Welcome to the PDB Situation Report. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage.

All right, let's get briefed, shall we? First up, Israel has kicked off the

opening stages of its invasion of Gaza City, codenamed Gideon's Chariots 2. We'll be joined by

intelligence analyst Ryan McBeth, who just returned from Israel for more on that. Later in the show,

the DOJ, the Department of Justice, is investigating claims that Washington's

Metropolitan Police Department, the MPD, because everything needs an acronym, manipulated crime

numbers to make the city look safer than it is. John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention

Research Center, will stop by to give his insight. But first, today's situation report spotlight.

This week, Israel officially launched what it's calling the first stages of the attack on Gaza's city.

Defense minister Israel Katz has approved the Israeli Defense Forces plan,

codenamed Gideon's Chariots 2, to invade and occupy the city. Now, as part of that push,

Israel says it may call up 50 to 60,000 reservists to help secure control on the ground. At the same

time, Israeli forces are continuing to carry out air and artillery strikes across the strip,

hitting targets in Ghan Yunus in the south, in Derealbala, in central Gaza.

All of this comes as Israel faces mounting international criticism with opponents accusing it of

waging a campaign of starvation or even genocide. So you ask yourself, what's the truth on the ground?

Well, Ryan McBeth, a 20-year Army veteran and friend of the show, is fresh off a fact-finding trip to Israel. You can check out his YouTube channel at Ryan Macbeth programming. He joins us now on the Situation Report. Ryan, thanks very much, and welcome back to the PDB, man. Well, thank you so much for inviting me. It's great to be back on. All right,

let's start about with the trip to Israel. I got a lot of questions here. Well, the most interesting

thing you picked up while you were there at Israel. What was it? I think the most interesting thing

I picked up was that this is not Northern Ireland.

And, you know, my family is from Lisbon, Northern Ireland, Protestant, and I always looked at the conflict as, oh, the Palestinians are just Catholics, right?

We need to give them land. We need to give them their own government, and they'll be fine.

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