🎗️Lonny's War Update- October 320, 2023 - August 21, 2024 🎗️

  

🎗️Day 320  that 109 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!!!”

We’re waiting for you, all of you.
A deal is the only way to bring
all the hostages home- the murdered for burial and the living for rehabilitation.

#BringThemHomeNow #TurnTheHorrorIntoHope

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

*7:15pm yesterday - north - hostile aircraft - Beit Hillel, Maayan Baruch, Kfar Giladi, Kfar Yuval, Metulla, Manara, Margaliot, Misgav Am, Kiryat Shemona, Tel Hai

*7:20pm yesterday - north - hostile aircraft - Dafna, Hagoshrim, Ajar, Kibbutz Dan, She'ar Hayeshuv, Snir, Metulla, Beit Hillel, Kfar Giladi, Kfar Yuval, Kiryat Shemona
*7:25pm yesterday- north - hostile aircraft - Merom Golan, Sha'al, Ortal

*7:30pm yesterday - north - hostile aircraft - Kela, Sha'al

*8:10pm yesterday - north - rockets - Sasa - more than 40 rockets fell in the upper Galilee with one direct hit on a house in Batzet

*9:30pm yesterday - north - rockets - Yaara, Avdon, Admit

*8:20- north - rockets - Katzrin, Kidmat Zvi- direct hit in Katzrin with several houses damaged and a man wounded.
A man wounded by Hezbollah’s rocket attack in Katzrin is listed in moderate condition, medics say. The Magen David Adom ambulance service says the man in his 30s sustained shrapnel injuries from a direct rocket impact on his home. He is being taken to Ziv Hospital in Safed for treatment.

8:25am- north- hostile aircraft- Batam, Alma, Dalton, Jish, Rehaniya, Yirin, Avivim, Kerem Ben Zimra 

*11:25am - north - hostile aircraft - Yiftach, Ramot Naftali, Dishon, Malkia, Mevo'ot Hermon, Sde Nehemia, Kfar Blum, Shamir, Gonen, Kfar Szold, Lahavot Habashan, Neot Mordechai, Amir, Yesod Hama'aleh, Huleta

*11:30am - north - hostile aircraft - Kfar Blum, Kfar Szold, Lahavot Habashan, Neot Mordechai, Amir, Sde Nehemia, Shamir, Kfar Hanasi, Mahanaim

*2:40pm - north - rockets - Misgav Am, Margaliot, Kiryat Shemona

*5:45pm - north - rockets - Zra'it, Arab al Aramsha, Shomera

*6:30pm - north - rockets - Zra'it
*6:55pm - north - hostile aircraft - Ya'ara

Hostage Updates 

• Talks to bring about a ceasefire and hostages-for-prisoners are “on the brink of collapsing,” Politico reports, citing two unnamed US officials and one unnamed Israeli official.

  While Washington has publicly insisted on expressing optimism, the officials reportedly say efforts to bring Hamas onboard the latest proposal — publicly endorsed by Israel — have so far been unsuccessful, with White House officials said frustrated by the Palestinian terror group’s hardline rhetoric against it.

  The US outlet says this “has US officials increasingly worried that this proposal will falter just as earlier ones did, with Hamas and Israel at odds and no clear path to end fighting or bring hostages home.”

  One of the sources is quoted as saying: “We don’t know if Sinwar wants this deal. But if we don’t get the deal there’s a chance that Iran attacks and this escalates into a full blown confrontation.”

  The report says US officials are still hopeful Hamas may abruptly accept the deal, citing past instances in which it spontaneously agreed to truce deals after publicly opposing them.
• How the bodies of the abductees were extracted: Fighters entered 4 tunnels simultaneously

  
  

  New details from the operation to extract the bodies of 6 abductees in Khan Yunis • Although the intelligence received was partial, it was decided to proceed • Fighters raided 4 tunnels: in one of them Hamas terrorists were eliminated - and a suspicious wall was discovered that led to a hidden compound where the bodies were hidden • The assessment in the army: Most were killed directly or indirectly from IDF operations

  
  

  The extraction operation that took place last night (between Monday and Tuesday) was carried out following partial intelligence information that reached the IDF, during which the forces operated in four tunnels, and in one of them the bodies were located after hours of activity. During the operation, Hamas terrorists whose task was to protect the compound where the bodies were hidden were eliminated.

  
  

  The force that operated in the south of the Strip identified in a tunnel at a depth of about 10 meters a wall that appeared loose, opened it - and discovered a hidden passage that led to the compound where the bodies of the hostages were hidden. This is similar to what happened in the previous operation in which the bodies of hostages were extracted from Khan Yunis.

  
  

  The IDF assumes that this is a modus operandi for concealing hostages' bodies in order to make it difficult for the IDF to locate them. The IDF estimates that the hostages were transferred to the tunnel where their bodies were found after they had already been killed. According to the assessments, most of the hostages whose bodies were returned last night were killed directly or indirectly from IDF operations, and only a few may have been murdered by Hamas terrorists.

  
  

  On Friday afternoon, forces from the 98th Division launched a divisional attack near the Qatari neighborhood, and on Sunday night the fighters had already gained operational control of the entire neighborhood. Then, the Yahalom and General Security Service forces began to operate in the underground, while at the same time, fighters from Battalion 75 ensured the security of the neighborhood and isolated it. IDF Spokesperson Brigadier General Daniel Hagari promised this evening at a press conference: "We will conduct a rapid debriefing in order to provide answers first and foremost to the families who have lost their loved ones and then to the public." He further clarified: "We will not be able to return all the abductees in rescue operations."

  
  

  The Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, toured the Gaza Strip today. "We have a very strong determination to fight Hamas, to return all the abductees, and to bring the fallen back to the burial of Israel," Halevi said. "In an operation that is not accidental, based on intelligence that we have been following for a very long time and has been developing, we had information about a place where our buried fallen who were abducted are located."

  
  

  Prior to the extraction of the bodies, and in accordance with the partial intelligence available to the IDF, the forces carried out preliminary operations in the area, including the use of fire, population dispersion, and intelligence missions. During the activity, the fighters fought in multi-story buildings and gained operational control that enabled them to reach the underground.

  
  

  The commander of Battalion 75, Lt. Col. Ron, told his fighters after the extraction of the abductees' bodies: "Within 24 hours we extracted the bodies of Yoram Metzger z"l, Nadav Poplavsky z"l, Yagev Bookshteyn z"l, Avraham Mundar z"l, Haim Frey z"l, and Alex Danczig z"l. You did an extraordinary job and you continue to do extraordinary work. I want all the fighters, to the last one, to know that I am proud of you. Continue to act with determination, continue to act professionally." Capt. Ziv, a company commander in the Paratroopers Brigade, spoke about the operation: "We have been fighting here for a few days. We carried out a surprise night attack, fighting in multi-story buildings, which worked very successfully. We are engaged in efforts to return the abductees and the missing. We will do everything we can to bring them back."

  
  

  Due to Hamas' attempts to hide the bodies, there is great importance to the IDF's surprise operations, which do not allow the murderous terrorist organization to prepare for them or carry out actions that will cause the fighters to chase after it. One day the forces are carrying out operations in the border area - and suddenly they change the mission by surprise and go out to an attack from a different area. In less than 24 hours, the fighters were already inside the tunnel, after 2nd Lt. Shahar Ben-Non z"l was killed that morning due to an air force bombing in Khan Yunis. The Yahalom fighters entered the passage, scanned for booby traps also with the help of technological aids, and then passed through several branches. Then they located a wall that was slightly different from the rest, handled it, and found a hidden passage, where the bodies were found. The fighters also located weapons, explosives and accommodation means used by the terrorists.  link It doesn't matter at all if they were killed directly or indirectly from IDF operations or from Hamas terrorists. Why doesn't it matter? Because they shouldn't have still been in captivity. Yes, the reason they were there to begin with was because of the barbarian Hamas terrorist, but the reason they weren't already back home is because of Netanyahu putting his political position before the lives of the hostages. If not for him killing every deal, they would have been home alive in November or December of last year.
  
  
• Israel Missed an Opportunity to Release 3 Adult Captives and 7 Women

  
  

  In the last day of the deal in November, Hamas claimed that it could only release 7 women, and proposed to complete the group of 10 with elderly men. The War Cabinet rejected the offer and torpedoed the deal. Abraham Monder's (79) grandson: "The realization that he could have been here is infuriating."

  
  

  Towards the end of the prisoner exchange deal in November, Israel missed an opportunity to release three of the older Israeli men held in the Gaza Strip, along with seven women. The possibility arose on the final day of the framework, which was supposed to be the eighth phase, but due to a dispute with Hamas over the identities of the released prisoners, the War Cabinet decided to torpedo the deal and return to combat. 

  
  

  That day, Hamas agreed to return 10 Israelis, but announced that it could only release seven from the women and children category. It proposed to complete the group of 10 with three elderly men. Two days earlier, Hamas had claimed - without providing proof - that Shiri Bibas and her her two children, Ariel and Kfir, had died in captivity and would therefore not be returning in the deal.

  
  

  The blood in Israel boiled, and the War Cabinet discussed the matter - and after much deliberation, decided to reject Hamas' proposal. Israel had information that there were still living women in captivity, and agreeing to receive elderly men in their place would have been an abandonment of them. The only War Cabinet member who supported completing the quota with the three men was Gadi Eisenkot, who believed it was better to release ten captives even if three were not from the agreed category, than to release none at all.

  
  

  In the end, as is known, not only were the seven women that Hamas declared to be alive not released, but those elderly captives were not released either. In the morning, the IDF extricated the bodies of Yoram Metzger (80), Abraham Monder (79), Haim Peri (80), Alex Danziger (76), Nadav Poplavsky (51) and Yigal Buchbut (35) from the Gaza Strip.

  
  

  In an interview with the ynet studio, Shahar Mor, Monder's nephew, said: "We knew he was alive until around January. To think that he survived all that time, three months after the abduction, is inconceivable. The realization that he could have been here if the prisoner exchange deal had not collapsed on the last day is infuriating." link

• US official says Netanyahu’s ‘maximalist’ remarks not helpful in reaching hostage deal

Unnamed Israeli negotiator says PM’s insistence on holding Philadelphi Corridor aimed at sabotaging talks; officials fear they missed chance to free elderly hostages in Nov. truce

Demonstrators call for the release of Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip outside the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, August 20, 2024. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)

A US official on Tuesday said “maximalist” remarks attributed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about maintaining control of the Gaza-Egypt border were not helpful to reaching a ceasefire deal with Hamas.

The rebuke from a senior US official traveling with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the Middle East, requesting anonymity to talk about sensitive discussions, came after Netanyahu reportedly told hardline relatives of hostages and bereaved families that “Israel won’t leave the Philadelphi Corridor and the Netzarim Corridor under any circumstances.”

Netanyahu has insisted that Israel will not withdraw from those two areas in southern and central Gaza, respectively, and that troops must be stationed there for strategic and security reasons. The Philadelphi Corridor runs along the Gaza-Egypt border, where Hamas for years smuggled in arms and weapons components. The Netzarim Corridor was carved out by the IDF during the war, and aims to prevent armed Hamas fighters from returning to northern Gaza, as well as allowing the military greater freedom to maneuver through the enclave. Earlier this week, Israeli negotiators were said to have told the prime minister that his demand for an ongoing IDF presence on the Philadelphi Corridor was dooming the deal.

“Maximalist statements like this are not constructive to getting a ceasefire deal across the finish line,” said the official, who also denied an Axios report that said Netanyahu might have managed to convince the top US diplomat on the issue.

“The only thing Secretary Blinken and the United States are convinced of is the need for getting a ceasefire proposal across the finish line,” the senior administration official told reporters en route to Doha, where Blinken met with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani following stops in Egypt and Israel. Speaking to reporters before leaving Doha, Blinken said a ceasefire deal needs to get done in the coming days, adding the United States, Egypt and Qatar would do everything possible to get Hamas on board with the “bridging proposal” that the US drew up at the end of last week’s Doha summit talks.

“Time is of the essence,” the top American diplomat said. “This needs to get done, and it needs to get done in the days ahead, and we will do everything possible to get it across the finish line.” Full article

• Former hostage Danielle Aloni recounts her time in captivity alongside five of the six hostages whose bodies were recovered yesterday from the Gaza Strip, describing their hopes of being freed despite enduring horrendous conditions in Hamas tunnels.

  Speaking to Army Radio, Aloni — who was released with her 5-year-old daughter, her sister and her 3-year-old nieces in a hostage deal in November, and who has three relatives still in captivity — says she spent several weeks with the group of hostages who later died and whose bodies have now been returned.

  “We turned the lemon into lemonade,” she says, describing how Alex Dancyg and others would hold daily lectures on the Holocaust, the Inquisition and other historic subjects.

  She says it was hard to see and breathe inside the dark, humid tunnels, and that the stench was hard to bear after several weeks of nobody showering. She says power would go out for hours at a time, and that there was no light when they moved between different locations within the tunnels.

  Aloni says she has survivor’s guilt, lamenting that people she describes as perhaps “better than me” died, while she survived. She says she doesn’t know how she would have done had she stayed in the tunnels for so long, and particularly how her child would have endured the conditions.

  She urges Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to sign a deal to free the hostages, saying that more and more are dying and that for over 10 months now, she and many relatives are unable to resume their normal lives and put the events of October 7 behind them, since they are still experiencing the atrocities.

• Noa Argamani to G7 in Japan: I thought ‘every night is my last,’ it’s a ‘miracle that I’m here’ 
  
  Rescued hostage Noa Argamani, who was abducted with hundreds of others from the Supernova music festival during Hamas's October 7 terror onslaught, speaks during a meeting with G7 embassy representatives during a visit to Tokyo, Japan on August 21, 2024. (Photo by Richard A. Brooks / AFP)
  
  
  

  A young Israeli woman who became emblematic of the 251 hostages kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 says she had thought every night in captivity would be her last.

  “Every night I was falling asleep and thinking, this may be the last night of my life,” Noa Argamani says in Japan on a visit with her father.

  “And until the moment I was [rescued by the IDF]… I just did not believe that I was still surviving,” the 26-year-old says as she meets with senior diplomats from G7 countries in Tokyo. “And in this moment that I’m still sitting with you, it’s a miracle that I’m here.”

  Argamani was among those kidnapped by the Palestinian terror group from the Supernova music festival during the brutal October 7 onslaught that sparked the ongoing war. A video that went viral showed her on the back of a motorbike screaming: “Don’t kill me!”

  The video showed her boyfriend, Avinatan Or, an engineer, being led away separately.

  Israeli special forces freed Argamani in a raid on Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp on June 8 along with three others — Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41.

  “Avinatan, my boyfriend, is still there, and we need to bring them back before it’s going to be too late. We don’t want to lose more people than we already lost,” says Argamani.

• Key mediator Egypt expresses skepticism as more details emerge of the proposal meant to bridge gaps in ceasefire-hostage release talks between Israel and Hamas, a day before negotiations were expected to resume in Cairo.

  The challenges around the so-called bridging proposal appear to undermine the optimism for an imminent agreement that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken carried into his latest Mideast visit this week. Diplomatic efforts had redoubled as fears grow of a wider regional war after the recent targeted killings of Hamas’s leader in Tehran, and a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut and threats of retaliation against Israel.

  Israel has neither confirmed nor denied it played a role in the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, but took responsibility for the drone strike that killed Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr.

  Officials in Egypt, in its unique role as both a mediator and affected party since it borders Gaza, tell The Associated Press that the Hamas terror group will not agree to the bridging proposal for a number of reasons — ones in addition to the long-held wariness over whether a deal would truly remove Israel forces from Gaza and end the war.

  One Egyptian official, with direct knowledge of the negotiations, says the bridging proposal requires the implementation of the deal’s first phase, which has Hamas releasing the most vulnerable civilian hostages captured in its October 7 massacre that sparked the war. Parties during the first phase would negotiate the second and third phases with no “guarantees” to Hamas from Israel or mediators.

  “The Americans are offering promises, not guarantees,” the official says. “Hamas won’t accept this, because it virtually means Hamas will release the civilian hostages in return for a six-week pause of fighting with no guarantees for a negotiated permanent ceasefire.”

  He also says the proposal doesn’t clearly say Israel will withdraw its forces from two strategic corridors in Gaza, the Philadelphi Corridor alongside Egypt and the Netzarim Corridor east to west across the territory. Israel offers to downsize its forces in the Philadelphi Corridor, with “promises” to withdraw from the area, he says. “This is not acceptable for us and of course for Hamas,” the Egyptian official says.

Gaza 

•  The IDF is calling on Palestinians in a small section of the Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah to evacuate.

  Col. Avichay Adraee, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, publishes a map of the zones that need to be evacuated.

  He says that the military will “forcefully operate” against terror groups in the area.

  “For your safety, we urge you to evacuate immediately to the west. The area you are in is considered a dangerous combat zone,” Adraee adds.

  The size of the humanitarian zone has changed multiple times, amid evolving IDF operations against the Hamas terror group.

  The zone is currently around 42 square kilometers, or 11% of the total size of the Gaza Strip. According to IDF estimates, some 1.9 million Palestinians of the 2.3 million Gazan population are residing in the zone.

• Dozens of gunmen were killed amid IDF operations in Gaza, and some 30 targets were struck by the Israeli Air Force across the Strip in the past day, the military says in a morning update.

  Targets hit by the IAF included buildings used by terror groups, armed terror operatives, rocket launching sites, tunnel shafts and observation posts, according to the military.

  The IDF says that in Rafah’s northwestern Tel Sultan neighborhood, troops with the 162nd Division killed dozens of armed terror operatives, destroyed sites belonging to terror groups, and located numerous weapons.

  In Khan Younis and on the outskirts of Deir al-Balah, the military says that troops with the 98th Division killed dozens more gunmen and raided Hamas sites.

  The division also directed an airstrike on several terror operatives who had been spotted in an area from which rockets were launched at Israeli border communities several times in recent days, the IDF says.

  Meanwhile, in the Netzarim Corridor of central Gaza, reservists with the 252nd Division struck buildings that the IDF says were used by Hamas to attack troops.

• Defense Minister Yoav Gallant says more than 150 tunnels have been demolished along the Philadelphi Corridor, the Egypt-Gaza border area, and that Hamas’s Rafah Brigade has been defeated.

  “The most important thing… is to remember what the goals of the war are, to meet all the goals of the war, both regarding Hamas and also regarding the hostages, and to look north now,” Gallant says to troops stationed in the Philadelphi Corridor area. “The Rafah Brigade has been defeated, the enemy’s Rafah Brigade has been defeated by the 162nd Division,” Gallant says.

• The IDF says it carried out an airstrike against Hamas operatives at a command room embedded within a school in Gaza City.

  According to the military, Hamas was using the command room at the Salah ad-Din School to plan and carry out attacks against troops in Gaza and against Israel.

  The IDF says it carried out “many steps” to mitigate harm to civilians in the strike, including using precision munitions, aerial surveillance, and other intelligence.

  “The Hamas terror organization systematically violates international law, brutally exploiting civilian institutions and the population as a human shield for terror activity,” the military says.

  In recent months, dozens of airstrikes have been carried out against Hamas sites embedded within schools and other sites used as shelters for civilians, according to the IDF.

  The IDF adds that it will “continue to act with strength and determination against the terror organizations that use schools and civilian institutions as shelters.”

Northern Israel - Lebanon/Hizbollah/Syria

• The Hezbollah terror group announces the deaths of four members killed “on the road to Jerusalem,” its term for operatives slain in Israeli strikes.

  The announcement comes following an Israeli airstrike on a cell of Hezbollah operatives at a building in southern Lebanon’s Matmoura earlier today.

  Their deaths bring the terror group’s toll since the beginning of the war in the Gaza Strip to at least 419. Link the situation is absurd. We keep bombing and reporting the deaths of Hizbollah members, senior or otherwise and they keep launching rockets and explosive UAVs injuring and killing our soldiers and civilians and damaging and destroying hundreds, if not thousands of homes in the north while we have 80,000 northern residents who are refugees in their own country. And our failed government has no plan and no strategy after 10 months of the same. 

  
  

• Hezbollah fired some 115 rockets and several drones from Lebanon at northern Israel on Tuesday in barrages throughout the day, according to the Israel Defense Forces, which said that some of the projectiles were intercepted.

  Amid the repeated barrages, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned that the Israeli military was shifting its focus from Gaza to the northern front, portending a major escalation with Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

  There were no injuries reported in the attacks on the Upper Galilee, Western Galilee, and the Golan Heights.

• Israeli hurt in rocket barrage on Golan; Fatah official tied to Iran killed in Sidon strike

  Some 50 rockets launched at Katzrin after IDF hits targets deep in Lebanon; killing of Khalil Makdah is first apparent strike targeting PA’s Fatah faction in Lebanon since October

  Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon launched more than 50 rockets at the northern Israeli city of Katzrin in the Golan Heights on Wednesday morning, moderately injuring a man and causing damage to homes.

  Meanwhile, the IDF carried out an airstrike on a vehicle in the Mieh Mieh Palestinian refugee camp near the coastal Lebanese city of Sidon, killing a Fatah official, marking the first such attack reported on the Palestinian group in over 10 months of cross-border clashes.

  The Hezbollah attack on Katzrin came hours after the Israel Defense Forces carried out a series of airstrikes in Lebanon, while targeting Hezbollah weapon depots deep in the country.

  According to the IDF, a barrage of some 50 rockets was launched in the attack on Katzrin, with most of the rockets being intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense system.

  Several rockets hit the city, causing heavy damage to homes and injuring one person.

  The Magen David Adom ambulance service said the man in his 30s sustained shrapnel injuries from a direct rocket strike on his house. He was taken to Ziv Medical Center in Safed in moderate condition, MDA said.

  Hezbollah took responsibility for the rocket barrage, claiming in a statement that it had targeted a nearby military base. The army rejected this, saying the group had intended to hit the town.

  The terror group said it launched several volleys of Katyusha rockets at the base in the Golan Heights in response to an IDF strike deep in eastern Lebanon overnight.

  Strike on Fatah official

  In Lebanon, the Israeli military confirmed carrying out the strike that killed Fatah official Khalil Makdah. Khalil is the brother of senior Fatah official Munir Makdah, who has been accused by Israel for years of working with Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to advance attacks on Israel.

  In a joint statement, the IDF and Shin Bet said that the Makdah brothers have been working out of Lebanon with the IRGC to transfer money and weapons to terror cells in the West Bank.

  The military published footage of the airstrike.

  In March, the Shin Bet revealed that it had foiled attempts by Iran to smuggle large amounts of advanced weapons to terror operatives in the West Bank to be used in attacks on Israeli targets.

  The Shin Bet said at the time that Munir Makdah was involved in the plot.
  
  Ongoing cross-border fire
  
  In another attack on Israel Wednesday, several drones were launched from Lebanon at the Upper Galilee, setting off sirens in numerous communities.
  The IDF said that some of the drones were shot down by air defenses, while others impacted the area. No injuries were caused.
  Overnight, Israeli fighter jets had struck Hezbollah weapons depots in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon’s northeastern Baalbek District, the military said, for the second straight night.

The IDF said secondary explosions were identified after the strikes, “indicating the presence of weapons in the warehouses that were attacked.”

Additionally, the military said a site used by Hezbollah’s air defense unit, which “posed a threat” to Israeli aircraft, was also struck in the Baalbek area.

Baalbek, a Hezbollah stronghold, is located some 100 kilometers from the Israeli border.

The IDF accused Hezbollah of putting military assets within populated areas, in a “cynical exploitation of Lebanese citizens,” after the Lebanese health ministry said one person was killed and at least 20 were wounded in the strikes.

Several more IDF strikes were carried out in southern Lebanon on Tuesday night.

The military said the targets included a rocket launcher in Abu Shash, used in an earlier attack on the northern Israeli community of Ya’ara; a Hezbollah operative in the Hamoul area; a Hezbollah operative in Beit Lif; and buildings used by the terror group in Ayta ash-Shab, Ramyeh, and Tallouseh.

Hezbollah announced the deaths of five members following Israeli strikes in Lebanon.

• IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari says the Hezbollah rocket barrage this morning was directed at the town of Katzrin, not at a military base as the terror group has claimed.
  “Hezbollah launched some 50 rockets this morning at the center of the city of Katzrin. Once again, Hezbollah is firing indiscriminately at Israeli civilians,” Hagari says on X.

  “Like any country that protects its citizens, we will act accordingly,” he adds. 
  
  

• Lebanese media reports an Israeli drone strike on a vehicle in the Mieh Mieh Palestinian refugee camp near the coastal city of Sidon.

  No further details are immediately available and the IDF has not yet commented on the incident. video

West Bank and Jerusalem and Terror attacks within Israel

• The terror group Hamas calls for mass protests on Friday to mark “a day to defend Gaza, Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa.”

  In a statement, the Palestinian terror group addresses in particular Muslims in the West Bank, Jerusalem and the rest of Israel, urging them to travel to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the capital’s Temple Mount and barricade themselves inside it to “thwart attempts by extremists to desecrate it.”

  The call comes on the 55th anniversary of an arson attack on the third-holiest place for Muslims carried out by a Christian Australian on August 21, 1969, which destroyed parts of the structure. Even though the arsonist acted independently, some Palestinian groups at the time accused Israel of plotting the attack.

  In its statement, Hamas claims Israel was “complicit,” and accuses it of attempting today to impose its sovereignty over the whole compound of the mosque, known to Jews as Temple Mount, the holiest place in Judaism and the place where the two Jewish Temples once stood.

      

Politics and the War (general news)

•  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly told officials that he “well knows how to conduct negotiations” with Hamas, arguing that he has “conducted negotiations with the Histadrut” labor federation, Channel 13 news reports.

  In response, Histadrut spokesman Yaniv Levy tells the network that “the parallel between the negotiations [Netanyahu is] holding with the terrorist organization Hamas and [those he held with] the Histadrut is nothing less than a shame bordering on incitement.”

  “Apologize now to the million workers who drive the economy, many of whom are reservists,” he adds.

  In response, Netanyahu’s Likud party releases a statement condemning what it calls “another low attempt by Channel 13 to generate gratuitous hatred among us by taking things out of context” for the sake of ratings.

  “The prime minister did not compare the Histadrut to the murderous terrorist organization Hamas. There is nothing in the world that can compare to the new Nazis of Hamas,” Likud continues.

  “The prime minister gave an example during a closed discussion regarding the processes of various negotiations that he conducted in the past, including negotiations between friends” and he “clearly emphasized that [the Histadrut] cannot be compared to negotiations with the murderous organization Hamas.”  link This may rank up there as one of the most asinine statements that Netanyahu has ever made, both for comparing the Histadrut to Hamas and for claiming that he is such a great bargainer. He has failed in every type of bargaining and put the country in worse shape every time.

• Two of the Gaza border towns ravaged the most by Hamas’s October 7 onslaught have announced that they reject the government plans for a state memorial on the anniversary of the assault, instead planning their own ceremonies.

  According to Ynet, Kibbutz Be’eri decided to hold its own event even before the government announced plans to hold a centralized ceremony organized by Transportation Minister Miri Regev, which drew extensive criticism from families of hostages and victims and some Gaza border communities.

  “This isn’t an alternative ceremony, this is the ceremony of the community,” the outlet cites Be’eri officials as saying.

  Additionally, mutiple Hebrew media reports say, Kibbutz Kfar Aza has said in a statement that it is “disappointed” by the government plans while 109 hostages are still in Hamas captivity, including five local residents.

  Kfar Aza urges the government to focus its efforts on bringing the hostages home and, in terms of a memorial, “make do with lowering the flag to half-staff and standing in attention at the memorial siren, and not produce grandiose events.”

  It says the kibbutz will mark the anniversary with a private community event, “in hopes that by then, we will get to hug our friends who will return from captivity.”

  
  

• The Hostages and Missing Families Forum announces it won’t cooperate with government plans for a state memorial on the anniversary of the October 7 massacre.

  The group says the “resounding failure” of the government to return hostages taken on October 7 “won’t allow it to continue trying to close the circle,” adding it will join Gaza border communities for an alternative ceremony.

  “The Hostage Families Forum will join with border communities and towns on the Gaza border and south to mark the anniversary of the massacre, to demand the restoration of security, the return of the abductees, the restoration of the communities, and the investigation of the failures that led to the terrible disaster on October 7, 2023,” the group’s statement reads.

  National Unity chair Benny Gantz calls on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to transfer responsibility over a state memorial ceremony for the October 7 massacre from Transportation Minister Miri Regev to the communities ravaged in the assault and to the culture minister.

  “The way to mark the anniversary of the October 7 massacre can’t be determined by me, nor by you, nor by minister Regev. The nature of this day should be determined by those who experienced the inferno: the residents of towns in the Western Negev, the hostages and their families, the families of fallen soldiers, and the wounded,” Gantz says in a statement.

• Only 17% of Israelis place high trust in the government, and 26% in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a poll released today by the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

  Some 45% express a high degree of trust in IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, and 61% indicate that they believe the IDF will win in Gaza. Somewhat paradoxically, less than half the Israeli public (44.5%) believes the country’s war aims will be achieved completely or in large part.

  Most Israelis want to see the country initiate some kind of military operation against Hezbollah in the north, with almost half expressing a desire to see a large-scale operation that could ignite a regional war.

  Only 28% of the public, and 21% of Israeli Jews, say the 5 IDF soldiers accused of abuse against Hamas prisoners should face criminal prosecution instead of disciplinary action by their commanders. Also, only 47% of the public says that “Israel should obey international law and maintain ethical values in war,” while 39.5% (47% of the Jewish public) say Israel should not. Both Jewish and Arab Israelis indicated that they are more concerned about domestic tensions within Israel than external security threats.

The Region and the World

•    Three projectiles have hit a merchant vessel off Yemen’s rebel-held port city of Hodeida, limiting the ship’s ability to maneuver, British maritime security agency UKMTO says.

  “The merchant vessel had been struck by two unidentified projectiles before being hit by a third,” United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations says, adding that there are no reports of casualties but “the vessel reports being not under command.”

Personal Stories

 

Rebuilding Hope by Gershon Baskin

 In 1972, at the age of 16, living in America, I already knew that Israel was the place where I felt home. I was a very political teenager, I started protesting against the war in Vietnam at the age of 12 and joined marches for equal civil rights for all citizens of the country where I was born. At 14, my family moved from a very Jewish neighborhood on Long Island to a very non-Jewish neighborhood. In my elementary school there were about 80% Jewish students and teachers. In my high school there were 3% Jewish students. It was at that time that a Jewish classmate recruited me to join the Zionist youth movement Young Judaea. I think I was mostly motivated to meet Jewish girls, but beyond all of those lovely Jewish girls I met, I was challenged to confront my identity and where I belong. I found intellectual challenges and inspiring leaders and I was given the opportunity to rise to positions of great responsibility and leadership myself. During my high school years, my general world view about freedom, equality and justice then merged with my Jewish identity and my decision to make Israel my home. Like most of the leaders in the movement, I spent a year in Israel after high school – half a year on Kibbutz Ein Harod (Ihud) and half a year in Jerusalem studying. At the end of the year, I went back to work in the Zionist movement’s summer camp, Tel Yehuda, in upstate New York. During that summer of 1975, I had a chance to absorb and understand the intensive indoctrinating year I spent in my new homeland. It was then that I came to the conclusion that if Israel is genuinely the democratic nation-state of the Jewish people, then in order for that to be true, Israel could not rule of millions of Palestinians in territories that Israel conquered in 1967, nor could it exclude the 18% of its Palestinian Arab citizens from full equality. In the winter of 1975, I penned my first op-ed article in a Jewish newspaper (The Jewish Radical from Berkeley California) calling for the creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel and a two states solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I was immediately attacked and challenged, mostly by Israelis that I knew. They told me that as a young American I was naïve, I didn’t (yet) serve in the Israeli army, and the sentence that repeated itself more than all was: You don’t know them! I understood that “them” was a generic term for Arabs, regardless of where they were from (Israel, the territories, Jerusalem, or anywhere in the Arab world). I didn’t have the confidence or the knowledge then to ask all of these experts on Arabs how they knew them and what was the extent of their knowledge. What I did know was that if I ever wanted to be able to have a voice on the most existential question facing the State of Israel, I would have to find a way to get to know “them” and to have credibility. I was fortunate to learn about a new project that was just being organized called “Interns for Peace”. The program searched for Jewish university graduates with community work experience to come to Israel for two years to live in Arab villages in Israel and develop programs of interaction with neighboring Jewish communities. I signed up the day after hearing about the program and in September 1978 I made aliya in the framework of Interns for Peace. After a training program of six months in Kibbutz Barkai, I went to live in the nearby Arab village Kafr Qar’a for the next two years. Within three months of living in the village, I found myself telling members of the kibbutz which was established in 1948 about their Arab neighbors. By the end of two years, I became one of the few Israelis who actually lived with the Arabs inside of Israel. I had gained the credibility that I wanted and needed. Under Prime Minister Menechem Begin I became the first civil servant in Israel working on Jewish Arab relations in a senior level position in the Ministry of Education under the National Religious Party’s head Zevulun Hammer. Under the Begin government I established the Institute for Education for Jewish Arab Coexistence which was directly associated with the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Education. We also established the Department for Democracy and Coexistence Education in the Ministry of Education (which no longer exists). I directed the institute until the fourth month of the first intifada when I left to establish IPCRI – the Israel Palestine Center for Research and Information – a joint Israeli Palestinian public policy think and do-tank which I co-directed for 24 years. During those years we developed and ran more than 2000 working groups of professionals from Israel and Palestine confronting every aspect of the relations between the two peoples.

From the beginning of the first intifada, reading the political directives of the United Leadership of the Intifada, I understood that the intifada, from a political point of view, was designed to lead to a peace process and that is why in March 1988 I established IPCRI. While most of the public in Israel was struck with fear that the Palestinian uprising represented, I was filled with hope for a new beginning between the people of Israel and the people of Palestine. IPCRI succeeded in its work from the beginning because it adopted what were then two very radical concepts – Israelis and Palestinians would work together in one institution, jointly run on the basis of full parity and equality; and our work began from the premise that the solution to the conflict is two states for two peoples. Our work focused on “reverse engineering” knowing where we want to get to, figuring out how to get there.

Today, our two societies are living at the highest levels of fear that we have experienced in 76 years. Most Israelis and Palestinians cannot imagine a reality of living in peace side-by-side in two states. We are consumed by fear and hatred which are completely normal given what we have all be through since October 7, 2023. But it is essential that we understand that our history did not begin on October 7, 2023. The horrific events that we have been living through and too many of us have died through are the results of everything that happened before October 7, 2023. The conclusion that I came to in 1975 that there are two peoples who are living on this land and that they both have rights to be here and to attain self-determination is the same conclusion that we must all come to now in 2024. The trauma that we are all now experiencing will only be healed by changing our reality from fear to hope.

We will return to a peace process. It will not be a repeat of Oslo because we all made too many mistakes in the Oslo process. We will undoubtedly make new mistakes but we must not make the same mistakes all over again. Oslo was a very naïve process based on unfounded trust. Building trust must be a corner stone of renewed peacemaking activities. Risk taking must be built on true confidence that the other side is indeed sincere in their desire to live in peace and that must be demonstrated by significant and irreversible actions that reflect the most basic value of a commitment to live in peace. Without that there will be no peace and therefore; those of us who understand how and why Oslo failed must take a leading role in teaching the lessons of the failures and designing a new course of action with much greater chances of success.

In the coming weeks, Israeli and Palestinian colleagues and I will be presenting some new initiatives which are based on the above. These initiatives reflect the necessity of ensuring that this war will be the last Israeli-Palestinian war. There will be a ceasefire at some time and there will be new governments in Israel and in Palestine. There will be increased political will of our Arab neighbors to help secure regional stability, security, economic development and cooperation. There will be more support from the international community to help Israel and Palestine to set a new course. With all of the skepticism and cynicism that peace will ever be possible, we must realize that it is essentially inevitable. We cannot continue to kill each other and to destroy the lives of so many people who mainly want to live a decent life with enough to support their families, to enjoy the calm and security of waking up a new day every day, to enjoy personal and national dignity and to create a better future for our children. We Israelis and Palestinians are not so different. Most of us, believe it or not, want the same things. This war has to teach us that if only we, if only our side seeks to achieve these things while disturbing the possibilities for the other side to achieve them, none of us will have them. There are no winners in war. There is no total victory. War only has losers and we have too many who have lost too much. Only through peace will the people living between the River and the Sea be free and secure.  link
About the Author

The writer is the Middle East Director of ICO - International Communities Organization - a UK based NGO working in Conflict zones with failed peace processes. Baskin is a political and social entrepreneur who has dedicated his life to peace between Israel and her neighbors. He is also a founding member of “Kol Ezraheiha - Kol Muwanteneiha” (All of the Citizens) political party in Israel.

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

MDA - Magen David Adom - Israel Ambulance Corp

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

PMO- Prime Minister's Office

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

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