DAY 37 OF THE GAZA WAR: Northern Border Heats Ups, Government Continues to Make Self Goals
Tel Aviv Diary, November 12, 2023
Thank you to all who participated in the Zoom briefing today, and for your excellent questions. I will post a recording of the session tomorrow. The next Zoom briefing will be in two weeks, on November 26th.
Today marked the first day that more missiles were fired from Lebanon to the north than by Hamas from the South. As of 9 PM, the only missiles fired today from Gaza were at the area immediately surrounding our border with Gaza. In the North, on the other hand, there were three sets of rocket attacks. The first and most deadly was an anti-tank missile attack at Moshav Dolev, where Israel Electric Company workers were fixing a downed line. The missile wounded 14 people, one gravely. A little later, Hezbollah mortar fire targeted soldiers near Manara, lightly wounding seven soldiers. Later in the day, Hamas fired 15 rockets from Lebanon at a wide range of targets throughout the Galilee, reaching as far south as the area between Akko and Haifa.
It is clear that Nasrallah is attempting to push Israel as far as possible without sparking a general war, anticipating that Israel will not want to divert its focus from Gaza. For the moment, I suspect the game of chicken will continue, and I don’t believe there will be a major confrontation in the short term. However, sometimes games of chicken go awry, so the next few days will be tense. As I have mentioned before, in the medium term, something significant in Israel will have to change — because as of now, none of the residents of the evacuated towns along the border will consider returning unless there is a fundamental change.
In Gaza, Israeli troops continued to consolidate their hold on the northern parts of the Strip, including Gaza City. The IDF has held off on taking action at the Gaza hospitals partly, to see if negotiations over the hostages will bear any fruit. The army claims that in Northern Gaza, Hamas (as a fighting group) no longer exists. Hopefully, the IDF’s assertion is not overly optimistic. The army tried to provide gasoline to Shifa Hospital, which claimed it had run out of fuel. However, the hospital refused to accept the replacement fuel — despite claims that babies were dying in the NICU, due to lack of fuel for their generators (a claim that is false). Nevertheless, the international media continues to report some of these falsehoods.
There are members of our government who continue to be our worst enemy when it comes to public relations. Today, Avi Dichter called the movement of Palestinians away from northern Gaza — the “Nakba of 2023.” Nakba is the Arab term for what Palestinians call the expulsion in 1948, in other words, the great tragedy of the year when Israel was born. Dichter’s comment immediately spread throughout the Arab world. A full week of intense public relations efforts are undermined by one thoughtless comment.
Netanyahu himself did not do Israel much good when he was interviewed on CNN by Dana Bash. When asked what would come after the war for Gaza, Netanyahu restated that Israel will not give up security control of Gaza, while he was unable to say who would control the Strip after Hamas. Netanyahu was asked about the Palestinian Authority, which the US has suggested should take charge after the war. The Prime Minister rejected the possibility of the PA replacing Hamas rule in Gaza. This public declaration did not sit well with the US Administration. Even if we have no intention of allowing the Palestinian Authority to take control of Gaza, why say that now while we are in the middle of the war? Netanyahu could have answered diplomatically, asserting that we do not know, and that we are examining all possibilities. In reality, we have no plan, and it's not clear if anyone else is working on one either.
Netanyahu was asked by Bash why he has not publicly taken responsibility for October 7th. The Prime Minister’s absurd response was — “Did anyone ask FDR to take responsibility for Pearl Harbor, or President Bush for 9/11?” Netanyahu seems unable to take any responsibility for anything. Apparently, taking personal responsibility goes against his nature.
There was no substantial news today relating to the hostages, just more rumors and conflicting reports. 239 hostages, 37 days of captivity and counting …
180,000 people attended a rally in Paris today against the rise of antisemitism.
BUSINESS
The Ministry of Defense and Rafael have signed an agreement to provide Finland with the David’s Sling missile defense system. The value of the deal is NIS 1.3 billion. David's Sling is Israel's intermediate missile defense system, designed to intercept medium-range missiles, which is what Finland, NATO's latest member, could expect to encounter from Russia."
The chip company Ingonyama raised $20 million in a seed round. The round was led by Walden Catalyst, also leading investors in AI21labs, and other prominent funds: London's Geometry, Germany's Blue Yard Capital, Samsung Next, Sentinel Global, and more. The company was founded in 2022, and currently employs about 25 people from its offices in Petah Tikva. The company was established by Omer Shlomovits (CEO), an entrepreneur and graduate of units 8200 and 81, for whom this is the third startup, his second in the field of cryptography, together with Miki Assa, the company's Chief Technology Officer, and Danny Shterman, the Vice President of R&D.
Israeli startup Tabnine, a pioneer in the field of AI-powered code completion tools, has been in the industry for nearly a decade. Tabnine stands out in a competitive market that includes tech giants like Microsoft, OpenAI, and Amazon. The company recently announced a significant fundraising milestone, securing $25 million. Tabnine’s product enhances coding efficiency by integrating with popular Integrated Development Environments (IDEs), offering an advanced AutoComplete feature that leverages strong AI models. This technology not only completes code based on the user's current project, but also considers other relevant works, providing highly contextual and appropriate code suggestions to streamline the development process.