A Daily Analysis
By Marc Schulman

Aug 16, 2009 Murders in Israel, Iran Update and Hamas Kills the Opposition

Today's news in Israel was dominated by a series of murders. The most disturbing story was of a middle aged man walking along the beach with his family. It seems the attackers were drunk and randomly attacked the man, as he sat with his family on a bench. When he ran, they followed and killed him. The other tragic story is of a possible serial killer, who has killed at least two women in the coastal area in the last few days. The killings are bringing about the usual soul searching. Needless to say, these are each terrible tragedies, but the confluence of these tragedies, and a few other murders, (including the killing of a 3 year old by her father two weeks ago) seem merely coincidental. They do, however, reflect a slow but steady, rise in violence in Israeli society that does get worse in the summer.

Friday night Hamas crushed an Islamic fundamentalist group that was even more fundamentalist than it is. The group, which was loosely tied to Al-Qaeda. When their leader declared at Friday prayers he was starting an Islamic Caliphates in the Gaza Strip, Hamas attacked. It destroyed the mosque that was the center of the group's operations and killed 20 of its members and 6 civilians. I doubt the UN will be coming to investigate the destruction of the mosque, or whether the Hamas used "proportional" force.

The Iranian opposition has not quieted down, with its leader calling for the establishment of a new movement, not a political party, to bring about freedom to Iran. It is interesting to watch the Twitter posts, mostly from Iran, that represent the opposition to the regime. In a twenty-minute period this morning I watched as over 2,000 posts were made on twitter on the subject.