| DAILY ALERT |
Tuesday, September 16, 2025 |
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
The Israeli military launched the early stages of a ground offensive to seize Gaza City on Monday night, an Israeli military official said Tuesday. "Last night, we transitioned into the next phase, or the main phase, of the plan for Gaza City. We are moving deeper toward the center of Gaza City," the official said. Over the past month, Israel has been warning the residents of Gaza City to leave and head south toward the Mawasi humanitarian zone. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that Israel is "going to get to decide how they want to proceed because they're the ones that were attacked on Oct. 7....We don't like war. The president doesn't like war. The only thing worse than a war is a protracted one that goes on forever and ever. At some point, this has to end." (Washington Post) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told visiting U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday: "We stand in a time of immense challenges, the aggression of Iran and its terrorist proxies, those who chant, 'Death to America, death to Israel.' And they are not chanting it by accident because they see Israel as the front line of American civilization here in the Middle East....[But] they're a lot less dangerous because they were met with our common resolve." Secretary of State Rubio said: "The President's been clear on the ongoing issues in Gaza, and that is that every single hostage, both living and deceased, needs to be home immediately. Hamas can no longer continue to exist as an armed element that threatens the peace and security not just of Israel but of the world, and that the people of Gaza deserve a better future, one that cannot begin until Hamas is eliminated." "We have to remember who we're dealing with here, and that is a group of people that have dedicated their lives to violence and barbarism. And when you're confronting that hard reality, as much as we may wish that there be a sort of a peaceful, diplomatic way to end it, and we'll continue to explore and be dedicated to it, we also have to be prepared for the possibility that that's not going to happen." (U.S. State Department) See also Rubio Insists Britain Recognizing Palestinian State Will Make "No Impact Whatsoever" - Kieran Kelly U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that Britain and France's decision to recognize the state of Palestine at the UN General Assembly is "largely symbolic. They have really no impact whatsoever in bringing us any closer to a Palestinian state. The only impact it actually has is it makes Hamas feel more emboldened." He added that this also made peace negotiations harder. (Telegraph-UK) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
Israel has launched its ground incursion into Gaza City, Prime Minister Netanyahu confirmed on Tuesday. The IDF said that more than 350,000 Palestinians, an estimated 40% of the city's residents, had left the city by Monday evening. Palestinian media reported massive airstrikes in northwest Gaza City overnight, and Israeli tanks were seen in the city center. (Ynet News) IDF ground forces penetrated Gaza City on Monday night and have taken over large portions of the heart of the city. Some 130,000 IDF reservists have been called up, with an 80% response rate. IDF sources said that Hamas has only 2,000-2,500 combat-ready forces, but Hamas is said to have tens of thousands of additional potential forces who are much younger and much less well-trained. (Jerusalem Post) A growing wave of departures from Gaza City, driven by collapsing morale, is eroding a core pillar of Hamas's war strategy, Hamas economy expert Eyal Ofer told Maariv on Monday. He said the shift is unfolding across Gaza. Over the past two years, many Gaza City residents have traced the same route to the south and back three times. "The social solidarity that still existed in Gaza is disappearing," he said, describing a market where "almost everyone who can profit from the situation does so." Hamas-run authorities have pushed a "do not evacuate" message. Yet the thousands of pedestrians who joined the southbound traffic jams of trucks are signaling that the campaign to keep people in place is losing traction. A continued civilian outflow would further undercut Hamas's leverage. (Maariv-Jerusalem Post) See also Hamas Officials Scramble to Flee Gaza - Sam Halpern Hamas "operatives fear for their own lives and are seeking to leave Gaza," as the group simultaneously calls on residents to remain, the IDF Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) said Sunday. "Two weeks ago, a member of the Gaza City Council, Anwar Atallah, fled Gaza together with his family through the mechanism operated by Israel that allows Gazans to exit via Jordan to a third country. Many other senior officials have submitted requests for their families to leave the Strip, and some have even asked to leave themselves." (Jerusalem Post) Satellite images released by U.S.-based Planet Labs and published by the BBC on Monday show the disappearance of tent encampments inside Gaza City between Sep. 9 and 15. Other images indicate the establishment of new tent areas in a designated humanitarian zone in southern Gaza. (Ynet News) Two Hamas terrorists were killed Sunday night in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza in a clash with members of the al-Majayda clan. Palestinian sources said the bloodshed was part of an ongoing feud: At the end of last month, Hamas terrorists killed a member of the al-Majayda clan. (Israel Hayom) After Israel's targeted strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar, the UN Security Council convened an "emergency session" on Sep. 11 to unanimously condemn the Israeli action. Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon challenged the Council's selective outrage: "Where was your indignation on October 7, when our sovereignty was breached and Israeli civilians were butchered by Hamas? What have we heard from this Council since then? Silence, silence." "When bin Laden was eliminated in Pakistan, the world did not ask why a terrorist was targeted on foreign soil - but why he was sheltered there in the first place. There was no immunity for bin Laden, and there can be no immunity for Hamas." (Israel Hayom) In a ceremony attended by Prime Minister Netanyahu, Secretary of State Rubio, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Huckabee, Israel on Monday unveiled the 600-meter Pilgrimage Road in the City of David, a first-century route linking the Pool of Siloam to the foot of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Archaeologists say the stepped street served as Jerusalem's main thoroughfare for pilgrims during the Second Temple period. (Jerusalem Post) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
The Gaza War The IDF has completed its final preparations for the ground offensive, assembling hundreds of tanks, armored personnel carriers, and bulldozers along Gaza City's edge. Military planners say the coming maneuver will unfold gradually, with brigade combat teams tightening a ring around the city. Operations could pause at any stage should negotiations for the release of hostages progress. Military intelligence has mapped out zones believed to contain hostages where Israeli forces must move with extreme caution even when encountering armed militants. New battlefield tactics aim to reduce risks to captives while maintaining operational momentum. Commanders do not believe Hamas will surrender even if Israel captures key parts of Gaza City. Large Hamas contingents remain entrenched in central Gaza and in displacement camps around al-Mawasi. (Ynet News) Newly-revealed internal Hamas documents prove that the group's exploitation of medical facilities in Gaza has been systematic. Hamas ministry documents from 2020 explicitly state that health facilities in Gaza are not neutral spaces, but instead play a critical role in Hamas's terror network. They describe medical facilities as places of "gathering for many commanders of the movement [Hamas] and the government in times of escalation." (NGO Monitor) Israeli Security The current war between Israel and its enemies is the world's first Artificial Intelligence (AI) war, a former IDF senior officer told the Jerusalem Post. Over the past five years, the IDF has been working to strategically transform into a network-enabled combat machine, with AI and Big Data being key enablers to harmonize the flow of information across operational units and commands. The IDF's Digital Transformation Division was formed in 2019 to take all the potential that was happening in the civilian world and bring it to the military. "Without these capabilities, we would have at least 5,000 more soldiers killed, and thousands more terrorists would still be alive," the former officer said. "How do you identify the enemy inside urban areas? You need more sources, sensors, and platforms. And then you need to be able to take all that data, integrate it, and send it to the officer's iPad." In the past, when a target was spotted and troops wanted to transmit the data to either a tank or aircraft, the process would take tens of minutes and involve a long chain of command before approval was given to strike. By then, it would be too late. But with the digital transformation, ground troops can call in the target, and it would be struck by the platform best suited to take it out a short time later. "We implemented AI in order to differentiate between civilians and terrorists," he added. "We harness AI and technology to focus on the hostile forces....The main rule in international law is the principle of differentiation between fighters and noncombatants." (Jerusalem Post) Israel and the West Pedro Sanchez, Spain's grandstanding socialist prime minister, seems content to lead the world in self-righteous humbug. On Monday he called for Israel to be banned from all competitive sports. This misguided and ill-timed intervention has only one purpose: to drum up support from his more radical supporters. As top cyclists, including an Israeli team, wound their way around the country's valleys and mountains over the past 21 days in the La Vuelta (Tour of Spain) race, they were confronted by thousands of protesters pretending to be Gazan corpses, to chants of "stop genocide now." The protesters were egged on by the host country's prime minister. Not a single life has been saved in Gaza as a result of blocking the cyclists. Sanchez may think he enjoys popular support for the demonization and cultural isolation of Israel. But blocking the path of cyclists in a race is merely an offensive stunt. Britain, France, Canada, Australia and Belgium - all poised to formally recognize Palestinian statehood at the UN next week - should learn something from Sanchez's misguided stunts and put their move on hold. This is no time to reward killers and kidnappers. (The Times-UK) As someone who's devoted a lifetime to the defense of my country, I take pride in understanding the nature of threats facing Israel and countering them covertly, powerfully and preemptively around the globe. The State of Israel must win any conflict it enters. The Jewish people have no alternative. We have no other homeland, no other refuge but the State of Israel. When I hear demonstrators chant, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," I am compelled to ask: Where exactly do they suggest we go? Most of them have never set foot in Israel. Many deny the atrocities of Oct. 7. They ignore the hundreds of thousands of victims who have perished at the hands of those with extremist ideologies who suppress women's rights, execute men for being gay, use hospitals as their military base and wield children as human shields. Despite these threats, Israel will continue to thrive. We stand shoulder to shoulder with the world's democracies, bound together by shared values of freedom, dignity and human rights. No slogan shouted by the ignorant and no act of violence will divert us from those values. What the protesters fail to recognize is that the real danger is not Israel. The real danger is posed by murderous regimes that seek to destroy not only the Jewish people but also the very foundations of Western civilization. They threaten you, the reader, simply because you believe in democracy and the values that form the Free World. The writer is a former head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency. (New York Post) When did we give up on truth, democracy and Western values? When did we choose to reward terrorists, butchers, kidnappers and barbarians? Why is Britain turning its back not just on Israel, a democracy on the front line against Islamism, but also, increasingly, against its Jewish citizens? The double standards are sickening. There was anger that Isaac Herzog, Israel's president, is in Britain meeting Prime Minister Keir Starmer; yet the PM's meeting with the Palestinian Authority dictator Mahmoud Abbas, holder of an antisemitic PhD from a Soviet university and proponent of pay-per-slay support for the families of Palestinian terrorists, was uncontroversial. How can this be right? And why is Starmer promising to unconditionally recognize a virtual Palestinian state that would still be committed to Israel's obliteration? Britain is now among the global centers of Israelophobia. The Jewish state is always on trial, guilty until proven innocent, its motives inherently suspect, its claims reflexively disbelieved. Israel's enemies, the savage Hamas blackmailers who were targeted in Qatar, rebranded themselves as "the negotiation team," even though they were the terror group's most hardline leaders. Israel isn't committing a genocide, as the Foreign Office has quietly admitted, and yet 45% of voters believe, absurdly, that Israel treats the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews. Israel needs to fight anew for its legitimacy every day, unlike every other country. It is never given the benefit of the doubt. Britain, America, France: all have made terrible errors in wartime, all are plagued by their fair share of rogues, and yet few believe that these nations have forfeited the right to exist as a result. The West projects upon Israel all of its own demons, every pathology of its own history. Our secular intelligentsia refuses to accept that Palestinian elites are rejectionists. They don't want a two-state solution: they want control from the river to the sea, with the Jews ethnically cleansed. (Telegraph-UK) Ireland in recent years has been finding new ways to injure or embarrass itself in pursuit of moral gratification. The latest act of self-harm came last week when the country's national broadcaster, RTE, announced Ireland's withdrawal from the Eurovision Song Contest in protest of Israel's participation. What we are left with is less an act of diplomacy than performance art, conceived more to flatter the vanity of RTE than to influence events in the Middle East. Boycotting a music competition while offering no solutions to a war 3,000 miles away is hardly the bold gesture some appear to think it is. RTE's coverage of the war in Gaza seems to present it as a David and Goliath morality tale, in which UN organizations with well-documented ties to Hamas, including UNRWA, are cast as neutral observers. However, the decision will no doubt be applauded by Ireland's many self-declared "Paddystinians." (Telegraph-UK) "The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue," a gripping account of one family's fight for survival during Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel, has won the People's Choice Documentary Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. TIFF organizers had pulled the documentary from the schedule in August. That decision was swiftly met with backlash and TIFF reinstated the film. (National Post-Canada) The British government has announced that, starting next year, Israelis will no longer be admitted to the Royal College of Defense Studies (RCDS). Amir Baram, Director General of the Israel Ministry of Defense and "a proud alumnus of RCDS (2008-9)," called the move a "deeply shameful and discriminatory" decision and "a betrayal of an ally in time of war." "Israel is defending international shipping from Houthi aggression, preventing nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of an Islamist regime that chants "Death to England!," and fighting to bring home 48 hostages from Hamas captivity - and the establishment's response is to silence Israeli voices." Silencing Israeli voices at a time when the country is actively defending international security constitutes "nothing less than an act of self-sabotage of British security." (i24News) See also Text: Open Letter from the Director General of the Israel Ministry of Defense (X) Iran Israel Defense Ministry Director-General Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amir Baram said Monday that the 12-day war with Iran "concluded with an unequivocal Israeli victory, yet additional confrontations with Iran are inevitable." "The Iranian regime, operating from a position of strategic humiliation, is massively investing in security infrastructure and pursuing accelerated force-building initiatives." Iran retains 50% of its ballistic missile capacities as well as a wide range of capabilities to promote terror around the region and the world. Yemen's Houthis, whose weapons were provided mostly by Iran, continue to launch aerial threats on Israel multiple times per week and sometimes multiple times in a day. (Jerusalem Post) Until recently, Israel maintained a purely defensive posture, striking at Iranian proxies on its immediate borders. This shielded Iran, which uses its terrorist proxies to enhance its strategic depth. Following Iran's missile attack on Israel in 2024, Israel targeted Iran's air defenses. This was followed by the decapitation of Hizbullah and the fall of the Assad regime. Then came the war in June 2025 in which Israel and the U.S. successfully targeted Iran's nuclear facilities. This was the first time that Iran had been held to account for its malign activities after decades in which over 1,000 U.S. service people were killed across the region. Israel's spearheading of the attacks that destabilized the Iranian regime was greenlit by the Trump administration. This was a reversal of the Biden administration's commitment to "deescalation" that only served to embolden the Iranian regime. Going forward, Israel must maintain its air supremacy that affords it operational freedom in Iran since the regime's nuclear goals remain unchanged. Therefore, Israel and the U.S. should adopt a broader strategy of seeking to topple the Iranian regime. The writer is an Associate Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. (Henry Jackson Society-UK) Houthis in Yemen Israeli security officials are preparing for a Houthi response to Israel's operation that eliminated the Houthi government on Aug. 28, 2025. The Houthis continue to launch ballistic missiles and drones from Yemen toward Israel. Senior security sources say the Houthis are today Iran's most active and strongest proxy, and that Yemen has become a primary confrontation zone between Israel and the Iranian-led axis. Israeli intelligence is now making a concentrated effort to acquire high-quality intelligence that will enable targeting the Houthi military leadership. The strategy of striking economic facilities in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen is not sufficient to stop the fire toward Israel. Intelligence cooperation between Israel and the U.S. - which has refrained from direct military action against the Houthis - provided Israel with an important information base. The partnership with the UAE - which perceives the Houthis as a threat to freedom of navigation in the Red Sea - also played a critical role in securing Israeli achievements in Yemen. The Houthis have expanded the range of weapons used to missiles with cluster warheads as part of a clear strategy of sustained military escalation. However, Israel's commitment to expand the fighting in Yemen presents the Houthis with a new military and political challenge. The Israeli strike that eliminated the Houthi government exposed the imbalance of forces. It demonstrated the security vulnerability of the Houthi leadership and caused erosion of its political rule. Senior security officials say the recent outcomes of Israeli strikes in Yemen force the Houthis to undertake a profound reassessment of their war strategy against Israel. 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 Security and Foreign Affairs) Qatar The game of duplicity, bribery, and subversion played for years by Qatar - that used its undeserved wealth to radicalize Muslims, destabilize the Middle East, and corrupt the world - is now over. Qatar has been unmasked as a terror sponsor that should be treated as such by the civilized world. Smaller than Puerto Rico, Qatar is home to 3 million people, 90% of them foreign workers. The Qatari citizenry is estimated at 300,000. Qatar helped finance al-Qaeda in Iraq, al-Nusra in Syria, and Hamas in Gaza. It served as Iran's collaborator, and - as all now understand - it sheltered the architects of Oct. 7. Qatar has been dishonest all along. It made believe that in the fight between civilization and jihadism, it was neutral. It wasn't neutral. It was on the jihadis' side. Qatar is not America's friend. It is its enemy, just like it's the enemy of America's Arab allies. The attitude toward Qatar must change. The writer is a fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. (Jerusalem Post) In 2009, Fenton Communications in Washington filed a foreign agent registration form for its client, a Qatari woman, Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned. She is the second of the three wives of Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the former Emir of the State of Qatar, and the mother of the current Emir, Sheikh Tamim. Fenton documents filed with the Justice Department detailed the Al Fakhoora public relations campaign - based on responding to Israel's 2008 military operation against Hamas rockets - that gave birth to the robust anti-Israel movement of today. An emphasis on universities and students is prominent in the campaign: developing press materials and pitching stories to university and mainstream press; assisting in the recruitment of student leaders on U.S. and international campuses; assisting in the recruitment of grassroots supporters, including NGOs and virtual supporters; developing a spokesperson and leadership development curriculum for student leaders. Today, 15 years later, how many of the Al Fakhoora-trained students went on to become teaching fellows at American universities, then college instructors, and then professors? How many are leading the anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian campaigns on campus? The writer, former Deputy Chief of Mission at Israel's Embassy in Washington, is a Research and Diplomacy Fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. (Substack) Observations: The Post-October 7 Security Strategy Driving Israeli Actions - Meir Ben Shabbat and Asher Fredman (Foreign Affairs)
Meir Ben Shabbat, Chair of the Misgav Institute for National Security, served as Israel's National Security Adviser from 2017 to 2021. Asher Fredman is Executive Director of the Misgav Institute. |
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