Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on November 14-15/2023
Israel ‘taking it too far,’ warns Lebanon as border skirmishes continue
Reports: US prevented Israel from striking deep in Lebanon
Netanyahu urges preparation for all scenarios as Gallant says not concerned with war with Hezbollah
Israel wants to obliterate Gaza to deter Iran, Hezbollah, says Dutch memo
Israel-Hezbollah border skirmishes: Latest developments
UNIFIL Commander visits Berri and Mikati, expresses deep concern about situation in south
UNIFIL chief says 1701's principles challenged but 'remain valid'
Tenenti: UNIFIL was not involved in organizing or coordinating journalists’ visit to Yaroun
Cabinet session postponed due to lack of quorum
Rahi meets UN’s Wronecka in Bkerki
US, UK sanction Lebanon money exchange firm over 'Iran-Hamas transfers'
Cabinet fails to convene due to lack of quorum
British Ambassador commemorates 'Remembrance Day' in honor of Armed Forces members
MP Raad: We defend our homeland while making sacrifices for Gaza
LBCI sources: Israeli army shells 'previously targeted' house in Tayr Harfa
Lebanese Daily: Hundreds Of Hizbullah-Allied Amal Movement Operatives Deployed On Lebanon-Israel Border, Carrying Out Attacks On Israel
Tension and the spread of intelligence... What is happening in Chekka?!
Israel Moves Against Pro-Hezbollah TV Station’s Local Operations
Is Benjamin Netanyahu Planning An Escape Through Lebanon?/Yezid Sayigh/Carnegie/November 14, 2023

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on November 14-15/2023
Israeli defense minister says Hamas has 'lost control of Gaza'
Report: Breakthrough in Israel-Hamas hostage deal may come in next 48-72 hours
Israel army says seizes Gaza parliament, other Hamas bodies
Rights group accuses Israel of disregarding civilian lives
Is Hamas hiding in Gaza's main hospital?
As fighting empties north Gaza, humanitarian crisis worsens in south
Israeli forces kill eight Palestinians in West Bank -medics
China, Iran, Arab nations condemn Israeli minister's statement about dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza
Israelis are arming up in the aftermath of Hamas’ attack. Some are worried it is playing to the far right’s vision for the country
Israel shows alleged Hamas ‘armory’ under children’s hospital in Gaza. Local health officials dismiss the claims
Israel’s Golani Brigade avenges troops killed by Hamas on Oct 7 with Gaza gains
Hamas apologists can only win by suppressing speech
Israeli lawmakers urge world leaders to accept Gaza refugees amid war
Belize suspends diplomatic ties with Israel, renews call for ‘immediate ceasefire’
Israel should use 'maximum restraint' to protect civilian life in Gaza Strip: Trudeau
There's nothing ‘humanitarian’ about a humanitarian pause in Gaza
Leader of Houthis says militia will target Israeli ships in Red Sea
Video purports to show Israeli-Russian researcher kidnapped in Iraq

Titles For The Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on November 14-15/2023
Why Erdoğan Wants a UN Seat for Muslims/Burak Bekdil/Gatestone Institute/November 14, 2023
Israel’s Hunt for the Sinwar Brothers/Jonathan Schanzer/Commentary/November 14/2023
Hamas commits war crimes in hospitals and mosques, but world says nothing/Richard Goldberg/New York Post/November 14/2023
I’m Arab and I Don’t Understand Why the World Can’t Acknowledge Jewish Pain/Hussain Abdul-Hussain/Newsweek/November 14/2023
Prevent the Gaza Conflict From Turning Into a Regional Conflagration/Andrea Stricker/ Al-Ain/November 13, 2023
The Rationality of The Summit… The Brutality of Arms… And The Discourse of Resistance/Nadim Koteich/Asharq Al-Awsat/November 14/2023

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on November 14-15/2023
Israel ‘taking it too far,’ warns Lebanon as border skirmishes continue
Arab News/November 14, 2023
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri warned on Tuesday against “the Israeli enemy taking it too far and escalating its aggression, repeatedly targeting civilians, media professionals, and paramedics, extending its attacks deep into southern Lebanon, in addition to its threats to the capital, Beirut.”During his meeting with the peacekeeping force UNIFIL’s mission head, Maj. Gen. Aroldo Lazaro, Berri said that the actions increase “the risks of the Israeli flames of war expanding in the region, contrary to international and Arab positions calling for adherence to international (law).”
Caretaker Premier Najib Mikati affirmed “Lebanon’s commitment to UNIFIL’s presence in the south and not tampering with its assigned missions and work rules, which are implemented in close cooperation with the Lebanese army.”
Mikati and Berri discussed with Lazaro the developments in southern Lebanon and the challenges UNIFIL faces in its missions. Mikati praised “the arduous efforts being made by UNIFIL at this difficult stage in order to reduce tension and prevent, as much as possible, the aggravation of the existing military clash along and across the Blue Line, which is the result of Israeli provocations,” his media office said. Two days ago, a UNIFIL soldier was injured by gunfire from an unidentified source during the hostilities that have been ongoing for 38 days between Hezbollah and the Israeli army amid Israel’s onslaught against the Gaza Strip.
Hezbollah’s attacks on Israeli military sites continued.
A military observer told Arab News: “The situation is still within limited sites … sometimes intensifying and sometimes decreasing, but within controlled frameworks so far.”A photo circulated on social media showing a drone stuck between tree branches, discovered by residents in the border town of Ebel Al-Saqi. It is unclear to whom it belongs.Mohammed Raad, head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, said: “We have prepared what is necessary for the enemy; now we are exercising our right to defend our homeland, and we are making sacrifices in defense of Gaza and victory for our cause.”
Raad said that “the Israeli enemy is talking about a long-term war, and this is nothing but a camouflage for failure and a lack of understanding of the target it is pursuing.”Hezbollah announced that it struck the Israeli Al-Malikiyah facility “using suitable armaments during the enemy’s reinforcement process.”The group said it targeted “a concentration point for enemy soldiers near the Al-Marj site,” causing “direct casualties there.”The party claimed that it used missiles to target “the Birkat Risha site and the military gathering places in its vicinity, resulting in successful direct hits.”Israeli Channel 12 reported that “an anti-tank missile was launched from Lebanese territory at an army camp in the Upper Galilee.”Israeli artillery bombardment was documented in multiple Lebanese border regions, encompassing the peripheries of Tair Harfa, Hula, Hunin, Rab El Thalathine, Ras Naqoura, and Labouneh. The regions encompassing Aitaroun, Maroun Al-Ras, the outskirts of Mays Al-Jabal, and the outskirts of Aita Al-Shaab and Blida were subjected to aerial bombardment and drone attacks by the Israeli military. The Israeli army stated that it bombed “several Hezbollah infrastructure facilities in Lebanese territory.”Israeli reconnaissance planes were constantly present in the airspace of the south. Reactions poured in following the Israeli army’s attack on a media convoy in the border town of Yaron on Monday. Fortunately, there were no casualties. This incident occurred one month after a similar media gathering in Alma Al-Shaab, where photojournalist Issam Al-Abdullah from Reuters was killed and others from Agence France-Presse, Reuters, and Al-Jazeera were injured. UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti said: “Journalists have an important job to do, especially in times of conflict, and they must be respected and protected at all times.”

Reports: US prevented Israel from striking deep in Lebanon
Naharnet/November 14, 2023
The Israeli army intended to carry out strikes deep in the south and deep in Lebanon following the meeting of Israel’s war cabinet on Sunday, but U.S. pressures on the Israeli government prevented that, media reports said. “Political sources in Tel Aviv revealed that the Israeli army commanders had told PM Benjamin Netanyahu that it was inevitable to deal a severe blow to Hezbollah in response to its new escalation over the past two days and that such a strike should be painful, specifically in Beirut’s (southern) suburbs, so that it could be deterrent,” Asharq al-Awsat newspaper reported.

Netanyahu urges preparation for all scenarios as Gallant says not concerned with war with Hezbollah
Naharnet/November 14, 2023
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday said that he has instructed the Israeli army to “prepare for all scenarios to deal with Hezbollah” on Israel’s northern front. “Our goal first and foremost is total victory over Hamas and the return of the captives and then we will deal with the north,” Netanyahu said after a meeting with the chiefs of the northern Israeli settlements. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant meanwhile said that the Israeli army is “prepared for any threat on the northern front.”“We are not concerned with war on the northern front and we warn Hezbollah against committing a mistake,” Gallant added.

Israel wants to obliterate Gaza to deter Iran, Hezbollah, says Dutch memo
Naharnet/November 14, 2023
Israel is deliberately using “disproportionate force” in Gaza and targeting “civilian infrastructure” in an effort to limit its own losses and showcase its “military force,” according to a confidential memo from the Dutch Embassy in Tel Aviv. The memo, drafted by the Dutch defense attaché in the embassy and seen by Dutch media outlet NRC, analyzes Israel’s military strategy in Gaza, where Israeli forces have been launching retaliatory airstrikes for over a month straight and conducting a ground invasion, killing more than 11,000 people according to the health ministry in Gaza. The defense attaché said that the Israeli army is using lethal force in an attempt to limit its own losses and “showcase credible military force to show Iran and its proxies [such as Hezbollah] that they will stop at nothing,” NRC reported. This strategy has the “intention of deliberately causing massive destruction to the infrastructure and civilian centers” in Gaza, targeting houses, bridges and roads, and causing massive civilian casualties, which explains the “high number of deaths” among civilians, the attaché added. Israel’s approach violates “international treaties and laws of war” and increases the chance of regional escalation, the memo said. The embassy’s defense attaché also wrote that Israel is trying to completely eliminate the threat of Hamas, a “military goal that is virtually impossible to achieve.” Israel is motivated by revenge, the memo said, as “the emotion and anger reverberate in IDF [Israeli army] briefings.”The memo also accuses the Dutch government of being aware of Israel’s “ruthless approach,” yet failing to condemn it. While Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week that Israel “must show that what they are doing is also proportionate,” he has not publicly called for a cease-fire. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that “not every internal document should be viewed as a policy recommendation.” “We do not comment on the wide variety of documents that are drafted at the ministry or at the diplomatic missions as part of the policy-making process,” it said in an emailed statement. The ministry added that the Netherlands is “highly concerned” about the “severity and scale” of the Israel-Hamas conflict and that “further civilian casualties on both sides must be avoided.” “We call for restraint, and we continue to emphasize this in all our diplomatic conversations,” the ministry said. “The situation is highly complex. And that only goes to reaffirm the importance of investigating events on the ground.”

Israel-Hezbollah border skirmishes: Latest developments
Naharnet/November 14, 2023
Israeli artillery and drones bombed Tuesday several southern towns including al-Labbouneh, al-Naqoura, Blida, Rab Tlatine, Markaba, Tayr Harfa, Hawnine, Aitaroun, Odeisseh, Mays al-Jabal, Aita al-Shaab, Kfarshouba, Halta and Houla.
Hezbollah targeted for its part several Israeli posts including al-Malkiyyeh, al-Marj, Margaliot, Arab al-Aramsha, Petah, Shomera, Matat, Rwaisat al-Alam, Birkat Risha and Shtula. The group had targeted an infantry force in Netua'a overnight. Two Israeli soldiers were severely wounded. Since October 7, more than 90 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, and nine inside Israel, in daily cross-border fire.

UNIFIL Commander visits Berri and Mikati, expresses deep concern about situation in south
NNA/November 14, 2023
Following is a statement by UNIFIL Head of Mission and Force Commander Lieutenant General Aroldo Lázaro, on Tuesday: "Today, I met with Lebanese Speaker Nabih Berri and caretaker Prime Minister Najib Miqati in Beirut, ahead of the Security Council’s consultations on resolution 1701 (2006). I expressed my deep concern about the situation in the south, and the potential for wider and more intensive hostilities. I thanked them for their efforts towards restoring stability during these critical days, including through diplomatic channels, and for the trust they have placed in UNIFIL’s liaison mechanisms to avoid further escalation. UNIFIL’s priorities right now are to prevent escalation, safeguard civilian lives, and ensure the safety and security of peacekeepers who are trying to accomplish this. Resolution 1701 is being challenged at the moment, but its principles of security, stability, and for a long-term solution remain valid. Our impartial role in conveying crucial messages to reduce tensions and prevent dangerous misunderstandings remains critical, aiming to avert any unwarranted escalation. Peacekeepers have had to adapt to the situation, but our work in support of the resolution continues." -- UNIFIL

UNIFIL chief says 1701's principles challenged but 'remain valid'
Naharnet/November 14, 2023
UNIFIL Head of Mission and Force Commander Lieutenant General Aroldo Lázaro on Tuesday met with Speaker Nabih Berri and caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati in Beirut, ahead of the Security Council’s consultations on Resolution 1701 (2006). "I expressed my deep concern about the situation in the south, and the potential for wider and more intensive hostilities," Lázaro said in a statement. "I thanked them for their efforts towards restoring stability during these critical days, including through diplomatic channels, and for the trust they have placed in UNIFIL’s liaison mechanisms to avoid further escalation," he added. He noted that UNIFIL’s priorities right now are to "prevent escalation, safeguard civilian lives, and ensure the safety and security of peacekeepers who are trying to accomplish this." "Resolution 1701 is being challenged at the moment, but its principles of security, stability, and for a long-term solution remain valid. Our impartial role in conveying crucial messages to reduce tensions and prevent dangerous misunderstandings remains critical, aiming to avert any unwarranted escalation," Lázaro went on to say. "Peacekeepers have had to adapt to the situation, but our work in support of the resolution continues," he added.

Tenenti: UNIFIL was not involved in organizing or coordinating journalists’ visit to Yaroun
NNA/November 14, 2023
Responding to a question by the National News Agency (NNA) on whether UNIFIL organized the visit of the journalists to Yaroun yesterday and its role in this matter, UNIFIL Spokesperson Andrea Tenenti said that “journalists have an important job to do, especially in times of conflict. They should be respected and protected at all times.”“We are aware that reporters narrowly escaped serious injury yesterday while reporting near the Blue Line. Peacekeepers have assisted and coordinated the retrieval of their vehicles and equipment,” he added. Tenenti pointed out that “UNIFIL was not aware of the journalists’ presence in the area at the time, and we were not involved in organizing or coordinating their visit.” “Exchanges of fire are happening regularly and suddenly all along the Blue Line. We continue to urge everyone to stay as far as possible from these areas for their own protection,” the UNIFIL spokesperson reminded, wishing a “full and speedy recovery to the injured.”

Cabinet session postponed due to lack of quorum
NNA/November 14, 2023
The Cabinet session, which had been scheduled to be held at the Grand Serail today, has been postponed due to lack of quorum. A new session date has not been set yet. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister held a consultative meeting with attending ministers

Rahi meets UN’s Wronecka in Bkerki
NNA/November 14, 2023
Maronite Patriarch, Cardinal Mar Bechara Boutros Al-Rahi, on Tuesday welcomed in Bkerki United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Joanna Wronecka.

US, UK sanction Lebanon money exchange firm over 'Iran-Hamas transfers'
Agence France Presse/November 14, 2023
The United States in conjunction with the United Kingdom on Tuesday announced a third round of sanctions on Hamas since last month's attack on Israel, again targeting the group's Iranian backers. The sanctions target "key Hamas officials and the mechanisms by which Iran provides support to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad," another militant group operating in the Gaza Strip, a statement from the U.S. Treasury Department said. Tuesday's actions mark another increase of U.S. sanctions since the October 7 attacks that saw Hamas fighters surge through the heavily militarized Gaza border and kill 1,200 people -- mostly civilians, according to Israel's tally. "Iran’s support, primarily through its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, enables Hamas and PIJ's terrorist activities, including through the transfer of funds and the provision of both weapons and operational training," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. Those targeted by the sanctions include Palestinian Islamic Jihad's representative to Iran, Nasser Abu Sharif, as well as a Lebanon-based money exchange firm, Nabil Chouman & Co, that allegedly handles transfers between Hamas and Tehran. According to the Treasury, Hamas' global asset holdings are estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. "The United States will continue to work with our partners, including the UK, to deny Hamas the ability to raise and use funds to carry out its atrocities," U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement. Since Hamas' attack, in which it took some 240 hostages, some 11,200 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Israel's reprisal offensive, Gaza health officials have said.

Cabinet fails to convene due to lack of quorum
Naharnet/November 14, 2023
The caretaker cabinet failed to convene Tuesday, due to a lack of quorum and a ministerial meeting at the Grand Serail replaced the cancelled session. The session was postpone to Monday. Unconfirmed reports claimed that the session was going to discuss postponing the army chief retirement for a year, but Pro-Hezbollah al-Akhbar newspaper quoted Tuesday confirmed ministerial sources as saying that the discussion of the army chief's term extension on Tuesday's session was unlikely, due to the lack of political consensus. Caretaker Prime Minister Nahib Mikati reportedly said during the side meeting with the ministers that the extension of the term of the Army chief needs consensus, and cannot happen through a confrontational approach. Army chief Gen. Joseph Aoun's retirement in January would add another gap to crisis-hit Lebanon's withering and paralyzed institutions. The tiny Mediterranean country has been without a president, while its government has been running in a limited caretaker capacity. Lebanon has also been without a top spy chief to head its General Security Directorate since March, and without a central bank governor.

British Ambassador commemorates 'Remembrance Day' in honor of Armed Forces members
Naharnet/November 14, 2023
British Ambassador to Lebanon Hamish Cowell on Saturday commemorated Remembrance Day. This annual event, which marks the end of the First World War on 11 November 1918, honors “the sacrifice of the Armed Forces community from the UK and the Commonwealth and remembers innocent civilians who have lost their lives in conflict and acts of terrorism,” the British embassy said in a statement. Cowell was joined in giving a reading by the American Ambassador, Dorothy Shea, the French Ambassador, Hervé Magro, and the German Ambassador, Kurt Georg Stöckl-Stillfried. Ambassadors and official representatives laid wreaths. A two minutes’ silence was held at the end of the service to mark the end of World War One. The service was conducted by Father Francois Koussaifi, from the Monastery of Saint Joseph - Batroun. Also in attendance was the British Defense Attaché, Lt. Col. Lee Saunders, and representatives of the Lebanese Army Commander, General Joseph Aoun, and the acting Director General of the General Security, Major General Elias Bayssari. Ambassadors, diplomats and military attachés of U.S., European and Commonwealth countries were also present.

MP Raad: We defend our homeland while making sacrifices for Gaza
LBCI/November 14, 2023
The head of the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc, MP Mohammad Raad, affirmed that "as advocates of the resistance, we have prepared what is necessary, and now we exercise their right to defend our homeland, making sacrifices for Gaza and triumphing for its people and our cause."Raad pointed out that they are honored to be part of the project defending Jerusalem, doing what they do on the front lines where duty and legitimate assignment dictate. He noted that "anyone who reads the analyses of the enemy military and generals knows there is a strange dilemma within the Zionist entity."
According to Raad, this indicates the extent of concern and hesitation within the leadership of this enemy, not only among its general population. "We appreciate that this enemy has been exposed for what it has done in Gaza now. It is on the fast track to collapse, and even those who were victims of its deception, squandering, and lies are ashamed," Raad added. The head of the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc concluded, saying, "It has been proven that human rights and democracy are made by strength. When you are strong, you become the masters of democracy and human rights defenders. However, when you are weak, you experience what befalls all those crushed by tanks, with no one to bury them."

LBCI sources: Israeli army shells 'previously targeted' house in Tayr Harfa
LBCI/November 14, 2023
LBCI sources confirmed that the Israeli army shelled a house in Tayr Harfa that was previously targeted in the past few days.

Lebanese Daily: Hundreds Of Hizbullah-Allied Amal Movement Operatives Deployed On Lebanon-Israel Border, Carrying Out Attacks On Israel
MEMRI/November 14, 2023
The following report is now a complimentary offering from MEMRI's Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM). For JTTM subscription information, click here.
On November 11, 2023, Lebanon's Shi'ite Amal Movement announced that one of its operatives, 'Ali Jamil Al-Hajj Dawoud, had been targeted in an act of "direct aggression by the oppressive Israeli enemy" in the Rab El Thalathine village of southern Lebanon, leading to his "martyrdom" and the injury of two other "mujahideen." The announcement stated that Dawoud was born in 1988 in the village of Mlikh, Jezzine district.[1]
The Lebanese Al-Modon online daily, known for its opposition to Hizbullah, published an article on November 12 discussing the presence of Amal operatives along the Israeli border and their activities against Israel. According to the article, hundreds of these operatives, native to the villages of southern Lebanon, have been deployed near the border since mid-October 2023, where they are engaged in operations against Israel.[2]
The movement, allied with Hizbullah and founded in 1974, is headed by Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri and is the largest Shi'ite party in Lebanon's Parliament, with 14 members compared to Hizbullah's 13.
Hundreds Of Amal Fighters Deployed To Israeli Border Since Mid-October
Al-Modon notes that in a 2019 speech commemorating the 41st anniversary of the disappearance of Lebanese Shi'ite cleric Musa Al-Sadr, one of the founders of Amal, Berri told the group's members: "Just as you were the beginning and cornerstone of the resistance, you are called to […] be ready and prepared to make the enemy understand that every inch of Lebanon is resisting." The article interprets the speech to be a "direct order to [carry out] operations in preparation for future aggression."
According to the Lebanese daily, reports increased following Berri's speech that Amal's military formations – whose activity never paused – had intensified their preparations and carried out maneuvers imitating the storming of Israeli settlements. Videos also circulated showing the group's military training, while "informed sources" reported that Amal had established units named after the companions of Imam 'Ali, such as the Hani bin 'Urwah unit led by Dawoud and the Al-'Abbas unit.
Al-Modon adds that although Amal's activity was not "completely concealed," its activity on the southern border since Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel has been. Al-Modon sources claim that since mid-October, the group has deployed its fighters at its positions in the area, adding that "we are speaking not about tens or a few hundred, but more." According to the sources, Amal has not publicized these activities, because it sees its operations at the border as "natural," as Berri has stated that the group "dos not [merely] stand behind Hizbullah in its resistance activity, but is a partner in the field, and the movement's fighters are deployed on the borders just like members of the Civil Defense."
November 11 Operation Was Not First Amal Attack On Israel And Will Not Be Last
The sources added that the operation carried out by Dawoud before he was killed in an Israeli airstrike "was not the first on the border against Israeli positions and will not be the last, of course." They reported that at the beginning of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, Dawoud and his unit headed to the "forward areas." He then left to visit his father before returning to his position, and on the morning of November 11, "gathered his group and discussed the plan of the operation with them for the last time. Then the group set out and carried out its task fully in a forward post near the border." At noon, the group returned to its position in Rab El Thalathine, about 2.2 km (1.4 miles) from the Israeli kibbutz Misgav Am, where each fighter prayed in his bunker. Dawoud insisted on praying under a tree and shortly thereafter was targeted by an Israeli drone, which killed him and lightly injured two of his companions. The sources added that for an hour Dawoud's companions were unable to drag him from the area.
Al-Modon notes that Amal's activity in Rab El Thalathine began in 1975-1977 and that 'Ali Dawoud was a nephew of Amal commander Hasan Dawoud, known as the "eagle of the south." The sources quoted Dawoud's companions, who reported that he had expressed a wish to be martyred in a way that would bring glory to Amal.
In a November 11 speech, Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah discussed the group's recent attacks on northern Israel, claiming the group has sent surveillance drones deep into Israeli territory.[3]
There have also been recent reports that Iran-backed militias have deployed more than 700 elite fighters to Syria's border with Israel.[4]
[1] Telegram, November 11, 2023.
[2] Almodon, November 12, 2023.
[3] See MEMRI JTTM Report: Hizbullah Leader Hassan Nasrallah Praises Hamas Attack As Parallel To 1982 Tyre Suicide Operation In South Lebanon; Claims To Have Sent Drones Into North Israel, November 11, 2023.
[4] See MEMRI JTTM Report: Syrian Opposition Website: More Than 700 Elite Forces Trained By Hizbullah And Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Now Control Syrian Border With Israel, November 13, 2023.

Tension and the spread of intelligence... What is happening in Chekka?!
Lebanon Debate/Tuesday, November 14, 2023
After citizen Suleiman Sarkis was subjected to an armed attack in Chekka, yesterday, Monday, which resulted in him being directly injured in the head, Lebanon Debate learned that “tension still exists between the people of Chekka and the people of Tallet al-Arab, to which the perpetrator belongs.” It was learned that “Army Intelligence is carrying out a deployment at the Cedar Junction between Anfeh and Shekka, in anticipation of security repercussions due to the crime, while movement remains normal in the internal neighborhoods.” Information had revealed to “Lebanon Debate” that “the shooting operation took place against a backdrop of revenge.” , where a problem occurred last October 7, when a motorcycle march came out from the Arab Hill area, supporting “Hamas” after the Al-Aqsa Flood operation and took the Shekka road, and then a problem occurred between the people of the area and the people of Arab Hill. With regard to Sarkis’s health, he underwent surgery on Yesterday, Monday, a delicate surgery was performed and one of the bullets was extracted, while a bullet remained in the head. It is likely that it will be extracted when the patient’s condition stabilizes and the tumor caused by the injury decreases, and he is still in a critical condition in the intensive care department.

Israel Moves Against Pro-Hezbollah TV Station’s Local Operations
FDD/November 14/2023
Latest Developments
Israel on November 13 approved a crackdown on the local operations of a pro-Hezbollah TV station that has been inciting against it during the Gaza war. The decision against al Mayadeen empowered Israel’s Communications Ministry to block access to the Lebanon-based channel’s website. Likewise, it empowered police to seize the station’s assets. The measures may also be implemented in Palestinian areas of the West Bank. Though not formally accredited, an Israeli Arab woman has been working for al Mayadeen in Israel, broadcasting stories favorable to Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists.
The security cabinet statement on the new emergency regulations for media described al Mayadeen as a Hezbollah mouthpiece working to promote Israel’s enemies. While the regulation could be applied to other stations, the statement made no mention of Al Jazeera, which Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi accused last month of pro-Hamas reporting and endangering Israeli soldiers in the field.
Expert Analysis
“Such are the liberal standards of Israel that, astonishingly, a station serving one of its worst enemies, and based in a country with which it is at war, has been able to operate within its territory until now. The crackdown on al Mayadeen is long overdue. It would appear that the Netanyahu government is sparing Al Jazeera, however, given Israeli and U.S. reliance on Qatari mediation to free hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. It may be an understandable Faustian bargain for now, but eventually, Israel and the rest of the West will need to confront Qatar’s malign global influence, which is publicly manifested through Al Jazeera.” — Mark Dubowitz, FDD CEO
“There is conceptual precedent for barring al Mayadeen. In 2006, the United States designated al Manar TV as a terrorist entity, which it found was owned and operated by Hezbollah. Washington rightly regarded al Manar in the same way it regards Hezbollah and denied it the privileges accorded to media entities. Europe and Arab countries followed suit, understanding incitement to violence was a national security issue, not a free speech issue.” — Toby Dershowitz, Managing Director of FDD Action
U.S. Sanctions Terrorist Media
While the United States has not sanctioned al Mayadeen, it has designated other terrorist media. In 2006, the George W. Bush administration sanctioned al Manar, which is controlled and operated by Hezbollah and broadcasts both subtle and overt incitement to violence against Israel. “Any entity maintained by a terrorist group whether masquerading as a charity, a business, or a media outlet is as culpable as the terrorist group itself,” said Stuart Levey, then Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. In 2010, the Obama administration sanctioned Al-Aqsa Television, a station in Gaza financed and controlled by Hamas.

Is Benjamin Netanyahu Planning An Escape Through Lebanon?
Yezid Sayigh/Carnegie/November 14, 2023
The Israeli prime minister may take a page out of Yasser Arafat’s book in order to get out of his perilous political predicament.
In a conversation with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is said to have expressed concern about Israel’s role in escalating tensions along the border with Lebanon, fearing this could lead to a regional war. And so he should. There is as yet no strategic necessity for Israel to widen the scope of the Gaza conflict, but the political logic shaping Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct makes continuation of this conflict and escalation on other fronts his default option. Therein lies the real danger for all.
Netanyahu has provided considerable evidence since the Hamas attack on October 7 that he is making policy on the hoof. He has blamed Israel’s top security echelon for the dramatic failure of his own past policies toward Hamas, in a post on X that was later deleted, but not before conveying the message to his intended domestic audience. In a statement on October 28, he reminded soldiers preparing to enter Gaza to “[r]emember what Amalek did to you.” In the current political climate, the invocation of a biblical passage commanding vengeance for an attack on defenseless Jews in the desert would be understood by listeners to imply a related passage: “Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and donkeys.” Netanyahu later predicted that the war would be followed by indefinite Israeli security responsibility over Gaza, although both Gallant and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken denied that this was in fact an official war aim.
That does not mean, however, that there is no inner logic or coherence to Netanyahu’s disparate statements and social media posts. Rather, they serve two purposes. First, delaying the moment when he will face the full brunt of demands for political accountability because of the failure of the policy he sold to the Israeli public for so long: promising security and prosperity for Israel, while blockading and pauperizing Gaza and expanding colonization in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. His second purpose is to hold his far-right coalition partners close and appeal to right-wing constituencies so as to ensure their support when that moment of reckoning arrives. If they enable him to retain his grip on the premiership, Netanyahu would be able to continue seeking immunity from prosecution for corruption charges that he has sought through the controversial judicial reforms pursued by his right-wing coalition since the start of 2023.
As veteran Israeli journalist Amos Harel put it, “[E]ven in the midst of the country’s most important war in 50 years, the prime minister is occupied first and foremost, above all else, with himself and with rescuing his shaky political future.” Netanyahu has a clear political interest in maintaining the tempo of military operations in Gaza, hence his repeated rejection of humanitarian ceasefires and pauses. No less worryingly, if the ongoing exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israeli forces across the Lebanese border shift into a large-scale confrontation, this will be due not to a decision made by Hezbollah or Iran, which seek to contain any escalation within current boundaries, but because Netanyahu feels his political survival requires an escalation on this scale.
In making escalation his default posture, Netanyahu is borrowing the tactic of “escaping by running forward” honed by his one-time nemesis Yasser Arafat, the late chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization and president of the Palestinian Authority. As I wrote of Arafat at the time, his escape by running forward came in response to the start of the Second Intifada and the resort to arms by some Palestinians in 2000. It revealed not a prior strategy, but rather the absence of strategy or clear purpose. He seized upon a “dramatic event brought about by external agency to obscure and escape a strategic predicament, and then sought to intensify and prolong that event as a means of gaining ‘crisis dominance’ and ultimately of inducing an outcome to his advantage... Arafat’s instinctive reaction was to maintain this advantage, which in a crude sense required a daily death toll.”
Supporters of either man will no doubt take offense, but as with Arafat, so with Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s rhetorical posture (backed by endless photo ops with the troops) reveals a perception that the domestic political costs of shifting his government’s current course—of conducting military operations without a coherent exit strategy in Gaza, in the view of Biden administration officials—are considerably higher than those of maintaining it. Israelis who feel that the lack of clear policy thinking is unimportant so long as Israeli forces are conducting a root-and-branch elimination of Hamas, underestimate the consequences of Netanyahu’s default option. This is most evident in his policy of focusing government resources and the bulk of army units on expanding and protecting an increasingly aggressive and violent settler movement in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, at the unbearable cost paid by Israeli civilians along the Gaza border on October 7.
Developments in the West Bank and East Jerusalem show that, while Netanyahu’s short-term aim centers on his personal political survival, his longer-term goal of retaining office is both strategic and longstanding. In mainstreaming ultranationalist, right-wing rhetoric, he deepens the conviction that Israel should—and, crucially, can—extend its control over all Palestinian territories with the aim of transforming them irrevocably into the Land of Israel from “the river to the sea.” In escaping his current political crisis by running forward, Netanyahu obscures from the Israeli public’s view that his determination to make Palestinian statehood impossible while promising full peace and security for Israelis represents a circle that cannot be squared. This lies at the core of his default option.
Whether Netanyahu is eventually forced from office or ultimately reemerges victorious in his domestic political battle, he will deepen his country’s polarization considerably and embolden his right-wing allies to become ever more confrontational with fellow citizens—whether the 2 million Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship or Jewish dissenters. The settler violence now seen in the West Bank is already manifesting itself across the 1967 borders, inside Israel. Netanyahu’s fight to keep office may so empower his far-right partners, in fact, that he will no longer be able to present himself to more centrist Israeli parties, or to Western governments, as the sensible safeguard holding back the far right. The latter will be too strong, and the balance of power will shift from him to them.
Once Arafat had locked himself into his own default option, he was hemmed in, literally and figuratively. Israeli troops besieged him in his presidential compound in Ramallah from mid-2002 until his death in November 2004. The Palestinian parliament meanwhile voted to curb his powers and, more importantly, the Roadmap for Peace issued by the U.S.-led “Quartet” in 2003 made further progress toward Palestinian statehood dependent on internal reforms and on ensuring security for Israel. But none of this prompted Arafat to abandon his default option.
Netanyahu remains considerably further from such a moment of reckoning, but is similarly locked in. The Biden administration’s deployment of significant military assets to the eastern Mediterranean may well have been intended to deter Hezbollah (and Iran) from widening the Gaza war, and additionally to dissuade the Israeli government from undertaking military action beyond Gaza. But it may in fact do the opposite: encourage Netanyahu to calculate that a military escalation in the north is again his cheaper—default—option.
*Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on November 14-15/2023
Israeli defense minister says Hamas has 'lost control of Gaza'
Agence France Presse/November 14, 2023
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday said Hamas has "lost control" of the Gaza Strip it has ruled for 16 years. "Hamas has lost control of Gaza. Terrorists are fleeing southward. Civilians are looting Hamas bases," he said without providing evidence. "They don't have faith in the government anymore," Gallant added in a video broadcast on Israel's main TV stations.

Report: Breakthrough in Israel-Hamas hostage deal may come in next 48-72 hours
Naharnet/November 14, 2023
A senior Israeli political source said Tuesday that progress has been made on a hostage deal and a breakthrough could come in the next 48-72 hours.The Israeli War Cabinet is meeting Tuesday night to discuss the deal, the source told U.S. network ABC News.
Israeli officials have said as many as 239 Israelis are being held captive by Hamas in Gaza.

Israel army says seizes Gaza parliament, other Hamas bodies
Agence France Presse/November 14, 2023
The Israeli army said Tuesday it had captured parliament and other government institutions run by Hamas in Gaza City, as its forces deepened their offensive in the Palestinian territory. Military units "took over the Hamas parliament, the government building, the Hamas police headquarters and an engineering faculty that served as an institute for the production and development of weapons," the army said in a statement.

Rights group accuses Israel of disregarding civilian lives
Associated Press/November 14, 2023
Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon that killed three children and their grandmother earlier this month showed “reckless disregard for civilian life.”The statement from the rights group comes as Israel and Hezbollah are continuing to clash along the tense Lebanon-Israel border since Oct. 8. The skirmishes have escalated but remain largely contained to areas near the border. The international community and Lebanese government have been scrambling to prevent the situation from turning into an all-out war in the small Mediterranean country. On Nov. 5, the Israeli military struck a car on the road between the southern Lebanese towns of Ainata and Aitaroun. Inside the car were the three adolescent girls, their grandmother and their mother. Only the mother survived and is in stable condition in a hospital. The rights organization said they conducted interviews and analyzed video of the attack. The Israeli military also said after the attack that they were investigating the incident. “Israeli authorities have long failed to credibly investigate their own serious abuses, even when they acknowledge they carried them out,” Human Rights Watch Lebanon researcher Ramzi Kaiss said. “With Israeli authorities continuing to commit abuses with impunity, Israel’s allies should insist on accountability for Israel’s violations of the laws of war and this apparent war crime.”

Is Hamas hiding in Gaza's main hospital?
Associated Press/November 14, 2023
Gaza's Shifa Hospital has become the focus of a dayslong stalemate in Israel's war against the Hamas militant group. Shifa is Gaza's largest and best-equipped hospital. Israel, without providing visual evidence, claims the facility also is used by Hamas for military purposes. It says Hamas has built a vast underground command complex center below the hospital, connected by tunnels, something Gaza health officials and Hamas deny. Since Israel declared war against Hamas in response to a deadly cross-border attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, its forces have moved in on Shifa. While Israel says it is willing to allow staff and patients to evacuate, Palestinians say Israeli forces have fired at evacuees and that it is too dangerous to move the most vulnerable patients. Meanwhile, doctors say the facility has run out of fuel and that patients are beginning to die.
Here is a closer look at the Shifa standoff.
A HOSPITAL AND A SHELTER
Shifa is the leading hospital in a health care system that has largely collapsed after years of conflict, chronic underfunding and an Israeli-Egyptian blockade aimed at weakening Hamas. Shifa has over 500 beds and services like MRI scans, dialysis and an intensive care unit. It conducts roughly half of all the medical operations that take place in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. After the war erupted, tens of thousands crammed into the hospital grounds to seek shelter. As the war has moved closer to the hospital, most of those huddling there have fled south — joining some two-thirds of the territory's 2.3 million residents who have left their homes. But hundreds of people, including medical workers, premature babies and other vulnerable patients, remain, staffers say. On Saturday, the hospital announced that its last generator had run out of fuel. Health officials say at least 32 patients, including three babies, have died. They say 36 other babies are at risk of dying because life-saving equipment can't function. The Health Ministry released a photo Monday showing about a dozen premature babies wrapped in blankets on a bed to keep them warm. "I hope that they will remain alive despite the disaster in which this hospital is passing through," said ministry spokesman Medhat Abbas. International law gives hospitals special protections during war. Hospitals can lose those protections if combatants use them to hide fighters or store weapons, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Still, there must be plenty of warning to allow evacuation of staff and patients. If harm to civilians from an attack is disproportionate to the military objective, it is illegal under international law.
ISRAEL'S CASE AGAINST HAMAS
Israel has long accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields. The group often fires rockets toward Israel from crowded residential areas, and its fighters have battled Israeli troops inside densely populated neighborhoods. Throughout the war, Israel has released photos and video footage showing what it says are weapons and other military installations inside or next to mosques, schools and hospitals. Late Monday, Israel's chief military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, showed footage of what he said was a Hamas weapons cache found in the basement of Gaza's Rantisi Hospital for Children. Hagari said he entered the hospital with Israeli troops on Monday, a day after the facility's last patients were evacuated. The hospital ran out of fuel last week, and Israel had ordered people to leave as it conducts its ground offensive. Hagari entered a room decorated with a colorful children's drawing of a tree, with weapons lying across the floor. He said they included explosive vests, automatic rifles, bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. "Hamas uses hospitals as an instrument of war," he said.
He showed another area that he said appears to have been used to hold hostages.
It included what appeared to be a hastily installed toilet and air vent, a baby bottle and a motorcycle — scarred by a bullet hole and apparently used to carry hostages. One windowless room had curtains on the wall that he said could be used as a backdrop in a video. Hagari said forensic experts were examining the scenes.
"This is not the last hospital like this in Gaza, and the world should know that," Hagari said. The army has claimed that Hamas is operating inside Shifa and underneath it in bunkers, some of which it says are accessible from the hospital itself. It also claims hundreds of Hamas fighters sought shelter at Shifa after the Oct. 7 massacre, in which at least 1,200 people in Israel were killed. Israel says these claims are based on intelligence. However, it has released no visual evidence to support the claims. Hagari last month unveiled maps showing where Israel believes Hamas' underground command centers are located, including one next to hospital's reception area and another next to the dialysis department. He also showed off simulated illustrations of what these centers allegedly look like, but acknowledged: "This is only an illustration." Israel also released a video of what it said was a captured militant answering questions during an interrogation. The militant, speaking quietly but clearly under duress, says that most tunnels are "hidden in hospitals.""At Shifa, for example, there are underground levels," the militant says. "Shifa is not small. It's a big place that can hide things."The army also released a voice recording of what it says are two anonymous Palestinians in Gaza discussing the presence of a tunnel under Shifa. The recording could not be verified.
Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official, rejected the Israeli claims about Shifa as "false and misleading propaganda." "The occupying forces have no evidence to prove it," Hamad said. "We have never used civilians as human shields because it goes against our religion, morality and principles."
HOW WILL THE STANDOFF END?
Israel on Sunday said it had tried to deliver some 300 liters (about 80 gallons) of fuel to the hospital in plastic containers several hundred meters (yards) from the facility. But as of Monday, the fuel had apparently not been taken. Israel accused Hamas of preventing medical workers from retrieving the containers. Hospital officials said the fuel should be delivered by the Palestinian Red Crescent and that the quantity of fuel was insufficient in any case. Israel offered safe passage for people to leave. But those who tried to go described a terrifying experience. Goudhat Samy al-Madhoun, a health care worker, said some 50 people left the facility on Monday, including a woman who had been receiving kidney dialysis. He said Israeli forces fired on the group several times, wounding one man who had to be left behind. U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday said the hospital "must be protected" and called for "less intrusive action" by Israeli forces.
"It is my hope and expectation that there will be less intrusive action," Biden said in the Oval Office. The Israeli army has said it is aware of the complexities, but says Hamas should not expect immunity. "We're not looking to take control of hospitals. We're looking to dismantle their infrastructure," said Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, another Israeli army spokesman. "We'll go in, we'll do what we have to do and leave," he said. "What it's going to look like, it's hard to say."

As fighting empties north Gaza, humanitarian crisis worsens in south
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP)/Tue, November 14, 2023
— About 200,000 Palestinians have streamed out of northern Gaza toward worsening conditions in the south in recent days, a U.N. agency said Tuesday, as Israeli troops battled militants around hospitals where patients, newborns and medics are stranded with no electricity and dwindling supplies.
Only one hospital in the north is now capable of receiving patients, according to the U.N. humanitarian office known as OCHA. None of the others are able to function, including Gaza’s largest, Shifa, which is surrounded by Israeli troops and and where the lives of dozens of patients, including newborns, are at risk. The Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory proposed Tuesday that the facility be evacuated under the supervision of the Red Cross. The war, now in its sixth week, was triggered by Hamas' surprise attack into Israel, in which militants killed hundreds of civilians and dragged some 240 hostages back to Gaza. The war has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians and wreaked widespread destruction on the impoverished enclave.
DETERIORATING CONDITIONS IN THE SOUTH
Israel has urged civilians to evacuate Gaza City and surrounding areas in the north, but the southern part of the besieged territory is not much safer. Israel carries out frequent airstrikes throughout Gaza, hitting what it says are militant targets but often killing women and children. U.N.-run shelters in the south are severely overcrowded, with an average of one toilet for 160 people. In all, some 1.5 million Palestinians, more than two thirds of Gaza’s population, have fled their homes. People stand in line for hours for scarce bread and brackish water. Trash is piling up, sewage is flooding the streets and taps run dry because there is no fuel, which is required to produce the electricity that powers water systems. Israel has barred fuel imports since the start of the war, saying Hamas would use it for military purposes. The onset of rainy, cold weather added to the misery. At a tent camp outside a hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah, people trudged through mud as they stretched plastic tarps over flimsy tents. “All of these tents collapsed because of the rain," said Iqbal Abu Saud, who had fled Gaza City with 30 of her relatives. “How many days will we have to deal with this?”The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, which is struggling to provide basic services to over 600,000 people sheltering in schools and other facilities in the south, said it may run out of fuel by Wednesday, forcing it to halt most aid operations. It said it was unable to continue importing limited supplies of food and medicine through Egypt's Rafah crossing, Gaza's only link to the outside world.
PLIGHT OF HOSPITALS
With Israeli forces fighting Palestinian militants in the center of Gaza City, both sides have seized on the plight of hospitals. Israel accuses Hamas of using hospitals as cover for its fighters, and alleged that the militants have set up its main command center in and beneath Shifa. Israel says these claims are based on intelligence but has not provided visual evidence to support them. Both Hamas and Shifa Hospital staff deny the allegations, and the Health Ministry says it has invited international organizations to investigate the facility. On Monday, the military released footage of a children's hospital that its forces entered over the weekend, showing weapons it said it found inside, as well as rooms in the basement where it believes militants were holding hostages. The video showed what appeared to be a hastily installed toilet and ventilation system in the basement. The Health Ministry rejected the allegations, saying the area had been turned into a shelter for displaced people. For weeks, Shifa staff members running low on supplies have performed surgery on war-wounded patients, including children, without anesthesia and using vinegar as antiseptic. After the weekend's mass exodus, a few thousand people remain.
The Health Ministry said 40 patients, including three babies, have died since its emergency generator ran out of fuel Saturday. The military said it placed fuel several blocks from Shifa, but Hamas militants prevented staff from reaching it. The ministry disputed that — and added that the amount was paltry compared to the hospital's needs. According to the ministry, 36 babies remain who are at risk of dying because there is no power for incubators. The Israeli military said it had started an effort to transfer incubators to Shifa. Christian Lindmeier, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, said incubators would be useless without electricity and that the only way to save the newborns was to move them out of Gaza. “Another hospital under siege or under attack is not a viable solution. Nowhere is safe in Gaza right now,” he told The Associated Press. He said an evacuation would require specialized equipment and a cease-fire along the route. Ashraf al-Qidra, a spokesman for the ministry, said Tuesday it has proposed evacuating the hospital with the supervision of the International Committee of the Red Cross and transferring the patients to hospitals in Egypt, but has not received any response. He said 120 bodies will be buried in a mass grave inside the hospital because they are unable to safely transport them to cemeteries. International law gives hospitals special protections during war. Hospitals can lose those protections if combatants use them to hide fighters or store weapons, but staff and patients must be given plenty of warning to evacuate, and the harm to civilians cannot be disproportionate to the military objective. The Red Cross tried Monday to evacuate some 6,000 people from another Gaza City hospital, Al-Quds, but said its convoy had to turn back because of shelling and fighting. As of last Friday, more than 11,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and minors, have been killed since the war began, according to the Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths. About 2,700 people have been reported missing.Health officials have not updated the toll since then, citing the difficulty of collecting information. At least 1,200 people have died on the Israeli side, mostly civilians killed in the initial Hamas attack. The military says 46 soldiers have been killed in ground operations in Gaza, and that thousands of militants have been killed. About 250,000 Israelis have evacuated from communities near Gaza, where Palestinian militants still fire barrages of rockets, and along the northern border, where Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group have repeatedly traded fire. The war has also fueled tensions in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where at least seven Palestinian were killed overnight during an Israeli raid, the Palestinian Health Ministry said Tuesday. There was no immediate comment from the army. More than 190 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7.

Israeli forces kill eight Palestinians in West Bank -medics
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters)/November 14, 2023
Israeli forces killed at least eight Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, seven of them in clashes during a raid in the town of Tulkarm near the boundary with Israel, Palestinian medics and local media said. The Israeli army and police said their forces, sent into Tulkarm to detain suspected militants, came under fire and killed several Palestinian gunmen in the ensuing skirmish. An Israeli air strike hit a group of Palestinians who shot and threw a bomb at the group, an army and police statement said. The official Palestinian news agency WAFA said the air strike was carried out by a drone and killed three people. There was no word of Israeli casualties and no Palestinian armed faction said it had lost members in the incident. An eighth Palestinian was killed by Israeli gunfire on Tuesday in Beit Aynoun, north of the city of Hebron in the southern West Bank, medical officials said. Israel has been striking armed groups in the West Bank with increasing intensity as it wages war on Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, another territory where Palestinians seek to establish an independent state. Anger over the fighting has risen in the West Bank and many parts of the Arab world, and calls for a ceasefire in Hamas-controlled Gaza are growing.

China, Iran, Arab nations condemn Israeli minister's statement about dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza
UNITED NATIONS (AP)/November 14, 2023
China, Iran and a multitude of Arab nations condemned an Israeli minister’s statement that a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip was an option in the Israel-Hamas war, calling it a threat to the world. At Monday’s long-planned opening of a United Nations conference whose goal is to establish a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, many ambassadors expressed condemnations and criticisms of comments by Israel’s Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu, who later called his remarks in a radio interview Sunday “metaphorical.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly disavowed the comments and suspended him from cabinet meetings. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its nuclear capability. It is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons, and a former employee at its nuclear reactor served 18 years in Israeli prison for leaking details and pictures of Israel’s alleged nuclear arsenal program to a British newspaper in 1986. China’s deputy U.N. ambassador Geng Shuang said Beijing was “shocked,” calling the statements “extremely irresponsible and disturbing” and should be universally condemned. He urged Israeli officials to retract the statement and become a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, considered the cornerstone of nuclear disarmament, as a non-nuclear weapon state “as soon as possible.” Geng said China is ready to join other countries “to inject new impetus” to establishing a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Mideast, saying there is greater urgency because of the situation in the current region. U.N. disarmament chief Izumi Nakamitsu, who opened Monday’s fourth conference, didn’t mention Israel. But she said: “Any threat to use nuclear weapons is inadmissible.” Nakamitsu reiterated the “urgency ... of a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction,” stressing that “cool heads and diplomatic efforts” must prevail to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians, based on a two-state solution. Oman’s U.N. Ambassador Mohamed Al-Hassan, speaking on behalf of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council which includes Saudi Arabia, said the threat to use nuclear weapons in Gaza “reaffirms the extremes and brutality of the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian people” and their “disregard for innocent life.” He called on the U.N Security Council and the IAEA to take decisive action on the matter. Lebanon’s Charge d’Affaires Hadi Hachem also condemned the Israeli heritage minister’s comments, stressing that “this self-acknowledgment of having nuclear weapons and the threat of using them by its officials, poses a serious threat to both regional and international peace and security."He urged Israel to stop “such rhetoric or posturing” and join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear weapon state. Iran’s U.N. Ambassador Amir Iravani told the conference the nuclear threats directed toward Palestinians by high-ranking Israeli officials highlight Israel’s “pride” in having these weapons in its hands. “The secrecy surrounding Israel’s nuclear capabilities poses a significant threat to regional stability,” he said. “In these critical times, the imperative to establish such a zone in the Middle East has never been more urgent.”Israel did not speak Monday but Netanyahu has said his country's biggest threat remains the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran, and it is prepared to prevent that from happening. Efforts to create a nuclear-weapon-free zone date back to the 1960s and include a call by parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1995 and a 1998 General Assembly resolution asking countries to contribute to establishing it. The first U.N. conference aimed at creating a zone was held in November 2019. Russia’s ambassador to the IAEA and other U.N. organizations based in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, told delegates Monday that given the new escalation of violence in the Middle East, a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the region “is more pertinent than ever.”
But he said Moscow is “extremely uncomfortable” that along with the two other sponsors of the 1995 resolution – the United States and the United Kingdom – the promise to establish a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Mideast has not been met after almost 30 years. And for more than 20 years, “there’s been almost no progress whatsoever,” he said.

Israelis are arming up in the aftermath of Hamas’ attack. Some are worried it is playing to the far right’s vision for the country
Tara John and Adi Koplewitz, CNN/November 14, 2023
Behind tables laden with more than 50 assault rifles, Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, smiled at a crowd of people who had come to the coastal city of Caesarea for a ceremony to receive the firearms. The divisive politician has been crisscrossing Israel in the past weeks handing out guns to civilian members of security squads as he expands Israeli citizens’ access to guns in the wake of Hamas’ attack last month. The aim, according to the Ministry of National Security, is to create teams to respond to future terror incidents. The successes of some volunteer security units in southern Israel, who were able to push Hamas gunmen back on October 7 in certain locales, have attracted new members to the initiative. The Israeli government says around 700 volunteer security squads, which will operate under the command of Israeli police, have been established since then, tapping into the wellspring of insecurity in the country following Hamas militants’ massacre of an estimated 1,200 people in Israel that day. “We saw this in the first days of the war, wherever there were weapons, the scale of the disaster was smaller,” Ben Gvir said in a press release. Critics see it as part of a far-right vision to inflame Israeli-Palestinian relations in the country, especially in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Ben Gvir, who leads the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, pledged to give 10,000 guns to towns and cities across Israel, including Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territory, according to the New York Times. “Weapons will be distributed to squads all around the country, with an emphasize on near- border fence communities in the north and south, mixed cities and settlements in Judea and Samaria,” Ben Gvir’s office said in a statement shared by the Jewish Power party and seen by CNN which used the biblical names for the West Bank. Palestinians fear these guns will be used against them. Mariam Barghouti, a Palestinian writer and policy analyst, described Ben Gvir’s pledge as “green lighting an intensification of killing Palestinians ­– although that has consistently been the reality in the West Bank,” she told CNN.
Violence has spiked in the West Bank since Israel declared war on Hamas last month and at least 176 Palestinians have since been killed by Israeli forces or Jewish settlers, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The United Nations and many foreign countries consider the West Bank and East Jerusalem as occupied land and therefore view Israeli settlements there as illegal under international law. But Israel says the status of the West Bank is disputed and denies its settlements there are illegal; while it regards all of Jerusalem as sovereign Israeli territory. Some in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, such as Ben Gvir and far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, support annexing the West Bank. Abdelathim Wadi, who lives in Qusra, south of the West Bank city of Nablus, lost his brother and nephew to an attack by armed settlers as they made their way to a funeral for four other Palestinians, he said.
“There’s no one to defend us… Our movement is so restricted, we’re constantly living in fear that if we leave our house, we’ll be shot,” he said. When CNN asked Ben Gvir at the Caesarea event last week whether his actions were inciting violence against Palestinians, CNN was kicked out of the ceremony.
In a later statement to CNN, Ben Gvir said “forming and arming the security squads will increase the probability that many Israeli families” will survive a similar attack to the one on October 7. It added that the Israel Defense Forces is “the one responsible for arming and forming the squads in Judaea & Samaria,” and not the police under Ben Gvir. “And to be clear, the minister’s vision and acts are to provide security to the citizens of Israel, (if) his views were met in the months prior the massacre, the present day could have been different and safer,” the statement added.
‘Causing chaos’
Ben Gvir, who has previously been convicted for supporting terrorism and inciting anti-Arab racism, loomed on the edges of the Israeli far-right before his party and other extremist figures shored up Netanyahu’s ruling coalition – the most right-wing in Israel’s history. Ben Gvir’s party draws its core support from Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Last week, Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, who is in Ben Gvir’s party, suggested that dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza could be “one way” for Israel to deal with Hamas. Eliyahu said later he did not mean his answer to be taken literally.
Outside the sports hall, where the ceremony was taking place in Caesarea, a small group of demonstrators gathered against Ben Gvir’s arrival in their neighborhood. Amid chants of “fascist,” protester Roy Malkan accused the minister of “provoking the situation in the West Bank,” and “hoping for riots from the Israeli Palestinians,” Malkan told CNN. Others against the mass distribution of arms believe the government should be shoring up the police force and the military instead, and not risk weapons falling into the wrong hands. In a video shared on Ben Gvir’s Facebook page, controversial far-right rapper Yoav Eliasi was seen being embraced by the politician after he received a rifle at a Tel Aviv security squad weapons ceremony. “The rapper for years has incited against Palestinians, against activists, and he also incited against me personally,” Ori Givati, a former tank commander for the Israeli military and advocacy director of NGO Breaking the Silence, told CNN. He adds that arming people like that “is only showing what he (Ben Gvir) is trying to cause, which is chaos.”CNN has reached out to Eliasi for comment. He addressed criticism of him in a November 12 post on Instagram, saying: “I am certified and trained by the police.”
‘Go, arm yourself’
In addition to the hundreds of new volunteer units, Ben Gvir has called on individuals to “go, arm yourself.” Shooting ranges and gun stores in Israel have seen an increase in foot traffic as private gun licensing rules were relaxed by Ben Gvir in recent weeks, Reuters reported. A press release by the Ministry of National Security said that Hebrew-speaking citizens who have military training, no criminal record, and live in an eligible area “can undergo a telephone interview instead of an in-person one, and be issued a firearm license within a week.” A 2017 report from the Small Arms Survey, a Swiss nonprofit tracking global firearms holdings, found civilians owned approximately 557,000 registered and unregistered guns in Israel, or 6.7 guns per 100 people – a tiny fraction of America’s 120 guns per 100 people. Israeli officials in October estimated that at least 300,000 Israelis would be eligible for the new licenses.
Guy Ben-Porat, a politics professor at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University, told CNN that while he does not want to discount the fear of the wider Israeli population, who “feel that they have been neglected by the military and the government and the instinct is to demand weapons,” he believes Ben Gvir has been “exploiting the opportunity to promote what he has wanted for a long time” that is “arming Jewish civilians.”
What the country needs is a reduction in arms, he said, pointing to the issue of illegal guns fueling gang-related violence among Arab citizens of Israel. The community – which makes up 20% of the population – has been calling for more measures to help curb criminal violence to deaf years, according to Ben-Porat. “There’s a gun culture because people are insecure, so they buy guns, and every local feud can turn into a gun battle,” Ben-Porat, who is also an expert on minority policing, said. “However, the answer is not to give guns to Jewish citizens, but to take the guns away.”
Security squad members at the Caesarea event believe the opposite, telling CNN that the process is regulated with a background check and proof of prior military experience. Those with prior police, national or civil service experience, or an exemption, is also accepted, according to a volunteer sign-up sheet. A large proportion of Israelis have undergone mandatory military service: Israel’s October call for 300,000 reservists, despite having a population 34 times smaller than the US, is nearly equal to the total size of the US’s military reserves. One of the new recruits, educator Liat Eisner, stressed it was pragmatism that led her to join the volunteer security unit. “We are not fanatics. We’re not crazy for guns. We are concerned citizens who are not willing to be butchered again,” she said. Eisner said she’s no fan of Israeli politics and previously protested Netanyahu’s attempt at judicial reform. But her priorities have changed since the start of Israel’s war with Hamas.“Listen, I’m not going to sit like a duck waiting for someone to slaughter me,” she said while filling a rifle magazine with bullets outside the event. “The only thing is us – we have to win (against Hamas). This is survival.”

Israel shows alleged Hamas ‘armory’ under children’s hospital in Gaza. Local health officials dismiss the claims
Nic Robertson, Rebecca Wright, John Torigoe and David Shortell, CNN/November 14, 2023
Editor’s Note: CNN reported from Gaza under IDF escort at all times, but did not submit the material for this report to the IDF and retained editorial control over the final report. The Israeli military’s focus on hospitals in Gaza is growing more intense with a spokesperson inviting news media to visit a medical center for children on Monday, where he alleged parts of the basement had been a Hamas “command and control center” and may have been used to hold hostages. A CNN team embedded with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and was shown guns and explosives in one room located beneath Al-Rantisi children’s hospital on Monday, which IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari termed as an “armory.”He also pointed to a chair with a rope next to it and a piece of women’s clothing, which he said would be tested for DNA, and a makeshift toilet. Hamas has repeatedly denied that its fighters hide under hospitals, as have Gazan health officials and hospital directors. Speaking by phone to CNN on Tuesday, Mohammed Zarqout, who has responsibility for all of Gaza’s hospitals, said the basement at Al Rantisi had been used as a shelter for women and children – not to store Hamas weaponry and hold hostages – as well as being the location of the pharmacy and some of the hospital’s administrative offices before rainwater made it “impossible” to use. Zarqout also told CNN that medical staff had been forced to leave the hospital by Israeli soldiers, and had been unable to take all the patients with them when they left.
In a statement on Sunday, the IDF said it was enabling passage by foot and ambulance to evacuate from three hospitals: Al-Shifa, Al-Rantisi and Nasser hospitals. But concerns are mounting that hospitals are now being targeted for military action, as searing images and accounts from civilians inside continue to emerge and as doctors warn they cannot evacuate their most vulnerable patients. Israeli troops had been conducting operations inside Al-Rantisi only a few hours before CNN’s visit, according to Hagari. He added that a forensic team would soon test the material left behind in the basement rooms to confirm any potential connection to the more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas during its rampage in Israel on October 7. The IDF is also working to determine if there is a connection between an apparent nearby tunnel entrance and the rooms under the hospital. CNN was shown a shaft, about 200 meters away from Al-Rantisi, which Hagari claimed was located next to a Hamas commander’s house and also a school. Wires leading into the shaft provided power to the tunnel from solar panels fixed onto the roof of the Hamas commander’s house, he also said. “We [put] a robot inside the tunnel and the robot saw a massive door, a door that is in the direction of the hospital,” Hagari said. Zarquot said “the tunnel they claim to be a Hamas tunnel is actually an electrical wire assembly point. We raised the wires to prevent any electrical shocks caused by floods.”
Vast destruction
CNN’s team witnessed huge amounts of destruction on their way through Gaza with the Israeli military as they were taken to Al-Rantisi hospital. Countless houses, tall apartment blocks, hotels and villas had been destroyed. Bullet and shell holes were visible everywhere and firefights were ongoing. Days of intensive fighting near hospitals in the enclave in recent days have lead to what medical personnel still working there describe as siege-like conditions. While hospitals are protected in times of war under international humanitarian law, that protection may be compromised if they are believed to be sites of military activity. The World Health Organization has recorded at least 137 attacks on health facilities in Gaza, which it said resulted in 521 deaths and 686 injuries. Other protected sites, like schools, civilian shelters, and United Nations facilities have already been damaged or destroyed in over a month of Israeli airstrikes. On Monday, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugee announced that over 100 UN staffers had been killed in Gaza since fighting began – the most in the United Nation’s history. Israeli forces’ orders for hospitals to evacuate or risk danger from fighting as troops try to root out Hamas have sparked criticism from global health organizations and aid groups. A joint statement by the regional directors of UNFPA, UNICEF and the World Health Organization on Sunday called for “urgent international action to end the ongoing attacks on hospitals in Gaza.” “We are horrified at the latest reports of attacks on and in the vicinity of Al-Shifa Hospital, Al-Rantissi Naser Paediatric Hospital, Al-Quds Hospital, and others in Gaza city and northern Gaza, killing many, including children. Intense hostilities surrounding several hospitals in northern Gaza are preventing safe access for health staff, the injured, and other patients” the statement reads. Doctors continue to refuse to leave Al-Shifa – the biggest in Gaza – as of Monday, , because they say they fear hundreds of patients will die if they are left behind. Israel has alleged a Hamas center is hidden in the basement there, a claim which the hospital staff and Hamas have denied. Thousands of civilians are believed to be sheltering at the hospital, and approximately 700 at-risk patients are receiving treatment there, according to Dr. Munir Al-Bursh, Director-General of the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in Gaza. “The problem is not the doctors, it’s the patients,” Al-Burish told CNN on Monday. “If they are left behind, they will die, and if they are transferred, they will die on the way, this is the problem.”

Israel’s Golani Brigade avenges troops killed by Hamas on Oct 7 with Gaza gains
Colin Freeman/The Telegraph/November 14, 2023
A month ago, Israel’s elite Golani infantry brigade was mourning some of its worst losses in 75 years, after bearing the brunt of Hamas’s brutal border assault.
At least 72 Golani troops died when Hamas fighters ambushed their positions – and with them also perished Israel’s reputation for military invincibility.
Now, though, their surviving comrades have had a chance to even the score. Late on Monday, after fighting their way into downtown Gaza City, they released a picture of themselves in the parliament building, holding up their rifles and Israeli flags.
The capture of Hamas’s legislative HQ was not the only triumphant photo op doing the rounds of social media on Tuesday. Together with comrades from Israel’s 7th Armored Brigade, Golani troops also posed for pictures in a Gaza police station and governor’s house, and published video of a weapons factory in a college engineering faculty.
Yet the images may represent more than just payback for the Golani Brigade. They also raise the question of whether the operation in Gaza may be over quicker than many expected. Last night, as some military experts predicted the major fighting could be over within “weeks rather than months”, a senior Israeli military official told the Telegraph that a turning point was in sight. “Some strategic achievements are measured not in terms of the number of terrorists we kill, but in terms of symbols, and getting to the core places of where Hamas’s terror operation is,” the official said. “I think we have made a huge advance in our achievements, and there is a positive direction towards the goals of the war, taking us towards the point of dismantling Hamas.”
Now into its third week, Israel’s Gaza operation has not been without cost to its military. At least 46 Israeli soldiers have died and hundreds injured.
With up to 40,000 Hamas fighters holed up in Gaza’s tightly packed streets, experts predicted a similar campaign to the gruelling nine-month operation to defeat Islamic State in the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2017. That cost the lives of an estimated 8,000 Iraqi troops, despite them having back-up from Western air power and special forces troops.
Jack Watling, a senior research fellow in land warfare at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, said that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had made “substantial progress” so far. “They started with fairly extensive airstrikes on Hamas commanders and infrastructure,” he said. “That disrupted Hamas’s ability to organise its defence, while the IDF was itself mobilising for the invasion.” Troops had managed to surround and isolate Hamas’s forces in Gaza City, he added, and were now doing slow block-by-block clearance operations, taking care to clear Hamas tunnels that could be used for ambushes. “They are being fairly effective and killing lots of Hamas fighters,” he said. “It is a slow process, but I’d expect it to last weeks, not months.”
Unlike in Mosul, where the Islamic State laid fields of homemade mines up to 16 miles long, Hamas has had neither the time nor the resources to set-up dense defences of booby-traps. The group also lacks the legions of suicide bombers that Islamic State had in Mosul, thanks partly to past Israeli operations that dismantled the special wing dedicated to recruiting for “martyrdom” operations.
“Suicide operations involve quite a lot of psychological conditioning – you can’t just turn around and tell someone to become a suicide bomber, although it may be a risk the IDF has to contend with in due course,” said Mr Watling.
The IDF now claims to have broken the combat effectiveness of 10 out of 24 Hamas’s battalions, each one of which typically consists of at least several hundred fighters.
In a briefing given to The Jerusalem Post, commanders gave the example of Hamas’s Shaati Battalion, which it said had lost 200 men, including many company commanders. Such losses are likely to compromise much of its fighting effectiveness.
Together with comrades from Israel’s 7th Armored Brigade, Golani troops also posed for pictures in a Gaza police station - Twitter
The IDF said that the Golani Brigade had spent 10 days in intensive battles against Hamas’s Sabra Tel al-Hawa Battalion, considered one of the four strongest in Gaza City. During that time, about 300 Sabra fighters had been killed and another 150 were presumed dead in collapsed buildings and tunnels.
“The command chain of the Sabra battalion was disrupted after we hit them,” an officer from the Golani Brigade told Israel’s Ynet news website. “Most of the battalion’s terrorists retreated or hid in a hospital.”The prospect of the Golani Brigade tasting battlefield victory will hearten many Israelis, for whom the unit has a status similar that enjoyed by the Paras or Royal Marines in Britain. Formed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, it has taken part in all of Israel’s major conflicts, including the Suez Crisis, the Six-Day War and Operation Entebbe, the legendary 1976 operation to free more than 100 hostages in Uganda. Its soldiers are among Israel’s best-trained but found themselves badly overstretched during last month’s Hamas raid, when they were manning the so-called “Iron Wall” frontier with Gaza. Many of the Golani soldiers were based around the kibbutzim at Nahal Oz and Re’im, which suffered some of the worst of the bloodshed. One Golani battalion lost 41 soldiers, more than its fatalities in both the Six-Day and Yom Kippur wars combined. The Israeli military official estimated that around “a couple of thousand” Hamas fighters had now been killed, but said that many were probably now in southern Gaza, to where the IDF has advised Gaza City’s civilians to flee. “Going forward, that is a problem we will have to address – we will also need to minimise civilian casualties as much as possible,” he said.
‘We are cleansing Gaza of Hamas’
He claimed that support for Hamas from its usual allies outside of Gaza had been muted because of the sheer brutality of last month’s attacks, in which women, children and babies were targeted. “The Hamas leadership thought that there would be big riots in Israel’s West Bank, and that Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen would join in the fight. But that hasn’t happened, because even other radicals are disgusted by what Hamas did. It reminds them of what Islamic State did, and they are saying: ‘This is not Islam.’”Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defence minister, confirmed last night that Israeli operations would extend into southern Gaza and “continue for many months”.
As he spoke, aid agencies continued to raise concerns about the humanitarian impact of the war, with one charity telling a British parliamentary committee that there was now a mass grave containing 200 bodies at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital.
Israel says that it has offered incubators for premature babies at al-Shifa and safe passage out for all those inside. Medics insist that anyone who ventures outside risks coming under fire. On Tuesday, the United States said that Hamas was using al-Shifa hospital to hold hostages and run military operations. Dr Moshe Elad, a former colonel in the IDF, said that if a major humanitarian crisis was to develop in southern Gaza, international pressure might eventually force Israel to halt military operations.
Hamas leaders, though, would continue to be targeted and not allowed to resume power. “We are cleansing Gaza of Hamas, even if they continue to have a voice internationally,” he said. “The problem is who then runs Gaza afterwards – but it won’t be Hamas.”

Hamas apologists can only win by suppressing speech
Madeline Fry Schultz/The Telegraph/November 14, 2023
It’s not a headline from a satire site, but it might as well be. “Fights erupt outside Museum of Tolerance after screening of film on Hamas,” reads an ABC affiliate article published Thursday. You’ll never guess which side claimed the mantle of tolerance. Spoiler: It was the terrorist apologists.
In Los Angeles on Wednesday, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League organised a screening of Hamas attack footage, titled “Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre.” As denials of Hamas atrocities proliferate –from arguing that the 240-plus hostages are being treated well and tearing down their posters, to questioning the reality of the 1,400 murdered Israelis and quibbling over what really counts as a beheading – the screening may have provided a refreshing dose of reality to Hollywood progressives.
Most of the footage, in fact, was released by Hamas itself. It’s not like the terrorists have been trying to cover up their crimes. On the contrary, they’ve been bragging about them. But that’s the kind of information that’s a little too inconvenient for the pro-Palestinian protestors who have been demanding that President Joe Biden push for a ceasefire.
According to the Los Angeles Times, protestors held signs denouncing the showing, including one that read, “The Museum of Tolerance is showing a pro-genocide film.” If by “pro-genocide,” they mean that the film depicted genocide, sure. But that’s surely not the sign’s meaning, which instead seems to suggest that these agitators believe showing Hamas atrocities equates to supporting…Israeli genocide. This is self-evidently nonsensical – but to those who have allowed their critical facilities to be replaced with a boorishly binaural “oppressor vs. oppressed” dynamic, it’s perfectly legitimate.
One protestor claimed that showing the public real footage of the Hamas attack would undermine calls for a ceasefire. If you’re afraid that more information will lead to worse decisions, then your cause may, to borrow a phrase from Theodore Roosevelt, have “no more backbone than a chocolate éclair.”
Those with the loudest voices and the fewest arguments are always the first to threaten free speech. As The Hollywood Reporter notes, “Another media outlet leaked the location at which [the screening] would be taking place, resulting in threats against the museum and necessitating an FBI advance team in the days leading up to it.”
What this boils down to is a complete disinterest in freedom of speech: Pro-Hamas protestors didn’t believe that people who would freely choose to attend the screening should be able to do so. Those who attended were met with violent protests. The irony is that all of this is coming from the same people who, just months ago, were arguing that “words are violence.” Now, literal violence is not violence – because of social justice, or something like that.
In the US pro-Palestinian (pro-Hamas) protestors have been tearing down posters of captured Israelis, and one may have caused the death of a 69-year-old Jewish man. Clashes throughout the country, particularly on college campuses, have turned aggressive. Meanwhile, a New York University student who lost a cushy job offer after blaming Israel for the Oct. 7 Hamas attack watched her fellow students come to her defense, claiming the rescinded offer represented “systemic, concentrated violence.”
These progressives have become the boy who cried wolf – if, getting tired of the town ignoring his cries, the boy finally became the wolf himself. Resorting to violence is the hallmark of petty tyrants, despots, and idiots who have run out of good ideas.
Why should “Bearing Witness” be “zionist propaganda,” as one simpleton claimed on social media? The film is meant to combat the equivalent of modern-day Holocaust denial, an important end considering some pro-Palestinian protestors caught on video didn’t even realise the Oct. 7 attack had occurred. Well, it did, resulting in victims being raped, burned, and decapitated. Pro-Palestinian protestors aren’t ready to face the facts: Hamas is a terrorist organization, as designated by the US and the European Union. They may point to the tragic civilian casualties in Gaza, but their supposed humanitarianism is undermined when they ignore the many innocent victims of Hamas.
A Hamas spokesman’s statement about the loss of Palestinian lives makes it clear that if anyone cares about the wellbeing of the Palestinian people, it’s not them. “Nations are not easily liberated... the Russians sacrificed 30 million people in World War II in order to liberate it from Hitler’s attack. The Vietnamese sacrificed 3.5 million people until they defeated the Americans. Afghanistan sacrificed millions of martyrs to defeat the USSR and then the US. The Algerian people sacrificed 6 million martyrs over 130 years. The Palestinian people are just like any other nation. No nation is liberated without sacrifices.” Protestors seem to conveniently ignore this information: when they hold up signs saying “resistance by any means necessary,” they’re talking about sacrificing Israeli lives, not Palestinian ones. We’ve developed an impossible number of self-described Middle East experts overnight who are incapable of backing up their passion with reason. This is why they fall back on nonsensical slogans, suppression of free speech, and violence against those who, deep down, they must know are in the right.

Israeli lawmakers urge world leaders to accept Gaza refugees amid war
Nick Robertson/The Hill/November 14, 2023
A pair of top Israeli lawmakers urged world leaders to accept Palestinian refugees displaced amid the Israel-Gaza war in an op-ed published Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal. Likud member Danny Danon and Yesh Atid member Ram Ben-Barak said leaders have a “moral imperative” to help the people of Gaza by allowing a “limited number” of refugees that wanted to relocate from the war-torn region into their countries.
Likud is the party’s ruling right-wing party, while Yesh Atid is the centrist opposition. Dannon served as Israel’s United Nations ambassador for five years until 2020.
Israel’s bombardment campaign and ground invasion of Gaza have displaced over 1.5 million people, the United Nations estimated. About a quarter million homes have also been damaged or destroyed, the U.N. said. The Israeli military has urged Gazans to move from the north of the 140 square-mile territory to the south in order to avoid being stuck in the conflict for weeks, though strikes have continued all over the enclave.
The pair argued that accepting Gazan refugees would be no different from Europe’s efforts to accept refugees from the Syrian and Libyan civil wars in the last decade and similar efforts related to the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.
“Countries around the world should offer a haven for Gaza residents who seek relocation,” they wrote. “Countries can accomplish this by creating well-structured and internationally coordinated relocation programs.”
“We simply need a handful of the world’s nations to share the responsibility of hosting Gazan residents,” they continued. “Even if countries took in as few as 10,000 people each, it would help alleviate the crisis.”Gaza’s only other bordering country, Egypt, has strongly spoken against taking in refugees from the war, claiming that Israel would not allow them back into the territory after the conflict ends.
“We are rejecting the liquidation of the Palestinian cause and the explosion of Palestinians to Sinai,” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said last month.
Al-Sisi said if refugees flow to Egypt, Sinai could be turned into a launching ground for “terrorist attacks” against Israel, which would in turn blame Egypt for such attacks.
“The threat there is significant because it means the liquidation of this (Palestinian) cause,” al-Sissi said. “It’s important for its people to stay steadfast and exist on its land.”
Jordan has also rejected calls to accept refugees, and GOP politicians in the U.S. have pushed back on similar notions. “The international community has a moral imperative — and an opportunity — to demonstrate compassion, help the people of Gaza move toward a more prosperous future and work together to achieve greater peace and stability in the Middle East,” Dannon and Ben-Barak wrote.
The Israel-Hamas war began early last month after Hamas militants launched a brutal surprise attack on border settlements, killing over 1,200 Israelis. The responding Israeli air and ground campaign has killed over 11,100 Palestinians, including over 4,600 children. The U.S. has pushed Israel to implement longer “humanitarian pauses” in fighting in order to help civilians and to help negotiate the release of an estimated 200 hostages held by Hamas. Much of the fighting in recent days has focused on the hospitals in Gaza City, which the Israeli military claims are host to secret Hamas command posts.
President Biden urged Israel not to attack hospitals on Monday.“My hope and expectation is that there will be less intrusive action relative to hospitals, and we remain in contact with the Israelis,” Biden said. “Also there is an effort to get this pause to deal with the release of prisoners and that’s being negotiated. … So I remain somewhat hopeful, but hospitals must be protected.”

Belize suspends diplomatic ties with Israel, renews call for ‘immediate ceasefire’
Maija Ehlinger, CNN/November 14, 2023
The government of Belize will suspend diplomatic ties with Israel over its refusal to implement a ceasefire in Gaza, adding to the list of countries in the Western Hemisphere voicing anger over the Israeli government’s war conduct. “The Government of Belize has repeatedly condemned the actions of the IDF in Gaza. We have appealed to Israel to implement an immediate ceasefire and to allow unimpeded access to humanitarian supplies into Gaza. Despite our requests, Israel has not stopped its violations of international humanitarian law nor allowed relief workers to alleviate the suffering of millions of Gazans,” the Belize statement said Tuesday. “Belize renews its call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, unimpeded access to humanitarian supplies into Gaza and the release of all hostages.”The Central American nation has also withdrawn its accreditation for Israel’s ambassador there, and suspended its own diplomatic activities in Tel Aviv. Belize follows several regional neighbors, including Colombia, Chile, and Bolivia, that have severed diplomatic ties or recalled ambassadors to Israel. A number of countries across the Middle East and Africa, including Turkey, Jordan, and South Africa, have also recalled ambassadors in recent weeks.
Israel declared war on Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza, and launched a “complete siege” of the enclave following Hamas’ terror attacks in Israel on October 7. An estimated 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’ attacks, and 240 taken hostage, most of whom remain captive in Gaza. Since then, Israeli attacks have killed at least 11,180 Palestinians – including 4,609 children and 3,100 women – according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah, which draws on medical sources in Gaza.
International pressure on the Israeli government has soared in recent days amid accounts of desperate circumstances at Gaza’s fuel-starved hospitals, and severe shortages of food and water. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday repeated his calls for a ceasefire in Gaza “in the name of humanity.”But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ruled out a ceasefire without the release of hostages held by Hamas. Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said Monday that the country has only a two to three week window until heavy international pressure for a ceasefire in Gaza began, telling journalists that that a few countries have privately urged Israel to strive for a ceasefire.

Israel should use 'maximum restraint' to protect civilian life in Gaza Strip: Trudeau
The Canadian Press/Tue, November 14, 202
OTTAWA — Israel must use "maximum restraint," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged on Tuesday, to protect civilian life in the brutal war it is waging on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Trudeau said the world is witnessing the killing of women, children and babies, and that it must stop. "The human tragedy that is unfolding in Gaza is heart-wrenching, especially the suffering we see in and around the Al Shifa Hospital," he said.
Gaza's largest hospital became a focal point of the conflict this week as Israeli ground troops surrounded the campus. While Israel said it is willing to allow staff and patients to evacuate, Palestinians say Israeli forces have fired at evacuees and that it is too dangerous to move the most vulnerable patients. Doctors say the facility has run out of fuel and patients are beginning to die. Israel is accusing Hamas of using hospitals as cover for its fighters, alleging that Hamas has set up its main command centre in and beneath the hospital, without providing visual evidence. Both Hamas and Shifa Hospital staff deny the Israeli allegations. "I have been clear that the price of justice cannot be the continued suffering of all Palestinian civilians. Even wars have rules," Trudeau said at an event in Vancouver on Tuesday. Israel declared war against Hamas after its militants killed 1,200 people on Oct. 7, including hundreds of civilians, and took about 240 people hostage.
Health officials in the Hamas-controlled territory say weeks of retaliatory airstrikes on the besieged Gaza Strip have now killed more than 11,200 people.
Trudeau said Hamas needs to stop using Palestinians as human shields and release all hostages "immediately and unconditionally." Canada has designated the group as a terrorist organization for more than 20 years.
He said the violence urgently needs to stop, "so that Palestinians can get access to life-saving medical services, food, fuel and water, so that all hostages can be released, so that all Canadians and other nationals can leave Gaza."
As clashes continue, a dire lack of fuel in the Gaza Strip will likely mean that the United Nations' work to support Palestinian civilians soon ends — a development that has Canada's foreign affairs minister "extremely concerned."
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, confirmed its fuel storage facility in Gaza is empty and its relief operations will be halted before long.
Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of UNRWA, said that after weeks of warnings and rationing, the agency will soon be out of fuel.
"The depot is now empty," said Lazzarini. "It is very simple. Without fuel, the humanitarian operation in Gaza is coming to an end. Many more people will suffer and will likely die." UNRWA provides food, shelter and other services to hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians.
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly called the situation unacceptable.
"Civilians must be protected and enough food, fuel and water must get into Gaza so that (the UN's) lifesaving work can continue," Joly said in a statement late Monday evening.
Israel has refused to allow fuel shipments into Gaza since Hamas's cross-border attack on Oct. 7. Israel says Hamas will divert any fuel shipments for military use.
Palestinians trapped in Gaza are struggling to survive without electricity or running water and are rationing food as Israel's siege of the territory extends into its second month.
Joly did not specifically name Israel in the statement posted on X, the platform previously known as Twitter. The Canadian government has faced increased pressure domestically from the National Council of Canadian Muslims, refugee settlement agencies, opposition members and municipal politicians to call for a ceasefire, in a bid to safely evacuate civilians and deliver humanitarian aid. Joly did not mention a ceasefire in her statement Monday, and Trudeau has instead called for "a sustained humanitarian pause" in the bombardments.
When asked why he won't go so far as to call for a ceasefire, the prime minister spoke about the need to keep Canadians safe from a rising tide of antisemitism and hate-motivated incidents. "If we can't figure out how to stop being mad at our neighbours here in Canada, who in the world will? That's the question we have to be asking ourselves every day," he said. "It's not, 'Oh, is this magic solution or that magic solution said by a Canadian prime minister going to suddenly bring peace to the Middle East overnight?'"
Scores of people connected to Canada are still hoping to escape the Gaza Strip, where the United Nations says no place is safe.
No Canadians were named on the list of potential evacuees allowed to use the tightly controlled Rafah border crossing into Egypt on Tuesday.
Global Affairs Canada said on Tuesday that it was in touch with 390 Canadians, permanent residents and their eligible family members in the war-torn Palestinian territory. So far, 356 Canadians and their relatives have made it out of the Gaza Strip, including 10 on Monday. "We are working day and night to bring the remaining Canadians in Gaza to safety," Joly said. Canada is also involved in efforts to secure the safe return of hostages taken in last month's attack and brought to Gaza.
Julie Sunday, Canada's new senior official for hostage affairs, is in Qatar engaging in negotiations with partners in the Middle East, Joly said. She has recently been in Israel and Egypt as part of her mission to help facilitate the release of Israeli hostages.
Canadian Vivian Silver, a dual national previously believed to have been taken hostage, is confirmed to have died in the initial attack last month.
Silver, who moved to Israel in the 1970s, was thought to be alive and held in Gaza. But identification of some of the most badly burned remains has gone slowly, and her family was notified of her death Monday.Trudeau said he met with one of her sons last month, and that her courage, commitment and compassion exemplifies what it means to be a Canadian. "Vivian dedicated her life to peace, and the bright light was extinguished on Oct. 7," Trudeau said. Global Affairs says it is aware of one Canadian who is still missing. A 19-year-old soldier who was taken hostage has also been killed, Hamas and Israel said, making her the first of the Oct. 7 hostages confirmed to have died in captivity. On Tuesday, Israel’s military declared Noa Marciano a fallen soldier without giving a cause of death. Meanwhile, Hamas said she was killed in an Israeli strike, without providing evidence.

There's nothing ‘humanitarian’ about a humanitarian pause in Gaza
Kurt Mills/The Conversation/November 14, 2023
Despite the steadily mounting death toll in Gaza, western politicians are still calling for a “humanitarian pause” in Israel’s assault on Gaza. “Humanitarian” is defined as “seeking to promote human welfare as a primary or pre-eminent good” – but, in Gaza’s case, a “humanitarian pause” in the war in Gaza will have little effect when it comes to promoting human welfare. As Malak Benslama-Dabdoub, a lecturer in law at Royal Holloway university, has recently pointed out, there is “an important difference between a humanitarian pause and a ceasefire”. A pause is a short-term, localised break in the fighting to allow humanitarian assistance to get through to civilians before fighting starts again. A ceasefire, meanwhile, is part of a political process which would hopefully lead to a permanent end to the fighting.
This is true, but the differences run much deeper and are much more problematic. The argument put forth by the UK’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, as well as the Labour leader Keir Starmer and others, for a pause rather than a ceasefire is that a ceasefire would allow Hamas to regroup and get stronger while the fighting stopped.
The French president Emmanuel Macron, meanwhile, has called for a ceasefire in Gaza and said that there is no justification for bombing civilians in Gaza.
Indiscriminate kiling
The effect of a ceasefire would be to stop Israel’s constant bombing and other assaults on the people of Gaza. This would undermine the Israeli government’s goal of eradicating Hamas and taking complete control of Gaza. While the attack by Hamas was horrific, there are limits – both legal and moral – to what Israel can do in response. Those limits have been breached. Israel has been the de facto occupier of Gaza because it has control of all of Gaza’s land borders except the Rafah crossing to Egypt. This includes controlling Gaza’s access to the Mediterranean and its air space. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vision would extend this to taking complete control of all security in Gaza, which would necessarily entail an Israeli military presence in Gaza. Failure to call for a ceasefire gives implicit consent for this approach, which could lead to increased radicalisation and violence.
Yet, rejecting calls for a ceasefire also provides implicit consent for other, longer-term goals of the Israelis. Plans have been developed by both the Israeli intelligence ministry and the Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy, a think tank with close ties to the Israeli government, to rid Gaza of all Palestinians by pushing them into Egypt. This should be described, at the very least, as ethnic cleansing.
Netanyahu has previously talked about “clear[ing] the West Bank” while recently citing a biblical injunction from the first Book of Samuel, in which God commands King Saul to kill every person in Amalek, a rival nation to ancient Israel. Critics say that this reference “has long been used by the far right to justify killing Palestinians”. Some have interpreted it as justifying genocide. Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, has said there are no innocent civilians in Gaza, an assertion which erases the distinction between combatants and non-combatants. This effectively justifies collective punishment, which is prohibited under the Geneva conventions. Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and the resulting deaths of more than 11,000 people, including 4,500 children, should be a matter for investigation by the International Criminal Court as a possible war crime, as should the attacks by Hamas.
Waiting to die
This is why calling for a “humanitarian pause” is not really a humanitarian act. As I have noted elsewhere humanitarianism – the provision of food, water, and medical care to those affected by war – frequently amounts to little more than what is know in the medical world as “palliation”. This is when medical care is oriented towards making the patient as “comfortable as possible for the time they have left”.
I have further argued:
While many millions of people have been saved by humanitarianism, it must seem for some caught in the middle of conflict that the refugee camp is akin to a hospice, with humanitarians keeping refugees alive and comfortable until the war – either directly through an attack by armed forces or indirectly through malnutrition and war-associated disease – kills them. Such is the case in Gaza. There is quite literally no escape for the people of Gaza. They are at the complete mercy of the Israeli military. While Israel has told people to leave northern Gaza and go to the south, this has not led to safety.
Israel still bombs southern Gaza. Men, women, and children are still killed there. Israel has bombed hospitals and rendered them unoperational. It seems clear that Israel has imposed few meaningful restraints on its military that would keep civilians in Gaza safe. As one Israel Defense Forces spokesperson said as Israel’s bombardment of Gaza got underway on October 10: “the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy”. The people of Gaza are just waiting to die from Israeli bombs and mortars and bullets. A humanitarian pause which allowed in food and water would do little more than create “well-fed dead”. They would be kept alive a while longer, but many more of them will die at the hands of the Israeli military. Israel has begun to put in place four-hour “humanitarian pauses” in fighting in northern Gaza. This will hardly slow the march toward death for those trapped in Gaza. As one observer noted: “Israeli forces will spend 20 hours a day murdering Gazans. Not 24.” Calls for a humanitarian pause in Gaza are not “seeking to promote human welfare as a primary or pre-eminent good”. Rather, they ignore Israel’s massacre of Gazans and thus undermine the supposed humanitarian outcome its advocates assert.

Leader of Houthis says militia will target Israeli ships in Red Sea
Reuters/November 14, 2023
ADEN: The leader of Yemen’s Houthis said on Tuesday his militia would make further attacks on Israel and they could target Israeli ships in the Red Sea and the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait. The Iran-aligned group made several missile and drone attacks against Israel this month, highlighting the risk of the war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas spreading into the wider Middle East. “Our eyes are open to constantly monitor and search for any Israeli ship in the Red Sea, especially in Bab Al-Mandab, and near Yemeni regional waters,” Abdulmalik Al-Houthi said in a broadcast speech.
Washington is on heightened alert for activity by Iran-backed groups since Hamas fighters rampaged into Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people. Since then, Israel has escalated its assault on Gaza, where its forces have killed more than 11,000 people, according to Palestinian officials. The Yemen war has settled into a stalemate as the fighting has largely stopped but both parties have failed to renew a United Nations-brokered truce that expired in October.

Video purports to show Israeli-Russian researcher kidnapped in Iraq
Associated Press/November 14, 2023
A video broadcast on an Iraqi television station and circulated on pro-Iranian social media purported to show an Israeli-Russian researcher who was allegedly kidnapped in Iraq, the first sign of life since her disappearance nearly eight months ago. No group has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of Elizabeth Tsurkov. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier this year that she was being held by the powerful Iran-backed Iraqi militia Kataeb Hezbollah. The Associated Press could not verify the authenticity of the video released Monday. In it, Tsurkov speaks in Hebrew with Arabic subtitles, calling for efforts to secure her release and for an end to the war in Gaza, indicating the video was made after the surprise Hamas attack in Israel on Oct. 7. Videos of prisoners meant to document a proof-of-life often include statements coerced by captors or statements otherwise made under duress.
A spokesperson for Tsurkov's family said in a statement: "It is encouraging to see this proof of life video, that was clearly filmed in recent weeks. While we can't comment on what Elizabeth is saying, we appreciate that this is an important step in the process to bring her home to her family."
Tsurkov, a 37-year-old doctoral student whose work focuses on the Middle East and specifically Syria and Iraq, disappeared in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, in March while doing research for her doctorate at Princeton University. She had entered the country on her Russian passport since Israel and Iraq do not have diplomatic relations. Days after her disappearance, a local website reported that Iraqi authorities had detained an Iranian citizen in connection with her kidnapping. It said that Tsurkov was kidnapped from Baghdad's central neighborhood of Karradah and that the Iranian Embassy in the Iraqi capital was pressing for the man's release and to have him deported to Iran. After Netanyahu went public about Tsurkov's kidnapping in July, the Iraqi government announcement it had launched an investigation into the matter but has not reported any results.

Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on November 14-15/2023
Why Erdoğan Wants a UN Seat for Muslims
Burak Bekdil/Gatestone Institute/November 14, 2023
In [Erdoğan's] speech [at the UN General Assembly], greeted as a brave international challenge by the Turkish media (90% of which he controls), he called on the international community to collectively fight what he thinks is the greatest malady of mankind: Islamophobia. He wants, he said, to revolutionize the post-World War II international political order by giving Muslim nations a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
That is not all. Erdoğan wants the world to recognize the breakaway Turkish statelet of Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, recognized only by Turkey. That statelet emerged after Turkey's illegal invasion of Cyprus in 1974.
Still not all. Erdoğan admitted he was holding NATO hostage. On September 26, he said that the Turkish parliament would abide by his pledge to ratify Sweden's accession to NATO if the US sticks to its commitments to deliver F-16 fighter jets to Ankara.
Meanwhile, at home, a brave Turkish journalist broadcast a video showing Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists being detained in Turkey, then released and sent to government-run camps for military training.
In Erdoğan's worldview, Islamophobia is the greatest threat to humanity. Radical Islamist suicide bombers and torturers are not.
In the worldview of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Islamophobia is the greatest threat to humanity. Radical Islamist suicide bombers and torturers are not. Pictured: Erdoğan addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on September 19, 2023. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)
Editor's note: The following is the last article written for Gatestone by Burak Bekdil, a few days before he tragically passed away last month. Burak was an extraordinary person, and a brave and brilliant journalist. May he rest in peace.
The world's "strategic eyes" should have looked closer at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's speech in September at the UN General Assembly. It was another warning to the West about his intended Islamist design for the entire world — not that he can accomplish this ambition, but what he aims for comes in with several red flags with it.
In his speech, greeted as a brave international challenge by the Turkish media (90% of which he controls), he called on the international community to collectively fight what he thinks is the greatest malady of mankind: Islamophobia. He wants, he said, to revolutionize the post-World War II international political order by giving Muslim nations a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. "The world is bigger than five" has been his dictum over the past several years. He wants Muslim nations, preferably Turkey, to have a veto power, via the UN, over a new world order.
That is not all. Erdoğan wants the world to recognize the breakaway Turkish statelet of Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, recognized only by Turkey. That statelet emerged after Turkey's illegal invasion of Cyprus in 1974.
In his speech, Erdoğan discredited the UN peacekeepers on Cyprus. He vowed to fight alongside Azerbaijan against Armenia in the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute. And, not surprisingly, he asked for global support for the Palestinian cause.
On the lighter side of things, he became the world's laughing stock when he complained that he was uncomfortable with the use of what he described as "LGBT colors" at the United Nations building, which is decorated with bright colors promoting the Sustainable Development Goals. Erdoğan said he would have liked to discuss it with UN Secretary-General António Guterres. "One of the issues that bothers me the most," Erdoğan said, "... is that when entering the UN General Assembly, you see the LGBT colors on steps and other places."
Still not all. Erdoğan admitted he was holding NATO hostage. On September 26, he said that the Turkish parliament would abide by his pledge to ratify Sweden's accession to NATO if the US sticks to its commitments to deliver F-16 fighter jets to Ankara.
Sweden wants to join NATO to deter any aggression from Russia. It filed an application after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, together with neighboring Finland, which was welcomed into the alliance in April. All member states have to agree on newcomers, and Turkey is the main holdout. Political analysts agree that the delay threatens to stoke tensions between Turkey and its US-led NATO allies, who are increasingly impatient to see Sweden a member.
Meanwhile, at home, a brave Turkish journalist broadcast a video showing Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists being detained in Turkey, then released and sent to government-run camps for military training. The "trained" terrorists include ISIS's top command, the video showed. No government official has denied the footage by prominent journalist Ismail Saymaz, a government critic and columnist for the opposition Sözcü daily.
Although rarely visible in the public domain, there are realistic politicians who understand the Western world's Erdoğan problem better than many self-deceiving optimists. One is a French Member of the European Parliament, Thierry Mariani, who in a September speech put the diagnosis plainly: "Erdoğan gets his strength from two things: Our loss of strength and our [strategic] blindness."
In Erdoğan's worldview, Islamophobia is the greatest threat to humanity. Radical Islamist suicide bombers and torturers are not.
© 2023 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Israel’s Hunt for the Sinwar Brothers
Jonathan Schanzer/Commentary/November 14/2023
Israel is hunting for its list of most wanted Hamas operatives in Gaza. The list includes Mohammed Deif, the shadowy figure behind all of Hamas’s military operations. Saleh Al-Arouri, whose mug shot already appears on America’s Rewards for Justice Program, is another wanted man. But no name comes up more than the top Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar.
The “butcher of Khan Younis” was the central figure in the two-year information operation that somehow convinced Israeli intelligence that Hamas was prepared to halt its war against Israel in exchange for greater access to goods and services facilitated by Israel. For reasons that are still difficult to fathom, the Israelis were prepared to believe him. Since the bloody collapse of that wishful paradigm on October 7, the IDF has been scouring Gaza for Sinwar. His kill or capture would be a key visual representation of an Israeli victory in Gaza. Reports several days ago suggested he was caught in a bunker somewhere in the bowels of Gaza. However, there is also a good chance he already escaped south and made it through the Rafah crossing into Egypt, according to one former Israeli official I spoke to last week (raising questions about the complicity of Cairo). But there is another Sinwar that may be an equally high-value target. Mohammed Sinwar is the brother of the most wanted man in Gaza. And the younger Sinwar may, in fact, be running Hamas operations in Gaza while his brother tries to avoid an untimely demise. Mohammed Sinwar joined the self-professed military wing of Hamas, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, in 1991. The Palestinian Authority arrested him during one of its half-hearted crackdowns on the terrorist group. These crackdowns were largely conducted under duress during the Clinton administration, which was still chasing a peace deal.
After serving three years, Sinwar somehow managed to escape prison. Sinwar and the aforementioned Mohammed Deif were behind several suicide bombings in in the mid-1990s that claimed dozens of Israeli lives.
In 2005, after flying below the radar for several years, Mohammed Sinwar became the commander of the Khan Yunis Brigade in southern Gaza. The pro-Hamas Qatari television network Al Jazeera announced his appointment in September 2005.
The following year, Mohammed Sinwar was involved in the Hamas kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Shalit was subsequently held in Gaza for five years. Mohammed Sinwar was part of the secretive Hamas cell responsible for holding Shalit, who was released in a prisoner swap with Israel in 2011. Mohammed Sinwar is said to be in close contact with the aforementioned Muhammed Deif and his deputy, Marwan Issa. According to Israeli media, Mohammed Sinwar “is a central figure” within the Hamas command structure. The IDF confirmed that it attempted to target Sinwar during the May 2021 Gaza war. Al-Jazeera interviewed the junior Sinwar about the May 2021 war. He ceded that he was involved in the “joint security room….the resistance axis was in constant session throughout the war and had important intelligence contributions during the battle.” In other words, he admitted to working closely with Iran and Hezbollah during that conflict. Sinwar was reportedly in the tight circle of Hamas leaders who planned the October 7 attacks. On the morning of Hamas’s invasion, Sinwar announced on Hamas’s Al-Aqsa television that the terror group “decided to put an end to all the crimes of the occupation.”
Sinwar is now high on the IDF hit list. Of course, this is nothing new for him. Al-Jazeera reports he has already survived no less than six attempts on his life over the last two decades. It is safe to say that the IDF has stepped up efforts to locate him. He is believed to be key to identifying where his brother, the most wanted man in Gaza, is hiding.Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. Follow him on X @JSchanzer.

Hamas commits war crimes in hospitals and mosques, but world says nothing
Richard Goldberg/New York Post/November 14/2023
Hamas supporters in New York and London took to the streets this weekend to pressure the American and British governments to cut off support for Israel’s war on terrorism. Hamas responded by reminding the world why Israel must succeed in destroying this terror organization once and for all.
The Israel Defense Forces released footage Monday of Hamas firing rocket-propelled grenades toward Israeli troops. The catch? The terrorists were firing from the entrance of Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City — committing a war crime by using civilians as human shields. The IDF returned fire and confirmed killing 21 Hamas terrorists using the hospital for cover. When civilians tried to run away, Hamas terrorists ran with them to create physical shields. As the dust settled, some terrorists went back inside the hospital. The events at Al-Quds are nothing compared to what’s happening at Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital — the headquarters of Hamas operations. Hamas is locked in an intense ground fight against Israel in the areas surrounding Shifa — potentially seeing the battle as a last stand before losing effective operational control of the Gaza Strip.
Israeli officials have spoken with the hospital and offered to coordinate the evacuation of sick patients, including children. Staff told the IDF that Hamas was hoarding fuel underneath the hospital, sacrificing more civilians for its own terrorist agenda. The IDF dropped off additional fuel to help the hospital continue operations. But Hamas blocked its retrieval. The terrorists want patients to die as a means of pressuring Israel to stop short of seizing its headquarters, which reportedly lies under the hospital. The Hamas supporters in the street blame Israel for civilian deaths in Gaza. But for those paying any attention, Hamas demonstrates every day that those civilians are dead because of Hamas, not Israel. Rather than condemn Hamas for violating the laws of war, the World Health Organization’s director-general accused Israel of targeting hospitals in Gaza and called for an immediate cease-fire.
WHO has not condemned Hamas for using hospitals as human shields, basing its headquarters under Shifa or denying a hospital access to fuel. No outrage can be found over Hamas using ambulances to transport terrorists and weapons.
Like the rest of the United Nations, WHO does not recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization. This is nothing new from WHO, a China-influenced agency that castigates Israel on an annual basis at its World Health Assembly. Now, with Syria and North Korea on its executive board, it is nothing more than a Hamas mouthpiece — albeit a mouthpiece funded generously by the United States taxpayer.
The IDF late Monday released video footage from inside a Hamas terror tunnel that ended in the basement of Gaza’s Rantisi hospital. Israel reportedly found diapers in the basement alongside rope used to hold Israeli hostages. A baby bottle found on top of a box bearing the WHO logo completed the indictment of a United Nations that is actively working against its founding promise: Never again. Hamas’ daily war crimes extend beyond the health-care sector. On Sunday, the IDF released footage of weapons, ammunition and explosive devices found inside a kindergarten in northern Gaza.
Israel is also finding major terror infrastructure in and under mosques. Weapons were seized from the Abu Bakr mosque while four IDF soldiers were killed in a booby-trapped tunnel under another mosque in Beit Hanoun. Sadly, as the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques hosted a summit of Arab governments in Riyadh to discuss the crisis in Gaza, not one leader condemned Hamas for desecrating mosques or using Muslims as human shields. Honored guests at this summit included Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. But there was no condemnation for Assad’s mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Syria — or Raisi’s mass murder of thousands upon thousands of Muslims in Iran. Only the Jewish state — the one party actively evacuating Muslim civilians from Hamas’ evil clutch — was singled out for condemnation.
During his remarks, Raisi unveiled a new final solution for the Jews: “From the river to the sea,” the very same chant American and British citizens heard this weekend from pro-Hamas demonstrators. Hearing it from Hamas’ chief terror sponsor should remove any doubt what that phrase means — and why it’s imperative Israel succeed in destroying the Tehran-backed cancer on its borders.
**Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is a former National Security Council official and senior US Senate aide.

I’m Arab and I Don’t Understand Why the World Can’t Acknowledge Jewish Pain
Hussain Abdul-Hussain/Newsweek/November 14/2023
Many many years ago, I learned Hebrew out of curiosity and in a bid to penetrate into a world that I once thought was evil and conspiring against the Arabs and Muslims. Once in, I was surprised how wrong I was, how wrong almost every Arab and Muslim around me was. Israel was not on a mission to kill us all, was not conspiring against us. Israel wanted to live, and let live. In the Middle East, it’s we, the Arabs, who never seem to let live, even if that means that we die.
These days, I watch both Hebrew networks and Arabic ones. The Israelis are suffering immense pain over the 1,200 of them who Hamas killed in cold blood on 10/7. Survivors are struggling with agony and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. All of Israel is living in anxiety over the fate of the 240 hostages Hamas took on the day Israelis now call Black Saturday.
In Israeli media, I see a lot of tears for the victims of October 7, now mixed with tears over fallen soldiers fighting in Gaza. The thing about all this Israeli pain is that it is almost exclusively in Hebrew. The world does not see Israelis hurt or hear them cry. All the world sees are Israeli fighter jets raining death on Hamas from 15,000 feet above the ground to punish those who killed Israelis and to free the hostages.
The world does not feel Israeli pain. It only sees and hears Palestinian pain. The world likes to take the side of the underdog, even when the underdog is guilty. Of course, they don’t see it that way. One billion Muslims have a much louder voice than 16 million Jews, making it harder to hear the truth, easier to tell lies. So the world blames Israel, even when Palestinians started the carnage like Hamas did on 10/7.
The Jews understood a long time ago that the world is not a fair place. International justice is erratic and unreliable. This is exactly why the Jews went out of their way to create Jewish sovereignty, to establish a nation state and a government that can protect Jews anywhere on the planet, anytime. Even if the Jews are connected historically, culturally, and emotionally to this biblical land, Zionism has never been just about the land; the early Zionists were open to building their sovereign state elsewhere, though they reasoned that no spot could have attracted as many Jewish immigrants as the land of Israel.
Many Jews died to earn that Israeli sovereignty, and they continue to die for it—even now. Hamas’s 10/7 massacre threatened Israel’s existence, and Israelis are now fighting the fight of their lives—a second War of Independence, as they call it.
But what Israelis think and say remains mostly in Israel, far from global media. It is the Arabs and Muslims who set the global narrative, who have repeatedly turned the Jews’ fight for sovereignty into a fight over real estate: We lived in this land thousands of years before them, therefore we are its rightful sovereigns. But who lived in this land before the advent of the Arabs? In fact, in many countries that we call Arab today, Jews lived and spoke Hebrew, then Aramaic, then Arabic, long before Islam even existed.
Israel must fight for its survival. The only alternative to war is peace. Yet one would be hard pressed to see one sign of peace in the thousands of protests against the war worldwide. Peace will only come when the Arab world recognizes Israel, but the protesters are not shouting for peace; they are shouting against Israel, hoping that a ceasefire can save Hamas.
I wish I had a magic wand to make my fellow Arabs and the rest of the world see what I see. There will never be peace without justice. Using our numbers as Muslims and Arabs to impose our narrative will not beat Israel and it is not the way to peace.
I write this to voice my dissent. I want peace, and peace depends upon winning the trust of those we want to live in peace with, not instigating the world against them. Peace requires admitting the truth. It requires admitting Jewish pain.
Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy. Follow Hussain on X @hahussain.

Prevent the Gaza Conflict From Turning Into a Regional Conflagration
Andrea Stricker/ Al-Ain/November 13, 2023
President Joe Biden and his administration must not remember the past, because they’re repeating it. The same Iranian-backed terror group that murdered 241 U.S. Marines in Beirut 40 years ago, along with other allied Iranian-backed terror groups, now threatens U.S. forces in the Middle East and its ally, Israel. All of this is primarily due to the Biden administration’s policies in the region and the erosion of American deterrence.
The Pentagon has acknowledged that Iran-backed groups have launched numerous attacks on U.S. positions, injuring dozens of American troops over the past few weeks — with minimal responses from Washington. As Iran-backed terror groups no doubt plot additional attacks against U.S. troops and assault Israel, Biden must restore the Middle East’s belief in America’s commitment to deterrence lest Tehran launch a catastrophic assault or open additional fronts against Jerusalem.
Despite multiple reports exposing Tehran’s hand in authorizing the 10/7 attack against Israel, U.S. officials – including the president – have been reluctant to hold Iran directly responsible, even though it funds, arms, and trains Hamas. Instead, officials have limited themselves to calling Iran “complicit.” The predictable result: Iran-backed groups have stepped up attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria and even launched attacks against Israel from the West Bank, Lebanon, and Yemen.
The United States moved two aircraft carrier strike groups to the eastern Mediterranean Sea and Middle East waters patrolled by U.S. Central Command and deployed an Ohio-class attack submarine, among additional military assets in the region. However, CNN reported that the United States had intelligence Iran was planning to ramp up assaults, with one U.S. official warning there are “red lights flashing everywhere.” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said he is “concerned about potential escalation.” He wasn’t talking about escalation by our enemies. He was declaring his concern that the U.S. might escalate matters too far.  If Iran appears undeterred, it’s because it is, and has been for a long time. Under questioning by Congress, Secretary Austin testified last March that since the start of Biden’s term in office, Tehran’s proxies had attacked U.S. bases and assets in the Middle East on 83 separate occasions – and Washington had counter-attacked only four times.
Is it any wonder Tehran doubts Biden’s commitment to deterrence?
If Biden does not send a clear message that he will hold the Islamic Republic accountable for continued assaults by its proxies, Israel’s war could grow into a regional conflagration.
WHAT’S AT STAKE?
Hezbollah could launch as many as 150,000 rockets and precision-guided missiles against Israel, potentially overriding the capabilities of Israeli air defense systems and causing damage and civilian fatalities that far surpass the magnitude – and, likely, the horror – of the 10/7 attack.
Tehran’s proxies could escalate strikes on U.S. troops. Those proxies could also lash out at targets in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Syria, and Yemen. And Iran could finally seize the opportunity to sprint for nuclear weapons.
America must deter further Iranian provocations now to prevent the situation from spinning out of control. Fortunately, there are several steps Biden can take immediately:
Restore UN sanctions. The Biden administration recently failed to prevent the expiration of UN sanctions on Iran’s missile and drone programs. At the UN Security Council, Biden should lead an effort with the United Kingdom, France, and Germany to initiate the snapback of UN sanctions, which would restore these key embargoes and all prior UN restrictions on Iran’s nuclear and military programs.
Enforce oil sanctions. Washington should put key Chinese government and related entities and financial institutions on notice that it will sanction oil imports from Iran to curtail nearly $100 billion in revenue Tehran has generated since Biden took office, much of it as a result of relaxed U.S. oil sanctions.
Re-freeze Iranian funds. Over the past several months, as part of a failed “de-escalation” effort with Tehran, the Biden administration has authorized the release of $16 billion in Iranian oil revenues held abroad. Much of these funds remain in accounts in Qatar and Iraq. The Treasury Department should promptly send notifications to relevant banks that it will penalize transfers to Iran or withdrawals from those accounts.
Inflict major damage on Iranian proxies. America must start to inflict major military damage on any Iranian proxy that attacks U.S. bases, troops, or assets in the region. To prevent Iran from escalating further, the U.S. must abandon a mainly defensive posture against Iran-backed attacks.
Reiterate a credible threat to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities. Biden has previously pledged to intervene militarily should Iran break out of its nonproliferation commitments. The president should reiterate this threat publicly, so the regime does not contemplate a sprint to the bomb. All these actions must be explained in context, simply and directly. The president and his team must place direct responsibility on Iran for the attacks on Israel and assaults on America by its proxies. Senator Lindsay Graham, for example, while on a trip to Israel recently, starkly warned the Iranian regime: “We’re here today to tell Iran: ‘We’re watching you. If this war grows, it’s coming to your backyard.’” Biden should use similarly simple and direct language to make the regime think twice about launching additional attacks.
The war in the Middle East needn’t escalate, but avoiding a larger conflagration initiated by Tehran will require leadership from the world’s superpower to stop the Iranian regime in its tracks. Biden must not delay further in restoring American deterrence against Iran’s malevolent plans.
*Andrea Stricker is a research fellow and deputy director of the nonproliferation and biodefense program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Follow her on X @StrickerNonpro. FDD is a nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

The Rationality of The Summit… The Brutality of Arms… And The Discourse of Resistance
Nadim Koteich/Asharq Al-Awsat/November 14/2023
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/124299/124299/
Three recent intertwined developments that makeup part of the intricate tapestry of Middle Eastern politics shed light on the current complexities of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and its broader regional dynamics. First, we have the joint Arab-Islamic Summit, which ended with a noteworthy final communique, especially given the attendance of the Iranian President. Second, the Israeli army has made significant progress in Gaza, with the low costs incurred by Israel defying expectations. Thirdly, amid the suffering of Palestinian civilians, the discourse of the Resistance Axis has become dreadfully incoherent, as seen in the speech of Hassan Nasrallah.
Despite the personal attendance of the Iranian President, the joint Arab-Islamic Summit held in the Kingdom managed to release a final communique that largely reflects the objectives of the Arab axis of moderation regarding the Palestinian question. Beyond the basic and classic responses to security and military developments of this kind, the statement notably explicitly condemned "the killing of civilians" and affirmed "the absolute equivalence of every single life, rejecting any discrimination based on nationality, race, or religion.”
In addition to being a principled position rooted in humanitarian values and international law, this stance implicitly condemns the Hamas operation on the seventh of October that resulted in a large number of Israeli civilian casualties. This position provides crucial support for the Arab position, which stresses the need for immediate intervention to protect Palestinian civilians.
The second key aspect of the communique is that it reaffirmed that the Palestine Liberation Organization is the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. This assertion underscores the need to bring all the Palestinian factions together under the umbrella of the PLO, in order to ensure the cohesion of the Palestinian front, which is the only way to strengthen the Palestinian national position. As tedious as this rhetoric may seem, this remains the course that could yield results for the Palestinians, and it is objectively antithetical to the current split between Gaza and the West Bank.
Third, the statement asserts that commitment to peace is a strategic choice the Arabs have made, putting particular emphasis on a two-state solution and the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative as the basis for a comprehensive and just peace.
These three assertions are significant because they reclaim the leading position of the Arabs in setting the tone for stances on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and protect it against insidious posturing. Moreover, these points are particularly consequential given the fact that the communique of Arab and Islamic based on pillars of the position of the moderate Arab states, which Iran and others have sought to undermine in favor of the discourse of resistance and armed struggle, was ratified by consensus.
On the other hand, the discourse of resistance regarding the violent developments in Gaza as we saw in Hassan Nasrallah's speech, seems incoherent. While the Palestinians were facing bombardment in greater intensity than all of the previous wars combined and forced to flee their homes in humiliation, Hassan Nasrallah, on behalf of the Resistance Axis, armed himself with a stream of repetitive rhetoric about "achievements" amounting to a missile here and a drone there in the face of Israeli tanks roaming freely in central and northern Gaza.
This discourse has left the Palestinians caught in an unimaginable spiral of destruction and terror because of its pathological disregard for the imbalance of power vis a vis Israel and a failure to do the bare minimum to equip the Palestinian arena to bear the costs of war. This approach has led to the scenes of devastation and displacement we are seeing, highlighting the consequences of a strategy that lacks foresight and realism.
On the Israeli side, defying expectations that the military incursion into Gaza would fail and that the war would take a heavy toll on the army, it has made significant progress, making up for much of the reputational damage it suffered after the October 7th operation. However, from the future of Israel's perspective, no Israeli political or diplomatic horizons have arisen despite this success on the ground thus far.
We are faced with these three realities: the resolutions of the Arab-Islamic Summit, the Israeli stance, and the discourse of the Resistance Axis. They create a complex situation picture that leaves three serious impasses.
The Arab-Islamic Summit has presented a clear and coherent political initiative. However, it lacks the force needed to impose a realistic and practical path for ending the conflict. On the other hand, the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu has nothing but brute force; it lacks the political flexibility or pragmatic imagination needed to build common grounds, firstly with the Palestinians and secondly with the Arab states, upon which an end to this continuous series of crises could be built.
Finally, we have the discourse of the Resistance Axis, which has captivated the popular imagination by capitalizing on the horrors of the Palestinians’ suffering. However, this discourse is not backed by the capabilities needed for the kind of resistance that could save Palestinians from the hell they currently find themselves in. It also lacks the integrity needed to purify the political scene from emotional reactions hindering political solutions and delaying an ending to the Palestinians’ suffering.