Thursday, September 26, 2024

09/26 Links Pt1: Biden Tilts at Hizbullah Windmills; Dershowitz: Israel's Pager Attack Was Legal under the Laws of War; US pushes Israel-Lebanon ceasefire, without noting Hezbollah

From Ian:

Arsen Ostrovsky: The West must play to win against terrorism
As history has shown, authoritarian regimes and non-state actors understand and respond to one thing: ruthless power. Whether military, economic or political, decisive action has proven to be the only language understood by those who seek to disrupt global stability.

Western nations learned this lesson the hard way during World War II, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement failed spectacularly. Chamberlain’s ill-fated agreement with Hitler, meant to ensure “peace for our time,” only delayed the inevitable. As Churchill scolded him, “you were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.”

Ultimately, it was not diplomacy but total military defeat that ended Nazi Germany’s threat to Europe. To use Churchill’s words again, when asked what was Britain’s policy, he said “victory, victory at all costs.”

Yet since its establishment in 1948, the Jewish state has been the only democracy repeatedly denied the right to achieve total victory against enemies who have time and again initiated wars and pogroms, seeking no less than its very annihilation.

Even though it was Israel attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7, it was also an assault on the West and the principles it claims to uphold — freedom, democracy and the rule of law. If the West truly seeks to uphold these sacrosanct values, then it must finally abandon the strategy of limited warfare and throw its full weight behind Israel as the frontier of Western civilization.

This is not the time for half measures. Hamas, Hezbollah and their sponsors in Tehran must be decisively defeated, not contained.

As Ronald Reagan warned in 1964, during his “A Time for Choosing” speech in the peak of the Cold War, “a policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender.”

The bad actors of today — China,  Russia, Iran, North Korea and their proxies — do not negotiate from a place of weakness or fear international opinion. Instead, they project power without concern for identity politics or public sentiment.

In short, the West must play to win in order to defend freedom.
WSJ Editorial: Biden Tilts at Hizbullah Windmills
When President Biden told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday that "a diplomatic solution is still possible" with Hizbullah, we wonder where he's been for the past 11 months. Israel gave those months over to diplomacy on its northern front, even as Hizbullah fired 8,500 rockets and forced 60,000 Israelis from their homes. But the U.S.-led talks went nowhere as Mr. Biden pressed Israel not to hit Hizbullah too hard.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Tuesday of Lebanon "becoming another Gaza." Nice of him to wake up. Since 2006, UN peacekeepers have done nothing to stop Hizbullah from taking over the Security Council-mandated buffer zone in southern Lebanon. Now Israel has to do it for them.

One lesson of Oct. 7 is that Israel can't let terrorists build up armies, even if they seem deterred. Northern Israel could never be safe if Hizbullah retains its arsenal.
70 Weapons Depots, 80 Missiles, and 3 Senior Commanders: How a Week of Israeli Strikes Kneecapped Hezbollah
Israel has destroyed scores of Hezbollah missiles, drones, and rocket launchers across Lebanon over the past several days, orchestrating an unprecedented series of pinpoint airstrikes and intelligence-driven operations that have quickly degraded swaths of the terror group's arsenal—and eliminated at least three of the group's senior commanders.

Israel's air force is pummeling Hezbollah's arms depots and targeting its senior leadership, marking the "most extensive" strikes "ever carried out in its history," according to the country's military leaders and regional news outlets.

Hezbollah, long known as Iran's preeminent regional terror proxy, is being defanged by the Jewish state's armed forces in the process. It has lost almost half of its medium and long-range missiles in a series of Israeli raids designed to annihilate "surveillance equipment, command rooms, and other infrastructure" used by Hezbollah to rain terror on Israel's northern border.

On Wednesday, Israel continued its offensive, showing no signs of backing down from a fight that it largely avoided for months as it turned its attention to Hamas in the wake of the Oct. 7 terror spree. Around 60 key targets belonging to Hezbollah's "intelligence division" were struck across Lebanon, with Israeli military leaders promising to destroy "all of their rocket capabilities" and bases.

All told, Israel has logged close to 3,000 flight hours, using more than 250 warplanes to drop an estimated 2,000 munitions across 200 separate locations in Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon. The strikes have destroyed around 400 medium-range rocket launchers, 70 weapons storage depots, and around 80 drones and cruise missiles. They've also killed at least three senior commanders—rocket and missile division head Ibrahim Qubaisi, military operations head Ibrahim Aqil, and training unit head Ahmed Wahbi—along with other top fighters.

The coordinated attacks, Israel says, are "changing the operational situation in the north, changing the reality," for Hezbollah as the terror group goes on defense after nearly a year of nonstop terror strikes on Israeli towns throughout the country. The ongoing aerial assault is being viewed as a regional game changer, proving to Hezbollah that it is not as untouchable as its leaders once believed.

Still, experts who spoke to the Free Beacon emphasized that Israel has a long way to go in its bid to defeat the terror group.


Hizballah’s Strategy Is in Tatters, but That Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Victory for Israel
While quite a lot has happened since this piece by John Raine was published on September 20, I think its analysis has only become more persuasive:

Whatever shape the next phase [of the war] takes it is now clear that Israel is rendering obsolete the paradigm of violent co-existence within which it has fought Hizballah for decades. That is a problem for the Hizballah leadership, which has relied on being able to fight a limited war in which they exercised control over the levels of violence through careful calibration of their operations. They may no longer have that lever, and they and their patron, Iran, may now need a new strategy to ensure their own survival. What are their options?

Most critically Hizballah will require Iran’s close and sustained support to maintain it as a fighting force, to deliver its regional network of non-state armed groups, and to use its influence with Russia and other powers to garner support—possibly including military support for Hizballah. The group will expect Tehran to guarantee its survival; the regime in Iran has little option but to follow through. Hizballah is a uniquely valuable partner for Tehran and without it the keystone falls out of the axis of resistance, [as Iran’s network of allies and proxies is known]. While the loss of Hamas is politically bearable in Tehran, that of Hizballah is not.

There is a complication for Tehran, however. While it has a spiritual commitment to Hizballah, its strategy has been to avoid escalation to state-on-state war with Israel; . . . its armed forces are not configured for a sustained war with Israel. Its capabilities and its strategy are designed to sponsor asymmetric conflict with Israel through third parties. Its strategy with Israel has been everything short of war, anything but peace.

Yet, although Israel can shift the strategic balance, it is not at all clear it will be able to achieve a decisive victory.
Alan Dershowitz: Israel's Pager Attack Was Legal under the Laws of War
The international "community" and its academic justifiers have claimed that Israel's attacks on Hizbullah communications devices are unlawful. They are dead wrong. The law is clear that if a person becomes a combatant, he is a legitimate military target. Becoming a combatant includes joining or assisting Hizbullah, harboring its terrorists, or allowing one's home or building to be used by Israel's enemies. The law is also clear that once someone becomes a combatant, he or she can be targeted as long as they retain that status.

If a person qualifies as a combatant, he or she may be targeted and killed while asleep, at work or at play. Combatants need not be actively involved in combat at the moment they are killed. Nor do they need to be actively committing terrorism when targeted. It is enough that they maintain the status of combatant. The individuals who were given beepers by Hizbullah were clearly combatants. Their deaths and injuries were lawful, even if they were shopping or walking when blown up.
US officials weighing steps Biden could take to preserve two-states after election
Settlement labeling
However this is only one of the few steps that Biden aides are considering taking during the lame-duck period that are broadly aimed at preserving and advancing prospects for a two-state solution.

Another one is to reverse a lame-duck decision taken by Trump in 2020 requiring goods made in Israeli-controlled areas of the West Bank to be labeled as “Made in Israel.” While the move was aimed at presenting the West Bank settlements as an equal part of Israel, it also applied to Palestinian towns in Area C of the West Bank.

That was a move that some Biden aides thought would’ve been taken much earlier in the president’s term, but fell through the cracks, the former senior US official said, acknowledging that it was less likely to be approved if Trump wins, given the likelihood of its reversal.

The concern in the past about labeling settlement products was that opponents would conflate it with a boycott of Israel, but proponents argue that it can be framed as a step that separates the settlements from the rest of the country.

Reopening the consulate
Biden came into office pledging to reopen the US Consulate in Jerusalem, the de facto mission to the Palestinians that Trump shuttered in 2019.

The move required a degree of approval from the Israeli government, which repeatedly rejected the idea. The administration sufficed with establishing an Office of Palestinian Affairs in 2022, which was still part of the US Embassy to Israel but was allowed to send diplomatic cables directly to Washington without being filtered by the US ambassador to Israel.

The lack of follow-through on Biden’s election promise has been a major sticking point for the PA, which some US officials would still like to remedy if Harris wins in November.

The former senior US official said the White House could dangle one last visit from Biden to Israel to participate in the corner-stone laying ceremony for the yet-to-be-built US embassy compound in exchange for Jerusalem lifting its opposition to reopening the consulate.

Leveraging US aid to Israel
One move that has not received as much public attention, but the former senior US official said could prove effective, would be for the US to threaten to change a clause in the Memorandum of Understanding on US security assistance to Israel that allows Jerusalem to spend up to 25 percent of the aid on weapons made in Israel.

Israel is the only country that isn’t required to spend the entirety of assistance it receives from Washington in the US. The former US official said Netanyahu’s aides pushed for this clause to be included in the MoU before it was signed in 2008 because many of the weapon manufacturing plants in Israel are managed by members of Netanyahu’s Likud Party.

While the MoU has already been signed, it is not legally binding, is subject to changes and has already seen minor violations by Israel, the former senior US official said, arguing that the US should threaten to remove the clause in question in order to pressure Netanyahu to take steps that advance a two-state solution.

A ‘realistic’ two-state solution
While the current and former US officials were skeptical that Biden would unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state or allow a resolution to be passed against Israel at the UN Security Council during the lame-duck period, they did think the president could approve a top member of his administration giving a high-level speech laying out Washington’s view on the need for a two-state solution and what a “realistic” proposal could look like.

It could be fashioned by the address former secretary of state John Kerry gave during the lame-duck period of Obama’s second term in December 2016 — a speech that was not received well by Netanyahu, who was still prime minister then.

The current and former senior US officials offered several other ideas of steps that Biden could approve after the presidential election but didn’t want them publicized due to fear that this could harm their chances of being implemented.


Daniel Greenfield: Biden Admin Promises It Didn’t Help Israel Take Out Marine Barracks Bomber
When Hezbollah suffered a devastating attack around the 40th anniversary of the Islamic terror group’s bombing of the US embassy (the second time), I was hoping we had something to do with it, but I should have known better.

Then Israel took out Hezbollah’s Ibrahim Aqil whom we have a standing $7 million reward on for his role in the Marine Barracks bombing that killed over two hundred Americans and the Biden-Harris admin frantically disavowed the move and is promising that it is not providing Israel with any intel support.

Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said that the US is not providing Israel with support in its current conflict with the Hezbollah terrorist organization, including intelligence,

Singh replied “no” when asked by a reporter if the US is providing any form of support to Israel in the Lebanon conflict.

The US military is not providing intelligence support to Israel for its operations in Lebanon, the Pentagon says, adding the United States is making “a full-court press” for a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

Instead, the Biden-Harris regime signed on to a call for a 21-day truce during which Hezbollah will have the time to rearm, regroup and launch more focused attacks on Israel.


Bassem Eid: Hizbullah Doesn't Care about Palestinians as Rocket Strike Shows
Hezbollah, the Shi'ite militia that holds Lebanon hostage, has always been perceived as an outside player in the Arab world for the way it scurries to carry water for its patron, Iran. To counterbalance this, Hezbollah has always tried to portray itself as the foremost defender of the Palestinian cause in opposition to Israel. On Sept. 23, as Hezbollah rockets came crashing down on the West Bank Palestinian town of Deir Istiya, this false friendship was fully revealed as a cynical farce.

After all, this is, unfortunately, a tired old play in the region. The cause of a Palestinian state was adopted by the Arab League (AL) as a cynical ploy from its very origins: in 1945, the year the AL was founded and World War II ended—and more than two years before Israeli independence—the AL declared a boycott on what it termed "Jewish products and manufactured goods." The AL always presented maximalist goals, refusing proposals to split the British Empire's Palestine Mandate between Arabs and Jews and instead opting for all-out war.

This cynicism continued with the schemes of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian general who overthrew his country's leader, King Farouk, and established a "United Arab Republic" that gobbled up Syria and Yemen and briefly aimed to create a new great power that would have controlled the geographic space of Israel. While a million Jews expelled from the Arab world and Iran were integrated into the State of Israel, the various Arab states refused to normalize the status of Palestinian arrivals, forcing them to live as stateless persons in permanent "refugee camps."

An interesting sleight-of-hand took place after Israel defeated Nasser's ambitions in the 1967 Six-Day War. Before that conflict, Gaza was integrated as a tiny piece of Nasser's empire. At the same time, the West Bank and East Jerusalem were annexed into Hashemite Jordan, and Syria ruled a small piece of the Galilee with an iron fist. Not one of these countries attempted to give the Palestinians under their control self-rule. Instead, the AL founded the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) at its 1964 Cairo summit, giving it a charter calling for Israel's destruction.

Predictably, this Frankenstein's monster came back to bite the hand that created it, as the PLO attempted to overthrow the Jordanian government in 1970, leading to its expulsion and then destabilizing the formerly functional Republic of Lebanon and sparking its 15-year civil war. The space created by the PLO's former "state within a state" in South Lebanon has now been replaced by Hezbollah and its Iranian advisors.


US leads push for Israel-Lebanon ceasefire, without noting Hezbollah
The United States, Australia, Canada, European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar called jointly on Wednesday night for an “immediate 21-day ceasefire across the Lebanon-Israel border to provide space for diplomacy towards the conclusion of a diplomatic settlement.”

Minutes before the statement went out, U.S. President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron stated that “it is time for a settlement on the Israel-Lebanon border that ensures safety and security to enable civilians to return to their homes.”

Neither of the two statements referred to Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terror group, which has launched thousands of rockets at the Jewish state since Oct. 8. Israel has targeted launch sites and missiles tied to Hezbollah and has not declared war on Lebanon.

In a call with reporters on Wednesday night, a senior U.S. official referred to the proposal as an “important breakthrough.”

“There is no government of Lebanon,” wrote Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “No mention here of Hezbollah or Hamas.”

“Imagine releasing two statements calling for a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon as if the government of Lebanon has any agency and sovereignty without mention of Hezbollah, which holds the power here,” wrote Jason Brodsky, policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran.

“That’s how disconnected from reality this sounds,” Brodsky wrote.

Kabir Taneja, a fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, wrote that it is “strange that Biden-Macron joint statement on border conflict between Israel and Lebanon fails to clarify the fact that the military exchange taking place is with Hezbollah, not the Lebanese armed forces.”
Israel denies agreeing to U.S., French 21-day cease-fire proposal for Israel-Lebanon border
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office denied agreeing to a French and American proposal for a 21-day cease-fire on the border with Lebanon, as he was en route to the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday.

Israel has not reached a cease-fire agreement, Netanyahu spokesman Omer Dostri said, calling it “an American-French proposal that the prime minister has not even responded to.”

Dostri also said that reports that Israel was scaling down its strikes in Lebanon are “the opposite of the truth. The prime minister instructed the IDF to continue fighting at full force.”

The Biden administration on Wednesday announced an effort to negotiate a 21-day cease-fire on the Israel-Lebanon border, in the hopes that a short-term agreement will allow time for the parties to reach a long-term deal to end the fighting on Israel’s northern border and allow Israeli and Lebanese civilians to return home.

“The exchange of fire since Oct. 7th, and in particular over the past two weeks, threatens a much broader conflict, and harm to civilians,” President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement on Wednesday night. “We therefore have worked together in recent days on a joint call for a temporary ceasefire to give diplomacy a chance to succeed and avoid further escalations across the border.”

The statement does not mention Hezbollah, the Iran-backed, Lebanon-based terrorist group that has fired approximately 9,300 missiles at Israel since Oct. 8, a day after the Hamas terror attacks killed more than 1,200 people in Israel. Hezbollah has killed 49 Israelis and wounded over 370. The government of Israel evacuated 63,500 people from towns closest to the border and thousands more have left their homes.


Sen. Sanders moves to block $20b in arms sales to Israel
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday introduced legislation to block arms sales to Israel. The Joint Resolutions of Disapproval would prevent the transfer of more than $20 billion in offensive weapons to Jerusalem. The Senate will vote on the resolutions when lawmakers reconvene in November.

In explaining his rationale for introducing the resolution, Sanders accused Israel’s “extremist government” of waging an “all-out war against the Palestinian people.”

“[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has bombed hospitals and schools, starved children, destroyed infrastructure and housing stock, and made life unlivable in Gaza. The United States must end its complicity in this atrocity,” wrote Sanders, adding that “sending more weapons is not only immoral, it is also illegal.”

Sanders went on to state that “now the world must contend with the dramatic escalation in Lebanon.”

Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Or.) joined Sanders in introducing the resolutions.


I was in a Hezbollah tunnel – this is what awaits Israel
As I took my first steps into the vast tunnel, stretching from an opening in the Galilee region deep into the bowels of the earth, the air turned sour and dusty.

The tunnel, discovered by Israeli forces and promptly sealed off in 2019, was half a mile long and 260 feet deep – all of it dug with handheld drills by Hezbollah fighters, piece by piece.

Descending the steps into the gloom, past walls dimly lit by glowing electrical cables, it was almost hard to believe that such a colossal tunnel had been dug by a secretive squad, and not industrial excavators.

But the evidence was right in front of me: all over the tunnel walls were cylindrical marks left by the hand drills of the Hezbollah men, who must have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours toiling away in the darkness.

It took several minutes to meander down to the bottom of the tunnel, which ended in a wall of rubble where the IDF had blocked the pathway leading to Lebanon.

It was May 2020 when I toured the tunnel with an Israeli army commander, a time when a full-scale Israeli invasion of Lebanon was only a vague possibility.

But with a possible ground invasion looming, the tunnel offers just a glimpse of the type of enclosed, difficult territory Israeli troops will be facing. It is also just one component of Hezbollah’s vast arsenal, which also includes huge quantities of precision Iranian missiles smuggled into Lebanon via Syria.

Col Roi Yosef Levy, then Israel’s Northern Border brigade commander for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), said as he showed me around the tunnel. “[It took] 14 years to build and only a few people inside Hezbollah knew about it.”

Had the tunnel not been discovered, Israel suspects it would have been used to launch a surprise assault on the north, perhaps to capture hostages and then take them back to Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s tunnel network is now feared to have grown even more vast and sophisticated in the four years since its discovery, posing a challenge for Israel should it opt for a ground invasion of southern Lebanon.

Israel estimates that the tunnel network, which can be used for hiding shock troops for attacks or moving supplies, stretches for hundreds of kilometres.

Hezbollah recently published footage that showed a truck mounted with rocket launchers passing through long, winding tunnels. The same slick propaganda clip also features Hezbollah troops driving on motorcycles through tunnels surrounding a command centre, Imad 4, passing posters of Hassan Nasrallah, their leader.

Imad 4, a nod to Imad Mughniyeh, the late Hezbollah army chief, is a complex inspired by similar bases in Iran and North Korea, likely built in the Bekaa Valley rather than southern Lebanon.

Nasrallah claims to have started expanding the tunnels in the wake of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, and Israel says the tunnels are enmeshed with houses in villages and other communities across southern Lebanon.

The tunnel network remains shrouded in secrecy, something of an unknown quantity in any future war between the two countries. Some Israeli analysts call it the “land of tunnels”, and say they draw inspiration and possibly direct expertise from similar underground networks in Iran, Hezbollah’s main military backer, and North Korea.


Melanie Phillips: Eye-witness to atrocity at Supernova
An important, extraordinary and shattering film started screening this week. Surviving October 7th: We Will Dance Again is about the massacre at the Supernova music festival during the Oct. 7 pogrom in southern Israel.

A preview was shown at the JW3 Jewish community center in London on Tuesday evening; it was subsequently being screened on BBC television and is being streamed on Paramount.

Somewhere over 360 of the approximately 3,500 participants and staff at the festival were murdered and about 40 kidnapped into Gaza, where an unknown number are still being held hostage.

The film stuns because it shows us the events of that terrible day as they unfolded through the eyes of the young festival-goers—and of the Hamas terrorists themselves—through footage taken from phones, Go-Pro cameras and studio interviews with survivors themselves.

We see the secular young Israelis dancing during the Friday night before the attack at what they called a “trance party” (with a disconcerting number of them high on drugs).

We watch with them as dawn rises—and in the sky rise the first rockets from Gaza, which the festival-goers think is just a regular attack that will soon be over. We see their increasing alarm as the rockets keep coming.

We and they hear the shooting start, and they can’t believe what’s happening—disbelief accentuated by the effect of the drugs they’ve taken.

Shockingly, we see what’s unfolding through the Hamas Go-Pro cameras as, deliriously screaming Allahu akbar (“God is great” in Arabic) and about martyrdom, the Gaza stormtroopers smash through the border fence, and ride their motorcycles and vehicles into Israel and the festival. And then we watch as they systematically commit mass slaughter.

We watch the young Israelis being mown down as they run. They film themselves as they confide their terror to their iPhones and desperately chart what’s happening. Through the eyes of Noam, we watch them hide in a garbage bin, which is then raked with bullets, killing her longtime boyfriend, David, and leaving her wounded among a pile of bodies.

We hear the heartbreaking sound of these secular young Israelis crying out the words of the Shema as they realize they are facing their deaths. We see the astounding courage of Aner Shapira, who tosses out, one by one, no fewer than seven grenades thrown by terrorists into the roadside shelter where he is trapped—with a group including his best friend, 23-year-old Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was subsequently taken hostage and murdered—but is finally killed by the eighth. Another young survivor, Eitan, takes over throwing out the grenades until he passes out after an explosion, only to recover to find himself among a mound of the dead.
Families of Hamas Hostages Plead For Action At UN Human Rights Council
Families of Hamas hostages held in Gaza made an emotional plea for their loved ones’ lives before the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on Wednesday.

Each speaker detailed the harrowing conditions their family members have endured for almost a year, and called for the release of the 101 remaining hostages in Gaza.

Amit Levy testified about his 20-year-old sister, Naama Levy, who was seen in a viral video from the day of her abduction. The footage shows her bloodied and barefoot, her ankles cut, and with her hands bound behind her back she’s forced into a Jeep. The sight of her bloodstained sweatpants raised fears that she may have been sexually assaulted by Hamas terrorists.

“Every day and hour that passes, her life is in grave danger,” Levy said. “She is held without access to food, water, hygiene, or the personal freedoms she once had.”

Levy shared that his sister was wounded by a grenade on October 7, and his family worries she hasn’t received proper medical care.

“My family and I are deeply worried about her physical and mental well-being, knowing that even someone as strong as Naama cannot remain the same after a year of captivity under constant threat,” he continued. “No one should endure such inhuman suffering, least of all my little sister, who is the kindest person I know.”

In a Hamas bodycam video released in May, Levy was seen with her face bloodied and pleading with terrorists, telling them she has “friends in Palestine.”

Naama Levy is an alumnus of Hands of Peace, an organization that promotes peace between young Israelis and Palestinians.

Shay Dickmann recalled how three generations of her family were caught in the path of Hamas’s massacre in Kibbutz Be’eri.

Michael Oren leads delegation of displaced Israelis in northern Israel to Washington
Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., has spent months trying to raise awareness on Capitol Hill about the plight of Israelis who live near the Lebanon border, as their story has gotten far less attention than Israelis in the south hard hit by the Oct. 7 attacks. He brought a delegation of those from the north to meet with lawmakers in June, when the focus was still on Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

But last week, as fighting intensified between Israel and Hezbollah, the delegation he brought to the Hill had a fresh urgency to it, coming just two days after the audacious operation that detonated pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members in Lebanon, ​​killing at least 20 people and injuring nearly 3,000, including Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon.

“The objective of the first delegation was to raise awareness. Since then, the situation has deteriorated remarkably,” Oren told Jewish Insider in an interview at the Washington Hilton, on the sidelines of last week’s Israeli American Council national summit, which the delegation also attended.

In the wake of the escalation, he said, the focus of people’s attention has changed “slightly.”

Both trips were organized through the Israel Advocacy Group, which Oren formed after the Oct. 7 terror attacks, in collaboration with the Democratic Majority for Israel and the Republican Jewish Coalition. Since Oct. 7, Hezbollah has bombarded Israel’s north with some 9,000 rockets, missiles and drones.

A group of four Israelis, representing a diverse range of ethnicities and backgrounds, alongside Oren, spent all day Friday meeting with Congress and the Biden administration. The packed day started with breakfast and a panel with ambassadors of Italy, Germany, Spain, United Arab Emirates, Estonia, Austria and Norway, as well as State Department officials, organized by the American Jewish Committee.

The delegation members were: Liat Cohen Raviv and her 23-year-old daughter, Doron Cohen, both residents of Metula, a town of about 2,500 people that abuts the Israel-Lebanon border and has been almost entirely evacuated; Samer Atallah, a member of the Druze community of Yarka, near Majdal Shams; and Nitsan Daniel, from Kibbutz Kfar Szold, located about three miles from the Lebanese border. The delegation met with senior White House advisors, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rick Scott (R-FL) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), as well as Reps. Nikki Budzinski (D-IL), Glenn Ivey (D-MD), Ritchie Torres (D-NY), Lucy McBath (D-GA), Brian Mast (R-FL), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Don Davis (D-NC), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Jared Golden (D-ME) and Grace Meng (D-NY).


This Is What Iran May Be Planning | Israel Undiplomatic w/ Mark Regev & Ruthie Blum
Israelis in cities across the country's central region woke up early Wednesday morning to air-raid sirens warning of incoming terrorist missiles fired by Iran-backed Hezbollah from Lebanon.

The attack comes after a series of major Israel Defense Forces victories over the past week.

Tune in to "Israel Undiplomatic" for a complete assessment of what has been happening and how things may unfold between Israel, Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Chapters
0:00 Sirens in Tel Aviv
5:00 Analysis
9:00 The larger picture
10:30 How does Iran fit the picture?
14:00 Escalation going forward
26:00 Intelligence on Oct 7
27:00 Panetta pans Israel


The Quad: Beepers, Bombs and the Blame Game - Unpacking Israel’s War With Hezbollah
This week on "The Quad," Fleur Hassan-Nahoum and co-host Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll, as well as guest hosts Aviva Klompas and Shirel Liberman, unpack the alleged Israeli beeper operations and recent targeted strikes against Hezbollah. It seems as if no matter what Israel does to limit civilian casualties, it will always be blamed, they conclude.

"The Quad" also interviews British-Israeli analyst Jonathan Spyers, head of research at the Middle East Forum, on why Hezbollah joined the war in support of Hamas on Oct. 8 and its end game.

And, of course, they reveal the Scumbags and Heroes of the Week!

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:54 Media perception
05:15 Israel's response to Hezbollah
07:44 Israeli humanitarian efforts in Syria
12:55 Iran's influence in the region
20:28 Hezbollah's miscalculations
23:40 Iran's strategic calculations
28:46 Role of Sunni Arab states
31:34 Jordan's complicity in smuggling
34:22 Future prospects
35:19 Scumbags and Heroes of the Week




Piers: “A WAR CRIME By All Means” Israel vs Hezbollah Debate Feat Elica Le Bon & Aaron Maté
Israel’s military carried out a series of bombings against its northern neighbour of Lebanon yesterday; bombings that have been condemned by many, but surprising to no one. Israel have claimed the strikes were targeting Hezbollah but once again, scores of innocent civilians are now dead; including children. Officials around the world openly worry that this next step could trigger a full-blown regional war.

With so much on the line, and so much history to comb through, Piers Morgan creates a dialogue between stakeholders on each side. First he talks to Lebanese Ambassador to the UK Rami Mortada for his official position. Then the debate begins with British-Iranian attorney Elica Le Bon, pro-Palestinian activist Aaron Maté, Special Envoy for the Foreign Ministry of Israel and host of 'The Quad' on JNS Fleur Hasan and pro-Palestine commentator Wajahat Ali.

00:00 - Introduction
01:00 - How close is the Middle East to regional war?
03:30 - Remi Mortada says Hezbollah does not want a full scale war
07:30 - "Nothing justifies killing civilians"
11:30 - Can you condemn both Hezbollah and Israel?
15:00 - Is it sensible of Israel to consider another ground war?
22:30 - Who started this war?
28:00 - The actions of Hezbollah since October 7th
35:00 - How violence breeds violence
45:00 - Netanyahu's hold over Israel
48:30 - The threat of Hamas
52:00 - The future of the Middle East




The Israel Guys: Will Israel INVADE & RETAKE southern Lebanon as a Buffer Zone?
Will Israel INVADE & RETAKE southern Lebanon as a Buffer Zone? Well they’ve done it before! There's enough Iranian terrorists there to drive any sovereign nation to declare a buffer zone! One thing you should know is that Israel has been at war with Lebanon since 1948. Lebanon was then and remains now hostile to Israel's existence, nothing’s changed. Israel's northern towns have lived in constant threat from these brutes since Israel's founding! It’s high time to remove the northern threats and create a permanent buffer zone held by none other than Hezbollah's most feared and hated enemy… the Israeli settlers!


The Israel Guys: UNBELIEVABLE: Pope Called For Israel to Do What?
Israel just started Operations Northern Arrows and is now working around the clock to erase the terrorist organization of Hezbollah from the face of the earth. You would think that the world would be happy that Israel is destroying evil right? Well unfortunately not. 12 countries are now calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, yes, they’re saying Lebanon and not Hezbollah, as if Israel was at war with Lebanon!






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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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