Yom Shnee
Monday
9 Tammuz 5784
July 15 2024
UPDATE 12:00 PM ISRAEL TIME
The Quotes of the Day
“We have finished the phase of the intensified war in the Gaza Strip, we have moved to phase three.”
An senior Israeli security official speaking yesterday.
You may be asking yourself “what is phase three”?
It was spelled out exactly back in October by Defense Minister Gallant:
“The third step will be the creation of a new security regime in the Gaza Strip, the removal of Israel’s responsibility for day-to-day life in the Gaza Strip, and the creation of a new security reality for the citizens of Israel and the residents of the communities on the Gaza border.”
In short, a dramatic shift in focus is about to happen.
Just how dramatic was indicated by the following comments from IDF Chief of Staff Halevi yesterday:
“At the end of the ceasefire we will return to fight with strength. The IDF will not give up on harming Hamas until the goal is achieved.”
Say what?
What ceasefire?
It is amazing that the mindset of the IDF Chief of Staff and General Command is that we are already in a ceasefire. A comment like this is indicative of the same sort of general “conception” that the IDF had before October 7th which led to disaster.
It must be obvious to everyone that if a prolonged 42-week ceasefire comes, the IDF will not return to “fighting with full strength” in Gaza.
On the Ground in Gaza
All comments about Phase 3 and a ceasefire notwithstanding, our heroic soldiers on the ground continue to risk their lives day and night to crush HamISIS.
The IDF Spokesman had this to say this morning:
“The forces of Division 162 continue to operate in the Rafah area: they eliminated armed terrorists in face-to-face combat. The fighters of the 8th Brigade eliminated a terrorist while he was planting charges in the center of the Gaza Strip. During the last day, the fighters of the Nahal Patrol eliminated a squad of terrorists armed with RPG weapons in a face-to-face battle . . . IAF fighter jets and aircraft attacked dozens of terrorist targets throughout the Gaza Strip during the past day. In one of the attacks, fighter jets eliminated terrorists who were spotted observing IDF forces and posed a threat to the force. Naval forces continue to attack terrorist targets throughout Gaza while assisting the forces operating in the area; during the last day terrorist infrastructures were attacked in southern Gaza.”
On the Ground in the North
Thus far it has been a relatively quiet day on the northern border; however, that will soon change if Hezbollah follows its normal pattern of missile and explosive drone launches in the afternoon. Yesterday, for example, there were 5 barrages between 12:00 pm and 12:14 pm.
On the Ground in Israel
The car the terrorist used in the ramming attack. The terrorist was shot and killed by Israel police.
A Palestinian terrorist from eastern Jerusalem carried out a car-ramming attack at the Nir Zvi Junction near Lod (beside the Zirifin IDF base) yesterday afternoon.
4 young men were wounded: 2 in critical condition, 1 in serious condition, and 1 in mild condition.
As of this morning, the condition of one of the critically wounded has deteriorated–he needs your prayers while the other critically wounded’s condition has stabilized.
The 4 Israeli young men who were run over were all combat soldiers who had been wounded in Gaza and are undergoing rehabilitation.
In Other News
*Col. Racheli Dembinski, the commander of the IDF Computer and Information Systems Center said yesterday that since the war began, there have been more than 3,000,000,000 (billion) attempts to hack into the IDF cloud.
She went on to say that “the targets of the attacks included operational cloud computing used by many systems that serve troops on the ground during combat to share information and troop locations.”
She said all attempts have been unsuccessful.
*Just unbelievable: last week we wrote that the idiotic Israel High Court of Justice had ruled that Israeli taxpayers need to pay for the defense attorney of one of the barbarians who carried out the October 7 massacres.
Now it turns out that we are not just talking about 1 terrorist. The Court has ordered that more than 100 of the terrorists to be similarly defended.
*The government voted yesterday to extend military service for males back to what it once was: 3 years because the IDF is facing a manpower shortage. This extension will be in place for the next 8 years.
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.