Monday, January 22, 2024

01/22 Links Pt1: Israeli FM demands EU backing for hostages’ return, defeat of Hamas; Former Miss World slams women’s groups for Oct. 7 ‘silence’

From Ian:

A Second Exile
For over a quarter-million Israelis, Oct. 7 didn’t only signal the start of a war. It was also the day they realized they’d have to leave their homes. Some of them had a sense of déjà vu. They had been exiled from their homes before.

For Pnina Rogolsky, this evacuation brought back memories of the spring of 1982, when she lost her home in southern Sinai after Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt.

Dreaming of a quiet agrarian life, Rogolsky and her husband had moved to the Yamit settlement bloc in the early 1970s in response to a government call to settle the Sinai, which had come under Israeli control after the Six-Day War in 1967. They joined a brand new moshav near Yamit called Netiv HaAsara.

“The Jewish Agency gave us a tract of land and a tractor, which we shared with another family,” Rogolsky told me. “We grew tomatoes, mangoes, and flowers. I had my first baby. We were all young. We helped each other out. We socialized. It was a good life.”

She didn’t expect it all to end, and certainly not so quickly. “When the talk started about a peace treaty with Egypt, we assumed that we’d remain in our homes,” she said. “We didn’t think we’d give back Sinai.”

Initially, Rogolsky and the other Sinai settlers fought the plan. “We lobbied Knesset members, we demonstrated, we even burned tires,” she recalled. But by the spring of 1982, she said, the battle was lost: “We left our moshav in a caravan with our lights on as if we were on the way to a funeral.”

Rogolsky and her family—along with the other 70 families who evacuated the moshav in the Sinai—helped to reestablish the moshav, also called Netiv HaAsara, in what they hoped was a more secure location just outside the Gaza Strip.

Starting again wasn’t easy. “Losing our moshav in the Sinai felt like losing a limb,” said Rogolsky. “Some of our people could barely function.” But Rogolsky, who was then in her 30s, felt compelled to pull herself together. “Working the land helped me to heal,” she said.

Then came the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, when terrorists killed 20 members of the moshav. Rogolsky and her husband were in another part of the country visiting friends, but her son was at the moshav leading the security team. Fortunately he survived the attack. Rogolsky has been back several times since Oct. 7 “to visit and to do laundry,” she said; her husband goes back more frequently to tend to the family’s chicken coop. But neither of them stays for long.

Netiv HaAsara is in its second exile, its 900 residents scattered in hotels and apartments throughout central Israel. Rogolsky lives in the Yearim Hotel in the Judean Hills just outside of Jerusalem with several dozen of her neighbors, most of them like herself in their 70s and 80s, but it’s far from ideal.

The first days were the hardest, she said: “That whole first week we went from funeral to funeral, shiva to shiva.”
Dr. Albert Bourla is Chairman and CEO of Pfizer: An Unexpected Encounter At Davos Inspired My Call to Action For the Israeli Hostages
It is our moral duty, as global citizens, to take the necessary steps to help the hostages. To start, we can learn more about them. They are real, innocent people facing unspeakable cruelty.

As citizens of the digital generation, we have the opportunity to raise public awareness, calling for the release of all hostages using the hashtag #BringThemHomeNow. We must rally around those elected officials who are advocating to bring the hostages home. By participating in the democratic process—sending an email or calling our senators, representatives, and the White House—we can give a voice to the hostages.

Join Ms. Goldberg, just as I did in Davos, by wearing a piece of tape on your shirt, counting the number of days that the 136 hostages are still not home. As the devoted mom told me, it reminds the world of the inhumanity at play.

As a healthcare leader, I have a responsibility to stress the urgent need for hostages to gain access to medication. International organizations need unfettered access to assess the conditions of the hostages, so that they can receive the necessary care. Supporting the families of hostages, and of course, the hostages themselves, does not end when they are brought home; mental health services must be made available to those in need, for as long as necessary.

The conditions for a return to calm and stability should be our priority. We owe it to the hostages to hold tightly to the hope that eventual peace, and the end to this cycle of violence, is within reach.

I will sign off with a question: Imagine if it were your loved one being held captive. What would you do?


Former Miss World slams women’s groups for Oct. 7 ‘silence’
Israeli lawyer, actress, model and beauty queen Linor Abargil, who won the Miss World title in 1998, has spoken out against the silence of women’s organizations in the wake of the murder, sexual assault and kidnapping of women by the Hamas terror organization.

“On Oct. 7, we witnessed the most horrible massacres, atrocities, rape, mutilation—the worst human behavior,” Abargil said at an event organized as part of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“I turned to all my colleagues and friends worldwide, as well to the leading women’s rights organizations, to expose this terrible event, certain that they would speak out and condemn this unspeakable event. And what did I discover? That there is a discriminatory approach— violence against one woman doesn’t equal violence [toward] another,” she said.

“Their silence, apathy and oblivion shocked me to the core. They even had the cheek to ask for evidence when it was all there to see. There is no need for more proof, it’s all out there to see,” she added.

The event, titled “Women at the Forefront of the Global Peace and Security Agenda” and organized by Israel, was also attended by Tatiana Kotlyarenko, an international expert in gender-based violence and human trafficking, Qanta Ahmed, a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum and Anastasiya Dzyakava, adviser on human online safety.

Abargil shared how at a young age she, too, was assaulted, and what helped her survive and speak up.

“I was invited to speak all over the world. I gave lectures, and I spoke about the fact that we women truly understand the world and its needs. I found out that this world of men, weapons and war doesn’t understand that women can work without agendas…[and] politics and rise above all this. I decided to dedicate my life to this cause. And it’s been my life’s journey [for] the past 20 years,” she said.

“Hamas established a new evil strategy: Openly abusing mostly the female hostages, and also men, mutilating them—not in secret and not in the dark. Everything was filmed. Anyone who doesn’t speak up against this is silently complicit in sexual violence against all women, not just Israeli women,” she continued.


Seth Mandel: The Red Sea Crisis: How We Got Here
The Saudis were already put in a tough spot by the Obama administration’s overall strategy of elevating Iran’s influence in the Gulf, of which the nuclear deal was a part. Fearing that the Yemen developments would push Saudi Arabia into open opposition to the Iran deal, the Obama administration had to come up with a response that would placate Riyadh without totally alienating Tehran. In the end, that meant supporting the Saudi blockade and providing logistical support to Saudi military strikes in Yemen. Once we started in this vein, we were locked in: Obama couldn’t afford to abandon the Saudis completely, but he also couldn’t risk the U.S. taking the lead in antiterrorist operations against Iran. Thus Yemen was caught between the Saudi blockade and the demonic ruthlessness of the Houthis.

The Saudi inability to dislodge the Houthis raised the pressure on the U.S. government to end its support for the blockade, and President Biden came into office promising exactly that. Indeed, Biden announced as much in March 2021, and then the administration took the Houthis off the list of foreign terrorist organizations. But reality, as it always does, intervened.

Now the Houthis have turned their fire on U.S. ships, in addition to other international commercial vessels traversing the Red Sea route. Biden’s removal of their terrorist designation only enabled their mischief, and has now been partially reversed. Nearly a decade after the U.S. began its passive participation in Yemen’s civil war, it has been forced to get directly involved by leading the coalition bombing of Houthi sites inside Yemen.

After ten days of strikes, the Biden administration has admitted that it’ll require an extended campaign to sufficiently weaken the Houthis’ ability to threaten Red Sea shipping, exacerbating the tensions within the president’s party between the hawks and the doves.

It turns out when you knowingly let a problem fester, it doesn’t solve itself. When you lead from behind, you often end up back where you started.

Every concession to Iran has been corrupting. Nearly a decade on, we find ourselves still paying for that ill-advised nuclear deal. There’s a lesson here about deferring our responsibilities in the hopes that someone will magically solve our problems for us. It didn’t work for the Mets, and it definitely won’t work for the leaders of the free world.
Seth Frantzman: With DeSantis out, will Mideast calculate odds on Trump win?
The question that regional leaders will begin to ask now is what might come of US policy over the next year. So far, media in the Gulf have been circumspect, with no major articles yet about what DeSantis’s decision means for the region. But regional leaders don’t always say what they are thinking.

A good example is the China-brokered Saudi-Iran deal, which was not leaked before it happened. There are also many trends afoot in the region, such as the Arab League welcoming the Assad regime back into its fold. There is also a rising crisis in Sudan, which is largely ignored by the world but nevertheless affects the region.

Meanwhile, the Hamas attack has also become an inflection point and has revealed that some countries in the region, such as Qatar and Turkey, continue to host Hamas leaders, and Russia and China did not condemn Hamas. It also appears that Russia and China are benefiting from the Houthi attacks, as their ships are not being targeted.

Regional media are also messaging about Saudi-Israel peace. Saudi Arabia-based English-language newspaper Arab News reported about how Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan had discussed the importance of resolving the Palestinian issue via a Palestinian state, which could lead to Israeli normalization with Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia has long had a proposal along these lines, so it isn’t exactly new. But Riyadh may now shift some calculations if it believes Trump is returning to office. Ankara may also shift its policies in Syria to be more aggressive in its strikes on eastern Syria. In addition, Russia’s war in Ukraine looms in the background of the region.

It appears that Moscow, for instance, did not condemn the Hamas attack, in part, because the distraction from its war in Ukraine was a welcome reprieve, with many issues up in the air.

Israel’s politics could also be affected by the US election, and its calculations about the Gaza war timetable may be altered.

It’s important to understand that US domestic politics has global ramifications, and many countries will be watching the GOP carefully to see what happens.
Netanyahu: Hamas has made no serious proposal for hostage deal
Hamas has failed to offer any serious proposal for a deal that would see the 130-plus captives held by the terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip released, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.

“Contrary to what is [being] said, there is no genuine proposal by Hamas,” Netanyahu told representatives of the hostages’ families during a meeting, according to a statement from his office. “This is not true.

“On the other hand, there is our initiative, which I will not detail,” stated Netanyahu, likely alluding to Saudi reports confirming renewed talks aimed at reviving the hostages-for-ceasefire deal that Hams violated in November.

On Sunday night, the prime minister confirmed that Hamas during negotiations had demanded that the Israel Defense Forces retreat from Gaza and end its war against the terrorist group, in addition to “the release of all the Nukhba [terrorist commando] murderers and rapists, and leaving Hamas intact.

“If we agree to this, our soldiers will have fallen in vain. If we agree to this, we will not be able to guarantee the security of our citizens. We will not be able to return the evacuees safely to their homes, and the next October 7 will only be a matter of time,” Netanyahu said.

On Monday, around 20 relatives of Israelis held hostage by Hamas disrupted a committee session at the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, demanding that lawmakers do more to free their loved ones.

Knesset security was unable to prevent the entry of the protesters, many of whom carried pictures of their family members taken to Gaza, and had to remove the group using force.

“Is it reasonable that 260 trucks of flour are entering Gaza now while my brother is eating nothing?” screamed Adi Angrest, whose brother Sgt. Matan Angrest remains in the Strip. “It doesn’t make any sense that my brother isn’t eating anything when they bring them 260 trucks of flour.”
'Gazans can't return home before hostages': 100 IDF officers in letter to government
Over 100 IDF officers who have served in Gaza signed a letter on Saturday addressed to the Security Cabinet saying not to let residents of Gaza return to their homes until the hostages are released.

The letter begins with the reiteration of the two main goals of the IDF in this war: The total destruction of Hamas and the successful release of all of the hostages.

According to the letter, the military operations in Gaza have been going fairly well until this point, and the officers expressed their appreciation for the progress being made toward these goals.

Mission not yet accomplished
However, the letter takes a shift in responding to recent developments in the war, including the IDF beginning to release reserve brigades and remove them from Gaza. "We see the IDF releasing brigades, and immediately the following questions arise: Did we achieve the goals that we set out to accomplish? What can we do with what we've achieved up until now?" the letter asked.

It proceeded to answer its own question by stating that the IDF and the Israeli government failed to turn the numerous small victories achieved around the Gaza Strip into an "overwhelming victory" to a systematic and strategic extent. Simply, the achievements until now have been significant but not enough to truly claim "mission accomplished," the officers argue.

The letter continued, claiming that it would be unfair to allow citizens of Gaza to their homes while there are still hostages that haven't been returned. The fact that hostages are still in captivity demands the simple equation, "there is no reason for Ahmed to return to his home in Gaza before Ziv and Gali return to their home in Kfar Aza," the letter states.
Hamas releases propaganda doc denying atrocities, blaming Israel for civilian deaths on Oct 7
Hamas has published a 16-page document presenting a justification for its actions on October 7. The document denies that the terror group committed atrocities against civilians, and calls for an international investigation into the events of the day, branding Hamas a “national liberation” group, battling “colonialism.”

On its front and back covers, the document features pictures of Gazans on an Israeli tank, as well as images of paragliders reminiscent of the early phases of the assault.

The document, titled “Our Narrative: Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” is addressed to “Arab and Islamic nations” and “free peoples worldwide.” It is divided into five parts: a narrative of the Arab-Israeli conflict; an account of October 7; a call for an “international investigation” of what happened; a presentation of the terror group itself; and a set of demands and calls to action.

The first section of the document presents the conflict as a 105-year battle by Palestinians against “colonialism.” It makes reference to the Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate, and recounts the formation of Israel by “Zionist gangs” while “the Palestinians were denied from [sic] the right to self-determination.”

The document levies accusations against Israel related to the Six Day War, West Bank settlements, and the supposed “Judaization” of the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem; it also makes reference to the issues of Palestinian prisoners, the blockade of Gaza, and the denial of a Palestinian right of return— maintaining, all the while, that the United States is complicit in Israel’s actions.

Denying atrocities on October 7, blaming Israel for civilian deaths
Hamas’s account of the October 7 attacks alleges that the “operation…targeted the Israeli military sites… and sought to arrest the enemy’s soldiers.” It avoids any mention of the bloody raids on Israeli towns and Kibbutzim.

It also avoids any mention of the approximately 240 people that Hamas took captive on October 7 as hostages, only implying their captivity in a claim that Israeli operations in Gaza were responsible for their deaths.

The document boasts of the Hamas terrorists’ “religious and moral commitment,” claiming that the “Al-Qassam Brigades fighters…avoid[ed] harm to civilians, especially children, women, and elderly people.” It adds that “if there was any case of targeting civilians; [sic] it happened accidentally and in the course of this confrontation,” and “maybe some faults happened during… implementation due to the rapid collapse of the Israeli security and military system.”

The terrorist group claims that “testimonies by Israelis” show that Hamas “did not target civilians,” invoking the “lie of the 40 beheaded babies”— a ‘debunked’ claim that was never in fact made by any Israeli press or spokespeople— and a report by the anti-Israel outlet Mondoweiss that reported a “lack of any evidence of mass rape.” The group blames Israeli helicopters for killing “many” of the 364 civilians massacred at the Nova music festival, saying that Hamas “had no prior knowledge of it.”


Behind the Curtain: Biden's Middle East moonshot
President Biden plans to keep pushing a grand bargain in the Middle East for the days after the war in Gaza — with the hope it could happen before the election, despite Israel's opposition, U.S. officials tell us.

The plan: Israel gets normalized relations with Saudi Arabia, in exchange for agreeing to an irreversible pathway to a Palestinian state — and allowing the Palestinian Authority to have a role in post-Hamas Gaza.

Why it matters: The Israelis aren't ready to accept a deal like this anytime soon. But they might eventually take it as U.S., international and internal pressure mounts in coming months, U.S. officials tell us.
- Biden needs to tap into and intensify that pressure without alienating pro-Israel American Jews at home.

Between the lines: This isn't a way to end the war. It's more aimed at setting up what comes after it.
- The administration — including Secretary of State Tony Blinken and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan— used comments in Davos, Switzerland, this past week to lay down its thinking more clearly than ever, in an effort to push world opinion.

What's happening: Biden is growing increasingly frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's refusal to engage in how to rebuild and run Gaza once he's done trying to decapitate Hamas, as Axios' Barak Ravid has reported in vivid detail.
- Bibi has vowed publicly to oppose any deal that provides the Palestinian Authority control over Gaza.

So U.S. officials are working with and around Bibi on a grand bargain to eventually stabilize the region. They believe Gaza needs to be run by a "revitalized Palestinian Authority," and that a new, formal Israel-Saudi alliance could help stabilize the surrounding environment.
- Tom Friedman flicked at the many obstacles to this deal in a New York Times column. Notably, he detailed the issues after speaking with Blinken in Davos.

How it works: New insight into these talks was some of the biggest news to emerge from Davos, which was otherwise dominated by talk of AI. As Barak Ravid chronicled in real time:
- Sullivan said the Biden administration's strategy for post-war Gaza is to link normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia to create a pathway for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
- The Saudi ambassador to the U.S., Princess Reema bint Bandar Al Saud, said later that any potential normalization agreement with Israel would be conditioned on a ceasefire in Gaza and the creation of an "irrevocable" pathway toward a Palestinian state.
- Blinken said the Israeli people and every Israeli "who's in office" will have to make hard decisions about this potential post-war diplomatic initiative.


White House: U.S. Still Opposes a Ceasefire in Gaza
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said on Friday that the U.S. still opposes a ceasefire in Gaza "for the same reason that we have in the past: We don't believe a ceasefire is going to be to the benefit of anybody but Hamas."

"We do support humanitarian pauses, as I said, to try to get hostages out and more aid in. But we don't support a ceasefire at this time. I think it's important to remember that there was a ceasefire in place on the 6th of October, and Hamas, Mr. Sinwar, chose to break that ceasefire. He's the one that chose this war. There was a ceasefire, which we obviously were supportive of, and Hamas chose to break it."

"The Israeli people have every right to expect that their military and that their government is going to act in their safety and security. And I guarantee you that if this was any other country, including this one, we wouldn't stand for that kind of threat to live next door to us like that - a threat that truly has existential ambitions. They want to wipe Israel off the face of the map. So the Israeli people have a right to expect that their government is going to try to protect them from that threat."


UN chief: Israeli opposition to two-state solution ‘totally unacceptable’
Without mentioning Benjamin Netanyahu by name, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres took aim at the Israeli premier on Sunday.

On Shabbat, Netanyahu issued a statement suggesting that Israeli security needs are incompatible with Palestinian statehood.

“The repeated refusal yesterday to accept the two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians is totally unacceptable,” Guterres said at the U.N. Third South Summit.

“The denial of the right to statehood for the Palestinian people would indefinitely prolong a conflict that has become a major threat to global peace and security, exacerbate polarization and embolden extremists everywhere,” he added.

After a conversation with U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday, and comments from Biden suggesting he might be able to convince Netanyahu to accept a Palestinian state under the right conditions, Netanyahu posted on social media on Saturday, “I will not compromise on full Israeli security control over all the territory west of Jordan—and this is contrary to a Palestinian state.”

Those comments did not sit well with Guterres, who was addressing the South Summit, the supreme decision-making body of the Group of 77, which consists of 135 developing countries and includes China.

In the speech, which Guterres delivered in Kampala, Uganda, the Middle East was a major focus.

“In Gaza, Israel’s military operations have spread massive destruction and killed civilians on a scale unprecedented during my time as secretary general, including more than 150 members of our own staff, following the horrific terror attacks by Hamas on Oct. 7,” said Guterres. “The Middle East is a tinderbox. We must do all we can to prevent conflict igniting across the region.”

After chastising Netanyahu, Guterres made no mention of consistent polling suggesting that most Palestinians don’t favor a two-state solution, or that Hamas officials have repeatedly called for Israel’s destruction.
Israeli FM demands EU backing for hostages’ return, defeat of Hamas
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz presented photos of Hamas captives baby Kfir Bibas and abducted women to the Council of the European Union’s Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels on Monday.

“I came here to talk with the European Union’s foreign ministers about two key issues—to return all the abductees and to receive the backing and support of the European Union for the elimination and dismantling of the terrorist organization Hamas to restore security to the citizens of the State of Israel,” Katz said.

The council brings together the top diplomats of all 27 E.U. member states. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt also attended the meeting, as did representatives of the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League.

Israel’s top diplomat will hold individual meetings with his counterparts from Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark France and Greece.

“We are continuing a diplomatic campaign to support the heroic IDF soldiers and defeat Hamas,” said Katz, according to a statement released ahead of the meetings. “I will work to mobilize the E.U. to exert pressure to secure the return of the hostages, take action against Hamas and advance economic projects that will transform the region and counter Iran.”

He said he would present strategic plans and projects to promote regional stability, including the “Tracks for Regional Peace” project linking Haifa to the Saudi Gulf port of Damman, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

Katz will also meet with Josep Borrell, the E.U.’s high representative for foreign affairs, and other officials.

Borrell, who is known for his anti-Israel sentiment, criticized Jerusalem’s conduct of the war to the media on Sunday, saying Israel “is seeding the hate for generations.

“To say that the goal is to destroy Hamas is something one-sided because it means that Israel will decide when it considers that [Hamas] has become sufficiently weak. It can’t go on like this,” the Catalan diplomat said.


Hamas Seeks to Wait Out Israel, Restore Presence in Northern Gaza
The Israeli campaign in Gaza is intense, but is unfolding in parameters Hamas has prepared for well.

Fuel, food, and logistical support for Gazans have resumed, as has the presence of residents and terrorists in areas recently defined as combat zones.

Such circumstances do not add pressure on Hamas. They only serve its "waiting-out and wear down Israel" strategy, providing Hamas with the hope that it could withstand the Israeli attack and ensure its continued existence as a military and governing entity in Gaza. For Israel, this is an intolerable scenario.

On a practical level, it is appropriate to step up Israeli airstrikes in any area where ground forces have been reduced. Hamas must not be allowed to establish governance in these areas. Hamas terrorists and officials should be targeted wherever they try to renew their presence.

Likewise, Israel should prevent residents from returning to northern Gaza and designate any area with tunnels as a combat zone.
Hamas losses: Up to 60% of terror forces out of action
Charting Hamas’s losses over more than 100 days of war with Israel, there are some critical data points:


On the positive side: 48-60% of Hamas’s forces are out of commission – meaning either killed, wounded, or arrested.

On the negative side: the IDF killed around 3,500 in northern Gaza in the initial three weeks of the invasion, but has only killed around 2,000 more in the last six weeks, indicating that elimination of Hamas forces has dropped steeply.

The IDF estimates it has killed 9,000 Hamas terrorists, wounded around 8,000 to a degree that they cannot easily return to battle (a much larger number have been wounded at lower levels), and has arrested 2,300.

This means 19,300 can no longer fight.

WSJ reported the number of dead, but not the number removed from battle
When The Wall Street Journal published a report citing US officials estimates that the IDF had only killed around 20-30% of Hamas’s forces, the report mentioned, but did not add together all of the elements of removing Hamas forces from the battlefield. So the WSJ figures did not encompass capture the whole picture.

But the most relevant question is how many battle-ready Hamas fighters remain. The problem is that the IDF has provided many different estimates of Hams numbers.


Seth Frantzman: The Hamas numbers game: Recruiting new terrorists
Israel is fighting a complex war in Gaza. But the question remains, when do you call success and how do you measure it? During the 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense, the IDF claimed to have targeted 1,500 Hamas terrorist sites and eliminated 19 leaders of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In 2014, the IDF said it eliminated hundreds of terrorists in Gaza during Protective Edge.

Over the years, Hamas has taken losses, but it also continued to expand its arsenal and the number of men it has under arms. For instance, back in 2009, it had an estimated 20,000 armed men; when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, it had around 30,000 armed men, according to estimates, organized into 24 battalions and 140 companies of men.

In essence, a Hamas “company” of men is supposed to have more than 215 men, fairly heavy companies in terms of a military organization. Hamas may have lost half its battalion commanders by December, while half its battalions had been broken down as well. The battalions are named after the areas in which they operate and are quite territorial units in that sense. The “Shati” battalion operated in Shati; it was later destroyed, and cannot be reconstituted in Shati. But, it can probably be reconstituted by recruiting among people who fled Shati to southern Gaza.

This is the question that now must bedevil Israeli policymakers regarding Gaza. With most of Gaza’s population now in the south – including more than a million people who fled the north during the fighting – Hamas now has a concentrated civilian population that can be preyed upon to serve its interests.

All Hamas has to do is recruit a small number of people – less than one percent – to fill up its ranks again. Hamas also has a lot of weapons to hand out to potential recruits, including AK-47s and RPGs.

Hamas may have lost most of its rocket arsenal, its “commando” units have been defeated or eliminated, and it may have lost battalion commanders and company commanders. But Hamas is also going to ground and seeking to fight a new kind of insurgency – so its need for heavy units, like a “company” of 200 men, is less relevant. It wants to use hit-and-run tactics, and it doesn’t need to train up new “battalions.”

If what Hamas wants is to recruit a few thousand more men, it likely has an easy resource in the fact that a million Gazans fled northern Gaza and are now sheltering in southern Gaza, where Hamas uses them as human shields.

The fact that the population that fled is composed mostly of women and children doesn’t prevent Hamas from recruiting from among the teenagers and young men that made up its ranks in the first place. Herein lies an issue with the numbers game, it’s not that the metrics are an issue, but that Hamas recruitment will be an issue as the war drags on into more and more months.
Israel foils ISIS-inspired terror attack near Knesset
Israeli security forces recently thwarted an Islamic State-inspired terrorist attack that was to be carried out near the Knesset in Jerusalem, the Israel Police and Israel Security Agency reported on Monday.

The Jerusalem District Attorney’s Office on Monday submitted to the city’s district court an indictment against two eastern Jerusalem residents who identified with ISIS— Mustafa Abdel Nabi, 19, and Ahmad Natsha, 20. The pair were arrested in the Ras al-Amud neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem on Dec. 26.

According to the charges filed, the two watched daily videos released by the ISIS terror group, including religious sermons, beheadings and other executions. ISIS and Hamas flags were also found with them, as well as chemical materials to prepare explosives and a notebook with instructions on how to prepare explosives, among other findings. Hamas flags found in the homes of two eastern Jerusalem residents arrested on suspicion of plotting a major terror attack in the city. Credit: Police Spokesperson.

They intended to blow up a truck full of gas tanks near Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, in the Givat Ram neighborhood.

Israeli security forces last month also arrested two other Palestinians planning ISIS-inspired terror attacks in Jerusalem, the Israel Police and ISA cleared for publication earlier in January.

The suspects, both in their twenties, were arrested in December in the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Jebel Mukaber, according to a joint police and ISA statement.

During a weeks-long investigation, authorities learned that the two were influenced by ISIS content online and on Telegram, including graphic videos of killings around the world.

The pair planned to plant improvised explosive devices around eastern Jerusalem aimed at security forces, and to commit other acts of terror.
Knesset considering military tribunals, death penalty for Oct. 7 terrorists
Over 100 days after they massacred Israelis in kibbutzim and cities near the Gaza border, hundreds of Hamas terrorists who participated in the Oct. 7 attack remain in Israeli prisons. The terrorists are in administrative detention, and a recent Knesset amendment extended the period in which the state can bar them from seeing a lawyer until April, as they await trial.

But the kind of trial they will face remains an open question — one that the Justice Ministry began to consider shortly after the attack, and one that will likely require legislation. The Knesset Law, Constitution and Justice Committee has established a confidential subcommittee meeting to discuss prosecuting Hamas terrorists who are part of the group’s special forces unit, Nukhba; the subcommittee held its second meeting on Sunday.

Committee Chairman Simcha Rothman of the Religious Zionist Party told Jewish Insider that “the Justice Ministry already understands that we need an amendment to the law, because current criminal law does not fit the events of Oct. 7.”

Regular courts would likely be overwhelmed by the number of terrorists who would need to be put on trial, creating a backlog and long delays, Chagai Vinizky, a military judge and candidate for the Supreme Court in 2021, noted in a paper for The Begin Institute for Law and Zionism submitted to the subcommittee.

Rothman expressed concern that such lengthy regular criminal proceedings “would be taken advantage of to disrupt investigations and coordinate between [the Nukhba terrorists].”

There are also difficulties in finding evidence to tie individual terrorists to specific victims beyond a reasonable doubt, as required in a murder trial. DNA samples were not collected according to usual procedure in light of the scale of the attack — 1,200 killed and thousands injured — and the need to collect the bodies in what remained an active combat zone for days. Other than the attack on the Nova music festival, the vast majority of the survivors hid and were unable to provide eyewitness descriptions of the killers. In addition, the terrorists burned many structures and bodies that could have carried evidence.

Yet, Israeli law allows for the death penalty or life in prison for those who abetted or failed to prevent genocide, including incitement or attempted participation, which may be easier to prove. In the case of Oct. 7, GoPros and cell phone recordings provide video evidence of the presence of terrorists during the attack. In addition, genocide charges would “express the unique severity of the actions,” according to the Begin Institute paper.
IDF kicks off fierce battle in western Khan Yunis
Israel Defense Forces troops are engaged in a massive military assault against Hamas targets in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, killing more than 50 terrorists, including a Hamas company commander, the military said on Monday evening.

The combat inside the city—preceded by airstrikes on Sunday night and includes parts of the IDF’s Givati Infantry Brigade, 7th Armored Brigade, paratroopers and commando forces—is expected to last at least several days.

Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza and one of the masterminds of the Oct. 7 massacre of some 1,200 persons in Israel, is believed to be hiding in Khan Yunis, as is Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades “military wing.”

Israeli forces are surrounding the terror hotspot and steadily advancing towards “the center of gravity” of Hamas’s Khan Yunis Brigade, wrote Ynet, describing it as Sinwar and Deif’s “home brigade.”

Ahead of the battle, civilian homes were marked to avoid collateral damage, Israel’s Kan News public broadcaster reported. Palestinian civilians have started to leave western Khan Yunis due to “heavy Israeli bombing,” Arab media said.

Earlier on Monday, the army said that soldiers of the Kfir Infantry Brigade operating in Bani Suheila, east of Khan Yunis, killed dozens of armed Hamas terrorists and discovered large numbers of firearms, explosive devices, grenades and rockets.

As Israeli troops moved to surround western Khan Yunis on Sunday night, the Kfir Brigade was pulled out of Gaza for rest and training and was replaced with other units, the IDF said.

Three IDF soldiers fell in battle during fighting in southern Gaza, the IDF announced on Monday night. The troops were named as Maj. David Nati Alfasi, 27, from Beersheva; Maj. Ilay Levy, 24, from Tel Aviv; and Capt. Eyal Mevorach Twito, 22, from Beit Gamliel.

Their deaths bring the number of military personnel killed since Oct. 7 on all fronts to 535. A total of 200 soldiers have died in the Strip since the start of ground operations there on Oct. 27.


Father of decapitated soldier whose head was for sale tells of son's final moments
David Tahar greets us at the door of his sister’s apartment in Jerusalem. He offers coffee and a comfortable place to sit in the winter sun by the open kitchen window. For more stories from The Media Line go to themedialine.org

We are here to speak about his son, Sgt. Adir Tahar, a sniper in the Golani Brigade’s Unit 13 who served on a base near the Erez crossing on the northern Gaza Strip border.

David Tahar's pride in his son is clear. His army hat "never leaves my head," says Tahar.

But clear too is the pain in David Tahar's eyes. On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists infiltrated his son’s base. They beheaded 19-year-old Sgt. Adir Tahar and stole his head back to the Gaza Strip. And then they attempted to ransom it.

The terrorists filmed and published video footage of their attack on the base, including of Adir Tahar’s headless corpse. The footage has been made available to The Media Line, although we will not be publishing it, in accordance with David Tahar’s wishes.
Three IDF soldiers killed in ambush in Khan Yunis
The IDF on Monday announced that three IDF soldiers were killed in an ambush in Khan Yunis.

The three were IDF Maj. David Nati Alfasi, 27 from Beersheba, IDF Maj. Ilay Levy, 24 from Tel Aviv, and IDF Capt. Eyal Mevorach Twito, 22 from Beit Gamliel. All three were in Battalion 202 of the paratroopers. The total number of fallen soldiers since October 7 is now 535.

IDF's Khan Yunis push
Additionally, the IDF has launched a major division-level new push in western Khan Yunis, ushering in likely the most intense fighting since early December when the military first entered other parts of Hamas’s southern capital.

Division 98 has unleashed serious forces from its seven brigades, artillery, tanks, and air support, and surrounded western Khan Yunis which until now the IDF had mostly steered clear of.

The IDF’s message earlier in the morning about large amounts of airstrikes was in preparation to give the ground forces an easier time moving into the new areas.


Israel Has Tactical Superiority over Hizbullah in Lebanon Fighting
Israel's northern border area is an active combat zone.

About 170 Hizbullah fighters have been killed since Oct. 8, along with 19 members of other terror groups. Israel has lost nine soldiers and six civilians.

U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein visited Israel and Lebanon last week in an attempt to find a diplomatic solution to the current impasse.

Diplomatic processes generally require concessions on both sides. The systematic violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, however, has come from the Hizbullah side alone.

Hizbullah began to rebuild its presence along the border immediately after the ceasefire that ended the 2006 war, in direct contravention of Resolution 1701, which requires it to stay north of the Litani River.

From the Israeli point of view, it is being asked to discuss territorial concessions as a reward for Hizbullah's unilateral violations.

The number of fighters that Hizbullah has lost is large and creeps up every week. In tactical encounters, Hizbullah appears to have little response to superior Israeli intelligence, and use of drones and missiles to target its teams close to the border.

Hizbullah's fighters' recent combat experience was in fighting poorly armed and trained Sunni Islamist militias in Syria. It is now encountering a very different enemy that has tactical superiority.

Hizbullah-associated Arabic media channels are nearly silent on the fighting at the Lebanon-Israel border, while giving saturation coverage to events in Gaza.

Evidently, Hizbullah sees little to celebrate as its forces continue to absorb losses.


US Navy declares two SEALs missing in Gulf of Aden as deceased
Two US Navy SEALs who went missing in the Gulf of Aden earlier this month during a raid on a boat carrying Iranian weapons have not been located following an exhaustive search and their status has been changed to deceased, military officials said on Sunday.

The SEALs were reported missing after boarding the vessel in a Jan. 11 operation near the coast of Somali, the US Central Command said on X.

“We mourn the loss of our two Naval Special Warfare warriors, and we will forever honor their sacrifice and example. Our prayers are with the SEALs’ families, friends, the US Navy, and the entire Special Operations community during this time,” CENTCOM Commander General Michael Erik Kurilla said in a statement.

Ongoing recovery mission
A joint operation carried out by the United States, Spain and Japan searched more than 21,000 square miles of ocean for the missing SEALs, CENTCOM said in the statement.

That mission had now become a recovery operation, CENTCOM said.
JCPA: Iran's Economic Attack: Blocking Israel's Trade Artery in the Red Sea
On Nov. 19, 2023, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei called on the Muslim countries to "block Israel's [vital] arteries."

Iran is using the Houthis to prevent goods from reaching Israel through the Red Sea. Israel's Eilat Port has seen an 85% reduction in activity.

The aim is to increase the pressure on Israel at a time when Iran is in no position to take part directly in the war against Israel and the U.S. because of its own economic crisis.

Iran's economy is based on oil and its foreign currency revenues depend on its oil exports. It is necessary for the West to augment the pressure on Iran by ramping up economic pressure, among other things by preventing its illegal oil exports.

Israel should consider adopting a policy of an eye-for-an-eye or "a trade artery for a trade artery."

Israel should cooperate with international bodies to locate, track, and report on the Iranian tankers' violation of international laws on shipping, and consider more creative actions to hamper their movement.


Saudi Arabia, Jordan Help Circumvent Houthi Blockade of Red Sea
To circumvent the dangerous waters in the Red Sea, where cargo vessels have come under repeated attacks from the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, Israeli companies were being assisted by Gulf nations and even Israel's neighbor to the east, Jordan.

The Houthis began what is essentially a blockade near the Bab el Mandeb straits to prevent the movement of ships they say are connected to Israel, in their efforts to assist the Hamas terror group in its war in Gaza.

Cargo vessels and oil and gas tankers have come under missile and drone attack forcing many companies to reroute their ships to longer and more expensive passages around Africa, refusing to endanger their cargo and using the ports in southern Europe, including in Greece and Italy while preferring to avoid Israel all together.

The economic damage however is felt not only by Israel and has impacted the supply chain in Europe as well. Electric car giant Tesla announced it would be closing its Berlin plant for two weeks due to a shortage of parts after delays in supplies caused by the Houthi threat.

One company that found a solution to the blockade is Mentfield logistics, which supplies much of the cargo destined for Israel. In coordination with the Israeli envoy to Bahrain, Eitan Naveh, ships traveling from China and India, unload their cargo in Bahrain and Dubai where it is loaded on Saud and Jordanian trucks and makes its way over land, to Israel, where Israeli trucks then receive the goods at the King Hussein border crossing with Jordan.

Company CEO Omer Yitzhari said the company has had to be creative in its solutions, even during the coronavirus pandemic when it chartered planes to bring essential goods such as medical protective gear or eggs, into the country.

"Today we are dealing with the Houthi threat to maritime routes. We understood that the shortest and least expensive solution to transport goods from the east is via Saudi Arabia and from there, overland to Jordan and then into Israel," he said.

Industry officials said the advantages of the land rout is its speed. The cost of transporting a container from the east to Israel before the war was around $2,000. Today because of the need to take a longer route, the cost it had spiked to $8,000. Before the war it would take the container 30 days to arrive but now it could reach up to 60 days. Over land, containers arrive within 20 days.

"If you are an Israeli importer and you want to transfer materials ahead of the Passover holiday, you are in trouble if you use a sea route. You have no choice but to use the ports in Bahrain and Dubai and transport your goods over land," one importer said. "There is also an interesting political aspect to this and a kind gesture from Saudi Arabia and Jordan. There are now more trucks making the trip over land and the number is growing at a maddening speed," he said.
To circumvent the danger in the Red Sea, where cargo vessels have come under repeated attacks from the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, ships traveling from China and India are unloading their cargo in Bahrain and Dubai.

The cargo is then loaded on Saudi and Jordanian trucks which travel over land to Israel, where Israeli trucks receive the goods at the King Hussein border crossing.
Eve Barlow: we will dance again
Your silence isn’t deafening. It’s antisemitic. This is how a Holocaust happens.

I know it’s not sexy. There is nothing to be gained from talking about rape, mutilitation, mass death. Nothing. There is no “selling” the fight against antisemitism. It cannot be popularized. It is the face of true evil, exposed. The truth. Too much for most to handle. But you know what the fight against antisemitism is? It’s the right thing to do. So you just have to get stuck in and do it. That’s it. End of story. The truth is a hard pill to swallow. People need it shoved down their throats.

As for my fellow Jews: standing up for ourselves isn't bold or courageous or brave, or any of those things. It's normal. When people are trying to come for you, it's normal to speak out about it and say - I will defend myself from your baseless life-threatening attacks. Jews won't tell you to "educate yourselves", instead it's normal for us to explain our point of view, and it's normal for us to realize that you'll look for another point of view until you have the one that suits you best. We know you'll do that and we'll laugh because it's so silly. Cool! But we will continue to stand up for ourselves because that's normal. It's a normal human reaction. What isn't normal is avoiding it or being quiet or trying to play both sides. That's weird and stupid and unhealthy. It's good and healthy and normal to stand up for yourself. So be normal. Don’t be like the Jewish popstar who saw me running the other morning and covered their entire face with one hand to avoid having to face me, and their own shame. We partied at Glastonbury together many, many years ago. Never again.

It’s awards season right now. In years gone by that would be a busy time of year for me. But no more. That part of my life ended, and it’s never coming back.

There are bigger things happening now than awards or industry developments that I would join in celebrating or crying over. For me life got slow and alienated and isolated when I spoke out against what I essentially identified as progressive radicalization a few years ago. I spoke out against it because I saw what was coming, and people responded to me like I was some extremist conspiratorial nutcase. But I was right. I was right.

And so I lost my career and almost all my friends. I lost my social life. I lost everything that was attached to my identity apart from one thing: who I am. I’m a Jew and I believe in the truth. And because of that over the course of time I started to attract more and more people like me. Some Jewish. Some not. But everyone could identify that the loudest people were not telling the truth. They were creating a tribal war and signing up to an ideology they didn’t fully understand. It went from one cause into another into another. So much so that now the people I once knew in the fields of Glastonbury are actively marching in the streets in support of a terrorist organization who mass raped women, kidnapped babies and murdered elderly people in their homes.

I have no regrets. As dark as the world is, I feel security knowing I am aligned with people who see the truth, who have stopped lying to themselves. I’m so grateful to have a platform that means something to people who need it, who congregate around it. Together we can build something better. Something honest. Something that has teeth. Thank you for being here and for supporting me through the worst years, the gaslighting, the bullying and the mocking, the being told I was hysterical, the dehumanization. You came along with me, and there aren’t enough words to thank you. I don’t care about being trolled. I care about fighting terrorism.


Families of hostages held in Gaza for 107 days demands answers from the Israeli government

'Their bodies were desecrated in different ways' - Search & Rescue volunteer depicts Oct. 7 horrors



Call Me Back PodCast: Israel’s escalating internal debates — with Haviv Rettig Gur
Hosted by Dan Senor
In today’s weekly check-in with Haviv Rettig Gur from the Times of Israel, we discuss intensifying debates within Israel over the leadership of the government, how to reconcile seemingly irreconcilable war aims as Israel transitions to a new phase in the war, is there an actual disagreement on concrete policy objectives between different members of the War Council, and what to make of the growing protest movement.


The Quad: Israel on Trial! The Hypocrisy of the "Palestinian Genocide" Claim
This week, the Quad discuss the case brought before the International Court of Justice that claims that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians. Should Israel have gone? Is there any merit to the claims? Why is South Africa the country that is bringing this claim? Is the world once again taking its eye off the ball on who the real terrorists are?

In addition, the Quad interview actor and comedian Ben Gleib who has also been battling against the claim of genocide nightly with one of the most virulently anti-Israel activists Cenk Uygur. He explains why he continues at the Young Turks even though it is outspokenly anti-Israel and what he is currently doing in Israel.




‘I’ll always stand by Israel’ Sunak tells CFI event
Rishi Sunak has repeated his calls for a “sustainable ceasefire” and an increase in humanitarian aid to Gaza, along with talks aimed at forging two states, but made clear that before they could happen, Hamas must release all its hostages and be removed from power.

The prime minister made his remarks in his keynote speech at the annual lunch hosted on Monday by Conservative Friends of Israel in front of no fewer than 19 of his Cabinet colleagues. The audience included former British PMs Liz Truss and Boris Johnson; their Israeli counterpart, Ehud Barak; Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely and the families of four of the hostages still being held by the terrorists in Gaza.

The only members of the Cabinet not present were Scottish Secretary Allister Jack, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and First Secretary to the Treasury Laura Trott. The JC understands that the absent ministers also wished to attend, but had unavoidable commitments elsewhere.

After the event, Barak told the JC: “This was a very important show of support for Israel in time of war and it is so obviously genuine. Coming here today has shown me how closely Jews are integrated into the heart of this nation, which is very encouraging.”

Before the event, held at the Intercontinental hotel in central London, Foreign Secretary David Cameron (who is also a former PM) spent time with the families of hostages Liri Albag, 19, who was kidnapped on October 7, and Danielle Gilboa, also 19, who was taken at the Nova dance festival where Hamas murdered 360 people.

Also present were friends and close family members of Ziv and Gaeili Berman, who were kidnapped from Kibbutz Kfar Azar, and of Elia Cohen and Idan Stivim, who were both abducted from the festival.

Sunak said: “To the families of the hostages here today we say, you are in our thoughts, and we say with one voice, ‘bring them home’.”


MPs Tom Tugendhat and Lisa Nandy to address Manchester march against antisemitism
MPs Tom Tugendhat and Lisa Nandy will be speaking at Manchester’s march against antisemitism on Sunday, at what is expected to be the largest gathering in history of the Manchester Jewish community.

Tugendhat, who is security minister and Nandy, the shadow minister for international development will be joined by MP Nicola Richards, co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Antisemitism and Lord Mann, the government’s independent adviser on antisemitism.

Marc Levy, CEO of Manchester Jewish Representative Council, said they were hoping for a turnout of around 5,000 people.

He told the JC: “Jewish people are having to endure an unprecedented surge in hate crime directly stemming from the terrorist atrocities committed in Israel on October 7th.

“Across the region, the Jewish community has been subjected to appalling abuse, physical attacks and desecration of property.”

He added that members of the community had “been forced to conceal their identities” while the city centre had “effectively been turned into a no-go zone most weekends due to overt antisemitism on anti-Israel marches”.

Other speakers will include The Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis, Marie van der Zyl, President of the Board of Deputies and Auschwitz Birkenau survivor, Ike Alterman.


Protester disrupts Dean Phillips’s campaign event over ceasefire
Rep. Dean Phillips‘s (D-MN) get-out-the-vote rally in New Hampshire was interrupted Saturday by a protester who pressured the congressman to endorse a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

During the question-and-answer portion of the event, the protester began shouting over Phillips to get him to call for a ceasefire.

“I hope you never see the videos of what they propagated that day in Israel,” Phillips said about the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack against Israel that killed over 1,400 people.

“We have seen the videos,” the man interrupted Phillips.

“Let me answer the question, sir,” Phillips shot back.

The crowd shouted down the protester to be quiet.

“So here’s how I feel,” Phillips continued in his response. “I believe in the State of Israel and I believe it should be safe and secure and prosperous and should exist.”

Phillips also said Palestinians deserve to live in peace.

“Now, I also believe deeply in the Palestinian cause,” Phillips said. “I believe deeply that Palestinians should have self-determination. I believe deeply that there must be a State of Palestine created and (that) we recognize. I believe that they should live side by side in peace.”

Once the congressman finished his response on the topic, the protester asked for a follow-up question and then shouted at him.


Exclusive audio reveals NSW cabinet minister’s wife disciplined for pro-Palestinian activism
Sky News host Sharri Markson has revealed a NSW cabinet minister's wife has been disciplined by the Department of Education for pro-Palestinian activism at the public school where she teaches.

Despite this action, the Emergency Services Minister Jihad Dib's wife, Erin, was part of a small group of teachers on Friday plotting a protest outside the offices of Chris Minns, Anthony Albanese or Jason Clare.

During the meeting, Ms Dib, a teacher at Burwood Girls’ High, offered to help produce a booklet to distribute at schools which accuses Israel of genocide and it explains how to get around the Education Department code of conduct.

Sky News has obtained an exclusive audio recording of the Teachers for Palestine group meeting on Friday which was attended by about 15 people.

In the explosive audio recording, Ms Dib discloses who her husband is as they debate which politician's office to hold a rally outside of.


‘Something has to give’: Pro-Palestinian 'cannot continue' as they currently are
Sky News host Caleb Bond says “something has to give” as pro-Palestinian rallies are costing the Australian taxpayer over $200,000 each time they go through with a protest.

“$220,000, something has to give, at some point,” Mr Bond said.

“Surely, whether it is the state government stepping in or the police simply saying well we’re going to show you and we’re not going to rock up and patrol this protest.

“Then someone will have to do something about it after that.

“It cannot continue as it currently is.”


Dozens of doctors reported to watchdog over Israel-Gaza social media posts
Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler made a complaint to AHPRA in October about a Melbourne doctor who he claims played down Hamas’ massacre of 260 partygoers at the Supernova Music Festival in Israel.

He alleges the doctor said: “There is no denial that crimes were committed, but the whole ‘naked women were pack raped or disrobed and displayed’ narrative is not factual ... It’s a rave party … the attire doesn’t include long sleeves and pants.”

Leibler said the GP, who this masthead has chosen not to name, “owes professional obligations in how she uses her profile and platform as an Australian medical doctor”.

Medical indemnity insurer Avant emailed its members in November to advise them to carefully consider how they comment on the crisis.

They were advised not to post social media content that may “reflect poorly on your role as a doctor and on the reputation of the broader medical profession”.

Anti-Defamation Commission chair Dr Dvir Abramovich said he had been shocked by some of “the hateful posts” he had seen from doctors.

“These include posts comparing Israel’s defence of its citizens to the Holocaust, others labelling Israel an apartheid state and calling for a boycott of Israel. It is antisemitic to its core,” he said.

“Clinics should not be turned into battlefields and hotbeds of anti-Israel propaganda and incitement.”


Jews attacked in London; police respond only after being called 10 times
Three Jews, all in their 20s, were violently attacked in Leicester Square in central London early on Sunday morning. The victims were reportedly targeted after being overheard speaking Hebrew.

Tehilla, 28, told the Telegraph about the harrowing experience. Despite making 10 distress calls to the Metropolitan Police fearing for her life, no officers responded, she said.

En route to a nightclub, the trio initially sought to defuse the situation when accosted for speaking Hebrew and opted to walk away. The three were confronted again about 2 a.m., this time with threats and offensive language in Arabic.

“They heard us talking and said, ‘Are you Jewish?’” Tehilla told the paper. “I said, ‘Yes, I’m Jewish.’ And then they started chanting ‘Free Palestine’, and [expletive] Jews, all this kind of swearing at us.”

The situation escalated rapidly, with assailants growing from two or three to a mob of 15 to 20 people, who attacked the three physically, according to the Daily Mail.

Tehilla was disheartened by the police’s lack of immediate response to her repeated calls.

“They don’t really care. They kept saying ‘I’m sorry. It takes some time, you are not the only one that called tonight,’” she said, expressing shock at the incident.

According to the Daily Mail officers arrived at the scene only after 28 minutes had elapsed.

Police arrived at Tehilla’s residence some 16 hours after the first call.

A friend of the victims claimed that police did not show up at the hospital, where the victims were being treated, despite assurances they would do so.


Pro-Palestine protests shut down main street of Sundance Film Festival
Pro-Palestinian protesters took to the annual Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah on Sunday, attempting to capture the attention of international media, Deadline Hollywood reported.

The crowd, shouting, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," was joined by actress Melissa Barrera. Barrera is a Mexican actress known for her roles in the film series, "Scream" and "In The Heights." Barrera joined nearly 100 protesters, chanting against President Joe Biden and shouting at protesters from the Bring Them Home movement to return Israel's hostages in Gaza.

The group of protesters were under heavy police surveillance, US media reported.

Deadline Hollywood reported that the protesters likely wanted to gain as much attention as possible from Sundance's huge media presence.

The group of protesters shouted remarks against President Joe Biden's ties with the Jewish State over the destructive October 7 Massacre. US media reported that protesters recycled an "old anti-Vietnam War chant," with signs referring to the President as a "butcher" and people shouting, “Genocide Joe, what do you say? How many kids did you kill today?”

Melissa Barrera shows support for Palestinians, even after losing jobs due to antisemitic remarks
Celebrity supporter Barrera was fired by Spyglass Media from Scream VII in November following the actress' pro-Palestinian remarks made on social media. The studio found her remarks antisemitic, though she disagreed.

Days later, she posted on her Instagram story exclaiming, “First and foremost, I condemn Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. I condemn hate and prejudice of any kind against any group of people.”


Democratic Socialists face seven-figure ‘crisis’ amid Palestinian support that may force dreaded layoffs of staff
The Democratic Socialists of America are red all over — with a financial situation so dire that some leaders are demanding job cuts and the layoff of staffers just like a corporate America entity, The Post has learned.

The DSA — which has led protests against Israel over the Jewish state’s retaliatory response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack — is deep in a seven-figure hole and desperately in need of a way to stanch the red ink, members acknowledge.

“We will cut $500,000 from staff-related expenses. We will first ask for volunteers from both director-level and bargaining unit staff to have their position cut and receive severance,” according to a proposal advanced by members of DSA’s National Political Committee affiliated with its Marxist Bread and Roses caucus.

“If necessary, we will then explore initiating lay-offs according to the DSA union’s contract,” the DSA officers said.

The situation appears to be a case of an organization that blindly seeks utopia and professes support of the working class clashing with reality — forcing it to have to balance a budget like the rest of America and even contemplate layoffs hated by labor unions.

“DSA is in a financial crisis and staff-related costs account for 58% of our total expenditures and 72% of our projected income,” wrote DSA members Alex Pellitteri, Kristin Schall and Laura Wadlin in the cost-cutting proposal.

“The current deficit will force us to make 7-figure budget cuts. This will require us to make painful decisions that will impact all levels of the organization. … Given our current financial state, we do not believe we can have a healthy, democratic, and effective organization while spending the amount we currently do on staff,” they said.

“If necessary, we will then explore initiating lay-offs according to the DSA union’s contract. Be it resolved: The Personnel Committee will be responsible for determining the quantity and type of positions to be eligible for buy-out or layoff, and they will assist with logistics and a staff transition plan,” the group said.

Progressive Jewish activists are blaming DSA leaders who blindly back Palestinian groups at least partly for the fiscal crisis, saying they have damaged the group’s credibility and lost support by backing the Hamas terrorists.


Toronto Star Columnist Says Anti-Israel Activists – Who Routinely Break The Law Unimpeded – Are the Victims Of An Assault On Free Expression

Australian Open fans take hands-on approach to dealing with free-Palestine campaigner
The incident took place in the third set of the match involving British No 1 Norrie and world No 6 Zverev, which was staged on the tournament’s second-biggest court: Margaret Court Arena. All 7,500 seats were filled for a contest that was delivering some high-quality tennis.

As Norrie tried to close out a service game, deep in the third set, a woman stood up from her seat near the front of the stands, shouted “Free Palestine”, and started tossing pamphlets in all directions. The front cover of the pamphlets were emblazoned with the message “War crimes and genocide. Free Palestine.”

In an echo of last year’s security issues over pro-Russian protests on the steps of Rod Laver Arena, there was no uniformed guard to deal with the issue. But a woman in a flowery shirt took the initiative, grabbing the satchel from which the protester was pulling the pamphlets, and then dragging her out onto the stairway.

A second, male fan then joined the first. Together, they grabbed an arm each and forced the struggling protester up the stairs and out of the arena. Norrie and Zverev were able to resume play after only 90 seconds, because the ball-kids had been able to gather the fallen pamphlets from the court’s surface without much trouble.

There was a second brief delay after a couple more points had been played, because the two fans came back into the arena and resumed their seats to an ovation from the rest of the stadium. It was arguably the largest cheer of the day.




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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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