Saturday
Yom Shabbat
29 Adar 5785
March 29 2025
UPDATE 8:00 AM ISRAEL TIME
On the Ground in Gaza
All we know here in Ashdod is that aside from the constant booms in Gaza during the night, the IAF launched a massive air attack beginning at 6:55 am this morning. Every few minutes we also have been hearing what sounds like helicopter gunship fire.
The only news that has filtered out of Gaza so far is that a “belt of fire” involving the IAF, artillery, and naval forces seems to have been established around Khan Younis and possibly Rafah.
On the Ground in Lebanon
*The IAF has carried out numerous attacks in central and southern Lebanon in response to yesterday’s missile fire at Kiryat Shmona and surrounding area.
Hardest hit was a Hezbollah drone storage facility in the middle of the Dahiya neighborhood in Beirut. Smoke billowing from the strike:
Where the building was (under the smoke):
According to various sources, Hezbollah has informed the Lebanese government that it does not intend to respond to the attack in Dahiya–and will leave it up to the Lebanese government to diplomatically do so.
*The US State Department issued new sanctions targeting Hezbollah’s finance entities which are responsible for commercial projects and oil smuggling networks that generate revenue for the organization.
On the Ground in Yemen
The USS Truman launched 66 sorties over Yemen in the last 24 hours targeting Houthi assets in. What was hit:
–the Iranian Republican Guard command base in Sanaa
–weapons depots in Kitaf, Saada, Al Jawf, Dhabwah, and Hodeidah
Among the Houthi and Iranian leadership killed includes:
–Abdul Hakim al-Khiwani, head of the militia’s Security and Intelligence Service, in a U.S. airstrike on the Houthi command center in the Tahrir District of Sanaa.
–General Abd al-Khaliq, the Houthi leader’s brother
–the Commander of the Republican Guard
On the Ground in Judea and Samaria
A report from military correspondant Amir Bohbot:
“The Central Command, under the command of Major General Avi Balut, entered the 63rd day today of Operation Iron Wall in the terror strongholds in northern Samaria, with an emphasis on Jenin and Tulkarm.
These are the achievements so far: IDF forces have so far killed 88 terrorists – including senior figures in the refugee camp battalions, arrested about 300 terrorists, destroyed infrastructure, located explosives labs and seized dozens of weapons, ammunition and explosive devices.
The biggest challenge so far has been dealing with the fact that terrorist battalions in neighborhoods have turned them into fortress cities in recent years, and when the IDF wanted to carry out arrests or eliminations there, it was required to bring in undercover forces at great risk to the fighters, or, having no choice, large and noisy forces, and then the terrorists would flee to nearby villages or go into hiding. To counter this IDF engineering forces have created new roads into the areas.”
On the Ground in the U.S.
You will recall how U.S. envoy Steven Witkoff ludicrously extolled the wonderful country of Qatar and its magnificent leadership in an interview the other day.
As we pointed out at the time, Qatar is evil, an evil that has manifested itself in the funding of Hamas tunnels, command centers, and weapons acquisition in Gaza as well as in the owning and funding of the viciously anti-Israel Al-Jazeera network—and in the massive funding of “Middle East Studies Departments” on U.S. university campuses which serve as anti-Israel lightning rods.
Just how massive that funding on U.S. campuses has been is revealed in this chart from the U.S. Department of Education:
As you can see, Qatar tops the list having “donated” more than $3 billion dollars in the last 13 years: $3 billion to establish academic departments, hire vehemently anti-Israel faculty, and fund fraudulent student organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine.
In sum, the Qatarian influence of American academia is devastating.
As a point of interest, you might also note that other Arab countries (Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria) are on the “Top 13” list. Even the “Palestinian Authority” (aka the PLO) donated over $1 million dollars (the same “desperately poor” PLO that rakes in hundreds of millions in “humanitarian aid” from the European Union and others).
A final thought: isn’t it amazing how the U.S. Department of Education saw what was going on and did nothing about it? This is another reason to support President Trump’s plan to abolish the Department.
And so it goes here in Israel on a cloudy Shabbat morning as we wish our soldiers and you dear readers:
Shabbat Shalom!
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.