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Jerusalem Center for Security
and Foreign Affairs
DAILY ALERT
Tuesday,
December 16, 2025
In-Depth Issues:

Israel Concerned as U.S., Qatar Renew Talks for Sale of Advanced F-35 Jets - Stav Levaton (Times of Israel)
    Israel is increasingly concerned over renewed U.S. discussions with Qatar regarding the possible sale of F-35 fighter jets, Israel's Channel 12 reported Monday.
    Doha has reopened a request to purchase the stealth aircraft, after a similar bid was rejected five years ago, and contacts between Qatari and U.S. officials are said to be underway.
    Israel fears that a wave of advanced U.S. arms sales in the region could erode the Israeli Air Force's qualitative military edge.
    Today, Israel is the only country in the Middle East with F-35s. It currently operates 45 of the aircraft with another 30 on order.


Understanding How Jews View Security - Daniel Sugarman (Jewish News-UK)
    I recently went to my local synagogue. There were three security guards outside. They let me through the outer gate. Then a different guard, watching the CCTV camera based inside the synagogue, opened the inner door for me.
    I'm not sure whether non-Jewish people entirely understand the high levels of security that so many Jewish communities operate with as a matter of course.
    We don't speak about it a great deal. It's just there - a part of life. Many synagogues have this set-up.
    Synagogues around Britain have been trained by the Community Security Trust for exactly the sort of attack that occurred at Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester.
    For many Jewish events in the UK and elsewhere, you sign up but aren't told where the event will take place until 24 hours before. The reason is to provide as little time as possible for would-be terrorists to scope out the venue and plan an attack.
    New attacks, new deaths, new pain and growing anger. Anger at those who incite violence yet plead ignorance at the inevitable consequences of that incitement.
    Anger at a succession of facile governments in Western countries, who seem to prefer to focus on crafting condolence messages rather than acting to prevent the need for such messages in the first place.
    Anger at those who have the nerve to try to tell us we shouldn't be angry.
    Jews care so much about security because for us, it's not if; it's when.


British Chancellor Rachel Reeves Restores Moral Clarity on Israel (Labour Friends of Israel-UK)
    Labour MP Rachel Reeves, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister), told Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) on Dec. 8:
    "We must not tacitly accept the distortion that Zionism is something to be apologized for."
    "Progressive friends of Israel - whatever their criticism of particular governments - must be willing to say, unapologetically: I am a Zionist. And that I am a Zionist not in spite of my belief in democracy and freedom and equality, but because of those beliefs."
    "As the late Rabbi Sacks reminded us: 'Antisemitism is not a Jewish problem. It's a problem for society. Wherever antisemitism flourishes, society is in danger.'"
    "A society in which antisemitism thrives is one in which disinformation replaces truth, extremism supplants moderation, conspiracy theories unseat reason, blame usurps responsibility, and hate takes the place of tolerance. These are the stakes."


America Must Expose the Dangerous Falsehoods about Israel - Amb. Nikki Haley (Fox News)
    Surging antisemitism is among the most disturbing trends in our national life and around the world. But where is the corresponding defense of the truth about the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel?
    There is an urgent need for elected officials to confront antisemitic falsehoods and declare without fear that America is right to stand with Israel for the sake of our own national security and theirs.
    Enemies of Israel loudly shout about its "occupation." In fact, not a single Israeli soldier or civilian was in Gaza after 2005. That's nearly 20 years of Palestinian governance with zero Israeli presence.
    Israel's actions in the Gaza War are denounced as genocide. In fact, in the history of modern warfare, no army has taken more steps to avoid civilian casualties than Israel's has. Its troops have been killed because Israel has tried to save the civilians whom the terrorists hide behind.
    Worldwide protests against Israel began on Oct. 8, 2023. That's one day after Hamas invaded Israel and massacred over 1,200 innocent men, women and children, including 46 Americans, and took 254 hostages, including 12 Americans. These protests weren't in response to Israeli actions in Gaza. There hadn't been any yet.
    In reality, the cries of "occupation" are about the antisemitic belief that there should be no Jewish state whatsoever. The criticism of Israel is a plain attempt to defame and delegitimize the country to promote its extinction.
    Israel is a military and intelligence juggernaut in a strategically vital region of the world. When America supports Israel, we are directly investing in the protection of our own citizens.
    Israel is fighting enemies that seek our destruction too. When we sell weapons to Israel, we spare our own troops from being sent into harm's way.
    The writer was U.S. ambassador to the UN.

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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
  • Bondi Terrorists Traveled to Philippines for Military Training - Sean Rubinsztein-Dunlop
    Sajid and Naveed Akram traveled to the Philippines for military training in November before they killed 15 people at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach, security sources have confirmed. From Manila they journeyed to the southern Philippines, which has been a hotbed for Islamic militants since the 1990s. Two Islamic State flags were found in the Akrams' car at Bondi Beach. (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
        See also Bondi Gunmen Were Inspired by Islamic State, Australia Police Say - Christine Chen
    After's Sunday attack at a Hanukkah event at Sydney's Bondi Beach, "Early indications point to a terrorist attack inspired by Islamic State," Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett said Tuesday. Police also said the vehicle of the terrorists contained improvised explosive devices.
        Israeli Ambassador Amir Maimon visited Bondi on Tuesday and said, "Only Australians of Jewish faith are forced to worship behind closed doors, CCTV, guards....It is insane."  (Reuters)
  • Iran Projects Military Strength with Missile and Drone Exhibition - Najmeh Bozorgmehr
    At Iran's National Aerospace Park in western Tehran, an exhibition of the Islamic republic's weapons included armored vehicles, ballistic and hypersonic missiles, and the remnants of an Israeli Hermes drone, shot down during the Israel-Iran war in June. Nasrin, 35, said, "Thanks to these missiles, the U.S. and Israel knelt down before us." "Our missile capability must continue to grow," said Sara, 19. "The war could resume at any moment."
        Officials insist Iran's military readiness is being rapidly restored. The exhibition is part of an effort to shift the public narrative away from vulnerabilities exposed during the conflict, when Israel killed dozens of senior commanders and nuclear scientists in a devastating opening salvo. More than 1,000 people were killed in Iran, according to local officials. But by firing more than 600 missiles, Iran argues it forced the war to a halt.
        A senior Western diplomat in Tehran said missile sites may now be moved deeper into eastern Iran - further away from Israeli and American jets - for greater protection. (Financial Times-UK)
News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
  • IDF Dismantles Hamas Infrastructure along Gaza's Yellow Line
    The IDF operated to dismantle Hamas infrastructure along Gaza's Yellow Line in eastern Rafah last week, the IDF said Monday. "The troops located weapons and surveillance equipment, including AK-47 rifles, RPG rockets, and cameras used by Hamas against IDF troops operating in the area." The soldiers also worked to dismantle tunnels and kill terrorists who posed threats to Israeli troops. (Jerusalem Post)
  • IDF Says Lebanese Army Struggles to Target Hizbullah's Weapons Stockpiles - Yaniv Kubovich
    Israeli defense authorities have determined that the Lebanese Army's actions against Hizbullah infrastructure are not keeping pace with the group's rearmament efforts, prompting the IDF to carry out daily strikes in Lebanon, military officials said Monday. In addition, Hamas continues to operate on Lebanese soil and is attempting to establish itself as an ally of Hizbullah.
        However, defense authorities have not detected rearmament activity by Hizbullah in areas near the border with Israel, in part due to the presence of five Israeli outposts in Lebanese territory. IDF officials say the Lebanese Army is struggling to operate in Shiite-majority areas. Most of Hizbullah's rearmament efforts are concentrated in the Beirut area and the Bekaa Valley. Hizbullah is estimated to currently possesses 20% of the arms it had on Oct. 7, 2023.
        IDF officials estimate that Hizbullah will not disarm. They say Israel's political leadership has instructed the military to corner Hizbullah into a condition in which it cannot strategically threaten Israel. (Ha'aretz)
Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:

    Attack on Jews in Australia

  • Democracies Must Be Much Tougher on Those Who Normalize Islamist Supremacism and Hatred towards Jews - Alexander Downer
    The murderous attacks on Jewish men, women and children on sunlit Bondi Beach show us that antisemitism is not simply another form of racism. It is a national security threat. The increasing confidence with which people feel able to attack Israelis and Jews in Australia, Britain, and across the West makes it easier for them to be physically attacked.
        Few, if any, Jewish gatherings can now take place without security: who else in our societies faces this? The risk may become that the West's tiny Jewish populations are driven out from the countries they have helped to create. Australia without Jews is not Australia.
        As the U.S. commentator Park MacDougald has said, it's not just about people disliking Jews in the way they might dislike, say, Mexicans. Antisemitism is a conspiracy theory about how the world works. There is this secret, invisible system of Jewish power that rules the world through the banking system, the media and the Israel lobby.
        The aim is to undermine the cohesion of the West: to push the argument that Western power serves the interests of Israel, the Zionists and the Jews rather than the interests of ordinary citizens. You do not have to defeat the West in open confrontation if you can divide it and leave it in a state of self-doubt.
        If Australia, Britain, Germany and others are to survive as multi-racial, multi-faith democracies, they must be much tougher on the forces that lead to and normalize Islamist supremacism and hatred towards Jews.
        The writer, chairman of the UK's Policy Exchange think tank, is a former Minister for Foreign Affairs of Australia.  (Telegraph-UK)
  • Islamists Target Jews at Bondi Beach - Editorial
    Terrorist gunmen inspired by fundamentalist Islam fired indiscriminately at party-goers celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach, killing at least 15 and injuring dozens more, including children. Why were these people targeted?
        The likely explanation from the Islamists is that this was a response to the events in Gaza that followed the pogrom in Israel which left more than 1,000 dead and hundreds kidnapped. However, these were not Israelis. They were mostly Australians, but they were also Jews. That is why they were singled out. (Telegraph-UK)
  • Bondi Beach Terror Is Exactly What "Globalize the Intifada" Means - Brendan O'Neill
    On Sunday, Bondi Beach, that gorgeous stretch of sand and sea in Sydney, Australia, became a slaughter zone. Its golden sand was stained red with the blood of men, women and children who were slain for one reason only - they were Jews. That even this beach can be invaded by Jew-haters should be a wake-up call for the entire West, for it confirms that the "intifada" has well and truly been "globalized."
        If you damned Zionists as an evil people and you spent the past two years frothing at the mouth over the "demonic" Jewish state, then we don't want to hear a word from you about the atrocity at Bondi. Because this is on you. The scenes from Sydney are atrocious. Grim video clips show the dead, the injured, the traumatized. It was as if the barbarism of 1930s Europe had been transposed onto 21st-century Australia.
        Australia, like the rest of the West, has been gripped by the mind fever of Israelophobia these past two years. Synagogues have been set on fire. Jewish schools have been daubed with graffiti. The Israel-haters say, "We only hate Zionists, not Jews." Is anyone still buying this? I'm not. The Bondi pogrom confirms that not one inch of the Western world is safe from the Islamist threat. (New York Post)
  • Australia Shooting Strengthens the Case for Israel - Rob Eshman
    Randomly killing people at a holiday festival in Sydney makes the case for Israel. Bad actors keep proving why Jews worldwide feel such an intense need to have a Jewish state. The vast majority of Jews who settled in Israel went there because they felt they had nowhere else to go. The "ingathering of exiles" was a result of an outpouring of hate and violence.
        Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, didn't have a religious or even a tribal bone in his body. But bearing witness to the rise of antisemitism, he saw the Land of Israel as the European Jew's best option. The Eastern European pogroms, the Holocaust, the massacre of Jews in Iraq in 1941, the attacks on Jews throughout the Middle East after Israel's founding, the oppression of Jews in the former Soviet Union - these were what sent Jews to Israel.
        Most Jews would rather take their chances on a state created to protect them, instead of one that just keeps promising it will. (Forward)


    • The Gaza War

  • Israel Must Insist on Demilitarization of Gaza - Meir Ben Shabbat
    The elimination on Dec. 13 of Ra'ad Sa'ad, a senior Hamas commander in Gaza, was a necessary step, in keeping with the oath to settle accounts with everyone who took part in the October 7 massacre and its preparations. It was also meant to disrupt Hamas's rearmament and rebuilding.
        The extensive knowledge Sa'ad acquired in Gaza and abroad, his rich experience in a series of command and staff roles, and the extensive network of connections he developed with many elements in the "resistance axis" would likely have shortened Hamas's recovery process. Israel must continue the policy of targeted killings systematically and continuously, without explaining and without apologizing.
        Currently, what interests the American administration more than anything is the stabilization of the ceasefire, cementing a reality of non-belligerence that will allow the U.S. president to take credit for this achievement and move on to his other plans. However, under current conditions, it is difficult to say that moving to the second stage is an Israeli interest.
        The opposite is true. IDF control of the areas from which it is supposed to evacuate not only improves security preparedness for various scenarios but also leaves Israel with a significant lever of pressure on Hamas and the mediating countries to fulfill its demands. In Israel's view, the ceasefire is not the goal. Dismantling the enemy's capabilities and demilitarizing the territory are the main goals in Gaza, and so far, they have not been achieved.
        Israel cannot settle for superficial solutions. To demilitarize Gaza means that the territory remains clean of any military capability, light or heavy weapons, offensive or defensive, ammunition, production means, tunnels, naval and aerial vessels, and communication, command and intelligence means - neither in the hands of Hamas nor in the hands of any other Palestinian element in the territory.
        From Israel's perspective, it is preferable to leave the situation as it is rather than "progress" in an outline that will not advance its goals, will increase pressure on it, and will only burden its conduct.
        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)
  • Why Turkey Cannot Be Trusted in Gaza - Blaise Misztal and Jonah Brody
    Turkey's past support for Hamas should exclude it, permanently, from any role in securing Gaza; and, so long as Turkey sides with a terrorist organization over its allies, it can have no role there whatsoever. For nearly two decades, Turkey has hosted Hamas leaders, pledged hundreds of millions in funding, and allowed front companies tied to the group to manage much of its $500 million in overseas assets. Many of these networks still operate freely as Turkey refuses to join its U.S. and European allies in designating Hamas a terrorist group.
        Since Hamas's brutal Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Turkish President Erdogan has been the group's loudest defender and Israel's most vehement critic. Turkey has refused to condemn the Oct. 7 massacre. Erdogan has called Hamas militants "freedom fighters" and accused Israel of "surpassing Hitler in barbarism."
        Erdogan hopes to transform Gaza in his own image - Islamist-ruled and an Ankara client. To that end, he wants to deploy Turkish troops in a stabilization force and act as a "guarantor" for Palestinians. To this, the U.S. cannot and should not acquiesce. Any Turkish military involvement in Gaza would sabotage the peace plan's central aim: disarming Hamas. Any Turkish role would give Ankara leverage to obstruct disarmament. A country that views Hamas as a resistance movement cannot be trusted to dismantle it.
        Blaise Misztal is vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), where Jonah Brody is a policy analyst.  (National Interest)
Observations:

The People of Forever Are Not Afraid - Liel Leibovitz (Tablet)
  • Amid the profound sadness and the righteous indignation in the wake of the massacre in Bondi Beach, Australia, one timeless truth mustn't be forgotten: We Jews are going to be just fine. Attack us, as Hamas did Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and you'll soon discover that Jewish blood is no longer cheap. For more details, kindly consult with Yahya Sinwar, Hassan Nasrallah, or the gentlemen in charge of Iran's nuclear program.
  • Try to scare us away from being Jewish - as marauders attempting a pogrom outside Manhattan's Park East synagogue did recently, chanting "make them scared" as they violently harassed Jews attempting to enter the building, and you'll discover that you've accomplished just the opposite.
  • We'll mourn the dead, we'll comfort the afflicted, we'll carry on. It's been millennia now; we've gotten good at it. And we'll continue to grow stronger because we draw our courage and our resolve from that ancient covenant that charges us, always and forever, to spread God's light and love to a blood-soaked world.
  • It's the same story everywhere you look. A West too weak to define, let alone defend, its own values, and hordes of marauders settling in and reshaping the culture in their violent, hateful image. So don't worry about us. Worry about the former capitals of culture and innovation that are now drowned by waves of angry savages cheering on murder and sowing chaos and violence.
  • Worry about the kind folks in Germany who let in hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the name of multicultural benevolence, only to be told that they may no longer enjoy their Christmas markets because their new neighbors may feel inclined to blow them up, shoot them up, or ram them with cars.
  • Hanukkah has never been a holiday of passive faith. It commemorates a moment when Jews refused to surrender their identity to those who demanded conformity. Hanukkah teaches that Jewish survival is not rooted in denial of danger, but in the courage to affirm who we are anyway.
Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs
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