Israel's War Against Hamas - Updates

[Sixties Fan]

“We are adjusting the fighting methods to each area in Gaza, and the necessary forces to carry out the mission in the best way possible. Each area has different characteristics and different operational needs,” he said. “Tonight, 2024 will begin. The goals of the war require lengthy fighting, and we are prepared accordingly.”

Hagari said the military would be carrying out “smart” management of the forces in Gaza, allowing reservists to return home to help bounce back the economy, and for standing army troops to train to become commanders.

The 460th Armored Brigade, responsible for the Armored Corps training base; the 261st Brigade, the Bahad 1 officers’ school in wartime; the 828th Brigade, the School for Infantry Corps Professions and Squad Commanders; the 14th Reserve Armored Brigade; and 551st Reserve Paratroopers Brigade, are all being released.

The five brigades are made up of thousands of soldiers.

The brigades tasked with training soldiers will return to carrying out their usual activity, while the reservists are being released to help bounce back Israel’s economy.

(full article online)

As 2024 begins, IDF withdraws 5 brigades from Gaza, but says fighting likely all year

Military says rocket launches down to average of 14 per day; 'We are adjusting the fighting methods,' spokesman says

www.timesofisrael.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

At stroke of midnight, Hamas attacks Israel with heavy New Year rocket barrage

Over 20 projectiles target south and center of country as Israelis mark the start of the new year amid sorrow: 'The minute I start to dance, I feel guilty'

www.timesofisrael.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Let's talk about "destroying cultural heritage" in Gaza​

Israel has been accused of destroying Gaza's cultural heritage with various attacks. But Gaza's best known mosque is a site where Jewish cultural heritage was quite literally erased.

One of the accusations is that Israel destroyed the Great Omari Mosque of Gaza:

The Omari Mosque, Gaza's most iconic landmark and oldest mosque stretching back centuries, has been largely destroyed in an Israeli strike, Gaza City officials and eyewitnesses say.

An Israeli official, who spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity to offer a preliminary assessment, confirmed the strike and said the mosque grounds contained a tunnel shaft used by militants, and that Hamas fighters from the elite Nukhba battalion had regularly used the mosque for cover.

Israel was reported to have destroyed the same mosque in 2014. Amazing how this historic mosque can be destroyed so many times.

Hamas used the mosque as a military site. And it wouldn't be the first time Hamas was associated with the mosque.

In 2007, Fatah gunmen shot dead the imam of the Great Omari Mosque, Mohammed al-Rifati, 40, by attacking his home with rocket-propelled grenades, because he was a Hamas supporter.

In 2014, Hamas chose the supposedly destroyed Omari Mosque as the spot to publicly execute six men in front of hundreds of spectators including children. The hooded suspected "collaborators" were dragged along the floor to kneel by a wall facing the crowd, then each man was shot in the head individually before being sprayed with bullets fired from an AK-47.

Hamas leaders regularly preached at the Omari mosque. Ismail Haniyeh preached there in 2018, and at a funeral there in 2016 for seven Hamas men who were killed in a tunnel collapse he praised those building tunnels.

Hamas senior official Mahmoud Zahar gave a press conference at the mosque last year.

In 1870, archaeologist Charles Clermont-Ganneau examined the Great Omari Mosque of Gaza and found a column with an unmistakable menorah, lulav, etrog and shofar in bas relief. In Hebrew and Greek underneath the image it said "Hananiah bar Yaakov."

He took a squeeze of the find and published it:



Apparently, the Muslims took a column from the site of an ancient synagogue and placed it there.


The anti-Zionist-and-definitely-not-antisemitic Gazans methodically chiseled out and smoothed over this representation of Jewish symbols sometime between 1987 and 1993.

Here's another famous case of Palestinians deliberately destroying Jewish heritage in Gaza: In 1966, Egyptian archaeologists discovered a mosaic in Gaza which in a building they identified as a church, showing a figure playing the lyre. A photo of the figure was published, and it was obvious that the Hebrew word "David" was next to the figure, and it was a synagogue that was uncovered, not a church.

When Israel took over Gaza in 1967, they went to the site - and found that the Gazans had gouged out David's face and other parts of his body.

The mosaic has since been restored.

The treatment of ancient artifacts in Gaza is a microcosm of the war itself. Hamas cynically hides itself under Gaza's historical heritage and blames Israel when it is destroyed in pursuit of Hamas. But Gazans deliberately destroying Jewish heritage in Gaza aren't condemned at all.

Let's talk about "destroying cultural heritage" in Gaza

Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Kibbutz Be’eri resident Ilan Weiss, missing since Oct. 7, is confirmed killed

Community asks that 'devoted father to his daughters' be recognized as a fallen soldier as he was part of kibbutz security team that tried to ward off terrorists during assault

www.timesofisrael.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

IDF finds Hamas bodycam footage of 'civilians' carrying RPGs

Terrorists, who have since been eliminated by the IDF, disguised their RPG in a civilian area using a blanket.

www.jpost.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

PBS Newshour continues to present one-sided coverage of the Hamas-Israel war, interviewing pro-Hamas propagandists with no Israeli representatives to counter them. (See: “Hamas Propaganda by Doctors Without Borders, Courtesy of PBS NewsHour”) The latest example is its Dec. 26, 2023 episode featuring former PA spokeswoman Nour Odeh to discuss recent events. (View clip here.)

After reciting the (unconfirmed) casualty statistics put out by Hamas –‘the death toll in Gaza is nearing 21,000, mostly women and children according to Palestinian officials” – interviewer Amna Nawaz questioned Odeh about “the proposed peace plan put forward yesterday by Egypt and Qatar” which “essentially calls for the phased release of hostages held by Hamas and also Palestinians held by Israel, and for a united technocratic Palestinian government# that would oversee Gaza and the West Bank.”


(full article online)

More Hamas Advocacy on PBS NewsHour

As a recipient of federal funding, PBS must comply with the federal statute requiring strict adherence to objectivity and balance in programs of a

www.camera.org

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[rylah]

"Humanitarian Aid" to HAMAS Must Stop! | The Caroline Glick Show​

Is the "humanitarian aid" being sent to Gaza reaching ordinary Gazans or being entirely stolen by Hamas? Has Israel gone too far to protect "innocent" Gazans and sacrificed its soldiers in the process.

Caroline interviews Chana Katan and Gal Carmeli two members of Mothers of Warriors who shared their stories and demands from the government.

Mothers of Warriors is an organization of women who had or have children serving in Gaza and making demands that humanitarian aid be stopped.

 

[rylah]

Watch: An anti-tank missile launched by Hezbollah misses a civilian jeep near Kfar Saled. The missile was fired from a distance of 12 km.

 

[rylah]

The war on global trade: At least 10 Houthis killed in the American attack in the Red Sea

4 Houthi boats tried to take over - the American helicopters were called: the Houthi attempt to take over a cargo ship in the Red Sea - for the second time in less than a day • A senior official of the organization met with an Iranian senior official in Tehran

https://www.kan.org.il/content/kan-news/defense/666092

 

[Sixties Fan]

[ The term "Refugees" has been changed to allow the Arabs to be refugees forever or until Israel is destroyed.
The same is happening with the term "Colonialism". It means one thing for the whole world, another when it comes to talking about Jews and their ancient homeland]

Part 1

In what can only be considered as an ironic twist of intention, it has become apparent that not only has the idea of a free Arab state of Palestine become an agenda item of the first degree for the United Nations, human-rights NGOs, and other similar bodies and institutions, but it has become the ideal of these bodies as well. The slogan “Palestine must be free” has literally colonized the minds of intellectuals, academicians, diplomats and university students, thus assuring, at least for the short term, it being a constant of discussion, debate and involvement.

In what I have termed as the rhetoric of obversity—that is, the orchestration of language to mean not what was originally intended, as well as the expanding of their meaning to include new definitions—the normative definition of settler colonialism has been modified. Settler colonialism is when invaders occupy a territory to permanently replace the existing society with the society of the colonizers so as to enjoy metropolitan living standards and political privileges. It has been applied, wrongly and falsely, to Zionism.

This allows news items, such as one from Dec. 20, “Illegal Israeli Colonizers Raze Land,” to hammer the term into the heads of Jewish youth who should know better as it more easily does into the thinking of others.

Implicit in applying the “settler colonialism” terminology is to suggest that the goals of Zionism were and are the elimination and exploitation of the “native” population. However, that never happened, nor was it the intention of the Zionist enterprise. In fact, it’s the opposite.

Cary Nelson, is his magnificent “Israel Denial” on the faculty campaign against the Jewish state, notes on pages 120-123 how the older claim of Zionism as a colonialist movement has now been linked to the false assertion not only of a supposed Arab Palestinian identity but an Arab Palestinian indigeneity as well, thereby interlocking the core forces that drive the anger and involvement of college student even while this causes a racialization format.

In an academic treatment, Sai Englert quotes Fayez Sayegh who described the core of Zionism’s ideology as one of “racial self-segregation, racial exclusiveness and racial supremacy” on p. 22 in a 1965 PLO booklet. Sayegh, the Syrian-born founder of the Palestine Research Center of Beirut, is held to be a pioneering analyst in the field. Perhaps one of the more illustrative examples of language rape practiced by the proponents of pro-Palestine propaganda is the one used at the March 2011 Seventh Annual Conference of the London’s SOAS Palestine Society. It would have us believe that “[f]or over a century, Zionism has subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new colonial Israeli society.”

‘Palestine’ and the Energy of Colonization - Algemeiner.com

JNS.org - In what can only be considered as an ironic twist of intention, it has become apparent that not only has the idea of a free Arab state of Palestine become an agenda item of the first degree for the United Nations, human-rights NGOs, and other similar bodies and institutions, but it has...

www.algemeiner.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Part 2

To give but one example of the relative primitiveness of the approach in its early period is to quote from Sayegh writing: “The frenzied ‘Scramble for Africa’ of the 1880s stimulated the beginnings of Zionist colonization in Palestine.” Jews at that time were a permanent feature for centuries in Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias and Hebron. Leading up to 1740 and in the following decade, thousands immigrated to Eretz Yisrael expecting the Messianic era to evolve, including Rabbi Moses Haim Luzzatto and Kabbalist Rabbi Haim ben Attar.

Indeed, in all the previous centuries, Jews were moving to reside in Eretz Yisrael, including hundreds of rabbis and some of the greatest luminaries of Jewish scholarship. In the mid- to late 18th century, hundreds of Chassidim, many with families, were immigrating to the country. By the early 19th century, the pupils of the Vilna Gaon, too, were making the move. Not antisemitism but religious motivation was the force behind this.

To borrow a phrase from Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), how did this theorizing warp the minds of young people?

As can be expected, one of the very first to spread the theme was a Jew, Maxime Rodinson, whose “Israel: A Colonial Settler-State?” (originally appearing in Frenchin early July 1967) did much to take it out of the category of PLO propaganda. He provided a Marxist and even anthropological framework that allowed the idea to settle into academia in tandem with the success of the growth of race theory and the north/south model.

Nevertheless, there was a problem for Zionism is one of the most genuine, and most successful, repatriation movements in history. Jews came from what the world calls “Palestine.” Antisemites throughout the centuries demanded that Jews “go back to Palestine.” Most recently, even an extreme leftist such as Uri Misgav, in Haaretz, has written: “Zionism is not colonialism, despite the efforts of the politics of blame and identity to place it under this heading.”

There is, perhaps, a psychological element working here.

As Lee Smith asserts, in advancing the cause of the Arab Palestinians, they created “the prototype of ‘Third World man’ which “served the narcissism of Western elites.” To what purpose? Smith explains: “Removed from the apex of their strength, and their will to defend a civilization built by better men long depleted, Western elites’ self-image is sustained by Third World man.” Indeed, “Palestine … [is] not a place, it’s a spiritual principle guided by the inversion of reality and governed by the equation 2+2=5.”

A recent example of the progress of Palestine’s colonization process was the attempted protest by Doctors Against Genocide to take place at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. It went too far and aroused too much pushback, and was walked back. But the idea was to invade the public representation of the Jewish Holocaust—a quite specific and unique event—rob it of its meaning, harvest its emotional value, and ultimately, to take it over as property of “Palestine.”

As Tafi Mhaka wrote in Al Jazeera this month: “The time is ripe for the end of Western colonization in Palestine.” It should be made clear that the time is overdue to end the colonization by pro-Palestine proponents.

‘Palestine’ and the Energy of Colonization - Algemeiner.com

JNS.org - In what can only be considered as an ironic twist of intention, it has become apparent that not only has the idea of a free Arab state of Palestine become an agenda item of the first degree for the United Nations, human-rights NGOs, and other similar bodies and institutions, but it has...

www.algemeiner.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

On Monday, the IDF released a video of Zahdy Ali Zahdy Shahin, identified by the military as a former Hamas operative, who told interrogators of the Military Intelligence Directorate’s Unit 504 that he felt “we were being used as human shields.”

Shahin described an incident in which he says he was heading from northern Gaza to the Strip’s south in the humanitarian corridor set up by Israel when apparent Hamas gunmen pulled him and other civilians aside and brought them to al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

He said he and other civilians were on the ground floor of the hospital, and once IDF forces reached the medical center, Hamas operatives came out from tunnels and hid among the sheltering civilians.

Shahin said he even argued with one of the Hamas operatives. “I told him ‘Your place isn’t up here with the civilians, but below. Why did you come up?’”

“He started to threaten me, said when the war ends he would settle the score,” he told the interrogator.

Another detainee, Muhammad Darwish Amara, who is identified by the IDF as a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, said Hamas fighters took over his home.

Amara said he was sheltering in a school in northern Gaza, and told his son to check their home every couple of days to ensure nobody was breaking in to steal their belongings.

“He entered the apartment, opened the door, and there was a mess. He looks and sees young men sleeping in my apartment,” Amara told the Unit 504 interrogator, claiming that they were Hamas fighters.

Amara said he did not give approval for Hamas to use his home to fight against the IDF.

“We left the apartment and they took control of it. On the upper floor where my son lives… a sniper was sitting by the window, and in the other room, there were several [operatives]. He said there were more than 20 people [in the apartment], their weapons thrown on the floor,” he said.

(full article online)

In interrogation, ex-Hamas operative says group uses Gaza civilians as human shields

Suspects captured by troops in Gaza Strip detail incidents of Hamas's use of civilians for terror operations, including one in which group forced men to hospital to hide among them

www.timesofisrael.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Lebanon’s Maronite Patriarch, Beshara al-Rahi, has called on Lebanese residents to remove all the rocket launchers from their homes in order to prevent Israel from launching a full-blown, devastating war against its northern neighbor.

“We demand the removal of any rocket launchpad planted between homes in the towns of the South that might draw a destructive Israeli response,” al-Rahi urged in his Sunday Mass sermon, the Lebanese Naharnet news outlet reported.

“Let everyone respect (United Nations) Security Council Resolution 1701 and all its articles for the sake of Lebanon’s welfare,” the Patriarch added.

Resolution 1701 was the ceasefire agreement that ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War between Israel and Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah.

The Patriarch also expressed his regret over recent attacks by residents in southern Lebanon against UNIFIL peacekeeper forces, which he said were intended to make it more difficult for the forces in the region.

“We meanwhile repeat our gratitude for the countries contributing to these UN peacekeeping forces for preserving peace in the south,” the Patriarch said.

According to international Organization for Migration figures quoted by Naharnet, some 72,437 people in Lebanon have been displaced by the hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel that were launched by the Iranian proxy on October 8th.

At least 130 Hezbollah operatives and some 20 civilians have been killed in Lebanon in attacks by Israel in response to rocket fire, anti-tank missile fire and suicide drone attacks against Israeli civilians and military posts by Hezbollah.

The Iranian proxy’s attacks on Israel began one day after Gaza’s ruling Hamas terrorist organization invaded dozens of Israeli villages and military bases near the border with Gaza. Hamas-led terrorists and civilians who followed them into Israel tortured, beheaded, raped, mutilated, dismembered, burned alive and slaughtered more than 1,200 on October 7th, in addition to kidnapping another 250 people, dragging them into captivity in Gaza.

According to the United Nations, quoting local Gazans, about 70 percent of the buildings in the enclave have been damaged, nearly all of which contained weapons of war and/or terrorist infrastructure such as entrances to terror tunnels, as Israel Defense Forces continue to search for the hostages, eradicate the military capabilities of Hamas, and end its rule over Gaza.

Lebanon’s Maronite Patriarch Calls for Removal of Home Rocket Launchers to Prevent War with Israel

"Let everyone respect (United Nations) Security Council Resolution 1701 and all its articles for the sake of Lebanon's welfare."

www.jewishpress.com

 

[bendog]

I wonder how many Israeli hostages are still alive. Not that I doubted Israel would prosecute this war to a bloody end of total destruction of any infrastructure Hamas could make use of.

The irony is that even Biden had more misgivings over Palestinian deaths than Trump, who has no misgivings about anything, and the Saudis probably have not much more. That's not necessarily a dig at Trump. It may simply not be possible to make any peace with the Palestinians who still want a right to return to the land they ran away from over 50 years ago.

 

[Sixties Fan]

[ No different than calling all Palestinians refugees. To mislead anyone about what is actually going on. The want to destroy the only Jewish country ON its ancient Jewish Homeland]

Egyptian media urges everyone to call Gaza war a "holocaust' because it pisses off the Jews​

In October, Egypt's Youm7 - considered close to the government - published an article calling Israel's action in Gaza a "holocaust."

Israel's Institute for National Security Studies noted this and other Arab articles using that terminology, pointing out how outrageous it is.

Now Youm7 seems to have just discovered the INSS article and they are ecstatic. They claim the terminology was "a media bullet that pierced the heart of Israel."

And in a new article, they urge all Arabs to adopt this terminology, while tossing in some Holocaust denial:

After the Youm7 newspaper article “The Gaza Holocaust” raised a state of strategic anxiety for the Israeli entity, there is a question, which is why the Arab media - new and old - did not employ these terms that hurt and worry Israel, so I call on everyone who has a media platform, even a page on social networking sites [to us that term.] . ...We must be aware of the importance of terminology. Especially since it has become a weapon no less important than the weapons of field wars

The Zionist state developed and perpetuated the narrative of the Jewish Holocaust to serve its strategic goals, as a means and justification to blackmail the world under the name of anti-Semitism and international terrorism and an excuse to attract the sympathy of the international community to justify killing and aggression against the Palestinian people.

This is why they are concerned about describing what is happening in Gaza as a Holocaust: It is a new Holocaust, which is more credible and more horrific than the Holocaust of the Jews that they claim, because there are many Western and American voices that have begun to doubt the occurrence of a Holocaust of the Jews as it is portrayed by the Zionists, or at least that there are those who consider what happened to the Jews a Zionist exaggeration in numbers and the descriptions.

There is agreement by many experts, researchers, and international research communities that the Jewish Holocaust is nothing but a Zionist industry that has been exploited over many decades as a scarecrow, an attraction for immigration to the land of Palestine, and a means - as we mentioned - for global and moral blackmail and for achieving strategic gains for the Zionist entity.

Besides the obvious antisemitism, note that the only reason they give to use that terminology is not accuracy, but because it upsets the Jews and because it frames the war to be other than what it is.

Egyptian media urges everyone to call Gaza war a "holocaust' because it pisses off the Jews

Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

• 
  Released hostages and survivors speak to journalists in front of the charred remains of the home of Raaya and Hila Rotem in Be'eri on January 1, 2024. (Canaan Lidor/Times of Israel)
• 
  The house where the remains of 12-year-old Liel Hetzroni found in Kibbutz Be'eri, near the Israeli-Gaza border, southern Israel, November 19, 2023. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
• 
  Oren Sharabi, right, sits near her sister Ofir and mother Nira in Be'eri on January 1, 2024. (Canaan Lidor/Times of Israel)
• 
  Daniel Weiss, right, performs with a band on the charred remains of his parents' home in Be'eri on January 1, 2024. (Canaan Lidor/Times of Israel)
• 
  Graves of Kibbutz Be'eri residents who were murdered by Hamas terrorists on October 7, in Kibbutz Revivim, southern Israel, November 15, 2023 (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Returning to Kibbutz Be’eri was visibly frightening for the Sharabi sisters Oren, 12, and Ofir, 13, who grew up here and survived the October 7 massacre along with their mother Nira. It was their first time back since Hamas terrorists stormed their formerly tranquil home alongside the Gaza border and took their father hostage.

Their mother hugged her daughters reflexively as they flinched at each loud bang produced by a nearby IDF artillery unit bombing Gaza.

“It’s the kibbutz where I grew up with my family and friends, but after all we went through, it’s difficult to be here, and I was afraid to come,” Oren told journalists at a press conference held at Be’eri Monday. “But I’m coping with the fear because the scariest thing is my father Yossi remaining a hostage in Gaza.”

(full article online)

Defying fears, freed hostages return to Be’eri to plead for the release of the rest

Seven survivors of the massacre stand amid the ruins of their homes in a moving event and concert

www.timesofisrael.com

 

[rosends]

[ No different than calling all Palestinians refugees. To mislead anyone about what is actually going on. The want to destroy the only Jewish country ON its ancient Jewish Homeland]

Egyptian media urges everyone to call Gaza war a "holocaust' because it pisses off the Jews​

In October, Egypt's Youm7 - considered close to the government - published an article calling Israel's action in Gaza a "holocaust."

Israel's Institute for National Security Studies noted this and other Arab articles using that terminology, pointing out how outrageous it is.

Now Youm7 seems to have just discovered the INSS article and they are ecstatic. They claim the terminology was "a media bullet that pierced the heart of Israel."

And in a new article, they urge all Arabs to adopt this terminology, while tossing in some Holocaust denial:




Besides the obvious antisemitism, note that the only reason they give to use that terminology is not accuracy, but because it upsets the Jews and because it frames the war to be other than what it is.

Egyptian media urges everyone to call Gaza war a "holocaust' because it pisses off the Jews

Blogging about Israel and the Arab world since, oh, forever.

elderofziyon.blogspot.com

heck, if that's what this conflict has descended to then maybe Hamas shouldn't have created such a Nakba on Oct 7.

 

[rylah]

The Knesset unanimously approves Minister Miri Regev's proposal,
for the main theme of the upcoming Independence Day,
will be "Israel's courage", in symbolizing the war

השרה רגב תהיה אחראית על טקס המשואות, שיוארך ויוקדש לנופלים

www.ynet.co.il

 

[Roudy]

The war on global trade: At least 10 Houthis killed in the American attack in the Red Sea

4 Houthi boats tried to take over - the American helicopters were called: the Houthi attempt to take over a cargo ship in the Red Sea - for the second time in less than a day • A senior official of the organization met with an Iranian senior official in Tehran

https://www.kan.org.il/content/kan-news/defense/666092

10 x 72 virgins each = 720 horny virgin donkeys.