Israel Cannot Win. I.D.F. Gaza. It Made Me Fight for Peace. A Memoir for a Man Who Formed to Die
I left his funeral last week crushed, knowing we had lost such a righteous soul. To me it’s clear. My friend not only fought against Hamas during his final moments to protect his friends and family; he also fought against Hamas during years of activism against the occupation.
All of our casualties in Gaza have done nothing because our leaders refuse to work on creating a political reality that will not lead to more violence. While I believe in self-defense, fighting in Gaza taught me that if my government doesn’t change its approach from crushing Palestinian hope to committing to Palestinian independence, not only will this war kill an untold number of Israelis and Palestinians in addition to the thousands who already have died, but it also will not decisively end terror. A ground invasion is not a good idea.
Human rights partners in the Palestinian people who organize protests are harassed and targeted by the Israeli military. I believe these policies have the goal of preventing pressure for a Palestinian state and permitting Israeli settlement development and creeping annexation in the West Bank.
Source: Opinion | I Fought for the I.D.F. in Gaza. It Made Me Fight for Peace.
The sound-and-light show of Gaza during the July 17 rocket attack: A tribute to the Wahdan shackle and soldier of the Aleppo army
At one point, I scribbled some thoughts on a piece of paper. Some of my team had been considering whether the operation was worth the loss of soldiers. I believe that it could be worth it, if we eliminate the threat.
As we withdrew from Beit Hanoun, we heard the roar of Air Force fighter jets overhead, followed by deafening explosions and towering plumes of debris and smoke rising from Al-Burrah. The deaths of eight members of the Wahdan family, most of them women and children, occurred when the plane hit the home of the soldiers from my unit.
Israeli troops entered from northern Gaza, Hagari said, among them ground troops, armor and artillery. The Israeli military released footage showing tanks entering Gaza’s north end. The ground operation was supported by “very significant, massive attacks from the sea” and heavy air bombardment, Hagari said.
Our main task over the two weeks I was in the northern Gaza Strip was to clear and secure a perimeter in urban areas to enable combat engineers to identify and demolish tunnels leading into Israel. We were always looking to get positions in new houses so we didn’t stay stationary and become easy targets. Each house had to be cleared; in one, I found a Kalashnikov rifle with a combat vest and an explosive device. I was terrified when I heard about reports that a missile had killed some of my friends and wounded others in the unit that had taken over the house.
Even today, I remember how the ground shook from the constant explosions as we moved into Gaza at dusk at the start of the ground invasion on July 17. As we marched into the village of Umm al-Nasr, our Merkava tanks plowed through the fields next to us, and the aerial and artillery bombardments created relentless thunder and lightning — what we jokingly called the sound-and-light show.
I stood over the body of the elderly lady who had her face blown off by the bombs in the war. There was a pool of blood on the floor of the shack and she had been lying there.
The Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza are outraged: How are doctors and medical staff affected by the Hamas operation? “We cannot help them anymore,” said Dr. Matar
The last several days, the Israel Defense Forces had mounted limited incursions into Gaza in which the soldiers left soon after entering. But Saturday’s announcement was the first extended presence of Israeli troops in the territory.
In a statement, Hamas called the operation a “failure” and said Israel took heavy losses. An Israeli military spokesperson said Israel had no casualties in Friday night’s fighting. Neither claim could be independently confirmed.
At least 17 people killed in the Hamas attacks were Bedouins in and around Rahat, the biggest city in an impoverished, predominantly Bedouin area of southern Israel. An Arab medic from northern Israel was one of 260 people massacred at a music and dance festival.
“Their death and assassination leads to a good advancement in the war’s stages and allows the forces on the ground to battle a weaker enemy,” Hagari added.
Multiple aid groups, including the International Committee of the Red Cross and the World Health Organization, reported difficulty contacting local staff in Gaza.
“We are still out of touch with our staff and health facilities. I’m worried about their safety,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO, in a Saturday post on the social media site X, previously known as Twitter.
NPR was also unable to reach local staff in Gaza. The top United Nations humanitarian official for the Palestinians said they only had the option to call staff in Gaza via satellite.
More than 1 million people have been displaced from their homes in Gaza, according to the UN. Shortages of food, water, fuel and electricity were already severe, aid groups had reported. Hospitals are overrun with patients injured in airstrikes, and at night, their hallways fill with people trying to take shelter from airstrikes.
Some of the doctors’ medical staffs are asking, what is the benefit of the assistance that we are giving them? We are not able to help patients anymore. “We cannot help them because we can’t do anything.” said Dr. Matar.
The Hostile and Missing Persons Families Forum: The Israeli Campaign on Gaza and the War on the Lives of the Hamas People
An official said Israel wants to give a significant increase in aid to Gaza in the coming days, and called on Palestinian civilians to head to a “humanitarian” zone in south of the territory.
“Whoever will be in this area, which is a protected area, will receive food, water and medicine,” Hagari said. The areas of Khan Younis and Rafah have been struck by Israel many times.
Nearly 230 hostages are still being held in Gaza by Hamas, according to Israeli officials. A group of families of hostages and others that have not been heard from in a long time demanded a meeting with Israel’s war cabinet to assure them of the safe return of their loved ones.
“This night was the most terrible of all nights. It was a long and sleepless night, against the backdrop of the major IDF operation in the Strip, and absolute uncertainty regarding the fate of the hostages held there, who were also subject to the heavy bombings,” said Liat Bell Sommer, a spokesperson for the group, which is called the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum.
After phone and internet service was restored, Fathi Sabbah wrote on his Facebook Profile that he was blind and unable to hear.
The phone and internet service in Gaza was cut at sunset Friday, three weeks into Israel’s bombing campaign, as Palestinians braced themselves for an impending Israeli ground invasion. Two American officials said the United States believed Israel was responsible for the communications loss, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
They had no way of knowing if their loved ones were alive or dead. The emergency phone lines weren’t ringing. Desperate paramedics tried to save people by driving toward the sound of explosions. Wounded people were left to die in the street.
The Number of Soldiers in the Gaza Strip: Israel’s War on the Zikkim Beach Inspiral and the Fate of the Bedouin Community
The fighting continues in the north of the Gaza Strip, and we will do what we must to achieve goals, according to Daniel Hagari.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said on Sunday that it got warnings from Israeli authorities to evacuate the hospital in the Gaza Strip.
There have been raids 50 meters away from the hospital. Israel did not comment on the claims.
“In the coming week we were planning to increase dramatically the amount of assistance” headed for Gaza from Egypt, said Colonel Elad Goren of Cogat, the Israel Ministry of Defense agency that coordinates with the Palestinians.
Netanyahu blamed Israel’s security failures on the heads of military intelligence in a deleted social media post.
“This is a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down after three weeks of war and a tight siege on Gaza,” the organization said in a statement.
Thousands of Gaza residents broke into warehouses and distribution centers of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency, grabbing flour and “basic survival items,” the organization said on Sunday.
The people have nowhere to go when Hamas fires rockets. She said that the aluminum roofs of the Bedouin homes turned into deadly projectiles. Hamas rockets killed several members of one Bedouin community.
The doctor who grew up in the Bedouin town of Tel Sheva rushed her hospital in Beer Sheva that day to treat hundreds of patients, including people who had lost limbs and others who had been shot. They cared for children, seniors, and foreigners too.
According to a cousin of the family who were attacked on the beach, all but four of the family are still missing, though an exact number is not known.
During their murderous Oct. 7 rampage, Hamas militants attacked Zikkim Beach near the Gaza Strip where Abd Alrahman Aatef Ziadna and his family had been camping along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
Israel will attack Gaza from land, air and sea, expanding its war against Hamas days after starting a ground operation. The military once again told civilians to go south as troops entered Gaza from the north.
Benjamin Netanyahu warned the people of Israel that there will be a long, hard fight when the troops arrive. But he did not say that Israel had launched a full ground invasion. While the number of soldiers in Gaza remains unclear, a more limited initial ground war would align with recent suggestions from the U.S. defense secretary, The Times’s Eric Schmitt reports.
Palestinians claim that thousands of people have been killed by bombing during the first stage of the war. Israel said it was aiming to hit military targets like Hamas. But experts say the majority of the group’s fighters and many of its weapons are underground in a vast network of tunnels, making it difficult for Israel to strike them from the air.
The blackout also complicated evacuation efforts. For more than two weeks, Israel has been calling on Gazans to move south, closer to the border with Egypt, an order that has pushed hundreds of thousands to leave their homes.
The Israeli military said two of its soldiers were injured overnight in northern Gaza, its first reported casualties of the expanded ground incursion. Follow our updates on social media.
The Maine man who killed 18 killed himself is being stabbed in the foot: a source of information to determine if he was paranoid
The man who killed 18 people in Lewiston, Maine, was paranoid and made threats against his army reserve base, prompting an alert to state police, officials said.