Global SITREP D4-14: "Do unto them as unto the Midianites..."

22 August 2014: The title of this SITREP is from verse 9 of Asaph's Psalm 83 prophecy about the Arab Islamic confederacy that has come against Israel for the past 66 years and to this very moment, specifically in Gaza. Do you know and understand why Asaph in his prophecy would plead with the Lord "Do unto them (the enemies to Israel's immediate north, east and south) as unto the Midianites." If not, then I would strongly recommend that you leave this blog and go read chapters 6 through 8 in the Book of Judges right now. Learn why Gideon, from a poor family in the tribe of Manasseh and the least of his father Joash's sons, was chosen by God to lead Israel in the smiting of the Arabian tribes known as Midianites, and the Amalekites and the children of the east. You will also learn why he also became known as Yeruba'al. 

If you understand this Biblical history, then you will understand that I believe God is about to chose another "Gideon" whose nick name may well become "Yeruallah," for this Jewish warrior will throw down the altar of the false god allah, and nothing will happen since there is no islamic allah to contend with the modern-day Gideon of Israel. This is the man I have referred to here before which I believe religious Jews will come to regard as "Mashiach ben Joseph." This modern-day Gideon will lead Israel to victory in these latter day final battles prophesied against the enemies named by Asaph, and Isaiah and Ezekiel, and he will do so in a similar manner lest Israel deny that the Lord their God has provided then with the victory. In this way Israel will come to know the Lord their God in fulfillment of Ezekiel 35:5-15.

I now return you to this prophetically appointed war in Gaza already in progress.

 HAMAS murdered 4-year old Daniel Tragerman (source: Times of Israel)

23 August 2014: With thousands of IDF reservists now having reported back to their unit assembly points all along the Gaza frontier, and just hours after Israel's senior military and political leadership could not have been more hopelessly wrong in telling southern Israel's residents that it was okay for them to return to their homes, a four-year old child became a completely unnecessary victim to the Israeli leadership's wrong strategy for the wrong war.  A new strategic prosecution of the conflict has been effectively signaled, taking it from being just another operation in a series of operations against HAMAS in Gaza to one in which the military conquest of HAMAS has been set as the mission complete objective.

 The IDF, as before, has warned civilians to keep their distance from all combatants in Gaza. The IDF is more than capable of conducting military operations in the confined spaces of urban areas, and although on a much smaller scale, this new phase of warfare in Gaza may essentially more resemble Sherman's 'March to the Sea' more than the limited objective, pin-prick boots-on-the-ground incursion into Gaza earlier this month. For young Daniel Tragerman and millions of other youth just like him, this new phase of the war had better be lest Israel's current leadership be accurately described as feckless and inept.

Hopefully it has not escaped the Israeli government's notice that PA President Mahmoud Abbas and HAMAS Khaled Maashal did not, as reported by some media, conclude their meeting in Islamist Qatar with a heated argument, bur rather with a unity consensus between them of destroying Israel through the offices of HAMAS erstwhile ally in Gaza, the United Nations. Israel must respond accordingly by removing HAMAS from existence as surely as Maashal intends to remove Mahmoud Abbas leadership of the PA from existence.

No more empty words Mr. Netanyahu, no more empty words!

UPDATE 25 August: Polls in Israel are reflecting the same sentiments I have openly expressed on this blog regarding PM Benjamin Netanyahu's fecklessness in dealing with the Islamic terrorists in Gaza. As it stands now, Netanyahu and Likud will very likely be trounced in the next election in Israel because HAMAS' tactics have made an utter fool of Netanyahu and his politically expedient military actions and unwarranted ceasefire capitulations.

Israeli's do not want HAMAS to be negotiated with, they want HAMAS to be gone. More importantly HAMAS has effectively and without any ground force invasion, caused the near total depopulation of Israeli territory adjacent to Gaza. Israeli's are refugees in their own country because Bibi Netanyahu hasn't a clue nor the nerve to fight and win a war against HAMAS in Gaza. In fact, he's shown himself to be even more inept as a Prime Minister than Ehud Olmert was during the Lebanon War in the summer of 8 years ago. HAMAS has also effectively set the stage for regime change in Israel. Finally, Bibi Netanyahu literally invites rockets from terrorists in Lebanon and Syria to impact Israel's territory. The current situation is absolutely pathetic.

SITREP D4-14 FINAL UPDATE 27 August 2014: It doesn't take more than a cursory scan of media around the world to see that HAMAS and PIJ terrorists have acheived a technical victory over Israel (the government) and the IDF. As always, this guarantees even more significant and destructive warfighting will occur in the short-term. The Islamists have been emboldened because Israeli PM Netanyahu has behaved as if he were U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama's lapdog. "Good boy Bibi, good boy!"

So, for the foreseeable and indefinitely defined future thousands upon thousands of Israeli citizens will be war refugees in their own God-given country.

Why? Because the IDF was forced into a war in Gaza by islamic terrorists fighting as proxy forces for the Islamic Republic of Iran who were armed with Iranian and Syrian weapons of every description without achieving a clear military objective in total victory.

Why? Because PM Netanyahu never wanted a clear military victory over Gaza's islamic terrorists, he wanted a negotiated political accommodation -- despite the fact that Israel was forced into this war via HAMAS' kidnapping and cold-blooded murder of three Israeli teenagers and unprovoked military extortion through rocket and mortar fire against every region of the country.

Once again, as in the 2006 summer war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, history repeats and Israel was defeated before even one boot of the IDF stepped on Gaza's soil. Bibi Netanyahu has ineptly used this occasion to snatch defeat from the jaws of a military victory because he followed Barack Obama's dictate. And to say that the majority of the citizens of Israel have lost all faith in their own government is a monumental understatement. They have been forced against their will by the governments actions into giving up their homes and livelihoods and life as they knew prior to the war in exchange for what? A worthless agreement with islamic terrorists whose charter calls for their slaughter and the continuous barrage of empty words from the failed Prime Minister of their nation. How utterly pathetic is this situation?

The islamic terrorists surrounding Israel must be licking their bloodthirsty chops. They will not delay their next aggression against Israel for very long.

Addendum 01 September 2014: Tucked away in a corner of the The Algemeiner website there is found a report dated Saturday, 30 August 2014, attributed to a Jerusalem Post article of the same day, with the headline" "Netanyahu Says He Hasn't Ruled Out Toppling HAMAS."

"Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu gave interviews to the country’s three television networks over the weekend defending the Gaza operation, and saying that driving Hamas from power has not been removed from the agenda.
“I never removed the goal of toppling Hamas, and I am not doing that now,” Netanyahu told Channel 2, saying, however, that Israel faces numerous other security challenges."

In other words, from PM Netanyahu's big picture perspective there are indeed bigger strategic fish for Israel to be prepared to fry. The Israeli PM then went on to identify those fish: 1) Al Qaeda on the Golan, 2) Islamic State moving on Jordan and already in Lebanon, and 3) Hezbollah in Lebanon supported by Iran. Knowing this I still have to ask: Why not deal a death blow to the terrorists in Israel's south (Gaza and Sinai) when the opportunity fully presented itself? Would PM Netanyahu rather have a future war on all three fronts instead of just two?

Sounds prophetic, like the sum total of the Psalm 83 finale.

Global SITREP D3-14: Islamic Jihadists Want Peace With Israel?

18 August, 2014: If you read the vast majority of Israeli newspapers this morning they are treating nearly 8 million Israelis as if they were turnips freshly fallen off of a farm truck. How so? By reporting that the islamic jihadists of Gaza are saying that even if the current ceasefire collapses without an agreement being reached in the Cairo negotiations they have lost the will to engage Israel in any more warfare (jihad).  In case no one notices, such statements are diametrically opposed to everything Islamic, and thus the Qur'an.  Islam cannot exist without a state of permanent warfare (jihad) against all other things non-Islamic. Period.

Think about it. Would it be possible for HAMAS to abide by the most basic tenets of its raison d'etre, it's foundational charter, without engaging in warfare (jihad) to liberate all of "Palestine" from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and from Lebanon to Egypt from the Jews who have created a modern state on that same land? 

No, it would not be possible. If any of this disinformation in today's Israeli media were truthful then there would be no reason for HAMAS, or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or Fatah, or the PLO, or the PFLP-GC to even exist. Were any of this abject nonsense being reported in the Israeli media this morning accurate then all of these islamic terrorist organizations would declare themselves disbanded; they would immediately recognize Israel's right to exist; declaring their unconditional acceptance of the so-called two-state solution and achieve a permanent peace agreement by sun-rise on Tuesday, 19 August 2014.

More importantly, is there anything that I have just written here which is consistent with Bible prophecy for these last days? If you said "no," then you are correct and you understand the basics about what Israel has to overcome in order to achieve the type of peace, safety and secuirty the prophet Ezekiel has foretold will exist for Israel and its people when the last pre-70th Week military engagement involving Israel occurs in the near future.

20/21 August 2014: Well, now that Israel's egg-faced government, and unfortunately its people, have been rocketed and blasted back into the reality of islamic jihadism a la HAMAS, PIJ, Fatah and the rest of Gaza's terrorists, what might be Israel's next move? Another round of Cairo negotiations for another worthless hudna (ceasefire) for the terrorists to use to their full military advantage? Or will the only other viable course of action to achieve the demilitarization of Gaza, and of Sinai for that matter, be brought to execution in the next few hours or days? If the current government of Israel has one scintilla of common sense, the forcible demilitarization of Gaza (i.e. full scale war) will be the course of action chosen, and the current IDF military tactic of "mowing the grass" in Gaza will fall by the wayside as it has failed to achieve its objectives.

For their part, the muslims will have to begin asking themselves, "Where was allah's protection of Mohammed Deif's wife and infant son? Where is his protection of us all as we wage jihad against the infidel Jews he has told us to kill wherever we find them? Why do the rocks not cry out as promised by the words of the prophet in the holy qur'an,' here is a Jew, come and kill him? Surely allah wills it?'" In this war the muslims will come to realize they have worshiped, enslaved, and murdered all over the world, on an industrial scale, the will of a false god. Or they will die hopelessly destined to eternal fires of hell for they have denied the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living and Eternal God of Israel. And know this, the innocent infant son of terrorist Mohammed Deif is in the loving arms of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And in Israel, the lesson thus far appears to have gone unlearned. There are many in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv who think this war is the product of one man, Mohammed Deif, the commander of HAMAS' Al-Qassam Brigades; that the continuation of this war will end with his own death and the deaths of his sub-commanders. These Israelis are ignorant, secularist dreamers. These are Israelis who do not comprehend that jihad against Israel is a qur'anic directive; that islamists regard the land of Israel no differently than they regard the land of Andalucia (the southern part of the modern NATO member nation we know as the Kingdom of Spain). Islamists do not want to live side by side with Israel in peace; they want Israel to cease to exist (Psalm 83:4)! These Israelis currently have more regard for the al-taqiyya doctrine (lies, deceit, illusion) of the islamists than they do for the prophetic words of the God of their fathers. This is why this war began in 1948 and continues in fits and spurts to this day.

Israel, for the most part still in disbelief, does not yet realize the spiritual basis of why they have been brought back from the four corners of the earth diaspora into Eretz Israel. It is the same reason why the LORD God had them wander in the wilderness for decades after the exodus from Egypt: disobedience and disbelief. They have been brought back into Eretz Israel to take possession of the land the LORD God has given to them, not trade it for worthless treaties with godless barbarians. And here is where I believe ancient history will repeat itself for Israel but on an infinitely more compressed time scale. Now I believe the time is right for the appearance of one whom the religious Jews expect -- Moshiach ben Joseph. See Obadiah 1. Through the coming trials Israel will learn to walk in faith and have full trust in what God has promised to them, and then will the Lord pour out His Spirit upon them.

As for the current war, as long as it continues there remains the possibility that it will morph into the final series of battles against those enemies surrounding Israel as prophesied by Asaph, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Obadiah and a host of others.

ISRAEL BREAKS OPEN ITS STRATEGIC WEAPONS LOCKER

Israel has brought a new weapon onto the battlefield, and although it is a part of the "mowing the grass" tactic, it is also an escalation demonstrating far more precision in which blades of grass Israel's leadership want to cut off at below root level. The weapon now being introduced to HAMAS is the GBU-28, a laser-guided bunker busting bomb that is 18.5 feet long (5.6m) and weighing 5,000 lbs (2,267kg). It makes very big and deep smoking holes of HAMAS underground command and control (C2) centers. The GBU-28 has ben used to devastating effect in Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq. And now in Gaza.

Israel's GBU-28 - Killing Terrorists in the Holes Where They Hide

The GBU-28 has almost certainly been delivered on target by Israel's recently upgraded fleet of F-15I Ra'am multi-mission strike aircraft. Taking out deeply buried targets in Gaza with this weapon is live fire practice for similar targets that Israel has not forgotten about in Iran. There will be payback with interest for all of the Iranian missiles fired against Israel's civilians by their Gaza proxies. Fair warning.

Update: It now seems fairly evident that the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate (a/k/a the al-Mukhabarat), working closely with Israel's Shin Bet clandestine service, provided the extremely critical and time-sensitive HUMINT (HUman INTelligence) which allowed IAF to strike with their other precision bunker buster ordnance that took out significant members of HAMAS senior terrorist leadership (Raed Attar, Abu Shmala and Muhamad Barhoum) early this morning. That weapon was the 2,000 lb U.S.-made BLU-109/B. Five of these bunker busters were delivered on-target by the IAF F-16I Sufa strike aircraft.

Global SITREP D2-14: Exposing a False God on the Altar of Gaza - Part II

IDF Merkava MBTs On-The-Move

11 August 2014: Neither of the the major factions of Islam (Sunni and Shi'a) have yet come to grips with the fact that the current warfighting, be it Sunni vs. Shi'a, or Sunni vs. Israel or Shi'a vs. Israel, is an existential war respect to the Islamic religion. These wars will prove the god of islam to be a false god, and that will happen when they both come against Israel, instead of each other. This is the basic point I was making in SITREP C17-14, and which is why I have made this entry the Part II of that topic.

Brother Lawrence of India today sent me an email that contained a recent article written by Daymond Duck and posted to RaptureReady.com entitled "Israel's God is God." In the introduction Daymond referenced his 1995 book "On The Brink," specifically pages 37-38, where he recaptured the inspiration from the Lord of two years prior wherein he wrote: (emphasis added)

“Religion and ownership of the land (the Promised Land of Israel) are at the heart of the never-ending Arab-Israeli conflict. The two groups are diametrically opposed to each other because each group thinks it worships the only real God and each group thinks He gave the Promised Land to them.

The conflict over this blessed place is theological and directly linked to the question, “Whose god is God and who worships the true God?” The land issue can never be settled until the theological conflict over God’s identity is settled. The religion of the loser is dead.”

I could not agree more with Daymond Duck's inspired statement simply because the inspiration of the Lord has made clear the exact same thing to myself as I have discussed in more posts to this blog than just the above referenced SITREP.  Sunni and Shi'a Islam today battle each other to determine which sect of Islam shall be dominant over the other, and simultaneously both claim their utmost ambition is to drive the State of Israel in to the Mediterranean Sea; to wipe the the nation off of the map. 

The jihadist Islamic State currently occupying northwestern Alawite-controlled Syria and northern Iraq (ancient Assur per Psalm 83) has positioned itself to directly threaten the Shi'a Islamic Republic of Iran, a nation within very short reach of an indigenous nuclear weapons capability, as well as its allies in Alawite-controlled Damascus, Syria and the Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon. The Islamic State also directly threatens Sunni Jordan and Saudi Arabia, as well as all other Sunni political entities who do not fall in lockstep with with its own brand of Al Qaeda-inspired Sunni totalitarian ideology. The Islamic State literally massacres all in its path to expand its declared Caliphate globally. Inevitably this includes Israel, and that is where the proverbial "rubber will meet the road." When the opposing sects of Islam come against Israel, the religion of the false god "allah" will be exposed as a sham, a fake, a phoney, a fraud. "The religion of the loser is dead." They just don't know it yet. That date of ultimate reckoning is certainly closer than anyone not part of the Bride of Christ in the Middle East currently suspects.

August 12: The second day of the 72-hour ceasefire came and went without much change from the first day. It appears that tomorrow, at the end of the 72-hour ceasefire of the war Israel says it has not been fighting and the islamic jihad which HAMAS says it will resume tomorrow or at the time of its choosing, will commence once again with the first rocket HAMAS fires at Israel. That first rocket will in all likelihood go airborne prior to the end the the full 72-hours. Jihadists are soooo predictable, unless you're the formerly conservative Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu -- he actually thinks that the islamic terrorists of HAMAS, the PIJ and Fatah are legitimate parties to an honorable negotiation that will be honorably adhered to. Israel desperately needs to shed itself of Netanyahu as much as the US needs to shed itself of Obama. Both are detrimental to the well-being of their respective nations, and to all innocents in harms way.  

Hasta mañana mis hermanos.

עד מחר אחיי.

August 13: See the comment I made above in bold red print. For the second time in as many so-called "ceasefires" the utter predictability of islamic terrorists in Gaza firing rockets into Israel prior to the agreed to end of the 72-hour ceasefire occurred exactly as anticipated. Gaza's terrorists launched ceasefire breaking rockets against Israel a full two hours before the agreed ceasefire termination. One can only hope, without holding one's breath, that Prime Minister Netanyahu stops playing childish patty-cake games with these Gaza terrorists and decides in relatively short order to do what needs to be done to solve the security problem permanently. In either case a negotiation with islamic terrorists or with something that no longer exists would be a de facto moot point. To the victor go the spoils as well as the determination of how a conquered territory should be governed thereafter. Another five days? For what purpose other than postponing the inevitable and extending for as long as possible PM Netanyahu's current penchant for a political dictatorship in his negotiation fantasies? This is truly a theater of the absurd.

August 14: Another day came and went. No active warfare, but no peace either. The recently announced 5-day extension of the current faux ceasefire is more of a grace period in which Israel is allowing the islamic terrorists in Gaza to regroup, take stock of their warfighting assets and prepare for the next assault upon Israel. Brilliant strategy that.

August 15: A rocket was reportedly fired from Gaza and also reportedly was heard to explode somewhere in the Eshkol District. However, there is no record of such a launch/impact occurring this morning on the real-time RedAlert website in Israel. This morning there are also OSINT media reports (take with a large grain of salt) that both HAMAS and PIJ have had enough of the whooping Israel has given them and are now more disposed to licking their wounds rather than going for more jihad against Israel.

Assessment Going Forward: While it is true that islamic jihadists will revert to a temporary hudna (ceasefire) because the enemy has kicked their buttocks up into brand new territory between their shoulder blades, as soon as their buttocks can be successfully relocated where they came from on the lower posterior, then the jihad will resume in full. This is my forecast for the war in Gaza. Have a great Friday!

Global SITREP D1-14: The War Continues; PA Official - Clear the Land of Jews from Jordan to the Sea; And Another Quick Halt

8 August 2014 - OPE Day 33: As expected HAMAS renewed its rocket attacks against Israel today. The IAF immediately went back into combat air operations, striking targets throughout Gaza. 

There is now no question about it - the IDFs boots on the ground have a mission to complete, and not just in Gaza. INN/Arutz Sheva is reporting this morning that Fatah Central Committee member (and global PA representative) Tawfiq Tirawi has made a public call for the destruction of the State of Israel. "We [Fatah] remain committed to the promise: freedom, independence, and driving out the occupier from the entire pure land, from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea." Tawfiq Tiwari has made such statements in the past, most recently when the unity agreement came this past April between HAMAS and Fatah. Such statements are 100% consistent with the prophetic text of Psalm 83:4.

Another senior PA official, Azzam al-Ahmad, who is the lead PA negotiator in Cairo, made public statements today reinforcing the now established fact that Fatah, HAMAS and the PIJ are currently on the same page with respect to continuing the war they started against Israel. These jihadi calls by the senior PA leadership did not fall upon deaf ears in Judea and Samaria, particularly in Hebron where violence and green Islamic HAMAS flags were evidence everywhere the eye dared to gaze. The same was true in Amman, Jordan where "Death to Israel" was the order of the day. Friday is the Muslim prayer day, so the mosques and their imams were clearly working a higher jihad against Israel gear than has been noted previously.

Meanwhile, back in southern Israel, the Israeli government will monetarily subsidize the exodus of its citizens to safer locations away from Gaza border town locations but not fully out of the terrorist's rocket range. The Israeli government is doing this while they try to figure out how to bend over yet again to inane US and European opinions which come from those who are not within the Islamic jihadists line of fire. I think it no understatement by any stretch of the imagination to say that this war is now entering a phase which borders upon the ridiculous, yet which according to Bible prophecy found in John 5:43 is pretty much par for the course for Israel's leadership, or lack thereof, in these last days.

10 August 2014: Another quick halt in a seemingly never ending stream of quick halts to the war in Gaza appears to have taken hold just as HAMAS sent one of its largest Iranian-made rockets screaming towards Tel Aviv. The fourth hour of the newest halt to combat is just moments away. 

Breaking News: Military Coup d'Etat in Iraq

The bigger news is in Iraq, where a military coup is in progress in Baghdad where the new President of Iraq (a Kurd) just chosen by the Iraqi Parliament has refused to allow Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to continue his Shi'a dominated and pro-Iranian government. Maliki's Shi'a troops then began seizing key government buildings in Baghdad and effected an encirclement of the Green Zone. Iraq today appears to be in a state of total chaos, with American military intervention having just gotten underway in support of al-Maliki's government against the forces of the jihadist Islamic State and well as the Kurds defending their semi-autonomous northern enclave along the Iranian and Turkish borders.

Global SITREP C30-14: Tisha B'Av 5774 and Israel Prays on Temple Mount

5 August 2014/ 9 Av 5774 (72-Hour Truce in Effect): Today is a special day - Israel is praying to the God of their fathers on the Temple Mount. This is a Tisha B'Av unlike many others in the past 1,944 years since the Roman Legions destroyed the second Temple in 70 AD.

Israel is at war, although a truce is currently holding (4 hours and counting as of 0500 EDT) among the various terrorist groups in Gaza. Jerusalem's police force swept Arab Muslim rioters from the area and remain there with a powerful presence so as many of Israel as would chose to do so could ascend the mount and pray to God in peace on this most solemn day. The image above is proof of this. Let us pray with them.

Update 7 August 2014: The 72-hour truce is now about 4 hours into its third and final 24-hour period. By all current indications the war in Gaza against HAMAS and their fellow terrorists will resume tomorrow. In simple terms, Israel presented its permanent albeit heavily laden conditional ceasefire proposal which HAMAS promptly rejected along with an extension of the current ceasefire. Additionally, there is also no doubt that the IDF failed to eliminate all of the terror tunnels in Gaza; HAMAS and the other jihadists remain at many of their firing positions to resume the war tomorrow.

That said, let there also be no doubt that Israel now has no choice, no other viable option, but to eliminate HAMAS and all terrorists from Gaza. This is the as yet unfulfilled prophetic truth. NEWSFLASH UPDATE: It was reported a short time ago via Israel's Channel 2 that the Strategic Affairs Minister, Yuval Steinitz, has affirmed that if Hamas resumes its warfighting upon Israel tomorrow, then Israel has no other choice but to go back into Gaza and forcibly demilitarize HAMAS and the other terrorist groups.

Another thing to understand is that kidnapping and murder of three youths in Israel by HAMAS led to the events which precipitated Operation Protective Edge. As it turns out OPE was, or still is, essentially a pre-emptive war that has saved hundreds if not thousands of Israeli lives. Captured HAMAS terrorists have told their Israeli interrogators that HAMAS had planned a massive terror attack to coincide with Rosh Hashana on September 24. That attack would have seen many treams of terrorists emerge from the tunnels in Israel with the goal to kill as many Israelis as possible. Israel's leaders now more fully understand the scope of the planned HAMAS attack because they now more fully understand the extent of HAMAS tunnel network. When this war began Israeli intelligence had no clue as to the full extent of the network of tunnels. Now they more fully appreciate what Hezbollah has been doing up north based upon the tunneling technology derived from North Korea and Iran.

And speaking of the Temple Mount... thank KenB for the image below which I have titled The Hand of God on Temple Mount.

This is what much of these pre-70th Week wars are all about, setting the conditions under which Israel will rebuild the Temple on Mount Moriah.

NOTE: The SITREP with the image of the two young Arab boys being hung up by their shirt collars allegedly in Gaza by an adult male has been deleted out of necessity. After exercising due diligence once I found evidence of photoshopping within the image it was further determined with 100% accuracy that the image had nothing to do with the current war in Gaza and was, in fact, several years old.

Global SITREP C29-14: Operation Protective Edge Morphs Into War of Attrition

IDF Merkava Mk4 MBTs form up in ranks to return to Israel from Gaza

3 August 2014 - Operation Protective Edge Day27: After 27 days of combat in Gaza, Israel's political leadership has decided that Operation Protective Edge will have achieved its mission objective of destroying all terrorist tunnels. Along with this determination the IDF also declared 2LT Hadar Goldin KIA and therefore not a prisoner of the enemy in Gaza. Israel can now go home, it's mission in Gaza is complete and there are no MIA soldiers to search for in Gaza. Yes, it appears as if 2LT Goldin's corpse, as well as that of SGT. Oron Shaul, will be left in the hands of the terrorists of Gaza; Israel abandons its soldiers on the field of battle for the purpose of political expediency; not everyone gets to come home.

With HAMAS, the PIJ, Islamic State and all other jihadi factions still extant on or under Gaza's soil this war will now morph into a war of cross-border attrition with rocket, missile, mortar and sniper fire coming out of Gaza being responded to by Israeli airstrikes, artillery and tank fire coming into Gaza. There will be no demilitarization of Gaza by the IDF, not this time anyway. And Israel's population will have to live with the sound of Code Red sirens 24/7 indefinitely. No army pulls itself out of a war zone, (i.e. relinquishes conquered territory) just to re-group, spin around and then go back in a day or a week later. The destruction of the terrorists of Gaza will have to wait for another day, another war.

In this type of unilateral disengagement the government of Israel can make all the claims that suit its political purposes and whims, but it has not achieved anything close to a comprehensive military victory. Israel has not won this war; it has postponed it to another day in the future. The Islamic Republic of Iran, though its proxies, has achieved a state of perpetual war on Israel's southern border with Gaza, a war of attrition which is guaranteed to continue to consume Israel's resources of every type imaginable for the foreseeable future. It also remains to be seen how the Israeli public will react to the current situation; how Likud manages to spin this fiasco and remain in power after the next election. Israel's generals did not get to fight this war with respect to any established doctrine; the politicians in Jerusalem made certain of that.

4 August 2014: OPE Day 28 was pretty much the same as what occurred on OPE Day 27. The terrorists launched another 100 rockets at Israel. The difference, if one can it that, is that yet another in an endless stream of worthless 72-hour cease fires has been scheduled to erupt in about four and one-half hours from now (0800 Israel time) during what we might ostensibly refer to as OPE Day 29. Same old, same old, including the quasi-intifada going on in Jerusalem's environs. By the way, as of sunset this evening Tisha B'Av officially commenced in Israel.

HaKirya, Israel government center and IDF HQ in Tel Aviv defended by the Lord's Qadiym

Final Update 4 August 2014 - OPE Day 28: On Sunday, 3 August, there was a report in Israel Today in which an Iron Dome anti-missile system operator admitted that there was a very rare instance recently where a HAMAS long range rocket (an M-75 of R-160 no doubt) that was inbound for the high-value the HaKirya (Campus) of central Tel Aviv. The inbound rocket was targeted, fired at and missed three times by its Arrow interceptors. This kind of failure of Iron Dome is virtually unheard of.

What happened within the next few and precious seconds is straight out of Genesis 41, Exodus 10/14 and especially Job 27:21, which says: "The east wind (qadiym) carries him away, and he is gone; It sweeps him out of his place." This is precisely what the Hand of God did to save hundreds of lives in the the HaKirya. As translated into English from the Hebrew kooker website, here is the Iron Dome operators narrative:

"A missile was fired from Gaza. Iron Dome precisely calculated [its trajectory]. We know where these missiles are going to land down to a radius of 200 meters. This particular missile was going to hit either the Azrieli Towers, the Kirya (Israel’s equivalent of the Pentagon) or [a central Tel Aviv railway station]. Hundreds could have died.
"We fired the first [interceptor]. It missed. Second [interceptor]. It missed. This is very rare. I was in shock. At this point we had just four seconds until the missile lands. We had already notified emergency services to converge on the target location and had warned of a mass-casualty incident.
"Suddenly, Iron Dome (which calculates wind speeds, among other things) shows a major wind coming from the east, a strong wind that…sends the missile into the sea. We were all stunned. I stood up and shouted, ‘There is a God!’
“I witnessed this miracle with my own eyes. It was not told or reported to me. I saw the hand of God send that missile into the sea.”

Despite all that is now occurring, or not occurring, as we may perceive these events in the Israel-HAMAS War this summer, one thing remains true above all else - the God of Israel is in total control; His will is being done for His purposes. Nothing is finished until He says "It is finished!"

Thank you Abba, in Jesus Name!

Global SITREP C28-14: Another Truce That Isn't

1 August 2014 - OPE Day 25/Ground War Day 15: What type of a ceasefire is it where observers who are watching it do so by counting the number of minutes and actual seconds on a clock in which it appears to be valid? One hundred twenty minutes and a few seconds into the latest declared Gaza ceasefire and Code Red sirens were wailing in Kerem Shalom, Israel. That means the latest U.S.-U.N.-brokered 72-hour ceasefire was actually a 2-hour and several seconds ceasefire. Atypical Islamic jihadist treachery. It matters not one iota that the HAMAS' rockets fired into Israel this morning did not hit anything but desert sand, what matters is that they were fired at Israel period.

The first thing to note following the collapse of the Day 25 ceasefire into which Israel entered in good faith, is that Israel has declared existent a closed military zone around all of Gaza bordering with Israel and the entire length of the northern border with Lebanon and Syria. This action has apparently come after an IDF officer, 2LT Hadar Goldin of the Givati Brigade, was apparently kidnapped by HAMAS terrorists while executing his assigned duties on a tunnel in Rafah. This action was apparently a HAMAS ambush which killed two other IDF soldiers who were members of 2LT Goldin's platoon at that tunnel. Heavy HAMAS rocket and mortar fire and along with even heavier IDF retaliation then put the truce that wasn't permanently to rest. Again, Muslims engaged in jihad cannot be trusted. Period.

I will also critically note that this attack and kidnap against the Givati Brigade came after an article in the ultra-Orthodox paper Mishpacha (Family) was circulated in Israel, and which was thereafter was even more widely circulated in other Israeli media, such as Ha'aretz, and the The Times of Israel, which prominently featured Col. Ofer Winter, commander of the brigade. That kind of completely unnecessary high profile notoriety was quickly noticed by other Islamic jihadists and which instantly put the Givati Brigade dead-center in the cross-hairs of HAMAS' kidnapping plots. There is NOTHING more important during a war than OPSEC (Operational Security), and based upon the overwhelming majority of the Israeli media's near-real time reporting and blogging such as the photographing and naming of field commanders that it was a virtual certainty that HAMAS would put that information to good use at the first opportunity during this particular and highly-ill advised "humanitarian ceasefire."  The Israeli media need to learn that "loose lips sink ships." It also gets your fathers, sons and brothers kidnapped and killed on the battlefield. Shut up already!

First Update - OPE Day 25: There is no proof of life for 2LT Hadar Goldin; it is being assumed he was taken alive. If I am correct in reading between the lines of various reports coming out of Israel today, it would seem that the abduction of 2LT Goldin had PM Netanyahu reading the "riot act" to a promptly called onto the carpet US SECSTATE Kerry. This may have been the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back." I am inclined to think the bottom line fall out of this mornings high level dressing down was that unless 2LT Goldin is immediately released by HAMAS, then PM Netanyahu and the security cabinet will deal with this kind of islamic treachery in the manner which even islamic terrorists can appreciate - unrelenting violence with no quarter given to any enemy combatant. If there was ever a reason for Israel's national leadership to come to the realization of the necessity to eliminate HAMAS for all time... this was it.

Final Update - OPE Day 25: As made clear in the update above, there is without question a sense in Israel that the entire paradigm of the war in Gaza against HAMAS has changed, possibly irrevocably, and to the point that it has finally hit a resonating chord across a broad political spectrum of the Israel population. So much so that there is now no chance of Israel agreeing to any cessation of hostilities against the terrorists in Gaza as long as 2LT Goldin remains a hostage of the islamic enemy. Instead of a truce the security cabinet now is debating an expansion of the mission objective beyond just a thorough demilitarization of Gaza, but now to include a military annihilation of HAMAS as the ultimate "mission complete" objective.

Again, the government of the State of Israel and its military forces are assuming that 2LT Goldin was abducted from the battlefield in Rafah alive and that this abduction occurred while HAMAS used the ruse of the ceasefire combined with Gaza human shield civilians collecting or checking up on their possessions near the IDFs Givati Brigade positions in Rafah. The U.S.-U.N. brokered ceasefire was for HAMAS a total sham. That the abduction of this Israeli officer occurred after the start of the ceasefire is beyond question. It is believed that 2LT Goldin remains within the matrix of underground tunnels in the vicinity of Rafah; all IDF artillery or other strikes in this immediate area today have been for the express purpose of freezing in-place 2LT Goldin and his abductors in the same general area of Rafah where the abduction occurred this morning.

2 August 2014 - OPE Day 26:  War brings out the strangest situations. Yesterday, a featured blogger (Yochanan Gordon) at The Times of Israel had his blog post entitled "When Genocide is Permissible" deleted because it was a violation of their editorial guidelines.  I have read Israeli news reports in which members of Israel's government, the security cabinet, have been quoted in Israeli media saying in a far more direct manner what Yochanan merely posed a question about in his blog post. Read it for yourself at the link above.

There is no question that HAMAS holds to the goal of genocide against all Israel. This is the ultimate objective of HAMAS in the current Arab-Israeli struggle as it has been since 1948. This was the central point of Yochanan's blog post, and at no point in his post did he call for or otherwise advocate for a genocide of all Arabs. In fact, Yochanan reiterated in his post what a very many people in both the United States and Israel, to include Jews, born-again Christians and even secular folks, have been discussing for the better part of the past month, as has this blog has been openly discussing - the need to destroy HAMAS and thereby the goal of its brand of political Islam - the genocide of Israel.

Obviously no Israeli editorial board can delete the HAMAS charter any more than it can delete the stated objectives of the Islamic Republic of Iran, or Hezbollah, or the new Islamic State, or Al-Qaeda or any other Islamic jihadist group -- or even the Islamic Qur'an itself, all of which speak pretty much to the same thing about the genocide of Israel at the hands of fully submitted adherents of islam for the sake of their small-g god. Nor can any Israeli editorial board delete the rampant anti-Semitism that has swept through European and South American capitals.

And neither can the editorial board of The Times of Israel delete the text, or any portion thereof, of the Bible, such as the text of Psalm 83:4 which speaks to exactly what is stated in the Qur'an as reflected in HAMAS' charter, and is the existential goal, the genocidal goal, of Israel's enemies round about them on every side:

“Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation,
That the name of Israel may be remembered no more.”

The editorial board of The Times of Israel, and all other editorial boards who followed suit in deleting Yochanan's blog post, are the equivalent of the proverbial ostrich who sticks his head in the sand because he simply can not face the cold hard facts of reality staring back at him: Islam has no interest in and does not care to coexist with Israel. Instead they are dedicated to the purpose stated by the singing prophet Asaph of the God of Israel's ancient fathers, and that purpose is the genocide of the State of Israel.

Hear O' Israel, wake up and smell the Nachle black coffee. 

First Update - OPE Day 26: Has anyone reading here wondered why it is that with so much global corporate media present in Gaza that there has been not been any video or images taken of HAMAS, PIJ or other Islamic jihadists at war or on the battlefields of Gaza in the past 26 days?  Have you seen a HAMAS rifleman firing his weapon? A rocket launch or mortar battery in action? Not even a policeman? We have only seen women and children in images of devastation and suffering. In pondering this question, consider also that there hasn't been an hour gone by in all this time where video or images of IDF troops engaged in this war have not been broadcast by these same corporate media. So, what do you think is the answer?

It is because the global corporate media were put on notice prior to day one that the cameraman or videographer who turned his/her lens in the direction of HAMAS or PIJ fighters during combat operations would be immediately shot at and killed. Yes, the media face immediate execution if they film HAMAS or PIJ fighters firing their weapons from fighting positions defended by Gaza's human shields, the civilian population. 

This is what we have learned from a Spanish journalist (who must remain anonymous for his own personal safety) who is based in Gaza and has covered the war from the get-go. This news was published by the New York-based paper the Algemeiner on July 31st. Didn't see or hear this news or anything remotely like it in any major US corporate media have you? ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, or even FoxNews? I certainly haven't. So, the fact is that we will never see any of the terrorists in Gaza fighting from within their human shield redoubts in Gaza because there is no corporate media will to risk their own lives to report it in high definition video format. Or text for that matter. This is what the Iranian IRGC has expertly trained its proxies to do whenever they engage Israel in combat. We in the West are seeing from inside Gaza exactly what the mullahs in Tehran want us to see, and it is having the desired effect upon the war effort from their terrorist jihadi perspective.

NOTE 6 August: With the ceasefire having held for more than 24 hours some clandestine video footage (taken by Indian and French news crews in Gaza) of Palestinian terrorist firing rockets from civilian areas have been released publicly. See this report from the Jerusalem Post for details. 

Speaking of Iran, there is a very good possibility that the terrorist operation to kill the most recent ceasefire was an Iranian plot carried out by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). HAMAS may not have custody of 2LT Hadar Goldin (or his corpse), but Iran has him through its PIJ proxy.

Is it becoming clear that in order to defeat the terrorist enemy in Gaza that Israel may very well need to reach out and very profoundly touch those mullahs in Iran? You know, the mullahs in Iran that Barack Hussein Obama appears dead set on seeing acquire nuclear weapons with which to attack Israel. Who exactly is being played as the fool here?

This morning the IDF has also begun unilaterally moving its forces out of the northern urban areas of Gaza and telling those residents, such as those of Beit Lahia (image above), that they may return. To what exactly, I'm not sure. Seems to me all functioning societal infrastructure there has been devastated; it's only hours removed from being an active war zone.

Meanwhile, the residents of Israel's northern communities, such as Kiryat Shmona, report hearing the noises of tunnels being dug beneath their homes. This nothing nothing new. Hezbollah has been tunneling into northern Israel for a few years now and have openly boasted from time to time that in the next war they will bring the war into northern Israel.