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In-Depth Issues:
While Hamas Continues to Rebuild, So Do Anti-Hamas Militias - Shachar Kleiman ( Israel Hayom)
Although Hamas has lost most of its military and political leadership in Gaza, along with more than 20,000 fighters, it still maintains control in the western part of Gaza beyond the Yellow Line, and even more so underground.
While Yasser Abu Shabab, head of the anti-Hamas Popular Forces militia in eastern Rafah, was killed during clashes involving a Palestinian clan, his deputy, Rassan al-Dahini, was quickly appointed as his successor.
Hossam al-Astal, head of another anti-Hamas militia in Khan Yunis, told Israel Hayom that the Popular Forces in Rafah would survive Abu Shabab's death.
Additional militia leaders including Rami Khalas and Shauki Abu Nasira are continuing to oppose Hamas in Gaza. These men previously served in the Palestinian Authority's security apparatus.
Hamas Is Failing to Rebuild Its Iron Rule ( Center for Peace Communications)
Hamas is indeed applying new levels of violence and intimidation in a bid for authority in Gaza.
In the first weeks following the ceasefire, it murdered at least 80 alleged "collaborators" in ISIS-style public executions.
However, to establish a viable new regime, Hamas needs to achieve what Hizbullah did after the 2006 Second Lebanon War, with massive assistance from a foreign patron (Iran). But the equivalent monies aren't coming.
The ever-increasing levels of brutality it has employed against its own civilians in order to extract funds are enraging civilians, most of whom already blame Hamas for triggering the destruction of their territory by launching the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
In addition, Hamas has begun taxing civilians at unprecedented rates, demanding exorbitant fees for cigarettes, food, and tents.
If an emerging U.S.-led plan for reconstruction offers housing, food, and a measure of safety from Hamas violence and Israeli military action, Gazans will not only welcome it; they will help in any way they can to expand the zone of reconstruction beyond the Israeli side into portions of Gaza Hamas still dreams of ruling.
UNRWA in Gaza Has Been Replaced - Enia Krivine ( Foundation for Defense of Democracies)
The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza has been replaced by over a dozen other aid organizations. UNRWA's decades-long monopoly on aid and services has finally been broken.
What's more, the international community now has a model for how to replace UNRWA everywhere it operates, not just in Gaza.
UNRWA schools have produced generations of indoctrinated and radicalized Palestinian children.
UNRWA staff participated in the horrors of Oct. 7, praised the violence on social media, and Israeli hostages were held captive in UNRWA facilities for months during the war.
U.S. taxpayers have contributed over $7 billion to the agency since its creation.
Israel's Knesset passed legislation in Oct. 2024 to end coordination with UNRWA, making it difficult for UNRWA (which had used the Jewish state as its base of operations for decades) to continue delivering its services.
UNRWA advocates warned that Israel's new law would have catastrophic consequences. It didn't.
Other organizations and state actors - without the proclivity towards terror - were willing and able to step in. Basic services performed by UNRWA before the war are now performed by other actors.
The UN Development Program (UNDP) is managing waste management. Fuel distribution is managed by the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS).
The World Central Kitchen has been effective at delivering food alongside the World Food Program (WFP). The World Health Organization (WHO) is providing medical aid to field clinics and hospitals.
The correct way to manage humanitarian crises caused by wars and natural disasters is with organizations that have a temporary mandate to deliver aid.
Once the crisis has passed, those services should once again be the responsibility of the state.
The writer is the senior director of FDD's Israel Program and National Security Network.
Swedish Funding Scandal Empowered Antisemitic Networks - David Ben-Basat ( Jerusalem Post)
An investigation by the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter has exposed a scandal involving $100 million in public funds, designated for education, welfare services, and childcare, that were diverted to institutional networks tied to radical Islamic actors.
Some of these groups have spent years deepening hatred toward Jews, promoting antisemitic agendas, collaborating with cells affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, and fueling campaigns of incitement.
Institutional networks in Stockholm and Gothenburg, operating under the guise of legitimate educational institutions, used funds to purchase real estate and luxury vehicles and to support organizations aligned with extremist ideologies, such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
In several institutions, investigators found curricula and messaging that encouraged hatred and undermined the legitimacy of Jewish existence.
Regulatory authorities admitted that oversight of these funds had been exceedingly lax for years.
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
- Israel's Latest Military Tech: Tested in Gaza, Wanted by the West - Anat Peled
Israel is leveraging the war in Gaza to market its latest military technology and U.S. and European buyers are lining up. Officials from countries including Germany, Norway and the UK flocked to a conference in Tel Aviv last week sponsored by the Israeli Defense Ministry that showcased tested battlefield technology. The turnout - much larger than the previous year - reinforced how Israeli military technology retains its allure regardless of the country's diplomatic isolation over Gaza.
European interest comes amid a push to rearm in the face of Russian aggression. Europe is wrestling with concerns that the U.S. is becoming a less reliable partner in NATO and is under pressure to invest more in its own defense. Now with Russia flying drones over NATO members in Europe, people at the conference said some countries feel they are running out of time.
(Wall Street Journal)
- Four Countries to Boycott Eurovision Song Contest as Israel Cleared to Compete - Philip Oltermann
Ireland, Spain, Slovenia and the Netherlands will boycott the 2026 Eurovision song contest after Israel was given the all-clear to compete by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). While no vote on Israel's participation was held on Thursday at the EBU general assembly, 65% of delegates voted in favor of rule changes and no further discussion on participation of Israel. The BBC indicated it would broadcast next year's competition, as did the German broadcaster SWR.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog welcomed the decision on his country's participation, saying Israel "deserves to be represented on every stage around the world." (Guardian-UK)
See also Sing a Eurosong of Antisemitism - Editorial
How embarrassing for the Irish, Dutch, Spanish and Slovenian governments that they care more about broadcasting their antisemitism than broadcasting a popular music contest.
(Wall Street Journal)
News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
- Hamas's Khaled Mashaal: We Will Not Disarm, Give Up Control in Gaza, or Accept International Oversight
Hamas will not disarm, give up its weapons, rule of Gaza, or permit external oversight in Gaza, including the International Stabilization Force (ISF), terror leader Khaled Mashaal said during a video address to an Istanbul conference on Sunday. Israel's Foreign Ministry called his comments a "direct contradiction of the core terms of the peace plan itself." (Jerusalem Post)
See also Hamas's Khalil al-Hayya Rejects Disarmament, Resists U.S. Stabilization Plan for Gaza - Einav Halabi
Khalil al-Hayya, one of five members of Hamas's top leadership in Gaza, said on Saturday that the Islamist movement will not disarm before the creation of a Palestinian state and rejected any deployment of an international stabilization force inside Gaza. He said the group is prepared to accept only a border-monitoring presence, not a force empowered to operate within Hamas-held areas or to dismantle its arsenal, a central requirement in the U.S. plan.
(AFP-Ynet News)
Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Hamas and the West
- Hamas at America's Doorstep: The Terror Network Now Threatening the Western Hemisphere - Dr. Dan Diker
The Oct. 7 massacre exposed an international jihadist network that threatens Western security. European law enforcement has been uncovering a disturbing reality: Hamas spent years building a transnational terror infrastructure that extends from Copenhagen to Venezuela, positioning the organization as a global threat that Western governments can no longer afford to dismiss.
Hamas operatives had established weapons caches across multiple European countries years before Oct. 7, including small arms stashed in Poland, Bulgaria, Germany, and Denmark - part of deliberate planning for potential attacks in Europe. Hamas has never successfully executed a terrorist attack outside Israel, the West Bank, or Gaza, but as its capabilities in Gaza face decimation, European and Israeli officials increasingly fear that Hamas will go global.
Hamas's global reach extends into the U.S. through Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations that provide ideological support, fundraising networks, and political cover. Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) exemplifies this challenge. In November 2025, Texas Governor Greg Abbott designated both CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations. President Trump subsequently issued an executive order designating specific Muslim Brotherhood chapters in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
Until Western governments recognize Hamas as the transnational threat it has become, the group will continue exploiting the gap between regional realities and Western perceptions.
The writer is president of the Jerusalem Center.
(Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs)
- Hamas's Coercive Grip on Aid and NGO Operations in Gaza
Internal Hamas documents spotlight the terrorist group's systematic control of foreign NGOs operating in Gaza.
Hamas operatives describe their surveillance of NGO officials and offices, methods for manipulating foreign-funded humanitarian groups, and the military and intelligence-gathering considerations that guide the limitations they impose on NGO activity. Similarly, the documents reveal that NGOs were complicit in this regime, hiding or downplaying Hamas abuses, and acquiescing to its demands.
NGOs - including those operating under the auspices of UN projects - are not permitted to provide services or operate projects in Gaza without Hamas's approval and ongoing coordination. This framework effectively grants Hamas the power to block, reshape, and exploit aid delivery based on its political and military priorities. NGOs are compelled to comply.
Hamas insists that local Gazans, approved by its Ministry of Interior and National Security, serve as the point of contact between Hamas authorities and NGOs. Hamas requires that these "guarantors" hold senior administrative positions, such as director, deputy director, or board chair, ensuring access to the highest levels of the NGOs' operations.
NGOs operating in Gaza are fully aware of the realities of working under Hamas rule. Instead of disclosing the coercive conditions under which they operate, NGOs consistently downplay Hamas's violations.
Worse still, many of these organizations are quick to level public condemnations of Israel, while failing to acknowledge Hamas's systematic abuse of humanitarian mechanisms. The result is an aid sector that, in many cases, no longer acts independently or impartially, but instead functions within a terror-controlled system and becomes an integral part of misinformation and disinformation campaigns. (NGO Monitor)
Israel and the West
- Why Hamas Sympathizers Love Ms. Rachel - Tal Fortgang
Rachel Griffin-Accurso, known by her stage name "Ms. Rachel," has gained wealth and influence through her low-budget children's show, a favorite of millions. But beyond the confines of her show, Ms. Rachel has emerged as an authoritative voice on every subject that even tangentially relates to children, including Israel's war on Hamas.
In an interview she acknowledged that she "didn't know much" about the Middle East before Hamas's Oct. 7 terrorist attacks. That has not stopped her from using her various platforms to construct a simplistic narrative of the conflict. Her Instagram, with 4 million followers, reads like the product of an anti-Israel activist.
After Israel launched its war to defeat the barbarians who had wiped out entire families (including babies pummeled to death in Gaza), Ms. Rachel began her campaign. She informed her followers that Israel is committing "genocide" and accused it of "murder[ing] 4-year-olds!" While she has regularly called on Israel to stop its just war, she has never once called on Hamas to lay down its arms. And now she regularly posts anti-Israel messages unrelated to children's welfare.
Ms. Rachel recently became a global ambassador for the Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF) after "fundraising" for them. The PCRF is as much a propaganda arm for the anti-Israel cause as it is a humanitarian outfit. Anti-Israel groups frequently employ children and hospitals to appeal to people's emotions in order to win support for their eliminationist war effort.
The anti-Western PR apparatus preys upon our decency. When your enemy both causes suffering and broadcasts it strategically, it can use your compassion against you. The result is the classic coercive formula: ensure that children suffer, document it relentlessly, then insist that this suffering means that their enemy must surrender - "for the children's sake." Our inability to tolerate children's suffering is a civilizational strength that becomes a weakness if we refuse to acknowledge that some actors will take advantage of it.
Children's suffering is intolerable - and that is precisely why the terrorists who started this war, use children as shields, and exploit their suffering need to be eliminated. This response requires us to discern good from evil.
The writer is a legal policy fellow and advisor to the president at the Manhattan Institute.
(City Journal)
- Ms. Rachel, Israeli Children Deserve Your Voice - Sarah Tuttle-Singer
Ms. Rachel is an early-childhood educator and YouTube creator whose gentle speech-development videos have been a salvation for millions of exhausted parents. I love that Ms. Rachel fights for children. But I can't escape the ache that she doesn't fight for all of them.
When she posts about the suffering of children in Gaza, she rarely acknowledges the Israeli children who were murdered, burned alive, executed in front of their parents, or taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7. She doesn't mention the babies dragged into tunnels. The toddlers orphaned. The ones kept underground for weeks in the dark. The ones strangled by terrorists. We shouldn't have to beg a children's champion to remember our murdered children.
When you tell millions of people that Israel is funded by America specifically "to kill children," you are stepping into the architecture of the blood libel - the medieval accusation that Jews murder children on purpose. Now, in 2025, the same story resurfaces, wrapped in compassionate language and delivered as an Instagram post from a beloved children's educator.
No mention of the terror attack that launched the war. No mention of Hamas using civilians as shields. No mention of Israeli families still burying their dead, or still reeling from the horror of captivity and survival.
Israel - the place burying murdered children - becomes the place murdering them. Millions of people saw her post.
And the applause rolled in.
A public figure speaks about protecting children, and the only children consistently absent from her compassion are ours - the ones murdered, tortured, burned alive, or kidnapped. We deserve better. Our children deserve better. And so do the children in Gaza - who suffer terribly, not because Israel wants them dead, but because Hamas deliberately hides behind them and dares the world to blame the Jews.
The writer is New Media Editor at the Times of Israel.
(Times of Israel)
Antisemitism
- Is George Mason University Scaling Back Protection for Jewish Students? - Bassem Eid
On Nov. 20, the George Mason University (GMU) Undergraduate Representative Body (URB) voted 14-2, with 4 abstentions, to redefine what anti-Jewish hatred is, in a significant scaling back of the protections available for Jewish students on campus.
Imagine a student government announcing that cross-burnings and the KKK do not represent anti-Black racism. Imagine a student government declaring that LGBTQ+ students must put up with the Westboro Baptist Church demonstrating on their campus. This is what the URB has done to Jewish students at GMU.
At GMU, the anti-Israel faction's leaders included sisters Jena and Noor Chanaa, who, according to police, led a group of vandals who spray-painted "student intifada" messages on campus buildings, causing thousands of dollars in property damage. A judge approved a warrant to search their home, and authorities found weapons, Hamas and Hizbullah flags, and signs reading "Death to America" and "Death to Jews."
The same circles that have produced vandalism, explicit calls for violence, open celebration of the Oct. 7 massacre, and support for Hamas terrorism are the ones telling Jewish students they are "incorrect" about antisemitism - and the URB is listening.
Those who voted for this resolution have aligned themselves with those who glorify Hamas's mass rape and slaughter of Jews, who possess "Death to Jews" signs and ISIS propaganda, and who seek to strip Jewish students of the protections GMU adopted to keep them safe. Allowing the people who chant "Death to Jews" to define antisemitism is not inclusion. It is not equity. It is not academic freedom. It is moral insanity.
The writer is a Palestinian peace advocate, political analyst, and human rights pioneer who founded the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group in 1996.
(Times of Israel)
Observations:
- Students who set up encampments, barricade buildings, chant "from the river to the sea," harass and threaten Jewish students, celebrate Hamas's Oct. 7 massacre, and disrupt pro-Israel events are merely the symptom, not the cause, of campus antisemitism. The real driver is institutional.
- Politicized academic departments and programs are using official school platforms - courses, events and announcements - to confer academic legitimacy on hatred of Israel and harassment of its supporters. Students are the foot soldiers, but the academic departments train and deploy them.
- Over the past few years, departments on more than 100 campuses have issued statements swearing fealty to the Palestinian cause, many of them explicitly endorsing anti-Zionist activism and anti-Israel boycotts. Even among the schools most popular with Jewish students, more than half hosted events, sponsored by academic departments, that featured pro-boycott speakers last year alone. The worst offenders included Harvard (44 events), Georgetown (43), Columbia (36), UC Berkeley (25), New York University (22) and the University of Chicago (22).
- If you work at a university, you're likely to see a constant stream of anti-Israel vitriol from academics. At our own campus, the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), all of the 28 events that some 20 departments have sponsored since the Oct. 7 massacre featured speakers bitterly hostile to Israel. Earlier this year, UCSC's education department held a colloquium urging prospective early-childhood teachers to bring "an anti-Zionist commitment" to kindergarten classrooms.
- Our campus, like so many others, has permitted scholarship to be abandoned for political campaigns, paid for with taxpayer dollars and sanctioned by institutional authority. Jewish students must endure a campus climate deeply hostile to their participation in coursework and in campus life.
- A serious survey of the Israel-Palestinian conflict would be highly beneficial to everyone, but it would have to examine arguments made by both sides - that's the difference between real academic instruction and political crusading.
- And it would have to look at all the relevant historical facts, not just those relied on by one side. But that isn't what students are getting; they hear only a stridently political narrative. They hear why the state of Israel is illegitimate. They hear of violence against Palestinians but not of violence against Israelis - or if they do, it's celebrated.
When are campus administrators going to confront the faculty whose grossly unprofessional behavior is the real source of their antisemitism problem?
Mr. Ellis is a professor emeritus of German literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Ms. Rossman-Benjamin, executive director of the AMCHA Initiative, dedicated to combating antisemitism at colleges and universities, is a former faculty member at UCSC.
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