🎗️Lonny's War Update- October 328, 2023 - August 29, 2024 🎗️

  

🎗️Day 328 that 107 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

*5:15am - north - rockets - Arab al Aramsha

*8:30am - south - rockets - Kissufim -Two rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip at the border community of Kissufim this morning, setting off sirens.

According to the IDF, both rockets struck open areas, and there are no injuries.

*1:00pm - north - hostile aircraft - Ein Kinieh, Kela, Sha'al - Several explosive-laden drones launched from Lebanon impacted in the northern Golan Heights a short while ago, according to the IDF.

Suspected drone sirens had sounded in the northern communities of Ein Qiniyye, Kela and Sha’al during the incident. There are no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

*2:00pm - north - rockets - Dafna, Kibbutz Dan, She'ar Hayeshuv
*3:10 - north - rockets - Zra'it
*4:35pm - north - rockets - Netua

Hostage Updates 

• Rescued captive calls to ‘put an end’ to hostage saga as crowd cheers his return home
  Brother of Farhan al-Qadi says terrorists shot him in leg before taking him to Gaza, where he was treated without anesthetic and held without sunlight for months
  

  Rescued captive Farhan al-Qadi on Wednesday urged an end to the hostages’ ordeal Wednesday, amid celebrations as he returned to his home in the southern Bedouin village of Khirbet Karkur.

  Earlier in the day, staffers cheered as al-Qadi was discharged from Beersheba’s Soroka Hospital, from which he had asked to be released so he could visit his ailing 90-year-old mother. Later, after he rode into Khirbet Karkur in a convoy of happily honking cars, al-Qadi met with elated crowds in a tent set up for the occasion.

  Looking pale and taking in the spotlight, the 52-year-old told the gathered press that he feels “100 percent,” while urging the government to reach a deal to bring home all the hostages.
  

  “The place I was in — I wouldn’t wish on anybody. So do everything — demonstrations, everything — to get the people home,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if they are Arab or Jewish, all have a family waiting for them. They also want to feel the joy.”

  “I hope, I pray for an end to this,” he added, saying he had delivered the same message in a phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shortly after returning to Israel.

  Al-Qadi was rescued Tuesday as troops combed a tunnel network in southern Gaza in search of hostages, the IDF said. The father of 11 was abducted on October 7 from Kibbutz Magen, near the Gaza border, where he worked as a security guard at a packaging plant. His brother Jamal was quoted Wednesday by Channel 12 news as saying that the terrorists who kidnapped al-Qadi shot him in the leg when he refused to tell them where there were Jews.

  The network said that in Gaza, al-Qadi’s wound was stitched with a needle and thread, without any anesthetic. Jamal said his brother was in solitary confinement without sunlight since December. Before that, according to Jamal, he was held with Thai agricultural workers who were abducted from the Gaza border communities.

  According to the report, al-Qadi told IDF troops after being rescued and again at the hospital that they could not imagine the vast expanse of the tunnel system Hamas built below Gaza.

  “You have no idea what Gaza looks like,” he was quoted as saying.

  Al-Qadi also reportedly said he was unable to tell the time or date, except from occasional conversations with his captors. Sometime before he was rescued — anywhere between a day and a week, Channel 12 said — his captors left, leaving him alone in a room with some food.

  Asked by the soldiers who rescued him how his hair and beard were so neat, al-Qadi reportedly said that when his captors cut their hair, he did, too. Al-Qadi’s friend Mazen Abu Siam, who spent a few minutes with the rescued hostage, said he was very thin.

  “He told us he was kept 50 meters [165 feet] underground and he wasn’t allowed to do anything, but they did allow him to pray,” Abu Siam said at the hospital, shortly before al-Qadi was released.

  Al-Kadi’s son Saleh told the Ynet news site, “We have no life without dad.”

  “His return to us was the most delightful surprise of [my] entire life,” Saleh said. “Now we’ll have a ball, and bring back to dad the happiness and good feelings that he lost over the past months.” Al-Qadi was kidnapped when his youngest son was only a few weeks old. While in captivity, Al-Qadi also became a grandfather for the first time.

  Former Rahat mayor Ata Abu Madighem told Channel 12 on Tuesday that Al-Qadi had witnessed the death of a fellow hostage with whom he had been held for two months. The information could not immediately be verified and there was no comment from the Israel Defense Forces or from the Hostage Families Forum.

  “They treated him as an Israeli in every respect,” said Abu Madighem, adding that Al-Qadi “barely saw the sun” while a hostage.

  It is believed that 104 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of 34 confirmed dead by the IDF. The shock assault saw thousands of Hamas-led terrorists storm southern Israel to kill nearly 1,200 people. link

• After a former Rahat mayor said rescued hostage Farhan al-Qadi had told him another captive died next to him at one point during his time in Gaza, Hebrew media names that hostage as Aryeh Zalmanovich, 85, whose death was confirmed in December.

  

  There is no comment from the Israel Defense Forces or from the Hostage Families Forum.

  “He said that one of the hostages, who was with him for two months, died next to him,” Ata Abu Madighem said in comments to the press broadcast Tuesday on Channel 12 news after meeting with al-Qadi in Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba.

  “This story is breaking his heart. He has many [terrible] memories. But ultimately, he is talking about being saved, rescued.” Abu Madighem, speaking to Kan TV, said the hostage who died was a Jewish man, adding he was not allowed to give more details.

• Over 300 vehicles are taking part in a convoy urging the government to reach a deal to free hostages held in Gaza, the Hostage and Missing Families Forum say in a statement.

The vehicles fly yellow flags and display pictures of hostages taken from Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7, driving from Hostages Square in Tel Aviv to the southern community, with the aim of bringing an “end to the abandonment” of the hostages, the statement reads.

At several points along the road, supporters of the hostage families rally to show their support, the forum says. Link 

• The fate of a potential ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas is “largely a question that is going to be answered” by the leader of the Palestinian terror group, CIA Deputy Director David Cohen says.

The US official does not refer to Hamas’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, by name. The Israelis are showing seriousness in the negotiations, Cohen tells an intelligence and national security summit in Washington.

Mediators from the US, Egypt and Qatar have been working to strike a deal between the sides and prevent a broader regional war.

On those efforts, Cohen says: “There may be episodes where people would step back from the brink, but I don’t think anybody can be confident that that effort to control escalation is something that… any party in that region” can control. Link

• Hostage family members gather at the Gaza border to call, yell and scream into powerful loudspeakers, with the hope their loved ones being held in captivity can hear their words.

  “Edan Alexander,” calls Varda Ben Baruch, grandmother of the 20-year-old lone soldier from Tenafly, New Jersey, who was taken captive on October 7. “It’s Grandma and Grandpa, you are our soul, do you hear us? Idanaleh! Mom and Dad are waiting for you, we’re worried about you and waiting for your return home. Be strong, you’re strong, survive, we’re doing everything we can for you and for all the other hostages.”

  With words of prayer, beseeching God, and, at times, berating the Israeli government, parents, siblings, children and grandparents call out to their loved ones, held hostage for 328 days in the tunnels and hideouts of Gaza.

  “Nimrod, Dad is speaking, we’re here at the border,” calls Yehuda Cohen, whose son, Nimrod, was a soldier when he was taken hostage on October 7 from the Nahal Oz army base. “I will not give up until you come home, I will run everywhere in the world until we have a deal that will free you and the other hostages.”

Eli Shtivi, father of hostage Idan Shtivi, drapes himself in a Jewish prayer shawl as he calls out to his son, telling him that Israel will give up on controlling Gaza’s Philadelphi Corridor in order to get him and the other hostages home, referring to one of the sticking points in the current hostage negotiations.

Eli Shtivi (left) and Varda Ben Baruch in a yellow hat (right) at the Gaza border on August 29, 2024. (Courtesy Hostages and Missing Families Forum)

“It’s Mama, Hersh,” calls Rachel Goldberg-Polin in English, speaking to her son, Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was taken captive from a field shelter near the Supernova desert rave on October 7. “It’s day 328. We are all here. All the families of the remaining 107 hostages,” she says as she blesses him, telling her son that she is giving him the traditional blessing she offers during her morning prayers and on Friday nights.

“May God bless you and keep you. May God’s light shine upon you, and may God be gracious to you. May you feel God’s Presence within you always, and may you find peace,” says Goldberg-Polin. 

Some parents sob, including Shira Albag, mother of Liri Albag, 19, one of the female surveillance soldiers held captive. Liri’s sister screams into the microphone, begging her not to give up.Hostage relatives breach the fence of Kibbutz Nirim, after crying out to the captives via powerful loudspeakers, and head toward Gaza, which is about 2 kilometers away, in an attempt to run toward their loved ones.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum falsely says they have breached the Gaza border fence itself.

“The families in their great pain breached the fence to Gaza and ran toward the Gaza Strip to get as close to their loved ones as possible,” the Forum claims in a statement, citing 11 months of unsuccessful pleas that the government secure a comprehensive hostage deal.

The Forum says a short while later that the relatives heeded pleas by security forces and made their way back to Nirim.   video

 

•  Bereaved family members fume over demolition of massacre site at Nahal Oz base 
  

  Parents of Israel Defense Force surveillance soldiers murdered at the Nahal Oz military base on October 7 have accused the military of destroying evidence pertaining to the Hamas massacre and acting against their wishes after they discovered that it was planning to demolish the affected buildings, contrary to what they were promised.

  
  Memorial candles line the charred desks in the destroyed command center of the Nahal Oz base, February 23, 2024. (Used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)

  The parents of the surveillance soldiers weren’t informed in any formal capacity of the plans to demolish the buildings on the base in order to make it fit for use, Hebrew media reported on Tuesday, but found out by chance.

  Sixty-six soldiers were killed in the Nahal Oz base, near the Gaza Strip’s northern border with Israel when Hamas stormed into the south of the country on October 7. Of that number, 15 were female surveillance soldiers. A further seven surveillance soldiers were taken hostage, one of whom, Cpl. Ori Megidish, was rescued in the early days of the war and has since returned to active service. Another, Cpl. Noa Marciano, was pronounced dead in November.
  

  Eyal Eshel, the father of Sgt. Roni Eshel, said that the construction work at the outpost directly contradicted promises made to the families.

  Sharing images online of the ongoing work, Eshel said the sight of the demolitions “shatter my heart into pieces.”

  “Despite the fact that the prime minister personally promised us that the base would become a memorial site, today they began dismantling the base where Roni and her friends were burned to death while they screamed into the radio,” he wrote on X. “We were promised that the place would be preserved… everything is falling apart in front of our eyes.”
  

  Also taking to social media, Sigal Price, mother of Staff Sgt. Noa Price, said in a post on Facebook that by tearing down the buildings on the base, the IDF was destroying the good times that her daughter experienced throughout her difficult military service.

  “My Noa, they took you from us in this place on October 7, 2023, and today they also took the memories of the life you and your friends shared in this place,” she wrote. “They don’t want us to remember the life you created in this place, your legacy that consisted of true friendship, joy, shared meals, celebrations, and above all — love and concern for each other and for the place that you called home.”

  Prior to October 7, many of the soldiers stationed at the base had warned their higher-ups of suspicious activity on the other side of the Gaza border, but their concerns went unheeded, and the information they reported was not passed on to senior officials.

  In recent months, their parents established “Their Voice — The Surveillance Soldier Families Forum” through which they have pledged to fight for the establishment of a state commission of inquiry into the failures that led to the largest terror attack in Israel’s history.

  In a joint statement on Tuesday, the parents raised concerns that the demolition may not have just been ordered as part of a plan to return the base to operational use, but that it was intentionally being carried out to conceal evidence surrounding the terror onslaught and the failure to prevent it.

  “Nothing is a coincidence, evidence is being obscured before the investigations and before the state commission of inquiry,” they said, according to Channel 12. “One can’t help but wonder how it will be possible to investigate in depth what happened at the outpost, when the evidence that remains on the buildings that tell the story disappears.”
  

  “We understand that the army has needs and that the outpost needs to return to use, but it’s possible to do both,” the parents said of the need to preserve their daughters’ memories. “The army agreed with us on the issue of preserving the outpost and the legacy of the soldiers who fell there, but in practice, they have left us only with the memory of death. All the memories of life were taken from us today.”

  
  Families of Israeli observation soldiers who were killed by Hamas terrorists at the Nahal Oz surveillance outpost on October 7, speak to press outside the Nahal Oz surveillance outpost near the Israeli border with the Gaza Strip, July 17, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

  Speaking to Channel 12, an unnamed military source said that the construction work was being carried out to fix security issues that were identified in the aftermath of the Hamas terror onslaught.

  The source added, however, that while some of the sites of the massacre were being demolished, specific buildings were indeed being preserved in order to serve as a memorial to the soldiers as per an agreement made with the bereaved families.

  In a statement to Channel 12 following the criticism, the IDF said that it was nevertheless halting the construction work “pending a dialogue with the bereaved families.”

  “The works do not pertain to the operations room or the shelter in accordance with the directives from the Chief of Staff,” the statement continued. “The IDF shares in the grief of the bereaved families and the families of the hostages and will continue to accompany them.” link  The government is working to erase the overwhelming and blinding evidence of their total failures and the army is assisting in this horrible endeavor. Unfortunately, there are too many heartless people who are making these decisions and they need to be stopped. The evidence of the massacre, destruction and devastation must be protected to serve as memorials, testimonials and lessons to be learned and etched into the minds and souls of future decision makers so that history will never be repeated. It's way too late to make an impression on the decision makers of today because, even after 11 months of the war, they refuse to take any responsibility.
  

• US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan says the negotiations over a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages have made progress.

  Speaking to reporters in Beijing, he says “the negotiators are bearing down on the details, meaning that we have advanced the discussions to a point where it’s in the nitty-gritty, and that is a positive sign of progress.”

  Officials from the United States, Egypt, Qatar and Israel have held several days of talks trying to hammer out an updated proposal that could be submitted to Hamas. But there has been no sign of a breakthrough, and Israel and Hamas remain far apart on key issues.

  US officials have said they are closing in on a deal, while Hamas has accused the United States of adopting unacceptable demands by Israel and trying to force them on the terror group. Officials in Egypt, one of the key mediators, have also expressed skepticism.

  “At the end of the day, nothing is done until it’s done. And so we’re just going to keep working at this until we finally get the ceasefire and hostage deal across the line,” Sullivan says.  link The lower level negotiators are making progress on the details of the proposal but the issue is with the high level points. This brings me a little back to Oslo where they chose to find the points of agreement on the easy things and then delay dealing with the more problematic issues. Here, too they have done that but for a very different reason (my assessment). Very little real progress has been made on the 2 late entry demands that Netanyahu put in knowing that Hamas will never agree to them. So instead of scuttling all of the negotiations and giving Netanyahu the excuse to call of continued negotiations, they decided to knock out the areas that they could reach agreement and compromise on without too many problems. But now, they have to go back to the main areas of contention and try to find compromise or solution. If not, it's all over.

Gaza 

•  The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) temporarily suspends movements across the Gaza Strip after it claimed one of its clearly marked vehicles was struck by at least 10 bullets while approaching an Israeli military checkpoint.

  WFP said in a statement that the convoy of two armored vehicles had received “multiple clearances by Israeli authorities to approach” the checkpoint at the Wadi Gaza bridge last night. No one in the vehicle struck was hurt.

  
  

• Israel has reportedly okayed temporary humanitarian truces in the Gaza Strip in order to facilitate polio vaccinations for the local population.

  According to Channel 13, the decision was made at US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s demand when he visited last week, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and security chiefs approving it without updating the security cabinet ministers.

  The Prime Minister’s Office denies authorizing a truce, but confirms it okayed “designating certain areas in the Strip.” It claims the move was presented in the security cabinet and got their support.

• Hamas has agreed to hold what it presents as a seven-day humanitarian truce in Gaza to carry out a vaccination drive against polio among the local population, the Arabic-language, London-based Al-Araby Al-Jadeed news site reports.

  The outlet says Hamas spokesman Jihad Taha told it in an interview that the Palestinian terror group is urging all sides to go through with the temporary truce initiative, arguing that Israel must not be allowed to “evade or procrastinate and put in place alternatives by specifying places to start the vaccination process and not committing to any humanitarian truce.”

  The outlet cites unnamed Egyptian sources as expecting a truce to kick off within days, lasting through daylight hours for 3-5 days, excluding places in the Strip where the IDF is operating.

  The truce, reportedly discussed by Egypt and the US last week, would be independent of any Israel-Hamas deal, as talks have failed to yield a breakthrough.

  The UN is preparing to vaccinate an estimated 640,000 children in Gaza, after the World Health Organization said a 10-month-old baby had been paralyzed by the type 2 poliovirus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.

  Last night, Channel 13 reported that Jerusalem had okayed temporary humanitarian truces in the Strip in order to facilitate polio vaccinations.

  According to the report, the decision was made at US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s demand when he visited last week. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and security chiefs were said to have approved the step without updating the security cabinet ministers.

  The Prime Minister’s Office denied authorizing the truce, but confirmed it had okayed “designating certain areas in the Strip.” It claimed the move was presented in the security cabinet and got its support.

• Hamas’s Rafah Brigade has “collapsed” as a result of the IDF’s ongoing offensive in the city in the southern Gaza Strip, military sources say.

  The remarks come a week after Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the Rafah Brigade had been defeated.

  According to the IDF, around 80% of Hamas’s tunnels along the Philadelphi Corridor, the Egypt-Gaza border area, have been neutralized.  The military has also seen Hamas operatives increasingly trying to escape from tunnels in Rafah and flee north to the Israeli-designated humanitarian zone. The IDF has successfully been ambushing Hamas gunmen in the area who have tried to flee, military sources add.

Northern Israel - Lebanon/Hizbollah/Syria

• Netanyahu declares return of northern residents a ‘national goal’; Gantz: That’s a lie

Visiting the Lebanese border following a briefing with the IDF’s Northern Command, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declares that the return of Israel’s displaced residents is a “national goal.”

“A few days ago, we thwarted a surprise attack by Hezbollah on the State of Israel. We destroyed thousands of short-range rockets, which were aimed at the Galilee and the Golan,” Netanyahu says in the wake of Sunday morning’s massive Hezbollah attack in which the terror group fired 230 rockets and 20 into Israel.

“We stopped all the drones aimed at the State of Israel, the Galilee, and the center,” he continues, touting the preemptive strike ahead of an anticipated attack on Tel Aviv as “a great success.”

However, “I am not telling you that it is enough,” he continues, adding that “this is not the end of the story.”

“When will it be the end of the story? Only when we can return the security and the residents to their homes safely. It’s not a statement, it’s not a slogan — it’s a national goal first and foremost. We are committed to achieving it — and we will achieve it, with your help and God’s help,” he says.

Nearly 70,000 residents of the north remain displaced following the outbreak of hostilities with Hezbollah in the wake of Hamas’ October 7 attack on southern Israel.

Responding to Netanyahu, former war cabinet minister and National Unity chairman Benny Gantz asserts that the prime minister’s claim of prioritizing the return of the displaced “is a lie.”

“You did not agree to include it in the goals of the war, prevented a discussion on the diversion of resources to the north for many months, and above all — wasted time,” he tweets.

“Even now, you continue to be cut off from the residents, repeatedly coming to the north and not meeting them or the heads of their [local] authorities.” Link

• Ahead of the new school year, which begins on Sunday, a survey shows that a majority of Israeli families evacuated from the northern conflict zone lack school supplies for their kids, and a significant minority don’t know which school their children will attend.

  A full 60% of northern families “reported a lack of school supplies to provide for their children,” and 20% of evacuated northern parents said “they have no idea where their children will be studying come the first day of school,” according to a press release from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ).

  The IFCJ, which has provided significant assistance to evacuees, commissioned the survey from the Geocartography Group, an Israeli research institute, which conducted the online survey of over 800 adult residents, both Arab and Jewish, in August, the statement says.

  The survey found that among evacuee families from the north, who have been scattered throughout Israel since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict in late October, 35% of parents said their children will attend a local school where they are currently living, 32.5% said their children would attend a temporary school set up for evacuee students, and 20% were still uncertain where their children would attend school. A small minority, 2.5%, said they didn’t expect their children to attend school.

  The survey also found that a full 82.5% of parents evacuated from the north said “their children are expressing more concerns and difficulties” about their situation compared to last year, and 65% said their children are “expressing higher levels of anxiety and fear.”

  More than half of survey respondents felt that the high cost of living has hurt their financial ability to provide a good education for their children, and 82% of evacuated parents said they have had to cut back on buying clothes due to economic reasons.  link This, unfortunately, is par for the course with this worthless government. They have totally abandoned the north and all the residents. We are now almost 11 months into the war and almost 100,000 people are still refugees in their own country and the government has no idea when they can go back home and has not developed any strategy for the security situation, for their return, or for their staying refugees. September 1, the first day of school in Israel is right around the corner, but for so many of these evacuees, the government doesn't seem to be aware of that. How much longer can this go on?

West Bank and Jerusalem and Terror attacks within Israel

•     Israel’s large-scale counterterrorism operation in the West Bank “risks seriously deepening the already catastrophic situation” in the territory, the United Nations says.

  The Israeli military launched a series of coordinated raids across four cities — Jenin, Nablus, Tubas, and Tulkarem — with the army saying it killed nine Palestinian terrorists.

  Israel’s operations in the cities “and the killing of at least nine Palestinians, two of them reportedly children, take the overall death toll in the West Bank since October 7 to 637,” UN Human Rights Office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani says in a statement.

  During the same period, 27 people, including Israeli security personnel, have been killed in terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank. Another five members of the security forces were killed in clashes with terror operatives in the West Bank.

  “This represents the highest number of fatalities over a period of eight months since the UN first started recording casualties in the West Bank two decades ago.”

  Violence has surged in the West Bank during the Israel-Hamas war sparked by the Hamas terror group’s October 7 massacre in Israel.

  “Many children have been killed while throwing stones at highly protected Israeli security forces, as have other Palestinians posing no imminent threat to life or serious injury,” Shamdasani says.

  “Such unnecessary or disproportionate use of force and the increase in apparent targeted and other summary killings are alarming.”

  She says thousands of Palestinians had been arbitrarily arrested and tortured, subjected to unrelenting settler violence, severe restrictions on movement and expression, their homes and property destroyed or seized, and forcibly displaced.

  “Israel, as the occupying power, must abide by its obligations under international law,” she says.

  “The Israeli security forces’ use of airstrikes and other military weapons and tactics violates human rights norms and standards applicable to law enforcement operations.”

  Shamdasani says alleged unlawful killings needed to be thoroughly and independently investigated, and those responsible held to account. Link
  
  

• As part of an ongoing IDF operation in the West Bank’s Far’a camp, near Tubas, troops located what the military describes as a command room used by local terror operatives embedded within a mosque.

  The site had numerous surveillance cameras hooked up to television screens, which, according to the IDF, was used by terror operatives to track Israeli forces.

  A video from an IDF drone shows the entrance to the mosque, the walls of which are plastered with “martyr posters.” The video also shows equipment that the IDF says is used to build explosive devices.

  Further inside the mosque, several primed explosive devices were found, according to the IDF. This evening, Palestinian media report that the mosque was blown up.

• Overnight, Israeli forces killed five Palestinian gunmen who were hiding in a mosque in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, including a local terror leader, the IDF, police and Shin Bet say.

  The IDF launched a large-scale operation in Tulkarem yesterday. Troops are also operating in the city of Jenin and the Far’a camp near Tubas as part of the operation. Yesterday, Palestinian media reported that 11 Palestinians had been killed amid the ongoing IDF operation, meaning the toll has now risen to 16.

  In Tulkarem, troops of Border Police’s elite Yamam counterterrorism unit battled a group of gunmen who had been holed up in a mosque, following intelligence of their whereabouts provided by the Shin Bet, the joint statement says. Five Palestinian gunmen were killed and one Israeli Yamam officer was lightly hurt in the exchange, according to the military.

  Among the dead is Muhammad Jaber, known as Abu Shuja’a, who had been previously reported by Palestinian media to be the commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s local wing in the Nur Shams camp in Tulkarem. The Shin Bet says Jaber was involved in planning and directing many terror attacks, including the killing of Amnon Muchtar in a terror attack in Qalqilya in June.

  Another terror operative was arrested, according to the statement.

  Palestinian media names the arrested individual as Mohammed Qassas, a member of Islamic Jihad’s local wing in Tulkarem.

Politics and the War (general news)

•  Families of victims slain at the Supernova music festival by Hamas terrorists on October 7 are planning their own memorial, Channel 13 reports, amid a continued fracas over how the anniversary of the onslaught should be marked and to what extent the government should be involved.

  The network says the Supernova ceremony will kick off at the rave site near Re’im at 6:29 a.m. on October 7, exactly a year after the beginning of the largest terror attack in the state’s history.

  Some 1,200 were murdered that day, including 364 at the dance party, and 251 were taken hostage to Gaza.

  The ceremony “will honor the memory of the victims, without politics and politicking,” says the organizer, who is the father of rave victim Ron Yehudai, according to Channel 13, which adds that several unnamed artists have confirmed their participation. Link

  
  
• Netanyahu unhappy with Regev’s unwavering stance on state Oct. 7 memorial
  

  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly privately bashing Transportation Minister Miri Regev of his Likud party over her conduct surrounding the embattled state memorial planned for the anniversary of the October 7 onslaught, which she is organizing.

  Regev has refused to back down from the plans, even faced with overwhelming refusal to cooperate by Gaza border towns and hostage families, who are organizing their own event.

  “I have no control over her,” Netanyahu claimed in a recent closed meeting, according to an unsourced report by the Kan public broadcaster. “I also think she is making a mistake regarding this whole issue. But there is no one to talk to; she does what she wants.” Netanyahu has avoided commenting publicly on the matter, even as the split memorials have reignited intense divisions within Israeli society. His office declines to respond to the Kan report.

  The report says some Netanyahu associates believe the premier should intervene and change at least some parts of the planned ceremony.

• The Prime Minister’s Office releases a short statement slamming US sanctions against a settler outpost support organization that receives ministerial funding.

  The office says it views the issue “with utmost severity.”

  “The issue is under intense discussion with the United States,” the office adds. Link if he truly took it severely, he would do the right things; first would be to remove the criminal Ben Gvir as Minister of Police, then instruct the police and army to act strictly according to the law and prevent the extremist attacks on Palestinians and arrest all perpetrators, and finally push to make these extremists groups and organizations illegal racist groups 

  
  

• Top Hamas official Khaled Mashaal calls for a resumption of suicide bombings in the West Bank, according to reports in Arabic media, including Sky News Arabia.

  In a video address to a conference in Istanbul, Turkey, Mashaal says: “We want to return to [suicide] operations. This is a situation that can only be addressed by open conflict. They are fighting us with open conflict, and we are confronting them with open conflict.”

  “I repeat my call to everyone to participate on multiple fronts in the actual resistance against the Zionist entity,” he adds.

• On the evening before the Knesset voted to pass the so-called reasonableness law in July 2023, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid received a security briefing from Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, who provided him with “unprecedented warnings” about “the security consequences of the coup d’état and the internal rift it was causing,” the Yesh Atid party chairman says.

  Lapid’s remarks, delivered in his testimony before an independent civilian commission of inquiry into the failures of October 7, refer to the government’s highly divisive judicial overhaul it advanced last year, which was derided by some critics as an attempted coup.

  Pushing back against the frequent claim that the government had not received advance warning that Hamas was no longer deterred, Lapid states that “it was indeed informed. I was informed, and the intelligence material I saw was of course also seen by the prime minister and cabinet ministers.”

  “During the months leading up to the disaster, the prime minister and cabinet ministers received a series of serious, unprecedented warnings. From the middle of 2023 there were more and more voices within the terrorist organizations that said that the moment they had been waiting for had arrived,” he says.

  Lapid recalls asking Bar “if these warnings were also brought before the prime minister and cabinet ministers, and the answer was: ‘Of course they were.'”

  “President [Isaac] Herzog also received updates regarding the growing security risk and expressed this in his talks with the prime minister,” Lapid adds.

  “The next day, about two hours before the vote, I spoke with President Herzog on the phone, and he informed me that the prime minister had withdrawn from all agreements after having a tense meeting with [Justice] Minister Yariv Levin and following messages sent to him by ministers [Bezalel] Smotrich and [Itamar] Ben Gvir. I informed the media that all attempts at compromise had come to naught, and the government was presenting the law in its original and extreme version,” Lapid continues, adding that Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had “tried to reach an agreement with us” and that “his motive was purely security.”

  On August 21, 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s military secretary Brig. Gen. Avi Gil gave both the premier and Opposition Leader Yair Lapid a security update during which he warned that Israel’s enemies — from Iran and Hezbollah to terrorist organizations in Gaza and the West Bank — had identified “weakness on the Israeli side,” Lapid tells an independent commission of inquiry probing the government’s failure on October 7.

  These signs of weakness seen by Israel’s enemies, he says, included internal tensions and a loss of capability within the Israeli military “alongside an emerging crisis with the Americans.”

  Lapid says he is determined “to debunk the claim” that the political echelon had not been updated that Hamas was no longer deterred from attacking Israel. He says he had been updated and so had the prime minister.

  He recounts that IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi sought to meet with Netanyahu about the national security repercussions of the divide in Israel over the judicial overhaul, and was refused. Halevi instead resorted to writing to Netanyahu about the dangers. Says Lapid: Halevi wanted it on record that he had warned and been ignored.

  At the August 21, 2023 briefing, Gil told Netanyahu and Lapid that Iran and terror groups in Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza “all identified weakness, an internal divide, tensions, and a loss of preparedness in the army, alongside an emerging crisis with the Americans.”

  Gil’s presentation, which synthesized material from all the defense hierarchies, indicated that Israel’s enemies saw an opportunity to harm it, says Lapid.

  While he considered this warning to be dramatic, Lapid says, “the prime minister — and here I am giving only a personal impression, so it can be disputed — seemed bored and indifferent to the issue, and did not comment on it.”

  Over the next few weeks, Lapid says, he viewed classified intelligence material provided to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that indicated that deterrence had indeed eroded. He also saw highly classified material, made available to him as a former prime minister.

  On September 18 at the committee, he “saw a further warning,” he says. “To me, what was written there was unequivocal: Israeli deterrence has eroded dramatically; our enemies think they have a rare opportunity to harm us,” Lapid says.

  The material showed “Israel is at the greatest level of danger,” says Lapid.

  Deeply troubled, Lapid recalls, he held a press conference on September 20 where, he reminds the commission, he warned of a looming multifront confrontation.

  Lapid reads out to the commission what he said publicly on September 20, beginning with the following warning: “Ahead of Yom Kippur, I am compelled to warn the citizens of Israel: We are drawing close to a multifront confrontation. According to the security establishment, the number of alerts in Judea and Samaria is unprecedented. And the recent events at the Gaza border are precisely of the kind that in the past have led to rounds of fighting…”

  Summing up this portion of his testimony, Lapid says the prime minister did know of the looming danger but ignored it. Netanyahu knew, the cabinet knew, “the defense establishment did warn,” and all the intelligence establishments warned repeatedly.

  Lapid says it is important to “distinguish between the fact that on October 7 there was no tactical, concrete warning of the breaching the fence, and the repeated strategic warnings of an eruption of violence and the loss of deterrence.”

  Netanyahu, he charges, “knew that deterrence was weakened, and knew that the terror groups were watching [the rifts in] Israeli society.”

  The prime minister also knew he had appointed ministers “who should not be anywhere near Israel’s sacred security,” says Lapid, naming Bezalel Smotrich, who he says was given an untenable role of responsibility within the Defense Ministry, and Itamar Ben Gvir, who as minister of national security is responsible for the police, border police and Temple Mount.

  Netanyahu knew Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad saw “an opportunity,” Lapid says. “He knew it was the government’s responsibility to act on the warnings, and did not do so.”

  Despite repeatedly warning to the prime minister that national security had been eroded by his coalition’s efforts to advance its judicial overhaul agenda last year, “instead of acting, [the defense establishment] waited for the political echelon’s instructions,” Opposition Leader Yair Lapid tells an independent commission of inquiry probing the government’s failure to stop Hamas’s October 7 attack.

  “There is no excuse for it, there can be no justification for it,” he continues.

  Nonetheless, Lapid stresses, the IDF’s responsibility for the disaster “does not negate the political echelon’s responsibility” for the worst mistake in Israeli history.

  “This catastrophe was preventable,” he insists.

  He says “the discussion about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s motives or mental state is none of my business.” “I cannot say here with certainty why he did not act in accordance with the intelligence material. I can tell you that the definition of the role of the prime minister and the cabinet, perhaps the most critical definition of that role, is the duty to stop everything in the face of this type and quality of intelligence and information, and mobilize the entire system to stop the threat. The first job of a prime minister in Israel is to prevent the death of civilians,” he argues.

• The Prime Minister’s Office accuses Opposition Leader Yair Lapid of lying after he claims Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ignored warning signs ahead of October 7.

  “Yair Lapid is lying again. Prime Minister Netanyahu did not receive any warning about the war in Gaza — not a month before and not even an hour before October 7. The opposite is true and the protocols prove it,” the PMO claims in a statement in response to the Yesh Atid party chairman’s testimony before an independent civilian commission of inquiry into the attack.

  “Lapid, who brought in workers from Gaza and gave free gas to [Hazbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah while promising that this would prevent war, is the last one who can preach in matters of security,” it adds.  link I would sooner believe Lapid over Netnayahu and his cronies any day. As Opposition leader, Lapid was given the security update together with Netanyahu. Netanyahu has and is doing everything to pin blame for October 7 on others, so Lapid is the person to be believed here.

The Region and the World

•    Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi rebels agree to allow tugboats and rescue ships to reach the damaged Greek-flagged crude oil tanker Sounion in the Red Sea.

  Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York claims the group has agreed to a temporary truce.

  “Several countries have reached out to ask Ansar Allah [the Houthis], requesting a temporary truce for the entry of tugboats and rescue ships into the incident area,” Iran’s UN mission says. “In consideration of humanitarian and environmental concerns, Ansar Allah has consented to this request.”

  But Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam tells Reuters that there is no temporary truce and the group only agreed after several international parties contacted the group to allow the towing of the tanker to avoid marine environmental damage.

Personal Stories

  

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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