Israel invades Gaza

The invasion of Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces began yesterday, in what two U.S. officials called a “rolling start.” Thousands of Israeli troops poured into the northern portion of Gaza, which is Gaza City and the area surrounding it. At the same time, U.S. Navy strength in the Mediterranean effectively doubled.

Israel moves in

Chatter on Telegram channels like Intel Slava Z began at about 9:30 p.m. Israel Daylight Time, indicating a night action. The Israel Defense Forces cut off Internet access to and from Gaza yesterday morning (Israel/Gaza time). TechCrunch reported at 10:43 a.m. EDT that several Internet Service Providers had fallen offline. In fact, the Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) organization was reporting outages in Gaza even earlier.

The Israel Time Zone is seven hours ahead of the Eastern Zone, and both zones are observing Daylight Saving Time.

Cullen Linebarger and Jim Hoft at The Gateway Pundit have details of the invasion. This includes a ground operation involving a force the size of several regiments, plus airstrikes on Gaza City.

The IDF released this video detailing their suspicion that the Islamic Resistance Movement (Arabic Harakah al-Muqāwamah al-Islāmiyyah, abbreviated HAMAS) is using the largest hospital in Gaza for a headquarters.

Nor is this incursion limited to northern Gaza, or to the ground forces. Flotilla 13, which is Israel’s main maritime force, has laid siege to southern Gaza as well.

The United Nations General Assembly passed an apparent ceasefire resolution yesterday.

An attempt to amend that resolution to condemn HAMAS for its atrocities in the Negev, failed. The Canadians introduced it to bring balance to the ceasefire resolution. But the Arabs were having none of it, according to The Prince George Citizen.According to Jim Hoft, delegates cheered after that failure.

U.S. dispositions

The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower CVN-69, en route to the theater, passed the Straits of Gibraltar yesterday.