Situational Update

• The ceasefire in the North continues to hold, despite pockets of attacks from Hezbollah. The IDF said: Throughout the day, the IDF acted in response to several activities in Lebanon that constituted threats to Israel, violating the understandings of the ceasefire agreement. The IDF identified several armed militants near a local church, which has been implicated as an active terror infrastructure of the Hezbollah organization in southern Lebanon. The forces opened fire on the militants, neutralizing them. The militants who were eliminated were involved in ground defense, anti-tank, and artillery operations in the sector and participated in combat while utilizing the church for their activities. Following the elimination of the militants, the forces searched the church area during the day and discovered a shaft containing weaponry.
• On November 30th, the IDF struck a vehicle with a terrorist, Hazmi Kadih, who took part in invading Kibbutz Nir Oz during the October 7 massacre. Kadih was monitored by IDF intelligence for a while and was struck following credible information regarding his real-time location. Kadih also worked for the World Central Kitchen organization. Israeli representatives demanded senior officials from the international community and the WCK administration to clarify the issue and order an urgent examination regarding the hiring of workers who took part in the October 7 massacre and terrorist attacks against the State of Israel.
• The situation in Syria is unfolding in real time, and much of the information I have read is not verifiable yet. I will share more analysis in my next update, but I did include one article below that helps offer some color on the different actors in the region. Quick take: they are all bad guys.

The Numbers

Casualties

• 1,801 Israelis have been killed including 807 IDF soldiers since October 7th (+1 IDF soldier since Wednesday)
• The South: 380 IDF soldiers during the ground operation in Gaza have been killed (+1 since Wednesday)
• The North: 127 Israelis (80 IDF soldiers) have been killed during the war in Northern Israel (no change since Wednesday)

  

  • Staff Sergeant Zamir Burke, 21, was killed on Friday in combat in northern Gaza
• Additional Information (according to the IDF):
  • 2,463 (+4 since Wednesday) IDF soldiers have been injured during ground combat in Gaza, including at least 468 (+2 since Wednesday) who have been severely injured.
  • 5,443 (+9 since Wednesday) IDF soldiers have been injured since the beginning of the war, including at least 797 (+3 since Wednesday) who have been severely injured.

• According to unverified figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, 44,429 (+180 since Wednesday) people have been killed in Gaza, and 105,250 (+504 since Wednesday) have been injured during the war.
  • On October 7th, Ohad Hemo with Channel 12 Israel News – the country’s largest news network, a leading expert on Palestinian and Arab affairs, mentioned an estimate from Hamas: around 80% of those killed in Gaza are members of the organization and their families.”
    • The article goes on to say: “In an N12 article that came out this morning, Hemo also pointed out that since the elimination of key leader Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s top echelon has gone underground and fled Iran and Lebanon, with some relocating to Turkey and Qatar – with the hope that Israel will not strike them there.
  • 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.”
• The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes official details on every civilian and IDF casualty.

Hostages

The Hamas terror group on Saturday released a propaganda video showing signs of life from hostage Edan Alexander, 20, a dual US citizen, in the first video of its kind in months. Alexander’s family permitted the video to be published in Israeli media. The three-and-a-half-minute-long video was not dated, though Alexander states that he has been held for over 420 days. If true, it would have been filmed this week. Alexander, a dual US citizen, is a soldier who was stationed near the Gaza Strip on the morning of October 7 when he was taken captive by Hamas.

• There are currently 97 hostages taken on 10/7 currently in captivity in Gaza
• 7 hostages are Americans: Meet the Seven American Hostages Still Held By Hamas
• On October 7^th, a total of 261 Israelis were taken hostage.
• During the ceasefire deal in November, 112 hostages were released.
• 146 hostages in total have been released or rescued
  • The bodies of 37 hostages have been recovered, including 3 mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
• 8 hostages have been rescued by troops alive
• This leaves 101 hostages still theoretically in Gaza
  • 30-50 hostages are assumed to be dead and held in captivity
  • Thus, at most, 50-70 living hostages could still be in Gaza.
• Hamas is also holding 2 Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of 2 IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.

Watch

Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, posts a video of a young girl being interviewed about her education at an UNRWA school, where she is taught to hate and kill Israelis.

• I decided not to show the video directly on this blog, but you can click on this link to see it.
• He writes: Meet Aya, from UNRWA’s Tulkarm School.
  • Q: What do you learn in school about peace?
  • A: That we don’t like Israel. That we’ll shoot them.
  • Q: Do you hate the Jews? A: A lot. They are our enemies.
  • Q: What do you like to watch on your phone?
  • A: Martyrs, resistance fighters, Hamas.

Rocket Alerts

Today in Israel, there were 2 rocket alerts. Since the start of the ceasefire agreement, there have only been two reported rocket alerts.

Source: Rocket Alerts in Israel

Summary of the Northern War

The Times of Israel, Israeli journalist Marc Schulman, and other Israeli news outlets report: As the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah appeared to hold on Friday, the Israeli military on Friday morning published a summary of its activities against the Lebanon-based terror group over the past 14 months of war.

• More than 12,500 Hezbollah terror targets were attacked in the northern sector, including over 1,600 military headquarters and more than 1,000 weapons storage facilities.
• Targets attacked deep in southern Lebanon as part of “Northern Arrows”
  • In Beirut: 360
  • In the Bekaa Valley: Approximately 1,000
• Air Force operations in Lebanon as part of “Northern Arrows”
  • Flight hours of fighter jets: 14,000
  • Sorties for attacks in Lebanon: 11,000
• Damage inflicted on Hezbollah’s Radwan Force
  • Destroyed weapons depots: Approximately 150
  • Destroyed operational headquarters: Over 160
  • Destroyed offensive terror infrastructure: More than 1,500
• Eliminated Hezbollah operatives and senior officials
  • Eliminated operatives: At least 2,500 with a high degree of certainty
  • Hassan Nasrallah and 13 members of Hezbollah’s senior forum targeted
  • Eliminated at the division commander level: 4
  • Eliminated at the brigade commander level: 24
  • Eliminated at the battalion commander level: 27
  • Eliminated at the platoon commander level: 22
• Hezbollah’s capabilities significantly reduced
  • It is estimated that Hezbollah retains less than 30% of the UAVs it possessed before the war.
  • Seized items by IDF fighters and the Loot Clearance Unit of the Technology and Logistics Directorate:
  • Approximately 12,000 explosive devices, UAVs, and explosive weapons were seized.
  • More than 13,000 anti-tank launchers and missiles, rockets, and anti-aircraft missiles were confiscated.
  • Over 121,000 communication devices, computers, electronic equipment, and documents were captured.
  • A total of over 155,000 items were confiscated.

What We Are Reading

How Hezbollah Diversified Its Funding by Clara Broekaert, a security researcher focused on disinformation and violent extremism, and Colin P. Clarke, the director of research at The Soufan Group and a senior research fellow at The Soufan Center. In Foreign Affairs

• Groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Houthis, and other Iran-backed factions remain surprisingly robust through their diverse financial streams—even after the first Trump administration successfully weakened the Iranian economy through extensive sanctions.
• Hezbollah owes the lion’s share of its budget to state sponsorship from Iran, which provides the “Party of God” with hundreds of millions of dollars per year—reportedly as much as $800 million, according to some estimates. But beyond that significant financial windfall, Hezbollah has cultivated a global network of money-making schemes, such as drug trafficking, fraud, and the abuse of cryptocurrencies.
• West Africa plays a crucial role in Hezbollah’s criminal activities beyond the Middle East, particularly through the significant Shiite Lebanese diaspora in Ivory Coast and Guinea. Elements within these communities are integral to Hezbollah’s lucrative operations, not just through the payment of zakat to the group—an annual charitable and religious payment that forms one of the five pillars of Islam—but also through aiding and abetting smuggling and money-laundering operations. This money can then be transferred through hawaladars, bulk cash smuggling, or front charities. In past Hezbollah money-laundering schemes in West Africa, money was funneled through networks of money couriers.
• For instance, Hezbollah’s transnational drug trafficking network collaborates with South American cartels in Mexico and Colombia to route drug money through West Africa, the profits of which ultimately bolster the group’s finances. While it remains opaque how much of Hezbollah’s financing is derived from its money-laundering operations through West Africa, profits from drug trafficking are known to be a significant share of Hezbollah’s revenue. Roughly 40 percent of Hezbollah’s revenue is reportedly from its drug trafficking trade.
• Most recently, Captagon, a form of fenethylline of which about 80 percent is produced in Syria, has become vital in supporting the activities of Iranian-backed militias throughout the Middle East. This drug financially reinforces Iran’s axis of resistance through its trade, while simultaneously suppressing fear in militias committing atrocities through its abuse. It has spread quickly throughout the region. Multiple Hamas fighters captured and killed by the Israel Defense Forces allegedly had the meth-like drug on them, likely used to suppress fear as they killed and sexually assaulted civilians.
• Captagon has provided a financial lifeline for the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose brother Maher controls the trade. It has become a regional phenomenon that, according to experts, is poised to expand globally in the coming months ahead. Captagon facilities under Hezbollah’s control in the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon remain active and form a crucial lifeline after all the tactical setbacks Hezbollah has endured since the Israel-Hamas conflict kicked off more than a year ago.
• Like Hezbollah, Hamas’s criminal activities are more complex than just money laundering through drug trafficking. The group has searched to hedge against risk by diversifying its funding operations. Hamas and PIJ, for example, have been actively abusing blockchain technology to solicit donations in cryptocurrency, which has drawn funding globally.
• In September, federal police in Argentina arrested four people suspected of financing Hezbollah through cryptocurrency transfers, for a total of 1.8 billion Argentine pesos. Hamas has also used the guise of charitable foundations to fund its operations. For example, Italy-based Hamas member Mohammad Hannoun established the Charity Association of Solidarity with the Palestinian People to bankroll Hamas’s military operations. According to the U.S. Treasury, as of early 2024, Hamas may have received as much as $10 million a month in donations through its use of sham and front charities.
• …to disrupt Hezbollah’s transnational funding networks, the United States, Israel, and others must engage with South American and West African countries that are used to funnel profits. This approach will require reciprocal, tit-for-tat diplomatic efforts to encourage these partners to assist in interrupting financial flows while also addressing their own domestic- or foreign-policy priorities to build goodwill. This could involve unfreezing certain assets currently held in abeyance by the U.S. Treasury, in exchange for measurable progress on anti-money laundering initiatives and counternarcotics programs.
• There are some concrete, proactive steps, too: Hezbollah’s drug labs should not be able to continue production unfettered. In January, Jordan launched airstrikes inside Syria against suspected Tehran-linked drug warehouses. The drug labs in Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon should also be forcibly closed. As long as the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) do not have the capabilities to do so, Lebanese allies need to reinforce the LAF and crack down where possible.
• Link: Hezbollah Funding Sources and the Crime-Terror Nexus

Israel’s only option on Iran is ending Khamenei’s regime: Supreme leader has set 2040 as target for final destruction of Israel, necessitating a change in strategy that transitions from defensive to offensive action using the IDF’s intelligence and operational capabilities, U.S. support and regional alliances. By Professor Jacob Nagel and Mark Dubowitz with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

• There is a clock in Palestine Square in Tehran that counts down to 2040, the year Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has identified as the end of the state of Israel.
• Allowing Iran to continue to dictate the pace and force of the conflict is not a recipe for victory. Survival is not the right strategy for Israel in the face of the Iranian threat and a defensive posture could lead to inevitable weakening. Israel must not continue to focus on surviving Khamenei’s threats. It must act early to neutralize their source.
• With the election of Donald Trump as president, a joint Israeli-American operation is not inconceivable and would significantly increase the chances of success, by combining Israel’s operational precision and technological systems with American firepower and special forces, along with diplomatic cover.
• Such initiated action, disruption of command systems and covert operation to sabotage critical components of Iran’s nuclear program, could be the pillars of this effort and a clear international message of support, critical for global stability, could bolster their legitimacy.
• Economic warfare remains one of the most powerful tools against Iran. Past sanctions as part of the maximum pressure campaign shattered Iran’s income from oil and limited its ability to fund its terror network.
• The diplomatic efforts must focus on strengthening existing alliances with the Arab world, signing a peace agreement with Saudi Arabia and building new coalitions. The Iranian aggression, especially supported by Russia, and the continued threats towards American allies in the Gulf, created new opportunities to forge coalitions against Iran. These must act not only to deter the Iranians but mostly to weaken the regime and bring it to its end.
• The disruption of Iran’s nuclear timeline, attacks on its nuclear scientists and on the leadership of the IRGC, using Israel’s cyber warfare must intensify and focus on critical weaknesses of the regime.
• Finally, Israel must increase its support of the people of Iran, the main victims of the brutal regime, by bolstering internal opposition forces through communication platforms, arms and usable intelligence. This doctrine must rely on creating protests that would accelerate the downfall of the regime.
• Link: Israel’s only option on Iran is ending Khamenei’s regime

Prepare for Disintegration of Syria and Rise of Imperial Turkey: China, Cairo move toward Erdogan as Iran recedes in newly threatening, fast-changing Mideast reality. By David Wurmser with The Editors

• The retreat of the Syrian Assad regime from Aleppo in the face of Turkish-backed, partly Islamist rebels made from remnants of ISIS is an early skirmish in this new strategic reality. Aleppo is falling to the Hayat Tahrir ash-Sham, or HTS — a descendant of the Nusra force led by Abu Muhammed al-Julani, himself a graduate of the al-Qaeda system and cobbled together of ISIS elements. Behind this force is the power of nearby Turkey. Ankara used the U.S. withdrawal from northern Iraq a few years ago to release Islamists captured by the U.S. and the Kurds. It sent some to Libya to fight the pro-Egyptian Libyan National Army under General Khalifa Belqasim Haftar based in Tobruk. It reorganized the rest in Islamist militias oriented toward Ankara. The rise of a Muslim-Brotherhood dominated Turkey, rehabilitating and tapping ISIS residue to ride Iran’s decline/demise to Ankara’s strategic advantage, will plague American and Israeli interests going forward.
• Added to this is the power vacuum created by the destruction of Hamas. The defeat of that terrorist group has been, for good reason, a critical goal for Israel and the United States, but it is one that also involves consequences that must be navigated and hopefully countered.
• In the past two decades, however, Iran proved more ascendent strategically in the region than Turkey. In fits and starts, Ankara had tried quietly to compete with Iran in the last two decades, but more often than not it was left only to nibble at the scraps left by Iran along the edges, whether in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon (after the August 2021 port explosion, for example) or among the two structures of geopolitical discourse, the “Lingua Franca” embodiments of regional competition — the Palestinians and the Islamists.
• However, suddenly the ground shifted. Israel has, since summer 2024, starting with Operation Grim Beeper and the demolition of Hezbollah, triggered an earthquake in the normally slow pace of regional strategic change. If Israel presses onward with priority, as it should, to devastate and destabilize the Iranian regime, and if the Iranian axis meets its demise, then Hamas—indeed all Palestinian and Islamist politics—drifts to a Turkish direction and they slowly emerge as Ankara’s strategic assets.
• In 2011, President Obama made at least two critical mistakes.
  • First, instead of supporting indigenous Syrian opposition such as the Free Syrian Army, which sought closer ties to the West, President Obama subcontracted to Turkey and Qatar the task of defining and supporting the opposition to President Assad of Syria as the Syrian regime descended into civil war. The threat of ISIS has thus remained ever since, and with Iran receding, Turkey surfs the crest of the ISIS-remnant wave.
  • Second, the U.S. tried to sustain Syria as a unified fiction of a state, fearing its partition. The same mistake was replicated in Libya, which had strategic consequences for Egypt. As a result, Egypt is also now drifting in a dangerous direction. The insistence on retaining a unified state meant that to survive in conditions of communal, sectarian, tribal, ethnic civil war, each faction within that state had to fight to the death for control over the other rather than disengage into partitioned pieces. Control meant survival while being controlled meant being slaughtered. This fueled the Syrian refugee crisis.
• Given the calamity that befell Syria and the chaos that lies underneath, as well as these hovering strategic forces positioning already to scavenge the Syrian nation’s cadaver, it is important for both Israel and the United States, along with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, to contemplate as soon as possible many scenarios that hitherto were outlandish in the western end of the fertile crescent. It is too early to identify and digest fully, let alone definitively plan for the reality that will emerge.
• With Iran’s defeat, Syria will begin unraveling. Russians will try to protect essential interests there — Assad’s Alawite regime and the Christian communities, especially the Greek Orthodox. It is not only the last remnant outside Cuba of the Soviet global bloc, but also a more civilizational sense of commitment to the remains of the world of Byzantium
• Moreover, China is likely to realign with Turkey and drop Iran when it realizes the Ayatollah regime is falling. China has hedged for the past few years, having signed a strategic agreement with Iran in 2021, but it has just as aggressively sought to tighten its relations with Turkey
• The post-October 7 closure of the Red Sea and by extension Suez – and the unwillingness of the United States to reverse that, which Cairo viewed as an inconceivable abdication of American power — shook Cairo. It made it more attractive to align with the Muslim Brotherhood, Erdogan and China. The evidence of this shift has been exposed in recent months. As the war progressed, and especially after Israel captured Rafah and the “Philadelphi” border region between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, the level of Egyptian tolerance that was exposed of a far-more expansive Hamas smuggling network through the Sinai surprised even the Israelis.
• In other words, we already see a mass realignment underway to digest the fall of Iran and the rise of an imperial Turkey. If Syria approaches a final failure and collapse, what pieces might emerge?
• Link: Prepare for Disintegration of Syria and Rise of Imperial Turkey

Antisemitism

The Rise and Fall of Jews on Campus: How the revolution that brought Jews to elite campuses turned against them by Charles Lipson in SAPIR Journal

• The open, virulent, and sometimes violent eruption of antisemitism at elite universities may be the most daunting social challenge faced by American Jews since the Ku Klux Klan’s antisemitic campaign in the 1960s.
• …today’s surge of antisemitism at universities is an outgrowth of a related set of changes that began during the same period in American life.
• In the 1960s, elite universities were pressured to do away with long-standing discrimination in admissions and hiring.
• But on its coattails came pockets of far-Left radicalism.
• The latest attacks are dramatically different from those of the Klan, which were confined to the South, led by lower-class whites, and universally condemned by the country’s leaders and its major organs of opinion. Today’s campaign may be more perilous because it is more pervasive and has considerable support from legacy media outlets and the country’s opinion leaders.
• Antisemitic attacks at elite universities, mostly in the Northeast and on the West Coast, are cloaked in the language of social justice and led by a coalition of extreme left-wing students, Muslim students, faculty, and outside agitators. They meet with equivocation by most college leaders, who refuse to mete out serious punishment for harassment, intimidation, and open violations of the university’s basic rules. The administrators, in their weakness (and, at times, complicity), betray basic academic values and fail to deter future violations.
• Ironically, it is southern universities that have emerged as the positive counterweight in this onslaught against Jews. Many public universities in southern states have been much more active in shutting down violent protests and unauthorized encampments, defending freedom of speech, and protecting Jewish students.
• A reflexively anti-Israel attitude is embedded in today’s leftist ideology. Among academic believers, that attitude quickly translates to open support for demonstrations that spill over from targeting Israel to smearing and harassing all Jews, who are depicted as “oppressors.”
• Instead of opposition to discrimination, the force that animated the opening of universities in the 1960s, many now favor discrimination — as long as it benefits the right people. They alone will decide who the “right people” are.
• How has this shift from liberal values to progressive ones affected Jewish students and faculty? Badly. That’s true even though many, perhaps most, American Jews think of themselves as progressive.
  • First, virulent opposition to Israel is a staple of left-wing ideology.
  • Second, Jewish admissions to elite universities have been systematically reduced by diminishing the role of high-school grades and standardized test scores in admissions decisions.
  • Third, on many campuses, administrators have failed to protect students’ free-speech rights and Jewish students’ rights to safety. To quote an old legal maxim, “Where there is no remedy, there is no right.” On these campuses, there are no rights to safety and free speech because there are no remedies — not even for intimidation, harassment, and threats against Jewish students.
  • Finally, Jewish students are harmed by a campus environment that progressives divide into “oppressed” and “oppressors” on the basis of racial identity.
• There is a third option, however, and more Jews are availing themselves of it. They are avoiding schools with the worst records of antisemitism. Alumni donors, many of them Jewish, are closing their wallets unless universities defend all students’ safety and their right to speak freely. Students who have been harassed and intimidated are bringing lawsuits.
• This peaceful pushback is badly needed to pressure universities to return to values for which they once strove.
• Link: The Rise and Fall of Jews on Campus

The Codification of Anti-Jewish Hiring Policies by Seth Mandel in Commentary

• For over a year now we’ve been subjected to the whinging of the “pro-Palestine” crowds who are physically harassing Jews on campus while claiming their speech rights are infringed upon any time their actions bring a whiff of consequences. But aside from the violence deployed against Jews, there’s been evidence of professional discrimination—at state-funded institutions, no less.
• The latest and most illuminating example comes from UCLA, where a newly filed complaint alleges that the college Cultural Affairs Commission has in place a policy of anti-Jewish bias in its hiring process.
• The crux of the allegation is that Alicia Verdugo, head of the Cultural Affairs Commission, told staffers not to hire Jewish applicants. Specifically, she told subordinates, “please do your research when you look at applicants” because “lots of zionists (sic) are applying.”
• According to Ha’am, “every student who indicated their Jewish identity in their applications for Cultural Affairs Commissioner (CAC) staff was rejected.” One rejected applicant, for example, answered a question on the application about an issue of importance by noting that “as a Jewish student at UCLA, it is imperative that I have the right to express my identity.” Another rejected applicant had mentioned Judaism when asked about attendance at the staff retreat, explaining that they are Sabbath observant.
• There are two important lessons here.
  • The first is that we know this attitude prevails on campuses and in institutions across America. The difference being alleged here is that the bigotry was codified.
  • The second lesson is a familiar one: Everyone knows what these activists mean when they say “Zionist.” Shops with signs that say “Zionists not welcome” are actually displaying signs that say “Jews not welcome”—and no one, but no one, is foolish enough to believe otherwise, no matter what they say.
• Remarkably, college students and administrators are starting to give up on even trying to gaslight the public. If someone says “don’t hire this person because they keep Shabbat and therefore are a Zionist,” they are not making a political argument; they are explicitly expressing an anti-Semitic hiring policy. And if there are not consequences for blatant policies that violate the basic civil rights of Jewish Americans, those policies will only get more brazen and codified. The complaint against UCLA’s cultural commission is not a glimpse into the future; it is an illustration of the present.
• Link: The Codification of Anti-Jewish Hiring Policies – Commentary Magazine

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, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Institute for the Study of War, and the Times of Israel