| DAILY ALERT |
Thursday, August 13, 2026 |
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
A U.S. official said Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's rejection of President Trump's latest Gaza peace plan is something the administration can live with for now, since Israel has eased its attacks in Gaza. (Politico) During five intense days in July, Iran launched waves of drones and missiles at U.S. troops on three bases in Jordan. Using advanced missiles that can suddenly change course, on the fifth day, the Iranians broke through. A missile struck prefabricated housing units at one of the bases on July 17, killing three U.S. soldiers and wounding more than 100. Pentagon officials later acknowledged that scores of other troops were injured and several aircraft damaged in attacks in Jordan that week. Iran is learning how to evade U.S. air defenses, while at the same time the Pentagon's supply of interceptors has quickly dwindled. The Pentagon has used more than 1,500 Patriot interceptor missiles in the war and has fewer than 1,700 interceptors left. The U.S. produced 600 interceptors in 2025. On a single day in July, American forces in the Middle East fired 50 Patriot interceptors. (New York Times) Former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, director of Israel's foreign intelligence service from 2016-2021, told a Times podcast this week that Mossad had "saved many, many lives on British soil." Cohen said, "I quote your former director of MI5 who said, 'Yossi, you deserve the Oscar for what you did here. You have disrupted a huge quantity of terror activity inside the UK. Thank you very much for doing it.' I think that the UK government should do exactly the same. I think that the UK has to be super supportive to the State of Israel, as we had been to you when you had suffered terrorism on your lands." Cohen said that UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham's condemnation of Israel last month crossed a line. "Criticism is OK, but opposing what we're doing is not OK. The State of Israel never initiated this war in Gaza. The terrorists did, Hamas and Islamic Jihad did." Cohen also revealed that some of Mossad's most effective operations simply leveraged its ruthless reputation without the need for any violent actions. "People have left their positions in defense organizations in Tehran because we told them, 'we know you.' We've sent them flowers to their houses and to their families saying, 'Hello Mahmoud, or whatever, we know that you work for the nukes and you may be next. So better for you to leave what you're doing right now.' And they've left." (The Times-UK) See also Mossad "Toured" Fordow Nuclear Site Many Times - Eli Ashkenazi The Mossad toured Iran's Fordow nuclear site "many times" in order to understand it, its former director Yossi Cohen revealed on Tuesday. "Its bombing by the Americans is the fulfillment of all my dreams," he added. While some Israeli officials told the Post they believe Fordow was destroyed, others said caution should be the rule until confirmation. (Jerusalem Post) Israel's Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon told the UN Security Council on Tuesday: "I could lecture for hours about our biblical rights, our historical rights, our legal rights to Judea and Samaria. But if we want to be practical today, and if this council is serious about bringing security and stability to the region, it must understand a simple truth: We are not going anywhere." "When speaker after speaker refers to 'settler violence,' it is an insult to thousands of years of continuous Jewish history in the Land of Israel. Jews have never been and will never be 'settlers' in Judea and Samaria. It's a provocation. Why? Because first it denies our connection to the Land of Israel. It distracts from constant terrorist attacks against Israelis and it collectively labels entire innocent communities for the crimes of the marginal extremist minority." "Our right to live in our land is based on our historical connection to it. It is described in the Torah. Judea and Samaria is where our story in the Land of Israel began. It is where it will continue." (X) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
IDF forces are tightening pressure on dozens of Hizbullah terrorists believed trapped inside an underground complex in southern Lebanon's Ali Taher ridge near the Beaufort Castle, cutting water supply lines and seeking to prevent supplies from reaching them, according to Lebanese reports Tuesday. (Ynet News) The IDF killed a Hamas commander on Wednesday who was planning an attack on troops in northern Gaza, in the first Israeli airstrike there in more than a week. (Times of Israel) Top current and former Israel defense officials across the political spectrum believe the country must maintain some kind of security zone in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria for years to come. While a majority are willing to withdraw to a smaller security zone in Gaza, they say the exact percentage is less important than keeping the high ground in each sector of the Strip. For example, the area around Shejaia requires the IDF to be deep into Gaza to maintain a useful buffer zone, whereas in Rafah, the military could control much less territory and still have an excellent vantage point to prevent any Hamas attempt to push into Israel. In northern Gaza, there are ridges and hills from Netiv Haasara on the Israeli side which straddle parts of Beit Hanoun and other areas, which need to remain under Israeli control. These officials would insist on keeping such a zone for many years because they do not believe Gazan society is likely to change its hostile attitude toward Israel. Moreover, a majority of Israeli defense officials have little faith that the Lebanese army taking control of "pilot" areas is anything more than a public relations effort. Another broad area of consensus is for Israel to regularly perform attacks when necessary to prevent all enemies bordering Israel from increasing their capacity to threaten the country. Almost no one in the Israeli defense establishment wants to withdraw much from Syria, despite a recent push by Washington on the issue. They see how Syrian leader Ahmad al-Sharaa has treated and massacred some Syrian minority groups and believe he remains a product of al-Qaeda. They mostly believe his reluctance to attack Israel is an extended tactical delay because he has not yet fully taken control over his own territory. (Jerusalem Post) Israel and Venezuela announced on Tuesday that they had renewed consular relations, 17 years after diplomatic ties were severed in 2009 by then-president Hugo Chavez, a few days after the start of an IDF operation in Gaza. Ties have also warmed since Israel sent humanitarian assistance following the recent earthquake. (Times of Israel) 77% of young Israelis feel "highly motivated" to serve in the IDF, with 57% saying they were highly motivated to serve in a combat unit, the highest percentage in 10 years, according to an August 2026 survey conducted by the Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF). Over 60% view the IDF as a "victorious army," while 13% disagreed. (Jerusalem Post) Following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, the entry of tens of thousands of Palestinian construction workers into Israel was banned overnight and the construction industry ground to a halt until foreign workers began to arrive. ; Baruch Hadad, co-CEO of veteran Israeli construction company Omer Construction and Engineering, said, "I welcome the change taking place in the workforce and the switch to foreign laborers." "They have many advantages: quality, the number of managerial staff that must be kept on the site to obtain the required quality, and construction time. In my opinion, these factors are making projects more economically worthwhile than in the past." Co-CEO Zeev Salant added, "As soon as we switched to foreign manpower, safety improved immeasurably, because they are more disciplined. With foreign workers, it's easier to keep safety under control." (Globes) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Iran Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan recently concluded a defense agreement. All three are Sunni-ruled states with substantial non-Sunni populations, whose interests are routinely suppressed or kept strictly in check by their central governments. The pact's public focus on Israel aligns with a familiar regional playbook: using anti-Israel rhetoric as a unifying force to obscure internal divisions and project ideological legitimacy. However, a deeper look reveals that the primary driver behind this arrangement is not Israel, but rather a profound sense of regional vulnerability driven by Iran's aggressive expansionism and the perceived unreliability of the U.S. - that American commitments can no longer be relied upon for long-term security. Middle Eastern regimes watch Western powers enter regional conflicts with high-minded goals, only to withdraw when domestic political will fades. Iran has adeptly exploited this perception of Western weakness. Through its network of regional proxies, Tehran continually tests the limits of American power. By demonstrating that Western allies will not step in decisively to dismantle aggressive regimes, Tehran reinforces the perception that local powers must fend for themselves. Western analysts often assert that severe economic pressure and internal unrest will inevitably cause the Iranian regime to collapse from within. This perspective fundamentally misunderstands the mechanics of power in totalitarian Middle Eastern states. Authoritarian regimes do not govern by public consensus or economic performance; they preserve power through the unyielding application of force against internal opposition. When Western powers rely on economic sanctions while avoiding decisive action against regional disruptors, regional capitals take note. The signing of the Saudi-Turkish-Pakistani defense agreement in Mecca is a direct outcome of this dynamic. The writer, a fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, served as an adviser on the Islamic world for the U.S. Department of Defense for 28 years. (JNS) New data emerge almost daily pointing to the collapse of Iran's economy: enormous domestic and foreign debts, bankruptcies, a majority of the population falling below the poverty line, 55% according to external figures, and the freezing of accounts belonging to the National Iranian Oil Company by an Iranian state-owned bank over massive debts. Pay in the civilian public sector has been cut in half, as have pension payments. (Israel Hayom) Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains greatly curtailed because of the war in Iran. Much of the oil getting through the strait is on tankers navigating a treacherous gantlet of Iranian attack drones, or running dark with their location devices turned off. Gulf countries are now intent on breaking their dependence on the narrow waterway. They are building or expanding pipelines and other infrastructure that can bypass it, and vastly expanding storage capacity in places like Asia. These endeavors will cost billions of dollars and take years to complete, but companies and governments recognize that relying too heavily on a single transit route is a risk they can no longer afford to take. In Fujairah, a UAE port city facing the Gulf of Oman, construction crews are working around the clock to lay a secondary crude line parallel to an existing pipeline, aiming to double the country's bypass capacity to 3.6 million barrels per day. In Saudi Arabia, the state oil giant, Aramco, is accelerating a multibillion-dollar expansion of its 1,200-km. East-West Pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. (New York Times) Gaza Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Israeli cabinet: "The IDF will not carry out any withdrawal [in Gaza] until Hamas is disarmed. And when I say the disarming of Hamas, it means heavy weaponry, lighter weaponry, all weaponry." He is far from alone in his response. For what should surely be obvious reasons, Israelis do not trust Hamas. The idea that Israel should take the word of the organization behind the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust that it will now disarm should be self-evidently preposterous. There is no possibility in the real world of any deal progressing, let alone succeeding, which requires Israel to trust Hamas. Israeli opposition leaders Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Lieberman have said more or less exactly the same thing as Netanyahu. Netanyahu is not an outlier on this in Israel. The merit of the proposed plan is precisely that it does not involve trust. It is based on verification - as outlined in an interview on Channel 12 in Israel with Nickolay Mladenov, the former UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process who now leads the Board of Peace. The proposal does not require Israel to withdraw a single troop from anywhere in Gaza until the first stage of weapons decommissioning has been verified by a U.S.-led body. If Hamas does not meet its obligation to disarm, Israel remains where it is now. Netanyahu said nothing which prevents the Board of Peace plan from being implemented. (Spectator-UK) For almost three years, we have been told that Israel is starving the children of Gaza as a weapon of war. We've been fed terrible images of emaciated children. Only it's a lie. A UNICEF-coordinated nutrition survey carried out across Gaza between 31 May and 15 June 2026 found that acute malnutrition among children under five in Gaza averaged 0.5%. After almost three years of supposed, deliberate starvation, Gaza's acute child malnutrition rate sits firmly within the lowest category, officially described as "Acceptable." In fact, the state of malnutrition in Gaza is better, in many cases far better, than almost all the countries in the Middle East. Yet there are no marches for the starving children in Yemen, Syria, Oman or Bahrain, all of which are above the WHO emergency threshold of 5%. No one is protesting over Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, all of which are way worse than Gaza. Apparently, Israel's supposed strategy of deliberately starving Gaza's children for almost three years has been an abject failure. Either it's a miracle, or someone is lying. These are not Israeli claims. It's the UN's own figures, its own reports, its own data that debunk the lies. (Jewish News-UK) On August 11, Hamas urged Palestinians to register for the Palestinian parliamentary election scheduled for late November. Hamas must not be allowed to participate in the election. The Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group that carried out the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel has no right to exist as a military organization and should have no right to exist as a political organization either. In 2006, Hamas was permitted to participate in the Palestinian parliamentary election without first being required to dismantle its terrorist infrastructure or abandon its 1988 charter, which calls for the elimination of Israel. The result was disastrous. Hamas won 74 of the 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council, compared with 45 for Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction. One year later, Hamas violently seized control of Gaza, expelled the Palestinian Authority, and established its own regime. Hamas then turned Gaza into a massive terrorist base. It built tunnels, accumulated rockets and missiles, recruited, armed and trained tens of thousands of terrorists, and fought repeated rounds of war against Israel. The lesson could hardly be clearer: allowing terrorists to participate in elections just gives them the legitimacy and institutions they need to consolidate power. Hamas has reason to be optimistic about elections. Despite the catastrophe it brought upon Palestinians in Gaza by launching the Oct. 7 attack, Hamas remains popular among Palestinians. Polling by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research has shown Hamas maintaining a substantial advantage over Fatah in party preference and in a hypothetical parliamentary election. 69% of the Palestinians oppose disarming Hamas. 86% said they did not believe that Hamas committed the atrocities against Israeli civilians depicted in videos from Oct. 7. Hamas may therefore see elections as its next route back to power and international legitimacy. Did the Allies, after World War II, allow the Nazi Party to continue governing Germany? (Gatestone Institute) Syria Last summer, after days of clashes in Sweida Province in Syria between local groups and the entry of government forces into the fighting, more than 1,700 people, most of them Druse, were killed, according to the UN. "We know they are coming," said Sumayah al-Yousef, 65, a Druse resident of Sweida who was among the people displaced. Druse residents repeatedly told us that it was only a matter of time before the government moved to assert control over the area. In July 2025, skirmishes broke out between armed Bedouins, part of Syria's Sunni majority, and Druse militias. Then government forces, along with allied fighters, descended on Sweida, killing civilians, destroying towns and villages, and displacing tens of thousands. Israel has a sizable Druse minority and has long cultivated close ties with the community, a relationship that extends to the Syrian Druse. Israeli officials are uneasy about the Syrian government extending its authority near its border, fearing it could become a staging ground for attacks. After the clashes, Israel launched airstrikes against government forces in Sweida. Israeli officials vowed to protect the Syrian Druse and demanded that the region remain demilitarized, without the Syrian Army or its allies deploying or operating in the area. "Israel stood with us," said Druse spiritual leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri in January. "Israel was the first to extend a helping hand." Clashes still occasionally break out in villages along the front line between the National Guard, a 28,000-strong militia in Sweida loyal to Mr. al-Hijri, and government forces and their allies. Sweida officials say the government has repeatedly cut electricity and water, damaged power lines and pipes during military operations, and blocked aid groups from repairing them. Humanitarian aid, including food and medical supplies, has often been delayed or restricted. (New York Times) Israeli Security In Gaza and Lebanon, Israel is compelled to play the diplomatic game being led by Washington in order to continue enjoying its support and avoid being portrayed as the recalcitrant party. But Israel must not allow that to constrain its freedom of action to destroy terrorist infrastructure and eliminate terrorists wherever they may be. Despite the efforts of the U.S., Hamas has no intention to disarm. Hamas views the diplomatic talks merely as leverage to drive the IDF out of Gaza, without relinquishing either its military power or its ruling infrastructure. What disrupts the ability of Hizbullah and Hamas to build up their strength or carry out attacks is the constant pressure of targeted counterterrorism operations. It would therefore be a strategic mistake to ease that pressure. As long as Hizbullah and Hamas remain under a constant Israeli threat, their senior leaders and operatives are forced to take security precautions that complicate their daily operations. To prevent a surprise attack against Israel, it is essential to deny the enemy the ability to organize and prepare. Reducing counterterrorism operations will give the enemy the confidence and sense of immunity that it currently lacks. Israel must not relinquish its freedom of action to conduct counterterrorism operations; it cannot withdraw from any territory currently held before the terrorist groups have been dismantled; and it should respond forcefully to every attack or attempt to attack Israel. The writer, head of the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, headed Israel's National Security Council (2017-2021) and served for 25 years in the Israel Security Agency. (JNS) U.S.-Israel Relations Every few years, Americans ask: Why do we send billions of dollars to Israel? It is a fair question. Every dollar spent overseas deserves scrutiny. But the debate often ignores what America receives in return. That is the wrong way to evaluate any investment. Few of America's allies combine world-class intelligence, battlefield-tested military innovation, cutting-edge cyber capabilities, missile-defense development, entrepreneurial technology and democratic resilience while sitting at the crossroads of the world's most volatile region. If Israel did not exist, the U.S. would spend decades - and likely hundreds of billions of dollars - trying to recreate the strategic advantages it provides. During the Cold War, Israel became a dependable democratic partner in a region where Soviet influence was growing. After the Cold War, intelligence cooperation expanded dramatically as terrorism became America's primary security concern. More recently, Israel has become an indispensable partner in confronting Iran, developing advanced missile defenses, countering cyber threats, and fostering the regional cooperation reflected in the Abraham Accords. The alliance has endured under Republican and Democratic presidents alike because it has consistently served American interests, not because any administration gave Israel a free pass. Israeli intelligence has helped expose terrorist plots, monitor Iran's military and nuclear programs, and disrupt weapons trafficking. Joint research has produced advances in missile-defense systems, while cooperation in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, unmanned aircraft, electronic warfare and battlefield medicine has strengthened both militaries. Israel is an active contributor to America's security, technological leadership, and military readiness. Those who believe abandoning Israel would save America money almost certainly have the arithmetic backward. Replacing what Israel contributes - in intelligence, innovation, deterrence, military cooperation, and regional stability - would cost far more than sustaining the alliance we have today. Good allies are valuable. Great allies are rare. Few alliances have contributed more to American security than the partnership between the U.S. and Israel. The writer served as U.S. ambassador to the EU. (Fox News) Over the past 60 years, idealistic Jewish donors have poured millions into Jewish Studies as a way of inculcating Jewish identity and strengthening American Jewish life. Yet according to a survey commissioned by the Ronn Torossian Foundation, these programs are giving a kosher stamp to anti-Israel propaganda and delegitimization. The study examines attitudes to Israel among the professors in 1,136 U.S. colleges offering programs in Jewish Studies and the spin-off fields of Israel Studies, Hebrew and Holocaust Studies between May 2021 and Spring 2026. Four in ten faculties have signed anti-Israel petitions. At Ivy League colleges, 72.3% of Jewish Studies faculty publicly denounced Israel. Columbia University topped the Ivies with 77 faculty boycotters, 27 events and statements for Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine (which was founded after the Oct. 7 attacks), and five departments committed to boycotting their Israeli peers. New York University had 148 faculty boycotters. In May 2024, 1,200 Jewish professors signed a petition opposing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. A March 2025 "Not In Our Name" petition recorded 3,400 signatures from Jewish professors, staff and students. How did it happen that the jewel of American Jewish academic life became a weapon against American Jews and Israel? The writer is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute's Center for the Study of America & the West. (Jewish Chronicle-UK) Israel and the West I grew up Christian, Arab and Israeli, going to church every Sunday with my father, the cantor of our Greek Orthodox church in Jaffa. I joined the Christian Scouts as a boy, later became a leader and even ran our marching band, a serious source of community pride. We marched at Christmas and Easter. Our neighbors were Muslims and Jews. We studied together, worked together, argued together and lived together. I felt rooted, safe and happy. Which is why I sometimes wonder whether the Israel I keep reading about is a different country. Apparently, Christians here live under siege and Jewish hostility is making Christian life increasingly impossible. It is a very strange description of the country in which I actually live. There have been ugly incidents of religious radicals verbally abusing Christians and vandalizing property. Such behavior is disgraceful. But do those extremists define Israel? In 2025, the Anti-Defamation League recorded 6,274 antisemitic incidents in the U.S., an average of 17 every day. Does that make America an antisemitic society? Of course not. Extremism exists in every democratic society. But serious people understand the difference between extremists within a society and the character of the society itself. Except, increasingly, when that society is Israel. If you genuinely want to know whether Christians are flourishing in a country, ask: Are Christians disappearing? In Israel, they are not. In 1950, Israel was home to 34,000 Christians. Today there are 184,000, and the community continues to grow. Christians are physicians and hospital directors, academics and businesspeople, mayors, police officers, soldiers and diplomats. I happen to be one of them, the first Christian appointed to represent Israel as an ambassador. Today, I serve as Israel's special envoy to the Christian World, a position created specifically to deepen Israel's relationship with Christian communities. Quite an elaborate way for a country supposedly hostile to Christianity to behave. The writer is a veteran diplomat with 18 years of experience who most recently served as Israel's ambassador to Azerbaijan. (Fox News) Antisemitism Across multiple campuses and disciplines, there is a discernible trend in which discourse surrounding Israel, Zionism and Jewish identity is framed in ways that go beyond critical inquiry and, in some cases, veer into rhetoric that can reasonably be understood as antisemitic. These dynamics operate in individual classroom interactions as well as broader institutional choices about curriculum and programming. Academic freedom cannot serve as a shield for the repeated presentation of one-sided or exclusionary narratives that delegitimize or demonize a particular people or identity. When critiques of Israel are advanced that erase Jewish historical ties, apply double standards or invoke tropes that echo longstanding antisemitic themes, the result is the normalization of bias within academic spaces. (Anti-Defamation League) See also The Faculty Factor: Inside the Networks Driving Anti-Israel and Anti-Zionist Activism on Campus Across U.S. university and college campuses, an organized segment of faculty groups, unions, and networks has emerged as a significant force driving belligerent anti-Israel rhetoric and activity. In a 2025 ADL/AEN survey of 209 Jewish-identifying faculty, nearly 3/4 reported observing anti-Jewish activity originating from other faculty, staff, or administrators. These faculty and staff networks seek to influence university policy, curricula, institutional ties, and public discourse. Their members organize and actively participate in anti-Israel protests, some of which have crossed into antisemitism through the use of classic antisemitic tropes, the targeting of Jewish organizations and individuals, and open hostility toward Jewish students and colleagues. (Anti-Defamation League) Observations: "To Be a Good Arab and a Good Muslim, Part of It Is to Hate the Jews" - Dalia Ziada interviewed by Or Shaked (Israel Hayom)
The writer, an Egyptian scholar, is a Senior Fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. |
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