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JERUSALEM-A senior Israeli defense official said on Friday that Palestinians firing rockets from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip would bring upon themselves what he termed a "shoah", the Hebrew word for holocaust or disaster.The word is rarely used in Israel outside discussions of the Nazi Holocaust of Jews. Many Israelis are loath to countenance its use to describe other contemporary events. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the Palestinians faced "new Nazis".Israeli air strikes have killed at least 33 Gazans, including five children, in the past two days. The army, which carried out additional air strikes on Friday, said most of those killed were militants.Israeli leaders said cross-border rocket fire may leave them no choice but to launch a broader military offensive against Hamas, which seized Gaza in June after routing forces loyal to Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.One Israeli was killed in a rocket attack on Wednesday in the southern border town of Sderot. Hamas raised the stakes by using Soviet-designed Grad missiles, more powerful and accurate than improvised Gazan Qassams, to strike deep into the larger city of Ashkelon, home to 120,000 people.Visiting Ashkelon, defense Minister Ehud Barak told Channel 10 television an Israeli response was "required" and that "Hamas bears responsibility for this deterioration and it will also bear the results".Deputy defense Minister Matan Vilnai told Army Radio earlier that "the more Qassam (rocket) fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger 'shoah' because we will use all our might to defend ourselves."Vilnai's spokesman said: "Mr. Vilnai was meaning 'disaster'.He did not mean to make any allusion to the genocide."To read more go to:
As in the days of Noah...
