Two Israelis killed, four wounded in terror shooting in south

Jns Update Desk

A civilian shot and killed the assailant.

Security forces at the scene of a terrorist shooting at the Re’em Masmiya Junction near Kiryat Malachi in southern Israel, Feb. 16, 2024. Credit: Magen David Adom.

Two Israelis were killed and four others wounded on Friday afternoon when a terrorist opened fire at a bus stop near the Re’em Masmiya Junction, near Kiryat Malachi in the northern Negev, according to medical officials.

Magen David Adom paramedics attempted to resuscitate a man in his 20s in critical condition, who was later declared dead upon arrival at the hospital.

A teenaged boy, a man in his 20s and a man in his 60s were seriously injured. Two others, including an elderly woman, were moderately hurt.

It was not immediately unclear which of these victims succumbed to their injuries.

They were being treated either at Assuta Ashdod Hospital or Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot.

Police said the terrorist arrived in a vehicle and opened fire on people waiting for the bus. He was eventually shot and killed by a civilian at the scene.

Israeli media identified the assailant as an Arab from Shuafat in the eastern part of Jerusalem.

A large police force was conducting sweeps to ensure no other terrorists were involved in the attack.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Israel Police chief Kobi Shabtai visited the scene.

On Tuesday, Israeli forces thwarted an attempted vehicular assault in Gush Etzion.

The driver, a Palestinian, tried to run over civilians at the Gush Etzion Junction, located south of Bethlehem about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from Jerusalem, the Israel Defense Forces said.

IDF forces neutralized the assailant following a pursuit. He was subsequently arrested and taken to hospital for treatment.

There were no other injuries in the attack.

A knife was found during a search of the terrorist’s vehicle.

On Sunday, an Israeli police officer was lightly wounded in a stabbing at the Lion’s Gate entrance to Jerusalem’s Old City.

The assailant was neutralized by Israeli security forces on the scene.

Also on Sunday night, a Palestinian terrorist attempted to stab Israel Defense Forces soldiers at the Hussan Junction near the ultra-Orthodox city of Beitar Illit in Judea.

No casualties were reported in the incident and the terrorist was neutralized, the IDF said.

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Israel Daily News – War Day 130 February 13, 2024

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Israeli research uses Earth’s magnetic field to verify event in Bible’s Book of Kings

JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH

The discovery was achieved by scientists from Tel Aviv University (TAU), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU), Bar-Ilan University (BIU) in Ramat Gan, and Ariel University in Samaria

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One of the studied burnt mudbricks. / (photo credit: Dr. Yoav Vaknin)

Using a “breakthrough” technology based on measuring the magnetic field recorded in burnt bricks, researchers at four Israeli universities have corroborated the occurrence of an event described in the Bible’s Second Book of Kings – the conquest of the Philistine city of Gath by Hazael, King of Aram.

The discovery – achieved by scientists from Tel Aviv University (TAU), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU), Bar-Ilan University (BIU) in Ramat Gan, and Ariel University in Samaria – will make it possible for archaeologists to identify burnt materials discovered in excavations and estimate their firing temperatures.

“Our findings are important for determining the intensity of the fire and the scope of destruction in Gath – the largest and most powerful city in the land at the time – and also for understanding construction practices in the region,” they wrote in the journal PLOS ONE under the title “Applying thermal demagnetization to archaeological materials: A tool for detecting burnt clay and estimating its firing temperature.”

Applying their method to findings from ancient Gath (Tell es-Safi, located between the cities of Ashkelon and Beit Shemesh in central Israel), the researchers validated the biblical account: “About this time. Hazael King of Aram went up and attacked Gath and captured it. Then he turned to attack Jerusalem” (2 Kings 12, 18).

They explain that, unlike previous methods, the new technique can determine whether an item such as a mud brick underwent firing even at relatively low temperatures, from 200°C and up. This information can be crucial for correctly interpreting the findings.

The studied area during excavation. (credit: Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project, Bar-Ilan University)

Clays are rich in magnetic-iron minerals, depending on the local geology. Yet, it is common to all iron-bearing clay minerals that, when they are heated to temperatures starting from about 150°C and up to 700°C, they are transformed into stable ferrimagnetic minerals such as magnetite, maghemite, and hematite.

The multidisciplinary study was led by Dr. Yoav Vaknin from TAU’s Nadler Institute of Archaeology Entin Faculty of Humanities and HU’s palaeomagnetic lab. Other contributors included: Prof. Ron Shaar at HU’s Institute of Earth Sciences; Prof. Erez Ben-Yosef and Prof. Oded Lipschits from TAU’s institute; Prof. Aren Maeir from BIU’s Martin (Szusz) Land of Israel studies department; and Dr. Adi Eliyahu Behar from Ariel’s the Land of Israel studies and archaeology department and its chemical sciences department.

“Throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages, the main building material in most parts of the Land of Israel was mud bricks. This cheap and readily available material was used to build walls in most buildings, sometimes on top of stone foundations,” Lipschits explained. “That’s why it’s so important to understand the technology used in making these bricks.”

During the same era, dwellers of other lands like Mesopotamia, where stone was hard to come by, would fire mud bricks in kilns to increase their strength and durability.

The method dates back to the biblical era
“This technique is mentioned in the story of the Tower of Babel in the Book of Genesis,” Vaknin added. “They said one to another – Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly, so they used brick for stone” (Genesis 11, 3).

“Most researchers, however, believe that this technology did not reach the Land of Israel until much later with the Roman conquest; until that time the inhabitants used sun-dried mud bricks. Thus, when bricks are found in an archaeological excavation, several questions must be asked: First, have the bricks been fired, and if so, were they fired in a kiln before to construction or on site, in a destructive conflagration event? Our method can provide conclusive answers.”

The new method relies on measuring the magnetic field recorded and “locked” in the brick as it burned and cooled down. “The clay from which the bricks were made contains millions of ferromagnetic particles – minerals with magnetic properties that behave like so many tiny ‘compasses’ or magnets,” Vaknin explained.

“In a sun-dried mud brick, the orientation of these magnets is almost random so that they cancel out one another. Therefore, the overall magnetic signal of the brick is weak and not uniform. Heating to 200°C or more, as happens in a fire, releases the magnetic signals of these magnetic particles and, statistically, they tend to align with the earth’s magnetic field at that specific time and place. When the brick cools down, these magnetic signals remain locked in their new position, and the brick develops a strong and uniformly oriented magnetic field that can be measured with a magnetometer. This is a clear indication that the brick has, in fact, been fired.”

In the second stage of their work, the researchers gradually “erased” the brick’s magnetic field, using a process called thermal demagnetization. This involves heating the brick in a special oven in a palaeomagnetic laboratory that neutralizes the earth’s magnetic field. The heat releases the magnetic signals, which once again arrange themselves randomly, canceling each other out, and the total magnetic signal becomes weak and loses its orientation.

Dr. Yoav Vaknin (credit: TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY)

“We conducted the process gradually.” Vaknin went on. “At first, we heated the sample to a temperature of 100°C, which releases the signals of only a small percentage of the magnetic minerals. We then cooled it down and measured the remaining magnetic signal. We then repeated the procedure at temperatures of 150°C, 200°C, and so on, proceeding in small steps up to 700°C. In this way, the brick’s magnetic field is gradually erased.

“The temperature at which the signal of each mineral is ‘unlocked’ is approximately the same as the temperature at which it was initially ‘locked,’ and ultimately, the temperature at which the magnetic field is fully erased was reached during the original fire.”

The researchers tested the technique in the lab; they fired mud bricks under controlled conditions of temperature and magnetic field, measured each brick’s acquired magnetic field and then gradually erased it. They found that the bricks were completely demagnetized at the temperature at which they had been burned – proving that the method works.

“Our approach enables identifying burning which occurred at much lower temperatures than any other method,” said Vaknin. “Most techniques used for identifying burnt bricks are based on actual changes in the minerals that usually occur at temperatures higher than 500°C – when some minerals are converted into others,” he continued.

One of the common methods for identifying mineralogical changes in clay – the main component of mud bricks – due to exposure to high temperatures is based on changes in the absorption of infrared radiation by the various minerals. In this study, they used this method as an additional tool to verify the results of the magnetic method.

Their new method is much more sensitive than others, because it targets changes in the intensity and orientation of the magnetic signal, which occur at much lower temperatures. “We can begin to detect changes in the magnetic signal at temperatures as low as 100°C, and from 200°C and up the findings are conclusive,” said Behar.

The method can determine the orientation in which the bricks cooled down
In addition, the method can determine the orientation in which the bricks cooled down. “When a brick is fired in a kiln before construction, it records the direction of the earth’s magnetic field at that specific time and place,” said Vaknin. “In Israel, this means north and downward, but when builders take bricks from a kiln and build a wall, they lay them in random orientations, thus randomizing the recorded signals. On the other hand, when a wall is burned on site, as might happen when it is destroyed by an enemy, the magnetic fields of all bricks are locked in the same orientation,”

After proving the method’s validity, the researchers applied it to a specific archaeological dispute – Was a specific brick structure discovered at Tell es-Safi, which has been identified as the Philistine city of Gath, the home of Goliath – built of pre-fired bricks or burned on location? The prevalent hypothesis, based on the Bible, historical sources, and Carbon-14 dating, attributes the destruction of the structure to the devastation of Gath by Hazael, King of Aram Damascus, around 830 BCE. But a previous paper by researchers including BIU’s Maeir, who headed the Tell es-Safi excavations, proposed that the building had not burned down but rather collapsed over decades and that the fired bricks found in the structure had been fired in a kiln prior to construction. If this hypothesis were correct, this would be the earliest instance of brick-firing technology discovered in the Land of Israel.

To settle the dispute, the research team applied the new method to samples from the wall at Tell es-Safi and the collapsed debris found beside it. The findings were conclusive: The magnetic fields of all bricks and collapsed debris displayed the same orientation – north and downwards. “Our findings signify that the bricks burned and cooled down in-situ, right where they were found, namely in a conflagration in the structure itself, which collapsed within a few hours,” Vaknin declared.

“Had the bricks been fired in a kiln and then laid in the wall, their magnetic orientations would have been random. Moreover, had the structure collapsed over time, not in a single fire event, the collapsed debris would have displayed random magnetic orientations. We believe that the main reason for our colleagues’ mistaken interpretation was their inability to identify burning at temperatures below 500°C. Since heat rises, materials at the bottom of the building burned at relatively low temperatures, below 400°C, and consequently the former study did not identify them as burnt – leading to the conclusion that the building had not been destroyed by fire.

“At the same time, bricks in upper parts of the wall, where temperatures were much higher, underwent mineralogical changes and were therefore identified as burnt, leading the researchers to conclude that they had been fired in a kiln prior to construction. Our method allowed us to determine that all bricks in both the wall and debris had burned during the conflagration: those at the bottom burned at relatively low temperatures, and those that were found in higher layers or had fallen from the top – at temperatures higher than 600°C,” he noted.

“Our findings are very important for deciphering the intensity of the fire and scope of destruction at Gath, the largest and most powerful city in the Land of Israel at the time, as well as understanding the building methods prevailing in that era,” Maeir said. “It’s important to review conclusions from previous studies, and sometimes even refute former interpretations, even if they came from your own school.”

Ben-Yosef added: “Beyond their historical and archaeological significance, ancient building methods also had substantial ecological implications. The brick firing technology requires large amounts of combustive materials, and in ancient times this might have led to vast deforestation and even loss of tree species in the area.

For example, certain species of trees and shrubs exploited by the ancient copper industry in the Timna Valley have not recovered to this day, and the industry itself ultimately collapsed once it had used up its natural fuels. Our findings indicate that the brick – firing technology was probably not practiced in the Land of Israel in the times of the kings of Judah and Israel.”

Directly beneath UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters, IDF uncovers top secret Hamas data center

EMANUEL FABIAN

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Subterranean facility for terror group’s intelligence needs, beneath UN complex in upscale Rimal neighborhood, discovered after interrogations of Palestinian prisoners

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Beneath the Gaza Strip headquarters of the controversial United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, known commonly as UNRWA, the Hamas terror group hid one of its most significant assets, the Israeli military has revealed.

The subterranean data center — complete with an electrical room, industrial battery power banks and living quarters for Hamas terrorists operating the computer servers — was built precisely under the location where Israel would not consider looking initially, let alone target in an airstrike.

The revelation of the server farm comes amid other accusations of UNRWA collusion with the Gaza-ruling terror group and the entanglement of the UN body that provides welfare and humanitarian services for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars and their descendants.

Israel last month accused 12 staff with the UN Palestinian refugee agency of taking part in the October 7 massacre by Hamas-led terrorists, who killed 1,200 people and took 253 hostages in the murderous rampage.

Since the allegations became public late last month, UNRWA has seen many of its top donor countries announce funding freezes, leading to concerns that the agency could stop operating in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East within weeks.

But the IDF’s recent discovery of the Hamas data center while UNRWA is under increased scrutiny appears to be merely a coincidence.

Col. Benny Aharon walks into UNRWA’s headquarters in Gaza City, February 8, 2024. (Emanuel Fabian/Times of Israel)

UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters is located in Gaza City’s upscale Rimal neighborhood, an area that the IDF had previously operated in, dismantled the local Hamas battalion and withdrawn its troops from.

At the time of the initial ground offensive in Gaza City, the military had not found or known much about the Hamas data center. But new intelligence, primarily emerging from the Shin Bet interrogations of captured terrorists, helped pinpoint where to dig.

“The IDF was here previously, the first time was to destroy the enemy, but when we were here the last time we collected a lot of intelligence documents and findings, a lot of prisoners, and thanks to this we reached here. Now we carried out a targeted operation to take this capability away,” said the commander of the 401st Armored Brigade, Col. Benny Aharon, while giving a media tour of the tunnel and UN complex on Thursday.

“We had a basis of information, but not enough to be able to dig down 20 meters and find it, we needed a bit more. There’s information we get from prisoners we capture, from computers we find, from documents, maps,” he said.

The IDF in recent weeks has returned to carry out smaller operations in the northern Gaza Strip, after largely destroying Hamas’s fighting capabilities during the early stages of the ground offensive.

A soldier of the Yahalom unit stands outside a tunnel leading to a Hamas data center, uncovered by the IDF in Gaza City, February 8, 2024. (Emanuel Fabian/Times of Israel)

Col. Nissim Hazan, a senior officer in the 401st Brigade, said the IDF can now carry out raids with much smaller numbers of forces, for operations “that require much more research and much more time, and a lot more patience.”

There is still a risk to these raids, with Aharon noting that two soldiers under his command had been killed during their operation to reach the Hamas data center — Maj. (res.) Yitzhar Hofman, a commander in the Israeli Air Force’s elite Shaldag unit and Maj. David Shakuri, the deputy commander of the Combat Engineering Corps’ 601st Battalion — both by sniper fire.

Hazan, who is tasked with coordinating the brigade’s underground operations, said the main entrance to the tunnel was located under a UNRWA school in the area. However, it had been blocked off by Hamas by the time troops arrived. Instead, combat engineers dug down around eight meters to find the shallowest part of the underground passage.

A muddy and humid labyrinth to the data center

Journalists, accompanied by troops of the elite Yahalom combat engineering unit, the Shaldag unit and Hazan, entered the tunnel passage that had been uncovered. Due to the humidity, with all of Hamas’s air filtration systems disabled, we were advised to remove our bulletproof vests before embarking on the journey to the data center. 

A soldier stands in a Hamas tunnel underneath a UNRWA school in Gaza City, February 8, 2024. (Emanuel Fabian/Times of Israel)

The first stretch of the 700-meter-long tunnel, a few dozen meters with Hamas’s hallmark concrete arches and a floor of sand, was relatively unremarkable, similar to hundreds of kilometers of underground passages the terror group has built across the Gaza Strip.

The passage had several other branching paths, but to keep the reporters on track and not get lost, soldiers had placed neon glowsticks on the floors.

The route we followed led to a small hole, which after climbing through, revealed a large hallway with flooring, wall tiles, air conditioning and lighting fixtures.

The hallway was plastered with posters bearing the logo of Hamas’s military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, some with operational security instructions for the terrorists managing the data center.

In this part of the tunnel, according to Hazan, Hamas IT and intelligence staff would supervise and manage the data center. 

Office chairs are stored in a room in a Hamas tunnel, underneath a UNRWA school in Gaza City, February 8, 2024. (Emanuel Fabian/Times of Israel)

Along the hallway, there were several rooms, including a kitchenette, a meeting room with office chairs, two bathrooms and living quarters with several mattresses.

Also in the hallway, troops found several small mobility scooters, thought to have been used by Hamas to traverse through the tunnel’s facilities with ease.

“Above us is a UNRWA kids’ school,” Hazan said, as we explored the rooms in the main hallway. “This is years of work, with a lot of determination and resources.”

From the main hallway, a 300-meter passage led to the data center and nearby electrical room.

“We are now crossing a main road in Rimal, below several high-rise towers,” Hazan said. 

A flooded tunnel leading to a Hamas data center, uncovered by the IDF in Gaza City, February 8, 2024. (Emanuel Fabian/Times of Israel)

Parts of the tunnel, due to the combat engineers’ operations, did not have the usual concrete ceiling, exposing the fragile sand.

“Keep your head down and don’t touch the ceiling,” a Shaldag officer told us, as we crawled through the section, making sure not to cause the tunnel to collapse on our heads.

Also as a result of the combat engineers digging to reach the tunnel, rainwater had flooded in, causing knee-deep puddles in some areas, which we waded through to reach the data center.

After the flooded sections of the tunnel, a slippery incline led to the first main facility in the tunnel, the electrical room.  

An electrical room serving an underground Hamas data center, beneath the UNRWA headquarters, uncovered by the IDF in Gaza City, February 8, 2024. (Emanuel Fabian/Times of Israel)

The room, with several electrical closets, power inverters and dozens of off-grid industrial batteries, was now covered in a thick layer of mud.

Part of the room’s dropped ceiling was falling apart, where the combat engineers had dug down 20 meters from the courtyard of the UNRWA complex, adjacent to one of the main buildings.

A few more dozen meters of tunnel from the electrical room led to the heart of the facility, Hamas’s data center.

There were about half a dozen rows of server cabinets, each with racks of computers for Hamas’s operations.  

A subterranean Hamas data center underneath UNRWA’s headquarters in Gaza City, February 8, 2024. (Emanuel Fabian/Times of Israel)

“We are now at the heart of the secret… under the main UNRWA building. Here is where Hamas kept its intelligence servers,” Hazan said. He said that “to destroy it, totally, so that Hamas cannot use this intelligence supremacy again, you need boots on the ground.”

IDF officials believe Hamas used the server farm for intelligence gathering, data processing and communications. Hard drives and some of the computers were taken to Israel to be investigated by intelligence authorities before the tunnel system was demolished in a large explosion.

Hazan said the IDF knows of several more “strategic” Hamas tunnels in Gaza, that they will reach in time.

“We have time, months ahead of us in the war, and one by one we will dismantle them and take away what the enemy is trying to hide, and it hides it in a very sophisticated and cynical way,” he said.  

Col. Nissim Hazan speaks to reporters from a Hamas data center, beneath the UNRWA headquarters, uncovered by the IDF in Gaza City, February 8, 2024. (Emanuel Fabian/Times of Israel)
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UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters

After leaving the tunnel back through the way we entered, we boarded an armored personnel carrier to take us to the UNRWA headquarters, as walking there aboveground was too exposed to potential Hamas snipers.

The headquarters appeared to be largely intact, unlike many of the surrounding buildings that had been pummeled by Israeli strikes.

Passing through the main gate, reading UNRWA HQ GAZA, and a nearby building with similar text in English and Arabic and bearing the UN logo, we reached the courtyard from which the combat engineers dug down into the electrical room.  

Troops of the Yahalom combat engineering unit lower a camera into a tunnel shaft they dug in the courtyard of UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters, to reach a Hamas underground electrical room, February 8, 2024. (Emanuel Fabian/Times of Israel)

At the UNRWA headquarters, Aharon said his forces found several caches of weapons belonging to Hamas when they raided and battled Hamas gunmen for the complex, although it was after the UN staff had evacuated.

“Grenades, rockets, launchers, explosives, a large amount of weapons that would put any Hamas company to shame,” he said.

The IDF also said that in some of the offices of UNRWA officials, troops found equipment and documents that indicated “that the same offices were also used by Hamas terrorists.”

“There is no doubt that UNRWA staff knew that [Hamas] was digging a massive tunnel beneath them,” Aharon said. “There’s a perimeter wall, a gate, cameras, at the gate they log who comes in and out. Whoever worked at UNRWA knew very well who was coming in, and who they were covering for.”  
Weapons recovered by IDF troops in the UNRWA headquarters, in a photo published by the IDF on February 10, 2024. (Israel Defense Forces)

“UNRWA provides cover for Hamas, UNRWA knows exactly what is happening underground, and UNRWA uses its budget to fund some of Hamas’s military capabilities, this is for certain,” he said.

At the main building in the UN complex, Aharon led the reporters to UNRWA’s server room, which he said sits directly above the underground Hamas data center, where the reporters had been a short while earlier.

“Some of the cables connect down,” he said, showing a line of cables running down to and into the floor, as we stood above the Hamas data center.

The IDF said the electrical cables leading from the UN building to the tunnel were providing power to the Hamas infrastructure belowground.  

Col. Benny Aharon shows reporters UNRWA’s server room at its headquarters in Gaza City, February 8, 2024. (Emanuel Fabian/Times of Israel)

The UNRWA server room, unlike the Hamas one, appeared to be mostly empty. One server cabinet was placed outside the room, but it had been stripped of all the computers.

“They cleared out all the computers, all the DVRs (digital video recorder for surveillance cameras), cut [most of] the cables, this is the behavior of someone who has something to hide,” Aharon said.

“Someone who works at UNRWA, who is supposed to care for human rights, to care for the welfare of the population in Gaza, shouldn’t rush to disconnect all the DVRs, the cameras, cut all the wires and take all the computers. These are the actions of someone who knew the army was coming and wanted to hide the evidence,” he said.  

Cables running from a UNRWA server room to a Hamas data center underground in Gaza City, February 8, 2024. (Emanuel Fabian/Times of Israel)

Hazan said that Hamas “didn’t randomly select this area. It knows that during peacetime and in previous wars [Israel] didn’t have the legitimacy to strike a UNRWA building and collapse it on the tunnel.”

In addition to the allegations of its collusion with Hamas, Israel has also long accused UNRWA of perpetuating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by extending refugee status to millions of descendants of Palestinians who fled or were forced out of homes in today’s Israel at the time of the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948, rather than limiting such status only to the original refugees, as is the norm with most refugee populations worldwide. 

An IDF infographic released February 10, 2024, showing the route of the Hamas tunnel found under UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters. (Israel Defense Forces)

“We were shocked to the depths of our souls, that an organization that is meant to be caring for human rights, is cooperating in such a clear and brutal way, without any fears, with a terror group like Hamas,” Aharon said.

UNRWA did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In a tweet following the publication, the agency’s head Philippe Lazzarini denied any knowledge of the Hamas data center.