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In-Depth Issues:
Hizbullah Shifts to Guerrilla Warfare - Maj. (res.) Tal Beeri ( Alma Research and Education Center)
With the stabilization of the IDF security zone in southern Lebanon, the Hizbullah threat within the zone may involve Hizbullah operatives "trapped" in the area; limited attempts to infiltrate cells; and large quantities of weapons, with concern that they may be booby-trapped.
Hizbullah's force model on the eve of Oct. 7, 2023, no longer exists. The broad invasion plan to capture the Galilee has been neutralized; the defense plan, with an emphasis on the area south of the Litani, has collapsed; and the massive fire plan no longer exists. Hizbullah possesses fewer than 15,000 rockets.
Hizbullah is adapting itself to a prolonged, low-intensity guerrilla war based on small cells, explosive charges, drones, and dispersed rocket fire intended to preserve continuity of combat.
The ground threat has not disappeared, but instead of a large-scale invasion, Hizbullah may deploy cells numbering up to several dozen operatives to infiltrate the security zone in southern Lebanon or Israeli territory.
The number of Hizbullah regular operatives is currently estimated at fewer than 40,000. To date, the IDF has eliminated 10,000 operatives.
The writer is director of research at the Alma Center.
Palestinian Source: There Are Eight Times More Attacks on Israelis in the West Bank than on Palestinians - Dinah Bucholz ( Times of Israel)
The Arab media outlet Mo3ta tracks incidents of Palestinian violence against Israelis in the West Bank, as they are very proud of it.
An X user posted a screenshot from Mo3ta that details actions taken against Israelis from January 2018 to August 2026.
In those 103 months, Palestinians engaged in 62,308 acts of violent confrontation with Israelis, about 605 incidents per month. These include shootings, stabbings, car rammings, stone throwing, suicide bombings, throwing grenades, and burning tires.
The Times of Israel reported 867 incidents of Israeli violence in 2025, which works out to 72 per month.
According to this Palestinian source, there are eight times more attacks on Israels than there are on Palestinians.
This is not to excuse Israelis but to point out that people are hearing only one side of the story, a crazily skewed version.
Israel makes up 0.013% of the land area of planet Earth. Its conflict with West Bank Palestinians is nothing compared to what's going on between gangs in Chicago, let alone a massive conflict like the one in Sudan that has left half a million dead in the same time span as the Gaza war.
The fact that the world is up in arms about Israeli violence but couldn't care less about what's going on in Chicago or other cities in the U.S. means this is not about compassion for the innocent; this is about hating Israel.
Israel's Desalination Crisis Threatens Vegetable Crops - Nurit Kadosh ( Calcalist)
Five of the six desalination plants along Israel's southern coastline have been shut down because of unusually high turbidity in seawater, caused in part by microalgae drifting from the Nile region of Egypt.
The shutdown is threatening 5,000 acres of vegetable crops in Nitzana near the Egyptian border, an area that produces 2 million tons of vegetables a year. Dozens of farmers in Nitzana rely on desalinated water for 80-90% of their supply.
Farmers completed planting tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and eggplants over the past two weeks and now require 1,500 cubic meters of water per hour for irrigation. They only received 300-500 cubic meters per hour Tuesday morning.
Eran Doron, head of the Ramat Negev Regional Council, warned, "The entire season will collapse. There will be no vegetables, the cost of living will rise, and dozens of farming families will enter a huge economic crisis, following loans they took out towards the start of the season."
A Tribute to Israeli Heroes - Sabine Sterk ( Times of Israel)
Israel is a country full of heroes. There are people who rescued hostages from captivity, who gathered intelligence about Iran's nuclear program, and who helped locate hostages.
There are soldiers who fought for their homeland, who were injured defending it, and who never returned home.
There are the rescue teams who travel across the world when disaster strikes, digging through the ruins after earthquakes, helping communities after floods.
There are ZAKA volunteers who recover and identify victims of terror attacks, accidents, and disasters; Israelis who helped bring Syrians wounded during the civil war across the border for treatment in Israeli hospitals; and Israelis involved in providing medical treatment to Gazans.
There are the farmers who continue working while rockets are flying; teachers who try to give children normality during war; volunteers who cook meals, collect equipment, drive across the country and help soldiers and displaced families.
Among Israel's greatest heroes are the parents who bring their sons and daughters to the IDF recruitment office, hug them, smile through their fear, and watch their child walk away to defend the homeland.
A country containing this many people willing to defend it, rebuild it, heal it, rescue others, volunteer for it, argue about it and love it with every fiber of their being is not easily defeated.
Israel will survive long after those who dream of its destruction have disappeared into history.
The writer is CEO of the NGO "Time to Stand Up for Israel."
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
- U.S. Thwarts Iranian Attempt to Mine Strait of Hormuz - Eric Schmitt
U.S. forces attacked two Iranian rocket launchers attempting to disperse sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday, U.S. Central Command said. Capt. Tim Hawkins said Iran's IRGC forces had been observed preparing to launch rockets armed with mines from Larak Island into the waters of the strait.
The IRGC said Monday it had fired missiles at American fighter jets at air bases in Jordan in response to the U.S. attack. The Jordanian military said it had intercepted eight missiles. A person familiar with the Iranian attack said that all of the Iranian missiles fired toward Jordan had been intercepted.
(New York Times)
- Iran Cites Pain of New U.S. Pressure but Doesn't Bend - Rachel Chason
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has conceded that U.S. sanctions have increased prices and cut trade. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei has called on the government to address "economic and livelihood challenges." But Iran has survived under some form of sanctions since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979.
A major stumbling block has been China, which is Iran's top trade partner and unwilling to bend to pressure from Washington. Alan Eyre, a former diplomat who served on the U.S. negotiating team that secured the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, said Iranian leaders often benefit financially from sanctions because they control the means to circumvent them.
The Trump administration may also be overestimating the ease with which it can isolate Iran from its neighbors. The UAE, Iran's second-largest trading partner, said Aug. 19 that it was halting all trade ties with Iran because of Iranian targeting of UAE tankers. But Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said it is hard to imagine countries such as the UAE "just turning a switch, and turning off decades and decades of economic integration." (Washington Post)
News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
- Israel Captures Senior Hamas Terrorist in Gaza - Yonah Jeremy Bob
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Tuesday confirmed that the IDF had successfully captured a senior Hamas terrorist while carrying out strikes on several targets in the Gaza City area. "We do not wait for threats. Instead, we pursue Hamas terrorists, thwart them, and destroy their terrorist infrastructure. We have built a strong and unprecedented security zone in Gaza to protect residents and IDF soldiers," Katz said.
"We are not leaving Gaza until the Strip is demilitarized, Hamas is disarmed, and all terrorist tunnels are destroyed. Even after that, the IDF will remain in Gaza along defensive lines and ensure the security of the western Negev communities. Any attempt to bypass the security zone through aerial launches will be met with a harsh response."
IDF sources would not deny foreign reports that Israel worked alongside Gazan militias to arrest the senior Hamas official. (Jerusalem Post)
- Lebanese Army Wants IDF to Remain in Southern Lebanon for Fear of Hizbullah Return
A senior American official stated that certain officers in the Lebanese army did not, at this stage, wish for a withdrawal of the IDF from southern Lebanon. They fear that a departure of Israeli forces would allow Hizbullah to quickly return to the areas from which it has been excluded.
Israel demands guarantees to prevent Iran-backed Hizbullah from reestablishing its military presence in southern Lebanon before considering any changes to its own deployment in the region. (i24News)
- Eastern Jerusalem Schools Swap Palestinian Curriculum for Israeli Program - Nir Hasson
All newly opened grades in public schools in Palestinian-majority eastern Jerusalem will use the Israeli curriculum as the school year begins Tuesday. After Israel annexed eastern Jerusalem in 1967, the education system in the Palestinian areas of the city taught the Jordanian curriculum, which was later replaced by the Palestinian curriculum.
This year - after a long process that began at the initiative of parents, followed by Israeli government pressure on school principals in the city - all new first grade and seventh grade classes opening in the state education system in eastern Jerusalem will use the Israeli curriculum. This means 45,000 students (38%) of a total of 120,000 Palestinian students in eastern Jerusalem will study the Israeli curriculum. In 2020, 13,000 students studied the Israeli curriculum, while in 2025 the number had risen to 30,000.
After the construction of the security barrier in the early 2000s, which separated Israel and most of eastern Jerusalem from the West Bank, increasing numbers of Jerusalem Palestinians looked for jobs in the Israeli labor market. Demand for the Israeli curriculum and Hebrew language studies increased as a path toward integration into Israeli higher education and the Israeli job market.
For many years, parent committees and Palestinian activists in the city opposed the introduction of the Israeli curriculum, but opposition gradually waned as demand for it grew. According to sources in the Jerusalem Municipality, in contrast with prior years, this school year there is no significant opposition to the Israelization process among Palestinians in the city.
(Ha'aretz)
Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Iran
- A Realistic Look at the Iran War - Walter Russell Mead
The war against Iran entered its seventh month Saturday. Iran has fought back harder, and with more success, than expected. While American casualties have been relatively light by historic standards, the war has been more expensive, more of a strain on American manpower and weapons stockpiles, and a greater political handicap than Team Trump anticipated.
Yet Mr. Trump has reasonable grounds for maintaining his optimism. With oil exports from the Persian Gulf having recovered to about 2/3 of their prewar level, Iran has failed to create a global energy crisis. The American blockade is causing more pain to the Iranians than the regime's attempt to close the strait is causing the U.S. Energy markets have so far proved more flexible and resilient than most observers expected.
The writer, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, is Professor of Strategy and Statecraft at the University of Florida. (Wall Street Journal)
- Voices from Inside Iran - Fatemeh Jamalpour
Interviews from five Iranian provinces and in six cities present a picture of the aftermath of a war that began six months ago. After the start of the war, Shahan, a cherubic five-year-old, stood with his grandparents among all the Iranians dressed in red. Red for blood, martyrdom and revenge.
It's difficult for his mother, Hadis, 30, to consider how her son became part of the regime's defiant response. Her husband, Vahid, had been left paralyzed after being shot during the January protests. They both bitterly opposed the era of the ayatollahs. Their parents, however, supported the Islamic Republic.
When the war began, Shahan's grandparents took him to regime-organized rallies at night, where he repeated chants of "Death to America" and "Death to Israel." Hadis said, "My father put it into his head that America and Israel were our enemies, that they had no real power, and that Iran and the Revolutionary Guards were so strong they would destroy them."
Hadis said that when she told Shahan "the war could start again, he answered with complete certainty: 'No. The war is over. It won't start again.'" She asked him how he knew. "Because we can't hear the fighter jets anymore. Israel has been destroyed."
Sepideh Gholian, 30, an activist who has been jailed repeatedly by the regime, said that she was beaten and arrested in December after attending a memorial service for Khosrow Alikordi, a human rights lawyer who had represented her, and whose death was considered suspicious. "They tortured us almost to death," she said. "I spent 70 days in solitary confinement."
During the crackdown that followed the January protests, Gholian was held in Vakilabad prison in Mashhad. "I watched groups of female protesters being brought into the ward. They had been shot, some had been raped and many were in terrible condition." (The Times-UK)
U.S.-Israel Relations
- Former Israeli Ambassador Dermer: Israel and U.S. "Very Closely Aligned" on Iran - Or Shaked
Former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer said Monday in Las Vegas that "Vice President Vance played a critical role in that 12-day war [against Iran], and particularly the first day, where that element of surprise was so critical to our success. And I will be forever grateful for the role that he played at that critical moment. He kept Israel safe."
Dermer said Israel and the U.S. were "very, very closely aligned" on Iran, estimating the level of agreement at 95%. On Lebanon, he put the figure at "90%." He acknowledged that Israel and the administration disagreed on Turkey and Qatar and also had differences over Syria.
Dermer said, "I think Iran was beaten pretty badly and now they're on their way into the dustbin of history." Three years earlier, Iran had possessed an advanced military nuclear capability, an advanced ballistic missile capability, and a network of terrorist proxies across the region. "Iran's military nuclear capability has been destroyed. They have enriched uranium, that's what's left, buried in a couple of sites within Iran and we have eyes on it and the U.S. has eyes on it as well."
He said Iran's advanced missile capability and missile production capacity had been set back by several years, while its network of regional proxies had been dramatically weakened. He pointing to the damage inflicted on Hamas and Hizbullah, the fall of Bashar Assad's regime in Syria, the weakening of Shiite militias, and Israel's killing of half of the Houthi leadership. (Israel Hayom)
Israel and the UN
- The Leading Candidate for UN Secretary-General Forgot Who Started the Arab-Israeli Conflict - Elliot Kaufman
The leading candidate for the next UN secretary-general, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett of Guyana, praises Fidel Castro and rages ignorantly, and tellingly, at Israel. She said in 2013 as foreign minister, "To speak about Cuba, its achievements, its resilience...cannot be done without paying tribute to the visionary, determined, revolutionary behind it all, Comandante Fidel Castro."
Speaking at the UN Security Council over the past few years, she repeatedly accused the Jewish state of "genocide." Rodrigues-Birkett even dumped on Israel for trying to get Gazan civilians out of harm's way. "Quite cynically," she said in May 2024, "it has urged civilians to evacuate to safe zones."
Perhaps most instructive is her September 2024 remark on the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. "The situation in Palestine today did not begin on 7 October 2023. We must cast our minds back to 1948 because it was in that year that Israel first violently rejected the two-state solution." In reality, the Jews of Palestine accepted the two-state UN Partition Plan, and the Arabs of Palestine went to war to prevent it. They lost despite the help of five Arab armies, only to recast their defeat and suffering as Israeli aggression. (Wall Street Journal)
Turkey
- Israel-Greece Defense Agreement Counters Possible Threats from Turkey - Aharon Lapidot
In recent years, a Sunni alliance has been taking shape among Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.
On Monday, Israel and Greece signed a $3.6 billion defense deal called Achilles' Shield to preserve the regional balance of power. Three advanced Israeli missile-defense systems will defend Greek airspace from Athens to the tourist islands of the Aegean Sea.
For Israel, the diplomatic and economic value is enormous. The agreement will integrate Greece's existing Patriot batteries with the David's Sling system for long-range ballistic missile defense; the Barak MX for engaging fighter aircraft, helicopters, drones and missiles; and the SPYDER designed to intercept low-flying aircraft, drones and loitering munitions.
The Israeli radar network incorporated into Achilles' Shield is intended to provide Greece with an unprecedented operational response to threats from the east. Deploying mobile ELTA MMR-series radars will eliminate blind spots. The system is also designed to confront drone swarms and saturation attacks through active electronically scanned array, or AESA, radar technology. AESA systems electronically direct large numbers of beams, enabling them to track hundreds of targets simultaneously with high precision.
Long-range radars integrated with David's Sling can detect ballistic missile launches hundreds of kilometers inside territory to Greece's east, enabling the system to calculate a missile's trajectory accurately and launch an effective interceptor before the threat approaches populated airspace.
The agreement will channel enormous sums into Israel's defense industries, while a dozen Greek defense industries will account for 25% of the project's value through local production. Within 35 months, Greece is expected to complete a sweeping transformation of its air-defense architecture. (Israel Hayom)
- Greece Strengthening Ties with Israel since It Doesn't Expect NATO Support Against Turkey - Yulia Pobegailova
European affairs analyst Yannis Koutsomitis told i24News, "Greece does not expect any NATO support in case Turkey makes an aggression against Greece. This is why it's pursuing military ties to friendly countries like Israel. Greece should defend itself with its own resources and also with friends. We've seen in the past, when Turkey invaded Cyprus, there was no support from other NATO countries."
"Greece is strengthening its ties with the Israeli military" in reaction to an increasingly belligerent Ankara. "Greece is responding by procuring these high-technology anti-missile and anti-drone systems."
Greece is also concerned about the missile and drone capabilities of Iran and its regional proxies, including Hizbullah in Lebanon. "Greece is facing a two-sided threat, both from Turkey and also from Iran and its proxies in the region." (i24News)
Observations:
- Why has Israel become the convenient scapegoat for virtually every political, social and humanitarian problem in the Middle East - and increasingly, in the wider world? Why are Jews, representing barely 0.2% of the world's population, so frequently portrayed as responsible for events over which they have neither control nor influence? And why is Israel held to standards that are applied to virtually no other country?
- These questions go to the heart of a disturbing phenomenon in contemporary political discourse: the normalization of anti-Israel prejudice, frequently dressed up as legitimate political criticism. There is a fundamental difference between legitimate criticism of Israeli policy and the systematic, blind and naive demonization of Israel as uniquely evil, illegitimate or criminal by much of the international community.
- Where are the comparable demands for international sanctions against countries that deliberately murder, torture or expel their own populations? Where is the same outrage directed at regimes that suppress women, LGBTQ communities, persecute minorities, imprison political opponents or launch wars of aggression?
- Israel did not create the Arab-Israeli conflict. It did not initiate the rejection of the 1947 United Nations partition proposal. It did not invent terrorism as a political instrument. And it did not compel generations of Palestinian and Arab leaders to reject opportunities for negotiated accommodation. Nor did Israel create Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizbullah or Iran's policy of seeking Israel's destruction.
- Yet whenever Israel defends itself against terrorism or armed attack, the aggressor disappears from the narrative, while Israel becomes the principal culprit. This inversion of responsibility is not merely intellectually dishonest. It can have deadly consequences.
- The Oct. 7 massacre demonstrated what happens when a terrorist organization operates on the assumption that Israel's response will be constrained by international condemnation while the terrorists themselves will be shielded by political rhetoric. The victims of terrorism are then transformed into the perpetrators, while those who deliberately attack civilians are presented as freedom fighters.
- Israel should be judged by the same standards as every other country - certainly not by impossibly higher ones. The alternative is not justice. It is prejudice masquerading as principle.
The writer, former Legal Adviser and Deputy Director-General of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, heads the international law program at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.
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