Today I post a photo of Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari of the IDF. He has been doing a truly remarkable job as the leading IDF spokesperson. He has been personally briefing the Israeli public in Hebrew on a near daily basis. His English is fluent and he has been doing the same to the English speaking press, albeit not as frequently. And he has been personally leading the foreign press on specific missions to see the Gaza front for themselves. Thank you Admiral for the incredibly hard work you do each day!!
No rockets were fired into Israel in the past 48 hours. No IDF casualties reported on either the northern or southern fronts in the past 24 hours.
IDF operations continued today in central Gaza with infantry maintaining patrols and calling in attacks from the air when armories, tunnels and terrorists are found. Several rocket and mortar launching facilities were destroyed today, including those that were used to fire into Israel earlier in the week. One Hamas cell was caught in the process of setting a booby trapped building. They and the building they were in were destroyed. In the meantime, the IDF is awaiting the green light from the government to start its Rafah Operation. But that is being held up while waiting for a response from Hamas to the latest hostage/ceasefire proposal. Hamas is publicly stating that it still demands that it include a permanent ceasefire (enforced by the USA and Egypt), full removal of the IDF from Gaza, and lots of money. Israel will not agree to a permanent ceasefire while Hamas remains a power in Gaza.
Speaking of Rafah, the IDF has already started briefing residents there where they will find humanitarian areas to the west of Khan Younis - both shelter and food. Apparently, more than 200,000 residents in Rafah have already left for that area. All of this is being communicated, in Arabic, via automated cell phone alerts and air dropped leaflets. Once it is fully underway, the evacuation is expected to take 3-5 weeks depending on the level of cooperation or resistance found among the residents. Here is a great article you can read that describes some of the issues and ongoing preparation work for the Rafah Operation.
Two Israeli Arabs were injured today while driving a chicken transportation truck when it came under fire by anti-tank missiles fired by Hezbollah. Both escaped serious injury and are recovering in a nearby medical center. Hezbollah had announced, soon after the attack, that they had set up an ambush against an Israeli military vehicle, but all they actually did was injure these drivers and kill a lot of chickens. Earlier this morning IDF fighter jets struck five Hezbollah positions in souther Lebanon including armories, launch sites and observation posts.
Meanwhile, the leading Christian political leader in Lebanon publicly criticized Hezbollah today for putting Lebanon into a war that is unnecessary. You can read details here.
You read me reporting regularly on the Hezbollah attacks into Israel in the north and the frequent Israeli Fighter Jet attacks on Hezbollah personnel and military infrastructure. To remind you, after the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war the UN Security Council passed a unanimous resolution 1701 that was to restrict Hezbollah only north of the Litani River. The Resolution was never enforced by the UN and Hezbollah ignored it. The BBC sent in a crew from the Lebanese side to inspect the damage and situation in southern Lebanon, just recently. It is worth reading their report here. In short summary, Hezbollah’s policies and actions have resulted in the destruction of much of southern Lebanon. Most of the civilian population in southern Lebanon has fled to other parts of the country in order to avoid the conflict. Like the displaced Israeli population in our north, they are waiting for the attacks to reside so they can return to a normal life. But, as you will read, because Hezbollah insisted on building out its military infrastructure in violation of the UN, many, many structures have been destroyed. You can also read a great analysis by my friend Seth Frantzman here on the situation along the Lebanese front.
And in the area around Yemen, US Centcom said that it destroyed marine drones (i.e. unscrewed marine military vessels) in and around a port controlled by the Houthis.
Israel re-opened its Erez border crossing with Gaza today for the first time since October 7. It is only open for aid trucks entering Gaza from its Ashdod Port. I presume that the timing was set to coincide with Secretary Blinken’s arrival. Today, more than 351 aid trucks entered Gaza. There was a small skirmish near the Jordanian border when Israeli demonstrators blocked one of the Jordanian aid trucks from entering Israel. The IDF interceded and the trucks proceeded on their route. They are demonstrating against providing humanitarian aid to Gaza without the humanitarian release of all the Israeli hostages. Thirty of those Jordanian aid trucks entered Gaza later in the day through the newly opened Erez border crossing, which was being inspected by Secretary Blinken at the time. Some of the crates were marked with World Central Kitchen, indicating that the WCK has resumed aid shipments.
With Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in Israel, all the attention is on the hostage/ceasefire deal. It seems like Yahya Sinwar has the entire region held hostage, not just the 100+ Israelis held in tunnels. Everyone is waiting to hear how he responds. It is absolutely amazing to me how Israel, the USA, etc. allow this rabid, bloodthirsty barbarian to dictate the terms of how this war gets conducted, its pace and what happens next. Basically, he has the leader of the free world, President Biden waiting to hear what he does next. It’s sick…. I read in the Hebrew Press today that Al Jazeera is producing a movie about the life and times of Sinwar, praising him as a hero. According to the report the movie will bear the title “Yahia Sinwar: The Man who Made the World Stand on One Leg”. I hope that the man is dead before the movie is released.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken arrived in Israel yesterday after a visit to Saudi Arabia. During Secretary Blinken’s visit he met with families of the American-Israeli hostages, Prime Minister Netanyahu, the War Cabinet and President Herzog. Tomorrow he is scheduled to go down and see the area of the October 7 attack, meet with some of the surviving families and inspect the newly opened northern border crossing between Israel and Gaza, that is seeing a large number of aid truck pass through daily.
Today the IDF forcibly removed more than 13 right wing activists who attempted to construct an illegal settlement in Samaria (West Bank). Six of them were placed under arrest. A settlement is deemed illegal if it did not receive approval from the government prior to its construction. A small number of illegal settlements were built on private land in the past. When that happens it generally goes to court where the deeds to the property are examined for authenticity. If they are valid then the illegal construction is demolished and the residents forcibly removed. This has happened several times in the past. This is precisely the situation in this case.
You may remember that I reported on the arrest of Ismail Haniyeh’s sister about a month ago for aiding and abetting terrorism. Haniyeh is the leader of Hamas living in Qatar. His sister was born in Gaza but became an Israeli citizen, living in a town in the Negev. She was released to house arrest today. That means she can go back and live in her home, but can’t leave the country pending trial.
As you may recall, Hamas has claimed that its operatives “uncovered a mass grave” at one of the hospitals in Gaza, accusing Israel of “genocide”. It does this to try and align the world’s image of Israel with that of Nazis in WW2. But here is a thorough analysis of the situation, along with acknowledged mistakes in how the IDF handled the situation for those of you wishing to spend the time to learn more.
Yesterday, Israel retired its batteries of Patriot anti-ballistic missiles that it purchased from the USA during the first Iraq war, back in 1991. That is when Iraq, under the lunacy of Saddam Hussein, invaded Kuwait in an attempt to take over the country and its oil fields. As you may recall, President George Bush Sr. put together a coalition of countries to come to Kuwait’s defense and demanded that Israel not defend itself, but allow the USA to place batteries of Patriot defense missiles in Israel and managed by US army personnel. Soon after, Israel purchased some so it could “defend” itself. Needless to say, out of those 42 SCUD missiles launched by Iraq against Israel some got through the Patriot defense missile system destroying more than 30 buildings, doing significant damage to 4,000 more and killing two Israelis. US military analyses of the actual hit ratio suggested that the Patriot missile system was not very effective in taking out the inbound SCUDs. It was mostly the poor performance of the SCUDs themselves that resulted in such few Israeli casualties.
Well, now both Israeli and US military analysts have had a chance to examine the data derived from the Iranian bombardment of Israel with more than 320 drones and missiles on April 13. The US was successful in neutralizing about 60 of the inbound drones outside Israeli airspace. However, attempts by the US Navy to intercept some of the 100 ballistic missiles launched by Iran were not so successful. Apparently, out of the eight SM-3 ship to air anti-ballistic missiles only two successfully destroyed their targets. A battery of Patriot anti-ballistic missiles successfully took down one Iran ballistic missile before entering Israeli air space. Also, the USA military provided up to the minute radar images that assisted the IDF in its mission. Thankfully, the Israeli batteries of anti-ballistic missile defense system picked up the slack with a 90% success rate in intercepting its targets. Hopefully, we will learn more in the future as the data becomes declassified.
I have been deliberately avoiding reporting on news related to the student “demonstrations” in the USA and will continue to do so. But I stumbled across this very interesting article today that appeared in the British press detailing funding details for the groups participating in the Columbia activities.