The Wall Street Journal has a straight news story on the rescue operation that extracted four Israeli hostages from two apartment buildings in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, or “refugee camp.” The rescue teams included the IDF, the Shin Bet, and the elite police counterterrorist unit (Yamam), whose squad leader was killed in a shootout at one of the apartments. Israeli commandos radioed to the command center once they had extracted the four hostages: “We have the diamonds in our hands.”
The Journal story includes details on the operation along with the video below. At one point the video cites “the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza” — an arm of Hamas and a well-known source of Hamas propaganda — not that the Journal hasn’t relied on it before. What is to be said? Pathetic.
The Journal provides the Hamas line on the operation. Hamas called the operation “brutal and barbaric” and “said it wouldn’t strike any hostage-release deal that doesn’t achieve security for Palestinians [sic]. It said the operation resulted in 210 dead Palestinians and 400 injured.”
You have to love the precision of the death count and wonder who “Hamas” is in that paragraph. Would that be what the video refers to as “the Palestinian Health Ministry”?
By contrast, “Israel’s Hagari said the military is aware of about 100 Palestinians killed or wounded in the firefight, some of whom he said were militants, as Israel extracted the hostages.” Those “militants” — they would be Hamas terrorists, and they are rather difficult to distinguish from the civilians of Nuseirat.
Please don’t tell the Democrats’ Hamas wing: “U.S. military personnel in Israel assisted in the hostage rescue, providing intelligence and other support, a U.S. official said. A small cell had been collecting intelligence for months, using American drones to assist the Israelis in hostage rescue operations.”
The Journal has separately posted a story on how they did it. Here is an excerpt:
In May, Israel located the female hostage Noa Argamani in a low-rise apartment block in Nuseirat, central Gaza, and three male hostages in another building about 200 yards away: Almog Meir Jan, Andrei Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv.
The Gazan families residing in the apartments were present there, together with the Hamas captors and their prisoners, Hagari said.
Raiding only one building would alert captors at the other location, so the Israelis decided to raid both buildings simultaneously, he said.
The Israeli police’s counterterrorist unit, Yamam, trained for the raid on models of the two buildings, Hagari said. The unit reached central Gaza from Israel, he said, and denied rumors that it had arrived via the U.S.-built pier designed for aid delivery.
Hagari declined to say whether the officers were disguised as Palestinian civilians, a tactic that Israeli special forces have previously used.
Once the order to proceed was given, the Israeli air force struck a preplanned list of Hamas targets in Nuseirat, creating cover for the rescue raid. Ground forces from Israel’s paratroopers division stood ready to support the operation.
The Yamam commandos reached the apartment entrances undetected, the families of the hostages told Israeli TV later.
One Yamam team stormed the first-floor apartment where Argamani was held and took the captors by surprise, according to the military.
On the third floor of the other building, a gunfight with the guards broke out. The Yamam squad leader, Arnon Zamora, was hit and later died of his wounds.
It’s a little difficult to distinguish “civilians” in the crowd:
Leaving the buildings, the teams came under fire from Hamas fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades, Hagari said. He accused Hamas of deliberately firing at the Israelis from streets full of civilians.
Israeli airstrikes and ground forces hit the militants. The many dead likely included both fighters and bystanders.
Arnon Zamora was the Yamam commander killed in the operation. JNS reports this morning that Israel will rename yesterday’s rescue mission Operation Arnon in his honor. The headline on Emanual Fabian’s Times of Israel account takes off from there: “‘Operation Arnon’: How 4 hostages were freed from Hamas captivity in central Gaza.”
🚨Michal Zmora , paid tribute to her husband ,Commander Arnon Zmora , who was killed yesterday in the operation to rescue the 4 hostages. “Arnon was a perfect father. A loving and beloved man. That's how we will remember him”
Arnon Zmora’s funeral will take place today at 16:00… pic.twitter.com/IkS2H6K9Tb— Iris (@streetwize) June 9, 2024
JNS’s Yaakov Lapin hears echoes of Entebbe. Elsewhere JNS adds this telling footnote: “Al Jazeera journalist held Noa Argamani hostage in Gaza.” Can we make that “journalist”?
