Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, October 20, 2024

Is peace any closer with Sinwar's death?

There are lots of "experts" who are substituting wishful thinking for decent analysis in the wake of Yahya Sinwar's death. Let's look at what Hamas is likely to do, and what will happen next, a bit more dispassionately.

Right now, Hamas is suffering a leadership vacuum. Even before Israel killed Hamas' "political leader" Ismail Haniyeh, Sinwar was really the real leader of Hamas, since he was the one on the ground in Gaza and only his decisions mattered. No matter what Hamas in Qatar or elsewhere decided, Sinwar was the one who held all the cards. He decided what the military strategy would be, what the negotiating strategy would be and what would happen to the hostages.

The idea that Hamas will simply replace Sinwar and everything will be the way it was, the way they have done in the past when Israel assassinated Hamas leaders, is fantasy fueled by Hamas propaganda. Israel has already killed most of the major figures in Gaza so there are very few who can step into his bloody shoes.

Again, anyone outside Gaza is irrelevant.

This means that either Sinwar will be replaced by a unifying figure in Gaza or by some sort of committee.

The vacuum created by Hassan Nasrallah's assassination in Hezbollah has seemingly been filled by Iranian officials, but this does not seem as likely for Hamas. Iran will need to approve any replacement but it cannot provide one.

Either way, the honor/shame mentality that the "experts" consistently ignore or downplay is, as always, the most important factor in what Hamas will do next.

The most likely single candidate appears to be Sinwar's younger brother Mohammed, who is equally ruthless. Whether he has the same leadership skills is an open question but he appears to be competent and just as much of a hardliner. He is not likely to want to show more flexibility in negotiations than his dead older brother did.

If a committee takes over, that also does not mean any realistic chance for leadership that would be pragmatic. The most extreme member of the committee would likely be the veto vote over any potential deal, and no one wants to be known as the person who knuckled under to Israel.

In either scenario, Hamas is not likely to surrender, or to negotiate seriously for the hostages, unless they have a guarantee of survival as Gaza's leaders, and Israel will never accept that.

As it is today, Hamas is no longer an army. It is back to being mostly a guerilla group. As such, it is not going to be destroyed anytime soon. But as long as Gazans are still afraid of Hamas, Hamas has effective control of Gaza even in skeleton form.

In short, Hamas has to be defeated in a way that no one can deny. Which means it needs to be not just defeated, but replaced.

That is the real problem.

For Hamas to be defeated in the minds of Gazans, someone has to fill the gap of day to day governance - and no one really wants to do that.

The PA would love to take over Gaza but it needs Hamas to be completely destroyed first. It will do everything to avoid fighting Hamas' guerilla remnants because it is afraid of appearing to be doing what Israel wants.

A multinational force, preferably led by Arab countries at peace with Israel, is a possibility but that is remote as well.

I always felt that letting the UAE take over Gaza would be the best solution, and I still do, but no matter the benefits to making Gaza an emirate, they don't want to be put in that position.

As long as that question is not settled, Hamas remains the de facto government of Gaza, no matter how dysfunctional and weak it is. NGOs can take up a small amount of the government functions like delivering aid but any real replacement has to be willing to fight Hamas for that title, and no one is willing to do that.

It appears to me that the main factors for Hamas maintaining its grip on power are whether Hamas leaders still have effective communications with their operatives in the field, whether the rank and file of Hamas are still dedicated to risk their lives for the organization, and whether they can still assert an iron fist rule over the people of Gaza while still fighting Israel. If any of those three are broken, Hamas is no longer nearly as much of a threat and can perhaps be replaced with an entity that is willing to tke over. But, again, someone has to be willing to step in.

Contrary to what the US and the West claim, Israel has little control over how Gaza will look in a post-Hamas world unless Israel wants to directly re-occupy Gaza and take over the governmental and security functions itself. That is not something anyone wants to see. The IDF itself would have to dedicate many tens of thousands of people indefinitely for a project like that, and most Israelis don't want that. This may be the least of all evils but no one is likely to support it.

So the obstacle for peace is not Israel but that no one wants to seriously challenge Hamas for ruling Gaza. They still fear Hamas. Israel can deal with any leadership that is not dedicated to destroying Israel - but who could that be?

Until those questions are answered, Israel needs to prioritize the cognitive war to make sure that the Arab world sees Hamas is defeated and impotent. Of course, it has to simultaneously continue to degrade Hamas' political and military abilities. If possible, Hamas should look like a joke to the Arab world. Because the weaker it looks, more more likely a substitute can be found.

Without a substitute, peace is simply not possible and Gazans are the ones who will suffer the most.

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The Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization issued a statement which said, in part:

The Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization mourns to the sons of our Palestinian people and all national action factions the martyrdom of the great national leader Yahya Sinwar, head of the political bureau of Hamas .

The Executive Committee extends its deepest condolences to the brothers in the Hamas leadership and cadres and to the family of the martyr Yahya Sinwar, calling for moving forward to strengthen our national unity within the framework of our sole legitimate representative, the Palestine Liberation Organization, so that we may be one front to thwart the Israeli plan aimed at displacing our people from their homeland, whether in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank...

The Executive Committee has 16 members. Its chairman is none other than Mahmoud Abbas.

The statement pretends that Sinwar, the architect of October 7 massacre, was merely the head of the "political bureau" of Hamas.

The official Palestinian Wafa news agency published this statement - but only in its Arabic site, not its English site.

The PLO website also published the statement of the minor Arab Liberation Front, which has not done anything of note for decades and does not even have a current webpage, to add to its mourning for Sinwar. The only possible reason to publish this statement from the ALF is if the PLO agrees with it.

With great sadness and pain, the Arab Liberation Front mourns the great national martyr Yahya Sinwar, head of the Political Bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, who ascended to glory as a martyr following an armed clash with the Zionist occupation soldiers in the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood in the city of Rafah on the afternoon of Thursday, October 17, 2024. The Front, led by its Secretary-General Rakad Salem Abu Mahmoud, offered its condolences and sympathy to the brothers in the Political Bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, to the family of the martyr, and to all the sons of our steadfast people.

The Arab Liberation Front confirmed that the martyrdom of the leader Yahya Sinwar and before him the martyr leaders Yasser Arafat, Abu Ali Mustafa, Ahmed Yassin, Khalil Al-Wazir and other martyred leaders of the revolution will only increase the strength and steadfastness of our people in confronting this arrogant Zionist enemy.

The PLO, and Abbas, support Hamas. They might disagree with Hamas as to who should control the Palestinians politically but they far prefer Hamas to peace.

The proof is in every Fatah, PLO and Palestinian Authority statement. And every time a Western leader says "two state solution." they are insisting that this Hamas-supporting Palestinian leadership control a Palestinian state that Israel is supposed to welcome - for its own security.

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10/19 Links: Death of a fascist; Israel's attack plan on Iran leaked; Hezbollah drone targets Netanyahu’s home; UN Peacekeepers Are Hizbullah's Best Friend

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: Death of a fascist

This is a man who deserved to die. His crimes against the Jews were legion. He took the postwar cry of ‘Never Again’ and stomped it into the dirt. ‘Again, again’ was his preferred slogan. His violent disregard for Jewish life was a function of his deep-seated anti-Semitism – you don’t get to be leader of a terror group whose founding covenant committed it to an apocalyptic war on the Jews without being a Jew-hater yourself. Yet he was horrendously cavalier about Palestinian life, too. He let Hamas’s war with Israel drag on because he believed the ‘spiralling civilian death toll in Gaza’ would drum up global hate for Israel and global pity for Hamas. He sacrificed Jews to his racist ideology, and Palestinians to his grotesque vanity.

So Gazans also benefit from the demise of this monster. They are a step closer to liberation from the tyrannical rule of the death-mongers of Hamas. Humankind benefits, too. For Israel’s righteous slaying of Yahya Sinwar is more than justice for 7 October. It is more than a brilliant and targeted strike in a now year-long war on terrorism. It is also a message to the world. It says this: you cannot kill Jews with impunity anymore. It reminds us that those days are gone. It reminds us it isn’t the Middle Ages anymore, when the Church would reward your Jew-hunting, or the 20th century, when pogroms had the blessing of governments. No, there are consequences now to singling out Jews for special opprobrium and wicked violence. Do that today and you might very well die. Do that now and you might get your head caved in, as Sinwar did.

And here’s the chilling thing, the thing that should truly unsettle those of us who live in the West: we needed this message. Our nations needed this reminder. Our young in particular needed to be told that fascist violence is intolerable and killing Jews will be rightfully avenged. For across America and Europe in the aftermath of 7 October, unreason reigned. On our campuses, our streets, in our art world and media world, the sympathies of the privileged went not to the victims of Hamas’s pogrom, but to Hamas. Israel was offered not support but condemnation – and the most shrill, hypocritical and borderline bigoted condemnation you could imagine. ‘You had it coming’ was the subtext of the Israelophobic insanity that swept our cities after the pogrom.

We found ourselves in the horrific situation where many of our fellow citizens were seemingly content to see Jews once again loaded into trucks, burnt to a cinder and killed on account of their ethnicity. This spoke to more than a failure of sense and solidarity. It spoke to how determinedly our societies had turned their backs on the values of the Enlightenment and the virtues of civilisation, and could thus find greater common cause with the anti-Jewish, anti-modernity hysterics of Hamas than with the democratic state of Israel.

So yes, we needed to hear it. We needed to hear that the murder of Jews will be met with the severest of consequences in the 21st century. The killing of Sinwar puts flesh on the bones of the cry of ‘Never Again’ that had come to be so weakened and withered in recent years. Jew-killers everywhere will tremble now, making this not a day of death, but a day of hope.

JPost Editorial: With Sinwar gone, Israel's next move must be decisive

Hamas and Hezbollah have both suffered heavy losses over the last year, but Israel did what many thought was impossible and took down those responsible for October 7. At long last, all the ringleaders are down and out – for good.

Decisions will need to be made about what to do next, and this war is still not over. Hezbollah remains a well-armed threat against Israel and continues to regularly fire rockets, drones, and missiles into the Jewish state. Hamas still has men under arms and rockets at their disposal, and 101 hostages still remain in their possession. The Houthis in Yemen are still a threat that could strike at any moment, boasting an arsenal of ballistic missiles and drones, and their leadership remains intact. And then there is the ever-looming threat of Iran, a well-equipped nation who backs all the aforementioned actors and hosts a formidably large army of its own.

What's next?

So what comes next? Will Israel be able to start returning evacuees to their homes? Will they press for another hostage deal on favorable terms? Will the IDF turn its focus to Iran or the Houthis?

Those questions will need to be answered very soon, and it remains to be seen how Israel’s allies such as the US will want the Jewish state to proceed. But for now, we can take solace in the fact that at the very least, Israel’s archenemy over the past year is dead, and that some measure of justice has been achieved for all the people who have lost and suffered since October 7. Zman simchateinu indeed.

Abe Greenwald: Sinwar Is Gone, Hamas Isn’t Far Behind

All of this also means that Hamas’s remnants might find themselves without the Iranian funds they’d have used to try to reconstitute the organization in the future. The regime in Iran has spent billions of dollars on its terrorist proxies. This was a good investment for decades, enabling Tehran to project power abroad and attack Israel without Iran sticking its neck out. But the mullahs can’t be happy looking at the present state of Hamas (and increasingly of Hezbollah). Iran’s return on its investment in proxy armies is vanishing fast. And with Israel about to take the fight straight to the regime, Iran needs to reallocate its resources.

So who wants to fill Sinwar’s shoes now? Israel took out Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh in July. The crown then fell to Sinwar, and now he’s dead. The list of senior Hamas members killed by Israel is long and growing longer by the day. The same, rather suddenly, applies to the senior ranks of Hezbollah. There aren’t many takers for the job of next mole to be whacked. Especially if it means getting whacked for a crumbling cause with a spare and ruined fighting force. It’s not going to be easy recruiting new members to what’s left of Hamas.

But what about Hamas’s supporters over here in the U.S.? Are they still “exhilarated” by the October 7 attack? Do they still think that it was a “gift to Allah from the world”? That “Palestine has never been as within reach”? Are they satisfied with what Hamas has wrought for the people of Gaza? And do they still think they’re on the winning side against Israel? Even if they now recognize Hamas’s strategic failure, they undoubtedly still support its aims. And they’re the kind of enemy that’s truly hard to defeat because you can’t destroy moral imbecility. On October 7, 2023, Sinwar ensured his own demise and that of his monstrous organization. But the woke jihadists of the West will live to tweet another day.

And here’s a thought for the Biden administration. The U.S. has recently threatened to withhold arms shipments to Israel over concerns about humanitarian aid getting into Gaza. The greatest gift of humanitarian aid ever received by the people of Gaza was Israel’s killing of Yahya Sinwar. His death, and the destruction of Hamas, don’t by any means guarantee that the Palestinians will one day be able to thrive in freedom. But so long as he was in charge, that would have remained a certain impossibility. And if Israel had heeded the Biden administration’s calls for a ceasefire, this massive aid package would never have been delivered. Take the win, Mr. President.

10/16 Links Pt2: Churchill would have stood behind Israel. We must too; Hamasticide: Apocalyptic barbarians at the gates of Israel; Antisemitism has made life in Ireland unbearable

From Ian:

Andrew Roberts: Churchill would have stood behind Israel. We must too

Although the USSR and USA were not fighting the Second World War beside Britain in 1940, and only came into the war as a result of Hitler’s decisions rather than their own in 1941, the British were supported stalwartly by Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India and other possessions and dependencies around the globe.

By total contrast, much of the world has shunned Israel as she fights its battles against Islamist tyranny and terrorism, ultimately for them as well as for herself.

The recent scene in the United Nations where delegates filed out of the General Assembly room rather than even listen to Bibi Netanyahu sums up the situation.

Meanwhile, South Africa has tried to divert attention from the corruption of its own government by making unfounded charges against Israel at the International Criminal Court.

At least the neutral nations in 1940-41 were privately hoping that civilisation would destroy barbarism: today they cannot even be counted on to do that.

What Churchill said about Britain’s ability “to ride out the storm of war” has powerful echoes in modern-day Israel.

The performance of the IDF was woeful on October 7 itself but since then it has fought with superb professionalism in destroying and degrading Hamas in Gaza, although of course we still eagerly await the moment when Yahya Sinwar meets the same fate as the Führer in the Reich Chancellery on April 30, 1945. Similarly, the failures of the hitherto-much-vaunted Israeli intelligence were apparent for all to see on October 7, yet since then it has carried out the flawless supply-chain “grim beeper” attacks that have done so much to cripple Hezbollah. Churchill would recognise the phenomenon of these early humiliations – with hardly a significant victory from 1939 to El Alamein in 1942, except for the Battle of Britain – turning into later triumphs. The IDF’s steep but highly successful learning curve in Gaza and now southern Lebanon has been impressive, just as it was for the Allied armies in the Second World War.

To paraphrase Churchill in his and his country’s finest hour, Israel is proving herself yet again able to defend her home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what she is going to try to do. It is the solemn duty of everyone who cares about the defeat of barbarism to stand beside her.

Hamasticide: Apocalyptic barbarians at the gates of Israel

Hamas senior leader Yahya Sinwar used his imagination well, ordering the tearing of children from their mothers’ arms and the killing of mothers in front of their children, inventing every possible way to make the terror more horrendous than that of ISIS, to exterminate in the cruelest manner possible. Sinwar commanded his men to kill babies; to brutally rape women of any age, whether alive or dead; to castrate men and boys; to decapitate; to burn entire families alive along with the symbols of their lives. Thus, he forever epitomized the savagery of his movement, making him the absolute leader of contemporary hatred.

Sinwar placed Hamas at the head of a worldwide movement for the deconstruction of history that legitimizes rage as the emblem of life. That believes that it must take this action against all of civilization. This movement has decided that the contemporary outcome of history and religion, including the Jewish-Christian civilization and the human rights culture, is advantageous only for those who created [it], and so it is a tool of oppression to be ripped to pieces. The diabolical choice to tear down this civilization permits any means to destroy the “colonialists,” the “imperialists,” the “racists,” the rich, the white men, and above all, of course, the Jews. This concept finds consensus far from Gaza, first in the Muslim world, which places the “Islamophobes” among the oppressors, and along with the students, the LGTBQ movements, the ecological movements that think the Earth will be destroyed by capitalist interests and the Jews.

The United Nations, the Palestinian Authority, and even the Ivy League universities have still not condemned Sinwar’s atrocities. It is a crime whose “context” is what counts, and nobody expected that after a massacre like Oct. 7, the destruction of contemporary civilization would piggyback on an antisemitic atrocity. The plan, unlike that of the Nazis in their time, was to destroy the Jews by publicizing as widely as possible the resolve to make them suffer one by one. Hamas leaders repeated the promise: “We did it, and we will do it again and again and again.”

Once the barbarians entered Israel, they roared down the roads by the hundreds in white pickup trucks and on motorbikes, shooting everyone they encountered, pedestrians and drivers, in the head and chasing those who tried to escape. They were divided into units, some assigned to close public roads, while others headed for the countryside and the kibbutzim. They were systematic, coming back to seize anyone who might have escaped them. They opened the doors of the cars abandoned at the sides of the roads to make sure everyone was dead and finish off the wounded. Then they came together to shout for joy over the bodies of the dead: Itbah el Yehud! Allah hu Akbar! They all shouted with the index finger raised, indicating their blasphemous oneness of God, the primal call of jihadism: “Allah is great.” By cutting off the head of a baby, the murderer was fulfilling the mission of reconquering the land occupied by the Jews, purifying it of the Western and democratic culture.

Jonathan Tobin: Jewish anti-Zionists can’t be part of our ‘big tent’ community

Historical memory lies at the heart of most Jewish holiday commemorations. During Sukkot, for example, Jews daily welcome ushpizin—“guests” or ancestors, including the patriarchs of Judaism—into their sukkahs, which themselves are a remembrance of the post-Exodus wanderings of the Jewish people in the desert. It is just one example of how identification with the past is very much part of the present. It also emphasizes the collective fate of a people on their way to their homeland, where shelter would hopefully no longer be a function of impermanent huts open to the stars. On Sukkot, we not only invite guests into our homes; it is a way we connect ourselves with that journey to Israel.

But for a small though noisy minority of contemporary American Jews, the fate of other Jews and Israel is no longer a matter with which they concern themselves. As a consequence, it is now more imperative than ever for Jews to stop pretending that one can join those chanting “from the river to the sea” and “globalize the intifada”—slogans that justify and encourage the genocide of the Jews of Israel—and still be considered part of the Jewish community.

Anti-Zionists may be considered Jewish according to religious law as well as mainstream by The New York Times. But in the post-Oct. 7 world, it should no longer be possible to pretend to speak for Jewish values or tradition, or to be part of the Jewish world, while opposing the right of the one Jewish state on the planet to exist and defend itself. That is true whether those who take that position explicitly—as do Jews who join the pro-Hamas demonstrators in America’s streets and on college campuses—or who merely rationalize their efforts from the sidelines or on the platforms provided to them by the liberal mainstream media.

10/16 Links Pt1: Negotiating what with whom?; Biden’s betrayal of Israel is clear weakness masquerading as policy; Netanyahu to Macron: UN didnt create Israel, ‘heroic fighters’ did

From Ian:

Negotiating what with whom?

Does Austin not think Israel is trying to do that? What would make it “possible” sooner rather than later? Does he think that talking to Hamas will do it? Just this month, U.S. officials said Hamas senior leader Yahya Sinwar is the primary impediment to a deal. And again, to be fair to Austin, he goes where the president goes, and U.S. President Joe Biden said the country is “doubling down” on negotiations.

Instead of doubling down, the administration should try a different path—one with which the secretary of defense should be familiar.

In 1939, following years of belligerence and the Anschluss, Nazi Germany launched World War II with the invasion of Poland. The Blitzkrieg followed in May 1940. Then Dunkirk, the French surrender, the Battle of Britain, Operation Barbarossa and Stalingrad. The Axis surrendered in North Africa in May 1943.

Maybe that was enough. Maybe the Allies should have sued for a negotiated settlement, offering the Germans … what? Autonomy for France and a promise never to take back Alsace? It was, after all, largely German-speaking and not terribly happy with France anyhow.

Then, the siege of Leningrad ended in the east and Italy surrendered in the west; followed by D-Day and the liberation of Paris.

Maybe that was the time to offer the Nazis a deal they could live with; after all, a lot of civilians had already been killed.

While the Soviets moved westward, the Allies moved east. The Germans launched the Battle of the Bulge in December of 1944, intending to split the Allied forces and allow the Germans to encircle the Allied armies and force them to negotiate a peace treaty in Germany’s favor.

Maybe they’d only keep half the concentration camps.

The Allies kept going and on May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered. Unconditionally. VE Day was on May 8.

President Franklin Roosevelt was a very mixed bag for Jews, to put it kindly. But on unconditional surrender, he was right, opposing half-measures for temporary quiet in Europe that might have been mistaken for “peace.”

Back to the present: Negotiations work best when the parties agree on an endgame and discuss, even acrimoniously, how to get there. Israel seeks security for its people; the removal of the military and political power of Hamas and now Hezbollah as well; and the return of the hostages. As long as Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and friends believe the endgame is the destruction of Israel, their surrender is necessary.

There was nothing then and there is nothing now to negotiate with evil.

Biden’s betrayal of Israel is clear weakness masquerading as policy

A refresher course on how we got here is apparently necessary for a White House that seems to have forgotten.

Hamas broke a cease-fire to launch the war with Israel more than a year ago with its barbaric invasion from Gaza.

Hezbollah, in a show of support, began its daily barrage of rockets and drones the very next day, forcing more than 60,000 Israelis to evacuate from their homes along the Lebanon border.

They still can’t go home, and Israel is still taking incoming fire from all sides, with Iran playing the role of puppet master and financier.

The mullahs are also firing on Israel, yet the White House is insisting all Israeli retaliation be modest.

Indeed, Biden reportedly extracted a promise from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel’s response will not hit Iran’s oil fields or its nuclear facilities.

The argument against striking the oil fields is that taking Iran’s production off the global market would drive up prices everywhere.

The last thing Dems want is a spike in gasoline and heating oil prices as voters make their choice.

Perilous duel with Iran
The reason for the American ban on striking Iran’s nuclear facilities is less clear, although it surely reflects Biden’s constant fear of escalation.

It’s the same fear that has kept our ally Ukraine in a bloody stalemate with Russia.

Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador, likens the tit-for-tat limitation to a boxing strategy known as the “rope-a-dope.”

He cautions that “the knockout punch, the haymaker, is the Iranian nuclear weapon.”

Oren, writing in The Times of Israel, adds: “the only question is whether Israel is prepared to deliver ours first.”

That’s the crunch of the argument that Israel should strike the nuke plants before Iran gets a bomb and the missile to deliver it.

The clock is ticking, with some reports saying the mullahs could reach that point within weeks.

Netanyahu has often said Israel will never allow a nuclear-armed Iran because the mullahs have made it clear that eliminating Israel is their aim.

One former Iranian official even called Israel a “one bomb country,” meaning that’s all Iran would need.

Although Israel is said to be still debating how it will respond to Iran’s latest attack, it has greatly diminished both Hamas and Hezbollah and thus made Iran more vulnerable.

But Oren argues that a stalemate offers insufficient protection because Iran could throw its nuke punch without notice.

“Now is our chance to strike,” he concludes.

“We may not get another.”

Michael Oren: Israel Pays a Price for Delaying Its Retaliation against Iran

In a piece Mosaic published exactly one year ago today, Jonathan Schachter praised American military and rhetorical support for Israel, but also warned of the dangers of a “bear hug,” whereby U.S. aid becomes a tool for preventing the Jewish state from taking necessary actions to defend itself. Michael Oren fears Israel now finds itself in a similar situation in the wake of Iran’s October 1 missile attack, resulting in

a prolonged delay in Israel’s response that threatens our security no less than the missiles themselves. With each passing day of inaction, Israel’s casus belli grows weaker. If and when Israel acts, the world will scarcely remember why.

What, besides avoiding further friction with the White House, does Israel have to gain by waiting? . . . Can we use the American administration’s fear of our response to Iran to secure vital concessions from Washington?

One such concession would be the president’s agreement not to oppose Israel’s implementation of General Giora Eiland’s plan to declare northern Gaza a closed military zone and then trade territory for Hamas’s release of the hostages. Another concession would be a presidential commitment to intervene militarily against Iran’s nuclear plants once they enrich uranium above 60 percent. Yet another concession would be America’s agreement to sell us long-range strategic bombers capable of dropping 15,000 kilogram bunker-buster bombs from a height that Iran’s defenses cannot reach. Such a sale would say to the Iranians “we won’t bomb your facilities this time but we have the means to do so effectively in the future.”

In the past two days, as if to confirm Oren’s suspicions, the U.S. has begun transfer of the THAAD missile-defense system to Israel while reportedly extracting a promise that Israel will not attack Iran’s oil infrastructure or nuclear program. As to what Israel is getting in return, Washington also appears to be pressuring Jerusalem not to go through with the Eiland plan.

Chag sameach!

Another week, another long weekend holiday....(Don't forget Eruv Tavshilin!)

Here was the description of Sukkot in a Portland, Maine newspaper from 100 years ago:

And, as a bonus, a description of the Palestine Etrog trade in 1905 from The Jewish Herald:

Finally, a sukkah in Lebanon:

From Yinon Magal's Twitter account:
Battalion 7012 of the Alexandroni Brigade builds sukkah in #Lebanon!

חג שמח 🇮🇱🇮🇱
عيد العرش اليهودي في لبنان pic.twitter.com/rWyXmOdgfW
— Abu Ali Express English (@AbuAliEnglishB1) October 16, 2024

Chag kosher v'sameach!

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A day under fire in the north of Israel (Forest Rain)

By Forest Rain

Stress poisoning and bombs

On October 13th, I had a very interesting day. Too interesting. By the end of the day, I felt like I had been steam-rolled and it took me 24 hours to bring myself back to normal.

Of course, our normal here in Israel, particularly in the north, isn’t normal at all.

Our day began with a meeting with an important Israeli official in a Haifa coffee shop. The conversation was interrupted by the sound of sirens, screaming that we needed to race to the bomb shelter – only there was no shelter in the coffee shop. What do we do? Everyone got up, leaving their food and drinks on the table and ran across the street to the shelter in the nearest building.

Packed in the shelter of an apartment building with people we don’t know, we had to wait 10 minutes before leaving - because while the Iron Dome is excellent, no system works 100% of the time and shrapnel from the missile interceptions can continue to fall from the sky – so we continued our discussion with explosions overhead and a girl crying in the corner from stress.

Then we returned to the shop, paid our bill, and continued our day.

Later in the day, we drove toward the northern border.

It’s not safe to travel to places under missile bombardment If you are in a shelter, that along with the Iron Dome is likely to keep you more or less safe (and even that is not 100% certain) but traveling between places, there is no shelter and no assurance that you won’t be hit.

But we wanted to see what was really happening to our country. Haifa is under bombardment and the communities along the way to the north have been bombarded even more than Haifa. Traveling that path is a risk but bombs can find you anywhere and the thought that any terrorist would succeed in terrorizing me into not going wherever I want in my own country made me so angry that there was no way I was staying home.

The communities bordering Lebanon have been evacuated for the last year. When the IDF entered Lebanon with ground forces, the area became a closed military zone – meaning that only the military or those approved by the military can travel there.

But from Haifa to Nahariya, life goes on. People live in their homes, go to work, shop, and send their kids to school (according to the assessments of the IDF Homefront Command which shuts down the schools when the bombings are too bad).

We decided to drive on the old road rather than the highway. The highway is faster but the old road has buildings along the way, making it possible to find shelter should we get caught outside when the sirens go off.

We popped in to check on our daughter-in-law who was by herself in their home near Nahariya. Our son, her husband, is enlisted and someplace in the north. That means worrying about him while being bombed. Fun stuff. She told us that although where they live there supposedly is 30 seconds to get to the shelter when the sirens go off, the explosions often come before the siren.

We had a nice visit and continued further north.

After Nahariya, soldiers stand guard closing the area to unnecessary travel – for the protection of civilians and to make it easier for the army to do what they need to do. The soldiers we talked to were pleasant (as our soldiers usually are) but also anxious (which is not usual at all). They were concerned about Hezbollah UAVs invading and bombing them. It was later in the day when we saw just how justified their concern was…

It was getting dark. Definitely, time to go home. That’s when the sirens went off.

We were on the road, nowhere near any kind of shelter. We did what other drivers did – stopped the car on the side of the road and ran down a small incline as far away from the cars as we could get. There was a ditch that provided some semblance of protection so we laid down and covered our heads, as the Home Front Command instructs us to do. When missiles hit shrapnel flies up at an angle so the best bet is to be flat on the ground and cover your head.

The sound of the siren blaring from the nearest community and my phone was nerve-wracking enough. Then I saw on the app update that the sirens were due to an incoming UAV. Then we heard explosions - the IDF trying to intercept – which is more difficult to do than with missiles that have a defined trajectory.

So there I was face down in a ditch, in the dark, shaking and cursing my curiosity. Len covered me with his body. He wanted me to feel safe and calm down so he made jokes to distract me. I laughed. Then I heard a little girl wailing in terror. She was further down the road with whoever it was that was trying to take her home. None of us were hurt but if I was shaking, how would a small child feel?

How long do you wait before moving when it’s a UAV attack and not a missile? I could see on my app that alerts were going off further south so obviously the UAV was moving in that direction, away from us. I assumed that it would be shot down closer to Haifa.

We got in the car and continued on the way home.

Outside Nahariya, the sirens went off again. This time missiles. Like all the other drivers on the road, we pulled over and got out to run to the nearest shelter. There wasn’t anything close and there wasn’t time. Some people stopped next to a wall that couldn’t really help. We were close to the mall so we ran in that direction, hoping to find an entrance. A building outside the mall looked like a bomb shelter but it was closed. It took us a moment to figure out that it was an electricity generator room for the mall (so not a place to go inside). So we stood in between the wall of that building and the wall of the mall, a relatively good place to be. Women from Nahariya were reluctant to stand where we were because they were wearing flip-flops and there were thorny bushes under our feet. But what’s a few scrapes in compared with flying shrapnel? We encouraged them to come in and they waited with us. One had a 10 or 12 year old daughter. She was silent but had tears in her eyes and her face was twisted in fear.

I swallowed my own pounding heart to smile and tell her she was very brave and doing a great job. It is absolutely infuriating to see children being terrorized – and children should not see grown-ups afraid.

There were no more sirens on the way to Haifa. When we arrived we thought we’d take some time to sit outside on the beautiful promenade overlooking the bay, breathe some fresh air, and relax before going home.

The weather was beautiful and the view stunning, as always.

And then, from the base at the bottom of the Carmel we heard their loudspeakers: “Warning! Be prepared for impact! Take shelter!”

What the hell?! First of all it was shocking that we could hear what was happening from so far away. And my reflexive response was, why do our soldiers have to be prepared for impact?! Hezbollah should be preparing for impact!!

And then they shot an intercept missile, bright like a streak of fire into the night sky. The trajectory was so steep, at first it wasn’t clear what direction it was going in – my body tensed before my mind understood what it was seeing. It looked like it went to Lebanon. The light disappeared and then we heard the sound of the explosion rolling back at us like a wave coming in from the sea.

Looking at my phone to see updates on what happened, I began seeing the lists of wounded roll in. The UAV that didn’t explode on us flew all the way to Benyamina and exploded on people there. A lot of people (later we learned that they were soldiers – 4 were killed, dozens wounded, some critically).

We went home and began to unwind from the too intense day. I understood that my body was washed with adrenaline, and I needed to decompress or suffer from stress poisoning, so I drank a lot of water.

And then the sirens went off.

We raced down the stairs to the shelter and listened to the huge explosions of the missile interceptions over our house.

It wasn’t easy to relax and go to sleep after all that but finally we managed – only to be woken up too early in the morning by sirens.

That was just one day when nothing happened to us.

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France24 reports:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should not forget his country was created as a result of a resolution adopted by the United Nations, French President Emmanuel Macron told cabinet on Tuesday, urging Israel to abide by UN decisions.

“Mr Netanyahu must not forget that his country was created by a decision of the UN,” Macron told the weekly French cabinet meeting, referring to the resolution adopted in November 1947 by the United Nations General Assembly on the plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

“Therefore this is not the time to disregard the decisions of the UN,” he added, as Israel wages a ground offensive against the Iran-backed Shiite militant group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, where the UN peacekeepers are deployed.

First of all, the statement is false. The UN did not create Israel, and the UN partition resolution was never implemented.

Jews created Israel. Jews who worked tirelessly since the 19th century, buying land, building cities, draining swamps, building a government, all while defending themselves. When Israel declared its independence in 1948 it was despite UN and US) desires, not because of them.

But there is a more insidious part of this friendly reminder, perfectly articulated by Arab Israeli diplomat George Deek:

As I hear a world leader reminding Israel that it “was created by a UN decision,” it’s a perfect moment to address why European elites seem particularly vexed by Israel’s independence— and why they expect obedience.

For those European elites, the right of self-determination of the French, Palestinians, or Chinese, is framed as a matter of justice: an inherent, unconditional right of a people to their land. But when it comes to the Jews, the narrative shifts. Their right to self-determination is not viewed as intrinsic, but as an act of European compassion—granted out of guilt for the Holocaust. In this view, Israel exists not because of a millennia-old connection to the land, or because of global rejection or because of Zionist activity, but because Europe, burdened by its conscience, graciously allowed the Jews a state through the UN.

This paternalist narrative strips Jews of their agency and their deep historical ties to Israel. But much worse, it turns their right to a homeland into something conditional—a “gift” from Europe. And like any gift, it can be revoked if the recipient misbehaves.

And this is where the obsession with Israel kicks in. If Europe believes it bestowed Israel’s right to exist, then it assumes the authority to judge Israel’s conduct. The Jews, unlike other nations, are expected to earn their right to sovereignty daily by conforming to the standards set by their “benefactors.” Fail to do so, and the right that was “given” can be questioned—or withdrawn.

This is exactly right. For all other peoples, self-determination is an eternal right - for Jews, it is only temporarily allowed against the world's better judgment.

And that's the thing. The world doesn't really think the Jews are a people, or that they have any connection to the Land of Israel, or that they have the right to defend themselves. They'll pretend that those things are true, but when it comes down to it, they don't act like they believe it.

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The Blinken/Austin letter: The US demands the IDF do the impossible, and threatens Israel when they fall short

The Biden administration sent a letter to Israeli leaders on Monday threatening withholding of weapons if Israel does not do more to facilitate humanitarian aid to Gaza.

The main legal justification the letter brings is a National Security Memorandum created by President Biden, written just for Israel, instructing the Defense Department to force any country that receives US arms to prove that it is facilitating US humanitarian aid:

[I]n furtherance of supporting section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 2378-1) and applicable international law, obtain credible and reliable written assurances from a representative of the recipient country as the Secretary of State deems appropriate that, in any area of armed conflict where the recipient country uses such defense articles, consistent with applicable international law, the recipient country will facilitate and not arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance and United States Government-supported international efforts to provide humanitarian assistance.

The key word here is "arbitrarily." And that word can be abused by anyone who wants to.

Last month, Israeli media - and practically no one else - reported on exactly how Hamas uses humanitarian aid as a lifeline:

Hamas has profited by at least a half billion dollars from humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip, Channel 12 reported on Tuesday.

“It’s actually become the main oxygen pipeline for the terrorist organization,” reported Channel 12‘s Almog Boker.

Hamas steals the humanitarian aid and sells it to the population. It then uses the money to finance recruitment, Boker said, noting that 3,000 terrorists have been added to Hamas’s payroll in northern Gaza.

Hamas operatives have been recorded saying their warehouses of aid are full. Where is the outrage from the donors seeing the aid being used to fund a terrorist group?

Hamas does not just profit monetarily from controlling the aid once it arrives in Gaza. It also uses it to control the people, to give the impression that it is still in charge, and it is an implicit threat against any civilian who does not do what Hamas demands.

Israel has a legitimate military goal to destroy Hamas. Hamas is cynically using humanitarian aid to stay alive. The two are at cross-purposes.

There is nothing arbitrary about Israel's restrictions on humanitarian aid and its distribution; in every conflict and under international law the war's goals are primary and everything else - including civilian lives - are extremely important but secondary when they conflict. A minor military target does not justify major civilian harm, but a major target does.

The evidence that Israel is not arbitrarily blocking aid is clear from the effective distribution of polio vaccines in September, which everyone considered a success. There was no way for Hamas to profit off those vaccines, so there were few issues in the IDF facilitating distribution.

Aid dropped off at the end of September but, again, it was not arbitrary. Israel placed in a new rule in direct response to Hamas' abuse of humanitarian aid demanding that relief organizations responsible for truck convoys from Jordan to Gaza must complete a form providing passport details and accept liability for any false information on a shipment. The UN refuses to do this, fearful that Hamas will retaliate.

All this context is missing from the letter. And this is part of a larger pattern where the world blames Israel and only Israel for Gaza civilian woes and then ignores everyone else's role.

Israel didn't close the Rafah crossing where the bulk of the aid was entering before May. Egypt did, for purely political reasons, to not deal with Israel directly at the crossing and look like they were allies. There has been no pressure on Egypt to reverse that decision.

Similarly, Egypt has refused to allow Gazans to flee and seek refuge there. And the world is silent.

The US and the world are putting Israel in a humanitarian aid straitjacket and then telling it, sure, you can defend yourself but you must also do it while we give the UN, Egypt and Hamas a pass for making you the party solely responsible for Gaza lives. When you fall short we will add more straps.

I looked at the US Army reports on Operation Iraqi Freedom. While there is lots of documentation on facilitating humanitarian aid after military operations in an area were finished and the US controlled the area, there is practically nothing I can find about humanitarian aid during active combat. The reason is because it is nearly impossible.

In Gaza, Israel is not trying to conquer the sector. It is not holding or occupying large swaths of land. It doesn't have the manpower (and just imagine the world reaction to Israel occupying Gaza territory!) But without full control of the geographic area, humanitarian aid distribution becomes much more difficult - and this is before the enemy turns that same aid into a weapon for itself, something Saddam Hussein didn't even consider.

Beyond that, even after Israel defeats Hamas in an area, the civilians in humanitarian zones are where Hamas units move to in order to use them as new human shields for their military use.

This letter does not take into account any of this context. It, as well as the February Biden memo that it is based on, creates rules for Israel that literally reward Hamas for stealing and abusing aid and using Gazans as shields.

To be sure, Israel should be doing a far better job communicating its challenges. But COGAT issues daily reports on what it does and what its humanitarian aid partners are not doing, and the world media ignores them or treats them as unreliable.

Israel is being asked to do the impossible, and is then blamed for falling short. Ironically, Israel is closer to performing the impossible than any other nation at war has ever done.

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The Arab48 site reports on what they consider alarming statistics on an increased number of Jews visiting their holiest spot.

Recent data shows that the number of Jewish worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque has increased significantly, while deportation orders issued by the Israeli police against those who violate the prayer rules that violate the “status quo” in occupied Jerusalem have decreased by 40%.

This is attributed to the implementation of the policy of the Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who called for changing the status quo at Al-Aqsa Mosque, and who stated on several occasions that Jews have the “right” to pray there, despite the government’s denial of any change in the status quo.

The Ynet website reported on Tuesday evening that the intervention and influence of the occupation police in dealing with the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque has noticeably declined, as the number of deportation orders (issued by the regional commander against some extremists) has decreased by about 40%.

According to the data provided by the website, in 2022-2023, 44,317 settlers stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque, while in 2023-2024, 51,223 Israeli settlers and extremists stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque, an increase estimated at about 14%.

However, during 2023, the Jerusalem District Commander of the Israeli Police issued a total of 271 administrative deportation orders from Al-Aqsa Mosque due to “violations of prayer rules” and fear of “violating public security.”

In 2024, during the same period, the police issued only 163 deportation orders; according to the report, these figures indicate a significant decline of about 40% in enforcement and deportation operations issued against settlers related to violating the rules of prayer at Al-Aqsa.

But if prayer is allowed, why are any Jews being ejected from the Temple Mount at all?

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10/15 Links Pt2: October 7 and the Battle for the West; The Creeping Authoritarianism of Political Anti-Zionism; No BBC – not everything is equal

From Ian:

October 7 and the Battle for the West

It is this history that has set Jews apart from other communities for millennia, but it has also made them more resilient, because it is built on the proposition that God’s laws take precedence over the laws instituted by those with whom they live and work.

That which makes the Jews strong is precisely what drives others to fury and envy. How dare the Jews persist while we rise and fall? That is the burning question enemies of the Jews have asked themselves from the time of the Philistines, Egyptians, Persians, and Romans to the Nazis and the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies. Now it includes a very angry and frustrated “woke” left.

What is particularly infuriating for them about Jewish history is that it has an overriding moral dimension, expressed through individual action both good and bad. If individuals or a nation suffer success or disaster, responsibility ultimately belongs to human beings, not class or race or gender or intersectionality. Good and evil exist; they are inescapable and crucial dimensions of each individual life, and they reveal the power and justice of God. There is no sidestepping moral decision making, no passage “beyond good and evil” for any of us.

Ultimately, accepting the validity of this perspective offers us a deep sense of freedom, but it’s a freedom that comes with a price: that of personal responsibility before the imperatives of God’s laws.

As it happens, the West is the great inheritor of that Jewish freedom and strength derived from the binding personal relationship with God and God’s laws. It has passed down first through Christianity, and then through the moral foundations of the modern state, including the notions of human rights and individual freedom that the left used to celebrate, and perhaps still does. But paradoxically, the entire thrust of our postmodern Western culture has been to neutralize and then deny that Judeo-Christian inheritance for the sake of a secular ideal based on political expediency and the universal power of self-interest.

Much of the West deliberately exalted this de-Christianized ideal in order to appear tolerant and open to other cultures and identities, including of course Islam. But it has come at a terrible price. By adopting what the French philosopher Pierre Manent has called a “radical secularism,” we have come to deny our own identities, Jew and non-Jew alike.

Which brings us back to October 7, and radical Islam.

The bitter truth is that the Islamists see through our disguise. They know what the West denies, i.e., that we are a Judeo-Christian civilization with deep religious and moral roots. Accepting that fact doesn’t necessarily mean confrontation, let alone unleashing a new spirit of “crusade” (the term from which both radical Islamists and liberals recoil in horror). On the contrary, taking pride in our Judeo-Christian inheritance would make it easier for Muslims and others to come to terms with its living presence in the West, both here in America and particularly in Europe, where the denial of that inheritance has sunk to the level of mass psychosis.

But doing this requires those of us who are non-Jews to acknowledge who we are, and our eternal debt to Judaism—which, paradoxically, the drama of the Holocaust served to obscure (except for evangelical Christians, who understand very well what Israel and the Jews represent for them and the rest of us). To put it slightly differently, just as we can’t and don’t expect Muslims to shed their core identity, we shouldn’t shed ours. The model for Muslims of how to adopt to the modern West should in fact be the Jews themselves, who live in freedom in our midst and recognize our laws without relinquishing who they are, or who they want to be.

In short, what may lie ahead is a new cultural synthesis that can grow up in the shadow of October 7, for Jews, Muslims, and the West alike. A synthesis in which we are all honest about who we are, perhaps for the first time.

The Psychological Barrier of Western Ideology

Western ideology and consciousness fail to grasp the depth of a culture that does not accept a Jewish state in its midst. On Oct. 1, just before Iranian missiles rained down on Israel, two armed Palestinians exited a train in Jaffa, adjacent to Tel Aviv, systematically killing seven civilians, including one young woman clutching a baby to her chest.

The two likely knew they would not survive their rampage to kill as many Jews as possible, but this probably raised their motivation even higher, presenting them with a prize of martyrdom and a place in the hearts of family and community who celebrated rather than mourned their deaths.

Western minds want to believe that we are all alike, that we all want the same things, and that we all just want peace. It is the same thinking that glorifies "resistance" as legitimate and fails to recognize that internal belief systems are far more responsible for behavior than any external environmental factors.

The West's noble but naive approach, based on wishful magical thinking, absolves the putative "victim" of any responsibility and assumes that a "fair" solution would solve everything. As with any ideology, this thinking is hard to crack, despite the test of reality.

A reality where Palestinian leadership rewards terror, with stipends if they survive and subsidies for their families if they are killed. A reality where Palestinians educate children that Jews have no history in the land and have no rights to exist as a state. A reality where Palestinians chose and continue to support Hamas. A reality where Hizbullah and Iran both seek to eliminate Israel.

The inability to recognize the defining role of ideology in the culture of the Middle East has incapacitated much of Western thinking and has tilted policy towards solutions that impose Western-based values on a culture that views things very, very differently.

Seth Mandel: The Creeping Authoritarianism of Political Anti-Zionism

Mason seems understandably baffled by the controversy. But it’s a glimpse into where political anti-Zionism is headed. Mason was told he violated a party rule with his comments but has not been told what that rule was. There’s a certain consistency to this. After all, if the modern left-of-center anti-Israel movements are going to subscribe to Soviet anti-Zionism, the same folks surely subscribe to Soviet logic as well.

At its heart this is an authoritarian mindset: It’s never clear what the rules are so you must obey the party leadership, never challenge it. You are in violation if the party says you are.

And it’s easy to see where this is going. Scotland has laws against “hate speech,” and the trend both there and in wider Europe is to increasingly criminalize speech. It’s likely that future crackdowns will make Mason’s punishment seem positively generous—he’s not even going to jail for saying Israel isn’t committing genocide! What a benevolent system this is.

Modern Western progressive politics exists on a slippery slope—there is no even ground. For how long will it even be considered acceptable to deny an anti-Jewish blood libel?

We should note the flip side of this. The pro-Hamas hordes marching through the streets of the enlightened West have been openly calling for genocide against Jews, including but not limited to chanting a Hamas founding statement that seeks the murder and expulsion of non-Arabs from the region.

This is permitted speech, but at what point will it become mandatory speech? In the Scottish National Party, it is not permitted speech to say that Israel isn’t committing genocide. It’s not much of leap from Mason’s expulsion to “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” becoming something like a loyalty oath, the way professing one’s anti-Zionism already is among various university clubs in the U.S.

“Israel should disappear” is rapidly becoming the default position of political parties and movements around the world. The SNP’s expulsion of Mason suggests it’ll soon become the only acceptable position.

10/15 Links Pt1: An Astonishing Threat From the Biden Administration; The UN’s History of Aiding Hezbollah; Hamas HQ in Turkey directed failed Tel Aviv suicide bombing

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The UN’s History of Aiding Hezbollah

In the summer of 2000, Israeli forces pulled out of South Lebanon, where they had maintained a security buffer between Hezbollah and the Israeli civilians in northern Israel. A few months later, Israel was rewarded for this gesture when Hezbollah ambushed three soldiers on the Israeli side of the border and took them captive.

The Iran-backed terrorists disguised themselves as employees of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and attached UN markings to the trucks used in the attack. The next day, UN workers tried to tow away the trucks but were stopped by Hezbollah operatives. The UN workers turned the vehicles over to Hezbollah.

But there was a twist. The UN had videotaped the scene, which was filled with evidence of the previous day’s kidnapping.

What the UN did with that tape is crucial to understanding the UN’s role in Lebanon and in shaping the conflict up to the present. With that tape, the UN did… nothing.

The news this weekend was saturated with coverage of UNIFIL blaming Israel for putting its cardboard peacekeepers in danger while the IDF responds to Hezbollah’s continued attacks. Israel, in turn, exposed the fact that the UN has allowed Hezbollah to construct tunnels and weapons depots under its nose, protecting the terrorists from IDF counterstrikes.

But all of this begins back in 2000, with that videotape.

Israel’s Labor government pleaded with the UN to turn over the recording, which could help Israel in its search for the captives. Time was, as always, of the essence: Every minute that went by put the kidnapped Israelis’ lives in more danger.

Instead of turning over the tape, the UN lied repeatedly by claiming there was no tape. Eventually, scenes from the tape leaked, revealing what everyone knew the entire time: Of course the tape existed. At that point, the UN publicly admitted they’d had the tape all along.

By then, the soldiers were dead. In 2004, Israel would trade hundreds of terrorists in Israeli jails in return for the bodies of the three soldiers.

There was some irony here: The Hezbollah terrorists dressed as UNIFIL and then UNIFIL aided and abetted their getaway and helped ensure the murder of the soldiers. What had started with terrorists impersonating UN members ended with the UN impersonating Hezbollah. The two were on the same team, cooperating in acts of profound evil. It was manifestly unclear where the UN ended and Hezbollah began.

Sound familiar? It should: It’s also the story of UNRWA, the Gaza-based UN agency that has become an adjunct of Hamas. Its members participated in the Oct. 7 attacks last year and even helped hold Israeli hostages. The head of the UNRWA teachers union turned out to be a high-level Hamasnik with ties to Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of Oct. 7. We even have video of an UNRWA worker dragging away the body of a murdered Israeli alongside a Hamas terrorist. Where does one end and the other begin?

Israel is here to stay. We will not let Hezbollah destroy us.

Five times over the past two weeks, rocket attacks from distant lands have sent me running for the bomb shelter in my home in central Israel. When Israel came under attack from about 200 Iranian missiles last week, I huddled together with my wife and children and we sang songs while air raid sirens blared outside our shelter and the room shook from the booms of Israel's missile interceptor defense system.

Just days before that, we had rocket attacks on two successive days by Houthi militants in Yemen - the second while my three older children were with friends at a local park on a Saturday afternoon. With nowhere to shelter, they ran to a nearby wall and covered their heads with their hands.

Meanwhile, residents of northern Israel have been under incessant attack from Hizbullah since Oct. 8, 2023, displacing more than 60,000 Israelis. Many of their hometowns lie in ruins as a result of attacks by Hizbullah rockets, drones and anti-tank weapons. Nearly 50 Israelis have been killed there.

The root of the conflict in the Middle East is painfully simple: Israel's foes refuse to accept it. It has been that way since Israel's establishment in 1948. Israel's enduring enemies want to reverse the outcome of Israel's 1948 War of Independence and wipe Israel off the map. What choice does Israel have other than to fight?

Israel does not covet territory in Lebanon, Yemen, Iran, Iraq or Syria. Israel wants to live in peace with these countries. But they refuse to give up on their dreams of annihilating the Jewish state. So Israel must respond to their attacks, ensuring they never become capable of destroying it. That's what Israel's response to Oct. 7 is all about.

The rest of the world should applaud Israel and offer it greater operational and intelligence support because these rogues threaten us all. In Israel, we understand that peace will come only when the country's enemies accept that Israel is here to stay. Until then, Israel must be strong - and continue to degrade those sworn to its destruction.

Israel’s red-blue line: Why is the Litani River so crucial in the war against Hezbollah?

With the end of the Second Lebanon war in 2006, UN Security Council Resolution 1701 required Hizballah to disarm completely—as did two previous Security Council resolutions—and more specifically required the terrorist group to remove itself south of the Litani River. (Why the first requirement doesn’t render the second unnecessary continues to befuddle me.) Pushing Hizballah north of the Litani is often cited as a possible Israeli goal in the current war. Lahav Harkov explains this waterway’s significance:

The Litani River is Lebanon’s longest river and a major water source for the country. It mostly runs north to south, but part of the river runs from east to west towards the Mediterranean Sea, in parallel to the border between Israel’s Upper Galilee region and southern Lebanon. The section parallel to the Israel-Lebanon border, also known as the Blue Line, is about seventeen miles north of Israel.

The population south of the Litani is 75-percent Shiite Muslim, making it a Hizballah stronghold, while the other 25 percent are Sunni Muslim, Druze, and Christian. [Since 2006], Hizballah stockpiled weapons and missiles throughout the area between the Litani and Israel, dug tunnels, and crossed into Israel with no significant pushback from the UN International Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

Hizballah uses the Litani River as a line of demarcation for its “first line of defense” against Israel. . . . Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser [said that] since UNIFIL has proven unable to enforce such resolutions, Israel will have to have a system for monitoring river crossings. “The Litani can only be crossed in a few places, so it can be supervised,” he said. “If we don’t want IDF soldiers there, then we have to monitor from afar. . . . It won’t be simple, but the supervision has to be Israeli because no one else will do it.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) never condemned Hamas for any of its terror attacks that killed Jews - not October 7 nor any of the hundreds of Hamas attacks in the decades beforehand.

Perhaps you can justify this and say that they only issue press releases about Muslim victims of the war. After all, they are a Muslim advocacy organization. Maybe they only issue statements when Muslims are killed?

So much for that theory:

CAIR Condemns Israeli Massacre in Christian Village in Lebanon

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today condemned the Israeli massacre of at least 21 people in a Christian village in northern Lebanon.

An Israeli airstrike hit an apartment building in the village of Aito in northern Lebanon on Monday, killing at least 21 people, according to the Lebanese Red Cross.

Nope. Israel attacked Hezbollah hiding among Christians, using them as human shields, and this gave CAIR an opportunity to condemn Israel as they have, daily, for over a year.

So they don't condemn when Jews are murdered, burned alive, kidnapped and raped for being Jews, but they condemn the incidental deaths of (apparently) Christians and Muslims, calling them all "massacres."

Yup. CAIR is antisemitic.

Israel said that it was targeting Hezbollah.

CAIR may or may not have knows this at the time of the press release, but AP reports that the entire building was rented out to the Hijazi family who fled southern Lebanon. Hijazi is a Muslim name. If Israel was targeting Christians, then what a coincidence that they accidentally hit a building with Muslims in the middle of a Christian village!

But the idea that Hezbollah sent their people deliberately to use Christians as human shields does not seem to be to the radar of world media.

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