Education Minister and Habayit Hayehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett on Tuesday morning tweeted a response to the statement by Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu Monday night, that the security cabinet discussed the Gaza terror tunnels before the 2014 Protective Edge Operation. Bennett said Netanyahu should accept responsibility for the ramifications of his decisions, not try to conceal them.

“Any company commander in the army learns his lessons at the end of an exercise, to avoid making future mistakes, and what’s true for an infantry company is doubly true for the political and security leadership of the State of Israel,” Bennett tweeted. “In preparation for the next war, we must learn from the mistakes of the past and not deny them. Drawing real lessons is a sign of strength and self-confidence. He who does not learn from the mistakes of the past is doomed to repeat them,” Bennett concluded.

Netanyahu has been saying in closed sessions that the IDF had been seeking operational solutions to the terror tunnels since 2013, and the security apparatus had dealt with it numerous times. The PM was responding to the harsh attacks on his administration’s conduct of the 2014 Gaza War.

On Sunday, 32 bereaved families of fallen IDF soldiers in Gaza demanded in a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Liberman that a state commission headed by a judge investigate the government’s decision-making process throughout the war.

Bennett stood out during the war weeks as the most stubborn advocate of sending the IDF in to demolish the Hamas terror tunnels, and was behind the popular notion that the Netanyahu security cabinet was unaware of the tunnel threat. But Walla, which in recent years has emerged as Netanyahu’s other favorite media outlet, reported on Tuesday that the cabinet held at least eight debates on the tunnels, and hosted 20 professional discussions with IDF and Intelligence officials to examine ways to locate and demolish the tunnels.

Two Islamic Jihad terrorists were killed in a “work accident” Sunday.

The two operatives were apparently working on something in a tunnel beneath the streets of Khan Younis in Gaza.

“Last week they lost another man in a tunnel collapse in the same area,” said security analyst Daniel Nisman, co-founder of the Levantine Group in a post on the Twitter social networking site.

The terrorist group said in its announcement the operatives were carrying out an unspecified “jihad operation” in southern Gaza at the time of the incident.

Numerous tunnel operations take place in Khan Younis, not far from where a Hamas operative taught a group of young women on Sunday how to shoot guns at a human target.

{Originally posted to the author’s website My Right Word}

Thank you, Muthana Najar:

Oh, note: no Israel:

Ah, to be a child having “fun” in Gaza.

A terrorist with the Islamic Jihad terror organization in Gaza died after his terror tunnel collapsed on him today, according to Arab sources on Social Media.

Seven other Islamic Jihad members in the tunnel were saved in a rescue operation that took 3 hours.

The dead Gazan man was identified as Ibrahim Al-Masri (28) from Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds Brigade.

According to Israel’s Galei Tzahal radio, the terror tunnel was located near the Erez border crossing, which is at the northern end of Gaza.

This is the first time that it’s been publicized that an Islamic Jihad tunnel collapsed.

As an aside, the last name “al-Masri” indicates that the Gaza man’s family had originally emigrated from Egypt.

Islamic Jihad terrorist Ibrahim Al-Masri

The escape tunnel used by the so-called “Burning Brigade” to allude the Nazis has been pinpointed at the Ponar massacre site near Vilnius in Lithuania, using Electric Resistivity Tomography.

Some 100,00 people, of whom 70,000 were Jews originating in Vilna and the surrounding area, were massacred and thrown into pits in the Ponar forest near the Lithuanian capital during WW2. With the retreat of the German forces on the eastern front before the advancing the Red Army, a special unit was formed in 1943 with the task of covering up the tracks of the genocide. In Ponar this task was assigned to a group of 80 prisoners from the Stutthof concentration camp.

A scan of the site using Electrical Resistivity Tomography. / Courtesy. Photo credit: Ezra Wolfinger, Nova

A scan of the site using Electrical Resistivity Tomography. / Courtesy. Photo credit: Ezra Wolfinger, Nova

A scan of the site using Electrical Resistivity Tomography. / Courtesy. Photo credit: Ezra Wolfinger, Nova

At night the prisoners were held in a deep pit, previously used for the execution of Vilna’s Jews, and during the day they worked to pen the mass graves, pile up the corpses on logs cut from the forest, cover them with fuel and incinerate them. All the while their legs were shackled and they were certain that, upon completing their horrendous task, they too would be murdered by their captors. Some of the workers decided to escape by digging a tunnel from the pit that was their prison. For three months they dug a tunnel some 100 ft. long, using only spoons and their bare hands.

On the night of April 15, 1944 they escaped. The prisoners cut their leg shackles with a nail file, and 40 of them crawled through the narrow tunnel. Unfortunately they were quickly discovered by the guards and many were shot. Only 15 managed to cut the camp fence and escaped into the forest. Eleven reached the partisan forces and survived the war.

Since WW2, the exact location of the tunnel has been lost, even though a number of attempts were made to find it. Now, through the cooperative work of Dr. Jon Seligman of the Israel Antiquities Authority; Prof. Richard Freund of the University of Hartford; Paul Bauman of Advisian of Calgary, Canada; and the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, the tunnel has been rediscovered using Electrical Resistivity Tomography, from the pit used to imprison the captives, to an open space next to it.

Electrical Resistivity Tomography is a geophysical technique used in mineral and oil exploration for imaging sub-surface structures from electrical resistivity measurements made at the surface, or by electrodes in one or more boreholes.

Preparations for the ERT scan of the trench used to hold the victims before their execution. / Courtesy. Photo credit: Ezra Wolfinger, Nova

Dr. Jon Seligman, of the IAA, said, “As an Israeli whose family originated in Lithuania, I was reduced to tears on the discovery of the escape tunnel at Ponar. This discovery is a heartwarming witness to the victory of hope over desperation. The exposure of the tunnel enables us to present, not only the horrors of the Holocaust, but also the yearning for life.”

Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev said, “I congratulate the Israel Antiquities Authority on its participation in this international effort that turns history to reality. The exciting and important discovery of the prisoners escape tunnel at Ponar is yet more proof negating the lies of the Holocaust deniers. The success of modern technological developments, that have aided the Jewish people to reveal another heroic story the Nazis attempted to hide, profits all humanity.”

The memorial to the Holocaust at Ponar. / Courtesy. Photo credit: Ezra Wolfinger, Nova

The award-winning science series NOVA, produced by WGBH for PBS, will follow this excavation and the team, capture their stories, and restore the memory of this lost world in a new film slated to premiere in the US on PBS in 2017. The documentary will tell the story of the fate of the Jews of Vilna, Lithuania, now the modern city of Vilnius, through major archeological excavations of several sites in and around the city, including the larger excavation project at The Great Synagogue of Vilna. The discovery of the evidence of an escape tunnel at the Ponar pits sheds new light on a story of life, resistance and courage.

It is the intention of the partners to return to the site in the near future to expose the tunnel for public viewing as part of the memorial for the victims of Vilna and the surrounding area.

The tunnel road linking Gush Etzion and Jerusalem was closed on Tuesday morning after soldiers heard shots fired at them.

A civilian who got caught inside the checkpoint during the attack described the situation as a “balagan”, a lot of confusion.

As soon as the shots were fired, the checkpoint went into a terrorist response mode. The road was closed and soldiers began preparing for action.

Following a quick search, a bullet was found embedded in one of the concrete barriers at the checkpoint.

One soldier was lightly scratched on his leg by the ricochet from the shooting, but he refused to be evacuated to the hospital.

The road has now been reopened.

The Knesset on Wednesday night, following a lengthy debate, passed in a second and third and final vote the War on Terror Law 5776-2016,by a 57 to 16 majority. The new law includes stricter punishment for terrorists and expands the state’s legal means of fighting them, including, for the first time, making digging a tunnel for terrorist purposes a criminal act.

The new law eliminates the emergency regulations which have been used since the establishment of the state. One of the new law’s provisions says that the punishment of a terrorist sentenced to life in prison may not be reconsidered during the first 15 years. It also punishes with 5 years’ imprisonment the direct incitement or encouragement for acts of terrorism. The new law does not require proof of any actual act of terrorism that resulted from the incitement.

The new law authorizes the defense minister to impose administrative forfeiture of the property of individuals suspected of security violations. It also empowers government to prevent an attorney representing two clients involved in the same investigation from meeting his clients. The law also imposes seven years’ imprisonment on a person threatening to carry out a violation that would be punishable by a life sentence.

The new law also revises the court procedures in terrorism cases, including interviewing a witness outside court, pre-trial testimony, statute of limitation on terrorist acts, detention of a security suspect, diversions from the rules of evidence, and concealed evidence.

Altogether, the new law cancels out two laws, two orders, and dozens of emergency Defense Regulations. It also modifies a long list of sub-items in as many as 14 existing laws.

Constitution Committee chairman MK Nissan Slomiansky (Habayit Hayehudi) who presented the bill for its final vote said that the conformation of the new law nullifies “60 laws and rules dating back to King George VI, so this is a kind of Day of Independence.” He praised the new law for emanating directly from Israel’s real, everyday experiences, “the real life in the State of Israel.”

MK Zahava Gal-On (Meretz) said that the only way to fight terrorism effectively is to eliminate the motivation for terrorism. She voted against the bill , saying, “I think it won’t do one thing: it won’t really provide tools for the war on terror, instead it will place us yet again on the list of countries that take advantage of a democracy’s ability to carry out anti-democratic legislation.”

The Arab MKs objected to the new law, saying it was anti-Arab rather than anti-terrorism. But MK Yoel Hasson (Zionist Camp) said in response that despite the fact that the law is complex, it is an Israeli law and not an anti-Arab law, “and it’s a law intended to protect all the citizens of Israel, since terror, if I may remind you, my friends, does not tell the difference between those sitting by this table or the other.”