Jay Zeidman-

Situational Update

• According to the Times of Israel, more than 100 victims of the devastating October 7 Hamas assault on Israel and their families filed a lawsuit Monday claiming $1 billion in damages from UNRWA, the UN aid agency for Palestinians, accusing that it aided and abetted the terror group’s assault. The lawsuit highlights that UNRWA insisted on paying its employees in US dollars, amounting to $1 billion in the period covered by the claim. Employees were unable to spend the dollars directly in the Gaza Strip, which uses the Israeli shekel, needing instead to convert the cash at Hamas-controlled money changers who took a commission. Hamas money changers took a 10%-25% spread on transactions, “ensuring that a predictable percentage of UNRWA’s payroll went to Hamas.”
• Former hostage Noa Argamani who was rescued from Gaza by the IDF spoke for the first time in a recorded message displayed at a Tel Aviv protest calling for the release of the captives on Saturday. “Although I’m home now, we can’t forget the hostages who are still in Hamas captivity, and must do everything to bring them back home,” she said in the video.
  • Link to Video (in Hebrew with English subtitles): Yaari Cohen on X: “For the first time since she was rescued from Hamas by the IDF during the heroic ‘Operation Arnon’ – Noa Argamani speaks
• Eighteen Israeli soldiers were wounded, including one seriously, in a Hezbollah drone attack in northern Israel on Sunday, the military said. According to the Israel Defense Forces, several drones were launched from Lebanon on Sunday afternoon, setting off sirens in the Galilee Panhandle and northern Golan Heights.

The Numbers

Casualties

• 1,612 Israelis dead, including 670 IDF soldiers (316 IDF soldiers during the ground operation in Gaza) – an increase of 4 from our last update
  • Cpt. Alon Skagio (22) was killed, and many others were wounded by a roadside bomb as IDF forces entered into Jenin in the West Bank. During the operation, around midnight between Wednesday and Thursday, a Panther armored personnel carrier (APC) used by a medical force was struck by a bomb planted under the road.
  • Sgt. Eyal Shynes, 19, was killed in a Hamas sniper attack in Rafah
  • Sergeant First Class (res.) Yakir Shmuel Teitelbaum (21) and Yair Avitan (20) were killed in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday, the military announced Saturday, as troops pressed on with an operation against the Hamas terror group in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood. Additional soldiers were seriously wounded in the fighting.
• Additional Information (according to the IDF):
  • 2,018 IDF soldiers have been injured during ground combat in Gaza, including at least 388 who have been severely injured.
  • 3,977 IDF soldiers have been injured since the beginning of the war, including at least 595 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, 37,765 people have been killed in Gaza, and 86,429 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)

• 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 19 others have been recovered. Tragically, 3 have been mistakenly killed by the IDF, and 1 was killed during an IDF attempt to rescue him.
• This leaves an estimated 116 hostages still theoretically in Gaza, with somewhere between (assumed) 35-43 deceased. Thus, at most, 85 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

Listen

[PODCAST] Call Me Back with Dan Senor: Where was the IDF on Oct 7? – with Ronen Bergman

• “Where was the IDF on October 7th?” It’s a topic that we have strenuously avoided. After the war, there will be a formal commission of inquiry that attempts to understand all that went wrong and why. There will be a time and a place for that. And yet, as the war in Gaza winds down, and as Israel prepares for another possible war, this question re-emerges. What lessons can be learned? More and more journalists in Israel are exploring the topic. So, we are going to dedicate an episode from time to time in the weeks ahead to try to understand what these journalists are learning.
• Our only caveat is that this is a difficult topic to explore – for all the obvious reasons. The information is uneven… there is still an element of fog of war.
• Dan sits down with Ronen Bergman in his home in Ramat HaSharon, to have a long conversation about what he has pieced together. Ronen 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. He has published numerous books, including: “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations” and also, “The Secret War with Iran.”
• Link: Call Me Back – with Dan Senor: Where was the IDF on Oct 7?
• Link to Ronen’s NYT article: Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan Over a Year Ago – The New York Times

[PODCAST] Can Israel Actually Win This War? Bari Weiss on Honestly

• Seth Frantzman, senior Middle East correspondent and analyst at The Jerusalem Post, and John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point and host of the Urban Warfare Project podcast, join Bari for this enlightening conversation.
• When Hamas attacked Israel eight months ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s war goals were threefold: one, destroy Hamas; two, free all of the hostages; and three, ensure that Gaza can never threaten Israel again.
• More than 250 days later, some 120 hostages remain in Hamas captivity, both dead and alive. Two Hamas battalions remain, consisting of somewhere between 9,000 and 12,000 fighters. More than 300 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza and thousands wounded, 135,000 Israeli civilians are still displaced, and the war seems to have no end in sight.
• Why? Israel is supposed to be the greatest military force in the Middle East. So why haven’t they achieved their war goals? Are their war goals even viable? And, can Israel win this war?
• Link: Can Israel Actually Win This War? | The Free Press

Watch

Israel’s End Game with Hezbollah: The Caroline Glick Show with our friend, Herut Center CEO, Amiad Cohen

• What is the IDF’s end game with Hezbollah? Can Israel really fight a two-front war on its Southern and Northern border? Is avoiding a full-scale with the Iran-backed militia even desirable? Journalist and author Caroline Glick discusses all this with the Herut Center’s CEO Amiad Cohen. He argues that Israel must take back all of southern Lebanon while seeking to prevent a Groundhog Day situation with Hezbollah.
• Link: Israel’s End Game with Hezbollah

What We Are Reading

Israel Is Ready for Another War: In the north, Israelis are not just resigned to the opening of a war with Hezbollah but in some cases annoyed that committing to one is taking so long. By Graeme Wood in The Atlantic

• But Nasrallah’s bellicose language masks a peculiar reality: Hezbollah does not want a war, and Israel—whose international standing has tumbled as a result of its prosecution of war on another front—does. In a week of visiting the north and talking with Israeli politicians and generals, I found a country not just resigned to the opening of a war in the north but in some cases annoyed that committing to one is taking so long.
• Historically the frontier status of Kiryat Shmona—and Metula, even farther north—had been a source of pride. Metula was one of the first Zionist agricultural communes. Now it is abandoned. Kiryat Shmona had been a stronghold of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, because of the Israeli right’s promises of security. Now its residents are having to consider the possibility that they will not be allowed back in time for September, the start of their children’s school year. That symbolic deadline will for many of them be the moment they admit that their families have to get comfortable elsewhere, and may never go back.
• Hezbollah’s purpose is to deter and punish Israel on behalf of Iran over the long term, not to provoke a war that could lead to its own destruction.
• Conversely, if Hezbollah wished to avert an Israeli invasion, some say, it could just stop firing missiles into Israel and allow residents to return to their homes and farms. But a promise from Hezbollah to stop firing rockets would not, under Israel’s post–October 7 doctrine, be enough. After Hamas’s attack, Israel decided that an enemy’s promises are not sufficient, and instead Israel must degrade the enemy’s ability to invade and slaughter Israeli communities.
• Demanding that Hezbollah withdraw from southern Lebanon is tantamount to asking Hezbollah to admit defeat in a war that has not yet happened, and that it has spent decades preparing for. To Nasrallah, that would be personally mortifying. The chasm between the two sides’ positions is wide. It is unlikely to narrow through diplomacy and negotiation.
• Link: Israel Is Ready for Another War – The Atlantic

Most of Gaza’s homes remain standing, according to a report detailed by Israeli journalist Marc Schulman reports

• The intelligence gathering unit in the IDF received a task to digitally map all the buildings in the Gaza Strip both before and during the war. According to findings revealed this morning, as of October 7th, there were 453,188 buildings in the entire strip. Half of these were permanent structures for residences, businesses, and government, while the rest were temporary structures (e.g., sheds and pens). In the first eight months of combat, the IDF destroyed only 16% of the permanent structures and 36% of the temporary ones. In absolute numbers, this means the IDF destroyed 35,952 permanent buildings in the strip and 84,276 temporary structures.
• The definition of “building destruction” involves flattening or rendering the building unusable by destroying walls or staircases. A single shell landing in a room or causing damage to a roof does not destroy a building. The IDF data significantly contradicts publications attributed to the UN and foreign media, which accuse the Israeli Army of destroying 50%-70% of the buildings in the strip, making comparisons to the destruction of Dresden in WWII.
• According to the IDF, the explanation for the discrepancy is that foreign entities collect data via satellite. In contrast, the IDF collects and analyzes data regularly using large drones and advanced UAVs from all angles and in 3D.
• In conclusion, most Palestinians have homes they can return to. Those who remained in the strip witnessed significant destruction up close. However, from the view on a building’s roof or a hilltop, it is easy to see, even recently, that the majority of Gaza’s buildings are still standing.
• Link: Marc Schulman’s Tel Aviv Diary
• Additional coverage from Israeli media outlet YNet: IDF says 16% of Gaza buildings destroyed; disputes higher UN figures

Israel’s Double-Edged Sword (Part III), If Not Iron Dome, What? By Ambassador Michael Oren

• Throughout the opening decades of its existence, Israel’s defense strategy centered on the concept of hachra’ah—decisive victory. Whether striking preemptively or in response to an initial attack, Israeli forces would go on the offensive and take the battle deep into enemy territory. The principle reached its peak in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the siege of Beirut, but thereafter fell into disrepute.
• Nevertheless, Israel went on the defensive toward both Hamas and Hezbollah. The cost of uprooting them, in terms of soldiers’ lives and loss to the economy, was deemed too prohibitive. American administrations, both Republican and Democratic, consistently opposed Israeli offensive action and Israeli leaders believed—tragically—that Hamas could be salved with Qatari cash. But the decisive factor in preserving the defensive position was the advent of a new anti-missile system.
• No more than the Maginot Line deterred the Germans, Iron Dome failed to convince the terrorists to abandon their rockets. On the contrary, even with its ninety-plus percent success rate, Iron Dome spurred Hamas and Hezbollah to greatly expand their rocket arsenal with the goal of overwhelming the system. And with one projectile in ten hitting its target, taking and disrupting Israeli life, rockets remained a key terrorist asset.
• Tactical, psychological, legal, and diplomatic—there are many shortcomings to Iron Dome, and yet clearly there is no alternative. The system still saves countless Israeli lives and provides time and space for the IDF to mount the ground action which, as the war in Gaza has demonstrated, is the only effective means of stopping rocket fire. That lesson will be more rapidly and massively applied in any future war with Hezbollah. The IDF will have to move swiftly into the two hundred Lebanese villages in which the terrorists have installed their launchers. Israeli troops will have to advance village by village, house by house, to end the incessant volleys. The cost will be incalculable.
• Still, there may be one alternative… The system, developed by Rafael and popularly known as Iron Beam (Magen Or, in Hebrew), is nearly ready for deployment. It focuses an extremely intense laser on the incoming projectile and literally cooks it. In its initial stage, at least, Iron Beam will work in tandem with Iron Dome which will still determine which rockets will or will not hit populated areas and can operate even in the bad weather that inhibits lasers. But at the cost of pennies per shot, Iron Beam will eliminate the terrorists’ ability to wage economic war against Israel, which previously had to shoot two $60,000 interceptors at each $100 rocket and enable the IDF to take down virtually anything aimed at us. Along with an airborne laser developed by Elbit, the new technology will render Israel all but invulnerable from the air.
• Link: Israel’s Double-Edged Sword (Part III) | Clarity with Michael Oren

#WTH Is wrong with Qatar by Danielle Pletka, a distinguished senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the host, with Marc Thiessen, of the podcast What the Hell is Going On.

• In a country of 2.6 million, Qatar’s capital Doha the place U.S. designated terrorist organizations like to call home. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and his cronies live a plush life in Doha. He is reputedly worth billions. Is all that dough under his mattress? Or in a bank in Qatar? I don’t know, but presumably the Treasury Department does.
• Now don’t get me wrong. The Qataris are happy to do dirty business with anyone, including the Israelis. When the Israeli government wanted to tighten pressure on Gaza, they turned to Doha to relieve the pressure with a few suitcases of cash for Hamas. And, of course, the Hamas hostage negotiations are ongoing in … Qatar.
• For a quick survey of Qatar’s support for America’s enemies, here’s former Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al Jubeir describing the neighboring regime:
  • “The Qataris, since the mid 90’s, have been sponsoring radicals. They have been inciting people. They have become a base for the leadership for the Muslim Brotherhood. And the Muslim Brotherhood, you have to keep in mind, is what begot us Takfir wal-Hijra, which begot us Al-Qaeda, which begot us Al-Nusra.”
  • “The Qataris allow their senior religious clerics to go on television and justify suicide bombings. That’s not acceptable. The Qataris harbor and shelter terrorists. That’s not acceptable. [Abd Al-Rahim] Al-Nashiri, the head of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in 2000 entered Saudi Arabia on a Qatari passport. We captured Al-Qaeda types coming into Saudi Arabia with Qatari passports. The Qataris know this, the Americans know this. The world knows this. The Qataris are funding dissidents in the Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. In order to cause problems for those governments and to create instability.”
  • “The Qataris pay ransom to terrorist groups including 500 million dollars to Hizbullah Iraq. Fifty million dollars to [IRGC Qods Force Commander] Qassem Soleimani, according to text messages between the Qatari Ambassador in Iraq and the Foreign Minister of Iraq.
• Then there’s Qatar’s super-cosy relationship with Iran. Qatar’s cronies in the Washington lobbying world, at the Department of State, and — perhaps most importantly — at the White House, insist that the Qataris are only acting at America’s behest. Hamas? They wouldn’t be there if the U.S. hadn’t asked. Iranian money flowing through Qatari banks? Ditto.
• Link: #WTH Is wrong with Qatar | What the Hell is Going On, Substack

‘We should never stop transferring arms to America’s closest ally’, by Ariel Kahana in Israel Hayom

• Elliott Abrams, who served as a senior official in previous Republican administrations whose last role was enforcing sanctions on the Iranian regime during the Trump administration, opposes delays in US arms shipments to Israel.
• “I don’t know what and how much has been held up, but it shouldn’t have happened. The level of delay should be zero,” Abrams tells Israel Hayom in an exclusive interview in the wake of the recent clash between the Biden administration and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
  • “At the end of Trump’s term, Iran was facing bankruptcy. The Biden administration’s abandonment of the sanctions policy led to a significant strengthening of the Islamic Republic.” He added, “If Trump had received four more years, the regime would have faced a choice between economic collapse and mass uprising, or halting the nuclear program. But then the Biden administration came and essentially stopped enforcing the sanctions, to the point that today Iran’s currency reserves stand at about $50 billion. Therefore, what needs to be done is to return to the sanctions policy and enforce it.”
• He emphasized that “America’s closest friend in the Middle East suffered a terrible attack, so we should never stop transferring weapons to her.” Abrams currently serves as chairman of the Tikvah Fund and will participate in the 21st Herzliya Conference at Reichman University.
• Abrams claims that the US president tried for two and a half years to revive the nuclear deal with Iran until he realized they weren’t interested. “Iran has benefited from this situation, and everyone outside the administration sees it as a failure. Moreover, for the last hundred years, the US has viewed keeping the Red Sea shipping lanes open and safe as one of its most important missions, and the Houthis have pretty much managed to end that. The Suez Canal is almost completely closed, as is the Red Sea. The US is currently in a defensive posture. We’re intercepting the Houthis’ missiles, but we’ve come to terms with them doing what they’re doing. In my opinion, the US needs to punish the Houthis and Iran for this.”
• Link: ‘We should never stop transferring arms to America’s closest ally’| Israel Hayom

Israel Struggles Against Global Amnesia, by Elliot Kaufman in Wall Street Journal

• “We pray that one day there will be peace,” says Nina Tokayer, half of the Israeli musical duo Yonina, after a candle is extinguished to bring the Sabbath to a close. “Sometimes that means eliminating our enemies, who hate peace and want to destroy us. For some reason, a lot of people around the world don’t understand that.”
• Israelis don’t understand what the world doesn’t understand about Oct. 7. Hamas is the Palestinian majority party, and Oct. 7 was its apotheosis. It will try it again if Israel quits Gaza too early, and it will do worse if Israel surrenders the West Bank. Yet the world demands both, leaving Israelis to conclude that the world has little problem subjecting them to more massacres. Israelis feel as if a mandatory form of amnesia is being imposed on them: Thou shalt not remember what actual Palestinian nationalism looks like.
• “We had Oct. 7 before—in 1929,” Mr. Goodman says. Then, Arab mobs massacred more than 100 Jews across Hebron, Safed, Jerusalem and Jaffa and left more than 300 wounded. “Jews were attacked in the streets, in their homes, with all the terrible atrocities that we saw on Oct. 7. This was before the nakba of 1948, before the occupation of 1967.”
• There’s a story the West tells itself: After the massacre, Israel had the world’s sympathy and support. But Israel went too far, and the world turned against it. Right-thinking Westerners like this story because right-thinking Westerners are its stars. They are moved by the plight of Kfar Aza and the Nova festivalgoers to denounce Hamas, but not so much that, like those vengeful Israelis, they lose their impartiality and humanitarian instinct.
• The truth is darker. Much, perhaps most, of the world didn’t condemn Oct. 7 or repudiate Hamas. Qatar and Egypt, the mediators, both blamed Israel on Oct. 7. On Oct. 8, China called on Israel to “immediately end the hostilities.” Russia still hosts Hamas delegations. None of Hamas’s patrons have abandoned it or been seriously pressured to do so.
• “Oct. 7 killed not only the dream of peace,” says Mr. Levy, the former Israeli spokesman. “It killed the dreamers” of the border kibbutzim. But Mr. Biden and his team, the none-too-quiet Americans, are still dreaming. They call it a peace process, but an Israeli withdrawal that returns Gaza to Hamas is the first step to the next massacre, the next war.
• Link: Israel Struggles Against Global Amnesia | Wall Street Journal

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.
• Also, according to FCAS’s Command Center, a recent report published by the CNCDH, France’s human rights commission, details that antisemitic hate crimes increased by 284% in the last year in the country. Similarly, RIAS, an organization that tracks antisemitism in Germany, released a report recording 4,782 antisemitic incidents in the country in 2023, a 83% increase from 2022. For more detail, please visit FCAS’s website here.

My Year at Harvard, writes Rabbi David J. Wolpe in Jewish Journal

• Rabbi David Wolpe took a one-year position at the Harvard Divinity School. What he found was an institution rife with antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Now he tells his story.
• The first day of the holiday of Sukkot was a week before the Oct. 7 attack. Each year the Divinity School at Harvard, to its credit, erects a Sukkah. Remarkably, the only ceremony marking the holiday was run by a group that called itself “Jews for Liberation.” As a Visiting Scholar I was new to campus and decided to attend my first Divinity School event. There was no lulav or etrog, traditional symbols of the holiday. Hebrew prayers were omitted in favor of English songs.  But before even this exiguous ceremony began, we were told by the student coordinator for whom the ceremony was intended:
  • “This is a safe space for anti-Zionists, non-Zionists and those who are struggling with Zionism.”  Wow, I thought.
• My first Divinity School event is a Jewish one in which there is no safe space for people like me.
• Like many people, I had a somewhat idealized image both of Harvard and of the position of Jews in the United States. I stood in the Divinity School chapel and marveled that this was the spot where Emerson had delivered his famous address, “The American Scholar.” Here was a plaque to the great American Preacher Theodore Parker whose sermons Emerson called “a streak of rockets all night long.”   I passed by storied halls and pictures of illustrious alumni.  But as the days passed, in the pit of my stomach was a gnawing sadness mixed with dismay. I began to understand, as I visited these places with my kippah on my head, that I might be the kind of Jew that this place was not eager to see.
• Then came Oct. 7. As the world knows, campuses exploded into protests and became a focus of worldwide attention.  The Divinity school was swept up in the maelstrom. The “apartheid wall” — an art installation claiming Israel is an apartheid state and calling for divestment from any business or institution associated with the State — was removed from Harvard Yard, where it had stood in previous years, and found a congenial home on the grounds of the Divinity School. The explosion and its implications, of course, went far beyond that corner of the university.
• The day after Hamas’ brutal massacre of some 1,200 Israelis, 33 campus organizations issued a statement blaming Israel for its citizens having been raped, brutalized and burned alive. The following day I received a call from the Harvard President, Claudine Gay. She was clearly shaken by the events. Only two months into her term, the University was suddenly facing what one old hand told me was “undoubtedly its greatest crisis.” Gay was contemplating possible responses.  We spoke for a while and it was a good conversation:  I suggested some resources to acquaint her with the history of the conflict and the story of antisemitism. She asked if I would serve on an antisemitism committee. I said yes without thinking — why wouldn’t I? I felt proud to have stepped onto campus two weeks before and suddenly have a way to contribute something meaningful.
• Yet day after day we received reports on the ubiquitous faculty and student WhatsApp groups of hostage posters defaced or torn down, students subjected to cruel and sometimes blatant antisemitic statements on internal channels of communication, protests that violated the school’s own policies, and in the favored inversion, defining Israelis as that which has most cruelly afflicted Jews, widespread Nazi imagery.
• In a place where discourse and argument should prevail, certain suggestive silences took their place. In silence and stealth, hostage posters were ripped down and defaced. Complaints from Jewish students to the administration were met with silence. On my way to class I saw a student published newspaper: “Harvard Daily: The Genocide Edition.” On internal Harvard messaging and on X, tutors in a student house were writing about “Judeonazis.” 
• Link: My Year at Harvard | Jewish Journal