Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Wednesday. August 16


4:59 PM IDF halts redeployment from Lebanon. Since UNFIL won't show up and Lebanese army won't show up and even if they do it'd be a waste of time, Israel has decided to stop withdrawing.

4:16 PM One would think the political witch hunt against opponents of the expulsion would stop, given the new situation. Hah. Riiiiight. A 16 year old girl in Tapuach was arrested by Yasamnikim. And as is their normal M.O., it was brutal. About 30 minutes ago a group of police officers from the Yasam as well as plain clothes policemen burst into the girl's house. They physically accosted the girl and other family members, even though the girl was holding a baby, whom she was watching at the time. The girl's mother said the 16 year old had sat in jail for two weeks at the time of the expulsion and since then the police have been harassing her. Other family members were physically pushed around, even though they had not been doing anything. (Hebrew story here)

2:14 PM This past Saturday night, Israel TV (Channel 2) had a special edition of "Uvda" (similar to 60 minutes?). I'm normally not a big fan of the show, but the content was so compelling that I was drawn to it and couldn't do anything else when it was on, but watch. A reporter was "embedded" within an IDF unit going into Lebanon for a night-time mission, and the Nachal unit (and cameraman) came under fire while filming the segment. Soldiers were wounded and evacuated under fire as the battle ranges around them. This is the closest you will ever get to battle, unless you go in yourself.

Forget Spielberg -- this is the real thing, with real soldiers, real emotions, and real heroism. It's about 30 minutes long, so find some time when you can sit down to watch it. Granted, it's in Hebrew, with no English subtitles, but there are subtitles in Hebrew to make it easier to follow. If there's any video clip worth watching about this war...this is it.

View it here.

There's no blood or gore it, so I would rate it PG-13.

(hat-tip to my son who found the video for me on the web...)

10:59 AM IDF Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz under tremendous pressure to resign due to his "stock portfolio sellout phone call" hours after the 2 soliders were kidnapped and the IDF was under fire. Criticism from Left, Right and IDF general staff generals. More on this later.

IDF soldiers operating in Beit Hanun and Beit Lahiya in Gaza.

IDF Manpower Chief, Elazar Stern reports that there is a gross imbalance between the price that kibbutz (and nationalistic religious) families** are paying by serving in combat units versus "Tel-Aviv"...which has much lower numbers of soliders in combat.

** IDF Radio interviewer, Razi Barkai has been talking about this the past few days, and always mentions that the vast majority of combat soldiers are coming from Kibbutzim, Moshavim, and Nationalist-Religious communities.

More soon...many serious topics to blog today.

- Funeral yesterday
- Photo exhibition last night in Raanana of "Disengagement Graffiti"

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael

1 comment:

AMERICA~LAND OF THE FREE said...

I could not get the video to load but I did see where a guy from Fox and a guy from Cnn was embedded with the soldiers. They played it on Fox and on Cnn. It was very scarry. You could hear fire all around them.

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