Today’s update is long and includes a lot of analysis on the unfolding events over the past week combined with some inspiration from the Paris Olympics where Israel has now won 6 medals, including one gold! In the Antisemitism section below, you will find a thorough report on NazTok, an organized neo-Nazi TikTok network that is getting millions of views and is truly worth the read. I also encourage you to listen to Michael Eisenberg’s interview with the “Tiktok Jewish Whistleblower” to get a clear understanding of the bias that exists on the social media platform. Again, thank you to everyone who reads these updates, and I hope you find this information useful.

Situational Update

• According to the WSJ, Hamas Leader Was Killed in Tehran by a Bomb in His Room: The planners somehow penetrated an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps facility, learned which room was Haniyeh’s and were able to confirm he was there in order to detonate the bomb. Photos of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps guesthouse where Haniyeh was staying show little damage to the exterior walls or the structure, indicating the attack involved a small, controlled explosion that detonated within his room.

  

• How It Happened: Mossad hired Iranian agents to plant bombs in Haniyeh’s residence
  • Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, hired Iranian security agents to plant explosives in three separate rooms of a building where a Hamas leader was staying, The Telegraph has learned.
  • The original plan was to assassinate Ismail Haniyeh, the political head of the Palestinian terror group, in May when he attended the funeral of Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s former president.
  • The operation did not go ahead due to the large crowds inside the building and the high possibility of its failure, two Iranian officials told The Telegraph.
  • Instead, the two agents placed explosive devices in three rooms of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) guesthouse in north Tehran where Haniyeh might stay.
  • The agents were seen moving stealthily as they entered and exited multiple rooms within minutes, according to the officials who have CCTV footage of the building.
  • The operatives are then said to have snuck out of the country but had a source still in Iran. At 2am on Wednesday, they detonated the explosives from abroad in the room where Haniyeh was staying.
  • The report came amid news that the authorities in Tehran were carrying out a series of arrests in connection with the killing, with the New York Times saying senior Iranian intelligence officers, military officials, and staff at the guesthouse were among some two dozen people held.
• Per Barak Ravid with Axios: The U.S. general in charge of American forces in the Middle East arrived in the region on Saturday as preparations continue for a possible attack against Israel from Iran in retaliation for the assassinations of senior Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, two U.S. officials said. Gen. Michael Kurilla’s trip to the region was planned before the recent escalation between Israel, Iran and Hezbollah but he is expected to use the trip to try to mobilize the same international and regional coalition that defended Israel against an attack from Iran on Apr. 13, a U.S. official said. Three U.S. and Israeli officials said they expect Iran to attack Israel as early as Monday.
• The IDF has uncovered an unusually large tunnel on the Gaza-Egypt border area, big enough for vehicles to pass through, the Israel Defense Force said Sunday according to the Times of Israel.

• Marc Schulman reports that United and Delta Airlines have canceled their flights to Israel, with United suspending service until further notice. European airlines are following suit, and once again, leaving travelers without tickets on El Al (or the smaller Israeli carriers, Arkia and Israair) out of options. El  Al simply does not have the capacity to transport all the necessary passengers—and the fact that it does not operate on Saturdays significantly reduces its availability.

Israel at the Olympics

• Tom Reuveny wins Israel’s only gold to date in men’s windsurfing. Watch as Hatikva, Israel’s national anthem, is played in this emotional ceremony.
• Israel has now won 1 gold, 4 silver, and 1 bronze at the Paris Olympics. Israel has now won more medals than ever before. According to the Times of Israel, Reuveny’s gold is Israel’s fourth ever, and first in the Paris games. It comes 20 years after his coach, Gal Fridman, won Israel’s first-ever gold medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

• Peter Paltchik won Israel’s first medal (bronze) at the Olympics in the 100-kilogram weight class and the country’s best finish in the sport since 1992. His coach Oren Smadja, a former Olympic medalist, lost his son Omer in combat in Gaza. Watch the emotional moment where he and Oren celebrate!

• Israeli judoka Inbar Lanir (far left above) later won the silver medal in her division. According to the JTA, Lanis said this: “Since the start of the war, my stomach has been in knots. I knew that the one thing I could do is keep training and doing what I’m best at because I have the privilege to represent the country and to raise the flag around the world — and that gave me huge motivation.”
• Raz Hershko (second from left) is a silver medalist in judo women’s 78kg+
• Sharon Kantor (third from left) is a silver medalist in women’s windsurfing
• Artem Dolgopyat (far right above) is a silver medalist in floor exercises

The Numbers

Casualties

• 1,655 Israelis dead (+5 since Wednesday) including 689 IDF soldiers (329 IDF soldiers during the ground operation in Gaza: thankfully no change since Wednesday)
  • Two Israeli civilians were killed and two others were wounded in a terror stabbing attack in the central city of Holon on Sunday morning, police and medics said.
• Additional Information (according to the IDF):
  • 2,176 (+3 since Wednesday) IDF soldiers have been injured during ground combat in Gaza, including at least 408 (no change since Wednesday) who have been severely injured.
  • 4,252 (+6 since Wednesday) IDF soldiers have been injured since the beginning of the war, including at least 630 (+2 since Wednesday) who have been severely injured.

• Note: we have always included the number of casualties in Gaza, as reported by the Gaza Health Ministry. We feel it is important to include this information with the caveat that this reporting ministry is not a trusted source of data by many. Most recently, The United Nations has begun citing a much lower death toll for women and children in Gaza, acknowledging that it has incomplete information about many of the people killed during Israel’s military offensive in the territory.
  • According to unverified figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, 39,480 (+156 since Wednesday) people have been killed in Gaza, and 91,128 (+298 since Wednesday) have been injured during the war.
  • We also encourage you to read this well documented piece from Tablet published in March: How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers
  • The Associated Press, an outlet with a demonstrated anti-Israel bias, conducted an analysis of alleged Gaza death tolls released by the Hamas-controlled “Gaza Health Ministry.” The analysis found that “9,940 of the dead – 29% of its April 30 total – were not listed in the data” and that “an additional 1,699 records in the ministry’s April data were incomplete and 22 were duplicates.”

Hostages (no change from Wednesday)

One Israeli Hostage’s Unusual Experience in Gaza: A conversation with Liat Beinin Atzili, who was kidnapped and held for more than 50 days by Hanna Rosin in The Atlantic

• My name is Liat Atzili. I used to be Beinin. And then when I returned from captivity, I found out that my husband had been killed on October 7, and his name was Atzili, so I had to get new ID. So I just decided on the spur of the moment that I’m ditching Beinin and becoming Atzili.
• I’m a teacher. I’m a history teacher. I’m a Holocaust educator. A huge issue that we discuss with students when teaching about the Holocaust is how something like the Holocaust can happen and why people don’t do anything about it. And to me, you know, there was a fence there, and I felt obligated to be interested in what happens on the other side of the fence.
• I was by myself in the safe room in our house. My two sons were on the kibbutz, but they don’t live at home anymore. And my daughter wasn’t on the kibbutz, which I’m so, so thankful for. So I was alone. And when people came and entered my house and came to kidnap me, to take me hostage—I don’t, I don’t even know what word to use—it was already pretty late in the day. It was around 11. And I think, by that point, they realized that the Israeli army wasn’t coming, that there was going to be no battle in Nir Oz, so they were very relaxed, I think.
• I ended up spending, like, the first 36 hours in—the guy who took me from my house, in his house. He brought me to his family’s home. And his mother and his sister just took really, really good care of me. I mean, they realized that I was in shock and that I was terribly upset.
• …there were two guys who were guarding us. One of them was a lawyer; one was a teacher, educated. They spoke English. They were active in Hamas. They were very, very religious, but they also—they made a huge, huge, huge effort to make us feel safe and to communicate with us. Obviously, it’s not an easy thing to go through.
• They kept saying, you know, Our job is to protect you and keep you safe and healthy until you’re released in a deal. I mean, they kept saying that from day one.
• Q: And what was the version of Israel that got reflected back to you? A: a very, very religious, fundamentalist, messianic worldview. They kept saying that from the river to the sea, it should all be a Palestinian state, and that all the Jews should leave. And there was a difference between the two of them. One of them was, I think, more religious, was less willing to compromise. And one said, you know, Well, yeah, maybe a two-state solution has to be a solution, at least temporarily, until we conquer the world and everybody converts to Islam.
• …they kept saying, We don’t understand why you were taken hostage. You’re women. We don’t fight women. Women shouldn’t be involved in war. At some point, pictures of all the hostages were released, and one of them said, I’m shocked at the number of children, at the number of elderly people, at the number of women. I didn’t think it was like that.
• …you know, when I said goodbye to him and thank you, he went like this: He patted me on the shoulder and said, you know, Good luck. And I hope that your family is safe, and I hope that everything will be okay with you. And you know, it was moving. It was a moment with this person who really, I mean, could have done anything. He didn’t have to—I mean, he had a job to keep me alive and sort of relatively in good condition. But, I mean, he could have done anything. He didn’t have to be nice to me. He didn’t have to talk to me. He didn’t have to, I mean—a million little gestures that just made it bearable.
• Listen: One Israeli Hostage’s Unusual Experience in Gaza
• Read: One Israeli Hostage’s Unusual Experience in Gaza

• On October 7^th, a total of 261 Israelis were taken hostage.
• During the ceasefire deal in November, 112 hostages were released.
• A total of 7 hostages have been rescued and the remains of 21 others have been recovered (no change since Sunday). Tragically, 3 have been mistakenly killed by the IDF, and 1 was killed during an IDF attempt to rescue him.
• 49 hostages have been confirmed dead.
• This leaves an estimated 111-112 hostages still theoretically in Gaza, with somewhere between (assumed) 33-41 deceased. Thus, at most, 82 living hostages could still be in Gaza.
  • According to an article published in the WSJ, “Of the approximately 250 hostages taken in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack, 116 continue to be held captive, including many believed to be dead. Mediators in the hostage talks and a U.S. official familiar with the latest U.S. intelligence said the number of those hostages still alive could be as low as 50.”
  • That assessment, based in part on Israeli intelligence, would mean 66 of those still held hostage could be dead, 25 more than Israel has publicly acknowledged.
  • Link: Families of Hostages in Gaza Are Desperate for News but Dread a Phone Call | WSJ

(Sources: JINSA, FDD, IDF, AIPAC, The Paul Singer Foundation, The Institute for National Security Studies, the Alma Research and Education Center, Yediot, Jerusalem Post, IDF Casualty Count, and the Times of Israel)

Watch

[VIDEO] Michael Eisenberg’s Invested: Barak Herscowitz on TikTok’s Anti-Israel Bias, Their Support of Hamas & Why He Resigned

• On this episode of Invested, Michael hosts Barak Herscowitz, formerly advisor to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, political campaigner and strategic advisor, entrepreneur, and a former employee of TikTok. Barak is an Israeli political campaigner and strategic advisor. Herscowitz became the “Tiktok Jewish Whistleblower” as he resigned due to what he identified as a severe bias against Israel and Jewish organizations, in favor of external influences serving Hamas and other foreign entities. He exposed a network of employees in sensitive roles within the company who supported terrorists, advocated for positions endorsed by Iran, and held extreme anti-Israel stances.
• Barak is currently in a mission to raise awareness to the public opinion war fought against democratic nations and the Jewish people on social media, campuses and other arenas. He is about to go on a tour with his lecture “If Bin Laden had Twitter: The War the West is Losing Miserably” that discusses his experience as a whistleblower but also a much wider global issue.
• Link (via YouTube): Barak Herscowitz on TikTok’s Anti-Israel Bias

Humanitarian Aid

For more detail, please visit COGAT’s website: Israel Humanitarian efforts – Swords of Iron (govextra.gov.il)

What We Are Reading

Bomb Smuggled Into Tehran Guesthouse Months Ago Killed Hamas Leader, reports Ronen Bergman, Mark Mazzetti, and Farnaz Fassihi in The New York Times

• Ismail Haniyeh, a top leader of Hamas, was assassinated on Wednesday by an explosive device covertly smuggled into the Tehran guesthouse where he was staying, according to seven Middle Eastern officials, including two Iranians, and an American official.
• Iranian officials and Hamas said Wednesday that Israel was responsible for the assassination, an assessment also reached by several U.S. officials who requested anonymity. The assassination threatened to unleash another wave of violence in the Middle East and upend the ongoing negotiations to end the war in Gaza. Mr. Haniyeh had been a top negotiator in the cease-fire talks.
• Israel has not publicly acknowledged responsibility for the killing, but Israeli intelligence officials briefed the United States and other Western governments on the details of the operation in the immediate aftermath, according to the five Middle Eastern officials.
• Such a breach, three Iranian officials said, was a catastrophic failure of intelligence and security for Iran and a tremendous embarrassment for the Guards, which uses the compound for retreats, secret meetings and housing prominent guests like Mr. Haniyeh.
• Israel decided to carry out the assassination outside Qatar, where Mr. Haniyeh and other senior members of Hamas’s political leadership live. The Qatari government has been mediating the negotiations between Israel and Hamas over a cease-fire in Gaza.
• The compound is staffed with a medical team which rushed to the room immediately after the explosion. The team declared that Mr. Haniyeh had died immediately. The team tried to revive the bodyguard, but he, too, was dead.
• They described the attack’s precision and sophistication as similar in tactic to the remote controlled A.I. robot weapon that Israel used to assassinate Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in 2020.
• Link: Bomb Smuggled Into Tehran Guesthouse Months Ago Killed Hamas Leader: The New York Times

Double assassination against Iran’s proxies is humiliation the ayatollahs can’t afford by Richard Kemp in Israeli media outlet YNet

• The elimination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, presumably by Israel, contains a shattering double message. First to Iran: that the IDF can strike where, when and against whomever it wants inside their country. Second to Hamas: that their leaders are no longer safe anywhere in the world and never will be.
• We will have to see the extent to which Haniyeh’s killing deters Iranian belligerence. But one thing is certain: This further sign of impotence will encourage the growing dissent inside Iran against a repressive regime that has destroyed the country’s economy while investing so much in imperialist aggression across the region. Whatever their response now, the ayatollahs can’t afford to risk much more humiliation.
• For Hamas, a leading Iranian proxy, Israel’s action will resound throughout what is left of the movement. Hamas in Gaza is already on its knees, with thousands of terrorists killed and captured, many miles of tunnels blown up and munitions seized and destroyed. It is no longer able to operate as a coherent military organization and its supply lines from Egypt have been cut. The terrorist leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, has been forced into survival mode. His military lieutenant, Mohammed Deif, was killed in an Israeli air strike earlier this month that was a tremendous blow to the organization. I saw for myself last week inside Gaza the extent to which the IDF has now secured freedom of operations everywhere.
• Demonstrable strength matters above most other things in this region where Israel is surrounded by terrorist enemies to whom weakness is always a provocation. A drone attack on Tel Aviv by Iran’s Houthi proxies in Yemen was met with massive Israeli airstrikes against their logistic infrastructure in Hudaydah Port. That had much greater significance than just disrupting Iranian weapons supply lines into Yemen. Trade through the port is also fundamental in financing the Houthis’ terror apparatus and for their hold over the country.
• Israel’s reputation as a strong horse was tarnished by the military and intelligence failures that led to the October 7 Hamas-led massacre, undermining confidence in the Jewish state across the region. That is why it is so important for Israel to win a decisive victory in Gaza and hit back with great force against Hezbollah and the terrorist masterminds in Tehran.
• Link: Double assassination against Iran’s proxies is humiliation the ayatollahs can’t afford

Ismail Haniyeh’s Assassination Sends a Message by Graeme Wood in The Atlantic

• Until a few hours ago, Hamas would have considered Tehran one of the safest places in the world for its leaders to show up in public, safe not only from boos and hisses but also from attempts on their lives. Israel has killed in Iran before, sometimes in ingenious and dramatic fashion. But its targets tend to be Iranians who have to go outside sooner or later. That Israel can kill even when the target is a prominent official, there on a brief visit—not long enough for Israel to surveil him and track his routines—suggests that the Israelis’ ability to operate in Tehran is very extensive indeed. The life-insurance premiums for senior Iranian and Hezbollah officials just spiked.
• When I visited a couple of months ago, everyone from officials to ordinary people seemed to have reconciled themselves to war with Hezbollah, as preferable to letting Hezbollah dictate the terms of permanent bombardment of northern Israel. Israel’s actions in the past day have convinced some that such a war is under way, and that these are its opening gambits.
• I suspect the opposite is true. The twin assassination attempts on Shukr and Haniyeh should, if anything, be a relief. Israel has drawn blood in pinpoint strikes as an alternative to the wholesale attempted dismemberment of Hezbollah through ground invasion or all-out war. Coordinated assassinations send the message that Hezbollah’s leaders, and the leaders of other groups that depend on Iran’s funding and protection, remain alive only because Israel has not yet decided to kill them. That message would certainly make an impression on me, if I were dependent on Iran’s protection. I would be less inclined to escalate, and more inclined to declare this round of violence concluded. Iran is naturally mortified that it could not protect its vassal even in Tehran, and it will seek revenge. But it has tried to avoid all-out war for years. To start one now would be an extreme gamble, at a time when Israel has just given Iran reason to doubt that fortune favors it.
• Link: Ismail Haniyeh’s Assassination Sends a Message

Two Assassinations and a Transformed War by Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president for research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies

• With the death of Deif, Haniyeh, and a handful of other senior leaders, Hamas is no longer the formidable terror group that it was on October 7. The top leadership is thinning out. The group has lost more than two-thirds of its fighting force in Gaza and is significantly weakened. One key Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, remains alive, and is believed to be hiding in the tunnels beneath Gaza. A tunnel is very likely where he will meet his end.
• …the most meaningful development in Gaza has gone remarkably unreported. The Israelis now control the Philadelphi Corridor, which is the border area connecting Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula to the Gaza Strip. More importantly, the Israelis now control the tunnels that lie beneath it. For most of the war, those tunnels enabled Hamas to bring weapons, cash, and materiel from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula into the Gaza Strip. Those days are over.
• All of this flies in the face of the conventional wisdom touted by the so-called experts early in the war. Some warned that this would be Israel’s “forever war” and said that thousands of Israeli soldiers would be killed. But Israel’s majority-reservist army defied those experts and their expectations. Others insisted that it was impossible to defeat Hamas because Hamas was an idea. But when the most visible champions of the “Hamas idea” are killed in the heart of Tehran, or even on the battlefields of Gaza, that argument starts to unravel.
• Hamas may never be fully dismantled. Pockets of insurgency will likely persist in Gaza for years to come. But the hard fighting may soon be over.
• The assassination of Haniyeh, however, was a wake-up call. Israel demonstrated that it had the ability to target its enemies with pinpoint accuracy—and with lethality—inside Iran. This theoretically means that Israel could target the regime’s leaders just as easily.
• Still, it would be an error to think that Iran’s strategy will change. Why? Because the regime in Tehran knows that Israel cannot sustain an extended war of attrition. The regime knows that Israel lacks the strategic depth, not to mention munitions—both offensive weapons and missile defense—to fight for months on end.
• The regime is also no doubt delighting in the tension this war has created between the Biden White House and Israel. If anything, Netanyahu appeared to be fighting on Iran’s terms. That may have changed on Tuesday night. Israel is regaining some of its swagger. If the military and intelligence services can continue to strike the leaders of the Iranian axis, the momentum may continue to shift. The Iranians can still be convinced that the price of continuing to fight this war is higher than what they were willing to pay at the beginning.
• Admittedly, the war cannot be won on decapitation strikes alone. The Israelis need to harness the hatred that the Iranian public harbors for their regime. Economic pressure from the United States and our allies could also turn the screws on the regime. Cyber attacks are not off the table, either.
• Link: Two Assassinations and a Transformed War

How all-out war between Israel and its adversaries might play out Raya Jalabi and Malaika Kanaaneh Tapper in Beirut and Andrew England, Steven Bernard and Ian Bott in London write for the Financial Times

• A full-blown conflict would pit the Middle East’s most sophisticated military, bolstered by advanced western hardware and weaponry, against arguably the world’s most heavily armed non-state actor.

• Israel is among the world’s best-equipped armies, equivalent to Nato standards and with US-made weaponry such as F35 fighter jets as well as top-of the-range air defences and other new equipment. It has also cultivated a well-developed domestic arms industry that produces its own tanks, armoured vehicles, air defences, missiles and drones.
• Hizbollah is also now able to strike across Israel and accurately calibrate strategic targets — meaning that no town or city would be safe.

• Given the geographical distance between Israel and Iran, any direct battle between the two foes would essentially be an air war.  Iran, under heavy sanctions, lacks the conventional weaponry to challenge Israel, with few aircraft assets, barring a few ageing jets acquired before the 1979 Islamic revolution but that it has been unable to service. It has, however, built up increasingly sophisticated domestic missile and drone capability, and relies on asymmetric warfare, mobilising its regional proxies and its 120,000-strong Revolutionary Guards force. Indeed, according to CSIS, Iran has the Middle East’s “largest and most diverse missile arsenal” made up of thousands of ballistic and cruise missiles, some capable of striking Israel and as far as south-east Europe.
• Link: How all-out war between Israel and its adversaries might play out

On The Ground In Gaza: What I Saw Of Israel’s Military Operation by Dave Deptula, Dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and also a Senior Military Scholar at the Air Force Academy, writes for Forbes

• Gaza presents an extraordinarily difficult adversary environment. Yet the Israel Defense Forces face the acute challenge of defending their nation while striving to protect Palestinian civilians. Unfortunately, negative perceptions on social media and elsewhere, based on a combination of disinformation, ignorance, and anti-Semitism, indicates there is a wide gap between the reality I witnessed and the perceptions abroad. Sadly, war always involves civilian casualties. But there are many complex factors unfolding on the ground in this war between Israel and Hamas.
• While there is certainly a difficult situation in Gaza for civilians, assertions by the International Criminal Court that Israel is intentionally starving Gazan civilians did not match what I witnessed on both sides of the crossing. The average man needs 2500 calories a day to maintain a stable diet; the average woman needs 2000. At current levels, there is enough aid entering Gaza daily to support over a 3,000 calorie a day diet. But food insecurity remains a challenge in Gaza, IDF officials say, because of Hamas fighters inside Gaza who steal and horde relief supplies.
• Driving into the city of Rafah, I witnessed a substantial level of destruction. IDF officials say that Hamas fighters deliberately mingle with civilians in order to use noncombatants as human shields. The fact is the killing of Palestinian civilians is a cruel and illegal element of Hamas’ strategy. While there is no denying that civilians are dying because of the IDF’s actions, the routine Hamas tactic of walking the streets in civilian clothes with no weapons, then duck into a building knowing where weapons are stored for use against the IDF, makes urban structures legitimate military targets according to the laws of armed conflict.
• In those cases where there are questions of misconduct or errors in the application of military force, these issues are investigated by a judicial arm of the IDF. In fact, such investigations are currently underway in Israel by a judicial arm that is separate from the military chain of command, causing widespread debates across the Jewish nation.
• The current war also complicates Israel’s obvious interest in avoiding confrontation with Egypt. I drove past Hamas rocket launch positions that were located feet from Gaza’s border with Egypt. Hamas operatives know the Israeli Air Force would not strike positions so close to Egypt. This is the same logic Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad use for occupying hospitals, mosques, schools, United Nations facilities, etc.
• While much of that has now been emptied, there are even server farms still housed in the Hamas tunnel system. And where does all the electric power needed to keep this underground city operating come from? It is diverted from civilian hospitals, apartments, offices, and often from UN facilities.
• There are both lethal and non-lethal operations integrated across the traditional armed services. How IDF actions are conducted are informed by an assessment that involves complex telecommunication operations, including the integration and distribution of the various means of data collected by intelligence organizations. The data is then translated into situational awareness, actualized by means across the electromagnetic spectrum. From my experience, it was evident that the IDF has achieved a level of integration and an authentic understanding of how to genuinely apply jointness—using the right force, at the right place, at the right time—regardless of the service components sourcing those forces.
• While there are multiple alternatives proposals for how to end this war, one thing is certain: the IDF takes many precautions in an effort to reduce civilian casualties. Thousands of phone calls, texts, leaflets, as well as roof-knocking (dropping small munitions on top of buildings) are some of the warnings the IDF uses to notify civilians to evacuate Hamas-occupied structures.
• There is no “moral equivalency” as implied by the White House’s public statements, when comparing Israel’s “right to defend itself” with ending the war in Gaza to stop “the death of far too many innocent civilians,” at least, not before the IDF reduces Hamas’ military capabilities so they can never repeat the atrocities of 7 Oct. There is no such thing as “immaculate war” where there are no civilian casualties.
• Link: On The Ground In Gaza: What I Saw Of Israel’s Military Operations

If Haniyeh Can Be Killed, So Can Hamas by Seth Mandel in Commentary

• Sometimes this is phrased as: “Hamas is an idea, and you can’t kill an idea.” Sometimes we’re told those eliminated in targeted assassinations—and even battlefield routs—will be replaced by interchangeable cogs. But the Haniyeh killing so defies that logic that it ought to prompt some reconsideration of this part of Israel’s strategy by its critics.
• A Saudi-brokered truce collapsed and the strip fell into anarchy. As COMMENTARY contributing editor Jonathan Schanzer wrote in his book Hamas vs. Fatah, “While Hamas and Fatah forces were killing one another, no one was policing the streets.” After Haniyeh and Hamas’s victory, public works projects were halted and infrastructure quickly degraded.
• The disorder in Haniyeh’s early days opened the gate to Hamas’s “Talibanization” of the Gaza Strip. The fleeing of aid groups brought in under the Palestinian Authority left Hamas in total control of what came into the strip.
• Hamas’s brutal tactics—kidnappings, summary executions—ultimately won the day, ejecting Fatah from the strip.
• In 2017, Yahya Sinwar took the operational reins in Gaza and Haniyeh decamped to Qatar to lead Hamas’s politburo. This only further legitimized Haniyeh as the gatekeeper of Gaza to foreign ministries around the world.
• Haniyeh had thus been Abbas’s and the PA’s direct rival for nearly two decades by the time he was killed late Tuesday. He takes more than mere institutional memory with him; he was the midwife of Gaza as we know it, in some ways its architect (at the risk of giving him too much intellectual credit).
• Haniyeh can be replaced in name only. Hamas’s upper ranks have gotten a throttling from Israel over the past year—Haniyeh’s deputy, Saleh al-Arouri, was killed earlier in the war, leaving the Hamas leader without a clear successor.
• Whoever comes next will lack Haniyeh’s experience, knowledge and connections. In the worst-case scenario for Hamas, there might even be a leadership fight, splintering an already debilitated organization.
• Link: If Haniyeh Can Be Killed, So Can Hamas

Netanyahu Decides, and Haniyeh Is Gone by Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, in the WSJ

• Israel followed two opposite policies toward Hamas since Oct. 7: destroy the organization and make a deal with it. This unfortunate two-track approach resulted in many costs to Israel. The killing of Ismail Haniyeh Wednesday perhaps marks the end of this protracted indecision.
• The former policy, victory over Hamas, has wide appeal and is articulated often by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But Mr. Netanyahu also pursues the latter policy: negotiate with Hamas and permit it to survive in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages. In agreeing to haggle with Hamas, Mr. Netanyahu heeds the demands of two powerful lobbies. Western and many Arab governments want a hostage deal, which they see as the best way to prevent a regional conflagration.
• But if indecision had an inner logic, it had three major costs. First, it condemned the hostages to more suffering. They didn’t win release, either through a deal or through an Israeli victory.
• Second, indecision exacerbated dissension within the Jewish state, where an unending argument among Israelis grew heated and even violent.
• Third, it damaged the security of Israelis. The country that once made “no negotiating with terrorists” its mantra and pulled off the 1976 Entebbe raid now called the return of hostages “the supreme mission.” This makes abduction a powerful tool of warfare and implicitly invites further kidnapping.
• Link: Netanyahu Decides, and Haniyeh Is Gone

Israel Reestablished Deterrence. It Should be Praised, Not Admonished by Arsen Ostrovsky and John Spencer in a Newsweek Opinion

• In case it needs to be reiterated, the elimination of these arch-terrorists and murderers was entirely legal, just, and moral. The world today is a safer place without them and Israel ought to congratulated for their elimination.
• In the last 72 hours, Israel not only regained its deterrence, but has taken it to a new level, with the potential to permanently alter the landscape of the Middle East.
• The pin-point operations against Shukr in Beirut and Haniyeh, while asleep in an apartment building in Tehran on Day 1 of the new President’s tenure, were daring, audacious, and brilliantly executed, with minimum to no civilian casualties and no harm to Israeli soldiers and assets.
• That they were carried out great distance away from Israel under the noses of the Hezbollah and Iranian leaderships, and relying on such precise intelligence, will also cause enormous embarrassment to Hezbollah and especially Tehran, because Haniyeh’s security was under their responsibility, underscoring that Israel can strike any target, at any time, effectively turning their leaders and military sites into sitting ducks.
• There are those who now insist that the elimination of Haniyeh and Shukr will only escalate regional tensions. To them we ask: Where have you been the last 10 months? If anyone has been escalating regional tensions, it has been the international community, which has been largely trying to pressure Israel into showing restraint or compromise, instead of demanding Hezbollah and Hamas, cease the attacks, disarm and release all the hostages, or that Iran reign in their proxies.
• Israel’s renewed deterrence can also have a positive impact on the hostage negotiations. Although there will be some uncertainty with respect to the negotiations in the short-term, in the medium term, it should place greater pressure on Hamas to accept a deal.
• Link: Israel Reestablished Deterrence. It Should be Praised, Not Admonished

Antisemitism

• The Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS) publishes weekly information from over 300 million online data sources including public social media, traditional media, websites, blogs, forums, and more. The bigger the phrase on the above image, the more total mentions it had in the time period.

Infection and Addiction: Metaphors for Antisemitism by Eve Garrard in Fathom

• Summary: Eve Garrard argues we can learn something of value about contemporary antisemitism from the use of two metaphors. The infection metaphor reminds us that if antisemitism is ignored or indulged by others it grows and spreads. The addiction metaphor reminds us that the rewards of antisemitism aren’t negligible and its bearers will cling onto them tightly, especially if they perceive, sometimes though not always rightly, that their society is disturbingly unstable and unfair.
• Metaphors can be very illuminating (a great deal of literature, especially poetry, rests on them), and one that springs readily to mind in the current case is the metaphor of infection. If we think of antisemitism as being like a virus, then as the virus spreads, it infects more and more people, each victim radiating infection to even more people, so that the virus increases by leaps and bounds, as we have seen.
• Admittedly, no metaphor is ever fully satisfactory, mainly because no two events are ever fully identical; but the metaphor of infection for the current dramatic increase in antisemitism, illuminating though it is, can’t be entirely adequate because it doesn’t fully capture certain key features of Jew-hatred, in particular the presence and role of human will and choice – that is, human agency. This is a very significant difference between physical disease and antisemitism: in cases of physical infection, neither the virus nor the victims choose to spread the disease, nor can they be morally blamed for doing so.
• But in the case of antisemitism, we do, and should, want to hold the antisemites responsible for their prejudices and their consequences, especially given the lethal history of that catastrophic bigotry. Many antisemites do willingly choose their views – often indeed embracing them with every sign of warm welcome – and that’s a measure of their responsibility for both their views and the actions that flow from them.
• There’s another metaphor which may help us think more comprehensively about the current outbreak of malignant hostility towards Jews: it’s the metaphor of addiction, with its unusual mixture of both visible choice and inwardly felt compulsion.
• Addiction can also be treated as a public health issue, rather like a purely physical disease, and as with antisemitism, those who are addicted, perhaps especially in the case of alcohol addiction, often deny the presence of any addiction at all. Antisemitism too can be regarded as a public health matter, though in this case it’s the health of the body politic which is at issue: the increasing prevalence of antisemitism is a threat to democracy, as has been frequently pointed out.
  • First, and most importantly, there is the fact that antisemitism is enjoyable: it gives its bearers pleasure to criticise, deride, blame, and condemn Jews and their behaviour.
  • Secondly, drug-taking is habit-forming, and so is antisemitism: the more often a person voices it, the more likely they are to do so again. It becomes easier and easier to take that stance, to find Jews a bit objectionable in a particular context, and then objectionable in a wider range of contexts, until, as Nirenberg suggests, the Jews become the standard locus of blame for whatever problem strikes antisemites as currently important.
  • Another very noticeable point of similarity with addiction is the desire not merely to repeat but also to increase the stimulus dose. What used to give sufficient pleasure is now not quite enough: a bigger dose is needed.
• Other similarities between antisemitism and drug addiction include the reluctance to desist even when it’s obviously harming other people as well as yourself, and the extreme blunting of sensibilities towards any attempts to persuade the addict to change. This is certainly the case with antisemitism: if David Nirenberg is right (and I think he is) in suggesting that hostility to Jews across the centuries is a prism through which people make sense of whatever most disturbs them in the world, then it’s bound to be very difficult, indeed painful, for them to abandon that prism, to acknowledge that they were wrong, that their moral vision was so defective that they were in effect hallucinating, and in doing so they often caused great harm in the world.
• Whatever metaphor or metaphors we choose to help us think about this phenomenon, which hideously degrades its practitioners and devastates and sometimes kills its many victims, fighting against it remains a permanent necessity.
• Link: Fathom – Infection and Addiction: Metaphors for Antisemitism

[WORTH THE FULL READ] NazTok: An organized neo-Nazi TikTok network is getting millions of views by Nathan Doctor, Guy Fiennes, and Ciarán O’Connor from The Institute for Strategic Dialogue

• Per FCAS, The Institute for Strategic Dialogue recently released a new study uncovering a network on TikTok sharing neo-Nazi content. The research uncovered over 200 accounts which have generated millions of views of content openly supporting Nazism. The key findings of its research include:
  • Pro-Nazi content is receiving tens of millions of views on TikTok.
  • TikTok is failing to take down violative videos and accounts, even when reported by users.
  • Accounts and videos promoting Nazism are being algorithmically amplified to other users engaging with similar far-right hate speech.
  • These videos often feature AI-generated media.
  • The prominence of these videos and accounts is partly driven by cross-platform coordination.
• Conclusion: TikTok is failing to adequately and promptly take down accounts pushing pro-Nazi hate speech and propaganda. Although the platform manages to periodically take down accounts, this often comes weeks and months after flagrant rule-breaking activity, during which time the accounts were able to accrue significant viewership. Moreover, the networked nature of the campaign and cross-platform coordination entails that after bans, accounts are able to re-emerge and rack up substantial audiences again and again.
• Success is not about routing out all forms of Nazism the moment it appears on the platform but rather sufficiently raising the barrier to entry. Instead, at present, self-identified Nazis are discussing TikTok as amenable platform to spread their ideology, especially when employing a series of countermeasures to evade moderation and amplify content as a network.
• Link to the full report: NazTok: An organized neo-Nazi TikTok network is getting millions of views

REVEALED: Iranian Regime Involvement with Texas Student Anti-Israel Protests by Sam Westrop, director of Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

• Leading Iranian regime operatives played a key role organizing student anti-Israel protests, an investigation by FWI reveals.
• Rise Against Oppression, a Houston-based “collective of Muslim grassroots activists,” participated in the University of Houston anti-Israel encampment, backing the creation of student movement’s “Popular University” and working with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the chief organization behind the campus protest movement this year.
• Rise Against Oppression may describe itself merely as a “collective,” but it is an unabashed representative of the regime in Tehran. In June, the group organized an “Imam Khomeini Conference” in Houston, where topics included “Imam Khomeini & the Palestinian Struggle” as well as “Imam Khomeini: A Role Model for the Western Youth.”
• Other Rise events have included former SJP leaders such as Mohammad Nabulsi; Yemeni activists such as Yousef Mawry, who is aligned with the Houthi terrorist movement; and Muzzamil Zaidi, a Houston Islamist currently resident in the Iranian city of Qoms.
• On May 1, just months after the Rise event, Zaidi pleaded guilty to transferring tens of thousands of dollars to Ayatollah Khamenei. According to the Department of Justice, Zaidi and his accomplice “collected payments” of khums, a religious tax, “as well as donations purportedly to help victims of the ongoing civil war in Yemen, from individuals in the United States,” before enlisting “friends, family members, and other associates to carry the cash out of the United States.”
• Student protests in Texas and elsewhere have also enjoyed support from the Muslim Congress, a Texas Shia Islamist organization and another key Iranian regime voice in the United States.
• Across America, the Houston-headquartered Muslim Congress organizes the U.S. rallies for the regime’s annual “Al-Quds Day,” an infamous annual global event, coordinated from Tehran, designed to celebrate the designated terrorist organization Hezbollah and plan the eradication of Israel.
• At universities across the country, Tehran-aligned Shia Islamist student groups such as Ahlul Bayt Student associations have also taken part in the encampments. At the University of Houston, the Ahlul Bayt Student Organization (ABSO) played a particularly leading role in the protests.
• Link: REVEALED: Iranian Regime Involvement with Texas Student Anti-Israel Protests