Lonny's War Update- October 213, 2023- May 6, 2024 (cont)

 

Day 213 (cont) of 132  of our hostages in Hamas captivity- **There is nothing more important than getting them home! NOTHING!**

“I’ve never met them,

But I miss them. 

I’ve never met them,

but I think of them every second. 

I’ve never met them,

but they are my family. 

BRING THEM HOME NOW!!!”

There is no victory until all of the hostages are home!

‎אין נצחון עד שכל החטופים בבית

Red Alerts - Missile, Rocket, Drone (UAV - unmanned aerial vehicles), and Terror Attacks

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* Interview with my brother on UK Times Radio - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1IRtauW9cY 

* Interview with my brother on the Jewish Report - https://www.sajr.co.za/the-hostage-negotiator-gershon-baskin/

Hostage Updates 

• A Hamas spokesman says the Palestinian terror group will continue negotiations toward a potential truce and hostage deal, despite Israel’s call for civilians to begin evacuating from parts of Rafah in south Gaza. “We will continue the negotiations positively and with an open heart,” Hamas spokesman Abdul Latif al-Qanou tells AFP. He reiterates that an agreement needs to provide “for a permanent ceasefire and the fulfillment of the demands of our people.” Israel has publicly rejected a permanent ceasefire and has said it has been left with “no choice” other than to launch an operation in Rafah after the apparent collapse of the talks and a deadly Hamas rocket attack launched from the Gazan city.  https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/hamas-spokesman-says-terror-group-to-continue-truce-hostage-deal-talks-despite-rafah-evacuation/

• Hamas announced that they agree to their proposal. We don't know what exactly that means and Israel is waiting to receive the official answer. The announcement does not specify what those terms are. The proposal is not a deal, but only an outline for the deal, so no matter what, a lot more negotiations will be necessary if Israel accepts the proposal as well. This is occurring 3 hours after a business like phone call between Biden and Netanyahu. Biden is pushing the deal and also demanding that Kerem Shalom Crossing remain open for the humanitarian aid despite the mortar attack yesterday which killed 4 IDF soldiers. That attacked was followed by IDF bombing on areas of Rafah near the Egyptian crossing from where the mortar launches occurred. Add to all of the above, the beginning of the movement of Gazans to the humanitarian zone north east of Rafah to enable the land operation in Rafah. Currently, as a result of  Hamas' announcement, there are celebrations going on in Rafah. Yesterday, they were furious with Hamas about the mortar attack on Kerem Shalom saying it was giving Israel the excuse for the land operation in Rafah. Now they see that there is a possible that it will be delayed/cancelled if the negotiations bear fruit.
• The Israeli negotiators just received the Hamas proposal and are learning it now. The pressure of the last days has been on Hamas. With their acceptance, they are trying to move the pressure onto Israel. Immediately after the Hamas announcement and before Israel received the official answer, this was the response "Senior Israeli officials: Hamas agreed to a far-reaching proposal that is unacceptable to us". This reaction, unfortunately is expected but still very upsetting. Netanyahu does not want this deal and will continue to look for and find ways to torpedo any deals that doesn't suit his political interests, which he believes a Rafah operation will do.

• The families of hostages went out to protest at the conclusion of Holocaust Remembrance Day under the message "Never Again." The protesters burned a giant hourglass in protest of the government "burning the time of the captives held by Hamas and sabotaging the deals. "The protesting families said that "The Israeli government has allowed Hamas to carry out a holocaust against our families. 213 days that the captives have been rotting in Hamas captivity and the government headed by Netanyahu continues to sabotage deals."  They added that "Instead of ending the war in order to bring all the captives home, the government is threatening a military operation in Rafah that will endanger their lives. Gantz, Eisenkot, as long as you continue to remain silent in the face of Netanyahu's sabotage, you are complicit in his crime - you have no mandate to abandon the captives." Earlier, families of 30 captives along with female captives who returned from captivity sent a letter to Security Cabinet ministers Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, in which they demanded that they "go public and tell the truth about the negotiations." They added: "We are watching in horror what is happening. Netanyahu is deliberately sabotaging the deal and abandoning the captives to their deaths. Entering Rafah now is a death sentence for the captives, and Netanyahu's statement that he is not the one sabotaging the deal is a misrepresentation and an attempt to mislead the public - and you know this."   https://www.mako.co.il/news-israel/2024_q2/Article-b4da29659ee4f81027.htm?sCh=31750a2610f26110&pId=173113802 

• The Families of the Abducted Addressed Hamas' Statement, Which Accepted the Egyptian Proposal for a Deal, and Said: "We Welcome Hamas' Statement to Advance the Ceasefire, Which Advances the Return of the 132 Captives and Abductees Who Have Been Held Captive by Hamas for Seven Months Already." According to the Office, "Now Is the Time for the Israeli Government to Prove Its Commitment to Its Citizens Through Actions - The Cabinet Should Take Hamas' Consent and Turn It Into a Deal for the Return of Everyone. Returning the Abducted Is the Key to Israeli Security."  https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/r1BATqUGR?utm_source=ynet.app.ios&utm_term=r1BATqUGR&utm_campaign=general_share&utm_medium=social&utm_content=Header
  
  
  
  
• A tough meeting was held today (Monday) between Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and families of soldiers being held captive by Hamas. The families asked if Israel would stop the war, and the Defense Minister evaded answering. Eventually, he said that in any case, even if Israel agreed to it, Hamas would create additional difficulties. Gallant added that throughout the past week, there were attempts by Hamas to mock Israel. Family members of the soldiers asked why not to stop the fighting and act when Hamas makes a mistake and attacks. Gallant responded to them: "That cannot happen, the guarantees he is asking from the mediators are significant, and not ones that would allow Israel to easily return to fighting - even if Hamas attacks. Israel is a state. They are a terrorist organization. We cannot behave like them and violate agreements." At the end of the meeting, the families lashed out at the minister: "If you back Hamas into a corner in Rafah and they murder our children, know that the blood will be on your hands."  https://www.kan.org.il/content/kan-news/defense/746021/
  
  
• Khalil al-Hayya, a deputy to Hamas’s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, tells Al Jazeera, “On the first day of the first phase of the agreement, there is a clear commitment to temporarily stop military operations.”  He says the second phase provides for the announcement of “a permanent cessation of military and hostile operations.”  He further says that Egypt is a guarantor of the deal and will not allow the war to return. He also says the mediators informed Hamas that President Biden is committed to ensuring the implementation of the agreement.  According to a Haaretz report, Hamas sources claim to have received assurances from the US and Qatar, as well as Egypt, that Israel will not resume the war after the three-stage deal is implemented.  https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/sinwars-deputy-quoted-saying-egypt-a-guarantor-war-wont-resume-after-truce-deal/

Yom Hashoa

• Just over half of Jewish Israelis believe that there is a basis for comparison between the Holocaust and the events of October 7, according to a new poll by the Israel Democracy Institute. Fifty-four percent of 600 Jewish respondents polled on May 1-5 stated that there was some basis for the comparison, while 39% said it such a comparison was out of place and 8% were unsure.  Fifty-six percent of those polled who were politically on the right, 54% on the left and 46% in the political center agreed that there was a basis for comparison.  “Ahead of this year’s Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), the debate that began more than six months ago has intensified, regarding the relevance of the comparisons between the events of October 7 and the events of the Holocaust,” says Prof. Tamar Hermann, the director of the IDI’s Viterbi Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research.  “The fact that among the Jewish respondents, a majority (albeit a small one) feel that there is a basis for such a comparison, suggests that despite the obvious difference between the circumstances in both periods, and despite Israel being a sovereign and militarily strong country, the sense of existential threat is a very strong link between then and now, especially against the backdrop of anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli hatred around the world today,” Hermann says.  https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/poll-54-of-jewish-israelis-believe-there-can-be-comparison-between-holocaust-oct-7/
  
  
• AUSCHWITZ — At the age of 86, Bella Haim walks briskly between the red-brick barracks of the Auschwitz-1 camp in Poland. It’s her first visit to a Holocaust commemoration site anywhere in Europe, which she left for Israel as a child survivor of the genocide. “I never felt any need to come to a place like this, but then October 7 happened,” Haim tells The Times of Israel ahead of the annual March of the Living commemoration event at the former Nazi camp on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. Thousands of Jews march here to commemorate the genocide. Her thoughts, she says, are with her grandson, Yotam, a hostage who was killed accidentally by Israeli troops in Gaza along with two other Israelis who escaped captivity there after being abducted by terrorists on October 7.  Yotam, who was taken from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, spoke with her as terrorists were raiding the kibbutz, where they killed dozens of members, she recalls: “He told me he can smell smoke and it transported me back to thinking about the Holocaust. The smell of Jewish homes burning.”  Haim, who was born in Poland in 1938 and settled in Kibbutz Gvulot in Israel’s south, near the Gaza Strip, in 1951, says she is at Auschwitz to make a statement,. “I’m here to show we are alive, we have risen from the Holocaust and we will rise again from October 7,” she says. Haim is among several Holocaust survivors who are participating in the march and whose lives were directly impacted by the October 7 onslaught, along with Berlin-born Judith Tzamir from Kibbutz Mefalsim near Gaza and Danit Gabbai, who was born in Marrakech, Morocco, and whose son and daughter and their children survived the onslaughts in Re’im and Zikim, respectively.  https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/at-auschwitz-march-survivor-bella-haim-commemorates-hostage-grandson-killed-in-gaza/
  
  

  

  Yotam Haim - Hostage accidentally killed by IDF Troops
  Bella Haim - Holocaust Survivor and Grandmother of Yotam

  
  
  
  

Gaza Fighting 

• Hamas' latest statement - a little visit to the land of hypocrisy: Hamas says in a statement that Israel is preparing for a large-scale military offensive in Rafah “without regard for the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in the Strip or the fate of the enemy’s prisoners in Gaza,” referring to Israeli hostages.  https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/hamas-warns-rafah-offensive-disregards-fate-of-hostages/

• The Palestinian Authority says it is holding intensive calls with regional and international parties, especially the United States, to prevent a “massacre” in the event of an Israeli offensive in Rafah, the Palestinian official news agency WAFA reports. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/palestinian-authority-says-its-holding-intensive-calls-to-prevent-rafah-massacre/

• Egypt warns Israel against launching a military operation in Rafah, saying it carries “grave humanitarian risks.” Egypt calls on Israel to exercise the utmost levels of self-restraint, the foreign ministry says in a statement. It urged Jerusalem to “avoid further escalation at this extremely sensitive time in the process of ceasefire negotiations.”The statement says Egypt continues to communicate with all parties to “prevent the situation from getting worse or getting out of control.”  https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/egypt-says-possible-israel-operation-in-rafah-carries-grave-humanitarian-risks/

• Egypt raised its military’s level of preparedness in northern Sinai, which borders the Gaza Strip, after Israel called for the evacuation of the civilian population in parts of Rafah ahead of a planned operation, say Egyptian security sources.The Wall Street Journal reported in February that Egyptian officials warned the decades-long peace treaty between Egypt and Israel could be suspended if Israel Defense Forces’ troops enter Rafah, or if any of Rafah’s refugees are forced southward into the Sinai Peninsula. 

• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden will speak by phone soon, an Israeli official tells The Times of Israel. CIA chief William Burns is in Jerusalem to meet with Netanyahu and the war leadership as Israel gears up for an operation in Rafah, something the Biden administration has advocated against for months.  https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-and-biden-to-speak-as-israel-prepares-for-rafah-offensive/

• EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell condemns Israel’s call for Palestinians living in parts of eastern Rafah to flee the Gazan city ahead of an expected ground assault. “Israel’s evacuation orders to civilians in Rafah portend the worst: more war and famine. It is unacceptable. Israel must renounce to a ground offensive,” Borrell says in a social media post. “The EU, with the international community, can and must act to prevent such scenario,” he says. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/unacceptable-eus-borrell-condemns-israels-call-for-civilians-to-evacuate-from-rafah/

• France says it is “strongly opposed” to Israel’s Rafah offensive, ahead of an expected ground assault in the southern city of the Gaza Strip.“France reiterates that it is strongly opposed to an Israeli offensive on Rafah, where more than 1.3 million people are taking refuge in a situation of great distress,” the foreign ministry says in a statement. “The forced displacement of a civilian population constitutes a war crime.”

• The United Nations agency serving Palestinian refugees says it will not heed the Israeli military’s call to evacuate parts of the southern Gaza city of Rafah ahead of a planned offensive. Juliette Touma, communications director for UNRWA, says the agency has not evacuated the area and has no plans to do so. She says it has thousands of employees in the city. “UNRWA will not take part in any forced evacuation of the population in Rafah or elsewhere in Gaza,” she says. “We are committed to staying and delivering humanitarian assistance.” Touma also calls for a ceasefire.

Northern Israel - Lebanon/Hizbollah

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  Fighter jets have attacked in recent hours a military facility of the Hezbollah terrorist organization in the Sarba area and a launch site of the organization in Aita al-Shaab in southern Lebanon. Earlier today, IDF forces carried out artillery fire to remove a threat in the area of Al-Tawanah in southern Lebanon.  https://hamal.co.il/main/%D7%9E%D7%98%D7%95%D7%A1%D7%99-%D7%A7%D7%A8%D7%91-%D7%AA%D7%A7%D7%A4%D7%95-%D7%9E%D7%98%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%A9%D7%9C-%D7%90%D7%A8%D7%92%D7%95%D7%9F-%D7%94%D7%98%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%A8-%D7%97%D7%99%D7%96%D7%91%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%9C%D7%94-%D7%91%D7%93%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%9D-%D7%9C%D7%91%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%9F-104703

West Bank

• A Palestinian gunman was killed and an explosives lab was destroyed during an ongoing IDF and Border Police raid in the West Bank city of Tulkarem that began this morning, the military says. The IDF says combat engineers uncovered explosive devices planted under roads in Tulkarem, and other troops located another explosives lab and seized an assault rifle amid the operation.Elsewhere in the West Bank, 13 wanted Palestinians were detained overnight, the military says.  Since October 7, the IDF says troops have arrested some 4,000 wanted Palestinians across the West Bank, including more than 1,700 affiliated with Hamas.  https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/palestinian-gunman-killed-explosives-lab-destroyed-in-idf-west-bank-raid/

Politics

• “Target Israel, and we will target you,” a dozen Republican senators warn, in a letter to International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan, amid reports that the ICC is considering issuing arrest warrants against top Israeli officials.

  “Such actions are illegitimate and lack legal basis, and if carried out will result in severe sanctions against you and your institution,” the letter led by Sen. Tom Cotton reads. Also signing on are Sens. Mitch McConnell (minority leader), Rick Scott, Tim Scott, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio.

  “The ICC is attempting to punish Israel for taking legitimate actions of self-defense against their Iranian-backed aggressors. In fact, in your own words, you witnessed ‘scenes of calculated cruelty’ conducted by Hamas in Israel following the October 7 attacks. These arrest warrants would align the ICC with the largest state sponsor of terrorism and its proxy. To be clear, there is no moral equivalence between Hamas’s terrorism and Israel’s justified response,” the senators write.

  “The ICC is also prohibited by its charter from proceeding in any case unless the relevant government is unwilling or unable to police themselves. You yourself have said that ‘Israel has trained lawyers who advise commanders and a robust system intended to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law.’ By issuing warrants, you would be calling into question the legitimacy of Israel’s laws, legal system, and democratic form of government.

  “If you move forward with the measures indicated in the report, we will move to end all American support for the ICC, sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States,” the letter states. “You have been warned.”   https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/republican-senators-warn-icc-target-israel-and-we-will-target-you/