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In-Depth Issues:
Gaza after Sinwar's Death - Ariel Kahana ( Israel Hayom)
A senior Israeli source told Israel Hayom that they expect
Yahya Sinwar's brother, Muhammad, to assume control of Hamas in Gaza, including managing the Israeli hostage situation.
However, they expressed pessimism regarding the chances of reaching a deal with Muhammad Sinwar, saying, "He is no less a radical than his brother and is an arch-terrorist like him."
Israel understands that dismantling Hamas's civilian control over Gaza, and its control of incoming supplies from the world, is key to achieving its war objectives.
A new proposal being considered involves private American companies being responsible for bringing aid through Israeli border crossings and distributing it to civilian centers in Gaza.
The IDF would be responsible for security, but soldiers would not be involved in the actual food distribution.
The senior official stated that Sinwar's elimination would not bring an end to the war.
"The objectives have not yet been achieved. Hamas still has military strength in the Strip, civilian control, and there are 101 hostages that need to be brought home."
Hamas Says Its Demands Are Unchanged after Sinwar's Death - Liam Stack ( New York Times)
Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya, Yahya Sinwar's deputy, vowed on Friday that Hamas would fight on, after Israel announced Sinwar's death on Thursday.
Al-Hayya, who lives in Qatar, said Hamas maintained its conditions for a ceasefire. He demanded that Israel end its operations in Gaza, withdraw completely, and release Palestinian prisoners in Israel.
After Sinwar's Death - Bret Stephens ( New York Times)
Some analysts think that Yahya Sinwar's demise can facilitate a deal that frees the hostages, ends the fighting, and allows reconstruction in Gaza to begin.
Unlikely. Many Israelis feel they're finally winning the war; they will want to press the military initiative in Gaza and Lebanon.
Moreover, whoever next takes charge of Hamas will not want to make a conciliatory move toward Israel as his first leadership act; it could easily be his last.
Nasrallah Made Assumptions about Israel that Cost Him His Life - Amir Bohbot ( Jerusalem Post)
Following the events of Oct. 7, Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah tied Hizbullah's fate to Hamas in Gaza and launched a war.
He believed Israel would not expand the war against Hizbullah or launch a ground offensive in Lebanon as long as the IDF was still fighting in Gaza.
After Israeli airstrikes on Hizbullah's military capabilities in southern Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley, Nasrallah relocated them to Beirut, mistakenly believing that American and European pressure would protect Beirut.
But concentrating them in Beirut made it easier for the IDF to strike them.
Moreover, Nasrallah managed the war against Israel with an extremely centralized approach, which required his physical presence at Hizbullah's command centers, making his elimination all the more impactful.
Oct. 7 Cyberattack Briefly Disabled Warning System in Israel - Michael Schwirtz ( New York Times)
The U.S. Justice Department has accused two Sudanese brothers of cyberattacks on U.S. infrastructure as well as preventing lifesaving alerts from reaching Israelis on Oct. 7.
On Oct. 7, Ahmed Omer, a Sudanese man, mounted a long-distance cyberassault on the online early warning systems used in Israel to alert citizens to danger, briefly disabling them.
Ahmed and his brother, Alaa, were indicted last week for running a group called Anonymous Sudan, which for a year launched as many as 35,000 cyberassaults that disrupted websites belonging to government agencies, including the FBI and Justice Department, and to news agencies, such as the Washington Post, CNN, and the Jerusalem Post.
Hospitals were attacked including Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles. Attacks also occurred in Denmark, France and Sweden.
The brothers have been arrested and are in custody in an unspecified country. They have been interrogated by the FBI.
Supporting Palestinians Has Turned into Normalizing Terrorism - Aliza Pilichowski ( Jerusalem Post)
The West opposes violence to achieve political aims. The international community always drew a clear line between advocating for a Palestinian state and supporting Palestinian terrorism.
But Palestinians never rejected terrorism, and therefore, they never achieved a state.
The Palestinian Authority, a governing body created with world support when it pledged to oppose and actively stop terrorism from its people, has instead actively supported and incentivized Palestinian terrorism with its "pay to slay" program of stipends for Palestinian terrorists.
It has yet to condemn the Oct. 7 terror attacks, and many of its leading officials publicly praised them.
While most Palestinian supporters in the West won't directly say they support Palestinian terrorism, they use words that effectively mean the same thing to Palestinian ears.
In demonstrations around the world, Hizbullah and Hamas flags are proudly raised, and chants for the death of Jews and supporting resistance by any means are regularly heard on the streets of Western cities.
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
- U.S. Intelligence Leak Reveals Documents on Israel's Plans to Attack Iran - Natasha Bertrand
The U.S. is investigating a leak of highly classified U.S. intelligence about Israel's plans for retaliation against Iran. The documents, dated Oct. 15 and 16, began circulating online Friday on the Telegram channel of Middle East Spectator. One document, compiled by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, describes preparations Israel appears to be making for a strike against Iran. Another document, sourced to the National Security Agency, outlines Israeli air force exercises.
(CNN)
See also U.S. Intelligence Documents Leaked Outlining Israel's Potential Attack Plan on Iran
A senior Israeli official remarked, "Israel's defense establishment is aware of the leak and takes it very seriously." The leaked documents revealed close surveillance by U.S. intelligence on Israel, including the use of satellites to monitor activities at Israeli Air Force bases. The leak highlights a severe security breach within the U.S. intelligence community, allowing highly classified information to reach entities affiliated with Iran.
(Walla-Jerusalem Post)
- U.S. Assists in Israel's Hunt for Hostages and Hamas Leaders - Julian E. Barnes
Days after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the Pentagon quietly dispatched several dozen commandos to Israel to help advise on hostage recovery efforts, U.S. officials said. Those troops from the Joint Special Operations Command were quickly joined by a group of intelligence officers, some working with the commandos in Israel and others back at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.
U.S. intelligence helped locate four hostages who were rescued by Israeli commandos in June. The U.S. military and intelligence cells also focused on hunting for the top leaders of Hamas. Defense Department officials have insisted that they are not directly supporting Israeli military operations on the ground in Gaza. But the search for top Hamas leaders was different.
Earlier this year, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said the American military and spy agencies had gained expertise in finding high-value targets from hunting Osama bin Laden and other terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We're putting that experience to use and have been since the early weeks after Oct. 7," he said.
At least six MQ-9 Reapers controlled by U.S. Special Operations forces have flown missions to assist in locating hostages, monitor for signs of life and pass potential leads to the IDF, U.S. officials said. The drones cannot map out Hamas's vast subterranean tunnel network - Israel is using highly classified ground-based sensors to do that - but their infrared radar can detect the heat signatures of people entering or leaving the tunnels from above ground.
The Pentagon said Thursday that no U.S. forces had been directly involved in the operation that killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. But, American officials insist, the U.S. helped collect intelligence that helped the Israeli military narrow its search.
(New York Times)
- In Israel's Most Bombed Town, You Have Five Seconds to React - Will Lloyd
The town of Metula is the most northern, most bombed and most dangerous place in Israel. Metula is surrounded by steep rocky hills, allowing Hizbullah to fling rockets, missiles and drones at the buildings below. Visitors have five seconds to hit the ground if a rocket or missile is launched.
The town's 700 families were evacuated. Without humans, Metula was being taken over by rats and flies. Vegetation was pushing up through cracks in the asphalt. Since Oct. 8, 2023, the town had been hit by 30 drone strikes, 450 Kornet anti-tank missiles, and up to 900 rockets, said Metula's mayor, David Azoulay. The IDF claimed they foiled two infiltration attempts into Metula by Hizbullah's Radwan Force.
After 20 minutes, the IDF pulled the plug on the journalists' tour. Before we could leave, alarms started wailing. We scattered out of the cars and scrambled for cover. Half of the group ended up in a ditch. There were three booming sounds overhead. The rockets had been intercepted. Our convoy left between rocket barrages.
(The Times-UK)
News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
- Israeli Man Killed by Hizbullah Rocket near Acre - Lior El-Hai
Alexei Popov, 50, was killed on Saturday by Hizbullah rocket shrapnel on a highway near Acre. Popov had been returning home from grocery shopping and pulled his car over to the side of the road when the siren sounded, but the explosion occurred before he could exit the vehicle and he was critically injured.
(Ynet News)
See also 180 Hizbullah Rockets Wound 10 in Israel on Saturday - Adi Hashmonai
Five people were wounded when a Hizbullah rocket landed in Kiryat Ata on Saturday. Four people were wounded by shrapnel when a rocket landed on a road in the western Galilee. One other person was wounded from the rocket fire that killed Alexei Popov near Acre. (Ha'aretz)
- Hizbullah Drone Strike Targets Netanyahu's Home in Caesarea
A drone launched from Lebanon targeted the private residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Caesarea on Saturday. Netanyahu and his family were not present at the time of the attack. The IDF said three drones crossed into Israeli airspace
and two were intercepted. One landed on a home in Caesarea, but no injuries were reported. (Ynet News)
See also Hizbullah Combines Rocket Barrages with Drone Strikes - Ron Ben-Yishai
Hizbullah has ramped up the use of explosive drones. It's latest strategy blends short-range rocket barrages with drone strikes, designed to overwhelm Israel's detection and interception systems. While rockets are intercepted by Iron Dome, drones are primarily intercepted by aircraft. Hizbullah concentrates rockets on a relatively small target area while launching drones in multiple directions.
New intelligence and operational capabilities developed by the Israeli Air Force enable the swift targeting of rocket launchers. While the number of direct hits from explosive drones has been rising, there are promising developments in the pipeline for better detection, interception and the ability to strike drones at their launch sites. (Ynet News)
- Video: Palestinian Rams Car into Police Vehicle, No Casualties
A Palestinian driver swerved into a parked armored police vehicle at high speed on Saturday near Ofra, north of Jerusalem. Security camera footage showed a police officer stepping out of the vehicle right before the car struck it, narrowly missing him.
The driver was killed and no police officers were wounded.
(Times of Israel)
- Israel Drops Leaflets over Gaza Showing Sinwar's Body
Israeli planes dropped leaflets over southern Gaza on Saturday showing a picture of dead Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar with the message that "Hamas will no longer rule Gaza." "Whoever drops the weapon and hands over the hostages will be allowed to leave and live in peace," the Arabic leaflet said. (Jerusalem Post)
Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:
The Gaza War
- Let Israel Finish the Job and Crush Hamas - Con Coughlin
Israel will not pay any heed to the naive arguments made by Western leaders that Hamas terrorist mastermind Yahya Sinwar's demise should result in the immediate implementation of a ceasefire. Israel's achievement in neutralizing the Iranian-backed terrorist responsible for orchestrating the worst atrocity in the Jewish state's history might never have happened if Israel had accepted their previous calls for restraint.
This is why, rather than taking Sinwar's demise as an opportunity to scale down its offensive in Gaza, Israel will ignore the siren calls of Western leaders and double down on achieving its stated goal of utterly destroying Hamas as a terrorist entity. Unlike Western leaders, the Israelis understand the importance of demonstrating that violence will never be rewarded. If Hamas is allowed to survive in any form in Gaza, then it will simply send a signal to Tehran that its terrorist campaign against Israel will ultimately succeed.
(Telegraph-UK)
- The Elimination of Yahya Sinwar Is a Great Moment for Israelis and Palestinians Alike - Brendan O'Neill
Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the Oct. 7 pogrom, has been eliminated. This is a great day not only for Israel and the Jewish diaspora, but also for all of humanity.
Sinwar was killed in Rafah, the city every virtue-signaler in the West told Israel to leave alone. It turns out the man who green-lighted the rape, kidnap and slaughter of more than a thousand Jews was there. If your campaigning entails putting a moral forcefield around a fascist overlord, if it involves the protection of a Jew-killer from the Jews looking for him, then you might not be as virtuous as you think.
Sinwar first served as Hamas's punisher of alleged Palestinian collaborators with Israel, earning him the nickname "The Butcher of Khan Yunis." He spent time in jail for the murder of such "collaborators," one of whom he strangled to death with his bare hands, another of whom he suffocated with a keffiyeh.
This is a man who deserved to die. His crimes against the Jews were legion. He was horrendously cavalier about Palestinian life, too. He let Hamas's war with Israel drag on because he believed the "spiraling civilian death toll in Gaza" would drum up global hate for Israel and global pity for Hamas. So Gazans also benefit from the demise of this monster. They are a step closer to liberation from the tyrannical rule of the death-mongers of Hamas.
Israel's righteous slaying of Yahya Sinwar is more than justice for Oct. 7. It is also a message to the world. It says: you cannot kill Jews with impunity anymore.
No, there are consequences now to singling out Jews for special opprobrium and wicked violence. Do that today and you might very well die.
Those of us who live in the West needed this reminder. Our young in particular needed to be told that fascist violence is intolerable and killing Jews will be rightfully avenged. In the aftermath of Oct. 7, many of our fellow citizens were seemingly content to see Jews once again loaded into trucks, burnt to a cinder and killed on account of their ethnicity. They found greater common cause with the anti-Jewish, anti-modernity hysterics of Hamas than with the democratic state of Israel.
So yes, we needed to hear that the murder of Jews will be met with the severest of consequences. The killing of Sinwar puts flesh on the bones of the cry of "Never Again." (Spiked-UK)
U.S.-Israel Relations
- Israel Kills Sinwar, and Biden Wants to "Move On" - Michael Doran
President Biden sees the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar as an opportunity to end the war in Gaza. Yet the Administration's approach clashes with the situation on the ground, and Sinwar's death hasn't changed that.
Team Biden's diplomacy suffers from major errors. First, it mistakenly assumed that Mr. Netanyahu could be forced into accepting a chastened Hamas as a major political actor in Gaza. Mr. Biden presumably hopes that Sinwar's death will force Hamas to negotiate a ceasefire. But in the eyes of most Israelis, the killing simply vindicated Mr. Netanyahu's demand for "total victory."
Second, Biden officials seem to want a ceasefire in Gaza that will also lead to a ceasefire in Lebanon. They expect Hizbullah and Iran to stop attacking Israel once Hamas agrees to a ceasefire, and they call for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon followed by a period of diplomacy. But the Israelis feel, correctly, that the tide of war in Lebanon has shifted dramatically in their favor. Why would Israel take its boot from Hizbullah's neck first and then start negotiating?
With respect to the security of its northern border, the Israeli government has little maneuvering room. Many tens of thousands of Israelis have been evacuated from their homes in the north. They won't return until they are certain Hizbullah will never be able to fire rockets and missiles at them again. Announcing a ceasefire wouldn't be sufficient reassurance.
The writer is director of the Hudson Institute's Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East. (Wall Street Journal)
Israel and the West
- Israel's Success Has Humiliated Its Critics - Editorial
After a year of fighting in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the Oct. 7 massacre, has faced justice. It is a triumph for the Israel Defense Forces, a grievous blow to Hamas and Iran's terrorist network - and a chastening moment for London and Washington.
If Sir Keir Starmer and President Joe Biden had got their way, Israel would have been forced into accepting a ceasefire months ago that would have left Sinwar at large, and Hamas's military network considerably more capable.
Indeed, at one point Mr. Biden stated that he would cut the supply of arms to Jerusalem if Israeli forces entered the city of Rafah. Rafah is where Sinwar was eventually caught and killed.
Predictably, Sir Keir and Mr. Biden have seized on this triumph to once again attempt to pressure Israel into negotiating with Hamas. Despite the mounting evidence, neither appears to be willing to accept the clear fact that Israel knows how to prosecute its own conflicts better than they do. Rather than once again assuming that we know better than leaders in Jerusalem what is best for Israel, we should simply offer our support to an ally in its fight for freedom and democracy.
(Telegraph-UK)
- Israel Fights Alone, Carrying the West - Dr. Majid Rafizadeh
How many of the world's most vicious terrorists has Israel liberated the world from in a few short weeks? Little Israel is showing the world how to win again - and saving civilization and a free way of life in the bargain. The multi-front war that Israel is currently waging against the Iranian regime and its numerous terrorist proxies is a battle that the West should have taken on long ago.
Western nations, through diplomatic miscalculations, cowardice, and a fear of conflict, have essentially outsourced their responsibilities for maintaining global peace to Israel, watching from the sidelines as the conflict ramps up. Israel, smaller than New Jersey, is left grappling with the world's top state sponsor of terrorism, Iran, as well as the well-armed proxies that the Iranian regime uses to protect itself from retaliation.
Instead of helping Israel defeat Iran's terrorism and towering abuses of human rights, or even just thanking it, the West goes out of its way to defame, sabotage and attack Israel.
Meanwhile, Iran, which is in the final stages of producing an atomic bomb, is arming Russia in its war on Ukraine, arming terrorist groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, and is deeply intertwined with other enemies of the West - Russia, China and North Korea. It is a grotesque reflection on the international community not to be offering unequivocal support to Israel, whose struggle is not just for its own survival but for the security and peace of the Free World.
The writer is president of the International American Council on the Middle East.
(Gatestone Institute)
Observations:
- According to Hamas documents, Yahya Sinwar's plan included overrunning 221 southern Israeli communities and enlisting Iran and Hizbullah to conquer the Galilee and topple Tel Aviv's skyline. The Oct. 7 atrocities were merely a fraction of what was planned. Sinwar and Hamas's meticulously crafted strategy aimed at Israel's complete annihilation within two years.
- Sinwar saw the world in stark binary terms: Dar al-Islam, the areas under Islamic control, and Dar al-Harb, regions yet to be conquered. Sinwar's Hamas believed it had a divine mandate to wage war, expanding Dar al-Islam's frontiers "to the utmost limits." Israel's very existence was seen as an intolerable affront. It also represented a perversion of the natural order, where Jews dared to govern Muslims instead of being subservient under Islamic law.
- The Hamas charter unequivocally commits to the conquest of all Palestine as its ultimate objective. Their rallying cry of "from the river to the sea" is a clarion call for a world without Israel. The Oct. 7 atrocities represented merely the opening salvo in Sinwar's diabolical masterplan. He declared on Nov. 30, 2023, that the massacre was a "dress rehearsal" for the final, more devastating act to come.
- Sinwar's toxic ideology indoctrinated a significant portion of Gaza's population. Many Gazans actively participated in the Oct. 7 massacre and subsequent looting. The majority of Gaza's residents chose Sinwar and Hamas as their leaders, with hundreds of thousands entangled in Hamas's intricate web of terror. Gaza was transformed into a land singularly focused on the slaughter of Jews and, ultimately, the obliteration of Israel.
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