| DAILY ALERT |
Sunday, November 1, 2026 |
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
The looming possibility of U.S. strikes on Iran has been met with weary nervousness in the Persian Gulf. Leaders in Persian Gulf nations, which bore the brunt of Iranian retaliation because they are home to U.S. bases, are calling for de-escalation as concerns about President Trump's war plans grow. In Bahrain, an island nation that has hosted the U.S. Fifth Fleet for more than 30 years and was targeted by hundreds of Iranian drones and missiles, signs of the previous phases of escalation are still obvious. Many said that their perception of the U.S. had changed. They had believed the Fifth Fleet base would protect them but found it became a vulnerability. Since the war began, Gulf nations have been bolstering their defenses. Albert Vidal, a research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), noted that in terms of counter-drone systems, the Gulf states have a "greater menu of available options" than at the beginning of the conflict in February 2026. (Washington Post) At least 25 ships were hit in the Strait of Hormuz in October, but daily oil exports surged to 14 million barrels for the week ending on Oct. 18, 80% of prewar averages. U.S. Central Command said Sunday that over the past six months, more than 3,000 commercial vessels have transited the waterway. (Washington Post) See also Inside the U.S. Military's Mission to Keep Gulf Oil Flowing - Shelby Holliday American jet fighters loaded with air-to-air missiles catapult off the deck of the aircraft carrier USS George Washington and make their way toward the Strait of Hormuz to shoot down Iranian cruise missiles and drones aimed at commercial ships. U.S. pilots sync up with electronic-warfare planes, flying radar systems and submarine-hunting helicopters to create an umbrella of protection over tankers transiting the waterway. (Wall Street Journal) The war with Iran has been very lucrative for American oil companies, which have earned more than $130 billion in profit. American producers are reaping greater income from higher prices without having to contend with the danger or cost of operating in conflict zones. (New York Times) The Liberian-flagged Contship Jet, operating under charter to Israeli shipping company ZIM, has sunk in the Black Sea after being struck by three maritime drones while traveling from Haifa to Romania on Oct. 28. All 18 crew members, 14 Filipinos and four Ukrainians, were rescued unharmed, but all 421 containers aboard were lost. (Jewish Chronicle-UK) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
U.S. and Israeli forces could be ready within days to launch major strikes against Iran in an operation intended to be short, lasting only a few days, but highly intensive. CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper presented President Trump on Thursday with operational options that he and his staff developed jointly with the Israel Defense Forces. There is a strong likelihood the IDF would be a full partner in any American strike. Trump wants to use a military strike to bring Iran to compromise on U.S. demands concerning its military nuclear program and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping. The strike is intended to weaken the Iranian regime and the Revolutionary Guards. If they still refused, the continuing economic blockade would leave the regime considerably weaker and more vulnerable internally. The U.S. military objectives include preventing Iran from attacking vessels sailing through the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranians have begun using speedboats to magnetically attach small naval mines to the hulls of ships that U.S. forces are escorting. The mines do not necessarily sink the vessels but can damage and disable them. Another objective is to strike Iran's ballistic missile and drone production and launch capabilities on a large scale to prevent Iran from attacking American forces and allies. An additional objective is to inflict more extensive damage on Iran's nuclear facilities, preventing it from resuming uranium enrichment and nuclear warhead development for many years. The Americans and Israelis would likely seek to disable the tunnels at Pickaxe Mountain and bury the uranium enriched to 60% even deeper underground. That material is located at Isfahan, Fordow, and an underground facility near Natanz. Other secret nuclear facilities recently uncovered by intelligence agencies would also be targeted. (Ynet News) Ten U.S. Air Force transport aircraft carrying military equipment arrived at air force bases in Israel as part of a larger Middle East air convoy, Israel's Channel 11 reported Thursday. Other U.S. aircraft landed in Jordan, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. (Jerusalem Post) See also U.S. Military Movements Don't Signal a Decision to Strike - Elisha Ben Kimon (Ynet News) Hizbullah is unlikely to join a renewed war between the U.S. and Iran unless Tehran's leadership faces an existential threat, a senior Lebanese official has told The National. (The National-UAE) The level of terrorism in Judea and Samaria has declined in the past year to a level not seen since before the First Intifada in 1987. Six Israelis have been killed so far in 2026, compared to 46 in 2024 and 43 in 2023. The number of wounded from terrorist attacks dropped by 42% from 2024 to 2025. The most important reason for this sharp decline is a radical change in counterterrorism strategy that began in 2024 to one of permanently occupying the large refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nablus, where the terrorists were concentrated. In the course of occupying these camps and the relocation of many of its inhabitants, the local battalion-level units were systematically destroyed, almost to the last man. Reducing Palestinian terrorism also means a reduction of Palestinian casualties. Moreover, Hamas spokesmen have acknowledged that harsher conditions imposed in Israeli prisons in the past three years have had a dampening effect on Hamas recruitment. In 2026, only one Israeli citizen was slightly wounded in a terrorist event in Jerusalem, where the level of violence is on par with Oslo. The writer is a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and professor emeritus at Bar-Ilan University. (Jerusalem Post) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Israeli Knesset Election 2026 - The Arab Vote In the aftermath of Israel's Knesset election, Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh offers an interpretation of the extraordinary turnout among Israeli Arab voters and the 19 Knesset seats won by the Arab parties. The Arab vote, he believes, should not simply be read as a rebellion against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or his political partners. Beneath the rhetoric of the Arab political leadership, something deeper is happening: A significant part of Arab society wants greater integration into Israel. One reason for the dramatic change was "the desire for integration. Working among Israelis and enjoying a free and democratic society, students, workers, judges and doctors in hospitals want to have a greater say. It is the only country in which Arabs can organize, demonstrate and vote freely." "In Italian society, too, minorities live protected by Italian law. Many appreciate this. Others less so. Minorities need to expand their opportunities and improve their situation, and despite the problems, this has also happened among the Arabs. Many of the people I speak with have a sincere desire to share in...Israeli society as a whole." Yet the rhetoric of Arab political leaders frequently appears much more radical than the attitudes Abu Toameh describes. Some Arab politicians have refused to describe Hamas as a terrorist organization and have accused Israel of colonialism and genocide. He responds, "The leaders of the Arab parties are highly rhetorical and sometimes stupid. They do not express the expectations and desires of a large part of Arab society....If the current Arab leadership says a lot of foolish things, that is wrong. They should stop seeking support by attacking Israel. Many Arabs want greater integration....Many believe that the Oct. 7 disaster was monstrous, and they have no problem saying that Hamas is a terrorist organization. It is so obvious." Perhaps this is the most unexpected message of the election. The extraordinary Arab turnout may mean that they increasingly want a stake in the country in which they live. Khaled Abu Toameh and Fiamma Nirenstein are both fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. (JNS) The huge Arab turnout in the Israeli election this week should ring loud alarm bells. What suddenly became visible in Israel was what's been emerging in Europe and now also in America: the weaponization of democracy by Islamic power. The Arabs' result is not a triumph of civil rights. It's a strategy of using those civil rights as a weapon for Israel's destruction. Jubilant supporters of the Arab Joint List, whose candidates celebrated the terror attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, sang Biladi, biladi ("My homeland, my country") during election-night celebrations. The song extols the redemption of Palestine and its liberation through blood and fire. The writer is a columnist for The Times-UK. (JNS) Palestinian Arabs Regarding the core issue of a Palestinian state and Israel retaining at least parts of Judea and Samaria, there isn't a whole lot differentiating Netanyahu's Likud from the opposition parties of Eizenkot, Lieberman, and Bennett-Lapid. The answer is Oct. 7. Any country that was viciously attacked as was Israel in 2023 would immediately strike forcefully against its enemy, concomitantly reverting psychologically to a far more militaristic mindset. Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies conducted an in-depth survey of West Bank Palestinians in 2025 and found: "More than half of the Palestinian public in the West Bank (54%) thinks that the State of Israel has no right to exist, while...among 18-34 year-olds in the West Bank, the proportion opposing Israel's existence is particularly high - 75%." Not only do most West Bank Palestinians consider the State of Israel to be illegitimate, but the "future" adult cohort looks even worse. What is the average Israeli supposed to think? There is no realistic partner for peace. Thus, for the foreseeable future the "two-state solution" remains a non-starter as long as the Palestinians (especially Hamas) don't change. The writer, Academic Head of the Communications Department at the Peres Academic Center in Rehovot, taught at Bar-Ilan University (1977-2017). (Times of Israel) Gaza Hamas's Oct. 7 massacre manifested the Islamic categorization of territory into the House of Islam and the House of War, and the imperative of reconquering formerly Muslim-controlled territory. Hamas also murdered fellow Muslims that day whom they considered traitors to Islam. Today's Islamic civilization seeks to eventually subjugate and Islamize non-Muslim societies through any means possible, among which are mass immigration, information warfare, and the spreading of Islam in the educational and cultural spheres. Western governments and officials who relentlessly seek permanent peaceful solutions with Muslim-majority countries do so at their peril. Westerners continue to ignore the fact that the values and objectives of Islam differ from those of the West. Muslims understand the Western concept of compromise as a form of defeat. The writer, a fellow of the Jerusalem Center, served as an adviser on the Islamic world for the U.S. Department of Defense for 28 years. (Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) Israel and the West In his novel 1984, George Orwell wrote: "The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies." Three years ago, thousands of attackers crossed from Gaza into Israel in a Hamas-led invasion. Their intent was genocidal. They murdered, raped, and kidnapped. Babies, pregnant women, entire families, farm workers, elderly people, Holocaust survivors, and peace activists were all among their victims. Hamas had long been designated a terrorist organization across the West. Its ideology was openly antisemitic and virulently hostile not only to Israel but also to core Western freedoms. But before the dead had been buried, the account of what happened began to change, manipulated by Hamas and its allies and enablers in the West. The deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust was blurred, rationalized, justified, celebrated, and, in certain quarters, dismissed as a false-flag operation. Hamas had announced its intention to destroy Israel long ago. On Oct. 7, its attackers acted on that aim with unprecedented ferocity, in full view of the world, gleefully recording and sharing their crimes with family and friends. Yet, in the story that took hold in many quarters, democratic Israel became the villain, the aggressor, and even the alleged perpetrator of genocide. Terrorist Hamas, meanwhile, was sanitized as a resistance movement. Its killers were romanticized as freedom fighters. Hamas started a war. It was a naked act of aggression. And then, along with fellow travelers, it methodically convinced much of the world that it was the innocent victim of the very war it began. The writer is executive vice chair of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP). (Jewish Chronicle-UK) Before Oct. 7, 2023, the English-language Wikipedia article on Zionism opened by describing a movement that emerged to "espouse support for the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine." Since then, the opening has been reworded to say that this homeland was to be established "through colonization." The editor who introduced it in August 2024 has since been banned from the entire Palestine-Israel topic area for non-neutral editing. Yet the sentence survives, and for a year Wikipedia formally barred its editors from even discussing whether to remove it. Wikipedia articles are supposed to summarize what reliable sources say without taking a position of their own. Yet, over the past three years, Wikipedia's coverage of this topic has undergone an extraordinary transformation - 80% of the article has been completely rewritten to present a simplistic, partisan account dominated by the perspective of Zionism's political adversaries. (Quillette-Australia) I am a Black American who is not Jewish. In the aftermath of Oct. 7, 2023, I was constantly looking for activities in Atlanta that expressed solidarity with Israel and the Jewish people. I wanted to find opportunities to stand alongside people who understood that the Hamas-led massacre of Israeli civilians was not merely another development in an interminable geopolitical dispute. It was an assault on human beings, on Jewish life, and on the fundamental right of a people to exist without fear of annihilation. Amid the increasingly visible demonstrations against Israel, what I witnessed as the real-time Palestinization of America struck me as a profoundly misguided response to the events of Oct. 7 and their aftermath. Too often, I saw political activism that appeared less interested in understanding the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than in making Israel the embodiment of every grievance imaginable. Let me be clear: Palestinian civilians possess human dignity and legitimate rights. Their suffering deserves serious consideration. One can argue for Palestinian self-determination without denying the Jewish people's right to national self-determination. But there is a difference between advocating for Palestinians and demanding the elimination of the Jewish state. There is a difference between pursuing justice and dressing up hostility toward Jews and Israel in the language of human rights. I could never accept the proposition that an existing sovereign state should simply cease to exist because someone objected to its existence. The Jewish people's historical and religious connection to the Land of Israel extends back thousands of years. The Jewish people have endured centuries of persecution, expulsion, discrimination, and violence. The Holocaust remains the bloodiest and most devastating modern expression of that history, but antisemitism did not disappear with the defeat of the Nazis. Jewish communities continue to navigate the consequences of an ancient hatred that repeatedly finds new language and new political surroundings. Oct. 7th added another terrible chapter to that history. (Times of Israel) "On the ground. Now." I dropped. Face down on the stones near a Ramle market, hands locked behind my neck. Somewhere above me, a piece of technology was trying to intercept a missile from Yemen. I had spent two years calling for the divestment of the very system I was now praying would work. The missile had not read my posts. 13 days after Oct. 7, Israel hadn't launched its ground invasion, yet somehow, Stanford students had become genocide scholars overnight. And I was one of them. Only one question mattered: Were you against genocide or not? Nothing recruits faster than the promise of being on the right side of history. I was marching for a Palestinian state. The one time I mentioned two states, my new friends from the campus encampment corrected me, gently, the way you correct someone embarrassing themselves: believing Israel should exist made me a Zionist. A slur. Next day, I was an anti-Zionist. Months later, someone sent me an email about an exhibit in LA about the Nova Music Festival massacre. I decided to go. Somebody had to fact-check it. I stayed longer than I meant to. I realized I was fluent in the state's sins but illiterate in its people. So I went to meet them. In Ramle, all I could think was: will it hit, will it hit, will it hit? I turned my head and saw it: a thin white line climbing to meet another one. Ramle has mosques and synagogues a few streets apart. Whoever fired it was aiming at both. Then the interception. The boom. Then everyone just kept walking. The marketplace reopened almost immediately. (Times of Israel) Antisemitism In this year's midterm elections, for the first time in generations, antisemitism has emerged from the shadows to influence American public life. From Graham Platner to Abdul El-Sayed, from Hasan Piker to Tucker Carlson, antagonism toward Israel and "Zionists" has morphed into fear and loathing of a minority that has lived peaceably and productively in this country for more than 300 years. The results on Nov. 3 will measure our collective immunity to an ageless hatred that destroys everything it touches. El-Sayed has made opposition to the U.S.-Israel alliance central to his candidacy. He demonizes Israel for committing a bogus "genocide" against Palestinians. He falsely charges Israel with apartheid while saying nothing about human-rights abuses in Iran. He refuses to say Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state. He didn't want to comment on the assassination of Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei because "there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad" about his death. His flippant response to a failed terror attack on a synagogue and preschool was that "hurt people hurt people." He implied during a recent debate that Israel and Iran are equal threats to the U.S. Victory for candidates who traffic in antisemitism will switch on a massive green light for antisemites across the political spectrum. The legitimacy barrier against open antisemitism will fall. American Jews will be in danger. They already are. Anti-Jewish attacks are the most common form of religious-based hate crimes, according to FBI data. Efforts to delegitimize Israel wind up legitimizing hostility to Jews. (Wall Street Journal) Observations: The "Iran Problem" Cannot Be Resolved without Regime Change - Amir Taheri (Gatestone Institute)
The writer was executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979. |
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