October 623

My 325th post on The War

Disclaimer:

My apologies to my loyal readers. I have been busy with both my iPhone App development and activities with The Lone Soldiers, but neglected to keep up with my posts. I hope that your patience persists and I can recover your confidence after this post.

Today’s Images

The first image is of Iranian ballistic missiles flying over the city of Tel Aviv last night. The view is looking towards the East. For reasons that are still not clear Israel’s missile defense system failed to take down ALL the missiles. As you can see many were descending at the same time.

The second image was taken this morning, Sunday, of the damage done to a residential building in the city of Bat Yam, Israel. This is the result from one of those missiles making it through the IDF’s defense system. Bat Yam is a suburb to the south of Tel Aviv, along the sea. It is completely residential and commercial. There is absolutely nothing there having anything to do with the military nor any industry. Striking such a building is absolute terror since it is intended solely to kill civilians. Seven people were killed in that strike, more than 100 injured and still a few not accounted for.

The third image is of the Khatib Family of Tamra, Israel. This is an Israeli Arab Village a bit outside the city of Haifa. Haifa was the target of a major Iranian missile attack last night as well. Haifa is the major port for Israel and has several major industries located there including the country’s major oil refinery. Haifa and its residents suffered from damage/injuries resulting from falling shrapnel, but no direct hits. The oil refinery there reported minor damage to pipelines and transmission lines. Tamra, the nearby village, however, took a direct hit from one of the Iranian missiles last night killing three of the women in this photo and another female relative not pictured. Again, there was nothing of any military or industrial consequence nearby. Another act of terror.

Altogether Israel suffered 11 casualties from last night’s Iranian missile barrage and 200 injured. Most of the injured have been discharged from the hospitals. A few remain in serious or critical condition. On the previous night, Friday night, 3 people died from the Iranian missile attacks. There were three waves of missile attacks on Friday night causing most of us into bomb shelters around the country. On Friday, Iran attempted to hit the IDF’s Kirya located near my apartment in Tel Aviv. The Kirya is the closest thing that the IDF has to the Pentagon in Washington, DC. The missiles were largely neutralized, but falling shrapnel caused damage to nearby buildings. I am in Jerusalem now, but reports from my neighbors in Tel Aviv suggest that my building only suffered very light damage with a few broken windows.

But one missile was a direct hit in the nearby suburb of Ramat Gan hitting a block of homes, killing 2 people. There is a military base in that city.

Casualties

Altogether 13 civilians have been killed. Not all the names have been announced as of the time I am writing this. Those whose names have been released include: Manar Khatib (Z’’L), Hala Khatib - 20 (Z’’L), Shada Khatib - 13 (Z’’L), Yevgenia Blinder - 64 (Z’’L), Yisrael Aloni - 73 (Z’’L) and Etti Cohen Engel - 66 (Z’’L). Names have not been released yet of the other victims. So all 13 civilians who died from the missile attacks were not in their bomb shelters at the time of impact. The Government is stressing this a lot to encourage everyone to pay attention and take the alerts seriously.

Besides all the action related to the Iran-Israel battle front an IDF infantry soldier was killed during fighting in Gaza, Sgt. First Class (res.) Noam Shemesh - 21 (Z’’L).

Rockets & Missiles & Drones

Altogether the IDF estimates that last night about 80 Iranian ballistic missiles reached Israel. It is not known how many were actually launched. Many fall and destruct on their own, never crossing the Iranian or Iraqi borders. Others are being intercepted by US air defense systems deployed on bases in Iraq as well as from US destroyers operating in the Arabian Gulf. About 40 of those missiles struck northern Israel including the direct hit on Tamra. In the second barrage 35 reached Israel, one struck the city of Rehovot and the other the city of Bat Yam. Iran is claiming that the missiles it is firing are “guided”, meaning that they can be remotely controlled. This is ironic since that implies that it is intentionally targeting civilian facilities, a war crime. But the IDF insists that they are not guided.

Ballistic missiles launched from Iran take about 10-15 minutes to reach Israel. Both IDF and USA Centcom have the capabilities to detect the launches emerging from Iran within less than a minute after launch. That is helping the IDF destroy the launchers very effectively. But, I will talk more about that later. Within just a few minutes after launch all of us here in Israel receive a message on our mobile phones from the Home Front Command that looks like this:

This is warning the entire country that missiles are expected within the next few minutes. At this time it is too early to nail their precise trajectories so the Home Front Command can’t identify which communities need to be alert. But what this does is give us all time to get our shoes on, gather together the kids, gather water and other necessities. Then, if the missiles are projected to arrive somewhere near our location we get the following warning on an application distributed by the Home Front Command:

Right around this time we should start hearing the sirens. You might call this the “2 minute warning”. By this time we should be on our way to the bomb shelter. All homes built legally since about 1992 are required to have a specially designated room with all four walls built from reinforced concrete, special thick iron plates over any openings and a special reinforced iron door. My “Mamad” in Tel Aviv also has a gas filtration system in the event of an attack with chemical weapons. Homes built before then or built illegally generally do not have such a room. Homes built during the 1970s and 1980s have a common bomb shelter which is shared between the different apartment owners within the building. People living in homes built before then often have to rely on a “public bomb shelters” which exist but are slowly disappearing as the land gets developed for other purposes. I use the word “illegal” above because many of the homes built in the Arab towns are built outside the zoning laws and generally without bomb shelters.

Then the third phase of the process, very close in time to getting the red alert, we receive messages like this on our Home Front Application:

I have my Application set to use English since it is faster for me to read and comprehend. You can choose your language - Hebrew, Arabic, English, Russian or French. By this time we are in the bomb shelter with the doors locked. I am in Jerusalem at my wife’s house where there is a shared bomb shelter with neighbors in her building. It becomes a “bonding experience”. Often we can hear the loud thumping in the background as the IDF missiles intercept the inbound ballistic missiles coming from either Iran or Yemen (remember the Houthis may not be striking against US and other ships, but they are still attacking Israel).

We will then wait about 15 minutes after which we can emerge from the bomb shelters. As you might be able to tell, I received these alerts on my iPhone as I was writing this post and had to stop in order to dash off to the bomb shelter. According to the Home Front Command this most recent barrage of Iranian missiles were targeting Jerusalem and the surrounding areas of Judea and Samaria. This time all the missiles were neutralized. So far no reports of damage, but most likely we will receive some since the shrapnel spreads over a large distance. The number of missiles being launched by Iran in each barrage is declining over the 3 day time period of this war. The IDF has free rein over the skies of Iran and is taking out the launchers very effectively. Here is an image of the different alerts that go our on a typical missile attack:

Besides ballistic missiles from Iran and Yemen we also have to deal with drones. Drones fired by Iran can take 7-9 hours to reach Israel. These are also being effectively neutralized, so far at 100%. While it is likely that the new IDF Iron Beam laser based anti-drone system is being effectively deployed, the IDF is publishing videos of their specially equipped fleet of Apache Helicopters taking out the drones from the air. Here you can see a video.

More to Come

Substack informs me that I am reaching my limit of words in a post. I will stop here, take a break and work on the next post today… Sunday. Will focus next on what is happening in Iran. The events taking place in the Middle East now are going to change the face of the Middle East for many years to come. You are living through a major historical event… so pay attention.