Israel Update 27.5.21

CEASEFIRE

 

Israel and Hamas in Gaza agreed to a cease-fire that began early last Friday 21/5. Read more here

 

During the latest conflict, more than 4,360 rockets and mortar shells were fired at Israel, of which 3,573 penetrated Israeli airspace, 680 fell inside Gaza and 280 fell into the sea. Read more here

 

JUST BEFORE THE CEASEFIRE

 

A rocket fired from Gaza fell on the grounds of Barzilai Medical Centre in Ashkelon on Thursday, metres from the emergency room.    The hospital, 13 km. north of the Gaza border, has treated 413 patients as a consequence of the rocket attacks, including 58 children. Read more here

 

Gazans fired about 40 rockets at Israel just before the cease-fire came into effect at 2 a.m. Friday. Read more here

 

The IDF foiled a major attack by Hamas just before the ceasefire went into effect by striking a Hamas cell making its way through an underground tunnel, intent on emerging close to the Israeli border and attacking soldiers. Read more here

 

HUMANITARIAN

 

The 17 year-old niece of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh is currently being treated at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, (and has received a bone marrow transplant) and has been there for over a month while her uncle’s terrorist group launched rockets into Israel. Read more here

 

AFTERMATH IN ISRAEL

 

A 73-year-old woman who was seriously injured while seeking shelter from incoming rocket fire from the Gaza Strip has died of her injuries, bringing the death toll in Israel during Operation Guardian of the Walls to 13.         Read more here

 

For many Israelis, everything has totally changed since Hamas fired some 4,300 rockets at Israel, killing 12 and wounding hundreds. With multiple buildings suffering hits during the barrages, dozens of families have been left homeless with their possessions destroyed.  Malka and Michael Stilerman have no protected area in their home and the public bomb shelter is too far to reach in time. Michael is in a wheelchair — every time there is a siren, the two of them just sat by the door and waited. The rocket that hit their apartment building on 17/5 made 14 families homeless and totally destroyed their home. Michael was lightly wounded and remains in hospital.  Read more here

 

Nearly a quarter (930) of the 4,340 rockets  fired at Israel from Gaza landed on the city of Ashkelon, 15 km. from the border, the closest heavily populated area.  Two women were killed in Ashkelon and two more are seriously injured. About a quarter of Ashkelon’s 160,000 inhabitants don’t have bomb shelters. Read more here

 

GAZA CASUALTIES

 

Israel estimated it had killed at least 215 combatants in the recent fighting, but in the Hamas count they became innocent civilians. Over 650 Hamas rockets fell inside Gaza and definitely caused civilian casualties. 1,440 Gazan rockets were successfully engaged by Israel’s Iron Dome batteries, while 160 struck Israeli residential areas. Read more here

 

An explosion that killed eight members of a Gazan family on the first day of the recent fighting in Gaza was caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket with fell inside Gaza, not an Israeli airstrike.    A senior military officer says the incident was investigated and Israel did not strike the Beit Hanoun area that night. Read more here

 

Photos of fake Gazan “civilian” casualties dressed in military fatigues and holding guns.Read more here

 

AFTERMATH OF GAZA CONFLICT

 

During the conflict, IDF destroyed over 100 km. of Hamas’ tunnel network and conducted 570 airstrikes targeting rockets and their launchers. The IDF severely damaged Hamas’ ability to develop and produce weapons, destroying workshops and research centres designed to upgrade their weaponry.The IDF struck 10 government offices, 11 internal security targets and five banks that manage terror funds. Dozens of command rooms, some in high-rise buildings, were also destroyed. The IDF eliminated 25 senior officials and 200 operatives belonging to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.Read more here

 

“So long as Hamas can have rockets, then the prospect of changing anything in Gaza will be very limited and any calm is basically a short-term calm,” former U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross said. He urged the international community to link humanitarian aid to Hamas demilitarization, adding that a mechanism would be needed to ensure that humanitarian assistance was not diverted to Hamas for the reconstruction of its rocket arsenal.  Read more here

 

Israel’s Foreign Minister has told the U.S. Secretary of State, and the foreign ministers of the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt that the international community must actively work to weaken Hamas while rebuilding Gaza.. The rehabilitation of Gaza must be monitored closely by international supervisors. Moreover, the two Israeli civilians held by Hamas and the bodies of two Israeli soldiers killed in the 2014 war must be returned.  Read more here

 

Despite intense surveillance and tight restrictions, the Hamas terror group had produced and procured thousands of long-range rockets and other arms. Read more here

 

Israel knew the Al Jala tower in Gaza City housed offices of the Associated Pressand Al Jazeera, but the building also contained vital Hamas electronic equipment…A top military official said that if Israel had not taken action, Hamas would have realized that it could shield its resources from attack by placing them near media facilities. Hamas had maintained a military intelligence facility in the building, and used it as a base for equipment used to try to jam Israeli communications and satellite navigation systems. Read more here

 

IRAN

 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the visiting German Foreign Minister that Iran had sent an armed UAV into northern Israel from Iraq or Syria that was intercepted, showing him a part of the drone. Read more here

 

Israeli forces shot down at least six kamikaze drones, designed and supplied by Iran, launched from Gaza. Operatives from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps smuggled in components of their Ababil-2 unmanned aerial vehicle and taught Hamas to equip it with a 30 kg. warhead. Read more here

 

The IDF’s Lt.-Col. Jonathan Conricus “When the most important countries around the world are thinking about negotiating with Iran, people need to remember [that] the Iranians are the number one exporters of instability and terror and death and destruction in the Middle East and they should be addressed and held accountable as such.”
“Iranian specialists, engineers and people who deal in rocketry and explosives have been educating and telling Hamas engineers how to produce rockets, how to manufacture their own weapons. Had it not been for that very specific and detailed Iranian intervention, we wouldn’t have been in the situation now.” Read more here

 

 

Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, on Friday thanked “the Islamic Republic of Iran, who did not hold back with money, weapons and technical support.” Read more here

 

UNWRA VOLTE-FACE

 

Matthias Schmale, director of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza said on Sunday: “I also have the impression that there is a huge sophistication in the way that the Israeli army struck [Gaza] over the past 11 days….Yes, they did not hit, with some exceptions, civilian targets.” On Tuesday he apologized for those remarks after being harshly criticized by Hamas and Palestinian groups.Read more here

 

ONE EXAMPLE (AMONG MANY) OF MEDIA BIAS

 

In her May 12 coverage of Hamas’ indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israel, CBS’ Elizabeth Palmer flipped reality on its head, claiming “Hamas launched over 100 rockets into Israel in response to Israeli airstrikes.”.  Whereas it was Hamas attacks on Israel’s cities that led to Israeli airstrikes on Hamas infrastructure, not the opposite. Read more here

 

CORONAVIRUS IN ISRAEL

 

Israel will lift most remaining coronavirus restrictions on June 1 as the number of active cases in Israel dropped to 500, compared with 88,000 at the peak of the pandemic. As of Monday morning, 59 people were in serious condition. Restrictions regarding airports and travel will remain. Read more here

 

COMMENT & OPINION

 

Lahav Harkov: Just walk down the street in Israel and ask any random passerby if they think they would be alive today if there was no Israel. Chances are the person would say “no.” The majority of Israeli Jews, descended from the 850,000 refugees of the ethnic cleansing of Jews from North Africa and the Middle East …have good reason to say “no.”…. Palestinians and their advocates like to tell Israelis to go “back” to Poland or Russia or wherever else – it’s always Eastern Europe and not the part of the world from where the majority of Israelis actually come. But, of course, those places are not our homes, and the circumstances under which much of our ancestors left show that those places never were our homes. Read more here

 

Evan Fallenberg: I turned a dilapidated 300-year-old Ottoman ruin in  Acre into a tiny, exquisite boutique hotel called Arabesque…On the night of May 12, an angry Arab mob breached the great, heavy front doors …Every piece of glass, ceramic or porcelain that could be broken was smashed, furniture was dismantled, mirrors shattered, televisions and air conditioners ripped to pieces. My 95-year-old grand piano was turned on its side. Sinks were cut in half, electrical appliances in the kitchen bashed in, art on the walls flung in every direction.
Yet in the days that followed, I was buoyed by the extraordinary outpouring of support and love and encouragement from my Arab friends and neighbours. They told us: We will clean up with you. We will donate. We will stay in the hotel when you reopen. Read more here

 

Herb Keinon: British-American television comedian John Oliver delivered a vicious 10-minute attack on Israel on his show on Sunday, arguing that since more Palestinians are dying than Jews, Israel is wrong, immoral and guilty of war crimes. That’s the equivalent of saying that because 500,000 German civilians were killed in World War II, as opposed to “only” 67,000 British civilians, the Nazis were right in that war and Britain was wrong…Social media amplifies these voices well beyond what they deserve…When it comes to the reaction of governments to Israel’s campaign against Hamas, Israel’s situation is better this time than during any of the previous rounds with Hamas in Gaza.Read more here

 

Jake Wallis Simons: But while Jerusalem may have lost the propaganda war, it emerges from this conflict the strongest, its security boosted by a hugely degraded enemy…A significant portion of Hamas’ network of tunnels – a vast subterranean world used to house arsenals, plan operations, train militants and move about undetected – were obliterated.
Intelligence sources report that factions inside Hamas are already grumbling about the reckless decision to invite so much destruction upon Gaza. Read more here

 

Jonathan Schanzer and David May: If it was not for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system, Hamas rockets could have killed hundreds or even thousands of innocents. Yet, somehow, the group has found a small gaggle of congressional apologists in Washington, which is odd given how much terrorism is reviled by both Democrats and Republicans alike. Hamas, now a full-fledged proxy of Tehran, was designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. in 1997, as it has been in Europe, Canada, and elsewhere around the world. Read more here

 

Charles Lane: Shooting more than 4,000 unguided explosives toward civilian populations in Israel violates all the norms of warfare. That’s more than 4,000 war crimes. Hamas stored rockets, and launched them, in or near civilians or civilian structures, just as it did during the 2014 war with Israel. This, too, is a violation of the laws of armed conflict. Read more here

 

Khaled Abu Toameh: In the past few weeks, thousands of Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank have been demonstrating in support of Hamas. These Palestinians are telling U.S. Secretary of State Blinken that he is wasting his time if he thinks that they would accept “so-called peaceful solutions” or “renounce any part of Palestine.” Read more here

 

Doug Lamborn, Lee Zeldin, Joe Wilson: In the end it comes down to one simple fact: Israel uses its weapons to protect its people, Hamas uses its people to protect its weapons. Read more here

 

Jonathan S. Tobin: President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken think they can aid the people of Gaza without helping or even rewarding Hamas…As the international community learned after it devoted billions of dollars to reconstruct Gaza after the 2014 war, it was virtually impossible to ensure that the money helped ordinary Palestinians rather than their Hamas tyrants… Most of the building material that was let into Gaza after 2014 went into rebuilding the terrorist group’s military infrastructure. There is no reason to believe the next round of rebuilding will go any differently.Read more here