Tuesday, September 29, 2026

09/29 Links Pt1: What Bibi knew; A Two-State Solution Was a Casualty of October 7 for This Generation; Oslo Was Never Owned by the Palestinian Public

From Ian:

A Two-State Solution Was a Casualty of October 7 for This Generation
The possibility of a two-state solution for this generation was a casualty of Oct. 7. It is hard for me to understand how anyone can honestly say that they would not protect themselves if their neighbor had already killed one of their children and threatened to do it again as soon as they had the opportunity. It is sad that self-preservation has become something Israel, and increasingly Jews, seem to have to argue for.

When Oct. 7 came, the people of Israel rose up and came to the aid of their county. They searched for hostages, killed terrorist before they were able to rape, kill and maim even more people, and collected the blood and remains of so many dead so they could be buried and their families could have graves to visit and mourn.

Once you've seen the videos taken on GoPros by the terrorists on Oct. 7 or hear the glee in the recorded conversations where they tell family about what they are doing. Once you've seen the horrific scenes and participated in the cleanup of massacres like the Nova festival, can you support allowing a border state to Israel that would be governed by the group that planned and committed this atrocity?

Even hearing about the work that was done from people whose eyes are haunted and dead is enough for most people to know that so many were killed on Oct. 7 and the two-state solution was also a casualty. This generation will never support such an approach.

For so many years, Israelis in bordering towns both north and south lived with rockets raining down on them constantly. They raised their children with an uncertainty borne of constantly needing to run to a bomb shelter. But this seemed to be the price to pay - the necessary reality of having neighbors who wanted us killed and world opinion who wanted Israel to exercise never-ending restraint. This, too, broke after Oct. 7. Many woke up to see that accepting such a life was impossible going forward. That protecting its citizens was the most important consideration. It feels like Israel and this generation is done hoping and conceding.
Oslo Was Never Owned by the Palestinian Public
On Sept. 13, 1993, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo Accords' Declaration of Principles at the White House. Days before the ceremony, Israel and the PLO exchanged letters of mutual recognition. The PLO recognized Israel's right to exist in peace and security and renounced terrorism. The killing was supposed to stop. It did not.

On that day, Jordanian television aired a prerecorded Arabic address by PLO chief Yasser Arafat. He reminded his listeners that the Palestine National Council had resolved in 1974 to establish a national authority over any part of the land that Israel vacated in a phased plan to eventually take over the rest. Oslo, in his telling, was a stage in the struggle, not a substitute for it.

Palestinians are scheduled to vote in November under rules requiring candidates to accept the PLO's commitments in Oslo. In a poll published Aug. 12 by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 2/3 of Palestinians opposed requiring election candidates to accept the PLO's commitments, including its agreements with Israel.

The frameworks now being assembled for Gaza rest on similar architecture. Yet agreements built on the Western model, in which a document creates obligations that outlast political changes, require something the Middle East has rarely supplied: A party able to carry out a commitment after the leader who made it is gone.

The practical conclusion for Jerusalem and Washington is that the next agreement should be judged by what the public demonstrably accepts, and its security terms should be enforceable by Israel without depending on anyone's goodwill.
Pools, marble and mansions: Inside 100 Palestinian luxury homes in West Bank A photography book published by Regavim showcases 100 privately owned Palestinian villas and estates across the West Bank, seeking to challenge what the organization describes as a selective international portrayal of Palestinian life.

Titled Real Estate Under Occupation, the book features swimming pools, fountains, marble staircases and landscaped grounds. Regavim, an Israeli NGO that campaigns on land use and construction enforcement, said its field coordinators photographed all the featured properties in a single day.

In Shuqba, a Palestinian village northwest of Ramallah, the team documented an estate that Regavim described as covering 4,800 square meters, with a central swimming pool, landscaped lawns, shaded entertaining areas and a large courtyard.

In Nahalin, southwest of Bethlehem, the book features a neoclassical property listed at 1,120 square meters, with seven balconies, a turret, a fountain and an ornamental pool.

In Khirbet Zif, in the Hebron Hills, the organization documented gated compounds with swimming pools, gardens, guest accommodations, saunas, security cameras and private access roads. Other properties featured stone columns, electric gates, orchards and private parking.

The measurements are those supplied by Regavim; they should not all be read as interior living-space figures.

The introduction uses sarcasm to place terms such as “oppression,” “severe deprivation” and “daily hardship” alongside photographs of luxury homes. Regavim said it aimed to show how selective imagery could influence public opinion and foreign policy, while acknowledging that poverty existed.

The photographs document individual examples of wealth. They do not establish how common such wealth is across the Palestinian population. In its May 2026 economic update, the World Bank reported that economic activity in the West Bank remained substantially below its pre-October 2023 level, despite modest growth in 2025.
Report PDF



Ruthie Blum: What Bibi knew
To counter the defamation, Netanyahu has filed lawsuits against Israeli outlets Haaretz, Yediot Achronot and Channel 12, as well as journalists Eldar, Uri Misgav, Nadav Eyal, Barak Ravid and Attila Somfalvi. Ironically, these are among the many parrots of the notion (referred to by Israelis as the “conceptzia”) that Hamas wasn’t interested in “escalation,” that it was “deterred.” Oh, and that the real peril to Israel was internal strife, not external enemies.

But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Netanyahu had been aware of the imminent invasion and decided to preempt it by launching a full-fledged war. Would the paragons of “progress” at Haaretz and the global anti-Zionist contingent that reads it have cheered?

We all know the answer. Israel would have been accused of unprovoked aggression, and the loudest voices would have been the very people now faulting Netanyahu for allowing the slaughter of 1,200 people and the abduction of hundreds more.

Even after Hamas perpetrated the crimes against humanity the world witnessed—much in real time—Israel was and remains subjected to charges of genocide and other evil deeds. Imagine the response to a preemptive Israeli operation based on a vague heads-up from the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.

For months, female IDF field observers on the Gaza border were issuing concrete reports of Hamas drills involving raids and kidnappings. But those young women in uniform were rebuffed by their commanders to the point that they were told to cease pestering them or face court-martial. Tragically, many were slaughtered by the very same terrorists they’d been monitoring.

Which brings us to the current situation in Judea and Samaria (aka the “West Bank”). The threat there is no more theoretical than it was in Gaza; in some ways it’s more dangerous.

Gaza is physically removed from most of Israel’s population centers. Judea and Samaria sit in the heart of the country—just minutes from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Petach Tikvah, Kfar Saba and Modi’in, from major highways and from Ben-Gurion International Airport.

Terrorism emanating from that territory is rampant. Fatah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other groups with the shared aim to annihilate the Jewish state commit daily attacks on Israelis, while digging tunnels and amassing weapons.

Nor do they hide their intentions. Two among endless examples documented by the research group Palestinian Media Watch are worth highlighting in this context.

The first is from the Telegram channel of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades on the day of the Hamas massacre. The post reads: “Allahu Akbar, come to jihad, come to jihad. To all our sons and brothers in the Palestinian [Authority] security forces throughout the West Bank—today is your day. Break into the settlements, strike the sons of apes of pigs, kill everyone who is a settler, slaughter everyone who is Israeli, by Allah, they are the most cowardly among men. Today is a tiding of days of victory, Allah willing—for this is jihad, jihad, victory or martyrdom.”

The second is a statement by Fatah Jenin branch member Abd Al-Rahman Abu Al-Rub on the P.A.’s official TV channel on Oct. 8, 2023: “[Oct. 7 was] a morning of victory and morning of joy, a morning of pride. … We in the Fatah movement … [tell] all our Palestinian people that they are compelled to take action and participate in this story of heroism with the Palestinian people that is realizing its natural right to fight the occupation and liberate the occupied lands [Israel].”

The point is that the potential for an Oct. 7-like attack from Judea and Samaria exists.

Yet are the anti-Netanyahu politicians and pundits calling for an all-out preemptive war against the P.A. and the terrorists it dispatches and funds? Of course not.

Instead, the Bibi-bashers are busy trying to distract the Israeli public and the world by focusing on the fringe phenomenon of “Jewish terrorism” against P.A. Arabs.
Ex-Biden aide: US pressure on Israel harmed talks with Hamas to release hostages
Former US president Joe Biden’s top Middle East adviser argues in his new book that public pressure on Israel from the previous administration proved counterproductive, as it led Hamas to harden its positions in negotiations on a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal.

“Looking back, it’s no wonder that Hamas never responded to our proposals during this period. We now know that in March 2024, as this political debate was taking place in the US, [then-Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar was in a tunnel complex underneath Rafah. An avid consumer of news, he would have understood that relations between Biden and Netanyahu were approaching the boiling point,” McGurk writes in his book “Brink: Inside the Race to Free the October 7th Hostages.”

An edited excerpt of the book — out on October 6 — was published Monday in The Atlantic.

While Israeli officials have long made this argument to criticize the Biden administration’s pressure against Israel during the war, McGurk’s comments represent one of the first times such criticism has been voiced by a senior US official who appeared to acknowledge that the strategy was a mistake.

In his book excerpt, McGurk — who helped lead the administration’s efforts to broker a ceasefire and hostage release deal — places most of the blame for the dragged-out nature of the Gaza war on Hamas.

He says a November 2023 ceasefire deal collapsed after seven days because Hamas refused to adhere to its terms by holding onto young women still in its captivity. The cover of Brett McGurk’s book October 2026 book “Brink: Inside the Race to Free the October 7th Hostages.” (Penguin Random House)

Subsequent negotiations went nowhere, as Hamas was insisting that it be allowed to remain in power after the war— something McGurk said no Israeli government could have accepted after the terror group sparked the conflict by leading a mass invasion of southern Israel during which some 1,200 people were killed and another 250 were taken hostage into Gaza.

McGurk doesn’t exonerate Netanyahu completely, though. He recalls traveling to Jerusalem in early 2024 to push the premier to accept a six-week ceasefire and hostage release deal. Netanyahu didn’t want to discuss the hostages and was more focused on advancing Israel’s military campaign against Hamas, believing military pressure was the only tool that would work.

While Netanyahu eventually told McGurk he accepted the proposal in principle, the former Biden aide writes that he wasn’t sure if the premier was actually on board. It didn’t end up mattering, though, as Hamas would go on to reject the offer.
Brett McGurk: How Biden Averted a War With Iran
When I walked into the Oval Office that day, Biden’s face was red like a beet. I sat in front of his desk with a larger crowd than usual, including Zients, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Burns. Everyone sensed that something was about to give. “What the fuck am I telling this guy?” Biden asked.

There were different views. Some people advised the president to simply tell Netanyahu that the war was over; if he refused, we’d cut Israel’s support. Biden was hearing this sentiment on the campaign trail from parts of the Democratic Party. But he asked what would happen if we cut military assistance while hostages remained in tunnels and the war continued, with Israel under attack from multiple directions. “We’re on the side of Iran?” he asked rhetorically.

Burns advised that a hostage deal remained the only path to a cease-fire. That meant maintaining support for Israel while trying to restart the negotiations with Hamas and easing the immense human suffering in Gaza as much as possible. I agreed with Burns but chose not to say much, taking in the scene and trying to read Biden, who seemed ready to blow his stack.

Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, discussed Israel’s preparations for the missile attack and its request for U.S. military support. On Biden’s desk were orders, recommended by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, for the emergency deployment of additional forces to the region. Biden said he approved them, without hesitation. He then asked how we might return to the hostage deal. It seemed hopeless, but Burns suggested that there might be an opportunity to use Iran’s attack to our advantage. If we helped defeat it, Netanyahu would owe us, and Sinwar would see that even a direct attack by Iran could not improve Hamas’s position.

“If we don’t defeat it?” Biden asked, unconvinced. The answer was regional war. Israel had already prepared a counterattack in the event that Iran’s missiles caused Israeli casualties. “Great,” Biden said.

The Situation Room connected the call. Biden jumped in. “Bibi, man, what the fuck are you doing?” He gripped the phone tight. “You think I’m Santa Claus? No Santa in Israel, pal.” When Netanyahu asked what he meant, Biden said he could cut off military aid to Israel with the snap of a finger, leaving the country on its own. Netanyahu retorted that Israel would defend itself even without the United States. (We later learned that he concluded from this call that we were cutting military supplies.)

Returning to his prepared points, Biden made specific requests regarding humanitarian aid and opening additional crossings into northern Gaza. Netanyahu began to discuss Israel’s preliminary assessment of the strike on the aid workers, claiming that it was more complicated than what was being reported in the news—a tragic miscommunication.

Biden interrupted: “I don’t want to hear it, Bibi.” He said he’d help defend Israel against Iran, but then the U.S. would move immediately to end the war and free the hostages. “That’s the deal, pal.” He hung up abruptly. It was a short call.

If not for the pending Iranian attack, the U.S. might have taken irreversible measures against Israel at this juncture. My own mind wrestled with whether this might have been a better course. We all wanted the war to end. It was a sickening horror in every dimension. Was the means to that end the hostage and cease-fire deal—the course we had been on—or simply telling Israel to stop, even as it was under attack on multiple fronts?

If there was a better way to end the crisis, Biden would have taken it. He had tried a UN resolution calling for an unconditional cease-fire. He had tried increasing public pressure. Those steps only seemed to make the situation worse.

There were multiple belligerents in this conflict. Increasing public pressure on Israel did not stop the war. It seemed to encourage those fighting against it.

I had never seen Biden so frustrated—spitting mad, literally.

Sullivan took out a note card to draft the readout, the official summary of the call. We debated whether to publicly threaten to cut military aid to Israel. Biden was not comfortable doing so at a moment when hundreds of Iranian missiles were being readied for launch. The final readout warned that U.S. policy “will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action” on “specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers.” At the same time, it said that Biden had “made clear that the United States strongly supports Israel in the face of [Iran’s] threats.”

This was the paradox. For all Biden’s frustration with the situation, and with Netanyahu, Israel was under attack from common enemies. Fueling Iran’s confidence was the belief that Biden was under pressure to break with Israel. Iran seemed to believe that a missile attack against Israel might help push Biden over the edge. That proved to be a miscalculation.


Ben Cohen and Richard Goldberg: Don’t let our next UN secretary-general be a shill for China, Cuba and Hamas
Rodrigues-Birkett’s affinity for China was on full display when she took her campaign to Beijing in July. While four other hopefuls also visited the Chinese capital, she was the only one to support explicitly the 1971 U.N. General Assembly resolution recognizing the People’s Republic of China as “the only legitimate representatives of China to the United Nations.” China’s communist regime routinely invokes this resolution to justify shutting democratic Taiwan out of the U.N. system entirely. Washington has consistently rejected China’s contention that the resolution bars Taiwan from meaningful participation in international organizations.

Additionally, China’s official readout noted that Rodrigues-Birkett “spoke highly of the four major global initiatives proposed by China.” Those four initiatives — on development, security, civilization and global governance — are central pillars of President Xi Jinping’s effort to recast the rules and institutions of international cooperation in ways that serve Beijing.

Rodrigues-Birkett has also been a supporter of a communist regime in our own hemisphere. In a 2013 speech, she lauded the late dictator Fidel Castro, who imposed Soviet-style communism on Cuba, as a “visionary, determined revolutionary.” In the same year, while serving as Guyana’s foreign minister, she sponsored a motion in that country’s National Assembly condemning the U.S. blockade of Cuba. In a related interview, she claimed that Cuba — which has imprisoned thousands of dissidents, punishing their families in many cases as well, as one would expect from a totalitarian regime — “has been kind to everyone.”

Concerns about Rodrigues-Birkett extend to her views on the war in Gaza, too. In the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel, she paid lip service to the plight of the abducted hostages but squarely placed the blame for the escalating conflict on Israel, accusing Jerusalem of executing a “veritable genocide.”

She has also pushed aggressively for the continued involvement in postwar Gaza of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency — the U.N. refugee agency dedicated solely to Palestinians. The U.S. has called for the agency’s abolition because as many as 100 of its then-current or former employees allegedly participated in the Hamas atrocities, and because the inspector general for USAID is investigating alleged links to terrorism by as many as 1,500 of its current and former employees.

The U.S. needs a U.N. Secretary General who will support the success of President Trump’s plan to stabilize Gaza by pressing for the disarmament of Hamas, rather than amplifying its propaganda while defending a U.N. agency that has provided the terrorists with material support.

As a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, the U.S. can veto a recommendation to elect Rodrigues-Birkett. It should do so, even if that comes with protests back in Guyana.
Penny Wong named and shamed by the Israeli government over false claim
News24 host Sharri Markson discusses Foreign Minister Penny Wong being named and shamed by the Israeli government over a false claim.

“Penny Wong is refusing to answer questions about where she sourced her information for her claim that 15,000 Palestinian children have been displaced from the West Bank,” Ms Markson said.

“The Israeli Foreign Ministry has labelled this a blatant lie, and the United Nations say the number is only 1000."




What NAZA really means before the order to strike
Assessing proportionality and precautions
I witnessed situations in which they did not. A change in civilian presence, the surrounding environment or new information could mean that the strike would not proceed as planned. Time already invested in planning did not make execution automatic.

Human shields must also be understood accurately. A terrorist organization that deliberately uses civilians to shield military activity violates the laws of war. But that doesn’t turn those civilians into military targets. Their presence must still be considered when assessing proportionality and precautions.

There is a paradox here. To someone unfamiliar with military decision-making, estimating how many civilians may be harmed can sound as if the military is assigning a price to human life. In my experience, the logic is the opposite. Civilian harm is assessed precisely because civilians are not the target and because their lives must be part of the decision.

None of this means war is sterile. Civilians can die even when a military attacks a legitimate target, applies precautions and acts within the law. That is one of war’s great tragedies, especially in dense urban areas where terrorist organizations operate from within civilian populations.

Nor does any of this mean that a large military fighting a long war cannot make mistakes, suffer failures or encounter cases in which personnel violate orders or the law. Part of the system is the obligation to examine exceptional incidents and learn from them. During “Protective Edge,” the IDF activated a General Staff fact-finding mechanism to examine exceptional incidents; that mechanism remains active in the current war.

Mechanisms exist to draw lessons
Accountability can also have personal consequences. After the April 2024 strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen workers, an IDF investigation found serious failures in identification and decision-making, and concluded that the strike violated procedure. Two officers were removed from their posts, and senior commanders were reprimanded.

That case does not prove that the system always works. It proves something different: When it fails, mechanisms exist to determine why, draw lessons and, where appropriate, impose consequences. There is, therefore, a fundamental difference between arguing that mistakes, violations or flawed judgments occurred in particular cases and treating the very existence of a collateral-damage assessment as evidence of indifference to civilian life.

When judging a military strike, the outcome alone does not tell the whole story. Civilian deaths are painful and consequential. But to understand whether a decision was lawful and proportionate, one must also ask what the decision-maker knew at the time, what the military objective was, what advantage was expected, what civilian harm could reasonably have been anticipated, what alternatives existed and what was done to reduce that harm.

There is an essential difference between judging a decision after seeing its consequences and judging it based on the information available when the decision had to be made. Those questions are harder to capture in a headline or a disturbing image, but they are the questions commanders must ask before giving an order to strike.

I was there. I sat in rooms where those questions were asked, where professionals debated them and where the answer was sometimes not “strike,” but “not yet”—“not this way” or “not now.”

That is what I want the public to understand: NAZA is not a green light for collateral damage; it is a mechanism designed to limit it.
UKLFI: NAZA – Unpacking False Claims about Nezek Agavi and International Law
"NAZA – Unpacking False Claims about Nezek Agavi and International Law" with Lt. Col. (Ret.) Sarit Zehavi and Natasha Hausdorff, which took place on Monday 28 September 2026.

A film called “Naza” received a 25-minute standing ovation on its premiere at the Venice Film Festival on 10 September 2026 and was awarded the Special Jury Prize. “Naza” is the acronym of “Nezek Agavi”, the Hebrew term for “collateral damage”.

The film has not yet been publicly released. However, reports about it suggest that it may misrepresent the processes used by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) to consider the risk of civilian casualties when deciding whether to strike military targets.

Lt. Col. (Ret.) Sarit Zehavi played a major role in developing processes used by the IDF to minimise civilian casualties. In this webinar, she will explain these processes, their purposes, and the dilemnas faced when fighting armed forces operating in civilian areas. This webinar will also address the legal framework provided by International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and how it applies in relation to these processes.

About the speakers:
Lt Col (Ret) Sarit Zehavi is the Founder and CEO of Alma Research and Education Center https://israel-alma.org/, an independent research and education center specialising in Israel’s security challenges on its northern border. She served for 15 years in the IDF Intelligence Corps., initially in the research and analysis section, and later on with the Northern Command including during the second Lebanon war.

Sarit holds an MA in Middle East Studies from Ben-Gurion University and is a member of Forum Devora, promoting the equal representation of women in key decision-making positions in the fields of national security and foreign policy. She was selected by the Jerusalem Post as one of the Top 50 Most Influential Jews of 2021.

Natasha Hausdorff is a barrister at 6 Pump Court Chambers and a frequent speaker on International Law. She has a law degree from Oxford University, qualified as a solicitor at Skadden, and subsequently gained an LLM from Tel Aviv University, focussing on public international law and the law of armed conflict. She clerked for Miriam Naor, President of Israel's Supreme Court, and was a fellow at Columbia Law School's National Security programme. Natasha is legal director of UKLFI Charitable Trust.

Natasha’s work explaining legal issues relating to Israel has been recognised by the American Jewish Committee’s award for moral courage and by the honour of lighting one of the torches on Har Herzl to mark Israel’s Independence Day.




Secretary of State Marco Rubio interviewed by Sean Hannity: Radical Shia Clerics with an Apocalyptic Vision Are Calling the Shots in Iran
Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed Iran on Fox News on Monday: "We are talking about a regime that has slaughtered tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of their own people throughout this so-called revolution. If that's what they're willing to do to their own people, imagine what they would do to Americans or others in the region or Israelis or anybody if they had a nuclear weapon. They have no regard for the lives of anyone else."

"The problem with Iran is the revolution, and that's what governs in that country. It's not the government officials you see with suits that go on "Meet the Press" and get this free pass on American media....Who calls the shots in Iran are radical Shia clerics with an apocalyptic vision of the future. They believe that it is their religious calling to trigger the last days of the world and the apocalypse."

"I know this sounds like something from a movie, but it is the reality. It is the stated purpose of their revolution. People like that can never possess a nuclear weapon, because they will use it to blackmail the world and to kill people. It is an unacceptable risk."

"Every dollar that Iran has, what they have done over the last 30 years is anytime they get money...they don't use that money to improve the life of the Iranian people. They use that money to do two things: build weapons for themselves and export the revolution. They use the money to fund Hizbullah; they use the money to fund Hamas; they use the money to fund Shia militias in Iraq....They use the money to sponsor terrorism and assassination plots all over the world."
Iran Destroys a Fundamental U.S. Military Assumption about Forward Bases
Since World War II, the U.S. has developed a far-flung network of 750 bases in 80 countries and territories. The presumption has always been that U.S. air superiority would keep those bases safe. The ongoing conflict with Iran, however, has revealed that this assumption no longer holds.

Iran has used drones and missiles to inflict heavy losses on U.S. bases across the Persian Gulf region. A recent Defense Department inspector general report noted, "Iranian strikes damaged and destroyed hundreds of buildings and structures at U.S. bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman, and Jordan during the conflict. In addition, dozens of U.S. aircraft were destroyed or damaged."

The damage was particularly significant at the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, which was knocked out of action on Feb. 28, the first day of fighting. With the Bahrain port inoperable, the Navy had to rely on its base at Diego Garcia, 2,200 miles away, to supply the U.S. fleet in the Middle East.
David H. Petraeus: How to Put Time Back on the Clock in Iran
Before the war, 20 million barrels a day of crude oil and petroleum products passed through the Strait of Hormuz. Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Central Command, said on Sept. 19 that the volume of oil, cargo and liquefied natural gas moving through Hormuz over the past two weeks has reached its highest level in six months.

Bypassing Hormuz, the UAE's Fujairah exported about 2.28 million barrels a day of crude in July. If Saudi Arabia's East-West Pipeline to Yanbu can be restored to 2.5 million, Gulf exports could approach 15-16 million barrels a day. This is far closer to what the global market requires, given the reduction in demand since February.
U.S.: Iran's Floating Oil Reserves nearing Zero
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent predicted Sunday that Iran will complete its remaining oil shipments to China within two weeks, as only 15 million barrels of Iranian oil remain out on the way to delivery since the U.S. blockade. "They are going to make their final deliveries of oil to China, and then they will have nothing," he said.

Tehran's latest proposal on Saturday offered to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Bessent said it's already open. "We're averaging now 15 to 22 million barrels a day. It was at about 20 pre-conflict....So think of it this way, the score is the United States, one billion - more than one billion barrels have gotten out - Iran, zero."


Hamas official's arrest in Gaza gave Israel intelligence surge needed to kill top terrorists
The arrest of a senior Hamas official on September 2 provided Israel with detailed intelligence that assisted in the location and assassination of top Hamas operatives, funds, and weapons, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

On September 2, the IDF, Shin Bet (Israel Security Service), and various Palestinian militias captured Mu’in al-Arabid, one of Hamas’s top internal security officials.

The IDF and Shin Bet on Tuesday confirmed the overnight assassination of Hamas Northern Gaza Brigade Chief Izz al-Din al-Bik in Gaza City. Al-Bik had served in his current role since Ahmed Randur was assassinated by Israel on November 10, 2023.

This is the third assassination of a Hamas brigade chief since September 11; three of the five brigade commanders were killed during that period.

According to the joint statement, al-Bik was responsible for managing the activities of the brigade’s operatives, including issuing orders to carry out attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians.

He also managed efforts to reconstitute the brigade’s capabilities, which had been heavily damaged over the last three years of war, said the IDF.

Defense Minister Israel Katz disclosed the assassination in a statement shortly before the official IDF and Shin Bet statement.


Under CPJ’s Review, Ismail Haniyeh With a Blog or Yahya Sinwar With a Camera Would Qualify
The Committee to Protect Journalists says it has now completed its “comprehensive review” of the journalists and media workers killed by Israel since October 2023. It removed 22 people, reinstated four Palestinians, including at least three with terror ties, and reclassified another 12. One of those reinstated was confirmed by PIJ itself as a fighter. CPJ says an external audit found that it “followed its established methodology” during the review. Yet in case after case, CPJ retained people despite official Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad material identifying them as members, including senior ones.

A closer look at CPJ’s explanations for keeping someone with confirmed membership in a terrorist organization essentially shows that, under CPJ’s standard as applied to Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh with a blog or Yahya Sinwar with a camera would qualify, as long as Hamas itself doesn’t publish a video of them with a weapon at the exact moment they died, along with a signed affidavit confirming their fighting hours, assigned tasks, and an active membership card.

Also, unlike the standard applied elsewhere, CPJ has explicitly acknowledged that it applies a special presumption to Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza. Rather than requiring evidence establishing that a death was work-related, CPJ presumes that Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza were killed “in connection with their work” unless evidence shows otherwise. In practical terms, a journalist killed in Sudan must have evidence linking the death to his or her journalistic work to be added. In Gaza, CPJ starts from the opposite presumption: the death is treated as work-related unless evidence proves otherwise. The logic, and the burden of proof, is effectively reversed, making anyone CPJ determines to be a journalist eligible to be added unless enough evidence shows that their death was not related to their journalism.

CPJ also claims its “longstanding policy” is to include media workers employed by terror-linked media organizations, provided they are “not engaging in hostilities” or “inciting violence with an imminent effect.” In practice, however, this standard has only ever been applied to Palestinian “journalists,” starting since at least 2001. CPJ’s database does not include ISIS “media workers,” an al-Qaeda “cameraman,” or “reporters” from Boko Haram. Yet in conflicts involving Israel, affiliation with a terrorist organization does not appear to determine whether someone is excluded.

This matters because CPJ’s database is not a general casualty list of people who worked in media and died during a war. It is supposed to document journalists and media workers killed in connection with their journalistic work, whether while on a dangerous assignment, caught in crossfire while reporting, or killed in retaliation for their journalism. For someone to qualify, three questions have to be answered: Was the person a journalist or media worker? Was the person killed in connection with their journalistic work? And were they engaging in hostilities?
UK Charity Commission investigates Doctors Without Borders following alleged terror links
The UK Charity Commission has opened a regulatory compliance case into Medecins Sans Frontieres (UK), widely known as Doctors Without Borders, responding to a detailed report filed by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI). The report focuses on allegations that the international medical charity maintains connections with terrorist organizations active in the Gaza Strip.

A senior case manager within the Charity Commission’s High Risk Compliance division formally notified UKLFI of the decision via email last Wednesday, indicating that the agency had initiated a compliance case to evaluate the situation and review the specific points outlined in the report.

A UKLFI spokesperson commented in a statement: “We welcome the Charity Commission’s confirmation that it has opened a regulatory compliance case concerning Medecins Sans Frontieres UK and will consider the serious concerns raised in our report.”

“We hope that the Charity Commission will examine these matters thoroughly and establish whether MSF UK and its trustees have complied with their legal and regulatory obligations,” the spokesperson added.

MSF's connection with Hamas, other terror groups
The regulatory development follows a submission presented by UKLFI in early September, which drew attention to the charity’s purported connections with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The dossier compiled by UKLFI highlights multiple individuals previously or currently employed by MSF in Gaza who are accused of maintaining active roles within proscribed groups or publicly celebrating terrorist operations.

Prominent among the cited instances is Fadi Jihad Mohammed al-Wadiya, an MSF physiotherapist who was killed during a June 2024 airstrike in Gaza. Although MSF initially rejected Israeli assertions linking him to PIJ operations, the PIJ subsequently released statements and imagery in February 2026 designating al-Wadiya as a commander and deputy head of its manufacturing division. In response, MSF maintained that it lacked prior knowledge of any military affiliation and reiterated its policy against knowingly retaining individuals involved in combat activities.

Additional scrutiny within the report targets other personnel, including a driver flagged by Israeli defense officials as a Hamas sniper and a physician allegedly tied to the PFLP medical apparatus who shared social media content praising terrorist acts. The filing also scrutinizes operational ties between MSF and the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, noting instances where medical stock was shared or transferred.


HonestReporting: Did Israel Go Too Far in Gaza? Elliot Kaufman on What Really Happened Inside Israel's War Room
"If you are Hamas, you have to be laughing at how easily you can play the international and American news media."

For Elliot Kaufman, the coverage turned ten days in, when the blast at al-Ahli hospital was reported around the world as an Israeli strike that had killed hundreds. He points out that it was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket that landed in the hospital's parking lot. From there, he argues, the war was told as if Hamas didn't exist: not in the footage, not in the casualty counts, not in the story of the aid.

Kaufman is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, and he writes about Israel and Iran. With Yonah Jeremy Bob of The Jerusalem Post, they wrote "In the War Room: The Inside Story of Israel's Fight Against Hamas and the Iranian Axis." The two reported it while the war was still going on. They interviewed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Benny Gantz, who made up the original war cabinet, along with Jake Sullivan, Steve Witkoff and more than a hundred Israeli military officials.

The Netanyahu in the book is not the one most coverage describes. Kaufman argues that in the opening weeks he was the one putting his foot on the brake. He held back Gallant's plan to hit Hezbollah first. On October 11, 2023. Kaufman says the IDF had no plan on the shelf for a full invasion of Gaza at all. His verdict on the war that followed is that Israel didn't go too far in Gaza. "I think it fought for too long," he says, because under a raid-and-leave strategy troops had to fight for the same neighborhoods again and again.

Then the conversation comes home to Brooklyn, and the 1991 Crown Heights riot. For three nights, Jews in the neighborhood hid in their homes while rioters threw bricks through their windows, and Yankel Rosenbaum was stabbed and killed. Kaufman revisited the episode for the WSJ, and his argument is that the police stood back and the press filed the violence as a racial clash, when the actual story was antisemitism.

He's worried about the right as well as the left: "The subtext of, say, the Tucker Carlson Show isn't that all Jews are evil. It's that all evil is Jewish." But he argues that the practical, interest-based case for Israel as an ally has never been stronger, and that is what gives him hope.

Chapters
00:00 Cold Open & Introducing Elliot Kaufman
05:58 The cautious Netanyahu the coverage missed
15:53 Gallant's plan to strike Hezbollah first
19:47 The geese that almost started a war in Lebanon
23:55 A near-monopoly for Hamas on reporting from Gaza
29:12 Al-Ahli hospital: the day the coverage turned
32:00 The aid failure: "Israel messed up. Period."
35:46 No plan on the shelf for invading Gaza
42:05 Too long, not too far: the raid-and-leave strategy
50:45 The war as seen from Tehran
55:30 From a protest at 770 to Crown Heights, 1991
1:01:27 What gives him hope, and what worries him
1:06:31 Closing thoughts







 




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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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