Situational Update

• Top leaders of both Hezbollah and Hamas were killed in the span of 24 hours in Beirut, Damascus and Tehran.
  • Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in the early hours of the morning in Iran hours after he attended a swearing-in ceremony for the country’s new president Masoud Pezeshkian. Haniyeh, who was widely seen as the second most important Hamas leader after Yahya Sinwar, is the highest-ranking Hamas official eliminated since the start of the war.
  • Just hours earlier, Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr was eliminated in Beirut. Shukr was the head of Hezbollah’s precision missiles program and the “right-hand man” to Hassan Nasrallah. In addition to being responsible for this weekend’s rocket strike which killed a dozen children in the Golan Heights, Shukr also helped coordinate the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut which killed 241 U.S. military personnel and wounded 128 others. According to AIPAC, Shukr was killed in a building in the heart of Beirut, demonstrating both the Iranian-backed terror group’s use of civilians as human shields across Lebanon, as well as Israel’s ability to locate and successfully target wanted terrorists in precision strikes.
  • I was not sure whether to include this but based on what I’ve seen there are unconfirmed reports that Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Forces, was killed in a strike in the Syrian capital of Damascus. He was the general that planned and executed Iran’s air attack against Israel a few months ago.
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday addressed the growing threats on Israel after it dealt “crushing blows” to Iran’s proxies and vowed to “exact a heavy price for any aggression against us..” “Since the start of the war, I have made it clear that we are fighting against Iran’s Axis of Evil. This is a war for survival against a stranglehold of terrorist armies and missiles that Iran seeks to tighten around our necks,” he said in a statement shortly after a two-and-a-half-hour Security Cabinet meeting following the assassinations of top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr and Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh.
  

  Citizens of Israel, challenging days are ahead. Since the Beirut attack, threats have been heard from all sides. We are prepared for any scenario and will face any threat with focus and determination. Israel will exact a heavy price for any aggression against us.Every week, voices urge me to end the war, claiming it is unwinnable. We did not yield then, and I will not yield now. We have made significant achievements by making brave decisions despite heavy pressure.

• Per the Jewish Insider, the Washington Post issued a lengthy editor’s note acknowledging that the paper did not provide “adequate context” on its Monday front page, which juxtaposed the photo of a funeral of a Druze girl killed by a Hezbollah strike in Israel with the headline “Israel hits targets in Lebanon”; the clarification is the second time in seven months that the paper has had to issue an editor’s note about its coverage of the Israel…

The Numbers

Casualties

***I am adding a brief note going forward to each casualty figure that indicates the change from the last update

• 1,650 Israelis dead (+1 since Sunday) including 689 IDF soldiers (329 IDF soldiers during the ground operation in Gaza: no change since Sunday)
  • 28-year-old Nir Popko, a member of Kibbutz Goshrim near the Lebanese border, was killed by a Hezbollah rocket
• Additional Information (according to the IDF):
  • 2,173 (+13 since Sunday) IDF soldiers have been injured during ground combat in Gaza, including at least 408 (no change since Sunday) who have been severely injured.
  • 4246 (+17 since Sunday) IDF soldiers have been injured since the beginning of the war, including at least 628 (+1 since Sunday) 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, 39,324 (no change since Sunday) people have been killed in Gaza, and 90,830 (no change since Sunday) 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 Sunday)

• 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, and the Times of Israel)

Listen

[PODCAST] School of War: Rich Goldberg on Israel‘s Northern Crisis

• Rich Goldberg, senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, joins the show to talk about the expanding war between Israel and Iran.
• Link: School of War: Ep 135: Rich Goldberg on Israel‘s Northern Crisis

[PODCAST] Bari Weiss on Honestly: The Conflict in the Middle East Is About One Thing: Iran with journalist Haviv Rettig Gur

• For the last 10 months, many have warned that Israel is on the brink of a major war with Hezbollah. But the truth is that Hezbollah has been fighting—and winning—in Israel’s north since October 8. For the past 10 months, Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy terror group that controls southern Lebanon, has essentially redrawn the northern border of Israel by pummeling the border towns daily with rockets, leaving 225 square miles unlivable for Israelis and displacing around 80,000 Israeli citizens.
• What is Israel going to do? Will Israel choose to confront Hezbollah, or will they respond in a more limited way to avoid the regional escalation that the Americans so fear? How does U.S. policy, and the upcoming presidential election, influence Israel’s strategic calculation? Is Kamala Harris equipped to bring calm to the region? Or are Israelis just waiting for Trump to return to office? Is America’s current policy—which is the containment of Iran—backfiring and inadvertently creating a regional crisis? Most importantly, should we be thinking about the war with Gaza and the war with Hezbollah as discrete fights, or are they all part of a broader war that’s already underway between Israel and Iran?
• Answering those questions today is Haviv Rettig Gur. Haviv is a journalist and writer for The Times of Israel, and he is one of the most important and insightful thinkers of our time on Israel and the Middle East.
• Link to Podcast: A Middle East on the Brink – Honestly with Bari Weiss
• Link to Transcript: The Conflict in the Middle East Is About One Thing: Iran.

[PODCAST] Call Me Back – with Dan Senor: HANIYEH DEAD – with Ronen Bergman & Nadav Eyal

• To help us understand this major development, I am joined by Ronen Bergman and Nadav Eyal for a special emergency episode.
• Ronen Bergman is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and Senior Correspondent for Military and Intelligence Affairs for Yedioth Ahronoth, an Israeli daily. Ronen recently won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on this war and the pre-war intelligence failures.
• Nadav Eyal is a columnist for Yediot. He has been covering Middle-Eastern and international politics for the last two decades for Israeli radio, print and television news.
• Link: Call Me Back – with Dan Senor: HANIYEH DEAD

Watch

[WARNING: GRAPHIC TESTIMONY] Hostage Recounts Horrors of Hamas Captivity: Maya Regev was shot by Hamas terrorists at the Nova Music Festival then held captive for 50 days. These are just some of the horrors she endured.

What We Are Reading

Lebanon/Hezbollah

Twelve Murdered Children—and a Middle East on the Brink by Matti Friedman with The Free Press

• Israel’s north has been pummeled by rocket fire from Hezbollah—the Iranian proxy army of Lebanese Shia fighters who began shooting in support of the Hamas offensive. Dozens of Israeli towns near the border were evacuated after October 7 and have stood empty since then—an unprecedented development in Israeli history. About 70,000 evacuees are still living in hotels and temporary quarters. Part of southern Lebanon has been depopulated by Israeli artillery and aircraft hunting down Hezbollah cells.
• The horror in Majdal Shams, where the Hezbollah rocket struck on Saturday, occurred in a beautiful and anomalous corner of this country: the mountainous stronghold of the Golan Druze. The Druze are a small, Arabic-speaking religious minority that broke off from Islam a millennium ago, with adherents in Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. Israel’s Druze citizens are integrated to a large extent, serving in the military and intelligence services. But on the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War, the Druze population has mostly opted out of Israeli citizenship and traditionally maintained an affiliation with Syria, under the assumption that the area would one day be returned.
• The 11,000 people of Majdal Shams are Arab but not Muslim, and though most aren’t Israeli, they aren’t necessarily hostile to Israel. The stricken town is a reminder that the human landscape here is more complicated than many observers grasp. If this tragedy finally triggers the Israel-Hezbollah war that many have feared, the Druze town will have played a role similar to that of Belgium in World War I—a marginal, neutral place whose violation ignites a broader war.
• With the Middle East facing one of the most perilous moments in its recent history, and the possibility of an even bigger war involving great powers no longer unimaginable, it doesn’t help that one of the key parties—Lebanon—hasn’t had a functional president or parliament for years. Israel is led by the least competent government in its history. As for the U.S., it’s not that no one knows who’ll be running the U.S. administration in a few months—no one really knows who’s running it now.
• All of this has reassured Hezbollah that it can safely move things to the brink, which it has done over the past 10 months.
• Link: Twelve Murdered Children—and a Middle East on the Brink

**Many of our readers have asked for some historical analysis of Lebanon, Hezbollah, and how we got to this breaking point. I am sharing a long but thorough read from our friends at the Herut Center, a conservative educational organization that cultivates Israeli intellectual leadership and discourse.**

What Happened to Lebanon? Published in April with Hashiloach Frontlines by Eyal Zisser, professor of Middle Eastern studies at Tel Aviv University, where he also serves as the Vice Rector. His area of expertise encompasses the modern history of Lebanon and Syria.

• Ever since the early days of Zionism, the idea of Lebanon has conjured up a fantasy of pleasant neighborliness with a pro-Western state. Yet in reality, this was never more than an illusion: Lebanon was born in sin, never evolving beyond a collection of conflicting religious communities and families, and was subsequently seized by the PLO and later Hezbollah. A historical journey alongside the Litani River.
• Link: What Happened to Lebanon? – Hashiloach Frontlines

Iran’s encirclement of Israel is aimed at destroying it by Barak Seener, Senior Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society and co-host of the Geo Godfather Wars podcast, for The Jewish Chronicle

• Iran is encircling Israel in order to be able to create a multifront war against it. The intention is to enable Iran to provide a nuclear umbrella to its proxies, threatening the survival of the Jewish state. Just as Russia wields its nuclear weapons to deter the West from greater involvement in Ukraine, imagine if Iran had a nuclear weapon and was able to provide Hamas and Hezbollah with a nuclear umbrella. Iran would be able to restrain Israel from entering Gaza to eliminate Hamas.
• Israel and Iran’s strategic competition sits against the backdrop of the US lacking a coherent Iran strategy.
• The US and Israel have not responded significantly to Iran’s provocations across the region, enabling it to act with impunity and never face any consequences for its actions. Despite Iran seeking to escalate and regionalise the conflict, the Biden administration’s priority of localising it led the US to initially deny Iran’s involvement in the October 7 massacre. At best, the US merely responds rather than pre-empting Iranian-led threats. Israel has similarly adopted a restrained approach towards the Iranian regime, focusing on preventing Iran from establishing a military base on its border with Syria by conducting airstrikes on Iranian proxies or the IRGC when it operates near Israel’s borders.
• As a result, Iran has been encouraged to establish new normals for the levels of accepted terrorism. The international community instead draws an artificial distinction between Iran’s proxies and the regime that sponsors these proxies. Iran is not held to account for threatening international shipping by wielding the Houthis to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and conducting piracy near the Strat of Hormuz. Similarly, the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon have increased their rocket fire against Israel.
• Iran’s regional dominance has led to it setting the agenda vis a vis Israel’s conflict against Hamas in Gaza. In January 2024, representatives of the Biden administration met Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani to request that Iran restrain Yemen’s Houthi rebels and that its proxies in Iraq and Syria cease targeting US forces. In response, Kani made this contingent upon the US brokering a ceasefire in Gaza. In turn, the Biden administration became increasingly critical of the manner in which Israel was conducting the war in Gaza and began to advocate a ceasefire. This created daylight between the US and Israel and emboldened Iran.
• Give the association of Iranian proxies with the regime itself, the US and Israel need to be willing to target nuclear facilities, drone factories and IRGC bases on Iranian soil.
• Link: Iran’s encirclement of Israel is aimed at destroying it

With two strikes in enemy capitals, the war enters uncharted territory by David Horovitz for the Times of Israel

• With the killings of two terror chiefs in the capital cities of two enemy nations in the past few hours, the existential war that began for Israel with Hamas’s invasion and slaughter on October 7 has now entered uncharted territory.
• Until now, the ayatollahs’ regime was directing what has become a devastating multifront war against Israel since October 7 with relative impunity. Training, arming, inspiring and mobilizing forces dedicated to Israel’s destruction — from Hamas to the Houthis, Hezbollah, and militias in Syria and Iraq, while quietly advancing toward nuclear weapons — it was itself largely outside the regional war it was fueling.
• Without doubt, “retaliation” will follow; I use quotation marks around that word because nobody should lose sight of the fact that this regional war was initiated by Hamas, invading sovereign Israel from the adjacent territory governed by Hamas and on which Israel had no claims, and was then escalated by Hezbollah, the Houthis et al under Iran’s direction.
• For all the tactical proof of pinpoint capabilities, for all the readiness to act in ways that Israel’s enemies might have regarded as improbable, for all the embarrassment Tehran is now suffering, the events of the past few hours do not in and of themselves necessarily represent a strategic turning point that will ease Israel’s crisis. Indeed, the opposite could prove to be the case. For, again, this is uncharted territory.
• Link: With two strikes in enemy capitals, the war enters uncharted territory

The Death of a Hezbollah Lifer by Matthew Levitt with The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

• In the immediate term, his death removes one of the group’s most capable military figures, who had the ear of both Nasrallah and the top brass of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF). It also sends a stark message: if Hezbollah kills Israelis, then Israel will no longer be deterred from carrying out sensitive operations deep inside Lebanon, even against the group’s leaders in the capital.
• Shukr played a central role in early terrorist attacks, including against Americans. In October 1983—two years before Hezbollah formally announced its existence in an “open letter” pledging support for Iran’s Supreme Leader and threatening violence against the West—he helped plan and launch suicide truck bombings targeting U.S., French, and Italian peacekeepers, killing 241 personnel at the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut along with 58 French personnel and 6 civilians (the Italian attack failed).
• Over time, Shukr transitioned to increasingly senior military positions, commanding Hezbollah operations against the Israel Defense Forces prior to their withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000.
• There is no single point of failure within Hezbollah—despite Shukr’s death, it remains a highly capable and dangerous terrorist and military organization. Still, the loss will likely impair it operationally to some degree, especially given that around 400 Hezbollah operatives have been killed by Israeli strikes over the past nine months, including senior regional commanders. That many pinpricks make for a fairly large hole, and Shukr’s death will pull at the resulting rip from the top down.
• Link: The Death of a Hezbollah Lifer | The Washington Institute

Palestine and Jordan: Elliott Abrams posts on his blog, Pressure Points, for the Council on Foreign Relations

• It’s a commonplace to say that the “two state solution” is the only possible solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  For more than a decade, I’ve publicly disagreed with that and written to say so. In my view, the two state “solution” is dangerous and impractical
• I still believe in partition, i.e. separation of Israelis and Palestinians, which was the original idea of the Peel Commission in 1937 and of the UN in 1948. But a sovereign and independent Palestinian state is simply too dangerous for Israel and Jordan both (especially while the Islamic Republic of Iran continues using every available nation as a launching pad for attacks on Israel), is likely to be another Arab tyranny (rather than providing freedom to Palestinians), and is likely to be a poor and resource-poor economy.
• I’ve suggested instead that the Palestinian entity be part of a confederation. Its neighbors are Jordan and Israel—and of those, the Muslim, Arab, Arabic-speaking, and half-Palestinian Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is the logical candidate.
• One problem with the obsessive insistence on the “two state solution” is that other options are never considered. Another is the argument that the Jordanians will never, never agree to a confederation.
• There is no chance of establishing a sovereign and independent Palestinian state in the near—or, I would say, the foreseeable—future, whatever fatuous remarks about this are made in Washington or European capitals, or by Arab states. Confederation is certainly no less realistic and perhaps far more so. It should be debated and analyzed. The obsessive focus on the dangerous and unreachable objective of the “two state solution” most often prevents serious debate on that “solution” and on the alternatives. With Israel’s “unsustainable occupation” now in its 57^th year, preventing that debate does Palestinians, Israelis, and Jordanians no favors.
• Link: Palestine and Jordan | Council on Foreign Relations

Terrorists and Diplomats Are Trying to Redraw Israel’s Borders by Seth Mandel in Commentary

• Tying Gaza and Lebanon together is reminiscent of the long-debunked “linkage theory” of the Middle East, in which a peace deal with the Palestinians is considered a prerequisite to solving any other conflict in the region. The idea here is that Israel does not deserve peace with Hezbollah/Lebanon until it has first made peace with Palestinians.
• No other country is made to follow such inane rules of engagement. Were the U.S. to be at war with Mexico, we would not countenance the idea that Canada can bomb us until we reach a truce with Mexico. Once again, putting any other country in Israel’s shoes reveals just how ridiculous are the standards to which the Jewish state, and no one else, is held.
• Israel is preparing to live—or at least to survive—underground. Rambam isn’t the only healthcare facility making such preparations. Hezbollah’s missile stockpile is deep enough to likely overwhelm Iron Dome with sheer numbers of rockets fired every day for two months—the baseline time period for which the hospitals are preparing.
• Blinken’s linking of the two borders to a Gaza ceasefire legitimizes the strategy of eroding Israeli sovereignty, more or less giving a green light to the folks ready to rain down thousands of rockets a day from up north. This is not how you get peace; it is how you get war. And Israelis have a right and a duty to defend their sovereignty.
• Link: Terrorists and Diplomats Are Trying to Redraw Israel’s Borders

The UN would have Israel accept attacks on its citizens by Stephen Daisley in The Spectator

• Security Council resolution 1701, in case you’re wondering, was the UN’s solution to the Second Lebanon War. It called on Israel and Hezbollah to withdraw from southern Lebanon and the Lebanese government to exert control over its territory and prevent it being used by Hezbollah to resume hostilities. Even if you’re not familiar with the exact details, you already know what happened: Israel withdrew, Hezbollah didn’t, Beirut never exerted control and Hezbollah continued to use southern Lebanon as a base from which to attack Israel.
• There is no appetite in Israel for another ground war. Bluntly, there is no capacity either. Israel will extract a price from Hezbollah but it will be much less than they deserve. Much less than would be required to deter them from further attacks. Yet when that price comes to be paid, expect the UN and the NGOs and the British Foreign Office to scold and condemn and denounce. There is no restraint Israel could show that would satisfy the one-eyed umpires of warfare etiquette. They simply do not regard Israeli self-defence as legitimate.
• And they are in plentiful company. You will search in vain for reports of marches in London, Paris, New York or Sydney decrying the bombing of 12 Arab children. They were the wrong kind of Arabs, bombed by the wrong people. Twelve children won’t show up for football practice in Majdal Shams this Saturday and all the world cares about is restraint.
• Link: The UN would have Israel accept attacks on its citizens

‘They’d purposely cause pain’: Ex-hostage describes cruel treatment by Gazan doctors from the Times of Israel

• Maya Regev, released by Hamas in November deal, describes doctors pouring chlorine, acid, vinegar into gunshot wound, ignoring pleas to stop, says she may not walk unassisted again
• Former Hamas hostage Maya Regev on Saturday shed light on the cruelty of Palestinian doctors who treated her after she was shot in the leg and kidnapped on October 7, in a tearful interview sitting alongside the mother of her friend who has been held in Gaza for almost 10 months.
• “They would really hurt me,” she told Channel 12 news. “When changing bandages, when they wanted to see the wounds, they would purposely cause pain. [The doctor] would take chlorine, alcohol, and sometimes even something like apple cider vinegar, and would pour it in [the wound] and apply pressure.”
• Regev, 21, was abducted along with her brother Itay, 19, and their friends Omer-Shem Tov and Ori Danino from the Supernova music festival on October 7,
• In the interview, Regev said that, one day, the doctor took a small knife and started cutting into her exposed flesh in the wound, ignoring her pleas to stop.
• “When they were changing my bandages they would give me ketamine and pethidine intravenously so that I wouldn’t scream. But they’re not really pain relievers, they’re muscle relaxants. So I couldn’t respond, but I could feel everything,” she said during the interview.
• Regev said that she returned from Gaza with many infections, a fungus growing inside her bone, and other signs of medical negligence. Even eight months after her release, her road to recovery remains long.
• Link: ‘They’d purposely cause pain’: Ex-hostage describes cruel treatment by Gazan doctors

New details of Hamas attack on Nahal Oz by Itay Ilnai, Noam Barkan and Shachar Kleiman for Israeli media outlet Israel Hayom

• Revealed here for the first time is “Operation 402,” Hamas’ attack order for the conquest of the Nahal Oz kibbutz on October 7 that left 15 residents dead and eight kidnapped.
• Two minutes and eight seconds. That’s all Hamas terrorists needed to get from their starting point inside Gaza to the entrance of the isolated Israeli community. Two minutes and eight seconds, during which no one stood in their way. With this as the starting point, it’s no wonder the battle for Nahal Oz was lost from the start. Almost.
• Members of the emergency response team described their experiences in “Testimony 710,” an extensive civilian documentation project that recently went online. Now, in a first-of-its-kind reconstruction based on these testimonies, along with internal materials and Hamas’ operation order, it’s possible to get a full picture of the battle. From this picture emerges, just as in the IDF’s investigation of the battle in Be’eri, questions regarding the army’s performance in Nahal Oz. As in Be’eri, in the case of Nahal Oz, it turns out that during the clearing of the kibbutz from terrorists, IDF soldiers accidentally killed at least one Israeli civilian.
• It took the IDF a long time to send forces to Nahal Oz. Only at 11:00 AM did the Maglan unit receive the first order, which placed responsibility for the kibbutz in its hands. As a result, several teams from the unit, who were moving around the area and had already fought in various places, began to make their way to Nahal Oz, but this was not simple and was full of ambushes set by the terrorists in advance.
• Link: New details of Hamas attack on Nahal Oz

Antisemitism

Jewish groups present recommendations for schools to tackle antisemitism by Haley Cohen with eJewishPhilanthropy

• In an effort to curb rising antisemitism on college campuses as the fall semester nears, five leading Jewish organizations are partnering to present a new series of recommendations for university leaders to implement at their schools
• Steps to “support Jewish students,” according to the recommendations, include ones to “prevent discrimination against Jewish students in campus organizations, clubs, and institutions, unequivocally denounce targeting of Jewish student organizations, ensure Israeli students and faculty are welcome, and reject BDS and provide antisemitism education and training for all students.”
• Link: Jewish groups present recommendations for schools to tackle antisemitism

NYU’s Pro-Palestine Coalition Says it Supports ‘Armed Struggle’ by Francesca Block with The Free Press

• Last week, NYU’s Palestine Solidarity Committee rebranded as the People’s Solidarity Coalition and announced a new mission hinting that they are prepared to use violence in their fight to “dismantle” the college’s “involvement in settler-colonial occupation, genocide and imperial wars.”
• The group went on to state that they “recognize and welcome the diversity of tactics that lead to victory,” including “armed struggle, non-violent direct action, cultural production, and world building.” The group declared it will “not condemn the brave actions of our allies nor will we limit ourselves to resistance through organizational means.”
• And while the group’s mission is still centered around its “struggle for the end of the Zionist Entity”—which it also dubs “apartheid ‘Israel’  ”—the new statement expands beyond the Middle East. “When we take up the struggle against the Zionist entity,” it proclaims, “we take on the global fight against U.S. imperialism and its violences.”
• Link: NYU’s Pro-Palestine Coalition Says it Supports ‘Armed Struggle’

Toronto Jewish sites attacked: School bus burned, anti-Israel graffiti found

• A school bus parked in a Jewish Toronto neighborhood was consumed in an arson attack and several Jewish community sites were daubed with anti-Israel graffiti, Canadian politicians and Jewish groups announced on Monday.

Link: Toronto Jewish neighborhood school bus burned, Jewish sites graffitie

I want to again thank Ethan Karlovsky, a junior finance major at Rice University in Houston. Ethan has not only helped prepare these updates, but also is a strong advocate for Jewish students on his campus and beyond. We continue to be proud of Ethan and appreciate his leadership and commitment to our community.