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Day 22 – Infiltration Kills 5 Soldiers; Nightmare in the South; Informed Americans Support Israel

by TheTower.org Staff |

Today was the twenty-second day of Operation Protective Edge and the eleventh day of ground operations in Gaza.

An infiltration yesterday in southern Israel left five soldiers dead. The Times of Israel reports:

The five soldiers were named by the army as Sgt. Daniel Kedmi, 18, from Tsofim; Sgt. Barkey Ishai Shor, 21, from Jerusalem; Sgt. Sagi Erez, 19, from Kiryat Ata; Sgt. Dor Dery, 18, from Jerusalem; and Sgt. Nadav Raimond, 19, from Shadmot Dvora.

The Hamas squad surfaced 150 meters inside Israel and fired an anti-tank missile at an army position. The barracks, just below the lookout tower, was hit, and four soldiers were mortally wounded. The soldiers in the lookout tower spotted the squad advancing on the position and trying to drag away one of the soldiers who had been hit. They then opened fire, killing at least one of the gunmen. The others fled.

The Tower published an article featuring residents of southern Israel discussing the nightmare that the discovery of the terror tunnels evoked. One resident said, ““We were feeling pretty safe before… We knew what to do with the missiles. The tunnels, it’s game-changing. We can’t do anything if the terrorists will come to our kindergarten.”

Two polls show high levels of American support for Israel. One, from Pew Research, found that Americans by a ratio of 2 to 1 blame Hamas for the latest round of violence. A Gallup poll found that Americans who are more informed about the Middle East are more likely to favor Israel.

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen argued in his column today that “blaming Israel is blaming the victim” for the current violence.

The New York Times today reported on the growing anti-Israel and anti-Semitic violence in France through the eyes of Rabbi Saloman Malka of Paris. “Anti-Semitism today is hiding behind anti-Zionism,” Malka said.

Yesterday’s escalation of violence—which led to the deaths of ten soldiers—was attributed to misfiring Islamic Jihad rockets that struck two targets inside Gaza, including the Shifa hospital.

For the third time in less than two weeks, a cache of weapons was found at a UNRWA school, establishing a pattern of the organization’s cooperation—intentional or not—with Hamas.

Soldiers wounded in Operation Protective Edge may benefit from a new therapy to heal open wounds. ISRAEL21c reports that the new procedure “enables stretching the edges of the skin over the wound with adhesive attachment plates placed on either side and secured with an approximation strap inserted into the first and then the second plate.”

[Photo: idfnadesk / YouTube ]

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