Friday - August 11th.

Quick Roundup since it's Erev Shabbat, and I'm very, very busy.

5:25 PM More rockets falling in Kiryat Shmona, Misgav, Maalot, Haifa, Akko and a few other places I forot off hand.

Have a Shabbat Shalom - will roundup the news on Motzei Shabbat, Saturday night after hockey.

--Jameel

4:55 PM Still working on the chicken, still listening to the radio, and the IDF Homefront announcement keeps interrupting. This time, about 20 Israeli Arab villages in Wadi Ara area are being told to enter their bomb shelters. Problem is, (for them), many of these arab homes don't have bomb shelters, because the houses were not built legally, or according to building code (to include a bomb shelter). Then again, these residents of Israel blame the Jews for the current war, their leaders in the Knesset encourage terrorism, cheer on the Hizbolla, and dance at the death of IDF soldiers...so I can't honestly say I feel overly sorry for them that they have no bomb shelter to run to. OK, that wasn't nice of me...there are municipal public bomb shelters for them to run to -- but if they don't have them in their homes because they built them illegally, then it's their problem.

4:38 PM Katyusha Strike in Haifa Just to dispell any rumors going around, the Intel Haifa R&D center was NOT hit by a rocket...the rocket landed near it, and some of it's windows were blown out.

4:36 PM Pictures from a Katyusha Strike in the Krayot today.

4:34 PM SF Rally for Israel. I was aksed to announce this...so here it is:

Date: August 9, 2006 8:35:30 PM PDT
Subject: URGENT! Counter Protest Announcement: PLEASE FORWARD!

This Shabbat - there plans to be a huge anti-israel rally in civic center - Voice of Israel is organizing a counter-protest. Please try to attend or encourage others to attend. [Note: they purposefully organized this for Shabbat so the community would have trouble mounting a counter-demonstration].


If you need any motivation - take a look at their website: http://www.internationalanswer.org/

Heck - it's not that far a walk for those who don't drive and people can go after shul as well - their rally starts later , but the plan is to march peacefully to civic center. I can;t think of a more important thing to do on a shabbat than support Israel (how's that for good old Jewish guilt).

4:05 PM Let me try to explain the past few hours to give you an idea whats going on in Northern Israel. A few hours ago, on my way back to the Muqata from one the kibbutzim near Petach Tikva, I tried to listed to Yoram Gaon's weekly Friday radio show on Reshet Bet (Israel radio). Not a minute didn't go by without an interruption from the IDF Homefront comnmand...sort of like the emergency broadcasting system in the United States...except here, the announcement interrupts the radio program as follows: "This is an announcement from the IDF Homefront Command: Sirens are currently sounding in the following areas...Please immediately go into a bomb shelter or secure area" (and then the message is repeated).

I must have heard over 30 different locations mentioned over the past few hours...every minute or two, another siren goes off, and a different location is sent running to their bomb shelters.

On the 4:00 PM news the radio announcer listed location after location that had been hit with katyushas...2 wounded here...3 wounded there...a public building was hit and is burning...brush fires here and there.

Northern Israel is burning.

However. With all that going on...Olmert must be hearing his spinmakers and polsters who are returning with distressing news. The people of Israel are not interested in a cease fire that weakens Israel...and everyone I speak to is angry at Olmert and the government for attempting to negotiate the worst cease-fire terms ever offered Israel.

During the 4 PM news, the announcer said that "the cease fire is not going as smoothyl as hoped, and Israel can't accept the current terms."

Thank G-d. Maybe now we can start winning the war.

I'm grilling chicken now for shabbat, so I'm not able to blog as usual...I'll see what I can report after I flip them.

Shabbat Shalom,

Jameel.


12:51 PM One more thing -- I usually don't post this, but what the heck. Serious warning/intelligence tip that there will be more than usual katyusha strikes up north today between 1 and 3 PM. Let's hope this one's wrong...

12:48 PM Rockets continue to fall all over Northern Israel -- with a focus on Haifa, Akko and it's surrounding areas. One rocket landed on the coastal highway (Highway #2) south of Haifa, and that lane has been closed off. Miraculously, no one was hurt when it landed.

Gotta go - I'll write more later.

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael