🎗️Lonny's War Update- October 229, 2023 - May 22, 2024 (cont)🎗️

  

🎗️Day 229 (cont) that 128 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

*6:40pm- north- Rockets Batzet, hanita, Rosh Hanikra, Shlomi, Western Galilee

*9:15pm- north-An anti-tank missile exploded without a siren in Beit Hillel in the Galilee Panhandle. There were no reports of injuries or damage. Simultaneously, the IDF announced that it struck two Hezbollah rocket launchers in Marwahin and Aita al-Shaab using fighter jets. A "terror infrastructure", in the IDF's phrasing, was attacked in Rab al-Thalathine in southern Lebanon.

*The army announced the deaths of 3 soldiers killed in battle in northern Gaza, in the same places that the IDF has battled, conquered and left in the past more than once. 

-Reserve Master Sergeant Gidon Chai Diroa, 33 from Tel Aviv

-First Sergeant Eliahu Haim Amsalem, 21 from Raanana

-Captain Yisrael Yudkin,22  from Kfar Habad

May their memories be a blessing

From left: Staff Sgt. Eliyahu Haim Amsalem, Master Sgt. (res.) Gidon Chai Diroa and Cpt. Yisrael Yudkin

Hostage Updates  
PLEASE READ ALL OF THIS NEXT PART AND WATCH THE VIDEO. IT IS DIFFICULT BUT EVERYONE MUST SEE IT.

• The families of the 5 observer soldiers who were kidnapped on October 7 permitted the release of a very censored video - the girls were handcuffed behind their backs and in the room with dozens of the Hamas barbarians for two hours. They censored out that all around the girls were the bodies of their friends who were killed. 54 soldiers were killed at the Nachal Oz base that day.
  
  
  There are cabinet ministers who refused to see this video because they are afraid they won’t sleep at night. They are the worse kind of cowards. They refuse to see this painful video, they refuse to do anything to get these girls and the rest of the hostages home. I can’t understand how anyone who sees these video can stay indifferent and apathetic. They have to pound in every table in every meeting and demand that everything be done to get them home. If it means to release every single Palestinian prisoner, if it means to end the war, so be it. Nothing can be more important than getting them all home but we have too many horrible people who are making the decisions. They have no souls, no moral compass, no plans to take responsibility or desire to try to right their wrongs. They should have resigned 7.5 months ago but they are without a conscience and can only see themselves and their political future. They have no right to continue, not in making decisions and not in any leadership positions. We would be so much better off of them crawled under some rocks never to be heard or seen again. 
  

  
  

Eli Albag, father of Liri  asks: ‘What else can we do to wake the nation up?

The Hostages Families Forum releases harrowing footage showing the abduction of five female soldiers from the Nahal Oz base by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7.

The video was taken by body cameras worn by Hamas terrorists that day as they attacked the base near the Gaza border.  It shows Liri Albag, Karina Ariev, Agam Berger, Daniella Gilboa and Naama Levy. “The disturbing video has been the reality of Agam, Daniella, Liri, Naama, Karina, and 123 other hostages for 229 days,” the forum says in a statement.

“The video is a damning testament to the nation’s failure to bring home the hostages, who have been forsaken for 229 days.” “The Israeli government must not waste even one more moment – it must return to the negotiating table today!”  link

Asked why the decision was made to have the footage broadcast, and told that the war cabinet is meeting tonight to discuss the hostages, Albag says: “If this film doesn’t change the thinking, this is the last bullet we have, to tell them. What else do you want? What else can we do? If that doesn’t influence them…”

It took five years to reach a deal for the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011, he notes, “and they paid so much more” to get him out of Hamas captivity. “Wake up! There are 128 hostages. One hundred and twenty-eight. The number is beyond comprehension. Somebody has to wake up. And if this doesn’t wake them up, I don’t know what else to say.”

Yoni Levy, father of Naama, says he can see that she is “scared to death,” but also that “her survival instinct” is working, when she tells one of the terrorists that “she has friends in Palestine.”

“I have watched the footage several times and it doesn’t get any easier,” he tells Channel 12. “But for them, this film continues… For them, now, 229 days, 330,000 minutes, they’ve been living this. That’s why we’re screaming out.”

He says: “The hostages have become just one more in the chain of unsolved problems that the State of Israel is facing. Our goal is to say, people, this cannot be. Look what they go through in three minutes. Everything can wait. There is nothing more urgent than to return them. To return all 128.

“The State of Israel is strong enough… It can settle accounts with all of those despicable people…. [For the hostages,] we cannot drag our feet any longer.”

• Today is the 23rd Birthday of Omer Vankert who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival. He and his friend Kim arrived at Nova an hour before the attack began. Kim was killed by Hamas terrorists and Omer was seen handcuffed behind his back being taken violently to Gaza by the terrorists. Omer surfers from chronic colitis and has not been receiving any medical care or medicine since his captivity to the best of anyone’s knowledge. Omer’s grandmother, Tsili Wenkert, 82, is a Holocaust survivor who was freed by the Russian Red Army on the way to Auschwitz. The family received a tip that Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to help hostages with family members who are Holocaust survivors, as “they have some sensitivity to that,” said Wenkert, speaking to The Times of Israel.

  The family met with the Russian ambassador and were aware of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conversation with Putin, but weren’t privy to the details of that conversation. They were told that Wenkert’s name is on the Russian list of hostages. Nothing has happened since then  and there hasn’t been any sign of life.  Link to the web page set up by his family to get help in rescuing Omer

  
  
  
  

• The high-level war cabinet will gather tonight, with the ongoing impasse in the hostage talks at the top of the agenda. The Israeli hostage negotiating team is pushing to receive a new mandate from the war cabinet to renew negotiations based off the previous proposal, following amendments by Israel and Hamas. The fundamental difference between the sides remains Israel’s desire to only accept a temporary ceasefire and Hamas’s prime demand for a permanent end to the war.  - the war cabinet was supposed to convene yesterday, but Netanyahu postponed it once again.

Gaza 

• Over the past day, the Israeli Air Force struck more than 130 targets across the Gaza Strip, including cells of terror operatives, buildings used by terror groups, observation posts, and other infrastructure, the military says.  Fighting is ongoing in northern Gaza’s Jabaliya, where the IDF says soldiers of the Paratroopers Brigade directed a drone strike against a Hamas weapons depot where eight operatives were gathered.

  According to the military, the Hamas operatives were involved in rocket fire, launching drones, and observing Israeli forces in Gaza. Separately, several more gunmen were killed by troops in the central Gaza Strip, the IDF adds.  link

• The Israeli military announces that the Nahal Brigade has been deployed to Rafah, joining the 162nd Division which has been operating in the city in the southern Gaza Strip since earlier this month. Nahal is now the fifth IDF brigade operating in Rafah, after the 401st, Givati, Commando and Negev brigades.

  The military says it is now operating in Rafah’s Brazil and Shaboura neighborhoods, following “information on terror targets in the area.”  The IDF says that the operation in Rafah is being carried out in an “accurate manner… while preventing harm to the civilian population as much as possible, after the civilians have evacuated the area.”

  Ahead of the new push deeper into Rafah, the IDF says it carried out a wave of fighter jet strikes against Hamas targets in the area. Link
  
  

• Primed rocket launchers were found by troops of the 7th Armored Brigade amid operations in northern Gaza’s Jabaliya, the military says. The IDF says dozens of rockets, as well as explosive belts, IEDs, grenades, and other weapons were found by the soldiers.

  The fighting in Jabaliya is described by the IDF as “intense.” It says troops raided and demolished dozens of sites belonging to terror groups amid the operation, which began earlier this month. link -- Our soldiers have already fought in Jabaliya and left after it was believed that they accomplished their mission. But because our Prime Minister refuses to set strategy for the IDF or for the future of Gaza, every place that the IDF leaves, Hamas comes back.

  
  
  
  

• Earlier today, troops of the 401st Armored Brigade located several rocket launchers on the so-called Philadelphi Corridor, the border area between Gaza and Egypt, the military says. The IDF says the primed launchers were destroyed. So far amid the operation in southern Gaza’s Rafah, the IDF has captured around half of the Philadelphi Corridor — which runs for a total of 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) all along the Gaza-Egypt border.  video
  
  

• The military says it carried out an airstrike against a UNRWA school in central Gaza's Nuseirat, where members of Hamas were gathered. According to the IDF, among the operatives at the school were a member of Hamas's anti-tank unit and a member of the terror group's elite Nukhba force. The site also had been used to store weapons, including mortars, guns, and explosive devices, the army says. Secondary blasts were seen after the strike, which the military says indicates that the site was used to store weapons. The IDF says the strike was "carefully planned and carried out using precise munitions" while "avoiding harm to uninvolved [civilians] as much as possible."

• 
  

Northern Israel - Lebanon/Hizbollah

• Israeli fighter jets struck a building in southern Lebanon’s Mays al-Jabal a short while ago, after identifying Hezbollah operatives entering the structure, the IDF says.

  Additional buildings used by the terror group in Ayta ash-Shab, and observation posts in Alma ash-Shab, were also hit by fighter jets, the military adds.  link

West Bank

•     A bill defining a group of West Bank settlements as part of Israel’s Negev region passes a preliminary reading 52-37 in the Knesset plenum on Wednesday.

  If passed through all three readings further in the Knesset, Kiryat Arba and the settlements of the Har Hebron Regional Council will be eligible for funding from the Negev Development Authority, ending “years of discrimination and injustice against the settlers,” asserts Otzma Yehudit MK Limor Son Har-Melech.

  According to the legislation’s explanatory notes, the challenges of life in the periphery also apply to the specified settlements, which were excluded from the purview of the Negev Development Authority in the early 1990s due to the fact that they are located in the Palestinian territories.

  “There is no reason for [the settlement communities] to be discriminated against just because it is in Judea and Samaria,” Har-Melech says, using the Biblical name for the areas which now comprise the West Bank.

  Railing against the measure, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid declares that “the Negev is the Negev, Judea and Samaria is Judea and Samaria. Don’t invent a geography that doesn’t exist.”

  Lapid accuses the bill’s backers of appropriating the budgets of towns harmed by the war, declaring that “the settlements have been stealing money from periphery communities for 50 years, and the Likud party has been silent.”  link 
  --This is so ridiculous and disgusting in so many ways. As Lapid said, they are inventing something that doesn't exist because their most important agenda is settlements and to hell with everything else. This is important to them, not the hostages. These are the same Knesset members who yell at the families of the hostages and call them traitors and refuse to agree to any deal to release the hostages. They are a disgrace.
  
  

• Militants threw explosives at forces in Jenin and were neutralized, armed person fortified in hospital Security forces are still operating in the Jenin refugee camp in an operation to thwart terror infrastructure. The Palestinian Health Ministry reported 8 killed, and clashes with armed militants continue. Fighters confiscated equipment and uncovered explosives buried under routes. An armed person was documented taking shelter in the government hospital: "Cynical use of humanitarian infrastructure" IDF soldiers, Shin Bet forces and undercover Border Police officers continue to operate in the Jenin refugee camp as part of the operation to thwart terror infrastructure, which began yesterday (Tuesday). During the activity, the forces exchanged fire with armed militants and neutralized several terrorists, including two who threw explosives at the fighters on the ground. According to Palestinian reports, electricity has been cut off in the refugee camp since yesterday afternoon. The Palestinian Health Ministry has so far reported eight killed, 24 injured, including four critically. The ministry also stated that since October 7th, 514 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and Jerusalem. During the operation, the fighters confiscated military equipment and uncovered explosives buried under routes intended to harm security forces. Yesterday, an armed person was identified entering the government hospital in Jenin and fortifying himself there. The IDF said "This is another example of the cynical use by armed militants in the Jenin area of humanitarian infrastructure including hospitals as shelters and hiding places." The operation in Jenin began yesterday, when dozens of IDF soldiers, Border Police and special units entered the refugee camp. The activity began with an undercover force, and after it took up positions in the camp, additional IDF forces arrived, surprising the militants and opening fire. One of those arrested in the operation is Wafa Jarrar, wife of the terrorist Ahmad Jarrar who headed the cell that murdered Rabbi Raziel Shevach in January 2018. Jarrar was critically injured when the "Panther" vehicle she was placed in struck an explosive device - and was evacuated to the hospital. There were no injuries among the forces, but damage was caused to the vehicles. During the activity in the refugee camp, Haruv reconnaissance unit fighters neutralized a militant who threw explosives. link

Politics and the Region

• My brother's FB post: The importance of countries recognizing the State of Palestine is  not how Israel responds but rather how it impacts Palestinian understanding that the State of Palestine will be real and that the occupation will end. Defeating extremism is about providing genuine hope for a future of freedom and dignity for Palestinians. Israelis will come to terms with Palestine as the Palestinians come to realize that there is no place for the armed struggle. Diplomacy will deliver freedom and dignity and Israel will also end up with security. Gershon Baskin
  
  

• If Theodor Herzl were alive today and could see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government “he would be ashamed,” Opposition Leader Yair Lapid declares from the Knesset rostrum. In an address in honor of Herzl Day, which fell on Sunday, Lapid questions what the progenitor of modern political Zionism would have made of a prime minister “who is not willing to take responsibility for 1,500 Jews who were killed and murdered on his watch [and] who is not willing to say: I am guilty, I am responsible, I am going home,” says Lapid. Not all of those killed on October 7 and in the subsequent war were Jewish.

  “Your punishment, Mr. Netanyahu, is that this is how history will remember you. This is what you will be remembered for. For not taking responsibility, for not admitting your guilt. That you didn’t even know how to ask for forgiveness and leave at [the appropriate] time,” Lapid says.  “We will not win with this government,” he continues. “We will not win with Haredim who do not want to enlist. We will not win with militias burning humanitarian aid trucks. We will not win with ministers who talk about total annihilation and atomic bombs on Gaza.”
  “Not only did Herzl want a Jewish state, but also a model liberal, fair, egalitarian society. He wanted there to be a government here that would protect the Jews from racism and violence, not a government that would foster racism by Jews and violence by Jews,” he says.
  “If Herzl were to wake up today and look at the country, he would be proud. If Herzl were resurrected and looked at the government, he would be ashamed.”

• Ministers from Arab states will meet with European Union counterparts in Brussels on Monday to try to forge a common path on ending the war in Gaza and building lasting peace, a senior EU official says.

Representatives from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates will join a regular meeting of foreign ministers from the 27-member EU, says Sven Koopmans, the EU’s special representative for the Middle East peace process.

Koopmans says the gathering was one of a series at which Arab and European countries were seeking common positions on ways to end the fighting between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas. “Our assignment is to see how we can build a coalition where we try collectively to contribute (to peace efforts) without putting people in a corner,” Koopmans tells Reuters.

The EU has been riven by divisions over the war in Gaza, which followed Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on October 7. Koopmans says EU members agreed on core priorities such as ending the war, avoiding a regional war and working towards a peace settlement in which Israel and a Palestinian state would live side by side.

“We may have different positions on recognition but we have unanimity on the need for a Palestinian state,” he says. Koopmans declines to provide details about Monday’s discussions, but said a major effort involving the United States and Arab and European countries is necessary to establish peace. “Nobody alone is sufficient. But if we work together, and we are working on doing something concretely together, maybe we’re just about sufficient, at least to get things started,” he says. link  What is missing from any of Koopmans statement? The Hostages!!!!!!

• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterates that the United States and Saudi Arabia are very close to concluding a set of agreements on nuclear energy, security and defense cooperation — the bilateral component of a wider normalization deal with Riyadh and Israel.
  Speaking at a hearing in the House of Representatives, Blinken says the finalizing of the agreements “could be weeks away” but cautions that for the wider normalization to be able to proceed, calm in Gaza has to occur and a pathway for Palestinian statehood needs to be formulated.
  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected the creation of a Palestinian state, a major reason why Washington’s vision of a “grand bargain”for the Middle East remains elusive. 

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

PMO- Prime Minister's Office

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