| DAILY ALERT |
Tuesday, December 3, 2024 |
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
President-elect Donald Trump on Monday demanded the immediate release of Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza, in a social media post. "If the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025...there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity. Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!" Trump's threat came hours after the Israeli government confirmed the death of Omer Neutra, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, whose body is still held by Hamas in Gaza. The Biden administration has said that Hamas has yet to show a willingness to reengage in negotiations and that the group isn't concerned for its own lives or the lives of Gaza civilians. (AP-Washington Post) See also What Leverage Does Trump Have to Threaten Hamas? - Ron Ben-Yishai While Trump lacks direct military options against Hamas, he holds three powerful levers to pressure the group into showing some flexibility on the hostage deal or to punish it if it resists after his inauguration. Trump could target Hamas's finances by shutting down Islamic charities in the U.S. and urging European allies to take similar steps. Additionally, he could pressure Qatar to cut off its generous funding. Trump's second lever could involve fulfilling his election campaign threats against Iran, using Hamas as a justification for imposing sanctions. Faced with this pressure, Iran may push Hamas to show flexibility in negotiations. The third lever could threaten that the U.S. will not contribute to Gaza's reconstruction unless Hamas compromises, blaming the group for the absence of a hostage deal. (Ynet News) U.S. Navy destroyers shot down seven missiles and drones fired by Yemen's Houthi rebels at the warships and three American merchant vessels they were escorting through the Gulf of Aden on Sunday. U.S. Central Command said the destroyers USS Stockdale and USS O'Kane shot down three anti-ship ballistic missiles, three drones, and one anti-ship cruise missile. (AP-Washington Post) Hundreds of Iran-backed Iraqi fighters crossed into Syria on Monday to help the government fight rebels who seized Aleppo last week, but Lebanon's Hizbullah has no plans to join them, according to sources. They said Hizbullah had pulled back forces from Syria in mid-October when the fighting with Israel in Lebanon intensified. (Reuters) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
The Israeli Air Force struck dozens of Hizbullah rocket launchers and other terrorist infrastructure across Lebanon on Monday night, shortly after Hizbullah fired two mortars at Israeli territory in the Golan Heights. The IDF said Hizbullah's actions constitute a clear violation of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon and called on Lebanese authorities to take responsibility and prevent Hizbullah from operating within its territory. The IDF said, "The State of Israel remains obligated to the fulfillment of the conditions of the ceasefire agreement in Lebanon" and "is prepared to continue operating wherever necessary...to defend Israeli civilians." (Ynet News) Sources reported that the U.S. has warned Israel that "there were Israeli violations of the ceasefire agreement, mainly the visible and audible return of Israeli drones in the skies over Beirut." In response, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on Monday told his French counterpart, Jean-Noel Barrot, that Israel was not violating the ceasefire agreement in Lebanon but enforcing it amid Hizbullah's violations, that require a real-time response. "Hizbullah's presence south of the Litani is a fundamental violation of the agreement. They must move north," Saar said. (Ynet News) While French diplomatic sources contend that Israel's use of UAVs in Lebanese airspace constitutes a violation of the ceasefire agreement, official Israeli sources emphasized that the country will maintain its monitoring operations over Lebanon to prevent Hizbullah's weapons buildup. (Israel Hayom) An Iranian flight suspected to be ferrying arms to Hizbullah was blocked by the Israeli Air Force over Syria on Saturday night. IAF fighter jets flew up to the Iranian plane and ordered it to turn around, which it did. The interception of the flight is part of Israel's efforts to prevent Iranian weapons from reaching Hizbullah during the ceasefire. In recent months, the IDF has caused a number of Iranian flights to make U-turns over Syrian or Iraqi airspace when they were suspected of carrying weapons to Hizbullah. (Times of Israel) The Israel Security Agency said Monday that it had identified more than 200 Iranian phishing attempts against senior Israeli officials in a bid to secure their personal details. Among those targeted were senior security officials, political figures, academics, media personnel, and journalists. The hackers approached Israelis via WhatsApp, Telegram and email, and tried to get them to download an app that would grant access to their devices. (Times of Israel) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Hizbullah Hizbullah dares proclaim it achieved "a great victory" but it finds itself isolated. It has lost its leaders, a large part of its fighters, its powerful military arsenal, its destructive missiles, and, above all, the trust of the Lebanese. They can no longer count on Hizbullah to defend their country and live in security. Yet we know Hizbullah's true intentions. It will undoubtedly reorganize for a second round and continue the Islamist fight against the Jewish state. Israel is currently in a position of strength that can dictate the course of action and guarantee stability in the north of the country for many years. Israel must seize all opportunities and intervene quickly in the event of a violation. The writer, a former Foreign Ministry senior adviser who was Israel's first Ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, is a fellow at the Jerusalem Center. (Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs) The changed factor in the recent ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon is Israel itself. The Oct. 7, 2023, attack changed Israel's deterrence concept to preventing the presence of potential threats in its immediate geographical vicinity. Israel considered that attack an existential threat, prompting a reconsideration of border coexistence with hostile groups. For this reason, it decided to eliminate Hamas, weaken Hizbullah, and prevent both organizations from threatening its existence. Israel has changed its policy from "mowing the grass" to "uprooting it." The agreement authorizes Israel to intervene and operate in Lebanon's airspace. It includes explicit conditions for monitoring border crossings and preventing rearmament. Israel has proven to be a devastating regional military power capable of waging and winning long and multiple wars. It surprised Hizbullah with its decisive superiority. It will be difficult for Hizbullah to return as a regional player threatening Israel under the current balance of power. The writer is chairman of Al Arabiya's editorial aboard and former editor-in-chief of Asharq al-Awsat. (Al Arabiya) Iran Iran knows that the ceasefire in Lebanon is critical to salvaging what remains of Hizbullah. The Iranians know that, from a propaganda standpoint, they must contend with the scenes of devastation in Lebanon, the destruction of Hizbullah's chain of command, and the pulverizing of much of its missile and rocket arsenals. Hence, the most important message in the Iranian propaganda strategy is equivalency. In Iran's script, Hizbullah was not defeated, just as Israel did not win; the central narrative is that "Israel bombs Beirut - and Hizbullah bombs Tel Aviv," as Hizbullah Secretary-General Naim Qassem has declared. The Iranians portray Israel as signing a ceasefire agreement due to capitulation, and haltingly returning Israel's northern residents to their homes after finding itself unable to destroy and disarm Hizbullah. They assert that "the nightmares about an October 7-type ground invasion by Hizbullah will accompany the northern settlers every day and every hour." According to Iran, the agreement is a temporary one, a catalyst for Hizbullah's rebuilding and rearming by its Iranian patron alongside the combat experience it has gained. The writer, vice president for strategy, security, and communications at the Jerusalem Center, has served in senior government positions for over 25 years. (Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs) Israeli Security It is a fallacy that ideas can't be defeated. Received wisdom has it that unless root causes are addressed, no conflict can be resolved. The same sophistry asserts that Israel can't conquer Hamas even if it annihilates the internationally designated terrorist entity militarily. Of course it can. Hizbullah has just come crawling to a ceasefire agreement with Israel. Its ballyhooed status as the most powerful non-state actor in the world has been stripped away in the aftermath of Israel's targeted campaign against its leadership, followed by a full-scale invasion of southern Lebanon. In its 13-month war with Israel, in solidarity with Hamas following the Oct. 7, 2023, atrocity, Hizbullah has been defeated. The regional alliance of militias, funded and buttressed by Iran, has been proven a chimera. Iran can't come to the rescue of any of its proxy states because Iran itself has been having a very bad year. Its barrage of 300 missiles and drones against Israel on Oct. 1 was ineffective and humbling, undermining the credibility of Iran's axis of resistance, and upending regional dynamics. Some are lauding the ceasefire as a rare win for diplomacy in the Middle East. But it would never have happened if Hizbullah hadn't been shaken to its combat boots, just as every overwhelmed and fractured warmongering side has only come to the negotiating table when its very existence came face-to-face with extinction. All of this leaves Hamas isolated and clinging by its fingernails, with 18,000 of its fighters dead, and much of its vast tunnel network destroyed, Gaza reduced to a lawless, chaotic mess, with tens of thousands of Palestinians dead, hundreds of thousands displaced, and Yahya Sinwar burning in hell. That war grinds on, Hamas's violent ideology still intact, but its sphere of potency is shrunken and its raison d'etre delegitimized. (Toronto Star-Canada) Israel's success in defanging Hizbullah provides a window of opportunity for a fundamental reset in its approach to the group and to the broader Iranian terror axis. At the core of this revived framework must be a world in which Israel can act whenever it sees a credible or imminent threat, wherever across Lebanon and Syria - Hizbullah's logistical lifeline to Iran - with the U.S. proactively buffeting Israel against international condemnation. Inevitably, critics will accuse Israel of violating the deal, even though the current ceasefire reportedly enshrines Israel's freedom of action against imminent threats. As with Israel's war in Gaza, robust U.S. support for Israel's self-defense is irreplaceable and a crucial bulwark against a wave of attacks threatening to undermine Israel's global legitimacy. The ceasefire deal should be the beginning of a sustained pressure campaign to inflict a fatal U.S.-Israel blow to Iran's axis of resistance that threatens Israel and the U.S. alike. Vice Adm. (ret.) Colin Kilrain is a former assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Commander of Special Operations Command Pacific. Yoni Tobin is a policy analyst at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA). (JNS) The Gaza War The Israel Defense Forces are fighting in Jabalia for the third time, confronting yet another Hamas resurgence in northern Gaza. But this time, Israel is leveraging new strategic advantages to seal off the neighborhood so terrorists cannot escape. By sealing the battlefield and systematically evacuating civilians, the terrorists barricaded in Jabalia will be apprehended or eliminated. Israel cannot guarantee security to the Israeli border communities until the threats in northern Gaza are dealt with conclusively. The IDF is determined to stem Hamas resurgences by ensuring that Hamas terrorists lack escape routes and reinforcements. This new tactic of laying siege to problem areas, evacuating civilians, and forcing terrorists to surrender will likely be repeated in Gaza City. Enia Krivine is senior director of the Israel Program and the National Security Network at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Aaron Goren is a research analyst. (JNS) Before the war against Hamas in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces were the only army in the world to have a full brigade-sized unit dedicated to training, researching, and developing new technologies and tactics solely for underground warfare. Their responses to these challenges signal a paradigm shift in modern approaches to underground warfare. The IDF faced a Hamas military organization that had spent fifteen years engineering the infrastructure of an entire region for war, with a vast and expensively constructed subterranean network under Gaza's population centers. No military had faced anything like it in the past. On Oct. 7, 2023, the IDF's Yahalom unit, a brigade of special operations forces engineers, was fully equipped with technologies and tactics to detect and map tunnels and bunkers, and to clear and destroy them. It used drones and robotic devices designed to work underground. In some cases, military dogs with cameras mounted on their backs were deployed, but the risk of losing dogs to booby traps made this tactic rare. After careful study of Hamas tunnels, the IDF changed its approach, sending special operations forces into uncleared tunnels at the exact same time it was maneuvering on enemy forces on the surface. These forces were equipped with all the specialized equipment needed to breathe, navigate, see, communicate, and shoot underground. They turned tunnels from obstacles controlled by the defending enemy into maneuver corridors for the attacker. The lessons learned by the IDF will save the lives of other soldiers in other battlefields. The writer is chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point. (U.S. Military Academy) I just returned to the Jerusalem Post after serving as an IDF reservist infantryman for 80 days on my second tour of duty in Gaza. There is a sense that Hamas is collapsing. It once fielded ambush cells that conducted frequent hit-and-run anti-tank missile attacks and ambushes from a wide network of bunkers and tunnels. Today, by and large, they do not operate at night or the light of day, clinging to the low visibility of dawn and dusk. It appears that their tunnel networks have been greatly compromised, as they have had to travel along roads and weave between buildings. Their mortar bombs fall far less accurately than they once did, and we did not encounter any enemy drone activity. The extent of the damage in Gaza hasn't been completely appreciated. Whole neighborhoods have been leveled during direct combat and the search and destruction of tunnels and booby traps. Many of the houses, apartments, and villas that we cleared had a decent and even opulent quality of life. All the homes we saw had televisions, computers, refrigerators, decorations, and stores of food similar to an Israeli suburb. The purpose of our operations was not geared toward the elimination of Gazan civilians. There were never orders to kill civilians wantonly, and there were debates on whether we had enough information to use deadly force and when it was legitimate to open fire. Civilians were allowed to pass by our positions along humanitarian corridors unmolested. Reservists want a resolution to the problems that led to Oct. 7; they don't want this war to become yet another round in an ongoing conflict. While we will continue to fight for Israel, we don't want to have to come back to Gaza and Lebanon in a few years' time. (Jerusalem Post) It has become conventional wisdom in Washington that Hamas will survive no matter how hard it is pummeled by Israel. Yet Islamic history is littered with failed insurgencies and vanquished militants. Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar envisioned an imminent triumph over Israel in a holy war to drive the Jews from Palestine. This is the kind of delusional hope that once powered al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. For most Palestinians in Gaza, Hamas's rule has been hell. Hamas, like Hizbullah in Lebanon, didn't moderate once in power. Hamas's creed promised young men not just martyrdom but victory. But as the Islamic State can attest, when Islamists start to lose wars, the faithful soon lose heart. Asking young men to kill themselves for the cause can be alluring. But such fanaticism always fades when the death toll gets too high, and the promised conquest fails to materialize. Hamas's future now depends on whether young men who have been part of it - and, more importantly, the far larger number who have not - want to support a movement that has done its part to make most Gazans homeless. Whatever comes next likely won't have the spiritual allure - the promise that comes with past or expected success - that made Hamas a redoubtable insurgent movement. For supporters of Hamas, Oct. 7 was a modern re-enactment of the Prophet Muhammad's slaughter of the Jewish tribe of Khaybar, which ended Jewish resistance to the Prophet's call. Yet the "glory" of Oct. 7 is unlikely to sustain Hamas's young men - and the Palestinian population more broadly - through the years of misery that lie ahead for all of Gaza. The writer, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is a former Iranian-targets officer in the CIA. (UnHerd) International Criminal Court In order to issue arrest warrants against Israeli leaders, the International Criminal Court first had to admit an entity - the "State of Palestine" - that is not a real state. Then the court had to act beyond its legal power or authority and decide on the borders of the nonexistent state. The ICC prosecutor then needed to act on the baseless complaints of the Palestinians and adopt the narrative of the terrorists who led the Oct. 7 massacre and their supporters. The ICC was created to allay fears that the punishment of war criminals would be dependent, as had historically been the case, on which side won the war. The neutrality of the court stands at its very core. The court's repeated decisions to acquiesce to the Palestinian political weaponization of the court against Israel is a fundamental breach of the court's reason for being. The writer, Director of the Palestinian Authority Accountability Initiative at the Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs, was director of the Military Prosecution in Judea and Samaria. (Jerusalem Post) The International Criminal Court (ICC) lost any vestige of legitimacy it may have had by issuing its recent arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The arrest warrant is improper, extra-jurisdictional and illegitimate. The warrant is not only entirely without merit on the evidence, but the very issuance of it was an abasement of the court itself. There is no point funding an institution that doesn't work. Any country which is not a member of the court is simply not bound by it. Israel and the U.S. have never ratified it, ironically largely because they feared bias. But by issuing this warrant the court has chosen to ignore that inconvenient fact as far as Israel is concerned. It's like being forced to follow the dress code of a nightclub when you have no intention of going inside. Even a country which has signed up to the Court can only be pursued by the ICC if that country is unable or unwilling to deal with any credible allegations itself. Israel has a robust and fair legal system, whose courts regularly strike down their own government's decisions. An Arab Israeli Supreme Court judge has even sat in judgment on the country's Jewish prime minister. But the ICC has refused to accept this inconvenient truth as well. Another problem the ICC has ignored is about a Head of Government like Prime Minister Netanyahu having diplomatic immunity, a principle that has been in existence in British statute law since 1709. There are many individuals, in Iran and Syria for example, who deserve the attentions of international law, but a democratically-elected Israeli Prime Minister defending his country from consistent attack from multiple quarters is not one of them. The writer is a former Attorney General for England and Wales. (Telegraph-UK) Other Issues As if further proof was needed of the pro-Palestinian movement's true motives - hatred of the West, of all that is good in the world, and, of course, the fevered desire to legitimize attacks on Israel - the Palestinian solidarity brigade made their agenda clear, for the second year running, at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in New York. Another jolly, fun-filled affair for children and families, patriotic and festive in nature, made ugly and disrupted by people with nasty, extreme views, waving flags, chanting "Free, free Palestine" and jumping barricades. The NYPD said it arrested 21 people. They are monomaniacal, obsessed, and amoral. They show no sustained attention to any other conflict in the world. It is only when Israel stands up to bullies and terrorists that the placards, the chants, the demands for divestment, and the public exposition of blood-curdling cries and threats become utterly commonplace. (Telegraph-UK) Actor Dean Miroshnikov, 36, who has business ventures in the bustling nightlife center of Nachalat Binyamin in Tel Aviv, volunteered in November 2023 for the "Magen Be'eri" reserve battalion (a group of veterans from elite IDF units). As a disabled IDF veteran, Miroshnikov was not required to serve. In 2010, while serving in the Shayetet 13 marine commando unit, he was injured during the Gaza flotilla raid. By December, his battalion entered Gaza. He spent most of the past year in Gaza and the West Bank. He says, "One of the reasons I serve in the reserves is because of what I see in the West Bank. Every night, we arrest people trying to harm us, infiltrate the country, and carry out attacks. If my team and I can stop even ten terrorists who could have reached Nachalat Binyamin to carry out attacks, that's why I do it....If we don't do this, there won't be a country." (Ynet News) On Oct. 8, 2023, Noga, 27, Head of Operational Command for the Paratroopers' Special Forces brigade, sent a text message to Guy, a reserve combat paramedic in the Air Force Rescue Unit 669: "I need a rescue helicopter. We've got casualties. Can you help me?" No one would guess that this conversation was between an engaged couple who had already set a date for their wedding. "Our unit's deputy commander was seriously wounded," Noga recalls. "I couldn't get through to the command center to request a rescue helicopter....So, I sent a WhatsApp to Guy," who contacted a friend from 669 who serves at the Air Force's control center. "It's one of the reasons why the unit's deputy commander is alive today. After a challenging six-month rehabilitation, he returned to his position and is back on the ground again in Gaza." Since the beginning of the war, Unit 669 has rescued and evacuated more than 2,000 wounded. Guy has recounted the events of Oct. 7 and the war from his perspective as a combat paramedic in 669 in his new book, The Rescue: October 7 through the Eyes of Israel's Para-Rescue Commandos. (Ynet News) Observations: There's Nothing Radical about Flying the Palestinian Flag - Brendan O'Neill (Spectator-UK)
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