| DAILY ALERT |
Thursday, September 5, 2024 |
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer told CNN on Wednesday in an interview: "We should all be angry at Hamas because they're the ones that are preventing any deal from happening, and they're the ones that are responsible for the execution of six hostages, including American Hersh Goldberg-Polin....Hamas is responsible for the plight of the hostages." "Hopefully there will be a deal that Hamas will agree to. Because up until this point they haven't agreed to anything. They haven't agreed to any proposal that was put forward. There are a lot of people who believe, unfortunately, mistakenly, that there's some deal on the table that Hamas has agreed to that the Israeli government does not agree to. That's simply not true." (CNN) See also Video: Prime Minister Netanyahu's Press Conference Wednesday (YouTube) President Biden and Vice President Harris met with their national security team on Monday to discuss a hostage-release and ceasefire deal with Hamas in Gaza. Biden and his top advisers were shocked after Hamas killed six hostages, among them U.S. citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin, and have started to rethink the way forward in the negotiations over the deal. At the same time, Hamas's new demand to increase the number of Palestinian prisoners released as part of the deal raised even more questions among U.S. negotiators about whether an agreement is possible, U.S. officials said. "In Doha last week, Hamas presented demands that were different from what was agreed on in the past," a U.S. official said. (Axios) Oct. 7 survivor Sabine Taasa, 48, who lost her husband and 17-year-old son during the Hamas attack on the Israeli village of Netiv Haasara, told the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva on Tuesday, "I need you to stop blaming us." Her son's murder was filmed by his killers. "Is that normal? Shooting a child of 17 six times in the head?" she asked. When Hamas militants entered Taasa's home, they lobbed a grenade at her husband Gil, 46, a firefighter. Gil threw himself on top of it to protect his children. Two of their sons were injured. The youngest, Shay, now nine, had an eye blown out of its socket, permanently blinding that eye. Taasa urged the committee to reflect on what it means to be "not just a child in Gaza, but also a child in Israel living with trauma marking them for life." "We are not criminals," she said, insisting it was Hamas "who are the terrorists, the devils who kill children, women, men, the elderly....We didn't ask for this war." On Tuesday, Israel's military announced it had killed Ahmed Fozi Nazer Muhammad Wadia, the Hamas commander who led the invasion of Netiv Haasara and who was photographed inside Taasa's home. (AFP) Up to 7,000 unruly anti-Israel protesters disrupted New York City's Labor Day parade on Sept. 2, lighting flares and setting off smoke bombs. The crowd waved Hamas terrorist flags along with Palestinian, Syrian, Iranian and Hizbullah banners. White House Spokesperson Andrew Bates said, "It is especially heinous to express support for Hamas on the same day as the funeral for an innocent American hostage who they brutally murdered. This is a moment for all Americans to come together and stand against antisemitism and against the sickening hate and evil that Hamas represents." (New York Post-Israel Hayom) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
Over the past week, IDF troops have been conducting "precise, intelligence-based operations" in the Tel al-Sultan area in Rafah. Troops have eliminated over 200 terrorists and located dozens of weapons in civilian structures, the IDF announced on Wednesday. The weapons included ten rocket launchers designed for firing long-range rockets. (Ynet News) Hizbullah fired more than 100 rockets into northern Israel on Wednesday, sparking fires and causing damage but no injuries. Several rockets impacted the city of Kiryat Shmona. More than 8,000 rockets have been fired at Israel from Lebanon since the start of the war. (Times of Israel) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has instructed the defense establishment to prepare to distribute humanitarian aid in Gaza, instead of the international organizations. The humanitarian aid sent to Gaza currently reaches Hamas and enables it to maintain control. Brig.-Gen. Elad Goren will head the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) unit for Gaza, a position similar to that of COGAT in the West Bank. Goren will handle daily tactical issues such as the delivery of humanitarian aid in Gaza, repairing local infrastructure destroyed in the war, and maintaining contact with foreign aid organizations. This will enable Israel to preserve its legitimacy to continue fighting in Gaza, without being hindered by a humanitarian crisis or famine. (Ynet News) The IDF said on Aug. 29 that Hamas manipulated public opinion poll results it sent to a respected polling institution in order to falsely inflate public support. Documents found in tunnels in Gaza indicated Hamas efforts to change results before returning them to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, headed by political scientist Khalil Shikaki. Shikaki's polling center is one of the leading authorities on Palestinian public opinion, holding significant credibility around the world. One of the documents details how Hamas edited its survey results and returned them to the research institute for publication. In a March survey, the polling institute reported that 62% of Gaza's population was satisfied with Hamas's performance in the war. The original survey indicated only 32% support. The published results stated that 71% believed Hamas's decision to attack Israel on Oct. 7 was correct, while in the original document, only 31% supported Hamas's decision. (Ha'aretz) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
The Gaza War Through our tears over the six murdered hostages, there's a sobering truth that cuts through the emotion: Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar doesn't want a deal right now. He needs the hostages to ensure his survival and to keep extorting us. His strategy is to wear us down. Israel should pursue Hamas leaders in Gaza and worldwide, just as we did the murderers of the Munich Olympics athletes in former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir's time - terrorists who also killed their hostages. A deal, as much as we wish for it, exists only in our imagination right now. There's no agreement on the table. We're mainly negotiating with ourselves. (Israel Hayom) See also Who Are the Remaining Gaza Hostages? - Michael Blum According to an AFP database, 64 captives in Gaza are still believed to be alive and held there by Hamas. 57 are Israelis, six are Thai nationals and one is Nepalese. They comprise 52 men, 10 women, and two children. Eleven are military personnel, including five women. 35 out of 70 dead hostages were already dead when they were taken to Gaza. They include 10 Israeli soldiers. The 35 other hostages died in Gaza. (AFP) Advocates of a hostage deal that would require the IDF to withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor that runs the length of the Gaza-Egyptian border suggest that technological solutions can effectively prevent the border from once again becoming Hamas's military and economic lifeline. Static defenses are ineffective against a human adversary that observes, learns, adapts, and innovates. The now-iconic image of a lone tractor dismantling the supposedly impregnable security fence near Kibbutz Be'eri, followed by waves of terrorists, serves as a powerful refutation of the claims made by U.S. officials and former Israeli military leaders that technological solutions alone would suffice. History provides numerous examples to debunk this claim. During the Arab revolt in the late 1930s, the British erected a security fence along the Lebanese-Mandate border to prevent the smuggling of terrorists and arms. British intelligence soon reported that the fence's metal rods were being sold in Beirut markets. In 1973, the Bar-Lev Line failed, leading to the deaths of hundreds of Israeli soldiers. Static defenses equipped with sophisticated sensors and cameras require consistent maintenance. How will the IDF maintain an advanced fence along the Philadelphi Corridor after withdrawing from Gaza? How will the IDF prevent Hamas from shooting and destroying the sensors and cameras above ground? Moreover, how will new smuggling tunnels that run under the fence be detected? An Israeli withdrawal from the border, and certainly from Gaza as a whole, would constitute a victory for Hamas, electrifying the Arab world, emboldening Iran's proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen, and severely weakening the U.S.-led coalition with Israel and presumed moderate Arab states. The image of the last Israeli tank crossing the destroyed fence back into Israel would symbolize the first decisive Arab victory in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. For all these reasons, there is no substitute for an IDF presence along the Gaza-Egyptian border. The writer is professor emeritus at Bar-Ilan University and former senior researcher at the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies. (Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security) Psychological warfare is a crucial part of Hamas's strategy. Hamas and its supporters understand that letting the Western public dwell too long on the massacres of Jews is damaging to their cause. Their objectives are drawing attention and public sympathy away from murdered Jews and shifting the news cycle to get the world back to sympathizing with Hamas as "the resistance" to Israel and depicting Jews as the devil incarnate. Another goal is to present Jews as the culprits for their own murders. After Oct. 7, pro-Hamas online brigades spread a lie claiming that the IDF murdered most of the Israelis who perished on that day. The same lie is circulating on social media today about the six hostages who were murdered. A document uncovered in Gaza by the IDF instructs Hamas operatives to increase dissemination of hostage videos to build psychological pressure on the Israelis; to continue blaming Netanyahu; and to work to undermine Israel's belief that the ground invasion will bring the hostages home. The writer is a Senior Advisor at the Kennan Institute (Wilson Center) in Washington, Senior Fellow at the Z3 Institute for Jewish Priorities, and a Fellow at the Jerusalem Center. (Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs) How is it that Gaza, with 36 hospitals built with EU donations, thousands of UN relief workers on the scene for decades, and some of the highest per capita healthcare spending in the Arab world, failed to vaccinate its children? Some are calling for an unconditional ceasefire, seemingly unconcerned that such a deal might leave dozens of hostages to die in the hands of Jew-hating terrorists. They somehow think that there's a peace agreement in the offing with Hamas, which has publicly committed to murdering every Jew in Israel. They claim it's Israel's duty to prematurely suspend their justified dismantling of the Hamas death machine, which has attacked Israel for almost 20 years. If it were any other country, Israel's response would either be ignored or praised for its calibrated consideration of civilians while putting their own fighters at risk. If Hamas were any other political entity in the world, it would be broadly condemned for attacking without provocation. For Hamas, this isn't really a war, it's a publicity stunt, a massive re-running of Yasir Arafat's original playbook: The more Jewish children you kill, the more world attention and sympathy you get. If Hamas didn't burn Jewish children alive on Oct. 7, the world would not be paying much attention to them. And, it's working out amazingly well for Hamas. They're getting massive amounts of positive media coverage, while world opinion is solidly against Israel. Except, according to New York Magazine, a mere 14% of Americans under 50 say they are following the war extremely or very closely, and that under-30 voters listed "Israel/Palestine" 15th among the 16 "major issues." So if Americans aren't following the story, and don't care much about the issue, why are we hearing about it so often? Because it's a money-maker for news corporations. Dead kids in Gaza are great clickbait, even if the images are fake. Disinformation campaigns that make Jews look like amoral, bloodthirsty killers are good for the bottom line, even if they cause a massive uptick in antisemitic violence in the U.S. The result is that the views of a small group of well-funded anti-Israel loudmouths are controlling the narrative. Somehow, when there are no Jews involved, many far more serious crises around the world just don't rate coverage. (Times of Israel) Israeli Security Israel's decisive defeat of Hamas in Gaza will facilitate regional peace with Saudi Arabia, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman told JNS. "Being a strong regional superpower that can manage its borders is what is admired in the Arab world. The Saudis want to see a strong Israel defeating common enemies." The Biden administration thought "that by limiting Israel's ability to prosecute the war they were preserving the opportunity for peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia; just the opposite. What makes the Arab world pay attention to Israel is Israel's strength against the enemies their countries face as well." Friedman voiced pessimism regarding a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas. "I am not optimistic that they will ever make a deal," he said. (JNS) On April 14, Israel and its allies successfully intercepted an Iranian attack in response to the elimination of the Revolutionary Guards' Lebanon-Syria Corps commander in Damascus two weeks earlier. On August 25, Israel launched a preemptive strike to neutralize Hizbullah's planned response to the killing of its chief of staff, Fouad Shukr, three and a half weeks prior. These incidents convey two crucial messages. First, the offensive actions planned by Iran and Hizbullah were thwarted. Both highlighted a significant gap between our adversaries' intentions and capabilities versus the actual results. Second, the IDF's intelligence capabilities demonstrated remarkable accuracy and penetrability of our enemies' plans. When enemies repeatedly see their plans foiled and face severe consequences - with distance (be it Yemen or Iran) no longer providing safety - they're compelled to change tactics. Our challenge then becomes staying vigilant and sharp enough to identify these shifts. The writer is former commander of the Israeli Air Defense Command. (Israel Hayom) Israel these days is waking up to the shattering realization that the rosy tales it told itself for decades were false. That there is no such thing as "the peace process with the Palestinians," if only because a) the scattered family-based tribes who dot Judea and Samaria do not coalesce over any one coherent national consciousness, and b) even if they did, coexistence with the Jews next door has never been and will never be on the menu. That America won't always be a perpetually reliable ally. And that the world remains, as it had always been, at best unmoved by our suffering and, at worst, committed to seeing the Jews as pesky outsiders who must be erased. Oct. 7 proved, with haunting clarity, just how much Israelis will now have to rethink. To gain real security, Israel can no longer revert back to its strategy of engaging in limited-scale conflicts with Hamas or Hizbullah every few years only to withdraw, attempt something akin to containment, and face increasingly fortified foes on their terms. To truly deliver a deadly and effective blow to its enemies, Israel will have not only to target its leaders and their enablers, but also reclaim and keep key territories, including the creation of buffer zones. It will have to dismantle the murderous and corrupt Palestinian Authority, and enforce some solution that gives Palestinians some autonomy in their daily lives but nothing remotely resembling an armed sovereign nation. And it will have to radically rethink the way it deals with terrorism, including eliminating incentives for kidnapping and holding Israeli civilians as bargaining chips. Oct. 7 reminded Israelis, in the most brutal fashion imaginable, that the quasi-normal life they had imagined was now their forever lot was an illusion. Now, they must fight. In recent days, a post from an unnamed reservist in Gaza has been going viral in Israel. "The Philadelphi Corridor is more important than hostages," wrote the reservist. "It's more important than me and my entire battalion, which has been fighting in Gaza since the beginning of the war." Approximately every 100 meters, he explained, a tunnel passes through the fence, openings used for smuggling massive amounts of contraband. Therefore, "leaving Philadelphi for one day means a death sentence for thousands more Israelis....Our blood is no less red than the blood of the hostages, although we are ready to sacrifice our lives for the sake of defeating the enemy." (Tablet) Israel repeatedly conceded territory, but the only result was more terrorism and more attacks on its citizens. In May 2000, Israel left Lebanon. In June of that year, the UN certified that Israel had met the requirements of Resolution 425. In July 2006, Hizbullah launched a major cross-border attack. A 33-day war ensued, and ended with Resolution 1701, which included disbanding Hizbullah south of the Litani River. Yet Hizbullah redeployed and rearmed all the way to the border with Israel. In 2022, Hizbullah demanded that Israel agree to allow Lebanon to explore the maritime border's seabed for gas. The Biden administration gave itself a pat on the back for helping reach "a historic" maritime border demarcation that demonstrated "the transformative power of American diplomacy." A year later, on Oct. 8, 2023, Hizbullah launched its war on Israel in support of Hamas. 31 years after Israel started experimenting with coordinated withdrawals with Palestinian leaders, 24 years after Israel unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon, 19 years after it left Gaza and Jenin, none of the deals or unilateral withdrawals brought Israel peace. For its concessions, Israel got a Hamas massacre of 1,200 of its citizens on Oct. 7. On Oct. 8, Israel found itself facing Hizbullah attacks that have depopulated its north. Three decades of Israeli concessions have proven the futility of compromising. The writer is a research fellow at the FDD. (Foundation for Defense of Democracies) U.S. Announces Charges Against Hamas Leaders U.S. officials unsealed criminal complaints against Hamas leader Yehiya Sinwar and other senior Hamas leaders on Tuesday, accusing them of conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization, conspiring to murder Americans and conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction. The charging document - filed in February in federal court in New York - cites the group's large-scale attack in Israel on Oct. 7, which killed 1,200 people, including more than 40 Americans, and resulted in the taking of 250 hostages. The document describes a terrorist conspiracy by the group's leaders dating back to 1997 "to kill nationals of the United States." U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland stressed that Hamas is responsible for the Oct. 7 deaths. "During the attack, Hamas terrorists murdered civilians who tried to flee, and those who sought refuge in bomb shelters. They murdered entire families. They murdered the elderly, and they murdered young children. They weaponized sexual violence against women." U.S. law allows the Justice Department to charge foreign nationals for killing Americans. (Washington Post) See also Justice Department Announces Terrorism Charges Against Senior Leaders of Hamas (U.S. Department of Justice) The Biden Administration on Tuesday unsealed criminal charges against six Hamas leaders, three of them believed to have been killed already by Israel. The U.S. move is minor, and it isn't even new. The U.S. filed the charges in February. The Justice Department details Hamas crimes from the 1990s on. But the U.S. didn't seek to charge the Hamas leaders until Feb. 1, the same day as Mr. Biden's executive order creating a sanctions regime targeting Israelis in the West Bank. Moreover, a criminal court is the wrong venue for the likes of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. Hamas jihadists aren't committing street crimes. Israel is fighting a war for survival against illegal enemy combatants. What matters is winning the war, not arresting suspects. If the administration had the will, it could follow up these charges with large bounties on Hamas leaders' heads and a campaign of charges against Hamas's material supporters in America. (Wall Street Journal) The U.S. Justice Department's criminal complaint against six Hamas leaders includes three terrorists who are already dead - Ismael Haniyeh, Mohammed Deif, and Marwan Issa. The Justice Department well knows that the dead cannot be prosecuted. This is not a criminal case. It's theater. A powerful nation that takes its defense seriously never responds to a foreign military enemy's mass-murder attacks by filing a lawsuit. As the administration well knows, none of these alien enemy combatants will ever be arrested and extradited to the U.S. While timed as a response to Hamas's cold-blooded murder last week of American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, the administration took no meaningful action against Hamas throughout his 11 months of captivity by a terrorist organization designated as such under U.S. law for almost 30 years. (National Review) Britain Suspends Arms Export Licenses to Israel The U.S. has refused to follow Britain in suspending arms sales to Israel, with U.S. officials saying they had not concluded there had been a breach of international humanitarian law. A senior UK government source told The Times that the U.S. had privately warned Britain against suspending arms sales. John Kirby, a spokesman for the U.S .National Security Council, said: "There's been no determination by the United States they have violated international humanitarian law...we're going to continue to do what we have to do to support Israel's defensive capabilities." Privately, one British minister said: "The U.S. will find the intervention unhelpful, the pro-Palestinian MPs think it won't go far enough, and the Israel supporters think it's bonkers. By trying to please all sides, they've ended up pissing off everyone." (The Times-UK) See also Netanyahu Slams UK Government over "Shameful" Arms Sale Decision - Lee Harpin Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the British government's decision to suspend some arms sales to Israel, in a a series of posts on X. "Days after Hamas executed six Israeli hostages, the UK government suspended thirty arms licenses to Israel. This shameful decision will not change Israel's determination to defeat Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization that savagely murdered 1,200 people on October 7, including 14 British citizens." "Hamas is still holding over 100 hostages, including five British citizens. Instead of standing with Israel, a fellow democracy defending itself against barbarism, Britain's misguided decision will only embolden Hamas. Israel is pursuing a just war with just means, taking unprecedented measures to keep civilians out of harm's way and comporting fully with international law." "Just as Britain's heroic stand against the Nazis is seen today as having been vital in defending our common civilization, so too will history judge Israel's stand against Hamas and Iran's axis of terror. With or without British arms, Israel will win this war and secure our common future." (Jewish News-UK) The Government's decision to suspend a number of export licenses to Israel is a shameful act. This was a time to stand by our ally, not risk legitimizing the murderous activities of those who wish to see Israel extirpated. Since the UK sends little in the way of armaments to Israel, this can be nothing other than a political gesture. Israel has been a good friend to the UK when our military needed help during the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. The war in Gaza is a ghastly affair. But Israel did not invite this. It had no option but to seek to dismantle Hamas's terrorist operations after the massacres of Oct. 7. Israeli forces have sought to minimize civilian casualties, which is nigh on impossible when the terrorist gunmen hide in hospitals or schools, prepared to see their own people die to turn international opinion their way. In Britain, they have succeeded in doing so. (Telegraph-UK) British Foreign Secretary David Lammy has announced a clampdown on arms sales to Israel. British arms account for only 1% of Israeli imports. The messaging propagates the falsehood that Israel is in breach of international humanitarian law (when it actually goes to great lengths to uphold it). Little wonder the decision will give succor to the barbarians of Hamas who tortured, beheaded, raped and burned hundreds of innocents on Oct. 7. Here in Britain, Lammy's messaging is bound to fuel antisemitism - legitimizing acts of Jew-hatred which hit record levels in 2023 and experienced a grim surge in 2024. In what corner of his misguided mind could the impact of his decision play out in any other way? This is the same man who previously nominated Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader. He has also restored funding to UNRWA, a UN agency that had housed Hamas terrorists. He has now given the green light to those who indulge in raging, violent, pro-Palestinian protest in the UK by suggesting right is on their side where arms to Israel are concerned. (Daily Express-UK) Iran Recent activities at a secretive office inside Tehran's Ministry of Defense are stoking fears that Iran is far closer to building a nuclear bomb. Documents reveal how Iran's parliament is significantly expanding funding for the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND). SPND's mandate is to produce advanced and nonconventional weapons with no civilian oversight. It reports directly to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Ali Akbar Salehi, former head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, told Iranian state television in February that his country already has all the necessary components to build a bomb. Starting in 2014, the U.S. has sanctioned a spiderweb of SPND officials, subsidiaries, and front companies in a bid to drain the organization's supply lines and resources. The expansion of SPND coincides with a shift in the U.S. intelligence community's view of Iran's nuclear program. A July report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence details how it can no longer verify that Iran's nuclear pursuits are strictly for civilian purposes. (Free Press) Iran's long-vaunted missile program was behind its unprecedented assault on Israel in April, when Iran became the first nation to launch such a barrage since Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein lobbed Scud missiles at Israel in the 1991 Gulf War. But U.S. officials assessed that 50% of the Iranian missiles failed at launch or crashed before reaching their target. Even those that reached Israel appeared to miss their marks. Sam Lair, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said if Iranian missiles are not able to hit targets precisely, "that recasts their role. They're no longer as valuable for conducting conventional military operations. They may be more valuable simply as terror weapons." James Martin analysts concluded that the four Iranian Emad missiles that struck Nevatim Air Base in the Negev Desert were "much less accurate than previous estimates indicated," Lair said. "This indicates the Iranians are a generation behind where previous assessments thought they were in accuracy." The poor performance may be attributable to electronic warfare measures designed to confuse the missile's guidance system, as well as potential sabotage, poor missile design and the distances involved in the attack. (AP-Washington Post) Antisemitism In a better world, Hamas's cold-blooded murder of six hostages in a tunnel under Rafah would deter student radicals from chanting pro-Hamas slogans. High-level task forces at Columbia and Stanford have issued detailed reports of their findings and recommendations regarding the mishandling of campus protests last academic year. What they uncovered is deeply disturbing. Large numbers of Jewish students report harassment, intimidation and even physical assault. Students wearing yarmulkes have been spat on, humiliated, and shoved up against walls. Necklaces with Jewish symbols have been ripped from their necks. Jewish students have been chased off campus by groups threatening violence, and many avoid walking alone on campus. Some have been excluded from public spaces. The Columbia task force found that "some critiques of Zionism on campus in recent months have incorporated traditional antisemitic tropes about secretive power, money, global conspiracies, bloodthirstiness, and comparisons of Zionists to Nazis or rodents." The Stanford task force concluded that "antisemitism exists today on the Stanford campus in ways that are widespread and pernicious." At both campuses, there were prominent examples of teachers abusing their authority to stigmatize and humiliate Jewish students. At both, Jewish students, faculty and staff reported that when they took their stories of misconduct on campus and in the classroom to administrators, their complaints often weren't taken seriously, and some students were advised to seek mental-health counseling instead of redress. (Wall Street Journal) Lebanon Tensions have been rising between the Christian community and Hizbullah since the beginning of the October war between Israel and Hamas. The Christian community has been accusing Hizbullah of dragging Lebanon into a war with Israel without prior consultations with either the state decision-makers or the other parties. Hizbullah's arch-enemy, Samir Geagea, the head of the Lebanese Forces party (LF) and the most vocal critic of Hizbullah's involvement in the Hamas-Israel war, has gained dominance in the Christian camp. Hizbullah's answer came in a survey published by the pro-Hizbullah newspaper Al-Akhbar, claiming that only 15.7% of Lebanon's population is Christian (compared to the 33-35% figure that was accepted as a consensus). Lebanon's Christian community saw the survey as a warning from Hizbullah that the present political status quo agreed in 1990 by all parties to end the civil war is no longer valid. Now, Hizbullah was signaling that the time had come to divest the Christian community of its remaining assets dominating Lebanese politics. Lebanese Forces spokesperson Charles Jabbour contested the survey, claiming, "It's enough to remember that during the parliamentary elections in May 2022, 35% of those who voted were Christian." Already in 1985, Hassan Nasrallah claimed that his goal was to transform Lebanon into an additional province of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Once Hizbullah's war against Israel is over, the next phase of the expansion of the Iranian axis will be to change the political equation in Lebanon. The writer, a special analyst at the Jerusalem Center, was formerly Deputy Head for Assessment of Israeli Military Intelligence. (Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs) Weekend Features Israeli archaeologists in Jerusalem found a 2,700-year-old stone seal last week near the Temple Mount's southern wall in Jerusalem. The writing on the seal is Hebrew - a Jewish name: Yeho'ezer ben Hoshayahu. That name is very similar to the name of one of King David's warriors mentioned in the Torah, and to a Jewish name mentioned in the book of Jeremiah. Filip Vukosavovic of the Israel Antiquities Authority said the seal, which dates to about 700 BCE, was used by someone who "held a senior position in the Kingdom of Judah's administration." It was only some 1,400 years after the creation of that seal, in the seventh century CE, that the Muslims of the Arabian Peninsula invaded and occupied the Land of Israel. The Muslim occupiers never called the country "Palestine." (JNS) Since Oct. 7, we have lost too many friends, attended too many funerals. We've seen parents burying children and grandparents burying grandchildren. Since Oct. 7, many of our children and neighbors have been deployed, fighting for Israel's existence and to guarantee that the kind of barbarism Hamas unleashed never occurs again. Fighting to restore deterrence is not vengeance; it's an essential and legitimate battle aim. During this year, three of our children wed. At each wedding, the list of fallen friends the couple memorialized under the huppah grew. As a dad, I know my kids only share some of their brushes with death. As a historian, I know that the difference between telling a great war story and getting a dignified military burial is a matter of millimeters - and sheer luck. Israelis' collective commitment to keep marrying and having children is a profound choice. We're obligated to support, love, and rebuild because, as Bernard-Henri Levy writes in his new book, Israel Alone, "Tragedy is Greek, not Jewish." The writer, a Distinguished Scholar of North American History at McGill University, is a Senior Fellow in Zionist Thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute. (Jerusalem Post) Observations: A Hostage Deal Is a Poison Pill for Israel - Bret Stephens (New York Times)
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