Yom Shnee
Monday
11 Sivan 5784
June 17 2024
Special Notice
Your humble servant and his wife returned to their home in Ashdod early this morning after 7 weeks in the United States.
While in our other home in Northern California, we “fought” for Israel on many fronts such as at the State Capitol in Sacramento and on the campus of the University of California-Davis whose central campus has been taken over by a pro-Hamas encampment. All told, we raised nearly $10,000 in donations which we will use in the coming weeks to help defend our soldiers.
I put the word “fought” in quotation marks to signify that obviously what we do cannot compare with actual fighting of our soldiers. Nor does it compare with the amazing Israeli supporters on the ground who are tenaciously fighting on campuses, in farmers’ markets, on street corners, and at other venues to support Israel.
Kolakevod to them!
Update 3:oo PM
The last 48 hours have been traumatic to Israelis.
As we reported in our last update, the IDF reported that 8 IDF soldiers were killed when their engineering Armored Personnel Carrier exploded. They were:
More information about each:
- Sgt. Eliyahu Moshe Zimbalist, 21, from Beit Shemesh
- Sgt. Itay Amar, 19, from Kochav Yair
- Staff Sgt. Stanislav Kostarev, 21, from Ashdod
- Staff Sgt. Orr Blumovitz, 20, from Pardes Hanna-Karkur
- Staff Sgt. Oz Yeshaya Gruber, 20, from Tal Menashe
- Sgt. Yakir Ya’akov Levi, from Hafetz Haim
- Sgt. Shalom Menachem, 21, from Beit El
Three more soldiers have fallen:
Sgt. Tzur Abraham, 21, from Modi’in was killed in a booby trapped tunnel in Rafah.
Sgt. Yair R0itman died from wounds he received in fighting last week.
The third soldier has yet to be named.
312 IDF soldiers have fallen since the Operation in Gaza began on October 27.
In what can only be described as a confusing series of mixed messages coming from the IDF and PM Netanyahu’s office, it appears that a “humanitarian truce” of sorts has been established in the vicinity of Kerem Shalom. According to one version, the truce is “to respect” the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.
Let’s sincerely hope that this report is false.
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.