Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus has served as the international spokesman for the IDF. He has returned to duty in connection with current events. He is working overtime to provide public and private briefings for those who seek reliable information on the war. Last night he posted the video briefing at the bottom on the IDF’s X/Twitter feed (his own feed is here). RealClearPolitics has posted this transcript:
Shalom from Tel Aviv, this is reserve Lt. Col. Jonathan and I’m here to give you a nightly update. We’re almost 48 hours into the fighting, a little bit less, and the picture of the situation in Israel is a dire one. There is still fighting on in Southern Israel, our troops are still fighting and hunting down the last terrorists that are still inside Israeli territory. That is something that will take a few more hours, or maybe even more than that.
We assessed that there were approximately 1,000 terrorists who participated in yesterday’s invasion of Israel, about 1,000 bloodthirsty Palestinians who went house to house and building to building in search of Israeli civilians, and massacred approximately 700 Israelis killed — that is civilians and military included — and more than 2,100 have been wounded. Unfortunately, there is a high number of critically wounded people who may not make it, so the astronomical figure of 700 dead Israelis will not remain that.
It is by far the worst day in Israeli history. Never before have so many Israelis been killed by one single thing, let alone enemy activity, on one day. If you’re American and want to compare this to something in American history, this could be a 9/11 and a Pearl Harbor wrapped into one. We’re a small country with about 8-9 million Jews living here, and out of that population, we’ve had 700 killed and 2,100 wounded.
Unfortunately, and this is probably the most dominant factor that will shape the activities for the future, there is a very large amount of Israeli civilians and soldiers held inside Gaza. And that number, I think in the coming days, will be revealed officially, but at this time I can only say that we are talking about many, many Israelis. Israelis who were forcefully taken from Israel, women, children, infants, elderly, and even disabled people. I’ve seen stories of a grandma Holocaust survivor who was taken across the border from Israel to Gaza by Hamas militants with two toddlers behind her in a special vehicle. That is the extent of the brutality, cynicism, and the monsters that we are facing.
We have amassed around 100,000 reserve troops who are currently in Southern Israel preparing to execute the task that the Israeli government has designated the IDF to do. Our job is to make sure that at the end of this war, Hamas will no longer have any military capabilities to threaten Israeli civilians with. And in addition to that, we are also to make sure that Hamas will not be able to govern the Gaza Strip. Because you see the situation today is fundamentally different than what it was two days ago, and at the end of this war, we will change the situation for the better around our border in Gaza, and it will be much better for Israeli civilians, and it will be better for the Palestinians as well.
But that is yet to come, that is in the future. As of now, we are focusing on burying the dead, grieving with the families, rallying our troops, preparing ourselves for the military tasks to come, and focusing on what needs to be done with Hamas after their unprovoked, barbaric attack against Israel.
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We’re in for a long, difficult, and gruesome task, at the end of which I am sure we will prevail. Despite how difficult these first few days have been and how horribly we started this war, Israel has proven time and again to all of our enemies, whether it was in the past armed gangs of Arabs and nation-states, and no non-state actors and terrorist organizations, to all of them who have tried to annihilate us have failed. So shall Hamas and so shall anyone else attempting to do that to us.
We shall prevail and we trust the good people in the world will support us.
An IDF Spokesperson @jconricus shares an important statement on ‘Swords of Iron’. LIVE from Tel Aviv: https://t.co/5lYJlleXK6
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 8, 2023
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