All posts tagged: Israel Defense Forces

‘The Slow Bleeding Out of a Country’ | Andrew Arsan

‘The Slow Bleeding Out of a Country’ | Andrew Arsan

Published by skeptic

Once again Lebanon’s inhabitants are living through—and dying in—a conflict they are powerless to end. Western leaders like British Prime Minister Keir Starmer talk of pulling “back from the brink,” as though doing so were still possible. But what is this if not war? Since last October, when Hezbollah and Israel began exchanging cross-border fire in the aftermath of Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Flood attacks, more than 2,800 people have died in Lebanon. Over 13,000 more have been injured. The Lebanese government estimates that 1.3 million people—over a fifth of the population—have fled their homes, in what the caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, described as possibly “the largest displacement” in the country’s history. Of these, more than 500,000 have crossed the border into Bashar al-Asad’s empire of ruins.  Each day and each night bring more bombardments, more deaths. After months of border fighting, Israel escalated matters on July 30, assassinating the Hezbollah military leader Fuad Shukr—who the IDF blamed for a missile strike on the occupied Golan Heights—in an air strike on the southern Beirut suburb of Haret Hreik. …

U.S. paused shipment of weapons to Israel to head off Rafah invasion, says official

U.S. paused shipment of weapons to Israel to head off Rafah invasion, says official

Published by skeptic

Israeli army tanks take position in southern Israel near the border with the Gaza Strip on May 7, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement.  Menahem Kahana | Afp | Getty Images U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration paused a shipment of weapons to Israel last week in opposition to apparent moves by the Israelis to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah, a senior administration official said on Tuesday. Biden has been trying to head off a full-scale assault by the Israelis against Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinian have sought refuge from combat elsewhere in Gaza. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that as Israelis leaders seemed to approach a decision on a Rafah incursion, “we began to carefully review proposed transfers of particular weapons to Israel that might be used in Rafah” beginning in April. “As a result of that review, we have paused one shipment of weapons last week. It consists of 1,800 2,000-lb bombs and 1,700 500-lb bombs,” the official said. “We are especially focused on the end-use of the 2,000-lb bombs and the impact they could have in dense urban settings as we have seen in other parts of Gaza. We …

The Road to Famine in Gaza | Neve Gordon

The Road to Famine in Gaza | Neve Gordon

Published by skeptic

In the days that followed Hamas’s heinous October 7 attack on military bases, kibbutzim, towns, and the Nova music festival, several high-ranking Israeli officials announced that they intended to deprive Gaza’s civilian population of its most basic needs. At the time, over 80 percent of the goods entering the Gaza Strip came from Israel, which has kept the area under strict blockade for seventeen years. On October 9, following two days of extensive aerial bombing, the country’s minister of energy and infrastructure, Israel Katz, announced that he had ordered water, electricity, and fuel to be cut off. “What was,” he said, “will not be.”  The same day, the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, demanded a “complete siege” of the enclave: “there will be no food, there will be no fuel.” (His reasoning has since become notorious: “we are fighting human animals.”) On October 17 the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, insisted that “as long as Hamas does not release the hostages in its hands…not an ounce of humanitarian aid” would enter Gaza—only “hundreds of tons of explosives from the …

Is the Destruction of Gaza Making Israel Any Safer?

Is the Destruction of Gaza Making Israel Any Safer?

Published by Sam

Israeli forces are killing thousands of innocent civilians and badly damaging their country’s standing with its most important partners, including the United States. Israel has also no doubt severely degraded Hamas’s military capabilities, but the question needs to be asked: Is the country’s furious response to the Hamas invasion of October 7 making Israel any safer? At best, it’s still too soon to say—but on balance, what I see worries me. It sometimes takes years to fully appreciate the strategic significance of a conflict. Great victories look more ambiguous in hindsight, and catastrophic defeats sometimes have silver linings. That seems especially true for Israel. In 2006, Israel fought a 34-day war with Hezbollah that most observers at the time classed as a decisive victory for the Iranian-sponsored Lebanese militant group. Eighteen years later, that conflict looks instead like the moment when Israel reestablished a measure of cross-border deterrence that it had lost when it withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000. The Israeli ground onslaught in 2006 may have been disjointed and underwhelming, but the aerial …

The Orthodox Exemption Could Break Netanyahu’s Coalition

The Orthodox Exemption Could Break Netanyahu’s Coalition

Published by skeptic

The most controversial Israeli comedy sketch of the current war is just 88 seconds long. Aired in February on Eretz Nehederet, Israel’s equivalent of Saturday Night Live, it opens with two ashen-faced officers knocking on the door of a nondescript apartment, ready to deliver devastating news to the inhabitants. The officers are greeted by an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man who is similarly stricken when he sees them. “I’ve been terrified of this knock,” he says. “Ever since the war began, I knew it would eventually come for me.” But before the pained officers can continue, he interjects: “Listen, there is no situation in which I will enlist—forget about it.” It turns out that the officers have the wrong address. This is not the home of a fallen soldier, but of one of the many thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews who do not serve in Israel’s army, thanks to a special exemption. As the officers depart to find the right family, the man calls after them, “Tell them that we prayed for him! We did everything we could.” …

Israeli Drone Strike Kills Hamas Member in South Lebanon

Israeli Drone Strike Kills Hamas Member in South Lebanon

Published by Sam

A senior Hamas leader was killed by an Israeli drone strike that targeted his vehicle on a road south of Tyre, Lebanon, on Wednesday, March 13, according to the Israel Defense Forces and the Hezbollah-owned Al Manar television channel. Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) described the occupant of the vehicle as Palestinian, and said a Syrian national passing on a motorbike was also killed by the blast. Hamas identified the target of the strike as Hadi Ali Matzafa, Al Manar reported. The IDF described Matzafa as a key Hamas operative who had directed “squads and terrorist activities” and planned attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets. They also said he was a close associate of Samir Pandi, a member of Hamas’s militant wing who was killed alongside senior Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri by an IDF strike in Beirut on January 2. Aerial footage released by the IDF shows a blast targeting a vehicle on a road near the Rashidieh refugee camp, one of the largest Palestinian camps in Lebanon. Credit: IDF via Storyful Video transcript [NO …

The anti-Zionist Jews countering mainstream support for Israel

The anti-Zionist Jews countering mainstream support for Israel

Published by Sam

RALEIGH, N.C. (RNS) — In the weeks following the Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, those protesting Israel’s reprisal into Gaza blocked a major highway, staged die-ins in front of federal buildings, confronted members of Congress, and shut down Grand Central Station in New York. Almost all of these demonstrations were led by Jewish organizations, particularly the self-described anti-Zionist organization, Jewish Voice for Peace. Their prominent opposition to the war from the start both challenged Americans’ ideas about Jewish attitudes toward Israel and provoked questions about Zionism. Jewish Voice for Peace says it is committed to solidarity with Palestinians’ struggle for liberation and opposes Israel’s ongoing oppression of Palestinians.  Pro-Israel Jews have denounced JVP members as antisemitic and not really Jewish. One New York politician called for its members to be excommunicated. Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, said, “These radical far-left groups don’t represent the Jewish community.” For many U.S. Jews, such denunciations are only stating the obvious: Jews who consider themselves anti-Zionist have long been outside the mainstream. The term …

Biden’s New Doomsday Option Against Israeli Settlers

Biden’s New Doomsday Option Against Israeli Settlers

Published by skeptic

On February 1, Joe Biden took the biggest step any U.S. president has ever taken against Israel’s settler movement. He issued an executive order “imposing certain sanctions on persons undermining peace, security, and stability in the West Bank” and used this new authority to punish four Israeli settlers for violence against Palestinians and Israeli peace activists. But because the president’s directive dealt with the West Bank and not the war in Gaza, and was initially applied to only a handful of people, it was largely overlooked—or cast by critics as a symbolic sop to disaffected Arab and Muslim voters in places like Michigan. A careful reading of the order and conversations with officials both inside and outside the U.S. government, however, reveal that the move was no PR exercise. It was a warning shot—part of a deliberate strategy to splinter Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition and to advance the cause of the two-state solution. In time, it could even upend the U.S.-Israeli relationship. For more than a decade, Israel has struggled to contain a …

These US citizens went to fight for Israel. Now they’re hostages in Gaza.

These US citizens went to fight for Israel. Now they’re hostages in Gaza.

Published by Sam

(RNS) — After graduating from Tenafly High School in New Jersey two years ago, Edan Alexander enrolled in an Israeli army prep seminar to see if he would be a good fit for the Israel Defense Forces. Both of Alexander’s Israeli-born parents had served in the IDF. His grandparents lived in Tel Aviv. He was conversant in Hebrew. And he had been attending an Israeli scouting movement, the Tzofim, while in high school. So after completing the three-month army prep program tailored to Jews who live outside of Israel, he enlisted. On the morning of Oct. 7, Alexander, 20, was on guard duty at a military outpost about 1.5 miles from the Gaza border when Hamas terrorists stormed his watchtower and took him captive. He has not been heard from since, and his parents, Adi and Yael Alexander, are working feverishly to advocate for his release. Alexander is among the 100 hostages still believed to be alive in a network of tunnels beneath southern Gaza. Of those, six are U.S. citizens and three, including Alexander, …

Israel Says It Destroyed Tunnel Network Connecting North and South Gaza City

Israel Says It Destroyed Tunnel Network Connecting North and South Gaza City

Published by Sam

Israel’s army said on February 26 that it had destroyed “large parts” of an underground tunnel system connecting north and south Gaza City. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) published this footage described as showing the tunnel system and its destruction on Monday. It said the system connected the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital in south Gaza City to the Zeitoun neighborhood of the city. Ynet reported that the network was 10 km (6.2 miles) long. The IDF said the tunnels contained, “rooms … that included toilets, storage rooms for weapons and combat equipment, a branched shaft system, as well as the bodies of terrorists left in the tunnel.” The hospital is Gaza’s only cancer hospital, according to Turkish media. It has been out of service since later October when strikes hit its top floor, according to Gaza Now. The hospital’s manager said 10,000 cancer patients in Gaza have not been able to access treatment since the hospital stopped operating. Credit: IDF via Storyful Video transcript [NO AUDIO] Source link