Israel Report Weekly – December 2023

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Welcome back to Mike Claydon writing his first Israel Report from his new home in Adelaide. We wish Mike’ and his wife, every happiness in their new location. The report of course covers the latest news on the war with Hamas. It is very evident how effective the PR utilised by the “palestinians” has become. Many, formerly balanced, people are irrational in their support for these terrorists and seem incapable of applying critical thinking to the situation, and to grasp the truth. The truth being that the terror organisation called Hamas has to be destroyed. Your prayers are needed for innocents on both sides, but, as in the second world war, many civilians lost their lives before the Nazis were defeated. War is a nasty business, but so is terrorism. Sometimes it is the only solution when facing an enemy sworn to wipe you out. Remember, Israel is God’s chosen Nation, curse it at your peril.

Genesis 12:3

“And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed”.

Forget the latest rumours flying around, trust the Bible. To receive the Israel Report, free of charge, and also the Israel Report see contact details at the end of this article.

Gibber! Gibber!

Chugleye

 Déjà vu all over again?

Editorial

As we go to print many lovers of Israel and the Jewish people are both thankful and angry over the situation is Gaza today.  Thankful that the hostages are trickling home, some with horrible stories of their treatment at the hands of their captors. Angry the current, just broken, ceasefire just seems to be a repeat of all the skirmishes of the past.

The murderous terrorists commit an atrocity. Israel mobilises its armed forces and responds – often vigorously – the world at large initially stands with Israel and her right to defend herself – the images of teenagers being mowed down at a festival, couples tortured and beheaded, and their children burned to death – tears at the heart of any thinking person no matter how they feel about the Jewish and Arab claims to the land of Israel.

Time passes and the initial images are replaced by scenes of great destruction wrought upon those who decided to awaken the formidable military power of Israel in killing and maiming her citizens through a surprise invasion during the start or end of a Biblical festival. 

As the bombing continues and the missiles fly, the verifiable truth that terrorist infrastructure is placed in and under civilian buildings catering to medical and humanitarian needs becomes apparent and the mainstream western media switch rapidly from showing the plight of the attacked to that of the attackers. 

Scenes of dead children being dug out of crumbling housing begin to take centre stage, the lack of water, fuel, food and sanitation is endlessly discussed. The United Nations caught in the crossfire blink and begin speaking in terms of moral equivalence, disproportionate force, war crimes, the violation of an illusory international law, and the Geneva Conventions.

This is closely followed by massive global rallies in support of a fabricated nation, during which accusations of genocide, occupation and Nazism are made and slogans are chanted that suggest the eradication of the only Jewish nation on earth from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea should be accomplished just as soon as possible.

Finally, unbearable pressure is applied by the supporting nations and a ceasefire demanded and gained.  With the aims of the military thwarted and a war left unfinished, those bent on Israel’s destruction see their plans realised, and just prior to their utter defeat are granted a halt in hostilities allowing them to regroup, rearm and be readied for a future attempt to rid the world of Zionism.

That’s about where we stand again today. Déjà vu all over again? [with apologies to Yogi Berra] – Maybe, maybe not?

As the fragile ceasefire between Hanas and Israel fell apart yesterday and the battle resumed, we believe that this moment in prophetic history is quite different despite some similarities to past events. Why? 

For the first time in human history the writings of the Biblical prophets, in which they announced in their day millennia ago, details concerning the time of the end of global gentile rule – are now clearly visible on our horizon.

Against all odds and historical twists and turns the very nations named in Ezekiel as taking part in a latter day invasion of Israel are in coalition and breathing hatred for Israel. Global anti-Semitism has reached heights not seen since the 1930’s. The technical means of enslaving mankind to a global surveillance and financial system are already in place. The cry to divide the holy land and bring about a false peace are increasing by the hour,  and world Jewry are once again being run down in city streets across the world.

The clamour for a ceasefire in previous outbreaks of violence never occurred surrounded by conditions of such prophetic importance.

From Isaiah to Malachi Israel’s prophets were adamant that Israel, although suffering through a great refining, would finally achieve victory over her enemies as the true and only Messiah rescues a believing remnant to establish His kingdom in Jerusalem FOREVER.

Those are the days in which we now find ourselves – it is a time like no other – this current ceasefire, now broken, will bring about great escalation over the coming period and will engulf the region in catastrophic warfare which will decimate Israel’s enemies and in that day it shall come to pass, that the glory of Jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean. [Isaiah 17’;4]

Without any question, we are about to enter great tribulation, How awful that day will be! None will be like it. It will be a time of trouble for Jacob, but he will be saved out of it. [Jeremiah 30;7]

The Lord says, “Small and weak as you are, Israel, don’t be afraid; I will help you. I, the holy God of Israel, am the one who saves you. [Isaiah 41:14-24] Yet, “The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind. [Isaiah 17;13]There is no going back to dithering over truces, hostage and prisoner releases, and safe passage out for Islamic terrorists, this is the beginning stage of the final battle for Jewish survival – there may be pauses, frustrations and delays – nevertheless the momentum is baked in and cannot be arrested this time and events will soon tumble in upon each other at an alarming speed.

In that day [our day] will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf; and they shall devour all the people round about, on the right hand and on the left [Zechariah 12;6]The God of Israel so arranged it that you would be here to observe all these events foretold in the scriptures unfold – and as alarming and often frightening as it may be – what a privilege that is.  What an enormous honour to be able to speak of biblical truth to others using current events as proof of the veracity of our beloved scripture?

Déjà vu? Not this time.

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Knowing the time, that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep; for now salvation is nearer to us than when we believed. The night is almost gone, and the day is near. Therefore let us lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armour of light. [Romans 13;11-12]

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IDF resumes combat in Gaza after Hamas violates Ceasefire……….

The Israel Defence Forces resumed combat operations in the Gaza Strip on Friday morning after Hamas broke a week-long ceasefire by firing rockets at the Jewish state. The military said it was conducting a wave of airstrikes across the coastal enclave. “Hamas violated the operational pause, and in addition, fired toward Israeli territory. The IDF has resumed combat against the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza,” the military has said. Israel is urging the residents of the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis to evacuate, as fighting resumes following Hamas’ violation of the truce. Local residents in Khan Younis said the IDF dropped leaflets in Arabic warning that “the city of Khan Younis is a dangerous combat zone.” In a released official statement, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office blasted the Hamas terror group for violating the truce and not honouring its obligation to release all female Israeli hostages. It further pledged to eliminate Hamas and return all of the remaining hostages back home. “The Hamas-ISIS terrorist organization has violated the outline. It has not met its obligation to release all of the women hostages today and has launched rockets at Israeli citizens. Upon the resumption of fighting, we emphasize: The Government of Israel is committed to achieving the goals of the war; releasing the hostages, eliminating Hamas and ensuring that Gaza never again constitutes a threat to the residents of Israel,” the Prime Minister’s Office stated. Following Israel’s control of most of the northern Gaza Strip, any Hamas top leaders and the majority of Hamas terror operatives still living are believed to have relocated south to Khan Younis and Rafah, close to the Egyptian border. Current Hamas Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar, [pictured below] believed to be the mastermind behind the October 7 massacre, was born in Khan Younis and the city is known to be a major Hamas stronghold. Hamas launched rockets into Israel and the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) returned to bombarding Gaza while each side blamed the other for why the ceasefire could not continue into an eighth day. Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts continue for another at least temporary halt to hostilities.

“Over the last few hours, ground, air and naval forces struck terror targets in the north and south of the Gaza Strip, including in Khan Yunis and Rafah,” the IDF said. It also “struck areas booby-trapped with explosives, terror tunnel shafts, launch posts, and operational command centres designated by Hamas for use in the renewed fighting.” Within hours of the truce expiring, Gaza health officials reported that 109 people had been killed and dozens wounded in air strikes.  Hamas launched several rocket salvos into Israel, including on Ashdod, Ashkelon,  Beersheba, Sderot and across central Israel. Haggling over the fate of over 130 remaining hostages held by Hamas after its October 7 invasion of Israel sparked the resumption of bloodshed. Hamas couldn’t produce a list Friday morning of another 10 people to be freed, prompting Israel to say Hamas had violated the terms of the truce. Attempts to extend the pause collapsed in part because Hamas was facing difficulty obtaining access to four female hostages held by other groups in Gaza, Egyptian officials said. “The Zionist occupation bears accountability for reigniting the genocidal war and Nazi aggression against the Gaza Strip, persistently rejecting offers throughout the night for the release of detainees,” Hamas said on Telegram. In preparation for the next stage of the war, the IDF is publishing the Evacuation Zone Map in the Gaza Strip. This divides the territory of the Gaza Strip into recognizable areas to enable the residents of Gaza to orient themselves and understand the instructions, and to evacuate from specific places for their safety if required. Israel’s intelligence services are preparing to kill Hamas leaders around the world after the current war ends, setting the stage for a years-long campaign to hunt down militants responsible for the October massacres, Israeli officials said. The fighting in southern Gaza will likely be complicated by the fact that the majority of Gaza’s residents, roughly two million, are concentrated in the south after Israel previously urged them to leave battle zones in the northern part of the enclave.  

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Biden – Blinken Treachery….

While the Biden administration pretends to back the Jewish state’s legitimate right of self-defence against the unprecedented Hamas aggression, Washington has increasingly expressed concern about the growing number of civilian casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip amid the ongoing war between Hamas and Israel. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken who recently made his fourth visit to Israel since the war began, urged Israeli war cabinet leaders to avoid “massive loss of civilian life” in southern Gaza. “We discussed the details of Israel’s ongoing planning and I underscored the imperative for the United States that the massive loss of civilian life and displacement of the scale that we saw in northern Gaza not be repeated in the South,” Blinken stated. Once again, an American administration is tying Israel’s hands by imposing an impossibility on the IDF – to destroy HAMAS without civilian casualties whilst they hide themselves and war materiel underneath civilian structures, hospitals and schools. No such humanitarian consideration was shown by American forces in their wars in Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan? Attacks against U.S. forces in Syria resumed Friday……… “The U.S.base at Shaddadi came under rocket attack, but everything fell outside the wire,” said an official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss operational details. There were no injuries or damage and U.S. troops did not engage air defence systems. This marks the 75th attack on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militias since October 7. On Thursday, a loose-knit group of Iranian-backed militias called The Islamic Resistance in Iraq issued a warning to the U.S. “While the Islamic Resistance in Iraq affirms that it will not leave its people in this war to face the tyrants of the world alone, it declares its readiness to escalate military operations inside and outside Iraq”.“If the American enemy insists on the continuation of the Zionist killing machine, whether in steadfast Gaza or in proud southern Lebanon,” the group said on Telegram. “Indeed, we have warned you of a near punishment.”

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Lebanon Simmers…..

The secretary-general of Hezbollah has not yet delivered a clear intent to open up a second front in the war in Gaza. But a wider war is still possible. Since October 7, many have wondered whether Hezbollah, a Lebanese political party with a sophisticated armed wing, will open up a second front in the war in Israel and Arab Palestine, attacking from the north. The border with Israel has already become the site of violence: 14 Lebanese and three Israeli civilians have died. Hezbollah occupies a unique position in Lebanese politics. They are both a political party and a fighting force. They hold an arsenal of thousands of weapons, making them the world’s most military well-equipped non-state actor. But despite their participation in electoral politics, Hezbollah is often described as “a state within a state” for providing medical and social services to its support base that the state does not. In contemporary Lebanon, which has been without a president since October 2022, they have both the means and the autonomy to engage in war. Hezbollah, like Hamas, is part of the loose-knit network of allies and proxies that Iran calls its Axis of Resistance. Founded in the 1980’s as a Shiite Islamist resistance movement to the claimed Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, the Iranian-funded group has since evolved into a domestic political behemoth and become a regional player, intervening in the Syrian civil war on the side of the Assad regime and training Iranian-proxies in Iraq and Yemen. Hezbollah’s military capabilities surpass that of the Lebanese Armed Forces.  Many nations, including the United States, also consider them a terrorist group. As those who live near the border wait to see if the current Hamas-Israel pause will turn into something more permanent, many in Lebanon are left in limbo about who will make decisions for the country, and what form those decisions will take.  

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Russia says advancing on all fronts in Ukraine………

Russia said on Friday its troops were advancing in every section of the Ukrainian front, despite observers seeing little movement. Improving weather conditions however have enabled Russia’s forces to intensify their assaults The front lines have barely shifted in 2023 but fighting has remained intense. The latest major flashpoint is the nearly encircled industrial town of Avdiivka, where Ukraine said it was fending off assaults. “Our servicemen are acting competently and decisively, occupying a more favourable position and expanding their zones of control in all directions,” Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu [pictured above R] said on Friday. In a briefing with Russia’s top military brass, Shoigu said his men were “effectively and firmly inflicting fire damage on the Ukrainian armed forces, significantly reducing their combat capabilities“. His ministry announced on Wednesday it had taken control of Khromove, a small village on the outskirts of Bakhmut in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, but other territorial gains have proved elusive. Despite Moscow’s insistence its forces were making headway, President Vladimir Putin issued a decree Friday that would boost troop numbers by 15 percent. “The increase in the full-time strength of the army is due to growing threats to our country linked with the special military operation and the continuing expansion of NATO,” the army said, adding that some 170,000 soldiers would join the force as a response to the “aggressive activity of the NATO bloc“. In recent days, improving weather conditions — following powerful storms across southern Ukraine and Russia earlier this week — have enabled Russia’s forces to intensify their assaults and use drones again, Ukrainian officials said. Moscow has been throwing troops and equipment at the war-battered town of Avdiivka in a bid to encircle and capture the industrial hub. Analysts suggest they have made incremental gains — though at an enormous human cost — while Ukraine said its troops were continuing to fend off Russian attacks.  

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World Attention Switches to Gaza…. Forgets Ukraine ……

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he could not allow the world to forget about war in his country as attention shifts to the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Zelenskyy has ordered the construction of an extensive network of fortifications aimed at holding back Russian forces, signalling a switch to the defensive posture after a months-long Ukrainian counteroffensive yielded only small gains. His message in a video address late Thursday is the clearest official acknowledgment that Ukraine faces a hard winter defending the territory it holds, with little immediate prospect of major advances against the nearly 20% of its land occupied by Russia. Instead, as the war approaches a third year, Ukraine is digging in just as winter starts to bite, with Russia pursuing grinding military offensives in the east and northeast. Zelenskyy’s announcement came after a day travelling the northeast and southeast for meetings with military commanders and soldiers, as well as a tour of schools operating from underground bomb shelters and subway stations because of the threat of Russian shelling. One meeting, he said, concerned fortifications “on all the main fronts, where we need to dig in, speed up the pace of construction.” He said the focus would be the east and northeast, where Russia has sought to advance for months, achieving small gains at heavy cost. But he also noted that fortifications should be built in the Kyiv region along with others that border Russia and Belarus, from where Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Ukrainian’s summer counteroffensive failed to secure significant territorial gains in large part because of the strength of Russia’s deep and extensive fortifications. Zelenskyy’s call for improvements to defensive structures comes as Russia steps up its own offensives in the east and amid uncertainty over additional military aid from the U.S., Ukraine’s most important backer. Zelenskyy visited the front-line city of Kupyansk this week. He called on private companies and donors to get involved in a campaign to finance and build the fortifications, which he described as an “obvious priority,” and thanked all Ukrainians engaged in sourcing and manufacturing the required materials. Russia won this war long ago – it may take time for that to become starkly apparent – but as world interest and financing turns elsewhere it is only a matter of time before this corrupt country falls to Putin. He will require this pathway to northern Israel in the latter day Russian invasion of Israel depicted in Ezekiel chapters 38 & 9.

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WORLD NEWS BRIEFING – 01 December 2023 – With Greg Denham & Eric Metaxas [New York author, speaker and columnist]

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Israel Report Editor; Mike Claydon israelreport@mail.com

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“None of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand”. [Daniel 12;10]