Holding the Yellow Line in Gaza

"Their only mission allowed when they cross the Yellow Line is to look for hostages. We've seen them cross, armed, and use this as n opportunity to hide explosives."

"We went to a spot, a house on our side of the Yellow Line -- it was filled with explosives, fighting ammunition that they placed in the guise of searching in the area."

"We've found them placing new weaponry across the Yellow Line."

"[It's a daily occurrence to] test us, to test the agreement. Pushing it to the limits."

"They failed to return the hostages within 72 hours. That deadline passed a month ago."

"They've failed to disarm. On the contrary they've tried to rearm. They have made multiple attacks against our troops."

"They threw a body from a window, covered it, and pretended to find it [a hostage body]."

"We are committed to the agreement. The problems right now are that Hamas needs to finish returning all the hostages, and Hamas needs to disarm — two things that are vital parts of the agreement that Hamas is refusing to do." 

Lt.-Col. Nadav Shoshani, international spokesman, Israel Defense Forces  

Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani speaks to The Times of Israel at an IDF post in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City, November 19, 2025. (Nava Freiberg/Times of Israel)

 

President Trump's much-vaunted 'peace' agreement recognized as an international agreement to end hostilities between Israel and Hamas is tested constantly by Hamas terrorists whose dedication to death and destruction -- that of Israel, and inclusive of their own citizenry as victims of 'Israeli genocide', when they fall as 'collateral damage' when Hamas continues to use them as human shields; the numbers useful in the terrorist group's public relations apparatus as proof-positive that Israel is the aggressor and they the victims.

 

On the outskirts of Gaza city is Shejaiya, with its concrete rubble, and twisted steel -- completely destroyed, a grim shell of what it  once was, housing thousands of Palestinians. Hamas contends that it has 'fully complied' with the restrictions of the peace agreement, accusing Israel of constant infractions. Hamas, points out Lt.-Col. Shoshani, "has killed three Israeli soldiers since the ceasefire began". Hamas committed to returning hostages and to remain behind the demarcation point called the Yellow Line that separates the two sides. The bodies of three Israeli hostages are yet to be delivered back to Israel.

 

Under the pretext of searching for the bodies of hostages, Hamas has on numerous occasions broken the agreement. On one occasion Hamas operatives staged the 'discovery' of an Israeli hostage body. Pretending to discover the body they had just covered, that they had thrown from the window of a destroyed building. Israeli hostage remains of Ofir Tzarfati had been moved from one location, reburied and then uncovered with Red Cross personnel witnessing in the pretense it was discovered for the first time. Not to mention returns supposedly of an Israeli  hostage, but found to be a Palestinian.

 

Hamas has returned to Shejaiya  to rearm, speculation being it means to resume its attacks on nearby Israeli territory. The IDF base at Shejaiya is a buffer zone to ensure that deadly fire launched by Hamas cannot reach Israeli civilians. A mere two kilometres distant from Shejaiya is Nir Oz, the farming community target of one of the terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023. A pleasant walk under 20 minutes, two minutes by car.

 

The view of Gaza City seen from the suburb of Shejaiya, November 18, 2025. Nava Freiberg/The Times of Israel

 

At Nir Oz, sixty of its residents were killed that fateful day by the marauding terrorists. The port city of Ashkelon is about 15 kilometres away. Rockets from Gaza can reach the city in under 40 seconds. Shejaiya once had a population of 90,000, "one of the main focal points of Hamas even before October 7, just because of the main proximity" to Israeli towns. Few of its former residents have returned to makeshift tents. "Civilians had a chance to get out of harm's way and remove themselves", observed Lt.-Col. Shoshani. The city, he pointed out, was the site of "some of the heaviest battles, one of the most heavy-fought areas [with] thousands of terrorists". 

 

Hamas had "some sort of presence" all across the city, "in every home". Dozens of senior IDF soldiers lost their lives in the area. IDF soldiers had "dealt a significant blow to Hamas Shejaiya Battalion, involved in attacking communities close to the Gaza Strip on October 7. During the combat, terrorists, some of whom were involved in the brutal massacre on October 7, were eliminated in coordinated operations", according to an IDF Telegram posting. "When you speak to commanders in this area, they’ll tell you that every single house had a history of booby traps, of a tunnel underneath it or a tunnel shaft, or Hamas fighting within it."

 

"Extensive tunnel" infrastructure "in hundreds of kilometres" are contained in Shejaiya. Their elimination causes the collapse of buildings above the tunnels. "New tunnels are still being found to this date", Lt.-Col. Shoshani explained. In the near distance, the heart of Gaza City has intact high-rises,  homes and various buildings. As the ceasefire took hold, the IDF wound up its campaign.

 

IDF troops operate on the eastern side of the Yellow Line in southern Gaza's Khan Younis, in a handout photo issued on November 9, 2025. (Israel Defense Forces)

 

The Jihadist Theocracy of Iran ... Fading

"We're geared to do whatever is necessary to achieve our dual aim, to remove ... two existential threats - the nuclear threat and the ballistic missile threat."

"We did act - to save ourselves, but also, I think, to not only protect ourselves, but protect the world from this incendiary regime."

"We can't have the world's most dangerous regime have the world's most dangerous weapons."

"Iran will pay a very heavy price for the murder of civilians. We will also achieve our goal. We are here because we are in an existential battle, which today is understood by every citizen of Israel."

"Think about what would happen if Iran had 20,000 missiles like this [that hit the northern Israeli community of Bat Yam]. It would be an existential threat to Israel. That is why we launched a war of salvation against a dual annihilation threat, and we are doing so with strength." 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu  

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits homes hit by Iranian projectiles on Sunday, June 15, 2025.

(photo credit: PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICE)

How much more threatening provocations, bald statements of intent to annihilate its presence, inciting of deadly violence, complicity in training, arming and dispatching satellite terror groups would any country other than Israel reasonably tolerate before finally in the realization that there was no possibility of reaching detente with an avowed enemy and to prevent total existential calamity it must act to protect itself and its population to preempt the inevitable? After decades of incendiary threats, attacks by terror proxies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the potential of facing a nuclear strike, Israel, left with no other choice, moved to defend itself and extinguish that threat.

 

Friday, 13th of June long before dawn rose to illuminate the day, that pre-emptive military strike was undertaken, reaching deep within Iranian territory toward very specific targets -- the country's nuclear infrastructure, its military sites, and most particularly its organizational capacity in the targeting of its senior military officials, its nuclear scientists and those senior officials in control of state mechanisms geared toward the jihad intentions of the theocratic state.

 

People gather outside an area hit by an Israeli strike in Tehran on 13 June. Photograph: Meghdad Madadi/Tasnim News/AFP/Getty Images

 

Israel is accused by many in the Western media, hinted at by the leaders of allied nations of overstepping its rights in planning and executing a full-scale attack on Iran. But none of these other countries have had to live for years with the Iranian Damoclean sword hanging over them, or responding to strike after strike by neghbouring terrorist groups or their administrations that incite the populace to violence against their population. Urging a ceasefire when Israel has only just launched an operation to nullify the Islamic Republic regime's focus on destroying the Jewish state, is an exercise in futility.

 

The threat against Israel represents a direct and imminent one, but the same surly threats, although not quite so freely expressed, are meant to create disequilibrium within Western democracies for the ultimate purpose of destroying their culture, laws, politics and ideology in favour of that of extreme political Islam as Muslim migration accelerates, creating large political, professional and activist blocs whose favour is sought by politicians with an eye fixed on votes, bypassing the longer stealth picture of overturned traditions and values.

 

Israel's Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept missiles over Tel Aviv, Israel on Sunday.

Leo Correa/AP

 

Israel's expected, but still shocking decision to launch a full-scale attack on Iran is fully legitimate in the international arena of legal permissibility. Every nation has the inherent right to defend itself under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations. Iran, as the only member of the UN that has openly threatened the annihilation of another UN member, it is understood that the threat goes well beyond rhetoric, but expresses full intention. 

 

According to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Israel is a "cancerous tumour" which "must be  eradicated". Iran has never been content to stop at verbal insults and threats of assault, but has moved to ensure that actual violent attacks take place as precursors to its final intent. In the IRGC's Quds Division's formation, training and arming of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Houthis in Yemen, Shia militias in Iraq, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, a pincer movement closing in on Israel was not only contemplated but put into motion.

 

These are groups whose focus on occasion strayed toward disturbed actions hitting Western interests through Tehran's global network, attacking American troops, disrupting global shipping, and hitting western allies in the Mediterranean, South America and Europe. Which led eventually to October 7, 2023, when Iranian proxy Hamas gave vent to its ambition of fomenting dread terror to a degree not to be outdone in its sadistic savagery, much less imagined that human nature could sustain such a degree of malevolence.

 

Rescue personnel work at an impact site following a missile attack from Iran, in Bat Yam, Israel, June 15, 2025 (credit: RONEN ZVULUN/REUTERS)

 

But it was an event that galvanized a traumatized nation to launch its military in a response to destroy the capacity of the Palestinian terror group to ever imagine a repeat could occur, striking at its leaders, its headquarters, its rocket launching sites, its interminable tunnel system, its weapons depots. And when Hamas was left licking its wounds but still launching missiles, it was Hezbollah's turn after a year of lobbing missiles into Israel, when precision technology placed pagers in the hands and pockets of shocked terrorists for long-range efficiency in administering punishment.

 

Although the Houthis' direct fire into Israel placed an additional burden on Israel to respond to that third front, the fourth failed to fully surge when Syrian opposition groups moved to destroy the Assad regime's hold on Syria. And then it was Iran's turn, to feel the full vibrant, deadly strength of the enemy whose ire it had so carefully cultivated over the years. The International Atomic Energy Agency had declared Iran in violation of its nuclear non-proliferation obligations earlier in the week. In the realization that it had little time left before Iran reached the end stage of producing nuclear weapons, Israel took the initiative.

 

Vehicles jam a highway as a fire blazes nearby in the oil depots of Shahran, northwest of Tehran, on June 15, 2025. (ATTA KENARE / AFP)

 

Necessity moved Israel to destroy the Islamic Republic's aspirations for nuclear achievement; to match nuclear warheads to the technologically advanced missiles it had devised for that purpose. With success, Israel may remove a regime that beggared its nation's culture and economy for the greater interests of forming a Shi'ite cabal capable of undermining and destabilizing the greater numbers of Sunni-led Arab regional governments. Removing the Ayatollahs and the IRGC from power in Iran to free the Iranian population from its stranglehold, relieving the region of the tensions inherent in Iran's bid for conquest, and freeing Israel from the prospect of a nuclear night, would also release the international community from the octopus-probing arms of Islamist state theocratic jihad. 

 

The Iranian regime’s security chain of command that has been eliminated by Israeli strikes, June 14, 2025. (Israel Defense Forces)

 

 

Canada/U.K./Norway/Australia/New Zealand Sanctioning Israel .. RCMP 'Investigating' Canadians in the IDF

"Extremist rhetoric advocating the forced displacement of Palestinians and the creation of New Israeli settlements is appalling and dangerous."

"Itimar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have incited extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights."

"Extremist settler violence and settlement expansion [is imperilling a two-state solution]."

"This is why we have taken action now -- to hold those responsible to account." 

"Violent perpetrators continue to act with encouragement and impunity. The Israeli government must uphold its obligations under international law and we call on it to take meaningful action to end extremist, violent and expansionist rhetoric." 

Sanctions statement, Canada/U.K., Norway, Australia, New Zealand 

 

"It is outrageous that elected representatives and members of the government are subjected to these kinds of measures."

"I discussed it earlier today with PM Netanyahu, and we will hold a special government meeting early next week to decide on our response to this unacceptable decision." 

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar 

 

"These sanctions do not advance U.S.-led efforts to achieve a ceasefire, bring hostages home and end the war."

"We reject any notion of equivalence; Hamas is a terrorist organization that committed unspeakable atrocities, continue to hold innocent civilians hostage, and prevents the people of Gaza from living in peace."

"The United States urges the reversal of the sanctions and stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel." 

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio 

Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (L) and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir (R) have been sanctioned by the United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, Australia, New Zealand  Getty Images

 

Canada's Royal Candian Mounted Police announced a 'structural investigation' into whether citizens of Canada may have committed war crimes while serving with the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza. An announcement that has elicited incredulous fury from Jewish Canadians whose leaders level accusations against the the Liberal government of political targeting. The June 4 statement revealed that an investigation had begun in early 2024 to determine whether Canadian citizens were acting in contravention of the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act.

 

This was not -- the RCMP hastened to assure -- a criminal investigation, merely a pursuit of information to "collect, preserve and assess information" including "open-source material and voluntary submissions". It is well to note that should prosecutions ensue, the data may be used in court in the future, should it meet the legal threshold. While not specifying any group, entity, or military -- such as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Abu Shabab, PFLP, Muslim Brotherhood or others fighting in the conflict, Jewish groups parse the announcement as aiming directly at Canadians who have fought for the IDF.  

"It's funny how law enforcement in our cities have watched tens of thousands of people illegally protest and harass Jews while the RCMP tells us they want to play global cop and pour resources into finding bogeyman crimes."

"[His son, fighting with the IDF] doesn't know when or if there's a bullet with his name on it. But I never expected this kind of bullet that would come from my government, and that really tore up my heart. I feel betrayed." 

Israel Ellis, Torontonian 

Smoke rises to the sky following an Israeli strike in Gaza City, June 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

 

Mr. Ellis pointed out that this is the second occasion when he felt his son, serving in Israel with the IDF has been targeted. The first time was when the Canadian site The Maple published a list of 85 Canadian-Israelis in an article attacking the IDF, for "ethnic cleansing, war crimes, apartheid and now genocide". The February article included a list of the 85 Canadian Israelis, both current or former Israeli soldiers. Mr. Ellis found his son Eitan's name on the list. 

 

UN Watch's Montreal-born executive director Hillel Neuer, stated the investigation is "nothing less than a moral inversion. It turns Canadian values upside down. For good reason, Ottawa has never prosecuted dual citizens who served with British, French or American forces in fighting ISIS and al-Qaeda." It is, he said "unconscionable" the federal Liberals "were even contemplating the prosecution of Canadians who fought in defence of civilians against a genocidal terrorist group".

 

Foundation for Defense of Democracies

 

"How do you know what happened at what time, at what day, for what reason an IDF soldier did what you think they did? You have no clue. You couldn't tell what happened unless you had somebody's bodycam. Do you really think that they have all the necessary footage and resources that they need to make a judgement? No, like, stay in your lane. Focus on the issues that you have in Canada", responded Noy Leyb of Calgary, recently serving in Gaza. Noting that when Israeli authorities suspect soldiers of ill actions, they are  tried in a court of law. 

 

330 Gazans on the other hand, have arrived in Canada since the war began. "Did anyone check whether they were involved with war crimes of Hamas? I'll bet not." There are about 7,000 lone soldiers in Israel -- those serving from other countries -- while an IDF study showed that in 2022 before the current war began,there were 51 Canadians. 

 

Israeli soldiers walk through the destruction caused by Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, near the Israeli-Gaza border, in southern Israel, October 15, 2023. (credit: EDI ISRAEL/FLASH90)

 

"Any suggestion that Israeli-Canadians should be targeted for their service -- particularly in a war of self-defence waged by a close ally of Canada -- not only represents a cynical distortion of the law, but fuels the violent hatred faced by Israelis and Jews in North America."

"Authorities [should] carefully consider the impact on public safety of future statements, given the heightened threat environment faced by our community."

Noah Shack, interim president, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs

 

"[His organization has] been advocating for such an investigation. The group sent a letter in January to Arif Virani, then Justice Minister, to seek action against] Canadian nationals in violations of international law in Gaza."

"[CJPME] cautiously welcome [the RCMP probe and felt there was] serious likelihood [that Canadians were] involved in the commission of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide."

"[They want the Canada Border Services Agency to conduct] detailed interviews [with Canadian nationals returning from foreign military service to share with the International Criminal Court]."

Michael Bueckert, acting president, anti-Israel Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East 

Toronto television personality, Shai DeLuca, former IDF combat engineer, believes the investigations stemmed from "very loud fundamentalist voices that the government is trying to pander to. Nothing has been brought against any Canadian that served in the IDF from a year and a half ago until today. So, you know, I'm not concerned." At the same time there are war catastrophes in Sudan, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon. "It's very important that people understand that service in the IDF during this war is not illegal in Canada, nor is it a war crime." 

"So the RCMP can pretend all that it wants that it's doing some investigation, but just like they said in that clarified statement, they're opening channels to people who want to send them stuff. Well, you know, people send me stuff all the time. Doesn't make it true."  

Israeli soldiers guard near the Gaza European Hospital near Khan Yunis, Gaza, on June 8, 2025. Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images

 

"No other Western democracy is criminally investigating its citizens for fighting alongside an ally, let alone one  defending itself from a genocidal terror organization."

"The Canadian government] should focus its pressure on Hamas -- the party that initiated this war."

"[The Israel Law Center will provide] legal defence and advocacy for those targeted by politically-driven investigations."

"The Mounties have made an [unprecedented decision]." 

Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, president, Israel-based Shurat HaDin -- Israel Law Center