January 18th 1991!!! Saddam Hussein threatens the Jews כלשון המן to "להשמיד להרוג ולאבד את כל היהודים"!!! The fear was palpable. The Americans acknowledged that Israel has the right to defend herself. THANK YOU!!! We may exist!!! Achshveirosh ALSO gave us the right to defend ourselves. We are allowed to not lie down and passively let ourselves be killed.
We BARUCH HASHEM are still here after seeing ניסים ונפלאות. Saddam's body rotted in the grave long ago. The war ended Purim time!!!
עם ישראל חי!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[Excuse the British english. A frum Brit gave birth to twin boys. A week later she made two Brits.]
The Gulf war exploded across the Middle East early this morning as an apparently prostrate Iraq struck at Israel.
The Pentagon reported that eight Scud missiles had landed, three in Tel Aviv, one in Haifa, three in largely unpopulated areas in remote regions and one in an unknown district. An Israeli army spokesman said seven Israelis were slightly wounded, but that the missiles had conventional, not chemical or biological, warheads.
Israel immediately issued a formal state of war alert. Shortly afterwards, a senior US official in Washington said: 'Israel has the right to defend itself, we recognise that.'
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Israel did not retaliate immediately, and the cabinet was in emergency session as dawn broke.
Six explosions were heard in Tel Aviv by Western journalists huddled for safety in sealed rooms after the Israeli alert.
Another wave of Iraqi missiles was reported to be heading for the main allied air base at Dhahran in eastern Saudi Arabia. But an explosion in Dhahran was said later to have been a US Patriot anti-aircraft missile blowing up accidentally.
Sources in Washington said later that US and allied fighter bombers were seeking out any of the remaining fixed Scud missile bases which remained unscathed after the first day's mass bombing of Iraq.
Within an hour of the first reports of the attacks on Israel, waves of allied planes were seen roaring away from bases in Saudi Arabia and setting course for Iraq.
President Bush was 'outraged' at the attack on Israel, and John Major condemned the attack as 'unforgiveable'.
The Iraqi strikes came exactly 24 hours after President Bush unleashed the air assault upon Baghdad.
The attack on Israel was the widening of the war which President Bush had most dreaded, throwing up alarming political implications for his Arab allies, a testimony to the double-edged power of the hi-tech modern weaponry on which the US had relied.
As air raid sirens screamed across Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Israeli military authorities said the first missiles had not been picked up by their radar.
Iraq had earlier suffered the most sustained and devastating aerial and missile bombardment in history, as the White House insisted there would be no pause for diplomacy and the pounding would go on until Saddam Hussein left Kuwait.
Last night the RAF said a second Tornado GR1 failed to return from an evening mission over Iraq. During the day a US Navy F-18 fighter went down in the Gulf with its pilot killed an RAF Tornado suffered an engine fire, perhaps caused by enemy action, its two-man crew missing one Kuwaiti plane was lost and four French Jaguar bombers were damaged.
A third wave of bombers last night switched their targets to Iraqi ground troops, while US Marines aboard their amphibious landing craft prepared, or at least rehearsed, an amphibious assault on the Kuwaiti coast. A full-scale ground attack seemed some days off, until the maximum damage had been inflicted on the Iraqi defenders. As the second night of war closed over Iraq, the allies claimed to have delivered over 1,400 sorties and dropped 18,000 tons of bombs. Some of the targets bombed in the first wave were attacked again last night.
The cruise missile strikes from the second world war-vintage battleships Wisconsin and Missouri continued in daylight yesterday, as Iraqi radio claimed that its forces had shot down a total of 60 allied aircraft.
France's armed forces chief of staff, General Maurice Schmitt, said yesterday that only about 15 Iraqi aircraft tried to oppose the first overnight allied air offensive, and about half the Iraqi air force had been destroyed on the ground.
A hundred of the US Navy's Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired in anger for the first time.
The White House spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, said yesterday: 'We do not think there is any need for a pause for Saddam to change his mind. If at any point he wants to change course here, all he has to do is surrender and comply with all UN resolutions.'
Late last night, B-52 heavy bombers were launched against Saddam's elite forces, the Republican Guard detachments in northern Kuwait and in south-central Iraq . Each plane carries 14 tonnes of bombs, and each flight of three B-52s can create a crater 1.5 miles long and a mile wide when if they drop all their bombs in unison. Cable News Network said the planes were operating from Turkey and from Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean.
Armed forces spokesmen earlier expressed their delight at the early success of their complex multi-national battle plan. It was left to the politicians to warn against any premature euphoria. 'Initial reports of accomplishments and losses are good, but we need to keep this in perspective. No one should assume the conflict will be short or easy,' President Bush told Congressional leaders at a meeting in the White House.
But allied commanders could hardly restrain their elation at the success of the first strike. Co-ordinated under US Air Force command from Riyadh, American, British, Saudi, French and Kuwaiti aircraft operated as bombing 'packages' escorted by fighters.
In Baghdad, witnesses reported the destruction of the defence ministry and damage to Saddam's presidential palace, the telecommunications centre, where satellite dishes on the roof melted, and the military airport terminal.
There was no sign of moves on the diplomatic front. At the UN, the Iranian ambassador called on the Secretary-General to raise the question of help to deal with the expected wave of Iraqi refugees from the bombing.
Fighting also broke out along the Kuwait-Saudi Arabia border, but only in a most limited way. Iraqi artillery managed to set fire to storage tanks at the small coastal oil terminal of Ra's al Khafji, in the far north-eastern corner of Saudi Arabia. The nearby town was evacuated and US Marine helicopter gunships and aircraft are said to have retaliated.
