Israeli officials are stepping up threats against the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, warning that Israel is running out of patience as the two sides continue to trade fire along Israel’s volatile northern border.
This from newsmax.com.
Hassan Nasrallah, a Lebanese cleric and secretary-general of Hezbollah, a Shia Islamist political party and militant group.
Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s War Cabinet, said Wednesday that if the international community and the Lebanese government do not restrain Hezbollah, Israel will.
Israel’s army chief, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said the military is in a state of high readiness and has approved plans in case it decides to open a second front in the north.
The fighting along Israel’s northern border broke out when Hezbollah began firing rockets shortly after the Oct. 7 cross-border attack by Hamas triggered the war in Gaza.
While at a lower intensity than the battle in Gaza, the simultaneous fighting has caused destruction, displacement, and death on both sides and raised fears of a wider regional war.
Here is a look at the battle between Israel and Hezbollah:
– Hezbollah fighters have been attacking Israeli posts and villages along the border, and the group has launched rockets and drones toward Israeli targets. Israeli tanks, artillery and aircraft have been striking areas on the Lebanese side of the border. The fighting has been mostly brief, but almost daily.
– The Israeli military says more than 1,700 rockets have been fired from Lebanon toward Israel, killing 15 Israelis, including nine soldiers, and injuring more than 150 people.
– Israel has evacuated about 60,000 people from more than 40 northern communities, including the main city of Kiryat Shemona, which has 22,000 residents. Israeli media outlets have aired footage of battered homes and barren communities, with Israeli soldiers guarding empty streets.
– On the Lebanese side, around 74,500 people have been displaced by the fighting, according to the International Organization for Migration.
– Nearly 160 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes and shelling in Lebanon, according to an Associated Press tally. Most of those were fighters with Hezbollah and allied groups, but at least 19 civilians have also been killed, including journalists and children.
– Human rights groups and local officials have also accused Israel of hitting Lebanese border areas with shells containing white phosphorus, a controversial incendiary munition. The strikes have burned hundreds of hectares (acres) of farm and woodland and injured civilians. Israel says all its actions conform with international law.
Further:
In the Red Sea, attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen against ships they believe to be connected to Israel have disrupted trade and prompted the launch of a U.S.-led multinational naval operation to protect shipping routes.
Iran-backed militias in Iraq have also launched dozens of attacks on bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria, which they have said are in retaliation for Washington’s support of Israel.
With its soldiers bogged down in Gaza, Israel has mostly sought to limit the fighting in its north. Hezbollah’s military capabilities are far superior to those of Hamas.
Still, Israeli officials are increasingly warning that the country is prepared to expand the fighting and that Hezbollah should be prepared to pay a price for the damage it has wrought over the past three months.
Israel already has bolstered forces in the north and could well turn its sights on Hezbollah once it scales down or wraps up the war in Gaza.
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In addition to the current status of actions in Gaza, the Hamas-released Israeli captive, Mia Shem, has opened up about the abuse she suffered at the hands of Palestinian residents of the coastal enclave.
Chilling final text from kidnapped Israeli Mia Shem.
In her first television interview since being released from Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip four weeks ago, Shem stated:
It’s important to me to reveal the truth about the people who live in Gaza, about who they really are.
Click HERE for a 4:40 min news clip.
Shem told the broadcaster:
I went through a Shoah (a catastrophe—the mass killing of Jews). Everyone there [in Gaza] is a terrorist.
She explained:
Entire families are under Hamas. I realized I was staying with a family. I started to ask myself, ‘Why am I in a family home? Why are there children here? Why is there a wife here?’
In a separate interview with Channel 12 News Shem recalled how Hamas terrorists abducted her to the Strip during the Islamist group’s Oct. 7 massacre at the Supernova music festival in Israel’s northwestern Negev.
She told the network’s primetime Ulpan Shishi program, according to a clip posted to X:
The floor was splattered with blood and I yelled in pain, ‘I lost my arm!’
He [a Hamas terrorist] started touching the upper part of my body. Suddenly, someone grabbed my hair, pulled me in a car and drove to Gaza. I felt like an animal in a zoo.
During Shem’s 54 days in Hamas captivity, a veterinarian operated on the bullet wound she sustained to her hand at the music festival, her aunt said late last month.
Shem recalled in the Channel 12 interview:
There was an operation room. No anesthesia, no nothing. I was choking on my own tears. Then he looked at me and said, ‘Enough, or I’ll send you down to the tunnel.’
Shem, a 21-year-old dual Israeli-French citizen, was released on Nov. 30 as part of the temporary hostages-for-cease-fire deal agreed to by Israel and Hamas.
Hamas released a propaganda video Oct. 16 featuring Shem, one of the approximately 240 people taken hostage during its Oct. 7 attacks, which left more than 1,200 dead and thousands wounded.
In the video, Shem can be seen apparently receiving treatment for a severe wound.
She said in the clip:
I’m Mia Shem, 21 years old from Shoham. Currently, I’m in Gaza. I returned early Saturday morning from Sderot—I was at a party. I was seriously injured in my hand.
Final thoughts: There are no innocent Palestinians in Gaza. There may be degrees of involvement with Hamas but all are guilty in some way.
