Friday, August 14, 2026

08/14 Links Pt1: Shame on the "genocide scholars"; Stop living in la-la land: Only the IDF can curb Israel’s enemies; UN Leaders Lit an Eternal Flame for a Hamas Commander

From Ian:

Andrew Fox: Shame on the "genocide scholars"
None of these academics sits on the ICJ, although it must be noted that some of their fellow Israel-haters do. Their public biographies reveal no qualification to adjudicate international criminal law or the law of armed conflict, no understanding of targeting, and no expertise in Hamas and its tactics. They may, of course, offer historical parallels or sociological theories within the very narrow bounds of their expertise. However, they have instead issued verdicts, wrapped those verdicts in academic prestige and watched journalists cite the prestige as proof. Shaw’s latest book is called The New Age of Genocide: Intellectual and Political Challenges after Gaza. The accusation produces headlines and speaking invitations. It also sells books. The blood libel has acquired peer review and a publicity department.

That description is earned. The modern version of the mediaeval libel says that the Jewish state deliberately kills Palestinians as a people, with dead children serving as its most potent imagery. Once repeated as settled fact by decorated academics, the charge escapes Gaza and attaches itself to Jews everywhere. The consequences have names. Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were murdered outside Washington’s Capital Jewish Museum. The accused gunman allegedly said, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza”. Weeks earlier, an attacker shouting “Free Palestine” threw Molotov cocktails at a Jewish hostage walk in Boulder. Karen Diamond died from her injuries. Bondi, Manchester, the list of Jews murdered over the Gaza blood libel goes on.

These academics did not commit those attacks. They have positioned themselves, however, as part of the international anti-Israel machine. Along with activists posing as journalists, maniacal Israel-haters posing as UN officials, and a whole industry of fellow travellers, they helped dignify the mythology in which Jews anywhere can be treated as accessories to an imaginary extermination campaign. Professors who lend their authority to that mythology cannot retreat into innocent scholarship when its slogans arrive outside Jewish museums with guns, or at Jewish gatherings with petrol bombs. Bartov, Mordechai, Shaw, Mehdi Hassan, Owen Jones, DropSite, Max Blumenthal, and all the rest: they all have blood on their hands as much as any of the IDF soldiers they accuse so viciously.

The evidential problem remains untouched. Under Croatia v Serbia, group destruction must be the only reasonable inference when intent is deduced from conduct. My earlier pieces have covered Gaza’s wartime births and Israel’s facilitation of mass polio vaccination, facts the genocide campaign simply wishes away. A brutal war against Hamas remains an obvious alternative explanation.

The genocide allegation survives only by declaring every piece of exculpatory evidence meaningless. Births supposedly tell us nothing. Vaccinations tell us nothing. Food deliveries tell us nothing. Humanitarian pauses tell us nothing. Failed famine predictions tell us nothing. The absence of measured famine mortality tells us nothing.

These academics have strayed wildly beyond their lanes and converted moral vanity into counterfeit legal authority. They profit in attention and publication from a blood libel whose human cost is paid by Jews they will never meet. Shame on them. They are shameless.
UN study debunks Gaza malnutrition claim, but Labour presses on
British Jews are scared; they’re right to be. Since October 7 they have seen murderous violence against their persons, vandalism against their synagogues, and arson against their property. Jewish-owned ambulances have been fire-bombed. Ambulances. It’s not enough that Jews be stabbed and bloodied and cowed into hiding their religious symbols; they must be deprived of the means to save themselves.

Most British Jews are Zionists, albeit the intensity of the attachment to Israel differs from person to person, as do the feelings stirred up. Some are happy warriors for Zionism; others are concerned by the impact of Jewish sovereignty on Jewish ethics; others still are the dissenting critics who imagine themselves to be the voice of Jewish conscience.

Zionism, like Judaism, encompasses the complexities of the Jewish experience: “Bless the sting and bless the honey/Bless the bitter and the sweet.”

Instead of acting to calm tensions, this government prefers to inflame them. If the political chatter is true, we can expect yet more inflaming in the coming months as Andy Burnham attempts to reset his party’s relationship with Muslim voters. Ministers will slug away at the Israel punching bag in the vain hope that it will sate the electors who have abandoned them.

New foreign secretary Ed Miliband used his “frank and constructive” first conversation with Israeli counterpart Gideon Sa’ar to lash out at Israel on settlements, Palestinian statehood, and, inevitably, the transfer of aid to Gaza. The anti-Israel lobby is itching to get its NGOs back into Gaza where they can return to business-as-usual, turning a blind eye to Hamas’s crimes, and denouncing Israel at every opportunity.

There is no silver lining in this for Jews. Labour increasingly sees British politics in terms of interest blocs, whether those interests be economic, political, or ethnic, and the harsh truth is that Jews are a much smaller bloc. It is worth noting, in passing, how insulting it is to treat all British Muslims as an unintegrated, ethno-religious bloc. Make no mistake, those Muslims exist, and in far greater numbers than we should be comfortable with, but plenty of British Muslims want to be addressed as the individuals they are.

Regardless, the voters who ditched Labour over Gaza are, by and large, not coming back. They want representatives who share and are willing to give voice to their extremist, antizionist prejudices. The 2024 election has shown them that Labour can be beaten in its heartlands by populist Muslim, Palestine-centric, sectarian campaigns.

While Labour MPs have grown accustomed to pandering to this electorate over the years, they could never go far enough. Now these voters don’t need Labour, and where they have the numbers they will put one of their own in Parliament.

Labour isn’t prepared to accept this yet, so expect the anti-Israel politicking to be stepped up again and again. Even though it won’t redraw the electoral map in Labour’s favour, it will contribute to the noxious fug of antisemitism that lingers in Britain’s major cities, university towns, and in progressive spaces like education, trade unionism, the public sector, and the arts.

It would be better all round if Labour just admitted what it was up to, that it doesn’t care whether the data it bases policy decisions on are reliable, that certain Muslim votes matter more than the Jewish community. Lessons should be learnt, but won’t, about the credence given to UN statistics on Israel. When you want to be misled enough, and to mislead others, you will believe anything.
Was Oct. 7 ‘inevitable’?
Asked what the DSA wants for Israelis and Palestinians, Romer described a “free Palestine” with a capital in Jerusalem, volunteering that this could safely be read as a one-state solution. She said nothing about what becomes of the roughly 10 million people currently living in Israel. Not a word. In this framework, the question does not arise.

Asked whether the DSA would have supported the terms discussed at Camp David in 2000, the closest the parties have ever come to a two-state agreement, she said it was a good question and that she would have to look at the specifics.

She didn’t know then and doesn’t now. She holds a maximalist position on the outcome and hasn’t read the history that produced it. That is not a policy. That is a slogan wearing a policy’s clothes.

The pattern held everywhere. She said the DSA believes in taxing the hell out of millionaires. Remnick asked what that means in practice. She had no answer, and when he observed that a co-chair might be expected to have one, she offered that it is a democracy and that we have to look at what we need to spend. On open borders, she described reforming the current system while rethinking it, building a new one and eventually “flipping a switch.”

And when the backlash came, Romer didn’t revisit any of it. She went on X the next day and called Remnick a “debate bro” trying to make her look and feel stupid.

He asked her questions. That was his job. The questions were never the problem. It was the lack of answers.

Democrats should understand exactly what is at stake because life is not a podcast. DSA members have won congressional primaries in New York, Colorado and Michigan, unseating sitting House incumbents in the above first two states. By January, there will almost certainly be seven of them in Congress.

This is no longer a caucus writing manifestos in a rented room. It is an organization with a functioning electoral machine, a farm system and a demonstrated ability to end 30-year careers.

To be exact, because exactness is the point: Romer’s words are hers. Mamdani did not say them, and no one should pretend that he did.

But Romer is not a member having a bad afternoon. She is the co-chair—the person whose formal job is to articulate what the organization believes. When the person elected to speak for a movement calls Oct. 7 inevitable, cannot answer a question about Camp David or explain her own tax position, then that is a description of the movement’s intellectual center of gravity.

It’s not a gaffe. It is a readout.

So put one question to every candidate seeking your vote, your check or your endorsement. Not whether they criticize Israeli policy. Not whether they grieve Palestinian suffering (because decent people do).

Was Oct. 7 inevitable? Yes or no.

The ones who can answer in a single syllable belong in public life. The ones who need a paragraph have already told you what they think.

Nothing about this was inevitable. Not then. Not now.
Pay-for-slay: Could the Palestinian Authority be held legally liable for October 7?
Can the Palestinian Authority (PA) be held civilly responsible for the October 7 massacre even if the plaintiffs cannot produce records showing that it directly paid the Hamas terrorists who planned and carried it out?

That question sits at the center of litigation brought by more than 8,000 plaintiffs now moving through the Jerusalem District Court, where they are seeking to hold the PA responsible for deaths, injuries, and other harm caused by the massacre and the war that followed.

Lt.-Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch, a former director of the IDF Military Prosecution in the West Bank whose recent study examines the PA and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) prisoner-payment system and its possible connection to October 7, does not expect the litigation to uncover a neat paper trail linking individual Hamas leaders to PA payments.

“I don’t think we’re going to see individual links to the PA,” Hirsch told The Jerusalem Post in a Monday interview. “I think it’s going to be very, very difficult to find that type of evidence.”

That evidentiary gap is central to the cases. Hirsch argued that the question is broader than whether a particular October 7 terrorist received a particular payment. The question is whether the PA’s long-standing system of paying, supporting, and employing prisoners and released prisoners can itself provide a sufficient connection to people who later returned to terrorism.

“What will most likely happen is that most of the discussion will be about the prima facie [initial] responsibility of the PA, if that can even be shown,” Hirsch said. “It will very much depend on whether the judge accepts this argument that the PA is responsible because of the payment of the salaries.”

The court has not decided that question.

In a July 1 decision, Jerusalem District Court Judge Eran Shilo set a common procedure for the thousands of lawsuits, separating the shared question of the PA’s potential responsibility from the individual circumstances and damages claimed by each plaintiff. The plaintiffs’ law firms were initially ordered to submit short written arguments, while the PA is due to file a single response by October 18.


UN Leaders Lit an Eternal Flame for a Hamas Commander
UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer is calling on UN Secretary-General António Guterres and UN General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock to retract their tribute to Imad El Samhouri, a longtime UNRWA teacher and school principal recently exposed as a Hamas field commander.

At a UN memorial ceremony on June 8, 2026, both officials helped light an eternal flame honoring fallen UN personnel, with El Samhouri’s name read aloud before them.

According to a Hamas martyr video, El Samhouri served as a field commander in the Muhammad al-Shamali Battalion of Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades. The footage shows him emerging from terrorist tunnels and declaring that jihad was his chosen path.

His publicly available social-media record also documented close ties to Hamas officials, glorification of terrorism, and the use of UNRWA schools to host Hamas figures and steer students toward Hamas-linked organizations.

In the open letter below, Neuer demands an independent investigation into how a Hamas commander was permitted to run UNRWA schools for more than a decade—and who within the agency knew or should have known. He also calls on Guterres and Baerbock to apologize to Hamas’s victims, disclose all UNRWA employees found to have terrorist ties, and hold accountable the supervisors and senior officials responsible.


The question is not ‘Bibi: Yes or no?’ but the answer is, ‘Which Israel?’
As another election approaches, Israel needs to ask a question more consequential than whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stays or goes: What kind of country must we become to flourish in a reality we cannot completely change?

There is an old French expression attributed to the 19th-century writer Alphonse Karr: Plus, ça change, plus c’est la même chose – the more things change, the more they stay the same.

For Israelis, it is an uncomfortable thought.

We are a nation built upon precisely the opposite proposition. Zionism was an extraordinary declaration that history could be changed.

Jews would no longer accept exile, vulnerability, or powerlessness as immutable conditions. We would change our destiny.

And we did.

Yet almost 80 years after independence, perhaps we need to confront another truth: some things have changed remarkably, while others stubbornly remain.

We have one of the world’s most formidable militaries, yet our children still run for shelters. We have transformed our diplomatic position, yet face growing international isolation and antisemitism.

We have peace with Egypt and Jordan and the extraordinary promise of the Abraham Accords, yet we still inhabit a neighborhood containing forces committed to our destruction.

Iran remains Iran. Its proxies may be weakened, rebuilt, or replaced. America’s embrace can tighten and loosen with administrations, personalities, and interests. The world’s sympathy can turn remarkably quickly.

And within Israel, confidence in institutions once treated almost as sacred – the government, the IDF, intelligence services, and political leadership – has been badly shaken.

So what exactly are we trying to change?

And what happens when we cannot?

Viktor Frankl offered a profound answer: “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

There is a story that captures the idea even more simply.
Stop living in la-la land: Only the IDF can curb Israel’s enemies
Israelis have every reason in the world to seriously doubt the American-hatched plans to bring peace to Israel’s southern and northern borders.

In both Gaza and Lebanon, there are deeply entrenched, well-equipped, Iranian-backed terrorist armies arrayed against Israel. Nobody has yet met an Islamist truly willing to give up his weapons.

Now, you’ve got to give the Jared Kushner-driven American diplomacy some credit for trying to defang Hamas and Hezbollah and transform the regional security situation.

Remember that nobody in Israel believed that Kushner and his team would be able to wedge Hamas into releasing all remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza. There was a one-in-a-thousand chance of that happening, and yet it did.

The new American plans are dreamy-delicious, too, at least on paper – perhaps hallucinatory, perhaps possible.

Hamas is supposed to be stripped of its weapons (guns, rockets, missiles, underground bunkers and weapons storehouses, and terror attack tunnels) and Gaza is supposed to be demilitarized by an “International Stabilization Force” of Moroccan, Albanian, and other troops.

Hamas rule is supposed to be replaced by a neutral, non-Hamas “technocratic government.” Members of this government and its “new” police force are supposed to be “vetted” for their peaceful intentions.

Hezbollah in Lebanon is similarly, hypothetically, going to be “decommissioned” or driven out of southern Lebanon by the ghostly, Hezbollah-penetrated weakling army known as the Lebanese Armed Forces.

This near-fictitious force, overseen by international observers from the US and reportedly by Italy, Switzerland, and Indonesia too, is to “verify” Hezbollah’s disarmament and disappearance.

This is notionally wonderful!

But both Hamas and Hezbollah vociferously deny that they will disarm (except perhaps performatively, imaginarily, a bit for the cameras), and they certainly have not abandoned their declared ideological commitments to the destruction of Israel.

And none of the presumed peacekeepers, observers, verifiers, vetters, stabilizers, and guarantors are going to actually, militarily, kinetically confront Hamas and Hezbollah, gunmen.

Never ever, none of them, not with a single bullet, never mind with a company of commandos.
Mark Dubowitz and Richard Goldberg: Tehran is losing its grip on Hormuz, and with it all its leverage
Its terrorist allies around the region, from the Houthis in Yemen to Hezbollah in Lebanon, are no longer the threat that they were on Oct. 7, 2023 — the day of the deadly invasion of Israel by Iran-backed Hamas.

Simply put, a weakened Iran played its Hormuz card too soon.

Each day that goes by leaves its regime more vulnerable to punishing military and economic pressure.

The results are already becoming visible.

According to US Energy Secretary Chris Wright, an average of 9 million barrels of oil are passing through Hormuz daily, while between 5 million to 7 million barrels are reaching consumers through “newly upgraded pipelines and export facilities.”

Wright’s figures have been disputed by oil industry analysts and other commentators.

Many of them insist that the true number of barrels is much lower, arguing as well that the febrile situation in Hormuz means that oil exports will continue at a trickle instead of a flood.

But what that ignores is that many ships move covertly through Hormuz with US assistance, going uncounted by analysts who rely solely on open-source data.

It also ignores the spectacular transformation of the oil export route that’s currently underway.

The United Arab Emirates is fast-tracking a new west-east pipeline to Fujairah, which lies outside the strait.

The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company announced in May that construction was about 50% complete, with operations expected to launch next year.

This means that the UAE can soon bypass Hormuz at minimal cost.

The Saudis too are moving in a similar direction, seeking to add 1 million to 2 million barrels per day of capacity to their east-west network running to the Red Sea.

The United States should now actively work with its Gulf allies to eclipse Iran even further.

The US Development Finance Corporation, which possesses $205 billion in investment capacity, is uniquely capable of facilitating export routes that avoid Hormuz.

It can also demand a significant share of the equity in this burgeoning consortium, with the benefits passed on to American taxpayers.

Stay the course
The situation further afield works to America’s favor too, as the United States continues to set records for oil and gas production and exports.

Venezuela’s oil exports reached approximately 1.16 million barrels per day in July, with roughly 786,000 of those heading to the US — the highest US-bound volume in seven years.

As in the Gulf, further investment here could increase production considerably.

The real loser here is not the United States but China, which relies on Middle Eastern oil far more than the US does.

Alternative routes out of the region coupled with non-Middle Eastern oil will bolster US dominance of energy markets while reducing the leverage of both China and Iran.

What’s shaping up, therefore, is not merely a victory over Iran.

If seen through to completion, these developments will set the stage for a new American century in which the flow of energy — both oil and liquefied natural gas — will be liberated from the manipulation of rogue states like Iran’s regime.

This is the direction in which we are heading, but we’re not at our destination yet.

That’s why President Trump needs to double down and resist the temptation to cut a deal with Iran that legitimizes its control over Hormuz.

Better to focus on marginalizing Iran so that its threats are empty ones.

That will truly be a legacy for future generations.
Analyst warns of potential Iranian ‘October surprise’ ahead of midterms
Behnam Ben Taleblu, the senior director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Iran program, warned on Thursday of potential Iranian escalation — military or otherwise — in the run-up to the midterms, with the goal of disrupting the elections.

Taleblu said on a panel at the Hudson Institute that, ahead of November, “my fear for the president prior to the midterms … is not failure. My fear for the president now is success.” He said that U.S. economic pressure alongside the blockade has been highly effective and will have success in squeezing Iran’s economy and oil exports, potentially bringing retaliation from Iran, even in the event of another diplomatic agreement.

“What you might actually have now is the Islamic Republic, once we reverse the economic pressure, they might lean in on asymmetric military pressure, and they might do so at a time that might deliver some sort of an October surprise or constrain his options, or create one surrender option or one major military engagement option, come October, prior to November,” Taleblu said.

A senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps advisor, Mohammed Reza Naqdi, told PBS earlier this week that Iran intends to prolong the war until the next administration and that it maintains significant capacity to attack at a time of its choosing.

Taleblu said that the U.S. needs to “prepare for success” and anticipate what Iran will do next, and to prepare contingencies for those situations.

“If you do turn it off, if you do try to pursue diplomacy, if you do try to pursue a deal, if you do try to handhold and arm-twist the media and markets just to make sure that … this global financial crisis doesn’t emerge — if you do all of that, I hope you use the time well here in this town to prepare for how Iran is preparing,” Taleblu said.

All three experts on the panel — Taleblu and Hudson Institute fellows Michael Doran and Zineb Riboua — predicted that the U.S. will be reengaged in negotiations with Iran by Thanksgiving and that there will be further U.S. or Israeli strikes before the holiday. Doran predicted that strikes are more likely after the midterms and the Israeli elections, which are scheduled for Oct. 27.

The three diverged on whether the Strait of Hormuz will be reopened by Thanksgiving.
Trump says he will declare Strait of Hormuz a 'territory of the United States'
US President Donald Trump said Friday that he would soon declare the Strait of Hormuz a US territory, following a Truth Social post on Wednesday in which he said of the waterway, "I think we will keep it."

"Pretty soon I'll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States," Trump told a crowd at a Garden City, New York, event honoring police.

Trump said the declaration would come "after we [the US] finish defeating Iran," which he described as being "very badly defeated."

He described the US naval blockade in the strait as "unstoppable" and a "wall of steel," saying, "No ships get through unless we want them to."

Trump added that he "built [up]" the US military, which he said he used "a little more than I wanted to, frankly, but that's okay."

"We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon," he emphasized. "Do we agree? Can't let them."

The US president described Iran as a "very evil country" and the "number one state sponsor of terrorism in the world."

"Remember that when you have to pay a little bit more [for gasoline]," Trump added.

Trump: Operation Midnight Hammer prevented Iranian nuclear weapon
Trump credited the US military's Operation Midnight Hammer for preventing Tehran from acquiring such weapons.

"If we didn't hit them, you would've had a nuclear weapon," he said, noting it as an outcome that would have been a "very sad day for this country and the entire world."

Trump's comments came a day after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US would impose measures on Tehran that have "never been seen" as soon as next week.


Iran to join BRICS development bank soon, central bank chief says
Iran will soon join the New Development Bank, the development lender established by the BRICS group of nations, central bank governor Abdolnasser Hemmati said in a state media report published on Wednesday ahead of a BRICS finance meeting in India.

Iran remains under sweeping US and international sanctions, and it has yet to reach a peace deal to end the current conflict with the US and Israel, giving Tehran added incentive to seek alternative financial channels outside the dollar system.

The NDB’s corporate communications division told Reuters it could not confirm information regarding Iran’s membership.

Iran joined BRICS in 2024 as the group expanded, in a move aimed at deepening economic ties among emerging economies, and it has since made clear its desire to become a member and shareholder of the NDB.

The bank was set up by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa in 2015 to finance infrastructure and sustainable development projects. It has since expanded its membership to include the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and other emerging economies.

“The most important result of cooperation among BRICS member countries is the establishment of the New Development Bank, and our country will soon become a member of this bank,” Hemmati said, according to state media.

Hemmati is attending the first meeting of BRICS finance ministers and central bank governors, hosted by India, which holds the rotating BRICS chairmanship this year.

BRICS members have sought to reduce reliance on the US dollar by promoting trade and financial transactions in national currencies.
Yemen UN envoy warns Security Council of regional escalation amid Iran-backed Houthi attacks
Yemen faces its greatest risk of renewed war since 2022 as fighting intensifies between the Iran-backed Houthis and Yemen’s Saudi-supported army and attacks on Red Sea shipping threaten further regional escalation, UN envoy Hans Grundberg warned the Security Council.

Grundberg said Houthi attacks in Marib, Hadramaut, Mokha and other areas have resulted in military and civilian casualties. He also warned that renewed Houthi attacks against commercial vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden could pull Yemen deeper into regional conflict.

The envoy urged the parties to immediately deescalate and pursue a lasting ceasefire. He said attacks and threats against shipping and cross-border attacks must end.

Grundberg said a negotiated "off-ramp" remained possible and called on countries with influence over the parties to help return them to negotiations.

The warning comes as Yemen also faces a severe humanitarian crisis. More than half of the population is experiencing acute food insecurity, UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told the council. About 6 million people have reached “Emergency” levels of food deprivation, approaching famine conditions.

Grundberg and Fletcher called for the Houthis to release 73 UN personnel being held by the group, along with workers from non-governmental organizations, civil society and diplomatic missions.

Efforts to free conflict-related detainees have also made limited progress. Grundberg said preparations for the release of more than 1,600 detainees under an agreement reached in May were moving slowly and risked being disrupted by the broader escalation.
Two slicks appear in Gulf as huge oil spill off Oman threatens disaster
Two slicks have appeared in Iranian waters, satellite imagery and video verified by Reuters show, as tit-for-tat attacks on oil tankers and other vessels by Iran and the United States spark concerns about environmental damage to the Gulf.

A potential environmental disaster is already unfolding off Oman outside of the Strait of Hormuz, where a grounded tanker, the Caroline Bezengi, is leaking Russian crude oil in a protected marine area and has created a massive slick, some estimates put at 2,000 square km.

The Caroline Bezengi incident has not been linked to the war with Iran.

The two latest slicks are inside the Gulf.

Dark color indicates heavy fuel oil
Wim Zwijnenburg, an environmental open-source researcher at the Dutch peace organization PAX, said the dark color in parts of the slick indicated heavy fuel oil, while a lighter, diluted slick stretched about 160 km.

A dark, bubbling liquid was spotted washing ashore on the beaches of Suza on Qeshm Island, contrasting with the turquoise water surrounding it, in a video posted on August 11 and verified by Reuters.

"This is the biggest one that I've seen in recent months, really since the conflict between Iran and the U.S. began," said John Amos, CEO of SkyTruth, which uses satellite imagery to detect oil spills, calling it "a major incident".

Satellite imagery showed a second slick near the smaller Sirri Island in the center of the Gulf, about 100 km southwest of Qeshm and home to some Iranian offshore oil and gas production.

The satellite imagery of Qeshm Island was taken on August 10 and that of Sirri Island on August 13.


‘Too little, too late’: Lebanon amnesty leaves former SLA members behind
Lebanon’s parliament passed a long-awaited general amnesty law on Wednesday, but the legislation does not resolve the legal status of former members of the Israel-aligned Southern Lebanese Army who fled to Israel after the militia collapsed in 2000.

The law provides amnesty for family members of former SLA fighters but does not extend the same provision to the former fighters themselves, according to the legislation. An estimated 3,500 former SLA members and family members remain in Israel today.

For families who have spent more than two decades in Israel, the legislation offers little prospect of returning to Lebanon together.

“It is too little, too late,” Joe Issa, whose father served in the SLA, told The Press Service of Israel. “After 26 years, we have built our entire lives in Israel.”

Jonathan Elkhoury, whose father also served in the SLA, said he was troubled by the inclusion of former SLA members in an amnesty framework that he believes wrongly implies they committed crimes requiring forgiveness.

“We are not criminals who need an amnesty,” said Elkhoury, who has lived in Israel for 26 years and works in public diplomacy on Israel-Lebanon relations. “We should not be included in the law with ISIS and drug dealers.”

The amnesty law, the first such legislation passed in Lebanon since 1991, is expected to benefit thousands of prisoners and people wanted by Lebanese authorities. It aims to reduce severe prison overcrowding, including among detainees who have spent years awaiting trial.

The legislation covers a range of offenses, including some cases involving attacks on the Lebanese army, participation in armed clashes, drug offenses and car theft. Lebanese Christian leaders had pushed for provisions addressing Lebanese who fled to Israel after the SLA collapsed when Israel withdrew from Southern Lebanon in 2000.

But because former SLA fighters themselves are not covered, Elkhoury said the law could divide families by allowing some relatives to return while former fighters remain subject to prosecution.
Hezbollah chief says Lebanon-Israel deal humiliates the nation and its army
Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem on Friday accused Lebanese authorities of subjecting the country’s armed forces to undue pressure by implementing a framework deal agreed with Israel to end hostilities.

In a speech marking the anniversary of the terror group’s 2006 war with Israel, known in Israel as the Second Lebanon War, Qassem demanded to know what the Lebanese government had to show for its seven rounds of negotiations with Israel, and pledged that his group wouldn’t “abandon” the people of Lebanon to Beirut’s desires.

The June trilateral framework, to which the United States is also a party, involves the disarmament of the Iran-backed terror group and a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon’s south, where it has occupied several areas over the past few months of renewed fighting.

It also includes the deployment of the Lebanese army to areas where Israel’s military has pulled out, starting in test areas known as “pilot zones.”

“How can you accept this ongoing humiliation of the Lebanese army, exposing it to bombardment and Israeli pressures, instead of acting as its protectors?” Qassem asked.

In talks between Lebanon and Israel in Rome last week, both sides discussed which countries might participate in a committee tasked with verifying the Lebanese army’s deployment in the so-called pilot zones from which Israel withdraws.

So far, two such zones exist, with the ultimate goal being a complete Israeli pullout from southern Lebanon.

The talks last week in Rome were the seventh round since Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the Middle East war in March with rocket fire at Israel in support of its backer Iran.
Katz moves to transfer Judea and Samaria civilian enforcement to police
Defense Minister Israel Katz has instructed the military to prepare a plan to transfer all civilian law-enforcement responsibilities in Judea and Samaria to the Israel Police, his office said on Friday.

Katz issued the directive following a meeting on Thursday with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the heads of the IDF’s Operations Directorate and Military Intelligence and other senior commanders.

Under the proposed plan, which is to be drawn up in coordination with the Israel Police and other relevant authorities, civilian law enforcement in Judea and Samaria would be transferred from the IDF to the police, as is the case elsewhere in Israel.

The police would establish a dedicated force to handle civilian matters and receive the necessary authority and funding, according to Katz’s office.

The IDF would continue to combat Palestinian terrorism and focus on defending Israeli communities and borders.

“It is not the IDF’s role, nor does it have the capacity, to deal with the enforcement of civilian matters in Judea and Samaria, given the welcome expected increase in the number of residents in Judea and Samaria following the decisions to establish 104 new communities and formalize the agricultural farms, on the one hand, and the growing security threats and challenges that the IDF is facing and is expected to face on the central front, on the other,” Katz said.

“The IDF’s role is to fight Palestinian terrorism, focus on defending the borders and communities against threats, deal with the borders and the territory itself, and address security threats to the communities and the State of Israel—not to chase teenagers on the hilltops. All responsibility for handling and enforcing matters relating to the communities, residents and civilian issues will be transferred to the Israel Police, which will be required to prepare accordingly.”

Katz described the move as “a significant step toward strengthening governance and enforcing law and order throughout Judea and Samaria,” while freeing the military to concentrate on its primary missions.

“The Israeli government and the IDF will delegate to the police all the powers necessary to carry out these missions,” he said.

The announcement came a day after Israeli security forces dismantled two unauthorized outposts near the Palestinian villages of Qusra and Jalud in Samaria.

Israeli forces overnight Thursday cleared Israelis from an unauthorized outpost and sheep pen next to Qusra and dismantled a second unauthorized outpost near Jalud. Both had been established in Area B, where the Palestinian Authority exercises administrative control and Israel retains security responsibility. One Israeli was detained during the operation.
Hamas commander killed in IDF strike
The IDF killed a Hamas commander in the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday who had been involved in attacks on troops, the army said on Friday afternoon.

Identified as Khan Yunis brigade company commander Hudhaifa Khaled Suleiman Qawari, the IDF said he had taken part in training terrorists, transferring weapons in southern Gaza, and attempts to rebuild Hamas.

Recently, the army said, Qawari had “advanced terror attacks against IDF troops and Israeli civilians,” and that he had been killed “in order to remove the threat he posed.”

The IDF said it used precise munitions and aerial surveillance in the strike in order to mitigate harm to civilians.


October 7 Wasn’t the Beginning. It Was the Warning.
What are the questions we should be asking ourselves about what happened on Oct. 7, 2023, and its aftermath? According to JNS Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Tobin, the key issue is not only learning and understanding the truth about the horrific crimes that occurred on that day. Rather, it is how so much of the world reacted to it by siding with the perpetrators and against the victims.

He’s joined on this week’s episode of Think Twice by documentary filmmaker Gloria Greenfield, the producer, director and writer of the new film, “A Collective Descent Into Evil: The Lethal Obsession with Jews and the Jewish State.” The film, which gives voice to a broad array of scholars, writers and commentators on the subject, isn’t only about the barbarism and the atrocities that occurred during the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab terror attacks on communities in southern Israel. It is, she says, an exploration of the motivations, ideologies and strategies of those involved and their apologists and enablers.

The problem is not just the terrorists and a population that supported and participated in the horrors of Oct. 7. Greenfield explains that her film seeks to broaden our understanding of the subject by pointing out that what happened was the product of decades of indoctrination into hatred for Israel, the Jews and the West. And the same is true of the mobs on college campuses and in the streets of American cities who turned out in support of Oct. 7 and to defend its perpetrators.

The goal of Oct. 7 wasn’t, says Greenfield, merely “destroying the Jewish people and destroying Israel. It's also about destroying the free world and destroying people who don't subscribe to Islamist ideologies.”

Greenfield, a feminist publisher who grew disillusioned with the movement because of its tolerance for antisemitism, points out that the “epidemic” of tolerance for Jew-hatred is rooted in the success of Marxist and radical ideologies in their “long march” through American institutions.







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Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026)

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

    

 

 



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Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



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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