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In-Depth Issues:
IDF Rejects Hamas Disarmament that Exempts Kalashnikov Rifles - Yonah Jeremy Bob ( Jerusalem Post)
IDF sources predicted on Thursday that there is a high probability that eventually a sizable military operation will be required against Hamas to ensure its disarmament.
The IDF rejected ideas leaked by U.S. officials for disarming Hamas that focus on collecting Hamas's "heavy" weapons, such as rockets and rocket-propelled grenades, for storage.
Placing these and any other Hamas weapons in storage would essentially allow them to keep their weapons but just change their address.
Hamas would either control the storage guards or would easily overpower them.
Moreover, merely collecting heavy weapons would be insufficient.
Seizing Hamas's Kalashnikov rifles would be crucial to limiting its lethal capacity. A large number of Oct. 7 victims were killed by these rifles.
Disarming Hamas Is a Fantasy - Interview with former Mossad official Oded Ailam ( Jerusalem Post)
Oded Ailam, former head of the Counterterrorism Division in the Mossad, told 103FM on Tuesday:
"The whole system Trump is building, based on a wishful thinking fantasy, is unrealistic. It doesn't align with the multi-layered archaeology and geology of the Middle East, which spans thousands of years."
"Hamas won't commit suicide in broad daylight and won't disarm. First, we need to let this fantasy dissipate."
He said Hamas knows what their fate would be if they disarmed. "In the past, they threw Fatah members from the 14th floor. Here, there's a minor technical problem, there are no more 14th floors in Gaza."
"The other techniques work very well, and Hamas knows this well. The biggest fear there is settling internal scores."
Hamas Intends to Control Gaza from Behind the Scenes - Yonah Jeremy Bob ( Jerusalem Post)
According to the IDF, Hamas will accept the Palestinian technocrat committee - the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) - with the goal of controlling it from behind the scenes, as Hizbullah has done in Lebanon.
Handing over civilian functions to the NCAG makes Hamas's life easier, as they do not need to invest in civilian issues.
The IDF noted that even though the NCAG will not be formally controlled by Hamas, it will still need to rely on local administrators in the field who are under Hamas control.
This would not truly dislodge Hamas from power absent an additional round of military pressure.
IDF: Gaza Casualties include Many Killed by Palestinian Rockets or Executed by Hamas - Yonah Jeremy Bob ( Jerusalem Post)
The IDF said Wednesday that 25,000 Hamas terrorists were killed during the Gaza War.
Moreover, the IDF presented evidence that through early 2024, when Hamas was firing large daily rocket salvos, 13% of their rockets were misfires, killing many Palestinians.
There were also periods when Hamas executed large numbers of Palestinians whom it viewed as political opponents, or civilians being prevented from fleeing an area.
The IDF said UN aid officials in the field have admitted that their headquarters' political bosses invented or exaggerated the food insecurity in Gaza in order to pressure Israel into ending the war earlier.
Follow the Jerusalem Center on:
Should Iran's Executioners Go Unpunished? - Bret Stephens ( New York Times)
This month the Iranian regime massacred its own people. Who will impose meaningful consequences on the Iranian regime for one of the worst atrocities of this century?
Not the UN Security Council, where Iran can rely on diplomatic cover from its close friends in Moscow and Beijing.
Not the EU, which has condemned and sanctioned Iran, but lacks any additional means to punish it.
And not the campus activists and global do-gooders who care so deeply about Palestinian lives but not about Iranian ones.
BBC Apologizes after Holocaust Memorial Day Report Omits Jews - David Brown ( The Times-UK)
The BBC apologized on Tuesday after introducing coverage of Holocaust Memorial Day without referring to the murder of Jews.
The day was introduced on BBC Breakfast as "remembering the six million people murdered by the Nazi regime over 80 years ago."
Lord Pickles, special envoy for post-Holocaust issues from 2015 until 2025, said the failure to highlight Jewish victims was "an unambiguous example of Holocaust distortion, which is a form of denial."
Syrian Kurds: "We Fought ISIS for America, Now Trump Has Abandoned Us" - Mustafa al-Ali ( The Times-UK)
After leading the overthrow of the dictator Bashar al-Assad in 2024, President al-Sharaa has sought to bring the autonomous Kurdish enclave in eastern Syria to heel. And this time, the U.S. backs the besiegers.
"We lost many young men fighting beside the Americans who left us now to face this attack by those jihadists," said Nadia Omar, 56, a Kurd who fled to the city of Kobani to escape fighting in the countryside.
"Why did we sacrifice our men to fight ISIS with U.S. soldiers who are providing no security for us? I and many others from my village feel betrayed by what the Americans did to us."
Tens of thousands of Kurds have fled the fighting around Kobani and sought protection in the town.
There is no electricity to heat the homes against the bitter north Syrian winter cold, and no water.
Although the town is near the border with Turkey, the Turks have assisted the military campaign against the Kurdish enclave in northeast Syria that emerged over the past decade during the civil war.
The campaign has already resulted in large swathes of the Kurdish-controlled territory falling to the Syrian army, along with prisons and camps housing ISIS inmates and their relatives.
The Kurds have accused Sharaa's forces, which include many former jihadists, of committing atrocities against them during the campaign.
Sharaa's forces are now besieging Kobani and their goal is to end the experiment of Kurdish self-rule in eastern Syria.
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
- Trump Weighs Iran Strikes - Samia Nakhoul
President Trump is weighing options against Iran that include targeted strikes on security forces and leaders, seeking to create conditions for "regime change" after a crackdown crushed a nationwide protest movement earlier this month, killing thousands of people.
However, a senior Israeli official told Reuters Israel does not believe airstrikes alone can topple the Islamic Republic. "If you're going to topple the regime, you have to put boots on the ground," he said, noting that even if the U.S. killed Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran would "have a new leader that will replace him." Only a combination of external pressure and an organized domestic opposition could shift Iran's political trajectory, the official said. Multiple U.S. intelligence reports reached a similar conclusion.
Khamenei has retreated from daily governance, and day-to-day management has shifted to figures aligned with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which dominates Iran's security network and big parts of the economy. Arab officials and diplomats said they believe the IRGC could take over, entrenching hard-line rule, deepening the nuclear standoff and regional tensions.
Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute, said that without large-scale military defections, Iran's protests remained "heroic but outgunned." The most likely outcome is a "grinding erosion - elite defections, economic paralysis, contested succession - that frays the system until it snaps." (Reuters)
- U.S. Tells UN: Gaza Demilitarization to include Internationally-Funded Buyback Program
U.S. Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz told the UN Security Council on Wednesday:
"Hamas and other militant groups must lay down their arms. Point 1 of the President's 20-point plan is that Gaza will be a deradicalized terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors. They must live up to their end of the bargain....Only deradicalization, only disarmament, only demilitarization will bring Gaza prosperity and stability."
"Hamas must not have any role in the governance of Gaza, directly or indirectly, in any form. Period. All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt."
"Independent international monitors will supervise a process of demilitarization of Gaza to include placing weapons permanently beyond use through an agreed process of decommissioning, and supported by an internationally-funded buy back and reintegration program." (U.S. Mission to the UN)
- Hamas Seeks Role for Its Police in Gaza - Nidal Al-Mughrabi
Hamas is seeking to incorporate its 10,000 police officers into a new U.S.-backed Palestinian administration for Gaza, sources say, a demand likely to be opposed by Israel. In a letter to staff on Sunday, Gaza's Hamas-run government urged its 40,000 civil servants and security personnel to cooperate with the new National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) but assured them it was working to incorporate them into the new government.
(Reuters)
News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
- Netanyahu: No Gaza Rebuild before Hamas Disarms, Israel Will Keep Security Control over Gaza
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday: "Absolute victory rests on three things: The return of all our hostages, the dismantling of Hamas's weapons, and the demilitarization of Gaza. Only in this way will we ensure that Gaza no longer poses a threat to the State of Israel. Yesterday, we fully completed the sacred mission of returning all of our hostages."
"Now we are focusing on completing the two remaining missions: The disarming of Hamas and the demilitarization of Gaza from weapons and tunnels....It will be done either the easy way or the hard way. But in any case, it will happen!"
"I hear even now the statements that we will allow the reconstruction of Gaza before demilitarization. That will not happen. I hear that we will bring Turkish soldiers and Qatari soldiers into Gaza. That will also not happen. I hear that I will allow the establishment of a Palestinian state in Gaza. That has not happened, and it will not happen."
"Israel will maintain security control over the entire area from the Jordan [River] to the [Mediterranean] sea, and that is also true regarding Gaza."
"Yesterday I participated in the Second International Conference on Combatting Antisemitism...against the backdrop of the wave of violent antisemitism sweeping many countries. I said there: We have the opportunity to see the enormous turnaround we have brought about in the life of our people."
"What they said about the Jews, they say today about the State of the Jews....But today we have a state, we have an army, we have wonderful young men and women. When they attack us, we fight back. Do they slander us? Yes. But when they come to slaughter us, we fight back fiercely, and we win." (Prime Minister's Office)
- IDF: Gaza Is Now "Flooded with Food, Water, and Medicine" - Yoav Zitun
Hamas continues to produce rockets and explosives, staff its command centers, rebuild damaged tunnels, and solidify its rule over two million people in Gaza, senior Israeli defense officials say. Many civilians are experiencing a relative return to normalcy, including reopening banks, restaurants and markets. Farmers have returned to their fields and schools have reopened.
Israeli officers warned, "We must immediately stop the 600 trucks we are sending in daily, three to four times what Gaza needs according to the UN." Hamas is collecting millions of shekels in taxes from those supply trucks. Gaza is now "flooded with food, water, medicines and more." Even the UN has complained it no longer has space to store supplies arriving from international aid organizations. (Ynet News)
- Palestinian Attempts to Stab Soldiers at Jerusalem Checkpoint - Emanuel Fabian
A Palestinian man, Qussai Halaika, 28, arrived on foot at the tunnels checkpoint south of Jerusalem on Wednesday and tried to stab Israeli Border Police officers. The assailant was shot and killed.
(Times of Israel)
Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Gaza
- How to Achieve Hamas's Disarmament and Gaza's Demilitarization - Tzachi Hanegbi
As the U.S. launches the second stage of the Trump plan, the core of the president's vision is turning Gaza into an area free of terrorist activity. After the proven ability of President Trump and his team to extract the hostages from Hamas tunnels "against all odds," Israel is right to grant the U.S. president room to operate.
There is a need to coordinate with the White House a detailed timetable for Hamas's disarmament and for the demilitarization of Gaza. Disarmament means the transfer of all weapons held by Hamas and smaller organizations to a body agreed upon by the U.S. and Israel and their removal from Gaza. This includes all components related to rocket arrays, all anti-tank weapons, all explosives and materials that are part of their production process, and all small arms.
Demilitarizing Gaza means destruction of military infrastructure, including an extensive tunnel network, most of which is still operational, and weapons production facilities, now concentrated mainly in areas where the IDF did not operate systematically, such as the central camps.
Reconstruction for Gaza's residents should take place only in areas under IDF control. Only there will construction materials be brought in, rubble cleared, and temporary housing installed. In areas under Hamas control, reconstruction will not begin as long as the condition requiring the removal of all weapons from the area has not been fulfilled.
The IDF has for some time been formulating operational plans to achieve the war's unfulfilled objectives: the destruction of the military and governing capabilities of the terrorist organizations to ensure that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israeli citizens. If Trump's vision is realized, as it was with the hostages, the gain is entirely ours. And if Hamas undermines Trump, the decision of when and how to act rests entirely in our hands.
The writer served as Israel's National Security Advisor from 2023 to 2025.
(Ynet News)
Iran
- Iran's Options: Talking or Fighting - David S. Cloud
President Trump's ultimatum to Iran calls for it to negotiate away its nuclear program or face a possible attack. Either path risks putting the already weakened regime in a more precarious position. Along with insisting that Iran halt domestic enrichment of nuclear fuel and hand over its stockpile of uranium, Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff has indicated Tehran must accept limits on its ballistic-missile arsenal and abandon its support for militias in the region.
A decision to halt enrichment of uranium would be a humiliating public retreat on a core national priority for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Rebuffing the demand is increasingly likely to prompt Trump to order strikes, further exposing the government's vulnerability.
"Their strategy right now is just buying time," said Alan Eyre, a former senior U.S. diplomat who specialized in Iran and is now at the Middle East Institute. "Their whole strategic outlook is when you're in a weak position you don't compromise, because that invites further aggression."
"The supreme leader is able to do compromises, but those compromises cannot touch the basic pillars of the regime, meaning he won't forgo a missile buildup, he won't forgo helping proxies and he won't forgo enrichment," said Danny Citrinowicz, a former Israeli intelligence officer and a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
Citrinowicz said killing Khamenei or expecting the other members of the regime to turn against him under U.S. pressure is a faint hope, given Iran's unity at the top. Even if Khamenei was somehow removed, the regime would likely coalesce quickly around a new leader, he said. For all the setbacks the regime has suffered, there are few signs it is facing imminent collapse, such as splits within the leadership or defections.
"They still have cohesion. The regime is still functioning," Citrinowicz said. "If they feel this war is aimed at toppling this regime, it won't topple this regime, because to do it will take time, and Trump has no intention to invest that time."
"You could do airstrikes that significantly restrict this regime's ability to control its population and to project power abroad," Eyre said. "But to get from there to a better form of government in Iran? You can't get there from here." (Wall Street Journal)
- A Battered Iran Is Still Able to Mount a Deadly Response to U.S. Strikes -
Laurence Norman
The Iranian regime emerged from June's 12-day war with Israel with much of its arsenal of thousands of ballistic missiles intact, which gives it the ability to inflict real damage on the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East.
Tehran has an estimated 2,000 midrange ballistic missiles that can reach Israel.
It also has significant stockpiles of short-range missiles capable of reaching U.S. bases in the Gulf and ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran also has significant stockpiles of antiship cruise missiles and torpedo boats, as well as many drones that can threaten U.S. ships. "Tehran may be weak, but its robust missile force means it is still lethal," said Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington.
The U.S. has a range of assets it would need to defend in the Middle East. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday there were 30,000-40,000 U.S. troops stationed in eight or nine facilities in the region within reach of Iranian missiles and drones. (Wall Street Journal)
Arab World
- Why Israel, U.S. Must Stand with the UAE - Aviram Bellaishe
In recent weeks, a Saudi strategic influence campaign has targeted the UAE, branding it an "Israeli Trojan horse" and "an Israeli project wearing an Arab cloak." The goal is to burn the legitimacy of a state that chose the Abraham Accords.
An alliance is measured not only in good times but in the readiness to stand together when costs arise. When an ally is targeted because of the alliance, this is an opportunity to show what the Abraham Accords alliance means.
The UAE is not just another partner. It is an anchor. It was the first actor to take political risk, sign, open the door for others, and build a partnership with Israel. Abu Dhabi did something rare: It chose a side and remained. Even in the midst of the Israel-Hamas War, the UAE refrained from recalling its ambassadors, canceling flights to Israel, or freezing cooperation, despite massive pressure from the Arab world.
The writer is vice president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.
(Jerusalem Post)
Antisemitism
- Why Are Jews Still Attacked Worldwide? - Amb. Danny Danon
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is meant to force the world to confront the industrial murder of six million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators. Education is meant to prevent repetition. But remembrance without action is hollow.
While solemn words are uttered, Jewish people are being attacked worldwide for being Jewish. Antisemitism is spreading with alarming speed, and the institutions built to confront hatred are too often enabling the pernicious narratives that sustain it.
Genocide does not begin with mass killings. Long before that, it begins with gradual dehumanization. With language that strips a people of legitimacy. With lies repeated until they sound like fact and with moral confusion masquerading as neutrality.
Today, antisemitism often disguises itself as hostility toward Israel, in rhetoric that treats Jewish self-determination as uniquely illegitimate. When violence is justified because someone is Jewish, it is antisemitism. When it is justified because someone is Israeli, it is no different.
Hatred is enabled by authority. When false claims are repeated from international podiums, they travel the world stamped with legitimacy, and they harden into belief.
The good news is that today the Jewish people are no longer defenseless. We have Israel. While we still face genocidal regimes like Hamas and the Islamic Republic of Iran, who continue trying to do what the Nazis failed to do, we have a formidable military to protect us. The days when Jews are massacred without response or consequence are over.
The writer is Israel's ambassador to the UN. (Jerusalem Post)
Weekend Features
- In WWII, Jewish Partisan "Uncle Misha" Fought the Nazis in Ukraine - Renee Ghert-Zand
In one day in May 1942, the Nazis murdered 2,200 Jews in the Korzak forest outside Korets, Poland (today in Ukraine), wiping out the centuries-old Jewish community in a mass shooting. Only 186 Jewish skilled laborers and a few who succeeded in hiding were spared, including Moshe Gildenman and his teenage son, Simcha. Gildenman's wife, Golda, and young daughter Feigela were among the dead.
As the survivors met in a synagogue to recite the Kaddish memorial prayer, Gildenman declared, "I will not go like a sheep to the slaughter!" When the Nazis entered the ghetto for its final liquidation in September 1942, Gildenman, his son, nephew, and nine other Jews escaped to join the Ukrainian partisans fighting the Germans and their collaborators.
The gripping story of how Gildenman, 44, a mild-mannered civil engineer, transformed into a ruthless guerrilla fighter is told in James A. Gryme's new book, Partisan Song: A Holocaust Story of Resilience, Resistance, and Revenge. Gildenman, known by his nom de guerre, "Uncle Misha," along with the Jews they met in the forests, organized and fought on their own. A few months later, they joined up with Ukrainian partisans but operated as a separate unit. Finally, Gildenman's group was accepted into the Soviet partisans.
Uncle Misha and his group carried out more than 150 combat operations. Toward the end of the war, Gildenman served in the Soviet Army as a combat engineer on highly dangerous missions behind enemy lines.
Gildenman and his son survived the war and immigrated to Israel in 1951. He died in 1957. (Times of Israel)
Observations:
- At the World Economic Forum in Davos, President Donald Trump's former senior advisor Jared Kushner presented a vision for what Gaza would look like, under the title "Empowering Gazans with Jobs, Training, and Services." This vision is based on real estate deal logic: property improvement, value creation, and bringing prosperity.
- Its foundational assumption, held also by Israel before Oct. 7, is that humans are, first and foremost, rational economic creatures. If we just provide Gazans good livelihoods, luxury hotels, a port, and factories, the motivation for terror will decrease until it disappears.
- But Middle Eastern reality and Palestinian reality proves again and again that the struggle is not about quality of life. The critical mistake of the Trump-Kushner approach is the attempt to reduce a deep national, religious, and identity conflict to a cash-flow and urban-development problem.
- The Palestinian national movement, and especially its extremist branches controlling Gaza, have never placed economic welfare at the top of their priorities. If they had wanted that, Gaza could have become the Singapore of the Middle East a decade ago, with the billions of dollars that flowed to it.
- Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are driven by an ideology that sees eliminating Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel as a lofty goal, sanctifying any sacrifice including poverty and hunger of their own people. For them, the land is not real estate waiting for a developer, but waqf land that must be liberated.
When offered prosperity in exchange for giving up the dream of Israel's destruction, they see it as humiliating bribery.
- The thought that money will buy quiet is an optical illusion. This is a national struggle. The other side is not seeking a business partnership, but historical victory. A discourse about economic development, without first neutralizing the nationalist-religious aspiration to destroy Israel, is a recipe for repeated disaster.
The writer is a senior lecturer at Kinneret Academic College.
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