Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Report From Israel

Carl in Jerusalem is live-blogging the situation in Israel as the IDF responds to the kidnapping of two Israel soldiers by Hizbullah from across the border in Lebanon. He has information from IDF sources:

Rumors flying that Ehud Olmert will be declaring war tonight (2 years too late)?

3 dead IDF soldiers in the north, 2 IDF soldiers kidnapped, triple pronged attack, Katyusha, terrorists on the ground shooting freely at IDF outpost, and then capturing 2 IDF soldiers.

Heavy fighting going on now. IAF knocked out bridges throughout southern Lebanon, IDF navy shelling Beirut suburbs,

In Gaza, Mohammed Deif, leader of Hamas, lost other leg and arm, not dead yet from last night’s IAF aerial bombing on a non empty building…

Shlomi Moshav in the north all children and parents are in the bomb shelters,

IDF tanks and troops have crossed into Lebanon where they left 6 years ago

IDF tanks and troops have cut Gaza strip in to two sections as IAF continues bombing

Censorship on other details now in effect by IDF

Fortunately, Hizbullah and Hamas would never co-ordinate with each other, right? The former is Shi’ite; the latter is Sunni, after all…

Oh, wait a minute. They just did.

Well, I guess pigs have flown. Hell has frozen over. It’s a cold day in July.


Late-breaking update: Both the kidnapped soldiers were Druze:

…DEBKAfile is also saying that the two kidnapped soldiers are both Druze. For those who were not aware, most Druze do army service here.

3 comments:

Krishna109 said...

There are also a fair number of Druze in Lebanon..I wonder how they feel about this? (I've heard that the Druze tend to be loyal to the country they're in-- Israeli Druze are even more patriotic than many Jewish Israelis...but those in Arab countries are very anti-Israel).

Supposedly they are fierce fighters-- the Arabs fear Israeli Druze soldiers more than the others...

Carl in Jerusalem said...

Thanks for linking me guys. It's been a wild night.

On the specific question of the kidnapped soldiers' religious beliefs, my best guess right now is that one is Druze and one is Jewish. See http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2006/07/israel-does-not-have-bodies-of-four.html

But the Druze are definitely excellent soldiers, and they will unfortunately get no breaks from Hezbullah.

Papa Ray said...

I don't know much about the Druze, so a google brought this up:

The Druze community in Israel

Very informative (at least to me).

Papa Ray
West Texas
USA