Situational Update
Prime Minister Netanyahu visited the Syrian side of Mount Hermon today and delivered the following remarks (you can watch here):
I am here on the summit of Mt. Hermon with the Defense Minister, the IDF Chief-of-Staff, the Head of Northern Command, the Director of the ISA and senior commanders. We are holding this assessment in order to decide on the deployment of the IDF in this important place until another arrangement is found that ensures Israel's security.
This is nostalgic for me. I was here 53 years ago with my soldiers in the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit. The place has not changed. It is the same place but its importance for the security of Israel has only been underscored in recent years, and especially in recent weeks with the dramatic events that have occurred below us in Syria. We will determine the best arrangement that will ensure our security.
While many sources reported during the day that Israel was close to a ceasefire/hostage deal, Axios reports differently: Despite optimistic public statements, a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal is not imminent, three Israeli officials tell Axios. The U.S., Israel and the Egyptian and Qatari mediators are trying to reach a deal before President-elect Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20. While the Israeli officials say progress has been made over the past two weeks, big gaps remain. CIA Director Bill Burns will visit Doha on Wednesday and meet the Qatari prime minister to discuss the status of the negotiations, according to a source familiar with the trip.
The Numbers
Casualties
1,813 Israelis have been killed including 818 IDF soldiers since October 7th (+2 since Sunday)
The IDF reported that two soldiers were killed when a building in Rafah’s suburban area collapsed while the two were inside. The military has assessed that the unstable building, which was already heavily damaged by IDF activity in the area, collapsed due to the movement of tanks on a route close to it. No explosives or Hamas terror group booby-traps were identified in the area, the probe found.
Maj. (res.) Moshiko (Maxim) Rozenwald, 35
Sgt. First Class. (res.) Alexander Anosov, 26.
The South: 386 IDF soldiers during the ground operation in Gaza have been killed (+2 since Sunday)
The North: 131 Israelis (84 IDF soldiers) have been killed during the war in Northern Israel (no change from Sunday)
Additional Information (according to the IDF):
2,491 (no change from Sunday) IDF soldiers have been injured during ground combat in Gaza, including at least 471 (no change from Sunday) who have been severely injured.
5,493 (+5 since Sunday) IDF soldiers have been injured since the beginning of the war, including at least 802 (no change from Sunday) who have been severely injured.
According to unverified figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, 45,059 (+224 since Sunday) people have been killed in Gaza, and 107,041 (+685 since Sunday) have been injured during the war.
Report: Questionable Counting: Analysing the Death Toll from the Hamas-Run Ministry of Health in Gaza by Andrew Fox with The Henry Jackson Society
On October 7th, Ohad Hemo with Channel 12 Israel News – the country’s largest news network, a leading expert on Palestinian and Arab affairs, mentioned an estimate from Hamas: around 80% of those killed in Gaza are members of the organization and their families.”
The article goes on to say: “In an N12 article that came out this morning, Hemo also pointed out that since the elimination of key leader Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s top echelon has gone underground and fled Iran and Lebanon, with some relocating to Turkey and Qatar – with the hope that Israel will not strike them there.
Read this well documented piece from Tablet published in March: How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers
The Associated Press, an outlet with a demonstrated anti-Israel bias, conducted an analysis of alleged Gaza death tolls released by the Hamas-controlled "Gaza Health Ministry." The analysis found that "9,940 of the dead – 29% of its April 30 total – were not listed in the data" and that "an additional 1,699 records in the ministry’s April data were incomplete and 22 were duplicates."
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes official details on every civilian and IDF casualty.
Hostages
There are currently 96 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 7th, a total of 261 Israelis were taken hostage.
During the ceasefire deal in November, 112 hostages were released.
145 hostages in total have been released or rescued
The bodies of 38 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 100 hostages still theoretically in Gaza
At least 34 confirmed bodies are currently being held in Gaza
30-50 hostages are assumed to be dead and held in captivity
Thus, at most, 50-70 living hostages could still be in Gaza.
Hamas is also holding 2 Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of 2 IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
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[PODCAST] Call Me Back with Dan Senor: Assad’s Death Factory - with Joseph Braude & Ahed Al Hendi
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They Tortured Him for Years. Now They Rule Syria: An Interview with Theo Padnos by Michael Moynihan with The Free Press
In October 2012, Padnos ventured from Turkey into Syria to report on the Syrian civil war. There, he was captured by HTS (then known as Jabhat al-Nusra) and held captive for nearly two years.
Throughout his captivity, Padnos endured relentless torture at the hands of his captors. He was savagely beaten until unconscious, given electric shocks, and forced into severe stress positions for hours at a time. This is to say nothing of the psychological torment inflicted on him.
Today, he discusses his harrowing experience, the psychology of jihadists, and what the future of Syria will look like under the leadership of his former captors.
X Post of the Day
John Spencer posts: According to the IDF, as of the end of November 2024 they had destroyed 90% of Hamas rocket supplies, killed 22,000 Hamas combatants to include Yahya Sinwar (leader of Hamas in Gaza), Mohammed Deif (head of Hamas military wing, 2nd in command), Marwan Issa, 8 Brigade Commanders, 30 Battalion Commanders, 165 Company Commanders. Effectively destroying (unable to do their assigned military task or reconstitute to do organized military collective operations) Hamas's military power. Hamas is now a guerrilla, criminal gang, terrorist group in Gaza attempting to maintain political power in the Gaza Strip. The IDF also continue daily humanitarian aid deliveries adding up to over 1 million tons (or 2.2 million pounds) of aid deliver.
Antisemitism
StopAntisemetism announces the 2024 Antisemite of the Year: Candace Owens
Disgraced political pundit Candace Owens has been crowned 2024’s Antisemite of the Year after a poll with over 30,000 votes! Owens edged out Hamas apologist Greta Thunberg and terror-supporting Twitch streamer Hasan Piker for the title, inheriting the dishonor from 2022 winner, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.
Once celebrated for her unapologetic takes that catapulted her into the conservative spotlight, Owens was given platforms by prominent Jewish conservatives like Dennis Prager and Ben Shapiro. But after Hamas’ October 7th massacre, she revealed her shocking antisemitism, leading to her departure from the Shapiro's Daily Wire and condemnation from PragerU.
Owens’ remarks were so vile that even evangelical and conservative groups denounced her, including her father-in-law, Sir Michael Farmer. In addition, She’s been banned from countries like New Zealand and Australia, blaming the fallout on a "Zionist media empire."
From defending Hitler’s actions in Germany and mocking Jewish fears over Kanye West’s antisemitic tweets to claiming Israel forces Muslims into segregated quarters and insinuating Hollywood is run by "sinister Jewish gangs", Owens has been rightfully crowned 2024’s Antisemite of the Year.
The Deep Roots of Irish Antisemitism: Ireland’s hostility to Israel, and the Jewish people, is nothing new, as Simon Sebag Montefiore’s family well knows. By Simon Sebag Montefiore with The Free Press
On Monday, the Israeli government announced that it was making the “tough decision” to close its embassy in Ireland. Explaining the move, Israel’s ambassador to the country, Dana Erlich said Ireland has taken “a more extreme stance than any other country” against Israel. Ireland has recognized a Palestinian state and recently backed South Africa’s action against Israel at the International Court of Justice, asking the court to “broaden its interpretation of what constitutes the commission of genocide by a state.” In other words, it is looking to redefine genocide itself in order to condemn Israel.
During World War II, Irish nationalists cooperated against Britain with the Nazis. Irish writers like the much-garlanded novelist Francis Stuart broadcast Nazi propaganda from Berlin.
In the decades since, Ireland has sometimes shown hostility to the idea of Jewish self-determination and the existence of the Jewish republic, Israel, which Ireland only extended de jure recognition of in 1963, and established diplomatic relations in 1975, among the last countries in the Western world to do so (though it preceded the Vatican by more than a decade).
But Ireland’s animosity has also been marked by visceral hostility from the government and activists to the very existence of Israel, by a lack of proportion and perspective in policy toward the Jewish state, by the deployment of medieval antisemitic tropes, harassment of Jewish students, and the inversion of Jewish history against Jews and Israelis, and by the blind acceptance of the often mendacious Hamas terrorist narrative. On the ground, the Irish contingent in the UNIFIL peacekeeping force in Lebanon, appointed to enforce the disarmament of Hezbollah, turned a blind eye to the terrorist group as they attacked Israel.
‘Anti-Zionism’ has become the new Antisemitism in Ireland by Oliver Sears in fathom
In Ireland, my home for almost forty years, (I was born in London where I lived until I was 18) vehement opposition to Israel and Zionism, in particular, has seen demonstrations with expressions that are antisemitic, including the flying of Hamas and PFLP flags and chants that hurl invective at all Jews, not just Israelis. On the campus of University College Dublin, a sign rippling with historical irony read, ‘Zionist-Free Zone’. The term Judenfrei, which it echoes, refers to zones which Reinhard Heydrich, one of the architects of the Final Solution, sought to establish in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, by deporting Jews from those areas and murdering them.
The students’ union of Trinity College Dublin also declared that Zionists were not welcome on campus. At the height of the stand-off, Jewish students were offered a safe room if they felt they were in danger.
For diaspora Jews who have been cancelled, insulted and attacked, contemporary Zionism may once again be defined as a refuge, the one place where they can live safely at least theoretically, however improbable that may seem with Israel under bombardment both physically and metaphorically.
Last November, in a Guardian article, written by Rory Carroll and Lisa O’Carroll, the following remarks were ascribed to Niall Holohan, a former high ranking Irish diplomat with long experience in the Middle East as he explained Ireland’s especially vocal pro-Palestinian stance:
Holohan claims that another factor in Ireland’s outlook has been its tiny community of approximately 2,500 Jews – barely 0.05 per cent – that contrasts with sizeable and influential Jewish communities in Britain and France. ‘It’s given us a freer hand to take what we consider a more principled position,’ he said.
So easily the mask slips, endorsing the worst kind of antisemitic conspiracy theory; that Jews act as a cabal influencing governments and economies and (therefore) Ireland with its minuscule Jewish population is ‘freer’ to govern itself independently. Here is a reflexive antisemitism which blindly sees all Jews as a monolith tied duplicitously to Israel, although in this case, we are deemed not large enough to threaten the state.
With the Zionist cause gathering momentum in British Mandate Palestine in the thirties, the Irish State was broadly supportive of the Jewish desire for self-determination and an independent state. The similarities with the Irish struggle for independence against British rule made it easy for the Irish psyche and body politik to show solidarity and make common cause.
Attitudes in Ireland began to change, however, after the Six-Day War. While the defence of the Israeli state against concerted attacks from multiple, neighbouring Arab states was understood and supported, the subsequent annexation of territory was not and was viewed broadly as colonisation. As the occupation of Palestinian territory endured and expanded, sentiment in Ireland hardened against Israel and for the Palestinians.
The politicians line up to be photographed with the community on Holocaust Memorial Day. When my organisation, Holocaust Awareness Ireland was invited by the Irish State to mount the exhibition, The Objects of Love at Dublin Castle, (the seat of the Irish State),which tells the story of my family before, during and after the Holocaust, all the major politicians, the president and the supreme court lined up to see it (and to be seen).
Those same politicians will not stand up publicly now to denounce the explosion of antisemitic rhetoric that has spilled into the public arena, including both houses of parliament. Alas, retail politics insists that there are no votes in it for them when the trend and mood is so overwhelmingly one-sided. It seems easier to acknowledge the suffering of dead Jews than living ones.
In September the Irish Times published a profoundly antisemitic cartoon. Referring to the Israeli attack on Hezbollah, using explosives in pagers, cartoonist Martyn Turner depicts an IDF soldier who looks dirty, sinister and with a large nose, a Jewish caricature which belongs in Der Sturmer. His thought bubble says ‘‘they all hate us so let’s get em’ painting Jews as justifying their place in the world only in terms of victimhood.
The headline above the cartoon reads “When the Country with the biggest chip on its shoulder.” This ignores the reality that Israel is surrounded by Iranian terrorist proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis who are attacking it simultaneously.
I want the politicians in Ireland to properly recognise how difficult life has become for Jews living here and for education courses on antisemitism to be mandatory in schools, in universities and the workplace.
Link: ‘Anti-Zionism’ has become the new Antisemitism in Ireland
Creating Worlds with Words: Combating Antisemitism and Defining Zionism by Aviva Klompas in Michael Oren’s Clarity
Disinformation is everywhere. As James Rubin at the U.S. State Department has said, “we’re in an undeclared information war with authoritarian countries.” Whether from the mouths of bots or bigots, words are weaponized. It is within this context that Boundless Israel undertook a study on the views and sentiments towards Zionism and Israel among the U.S. population. The results were startling.
14% of Americans can accurately define Zionism.
54% don’t recognize genocidal rhetoric — “from the river to the sea,” “intifada, intifada,” “we want 48” — as being problematic.
Most troubling still was the fact that only 40% of Americans are willing to report antisemitic incidents
Jews have long been known as “the people of the book.” It was with words that Moses descended Mount Sinai, words that Jews have wrestled with and fought over for millennia. As a diaspora — disenfranchised from land ownership and political office — we prized words as a sort of alternative to power and for the sense of identity and belonging they furnished us with. Even today, as a nation rooted in our ancestral homeland, words have not lost their preciousness or power.
It is, therefore, more important than ever for us to use the power of words to create a world where antisemitism is understood and denounced, and Zionism is seen as the simple desire to establish and maintain a Jewish homeland in Israel.
Syria
The U.S. should not yet trust Syria’s new regime, by Matthew Levitt in Los Angeles Times
Long before the lightning events that suddenly led to the end of the Assad regime this week, the United Nations General Assembly mandated an investigation into the use of systemic torture and abuse in its prisons. Released just as the regime was collapsing, the report is hard to read, but the images that have come out of the notorious Sednaya prison since its doors were opened are infinitely worse.
The fall of the Assad regime is also strategically beneficial to the U.S. and its allies in the region by virtue of removing a linchpin of Iran’s “axis of resistance.” This axis was a three-legged stool — based on Iran, Syria and the Lebanon-based group Hezbollah — and it can no longer stand. Syria served as a land bridge across which Iran shipped weapons to Hezbollah for many years. Without Syria, Iran will find it far more difficult to rearm those fighters. And without Iranian weapons and funds, the Lebanese terrorist group faces a tremendous challenge reconstituting itself after being devastated by a series of Israeli strikes have devastated the group.
Israel has capitalized on this vulnerable moment in Syria to destroy a huge number of weapons before they can fall into new hands and be used against Israel or others. Since Saturday, the Israeli air force and navy have hit more than 350 strategic targets across the country, destroying an estimated 70% of Syria’s military capabilities.
The rebel alliance taking power in Syria now is led by Hayat Tahrir al Sham, a designated terrorist group that grew out of Al Qaeda and was first dispatched by Al Qaeda in Iraq, which later became Islamic State. While Hayat Tahrir al Sham has fought both Islamic State and an Al Qaeda splinter element in Syria, it remains a jihadist organization called out by the State Department.
Just in the past year, courts in the United States have convicted people of funding terrorism for raising funds for Hayat Tahrir al Sham. And two Al Qaeda branches, one in North Africa and another in the Sahel, already issued a joint statement urging fellow jihadists to rebuild Syria as a “Sunni entity” ruled by sharia. Al Qaeda branches in Yemen and South Asia also issued statements supporting the offensive that deposed Assad.
The U.S. should be cautious about removing sanctions against the Syrian state, the Hayat Tahrir al Sham group and its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. Such softening should occur only in return for clear deliverables. However, Washington should immediately issue licenses permitting a wide range of humanitarian support to Syria. Removal from the list of known terrorist groups should be earned, not gifted, especially when dealing with a jihadist group in power.
This week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken laid out what the political transition process in Syria needs to look like for the U.S. to recognize a future Syrian government: respect for the rights of minorities, facilitation of humanitarian assistance to all in need, preventing Syria from being used as a base for terrorism, preventing Syria from posing a threat to its neighbors, and ensuring that any stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons are secured and safely destroyed.
Other key U.S. interests implied but not expressly included in this statement include protecting U.S. Kurdish allies in northeast Syria and enabling them to continue maintaining detention camps holding Islamic State fighters and ensuring that Syria truly break with Iran and Hezbollah so that Syria will no longer serve as a land bridge to rearm Lebanese fighters. To secure these interests, it will be critical for the incoming U.S. administration to maintain its small but influential U.S. military presence in Syria, which then-President Trump twice tried to remove during his first term.
U.S. officials need to watch not only how the new ruling rebel alliance governs in the moment, but how it governs going forward. For many, Syria today has very strong echoes of Iran after the 1979 revolution.
The new government in Tehran talked the talk about respecting minority rights and even included secularists in government for a time. Then the theocracy took hold and Iran became a sponsor of terrorism for decades, continuing to this day.
Link: Opinion: The U.S. should not yet trust Syria’s new regime
Syrian rebels reveal year-long plot that brought down Assad regime, by William Christou with The Guardian
In his first interview with foreign media since the fall of Bashar al-Assad brought an end to the family’s 54-year rule, Abu Hassan al-Hamwi, the head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s (HTS) military wing, spoke about how his group, which was based in the country’s north-west, communicated with rebels in the south to create a unified war room with the goal of ultimately surrounding Damascus from both directions.
If it hoped to defeat the regime, HTS realised that it needed to instil order to the hodgepodge alliance of opposition factions that had been pushed into Idlib. It offered other groups the chance to merge under its auspices, and when they refused, brought them to heel. It fought against groups such as the al-Qaida affiliate Hurras al-Din, which rejected HTS’s more pragmatic Islamist approach. Soon, HTS became the dominant power in north-west Syria.
The latest iteration of HTS drones was a new model of suicide drone, named the “Shahin” drone by al-Hamwi himself, Arabic for falcon, “symbolising their precision and power”. The Shahin drone was deployed for the first time against regime forces this month, with devastating effectiveness. Artillery military vehicles were disabled by the cheap but effective aircraft.
The group sent out messages to rebels in the south a year ago and began to advise them on how to create a unified war room.
With HTS’s help, an operations room was founded, bringing together the commanders of around 25 rebel groups in the south, who would each coordinate their fighters’ movements with one another and with HTS in the north.
The group first and foremost wanted to stop the trend of regional powers, led by countries such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, from normalising relations with the Assad regime after years of diplomatic isolation. It also wanted to stop intensifying aerial attacks on northwest Syria and its residents. Finally, HTS saw that Assad’s international allies were preoccupied, creating a strategic opening.
Russia, which provided the majority of aerial support, was bogged down in Ukraine. Iran and Hezbollah, whose fighters were Assad’s fiercest ground troops, were reeling from their fight with Israel.
After the fall of Aleppo, the rebel advance in the north was seemingly unstoppable. Four days later, the opposition took Hama, On 7 December, rebels started their offensive on Homs. They took the city within hours.
Rebels in the south were supposed to wait until Homs fell to start their own rebellion in the south, according to Abu Hamzeh, a leader of the Operations Room to Liberate Damascus, but out of excitement, they started earlier. Rebels quickly pushed the Syrian army out of Daraa and reached Damascus before HTS did.
Link: Syrian rebels reveal year-long plot that brought down Assad regime
Assad dispatched $250mn of Syria’s cash to Moscow by Miles Johnson, Mehul Srivastava, and Chloe Cornish in The Financial Times
Syria’s relations with Moscow deepened dramatically as Russian military advisers bolstered Assad’s war effort and Russian companies became involved in Syria’s valuable phosphate supply chain. “The Syrian state could be paying the Russian state for a military intervention,” said Malik al-Abdeh, a London-based Syrian analyst.
Russian trade records from Import Genius, an export data service, show that on May 13 2019, a plane carrying $10mn in $100 bills sent on behalf of Assad’s central bank landed in Moscow’s Vnukovo airport.
In February 2019 the central bank flew in around €20mn in €500 notes. In total there were 21 flights from March 2018 to September 2019 carrying a declared value of over $250mn.
A person familiar with Syrian central bank data said foreign reserves were “almost nothing” by 2018. But due to sanctions, the bank did have to make payments in cash, they added. It bought wheat from Russia and paid for money printing services and “defence” expenses, the person said.
They added that the central bank would pay according to “what was available in the vault”. “When a country is completely surrounded and sanctioned, they have only cash,” the person added.
First lady Asma al-Assad, an ex-JP Morgan banker, built a powerful position influencing international aid flows and heading a secretive presidential economic council. Assad and his acolytes also generated revenues from international drug trafficking and fuel smuggling, according to the US.
Records show the cash delivered to Moscow in 2018 and 2019 was delivered to Russian Financial Corporation Bank, or RFK, a Russian lender based in Moscow controlled by Rosoboronexport, the Russian state arms export company.
Yassar Ibrahim, Assad’s closest economic adviser, is a shareholder in a Lebanese company called Hokoul SAL Offshore, alongside his sister Rana, who has also been sanctioned by the US.
In 2019 Assad’s extended family had from 2013 bought at least 20 luxury apartments in Moscow using a complex series of companies and loan arrangements.
Sources: JINSA, FDD, IDF, AIPAC, The Paul Singer Foundation, The Institute for National Security Studies, the Alma Research and Education Center, Yediot, Jerusalem Post, IDF Casualty Count, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Institute for the Study of War, and the Times of Israel