October 382, 2023, "The War"

My 283rd post on The War

Today’s Image

Excuse the sarcasm. All of us here are so “jaded” by the vicious anti-Israel reporting from Western Media that we fully expect to be seeing bylines in those newspapers claiming that Sinwar was just an ordinary non combatant and killed by Israel.

In case you hadn’t heard the IDF killed Yahya Sinwar today, the architect behind the October 7 attack and current head of Hamas. More details below.

My View - What Happened and What Will it Mean?

It appears that the IDF had known for some time that Sinwar was inside tunnels below the Tel Sultan neighborhood of Rafah where they have been operating for the past 3 months. While they were conducting building to building ground operations rooting out the Hamas combatants and destroying their infrastructure they were continually looking for signs of Sinwar. They also knew that those 6 hostages killed by Hamas on or before August 31, 20234 were being kept nearby Sinwar continuously through the past 6 months or so. In fact, after those dead hostages were extracted by the IDF in a tunnel in the same neighborhood, they continued exploring the tunnel. They concluded that wings of that tunnel complex were used by Hamas leadership. They extracted samples from the conference room they found but could not pin down whether any of it belonged to Sinwar or not.

IDF troops operating in the Tel Sultan neighborhood called in an aerial strike from a drone when they spotted a group of terrorists taking refuge there. The whole area is absent non combatants at this point. After the first strike at least one of the terrorists was still alive. The ground forces directed a small portable drone with a camera towards the hit facility and found this character still alive, throwing stones in the direction of the small drone.

You must, absolutely must, watch the video on this site. It shows Sinwar’s last moments on this earth.

The troops then initiated a second strike from the missile bearing drone that struck the building with this character inside. It turns out that this character was none other than Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the October 7 attack and current head of Hamas. Still at this point no one knew that they had just killed Sinwar. The troops then approached the destroyed building, examining the destruction and the bodies. When they lifted objects off one of the bodies they found one, this one, that had a strong resemblance to Sinwar. This was at about 14:00 this afternoon, Thursday. The soldiers took DNA samples and had them rushed back for examination. About two hours later they had 100% confirmation that they had just killed Yahya Sinwar. His body was taken back to Israel. So that summarizes what happened…. now what does it mean and what will change.

It is my guess that the IDF was ordered to bring back Sinwar’s body because no one is interested in some large funeral procession that will raised the fever level amongst the Jihadis to rally the troops for revenge. I doubt that Israel will return the body to Hamas, Turkiye, Qatar or any other Hamas ally in the region. But we will see.

At this point there is only one leader from the original Hamas organization surviving still in Hamas, Sinwar’s brother Muhammed. Muhammed Sinwar took over leadership of the Hamas fighting forces after Muhammed Deif was assassinated on July 13, 2024 in Gaza. Muhammed Sinwar was responsible for the kidnap of Gilad Schalit and the ransoming of his as a hostage in order to secure the release of his brother along with 1,026 other terrorists from Israeli prisons in October 2011. He is considered ruthless but does not have the political insights into Israel or other parts of the world that his brother had possessed. He will now be at the top of the Hamas Hit List alongside Khaled Mashal, who is likely to be appointed the next leader of Hamas. Mashal lives in Doha, Qatar in a 5 star hotel.

It is my understanding from what I have read that in the last few months, due to the difficulty to maintain daily communications with Hamas forces, Yahya Sinwar relied on providing general strategies and relied on individual field commanders to determine the daily tactics. So it is not at all clear now who will be determining either the strategy or the tactics. I am sure that the Shin Bet and the IDF know who is likely to emerge as the next person calling the orders in Gaza, but more than likely there will be somewhat of a power struggle that will emerge. No one has the respect from the ground forces that Sinwar had, not even his brother that survives him. So more than ever before, Hamas will soon become a decentralized insurgency of guerilla’s hiding deep within the non-combatant population attempting to launch attacks routinely against IDF troops operating in Gaza as well as trying to launch an occasional rocket in order to prove to the world that they are still alive and operating.

In terms of the fighting, the IDF has already shifted gears and is treating The War now as a guerrilla type war. There is a large contingency of Hamas combatants, perhaps 2,500-3,500 operating in Northern Gaza. This is probably the largest group. The IDF has been trying to encourage the 200,000 or so non combatants there to leave for the humanitarian zones without a lot of success. Hamas fighters hit and threaten those who leave with guns. The USA demands that the IDF provide more inbound aid to the Northern Gaza interferes with this effort as the non combatants will have little incentive to move. There also remain a significant, but smaller, number of Hamas forces in Nuseirat and Deir al-Balah where it is believed that the hostages are being held. Given the boundary conditions being imposed on it, it is not at all certain how the IDF will be able to wrap up operations in these five towns: Jabaliya, Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya, Nuseirat and Deir al-Balah. If the hostages were not a factor, there would be limited constraints on the IDF forces. But that is not the current situation.

Now on to the impact regarding the hostages and winding down The War in Gaza… As you, my readers, will recall I said on numerous occasions that Sinwar would never give up all the hostages as they were his only leverage to both stay alive and remain in power to rule Gaza. He spent a lifetime building a country of Jihadi Terrorists, controlling their UNRWA managed schools so that they were raised from birth on the notion of killing Jews. He would never give that up. With him no longer in the picture, it is now no longer clear who will emerge as the leader in Gaza and what will motivate him. But this does open a major opportunity relating to the hostages.

The entire Israeli leadership - Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Herzog, Defense Minister Gallant, Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi - all now agree that this is an opportune time to try and strike a hostage/ceasefire deal. President Biden called and spoke with Prime Minister Netanyahu to both congratulate him and to push forward with an effort to secure the hostages’ freedom. This evening in an address to the nation, Netanyahu quoted President Biden as saying:

The US President praised the IDF and their excellent work.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters this afternoon that:

Now that that obstacle has been removed, President Biden looks forward to talking to Prime Minister Netanyahu about how we secure the return of the hostages and end the war.

In a statement issued from the White House on behalf of President Biden, who is on Air Force 1 at the moment:

Shortly after the October 7 massacres, I directed Special Operations personnel and our intelligence professionals to work side-by-side with their Israeli counterparts to help locate and track Sinwar and other Hamas leaders hiding in Gaza. With our intelligence help, the IDF relentlessly pursued Hamas’s leaders, flushing them out of their hiding places and forcing them onto the run. There has rarely been a military campaign like this. Today, however, proves once again that no terrorists anywhere in the world can escape justice, no matter how long it takes. To my Israeli friends, this is no doubt a day of relief and reminiscence, similar to the scenes witnessed throughout the United States after President Obama ordered the raid to kill Osama Bin Laden in 2011. Israel has had every right to eliminate the leadership and military structure of Hamas.

In his message to the nation this evening, Prime Minister Netanyahu had this to say:

The killing of Yahya Sinwar marks the beginning of the day after Hamas. The one who carried out the worst massacre in the history of our people since the Holocaust, the mass murderer who murdered thousands of Israelis, abducted hundreds of our people, was eliminated today by our heroic soldiers. Today, as we promised we would, we settled accounts with him. Today, evil suffered a heavy blow, but our mission is not yet completed.

Then in a message directed at the families of the hostages he said this:

This is an important moment in the war. We will continue with full force until all your loved ones — our loved ones — are returned home. That is our supreme obligation. That is my supreme obligation.

Finally, he turned to the residents in Gaza to say this:

Sinwar destroyed your lives. He told you he was a lion, but in practice, he hid in a dark tunnel and was eliminated when he fled in a panic from our soldiers. His elimination is an important milestone in the demise of the Hamas axis of evil. Hamas will no longer rule Gaza. This is the beginning of the day after Hamas, and this is an opportunity for you, the residents of Gaza, to finally break free from its tyranny. To the Hamas terrorists I say: your leaders are fleeing and they will be eliminated.

He specifically announced that anyone holding hostages will allowed to live if they lay down their weapons and release their captives. If not, whoever harms the hostages will have their blood over their head and the IDF will come to you for a day of reckoning. He continue:

In Gaza, in Beirut, in the streets of the entire area, the darkness is withdrawing and the light is rising. Deif, Haniyeh, Sinwar, Nasrallah, Mohsen, Aqil and many of their partners are no more.

You can watch Netanyahu’s address to the nation here. It is in Hebrew.

Here is a 2 minute video of Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, spokesman for the IDF, announcing the killing of Yahya Sinwar. You should watch it. If you understand Hebrew, here is the longer version he made to Israeli people this evening. In this second video, skip to 22 min. In the Hebrew version he stresses that we will now be pursuing Sinwar’s brother Muhammed until he joins his brother in hell. This is an active effort underway now, along with the pursuit of the remaining Hamas command infrastructure.

Soon after the body was identified as being Sinwar’s, Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi and Head of Shin Bet Ronen Bar arrived at the location of Sinwar’s death where Halevi praised the efforts of the ground troops for everything they do and the sacrifices they make daily. Sorry but the video is in Hebrew.

Finally, here is my view. Sinwar’s killing is a vindication that the policies pursued in the conduct of this war are the correct ones. In face of all the pressure from the world, including our allies in the USA, we insisted on entering with ground troops into Gaza, on entering Khan Younis to destroy the home of Hamas underground, to enter Rafah in order to constrain their ability to re-arm and ultimately eliminate their leadership. Moreover, our strategy in Lebanon with Hezbollah is clear, is succeeding beyond our expectation and, despite world pressure, we will continue until Hezbollah forces are pushed north of the Litani River. We still have much to do and without doubt world opinion will continue to turn against us, but we will continue in these strategies as we have little choice. Despite what French President Macron may say, we will continue our operations in Lebanon until Hezbollah is pushed back. It is essential to our survival.

And now let’s watch how events play out in Iran….

Casualties

Today the IDF announced five soldiers killed during fighting in Southern Lebanon:Company Commander Maj. Ofek Bachar - 24 (Z’’L), Team Commander Cpt. Elad Siman Tov - 23 (Z’’L), Squad leader Staff Sgt. Elyashiv Eitan Wieder - 22 (Z’’L), Staff Sgt. Yakov Hillel - 21 (Z’’L) and Staff Sgt. Yehudah Dror Yahalom - 21 (Z’’L). They were members of an elite division of the Golani Brigade which just last week suffered through a devastating drone strike on their Base near Binyamina. It appears that their unit was hit with an anti-tank missile fired by Hezbollah combatants.

Rockets & Missiles & Drones

No rockets fired from Gaza crossed into Israel the past 4 days.

A kamikaze drone entered Israeli air space in the south eastern part of the country along the border with Jordan. The drone was presumably launched from Iraq, crossed Israeli air space and then was eliminated over the Mediterranean Sea. Later in the day the Iranian Proxy, Islamic Resistance took credit for the drone attack.

Early this morning Hezbollah launched a rocket barrage at the northern city of Kiryat Shmona resulting in one building destroyed and no injuries. The city has been largely evacuated since October, 2023. Then another barrage targeted Haifa and much of the Galilee region. Rockets were intercepted and a few fell in open areas. No injuries or damage reported. Mid morning another barrage of 30 rockets were fired into the Upper Galilee, close to the Lebanese Blue Line. Some were intercepted and others fell in open areas.

In an unusual turn of events, a warship belonging to Germany operating in Mediterranean waters neutralized a drone operating off the coast of Lebanon.

Lebanon Operations

Today, UNIFIL reported that its forces in Southern Lebanon were fired on again. The IDF reiterated its hope that they would move to a different location and informed them that they are not targets.

This morning the IDF reports that it assassinated Hussein Myhammed Auda. He was the battalion commander in Bent Jbeil, only 3 km north of the Lebanese Blue Line, in charge of the rocket launching operations. Altogether the IDF said that it had eliminated 45 Hezbollah operatives while destroying about 150 of its facilities in the past 24 hours via aerial attacks. Here you can see videos of some of the IDF operations in Southern Lebanon including one clip seen through night vision goggles.

Mid afternoon, Hezbollah announced that it had hit two Israeli tanks operating in Southern Lebanon. There has been no confirmation yet from the IDF.

The IDF broadcast SMS messages and posted messages on the Arabic Spokesman’s x.com account calling for residents of the Lebanese coastal city of Tyre to evacuate the neighborhood near Al-Hawsh. Soon after IDF fighter jets struck Hezbollah facilities operating from that neighborhood.

Gaza Operations

This morning in Gaza IDF infantry operating in and around Rafah found additional Hamas weapons storage facilities, eliminating them and a score of Hamas combatants attempting to thwart the operations. They found man AK-47s, RPGs, grenades and mortars. Operations have been launched in central Gaza as well in the towns of Bureij and Nuseirat.

In Northern Gaza Israeli jet aircraft fired a missile hitting a facility in a school no longer in use which was being used by Hamas as a command and control center. You can see and image of the entire facility and the building that was hit here. The IDF insists that dozens of terrorists were in the building at the time of the attack and all were killed. They actually provide a list.

There are reports in the Arab Media that the IDF killed the commander of Hamas’s Rafah Brigade in operations today.

Yemen Operations

US CENTCOM reports multiple aerial strikes from the air targeting underground Houthi weapons storage facilities. According to Secretary of Defense Austin, US B-2 advanced bombers struck 5 Houthi facilities using precise bunker busting bombs, much like those that could be possible used in a similar raid on underground nuclear facilities like those in Iran. The US Military says that these 5 facilities stored a variety of arms that can be used to construct drones and fire missiles at commercial ships operating in the Red Sea and around Yemen.

Syria/Iran/Jordan/Egypt/Iraq/Turkiye

Syria’s official media reports an aerial attack in its largest Mediterranean port of Latakia. It is not clear the nature of the target.

Aid

Overall the numbers of trucks bringing aid into Gaza dropped from an average of 180 trucks per day up until late September to an average of about 30 trucks per day during the first half of October. COGAT has not provided any explanation on why that has happened and it is likely that it is either related to the accumulation of aid inside the staging areas or an attempt to get residents of Northern Gaza to move to the humanitarian zones. But this is likely the situation that triggered the ire of the Biden Administration.

Nonetheless, the UN announced its now monthly warning of an aid catastrophe in Gaza. I will point out, as I have done numerous times, that there has yet to be a single death in Gaza due to starvation despite the UN raising this issued on a monthly basis with warnings of catastrophe. With the exception of issues in Northern Gaza currently, there is aid stocked up inside Gaza still waiting for distribution that the UN is remiss in handling. It seems to me that these are orchestrated efforts by these UN agencies led by UNRWA to get the USA to apply pressure on Israel just as its forces are applying huge pressure on Hamas forces. It happens too often and is timed too closely to these missions for it to be a coincidence.

Aid entering the Northern area of Gaza has increased dramatically in the past two days. Today, more than 50 trucks of aid entered the enclave. It is reported that about 300,000 Gazans remain in the northern towns. Amongst them are roughly 3-5,000 terrorists or pretty much what remains of Hamas forces. The IDF is trying to get the civilians to evacuate so it can eliminate much of the remaining infrastructure in Jabaliya, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya. My guess is that part of the strategy was to reduce aid in the area in favor of the designated humanitarian zones, but that is just a guess on my part.

In cooperation with the IDF, the UAE launched an aerial operations over Gaza dropping aid from the air. You can see videos here of the aid parachuting down.

Hostages/Ceasefire

And here is a first for me. I am actually providing a link to an x.com post coming from the program The Last Word, published on the MSNBC network. That’s right, I am actually posting something from MSNBC. It is a story referring to an episode from Bob Woodward’s newly published book, “War”. The host Lawrence O’Donnell shared an excerpt from Woodward’s book. It is 3 minutes long and worth your viewing, particularly towards the end.

International

In this report in Politico, the top U.S. official working on the humanitarian situation in Gaza Lisa Grande informed representatives from some of the aid organizations in Gaza that the USA would not consider an arms embargo on Israel. These officials complained that not enough aid was getting in to Gaza. But, as I have been reporting routinely more than 400 truckloads of aid have accumulated in the staging areas inside Gaza waiting for the aid agencies to distributed to Gaza residents. While there did appear to be a lack of aid in the north, it is not clear what aid shortages the agencies are talking about.

Our good friend (not) Josep Borrell, the EU’s Foreign Policy Chief, publicly chastised the USA for giving Israel 30 days to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza. According to him:

The US has been saying to Israel that they have to improve humanitarian support to Gaza, but they gave one month delay. One-month delay at the current pace of people being killed. It’s too many people.

The Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris, another good friend (not), said that “Europe ha not yet used every lever at its disposal to bring a ceasefire”. Much of this rhetoric has been launched as result of French President Emmanuel Macron’s (another friend, not) call for an arms embargo on Israel. In June 1967, right before Egyptian President Abdel Gamal Nassar blockaded the straits of Tiran and announced a holy war against Israel, France also announced an arms blockade of Israel. Until that point in time France under Charles de Gaulle was a large arms supplier to Israel. I guess we should learn from our past mistakes.

But, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has taken a different view. This morning in response to all these calls from our “friends” in Europe for an arms embargo, he said:

All criteria must be respected, such as international law. When it comes to monetary aid, which must go to Gaza, it’s about preventing the war from escalating further. However, it is clear that supporting Israel also means that we are constantly ensuring Israel’s defense capability, for example by supplying military goods or weapons.

And it appears that someone in France has a brain on their shoulders. Today Gerard Larcher, the Speaker for the Upper House, underlined the message that Prime Minister Netanyahu was sending to French President Macron. As you will recall Macron stated that Israel should not forget that it owes it existence to a UN resolution back in 1947. This provoked a furious response from Netanyahu saying that Israel draws its legitimacy not from some UN Resolution but from the rights of the Jewish People to its ancestral homeland and the blood/sacrifices made by the men and women who fought in our War of Independence in 1948. Larcher said today regarding Macron’s message:

It first of all shows an ignorance of the history of the birth of the State of Israel. Questioning the existence of Israel touches on fundamental questions for me. I was astounded that these remarks could be made. The creation of Israel did not come as a notarial act merely validated by the UN.

By French law, if Macron becomes incapacitated or dies in office Larcher would assume the Presidency. Well, in my eyes Macron is showing clears signs of dementia. He totally forgets who launched rockets into Israel on October 8 without any basis or justification. He did not call for a ceasefire then.

And In Your Copious Spare Time…

• Ron Ben Yishai posted this quick analysis in the aftermath of Sinwar’s Death. His basic message is that it is very hard to predict now who will be in charge and what will happen next.

• Here is an analysis from Seth Franzman on the expected impact of Sinwar’s death on Iran’s “Ring of Fire” around Israel.

• And here is a description of how President Biden views Prime Minister Netanyahu as depicted in Woodward’s new book, “War”. It is an unfortunate depiction by President Biden and does not serve him well.