| DAILY ALERT |
Thursday, June 27, 2024 |
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said Tuesday: "We are working every day to try to get a ceasefire. It's why we were so disappointed that Hamas rejected the ceasefire proposal that was on the table that the United Nations Security Council and countries around the world endorsed....[Hamas] gave us a written response that rejected the proposal that...President Biden had outlined." (U.S. State Department) Protesters waving Palestinian flags and shouting anti-Israel slogans gathered outside Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles's Pico-Robertson neighborhood on Sunday. They tried to block the entrance and were soon met by counterprotesters waving Israeli flags. Synagogue officials said the anti-Israel demonstrators maced and bear-sprayed Jews trying to enter the synagogue. "There was nowhere to turn where you could be safe," said Naftoli Sherman, 25. He was attacked and ended up in the hospital. "There was a whole gang of protesters on top of me. They broke my nose and kicked me in the head a couple of times." Members of the Los Angeles Police Department observed the melee unfold rather than protecting those targeted by the mob. It took volunteers from nonprofit Jewish security organizations, including LA Shmira Public Safety and Magen Am, to break up the scuffles. "Without them, it would have been a lot worse," Mr. Sherman said. David Kramer, 37, said people were begging uniformed officers to intercede. Despite many pleas, he said, "they were slow to move, and it appeared to me like they had orders to stand down." As the fighting moved toward other synagogues in the Jewish neighborhood, the police remained about a quarter-block away from the action. Would the police have been as passive if those being targeted had been any minority other than Jews? Would they have stood by and let protesters block the entrance to a church or mosque? (Wall Street Journal) See also below Commentary: Antisemitism in Los Angeles Westchester County Executive George Latimer, a moderate pro-Israel Democrat, defeated Rep. Jamaal Bowman by 58-42% in a suburban New York primary race that became a referendum on attitudes toward Israel, making Bowman the first member of the Squad to lose an election since the group formed in 2018. (Politico) Massive amounts of recently acquired advanced Chinese military equipment and weapons technology were found in Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces, according to Guermantes Lailari, a scholar at National Chengchi University in Taiwan and a retired U.S. Air Force officer. Lailari told me that two tunnel engineers from China's People's Liberation Army were captured by the IDF, meaning that China helped Hamas significantly in its construction of the massive tunnel networks under Gaza. The two PLA engineers were returned to China. (Newsweek) Israel is preparing to directly supply electricity to a desalination plant in Khan Yunis in Gaza so it can produce more water, an Israeli security official and a Western official said Wednesday. The facility was established with UN funding in 2017 to provide drinking water to areas in Deir al-Balah, Khan Yunis and the Mawasi area, where many Gazans have fled. The Israeli source said the planned supply of electricity to the water plant could provide water for just under a million people. "The Israelis are ready on their side," said the Western official. "Right now, Palestinian engineers are inside the strip checking the integrity of the line." (Reuters) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant reported "significant progress" in advancing shipments of arms from the U.S. to Israel following his meeting with U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in Washington on Wednesday. Gallant said "obstacles were removed and bottlenecks were opened to advance the procurement and armament we need for the State of Israel." A senior U.S. administration official said, "There was real progress in a mutual understanding of where things stand, of prioritization of certain cases over others, so that we can make sure that we are moving things in ways that meet the needs of the Israelis, and with the only exception being one shipment" of heavy-payload bombs. (Ha'aretz) See also Israel's Defense Minister Urges U.S. to Work with Israel Against Iranian Threat - Yaniv Kubovich Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in Washington on Tuesday that "The greatest threat to the future of the world and the future of our region is Iran - and time is running out. Now is the time to realize the commitment of the American administrations over the years, promising to prevent Iran from possessing a nuclear weapon." (Ha'aretz) Captain Alon Sacgiu, 22, was killed early Thursday during a counter-terror operation in the West Bank's Jenin refugee camp when two bombs buried deep below ground at the camp's entrance exploded. 16 IDF soldiers were injured in the blasts. An armored D9 bulldozer had cleared the route for the forces with its scoop on the ground to uncover hidden explosives, but two of the explosives were buried at a depth of at least one and a half meters. When an armored personnel carrier passed over the first explosive, which detonated, their fellow troops hurried toward them to help treat and evacuate them, at which stage another explosion took place. (Ynet News) Israel has rejected a report issued on June 19 by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) accusing it of having "systematically violated" key principles of the laws of armed conflict during the war against Hamas in Gaza. It detailed the IDF's use of bombs in densely populated areas, and focused on six specific incidents. The Israeli response, authored by Israel's delegation to the UN in Geneva, noted that the OHCHR based its claims on the outcomes of attacks instead of assessing the decision-making process behind them, as is required when assessing the legality of an attack. Israel pointed out that Hamas's comprehensive use of civilian infrastructure in Gaza had turned a multitude of previously civilian sites into military ones, meaning that broad swaths of urban Gaza had become legitimate military targets. Moreover, Israel observed that Hamas's list of fatalities includes male combatants who are listed as women, minors who have been identified as combatants, and men who have been identified as combatants. Hamas's fatality list also includes deaths caused by Hamas and other terror groups, including by misfired munitions and explosives placed in areas populated by civilians. Israel noted that attacks cannot be legally evaluated based on the outcome, but rather "only the harm that could reasonably be anticipated at the time of the decision." The Israeli response concluded: "It is apparent that the document suffers from hindsight and methodological biases which cast a shadow on the credibility of its legal assessment." (Times of Israel) Hamas is experiencing an inability to produce weapons and lacks command and control, and the Gazan population is trying to prevent them from firing towards Israel, a source in the IDF Southern Command revealed. "On the rare occasions when they do fire, we quickly close the loop and strike them." "We are also working to locate the remaining launchers and terrorist squads before they are able to fire....At the same time, we found that individuals in Gaza have started trying to intervene in Hamas's firing attempts. This marks a local rebellion by the population against Hamas. It is in our interest that similar interventions happen again in the future." (Jerusalem Post) Doctors Without Borders staffer Fadi al-Wadiya, killed in an Israeli drone strike in Gaza City on Tuesday, was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket expert, involved in "the development and advancement of the organization's missile array," the IDF said. He was also a "source of knowledge" within Islamic Jihad in the fields of electronics and chemistry. (Times of Israel) IDF brigade commander Col. Dvir Edri told Maariv in a recent interview: "We are close to a decisive military victory in Gaza and we are prepared for a battle in the North....It will not be easy or simple, but in light of the fighting in Gaza, we have a generation of experienced commanders and soldiers." Asked if the soldiers weren't tired and worn out, Edri said, "When the task is to return over a hundred thousand residents to their homes, then I trust them to find the strength to do it in the best way." Asked where the motivation of the fighters to fight for such a long period comes from, Edri said, "What we saw on Oct. 7 was engraved in us in a way that cannot be described in words....The sights of the bodies and burnt vehicles were very harsh. But precisely because of them, there was a great belief in what we are doing and a deep sense of justice." "In the field, among the bodies, lay embracing couples. It was evident that they had decided to end their lives together, and that's how we found them. It shocked me. It was part of the feelings that accompanied us as we entered Gaza." (Maariv-Jerusalem Post) Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Tuesday met with U.S. Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) who is making his first visit to Israel. President Herzog expressed his deep thanks to the Senator for his continued support for Israel and solidarity with the Israeli people. During the meeting, Fetterman showed the President a bracelet he was wearing which he was given by families whose loved ones were murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Nova Festival on Oct. 7. He told the President that he would not remove the bracelet till all the hostages had been returned home to their families. President Herzog said: "Welcome to Israel, my friend. I know that you come out of passion and love for this country. And I want to say thank you on behalf of our nation and behalf of Israel. Those who stand with us show moral clarity, we shall never forget them." Fetterman responded: "I'm honored by those words, but I don't really believe I should be thanked for just doing my job. It's been a very easy and clear choice throughout all of this, through everything your nation has been through after Oct. 7. I've always wanted to be a very consistent voice throughout all of this." (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
The Gaza War "From a Murderous Ideology to a Moderate Society: Transforming and Rebuilding Gaza after Hamas" is a 28-page paper circulating around the upper echelon of Israel's government and security establishment, outlining four academics' recommendations for ensuring Hamas and Gaza are no longer a threat to Israel. According to the document, "Israel's ability to achieve its goals depends not only on the military and diplomatic campaign taking place these days, but also on its ability to rehabilitate and transform a nation that was led by a murderous ideology, to produce stable institutions and an Arabic culture that does not educate for jihad, a culture that accepts the existence of the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people." The authors analyzed post-World War II Germany and Japan as successful cases. The first precondition is the total defeat of Hamas. "If there is no total defeat, there is no point in starting the attempts at deradicalization, rehabilitating systems, building new governing infrastructure and so on. History teaches us that rehabilitation under fire will fail." They point to three parameters for total defeat: A loss of territory, a loss of sovereignty - meaning no Hizbullah-like situation where Hamas maintains de facto control - and public trials for Hamas leaders and Oct. 7 perpetrators. The public trials are "critical for the long-term and historic memory in Israel and internationally," said Netta Barak-Corren of Hebrew University, one of the authors. "One cannot totally defeat ideologies, but ideologies can be either very central or very peripheral. We see the Nazi idea hasn't passed away - it's still out there - but it isn't what it was in World War II." The authors recommend leaving Hamas' middle management in place to run Gaza. "The 'technocrats'...who will be willing to accept the new reality will not be harmed and will be rewarded." The authors say "successful transformation requires the creation of a positive horizon for the defeated nation," while "the option of Israeli military rule must float in the background." If Israel makes clear that it will leave Gaza at some point regardless of its progress, Gazans will have less of an incentive to come up with an alternative to Hamas. As such, the goals Gazans need to meet must not have a rigid schedule attached to them. The new narrative would "lean on Sunni Muslim Arab tradition...in its moderate versions in education and culture and grant the Palestinians a concrete, positive vision to latch onto for demilitarized Palestinian self-rule at the end of the process." The paper discourages Israel's leadership from setting a goal of democratization for Gaza, saying that this is "a move that has failed in every place it was tried in the Arab world. The goal should not be turning Gaza into a Western democracy, but an Arab-Muslim entity that is moderate and not jihadist." (Jewish Insider) The Hamas invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, was quickly characterized by Hamas as fulfillment of a prophecy about the destruction of Israel. The battles of Oct. 7 were labeled a divine victory by believers over the enemies of Allah. However, more recent articles published on the Hamas website suggest a shift to admitting that Hamas has been defeated in battle again and again. Hamas predicted that Israel would not enter Gaza on the ground and that the war would end swiftly, as the inevitable heavy international pressure on Israel would force it to stop fighting. Hamas also expected Israel to negotiate a wholesale release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the hundreds of Israeli hostages due to Israel's high sensitivity to human life. Instead, the death toll in Gaza is rising, most Hamas battalions have been disbanded and stripped of their military and organizational capabilities, and Gaza, which until recently was considered a land liberated by jihad, is being recaptured. Hamas understands and has reconciled itself to the fact that it has been defeated militarily and that the citadel of resistance in Gaza has fallen. Hamas is aware that the Oct. 7 war is seen by some of the Palestinian public as a dangerous gamble that harmed the Palestinian cause. The writer is a senior researcher at the BESA Center. (BESA Center for Strategic Studies-Bar-Ilan University) Numerous analysts have noted how traumatized Israelis remain by the horrific Hamas attack of Oct. 7. All over Israel, there are incessant remainders of the roughly 80 hostages who are believed to still be alive in Gaza. Many people wear a yellow ribbon and everywhere you see "Bring Them Home" signs. In such a small country, it seems everyone has a connection to this tragedy. Israel has undertaken the most extensive mobilization of reserves in its history. One student at Hebrew University - a reservist in the tank corps - told us about how he had to study for his university courses in the middle of the night, while sitting inside his tank near the Lebanese border. Now Israel is facing the prospect of a major war against Hizbullah, an Iranian-backed militia in Lebanon, whose military capabilities dwarf those of Hamas. Despite Israel's travails, few international observers extend much sympathy to the Jewish state. The world's focus is almost entirely on the undoubted suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, with Hamas getting a pass for hiding behind civilians in violation of the laws of war. As one former Israeli government official said, "If you defend yourself, you'll be a pariah, and if you don't defend yourself, you'll disappear." (Washington Post) Hizbullah Israel faces a grave decision in the coming weeks whether to pivot from one war, against Hamas, to another, against Hizbullah. The best way for President Joe Biden to head off a devastating Israeli war with Hizbullah in Lebanon is to demonstrate that he will back Israel to the hilt. Since Oct. 7, the escalating back-and-forth between Israel and Hizbullah has claimed hundreds of lives and depopulated swaths of northern Israel and southern Lebanon. Israel has inflicted perhaps 10 fatalities for each one it has suffered. Tens of thousands of Israelis are still scattered from their homes; the country's inhabitable territory has, in effect, contracted. Israeli tolerance for that predicament is waning. Many Israelis believe, rightly, that Hizbullah seeks their destruction, and - after the horrors of Oct. 7 - are unwilling to live indefinitely with the threat it poses. But there may be an opening for de-escalation. Hizbullah knows that all-out conflict with Israel would be its ruin. Hizbullah is more likely to pull back, and Iran is more likely to counsel retrenchment, if they are convinced that America will aid Israel resolutely. Biden must make clear that he will give Israel the time and resources it needs to decimate Hizbullah - that there will be no early calls for a ceasefire, and that American bombs and bullets will flow. He should make clear, moreover, that Washington will inflict crushing punishment on Iran if Iran enters the conflict. Unfortunately, the administration's body language signals something different. The writer is a senior fellow at AEI. (Bloomberg-American Enterprise Institute) Antisemitism in Los Angeles There was a real estate exhibit to buy an apartment or house in Israel at the Orthodox Adas Torah Synagogue on Sunday in the heart of Pico Robertson, my Jewish neighborhood. This event made the antisemites very distraught. So hundreds showed up, many with their faces covered. They were jumping, howling, hooting and wishing that Jews would die. Standing in the middle of the protesters, I noticed that God always seems to give insane people the loudest voices. I was seeing people who, if they ever get their way, want to put an end to all Jews and civilization as we know it. If it weren't for the police presence, there would have been dead Jews and others all over Pico Blvd. Many of the antisemites weren't fighting for Islam and the Koran; their fight was with Jews and with America. If you hate the Jews, you also hate America. (Los Angeles Jewish Journal) I don't want to see protest of any kind outside a synagogue. What happened in LA at the Adas Torah synagogue last weekend was horrifying. Pro-Palestinian protesters turned up with Palestinian flags. They chanted, "There is only one solution - intifada revolution." Let's be clear: this was the intimidation of Jews masquerading as political protest. The protesters said they picketed the synagogue because a real estate event was taking place inside, at which people were browsing houses for sale in Israel. What a thin excuse for mobbing a synagogue. The fact is this: if you are screaming at Jews as they enter their house of worship, you are not one of the good guys. In fact, you are reminiscent of some of the worst guys in history. To holler at Jews about "intifada" eight months after an "intifada" claimed the lives of more than a thousand Jews in Israel is Jew-baiting, plain and simple. It is cruelty, not activism. It is more a mini-pogrom than an act of protest. If being "progressive" now means rubbing Jews' noses in an act of apocalyptic violence that claimed the lives of a thousand of their co-religionists, then I guess I'm not progressive anymore. It feels to me that there is insufficient outrage over the intimidation of Jews in LA. The "anti-racists" are silent. Perhaps Jew-taunting is okay so long as you wear a keffiyeh while you're doing it. Antisemitism is reaching crisis levels in America and Europe. Attacks on Jews have shot up. It's time we got serious - very serious - about this hatred that hides itself in the Palestinian colors. (Spectator-UK) On Sunday, a synagogue in the largest Jewish neighborhood in Los Angeles hosted a small, privately advertised event for those interested in purchasing homes or second homes in Israel. As violence across America has grown without much pushback - especially in cities where Jews live - many Jews are thinking about alternative plans, or at least exploring their options, and so are open to learning a bit about real estate in Israel. The event at Adas Torah synagogue wasn't political and it had nothing to do with the Gaza war. But within moments it became the backdrop to antisemitic violence. Over the course of several hours, with dozens of LAPD officers decked out in riot gear largely staying out of the fray, around 100 pro-Hamas activists attacked, bear-sprayed, harassed, and brawled with Jews up and down Pico Boulevard. The police occasionally stepped in, but their main activity seemed to ensure that the activists were able to successfully shut down the front entrance to the synagogue, ruin the event, and harass Jews more or less with impunity. While dozens of video clips have been posted online, there is scant footage of the police forcefully intervening in the numerous fistfights, brawls, and beatings. The same groups that promoted Sunday's violence had shown up at similar real estate events earlier this year in Toronto, Montreal, and Teaneck, New Jersey. The activists make no distinction between Israel proper and the disputed territories. To them, all of Israel is Palestine, all of Israel should be destroyed, and every home inhabited by a Jew on any part of this land is a crime. Police were unwilling to confront, arrest, and prosecute bad actors. It's important to note that this approach applies only to certain kinds of people. If a hundred masked Christians, say, had gathered in front of a Los Angeles mosque and assaulted Muslims, there would be joint LAPD-FBI task forces kicking down doors, and a national news cycle about Islamophobia and injustice in America. Anti-Israel activists understand that they enjoy something like immunity. Criminality, including vandalism, graffiti, trespassing, and harassment, will go unpunished. The groups organizing and carrying out these regular campaigns of violence routinely break numerous state and federal civil rights and hate crime laws. They could be prosecuted under a half-dozen different statutes. But it never seems to happen. (Free Press) On June 23 at Los Angeles's Adas Torah synagogue, IfNotNow-LA protested a real estate event marketing homes in "Anglo neighborhoods" in Israel. Buying property in Israel is an ancient Jewish custom. The founder of Judaism, Abraham, went to Hebron to purchase a burial place for his wife, Sarah. King David bought land on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem in preparation for the future construction of the Temple. Obtaining property by Jews in the Land of Israel is a religious act. It is a fulfillment of Judaism. Jews had been doing this since ancient times without regard to the state of Jewish sovereignty over the land. In 1860, together with money left to him by the American Judah Touro, Moses Montefiore bought the land upon which the Mishkenot Sha'ananim neighborhood in Jerusalem was built. Arieh Avneri's book, The Claim of Dispossession: Jewish Land Settlement 1878-1948, traces land purchases made by the Jews in the region of Palestine over many decades - Jews repurchasing their national homeland from its occupiers. (Jerusalem Post) Prof. Alan Dershowitz told Ynet in an interview Wednesday: "Never before have the Jewish people and the nation-state of the Jewish people been subject to so much antisemitism and it grows not out of the strength of Israel but out of its weakness. The antisemitism began on Oct. 7 when Israel showed weakness....Showing weakness is a cause of antisemitism....The only way the Jewish people will ever get peace is through strength." Q: We see Iran getting close to a nuclear bomb. Dershowitz: "Israel has to act on its own. Israel has to understand that it can never again count on the unequivocal support of the United States. It can count on some support from the United States, but Israel has to make its own decisions....Israel is alone in the world in many aspects and it has to act unilaterally in many instances. It cannot allow Iran to develop a nuclear arsenal and [must] do whatever it takes." (Ynet News) The latest ceasefire proposal for Gaza has not been accepted by Yahya Sinwar and his partners in terror. For the leadership of Hamas, Palestinian casualties of war are a price worth paying for their genocidal aims. But what of all the people in Western countries who have expressed such anger about the war in Gaza and who have placed huge pressure on Israel to end it? If people cared so much about innocent Palestinians caught up in the fighting, why are there not tens of thousands on the streets of London every Saturday demanding that Hamas accept the ceasefire, or university campus protests demanding that the terrorists agree to end the war? On social media, I have not seen any popular hashtags calling for Hamas to agree to the ceasefire. I have not seen the masses on TikTok mobilized against Sinwar and his backers in Iran. It is a terrible shame they do not realize that the best way to protect the civilians of Gaza is to pressure Hamas to stop the war. The world feels upside down. Why is it that a democratic state that was the victim of the worst massacre in its history faces all the protests, but the terrorist organization which started it faces none? There is something so perverse about this that it should act as a warning to us all. The writer was director of BBC Television from 2013 until 2015. (Telegraph-UK) Israel in American Politics The Squad, an uberprogressive faction in Congress, blames the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, for Rep. Jamaal Bowman's loss in Tuesday's Democratic primary in New York's 16th District. However, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), who represents the neighboring 15th District, said, "Jamaal Bowman's greatest problem is Jamaal Bowman. AIPAC did not illegally pull a fire alarm [at a House office building], Jamaal Bowman did. AIPAC did not vote against infrastructure, Jamaal Bowman did. AIPAC did not deny the Hamas rapes against Israeli women, Jamaal Bowman did." (Wall Street Journal) U.S. Military Assistance to Israel In the summer of 2014, after volleys of Hamas rockets from Gaza and Hamas's kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers, the Israeli air force struck back. Seven weeks of war ensued. The Wall Street Journal reported that "White House and State Department officials [led] U.S. efforts to rein in Israel's military campaign in the Gaza Strip." "Tensions really started to flare after Israel launched Gaza ground operations on July 17, 2014, and the civilian death toll started to rise sharply, prompting U.S. officials to complain that Israel wasn't showing enough restraint. Israeli officials rejected that notion, saying Hamas was using civilians as human shields." "On July 20, Israel's defense ministry asked the U.S. military for a range of munitions, including 120-mm mortar shells and 40-mm illuminating rounds, which were already kept stored at a pre-positioned weapons stockpile in Israel. According to Israeli and congressional officials, the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency was about to release an initial batch of [precision helicopter-fired] Hellfire missiles. The Pentagon immediately put it on hold." "Top White House officials instructed...agencies to consult with policymakers at the White House and the State Department before approving any additional requests. The White House and State Department would require approval for even routine munitions requests by Israel, officials say. Instead of being handled as a military-to-military matter, each case was subject to review - slowing the approval process and signaling to Israel that military assistance, once taken for granted, [was] now under closer scrutiny." The writer, former Deputy Chief of Mission in Israel's Washington Embassy, is Director of the Institute for U.S.-Israel Relations at the Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs. (Jerusalem Post) Observations: Real Progressives Reject
Antisemitism - Amanda Berman (Daily Beast)
The writer, a civil rights attorney, is founder and executive director of the Zioness Movement to empower and activate Zionists on the progressive left. |
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