Update

Husband returned last night from Ashkelon at about 11 p.m. The trip normally takes about an hour each way, but the IDF wouldn't let traffic into Ashkelon for a while; a Kassam had landed (no damage or casualties; Kassams have no steering ability) not far away from where his client's relatives lived and the army wasn't letting anyone in until the area was declared safe.

Woke up this morning to an international press which is fairer than it usually is. Ehud Yaari, an Israeli expert on Arab affairs, said last night that the Arab world was pretty disgusted with Hamas right now: Egypt had actually warned Hamas that this was not the moment to provoke either Israel or the US. My guess is that the Hamas leaders were under increasing pressure from their own lower-level people to show their "strength", and the top leadership acquiesced lest they be thought weak and therefore lose the allegiance of their supporters.

Of course there are the usual condemnations about "excessive force". We should obviously just retaliate with Kassams, too. How ludicrous. Isn't it obvious, that by using precision bombing, we are being very restrained? We could very easily simply flatten Gaza, in a matter of a few hours, and we wouldn't have this continuing problem. It is our very restraint that has exacerbated the situation. The Gazans don't think we have enough guts to really teach them a lesson; in Arab thinking, if a single enemy remains, you haven't done your job thoroughly enough.