Situational Update

• The Goldberg-Polin family issued a statement and authorized the release of a video of Hersh by Hamas before his brutal murder:
  

  “We are in the midst of the seven seven-day Jewish mourning period after burying our son Hersh (of blessed memory) on Monday. Earlier tonight, Hamas released a new video of him, taken while he was being held hostage in the tunnels underneath Gaza. This must serve as an immediate wake-up call to the world to take action today to secure the release of the remaining 101 hostages before it is too late. No other family should go through what our family (and the families of the other recently executed hostages) have endured.”

• The family of Carmel Gat authorized the release of her video here
• A video of Alexander Lobnov was also released

• A report by Channel 12 News, published by Haaretz, has revealed a disturbing detail about the condition of hostages held in Gaza by Hamas. The body of Eden Yerushalmi, returned to Israel recently, weighed a mere 79 pounds – 22 pounds less than before her abduction. This alarming weight loss paints a grim picture of the conditions endured by the 101 hostages still in captivity.
  • “I want to speak to my dear family, whom I love so much and miss – Mom, Dad, Shani, and May. I love you so much and I miss you.” Her family authorized the release of a portion of this footage.
• AIPAC writes: the IDF published photos and videos of the tunnel entrance where the bodies of Eden, Carmel, Ori, Almog, Alex, and Hersh were recovered after they were brutally murdered by Hamas. The tunnel shaft was built inside a child’s bedroom, with wall paintings of Disney characters and stuffed animals found nearby, revealing yet again the unconscionable evil of Hamas. “This is exactly what Hamas does. They hide behind the civilian population, putting them at risk,” an IDF spokesperson said.

• Barak Ravid from Axios reports: Channel 12 poll: 60% of Israelis think a hostage deal is more important than maintaining IDF control over the Philadelphi corridor. 61% don’t think the Netanyahu government is doing enough to bring the hostages home
• The Times of Israel reports: an unprecedented 500,000 rally for hostage deal as crisis enters 12th month:

  

• According to journalist Marc Schulman: A Pakistani man was arrested in Canada and charged with plotting a mass shooting at a Jewish center in Brooklyn, New York, on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. The man, believed to have been inspired by ISIS, allegedly intended to “slaughter” as many Jews as possible during the planned attack. The arrest came as part of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation, with the suspect communicating his plans to undercover agents, outlining his intent to carry out the attack in the name of ISIS. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the charges, emphasizing the seriousness of the threat and the ongoing efforts to combat terrorism.

The Numbers

Casualties

• 1,664 Israelis dead including 706 IDF soldiers (341 IDF soldiers during the ground operation in Gaza: no since Wednesday)
• Additional Information (according to the IDF):
  • 2,271 (+3 since Wednesday) IDF soldiers have been injured during ground combat in Gaza, including at least 427 (no change since Wednesday) who have been severely injured.
  • 4,425 (+3 since Wednesday) IDF soldiers have been injured since the beginning of the war, including at least 658 (no change since Wednesday) who have been severely injured.
• According to unverified figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, 40,861 (+42 since Wednesday) people have been killed in Gaza, and 94,398 (+77 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 97-101 hostages 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 an estimated 97-101 hostages still theoretically in Gaza
  • 31 hostages are assumed to be dead and held in captivity
  • Thus, at most, 74 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.

Read and Listen

‘Bring Them Home’ Is Bringing Us to the Brink: Empty slogans and misbegotten promises are designed to cause civil war. Don’t let them. by Liel Leibovitz in Tablet

• There are many great and valid critiques of the prime minister’s conduct this past year…On the Israeli right, for example, a host of increasingly louder voices, including ex-generals, are arguing that by being much too deferential to American pressure, and by refusing to pursue goals that would provide real deterrence—like seizing and keeping swaths of the strip as a security buffer zone—the prime minister greatly diminished the impact of Israel’s military response. You can scrutinize Bibi from the left, arguing that he failed to do everything he could to follow through on good diplomatic leads. You can attack him from the center, noting his government’s inability to provide adequate services to the hundreds of thousands of Israelis displaced by the war, or to take action to allow these refugees to safely return to their homes. These are all fair and valid points, and a democratic society can and must debate them all urgently and candidly.
• That, however, is not what’s currently going on Israel.
• The masses in the streets are not abstractions to me. They are my mother and my closest friends, former work colleagues and men and women I’ve served with in the army. I know their heart, and I know that it is bleeding with rage and with a profound sense of sadness for all that was lost. But rage and sadness are dangerous substances, and right now in Israel, these emotions are being manipulated to incite an inflamed mania that, if we’re not careful, may succeed in doing what no Nukhba jihadist could ever achieve and bring Israel down.
• It hardly takes a strategic mastermind to understand that American pressure on the Jewish state isn’t limited merely to determining how many smart bombs are delivered and when. Nor, for that matter, does it stop with Tom Nides, the former American ambassador to Jerusalem, admitting openly and giddily that America is happy to intervene in Israel’s domestic politics, because, in flagrant violation of all diplomatic norms and traditions, it believes it can save Israel from itself. The same logic applies everywhere else: Once you’ve set up a large and largely impregnable construct that folds into it major conglomerations, the government, media, academia, and just about every other previously independent institution, you can expect nothing but pressure to conform, by everyone everywhere in every way.
• Swayed by their dislike of Bibi, they’ve convinced themselves that it is actually the prime minister—and not the superpower limiting their military options or the murderous terrorist group taunting them at every turn—who is public enemy No. 1. And that, for a small country with very big existential threats, is not merely a derangement syndrome you can shake off; it is, instead, a potentially deadly distraction.
• Because Israel these days is waking up to the shattering realization that the rosy tales it told itself for decades were false. That there is no such thing as “the peace process with the Palestinians,” if only because a) the scattered family-based tribes who dot Judea and Samaria do not coalesce over any one coherent national consciousness and b) even if they did, coexistence with the Jews next door has never been and will never be on the menu.
• To truly deliver a deadly and effective blow to its enemies, Israel will have not only to assassinate its leaders and their enablers—which, in the case of Lebanon, at least, involves a wide swath of the country’s elected officials—but also reclaim and keep key territories, including a permanent return to the Litani River up north and the creation of vast buffer zones in the north and the south alike. It will have to dismantle the murderous and corrupt Palestinian Authority, and enforce some solution that gives Palestinians some autonomy in their daily lives but nothing remotely resembling an armed sovereign nation. And it will have to radically rethink the way it deals with terrorism, including immediately executing the worst perpetrators to eliminate incentives for kidnapping and holding Israeli civilians as bargaining chips.
• But Oct. 7 reminded Israelis, in the most brutal fashion imaginable, that the quasi-normal life they had imagined was now their forever lot was an illusion. Now, they must fight, and in fighting they must also ask themselves what it is that they’re fighting for. The answer cannot merely be survival—those merely struggling to stay alive rarely do for very long. The answer, instead, involves rethinking the nation’s commitments and priorities, its purpose and its powers—the ur-discussion that had informed Zionism from the very moment of its birth.
• The clashes unfurling all over Israel these days, then, aren’t really about the hostages, or the war, or even about Bibi Netanyahu. They’re more ontological than political, a referendum on how Israelis see the world and their role in it.
• Link: ‘Bring Them Home’ Is Bringing Us to the Brink

[PODCAST] Liel Leibovitz on What the Protests in Israel Mean in Mosaic

• For a while after October 7, the war produced an atmosphere of national solidarity in Israel, quieting some of the tensions that had divided Israelis from one another with a special intensity throughout the previous year. That quiet now seems to be ending.
• Jonathan Silver speaks this week with Leibovitz about a recent essay analyzing the roots and effects of the protests themselves, “‘Bring them Home’ Is Bringing Us to the Brink.” In it, Leibovitz looks at the protesters’ motivations, at a style of politics he thinks has been imported from America, and deeper questions raised by the Israelis marching against their government. In their conversation, Silver and Leibovitz try to peer a little more deeply into the ongoing drama of modern Zionism and the meaning of modern Israel.
• Link: Liel Leibovitz on What the Protests in Israel Mean

Listen

[PODCAST] Call Me Back with Dan Senor: Bibi’s message vs Bibi the messenger – with Nadav Eyal and Amit Segal

• In recent days, there has been intensifying debate inside Israel over whether the security concerns raised by Prime Minister Netanyahu (regarding the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border) are legitimate or just sand being thrown in the gears of the hostage negotiations? Are there actual substantive objections to the concerns the Prime Minister is raising, or are the concerns really just with Netanyahu himself? Is the problem the message? Or the messenger?
• Link: Bibi’s message vs Bibi the messenger

Watch

[VIDEO] The harrowing account from rescued hostage Farhan al-Qadi

• On October 7, al-Qadi was working on an Israeli kibbutz. Terrorists caught him and after demanding proof that he was a Muslim, demanded that he show them where Jews were hiding. Al-Qadi refused, saying “I was prepared to die rather than point them to a Jew, not even to a cat.”
• The terrorists shot him in the leg, tied his hands behind his back, threw him into a car and drove him to Gaza.
• Unable to walk, al-Qadi was forced to crawl up stairs on all fours. The terrorists laughed and said, “Look, here’s our dog walking.” His injury was then sewn up without anesthetic and while he was being interrogated.

Rocket Alerts

• Since September 1st, Hezbollah has caused 160 rocket alerts

Source: Rocket Alerts in Israel

Humanitarian Aid

Source: Israel Humanitarian efforts – Swords of Iron

What We Are Reading

The high-stakes battle over understanding Palestinian public opinion in Israel, by Lahav Harkov with Jewish Insider

• In March, the highly regarded Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki set out to survey Palestinian public opinion about the brutal attack carried out by Hamas on Oct. 7. The poll, published by Shikaki’s Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, found widespread support for Hamas: More than 7 in 10 Gazans backed the Oct. 7 attack, nearly two-thirds were satisfied with Hamas’ performance in the war and a majority were satisfied with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. But like so much else about the war in Gaza, Shikaki’s poll results are shrouded in fog.
• The official Israel Defense Forces X account, in a post last week carrying the hashtag “busted,” released documents purporting to show Hamas falsified the results of the poll from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research to indicate greater support for the Oct. 7 attacks in Palestinian society.
• The IDF found a letter in Gaza that the military said indicated that someone named Abu Khaled was manipulating March 2024 poll results without evidence that PCSR Director Khalil Shikaki had any knowledge of the matter.
• According to the IDF, “these documents are part of a systematic process, the purpose of which is to disguise the collapse of the organization and the collapse of public support for it.”
• One of the current Gaza war’s aims is to destroy Hamas’ ability to threaten Israel and to govern in Gaza, such that “the collapse of the organization” would mean a win for Israel, and could be a reason to move towards an end to the war.
• But a subsequent PCPSR poll showed otherwise. Rather than a precipitous decline in support for Hamas, the new results were consistent with the published results from March, which the IDF said were faked, showing widespread Palestinian support for Hamas, with a gap in Hamas’ popularity between the West Bank and Gaza.
• A PCPSR poll conducted in June showed that 73% of Palestinians supported the Oct. 7 attacks and 79% said Hamas would win the war, while only 2% said Israel would win.
• Asked about who should rule Gaza the day after the war, Hamas was still the most popular answer at 61%, though 71% of West Bank Palestinians chose Hamas, while less than half (46%) of Gazans did so. Sinwar enjoyed 65% support — 76% of West Bank Palestinians and 50% of Gazans.
• Soon after the IDF published the documents, Shikaki said that it is “highly unlikely” Hamas was able to manipulate poll results and that the claim may be based either on a forgery or an attempt by someone to lie to get money from Hamas. Still, he said that PSPCR would investigate the claim.
• Experts from research institutions with varied political leanings all told JI that while they trust that the IDF is telling the truth about finding the documents in Gaza, they do not share the military’s assessment of what they mean and that most Palestinians still support Hamas and Oct. 7.
• Link: The high-stakes battle over understanding Palestinian public opinion in Israel

10 Things Washington Should Do to Hold Hamas Accountable, by Richard Goldberg with Foundation in Defense of Democracies (FDD)

1. Hamas leadership: Support Israel’s campaign to kill or capture Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and other Hamas leaders at large, both inside and outside Gaza.
2. Hamas and partner networks: Within the United States and overseas, lead a crackdown on Hamas networks. The Department of Justice should move forward with indictments of known individuals and groups in the United States providing material support to Hamas and those associated with Hamas, domestically and abroad. The Departments of the Treasury and State should also target Hamas’s support network of terrorist entities in and out of the Gaza Strip. Sanctions have not yet been imposed on organizations such as the Popular Resistance Committees, Abdul al-Qadir al-Husseini Brigades, and the Palestinian Freedom Movement. These armed organizations coordinate attacks on Israeli troops and territory with known designated Palestinian terrorist factions. Palestinian organizations that provide material support to Hamas and coordinate attacks with them should be held accountable for their actions. Hamas networks in foreign countries, including South Africa, should be targeted with sanctions as well.
3. Munitions to Israel: With U.S partners, publicly send Israel a series of additional munitions to help it wage an offensive against Iran’s terrorist proxies.
4. Qatar: Bring immediate and intense pressure to bear on Qatar to cut off all political and financial lifelines it provides to Hamas. Pressure on Qatar should include threats to remove Qatar’s status as a major non-NATO ally; move Al Udeid Air Base assets; impose sanctions on Qatari officials, instrumentalities, and assets; and impose sanctions on Qatar’s Al-Jazeera Media Network. Qatar should be compelled to close all Hamas offices and operations, freeze and turn over to the United States all Hamas-connected assets, and turn over to the United States or Israel all Hamas officials who remain in the country.
5. Egypt: Bring immediate and intense pressure to bear on Egypt to permanently cut off Hamas supply routes above and below the Egypt-Gaza border.
6. Turkey: Bring immediate and intense pressure to bear on Turkey to cut off all political and financial lifelines provided to Hamas. Pressure should include threats to impose sanctions on Turkish officials or entities that provide material support to Hamas. Turkey should be compelled to close all Hamas offices and operations, freeze and turn over to the United States all Hamas-connected assets, including Ismail Haniyeh’s assets reportedly in Turkish banks, and turn over to the United States or Israel all Hamas officials who remain in the country.
7. Lebanon: Bring immediate and intense pressure to bear on Lebanon to cut off all political and financial lifelines provided to Hamas.
8. China: Target China with economic and political pressure for subsidizing Hamas through oil imports and from Iran.
9. Iran: Increase other forms of pressure on Iran. Pressure should include ending Iranian access to previously inaccessible Iraqi electricity payments and any other funds made available for Iran’s use, triggering the snapback of UN sanctions on Iran at the Security Council, and an all-out diplomatic push to get the United Kingdom and the European Union to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization.
10. International Organizations: Fight back against Hamas allies within international organizations.
11. Link: 10 Things Washington Should Do to Hold Hamas Accountable

Psychological warfare: Sinwar-approved doc highlights Hamas’s negotiating tactics – report, by Mathilda Heller with Jerusalem Post

• A previously unseen document found on Yahya Sinwar’s computer reportedly sheds light on the organization’s negotiation strategy, including psychological torture of hostage families, the German newspaper BILD reported in an exclusive on Friday.
• The document apparently states that Hamas intentionally abuses hostages to leverage its negotiating position. These include “exhausting” Israel’s military apparatus, increasing international pressure on Israel, and maintaining its armed capacity.
• According to BILD’s reading of the document, psychological tactics against the hostages’ families is a strategy developed to increase pressure on Israel’s government to agree to the terms of the deal.
• It instructs, “Continue to exert psychological pressure on the families of the [hostages], both now and during the first phase [of the ceasefire] so that public pressure on the enemy government increases.”
• According to BILD, the document showed that Hamas is not seeking a quick end to the war that would benefit Gazan civilians. Rather, the document states, “Important clauses in the deal should be improved upon, even if negotiations continue over a longer period of time.”
• In the document, Hamas admits that its “military capacity has been weakened,” but does not see the need for a quick end to fighting, BILD revealed.
• The document makes no reference to Palestinian casualties and civilian deaths, which BILD told The Post was unusual given the reportedly high death toll.
• Hamas also lists important demands on Israel, such as the release of 100 prisoners and terrorists serving life sentences in Israeli prisons, according to BILD.
• In the document, Hamas is allegedly adamant that Israel should be held solely responsible for the unsuccessful negotiations. They state that if Israel rejects a deal brought by the US, “the media must be made aware that Hamas agreed, but that the deal failed due to “Israel’s stubbornness.”

  Hamas should not be “held responsible for the failure of an agreement,” the document says. Hamas should not be “held responsible for the failure of an agreement,” the document says.

• BILD adds that the document makes no reference to the Philadelphi Corridor, despite it being a key sticking point in ongoing negotiations.
• Link: Psychological warfare: Sinwar-approved doc highlights Hamas’s negotiating tactics – report: Jerusalem Post

Crush Hamas or free hostages? I choose the hostages, by Yossi Klein Halevi with Times of Israel

• Israel’s strength and resilience depend on maintaining our deterrence and our solidarity, the two pillars of our national ethos. During the first months of the war, Israelis pretended that we could do both: defeat Hamas, restoring our deterrence, and free the hostages, restoring our faith in our ability to protect each other. Now though, we know that we must choose between those two essential goals.
• That is the cruelty of our hostage dilemma.
• Prioritizing the hostages will have consequences for restoring our deterrence; prioritizing victory will have consequences for restoring our solidarity. Proponents of either position need to acknowledge the brutal price their choice entails.
• Like most Israelis in the initial phase of the war, I prioritized military victory over rescue – even if I couldn’t quite admit that to myself. The overriding need in the immediate aftermath of October 7 was to prove that we could still defend ourselves. In media interviews and essays, (including those published in TOI), I argued that our long-term existence depends on restoring our deterrence and that that could not be achieved by leaving a genocidal regime on our border.
• If the hostages are left to die, large numbers of Israelis will believe they were sacrificed not for a higher security purpose like retaining the Philadephi Corridor on the border between Gaza and Egypt, but for the political needs of an endlessly cynical prime minister seeking to hold his coalition together. What matters for the well-being of Israel is not whether that perception is true but that many Israelis are convinced that it is. The consequences for the covenant of trust between the state and a large part of its people will be far-reaching.
• As a citizen, whom am I to believe: the heads of the IDF, the Mossad, the Shin Bet, all of whom insist that the Philadelphi Corridor can be handled differently, or a prime minister who repeatedly adds new demands in negotiations and who barely mentioned the Corridor until recently, when far-right politicians threatened to bring down the government if he withdraws from there?
• In recent days, some voices have suggested that it is time to reexamine the very premise of hostage negotiations. A compelling argument can indeed be made for breaking the pattern of hostage-taking and the mass release of terrorists, which only encourages more hostage-taking. Yahya Sinwar, after all, was freed in the 2011 exchange for Gilad Shalit.
• But changing the norm to prioritize strategic considerations over the lives of our fellow citizens requires the trust of Israelis in the morality of that hard decision. And that requires trust in the integrity of our leader.
• Needless to say, Netanyahu is not that man.
• Standing among hundreds of thousands of Israelis at the pro-hostage protest on Sunday night in Tel Aviv, I sensed the cold rage of patriotic citizens who felt betrayed by their government. Young people, many of them back from the front, wrapped themselves in Israeli flags like a protective blanket, clinging to the symbol of the values on which they were raised and in whose name they have fought, seeking reassurance that those values still held.
• Link: Crush Hamas or free hostages? I choose the hostages

The Iranian Perspective on Hezbollah’s Massive Attack on Israel, by Aviram Bellaishe with Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA)

• Arab society is based on shame, in contrast to Western society, which is based on guilt. The response to shame is often revenge, while the response to guilt is punishment or forgiveness. What is the response to the failure of revenge? Especially when it is publicly evident and results in greater shame, lies, confusion, attempts to dissimulate, and lack of coordinated messaging? The question then arises whether we are trapped in a vicious cycle, leading back to revenge, or if the current struggle is over the image of victory.
• Just hours before Hizbullah’s planned attack, an Iranian-affiliated channel on Telegram, likely linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), published the Iranian regime’s and its proxies’ planned response to Israel’s recent targeted killings:
  • Iran is planning to target a high-level decision-maker and a strategic structure; it is likely that the intention is to strike an individual Israeli figure.
  • Hezbollah would hit a non civilian target, an important site where the killing of Hezbollah military leader Fuad Shukr was planned, with no intention to harm civilians.
  • The Houthis would target essential Israeli infrastructure indiscriminately, including civilians.
• The Iranian regime, for its own reasons, chose not to join the attack. Possible reasons included a lack of operational readiness, fear of escalation into a full-scale war, but primarily U.S. support for Israel, which was bolstered after Israel’s preemptive strike in Lebanon. Other considerations included Iran’s economic plight, fear of Israeli retaliation in light of Israel’s demonstrated operational capabilities in reaching the Houthi-controlled Hudaydah port in Yemen, the outdated Iranian air force’s lack of offensive capability, and the geographical distance between Israel and Iran, because missile attacks can be readily detected.
• Hence, Tehran shifted the responsibility for revenge against Israel to Hizbullah. This could also be inferred from statements by the Iranian chief of staff indicating that the Iranian revenge attack might be carried out either by Iran itself or the resistance axis. It is clear that the regime was preparing for victory celebrations, and aimed for a symbolic achievement by dubbing the attack “Operation Arba’in” and planning it for the most symbolic day for Shiites.
• Hezbollah’s operational and propaganda failure constituted a significant blow to the entire resistance axis and especially Iran. Iranian officials have clearly tried to create a victory image for Hizbullah’s failed attack. For example, initially, Iranian media claimed that the damage to the Israeli Dvora-class ship in the Mediterranean and the killing of the sailor were inflicted by a Hezbollah missile rather than an errant Israeli interceptor. In addition, the Tasnim News Agency published footage of a Hizbullah missile allegedly in flight, which turned out to be a Hezbollah drone that was intercepted.
• This failure clearly prompted rapid and uncoordinated reactions by Iranian propagandists in an attempt to cover for the failed attack. For instance, Hossein Fak, a prominent communications activist for the IRGC, published an article in the Tehran municipality’s newspaper claiming that Hizbullah’s attack was only the first part of the revenge for Shukr’s death.3 However, after Nasrallah’s speech, in which he declared that the revenge had ended, Fak was forced to clarify on his Telegram channel that his statements were made before Nasrallah’s speech.
• Iranian efforts to attribute a military achievement and victory to Hizbullah’s attack on Israel were clearly unsuccessful. Instead, these efforts were greeted with mockery from the Lebanese and the Iranian public. The “revenge” was lampooned as only harming chickens because of a chicken coop that was damaged.
• Link: The Iranian Perspective on Hezbollah’s Massive Attack on Israel

Hamas Diplomacy: From Haniyeh to Sinwar, by Aaron Y. Zelin with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy

• After conducting the world’s largest terrorist attack since 9/11 and sparking a tragically destructive war in Gaza, Hamas has spent months conducting a diplomatic campaign to garner support and gain political cover on the world stage. These efforts increase the chances that the group will remain a key actor in the Palestinian arena after the war, potentially undermining Israel’s pledge to eradicate or at least defang it. Yet the recent assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh—who took part in nearly three-fourths of its diplomatic engagements during the war—will likely complicate its future charm offensives.

• Since the October 7 attack, Hamas has regularly promoted its diplomatic meetings with foreign officials, political parties, local NGOs, and other groups via its official Telegram channels and website. As of August 28, it had engaged in 128 such meetings either in person or via phone (or 134 if one includes each country’s presence at a multilateral engagement). Twenty-three countries were involved in these meetings, whether in the form of government officials, political parties, or nonstate actors that operate within their borders. In contrast, Hamas had only 37 diplomatic engagements in the year prior to the October 7 attacks, meaning it is on pace for a fivefold annual increase.
• Unsurprisingly, the meetings also show that Iran is the group’s biggest diplomatic backer, not just its main military patron. The Islamic Republic was the first country to congratulate Hamas on the October 7 attack and has steadfastly supported it via numerous phone conversations and in-person meetings in Tehran and Qatar. Among other issues, the two allies have discussed broad strategic matters and specific responses to Israel’s actions in Gaza and regionally.
• Notably, a large proportion of the group’s diplomatic meetings in recent years have been conducted by phone rather than in person (e.g., 40 percent during the war, 33 percent the previous year). Although the restrictions on travel to or from Gaza may partially explain this trend (especially during wartime), it also suggests that questions persist about the group’s legitimacy.
• The group has also attempted to situate itself as the sole voice on Palestine, in part by praising countries for taking actions it perceives as beneficial to the Palestinian cause. For example, Hamas has:
  • Thanked the African Union and Arab League for backing its struggle;
  • Thanked Armenia, the Bahamas, Ireland, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, and Trinidad and Tobago for recognizing a Palestinian state post-October 7;
  • Praised Bolivia, Brazil, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, South Africa, and Turkey for breaking ties with Israel post-October 7;
  • Congratulated South Africa for opening a “genocide” case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, and praised Egypt, Libya, Spain, and Turkey for subsequently joining the case.
• In the months after the October 7 attack, Haniyeh took part in 73 percent of Hamas’s publicly announced diplomatic engagements. How will the group fill this gap now that he is gone?
• Washington should also do more to curb the major increase in Hamas diplomatic engagement on the world stage—otherwise, the group could wind up being legitimized as the sole voice of Palestine despite starting a destructive war and losing much of its infrastructure in Gaza.
• Link: Hamas Diplomacy: From Haniyeh to Sinwar

The Philadelphi conundrum: “If, after Oct. 7, and after seeing the implications of military buildup, we don’t insist on this, then it essentially means Israel can be forced to fold on any issue.” By Israel Kasnett in Jewish National Syndicate

• Clearly under pressure from the international community to leave the corridor, Netanyahu warned repeatedly during the press conference that such a retreat would enable Hamas to maintain power and smuggle in weapons, preventing the demilitarization of Gaza and posing a grave threat to Israel’s security.
• …many experts, including Krivine and former Israeli National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat, agree with Netanyahu that contrary to what some Israeli defense officials believe, Israel will not be able to easily return to the corridor once it withdraws, as the international community will place heavy pressure on Jerusalem to keep it from doing so.
• “Of course, the IDF has the ability, operationally, [to] reoccupy this corridor even after 42 days, but it’s not just a matter of military capability,” he added. “Everyone understands that once we leave, Israel will face immense diplomatic pressure from the U.S. and other countries not to return.”
• Part of the confusion leading up to the press conference was that Netanyahu seems to now be saying he does not intend to withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor, but media outlets had reported that he had agreed to withdraw from parts of the corridor that are heavily populated, in the second phase of a proposed ceasefire deal.
• Netanyahu clarified on Wednesday that Israel would be willing to withdraw if a suitable foreign entity is found that is able to properly monitor the border and prevent smuggling there.
• Ben-Shabbat told JNS that relinquishing control of the Philadelphi Corridor “would encourage Hamas, signal to the residents of Gaza that the terror organization will continue to be the dominant force in the Strip and might even embolden the ‘resistance axis,’ particularly Hezbollah, to take a harder stance against Israel.”
• While some argue that it’s not wise to occupy the corridor because it’s a narrow strip of land, and staying there would expose Israeli forces, Ben-Shabbat told JNS that “now is precisely the time for the IDF to carry out all the necessary engineering work in the area to improve conditions for the safety of our forces,” adding, “Who said we have to settle for a 14-meter-wide strip?”
• Brian Carter of the American Enterprise Institute seems to agree. He told JNS that “either Israel or another capable entity must control the Philadelphi Corridor for Israel to prevent Hamas from rebuilding its capabilities to the same level the group reached by Oct. 7.”
• Ben-Shabbat told JNS that Israel can take more steps to ensure it achieves its objectives in this war.
  • First, Israel must “completely deprive Hamas of control over the supplies entering the Strip,” he said. “This is its lifeline and the main means of maintaining its governance.”
  • Second, Israel should “divide Gaza into more sections, beyond what currently exists.”
  • Third, as another former head of the Israeli National Security Council, Giora Eiland, proposed, Israel should launch a “broad operation” in northern Gaza. This means evacuating Gaza City and the northern Strip, closing it off as a military zone, cutting off supplies to the area, and then conducting a thorough military operation to destroy terrorists.
• Link: The Philadelphi conundrum

How Crypto and U.S. Allies Ensure Hamas Remains Well-Funded, by Jim Geraghty in National Review

• Last Thursday night, the Democratic presidential nominee briefly addressed the ongoing crisis in the Middle East, and emphasized that no matter what, “We have got to get a deal done”:
• The administration’s position is that “Hamas must be eliminated” and “Hamas cannot control Gaza,” but Israeli military forces must not enter Rafah and the administration has been negotiating with Hamas, fruitlessly, since the beginning of the year. Apparently, the idea is that the Palestinian people in Gaza are supposed to desire new leadership, while the U.S. pressures Israel to give Hamas a better deal. Why would the Palestinians want to get rid of Hamas, when Hamas has figured out how to get the Biden administration to act as its agent, negotiating on its behalf with Israel?
• There is no deal to be reached with Hamas.
• The evidence that we have indicates that the leaders of Hamas are sadistic maniacs who cannot be cajoled into ceasing barbaric behavior that comes as naturally to them as breathing.
• Hamas runs, in significant part, on foreign money — some from Iran that is difficult to block, but also some from donors in other countries, some knowingly, some unknowingly financing terrorism.
  • The group’s primary external funding comes from Iran, which has provided it roughly $100 million per year. Hamas also generates of revenue from an expansive and sophisticated international investment portfolio, previously estimated to be worth at least $500 million. This investment portfolio has invested in companies and assets located across the world, including in Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Türkiye, and the UAE, and is managed by Hamas’ Investment Office In addition, Hamas relies on a global fundraising network to raise funds for its nefarious activities. Hamas is prolific in soliciting donations from witting and unwitting donors worldwide in both fiat and virtual assets.
  • Israel’s declared goal of destroying Hamas for good requires its financial base to be dismantled, too. Very little of this sits in Gaza. Instead, it is overseas in friendly countries. Furnished with money-launderers, mining companies and much else, Hamas’s financial empire is reckoned to bring in more than $1bn a year. Having been painstakingly crafted to avoid Western sanctions, it may be out of reach for Israel and its allies.
  • Last year, the U.S provided $196 million in assistance to Turkey, mostly humanitarian assistance. This is separate from the $23 billion sale of new F-16s and upgrades to existing jets that also went to Turkey.
• Hamas is not designated a terrorist group in Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Turkey, or the United Nations. This gives the group quite a few banking and financial options. (In case you’re wondering if this is part of Switzerland’s longstanding neutrality, note that the country does designate al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad as terrorist organizations.) The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, and the UAE) also do not consider Hamas a terrorist organization, but back in 2016, the GCC countries did designate Hezbollah as a terrorist group.
• The Biden administration could do some more arm-twisting of these allies, pointing out that they’re willing to classify Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad as terrorists, but not Hamas.
• Link: How Crypto and U.S. Allies Ensure Hamas Remains Well-Funded

Antisemitism

A Year of Campus Conflict and Growth: An Over-Time Study of the Impact of the Israel-Hamas War on U.S. College Students, by Eitan Hersh with the Jim Joseph Foundation.

• A new report from Dr. Eitan Hersh and College Pulse provides an unprecedented look spanning three years of the experiences and views of Jewish and non-Jewish students on college campuses both before and after October 7th, 2023. This research is unique because it includes and compares survey responses and interviews from Jewish college students who participated in the study in April 2022, in November and December of 2023, and in March and April of 2024. The study also includes detailed analyses of focus groups from a wide range of students who talked through their feelings on the conflict on campus and the conflict in the Middle East. Here are some of the most revealing findings of the study. The studies are available through the link provided below.
• We measure significant changes in attitudes through the 2022-2024 surveys. The percentage of Jewish students who said their Jewish identity is very important to them increased significantly from 2022 to 2023 to 2024. About half of Jewish students feel their identity is very important. The percentage of students who said they feared antisemitism also increased between 2022 and the 2023-2024 school year.
• Between 2022 and 2023, there were elevated rates of Jewish students saying they need to hide some of their opinions to fit in at Jewish activities on campus.
• Students with less robust Jewish backgrounds were most likely to feel they needed to hide their opinions in Jewish spaces.
• In the 2023-2024 school year, 1 in 4 Jewish students said they felt the need to hide their Jewish identity to fit in on campus, 1 in 3 students said they were judged negatively for participating in Jewish activities, and more than half said that Jewish students pay a social penalty for supporting the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.
• One in five non-Jewish students deliberately aim to socially ostracize Jewish peers who support the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.
• In 2024, one in five non-Jewish students say they wouldn’t want to be friends with someone who supports the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. Forty-five percent said they were not sure.
• From 2022 to 2023 to 2024, a significant increase in students reported they had been directly exposed to antisemitic slurs in classrooms and said they feared antisemitism.
• Several demographic characteristics correlate with Jewish students’ views on Israel, including their political ideology, their sexuality, and their family’s Jewish background.
  • Student’s socioeconomic class also is a major predictor – students from wealthier families are much more supportive of a Jewish state. This pattern is especially strong among students without robust Jewish backgrounds.
  • The same relationship is visible in non-Jewish students too. Jewish and non-Jewish students from upper class homes are twice as likely to believe a Jewish state should exist in general and twice as likely to blame Hamas rather than Israel for the current war, compared to students from lower- or working-class homes.

• Of “activists” who attended campus advocacy events, Jewish activists who oppose a Jewish state and attended pro-Palestine events during the school year have different backgrounds and demographics than Jewish activists who support a Jewish state and attended pro-Israel events during the school year.
  • The former group mostly grew up with less robust Jewish backgrounds. The majority identify as LGBT and as very liberal. They are also mostly lower/working and middle class.
  • Conversely, the latter group of activists overwhelmingly come from families affiliated with denominations and had many Jewish experiences growing up. They are mostly heterosexual, upper-middle or upper class, and do not identify as very liberal.

• Link: A Year of Campus Conflict and Growth: An Over-Time Study of the Impact of the Israel-Hamas War on U.S. College Students
• Full Report: Hersh_Final_Report_Campus_Conflict_and_Growth.pdf

An Infantilizing Double Standard for American College Students, a Guest Essay by Brecht Vandenbroucke with The New York Times

• Picture two 20-year-olds. One is a full-time college student and the other is a full-time waiter. Both go out one night to drink and have a good time.
• Universities don’t openly describe students as children, but that is how they treat them. This was highlighted in the spring, when so many pro-Palestinian student protesters — most of them legal adults — faced minimal consequences for even flagrant violations of their universities’ policies. (Some were arrested — but those charges were often dropped.) American universities’ relative generosity to their students may seem appealing, especially in contrast to the plight of our imaginary waiter, but it has a dark side, in the form of increased control of student life.
• If universities today won’t hold students responsible for their bad behavior, they also won’t leave them alone when they do nothing wrong. Administrators send out position statements after major national and international political events to convey the approved response, micromanage campus parties and social events, dictate scripts for sexual interactions, extract allegiance to boutique theories of power and herd undergraduates into mandatory dormitories where their daily lives can be more comprehensively monitored and shaped. This is increasingly true across institutions — public and private, small and large — but the more elite the school, the more acute the problem.
• A result of this combination of increased lenience and increased control is a kind of simulacrum of adult independence that in reality infantilizes students and protects them from responsibility — for both their good choices and their bad ones. On one hand, there is almost no chance that a Stanford student will face serious consequences for underage drinking at a party. The first three violations of the school’s alcohol policy result in consequences no more severe than mandated participation in an in-house educational program. On the other hand, under rules requiring extensive monitoring and an elaborate registration process for social gatherings, finding a party to attend in the first place at Stanford might be even more difficult than being punished for drinking at one.
• After pro-Palestinian students set up camps to allege that their universities were complicit in the harm of a foreign genocide, Jewish students alleged that the protests imperiled their campus safety. In response, Muslim students alleged that measures to restrict the protests slighted their safety, and disabled students pointed out that the protests, as well as the university’s response to them, were undermining their safety by blocking their access to campus. All these groups looked simultaneously to administrators for protection. Safety comes first, no doubt — but whose?
• If universities are to do less, then students must be prepared to do more, by relinquishing the comfort of leniency and low standards and stepping up to manage their social and academic lives on and off campus, as their peers outside the university already do. Universities, faced with the constant threat of litigation, will be hesitant to extend student autonomy, but they stand to lose their own autonomy if they concede all their institutional decision-making to lawyers and judges.

Link: An Infantilizing Double Standard for American College Students

Jessica Schwalb posts on X: In a packet handed out by @ColumbiaBDS during 2024 Convocation to incoming students, the student organization, again, openly expresses unequivocal support for Hamas. Pictured on the cover is a Hamas fighter. The back endorses the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas:

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