Red alert siren in the Greater Tel Aviv area. Shortly after the reports of missile strike. In Ramat Gan, which is attached to Tel Aviv, a house is destroyed, Israeli television shows rescue workers: “We searched everywhere. We pulled two people out of the house with superficial injuries,” said one rescuer. During the search, the rescue team pulled a citizen out from under the rubble, not breathing; attempts to save the citizen’s life are in vain. He lost his life. At least 10 people have been killed and more than 1,500 injured in Israel over the past five days. More than 2,900 rockets have been fired at Israel from Gaza since Monday, May 10, according to the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs. Most of these missiles, which targeted residential areas, were destroyed by Iron Dome Defense System. From Friday night to Saturday morning alone, more than 200 rockets were fired at Israeli cities. The missiles are fired from inside residential areas, administrative and civilian buildings in Gaza, to residential and civilian areas in Israel. During one of the attacks, more than 100 rockets were fired in a matter of minutes, a Hamas official said. For comparison: Throughout the 2014 Gaza war, a total of 4,500 missiles were fired at Israel during the 50 days of fighting and three weeks of sporadic clashes before the start of the war.
This unprecedented volume of missile strikes reveals the strategy of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ): Terrorist forces seek to neutralize and overcome the Israel air and missile defense systems. The fact that civilians are the main victims of these attacks is part of the strategy of these two groups. It is not without reason that both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are on the list of terrorist organizations in most countries. But another common question that these days on social media, especially among Iranians, is, where did all these missiles come from? How many missiles do they have?
Cathy
Sadegh Ahangaran’s biography states that before Operation Hoveyzeh and after oration in Jamaran in the presence of Khomeini, he became known as “Khomeini’s Nightingale” and Mohsen Rezaei immediately took Sadegh’s weapon and handed him the microphone; that’s how the nightingale started singing operational codes in his songs (lamentations) and prepared the “Lashkar-e Sahib-e-Zaman” (Imam Zaman Division), when Mohsen Rezaei was sending soldiers to the slaughterhouse in Operation Deception, to go to heaven between the two hells of Karbala 4 and 5*. If the war propaganda narratives of the 1980s are true, Iranian soldiers on the embankments and frontline of the eight-year war were encouraged by the lamentations and prayers of Haj Sadegh. In World War II, the same thing was done on the embankments of the German Nazi army by Lily Marlen of Leningrad soldiers’ radio for German forces. And on the Stalin Red Army front was the song “Katyusha” that cheered the Russians; a simple song, with a much simpler lyrics, in which love and war propaganda were intertwined in a very vulgar way**: “ Oh you song! Little song of a maiden, Head for the bright sun. And reach for the soldier on the far-away border, Along with greetings from Katyusha […].” Katyusha in Russian is the nickname for little girl “Ekaterina”, “Little Katarina” or as we say, “Cathy”. The song is the story about a girl named Katyusha who misses her lover, goes to the steep bank of the river in the spring, when “apple and pear trees are in bloom everywhere” and sings a song to her soldier lover on the battlefield and returns home at the end.
Stalin’s Organ (Stalinorgel)
A few years after the song was composed, on July 14, 1941, a squad of launchers consisting of 7 “BM-13 to 16” equipped with 3,000 rockets, from the top of a “steep” hills, fired rockets at a gathering of Nazi forces in the town square of “Rudnya” for the first time. In the minds of Russian soldiers, the image of the singer “Katyusha” standing on a steep slope was immediately evoked. For Nazi German soldiers, those who survived that hell, a completely different picture was created. According to them, this was one of their most terrifying memories of the entire war. Each of these war survivors describes the sound of the missiles differently: roar, howl, wail… Because these rocket launchers were actually a series of rails that were placed side by side and the rockets were placed on them, they resembled the pipes of the church organ. Because the organ was played by Stalin’s soldiers, the Russian Katyusha soon became known as “Stalin’s Organ” among soldiers of the Third Reich Army. From the very beginning, Stalin’s organ was more of a weapon to demoralize and create an atmosphere of terror than a weapon of physical destruction and high-precision targeting: a weapon for terrorizing.
Jonathan Conricus, International Spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces says, most of the rockets fired in the attacks we see these days were produced inside the Gaza Strip, with the technology that the Islamic Republic has provided to terrorist groups. Some of these rockets are made from components that cost around $100. The Washington Institute’s Michael Herzog estimates the cost of building components for the Qassim and Al-Quds series rockets at $2,500 and the total Hamas arsenal at 8,000 to 10,000 rockets. “The rockets that are being built inside the Gaza Strip with technology and with the help of the Islamic Republic,” said Jonathan Conricus, “have a major drawback: the launchers do not have the ability to determine the flight path and the point of impact of these rockets.” In essence, these rockets act like Stalin’s organ. They do not hit a specific target; their impact is more political and psychological than military. The purpose of using these rockets is to create an atmosphere of terror; “The aim is to terrorize citizens.” About 20% of all rockets fired by Hamas and PIJ have fallen short and hit targets inside Gaza. This means that Palestinian terrorist forces have fired about 600 rockets at their people and their territory since Monday. “These days we are witnessing the unveiling of a completely new tactic by Hamas,” explains Michael Herzog. “They fire barrages of Quds & Qassem rockets, the handmade rockets of PIJ and Hamas, saturating the Iron Dome. Then, right when there is a break in the Iron Dome, Ayyash rockets are fired at regular intervals, which are more accurate and reach longer range.” The Islamic Republic supplies the components needed to build these weapons to terrorist groups based in the Gaza Strip in a variety of ways: by sea and fishing boats, or through a system of tunnels dug through Egypt. “Gaza is like a black box,” Fabian Hinz, an independent Middle East analyst, likens; “Most smuggling routes are completely unknown. In the 2000s, rockets and weapons, manufactured and ready for use, were smuggled by Syria and Iran, first by sea to Sudan and then by arms smuggling gangs through Egypt and the Sinai Desert, through underground tunnels to Gaza. The Islamic Republic and terrorist groups have developed their means of communication and cooperation. “What is new is that the Islamic Republic is teaching its terrorist allies how to build the weapons they need.”
The “Stalin Organ” of Gaza terrorists will soon be shut down. But the commanders of the IRGC, Hezbollah, and the regime-led terrorists have gained valuable insights and results from the course of the war in terms of the Iron Dome’s defense capabilities and deterrent capacity. The results that the regime will surely use for a much more bloody and destructive war by reviving JCPOA and increasing its economic power. A war that threatens not only Israel and the Middle East, but most of all Europeans, who are appearing these days as the regime’s savior in the Vienna talks.
Translation of this article by Sahar.
*: Karbala 4 was an offensive operation by Iran forces in 1986, which led to Iran’s defeat and death of more than 1,000, capture of 4,000 and 11,000 wounded Iranian. Mohsen Rezaei claimed this was a diversionary operation, “Operation Deception,” before Karbala 5.
** English Translation of Katyusha