WarSclerotic

Deep in the ground: Combat engineering is fighting the tunnels

IDF combat engineering is in charge of an important duty and massive responsibility in the current operation – destroying Hamas tunnels infrastructure.

The massive D9 vehicles are uncovering the ground layer and the unit’s soldiers are going on special missions inside the tunnels where the Hamas terrorists hide

Aug 02, 2014, 12:59PM | Rio Avitayler

via Israel News – Deep in the ground: Combat engineering is fighting the tunnels – JerusalemOnline.

5 meters deep underground in Gaza, there is a horrid silence. While battle rages over the ground level, underground is utter silence. For most of us, the Hamas terror tunnels are a new threat, unknown and dangerous. But for the Yahalom elite combat engineering unit, it is exactly what they prepared for. They are working with the heavy engineering machinery unit to uncover those tunnels. In the last weeks they have been destroying tunnel after tunnel, and destroy the tunnels before they will be able to use them to enter Israel.

“When you visually see the tunnels you understand the amount of effort that has been put into them, there were bunkers, storage rooms of ammunition, and breathing systems to support long time underground. You see that someone professional made this”. Said Major Noam, one of the commanders in Yahalom.

The giant machine that IDF soldiers want in the front

On the way to the border with Gaza, next to Kibutz Be’eri, in the forward preparation ground we meet Rotem Levi, a heavy engineering machinery company commander. The work of uncovering the tunnels begins with his unit using the D9 caterpillar tractor. “It is a massive 40 ton vehicle that can easily take down any structure of any height, any force that wants to go in to Gaza, wants this vehicle on the front”, says Captain Levi.

From the D9 driver seat you can appreciate the vehicles capabilities and the protection it provides to its operator – fortified windows with old bullet holes, the space itself is quite small, no more than 2 square meters. Inside is a commander and a driver that sometime have to spend a whole day seeing the world through a dense protective net. That net is nicknamed “fifty-fifty”, either it stops the anti-tank missile, or it doesn’t.

After the D9 finishes clearing the area, engineering ground forces arrive at the scene and begin treating the tunnels up close. Sometimes the tunnel or the shaft are booby-trapped so they work slowly while uncovering the tunnels. Once understanding the scale of the tunnel, the process of destroying them starts.

You can only guess where the tunnel ends

One of the tunnels was discovered 3 months ago, before the current operation. It stretches 2.5 kilometers, out of which 1.2 kilometers are inside Israeli territory. The problem that they run into even today, is that they know where the tunnel starts, but they never know where it ends, sometimes the last part it being dug right before the exit.

During the operation, 5 D9 operators were killed while uncovering tunnels. Yahalom lost one soldier and many were wounded. “Hamas blew up a tunnel while our forces were in there”, said Lt. Aharon, a team commander in Yahalom and adds, “it’s part of the job”.

In this operation, IDF uncovered 11 tunnels that go into Israel, and 20 more for other purposes. According to estimations, IDF destroyed 4 years’ worth of tunnel building.

Hamas denies knowing captive officer’s whereabouts, says he may have died. IDF continues to blast Rafah.

Debka

Hamas’ military wing issued a statement early Saturday, Aug. 2, claiming: “We have lost contact with the group of fighters that took part in the ambush [in which 2 soldiers were killed and 2nd Lt. Hadar Goldin, 23, went missing in Rafah Friday] and we believe that they were all killed in the [Israeli] bombardment. Assuming that they managed to seize the soldier during combat, we assess that he was also killed in the incident,” the Hamas statement said, clearly trying to get off the hook of international condemnation and Israeli punishment.

All Friday night until early Saturday, Israeli jets, tanks and heavy artillery continued to pound parts of Rafah. The Palestinians say they have lost 150 dead, of whom 70 were killed in Rafah since Friday morning, when their “ambush,” was mounted 90 minutes after an international ceasefire went into effect.

debkafile’s military sources report on the findings of an inquiry into the Rafah attack, in which two Givati Brigade officers,  Major Benaya Sarel, 26, from Kiryat Arba and St.-Sgt. Liel Gidoni, 20, from Jerusalem,              lost their lives. It turns out that the plan for the attack was devised in detail by Hamas and most likely Islamic Jihad for the abduction of an Israeli soldier.
An ambush squad of 10-15 commandos, some wearing large explosive vests, stole into the Seri district of Rafah early Friday, covered by a group of local civilians who, upon hearing that a ceasefire had gone into effect at 8 a.m. that morning, scattered to their homes.
The attackers then crept up to the building where the Givati troops were busy dealing with a tunnel.
At 9:30, two suicide bombers moved in on the Israeli team and blew themselves up.

The rest of the squad grabbed Lt. Goldin.
The attack and abduction were deliberately timed to occur after the 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire announced by the US and UN went into effect.

Friday night, US President Barack Obama said that to sustain the ceasefire, Hamas must unconditionally release the Israeli officer who had been seized in the course of the truce, although he admitted to doubts about the Islamist terrorists “following through” on a ceasefire agreement.

This was a reference to Hamas violations of all five previous truces in the 25-day armed conflict in Gaza.

Israel’s security and policy-making cabinet ended a long meeting starting Friday and ending Saturday morning without releasing a statement. The IDF’s mode of attacks in and around Rafah, a town of some quarter of a million inhabitants, indicated that they are trying to trap Lt. Goldin’s abductors before they fled and went to ground, possibly with their captive.

Hamas and Jihad have tried time and again to kidnap Israeli soldiers. This time they took advantage of the ceasefire to achieve this goal.
The fate of the negotiations, scheduled to be launched between Israeli and Palestinian delegations in Cairo Friday at the same time as the 72-hour ceasefire, is up in the air as far as Israel’s intentions are concerned.

Israel held off sending its delegation to Cairo Friday in outrage over the shock Hamas attack-cum-abduction in Rafah. Whether Netanyahu decides to respond to the US appeal, and send negotiators to Egypt on Sunday, may depend on the way matters evolve in the Gaza Strip Saturday, especially if the missing officer is found.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon have still to reach a decision on whether to order the IDF to expand the harsh punitive operation devastating Rafah since Friday to other parts of the Gaza Strip.

As to the ceasefire, it is abundantly clear, as President too acknowledged Friday, that however any talks through Egyptian intermediaries may turn out, and whatever the parties may sign, Hamas can’t be counted on to follow through.

As the latest ceasefire attempt demonstrated, Islamic terrorists will seize on any cessation in hostilities for surprise attacks on Israeli soldiers and any civilian targets within reach, whether by ambush, rockets, or tunnel terror. So a signed deal if it happens may be a diplomatic breakthrough, but have little relevance on the field of combat in Gaza.

Young Americans risking lives for Israel – YouTube.

What drives so many Americans to join the Israel Defense Forces? 21-year-old Noam Sohn from Westchester, N.Y., explains why he is ready to fight for Israel.

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Our World: Congress, Obama and the way to defeat Hamas | JPost | Israel News.

By CAROLINE B. GLICK

08/01/2014 22:56

It is imperative that Congress begin questioning the nature of the Turkish and Qatari regimes and the legality of US military and other strategic ties with these two state sponsors of Hamas and al-Qaeda.

Women hold Hamas flags as they take part in the funeral of leading Hamas terrorists Imad and Adel Awadallah last month. Photo: REUTERS

Why did Hamas attack the Givati forces, kill two soldiers and capture 2nd. Lt. Hadar Goldin Friday morning in violation of the US-UN brokered 72-hour cease fire? Hamas acted as it did, because it thinks it can get away with it. And Hamas thinks that it can get away with it because Hamas is convinced that it will win this war.

And as long as Hamas is convinced that it will win this war, it will continue to attack, no matter what its situation is on the ground in Gaza. It will continue to attack Israel no matter what Israel does.

As a consequence, there is no way for Israel to disengage. There can never be a ceasefire with Hamas for as long as Hamas is convinced that it will win this war.

To understand why Hamas is convinced that it will win, it is necessary to understand first why Hamas is fighting in the first place.

Hamas went to war with one goal, to reopen Gaza to the world.

Hamas is fighting to open Gaza’s border with Egypt, to end Israel’s maritime blockade of the Gaza coast, and to reinstate its lines of finance.

Today Hamas’s leadership, snug in their multi-million dollar villas in Qatar and well-equipped bunkers under Shifa Hospital in Gaza City are that they will achieve their goal. They will win.

And as a consequence, they will not stop attacking Israel.

Hamas’s goal of opening Gaza to the world has nothing to do with helping the people of Gaza. Hamas wants open borders so that it can import arms and the means to rebuild its tunnels. It was to open the borders so that it can replenish its coffers.

In other words, Hamas’s purpose in fighting this war is to ensure that Hamas can keep fighting.

From a financial perspective, it isn’t simply that Hamas is expecting to receive cash payments from Qatar, Turkey, Iran and the Palestinian Authority. Hamas runs Gaza. Hamas is the tax authority.

As Dr. Moshe Elad explained to Globes, Hamas siphons money off every dollar in aid transferred to Gaza because it controls all the aid pipelines. Every dollar of international humanitarian aid to UNWRA and every other organization goes through that pipeline and part of the funds are transferred to Hamas.

Hamas taxes all businesses in Gaza. And it taxes all imports. According to Elad, Hamas levied a flat tax of $2000 on every car load of goods smuggled into Gaza from Egypt in addition to 25 percent of the value of every shipment.

As a result, all economic activity in Gaza funds Hamas.

In other words, as long as Hamas rules Gaza, all aid to Gaza is aid to Hamas. All economic activity is hostage to Hamas. All of Gaza is hostage to Hamas.

The reason that Hamas is certain that when the war ends, it will achieve its goal of opening Gaza’s borders is simple. The United States says so.

The official position of the US government is that a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will involve opening Hamas’s borders to the world. This position was spelled out by Secretary of State John Kerry in the draft cease fire that he sent to Israel last Friday.

Kerry’s draft said that a permanent cease fire agreement must include, “arrangements to secure the opening of the crossings, allow the entry of goods and people and… transfer funds to Gaza for the payment of salaries for public employees…” This position was reiterated by President Barack Obama in his telephone conversation with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu last Sunday. According the White House’s press release of that phone call, “Building on Secretary Kerry’s efforts, the President made clear the strategic imperative of instituting an immediate, unconditional humanitarian ceasefire that ends hostilities now and leads to a permanent cessation of hostilities based on the November 2012 ceasefire agreement… The President underscored the enduring importance of… alleviating Gaza’s humanitarian crisis, and enacting a sustainable ceasefire that both allows Palestinians in Gaza to lead normal lives and addresses Gaza’s long-term development and economic needs.”

After 2nd Lt. Hadar Goldin was captured, Secretary of State John Kerry called the Qatari and Turkish foreign ministers to ask them to get Hamas to release him. Kerry’s move demonstrated that the US continues to view Hamas’s chief state sponsors as the most attractive allies in achieving a sustainable ceasefire. As Hamas’s sponsors, Qatar and Turkey insist that Hamas’s demand for open borders be met.

Under these circumstances, Hamas has no reason to stop fighting.

As a result there are only two options, moving forward.

The first option is for Israel to retake control over Gaza. The aim of the operation would be to decimate Hamas physically.

Such an operation will be prolonged. It will result in the deaths of thousands of Gazan civilians, hostages as they are, to Hamas.

It will result as well in massive losses of IDF soldiers.

In short, it will be a very painful, heartbreaking process. But it will make it impossible for Hamas to enjoy open borders and so continue fighting.

The other option is for the US to credibly reverse its position and oppose any opening of Gaza’s borders for as long as Hamas remains in charge. For this to work, it is not sufficient for the Obama administration to retract its current position and publically oppose the opening of Gaza’s borders. Given the administration’s track record, Hamas’s leadership won’t believe that the policy reversal is real.

Strong Congressional action is also required.

The relevant committees in both houses must begin serious examinations of all manner of US funding to the Palestinians and how this money serves Hamas. Such an investigation should focus on UNWRA.

During this war – and in previous Hamas campaigns against Israel – we have seen Hamas use UNWRA schools as missile storage sites and missile launching pads. This week three soldiers were killed trying to seal a tunnel whose entry shaft was located in an UNWRA clinic booby trapped with over a ton of explosives built into one of the walls.

At a minimum, this tells us that UNWRA is subservient to Hamas. All UNWRA installations and personnel are controlled by Hamas. As a result, UNWRA is a subsidiary – willing or unwilling – of Hamas and all funds to UNWRA must be suspended until Hamas is no longer in control of Gaza.

Again, the central point is that for as long as Hamas exercises control over Gaza, everyone in Gaza and every entity operating in Gaza is controlled by Hamas. All assistance to Gaza assists Hamas and communicates the message that Hamas will win the war.

As a result, the only way for anyone to help the people of Gaza is to free them from Hamas. And the only way to free them from Hamas is to defeat Hamas.

After Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, in keeping with binding UN Security Council resolution 1373 from 2001, Israel imposed a maritime naval blockade of the Gaza coast to prevent material aid to the terrorist organization from getting through.

The blockade is the most passive way possible for Israel to abide by the stipulations of the resolution that prohibits nations from providing assistance to territories controlled by terrorists.

Rather than support Israel’s efforts, the Obama administration has adopted Hamas’s language and refers to the blockade as “a siege,” intimating that there is something illegal about it.

It would be reasonable for the Armed Services Committees of both houses to pass resolutions calling for the US Navy to assist Israel in maintaining the blockade. They can also bring the commanders of the US Navy before them to testify regarding how the US is or can assist Israel in sustaining the blockade.

Such moves would symbolically communicate US commitment to keeping Gaza’s borders sealed. Certainly they would communicate to Turkey that its intention to take action to break Israel’s blockade is strenuously opposed by the US Congress.

And this brings us to another key move that Congress can make. Given the active support Turkey and Qatar are providing to Hamas in its terrorist war against Israel, it is imperative that Congress begin questioning the nature of the Turkish and Qatari regimes and the legality of US military and other strategic ties with these two state sponsors of Hamas and al-Qaeda.

In the case of Qatar, a good place to start is for members of both houses to follow the lead of House Chief Deputy Whip Rep. Peter Roskam who sent a letter to Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew Thursday questioning US diplomatic ties with Qatar in light of its massive financial support for Hamas and its facilitation of the funding of al Qaeda affiliates ISIS and the al Nusra Front.

Members of the Senate Armed Services committee can exercise oversight and state their intention to cancel through legislation the $11 billion dollar arms deal with Qatar that the Pentagon announced last week. In light of what the US now knows about Qatar’s central role as the banker and bankroller of Hamas and other Islamist terror groups, continued military sales to Qatar may well be prohibited under the Arms Export Control Act.

As for Turkey, under the dictatorial regime of Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, NATO member Turkey has joined Qatar, Iran and Syria as a massive state sponsor of terrorism. It funds and provides other material support for Hamas. It is a major funder of al Nusra and ISIS.

To date, Turkey has largely avoided Congressional scrutiny for its support for terrorism. As a member of NATO its forces continue to train with US forces and Turkey is contracted to receive a hundred F-35 warplanes from the US over the next several years.

With Turkey actively involved in Hamas’s war against Israel, the time has come for Turkey’s support for terrorism to be scrutinized, with an eye towards designating Turkey as a state sponsor of terrorism, or at a minimum, demoting its position in NATO. Relevant committees in both houses of Congress should hold formal hearings about Turkey’s support for terrorism.

Hamas is a genocidal terrorist organization dedicated to the annihilation of the Jewish people and our state as a first step towards Islamic world domination.

It is waging war against Israel because it believes that the US supports its goal of opening Gaza’s borders so that Hamas can continue fighting Israel.

As its bipartisan resolutions expressing support for Israel issued this week made clear yet again, the US Congress shares Israel’s concerns for its security, as well as its concern for the wellbeing of the people of Gaza who are being held hostage by Hamas.

In order to minimize suffering of the people of Israel and Gaza, and to ensure Israel’s national security and US national security interests in the Middle East, the US must join Israel in its goal of defeating Hamas. To that end, both the administration and the Congress must openly and credibly join Israel in rejecting any cease fire arrangement that provides for the opening of Gaza’s physical and financial borders so long as Hamas remains in control of the area.

Caroline B. Glick is the author of The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East.

Obama and Kerry behind one of most strategic mistakes in military history, Fox News, Steven Emerson, August 1, 2014

July 22, 2014: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri in Cairo. AP

This administration believes that Al Qaeda is bad but the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the parent of Hamas and Islamic Jihad as well as that of Al Qaeda, is a rational organization with “legitimate grievances” that can be negotiated with on the same basis that the U.S.can negotiate with Canada or Germany. That is why this administration has embraced the Muslim Brotherhood, starting with the first speech Mr. Obama gave in Cairo in February 2009, where the first two rows of “dignitaries” were 20 leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt hand-selected by the Obama administration.

The obsession by the Obama-Kerry administration with imposing a cease-fire on the warring parties in the Hamas-Israel war will go down in history as one of the most strategic mistakes in military history.

Here is a fact the administration deliberately and maliciously ignored: In the history of modern warfare, no terrorist group has ever honored a cease-fire. Hamas has broken every cease-fire it ever said it would honor. Every single one.

Even the Israel-Hamas 2012 cease fire, brokered by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was simply agreed to by Hamas to give it an opportunity to restock its military arsenal, pressure Israel to lift its restrictions on the import of cement and steel into Gaza – material that Clinton said would be used to build hospitals and schools, but in fact was used to build a network of underground tunnels into Israel and build a subterranean network of underground bunkers, weapons storage facilities and launching pads.

Hamas simply used the cease-fire to rebuild its military infrastructure and as predicted by Israeli military intelligence, would simply break the cease-fire when it felt ready to take on the Israelis once again.

And on Friday, Hamas did the exact same thing. It agreed, through its main financial backer Qatar (which is the world’s largest financial sponsor of terrorist groups including Hamas, Hizbollah, Al Qaeda and Al Nusra in Syria) and which the U.S. inexplicably anointed as its interlocutor to Hamas, that it would honor a 72-hour cease-fire initiated by the Obama-Kerry administration.

On Thursday night, Kerry proudly announced the cease-fire. But read the main sentence of his press conference.

“Then, as soon as the cease-fire is underway tomorrow morning – I talked to the Egyptian foreign minister tonight – Egypt will issue invitations to the parties to come to Cairo immediately in order to engage in serious and focused negotiations with Egypt to address the underlying causes of this conflict.”

“Underlying causes?” What in God’s name is Kerry talking about? That would be the equivalent of announcing a cease-fire with Al Qaeda after it killed 3000 Americans on 9-11 on the grounds that it needed to “address the underlying causes” of Al Qaeda’s war against the United States and the West.

Here is a little secret for Mr. Kerry: The underlying causes of the current Israeli-Hamas war, initiated by Hamas with its launching of tens of thousands of missiles into Israel and its use of underground tunnels from Gaza to carry out murderous attacks against Israel civilians, is that Hamas, like Al Qaeda, is a nihilistic radical Islamic organization dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state and the establishment of an Islamic caliphate.

The term “underlying causes” directly implies there are legitimate rational grievances by Hamas. Yes, the same “underlying causes” that motivated Adolph Hitler to carry out a worldwide war of conquest, including the Holocaust of six million Jews. Hamas is the embodiment of pure evil. And its motivation is the same as that of Al Qaeda and ISIS.

On Fox News, the former U.S. Ambassador to Bahrain, Adam Ereli, summed up the conflict in words that accurately described the “underlying causes” behind the war between Israel and Hamas:

“…[W]hat we’re seeing happen between Israel and Gaza is not a localized conflict, but is much, is part of a much bigger regional war. And that war has Iran, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood on one side and it has the forces of what I would call reason and moderation on the other side – being Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the countries of the Gulf. And United States has an interest in ensuring that the forces of reason and moderation prevail.”

Mr. Ereli was right on point. But somehow this administration lost sight of its real strategic interests and instead embraced an agenda that has resulted in extensive damage to our national interests, which in turn has resulted in increasing the strategic threat to American national security.

This administration believes that Al Qaeda is bad but the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the parent of Hamas and Islamic Jihad as well as that of Al Qaeda, is a rational organization with “legitimate grievances” that can be negotiated with on the same basis that the U.S.can negotiate with Canada or Germany. That is why this administration has embraced the Muslim Brotherhood, starting with the first speech Mr. Obama gave in Cairo in February 2009, where the first two rows of “dignitaries” were 20 leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt hand-selected by the Obama administration.

Moreover, the Obama administration, according to an investigation carried out by my organization, the Investigative Project on Terrorism, lifted all visa restrictions on Muslim Brotherhood officials in their applications to visit the United States. In a report our organization will be releasing next week, more than 25 senior Muslim Brotherhood officials who had publicly called for jihad against the United States or the West, or had openly expressed their support for Hamas and Hezbollah, visited the United States in the past three years and met with senior U.S. officials. One of them, who served as vice president of a Muslim Brotherhood group that had called for the killing of Americans, actually met with President Obama in the White House.

So the “underlying causes” of the current war of annihilation carried out by Hamas against Israel is very simple: It believes that Israel needs to be destroyed paralleling the same agenda of Al Qaeda that believed the United States should be destroyed. We are talking about an organization that won’t be satisfied in the short term until every Jew in Israel is dead and in the long term until Western civilization is destroyed replaced by a worldwide Islamic caliphate.

Hamas on Friday succeeded in kidnapping an Israeli officer, after launching a suicide bombing against Israeli soldiers in a well-planned operation 90 minutes after the cease-fire had gone into effect.Immediately following the suicide bombing that killed several Israeli soldiers (still unreported), a group of up to 10 Hamas terrorists immediately descended upon the scene of the bombing where chaos reigned supreme, and kidnapped the Israeli officer in charge of the company stationed in Gaza.

Then Musa Abu Marzuk, a leader of Hamas in Cairo, who was invited to participate in the talks with the U.S. and UN officials on the cease fire, had the audacity to announce the kidnapping took place BEFORE the cease-fire went into effect. This was a manifestly demonstrable lie, as Israel would never have agreed to a cease-fire if it knew one of its soldiers had been kidnapped.

The Obama-Kerry administration’s obsession with imposing a cease-fire on Israel on the grounds that too many civilians were being killed in collateral damage (caused by the fact that Hamas used the Gaza population as human shields to protect its launching of missiles ensconced in hospitals, mosques, kindergartens and civilian apartment buildings) somehow convinced itself that Hamas was an organization with “legitimate” political grievances. Yes, the same type of radical Islamic group whose agenda parallels exactlythat of the same radical Islamic groups that has killed thousands of Americans and Europeans and whose wars of aggression has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Christians in Syria and Iraq.

At this point the administration, if it truly wants to limit the damage to our own national security and reverse the strategic threat to the survival of Israel, needs to be honest with itself and acknowledge its historic mistake in its approach to the Muslim Brotherhood and its stepchild, Hamas. The Muslim Brotherhood is the godfather of all Sunni terrorist groups, from Al Qaeda to Hamas, a fact these groups openly admit.

This is a classic war of good versus evil. The only difference between the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist offspring is the deception perpetrated by the Muslim Brotherhood in portraying itself as opposed to violence and committed to political pluralism. Nothing could be further from the truth. All one needs to do is read the covenant of the Muslim Brotherhood in which it states its commitment to carry out jihad to dominate the world, read the contemporary incendiary statements of Muslim Brotherhood officials issued in Arabic and not in English, and observe the Muslim Brotherhood hatred and persecution of of Christians, secular women, non-believing Muslims, infidels and gays.

This administration’s current policy towards the Muslim Brotherhood extends from the legitimacy it has conferred on the Muslim Brotherhood organization overseas and its chief patron, Qatar, to the embrace of Muslim Brotherhood front groups in the United States. This administration has gone so far as to ban the mention of the term “radical Islam” and to claim that the word jihad means only peaceful struggle and not violent commitment to impose Islam, which is the genuine historic and religious definition of jihad.

Reversing these policies would not only help protect the long term strategic interests of the United States but would also protect and help in the growth of the community of genuine Muslim moderates who in the end are the only key to reversing the growing threat of radical Islam in the world today.