Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on October 19-20/2023
Hezbollah's Destructive Role in Lebanon: A Threat to Peace and Stability/Elias Bejjani/October 19/2023
Leave Lebanon now, Britons and Americans told
US issues 'worldwide' alert for citizens amid Israel-Hamas war/The US Embassy in Beirut also urged Americans wishing to depart Lebanon to make plans "as soon as possible."
Hezbollah will bear the consequences: Israel's Adraee
Saudi urges citizens to depart Lebanon 'immediately'
US, UK, Germany urge citizens to leave Lebanon over border tensions
Denmark, Sweden and Norway urge against travel to Lebanon
UK advises against all travel to Lebanon
The Lebanese Army requested UNIFIL assistance in rescue operation near the Blue Line
Will US forces fight alongside Israel if Hezbollah opened new front?
Labbouneh shelling: Unrest erupts in Naqoura, surrounding areas
Hezbollah publishes video of targeting Israeli army sites in Jal al-Alam, Ras al-Naqoura
Hezbollah attacks Israeli posts as Hamas fires 30 rockets from Lebanon
Bou Habib agrees with Arab ambassadors on need for Gaza ceasefire
German Defense Minister Visits Troops at UN Force in Lebanon
Al Jazeera cites German Defense Minister: Reducing or withdrawing UNIFIL forces from Lebanon would be a wrong signal
Lebanon-based organizations, embassies take precautionary measures
Israeli Army Targets Hezbollah Positions in Lebanon
Gaza Has Created a Dilemma for Hezbollah/Mohanad Gage Ali/Carnegie/October 19/2023

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 19-20/2023
Israel-Hamas war live updates: Biden addresses U.S. in rare Oval Office speech
U.S. Targeted Across the Mideast in Spate of ‘Revenge for Gaza’ Attacks
In the news today: Israel's envoy to Canada warns of "fine line" in free speech
Israel’s War Against Hamas Will Take Time
A US State Department official resigned over Biden's 'blind' military support for Israel
Egyptian President, Jordan’s King Condemn ‘Collective Punishment’ against Palestinians
Report: Evidence Shows Hamas Likely Used Some North Korean Weapons
Palestinians in Gaza Feel Nowhere is Safe amid Unrelenting Israeli Airstrikes
US targets Iran's drone, missile programs as UN restrictions expire
US destroyer shoots down cruise missiles by Iran-backed Houthis
Sunak supports Israel, hails accord on Gaza humanitarian aid delivery
Gaza in 'unprecedented catastrophe': over 3,700 deaths, 1,524 are children
Gaza awaits humanitarian aid, as Israel tells troops to 'be ready' for ground invasion
African-Nordic Ministers Agree to Confront Terrorism
UK's Sunak Visits Israel, Will Warn against Gaza War Escalation

Titles For The Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 19-20/2023
Eyeless in Gaza .... How the U.S. blinded Israeli intelligence gathering efforts on Hamas and other Palestinian groups inside Lebanon/Tony Badran/The Tablet/October 19/ 2023
How to save Gazan lives ...It would require only two words/Clifford D. May/The Washington Times/October 19, 2023
On Our Dark Times and Closed off Horizons!/Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al-Awsat/October 19/ 2023
As Biden Turns against Israel, Netanyahu Must Stand Strong/Caroline Glick/Gatestone Institute./October 19, 2023
Hamas, Israel and the Hypocrisy of Arab and Muslim Leaders/Khaled Abu Toameh/October 19, 2023
How Christian Disunity Led to Slaughter at the Battle of Kosovo II/Raymond Ibrahim/October 19/2023
The Hell of Urban Warfare Is Not Unique to Gaza/Bradley Brincka/The Tablet/October 19/2023
Gaza 2023: The War of Fallen Illusions/Eyad Abu Shakra/Asharq Al Awsat/19 October 2023

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on October 19-20/2023
Hezbollah's Destructive Role in Lebanon: A Threat to Peace and Stability
Elias Bejjani/October 19/2023
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/123338/elias-bejjani-hezbollahs-destructive-role-in-lebanon-a-threat-to-peace-and-stability/
Lebanon has long been a nation beset by political strife, sectarian tensions, and a fragile balance of power. But amidst these complexities, one entity stands out as a particularly destructive force: Hezbollah. This Shiite militant group, with its dual identity as both a political party and a paramilitary organization, continues to sow the seeds of discord and violence within the country, threatening the very essence of Lebanon's existence.
Hezbollah, which was founded in the early 1980s with Iranian and Syrian support, has since evolved into a powerful and well-armed military force. Its actions, both inside and outside Lebanon, have earned it the label of a terrorist organization by a number of countries, including the United States and many in the European Union. But the true cost of Hezbollah's actions is not merely measured in the formal designations it carries; it is measured in the pain and suffering inflicted on the Lebanese people and the erosion of the nation's sovereignty.
One of the most pressing concerns regarding Hezbollah is its military wing's activities. The group has been responsible for numerous acts of terrorism, including bombings, kidnappings, and rocket attacks. Its military actions, often serving as proxies for foreign powers, have dragged Lebanon into regional conflicts and compromised the security of its own citizens. The scars of the 2006 Lebanon War still remain, a testament to the havoc Hezbollah can wreak on the country.
Moreover, Hezbollah's close alignment with Iran has turned Lebanon into a battleground for regional rivalries. This alignment has little to do with the interests of the Lebanese people but instead serves the objectives of the Iranian regime. As a result, Lebanon is not only a victim of its own political divisions but also a pawn in the larger regional chessboard, where Hezbollah's strings are pulled by foreign powers.
The intertwining of Hezbollah's military might with its political influence has created a dangerous dynamic within Lebanon. It wields significant power within the government, often hindering the functioning of state institutions and using its clout to shape policy in ways that are inconsistent with the best interests of the nation. This polarizing effect has stalled progress and deepened divisions within the already fragmented political landscape of Lebanon.
Furthermore, Hezbollah has cleverly employed social services, including schools, hospitals, and charities, as tools to consolidate its influence and recruitment. While these services may appear to benefit the local population, they serve to maintain its grip on power and deepen its influence, further complicating the challenges facing Lebanon.
It is evident that Hezbollah's destructive role in Lebanon poses a grave threat to the nation's peace, stability, and progress. The Lebanese people deserve better. They deserve a nation free from the shackles of regional conflicts and terrorist activities. They deserve a government that acts in their best interests, rather than one influenced by a paramilitary organization with foreign ties.
Addressing the Hezbollah problem is a complex task that necessitates international cooperation, commitment, and the recognition of Lebanon's sovereignty. It is time for the world to recognize the destructive force Hezbollah represents, not just for Lebanon but for regional stability. A stable and prosperous Lebanon requires a concerted effort to mitigate Hezbollah's influence and allow the country to chart its own course towards peace and prosperity.

Leave Lebanon now, Britons and Americans told
The Telegraph/October 19, 2023
Britain and the US have urged their citizens to flee Lebanon while “commercial options are still available” amid growing tensions between Hezbollah and Israel. The US embassy implored American nationals to prepare “contingency plans” for emergency situations in an emailed advisory note. “Make plans to depart as soon as possible while commercial options are still available,” it said. The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office called on Britons still in Lebanon to “leave now while commercial options remain available”. Since Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on 7 October, there have been frequent clashes along Israel’s border with Lebanon. Hezbollah has launched attacks almost daily, with Israel responding with artillery, fighter jets and attack helicopters, leading to fears that the violence could quickly spiral out of control and open up a second front in the war.

US issues 'worldwide' alert for citizens amid Israel-Hamas war/The US Embassy in Beirut also urged Americans wishing to depart Lebanon to make plans "as soon as possible."
Elizabeth Hagedorn/Al- Monitor/October 19, 2023
WASHINGTON — US citizens abroad are advised “to exercise increased caution,” the US State Department said in a new bulletin Thursday, as the intensifying war between Israel and Hamas has sparked protests and fears of hate crimes worldwide. The rare "Worldwide Caution Security Alert" cited “increased tensions in various locations around the world, the potential for terrorist attacks, [and] demonstrations or violent actions against US citizens and interests.” The bulletin warned that Americans overseas should stay alert, enroll in its Smart Traveler Enrollment Program for security updates and follow the State Department on social media. The last time the State Department issued a worldwide caution to US citizens was in August 2022 following the killing of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, warning that the group's supporters could target Americans. The State Department on Thursday also urged US citizens in Lebanon to make plans to leave “as soon as possible while commercial options are still available." It earlier raised the travel advisory for the small Mediterranean country and authorized the voluntary departure of family members and non-emergency personnel from the embassy in Beirut amid a tense night of protests that erupted hours after the Gaza hospital blast on Tuesday. The US Embassy in Cairo advised Americans to exercise caution across Egypt after a policeman fatally shot two Israeli tourists and their Egyptian guide in the city of Alexandria the day after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel. The US Embassy in Ankara said Wednesday that large demonstrations tied to the war were expected throughout Turkey for the next several weeks and could turn violent. “Protest activity may result in enhanced police presence, road closures, and traffic disruptions,” the security alert said. Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies in the United States have also stepped up security amid what Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday was an increase in reported threats against Muslim, Arab and Jewish communities. Last weekend, a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy in suburban Chicago was stabbed to death in an alleged hate crime motivated by the war between Israel and Hamas.

Hezbollah will bear the consequences: Israel's Adraee
LBCI/19 October 2023
The Israeli army spokesman, Avichay Adraee, announced, "Several hours ago, Hamas launched rocket shells towards Israeli civilian towns in the north, with one of them hitting the city of Kiryat Shmona, while the rest of the rockets fell in open areas."He stated, "Our army attacked the sources of the fire and targeted several Hezbollah sites, successfully neutralizing a group of saboteurs. The rocket launch was carried out with the consent of Hezbollah, like all recent Palestinian operations originating from Lebanon, including targeting civilians in Israel."He added, "Hezbollah will bear the consequences. Our forces remain vigilant and prepared in the north."

Saudi urges citizens to depart Lebanon 'immediately'
Agence France Presse/19 October 2023
Saudi Arabia has called for all citizens to leave Lebanon "immediately" as tensions mount along Lebanon's southern border with Israel. The Gulf kingdom's embassy in Beirut said it was "closely following the developments" in southern Lebanon, where at least 18 people have been killed in exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Palestinian militants on one side and Israel on the other. The dead are mostly fighters but have also included a Reuters journalist and two civilians. At least three people have been killed on the Israeli side.
Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a massive assault against Israel on October 7.
Israel launched a wave of retaliatory air strikes against the Gaza Strip, killing nearly 3,500 people, mostly civilians. Hezbollah has since been involved in a series of tit-for-tat incidents with Israel. After a rocket strike on a Gaza hospital killed hundreds on Tuesday, Hezbollah called for a "day of rage".Hundreds of Hezbollah supporters gathered in Beirut's southern suburbs on Wednesday to protest the strike.The Saudi embassy statement said citizens remaining in Lebanon should "exercise caution and stay away from places where gatherings or demonstrations are taking place".Kuwait this week also warned its citizens against travelling to Lebanon. The Kuwaiti foreign ministry said citizens wishing to visit "should be patient and postpone travel during this stage" and those already in the country should "return voluntarily if there is no urgent need for their presence".

US, UK, Germany urge citizens to leave Lebanon over border tensions
Agence France Presse/19 October 2023
Washington, London and Berlin on Thursday advised their citizens to leave Lebanon as border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah intensify over Israel's war with Hamas.
"We recommend that U.S. citizens in Lebanon make appropriate arrangements to leave the country; commercial options currently remain available," a statement from the U.S. embassy in Beirut said, with a similar warning issued by the British.
"If you are currently in Lebanon, we encourage you to leave now while commercial options remain available," the British embassy said, urging its nationals to "exercise caution."Germany's foreign office also asked citizens to "leave Lebanon" in a statement warning that border clashes "can escalate further at any time" and advising its nationals to "use existing commercial travel options to leave the country safely."Hezbollah and allied Palestinian factions have been trading daily cross-border fire with Israel after Hamas launched a massive October 7 assault on southern Israel. Relentless Israeli strikes on Gaza have since killed at least 3,700 people, mostly civilians. On Thursday, there were further cross-border exchanges of fire, with Hamas’ armed wing saying it launched a salvo of "30 rockets" from south Lebanon towards northern Israel. Hezbollah also said it had targeted several Israeli positions, in some cases using "guided missiles," and the Israeli army said it had retaliated to incoming strikes from Lebanon. On Tuesday, the U.S. State Department raised its travel advisory for Lebanon from level three to four -- the highest level available, and authorized non-essential embassy personnel and their families to leave. Many Arab and Western countries have already encouraged their nationals to avoid travel to Lebanon or leave, with Saudi Arabia on Wednesday urging its citizens to leave Lebanon "immediately" and Kuwait also warning against traveling there. France, Canada, Australia and Spain have also warned against travel to Lebanon. At least 21 people have been killed by cross-border fire in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally, mostly Hezbollah and Palestinian combatants but also three civilians including a Reuters journalist. At least three people have been killed on the Israeli side. Since Tuesday, demonstrators have taken to the streets of Beirut and its suburbs, including near the American and French embassies, to protest against a deadly strike on a Gaza hospital.'

Denmark, Sweden and Norway urge against travel to Lebanon
Associated Press/19 October 2023
Denmark, Sweden and Norway have further tightened their travel advisories for Lebanon and cautioned against travel there until further notice. Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said Thursday that Norway was “tightening the travel advice due to the serious security situation in the region. There are daily military actions on the border between Lebanon and Israel. This increases the risk throughout Lebanon.”Denmark's Foreign Ministry said the security level in Lebanon had been changed to red. “Staying in Lebanon entails a very high security risk,” the ministry said. It “strongly encouraged” Danish citizens in the country to leave. Barth Eide noted that flights were still available from Beirut but that “at short notice, it may become even more difficult to leave Lebanon.”Sweden's travel advice was updated late Wednesday.

UK advises against all travel to Lebanon
Naharnet/19 October 2023
The British Embassy in Beirut has announced updated Travel Advice for Lebanon.
“The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office advises against all travel to Lebanon. British nationals who intend to leave are encouraged to do so now, while commercial options remain available,” the Embassy said in a statement.
“If you are a British national in Lebanon, you are encouraged to register your presence” via this link https://www.register.service.csd.fcdo.gov.uk/lebanon-20231013/tell-the-uk-government-youre-in-lebanon, the Embassy added. “British nationals should remain vigilant and keep up to date with the latest developments. They should avoid any rallies, marches or processions, and follow the instructions of local authorities,” it said. “The situation is unpredictable and could deteriorate without warning,” the Embassy added. “British Nationals in Lebanon continue to have access to 24/7 consular assistance. Please call +961 (0) 1 960 800 for any routine enquiries,” it said.

The Lebanese Army requested UNIFIL assistance in rescue operation near the Blue Line
LBCI/19 October 2023
The official spokesperson for UNIFIL, Andrea Tenenti, announced that the Lebanese Army requested assistance from UNIFIL this evening to rescue seven individuals who were stuck near the Blue Line, close to the tomb of Sheikh Abbad, during an intense exchange of gunfire across the Blue Line. UNIFIL immediately contacted the Israeli army and urged them to halt the gunfire to facilitate the rescue operation. The Israeli army ceased fire, allowing the Lebanese Army to extract the individuals from the area successfully. Unfortunately, one person died during this incident, but the remaining individuals were rescued successfully.

Will US forces fight alongside Israel if Hezbollah opened new front?
Agence France Presse/19 October 2023
The U.S. and Israel are discussing what to do in case Hezbollah joined the war.
U.S. President Joe Biden said he hasn't promised Israel that U.S. forces would fight alongside Israeli troops in response to any attack by Hezbollah against Israel. "Not true," Biden replied to journalists who asked him about reports that his administration had told Israel that the U.S. would enter the war if Hezbollah did. However, Biden said that "our military is talking with their military about what the alternatives are" in the event of a Hezbollah attack. U.S. news portal Axios meanwhile reported that furing his hourlong meeting with Netanyahu and a subsequent talk with members of Israel's War Cabinet, Biden asked about the escalating tension between Israel and Hezbollah on the border of Israel and Lebanon. "Biden was particularly concerned that Iran-backed Hezbollah would decide to join the war, increasing the odds of a broader conflict in the Middle East," Axios said.
Since the early days of the war, the Biden administration has sent private and public messages to Hezbollah and Iran, warning them not to join in the fighting. Hezbollah has said it is willing to help Hamas. The Israeli army announced Thursday on X, formerly Twitter, of strikes against positions of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Since the start of the war, triggered by an unprecedented attack by Hamas militants on Israel on October 7, exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and the Israeli army have likewise increased around the Israel-Lebanon border area.
Clashes there have left at least 18 people dead on the Lebanese side. Most of the dead have been combatants, including 10 Hezbollah fighters, but they also include a Reuters journalist and two civilians. On the Israeli side, at least three people have been killed.

Labbouneh shelling: Unrest erupts in Naqoura, surrounding areas
LBCI/19 October 2023
Intermittent shelling has been reported in the Labbouneh area in Naqoura, as well as in the outskirts of the towns of Aalma El Chaeb and Dhayra. Furthermore, there have been intense flights of reconnaissance aircraft and targeted missile strikes on the Al-Abad settlement, which is located across from the town of Houla.

Hezbollah publishes video of targeting Israeli army sites in Jal al-Alam, Ras al-Naqoura
LBCI/19 October 2023
Hezbollah's media arm released a video showing the moment when the Islamic resistance elements targeted Israeli military sites at the Lebanese-Palestinian border on the afternoon of Wednesday, October 19, 2023, achieving direct and precise hits.

Hezbollah attacks Israeli posts as Hamas fires 30 rockets from Lebanon
Associated Press/19 October 2023
The military wing of Hamas said its members fired 30 rockets from south Lebanon into northern Israel Thursday, mainly targeting the towns of Nahariya and Shlomi. Media reports said the rockets wounded three Israelis with one of the rockets slamming directly into a building in northern Israel. The Qassam Brigades' statement came after Lebanon’s Hezbollah said it hit several Israeli army positions and a kibbutz along the border with missiles. Israeli forces also shelled border areas on the Lebanese side, an Associated Press journalist in southern Lebanon said. Hezbollah has been launching similar operations against Israel for the past 11 days now, in a show of support for the Palestinians amid Israel’s devastating bombardment of the Gaza Strip and its attempt to crush the Palestinian militant group Hamas. At least 12 Hezbollah fighters and three Lebanese civilians -- including a journalist -- have been killed by Israeli shelling since the eruption of hostilities. Palestinian groups and Lebanon's Jamaa Islamiya have also launched attacks on Israel from south Lebanon. Israel said it launched airstrikes overnight Wednesday on alleged Hezbollah sites in the South. Hezbollah has said in several statements that its attacks on the Israeli military posts are in retaliation to the killing of its fighters and Lebanese civilians and to Israel’s attacks on Lebanese territory.

Bou Habib agrees with Arab ambassadors on need for Gaza ceasefire
Naharnet/19 October 2023
Caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib announced after meeting the Arab ambassadors in Beirut on Thursday he agreed with them on “the importance of reaching an immediate ceasefire and sending aid to Gaza.”The conferees “rejected the displacement and naturalization (of Palestinians) in another country” and called for ending Israeli occupation and establishing a Palestinian state, Bou Habib said. He added that he had sensed Arab unity during the ministerial meeting that was held Wednesday in Jeddah, calling for “capitalizing on it to convince the Western countries to press Israel to stop this absurd war and tyrannical siege.”“A just and comprehensive solution for the conflict begins with the Palestinians first, second and last,” Bou Habib said. The meeting was attended by the ambassadors of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Iraq, Oman, Algeria, Kuwait, Yemen, Sudan and Palestine, in addition to the Syrian charge d’affaires.

German Defense Minister Visits Troops at UN Force in Lebanon
Asharq Al Awsat/19 October 2023
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius traveled to Lebanon on Thursday to visit German soldiers serving in a UN peacekeeping force in the region in the wake of a major escalation between neighboring Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.
Berlin has deployed some 140 soldiers on a corvette off the Lebanese coast and at the headquarters of the UNIFIL mission in southern Lebanon that was hit by a rocket on Sunday without causing casualties, Reuters said. "On the corvette Oldenburg, (the minister) thanked the sailors for their efforts and was briefed on the impact the conflict in Israel and Gaza is having on German soldiers in the region," the defense ministry in Berlin said on the social media platform X, formerly called Twitter. UNIFIL has operated in Lebanon since 1978 to maintain peace along the border with Israel and was expanded by the UN resolution that halted the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war in southern Lebanon.

German defense minister arrives in Beirut
Agence France Presse/19 October 2023
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius arrived Thursday in Beirut on a surprise visit, amid a war that is raging between Israel and Hamas and growing violence on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. Pistorius' ministry said his visit to Lebanon "at short notice" was to thank German soldiers serving with UNIFIL, the U.N. peacekeeping force deployed in a buffer zone between northern Israel and southern Lebanon. It posted on X, formerly Twitter, that the minister also intended to "get informed about the impact of the conflict in Israel and Gaza on the (German) contingent in the region."
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Thursday meanwhile embarked on her second trip to Israel since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks to express "unwavering solidarity" and help ensure Palestinian access to aid. The trip, due to last until Saturday according to her ministry, will also take her to Lebanon and Jordan and Lebanon. Before her departure, Baerbock insisted on Israel's "right to defend itself against Hamas terror" and accused the militant group of using the civilian population of the Gaza Strip as "human shields" in its conflict with Israel. "It is important to me to make clear to Palestinians that we also recognize their suffering," Baerbock said, describing the humanitarian situation in Gaza as "catastrophic."Baerbock, who already visited Israel and Egypt last week followed by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, said Berlin was working closely with the G7, European Union and regional partners to ensure aid could flow into Gaza.She said she would also "use the trip to speak with all those who have channels to Hamas" to discuss how to secure the release of captives held by the group.

Al Jazeera cites German Defense Minister: Reducing or withdrawing UNIFIL forces from Lebanon would be a wrong signal
LBCI/19 October 2023
Al Jazeera, citing the German Defense Minister, reported that reducing or withdrawing UNIFIL forces from Lebanon would be a wrong signal at this time.

Lebanon-based organizations, embassies take precautionary measures
Naharnet/19 October 2023
The security departments of the international organizations in Lebanon have prepared a plan to evacuate employees and workers in coordination with the Lebanese Army, a media report said. “The army will allow these to use military airports and small ports for evacuation should the Beirut international airport be closed,” al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Thursday. “Foreign companies and media outlets that have major offices in Beirut have asked their employees to prepare to move to a number of countries in the region, including the UAE, while keeping a very limited number of employees in Beirut,” the daily added. Foreign and Arab embassies have meanwhile upped their security measures and evacuated additional numbers of their diplomats and their families, especially after the protests that started yesterday in response to the Gaza hospital carnage, al-Akhbar quoted security sources as saying. Informed sources meanwhile said that caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib has invited Arab ambassadors to a meeting that will be held today, Thursday. Bou Habib had warned at the Islamic summit in Jeddah that the entire region might go up in flames should the war on Gaza continue.

Israeli Army Targets Hezbollah Positions in Lebanon
Asharq Al Awsat/19 October 2023
The Israeli army announced early on Thursday that its troops have targeted Hezbollah positions in Lebanon. On Wednesday, Hezbollah said it had attacked four locations including Israeli positions in Metula, Rweisat al-Alam, the occupied Shebaa farms and Malkiye using guided missiles in several of the strikes. The Israeli army said it was responding by firing artillery at areas in the western sector including the towns of Labbuna, the outskirts of Naqoura, al-Dhaira, Ramia and Aita al-Shaab. Israeli strikes also targeted the eastern sector in the vicinity of Mays al-Jabal, as Israeli warplanes hovered over the villages of Mays al-Jabal, Houla and Markaba. Later on Thursday, the Israeli army said that anti-tank missile fire were reported in the Manara area on the Lebanese border, according to the Jerusalem Post The paper added that due to the incident, the Upper Galilee Regional Council has told residents to stay indoors in protected areas.

Gaza Has Created a Dilemma for Hezbollah
Mohanad Gage Ali/Carnegie/October 19/2023
The party has spent almost two decades building up a deterrence capacity, and now may be its prisoner.
Since Hamas’ attack against Israeli towns on October 7, and the ensuing Israeli bombardment and military operations in and around Gaza, Hezbollah’s response in southern Lebanon has been mostly restrained. The party is expected to escalate if or when Israel begins its ground invasion of Gaza in order to achieve its objective of eradicating Hamas. However, given Hezbollah’s recent history, this escalation may be more forced than intended.
Since 2019, the party has reinforced its alliance with Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other Iran-backed groups in the Middle East, to strengthen its deterrence capacity against Israel. Wider coordination among these groups means engaging in a multifront conflict if Israel crosses certain “red lines.” The first of these is violating the sanctity of religious sites in Jerusalem, notably the Al-Aqsa mosque.
Hezbollah is also helping its partners to develop their military capabilities, such as perfecting their use of drones and ameliorating their military tactics. At face value, the Hamas attack of October 7 affirmed the success of Hezbollah’s threat to occupy Israeli towns in a future war with Israel. The party’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, threatened as early as February 2011 to attack Israeli towns, although the tactic was more confidently put forward in 2019.
While Hezbollah must have realized that Israel would be vulnerable to such attacks, what happened on October 7, with the killing of hundreds of Israeli civilians, must have provoked a feeling of entrapment in the party. Hezbollah has demonstrated that it understands the power balance in its conflict with Israel, after four decades of experience and the high cost of the 2006 war. The party’s interaction with Israel has relied on a careful calibration of Israeli political calculations, Hezbollah’s military capabilities, and geopolitics. A sign of this has been the party’s effective acceptance and lack of response to years of Israeli airstrikes against Hezbollah positions in Syria. As the conflict in Syria subsided in 2017, it was the party’s understanding of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s risk-averse approach and polarizing internal behavior that led it to try to rework the rules of engagement with Israel, by playing a wider role in supporting Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Only time will tell the extent of Hezbollah’s knowledge of the details of the Hamas attack. Yet the scale of the operation and its high civilian death toll are anomalies in the recent record of Iran and its allies, who tend to progress slowly and carefully, as if weaving a Persian carpet. Definitely, some elements of the attack were highlighted previously by Hezbollah, and were featured in its rhetoric and as part of its deterrence options. Even the operation’s security aspect, with Hamas switching to a more secure mode of communications within the network of participants, showed signs of cooperation with Hezbollah, which has expertise in this field.
Since 2006, Hezbollah has worked meticulously on building up its military capabilities through a manifold increase in its firepower, by developing a precision-guided missile and drone capacity, and by adopting naval tactics. The party has added layer upon layer of deterrence capabilities, while becoming much more of a regional player, for instance by participating in the Syrian conflict on the side of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. For Hezbollah, the alliance with Hamas and the Islamic Jihad under the “unity of the fronts” strategy, represented yet another layer of deterrence and a manifestation of its regional role.
In this context, Hezbollah relied on Netanyahu’s willingness to accept shades of violence on his northern border to shift the rules of engagement in southern Lebanon. For instance, Palestinian factions have launched limited rocket attacks and infiltrated Israeli territory in the past year, and Israel has time and again responded with restraint. It did so both to respect these evolving rules of engagement and avoid a wider conflagration. This came at a fairly low cost.
Politically, Hezbollah’s alliance with Hamas and Islamic Jihad became a part of the party’s rhetoric, giving Nasrallah and Iran a front seat in the battle to protect Al-Aqsa. This presented Iran and its allies with an opportunity for redemption after their more sectarian approach during the post-2003 period in Iraq, and during the Syrian conflict. Hamas, which fought on the rebel side in Syria and fell out with Hezbollah and Iran, is now underlining Iran’s role in protecting Al-Aqsa. The alliance is also a political response to the Abraham Accords and its promise to reshape the Middle East and redefine the region’s geopolitics.
Allowing the demise of Hamas in Gaza would be costly for Iran and Hezbollah in terms of morale, and would redefine them as being primarily centered on Shiite interests, with a strictly sectarian agenda. Hamas is already showing signs of distress over Hezbollah’s relatively limited response to the bombings in Gaza. But more importantly for Hezbollah, a Hamas defeat would not only destroy the “unity of the fronts” strategy, which is already a burden, but also expose the limits of its deterrence capabilities, which would effectively bring Hezbollah back to where it was in 2006. Added to this, the October 7 attacks might push Israel to again adopt preemptive military action as a central feature of its defensive strategy, which means that a crushing conflict with Hezbollah may only be a matter of time.
In spite of this, Hezbollah still wants to avoid an all-out conflict in Lebanon over Gaza, given the implications for its political standing in a crisis-ridden country. Rather, it prefers a gradual escalation, with the now difficult objective of halting an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza. However, the party knows that it cannot control the outcome of its actions, as the wars of 1993, 1996, and 2006 were all Israeli operations aimed at deterring Hezbollah or destroying it. A widening of the Gaza war to Lebanon is ultimately an Israeli decision.
Today, Hezbollah is caught in a trap largely of its own making, with high stakes that can bring potentially devastating consequences. The party’s alliances, which were designed to act as another level of deterrence, have instead exposed it to levels of military escalation that it has sought to avoid since 2006.
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 October 19-20/2023
Israel-Hamas war live updates: Biden addresses U.S. in rare Oval Office speech
Yahoo News Staff/October 19, 2023
In a rare primetime speech from the Oval Office on Thursday night, President Biden addressed the nation about the U.S. response to the ongoing wars between Israel and Hamas, and Ukraine and Russia. The president sought to link the two conflicts, insisting that "making sure Israel and Ukraine succeed is vital for American security."The address followed Biden's whirlwind trip to Tel Aviv, where he reiterated the United States’ support for Israel but warned Israelis not to make the same “mistakes” the U.S. did following the 9/11 terror attacks. Biden said Thursday that he also discussed with Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu "the critical need for Israel to operate by the laws of war." "The people of Gaza urgently need food, water and medicine," he said, noting that, while in Israel, he helped secure an agreement to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza from Egypt. But exactly when the desperately needed supplies will be delivered is unclear. "We cannot give up on peace," Biden said. "We cannot give up on a two-state solution."

U.S. Targeted Across the Mideast in Spate of ‘Revenge for Gaza’ Attacks
Dan Ladden-Hall/The Daily Beast./October 19, 2023
Two U.S. military bases in Syria were attacked early Thursday, according to reports, after Iran said it considered Washington, D.C. complicit in Israel’s ongoing strikes against Gaza. The Iran-aligned Lebanese TV channel Al Mayadeen reported that a drone attack had been launched on America’s Al-Tanf base and a missile attack had been conducted at the Conoco base, according to Reuters. No further details were given as to whether there were any casualties.
Iran Threatens to Drag the U.S. Into Regional Holy War
Omar Abu Layla, a Europe-based activist who serves as the executive of the Deir Ezzor 24 outlet, said that three drones carrying explosive struck the Conoco gas field in Deir el-Zour, an eastern province which borders Iraq, on Thursday, according to the Associated Press.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based opposition war monitor, separately reported that explosions were heard within the gas field “base of the International Coalition.” Earlier, the Observatory said “three drones of the Iranian militias” had attacked the U.S. military base of Al-Tanf in eastern Syria near to where the borders of Iraq, Jordan, and Syria meet.
The opposition organization said according to its sources, “Iranian-backed militias will continue launching attacks on American forces’ bases under the slogan of ‘Revenge for Gaza.’”
Thursday’s reported attacks come after the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed that U.S. forces had been attacked by drones in Iraq. It said American troops engaged two drones in western Iraq, successfully destroying one and damaging a second. It said Coalition forces sustained “minor injuries” in the incident. A third drone was destroyed in northern Iraq, resulting in no injuries, CENTCOM added.
The assaults come after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Tuesday that the U.S. “is formulating the Zionist regime’s current policy,” referring to Israel’s strikes in Gaza which massively escalated after Hamas militants slaughtered 1,400 Israeli civilians and soldiers earlier this month. Khamenei said the U.S. “must be held responsible” for what is happening in Gaza, where local health officials say nearly 3,500 people have been killed in Israeli strikes.
Iran has been warned by the U.S. not to get involved in the war and has sent two aircraft carriers to Israel in an effort to stop the conflagration spreading. But reports of Tehran-backed militias carrying out attacks are appearing after another Iranian-supported group, Hezbollah, has already been involved in multiple lethal exchanges with the Israeli military across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.
On Wednesday, Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine used a speech to respond to American warnings about the conflict widening, saying President Joe Biden, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and “malicious Europeans” should tread carefully. “The response to the mistake you might make with our resistance will be resounding,” Safieddine said to thousands of supporters, according to Reuters. “Because what we have is faith, and God is stronger than you, all your battleships, and all your weapons.”
The following morning, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had carried out attacks on “targets belonging to Hezbollah” inside Lebanon in response to shooting attacks on Wednesday. Violence has also been reported in the West Bank, where at least 72 Palestinians have been killed since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, according to Al Jazeera. The Times of Israel reported Thursday that the IDF had conducted a drone strike on the Nur Shams refugee camp in the West Bank, with local health officials saying that three people were killed and a fourth was shot dead overnight.
While Biden has attempted to contain the crisis in Israel, Netanyahu on Thursday called for greater international involvement in his country’s fight. “Hamas are the new Nazis, they’re the new ISIS,” he said Thursday alongside British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who traveled to Israel the day after Biden’s departure. Netanyahu said that just as “civilized world united to fight the Nazis,” it “must now stand with Israel as we fight and defeat Hamas.”
“It’s the battle of Israel, it’s the battle of modern Arab countries, it’s the battle of Western civilization, the battle of the free world, the battle for the future,” Netanyahu added.

In the news today: Israel's envoy to Canada warns of "fine line" in free speech
The Canadian Press/October 19, 2023
Here is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to bring you up to speed on what you need to know today... 'Thin line' for free speech, hate: Israel envoy
Israel's envoy to Canada says it's important for democracies to look at when a line has been crossed between freedom of speech and what he calls "freedom of hate."
Ambassador Iddo Moed spoke generally in an interview with The Canadian Press about what he sees as a "thin line" between the two. He says he couldn't comment on the nature of any demonstrations seen in Canada since Hamas's surprise attacks on Israel on October 7th, which triggered retaliation from the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s War Against Hamas Will Take Time
Enia Krivine/FDD/October 19/2023
A senior Israeli official reportedly said on Tuesday that the Jewish state has struck more than 5,000 targets in Gaza with the goal of eliminating Hamas, even if it takes “months or years.” The objective will therefore require long-term support and forbearance from its greatest ally, the United States.
On October 7, Palestinian terrorists invaded several communities in southern Israel, massacring 1,400 Israelis, including children, the elderly, and the disabled. Israel has identified 199 additional people taken hostage by Hamas, though the terrorist group claims that up to 250 hostages are being held in Gaza.
While Israel has conducted several operations against Hamas in the past, prior campaigns sought only to degrade and deter the terrorist group, leaving it intact to preserve the functions of governance in the coastal enclave. This time, Jerusalem’s objective is to remove Hamas from power.
Accordingly, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it is preparing a Gaza offensive by “air, land and sea.” An IDF land incursion into Gaza could produce heavy casualties for the IDF and inevitably involve significant collateral damage. Moreover, Hamas has likely planned for a ground invasion.
With Hamas’ large arsenal, extensive network of terror tunnels, and track record of setting cunning traps for IDF soldiers, there is understandable concern for the safety of Israel’s men and women in uniform. However, a ground incursion may be Israel’s best chance of eliminating Hamas and bringing the hostages home alive.While many Israelis understand the need for a ground invasion, they also know that the longer they can bombard Gaza from the air, destroying terror infrastructure and degrading Hamas’ capabilities before sending their soldiers into Gaza, the better chance that more of them will come home to their families at the end of the war.  On Monday, the IDF released images of weapons seized from Hamas fighters in recent days. FDD’s Long War Journal analyzed the images, identifying an array of deadly munitions in the terror group’s possession, including armor piercing explosively formed penetrators (EFP), shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, shoulder-fired anti-tank rockets, and various types of powerful explosives. Another complicating factor for an IDF ground invasion is the high number of civilians that remain on the battlefield. Israel has urged Gazans to move to safer territory in southern Gaza, away from the center of Hamas infrastructure in the north. However, Hamas has called on Palestinians to stay put, apparently seeking to use them as human shields for its fighters. Hamas is reportedly even putting up roadblocks to prevent Gazans from evacuating to safer areas. On Sunday, the IDF shared an audio recording of a Palestinian in Gaza stating how Hamas was prohibiting civilians from fleeing south. On Monday, President Joe Biden said that while Israel should eliminate Hamas, an Israeli reoccupation of Gaza would be a “big mistake.” This statement suggests that Washington might oppose an operation that involves a prolonged IDF presence in Gaza. The president should make clear that he will stand with Israel for as long as it takes to ensure the safety and security of all Israelis, particularly the communities of Israel’s south. **Enia Krivine is the senior director of the Israel Program and the National Security Network at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) For more analysis from Enia and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow Enia on X @EKrivine. Follow FDD on X @FDD. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

A US State Department official resigned over Biden's 'blind' military support for Israel
Thibault Spirlet/Business Insider/October 19, 2023
A US State Department official resigned because of President Joe Biden's "blind" support for Israel. Josh Paul, director of the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, justified his decision in a letter. The US should not side with the "combatants" but with the people "caught in the middle," he wrote. A US State Department official overseeing arms transfers resigned in response to President Joe Biden's "blind" decision to keep supplying Israel with weapons as it imposes a siege on Gaza as part of its war with Hamas. Josh Paul, who served as the director of congressional and public affairs for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs of the State Department for more than 11 years, explained the reasons for his resignation in a letter published on his LinkedIn page on October 18. Paul said that the Biden administration's "blind support for one side" was leading to policy decisions that were "shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values we publicly espouse." He added: "The response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people".
"I fear we are repeating the same mistakes we have made these past decades, and I decline to be a part of it for longer," he said. Paul did not give specifics about what he meant by the US' "past mistakes". More than 1,300 Israelis died in Hamas' surprise attacks on October 7, the Israel Defense Forces said. Over 3,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza during Israel's retaliatory strikes, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. The US government has given Israel more aid than any other foreign country over the last nearly 75 years, according to the non-partisan think tank the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Biden Administration is now working on a $100 billion foreign aid package that will include help for Israel as well as other priority security concerns, two aides familiar with the plan told ABC News. While Paul acknowledged there is a "great need" for American arms and defense assistance across the world, he said the Biden administration cannot be "both for and against" the occupation of Gaza. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Tuesday that the Israeli government's decision to evacuate the northern part of the enclave and its siege of Gaza constituted a forceful transfer of residents in violation of international law. In an interview with The New York Times, Paul said the Biden administration cannot let American weapons fall into the hands of human rights violators. Paul condemned Hamas' attack on Israel in the strongest terms, calling it a "monstrosity". But he insisted that, as third parties in this conflict, the US should not side with the "combatants" but rather the people "caught in the middle."

Egyptian President, Jordan’s King Condemn ‘Collective Punishment’ against Palestinians
Cairo: Asharq Al Awsat/19 October 2023
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi met on Thursday with King Abdullah II of Jordan for a closed-door discussion about the escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas, and the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza. Egypt’s presidential office said in a statement that followed the meeting that the two leaders condemned Israel’s policy of “collective punishment” against Palestinians in Gaza and its efforts to displace “Palestinians from their lands to Egypt or Jordan.” Both leaders have since Oct. 7 separately expressed fear about a permanent expulsion of Palestinians into their countries, concerned it could nullify Palestinians' demand for a future state. Sisi on Wednesday said Egyptians in their millions would reject the forced displacement of Palestinians into Sinai, adding that any such move would turn the Egyptian peninsula into a base for attacks against Israel.

Report: Evidence Shows Hamas Likely Used Some North Korean Weapons
Asharq Al Awsat/19 October 2023
Hamas fighters likely fired North Korean weapons during their Oct. 7 assault on Israel, despite Pyongyang's denials that it arms the group, according to a report published by The Associated Press. According to the report, South Korean officials, two experts on North Korean arms and an Associated Press analysis of weapons captured on the battlefield by Israel point toward Hamas using Pyongyang’s F-7 rocket-propelled grenade, a shoulder-fired weapon that fighters typically use against armored vehicles. The evidence shines a light on the murky world of the illicit arms shipments that sanction-battered North Korea uses as a way to fund its own conventional and nuclear weapons programs. Rocket-propelled grenade launchers fire a single warhead and can be quickly reloaded, making them valuable weapons for guerrilla forces in running skirmishes with heavy vehicles. The F-7 has been documented in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, said N.R. Jenzen-Jones, a weapons expert who works as the director of the consultancy Armament Research Services. “North Korea has long supported Palestinian militant groups, and North Korean arms have previously been documented amongst interdicted supplies,” Jenzen-Jones told the AP. Hamas has published images of their fighters with a launcher with a rocket-propelled grenade with a distinctive red stripe across its warhead, and other design elements matching the F-7, said Matt Schroeder, a senior researcher with Small Arms Survey who wrote a guide to Pyongyang’s light weapons. “It is not a surprise to see North Korean weapons with Hamas,” Schroeder said. The North Korean F-7 resembles the more widely distributed Soviet-era RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade, with a few noticeable differences. Jenzen-Jones described the F-7 rocket-propelled grenade as “intended to offer a lethal effect against personnel” given its shape and payload, rather than armored vehicles. Weapons seized by the Israeli military and shown to journalists also included that red stripe and other design elements matching the F-7.
In a background briefing with journalists Tuesday, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff specifically identified the F-7 as one of the North Korean weapons it believed Hamas used in the attack. The Israeli military declined to answer questions from the AP about the origin and the manufacturer of those rocket-propelled grenades, saying the ongoing war with Hamas prevented it from responding. North Korea's mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment from the AP. However, Pyongyang last week through its state-run KCNA news agency dismissed claims that Hamas used its weapons as “a groundless and false rumor” orchestrated by the United States. Hamas propaganda videos and photos previously have shown its fighters with Bulsae guided anti-tank missiles. Jenzen-Jones said he believed, based on imagery of the weapons wielded by Hamas fighters in the Oct. 7 attack, they also used North Korea's Type 58 self-loading rifle, a variant of the Kalashnikov assault rifle. “Many North Korean weapons have been provided by Iran to militant groups, and this is believed to be the primary way by which militants have come to possess North Korean weapons,” Jenzen-Jones said.
Iran also has modeled some of its ballistic missiles after North Korean variants. Iran's mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment. Officials in Iran have long supported Hamas and have praised their assault on Israel.
In December 2009, Thai authorities grounded a North Korean cargo plane reportedly carrying 35 tons of conventional arms, including rockets and rocket-propelled grenades, as it made a refueling stop at a Bangkok airport. Thai officials then said the weapons were headed to Iran. The United States later said in 2012 the shipments intercepted by the Thais had been bound for Hamas. North Korea also faces Western suspicions that it supplies ammunition, artillery shells and rockets to Russia to support its war on Ukraine. The White House said last week that North Korea recently delivered more than 1,000 containers of military equipment and munitions to Russia.

Palestinians in Gaza Feel Nowhere is Safe amid Unrelenting Israeli Airstrikes
Asharq Al Awsat/19 October 2023
Israeli airstrikes pounded locations across the Gaza Strip early Thursday, including parts of the south that Israel had declared safe zones, heightening fears among more than 2 million Palestinians trapped in the territory that nowhere was safe.
In the nearly two weeks since Israel began attacking in response to a devastating Hamas rampage in towns across southern Israel, airstrikes have relentlessly hit the densely populated territory. Even after Israel told Palestinians to evacuate the north and head to what it called “safe zones” in the south, strikes continued across the entire territory, The Associated Press said. The bombardments came after Israel agreed Wednesday to allow Egypt to deliver limited humanitarian aid to Gaza, the first crack in a punishing 11-day siege. Many among Gaza's 2.3 million residents have cut down to one meal a day and have been left to drink dirty water amid dwindling supplies. The announcement of a plan to bring water, food and other supplies into Gaza happened as fury over the blast at Gaza City’s al-Ahli Hospital spread across the Middle East, and as US President Joe Biden visited Israel in hopes of preventing a wider conflict in the region. There were conflicting claims of who was behind the deadly hospital explosion. Hamas officials in Gaza blamed an Israeli airstrike, saying hundreds were killed. Israel denied it was involved and released a flurry of video, audio and other information that it said showed the blast was instead due to a rocket misfire by Islamic Jihad, another militant group operating in Gaza. Islamic Jihad dismissed that claim. The Associated Press has not independently verified any of the claims or evidence.
Video from the scene showed the hospital grounds strewn with torn bodies, many of them young children. Hundreds of wounded were rushed to Gaza City’s main hospital where doctors, already facing critical supply shortages, were sometimes forced to perform surgery on the floors, often without anesthesia.
More than 1 million Palestinians have fled their homes, roughly half of Gaza’s population. Many who fled the north and Gaza City, after Israel told them to evacuate, have crowded into UN schools or the homes of relatives.
Palestinians in the southern city of Khan Younis said bombings were relentless overnight, with airstrikes hitting several homes, according to the Hamas-led Interior Ministry. In Rafah, on Egypt’s border, Israel hit several homes. Medical staff at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis said they received at least 12 dead and 40 wounded. Homes along the Gaza border with Israel in the northern evacuation zone were also hit, the ministry said. Israel has massed troops in the area and is expected to launch a ground invasion into Gaza, though military officials say no decision has been made.
Airstrikes also hit three residential towers in al-Zahra, within the area that was told to evacuate, the Interior Ministry in Gaza said. Israel has said it is attacking Hamas militants wherever they may be in Gaza and accused the group's leaders and fighters of taking shelter among the civilian population.
The Israeli military said it killed a top Palestinian militant in Rafah, near the Egyptian border, and hit hundreds of targets across Gaza, including tunnel shafts, intelligence infrastructure and command centers. It said it hit dozens of mortar launching posts, most of them immediately after they launched shells at Israel.
Palestinians have been launching barrages of rockets at Israel since the fighting began. The Gaza Health Ministry said 3,478 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, and more than 12,000 wounded, mostly women, children and the elderly. Another 1,300 people are believed buried under the rubble, health authorities said. More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, mostly civilians slain during Hamas’ deadly incursion on Oct. 7. Roughly 200 others were abducted. The Israeli military said Thursday it had notified the families of 203 captives.
The strikes across Gaza left Palestinians feeling they were in constant danger. The Musa family fled to the typically sleepy central town of Deir al-Balah and took shelter in a cousin’s three-story home near the local hospital. But at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, a series of explosions, believed to be airstrikes, rocked the building, turning the family home into a mountain of rubble that they said buried some 20 women and children.The dead body of Hiam Musa, the sister-in-law of Associated Press photojournalist Adel Hana, was recovered from the wreckage Wednesday evening, the family said. They don’t know who else is under the rubble.“It doesn’t make sense,” Hana said. “We went to Deir al-Balah because it’s quiet, we thought we would be safe.”
The Israeli military said it was investigating.
Violence between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon has also flared in recent days amid fears the fighting could spread across the region. In the West Bank, where scores of Palestinians have been killed since the war started, Israeli forces killed dozens of Palestinians in the past two days, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
The deal to get aid into Gaza remained fragile.
Biden said Egypt’s president agreed to open the Rafah crossing to let in an initial group of 20 trucks with humanitarian aid. If Hamas confiscates aid, “it will end,” he said. The aid will start moving Friday at the earliest, White House officials said. Egypt must still repair the road across the border, which was cratered by Israeli airstrikes. More than 200 trucks and some 3,000 tons of aid are positioned at or near the crossing, Gaza’s only connection to Egypt, said the head of the Red Crescent for North Sinai, Khalid Zayed. Supplies will go in under supervision of the UN, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told Al-Arabiya TV. Asked if foreigners and dual nationals seeking to leave would be let through, he said: “As long as the crossing is operating normally and the (crossing) facility has been repaired.”Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the decision was approved after a request from Biden. It said Israel “will not thwart” deliveries of food, water or medicine from Egypt, as long as they are limited to civilians in the south of the Gaza Strip and don’t go to Hamas militants. The statement made no mention of fuel, which is badly needed for hospital generators. Relatives of some of the roughly 200 people who were taken hostage and forced back to Gaza during the attack reacted in fury to the aid announcement. “Children, infants, women, soldiers, men, and elderly, some with serious illnesses, wounded and shot, are held underground like animals,” said a statement from the Hostage and Missing Families Forum. But “the Israeli government pampers the murderers and kidnappers.”In his brief visit, Biden tried to strike a balance between showing US support for Israel, while containing growing alarm among Arab allies. He also announced $100 million in humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

US targets Iran's drone, missile programs as UN restrictions expire
Elizabeth Hagedorn/Al- Monitor/October 19, 2023
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration unveiled new measures Wednesday to counter Iran’s proliferation of missiles and drones, as well as its destabilizing regional behavior, following the lapse of the United Nations’ prohibitions on Tehran's missile-related activities. The administration announced sanctions on more than 20 individuals and entities based in Iran, Hong Kong, China, Venezuela and Russia that it said were providing support to the Iranians' ballistic missile and drone programs.
Senior State Department officials said the designations would not only squeeze those programs, but constrain Iran's military relationships with countries like Russia, which said it would no longer comply with UN restrictions on Iran’s missile program following their expiration on Wednesday.
For more than a year, Western powers have accused Tehran of helping replenish Moscow's supply of weaponized drones to attack Ukraine's civilian infrastructure and military targets. Those hit with US sanctions on Wednesday included the Iran-based Sarmad Electronic Sepahan Company that, according to the Treasury Department, produced components found in Iranian Mohajer-6 drones that were downed by Ukrainian forces. In addition to the "destructive result” of Iranian drones in Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement the US remains concerned by the "horrific impact" of Iran's supply of missiles and drones to terrorist organizations and proxies "that directly threaten the security of Israel and our Gulf partners."
Under the terms of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which enshrined the now-defunct 2015 nuclear deal, some restrictions on Iran were to expire on Oct. 18, including a ban on its import and export of missiles and drones with a range of 300 kilometers or more. The accord’s European signatories — Britain, France and Germany — chose not to invoke the “snapback” mechanism under 2231 as the nuclear deal's critics had hoped, which would have forced a return of terminated UN sanctions. The three European powers instead transferred the UN restrictions that were set to expire into their domestic sanctions regimes last month. The ability for one or more of the nuclear deal's participants to call for a snapback of sanctions itself expires in October 2025. The Trump administration withdrew from the nuclear accord in 2018, and Biden officials say the United States lacks the authority to snapback sanctions.
Briefing reporters Wednesday on condition of anonymity, a senior State Department official said the new US sanctions were taken in coordination with partners to send “a very clear message” to Iran that it is “not business as usual.”
“The fact that UN 2231 has been lifted, that has no effect on us letting up any pressure on Iran,” the official said. “We are incredibly concerned about what Iran is doing to destabilize the region.” The Biden administration on Wednesday also issued new guidance to private industry regarding the electronics and other dual-use components that Iran is seeking to bolster its missile program. It additionally released a joint statement endorsed by more than 45 countries, including Canada and European allies, underscoring their commitment to preventing “the supply, sale, or transfer of ballistic missile-related items.”
But following Wednesday’s expiration, Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said to expect more, not less, missile testing and proliferation from Iran. “Targeting Tehran’s drone and missile procurers, producers and proliferators is necessary but not sufficient to counter Iran’s evolving unmanned aerial threats,” Taleblu said, adding that the lapse of UN penalties “will feed into Iranian assessments of Western risk aversion.”The US moves came amid growing bipartisan congressional pressure for the Biden administration to punish Iran over the deadly assault on Israel carried out by Gaza-based group Hamas. US officials say Iran is broadly complicit in the attack due to the significant financial and material support it provides the Palestinian militants, but they do not have evidence suggesting Tehran played a direct role in the planning.
As a condition of its prisoner exchange with the United States last month, Iran gained limited access to $6 billion of its oil revenue that was effectively frozen in South Korea due to US sanctions. The funds were wired to a restricted account in Qatar, where US officials say Iran can use them for food, medicine, medical devices and agricultural products under strict Treasury Department supervision. Following the Hamas attack in Israel, the US and Qatari governments have reportedly agreed to prevent Iran from accessing the $6 billion fund.
“Not a penny of that money has been spent,” the senior State Department official said. “We do not expect this money to move anytime soon.”

US destroyer shoots down cruise missiles by Iran-backed Houthis
Jared Szuba/Rina Bassist/Al- Monitor/October 19, 2023
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon confirmed on Thursday that the Navy destroyer USS Carney shot down three land-attack cruise missiles and several drones fired by the Iran-backed Houthi militant group in Yemen. There were no casualties to US forces or to any civilians, the Pentagon said. The missiles “were launched from Yemen heading north along the Red Sea, potentially towards targets in Israel,” Pentagon press secretary Pat Ryder told reporters. The shoot-down marks the first major US military response to what appeared to be a coordinated escalation by suspected Iran-backed militias as Washington seeks to contain the fallout from Israel’s war in Gaza. Saudi Arabia also shot down one of the drones launched by the Houthis, Israeli media reported. “This action was a demonstration of the integrated air and missile defense architecture that we have built in the Middle East,” Ryder said. Elsewhere in the region, US bases in Iraq and Syria were targeted in at least three separate drone attacks starting Tuesday, leading to the death of a civilian contractor working for the US military at al-Asad airbase in Iraq’s Anbar province. The contractor, whose identity and nationality the Pentagon has not confirmed, died of a “cardiac episode” after early-warning sirens caused personnel at the base to seek shelter, Ryder said Thursday. Pentagon officials did not say what groups may have been behind the attack, but did not rule out potential US retaliation.“We’re going to do everything necessary to ensure that we’re protecting our forces,” Ryder told reporters on Thursday. “And if and when we choose to respond, we will do so at a time that we’re choosing.” Al-Asad air base was previously targeted by two kamikaze-style drones on Tuesday morning. Ground-based US air defenses shot down one of the drones and damaged the other, leading to “minor injuries” among personnel at the base, including symptoms potentially indicative of concussive brain injuries, Al-Monitor reported yesterday. It remained unclear how many coalition personnel were affected. US troops also shot down a drone near the Bashir airbase in Iraq’s Kurdistan region.
Early on Wednesday, US troops at the Al-Tanf garrison in Syria’s remote southern desert were also targeted by two incoming drones. “US and coalition forces engaged one drone, destroying it, while the other drone impacted the base resulting in minor injuries,” Ryder told reporters. Coalition personnel also suffered headaches in the aftermath of the al-Tanf attack, Al-Monitor reported earlier on Thursday. It remained unclear where the drone attacks were launched from.
The new spate of attacks suggests Iran-backed militias in the region are seeking to target US personnel in retaliation for Washington’s support for Israel, despite the Pentagon’s efforts to deter wider regional escalation. Iraq’s Sabereen news, aligned with factions backed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), suggested the “Islamic Resistance of Iraq” — an umbrella term for Iran-backed militias — was behind the drone attack, as well as an alleged rocket attack targeting al-Asad air base, which remains unconfirmed by the Pentagon. Iran-backed militias across the region have openly threatened to target American forces in retaliation for Washington’s support for Israel amid its war against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. Houthi leader Abdel Malik al-Houthi warned earlier this month that his side would target American forces with drones and “other military options” if the US gets involved in Israel’s war in Gaza. In a tweet on Tuesday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused Washington of governing Israel’s campaign in the besieged Palestinian enclave.
Ryder sought to downplay any linkages between this week’s attacks and the Israel-Gaza war. “Right now, this conflict is contained between Israel and Hamas,” he told reporters. “We’re going to do everything we can to ensure deterrence in the region so that this does not become a broader regional conflict.”The US has dispatched its largest aircraft carrier strike group, the USS Ford, to the eastern Mediterranean, with a second carrier strike group on the way in a bid to contain the fallout.
The Pentagon has also sent additional F-15s, F-16s and A-10s and redirected the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit aboard the USS Bataan Amphibious Readiness Group to the region to respond if needed. In addition to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, Iran’s IRGC has funded and trained a host of militias in Syria and Iraq, arming them with precision-guided munitions and raising fears of a potential multi-front confrontation against Israel.
US forces across the region have been on heightened alert since Israel began bombing targets in Gaza in response to a massive terrorist attack that left some 1,400 people dead across southern Israel on Oct. 7.
President Joe Biden has thrown full support behind Israel while his administration seeks to buy time ahead of an anticipated ground invasion of Gaza. Administration officials are reportedly concerned that Israel does not have a realistic plan for governing the Palestinian enclave once it deposes Hamas. Pentagon officials are also increasingly worried that an IDF ground incursion could scuttle Washington’s efforts to convince additional Arab countries like Saudi Arabia to normalize ties with Israel in order to build a defensive regional bulwark against Iran. Biden on Wednesday cast doubt on recent news reports suggesting the US military would get directly involved if Hezbollah were to unleash its massive arsenal of projectiles against Israel. “Not true,” Biden said of reports from Israel that Washington had offered such assurances.

Sunak supports Israel, hails accord on Gaza humanitarian aid delivery
Rina Bassist/Al- Monitor/October 19, 2023
On a visit to Israel on Thursday, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak thanked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his decision to enable the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. Shortly after meeting in Tel Aviv with US President Joe Biden on Wednesday, Netanyahu announced that Israel would not prevent aid from entering Gaza from Egypt. Sunak is the fourth head of government to travel to Israel on a solidarity visit since Hamas' surprise attack on Oct. 7, following those of Romania, Germany and the United States.
Standing alongside Netanyahu at a press conference, Sunak said, “We recognize that the Palestinians are victims of Hamas too. And that is why I welcome your decision yesterday that you took, to ensure that routes into Gaza will be opened for humanitarian aid.” He added, “I’m glad that you made that decision. We will support it. We are increasing our aid to the region, and we will look to get more support to people as quickly as we can.”Sunak also stressed that the United Kingdom stands by Israel in the wake of the Hamas attack. “We absolutely support Israel’s right to defend itself in line with international law, to go after Hamas, to take back hostages, deter further incursions, and to strengthen your security for the long term,” he said.Addressing a prior statement by Netanyahu on the situation Israel finds itself in, Sunak said, “You described this as Israel’s darkest hour. Then it is for me to say, I am proud to stand here with you, in Israel’s darkest hour. As your friend, we will stand with you in solidarity. We will stand with your people, and we also want you to win.”Israel considers the UK one of its closest allies. British Foreign Minister James Cleverly visited Israel last week to express UK solidarity with the Israeli people in the wake of Hamas' attack. He is currently in the region, making stops in Egypt, Turkey and Qatar. The British Foreign Ministry said the goal of Cleverly's tour is “to help prevent the conflict spreading across the region and to seek a peaceful resolution” as well as to push for an agreement on humanitarian access to Gaza, release of British hostages and foreign nationals held in Gaza by Hamas, and secure safe passage for British nationals to leave Gaza. The issue of the hostages, including dual nationals, was also a topic of discussion between Sunak and Netanyahu. While in Israel, Sunak met with the family of two British citizens believed to be among those kidnapped by Hamas and taken to Gaza. According to British authorities, seven British citizens were killed during the Oct. 7 attack and nine remain missing. The Israeli Defense Forces said on Thursday that 100 to 200 Israelis remain unaccounted for after Hamas' attack, and it believes more than the 203 hostages previously confirmed by the IDF to be in the Gaza Strip could be in captivity there as well. According to IDF estimates, 30 out of the 203 are under 18, and 10 to 20 are elderly. The IDF also said it is uncertain how many of the hostages are alive, noting that while most are being held by Hamas, some may be held by Islamic Jihad or even by private residents. Shortly after Hamas' attack, the UK government said it was deploying Royal Navy vessels and Royal Air Force surveillance planes to the Eastern Mediterranean to “ensure regional stability” and support.

Gaza in 'unprecedented catastrophe': over 3,700 deaths, 1,524 are children
Beatrice Farhat/Rina Bassist/Al- Monitor/October 19, 2023
Hundreds of aid trucks waited Thursday near the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing, prepared to deliver much needed humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip following a US-Egyptian agreement to open it. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini described an "unprecedented catastrophe" in Gaza Strip, with millions trapped in the southern part, hospitals nearing capacity and clean water running out. "An unprecedented catastrophe is unfolding before our eyes," Lazzarini said. "Gaza is being strangled and the world seems to have lost its humanity." More than 3,785 people, including 1,524 children, have been killed in Israeli airstrikes since Oct. 7, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza, while 12,493 have been injured according to the Health Ministry figures. Hospitals across the territory are struggling to cope with the rising number of casualties amid a blackout and lack of supplies due to the blockade imposed by Israel. In the early days of the war, Israel imposed a "total siege" on Gaza, saying it will be eased once the hostages being held by Hamas are freed. After nearly two weeks of inaction on assistance amid intense Israeli bombardment of Gaza, US President Joe Biden said Wednesday that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi had agreed to open the crossing — Gaza's only current point of exit or entry — to allow in aid.
The crossing connecting Gaza to the Sinai Peninsula has remained closed since Israel began conducting air raids against the enclave after Hamas' attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed 1,400 people. Many Gazans fled northern Gaza last week after Israel ordered them to evacuate ahead of its looming ground invasion of the territory. More than 1.1 million Palestinians live in northern Gaza. Israel and Egypt have traded blame for obstructing the delivery of aid as well as the exit of Palestinian civilians and foreign passport holders in Gaza. On Wednesday, the Israeli government said it will not prevent the entry of deliveries from Egypt. “In light of President Biden’s demand, Israel will not thwart humanitarian supplies from Egypt as long as it is only food, water and medicine for the civilian population in the southern Gaza Strip,” a government statement read.
The delay in aid deliveries has caused global outrage as the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip continues to deteriorate after almost two weeks of war. Israel, supported by Egypt, has imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip since Hamas came to power in 2007. The Ministry of Health in Gaza said on Thursday that 44 healthcare workers have been killed in the Israeli air assault, which also forced four hospitals and 14 medical centers across Gaza to halt operations. Worsening matters, a deadly blast at al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City resulted in hundreds of casualties. Hamas has blamed Israel for the strike, but the Israel Defense Forces and the Pentagon say the blast was likely caused by an errant rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Meanwhile, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said 32 of its facilities across Gaza have been impacted by Israeli airstrikes since Oct. 7. On Tuesday, an UNRWA school sheltering some 4,000 displaced people in Al-Maghazi refugee camp was hit, leaving eight people dead and 40 injured, the UN refugee agency said in a report. “UNRWA shelters are overcrowded and have very limited supplies of food, hygiene and cleaning supplies and potable water. The dire conditions, compounded by trauma due to the war, have started to fuel tensions among the IDPs [internally displaced persons] in the shelters,” UNRWA warned.

Gaza awaits humanitarian aid, as Israel tells troops to 'be ready' for ground invasion
Associated Press/19 October 2023
Israel pounded the Gaza Strip with airstrikes on Thursday, including in the south where Palestinians were told to take refuge, and the country's defense minister told ground troops to "be ready" to invade, though he didn't say when. Gaza's overwhelmed hospitals tried to stretch out ebbing medical supplies and fuel for diesel generators to keep the equipment running, as authorities worked out logistics for a delivery of aid into from Egypt. Doctors in darkened wards across Gaza stitched wounds by mobile phone light, and others used vinegar to treat infected wounds. The Israeli military has relentlessly attacked Gaza in retaliation for a devastating Hamas rampage in southern Israel almost two weeks ago. Even after Israel told Palestinians to evacuate the north of Gaza and flee south, strikes extended across the territory, heightening fears among the territory's 2 million people that nowhere was safe. Palestinian militants fired rockets into Israel on Thursday from Gaza and Lebanon, and tensions flared in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
In a fiery speech to Israeli infantry soldiers on the Gaza border Thursday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant urged the forces to "get organized, be ready" for an order to move in. Israel has massed tens of thousands of troops along the border.
"Whoever sees Gaza from afar now, will see it from the inside ... I promise you," he said. "It might take a week, a month, two months until we destroy them," he added, referring to Hamas. Israel's consent for Egypt to let in food, water and medicine provided the first possibility for an opening in its sealing off of the territory. Many among Gaza's 2.3 million residents are down to one meal a day and drinking dirty water.
Israel did not list fuel as a permitted item, but a senior Egyptian security official said Egypt was negotiating for the entry of fuel for hospitals. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press. The first trucks of aid were expected to go in Friday, Egypt's state-owned Al-Qahera news, which is close to security agencies, reported.
With the Egypt-Gaza border crossing in Rafah still closed, the already dire conditions at Gaza's second-largest hospital deteriorated further, said Dr. Mohammed Qandeel of Nasser Hospital in the southern town of Khan Younis. Power was shut off in most departments to save it for intensive care and other vital functions, and staff members were using mobile phones for light. At least 80 wounded civilians and 12 dead flooded into the hospital Thursday morning after witnesses said a strike hit a residential building in Khan Younis. Doctors had no choice but to leave two of the incoming to die because there were no ventilators left, Qandeel said. "We can't save more lives if this keeps happening, meaning more children ... more women will die," he said.
The Gaza Health Ministry pleaded with gas stations to give whatever fuel they had left to hospitals. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, gave some of its little remaining fuel stores to hospitals, according to spokesperson Juliette Touma.
The agency's donation to Gaza City's Shifa Hospital, the territory's largest, would "keep us going for another few hours," hospital director Mohammed Abu Selmia told The Associated Press.The Gaza Health Ministry said 3,785 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, the majority of them women, children and older adults. Nearly 12,500 others were injured, and another 1,300 people were believed buried under the rubble, health authorities said.
More than 1,400 people in Israel have been reportedly killed during Hamas' massive incursion on Oct. 7. Roughly 200 others were abducted. The Israeli military said Thursday it had notified the families of 203 captives. More than 1 million Palestinians, roughly half of Gaza's population, have fled their homes in Gaza City and other places in the northern part of the territory since Israel told them to evacuate. Most have crowded into U.N.-run schools-turned-shelters or the homes of relatives.The deal to get aid into Gaza through Rafah, the territory's only connection to Egypt, remained fragile. Israel said the supplies could only go to civilians in southern Gaza and that it would "thwart" any diversions by Hamas. U.S. President Joe Biden said the deliveries "will end" if Hamas takes any aid.
More than 200 trucks and some 3,000 tons of aid were positioned at or near Rafah, according to Khalid Zayed. the head of the Red Crescent for North Sinai. Under an arrangement reached between the United Nations, Israel and Egypt, U.N. observers will inspect the trucks carrying aid before entering Gaza, and the U.N. working with Egyptian and Palestian Red Crescent will ensure aid goes only to civilians, an Egyptian official and European diplomat told the AP. A U.N. flag will be raised on both sides of the crossing as a sign of protection against airstrikes, they said.
The official and the diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief media. It was not immediately clear how much cargo the crossing could handle. Waleed Abu Omar, spokesman for the Palestinian side, said work has not started to repair the road between the two gates, damaged by Israeli strikes.
Asked if foreigners and dual nationals seeking to leave would be let out of Gaza, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told Al-Arabiya TV: "As long as the crossing is operating normally and the (crossing) facility has been repaired."Israel had previously said it would let nothing into Gaza until Hamas freed the hostages taken from Israel. Relatives of some of the captives reacted with fury to the aid announcement. "Children, infants, women, soldiers, men, and elderly, some with serious illnesses, wounded and shot, are held underground like animals," the Hostage and Missing Families Forum said in a statement. But "the Israeli government pampers the murderers and kidnappers."
The Israeli military reported Thursday that it killed a top Palestinian militant in Rafah and hit hundreds of targets across Gaza, including militant tunnel shafts, intelligence infrastructure and command centers. It said it also hit dozens of mortar-launching posts, most of them immediately after they were used to fire shells at Israel. Palestinians have launched barrages of rockets at Israel since the fighting began.
Israel has said it is attacking Hamas militants wherever they may be in Gaza. It has accused the group's leaders and fighters of taking shelter among the civilian population, leaving Palestinians feeling in constant danger.
After Thursday's strikes in Khan Younis, sirens wailed as emergency crews rushed to rescue survivors from the crushed apartment building. Many residents were believed trapped under twisted bed frames, broken furniture and cement chunks. A small, soot-covered child, dangling in the arms of a rescue worker, was taken out of a damaged building. Gaza's Hamas-led government said several bakeries in the territory were hit in the overnight strikes, making it even harder for residents to get food.
Violence was also escalating in the West Bank where Israel carried out a rare airstrike Thursday, targeting militants in the Nur Shams refugee camp. Israeli troops raided the camp the previous night and were still battling Palestinian fighters inside. Six Palestinians were killed in the camp, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, and the Israeli military said the strike killed militants. Ten Israeli officers were wounded when fighters threw explosives at the troops. More than 74 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the war started. Hezbollah militants in Lebanon on Thursday said it fired missiles into northern Israel, hitting a kibbutz. The Israeli military said no one was injured and responded with shelling on border areas in Lebanon. Hamas militants also fired 30 rockets from southern Lebanese toward Israeli towns. Violence on the border comes amid fears the Hamas-Israel conflict could spread across the region.

African-Nordic Ministers Agree to Confront Terrorism
Asharq Al Awsat/19 October 2023
The African-Nordic ministerial meeting agreed to transform challenges into cooperation and partnership opportunities to address conflicts and terrorist threats, especially in the Sahel-Saharan region. Algerian Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf delivered a speech at the conclusion of the 20th session of the African-Nordic Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Algiers, stating that the three-day consultations agreed to boost the cooperation between African and Nordic countries and coordinate to address various political and security challenges. Attaf noted that the talks also called for increased efforts to revitalize and boost the role of multilateral diplomacy under the umbrella of the United Nations. The consultations shed light on the unprecedented global and regional challenges amid international relations characterized by turmoil and polarization. The talks highlighted the importance of employing the enormous youth energy in Africa to serve the shared goals and aspirations for peace, security, and sustainable development. The participants stressed that African-Nordic cooperation continues to grow within the broader framework of the North-South partnership, according to Attaf. He pointed out that there are efforts to establish a free trade area on the African continent. The Algerian diplomat further explained that African-Nordic cooperation should not be limited to the annual meeting, stressing that those distinguished ties must extend their constructive and positive impact to international forums, especially at the UN. Attaf gave a presentation about Algeria's efforts to ensure calm and encourage the activation of peaceful solutions to the crises in Niger and Mali. He also called for mobilizing efforts to organize an international conference on development in the Sahel. Algeria will join the UN Security Council in early 2024 as a non-permanent member, said Attaf, pledging to coordinate efforts towards advancing peace and security and boost collective support for just causes based on principles and values that serve all of humanity. Attaf strongly criticized "double standards" in dealing with even the most heinous crimes, referring to the “massacre” against Gaza’s people amid a “terrible” international silence. He warned that turning "a blind eye" to the “genocide” in Gaza is unacceptable and threatens the region's security. Experts on development issues, combating extremism, terrorism, and irregular migration from 30 African countries and the five northern European countries, namely Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Iceland, participated in the meeting. The 19th session of the African-Nordic foreign ministers meeting was held in Finland in 2022 with the participation of only four Nordic and seven African ministers.
Denmark assumed the presidency of the 21st session at the Algeria meeting and will organize the next session there.

UK's Sunak Visits Israel, Will Warn against Gaza War Escalation
Asharq Al Awsat/19 October 2023
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak arrived in Israel on Thursday to demonstrate solidarity with a country reeling from an Oct. 7 rampage by Hamas gunmen and to hold talks with his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu. With Israel's counter-offensive against Hamas in Gaza spiraling, Sunak will share his condolences for the loss of life in Israel and in the Palestinian enclave and warn against further escalation, his office said. "Above all, I'm here to express my solidarity with the Israeli people. You have suffered an unspeakable, horrific act of terrorism and I want you to know that the United Kingdom and I stand with you," Sunak told Israeli reporters after landing. Sunak was due to visit other regional capitals after Israel, said Reuters. In an early statement, he said a Gaza hospital blast on Tuesday that caused mass Palestinian casualties should be "a watershed moment for leaders in the region and across the world to come together to avoid further dangerous escalation of conflict", adding that Britain would be at "the forefront of this effort". Sunak will also urge the opening up of a route to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza from Egypt as soon as possible, and to enable British nationals trapped in Gaza to leave.
"Every civilian death is a tragedy. And too many lives have been lost following Hamas’ horrific act of terror," Sunak said. At least seven British nationals have been killed and at least nine are still missing since the attack on Israel, Sunak's spokesperson said on Wednesday.
Alongside Sunak's visit, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, who visited Israel last week, will travel to Egypt, Türkiye and Qatar over the next three days to discuss the conflict and seek a peaceful resolution, his office said.
Britain said the three countries were "vital to international efforts to uphold regional stability, free hostages and allow humanitarian access to Gaza". Cleverly will meet with senior leaders there to discuss efforts to prevent the conflict spreading, the urgent need to open the Rafah crossing with Egypt to let aid reach those who need it and for Hamas to release hostages, Britain said.

Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 19-20/2023
Eyeless in Gaza .... How the U.S. blinded Israeli intelligence gathering efforts on Hamas and other Palestinian groups inside Lebanon
Tony Badran/The Tablet/October 19/ 2023
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/123332/123332/
“… Promise was that I
Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;
Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza…”
—John Milton, Samson Agonistes
It will be a while before we’re able to piece together a more complete picture of how Israel, despite its vaunted intelligence-gathering capabilities, was blindsided by the massive Hamas terrorist onslaught on Oct. 7, which led to the biggest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. After the current Israeli operation in Gaza concludes, there will be inquiries, official and unofficial, in Israel and beyond, about what contributed to this intelligence failure. Where was Israel blinded, and how?
A key focal point for these inquiries will be Lebanon. Immediately following the Oct. 7 massacre, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing Hamas and Hezbollah sources, that the terrorist attack was planned by the Iranians and Hezbollah in Lebanon, where the Iranians had set up a joint operations room, the existence of which Hezbollah media had previously disclosed in 2021. The New York Times corroborated the Journal’s story a few days later, adding that training for the attack, including on paragliders which were used to slaughter Israelis and tourists at a music festival, also took place in Lebanon.
So how did Israel find itself blind and deaf in Lebanon? Why was it that, with all this activity taking place in Lebanon over several months, Israel was not able to pick up meaningful intelligence on a lethal adversary? To answer these questions, we must turn to the current security environment in Lebanon, which in turn shaped and constrained Israel’s intelligence gathering capabilities.
Since Israel’s last major war in Lebanon in 2006, the tiny county has come under American sponsorship, even as it remained under Iranian suzerainty via its local regent, Hezbollah. This U.S.-Iranian condominium, solidified during Barack Obama’s two terms in office, is being topped off by the construction of a brand-new, $1 billion U.S. Embassy in Beirut—a symbol of the U.S.’s commitment to underwriting the country’s existing Hezbollah-led order.
America’s most significant commitments to Iranian-dominated Lebanon involve underwriting the Lebanese security sector, especially its two largest organs: the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and the Internal Security Forces (ISF). The U.S. provides arms, training and equipment to these forces. Over the past year, American taxpayer dollars have also underwritten their salaries.
Right from the outset, the Lebanese security forces used American training and equipment to uncover Israeli spy cells gathering intelligence on Hezbollah. In 2009, the ISF detected an Israeli breach of Hezbollah’s ranks. The then-head of the ISF called the group’s intelligence chief and told him: “You’ve been infiltrated.” After Hezbollah and the ISF exchanged information, Hezbollah reportedly then took over the surveillance, apprehension, and interrogation of the spies. Following the assassination of Hezbollah senior commander Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus the previous year, the LAF gave Hezbollah a counterintelligence assist by snatching Israeli spies in eastern Lebanon.
It’s hard to argue with the notion that funding the security arm of an Iranian-backed pseudo-state run by a terror army that has murdered hundreds of Americans and targets America’s only useful military ally in the region is the furthest thing from a wise or sane investment. But the U.S. didn’t set out to fund Hezbollah’s auxiliary security services—not initially.
During the presidency of George W. Bush, Washington imagined that building and strengthening so-called state institutions in Lebanon would bolster a weak political coalition the U.S. was then backing, and help fend off a violent campaign sponsored by Syria and meant to eliminate the possibility of any kind of functioning Lebanese state. The ISF’s Intelligence Branch in particular was run by figures close to Saad Hariri, the son of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, whom Hezbollah had assassinated four years earlier. A U.N. commission, and then a special tribunal, were set up to investigate Hariri Sr.’s murder, and this loyalist ISF unit worked with the U.N. investigators. A small number of ISF officers spent their days analyzing the data of cellphone communications between members of the Hezbollah assassination unit that killed Hariri Sr. They were all targeted for assassination between 2006 and 2008.
Whatever the intentions of the Bush-era policy, to anyone familiar with Lebanese dynamics, it was as predictable as it was inevitable that the ISF would reach out to Hezbollah with an offer to provide it with counterintelligence services. With that offer, the ISF essentially was telling Hezbollah, “the assistance we are getting from the U.S. is not targeted against you. To the contrary, it can be of benefit to you. It is our duty, as a security organ of the state, to defend Lebanon and every Lebanese against all external threats, the Israeli enemy chief among them. So American assistance can be a boon to you as well.”
Guided by a combination of fear as well as a desire to curry favor, Lebanese security organs redirected the signal-detection equipment provided by the U.S. to fight Islamic militants, and used it against Israel instead. Under the terms of the arrangement with Hezbollah, the LAF and ISF are allowed, even encouraged, to use American support to Hezbollah’s advantage by focusing on Sunni Islamic groups (that is, those not already working or aligned with Hezbollah) and on Israel.
This cooperation did not eliminate Hezbollah’s red lines, however. It merely affirmed the terror group’s dominance. As such, when the head of the ISF Intelligence Branch was deemed a potential source of trouble in the early days of the uprising against the Assad regime, he was swiftly eliminated in an October 2012 car bombing.
It’s hard to argue with the notion that funding the security arm of an Iranian-backed pseudo-state run by a terror army that has murdered hundreds of Americans and targets America’s only useful military ally in the region is the furthest thing from a wise or sane investment.
The counterintelligence collaboration between Hezbollah and the security services has continued uninterrupted ever since. In recent years, LAF and ISF counterintelligence units have proved their worth to Hezbollah by uncovering Israeli agents, networks, and spying equipment.
The largest recent ISF counterintelligence operation occurred in the beginning of 2022, a few months after Hezbollah media disclosed the existence of the IRGC joint operations room in Beirut that oversaw the 2021 war in Gaza. The ISF uncovered multiple Israeli spy cells inside Lebanon, some of which had penetrated Hezbollah and others that were providing intelligence from Syria. Others, meanwhile, were collecting on Hamas. According to a report in the pro-Hezbollah Al-Akhbar, the informants were asked to observe movements of Palestinian outsiders into the camps and to monitor locations that might have a military purpose.
Up until that point, Israel had been watching Hamas’ rising profile in the country quite closely. An unsourced December 2021 report in Yedioth Ahronoth claimed Hamas fighters in Lebanon were receiving training from the Iranians. The dismantling of the spy networks came before the public activity of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leaders in Lebanon was set to increase. Senior leaders in both factions, including PIJ’s Ziad Nakhaleh, had either already relocated to Lebanon or were about to. With this process underway, it was necessary to blind the Israelis, using U.S.-trained-and-equipped Lebanese counterintelligence forces—who enjoyed the additional advantage of being immune to Israeli retaliation, as U.S.-trained-and-protected state actors.
In August 2022, a meeting between Nakhaleh, the Islamic Jihad leader, and Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah was publicized by Hezbollah media. The meeting discussed the so-called “unity of fronts” against Israel, and “the roles all the parties in the Resistance Axis are expected to play in the next stage.” According to Iranian sources cited in the above-mentioned New York Times report, planning for the Hamas terrorist attack started around this time in 2022.
The Iranian-Hezbollah-Palestinian coordination effort went into high gear in 2023, specifically in Lebanon. In early April 2023, the head of Iran’s Quds Force, Esmail Ghaani, arrived in Beirut to meet with the leaders of Hezbollah, Hamas, and PIJ at the Iranian Embassy. Prior to his Beirut stop, Ghaani’s itinerary reportedly included meetings with leaders of IRGC-commanded militias operating in Syria and Iran. In conjunction with Ghaani’s Beirut visit, Hezbollah orchestrated the firing of 34 rockets—the largest number to be fired from Lebanon since 2006. From April through September, Hamas and PIJ leaders held meetings with the Iranian leadership in Iran, Syria, and Lebanon, and continued to consult regularly with Nasrallah in Beirut.
Ghaani reportedly returned to Beirut in early August. Right before the Quds Force commander’s second visit, clashes erupted in Ain el-Helweh, the largest Palestinian camp near Sidon, between Fatah and Islamist factions. The fighting began following a visit to Lebanon by Palestinian Authority intelligence chief Majed Faraj, and the subsequent assassination of one of his security officials in the camp, Abu Ashraf al-Armoushi.
Pro-Hezbollah media interpreted Faraj’s visit as intersecting with Israeli interests in an attempt to agitate against Hamas and PIJ, who had been leading the unrest in the West Bank. According to Al-Akhbar, Faraj wanted “to curb the Palestinian resistance factions which have grown capable of targeting Israeli settlements with rockets.” In addition, the paper claimed, Faraj offered cooperation with the Lebanese government on checking any uncontrolled armed presence in the camps, as well as handing in all wanted men to the authorities, “in return for Beirut to tighten the vise on Hamas’ and Islamic Jihad’s political and military activity” in Lebanon.
If that was indeed Faraj’s plan, it didn’t go anywhere. The initial fighting stopped a few days later in early August before breaking out again briefly the following month and ending in a ceasefire in mid-September 2023.
As these events unfolded in the period immediately preceding the Oct. 7 attack, the ISF uncovered and arrested another Hamas operative spying for Israel in Sidon. The ISF reportedly also confiscated his computers and was able to trace his various connections inside Hamas’ Qassam Brigades. According to Al-Akhbar, his tasks included monitoring Hamas members who had moved to Lebanon from the West Bank and Gaza.
The ISF’s bust led to their greater cooperation with Hamas to obtain further information. In turn, Al-Akhbar claimed, Hamas began its own investigation in Gaza to track everyone the operative had worked with or remained in contact with since coming to Lebanon from Turkey. That is, the ISF once again contributed to blinding Israel on behalf of Iranian assets. In doing so, it may well have directly aided and reinformed Hamas operational security in Gaza on the eve of the Oct. 7 attack.
U.S. policy in Lebanon, and its sponsorship of the Lebanese security sector, badly undermined Israel’s collection capabilities in the country. But what about America’s own intelligence gathering capabilities in Lebanon? Over the past decade, one of the justifications you’d hear from U.S. officials and bureaucrats for supporting the Lebanese military and security organs was that this deepening relationship gave America better visibility and human intelligence into what was going inside a terror hotbed. America’s Lebanese assets would also supplement our extensive capabilities monitoring terror groups throughout the region, including the IRGC, Hezbollah, and Hamas. And that’s in addition to what we collect in neighboring Syria, where the Iranian network has been active for years. By way of example, in 2017, following a chemical attack in northwestern Syria by the Assad regime, the U.S. government disclosed that signals intelligence had intercepted communications of the Syrian command leaving no doubt as to Assad’s responsibility for the attack.
And yet, despite countless meetings and high-level visits between Iranian officials, Hezbollah, and Hamas, coupled with intensified kinetic activity in the region, U.S. officials are saying that they “weren’t tracking” this operation. That answer is, to put it mildly, difficult to believe. But let’s ask another question: how come none of the U.S.-subsidized clients in the Lebanese military and security services—the ones who were busy busting Israeli cells all the way up to September—provided the U.S. any meaningful intelligence, even despite the fact that Hamas paragliders had been training in Lebanon? Hundreds of military-aged Palestinian hang gliders repeatedly soaring over any country seems like a difficult target for a major intelligence service to miss.
What seems clear is that, in exchange for the U.S. providing training and equipment, and paying everyone’s salaries, U.S. clients inside Lebanon managed exclusively to provide U.S.-subsidized counterintelligence support to Hezbollah and Hamas that contributed to blinding Israel, while failing entirely to provide the U.S. itself with any relevant information whatsoever. The U.S. government’s awesome signals intelligence capabilities in the eastern Mediterranean and the Levant, Iraq, and the Gulf were also unable to pick up anything of interest, while the planning and the training was happening in the country where the Biden administration is completing a 43-acre embassy compound.
It would be bad enough that U.S. policy in Lebanon appears to have contributed to keeping Israel in the dark in the months before the Oct. 7 massacre. It did. But it also did more than that. As Hezbollah increased the tempo of cross border attacks and provocations from Lebanon, leading to the establishment of a military outpost in the Israeli Golan, the administration backed Hezbollah’s play and moved to distract Israel by tying it down in a land border demarcation process with the Lebanese, helping to keep Israel’s political echelon from noticing the actual threat brewing inside Lebanon.
Did the U.S. intend for any of this to happen? Not exactly. On the other hand, everything that did happen was the direct product of U.S. policy, which means that America must shoulder some part of the blame. And if the U.S. chooses to continue its deadly policies in Lebanon, it will hardly be able to plead ignorance the next time that the Iranian “axis of resistance” murderers Israelis—and Americans.
*Tony Badran is Tablet magazine’s Levant analyst. He is a research fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where he focuses on Lebanon, Hezbollah, Syria, and the geopolitics of the Levant. He tweets @AcrossTheBay.

How to save Gazan lives ...It would require only two words
Clifford D. May/The Washington Times/October 19, 2023
Much of the media is now moving briskly on from the atrocities committed by Hamas with Tehran’s assistance – the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust – to the plight of Gazans. Why must Gazans suffer for the crimes of their leaders who happen to be designated terrorists?
The answer: They needn’t.
It would require only two words by Hamas leaders to end this war. Those words are: “We surrender.”
Hamas leaders could emerge from the elaborate and expensive tunnels in which they are hiding. They could release their nearly 200 Israeli, American, and other hostages.
Emperor Hirohito surrendered to spare the Japanese further suffering and end a world war. To do the same would be beneath the dignity of Mohammed Deif, Hamas’s military commander?
Israel’s military operation against Hamas has been targeting infrastructure: weapons factories, munitions warehouses, command-and-control centers.
Because the north of Gaza is an active war zone crawling with Hamas fighters, Israel has advised Gazans not eager to die for Hamas and its Iranian puppeteers to head south.
Hamas has been ordering Gazans to stay put and get killed so their corpses can be used for public relations purposes.
Gazans would be even safer if they’d cross into Egypt to wait out the war. But Egypt has prohibited large numbers from entering. Hamas also has taken steps to prevent an exodus.
Israelis have long supplied Gazans with electricity. No international law obligates them to do so in wartime. At President Biden’s urging, however, they have agreed to provide power to the south – for now.
But with all the foreign aid that has poured into Gaza since Israel’s complete withdrawal from the territory in 2005, why are Gazans still relying on Israel for electricity?
The answer: Because Hamas’s raison d’etre is killing Jews. The wellbeing of Gazans is for other to worry about. Hamas turns metal pipes imported to distribute water into missiles.
Hamas’s war crimes on Oct. 7 – including torture, rape, and mutilation – replicate ISIS and Nazi barbarism.
Call me naïve, but I expected self-proclaimed champions of the “Palestinian cause” to protest: “It’s not fair to judge all Palestinians by Hamas’s terrible actions!”
But the Democratic Socialists of America, Black Lives Matter Grassroots, Harvard identity groups, and a Starbucks’s union are among those proclaiming solidarity with the baby-killers and genocidaires, including by displaying drawings of a Hamas terrorist flying a paraglider over the international border into Israel.
I attribute that mostly to malice, but ignorance spiked with antisemitism plays a role. I have space here to relate just a few fundamental facts.
“Palestine” is the name the Romans gave to Judea, the land of the Jews, as a punishment for Jewish rebellion. The name derives from the Philistines, non-semitic, sea-faring people from Crete who settled in the coastal area known as Canaan in the 12th Century BCE. The Philistines became enemies of the Jews – Goliath the best known. Arab armies invaded centuries later.
Palestine was ruled by foreign empires for millennia until the founding of Israel in part of that territory – an act of decolonization.
As recently as the 1940s, the term “Palestinian” generally referred to Jews. Musicians in the Palestine Symphony Orchestra were Jews. Reporters writing for the Palestine Post were Jews.
The most prominent Palestinian Arab leader before Yasser Arafat, who founded the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, was Haj Amin al-Husseini, appointed Mufti of Jerusalem by the British.
He spent much of World War II in Germany, recruiting European Muslims to the Nazi cause and broadcasting Nazi propaganda. “Kill the Jews wherever you find them,” he told the Arabs of the Middle East on March 1, 1944. “This pleases God, history, and religion. This serves your honor. God is with you.”
In 1947, the U.N. passed a resolution calling for the partition of Palestine – minus the three-quarters Britain had already constituted as a new Arab state today known as Jordan – into two more states, one Jewish and one Arab.
Palestinian Jews agreed to the plan. Palestinian Arabs and the five Arab members of the U.N. denounced the resolution and launched a war to drive the Jews into the sea.
More than one percent of the Jewish population of the fledgling State of Israel was killed in that conflict. About 700,000 Palestinian Arabs became refugees. Over the years that followed, a larger number of Jews would be expelled from Arab and Muslim countries.
Today, the descendants of Arab Muslims who didn’t fight or flee are Israel’s largest minority. They attend Israeli universities. They are doctors, scientists, lawyers, judges, and police officers. Some serve in the Israel Defense Forces.
Nowhere is it easy to be a minority, but Israeli Arabs enjoy more rights and freedoms than do Arabs in any Arab country. Israeli Muslims enjoy more rights and freedoms than do Muslims in any Muslim country.
Yet Israel is slandered as an “apartheid” state.
A “two-state solution” means two states for two peoples peacefully coexisting. Palestinian leaders in the West Bank have rejected multiple proposals.
The Hamas Charter warns that anyone signing a peace agreement that would give so much as “a grain of sand in Palestine in favor of the enemies of God” should have their “hand cut off.”
Besides, Gaza, is already a de facto Palestinian state, established following the 2005 Israeli withdrawal, one ruled by Hamas with funds, arms, training, and instruction from Iran’s rulers who are always happy to sacrifice Arab pawns to advance their goals of “Death to Israel!” and “Death to America!”
Why aren’t those concerned about the people of Gaza directing their fury toward Hamas and its patrons in Tehran who have now made any solution impossible for the foreseeable future?
The answer: It’s much more exhilarating to blame the Jews.
*Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. Follow him on X @CliffordDMay. FDD is a nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

On Our Dark Times and Closed off Horizons!
Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al-Awsat/October 19/ 2023
The great paradox of the Gaza war could perhaps be summed up in this two-pronged and contradictory discovery: on the one hand, the Palestinian problem can only be solved politically, through the establishment of a state for the Palestinian people, and on the other hand, this is no longer possible.
In fact, the first half of the “discovery” is not a discovery. Palestinians and Israelis had reached this conclusion by 1993, the year they signed the famous Oslo Accords, overcoming the pains they had inflicted on one another.
The Oslo Accords were not a model agreement; they were riddled with deficiencies, and the resolution of the most consequential issues they covered was delayed to later stages.
Nonetheless, it was incomparably better than what the balance of power could have offered the Palestinians at that time. And the Oslo Accords gave rise to a situation incomparably better than the state of affairs that has now emerged - the situation we now find ourselves in after this agreement was thwarted and the horrific war in Gaza broke out.
The blows dealt by the Israeli right, both nationalist and religious, accompanied by those of Hamas and the Iranian and Syrian regimes backing it, succeeded in foiling the Oslo Accords under the pretext of its shortcomings. It is indicative that those who toppled it, by assassinating Yitzhak Rabin, as well as bombings and the killing of civilians, are the same people waging the current war and pushing it to a dead end.
Thus, in contrast to wars’ capacity for creating political openings, genocidal wars like that which Israel is waging on the Gaza Strip, and horrific attacks like “Al-Aqsa Flood” push back against this kind of optimistic potential outcome.
Can we imagine, today, the Israelis (represented by Benjamin Netanyahu) and the Palestinians (represented by Hamas) sitting together at a negotiating table and hashing out a political solution? Can either side find the kind of strong popular support and sympathy needed to take this course, at a time when the prevailing rhetoric can be put in the same category as an exchange of fire: “It's either us or them,” and “They only understand the language of force?”
That much can be said before mentioning the bleak specter of an expanded battlefield, either through Western intervention by sea or Iranian intervention by land.
Moreover, the state of the world more broadly can only reinforce predictions of total violence, which could be accompanied, this time, by the absence of a way out and immense difficulties discerning when it could end. The exacerbation of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism in Western countries, increasing numbers of crimes like the murders of a Muslim child in the United States and a teacher in France, and the growing prevalence of the “clash of civilizations” and “tribal wars” discourse, coincide with a stark new development: Western governments are addressing the current Israeli war from a “national security” rather than “foreign policy” perspective.
This has gone beyond the political and military support provided to the Jewish state and is reflected in the crude bias we have seen in the media, culture, sports, and other arenas. We could witness, if things continue to go in this direction, assaults on human rights and multiculturalism ethnic coming hand in hand. “Right-wing” Westerns, and even some who are not necessarily right-wing, could develop ideas advocating the need to contain unchecked social pluralism in a manner that serves the “national interest.”
The mass protests being held in Western capitals in support of Gaza are a testament to just how strongly intertwined political life and the origins of residents are at present. In light of the migration of millions and the fears this evokes in some, this fact could provide belated support for the old reactionary theory that emphasizes origins over free will, and perhaps the primacy of blood ties over universal law.
If the conflicts and clashes persist, here and in Europe, between Muslims and Jews, and we see a surge in Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, we would be staring down an avalanche of retaliation and revenge, as well as regression toward a more rigid and stagnant religious and identitarian consciousness. Such a state of affairs would inevitably inflame the war of symbols: the cross, the hijab, the kippah, and halal and non-halal meat...
In all of this, and given the increased globalization of minor conflicts that are likely to grow, another chapter is being written in the history of setbacks undercutting the modernity and enlightenment project, hitting it after what a period of optimism that arose in the 1990s but was, hindsight demonstrates, naive and premature. If the Arabs and Muslims’ relationship with the West (and thus with democracy and secularism) has always been turbulent, we can only imagine the depths it could now sink to.
We could once again face an explosion, potentially on a more global scale, of the toxic voices we heard from all sides after September 11, 2001, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed. More than a few figures have recently begun reminding us of the Crusades and that their legacy has not died and never will. Modernity is less powerful than identity, as is becoming apparent once again, and it is more frail. While the former progresses like a novel, the latter progresses like an epic, and in epics, the spirit of ancestors lives on through descendants and continues to push them, generation after generation, toward vengeance and death. Our region is horrifying and cursed. It contains enough poison to contaminate the entire universe, or to add qualitatively distinct forms of poison to those that are already present. As for the political discourse advocating a fair solution for the Palestinians, the Al-Aqsa Flood has probably turned it into a flood of illusions that are simultaneously well-intentioned and tedious.

As Biden Turns against Israel, Netanyahu Must Stand Strong
Caroline Glick/Gatestone Institute./October 19, 2023
According to reports, there are "hundreds of trucks" lined up on the border in Egypt, poised to enter the Gaza Strip carrying so-called "humanitarian aid." These trucks, if permitted to enter, will not be inspected in any significant way. There is every reason to believe they are carrying war materiel and jihadist fighters who have arrived to augment Hamas.
To the extent that there is food in the trucks, who will it feed? The hostages? The infirm? Who will the medicine be delivered to? The hostages? Will the fuel in the trucks be used in refrigerators to feed the captive Israelis? Of course not.
Hamas is Gaza. All the "ministries" in Gaza are Hamas. All hospitals are Hamas. Hamas's military headquarters is located under Shifa Hospital.
So whatever and whoever is in the trucks carrying "humanitarian aid," all of it will be delivered to Hamas and will be distributed to benefit Hamas.
By barring civilians from escaping Gaza to its territory, even for the purpose of transiting to third countries, Egypt is collaborating with Hamas's war effort.
[T]he U.N. Security Council passed resolution 1373 under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter. Chapter 7 resolutions, unlike others, are binding on all U.N. member nations. Resolution 1373 stipulates that all U.N. member nations must "Refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts."
Any provision of any aid to Gaza, which is completely controlled by Hamas, is of course either "active or passive" assistance to Hamas, and hence illegal.
Following Blinken's visit to Israel last Thursday, he traveled to Qatar. Qatar houses Hamas's top terror masters. They planned their atrocities from Qatar. Iran's cash and arms are funneled to Hamas through Qatar. Qatar's Al Jazeera satellite channel is an integral component of Hamas's terror machine. On Monday morning, the IDF announced that Al Jazeera reporters are transferring information about IDF troop placements and numbers to Hamas both directly and through their broadcasts.
Qatar is Hamas.
Rather than designate Qatar officially as a state sponsor of terrorism, last Friday Blinken embraced Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassin Al Thani as an ally.
By embracing Qatar as an ally rather than punishing it for its central role at all levels of Hamas's terror infrastructure, the administration is breaching international law, yet again. It is also betraying Israel.
In his interview with "60 Minutes," Biden said that the United States opposes Israel's war goal of obliterating Hamas and destroying its capacity to govern in any way in Gaza. Instead, Biden drew an obscene, imaginary distinction between Hamas and "extreme elements in Hamas." Biden also endorsed the idea that Israel should knock down Hamas a few notches, but not conquer Gaza.
The administration's goal, apparently, is to block Israel from winning and force it to fight to a draw—in the best-case scenario.
This is perfect for Hamas, which would survive, and with its friends in the United States, the United Nations, Iran, Qatar and throughout the Arab and Western world, rebuild itself stronger than ever.
Iran would stand as the regional superpower, and within months could be expected to test a nuclear weapon. Israel's future, in short, would be bleak.
[I]f he stands up to Biden, Netanyahu will give the soldiers and commanders of the IDF the opportunity to fight this war to victory and secure Israel for the next many years. Now is no time to go wobbly.
On Sunday, U.S. President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan all announced that the United States expects Israel to permit "humanitarian aid" into Gaza.
The implications of this position are devastating for Israel. According to reports, there are "hundreds of trucks" lined up on the border in Egypt, poised to enter the Gaza Strip carrying so-called "humanitarian aid." These trucks, if permitted to enter, will not be inspected in any significant way. There is no reason to believe they are carrying baby formula and foodstuffs that will be delivered to the needy. There is every reason to believe they are carrying war materiel and jihadist fighters who have arrived to augment Hamas.
To the extent that there is food in the trucks, who will it feed? The hostages? The infirm? Who will the medicine be delivered to? The hostages? Will the fuel in the trucks be used in refrigerators to feed the captive Israelis?
Of course not.
Hamas is Gaza. All the "ministries" in Gaza are Hamas. All hospitals are Hamas. Hamas's military headquarters is located under Shifa Hospital.
So whatever and whoever is in the trucks carrying "humanitarian aid," all of it will be delivered to Hamas and will be distributed to benefit Hamas.
The idea that it could be otherwise is absurd. And the fact that the Biden administration is arguing this absurdity is an outrage.
Even if the "hundreds of trucks" are completely empty — and they manifestly are not — the trucks themselves are instruments of war. Their presence in Gaza will also advance Hamas's military effort against Israel. They will augment Hamas's capacity to kill and wound untold numbers of IDF soldiers now poised at the border waiting for the Netanyahu government to finally order them to enter Gaza.
Biden, Blinken and Sullivan — like their counterparts in Europe and the United Nations — insist that they want to give Hamas the trucks to avert a humanitarian disaster in Gaza. But their position is actually devastating for Gaza's civilians.
By barring civilians from escaping Gaza to its territory, even for the purpose of transiting to third countries, Egypt is collaborating with Hamas's war effort. By enabling Egypt to maintain its position, and demanding that Israel allow Hamas to resupply while calling that resupply "humanitarian aid," the Biden administration is trapping the civilians of Gaza it claims to care about protecting. They will remain under Hamas's jackboot. They will remain its human shields and cannon fodder.
Similarly, the United States is providing material support for Hamas's propaganda campaign blaming Israel for the carnage of which Hamas is the sole author — in Israel and Gaza alike.
The United States is also acting in breach of binding international law. As Professor Avi Bell of Bar-Ilan University and University of San Diego law schools explained in an interview on The Caroline Glick Show on Sunday, while Biden and his aides have insisted repeatedly that they expect Israel to respect the international laws of war in its prosecution of its war effort against Hamas, the administration's positions in relation to that war are illegal.
Following the September 11, 2001 jihadist attacks on the United States, the U.N. Security Council passed resolution 1373 under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. Chapter 7 resolutions, unlike others, are binding on all UN member nations.
Resolution 1373 stipulates that all UN member nations must "Refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts."
Any provision of any aid to Gaza, which is completely controlled by Hamas, is of course either "active or passive" assistance to Hamas, and hence illegal.
Resolution 1373 also requires all UN member states to "Deny safe haven to those who finance, plan, support or commit terrorist acts, or provide safe havens."
Following Blinken's visit to Israel last Thursday, he traveled to Qatar. Qatar houses Hamas's top terror masters. They planned their atrocities from Qatar. Iran's cash and arms are funneled to Hamas through Qatar. Qatar's Al Jazeera satellite channel is an integral component of Hamas's terror machine. On Monday morning, the IDF announced that Al Jazeera reporters are transferring information about IDF troop placements and numbers to Hamas both directly and through their broadcasts.
Qatar is Hamas.
Rather than designate Qatar officially as a state sponsor of terrorism, last Friday Blinken embraced Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassin Al Thani as an ally. And that makes sense because from the administration's perspective, Hamas's host is a U.S. ally. Shortly after entering office, the Biden administration designated Qatar a major non-NATO ally—the same designation Israel enjoys.
By embracing Qatar as an ally rather than punishing it for its central role at all levels of Hamas's terror infrastructure, the administration is breaching international law, yet again. It is also betraying Israel.
In his interview with "60 Minutes," Biden said that the United States opposes Israel's war goal of obliterating Hamas and destroying its capacity to govern in any way in Gaza. Instead, Biden drew an obscene, imaginary distinction between Hamas and "extreme elements in Hamas."
Biden also endorsed the idea that Israel should knock down Hamas a few notches, but not conquer Gaza. Instead, he intimated that the PLO-controlled Palestinian Authority, which supports Hamas and is serving as its foreign ministry at the United Nations and in world capitals, should rule Gaza.
As a superpower, the United States is in a position to side with Israel and Hamas simultaneously. And that is clearly the Biden administration's current policy. The administration's goal, apparently, is to block Israel from winning and force it to fight to a draw — in the best-case scenario.
This is perfect for Hamas, which would survive, and with its friends in the United States, the United Nations, Iran, Qatar and throughout the Arab and Western world, rebuild itself stronger than ever.
For Israel, it would be a calamity of biblical proportions. Alone in the world, and treated infamously by its ostensible U.S. ally, Israel would emerge from the war with its regional position in tatters. The peace with Egypt and Jordan would likely not long survive. The Abraham Accords would be undone. And the very notion of normalization of ties with Saudi Arabia would be pushed down the memory hole. Iran would stand as the regional superpower, and within months could be expected to test a nuclear weapon. Israel's future, in short, would be bleak.
On the face of things, with the Israeli public now united behind the goal of eradicating Hamas, the administration's position should be impossible to sell to the people of Israel. Apparently recognizing this state of affairs, during a brief visit to Israel on October 12, Blinken made a point of meeting with the Brothers in Arms organization. Until the war, Brothers in Arms was a shock force comprising the backbone of the anti-government riots. Its members routinely assaulted government ministers and Knesset members from Netanyahu's governing coalition as well as academics, businessmen and journalists who support the Netanyahu government. Brothers in Arms worked to undermine the readiness of the IDF by calling for members of key military reserve units, first and foremost Air Force pilots, to refuse to serve under the Netanyahu government.
Since the atrocities of October 7, with the support of its billionaire funders, Brothers in Arms has launched an extraordinary, massive civilian assistance campaign for the south — second to none in the national war effort. Its operation has won it the legitimate plaudits from all sectors of Israeli society.
All the same, Blinken's visit to their aid operation was a signal to Netanyahu. Likewise regarding his decision to meet with opposition leader Yair Lapid during his visit on Monday. To wit, if Netanyahu fails to bow to the administration's pressure to save Hamas, the administration will turn to the likes of Brothers in Arms and Lapid to undermine the internal stability and cohesion of Israeli society once again, this time at the height of the ground operation in Gaza.
Netanyahu, hobbled politically by the assault, may be living through his final days as national leader. Even many of his most fervent supporters are intimating that he may be forced to resign when the war has ended. Whether Netanyahu sees the end before him, or believes he will be able to stay in power once the war is over, his future and his legacy are now on the line.
If Netanyahu stands up to the United States, he may face a renewal of the violent protests against him and his government. If it happens, the goal of the operatives organizing the protests will be to undermine morale in a time of war. Judging by media coverage to date, the rioters will be supported by nearly every media organ in the country.
On the other hand, if he stands up to Biden, Netanyahu will give the soldiers and commanders of the IDF the opportunity to fight this war to victory and secure Israel for the next many years.
If Netanyahu fails to stand up to the United States, if he buckles, the pressure from Washington won't stop. By buckling, he will merely whet the appetites of the likes of U.S. envoy to the Palestinians Hady Amr — who has a public record of supporting Hamas (and worked in Doha, Qatar during the Trump years). Amr and his colleagues will pocket Israel's first concession and demand more, and more, and more, in coordination with Hamas, the PLO, Qatar and Egypt.
Following the war, Netanyahu will be pushed out of office, his legacy in tatters forever. The Israel he will leave behind will be one where Jewish sovereignty will be placed in doubt for the first time in 75 years.
Now is no time to go wobbly.
*Caroline Glick is an award-winning columnist and author of The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East.
© 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.

Hamas, Israel and the Hypocrisy of Arab and Muslim Leaders
Khaled Abu Toameh/October 19, 2023
Notably, some of the Arab and Muslim states and their leaders who are pointing the finger of blame at Israel have not hesitated to take punitive measures against Hamas when they themselves felt threatened... In the eyes of these rulers, it is fine for Arabs to punish Hamas, but it is not fine for Israel to respond to the worst atrocity ever committed against its citizens.
The Palestinian Authority (PA)... appears to have forgotten about the violent and bloody coup Hamas carried out in the summer of 2007. Then, Hamas killed and injured hundreds of PA loyalists, some of whom were tossed from rooftops of buildings throughout the Gaza Strip.
This is the same Abbas who is now afraid, or unwilling, to hold Hamas responsible for the outbreak of the war.... Abbas has good reason to avoid overt criticism of Hamas. He is aware of the pro-Hamas demonstrations in the West Bank... where demonstrators chanted slogans calling for toppling the Palestinian Authority leadership.
The Egyptians, Jordanians and Syrians, who are now condemning Israel for targeting Hamas, have not hesitated to confront Hamas when it threatened their national security.
In 2014, an Egyptian court declared Hamas, an off-shoot of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood organization, a "terrorist organization."
In 1999, Jordan, whose leaders have also refrained from denouncing Hamas's October 7 massacre of Israelis, expelled the terror group's political leaders from the country.
These rulers now find it awkward to come out against the same terrorists with whom they have been meeting.
None of these rulers has ever taken a single step to help the Palestinians get relief from Hamas's human rights violations against the people living under their brutal rule in the Gaza Strip..... When these rulers were unhappy with Hamas, they expelled its leaders, shut their offices and outlawed its armed wing.
Now that Hamas has brought down hell on two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, perhaps these Arab and Muslim rulers will finally decide whose side are they on. Will they continue to embrace the very Hamas they have targeted for threatening them and their regimes, or will stand with those who -- on their behalf as well -- are defending themselves against Iran and its proxies?
Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas appears to have forgotten about the violent and bloody coup Hamas carried out in the summer of 2007. Then, Hamas killed and injured hundreds of PA loyalists, some of whom were tossed from rooftops of buildings throughout the Gaza Strip. This is the same Abbas who is now afraid, or unwilling, to hold Hamas responsible for the outbreak of the war. Pictured: Abbas addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on September 21, 2023. (Photo by Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images)
Most of the Arabs who are now condemning Israel for its military strikes against the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group in the Gaza Strip have never uttered a word against Hamas's rocket attacks on Israel. These Arabs, who are now weeping over the plight of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, chose to turn a blind eye to Hamas's repressive measures against the residents of the Gaza Strip. They also chose to look the other way as Hamas accumulated an arsenal of weapons and built dozens of offensive tunnels along the border with Israel. Incredibly, most of these Arabs still have not denounced Hamas for initiating the war on October 7, when hundreds of its heavily armed members crossed into Israel and massacred more than 1,400 Israelis, wounded thousands more, and abducted more than 200 hostages who were taken to Gaza.
Notably, some of the Arab and Muslim states and their leaders who are pointing the finger of blame at Israel have not hesitated to take punitive measures against Hamas when they themselves felt threatened or were unhappy with the actions and rhetoric of the group. In the eyes of these rulers, it is fine for Arabs to punish Hamas, but it is not fine for Israel to respond to the worst atrocity ever committed against its citizens.
The Palestinian Authority (PA), whose leaders have been condemning Israel since the beginning of the war, appears to have forgotten about the violent and bloody coup Hamas carried out in the summer of 2007. Then, Hamas killed and injured hundreds of PA loyalists, some of whom were tossed from rooftops of buildings throughout the Gaza Strip. Other Palestinians were dragged into to the street and brutally lynched by Hamas members. In response, PA President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree outlawing the armed groups of Hamas and said that its members would be prosecuted. Abbas said that he decided to "consider the [Hamas] Executive Unit and the militias of the Hamas movement illegal, due to their military coup against the Palestinian legitimacy and its institutions, and anyone who is involved in any of these groups will be punished in accordance with the law and regulations of the state of emergency."
In 2018, Abbas directly accused Hamas of carrying out a bomb attack targeting former PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah in the Gaza Strip. A roadside bomb exploded as Hamdallah's convoy entered Gaza. Hamdallah was unhurt, while six of his bodyguards were lightly wounded. At a meeting of the Palestinian Authority leadership shortly after the assassination attempt, Abbas said:
"We do not want them [Hamas] to investigate, we do not want information from them, we do not want anything from them because we know exactly that they, the Hamas movement, were the ones who committed this incident."
The same year, Abbas, in an effort to undermine Hamas, implemented a number of punitive measures against the Gaza Strip. They included withholding salaries to thousands of civil servants and refusing to pay for the electricity Israel supplied to the Gaza Strip. Abbas later went as far as accusing Hamas of being a "spy" for Israel after the terror group arrested dozens of his supporters in Gaza.
This is the same Abbas who is now afraid, or unwilling, to hold Hamas responsible for the outbreak of the war. On October 15, the PA's official news agency, Wafa, published comments by Abbas that criticized Hamas for its assault on Israel. The agency, however, later removed references to the terror group without providing an explanation. The original Wafa report included the line: "The president [Abbas] also stressed that Hamas's policies and actions do not represent the Palestinian people, and the policies." Several hours later, the phrase was adjusted to exclude Hamas.
The new version reads:
"President Abbas also stressed that the policies, programs and decisions of the PLO are what represent the Palestinian people as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and not the policies of any other organization."
Abbas has good reason to avoid overt criticism of Hamas. He is aware of the pro-Hamas demonstrations in the West Bank, including the de facto capital of the Palestinians, Ramallah, where demonstrators chanted slogans calling for toppling the Palestinian Authority leadership.
The Egyptians, Jordanians and Syrians, who are now condemning Israel for targeting Hamas, have not hesitated to confront Hamas when it threatened their national security.
In 2014, an Egyptian court declared Hamas, an off-shoot of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood organization, a "terrorist organization." Egyptian prosecutors told Cairo's Court of Urgent Matters:
"Hamas is a terrorist organization whose involvement in terrorist attacks killing Egyptian soldiers and officers from the armed forces and interior ministry has been proven."
The Egyptian military, in addition, claims that over the past decade it has destroyed most of the tunnels that had been used to smuggle weapons from Egypt to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Tamer al-Refai, an Egyptian military spokesman, announced in 2020 that Egypt had destroyed more than 3,000 tunnels leading into the Gaza Strip since 2015. The tunnels were as long as three kilometers; some ran as deep as 30 meters into the ground, al-Refaid said.
In 2015, Egypt's state-run newspaper Al-Ahram accused Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood of conspiring to overthrow the Egyptian regime within the next few years. The newspaper quoted "informed sources" who accused Hamas's military wing of coordinating plans with the Muslim Brotherhood to hit Egyptian military targets and vital installations and distribute footage of the attacks to undermine national morale.
The same year, the Cairo Criminal Court sentenced ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi to life in prison over charges of collaborating with Hamas and Iran's Lebanon-based proxy, Hezbollah. It is worth noting that Hamas leaders have since been permitted to visit Egypt without any restrictions. True, there is no love affair between Egypt and Hamas, but once you invite the leaders of the terror group to regular meetings with senior government officials in Cairo, you are giving legitimacy to Hamas and signaling to other countries that there is no reason why they too should not do so.
In 1999, Jordan, whose leaders have also refrained from denouncing Hamas's October 7 massacre of Israelis, expelled the terror group's political leaders from the country. Jordan's King Abdullah, apparently fearing that the activities of Hamas and its local allies would jeopardize peace negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, accused Hamas of engaging in illegitimate activities within Jordan. Earlier, Jordanian authorities had arrested several Hamas leaders, including Khaled Mashaal and Ibrahim Ghosheh, upon their return from a visit to Iran, and charged them with membership in an illegal organization, storing weapons, conducting military exercises and using Jordan as a training base.
In 2006, the Jordanians have also accused Hamas members of smuggling missiles and other weapons into the country. A Jordanian official told Associated Press at that time that "missiles, explosives and automatic weapons were seized in the last couple of days." Hamas activists had managed to smuggle "such dangerous weapons into the country" and store them, the official revealed. Despite a crackdown, Jordan's King Abdullah received a senior Hamas delegation in Amman in 2012. Such meetings benefit Hamas and legitimize it in the eyes of Arabs and Muslims.
Syrian, for its part, has also targeted Hamas. In 2012, Syria's state-run media unleashed a scathing attack on Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, accusing him of turning his back on Syrian President Bashar Assad and describing Mashaal as ungrateful and traitorous. Earlier, Syrian authorities closed Hamas's offices in Damascus after the terror group failed to support Assad at the beginning of the Syrian civil war in Syria. Last year, however, Assad, like Jordan's King Abdullah and the Egyptians, lifted the ban and met with a senior Hamas delegation in Damascus.
These rulers now find it awkward to come out against the same terrorists with whom they have been meeting.
In the past decade, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has also been seeking rapprochement with Hamas. He has repeatedly met with Hamas leaders and discussed with them ways of achieving national unity. The last meeting was held in late July in Ankara, where Abbas and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh were jointly received by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Despite their disputes with Hamas, the rulers of the PA, Egypt, Jordan and Syria have been working to improve their relations with the terror group. By doing so, they have strengthened Hamas and turned it into a significant player in the Middle East.
None of these rulers has ever taken a single step to help the Palestinians get relief from Hamas's human rights violations against the people living under their brutal rule in the Gaza Strip. Those violations have included the arrest and murder of political rivals and crackdowns on journalists and human rights advocates. None of these rulers has ever called out Hamas for transforming the Gaza Strip into a terror base for Iran. When these rulers were unhappy with Hamas, they expelled its leaders, shut their offices and outlawed its armed wing.
Now that Hamas has brought down hell on two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, perhaps these Arab and Muslim rulers will finally decide whose side are they on. Will they continue to embrace the very Hamas they have targeted for threatening them and their regimes, or will stand with those who -- on their behalf as well -- are defending themselves against Iran and its proxies?
*Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.
© 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.

How Christian Disunity Led to Slaughter at the Battle of Kosovo II
Raymond Ibrahim/October 19/2023
One of the most terrible pitched battles between Christians and Muslims—which took a total of three carnage-soaked days to conclude (October 17-20)—was waged this week on European soil.
The year was 1448, and the Ottoman Turks had been invading and terrorizing the Balkans for several years. One of the staunchest Christian foes of the Muslims, John Hunyadi, governor of Hungary, decided enough was enough, as evident in a letter he wrote to the pope on September 17:
[T]he enemy attacks our neighbors [the Serbs], incites [them] to war against us. We have decided to attack him instead of waiting for him to attack us. We have had enough of our men enslaved, our women raped, wagons loaded with the severed heads of our people, the sale of chained captives, the mockery of our religion…. [W]e shall not stop until we succeed in expelling the enemy from Europe.
Unfortunately for Hunyadi, none of the Hungarian nobles, who had always despised the veteran fighter for not being a true member of the nobility—that is, the elite class—supported him. Nor would the pope, whom Hunyadi had implored on several occasions, send aid.
Hunyadi set off counting on at least being able to meet up with the Albanians, but the mercurial Serbian despot—casting his lot with the Ottomans once again—prevented their passage. Frustration turned to rage when Hunyadi and his men learned that the Serbs had betrayed them, including by “refusing to take up arms against the Turks, though the war was started to right their wrongs and recover their possessions now in Turkish hands,” writes a Polish chronicler.
Finally, at the fields of Kosovo—where, nearly sixty years earlier, and rather ominously, the Turks had first crushed a Christian coalition in 1389—Sultan Murad II, with as many as 60,000 Ottomans met Hunyadi and his 24,000 men. The latter defiantly harangued his outnumbered men to fight with all their might and either “win a good and secure life for our country, forever,” or “die with glory, and eternal life is waiting for us on the other side.” For his part, the Muslim sultan dismounted, fell to the floor facing Mecca, performed two prostrations, and implored Allah to empower the “community of Muhammad.”
The battle lasted a full three days, from October 17–20, with many reverses and shedding of blood. The contemporary account of Aeneas Silvius (the future Pope Pius II) follows:
Hunyadi did not wait to be challenged but initiated the fight himself. When battle was commenced, the outcome of the struggle long remained uncertain. Where Hunyadi fought, the enemy was routed and turned tail, and a great slaughter was carried out. In the same way, Murad was victorious on his own wing, where he overwhelmed and routed the Hungarians. Finally, when the two victors came head to head, the Christians were unable to withstand the onslaught of the Turks. Although they were superior in courage, they were surpassed in numbers and compelled to give way out of exhaustion rather than defeat.
Despite Hunyadi’s “threats and pleas,” the outnumbered Christian army began to crumble; before long its “rank and file was massacred.” Fifteen thousand Christians lay dead; not content, Murad ordered them all decapitated, their heads placed on spears.
Hunyadi statue
During the carnage and chaos, three Muslims captured Hunyadi, without knowing who he was, for he was often fighting at the front alongside his men. The chronicler Jan Długosz has the rest:
One of them goes off to hunt other fugitives, leaving the others to guard Hunyadi. These now quarrel over a golden crucifix he wore under his shirt, which they had not previously noticed. As they are squabbling, Hunyadi picks up a sword and kills one of them and wounds the other, and so recovers his possessions. He wanders for several days and eventually reaches Serbian territory and, trustingly, goes to a castle, where he is seized and kept prisoner for three months.
Clearly, the significance of the word “Balkanization” is much older than commonly assumed.
At any rate, Hungary’s elites got what they wanted—the disgrace of Hunyadi. He remained governor, though his prestige tanked; no one wanted to hear any more talk of Crusades against the Turks. Considering that the army he had spent two years rebuilding had been annihilated at Kosovo, the upper nobles became increasingly aggressive and defiant.
Rather than fold and capitulate, however, Hunyadi revealed that there was more to him than battle and bloodshed, and the next few years saw him transformed into an adroit politician and diplomat—until, that is, the great siege of Belgrade, where the Turks suffered one of their most humiliating defeats at his hands.
The above account was excerpted from and is documented in Ibrahim’s Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam.
https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2023/10/19/how-christian-disunity-led-to-slaughter-at-the-battle-of-kosovo-ii/

The Hell of Urban Warfare Is Not Unique to Gaza
Bradley Brincka/The Tablet/October 19/2023
During the campaign against ISIS in Mosul, the U.S. flattened a large city with far less provocation—while observing all the rules of modern war
In the coming days, Israel may launch a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip in response to the shocking pogrom carried out against Israelis on Oct. 7. The looming operation has led many to search for precedents in military history. There is one recent urban conflagration with great relevance to the impending assault on Gaza that, though unlikely to provide comfort to anyone, may offer some historical grounding. That is the U.S.-backed Iraqi campaign to liberate Mosul from the Islamic State in 2016-17.
I was a minor participant in this titanic affair, serving as a volunteer ambulance driver with the Free Burma Rangers, a humanitarian medical group then embedded with the Iraqi Army. From January to June 2017, I accompanied Iraq’s 9th Armored Division as it slowly encircled Mosul from the west before finally throwing all of its American- and Soviet-made tanks into the dense concrete jungle along the Tigris river at the battle’s climax that spring. It was a formative experience as a younger man, and one that taught me the brutal nature of urban combat first hand.
Three years earlier, the Islamic State had exploded onto the world stage after routing the same Iraqi Army in Mosul, conquering the country’s second-largest city with ease over the course of five days, as the American trained Iraqi Army largely collapsed or fled. On June 29, 2014, the group’s secretive leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, proclaimed his caliphate. A short time later, his legions invaded the neighboring district of Sinjar, subjecting its Yazidi inhabitants to a genocide, exterminating whole villages, impressing over 6,000 women and children into sexual concubinage, and boasting of the reimposition of chattel slavery in their glossy English-language magazine. In the months that followed, a notorious troop of British national ISIS members who came to be known as “The Beatles” beheaded Western hostages and threatened future attacks. These viral videos, combined with images of Yazidi women carried off to the caliphate’s slave markets, had the effect of decisively galvanizing American public opinion in favor of military intervention.
Rather than sending its own troops back into Iraq, the war-weary U.S. would seek to win “by, with, and through” its local proxies while “leading from behind.” In practice this meant funding, equipping, and providing U.S. air support to Iranian-backed Shia militia groups—the same groups that had previously carried out attacks on U.S. soldiers—which formed the backbone of Iraq’s new Popular Mobilization Forces. At the same time, small groups of U.S. special operations soldiers began training elite Iraqi commando units in anticipation of an eventual push to drive ISIS out of Mosul. The approach meant that Iraqi and Kurdish forces would do all the fighting and dying while the U.S. provided logistical, intelligence, and—most crucially—air support. It was a strategy that would prove to be devastatingly effective.
For the next five years, the American-led coalition pursued a nearly continuous bombing campaign in conjunction with partner ground operations. Spanning two administrations, the campaign resulted in the leveling of multiple major cities across Iraq and Syria, killing tens of thousands, and displacing hundreds of thousands more. At no point during that time was the efficacy or morality of this policy meaningfully discussed within the body politic. If anything, candidates for public office vied to outdo one another regarding who would be tougher against the terror group, with presidential candidate Donald Trump suggesting, “You have to take out their families when you get these terrorists. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself.”
Meanwhile, the Islamic State, while pushed back in other parts of Iraq, had time to fortify defenses in the urban strongholds under its control. The caliphate’s eschatological ambitions collided with the coalition’s determination to uproot it as the two raced toward an inescapable trajectory: the annihilation of cities like Manbij, Mosul, and Raqqa.
Before its sacking in 2014, the great riverine metropolis of Mosul boasted an estimated 2 million residents. By 2016, as many as 12,000 hardened ISIS defenders confronted a patchwork of 100,000 Iraqi soldiers, police, and the elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS). The Iraqis were better armed, better trained, and better led than before, and they were now backed by stupefying American air power. The battle commenced on Oct. 16, 2016. What had taken the Islamic State less than a week to achieve in 2014 would take 252 days of savage fighting to undo.
Owing to the character of urban combat, the Iraqi soldiers tasked with ridding Mosul of ISIS faced all manner of harrowing tactical and moral dilemmas. They confronted an entrenched opponent with two years to prepare for a siege shielded by noncombatants (Hamas by comparison has ruled Gaza since 2007). Drones—rudimentary novelties on the battlefield then, years before their proliferation in Eastern Europe—appeared from nowhere in liberated areas, instilling panic among soldiers and civilians alike because of the lethal ordnance they frequently dropped. Heavily armored “suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices” (SVBIEDs) drove out of garages and detonated behind passing Iraqi columns. An invisible dimension of subterranean tunnels—Gaza has its own cement reinforced tunnel system built by Hamas—enabled Islamic State fighters to spring from the earth and cause mayhem. Mechanized Iraqi soldiers, in keeping with the cavalryman’s maxim of “Death Before Dismount,” demurred from chasing ghosts into these labyrinths, preferring instead to collapse the tunnels and entomb their foes.
The heroism of the Iraqi soldiers who fought in Mosul cannot obscure the startling cost of liberation: some 8,200 dead Iraqi servicemen (a whopping 60% casualty rate among the elite CTS), an estimated 10,000 civilians killed (though likely much higher) of which 3,200 are thought to have perished in coalition airstrikes, and the destruction of 40,000 homes in west Mosul alone. Notwithstanding the occasional media criticisms of especially deadly strikes, there were no popular protests in Western or Arab capitals to speak of and certainly nothing akin to the tens of thousands marching in the streets the past week over Gaza. Back then, the climactic showdown between Iraq and the Islamic State was just another quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom most were content to know nothing.
Even the most ‘humane’ application of force in full accordance with the Law of Armed Conflict in a densely populated city results in shocking death and destruction.
The apocalyptic destruction visited on Mosul might lead some to conclude the coalition pursued an indiscriminate bombing campaign to rid the city of its occupiers, but that was not the case at all. U.S. targeting procedures are heavily regimented and bureaucratized with lawyers involved at every step. The banal process of determining whether a building and its occupants are to be vaporized more closely resembles a quarterly HOA board meeting than the ravings of Dr. Strangelove.
It is a point worth emphasizing: Even the most “humane” application of force in full accordance with the Law of Armed Conflict in a densely populated city results in shocking death and destruction far in excess of what most would consider “proportionate.” To innocents on the business end of such strikes, this jargon would appear as mere ritualistic ablutions or voodoo; the obfuscation of an enterprise which—when stripped to its essence—is the imprecise incineration of one’s foes by means of mechanical dragons. Abstractions like “surgical precision” and “harm reduction” are cold comfort to one whose home has been flattened or family line eliminated.
That said, neither Iraq nor the coalition ever seriously countenanced the idea of leaving Mosul in the hands of the Islamic State. The threat was perceived as existential and the preceding years’ outrages and sadism had to be avenged. Mosul’s fate was decided long before Iraqi troops approached its outskirts in 2016. The brutal logic of destroying the city to save it had long since been internalized. The prospect of human sacrifice appeared less horrifying only when compared with the implications of forgoing the sacrifice. To not administer the purging fire would be for the slave markets to continue humming, for the captives to languish, for millions of souls to remain under the boot of a death-worshiping cult, and for the caliphate’s hordes to flood out of the desert once more. To the extent there was any choice, it was not between the high and the low but between the terrible and the unthinkable. Such is the dilemma of confronting a foe ensconced in a city among a population.
This brings the discussion at last to Gaza. The horrors inflicted on southern Israel by Hamas last week represent a casus belli of a magnitude that dwarfs the comparably trivial one that spurred Americans to shrug at killing a new state in its infancy and leveling whole metropolises on the other side of the world. The knifing of Jewish mothers and the unborn, the slaughter, the pyres of children, and outrages against women carried off as war booty to the attackers’ lairs, are hauntingly evocative of the genocidal campaign against the Yazidis in 2014.
I write with no glee or triumphalism that the momentum of events points toward an ominous and seemingly inexorable trajectory: that Gaza is doomed, that the city will be destroyed, and that its population will soon share the people of Mosul’s fate. Human nature being what it is, any Israeli government unwilling or too squeamish to carry this out would almost certainly be replaced by one with no such compunctions, or find itself vanquished by other means. No technological sorcery will enable Israel to extirpate Hamas in a way that would leave civilians unscathed or satisfy those for whom the horrors of urban warfare and siege are problems ameliorable through ever more effective technocratic management. Alas, Mosul still stands today, but it is no longer the city it once was nor shall it ever be again. Its shattered visage lies half-sunk in the sands of northern Iraq. It is Ozymandias-like, a colossal wreck, boundless and bare. It is a testament to the wages of madness, hubris, and human sacrifice, and a harbinger of what is to come.
*Bradley Brincka is a writer, ethnographer, and former member of the Free Burma Rangers. He lives in northern Virginia with his family.

Gaza 2023: The War of Fallen Illusions
Eyad Abu Shakra/Asharq Al Awsat/19 October 2023
I cannot exactly tell which of leaderships of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad or Hamas ordered the launch of the latest "Gaza War". But frankly, given the enormity of what we have seen and what we may still see, such a question becomes insignificant.
What happened has happened; and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime minister, has promised a new regional map, with a "chorus" of absolute support from Western government led, of course, by Washington.
However, given that in every crisis there are two "camps", let us ask about what considerations brought about the actions and counteractions of the Likud and Hamas; and begin with the "camp" that fired the first shot, i.e. Hamas and allies.
What reaction did the planners of the Hamas large-scale assault expect from Israel's most extremist and anti-Palestinian government since 1948.
Didn't these planners recall what happened to Lebanon in 2006, after Hezbollah's cross-border operation, which was much smaller than the attack on the several settlements in the "Gaza Envelope"?
Didn't they remember that Israel responded with a massive operation that destroyed much of Lebanon's infrastructure to the extent that Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's Secretary General, admitted his miscalculations. In fact, until today Nasrallah's local opponents continue to taunt him by his words "had I known" phrase?!?!
Furthermore, I guess that there is a multi-dimensional query that does beyond the Palestinian-Israeli confrontation itself. It is whether those who took the decision to start the war really expected Iran - both its government or/and its affiliated militias - would rise and "wipe Israel off the face of the earth", as we are frequently told by the orators of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and the Mullahs of Tehran, Beirut and Baghdad?
Weren't they surprised by Washington's claim, a couple of hours after the Hamas assault, that there was no proof of Tehran's involvement? Weren't they even shocked by Iran's initial silence, before its vocal orators overcame the embarrassment of being acquitted by the "Greater Satan" and the "Lesser Satan"?
Well, forget about Iran for a moment, and let us look at the regional players. Was it logical to bet on regional players burdened by their own concerns, worries, and fears?
Moreover, did the assault planners take in consideration that Russia and China were too busy (with the Ukraine and Taiwan respectively) to stop Washington from defending an entity that it has always regarded an inseparable part of its national security and the spearhead of its Middle East influence?
In the other camp, i.e. Israel, I reckon that "finishing off" the notion of "Palestine", as an identity, an entity and a cause, has always been a top priority for the Israeli Right; indeed, not only the Israeli Right!
The mere existence of "Palestine" has been a moral, demographic, political and national security problem for Israel since the days of its founders. However, if some of the "founders" comfortably repeated during the days of relatively weak media and scant education the slogan "a land without people for a people"; many still believe this falsehood in the days of Netanyahu's current government... despite the media and education advances!
Extremists, like the National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, do not accept the existence of the Palestinian people, and actively seek the full "transfer"(of the Palestinians) as a final solution. This uprooting and displacement "solution" has been recently commended by the former Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, when he defended the idea of transferring 1.1 million Palestinians to Sinai (despite Egypt's refusal) and settling them there just like the resettling of the Syrian refugees escaping the massacres of the Assad regime!
By the way, Ben Gvir is a former disciple of Kach, the militant Zionist organization founded by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane who once described the Arabs as dogs. He was recently busy distributing assault weapons to Israeli settlers, thus, proving his militant credentials.
As for Smotrich, he recently said and repeated in both France and America that historically there was no Palestinian People, but was only "invented" in the 20th century!
Dangerous people like these, Netanyahu has no qualms as having as allies in order to keep him in power, and assure him of immunity from prosecution for corruption charges. For this end, the Israeli prime minister, has been more than willing to undermine the legal system through "reforms" opposed by hundreds of thousands of Israelis, who have been demonstrating in the streets for months.
All the above promises a gloomy future for the Palestinians. However, for some like the prominent Jewish American columnist Thomas Friedman, it does not bode well for the Israeli either.
Friedman wrote a few days ago "America cannot protect Israel in the long run from the very real threats it faces unless Israel has a government that reflects the best, not the worst, of its society, and unless that government is ready to try to forge compromises with the best, not the worst, of Palestinian society."
As for the Middle East, as whole, a lot depends on what one concludes from Iran's stances.
Washington's keenness on preventing the "expansion of the conflict" really means allowing Israel's war machine to isolate Palestinian... some of whom have naively gambled Iran's support. It may also mean that Joe Biden's administration still wants Tehran as a "security partner" in the Near East, just as it was after the "invention" of ISIS, and the exploitation of its atrocities.
So, the regional map that may be sought by Netanyahu – including the Iranian corridor to the Mediterranean – may very well be based on "confirming" and "perpetuating" the regional zones of influence in Iraq, Lebanon, and specifically, Syria.
Here, indeed, all previous illusions fall.