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IDF Spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari delivered an address today in English on the war between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization and the airstrike in the Rafah area in which 30 people were reportedly killed on Sunday.

He said that the fire caused by the airstrike could not have been caused by the munitions used by the IDF and presented a conversation between two Gazans saying that the Israeli strike was not that strong and that the fire was likely caused by munitions or other materials kept by terrorist organizations in the area.

The facts about the IDF strike in Rafah:

The IDF targeted two senior Hamas terrorists it had tracked by aerial surveillance to a Hamas compound in Rafah

The IDF confirmed no women or children were in the compound before striking

The strike took place more than a mile outside the Al-Mawasi designated humanitarian zone and more than 0.1 miles from the shelters that caught fire.

The strike was carried out using 37 lb. warheads — the smallest munition IDF jets can use; the IDF munitions alone could not have ignited such a large fire.

The IDF is continuing to investigate the cause of the fire, including the possibility that Hamas had stored weapons in the area that the IDF was not aware of, and which exploded due to the strike.

This is another opportunity to rush to blame Israel in the public’s mind. The sad reality is that if Israel is at fault, the outcry over the reportedly 30 civilian deaths would have been far greater than that of the Oct. 7th massacre, which everyone seems to have forgotten about. We hope that Israel will not accept blame for this “tragic mishap” unless it’s proven the IDF were at fault and did not take all reasonable precautions. While there is no definitive finding as to the cause of the fire, we trust the facts will be revealed soon and exonerate Israel.

Sources:
IDF Spokesman: Fire from Rafah strike could not have been caused by IAF munition, by Israel National News, May 28, 2024

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https://t.me/beholdisraelchannel

An ambiguously worded ruling by the International Court of Justice does not rule out continued military operations in Rafah, Israeli officials said on Sunday. One analyst said Israel’s refutation of claims of “genocide” should end the ICJ’s jurisdiction once and for all.

From its seat in The Hague, the ICJ issued an emergency ruling on Friday, with Lebanese Judge Nawaf Salam, president of the court, calling on Israel to “immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Israeli jurist Talia Einhorn, a Professor of Law stated, “By holding that it is plausible that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, the Court has turned the Convention on its head. It is a shame that only Julia Sebutinde, the Honorable Vice-President of the ICJ held that, in the absence of any evidence of genocide, the ICJ had no jurisdiction to adjudicate and therefore no jurisdiction to make interim orders. The Court is not competent to micromanage Israel’s fight for survival.”

Source:
Ambiguous International Court Ruling Unlikely to End Rafah Military Operations, by Pesach Benson/TPS, May 26, 2024

Israel’s Knesset is set to hold a preliminary vote on Wednesday on two bills targeting the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) over its ties to terrorism.

One of the bills, proposed by Knesset member Yulia Malinovsky (Yisrael Beiteinu), seeks to define the agency as a terrorist organization and cut all official ties with it, while the other, tabled by MK Dan Illouz (Likud) seeks to strip UNRWA of various immunities it currently enjoys. Illouz, whose bill seeks to strip UNRWA of immunities it enjoys with regard to taxation, lawsuits and more, said, the agency “is not and cannot be part of the solution” in the Gaza Strip.

Malinovsky’s bill “will allow for a complete dissociation from the agency—no cooperation, no trade, nothing,” she told JNS.

We look forward to this vote passing. All ties with UNRWA must be cut.

Source:
Knesset to vote on bill designating UNRWA a terror group, another stripping its immunities, by Troy Osher Fritzhand/JNS

Following announcements by several European countries, including Spain, Ireland, and Norway, that they will unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has announced a nonviolent response that has the world in a tizzy.

Smotrich said that he would take financial steps which would topple the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria, where the European countries have declared they would recognize “Palestine.”

Among these steps is a complete halt to the transfer of tax money to the Palestinian Authority, and no extension of the indemnity extended to banks which transfer money to banks in Judea and Samaria.

Smotrich also called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take a number of financial steps which will deal a critical blow to the Palestinian Authority and may cause its economic collapse within a matter of months.

The media is hysterical and reporting on what they see as a potential financial collapse that will badly cripple the PA if Smotrich’s plan is implemented. OK, so what response do they have to offer for the PA to turn itself around and become a respectful entity? None that we’ve heard of. If the PA really wants to survive and be a force for good for its people, then it needs to develop into a peace loving and law-abiding organization. Not a terrorist operation hell-bent on destroying Israel.

Source:
Will Smotrich’s plan topple the Palestinian Authority?, by Chana Roberts/Israel National News, May 23, 2024

Israeli lawmakers in the Knesset plenum voted Wednesday to approve cancelation of the Disengagement Law in northern Samaria. The residents of four Israeli towns in the region were expelled from their homes during the 2005 Disengagement from Gaza, along with those living in the Gush Katif region.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has instructed his staff to implement the new law in Sa-Nur, Ganim, Kedim and Homesh.

“After the Knesset passage of the law canceling the disengagement and at the end of the work done by IDF headquarters, we were able to complete the historic move,” Gallant said in a statement. “The Jewish hold on Judea and Samaria guarantees security. Implementation of the law to cancel the disengagement will lead to the development of settlements and provide security to the residents of the area,” Gallant said.

Now, the government must approve building in these communities as part of an overall building surge in Judea and Samaria. Stopping Palestinian Arab land grabs and providing increased security through expansion and all other available means for the Israelis in the region should be a priority!

Source:
Israel Cancels Disengagement Law for Northern Samaria, by Hana Levi Julian/Jewish Press, May 22, 2024

Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council, revealed an official IDF document proving that no IDF troops had been transferred from Gaza to Samaria on the day before October 7. Plus, they were not specifically moved to protect the protest tent set up by MK Zvi Sukkot in Huwara, following the attacks that took place there.

The truth states that the transfer of the forces to reinforcement positions throughout Samaria was part of a quarterly IDF plan from as early as August 2023, and therefore is not connected to MK Zvi Sukkot’s protest tent.

This matter was a heated debate so the Israel haters in the media and other leftists could prove that the massacre was enabled in part because battalions were moved from the south to Samaria on the evening prior to October 7, to protect Huwara and MK Zvi Sukkot’s protest tent. They claimed that by doing this, they could point the finger at the “settlers” in Samaria as being responsible for the circumstances that led to the massacre of October 7. Thankfully, the truth has been revealed.

Source:
IDF document proves that troops were to move from the South to Huwara already in August, by Uzi Baruch/Israel National News, May 21, 2024

The International Criminal Court’s Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking arrest warrants for Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on charges of “war crimes and crimes against humanity” over the October 7 attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.

Khan also said the court is seeking warrants for Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as two other top Hamas leaders: leader of the Al Qassem Brigades Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ political leader.

Kohelet Policy Forum member and international law expert Prof. Eugene Kontorovich commented on the significance of the ICC’s charges against Israeli officials earlier today.

“The significance is that the ICC has become, what it had long been turning into – another politicized international org like the UN or ICRC. Legally, its lacks jurisdiction, and seeking to accuse Israel of war crimes in the war with the lowest civilian casualty rate of any modern urban combat is absurd. It is absurd to accuse Israel of the “crime of starvation” when no one has died of hunger.”

It seems the ICC forgot who started this war and, in their eyes, you can’t have one without the other. No matter how much evidence there is to expose the evil actions of Hamas, Israel must be a part of the ICC’s sick equation. “Diplomatically, it is an attempt to create moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel,” said Kontorovich.

Sources:
‘ICC is like voodoo, its power depends on your belief’, by Israel National News, May 20, 2024

ICC Prosecutor seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Sinwar, by Israel National News

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich blasted an article that appeared in The New York Times last Thursday accusing the State of Israel of secretly abetting so-called “settler violence.”

The Times exposé presented as one piece of evidence a classified document from March, in which Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fox, head of the Central Command of the Israel Defense Forces whose area of responsibility includes Judea and Samaria, accused Smotrich of undermining law enforcement in the region.

Smotrich responded, “The investigation by The New York Times with the same ‘secret document’ is a blood libel by a newspaper that regularly incites against the state and this time in cooperation with senior IDF officials openly and covertly. We will do everything to prevent a Palestinian state that would endanger our existence here.”

Source:
Smotrich slams ‘NYT’ settlement hit piece as ‘blood libel’, by JNS

The Palestinian Authority is accelerating its construction of a new city in the Ha-Masrek Nature Reserve in the Judean Mountains. In the last few weeks, a new resort complex was built in the reserve.

The new city in the reserve is being built at a fast pace to create facts on the ground and to make law enforcement more difficult, despite the explicit prohibition against building there following the Oslo Accords. The enforcement agencies do not operate in the field.

Another step that the city planners are now taking is the construction of a B&B complex for Palestinian Arab tourism.

Gush Etzion Regional Council Head Yaron Rosenthal said, “If we do not stop the rampant illegal construction in the Ha-Masrek Reserve today, in a few years we will be dealing with one of the most serious security incidents here. This serious failure is a security risk for the State of Israel, wake up.”

Source:
PA accelerates construction of illegal city in nature reserve, by Israel National News, May 19, 2024

Based on IDF and ISA intelligence, the IAF carried out a precise strike on a central Hamas war room embedded inside an UNRWA school in the area of Nuseirat. The war room was used by terrorist operatives in Hamas’ military wing. The strike was carried out using precise munitions in order to minimize harm to uninvolved civilians.

The Hamas war room had been used by the terrorist organization to plan multiple attacks against IDF troops in central Gaza in recent weeks. The Nukhba terrorists situated inside the war room took part in the October 7th Massacre and carried out ambushes and attacks on IDF troops in the Gaza Strip. In the IAF strike, approximately 15 operatives from terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip were eliminated, over 10 of whom were part of Hamas.

“The Hamas terrorist organization systematically exploits the civilian population and institutions as human shields for their terrorist activities against the State of Israel.,” the IDF stated.

We’ve known all along that UNRWA’s main focus was never a school to for the proper education of children. Now the world is learning the truth too. As this additional piece of evidence of terrorist activity intended to destroy Israel is revealed, it further supports the IDF’s necessary entry into Rafah to finish the job.

Source:
IAF strikes Hamas war room in UNRWA school, by Israel National News, May 14, 2024