Friday, November 01, 2024

11/01 Links Pt1: The Iranian Period Is Finished; The UN’s Kosher Stamp for Terror; Albanese report slammed as ‘gross perversion of history,’ ‘weaponizing Holocaust comparisons’

From Ian:

Israel’s Mistake Was Viewing Hamas as a Minor Nuisance
Thirty years ago, Netanyahu warned that the Oslo Accords would turn Gaza into a launching pad for rockets, and Yitzhak Rabin accused him of abetting Hamas. That was the first articulation of the now common—and slanderous—claim that “Netanyahu has supported Hamas.” The truth was that Netanyahu was proved right in the summer of 2007, shortly after the terrorist group seized control of Gaza, when its first rocket barrages fell on Sderot. The late military analyst for Haaretz, Ze’ev Schiff, at the time wrote a biting column titled “Israeli Defeat in Sderot,” in which he called what had happened a national disgrace. And it was: Israel had no response to a heavily armed organization at its doorstep that went on to build a vast subterranean fortress beneath its territory and to amass missiles that could reach Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion airport. In an article for Israel Hayom, I described Gaza as a “mini-North Korea” and argued that Israel couldn’t live with this sort of hostile statelet on its southern border.

Only a handful of individuals believed that Israel should have done then what it is doing now at a much greater cost, that is, reoccupy Gaza and eliminate Hamas: the former head of the Shin Bet Avi Dichter (now minister of agriculture), the erstwhile finance and energy minister Yuval Steinitz, the late former defense minister Moshe Arens, and perhaps one or two others. The IDF, meanwhile, formulated various plans for conducting retaliatory strikes and restoring deterrence, but not for achieving a decisive victory, let alone reoccupying the Strip.

For the past fifteen years Israel has had several governing coalitions and a parade of defense ministers who were prepared to go no further than carrying out limited ground incursions into Gaza. Gadi Eisenkot, who was chief of staff of the IDF from 2015 to 2019, said not too long ago that Hamas was Israel’s weakest foe in the region, and that fighting against it weakens the army. Only a few days before the October 7 attacks, the security services, headed by the Shin Bet, formally recommended that the government continue strengthening Gaza’s economy to ensure continued calm. Shouldn’t a PM be able to trust the army to secure a 42-km border?

If there were political considerations that shaped Israeli policy in Gaza, they were those of left-wing leaders and high-ranking IDF officers who didn’t want to re-enter, let alone reoccupy, the territory, since doing so would be an admission of the massive failure of the policies they had long supported.

To identify the flawed concepts behind the intelligence failures of October 7, we should look at the inability of technocratic military leaders to understand the psychology of the enemy. A large section of the media, the intelligence services, and the IDF saw Gaza as a hostile territory only in a technical sense, instead of realizing that it was governed by bloodthirsty Islamist fanatics. And the problem goes further still: if you are alienated from your identity as a Jew, it becomes harder to understand an enemy that wants to murder you merely because you are Jewish.

This fundamental failure of imagination manifested itself concretely in the behavior of the IDF on October 7 of last year. Unlike the surprise attack of October 1973, when Golda Meir and members of her cabinet were informed of the threat but told to ignore it by the head of military intelligence, in October 2023 the military didn’t communicate the warnings it received to the prime minister or defense minister at all. The chief of military intelligence went back to sleep on the night before the attack. The IDF didn’t even order the units defending the border to go on high alert.

Even then, as Brigadier General Guy Hazot has written, the army is supposed to abide by the motto, “Even if we are surprised, we won’t be defeated.” That is, even when confronted with a surprise attack, it should be able to muster an effective defense immediately. Instead, what ensued on that awful day was a systemic failure of the security apparatus. It’s only thanks to the extraordinary heroism and grit of the Israeli people that the state regained control of the Western Negev after only three-and-a-half days.

October 7 saw a complete breakdown from the IDF top brass on down. In seeking to identify modes of thinking that led to disaster, we should begin with the conceptual error that caused a heavily armed and fanatical enemy to be perceived as a minor nuisance.
The Iranian Period Is Finished
Two months of war have transformed Lebanon. Hezbollah, the Shiite movement that seemed almost invincible, is now crippled, its top commanders dead or in hiding. The scale of this change is hard for outsiders to grasp. Hezbollah is not just a militia but almost a state of its own, more powerful than the weak and divided Lebanese government, and certainly more powerful than the Lebanese army. Formed under the tutelage of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, it has long been the leading edge of Tehran’s “Axis of Resistance,” alongside Hamas, the Shiite militias of Iraq, and the Houthi movement in Yemen. Hezbollah is also the patron and bodyguard of Lebanon’s Shiite Muslims, with a duly elected bloc in the national parliament (Christians and Muslims are allocated an equal share of seats). Hezbollah smuggles in not just weapons, but billions of dollars from Iran. It runs banks, hospitals, a welfare system, and a parallel economy of tax-free imports and drug trafficking that has enriched and empowered the once-downtrodden Shiite community.

Hezbollah has long justified reckless wars against Israel with appeals to pan-Arab pride: The liberation of Palestine was worth any sacrifice. But the devastation of this conflict extends far beyond Hezbollah and cannot be brushed off so easily. Almost a quarter of Lebanon’s people have fled their homes, and many are now sleeping in town squares, on roads, on beaches. Burned-out ambulances and heaps of garbage testify to the state’s long absence. Many people are traumatized or in mourning; others talk manically about dethroning Hezbollah, and perhaps with it, Lebanon’s centuries-old system of sectarian power-sharing. There is a millenarian energy in the air, a wild hope for change that veers easily into the fear of civil war.

A few stark facts stand out. First, Israel is no longer willing to tolerate Hezbollah’s arsenal on its border, and will continue its campaign of air strikes and ground war until it is forced to stop—whether from exhaustion or, more likely, by an American-sponsored cease-fire that is very unlikely before the next U.S. president is sworn in. Second, no one is offering to rebuild the blasted towns and villages of southern Lebanon when this is over, the way the oil-rich Gulf States did after the last major war with Israel, in 2006. Nor will Iran be able to replenish the group’s arsenal or its coffers. Hezbollah may or may not survive, but it will not be the entity it was.

I heard the same questions every day during two weeks in Lebanon in September and October, from old friends and total strangers. When will the war stop? Will they bomb us too—we who are not with Hezbollah? Will there be a civil war? And most poignant of all, from an artist whose Beirut apartment was a haven for me during the years I lived in Lebanon: Should I send my daughter out of this country?
The UN’s Kosher Stamp for Terror
Having a U.N. agency of multinational toy soldiers in white armored personnel carriers backed by the U.S. and ostensibly representing the “international community,” whose actual function is to shelter military positions inhabited by Iran’s chief terror army, presents a real threat to Israel’s national security. Given its function and purpose, UNIFIL will always necessarily be enmeshed with Hezbollah and with its “social support base”—employing them, relying on their goodwill, and servicing them. Because this partnership with a terror group serves U.S. objectives, and because UNIFIL’s ability to appear to fulfill its mandate requires it to whitewash and buy off Hezbollah, Israel will find itself having to compromise its security to appease its superpower ally, while the latter will utilize its U.N. instrument to place constraints on Israel’s sovereign decision-making.

By its nature, this dance with a terror army is obscene. Letting that army entrench itself on Israel’s northern border for the past two decades under U.N. protection is a joint act of madness by American policymakers of both parties and especially by Israel’s leaders, who can only thank some form of divine protection for the fact that the attack tunnels that UNIFIL helped shelter were never used to massacre Israeli civilians in the north, on a scale much larger than the attacks that UNRWA helped to support and perpetrate in the south.

Yet it’s no surprise, on the eve of the election, that the Biden administration is tripping over itself to resuscitate the UNIFIL-LAF arrangement in Lebanon and impose it again on Israel—which is what the U.S. peace proposal for Lebanon, leaked by an Israeli TV channel this week, is all about. In addition to beefing up UNIFIL, the administration wants to enlarge the LAF, and underwrite legions of new recruits—many of whom will no doubt come from Hezbollah’s support base, if not Hezbollah itself.

The added twist in the proposal is the formation of a so-called monitoring mechanism which would include the U.S.—an outgrowth of the 2022 maritime deal brokered by special envoy Amos Hochstein, which introduced the idea of Washington as a direct arbiter between Israel and Hezbollah. Now, Hochstein wants to formalize this role. As a bonus, his proposal also calls for picking up where he left off with his maritime deal to initiate a land border demarcation process. Inserting the U.S. in this so-called monitoring mechanism as an official arbiter reaffirms the status of Lebanon as a special province under U.S. protection, where Israeli security interests would need to pass through Washington. If Israel has intel about new Hezbollah tunnels, it can pass it along to the CENTCOM security coordinator who will then share the intel with the LAF—which is controlled by Hezbollah—or with a “strengthened” UNIFIL, whose role as Hezbollah’s protector in the south has been well established for the past decades, and at the same time has never been more urgent.

Luckily, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to understand the stakes much better than American politicians do. In an address on Thursday, Netanyahu had this to say about the American plan: “The agreements, documents, proposals and numbers—[UNSCR] 1701, 1559—with all due respect, are not the main point. The main point is our ability and determination to enforce security, thwart attacks against us, and act against the arming of our enemies, as necessary and despite any pressure and constraints. This is the main point.”

In the event Donald Trump wins Tuesday’s election, Israel will likely have a wider margin vis-à-vis Iran and its proxies. However, Jerusalem should not underestimate how similar Republican impulses toward Lebanon are to those of Team Obama, even if their ostensible motives are different. On the right, the growing, poisonous sectarianism that’s been infused into Lebanon policy in Washington—a toxicity that the Lebanese (and Lebanese American) lobbyists have consciously encouraged and exploited—fantastically views Lebanon as an arena for “empowering Middle Eastern Christians.” Another, related variant draws on cliches about Lebanon as the “Paris” or “Switzerland” of the Middle East—a naturally pro-Western society that’s just waiting for the proper amount of U.S. political and financial investment, the same way Iraq was a natural democracy waiting for U.S. liberation in order to fulfill the reality-free fantasies of Freedom Agenda ideologues. In reality, Lebanon is a bankrupt terror haven controlled by Iran whose fake “state institutions” are run by sectarian jackals who are unable to supply basic services like electricity to their supporters. Yet that hardly stops Republican lawmakers in Congress from being among the most ardent supporters of the disastrous Obama policy of underwriting the LAF.

None of these deranged fantasies—whether of an American partnership with the mullahs in Tehran that runs through Beirut, or of a “Lebanese state” built on infusions of U.S. dollars into “institutions” controlled by Hezbollah—can alter reality, however. Washington can entertain itself by pumping billions into the UNIFIL-LAF charade to maintain the appearance of running its own special Levantine province. For Israel, such Napoleonic parade ground antics will remain detached from the reality on the ground. Only by preserving its freedom to act independently and at will to remove threats from its northern border will Israel be able to live in peace.


IDF says 3 gunmen killed in airstrike, clashes during day-long West Bank raid
The Israel Defense Forces said it had wrapped up a day-long raid in the West Bank’s Nur Shams camp near Tulkarem on Friday, during which three gunmen were killed in an airstrike and clashes with troops.

The operation was carried out by the Kfir Brigade’s Haruv reconnaissance unit alongside Border Police and Shin Bet forces.

Amid the raid, Israeli forces carried out a drone strike against two gunmen who were firing at the troops, the IDF said. It published footage of the incident.

Also amid the operation, Haruv soldiers killed another operative who “posed a threat,” the IDF said, adding that the unit also wounded several other gunmen.

The operation also saw Border Police officers neutralize several explosive devices planted under and along roads in Nur Shams.

The IDF also published drone footage of gunmen operating at the entrance to a hospital in Tulkarem. In the video, one gunman can be seen handing over an assault rifle to another at the medical center compound.

Amid the raid on Thursday, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini claimed that IDF bulldozers had severely damaged the UN aid agency’s office in Nur Shams, rendering it unusable.

The IDF, however, issued a statement denying responsibility for any damage sustained to the building.

“The claim that the UNRWA offices in Nur Shams were destroyed by IDF soldiers is false,” the statement read. “Terrorists planted explosives in the proximity of the UNRWA offices that were then detonated in an attempt to harm IDF soldiers. The explosives likely caused damage to the structure.”

The raid in Nur Shams was launched shortly after troops operating in the West Bank city of Tulkarem killed prominent Hamas member Hussam al-Malah.

In a joint statement, the IDF, Israel Police and the Shin Bet said that al-Malah was involved in planning imminent terror attacks with Islam Odeh and Zahi Oufi, two Hamas operatives killed by Israel in separate incidents in recent weeks.

The three, along with other members of a Hamas network in Tulkarem, were allegedly planning a major terror attack on the October 7 anniversary.

The military said that after Odeh and Oufi were killed, al-Malah continued to lead the Hamas network and worked to plan imminent attacks in recent days.

Since October 7, troops have arrested some 5,250 wanted Palestinians across the West Bank, including more than 2,050 affiliated with Hamas.


Albanese report slammed as ‘gross perversion of history,’ ‘weaponizing Holocaust comparisons’
Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for Palestinian rights, presented a new report to the U.N. General Assembly this week that purports to provide “clearly identifiable” proof that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians.

Titled “Genocide as colonial erasure,” the report focuses on “genocidal intent, contextualizing the situation within a decades-long process of territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing aimed at liquidating the Palestinian presence” in Gaza, eastern Jerusalem, and Judea and Samaria.

“The situation is worsening by the day,” Albanese said at a Thursday press conference. “The pace and intensity of the Israeli violence and destruction has spread to the rest of the occupied territory, leaving no Palestinian safe under Israel’s unfettered control.”

“For over a year, I have pleaded to all concerned parties as well as states, particularly those with influence, to take concrete action to stop the destruction of the Palestinian people, to ensure the prompt and unconditional release of all hostages, both Israelis and Palestinians, and to ensure international law is respected,” she added.

The violence that “Israel has unleashed against the Palestinians post-Oct. 7 is not happening in a vacuum,” per the report, “but is part of a long-term intentional, systematic, state-organized forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinians.” (U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres was criticized for saying in late October 2023 that the Hamas attack “did not happen in a vacuum.”)

In the report, Albanese called for Israeli officials, military leaders and soldiers to be prosecuted. The report states that since Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has acted not in self-defense but with an aim to expand its territory.

“The events of Oct. 7 provided the impetus to advance towards the goal of a ‘greater Israel,’” Albanese wrote. (That term generally refers to Israel, Judea, Samaria and Gaza.) She added during a private event on her U.S. speaking tour this week that Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack “triggered the opportunity for Israel to complete and channel the project of colonial erasure.”

Multiple U.S. ambassadors and the French and German governments have accused Albanese of Jew-hatred, including for comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and stating that Hamas wasn’t motivated by antisemitism when it attacked Israel on Oct. 7.

“The latest report by Francesca Albanese is a gross perversion of history, weaponizing Holocaust comparisons to demonize Israel while ignoring the terror of Hamas. This inflammatory rhetoric must be confronted,” the World Jewish Congress stated on Wednesday. “United Nations, it’s time to stop platforming antisemitism.”

The group “demands that the United Nations holds Francesca Albanese accountable and stops permitting its platforms to be hijacked by individuals who exploit them to spread hate and undermine the U.N.’s mission of promoting peace and human rights,” the World Jewish Congress added.
FDD: U.S. Officials Chide ‘Antisemitism’ of UN Rapporteur Francesca Albanese
Latest Developments
The Biden administration issued a fresh rebuke of Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur “on the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967” on October 29, ahead of her arrival in New York as part of nationwide speaking tour. U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield maintained that Albanese is “unfit for her role” and that “the United Nations should not tolerate antisemitism from a UN-affiliated official hired to promote human rights.”

Albanese has a long history of promoting antisemitism and justifying terrorism. On social media, she has described the United States as “subjugated by the Jewish lobby” and claimed that the “Israeli lobby,” directed by “Israel’s greed,” has skewed media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On October 11, 2023 — four days after the Hamas assault on southern Israel — Albanese cast doubt on the mass rapes and other sexually-based atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists.

In a March 2024 report, Albanese falsely accused Israel of committing genocide and called for an arms embargo against the Jewish state, a UN General Assembly plan to punish Israel for supposedly provoking the war Hamas launched, and an “international protective presence to constrain the violence” against Palestinians. At the time, the Biden administration dismissed Albanese’s accusations as “unfounded” and expressed opposition to “the mandate of this special rapporteur,” noting Albanese’s “history of antisemitic comments.”

Albanese released a new report in October in which she claimed that “Israel has pursued a pattern of conduct” intended to create “conditions of life calculated to bring about” the “physical destruction” of the Palestinian people.

Albanese’s antisemitism was once again on full display in New York this week when she called on the United Nations to suspend Israel from the international body. Speaking on October 31 before the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People — a body created in 1975 in the immediate wake of the UN General Assembly’s denunciation of Zionism as a form of “racism” — Albanese described herself as a “reluctant chronicler of genocide” and claimed that there is a “bigger design behind” Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza. She told the committee that “it is time to consider suspending the credentials of Israel as a member state of the UN.”

A briefing that Albanese was due to give members of Congress on October 29 was canceled, one day after she told a Washington, DC, audience that the October 7 atrocities had been seized by Israel as an “opportunity for Israel to complete and channel the project of colonial erasure.” Asked by a reporter at the State Department’s October 29 press briefing whether Albanese should have been granted a visa to enter the United States in the first place, spokesperson Matthew Miller replied, “We have an obligation as the host country for the United Nations. We take that obligation very seriously, and one of those obligations is to grant visas to any number of individuals with views with which we do not agree.”

Expert Analysis
“U.S. policy can’t have it both ways — offering the United Nations our money and participation without conditions and then recognizing some of the terrible ways the United Nations abuses that money and participation. We need to start holding the United Nations accountable, not just complaining about an anti-American and antisemitic system we subsidize.” — Richard Goldberg, FDD Senior Advisor

“The UN special rapporteur position dedicated to scrutinizing Israel is discriminatory and antisemitic by its very nature, applying double standards to the Jewish state not expected of any other country. So, in that sense, Albanese, with her track record of antisemitism, is very fit for the role.” — David May, FDD Research Manager and Senior Research Analyst


Analysis: Naim Qassem’s inaugural speech as Hezbollah’s new secretary-general
One day after his surprise appointment as Hezbollah’s new secretary-general, Naim Qassem delivered his inaugural speech from that post—his fourth speech since Hassan Nasrallah’s assassination. Qassem’s latest speech was virtually identical in tone and content to his previous three speeches, seeking to justify Hezbollah’s war effort and the suffering it has brought upon the group’s base and Lebanon and to promise his audience inevitable victory.

The underlying logic behind this repetition may be based on a Lebanese saying: “Al tikrar bit’alam al-hmar,” which translates to “With repetition, even a donkey can learn.” Qassem may seek to drill these themes into his audience’s consciousness, realizing that by maintaining Hezbollah’s hold over their hearts, minds, and grasp on reality, the group will guarantee its post-war regeneration. Qassem’s speeches—as with his predecessor’s—aim to advance this objective by providing grist for Hezbollah’s propaganda mills and other officials’ statements, reinforcing the comprehensive information environment in which the group keeps its base ensconced.

This process also serves as part of Hezbollah’s process—already underway, as demonstrated by the fawning reactions to Qassem’s speech on Al-Manar and Al-Mayadeen—to build a cult of personality around the group’s new secretary-general. This aura was lost with the death of the highly popular Nasrallah, and it was an indispensable ingredient in his ability to frame reality for Hezbollah’s followers.

The speech’s overall theme
Qassem began by framing the current battle with Israel along religious lines, drawing on classical Islamic anti-Judaism. The current battle, he said, could be understood through “what the Qur’an tells us about the experience with the Jews throughout time, [saying] ‘they cannot hurt you but for inflicting malicious harm. If they fight you, they will flee from you, and they will find no help.’” The next verse, which Qassem did not reference, speaks of the Jews collectively being fated for humiliation and dependency on the mercy of others “wherever they go” and “branded with misery” as a “just reward” for “displeasing God.”

Qassem thus promised Hezbollah’s supporters an inevitable victory, bestowed by God, despite the current sacrifices. That is why, he said, Hezbollah had borrowed “from Surat al-Israa, about the Jews ‘if the first of two warnings comes to pass, We sent against you our servants of might [lit. misery], who would ravage your homes. This is a promise that will be fulfilled’”—describing the Babylonian and then Roman destructions of ancient Jewish national polities. So, he said, Hezbollah had chosen to name this war “the Battle of the Mighty Servants,” because the group was divinely promised a similar victory over the Israelis.


Hezbollah barrages continue: Ten wounded following rocket fire
Ten people were wounded in a Hezbollah rocket barrage from Lebanon toward Israel's North, Magen David Adom (MDA) announced on Friday.

At least nine of those who were reported wounded, of varying degrees, have been transferred for medical treatment.

Later, a tenth person, a 37-year-old man in moderate condition was hospitalized after enduring shrapnel wounds from Hezbollah rocket fire in the Arab town of Sha'ab in Israel's north on Friday.

At least 30 rockets were fired toward northern Israel communities as far south as Karmiel.

Forest fires in the North
Also in the North, Israel's Fire and Rescue Authority stated that firefighters are nearly finished extinguishing fires that were spreading through Givat HaMoreh forest areas from rocket fire.


Soldier hurt in Gaza succumbs to wounds, bringing IDF toll to 778
An Israel Defense Forces soldier hurt last month battling Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip succumbed to his wounds on Friday, the military announced.

Cpt. Yarden Zakay, 21, of the Givati Brigade’s Shaked Battalion, from Hadera, was seriously wounded on Sept. 17.

In the same incident, four other soldiers were killed: Cpt. Daniel Mimon Toaff, 23, of the Givati Brigade’s Shaked Battalion, from Moreshet; Staff Sgt. Agam Naim, 20, of the 401st Armored Brigade’s 52nd Battalion, from Mishmarot; Staff Sgt. Amit Bakri, 21, of the Givati Brigade’s Shaked Battalion, from Yoshivia; and Staff Sgt. Dotan Shimon, 21, of the Givati Brigade’s Shaked Battalion, from Elazar.

The troops were struck by a bomb while searching a building in Rafah.

Five additional soldiers were wounded in the attack.

On Tuesday, the military announced the deaths of five more IDF soldiers killed fighting in the northern Gaza Strip and Southern Lebanon.

The soldiers slain in Gaza were named as Cpt. Yehonatan Joni Keren, 22, from Moledet; Staff Sgt. Nisim Meytal, 20, from Hadera; Staff Sgt. Aviv Gilboa, 21, from Neve Tzuf; and Staff Sgt. Naor Haimov, 22, from Rosh Ha’ayin. All four served in the IDF’s elite Multidimensional Unit.

Also, Master Sgt. (res.) Yedidia Bloch, 31, from Mevo Horon, died of wounds sustained last week while fighting Hezbollah terrorists in Southern Lebanon. Bloch served in the Battalion 7155 of the 55th Paratroopers Brigade.


IDF discovers Nazi flag, Hitler figure, swastikas in Southern Lebanon
The Israel Defense Forces found Nazi-related paraphernalia while searching civilian homes in Southern Lebanon, used by Hezbollah terrorists for storing weapons and other items.

The Israeli military crossed the border last month to destroy terror infrastructure and work to stop the rocket and other fire that has been launched at the Jewish state since Oct. 8, 2023, one day after the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel.

On Friday, the IDF shared images of five objects uncovered during operations. One photo shows a book with an Arabic title and the handwritten name Hassan Salih above a swastika drawn in the style of an Indian swastika rather than the Nazi version.

Another image includes four items. Two—a red pennant flag and what appears to be a wooden box or puzzle—include swastikas. Two figures photographed show Adolf Hitler performing a Nazi salute and a man in a greenish uniform carrying a gun.

“It’s no coincidence these were found in civilian homes exploited by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon,” the IDF stated on X. “Hezbollah’s goal has always been the same: annihilate Israel.”


Bipartisan Senate group urges administration to reinstate Houthis’ Foreign Terrorist Organization designation
A bipartisan group of senators wrote to Secretary of State Tony Blinken on Thursday pressing him to redesignate the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Their letter suggests growing frustration on Capitol Hill over the administration’s refusal to take the step after a year of Houthi attacks on U.S. forces, Israel and commercial shipping lanes.

The administration has faced bipartisan pressure from lawmakers to reinstate the Houthis’ FTO designation since as early as January, when the administration imposed a separate Specially Designated Global Terrorist designation which confers less stringent sanctions authorities.

“While we recognize that your administration has listed the Houthis as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT), that designation is nowhere near as impactful as an FTO listing. Designating the Houthis as an FTO would impose meaningful costs on the Houthis and degrade their ability to commit acts of terrorism,” the lawmakers wrote.

“Since the misguided revocation of the Houthis’ FTO designation in 2021, the Houthis, backed by the Iranian regime, have only escalated their efforts to destabilize the Middle East,” they added.

The lawmakers noted that the Houthis’ attacks have continued in spite of U.S. and allied military strikes to destroy and disrupt their capabilities, and said that the U.S. needs to “take further action to impose costs on the Houthis” before Americans are killed in the group’s attacks.

The letter argues that the enhanced designation would “enable the United States to better target the group’s assets and financial support and hold the group accountable.”

The letter was organized by Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), co-signed by Sens. Bob Casey (D-PA), Rick Scott (R-FL), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).
Bombing Hezbollah’s drug empire is the key weakening its power
Back in 1997, at the height of Hezbollah’s relentless campaign to drive the IDF out of Israel’s security zone in southern Lebanon, I made an out-of-the-box suggestion.

Along with attacking the terrorists head-on, I gave an opinion in The Jerusalem Post that Israel should strike at one of their principal sources of funding – drugs.

Back then, Hezbollah and its Syrian allies were regional leaders in the production of heroin. The poppy fields from which the opiates were extracted blanketed the Bekaa Valley and other fertile areas. Defoliate them, I argued, and deprive the terrorists of their oxygen.

My proposal went unremarked by Israel’s security establishment, and, in May 2000, the last Israeli soldier exited Lebanon.

Over the course of the next twenty-five years, Hezbollah swelled from a relatively small terrorist force into an immense terrorist army, one of the Middle East’s most formidable military forces.

The 15,000 rockets and missiles Israel confronted in the 2006 Second Lebanon War ballooned into more than 150,000.

Since invading southern Lebanon in September, the IDF has uncovered a vast network of attack tunnels, each lavishly equipped with weapons, designed to facilitate Hezbollah’s planned conquest of the Galilee.

All of those armaments, the infrastructure, and training cost billions of dollars. Much of this sum was remitted from Iran, but a no less lucrative moneymaker is – still – the drug trade.


Q & A: Sharansky, Israel, Ukraine, and the World
Hosted by Jay Nordlinger
Natan Sharansky began life as Anatoly Shcharansky. He was a dissident and refusenik in the Soviet Union. For nine years, he was a prisoner in the Gulag. He then made his life in Israel: as a writer, a politician, a human-rights activist, and so on. With Jay, he talks about the war in which Israel is engulfed. And the Ukraine war. And the consequences of all this for the world. He also talks about the prisoner swap between the West and Russia last summer. He himself was part of such a swap, in 1986. A conversation with Natan Sharansky is always a privilege.


Call Me Back: Israel, Iran, Trump, Harris – with Dr. Micah Goodman
Hosted by Dan Senor
Micah Goodman is on the speed-dial of a number of Israeli political leaders – from Right to Left, but especially on the Center-Left and the Center-Right. And Micah has been synthesizing how Israelis view the war with Iran and the U.S.-Israel relationship.

Micah is a polymath, a podcaster and one of Israel’s most influential public intellectuals, having written books ranging from biblical lessons for the modern age to Israel’s geopolitics. Micah has a new book (in Hebrew), called ‘The Eighth Day’, in which Micah tries to understand the implications of the nation’s trauma and what it means for the other ‘day after’ (not the ‘day after’ in Gaza, but the ‘day after’ inside Israel).
Jewish student compares pro-Palestine encampments to Hitler Youth protests
UCLA student Eli Tsives has compared the “shocking” pro-Palestine encampments to Hitler Youth protests from 1933.

Mr Tsives spoke specifically about the moment he and other Jewish students were blocked from going to class.

“We can directly correlate that moment to what Jews experienced in 1933 when they were blocked out not by the law, but by Hitler Youth who took it into their own hands to block out Jewish students from universities,” Mr Tsives told Sky News host James Morrow.


‘Duty of humanity’ to speak out against Jew hatred
Political strategist and analyst Amjad Taha says it is a “duty of humanity” to speak out against Jew hatred.

Mr Taha told Sky News host Erin Molan that Israel’s battle against Hamas is a “fight between darkness and light”.

“And sometimes, in that darkness, it can be quite dark,” he said.




What Matters Now to Haviv Rettig Gur: US elections through an Israeli prism
Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan and senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur.

The United States is electing its next president on November 5 and according to a poll published this week, Israelis massively favor Republican Donald Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris.

So ahead of next week’s results, we take a closer look at exactly how Israelis are polling, which candidate they favor — and some reasons why. We also learn how the current polling matches previous surveys of Israelis ahead of past US elections and who was actually elected in the end.

We also hear from Rettig Gur, who has been touring Jewish communities over the past week, what concerns he’s gathered about both candidates from the American Jews he’s spoken with.

And finally, we look at the recently published AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey of Americans which, among other things, drills down into the US population’s partisan divide on all things Israel and the Middle East.

So this week, we ask Haviv Rettig Gur, what matters now?


Stumping for Harris, Bill Clinton notes Jews were in Holy Land prior to advent of Islam
Campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris at Christ Temple Apostolic Faith Church in Muskegon Heights, Mich., on Wednesday night, former President Bill Clinton discussed Israel extensively at the end of his nearly 45-minute remarks.

“I understand why young Palestinian and Arab Americans in Michigan think too many people have died since—I get that. But if you lived in one of those kibbutzim and in Israel, right next to Gaza, where the people there were the most pro-friendship with Palestine, most pro-two state solution of any of the Israeli communities—were the ones right next to Gaza, and Hamas butchered them,” Clinton, 78, said.

Those who criticize the Jewish state “are essentially saying, ‘Yeah, but look how many people you’ve killed in [retaliation]. So how many is enough for you to kill to punish them for the terrible things they did?’” Clinton added. “That all sounds nice until you realize what would you do if it was your family? And you hadn’t done anything but support a homeland for the Palestinians, and one day they come for you and slaughter the people in your village.”

“You would say, ‘Well, you have to forgive me. I’m not keeping score that way. It isn’t how many we’ve had to kill because Hamas makes sure that they’re shielded by civilians,’” he said. “They’ll force you to kill civilians if you want to defend yourself.”

Clinton said the Hamas terror group doesn’t care about a Palestinian homeland.

“They wanted to kill Israelis and make Israel uninhabitable. Well, I got news for them. They were there first before there was—their faith existed,” he said. “They were there in the time of King David in the southernmost tribes had Judea and Samaria.”


Barclays: We have not ‘divested’ from Israel's largest arms manufacturer
Barclay’s bank has denied allegations that the company has “divested” from Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems.

Palestine Action, a group responsible for violent protests at both Barclay’s banks and Elbit factories across the UK, claimed on social media that “Barclays PLC has sold all of its shareholdings in Elbit”.

The group’s campaign, which began just over a year ago, included a series of attacks on the bank which included vandalising branch windows and splattering red paint, aimed at disrupting Barclays' operations and increasing the PR costs associated with its investment in Elbit.

According to the most recent SEC filings and NASDAQ data Barclay’s sold their holding in Elbit Systems which was valued at over $3.4m.

This marks a significant shift, as Barclays’ shareholdings in Elbit had steadily increased over the past decade.

However, a Barclays spokesman denied the allegations made by Palestine Action. “Barclays trades in shares of listed companies in response to client instruction or demand and that may result in us holding shares,” he said.

“We are not making investments for Barclays and Barclays is not a ‘shareholder’ or ‘investor’ in Elbit Systems in that sense, and therefore cannot divest; it would be misleading to suggest otherwise. We continue provide a range of financial services to the defence sector, including US, UK and European defence companies.”

Elbit Systems is the primary provider of the Israeli military's land-based equipment and unmanned aerial vehicles. The company has been critical within the defence industry of Israel.

In October 2023, Palestine Action intensified its efforts focusing specifically on Barclays due to its ties with Elbit. The demonstrations reached a critical point on June 10, 2024, when protesters executed a coordinated action that vandalised 20 branches.

In the aftermath, Barclays CEO CS Venkatakrishnan expressed concern about the conflict in the region but also criticised the disruptive tactics employed by Palestine Action.

Throughout the year-long campaign, several activists were convicted, with police estimating damage from the actions to be between £250,000 and £500,000. Many branches were forced to close for extended periods.




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