It’s time for another article on Israel and the Missile East. From around September 2006 until the end of November 2007, the facts on the ground did not appreciably change.

The Extant facts on the ground

1. Iran continued to develop its nuclear missile threat. That is what everybody believed, or at least said they believed. Is this still true? Probably, in spite of what the American “intelligence” reports say.

2. Huge American fleets sat off the Persian Gulf. This is still true. They are still sitting there, eating up millions of dollars a day, dollars that the United States is having a harder and harder time coming up with.

3. Americans have been fighting and dying in Iraq. Again, still true. Over one hundred thousand American soldiers are fighting for OIL who knows what, also costing the American taxpayer oodles of millions daily. And those dollars are harder and harder to come up with - daily.

4 A European fleet sits off the coast of Lebanon. This, along with the American battle groups of the Persian Gulf, was the immediate result of the Second Lebanon War. Journalists seem to think that if you don’t talk about something, it will go away. But that European fleet is still sitting just a few miles into international waters, and has been for over a year now.

5 Hamas and others had been (and still are) lobbing Qassam rockets into S’derot, Ashqelon and other towns immediately surrounding that open air prison known as “Gaza”. Daily, the bombardment continues, usually ignored by Americans and by Israelis who think that if they ignore the big bad Arab threatening to kill them, he’ll disappear in a puff of methane.

6. Israel’s government continued (and continues) to lose credibility and authority. For the last fourteen months, everybody wanted to get rid of the clown who pretends to be prime minister, but did not want to risk their Knesset seats to do so. This remains just as true today. On a daily basis “strikes” continue to attempt to take out Arab terrorists in Gaza, but the Israelis simply cannot afford to launch a massive offensive into the Strip. But they afflict the Arabs there with oil, water and gas shortages. That is probably the most effective weapon they can use, and knowing this, “the international community”, which is definitely not on our side, is doing what it can to squelch these efforts.