Unlike the May 15 protests to commemorate the Palestinian "catastrophe" of Israel's founding that resulted in a breach of Israel's northern border, this time the IDF was better organized to contain the June 5 "naqsa" demonstrations designed to commemorate another Arab "catastrophe" -- Israel's victory in the 1967 Six-Day war that left Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian aggressors shorn of the Golan, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Sinai.

In the second round of this new challenge to the Jewish state, attempts to penetrate Israeli sovereign soil from Syria were thwarted by the IDF with a combination of utmost restraint and firm resolve to keep the border inviolate. Before using live fire, Israeli forces first sent warnings in Arabic to protesters to keep on their side of the line if they didn't want to get hurt, followed by shots in the air, and when that still didn't work, live fire directed at the legs of the would-be infiltrators. 

When the smoke cleared, the promised June 5 barrage of demonstrations turned out to be an anemic fizzle.  Things were quiet on the Gaza front, on the Lebanon front, and in Jerusalem.  There were minor outbursts in the West Bank, contained with no loss of life.  Only on the Syrian border was there a loss of lives.

In reviewing the day, here are a couple of interesting points worth noting, but largely ignored by mainstream media. 

The Syrian anti-Assad opposition reported that his regime paid poor Syrian farmers $1,000 to head to the border and try to cross into Israel, and $10,000 to families of farmers who might be killed in the process.  While the mainstream press was quick to report Syrian pronouncements about casualties and fatalities, it largely ignored this bit of information put out by  the anti-Assad coalition.  Question:  Why would the media attach more credibility to Assad's flaks than to Syrian protesters risking their lives to depose the tyrant?

Also, and this is probably the most ironic aspect of the day, the number of provocateurs trying to cross the border into Israel numbered by all accounts only in the hundreds.  Contrast this with a day earlier, when thousands of Israeli leftists demonstrated in Tel Aviv against the security and peace policies of the Netanyahu government and in support of President Obama's push to get Israel to accept major land concessions prior to any talks about Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees -- a ploy for Israel to surrender its biggest negotiating card -- surrender of land -- and leave it without negotiating chips when the agenda turns to refugees and Jerusalem.  Yet, by the thousands, these demonstrators managed to knock Bibi on Israeli soil and in greater numbers than the hundreds of Arabs who were kept out of Israel.

Makes one wonder whom Israel has most to worry about.