Today, was the continuation of Israel’s 76th Independence Day. Like every year since its founding, the Lone Soldier Center hosted a BBQ for all currently serving Lone Soldiers and those veterans that chose to RSVP the invitation. About 400 Lone Soldiers showed up. In past years we had more, but many are in active duty in either Gaza or along the Lebanese border. The actual title of the LSC is The Lone Soldier Center in Memory of Michael Levin. Michael Levin (Z’’L) was a Lone Soldier who died in combat in the Second Lebanese War. The founding CEO of the LSC was Joshua Flaster, a Lone Soldier from the Phoenix community. Here you will find an 2018 interview with Josh. I speak with Mark Levin, Michael’s father on a monthly basis. He and his wife, Harriet, often come to Israel around this time of year to participate in various activities, see friends and visit Michael’s grave site on Mount Herzl, in Jerusalem. Mark addressed the current Lone Soldiers today at the BBQ reminding them of his son’t legacy and how defending the State of Israel is a “holy” mission and how much we all appreciate their sacrifice. Here is a picture of Mark and Harriett at the BBQ today.
This morning rockets were fired from Gaza in the direction of the Israeli City of Ashkelon triggering sirens on Independence Day. All were intercepted without damage or injury. And early this afternoon three rockets launched from Gaza in the direction of the Israeli town of Sderot were intercepted. This happened during a right wing demonstration in the area. A civilian was killed this morning resulting from an anti-missile attack of several missiles fired by Hezbollah in the north. The name of the victim has not been released yet. He was a resident of an Arab village less than 1 ½ km from the Lebanese border. Four IDF soldiers were lightly wounded as a consequence of the same attack.
It is clear that operations on all three fronts - Jabaliya, Zeitoun and Rafah - are ramping up. Some civilians still remain in Jabliya despite requests to evacuate to an humanitarian zone set up southwest of Gaza City. But most have left. Since the operation started last Friday the IDF reports more than 50 terrorists killed along with many tunnel entrances and armories destroyed. The IDF announced that four IDF troops were seriously wounded in fighting. Three during a gun battle with Hamas operatives around Jabaliya and one resulting from an IED in Rafah. All were rushed to hospitals. Through gathered intelligence, the IDF identified a major common room and operations center for Hamas in an UNRWA school located in Nuseirat, central Gaza. More than 15 Hamas terrorists were killed during the operation, many of whom were identified (using facial recognition) as having participated in the October 7 attack. The UNRWA school was being used as a command center. Here you can see a map and read more details. In Rafah operations, the infantry has been successful in locating many Hamas facilities defended by terrorists. There have been many close quarters combat situations. And there are reports that IDF tank corp continued to advance deeper into eastern Rafah.
The IDF issued a complaint to the UN showing clear video evidence that Hamas terrorists were using UN facilities in eastern Rafah - building and automobiles - all clearly marked with UN markings. Here is the article, in English, and the footage. This is important because the UN has accused the IDF of deliberate killing of their staff during operations. Well, if the UN permits the terrorists to use their buildings and vehicles for their operations, they cannot expect any other type of behavior from Israel.
Today UNRWA announced that so far 450,000 Gazans have left Rafah for the newly establish humanitarian corridor the IDF set up in cooperation with the international aid organizations. That suggests that they are averaging about 80,000 a day. Should this pace keep up, not likely, Rafah would be evacuated of civilian in about 15 days. To remind you, the USA told Israel it would take 3 months.
This afternoon Hezbollah launched amore than 10 missiles in the direction of the Druze town of Mahdal Shams. This town has a very interesting history. It is in the very north of the Golan Heights. Many years ago, it was a part of Syria, until the 1967 war when Israeli troops liberated the area. Its residents are Druze, but unlike the Israeli Druze they mostly do not see themselves as Israelis, somehow still thinking that they will, one day, be reunited with Syria. The dilemma of this village was played out in a beautiful movie called “The Syrian Bride” produced in 2004 and directed by Eran Riklis. The movie is filmed on location. You can see a trailer of the movie here. If you can find it on Netflix or a different streaming service I highly recommend you watch it.
In any case, the residents are slowly but surely starting to request Israeli citizenship and in most cases they get granted. The Israeli Druze community comprises about 2% of the overall population, they serve in the IDF and are loyal citizens of the state.
In other activity on the northern border, Hezbollah claims that it shot down an observation balloon used by the IDF to scan the southern Lebanese region. The IDF confirmed that the balloon was hit, crashing into Lebanese territory. Other than sensors and cameras there was not anything highly classified on the balloon as none of the data is stored on the electronic systems on the balloon. As you could easily surmise, IDF fighter jets launched several operations to destroy Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon. According to reports several Hezbollah operatives were killed in the strikes. This follows several fighter jet operations last night also attack military buildings in southern Lebanon.
Members of the protest group, Stav 9, that try to interfere with aid shipments traversing Israel on the way to the Gaza border managed to set fire to one of the trucks today. The fire was ultimately extinguished but did severe damage to the truck and its contents. The other trucks in the convoy were held up, but made it to the Gaza border intact.
Three days ago I reported on the discrepancy in the Gaza casualty figures posted by the United Nations, extracting its data from that provided by the Hamas run Gaza Health Ministry. You may remember that I showed how until May 8 they were over counting child and female casualties by about 100%. Since then, as you may have noticed, the story has broken in many news outlets around the world. Today the World Health Organization WHO held a press briefing saying “The fact we now have 25,000 identified people is a step forward, there is nothing wrong with health ministry data.” Yet they and most of the world have been accusing the IDF of targeting women and children claiming that the distribution of casualties matches the overall population distribution in Gaza, suggesting that it is just random killing of civilians. And this has been repeated over and over and over and over across the globe. Now that it is clear that THIS IS AN OUTRIGHT LIE we don’t hear a peep from any world leader. It does not fit the “reality” they want to hear, so it will be ignored.
There is cross blame between Israel and Egypt regarding the drop in aid shipments arriving in Gaza. Egypt has refused to allow trucks to cross not only the Rafah border but also the Kerem Shalom crossing. The former is due to the active fighting that is ongoing there, although the fighting has now moved further west of the actual crossing and the IDF has secured the north-south road so the trucks should be able to transit in relative safety further north. But, the Kerem Shalom border crossing has been coming under daily rocket attack by Hamas positions in central Rafah. The IDF cannot eliminate them until it enters the main part of Rafah. But today there were no rockets fired against Kerem Shalom. Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz (who may need to take a course in public diplomacy) issued a statement that cross border aid was now in the hands of Egypt… meaning that they were to blame for the hold up. Then Egyptian Foreign Minister, Sameh Showery, publicly denounced “Israel’s attempt to blame Egypt”. I do not believe that these two diplomats are contributing to the lowering of tensions between the two countries. The ICRC has set up a field hospital in southern Gaza not far from Rafah.
Two unrelated reports emerged from Turkiye today. Its President for Life Tayyep Erdogan really wants the world attention by involving himself in the mediation for hostages, but has been dealt out of this process. So he decided to submit to the International Court of Justice ICJ a petition to join the war crimes accusations initiated by South Africa in December 2023. And then there was report emerging in many newspapers around the world that Hamas was working to set up a base in Turkiye for the purpose of perpetrating terror attacks globally. Here is an article appearing in The Telegraph on the subject. And here is one in English from the Israeli press.
A fire broke out at an IDF military base in a suburb of Tel Aviv (Ramat Gan). It is not known yet the cause. Most likely it is unrelated to the war.
The holocaust memorial in Paris was vandalized today with red handprints plastered all over the wall listing all the French Jews killed in the Shoah. Here you can see a short post on the subject.
Here are a few background articles that might interest you:
Andres Spokoiny, President and CEO of the Jewish Funders Network published this article in Tablet. In it, he tries to explain why Jews in the Diaspora, particularly in the USA, have this proclivity to self destruction. I am not in full agreement with his analysis, but I think he raises some very good issues deserving discussion and thought amongst Diaspora Jewish communities.
Here is an interview with Professor Mordechai Kedar a professor at Bar Ilan University on the Arabic channel of Sky News. The interview is in Arabic with English subtitles. I liked the interviewer. She asked relevant and tough questions. Professor Kedar is absolutely fluent in Arabic and has a very good understanding of the Arab world. He has been interviewed on many Arabic News Networks around the world.
And here is a short interview on CNN with former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett related to the arms shipment holdup form the Biden Administration. I find the interviewer a bit ridiculous, not because the questions are bad but because she asks them and then ignores them while she is clearly doing something else.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/jewish-oyster-problem
Thank you
Your post reminded me of the short documentary on lone soldiers students in my high school program created through interviews in Israel. https://youtu.be/NyrbA7JB6Uk?si=Rj4T1fwtUZctQJ7k