A mosque containing weapons? The mainstream media and Western government officials will almost certainly discount this as Israeli propaganda, since they all know that Islam is a religion of peace. But in reality, there is nothing unbelievable about it. We have seen mosques used to stockpile weapons in other countries in the past, and Hamas would especially want to do this, since they would then be able to use the Israeli strike against the mosque to defame Israel as indiscriminately hitting civilian targets.
“Israel Says It Struck a Gaza Mosque Containing Weapons,” by Isabel Kershner, New York Times, July 12, 2014 (thanks to all who sent this in):
JERUSALEM — The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had struck a mosque in central Gaza overnight that held a concealed weapons cache.
The attack was likely to fan Palestinian outrage, especially as it took place during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
In Gaza, health officials said that the death toll from the Israeli airstrikes had reached 120, with hundreds more wounded. Many of those killed and wounded were said to be civilians, including women and children.
Israel’s military said that over five days of fighting it had struck more than 1,160 targets in Gaza, including rocket launchers, weapon manufacturing and storage facilities, and private homes that it said had served as command-and-control centers for militants guiding the rocket fire. Overnight, the military said it had targeted 10 “terror operatives,” six of whom it said were directly involved in launching rockets at Israel at the time.
In a statement on Saturday, the military said that Hamas, the Islamic group that dominates Gaza, and the militant group Islamic Jihad “systematically use mosques to conceal weaponry and establish underground tunnel networks, abusing the holy nature of these sites for their own terror-oriented agendas.”
“These sites are part of a vast terror network embedded deep within civilian populations purposefully by these terror organizations,” the statement added.
The military issued aerial photographs of the mosque site, surrounded by civilian homes.
Gazans and Israelis brace for more conflict as Hamas continues to launch rockets, and Israel continues a fourth day of aerial strikes.
But Iron Dome does not provide total protection. A rocket struck a house in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba on Friday night, destroying it and injuring an elderly woman. A man was severely wounded on Friday and seven others suffered less serious wounds when a rocket hit a gasoline station in Ashdod, an Israeli port city, setting it ablaze.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that Israel was “weighing all possibilities and preparing for all possibilities,” including dispatching ground forces to Gaza.
Hamas’s military wing said it was ready for a long fight, saying on its website that it had “utilized only a little of what it has prepared for the Zionist enemy.”
While there was talk about some efforts underway to broker a cease-fire, none appeared imminent.