As hundreds of rockets from Hamas-controlled Gaza rained down on Israel, Arab mobs rioted in Israeli cities, setting fire to synagogues and businesses.
The Israeli government ordered a state of emergency in the city of Lod after violent Arabs gangs set fire to three synagogues, and burned down several shops and vehicles. “Protests by Israeli Arabs broke out in Lod, a city near Tel Aviv, and escalated to full-scale rioting,” the BBC reported.
The President of Israel referred to it as a pogram:
The mayor of the city compared the situation to the Kristallnacht, the Nazi pogrom against Jews in 1939. A “civil war” has broken out, the mayor of the biblical city said.
The Jerusalem Post reported Arab rioting in the central Israeli city of Lod:
With fierce rioting continuing throughout Tuesday night in the mixed Jewish-Arab city of Lod, a state of emergency was declared, with Defense Minister Benny Gantz announcing the deployment of several Border Police units to help quell the violence that saw the burning of three synagogues and dozens of cars.At least two people were in serious condition from the clashes, one from rocks. In Acco, another mixed Arab-Jewish city in northern Israel, an 84-year-old man was seriously hurt when a restaurant was set on fire by rioters. Some 25 residents of Ramla and Lod were arrested on Tuesday night, according to a police spokesperson, and 151 were arrested in total within the central-northern district of Israel.”We have lost control of the city and the streets,” Lod Mayor Yair Revivo lamented to Israel’s Channel 12 News. Garbage bins, knocked over and set ablaze, could be seen nearby.Israel Police Chief Kobi Shabtai commented on the violence seen in Lod late Tuesday night: “We have not seen this kind of violence since October 2000,” he said, in reference to Arab riots that took place at the beginning of what would later become the Second Intifada. Shabtai said that he was moving his office to Lod until the anarchy there settled down.
In the current wave of terror, Palestinian terrorists fire rockets in massive barrages, a tactic aimed at overwhelming the Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, Israeli news reports said.
“According to the IDF, over 1,050 rockets and mortar shells have been fired from the Gaza Strip toward Israel since the outbreak of fighting on Monday evening,” The Times of Israel reported.
Despite the protective air defense system, some rockets still manage to fall on civilian populations. Rockets from Islamist Hamas-held Gaza continued to land on Israeli cities in southern and central Israel, killing at least five Israeli civilians.
Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) targeted the command structure and missile launching sites of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and other terrorist groups entrenched in Gaza. They managed to kill several Hamas and PIJ top operatives involved in the current rocket offensive.
The ” government has authorized the IDF to target and kill high-ranking military officials in Gaza,” the Israeli news website YNet News reported citing officials sources.
“Three terrorist battalions now rendered incapable of launching further attacks,” the Israeli TV channel i24News reported on Tuesday citing military sources. The IDF “destroyed some 150 rocket launchers in Gaza’s north. In addition to that, the army struck between 50 to 70 rocket launch sites, which were used for firing projectiles into Israel’s south,” the broadcaster added.
Despite sweeping condemnation from Arab and Muslim countries, Israel is showing the political world it will eliminate the imminent threat posed by the Gaza-based terrorist infrastructure. French deputy foreign minister Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne told Israel to use a “proportionate” force against Gaza terrorists firing indiscriminate missile barrages and killing Israeli civilians.
The Islamist terrorist groups, Hamas and the PIJ, “will pay a heavy price for aggression,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Tuesday.
Update:
The IDF continues to Hammer at Hamas terrorist network in Gaza. “The Shin Bet security service identifies four top Hamas commanders who were killed in its joint operation with the Israel Defense Forces earlier today,” The Times of Israel reported Wednesday morning.
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