AN ISRAELI minister has said Palestinians firing rockets from Gaza will bring upon themselves what he termed a "shoah", the Hebrew word for holocaust.
The word can also mean disaster, but is rarely used in Israel outside discussions of the Nazi attempt to wipe out the Jews. Most Israelis are loath to use it for other contemporary events.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for the Hamas movement, sai
d the Palestinians faced "new Nazis".
Israeli air strikes have killed at least 33 Gazans, including five children, in the past three days. The military 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 the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.
One Israeli was killed in a rocket attack on Wednesday on the town of Sderot. Hamas raised the stakes by using Soviet-designed Grad missiles, more powerful and accurate than improvised Gazan Qassams.
The deputy defence minister, Matan Vilnai, told Army Radio that "the more Qassam 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."
Israel's foreign ministry spokesman, Arye Mekel, said: "Deputy defence minister Matan Vilnai used the Hebrew phrase that included the term 'shoah' in Hebrew in the sense of a disaster or a catastrophe, and not in the sense of a holocaust."
Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas's prime minister in Gaza, said: "This is a proof of Israel's pre-planned aggressive intentions against our people.
"They want the world to condemn what they call the Holocaust and now they are threatening our people with a holocaust".
The full article contains 299 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
