UPDATES
8 am Israel time, Thursday, March 26 2015
**Benjamin Netanyahu was officially tasked with forming the next government by President Rivlin at a ceremony yesterday afternoon.
Rivlin signs the document yesterday authorizing Netanyahu to form a coalition (picture source: Ynet).
**Now that PM Netanyahu has been chosen to form a coalition government, he has immediately and unhappily reverted to his old tricks.
–He promised during the latter part of the election campaign that Beit Yehudi (Jewish Home) would be the first party that he would reach out to form a coalition with. Yesterday, Beit Yehudi members bitterly criticized Netanyahu for not keeping his word.
–He promised during the latter part of the election campaign that Moshe Kahlon would be named the new Finance Minister. Last night, Kahlon wrote on his Facebook page that Netanyahu had not negotiated with him at all since the election.
–He promised the day before the election while standing in Har Homa that construction in Jerusalem would continue unabated. He even praised Har Homa for being what blocked Bethlehem from expanding toward Jerusalem–a statement roundly criticized by the Obama White House. What did Netanyahu do yesterday? He indefinitely froze the planning process for 1500 new homes in Har Homa.
**From Sunday through Wednesday, 51 Palestinian terror attacks have occurred in Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem. Most of the attacks have been “rock” and Molotov cocktail assaults aimed at Israeli motorists.
**The Middle East continues to deteriorate along Iranian fault lines–all brought about by the bizarre foreign policy of the President Obama.
In the wake of the Obama Administration announcement that U.S. special forces are being pulled out of Yemen, Saudi Arabia led other Gulf countries in launching air attacks on the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen overnight.
In the wake of an impending Obama agreement with Iran over its nuclear weapons program, countries all over the region are rushing to go nuclear themselves. The latest announcement yesterday came from Jordan which has chosen Russia to build a nuclear power plant there by 2022.
TODAY’S BLOG:
Following two reports over the last few months that accused Israel of war crimes in Gaza during last summer’s war, Amnesty International uncharacteristically issued a new 63-page report accusing the Palestinians in Gaza of war crimes against Israel–focusing on the thousands of rockets and mortars that rained down on Israelis.
In today’s blog, your humble servant would like to focus on one of the supposed “crimes” that Amnesty accused Israel of in one of its earlier reports of–an incident that occurred on July 30, 2014, about midway through the war. A market area in the neighborhood of Shujaiya was hit by two Israeli shells resulting in the deaths of between 15 and 17 people.
You will remember that Shujaiya was the neighborhood from which tunnels were running into Israel and from which most of rocket and mortar fire was emanating.
Following a lengthy investigation by the IDF Judge Advocate General’s office, here was the sequence of events which led to the shelling:
1. At 4:10 pm, IDF forces operating on the outskirts of Shujaiyah were attacked with anti-tank missiles.
2. Following the anti-tank missile attack, Palestinian terrorists launched a massive and sustained mortar and gunfire attack from five locations in the residential buildings in the neighborhood.
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3. IDF soldiers were wounded, and IDF commanders on the ground communicated their belief to the IDF upper echelon that the Palestinians were attempting to kidnap an IDF soldier.
4. The IDF did not return fire because the anti-tank, mortar, and gunfire attack was emanating from an area that the IDF had previously identified as containing “special civilian sites” including medical facilities.
5. The attack on the IDF soldiers continued until 4:40 pm. Between 4:10 pm and 4:40 pm, commanders continued to order their troops not to return fire and instead to fire smoke grenades to mask their position from the Palestinian attackers.
6. By 5:00 pm., realizing that the IDF soldiers were pinned down, the Palestinians increased their attacks. Commanders on the ground asked to use 155mm artillery rounds to protect their soldiers. This request was refused. Also tank and aerial support continued to be rejected because of the “special civilian” sites situation.
7. Finally, it was decided that the ground commanders could fire 5 mortar rounds toward the incoming fire. However, by 5:18 pm, the incoming fire had increased. At this point, 10 more mortar shells were fired by the IDF at the points from which the fire was coming.
8. This IDF mortar fire brought the incoming attack to a halt by killing an unknown number of terrorists. However, it was a combination of the IDF mortar fire at 5:00 and 5:18 that resulted in the civilian deaths.
What is remarkable to your humble servant is the extraordinary lengths that the IDF went to in order to not hit Palestinian civilians–even to the point of severely endangering IDF soldiers. Pinned down in a firefight involving guns, missiles, and mortars, the IDF refused to use tanks and aircraft to support its own soldiers, and refused to allow the soldiers to protect themselves with artillery.
It was only when the situation moved well past desperate that IDF forces were able to use mortars to suppress the incoming fire.
Can you think of any other army in the world that would have gone to such lengths to protect civilians?
The account in today’s blog is taken from the IDF legal website.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.