PLANES WIPE OUT MOSQUE ARSENAL

Israel raised the ante in its five-day Gaza Strip offensive by blasting a mosque that it said had been turned into a bomb warehouse and terrorist hideout.
Several people were hurt in the airstrike, which left only the Gaza City mosque's minaret standing, Palestinian officials said.
The escalation in the fighting came as Hamas lobbed a barrage of 60 more rockets deep into Israel and Israel rejected, at least temporarily, a French-led appeal for a two-day truce.
The head of Israel's Shin Bet intelligence agency, Yuval Diskin, said Israel had already blasted 130 rocket launchers - and the success of the airstrikes had forced Hamas to turn dozens of mosques into arsenals and command centers.
"Many Hamas officials are hiding in mosques throughout Gaza, out of the assumption that Israel will avoid attacking Muslim houses of worship," he told the Israeli Cabinet yesterday.
Other Hamas chiefs have "disguised themselves as doctors and nurses" in hospitals, he said.
The military said terrorist cells had been firing rockets from the mosque grounds as early as yesterday morning. The airstrike touched off explosions from stockpiled munitions inside the mosque.
Nevertheless, Hamas continued to send powerful rockets nearly 30 miles inside Israel.
In a new barrage yesterday, a Hamas rocket landed inside a classroom of an evacuated schoolhouse in Beersheba, a city of more than 200,000 people.
Four Israelis were slightly wounded in other rocket attacks on the towns of Ashdon and Ashkelon.
Meanwhile, Gaza officials put the death toll at more than 390 since the Israeli offensive began Saturday, including 200 uniformed Hamas security officers.

So the arab muslims are upset about a munitions stuffed mosque that was blown up? You have to love the childlike thinking of a muslim. They call some place holy and run there during a battle or fight from a mosque and they believe that the good guys cannot shoot them there because it is a "safe" place. Well, now they were wrong about that, weren't they? So sad that the bad guys are no longer safe in a holy place. The wars in Iraq and Afganistan would both be over if we did not follow those rules of engagement. No safe places for the terrorists to hide.

Israeli strike kills Hamas top dog; AP says this "escalates campaign"

Rockets into Israel from Gaza? That didn't escalate anything. Only Israel can escalate the campaign. "Israel kills top Hamas figure, escalating campaign," by Ibrahim Barzak And Amy Teibel for Associated Press, January 1 (thanks to all who sent this in):

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Israel dropped a one-ton bomb on the home of a Hamas strongman Thursday, killing him along with two wives and four children in the first attack on the top leadership of Gaza's rulers. As the aerial bombardment escalated, the army said it was also poised to launch a ground invasion. Israel also appeared to be sounding out a possible diplomatic exit from the 6-day-old military offensive against Hamas by demanding international monitors as a key term of any future truce.

The bombing targeted 49-year-old Nizar Rayan, ranked among Hamas' top five decision-makers in Gaza. His four-story apartment building crashed to the ground, sending a thick plume of smoke into the air and heavily damaging neighboring buildings. It killed Rayan and 11 others, including two of his four wives and four of his 12 children, Palestinian health officials said. The Muslim faith allows men to have up to four wives.
Israel has made clear that no one in Hamas is immune in this offensive, and the strike that flattened Rayan's apartment building in the northern town of Jebaliya drove that message home.
"We are trying to hit everybody who is a leader of the organization, and today we hit one of their leaders," Israeli Vice Premier Haim Ramon said in a television interview.

Hamas leaders went into hiding before Israel launched the offensive on Saturday, but Rayan was known for openly defying Israel, and the military said he had a tunnel under his house that could serve as an escape route.

A professor of Islamic law,

...apparently, therefore, another Misunderstander of Islam...

Rayan was closely tied to Hamas' military wing and was respected in Gaza for donning combat fatigues and personally participating in clashes against Israeli forces. He sent one of his sons on an October 2001 suicide mission that killed two Israeli settlers in Gaza....

Don't worry, some of his virgins are the two wives killed along with him. So you see, allah, the moon god, has it all worked out. And according to some idiot that won't leave me alone from YouTube says that paradise is a physical place so high above the Earth that only Old Mo has made it there when not dead. I would like to see that on a star chart. What solar system does the muslim paradise reside in?

Hizballah top dog: "The Israelis claim they have learned the lessons of the Second Lebanon War, but they haven't"

I have to agree with Nashralla. Israel has not learned its lesson of the war with the hizballah. They are tying to take out the militant wing of Hamas. They need to take out every single muslim man, woman and child. Just eliminate them. Level Gaza and start over.

"The Israelis claim they have learned the lessons of the Second Lebanon War, but they haven't," Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said Wednesday night.
In a televised speech, Nasrallah said that Israel had not set a clear target for the current Gaza operation, asserting that the IDF wasn't sure it would achieve anything and that the military action in the Strip would end in failure.