Today’s Image
Guess who came to dinner??? That’s right Senator John Fetterman from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania came to Israel and wanted to spend time with the Lone Soldiers. Last night I got a call and email from the US Embassy asking me if we could pull together a meeting between Senator Fetterman and the soldiers. It is not so easy in the middle of the week as the soldiers are either on base or in operations. It is rare for them to have leave in the middle of the week. But we put out an All Points Bulletin and managed to scramble together about 15 lone soldiers, half born in Israel and half born abroad. They had an interesting dialogue.
I spoke briefly. I started by thanking the Senator for everything he does. I told him that he probable does not hear it often, but as important as our lives and state is to those of us living here in Israel, it is equally important to us that the USA remain the leader of the free world. And that we appreciate that he is standing up to the fringe elements of his own party in a sensitive election year to make sure the USA continues to stand strong. Then I gave him a bit of biography about Michael Levin (Z’’L) for whom our Lone Soldier Center honored as he was born and raised in Philadelphia.
I did not know it, but this was Senator Fetterman’s first visit to Israel.
Gaza Rockets
No rockets were fired from Gaza in the past 24 hours.
Casualties
No IDF casualties were reported in the past 72 hours.
Gaza Operations
Israeli fighter jets conducted narrow attacks on 2-3 buildings in the Shati and Dara neighborhoods of Gaza City, citing that the facilities were UNRWA schools being used by Hamas combatants for organizing and executing terror attacks. About a dozen operatives were killed in the strikes and severe damage was done to the arms storage facilities in those schools.
Fighter jets also struck Gaza City’s Islamic University which has been used by Hamas combatants to regroup and redeploy. The combatants launched many anti-tank missiles and RPGs from this building. They also struck a weapons storage facility at the University.
During the ongoing operations in Rafah, the IDF published today a video of a drone scouting out a residence to locate booby traps and a tunnel entrance. Here is a short article and video that are worth watching.
The British Publication, The Guardian, has been consistently biased against Israel for years, including the period since October 7. Today they published an article stating that the IDF views Hamas funded journalists as legitimate targets. Since most of them are part time combatants and part time press runners, it all seems logical. According to the IDF:
Al-Aqsa (the major media outlet for Hamas) belongs to the Hamas war organization and the people who work for it are active members of the war organization of Hamas.
Lebanon Operations
Two drones, launched by Hezbollah, were shot down with Israeli air defenses this afternoon, but the falling shrapnel triggered another round of fires.
Egypt/Syria/Jordan/Iraq
Those of you who have been following these posts may recall that on January 9, 2023 I reported on Jordanian fighter jets attacking positions of Iranian proxies in Syria. As I said at the time, the Jordanian Monarchy is not particularly stable. It has a population that is largely radicalized. Most of the citizens descended from refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars. There are signs that the Iranians are trying to “stir the pot” and ferment dissent against the monarchy. Well, early this morning Jordanian security forces announced that they uncovered and detonated explosives hidden in a commercial warehouse in an industrial area southeast of the capital Amman that security sources say are part of an Iran-linked plot to destabilize the country. This is the second major sting operation against an illegal arms storage facility found in Jordan. That means that there are probably more. The Jordanian Security Forces said that they had found many attempts to smuggle weapons into Jordan over the past year. The Hashemite Kingdom has accused Iran of formenting this instability. Here you can read more about it. But, I find it strange that I could find no reports on this in either the Jordanian or Saudi Arabian English papers.
Previously, Israel had urged Egypt to re-open the Rafah border crossing for aid and for the movement of Gazans seeking medical aid in Egypt’s nearby hospital. Egypt has rejected these requests. So, yesterday Israel opened the Kerem Shalom border crossing that bridges Egypt-Israel-Gaza, allowing those seeking medical aid to leave for Egypt. Egypt is playing this game because they do not want Israel to control the border crossing with Gaza. But that is precisely what is going to happen. ALL, and I mean ALL, the arms and explosives being used by Hamas are being smuggled across the border with Egypt. And in most cases the Egyptian Army is financially bribed by Hamas and Qatar to facilitate the smuggling. It became a major source of funding for the Egyptian Government. Meantime, the World Health Organization accused Israel of keeping the Rafah Border crossing closed and thereby preventing Gazans from seeking medical attention in Egypt. Somedays, you can never win and you wonder why bother even trying???
IDF General
The big news of the day here is the ruling rendered this morning by the Israeli Supreme Court this morning. The full nine sitting Supreme Court justices unanimously ruled today that the government can no longer provide exemptions to the ultra-orthodox draft eligible students from serving in the IDF. This has been brewing for some time, but it landed in the middle of the Israeli political landscape like a heavy bomb. The Knesset was working on the draft of a modified exemption law which would lower the exemption age from 26 to 21. Most everyone inside and outside the government, except for the ultra-orthodox political parties, are saying “too little, too late”. For the past 20 years, throughout Netanyahu’s various governments, the parties in power did everything they could to stall, dissuade, cloud and ignore this major inequality in the application of the law. In response, to this ruling the Government’s Attorney General issued orders to the government to immediately draft 3,000 eligible ultra-orthodox into the current draft cycle. There are there major draft cycles per year.
As you might expect opposition parties are declaring that finally there is justice being rendered. The leaders of the ultra-orthodox are exclaiming that this will cause the break up of the state. No one believes them. The main reason, it is felt, that the ultra-orthodox political leadership has demanded the draft exemption is to enable their rabbis and leadership to control the ultra-orthodox population. They have large influence on the stature and status of members of their community. It is hard to see how Netanyahu can maneuver around this ruling and without doing so the odds are that his coalition will break apart.
I had been telling you all along that this was the issue that would bring down the government. But, it will be interesting to see how the pieces fall over the next few weeks to understand all the implications.
Aid
And now another report has been released describing the claims of famine in Gaza, which UNRWA, WHO and ICRC have been screaming about ad infinitum. At this url you can download the report yourself. To quote from the first paragraph of the “key findings”:
Following the publication of the second FRC report on 18 March 2024, which projected that a Famine would occur in the most likely scenario, a number of important developments occurred. In contrast with the assumptions made for the projection period (March – July 2024), the amount of food and non-food commodities allowed into the northern governorates increased. Additionally, the response in the nutrition, water sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and health sectors was scaled up. In this context, the available evidence does not indicate that Famine is currently occurring.
The Executive Director of UNRWA announced that the organization is out of financial trouble since most donor countries have restored their funding.
A law suit has been filed in US courts against the United Nations Relief Works Agency by representatives of more than 100 victims of the October 7 attack claiming that UNRWA laundered money for Hamas and supported its infrastructure and propaganda. You can read more about it here. Given all the footage gathered by the IDF and the textbooks etc. taught inside the UNRWA schools and all the arms storage facilities, etc. I do not think this will be hard to prove. I just do not know whether a US Court can rule that it jurisdiction over the issue.
The US State Department has started applying pressure against Israel to enable UN requests for protection and communications so that they can safely distribute the accumulating aid inside Gaza. The UN aid organizations are claiming, with some legitimacy, that the aid trucks are routinely getting hijacked and they are unable to protect them in order to properly distribute the aid. The problem with providing IDF soldiers is that this makes them sitting targets for Hamas. The problem providing the UN organizations arms to protect the convoys is that because the NGOs collude with Hamas so much that the arms will quickly find their way to Hamas. There is not obvious solution to this problem at the moment.
Day After
Earlier today, at a security conference hosted by the Reichman University, Israel’s National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi said, in response to a question from the moderator, that there is a plan for who/how to rule Gaza developed by the government. And the public should see first glimpses of it in the coming weeks, first targeting northern Gaza. He was no more specific than that. He continued to say that no one expects the IDF or anyone else to eliminate Hamas as an idea, but eliminating their ability to govern and to constitute a fighting force are possible.
International
During Defense Minister Gallants meeting with Secretary of State Blinken in Washington the US Secretary insists that he pressured Gallant on aid.
Then Defense Minister Gallant and his aids met with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. At the meeting Gallant stressed that Israelis will never forget the support provided by the USA after October 7. He then went on to state that the greatest threat to everyone is a nuclear Iran, which is imminent. He stressed that time was running out and that the time has come to realize the commitment of many American administrations over the years to prevent Iran from possessing nuclear weapons. Well, I don’t think that much will be done on this during an election year…
No doubt much of the time was spent on what is going on at the Lebanese Border.