Situational Update
Incumbent Jamal Bowman, a member of the House’s left-wing “Squad” lost to George Latimer (58.4%-41.1%) on Tuesday night in a Democratic battle that highlighted the party’s deep divisions over the war in Gaza. Bowman denied Hamas terrorists raped Israeli women on October 7 and has pushed 9/11 conspiracy theories. AIPAC spent more than $15M on what became the most expensive primary in history.
Israel’s Supreme Court issued its long-awaited, historic decision regarding the military draft of the ultra-Orthodox. The Army plans to draft an additional 3,000 ultra-Orthodox soldiers by the end of the year and another 5,000 next year from a total pool of 63,000 ultra-Orthodox youth who had previously been exempt.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the Biden administration announced separately Wednesday that progress had been made toward resolving what Jerusalem considers to be an insufficient flow of arms from the United States to Israel.
The United States characterized Hamas’s last response to Israel’s proposal for a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza earlier this month as a rejection of that offer for the first time Tuesday, as Washington appeared to harden its rhetoric against the terror group. The comment marked the first time that a US official had publicly gone so far.
The Numbers
Casualties
1,611 Israelis dead, including 666 IDF soldiers (314 IDF soldiers during the ground operation in Gaza) – an increase of 1 from our last update
Additional Information (according to the IDF):
1,997 IDF soldiers have been injured during ground combat in Gaza, including at least 384 who have been severely injured.
3,922 IDF soldiers have been injured since the beginning of the war, including at least 590 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, 37,626 people have been killed in Gaza, and 86,098 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 (one more Israeli identified)
The IDF confirmed Sgt. Maj. Muhammad Alatrash (39) was killed in fighting on Oct. 7 and his body was held in Gaza. 39-year-old tracker from Bedouin community in south was abducted from Nahal Oz area during Hamas-led onslaught.
The IDF has now confirmed the deaths of 42 of those still held by Hamas — including Alatrash — citing new intelligence and findings obtained by troops operating in Gaza. One more person is listed as missing since October 7, and her fate is still unknown, though her family believes she was killed.
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 19 others have been recovered. Tragically, 3 have been mistakenly killed by the IDF, and 1 was killed during an IDF attempt to rescue him.
This leaves an estimated 116 hostages still theoretically in Gaza, with somewhere between (assumed) 35-43 deceased. Thus, at most, 85 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
Listen
[PODCAST] Call Me Back with Dan Senor: The ‘Day After’ Document - with Prof. Netta Barak-Corren
Is now the time for Israeli decision-makers to begin serious internal deliberations and planning for the “day after” in Gaza? According to Nadav Eyal in his column last Friday in Yediot, over 95% of Hamas rockets are gone, Hamas’s smuggling routes have been closed, and its munitions production capacity is zero. Is progress in defeating Hamas appears much better than one would think from reading popular press accounts?
It’s against that backdrop that we’ve learned of a 28-page document -- this is not public -- and is circulating among Israeli military leaders and war strategy decision-makers within the government. Some we spoke to suggested that this document is being treated as the basis for ‘day after’ planning in the government. It’s called: "From a murderous regime to a moderate society: the transformation and rehabilitation of Gaza after Hamas". The researchers are Prof. Netta Barak-Corren, a law professor who works on conflict resolution; Prof. Danny Orbach, a military historian; Dr. Nati Flamer who specializes in Hamas and Hezbollah; and Dr. Harel Chorev, an expert on Palestinian society
More from the Jewish Insider: The day-after plan for Gaza on Israeli leaders’ desks by Lahav Harkov
[PODCAST] Ask a Jew hosts Urban Warfare Urban Legends with John Spencer
Why war isn't as simple as two armies fighting, the obsession with "2,000 pound bombs", Hamas's non-battlefield strategy (which the media helps it achieve) and so much more with John Spencer.
No one understands the intricacies of modern warfare like John Spencer. As a retired US Army Major and chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, not only has he studied war for years, he also put his boots on the ground as a soldier and researcher (including several visits to Gaza over the last year).
Link: Ask a Jew: Urban Warfare Urban Legends with John Spencer on Apple Podcasts
Watch
[WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO]: Hostage families release Hamas video showing 3 sons’ abduction into Gaza under fire. In new footage, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eliya Cohen and Or Levy are seen crammed and bloodied on flatbed of pickup truck, being driven toward Strip
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office dropped all charges against 31 of the 46 individuals who violently took over Hamilton Hall of Columbia University on the early morning of April 30 and soon another 14 will also have their charges dropped. In response, watch this powerful speech by @ShaiDavidai at the @EndJewHatred rally.
Read Daniel Greenfields’s thread: What I saw at the terrorist rally outside Congregation Adas Torah (Congregation of the Bible) in Los Angeles and watch this disturbing video of the unfolding violence
The LAPD allowed terrorist supporters to occupy both sides of the synagogue while keeping Jewish counter protesters out. Only a narrow protected lane allowed access.
There were multiple instances of Jewish community members being maced/bear sprayed with no police response. The LAPD was deployed in riot gear but did nothing for nearly an hour, failed to separate protesters from counter protesters, intervene or put up barriers
Many Jewish community members, including teenage girls and families, took a risk by coming to what they thought would be a safe rally only to face violence and threats
What We Are Reading
The Pogrom on Pico Boulevard: I went to synagogue with my kids to learn a bit about real estate in Israel. Instead, we witnessed a street battle. By Noah Pollak for The Free Press
On Sunday, a synagogue in the largest Jewish neighborhood in Los Angeles hosted a small, privately advertised event for those interested in purchasing homes or second homes in Israel. “The Great Israeli Real Estate Event” at Adas Torah synagogue wasn’t political and it had nothing to do with the Gaza war. But within moments of its noon start time, it became the backdrop to the worst antisemitic violence in Los Angeles since an attack on Jewish diners at a restaurant in 2021.
The police occasionally stepped in, but their main activity Sunday afternoon seemed to ensure that the activists were able to successfully shut down the front entrance to the synagogue, ruin the event, and harass Jews more or less with impunity.
They knew about the event in advance, and were putting out calls on social media via groups like Code Pink and the “Palestinian Youth Movement” to mobilize their keffiyeh-clad thugs to show up at Adas Torah at “12PM SHARP” ready for action. The same groups that promoted Sunday’s violence, it turns out, had also shown up at similar real estate events earlier this year in Toronto, Montreal, and Teaneck, New Jersey.
Why did it have to escalate like this? Because, as they have realized on elite college campuses and in blue cities across the country, anti-Israel activists understand that they enjoy something like immunity. They can’t murder or severely beat people, but pretty much all other criminality—vandalism, graffiti, trespassing, harassment—will go unpunished.
I read the new ‘Gaza famine report’ so you don’t have to by Rachel Lester in the Times of Israel
Finding 1: Famine Review Committee (“FRC”): The FRC highlights two glaring omissions in the FEWS NET’s analysis of food in Gaza: FEWS NET “excludes the contribution of commercial and/or privately contracted deliveries” as well as “the contribution of World Food Program deliveries (flour salt, and yeast) to bakeries in northern Gaza.”
Finding 2: Even according to the most conservative calculations made by the very people who have been crying “famine” in Gaza, what the pro-Israel movement has been saying for months is actually true: Israel has been delivering more food to Gaza than ever before – increasing amounts every day – and people in Gaza would have all the food they need if it was distributed by the UN properly.
Finding 3: “The FRC has some concerns with the methods by which the situation with regard to food availability in northern Gaza was calculated, which, combined with an incomplete understanding of food access makes the FEWS NET conclusions tenuous.” The predictions for deaths caused by malnutrition or dehydration “are not supported by the available evidence for the current period of analysis.”
Finding 4: “The FRC notes that the overall number of trucks entering the Gaza Strip and available food that FEWS NET used for its analysis is significantly less than reported by other sources.” So the people who wrote the report that there is famine in Gaza (which there isn’t) were basing their claims on the last Big Lie: that Israel wasn’t allowing enough humanitarian aid into Gaza (which they were). This is why misinformation is so dangerous.
Finding 5: “To address major gaps in publicly accessible evidence, including direct and indirect evidence for food consumption and livelihood change, nutritional status, and mortality, FEWS NET relied on multiple layers of assumptions and inference.”
So, bottom, is there famine in Gaza? The FRC says there’s not enough information to know for sure. But the evidence they do have points “no.”
Link: I read the new ‘Gaza famine report’ so you don’t have to
Sourced from AIPAC’s daily briefing: State Department advisor and JINSA fellow Gabriel Noronha highlighted on X a few charts that clearly show how Hezbollah is bringing Israel and the Iranian-backed terror proxy closer to a devastating war.
First, every single day, Hezbollah is firing a significant number of rockets, missiles and drones into Israel — and this number has grown dramatically this month: from an average of 15 munitions per day to 44 per day in June.
The IDF has carried out 2,700 airstrikes against Hezbollah targets since October 7, but they're not ramping up like Hezbollah has. Instead they've taken out half of Hezbollah's commanders in the south. Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s rocket and missile arsenal has grown:
For additional detail and data, JINSA’s Iran Projectile Tracker presents regularly updated charts and graphs on missiles, rockets, drones, and mortars that Iran and its regional proxies have fired at U.S. personnel, partners, and interests in the Middle East.
More on Hezbollah’s capabilities: Hezbollah's suicide drones zero in on Israel's weapons industry: Hezbollah continues to demonstrate that its target bank in Israel is extensive, diverse, and well within its reach. This is particularly concerning for the defense system, as it impacts the availability of armaments crucial for the IDF to sustain a prolonged campaign. By Yuval Azulay in CTech by Calcalist (and Israeli media outlet)
In a large-scale war with Israel, Hezbollah will likely not be content with a single UAV but will try to launch many more, targeting Israeli weapons industries while also firing rockets and precision missiles capable of carrying large warheads. This would saturate the IDF's air defense systems, making it challenging to intercept numerous threats simultaneously.
The Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) recently requested that part of its dividend profits be redirected as state investment to protect its production infrastructures, which have been operating in emergency mode around the clock since October 7.
A significant portion of the IAI's production facilities are located in the center of the country, and they recognize that in an all-out war with Hezbollah, potentially supported by Iran, they will also be targeted.
Link: Hezbollah's suicide drones zero in on Israel's weapons industry
Israel and the U.S. Need to Get Tough on Egypt: Cairo has turned a blind eye to Hamas’s tunneling and shipments of weapons over and under its border. WSJ Opinion by Reuel Marc Gerecht
Israeli and American officials long operated under the false assumption that the Egyptian army’s loathing of the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots—including Hamas—would keep in check the army’s corruption and anti-Israeli bias.
It would be naive to believe that the Gaza war has changed Egypt’s calculations.
Egypt stands to gain from the disruption in some respects. For one, the war and shipping troubles in the Red Sea, where Iranian-aided Houthis routinely fire on ships, made it easier for Cairo to obtain $5 billion from the International Monetary Fund to offset the crushing debt Mr. Sisi has incurred through a spending spree by framing it as aid to an economy under pressure by the war.
Neither the U.S. nor Israel has been willing to put Mr. Sisi’s feet to the fire over lax surveillance of border crossings and tunnels into Egypt. This approach has effectively neutralized censure in Washington and Jerusalem while indulging Egyptian dysfunction.
Admitting the gravity of the problem could force the White House to accept permanent Israeli control of the Philadelphi Corridor, the narrow belt of land on the border between Gaza and Egypt. Even Israeli governments that embraced the two-state solution insisted on Israeli control of the West Bank’s ports of entry and the Jordan Valley. An Israeli admission of Egyptian culpability would allow Jerusalem to plan openly to keep control of a slice of Gaza, which would surely entail military deployments larger than Israeli politicians and generals want to accept.
Hezbollah Threatens Cyprus: Capabilities, Intentions, and Potential Consequences by Hanin Ghaddar, Farzin Nadimi, David Schenker from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy
When Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave a speech this week commemorating a senior commander killed by Israel, his remarks were noteworthy for both their exceptionally menacing tone and their focus on the East Mediterranean. The headline from the June 19 address was his threat to strike Cyprus if it allows Israel to use the island’s air bases or other military facilities during a future war in Lebanon—an understandable point of media focus given the republic’s status as a European Union member state.
Nasrallah’s threat to Cyprus was not random—the republic has long maintained close ties with Israel, much to Hezbollah’s irritation. In recent years, the island has hosted multiple joint air defense drills and annual special forces exercises with Israel focused on potential threats from Hezbollah and Iran.
In January, the Cypriot government affirmed its neutrality and non-involvement in any foreign military operations after aircraft launched from the British base at Akrotiri participated in counterstrikes against the Houthis. According to the 1960 Treaty of Establishment, the Cypriot government has no control over the activities of sovereign British bases on its territory—notably, however, it is obligated to help ensure the security of these facilities.
At present, Cyprus and its environs are not protected by a robust, multilayered air and missile defense network. The government reportedly reached a tentative agreement in 2022 to purchase Iron Dome systems from Israel, though it is unclear if and when they will be delivered. The island could therefore be vulnerable to Hezbollah missiles absent the deployment of British or NATO guided-missile destroyers. This scenario should be particularly troubling to Washington given the large allied military presence in Cyprus, which includes a few thousand British troops, more than a hundred U.S. Air Force personnel, and a detachment of U-2 surveillance aircraft from the 1st Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron.
Nasrallah’s threat highlights the very real prospect of the Hezbollah-Israel conflict broadening into the Mediterranean. If a wider war erupts, Israeli military and commercial traffic at sea would certainly be at risk given the militia’s large antiship arsenal and track record of tactical surprise
From Sapir’s quarterly publication: Resilience Is a Threat: A new dream for the Zionist future by Ariel Beery
We are living through a moment when our overreliance on resilience is more than a weakness. It is a threat to the continued existence of Jewish peoplehood as we know it.
As a nation committed to self-determination and equal status with all other national peoples, we have not been under this level of threat for nearly a century. With academia as the safest space for anti-Jewish forces, we must accept the real possibility that the siege could be multigenerational.
Resilience was behind the idea of “shrinking the conflict,” the conception that led our leaders to imagine that the State of Israel could remain Jewish and Democratic in the land between the river and the sea, a land that was quickly becoming neither majority Jewish nor majority democratic.
Resilience is why a genocidal yet democratically elected government in Gaza was permitted to continue its rule despite sparking conflict after conflict and carrying out attack after attack on Israeli civilians.
Zionism was and is a rejection of resilience, not an example of it.
The great challenge facing the Jews today is not to find comfort in our ability to survive this current wave; it is to imagine a future that does not necessitate recurring resilience and then to act to bring that future about.
Why All the Criticism of Qatar? Qatari-owned "news" media like Al Jazeera and Al-Quds Al-Arabi are not independent news sources, and continue to show deep hostility to the United States in their biased reporting. By Elliott Abrams in Pressure Points
Al Jazeera is Qatar’s international “news” medium. It’s a network of stations and sources producing news and commentary on satellite television, internet channels, and other means of communication, with 70 bureaus, broadcasts to about 150 countries, and a claimed audience of 430 million people.
Let’s be clear: the criticism of Qatar and of these various Qatari media properties has nothing to do with freedom of the press. These news sources are not free; they need to stay close to the Qatari official line and never contradict it in significant ways. They are the equivalent of Izvestia or China Daily, which are also voices of their governments, not of the Times of London, Le Monde, the Washington Post, or for that matter Israel’s newspapers.
And that is what makes their pernicious role so consequential: Qatar could turn them off, or turn them into actual independent news sources, if it wished. Instead it wishes to promote and laud violence, and to call the U.S. Secretary of State a war criminal.
According to Israeli journalist Marc Schulman (who writes a wonderful daily update), Elliott Abrams closing statement today at the Herzliya Security Summit Conference is, “the most significant one, and that should be our focal point.”
Having a massive number of nuclear weapons did not save the USSR; they collapsed internally. The Iranian regime is very unpopular, and we are not doing anything to bring it down. That is what we should be working on. We should not assume that the regime is eternal; otherwise, it will be.
Antisemitism
Inside the war over Israel at Wikipedia: Behind the scenes, ideologically motivated actors are working to shape the knowledge shared on the world’s largest encyclopedia by Gabby Deutch from The Jewish Insider
After Wikipedia’s editors voted earlier this month to rate the Anti-Defamation League as an unreliable source on matters related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a group of online activists celebrated the news in a pro-Palestine channel on the messaging app Discord.
Central to Wikipedia’s mythology is the notion that these altruistic editors have no hidden motive besides expanding access to knowledge. But the decision by several dozen Wikipedia editors — a fraction of the more than 10,000 high-volume editors on the site, let alone the 117,000 editors who have been active in the last 30 days — to deem the ADL an unreliable source raises questions about the motivations driving editors on the platform and the far reach of a handful of highly active, ideologically driven users.
The ADL now joins Wikipedia’s list of unreliable sources, which also includes the Iranian government outlet Press TV, satire site The Onion and Gateway Pundit, a far-right site known to traffic in conspiracy theories. Editors who attempt to cite the ADL will receive a pop-up warning message.
Earlier this year, editors affirmed the reliability of Al Jazeera, despite concerns raised by some over its ties to the Qatari government and its slanted coverage of the war in Gaza.
The public discussion board where editors debated the reliability of the ADL reveals that some of the most active editors on matters related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict do not themselves take a neutral point of view. One editor, who posted more than five dozen comments describing their opposition to the ADL, called Israel a “racist, apartheid and now genocidal” state.
Efforts are underway to recruit more people to the Wikipedia cause. The Discord channel recently posted a series of how-to videos on YouTube called “Wikipedia for Palestine.” All the videos are unlisted, meaning they do not show up in public searches on the site.
Dropping Charges Against Columbia Protesters is “Wrong,” Says Janitor: “You should be found guilty,” Lester Wilson told The Free Press. “We as the workers, y’all violated us. By Francesca Block and Jonas Du in The Free Press
For “context”: Nearly all of the Columbia students who were arrested a little over a month ago for breaking into and occupying Hamilton Hall had their charges dismissed on Thursday afternoon by the Manhattan district attorney.
“We as the workers, y’all violated us,” he added. “Y’all really violated us, keeping us in that building, by taking over that building, you affected all our lives.”
Earlier this month, the prosecutor’s office also dismissed the cases of at least seven protesters who occupied a building at CUNY, some of whom faced felony charges of burglary and misdemeanor charges of obstructing government administration.
Link: Dropping Charges Against Columbia Protesters is “Wrong,” Says Janitor
(I highly recommend reading in its entirety) The Child Soldiers of Ethnic Studies: How American students are radicalized against the West by Neetu Arnold in Tablet
Middle East and Islamic studies centers became avenues for foreign governments to purchase influence and prestige a long time ago. But today, these centers play a much broader role in national politics, law, scholarship, and culture. And the drivers are no longer just foreign political actors, but increasingly domestic ones, too.
The nuclei of Middle East education at American universities are the Middle East and Islamic studies centers. There are around 50 such centers distributed across the country, depending on how you count them. Columbia University alone hosts three: the Center for Palestine Studies, the Middle East Institute, and the Sakip Sabanci Center for Turkish Studies.
The original purpose for the centers, established in the 1950s, was to produce policy-relevant information that the government could use to develop sound Middle East foreign policy. Relatively little expertise on the region existed in the United States at the time, which made getting up to speed a national security priority. But it’s hard to see that purpose in what passes through the centers and their affiliated faculty today.
…these centers have long produced area experts that populate U.S. government agencies and the foreign service. The degeneration of the education provided by these programs into its current activist form tracks with the increasing activism of government bureaucrats, such as the political appointees and staff members of several government agencies who signed a letter objecting to the administration’s Israel policy, and the various State Department officials who have resigned in protest.
But the toxic influence extends beyond government bureaucracy. Federally funded Middle East centers produced more than 2,500 instructional materials between 2000 and 2020, of which over 60% were intended for use by K-12 educators. Content matter ranged from climate justice to Islamophobia to youth activism. These centers also conducted over 22,000 outreach programs throughout the same time period, of which over 20% were intended for K-12 educators. Both the instructional materials and outreach programs are part of the centers’ mandate from the federal government, so our taxpayer dollars directly fund these programs.
It would be one thing if this educational infrastructure simply resulted in American school kids learning a biased set of facts about Israel and Palestine. But simply teaching even skewed history is not the goal, as evidenced by the many “Free Palestine” student protesters who apparently didn’t even know what they were protesting. The goal, rather, is to teach school students a framework of values that they can apply blindly to every social and political issue.
Middle East education at all levels needs a complete overhaul. It has gone from an attempt to help inform our geopolitics and augment our security posture against the various threats facing the United States in the region, to a factory of apologists for America’s enemies and advocates on their behalf.
12 Tough Questions and Simple Answers About Israel by Gil Troy in The Jewish Journal
My good friend, Taglit-Birthright Israel’s CEO Gidi Mark, challenged me recently. “Can you offer short, punchy answers to some of the pressing questions our participants have – and some of the accusations being thrown at them?” Here’s my best shot….