By now, I’m sure you know that Israel successfully eliminated the longtime leader of Hezbollah on Friday, a terrorist organization that has killed Jews, Muslims, Christians, and many more, including 241 US military personnel and 58 French paratroopers in a 1983 suicide bombing. The news has moved fast over the past few days, with additional strikes in Lebanon and now Yemen. I’m not going to try and capture it all and instead will post the most thoughtful analysis I have seen regarding how the events unfolded and the subsequent implications, both in Israel and in the broader Middle East, of the successful dismantling of Hezbollah’s leadership.

• Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Hassan Nasrallah died of suffocation in an unventilated bunker, which is why his body was recovered intact from the rubble. According to the report, toxic gases from the explosions entered the room where he was staying, causing his gradual death.
• Other terrorists killed include:
  • Muhammad Ali Ismail, the Commander of Hezbollah’s Missile Unit in southern Lebanon, and his deputy, Hussein Ahmad Ismail, were also eliminated in a precise IAF strike.
  • Ali Karaki, the commander of Hezbollah’s Southern Front
  • Ibrahim Hussein Jazini, head of Nasrallah’s personal security unit
  • Samir Tawfiq Deeb, an adviser to Nasrallah
  • Abd al-Amir Muhammad Sablini, responsible for Hezbollah’s force buildup
  • Ali Nayef Ayoub, responsible for Hezbollah’s firepower
  • Senior Iranian Quds Force officer Abbas Nilforoushan was also eliminated in the strike. He was described by Iranian media as the “deputy commander of operations” for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, where he oversaw ground forces. AIPAC writes that he was sanctioned by the United States for his direct role in the brutal suppression of the Iranian people protesting the regime’s gruesome murder of Mahsa Amini.
  • The head of Hamas in Syria, Ahmad Muhammad Fahd, was also eliminated.

The IDF offered additional information on the strike: 53 meters. That’s the distance between a UN school and Hezbollah’s underground headquarters where Hassan Nasrallah was eliminated alongside 20+ additional terrorists. The terrorists were in Hezbollah’s central headquarters, located in the heart of Beirut, embedded beneath civilian buildings.

How Israeli spies penetrated Hezbollah by Mehul Srivastava, James Shotter, Charles Clover and Raya Jalabi in Financial Times

• In its 2006 war with Hezbollah, Israel tried to kill Hassan Nasrallah three times.
  • One air strike missed — the leader of Hezbollah had earlier left the spot. The others failed to penetrate the concrete reinforcements of his underground bunker, according to two people familiar with the attempted assassinations.
• On Friday night, the Israeli military fixed those mistakes. It tracked Nasrallah to a bunker built deep below an apartment complex in south Beirut, and dropped as many as 80 bombs to make sure he was killed, according to Israeli media.
• What changed, said current and former officials, is the depth and quality of the intelligence that Israel was able to lean on in the past two months, starting with the July 30 assassination of Fuad Shukr, one of Nasrallah’s right-hand men, as he visited a friend not far from Friday’s bombing site.
• These officials described a large-scale reorientation of Israel’s intelligence-gathering efforts on Hizbollah after the surprising failure of its far more powerful military to deliver a knockout blow against the militant group in 2006, or even to eliminate its senior leadership, including Nasrallah.
• For the next two decades, Israel’s sophisticated signals intelligence Unit 8200, and its military intelligence directorate, called Aman, mined vast amounts of data to map out the fast-growing militia in Israel’s “northern arena”.
• …Israeli intelligence widened its aperture to view the entirety of Hezbollah, looking beyond just its military wing to its political ambitions and growing connections with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Nasrallah’s relationship with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.
• While Hizbollah’s fighters were battle hardened in Syria’s bloody war, the militant group’s forces had grown to keep pace with the drawn-out conflict. That recruitment also left them more vulnerable to Israeli spies placing agents or looking for would-be defectors.
• Israel’s broadened focus on Hezbollah in the region was accompanied by a growing, and eventually insurmountable technical advantage — spy satellites, sophisticated drones and cyber-hacking capabilities that turn mobile phones into listening devices.
• It collects so much data that it has a dedicated group, Unit 9900, which writes algorithms that sift through terabytes of visual images to find the slightest changes, hoping to identify an improvised explosive device by a roadside, a vent over a tunnel or the sudden addition of a concrete reinforcement, hinting at a bunker.
• Once a Hezbollah operative is identified, his daily patterns of movements are fed into a vast database of information, siphoned off from devices that could include his wife’s cell phone, his smart car’s odometer, or his location. These can be identified from sources as disparate as a drone flying overhead, from a hacked CCTV camera feed that he happens to pass by and even from his voice captured on the microphone of a modern TV’s remote control, according to several Israeli officials.
• Any break from that routine becomes an alert for an intelligence officer to sift through, a technique that allowed Israel to identify the mid-level commanders of the anti-tank squads of two or three fighters that have harassed IDF troops from across the border. At one point, Israel monitored the schedules of individual commanders to see if they had suddenly been recalled in anticipation of an attack, one of the officials said.
• In recent months, if not years, Israeli intelligence had nearly perfected a technique that allowed it to, at least intermittently, locate Nasrallah, who had been suspected of mostly been living underground in a warren of tunnels and bunkers.
• In the days after October 7, Israeli warplanes took off with instructions to bomb a location where Nasrallah had been located by Israel’s intelligence directorate Aman. The raid was called off after the White House demanded Netanyahu do so, according to one of the Israeli officials.
• On Friday, Israeli intelligence appears to have pinpointed his location again — heading into what the IDF called “a command and control” bunker, apparently to a meeting that included several senior Hizbollah leaders and a senior Iranian commander of Revolutionary Guards operations.
• In New York, Netanyahu was informed on the sidelines of his address at the UN General Assembly, where he rejected the notion of a ceasefire with Hezbollah and vowed to press on with Israel’s offensive. A person familiar with the events said that Netanyahu knew of the operation to kill Nasrallah before he delivered his speech.
• Israel’s campaign is not over, says Netanyahu. It is still possible that Israel will send ground troops into southern Lebanon to help clear a buffer zone north of its border. Much of Hezbollah’s missile capabilities remain intact.
• Link: How Israeli spies penetrated Hezbollah: Financial Times

Israeli journalist Nadav Eyal shared his opinion in an op-ed with Yediiot (Ynet for short), Israel’s most widely read publication. His article was written in Hebrew, so I’ve done my best to translate:

• In the days of his life full of fanaticism, Hassan Nasrallah planned or participated in the murder of Israelis, Americans, Druze and Lebanese Christians. But the largest religious-ethnic group he murdered were Syrians. Sunni Muslims. His elimination is an event on a regional, historical scale. The waves of shock are still spreading in the region, as if a large rock had been thrown into the heart of a pond. The images of the mass joy in Syria well represent the meaning that Nasrallah carried on earth as the messenger of the Iranian regime and all its injustices.
• Until his last moments, Nasrallah did not understand the strength of the IDF’s penetration of his capabilities. It was the same intelligence wing that failed horribly, which was truly blind, that provided and continues to provide – along with brilliant conduct in the Mossad – what was required. A lot of work was required to reach the moment when the Chief of Staff Harzi Halevi is connected to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense, and tells them that the operation needs to take place now, because in a few hours Nasrallah may be on the move to a less optimal point for execution.
• Yesterday I spoke with a Lebanese. not christian He tried to hide his happiness, and gave me his assessment: Lebanon is on the verge of civil war. Its major armed force was Hezbollah. He held the keys to violence. Before him, there were the Syrians. Before the Syrians, there was a civil war and for a short period – the State of Israel. And what now, he asked. The Lebanese reported increasing tension in Beirut. “Naim Kassam is nothing,” he said of Nasrallah’s deputy, “he has no strength and no troops. Everything can change now, God willing.” He aimed at making Lebanon a real country; Or to be modest, more real.
• For the first time since the start of the war, it can be said with complete certainty that the Iranian regional axis has been weakened strategically; Yahya Sinwar’s flood to Al Aqsa became the flood of Air Force attacks on Da’ahiyah. And whoever thinks that Hezbollah is holding back from launching its thousands of missiles – this is not the case. He wants to launch a lot more, and at this point he doesn’t succeed. Israel is beginning to recognize an outline of a solution: the withdrawal of the Lebanese army itself to the border, and in fact the expulsion of Hezbollah as a military force from the south. It’s not close, but it’s gotten significantly closer in the last two weeks.
• The West of course does not understand these regional subtleties. The joint statement by President Biden and President Macron, calling for a ceasefire, demonstrated this precisely. For a year, a sovereign country called Lebanon, through a well-known and well-financed terrorist organization, has been attacking Israel.
• US officials’ description of the situation has consistently referred to the war in the north as such an unpleasant byproduct of the war in Gaza. We’ll solve Gaza (“solve” is a big word; we’ll put a Band-Aid on a cease-fire) and then Hezbollah will keep shooting, we’ll reach some kind of bluff agreement (“removal of 10 kilometers from the fence”) and everything will be fine. I mean, everything won’t be fine. But the international community doesn’t really care. They are not the agents of change in the Middle East, they are the knights of peace.

Former Trump administration official Jared Kushner, who rarely puts out public statements, posted his opinion on X which is worth reading in its entirety:

• September 27th is the most important day in the Middle East since the Abraham Accords breakthrough.
• Iran is now fully exposed. The reason why their nuclear facilities have not been destroyed, despite weak air defense systems, is because Hezbollah has been a loaded gun pointed at Israel. Iran spent the last forty years building this capability as its deterrent.
• Iranian leadership is stuck in the old Middle East, while their neighbors in the GCC are sprinting toward the future by investing in their populations and infrastructure. They are becoming dynamic magnets for talent and investment while Iran falls further behind. As the Iranian proxies and threats dissipate, regional security and prosperity will rise for Christians, Muslims and Jews alike.
• Israel now finds itself with the threat from Gaza mostly neutralized and the opportunity to neutralize Hezbollah in the north.
• Anyone who has been calling for a ceasefire in the North is wrong. There is no going back for Israel. They cannot afford now to not finish the job and completely dismantle the arsenal that has been aimed at them. They will never get another chance.
• After the brilliant, rapid-fire tactical successes of the pagers, radios, and targeting of leadership, Hezbollah’s massive weapon cache is unguarded and unmanned. Most of Hezbollah fighters are hiding in their tunnels. Anyone still around was not important enough to carry a pager or be invited to a leadership meeting. Iran is reeling, as well, insecure and unsure how deeply its own intelligence has been penetrated.
• This is a moment to stand behind the peace-seeking nation of Israel and the large portion of the Lebanese who have been plagued by Hezbollah and who want to return to the times when their country was thriving, and Beirut a cosmopolitan city. The main issue between Lebanon and Israel is Iran; otherwise there is a lot of benefit for the people of both countries from working together.
• More than 40 years ago, Hezbollah killed 241 US military personnel, including 220 Marines. That remains the single deadliest day for the U.S. Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima. Later that same day, Hezbollah killed 58 French paratroopers.
• The Middle East is too often a solid where little changes. Today, it is a liquid and the ability to reshape is unlimited. Do not squander this moment.

Turning the tide of war: Israel’s ‘Midway’ moment by Ambassador Michael Oren in the Times of Israel

• …Israel’s massive counterstrike against Hezbollah, eliminating Hassan Nasrallah, its senior leadership, and much of its missile capabilities, proves that Israel’s deterrence power can still be restored. Accomplishing that, though, will require Israel to continue the fight and resist international, and especially US, calls for a ceasefire. As America’s own history proves, persistence in war, even after initial setbacks, can ultimately lead to triumph.
• October 7 all but obliterated that image. Though the IDF subsequently fought valiantly and, by most professional estimates, effectively, it failed to resuscitate its reputation. The fact that Hamas, though seriously degraded, remains undefeated after more than eleven months of intense combat has further diminished that stature.
• Recalling the “aroused democracy” once described by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Israel brilliantly and fiercely struck back at Hezbollah, killing dozens of its commanders and destroying thousands of its missiles. Friday’s devastating bombing in Beirut, and Nasrallah’s death, left the organization effectively leaderless. Though the terrorists have yet to unleash the full brunt of their most lethal and accurate rockets, their image has been irreparably tarnished.
• For that reason, alone, Israel must not agree to a ceasefire that will allow Hezbollah to rearm and rebuild its command structure. In contrast to Gaza where Israel’s stated goal is to destroy Hamas and free the hostages, in Lebanon, the objective is to vastly reduce Hezbollah’s ability as a fighting force and drive it north of the Litani River. A ceasefire that enables Hezbollah to remain deployed along our northern border and resume daily firing at our citizens will not enable tens of thousands of displaced Israelis to return to their homes.
• Still, the dangers of failing to continue our counteroffensive against Hezbollah far outweigh those of waging one. At stake is not only the salvation of Israel’s north but its ability to achieve long-term peace and security in the Middle East – in short, to survive.
• This is Israel’s Midway moment. In Lebanon, Israel can have its Gettysburg and its Yorktown. The alternatives are the examples of Iraq and Afghanistan, America’s most recent wars that ended inconclusively with ignominious withdrawals. Israel, fighting an existential war on our own borders, must not go that route. Rather, by resisting pressure for a ceasefire that leaves Hezbollah unbowed, Israel can fully restore our deterrence power and regain our regional preeminence.
• Link: Turning the tide of war: Israel’s ‘Midway’ moment

The Numbers

Casualties

• 1,677 Israelis dead including 715 IDF soldiers (no change since Wednesday)
• 346 IDF soldiers during the ground operation in Gaza: no change from Wednesday)
• 53 Israelis have been killed during the war in Northern Israel (no change since Wednesday)
• Additional Information (according to the IDF):
  • 2,293 (+3 since Wednesday) IDF soldiers have been injured during ground combat in Gaza, including at least 441 (no change since Wednesday) who have been severely injured.
  • 4,480 (+8 since Wednesday) IDF soldiers have been injured since the beginning of the war, including at least 678 (no change since Wednesday) who have been severely injured.
• According to unverified figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, 41,586 (+119 since Wednesday) people have been killed in Gaza, and 96,210 (+289 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)

• 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

Listen

[PODCAST] Call Me Back with Dan Senor: NASRALLAH DEAD, HEZBOLLAH CRIPPLED – with Nadav Eyal

• To help us better understand the dramatic developments in Lebanon, Nadav Eyal joined us for an emergency episode of the podcast.
• Link: NASRALLAH DEAD, HEZBOLLAH CRIP – Call Me Back – with Dan Senor

Aviva Klompas, who is a great follow on X, posts: This is one for the history books. It’s an audio recording of the conversation between the commander of the Israeli Air Force and the pilot who eliminated Nasrallah.

• Pilot: We will reach everyone, everywhere. And we will do whatever is necessary to bring the hostages back and return the residents of the north home

Watch

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Speech at the UN General Assembly.

• “I didn’t intend to come here this year. My country is at war, fighting for its life. But after I heard the lies and slanders leveled at my country by many of the speakers at this podium, I decided to come here and set the record straight,”

Elliott Abram’s with the Council on Foreign Relations delivers his testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia addresses Iran’s proliferation of Chaos: Israel and the Middle East at a Crossroads: How Tehran’s Terror Campaign Threatens the U.S. and our Allies

• Think of Iran’s role this way: what would the Middle East look like if Iran were not engaged in terrorism and aggression?
• Iran is indeed seeking to expand the chaos, most recently into Jordan. A July article by former Israeli deputy national security adviser Eran Lerman noted that “the Iranian regime has intensified its efforts to subvert the Hashemite monarchy” and Israel’s foreign minister Israel Katz said in August that Tehran is seeking to set up a proxy terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank akin to those in the Gaza Strip, Yemen, and Iraq.
• Iran fears American power. Its leaders are, as I said, evil but rational. They fear escalation and they fear confrontation with the United States. But we have too often been guided by fear of Iran, and have restrained the ability of both our own CENTCOM forces and of our ally Israel in responding to Iranian attacks. Its past time to put those fears behind us and reassert America’s ability and willingness to ensure that Iran cannot build a nuclear weapon, cannot close international waterways, cannot attack our troops in the Middle East, and cannot assault and subvert our allies. We have the power; the question is whether we have the will and the commitment.
• Finally, it’s important to remember that Iranians have not chosen the regime that rules them and creates chaos in the Middle East. The Iranian people loathe the regime and repeatedly risk their lives to rise up against it. The ultimate solution to the problem of Iran is democracy, because when the Iranian people are free to govern themselves Iran will have a very different foreign policy. Consequently, we should do what we reasonably can to help them express their views and bring this evil regime to an end. This means, among other things, taking a close look at our public diplomacy, our broadcasting, and other ways in which we can assist the Iranian people in their struggle for freedom.

Rocket Alerts

• Yesterday, there were 831 red alerts, and a total of 2,371 in the past week (+955 since Wednesday)

Source: Rocket Alerts in Israel

What We Are Reading

Killing Nasrallah, by Lee Smith in Tablet Magazine

• By ordering the strike on Nasrallah while attending the U.N. General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu underscored the Jewish state’s independence from the global consensus that has resolved not to confront terrorists but rather to appease them, whether they’re plotting in the Middle East or living among the local populations of Western nations, including the United States. Israel’s attack also shows that almost everything U.S. and other Western civilian and military leaders have believed about the Middle East for the last 20 years was simply a collection of excuses for losing wars. The questions that senior policymakers and Pentagon officials, think-tank experts and journalists have deliberated over since the invasion of Iraq—questions about the nature of modern warfare and the proper conduct of international relations in a multipolar world, etc.—can now be set aside for good because they have been resolved definitively.
• The answers are as they ever were—at least before the start of the “global war on terror.” Contrary to the convictions of George W. Bush-era neoconservatives and the pro-Iran progressives in Barack Obama’s camp, securing a nation’s peace has nothing to do with winning narratives, or nation-building, or balancing U.S. allies against your mutual enemies for the sake of regional equilibrium, or any of the other academic theories generated to mask a generation’s worth of failure. Rather, it means killing your enemies, above all those who advocate and embody the causes that inspire others to exhaust their murderous energies against you. Thus, killing Nasrallah was essential.
• Taking down officers demoralizes a force. Wiping out its chain of command cripples it.
• Israel’s campaign went into high gear on Sept. 17 with the detonation of Hezbollah’s communications devices, which Israeli intelligence had booby-trapped with explosives, decommissioning thousands of the terror organization’s medical and logistical support staff as well as fighters. Because Hezbollah’s communications infrastructure, as well as its supply chain, was compromised, senior officials were forced to meet in person.
• Israel’s immediate goal is to get the 60,000 Israelis who have been displaced from the north since Oct. 7 back into their homes. Therefore, say Israeli officials, Hezbollah forces must be driven north of the Litani river, roughly 20 miles away from the border. The Biden administration says the Israelis can’t reach their goals through force and the only way forward is through diplomacy. In fact, the harder Israel struck Hezbollah, specifically showcasing its ability to eliminate its leadership, the more desperate the White House became to end IDF operations. The Biden team took advantage of the U.N. General Assembly to work with France on a statement calling for a 21-day ceasefire that would shut down Israel’s campaign and protect Nasrallah.
• Unsurprisingly, Israel’s success against Hezbollah the last two weeks alarmed the former Obama officials staffing the current administration. After all, Obama’s strategy to realign U.S. interests with Iran was predicated on the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which put Iran’s nuclear weapons program under the umbrella of an international agreement guaranteed by the United States. The Iranians armed Hezbollah with missiles in order to deter Israeli action against their nuclear facilities, which is to say that the Lebanese militia serves not only Iranian interests but also those of the Obama faction.
• The Biden team tried to stop Netanyahu from continuing his Hezbollah campaign by outlining how it intends to punish Israel in the period between the November election and the January inauguration with sanctions and other anti-Israel measures. But by telegraphing its intentions, the White House inadvertently incentivized Netanyahu to act quickly. Since a Harris victory ensures four to eight more years of a White House filled by Obama aides determined to protect the Iranians and their proxies, and a Donald Trump win means Biden’s punitive actions go away, Israel saw it had nothing to lose in either case. So on Friday, Netanyahu brought the era of permanent resistance to an end by killing the cult leader the Obama faction so desperately wanted to but could not keep alive.
• If Washington and the Europeans are appalled by Israel’s campaign over the last two weeks, it’s because the Israelis have resurfaced the ugly truth that no modish theories of war, international organizations, or even American presidents could long obscure. Wars are won by killing the enemy, above all, those who inspire their people to kill yours. Killing Nasrallah not only anchors Israel’s victory in Lebanon but reestablishes the old paradigm for any Western leaders who take seriously their duty to protect their countrymen and civilization: Kill your enemies.
• Link: Killing Nasrallah

The Killing of Nasrallah—and the Virtue of Escalation

• What Israel has managed to accomplish over the past two weeks will long be studied by military historians.
• Hezbollah’s war is not just with Israel. It has American, Syrian, and Lebanese blood on its hands as well.
• Recall that in 1983, the group killed 241 servicemen with a massive bomb at the Marines barracks in Beirut. The organization was also responsible for the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Cultural Center in Buenos Aires, in which 85 innocent people were murdered. In 2012, Hezbollah bombed a bus with young Israeli tourists at the port of Burgas, Bulgaria, that left five dead and 32 injured.
• But Hezbollah’s bloodiest campaign was reserved for Syria, where it became the shock troops for the country’s tyrant, Bashar al-Assad, during his brutal suppression of a democratic uprising.
• The trouble is that the Middle East is already engulfed in a regional war. The party behind that war—Iran, which funds Hezbollah, Hamas, and other proxies—just suffered a devastating blow thanks to Israel.
• Indeed, by refusing to heed the council of Biden, Macron, and Starmer, Israel has brought the Middle East far closer to peace than it was before.
• Since the early 2010s, Iran’s strategy has been to arm and train proxies like Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon to encircle Israel in a “ring of fire.” This strategy is not just a traditional proxy war for Iran. It’s an insurance policy for its nuclear program, which is perilously close to building a bomb. If Israel decides to strike one of Iran’s nuclear facilities, Hezbollah has more than 100,000 missiles pointed at Tel Aviv, Haifa, and other major cities in the country. Knocking out Hezbollah’s leadership and targeting its rocket and missile launchers degrades that insurance policy and makes Iran’s nuclear program more vulnerable.
• The problem with the Biden administration’s approach is that it in no way impedes Iran, which controls the purse strings and provides strategic direction to its proxies. It’s a great deal for the mullahs. Lebanese and Palestinians fight and die in Iran’s war to destroy Israel, while Iran is treated by America and the West as an outside observer, facing few consequences other than Israel’s occasional targeted strikes on its officers in Syria and Lebanon and its sabotage inside the country.
• Israel has now shown its most important ally a better way. By escalating the conflict with Hezbollah, there are now strategic opportunities to go after Iran’s nuclear program. If Harris and Biden were wise, they would shelve their strategy of endless ceasefire talks and instead embrace Israel’s escalation. Because the best way to end a regional war is to win it.
• Link: The Killing of Nasrallah—and the Virtue of Escalation

AIPAC wrote a highly informative memo on UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1701, something you will hear a lot about over the coming weeks.

• The resolution was a negotiated resolution to end the 2006 Second Lebanon War that Hezbollah initiated.
• Fact: UNSCR 1701 “require[s] the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that […] there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese State.”
  • Reality: With Iran’s help, Hezbollah’s arsenal has grown tenfold since UNSCR 1701’s passage. In 2006, the terrorist group possessed around 15,000 rockets. Today, it has more than 150,000 missiles and rockets — many of which are capable of precisely targeting any location in Israel.
• Fact: UNSCR 1701 requires “the establishment between the Blue Line [the 2000 border demarcation between Israel and Lebanon] and the Litani river of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the Government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL”
  • Reality: Hezbollah has turned major Lebanese cities, including the entire area south of the Litani River, into a military fortress from which it can attack Israel — in blatant violation of UNSCR 1701.
• Fact: UNSCR 1701 “supplement[s] and enhance[s] the [U.N.] force in numbers, equipment, mandate and scope of operations, [including] to authorize an increase in the force strength of UNIFIL to a maximum of 15,000 troops,” up from 2,000 troops. Also, authorized UNIFIL to take “all necessary action” to enforce the resolution.
  • Reality: Due to intimidation by Hezbollah and lack of cooperation from the Lebanese Armed Forces, UNIFIL’s roughly 10,000 troops do not act against Hezbollah. NIFIL routinely fails to patrol areas known to host

    illicit Hezbollah weapons and neglects to report on Hezbollah violations. Hezbollah outposts are often situated mere feet from UNIFIL outposts.

• Link to Full Report: AIPAC Memo – Security Council Resolution 1701: The Diplomatic Solution the U.N. Failed to Implement

What Is Hezbollah? by Kali Robinson in The Council on Foreign Relations –a complete timeline and history of Hezbollah with additional recommended resources to stay away from misinformation (written before the events of Friday)

• A group of Shiites influenced by the theocratic government in Iran—the region’s major Shiite government, which came to power in 1979—took up arms against the Israeli occupation. Seeing an opportunity to expand its influence in Arab states, Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) provided funds and training to the budding militia, which adopted the name Hezbollah, meaning “The Party of God.” It earned a reputation for extremist militancy due to its frequent clashes with rival Shiite militias, such as the Amal Movement, and its attacks on foreign targets, including the 1983 suicide bombing of barracks housing U.S. and French troops in Beirut, in which more than three hundred people died. Hezbollah became a vital asset to Iran, bridging Shiite Arab-Persian divides as Tehran established proxies throughout the Middle East.
• Hezbollah bills itself as a Shiite resistance movement, and it enshrined its ideology in a 1985 manifesto that vowed to expel Western powers from Lebanon, called for the destruction of the Israeli state, and pledged allegiance to Iran’s supreme leader. It also advocated an Iran-inspired Islamist regime, but emphasized that the Lebanese people should have the freedom of self-determination.
• Israel is Hezbollah’s main enemy, dating back to Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon in 1978. Hezbollah has been blamed for attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets abroad, including the 1994 car bombings of a Jewish community center in Argentina, which killed eighty-five people, and the bombings of the Israeli Embassy in London. Even after Israel officially withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, it continued to clash with Hezbollah, especially in the disputed Shebaa Farms border zone. Periodic conflict between Hezbollah and Israeli forces escalated into a monthlong war in 2006, during which Hezbollah launched thousands of rockets into Israeli territory.
• Link: What Is Hezbollah?

Antisemitism

Exposing the Hypocrisy of the ‘Genocide’ Propagandists by Seth Mandel with Commentary Magazine

• Do anti-Israel protesters on campus care about Palestinians or do they merely hate the Jewish state? If they’re waving Hezbollah flags and chanting support for the Iranian satrapy, they aren’t worried about Palestinians. Do activists want peace or merely the unfettered ability to make war on Israel? If they’re blaming escalation on Israel and legitimizing a third country’s entry into the war Israel didn’t start, it ain’t peace they’re after. Do politicians stand against terrorism or do they stand against Israel? If their definition of “terrorism” includes Israel’s targeted maiming of terrorists, they’re taking a stand against the Jewish state.
• The terms commentators use to describe events are also revealing. Since what is happening in Gaza is definitionally not a genocide, why would people use that word anyway? Once again, let events in Lebanon be our guide: If someone calls Israel’s targeted response against Hezbollah terrorists after months of having its own population bombed from South Lebanon “genocide,” we can infer that this person’s application of the term “genocide” to Gaza is just as intentionally dishonest. In general, it’s best not to attribute the worst possible motive to someone in public debate, but anyone who calls Israel’s Lebanon response a “genocide” has only one possible motive. It’s not a multiple-choice question.
• “It’s easier to stop sending the Israel government weapons to conduct its genocidal wars than it is to evacuate every American in Lebanon,” posted anti-Semitic congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.
• In terms of its effects on public discourse, this is a very unhelpful thing to say. But in terms of its revelatory capacity, this is a very helpful thing to say.
• DC think-tanker Yousef Munayyer wanted his audience to know that Israeli figures pointing out Hezbollah’s human-shields policy are “Attempting to manufacture consent for a genocide of Lebanon’s Shia community.”
• A morally blind statement? Sure. An innocent mistake? No.
• Israel’s operations in Lebanon have been so precise that they have won praise from Tlaib’s fellow Democrats who might otherwise be readily critical of the IDF.
• “This attack was definitely aimed precisely at Hezbollah and seems to have been highly successful,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told the outlet. “It seems to have been extremely strategic.”
• The fact of the matter is, Hezbollah’s intervention on behalf of Hamas has been clarifying. Accusing Israel of genocide for retaliating against indiscriminate bombings with unimaginably precise strikes is the act of a deeply dishonest propagandist. But the ramifications of that propagandizing should not be contained to Lebanon and Hezbollah. It should extend to Gaza.
• Link: Exposing the Hypocrisy of the ‘Genocide’ Propagandists

The Moral Inversion of Rashida Tlaib—and the Smearing of Dana Nessel, by The Editors with The Free Press

• The trouble began for Attorney General Dana Nessel (she’s the progressive lesbian) when she had the gall to do her job: namely, to prosecute criminals. The criminals in question were mainly anti-Israel protesters at the University of Michigan who resisted arrest and refused to leave an encampment on the Ann Arbor campus.
• Unlike so many other state attorneys general, who have lacked the political will to indict politically inconvenient criminals, Nessel did. Two of the protesters were prosecuted for trespassing, another seven were charged with trespassing and resisting arrest, and two more pro-Israel demonstrators were prosecuted for separate incidents involving a counterprotest at last spring’s encampment.
• “A campus should not be lawless,” Nessel said in a statement announcing the indictments. “What is a crime anywhere else in the city remains a crime on university property. Our laws everywhere are designed to make safe communities and encourage respectful coexistence, no matter our personal disagreements or conflicting beliefs.”
• That is not how Michigan Democratic congresswoman Rashida Tlaib saw it. A day after Nessel announced the indictments, she gave an interview to the Detroit Metro Times in which she said, “We’ve had the right to dissent, the right to protest.”
• “We’ve done it for climate, the immigrant rights movement, for black lives, and even around issues of injustice among water shutoffs. But it seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs.”
• In normal times the outrage would have been directed in one direction: at Tlaib. The congresswoman would have issued a statement apologizing for her remarks and everyone would have moved on. But we no longer live in normal times. We live in a post–October 7 America where antisemitism is kosher when it comes from progressives pontificating on Palestine.
• Indeed, when CNN anchor Tapper asked Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer for a comment on the incident, Whitmer demurred and said, “I’m not going to get in the middle of this argument that they’re having.” The next day, Whitmer offered mild criticism of the remarks without mentioning Tlaib by name. The governor, who is often held up as the great hope of moderate Democrats, appears frightened of offending the wing of her party that protests in solidarity with terrorists.
• This fake umbrage is best captured in a post, retweeted by Tlaib, from Matt Duss, the executive vice president of the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders. He complains that Tapper, Anti-Defamation League Director Jonathan Greenblatt, and others “can engage in a multi-day defamation campaign against @RashidaTlaib by blatantly misquoting her and face zero repercussions for it is a great example of the institutional anti-Palestinian bias she called out in the first place.”
• In other words, Tlaib is claiming a movement that makes Jewish students feel the need to hide their stars of David on campus is actually a human rights organization.
• Link: The Moral Inversion of Rashida Tlaib—and the Smearing of Dana Nesse

Bad Faith by Tal Fortgang with City Journal

• After Israel’s phenomenal precision strike against the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah on Tuesday, which killed about a dozen people and wounded thousands more, the Jewish state’s critics kicked into overdrive. Israel rigged pagers distributed by Hezbollah to its operatives with just enough explosive material to kill or harm the terrorist possessing them and as few bystanders as possible. Yet this finely calibrated response was still a bridge too far for the chorus of those who have never met an Israeli military action they found legitimate. After 11 months of Hezbollah missile attacks aimed at Israel’s civilian centers, resulting in tens of thousands of evacuations and dozens of deaths—including children murdered on a Golan Heights playground—the rules of proportionality and just war have shifted. Even one civilian harmed now renders an Israeli attack illegitimate.
• “Israel’s pager attack in Lebanon detonated thousands of handheld devices across a slew of public spaces, seriously injuring and killing innocent civilians,” New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted on X. “This attack clearly and unequivocally violates international humanitarian law.” Ocasio-Cortez did not specify which provision, nor could she. A strike carefully designed to target only individuals carrying Hezbollah-issued technology would pass muster under any traditional standard. It is an extraordinarily humanitarian way to conduct war.
• Kenneth Roth, the anti-Israel fanatic who ran Human Rights Watch from 1993 to 2022, condemned Israel’s “use of booby traps—objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use.” He believes, apparently, that these pagers are children’s toys or were sold to the Lebanese public at the Beirut RadioShack. Of course, this is not the case. These were devices procured and distributed by Hezbollah to its operatives to evade Israeli surveillance, with the ultimate goal of coordinating attacks against the Jewish state. Roth conveniently leaves out these facts. He would prefer that his audience mistakenly believe Israel is sowing chaos by rigging ordinary consumer items to maximize civilian suffering.
• This criticism is particularly rich considering Israel’s ongoing operation in Gaza to root out Hamas. While Roth and others spend their days condemning Israel for not doing enough to prevent civilian casualties, Israel puts its soldiers at risk by sending them into dense urban-war environments, going above and beyond what is required of it under the laws of armed conflict and basic ethics. One major source of risk for Israeli troops is Hamas’s well-documented use of booby traps, including a reported 14,000 rigged structures in Rafah alone. Yet Roth finds a way to thread the needle, faulting Israel for insufficient care on both fronts without pointing out that Hamas and Hezbollah put vastly more civilians in harm’s way.
• It’s worth noting the unreasonable standard these criticisms set for Israel. Everyone else can fight wars that result in civilian casualties, as long as they don’t kill civilians to an extent unjustified by legitimate military goals. That’s what the international-law principle of “proportionality” means. But Israel is not allowed to harm civilians at all. Even traumatizing civilians renders an attack illegitimate in these critics’ eyes. If rigging Hezbollah pagers issued to combatants with tiny amounts of explosive material is a “war on civilians,” then it’s hard to imagine what acceptable war conduct looks like.
• Link: Bad Faith