Day 355 Swords of Iron – “IDF Calls up Battalions”
Chaim starts the video by saying that he finds it absurd that anyone would call Israel a “warmonger” country because we definitely don’t want wars but if they come to us we would rather win them than lose them. Chaim also says that he has children and a job and all kinds of other things that he has to be away from when he gets called up to be in the IDF reserves. All the other reservists also have other things they’d rather be doing, but the war that was imposed on Israel has forced them to leave all that and fight in the Army.
On this note, Chaim says that there have just been two more reserve brigades activated for possible deployment to Lebanon where they will have to push the Hezbollah forces north of the Litani River so they can’t menace the Israeli communities near the border.
But several countries in the region and beyond are saying that this could be the beginning of a much larger war, perhaps even a global conflict. In the meantime, the major powers are all sending troops to Cyprus to assist their citizens who want to leave Lebanon. About 500,000 residents of southern Lebanon have moved north, fleeing the fighting. One of the goals of this war is to allow the residents of northern Israel to return to their homes, and now many countries are demanding that these Lebanese people also be allowed to return to their homes. This puts pressure on both Israel and Hezbollah to find a way to end the fighting.
Chaim says he hasn’t been deployed to the north yet, and until there’s a ground invasion of Lebanon he’d rather use his skills and experience to continue clearing mines, tunnels, and rockets from Gaza. However, there are already lots of rockets hitting communities in the Galilee, and that’s why the IDF is hitting Hezbollah targets so hard, to deny them the ability to continue firing into Israel.
But Tel Aviv has been targeted, and this is making many Israelis very nervous and ready to support a ground invasion into Lebanon. Chaim says he’s ready to be part of the army that liberates the people of Lebanon from Hezbollah, just as he was already part of the army that liberated the people of Gaza from Hamas. Because Israel wants peace, and in order for there to be peace, the people who are causing wars and problems need to be dealt with.
