TUESDAY, AUGUST 8, 6:00 PM

 

The daily Hizbullah rocket barrage upon communities all across northern Israel continued unabated today, with over 120 rockets being fired across the Lebanese border by 6:00 PM.  Several more buildings in the hard hit town of Kiryat Shmona were set on fire.  Reports from the town today say the center has been virtually destroyed in the past week of heavy rocket assaults.  This came as the government announced it would bus hundreds of local residents who lack the finances to evacuate the besieged town to safer locations further south.  Many said they could not face a fifth week of constantly living in underground shelters.  Two Israelis were wounded when shrapnel struck them in a western Galilee village this afternoon, and another civilian was hurt within the past hour in the often struck town of Ma’alot.  Other rockets fell in the towns of Safed, Tiberius, Carmiel and Nahariya.  This came after the army confirmed it had shot down an Iranian-made Hizbullah drone aircraft last evening off the coast of Haifa.

 

The army confirmed that three reserve soldiers were killed overnight as intense fighting raged near the town of Bint Jabail.  One soldier from a Jerusalem suburb died after his armored vehicle was hit by a Hizbullah anti-tank rocket. This brings the number of confirmed IDF deaths to 65.  Several other soldiers were wounded and evacuated from the action today.  The army said it captured five Hizbullah fighters as they were attempting to set up an anti-aircraft rocket position.  One of yesterday’s IDF casualties was from a family I knew when I studied Hebrew on a Jezreel Valley kibbutz, Beit Hashita, in 1982.  Proving that nothing is new under the sun, the language course ended prematurely when IDF forces first entered Lebanon en masse in June of that year to push back rocket-firing PLO fighters from the border.

 

With the Israeli Air Force carrying out over 80 sorties in Lebanon overnight and today, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert indicated today that the inner Security Cabinet may be asked to significantly expand the ground operation in southern Lebanon when it meets in special session tomorrow morning.  This comes amid mounting criticism of the campaign—which has just led to the replacement of the senior northern army commander—with many military analysts and right-wing politicians charging that massive force should have been deployed in the early days of the conflict.  They say the government coalition, made up primarily of former Likud party members and Labor politicians, failed to take the bull by the horns due to their dovish views.  The use of overwhelming force was the exact strategy adopted in the 1982 “Peace for Galilee” operation, in which vastly outnumbered and outgunned PLO fighters were driven from the entire border region in just a couple hours.  Critics, who are still speaking fairly softly due to the ongoing conflict, say the failure to deploy any ground forces inside south Lebanon at the start of the conflict, and the over-reliance on Air Force bombings, has resulted in far more rocket assaults upon northern Israel than should have occurred. They add that the initial light ground assault only emboldened Hizbullah, which can now claim a moral and political victory, and possibly even increase its ultimate influence over the weak Lebanese government.

 

ON THE FRONT LINES

 

I received an e mail today informing me that around 30 south Lebanese evangelical Christians, some of whom I worked with during the early 1980s, were unable to get out of their small border community before the conflict intensified, and are now spending each night in the basement of their church.  I have sent information to the army spokesman’s office about their presence amid concerns that Hizbullah fighters might try to draw IDF artillery fire upon the church by launching rockets from near the building.

 

I want to thank the hundreds of readers who have written encouraging notes in the past few days, particularly in reaction to my commentary sent out on Sunday.  Some Christian readers have asked how they might pray more effectively for those directly involved.  One obvious way is to intercede for the Lebanese Christians mentioned above who are suffering due to the conflict.  Another is to pray for the young IDF believers who have been sent into the battlefield, along with all Israeli soldiers serving in the line of fire. A list of the believer’s names is below (some had requested that only their first names be released).  I personally know many of these fine people, along with their parents.

 

David Boskey, Daniel Boskey, Naphtali Greenburg, Stefan Silver, Joel Golden, Elisha Ben Haim, Assi, Gil, Alon Williams, Reuven Miller
Daniel Miller, Yossi Schweig, Rami Morrison, Shmuel, Eli Abramov, Dima Mazurovsky, Yigal Gittelman, Kolya Rybin, Fyodr, Joshua Meyers, Herman Haustein, Gidon Harverson.

 

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DAVID DOLAN is a Jerusalem-based author and journalist who has lived in Israel since 1980.  His new DVD, titled “FOR ZIONS’S SAKE—REPORTING FROM THE LAND OF THE BIBLE,” is now available on both PAL and NTCS versions.  Details are posted at his web site, www.ddolan.com