Nov 28, 2024

I would like to wish you all a happy Thanksgiving. I am truly grateful for the support I have received in putting this update together and more importantly, for standing alongside of the Jewish people and the state of Israel in this fight of good versus evil. I hope you find the update resourceful and please feel free to share this with your friends and family. They can easily subscribe via the link below.

Thank you and Am Israel Chai (the people of Israel live)

The Ceasefire Deal

On Tuesday (Wednesday 4 AM Israel time), a ceasefire came into effect. The newly-signed deal was facilitated by the United States and France, and required the agreement of Israel, Hezbollah, Lebanon and the United Nations.

All fighting between Israel and Hezbollah will cease for a at least a 60-day period, including an end both to Hezbollah attacks on Israel and Israeli attacks in Lebanon
Both sides will recognize UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War. This means that the Lebanese Army will be the only armed group in southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah will redeploy to the north, beyond the Litani River. This significantly hampers their ability to attack Israel.
As Israel gradually redeploys its troops and positions in southern Lebanon, it will be replaced by the Lebanese Army, which will also assume control of all roads and passages leading to the country’s border area with Israel.
Israel and Lebanon will maintain the right to self-defense.
Any sale, supply or production of weapons in Lebanon will be under the sole supervision of the Lebanese Army, meaning that Hezbollah cannot rearm.
All unauthorized weapons production facilities and military bases in Lebanon will be dismantled and all unauthorized weapons will be confiscated.
Israel and Lebanon will present reports of any infractions of these obligations to an international committee and to UNIFIL (the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon).

Map accompanying US-brokered Israel-Lebanon cessation of hostilities announcement. *Credit: Times of Israel*

In addition, a parallel deal (a “side note”) was written up as a letter of guarantee from the US to Israel. It states that:

The US recognizes Israel’s right to act against all threats emanating from within Lebanon’s territory.
Therefore, Israel maintains the right to operate at any time against any Hezbollah infractions in the southern part of Lebanon. In other parts of the country, Israel will maintain the right to operate against the development of potential threats. If the Lebanese government and its armed forces do not deal with those threats. Israel will inform the US before taking any such action.
Israel and the US agree to share with the Lebanese Army all intelligence information regarding Hezbollah infractions of the main agreement.
The US is committed to cooperating with Israel to halt Iran’s efforts at destabilization in Lebanon, including preventing weapons transfers.
Israeli Air Force flights over Lebanon will be conducted only in order to gather intelligence and shall not break the sound barrier.
Read the full text of The Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire deal

Analysis of the Ceasefire Deal

A Confused and Confusing Cease-Fire by Noah Rothman in the National Review

The problem with this arrangement is that Israel was never at war with the Lebanese government. It embarked on a campaign of hostilities against Hezbollah, a distinct terrorist entity over which Beirut has limited influence. The goal of the Israeli government’s pivot to the northern front in the wars inaugurated by the 10/7 massacre was to degrade Hezbollah’s capacity to project force across the Israeli border so that the tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by terrorist rocket and mortar fire could return home.
The deal, which treats Hezbollah as an adjacent third party to the conflict, compels it to end its armed presence near Israel and relocate its heavy weapons north of the Litani. That’s a familiar demand — one that is codified in the tragically unenforced United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701. Perhaps that’s why the terrorist entity does not seem all that displeased by recent developments. “Hassan Fadlallah, a senior Hezbollah official and member of parliament, told Reuters on Tuesday that the group will remain active after its war with Israel ends,” CNN reporters wrote.
“The withdrawal of forces now, and the dynamic that will be created, will make it difficult for us and will make it easier for Hezbollah to regroup,” wrote Benny Gantz, leader of the Israeli opposition and onetime member of Netanyahu’s unity wartime government. “We will not accept an arrangement that will not provide full protection for our residents,” said Gabi Naaman, head of a council of mayors of northern Israeli towns.
As one Israeli reporter, Yossi Yehoshua, observed, for Israel to pull back now “is not a victory and certainly not a complete victory.” The peace agreement, as these critics see it, represents Israeli capitulation in the war it was prosecuting so adroitly.
Even though the Israeli public is split on the value of a diplomatic settlement to the conflict with Hezbollah, the Netanyahu government is not expected to collapse as a result of this agreement. It is, therefore, “something of a political victory,” according to one Israeli political analyst. That remains to be seen.

Hezbollah’s Cease-Fire Is a Victory for Israel by the WSJ Editorial Board

Israeli hard power has secured what 11 months of soft words from Biden envoys could not: Hezbollah’s agreement to abandon Hamas
Hezbollah had been deterring Israel. Even as the terrorists expanded their arsenal, fired on northern Israeli towns and ultimately forced more than 60,000 Israelis from their homes, Israel feared escalation. Hezbollah might launch thousands of missiles a day and topple buildings in Tel Aviv. The threat of an Oct. 7-style raid on the Galilee loomed.
But once Israel took the initiative with air strikes and daring sabotage, Hezbollah couldn’t deliver on its threats. Israel suffered little damage after it killed Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and tore through its chain of command. Israel lost 80 soldiers, but the ground invasion cleared weapons stores and tunnels in the border villages.
The test of the cease-fire isn’t whether Hezbollah is finished. It isn’t. Unlike in Gaza, whose borders Israel could surround, Israel’s objectives in Lebanon were limited. The test is whether Israelis return to their homes in the north.
If the deal survives the 60-day transition period, Israel will be able to greet the second Trump Presidency with Iran newly vulnerable, Hamas isolated in Gaza, and a major diplomatic opportunity for a deal with Saudi Arabia. Second-guessed at every point, Israel has fought through to its strongest strategic position in at least a decade.

FDD’s Rich Goldberg posts on X:

The U.S. position should also be clear going forward beyond January 20: Israel has our full support to engage any terror threat in Lebanon it deems a threat to its security. We will also need to use our leverage over Lebanon in ways we never have.
But take this moment to reflect on Israel’s position today as compared to a few months ago when Biden, Blinken and Hochstein tried to force Israel to surrender on all fronts. What a disaster that would have been. Just as they tried to stop Israel from going into Rafah, which was later proven to be a strategic imperative, they must live with knowing they tried to stop Israel from destroying the massive terror infrastructure along Israel’s border with Lebanon that the IDF has now exposed and destroyed. Not to mention Nasrallah, the senior leadership, extensive strategic capabilities, and a whole lot more money that has been incinerated.
It’s amazing that these men have learned absolutely nothing. They pressure Israel to make concessions even today, as Hezbollah and Iran are the weakened parties suing for peace, clearly also afraid of Donald Trump becoming president. But the terms of the ceasefire will demonstrate that it’s Iran and Hezbollah breaking all of their own previously established conditions for a ceasefire – not Israel.

The Institute for the Study of War writes that the ceasefire contains several elements that will prove difficult to implement

Hezbollah has abandoned several previously-held ceasefire negotiation positions, reflecting the degree to which IDF military operations have forced Hezbollah to abandon its war aims.
The decision to rely on the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and UN observers in Lebanon to respectively secure S. Lebanon & monitor compliance w/ the ceasefire agreement makes no serious changes to the system outlined by UNSC Res. 1701, which ended the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War.
The difficulties in implementing this deal mean that Hezbollah and Iran can recover from this setback if the United States and Israel fail to prevent Hezbollah and Iran from doing so.

[PODCAST] Call Me Back with Dan Senor: CEASEFIRE – with David Horovitz

Times of Israel/AIPAC write: Israel destroyed Hezbollah’s largest precision missile plant.

New details are emerging about the IDF’s major operation yesterday, before the ceasefire took effect, to destroy Hezbollah’s largest precision-guided missile factory and strike another major blow to Iran’s terror army in Lebanon.
In an operation lasting over four hours, the Israeli Air Force acted on years of intelligence to target and destroy the missile production site, which was built with Iran’s help more than 75 yards under a mountain near the Syrian border.
The site was used by Hezbollah to build precision surface-to-surface missiles and other weapons, as well as to store the guided missiles. The IDF says that Iranian operatives also worked at the facility, alongside Hezbollah members.
The military says that its proximity to Syria allowed Hezbollah to smuggle into Lebanon thousands of components to build the precision missiles, as well as for operatives to travel between Syria and Lebanon.
Before striking the site, the Air Force destroyed numerous terror strongholds nearby, including a central compound where Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Forces trained for their ‘Conquer the Galilee’ plan.
“This is the most strategic production infrastructure of the Hezbollah terror organization in Lebanon that was struck during the war. The strike was made possible by a precise intelligence file that was collected and built over the years,” the IDF says.

Situational Update

The Paul Singer Foundation writes: This weekend, the world was reminded of the deadly consequences of antisemitism, even in countries that have normalized with Israel. Rabbi Zvi Kogan, an Israeli-Moldovan citizen, was found dead in the United Arab Emirates, where he had been serving UAE Jews as a Chabad Rabbi. YNet adds: Mossad announced an “intensified investigation” after concluding that Kogan, who managed the kosher grocery store Rimon in Dubai, was likely kidnapped and murdered by an Uzbek terror cell allegedly directed by Iran to maintain plausible deniability.
Three suspects were arrested, the UAE Ministry of Interior announced, but not in the UAE, a Channel 12 report said Monday. The operation to find and arrest them spread across several countries, according to the report. Ynet reported Monday that they were likely extradited from Turkey to the UAE, without Israeli involvement.
The NYT says that Rabbi Kogan was “found dead.” The reality is that he was kidnapped and brutally murdered in a terror attack. Downplaying antisemitism in the media continues. Below is a screenshot I took of the NYT headline.

The Numbers

Casualties

1,796 Israelis have been killed including 806 IDF soldiers since October 7th (+2 IDF soldiers since Sunday)
The South: 379 IDF soldiers during the ground operation in Gaza have been killed (+1 since Sunday)
The North: 123 Israelis (77 IDF soldiers) have been killed during the war in Northern Israel (no change since Sunday)
- Sergeant First Class Yona Betzalel Brief (23) (above left), who was wounded on October 7th and has been in intensive care ever since, succumbed to his wounds.
- Sergeant Tamer Othman (21) (above right) fell during combat in Beit Lahiya, close to Jabalya in northern Gaza.
Additional Information (according to the IDF):
- 2,459 (+11 since Sunday) IDF soldiers have been injured during ground combat in Gaza, including at least 466 (+2 since Sunday) who have been severely injured.
- 5,434 (+20 since Sunday) IDF soldiers have been injured since the beginning of the war, including at least 794 (+2 since Sunday) who have been severely injured.

According to unverified figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, 44,249 (+257 since last Sunday) people have been killed in Gaza, and 104,746 (+848 since last Sunday) 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.

Humanitarian Aid

Source: Israel Humanitarian efforts – Swords of Iron

Rocket Alerts

Today in Israel, there was 1 rocket alert. Only 1. Lets hope that number goes to 0 immediately as result of the ceasefire deal.

Yesterday, there were 371 red alerts, and a total of 1,320 in the past week

+836 rocket alerts since Sunday
+169 UAV alerts since Sunday

Source: Rocket Alerts in Israel

What We Are Reading

[FEATURED] The Profundity of Evil, by commentator, cultural critic, and thinker Douglas Murray with The New Criterion

Over the last six decades, a certain phrase has metastasized and become such a cliché that it has been used to describe all the following things and more: the coronavirus pandemic, Republican moderates, neoliberalism, January 6, the death of George Floyd, the war in Gaza, and of course Donald Trump. That phrase is “the banality of evil,” and it has tripped off more tongues than the book it comes from has had readers—which is quite something. The more subtle thinkers even occasionally boast that they know where the quote comes from.
The overuse of any phrase is not the phrase’s fault, of course. Decent concepts can become clichés without damage to the truth of the concept.
And yet today, the idea of pure evil seems unavailable to many cultured minds. Perhaps it is too theological. Or perhaps we think such terms come from a metaphysics that we have abandoned as insufficiently subtle for our more enlightened times. Today, it is as though everything must be understood in some psychological or sociological terms—and may well be understandable if we can only study it enough.
This is, of course, a view popularly held among those members of the print and broadcast media who to this very morning cannot call members of Hamas or Hezbollah “terrorists” and prefer to fall back on weaselly terms like “fighters.” As though the terrorists are like anyone else who has pulled himself up by his bootstraps and tried to make his way in the world.
How strange it is that as we try—and largely fail—to recognize and stand up to the enemies of civilization in our time, one of the people who seems to have stripped us of our ability to do so should have been a German Jewish philosopher, who sat for a few days in a room with evil in its most concentrated form and decided to define it by everything it was not.
Link: The profundity of evil

Hezbollah’s terror army will rebuild—Israel’s test lies in first breach, writes Ron Ben-Yishai in Y-Net News

Successive Israeli governments, while seeking quiet, turned a blind eye to Hezbollah’s gradual entrenchment in southern Lebanon. Even as the terror group began launching rockets and stoking border tensions, Israel refrained from responding and certainly did not enforce the resolution on the Lebanese side.
UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force established to oversee the agreement, also failed. Intimidated by Hezbollah’s threats, it avoided confrontation and limited itself to ineffective reports of violations by both sides
The third entity tasked with enforcement, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), also did nothing, even as Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force erected observation posts just feet away from its bases. In practice, Hezbollah outmaneuvered everyone. Even as Israeli intelligence and the Northern Command gathered extensive evidence of Hezbollah’s military buildup disguised as civilian or environmental activity, no action was taken by any of the parties involved.
What Israel’s leadership—especially Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—needs is the resolve to stop tolerating such violations and to respond firmly. The real challenge lies in addressing the more subtle, long-term violations that Hezbollah has engaged in for years, building its infrastructure above and below ground, often concealed within Shiite villages near the border and surrounding wilderness.
Hezbollah has also flagrantly violated UN Resolution 1701 by constructing missile and drone launch bases across Lebanon, not just in the south. The difference is that in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah initially attempted to conceal these activities, particularly during periods when Israel refrained from conducting reconnaissance flights over Lebanese territory or when it accepted the deterrence equations imposed by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. These periods of inaction allowed the organization to grow into a heavily armed force, plotting operations like its “Galilee invasion plan.”
Under the emerging agreement, Israel would need to file a complaint with the international committee, led by the U.S. general and his peers from Britain, France and an Arab state. The committee would demand evidence, forcing Israel to disclose its intelligence-gathering methods and prove the violations weren’t merely innocent construction.
Lacking its own enforcement mechanism, the committee would then turn to the Lebanese Armed Forces—many of whose soldiers and commanders are Shiites—and UNIFIL, asking them to compel Hezbollah to dismantle the violations identified by Israel. It is highly unlikely these entities will be more effective now than they were between 2006 and 2023. Hezbollah will likely continue to intimidate them and act with impunity across Lebanon, leaving Israel to repeatedly seek committee approval and prove its claims while UNIFIL and the Lebanese Army fail to act.
The current agreement carries importance in two key areas. First, it ends the ongoing fighting, allowing the IDF to reorganize for more effective border defense while enhancing intelligence capabilities to detect Hezbollah violations as they occur. This would enable Israel to act swiftly against infractions while Hezbollah remains weakened and unable to mount a strong response.
The second, and perhaps most significant, advantage of the agreement is its potential to isolate Hamas in Gaza. It could serve as a model for a similar arrangement in the south, including the release of hostages and the establishment of an international and inter-Arab administration to replace Hamas as a civilian governing body.
Link: Hezbollah’s terror army will rebuild—Israel’s test lies in first breach

After UAE murder, global Jewry must be vigilant, by analyst Jason M. Brodsky in The Jewish Chronicle

The murder of Rabbi Zvi Kogan in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), allegedly by three Uzbek nationals, should serve as a warning shot for Jewish communities around the world.
Iran has been seeking to settle accounts with Israel after a series of losses in its proxy network and its own air defence system on Iranian soil. A heightened terror campaign against soft targets in the Jewish world is a very real threat.
Iran has an extensive apparatus for extra-territorial operations. It operates predominantly through two main nodes: the Ministry of Intelligence and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The Ministry of Intelligence has a history of operations in the UAE. For example, in 2020 its agents kidnapped Iranian dissident Jamshid Sharmahd from Dubai and renditioned him back to Iran where he was later tried and executed. In 2013, British-Iranian businessman Abbas Yazdi also vanished from Dubai.
Recent reporting suggests Kataib Hezbollah, an IRGC proxy that has an IRGC representative on its Shura Council, has been active in targeting Jewish centres in Uzbekistan.
Iran maintains connections with many other criminal gangs such as the Mocro Mafia, which it has used to harm its opponents in the past. The Emirati authorities arrested Redouane Taghi, its leader, in Dubai in 2019. A plot by Islamic State, which has presence in Central Asia, should also not be ruled out in Rabbi Kogan’s case given the arrests of three Uzbek nationals.
Tehran may opt to double down on such tools in retaliation for Israeli strikes as it remains exposed to military action with its air defences degraded and its broader proxy network, especially Hezbollah, weakened. Choosing terror campaigns is a safer way for Iran to attempt to re-establish deterrence than direct military strikes on Israel again
The UAE retains leverage over the Iranians as they value their economic access to Dubai and other cities. Washington and London should work closely with the UAE to ensure that Tehran is not allowed to use Emirati territory as a launchpad for terrorism. Rabbi Kogan’s murder was not only an attack on the State of Israel and the Jewish people, but also the UAE and the spirit of the Abraham Accords. A decisive response is necessary.
Link: After UAE murder, global Jewry must be vigilant

Why Netanyahu’s Ambition to Remake the Middle East Is Unlikely to Succeed by Shalom Lipner in Foreign Affairs

Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election could not have come at a better time for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. More than 13 months since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terrorist attack, Israel finds itself on a roll. Since the beginning of the year, Israel has assassinated much of the senior leadership of both Hamas and Hezbollah, decimated their ranks, and conducted precision strikes in Iran. At home, after seeing his approval rating hit rock bottom following October 7, Netanyahu has watched his popularity start to rebound.
Now Netanyahu and his government see a rare opportunity for a comprehensive realignment of the Middle East. Resisting calls for a truce, Netanyahu—with potent stimulus from his extreme right flank—is pledging to double down on his pursuit of “total victory,” however long that might take. In addition to continuing the Gaza war and laying the groundwork for a protracted Israeli security presence in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, this narrative involves imposing a new order on Lebanon; neutralizing Iran’s proxies in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen; and ultimately, eliminating the Islamic Republic’s nuclear threat.
This scheme is seductive and even carries a certain logic: after all, Trump is viewed in Jerusalem as a staunch patron of Israel who is far less concerned about international norms and institutions—and the need for restraint—than his Democratic predecessor. Moreover, the president-elect has already telegraphed plans to resume his “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran and prioritize the expansion of the Abraham Accords.
But these assumptions—both about what is possible through force of arms and the degree to which the Trump White House will back it—are dangerously overstated. Tactical battlefield successes, in the absence of political or diplomatic arrangements, cannot bring lasting security.
Trump is highly unpredictable, and Israel, having gambled on his support, could find itself isolated on the world stage.
Before the U.S. elections in November, these military gains came at the cost of growing friction with the United States. Although the Biden administration sustained Israel militarily, economically, and diplomatically—including a first-ever wartime visit to Israel by a U.S. president—it showed frequent disapproval of the way Israel was conducting the war, and U.S. President Joe Biden was often directly at odds with Netanyahu. There were continual clashes over the Netanyahu government’s lack of enthusiasm for cease-fire negotiations and its reluctance to expand the distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza. For the prime minister, an election victory by Vice President Kamala Harris portended even more tension with Washington, perhaps even growing limits on U.S. backing for Israel.
By contrast, Netanyahu and his allies envisage that the incoming Trump administration will bring unqualified U.S. support for Israel. That assumption has given new fuel to the most expansionist—or even messianic—aspirations of Israel’s ascendant right wing, which hopes that, once the IDF obliterates its adversaries, all the naysayers might recognize the futility of trying to defeat Israel and, instead, pursue peace with it. Israel will strengthen its grip over the West Bank and, according to some of Netanyahu’s coalition partners, Gaza. Everybody—or at least all the important regional players—will live happily ever after.
Many Israelis anticipate that the new U.S. administration—directed by a man whom Netanyahu once crowned “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House”—will support their country unconditionally. Trump’s nomination to his foreign policy team of stalwart advocates of Israel, such as Senator Marco Rubio for secretary of state, former Governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel, and Representative Elise Stefanik as ambassador to the United Nations, adds ballast to that notion.
Outside the United States, Israeli officials are hopeful that—beyond a green light from Trump—they might face only minimal resistance from other capitals in their plans to ratchet up pressure on Iran. In August, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom warned Tehran and its allies that they would hold them responsible if Iran chose to escalate further. Other reassuring signs have come from Israel’s regional partners, which are also threatened by Iran-sponsored aggression. Israeli officials have taken note of the fact that the Abraham Accords have withstood the past year of war, and they have followed persistent talk between U.S. and Saudi principals suggesting that Riyadh could eventually be persuaded to enter a deal.
But Netanyahu and his allies are underrating the myriad problems that undermine these grand ambitions. For one thing, Iran and its surrogates will not disappear. Already, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis are demonstrating resilience and beginning to regroup. They have substantial leftover firepower and remain capable of pounding Israel daily with hundreds of rockets, ballistic missiles, and drones that kill Israelis and destroy their property. Even as these groups fail to overwhelm Israel’s air defenses, they have succeeded in wreaking general havoc, constantly scrambling Israelis to bomb shelters, and disrupting the flow of Israelis’ lives. Dreams that these factions might imminently capitulate are fantastical. And the expectation that Iranians, Lebanese, Palestinians, and Yemenis are going to rise up immediately and throw off the yoke of their brutal oppressors seems more like wishful thinking than informed analysis.
After all, Trump ended his first term hurling epithets at Netanyahu, and he has made it abundantly clear that he has no desire for Israel to drag on hostilities. When the two leaders met in Florida in July, Trump told Netanyahu to complete the war before Biden leaves office. Backers of Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank are among Trump’s biggest supporters, but they may soon be reminded that he feels little obligation to their agenda. It is worth recalling that “Peace to Prosperity”—Trump’s short-lived 2020 Israeli-Palestinian peace plan—countenanced the eventual creation of a Palestinian state and was assailed by settler leaders for “endangering the existence of the State of Israel.”
Notwithstanding its battlefield triumphs, Israel faces genuine peril. Its ability to successfully end the current conflicts will depend heavily on how Netanyahu manages relations with the next U.S. president. Untethered to any considerations of reelection, Trump may be even more ready to follow his most transactional instincts. Netanyahu will need to walk a high wire, circumventing any grudges that Trump may still harbor and moving adeptly to bring their goals into alignment. Ironically, Netanyahu’s most formidable obstacle could prove to be the same right-wing parties that are keeping him in power.
The president-elect will be similarly frustrated to discover that making any headway with Saudi Arabia will be out of the question, probably for the duration of the current Israeli government. Smotrich and Ben-Gvir will never commit to paying the minimum price that Riyadh demands—some kind of pathway to Palestinian statehood. From their perspective, although the Abraham Accords are nice to have, nothing can compare with cementing Israeli control over the entire “land of the Patriarchs.” Moreover, Saudi Arabia may have very little inclination to antagonize Iran, as shown by the cordial reception given to Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, by Arab states—including Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, and Oman, as well as Saudi Arabia.
Netanyahu will have to read the tea leaves correctly. He needs to seize the moment and wind down Israel’s wars before they begin to cause more harm than good and—no less fatefully—create a rift with Trump. If Netanyahu can stand up to his coalition partners, he might still be able to end the conflicts and leave Trump the clean desk he asked for. But time is short.
Link: Israel’s Trump Delusion

Israel is Right to ‘Cancel’ the UNRWA, by Senior Research analyst Sean Durns with Providence

The United Nations,” Eleanor Roosevelt said shortly after its founding, “is our greatest hope for future peace.” The UN was birthed from the most cataclysmic war in modern history—a war in which the genocide of world Jewry was an animating feature of the West’s enemies. But nearly eight decades later the UN is a collaborator in another attempted genocide of Jews.
On November 4, 2024, the Israeli Foreign Ministry informed the UN that it was withdrawing from the 1967 agreement recognizing the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA).  The move came after the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, passed legislation to curtail the UNRWA’s operations in Israel, the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), and the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s decision to sever ties with UNRWA did not happen in a vacuum. The UNRWA is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Of the approximately 13,000 UNRWA employees in Gaza, Israeli security documents reveal that no fewer than 440 are active members of Hamas, 2,000 are registered Hamas operatives, and another 7,000 have family members who belong to the terrorist organization. On October 7, Hamas used UNRWA vehicles and facilities to carry out the attack and UNRWA employees helped murder, maim, and kidnap innocents.
In August, faced with insurmountable evidence, the UN itself conceded that no fewer than nine of its employees may have taken part in the attack. But as Richard Goldberg and David May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies noted, the UN’s admission was little more than a “whitewash” meant to “protect UNRWA’s funding” from members of Congress rightly outraged that American tax dollars are funding the mass murder of Israelis, Americans, and others. As Goldberg and May point out, “UNRWA is more than nine bad apples—it is rotten to the core.”
Nor is this the first documented instance of the UNRWA assisting Hamas. As the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) noted in the Washington Post in 2018, UNRWA employees have been caught praising anti-Jewish violence, and, per a 2015 U.N. investigation, the organization’s facilities were used by terrorist groups to launch and store rockets during the 2014 Israel-Hamas War. For years, the UNRWA’s employee unions have been dominated by members of terrorist groups, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. This evidence—including video footage of terrorists using UNRWA buildings during wars against Israel—has long been in the public domain. When Israel recently killed Hamas leader Yayha Sinwar, an UNRWA teacher’s ID was found on the terror chieftain’s body.
The UNRWA does not recognize Hamas as a terrorist group—this despite Hamas’s charter that calls for the destruction of Israel and the genocide of Jews. And it doesn’t do so for a simple reason: UNRWA shares these objectives.
Refugee agencies are meant to resettle refugees and to equip them for a better, and more peaceful, life. But the UNRWA is not about refugee resettlement; it is about perpetuating the victimhood of the descendants of Arab refugees from Palestine.
Estimates vary, but there were approximately 700,000 Arab refugees after the 1948 War, in which numerous Arab states tried and failed to destroy the fledgling Jewish nation at its rebirth. Now, the UNRWA counts more than 5 million “refugees” according to its own spurious definition. But as then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo revealed in 2021, fewer than “200,00 Arabs displaced in 1948 are still alive and most others are not refugees by any rational criteria.”
For years, the UNRWA’s curriculum of hate has been documented by nonprofit organizations like Palestinian Media Watch, UN Watch, CAMERA, IMPACT-se, and others, and has been highlighted in testimonies before the U.S. Congress, the EU, and elsewhere. Yet, UNRWA has refused to change.
As Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz recently said: “The UN was presented with endless evidence about Hamas operatives working at UNRWA and about the use of UNRWA facilities for terror purposes and nothing was done about it.” In fact, according to a recent UN Watch expose, in February 2017 the former head of UNRWA, Pierre Krahenbul, met with top operatives from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, telling them “we are one” and “no one can separate us.”
Link: Israel is Right to ‘Cancel’ the UNRWA

Antisemitism

Bret Stephens publishes a quarterly journal called SAPIR that I highly recommended subscribing to. This quarter’s focus is appropriately titled: The University. I will post select publications over the coming weeks that I feel are worth sharing, but I encourage you to read the entire journal.

Why HBCUs Are Key to Fighting Antisemitism: Mending the friendship between black and Jewish Americans by Dana White

There is something telling in the fact that the pathology of contemporary campus antisemitism we are now seeing was foreshadowed at Howard 30 years ago. Whether it is the drug epidemic, hip-hop culture, or antisemitism, black culture — the positive, the negative, and the neutral — forecasts the future of American culture. The sad truth is that anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment infiltrated certain HBCU campuses long ago, and black–Jewish relations have not recovered.
Arriving at Howard University during the height of the civil rights movement, my parents had professors who were Jewish — many of whom had fled the Nazis in the 1930s and ’40s and continued their scholarship at Howard and other HBCUs. They even had Jewish classmates who were kept out of predominantly white colleges and universities because of discriminatory quotas. My parents felt a sense of shared purpose with their Jewish peers, and it was on HBCU campuses that blacks and Jews worked together to dismantle Jim Crow and all forms of racial discrimination. My parents observed and benefited from the Jewish ethos of continually striving to improve the world, even at their peril.
Owing to the exodus of the black professional class and the broken promises of LBJ’s Great Society, the most vulnerable black Americans were susceptible to radicalization by militant groups such as the Black Liberation Army (BLA), a faction of the Black Panthers. The BLA promoted killing police officers and confiscating funds from capitalists and imperialists to support their revolution. This rhetoric formed the basis for Louis Farrakhan’s anti-Israel, antisemitic, Jew-hating platform. He fed the black community antisemitic tropes: Jews were responsible for the transatlantic slave trade; Jews controlled the economy, the government, and the press; Jews pulled the strings on black leaders. While it was often laced with antisemitic venom, the rebellious, empowering message that Farrakhan delivered captivated students who were the beneficiaries of the civil rights movement.
In the 1980s, HBCUs were havens for black excellence, but they became breeding grounds for revenge history or alternative narratives
As a result of these new facts and perspectives, my brother and other HBCU students were more open to messages casting Jews as the oppressor rather than the oppressed.
Outside the classroom, young men from the Nation of Islam sold Final Call, the Nation of Islam’s official newspaper. They distributed pamphlets criticizing the white man’s capitalist system — a system responsible for slavery, destroying black communities with drugs, and denying black men the educational and financial means to support their families. They maligned Jews as capitalist overlords who denied black men the ability to thrive in their communities. Before today’s progressives arrived on Ivy League campuses, Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, preaching at HBCUs, had already sown the seeds of discord and hatred for America, capitalism, and Jews.
However, it wasn’t just Farrakhan or the Nation of Islam that brought about this change. There was social and cultural drift that happened between blacks and Jews. Without quotas that once barred Jews from predominantly white colleges and universities, Jews no longer had to attend black colleges or graduate programs.
So how can HBCUs contribute to the fight against antisemitism? How can our communities reinvigorate the long-neglected black and Jewish alliance, address misunderstandings, and rebuild trust? How do we celebrate our past accomplishments and pursue future objectives together?
First, it is necessary to realize that most people under the age of 70, whether black or Jewish, have little or no knowledge of our respective communities’ long history of fighting racism and discrimination together. They certainly didn’t live it as my parents did. Some HBCUs including Dillard University in Louisiana, Voorhees University, and South Carolina State University offer classes on how HBCUs helped support Zionism and how Jews helped support the NAACP and other black civil rights organizations and efforts.
Education is the key. It is vital to establish chairs, fellowships, and scholarships in the name of Jewish civil rights pioneers such as Julius Rosenwald, Andrew Goodman, and Elie Wiesel at HBCUs. We should have libraries and buildings on campuses named in honor of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a close friend and ally of Martin Luther King Jr., to commemorate their bond and friendship in the struggle for human dignity in America.
Additionally, we need an integrated civil rights curriculum that showcases black leaders and highlights their allies and friends, such as Jack Greenberg, who represented Martin Luther King Jr. and second-chaired Thurgood Marshall in Brown v. Board of Education. Books like Kenneth Chelst’s Exodus and Emancipation should be required reading.
From the abolition of slavery through the civil rights movement to today, the Jewish community has remained committed to eliminating the scourge of discrimination wherever it appears. In America’s long struggle to achieve its highest ambition — equal justice under the law — whether it was abolishing slavery, rescinding Jim Crow laws, championing gay rights, or fighting anti-Asian hate, Jews have always been there, fighting for the rights of others.
We can honor the enduring partnership between the black and Jewish communities by establishing lasting endowments to celebrate our accomplishments in pursuing freedom, opportunity, and equality for all Americans.
Second, Jews need to help black people understand Jewish life and how being Jewish is different from being white.
We need more Jewish professors teaching at HBCUs. We need to create opportunities for black and Jewish students to interact and socialize with one another. There are many untapped opportunities for this. Washington, D.C., is home to not only two HBCUs but several universities with very sizeable Jewish populations. What about metro-area Shabbat dinners and barbeques hosted at different campuses? These events could be themed or otherwise designed to be both educational and social.
Today, the average HBCU student would probably not distinguish whites from Jews, except to note that Jews tend to have more wealth and influence than white people. Some would even consider Jews a greater threat to them based solely on that idea. This is troubling because it is unfounded, yet many HBCU students believe it to be true.
Students for Justice in Palestine, which boasts some 200 chapters, is active on the campuses of Howard University, Hampton University, and the Atlanta University Center, which includes Clark Atlanta, Spelman College, Morehouse College, and the Morehouse School of Medicine.
Third, HBCUs need consistent and equitable public funding. In September 2023, the U.S. secretaries of education and agriculture jointly sent letters to the governors of 16 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. They urged the governors to provide equal funding for the HBCU land-grant institutions in their states.
Link: Why HBCUs Are Key to Fighting Antisemitism

The U.N’s Anti-Israel ‘Genocide’ Purge: Alice Nderitu said Israel’s campaign in Gaza doesn’t meet the definition of genocide. She was fired. By the WSJ Editorial Board

The United Nations long ago lost credibility as a moral arbiter, but its assault on Israel is hitting a new low. On Wednesday the U.N. will refuse to renew the contract of Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the Kenyan who is the Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide.
She is being dismissed because she has stood firm in her belief that Israel’s war with Hamas isn’t genocide.
As a legal matter, establishing a pattern of violence as a genocide requires demonstrating intent. Israel’s campaign of self-defense doesn’t qualify. The war against Hamas has had many deaths, but Israel’s strategy is intended to dismantle a terrorist regime, not eliminate an ethnic group. The Jewish state has gone to great lengths to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties, even as Hamas uses civilians as shields so their deaths can be used as propaganda.
On Nov. 14 the U.N. Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices issued a report supporting accusations of genocide.
The committee is taking its cues from Austrian Volker Turk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, who has spent the past year assailing Israel. His claims are often echoed by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Israel’s critics. The committee is comprised of member states Malaysia, Senegal and Sri Lanka. Senegal and Malaysia are majority Muslim nations with a history of hostility to Israel.
Beyond Ms. Nderitu’s fate, the damage here includes defining genocide down. The word has become a weapon of political propaganda that will erode its moral authority when it’s needed to describe genuine horrors.
Ms. Nderitu may be out, but her refusal to endorse a lie in service of a political agenda has been a profile in courage. Can anyone with integrity survive at the U.N.?
Link: The U.N’s Anti-Israel ‘Genocide’ Purge

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 28 (day 420)