Today’s long update marks a grim milestone. One number continues to rise, while another stays the same. This week, the number of IDF casualties has sadly now surpassed 800, while the number of hostages, 101, remains the same. It is not lost on me that each name and picture I put below represents so much more than what this little update that I compile can describe. Please join me in honoring their sacrifice, supporting all that they leave behind, and holding all of their families in our prayers. Am Israel Chai.

Situational Update

On Thursday, the Times of Israel writes: In a massive legal bombshell, the International Criminal Court on Thursday issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant over the war in Gaza. The decision marked the first time the ICC has ever issued arrest warrants against leaders of a democratic country. Israel and the United States are not party to the court, and the warrant has no enforcement mechanism, with the ICC instead relying on cooperation from its member states. ICC member countries are required to act on the court’s arrest warrants, but have not always done so. Several European countries, including France and Holland, said they would respect the warrants. And the European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said the court’s decision “has to be respected and implemented,” telling reporters in Amman that it was “binding” on all state parties of the court, including all EU members. The Prime Minister’s Office declared in a statement on Thursday that the ICC’s “antisemitic decision” to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant “is equivalent to a modern Dreyfus trial.” Pledging that the court’s decision would not deter Israel from protecting its citizens, the PMO said it rejected “with disgust” the court’s “false” and “absurd” charges. I have shared commentary on the fallout from this decision below.
FDD reports: An IDF airstrike in Syria killed Ali Musa Daqduq, a senior Hezbollah commander who was responsible for the murder of American service personnel during the war in Iraq. On January 20, 2007, five U.S. soldiers were killed when a terrorist squad disguised as an American security team attacked a U.S. military compound in Karbala. The United States handed over Daqduq to the Iraqi authorities in 2011, who reneged on their pledge to prosecute him. Daqduq was released less than a year later, resuming his role as a Hezbollah commander.

The Numbers

Casualties

1,789 Israelis have been killed including 804 IDF soldiers since October 7th (+4 IDF soldiers and +1 civilian since Wednesday)
The South: 379 IDF soldiers during the ground operation in Gaza have been killed (+3 since Wednesday)
The North: 123 Israelis (77 IDF soldiers; +2 IDF soldiers and +1 civilian since Wednesday) have been killed during the war in Northern Israel
- Sergeant First Class (Res.) Roi Sasson (21) (above), was killed when his unit was ambushed during an operation around Jabalya in Gaza
- Sergeant first class (res.) Eitan Ben Ami (22) (below left) was killed in combat in Lebanon
- Zeev Erlich, 71 (above, top right), a civilian, was killed alongside Israel Defense Forces Sgt. Gur Kehati, 20 (below), during a gun battle with Hezbollah operatives on Wednesday, after entering southern Lebanon with a senior officer, but apparently without official authorization. March Schulman writes: Investigators are now scrutinizing the decision to deploy a 71-year-old historian to an active battlefield, a move that resulted in the deaths of Erlich and Kehati, as well as the wounding of two other soldiers at the archaeological site.
- Staff-Sergeant Ron Epshtein, 19 (below) was killed by an artillery shell in Jabaliya, becoming the 29th IDF casualty since the raid began in the northern Gaza Strip last month.
Additional Information (according to the IDF):
- 2,448 (+8 since Wednesday) IDF soldiers have been injured during ground combat in Gaza, including at least 464 (+3 since Wednesday) who have been severely injured.
- 5,414 (+34 since Wednesday) IDF soldiers have been injured since the beginning of the war, including at least 792 (+6 since Wednesday) who have been severely injured.

According to unverified figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, 43,992 (no reported change from Wednesday) people have been killed in Gaza, and 103,898 (no reported change from 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 (no change)

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.

Listen

[PODCAST] Call Me Back with Dan Senor: Ending the Lebanon War – with Nadav Eyal

On an almost daily basis, Hezbollah fires hundreds of missiles and rockets into Israel’s North. And yet there seems to be progress being made in negotiations towards a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. If we are approaching a deal, what does it look like? How will it be enforced? What are the political forces shaping the deal – in Jerusalem, in Tehran, and in Washington D.C., as the U.S. transitions to a new administration? And, crucially, how many of the some 60,000 Israelis who were evacuated from the north over a year ago will be able to return to their homes?

Watch

Bari Weiss: The Old World Is Not Coming Back

Canada Burns

Arsen Ostrovsky posts: Though I feel like I just parachuted into Khan Younis. Just insane scenes. Absolute lawlessness, with these pro-Hamas thugs roaming the streets. Complete absence from @JustinTrudeau government.

Rocket Alerts

Yesterday, there were 172 red alerts, and a total of 881 in the past week

+270 rocket alerts since Wednesday
+142 UAV alerts since last Wednesday

Source: Rocket Alerts in Israel

What We Are Reading

Commentary from the ICC Arrest Warrants

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies: ‘Corrupt to its Core’: World Reacts to ICC Warrants Against Netanyahu and Gallant

U.S. Officials React to Warrants: After the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on November 21, U.S. President Joe Biden said that the act was “outrageous,” adding that “whatever the ICC might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas.” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said that the ICC is “corrupt to its core” and a “rogue and politically motivated organization.” A bipartisan statement released by Senator Graham along with Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) and incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) warned that “Acquiescing to the Court’s jurisdiction over Israel is to agree, in theory, they have jurisdiction over the United States.”
Several Countries Confirm Compliance With ICC Warrants: Numerous countries that are parties to the Rome Statute released statements confirming their intended compliance with the ICC warrants, including Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Lithuania, Canada, Ireland, South Africa, Jordan, Norway, and Sweden. Hamas also praised the warrants as an “important step towards justice.” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said that the ICC warrants were “justice being served.”
Other Countries Voice Support for Israel: Argentine President Javier Milei issued a scathing condemnation of the ICC arrest warrants, saying that “the decision disregards Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself from the constant attacks of terrorist organizations.” Additionally, he announced that Argentina was “advancing a historic memorandum with Israel, a bilateral alliance … against terrorism and dictatorship.” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that the arrest warrants were “brazen, cynical, and complete unacceptable,” inviting Netanyahu to visit Hungary. Jan Bartosek, a member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic, called on his fellow parliamentarians to consider suspending ties with the ICC. Germany distanced itself from outright compliance with the arrest warrants, with Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock saying, “we are now examining exactly what this means for us in terms of its international application.”

The case against Israel is built on lies on Andrew Fox’s Substack

*The author revisits his report from July with the High Level Military Group, a collection of distinguished retired senior-ranked officers from a multiplicity of Western militaries

The International Criminal Court continues to beclown itself with a farcical case against Yoav Gallant and Benjamin Netanyahu. It is now plain that any western country aspiring to retain a war fighting capability must withdraw from the Treaty of Rome and the ICC’s jurisdiction. The international rules-based order is dead. It has been subverted and weaponised against us, both in the UN and the ICC.
Anyone with half a brain realises that a country practising deliberate starvation does not facilitate the delivery of over a million tonnes of aid. Likewise, all but the antisemitic, disingenuous and stupidly gullible understand that civilians die in war without that sad fact meaning that they are being targeted. The astonishingly low civilian death toll in Gaza (somewhere between 16-20k civilians have died, remarkable for the amount of munitions dropped) stands as a tragic but notable testimony to the effectiveness of Israeli targeting.
…with the cynical, antisemitic and destructive ICC arrest warrants, our amicus curiae brief to the ICC bears repeating.
- Our assessment shows that the IDF is operationalising the Israeli government’s stated policy to ‘flood Gaza with aid’^[2] and this has substantially contributed to averting what may have been a situation of famine caused by ongoing violent belligerence by Hamas. Again, we believe this is counter indicative of and inconsistent with any plan or intent to employ starvation as a method of warfare at any stage in this conflict.
- It is our assessment that whatever food insecurity exists today among the population of Gaza is not due to Israel impeding entry or distribution of aid into the territory – either deliberately or arbitrarily – but to the unavoidable effects of large-scale urban warfare, compounded by Hamas hijacking aid for their own military purposes, allowing criminal elements to seize aid, and in some cases confiscating aid and selling it to the civilian population.
- Any military force would find immense difficulty in delivering aid to population in a territory controlled by its enemy whilst simultaneously fighting in their own territory against thousands of combatants, for several days, clearing community after community and outpost after outpost, while simultaneously trying to determine how many civilians were killed and kidnapped and their identities.
- We also note the Prosecutor alleges that Israel cut off water pipelines from Israel into Gaza, “their principal source of water”, for a prolonged period. We understand that 90% of the water in Gaza does not come from Israel.
- Moreover, the Prosecutor’s allegations completely absolve Hamas – who instigated the war – of the responsibility for supplying its own population. As military experts, we can attest that if states engaged in war are forced to adopt full responsibility for the enemy’s civilian population, especially in a context where the opposing party deliberately hinders aid efforts, it sets a standard that will be unacceptable for most states.
- Based on our observations, we do not believe the evidence of actual operational practice in any way corroborates the accusation of policies directed from the alleged defendants to intentionally attack civilians. In our view, the IDF has developed and implemented innovative procedures to mitigate the risk to civilians arising from attacks on valid military objectives. These procedures often result in suspension or cancellation of attacks due to civilian risk estimates.
Link: The case against Israel is built on lies

Sanction the Disgraceful ICC by The Editors of The National Review

The ICC said that the warrants were for “crimes against humanity and war crimes,” accusing Israel of intentionally starving the people of Gaza and targeting civilians in its campaign against Hamas in the wake of the October 7 attacks. The charges are without basis, as Israelis have demonstrated the great lengths they go to to limit civilian casualties against an enemy that deliberately hides behind civilians and civilian infrastructure. So by taking this action, the ICC is putting more Palestinian civilians in danger by convincing Hamas that its strategy is working.
Even in theory, there is no place in the world for the ICC, an international organization that seeks to enforce a transnational-progressive, antisemitic political agenda disguised as make-it-up-as-you-go-along “international law” against sovereign countries who are not participants and over which it has no credible claim to jurisdiction. (In the U.S., even before Bush pulled out of the Rome Statute that established the ICC, it did not have the force of law because it had never been approved by the Senate as required by the U.S. Constitution.) In practice, the biased institution is disproportionately targeting Israel while doing little to target actual war criminals.
In recent years, the ICC has not issued arrest warrants against Bashar Assad or investigated Syria for war crimes, despite the fact that over 300,000 civilians have been killed in the conflict and Assad gassed his own people; it has not issued arrest warrants for the leaders of Iran. While these countries are not parties to the Rome Statute, that did not stop the court from going after Israel.
Egregiously, the ICC had been investigating U.S. servicemembers as part of a broader look into war crimes in Afghanistan until the Trump administration imposed sanctions on ICC officials and the court announced they would be focusing on the conduct of other parties in the conflict.
Link: Sanction the Disgraceful ICC

On Israel, the International Criminal Court Is Wrong on the Law—and the Facts by Mark Goldfeder, Director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center in TIME

The ICC’s charges against Israel are based on alleged violations of the Rome Statute, yet they conspicuously omit the full statutory language that would clearly exonerate the accused. For instance, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are accused of engaging in “starvation as a method of warfare.” Article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Rome Statute, however, explicitly defines this crime as “intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including willfully impeding relief supplies as provided for under the Geneva Conventions.”
This is a specific intent crime. It is not enough to demonstrate that civilians suffered based on decisions Israel made while fighting Hamas; the prosecutor must show that Israel acted with the deliberate aim of starving civilians as a method of warfare. This is patently untrue. Israel has made extensive efforts to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza, even under the extraordinary challenge of Hamas’s systematic theft and weaponization of such supplies.
Moreover, the Geneva Conventions themselves do not require a sieging party to allow in aid when it will be commandeered by the enemy or provide a military advantage, both of which are indisputably the case with Hamas in Gaza.
Beyond the legal and procedural flaws, the factual claims underpinning the charges simply do not hold. In June, after the prosecutor had submitted his charges, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Classification System (IPC) released an analysis showing that an earlier projection that famine “may occur” in Gaza by May had not come to pass. At the time, a spokesperson for the ICC declined to comment on whether they would let these facts in any way alter their false claims. To date there is no credible evidence that a single individual has died from starvation as a result of Israeli actions, let alone from a deliberate policy to intentionally starve civilians.
Finally, under the terms of the Rome Statute itself, the ICC is meant to be a court of last resort, intervening only when a nation is “unwilling or unable” to investigate or prosecute alleged crimes. Israel, however, has a robust legal system, staffed with expert legal advisers and an independent judiciary that has repeatedly demonstrated its commitment to upholding international humanitarian law. Dozens of active investigations into actions taken since Oct. 7 are currently underway. The ICC, by disregarding the principle of complementarity, has acted in clear violation of the court’s own rules.
Equating Israel’s legitimate acts of self-defense with the atrocities of a terrorist organization like Hamas represents a dangerous moral and legal inversion, undermining the principles of international law and emboldening bad actors who exploit these flawed rulings for propaganda purposes.
The U.S. Senate should pass the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, which has already received bipartisan Congressional support, and which would impose sanctions on ICC officials who overreach their jurisdiction to target the U.S. and its allies. Far from weakening international institutions, standing with Israel against this egregious mockery of the system would be the strongest safeguard for the integrity of international law as applied, and quite possibly the only way to save the court from itself.
Link: On Israel, the International Criminal Court Is Wrong on the Law—and the Facts

Why Is It OK for Everyone but Israelis to Defend Themselves? By Aviva Klompas in TIME

This is not the first time the Middle East’s only democracy has been the butt of a dangerous joke.
Last year, South Africa went to the ICC’s sister court, the International Court of Justice, to charge Israel with the crime of genocide. That’s the same South Africa that once hosted a Sudanese dictator after the ICC issued warrants for his arrest on crimes against humanity and genocide and then, last year, also hosted a Sudanese warlord accused of crimes against humanity.
However, few in the international community saw the irony: coddling war criminals from failed states with one hand while accusing democracies of war crimes with the other.
For example, the United Nations has repeatedly failed to condemn or reign in Iran and its proxies in Hamas and Hezbollah for their relentless and daily efforts to literally annihilate Israel. This, along with the ICC’s decision to indict a Hamas commander—in the same breath as Netanyahu and Gallant—exposes the macabre moral equivocation that so often lurks behind the legal mumbo jumbo of both international organizations.
The war in Gaza is brutal, tragic, and has no end in sight. But many seem to have forgotten how we got here.
The reality on the ground is this: Israel is doing what every democracy would do when faced with similar attacks: fighting back to eradicate the responsible groups. But from a global perspective, Israel is just the tip of the spear in a wider conflict with an increasingly nihilistic and technologically sophisticated network of radical Islamists.
The first quarter of this century has made it clear: democracies under attack from terrorists are well within their rights to vehemently fight back. The court’s ruling—if taken seriously—risks squandering these hard-fought lessons in the service of a “dangerous joke.”
This can only lead to one outcome: the normalization of terror and the criminalization of democratic responses to it.
Link: Why Is It OK for Everyone but Israelis to Defend Themselves?

[WARNING: GRAPHIC TESTIMONY] Hamas’ sexual crimes: Uncollected evidence come to light: Previously undocumented indicators of sexual violence by Hamas during October 7 attacks now emerging through new report compiling evidence and survivor testimonies; findings aim to shed light on scope of atrocities by Rotem Izak in YNet

In the chaos at the IDF’s Shura base on the days following the October 7 massacre, bodies of the murdered – soldiers, civilians and the occasional body that, after examination, turned out to be that of an abominable Nukhba terrorist, were piling up.
On one body alongside grenades, they found an open packet of condoms. “I read about this in the newspaper. It was part of a journal kept by a guy from Shura,” says leading Israeli lawyer, Prof. Yifat Bitton. “Our investigator contacted him and asked, ‘Tell me, did you report this to anyone?’ He said, ‘No. We had to deal with neutralizing the grenades. Why should I be dealing with condoms?’”
Many interviewed said that they didn’t forward the evidence they had photographed on their personal phones. “For example, pictures including very serious indications of sexual offenses, not passed on for fear of violating the victim’s privacy,” says Bitton. A senior Zaka official, who was present at the massacre scene, said he had a whole gallery of pictures he’d taken on his phone that he didn’t know what to do with.”
“A lieutenant colonel told me that he saw a woman tied to a pole, naked from the hips up. When I asked him what he did, he told me that he took her off the pole and completely covered her up. ‘It was important for me to put an end to her denegation, and certainly not document her in this horrific condition.’ I understand the compassion by which he was guided, but that shouldn’t negate the importance of documentation, as long as there are clear and ethical guidelines as to how to do it.”
From these examples, we learn of the lack of readiness for terrorism that incorporates sexual violence – not just in the field, but afterward too, at Camp Shura. “Naked, or partially naked, bodies were showing up at Shura, and no one documented it,” says Bitton. “At Shura, they photographed operational injury. They didn’t, for example, photograph bruising adjacent to sexual organs.”
“The thought of sexual assault didn’t cross our minds,” she says. “We just opened up the top part of the body bags. On the second or third day, a Zaka guy rolled in a body in a cart. Helping him bring it in, I said, ‘There’s something strange here.’ I thought there was another body inside. We then removed the body bag and saw that the pelvis was very clearly broken. This is how we understood that sexual assaults had occurred.”
“We suddenly realized that burning the houses and bodies or shooting the sexual organs was, in part, means to conceal the sexual assaults. Pramila Patten (United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, who came to Israel in January and then compiled a report concluding that sexual assaults by Hamas had indeed occurred), confirmed there had many gunshots at sexual organs, mainly but not only, of women.”
In their report, Bitton and her partners present new perceptions. Firstly: the obstacles faced in collecting and documenting evidence of sexual offenses, are rooted in this being a totally different kind of attack. And secondly: it may well happen again.
What do you feel this report contributes? “It has two important aspects. Firstly: casting light on the horrific sexual offenses committed on October 7. Secondly: addressing the challenges faced by first respondents arriving at the scene of such a huge incursive terrorist attack, who are busy dealing with other issues like saving lives, fighting, and obviously not collecting the facts required to prove sexual offenses.
Link: Hamas’ sexual crimes: Uncollected evidence come to light

How Israel and Lebanon can stop the slaughter: Another ceasefire is bound to fail, by Shany Mor with Unherd

In the Middle East, transitions between US presidential administrations are often times of bold attempts at diplomacy. For Israel and Lebanon, the coming weeks will be no different. The outgoing Biden team will seek to have an impact on the war.
Across the West, diplomats and experts have settled on a consensus for solving the ongoing Arab-Israeli war — one that reveals exactly why international diplomatic efforts have consistently failed. At its core, this approach focuses on restoring the very ceasefire conditions which Lebanon and Hezbollah violated last year, while avoiding any mention of even the desirability of peace — something Lebanon would benefit from more than any other party.
According to the Quai d’Orsay and the State Department, the formula for ending the war merely requires punching in the four-digit PIN code 1701. That, of course, is UN Security Council resolution 1701, the one that ended the last war back in 2006. The resolution included several clear obligations for all parties. Israel was to withdraw from Lebanese territory. Hezbollah was to move all its forces north of the Litani River, creating a buffer zone where the only permitted armed forces would be those of the UN peacekeeping force (UNIFIL) and the Lebanese Army (LFA). UNIFIL was to monitor and enforce these deployments. And Hezbollah was supposed to be decommissioned as an armed force inside sovereign Lebanese territory.
The first measure, Israeli withdrawal, was implemented within days of the resolution’s passage. The others were not.
This consensus around the indeterminate and obsolete Security Council resolution tells, in short, the entire story of the failure to resolve this conflict. If there is one thread running through nearly every diplomatic effort of the last eight decades, it is a firm commitment to the idea that any party that launches a war against Israel and is then defeated is entitled to a restoration of the conditions it violently rejected when launching the war.
This unspoken normative commitment explains the iterations of final status plans presented to the Palestinian leadership after its rejection of statehood at Camp David and subsequent suicide bombing campaign of the early 2000s. It explains the insistence on pre-1967 armistice lines as the only legal basis for Israel’s border after 1967. It explains the curious exception to that norm regarding the refusal to recognise even the pre-1967 part of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. And it explains the cruel human experiment known as UNRWA, a refugee agency that, unlike any other refugee agency, exists not to rehabilitate refugees but rather to keep them in a permanent state of immiseration to maintain an irredentist claim against another country.
Such a norm has not featured in the post-war mediation of any other conflict, not before 1945 and not since. No one has ever seriously suggested creating a kind of sportsman’s mulligan as an international diplomatic norm for other conflicts for this very reason. It’s not hard to see why this might be the case. If the international community extended a line of insurance to other aggressors, which promised that launching wars could bring gains with victory but no losses with defeat, there would be a lot more wars.
But what’s even more notable than the warped consensus around 1701 is the absence of any mention of making peace between the two neighboring states. Nowhere is the establishment of normal diplomatic relations between Lebanon and Israel even mentioned as a long-term goal.
Just before the US election, France hosted an “International Conference in Support of Lebanon’s People and Sovereignty”, where $1 billion in aid was pledged and where French President Macron claimed Israel was “sowing barbarism”. If there was any suggestion that Lebanon’s situation might have been improved by not firing rockets into Israel for the past 11 months, the participants were too polite to mention it. Nor was there any reckoning with Lebanon’s decision to cultivate an alternative armed force, larger than its own military, implicated in atrocities in Syria, and answerable to the Islamic Republic of Iran. The insistence of global actors, most notably the host country itself, on protecting Hezbollah and securing for it advantageous ceasefire arrangements in previous wars in 1996 and 2006 also went unmentioned.
And no one mentioned peace. Normal diplomatic relations between Lebanon and Israel wouldn’t mean that Lebanon agrees with everything Israel does. This is already the case for France as well as most of its allies. For that matter, it is also the case for Egypt and Jordan. It would just mean that there is an agreed border, a possibility for minimal economic cooperation, and a commitment to resolve disputes by negotiation. Good for Israel, to be sure. But even better for Lebanon.
Link: How Israel and Lebanon can stop the slaughter

Unsanction Israel, by Cole S. Aronson and Avi Bell in National Review

President-elect Donald Trump promises to abandon the Biden administration’s duplicity toward Israel and accommodation of Iran. An easy win for Trump and future ambassador Mike Huckabee is canceling sanctions against Israelis “for undermining peace, security, and stability in the West Bank,” in the words of an executive order from February of this year.
America almost never sanctions other democracies, even to resolve disputes affecting hundreds of millions of people — Indian discrimination against Muslims, for instance, or low European defense spending. Americans respect the desire of other self-governing peoples to govern themselves, rather than to obey coercive dictates from Washington. If America cannot peacefully persuade another democracy to change its ways, America lives with it.
America sometimes uses sanctions to help functioning democracies fight crime syndicates, like the Italian mafia or the Japanese yakuza. And recently, America sanctioned two allies — Germany and Turkey — for aiding an enemy state: Russia. Notably, German participation in the Nord Stream pipeline and Turkish weapons purchases from Moscow were sanctioned under a statutory authority — the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act — expressly made to fight American enemies. The sanctions against Israelis — authorized by the much broader International Emergency Economic Powers Act — aren’t about anything of the sort. Israel is itself fighting America’s enemies, not helping them.
American sanctions policy now classes Israel with the world’s worst regimes, including Iran, a state sponsor of terror officially dedicated to Israel’s destruction. But actually, in at least one way, American sanctions now treat Israel worse than Iran: by targeting the speech of its citizens.
The sanctions regime could even target Americans. One of us is co-counsel in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Biden’s executive order on behalf of Texans for Israel, a 501(c)(3) defending the rights of Jews to live in the West Bank. The Biden administration views the West Bank’s Jewish residents as obstructions to a two-state solution. Most importantly for Texans for Israel, anyone who funds legal defense — or even buys groceries — for Jews sanctioned for residing in the West Bank is himself sanctionable.
The Biden sanctions are a new backdoor method for punishing activities protected by the First Amendment. By marketing the sanctions as a way to stabilize the West Bank, the Biden administration converts everyone’s speech into a threat to American security interests. This could be done by any administration for any purported security interest at all. Any person, American or not, could be accused of “indirectly” destabilizing a hot spot and have their bank accounts frozen without due process.
The only Palestinian entity the Biden administration has sanctioned is something called Lions’ Den, a cluster of loosely affiliated cells manned by members of established groups such as Hamas and the PA security forces. But really, it’s too generous to say Lions’ Den has even been sanctioned at all. Lions’ Den has no bank accounts and little institutional existence beyond pamphlets and graffiti.
West Bank Palestinians have committed hundreds of terrorist attacks and killed at least 20 Israelis since October 7, 2023. But the Biden administration and Israel’s critics haven’t confirmed a single West Bank Palestinian death from so-called settler violence in the same period. We stress confirmed — completed investigations into incidents in which West Bank Palestinians died haven’t determined settlers to be responsible, except when deadly force was used against Palestinians committing crimes or terrorism.
Nearly all alleged incidents of West Bank Jews committing violence against Arabs involve property crimes — stealing sheep, breaking fences — or intimidation: youths yelling at Bedouin to leave an encampment. Such activity is wrong. But whatever ails the West Bank, it isn’t the low-grade thuggery common to regions where antagonistic groups live cheek by jowl.
Settler violence is so infrequent that the Biden administration has struggled to find perpetrators to sanction. Instead, it has sanctioned persons never accused of violence or already dealt with by the Israeli authorities.
Americans should join with Israelis in opposing this intervention in Israeli public life — to protect their own free-speech rights, and to support an American security partner. Meanwhile, if the incoming Trump administration wants to address West Bank violence, it can start by sanctioning the Palestinian Authority, which has never been punished for its 30-year career of funding and encouraging Palestinians to murder Jews.
Link: Unsanction Israel

Lebanon’s Day After by Lebanese author Maha Yahya with Foreign Affairs

On October 8, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the Lebanese people to rise up against Hezbollah, giving them a stark choice: “Stand up and take your country,” he said, “before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.”
Netanyahu’s speech and Araghchi’s visit highlighted just how much Lebanon had become the center of the proxy war between Iran and Israel. It is the place where the two countries are most outwardly tussling over the Middle East’s regional order. Lebanon’s role in their fight has, accordingly, received substantial international attention.
Critically, the power-sharing system through which Lebanon is governed means that the state is also highly fractured along sectarian lines, with political parties representing different communities. The fighting with Israel is worsening these divisions. The massive destruction and suffering could, in time, turn the country’s Sunni and Christian populations against its Shiite Muslims, who make up about a third of the population and are Hezbollah’s base of support. It is also unsettling Lebanon’s domestic political balance. Lebanese people and parties that have long resented Hezbollah’s hegemony are sensing a unique opportunity to reshape Lebanon’s political dynamics more in their favor.
For Lebanon, this makes for a dangerous moment. The country’s factions have a history of settling their differences through violence, as the terrible 15-year Lebanese civil war attests. But the country can avoid a new outburst of civil unrest if its factions, Hezbollah included, initiate a national dialogue that advances a path forward and an inclusive vision for the country. If nothing else, these groups should all share an interest in stabilizing their country’s institutions. And they need support from the international community—in part to stop Israel’s brutal attacks.
On October 29, the Israeli army announced that it had achieved its military goals in Lebanon. And yet it has not withdrawn, because Israel’s war objectives seem to have changed. Israel’s original reason for invading Lebanon was to allow displaced Israeli citizens to go home. And now, instead of simply wanting its residents to return, Netanyahu is promising a new regional order: to change “the strategic reality in the Middle East,” as he put it at the end of October. To do so, Israel wants to break the Iranian regime’s network of allies and proxies—the so-called axis of resistance—of which Hezbollah is a central component. That means that in the absence of outside pressure and a cease-fire deal, Israel may continue fighting in Lebanon for at least the near future.
Israel is not the only force driving up tensions between Lebanon’s religious groups. Hezbollah also bears responsibility. The organization has wielded outsize influence in Lebanon, and it has engendered resentment for its expanding role in regional conflicts, especially in Syria. It has also earned widespread ire for its willingness to deploy military force and political capital within the country to protect its interests and preserve the status quo.
The group’s power has been a long-standing issue. After Israel withdrew from the southern part of Lebanon in 2000, leaving places it had occupied for 22 years, many Lebanese hoped that Hezbollah would disarm. But it refused, insisting that it needed its weapons to resist Israel. (Critically, both Iran and Syria did not want the group to disarm, either.) Hezbollah has since used this arsenal to fight against Israel, including in a bloody 2006 war. Yet it also used its military strength to intimidate other groups in Lebanon, and indeed the Lebanese state. According to the findings of an international tribunal at The Hague, the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, in 2005, was perpetrated by Hezbollah members. The organization was believed to have been responsible for a string of other political assassinations of prominent politicians and intellectuals. Since 2019, Hezbollah has played an active role in obstructing reform and protecting the status quo. And although all of Lebanon’s political parties benefited from the port of Beirut’s poor governance and accountability structures, which allowed corruption to flourish, some suspected that Hezbollah was involved in storing over 2,000 tons of ammonium nitrate there, which led to the 2021 explosion. It subsequently blocked an investigation into the incident, intensifying anger against the party and further deepening sectarian tensions. These tensions materialized in localized shootouts with Sunnis, Druze, and Christian communities.
To prevent the violence on the Israeli-Lebanese battlefield from ricocheting internally, Lebanon’s parties will need to cooperate and come to some kind of road map for putting the country back on track. They need to immediately elect a president, appoint a new prime minister, and set up an emergency government—one designed to initiate an inclusive and broad-based political dialogue on Lebanon’s trajectory and on rebuilding state institutions, as well as areas devastated by the conflict. This dialogue must also feature key members of Lebanon’s politicized civil networks, as well as the country’s main activists, who represent important currents within Lebanese society.
The dialogue must also pave the way for Lebanon to finally implement the Taif agreement. The deal created an intricate set of power-sharing mechanisms. It also called for the state’s militias to dissolve. But with the approval of the president of Lebanon, Hezbollah retained its arms. Today, in the aftermath of the current war, Hezbollah’s arsenal is a topic of even greater contention within the country. To get Hezbollah to disarm, however, Lebanon needs a national defense strategy that integrates the group’s forces into the state’s army. Such a dialogue would build on the 2012 Baabda Declaration, agreed to by Hezbollah and all of Lebanon’s other key political parties, which calls on the Lebanese to “eschew local block politics and regional and international conflicts” as well as “to avoid the negative repercussions of regional tensions and crises” and to respect resolution 1701. An inclusive dialogue about these issues would assure Hezbollah and, with them, the broader Shiite community. It could mitigate Hezbollah’s worst impulses as the group adjusts to new realities.
The outside world will have to be involved in fostering such conversations, given that an end to the conflict in Lebanon will likely come as part of a broader regional settlement involving France, Iran, Israel, the United States, and key Arab countries such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and possibly the United Arab Emirates. Right now, cease-fire negotiations still have significant points of contention related to upholding Lebanese sovereignty while ensuring that Hezbollah does not rearm. A U.S.-drafted Israeli-Lebanese agreement, leaked to the Financial Times, reads more like a diktat of complete surrender from a Lebanese perspective. According to its terms, Lebanon would implement UN resolution 1701 alone, leaving Israel free to continue conducting flyovers and bombings and to enter the country at will. An annex associated with the document would provide U.S. guarantees to Israel that it could continue bombing Lebanon whenever it felt that resolution 1701 was being violated.
Link: Lebanon’s Day After

Antisemitism

Israel’s Comically Inconsistent Critics, by Seth Mandel in Commentary Magazine

Critics of Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza, especially those in the media, really need to settle on a complaint. Too often they are effectively arguing with each other, though unintentionally. To read the daily newspapers is to see Israel accused of mutually exclusive sins.
Take the fights over humanitarian aid and postwar governance in Gaza. Today’s New York Times carries a story on the fact that an aid convoy of 109 trucks was hijacked and looted over the weekend. Only 11 of the trucks made it to their destination.
Who’s to blame? Well, we know the one group that isn’t looting convoys is the IDF. Miraculously, the IDF is also the one at fault, according to the press. “Aid agencies have said for months that woefully inadequate food supplies have led to looting, hoarding and profiteering, exacerbating the shortages,” the Times explains. That is, when food is let into Gaza, it gets stolen, usually by Hamas. This means if there are starving Gazans it is most likely Hamas that is starving them.
Just to review: Israel let in a convoy of over 100 aid trucks. Nearly 100 of them were looted. Had the convoy been 150 trucks, they would… not have been looted? It begins to sound like a riddle: How many trucks must an aid convoy be before Hamas chooses not to loot it?
And when it’s not Hamas looting the supplies, it’s still Israel’s fault. “Gaza is basically lawless,” a UN coordinator tells the Washington Post. “There is no security anywhere. Israel is ‘the occupying power,’ he said, so ‘this is on them. They need to make sure that the area is protected and secured.’”
The Post, in fact, makes a provocative accusation: that Israel is looking the other way as local gangs are becoming bolder in areas controlled by the IDF. Says the Post: “The thieves, who have run cigarette-smuggling operations throughout this year but are now also stealing food and other supplies, are tied to local crime families, residents say. The gangs are described by observers as rivals of Hamas and, in some cases, they have been targeted by remnants of Hamas’s security forces in other parts of the enclave.”
The problem, according to the Post and the UN, is that Israel is trying to crush Hamas. Local families are trying to take the reins from Hamas, and Israel stands accused of letting them steal cigarettes.
Is Israel exercising too much control over Gaza while at the same time not enough control over Gaza? I don’t think so. The complaints sound a lot like pleas to let Hamas remain in control of Gaza. The Times and the Post think the Palestinians are ungovernable except by foreign Iranian imperial forces, apparently. It’s an Orientalist version of Homo Sovieticus—the authoritarian-seeking servile Russian.
The solution is not to let Hamas finish what it started. It is to finish Hamas. Until then, let the Times and the Post argue with each other till they’re blue in the face, while Israel does its job.
Link: Israel’s Comically Inconsistent Critics

Unfulfilled Promise, by Adam Gregerman in Tablet Magazine

Pope Francis has called for an investigation to determine if Israel’s operation in Gaza constitutes genocide, according to a new book published for the Catholic Church’s jubilee year. “According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide,” the pope said in excerpts published Sunday by the Italian daily La Stampa.
What makes the inflammatory statements in the pope’s book especially disturbing is that they follow on remarks by the pope that appear to demonize Jews even more broadly and which are contrary to teachings of the Church. Pope Francis’ prior Letter to Catholics of the Middle East on the first anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel from Gaza provoked widespread confusion and consternation among Jews and Catholics. While he has spoken regularly about the attack and the fighting that erupted in its wake, his inclusion in the letter of a citation of John 8:44 to denounce the evils of war was to many inexplicable.
The pope cannot and does not separate the Jewish-Catholic relationship from the Israel-Hamas war. Francis has spoken often and highly personally about Jewish-Catholic relations and emphasized his commitment to deepening the connection between the two long-estranged communities. He has celebrated the remarkable changes that started with the Second Vatican Council, noting that “enemies and strangers have become friends and brothers” (10/28/15). Building upon the admirable endeavors of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XV, he has endorsed profound theological changes in Catholic teachings about Judaism and expressed sadness over Catholics’ past misdeeds against Jews (e.g., Evangelii Gaudium 248). Relevant here in particular are the popes’ expressions of support for the State of Israel (especially following the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and the Holy See in 1993) and peacemaking endeavors for the region, which Francis has continued. He was warmly welcomed by national leadership during his visit to Israel in 2014 and emphatically insisted “the State of Israel has every right to exist in safety and prosperity” (10/28/15).
Speaking to a Jewish audience in Rome, he said Catholics should “always maintain the highest level of vigilance [against hostility toward Jews], in order to be able to intervene immediately in defense of human dignity and peace” (1/17/16). He insists here on an active stance, alert to such threats, “lest we become indifferent” (1/27/20). Responding to a letter from Jewish scholars written in November 2023 expressing deep concern over “the worst wave of antisemitism since 1945,” he says the Oct. 7 attack against Israel in particular reminds him that the promise “never again” remains relevant and must be taught and affirmed anew (2/2/24). Likewise, the Church’s commitment to opposing antisemitism remains firm. Because of the “path that the Church has walked with you,” he replied, it “rejects every form of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, unequivocally condemning manifestations of hatred towards Jews and Judaism as a sin against God.”
Francis’ statements following Oct. 7, 2023, are therefore disappointing on multiple levels. First, he does not fulfill his commitment to vigorously and publicly oppose antisemitism and anti-Judaism. By ignoring central aspects of the conflict, such as the motivations of the combatants, he actually undercuts his promise of vigilance and resistance against all such forms of hatred. Second, his view of the war is not constructive. Desiring to move Catholic theology away from just war theory and toward a nascent so-called just peace theory, he offers little practical or moral guidance in the present Israel-Hamas war. Instead, he misrepresents the nature of the conflict and simplistically presents highly complex and nuanced situations in service of his a priori views on war in general. While it would be unreasonable to expect him to become a partisan in the conflict or to dig deeply into the nature of the opposition Israel is facing, he has failed to consider the need for military self-defense or to assess whether antisemitic hatred of Jews—an explicit concern of his—lies behind any of the aggression and rhetoric against Israel.
Francis’ sweeping indictment of all wars, regardless of how or why they are fought, buttresses his claim that violence is inherently self-defeating (“always, always, always a defeat”)—a ruse orchestrated by those who want to increase suffering and death. There can be no justifiable military action, for what lurks behind claims that war is just is selfishness and greed: “What is really at stake [in war] are the power struggles between different social groups [and] partisan economic interests” (6/7/24). These, he argues, are what “really” prompt wars and conflict. As an example, he says war serves no goal but the enrichment of those who sell weapons. No people or country can presumably decide rationally and appropriately to employ force, for they are certain to suffer a net loss. “The only ones to gain [in war] are arms manufacturers” (11/19/23). They “profit the most” (4/24/24).
Francis’ thinking seems constrained by outdated assumptions about the parties to a conflict. He speaks as if he is commenting on a conflict between two warring nation-states. He addresses his comments to both parties equally (again, without naming Hamas), asking for a cease-fire and the release of hostages (10/11/23, 12/10/23, 6/7/24, 9/15/24). However, it is clear that his comments are actually relevant for and directed almost entirely at Israel. For example, in pleading for an end to fighting, he appeals to law (“international humanitarian law”), our shared humanity (“the defence of human dignity”), and practical political goals (1/8/24). These are couched in language suitable for a modern democracy such as Israel, which, at least in theory, aspires to legal and moral behavior. However, this imbalance reveals his misunderstanding of the nature of Hamas.
For example, Hamas’ recent official video bluntly says, “O Lord … let us kill your enemies, the Jews.” Likewise, the language of other aggressors is viciously antisemitic and anti-Jewish. The Houthis’ slogan illustrates this as well: “God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, A Curse Upon the Jews, Victory to Islam.” Hezbollah’s charter says its goal is Israel’s “final obliteration from existence.” Former leader Hassan Nasrallah spoke of Jews in terms borrowed from medieval antisemitism and anti-Jewish Quranic surahs (e.g., 82). Iran, the backer of these organizations, has made hatred of Israel and Jews a fundamental aspect of state policy since 1979 and, like Hezbollah, undertakes terror attacks against Jews throughout the world. Though sometimes these opponents insist they only hate Zionists or Israelis, not Jews, their actions and discourse indicate otherwise. Expressions of vicious hostility toward Jews, the use of traditional anti-Jewish tropes, and annihilationist threats of destruction of the only Jewish state are ubiquitous.
This context is directly relevant to Francis’ comments on and understanding of the Israel-Hamas war. Francis, with rare exceptions, ignores or minimizes the nature of the threats faced by Israel. While he usually speaks generally and succinctly about world events, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict consistently gets not only more attention than any other topic but typically occupies the first place in most of his reviews of international conflicts.
Without any military capabilities, all a pope has is his moral stature, and this current pope, who is widely respected, speaks with great authority on diverse moral questions. It is for this reason that his statements are so puzzling and undermine the admirable stances to which he has committed himself and the Church.
Francis harshly and regularly denounces terrorism (in the usual sense of the term) when looking at other parts of the world (e.g., an attack on innocent civilians in Kerman, Iran). He is also sensitive to the religious aspects of terrorist violence, especially for minority religious groups (1/6/24). However, when he mentions terrorism in the context of the Israel-Hamas war, he always lumps it in with other actions (such as “terrorism and war” [noted above, from 12/17/23] or “terrorism and extremism” [10/11/23, 1/8/24]). He never notes the distinctive features of terrorism nor the labeling of Hamas—the main aggressor in Gaza—as a terrorist organization. He obfuscates the deep moral divide between these two terrible but profoundly different acts.
Why does Francis fail to live up to the moral and historical commitments to Jews that he emphatically endorses? Does the appearance of anti-Judaism in the context of a war explain his silence? Perhaps he prefers to speak out against hatred of Jews only when Jews are exclusively victims.
Do the terrible losses suffered by Palestinians make his concern for Jews moot? That would undermine the seriousness with which he speaks about the Jewish-Catholic relationship and suggest he has only finite reserves of compassion or imbalanced sympathies.
Link: Unfulfilled Promise

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

Israel Update: November 24 (day 415)