GNITN - Special Edition

Israel At War – Day 356

All Attention On Hezbollah

Ceasefire With Hezbollah?

There’s a report floating around that Israel agreed to a 21 day ceasefire with Hezbollah, but is it true? We read more about this from a report from The Jerusalem Post:

The Biden administration’s plan for a 21-day ceasefire to avert a third Lebanon war was coordinated with Israel, the White House said as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to press on with the IDF’s campaign to push Hezbollah back to the Litani River.

“The statement was coordinated with the Israeli side,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters in Washington, adding that the US was holding diplomatic talks in New York on the sidelines of the high-level opening sessions of the 79th UN General Assembly.

“Israel was aware of the statement and we are having continued discussions with our team in New York,” Jean-Pierre said.

However, Prime Minister Netanyahu acknowledged that there was a proposal from France and the US and swiftly let everyone know his thoughts on it:

“We are continuing to hit Hezbollah with all our power, and we will not stop until we achieve all our objectives, first and foremost the return of the northern residents to their homes,” he told reporters on the tarmac as he stood under an umbrella with his wife, Sara.

“Our policy is clear, “ Netanyahu said, so “nobody should misunderstand it.”

And then the PMO added this:

The Prime Minister’s Office sent a message from the plane stressing that it had not yet accepted that offer and then issued a photograph of Netanyahu authorizing the assassination of Hezbollah’s drone unit chief Muhammad Hossein Sarur.

The PM confirmed his office’s statement:

Netanyahu told reporters that “during the flight, I gave authorization for the assassination of the head of [Hezbollah’s] drone unit and other things, and he was assassinated.”

Netanyahu noted the reason for his trip, though:

He explained the significance of his trip to the US, in which he is expected to deliver an address before the UNGA on Friday morning Eastern Time.

“I am here for an important visit to the United Nations together with families of the [Gaza] hostages, whom we have not forgotten for a minute, in order to make Israel’s case to the world.”

Netanyahu’s office reaffirmed that the ceasefire offer wasn’t from him and not one he agreed to:

The PMO said earlier Thursday that the ceasefire call was “an American-French proposal that the prime minister has not even responded to.”

They also said that they are ramping up their offensive against Hezbollah, not holding it back:

It also rejected reports that as a result of the diplomatic initiatives, the IDF had scaled down the level of its military campaign.

“The report about the purported directive to ease up on the fighting in the North is the opposite of the truth. The prime minister has directed the IDF to continue fighting with full force, according to the plan that was presented to him.”

Weapons Out, Terrorists Neutralized

One of the goals of the IDF is to stop weapons from flowing into Hezbollah which makes sense as we read in a report from The Times Of Israel:

The chief of the Israeli Air Force, Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar, says preventing all weapon transfers from Iran to Hezbollah is now a top priority.

“We in Lebanon are now going to prevent any possibility of weapon transfers from Iran, in the face of what we have taken away so far from Hezbollah,” Bar says during a meeting with officers at the Tel Nof Airbase today.

Bar actually said that keeping weapons from Hezbollah is very important:

“This is a mission that is becoming the first in the order of priorities,” he says.

His experience is also noted:

The IDF says Bar also participated in airstrikes in Lebanon today with the 133rd Squadron.

In an article from the Jewish News Syndicate we also see that the IDF continues to target and take out Hezbollah leaders:

The Israel Defense Forces on Thursday killed the head of Hezbollah’s aerial forces in an airstrike in Beirut’s Dahiyeh district.

Some accounts just say he’s in charge of drones because Hezbollah really doesn’t have an air force, but I think we get the point:

Senior Hezbollah terrorist Muhammad Hossein Sarur commanded numerous attacks with “drone, cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles launched at the Israeli home front,” the IDF stated.

Sarur was also a drone production “project leader” in Lebanon, who established sites to build explosives and intelligence-gathering drones, “including some located under civilian buildings in Beirut and other areas in Lebanon,” the Israeli army said.

He had a long history with Hezbollah:

The slain terrorist joined Hezbollah in the 1980s and served in a variety of positions, including as the commander of the surface-to-air missile unit and the “Aziz” unit, responsible for terror operations on Lebanon’s southern border with the Jewish state.

Sarur also served as the Iranian-backed terrorist organization’s envoy to the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Sarur wasn’t the only one taken out:

Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen television channel, which is affiliated with Hezbollah, reported that four people were killed in the Israeli airstrike.

Two Lebanese “security sources” confirmed that Sarur, also known as Abu Saleh, was among the dead, Reuters reported.

And as if we needed confirmation of this, the report also added this:

“The IDF will continue to undermine the capabilities of the Hezbollah terrorist group and to dismantle the organization’s top command,” the Israeli military stated on Thursday afternoon.

Shortly before the IDF announcement, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office released a photo of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approving the assassination during his flight to the United States.

More dead men walking are now becoming just dead men. Expect that to continue all the way up to Sinwar and Nasrallah.