Friday, December 05, 2025

12/05 Links Pt1: How time ran out on Blinken’s plan for postwar Gaza; Hostages as leverage: Iran's secret demand aimed at crippling Israel's agriculture; Did the Red Cross do all it could for hostages in Gaza?

From Ian:

The day after that never came: How time ran out on Blinken’s plan for postwar Gaza
Had the world not been turned upside down, Antony Blinken would have been in Israel on October 10, 2023. Had Hamas terrorists not shaken the Middle East and pulverized plans for its future, the US secretary of state would have flown from Israel to Saudi Arabia a few days later as part of a multi-stop tour aimed at bridging some of the final gaps between the two countries on long-elusive normalization, a deal that could have been as positively transformative as the Hamas massacre and ensuing war were devastatingly destructive.

For months ahead of the scheduled trip, the US had been hard at work crafting a document with Saudi Arabia, laying out what Israel would need to do in exchange for Riyadh joining the Abraham Accords, namely a series of relatively minor concessions meant to assuage Palestinian aspirations for statehood. Blinken planned to bring that document to Jerusalem for approval, two senior Biden officials told The Times of Israel.

Israel was aware of where things stood and was comfortable enough with the modest steps discussed by Washington and Riyadh for the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem to draft a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia, according to the two former US officials and a current Israeli official.

Blinken did end up making it to Israel that week, but under very different circumstances, as then-US president Joe Biden’s administration rallied to support the Jewish state following the Hamas-led cross-border attack on October 7 that cut down some 1,200 people and saw 251 more taken hostage into Gaza.

Documents uncovered by the IDF from Gaza during the war revealed that one of the motivations of Hamas’s leaders in launching the attack was scuttling the US effort to broker that brewing normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

To a great extent, the terror group succeeded. The Biden administration’s normalization push was shelved in favor of, first, providing Israel with the military and diplomatic support needed to restore deterrence against Iran and its proxies, and second, working to secure an end to the war through a hostage release deal. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (L) meets with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Jeddah on June 7, 2023. (Amer Hilabi/Pool/AFP)

Many leading figures in the administration saw freeing the abductees as the key to ending the war and accordingly concentrated their attention on the indirect hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas, which largely ran through Qatar and Egypt. But Blinken grew to believe that setting up the security and governing bodies to help administer Gaza the “day after” the war was no less critical.

“Israel needed the confidence to know that [its] security would not be threatened by withdrawing from Gaza, and Hamas needed the confidence to know that the war would end if it gave up the remaining hostages,” said a senior Biden aide, who was one of 10 government officials and well-placed regional sources interviewed for this story.

That logic was the basis for a “Transitional Mission” that Blinken worked to establish, which would steer the Strip after the war. The initiative, as laid out in a 14-point plan that would have been part of the ceasefire agreement, was aimed at “support[ing] the provision of governance, security and humanitarian assistance for Gaza” after the war, according to a never-before-reported US government document outlining the plan, which was obtained and verified by The Times of Israel.

The proposed mission was to involve civilian and military personnel, funding and other contributions from a handful of foreign governments, including Saudi Arabia, whose involvement Blinken hoped would provide an opening to revive the stalled normalization negotiations. Displaced Palestinians stand on a road after heavy rain in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, on November 25, 2025. (Omar Al-Qattaa / AFP)

To ensure strong Arab support, the proposal characterized the initiative as a “first step toward establishing an independent and sovereign Palestinian state.” That made the idea a hard sell to Jerusalem, but Blinken believed the prospect of Saudi normalization could be enough of a carrot to overcome Israel’s likely objections.

The result was a precarious house of cards, but one that Blinken thought could lay the foundation for not just a temporary halt in hostilities, but a durable, lasting peace and a truly transformed region.

The US held months of talks to advance the plan and Saudi normalization, but neither got off the ground by the time Biden left office in January 2025. A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was brokered during the waning hours of the previous administration, helped by critical pressure from the incoming Trump team. But Israel still wasn’t interested in discussing postwar arrangements of the kind Blinken sought to finalize, and the Trump administration backed Jerusalem’s decision to resume the war in March.
Hostages as leverage: Iran's secret demand aimed at crippling Israel's agriculture - exclusive
Iran offered Thailand help in securing the release of Thai hostages held in Hamas captivity on the condition that Bangkok label Israel an “unsafe country” and instruct its tens of thousands of agricultural workers working there to leave immediately, two sources familiar with the matter told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

The Iranian message was clear: help us apply economic pressure on Israel, and we’ll help you bring your people home.

In the tense and chaotic weeks following the October 7 attacks, while Israel was still counting its dead and searching for missing civilians, a drama was unfolding thousands of kilometers away in Bangkok.

Thailand’s government, shocked by the scale of the massacre in which 39 Thai citizens were murdered and desperate to protect its citizens, began urgent diplomatic efforts to secure the release of the 31 Thai laborers abducted by Hamas and other terrorist groups.

It was a humanitarian crisis, not a political one; Thailand had no direct conflict with Hamas. But as often happens in the Middle East, even humanitarian crises can become bargaining chips.

Tehran, which maintained influence over Hamas, signaled it might be able to facilitate the release of the Thai hostages; however, the offer was not unconditional. Possible damage to Israel's agriculture sector If Thailand complied, it would deliver a painful blow to Israel’s agricultural sector at the very moment it was struggling to recover from the shock of the attack.

Between 30,000 and 40,000 Thai laborers worked on Israeli farms and in greenhouses – some of them in the western Negev and near the border with Gaza, the area hardest hit on October 7.

Their sudden withdrawal would have crippled Israeli food production and inflicted long-term economic damage.
Joshua Namm: Et Tu America? For Israel, No Ally Is Forever
There has been a lot of serious discussion recently about America’s role in the recent agreement between Israel and Hamas. And while I wrote about that topic last month, this month contains my favorite holiday of the year: Chanukah. I wrote about the incredible importance of that holiday two years ago. This year, those two things are connected.

What’s the connection?

As Chanukah approaches there are two, seemingly different, but related reasons that “make this year different than all other years” (sorry about mixing two Jewish ideas in that way).

According to a story in the Jerusalem Post, the United States, obviously under Donald Trump, is planning to build a large military base in Israel along the Gaza border. The aim is purportedly to aid “stabilization efforts” in Gaza during the current conflict, and (more tellingly) to “serve future international stabilization efforts.”

At the same time, the acceptance of Trump’s plan, and the various ways the U.S. has been involved in shaping Israel’s policy during this war, under Biden and Trump, demonstrates an expansion of America’s influence on Israel, representing an increasing Israeli willingness to relinquish sovereignty – in much the same way it has given up land for a phantom “peace,” for decades.

That isn’t as threatening if we’re talking about the U.S./Israel relationship as it has existed for most of the last 50 years. But Israeli/American relations haven’t always been this friendly, and there is no reason, especially given the events of the last two years, to believe that they will remain so in the future.

It is no longer entirely in the realm of fantasy to believe that at some point America could be a significant opponent to Israel’s interests (and to wider Jewish interests). When I was growing up, I assumed that any conflict in which Israel and America found themselves on different sides, would be an America so different than the one I grew up in, that it would be unrecognizable as America. I also assumed this to be an almost entirely theoretical question, one which, if it did occur, could occur only after many, many generations.

That was naively idealistic.

Again, we aren’t there yet, but now we can easily see how things could get there. The rise of the antisemitic left (most recently embodied in the elections of not one, but two Jew hating socialist mayors in New York AND Seattle, with a newly declared socialist mayoral candidate in Los Angeles announcing on November 15), and the rise of the antisemitic right, embodied in the Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, etc., is a wake up call that every Jew should heed.


Did the Red Cross do all it could for hostages in Gaza?
Welcome to The Times of Israel’s Lazar Focus. Each Friday, join host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan and diplomatic correspondent Lazar Berman for a deep dive into what’s behind the news that spins the globe.

This week, we’re joined by Julien Lerisson, the head of delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Israel and the Occupied Territories. WATCH this episode here:

Berman reviews the organization’s troubling history of failures regarding Jews, specifically during the Holocaust, but also moving forward in its rejection of Israel’s national Magen David Adom chapter until two decades ago.

We learn about the ICRC’s work in Gaza during the hostage releases and Lerisson shares the humanitarian group’s frustrations with its inability to access those held by Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza.

Lerisson tells us about the group’s core principle of neutrality and how a mission to serve humanity is at the center of its work in war-torn and disaster-prone regions.
Lazar Focus: Did the Red Cross do all it could for hostages in Gaza?



Ghassan Al-Duhaini to replace Abu Shabab as Popular Forces leader in Gaza
Ghassan Al-Duhaini, deputy official to the slain Popular Forces militia head Yasser Abu Shabab, has been appointed to lead the anti-Hamas armed group in Rafah in southern Gaza.

He was recently documented moving among the militia operatives and lifting the spirits of members after his predecessor's death. Duhaini was also wounded in the attack that killed Shabab.

Shabab, 32, died on Thursday during a conflict between armed groups when he was wounded in critical condition. It was reported that he was not killed by Hamas fire but rather in the framework of an internal dispute.

According to security officials, Abu Shabab met his death in a mass brawl that broke out between several factions within the armed group over governance, Shabab’s leadership of the clan, and the division of areas within the territory where the group operates in the southern part of the Strip.

Defense establishment's comments on Shabab's death
The Israeli defense establishment acknowledged that the IDF evacuated Shabab to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, and he was pronounced dead upon entering the emergency room.

In Israel’s defense establishment, the assessment is that Shabab's death is a significant blow to Hamas. The IDF and the defense establishment are already required to find a way to bring Shabab’s group back toward unity and activity against the Hamas terror organization.

Until October 2023, Shabab was imprisoned by Hamas on theft and drug offenses, and his release came under the cover of an Israeli strike on the security facilities in the Strip at the start of the war. From that moment, his name surfaced as someone filling the security vacuum in eastern Rafah. Throughout the war, much was said about his activity against Hamas, including armed clashes across the Strip and the looting of aid trucks in order to undermine Hamas’s monopoly over goods in the territory.


Acting ICC prosecutor says ‘conceivable’ to hold in-abstentia hearing against Netanyahu
It would be “conceivable” to hold an in-absentia hearing against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Russian President Vladimir Putin, the deputy prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said Friday.

Mame Mandiaye Niang is currently acting chief prosecutor of the ICC, in the absence of Karim Khan, on leave pending an investigation into sexual abuse allegations that he denies.

Niang said it was frustrating that arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Putin have not resulted in a court appearance.

On November 24, 2024, the ICC issued warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on suspicion of ordering war crimes during Israel’s campaign against the Hamas terror group in Gaza, following the October 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel.

Jerusalem denies the allegations, asserting that the war, with the declared aims of returning the hostages, defeating Hamas, and preventing a future threat from Gaza, has been fought in accordance with international law.

The ICC has no police force and relies on countries to arrest suspects and transfer them to the court — extremely unlikely in the case of Putin or Netanyahu.

However, he pointed to an unprecedented hearing against fugitive Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony earlier this year, held in absentia.


Call me Back Podcast: The Only-Bibi Camp Vs Never-Bibi Camp - with Ari Shavit
Benjamin Netanyahu towers over Israeli politics like no other living leader. Everything about him – from his vision to his demeanor, from his entanglement with Israel’s legal system to his personal life – is a source for division. So much so that he became the litmus test by which Israel’s political tribes are divided.

Dan was joined by Israeli journalist and author Ari Shavit to discuss how Netanyahu came to embody Israel’s political divide, what his pardon request from President Herzog means for his future, and whether Israelis can reach unity in a post-Netanyahu world.


Ask Haviv Anything: Episode 66: Do BDS campaigns help Palestinians?
Welcome to our new short-form episodes interspersed with the regular interviews that dive into an often-asked question about Israel, Jews and the Middle East.

Our current question: Do BDS campaigns help Palestinians?


Jonathan Sacerdoti: From campuses to congress: Wendy Sachs on how Qatar bought America and the West
A filmmaker set out to document the fallout of October seventh. Instead, she uncovered something far larger and far darker: a coordinated ideological capture of Western institutions, a foreign-funded corrosion of democratic values, and a generation primed to cheer for extremists before the bodies in Israel had even been counted. Wendy Sachs joins Jonathan Sacerdoti for a stark, unflinching look at how the world lost its bearings on October eighth, and why the shockwaves are still reshaping global politics today.

Sachs traces the journey from campus slogans to international propaganda machines: the sudden mobilisation of Students for Justice in Palestine, the foreign financing behind them, and the decades-long strategy to infiltrate universities, media and social platforms. She reveals how Qatar, Iran and China have poured billions into Western education while demanding silence about their own regimes, how academics have embraced an oppressor–oppressed fiction that rewards extremism, and how young people were ideologically groomed long before October seventh made the crisis visible.

👁‍🗨 Watch if you want to understand why October eighth wasn’t a reaction — it was a revelation.

💬 We Discuss:
📽️ How October 8th exposes the ideological collapse after the Hamas massacre
🗽 The Times Square celebrations before the dead were even named
🎓 The hidden foreign funding behind SJP and campus radicalism
🔺 The origins of the red-triangle symbol and why its use is a call to violence
📡 Decades of Hamas messaging strategy revealed in FBI wiretaps
🌍 How anti-Zionism became the fashionable disguise for old antisemitic tropes
💸 Qatar, China and Iran’s billion-dollar grip on Western universities
📚 The academic shift from scholarship to indoctrination
🧠 How TikTok and social algorithms manufactured a generation’s worldview
🏛️ Why institutions police “offence” but not extremism
🎞️ Why Hollywood is now a battleground for foreign influence
🔥 The climate of hate: from campus cancellations to political assassinations
🕊️ How Jews rediscovered identity — and why the crisis reaches far beyond them
⚖️ What it will take for democracies to fight back, and whether they still can




Fmr. Neo-Nazi Just EXPOSED The Entire Jew-Hating Movement in One Video!
He was a white power rock star and neo-Nazi "reverend" in a so-called racial holy war until a sitcom, a few kind strangers and fatherhood shattered the illusion. In this episode, Arno Michaelis reveals how he got radicalized, why antisemitism fuels all violent extremism and what finally pulled him out.




Mamdani says NYPD commissioner apologized after her brother called him 'enemy' of the Jewish people at gala
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani said Thursday that NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch personally apologized to his team after her brother described him as an "enemy" of the Jewish people during a high-profile charity dinner in Manhattan on Wednesday night.

Speaking at his Cocoa Chat community meeting, Mamdani stressed that the apology was received and that he intends to govern for all New Yorkers.

"The commissioner apologized to my team for those remarks, and I look forward to being a mayor for each and every New Yorker, including Jewish New Yorkers," Mamdani said.

He emphasized that the incident will not interfere with his working relationship with Tisch, whom he has chosen to keep on as police commissioner despite policy disagreements.


Jonathan Tobin: How to regulate synagogue protests? Marginalize anti-Israel blood libels
The willingness to normalize Mamdani is the most obvious symptom of what has gone on.

That a person for whom the destruction of the one Jewish state on the planet is the driving force of a burgeoning political career—he is, after all, 34, and the mayoralty will be his first significant political position—and the organizing principle of his advocacy is an appalling turn of events. But rather than treat him as a pariah, as the chattering classes would behave if someone like Fuentes or David Duke, leader of the Ku Klux Klan, were elected to any office, he’s been feted and fussed over by leaders on both sides of the aisle. That not only includes leading Democrats, but President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

While they aren’t wrong to praise his skill as a manipulator of the media, treating his antisemitic beliefs as merely a curious eccentricity or merely a questionable aspect of his appeal to young voters is to normalize such abhorrent views. Instead, they are treating anyone who dares to call him out as an “enemy of the Jewish people”—as Benjamin Tisch, the brother of New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, rightly did—as the problem. That Commissioner Tisch publicly apologized for her brother’s accurate comment undermines the notion that she will be an effective check on the mayor-elect’s excesses. It also sends Mamdani, his Jew-hating advisers and members of the pro-Hamas mobs besieging synagogues, the message that they are legitimate actors.

The question isn’t, as the sponsors of the New York synagogue buffer zone legislation said, how they can protect the free-speech rights of protesters without making the lives of synagogue-goers hell. Rather, it is how leading liberal opinion leaders, including many left-wing Jews who never miss an opportunity to bash the Israeli government or to bolster arguments that strip Jews of rights that no one would deny to any other people, now fail to treat antisemitism as a disqualifying character flaw. More than that, such sentiments should deem them unfit for office or a position of influence in academia or journalism.

We should welcome efforts to protect synagogue-goers. But what we should really be pushing back against is a cultural climate in which Israel and the expression of normative Jewish beliefs are now considered illegitimate. As long as that is true of mainstream American public discourse, the safety of worshippers or any other action of an identifiable Jew will always be in question.
1,100 Jewish New Yorkers brave bitter cold to rally against Jew-hatred outside targeted synagogue
On a bitterly cold Thursday night last week, some 1,100 Jewish New Yorkers braved the freezing temperatures to participate in a solidarity rally outside the Orthodox synagogue which was targeted by anti-Israel protesters two weeks earlier.

At the Dec. 4 rally, the mood was one of pride and determination.

“This felt like ‘We are Jewish New Yorkers. Don’t you dare f*** with us.’ It was the necessary response to those crazy hoodlums trying to intimidate Jews. Because we’re not going to allow it,” said Shira Dicker, a writer and publicist from the Upper West Side.

On Nov. 19, Nefesh b’Nefesh held an event at Park East Synagogue promoting aliyah when demonstrators outside chanted “death to the IDF” and “globalize the intifada,” as well as “we don’t want no Zionists here.” One organizer from the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation reportedly told the 200-person crowd, “We need to make them scared.”

“I was glad to see the Jewish community organize this rally,” said participant Daniel Treiman, an attorney who lives on the Upper East Side. “It’s really important to stand up against this abominable, genuinely hateful trend of protests outside Jewish institutions in which they chant unambiguously murderous slogans.”

The rally was organized by UJA-Federation of New York and had a long list of co-sponsors, including synagogues of every denomination and Jewish day schools.

The Federation began planning it the day after the anti-Israel protest outside Park East, said Hindy Poupko, the agency’s senior vice president for community organizing and external relations, by email.

“We held this rally to stand up for our community, our core values and our unwavering support for Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish homeland,” she said. “With nearly 100 partners for the rally, we showed we are united, strong and proud Jews, News Yorkers and Zionists.”




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