October 14, 2012-Exchange of Rockets With Gaza, Cyberattack and Election News

Since Friday night there has been an ongoing low--evel exchange of fire between Gaza and southern Israel. It has been the Salifis that have been shooting in Gaza. Israel successfully responded and killed one of their top leaders. For the moment it looks like Hamas has no interest whatsoever in letting this exchange get out of hand. They certainly are not willing to get involved in a war, when the Salafis, or Al Qaeda (which more and more seem, to be the same thing), are being killed by Israel. If there are civilian deaths in Gaza, then they will respond.

The speech by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, last Thursday on the dangers of a cyber attack have created waves in Israel. Panetta compared the threat of cyber attack to that of Pearl Harbor. He also stated the US would take preemptive action against any nations planning a cyber attack. He specifically said that Iran was one of those countries. In Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu was quick to announce that he had created a cyber command to be the cyber equivalent of the "Iron Dome" missile system. Some commentators in Israel are saying that in the end, the US could use the excuse of cyber attack to mount an assault against Iran.

The Bank of Israel released an interesting report today. The Ministry of Education budgets 42 hours a week to Arab high schools, 52 hours to secular high schools and 72 hours to religious high schools.

The Israeli political world is holding its breadth to hear if Ehud Olmert is going to return to public service. The only sadder news is that Israelis are also waiting to hear if Foreign Minister Lieberman is going to be indicted- two years after the police recommended that he be charged.