Wednesday, August 14, 2024
Elder of ZiyonThere is desperation in Western media to declare Israel’s campaign in Gaza, Operation Swords of Iron, a failure. Over the past several months, there has been a steady supply of analysis beating the same drum: Israel is not winning. Hamas remains intact. The Israeli government has no plan. The very notion of a military victory is illusory. And so on. It’s a genre unto itself—one which, unsurprisingly, tracks precisely with the official talking points of the Biden-Harris administration and other Western governments that have been trying to bend Israel’s operation against Hamas to fit their own failed paradigms.Hamas, whether it still has cohesive battalions or not, has been unable to land a decisive blow against the IDF since the start of ground maneuver operations. The IDF has killed some 17,000 Hamas fighters, and Hamas’ senior leadership has taken significant casualties, including the group’s former head, Ismail Haniyeh, and before that, its top military commander Muhammad Deif. Those who are still alive are in hiding. The group’s battalion command structure is badly damaged. Their weapons manufacturing capability is diminished. They cannot launch a repeat of Oct. 7. The Philadelphi Corridor has been seized and the tunnels to Egypt are being dismantled. Importantly, Netanyahu’s office has stressed that Israel has no plans to cede control of the corridor.At the start of the war, Western analysts and government officials told us that none of this could be done. In less than 10 months, this is an impressive achievement by the IDF, given the remarkable built-in defensive capabilities of Hamas. Finishing the job will take longer still.
The story of the Philadelphi Corridor spans over four decades of smuggling, broken promises, accusations and indirectly, numerous casualties. This has long been a problem for Israel, as the transfer of weapons, terrorists, infiltrators and goods beneath the border between Gaza and Egypt was a known and frustrating issue long before Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in 2007 and even before the disengagement in 2005.However, only during the massacre of October 7 and the subsequent war did the extent of its impact on building a terrorist army in the Gaza Strip become evident.
In recent days, soldiers from the Givati Brigade operated in the Shabura area in Rafah under the command of the 162nd Division, where they eliminated approximately 100 terrorists, and numerous weapons and terror infrastructure sites were destroyed.
Off grid: How does Yahya Sinwar lead Hamas from underground? - analysis
Recent reports have painted a picture of Sinwar on the run, leaving rooms in tunnels with the coffee still hot, as he has been pursued. This may be accurate, but it also shows that he continues to find a way to work behind the scenes to control Hamas. The fact that Hamas has elevated him now to its “political” leadership shows that there is no difference between the “military” and “political” wings of Hamas and that the mastermind of the October 7 genocide is firmly in control. He uses couriers to pass messages, the recent reports indicated.
Who Is Ilan Goldenberg, Kamala Harris’s New Liaison to the Jews?
Goldenberg has longstanding ties to the anti-Israel group J Street and served as a foreign policy adviser to Elizabeth Warren’s failed 2020 presidential bid. Throughout his professional career, both in and out of government, he has served as a public defender of the Democratic party’s criticisms of Israel, a critic of the GOP’s efforts to strengthen ties with the Jewish state, and a proponent of deepening diplomatic relations with Iran.
Before joining the Biden administration in 2021, Goldenberg participated in a briefing organized by the anti-Israel group J Street in which he described President Joe Biden’s historically pro-Israel view as "old school" and said the United States must "publicly criticize the Israelis" in order to pressure them to accept a ceasefire.
Goldenberg was also a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s approach to the region, panning the president’s decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, which he described as a "bad idea" that should only take place if the United States accompanies it with a "formal recognition of the state of Palestine."
China Is Now Goading Iran into Attacking Israel
China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi on August 11 told Iran's acting foreign minister that Beijing supports the Islamic Republic defending its "sovereignty, security, and national dignity." Wang said that killing Hamas's Ismail Haniyeh, the terrorist group's political leader, in Tehran violated Iran's sovereignty and threatened regional stability.
As countries around the world pressure Iran not to strike Israel — Tehran blames the Jewish state for the bomb that killed Haniyeh on July 31 — China was, in effect, publicly goading Iran to act.
Why would the Chinese foreign minister do that? Perhaps because Beijing believes that its proxy, Iran, is losing a war and has to act fast.
Hamas is a proxy of Iran. Iran's regime believes that it is no one's proxy, but the Chinese seem to think that Iran is indeed theirs.
Whether Iran is China's claw or not, Tehran could not have launched the October 7 war without the direct and indirect support of the Chinese state.
Report: Iran's central bank crippled in massive cyberattack
A major cyber attack has targeted the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) and several other banks, causing widespread disruptions in the country's banking system, according to a report by Iran International.
Iran International, a news outlet aligned with the Iranian opposition, said the scale and impact of the attack suggest it could be one of the largest cyberattacks on Iran's state infrastructure to date. This incident occurs against a backdrop of rising tensions in the Middle East and international pressure on Iran.
For Lasting Peace, Keep the IDF in Gaza
Since Israel withdrew in 2005, Gazans have endured two decades of fanatical rule. They are now suffering from a war that Hamas began by killing 1,200 Israelis. What ails Gaza is not a lack of autonomy or even a government without popular legitimacy––Hamas received a majority of seats in the 2006 parliamentary elections, and most Gazans still support the October 7th massacre. The basic problem is misrule by a terror group too long unresisted by the IDF.
The West Bank since October 7 is altogether different. Although Israel has fought terrorist cells in the northern cities of Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nablus, nothing like Gaza-grade destruction has been visited upon West Bank Palestinians. West Bank terrorism is simply less threatening to Israelis, because over two decades of ongoing Israeli operations before October 7—sometimes assisted and sometimes opposed by Hamas’s rivals in the Palestinian Authority—have kept terror networks from forming.
Israel should finish off Hamas and resist the Biden-Harris demands for concessions to terrorists (NY Post)
Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s planned Mideast trip will mean more pressure on Israel to make concessions to Hamas, yet Jerusalem’s best course is to push on and finish off the terrorists.
At this point, Hamas’ central goal is simply to hang on long enough for Kamala Harris to win in November and then save it from final eradication.
Iran is helping out: Its officials now claim Tehran will shelve plans to retaliate against Israel for killing Hamas boss Ismail Haniyeh if Jerusalem engages in good-faith cease-fire talks.
Meanwhile, Hamas boss Yahya Sinwar is reportedly demanding Israel cease fire now as a precondition for cease-fire talks, which would give him immediate breathing room and let him stretch out the talks for months.
In fact, Iran actually wants an excuse to hold off: It fears losing face if it doesn’t respond to the killing of Haniyah in Tehran, but its last strike at Israel was an embarrassing bust. And if it escalates now, it risks an IDF counter-strike that could smash its oil industry, costing the regime big-time and potentially feeding mass unrest.
The Secret War Behind the Exchanges of Fire in the North
The current war of attrition in Israel’s north is not just a series of reaction equations. It is a race to learn about the enemy and prepare for a battle in which both sides will try to overwhelm the opposing military force. The exchanges of fire are providing Hezbollah with an opportunity to study the Israeli air defense system in detail. This is a serious risk that deserves to be given its due weight.
The [Harris] campaign, along with its Democratic allies, has gone out of its way to appeal to the anti-Israel voices in the party, without receiving much in return. The party still faces the specter of disruptive protests in Chicago.
The campaign appears to think it would be politically risky to draw a red line, and it’s more convenient to try and maintain a big tent that includes virulently anti-Israel voices. Tolerating extremes has certainly been a bipartisan trend lately in politics.
Katherine Brodsky: The 'good Jews' trotted out to bash Israel (National Post)
Organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Independent Jewish Voices Canada (IJVC), which claim to speak on behalf of a subset of Jews, are frequently propped up by media as representatives of the “Jewish” community. They tokenize fringe Jews for political means. JVP, by the way, consists of many non-Jews as well, with one of its chapter co-founders being Ibraheem Samirah, a Palestinian-American politician.
They appropriate Jewish symbols, wear watermelon-themed kippahs and betray their ignorance by printing Hebrew words left-to-right, instead of correctly writing right-to-left. It’s obvious that the connection of many participants to their Jewishness is being over-exaggerated for effect, given that text direction is basic knowledge for even the most secular Jews.
Meanwhile, IJVC has promoted articles to its followers from white supremacist websites. One such article falsely claimed that no more than one million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany and justified antisemitism as a natural response to Israel’s policies. (IJVC later removed the postings promoting the articles, and apologized for the “oversight.”)
Britain’s leaders have blinded themselves to the growing Islamist threat
The far-Right is a topic our leaders, and many pundits, enjoy talking and writing about because it is an easy subject to approach. Just as apple pie and motherhood (must we say “parenthood” nowadays?) are universally beloved, so fascists are, naturally and rightly, despised. No politician ever lost votes by decrying the far-Right.But what if it turned out that the much bigger threat to life and limb in Britain came not from the skin-headed thugs who go on a looting spree every few years, but from Islamists? Statistics and facts, those unpopular and inconvenient irritants in politics, suggest that is indeed the case. Nearly 100 innocent UK residents have been murdered by Islamist terrorists since 2005. And yet the orchestrated and almost universal silence from parliament in response to this clear and present danger has been deafening.
The Palestinian Authority has made denial of Jewish history in the Land of Israel and denial of the centrality of Jerusalem in Jewish history into cornerstones of its ideology. It denies all facts and historical evidence, calling Jewish history “fabricated,” “forged,” consisting of “delusional myths,” “lies,” “libels,” “legends,” and “stolen heritage.” It is the essence of the pot calling the kettle black, as it is the Palestinians who are guilty of claiming Jewish history as their own. Aspiring to create a state on land in which they have no ancient national or political roots, the Palestinian leadership feels very much threatened by thousands of years of well-documented Jewish history in the Land of Israel. The PA has thus made the rejection of any Jewish connection to the Temple, Jerusalem, or Israel into their recurring mantras.
The valuations of Israeli public companies are nearly 40% lower than global companies (as measured with both price to earnings and price to book). An efficient skilled-labor force full of ambitious entrepreneurs with startup expertise makes investment dollars go further than in other developed markets. Many Israeli companies are also bringing solutions to issues we care about such as healthcare, sustainability, green energy and food scarcity.Investing in Israel today may seem counterintuitive, but it is resoundingly attractive. The case for Israel starts with high-quality companies at low valuations and extends to social and environmental progress along with the advancement of regional prosperity. Our ultimate goal is for Israel’s success not only to benefit our investors but to bring peace, freedom and prosperity to all residents of the Middle East.
Virtual speed-dating will take place August 20 at 9 p.m. Jerusalem time; and 8 p.m. New York time. The event will be run online via DateNight AI’s virtual platform.
Young cocoa trees undergoing research in southern Israel were abandoned when the war broke out on October 7 and were stuck in a closed military zone. But some survived
I’ve never asked this before, but please watch and share. Both major political parties must understand that the Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel is essential to our religious expression. Denying the Jewish People their connection to Zion is unquestionably antisemitic pic.twitter.com/QD5bfcKFBh
— Shabbos Kestenbaum (@ShabbosK) August 13, 2024
Six more pro-Israel Democrats won tonight!
— AIPAC (@AIPAC) August 14, 2024
All 111 AIPAC-endorsed Democrats have won so far this cycle.
Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics!pic.twitter.com/z41kVHmgEp
The UK’s Israel policy is now so abysmal and incoherent that we have the UK representative at the UN Security Council reading out Hamas propaganda, verbatim.
— Andrew Fox (@Mr_Andrew_Fox) August 14, 2024
Great way to destroy what tiny influence the UK had over this conflict.
Elect Corbynites, get Corbyn policies, I guess. pic.twitter.com/QwR5wN691Q
Soul Khan—whose name is a misnomer because he has no soul—said “if only visible Jews are at significant risk, then it undermines the whole notion that America is unsafe for Jews.” A statement so soulless that it leaves one speechless.
— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) August 13, 2024
If America is no longer safe for visible… pic.twitter.com/uUOgJCuIxs
(satire)
HEBREW 👏 IS 👏 TRAUMATIZING 👏 pic.twitter.com/gQvFTJjrdE
— Nakba Nancy 🍉🍗 (@NakbaNancy) August 14, 2024
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