Shabbat
Saturday
14 Cheshvan 5784
October 28 2023
Please note that our standard policy of no blog on Shabbat is waived for the duration of the war.
UPDATE 10:05 PM
PM Netanyahu, Defense Minister Gallant, and Benny Gantz have just held a press conference in which PM Netanyahu said that the ground phase of the war has begun and that the war will be a long one.
9-year old Tamar [last name withheld]. May her memory be for a blessing.
Last Friday, Tamar was in her home here in Ashdod when the incoming missile alarm sounded in her neighborhood. She started to run to her family’s bomb shelter and collapsed. Since then, she has been on a ventilator at Assuta Hospital. Today, she died of cardiac arrest.
Missile and mortar attacks in South and Central Israel since 4 pm:
Ashdod (10:01); Amiauz, Yesha Sde Nitzan (9:12); Rishon LeZion, Rehovot, Nes Ziona (7:01); Be’eri (6:47); Zikim (6:22); Ashkelon (6:10); Netiv HaAsara (5:22).
Missile attacks in Northern Israel since 4 pm:
Margaliot (7:17); Shatula (6:02); Abu Karinat, Katz-e-Sir (5:15).
UPDATE 4:00 PM
A note about the missiles emanating from Gaza
We are now three weeks into the war and nearly 10,000 missiles and mortars have been fired at Israelis by the barbarians in Palestinian Gaza. We can sit here at home in Ashdod and watch the missile launches on Gaza livecams. There is no mystery where the missiles are fired from–not to us and not to the “poor Palestinians” in Gaza supposedly being used as human shields.
Your humble servant believes it is time to get rid of the “human shields” reason for not hitting the launch sites.
Three weeks ago as we watched the naked female hostage taken from Israel tied to the back of a pickup truck and paraded through the streets of Gaza with cheering men, women, and children on both sides screaming Allahu Akbar and handing out candy, any sympathy that any of us here in southern Israel ever had for the “human shields” vanished.
If we needed any confirmation that the “so-called” human shields are actually willing human shields, it came several days ago when HamISIS called on Palestinians to come to the Shifa Hospital to protect it from being bombed. An estimated 70,000 showed up.
No country in the world would tolerate any missile attacks much less 10,000 missiles. Why is Israel held to a different standard? It is time to aggressively go after every launch site no matter where it is and stop the missile madness.
In the South
Missiles and mortars targeting southern and central Israel in the last four hours:
(3:12) Ashkelon; (3:04) Beersheva–direct hit on a house; (3:00) Reim; (2:44) Kissufim; (2:01) Tel Aviv–4 wounded 2 seriously; (1:44) Netiv HaAsara; (1:06) Nir Yitzhak; (12:59) Yad Mordechai.
In the North
(2:41) Arab Al Aramsha; (2:30) Meshgav.
In Judea and Samaria
Since the beginning of the war 1,030 wanted terrorists have been captured. 670 of them are members of HamISIS.
UPDATE 12:00 PM
In the South
Missiles and mortars targeting Israel–especially Israeli soldiers in staging areas on the Gaza border in the last two hours:
Netiv HaAsara (11:49); (Kissufim (11:33); Magen (10:49); Nahal Oz (10:36); Nir Oz (10:20)
The commander of the Hamas Naval Force–which among other things has been attempting to infiltrate by sea into Zikim–was killed this morning.
In the North
There are reports of an interception of a drone or missile over the Kineret in the last hour, and explosions in southern Lebanon.
Worth 7 minutes of your time
For an excellent discussion of proportionate response and anti-Semitism, watch and listen to the first 7 minutes of this exchange with author Douglas Murray.
The Leftist Village Idiots
If you can believe this, in the middle of a raging war on numerous fronts, the anti-Netanyahu forces have gotten permission to demonstrate in front of his house today.
Just unbelievable.
UPDATE 10:00 AM
The fog of the evening and early morning has burned off, and we have these encouraging statements from the IDF Spokesman about last night:
“Fighter jets attacked about 150 underground targets in the northern Gaza Strip tonight. During the attack, terrorists of the terrorist organization Hamas were eliminated and combat tunnels, underground combat spaces and other underground terrorist infrastructures were destroyed.
From the words of the commander of the fire center in the Southern Command, Lt. Col. J.: ‘We are using fire that has never been seen before in the Gaza Strip. From the air, from the ground, or from the underground – the IDF will eliminate every senior or junior terrorist and every terrorist infrastructure of Hamas.’
RMA (Head of the Air Operations Group), Lt. Col. Gilad Keinan: ‘In the attack flight tonight, about a hundred fighter jets dropped hundreds of weapons and destroyed hundreds of targets of the Hamas terrorist organization. The Air Force is prepared for the continuation of the development of the campaign, and works together with all the bodies in the IDF when the goal is clear – to destroy everything that has been touched by the hands of Hamas.'”
UPDATE 8:00 AM
A reminder to the world of what this war is about. Testimony from a ZAKA volunteer yesterday about what he saw when he entered Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7:
“What we saw there was simply cut up children–a hand, a foot. There’s no words to describe the horrors. The Hamas terrorists stomped and crushed the babies’ heads–that’s what we saw in the nursery. Inside the rubble, inside the cribs, babies thrown in all sorts of places. We found a mother and her child in an attic in Kibbutz Be’eri. They had been completely burned. We had to scrape their ashes with a spatula in order to bring them to burial.”
This war is about eradicating utter evil.
Yes, we want a ceasefire–after the hostages and hostage bodies have been released, and after every HamISIS terrorist and every other terrorist in Palestinian Gaza is dead.
—-
It is a very foggy morning here in Israel in more ways than one. After a night of continuous IAF air attacks and bombing and an expanded ground incursion by the IDF into Gaza, there is little concrete news about where we stand at this hour.
What we know:
*The head of the HamISIS air force was killed last night.
*The IAF struck the HamISIS neighborhoods of Rimal, Shatti, El Boreiji, Deir El Balach, and the cities of Gaza City and Khan Younis. The bombing of northern Gaza continues at this moment as it has all night (we can hear it loudly here in Ashdod).
*The IDF and HamISIS are engaged at this hour in close firefights-in the heavy fog. Apparently, the IDF has advanced toward Beit Hanoun in three directions.
*The IAF struck in southern Lebanon last night in response to anti-tank missile fire on IDF facilities in Israel.
*Iranian proxies in Syria fired artillery at the Golan Heights last night.
*The Houthis in Yemen launched drones and missiles toward Eilat last night. Apparently one hit in an open space near the city. The IAF intercepted an as-yet-unidentified-to-the-public aircraft over the Red Sea.
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.