Gaza War And Growing Costs
Israel is fighting to remove Hamas from Gaza, and by its own calculations the costs are heavy.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Wednesday the costs in the war are high but Israel will win the fight as Israeli forces are moving deeper into Gaza to free hostages if possible, and remove Hamas from using the refugee camp to train, arm, and use it as a platform to attack the Jewish state.
Israel now confirms 240 hostages were taken when Hamas stormed out of Gaza Oct 7, a number which has been rising, and among the 1400 Jews killed by Hamas in Kibbutzim and at a peaceful music festival, there were almost 300 Israeli soldiers slain at army bases and in fighting to stop the butchery.
Inside Gaza 11 Israelis have been killed in the fighting, and that includes 2 soldiers blown up by a mine as their tank advanced, and 7 soldiers killed when a Hamas terrorist emerged from a tunnel and fired an anti tank missile at them.
Israel’s retaliatory attacks have killed 8,796 Palestinians, including 3,648 children, the health ministry in Gaza has said.
To understand the storm of air and ground attacks on Gaza, try to imagine the fact Israel has by it’s own calculations destroyed more than 11,000 Hamas targets since the war began. 11,000 bombs and artillery shells is a horrendous number in an area 45 miles long by roughly 7 miles wide.
U.S. President Biden last night said “I think we need a pause. A pause means give time to get the prisoners out.” White House officials later clarified he was referring to hostages being held by Hamas.
The Israel Defence Forces said it targeted and killed Muhammad A’sar, the commander of Hamas’s anti-tank guided missile array in the bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp in Northern Gaza.
The bomb strikes on Jabalia were devastating, killing about 80 people and wounding more than 770 Palestinians.
Israel justified the air attacks saying this was a key command and control facility for Hamas.
For the first time foreign national passport holders have been allowed to leave Gaza, including many wounded Palestinians in need of hospital care in Egypt. 335 dual nationals and 76 injured seriously wounded and sick people crossed the border, with more expected to follow.
Concerning is a wave of anti semetic incidents and Islamic slurs across Europe and in Canada and the U.S. including at well known Universities.
Patrick Dai, a 21 year old junior at Cornell, has been charged with threatening to kill or injure using interstate communications. Prosecutors claimed Dai said he would “bring an assault rifle to campus and shoot all you”, threatened to “stab” and “slit the throat” of Jewish men, rape Jewish women and throw their bodies off a cliff, and behead Jewish babies. He allegedly specifically targeted the campus’s Center for Jewish Living.
As ugly as those threats are, there have been many of them, and Jewish students have suffered physical threats and intimidating pro Palestinian marches where chants include “from the river to the sea” which is clearly a threat to destroy Jews.
Iran continues to threaten Israel, and it’s Houthi rebels in Yemen said on Tuesday that they had launched three drone and missile attacks toward Israel since the start of the war and vowed to carry out more such attacks.
On the Northern border with Lebanon, daily exchanges of fire have taken place between the IDF and Irans Hezbollah, but so far the Hezbollah has not committed itself to a larger conflict.
What’s important is aid to Gaza has to get through the Egyptian border, and U.S. Secretary of State Blinken will be in israel again this week to push that issue.
Any notion of a ceasefire at this point, is some fantasy of people who vastly underestimate the anger and anguish of Israeli, seeking their loved ones back, and determined to remove the Hamas threat in Gaza once and for all, if that’s somehow achievable.