Today’s Image
A bit of a distraction today. This is the Israeli Gymnastics Rhythmic team that won the Silver Medal in Paris yesterday. So far the Israeli Olympics team has taken home seven medals.
Gaza Rockets
No rockets from Gaza landed in Israel over the past 2 days.
Casualties
No IDF casualties have been reported in the past 15 days. But one Israeli civilian died today from gunshot wounds. While driving along highway 90 that runs north-south not far from the Jordanian border, a passing car fired shots killing one and injuring a second in the vehicle. You can read more here.
Gaza Operations
Yesterday, an IDF drone operating in Gaza struck a mosque attached to a school, Al-Taabin, in Gaza killing a unit of Hamas combatants who were preparing to stage actions against the IDF. Before the strike, the IDF ensured that no civilians were in the section of the building that was hit. The intelligence was so good that the IDF could list the names and photos of those killed in the operation. The IDF insists that about 20 Hamas combatants were killed and they believe, but aren’t certain, that one of the casualties was a brigade commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Terrorist group, Ashraf Juda. Nonetheless, the Hamas run Health Ministry insisted that over 90 civilians were killed in the operation. The IDF says their claims are ridiculous. You should see the video and images posted here. You can see how only a small section of the mosque was hit, leaving more than 90% of the school untouched. The munitions used by the IDF could not have caused the kind of results claimed by Hamas. Needless to say the Hamas claim prompted world leaders from all over the world to issue statements castigating Israel without questioning the claims from Hamas, of course. According to one of my favorite personalities in this chorus of idiots is European Union Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell who said “There’s no justification for these massacres. We are dismayed by the terrible overall death toll.” And my other favorite idiot is UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese who wrote on X.com, “Israel is genociding the Palestinians one neighborhood at the time, one hospital at the time, one school at the time, one refugee camp at the time, one 'safe zone' at the time.” You gotta commend these idiots.. at least they are consistent.
The IDF dropped flyers in pars of Khan Younis requesting those few civilians remaining to evacuate. Hamas, late last week, fired several rockets from these neighborhoods in Khan Younis. The IDF intends to find, then destroy the tunnels to which these rocket launchers were used. The IDF also sent SMS messages and made phone calls to those civilians still in the area.
Lebanon Operations
A major Israeli treatment and rehabilitation facility about 6 km from the Lebanese border was destroyed today in the aftermath of an Hezbollah kamikaze drone attack. At this time it is not clear whether the drone hit the facility or shrapnel from the Iron Dome interceptor missile caused the severe damage. No injuries were reported, by a stroke of luck in timing.
An Hezbollah anti-tank missile was fired across the Lebanese border striking the village of Netua causing damage but no injuries.
Yemen Operations
Nothing to report :-))
Syria/Iraq/Egypt/Jordan/Turkiye/Iran
Earlier in the day a missile fired from a drone struck a group of Iranian backed fighters in eastern Syria, along the Iraqi border. No one took credit for the strike. Most likely it was either Israel or the USA. Both operate in this area.
Late last night US army personnel stationed in Syria were wounded in a drone attack. Perhaps that is what triggered the killing of the Iranian backed fighters, or perhaps the events were unrelated?
Egypt just announced that it is placing a bid to host the 2036 or 2050 summer Olympics. I don’t get it. This country is essentially bankrupt. I do not know how their armed forces could possibly secure the country from jihadi launched attacks against not just Israel but many Western citizens. And most importantly this country is bankrupt. Even with all the US Aid, it has borrowed so much money from the IMF that there is essentially no hope of them ever repaying it back. But, who knows, maybe they will host the swimming event of the Triathlon and Pentathlon in Nile River… with or without the crocodiles?? :-))
Iran has promoted their Commanding General of the Iranian Air Force to be Defense Minister. From what I have read the IRGC is scrambling to grab more and more power from the Iranian conventional army as they believe the Defense Department has been compromised, leading to all the Israeli successes in Iran. And one of the key members of Iran’s JCPOA negotiating team has been nominated to be Iran’s Foreign Minister.
Turkiye announced today that is has completed the development of its “Steel Dome” multilayer aerial defense system. I wonder if Israel can sue for copyright infringement on its use of “Iron Dome”??? You can read more here.
IDF General
There is some level of frustration bubbling up into the public domain from IDF rank and file commanders criticizing the top brass and the top brass criticizing the government. Today a letter signed by 200 IDF commanders in the field serving on active duty was released to the public after being sent to the IDF Chief of Staff. In the letter they said that despite what is being broadcast to the public, there is still a lot of fighting that needs to be undertaken in Gaza. To quote, after translation:
It is important to us that the public knows that this is not how wars are won, wars are won on foot. You conquer territory, cleanse it, hold it, and move on to the next target. We did not come to revolt, we will be here every time and everywhere they call us, we came to push forward from the bottom up, there is a whole movement of people here who want to win, who want to defeat the enemy after years of endless rounds of fighting. We, the undersigned, have been mobilized since the beginning of the war for over 200 days, commanding and leading thousands of soldiers from all IDF brigades. We fought and still fight on all the different fronts, from the northern border, through Judea and Samaria, to the Gaza Strip. All this we did for one and only purpose: to achieve a decisive victory over our bitter enemies who massacred, burned, raped, and kidnapped our brothers and sisters, humiliated our national dignity, and severely damaged our deterrent capability. In the past few days, we have been astonished by repeated statements from senior army officials that victory is within reach and it is possible to move to the stage of only pinpoint raids. We, who came from the field, know very well that the situation is still far from victory. The enemy still has cross-border capabilities, UAVs, explosive drones, mortars, an enormous tunnel infrastructure, and tens of thousands of live terrorists, prepared for continued fighting against us. This is not what victory looks like! Commander! We are full of fighting spirit! Confident in our ability to achieve a true victory and defeat the enemy! We believe in our fighters and the families that push us forward. Don’t stop us! Let us win!
I cannot express an opinion on this as I have not been in the field at all nor seen what these commanders are seeing in the field. However, this is not a war of conquest. Israel is NOT looking to gain territory and rule over the population in Gaza. So, I am not as certain as these commanders are that the goals they express should be the goals of this war. I am hearing that there a couple of areas in Gaza that the IDF has still not entered. Apparently, there are upwards of 5-7,000 Hamas combatants taking shelter there. And the reason that the IDF has not launched a major offensive in those areas is because they are convinced that many of the hostages are kept prisoner there. Any assault would likely result in their deaths. Likewise, I have heard from multiple sources that the IDF has known Sinwar’s location for more than a month. But, since he has surrounded himself with the hostages, the IDF cannot take him out… that is until he makes a mistake like Mohammed Deif. So, while real victory, as these commanders say, is still elusive, it is not clear that victory as they defined it is realistic at this time.
And then the top brass of the IDF is telling the government that there are few to no targets left in Gaza so they should close a “deal”. Again, I am not totally qualified to judge them, I do think that from one view they are right but from another they are wrong. If one says that launching a rescue mission to recover large numbers of hostages is too high a risk to the lives of the hostages, then to some extent the top brass would appear correct. As best the IDF has told the public, the ability for Hamas to smuggle arms into Gaza is near nil after the capture of Rafah and the slow process of discovery, then destruction of the tunnels proceeds. No doubt the remaining Hamas combatants have stored arms and are preserving them, but also, without doubt they are tired and getting more desperate. And exhaustion and desperation lead to mistakes by the enemy and opportunities for the IDF. Talk a bit more about this in the hostage/ceasefire section.
In the meantime, in response to these conflicting messages from the different parts of the IDF, the Prime Minister released this message today:
I heard in the media that there is no goal to the fighting in Gaza and that the political echelon is preventing the IDF from progressing. It’s not true. The goal is victory. The IDF is destroying Hamas in a systematic way with the aim of demolishing the military and governing capabilities of Hamas, and in conjunction with freeing the hostages.
Just to remind my readers, the Prime Minister has defined victory as the dismantling of Hamas as a fighting force, ensuring that it cannot repeat anything like October 7, securing the recovery of the hostagesAND (not or) eliminating the future ability of Hamas to govern Gaza. This is essentially what he said in Congress a couple weeks ago.
The IDF announced that it has increased the range of its GPS jamming to extend down to the southern city of Eilat, where it is intended to scramble any drones fired by the Houthis, as well as along the Jordanian border. Readers may remember the images I posted a week ago from my iPhone showing that the Apple Maps located me once in Cairo and once in Beirut.
Meantime, after more than a week there is still no sign of major attacks from Iran or its proxies. Statements are being issued by the government preparing the public for a multi-day attack. In the meantime, people are going about their business pretty much as usual. Most everyone has stocked up on bottled water, canned goods, paper goods, etc.
Aid
COGAT reports that 41 trucks entered Gaza yesterday with humanitarian aid. About 500 trucks worth of aid remains in the staging areas waiting for distribution.
Politics/Protests
Today, the country’s Attorney General ordered cuts in funding to ultra-orthodox students that were sent IDF draft notices but refused to show up at the draft office. The ultra-orthodox receive higher social benefits to handle daycare as the wives often work and the husbands are studying (supposedly). The ultra-orthodox ministers in the government have compared the decision to the historical catastrophe of the destruction of the first and second temples. And in some cases, “child abuse”. Read more here.
Hostages/Ceasefire
Egypt’s negotiators are now pushing a plan that as part of the hostage/ceasefire deal, the Palestinian Authority will assume control of the Rafah area and all the goods brought across the border. Is this supposed to address Israel’s concerns or Hamas’s???
International
German Prime Minister Olaf Scholz spoke with Prime Minister Netanyahu today telling him that it is time to sign a deal, end the war and de-escalate the region.
The International Criminal Court ICC decided to open their deliberations on whether or not to issue arrest warrants for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar to the public. The arrest warrants for Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh were withdrawn since they were assassinated. Maybe, soon there will not be a need to issue any of the arrest warrants? Soon, we all hope, Sinwar will join Deif and Haniyeh in hell. And once the judges come to their sense they will realize that there is no case against Israeli leaders claiming that they are committing crimes against humanity because they are causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies and deliberately targeting civilians in conflict. Given the reality of the situation, if there is any kind of objective set of judges to preside over such a case they would quickly conclude that the prosecution has no case.
A brief led by The Touro Institute and its Director Anne Bayefsky (you can learn more about them here). was filed with the ICC. In it they argued that the ICC has no jurisdiction over the case and that the prosecution filed it solely with political motivations. It states:
The Prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants against Israeli nationals exceeds this Court’s authority. The Prosecutor asks this Chamber to allow the Palestinian entity to delegate to this Court jurisdiction which it has never in history possessed itself, even though it does not meet the legal test for statehood, and then use that jurisdiction to issue arrest warrants against senior officials of a non-Party State which does not recognize its statehood. This violates the Rome Statute and fundamental principles of international law.
It goes on to accuse the Prosecutor Karim Khan of violating the principle of complementarity by"by remaining willfully blind to information about Israeli investigations that would have been necessary to assess whether this case was admissible."
The principle of complementarity refers to the fact that the ICC can ONLY exercise jurisdiction when national legal systems fail to do so. In the case of Israel, it has a vibrant and independent Judicial System that has, when warranted, insisted that the government defend its actions. A case in point is the administration of the Sde Terem detention facility which the court is insisting the government shut down.
In the aftermath of the strike killing the Hamas combatants near the Al-Taba’een school in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority called on the ICC to issue immediate arrest warrants against the Israeli “war criminals”.
President Biden, after being bombarded with reporters’ questions on leaving a church Sunday morning responded to the question “What’s your message to Iran?” He replied, “Don’t!”.
And In Your Copious Spare Time…
You might find this article interesting. It is an interview with an Israeli author who has just finished writing a book on Israel’s operations in Iran. It and the interview passed through IDF censorship.
And here is an insightful report from the Wall Street Journal talking about how Iran is constrained in how it can respond to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, which Iran attributes to Israel.
And from the images in this article you can get a glimpse of the impact that Hezbollah’s operations on our northern border have had on our town and villages along that border.