This post was just going to be a standard "here's what's going on" post about the last 24 hours of Israeli-Palestinian. Except it took me 25 minutes to untangle the MSM's early awkward attempts to squeeze the day into a "cycle of violence" frame - the AP's true but misleading description about how the rocket barrage "came after an Israeli air strike" being to the point. So now it's also a "wow the media is shamelessly biased" post. Go figure.

Here's what I think happened, roughly in order. There were two sets of mortar attacks on Israel - a small one after an anti-terrorism incursion and then the massive barrage against a range of Israeli towns.

(1) Hamas has been using the ceasefire to dig tunnels into Israel so they can kidnap more Israeli soldiers. They're not supposed to - but they're also not supposed to be building a massive army, and that's not holding them back. It's an international agreement and it's with Israel so it's all just nudge-wink anyway. Regardless, the IDF received intelligence about a tunnel with an entrance 250m from the security fence that was about to be used for an imminent attack. The entrance was inside a house in the middle of a residential neighborhood - because where else would it be? On Tuesday night they went in to get it.

(2) Then the IDF attempted to destroy the tunnel but they were engaged by Hamas soldiers inside the house and mortar crews outside the house. Eventually one of the Hamas soldiers managed to blow up the whole building - which was packed with explosives. One Hamas soldier was killed and six Israeli troops were injured.

(3) Then the Palestinian launched six mortars at Israeli civilians. Because that's the kind of frustrated lashing out you'd expect after the IDF foils one of their massive, long-planned attacks.

(4) Then Israel called in air strikes against the mortar crews who were firing at Israeli civilians. This is when the rest of the Hamas casualties happened.

(5) Then this: