300 dead, 1600 injured and still counting

[EndtheMadnessNow]

I suspect Israel will respond with scorch earth policy.

Go here for live updates: The Times of Israel

Sderot mayor decries ‘massacre of innocent civilians,’ calls to erase Hamas

Sderot Mayor Alon Davidi tells residents to stay in their homes behind locked doors and not open them until instructed otherwise, as Israeli security forces work to find and apprehend an unknown number of Palestinian terrorists who infiltrated this morning from Gaza into Israeli communities and gunned down people in the streets and in their homes.

Davidi decries the “massacre of innocent civilians everywhere,” and calls for Israel’s leadership to deal a significant blow to Hamas.

“We need to take over Gaza and kill them, they need to be erased,” he tells Channel 12.

The intelligence failure resembles 1973, but you almost have to go back to 1948 to find an analogue for the violence that played out in cities and towns today. It'll take a few days for the dust to settle to know the scale of Israel's response. No doubt Iran is back in the cross-hairs. Netanyahu has historically been cautious about using military force. But he's now surrounded by a coterie of incompetent ideologues, and public opinion will probably be in favor of a dramatic change to the status quo.

50 years ago today...