Israel Update: July 24 (Day 292)
Tonight’s update is a bit longer than normal given the news today which started with the Prime Minister’s address to a Joint Session of Congress, more analysis from the Houthi attack in Tel Aviv, and the discovery of the bodies of five murdered hostages in Gaza. Thank you for all of the continued support. What started as a small e-mail update to friends and family about the horrors of 10/7 and the surge of antisemitism around the world has truly grown into what we hope is a reliable resource for you. Your feedback is always welcome, and please feel free to share far and wide.
Am Israel Chai and G-d Bless America!
Situational Update
The Jewish Insider recaps the Prime Minister’s speech today: In his fourth address to Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made an aggressive case to the U.S. and the world in defense of Israel’s operations in Gaza, while also offering appreciation to President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump for their support for Israel.
While not shocking, outside of the US Capitol and Union Station, Pro-Palestine protesters have taken down the three American flags, burned them, and replaced them with Palestinian flags.
On Monday, the IDF confirmed that two of the 120 hostages previously believed to be alive — Alex Dancyg (75) and Yagev Buchshtav (35) — have been declared dead. More details are below in the “Hostages” section.
The bodies of five Israeli hostages taken captive on October 7 were recovered by troops operating in the southern Gaza Strip and brought back to Israel on Wednesday, officials said. Ravid Katz, 51, Oren Goldin, 33, Maya Goren, 56, Sgt. Kiril Brodski, 19, and Staff Sgt. Tomer Yaakov Ahimas, 20, were all previously declared dead by the Israel Defense Forces, though their bodies continued to be held in Gaza until Wednesday.
The bodies of Staff Sgt. Tomer Yaakov Ahimas, 20 and Sgt. Kiril Brodski, 19 have been recovered from Gaza and brought to Israel in a military operation. Both were killed while serving in the forward command team of Col. Asaf Hamami, the commander of the Gaza Division’s Southern Brigade, who was also killed on October 7 as they tried to fight off dozens of Hamas terrorists invading kibbutz Nirim. The bodies of all three were abducted to Gaza, where Hamami’s remains are believed to still be.
The IDF said on Monday that it was adjusting the boundaries of the Israel-designated humanitarian zone in the Gaza Strip to better target Hamas following numerous rocket attacks on southern Israel in recent weeks, and urged civilians to evacuate the Khan Younis area amid reports of intensified strikes.
An attempt by Hamas to carry out a shooting attack in the West Bank directed by members of the terror group in Turkey was foiled recently, the Shin Bet announced on Sunday. According to the security agency, the cell was made up of Hamas representatives on the student council at Birzeit University in the West Bank
Amid a spate of threats and an expected hostile welcome, most of Israel’s Olympic delegation departed Monday afternoon for Paris ahead of the opening ceremony of the 2024 Games on Friday.
The Numbers
Casualties
***I am adding a brief note going forward to each casualty figure that indicates the change from the last update
1,631 Israelis dead, including 684 IDF soldiers (326 IDF soldiers during the ground operation in Gaza) (no change since Sunday)
Additional Information (according to the IDF):
2,148 (+8 since Sunday) IDF soldiers have been injured during ground combat in Gaza, including at least 404 (+1 since Sunday) who have been severely injured.
4,213 (+19 since Sunday) IDF soldiers have been injured since the beginning of the war, including at least 623 (+2 since Sunday) who have been severely injured.
Note: we have always included the number of casualties in Gaza, as reported by the Gaza Health Ministry. We feel it is important to include this information with the caveat that this reporting ministry is not a trusted source of data by many. Most recently, The United Nations has begun citing a much lower death toll for women and children in Gaza, acknowledging that it has incomplete information about many of the people killed during Israel’s military offensive in the territory.
According to unverified figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, 39,090 (+242 since Sunday) people have been killed in Gaza, and 90,147 (+688 since Sunday) have been injured during the war.
We also encourage you to read this well documented piece from Tablet published in March: How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers
The Associated Press, an outlet with a demonstrated anti-Israel bias, conducted an analysis of alleged Gaza death tolls released by the Hamas-controlled "Gaza Health Ministry." The analysis found that "9,940 of the dead – 29% of its April 30 total – were not listed in the data" and that "an additional 1,699 records in the ministry’s April data were incomplete and 22 were duplicates."
Hostages (deaths of two confirmed, five bodies recovered)
The IDF informed the families of Alex Dancyg, 76, from Nir Oz, and Yagev Buchshtab, 35, from Nirim, that the men were killed several months ago in Gaza, and that their bodies are being held by Hamas. The decision announced on Monday was based on intelligence information and was approved by an expert committee of the Ministry of Health in cooperation with the Ministry of Religious Services and the Israel Police, according to the IDF. Buchshtab's wife, Rimon Kirsht-Buchshtab, who was abducted with them, has returned alive. Rimon and her husband Yagev Buchshtav, were kidnapped from their apartment in the kibbutz. Contact with Yagev 's parents, who live near the couple, was cut off in the morning hours of October 7 while they were also hiding in their secure room. A few hours later, when Yagev's father arrived at his son and daughter-in-law's apartment accompanied by military forces, he found it empty with bullets on the floor.
Per journalist Marc Schulman, Alex was an expert on Poland, leading groups and authoring a wide array of guidebooks on Poland. Alex’s popular guidebooks were the inspiration for the apps we developed to teach about Poland and the Holocaust.
According to the Jerusalem Post, the IDF recovered the body of hostage Maya Goren, 56, in a military operation in Gaza on Wednesday. "She will be buried next to her husband Avner Goren, who was murdered on October 7." Goren worked as a kindergarten teacher and "lovingly cared for the children of the kibbutz for many years," the Kibbutz said. Goren's husband was murdered on October 7, and the couple left behind four children.
According to the Jerusalem Post, Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak announced that the body of hostage Oren Goldin, a member of the Kibbutz's emergency standby squad who was killed and taken hostage on October 7, was recovered and returned to Israel by the IDF. "Oren was the first to leave that dark morning, even before we knew how serious the danger was outside. In November, about a month and a half, which we were hoping for a sign of life, we were informed that Oren was killed on 7/10 and his body is being held hostage." He ran Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak’s mechanic shop, was among the first members of the community’s civilian defense team to respond to the attack.
Ravid Katz, 51, was taken captive by Hamas terrorists on October 7, when they attacked Kibbutz Nir Oz where Katz lives with his family and other relatives. On that Saturday, Ravid made sure his wife and four-month-old baby were safe with neighbors in their sealed room and went to fight the terrorists with the kibbutz security team. Ravid’s wife and baby survived the assault, after hiding for hours. Ravid’s sister Doron Katz Asher and her two daughters were taken hostage separately and released on November 24, 2023.
On October 7th, a total of 261 Israelis were taken hostage.
During the ceasefire deal in November, 112 hostages were released.
A total of 7 hostages have been rescued and the remains of 21 others have been recovered (+5 since Sunday). Tragically, 3 have been mistakenly killed by the IDF, and 1 was killed during an IDF attempt to rescue him.
49 hostages have been confirmed dead.
This leaves an estimated 111-112 hostages still theoretically in Gaza, with somewhere between (assumed) 33-41 deceased. Thus, at most, 82 living hostages could still be in Gaza.
According to an article published in the WSJ, “Of the approximately 250 hostages taken in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack, 116 continue to be held captive, including many believed to be dead. Mediators in the hostage talks and a U.S. official familiar with the latest U.S. intelligence said the number of those hostages still alive could be as low as 50.”
That assessment, based in part on Israeli intelligence, would mean 66 of those still held hostage could be dead, 25 more than Israel has publicly acknowledged.
Link: Families of Hostages in Gaza Are Desperate for News but Dread a Phone Call | WSJ
(Sources: JINSA, FDD, IDF, AIPAC, The Paul Singer Foundation, The Institute for National Security Studies, the Alma Research and Education Center, Yediot, Jerusalem Post, and the Times of Israel)
Watch
[VIDEO] The Al Jazeera reporter who held 3 hostages in his home in Gaza was a sadist who tortured them, denying them bathroom use and tying them up with their hands behind their backs for up to week at a time, according to one of the hostages who speaks publicly in an interview with Israeli media (Hebrew with English subtitles).
[VIDEO] The DC Palestinian Youth Movement released maggots and crickets throughout the Watergate Hotel where Netanyahu is staying. The protestors also pulled multiple fire alarms throughout the night.
What We Are Reading
Israel’s Next War: by Amos Harel in Foreign Affairs
Although the possibility has received relatively little scrutiny in the international media, a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah would have consequences that dwarf the current Gaza conflict. A major Israeli air and ground assault against Hezbollah, the most heavily armed group in the Middle East, would likely cause turmoil across the entire region, and could prove particularly destabilizing as the United States enters a crucial stage of its presidential election season. It is also far from clear that such a war could be ended quickly, or that there is a clear path to a decisive victory.
The implications for Israel itself could be stark. Although Israeli air defense systems have been extremely successful thus far against missile attacks from Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen, a total war with Hezbollah would be a whole different ballgame. According to Israeli intelligence estimates, Hezbollah’s weapons stockpile is more than seven times as large as Hamas’s and includes far more lethal weapons. Along with hundreds of attack drones, it includes some 130,000–150,000 rockets and missiles, including hundreds of ballistic missiles that could reach targets in Tel Aviv and even further south—indeed, every point in the country.
For now, both sides still have reason to exercise restraint. In fact, it seems that all the actors involved in the current conflict—Israel, Hezbollah, Iran, the Lebanese government, and the United States—have strong reasons to try and avoid a regional war. But even if the Biden administration manages to achieve an agreement between Israel and Hezbollah that includes a withdrawal of Hezbollah forces from the area around the border, Israel’s leaders may still find it hard not to respond to a domestic audience that favors dealing with Hezbollah once and for all. If Israel succumbs to that temptation without a clearly defined endgame or strategy for limiting the war, the results could be devastating.
In contrast to its unexpected war in Gaza, Israel has long been preparing for a war with Hezbollah. Although Israel’s military leadership was caught completely by surprise by Hamas’s October 7 attack, it had for several years anticipated that Hamas might try to unite with Hezbollah and Iran’s other regional proxies in a coordinated multifront attack against Israel. In the years before his 2020 assassination by U.S. forces, Qasem Soleimani, who headed Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force and supervised Iranian proxy forces across the Middle East, actively promoted a new strategy called “ring of fire”: by backing and arming a series of mostly Shiite militias, the Islamic Republic would gain influence in countries such as Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. At the same time, he tightened links with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
These militias, several of which sat on Israel’s borders, provided Iran with deterrence against Israel’s more powerful military and gave Tehran a ready launching pad for attacks. By early 2023, Salah al-Arouri, a senior Hamas leader who was then based in Lebanon and helped cement Hamas’s ties with Hezbollah, was talking publicly of the need to “unite all fronts” against Israel. To many Israeli officials, Hezbollah, as the most heavily armed and well trained of these Iranian proxies, posed the greatest threat. On October 7, as Hamas’s brutal assault was unfolding along the Gaza perimeter, Israeli leaders rushed to prepare for an even larger attack from Hezbollah in the north.
The common complaint among Israelis is that the evacuation of the north has given Hezbollah a three-mile security zone inside Israel, thus upending a status quo on the border that had more or less held since the 2006 war. The fact that twice the number of Lebanese citizens have been forced out of their homes as well, and from an area even further away from the border, is of little comfort for the displaced Israelis. But arguably even more important in the immediate aftermath of October 7 was the outcome of an intense debate within the Israeli government about whether to launch a massive assault on Hezbollah itself.
As the war in Gaza has unfolded, the situation along the northern border has remained volatile. Although both sides have exercised a degree of restraint, Israel has decided to escalate on multiple occasions. In early January, Israeli forces assassinated Arouri, the Hamas leader, while he was staying in the Dahiya, the Shiite quarter in southern Beirut—crossing a significant threshold, since Israeli attacks as far north as Beirut have been rare in recent years. More recently, Israel has also assassinated three of Hezbollah’s senior commanders. Throughout the war, the Israeli Air Force has frequently struck weapons convoys and sometimes killed Hezbollah operatives in the Bekaa Valley, close to Lebanon’s border with Syria. As of mid-July, Hezbollah had confirmed the deaths of more than 370 of its fighters in Israeli strikes since the war in Gaza started. Dozens of Palestinian gunmen and Lebanese civilians have also been killed.
Shimon Shapira, an Israeli analyst of Hezbollah, believes that Nasrallah hopes to avoid a full-scale war with Israel. Yet he sees further escalation—even if unintended—as entirely possible. One side might decide to strike a preemptive blow against the other, fearing that its opponent was planning a similar surprise attack. For example, if Hezbollah maintains its forces in the south on high alert, Israeli military intelligence could mistakenly assume that the group is preparing for an immediate operation and respond with massive force.
The calendar may also contribute to heightened support in Israel to take on Hezbollah soon. With the school year beginning on September 1, many families from the north are losing patience. Heads of local municipalities in the north fear that without government action many families will choose to leave the region for good. The Netanyahu government has gained notoriety for neglecting communities on the frontlines of the war—and although a special office was established to deal with the needs of southern residents, no similar action has been taken in the north. In recent weeks, opposition leaders have seized upon the government’s failure to address security around the northern border, and Netanyahu may conclude that time is running out.
To Secure the Red Sea, Sink Iran’s Navy: Attacking the Houthis hasn’t kept up with the pace of Tehran’s resupply effort. By Shay Khatiri with the WSJ
The U.S. has tried several strategies to defeat the Houthis. In 2015, Washington began to provide support for a Saudi-Emirati campaign against the militia. After six years, the campaign had made little progress and was a humanitarian catastrophe, leading the Biden administration to end support for the Arab partners in 2021. The recent drone attack shows the failure of the campaign to reopen the Red Sea and America’s broader Yemen policy.
Israel must recognize that degrading Houthi capabilities alone won’t succeed. The Saudis, Emiratis and Americans can attest to this. Iran will continue to supply the Houthis faster than their military assets can be destroyed.
Iran has no land access to Yemen, and so all supplies to the Houthis must leave Iran by sea. The primary route is through Oman. Iran’s ships cross the Sea of Oman southward and land in northern Oman, where local tribes, with which Iran has cultivated relations, aid the transit. Other routes include exiting the Sea of Oman into the Arabian Sea and arriving in southern Oman or Yemen. To end this trade, someone needs to patrol the Sea of Oman—an expensive task for which the small Israeli navy is unequipped and that the overstretched U.S. Navy can’t undertake without cutting vital commitments elsewhere.
The alternative is for the U.S. to sink Iran’s navy. This carries the risk of escalation, but history shows that Iran typically backs down when attacked.
The key to ending the Houthis’ assaults on Israel and commercial shipping is interrupting their ability to restock. That will require attacking the Iranian ships that are supplying the weapons. This strategy carries risks, but defeat is the only risk-free strategy. The U.S. and Israel stand to lose the most from the continued blockade of the Red Sea.
The Palestinian Authority and Hamas Strike a Deal in Beijing from the WSJ Editorial Board
The only way to defeat Hamas in Gaza, says the U.S., is to hand the keys to Mahmoud Abbas and a “revitalized” PA.
On Tuesday the PA’s many factions signed an agreement with Hamas and Islamic Jihad to form a unity Palestinian government. Oh, and they did it in Beijing, with China’s foreign minister presiding over warm handshakes with the perpetrators of the Oct. 7 massacre.
The plan is to form an interim reconciliation government for Gaza and the West Bank, where the PA has been losing ground to Hamas. But the agreement lacks a timetable for implementation and faces many obstacles.
The deal is a way for the PA to signal solidarity with the “resistance.” Though the Biden Administration ignores the broad popularity of Oct. 7 among Palestinians, Mr. Abbas can afford no such illusions. Hamas’s atrocities are glorified and its decision to launch the war earns about 70% support in Palestinian polls.
This Beijing Declaration is also a way for Hamas to advertise its diplomatic success. Carrying out the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust has improved its standing in Beijing, Moscow and Pretoria, without jeopardizing support from Tehran, Doha and Ankara. Hamas has become a player on the world stage.
While liberals insist on a Palestinian state, they rarely ask what kind of state it would be. At present it would be a Hamas state, by force of the ballot or the bullet. Creating a jihadist-theocracy Iranian satellite state isn’t high on a list of vital U.S. priorities.
Link: The Palestinian Authority and Hamas Strike a Deal in Beijing
My Son Was the First American Killed by Hamas: by Joice Baum in Tablet Magazine
It was Monday, May 13 of 1996, and David was 17. Although he was born in New York, he was studying at a yeshiva in Israel, and, that fateful morning, he was standing at a bus stop with his friends, chatting happily as he waited for his ride back home to Jerusalem.
Tragically, Amjad Hinawi and Khalil Tawfiq Al-Sharif had other, evil plans. The two Hamas terrorists contemplated an attack on a nearby military base, but the sight of soldiers with guns made them lose heart. Better, they reasoned, to seek out more vulnerable targets. Driving around, they first shot at a bus, wounding two passengers. Then, they spotted the kids at the bus stop and opened fire.
David’s friend Yair Greenbaum was shot in the chest and later recovered. David wasn’t so lucky: He was struck in the head and was pronounced dead within the hour. Hinawi and Al-Sharif fled to the Palestinian Authority and remained committed to murder and terrorism. A year after he had murdered my son, Al-Sharif blew himself up on Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda street, killing five and wounding 192 Israelis.
Over the years since David was murdered, I have visited his grave hundreds of times. I told him about the lawsuit his father and I filed against American organizations we believed were fundraising fronts for Hamas. I shared with him the good news when we won that lawsuit in 2004 and were awarded a $156 million judgment. And I wept for him as the same organizations found guilty of providing material support to the terrorists quickly disbanded rather than comply with the court’s ruling. Then I was told that many of the same terrorism supporters went on to play very similar roles in very similar organizations, only with different names.
The same newspapers that minimized our suffering as understandable collateral damage today continue to draw false equivalences. The same so-called defenders of human rights extend sympathy to everyone but Jews.
I will continue to do whatever I can to remind anyone listening that Hamas is a murderous terrorist organization, not a legitimate national or religious group; that it is still holding American citizens hostage; and that it continues to murder innocent Israelis and Americans, just as it murdered my boy. And I will continue to remind them, too, that the Hamas terrorists who pull the trigger and plan attacks, are aided by men and women all over the world who raise funds, spread propaganda, and take other similar actions to support the killers in their work.
My goal is as simple as it is sacred: to make sure no other mother ever goes through the same ordeal as me. I can think of no more worthy thing to do with my remaining years, and, since Oct. 7, as I watched protesters cheering for Hamas in American cities and colleges, my task, alas, has grown urgent.
Link: My Son Was the First American Killed by Hamas: Tablet Magazine
Now in Germany, a Gazan dissident tries to set record straight on Hamas’s brutal regime: by Gianluca Pacchiani in The Times of Israel
Last August, Howidy, 26, managed to leave Gaza after another round of protests and another detention. Abed, 35, stayed behind, unable to afford the exorbitant exit fees from the enclave, and unwilling to let his beloved Gaza collapse further under the weight of Hamas’s mismanagement and repression.
Even after October 7, Abed refused to remain silent in the face of the devastation that the terror group brought upon Gaza. Earlier this month, the well-known activist, a longstanding thorn in Hamas’s side, published a Facebook post in Arabic excoriating the Islamist group for its onslaught against Israel.
The 26-year old grew up in Gaza City’s Rimal neighborhood, in what used to be one of the most upscale areas in the Strip, and for that reason was home to various Hamas leaders. The terror group’s military chief Yahya Sinwar used to live a 15-minute walk away from his home, and Ahmad Bahar, another prominent official killed in an Israeli airstrike in November, also resided nearby.
Howidy was only nine years old when in June 2007 Hamas wrested power over the coastal enclave from the Palestinian Authority (PA) after winning a majority of seats in the Palestinian legislative elections the previous year.
After the coup, Hamas took to executing dozens of Fatah members, the secularist party that runs the PA. About 600 Palestinians were killed over the course of few weeks in the internecine fighting between the two factions.
“Three weeks of being beaten daily and tortured is a very, very long time. When people in the West think of prison, they think of calling a lawyer and a trial in court. In Gaza, we were under a terrorist regime; we had none of that. Your family cannot visit you. You don’t have any idea what’s going to happen to you.”
“They accused us of the most ridiculous things. For instance, for the first few days, I was accused of collaborating with Israeli authorities. Then they accused me of working with the PA. And then in the last days, I remember them telling me I was financed by the UAE. I was like: What the f***! I only protested because I want a job!”
“Eventually, you just think to yourself that you might plead guilty so that they stop beating you up. I think that if I’d stayed longer, I’d have admitted to anything they wanted,” he said.
“You know what would help the Palestinians in Gaza? Condemning Hamas’ atrocities. Instead, the protesters routinely chant their desire to ‘Globalize the Intifada.’ Apparently, they do not realize that the intifadas were disastrous for both Palestinians and Israelis, just as October 7 has been devastating for the people of Gaza,” Howidy wrote in his op-ed.
Israeli Military Expects Yemen Theater to Become More Central, May Strike Houthi Targets Again says Yaniv Kubovich in Haaretz
The military's assessment is that the Houthis, who are backed by Iran, will continue to be actively involved in the war. The decision to attack the port of Hodeidah was taken in part because it has been used by the Houthis to receive arms shipments from Teheran, as well as because of the economic activity at the port that helps finance the group.
Following Saturday's attack, the military is attempting to manage the public's expectations, under the assumption that Yemen will become a more active theater. While the military understands that rebuilding Hodeidah's port will likely take months, it knows the Iranians have other means of sending arms shipments to the Houthis, as well as other militias it supports across the Middle East.
Therefore, in some units, the decision-making process has been changed to require more than one person to make a final decision. In addition, the air force has also raised the frequency of patrol missions that are intended to locate and shoot down suspicious air targets near Eilat. The military has also began to equip itself with air defense systems that combine radar and the Vulcan, a rapid-fire system whose older models have previously been used by anti-aircraft units, but which has fallen out of use over the past few decades. The military now realizes that these systems may actually be far more effective in shooting down drones. Using them is much cheaper than using the Iron Dome interception system.
The military is continuing its policy of targeting senior and mid-level Hezbollah officials. The assumption is that killing them creates problems for Hezbollah, which has to deal with Israeli intelligence's capabilities and the sense that no one is safe. The organization seems to be having a hard time identifying the breach that exposes its people, ammunition depots and headquarters in southern Lebanon.
More and more air force captains and majors have recently expressed their wish to retire after their regular service. The military says this is not because of a drop in motivation, as they all agree to keep serving in the reserves. The issue is causing grave concern among senior military commanders, who are finding it hard to get quality officers to remain in active service.
After deadly Tel Aviv attack, restraint against Houthis was no longer deemed an option: by David Horovitz in The Times of Israel
Israel’s air force had therefore just targeted the Red Sea port of Hodeida, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the nation in a recorded video statement after Shabbat had ended, because it was the entry point for Iranian weaponry used by the Houthis against Israel and other Iranian enemies in the region. The US-led coalition trying to thwart Houthi attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea has not operated against the port in western Yemen, in part at least because it is also used for civilian purposes.
Hitting facilities over 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) away, the strike was among the most complicated ever carried out by Israel, the IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari said.
As of Saturday night, nonetheless, the IDF said it was issuing no new security instructions to the public.
As he spoke, demonstrators in Tel Aviv and elsewhere, including relatives of the 116 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza since the October 7 attack, were urging him not to make the trip to the US — or at least not until he has finalized a hostage-ceasefire deal that, they believe, could also deescalate the entire conflict, notably across Israel’s northern border, where a third Iranian proxy Hezbollah has been firing dozens of rockets into Israel daily.
The heads of Israel’s security establishment, and Netanyahu’s own Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, are understood to widely share this assessment, and to have been urging the prime minister to do his utmost to get the deal done. As of Saturday night, however, they were also bracing for nine months of war to widen.
‘A Rubik’s Cube in the Sky’: Israel Struggles to Defend Against Drones: by Anat Peled and Dov Lieber in The WSJ
Israel has a problem with drones. They can be small and hard to detect, and they don’t move on predictable trajectories or emit the intense heat of rocket engines that make missiles easier to track and destroy. They are also cheap and plentiful, and are being deployed by the country’s adversaries in increasing numbers and sophistication.
Goading the Israeli military, Hezbollah flew surveillance drones across northern Israel in recent months, collecting aerial images of sensitive sites and publishing them in an unsubtle reminder of Israel’s vulnerability.
The Iron Dome, Israel’s famed air-defense system, has struggled to cope with the challenge. The alternative has been to scramble jet fighters, a costly and potentially dangerous solution that forces pilots to fly low in mountainous areas and exposes them to Hezbollah’s antiaircraft systems.
When all else fails, Israeli soldiers are told to use their rifles, some of which have been rigged with technology that can make their shots more accurate, according to Israeli military and defense officials.
Israel’s vulnerability to uncrewed aerial vehicles is a sign of the challenges it would face in any full-scale war with Hezbollah and the difficulty it will have ever feeling confident it has eliminated threats from the adversaries around its borders. It is a threat all modern armies are struggling with as their opponents make use of the fast advances in civilian technology to develop cheap and highly accurate weapons.
Samuel Bendett, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, who studies drone warfare, said Israel could learn from Ukraine’s experience. After 2½ years of drone-intensive war with Russia, the country has developed more cost-effective solutions for detecting and intercepting them.
They include spreading acoustic sensors throughout the country to pick up the sound of drone motors. Ukraine also has established specialized truck-mounted mobile defense units armed with large-caliber machine guns, projector lights and electronic warfare systems that are then dispatched to intercept approaching drones.
One highly expected response is the “Iron Beam,” which will fire a concentrated laser to take down aerial threats. A defense official said it would be rolled out sometime in 2025. The energy used for each interception is expected to cost a dollar or two per target, significantly cheaper than using interceptor missiles.
Still, the system has its weaknesses. Its effectiveness goes down in bad weather, and it can only shoot down one threat at a time, when adversaries are expected to attack with swarms. Israeli defense officials said it would need to be integrated into a multitiered defense system similar to what Israel now uses against rockets and missiles.
Link: ‘A Rubik’s Cube in the Sky’: Israel Struggles to Defend Against Drones: The Wall Street Journal
How Israel Turned the Tide in Rafah: by Elliot Kaufman in The WSJ
Israel cut off Hamas’s supply routes and now holds Hamas “by the throat,” as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently put it. Senior terrorists are dropping at a faster clip as Israeli intelligence closes in; half of Hamas’s military leadership has been eliminated. Even after a large Israeli bombardment to kill Hamas’s military chief, Mohammed Deif, who is considered unlikely to have survived, Hamas barely attacked in response and rushed to clarify that it isn’t leaving negotiations. “Hamas is under much more pressure now,” Mr. Katz says. “That’s what made the difference.”
Israeli intelligence confirms it. “We see now the signs that there is a lot of pressure from the military arm of Hamas. They push the leaders in the hotels outside”—Hamas’s politicians, who live in luxury in Qatar—“to achieve an agreement. It wasn’t like that before,” Mr. Katz says. Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, “didn’t want a deal before. Not even when we offered everything.”
“And we were right,” says Mr. Katz. “Everyone knows it now, even the U.S., because everyone warned that it would be a catastrophe. It’s a war, yes. It’s not a picnic. But they said that it would take four months to evacuate the population. It took only days.” More than a million Gazans quickly evacuated Rafah to designated safe zones.
Coming face to face with the reality of Palestinian nationalism has changed Israel. “The people from the kibbutzim in the south—many were socialist and believing in all the ideas,” Mr. Katz says. “Now, they’re telling us, ‘We are against a Palestinian state.’ ” They saw on Oct. 7 what purposes such a state would be put to.
Western foreign ministers should know better. “You will sit there, in the fjords in Norway, and decide that there will be a Palestinian state?” Mr. Katz says. “It will not happen. We want peace more than you do.” It’s suicide that Israelis object to. “No one can force Israel into it, not even the wise deputy prime minister in Spain,” he says, referring to Yolanda Diaz, who uses the protest slogan for the destruction of Israel: “From the river to sea, Palestine will be free.” Mr. Katz says: “I told them the days of the Inquisition have passed.”
Mr. Katz is grateful for American support and has no interest in criticizing the Biden administration. On Iran, he thinks the U.S. is moving in the right direction. Regarding the delayed weapons he says: “I think that now everything is OK, and it’s very good that our enemies know that it’s OK.”
On the ICC, he aims his fire at the prosecutor. Karim Ahmad Khan had assured Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Britain’s then-Foreign Minister David Cameron that before making a decision, he would give Israel a chance to provide evidence. “Why are a lot countries mad at him? Because he lied to them,” Mr. Katz says. Mr. Khan canceled the meetings with Israel on short notice and instead showed up on CNN to announce that he would seek arrest warrants for Israeli leaders.
“This is not a regular war. Iran and Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis and the Shiite militias—they want to eliminate Israel. To destroy Israel. It’s not a game. We don’t have another homeland, OK?” As our meeting ends, he sighs and comes at it from a different angle: “It’s not like the Holocaust. I’m a son of Holocaust survivors, may they rest in peace. I heard the stories from my mother, and I know everything. It’s not the Holocaust—but it’s the same intent. If they would have the power to do the same thing, they would do it.”
Link: How Israel Turned the Tide in Rafah: The Wall Street Journal
Antisemitism
Campus Protests Led to More Than 3,100 Arrests, but Many Charges Have Been Dropped: A report from the NYT
As pro-Palestinian demonstrations rocked college campuses this spring with protests of the war in Gaza, many university administrators found themselves eager to quell the action however they could. Some negotiated with the demonstrators. Many sent in the police.
But in the months since, many of the charges have been dropped, even as some students are facing additional consequences, like being barred from their campuses or having their diplomas withheld.
According to data collected by The New York Times, protesters were detained this year at more than 70 schools in at least 30 states, from Arizona State University, with its 80,000 students, to the University of Mary Washington in Virginia, with a student body of under 4,000.
Indiana University Bloomington: 57 Arrests
University of Texas at Austin: 136 Arrests
University of Virginia: 27 Arrests
Link: Where College Protesters Have Been Arrested or Detained - The New York Times
“Anti-Palestinian Racism” Is Coming Soon to a School Near You: For the Jewish community, freedom of expression and the quality of education, the implications of the new term “Anti-Palestinian Racism” are staggering. By Mika Hacker with the Jewish Journal
If you thought that the adoption of “liberated” ethnic studies in California was bad for Jews, the latest mutation of this ideology coming out of Canada, “anti-Palestinian racism,” should have you worried. Like a virus, these radical pedagogies know no boundaries. What began in Canada is spreading throughout the United States.
On June 20th, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) incorporated the term “anti-Palestinian racism” in its “Combating Hate and Racism Student Learning Strategy” as well as professional development seminars for school administrators and educators.
According to the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association (ACLA), anti-Palestinian racism (APR) “silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives.” This may be done by denying the “Nakba” (the supposed catastrophe of Israel’s creation), “justifying violence against Palestinians,” “defaming Palestinians and their allies with slander such as being inherently antisemitic, a terrorist threat/sympathizer or opposed to democratic values,” and denying Palestinian indigeneity to “occupied and historic Palestine.”
Yet even this “non-exhaustive” list has horrifying implications. Take, for example, “Nakba Denial.” For ACLA, “Nakba Denial” includes “claims that there are no such people called Palestinians or no state of Palestine exists … denial that Palestinians were ethnically cleansed (along with accompanying crimes) to create the state of Israel; rejecting the inalienable rights of Palestinian refugees including the right of return.”
Under such a framework, teachers will be obligated to ignore the multi-causal factors that led to Arabs leaving Israel before and during 1948. Teachers will be obliged to recognize the “right of return”—the right of all Palestinians to immigrate to Israel even though the “right of return” has never been included in any contemplated peace deal, as it would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state. It will prevent teachers from talking about the failed peace initiatives between Israel and the Palestinians. And it will preclude Jewish students from expressing their views about the right of Jewish self-determination in our ancestral homeland.
Like so much radical ideology in schools, the framework of “anti-Palestinian racism” is something that activists sneak in through the back door by first normalizing the term and then insisting that everyone must agree with the entire framework. And as with so much of the radical ideology, claims of “anti-Palestinian racism” will be used as yet another weapon in the arsenal to influence curriculums across the country.
Link: “Anti-Palestinian Racism” Is Coming Soon to a School Near You
JDC survey: Antisemitism ‘leading threat to Jewish life in Europe,’ but majority of Jewish leaders say they aren’t going anywhere by Efrat Lachter with eJewish Philanthropy
Across Europe, Jewish leaders are navigating a complex landscape marked by concerns over antisemitism. The newly-released results of a comprehensive survey conducted between March and April 2024 by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s International Center for Community Development (JDC-ICCD) illuminate both these leaders’ anxieties and resilience.
79% of survey respondents cited antisemitism as the leading threat to Jewish life in Europe, asserting that combating it should be the top priority for community leaders. Additionally, 78% said they feel less safe living as Jews in their cities compared to before the Hamas attack.
The 2024 survey, conducted online in ten languages with 879 respondents across 32 countries, offers a panoramic view of the state of Jewish communities in Europe.
38% of all respondents and nearly half (46%) of those aged 40 and under reporting becoming more distant from their non-Jewish friends.
The survey also reveals that Jewish leaders are also more concerned about safety and antisemitism than they were three years ago, particularly in Western Europe. About 64% of respondents now identify antisemitism as a major concern, up from 50% in the previous survey.
Since Oct. 7, 38% of respondents have reported that their institutions experienced antisemitic incidents. Additionally, 83% anticipate that antisemitism will worsen in the coming years, up from 70% in 2021. Respondents indicated they are more cautious about how they identify themselves as Jews, and there was notable concern about “alienation of Jews from Jewish life.” Thirty-two percent said they are “less likely to wear a necklace or T-shirt with Jewish markers,” while 25% stated they are “less likely to wear a kippa.” (74%).
Despite these concerns, 73% of respondents still feel safe living and practicing as Jews in their cities (while 27% reported feeling unsafe), and the survey found notable confidence in government responses to community security needs. Approximately 78% of respondents felt their governments were adequately addressing security concerns, a slight increase from previous years. The assessment indicated that 41% of respondents felt their communities were very prepared, and another 41% felt somewhat prepared to handle an emergency.
Resilience is also a recurring theme in the survey’s findings. Despite the rise in antisemitism, 85% of leaders expressed a steadfast commitment to fight back against antisemitism and ensure the continuity of Jewish life.
A majority (71%) of respondents reported that the attacks have created new needs within their communities, and nearly half (48%) indicated they are now more inclined to participate in demonstrations supporting Israel or combating antisemitism.
Link: JDC survey