Don’t Go Into Rafah They Said. It’s a Mistake They Said.
The IDF and ISA confirmed last Thursday that after a year-long pursuit, on Wednesday, October 16, 2024, IDF soldiers from the Southern Command eliminated Yahya Sinwar, the leader of the Hamas terrorist organization, in an operation in the southern Gaza Strip.
“Yahya Sinwar planned and executed the October 7th Massacre, promoted his murderous ideology both before and during the war, and was responsible for the murder and abduction of many Israelis,” the IDF stated.
The Hamas leader was eliminated after a tank fired at a building in Rafah which was thought to contain terrorists. After that, infantry from the 450th Battalion raided and searched the building. During the searches, the forces found Sinwar’s body.
Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant hinted at the elimination in a post on X in which he quoted the verse from Leviticus: “‘You shall give chase to your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword.’ We will reach every terrorist, and we will eliminate him.” Alongside the post, Gallant added a picture with an empty space between Mohammad Deif and Hassan Nasrallah.
There is no question that the elimination of Yahya Sinwar was nothing short of a modern-day miracle. The IDF’s unexpected success during this stage of the war has badly humiliated Israel’s critics. Everything will be OK. We trust they’ll get over it.
Source:
IDF confirms: Yahya Sinwar eliminated, by Uzi Baruch/Israel National News, October 17, 2024
Spies That Lie
What Iran doesn’t know the U.S. will gladly share with them. And then lie about it to Israel.
The media has been filled with anonymous ‘leaks’ and ‘quotes’ from Biden-Harris administration officials regarding Israel’s attack plans on Iran. It was all too obvious that these leaks were deliberate and orchestrated.
The leaks now appear to have escalated to directly passing material on to Iran.
Senior American officials voiced serious concern on Saturday following the leak of two US intelligence documents allegedly outlining Israel’s preparations for a potential strike on Iran. These documents were published by a Telegram account linked to Iran.
While both the US Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the leaked documents, they did not deny their authenticity.
The leak occurred on Friday when the Middle East Spectator Telegram channel claimed it had received documents about Israel’s strike preparations from a source within the US intelligence community.
Brigadier General (ret.) Amir Avivi shared during an IDSF briefing this morning that this was simply part of a much bigger campaign, nevertheless, Israel must keep its strategy to itself.
At the critical moment, the leader of an army acts like one who has climbed up a height and then kicks away the ladder behind him. He carries his men deep into hostile territory before he shows his hand. ~~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Following the Money
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported Sunday night that the IDF carried out a series of raids targeting buildings belonging to the Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Qard Al-Hassan Association after asking residents to stay away. IDF spokesman in Arabic Avichay Adraee issued a series of warnings accompanied by maps of buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut, the eastern Beqaa, and south Lebanon, warning that these are facilities and interests affiliated with Hezbollah, and calling for people to keep their distance.
The Qard al-Hasan is similar in principle to the Jewish Gmach – offering interest-free loans to people in the community who need them. But according to Israeli sources, the bank was used to pay the salaries of Hezbollah terrorists. It also functions as a conduit for money laundering for Hezbollah’s drug trade.
The bank has been under sanctions imposed in 2007 by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control. In 2021, the U.S. Treasury Department said the bank “illicitly moves funds through shell accounts and facilitators, exposing Lebanese financial institutions to possible sanctions.”
If the money runs as deep as the many terror tunnels the IDF has uncovered, and continues to expose, then Israel’s defense forces have a long road ahead of it in order to rout out this source that enables terrorism.
Source:
IDF Blows Up Hezbollah’s Banks All Over Lebanon, by David Israel/Jewish Press, October 21, 2024
Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way
Troops from the Alexandroni Brigade’s Battalion 7012 on Wednesday blew up Hezbollah’s central operations command center in southern Lebanon.
The command center was built across from the Ramim Ridge and the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona in the Galilee panhandle. In the village of Muhajbib, where the command center was located, troops exposed numerous shafts that led to underground infrastructure consisting of advanced command centers, berthing and planning rooms, communications rooms, and more.
During the time that Battalion 7012 operated under the 8th Brigade, the troops seized hundreds of Claymore mines that were ready to be used, advanced shoulder-fired and anti-tank missiles, hundreds of hand grenades, hundreds of RPG grenades, hundreds of anti-tank mines, and ammunition.
Among other things, the forces were led to discover the largest storehouse that has been located thus far. During the operation, the troops eliminated dozens of terrorists above and below ground.
Due to the magnitude of the success and the will to prevent Hezbollah from restoring the infrastructure in the area, the command center was destroyed using dozens of tons of explosives. A pre-Sukkot blessing!
A Sukkah We Look Forward to Sitting In
On Sunday and Monday, the third and fourth days of Chil Ha’Moed Sukkot this week, a city of sukkahs is going to be erected in northern Gaza by community activists, rabbis, government ministers, MKs, public figures, and ordinary Jews. The effort is being led by longtime AFSI friend, Minister May Golan of the Likud Party.
It’s a project of the group Preparing for Settlement in Gaza which has been pushing since October 7 to bring back Jews to the Strip, to repair the physical, emotional, and spiritual harm of the Tisha B’Av 2005 expulsion.
The new Gaza “settlement” movement, led by many national-religious activists, including Daniella Weis, Bezalel Smotrich, and Itamar Ben Gvir, is planning to establish the first new Jewish communities in northern Gaza.
It’s a mitzvah to observe the Sukkot holiday. It’s an even greater mitzvah to recite “Leishev b’Sukkah” in a Sukkah on our land. What a blessing!! May the temporary dwellings of this Sukkot holiday that are being erected in “Gaza” be the start of our permanent and rightful return to our land.
If True, It Wouldn’t Surprise Us
Diplomatic sources on Tuesday told the Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Akhbar newspaper, that the United States sent a message to the Lebanese regarding Israeli military plans. According to the report, Israel is planning a limited operation in southern Lebanon.
According to the information the Americans snitched to the Lebanese, knowing full well Hezbollah would also receive the message, Israel wished to enter Lebanese territory at a depth of three kilometers from the border. The purpose of the operation is to cleanse the area from terrorists and their equipment, blow up or seal their tunnels, and get out as quickly as possible after completing the task.
The same diplomatic sources told the Hezbollah-affiliated newspaper that Israel made it clear: should UNIFIL and the Lebanese army not fulfill their role as required, Israel would take over the task of chasing away the terrorists.
It is important to note that the information comes from sources close to Hezbollah and that no official response has been received from Israeli or American government officials to this report.
Mass Casualty Terror Attack in Binyamina
Four soldiers were killed, and more than 51 Israelis soldiers were wounded, seven of them seriously, on Sunday evening when an explosive drone launched by Hezbollah hit their base near Wadi Ara in the Menashe Regional Council district, close to the town of Binyamina. All the wounded soldiers were evacuated, and their families are being notified.
It is believed the drone evaded the defense systems by entering Israel with another drone that was shot down. This one was flying so low that it dropped off the radar. A faulty assumption was made that it must have crashed or have been intercepted. Minister of Defense, Gallant, has vowed to employ methods to avoid another tragedy.
The Israel Defense Forces announced the names of the four soldiers killed in a Hezbollah drone attack on a Golani training base near Binyamina in north-central Israel, while questions abounded as to why sirens failed to sound ahead of the strike.
With the new week that began today, as of this writing, three surface-to-surface missiles were fired at central Israel late Monday afternoon by Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon.
As it claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attack, Hezbollah touted what it said was its ability to overwhelm Israeli air defenses even as the military forges ahead with its ground operation against the terror group in south Lebanon. That Hezbollah has such capabilities to reach deep into central Israel adds an urgent level of new security concerns in this war to defend Israel’s survival.
Will Guterres Do the Right Thing?
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday addressed UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres with a call to evacuate UNIFIL soldiers from Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon.
Netanyahu stated, “I would like to appeal directly to the UN Secretary General: The time has come for you to withdraw UNIFIL from Hezbollah strongholds and from the combat zones. The IDF has requested this repeatedly and has met with repeated refusal, which has the effect of providing Hezbollah terrorists with human shields. Your refusal to evacuate UNIFIL soldiers has turned them into hostages of Hezbollah. This endangers both them and the lives of our soldiers.”
He added in an appeal in English, “Mr. Secretary General, get the UNIFIL forces out of harm’s way. It should be done right now, immediately.”
It’s Israel’s Call to Make
Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant on Wednesday visited Unit 9900 of the IDF’s Intelligence Directorate, which is responsible for gathering visual intelligence.
He spoke about the recent Iranian attacks against Israel that failed, the reason being they weren’t precise. “The Air Force was unharmed – all the runways are operational, our activities are ongoing, not a single aircraft was damaged, not a single soldier or civilian was harmed,” he said.
“As we have shown until now in this war and in all arenas – whoever attacks Israel will pay a price. Our strike will be powerful, precise, and above all – surprising. They will not understand what happened and how it happened,” Gallant said.
As Israel convenes its cabinet to determine the response it will pursue for Iran’s attacks against the Jewish Nation State, Biden whines that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t share Israel’s plans with the US. We say – too bad. Israel does not need permission from anyone! It is a sovereign nation and can determine its own path over the course of this war to defend its very existence. It’s Israel’s call to make.
Reasonable Doubt Doesn’t Apply
Chairman of the Knesset Constitution Committee MK Simcha Rothman (Religious Zionists) and MK Yulia Malinovski (Yisrael Beitenu) are promoting a private bill according to which all terrorists suspected of having participated in the October 7 atrocities will be defined as illegal combatants and imprisoned indefinitely. This is contrary to the current law.
According to the Rothman-Malinovsky bill, a special court will hear the case of terrorists who are deemed eligible to be tried for the crime of genocide, and thus those terrorists would not be tried according to Israeli criminal law – meaning the evidence in their cases would be examined according to special legal procedures for the crime of genocide.
MK Malinovsky told Reshet Bet that a year after the catastrophe, it’s time to “find a solution and bring the damned terrorists to justice and do justice to the victims and their families.”
The big problem using the current law is that should the terrorists be tried according to Israel’s criminal rules of evidence, many of them would be able to establish reasonable doubt regarding their actions.
By being declared illegal combatants, the Hamas detainees would lose their right to criminal prosecution.
Just like the Nuremberg Trials that were held for the purpose of bringing Nazi war criminals to justice, a special court for the genocidal terrorists that sought the destruction of innocent Israeli women, men and children on October 7 must be established. We applaud MKs Rothman and Malinovksy for promoting this bill. We trust it will be pass and be implemented very soon.
Source:
New Bill Streamlines October 7 Hamas Terrorists’ Prosecutions, by David Israel/Jewish Press