Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, September 29, 2024

Who is weaker than a spider web? Iran without Nasrallah, that's who.

Since 2000, Hassan Nasrallah and later other Iranian proxies have been fond of calling Israel "weaker than a spider's web." The term has been on Iranian billboards and elsewhere.

At the same time, Iran (and Hezbollah) have been pushing the narrative that they are strong, with huge arsenals and dedicated fighters, and just itching to get into a war with Israel if Israel is so foolish as to start one.

That had been the story they have repeated for decades. And, as with so much other anti-Israel propaganda, it was all a lie.

And as with the other anti-Israel lies, much of the world bought it.

Israel has done a lot of innovative things during this conflict, but one of the most significant did not involve high tech or brilliant strategy or intelligence: Israel simply called their bluff.

And the Axis of Resistance came up empty.

Hezbollah bet that Israel would not escalate the war of attrition they have had for ten months, and lost that bet. Now it is largely in disarray and as long as Israel keeps up the pressure it will have a hard time rebuilding its damaged infrastructure.

Iran bet on Hezbollah being able to degrade Israel's will to fight and move it towards a ceasefire in Gaza, preserving Hamas as a critical member of the Axis. It certainly didn't think Israel might make Lebanon the major focus of the fighting.

Iran's strategy has been based on its proxies, because it is the frightened party. Israel is doing militarily what the West couldn't do in Lebanon - blocking all Iranian arms imports to Hezbollah. And it can do militarily (including cyberwar) to Iran what the West has not been able to enforce - severely blocking all Iranian imports and exports, crippling its economy in weeks, if it wants to.

This is not to say the war is won. Far from it. Iran still has proxies in Syria, Iraq and Yemen who are willing to send missiles and drones to Israel. They are dangerous but the threat is not existential. Israel no doubt has been working on plans to neutralize those threats, in ways we cannot imagine - or Israel will send a message to Iran that those projectiles will be treated as if they were launched from Tehran and the response will be in that direction.

Every time Israel has done what Iran considers a provocation, Iran has promised retribution - and come up short. Even honor is not enough to make Iran want to bet the country on a war with Israel. Hezbollah was its buffer, and it can no longer rely on that.

This is the first major setback for the "Axis of Resistance" since Iran created it. Israel is the one that has popped the balloon of inevitable Iranian growth in strength and influence. The psychological value of embarrassing Iran in the rest of the Muslim world is dramatic. .This is no less than a restructuring of the Middle East, no less important than the Abraham Accords, that has increased Israel's prestige and diminished Iran's.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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For those who are trying to soft-pedal Hezbollah's evil, here are some sections from its 1985 manifesto:

No one can imagine the importance of our military potential as our military apparatus is not separate from our overall social fabric. Each of us is a fighting soldier. And when it becomes necessary to carry out the Holy War, each of us takes up his assignment in the fight in accordance with the injunctions of the Law, and that in the framework of the mission carried out under the tutelage of the Commanding Jurist.

Let us put it truthfully: the sons of Hezbollah know who are their major enemies in the Middle East - the Phalanges, Israel, France and the US.

TO THE CHRISTIANS
If you, Christians, cannot tolerate that Muslims share with you certain domains of government, Allah has also made it intolerable for Muslims to participate in an unjust regime, unjust for you and for us, in a regime which is not predicated upon the prescriptions of religion and upon the basis of the Law (Sharia) as laid down by Muhammad, the Seal of the Prophets…

We don't wish you evil. We call upon you to embrace Islam so that you can be happy in this world and the next.

We see in Israel the vanguard of the United States in our Islamic world. It is the hated enemy that must be fought until the hated ones get what they deserve. This enemy is the greatest danger to our future generations and to the destiny of our lands, particularly as it glorifies the ideas of settlement and expansion, initiated in Palestine, and yearning outward to the extension of the Great Israel, from the Euphrates to the Nile. Our primary assumption in our fight against Israel states that the Zionist entity is aggressive from its inception, and built on lands wrested from their owners, at the expense of the rights of the Muslim people. Therefore our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated. We vigorously condemn all plans for negotiation with Israel, and regard all negotiators as enemies, for the reason that such negotiation is nothing but the recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist occupation of Palestine.

In 1992, Hassan Nasrallah said he planned to turn all of Lebanon into "resistance."

“Our participation in the elections and entry into the National Assembly do not alter the fact that we are a resistance party. We shall, in fact, work to turn the whole of Lebanon into a country of resistance, and the state into a state of resistance. "

I fear whether Lebanon has any leaders ready to fight for Lebanon, even when Hezbollah is in a weakened state. But if they don't do it now, they will never get another chance.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

According to Lebanon's health minister, only ELEVEN people were killed in the airstrikes that killed Nasrallah!

We know that Israel flattened four apartment buildings in its airstrike on Hassan Nasrallah.

Israel haters are claiming that this is a war crime because there were so many civilians presumed to have been killed in the strikes. They say that this violates the principle of proportionality.

They are obviously wrong. Nasrallah, his bunker and the people with him are as high value military targets as can be imagined, and nothing in international law says that the highest value targets cannot be struck - just that the attacker must do everything feasible to minimize collateral damage. International law (as codified in many nations' military manuals) says that the presence of civilians within or near military objectives does not render such objectives immune from attack. As I've shown previously, the latitude in attacking within the bounds of proportionality have been ruled to be far more generously than the "experts" claim for Israel. Hundreds of civilian deaths would indeed be proportional to the military value of killing the single most important decisionmaker in Iran's war against Israel.

But how many ended up dying from the airstrike?

Each building had about 7-9 stories, presumably with at least four apartments per floor; one can expect that hundreds of people lived there. So we would think that death toll would be in the hundreds, assuming no warning.

The Lebanese minister of health, Firas Abiad, held a press conference on Saturday detailing all of the deaths since the beginning of the war October 8. Here is what he said about Friday's airstrikes, according to LBC TV:

Regarding the toll of Friday's Israeli strike on Beirut's southern suburbs:

Total deaths: 11.

Total injuries: 108.

ELEVEN?

And out of that eleven, how many were Hezbollah terrorists and their partners?

For contrast, the health ministry says that 33 were killed Saturday in airstrikes across Lebanon. One would think that they would have been able to recover far more bodies by Saturday than only eleven if there were hundreds of casualties from the massive Friday airstrikes.. The hospitals would record the numbers.

How could the death toll be so low?

Maybe Israel did manage to obliquely warn the residents? According to Dearborn.org, the airstrike occurred two hours after residents in the area were warned to evacuate, but I cannot find that reported anywhere else. Maybe Israel calculated that a general warning for the entire neighborhood would be enough to get many residents to flee but not specific enough to make Nasrallah risk going aboveground, thinking it was a trap for him. However, outside this one source, I cannot find any reports of warning for that airstrike.

Somehow, Israel seems to have managed to minimize civilian casualties even when destroying four buildings. Perhaps the death toll will rise, but it seems unlikely to reach more than a few dozen. Which is absolutely mindblowing.

This also proves that Israel knows how to use 2,000 pound bombs in a precise way even in an urban environment - the exact opposite of how it has been framed by the media and Kamala Harris.

One other point. If you look at Google Maps you see that most of Beirut can be seen in Google Street View (blue highlighted section.) But large parts of the city have no street view, including the Haret Hreik area that was struck.

Those areas are controlled by Hezbollah, which probably instructs Google that some areas are off limits from open source photographs. Presumably the only people that live there either Hezbollah members, their families or otherwise linked to Hezbollah.

Not to say that any civilians linked to Hezbollah deserve to die, but they knew exactly where they lived and why.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

09/28 Links: Killing Nasrallah; The death of Hassan Nasrallah shows why this is a just war; Defund the UN for its role in enabling terror and antisemitism

From Ian:

Lee Smith: Killing Nasrallah

In the past, Israeli officials warned against targeting the terror chief. They feared it might bring about an even more ruthless leader just as Israel’s 1992 assassination of then-Hezbollah chief Abbas al-Mussawi elevated, in their eyes, the more effective Nasrallah. But what made Nasrallah special, what gave rise to the personality cult around the man whose name means “victory of God,” was his relationship with Khamenei.

In 1989, Nasrallah left Lebanon for Iran, where the 29-year-old cleric was introduced to Khamenei. In the vacuum left by Khomeini’s death, Khamenei was working to consolidate his power, which included taking control of Hezbollah, Tehran’s most significant external asset. He saw Mussawi’s assassination as an opening to put his own man in place, and with Hezbollah’s operations against Israeli forces in Lebanon, Nasrallah’s legend steadily grew. Even Israeli officials credited Hezbollah for driving Israel out of the south in 2000, a singular triumph worthy of the name Nasrallah, a victory against the hated Zionists that no other Arab leader could claim.

But the myth of Nasrallah as Turban Napoleon was dispelled with the disastrous 2006 war which he stumbled into by kidnapping two Israel soldiers. Later he said that had he known Israel was going to respond so forcefully, he’d never have given the order. And yet despite the thousands killed in Lebanon, Hezbollahis and civilians, and the billions of dollars worth of damage, he claimed that Hezbollah won just because he survived. Before his demise, he’d been in hiding since 2006.

Israel’s recent demonstrations of its technological prowess show that Nasrallah survived this long thanks only to the sufferance of the Jerusalem government. Netanyahu and others seem to have hoped the Hezbollah problem would resolve itself once the Americans came to their senses and recognized the threat Iran posed to U.S. regional hegemony. But the Israelis misread the strategic implications of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The George W. Bush administration’s freedom agenda gave Iraq’s Shia majority an insuperable advantage in popular elections. And since virtually all the Shia factions were controlled by Iran, democratizing Iraq laid the foundations for Iran’s regional empire as well as Obama’s realignment strategy, downgrading relations with traditional U.S. allies like Israel and building ties with the anti-American regime. Even Trump, whose January 2020 targeted killing of Iranian terror chief Qassem Soleimani and his Iraqi deputy Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was far and away the most meaningful operation ever conducted by U.S. forces on Iraqi soil, couldn’t entirely break the mold cast by his predecessors and which the Pentagon protected like a priceless jewel.

U.S. forces are still based in Iraq and Syria to fight ISIS and any other Sunnis the Iranians and their allies categorize as threats to their interests. The detail seems almost like a medieval curse imposed on the losing side in a war. After the Iranians killed and maimed thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq, and helped kill and wound thousands more by urging their Syrian ally Bashar Assad to usher Sunni fighters from the Damascus airport to the Iraqi front, America’s best and bravest are condemned to eternal bondage requiring them to protect Iranian interests forever.

The idea advanced by conspiracy theorists from the U.S. political and media establishment on the left as well as the right that Netanyahu is trying to drag the U.S. into a larger regional war with Iran—a thesis sure to be cited repeatedly in the aftermath of Nasrallah’s assassination—is absurd. The Obama faction, of which Biden and Harris are a part, is in Iran’s corner. Moreover, only a fool could be blind to the fact that the Pentagon way of war, three decades into the 21st century and a world away from the United States’ last conclusive victory, means death for all who pursue it.

If Washington and the Europeans are appalled by Israel’s campaign over the last two weeks, it’s because the Israelis have resurfaced the ugly truth that no modish theories of war, international organizations, or even American presidents could long obscure. Wars are won by killing the enemy, above all, those who inspire their people to kill yours. Killing Nasrallah not only anchors Israel’s victory in Lebanon but reestablishes the old paradigm for any Western leaders who take seriously their duty to protect their countrymen and civilization: Kill your enemies.

Seth Mandel: Iran’s Limits

So what was happening was this: Iran was using Hezbollah to draw Israeli attacks on Hezbollah’s stronghold in South Lebanon, while claiming Israel was attacking Hezbollah to provoke Iran. For the Iranian president to say this out loud was essentially an admission that Tehran won’t sacrifice itself to save Hezbollah or to avenge Hamas’s honor.

To be clear, there are limits to this reticence. Iran has been using its proxies in four different countries to attack Israeli and American targets, and Iran did strike at Israel this summer directly with hundreds of missiles and drones.

Hamas and Hezbollah (and the Houthis and groups in Iraq) are extensions of Iranian force around the Middle East. The assumption was that Iran would intervene before letting any of its proxies get fully destroyed. But what if that’s not the case? It’s not clear at all that Iranian self-preservation extends to those groups, or beyond Iran’s borders at all.

The idea that it’s impossible to, say, destroy Hamas because “you can’t kill an idea” was always preposterous. Hamas can be destroyed. But it’s becoming clearer that there is no reason not to destroy Hamas, because destroying Hamas won’t trigger a wider war with Iran. And Hezbollah is clearly getting worried that they, too, might be considered expendable by the regime.

The answer to this one isn’t clear yet. Iran does not have the same investment in and connection to Hamas that it has with Hezbollah, which is a key arm of its global expansionist militaries. But terror groups don’t last forever, and this one is now into its fifth decade on earth.

That doesn’t mean Iran won’t fight to hold onto its control over territory in Lebanon and Syria and Iraq and Yemen. But no proxy is more important than its principal.

A path to a wider victory is clear: maximum pressure on Iran, along with strong regional alliances, can defeat Tehran in the long run. The West just has to decide if it wants that victory.

John Bolton: Israel has exposed the lie at the heart of Starmer and Biden’s foreign policy

We have all repeatedly dealt fecklessly with Iran’s efforts to create nuclear weapons. But now that the reality of present danger has become crystal clear, quibbling about Israel’s determination to survive is quite unbecoming to the West’s leaders.

Failed and misbegotten diplomacy toward Iran and Hezbollah particularly has helped produce the current conflict. I know personally because of my service as US Ambassador to the UN during and after the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War.

Although the inadequacies of Security Council Resolution 1701, which brought that conflict to a halt, were evident even as the Council was voting unanimously to approve it, recent years have shown it to be wholly ineffective. Resolution 1701’s central objective was to prevent the rearmament of Hezbollah after Israel’s devastating retaliation for combined Hamas-Hezbollah attacks from Gaza and Lebanon (sound familiar?).

To say the least, this UN diplomacy facilitated exactly the opposite result. It did not strengthen an independent Lebanese government, with the backing of enhanced UN peacekeeping forces, to stand against Hezbollah. Instead, Hezbollah in effect took over the Lebanese government.

As with Hamas in Gaza, not until Hezbollah is eliminated will the truly innocent civilians have a chance for representative government.

Today’s real issue is Iran. Far from being eager to aid now-beleaguered Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran is clearly worried it will face direct, devastating retaliation from Israel. Indeed, there were reports even before Israel’s elimination of Nasrullah that Iran was dodging Hezbollah entreaties for Iran to come to its defence.

Iran has been visibly nervous about responding to Israel’s killing of Hamas leader Ismael Haniyah on July 31, and Nasrullah’s exit will only make the ayatollahs more nervous.

The fear that this time Netanyahu will not succumb to American pressure to “take the win,” as Israel did in April after Iran’s unsuccessful missile and drone attack, is clearly chilling Iran’s leadership. As well it should.

While the future is decidedly murky, Israelis undoubtedly remain determined to defend themselves. Too bad the current United Kingdom and the United States governments are not proud to stand with them.

09/27 Links Pt2: Murray: The United Nations is pointless, toothless and morally corrupt; Phillips: Eye-witness to atrocity at Supernova; The Moral Inversion of Rashida Tlaib

From Ian:

Netanyahu sets out a choice between a ‘blessing’ and a ‘curse’ in UNGA speech

In his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set out what he described as a choice for the nations of the Middle East and the world, between the “blessing” of expanded regional normalization or the “curse” of Iran, its proxies and Oct. 7.

“Ladies and gentlemen, as Israel defends itself against Iran in the seven-front war, the line separating the blessing and the curse could not be more clear,” Netanyahu told delegates, brandishing a pair of maps — one showing a potential normalization corridor through the Gulf and the Middle East and the other showing the proliferation of Iran’s proxies.

“On the one hand, a bright blessing, a future of hope,” he said. “On the other hand, a dark future of despair… Israel has made its choice. We seek to move forward to a bright age of prosperity and peace. Iran and its proxies have also made their choice. They want to move back to a dark age of terror and war.”

He said that the countries of the world must choose which side they will stand on. Netanyahu argued that Israel’s wars against international terrorist groups are a fight against a common global enemy. He condemned those at the U.N. and elsewhere who he said have tried to cast Israel as evil and Iran and its proxies as good.

Netanyahu made the case for Israel’s escalating campaign against Hezbollah, which, he emphasized, has targeted citizens from a slew of countries, not limited to Israel.

“As long as Hezbollah chooses the path of war, Israel has no choice and Israel has every right to remove this threat and return our citizens to their homes safely, and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Netanyahu said, asserting that Israel has had significant success in its recent operations. More than 60,000 residents of northern Israel have been evacuated since Oct. 7.

He said that Israel has been “tolerating this intolerable situation” of communities being evacuated from northern Israel for a year but “enough is enough,” vowing that Israel would ensure its citizens can return home and “will not accept” a Hezbollah army on its northern border.

Netanyahu emphasized that Hezbollah is violating U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 — which calls on it to move its forces north of the Litani River — and that it is firing rockets from civilian locations in Lebanon.

Addressing Iran’s leaders, Netanyahu said, “if you strike us, we will strike you. There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach.”

Douglas Murray: The United Nations is pointless, toothless and morally corrupt

It’s that most wonderful time of the year in New York. I mean of course the time when the United Nations General Assembly is in session.

There really is nothing like it. If you can’t get down a couple of blocks on foot you can at least console yourself that some African despot is holed up in his 5-star hotel.

And if you can’t cross town in a car then you can be safe in the knowledge that some Arab potentate is raiding the minibar in a hotel of their choice.

But at least you know that the real action is going on over on the floor of the United Nations.

On Tuesday it was Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey who was up. And from the main podium at the UN he used an analogy that people like him enjoy using on 1st Avenue.

“Just as Hitler was stopped by the alliance of humanity 70 years ago, Netanyahu and his murder network must also be stopped by the alliance of humanity.”

At the 79th General Assembly the Turkish president also criticized the U.N. for failing to fulfill its original mission and instead becoming “a dysfunctional structure.”

He’s right on that last bit, at least. But unfortunately he seems not to realize is that one reason the UN is dysfunctional is because it allows despots like him to use the stage to attack not only the country that is hosting them but also our democratic allies.

Of course Erdogan is simply committing what this city’s shrinks would call “projection.” Throughout his time in office Erdogan has consistently locked up journalists, judges and anyone else who stands in his way or criticizes him.

After what he claimed was a “coup” attempt against him in 2016 he locked up around 50,000 people.

He has also continued a war of aggression against the Kurdish people who have been denied a state of their own by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, among others.

When faced with people like Erdogan, Vladimir Putin, the Mullahs in Iran and the terror-sponsoring, slave-state of Qatar, you would have thought that the world’s democracies would have a chance to shine.

But then you would be wrong.

It seems that when it comes to speeches before the UN the Western democracies are not sending our best.

Kassy Akiva: ‘We Are Winning’: Netanyahu Slams UN As ‘House Of Darkness’ In Scathing Speech

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel was winning the battle against its enemies and tore into the United Nations General Assembly in a Friday speech, accusing the body of being a “house of darkness.”

Netanyahu began his speech by stating that he did not intend to come to the UN this year, but changed his mind because he felt Israel was being slandered.

“I decided to come here to speak for my people, to speak for my country, to speak for the truth,” Netanyahu said. “And here is the truth: Israel seeks peace. Israel yearns for peace. Israel has made peace, and will make peace again.”

“And I have another message for this assembly and for the world outside this hall: We are winning.”

Netanyahu also slammed the UN for its long-standing bias against Israel, which he said has gone into overdrive since October 7.

Calling the UN a “house of darkness” and “a swamp of anti-Semitic bile,” Netanyahu pointed out that there have been more anti-Israel resolutions passed against Israel in the UN than the entire world combined.

“What hypocrisy, what a double standard, what a joke,” Netanyahu said.

“It’s not about Gaza … it’s always been about Israel. … The UN will be viewed by fair-minded people everywhere as nothing more than a contemptuous farce.”

“So all the speeches you heard today, all the hostility directed at Israel this year, not about Gaza. It’s about Israel. It’s always been about Israel, about Israel’s very existence.”

Netanyahu referenced the story of Moses, wherein the ancient Jewish leader said to the Israelites that the actions they choose will determine if they bless or curse future generations.

“That is the choice we face today: The curse of Iran’s unremitting aggression, or the blessing of a historic reconciliation between Arab and Jew.”

Netanyahu unveiled a “map of a blessing,” showing the potential for Israel and Arab partners to form a land bridge to connect Europe and Asia with rail lines, energy pipelines, and fiber optic cables.

Showing a second map “of a curse,” Netanyahu highlighted Iranian influence in the region.

“Iran’s malignant arc has shut down international waterways. It cuts off trade. It destroys nations from within and inflicts misery on millions.” he said, adding that Iran’s aggression endangers every other country in the Middle East.

09/27 Links Pt1: Schrodinger’s Nasrallah: 'Cautious Optimism' in Israel That Beirut Strike Eliminated Hezbollah Head Hassan Nasrallah

From Ian:

'Cautious Optimism' in Israel That Beirut Strike Eliminated Hezbollah Head Hassan Nasrallah

Preliminary reports in Israel suggest Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was eliminated Friday in an Israeli airstrike that destroyed the terror group’s central headquarters in downtown Beirut, a game-changing operation that comes as a significant blow to Iran and its proxies.

Reports across Israeli media say that Nasrallah was one of many killed in a pinpoint strike on Hezbollah’s stronghold. The strike also reportedly took out the terror group's "number two" commander and is believed to have killed many other senior Hezbollah operatives.

"The assessment in Israel: Nasrallah is eliminated," stated a Hebrew-language headline on Israel’s Channel 12 news station. A second outlet said there is "cautious optimism in Israel: The strike on Nasrallah succeeded," according to the Times of Israel.

The reports are bolstered by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s abrupt decision to leave New York City early, just hours after he addressed the United Nations General Assembly. Nasrallah’s death would mark a sea change for Lebanon and the larger Middle East, which has been plagued by the Iran-backed terror group for decades.

It is also likely to infuriate Tehran’s hardline regime, which has long treated Hezbollah as its crowning terror proxy. In the wake of the strike, Iran's embassy in Beirut said it "represents a dangerous escalation that changes the rules of the game."

Regional analysts described the possibility of Nasrallah’s death as a "strategic game-changer for Tehran." Former White House National Security Council member Richard Goldberg noted that Nasrallah "took over" for Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, becoming senior strategist for Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

"Nasrallah had operational control of Lebanon and Syria," wrote Goldberg. "This is not just a strategic game-changer for Hezbollah, Lebanon and Syria, it's a strategic game-changer for Tehran."

Jonathan Schanzer, a Middle East expert at the Foundation For Defense of Democracies, said that in addition to Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s "key leadership structure" and some Iranian officials may have been eradicated in Friday’s strike.

Netanyahu, in his earlier remarks before the U.N., vowed to confront Iran if it attacks the Jewish state.

"I have a message for the tyrants of Tehran," Netanyahu said. "If you strike us, we will strike you."

Did Israel succeed in eliminating its number one enemy?

The fate of Hassan Nasrallah, Israel's top target in recent years, is still unclear. The fact that Israel struck Hezbollah's central headquarters while Nasrallah was there is a dramatic development.

First and foremost, Israel is making it clear that Nasrallah is marked for death. Second, it demonstrates Israel's intelligence capabilities and resolve. Third, Israel shows that it has no red lines in its battle against Hezbollah—every figure and every place where Hezbollah operates will be targeted decisively.

The strike was carried out by the Israeli air force’s 119th “Bat” Squadron, using an F-16i aircraft known as “Sufa” (Storm) in the IAF. The planes dropped tons of munitions. Israel conducted the bombing while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in New York, on American soil.

Hassan Nasrallah, at 64, has been Hezbollah’s leader for four decades and is one of Israel’s most challenging adversaries in recent decades. He is closely aligned with Iran, and although he didn’t find Hezbollah, he has shaped the organization in his image.

Nasrallah began his journey in the organization during his school years in the city of Tyre. He frequented the main mosque, drawing the attention of preacher Muhammad al-Gharawi, who was impressed by Nasrallah’s intelligence and interest in theological studies.

Al-Gharawi recommended him to Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, a leading figure in the Shiite seminaries in Najaf, Iraq. After completing high school about a year later, Nasrallah moved to Najaf to start his studies.

Matthew Continetti: America Must Side With Israel Against Hezbollah

For 17 years, Hezbollah restocked its arsenal of rockets and ballistic missiles, waiting for orders from the terror masters in Tehran. The green light arrived on Oct. 7. Now, rather than a security buffer in Lebanon, there is one in Israel—a ghost zone of abandoned communities and uprooted lives.

The situation is intolerable. No nation would stand for it. No democracy would countenance it. That Israelis have put up with such disruption for so long is a reminder of their fortitude and clarity of purpose. Destroying Hamas and freeing the hostages came first. Hezbollah could wait.

But the wait is over. Hamas is devastated. The Egypt-Gaza border is secure. The IDF has control of the Gaza Strip above ground, as its forces methodically explore and collapse Hamas's tunnel network below. The search for the remaining hostages goes on. Hamas won't free them. They must be rescued. It's slow, tough, grueling work under extraordinary conditions and relentless pressure. Work that requires fewer resources than before.

Which allows Israel to turn to Hezbollah. Last week's remarkable device attack wreaked havoc on the militia's operatives and communications. Sophisticated airstrikes took out the leadership of Hezbollah's special forces and damaged its weapon stockpiles.

Preparations for a ground incursion have begun. No one wants it to happen. But it might have to. If Hezbollah doesn't stand down, there is no other way to diminish the threat. No other way to make good on the promise of Israel to provide security for the Jewish people.

Diplomacy hasn't worked. Biden's joint statement reads as if negotiations haven't been tried. On the contrary: U.S. special envoy Amos Hochstein has been traversing the region for months. He's been as ineffective as Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the quest for a Gaza truce. It's not Israel that has made Hochstein and Blinken look like fools. It's the terrorist psychopaths they treat as good-faith interlocutors who won't take yes for an answer.

In Hezbollah's case, a deal has been on the table since 2006. Move your forces back. Stop trying to kill Israelis. Peace is elusive because Hezbollah's not interested. Hezbollah doesn't exist to make friends. It exists to destroy Israel and America. It's an Iranian asset in a strategic location meant to deter Israel from attacking Iran's nuclear program. Lebanon's central government is either uninterested or incapable of challenging Syria and Iran. And the U.N. is worse than useless.

Israelis understand. Prime Minister Netanyahu has seen support for his party rise since Israel began taking the fight to its enemies in unorthodox ways. The division over hostage negotiations with Hamas is absent in conversations about the north. Hezbollah prevents Israelis from living in safety. It must be stopped.

Rather than building sandcastles with his friends in the U.N., President Biden could try applying to our besieged ally in the Middle East the same rhetorical and material support he bestows on Ukraine. But that is not the president we have. Biden's policy of escalation management has produced expanding circles of ruin from Kiev to the Gulf of Aden. His Defense Department's statement that it's not providing intelligence to Israel in Lebanon is disgraceful. Israel would be right to ignore him—and to do what's necessary to restore balance to the region and Israelis to their homes.

Students in Belgium are being indoctrinated to hate Israel

Two Belgian Jewish umbrella groups, the the CCOJB and the Forum of Jewish Organisations, are warning about indoctrination against Israel in Belgian education.

The 200-page report shows that almost 75% of the examined teaching materials present a one-sided anti-Israel, polarising narrative with antisemitic elements. This material distorts facts, introduces conspiracy theories and demonizes Israel, which according to the organizations often leads to antisemitism. This content violates the educational objectives of both Flanders and the French-speaking community, which emphasise objectivity and the avoidance of political agendas.

The report has several examples. For example, one resource asks students to list three reasons “Why

are the Jews not loved?" which presupposes that there are good reasons for antisemitism.

Another resource for students on the Israel-Palestinian conflict uses this cartoon:

It shows a stereotypical Orthodox Jewish man, urging an Israeli soldier to hasten his gunfire to facilitate moving into “new colonies,” as he carries a gun himself.

Or this Latuff cartoon, one of many of his that compare Palestinians to Holocaust victims.

Things are getting worse by the day.

(h/t Rudi)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Lebanon Health Minister Firass Abiad spoke with NPR on Wednesday, saying how civilians are the major victims of Israeli airstrikes.

SUMMERS: I've heard you mention the high number of casualties among civilians, particularly on Monday, the most intense day of airstrikes there. Can you give us a sense of how you and the government have determined that so many of these victims were civilian victims?

ABIAD: I mean, you could see that. You know, the civilians were coming from residential areas. They were coming from their homes. Remember that our ambulances are the ones that were transporting. You know, we're talking about women. We're talking about children, and we're talking about people at different ages. I mean, we're not talking about combatants.

And furthermore, you know, I've been asked this question several times by the international media. And my answer to them is, you know, unlike Russia, the media in Lebanon can go everywhere they want. And they can judge for themselves whether these are areas that were where civilians live or whether these are areas where combatants live.

Abiad's claim is that Israel is randomly targeting civilian houses in Lebanon, and certainly no Hezbollah members would be in civilian houses.

So his bias is clear. Before this month, nearly every casualty in Lebanon was Hezbollah or Hamas, and everyone knows it.

I find it interesting that while his health ministry was eager to publish the statistics of women and children killed on Monday, they have not released any such figures the rest of the week.

Here are the best tallies I can find:

Monday: 569 people killed, including 94 women and 50 children

Tuesday: 11 people killed, no mention of women and children

Wednesday: 72 killed, , no mention of women and children

Thursday: 92 killed, no mention of women and children

Friday: 25 killed so far, no mention of women and children

If Abiad is so eager to claim that Israel is randomly murdering Lebanese people, why is he not releasing figures on women and children every day?

What about Monday? If Israel was randomly firing at residential areas as Abiad claims, then we would expect about 220 women and 120 children killed according to current demographics. So even his own statistics prove him wrong. Israel was targeting Hezbollah and Hezbollah was hiding among civilians, as we saw in their meeting last week hit by an airstrike in a sub-basement of a residential building, something Abiad is certainly aware of.

In the days since then, the ministry's refusal to publish the same statistics - which take no more effort to compile than the deaths themselves - indicate that the percentage of women and children killed has become significantly lower.

Abiad already proved that he cares more about propaganda than facts, but he doesn't want to be caught in a lie. Better not to mention the current statistics than to be proven that his thesis of Israeli depravity has no basis.

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From Arab News:

Algeria said Thursday it was imposing visa requirements on Moroccans, accusing its passport holders of criminal activity, including “Zionist espionage,” in a new downturn in fraught relations with its neighbor.
A statement carried by Algeria’s official APS news agency charged that Morocco had “engaged in various actions that threaten Algeria’s stability.”
It accused Morocco of having “deployed Zionist espionage agents holding Moroccan passports to freely enter the national territory.”
It also said Morocco had been conducting “multiple networks of organized crime, drug and human trafficking, not to mention smuggling and illegal immigration” within its borders.

Algeria and Morocco have been at odds for decades. Algeria severed relations with Morocco in 2021. But the Abraham Accords has given Algeria fresh ammunition: the larger Arab world might not care so much about the two countries' differences over the Western Sahara or the Kabyle people, but you can get some of them on your side by accusing your enemies of being Zionists or Jews.

Morocco's Hespress adds:

Hisham Aboud, an Algerian opposition activist, said, “This decision is unjustified, and there is no evidence of the presence of Israeli spy networks in Algeria,” indicating that “this is evidence of the disintegration of the Algerian regime’s security base.”

The spokesman stressed that "this decision indicates the weakness of the Algerian regime, and is an attempt to curb visits between the two peoples in order to cover up the miserable Algerian situation."

“The story of Morocco bringing in Israeli spies is a very funny story that cannot be believed. Everyone knows the nature of Algeria’s intelligence situation, and what is happening is weakness and a great insult to this country,” Aboud says, emphasizing that “the goal is to drag Morocco into imposing the same decision.”

Keep in mind that Algeria is now a member of the UN Security Council and is the conduit for Israel haters to bring anti-Israel resolutions.

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Lebanese foreign minister Abdallah Bou Habib spoke to the UN General Assembly on Thursday.

He said, “What we are currently experiencing in Lebanon is due to the absence of a sustainable solution to the root of the crisis, which is occupation. To claim anything else would be a waste of time.”

“So long as the occupation persists there will be instability and there will be war," he added.

It was unclear exactly which "occupation" he meant. Is it Israel's control of the West Bank? The war in Gaza? Or the "occupation" of the Shebaa Farms and other tiny border disputes with Hezbollah in Lebanon? (Recall that the Blue Line separating Israel from Lebanon was drawn by the UN who certified that Israel withdrew from all of Lebanese territory. Hezbollah made up 14 land disputes, some of them only centimeters, to have a reason to claim they are defending Lebanon from Israeli expansionism.)

Either way, the statement is absurd. All of those things have been in place since 2006, why are there rockets being fired from Lebanon today? Who started this war?

Which brings us to the other fascinating part of his speech: It doesn't mention Hezbollah once. The terrorist group that hijacked Lebanon is so powerful that politicians cannot say their name.

Even worse, they adopt Hezbollah propaganda. Bou Habib referred to Hezbollah's military pagers as "civilian telecommunications devices." With the exception of claiming that Lebanon wants to implement UNSC 1701, everything else he said could have come from Hezbollah propaganda.

Bou Habib made a similar speech to the Security Council last week, again not mentioning Hezbollah while discussing the war Hezbollah started.

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09/26 Links Pt2: The White House’s Evil Hostage Lie—and The Atlantic’s; Stop equating anti-Semitism with Islamophobia; A New Holocaust Film Mentions Jews Only Once

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The White House’s Evil Hostage Lie—and The Atlantic’s

Foer writes that “throughout October, Biden-administration officials kept finding themselves struck by the Israeli government’s unwillingness to explore hostage negotiations. Perhaps it was just the chaos that reigned in the aftermath of the attacks, but they began to feel as if there was a stark difference in outlook: Where the Americans were prepared to negotiate with Hamas, the Israelis wanted to obliterate it. Where the Americans worried about hostages dying in captivity, Israel retained confidence in its ability to stage daring rescues.”

I want to pause here and fast-forward to the end of the essay to remind readers of what Foer already knew when he wrote those sentences. “Sullivan wondered if a deal had ever been possible,” Foer writes in the essay’s coda after IDF soldiers have recovered the bodies of six hostages, including a high-profile American. “Hamas had just killed six of its best bargaining chips, an act of nihilism.”

This moment took place ten months after the period in which Foer claims the Israelis thought they could simply pass up a hostage deal and magically rescue 250 people in the goblins’ dungeons under Gaza.

We know now that’s not what happened at all. Hamas wanted to drag out negotiations over hostages before Israeli troops entered Gaza. That way, Yahya Sinwar believed, the invasion might not just be forestalled but avoided completely. Sinwar wanted Israel to flinch and for Biden to step in between the two of them, making an eventual full-scale mission in Gaza close to impossible. Before the ground invasion commenced, the New York Times tells us, “Hamas refused to provide any proof of life about the hostages. Negotiations stalled.” Hamas was bluffing.

What else do we know now? That Hamas wouldn’t actually trade the babies whose diapers it supposedly wanted to avoid changing. We know that, because the youngest hostages taken on Oct. 7 have never returned. Perhaps one day they will, but the likeliest explanation is that Hamas did to inconvenient Jewish babies what the Nazis did to such infants.

Has Foer ever come across another person who would kill a baby to avoid changing its diaper but otherwise is an honest and reliable person whose word you could take to the bank? Has Sullivan? Has Blinken? Have these people lost their minds? Or is it their souls they’ve lost?

Truth be told, we don’t have to fast-forward all the way to the end of the story to know this part is hogwash. Three weeks after Israeli troops entered Gaza, the two sides struck the very hostage deal the Israelis were supposedly avoiding, complete with a “pause” in the fighting.

How did that happen? Well, Biden’s negotiating team had been focused more on getting a ceasefire than on the hostage aspect of the deal. As the Times noted, Biden realized he wouldn’t get the ceasefire without ensuring the release of the hostages too. The ceasefire was Biden’s prize, and he’d only get it because Israeli ground troops had pushed Hamas’s back against a wall. When the IDF surrounded al Shifa hospital in Gaza City, which Hamas had taken over to hoard supplies, hold prisoners, and host commanders’ strategy sessions, Sinwar became increasingly willing to strike that deal.

The idea that “the Americans worried about hostages dying in captivity” but the Israelis didn’t is a monstrous, despicable, evil lie—and contemporaneous reporting proves the Americans knew it was a lie ten months ago. Yet here it is, presented to readers as if a revelation.

It is not a revelation. It is a rank falsehood and a disgrace.

Eugene Kontorovich and Mark Goldfeder: Outrage as US DOJ defends UN staffers who collaborated in Hamas’ terror

“No one is above the law,” Kamala Harris says when speaking of her rival, former President Donald Trump.

But the Harris-Biden administration is arguing in federal court that lots of people are above the law — in particular, the many UN employees who helped Hamas build its terror facilities and launch its genocidal pogrom on Oct. 7.

In June, some victims of the Oct. 7 massacre filed suit in New York, where the United Nations is based, against the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, alleging that UNRWA and its officials have aided and abetted Hamas.

Evidence of UNRWA’s wholesale collaboration with the designated terror group is abundant, and goes back years.

“Oh, I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll, and I don’t see that as a crime,” then-UNRWA Commissioner-General Peter Hansen stated in 2004.

Twenty years later, many UNRWA staffers participated directly in the Oct. 7 terror attack, while others imprisoned and tortured the hostages afterward.

The United Nations, which claims to be dedicated to advancing human rights, has pledged that it will waive any claims to immunity for acts of terror.

Nonetheless, it responded to the victims’ lawsuit by invoking immunity for itself and its employees.

And this week, news broke that the United States Department of Justice has joined that effort, filing a submission to the US District Court arguing that both UNRWA and its workers should have “absolute immunity” from suit.

As the first anniversary of Oct. 7 approaches, the DOJ is lawyering for some of the attack’s perpetrators.

The DOJ letter asserts that the UN officials have immunity under the 1945 International Organizations Immunities Act.

Indeed, the United States has historically supported a broad interpretation of UN immunity — but despite significant prior misdeeds, UN agencies have never before been structurally intertwined with a US-designated terror group, or had numerous employees carry out mass atrocities.

And the administration’s defense of the UN-Hamas terrorists is not only ugly — it is legally unnecessary.

Stop equating anti-Semitism with Islamophobia

Given that anti-Muslim sentiment is clearly not as significant a problem as anti-Semitism, why is there so much elite focus on Islamophobia?

To answer this, it’s important to understand that campaigns against Islamophobia aren’t really concerned with promoting tolerance towards Muslims. Though the term was first used over a century ago by French colonial officials in Algeria, it acquired its contemporary meaning when Islamic fundamentalists started wielding it against writers critical of Islam, like Salman Rushdie, Irshad Manji and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Its main function is to shield Islam, often violently so, from any form of criticism. Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme leader and the man behind the bounty on Rushdie’s head, even labelled unveiled women as ‘Islamophobic’. As French writer Pascal Bruckner explains, the accusation of Islamophobia represents an attempt to stigmatise or even criminalise any critique of Islam as racist. This, in turn, stifles any discussion of Islamic practices and preaching, even at their most radical. The result is the creation of a legal double standard, where some ideologies and political practices can be criticised, while others enjoy privileged immunity.

Those wielding the charge of Islamophobia as a weapon sometimes even elevate protecting Muslims from offence above human life. In 2015, the Islamic Human Rights Commission gave its ‘Islamophobe of the Year’ award to the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo – just weeks after Islamist terrorists had massacred them for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Worryingly, this idea of Islamophobia is increasingly being institutionalised. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, which represents 56 countries, has been pushing for Islamophobia to be criminalised worldwide for several decades. Within the EU, the European Network of Equality Bodies is also pushing for states to adopt the ‘counter-Islamophobia toolkit’, which, among other things, recommends the creation of ‘Muslim spaces’.

The more Islamophobia is institutionalised, the more difficult it will be to discuss any aspect of Islam or Islamism. In Germany over recent weeks, there have been fierce debates over the meanings of ‘caliphate’ and ‘genocide’, as well as the significance of the Islamist ‘Tauhid gesture’. These debates would be near-enough impossible if one side could silence the other by having them punished for Islamophobia.

Islamophobia is simply not comparable with anti-Semitism. Islamophobia amounts to a new form of blasphemy, in which any criticism of Islam is prohibited. Anti-Semitism is a hatred of Jews, an ideology that unites German neo-Nazis with radical Islamists and even climate activists. It is a universal language of loathing, a kind of Esperanto of resentment that flourishes in times of crisis. As Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, the anti-Semite is a ‘destroyer by vocation, a pure-hearted sadist’ who desires ‘the death of the Jews’.

By equating anti-Semitism with Islamophobia, our elites are conflating the hatred of Jews with criticism and mockery of Islam. This conflation undermines the struggle against anti-Semitism. And it empowers Islamic reactionaries.

09/26 Links Pt1: Biden Tilts at Hizbullah Windmills; Dershowitz: Israel's Pager Attack Was Legal under the Laws of War; US pushes Israel-Lebanon ceasefire, without noting Hezbollah

From Ian:

Arsen Ostrovsky: The West must play to win against terrorism

As history has shown, authoritarian regimes and non-state actors understand and respond to one thing: ruthless power. Whether military, economic or political, decisive action has proven to be the only language understood by those who seek to disrupt global stability.

Western nations learned this lesson the hard way during World War II, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement failed spectacularly. Chamberlain’s ill-fated agreement with Hitler, meant to ensure “peace for our time,” only delayed the inevitable. As Churchill scolded him, “you were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.”

Ultimately, it was not diplomacy but total military defeat that ended Nazi Germany’s threat to Europe. To use Churchill’s words again, when asked what was Britain’s policy, he said “victory, victory at all costs.”

Yet since its establishment in 1948, the Jewish state has been the only democracy repeatedly denied the right to achieve total victory against enemies who have time and again initiated wars and pogroms, seeking no less than its very annihilation.

Even though it was Israel attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7, it was also an assault on the West and the principles it claims to uphold — freedom, democracy and the rule of law. If the West truly seeks to uphold these sacrosanct values, then it must finally abandon the strategy of limited warfare and throw its full weight behind Israel as the frontier of Western civilization.

This is not the time for half measures. Hamas, Hezbollah and their sponsors in Tehran must be decisively defeated, not contained.

As Ronald Reagan warned in 1964, during his “A Time for Choosing” speech in the peak of the Cold War, “a policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender.”

The bad actors of today — China,  Russia, Iran, North Korea and their proxies — do not negotiate from a place of weakness or fear international opinion. Instead, they project power without concern for identity politics or public sentiment.

In short, the West must play to win in order to defend freedom.

WSJ Editorial: Biden Tilts at Hizbullah Windmills

When President Biden told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday that "a diplomatic solution is still possible" with Hizbullah, we wonder where he's been for the past 11 months. Israel gave those months over to diplomacy on its northern front, even as Hizbullah fired 8,500 rockets and forced 60,000 Israelis from their homes. But the U.S.-led talks went nowhere as Mr. Biden pressed Israel not to hit Hizbullah too hard.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Tuesday of Lebanon "becoming another Gaza." Nice of him to wake up. Since 2006, UN peacekeepers have done nothing to stop Hizbullah from taking over the Security Council-mandated buffer zone in southern Lebanon. Now Israel has to do it for them.

One lesson of Oct. 7 is that Israel can't let terrorists build up armies, even if they seem deterred. Northern Israel could never be safe if Hizbullah retains its arsenal.

70 Weapons Depots, 80 Missiles, and 3 Senior Commanders: How a Week of Israeli Strikes Kneecapped Hezbollah

Israel has destroyed scores of Hezbollah missiles, drones, and rocket launchers across Lebanon over the past several days, orchestrating an unprecedented series of pinpoint airstrikes and intelligence-driven operations that have quickly degraded swaths of the terror group's arsenal—and eliminated at least three of the group's senior commanders.

Israel's air force is pummeling Hezbollah's arms depots and targeting its senior leadership, marking the "most extensive" strikes "ever carried out in its history," according to the country's military leaders and regional news outlets.

Hezbollah, long known as Iran's preeminent regional terror proxy, is being defanged by the Jewish state's armed forces in the process. It has lost almost half of its medium and long-range missiles in a series of Israeli raids designed to annihilate "surveillance equipment, command rooms, and other infrastructure" used by Hezbollah to rain terror on Israel's northern border.

On Wednesday, Israel continued its offensive, showing no signs of backing down from a fight that it largely avoided for months as it turned its attention to Hamas in the wake of the Oct. 7 terror spree. Around 60 key targets belonging to Hezbollah's "intelligence division" were struck across Lebanon, with Israeli military leaders promising to destroy "all of their rocket capabilities" and bases.

All told, Israel has logged close to 3,000 flight hours, using more than 250 warplanes to drop an estimated 2,000 munitions across 200 separate locations in Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon. The strikes have destroyed around 400 medium-range rocket launchers, 70 weapons storage depots, and around 80 drones and cruise missiles. They've also killed at least three senior commanders—rocket and missile division head Ibrahim Qubaisi, military operations head Ibrahim Aqil, and training unit head Ahmed Wahbi—along with other top fighters.

The coordinated attacks, Israel says, are "changing the operational situation in the north, changing the reality," for Hezbollah as the terror group goes on defense after nearly a year of nonstop terror strikes on Israeli towns throughout the country. The ongoing aerial assault is being viewed as a regional game changer, proving to Hezbollah that it is not as untouchable as its leaders once believed.

Still, experts who spoke to the Free Beacon emphasized that Israel has a long way to go in its bid to defeat the terror group.

Israeli Left, Bleeding Support, Sees New Voters In Captured Hamas Fighters (PreOccupied Territory)

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Israeli Left, Bleeding Support, Sees New Voters In Captured Hamas Fighters

Tel Aviv, September 26 - The shrinking contingent of the politically-progressive sector of the electorate in the country hopes to combat its diminishing prospects of ever holding power again, banking on a plan to replace their long-gone contingency with imprisoned terrorists taken in and around the Gaza Strip since October 7 of last year, a spokeswoman for one of the parties disclosed today.

Leaders of the once-mighty Labor Party - now a fraction of its former self - and its counterpart in The Democrats, Meretz, hit on the notion several weeks ago as survey after survey indicated that despite widespread distaste for incumbent Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his bare-majority, narrow-right-wing coalition, and its failure to anticipate and prevent the current war, the Labor-Meretz odds of ever holding significant political influence in national elected office grow ever longer, amid broad public acknowledgment that the flagship enterprise of the Left, which involves generous concession to Palestinian ambitions, has resulted not in peace, but in increased terrorism and barbarism by Palestinian terror groups.

That last element gave The Democrats leaders an idea: why not harness the Palestinian vote?

"Obviously the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank can't vote," explained Yair Golan, a former IDF Deputy Chief of Staff and the party leader. "But we do have plenty of them in prison, and I don't see them being allowed back home anytime soon, certainly not while the fighting still rages. All we have to do is get the Supreme Court, which has the same ideas as we do, to grant them citizenship. Shouldn't take too much. At least our kind still controls that institution."

Party insiders acknowledged that appealing to Israelis - even to Israeli Arabs - has no chance of returning the Left to power. "Even Meretz on its own, as far left as it was, couldn't attract the Arab vote," recalled former Meretz chief Zehava Gal-On. "We were still nominally Zionist, even if we had a self-defeating definition of the term. That was too much for most Arab voters, who, if they voted at all, generally preferred their own parties. We made overtures to them repeatedly, especially as Jewish Israelis increasingly rejected our delusions of peace breaking out, to little avail. There's even less chance that as a joint endeavor with Labor, which built and expanded the whole Zionist enterprise for the first four decades of the state's existence, we could make a successful appeal to that ambivalent demographic."

"Imprisoned Palestinian terrorist it is," she concluded.

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Seth Frantzman, usually an excellent analyst, writes in The Jerusalem Post:

Can Iraqi militias be deterred from attacking Israel? - analysis

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iranian-backed militias, targeted Eilat on Wednesday evening. It was one of a number of escalating attacks from Iraq over the past two weeks.

The militias have targeted Israel with drones and also claim to have launched cruise missiles. This is a dangerous escalation. The strike on Iraq included several drones, one of which was intercepted.

Can Israel deter the Iraqi militias? It would seem that they cannot easily be defeated because they are so large. and there are so many of them.

The problem is that people, Frantzman included, keep forgetting that this is a single war, not separate wars against Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, Syrian and Iraqi groups.

None of those would fire a single rocket or drone if Iran didn't want them to.

I understand losing sight of the big picture, but that is entirely the point of Iran's use of proxies.

Israel has already redefined what war is with the phenomenal attack on pagers and other equipment. It has to do this further.

Part of the appeal of using massive amounts of rockets is that they are much cheaper than Iron Dome interceptors are. Iran knows that a coordinated attack would overwhelm Israel, but also that economics is on their side - they can churn out the rockets much less expensively than Israel can intercept them.

Economics can help stop this war as well.

Iran's economy is not in good shape, and the West has not done enough to use economic pressure to stop Iran from its support for terror. But there are other ways besides sanctions to hurt Iran's economy, both of which Israel can do without any Western help at all.

The first one is kinetic. Israel could attack Iran's oil export infrastructure. It is essentially a single point of failure that would cripple Iran's economy. It would involve a direct attack and it would be difficult to gain support for such a move; international law is not mature enough to deal with a scenario where a state actor broadly tells a proxy what to do without saying anything specific. Iran's proxy strategy has great advantages, which is why it employs it.

But Israel can also hurt Iran's economy using cyberattacks. And that is a twist on Iran's own strategy o f plausible deniability, since proving who the attacker is in a cyber attack is very difficult.

Iran has been hit with cyberattacks before, at least one of them probably from Israel - the shutting down of Iran's Shahid Rajaee port terminal. It caused chaos but it could have been much worse. Israel could shut down all commercial imports and exports.

There were other attacks on Iran's infrastructure, like the 2023 attack on Iran's petroleum stations that may have been linked to Israel.

The point is that war is no longer only fought with bullets, as we saw with the pager attack. We are too used to looking at war through a prism of physical battle, but terrorism, cyberwar and espionage have changed the definitions.

Israel needs re-couple Iran with its proxies. It needs to send a message to Iran: The next time a single rocket hits Israel from Iraq, Syria or Yemen, it will cost Iran's economy tens of millions of dollars. After a couple of cyberattacks, along with Iranians protesting the government policy of hurting them to hurt Israel, then Iran's appetite to use proxies will go way down.

Especially since, so far, the long distance attacks have been more for show and honor than causing actual damage. Just like Iran doesn't care about putting the lives of its proxies at rick, it doesn't care about their honor, either. The cost/benefit analysis of these rockets will change drastically.

And as a bonus the world will more clearly see the linkage between Iran and its proxies, which dilutes the effect of using proxies for plausible deniability to begin with.

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