War
IDF troops in Gaza
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told a press conference Wednesday evening that Israel was still fighting in north Gaza, in Jabalia, Salajiah, and Khan Yunis. Israel was doing everything to find the hostages. He also said that Israel was doing what it could to find Hamas head Yeheh Sinwar and other leaders.
According to Amit Segal, on Channel 12TV, this is the first time that Israel fought in Gaza that the fighting in now encompasses all of Gaza,
Almog Boker of Channel 13TV, Israel has broken through the Hamas defenses in Khan Yunis and are now in the center of the city.
According to the IDF, Israel has entered stage II of the war, engaging Hamas terrorists in south Gaza. Chief of Staff Gen. Herzi HaLevi said, “Whoever thought the IDF couldn’t take up where they left off before the pause in fighting was mistaken.”
IDF soldier in Gaza
So far, over 80 soldiers have been killed in the fighting since Israel invaded Gaza. 14 since fighting resumed. Over 440 soldiers, police and shin bet officers have been killed since Oct 7th, when Hamas terrorists massacred 1200 people along the Gaza border and took over 240 hostage.
On Wednesday night, media reports that Israeli jets and artillery were conducting an intense attack on Gaza, aimed at the Khan Yunis area, home to Hamas leaders Sinwar and Deiff.
Gen (ret) Amos Yadlin, former head of military intelligence, told a Channel 12TV panel that he thought Israel had no choice but to provide Gaza with humanitarian aid requested by the USA. But he said that “Hamas doesn’t care about the civilians.” He said, Hamas only cared about control of their military forces. Now they’re cut off.
Israel has also entered the Khan Yunis area on the ground in order to flush out, kill or capture Hamas terrorists. . This might take weeks, according to Nir Dvori of Channel 12TV. The entire operation might take months to take all of Gaza.
Dvori also said that the fighting in Khan Yunis will take at least weeks. He said the IDF was carrying out attacks on the targets. He thought Sinwar had lost control over his forces. And that all her wants now is to keep the human shields, the citizens of Gaza, in place but many are ignoring him and fleeing to Rafiah and the UN shelters there.
Ohad Hemmo said on Wednesday that Israel doesn’t know exactly where the leaders of Hamas are. He said that the IDF had destroyed Sinwar’s home above ground. “It is just as important to get to Machmud Deiff and his second in command Marwan Issa. IDF is working above the ground and beneath the ground. And that is having results.”
Weapons found near UN school and Mosque in Gaza
The IDF also released photographs of a large weapons cache of hundreds of missiles, some long range that could hit Tel Aviv. Also found in a school and a mosque in northern Gaza were grenades, explosives, weapons and ammunition found
The IDF reported that so far over 5,000 Hamas terrorists have been killed since the beginning of the war on Oct 7th, when Hamas terrorists broke through the Gaza border fence with Israel, massacring over 1,200 people and taking over 240 hostage.
So far, 118 hostages have been returned, with 137 still held somewhere in Gaza.
IDF loads long-rang Hamas rockets on truck in Gaza
According to the Times of Israel, the IDF reportedly took control of the Jalabiya refugee camp in north Gaza and the Hamas security headquarters there.
Some pundits speculate that even if Sinwar, Deiff and Issa are eliminated, others will take their place. More than likely, those outside of Israel, in Beirut and Qatar will try to take control, something they’ve apparently lost to Sinwar.
Politics
During a press conference in Jerusalem on Tuesday evening, Gen (ret.) Benny Gantz, head of the opposition and member of the military cabinet, caught Prime Minister Netanyahu by surprise. Gantz half-turned to Netanyahu and told him that the proposed budget for 2024 was political and not the one Israel needed during a war.
Before the vote on the budget on Wednesday, Likud member Yuli Edelstein said that the proposed state budget for 2024 should be devoted to the war, (the paying for the army, to help the 120,000 Israelis displaced from their homes, to help rebuild the destroyed settlements.)
Rather, he said, the money was being diverted to the ultra-Orthodox for yeshivot, and to the settlers for more settlements. Money desperately needed to finance the war and help rebuild after the war.
Likud MK Nir Barakat was absent when the first reading of the budget came up for a vote in the Knesset on Wednesday. Before the vote, Barakat said monies allocated to businesses in north and south. Barakat has recently hinted he would challenge Netanyahu for leadership of Likud.
The 30 billion shekel(@$8 billion) 2024 budget was passed and went to the various committees for approval. Ultra-Orthodox parties saw their budgets increased from 24 million shekels to 68 million shekels, settler budgets went from 74 million shekels to 101, the Diaspora ministry went from 56-91 million shekels. Others connected with settlement went up as much as 5x. All this, according to critics, taken from budgets that should have gone to the war effort.
According to Gen. (ret.) Amos Malca, a political conspiracy was in place to put the blame for the Oct 7th massacre on the military and security services. “Anything the government can do to keep the coalition together is being tried.” Malca said that Israel needed to start to formulate a strategy for an end game.
Yair Lapid, of the Yesh Atid party, said that Israel went to war without a plan for the day after. He thought that the PA (Palestinian Authority) could be a part of the process to run Gaza after the war was over. Something Netanyahu has said would never happen as long as he was Prime Minister.
Lapid said that the PA needed to be ‘de-radicalized.’ Lapid thought that Gaza could become a ‘B’ area, that Israel could go into with the military if needed. And perhaps include an international body to help oversee Gaza. He thought that PM Netanyahu was not concentrating on the war but rather on a coalition that would keep him in power.
Reportedly, PA leader Abbas told Sky News he would be open to the idea of the PA running Gaza. The PA lost the last election in Gaza to Hamas and was then essentially run out of Gaza.
Zohar Pelti, former Mossad executive, said that Israel would need an expanded budget not only for 2024, but for 2025. He thought that Israel would have to leave soldiers in reserve duty for a year or more to keep Gaza from returning to Hamas control.
Unspoken was the possibility of financing a long and bloody war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
On Wednesday, Belgium joined the USA in issuing a ban on visas for any Israeli settler who had committed a violent act against Palestinians. And, according to the Times of Israel, two far-right ultranationalist organizations, including supporters of National Police Minister Ben Gvir’s party, and multiple Temple Mount activist groups are set to conduct a march through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem on Thursday night to call for the reestablishment of “Jewish control” over the holy site. Authorities worry about unrest among the Arab population.
Also, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Israel on Wednesday that Israel would “pay a very heavy price” if it attempted to eliminate Hamas members in Turkey. He accused PM Netanyahu of, who is entangled in legal troubles, of putting the entire region in danger for his alleged political survival.
Rockets
Car hit by rocket shrapnel in Beer Sheva parking lot
Scores of rockets were fired Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at Israel, some reaching as far as Tel Aviv.
On Wednesday, over 20 rockets were fired on the city of Beer Sheva within a minute. Beer Sheva mayor Reuven "Ruvik" Danilovich said, “We are on the front lines. The IDF has to stop Hamas from firing at our people.”
Meanwhile, firing continued from both Gaza and Lebanon on a daily basis.
Sirens were even heard in Eilat when Houthi rebels fired a long-range missile with a 500 pound warhead at Israel. The missile was aimed at Eilat in the south of Israel but was downed by an Israeli Arrow missile.
According to Gen (ret.) Amos Yadlin, the problem isn’t with the missiles but with the Houthis cutting off shipping traffic in the Straights of Hormuz, as the Egyptians did in the ’73 war.
Israel now receives 12% of her supplies from this channel and could ill-afford to allow the straights to be closed.
According to US national security advisor Jake Sullivan, Iran supplies the weapons and the Houthis push the buttons.
Cargo ship about to be boarded by Houthi rebels in the Red Sea
Meanwhile, the Houthi rebels seized another cargo ship, the Galaxy Leader, in the Red Sea that was tangentially linked to an Israeli company.
Reportedly, an explosion of mysterious origin blew up a warehouse in Sanaa, Yemen, destroying missiles and drones. Observers believe Israel was behind the blast.
West Bank
On Tuesday, Israel destroyed the Jenin homes of Ahmed Barakat, who was involved in the killing of Meir Tamari near the West Bank settlement of Hermesh last May. The IDF and the Military Police also arrested 21 suspects overnight. A soldier was wounded in the firefight during the arrests.
The IDF also used the D9 bulldozer, considered by observers as important as a tank, to tear up roads in Tulkarim preventing roadside bombs and traps when Israeli troops raided the city.
According to the Times of Israel, the IDF found a printing press used to produce inciting materials including those for Hamas. In a village near Jerusalem the IDF seized an assault rifle and in Surif near Hebron a bakeshop machine gun.
North
Hezbollah continues to fire at Israel from inside Lebanon. Israel responds with artillery fire and jet fighter attacks on missile launch site. According to Gen. (ret.) Amos Yadlin, this is the same tit-for-tat fighting that has been going on since Oct 7th, and has not changed.
Israel has had the same strategy for 60 days, says Amos Yadlin, and if the USA and France don’t understand there’s a diplomatic solution, not only a military solution, by enforcing UN resolution 1701. He said he thought that the US and France were finally coming to realize the importance of enforcing this resolution.
Map of Lebanese border. Hezbollah forces in yellow
Israel’s Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant told the press on Wednesday that
Israel would prefer a diplomatic solution to the tension on the Lebanese border, similar to UN resolution 1701. But if Hezbollah refuses, “We will do it by force.”
Gallant emphasized that Israel didn’t want war with Hezbollah but “We will go in if necessary. We will not make the same mistake we made in the south.” (allowing Hamas to build up their forces and spring a surprise attack on Israel.)
Press reports that a new version of 1701, including a buffer zone that would push Hezbollah over 20 kilometer from Israel’s border, has been suggested.
Gen (res.) Israel Zev thought that there should be a revised 1701 resolution that pushed Hamas even further away from Israel’s borders. He said that since the end of the last War in Lebanon, Hezbollah has committed over 20,000 violations of the UN resolution.
Lev said that Hezbollah now has over 4,000 Rajwan commandos on the border with Israel. Lev said that Hezbollah went from a defensive strategy following to War in Lebanon to, recently, one of offense when they moved troops up to the border, in contravention to the UN resolution.
Nir Dvori, military correspondent of Channel 12TV said that things seemed to be changing in Israel’s military strategy on the Lebanese border. Dvori said that for once Israel has struck first at a Hezbollah base in Lebanon before Hezbollah fired at Israel.
According to Ohad Hemmo, Arab affairs reporter for Channel 12TV, Hezbollah has said that there will be no new resolution to replace 1701. Nor will Hezbollah agree to a buffer zone.
Ehud Yaari, veteran Arab affairs correspondent on Channel 12TV, said that a Christian fascist militia based in Syria recently joined Hamas. But then a Sunni battalion in Lebanon quit in protest. The Sunnis said that Hamas was recruiting young Palestinians from refugee camps in Lebanon near the Israel border. “Once this area was called Fatahland (when it was run by the PLO), now it looks to become Hamasland.”
Military strategists have said that one solution to the tunnel problem in Gaza, and in Lebanon, was to flood the tunnels with sea water. Israel has reportedly set up five huge water pumps along places in Gaza. However, there is opposition to using the pumps, one for fear of the water reaching hostages, two for fear of polluting the underwater aquifers used by the Gazans for drinking water, and three for the threat of sea water seeping from the tunnels into the land making farming difficult.
Maj. (ret.) Yahoo Kfir, a tunnel expert and once a former intelligence officer, thought the solution to the tunnels was using Tesla/X owner Elon Musk’s “Boring” company. He suggested Israel drill tunnels to intersect with the Hamas tunnels and use those new tunnels to infiltrate and destroy Hamas inside the tunnels.
Like others, he thought a new approach was needed to solve the decades old problems of Hamas and Hezbollah.
Hostages
Reportedly, 14 children under the age of 10, and 25 hostages over the age of 80 are among the 137 hostages still being held in Gaza.
According to Nir Dvori, Channel 12TV military correspondent, Israel is involved in intelligence operations, with the Shin Bet, and soldiers working day and night seeking the locations of the hostages. He thought that the IDF battle plans could produce results as they did to force the previous hostage negotiations. Dvori thinks that the current battles could produce relents but as of now it seems that the negotiations have hit a dead end, “but I’m not positive that’s the case.”
According to Dana Weiss, on Channel 12TV, the hard fighting may bring about negotiations, “but Hamas wants to release prisoners with blood on their hands and that’s not going to happen so fast.”
Gen. (ret.) Amos Yadlin thought that the deal on the table now is a final agreement, release all of the hostages. But as of now that is not on the agenda.
According to the Times of Israel, freed hostages, brother and sister Aisha, 17 and Bilal, 19 al-Saidna, Bedouin from the Rahat area near Beersheva, Hamas doesn’t differentiate between Jews and Arabs. They say they overhead Hamas terrorists talking, saying that it wasn’t important if the hostages were Jews or Arabs, just that they could help in the negotiations.”
Aisha and Bilal were farmworkers n Kibbutz Hulit, along with their father Yusif, 49, and brother Hamza, 21, when the terrorists invaded the kibbutz on Oct 7th. They were held in a pitch-dark space, they didn’t know if it was a tunnel or a house. They were released in a hostage exchange but their father and brother are still being held in Gaza.
Released Bedouin hostages Belal (left) and Aisha(right) al-Saidna
One of those returned, Hanna Katzir, 76,or Nir Oz, has been placed in the hospital in critical condition. Relatives of the hostages still held in Gaza point to her and say “This proves that every day in captivity is life threatening.
At the UN, Israel led a special session condemning the world’s silence on Hamas using rape as a weapon of war.
Israeli born actress Gal Gadot said that the world will remember those women captured on October 7th.
Israeli women protesting women still held hostage
Some observers say that one of the reasons that Hamas refused to release the last 10 women, a move that caused the breakdown of the negotiations, was because they were afraid of what the women would say about the sexual abuse they endured while in captivity.
According to the Times of Israel, in a report detailing allegations of severe and widespread sexual abuse by Hamas terrorists during their October 7 onslaught and later against hostages, a doctor who treated some of the 110 hostages released from captivity told the AP that at least 10 men and women among those freed were sexually assaulted or abused.
This was also told to PM Netanyahu in a heated meeting he had with the families of hostages on Tuesday. Aviva Siegel who was freed from Hamas captivity last week and whose husband, a US citizen, is still a hostage, reportedly said during the meeting that some of the women hostages were “being touched.” Others said during the meeting that both men and women were sexually assaulted, according to leaks to Hebrew media.
Israel is reportedly pursuing criminal charges against those Hamas terrorists now held in Israel. Some are to be accused of rape. However, problems arise when looking for physical evidence since many of the women’s remains were burned and destroyed.
A large number of the released hostages are reportedly suffering from PTSD. Few have been interviewed. Pediatricians treating some of the freed hostages say that reports of them being in “good condition“ are misleading.
Dr. Yael Mozer-Glassberg, director of Israel’s Pediatric Liver Transplant Service at Schneider Children’s Medical center, says nothing prepared her for treating these children released after two months in captivity. “Reports that everyone is giving that the returnees are in more or less stable condition is not true,” she said.
Many have lost between 10%-15% of their body weight. She said the children told her that they were given a cup of tea and a biscuit or a dried date in the morning, that was breakfast. In the evening they were given rice…access to drinking water was limited. She said they had deficient hygiene. Head lice, even after five or six treatments, would still not go away.
Dr. Mozer-Glassberg said it took four or five days for the children to speak in a normal volume since they were told not to talk or only whisper. She said the children told her that they had to knock on the door and then wait for someone to answer if they wanted to go to the toilet. Even toddlers. She also said the terrorists told them they were going to be held for a year.
Many of the hostages said that when they were taken from their hiding place they thought they were going to be executed.
Karim Khan, chief investigator for the ICC (International Criminal Court) was in Israel to investigate crimes Hamas may have committed.
He said that serious international crimes were committed by Hamas on the Oct 7th Hamas attack on Israelis “You don’t fight a child hiding under a bed. That’s not combat. That’s criminal,”
Khan said, “It’s a crime to use human shields. Hamas should not have taken hostages. They should be released immediately.” He also criticized Israel saying Israel could do better. That it was fundamental to make sure children had food and water.
Channel 12TV’s Dana Weiss said that while there is presently no negotiations, Hamas has said that should negotiations resume they will demand the release of Palestinian prisoners that have committed terrorist acts. Israel has said they will not release terrorists with blood on their hands.
According to the Times of Israel, at a Knesset Health Committee meeting on Tuesday, a Health Ministry representative said that the hostages recently freed from captivity in Gaza were given tranquilizer pills by Hamas before their release.
The drugging would have been aimed to make the hostages appear calm and happy after suffering physical abuse, deprivation, and psychological terror in Gaza for more than 50 days.
Humanitarian Aid
If once humanitarian aid was part of negotiations, now the US wants israel to continue to allow fuel and medical supplies into Gaza, especially since IDF tanks are there.
According to observers, the US does not see Gaza as Israel sees it. Some believe Gaza is run as a liberal democracy. Also, the US is worried about plagues and disease. The USA wants 3x the current supply of fuel into Gaza.
According to MK Hili Tropper, a member of the war cabinet, “We need to give as much as possible to Gazans, not because USA asks but because it is the right thing to do.” He said that Israel must make certain that the aid goes to the Gazans and not to Hamas.
According to Zohar Palti, former Mossad department head, Israel has a choice, either to argue with the US over some fuel or keep the crucial and so far unwavering US support. Palti said that Israel had at least a few more weeks to fight, and couldn’t afford to lose US backing over trucks of fuel.
However, media reports that the aid is being stolen by Hamas. That bags of food, flour, other aid, are simply dumped on the floor a UN tent in Rafiah without any supervision. Gazans come and take what they want without anyone checking who they are or what they are taking.
Anti Semitism
The testimony of three US university presidents before congress has set off a wave of recriminations. The three presidents, one from Harvard, one from U of Penn, one from MIT, all stumbled over admitting that classifying the call by students to kill Jews was a call for the genocide of Jews. All three said that the statements ‘had to be viewed in context.’
Israeli born actress Noa Tishbi, a pro-Israeli activist living in Los Angeles, who was once an Israeli good-will ambassador until she criticized PM Netanyahu’s push for Judicial Reforms, said that these three presidents wouldn’t be able to keep their jobs for more than a few weeks because of their quavering over the issue of Jewish genocide.
Also, a skullcap wearing waiter was reportedly assaulted at a Kosher restaurant ‘Sushi-Tokyo’ in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City. A man came in, yelled, “You’re a fucking racist,” then threw a chair at the waiter, smashed the restaurant window before fleeing.
A recent ADL (American Defamation League) poll showed that since the war began on Oct 7th, Jewish students felt less safe physically and emotionally on college campuses. The ADL poll showed a drop from 46% to 33%.
However, the US House of Representatives overwhelming approved a resolution stating that anti-Zionism was anti-Semitism, with 311 in favor and 14 against.
Israel has also issued travel warnings to dozens of countries amid the rising anti semitism around the world.