THE NEXT STAGE

By Barry Shaw

The Iron Dome missile defense system was a game changer in Israel’s war against Palestinian terrorism. Almost all the rockets from the Gaza Strip and heading for large civilian centres in Israel were intercepted and destroyed in the air.

The Israeli Air Force succeeded in spotting and pinpointing about twenty terrorists who were in the act of preparing or firing rockets and mortars from Gaza into Israel. Most are no longer around to continue their murderous work. Despite the attempts of sections of the international media to portray Israel as killers of Palestinians, civilian deaths were minimal.

This has led to enormous frustration for the Palestinian terror organizations. They now see the ineffectiveness of their rocket campaign and how adversely it has cost them in terms of members lost, including their leaders, and destruction of their infrastructure without achieving any notable success.

No longer able to employ their suicide bombers due to Israel’s defensive measures, including the security fence and “humit” (human intelligence resources) they are left scratching their heads for an effective way to kill Israelis.

We will begin to see actions, starting later this year, which will attempt to copy scenes from “the Arab Spring.” They are planning a “Global March on Palestine.” They are busy planning and recruiting a million man invasion of Israel. They intend to transport huge numbers of people to the borders and security checkposts of Israel with orders to “take back Palestine from the Zionist enemy.”

With massive numbers assaulting Israel’s sovereign territory they hope to provoke Israeli security forces to take harsh measures to stop this mass incursion. They want it to be seen on TV screens worldwide as equivalence to the resistance of Ghaddafi and Assad to the Arab uprising. They want, by the necessary firm Israeli response, to draw a comparison between Israel and the brutal dictatorships in the Arab world that has drawn international condemnation. Who is to say that a conditioned media will not spread this mistaken message to the detriment of Israel that will be seeking to do no more than to protect its territorial integrity?

The Palestinians will be joined by European radicals who are readying to reprise last year’s “Flightilla” in which they tried to airlift hundreds of demonstrators to fly into Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport and cause disruption by carrying out noisy protests in the arrival hall and later throughout Israel.

The 2011 Gaza Flotilla was an expensive propaganda failure for the extremists. Israeli social media activists and the Israeli Government managed to put out the message that this so-called “humanitarian mission to Gaza” was a sham, namely because there is no humanitarian crisis there but also because the ships did not carry any needed humanitarian aid on board. This, however, will not stop them wasting even more money and effort this year as the anti-Israel activists seek to pull a solidarity stunt to justify the huge amount of funding that is being pumped into radical organizations dressed up as “human rights” NGOs.

We are in a stage that began with failed wars of extermination against the Jewish state. It continued with the Arafat/PLO inspired decades of terror that is also reaching its nadir. The next stage is a form of lawfare in which the war to remove the Zionist state is waged by United Nations resolutions, appeals to the International Criminal Court, campaigns for boycotts, and calling Israel names, such as racist, Apartheid, etc. It will increasingly dress itself up as mass social protests. It is all a part of an attempt to demonise and delegitimize Israel for crimes not committed.