| DAILY ALERT |
Tuesday, September 3, 2024 |
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
The UK government on Monday announced immediate suspension of 30 licenses for items used in the current conflict in Gaza which go to the IDF, from a total of 350 licenses to Israel, following a review of Israel's compliance with international humanitarian law. The list of suspended items includes important components which go into military aircraft, including fighter aircraft, helicopters and drones, as well as items which facilitate ground targeting (equipment for artillery sights), that would be used in Gaza. (UK Foreign Office) See also below Commentary: Britain Suspends Arms Export Licenses to Israel Amit Soussana, 40, a lawyer, was taken hostage from Kibbutz Kfar Aza on Oct. 7 and returned to Israel as part of November's hostage swap. She tells the story of her captivity. As four men grabbed me to bring me to Gaza, I fought them. One punched me in the eye, split my lip, severely beat me up, lifted my shirt, touched my breast, and choked me constantly. I kept on fighting them, the fight of my life. They got really mad, handcuffed me, tied my legs, and started dragging me on the ground, face down at first. In Gaza, one of the guards, Mohammad, came to me early in the morning and told me to shower. Then suddenly I saw him standing in the shower with the gun. He touched me; I didn't let him. I just closed my legs, tensed all my muscles, thinking, "This son of a bitch won't get what he wants." He touched my chest and kept hitting me because I wouldn't give in. Then he took me to the children's room. There I was, while he was doing what he was doing. I, who had never experienced anything like this in my life. One day, one of the terrorists put a shirt over my head, bound me with iron handcuffs behind my back and made me kneel on the floor. He began hitting me on the head with a gun. Then other terrorists moved two armchairs, brought two sticks, and simply hung me upside down between the armchairs. I had masking tape over my face. They hit me for about 45 minutes. One with a wooden stick and the others with their hands and guns. (The Sunday Times-UK) Hamas's handbook for underground combat describes, in meticulous detail, how to navigate in darkness, move stealthily beneath Gaza, and fire automatic weapons in confined spaces for maximum lethality. Israeli officials spent years searching for and dismantling tunnels that Hamas could use to sneak into Israel to launch an attack. But assessing the underground network inside Gaza was not a priority, a senior Israeli official said, because an invasion and full-scale war there seemed unlikely. All the while, Hamas was girding for just such a confrontation. Were it not for the tunnels, experts say, Hamas would have stood little chance against the far superior Israeli military. Hamas prepared for subterranean battles that have not materialized. Hamas has primarily ambushed soldiers near tunnel entrances, using the tunnels to launch aboveground hit-and-run attacks, hide from Israeli forces, and detonate explosives using remote triggers and hidden cameras. While these maneuvers have slowed Israel's assault, its military has still decimated Hamas's ranks, routed them from strongholds, and forced them to abandon huge swaths of the tunnel network in which they invested so heavily. (New York Times) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
All six hostages whose bodies were recovered from Gaza on Sunday were found with gunshot wounds to their head and other areas, autopsies showed. They were executed no more than 48 hours before being found and signs of neglect in captivity were found on their bodies. The hostages were abducted from Israel to northern Gaza and transferred over time to Rafah. (Ynet News) The IDF located and eliminated the Palestinian terrorist who killed three police officers earlier on Sunday in a drive-by shooting attack near Tarqumiyah in the West Bank. The terrorist, Muhammad Mahmoud Al-Asouda, reportedly fled to the PA National Security headquarters in Hebron, seeking to surrender and request protection, but was turned away. (Ynet News) A vehicle rigged with explosives in the form of two large gas cylinders connected to a detonation mechanism was discovered and neutralized Monday morning at the entrance to Ateret, an Israeli community in the Binyamin region north of Jerusalem. A security source said, "A major attack was prevented thanks to a resident's vigilance and quick cooperation between the civilian security officials and military forces." (Ynet News) A Hizbullah anti-tank guided missile attack on Kfar Yuval in the Upper Galilee on Sunday wounded three Israelis, one seriously. Meanwhile, 30 rockets were launched at Israel from Lebanon, including a barrage of 10 rockets at the Misgav Am area and another 20 at Matat. (Times of Israel) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Israeli Hostages in Gaza Six innocent Israelis were murdered by Hamas terrorists who stole them nearly a year ago. The chaos Hamas ushered in on Oct. 7 with the mass rape, abduction, torture, and slaughter that marked the start of Iran's multifront war against Israel exposed a moral confusion in the West. We read headlines describing these six Israelis as having "died" in Gaza. We are told that those defending their murderous captors "have a point." The foundational principle of our civilization is that every human life has dignity. It is this very principle that Hamas and its barbaric ilk are trying to turn on its head. Many will rightly point out that Americans should be especially outraged because one of those murdered, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was an American citizen. But it's not just that one of Iran's terror proxies murdered an American citizen. It's that he and all of those murdered by Hamas are on the front lines of a wider war that America is already part of - whether we like it or not. In other words: This is not only about Israel. It is about the reality that those who burn Israeli flags burn them alongside American ones. Hersh, and those executed beside him, were killed by Iran, a country now in league with China and Russia, that calls for death to America in the same breath it calls for the destruction of Israel. Statements of sorrow from the leaders of the Free World are insufficient. The message to terrorists and those who support them should be that the defenders of civilization will defeat them. No matter the cost. (Free Press) An American - Hersh Goldberg-Polin - has been murdered in the tunnels under Rafah. I cannot help but ask - would Hersh and the other five hostages have survived if Israel had not found itself restrained and under assault, not told to pause, not scolded in phone calls with petulant Americans, without arms and aid held up, without being lectured about the geostrategic value of going slow or not going at all. Imagine an Israel that was not told by its best friend in the world that offensive action in Gaza had become self-defeating, was not told that Israel should care more about feeding people in Gaza than about eliminating the threat to its 9 million citizens and pummeling Hamas until that evil group of thugs begged for ways to negotiate to return the hostages. We Americans are morally liable for our role in our backseat-driving in this war, for screaming at the Israelis at the wheel, unnerving them as they were trying to keep their eye on the road ahead. (Commentary) The international narrative continues to be overwhelmingly anti-Israel, even as IDF special forces extricate the bodies of innocent Israeli hostages dragged from their homes on Oct. 7. They were kept in tunnels for months on end, tortured and starved, only to be killed as help arrived. The sheer mercilessness of their captors does not appear to exercise the same people around the world so eager to join pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Where are the mass protests against the inhumanity of Hamas? Hamas is happy to sacrifice as many Palestinians as it can to turn international opinion. That it has partly succeeded in doing so is a blot on the people unable to make a moral distinction between those who perpetrated this violence and those responding to it. (Telegraph-UK) The 250 hostages taken from Israel by Palestinians from Gaza on Oct. 7, in operations which included mass murder and rape, and involved extreme violence towards and humiliation of those kidnapped, included old people, sick people, women and children. Contrary to all law, they were denied any rights as prisoners. They were often held without light, sanitation, and without enough food. Those who were Jews were treated even worse than those who were not. Some were beaten, some molested. Some died of wounds or illness. Some were killed in captivity. Eleven months later, all this is still going on. It must be the biggest continuous, organized non-state violation of international law and morality this century. Strange how muted are the protests of Western governments and international organizations against these atrocities. (Telegraph-UK) Hamas probably can't believe its luck - or the lack of moral seriousness by its enemies. The terrorists murder six Israeli hostages and Israel is suddenly under pressure to make concessions to Hamas. The crime here is all on Hamas, which took the innocent hostages on Oct. 7 and has refused to release them through multiple rounds of U.S.-brokered negotiations. Yet the reaction is to blame the Israeli government. On Monday, President Biden accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of not doing enough to secure a hostage deal. U.S. pressure should be on Hamas, which took the hostages and murders them. (Wall Street Journal) The aim of the execution of six Israeli hostages by Iran-backed Hamas was to shock the Israeli public and convey to the Biden administration the need to increase pressure on Israel to accede to most of Hamas's demands. The Hamas leaders see the ongoing tensions between the Biden administration and the Netanyahu government as an encouraging development. It has long been the dream of Hamas and many Palestinians to see the U.S. turn its back on Israel. In any hostage deal, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the Oct. 7 atrocities, will not release all the hostages at once. He will continue to physically surround himself with many of them to ensure that Israel does not kill him. Even if Hamas were to initially release 10 or 20 hostages as part of any agreement, who could ensure that the remaining captives would be released? Are we supposed to take Hamas's word for it? Are we supposed to believe that the Americans, Egyptians and Qataris would be able to force Hamas to comply with the terms of any agreement? Hamas is only interested in a deal that would keep it in power and make Israel lose the war. The hostages-ceasefire negotiations have broken down because of insufficient pressure from the Biden administration on Hamas's patrons in Qatar. (Gatestone Institute) The murder of six more Israeli hostages captured by Hamas appears to be leading many to think that if only the Israeli government would agree to a ceasefire, Israel would get their hostages back, especially before Hamas finishes murdering them. But even with a ceasefire, Hamas will hold on to as many of the hostages as they can for as long as they can, to keep them in play as a weapon. With a ceasefire, the Israelis might see a few hostages at a time dribbled out, each one exchanged for hundreds, if not more, of convicted Palestinian terrorists released from Israeli prisons, whose first job would be to go right back to terrorizing. (Gatestone Institute) News reports often failed to note that Farhan al-Qadi - the Israeli hostage freed last week - is an Arab-Israeli Muslim. He is a Bedouin Arab, like at least 17 other Israelis, including six children, who were killed by Hamas on Oct. 7. None of this fits the stereotype in some Western precincts that Israel is an apartheid state rooted in ethnic hatred. That description applies to Hamas, which could have released al-Qadi, as its Palestinian brother, at any time. But Hamas considered al-Qadi an asset it could trade to Israel for the release of many terrorists. Hamas knows Israel prizes the lives of all its citizens, including Muslims, and Hamas takes advantage of Israel's basic decency. (Wall Street Journal) As a Muslim committed to Islam, and thus starkly opposed to the mendacious, totalitarian imposter of Islam that is Islamism, the underpinning of all Hamas's words, deeds, and diabolical aspirations, I and countless other Muslims around the world who saw a humble Muslim Israeli (Farhan al-Qadi) rescued by the IDF, only to witness the appalling execution of 6 Israeli hostages at the last moment of rescue, are reaffirmed in our mission to expose, disavow, reject and dismantle Islamism by all means possible. Far from a moral stance, tolerating Hamas or even going so far as to celebrate it as in some way "defenders" of the Palestinians against Israel is, in fact, an immoral fallacy. Hamas murders Jew after Jew while expending Palestinian lives to do so, its appetite for death boundless. The vile murder of 6 Israeli hostages tells us who Hamas is; the heroic rescue of Bedouin captive Farhan al-Qadi tells us who Israel is. The writer, a British-American Muslim, is Associate Professor of Medicine at the State University of New York and an Honorary Fellow at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. (Times of Israel) The Gaza War Here in Israel, we've had to learn a lot since this war began. We've learned that we're nearly encircled by Iranian proxies. We've learned that the terrorist organization Hamas operates openly in the territory of two American allies, Turkey and Qatar. We've learned that Egypt, which has a border with Gaza and a peace agreement with Israel, has been allowing in the weapons that Hamas uses against us. We've learned that Hamas is not universally shunned as a terror group, but actually enjoys broad support, including in the West, including among some of the most educated citizens. We've seen that much of the Western press is capable of turning a story about a war launched by Muslim fundamentalists into a story about the injustice of the Israeli response, and indeed about the injustice of our country's existence. We've seen the support of the American administration wane as the war wears on, including an explicit demand by the White House to stay out of Rafah - the Gaza city where the six hostages were found, but too late. (Free Press) Our enemy is dedicated, by all means necessary, to teaching a final lesson to those Jews who dared imagine themselves equal, sovereign, and masters of their fate in their own state on their ancestral land. We are up against an enemy that not only invaded our country and our homes to gleefully murder and mutilate the most peace-loving people in their beds, but went on to kidnap hundreds of them to ensure they face no consequences for what they did on Oct. 7. Buoyed by global pressure to provide it with ongoing supplies even as it conducts a total war, Hamas remains in firm control of Gaza and its people. It has secured a position as a legitimate negotiating partner. At the same time, all the pressure is placed on Israel to yield to its demands - with no consequences for its actions. There is only one moral position for any government or international organization to pursue: unconditional release of the hostages and unconditional surrender of Hamas. Until then, the war should be waged with no illusions about the enemy we face. The writer is a former IDF intelligence officer and Knesset member for the Independence and the Labor Party. (Jerusalem Post) Hamas controlled the Philadelphi Corridor bordering Egypt since 2007 and it used it to build up an unprecedented rocket arsenal. It used this arsenal to carry out the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. The control of the border was a key ingredient in Hamas's strength, and this is why it wants it back. Hamas understands that the IDF's control of these areas is preventing Hamas from controlling all of Gaza. When Israel controlled Gaza from 1967 to 2005, control of the Netzarim and Philadelphi corridors was key to securing Gaza. Hamas understands that control of the border with Egypt and central Gaza is a key to its return to power. (Jerusalem Post) Iran Tehran shifted the responsibility for revenge against Israel to Hizbullah. Hizbullah's attack, dubbed "Operation Arba'in" was planned for a major symbolic day for Shi'ites. Iranian officials clearly tried to create a victory image for Hizbullah's failed attack. For example, initially, Iranian media claimed that the damage to the Israeli Dvora-class ship in the Mediterranean and the killing of the sailor were inflicted by a Hizbullah missile rather than an errant Israeli interceptor. In addition, Iran's Tasnim News Agency published footage of a Hizbullah missile allegedly in flight, which turned out to be a Hizbullah drone that was intercepted. The Kayhan newspaper featured on its front page Hizbullah's claim that the Israeli preemptive strike was fake news, while the Jam-e Jam newspaper reported that the Israeli preemptive strike had "failed" to prevent Hizbullah's retaliation. The image of victory for Hizbullah's Aug. 25 operation against Israel was sorely needed, and since it did not materialize, it had to be fabricated. 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) The IDF's current operation in northern Samaria is a pre-emptive strike against a terrorist army established by Iran, aimed at taking control of Judea and Samaria and renewing suicide attacks within Israel. Over the past three years, terrorist groups established by Iran, with support from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have taken control in areas like Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nablus, pushing out the PA security forces. According to Israeli security sources, 800-1,000 armed terrorists, equipped with weapons and explosives smuggled from Iran via the Jordanian border, are operating in these regions. They are referred to as "Iran's terrorist army," established by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, in collaboration with Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Recently, these groups have escalated their use of explosive devices, setting up laboratories to produce large explosive bombs, car bombs, and suicide belts. The writer, a veteran Arab affairs and diplomatic commentator for Israel Radio and Television, is a senior Middle East analyst for the Jerusalem Center. (Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs) The anti-Israel trope of "settler-colonialism," which refutes a Jewish connection to the land of their ancestors and denies a permanent Jewish presence in Israel, stems either from ignorance or malevolence. Overlooked is Iran's real "settler-colonialism" in the Middle East that has intentionally altered the demographics in war-torn Syria and Iraq. In Syria, Iran has settled Shia families from Iraq and Lebanon in strategic Sunni areas between Damascus and the Lebanese border. In Iraq, Iranian-backed militias were at the forefront of sectarian cleansing of Sunnis to solidify its corridor to Lebanon. Meanwhile, Turkey has been changing the demographics of Kurdish territories in northeast Syria. After the Turkish military and its allied Islamist militias captured the Afrin district from Kurdish rebels in 2018, 300,000 Kurdish residents were driven out and their properties given to ethnic Arabs. Qatar agreed to finance 240,000 housing units for Arabs in Turkish-controlled Kurdish lands. The writer is director for legislative affairs at the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET) and a fellow at the Yorktown Institute. (Newsweek) Britain Suspends Arms Export Licenses to Israel Over the last three years, Britain sold 3.1 billion pounds worth of weapons to Qatar, the world's foremost sponsor of Sunni jihadism and the principal benefactor of Hamas. It sold 1.9 billion pounds worth to Saudi Arabia, which has been engaged in a bloody war in Yemen that has not been fought entirely according to democratic norms. Turkey, which has crushed the Kurds once again with less concern for human rights than one might hope, received 799 million pounds in British arms. By contrast, Israel, the Middle East's sole democracy and the only power to respect the rights of women and minorities, which is locked in an existential struggle against the forces of jihadism that menace us all, bought 83 million pounds of British arms, 1% of its total weapons purchases. Yet it is the Jewish state that attracted the criticism of Foreign Secretary David Lammy amid misinformation that it has been prosecuting the war in Gaza to excess. In fact, Israel has been fighting a cleaner war in Gaza than has ever been waged anywhere in the world. Arguably, the Israeli-British security partnership has benefited us more. Britain's Watchkeeper surveillance UAVs, based on Israel's Hermes 450 drone, have saved countless British lives in Afghanistan. British troops have trained with Israel's cutting-edge Rhino mobile command and control center. In 2015, Israeli intelligence helped the Metropolitan police discover a bomb factory in northwest London, complete with three tons of ammonium nitrate. This suspension of 30 arms export licenses will surely prove an ill-judged blip, to be rectified when wiser heads prevail. (Telegraph-UK) See also Understanding the Israel-UK Weapons Trade (BICOM-UK) It beggars belief that the British government, a close strategic ally of Israel, has announced a partial suspension of arms licenses, at a time when Israel is fighting a war for its very survival on seven fronts forced upon it on Oct. 7, and at the very moment when six hostages murdered in cold blood by cruel terrorists were being buried by their families. As Israel faces down the threat of Iran and its proxies, not just to its own people but to all of us in the democratic West, this announcement feeds the falsehood that Israel is in breach of international humanitarian law, when in fact it is going to extraordinary lengths to uphold it. Sadly, this announcement will serve to encourage our shared enemies. It will not help to secure the release of the remaining 101 hostages, nor contribute to the peaceful future we wish and pray for. Britain and Israel have so much to gain by standing together against our common enemies for the sake of a safer world. Surely that must be the way forward. (X) The Houthi Blockade in the Red Sea More than eight months after the U.S.-led Operation Prosperity Guardian began, the Houthis continue to attack ships. They attacked the Greek-flagged oil tanker MV Sounion in the Red Sea on Aug. 22 and the ship, carrying 1 million barrels of crude oil, continues to burn. Iran backs the Houthis and is using them to try to blockade Israel and take over the Red Sea. Stakeholder countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt should be doing more to secure the waterway, but they are concerned they will not be backed by the West. This leaves the region open to Iran's predatory behavior. The Houthi campaign is not really about Israel. This is about Iran making a play to control the region. The U.S. and Western countries have largely been unable to stop the Houthi attacks, which are occurring almost every day. This is not how international waters are supposed to operate. It used to be policy to keep these waters safe. However, Iran and the Houthis have shown they can upend centuries of the U.S., UK, and others securing the world's waterways. This is part of a play by Russia and China to upend world order. Their goal is to work with Iran and proxy groups such as the Houthis to weaken the U.S. and Western ability to set global norms. (Jerusalem Post) See also Yemen's Houthis Attacked Two Oil Tankers in Red Sea - Jonathan Saul Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis attacked two oil tankers in the Red Sea on Monday - the Saudi-flagged Amjad and the Panama-flagged Blue Lagoon I - with ballistic missiles and drones. In more than 70 attacks, the Houthis have sunk two vessels, seized another, and killed at least three seafarers. (Reuters) Operation Prosperity Guardian was set up in December 2023 in response to the Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, where 17,000 ships and 10-12% of global trade pass through every year. The aim was to provide a unified international front that would both deter the Houthis from further attacks and reassure the shipping companies who, due to reasons of risk and associated insurance costs, were already starting to take the long route round the Cape of Good Hope. The problem was, it didn't work. The Houthis were not deterred and continued taking pot shots at anyone and everything, including Iranian grain carriers and Russian dark fleet oilers. Back in May when the carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower was present, the U.S. had 12 warships on station providing a mix of missile picket and escorting duties. Now they have zero. The U.S. could have ships in the Red Sea if it wanted to. There can only be one conclusion: that the U.S. has given up on Operation Prosperity Guardian. Freedom of navigation is in the U.S. Navy's DNA. Now is a bad time for the world's most powerful navy to abandon that key principle. The writer spent 27 years in the Royal Navy, where he commanded four different warships. (Telegraph-UK) An article entitled "What is a Navy For" (in the Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute) stated, "The Navy's primary purpose is to sustain friendly commerce by sea." The U.S. Navy web site entitled "Who We Are" tells us: "Since 1775, America's Navy has maintained freedom of the seas. Not only for our nation, but for our allies and strategic partners." The Navy isn't seeking to abandon that role and there are many reports that it wishes to do more to defeat the Houthi attacks that have decimated Suez Canal traffic. But it has not been given a green light by the White House. The writer, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, served as deputy national security advisor, where he supervised U.S. policy in the Middle East for the White House. (Council on Foreign Relations) Other Issues There's no Israeli constituency to speak of for the so-called "two-state solution." The two-state solution died with the collapse of the Oslo framework in the Second Intifada, which began in 2000. Nor is a government ready to return to the two-state track likely to come to power anytime soon. Dreams about it are no more than airy nostalgia and optimism verging on the delusional. The future, alas, belongs to the pessimists, who know that for years to come, we will not be able to let down our guard. Most Israelis feel this in their bones, and are ready for the struggles ahead. In the IDF is a younger cadre of officers who already call themselves the Victory Generation. They are determined to win this war. As are most of us. The writer is a senior lecturer at Hebrew University's Federmann School of Public Policy. (JNS) Israel, you may have read, has escalated tensions with the Palestinians, escalated conflict with Hizbullah, initiated a major escalation with Iran, and even risked escalation with the Houthis in Yemen. You probably noticed a pattern: Wherever Israel defends itself, it is accused of escalation. Iran has been escalating the conflict for months on various fronts, and Israel's response to this escalation was an attempt to prevent Iran's escalation from coming to full fruition. (Commentary) Anti-Zionism undermines the millennia-old ties between Judaism and the Land of Israel. While preparing to leave my position as a tenured full professor and academic administrator at Rutgers University in May, I was called out for contending that calls for Israel's destruction, including the view that Israel has no right to defend itself or its citizens, are antisemitic. Anti-Zionism - opposition to the Jewish right of self-determination in the Jewish people's historic homeland - is antisemitic because it attacks a core belief of Judaism. Three times a day, traditional Jews pray for the rebuilding of Jerusalem as part of the Jewish homeland. Academics would be outraged if anyone tried to dictate to any other religion what its beliefs should be. The writer is dean of the Undergraduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Yeshiva University. (Wall Street Journal) Observations: Netanyahu: Israel Must Control the Philadelphi Corridor in Gaza - Itamar Eichner (Ynet News-Jerusalem Post)
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