According to a pro-Israel website, the Jewish Virtual Library, Gaza rocket fire against Israel began in 2001. Four rockets were launched in the entire year.
The Israeli military website agrees with this chronology, saying that the first rocket was launched from Gaza on April 16, 2001.
By happenstance, I was traveling throughout the Palestinian Occupied Territories just before that - during February-March 2001 - as a freelance reporter.
While I was there, Israeli forces were regularly shelling both the West Bank and Gaza, and had been doing so for several months. Gaza was particularly hard hit. (An article I wrote at the time can be read here.)
Below are some of my photos from Gaza from February 2001 (i.e. BEFORE any rockets had been fired, and long before Hamas was elected in 2006.)
© Alison WeirTofah area, Khan Yunis, Gaza, February 2001.
© Alison WeirTofah, Khan Yunis, Gaza, February 2001.
© Alison WeirGaza boy shot by Israeli forces, Feb 2001.
© Alison WeirPalestinian 12-year-old boy shot by Israeli forces in Feb 2001; brain dead.
In the following three months Israeli forces killed over 90 Palestinian children - before a single Israeli child was then killed, and long before any rockets were fired. (The largest single cause of these Palestinian children's deaths was gunfire to the head.)
In fact, in every year since, far more Palestinian children have been killed than Israeli children:
For additional charts with statistics on both populations go to http://www.ifamericansknew.org
Some groups (usually not Hamas), have also periodically fired rockets at Israel through these years.
During that time Israeli forces killed 4,000 Gazans, while Gazan resistance fighters using rockets killed 27 Israelis. On average, Israelis have killed a Palestinian child every three days.
By the way, the Iron Dome system has played a somewhat minimal role in the small number of Israeli deaths from rockets. Iron Dome wasn't begun to be put in place until March 27, 2011. In the ten years before, there were only 17 deaths. For a full analysis go here.
Comment: The Iron Dome might be the best fireworks show on the planet:
Iron Dome is a massive hoax: Israel is just firing blank missiles up in the air
Who originally began this violence?
Of course, the conflict between the two groups began before fall 2000, so let us go back and see how this all started, and which party initiated the violence.
That's actually quite easy to do.
You don't need to go back "thousands of years," as some people believe. In reality, in the late 1800s this region - known as Palestine - was peaceful and had been so for centuries. Its population was about 80 percent Muslim, 15 percent Christian, and a little under 5 percent Jewish; all practicing their faiths side by side largely without conflict on land considered sacred to all three groups.
The problem began when a political movement called "Political Zionism" began in the late 1800s in Europe (and also in the United States) with the goal of pushing out the inhabitants and creating a Jewish state on this land.
The culmination of their efforts came in 1948-49, when Israel was created through warfare. At least 750,000 of Palestine's non-Jewish inhabitants, approximately half of the total population, were ethnically cleansed, their lands, businesses, orchards, and other property (worth many millions of dollars) confiscated by the newly created Jewish state, Israel.
The Palestinians' crime was being there.
By the way, the belief - also pushed by US media - that the current wave of violence began with the abduction and murder of three young Israelis is also incorrect.
Comment: From: Psychopathic morality: The truth behind the kidnapping and murder of 3 Israeli teens
The motivation for the lock-down on the truth about the fate of the boys was clear enough even to Israeli journalists. One week after the kidnapping, leading Israeli journalist Noam Sheizaf stated in a Facebook post that the gag order was to "preserve the local and international legitimacy" for a military policy aimed at Hamas - and, as such, the gag order was a form of "media manipulation". Sheizaf also cited a Haaretzarticle of June 20th by Amos Harel that hinted that the military knew the teens were dead because the IDF operation in the West Bank clearly had nothing to do with finding the boys and was even harming the search for them.
What this means is that Netanyahu and his psycho cohorts callously used the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers to emotionally manipulate the Israeli population into calling for Palestinian blood (which they most assuredly did) and to justify the Israeli military bombardment of Gaza.
The fact is that Israeli forces had killed at least 4 Palestinian children and approximately 35 Palestinian adults in 2014 BEFORE the abuction/murder of the 3 Israelis.
Also, one of the largest group hunger strikes in history was going on among Palestinians who were being held illegally in Israeli prisons -- these "administrative detainees," Israel's Orwellian term, are prisoners who have never even been charged with a crime, yet are held for months or years. Many are tortured.
Even JJ Goldberg, a fervently pro-Israel journalist, says that Israeli "politics and lies" are behind Israel's current aggression.
The pro-Israel spin, despite being repeated over and over, just doesn't survive the facts.
For a synopsis of the history go here, for a more thorough discussion go here, for the US history go here.)
An account by another person who visited Khan Yunis (this is also spelled Khan Younis) a year later can be read here. Below is one of his photos:
© John CarusoTofah area of Khan Younis, March 2012.
© Alison WeirGaza, July 2009
© Alison WeirGaza, July 2009. American International School in Gaza destroyed by Israeli forces.
© Alison WeirGaza, July 2001
"Intifada" literally means "shaking off" of oppression. The American Revolutionary War, for example, could be similarly called the American Intifada against the British.
It would be no different if the states came north and squatted in our land. No peace until every single one of them leaves or is killed.
Funny though, Isreal breaks law left and right...and their biggest backer has the same lack of morals.