Israel’s 136th Day of War

 Yesterday, Sunday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced that the IDF has defeated two Hamas battalions in the city of Khan Younis, with over 200 terrorists surrendering and, in many cases, literally laying down their arms. According to Israeli intelligence, Hamas had 24 battalions (units of about 1,000 fighters) when the war began, of which six remain: four in Rafah, at Gaza’s southern tip, and two in the central part of the Strip. The IDF has now turned its attention to the latter, presumably in preparation for the final assault on Rafah.

Meanwhile, at the Munich Security Conference—an annual gathering of statesmen, military officers, and assorted grandees that bills itself as the “leading forum for debating the most pressing challenges to international security”—the Palestinian Authority/s (PA) prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh stressed the need for unity between his government and Hamas.  Shtayyeh dodged questions about reforming the PA, said he looks forward to meeting with Hamas officials in Moscow next week, and called for the world to stop paying attention to the October 7 massacres. American plans for a two-state solution rest on reforming the PA and replacing its current president, Mahmoud Abbas, with a more reasonable figure. Like Shtayyeh, for instance…..get it?

Israel has announced its outrage over the obscene remarks made by Brazilian president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva comparing our actions in Gaza to Hitler’s genocide against the Jews in the runup to WW II and during the war itself.  Quite amazing that the country that made a home to so many ex-Nazis after the war ended should now point a finger at Israel.  The Brazilian ambassador to Israel has been summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a reprimand.

The Iran-backed Houthis continued to escalate their attacks today with a new attack on a ship off the coast of Yemen. The Houthis claimed they struck the ship Rubymar off the coast.  According to Arab News, “Yemen’s Houthis targeted the Rubymar cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden, and it is now at risk of sinking, the group’s military spokesperson Yahya Sarea said in a statement on Monday. The ship is British, and the crew are safe, he said, adding the Houthis had also shot down a US drone in Hodeidah.”

The UK Maritime Trade Operations agency reported the crew had abandoned a ship off Yemen after an explosion. “The attack on the ship came as the US military acknowledged conducting new airstrikes targeting the militia, including one that targeted the first Houthi underwater drone seen since the militias began launching their attacks on shipping in November,” Arab News noted.

Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and has enforced a policy of apartheid against Palestinians for years, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said on Monday at the opening of a week of hearings by the International Court of Justice in the Hague on Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.  “Allowing this to continue is unacceptable,” Al-Maliki said. “It is a moral and legal obligation to bring it to a prompt end.”  Israel decided not to send a representative to the hearings to defend its position.

Future Leadership

Today I want to call attention to Sigalit Shavit, COO of KTrust, a pioneer in continuous threat exposure for ‎Kubernetes (K8s) environments.  Formerly the Global Chief Information Technology Officer at CyberArk, a cybersecurity company founded in 1999 serving more than 4,400 global businesses. Sigalit was responsible for providing and managing the information technology and security infrastructure that enables CyberArk’s business objectives.

Previously, Sigalit served as Global CIO and Head of DevOps at ECI Telecom Ltd. And before ECI, she served as Vice President and CIO of FedEx, Israel.

She has more than 26 years of executive and IT inter-disciplinary experience, having demonstrated an innate ability to tightly align the technology roadmaps of IT organizations with business objectives.

Sigalit was named one of the the Top 25 Women Leaders in Cybersecurity both in 2019 and 2020 by the Software Report and one of 10 Key Female Cybersecurity Leaders to Know in 2020 by Solution Review.

Sigalit hold a BSc. in Industrial Engineering and Information Systems from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.

If anybody doubts that we don’t have good people who could be tapped for national leadership in a new post-war government, these profiles should certainly allay all of those fears.  Now the challenge will be to get them to agree to serve.