| DAILY ALERT |
Tuesday, July 7, 2026 |
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fired missiles at two commercial ships near the Strait of Hormuz early Tuesday, according to a senior U.S. official. One vessel appeared to be the Al Rekayyat, a liquefied natural gas tanker owned and managed by Nakilat, the shipping arm of Qatar's LNG industry. (Wall Street Journal) "There are dozens of mines in the Strait of Hormuz, which will require a commitment of about two months: these are sophisticated and advanced mines that require capabilities and expertise not available to all countries," said the commander of the Joint Operations Command (COVI), Giovanni Maria Iannucci, on July 1. He added that Italian minesweepers are currently in Djibouti. (ANSA-Italy) At Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei's funeral, participants pelted a picture of President Trump with stones, while others held a large banner that said "We will kill Trump" in Farsi and English, according to footage widely circulated on Iranian state media. The crowds flew red banners that called for vengeance. "We don't forgive or forget," one placard said. "The processions are meant to confer renewed legitimacy on Khamenei's worldview and show that a large constituency in Iran remains mobilized behind it," said Sina Toossi, an Iran-focused fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington. "Iran is signaling that it will not back down." (Wall Street Journal) Officials within the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza are taking bribes to place healthy people on medical evacuation lists, the families of ill and injured Gazans have claimed. Healthy people are said to have acquired forged medical papers by saying they require evacuation on medical grounds. Gazan refugee Ramzi Herzallah organized demonstrations in front of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza and Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis after discovering that "healthy individuals were being evacuated instead of [genuine] patients, using forged medical reports," while trying to get his sick father out of the strip. Exiled Gazan activist Hamza al-Masri said, "The protesters emphasized that there is clear discrimination and corruption in the mechanism for selecting names permitted to travel for treatment. They pointed out that priority has shifted to those who pay money to certain doctors and officials affiliated with the Hamas government, while the remaining patients and wounded are left to their fate." (Telegraph-UK) After Hamas slaughtered over 1,200 people, including more than 40 Americans, on Oct. 7, 2023, the IDF is reactivating 45 military bases spread out between Israel and Jordan that were built after the 1967 Six-Day War and were discontinued in the late 1990s after Jordan and Israel reached a peace agreement in 1994. (Fox News) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News on Monday: "Turkey is a great country, but it's governed by a man who calls openly for the annihilation of Israel," referring to Turkish President Erdogan. "He occupies half of Cyprus, a NATO country. He's threatening Greece, another NATO country, and he talks openly about conquering Jerusalem." It is "a regime infected by the Muslim Brotherhood," that "hates America and chants death to America." Netanyahu added that giving Turkey F-35s or fighter jet engines would "upset the power balance in the Middle East, which is ultimately guaranteed by Israeli air superiority and also by America's posture in the Middle East." Netanyahu also cited Turkish support for Hamas and its lack of action against the regime in Iran. (Jerusalem Post) See also Providing Turkey with F-35 Jets Endangers Israel - Editorial The F-35 is a strategic platform. It would give Turkey stealth, reach, intelligence-gathering capacity, and a place inside a military ecosystem built on trust. That trust was broken when Ankara chose the Russian S-400. It was broken again by Erdogan's embrace of Hamas, his threats against Israel, and his use of anti-Israel incitement as a pillar of his regional identity. Erdogan has repeatedly taken what the West offers and used it to expand his room for maneuver. He trades with Moscow, pressures NATO allies, threatens Greece and Cyprus, courts Islamist movements, and then asks Washington for another prize. Rewarding this pattern would be a serious mistake. For Israel, the issue is existential. Israeli air superiority is not a luxury. It is how a small country surrounded by threats prevents wider war. It allows Israel to strike Iranian weapons convoys, deter Hizbullah, monitor Syria, defend its skies, and keep hostile armies from believing they can change the map by force. Weakening that edge would invite adventurism. (Jerusalem Post) Lebanese President Joseph Aoun defended the framework agreement with Israel, Lebanese Al-Jadeed television reported on Sunday. "I am telling you that I am not in love with Israel, but give me another solution, whatever it may be," Aoun said. "I am telling those who oppose this framework that I am waiting for any solution or agreement that will get us out of wars." (Maariv-Jerusalem Post) Israeli security officials say Hamas is continuing to grow stronger and rebuild itself for a confrontation with Israel, both through money reaching it from outside Gaza and thanks to the "humanitarian" aid that continues to enter Gaza unchecked, about 600 trucks a day, while the real need is only about 200-250 trucks a day. Hamas directly taxes the incoming trucks, collecting a tax of 15-30% from merchants. Hamas also forces merchants to sell their goods to traders operating under its auspices at a "supervised" price, so it can take a cut of the profits. In addition, Hamas manages to smuggle banned products into Gaza, such as cigarettes, which are sold at high prices and taxed at a higher rate. There is evidence that Hamas sells electricity produced by hospital generators to residents living near the hospitals, using fuel that enters Gaza for humanitarian needs. It also charges rent for local merchants operating markets and stalls, and imposes fees for renewing business licenses. All this enables Hamas to efficiently fund its military arrays. Sources in the defense establishment said, "The money Hamas receives from outside Gaza, along with the strengthening it achieves through the aid entering the Strip, enables it to rehabilitate military infrastructure and recruit new and young operatives who cannot find other work in Gaza. The money Hamas offers is their solution." "We cannot repeat the statements we made before Oct. 7, according to which Hamas was deterred and would not attack. We cannot once again ignore what the other side is doing." (Israel Hayom) The wars in Iran and Lebanon, which drew most of Israel's attention and military capabilities, eased some of the pressure on Hamas. In Gaza, Israel is continuing a policy of targeted killings and reducing Hamas-controlled territory. The growing list of operatives killed provides Hamas with a demonstration not only of Israeli intelligence and counterterrorism capabilities, but also of its success in carrying out this policy despite the restrictive arrangements that Hamas and the mediating countries tried to impose on it. Preventing the Gaza threat from being rebuilt, completely dismantling Hamas's military and governing capabilities, and demilitarizing the area are goals Israel must achieve. Until then, Gaza must remain an active front. The writer, head of the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, served as Israel's National Security Council head during 2017-2021. (Israel Hayom) The IDF and Defense Ministry are preparing to purchase military aircraft, munitions, and factories in order to strengthen Israel's self-reliance, in light of the IDF's expanded missions in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran, Walla reported on Sunday. The move will accelerate the establishment of factories and infrastructure to produce ammunition and weapons systems. On the agenda are more fighter jets, refueling aircraft, attack helicopters, naval vessels, armored vehicles, advanced weapons production, and a space project. (Jerusalem Post) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
Iran Western diplomats and political officials from the Middle East say there is a "low likelihood" of reaching a full agreement between Iran and the U.S. Efforts by supporters of the agreement in the administration to calm matters and paper over the gaps are running into growing difficulties, partly because of the harsh statements against the U.S. by leaders in Iran and calls to take revenge on Trump for the death of former supreme leader Ali Khamenei. (Israel Hayom) The funeral of Iran's former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which began on Saturday and will last six days, was designed as a demonstration of power, both domestic and external. Most of Iran's population does not know any other type of regime or leader other than Khamenei, whose reign lasted 36 years. For many citizens, he is the leader who added Iran to the list of global powers and who restored Iran to its historical glory. For the first time since 1979, there is no authoritarian or "natural" leader who wields the authority and power possessed by his predecessors as a result of the leader's skills and talents. Khamenei left behind a ruined country with a vision. At this stage, the regime is trying hard to consolidate the recognition of Iran's power and status, and as a country equal to the U.S. despite its patent military inferiority. (Ha'aretz) Supporters of the U.S.-Iran MoU in Tehran consider it an ideological victory, a deal that confirms the regime's claims to dominate the Strait of Hormuz and project power in the Middle East. Yet, skeptical observers want to know: How much extra security spending will be necessary if Iranian terror groups receive the biggest injection of funds in a generation? A decade ago, once the Obama administration eased sanctions as part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iranian regime spent billions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' support for the Assad regime in Syria and on Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen. Some in Europe have viewed Iran as a regional problem, but in October 2025, the director general of MI5, Britain's domestic security agency, said the country had tracked more than 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots in the past year alone. Tehran's influence campaigns have evidently moved online too. Pro-Scottish independence accounts recently went silent when the internet was shut off in Iran. Since the death of the last supreme leader, the IRGC has largely taken over the state. They aren't interested in serving their fellow citizens but in killing ours. Whatever any treaty says, once new money is in the country, it will allow funds once spent on essentials to be used to spread hate. No deal will tie the hands of the IRGC. History suggests, then, that this deal is more expensive than the fine print lets on. A richer Iranian regime will be a more violent regime, costing lives in the region and threatening others around the world. That means national security services will face more hostile state activity and a new urgency in detecting and disrupting threats. They will need more resources for that fight. The writer, a member of the British Parliament, is a former Security Minister. (Washington Post) Turkey American and European leaders are revving up their engines to coddle, cradle, and embrace the radical, antisemitic, and viciously anti-Western and anti-Israeli Turkish President Erdogan at a meeting of NATO leaders in Ankara. Washington just announced that it will ship to Ankara eighty engines worth more than $700 million for Turkey's homegrown fighter jet, and it is positively considering letting Turkey back into the F-35 jet program. This is astonishingly unwise and infuriating because Turkey under Erdogan openly seeks to undermine the values and long-term interests of the West, and to obliterate Israel. Erdogan regularly brands the U.S. a declining hegemon and an "imperialist sponsor of terrorism," sides with Russia against the West in defense of Iran, and hosts Hamas military headquarters. It is time to confront Erdogan about his much-too-close alignment with Russia, China, and Iran; his military occupation of northern Cyprus and northern Syria; and the actual war he wages against Israel. Erdogan is a true-believing antisemite who considers classic antisemitic myths like the Protocols of the Elder of Zion as truth. He honestly hates Jews and Israelis, and his preference is to lead a pan-Islamic coalition to crush Israel. In 2025, he publicly prayed that "Allah make Zionist Israel destroyed and devastated." Just this week, he repeated the wild claim that the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey was organized by "the genocidal, occupying, and expansionist ideology called Zionism." According to President Trump, Erdogan's military was prepped to join Iran's war against Israel this year until Trump "asked Erdogan not to do so." Last week, the IDF revealed yet another Hamas terrorist network directed from Turkish soil which recruited operatives to carry out terror attacks and which transferred weapons and funds into Judea and Samaria. Erdogan has jailed more journalists, judges, generals and academics than any other country in the world, including China. He is building 40,000 new jail cells to handle the overload. Erdogan needs to be cut down to size. How can it be that American and European leaders don't see this? The writer is managing senior fellow at the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy in Jerusalem. (Israel Hayom) U.S.-Israel Relations The values that made America possible - liberty, human dignity, justice and moral responsibility - were deeply influenced by a biblical worldview that has guided generations of Americans. The laws that govern our nation are informed by the Old Testament and the Ten Commandments. Our founding principles are one more reason to support Israel. Following the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, I traveled to Israel and met soldiers, families and communities whose lives were forever changed. What stood out most was not only their resilience but also their commitment to defending freedom while maintaining a strong moral framework under incredibly difficult circumstances. The joint operations by the U.S. and Israel in 2025 and 2026 to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions represent the cooperation and partnership that should typify the relationship between our two great nations. Such camaraderie is the natural outcome of our historic common bond that is built on the shared foundations of hope, truth and freedom. As we mark 250 years of American freedom, let us stand with our Jewish neighbors and with our ally, Israel, and remember that freedom survives only when each generation chooses to stand up and preserve it. (Fox News) The idea that a psychological divorce from Israel is possible seems fanciful. Almost half of all Jews live there; many of us have Israeli friends and relatives. Many American Jews grew up in a world of Jewish day schools, Jewish summer camps, gap years studying in Israel between high school and college, and little blue tin boxes in which a few coins for Israel would be deposited just before the Sabbath. Thriving synagogues where Israel isn't mentioned, where the Israeli flag isn't displayed, where the congregation doesn't say a weekly prayer for the Jewish state, are rare, even in the Reform movement. This lived experience makes it clear why a Washington Post poll last year showed that 3/4 of American Jews agree that Israel is "vital for the long-term future of the Jewish people." Zionism's success in establishing a Jewish state wasn't inevitable - nothing is - but it's easier to understand in the context not only of the mass murder of Jews in Europe and, after the Second World War and into the 1970s, our expulsion from most of the Middle East and North Africa, but also of Jewish tradition. The main story line of the Hebrew Bible is of an exiled people's search for a homeland. Long before Herzl, Jews prayed facing Jerusalem, and at least notionally have longed for the rebuilding of the Temple there. Zionism touched a deep collective yearning for self-determination, for self-protection, for freedom from perpetual outsider status. All this makes the idea that Israel and Zionism can easily be factored out of American Jewish life seem almost fantastical. It asks us to give up a portion of our souls. The writer is former dean of the Columbia Journalism School. (New York Times) Palestinian Arabs The furious Palestinian reaction to the recent declaration by the "Board of Peace" that the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) "has no place in the new Gaza Strip" has once again exposed a fundamental truth. For the Palestinians, UNRWA is a political institution that keeps alive the dream of the "right of return" - a demand that would overwhelm Israel's population with millions of supposed "refugees," which would effectively bring about the end of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Ahmed Abu Holi, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, denounced the "Board of Peace" for allegedly attempting to "liquidate the Palestinian refugee issue." "Any attack on UNRWA or attempt to dismantle it constitutes a direct assault on Palestinian national identity...and an undermining of the right of return." The issue is not schools, food distribution, or medical clinics. The issue is politics. More than seven decades after the 1948 war, the number of registered Palestinian refugees has expanded from roughly 700,000 to several million. Instead of solving the refugee problem, UNRWA's function is to perpetuate it. The Palestinian insistence on the unrealistic "right of return" remains one of the principal obstacles to any peace agreement. Palestinian leaders are lying to their own people by telling them that one day they will return to their families' former homes inside Israel. So long as UNRWA continues to institutionalize that dream, it will remain part of the problem rather than part of the solution. If the goal is a different future for Gaza - one based on reconstruction, coexistence, and stability rather than perpetual conflict - then eliminating UNRWA is not only justified, it is long overdue. (Gatestone Institute) South of Bethlehem are Solomon's Pools, part of an extensive water infrastructure originating in the Judean hills that supplied water to the Jewish Temples in Jerusalem. In the Oslo Accords, Judea and Samaria were divided between the Palestinian Authority and Israel into three areas of jurisdiction - Areas A, B and C. The Oslo Accords never envisaged a situation in which Areas A and B would be off limits to Israelis. Rather, the accords included specific provisions regarding both the treatment of Israelis in those areas and the manner in which the PA treated Jewish historical sites therein. The Israeli authors of the accords certainly did not anticipate a situation in which this area would become dominated by hostile PA forces and other Palestinian terrorist organizations, and that almost every entry of a Jew into those areas would potentially be accompanied by mortal danger. The danger is only to Israeli Jews. Israeli Arabs are free to enter, study, and even live in Areas A and B. Solomon's Pools are located within Area A. However, being given jurisdiction and control of a historical site, which by its very name pays constant witness to the historical connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, was particularly problematic for the PA. It chose to ignore the site and let it fall into disrepair. The constant PA neglect of the site has led to repeated Israeli calls to retake control of it. The writer, former director of the Military Prosecution in Judea and Samaria, is director of the Palestinian Authority Accountability Initiative at the Jerusalem Center. (Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) Were all Palestinians supporters of Hamas, or were there Palestinians who opposed the massacre and longed for a different future? My search for the answer led me to Moataz Al-Mansi in Gaza. "The future of Palestine is not built on hatred or on the dreams of cancelling the other," he wrote. "I dream of a relationship based on good neighbors, shared interests, and mutual respect." I invited him to appear on my podcast, "Conversations at the Peace Table." Moataz told me he had lost both of his businesses during the war. His children had not attended school in years. Yet he refused to abandon his belief that Israelis and Palestinians must one day live as neighbors rather than enemies. My friend Inbal, who worked closely with Palestinians in the West Bank for years, often told me that many Palestinians quietly desired coexistence but were afraid to say so publicly. Those who engaged with Israelis risked being labeled collaborators or traitors. Again and again, I heard the same story: Palestinians who sought dialogue often faced pressure from their own society, while Israelis who sought partnership struggled to find counterparts who could safely engage. This helped me understand a central obstacle to peace: the culture of anti-normalization. Anti-normalization discourages dialogue, joint initiatives, business partnerships, cultural exchanges, and even personal friendships with Israelis or Jews. A Palestinian who speaks publicly about cooperation can be accused of betrayal. The result is that peace becomes socially dangerous and the public square becomes dominated by those who reject coexistence. Two days ago, Moataz contacted me again. An article had appeared in a Gaza newspaper calling him a traitor. He believed the danger to his life had become immediate. He asked me to tell his story. "If something happens to me, it is because I chose peace." Peace must first become socially acceptable among ordinary people. That requires protecting those courageous enough to see humanity in the other side. The ideology that condemns Moataz for reaching across the divide is the obstacle to peace. Until Palestinians who seek coexistence are free to do so without fear, and until activists stop treating anti-normalization as a moral virtue, those yearning for peace will continue to pay the highest price. (Times of Israel) Antisemitism Respected scientific publications - particularly medical journals - are supposed to be highly professional, and to avoid partisan media's cynical manipulation in which verifiable evidence is too often replaced with myths and half-truths. The Lancet, founded in 1823, traffics in boycott campaigns targeting top doctors and medical researchers, and has transformed into a platform for hate that spits in the face of its neutral scientific mission. For its latest discriminatory and anti-scientific act, the Lancet is playing a central role in a campaign for an all-encompassing boycott of the Israel Medical Association (IMA). It is platforming and amplifying a petition promoted by radical fringe groups that recycles false slogans of "genocide" and blames Israel for the destruction of Gaza's medical infrastructure. The promoters of this campaign erase overwhelming evidence showing that it was Hamas and its allies that exploited and undermined Gaza's hospitals for terror, which resulted in their ruin. This attack on the IMA is simply another part of the multi-front war to vilify everything related to Israel. The systematic entrenchment of Hamas forces and weapons in Gaza's hospitals - real war crimes - is entirely omitted. The writer is founder and president of NGO Monitor, and professor emeritus of political studies at Bar-Ilan University. (American Spectator) See also Why the Lancet Study Suggesting a Far Higher Gaza Death Toll Is Deeply Flawed - Mark Zlochin (Jewish Chronicle-UK) On the eve of the July 4 holiday, the New York Times posted a multimedia map illustrating "How a Nation of Immigrants Traces Its Roots." A celebration of diversity, it includes 200 "unique identities" represented across all 50 states. But there are no Jews. Hover over Manhattan, home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the world, and you'll find pockets where 20% or more of the residents are Chinese, Puerto Rican, African American, Dominican, German and Italian, but there is no heading for "Jewish." (JTA) I understand grievances. I understand the pain of a conflict that has cost lives on every side. What I do not understand is a movement that insists it advances justice by demanding that human beings reject the very things that heal them, feed them, protect them and connect them. Here is the uncomfortable truth: if you truly boycotted everything Israel has given the world, you would have to dismantle a large part of modern life. You must give up Waze, which now tells half the planet how to get home. Much of the chip architecture inside the world's laptops was developed in part at Intel's research labs in Haifa. The USB flash drive was developed in large part by the Israeli company M-Systems. Teva is the largest maker of generic medicine on earth. Mobileye, the collision avoidance system, came out of Israel's Hebrew University. Check Point, the modern firewall that shields banks, hospitals and governments from cyberattack, was built by an Israeli company. Wix, the website builder used by millions of small businesses worldwide, is Israeli. Since the Abraham Accords, I have met Israelis who want nothing more than to live beside us in peace. I have learned that you do not honor the Palestinian people by impoverishing everyone, including yourself. You honor them by demanding leaders who choose negotiation over slogans, and life over hatred. The writer, born and raised in Saudi Arabia and now based in Abu Dhabi, is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa. (Fox News) A Young Republicans chapter in Tennessee recently sent out a mail campaign promoting a platform that included "No wars for Jews." [Local Republican leaders told JTA the mailers were sent out without permission and the Maury County GOP chair strongly denounced the content of the mailers.] 80 years ago, the U.S. refused to bomb a target on behalf of the Jews. In 1944, while the extermination machine at Auschwitz was still operating at full capacity, consuming 12,000 human beings a day, most of them Hungarian Jews, Jewish leaders appealed to the Americans (and the British) to bomb the railway lines into Auschwitz. The appeals led nowhere. Why? Allied bombers had the flying range. In 1944, an industrial slave labor camp near Auschwitz, Buna (also known as Monowitz), that produced aviation fuel and synthetic rubber, was bombed more than once by the Americans. The claim that bombing the rail lines to Auschwitz would be ineffective because the lines were easily repaired is simply an excuse. The Allies found that bombing the German rail lines was very helpful to the war effort. It could be argued that Auschwitz was not a military target. But Auschwitz contained a large ammunition factory that was producing the detonators for one-half million artillery shells per month. The factory, Weischel Union Metallwerke, included 2,000 to 2,500 workers, mostly young Jewish women, and was located in Auschwitz II (Birkenau). Originally, located in Essen, it moved to Auschwitz after it had been bombed in 1943. It was a valid bombing target in the past, so why not now? In Eight Days at Yalta, Diana Preston cites President Roosevelt's advisors in noting that the rail lines at Auschwitz were not bombed because doing so would have confirmed the charge that the war was a war for the Jews. The Allies also rejected requests by the Poles to bomb Auschwitz for "fear of stirring up antisemitism at home." The decision not to bomb the rail lines to Auschwitz was due to a toxic combination of antisemitism and isolationism, both of which were pervasive in the U.S. in the 1940s. (Perhaps, to some extent today too.) It was of paramount importance, particularly to the Americans, that their fight in World War II not be seen as a war on behalf of the Jews. The writer, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor from the University of Waterloo. (Los Angeles Jewish Journal) Observations: Anti-Zionism Is Repackaged Antisemitism - David Harris (Telegraph-UK)
The writer is executive vice chair of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) in New York. |
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