President Joe Biden’s botched Gaza pier not only cost U.S. taxpayers $320 million, it also came at a tragic human cost. Two Israeli soldiers deployed to secure the project were killed by Hamas terrorist in mid-June, the news agency Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) reported exclusively Sunday.
Two IDF soldiers were killed and two others seriously injured when their tank was hit by explosives planted by Hamas terrorist while they were securing the pier off the coast of northern Gaza.
The Israeli troops were there to “establish a “security bubble” to protect the U.S. personnel building the pier as well as the individuals involved in offloading and distributing the aid,” Politico reported on March 26, citing a official U.S. sources .
The IDF soldiers killed while protecting U.S. personnel were identified as 28-year-old Eitan Koplovich and 49-year-old Elon Waiss.
The JNS reports:
Two Israel Defense Forces soldiers were killed last month while securing the United States’ humanitarian aid pier off the coast of Gaza, an Israeli military source deployed to the Strip told JNS.The Biden administration project was plagued by technical and logistical dysfunction and is now being decommissioned by the Pentagon.“What led me to talk is really just the frustration towards the end of the last few weeks. It’s a very unsafe operation; anything could happen,” the source said. “They [the United States] could have delivered the aid through any land port and finished within a week, butbut for whatever publicity reason they built the pier. Then they failed and tried to cover it up.”On June 15, IDF tanks based at a makeshift military outpost set up near the pier ran over a large IED some 400 meters north of it, killing two soldiers and wounding two others, according to the source.“The operation was conducted in defense of the pier. Anything that occurred in the area, they [the Israeli troops] were responsible for protecting it [the pier],” the source said. “Ultimately, the reason they were engaging these terrorists is because they posed a threat to the forces protecting the aid,” he added.“The mission was in support of the larger goal of protecting the pier and occurred within that context. Soldiers would not have been positioned within these areas otherwise,” he told JNS.On June 16, the IDF announced that Capt. (res.) Eitan Koplovich, 28, from Jerusalem, and Warrant Officer (res.) Elon Waiss, 49, from Psagot, were killed in northern Gaza. Both served in the 8th Reserve Armored Brigade’s 129th Battalion.Two other troops were seriously wounded in the attack, according to the military.Hamas had targeted the tank with explosives.JNS reached out to the IDF twice to confirm the veracity of source’s claim. Both times, the military referred JNS to its website and Telegram channel “for information regarding fallen soldiers.”
The project ended in a total disaster as Biden administration on Thursday announced the it was dismantling the floating pier after spending hundreds of millions of dollars and putting the lives of nearly a thousand U.S. servicemen in danger.
The pier was only operational for a few weeks. Hamas had not interest in allowing aid into Gaza. The terrorist group has been firing rockets at humanitarian border crossings, killing IDF soldiers facilitating the flow of aid.
This was not the only known terrorist attack on the Gaza pier. Nearly two months ahead of the IED blast, Palestinian terrorists fired mortars at the construction site, damaging engineering equipment and reportedly injuring at least one U.S. worker. “Members of a terror group in the Gaza Strip launched mortars at an under-construction pier for a US-led project to bring aid into the Palestinian enclave,” The Times of Israel reported on April 24.
The failed project risked the lives of hundreds of U.S. soldiers, sailors and engineers. “The Pentagon spent $320 million and engaged 1,000 soldiers and sailors to open a major maritime corridor,” The Wall Street Journal noted on May 25.
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