Here’s what these surface to surface missiles look like. Calling them rockets or (worse) “home made rockets” is lethal journalism, you’ll hear it a lot later.

This is the sound people to the north of me woke up to. You have to scramble to get your kids to a shelter if you have one in your home as modern Israeli homes do, or to a communal one. You may not get there in time. There was probably 60 to 90s warning.

Drone footage of the damage.

Ground shots of the damage.

Currently the reports say 6 people were injured including 2 babies.

Netanyahu was due to speak at AIPAC on Tuesday, he’ll cut that and fly back to Israel today. His political rival, Benny Gantz will probably stay on and speak today I’m guessing.

The lunatics and the Israel/Jew haters will start shouting about false flags and talking about the Israeli elections. The much more likely reason is that Gaza is a seething cauldron of anger against Hamas: massive demonstrations brutally repressed that you haven’t heard about over the last few weeks.

I’ll tell you something though, this tweet is not an uncommon view here.

We know they edit maliciously, but it is so delicious when they get shown up quite this brilliantly. Excellent work Avi!

Statement of Nick Sandmann, Covington Catholic High School junior, regarding incident at the Lincoln Memorial

I am providing this factual account of what happened on Friday afternoon at the Lincoln Memorial to correct misinformation and outright lies being spread about my family and me.

I am the student in the video who was confronted by the Native American protestor. I arrived at the Lincoln Memorial at 4:30 p.m. I was told to be there by 5:30 p.m., when our busses were due to leave Washington for the trip back to Kentucky. We had been attending the March for Life rally, and then had split up into small groups to do sightseeing.

When we arrived, we noticed four African American protestors who were also on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I am not sure what they were protesting, and I did not interact with them. I did hear them direct derogatory insults at our school group.
The protestors said hateful things. They called us “racists,” “bigots,” “white crackers,” “faggots,” and “incest kids.” They also taunted an African American student from my school by telling him that we would “harvest his organs.” I have no idea what that insult means, but it was startling to hear.

Because we were being loudly attacked and taunted in public, a student in our group asked one of our teacher chaperones for permission to begin our school spirit chants to counter the hateful things that were being shouted at our group. The chants are commonly used at sporting events. They are all positive in nature and sound like what you would hear at any high school. Our chaperone gave us permission to use our school chants. We would not have done that without obtaining permission from the adults in charge of our group.

At no time did I hear any student chant anything other than the school spirit chants. I did not witness or hear any students chant “build that wall” or anything hateful or racist at any time. Assertions to the contrary are simply false. Our chants were loud because we wanted to drown out the hateful comments that were being shouted at us by the protestors.

After a few minutes of chanting, the Native American protestors, who I hadn’t previously noticed, approached our group. The Native American protestors had drums and were accompanied by at least one person with a camera.

The protestor everyone has seen in the video began playing his drum as he waded into the crowd, which parted for him. I did not see anyone try to block his path. He locked eyes with me and approached me, coming within inches of my face. He played his drum the entire time he was in my face.

I never interacted with this protestor. I did not speak to him. I did not make any hand gestures or other aggressive moves. To be honest, I was startled and confused as to why he had approached me. We had already been yelled at by another group of protestors, and when the second group approached I was worried that a situation was getting out of control where adults were attempting to provoke teenagers.

I believed that by remaining motionless and calm, I was helping to diffuse the situation. I realized everyone had cameras and that perhaps a group of adults was trying to provoke a group of teenagers into a larger conflict. I said a silent prayer that the situation would not get out of hand.

During the period of the drumming, a member of the protestor’s entourage began yelling at a fellow student that we “stole our land” and that we should “go back to Europe.” I heard one of my fellow students begin to respond. I motioned to my classmate and tried to get him to stop engaging with the protestor, as I was still in the mindset that we needed to calm down tensions.

I never felt like I was blocking the Native American protestor. He did not make any attempt to go around me. It was clear to me that he had singled me out for a confrontation, although I am not sure why.

The engagement ended when one of our teachers told me the busses had arrived and it was time to go. I obeyed my teacher and simply walked to the busses. At that moment, I thought I had diffused the situation by remaining calm, and I was thankful nothing physical had occurred.

I never understood why either of the two groups of protestors were engaging with us, or exactly what they were protesting at the Lincoln Memorial. We were simply there to meet a bus, not become central players in a media spectacle. This is the first time in my life I’ve ever encountered any sort of public protest, let alone this kind of confrontation or demonstration.

I was not intentionally making faces at the protestor. I did smile at one point because I wanted him to know that I was not going to become angry, intimidated or be provoked into a larger confrontation. I am a faithful Christian and practicing Catholic, and I always try to live up to the ideals my faith teaches me — to remain respectful of others, and to take no action that would lead to conflict or violence.

I harbor no ill will for this person. I respect this person’s right to protest and engage in free speech activities, and I support his chanting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial any day of the week. I believe he should re-think his tactics of invading the personal space of others, but that is his choice to make.

I am being called every name in the book, including a racist, and I will not stand for this mob-like character assassination of my family’s name. My parents were not on the trip, and I strive to represent my family in a respectful way in all public settings.

I have received physical and death threats via social media, as well as hateful insults. One person threatened to harm me at school, and one person claims to live in my neighborhood. My parents are receiving death and professional threats because of the social media mob that has formed over this issue.

I love my school, my teachers and my classmates. I work hard to achieve good grades and to participate in several extracurricular activities. I am mortified that so many people have come to believe something that did not happen — that students from my school were chanting or acting in a racist fashion toward African Americans or Native Americans. I did not do that, do not have hateful feelings in my heart, and did not witness any of my classmates doing that.

I cannot speak for everyone, only for myself. But I can tell you my experience with Covington Catholic is that students are respectful of all races and cultures. We also support everyone’s right to free speech.

I am not going to comment on the words or account of Mr. Phillips, as I don’t know him and would not presume to know what is in his heart or mind. Nor am I going to comment further on the other protestors, as I don’t know their hearts or minds, either.

I have read that Mr. Phillips is a veteran of the United States Marines. I thank him for his service and am grateful to anyone who puts on the uniform to defend our nation. If anyone has earned the right to speak freely, it is a U.S. Marine veteran.

I can only speak for myself and what I observed and felt at the time. But I would caution everyone passing judgement based on a few seconds of video to watch the longer video clips that are on the internet, as they show a much different story than is being portrayed by people with agendas.

I provided this account of events to the Diocese of Covington so they may know exactly what happened, and I stand ready and willing to cooperate with any investigation they are conducting.

This was posted on Twitter by Jake Tapper. I don’t believe he’ll have learned anything from this.

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1. They ran a story that was basically a press release from far-left activists;
2. They had no journalists present, they were running with “social media” reports as their sources;
3. They did not spend any journalistic energy to watch all available sources, they stuck only with what their far-left activist circles were telling them.

As I said yesterday, this mirrors exactly what goes on in Israel with the press and especially the news wires like AP. Let’s look at the latest AP version of the story, an act that is unusual in itself: if the AP had reported this story correctly yesterday they wouldn’t have to write a new story today. The admission, just by covering this again, is that there were very important details they didn’t cover the first time.

Right there in the headline: “BREAKING” – how can it be BREAKING news that you actually got a comment from the person you set up yesterday as the main antagonist in the story:

DETROIT (AP) — The student who stared and smiled at an elderly Native American protester drumming in his face outside the Lincoln Memorial as his schoolmates chanted and laughed says he did nothing to provoke the man in the videotaped confrontation and was only trying to calm the situation.

The student identified himself in an email statement Sunday evening as junior Nick Sandmann of Covington Catholic High School in a northern Kentucky suburb of Cincinnati. An official working with the family confirmed Sandmann’s identity, speaking on condition of anonymity because the source didn’t want to distract from the statement.

“Detroit AP” – I thought this story happened in Washington DC? The kids are from Kentucky. My US geography might not be as good as Obama 57 States, but Detroit doesn’t seem to be anywhere near either of those. Let’s continue deconstructing: “student identified himself in an email statement” – that doesn’t sound like the AP actually reached out. The story notes some input from Kentucky based people, nothing indicates that any AP journalist was anywhere near this event.

Both Sandmann and Nathan Phillips say they were trying to defuse tensions that were rising among three groups on a day Washington hosted both the March for Life and the Indigenous Peoples March. But video of Sandmann standing very close to Phillips, staring and at times smiling at him as Phillips sang and played a drum, gave many who watched it a different impression. Other students appeared to be laughing at the drummer; and at least one could be seen on video doing a tomahawk chop.

“Both Sandmann and Nathan Phillips say …. BUT video …”: we’ll tell you the story we told yesterday, but then we’ll sheepishly acknowledge that there is more video than we chose to report which “gave many who watched it a different impression”. Oh. I see now.

The dueling accounts emerged Sunday as the nation picked apart footage from dozens of cellphones that recorded the incident on Friday in Washington amid an increasingly divided political climate fueled by a partial government shutdown over immigration policy.

“Duelling accounts” is a favourite way of introducing new “facts” that contradict their earlier story while they try to squeeze in a completely irrelevant reference to Trump I guess.

Videos show members of the religious group yelling disparaging and profane insults at the students, who taunt them in return. Video also shows the Native Americans being insulted by the small religious group.

Sandmann wrote that the students were called “racists,” ″bigots,” ″white crackers” and “incest kids” by the third group. He said a teacher chaperone gave the students permission to begin their school chants “to counter the hateful things that were being shouted at our group.”

This leaves out significantly worse material that was being thrown at the kids by the racists hate group, Black Hebrews including some pretty nasty anti-gay slurs. And the reaction from these Catholic schoolboys? Gasps and push back because they Catholic kids are clearly not homophobic. None of which makes this AP account.

One of those chants, however, is what led Phillips and Marcus Frejo, a member of the Pawnee and Seminole tribes, to approach the youths.

It was a haka — a war dance of New Zealand’s indigenous Maori culture, made famous by the country’s national rugby team. Frejo, who is also known as Chief Quese Imc, told the AP in a phone interview that he felt the students were mocking the dance.

This bit is flat out weird. Indigenous peoples do not treat other indigenous peoples’ traditions as a smorgasbord from which to pull an “indigenous activity” from. Why are self described Native Americans using a New Zealand Maori “haka” in Washington DC? Don’t they have their own indigenous dances? This is a huge red flag. Upon further reading through the confusing copy in the AP piece it may be that Frejo is claiming the Covington boys were doing a Haka. If they were, I haven’t seen video of it. The point however stands: what does a Haka have to do with Native Americans? Why would Frejo get upset if others performed it? The New Zealand All Blacks rugby team is not all Maori: non Maoris perform the Haka.

The M5M’s hate generating story has collapsed. Those who try to say the MAGA hat itself is a provocative symbol are relying on stories exactly like this before it started to be corrected. If you rely on almost any mainstream source for information on Trump or Israel, you’ll be proved wrong time and again.

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