Swords of Iron Day 1061 finds me in the south of Israel, and the reason you keep turning on this channel is that you get it from the boots on the ground rather than from a studio. Today that means an American air campaign over Iran, a hard night in Gaza City, and a wedding that will stay with me for a long time.
Swords of Iron Day 1061: The USA Is Bombing Iran
It is not a rumor and it is not a threat. U.S. Central Command has launched a new round of strikes across southern Iran, hitting IRGC military and communications sites, air defenses, coastal radars and maritime and mine-laying assets. Reported target areas include Sirik, Konarak, Bandar Abbas, Jask, Asaluyeh, Ahvaz and Qeshm Island.
I want to be careful and honest with you about the human cost, because our credibility depends on it. Reporting from the ground counts at least eleven people killed, including five at a wedding in the Kuhestak area, and dozens wounded. That is a real thing that happened to real families, and we do not celebrate it.
Alongside the air campaign there is a maritime dimension: American forces striking Iranian government tankers in reprisal for Iranian attacks on commercial shipping, while Iran runs its own campaign against vessels in the Strait. Add the sanctions track on top, and you have three simultaneous forms of pressure on a regime that has spent decades exporting exactly this.
An Unusual Battle in Gaza City
Closer to home, an unusual battle took place in western Gaza City. IDF special forces operated in the al-Katiba area near the American Hospital, and it turned into heavy exchanges of fire backed by more than a dozen airstrikes with aircraft flying low over the city.
The objective was the capture of Mu’in al-Arabid, the head of Hamas’s internal security in Gaza City. Our guys came through it without casualties, which given the intensity of that fight is no small thing. Israeli reporting describes an intense, close-quarters operation.
Anti-Hamas Gazan groups working with Israel reportedly played a central role in locating and reaching him. That deserves a moment of thought: there are Gazans actively risking their lives to help remove Hamas from their own streets. They do not get written about much.
Swords of Iron Day 1061: Staying on the Offensive
There will be pressure to scale the strikes back. There always is. But IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir put the principle plainly when he said in Gaza that “we will not return to October 6” — meaning we will not go back to the arrangement that let Hamas build in peace until it was ready.
That is the whole doctrine in one line. Keep the south safe. Do not let Hezbollah rebuild, rearm or regroup in southern Lebanon. And keep pursuing the October 7 perpetrators, who remain a high priority and who are, as far as I am concerned, dead men walking.
Israeli forces have also been operating with heavier equipment in Judea and Samaria, including the first reported use of Eitan armored personnel carriers to support an operation in the Tubas area, as terrorist infrastructure builds up there.
Israel and Greece Sign the Achilles Shield
While all of that goes on, the good guys are strengthening each other. Israel and Greece have signed a roughly €3 billion agreement, about $3.5 billion, for a system the Greeks are calling the Achilles Shield.
It is a fully integrated multilayer air-defense array built around Israeli technology including David’s Sling, Barak MX and Spyder, designed to handle ballistic missiles, aircraft and drones together rather than as separate problems. A separate contract covers Drone Dome.
Seeing our ancient people produce technology that a European nation now trusts with its skies is, frankly, incredible. Two of the oldest civilizations in the Mediterranean, defending each other with systems built in the Negev. On Swords of Iron Day 1061, that partnership is one of the clearest signs that Israel is not standing alone.
Tali Dee Walks to the Chuppah
And then there is the moment that undid me this week. Tali Dee got married wearing her murdered mother’s wedding dress.
In April 2023, terrorists shot and killed her mother Lucy and her sisters Maia and Rina in the Jordan Valley. Her father, Rabbi Leo Dee, became a public voice for a family that had been torn apart in the most brutal way imaginable.
Three years later, his daughter walked to the chuppah in Lucy’s dress. I do not have adequate words for that. It is not that the grief has resolved, because it has not and it will not. It is that a young woman decided to build something anyway, and carried her mother and her sisters into the room with her while she did it. From trauma, a sliver of hope. A light in the darkness, and one of the moments of Swords of Iron Day 1061 that I will carry longest.
Swords of Iron Day 1061: The Bond Between Israel and America
We also have to protect the bond between Israel and America, and that means being accurate about it. You often hear that America simply hands Israel money. The reality is more interesting.
Under the terms of U.S. Foreign Military Financing, the great majority of that assistance must be spent with American defense companies. Israel’s narrow exemption allowing some of it to be spent domestically is being phased out and reaches zero in 2028. In practice that means American factories, American jobs and American production lines.
And the flow runs both directions in ways that never make a headline: intelligence, regional awareness, counterterrorism cooperation, battle-tested equipment, and a stable partner in a region with very few of them. Americans are of course free to support what they believe, and political influence in Washington comes from a great many directions. But the ledger deserves to be read honestly.
Justifying the Wicked
He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, both alike, are an abomination to Adonai. (Proverbs 17:15)
Notice that the verse condemns both moves equally. Excusing the guilty and slandering the innocent are treated as the same offense, and in this war we are watching both happen at once, often in the same sentence. Much of what you will read about Swords of Iron Day 1061 in the international press does exactly that.
Their Faces Are Everywhere
Here in Israel you see the memorial stickers with the faces of fallen soldiers in every public place: bus stops, gas stations, bumper stickers, car windows. You start to grasp how many paid the ultimate price only when you notice how ordinary the stickers have become.
Everywhere I go I recognize someone I knew personally, including men from Yahalom and from other units. Their faces are everywhere. That is the part of Swords of Iron Day 1061 that no headline captures.
It is a sad time. We keep moving forward anyway, because that is what they would want and because there is no other honest option.
Watch the Full Swords of Iron Day 1061 Update
You can watch the complete Day 1061 briefing on Rumble or on YouTube. For the previous briefing in this series, see Swords of Iron Day 1060, and learn more about the work of the Aliyah Return Center.
Israel is standing. Am Yisrael Chai.
About These Swords of Iron Updates
These daily briefings are written from Israel by the team at the Aliyah Return Center in the Galilee, drawing on Israeli and international reporting alongside first-hand perspective from the ground. Our work centers on welcoming and supporting new immigrants, training ambassadors for Israel, and helping friends of Israel around the world understand what is actually happening here. If you would like to visit, volunteer, or support this work, you can reach us through the Aliyah Return Center website.