Tuesday, October 20, 2026

10/20 Links Pt1: Elisha Wiesel: Obama's Dangerous Mideast Words; The Truth about U.S. Aid to Israel; Shattering the Palestinians' Hope of Defeating Israel

From Ian:

Richard Goldberg: Time for a Reset in U.S.-Israel Relations
America will only win the century over the Chinese Communist Party if it dominates super intelligence (SI), quantum computing, critical supply chains, and defense technology. Israel is one of the world's most important centers of innovation in every one of these areas - with both a capability and will to align its own strategic investments for the benefit of the U.S. Americans should want Israel to invest billions of dollars into SI and quantum research and development in full cooperation with the U.S.

Notably, Israel's innovation ecosystem also includes research and commercial activity in advanced chemicals, synthetic materials, critical mineral recovery and refining, and the development of substitutes for scarce raw materials. Israel is already a member of the State Department's Pax Silica, a diplomatic alliance aimed at building out an American-led ex-China supply chain for critical minerals.

The U.S. 2026 National Defense Strategy recognizes Israel as a "model ally," already spending a higher percentage of its GDP on defense than any NATO ally. After the U.S., Israel is the most innovative country in the world when it comes to defense technology. It battle-tests American platforms and makes them better. It co-develops missile- and laser-defense systems that help keep both countries safe from threats beyond the Middle East.

Moving from a foreign aid paradigm to an interest-based joint venture will deliver massive economic and security return on investment and help guarantee another American century. That's a U.S.-Israel relationship every American should support.
Elisha Wiesel: Obama's Dangerous Mideast Words
Last week former President Barack Obama said of the Jewish people that after millennia of persecution, "they took land off people, and they were excessive. And those people understandably said, 'This is injustice and I want my land back.'"

Was it excessive for Jews to buy land, at fair or often inflated prices, from absentee landlords in Beirut and Damascus who were glad to sell malarial swamps? Was it excessive for the Jews of Hebron, a community that had prayed there for centuries, to be slaughtered by rioters in 1929, nearly 20 years before there was a Jewish state to blame?

Was it excessive for Jews to accept the UN's 1947 partition plan while facing an impending invasion by five armies in 1948? To offer peace at Camp David in 2000, and again in 2008? To pull every soldier and settler out of Gaza in 2005? Is it excessive to want to live in peace?

And what does "understandably" demanding one's land back look like? There can and should be no understanding of Hamas's ambitions.

The deeper problem is the story itself. In Mr. Obama's telling, Jews were oppressed in Europe and then arrived somewhere else and took too much. Jewish history in the land disappears. My father drew a line when he wrote in the New York Times in 2001: "To compromise on territory might seem, under certain conditions, imperative....But to compromise on history is impossible." That is the line Mr. Obama crossed.

My father's life was a testimony to what words can do. History is replete with speeches, lectures, editorials and textbooks turning neighbors into intruders and murder into justice. Mr. Obama's place isn't with those who call Jewish survival excessive.
Black American pastors rebuke Obama for accusing Israel of taking land
A national organization of Black American pastors on Monday categorically rejected an assertion made by former U.S. President Barack Obama that Israel “took land off people,” saying that claim was a dangerous omission of the Jewish people’s three-thousand-year-old connection to the Holy Land.

The strong pushback by the Christian leaders came just days after the first Black president made the contested remarks in Northern Ireland, adopting a common claim used by anti-Israel activists.

“When a former president of the United States tells a European arena that Israel was founded on theft, he hands a talking point to every campus mob, every synagogue vandal and every ideologue who has spent half a century teaching that the Jewish state is a colonial crime,” said the Black Christian Leadership Council on Israel.

“The Council will not be silent while that happens, and we will not let the claim go unanswered in the African American churches we serve,” the statement added.

At his talk, Obama said that after millennia of persecution, Israel “took land off people, and they were excessive. And those people understandably said: ‘This is injustice, and I want my land back.’”

The church leaders noted that Obama himself had called Israel “the historic homeland of the Jewish people” during a 2013 visit to Israel, and had highlighted that Jews lived, worked the soil and prayed in that land more than 3,000 years ago.

“He was right then. He is wrong now. Nothing in the ground changed between 2013 and 2026. Only the audience did,” the statement continued.

The pastors added that in his Belfast speech, the former president omitted the historical connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, noting that it was never emptied of Jews and was both lawfully recognized and legally purchased.

The group, which was established this summer and seeks to revive historic Black–Jewish relations, plans to lead a major pilgrimage to Israel next month of 500 pastors and church leaders.

The tour, which has been dubbed “Unfinished Business,” commemorates a large-scale Holy Land visit originally planned by Martin Luther King Jr. in November 1967, which was postponed following the Six-Day War and later prevented by his assassination in 1968.

Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also fired back at Obama’s remarks.


The Truth about U.S. Aid to Israel
America gives aid to many countries, but only its aid to Israel elicits controversy. American aid is military, Israel gave up the economic portion on its own initiative in 2008.

American aid is not an act of kindness. It forms part of a long-term strategy in which the superpower strengthens its own position by strengthening its allies. Aid hands Washington leverage over Israeli policy, which narrows Israel's freedom of action and makes it more sensitive to every shift in American politics.

Egypt is the beneficiary of $1.3 billion in military aid each year, and Jordan receives nearly half a billion. Both are paid for services rendered in support of American policy. Egypt's aid sustains its peace treaty with Israel, while Jordan's aid secures its cooperation on security and the fight against terrorism. In both cases, the money buys something Washington wants. Neither draws controversy.

U.S. aid to Israel works largely as a purchase order placed with American industry. Of the $3.8 billion Israel receives each year, $3.3 billion is foreign military financing and $500 million supports joint missile defense, and nearly all of it is spent in the U.S.

Israel is the most important foreign operator of the F-35, which it buys from Lockheed Martin's plant in Fort Worth, and the aircraft's supply chain stretches across 45 states. The ten-year structure of the aid gives American arms makers steady demand and the financial security to plan long production runs.

Set against the facts, the controversy looks badly out of scale. The aid comes to 0.6% of the $649 billion the U.S. spent on defense in 2018, and for Israel it is about 0.5% of GDP. The real question is whether Washington should continue treating military aid as an instrument of foreign policy when its economic benefits are directed toward domestic producers.
Michael Oren, Jonathan Schanzer split over when Israel should move past U.S. aid
Former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren and Foundation for Defense of Democracies executive director Jonathan Schanzer squared off Monday evening in New York over whether Israel would be better off weaning itself from U.S. military aid.

Oren argued that Jerusalem should shift toward a strategic partnership before political winds in Washington dictate more unfavorable terms, while Schanzer warned that abandoning the arrangement mid-war could leave Israel exposed.

Audience members were unswayed by either argument: Polled before and after the debate, 39% still agreed that Israel would be better off without American aid, while 61% disagreed. The discussion, part of the 92nd Street Y’s SAPIR Debates series, was moderated by Bret Stephens, editor-in-chief of SAPIR and a New York Times columnist.

Despite taking opposing sides, Oren and Schanzer largely agreed that the U.S.-Israel relationship should eventually move from a traditional military aid arrangement toward a strategic partnership centered on shared defense technology and cooperation. Their disagreement focused on how quickly to make that transition and whether Israel could afford to do so amid continuing regional threats.

“I’m not sure we have more than a couple of months, and so we have to move very, very quickly,” Oren said, warning that a potentially less supportive Congress after the midterm elections could leave Israel with little control over the timing of a transition away from American assistance. He also noted that “there’s already a dialogue going on with the Trump administration about how we can move [the U.S.-Israel relationship] to a partnership.”

Oren argued that Israel’s reliance on U.S. assistance gives American administrations leverage over Israeli military decisions, particularly during wartime, while projecting an image of dependence that he said undermines Israel’s standing as a sovereign nation, pointing to the Obama administration’s withholding of certain munitions shipments during the 2014 Gaza conflict and the Biden administration’s decision to hold shipments of 2,000-pound bombs during the more recent Gaza war.

“Being dependent or being perceived as being dependent on America, it was unbecoming to our status,” Oren said. “It was sending the wrong message to our neighbors in the region — a message of weakness, a dependency — and it was exposing us to blackmail.”

Oren also argued that the existing aid arrangement restricts Israel’s ability to independently develop, purchase and sell military technology, potentially limiting the growth of its defense industry.
Shattering the Palestinians' Hope of Defeating Israel
Israel has not yet won in the minds of its enemies. A sustainable resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will come only when the Palestinians lose the hope of subduing Israel and imposing their will on it by force.

The Oslo Accords were meant to end Palestinian terrorism and set the conflict on a path to resolution. They did the opposite. They taught the Palestinian public and its leaders that pressure extracts concessions from Israel, and they read Israel's readiness to compromise as weakness.

33 years after the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has violated nearly every commitment it made. It has never prosecuted a single Palestinian for terrorism against Israel; it pays terrorists and their families $470 million a year, 7.6% of its budget; its schools teach the Oct. 7 massacre as a model; and its security forces have grown from a 30,000-man police force to 70,000 armed troops.

Cognitive defeat is a deep and lasting change in the enemy's perception that leads it to understand that it cannot achieve its goals by force, and that trying will cost more than it is worth. It requires a military decision so unequivocal that it changes the enemy's mind.

The Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War, and the Abraham Accords each shifted the Arab world's assessment of whether Israel could be destroyed or isolated. Terrorist organizations are harder targets: they count survival as victory and hold an ideology that treats every setback as temporary.

Postwar Gaza should stand as lasting testimony to the price of attacking Israel. The terrorist attack from Gaza and the war that followed it fixed, among most of the public and the leadership in Israel, the risks of the existence of a hostile entity in territory saturated with terrorists and weapons, within and next to which lie Jewish communities, infrastructure, and vital Israeli centers.

The Palestinian leadership failed to make the transition required from a violent nationalist movement to a functioning and responsible leadership of an autonomous political entity living in peace alongside the State of Israel. Israel has not given up its aspiration to peace, but it is no longer willing to indulge in illusions of peace.
How Turkey Is Turning from a Hostile State into an Enemy
For years, we became accustomed to thinking that, in Israeli-Turkish relations, Erdogan controlled the thermostat: turning up the heat when enthusiasm on the street was needed, and cooling things down when economic and diplomatic interests required it.

The expulsion of the Israeli ambassador in 2018 did not prevent the restoration of ambassadors in 2022.

But in 2023, Erdogan publicly defended Hamas after the Oct. 7 massacre and abduction of civilians, declaring that it was not a terrorist organization but a "liberation group." He later compared Netanyahu to Hitler.

This is no longer only about Erdogan. The anti-Israel and antisemitic virus has penetrated deep into the Turkish mainstream. The secular, social-democratic CHP, Erdogan's principal rival, demanded an end to trade with Israel.

Turkey is rebranding itself as a champion of terrorist movements. Through its open and practical support for Hamas, its deep involvement in Syria and Gaza, and its undisguised aspiration for hegemony in the Eastern Mediterranean, it is turning from a hostile state into an enemy state.

Turkey is a formidable military power, with an active-duty army of 355,000 personnel, the second largest in NATO, and a modern navy. Turkey is also a major arms producer, including advanced UAVs.

From the Turkish perspective, Israel is an impediment, a regional actor that must be moved out of the way.

A public taught to regard Israel as a threat to its homeland cannot be returned so easily to the status quo ante.

Israel must stop counting on the next reconciliation and prepare for a Turkey that increasingly sees confrontation with Israel as part of its aspiration for regional hegemony.
US trying to reform cultural, moral, ethical ‘rot’ at United Nations, Jewish envoy says
Jeff Bartos, U.S. representative for United Nations management and reform, has a statue of Sisyphus—the king in Greek myth condemned to roll a massive boulder up a hill daily, only to see it roll back down—on the coffee table in his office.

“To remind me every day that the task is not only not even close to being finished, but we have many more miles to go to push that boulder up the hill,” the Jewish real estate developer, lawyer and former candidate for political office told JNS.

Raised in southeastern Pennsylvania, Bartos interviewed for the job even though, as he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during his confirmation hearing, the United Nations may be “immune to reform.”

“My wife and my in-laws both said to me, ‘Why are you taking this job if it’s not possible?’” he told JNS. “What are you doing?”

But there has been notable progress, according to Bartos.

That includes, he said, key fiscal reforms that Washington introduced that drew consensus support, like cutting $1.1 billion from the U.N. budget, shedding more than 4,000 civilian jobs and eliminating a rule that perpetuated a liquidity crisis by returning unspent funds to member states irrespective of whether the states paid their dues.

“But here we are now, starting the negotiations on the regular budget for 2027, and I can say that the task ahead of us, for sure, is to reform the rot that lives within the institution,” he said. “The cultural, moral, ethical rot.”

Part of the rot is agenda item seven at the U.N. Human Rights Council. “Every session of the U.N. Human Rights Council features a standing agenda item targeting Israel,” the watchdog UN Watch says, of item seven. “No other country in the world—not Iran, Russia or North Korea—is singled out in this fashion.”

Bartos also said that the United Nations has “out of control special rapporteurs,” including Francesca Albanese, who frequently criticizes Israel and whom the Human Rights Council appoints. The United Nations has told JNS often that it doesn’t police the speech of rapporteurs, whom it considers “independent experts.”

Albanese is “not the only lunatic running around wearing the U.N. uniform and soiling the good name of the organization,” Bartos told JNS.

“We have an enormous task in front of us to reform the human rights pillar, to make meaningful reforms to the development pillar and to get the peace and security pillar of the U.N. back to its core mission of maintaining and preserving and protecting international peace and security,” he said.
UN Watch: From the Archive: Elie Wiesel Delivers Powerful Testimony at the United Nations | 21 June 2004
"Antisemitism has even managed to penetrate the U.N. atmosphere... Naively, I was convinced that antisemitism died in Auschwitz, and now I realize my mistake."

— Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel addresses the United Nations, 21 June 2004


US-sanctioned International Criminal Court shortlisted for EU’s top rights prize
The International Criminal Court was shortlisted Monday for the European Union’s top rights prize, in what supporters described as a show of support for the institution.

The European Parliament named the Netherlands-based tribunal among the three finalists for its Sakharov Prize alongside Tanzania opposition leader Tundu Lissu and twin sisters Taraneh and Romina Rahimi, representing those prosecuted by the Iranian government.

Set up in 1988 and named after Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, the prize is bestowed annually on individuals or organizations to recognize their fight for human rights or democracy.

“In an increasingly fraught global environment, it has never been more important — or more challenging — for MEPs to support them in their struggle,” said Barry Andrews, a centrist EU lawmaker from Ireland.

Contenders are nominated by parliament’s political groups as well as individual lawmakers. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Newsletter email address


Left-wing foundations quietly fund UN human rights ‘experts,’ watchdog says
U.N. “human rights” experts are taking six-figure donations from leftist nonprofit groups without properly disclosing them all, a watchdog group alleges.

Research unveiled by the Geneva-based UN Watch on Monday traced funding from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation to current and former U.N. special rapporteurs. The watchdog raised concerns that such influence could compromise the rapporteurs, who the U.N. appoints as independent experts to monitor human rights abuses in specific territories. Real journalism.Trusted by millions.

Unlimited access to in-depth reporting, expert analysis, and the stories that shape our country.

“These arrangements allow politically engaged foundations to support UN agendas through financial relationships that governments and the public cannot adequately scrutinize,” UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer said in a statement. “Independence requires more than an unpaid job title.”

The Ford Foundation and the U.N. did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s requests for comment. The Open Society Foundations portrayed its support as helping, rather than hindering, the experts’ independence.

“The Open Society Foundations is proud to be a human rights funder,” a foundation spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “We recognize the important role that UN Special Rapporteurs play as independent experts in their fields because their impartial scrutiny is essential to upholding universal human rights and international law. Our support helps ensure that Special Rapporteurs have the resources needed to carry out their mandates, but it does not direct or determine their findings, analysis, or conclusions. Private philanthropic support has long helped supplement their work given the significant budgetary constraints they face.”

U.N. experts took $4.7 million combined in Open Society Foundations grants, ranging from $1,600 to $829,981 per individual recipient, UN Watch found. Some rapporteurs did not properly report six-figure amounts from Open Society Foundations as the money passed through entities personally tied to them, UN Watch said.

Soros passed down his philanthropic and political empire to his son, Alex, in 2025. The family directs millions of dollars toward leftist initiatives, sparking criticism in the United States, most famously for helping to elect lenient prosecutors.

Another $11.1 million to the U.N. experts came from the Ford Foundation, according to UN Watch’s research. The foundation’s history of left-wing projects includes funding protests and other activities that occasionally turned violent, the Washington Examiner previously reported.

In September 2025, Trump administration officials named the Open Society and Ford groups as possibly abusing their tax-exempt status in a podcast interview and a Department of Justice directive obtained by The New York Times.


UK police rearrest duo suspected of helping Iranian intel over RAF Fairford incident
British police said on Tuesday that they had rearrested two men on suspicion of assisting Iranian intelligence as part of their investigation into activity at the RAF Fairford air base last month.

RAF Fairford had been used by US bombers to carry out strikes on Iran, but American B-1 bombers were withdrawn shortly after five British men were arrested outside the military base in southwest England in the early hours of September 27.

Two other men were later arrested by police, though all seven were released on bail. Counter Terrorism Policing said on Tuesday, however, that two individuals had been rearrested under the National Security Act.

CTP said in a statement they had rearrested a 24-year-old British national, who was initially arrested outside RAF Fairford, and also a 25-year-old British-Iranian dual national who had previously been arrested in London.

Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, head of National Counter Terrorism Policing in the UK, said in a statement: “This is very much a live investigation, and our evidence gathering continues, but at this time our position remains the same; we consider it highly likely that there is Iranian state involvement.”

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham last week said that the activity at RAF Fairford was likely to have been coordinated in Iran, which Iran’s ambassador to Britain has denied. Police stand guard outside the Iranian Embassy after a small group of protesters threw paint at the building in London, September 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

“We know the public have unanswered questions,” CTP’s Taylor said. “I want to be as transparent as possible and when we are in the position to share more, we will.”

British authorities have for some years accused Iran of being involved in numerous plots and attempted assassinations in Britain using criminal networks and proxies, accusations Tehran has repeatedly denied.

Last year Britain said there had been 20 credible Iranian-backed threats to kill or kidnap individuals based in the UK.
Pentagon deploys USS Theodore Roosevelt to Middle East as Trump weighs further Iran strikes
The Pentagon is sending the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group and the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit to the Middle East, two US officials confirmed to Fox News on Tuesday.

This follows a US official telling The Jerusalem Post on October 1 that the aircraft carrier and a unit of US Marines would be sent to US Central Command (CENTCOM)'s sphere of operations.

The USS Makin Island amphibious ready group also departed San Diego, carrying the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, the Post reported at the time.

According to Fox's report, the aircraft carrier group is due to arrive in the Middle East by the end of November.

Currently, two other US aircraft carriers are deployed in the region, namely the USS George H. W. Bush, which arrived in April, and the USS George Washington, which arrived in August to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln.

However, US Naval Institute News reported that the USS Theodore Roosevelt was moving to US Central Command's area of operations in order to relieve the USS George Washington.

In addition, the USS Boxer amphibious ready group is deployed in the Arabian Sea, carrying the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, alongside the USS Portland and USS Comstock.
Seth Frantzman: What does Tom Barrack's warning on Saudi Arabia reveal about US Middle East policy?
US Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, who is also the US envoy to Iraq and Syria, spoke on October 20 at the Global Security Forum in Doha. He discussed Saudi Arabia’s“difficult position” today. He hinted at the challenge Riyadh and others will face pursuing an exclusively military or “kinetic” response. This comes amid reports from Bloomberg that the UK would send its Royal Air Force Typhoon fighters to help protect Saudi Arabia.

Ambassador Barrack’s comments indicate what the US is thinking about the region. The US has been reluctant to intervene in the conflict in Yemen. However, other countries are moving to do more. Egypt is considering sending forces to help Saudi Arabia. The UAE and others are also considering what their involvement might be. There were also reports about Israel approaching the continued threat from the Houthis in Yemen.

Meanwhile in Saudi Arabia reports continue to focus on the fighting in Yemen. Arab News, a Saudi media outlet, noted that the “Yemeni government forces captured new positions in Taiz as they intensified their offensive against the Houthis, carrying out 1,164 strikes and neutralizing an estimated 558 militia fighters over the past 24 hours, a military spokesperson said on Monday.”

The report added that “Majed Al-Nuzaili, spokesperson for the Yemeni Armed Forces, said in a post on X/Twitter that government troops had forced Houthi fighters to retreat in Taiz under heavy air and artillery support as part of Operation Dawn of Yemen. The military also reported destroying or damaging 135 Houthi military vehicles and pieces of equipment during the operations, which targeted the militia’s troop concentrations, reinforcements, fortifications and supply routes.”
Amb. Tom Barrack: It’s ‘not America’s job’ to combat Iran-backed threats in the Middle East
U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack said Tuesday that it is “not America’s job” to resolve the threats posed by Iranian-backed terror groups and militias across the Middle East, arguing that regional governments must take greater responsibility for their own security rather than relying on U.S. military intervention.

Speaking with Al Jazeera diplomatic editor James Bays at the Global Security Forum in Doha, Qatar, Barrack said the “answer” to Yemen’s struggle with the Houthis, Lebanon’s attempt to demilitarize Hezbollah and Iraq’s battle with Iran-funded militias “has to be that there becomes no purpose for those militias or those intermediaries, that the state or the nation state or the regime itself takes responsibility. So there’s no function for those militias. That’s not America’s job.”

Barrack said that while Saudi Arabia is in a “difficult position” as the Houthis repeatedly strike the kingdom, he expressed skepticism about the prospect of direct American military intervention.

“I think the president has been clear that he supports Saudi Arabia and the backing that they need logistically. He will supply, but America getting involved in a ground kinetic battle somewhere else seems fruitless,” he said.

Barrack argued generally that the United States should maintain its presence in the Middle East while moving away from efforts to control political outcomes.

“We’ve had 23 regime changes; none of them have worked,” he said. “Every time we try and intervene and change the person or the regime, it seems to have been a mistake.”

“The bargain is not to own, not to control, but to tend, not to leave. We’re not leaving,” Barrack said. “But what everybody’s doing is saying, ‘OK, I can’t rely on America to solve all my problems anymore.'”

Asked whether he was advocating an American “overwatch” role in the region, he agreed, arguing that regional governments must develop their own security arrangements with Washington serving in a supporting capacity.

Barrack also declined to say whether American military involvement in the war with Iran had been a “mistake,” instead warning that the conflict has resulted in “unintended consequences.”

“So I think when we say, ‘Is it a mistake?’ I don’t know whether it’s a mistake or not,” Barrack said. “It’s something that certainly none of us want to see, including this administration does not want to see proliferation of these unintended consequences of what’s happening in the region, or to the Iranian people, or to the Israeli people, or what’s happening in Europe.”

Barrack said that while he was deeply concerned about the conflict’s effects, he maintained that Trump’s original objective had been to prevent a nuclear threat rather than overthrow Iran’s government, despite President Donald Trump at times suggesting he supported regime change.

He argued that a negotiated settlement, rather than continued military escalation, offered the most viable path forward, pointing to the lack of trust between Washington and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a central obstacle.

“The IRGC has become an adversary. The IRGC, in its adversarial role with Israel, has been a problem,” Barrack said. “It’s, ‘How do we have not an event but a process in which everybody has relevancy, respect, and continues on without this dramatic threat to all of us?’”

Despite identifying the IRGC as an adversary, Barrack rejected describing the Iranian regime as “evil,” saying its religious tradition was deserving of respect.

“It’s a theocracy. It’s not an evil regime and that has nothing to do with it,” Barrack said. “That’s a religious content and practice that we all respect.”


The IDF Listed 170 Gaza "Journalists" as Combatants: The Evidence Holds Up, the Debunkings Fail
Each week brings new martyr notices, whether from Hamas and PIJ themselves or from Palestinian social media, further corroborating the IDF's claims. Mohammed Ahmed Youssef Al-Munirawi provides a revealing example. A recognized journalist and editor at Felesteen newspaper, but absent from the CPJ database, Al-Munirawi was identified by the IDF as a Hamas military operative based on a captured document. Critics dismissed the allegation as another unsubstantiated Israeli claim. Yet just days after the IDF released its list, a Hamas martyr video identified Al-Munirawi as a military commander.

The IDF's list of 170 is not beyond scrutiny, and some entries have considerably stronger evidence than others. While the social media evidence does not always conclusively establish combatant affiliations, it provides substantial additional corroboration. Given more space, the authors could present further compelling evidence concerning dozens of additional cases beyond those examined here. There is also the legitimate question of journalists listed by the CPJ and other organizations who do not appear on the IDF's list. Two points are worth making. First, the IDF took considerable time to release even this initial list, and Israel is under no general obligation to publicly explain the circumstances of every death in Gaza or disclose the intelligence underlying its targeting decisions.

Second, at least forty journalists listed by the CPJ and other organizations but absent from the IDF's list have been identified as having been killed in strikes that also killed Hamas and PIJ combatants. For example, the CPJ lists journalist Moussa Al-Borsh, who was killed alongside his brother, Yaqoub Al-Borsh, in a November 12, 2023 airstrike. Hamas subsequently identified Yaqoub as a commander and the CPJ removed him from its database. In another example, the CPJ lists journalist Islam Mohareb Abed, who was killed on August 31, 2025, alongside her husband, Thaer Mansour Abdullah Abed, a PIJ Staff Council leader whose affiliation was confirmed in an official martyr notice issued in October 2025. Yet the CPJ's account of Islam's death omits this highly significant fact, leaving readers unaware that she was killed alongside a senior PIJ figure.

The pattern is clear. Israel identifies a journalist as a combatant. Critics dismiss the allegation as propaganda and "hasbara." Hamas or PIJ subsequently acknowledges the individual as one of its own. Yet rather than reconsidering their accusations that Israel systematically targeted journalists, critics simply shift their demands to the remaining names. Each new acknowledgment is treated as an isolated exception rather than part of a growing body of evidence. The response is invariably, "What about the rest?"

But at what point does the scrutiny turn in the other direction? If Hamas and PIJ have now acknowledged 59 individuals portrayed as innocent journalists killed by Israel as their own combatants, when will critics begin questioning the reliability of the Gaza media reports that presented them that way? Why is Israel's credibility continually challenged while those accounts escape comparable scrutiny? If 59 cases are not enough to prompt that reassessment, how many would it take?
Uri Kurlianchik: Israel Has a Settler Violence Problem, but It’s Not What You Think
Every day, Palestinians supported by foreign leftists attack Jewish homesteaders in Samaria. They throw rocks at them, attempt to steal their herds, poison their dogs, insult and harangue them and so forth. This is well documented, but even the Israeli media ignores it because such behavior came to be expected from Arabs and leftists, so reporting it isn’t “news.” However, when Jews react, this makes headlines based on the principle of “man bites dog.”

Folks like Heidi Levine, the “neutral” WaPo camerawoman who claims she was assaulted by settlers, are there to record the cases when Jews fall to these provocations, so they could report about “settler violence.”

Because this trope is already engrained, they can embellish events without fear. For example, Heidi claims she was beaten for ten minutes. There were over a hundreds people and dozens of cameras there. Where is this video of her being beaten for ten minutes?

In fact, I’m yet to see a single video of her being beaten at all…

This is the same story as the European delegation, who just so happened to include rabidly anti-Israel activists. They claim they were assaulted by settlers even though not a single one of them needed medical care, nor are there any videos of them actually being being beaten. The only actual records are of masked men beating on their cars, and Bernard Baudoux, a known Communist, striking a dramatic pose on the ground with a scratch visible on him.

One wonders why these far-left freaks are allowed into Israel to cause trouble in the first place, but that’s a different question.

Let’s look at a third example.

A couple months ago, everyone spoke about Jewish settlers “besieging” a Palestinian family in Qusra. However, they didn’t just attack a random home inside an Arab village because they felt like it.

What happened is that Arab residents from Qusra blocked roads leading to Jewish towns with boulders and burning tires and threw stones at Jewish homesteaders who tried to remove the obstacles. They Arab attackers moved to a building on the edge of the village to create the impression of a “siege” when the Jews fought back.

Not a single word about it in the media, not even on Israeli media.

Now, do Israeli settlers engage in illegal activity? Of course. All human beings do and these guys are more radicalized than most. I’m totally in favor of Israel punishing Israelis who attack Palestinians Arabs as harshly as the Palestinian Authority is punishes Arabs who attack Jews.

However, this isn’t why I’m telling you all this.

People are saying that Israel is losing the information war but it would be more precise to say Israel isn’t fighting at all. I don’t mean that Israel doesn’t issue correct statements and occasionally has a nice social media campaign.

What I mean is that Israel isn’t treating it is as a war.


IDF says strike killed final Hamas member who took part in kidnapping Shani Louk
The military on Tuesday announced that Israeli strikes in Gaza over the past day killed two Hamas operatives, including a terrorist who took part in abducting the body of Israeli hostage Shani Louk during the October 7 onslaught.

The killing of Tamer Muhammad Ibrahim al-Sabbagh in the northern Gaza Strip’s Jabalia on Monday marked the final member of the Hamas cell that was seen abducting Louk on October 7, 2023, with three others killed earlier in the war and one captured by Israeli forces.

Infamous photos taken by AP freelance photographer Ali Mahmud showed a half-naked woman, later identified as Louk, lying unconscious face-down in the back of a pickup truck in Gaza filled with armed men.

The army said al-Sabbagh, seen in the photo, invaded Israeli territory on October 7 and took part in the abduction of Louk, 22, who was attending the Supernova music festival.

During the war and recently, al-Sabbagh had carried out advanced attacks on Israeli troops and civilians and acted to restore Hamas’s capabilities, “in systematic violation of the ceasefire,” according to a joint statement from the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet, which added that he was killed to “remove the threat he posed.”

Louk’s body was recovered by IDF troops and returned to Israel in May 2024. Shani Louk was killed on October 7 by Hamas terrorists near the Supernova rave and her body was recovered in an IDF operation and returned to Israel on May 17, 2024. (Courtesy)

Both the military and Shin Bet also said that an Israeli strike in Gaza on Tuesday killed Akram Bassam Shaaban Yassin, who they identified as a senior officer in Hamas’s general security apparatus.

The security apparatus, according to the military, is a clandestine Hamas body responsible for security for top Hamas officials, communications between them, coordinating their meetings, and transporting them between emergency sites.

The mechanism is also responsible for producing intelligence assessments, “which assists the organization’s senior leadership in decision-making and in carrying out terror plots against the State of Israel,” the IDF added.

The military said his killing continued an “ongoing effort to target senior officials in the apparatus and weaken its capabilities in the Gaza Strip.”


Israel's "Offensive Defense" Posture in Lebanon
The IDF's current deployment in southern Lebanon has a "forward and offensive defense" posture: Troops occupy commanding terrain inside Lebanon, using those positions to monitor and strike Hizbullah targets farther inland.

At the Ali al-Taher Ridge, Israeli forces spent three months isolating the Hizbullah underground command complex and cutting its supply routes.

Israeli forces then destroyed more than two km. of tunnels, along with weapons stores and a command center.

Rather than establish a permanent garrison on the ridge, Israeli troops redeployed to nearby commanding positions from which they could monitor the area and strike Hizbullah fighters attempting to return.

Three years after Hizbullah opened what may prove to be the most disastrous war in its history, Israel's victory will be secure only when Hizbullah can no longer rebuild its military power.
IDF: Lebanese Army failed to dismantle Hezbollah weapons site
The Israel Defense Forces said on Tuesday that Hezbollah continued using a weapons-storage site in Southern Lebanon months after the Lebanese Army reported that it had dealt with the facility.

The IDF said it referred the site in the Kfarra area to the Lebanese Army in December 2025 through a U.S.-led monitoring mechanism established under the 2024 ceasefire understandings.

Footage released by the Israeli military shows Hezbollah terrorists loading weapons from the site onto a truck. Israeli troops subsequently struck the vehicle.

The IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate said elements within the Lebanese Army coordinated with Hezbollah to delay or thwart enforcement operations, allowing the Iran-backed terrorist group to move weapons in advance.

The military urged the Lebanese Army to take more decisive action against Hezbollah’s weapons and military infrastructure in the country’s south.

“The IDF and the Intelligence Directorate continue to monitor Hezbollah’s attempts to rebuild and strengthen its capabilities and will not allow any violation that poses a threat to the State of Israel and its civilians,” it said.

“The Hezbollah terrorist organization dragged Lebanon and its residents into a war in service of Iran during Operation Roaring Lion, launching thousands of rockets, including from areas south of the Litani River, where no armed elements, assets or weapons belonging to anyone other than the Lebanese government or UNIFIL should be present.”





 




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Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



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