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IDF Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 25, 2014 27 Comments
John Kerry has proposed a seven-day truce, during which time there would be negotiations over a longer-term ceasefire. Hamas reportedly is going to accept the proposal, but that's far from official. The Israeli cabinet is discussing the proposal as we speak. Concerns are that Hamas, having rejected a ceasefire early on and finally beginning to crumble, will simply use the truce to redeploy and recover. We will update when more is known, but you can follow the events in the live video and Twitter feeds at the bottom of the post. A ceasefire that allows Hamas to rearm and reload likely will be unacceptable to Israel in light of the discovery that Hamas had planned a massive Rosh Hashonah attack through the tunnels that are being destroyed:
Israel’s Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu revealed on Thursday that Hamas was intending to attack Israel from dozens of tunnels in a coordinated simultaneous attack. At the beginning of Thursday’s special cabinet meeting the prime minister said, “These tunnels enable the enemy to open a multi-pronged offensive and carry out a massive terror attack inside Israel.” According to security officials cited by Israeli daily Ma’ariv, the political echelon needs to give the military more time to eliminate the tunnels since “we are now not even halfway through.” The attack Hamas was planning, the officials say, “would have made Israel drop to its knees.” They added that even the tunnels destroyed until now takes away from Hamas a strategic asset the terror group has been working on for years..
IDF officers estimate that the job of destroying all the tunnel infrastructure will take another ten days to two weeks to complete:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 21, 2014 9 Comments
Part of the anti-Israel war effort includes attempts to demoralize Israel and its supporters. That is why Hamas, Hezbollah and others try so hard to kidnap Israeli civilians or soldiers, and even to grab dead bodies. That psychological warfare is on full display in the media and social media. But it's not working because Israelis know that Hamas and other Islamic terrorist groups in Gaza, who fire from among civilians towards civilians, leave Israel with no choice but to fight in a war it didn't want but in which so much is at stake. Despite losses from infiltrators and in city combat, Israeli troop morale is high from all reports. The video below has gone viral on Facebook, with over 30,500 likes and almost 20,000 shares as of this writing. It shows Israeli soldiers on a break from combat in Gaza singing: The song is "Who Believes" by Eyal Golan. This is a rough translation (thanks to our Israeli family friend Daniel for the link):

Posted by David Gerstman on July 17, 2014 19 Comments
In the early morning hours today, prior the implementation of the humanitarian ceasefire, the IDF spotted a terror cell infiltrating from Gaza. Aircraft targeted the terrorists in a dramatic video. The New York Times reports:
The Israeli military said it foiled an attempt by Gaza militants to infiltrate a kibbutz through a tunnel early Thursday, hours before the two sides briefly halted fire for a humanitarian lull in which Gaza residents tentatively stepped into the streets, hoping to find one of the handful of cash machines that opened for the first time since the conflict escalated July 8. ... An Israeli military spokesman said it was not immediately clear if all the militants from the tunnel had been killed. Residents of the Israeli border community nearest the exit of the tunnel, Kibbutz Sufa, were told to stay in their homes for several hours after the initial confrontation, which began around 4.30 a.m.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 15, 2014 53 Comments
An argument which is being used against Israel and which is quite nonsensical is that the low Israeli casualty rate from over a thousand Hamas rockets somehow makes the higher Palestinian casualty rate a war crime or otherwise indefensible. It's true that the casualty rate is lopsided, but that has nothing to do with breach of law or intent to kill. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others in Gaza fire rockets from civilian areas, and conceal their weapons and leadership in and under civilian buildings. The only way for Israel to defend itself is to target the source of the rocket fire and to seek out command and control structures located in civilian areas. Israel goes to extraordinary and unprecedented lengths not to kill civilians. From warnings via text message and telephone, to public announcements and leaflets, to roof tapping (use of inert warheads to shake a building as warning to get out, usually 15 minutes in advance), to calling off airstrikes. If any other military in the history of humankind has gone to such lengths, please tell me. As in every single military campaign in the history of modern warfare, sometimes mistakes are made. But to deny Israel's efforts is to deny reality. Hamas and the others have no such concerns. Their rockets are fired almost exclusively into heavily populated civilian areas, the one exception being targeting of the Dimona nuclear reactor. So when not trying to kill civilians directly, Hamas tries to create a nuclear leak to kill civilians indirectly. The low Israeli casualty rate is due to the extraordinary efforts of the Israeli government to protect its civilians -- including extensive bomb shelters and safe structures on streets. And of course, the Iron Dome system that shoots down rockets heading for populated areas. So on the one side we have homicidal Hamas maniacs targeting civilians and using civilians as human shields, and on the other side we have Israel trying to avoid killing Palestinian civilians and protecting its Israeli civilians. The result is an imbalance in civilian casualties in Israel's favor. But that imbalance is not proof of anything other than which side values civilian life. Israel's good behavior, however, does not go unpunished. Islamists and leftists accuse the party trying to avoid civilians casualties (Israel) of being the equivalent of Hitler, as they spew their Jew hatred openly around the world. But it's not just street mobs who play this perverse game. Some Western commentators use Israel's protection of its civilians as evidence that Israel is acting unjustly or even in violation of international law. Here are three examples:

Posted by Mandy Nagy on July 04, 2014 1 Comment
The Syrian Electronic Army claimed credit Thursday for hijacking the Twitter account of the Israel Defense Forces then posting false information from the account. The incident spurred a flurry of confusion and concern after one of the tweets, posted from the hijacked @IDFSpokesperson account, falsely claimed that a rocket attack on a nuclear facility caused a “possible nuclear leak.” No such attack or leak occurred. SEA-IDF-tweet1 Another tweet displayed this pro-Palestinian message. (The tweets have since been deleted but have been saved in screen shots online).

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 29, 2014 28 Comments
This video does not appear to be a Pallywood production. The Times of Israel reports, Gaza surveillance cameras pick up Israeli strike on terrorists:
Unverified footage posted to YouTube on Saturday appears to show the Israeli air strike carried out Friday afternoon on a car carrying two operatives belonging to the Popular Resistance Committees, a coalition of armed groups in Gaza. The footage shows a vehicle driving along a coastal road before being struck. Passersby remain seemingly unharmed. Israel confirmed carrying out the targeted killing of Osama Has​sumi, 29, and Mohammad Fatzih, 24, on Friday, charging that they were involved in a cell responsible for repeated rocket fire on Israel’s southern cities over the past several weeks and were planning terror attacks on Israeli civilians.
Interesting comment at YouTube:
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