Recent Appearances...

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Recent Appearances...

Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Heavy seas batter US Gaza maritime aid mission, says CENTCOM

2024-05-26

[GEO.TV] Heavy seas battered the U.S. maritime humanitarian mission to Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
on Saturday, US Central Command (CENTCOM) said, with four vessels serving a floating aid delivery pier breaking free from their moorings.

No injuries were reported and the aid pier remains fully functional, CENTCOM said in a statement, adding that no US personnel would enter Gaza.

Two of the affected vessels were now anchored on the beach near the pier and the other two were beached on the coast of Israel near Ashkelon, CENTCOM said, adding that efforts to recover the vessels were under way with assistance from the Israeli Navy.

The Times of Israel adds:

One of the ships got stuck on a beach at the southern end of Ashdod, and another ship sent to extract the stuck vessel also got beached.

The other two vessels washed up on a beach near the pier, the statement said, adding that efforts to recover the vessels were underway with assistance from the Israeli Navy.

Courtesy of NoMoreBS, more from Red State:

Nothing about this mission has been thought through. An absence of heavy-lift ships on the East Coast meant that small Army ships spent over a month in a trans-Atlantic crossing, roughly going the same speed as Christopher Columbus' fleet. We now know that none of the aid pushed over the pier has reached Gaza civilians. To top it off, our humanitarian mission has come under attack from the people we are trying to help.

Now, the final promise has been broken, that of no "boots on the ground" in Gaza — even if the boots belonged to US military personnel walking away from a shipwreck.

Link

Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Senior officer moderately hurt in Gaza City amid renewed fighting in Strip’s north

2024-05-13

[IsraelTimes] Rockets fired at Ashkelon, injuring 3; military presses on in Rafah, battles resurgent Hamas in Zeitoun, Jabaliya; IDF says terror operative who guarded Noa Marciano killed in airstrike

A senior Israeli officer was maimed fighting in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
on Friday, the military announced Sunday, as battles raged across the Strip amid army operations in Rafah in Gaza’s south, and Zeitoun and Jabaliya in in its north.

Brig. Gen. Yogev Bar Sheshet, the Defense Ministry’s deputy comptroller for the defense establishment, was moderately maimed by shrapnel from gunfire in Gaza City, according to the Israel Defense Forces. The top officer was with the Nahal Infantry Brigade chief’s forward command team in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City when he was hurt. He is the most senior IDF officer to be maimed in fighting in the Strip amid the war. Five Nahal soldiers were killed fighting Hamas
Hamas

..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
in Zeitoun on Friday.

The IDF has returned several times to the Zeitoun neighborhood since the war’s outbreak, as Hamas has repeatedly managed to regroup in areas previously cleared by the army.

Also on Sunday, the IDF said that a senior Hamas operative in the terror group’s Shati Battalion was killed in an ~~Arclight~~ airstrike
...KABOOM!...
in Gaza on Friday. Naim Ghoul, according to the IDF and Shin Bet, was involved in rocket fire at Israel, and was among those responsible for guarding hostage Cpl. Noa Marciano in the Gaza Strip. Marciano, who was kidnapped on October 7, was later killed by Hamas at Shifa Hospital. Her body was recovered by the IDF in November. In February, the IDF had said it killed Ahmed Ghoul, another Shati Battalion commander who was involved in guarding Marciano.

On Sunday, the IDF said several button men were killed in close-quarters combat and by airstrikes in Zeitoun. Strikes were also carried out against Hamas infrastructure, it added.

Sunday also saw rocket fire from the Gaza Strip at southern Israel. At around 1 a.m., a rocket fired at the southern city of Ashkelon directly struck a home, lightly wounding three people, authorities said.

Sirens again sounded in Ashkelon on Sunday afternoon, with no reports of damage or injuries.

Several rockets were also launched at the border city of Sderot, with some of the projectiles being intercepted and others hitting open areas, the IDF said.

The military said another two rockets fired from Rafah in southern Gaza at the Kerem Shalom area on the border were intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense system.

The key Kerem Shalom Crossing with the southern Gaza Strip, used for humanitarian aid

deliveries to Gaza, was reopened last week after having been shuttered days earlier following a deadly Hamas rocket attack.

Meanwhile,
...back at the palazzo, Count Guido had escaped from his bonds and overwhelmed his guard using the bludgeon the faithful Filomena had smuggled to him in the loaf of bread...
overnight, the IDF launched an operation against Hamas in northern Gaza’s Jabaliya, after it said Hamas was identified regrouping in the area.

Ahead of the entry of the 98th Division into Jabaliya, fighter jets and other aircraft struck some 30 Hamas targets, killing several operatives, the military said Sunday morning. The IDF said it had "intelligence information about the presence of gunnies and the restoration of terror infrastructure of the Hamas terror group in the area."

An evacuation order was given for the Jabaliya area on Saturday, where the IDF estimated there were between 100,000 and 150,000 Paleostinians.

According to a Channel 13 report Saturday, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi noted the need for troops to return to Jabaliya when he criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during security consultations over the weekend for failing to develop and declare a postwar strategy.

"We are now operating once again in Jabaliya. As long as there’s no diplomatic process to develop a governing body in the Strip that isn’t Hamas, we’ll have to launch campaigns again and again in other places to dismantle Hamas’s infrastructure," Halevi was quoted by Channel 13 as saying. "It will be a Sisyphean task."

Netanyahu and his government have long faced criticism over their refusal to make a plan for the management of Gaza after the war. The international community has pushed for the West Bank’s Paleostinian Authority to take control, but Netanyahu says he will not allow a governing body that supports terror through education and financing to rule the enclave.

Operations in the northern Gaza Strip came as the IDF pressed ahead with a controversial offensive in the southern city of Rafah. The IDF said troops of the 162nd Division discovered and destroyed several tunnel shafts and rocket launchers primed for attacks on Israel in Rafah, including in the area of the Paleostinian side of the Rafah Crossing with Egypt. Some 10 Hamas button men spotted by troops in the area were killed in an airstrike, the military said.

Israel ordered new evacuations in Rafah, instructing tens of thousands more people to move as it prepares to expand its military operation closer to the heavily populated central area, in defiance of growing pressure from close ally the United States and others.

It ordered civilians out of the eastern outskirts of Rafah last week. In the initial evacuation zone and other areas of Rafah, around 300,000 Paleostinians evacuated to a designated "humanitarian zone," according to IDF assessments.

Around a million more Paleostinians, who fled other parts of Gaza during the war, remain in the city itself, and they have not been called to evacuate yet. The operation remains limited in scope amid negotiations via mediators to secure the release of hostages who were kidnapped from Israel during the Hamas October 7 assault.

Israel says that it has made plans to evacuate civilians from areas of combat, and that it must tackle Hamas’s remaining battalions in Rafah to fully defeat the group in the enclave.

Over the past day, airstrikes were carried out against more than 150 targets across Gaza, according to the military. The targets included rocket launchers, cells of button men, weapon depots, observation posts, tunnels, and other infrastructure, the IDF said Sunday.

The war in Gaza erupted after Hamas’s October 7 attacks, which saw some 3,000 gunnies burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 252 hostages amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.

The ensuing war has killed over 35,000 Paleostinians, according to Gaza health officials, though data issued by the Hamas-run authorities cannot be independently verified, and is believed to include both civilians and Hamas members killed in Gaza, including as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires.

Israel has said it has killed some 15,000 terror operatives in Gaza, in addition to some 1,000 gunnies inside Israel on October 7, while 272 soldiers have been killed during the ground offensive against Hamas and amid operations along the Gaza border.

Israeli airstrike in Gaza said to kill senior member of Democratic Front terror group

[IsraelTimes] A senior member of the small Paleostinian terror group Democratic Front

Who are they? The name is so nondescript that I suspect a search of the Rantburg archives would get hits all over the world.

has been killed in an Israeli ~~Arclight~~ airstrike
<del>Arclight</del> airstrike

...KABOOM!...
in the Sabra neighborhood of Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
City, according to Paleostinian and Arab media.

The reports identify the targeted man as Talal Abu Zarifa, a member of the organization’s political bureau.

Link

Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Israeli stabbed in alleged terror attack in Palestinian town; suspect arrested

2024-03-03

[IsraelTimes] 57-year-old in moderate condition after being knifed in Dahariya; assailant reportedly attacked after discovering he was Jewish

A 57-year-old Israeli man was stabbed by a Paleostinian in the West Bank on Saturday, the military, medics and police said, with the attack suspected as terrorism.

The victim, a Jewish resident of Ashkelon, entered the Paleostinian town of Dahariya near Hebron at the southern tip of the West Bank to visit a doctor there, the Ynet news site reported. He was accompanied by two Arab Israelis, the report said.

Police said a 20-year-old Paleostinian assailant stabbed the man, reportedly after discovering he was Jewish.

The Israel Defense Forces later said it had arrested the suspected terrorist a short while after the attack and handed him over to the Shin Bet for questioning.

Ynet said one of the Arab Israelis accompanying the Jewish man hit the assailant in the head with a rod.

A mensch, that one.

Police and the Magen David Adom ambulance service said one of the men accompanying the victim drove him to the nearby Meitar Crossing, where medics treated him for stab wounds before taking him to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba.

Him, too.

"We gave him lifesaving treatment, stopped the bleeding, and took him to the hospital in moderate and stable condition," said one of the MDA paramedics who treated the stab victim.

Police said officers reached the scene to investigate the circumstances, with the IDF later saying it was a suspected terror attack.

Dahariya falls under the jurisdiction of the Paleostinian Authority in Area A of the West Bank, a territory that Israelis are not legally allowed to enter. Nevertheless, it is commonplace for Arab Israelis to visit the area.

"Entry into these areas is prohibited for citizens of the State of Israel according to law and is a real threat to their lives," police said.

Last August, an Israeli father and son were killed in the Paleostinian town of Huwara while visiting a carwash in the Area A village.

Since October 7, IDF troops have arrested some 3,400 wanted Paleostinians across the West Bank, including more than 1,500 affiliated with Hamas
Hamas

...the braying voice of Islamic Resistance®,...
. According to the Paleostinian Authority health ministry, more than 400 West Bank Paleostinians have been killed in that time, most of them during ~~violent~~ mostly peaceful festivities with Israeli forces.

Link

Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Three soldiers killed in Gaza as troops keep up raids on Hamas sites and gunmen

2024-03-03

[IsraelTimes] 14 other soldiers maimed by blast in booby-trapped building in Khan Younis; rare long-range rocket barrage fired toward Beersheba area, causing no damage

The Israeli military announced the deaths of three soldiers in the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
Strip Saturday, as troops continued to score achievements in the nearly five-months-long war against the Hamas
Hamas

...a regional Iranian catspaw,...
terror group, and as a rare barrage of rockets was launched from the enclave toward Beersheba.

At least four long-range rockets were fired from the Strip at the Hatzerim region near Beersheba, according to the IDF. The rockets all apparently struck open areas, causing no injuries. Rocket barrages, certainly long-range ones, have become uncommon as the war has progressed, with terrorists’ launching capabilities severely hindered by the offensive.

The Israeli Defense Forces said three soldiers were killed during fighting in southern Gaza, raising the toll of slain troops in the ground offensive against Hamas to 245. They were named as:

Sgt. Dolev Malka, 19, of the Bislamach Brigade’s 450th Battalion, from Shlomi.

Sgt. Afik Tery, 19, of the Bislamach Brigade’s 450th Battalion, from Rehovot.

Sgt. Inon Yitzhak, 19, of the Bislamach Brigade’s 450th Battalion, from Mitzpe Ramon.

Malka, Tery and Yitzhak were killed and 14 other troops were maimed, six of them seriously, as a result of a blast in a booby-trapped building in the Khan Younis area.

The troops had raided a two-story structure that was booby-trapped with bombs both inside and outside the building, according to an initial IDF probe. The force that entered the building was hit by two bombs, leading to two soldiers becoming trapped inside. The Air Force’s search and rescue Unit 669 was then dispatched to the scene.

According to the IDF’s probe, several Hamas operatives were killed by troops in the area during the incident.

The 98th Division is investigating the manner in which the troops scanned the building, the manner in which the explosives were planted and other circumstances surrounding the deadly incident.

The Bislamach Brigade — the IDF’s School for Infantry Corps Professions and Squad Commanders in wartime — entered Gaza on Thursday to replace the Paratroopers Brigade, which was withdrawn after three straight months of fighting in Khan Younis.

The three slain soldiers, formerly of the Kfir Brigade’s Nahshon Battalion, were in a squad commander’s course.

OFFENSIVE ONGOING
The army also said it struck an area in northern Gaza from which rockets were fired toward southern Israel Friday night, within minutes of the attack. The Paleostinian Islamic Jihad
...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah...
grabbed credit for the rocket fire, which set off sirens in Zikim and Ashkelon’s southern industrial zone. Several more targets in the area, including rocket launchers and Hamas infrastructure, were also struck, the IDF said.

Meanwhile,
...back at the desert island, Irene was indignant at the thought of doing such a thing without benefit of clergy...
in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, the IDF said the 7th Armored Brigade killed several Hamas operatives and captured weapons over the past day. The brigade also directed several ~~Arclight~~ airstrike
...KABOOM!...
s which the IDF said killed at least eight button men.

In central Gaza, the IDF said the Nahal Brigade had killed some 20 button men over the past day, including by calling in airstrikes, and the Ghost Unit killed several more operatives using "innovative means."

Nearby, in Gaza City’s Rimal neighborhood, the IDF said the 215th Artillery Regiment directed an airstrike against a three-man Hamas cell, and infrastructure used to launch rockets at Sderot on Thursday.

The army also said it carried out a strike against a group of Paleostinian Islamic Jihad operatives who were gathered at a Hamas site in southern Gaza’s Rafah. It added that no damage was caused to a hospital close to the targeted site.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said 11 people were killed and dozens maimed in the strike. The ministry claimed that a paramedic was among those killed.

The military also released new footage of the Commando Brigade operating in Khan Younis. The brigade is battling Hamas in the western part of the city, killing dozens of operatives and raiding terrorist sites, the IDF said. It said the Egoz commando unit raided a compound previously used by Hamas’s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, where they found an assault rifle. At another site, troops found a cache of Hamas military equipment.

Troops of the Commando Brigade’s training base have also joined the fighting in Khan Younis in recent weeks, killing dozens of operatives during raids on Hamas sites.

HUMANITARIAN EFFORTS AMID TRUCE TALKS
Also Saturday, the United States carried out the first of what it said would be a series of humanitarian airdrops of food into Gaza, as aid agencies warned of a growing humanitarian disaster in the Paleostinian enclave in the absence of a ceasefire deal.

Three C-130 US military planes delivered more than 38,000 meals into a territory where the United Nations
...an organization which on balance has done more bad than good, with the good not done well and the bad done thoroughly...
says at least 576,000 people are one step away from famine conditions. Paleostinians posted videos on social media showing boxes of aid being dropped. Jordanian forces also participated in the operation.

The White House has said the airdrops would be a sustained effort, and that Israel supports them. Critics say airdrops are far less effective than aid deliveries by truck, and it is nearly impossible to ensure supplies do not end up with the Hamas terror group that rules Gaza.

With indirect talks between Israel and Hamas on a hostage release and truce deal set to resume in Egypt on Sunday, a senior US official said the framework for a deal on a six-week ceasefire was in place, with Israel’s agreement, and depended on Hamas agreeing to release hostages.

"The hostages have to be released," the official told news hounds. "The deal is basically there. But I don’t want to create expectations one way or the other."

US President Joe The Big Guy Biden
...46th president of the U.S. ‘This Is A Man ThatDoes Not Seem Demented’...
has said he hopes a ceasefire will be in place by the Moslem fasting month of Ramadan, which starts on March 10. But both Israeli and Hamas officials have signaled significant gaps between the sides remain.

International pressure for a ceasefire has grown.

Three people searching for food in farmland in the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday were killed by Israeli strikes, residents and medics said. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but says it only targets terror operatives, who regularly operate from within the civilian population.

Thirteen children have died at the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza in the last three days from dehydration and malnutrition, according to the Gaza health ministry.

…which may or may not be telling great big whoppers…

Doctors at the hospital said more were at risk of dying. "When a child is supposed to eat three meals a day and he only eats one, he obviously suffers from malnutrition, and all the diseases that come because of it," said Imad Dardonah.

Biden announced plans for the US airdrop on Friday, a day after the deaths of Paleostinians queuing for aid drew renewed attention to the humanitarian catastrophe.

Hamas has said 118 people were killed, attributing the deaths to Israeli fire and calling it a massacre. Israel disputed those figures and said most victims were trampled or run over in the rush to grab food from the trucks, and that its troops only fired at a few individuals who rushed toward them in a threatening manner.

The Israeli military on Saturday promised "an exhaustive, truthful investigation" into the incident, which underscored the collapse of orderly aid deliveries into areas of Gaza held by Israeli forces.

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Israel would present its findings from Thursday’s deadly incident. "We are investigating this incident, we have all the footage we need to complete an exhaustive investigation and find out the truth of the facts of this incident, and we will present the findings," Hagari said in an evening presser.

"This was a humanitarian operation we conducted, and the claim that we intentionally struck the convoy and intentionally harmed people is baseless," he added.

The war in Gaza began with Hamas’s massacres in southern Israel on October 7, when thousands of bully boyz broke through the border, killed some 1,200 people and kidnapped 253 others to Gaza while committing mass atrocities.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said Saturday that at least 30,320 Paleostinians had been killed and 71,533 had been maimed in the war. The terror group’s figures are unverified, don’t differentiate between civilians and combatants, and list all the fatalities as caused by Israel — even those believed to have been caused by hundreds of misfired rockets or otherwise by Paleostinian fire.

Israel has said it killed some 13,000 Hamas members in Gaza fighting, in addition to some 1,000 killed in Israel during the terror group’s October 7 invasion and onslaught.

Link

Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Two IDF soldiers killed in Gaza; foreign nations airdrop civilian aid into enclave

2024-02-29

[IsraelTimes] Israel says no limit set on truck deliveries to Strip; hostage release negotiations continue in Qatar as families of captives march to Jerusalem

The Israel Defense Forces announced Wednesday that two soldiers had been killed in battles against Hamas
Hamas

...not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
in the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
Strip.

Meanwhile mediators from Egypt, Qatar
Qatar

...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
, and the United States continued to strive for a path to a temporary ceasefire and hostage release amid the bitter fighting, with negotiators seeking a six-week pause in the nearly five-month war.

And as a round of negotiations was held in Qatar, families of hostages kidnapped during Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel begin a march from the Gaza area toward Jerusalem to demand the government agree to a deal for their release.

The IDF announced two officers had been killed fighting Tuesday in northern Gaza, raising the ground toll in the offensive against Hamas to 242.

They were named as Maj. Iftah Shahar, 25, a company commander in the Givati Brigade’s Tzabar Battalion, from Paran, and Cpt. Itai Seif, 24, a platoon commander also in the Givati Brigade’s Tzabar Battalion, from Yeruham.

Shahar had until recently served as an officer in the Israeli Air Force’s elite Shaldag unit. He had been sent to the infantry unit to replace a seriously maimed Givati company commander.

The IDF said another seven soldiers of the Tzabar Battalion were seriously maimed in the same incident.

Shahar and Seif were killed and the seven other soldiers were maimed as a result of a kaboom in a booby-trapped building in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood on Tuesday.

As global concerns mount over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where over 2 million people reside, the IDF said it coordinated the airdrop of food and medical supplies by several nations to the southern Gaza Strip over the previous two days. Some 160 packages of humanitarian aid

were airdropped to 17 locations along the southern coastline of the Strip using American, Egyptian, Emirati, French and Jordanian planes, the IDF said.

Additional packages of food, medical supplies and fuel were also airdropped to a Jordanian field hospital in Khan Younis, the IDF said. The Jordan News Agency reported that King Abdullah II, who is Supreme Commander of the Jordanian military, participated in an airdrop Tuesday. According to the report, six C130 aircraft flew in from Amman, three of which were from the Royal Jordanian Air Force alongside three others from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and La Belle France.

The IDF said the recent airdrops were in addition to trucks of humanitarian aid that enter the Strip daily.

A convoy of 31 trucks carrying food entered the northern Gaza Strip Wednesday, according to the military liaison to the Paleostinians, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. COGAT added that close to 50 trucks had traveled to the northern part of the enclave over the past three days, and that "there is no limitation on the amount of humanitarian aid for the civilians in Gaza."

Northern Gaza is seeing a spiraling humanitarian crisis, with aid agencies unable to get into the area because of the fighting, and frenzied looting of the few trucks that do enter.

Israel has denied fault for the low numbers of trucks entering the enclave and blamed humanitarian organizations operating inside Gaza, saying hundreds of trucks filled with aid sit idle on the Paleostinian side of the Kerem Shalom Crossing. The UN, in turn, says it can’t always reach the trucks at the crossing because it is at times too dangerous.

Additionally, Israel has long accused Hamas of appropriating and stealing aid from an increasingly desperate civilian population.

In other operations, the IDF said it killed dozens of Hamas operatives across the Gaza Strip over the previous day, releasing footage of a strike on a gunman who tried to flee after opening fire at troops. The military said it carried out overnight ~~Arclight~~ airstrike
...KABOOM!...
s on eight "significant targets" in an area from which rockets were fired at Ashkelon on Tuesday.

Several more sites in the area, including tunnel shafts, were also struck, the IDF added.

In southern Gaza, the IDF said troops raided Hamas sites, captured weapons, and killed a five-man Hamas cell in a vehicle using a guided munition.

In Khan Younis fighter jets struck buildings where Hamas operatives were gathered and preparing to attack troops, the IDF said, while ground troops killed several gunman in festivities.

The military said it was continuing to operate in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood, where soldiers killed several Hamas button men and located weapons over the past day.

The Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry reported that 91 people were killed overnight during Israeli strikes. It said that since the start of the war, at least 29,954 people had been killed in Gaza. The figures cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include both civilians and Hamas members killed in Gaza, including as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires. The IDF says it has killed over 12,000 terror operatives in Gaza, in addition to some 1,000 turbans inside Israel on October 7.

War erupted when Hamas led a devastating cross-border attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Israel responded with a military campaign to topple the Hamas regime in Gaza and free the 253 hostages who were kidnapped by turbans during the October 7 attack.

The security cabinet was set to meet Thursday evening amid efforts to secure a deal that would see a temporary ceasefire and the return of the 130 hostages still held in Gaza — not all of them alive.

Families of hostages began a four-day march from the south of the country to Jerusalem as they lobby for the government to quickly reach a deal that will secure freedom for their loved ones.

A US-drafted proposal reportedly provides for a six-week pause in fighting during which some 40 hostages would be freed in exchange for some 400 Paleostinian security prisoners.

There have been conflicting reports on whether a deal is close at hand, and Israeli officials in recent days have said Hamas has signaled it is preparing to reject the terms of the latest proposal offered by mediators.

Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh
...became Prime Minister of Gaza after the legislative elections of 2006 which Hamas won. President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Haniyeh from office on 14 June 2007 at the height of the Fatah-Hamas festivities, but Haniyeh did not acknowledge the decree and continues as the PM of Gazoo while Abbas maintains a separate PM in the West Bank...
said Wednesday that while the terror group is showing flexibility in talks for a potential deal, it is prepared to continue to fight.

The terror leader additionally called on Paleostinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank to march to the flashpoint Temple Mount on the first day of Ramadan.

Meanwhile,
...back at the shouting match, Bart was wondering if fisticuffs would be appropriate at this point...
Hamas claimed to have fired 40 Grad rockets
...Soviet-developed 122-mm rockets, usually launched from trucks. Newer versions are reported to have a range of up to 30 km....
from Leb
...an Iranian satrapy currently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
at IDF bases near Kiryat Shmona in the north of the country.

The IDF identified only some 10 rockets crossing the border, one of which struck a building in Kiryat Shmona, causing damage but no injuries.

Earlier, another four rockets were fired at the city, which caused no damage.

There has been daily violence across the border with Lebanon since October 8 when Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah began launching attacks on Israel it says are a show of support for Paleostinians in Gaza. The level of violence has crept upwards with Hezbollah firing dozens of rockets at northern areas earlier in the week while the IDF has pounded the terror groups assets with airstrikes reaching further and further into Lebanon.

More from the Times of Israel:

IDF says troops killed dozens of Hamas operatives, hit area from which rockets were fired at Ashkelon; 2 IDF troops killed in northern Gaza, toll now 242.

The IDF says it killed dozens of Hamas
Hamas

...a regional Iranian catspaw,...
operatives across the Gazoo
Strip over the past day, releasing footage of a strike on a gunman who tried to flee after opening fire at troops.

The Hamas gunman who shot up troops was spotted by soldiers of the 414th Combat Intelligence Collection Unit, who called in an ~~Arclight~~ airstrike
...KABOOM!...
Overnight, the IDF says it carried out airstrikes on eight "significant targets" in an area from which rockets were fired at Ashkelon last night.

Several more sites in the area, including tunnel shafts, were also struck, the IDF adds.

In southern Gaza, the IDF says the 7th Armored Brigade raided Hamas sites, captured weapons, as well as killed a five-man Hamas cell in a vehicle using a guided munition.

Also in Khan Younis, the IDF says fighter jets struck buildings where Hamas operatives were gathered and preparing to attack troops; the Paratroopers Brigade killed several button men with sniper fire; and the Givati Brigade called in airstrikes on two operatives.

In central Gaza, the IDF says it is continuing to operate in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood, where the Nahal Brigade killed several Hamas button men and located weapons over the past day.

US said to consider airdropping aid into Gaza as land deliveries increasingly hard

[IsraelTimes] US President Joe The Big Guy Biden
Joe <q>The Big Guy</q> Biden

...46th president of the U.S. The very model of probity....
’s administration is considering airdropping aid into Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
as land deliveries becomes increasingly difficult, Axios reports, citing four US officials.

"The situation is really bad. We are unable to get enough aid [in] by truck so we need desperate measures like airdrops," a US official says.

The outlet notes that officials acknowledge such action would not be particularly effective, and that any large amounts of aid can only be moved in by land.

BLUF: Showy but ineffective, that’s the Biden admin way!

Link

Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Hamas planned Ashkelon jail raid to free Palestinian prisoners on October 7 – report

2024-02-22

[IsraelTimes] Terrorists headed to Shikma Prison with detailed plan but got lost on the way for ‘unknown reason,’ ended up in Sderot, according to London-based Arabic paper

A report Tuesday claimed Ashkelon’s Shikma Prison was one of the targets in Hamas
Hamas

...the well-beloved offspring of the Moslem Brotherhood,...
’s October 7 onslaught, but the holy warriors who set out to storm the prison and free its Paleostinian inmates got lost on the way.

London-based Asharq al-Awsat on Tuesday cited unnamed Paleostinian sources as saying that one of the first groups of Hamas holy warriors that crossed the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
border and went north on October 7 was headed for the facility housing hundreds of Paleostinians convicted of terror and other security offenses.

However,
Switzerland makes more than cheese...
the mission failed when the group deviated from its path for an "unknown technical reason," according to the report, which could not be verified.

The report included a map illustrating the cell’s route. After bursting through the Erez crossing, the group of nearly two dozen holy warriors traveled north to Yad Mordechai, but after getting in a firefight and killing several people, the cell seemingly lost its way. Turning west and then south, the group reached Netiv Ha’asara, on the border with Gaza, and eventually ended up in Sderot, where its members continued to massacre people and battle Israeli forces.

The 23 terrorists, part of Hamas’s elite Nukhba force, were among the thousands of attackers who streamed into southern Israel on October 7, by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and kidnapping 253 to Gaza, amid horrific acts of brutality and sexual assault.

It is believed that 130 hostages kidnapped by Hamas that day remain in Gaza, not all of them alive.

The IDF says it killed some 1,000 holy warriors inside Israel on October 7 as security forces responded to the devastating shock attack.

According to the report, the group had prepared a detailed plan to assault the prison, including "attacking the main gate using bombs" in such a way that they hoped would cause a riot in the prison and help in liberating the prisoners.

Shikma is located some 13 kilometers from Gaza, southeast of Ashkelon. It has separate wings for security inmates serving time for terror-related offenses and criminal convicts. There are also sections for female prisoners, minors and inmates requiring enhanced protection.

The newspaper claimed that after reaching Sderot, the group was ordered to hold their ground in the city as long as possible, with some members holing up in a cop shoppe, where battles continued into October 8.

Meanwhile,
...back at the dirigible, the gondola was dangling by a single thread of rope.

Jack! Cynthia cried. I just realized I'm afraid of heights! I don't even like high heels!...
a separate cell that had infiltrated Kibbutz Zikim was ordered to try to reach the prison, but was killed by Israeli forces, Asharq al-Awsat reported.

Hamas has insisted that Israel release thousands of Paleostinian prisoners, including hundreds serving life sentences, in exchange for freeing hostages.

In January, Asharq al-Awsat reported that the first 70 holy warriors to breach the border on October 7 were selected from among hundreds of elite commandos from all over Gaza, and underwent training for a number of years, along with continuous testing to gauge their skills.

Link

Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Special forces searching Khan Younis hospital detain over 100 terror suspects, IDF says

2024-02-18

[IsraelTimes] Military denies Hamas
...not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
claim troops targeted generators at Nasser hospital, says soldiers worked to repair malfunctioning machine, brought in replacement; rocket fire at Ashkelon

The Israel Defense Forces said Saturday that special forces soldiers have arrested more than 100 terror suspects at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis as they continued to carry out searches of the medical center.

The military said that forces from the Maglan and Egoz units have also killed several Hamas operatives on the outskirts of the hospital.

IDF troops entered the Nasser Hospital building on Thursday after surrounding the hospital for a week, saying they had information that hostages had been held there and that some bodies of dead hostages may still be at the site. At least one released hostage has said that she and over two dozen other captives had been held inside the hospital.

The soldiers have found mortars, grenades and other weaponry belonging to Hamas inside the medical facility, as well as medications with the names of hostages on them.

The IDF on Friday denied claims that troops targeted generators at the hospital. Hamas had claimed several patients had died due to a lack of oxygen after power was cut off and the generators stopped following an IDF raid.

"This morning, a report was received concerning the interruption of generator activity, resulting in the failure of electrical systems within the hospital. Contrary to the allegation, IDF troops did not target the generators. The troops were instructed to ensure the continuous functioning of the hospital," the IDF said.

"Despite the generator malfunction at the hospital, all vital systems continued to operate throughout the day based on the existing Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) system in the hospital," the IDF said.

The IDF said that upon receiving reports of the generator malfunction at the hospital, troops worked to repair it, while the Navy’s Shayetet 13 commando unit brought in a replacement generator.

"These actions were carried out in close coordination between the IDF and the hospital administration through officers of the Coordination and Liaison Administration for Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
(CLA)," the IDF said.

The IDF said it also brought food and water to Nasser Hospital, as well as coordinated with international aid organizations to supply fuel for the medical center.

Meanwhile,
...back at the barn, Bossy was furiously chewing her cud and thinking...
the IDF continued its campaign throughout different parts of the Gaza Strip with widespread ~~Arclight~~ airstrike
...KABOOM!...
s and battles between troops and button men.

As the fighting continued in Khan Younis, the IDF said Saturday that troops led by the 7th Armored Brigade raided several compounds, finding weapons including bombs, grenades and Kalashnikov rifles.

Troops in the area also called in several air strikes on Hamas forces including three turbans who were trying to launch rockets.

In addition, a paratrooper force killed a terror cell in close-quarters combat, the IDF said.

The IDF also said that there were also festivities in central Gaza where Nahal soldiers killed several operatives.

Meanwhile,
...back at the barn, Bossy was furiously chewing her cud and thinking...
rocket warning sirens sounded in the Ashkelon area on Saturday morning, with the IDF saying one rocket fired from northern Gaza was intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense system.

The IDF said within half an hour of the attack, the Hamas terrorist behind the attack was struck and killed.

The rocket had been fired from the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City. Within 30 minutes, the IDF said the Nahal Infantry Brigade and 215th Artillery Regiment identified the operative behind the attack, and called in an airstrike, killing him.

Link

Israel-Palestine-Jordan

3 6 more troops killed as IDF hits Hamas in central Gaza, battles al-Bureij battalion

2023-12-27

[IsraelTimes] Military corpse count in ground offensive reaches 161; army says focus shifting to central area of Strip; rocket hits synagogue in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
border community, but no injuries

The IDF announced Tuesday that three more soldiers had been killed in fighting in the Gaza Strip, bringing the toll of slain troops since the start of the ground offensive to 161 as battles intensified in the central Strip between troops and Hamas
Hamas

...a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",...
’s al-Bureij battalion.

The dear departed soldiers were named as:

Master Sgt. (res.) Maor Lavi, 33, of the Bislamach Brigade’s 450th Battalion, from Susya.

Cpt. Shay Shamriz, 26, a company commander in the Nahal Brigade’s 931st Battalion, from Merkaz Shapira.

Cpt. (res.) Shaul Greenglick, 26, of the Nahal Brigade’s 931st Battalion, from Ra’anana.

Lavi was killed in central Gaza in a battle that also seriously maimed another soldier of the 450th Battalion. Shamriz and Greenglick were killed in the northern part of the Strip. Another officer and two soldiers of the 931st Battalion were seriously maimed in the same battle.

Separately, a soldier of the Nahal Brigade’s reconnaissance unit was seriously hurt in northern Gaza.

Earlier Tuesday, the military announced the deaths of Staff Sgt. (res.) Elisha Yehonatan Lober and Sgt. First Class (res.) Joseph Yosef Gitarts.

The deaths came as the IDF was further expanding its operations in the central Gaza Strip.

"The IDF forces are fighting in the Gaza Strip in Khan Younis, and we have expanded the fighting to the area called the ’Central Camps,'" IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said on Tuesday evening.

"We are operating in Khan Younis with new methods and with a different composition of forces, and the same is true of the central camps," he added, referring to the area made up of several refugee camps in central Gaza.

"We will continue to adapt the operation, the method and the composition of the forces according to the operational needs," Hagari said.

Khan Younis is the largest city in southern Gaza, where many leaders of the Hamas terror group are thought to have fled. On Monday, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, assumed to be in Khan Younis, appeared defiant in his first message since the October 7 massacre, grossly inflating the terror group’s achievements in the war.

The IDF said Tuesday that the 36th Division was moving away from the Gaza City area and striking Hamas’s al-Bureij battalion, which consists of around 1,000 fighters and is just one of four Hamas battalions in the terror group’s central camps brigade.

"The battalions of the central camps are currently facing the might of the IDF. They will cease to function as other battalions have ceased to function," said the commander of the 36th Division, Brig. Gen. Dado Bar Kalifa.

The four Hamas battalions in the central camps brigade — al-Bureij, Deir al-Balah, Maghazi and Nuseirat — have all sustained some damage in Israeli strikes, but are believed to be largely functioning. The commander of the central camps brigade, Ayman Nofel, was killed in an Israeli strike last month.

During the first hours of ground operations in al-Bureij, the IDF said troops of the Bislamach Brigade located a tunnel shaft leading to a large underground Hamas tunnel network, as well as a training ground.

The IDF is currently focusing most of its efforts on the southern part of the Strip, while conducting clear-up operations of Hamas infrastructure in the north.

The 36th Division had fought in the Gaza City neighborhoods of Zeitoun, Shejaiya, Rimal and Shati.

"The fighting in Shejaiya was difficult and complex, and we managed to achieve significant achievements during it. Shejaiya will no longer be a terror center for Hamas," Bar Kalifa said.

The IDF has begun to demolish buildings in areas it has captured along the Gaza border, including Shejaiya, to establish a one-kilometer buffer zone, so that residents of Israeli border towns can return to live in their communities in safety.

However,
by candlelight every wench is handsome...
sporadic rocket fire continued Tuesday toward towns in the south, with projectiles fired at Ashkelon, Sderot and a number of Gaza border communities. There were no injuries, but a rocket struck a synagogue in a town in the Sdot Negev Regional Council. Video from the synagogue showed a significant hole in the roof and extensive damage inside.

With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other leaders vowing to continue fighting, despite growing international pressure to wind down the battle and calls at home for a deal to free hostages held in Gaza, the military appeared poised Tuesday for a newly intensified push into the central and southern parts of the Strip.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said that the military is expanding its operations in southern and central Gaza as it is close to dismantling all of Hamas’s battalions in the northern part of the Strip, but warned that the war will last "many more months."

Halevi said that the military was concentrating its efforts in the south of the Strip while continuing to "preserve and deepen the achievement" in northern Gaza.

He added that the IDF "will not allow a return to the security reality before October 7, and we will not allow such an event to be repeated."

Halevi warned that the war would not end in the near future.

"This war has necessary and not easy goals to achieve, it takes place in complex territory. That’s why the war will continue for many more months, and we will work with different methods, so that the achievement will be maintained for a long time," he said, adding that the IDF is constantly learning and adapting its fighting methods to each area of the Gaza Strip it operates in.

"There are no magic solutions, no shortcuts in the thorough dismantling of a terror organization, but stubborn and determined fighting. And we are very, very determined," Halevi said.

Halevi’s comments came hours after Defense Minister Yoav Gallant vowed Israel would punish Hamas over its brutal October 7 attack, "whether it takes months or years."

However,
by candlelight every wench is handsome...
Netanyahu is facing pressure from Washington to quickly transition toward a less intense form of fighting, with US President Joe The Big Guy Biden
...46th president of the U.S. You're a lyin' dog-faced pony soldier...
’s administration joining international calls for the humanitarian crisis in the Strip to ease, even as Washington has continued to back Israel’s refusal to entertain a ceasefire with Hamas still in charge of Gaza.

Israel launched its war against Hamas after the terror group led an unprecedented assault into southern Israel on October 7. Some 1,200 people in Israel, most of them civilians, were massacred. Another approximately 240 people were kidnapped. A previous truce deal allowed for the release of over 100 hostages, but talks for a new deal have foundered.

The expanding fighting has pushed the Gazook population into a shrinking area, particularly the city of Deir al-Balah in the center and Rafah in the far south of Gaza, on the Egyptian border. More than a million people have squeezed into UN shelters, and many more displaced people are crowded into houses.

Gaza’s civilians are suffering dire shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine, with only limited aid entering the Strip.

The Paleostinian telecommunications company Paltel said Tuesday that internet and telephone services were cut again across Gaza.

"We regret to announce a complete breakdown of fixed telecommunications and internet services in the Gaza Strip due to the ongoing offensive," the company said, announcing the fourth such breakdown since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7.

Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health authorities claim Israel’s bombing campaign and fighting on the ground have killed over 20,915 people in Gaza, though the figures cannot be verified. Hamas has been accused of inflating casualty figures in the past, and including those killed by misfired Paleostinian rockets.

Hamas does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. The IDF says it has killed some 8,000 Hamas operatives in Gaza and another 1,000 turbans during and immediately after the October 7 attacks.

3 more soldiers killed fighting in northern Gaza, raising ground operation toll to 164

[IsraelTimes] The IDF announces the deaths of three additional soldiers killed fighting in northern Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
, bringing the Israeli corpse count in the ongoing ground operation in the Strip to 164.

They are:

Lt. Yaron Eliezer Chitiz, 23, deputy company commander in the Givati Brigade’s Shaked Battalion, from Ra’anana.

Staff Sgt. Itay Buton, 20, a soldier in the Shaked battalion in the Givati Brigade, from Petah Tikva.

Staff Sgt. Efraim Jackman, 21, a soldier in the Shaked battalion in the Givati Brigade, from Neve Daniel.

Link

Israel-Palestine-Jordan

IDF solidifies hold in northern Gaza as Israel allows expanded aid into Strip

2023-12-19

[IsraelTimes] Two more soldiers killed in fighting, bringing ground op corpse count to 129; military says forces are in control of Beit Hanoun, notching up achievements in Shejaiya

IDF troops continued their intense battles against Hamas
Hamas

...one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,...
in the heart of Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
on Monday, as Israel allowed the expansion of the amount and types of humanitarian aid

entering the Strip.

The military said it had taken full control of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, arresting Hamas button men as its forces advanced in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City.

Two IDF soldiers were killed Monday fighting in Gaza, the military announced, bringing the toll of troops slain during its ground offensive against Hamas to 129.

The soldiers were named as Cpt. Yarin Gahali, 22, a platoon commander in the Givati Brigade’s reconnaissance unit, from Rehovot; and Cpt. (res.) Netanel Silberg, 33, a team commander in the Combat Engineering Corps’ Yahalom unit, from Na’ama.

Gahali was killed in southern Gaza, while Silberg was killed in the Strip’s north.

Earlier Monday, the IDF announced the deaths of five other soldiers.

The military said Monday that troops in its 252nd Reserve Division had completed operations against Hamas in the Beit Hanoun area of northern Gaza, and handed over responsibility of the region to the Gaza Division, indicating the military has firm control of that sector.

Soldiers eliminated "many terrorists" during the operation in the city, destroyed their weapons depots, rocket launchers, underground command centers, and "significant" tunnels," the IDF said, capturing all of the Beit Hanoun battalion’s main compounds and strongholds.

Soldiers also uncovered the Beit Hanoun battalion’s main tunnel in the area, which according to the IDF was located deep within civilian infrastructure, between the Beit Hanoun city hall, a mosque, a soccer court, and a daycare center.

Also Monday, the IDF announced that it had arrested a member of Hamas’s elite Nukhba forces and another terrorist who participated in the October 7 massacre in Israel, at a school in Gaza City’s Rimal neighborhood.

The pair, along with several other Hamas members, were captured during a raid on the school on Friday, during which troops of the 401st Armored Brigade killed "many" more operatives, according to the IDF. Those who were caught by the soldiers were questioned by the Military Intelligence Directorate’s Unit 504.

As intense fighting continued in both north and south Gaza, Israel has moved to boost humanitarian aid convoys into the Strip and also allow in commercial goods, the White House said Monday. Israel has downplayed such moves at home, where they are seen as largely unpopular, while seeming to acquiesce to pressure from the US and other countries to do so.

The IDF said Monday that it had killed some 600 Hamas operatives in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City in the past two weeks, as troops in its Golani Infantry Brigade engaged in "intense fighting" with the Hamas battalion based there.

The Golani troops have also located and destroyed more than 10 tunnel shafts in the neighborhood, the IDF said, and seized weapons and intelligence materials found in the homes of Hamas operatives and located and destroyed dozens of rocket launchers.

The commander of the Golani Brigade, Col. Yair Palai, said his forces "will do everything so that the residents of the [Israeli border communities] and the south can return to their homes, and so that Hamas does not rule Gaza anymore."

"This neighborhood was and still is an established stronghold of the Hamas terror organization, and this is a problem that needs to be uprooted," he added.

Also Monday, troops of Golani Brigade’s 13th Battalion captured Paleostine Square in Shejaiya, and destroyed a Hamas monument there commemorating a deadly attack on an armored personnel carrier during the 2014 Gaza War.

"We are here, the 13th Battalion, at the place where the terrorist organization Hamas erected a statue glorifying the disaster that happened to the battalion in [Operation] Protective Edge. We are sending a clear message to Hamas: Wherever such a statue is erected, we will come and destroy it," said the new commander of the 13th Battalion, Lt. Col. Yuval Mazuz, in remarks provided by the IDF.

Mazuz replaced Lt. Col. Tomer Grinberg, who was killed in action last week.

In the 2014 war, seven Golani soldiers were killed when their APC was hit in fighting in Shejaiya. The remains of one of the seven, Sgt. Oron Shaul, were captured by Hamas and are still in its possession.

After the deadly incident, Hamas erected a monument of a large fist punching through an APC, holding three dog-tags, one of which has the name of Shaul.

The IDF said Golani’s 13th Battalion and troops of the 188th Armored Brigade captured the square — from which Hamas also paraded released hostages several weeks ago — and destroyed the monument.

On the home front, Israel worked toward returning life to normal, as Hamas rocket fire from the Strip has decreased dramatically in recent weeks. On Monday, the IDF Home Front Command announced that the southern coastal city of Ashkelon — which was heavily battered by rockets in the first months of the war — and the surrounding Lachish area can resume in-person schooling, work, and other activities.

Despite growing international pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza, government and military officials have repeatedly stated that they intend to continue fighting until the operation’s goals are achieved, namely the elimination of Hamas and the return of all the hostages.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Monday in comments to Austin that Israel is committed to "achieve total victory against Hamas."

Link

Israel-Palestine-Jordan

At least five Palestinians killed by Zionist attacks on West Bank

2023-12-06

[HODHODYEMENNEWS.NET] At least five Paleostinian young men were killed by Israeli occupation forces during ~~violent~~ mostly peaceful raids across the occupied West Bank amid the regime’s genocidal war on the besieged Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
Strip.

According to the Paleostinian Information Center, citing the Paleostinian Health Ministry, the five men bit the dust in separate attacks by the regime’s forces on Monday.

The ministry said two Paleostinians were killed after Israeli forces stormed the town of Sa’ir, northeast of the West Bank city of al-Khalil, also known as Hebron, opening fire on the town’s residents who responded by throwing firecrackers and rocks at the regime’s troops.

The victims were identified as 23-year-old Anas Ismail al-Faroukh and 22-year-old Muhammad Saadi al-Faroukh.

Earlier on Monday, and in the West Bank’s northwestern city of Qalqilyah, Israeli troops raided Paleostinian civilians, killing two more young men in the ensuing confrontations.

The Paleostinian Health Ministry said the victims’ bodies were then seized by Israeli forces.

The fifth Paleostinian was killed during an attack by the regime’s forces on a refugee camp in the town of Qalandiya in central West Bank, while 18 others were maimed. He was identified as 23-year-old Ali Ibrahim Alqam, who was shot in the heart during the raid.

According to the Health Ministry, the new fatalities raise Paleostinians’ corpse count in the West Bank since the beginning of this year to 465, including 257 people who have bit the dust since October 7.

Link

Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Summary of Gaza war: IDF steps up Gaza airstrikes; 30 premature babies evacuated from Shifa Hospital

2023-11-19

Article datelined today at 3:22 p.m. local time.

[IsraelTimes] Israeli ground forces move deeper into Strip, raid Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
City homes of senior Hamas
...one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,...
officials; IDF ground operation corpse count at 61; body of 12-year-old Be’eri girl identified

The Israel Defense Forces said Sunday that it had stepped up overnight ~~Arclight~~ airstrike
...KABOOM!...
s and ground forces began to maneuver deeper into the northern Gaza Strip, as the military’s corpse count in the ground operation reached 61.

Fighter jets struck "many" Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip towns of Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya, and Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood, the military said.

Meanwhile,
...back at the pound, the little lost dog had finished eating the rat terrier...
the IDF said troops of the Nahal Brigade, with tanks and air support, battled Hamas operatives on the outskirts of Jabaliya as well as Zeitoun.

In one of the festivities, troops called in a dronezap on Hamas button men on a rooftop, and soldiers also recovered weapons in residential homes in the area.

At the same time, navy missile ships carried out strikes on Hamas sites along Gaza’s coast, the IDF said, adding that the navy aided ground troops with observation capabilities and firepower.

Additionally, the military said troops raided the homes of senior Hamas officials in Gaza City’s upscale Rimal neighborhood and battled operatives in the area.

Much of Rimal, once one of the Strip’s toniest neighborhoods, has been destroyed by Israeli airstrikes.

The military said troops have located some 35 tunnel shafts and dozens of weapons in the Rimal and the Sheikh Ijlin neighborhood, and killed several Hamas operatives.

The forces also raided a Hamas military camp in the Rimal area, locating a weapons depot and seven rocket launchers, the IDF said.

At Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical center, many patients, staff and displaced people evacuated, Hamas health officials in the Strip said, leaving behind only a skeleton crew to care for those too sick to move.

The military has been operating around the hospital over the past week, uncovering what it has said is evidence of Hamas’s use of the site for terrorist activities. The IDF has said it was working to evacuate as many patients as possible from the compound, which it says has been used by Hamas as a command center.

The World Health Organization sent a team to Shifa to evacuate at least 30 premature babies on Sunday ahead of their transfer to facilities in Egypt, the enclave’s Hamas-run Health Ministry said.

Scores of other critically maimed patients reportedly remained stranded at the medical center.

There was no immediate comment from the WHO, and it was not clear if all the babies had been extracted.

Israeli forces at the hospital uncovered an entrance to a Hamas tunnel and a cache of weapons, in addition to other findings over the past few days

"We see the presence of Hamas in all hospitals. It is a clear presence. They make cynical use of the hospitals, like here in the heart of Shifa," Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman, head of the IDF Southern Command, said on Friday.

On Saturday, the Israel Defense Forces said it had been asked by the hospital’s director to help those who would like to leave do so by a secure route. The IDF also said soldiers transferred over 6,000 liters of water and over 2,300 kilograms of food to Shifa.

On Sunday, the IDF announced the deaths of five soldiers killed during fighting in the Gaza Strip, bringing the corpse count in the ground offensive against Hamas to 61.

They were:

Cpt. (res.) Roey Biber, 28, a team commander in the Combat Engineering Corps’ Yahalom unit, from Tzur Moshe.

Sgt. Binyamin Meir Airley, 21, of the Paratroopers Brigade’s 101st Battalion, from Beit Shemesh.

Sgt. Maj. (res.) Rani Tahan, 40, an operations sergeant of the 261st Reserve Brigade’s 8717th Battalion, from Sde Nehemia.

Master Sgt. (res.) Yakir Biton, 34, of the 261st Reserve Brigade’s 8717th Battalion, from Jerusalem.

It also announced the death of Maj. (res.) Chen Yahalom, 35, an officer in the Artillery Corps’s 8159th Battalion, from Kfar Azar, who died on November 18 in a car accident during a break from duty.

Additionally, the remains of 12-year-old Liel Hatzroni, who was killed in the October 7 Hamas assault on her home in Kibbutz Be’eri, have been formally identified, Hebrew media reported Sunday, citing family members.

GAS DELIVERIES FOR GAZA APPROVED
On Saturday night, the security cabinet approved the daily transfer of a limited amount of fuel into the Gaza Strip for humanitarian purposes, rubberstamping the decision made by the top-level war cabinet, officials told the Times of Israel.

The decision was unpopular with a number of members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline security cabinet. Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, and Likud Transportation Minister Miri Regev voted against it, and Gideon Sa’ar from Benny Gantz’s National Unity party abstained.

Israel initially refused to allow any fuel into Gaza, saying it could be used by Hamas, but now says it has shifted its stance amid international pressure to avoid a humanitarian disaster with the breakdown of the sewage system.

Netanyahu said Saturday that allowing humanitarian aid

to Gaza is crucial to continue the war, and that without it there would be less international support for Israel’s military campaign.

"Even our best friends would be hard pressed to maintain their support for us in the long term and that would make it hard for us to complete the war," he said. "The IDF and the Shin Bet recommended that the cabinet accept the American request to allow two fuel tankers a day to enter the southern Gaza Strip."

At the same presser, Defense Minister Gallant said the IDF was continuing to hit Hamas hard in the Strip and will also operate "soon" in the south of Gaza.

As the military secures its control over Gaza City, it has begun warning residents of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis to evacuate, indicating that the ground operation will likely expand to those areas of the Strip in the days and weeks to come.

The military announced humanitarian pauses in the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday to enable Paleostinians to evacuate to the south.

The IDF’s Arabic-language Spokesman, Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee, said on X that the Salah a-Din road was opened for southbound movement until 4 p.m., urging residents of the Gaza City neighborhoods of Jabaliya, Shejaiya and Tuffah to take advantage of the corridor to reach the "humanitarian zone" in southern Gaza.

"Hamas has lost its control over the northern Gaza Strip area and is trying to prevent you from moving south and protect yourselves," he wrote, adding a phone number for anyone who needed assistance leaving.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claims that 12,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war on October 7, including at least 4,700 children and 3,000 women. The figures cannot be independently verified and do not distinguish between civilians and terrorists, and also do not differentiate between those killed by Israeli airstrikes and those killed by failed Paleostinian rocket launches.

The UN has warned that Gaza’s 2.3 million people are running critically short of food and water, and said the amount of fuel being provided is only half of the daily minimum requirement.

Israel has resisted calls for a ceasefire unless a significant number of the some 240 hostages kidnapped on October 7, including all women and kiddies, are released in exchange. There has also been concern that an extended pause in the fighting would allow Hamas and other terror groups to regroup and prepare for the next stage of fighting, impeding the IDF’s ability to operate.

Meanwhile,
...back at the pound, the little lost dog had finished eating the rat terrier...
rocket fire continued on southern Israel on Sunday, including toward the coastal city Ashkelon. There were no reports of injuries or damage.

The military has kept up its efforts to counter the rocket fire, which has diminished considerably in recent weeks. Hamas is believed to be stockpiling rockets for a long war but also has growing difficulty in carrying out attacks amid the IDF’s ground operation.

Israel’s ground operation in Gaza followed three weeks of intense aerial campaigns across the Strip in response to Hamas’s shock October 7 invasion of southern Israeli communities under cover of thousands of rockets, when thousands of forces of Evil killed about 1,200 people, a majority of them civilians of all ages in their homes and people at an outdoor music festival near Kibbutz Re’im.

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Israel-Palestine-Jordan

AP, CNN, NY Times, and Reuters had journalists embedded with Hamas terrorists on October 7th massacre

2023-11-09

Photos with bylines at article link. Article link is an archive site as prime site is under massive DOS and hacking attack.

🚨 Breaking: AP, CNN, NY Times, and Reuters had journalists embedded with Hamas terrorists on October 7th massacre pic.twitter.com/B1B1N2EzXg
— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) November 8, 2023

[HonestReporting] On October 7, Hamas terrorists were not the only ones who documented the war crimes they had committed during their deadly rampage across southern Israel. Some of their atrocities were captured by Gaza-based photojournalists working for the Associated Press and Reuters news agencies whose early morning presence at the breached border area raises serious ethical questions.

What were they doing there so early on what would ordinarily have been a quiet Saturday morning? Was it coordinated with Hamas? Did the respectable wire services, which published their photos, approve of their presence inside enemy territory, together with the terrorist infiltrators? Did the photojournalists who freelance for other media, like CNN and The New York Times, notify these outlets? Judging from the pictures of lynching, kidnapping and storming of an Israeli kibbutz, it seems like the border has been breached not only physically, but also journalistically.

AP: PHOTOJOURNALISTS OR INFILTRATORS?
Four names appear on AP’s photo credits from the Israel-Gaza border area on October 7: Hassan Eslaiah, Yousef Masoud, Ali Mahmud, and Hatem Ali.

Eslaiah, a freelancer who also works for CNN, crossed into Israel, took photos of a burning Israeli tank, and then captured infiltrators entering Kibbutz Kfar Azza.

HonestReporting has obtained screenshots of Eslaiah’s now-removed tweets on X in which he documented himself standing in front of the Israeli tank. He did not wear a press vest or a helmet, and the Arabic caption of his tweet read: “Live from inside the Gaza Strip settlements.”

Masoud, who also works for The New York Times, was there as well — just in time to set foot in Israeli territory and take more tank pictures.

Ali Mahmud and Hatem Ali were positioned to get pictures of the horrific abductions of Israelis into Gaza.

Mahmud captured the pickup truck carrying the body of German-Israeli Shani Louk and Ali got several shots of abductees being kidnapped into the Strip.

Interestingly, the names of the photographers, which appear on other sources, have been removed from some of the photos on AP’s database. Perhaps someone at the agency realized it posed serious questions regarding their journalistic ethics.

REUTERS: LYNCHING AS “IMAGE OF THE DAY”
Reuters has published pictures from two photojournalists who also happened to be at the border just in time for Hamas’ infiltration: Mohammed Fayq Abu Mostafa and Yasser Qudih.

They both took pictures of a burning Israeli tank on the Israeli side of the border, but Abu Mustafa went further: He took photos of a lynch mob brutalizing the body of an Israeli soldier who was dragged out of the tank.

Reuters was kind enough to add a graphic warning to the photo caption, but it didn’t prevent editors from shamelessly labeling it as one of the “Images of the Day” on their editorial database.

Let’s be clear: News agencies may claim that these people were just doing their job. Documenting war crimes, unfortunately, may be part of it. But it’s not that simple.

It is now obvious that Hamas had planned its October 7 attack on Israel for a very long time: its scale, its brutal aims and its massive documentation have been prepared for months, if not years. Everything was taken into account — the deployments, the timing, as well as the use of bodycams and mobile phone videos for sharing the atrocities.

Is it conceivable to assume that “journalists” just happened to appear early in the morning at the border without prior coordination with the terrorists? Or were they part of the plan?

Even if they didn’t know the exact details of what was going to happen, once it unfolded did they not realize they were breaching a border? And if so, did they notify the news agencies? Some sort of communication was undoubtedly necessary — before, after or during the attack — in order to get the photos published.

Either way, when international news agencies decide to pay for material that has been captured under such problematic circumstances, their standards may be questioned and their audience deserves to know about it. And if their people on the ground actively or passively collaborated with Hamas to get the shots, they should be called out to redefine the border between journalism and barbarism.

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