Lonny's War Update- October 223, 2023 - May 16, 2024 (cont)

   

Day 223 (cont) that 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 and Death Announcements

*3:30pm- north- hostile aircraft intrusion- Golan Heights and Western Galilee 

*4:25pm-north- hostile aircraft intrusion- Golan Heights and Western Galilee 

*5:00om- north- rockets-Kiryat Shemona, Tel Hai, kibbutzim Kfar Giladi, Margaliot, Misgav Am

*5:30pm- north- rockets-Batzet, Leeman, Rosh Hanikra

*6:15pm- north- hostile aircraft intrusion- Golan Heights and Western Galilee 

*6:50pm-north- hostile aircraft intrusion- Golan Heights and Western Galilee 

*10:15pm-north- hostile aircraft intrusion Golan Heights

*10:30pm-north- hostile aircraft intrusion western Galilee

*10:50pm-north- rockets kibbutz Margaliot 

3 soldiers were wounded today, 1 seriously from explosive UAVs today from Lebanon- over the last 2 weeks, the quantity and quality of attacks and the UAVs and rockets launched in each attack are growing and are about double the amount they were 3 weeks ago

*7:45pm- south - rockets Kerem Shalom

*9:00pm- south - rockets kibbutz Mefalsim and Nir Am

*The army announced the death of Staff Sergeant Ran Yabetz, 39 from Modiin. Ran was killed as a result of an explosion of munitions at The Black Arrow Memorial Site which borders Gaza. The incident is being investigated. His wife is in her last month of pregnancy.  May his memory be a blessing.

Soldier killed in friendly fire saved woman’s life with bone marrow donation at beginning of war
Daniel Hemo, who was one of the five IDF soldiers killed in a friendly fire incident in northern Gaza yesterday, donated his bone marrow to save a woman’s life toward the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, the Ezer Mizion Jewish bone marrow registry reveals.

Hemo was found to be a match for a woman in her 60s, days before the war’s outbreak. On October 7, he was supposed to be discharged from the army in order to begin the process of the donation, but it was put off due to the Hamas onslaught. On that day, his 202 Paratrooper’s Battalion fought off Hamas terrorists in Israeli border towns in the south. Later that month — while he was fighting in Gaza — the condition of his intended recipient worsened and his commander agreed to discharge him so that he could go through with the donation and save the woman’s life. The donation went forward successfully on October 26. Hemo eventually returned to fighting in Gaza where he was killed yesterday.

May his memory be blessed

Hostage Updates 

• The upcoming Saturday night rally for the hostages will have an international tone, announces the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

  The group is calling on the global community to join the effort for the release of 132 captives in Gaza, noting that Hamas is holding hostages from 24 different countries.

  Speakers will include US ambassador Jack Lew, UK ambassador Simon Walters, German ambassador Steffen Seibert and Austrian ambassador Nikolaus Lutterotti, as well as video messages from former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and talk show host Dr. Phil, who was just in Israel, interviewing hostage families and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

  Hostage family members holding foreign citizenship will also speak, including US citizen Jonathan Dekel-Chen, whose son Sagui Dekel-Chen is a hostage; Argentinian-Israeli Itzik Horn, whose sons Eitan and Yair Horn are held captive; Ayala Yahalomi, sister of French-Israeli hostage Ohad Yahalomi and Russian-Israeli Evgeny Kozlov, whose son Andrey Kozlov is a hostage.

  Musical performers on Saturday night will include Lola Marsh, Eurovision 2018 winner Netta Barzilai, singer-songwriter Noga Erez, American singer Montana Tucker and Israel’s Eurovision 2024 performer Eden Golan who will sing “October Rain,” the original version of the official Eurovision entry “Hurricane,” which had several verses removed by organizers because they referred to the October 7 attacks by Hamas.  link 

  
  
  
  
  
• Israel notifies families of 2 Thai nationals that their loved ones were killed on Oct 7., bodies being held by Hamas:: IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari in a press conference says the military and Foreign Ministry have notified the families of Thai national hostages Sonthaya Oakkharasr and Sudthisak Rinthalak, that they were killed during the October 7 onslaught and their bodies are held by Hamas in Gaza.

  The two had worked in agriculture in the border community of Be’eri.

  “On October 7, Hamas terrorists brutally murdered 39 Thai nationals, and kidnapped 31 Thai nationals to Gaza. Like them, other foreign nationals were abducted, including from Tanzania, Nepal, Mexico, the US, and France,” Hagari says.  The terrible cruelty of Hamas was used against anyone that stood in its way, without distinction of their origin,” he says.  

  
  

Gaza Fighting 

• My brother's column in The Times of Israel: There is a day after plan: Link After Gallant’s remarks that Israel should not create a military government to police Gaza or a civil administration to govern Gaza after the war and that Israel must not remain in Gaza, the following are steps that must be taken now. I wrote them seven months ago – but hopefully it is still not to late. I write them as bullet points because I have written about them extensively over the last months. They are not necessarily in order – many of them need to be taken in parallel:
  • The Palestinian opposition to Abbas in Fatah must negotiate with Abbas on the establishment of a temporary government for Gaza headed by an acceptable person who is legitimate, not corrupt, believes in democracy, believes in the two-state solution, is willing to disarm Hamas, and control a legitimate Palestinian security force in Gaza. (It would be wise to consider that the new government be termed “The Provisional Government of the State of Palestine” and that this government be considered the sovereign in Gaza as the first step towards realizing full Palestinian statehood.
  • The leaders of the Palestinian opposition to Abbas in Fatah must conclude their dialogue with the leaders of Hamas on taking the keys from Hamas over Gaza. The negotiations between them includes the possible integration of Hamas leaders into the new system, without being participants in the new government. The talks must also include the disarming of Hamas and the integration of willing Hamas soldiers into the Palestinian security force. There cannot be any armed opposition in Gaza and the only armed personnel are those under the authority of the new government. They need to also decide the fate of the Hamas leadership in Gaza.
  • The leaders of the Palestinian opposition to Abbas in Fatah must conclude with Hamas the possible deal for the release of all of the Israeli hostages for terms that Hamas will be willing to accept.
  • The leaders of the Palestinian opposition to Abbas in Fatah must conclude their discussions which are ongoing with the leaders of those Arab countries that will be willing to send peacekeeping forces to Gaza following Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. These include Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and maybe some others.
  • The leaders of the Palestinian opposition to Abbas in Fatah must enter to talks with Israeli leaders, probably those not in the government, but with others who have influence in Israeli society to understand the Palestinian plan and to support it. These talks should always conclude with a joint statement in support of a peaceful two states solution based on the 1967 borders with agreed upon territorial swaps.
  • Israel must be willing to declare its readiness to end the war and to withdrawal from Gaza. The negotiations for the Israeli hostages should be for all 132 hostages, alive and dead, in one single release, in exchange for ending the war and withdrawing from Gaza in one week, after the new Palestinian government has taken over. The release of Palestinian prisoners negotiated in the deal should be in one phase at one time and all prisoners must be released to their homes.
  • A donors’ conference for Gaza must be convened where real commitments will be undertaken for the reconstruction of Gaza. There will be no more refugee camps in the rebuilt Gaza. The oversight for the reconstruction plans and the distribution of money will be in the hands of the new Palestinian government with international oversight.
  • The Egyptians with the assistance of the US will undertake the permanent sealing of the Gaza-Sinai border along the 13 kilometers Philidephi corridor. International observers from the United States will be stationed at the Rafah Crossing and scanners will be in place to ensure that no smuggling of weapons and ammunitions occurs there.
  • The economic blockade on Gaza will come to an end.
  • After a period of stabilization, Palestinians will conduct elections for president and parliament.
  • The Palestinian and Israeli leaderships should enter into new negotiations within a regional framework for the establishment and recognition of the two-state solution.
  • Within the framework of the regional negotiations, agreements will be reached on a regional defense alliance against the extreme forces in the region that do not want to see peace between Arab and Muslim countries and Israel.
  • The Arab peace initiative will be fulfilled and all Arab and Muslim states should be ready to enter into full diplomatic relations with the State of Israel.
• Israeli troops operating in southern Gaza’s Rafah located several primed rocket launchers with long-range projectiles, the military says.
  According to the IDF, some of the launchers were used in attacks on Israeli cities in recent months.
  Troops of the 414th Combat Intelligence Collection Unit, using drones, located the primed launchers and demolished them, the military says.
  In a different area of Rafah, the IDF says troops located another rocket launching site with dozens of launchers, before it was also demolished.
  The site had also been used in recent attacks on Israeli cities, including last week’s barrage on Beersheba, according to the military.  link

• Israel continues to evade efforts to reach a ceasefire in its war with Hamas in Gaza, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, whose country has mediated in the conflict, tells Arab leaders at a summit in Manama.

  Sissi adds that Israel is pursuing its military operations in Rafah, the southern border city between Egypt and Gaza, and using the city’s border crossing from its Palestinian side “to tighten the siege of the enclave.”

  Israel and Egypt have traded blame for the responsibility of the crossing’s closure, which has been a vital route for aid to the coastal territory, where a humanitarian crisis has deepened and some people are at risk of famine.

  Israel said on Tuesday that it was up to Egypt to reopen the Rafah Crossing and allow humanitarian relief into the Gaza Strip, prompting Cairo to denounce what it described as “desperate attempts” to shift blame for the blockage of aid.

  “We found Israel continuing to escape its responsibilities and evade efforts exerted to reach a ceasefire,” Sissi says.

  “Those who think that [only] security and military solutions are able to secure interests or achieve security [are] delusional,” Sissi adds.

• The IDF reported that forces from the 162nd Armored Division continue fighting in the area east of Rafah, and combat soldiers from the Commando Brigade raided an additional area in that region overnight. The forces entered the operation after the area was besieged and dozens of Hamas military targets were struck by the air force.
  In northern Gaza, forces from the 98th Armored Division continue fighting in the heart of Jabaliya refugee camp. So far, the forces, in cooperation with the air force, have eliminated over 150 militants, struck several rocket launchers and located dozens of rockets, some long-range. Paratroopers have raided many terror infrastructures in the camp, eliminating and arresting dozens of militants.
  The 99th Armored Division completed its activity in the Zaitoun neighborhood area yesterday. Combat soldiers from the 2nd Brigade eliminated several militants and located and destroyed an operational shaft in the area over the past day. In parallel, combat soldiers from the 2nd and 679th Brigades continue fighting in central Gaza.

Northern Israel - Lebanon/Hizbollah

• The military says it carried out strikes against some 10 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon a short while ago, including buildings where operatives were gathered.

  The IDF also confirms that earlier today it carried out a drone strike on a vehicle with two Hezbollah operatives, near the southern Lebanon towns of Qana and Seddiqine.

  According to the IDF, the pair were “en route to carrying out an immediate terror attack” against Israel.

  Fighter jets, meanwhile, struck several Hezbollah sites, including a building and an observation post in Mays al-Jabal, another building in Kafr Qila, and two more buildings in Naqoura and Houla, where operatives were gathered, the IDF says.  video of attack on Hizbollah terrorists

West Bank

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Politics and the Region

• Invoking the Shoah masks how Israel didn’t protect my son, hostage in Gaza 

  

  Jonathan Dekel-Chen, left, holds a picture of his son Sagui Dekel-Chen, as he stands next to Ruby Chen, father of Itay Chen, following a White House meeting of families of hostages held in Gaza on December 13, 2023, in Washington, DC. (AP/ Evan Vucci)

  Israeli society – barring its extreme political fringes – is still in shock from the massive military failure of October 7 and the even greater governmental failure since then. Most Israelis are also horrified by the loss of civilian life and the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. They want nothing more than for our hostages to return home, for the end of Hamas’s rule in Gaza, and for the killing to stop.

  During this time of national crisis, I have been profoundly troubled by the narratives promoted by senior Israeli government officials since that “Black Saturday,” in which these leaders have tried to obscure their accountability for the catastrophe of October 7th and their ineffectiveness since then.

  Most frequently, we hear Israeli ministers and other leaders invoking collective memories of the Holocaust. Most insist that Hamas’s attack mirrored Nazi genocide. Recently, Prime Minister Netanyahu has taken a different tack: the October 7th attack was unlike the Holocaust because Hamas was not able to execute a larger-scale massacre. In both cases, invoking the Holocaust absolves the Israeli government for its failures that nightmarish morning in the Negev — the day everything designed to protect us collapsed.

  I find our government’s invoking of Holocaust comparisons offensive as a professional historian, as a member of Kibbutz Nir Oz (destroyed during the attack), and as the son of a Holocaust survivor and a refugee from Nazi Germany. Having emigrated from Europe to the United States, my parents never moved to Israel. But they were immensely proud — particularly as Holocaust survivors — of my family and of our country.

  Part of me was grateful on October 7th that my parents had died years before; they would have been crushed by Israel’s failure to defend its own citizens, the complete destruction of our kibbutz home that they cherished, and the kidnapping of a beloved grandchild, my son, Sagui.

  Invoking the Holocaust and pogroms is neither historically accurate nor necessary to absorb the magnitude and consequences of the October 7th massacre. Doing so insults my parents and countless other victims of antisemitic slaughters in the past, with no Jewish state to defend them.

  Netanyahu’s use of Holocaust memory is a distortion of another kind: it suggests that the IDF stopped the attack when, in fact, the vast majority of the defensive actions by Israelis that day came from heroic civilian first-responder teams or uncoordinated actions by small military units — even individual soldiers — who sought out and engaged Hamas invaders with little or no guidance from their commanders.

  Until October 7th, we all believed that the Israeli army would arrive to defend our kibbutz within minutes of any breach of the border fence, approximately one mile from our homes. As we experienced on October 7th, that entire system collapsed. Comparing what happened that day to the Holocaust is a cynical mobilization (conscious or otherwise) of collective Holocaust memory for political purposes. On the one hand, comparisons obscure the culpability of Hamas for its butchery. On the other, comparisons muddle the singular accountability Israel’s government bears for what happened and its lasting effects.

  October 7th was indeed the deadliest single day for world Jewry since the Holocaust, and the worst military failure in Israel’s history. We Israelis and Jews must remember, however, that in 1939 there was no sovereign Jewish state — Israel — nor a strong, well-equipped and well-trained Jewish army. It is a simple, painful truth that Hamas’s attack should never have happened and would not have been so deadly if Israel’s government and army had done their jobs.

  By allowing these comparisons to the Holocaust, we release the Israeli government from accountability for the October 7th massacre and our leaders’ sacred responsibility to return all the hostages alive. 

  The true lesson of the Holocaust for Israelis should not be eternal victimhood, as our leaders constantly suggest. Rather, it is that there is nothing of greater value in the Zionist project than Jewish empowerment.

  Describing October 7th as a pogrom (anti-Jewish riot) that preceded the Holocaust is similarly unhelpful. Unlike the spontaneous mob violence in 19th and 20th century Eastern Europe, Hamas, the governing body in the Gaza Strip since 2007, formulated, organized, funded, and executed the attack.

  Summoning memories of pogroms risks obscuring the sole responsibility of Hamas and its leaders for mass murders, kidnappings, rape, and looting. Whatever the scale of civilian casualties inflicted by the IDF on Gaza’s civilians since that tragic day, Hamas’ brutality must never be brushed over. 

  The devastation Hamas wrought on October 7th stands alone. So does the need for Israel’s government to rise to this national challenge and not allow petty domestic politics to condemn the hostages to death in Hamas’s tunnels. This is our government’s moral responsibility to our captive loved ones and to Jews everywhere who believe in the promise of Israel.

  In recent weeks, the world has witnessed a wave of pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel protests on university campuses. Ignorant or cynical Israeli government officials compare these protests — or suggest they are a prelude — to Nazi Germany in the 1930s. 

  Whatever our opinions about the protesters and their knowledge of the issues or their motivations, these students have come together because of what they see happening in the news or online. Labeling them “Nazis” again obscures our government’s role in pushing them toward protests: the civilian casualties in Gaza and our government’s inability to maintain the moral high ground in public opinion or offer even a hint of a vision about the “day after” in Gaza after the fighting stops. 

  Why are these comparisons so fundamentally wrong? First, the student protesters are invariably from minority groups. In Nazi Germany, the angry mobs in the streets were part of an angry ethno-national majority (Germans) seeking to restore national pride after a decades-long crisis.

  Second, the campus protesters have almost no support among powerful politicians, industrialists and financiers — the kinds of people who financed and facilitated the rise of National Socialism in Germany.

  Third, the campus protesters and their supporters today are not the government anywhere. They have no leader or party structure. They do not have numbers. They have no common ideology. They are not protesting within a failed state, like Weimar Germany, that is too weak to deal with them. On the contrary, if anything, one could say that some of the authorities and police forces around the world are over-reacting to the campus protests. 

  Fourth, in the 1930s there was no Jewish state that could work with European and US Jews to deal with a rise in antisemitism. Unfortunately, the problem in facing this challenge for the past 20 or so years is that the Israeli government has increasingly alienated non-Orthodox Diaspora Jewry. Comparing campus protests to 1930s Germany absolves Netanyahu’s government from its responsibility for creating and solving these challenges before and after October 7th. 

  The rise of antisemitism is indeed a global problem. But blowing it out of proportion to whip up hysteria among Israelis and by erasing Israel’s part in this current cycle of hate is disrespectful to the victims of the Holocaust, distorts the truth about what happened on October 7th and reduces our government’s responsibility for the fate of our hostages. 

  The only way to begin healing for our society and for our region is the immediate release of our hostages and ending the carnage in Gaza.  link

• US looking to sanction extremist Israelis for attacks on Gaza aid convoys:
  

  The Biden administration is looking into sanctioning the extremist Israelis involved in the recent spate of attacks targeting humanitarian aid convoys for Gaza civilians, two US officials tell The Times of Israel.

  The sanctions would be levied through the executive order signed by US President Joe Biden in February, which allowed the Treasury Department to designate Israelis involved in violent activity in the West Bank, the officials say.

  The attacks in the West Bank largely started last month when Israel agreed to expand the aid route from Jordan to ensure that more assistance gets into Gaza.

  The far-right group Tzav 9 has led many of the protests in both the West Bank and within Israel proper, aiming to block aid trucks from reaching Gaza. The group argues that the assistance is being co-opted by Hamas — a charge the US denies. Israel has also made a point in recent months of stressing the amount of aid it is allowing into Gaza, indicating that it, too, doesn’t believe the assistance is for Hamas.

  Tzav 9 also argues that the aid should be used as leverage to secure the release of the Israeli hostages in Gaza, but rights groups say doing so would violate international law.

  Since the attacks on aid convoys in the West Bank are a relatively new phenomenon, it is unclear whether the administration will be able to put together the legal cases necessary for justifying sanctions against involved individuals by the time the US issues its fourth batch of settler sanctions in the coming weeks, one of the US officials says.

  Individual members of the Israeli security forces are believed to be tipping off the far-right activists regarding the location of the aid trucks once they’re en route to Gaza, enabling their interception by those who have blocked the convoys from proceeding, and looting their contents.

  Early on in the war, when the attacks were happening regularly near Israel’s Kerem Shalom and Nitzana crossings into Gaza, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir signaled to police, which are under his jurisdiction, to take a lax approach on the crack down, an Israeli official said.  link
  
  

• The Arab League has called for a United Nations peacekeeping force in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem during a summit dominated by the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

  The “Manama Declaration” issued by the 22-member bloc called for “international protection and peacekeeping forces of the United Nations in the occupied Palestinian territories” until a two-state solution is implemented.

  The declaration also calls on “all Palestinian factions to join under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organization,” which is dominated by Hamas’s political rivals, the ruling Fatah movement.

  The Arab League adds that it considered the PLO “the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.”

  The summit in Bahrain “strongly condemned the attacks on commercial ships,” by the Houthis, saying they “threaten freedom of navigation, international trade, and the interests of countries and peoples of the world.”

  The declaration adds the Arab nations’ commitment to “ensuring freedom of navigation in the Red Sea” and surrounding areas.  link

• South Africa wraps up ICJ argument against Israel, which will issue defense tomorrow

In South Africa’s final presentations at the ICJ, its representatives claim that Israel has genocidal intent against Palestinians and that the only way to prevent genocide is a court order instructing Israel to halt its entire military campaign in Gaza and not just Rafah as it had originally requested.

Attorney Tembeka Ngcukaitobi cites comments by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich who was quoted by Haaretz at the end of April as saying, “There are no half-measures. Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nusseirat – total annihilation,” as evidence of Israeli genocidal intent and also plays a video of IDF soldiers before entering the southern Gazan city of Rafah praying and then singing, “We will dismantle Rafah.”

Attorney Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh urges the court to intervene due to “the severity of the situation involving horrific human suffering,” which she says “mandates that the court to now order Israel to cease military operations” and claiming that Israel has ignored previous ICJ orders.

“South Africa cannot but reiterate what is the power of this court to do, what the drafters of the Genocide Convention called on it to do, to listen to that desperate cry for help from Gaza and order Israel to cease fire,” she says.

Israel will respond to South Africa at tomorrow’s hearing.

Acronyms and Glossary

COGAT - Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories

ICC - International Criminal Court in the Hague

IJC - International Court of Justice in the Hague

UAV - Unmanned Aerial vehicle, Drone. Could be used for surveillance and reconnaissance, or be weaponized with missiles or contain explosives for 'suicide' explosion mission

PA - Palestinian Authority - President Mahmud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen

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