Israel Update 6.7.23

There will be no Israel Update next week. Hopefully to be resumed on 19^th July.

 

JENIN: COUNTER TERRORISM

 

 

 

Israeli forces overnight July 2/3 launched a massive military operation  targeting a terrorist headquarters in Jenin.   A “joint operations centre” of  the Jenin Brigades, which served as an advanced observation and reconnaissance centre where armed terrorists would gather before and after conducting terrorist activities was hit by the IDF and the Israel Security Agency. It was also a site where weapons and explosives were stored and was used as a coordination and communications hub.   Read more here

 

 

Sgt. First Class David Yehuda Yitzhak (23) from the elite Egoz commando unit was killed in Jenin on Tuesday evening, as Israeli forces began to withdraw from the area. Read more here

 

 

IDF troops located a makeshift rocket, among other weapons and equipment in Jenin. Read more here

 

 

The IDF accused Palestinian gunmen in Jenin of turning a mosque into a fortified hideout, complete with an underground tunnel and a cache of weapons. On the ground floor of the al-Ansari mosque, troops found two tunnel openings. Explosives, weapons, and other military equipment were found inside the holes and scattered across the mosque. Read more here

 

 

 

IRAN BEHIND WEST BANK TERROR

 

 

What is happening today in the West Bank corresponds to the directives of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei according to the Secretary-General of Islamic Jihad. He said “There was a great focus in order for the West Bank to move from a state of coexistence and calm to a state of resistance that we see today, and of course all of this coincides with the directives of His Eminence the Leader, and during our last meeting with him in Tehran, he renewed the call for that.” He added that elements of Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement have also been helped with support and arms.  Read more here

 

 

MEDIA MISREPORTING

 

 

Multiple media sources including the BBC, Sky News & The Times of London etc were reporting that “3 children” had been killed during the IDF counter-terror operation in Jenin.

Palestinian Media Watch has published some facts about these “children”. Their report shows photos of the three, aged 16 & 17, showing them armed and dressed in combat gear and reveals that each belonged to one of the 3 dominant Palestinian terror organizations.          View here

 

 

The BBC has apologized after its news anchor in an interview with former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that the IDF are “happy to kill children.” Bennet replied. “The fact that there are young terrorists who decide to hold arms is their responsibility. All the Palestinians that were killed were terrorists in this case.” Read more here

View interview here

 

 

TEL AVIV TERROR ATTACK

 

 

Seven people were wounded, four of them seriously, in a car-ramming and stabbing terror attack in northern Tel Aviv on Tuesday. The Palestinian assailant rammed a pickup truck into people on a pavement then got out and stabbed others. He was shot dead by an armed civilian.

Yesterday it was reported that 2 seriously injured women remained sedated and intubated. One was a pregnant woman who lost her child due to the severe wounds she suffered in the attack. Others seriously hurt were a 30-year-old man who suffered stab wounds to his stomach and underwent surgery on Tuesday and another man, 76, who was treated for knife wounds to his chest and is in intensive care. Read more here Read more here

 

 

 

ROCKETS FIRED FROM GAZA & LEBANON

 

 

 

A salvo of five rockets, launched from the Gaza Strip at southern Israel early Wednesday morning, were all intercepted by Iron Dome. A large fragment from a rocket hit a home in Sderot, damaging the roof and crashing into a children’s paddling pool in the yard.Read more here

 

 

A rocket launched from Lebanon at Israel on Thursday morning exploded in Israeli territory, close to the northern village of Ghajar.Read more here

 

 

 

THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY

 

 

Fatah and the PA security forces are leading the recent terror wave against Israelis, the Director of the Palestinian Centre for Strategic Studies, told PA TV on June 14. He stated that “63-65%” of the “martyrs” in “the daily confrontations” are from Abbas’ Fatah movement, and that most of those are officers in the PA security forces.
Moreover, the Fatah Commission of Information and Culture said on Facebook on May 27 that “more than 355 of our Palestinian people’s prisoners…are from the Palestinian Security Forces.” Read more here

 

 

 

POST-SCRIPT TO THWARTED CYPRUS TERROR ATTACK

 

 

 

Israel’s Mossad revealed  that it was able recently to thwart a Cyprus terror attack by kidnapping the mastermind from within Iranian territory. Abbasalilu had received detailed instructions from senior members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and told his interrogators how the plot was to be carried out and where to find all the supplies and cell members. Read more here

 

 

 

ISRAELI MEDICS CARE FOR CHILDREN

 

 

In an extremely rare and complex operation, Hadassah Medical Centre surgeons have reattached a 12-year-old boy’s head to his neck after a serious accident. Suleiman Hassan, a West Bank Palestinian, had been airlifted to the hospital’s trauma unit, where it was determined that the ligaments holding the posterior base of his skull were severely damaged, leaving it detached from the top vertebrae of his spine, known as an “internal decapitation”. Read more here

 

 

 

The lives of two  boys aged 5 and 6 from Eswatini formerly Swaziland, who both had congenital heart defects, were saved after surgery by doctors in Israel via the Save A Child’s Heart (SACH) programme. One of their mothers said: “Coming here and experiencing the people’s kindness and care, it’s another feeling altogether. What Israel is doing for our African children is amazing.” Read more here

Haifa’s Rambam Hospital sends humanitarian delegations to perform certain types of surgery at St. Peter’s Hospital in  Addis Adaba (Ethiopia). Recently during head and neck surgery on a 3 year old, during a power cut a backup generator also failed, so the Israeli surgeons continued by the light of their smartphones.Read more here

 

 

 

FOOTBALL (Soccer)

 

 

 

England defeated Israel 3-0 on Wednesday in a semi-final match of the European Under-21 Championship. However, by reaching the semi-final stage, Israel will be one of only 16 teams to qualify to play in the football (soccer) tournament, played at Under-23 level, at the Paris Olympics in 2024. Read more here

 

Israeli soccer star Manor Solomon is reportedly to join Tottenham Hotspur. He has been the only Israeli playing in the Premier League since he signed for Fulham last year. The move is subject to approval from Shakhtar Donetsk and FIFA, and also subject to Manor passing a standard medical test. Read more here

 

 

FILM FESTIVAL

 

 

When the 40th Jerusalem Film Festival opens July 13 at Jerusalem’s Sultan’s Pool, the award-winning actors and directors attending will include Helen Mirren and Oliver Stone. Read more here

 

 

 

VIDEO

 

Explains in 1 min 17 sec how Jenin became a hub for terrorism.

“It all comes down to Iran which has funded and armed these militant groups”

View here

 

 

 

COMMENT & OPINION

 

 

Sean Durns (Extract): The (IDF) operation in Jenin really highlights the failure of the Palestinian Authority, the U.S.-backed entity that was created as part of the 1990s Oslo Peace Process. The PA is tasked with preventing terrorism, and its security forces are trained and armed by the United States, among others, to do just that. Instead of preventing terrorism, however, the PA pays tax-deductible salaries to those who carry out terrorist attacks…The U.S. has failed to stave off the PA’s growing unpopularity and weakness, declining to pressure the authority to uphold the rule of law. Fixated on a “two-state solution” that Palestinian leaders like Abbas have repeatedly rejected, U.S. policymakers have infantilized Fatah’s leadership, failing to push for healthy institutions and a stop to the authority’s policy of rewarding terrorism.  Read more here

 

 

 

Yaakov Lappin (Extract):  it appears (that) the IDF’s goal of squashing Jenin’s image as a terrorist safe haven has been accomplished, with some caveats.
The IDF, backed by Shin Bet intelligence and Border Police officers, seized more than a thousand pieces of armament in Jenin camp and surrounding areas, including bombs, ammunition, and guns.
Fourteen command posts and hideouts used to coordinate terrorist activity were demolished, and six bomb-making facilities were dismantled, where security forces found over 300 bombs, bomb-making chemicals, and other weapons. Hundreds of thousands of shekels in terror funds were confiscated, and six underground shafts and two weapon pits were also found, including in a mosque.
The army killed 12 Palestinian combatants and expected to engage many more, but Jenin’s (other) terrorists lost their motivation…and fled. Read more here

 

 

JPost Editorial(Extract): If it were true that the construction of (West Bank) homes causes violence, it would follow logically that the absence of such construction should bring about a lull in that violence. But (during) the 10-month settlement freeze declared by P.M. Netanyahu in November 2009 numerous Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, were murdered by Palestinian terrorists during that period.
What drives Palestinian terrorism is the persistent refusal to countenance any sovereign Jewish presence in this land, the hatred and dehumanization of Jews, the ongoing incitement to violence in Palestinian schools and mosques, and the Palestinian Authority’s incentivization of terrorism by means of financial inducements and rewards.
Jewish homes do not cause violence. Terrorists cause violence. To compare the construction of homes to the wanton murder of innocent civilians is to engage in a stunning perversion of basic morality.  Read more here

 

 

Elder of Ziyon blog: Why is there a “refugee camp” in Jenin?

The city has been under Palestinian Authority control for nearly three decades. The residents live in “Palestine”, so they aren’t refugees or even the grandchildren of refugees. They live in the land they claim as their own, under Palestinian rule. There is no definition of “refugee” in the world that would call these people refugees.  Yet they live, rent free, in a cramped “refugee camp” and the world pays for their housing, as well as their schooling and their medical care – all services way beyond what real refugees receive.

In 2002, after the IDF went into Jenin and destroyed the terrorist infrastructure in fierce fighting with heavy casualties on both sides, the Israeli housing minister offered to rebuild the camp elsewhere where residents could have larger houses and wider roads – to live like normal people. The idea was vehemently rejected…

This is the way things have been since 1948. Ordinary Palestinians are stuck with leaders who actively want to use them as “symbols” of misery – by keeping them miserable.  Read more here

 

 

Critique of BBC Jenin reporting by David Collier: Read more here