| DAILY ALERT |
Thursday, August 7, 2025 |
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
When asked on Tuesday about a possible Israeli full occupation of Gaza, President Trump said: "It is going to be pretty much up to Israel." Two U.S. officials told Axios that Trump won't intervene in the Israeli decision-making around the new operation. Israel says Hamas isn't interested in signing a comprehensive ceasefire and hostage deal on terms Israel can accept, and that only military pressure can change that. "We are not willing to remain in the current limbo and we are not willing to surrender to Hamas' demands - so essentially only one option is left, to take a drastic step. This is the last card we have left," a Netanyahu aide said. One U.S. official said Trump was moved by the video released by Hamas of an Israeli hostage digging his own grave. "It influenced the president, and he is going to let the Israelis do what they need to do." In a meeting Monday at the White House, Trump and special envoy Steve Witkoff discussed plans for the U.S. to significantly increase its role in providing humanitarian aid to Gaza. However, the U.S. is not "taking over" the aid effort," a U.S. official said. (Axios) Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, said Wednesday that the American-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid initiative would soon "scale up" from the four current distribution sites. "The immediate plan is to scale up the number of sites up to 16 and begin to operate them as much as 24 hours a day," he told Fox News. "The president has been telling us he wants food into the hands of hungry people but he wants it in a way that it doesn't get into the hands of Hamas. That's exactly what we did when we stood up GHF." (New York Times) Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News on Wednesday: "The President has said that it's up to Israel to decide what they need to do for their own security....There are three problems going on there, and they're all interrelated. The first is there is a humanitarian problem that needs to be addressed. We're working very hard to figure out ways to address it in ways that don't benefit Hamas but that allows people to be fed and prevents a further humanitarian problem there that we're seeing now." "The second is that there are 20 innocent human beings that are being held hostage in horrifying conditions. And the third is that as long as Hamas exists, there will not be peace. There cannot be a permanent peace. It'll restart again if Hamas remains....Not enough attention is being paid to the fact that 20 people that had nothing to do with this are being held hostage in tunnels on the verge of death, and [there is] no real talk about how Hamas needs to be disarmed and disbanded. We have to focus more on those two things." (U.S. State Department) Galia David has viewed the horrifying footage of her emaciated son being forced to dig his own grave in the terror tunnels of Gaza - an image that went around the world. She had already endured nearly two years of unimaginable torment after Evyatar was kidnapped from the Nova festival with his best friend, Guy Gilboa-Dalal. Both 24-year-olds spent their first weeks of captivity bound hand and foot with bags over their heads, blood dripping from their wounded limbs. In February, Hamas cruelly filmed them watching other hostages released, and then returned them to the tunnels. "He looked like a skeleton," Galia tells the Daily Mail. "It is sadistic torture." Today she bravely speaks out for the first time to remind the international community "who here is cruel." "I want everyone in the world to see this image, to know what Hamas terrorists are doing....I want each person to stop and think for a moment: What if this were your son or brother? What would you do?" Guy's father, Ilan Dalal, furious at Britain's decision to follow France in pushing for Palestinian statehood, addressed Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron directly. "Because of you there wasn't an agreement to bring our children home, and you caused the war in Gaza to continue." Guy's mother, Meirav, said, "I am sick of this hypocrisy of the world. People are simply bleeding hearts, and they don't grasp what's happening. And my son and Evyatar are rotting in the tunnels, with other hostages, which is insane." (Daily Mail-UK) American forces pulled out of the "Conoco Fields" base in Deir ez-Zor province in eastern Syria in May, after holding it for years amid repeated attacks. The end of the U.S. presence at Mission Support Site Euphrates came as part of a wider drawdown in Syria in May, with American troops withdrawing from multiple bases used in the fight against ISIS, according to a new quarterly report from the Department of Defense. Despite the drawdown from roughly 2,000 troops to 1,000, U.S. troops remain active in Syria, carrying out operations against ISIS in the country. In February 2018, the outpost was attacked by 500 pro-Assad regime forces, including members of the Russian mercenary firm the Wagner Group. U.S. forces held the outpost as American planes and helicopters poured bombs and rockets onto the attacking troops. No Americans were harmed and several hundred attackers were killed. (Task & Purpose) Israel's Leviathan natural gas field has signed a deal worth up to $35 billion to supply gas to Egypt through 2040, NewMed, one of the partners in the field, said on Thursday. Leviathan began supplying Egypt in 2020 under an initial deal expected to be completed in the early 2030s. (Reuters) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar told the UN Security Council on Tuesday: "I am here today because our hostages are still there. Starved. Tortured by Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the dungeons of Gaza. On October 7th, Hamas invaded with no reason into Israel. It committed evil crimes like the Nazis and ISIS did....This past weekend, the whole world witnessed the cruel starvation of Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski. Tortured at the hands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad." "The world must put an end to the kidnapping of civilians. The international community must make it not worthwhile for the terrorists. Today it's Israel. Tomorrow it's you!...Do you know what Secretary-General Guterres tweeted after the horrible images of Evyatar and Rom were released? Not a word. Deafening silence. Yet we all see his endless and obsessive tweets against Israel." "What we are witnessing today is the rise of psychotic antisemitism around the world, inflamed by modern blood libels, like the darkest days in history. Jews are hunted around the world, simply because they are Jews....It's the only case that people are being hunted everywhere because of their nationality. Do you know of another nation fighting for its life and suffering around the world from hostility and violence?...80 years after the end of the Holocaust, antisemitism is having its golden age." "We call for the immediate and unconditional release of our hostages. We call on the UN Security Council to finally condemn Hamas for its evil crimes and to hold it responsible." (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs) "We've seen Hamas loot and fire at civilians who tried to approach" to receive humanitarian aid, Maj. A. of the Kfir Brigade told Walla on Thursday. "We've treated civilians who were wounded by Hamas gunfire." Maj. A. said of his troops, "They're amazing. They don't go home often, despite the heat and the sand. They're there by choice and out of a true sense of mission. They're happy to be with the company and carry out their duties with excellence." "The morale among the soldiers is high. The fighters give their all, even after two years of combat, and...they're there by choice. We have 100 fighters who believe in the justice of the cause, and they're doing it with excellence." (Jerusalem Post) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
The Gaza War I've seen the level of devastation in Gaza myself from the ground. In places there is nothing other than piles of rubble where buildings once stood, as far as the eye can see. But this ruination should be no surprise to those who understand the way Hamas turned the whole of Gaza into a military redoubt disguised as a civilian population center. If there is greater devastation in Gaza than on some other battlegrounds, it can be understood by Hamas's contemptible way of fighting. Tunnels have featured in armed combat for hundreds of years. But nothing before has come close to Hamas's utilization of the 400 miles of tunnels it dug over 16 years as its primary military infrastructure, shielded beneath populated areas. The interconnected network includes tunnels down to a depth of more than 200 feet. They are used for battle maneuver, weapons storage, command posts and living quarters. In some areas every house or every other house contains weapons and explosives. I have seen boxes of grenades beneath children's beds, rocket launchers in kitchen cupboards, and rifles stashed underneath piles of clothing. Some 40% of buildings in Gaza were also booby-trapped to kill soldiers. In the 1980s, in Belfast during the Troubles, we discovered a house that was similarly booby-trapped by the IRA, with multiple concealed devices intended to kill soldiers and police. In that case, we also decided, rather than risk the lives of our bomb disposal experts, we would use explosives to do the job. Hamas transformed Gaza into an engine of war, harnessing the entire population, every building, every inch of land, along with much of the vast quantity of international aid poured in to help their people. The writer, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, was chairman of the UK's national crisis management committee, COBRA. (Telegraph-UK) The unique conditions of Gaza for creating Hamas's tunnel network are well known: its soft sandstone allows for relatively easy subterranean digging, in contrast to the hard limestone terrain in Lebanon and the West Bank. The prolonged campaign in Gaza stems decisively from the challenge of the underground domain. Beyond the issue of the hostages, which significantly restricts IDF operations, the vast underground space in Gaza enables Hamas to shelter, hide, and disappear. The IDF is left with little choice but to advance slowly and methodically as the default course of action. The underground will remain the most consequential factor shaping the limitations of warfare in Gaza and sustaining Hamas's control of the area. Anyone who hopes for a fundamental change in the Gazan reality must take this into account. The writer is head of the International and Executive MA Programs in Security and Diplomacy at Tel Aviv University. (Institute for National Security Studies-Tel Aviv University) Moshe Fuzaylov, a senior researcher at the Misgav Institute for National Security and a former senior Israel Security Agency official, told Maariv on Thursday: "The military history of eliminating guerrilla movements teaches a simple truth: whoever wants to subdue a sub-state organization must cut it off from the population, isolate it from supplies, and create a psychological rift between the leadership and the 'believers.' We have a rare opportunity to implement this now - without returning Gaza to Hamas." "Hamas relies on a frightened population, supply chains backed by international elements, and a religious faith it has managed to claim as messianic. As is known in the Islamic tradition, there is no obligation to fight when there is weakness of believers, and the good of the nation must be placed above the whims of a lost jihad. This message, if it reaches Gaza correctly, may be received not as surrender, but as religious permission for compromise." (Jerusalem Post) Throughout nearly two years of war, Hamas has used a secret cash-based payment system to pay 30,000 civil servants' salaries. The BBC has spoken to three civil servants who confirmed they have received nearly $300 each within the last week. Tens of thousands of employees have continued to receive 20% of their pre-war salary every 10 weeks. The token salary - a fraction of the full amount - is causing rising resentment among the party faithful. Since there is no functioning banking system in Gaza, and Israel regularly identifies and targets Hamas salary distributors, employees often receive an encrypted message on their phones or their spouses' instructing them to go to a specific location at a specific time to "meet a friend for tea." One senior Hamas employee who is familiar with Hamas's financial operations told the BBC that the group had stockpiled $700 million in cash and hundreds of millions of shekels in underground tunnels prior to the group's Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel. (BBC News) On Aug. 5, Ariel Bibas should have celebrated his sixth birthday. Instead, Ariel, his baby brother Kfir, and their mother, Shiri, 32, were murdered by the Palestinian terrorists who held them hostage for months. For almost two years, Israel has fought a war of rescue, a war to bring its sons and daughters home. The Israel Defense Forces have been fighting with one hand tied behind its back - to preserve the lives of those still in the terrorists' clutches. This war will not end until the hostages come home. The writer, a fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, served as vice president of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the Italian Chamber of Deputies. (JNS) Amid epic military achievements safeguarding Israel and the West, Israel is mired in a difficult war against jihadists using their own people for cannon fodder and propaganda points. Hamas wants to destroy us, not only our reputation. We cannot be so hard-hearted to deny Palestinian suffering. Yet we dare not be so softheaded as to fall for the jihadi genociders' con. 74% of Palestinians cheered as Hamas marauders and Gazan rampagers yelled "Itbah al Yahud" - meaning "slaughter the Jew" - not "end the occupation." Nevertheless, by Oct. 8, Israel was accused of "genocide." With Hamas still holding hostages and amassing weapons, Israel cannot withdraw blithely from Gaza or assume that Hamas will ever relinquish every hostage. The writer, a Distinguished Scholar of North American History at McGill University, is a Senior Fellow in Zionist Thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute. (Jerusalem Post) Iran Recent satellite imagery allows us to have a more realistic picture of the extent of the damage to Iran's nuclear facilities from the Israeli and U.S. strikes. It also provides insights into Iran's initial efforts to rebuild its nuclear program and can help identify potential pathways for developing a covert nuclear weapons program. We determined that the U.S. and Israeli strikes inflicted significant damage on Iran's nuclear program by destroying key infrastructure and human capital. Israel's broader campaign against Iran also targeted military leaders, Iranian missiles, and defense industrial base targets. The precision of these operations revealed a deep penetration of intelligence, particularly by Mossad, into Iran's nuclear program. The strikes did not, however, completely eliminate the nuclear program, such as Pickaxe Mountain, where activity continues, and the underground facility near Isfahan, which could be the third enrichment site. The status of Iran's highly enriched uranium (HEU) remains unknown. The strikes imposed significant damage to Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, and essentially brought operations to a halt. There are no significant signs of the resumption of enrichment activity at the main sites. (Center for Strategic and International Studies) Hizbullah The U.S. government officially delivered its final proposal to Lebanon outlining a roadmap for resolving the country's security crisis. It offers a phased plan for Hizbullah's disarmament - beginning with its heavy weapons, followed by drones, and ending with individual arms. It also calls for a cessation of Israeli strikes, Israeli withdrawal from remaining occupied points in southern Lebanon, and the release of Lebanese detainees. In return, the U.S. and its international partners pledge robust support for Lebanon's reconstruction and economic recovery - contingent upon full compliance with these demands. For decades, Hizbullah has operated beyond the authority of the Lebanese state, unaccountable to its institutions, immune from criticism, and increasingly divorced from the national interest. Its narrative of "resistance" has become a threadbare excuse for political domination, economic capture, and social coercion. It is not merely unwilling to relinquish its weapons - it is unwilling to acknowledge the authority of the very state it claims to protect. Hizbullah is no longer seen as an organic Lebanese actor, but as an Iranian asset whose wars do not rally national unity. We are witnessing the unraveling of a political-military entity whose bluff has been called. Its weapons were never about defending Lebanon, they were about dominating it. When faced with a genuine military threat, Hizbullah collapsed. Hizbullah's arsenal no longer serves as a deterrent against Israel. It has become a liability. The writer is an assistant professor of history at the American University of Beirut. (Al Arabiya-Saudi Arabia) See also Hizbullah Rejects Lebanese Government's Disarmament Plan (France 24) Recognizing a Palestinian State The recent announcements by France, Britain, Canada and other countries that they intend to recognize a Palestinian state have emboldened the Iran-backed Palestinian terror group Hamas. Hamas's initial reaction to the announcements was: "The recognition of the State of Palestine with full sovereignty is the fruit of our people's continuous struggle." Hamas clearly views this as the direct result of its Oct. 7 carnage. Hamas's primary goal is to remain in power after the war so that it can continue its jihad (holy war) to eliminate Israel. Western leaders have succeeded in making any negotiations impossible. The message they sent was: Massacre and keep the hostages and be rewarded with a state. This is certainly not the right time to talk about a "two-state solution." The jihadists and terrorists see it as a reward for their atrocities against Israel. It is more important to focus efforts on dismantling and crushing all the Palestinian terror groups and embarking on a process of deradicalization for the Palestinians before talking about a peace process or "two-state solution." The writer, a veteran Israeli journalist, is a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. (Gatestone Institute) Taiwan has a "far more robust" claim to statehood than Palestine, former UK prime minister Boris Johnson said in Taipei. The Taiwanese "actually have a recognized government. They actually have boundaries that they control. They actually have a proper democratic system, none of which you could say, with all due respect, about Palestine." (Telegraph-UK) In saying that Israel could avoid British recognition of Palestine by securing a peace deal, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is not only giving Hamas inordinate leverage, he is transforming recognition from a statement of legal fact into a disciplinary tool. This is politics masquerading as law. The legal conditions for statehood are set out clearly in the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States of 1933. Four criteria are necessary: a permanent population, defined territory, a government and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. Recognition acknowledges these facts. It doesn't create them. International law has always been clear that statehood is recognized, not granted. The writer, a member of the British Parliament, is a former Security Minister. (Washington Post) Israel and the West Western newspapers and television screens recently filled with images of two emaciated Palestinian children, presented as proof that Israel is starving Gaza. Yet both were later revealed to suffer from pre-existing muscular diseases. Now contrast that with the world's reaction to the videos of two skeletal Israeli hostages - the latest grotesque propaganda released by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. These images were not splashed across front pages. It took days for many outlets even to report them - and with none of the intensity that attended far shakier claims about Israel. These emaciated, brutalized, traumatized hostages simply don't fit the narrative that much of the media, NGOs, and even some Western governments have spent the past 22 months carefully constructing. In this script, Israel - the victim of a genocidal assault - is recast as its perpetrator. (Jewish Chronicle-UK) The wave of anti-Israel protests that exploded across the globe did not emerge in response to Israeli military action in Gaza. It began before Israel launched a single airstrike - before one soldier crossed the border, before the blood of Israeli civilians from the Oct. 7 massacre was even dry. It was a global campaign of antisemitism, unleashed the moment Jews were slaughtered. Selective outrage is not justice. And when that selectivity always targets the Jewish state, it is antisemitism, plain and simple. Any honest person knows that Israel is not a colonialist enterprise. It is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. We Jews are indigenous to that land - our language, holidays, history, holy sites, and our identity are all rooted there. We have lived, prayed, died and returned there for more than 3,000 years. Modern Israel is a multiethnic, pluralistic democracy. It is not ruled by a foreign empire from across the sea. By definition, Israel is not a colony. Those who chant otherwise either don't know the definition of colonization - or they don't care. These same protesters romanticize Hamas, a genocidal Islamist regime that commits daily human-rights violations. Hamas doesn't want peace. They want leverage. And the world enables their cruelty. Why do these "activists" go silent when Jews are the victims? The global anti-Israel movement is not about Palestinian rights. It's about erasing Jewish rights. To those who cling to propaganda, who parrot slogans without understanding, know this: You have been seduced by ideologies that would crush your own freedoms. You are fighting for regimes that would silence you, erase your identity and criminalize your speech. That is not justice. That is self-delusion. You are not resisting oppression. You are enabling it. (JNS) 22 months after the slaughter of the innocents in Israel by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, murderous appendages of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Western liberals join the Iranians and the apologists for Hamas by sanctimoniously and erroneously accusing Israel of genocide. These sentiments are the moral posturing of politicians and publicists more concerned with flaunting their own confused ethics than with helping the democracies to beat the authoritarians. Accusing Israel of genocide and recognizing a non-existent state are the luxury beliefs of Western foreign policy, elicited in response to misleading photographs on front pages and fake fatality statistics, and utterly divorced from strategic reality. The war in Gaza is brutal, but one cannot call this nasty war genocide. The Israeli government does not intend to kill Palestinian civilians. Nothing remotely resembling a Palestinian state exists today. Nor is one likely to exist at any point in the foreseeable future. The Palestinian Authority (PA) is an oxymoron; Palestinians despise it, and it has no authority. Hamas continues to enjoy significant support in both Gaza and the West Bank. According to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, in May, 64% of Gazans said they opposed the disarmament of Hamas in order to stop the war. Most Israelis regard Oct. 7 as an event disqualifying the Palestinians from self-government, not entitling them to it. Nine out of ten Palestinians simply deny the Oct. 7 atrocities took place. The writer, a historian who has taught at Cambridge, Oxford, and Harvard, is a fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. (The Times-UK) Israeli Security As the war against Hamas in Gaza drags into its second year, international hostility toward the Jewish state continues to intensify. For decades, Israel has voluntarily limited its existential war against Palestinian attempts to wipe it out by self-imposed moral constraints. These constraints - designed to win favor with the global community and maintain a sense of ethical superiority - have not yielded strategic dividends. Instead, they have led to painful losses, squandered leverage and emboldened its enemies. Israel must adopt a new strategic doctrine grounded in realism and deterrence. Being liked might have been a necessary strategy for Jewish survival when it depended on non-Jewish largesse, but it is a bad strategy for an independent, self-respecting, and increasingly self-reliant state. Being morally superior has not brought peace. It has not earned goodwill. It has not prevented charges of war crimes. Instead, it has made Israel look weak, hesitant and unsure of its own legitimacy. Hatred of Israel has only increased. Killing terrorists is necessary, but it is not sufficient. The strategic elimination of enemy combatants has rarely deterred the next generation from taking up arms. In fact, martyrdom has often fueled the ranks of jihadist movements. Israel must get tough, not out of cruelty, but out of clarity. Not to match the barbarism of its enemies, but to defeat it. The wars against Palestinian exterminationism and for public opinion will be won when the enemies of Israel believe that the cost of attacking the Jewish state is too high to bear. The writer is the publisher of the Jewish News Syndicate. (JNS) Weekend Features During World War I, the Jews of Palestine suffered from hunger, disease, and oppression. The territory was ruled with an iron fist by the Ottoman (Turkish) army. In 1914, Turkey abolished agreements with European powers which granted them elements of sovereignty over their subjects in the Ottoman Empire. The financial assistance the Jews received from their European Jewish brethren evaporated. Many Jews of the Holy Land were seen as citizens of the enemy - France, Britain and Russia. The Turkish authorities ordered their immediate expulsion. In 1915, a plague of locusts of Biblical proportions ravaged the land for six months. The U.S. retained its neutrality in the war until 1917. The Americans were the only ones left to help the Jews of Palestine. On October 6, 1914, the U.S. Navy's USS North Carolina landed in Jaffa harbor and delivered $50,000 to the U.S. consul general for distribution to the Jewish community. The USS North Carolina, Vulcan, Des Moines, and Tennessee made 13 port visits, delivering aid to the Jews of Palestine until the U.S. entered the war. The U.S. ships also departed the Holy Land with Jews who were expelled or had to flee the Turks because of their Russian origins, Zionist activity, or draft dodging. Some 6,000 Jews of Palestine were evacuated by U.S. Navy ships in 1914 and 1915. The Jews of the Holy Land "would have succumbed had not financial help arrived from America," according to a Zionist Organization of London report. "America was at that time the one country which through its political and financial position was able to save [Jewish] Palestine permanently from going under." The writer, a Research and Diplomacy Fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, is the author of American Interests in the Holy Land Revealed in Early Photographs: 1840-1940. (Substack) Observations: Is Combating Media Bias Possible? - Jonathan S. Tobin (JNS)
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