Yom Reva’ee
Wednesday
16 Elul 5784
September 18 2024
May Their Memories Be For A Blessing
Capt. Daniel Mimon Toaff, 23 years old from Moroshet, deputy company commander in the Shaked Battalion, Givati Brigade, fell in Rafah.
Sgt. Agam Naim, 20 years old from Mishmarot, a paramedic in the 52nd battalion, a designer of the iron tracks (401), fell in Rafah.
Sgt. Amit Bakri, 21 years old from Yeshiva, a fighter in the Shaked Battalion, Givati Brigade, fell in Rafah.
Sgt. Dotan Shimon, 21 years old from Elazar, a fighter in the Shaked Battalion, Givati Brigade, fell in Rafah.
Three other soldiers were critically wounded and two more seriously in the same incident–the explosion of a bomb in a booby-trapped house in Rafah. The deaths of these four brings to 343 the total number of IDF soldiers killed in Gaza.
Sgt. Agam Naim is the first female soldier to fall in combat in Gaza.
Sometimes your humble servant just wants to scream at the world. Every day on Israeli television we watch IDF soldiers entering house after house in Gaza checking for terrorists and tunnel shafts. Each time we see this we wonder aloud why the IDF continues to send our soldiers into “empty” buildings which everyone knows might be booby-trapped. Why not just bomb every empty building?
The Quote of the Day
“It is possible to classify what happened to Hezbollah today as the biggest preemptive attack in modern history, and it can be compared to the attack that Israel carried out in the past against Egyptian aviation before the Six Day War.
Today there are thousands of disabled leaders and terrorists in Hezbollah.If Hezbollah enters the war today, it will be in bad shape because the hospitals are now loaded with wounded.
What’s worse than that is that Hezbollah has lost the most important means of security and military communication. Israel hunted its enemies electronically and caused thousands of deaths among them from a distance without bothering or firing a single bullet, and the terrorist organization is still busy with the conflict between Hussein and Yazid 1,400 years ago.”
Syrian journalist (now living in Qatar) Faisal al-Qassam writing on Twitter (X) this morning.
Whether thousands of deaths were caused is unknown, but the basic point is that Hezbollah is living in the past, and Israel is using the elements of future wars.
The War in the North
Obviously, the big news came from Lebanon yesterday where thousands of “pagers” belonging to Hezbollah members and supporters all over Lebanon exploded killing at least 10 and wounding at least 4000.
Most of those wounded lost hands or eyes. According to a Saudi website, some 500 Hezbollah members were blinded. The Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon reportedly lost one eye, and had his other badly injured.
Apparently, the pagers were made by a European company named BAC which operates under a trademark from the Taiwanese company Gold Apollo; somehow Mossad was able to insert 20 grams of PETN (pentaerythritol tetranitrate) explosives into the devices’ batteries before they were shipped to Lebanon five months ago.
On a given signal yesterday, a message was sent to all the pagers from what members thought was the Hezbollah leadership; the message raised the temperature of the batteries to 180 degrees C (356 F) whereupon the pagers exploded.
**Hezbollah fired 3 barrages of missiles yesterday which targeted Dovev, Baram, Yiron, and Shtula. 2 barrages of explosive drones also struck: Malkia, Lev HaHula, Dishon, Iftach, Mevuot Hermon, Ramot Naftali, Karkom, Almagor, Amnon, Kfar Nahum, Tabgha, Ginosaur, Wadi Hamam, Livnim, Migdal, Tiberias, and Arbel. Metulla was already targeted by drones at 06:12 this morning.
The War in Gaza
From the IDF Spokesman:
“The IDF struck and eliminated the Head of the Islamic Jihad’s Rocket and Missile Unit in the Rafah Area who fired rockets from inside the Humanitarian Area at Israeli civilians.
The IAF conducted an intelligence-based strike on the terrorist Ahmed Aish Salame al-Hashash, who served as the Head of the Islamic Jihad’s Rocket and Missile Unit in the Rafah area. Al-Hashash was responsible for the Islamic Jihad’s rocket attacks in the Rafah Brigade and was an important source of knowledge of rocket fire within the Islamic Jihad terror organization in Gaza. During the war, al-Hashash was responsible for firing rockets from inside the Humanitarian Area toward Israeli civilians.
At the time of the strike, Salame al-Hashash was embedded and operating inside the Humanitarian Area in Khan Yunis. Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence.”
And so it goes this morning in Israel . . .
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.