Situational Update

• The IDF reports that Ibrahim Muhammad Qabisi, the Commander of Hezbollah’s Missiles and Rockets Force, was eliminated by an IAF airstrike in Beirut. Qabisi was eliminated alongside additional central commanders in Hezbollah’s Missiles and Rockets Force.
• Hezbollah urged Iran in recent days to launch an attack against Israel as fighting between the Lebanese militant group and the Israeli military dramatically escalated, but Iran has so far refrained, two Israeli officials and one Western diplomat told Axios.

The Numbers

Casualties

• 1,677 Israelis dead including 715 IDF soldiers (no change since Sunday)
• 346 IDF soldiers during the ground operation in Gaza: no change from Sunday)
• 53 Israelis have been killed during the war in Northern Israel (+1 since Sunday)
• Additional Information (according to the IDF):
  • 2,290 (+3 since Sunday) IDF soldiers have been injured during ground combat in Gaza, including at least 441 (no change since Sunday) who have been severely injured.
  • 4,472 (+6 since Sunday) IDF soldiers have been injured since the beginning of the war, including at least 678 (no change since Sunday) who have been severely injured.
• According to unverified figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, 41,467 (+76 since Sunday) people have been killed in Gaza, and 95,921 (+161 since Sunday) have been injured during the war.
  • We also encourage you to read this well documented piece from Tablet published in March: How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers
  • The Associated Press, an outlet with a demonstrated anti-Israel bias, conducted an analysis of alleged Gaza death tolls released by the Hamas-controlled “Gaza Health Ministry.” The analysis found that “9,940 of the dead – 29% of its April 30 total – were not listed in the data” and that “an additional 1,699 records in the ministry’s April data were incomplete and 22 were duplicates.”
• The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes official details on every civilian and IDF casualty.

Hostages (no change since Sunday)

• 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
  • 31-50 hostages are assumed to be dead and held in captivity (based on reports from today, 9/22)
  • 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.

The North

Source: Swords of Iron: an Overview | INSS

Hezbollah’s military chain of command has been almost completely dismantled after a dozen significant terrorists.

The IDF has released images from INSIDE of the house that they struck yesterday containing the Hezbollah cruise missile.

Listen

[PODCAST] Call Me Back with Dan Senor: Emergency Episode — OPERATION NORTHERN ARROWS — with Nadav Eyal

• To help us better understand the escalating war between Israel and Hezbollah, Nadav Eyal joined us for an emergency episode of the podcast.
• Link: Emergency Episode

Watch

Hezbollah’s Hostages: A Special Series Presented by The Free Press

• Hezbollah—meaning “Party of God”—is an Islamist party, a terrorist group, an organized crime syndicate, and a proxy of Iran that for over four decades has spread destruction and death across the Middle East. Born out of the turmoil of the Lebanese civil war, it aims to eliminate Israel and undermine the West, in particular the United States.
• But the grip of Hezbollah, though far-reaching, is not absolute. Hezbollah’s brutality is also its chief weakness. It provokes seething resentment everywhere it operates, a feeling shared by millions of Arabs who yearn to break free.
• Hezbollah maintains control by wielding lethal force to silence dissenting voices, especially among the Lebanese Shi’ites it claims to represent. Yet these voices want to be heard—and the world needs to hear them, for the sake of a new conversation about how to end the harm Hezbollah does to Arabs and Israelis alike.
• Hezbollah’s Hostages, a Center for Peace Communications production, which The Free Press is presenting every week.
• Today, we present the story of Alya, a happily married, 20-year-old woman living in the city of Raqqa, Syria, who caught the eye of a Hezbollah operative. The story of her abduction and enslavement in “Episode 2: The Sex Slave” sheds unprecedented light on Hezbollah’s sex- and human-trafficking operations, which prey on the very people it claims to protect.
• Recall that Hamas raped and abused the women it took captive after invading southern Israel in a single, terrible day. Now consider that Hezbollah has enjoyed such power for decades in its native Lebanon and for years in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
• Alya is the first victim of Hezbollah’s massive human trafficking operations ever to come forth. She is breaking her silence and speaking out to encourage other women to come forward.
• Link: Hezbollah’s Hostages

Rocket Alerts

• Yesterday, there were 480 red alerts, and a total of 1416 in the past week

  

Source: Rocket Alerts in Israel

What We Are Reading (The North)

The Vast Hezbollah Arsenal Awaiting Israel in Lebanon by Jared Malsin and Adam Chamseddine in the WSJ

• Hezbollah, which has been regularly striking targets in Israel for nearly a year, has kept in reserve a massive arsenal of rockets, drones and antitank missiles that it can deploy to counter Israeli advances. Among its most dangerous new weapons is an Iranian-made guided antitank missile called Almas—the Persian word for diamond—which gives Hezbollah a much higher degree of precision in its strikes than it had when it last fought a war with Israel in 2006.

• Hezbollah’s upgraded drones successfully struck Israeli military equipment in recent months, including a radar surveillance balloon called Sky Dew in May and a multimillion-dollar antidrone system called Drone Dome in June. The militant group said Sunday that it had attacked the headquarters of an Israeli defense company near Haifa, Israel’s third largest city.
• Hezbollah is probably the world’s most heavily armed nonstate paramilitary force, with tens of thousands of troops and an extensive missile arsenal, military experts say.
• Link: The Vast Hezbollah Arsenal Awaiting Israel in Lebanon

Why War in Lebanon is Inevitable by Robert Nicholson in Providence Magazine

• With neither US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken nor his special envoy Amos Hochstein nor any of their Arab or European peers able to stop Hezbollah’s attacks through diplomacy, Israelis are demanding action from their prime minister—and Benjamin Netanyahu has no choice but to listen. Last Thursday he warned his security chiefs that a “large scale confrontation” with Hezbollah is coming. On Monday Yoav Gallant, his minister of defense, told US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that the time for deal-making with Hezbollah is about over. On Tuesday Israel’s security cabinet made the return of displaced families an official war aim.
• Arriving in the Upper Galilee region of Israel from Tel Aviv that Friday morning, I found it eerily deserted. Houses empty, stores shuttered, whole towns abandoned to nature—a near-total shutdown of a region that is already one of Israel’s least developed. But while the economic damage was stunning, the psychological damage is undoubtedly worse.
• As the missiles collided above us, I asked my friend how she and her family, Israeli Christians, got on amid such chaos. “Oh this happens every day,” she answered with a weak smile. “You get used to it.” Feeling the bumim (a Hebraicization of the English word “booms”) reverberate in my chest, I couldn’t understand how.
• “If I had to summarize: Oct. 7 proved that containment doesn’t work, that the old way of doing things is over, and that it’s time to be more aggressive.”
• I found it an astonishing statement. Israelis are often caricatured as warmongers, but almost always prefer quiet “live-and-let-live” deals with their enemies over military confrontations. Harboring no illusions about changing hostile societies through force (at least since the First Lebanon War in 1982), they avoid grand adventures and apply violence only in limited circumstances. It’s the reason why Israel has been such a pioneer in the field of targeted killing, meting out pinprick strikes against high-value terrorists, applying the smallest amount of force to the fewest number of people as possible. US presidents often work to foster good around the world; conscious of limited means, Israeli prime ministers focus on preventing the worst.
• Yet many in Israel now believe it was their very aversion to war and willingness to embrace a modus vivendi in Gaza that made the horrors of Oct. 7 possible. Netanyahu is assigned the most blame for his now-infamous policy of containing Hamas in the Gaza Strip, periodically degrading its military infrastructure in short wars, yet working to keep the Hamas regime afloat with cash infusions from Iranian ally Qatar. Though odd, the policy had its rationale.
• War is coming not because Israel wants one or because its leaders are spoiling for new entanglements. It’s coming not because diplomacy hasn’t been tried or because Israel has ambitions for new territory. (In Hebrew, the word “Lebanon” carries the same dismal notes that “Vietnam” does in English.)
• War is coming because the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, moved by eschatological conviction, seek the destruction of Israel—and America, with Allah’s help—as a matter of policy, and because successive US administrations have ignored, excused, and thereby encouraged the ayatollahs’ behavior for 44 years. War is coming because my friend is right: The record shows that dialogue is impossible. These people only understand power.
• …when countries see history in terms that are radically different or indeed antithetical, even interest-based transactions become hard. Hailing from conflicting cosmological starting points, the two sides can’t understand, much less trust, each other because they can’t see the world through the other’s eyes. Every transaction, even if apparently value-neutral, implicates values and threatens domestic identity. For a country like the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose self-understanding is premised on the destruction of its infidel opponents, the very idea of win-win arrangements is nonsensical and repugnant.
• Like it or not, power is the only lingua franca that reliably transcends cultural fault lines like those that separate Israel from Lebanon. That isn’t to say interest-based diplomacy across such boundaries is impossible—history is filled with pragmatic compromises between enemies. But these compromises, when they occur, are almost always reached in response to a real or threatened show of force that appeals to one or both countries that need to survive. Think of the US and the USSR under the shadow of mutually assured destruction.
• The much-feared regional war is well underway—the only question now is how to end it. Paradoxically, the best answer is to skip multiple rungs on the escalation ladder and make a dramatic show of force that stops the Iranian regime in its tracks. This is where the US can help.
• Link: Why War in Lebanon is Inevitable

The Death of (Another) Hezbollah Lifer, by Matthew Levitt with The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

• The September 20 strike was just the latest in a series of successful Israeli military and intelligence operations against Hezbollah. After killing Shukr in a July airstrike in Beirut, Israel launched a preemptive attack targeting the group’s rocket launch sites in late August, just hours before the group reportedly planned to attack Tel Aviv. In early September, Israeli special forces raided an Iranian facility in Syria, destroying an underground factory producing missiles for Hezbollah. Days later, Israel launched another preemptive airstrike targeting rocket launchers set to fire on Tel Aviv. And just last week, explosive-rigged Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies detonated simultaneously across three countries, killing or wounding many Radwan members, other Hezbollah fighters, associated militants in Syria and Iraq, and around forty Yemeni Houthi fighters who were in Lebanon at the time.
• In April 1985, CIA analysts penned a report titled “Wild, Wild West Beirut,” in which they described how the city’s west side had become riddled with daily turf battles involving the use of car bombs, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades. It also warned that “West Beirut has earned the reputation of being the most dangerous city in the world for foreigners, especially Americans and Europeans.” One of the key people behind this violence was Ibrahim Aqil (aka Tahsin).
• According to Israeli authorities, Aqil “directed” the April 1983 car bomb attack against the U.S. embassy. That July, he reportedly rigged another car bomb that unsuccessfully targeted Lebanese prime minister Shafiq al-Wazzan. And in October, he was a key participant in the deadly bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks, according to the CIA. Aqil also helped provide explosives to the Hezbollah operatives who carried out a series of bombings in Paris in 1985-86, including at the Galeries Lafayette department store. When operative Mohammad Hamadi was arrested at the Frankfurt airport with a wine bottle full of liquid explosives intended for the Paris cell, Aqil helped organize the kidnapping of German citizens in Lebanon to secure his release.
• As the State Department noted, Aqil carried out all of these activities as “a principal member of Hezbollah’s Islamic Jihad Organization.” At the request of several countries, Interpol issued multiple Red Notices calling for his arrest due to these plots.
• According to Israeli authorities, Aqil served as the overall commander of the Radwan special forces, “responsible for Hezbollah’s anti-tank, explosives, and air defense operations, among other activities.” He was particularly focused on developing the unit’s ability to storm the border, attack Israeli communities, lay roadside explosives to attack first responders, and kidnap Israelis back into Lebanon—the very playbook that fellow Iranian proxy Hamas used to surprising and devastating effect on Israel’s southern border last October
• When the State Department listed Aqil as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in 2015, it noted that both he and Shukr sat on the Jihad Council, Hezbollah’s highest military body. After Badreddine’s death, Aqil, Shukr, and Ali Karaki filled his shoes by forming a de facto triumvirate. (As of this writing, reports are emerging that Karaki has been killed as well. If true, this would only magnify the operational impact discussed below and essentially eliminate the circle of experienced senior commanders around Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.)
• The deaths of Aqil and around twenty fellow Radwan commanders would present a serious setback for Hezbollah under any circumstances, but especially on the heels of losing Fuad Shukr and some 400 other operatives over the past several months—not to mention last week’s shocking detonation of military communication gear. The group can still launch rockets and drones into Israel, as it has demonstrated in the days since his death, but it is nowhere near as prepared for the inevitable Israeli response as it was just a few days ago. Many Hezbollah operatives are surely looking over their shoulders now, fearing there are moles in the organization and wondering if Israel will take the opportunity to hit their arsenal of longer-range and precision-guided missiles while the group is on its back foot.
• Meanwhile, the group’s diminished military capabilities increase the likelihood that it will attempt to carry out terrorist attacks abroad.
• Link: The Death of (Another) Hezbollah Lifer

What We Are Reading

The Gaza ceasefire proposal needs this crucial change by Robert Satloff with Times of Israel

• From a US policy perspective, one paragraph in the president’s White House speech has not garnered much attention but deserves closer scrutiny: “If Hamas fails to fulfill its commitments under the deal, Israel can resume military operations. But Egypt and Qatar have assured me and they are continuing to work to ensure that Hamas doesn’t do that. And the United States will help ensure that Israel lives up to their obligations as well. That’s what this deal says…And we’ll do our part.”
• This wording is problematic on multiple levels. First, Egypt and Qatar have shown themselves to be woefully incapable of influencing Hamas over the past eight months, so the idea that there is any value in their “assurances” regarding the group’s future behavior is risible. By contrast, any US administration necessarily has considerable leverage on Israel’s actions given Jerusalem’s reliance on US rearmament and diplomatic backing to sustain its military operations.
• In addition, two key principles outlined in this paragraph – that the United States guarantees Israel’s adherence, and that Israel gets to resume military operations in the event Hamas fails to fulfill its commitments – practically ensure bilateral tension down the road, when Washington and Jerusalem will almost inevitably disagree in their judgment of what constitutes an actionable Hamas violation. Indeed, the group will likely ready itself to engineer such a clash at a moment of heightened instability on another Israeli front (e.g., with Hezbollah or Iran).
• If the president accurately described the proposal’s terms, and if the parties seem likely to accept the deal in the near term, then Washington and Jerusalem should work out the details of implementing its competing principles now, well before any potential crisis can arise over interpretation of the above paragraph. This means more than just reassuring Israel that the United States will not object to resumed military operations if Hamas violates the ceasefire. To balance Washington’s very real leverage over Israel and the absence of any third-party leverage over Hamas, it is important to strengthen Jerusalem’s hand and raise the stakes of noncompliance for Hamas.
• Substantively, this could include two specific sets of US commitments:
  • To increase direct support to Israel if it is forced to resume military operations, such as providing specialized intelligence that Washington may have been reluctant to share previously and enhancing cooperation in countering the various international legal challenges Israel is facing
  • To punish Hamas through measures such as securing the arrest and extradition of Hamas leaders who reside in Qatar and elsewhere, as well as providing assistance for counter-tunnel efforts along the Egypt-Gaza border
• While some of these understandings would remain confidential, others should be publicized to make sure Hamas understands what is at stake. Tacit US support for Israel’s current operation in Rafah, even in the wake of the recent tragic incident that left scores of Palestinian civilians dead, shows that it is possible for the two partners to find common ground on the most controversial military operations.
• Link: The Gaza ceasefire proposal needs this crucial change

I Survived Hamas Captivity, but I’m Not Yet Free by Aviva Siegel in The Atlantic

• The last time I saw my husband, Keith, was on November 26. He was lying on a filthy mattress on the floor of a darkened room and could barely look at me. We had spent 51 days together as Hamas’s hostages after being violently abducted from our home on October 7. I had been told earlier that day that my name was on the list; I was to be released and sent back home to Israel. Keith was to be left behind.

  

• My long journey out of Gaza was filled with fear and sadness. I was sure our son had been murdered on October 7 in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where we lived. The Hamas terrorists had been telling us throughout our captivity that Israel had been destroyed; I didn’t know what I would find. When I finally arrived at the border, I was told that all four of my children were waiting for me in the hospital. The attack on Kfar Aza had killed 64 people, and another 19 had been taken hostage, but my son had miraculously survived. I looked up and saw the moon for the first time in 51 days and screamed with joy and relief that he was alive and I was free.
• I think about Keith all the time, but I feel a particular pang whenever I drink water, when I take a shower, when I eat something delicious. As a hostage in Gaza, these are not things I could do. The most frustrating part is that I don’t know anything about Keith’s condition: Is he alone? (I’d love for someone to tell me that he’s not.) Is he sad, or crying? Is he in a tunnel with no oxygen? Is he sick or being tortured? Has he eaten any food at all today? Is he alive?
• Keith is an American citizen. He was born and raised in Chapel Hill, North Carolina—also the hometown of James Taylor, his favorite singer. In his early 20s, he moved to Israel, where we met and started a life together. I was a nursery-school teacher, working with the children of the kibbutz, and Keith was an occupational therapist who was working for a pharmaceutical company. Our entire lives centered on supporting each other and our community, nourishing the next generation with family time and instilling the values of respect, integrity, and acceptance of the other in our four children and five grandchildren.
• Keith is the kindest, most gentle man you could ever meet. He makes friends wherever he goes and is universally loved by people and animals. Thirty years ago, Keith learned Arabic so that he could talk with the Palestinian workers on the kibbutz, whom he swiftly befriended. A lifelong vegetarian, he held fast to his values in captivity. He wouldn’t even eat a few tiny morsels of chicken when the terrorists gave us more than our standard daily rations of half a pita or a few bites of plain rice.
• We arrived in Gaza and found people celebrating everywhere. We were bleeding and in shock. I couldn’t believe anyone could be happy to see two people in their 60s in such a state. The terrorists led us to a tunnel shaft, and we climbed down a rickety ladder into one of the scariest places I’d ever seen. It was damp and we could hardly breathe. There were electric lights on the path, which was a relief, because I’m scared of the dark. Keith’s ribs were broken and his hand was still bleeding. Within a few hours, they moved us aboveground to a room in an apartment with three yoga mats on the floor. The window was covered and we were not allowed to move. It was absolutely filthy.
• Keith and I were moved 13 times while I was in Gaza, from darkened rooms in private homes to terrifying tunnels without oxygen, light, or sanitation. We were treated with pure brutality, and knew we could die at any moment. We were not seen as human beings. We were starved while our captors ate. We were beaten, humiliated, and kept in disgusting conditions with no way to take care of our basic hygiene or survival needs. We depended on terrorists for every sip of water as they guarded us with their guns and threatened to kill us if we spoke or moved around. There were times I wanted to die.
• And there were many times I thought I would die. The buildings shook and walls crumbled with the launch of every missile. It seemed like the terrorists were firing them from our building. Many times a day, we heard the bell of a mosque and then, a moment later, the launch of a missile from the same direction. And, of course, we heard the Israel Defense Forces bombing close by. Between the missiles, the bombs, and the constant threat of being shot or beaten, it’s a miracle I survived.
• Every moment since my release, I’ve been fully consumed with freeing Keith and the other hostages out of that hell. There isn’t a head of state, member of parliament, news network, tech leader, or global organization that my family and I haven’t reached out to over the past months with a simple message: Get them out now, or they’ll be murdered.
• The international community, with its promises of solidarity and support, does not fully grasp the personal tragedy of those who are left waiting. We are not just statistics or stories. We are real people with real families, struggling with the most intense sadness, exhaustion, and frustration. Keith’s captivity is not just a political issue or a humanitarian tragedy. It is a deeply painful and personal wound.
• But now, as I wait for news of Keith, I feel helpless. I am at the mercy of negotiations, of political strategies, and of decisions made far from the emotional core of this situation. I have learned that hope is a double-edged sword, at once a source of strength, pushing me through each day, and a terrifying reminder of what is at stake. My daughters tell me, whenever a deal is on the table, not to dare to hope, or my heart will shatter again.
• Link: I Survived Hamas Captivity, but I’m Not Yet Free

Israel Must Battle the “But” in Clarity by Ambassador Michael Oren

• “I will always give Israel the ability to defend itself, in particular as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel.”
• So declared Vice President and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in the September 10 presidential debate. The statement certainly resounded positively among Israel supporters. It defied those radical progressives who impugn Israel’s right to defend itself and even its right to exist. It refuted those in the White House who had pressed for—and for a while succeeded—in delaying vital munitions supplies to Israel. These commitments, though, proved part of a much broader context. Immediately following them was the pivotal word, “But.”
• Israel can defend itself, Harris stated, “but how it does matters.” Israel can defend itself, but not if it prevents the achievement of a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages. Israel can exist and preserve its existence, “but we must have a two-state solution…. where the Palestinians have security, self-determination, and the dignity they so rightly deserve.”
• Harris’s remarks represented a new boilerplate and not only for moderate Democrats. In many sectors of America—indeed, throughout the West—recognition of Israel’s right to self-defense and sovereignty is now subject to a number of conditions. Few, if any, can be met.
• By the administration’s own admission, the achievement of a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza is now highly unlikely. “Mr. Sinwar is the major obstacle,” White House National Security spokesman John Kirby recently averred. “No question about it.” Nor is the creation of a Palestinian state, which only a third of Palestinians and Israeli Jews back, a realistic possibility. No one—not even the United States—can say what that state would look like or who would govern it other than Hamas, which the majority of West Bank Palestinians do favor. No one can guarantee that that state could, in fact, give security and dignity to its inhabitants or ensure that it won’t quickly deny security and dignity to its neighbors.
• Those who condition their support for Israel on the conclusion of a ceasefire in Gaza and the establishment of Palestinian statehood risk reducing that support to meaningless. Still, the biggest “but” pertains to the way Israel defends itself.
• The implication is that, if Israel cannot defeat terrorists without causing large numbers of civilian casualties, it must be defenseless. “Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed,” the Vice President explained. “Children, mothers.” Since no one in Washington or elsewhere in the world can prescribe how an enemy that hides behind and beneath millions of civilians can be fought without causing collateral damage, this “but” effectively neuters the IDF.
• Link: Israel Must Battle the “But”

Antisemitism

Gov. Whitmer declines to back Michigan attorney general for prosecuting anti-Israel protesters, by Josh Kraushaar in Jewish Insider

• Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is declining to back state Attorney General Dana Nessel, a fellow Democrat, who has been attacked by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) over Nessel’s decision to charge anti-Israel campus demonstrators at the University of Michigan for assaulting police and engaging in ethnic intimidation, among other alleged crimes.
• Tlaib has also suggested that Nessel is only charging the protesters because she’s Jewish. Nessel has publicly decried the congresswoman’s characterization as antisemitic and wrong.
• “I can just say this: You know, we do want to make sure that students are safe on our campuses, and we recognize that every person has the right to make their statement about how they feel about an issue, a right to speak out. And I’m going to use every lever of mine to ensure that both are true.”
• Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt sharply criticized Whitmer for not speaking up more aggressively against antisemitism. “Governor Whitmer, when your attorney general prosecutes people for violating the law, harassing Jews, and attacking police officers, it’s in the interest of public safety. When a congresswoman accuses the attorney general of prosecuting protestors simply because she’s Jewish, it’s bias,” Greenblatt said on X.
  • “Saying you want to “make sure that students are safe on our campuses” is just words if you are not willing to use your bully pulpit to speak out unequivocally on antisemitism and support holding people accountable for violating the law when it affects Jews.”
• Earlier this month, Nessel charged nine anti-Israel demonstrators — and two counterprotesters — involved in incidents at the University of Michigan relating to the school’s anti-Israel protest encampment.
• Nessel’s office charged seven demonstrators with assaulting or resisting police, a felony punishable by up to two years in prison. Two were charged with misdemeanor trespassing, carrying a maximum penalty of 30 days in prison. A university alumnus is also charged with disturbing the peace and attempted ethnic intimidation.
• Nessel first spoke out against Tlaib last November, after the congresswoman defended protesters’ use of the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as an aspirational call for freedom.
• At the time, Nessel wrote to Tlaib on X: “I have supported and defended you countless times, even when you have said the indefensible, because I believed you to be a good person whose heart was in the right place. But this is so hurtful to so many. Please retract this cruel and hateful remark.” Tlaib didn’t respond.
• Link: Gov. Whitmer declines to back Michigan attorney general for prosecuting anti-Israel protesters

University Cancels Panel Because Author Is a ‘Zionist’ by Joe Nocera with The Free Press

• For the last seven years, the New York State Writers Institute has held an annual book festival at the University at Albany. It’s where notable authors come together and discuss big ideas like climate change, feminism, and immigration. But this year, the festival, which was held on Saturday, was disrupted because two authors refused to discuss their books with the panel’s moderator. Why? Because she is a “Zionist.”
• The Zionist in question was Elisa Albert, a 46-year-old progressive feminist author whose novels—she’s written three of them—are dark comedies about subjects like modern motherhood and fame. She had agreed to moderate the panel months earlier, and she was looking forward to it. “I was going to be like a game-show host,” she told me in a phone interview. “Congenial and respectful. Have some fun in the process.”
• But on Thursday afternoon, just as she was preparing to read the books by her fellow panelists, she received an email out of the blue from Mark Koplik, the assistant director of the Writers Institute. “Basically, not to sugar coat this, Aisha Gawad and Lisa Ko don’t want to be on a panel with a ‘Zionist,’ ” he wrote in an email shared with The Free Press. “We’re taken by surprise, and somewhat nonplussed, and want to talk this out.”
• Albert was stunned. Though she described herself to me as “a proud Jew” who has been fiercely outspoken since October 7, there had been no hint of trouble in the months leading up to the festival. And the panel’s topic—“Girls Coming of Age”—seemed utterly benign.
• According to Albert, Grondahl said it “didn’t seem fair to festival attendees who thought they were going to a panel about coming of age and instead had to suddenly confront bigotry.” She replied, “You’re right. It’s not fair. But it’s a lot less unfair than what my community is dealing with.”
• Once the panel was canceled, Albert made the real reason for its termination public through several media outlets.
• “The weaponization of the word Zionist as a permissible pejorative is a foul, hateful tactic used to dehumanize the people of Israel, wherever we reside,” Albert added, in an email last week to The Free Press. “This, it is apparently not needless to say, helps zero Palestinian civilians. And it brings zero relief to those directly impacted by this historically intractable, psychotic, gruesome, nightmarish conflict in the Middle East. . . It simply further entrenches a stale, appalling, violent status quo.”
• By the time I spoke to Albert over the weekend the shock had worn off, but not the anger. “Let’s face it,” she said. “The word Zionist is a newfangled word for Jew. Refusing to participate on a panel with a Zionist is a straight-up, bare-assed excuse for antisemitism.”
• The cancellation of Albert’s panel highlights a worrying recent trend in the realm of literature, where authors who believe that the world’s only Jewish state should not be singled out for elimination are finding themselves increasingly facing calls for their work to be boycotted and their voices silenced. What’s more, this tendency to cast anyone who is “Zionist”—a.k.a. Jewish—as an oppressor, and thus canceled for the common good, is escalating in elite, educated circles, sources told The Free Press.
• When I asked Paul Grondahl, the institute’s director, for an interview, he instead sent a statement saying the institute was “disappointed that the Girls Coming of Age event at the festival this weekend couldn’t take place.” He continued: “We are proud to provide the community with a diverse range of programs and voices that inform and educate the public about the experiences of those around us. Sharing the differences between us can be an exceptional opportunity for conversations that raise awareness and empathy. But we also understand that such discussions can be difficult and support everyone’s right to advocate for themselves.”
• He made no mention of antisemitism.
• Link: University Cancels Panel Because Author Is a ‘Zionist’

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