Israel used a swarm of tanks, bulldozers and APCs to launch a targeted night assault against Hamas targets in Gaza on Wednesday night in its biggest incursion since the terror group’s October 7 atrocities. Ahead of a suspected imminent ground incursion by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), soldiers burst through border walls separating the Gaza Strip from Israel using armoured bulldozers before claiming to have taken out military targets.
Published October 26, 2023
The IDF said it suffered no casualties in the operation to ‘prepare the battlefield’ after a brutal, fortnight-long siege on the Palestinian territory. Grainy footage shared on social media showed armoured vehicles crossing the highly fortified barrier from Israel and blowing up buildings ‘in preparation for the next stages of combat’. ‘Tanks and infantry struck numerous terrorist cells, infrastructure and anti-tank missile launch posts,’ the IDF said. It represented the most significant escalation of Israeli force since Hamas’s bloody rampage across southern Israel saw 1,400 civilians murdered and more than 200 kidnapped.
Leading the push into Gaza territory on Wednesday night was the ‘Doobie’ – a type of armoured bulldozer that boasts bulletproof windows and metal slats which deflect RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades). The bulldozers, named after the Hebrew for teddy bear, are designed to burst through obstacles such as border fences and walls in order to pave the way for soldiers and other armoured vehicles. Also seen in footage of the assault were 50-tonne Namer armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and columns of Merkava tanks. The tanks can carry up to ten people – four crew and six passengers – and weigh 65 tonnes each. Last night tanks broke through the northern Gaza border and headed southwards, in a possible rehearsal of a future full-scale invasion.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli troops were still preparing for a full ground invasion, while the US urged Israel to delay, fearing it could ignite hostilities on other Middle East fronts. Palestinians said Israeli air strikes pounded the territory again on Thursday evening and people in central Gaza reported intensive tank shelling. Israel’s defense minister said his country would invade Gaza when the ‘conditions are right’. ‘The day it will come is not far off… the manoeuvre will start when conditions are right,’ Yoav Gallant said. He added that Israel had no interest in war with any other foe than Hamas. ‘We are waging war on the southern front against Hamas, prepared for any development in the north, Hezbollah is suffering a lot of losses. ‘However, we have no interest in expanding the war,’ he said.
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SOURCE: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/galleries/article-12679577/How-Israels-tanks-swooped-Gaza-lightning-raid-Hamas.html
RELATED: Blue State Blues: I Saw the Worst, and the Best, of Humanity in Israel
I came to Israel because I wanted to be alongside these brave, beautiful people, these children of Israel, who fight on through the tears.
Published October 26, 2023
I saw the very worst, and the very best, of humanity in Israel this week.
I saw a mother and her two daughters, her only children, buried together in a field after they were murdered by Palestinian terrorists in their home at Kibbutz Be’eri.
The husband, the father, could not say memorial prayers because he is still missing.
His brother is being held hostage, somewhere in the tunnels Hamas has dug for itself rather than building anything for the Palestinian people.
I saw refrigerated trucks full of dead and decaying bodies, hundreds of corpses, including those of children, murdered for no reason other than the fact that they were Israeli, or Jewish. I saw the mist float out of the containers and breathed the scent of death.
I saw footage of the attack, saw teenage girls begging in vain for their lives; saw a terrorist toss a grenade into a bomb shelter to kill a father in front of his two boys; saw the boys, one now blind, wail in terror.
I saw the bullet holes in the kindergarten; saw the “safe room” door, where the children hid, twisted off its hinges by an explosion. I saw the holiday decorations, picked up the bullet casings still on the ground.
I saw the footage of drivers being murdered in their cars; I heard firsthand accounts of the naked bodies of women, found on the roadways after they had been raped.
Who would have thought such things were possible? Who would dare to excuse them?
I also saw volunteers braving rocket fire to bring meals to people too old or too disabled to leave their bomb shelters. I met fathers who said goodbye to their wives and children and raced toward the front to join the fight.
I met a mother who learned, after several days, that her daughter had been murdered at the Supernova music festival, and who still kept coming back to the center for the families of hostages and missing people, so she could comfort them.
I came to Israel because I wanted to be there, now, despite the dangers.
My flight from Los Angeles was full of Israeli families coming home, in wartime, defying the claim by anti-Israel activists that the “zionists” were frightened and desperate to flee.
I came to Israel because I wanted to be alongside these brave, beautiful people, these children of Israel, who fight on through the tears and who reach out to each other with love, in the face of unbelievable hate.
I am proud that these are my people, both the Jewish people and those who have chosen to join their lives to the Jewish destiny.
I wondered, before I arrived, whether the haters were right — whether Israelis would look around at the dangers facing them on every border and decide that the whole idea just wasn’t worth it anymore, that life was simpler and safer in Beverly Hills or in Skokie or in Golders Green, that it was best to leave this brutal region to its own fate.
I found the opposite.
I found a nation digging in, planting its feet more firmly in the soil and raising its flag even higher.
“We will win together,” the banners say, and that is what people believe.
The political differences of just a few weeks ago have been set aside; the activists who marched in the streets for months against the government’s judicial reforms have turned their organization into a distribution network for donated food, clothes, and other necessities.
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SOURCE: https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2023/10/26/blue-state-blues-i-saw-the-worst-and-the-best-of-humanity-in-israel/
RELATED: EU leaders call for ‘humanitarian pauses’, aid corridors in Israel-Gaza war
Declaration made as European countries face criticism of employing double standard on human rights, international law.
European Council President Charles Michel speaks with the media at an EU summit at the European Council building in Brussels on October 26, 2023 [Virginia Mayo/AP Photo]
Published October 26, 2023
European Union leaders have called for humanitarian pauses in the fighting between Israel and the armed Palestinian group Hamas as the Gaza Strip reels under an Israeli bombardment and siege.
Leaders at an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday issued a declaration calling for a halt to the fighting to establish humanitarian corridors and get much-needed aid into Gaza.
“The European Council expresses its gravest concern for the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza and calls for continued, rapid, safe and unhindered humanitarian access and aid to reach those in need through all necessary measures including humanitarian corridors and pauses for humanitarian needs,” the declaration said.
The declaration was made as criticism grows from around the Middle East about Israel’s campaign of air raids and a “complete siege”, which has cut off access to food, water, electricity and fuel for the strip’s 2.3 million inhabitants.
