Situational Update

• Barak Ravid with Axios reports: An elite Israel Defense Forces unit conducted a highly unusual raid in Syria earlier this week and destroyed an underground precision missile factory that Israel and the U.S. claim was built by Iran, according to three sources briefed on the operation. Israeli airstrikes on Syria have increased since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel as cross-border conflicts between Hezbollah and Israel intensified. But the raid on Sunday was the first ground operation the IDF has conducted in recent years against Iranian targets in Syria. The destruction of the factory appears to be a significant blow to an effort by Iran and Hezbollah to produce precision medium-range missiles on Syrian soil. Two sources said Israel briefed the Biden administration in advance of the sensitive operation and the U.S. didn’t oppose it.
  • The Israeli special unit surprised the Syrian guards at the facility and killed several of them during the raid, but no Iranians or Hezbollah militants were hurt, one source said.
  • The special forces used explosives they brought with them in order to blow up the underground facility, including sophisticated machinery, from inside, two sources said.
  • The airstrikes were intended to prevent the Syrian military from sending reinforcements to the area, one source said.
• The Times of Israel reports: IDF declares Hamas’s Rafah Brigade defeated; no active cross-border tunnels found. The Hamas terror group’s Rafah Brigade has been decimated, at least 2,308 of its operatives have been killed by the Israel Defense Forces, and over 13 kilometers (8 miles) worth of tunnels have been destroyed, military officials told reporters in the Gaza Strip’s southernmost city on Thursday.
  • 203 separate but interconnected tunnels found in the Philadelphi Corridor so far
  • 9 tunnels stretched into Egyptian territory; they have reportedly all been blocked off, by Egypt or by Hamas itself, before or during the war
  • Most of the underground smuggling from Egypt to Gaza likely occurred during Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s reign (2012-2013); this enabled the establishment of huge munitions production plants, which Hamas used to boost its self-production capabilities using raw materials shipped in via Egypt and Israel
• According to the Times of Israel: “UNRWA staffer killed in West Bank raid was hurling explosives at troops. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said Friday that one of its employees was killed this week during an Israeli raid in the West Bank. The Israel Defense Forces later said he was throwing explosives at troops in the camp and was a known terror operative, issuing an English language statement accusing the agency of “not telling the full story.”
• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was said to have warned security chiefs during a strategic discussion on Thursday that Israel was facing a “large-scale confrontation” with Hezbollah in the north of the country, a possibility that he contended would not diminish the military pressure on Hamas in Gaza. According to Channel 13 news, Netanyahu believes that Israel is headed for an inevitable all-out confrontation with Hezbollah, as a diplomatic solution that could bring an end to the near-daily cross-border clashes with the Lebanese terror group has remained elusive.
  • YNet reports this evening: Israeli airstrikes hit Hezbollah arms depots deep in Lebanon. Israeli airstrikes hit Hezbollah arms depots deep in Lebanon, with additional strikes targeting seven southern sites in under an hour;

The Numbers

Casualties

• 1,670 Israelis dead including 709 IDF soldiers (342 IDF soldiers during the ground operation in Gaza: +3 since Wednesday)
  • Sergeant Major (Res.) Daniel Alloush and Sergeant Major (Res.) Tom Ish-Shalom were killed when their Blackhawk helicopter suffered a fatal crash during a landing in the Rafah area overnight. According to March Schulman, “the helicopter was conducting a rescue mission to evacuate a seriously wounded Israeli soldier. Onboard were members of the elite 669 rescue unit, responsible for extracting wounded Israeli soldiers and providing immediate medical care en route to the hospital. The crash was not the result of enemy action but was likely due to either pilot error or mechanical failure.”
  • Staff Sgt. Geri Gideon Hanghal, 24, was killed near the West Bank when a Palestinian truck driver rammed his fuel tanker into an army post adjacent to a bus stop at the Givat Asaf Junction.
• Additional Information (according to the IDF):
  • 2,280 (+9 since Wednesday) IDF soldiers have been injured during ground combat in Gaza, including at least 435 (+8 since Wednesday) who have been severely injured.
  • 4,441 (+10 since Wednesday) IDF soldiers have been injured since the beginning of the war, including at least 668 (+10 since Wednesday) who have been severely injured.
• According to unverified figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, 41,020 (no change Wednesday) people have been killed in Gaza, and 94,925 (no change since Wednesday) have been injured during the war.
  • We also encourage you to read this well documented piece from Tablet published in March: How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers
  • The Associated Press, an outlet with a demonstrated anti-Israel bias, conducted an analysis of alleged Gaza death tolls released by the Hamas-controlled “Gaza Health Ministry.” The analysis found that “9,940 of the dead – 29% of its April 30 total – were not listed in the data” and that “an additional 1,699 records in the ministry’s April data were incomplete and 22 were duplicates.”
• The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes official details on every civilian and IDF casualty.

Hostages (no change since Wednesday)

• [WATCH] The family of slain hostage Alex Lobanov authorized on Friday the publication of parts of the final video of him recorded by Hamas, giving a glimpse into the dire conditions he endured before being murdered by the terror group. In the 90-second, heavily edited video, Lobanov said the hostages are being held “in very very difficult circumstances. There are no basic supplies, like water, food, electricity and hygiene.” He called on the Israeli public to help his pregnant wife and two-year-old child make their voices heard.
• Ynet reports: Anat Angrest, the mother of soldier Matan Angrest who was kidnapped into Gaza on October 7, revealed a video of her son Saturday night during a protest in Tel Aviv. In the video, filmed in captivity, Matan is heard addressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in words that were likely dictated by his captors.
• There are currently 97 hostages taken on 10/7 currently in captivity in Gaza
• 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
  • 31 hostages are assumed to be dead and held in captivity
  • Thus, at most, 70 living hostages could still be in Gaza.
• Hamas is also holding 2 Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of 2 IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.

Watch

• Eitan Chitayat sat down with five bright, fierce and inspiring Jewish American college students. He writes:
  • “Nathan. Arielle. Yasmeen. Noah. Ava. We talked about what they went through on and since October 7th, the rabid antisemitism they’ve experienced on American campuses, the silencing of their voices – and yet – their hope for a brighter future. I salute their honesty, bravery and leadership. I hope you share their words. And that the world hears what they have to say.”
  • Watch this impactful video. It’s worth the 10 minutes.

• FCAS posts: In a satirical yet alarming social media video, comedians Zach Sage Fox and Yechiel Jacobs posed as recruiters for a fake pro-Hamas fraternity, attempting to recruit students from New York University, Columbia, and Pace University into the fraternity. In a 90-second clip titled “Rush Hamas,” the comedians wore red shirts emblazoned with “HAMAS” spelled using the Greek alphabet. According to Fox, they approached dozens of students, about half of whom agreed to join the fraternity after minimal persuasion. “It was pretty shocking to see how many students were willing to sign up for a Hamas fraternity, especially when we kept giving them the terms and conditions of what we would be doing as a Greek organization: harassing Jewish businesses and synagogues,” Fox said.
  • Fox and Jacobs told some students that joining the fraternity would involve protesting at Jewish-owned businesses. “We want a safe space for Jew-haters. All the proceeds, like, go to funding terrorsim,” they joked to unsuspecting participants.
  • The stunt revealed how easily some students could be swayed into supporting antisemitic causes. The video has since garnered more than 250,000 views on X and over a million on Instagram. People on social media expressed shock and concern over how readily some students appeared willing to support the fake fraternity.

Rocket Alerts

• 274 alerts have occurred in the past week!
• To give you a sense of where these rockets are landing, see the map below which shows just the last 24 hours. Now you will get a clear picture as to why residents in the northern part of Israel are unfortunately not able to return to their homes.

Source: Rocket Alerts in Israel

Humanitarian Aid

Hamas warehouses in Gaza are overflowing with stolen humanitarian aid

• The Jerusalem Post reports: Hamas terrorists have confiscated so much humanitarian aid that the terror group is struggling to find space in warehouses to store all of it, according to intercepted communications between Hamas operatives that were played during an episode of N12’s “Ulpan Shishi” on Friday.
• What began with two trucks entering Gaza before the agreement has now grown into 200 trucks arriving daily. Hamas seizes these supplies, gaining complete control over the warehouses without resistance, they said.
• They also mentioned how the recordings not only expose how Hamas takes control of these shipments but also highlight the absurdity of the situation—the terrorist organization is running out of space to store the aid. Clearly, this aid is not being used for humanitarian purposes but is instead aiding the enemy.

Source: COGAT (Coordinator of the Government Activities in the Territories)

What We Are Reading

Israel and the Coming Long War by Assaf Orion in Foreign Affairs

• In some ways, this wider regional war is already at hand. From the outset, “the Gaza war” was a misnomer. Ever since Hamas’s heinous October 7 attack nearly one year ago, Israel has faced not one but numerous antagonists in what has already become one of the longest wars since Israel’s founding. The day after Hamas’s assault from Gaza, Hezbollah began attacking Israel from Lebanon, declaring that it would continue its attacks as long as the fighting in Gaza continued. Shortly thereafter, the Houthis in Yemen also joined in, launching continual attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea and launching missiles and drones at Israel, including one that exploded in central Tel Aviv.
• Nonetheless, so far, this multifront war has been of limited intensity. If Israel or its enemies decide to escalate on any of the other fronts, it would have profound implications for Israeli security and strategy. Not since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war has Israel waged a full-fledged war on multiple fronts simultaneously. Nor has it faced a major offensive from another regional power. For decades, Israel has instead concentrated on addressing the threat of nonstate armed groups. Since its establishment in 1948, Israel’s security concept has been based on short wars on enemy territory—an approach that allows it to maximize its military punch and compensate for its basic disadvantages: its small territory and population, as well as its lack of strategic depth and domestic resources to support protracted campaigns.
• To achieve these difficult tasks, Israel must dismantle Hamas’s army units and governing bodies; destroy its armaments, production sites, tunnels, and command posts; and degrade Hamas’s fighting force. It must also safeguard Gaza’s borders in the long term, in coordination with Egypt and other partners. And at the same time, Israel has also had to try to prevent other members of Iran’s “axis of resistance,” such as Hezbollah and the Houthis, from fully joining into the war.
• To enable this strategy, this unwritten security concept was built on three pillars: deterrence, early warning, and decisive victory. (Subsequently added to these were two additional pillars: protection/defense and the imperative of seeking support of a major power.) Deterrence meant using Israel’s formidable record of victories (and enemy defeats) to dissuade any antagonist from attacking the country. Early warning enabled the quick call-up of reserve forces‚ thus allowing Israel’s large pool of citizen-soldiers to continue contributing to the economy and society until mobilized for active duty. On the military level, it also gave the IDF the capability to quickly surge its order of battle. Decisive victory sought to remove any existing threat and further bolster deterrence.
• Sooner or later, Israel will also have to address the Hezbollah threat in Lebanon, preferably by diplomacy but more probably by war. Optimally, it would do this by means of a carefully planned, preventive attack at a time of its choosing rather than by an uncontrolled escalation or deterioration of the current fighting. Until it is possible to take such a step, Israel should strive to end the fighting in Lebanon and distance Hezbollah from the border through diplomacy, but with no illusions that this will solve the problem. If it becomes clear that Hezbollah is preparing for a major attack on Israel, it would be wise for Israel to consider another preemptive strike, but this time with much stronger signaling, including lethal force against a broader range of targets.
• Israel will also have to continue to disrupt Iran’s efforts to arm its proxy forces and its pursuit of nuclear weapons. This will require stronger cooperation with Israel’s partners, including, foremost, the United States, but also other like-minded countries in the West and the region. And to truly end the threat posed by the Houthis to international interests will require a collective approach that tackles the problem at its source: by addressing the supply chain that is funneling Iranian support and weapons technology to the Houthis and by weakening the Houthis’ power in Yemen by reinforcing their competitors.
• To win a long-term, intensive multifront war, Israel would have to increase defense budgets; open new production lines for munitions; harden its critical national infrastructure, such as energy and communication; and expand the IDF’s pool of recruitment to additional parts of Israeli society. Most critically, however, it will have to resolve the country’s political crisis, which has undermined its resilience, encouraged its enemies, and prevented Israel from developing the broader strategy it needs. The war’s most vital front is the eighth one: the home front. Israel’s national security begins at home, and until the government can pull its divided house together and restore Israeli unity, it will be impossible to restore security and peace in Israel and in the region.
• Link: Israel and the Coming Long War: Foreign Affairs

Deradicalizing Gaza Before ‘the Day After’ by Cole S. Aronson in European Conservative

• For Americans like me, who’ve known their country at war only in the Middle East, one of the most interesting things about World War II is the lack of a postwar insurgency. After the Nazis and imperial Japanese surrendered, groups of disaffected soldiers did not lead violent campaigns to restore the defeated regimes (an end-of-war coup attempt in Japan failed rather quickly). The occupations of Germany and Japan were peaceful. Both countries became reliable American allies in short order. Hundreds of thousands of the defeated regimes’ erstwhile supporters––including senior officials, including war criminals––escaped serious punishment, rejoined society, and sometimes gained political influence. And still the peace was kept.
• How did the populations that had supported and fought for the Axis regimes get moderated? It would be good to know, because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he wants to do in Gaza what the Allies did in Germany and Japan. Netanyahu wants to destroy Hamas and then to purge Gaza of whatever allowed Hamas to rule Palestinians and murder Israelis. Netanyahu wants deradicalization.
• The mechanics of wartime deradicalization seem to be as follows. Civilians who are promised safety and glory see that the regime they once supported, whether from hope or from fear, cannot provide either. Official propaganda about eventual victory is belied by the lived experience of bombing: deprivation and homelessness and horrendous noise. Civilians may continue to go to work––thus supporting their regime’s industrial base––but their attention increasingly turns to immediate material needs. They care less about political matters. They just want the war to stop. As it becomes clear that the demise of the regime ruling them is a condition of peace, they comply with an alternative.
• But politically speaking, ideas can certainly be destroyed, just as they can be weakened, or die peacefully, or be resurrected. Imperialism was destroyed in Japan. Baathism was destroyed in Iraq. Communism died (without war) in Russia. Nazism was destroyed in Germany.
• Hamas’s bellicose Islamism might––might––be destroyed in Gaza. Not necessarily because Gazans stop believing, deep down, that Hamas has noble ideals. Rather, because Hamas’s ideals are deprived of the instruments of political power––armed militants, and popular support for armed militants. Such things have happened before; they could happen again.
• What the Allies did physically to Germany and Japan was astounding. So is what Israel has done to Gaza since October 7th of last year. Many analyses of the Gaza war focus on the civilian death count. As far as it goes, this is not objectionable. Wartime civilian deaths should always be lamented, whether or not the civilians are subjects of the regimes that started the war. And I will say something later about the morality of military methods that kill large numbers of people.
• Japanese losses in World War II were not as bad as Nazi ones. Japan’s home islands were free of Allied troops when the imperial government surrendered, and hundreds of thousands of troops remained in Japan proper and in Japan’s Asian colonies. But more than two million Japanese soldiers had been killed by war’s end, the Japanese navy had been disabled, Japan’s merchant marine could no longer supply Japan’s import-dependent economy, and Japan’s key island possessions had been conquered.
• A post-Hitler Nazi party or insurgency likely wouldn’t have found the needed popular support (and the same goes, mutatis mutandis, for Japan). For the German and Japanese peoples hadn’t suffered military defeat only in terms of body bags from the front and low rations. They had lost their homes, their streets, their comfort, and their civilian relatives to urban destruction brought on by their regimes’ failed wars. Military defeats showed the Axis projects to be futile. Bombing made the projects costly for Axis civilians. At war’s end, they complied peacefully with Allied occupations and then formed governments friendly to Allied governments. In great measure, the German and Japanese peoples were deradicalized by the war itself.
• But depriving civilians of their collective, political consciousness has political uses all its own. Any regime (or terror group) will have a core of fighters and supporters that will loyally carry on the struggle no matter what. But for many others, the desire to feed one’s family, find shelter, and sleep can overwhelm erstwhile support for the regime and its cause. These others may well be the majority of the population, and detachment from collective political concerns is precisely what will moderate them. The population’s compliance can then be won by a new regime that satisfies their immediate material needs, even if that new regime is sponsored by a government until recently at war with the population’s former regime. Axis civilians were made needy through bombing. Peaceful compliance with the Allies became a good alternative to supporting violent resistance to the Allies, even if compliance amounted, in the famous words of Hirohito’s surrender speech, to “enduring the unendurable and suffering the insufferable.”
• Applying these lessons to the Gaza war can be difficult, because popular empirical pictures of Israeli operations are always muddied by sympathy for (contradictory) Palestinian interpretations of the conflict. Every Israeli military operation is now described both as a new form of brutality and as just the latest episode in a century of brutality. But while the standard moral analyses of Israeli actions are mistaken, the current war in Gaza is indeed new in the history of Israel’s conflict with Palestinians.
• Since October 7th of last year, Israel has undertaken something it has never tried before: a war of Palestinian regime change. Israel is doing a remarkable job given its political constraints.
• Hamas’s military defeats and the ongoing destruction of the strip’s buildings have been been accompanied by a decline in political standing.
• …Hamas’s standing in Gaza had declined quite a bit by March, after the bombing campaign had substantially damaged all parts of the strip north of Rafah, to which Hamas’s few remaining organized battalions had retreated.
• The toll on Gaza’s civilians and buildings is explained, not by Israel intentionally targeting civilian infrastructure, but by Israel’s ambitious war aims, by Gaza’s highly urban environment, and by Hamas’s strategy of increasing Palestinian deaths. It is impossible, with current technology, to fight a war of regime change in densely-populated cities without large numbers of civilians dying.
• Israel’s current campaign makes a moderate Gaza more likely, not less. Destroying Hamas not only deprives Islamists of the ability to rule––it proves the futility of armed resistance to Israel, a condition for peace. The destruction of buildings not only deprives Hamas of its hideouts. It also gives ordinary Palestinians strong reasons to shun groups planning to replicate Hamas’s behavior.
• Link: Deradicalizing Gaza Before ‘the Day After’

Israel won’t let reporters into Rafah… is that a wise strategy? by Jake Wallis Simons in The Jewish Chronicle

• Last week, I visited Israel with a delegation of senior military leaders from around the world, led by General Sir John McColl, former deputy supreme commander of Nato in Europe. The intention was to scrutinise how the IDF is conducting the war on the ground, to ascertain whether there was any substance to the allegations that it was prosecuting the war without sufficient care for civilians.
• Many members of the delegation were starting from a point of some scepticism. Their military backgrounds did not make them fully immune to the effects of the broadcast media, which paints such a bleak picture of the Jewish state that it is hard to resist that point of view. Tragic footage of suffering civilians – Hamas censors any pictures of dead or wounded combatants, creating the impression that Israel is targeting the innocent – is aired alongside Hamas talking-points, such as the allegation that Israel has killed “40,000” people in Gaza (nobody mentions that about half of these were terrorists, a better record than other armed forces).
• The question then became one of public relations. My military companions identified one key difference between the Israeli approach to warfighting and that used by Western states. Whereas Britain, America and other democracies treat the information campaign as seriously as the shooting one, making every effort to take public sympathies with them, Israel seemed to regard it much more lightly. Its public- relations operations were underfunded and often shambolic and frequently felt more like a badly formulated afterthought than an indispensable part of the war.
• Israel is hated many orders of magnitude more than any other democracy. Bias against the Jewish state is structural at the United Nations – the Human Rights Council is mandated to discuss the “human rights situation in Palestine” at every single meeting, regardless of the myriad greater abuses elsewhere in the world – not to mention NGOs and the broadcast media. This has led many browbeaten Israelis to adopt a similar attitude to Millwall supporters: “No one likes us, we don’t care.”
• That is all very well, but the problem is that it leaves a vacuum that is readily filled by Hamas and its outriders. The Gazan jihadis are the mirror image of the Israelis. Their warfighting capabilities are very limited yet they place much greater emphasis on propaganda. Lusting after headlines, they sacrifice as many of their own people as possible. That is why there is not a single bomb shelter in Gaza, and – unlike in every other modern example of bombardment, from the Blitz to Kyiv – not a single civilian is permitted in the relative safety of the tunnels. Brainwashing the soft Westerners to support the very fanatics who wish to kill them is the Hamas strategy for victory. And they’re good at it.
• The delegation had seen rotting truckloads of aid piling up just inside Gaza, demonstrating that although Israel was sending more than enough in, the distribution inside the Strip was woeful. They had observed the efforts to destroy the tunnels, which required the IDF to drill down to the water table every seven yards along the Egyptian frontier. They had travelled along the Philadelphi Corridor to the sea and picked up pebbles as souvenirs. But the main impression they took away was the scale of the damage.
• This dark symbiosis, in which a jaded Israel neglects the opinion of the world while Hamas obsesses with it, became especially vivid on the day our group was to enter Rafah. The IDF ruled that as I was a journalist, I was to be excluded. So off went the former generals, special forces officers and war heroes in their helmets and their Kevlar, riding in a couple of armoured personnel carriers, while I slunk back my hotel room to lick my wounds and to write.
• It is true that giving access to journalists would hardly guarantee fair coverage. Aside from the natural bias in the media, no reporter would be allowed to manoeuvre without a Hamas chaperone, meaning simply that the propaganda would be even more detailed and effective. Imagine Alex Crawford broadcasting from a hospital with a jihadi handler lurking in the background. Balanced? I don’t think so.
• Reporters have been allowed into Gaza during previous conflicts and owing to Hamas censorship, it has not gone well.
• Link: Israel won’t let reporters into Rafah… is that a wise strategy?

Iran turns to Hells Angels and other criminal gangs to target critics, by Greg Miller, Souad Mekhennet and Cate Brown in Washington Post

• British authorities had done even more to protect Iran International, the London-based satellite news channel that airs the weekly program of the journalist, Pouria Zeraati, and has built an audience of millions in Iran despite being outlawed by the Islamic republic.
• None of these measures managed to protect Zeraati from the plot that Iran is suspected of setting in motion this year. On March 29, he was stabbed four times and left bleeding on the sidewalk outside his home in the London suburb of Wimbledon by assailants who were not from Iran and had no discernible connection to its security services, according to British investigators.
• Instead, officials said, Iran hired criminals in Eastern Europe who encountered few obstacles as they cleared security checks at Heathrow Airport, spent days tracking Zeraati and then caught departing flights just hours after carrying out an ambush that their victim survived — perhaps intentionally, investigators said, to serve as a warning but not trigger the fallout that would come with the murder of a British citizen.
• In recent years, Iran has outsourced lethal operations and abductions to Hells Angels biker gangs, a notorious Russian mob network known as “Thieves in Law,” a heroin distribution syndicate led by an Iranian narco-trafficker and violent criminal groups from Scandinavia to South America.
• This story reveals new details about how Iran has cultivated and exploited connections to criminal networks that are behind a recent wave of violent plots secretly orchestrated by elite units in the IRGC and Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS). It is based on interviews with senior officials in more than a dozen countries, hundreds of pages of criminal court records in the United States and Europe, as well as additional investigative documents obtained by The Washington Post from security services.
• “We’re not dealing with the usual suspects,” said Matt Jukes, the head of counterterrorism policing in the United Kingdom and assistant commissioner for special operations with Scotland Yard. He acknowledged that Zeraati’s assailants remain at large more than five months after his stabbing. They have been identified and their travels traced to countries in Eastern Europe but have so far not been detained. Officials said the suspects remain in Eastern Europe and that other security services are cooperating with British authorities, but they declined to explain why the suspects have not been taken into custody.
• “What we’ve got is a hostile state actor that sees the battlefield as being without border and individuals in London every bit as legitimate as targets as if [they were] in Iran,” said Jukes.
• Amid worries that the conflict in Gaza might break out into a regional war, Tehran has also been linked to plots against U.S. and Israeli officials and members of Jewish communities in France and Germany.
  • The Justice Department filed charges last month against a Pakistani man with ties to Iran who was accused of seeking to hire a hit man to assassinate political figures in the United States, possibly including former president Donald Trump. It was the latest in a series of plots against members of his administration, including former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and former national security adviser John Bolton, in response to a 2020 U.S. drone strike in Iraq that killed IRGC leader Qasem Soleimani.
• “We’re seeing a major escalation in lethal plotting from a government that has used this tactic from the outset,” said Matthew Levitt, a counterterrorism expert at the Washington Institute.
• Iran has outsourced assassinations and abductions to at least five criminal syndicates, officials said. At the center of this web is an alleged heroin trafficking kingpin based in Iran, Naji Sharifi Zindashti.
  • U.S. criminal charges made public earlier this year outline an alleged scheme in which Zindashti negotiated a $350,000 contract with two Hells Angels members in Canada to kill an Iranian defector and his wife living under false identities in Maryland.
• In exchanges over encrypted texts, the would-be assassins discussed their client’s insistence that the slaying be symbolically vicious. One assured the other that he would “make sure I hit this guy in the head with ATLEAST half the clip,” according to the U.S. indictment, adding, “we gotta erase his head from his torso.”
• The name of the targeted defector has not been disclosed, but U.S. officials said the individual had served as an officer in the IRGC, a powerful wing of Iran’s military created after the 1979 revolution, and become an informant for the CIA.
• The incongruous partnership between an Islamic theocracy and a notorious biker gang was driven in part by necessity, officials said, given the resources U.S. security agencies devote to preventing Iran from deploying operatives to the United States.
• Zindashti has emerged as a linchpin in Iran’s operations. A hulking figure who stands over 6 feet tall and weighs 250 pounds, Zindashti was described by one U.S. intelligence analyst as a “Pablo Escobar-type narco-trafficker.”
• The U.S. Treasury Department and its U.K. equivalent imposed financial sanctions on Zindashti earlier this year, saying that he had conducted “assassinations and kidnappings under the direction of the MOIS across multiple continents.”
• Link: Iran turns to Hells Angels and other criminal gangs to target critics

330 Days of Israel-Hamas war: Updated Comprehensive Public Report was released by The Council for a Secure America this past week.

• The Israel Hamas War Report created by CSA is a continuously updated report serving as a vital resource documenting ongoing developments in the Israel-HAMAS war
• Link to the full report: Israel-Hamas War

I fought in Iraq — I know Israel’s doing all it can to save civilians by General Sir John McColl in The Sunday Times

• Expressions of support and sympathy for Israel have rapidly turned into widespread criticism, including from allies. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are accused of the reckless use of force and the murder of civilians, while international organizations have expressed concern about inadequate flows of aid.
• Last week I visited Israel with a team of military experts from six Nato countries to see for myself. As a career officer, I served for 38 years in the British Army and have been in combat in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan, and I was deputy supreme allied commander of Nato.
• The IDF commanders explained that underneath Gaza they have discovered 125 miles of tunnels, but believe that there could be in excess of 310 miles. The areas they have cleared have tunnel shaft entrances in houses, in children’s bedrooms, mosques, schools and hospitals. The tunnels are used for fighters to move around the urban areas, appearing behind and on the flanks of troops. Suicide bombers are a constant threat. Many of the houses and tunnel entrances are booby-trapped and civilians are used as human shields.
• It means that in the confusion, regrettably, errors will occur. But the real problem is whether soldiers’ rules of engagement adhere to the law of armed conflict, whether they are being applied strictly, and whether when mistakes occur they are investigated thoroughly.
• Our briefing from the independent military legal directorate laid out in detail the rules designed to protect civilian life. The procedures are at least as rigorous as those applied in the UK armed forces. In addition, the Israeli military carries out civilian evacuations of war zones, forgoing the element of surprise, to which it would be entitled in armed conflict.
• Phone calls and text messages to Gazan residents, loudhailers, leaflet drops and “knocking” on the roofs of targeted buildings with small non-lethal munitions to warn of an imminent strike are part of the IDF’s tactics to minimise civilian casualties.
• The level of casualties in Gaza is significant and will undoubtedly result in criticism of the IDF. The alternative is to clear the buildings by hand with the inevitable loss of life that would entail, especially as Hamas terrorists wait for IDF entry to set off lethal booby traps via remote detonators. Rebuilding Gaza will take an enormous international effort.
• The IDF briefed us that 1,500 aid trucks were flowing into the Gaza Strip weekly and gave assurances that the quantity of food and medical supplies that they carry is sufficient to meet the needs of those displaced.
• There are obvious safety problems but they can and must be overcome. Journalists, too, must make a greater effort to report more accurately. I came away from the trip satisfied that the IDF’s operations and rules of engagement were rigorous compared to the British Army and our western allies.
• War is terrible, but sometimes necessary. And Israeli soldiers are fighting in conditions of extraordinary complexity and risk. It’s time for the world to have its eyes opened to that.
• Link: I fought in Iraq — I know Israel’s doing all it can to save civilians

The video that shocked the nation: IDF footage of hostage tunnel divides Israel, by Herb Keinon in The Jerusalem Post

• A nation emotionally drained after 11 months of war and the constant drumbeat of tragic news was confronted with another heart-wrenching revelation on Tuesday when IDF Spokesman R-Adm. Daniel Hagari showed chilling images of the Gaza tunnel where Hamas executed six hostages last month.
• The three-minute video clip showed Hagari descending from a children’s room with brightly colored walls and paintings of Snow White and Mickey Mouse in the Tel Al-Sultan neighborhood of Rafah, 20 meters into the hell where Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Alex Lobanov, Almog Sarusi, and Ori Danino were held and murdered.
• “It is very hard to survive here,” Hagari continued. “They were heroes, heroes who were killed in cold blood by murderous terrorists who build tunnels under the rooms of children and hide in them with hostages.”
• Hagari showed the horrific conditions in which the hostages were held – the low ceiling that made it impossible to stand upright, the cesspool, the bottles of urine, and the lack of ventilation. He spoke of the extreme humidity. He picked up a broken hairbrush, a chess set, a flashlight, AK-47 magazines, and a bullet casing. Amid it all, was also a copy of the Koran.
• An empathetic nation watched that video and felt the suffocating heat, smelled the stench, sensed the fear, and heard the cries. As the nation watched the horrific images being broadcast during the 8 p.m. news slot, the October 7 anger welled up again, and the rage again boiled over.
• But the anger and rage were directed in different directions. As the harrowing images gripped the nation, a divide over how to respond quickly resurfaced.
• If this is how Hamas behaves, Yediot Aharonot journalist Amichai Attali wrote, articulating this school of thought, then Israel should halt all but essential humanitarian aid – water and flour – to Gaza.
• A nation deeply divided over how to free the hostages – by an agreement that would include giving in to some of Hamas’s demands or by continued military pressure – viewed the same grisly video and came to opposite conclusions.
• Those in favor of a hostage deal under almost any circumstances saw the video and used it to support their argument about why such an agreement is needed immediately.
• The video, they said, just shows how horribly the hostages are suffering, and that everything needs to be done to reach a negotiated agreement, free them, and relieve them of that torture.
• Additional evidence of Hamas’s murderous brutality cannot be expected to tip the scales. The world knows who and what Hamas is, but for a variety of reasons part of the world chooses to simply not care. It’s not that these people don’t see; they see but draw false conclusions. This is what Israel’s public diplomacy apparatus is up against.
• This video is powerful. It is being distributed, at least, in English (it should also be distributed in Arabic, French, Spanish, Russian, and Farsi). Some people will see it, see the enemy Israel is facing, and understand what the country is doing, why it is doing it, and who the enemy is.
• Link: The video that shocked the nation: IDF footage of hostage tunnel divides Israel

Antisemitism

Governor Abbott Urges Vigilance Against Antisemitism At Texas Colleges, Universities

• Governor Greg Abbott issued a letter to Texas higher education institutions to continue the fight against antisemitism in Texas and ensure a safe learning environment for Jewish students and Texans by reminding all colleges and universities to comply with his Executive Order.
• The Governor’s Executive Order (which I highly encourage you to read and should serve as a model for other states), is one of the strongest in the nation.
• He writes: In March of this year, I issued an executive order that directed all higher education institutions to review their free speech policies and update those policies to
  • (1) include the statutory definition of antisemitism that I signed into law
  • (2) establish appropriate punishments for violating the policies, and
  • (3) ensure these policies are being enforced to include appropriate discipline for antisemitic groups on campus.
  • Also keep in mind the additional tools you have to address this behavior, such as the law I signed that bans encampments that are established without your institution’s consent on your campuses and the law that gives you the ability to ban protests that disrupt your classes or incite violence.
• Link: Letter to Texas higher education institutions

• The Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS) publishes weekly information from over 300 million online data sources including public social media, traditional media, websites, blogs, forums, and more. The bigger the phrase on the above image, the more total mentions it had in the time period.

Most Jewish teens feel their antisemitism concerns are being ignored — poll. Survey by Israeli government-backed group finds significant numbers of teenagers from U.S. and elsewhere saying they hide Jewish identity out of fear. Report by Haley Cohen with eJewish Philanthropy

• A large majority of Jewish teens worldwide — 78% — feel that their concerns over rising antisemitism are being dismissed or minimized
• Of the 662 respondents, nearly half (47.4%) reported experiencing antisemitism personally — including physical threats, online harassment and derogatory comments — with the majority of incidents occurring in school.
• More than 30% of respondents also reported avoiding wearing Jewish symbols out of fear, and 22% have said they hide their Jewish identity.
• In the U.S., most antisemitic incidents occurred in school, with 26.6% of respondents facing discrimination from teachers and 27.4% from school administrators.
• Ebin said that she expected antisemitism among teens to come from peers, but was surprised by the high percentages that were reported in the U.S. coming from teachers, curricula and administrators. “That points to a larger systemic issue of what’s happening in education and is raising red flags,” she said.
• Link: Most Jewish teens feel their antisemitism concerns are being ignored

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, and the Times of Israel