Fox News is reporting that Israel has withdrawn ground troops out of Gaza as a new 72-hour cease-fire takes effect today. This as Palestinian apologists on America media are called to task and a simple explanation of the conflict goes viral.

The Times of Israel reported that a barrage of rockets were fired from Gaza minutes before the cease-fire was due to take effect. The paper also reported that Israeli’s Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted two rockets over central Israel, while two other rockets fell into open areas in southern Israel near the Gaza border, causing no damage or injuries.

In Gaza City, where streets had been deserted during the war, traffic picked up and shops started opening doors.

Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter said Israel withdrew all its remaining forces from Gaza on Tuesday after troops neutralized cross-border tunnels that were built for Islamic militant attacks inside Israel.

“Overnight, we completed the destruction of 32 tunnels in the Gaza Strip,” Lerner said. “They were part of a strategic Hamas plan to carry out attacks against southern Israel.

Israel launched its ground offensive in Gaza on July 17, nine days after launching airstrikes on Hamas militants and weapons caches.

Click here for more from Fox News.

Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell writing in his regular column for World Net Daily considers, given the twisted logic in defense of terror in the Middle East, if we may now be living in a “post-thinking era.”  Sowell writes:

Many people in Europe and the Western Hemisphere are staging angry protests against Israel’s military action in Gaza. One of the talking points against Israel is that far more Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli military attacks than the number of Israeli civilians killed by the Hamas rocket attacks on Israel that started this latest military conflict.

Are these protesters aware that vastly more German civilians were killed by American bombers attacking Nazi Germany during World War II than American civilians killed in the United States by Hitler’s forces?

Geraldo Rivera

Talk-show host Geraldo Rivera says that there is no way Israel is winning the battle for world opinion. But Israel is trying to win the battle for survival, while surrounded by enemies. Might that not be more important?

Has any other country, in any other war, been expected to keep the enemy’s civilian casualties no higher than its own civilian casualties? The idea that Israel should do so did not originate among the masses but among the educated intelligentsia.

In an age when scientists are creating artificial intelligence, too many of our educational institutions seem to be creating artificial stupidity.

Click here for more from Thomas Sowell at World Net Daily.

Dennis Prager (HT/TheBlaze)

Finally, while the Middle East conflict is framed as one of the most complex problems in the world, in reality, it’s very simple. Israelis want to live in peace and are willing to accept a neighboring Palestinian state. And most Palestinians do not want Israel to exist. As Dennis Prager explains below, this is really all you need to know.

In 5 minutes, understand how Israel was founded, and how, since that auspicious day in 1948, its neighbors have tried to destroy it, again and again.

As a post script, citizens of the world should remember that Islam is a religion that claims to be of peace, but whose leaders refuse to condemn their own members who seek murder and war thus not “civilized” by common standard.