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Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs
DAILY ALERT
Sunday,
August 18, 2024
In-Depth Issues:

Hamas Intent on Sabotaging Ceasefire Talks - Avi Issacharoff (Ynet News)
    Hamas, seeking regional escalation to distract the IDF, may aim to sabotage ceasefire talks in hopes of sparking the broader conflict it has been unable to ignite since the war began.
    This has been Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar's goal since Oct. 7, but his attempts to trigger a regional war have so far failed.
    Neither Hizbullah nor Iran has a genuine interest in a full-scale regional war, despite recent high-profile targeted killings.
    While Sinwar was willing to sacrifice Gaza for his ambitions, Iran's leaders are unlikely to risk their country's economy for revenge.
    Iran could see its oil industry damaged and its nuclear program become a primary target.
    Similarly, Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah knows that initiating a major war with Israel would come at a steep price.
    The writer, a veteran Israeli journalist focusing on Palestinian affairs, is one of the creators of the TV series "Fauda."


Hamas's Terms for Hostage Deal Are Dangerous - Ariel Kahana (Israel Hayom)
    There isn't a soul who doesn't want to see Israeli hostages back home.
    However, announcements of "cautious optimism regarding the possibility of progress toward a deal" do not in any way mean that an agreement is about to be signed.
    The progress was made with mediators Qatar and Egypt, not with Hamas directly.
    Outstanding issues include the Hamas demand for IDF forces to withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor.
    Every child understands that withdrawing from Philadelphi while Hamas is still functioning means reviving the monster.
    Hamas also has yet to agree to a mechanism for screening those returning to northern Gaza. Hamas Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar doesn't want screening so he can rebuild his military capabilities.
    This is precisely the kind of rebuilding that Israel cannot agree to.
    Moreover, there's uncertainty about the number of hostages who will actually be released. The first phase speaks of 18 living hostages, and even that is not guaranteed.

    See also U.S. "Bridging Proposal" for Gaza Deal Said to Exclude Two Key Israeli Demands (Times of Israel)
    The U.S. "bridging proposal" to finalize a hostages-for-ceasefire deal does not provide for an ongoing Israeli presence along the Gaza-Egypt border or for a mechanism in central Gaza to prevent the return of armed Hamas forces to the north, as demanded by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Hebrew media reported Saturday.
    Hamas has made clear that it will not agree to a deal that accommodates these two Israeli demands.


The Jews' Right to the Land of Israel - Amb. Dror Eydar (Israel Hayom)
    Here is a historical fact: Over the last 3,300 years, the only people to establish any kind of political rule in this land were the People of Israel.
    No other kingdom or state was established in the Land of Israel, apart from the Kingdom of Israel or Judea and the State of Israel.
    The only people ever to have their political capital in Jerusalem is the Jewish people.
    During periods when Jewish independence was lost, various empires treated this land merely as a distant province.
    In 638 CE, the Muslims conquered the Land of Israel from the Byzantine Empire (the Eastern Roman Empire centered in Constantinople) and built their mosques in the holiest Jewish places.
    They are the foreign occupiers of the land, not the Jews.
    The writer is a former Israeli Ambassador to Italy.
    See also The Attempt to Deny the Legal, Historical, and National Rights of the Jewish People - Robert L. Meyer (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)


Hamas Plotted to Dig Up War Graves of British Veterans and Hold Them "Prisoner" - Melanie Swan (Telegraph-UK)
    For more than a century, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission has maintained a cemetery in central Gaza containing the remains of more than 3,000 Commonwealth troops from the First and Second World Wars.
    A 7-page document shared with the Telegraph by Israeli officials details a Hamas plot to dig up their remains and hold them "prisoner."
    The document was uncovered by the Israel Defense Forces on Jan. 31 at a compound in Khan Yunis linked to Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif.
    "The tactic depicted in this document is intended to quite literally terrorize the people of the UK as a whole in order to influence political decisions," an Israeli official told the Telegraph.
    Israeli officials say the document was found in a plastic sleeve among a cache related to Hamas's dealings with Hizbullah and other international terrorist organizations.


In Northern Israel, Midwives Prepare Expectant Mothers for Birth during War - Diana Bletter (Times of Israel)
    As Hizbullah continues to fire daily barrages into northern Israel, expectant mothers are concerned that a full-blown war may prevent them from reaching a hospital in time for delivery.
    To help them prepare for an emergency birth at home, a volunteer project in the Western Galilee and the Golan Heights called First Contractions was begun in April, matching expectant mothers with volunteer midwives who live near them.
    Sponsored by Magen David Adom, the Israel Midwives Organization, and the Jewish Federations of North America, First Contractions has enrolled 60 midwives, among them Jews, Arabs, and Druze.
    In Israel, midwives are registered nurses who study for six years to treat women during pregnancy and for six weeks after giving birth.

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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
  • How Israel Killed a Ghost - Sune Engel Rasmussen
    Senior Hizbullah military commander Fuad Shukr had eluded the U.S. for four decades, ever since a bombing killed 241 American servicemen in a Marine barracks in Beirut, which he helped plan. On July 30, an Israeli airstrike found him. Despite being one of Hizbullah's most important figures, he lived an almost invisible life, appearing only in small gatherings of the group's trusted veterans.
        His office was on the second floor of a residential building in the southern Beirut neighborhood of Dahiyeh. He lived on the seventh floor of the same building. According to a Hizbullah official, Shukr received a call from someone telling him to go to his apartment five floors up, where he would be easier to target amid the surrounding buildings. Around 7 p.m., Israeli munitions slammed into the apartment. (Wall Street Journal)
  • Jordanian Citizen Charged with Attacking Florida Solar Power Facility over Anti-Israel Beliefs - Holmes Lybrand
    Hashem Younis Hashem Hnaihen, 43, a Jordanian citizen residing in Orlando, Florida, has been charged with causing $700,000 worth of damage to solar panels at an energy facility in Wedgefield, Fla., because he believed the business supported Israel. He also smashed the windows of several businesses in the Orlando area, leaving "warning letters" threatening to destroy companies and factories that support Israel. (CNN)
News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
  • IDF Drone Strike Kills Hamas Terrorists in Jenin - Yoav Zitun
    An Israeli drone struck Hamas terrorists in a vehicle in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, the IDF reported Saturday. Palestinians confirmed that at least two of the dead were Hamas members - Rafet Mahmoud Dwassa, 28, and Ahmed Abu Ara, 26. The two were involved in planning the shooting attack in the Jordan Valley last week which claimed the life of Yonatan Deutsch. In recent weeks, the IDF has ramped up its use of targeted airstrikes against terrorists in the West Bank. (Ynet News)
  • IDF: Dozens of Tunnels Razed on Gaza-Egypt Border, 17,000 Terror Operatives Killed in War - Emanuel Fabian
    The Israel Defense Forces said Thursday that more than 50 tunnels discovered along the Philadelphi Corridor, along the Egypt-Gaza border, were demolished by combat engineers over the past week. IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari said more than 17,000 terror operatives had been killed in Gaza since the beginning of the war. In an update on Thursday morning, the IDF said dozens of gunmen had been killed over the past day in Rafah, Khan Yunis and central Gaza. (Times of Israel)
  • Over 80 Percent of Israelis Living near Gaza Have Returned Home - Canaan Lidor
    More than 80% of the more than 50,000 Israelis evacuated from their homes near Gaza in the wake of Hamas's Oct. 7 attack have returned, the government authority responsible for them said. Residents of 10 kibbutz communities that were badly damaged in the attack will be given temporary housing for at least another year as their communities undergo renovations and reconstruction, the authority said. (Times of Israel)
Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:

    The Gaza War

  • In Gaza, Israel Is Doing What Any Country Would Do - Matthew Schultz
    An August 14 report in Ha'aretz is titled: "Gaza War Is One of the Bloodiest in the 21st Century." As the death toll in Gaza reached 40,000, the author himself provides numbers that disprove his own claim. In Syria, 405,000 dead. In Iraq, 210,000 dead. In Yugoslavia, 100,000 dead. In Ukraine, 172,000 dead. And Israel is already winding down its operations in Gaza.
        In January, the Washington Post called the displacement of Gazans "the largest displacement in the region since 1948." But it's not. Not even close. 1.9 million people live in Gaza. 13 million were displaced by the Syrian civil war. 4 million in Yemen. 9 million in Iraq. And why say "since 1948"? To make it seem like the existence of Israel is the problem.
        The world is insisting that Israel is bloodthirsty - that it is doing something other than what any country would do after suffering the kind of invasion that Israel suffered on Oct. 7. This isn't true and it's not "what the numbers show."  (Israel Hayom)
  • No Genocide, No Famine in Gaza - Maj. (ret.) Andrew Fox
    Some are still claiming a genocide in Gaza, in the face of all available evidence. The definition of genocide is the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." No one has shown evidence of a clear plan to destroy all Gazans. We have documented and unquestionable Israeli attempts to remove civilians from the areas they are attacking. For example, they delayed the assault on Gaza City until a million people had fled South. That is not the action of an armed force determined to commit genocide.
        Hamas fighters are legitimate targets. Israel has killed 15-20k Hamas fighters. Hamas omits this in their weekly casualty figures. We can safely take Hamas's reported "40k dead civilians" and bring that total down to 5-15k at most. Were those civilians legally collateral damage? I don't know and you don't know.
        We're 10 months in. The conditions, while clearly appalling for Gazan civilians, are demonstrably not bringing about physical destruction to any greater extent than one would expect in a war zone, and even the most recent reports say there is no famine.
        Be appalled at dead civilians: that is the correct human response. But the deepest shame is on those who disregard all available evidence and twist facts, accusing the victims of being the perpetrators.
        The writer, who served in the British Army from 2005-21, is a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society and a lecturer at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.  (X)


    • Israeli Security

  • Israel's Primary Consideration Is Restoring Deterrence - Meir Ben Shabbat
    Israel cannot afford to end the war with the impression that it cannot topple Hamas. If this becomes the conclusion of its enemies and other actors in the region, it would significantly harm its efforts to restore deterrence. Moreover, Israel cannot relinquish the gains it has made at such a high cost, and certainly cannot hand Hamas a lifeline or provide conditions that would enable its recovery.
        Much work remains to destroy Hamas's military and governmental capabilities. As long as the IDF controls the Philadelphi Corridor and continues to operate within Gaza, it is eroding Hamas's capabilities, undermining its public standing, and forcing it to focus all its efforts on survival.
        The U.S.'s ability to influence Hamas to change its positions is minimal, if it exists at all. Against this backdrop, it is likely that U.S. compromise formulas would erode Israel's positions.
        The very idea of offering concessions to "calm" Iran and Hizbullah contradicts the objective of deterring them.
        The writer, a former Israeli national security advisor, is chairman of the Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy in Jerusalem.  (Israel Hayom)


    • Iran

  • Why Are We Playing by Iran's Rules? - Seth Mandel
    Hizbullah is not a separate entity, it's an Iranian occupation force. So is Hamas. So are the Houthis. And so are the Iraq-based terrorists who killed three American service members in Jordan. U.S. regional diplomacy is a charade. And it is one that legitimizes Iranian terror groups.
        The Palestinians currently have two governments. Israel is at war with one of them, the one that isn't recognized as the official representative of the Palestinian people. Gaza under Hamas is essentially a rogue statelet controlled by Iran. Israel is not at war with "the Palestinians" and their recognized government in the West Bank, based in Ramallah. It is at war with Iran.
        The U.S. has constructed a bizarre Kabuki theater production in which resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is being billed as front-and-center, when in fact we are not currently talking to anyone who is interested in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is a war Iran has launched against the U.S. and Israel. Gaza is a front in that war. We have let Tehran hijack the narrative and set the terms of the conflict. (Commentary)
  • Iran's Apocalyptic Shi'ite Dream - Col. Lawrence Franklin
    Iran's theocratic worldview is shaped by the Shi'ite belief that Muhammad's will was betrayed by the Sunni Caliphs who immediately succeeded the prophet. Yet Iranian efforts to recruit both Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims to join the anti-Zionist "resistance" have succeeded in capturing the passion of even some Sunni extremist groups, like Hamas.
        Sunni Muslims dominated the Islamic world in both power and population for centuries. All that changed with the U.S.-led destruction of the Sunni dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. The demise of Saddam liberated Iraq's Shi'ite majority, many of whom felt an affinity for Shi'ite Iran across the border. These Shi'ites, who make up the several terrorist gangs in Iraq, do the bidding of Iran's extremist regime.
        The overriding goal of Iran's Shi'ite clerics is finally to replace Sunni dominance; first in the Middle East and eventually throughout the Islamic world. Iranian muscle in the Persian Gulf has now outclassed the Arabian Peninsula's monarchial Sunni states in raw power. For the foreseeable future, they will all require protective guarantees from the cavalries of heathen states like America, Israel or China.
        The writer was the USAF Reserve Military Attache to the U.S. Embassy in Israel and the U.S. Defense Secretary's Farsi-speaking Iran Officer and Islamic terrorism specialist.  (JNS)


    • Protests at the Democratic National Convention

  • The Coming Protests at the Democratic National Convention - Kenneth Jacobson
    It is reasonable to expect that there will be large demonstrations regarding U.S. policy toward Israel outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. It is equally likely that these demonstrations will be compared to the same convention in the same city in 1968. Yet there are significant differences.
        The anti-Vietnam War protests were directed at U.S. political leaders. Whatever one's views on the war, there was a legitimacy to the protests because they did not target any particular group of Americans, other than the political leadership.
        While today's pro-Palestinian protests oppose U.S. support for Israel, they are radically different because of the significant hate component that has characterized these protests since Oct. 7. There has been explicit or tacit support of the terrorism of Oct. 7. Long before Israel took action to defend itself, protestors were either rationalizing or actually supporting Hamas's terrorism. The phrase "by any means necessary" appeared almost immediately. Explicit support for Hamas has remained an element in the protests ever since.
        There also has been the persistent theme of delegitimizing the Jewish state, leading to calls for Israel's disappearance. Other manifestations of this are false references to Israel as an apartheid state as well as the genocide charge. These are not about policy disagreements but hate, things that were absent in the protests in 1968.
        In addition, the current protests are targeting a particular community within the U.S. - American Jews. This type of antisemitism is of a kind that hasn't been seen in decades, catalyzing the largest number of antisemitic incidents in America in years.
        The writer is Deputy National Director of the Anti-Defamation League.  (Times of Israel)


    • Other Issues

  • Israel: Leader of the Free World - George Gilder
    The issues in the Middle East could hardly be simpler. On one side is tyranny, dependency, and resentment; on the other is liberty - and the essence of liberty is self-government.
        A self-governing people does not whine. They do not expect to be catered to like children. Unlike the so-called "Palestinians" who depend entirely on funds from Western "charities," the Israelis give back far more than they take. They assume responsibility for their own fate and flourishing. Israelis don't complain; they fight. The very essence of Zionism is that no Jew should ever again be dependent on the forbearance of some alien elite for survival.
        The question is between envy and admiration of excellence. Do you view the exceptional accomplishments of others as examples to admire and emulate, and new sources of opportunity? Or do you greet these achievements with envy and hatred and charges of conspiracy, and demands for some unearned "fair share"?
        A nation's reaction to Israel has become the most crucial test of a free people. Equivocation by the U.S. toward Israel and its enemies, even to the extent of tolerating antisemitic violence at home, may be the most alarming signal yet of American decline in leadership for liberty.
        Israel has emerged from five deadly wars over 50 years with a per capita income - for Jews and Arabs alike - higher than the per capita incomes of Germany, the UK, South Korea, or Japan. Fully 100,000 Israeli citizens work in Silicon Valley and are indispensable to its inventive powers. Israel also is the key source of life-saving military technology for America and the Free World.
        Forty-plus years after Ronald Reagan launched the Strategic Defense "Star Wars" Initiative, America still does not have a serious missile defense. The U.S. Patriot air defense system is more expensive and less effective than Israel's system. If the Iranian nuke program is terminated, it will be by Israel and not the U.S. Israel is now fighting our wars and winning. So, who is the leader of the Free World now?
        The writer, an American investor and economist, is the author of The Israel Test: How Israel's Genius Enriches and Challenges the World (2024).  (RealClearPolitics)
Observations:

The Idea Fueling the Anti-Israel Student Protest Movement - Adam Kirsch interviewed by Evan Goldstein (Chronicle of Higher Education)

Adam Kirsch, author of the new book, On Settler Colonialism, said in an interview:
  • After the Hamas massacre in Israel on Oct. 7, I started noticing that a lot of the more sympathetic reactions to Hamas used the term "settler colonial" to describe Israel. It's an ideology in the sense that it's a story people tell about the world and its problems.
  • The most common manifestation of this worldview is land acknowledgment. Now, every university or institution, whether a college or a museum, identifies the Native American peoples who once inhabited the same land.
  • We learned in elementary school that America was conquered from Native Americans. So this reaffirms this idea that society and the institutions we've built sit on a false foundation, that they're rooted in an evil crime, and are therefore illegitimate in some way.
  • Yet, why is there no serious plan to make reparations? There's never a sense that the university should dissolve itself or give back the land, or that the museum should sell off its paintings. The purpose is moral prestige. If you are willing to acknowledge that you're a settler, an inheritor of an original sin, paradoxically that makes you better than people who don't acknowledge it.
  • Settler colonialism is a theory that was developed in the context of Anglophone countries colonized by the British in the 17th and 18th centuries - North America and Australia. That is not what happened in Israel. This template was developed for one type of scenario and is being applied to a context where it obviously doesn't fit.
  • Oct. 7 was a terrorist raid to kill civilians. In Israel you see a real struggle to kill people and destroy a country. That's the logical endpoint of settler-colonial theory: Israel is an illegitimate country that should not exist. Therefore, if you're working to get rid of it, you're supporting a virtuous cause. Which explains why some of the responses to Oct. 7, especially among those who use the language of settler colonialism, were gleeful.
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