Bible Quotations For today When

English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For October 24/2024
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

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Bible Quotations For today
The Weed & Good Wheat Seed Parable/The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field
Matthew 13/24-30: “Jesus put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?” He answered, “An enemy has done this.” The slaves said to him, “Then do you want us to go and gather them? ”But he replied, “No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on October 23-24/2024
To social media Politicized activists: Confront criticism with facts, not threats and insults/Elias Bejjani/October 23/2024
41 Years After Hezbollah’s (Islamic Jihad) Attack on American and French Soldiers of the Multinational Force/Gen (r) Maroun Hitti/October 23/2024
41 Ans Après l’Attaque du Hezbollah (Jihad Islamique) Contre les Soldats Américains et Français de la Force Multinationale/Gen (r) Maroun Hitti/23 octobre 2024
Israeli raids destroy neighborhoods in Tyre
Israeli Strikes Pound Lebanese Coastal City after Residents Evacuate
‘The whole city shook’: Israel pounds Lebanon’s ancient Tyre
Rocket slams into building after barrage unleashed on northern Israel
US has not seen evidence of Hezbollah cash bunker under Beirut hospital, Pentagon chief says
Netanyahu says Hezbollah prepared ‘invasion’ of Israel
Lebanon state media says drone strike hits Beirut apartment
Western diplomat says foreign forces an option in Lebanon after truce
German foreign minister warns Lebanon ‘on brink of collapse’
IDF eliminates three Hezbollah sector commanders, 70 more terrorists
'IDF to act forcefully': Israel strikes Lebanon's Tyre hours after warning residents to evacuate
German FM Calls for Diplomatic Solution to Fighting on Her Visit to Beirut
Hezbollah's Hashem Safieddine, heir apparent to Nasrallah, killed in Israeli attack, group says
Austin: US Has Not Seen Evidence of Hezbollah Cash Bunker Under Beirut Hospital
Lufthansa Suspends Flights to Beirut, Tehran until Early 2025
Israel Confirms Hezbollah’s Safieddine Killed
Hezbollah Confirms that Top Official Hashem Safieddine was Killed in an Israeli Strike
Israel Says it Killed Three Hezbollah Commanders
US has not seen evidence of Hezbollah cash bunker under Beirut hospital, Pentagon chief says
War Likely to Wipe 9% off Lebanon’s GDP, with Fallout Set to Exceed 2006 Conflict
Like in Gaza, Israel Attacks Lebanon’s Healthcare Sector
Bassil Disavows Hezbollah, Blames it for Israeli Assault on Lebanon
Israeli weapon seen in rare AP photos of Beirut airstrike appears to be a powerful smart bomb
Israel says it killed a Hezbollah official expected to become the group's next leader
Blinken warns Israel to not escalate conflict with Iran, Hezbollah
Israel Is Hurting Hezbollah. But It Can’t Rely on Lebanon to Finish the Job/David Daoud & Ahmad Sharawi/Haaretz/October 23/2024
With Hezbollah weakened by Israel, its political opponents see an opportunity
Nabih Bulos, Tracy Wilkinson/LA Times/October 23, 2024

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 23-24/2024
Twenty reported killed in Gaza as Israel intensifies siege of north
Sirens Sound Across Tel Aviv as Projectiles are Intercepted Near Blinken's Hotel
UNRWA Calls for Truce in North Gaza ‘Even if for Few Hours’
Israel Has Denied Requests to Deliver Aid to Northern Gaza, UN Humanitarian Office Says
IDF soldiers should refuse orders that may be war crimes, Israeli ex-security adviser tells BBC
Israel names Al Jazeera reporters as Gaza militants, network condemns 'unfounded allegations'
Israel's military accuses 6 Al Jazeera journalists of acting as Hamas operatives
Blinken urges Israel to seek deal after tactical gains as truce efforts remain stalled
Saudi Crown Prince, Blinken Discuss Efforts to Stop Escalation in the Region
An attack targeting a Turkish defense company leaves 4 dead and 14 wounded

Titles For The Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on October 23-24/2024
'The House With Nobody In it' - In Washington D.C.?/Lawrence Kadish/Gatestone Institute/October 23, 2024
Yes, It’s Time for Painful Decisions/Tariq Al-Homayed/Asharq Al Awsat/October 23/2024
Israel Does Not Intend to Stop/Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Asharq Al Awsat/October 23/2024
Kurdish Democracy’s Last Chance/Lahur Sheikh JangiAsharq Al Awsat/October 23/2024
Yair Lapid urges deal to free all captives at once, pushes for Saudi normalization/Elav Brueer & Tova Lazaroff/Jeruselem Post/October 23/2024
Israel must not end war yet despite Sinwar success/Gil Troy/Jerusalem Post/October 23/2024
Will Israel assassinate Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei?/Salem Alketbi/Jerusalem Post/October 23/2024
Netanyahu must put his ministers in order to make successful 'day after' plan /Editorial/Jerusalem Post/October 23/2024
Arab Advocates for Israel Speak Out on Social Media/Hllel Kuttler/The Magazine/October 23/2024
Why Canceled Christopher Columbus Sailed West (Hint: Islam)/Raymond Ibrahim/The Stream/October 23/2024
Today in History: Muslims Worship Allah Atop 2,400 Christian Heads/Raymond Ibrahim/The Stream/October 23/2024

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on October 23-24/2024
To social media Politicized activists: Confront criticism with facts, not threats and insults.
Elias Bejjani/October 23/2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/10/135661/
Dear social media activists you MUST be aware that our duty toward the martyrs, the country, and its people is not to appease anyone … government officials, clergy, journalists, activists, or politicians—whoever they may be—are all meant to be servants of the people, yes, servants of the people and their interests, not deities to be worshiped, praised for their blessings, and shielded from criticism or opposition to their stances and choices. Whoever supports any politician, politica party leaderl or official in any position, part if they are truly human and not mere mouthpieces, slaves, or parrots, must focus on criticism based on documents and facts, not on insults, mockery, or threats. And they shouldn’t sulk or leave or threaten to leave the groups they belong to. Especially during times of crisis and war, it is crucial to explain the stances and choices of politicians, and freely accept or reject them. Remember that the saying, “No voice is louder than the voice of battle,” has led the Arabs, their nations, our country, and our rulers to the depths of hell. Those who wish to sulk يحرد are free to do so, but neither they nor anyone else has the right to tailor criticism to fit their allegiance to the idols they worship. As for those who act like herds of sheep they should at least remain silent and try to educate themselves.

41 Years After Hezbollah’s (Islamic Jihad) Attack on American and French Soldiers of the Multinational Force
Gen (r) Maroun Hitti/October 23/2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/10/136073/
As today, Hezbollah, under the name of Islamic jihad, attacked the lives of American and French Soldiers of the Multinational Force, which came to help in the pacification of Lebanon and the evacuation of the PLO from Beirut and Lebanon.
After this attack, the Multinational Force hastily evacuated Lebanon, leaving it easy prey to the vulgar Syrian Ba’ath regime and its acolytes, and leaving behind its allies from within to confront alone these forces of evil for many years.
Today Lebanon is still living in tragedy. The evacuation-abandon of 1983 is partly one of the causes. It is also the indirect cause of October 7 and 8, 2023… in the same trajectory that Israel is breaking today for the nth time.
History lessons are learned slowly. Let us hope that the West will not repeat itself in hasty abandonment, and will know that the borders of its security begin here, in this Near Levant. Let us hope that he will remember October 23, 1983, his Soldiers, French and Americans, our Brothers in Arms to us Lebanese Soldiers, so that their sacrifice will never be in vain. Let us hope that the struggle that is taking place today before the eyes of the West will lead, not to miserable ceasefires or weak so-called “humanitarian” truces, which would only allow the tentacles of the monster to grow back, but to a real definitive and lasting solution of which only this West has the means to impose.
As for us, we will never forget them. God Have their souls!

41 Ans Après l’Attaque du Hezbollah (Jihad Islamique) Contre les Soldats Américains et Français de la Force Multinationale
Gen (r) Maroun Hitti/23 octobre 2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/10/136073/
Comme aujourd’hui, le hezbollah, sous le nom du jihad islamique, attenta à la vie de soldats Américains et Français de la Force Multinationale, venue pour aider à la pacification du Liban et à l’évacuation de l’OLP de Beyrouth et du Liban.
Après cet attentat, la Force Multinationale évacua hâtivement le Liban, le laissant une proie facile au vulgaire régime baath syrien et ses acolytes, et laissant en plan ses alliés de l’intérieur confronter ces forces du mal pour de longues années.
Aujourd’hui le Liban vit toujours dans le drame. L’évacuation-abandon de 1983 en est partiellement une des causes. Elle est aussi la cause indirecte des 7 et 8 octobre 2023…dans une même trajectoire qu’Israël brise aujourd’hui pour une nième fois.
Les leçons de l’Histoire s’apprennent lentement. Espérons que l’Occident ne récidivera plus en abandons hâtifs, et saura que les frontières de sa sécurité commencent ici, dans ce Levant si proche de lui. Espérons qu’il se souviendra du 23 Octobre 1983, de ses Soldats, Français et Américains, nos Frères d’Armes à nous Soldats Libanais, afin que leur sacrifice ne sera jamais en vain. Espérons ce que le combat qui se passe aujourd’hui sous les yeux de l’Occident, aboutisse, non à de misérables cessez-le-feu ou de mièvres trêves dites” humanitaires”, qui ne permettraient qu’au tentacules du monstre de repousser, mais à une véritable solution définitive et durable dont seul cet Occident à les moyens d’imposer.
Quant à nous, on ne les oubliera jamais. Dieu aie leur âme.

Israeli raids destroy neighborhoods in Tyre
NAJIA HOUSSARI/Arab News/October 23, 2024
Raids destroyed several neighborhoods, including hotels, restaurants and commercial institutions
BEIRUT: Intense Israeli raids targeted the southern coastal city of Tyre on Wednesday following evacuation warnings by the Israeli army. Although the number of people in the city had decreased, panic gripped the remaining residents, prompting them to flee. Half an hour after the warnings by Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee, the city was targeted, with plumes of black smoke filling the sky. The raids destroyed several neighborhoods, including hotels, restaurants and commercial institutions. Tyre often hosts UN peacekeepers on their first break from deployments along the border region. It comprises rich Phoenician, Byzantine and Roman remains recorded on the World Heritage List 1984. A portion of the city, formerly known as “the onshore Tyre,” also includes Qana, Sarafand and the surroundings of Naqoura. Maha Al-Khalil Chalabi, chief of the International Association to Save Tyre, described what was happening as “brutal.”The destructive Israeli bombing, she said, besieged Tyre and the old town specifically. UNESCO has warned of the need to take immediate measures to protect Tyre and Baalbek from the dangers of bombing and destruction to protect its population. The Israeli army says that it is targeting Hezbollah’s infrastructure, while simultaneously invading several border villages to bulldoze them after bombing houses and facilities. These villages include Aita Al-Shaab, notably the old town, as well as other villages in Bint Jbeil, which was subject to artillery shelling. Israeli raids also targeted more than 20 villages, including Khiam, Taybeh, Chakra, Ainata, Sarbin, Mayfadoun, Habboush, Maarakeh, Kfarsir, Aaichiyeh, Jibchit, Harouf, Blat, Kfar Reman, Arab Salim and Yohmor Chkeif, killing and injuring dozens of people.One of the fleeing residents in the south, who wished to remain anonymous, said that after remaining in his village for 22 days, what he saw “is black hell I’ve never seen in my life.”
He added: “They left us to our fate and let us down. If you see the magnitude of the destruction, you will not believe your eyes.”
He said that “many Hezbollah members are shaving their beards and fleeing the country to Iraq.”
Hezbollah announced the execution of a series of military operations, some of which targeted “a gathering of soldiers at the eastern outskirts of the Lebanese town of Taybeh, as well as two gatherings at the Misgav Am site and at the borders of the Lebanese town of Rab El-Thalathine.”
The clashes remain intense at the triangle of Taybeh-Rab El-Thalathine-Adaisseh between Hezbollah and the Israeli army, aimed at preventing any incursion into Lebanese territory. On Tuesday night, Israeli airstrikes hit the southern suburbs of Beirut with about eight raids targeting residential buildings that had been evacuated in the neighborhoods of Al-Laylaki and Haret Hreik, the vicinity of Al-Rayah Stadium, Al-Qaim Mosque, the Atwi complex in Al-Marija and Burj Al-Barajneh, and a building opposite Bahman Hospital, causing massive damage to the hospital.The Israeli army reported that it intercepted “four drones on Wednesday that were attempting to approach the border, and detected the launch of 25 projectiles from Lebanon toward Haifa Bay and Upper Galilee.”Israeli media reported “the interception of a missile in the airspace over the city of Petah Tikva, located northeast of Tel Aviv, as well as two missiles in the airspace above the Ramat David military airport in the Jezreel Valley, east of Haifa.”The Israeli army announced that “22 soldiers were injured in battles in southern Lebanon over the past 24 hours.”
Hezbollah is mourning the head of the party’s executive council, Hashem Safieddine, who was killed in Israeli raids that targeted buildings in Al-Marija in the southern suburbs of Beirut early this October. The Israeli raids prevented any efforts to approach the targeted site to retrieve his body to confirm his death. Safieddine was the likely successor to the party’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed by Israel in raids that targeted his underground residence in Haret Hreik on Sept. 27. The Israeli army announced on Tuesday evening the “elimination of Safieddine” after receiving intelligence in Beirut about the recovery of his body and the bodies of about 20 leaders. The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah appears to be far from resolution, despite diplomatic efforts, and has entered a phase of attrition. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who arrived in Beirut, said: “Israel has significantly weakened Hezbollah, and the current task is to achieve an effective diplomatic solution.”MP Ibrahim Mneimneh predicted that the conflict will be long.
“Israel has confirmed that it will not cease its operations against Lebanon until it has completely dismantled Hezbollah’s military capabilities, disarmed the group, and returned the residents of the north to their settlements. “Conversely, Hezbollah asserts that it will continue to resist Israel until the last fighter.“Therefore, it is unlikely that the fronts of combat will calm down in the near future, especially given that the US administration is preoccupied with the election campaigns for the presidential race.”Mneimneh said: “This situation is accompanied by the Lebanese government’s inability to exert pressure to halt the war, and the ruling system that has led the country to this disaster remains determined to dismantle what is left of the state. “Iran is stepping forward to negotiate on our behalf as if its previous interventions have not already brought devastation and ruin to all of Lebanon.”Meanwhile, a meeting was held on Wednesday between the two former presidents, Amin Gemayel and Michel Suleiman, and former prime minister, Fouad Siniora, at Gemayel’s residence in Bikfaya.
The meeting praised Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s “stance against Iranian guardianship and hegemony and his affirmation of the sovereignty of the Lebanese state and its full control of its free decision.”The attendees said that “efforts should now focus on saving Lebanon without any delay to stop the horrifying and open massacre of the Lebanese people at the hands of the Israeli aggression, through an immediate ceasefire and the implementation of Resolution 1701 under the exclusive authority of the state strictly and completely.”The meeting called for supporting the parliament’s speaker, prime minister and Arab parties in these efforts. The process of electing a president for the republic should be freed from any preconditions, and the elected president should have the confidence of parliament, they said.
“A national salvation government should be formed, and work should commence on preparing and implementing a plan for state-building that ensures economic recovery in all its forms, including efforts to rebuild what the Israeli aggression has destroyed, in cooperation with friendly institutions and nations,” a statement released after the meeting said. The attendees called for “the need to re-establish the authority of the state over all Lebanese territories, in compliance with international and Arab legitimate resolutions.”They also urged “adopting and implementing the financial, economic, administrative and institutional reform plan in the country.”Siniora said: “From the first day after the 2006 July war, there was a failure to implement Resolution 1701 by Israel and Hezbollah. It is true that the state sent a large number of army personnel to the south, but at that time, we witnessed a laxity in implementation.”Meanwhile, the 11th relief plane in the Saudi air bridge, operated by the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center, arrived at Beirut Rafic Hariri International Airport, carrying food, tents and medical aid.

Israeli Strikes Pound Lebanese Coastal City after Residents Evacuate
Asharq Al Awsat/October 23/2024
Israeli jets struck multiple buildings in Lebanon's southern coastal city of Tyre on Wednesday, sending up large clouds of black smoke, while Hezbollah confirmed that a top official widely expected to be the group's next leader had been killed in an Israeli strike.
The state-run National News Agency reported that an Israeli strike on the nearby town of Maarakeh killed three people. There were no reports of casualties in Tyre, where the Israeli military had issued evacuation warnings prior to the strikes. Hezbollah meanwhile fired another barrage of rockets into Israel, including two that set off air raid sirens in Tel Aviv before being intercepted. A cloud of smoke could be seen in the sky from the hotel where US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was staying on his latest visit to the region to try to renew ceasefire talks. The group confirmed that Hashem Safieddine had been killed in an announcement Wednesday, one day after Israel said it had killed him in a strike earlier this month in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Safieddine, a powerful cleric within the party ranks, had been expected to succeed Hassan Nasrallah, one of the group’s founders, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike last month. Hezbollah began firing rockets, missiles and drones into Israel, drawing retaliatory airstrikes, after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023 attack out of Gaza triggered the war there. All-out war erupted in Lebanon last month, and Israeli strikes killed Nasrallah, and most of his senior commanders. Israeli ground forces invaded southern Lebanon at the beginning of October.
Tyre, a provincial capital, had largely been spared in the Israel-Hezbollah war, but strikes in an around the city have intensified recently. The 2,500-year-old city, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Beirut, is known for its pristine beaches, ancient harbor and imposing Roman ruins and hippodrome, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is among Lebanon’s largest cities and a vibrant metropolis popular with tourists. The buildings struck on Wednesday were between several heritage sites, including the hippodrome and a cluster of seaside sites associated with the ancient Phoenicians and the Crusaders. The Israeli military issued evacuation warnings a couple hours prior for dozens of buildings in the heart of the city. It told residents to move north of the Awali River, dozens of kilometers (miles) to the north. Avichay Adraee, an Israeli military spokesman, said on the platform X that there were Hezbollah assets in the area of the evacuation warning, without elaborating or providing evidence. The city is in southern Lebanon, where the Shiite Hezbollah has a strong presence, and its legislators are members of the group or its allies. But Tyre is also home to civilians with no ties to the group, including a sizable Christian community.
First responders from Lebanon’s Civil Defense used loudspeakers to warn residents to evacuate the area and helped older adults and others who had difficulty leaving. Ali Safieddine, the head of the Civil Defense, told The Associated Press there were no casualties.
Dr. Wissam Ghazal, a health official in Tyre, said the strikes hit six buildings, flattening four of them, around 2 1/2 hours after the evacuation warnings. People displaced by the strikes could be seen in parks and sitting on the sides of nearby roads. The head of Tyre's disaster management unit, Mortada Mhanna, told the AP that although many people had fled, thousands of residents and others who have been displaced from other areas have chosen to stay in the city. Many people, including hundreds of families, previously had fled villages in South Lebanon to seek refuge in shelters in Tyre. An estimated 15,000 people remain in the city out of a pre-war population of about 100,000, Mhanna said. “It’s very difficult for many to leave. They’re worried about being subjected to further chaos and displacement,” he said, adding that he and his team had chosen to stay in the city, but “it’s a big risk. It’s not safe here anymore.” Over 2,500 people have been killed in Lebanon since the conflict began late last year, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Over a million people have fled their homes since September. On the Israeli side, attacks have killed around 60 people, half of them soldiers. Near-daily rocket barrages have emptied out communities across northern Israel, displacing some 60,000 people. In recent weeks Hezbollah has extended its range, launching scores of rockets every day and regularly targeting the northern Israeli city of Haifa. Most of the projectiles are intercepted or fall in open areas.

‘The whole city shook’: Israel pounds Lebanon’s ancient Tyre
AFP/October 23, 2024
TYRE, Lebanon: Israeli strikes on Wednesday pounded Lebanon’s Tyre, an ancient coastal city which boasts a UNESCO World Heritage site, leaving swathes of its center in ruins. The raids, among the worst since the start of the Israel-Hezbollah war last month, hit the “heart of Tyre,” said Rana, a resident who asked to only use her first name over security concerns. “The whole city shook,” said Rana, after fleeing to the seafront following an Israeli military warning for people to evacuate much of Tyre’s center in the morning. Thick black plumes of smoke were seen rising from several neighborhoods, with parts of the evacuation area just 500 meters (yards) from the city’s ancient ruins. The strikes caused “massive destruction and serious damage to homes, infrastructure, buildings, shops and cars,” said the official National News Agency.
AFP footage showed entire neighborhoods buried under rubble. The Israeli army struck “command and control complexes of various Hezbollah units,” according to a post from the military’s Arabic-language spokesman, Avichay Adraee, on social media platform X. Adraee described Tyre as an “important” Hezbollah stronghold, although Amal, an ally of the Iran-backed group, was believed to hold more sway there. Bilal Kashmar of Tyre’s disaster management unit said seven building were completely levelled and more than 400 apartments in their vicinity damaged in the strikes. Four streets were completely blocked by debris, he told AFP, adding that at least two people were left wounded after most residents fled. Before Hezbollah and Israel started trading fire over the border last year, at least 50,000 people lived in Tyre, a vibrant city home to both Christians and Muslims. The city was emptied of most of its population when Israel’s heavy bombardment began last month.Only 14,500 remained there on Tuesday, Kashamr said. But the city saw a fresh exodus on Wednesday as people began to escape immediately after the Israeli army issued an evacuation warning for four neighborhoods at 8:00 am (0500 GMT). Emergency teams drove around the city, urging people to evacuate over megaphones, a video journalist collaborating with AFP said. An AFP photographer in the city of Sidon, further north, saw dozens of cars on the coastal highway filled with families carrying mattresses, suitcases and clothes. “Some families, who had not left the city of Tyre before, began leaving their homes to stay clear of areas that the Israeli enemy threatened to target,” NNA said. Civil defense teams helped transport elderly people and people with limited mobility “to safe areas,” the NNA added. The Risala Scouts, rescuers affiliated with Hezbollah ally Amal, deployed ambulances to targeted areas to transport wounded civilians to nearby hospitals. “We are working on providing alternative housing with municipalities,” said Rabih Issa, an official with the organization. Tyre is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. It is home to important archaeological sites, mainly from Roman times. Kashmar of Tyre’s disaster management unit said there has yet to be a damage assessment for heritage sites.However, “damage is possible,” he said, explaining that one strike hit less than 50 meters away from one of the city’s ruins. UNESCO said it was “closely following the impact of the ongoing conflict on the World Heritage site of Tyre” using remote sensing tools and satellite imagery. On September 23, Israel launched an intensive air campaign in Lebanon, after almost a year of cross-border exchanges with Hezbollah over the Gaza war. Since then, at least 1,552 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon, according to an AFP tally of health ministry figures, although the real number is likely to be higher due to data gaps.

Rocket slams into building after barrage unleashed on northern Israel
Jerusalem Post/October 23/2024
Twenty-five projectiles were identified crossing over from Lebanon into Israel following the Wednesday rocket barrage that targeted northern Israel, the IDF announced shortly after the incident. During the barrage, sirens were heard in Israel's Upper Galilee, Central Galilee, and Haifa Bay. According to Israel's military, most of the projectiles were intercepted, while others struck in identified areas. Footage released by N12 showed a building in the Naaman industrial area after being hit by the strike and sustaining significant damage. Flames can be seen in the building. No reports of any wounded. Following the barrage, MDA said that medical teams were en route to the areas where rocket strikes were identified. There have been no reports of any wounded. Additionally, the Israel Air Force intercepted a total of four drones on Wednesday morning following drone sirens that also sounded in northern Israel, the military said.

Netanyahu says Hezbollah prepared ‘invasion’ of Israel
AFP/October 23, 2024
PARIS: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday Israel had uncovered a plot by Hezbollah to attack his country via underground tunnels involving jeeps and missiles. He told French broadcasters CNews and Europe 1 that had the plan succeeded such an assault would have been more damaging than the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. “A hundred meters, two hundred meters from the border we found tunnels, tunnels that were preparing an invasion of Israel, an attack even greater than on October 7,” Netanyahu said, according to a simultaneous translation provided by the networks. “With jeeps, with motorbikes, with rockets, with missiles. They were planning an invasion.”Netanyahu had told French daily Le Figaro earlier this month that the Israeli army found Russian cutting-edge military hardware in Hezbollah arms caches. Since Israel last month escalated its bombing in Lebanon before sending ground troops across the frontier, the war has killed at least 1,552 people, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, though the real toll is likely higher.

Lebanon state media says drone strike hits Beirut apartment
Arab News/October 23, 2024
BEIRUT: Lebanese state media said an Israeli drone strike hit an apartment in the Jnah neighborhood of south Beirut on Wednesday, as raids targeted the nearby suburbs of Ouzai and Haret Hreik. “An enemy drone strike targeted a residential apartment in Jnah near the former location of the Iranian embassy,” the official National News Agency said, also reporting other strikes in the suburbs of Ouzai and Haret Hreik which were not preceded by an Israeli evacuation warning.

Western diplomat says foreign forces an option in Lebanon after truce
AFP/October 23, 2024
BEIRUT: Western countries have floated the idea of deploying international forces to Lebanon alongside the country’s army in case of a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, a Western diplomat said Wednesday. Some 10,000 peacekeepers with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) are already deployed in the country’s south, but the diplomat said a separate multi-national troop deployment was under consideration. “What is needed right now is a ceasefire and a presence trusted by both sides — this could be the Lebanese army with international forces,” the diplomat told AFP, requesting anonymity as the matter is sensitive. “Partners of Lebanon have already been supporting the Lebanese army and are looking very concretely into how they can support it further... in the context of a ceasefire and long-term diplomatic agreement,” the diplomat added. After nearly a year of war with Hamas in Gaza, Israel shifted its focus to Lebanon last month, vowing to secure its northern border under fire from Hezbollah, ramping up air strikes on the group’s strongholds and sending in ground troops. UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended a 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah and called for the deployment of only Lebanese government forces UNIFIL peacekeepers in south Lebanon, has come under fire for its limited implementation. Lebanese media outlets have reported discussions on bolstering the UN resolution’s implementation, dubbing such an option as “1701-plus.”On a visit to Beirut on Monday, US envoy Amos Hochstein said that “both sides simply committing to 1701 is just not enough.”“We have to put things in place that would allow for confidence that it will be implemented for everyone,” he added.The Western diplomat told AFP that “the push toward a 1701-plus is a reflection of the reality that neither side implemented” the resolution.Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said this month that Lebanon was ready to bolster the army in the south after any ceasefire was reached. UNIFIL, set up in 1978 to monitor the withdrawal of Israeli forces after they invaded Lebanon, has accused Israel’s military of “repeatedly” and “deliberately” firing on its positions in recent weeks. Hezbollah, founded after Israel invaded and besieged Beirut in 1982, is the only group that refused to give up its weapons after Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war, doing so in the name of “resistance” against Israel. A UN-mandated multinational force including contingents from the United States and France deployed in Lebanon after the 1982 invasion, but the mission was targeted by two deadly attacks that killed almost 300 personnel.

German foreign minister warns Lebanon ‘on brink of collapse’
October 23, 2024
BEIRUT: German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock warned on Wednesday that “Lebanon is on the brink of collapse” as she arrived in the war-torn country for a visit. As Israel clashes with militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon, she also said that “any deliberate attack on UN peacekeepers violates international humanitarian law.”Baerbock was on her 12th trip to the Middle East since the Hamas attack of October 7 last year set off Israel’s war in Gaza and now against Hezbollah in Lebanon. “The humanitarian situation in Lebanon is becoming more desperate by the day,” she said at the start of her trip, which Berlin had not previously announced because of security concerns. “Hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing with their last belongings, children are being separated from their parents, hospitals are working at the limit of their capacity. “Lebanon is on the brink of collapse.”She said Hamas allies Hezbollah are “hiding behind civilians and continuing to fire rockets at Israel” but also cautioned that Israel must operate within “the narrow limits of the right to self-defense and international humanitarian law.” The UN Interim Force in Lebanon has accused Israel of attacking its peacekeepers multiple times in recent weeks. “All parties to the conflict also have an obligation to protect UN peacekeepers,” said Baerbock. “The soldiers of UNIFIL have our full support. They are needed for a political solution to the conflict. “Any deliberate attack on UN peacekeepers violates international humanitarian law.”
The war in Gaza began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed 42,718 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry which the UN considers reliable. Israel shifted its focus to Lebanon in late September, vowing to secure its northern border under fire from Hezbollah. Baerbock urged efforts involving the United States, Europe and the Arab world “to develop a viable diplomatic solution that protects the legitimate security interests of Israel and Lebanon.”

IDF eliminates three Hezbollah sector commanders, 70 more terrorists
Jerusalem Post/October 23/2024
The three sector commanders had reportedly overseen many attacks on civilians in Israel, including rocket and anti-tank missile attacks on communities in the North. Over the past two days, the Hezbollah commanders of the Jibchit, Jouaiya, and Qana sectors were killed by Israeli air force strikes in Lebanon, the IDF stated on Wednesday morning. The three sector commanders had reportedly overseen many attacks on civilians in Israel, including rocket and anti-tank missile attacks on communities in the North. Additionally, Khalil Mohammad Amhaz, a terrorist operative in Hezbollah's Aerial Unit, was killed by the IAF on Monday, the IDF added. According to Israel's military, Amhaz's role in the unit made him responsible for the development and launching of explosive and intelligence-gathering drones into Israel. Furthermore, since Tuesday morning, some 70 terrorists were eliminated via ground encounters and aerial strikes during ongoing “limited, localized, targeted raids against Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure and operatives,” the military added. Around 20 of these terrorists reportedly posed an immediate threat to IDF troops, and were eliminated by the IAF and troops of the 36th Division, the IDF noted. During this operational activity, troops uncovered and destroyed subterranean terror infrastructure and weapons caches. The IDF reported that rockets, anti-tank missile launchers, mortars, and munitions were among the ordnance destroyed.
IDF activities in Gaza
Concurrently, the IDF reported that troops also killed terrorists and located weapons in the Gaza Strip during ongoing operations in the Jabalya area. In one such encounter, the military stated that an Israeli aircraft struck a group of armed terrorists and that after the strike, secondary explosions went off, indicating “the presence of significant quantities of weapons.”Israeli forces also reportedly captured dozens of terrorists as troops enabled civilians in the Strip to evacuate along humanitarian routes.

'IDF to act forcefully': Israel strikes Lebanon's Tyre hours after warning residents to evacuate
Jerusalem Post/October 23/2024
The reports of the strikes came approximately three hours after the IDF called on residents of Tyre, Lebanon, to evacuate the area. Israel conducted an airstrike on the Lebanese port city of Tyre on Wednesday, witnesses in the area told Reuters. The reports of the strikes came approximately three hours after the IDF called on residents of the Lebanese city to evacuate the area. Arab Media Spokesperson Avichay Adraee posted the announcement on X/Twitter, emphasizing that the residents were required to move out of the locations marked in red in the accompanying graphic. Hezbollah's endangerment Adraee also noted that the residents should head "north of the Awali River.""Anyone who is near Hezbollah facilities and combat equipment is putting his life in danger," he added. "Hezbollah's activities force the IDF to act against it forcefully, as it does not intend to harm you." The area highlighted in red by the graphic was bordered by Jaafar Sharaf Al-Din Street in the west, Hiram Street in the north, Al-Athar Street in the east, and Abu Deeb Street in the south.

German FM Calls for Diplomatic Solution to Fighting on Her Visit to Beirut
Asharq Al Awsat/October 23/2024
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has called for a diplomatic solution to the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. Baerbock, upon her arrival Wednesday in Beirut, said that “we must now work with our partners in the USA, Europe and the Arab world to find a viable diplomatic solution that safeguards the legitimate security interests of both Israel and Lebanon.”The foreign minister warned that “a complete destabilization of the country would be fatal for the most religiously diverse society of all states in the Middle East and also for the entire region.”She also asked all parties involved in the conflict to protect the United Nations peacekeeper troops stationed in the Israeli-Lebanese border region. Baerbock is on her 12th visit to the region since Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. She held talks with influential parliament Speaker and Hezbollah ally Nabih Berri upon her arrival in Beirut.

Hezbollah's Hashem Safieddine, heir apparent to Nasrallah, killed in Israeli attack, group says
Reuters/October 23, 2024
Hashem Safieddine, the top Hezbollah official widely expected to succeed slain secretary general Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli attack, the group said Wednesday. Hezbollah confirmed that Safieddine was killed in an Israeli airstrike. Safieddine had been running Hezbollah alongside its deputy secretary general Naim Qassem since Nasrallah's assassination and was expected to be formally elected as its next secretary general, although no official announcement had yet been made. A relative of Nasrallah, Safieddine had sat on the group's Jihad Council - the body responsible for its military operations. He was also head of its executive council, overseeing Hezbollah's financial and administrative affairs. Safieddine assumed a prominent role speaking for Hezbollah during the year of hostilities with Israel that ultimately led to his death, addressing funerals and other events that Nasrallah had long been unable to attend for security reasons. His killing further erodes the group's top leadership as Israeli strikes pummel Lebanon's south, eastern Bekaa Valley and southern suburbs of Beirut - all Hezbollah strongholds - and the group's fighters seek to push back Israeli ground incursions.

Austin: US Has Not Seen Evidence of Hezbollah Cash Bunker Under Beirut Hospital
Asharq Al Awsat/October 23, 2024
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Wednesday that he had not seen evidence that there was a Hezbollah bunker filled with cash built under a hospital in Beirut, adding that Washington would continue to work with Israel to get a better insight. Israel's military said that Hezbollah has stashed hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold in a bunker built under a hospital in Beirut, adding that it would not strike the facility as it keeps up attacks against the group's financial assets. "We have not seen evidence of that at this moment. But, you know, we will continue to collaborate with our Israeli counterparts to gain better fidelity on exactly what they are looking at," Austin told reporters in Rome. Fadi Alameh, a Lebanese lawmaker with the Amal Movement and the director of the hospital in question, Al-Sahel, has told Reuters that Israel was making false and slanderous claims and called on the Lebanese Army to visit and show it had only operating rooms, patients and a morgue. In a televised statement on Monday, the Israeli military's chief spokesman said Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, killed by Israel last month, had built the bunker which was designed for lengthy stays.

Lufthansa Suspends Flights to Beirut, Tehran until Early 2025
Asharq Al Awsat/October 23/2024
Lufthansa extended the suspension of its flights to Tehran and Beirut until early next year for operational reasons, the German flagship airline said on Wednesday. For Lufthansa Airlines, this means flights to Tehran will be suspended up to and including Jan. 31, 2025, while those to Beirut are suspended up to and including Feb. 28, 2025, it said.Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings are all part of the Lufthansa Group. SWISS said in a separate statement that flights to Beirut would be cancelled up to and including Jan. 18, 2025, to provide greater planning certainty for both its passenger and crew.

Israel Confirms Hezbollah’s Safieddine Killed
Asharq Al Awsat/October 23/2024
Israel on Tuesday confirmed it had killed Hashem Safieddine, the heir apparent to late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah who was killed last month in an Israeli attack targeting the group in Beirut’s southern suburbs. The military said Safieddine was killed in a strike carried out three weeks ago, its first confirmation of his death. Earlier this month, Israel said he had probably been eliminated. There was no immediate response from Hezbollah to Israel's statement that it had killed Safieddine. "We have reached Nasrallah, his replacement and most of Hezbollah's senior leadership. We will reach anyone who threatens the security of the civilians of the State of Israel," said Israeli army chief Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi. Israel has been carrying out an escalating offensive in Lebanon after a year of border clashes with Hezbollah. A relative of Nasrallah, Safieddine was appointed to its Jihad Council - the body responsible for its military operations - and to its executive council, overseeing Hezbollah's financial and administrative affairs. Safieddine assumed a prominent role speaking for Hezbollah during the last year of hostilities with Israel, addressing funerals and other events that Nasrallah had long been unable to attend for security reasons. Israel has so far shown no sign of relenting in its Gaza and Lebanon campaigns even after assassinating several leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, which lost Nasrallah, its powerful secretary-general, in a Sept. 27 airstrike. The Beirut suburb where Safieddine was killed was pummeled by fresh airstrikes Tuesday, including one that leveled a building Israel said housed Hezbollah facilities. The collapse sent smoke and debris flying into the air a few hundred meters from where a spokesperson for Hezbollah had just briefed journalists about a weekend drone attack that damaged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's house. Tuesday's airstrikes came 40 minutes after Israel issued an evacuation warning for two buildings in the area that it said were used by Hezbollah.

Hezbollah Confirms that Top Official Hashem Safieddine was Killed in an Israeli Strike
Asharq Al Awsat/October 23/2024
Hezbollah announced Wednesday that Hashem Safieddine, one of its top officials who had been widely expected to be the group’s next leader, was killed in an Israeli airstrike. The announcement came a day after Israel said it had killed Safieddine in a strike earlier this month in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Safieddine, a powerful cleric within the party ranks, had been expected to succeed Hassan Nasrallah, one of the group’s founders, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike last month, The AP reported. Over the past several weeks, Israeli strikes have killed much of Hezbollah’s top leadership.

Israel Says it Killed Three Hezbollah Commanders
Asharq Al Awsat/October 23/2024
Israel's military said it had killed three Hezbollah commanders and some 70 fighters in southern Lebanon in the past 48 hours, a day after confirming it had killed Hashem Safieddine, the group's heir apparent leader. n southern Lebanon, Israeli “troops continue conducting limited, localized, targeted raids against Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure and operatives," the army said in a statement. "Over the past day, the troops eliminated approximately 70 terrorists in ground and aerial strikes," it said. n Tuesday, the Israeli military said it had confirmed the killing of Hashem Safieddine, the heir apparent to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah who was killed in an Israeli attack last month. The military said Safieddine was killed in a strike carried out three weeks ago in Beirut's southern suburbs, its first confirmation of his death. Earlier this month, Israel said he had probably been eliminated. here was no immediate response from Hezbollah to Israel's statement that it had killed Safieddine. We have reached Nasrallah, his replacement and most of Hezbollah's senior leadership. We will reach anyone who threatens the security of the civilians of the State of Israel," said Israeli army chief Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi.

US has not seen evidence of Hezbollah cash bunker under Beirut hospital, Pentagon chief says
REUTERS/October 23, 2024
ROME: US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Wednesday that he had not seen evidence that there was a Hezbollah bunker filled with cash built under a hospital in Beirut, adding that Washington would continue to work with Israel to get better insights. Israel’s military said that Hezbollah has stashed hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold in a bunker built under a hospital in Beirut, adding that it would not strike the facility as it keeps up attacks against the group’s financial assets. “We have not seen evidence of that at this moment. But, you know, we will continue to collaborate with our Israeli counterparts to gain better fidelity on exactly what they are looking at,” Austin told reporters in Rome. Fadi Alameh, a Lebanese lawmaker with the Shiite Amal Movement party and the director of the hospital in question, Al-Sahel, has told Reuters that Israel was making false and slanderous claims and called on the Lebanese Army to visit and show it had only operating rooms, patients and a morgue. In a televised statement on Monday, the Israeli military’s chief spokesman said Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, killed by Israel last month, had built the bunker which was designed for lengthy stays.

War Likely to Wipe 9% off Lebanon’s GDP, with Fallout Set to Exceed 2006 Conflict
Asharq Al Awsat/October 23/2024
The war between Israel and armed group Hezbollah is expected to wipe 9% off Lebanon's national wealth as measured by GDP, the United Nations said on Wednesday, with the scale of hostilities and the economic fallout set to surpass the last war in 2006.
The UN Development Program's rapid appraisal of the conflict's impact on Lebanon's gross domestic product was released a day ahead of a summit hosted by France to help drum up international support for Lebanon. UNDP said it expected the conflict to last until the end of 2024, leading to a 30% jump in the government's financing needs in a country in dire straits even before violence began. "GDP is projected to decline by 9.2% compared to a no-war scenario, indicating a significant decline in economic activity as a direct consequence of the conflict (around 2 billion dollars)," the report said. UNDP said that even if the war ended in 2024, the consequences would persist for years, with GDP likely to contract by 2.28% in 2025 and 2.43% in 2026. Lebanon was already suffering a four-year-old economic downturn and a political crisis when Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel last year in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas. In late September, Israel dramatically ramped up its bombing across Lebanon, with strikes now regularly hitting Beirut's southern suburbs, major cities in southern Lebanon and parts of the eastern Bekaa Valley, including the border with Syria. Hezbollah and Israel last fought in 2006, when a month-long conflict left much of Lebanon's south and the capital's southern suburbs in ruins and required international help to rebuild. UNDP said the damage to physical infrastructure, housing and productive capacities like factories would likely be close to that estimated for the 2006 war, which was between $2.5 billion and $3.6 billion. But it warned of larger overall damage to Lebanon. "The scale of the military engagement, the geopolitical context, the humanitarian impact and the economic fallout in 2024 are expected to be much greater than in 2006," it said. UNDP's report said the closure of border crossings critical for trade would bring a 21% drop in trade activities, and that it expected job losses in the tourism, agriculture and construction sectors.
It said Lebanon had already sustained "massive environmental losses" over the last year, including due to unexploded ordnance and contamination from possibly hazardous material, particularly the use of white phosphorus across southern Lebanon. Government revenue is expected to fall by 9% and total investment by more than 6% through both 2025 and 2026. As a result, increased international assistance will be essential for sustainable recovery in Lebanon, UNDP said - not only to address the spike in humanitarian needs but to stem the long-term social and economic consequences of the conflict. Lebanon's minister in charge of its crisis response told Reuters that the country needed $250 million a month to help more than 1.2 million people displaced by Israeli strikes.

Like in Gaza, Israel Attacks Lebanon’s Healthcare Sector
Beirut: Youssef Diab/Asharq Al Awsat/October 23/2024
Israel is executing a systematic plan to weaken Lebanon’s healthcare sector, aiming to shut down hospitals and medical facilities, starting from the south and spreading to the Bekaa and southern Beirut. The latest strike hit the entrance of Rafic Hariri University Hospital in Beirut’s Jnah area, just an hour after Israeli forces warned Sahel Hospital to evacuate, alleging a Hezbollah tunnel with $500 million underneath. Lebanon’s Health Minister Firass Abiad condemned this as an “Israeli attack on the healthcare sector.”Jihad Saadeh, director of Rafic Hariri Hospital, said the facility was damaged by Israeli shrapnel but confirmed they are still operating at full capacity despite the severe damage. He stated that the hospital would not be evacuated, and urgent repairs are needed. Fadi Sinan, Director-General of the Ministry of Health, denied any involvement of the healthcare sector in non-medical activities and called on the international community to help stop Israel’s attacks on hospitals. The strikes have damaged three hospitals in the Bekaa and shut down all facilities in southern Beirut. In response, MP Bilal Abdallah sent a memo to global health organizations, documenting Israel’s violations of the healthcare sector. Abdallah also questioned why Israel would target Rafic Hariri Hospital, which serves the poor and provides essential care like dialysis and cancer treatment, rejecting Israeli claims that it was linked to Hezbollah. In comments to Asharq Al-Awsat, Abdallah argued that Israel’s assault on Lebanon’s healthcare system was a reaction to the sector’s effectiveness in treating casualties from Israeli attacks and part of a broader attempt to undermine the resilience of the Lebanese people. Following the attacks, Abiad set up an emergency operations rooms to distribute patients across remaining hospitals. Mobile clinics are also providing care to displaced people across the country. Sahel Hospital’s media tour prompted an angry response from Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee, who accused journalists of ignoring alleged Hezbollah bunkers. Hospital director Fadi Alameh dismissed these claims as false, saying the facility has no political ties and was turned into a field hospital after other hospitals were damaged. Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, Alameh called the Israeli allegations about a Hezbollah money vault under the hospital “pure fabrication,” part of a strategy to destroy Lebanon’s healthcare system—similar to what Israel had done in Gaza. Despite later assurances from the Israeli military that Sahel Hospital would not be bombed, Alameh insisted that a Lebanese army engineering team inspect the hospital and its surroundings to disprove the claims of an underground Hezbollah facility. Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari, meanwhile, maintained that Hezbollah had constructed a tunnel under a hospital in southern Beirut, allegedly storing hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold.

Bassil Disavows Hezbollah, Blames it for Israeli Assault on Lebanon
Asharq Al Awsat/October 23/2024
Head of the Free Patriotic Movement MP Gebran Bassil announced on Tuesday that his party was no longer in alliance with Hezbollah. In scathing remarks against the Iran-backed party to Al-Arabiya television, he said Hezbollah had relinquished Lebanon’s claim to self-defense when it opened the “support front” for Hamas in Gaza on October 8, 2023. This weakened the party and exposed its military capabilities and rendered Lebanon completely vulnerable to Israeli assaults, he added. Bassil’s statements are another in a slew of criticism by Lebanese officials that have blamed Hezbollah for dragging Lebanon to another conflict with Israel. They have slammed the party for taking the unilateral decision to launch the “support front” without informing official authorities. Bassil held Hezbollah responsible for committing a strategic error when it said it would “unify arenas” in Lebanon and Gaza to champion Hamas, a fellow Iran-backed ally. He stated that the “unity of arenas” does not benefit Lebanon, rather another – Iran. Moreover, Bassil said Hezbollah committed another error when it prioritized Shiite interests at the expense of Lebanon’s. “We are no longer in an alliance with the party,” he declared.
The FPM had struck the alliance with the party in 2006.
Iran is using Hezbollah and the Lebanese people, Bassil went on to say, expressing his fears over internal strife erupting in Lebanon. “We are facing an existential threat,” he said. He also voiced concern over attemts to divide the country. Meanwhile, the Kataeb party warned that Lebanon is enduring one of the most dangerous phases in its history that could be a turning point in shaping its future for generations to come. In a statement after a politburo meeting, it added: “After the end of all conflicts, the Kataeb will not under any circumstances agree for the situation to return to the way it was” before the eruption of the conflict. It will not agree to the return of the absence of the state and its authority. It will not return to a state that sells its decision-making power to countries near and far. It will not agree to the spread of weapons outside of state authority, “which the decades have proven is the main reason for undermining the authority of the state and wronging the Lebanese people and exposing them to all forms of occupation,” added the statement.

Israeli weapon seen in rare AP photos of Beirut airstrike appears to be a powerful smart bomb
Adam Schreck/JERUSALEM (AP) /October 23, 2024
In all but the blink of an eye, an Associated Press photographer's camera captured the moments that a battleship-gray Israeli bomb plummeted toward a Beirut building before detonating to bring the tower down. The airstrike came 40 minutes after Israel warned people to evacuate two buildings in the area that it said were located near Hezbollah warehouses and assets. The site was not far from where a spokesperson for the militant group had just briefed journalists. It was a rare glimpse into the use of one of the most powerful bombs in Israel's arsenal.
What kind of weapon was it?
An examination by independent arms researchers suggests the weapon was a guided bomb, also known as a smart bomb, launched from an Israeli jet. The tail fin and nose sections indicate this was a 2,000-pound warhead fitted with an Israeli-made guidance kit known as SPICE, according to Richard Weir, a senior conflict, crisis and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch. SPICE — Smart, Precise-Impact and Cost-Effective — guidance systems are made by Israel’s government-owned Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. They are attached to a standard unguided bomb to direct the weapon to its target. Minutes before the strike brought down the building, there were two smaller strikes on it, in what Israel’s military often refers to as a “a knock on the roof" warning strike, according to AP journalists at the scene. The practice has been observed in Israel's military campaign in Gaza; there, over 40,000 have been killed, according to local officials who don't distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths, in one of the most destructive conflicts in recent history.
The Israeli military declined to comment about the type of weapon used.
Why does Israel use this type of bomb?
Rafael advertises SPICE kits as being able to operate day or night, through bad weather, and in areas jammed against GPS. It says the weapons offer “high lethality and low collateral damage” and “pinpoint hit accuracy.”It also keeps the attacking aircraft out of harm's way. The 2,000-pound version can be launched as far as 60 kilometers (37 miles) from its target. Rafael also makes smaller versions. Once released by an attacking Israeli warplane such as an American-made F-15 or F-16, the bomb glides toward its target, adjusting course using movable fins. Joseph Dempsey, a defense and military analyst at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, agreed the photos indicated the weapon was a 2,000-pound SPICE bomb. He said the guidance system is thought to rely on GPS and what are known as electro-optical guidance systems, which use cameras or sensors to zero in on the bomb's target. The destructive nature of the weapon comes down to many factors, including the size of the warhead and the way it is fused. “This was clearly a delayed action fuse. It buried down into the ground (and) detonated, which has the effect of limiting the fragmentation and blast damage of this particular strike,” Weir said. That explains why the destruction was limited almost entirely to the targeted building. People standing a few hundred meters away felt little to nothing from the blast and didn't see much fragmentation.
Where is this bomb made?
The answer isn't straightforward.
“The guidance kits for the SPICE 2000 are manufactured by Rafael in Israel, though the level of reliance on foreign sub-components is unclear,” Dempsey said. In 2019, Rafael and U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin signed a deal to work together to build and sell SPICE guidance kits in the U.S. At the time, the companies said production of over 60 percent of the SPICE system was spread across eight U.S. states. In late October 2023, weeks after Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack, the U.S. State Department issued a letter approving the export of additional SPICE bomb assemblies to Israel. That letter, first reported by The New York Times, notified Congress that Rafael USA, an American subsidiary of the Israeli defense company, was seeking the $320 million shipment. That request was an amendment to an earlier $403 million license in 2020. The explosive warhead is a basic bomb, in this case likely a 2,000-pound MK-84 style explosive, where the nose and tail section have been swapped out for the guidance system. The U.S. earlier this year paused shipments of those powerful bombs to Israel because of concerns over civilian casualties, though Israel is believed to still have supplies in stock. It is difficult to know for sure where the bomb part was produced. Israel relies on the U.S. for supplies of MK-84 bombs, but it and other countries also produce similar weapons.
Determining that with certainty would require recovering remnants with markings on them, Weir said.

Israel says it killed a Hezbollah official expected to become the group's next leader
Sarah El Deeb, Farnoush Amiri, And Tia Goldenberg/BEIRUT (AP)/Wed, October 23, 2024
Israel said Tuesday that one of its airstrikes outside Beirut earlier in the month killed a Hezbollah official widely expected to have replaced the militant group's longtime leader, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in September. There was no immediate confirmation from Hezbollah about the fate of Hashem Safieddine, a powerful cleric who was expected to succeed Hassan Nasrallah, one of the group’s founders. Safieddine was killed in early October in a strike that also killed 25 other Hezbollah leaders, according to Israel, whose airstrikes in southern Lebanon in recent months have killed many of Hezbollah’s top leaders, leaving the group in disarray. Last week, Israel killed the top leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, during a battle in Gaza. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a trip to Israel that leaders there should “capitalize” on Sinwar's death as an opportunity to end the war in Gaza and secure the release of hostages taken during the deadly Hamas attack that started the war. Blinken also stressed the need for Israel to do more to help increase the flow of humanitarian aid to Palestinians. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office called his meeting with Blinken, which lasted more than two hours, “friendly and productive.”The Beirut suburb where Safieddine was killed was pummeled by fresh airstrikes Tuesday, including one that leveled a building Israel said housed Hezbollah facilities. The collapse sent smoke and debris flying into the air a few hundred meters (yards) from where a spokesperson for Hezbollah had just briefed journalists about a weekend drone attack that damaged Netanyahu's house. Tuesday's airstrikes came 40 minutes after Israel issued an evacuation warning for two buildings in the area that it said were used by Hezbollah. The Hezbollah news conference nearby was cut short, and an Associated Press photographer captured an image of an Israeli bomb heading toward the building moments before it was destroyed. There were no immediate reports of casualties. Hezbollah’s chief spokesperson, Mohammed Afif, said the group was behind the Saturday drone attack on Netanyahu’s home in the coastal town of Caesarea. Israel has said neither the prime minister nor his wife were home at the time.
Blinken's meetings with Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders was part of his 11th visit to the region since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war. He landed hours after Hezbollah launched a barrage of rockets into central Israel, setting off air raid sirens in populated areas and at its international airport, but causing no apparent damage or injuries.
Hospitals in Lebanon fear being targeted by Israel
An Israeli airstrike late Monday in Beirut destroyed several buildings across the street from the country’s largest public hospital, killing 18 people and wounding at least 60 others. The Israeli military said it struck a Hezbollah target, without elaborating, and said that it hadn’t targeted the hospital itself. AP reporters visited the Rafik Hariri University Hospital on Tuesday. They saw broken windows in the hospital’s pharmacy and dialysis center, which was full of patients at the time.Staff at another Beirut hospital feared it would be targeted after Israel alleged that Hezbollah had stashed hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and gold in its basement, without providing evidence. The director of the Sahel General Hospital denied the allegations and invited journalists to visit the hospital and its two underground floors on Tuesday. AP reporters saw no sign of militants or anything out of the ordinary. The few remaining patients had been evacuated after the Israeli military's announcement the night before. “We have been living in terror for the last 24 hours,” hospital director Mazen Alame said. “There is nothing under the hospital.”Many in Lebanon fear Israel could target its hospitals in the same way it has raided medical facilities across Gaza. The Israeli military has accused Hamas and other militants of using hospitals for military purposes, allegations denied by medical staff. Lebanon’s Health Ministry said Tuesday that 63 people have been killed over the past 24 hours, raising the death toll over the past year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah to 2,546. Three Israeli soldiers were killed on Tuesday: one in Gaza, one in Lebanon, and one in a rocket attack in northern Israel, according to the military.
Blinken trying to restart efforts to reach a cease-fire in Gaza
During his meeting with Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders, Blinken underscored the need for a dramatic increase in the amount of humanitarian aid reaching Gaza, according to U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller. The need for more aid in Gaza is something Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made clear in a letter to Israeli officials last week. Miller said Blinken also stressed the importance of ending the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, which escalated earlier this month when Israel began a ground invasion of southern Lebanon.
The United States, Egypt and Qatar have brokered months of talks between Israel and Hamas, trying to strike a deal in which the militants would release dozens of hostages in return for an end to the war, a lasting cease-fire and the release of Palestinian prisoners.
But both Israel and Hamas accused each other of making new and unacceptable demands over the summer, and the talks halted in August. Hamas says its demands haven't changed following the killing of Sinwar. Israel said it invaded Lebanon to try to stop near daily rocket attacks from Hezbollah since the start of the war in Gaza. Israel has said it plans to strike Iran — which backs both Hamas and Hezbollah — in response to its ballistic missile attack on Israel earlier this month.
War rages in Lebanon and northern Gaza
The U.S. has also tried to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, but those efforts fell apart as tensions spiked last month with a series of Israeli strikes that killed Nasrallah and most of his senior commanders. Israel has carried out waves of heavy airstrikes across southern Beirut and the country’s south and east, areas where Hezbollah has a strong presence. Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets, missiles and drones into Israel over the past year, including some that have reached the country’s populous center. On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, and took another 250 hostage. Around 100 of the captives are still held in Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded tens of thousands, according to local health authorities, who don't say how many were combatants but say more than half were women and children. It has also caused major devastation and displaced around 90% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million.

Blinken warns Israel to not escalate conflict with Iran, Hezbollah
Jerusalem Post/October 23/2024
“It's also been an imperative for us to try to make sure that this conflict doesn't spread."US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Israel not to escalate its conflict with Tehran and the Iranian proxy group Hezbollah as it continues to respond militarily to attacks from both entities.
“It's also been an imperative for us to try to make sure that this conflict doesn't spread. We are resolute in our defense of Israel when it comes to attacks it's receiving from Iran, from Iran's proxies,” Blinken told reporters on Wednesday morning before departing Tel Aviv for Saudi Arabia.“We stand with Israel and will always stand with Israel and its defense,” he stressed. “It's also very important that Israel respond in ways that do not create greater escalation and do not risk spreading the conflict with Hezbollah and Lebanon,” he said. He spoke as Israel continues to weigh its retaliatory response both to Iran’s direct ballistic missile attack against it at the start of October and the Iranian and Hezbollah attempted assassination against Netanyahu last week. The IDF has continued to strike at Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. Israel on Wednesday began to bomb the UNESCO-listed port city of Tyre on Wednesday roughly three hours after issuing an order online for residents to flee central areas. Huge clouds of thick smoke billowed above residential buildings. Tens of thousands of people had already fled Tyre in recent weeks. The port is typically a bustling hub for the south - with fishermen, tourists, and even UN peacekeepers on a break from deployments near the border spending time there by the sea. But Israel's evacuation orders this week for the city have for the first time encompassed swathes of it, including right up to its ancient castle. In Lebanon, Israel's military said it had killed three Hezbollah commanders and some 70 fighters in the south in the past 48 hours, a day after confirming it had killed Hashem Safieddine, the militant group's heir apparent leader.
Ceasefire deal The United States has pushed in particular this week to advance a ceasefire to end the year-long IDF-Hezbollah war in Lebanon that would be based on UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that set the ceasefire terms which ended the 2006 Second Lebanon war. That text calls for Hezbollah not to operate between the Israeli-Lebanese border and the Litani River. US special envoy Amos Hochstein has been in Lebanon this working working on a ceasefire deal that would be based on that same resolution. “We're working intensely on the effective implementation of 1701… that many years ago should have avoided what we're seeing now, but didn't, because it's never been implemented,” Blinken said. “It's absolutely critical that the parties, and notably, Hezbollah, be moved back from the border, that the Lebanese Armed Forces are able to assume their responsibilities,” Blinken said. He stressed that it was important that evacuated Israeli and Lebanese civilians on both sides of the border be allowed to return home. Separately, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock arrived in Beirut for talks on Wednesday and said the task was to find a viable diplomatic solution between Israel and Lebanon after Israel succeeded in weakening Hezbollah. "The task now is to work with our partners in the U.S., Europe, and the Arab world to find a viable diplomatic solution that safeguards the legitimate security interests of both Israel and Lebanon," Baerbock said in a statement.

Israel Is Hurting Hezbollah. But It Can’t Rely on Lebanon to Finish the Job
David Daoud & Ahmad Sharawi/Haaretz/October 23/2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/10/136089/
The Iranian-backed group has deep popular roots, and its degradation or elimination will have to rest equally on military defeat coupled with political and social pressure
The Third Lebanon War has begun, and Israel has already landed impressive blows against Hezbollah. But victory has yet to be achieved and remains far from certain.
The group has deep popular roots, and its degradation or elimination will have to rest equally on military defeat coupled with political and social pressure to finish the job. Israel is handling the military prong – it possesses the capabilities and means, the numbers and organization and, most importantly, the will to finish its part of the task. Israeli popular support for degrading Hezbollah, no matter the price, has never been higher. Israel is therefore certain to severely weaken the group if it continues fighting at this level of tenacity.
Who will carry out the political and social prong remains an open question. Lebanon and the Lebanese, Hezbollah’s host state and society, are the most obvious candidates. But they lack any of the vital components to make them credible or viable actors to undertake that task.
Hezbollah today is hurting but is far from decimated. The group continues to demonstrate both its ability to take the fight into Israel – albeit at much lower levels, so far, than previously expected – and to put up a determined defense in south Lebanon. This, the group is still insisting, will continue until a prior cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.
Considerable erosion of Hezbollah’s popular support also cannot be identified. At Hezbollah’s nadir, figures like Abbas Ibrahim – former head of Lebanon’s General Security and an allegedly opportunistic supporter – poetically eulogized Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. From fear or conviction, lead “opposition” figures like Mark Daou similarly condemned attacks on Hezbollah, including Nasrallah’s assassination, describing him as a “historical figure” whose death “was a loss to all.” More surprisingly, so did Saad Hariri and An-Nahar CEO Nayla Tueni, whose fathers were both murdered by Hezbollah.
This continued popularity has restrained even Lebanon’s old feudal chieftains who would be so inclined from undermining the group. Much ado was made of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Miqati and Druze figurehead Walid Jumblatt’s joint October 2 statement allegedly decoupling Lebanon from Gaza – including, erroneously, that it had forced Hezbollah to follow suit. Speculative rumor and gossip aside, Berri’s moves are not aimed at seizing this opportunity to settle decades-old scores with Hezbollah or undermine it. To the contrary, he still supports Sleiman Frangieh, the pro-Hezbollah candidate, for president and has been meeting with Iranian officials. By exploiting misplaced Western and American trust in him as a reliable interlocutor, he is – as he did during the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war – playing the political angle to obtain a cease-fire that would prematurely halt Israel’s campaign, giving Hezbollah room for survival and regeneration and a possibly face-saving off-ramp from continuing to fight on behalf of Gaza. Hezbollah could then theoretically accept decoupling Lebanon from Gaza by saying it was following Lebanon’s orders, not succumbing to Israeli military pressure. No wonder, then, that Hezbollah’s top remaining officials have expressed their utmost trust in Berri and his maneuvering – while Berri says Hezbollah has authorized him to act on their behalf since 2006. Jumblatt has similarly condemned Nasrallah’s assassination and insisted now is not the time to force terms upon Hezbollah domestically. Frangieh’s alleged request to fleeing Hezbollah leaders and their families that they stay out of his political-sectarian stronghold of Zgharta also should not be interpreted as severing alliances. Lebanese identity is very local, and Frangieh doesn’t want his Lebanon to suffer the consequences of war with Israel. This hyper-localized identity also prevented Jumblatt, in May 2008, from supporting his erstwhile allies against Hezbollah’s onslaught but didn’t stop him from tenaciously fighting off the group’s encroachment into his Druze-Progressive Socialist Party sectarian enclave. So long as Hezbollah and the consequences of its actions remain the problem of Hezbollah’s Lebanon, feudal chieftains like Jumblatt or Frangieh will not act against it. The self-styled Lebanese opposition – both those aligned with traditional political parties and the so-called independent and civil society figures – is disunited and ineffective, and as unreliable as the old political establishment they seek to unseat. The former, including Kataeb and the Lebanese Forces parties, have produced little more than rhetoric for two decades, with no meaningful progress or action against Hezbollah. Much like their idol Bachir Gemayel, they seek foreign forces to solve their domestic problems while they observe from the sidelines and reap the benefits after the fact.
In fact, rather than exploit the group’s weakness, they publicly condemned both Israel’s telecommunications device attacks and Nasrallah’s assassination. Lebanese Force’s leader Samir Geagea, despite obvious and real disagreements with Hezbollah, nevertheless insisted Israel was Lebanon’s real enemy to be fought. Civil society figures, framed as anti-Hezbollah progressive alternatives, critique the group’s independence from the Lebanese state but not its status as a national resistance or ultimate objective of destroying Israel. This camp’s far-left orientation has led it to likewise adopt strong anti-Western, anti-American and anti-Israel stances, with rhetoric that inadvertently but frequently mirrors Hezbollah. As many, like Paula Yaacoubian and Elias Jarade, have demonstrated their willingness to compromise with Hezbollah, they and others have also openly defended or celebrated violence against Israelis – including the October 7 massacre – accused Israel of genocide and framed the Israeli national psyche as inherently evil. Prominent figures like Mark Daou have even connected to anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian movements in the United States.
Discounting both prongs of the opposition is therefore not making the perfect the enemy of the good. It is recognizing that, while these figures and factions do nothing to counter Hezbollah, their ideas and rhetoric unwittingly create an intellectual environment that legitimizes the group. Promoting the notion that Israel and Zionism are inherently evil and their destruction desirable – albeit, through a soft-power delegitimization approach that Hezbollah also endorses – as Lebanese consensus normalizes Hezbollah’s ideology and objectives.
Furthermore, neither the old feudal lords nor the opposition in its various permutations are calling for making Hezbollah disarm by force or law. Instead, they are calling for a solution through “dialogue and consensus” that includes Hezbollah, and which will allegedly culminate in a national defense strategy. The group, after all, won 356,000 of 1.8 million votes cast in the 2022 parliamentary elections and a 2024 poll found 93 percent of Lebanese Shi’ites support Hezbollah. The group therefore can’t be ignored. Nor can a solution be imposed upon it. Hezbollah can, as in the past, mobilize its supporters to paralyze the country, its fighters to forcefully repel any attempt at disarmament, or summon its regional allies, as the Resistance Axis did in Syria, if it feels in mortal danger. But neither will Hezbollah ever agree to disarm.
But even this national defense strategy dialogue, if it ever happens, would come at the end of a long political process, one that involves international financial aid and assistance in electing a president, followed by the election of a cabinet, and only then dealing with Hezbollah’s arms. Meanwhile, Lebanese officialdom is simply trying to extract benefits from the international community. Until the Israeli war effort against Hezbollah intensified, Beirut sought this by exploiting the group’s continued attacks. Now, Lebanon is replicating its 2006 war playbook and seeking the same through empty promises that will lead to a premature cease-fire.
Once that cease-fire is imposed, Beirut likely hopes that the world will tire and move on as the issue of Hezbollah’s arms becomes lost again in the byzantine mazes of Lebanese politics. Hezbollah will survive to rearm, Lebanon will have received a needed injection of international aid, and the current crisis will inevitably repeat itself in several years’ time. The current opportunity to degrade Hezbollah is too important, and too rare, to prop up half the strategy against the group on an undependable leg – on the hope that a reed that has long proven itself splintered and broken will now, for once, step up and act at all, let alone correctly.
**David Daoud is senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where he focuses on Israel, Hezbollah and Lebanon affairs.
**Ahmad Sharawi is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies focused on Iranian intervention in Arab affairs and the Levant.

With Hezbollah weakened by Israel, its political opponents see an opportunity
Nabih Bulos, Tracy Wilkinson/LA Times/October 23, 2024
Under heavy attack from Israel, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has been seriously weakened militarily in recent weeks, with many of its top leaders killed, and at least some of its arsenal destroyed.
That has raised hopes among its opponents both foreign and domestic that it may also be vulnerable politically. Hezbollah is also a powerful political party — and in the view of its critics a major reason why Lebanon has been so difficult to govern. The country has been without a president for two years, meaning it has no commander in chief of the army or effective way to deal with an economy in shambles. Here's a look at whether recent development could be the beginning of the end of Lebanon's political paralysis.
How did Hezbollah get so much power in the first place?
Hezbollah got its start in 1982 during Lebanon’s civil war as a cadre of Shiites dedicated to ending Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon. With backing from Iran, it grew into a highly organized force responsible for major attacks against the U.S. and Israel.
When the civil war ended in 1990, Hezbollah was the only faction to keep its arms, saying it needed them to continue its resistance against Israel. Ten years later, it forced Israel to withdraw from the country — though Israel continues to control some disputed territory — but did not disarm. In 1992, it entered politics, parlaying its growing popularity to elect lawmakers to parliament. It wooed Lebanon’s long-disenfranchised Shiites — who make up roughly 32% of the population, according to research groups — with micro-lending programs and medical and social services often superior to those provided by the government. Even as the U.S. designated the group as a terrorist organization, Hezbollah evolved into what many describe as “a state within a state.”It holds just 13 seats of the 128 seats in parliament, but as part of a parliamentary bloc can count on 58 in total — still short of a majority. Before the current war began, it was thought to have about 100,000 fighters, who are widely considered to be better trained and equipped than the estimated 73,000 active-duty soldiers in the Lebanese army.
What's the situation with the Lebanese presidency?
Lebanon’s last president, Michel Aoun, left his post in October 2022 after his term expired. Since then, the country has been run by a caretaker government led by Najib Mikati, who was nominated as Prime Minister-designate but never formed a government. That has limited the ability of the cabinet to make executive decisions and left the country's institutions virtually running on autopilot. With 18 official sects, Lebanon employs a complex political system in which religious communities share power and government positions and seats in parliament are distributed in rough proportion to the country's demographics. The president must be a Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of parliament a Shiite Muslim.
The parliament has made 12 attempts to elect a president over the last two years. All have failed because the parties — none of which has enough seats to impose its choice — have refused to cooperate. Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, and its partners insisted on a candidate close to Tehran and Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, another Hezbollah ally. Others called for a more pro-Western candidate, which Hezbollah believes would curtail its influence in the country, and work against what it calls its “resistance” against Israel and the U.S.
What's the new plan to break the impasse?
Over the past few weeks, U.S. officials have corralled support from regional governments and held discussions with Lebanese politicians with the aim of convening parliament to choose a president. Besides helping restore stability and getting the economy on track, Lebanese politicians say a president would be empowered to negotiate a cease-fire. U.S. officials and many Lebanese politicians would like to see a full implementation of United Nations resolution 1701, a 2006 agreement under which Hezbollah fighters would withdraw from a section of southern Lebanon and the Lebanese army would take sole responsibility for security in the region. The army has remained neutral in the current conflict even as Israel has fired on its positions, killing or wounding at least five of its soldiers since the beginnng of Israel's invasion. Last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Lebanon’s caretaker prime talked by phone and discussed “the need to empower leadership that reflects the will of the people for a stable, prosperous, and independent Lebanon,” according to a transcript of the call.
Blinken “emphasized that Lebanon cannot allow Iran or Hizballah to stand in the way of Lebanon’s security and stability.”
How is Hezbollah reacting?
Hezbollah and its allies say they will entertain no talks about the presidency without an end to the war, which began last fall after the militant group began firing rockets into northern Israel in what it called a "solidarity campaign" with Gaza. Since Israel invaded southern Lebanon this month, it has killed more than 2,500 people there and driven 1.2 million from their homes. Some 60,000 people have been displaced in Israel over the last year, and Israeli authorities say 59 people have been killed in northern Israel and the Golan Heights. “The solution is a cease-fire," Hezbollah’s deputy chief Naim Qassem said in a pre-recorded address last week as he insisted that the group remained a powerful military force. "We are not speaking from a position of weakness.”“If the Israelis do not want that, we will continue,” he said. Politically, Hezbollah has enough seats with its allies to thwart quorum in parliament even as many of its MPs have maintained a lower profile for fear of drawing Israeli fire.
What is Israel saying?
In a speech this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the Lebanese people to “take back their country” from Hezbollah, saying the group was the weakest it has been in many years. “Now you, the Lebanese people, you stand at a significant crossroads,” he said.
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid has called for the recreation of a South Lebanon Army, an Israeli-backed Christian-dominated Lebanese militia that operated in south Lebanon during Israel’s occupation of the area stands accused of torture and forcing residents from their homes.
Michael Young, a Lebanon expert with the Carnegie Middle East Center, said those statements suggest that Israel plans that go beyond merely pushing Hezbollah back from the border — to its disarmament if not destruction.
So does any of this have a chance of working?
Despite a flurry of consultations between various parliamentary blocs, there has been little progress. Parliament head Nabih Berri, who leads Amal, a Shiite party that has in the past been a rival of Hezbollah but is now its top ally, has yet to call parliament in session.
And if the past is any indication, the chances for success are low. In 1982, Christian president-elect Bachir Gemayel came to power with Israeli and U.S. support. The aim was to remove Palestinian factions fighting using south Lebanon as a staging ground against Israel and head a government friendly towards Israel. He was assassinated a few weeks later. Indeed, whatever initiative comes for the presidency would almost certainly require buy-in from Hezbollah. “Hezbollah still has tens of thousands of armed men," Young said. "They will provoke a civil war if they need to defend their interests."At the same time, few people have faith that the Lebanese army would be able to deploy to the south in a meaningful fashion, especially if it means removing Hezbollah by force. Any confrontation would be a recipe for civil war, since a significant portion of the army is Shiites.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 23-24/2024
Twenty reported killed in Gaza as Israel intensifies siege of north
Nidal al-Mughrabi/CAIRO (Reuters)/October 23, 2024
Israeli strikes across Gaza killed 20 people on Wednesday as Israeli forces intensified a siege of northern parts of the Palestinian enclave, surrounding hospitals and refugee shelters, and ordering residents to head south, medics and residents said. The Gaza health ministry and the World Health Organization said they would be unable to start a polio vaccination campaign in northern Gaza as planned because of the intense bombardments, mass displacements and lack of access.
Israeli forces began the operation in the north about three weeks ago with the declared aim of preventing Hamas fighters from regrouping. The operation has intensified since the killing of Hamas chief Yahya Al-Sinwar a week ago. Israel's allies, including the United States, have said they hoped Sinwar's death could provide a fresh impetus for peace by allowing Israel to declare that it had achieved some of its major objectives in Gaza. But so far, Israeli forces seem to have only intensified their assault, especially on the northern areas, where Israel says Hamas fighters are regrouping in ruins of areas that were among the first targeted by Israel's campaign last year. The Israeli military announced last Friday it had sent another army unit to Jabalia on the northern edge of Gaza. Residents say the troops have besieged shelters, forcing displaced people to leave while rounding up many of the men. The health ministry said at least 650 people had been killed since the new offensive began. Of at least 20 people reported killed by Israeli military strikes across the enclave on Wednesday, 18 deaths were in northern Gaza. The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA said on Wednesday one of its staff members was killed when an UNRWA vehicle was hit in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. Medics said the man's brother was also killed. The municipality of Gaza City said two city workers were killed and three others wounded in a strike there. Health and civil emergency officials said dozens of bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire in and around Jabalia were scattered on roadsides and under the rubble where medical teams could not reach them. Hospitals in the north have either stopped providing medical services or are hardly operating because of the offensive. Hospitals where medics have refused Israeli evacuation orders say they are running out of blood for transfusions, as well as coffins and shrouds for the dead.
"We call on the world, which has failed to provide protection and shelter for our people and has been unable to deliver food and medicine, to make an effort to send shrouds for our fallen," the Gaza health ministry said in a statement. The polio vaccination campaign, launched after a baby was paralysed by the disease in Gaza for the first time in 25 years, had to be halted. "We have not been able to launch the campaign to vaccinate 120,000 children in Gaza City and northern Gaza today because of the siege and the Israeli aggression," health ministry official Majdi Dhair said. Israel's military humanitarian unit, COGAT, which oversees aid and commercial shipments to Gaza, said the vaccination campaign in northern Gaza will begin in the coming days, "after a joint assessment and at the request" of the World Health Organization and the U.N. International Children's Emergency Fund UNICEF.
CALL FOR TRUCE
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Israel and was heading to Saudi Arabia to push for a ceasefire, the first major U.S. peace initiative since the killing of Hamas leader Sinwar and the last before a Nov. 5 presidential election that could upend U.S. policy in the region. Washington has called on Israel to allow more humanitarian supplies into northern Gaza. Israel says aid has been delivered in scores of trucks as well as air drops, but Gaza medics say the aid has not reached them. COGAT said on Tuesday that 237 trucks containing humanitarian aid from Jordan and the international community had been transferred to northern Gaza over the past eight days. Israel "will continue to act in accordance with international law to facilitate and ease the humanitarian response to the Gaza Strip," it said. Palestinian health officials and residents said no aid has been allowed into Jabalia, Beit Hanoun, and Beit Lahiya, three towns on the northern edge of Gaza. The Israeli military said its forces were operating against Hamas militants who staged attacks from there, and that they killed scores of militants and destroyed military infrastructure while helping residents who heeded evacuation orders to leave. The overall death toll in Gaza is approaching 43,000, according to the latest health ministry figures, and nearly all of the 2.3 million Gazans have been displaced, many multiple times. The Israeli offensive was triggered by the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and around 250 taken as hostages back into Gaza.

Sirens Sound Across Tel Aviv as Projectiles are Intercepted Near Blinken's Hotel
Asharq Al Awsat/October 23, 2024
Air raid sirens echoed across Tel Aviv on Wednesday as United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken prepared to end a visit. Smoke, apparently from an intercepted projectile, could be seen in the sky above the hotel where Blinken was staying. Blinken urged Israel to use its recent tactical victories against Hamas to seek a war-ending deal and bring back dozens of hostages, before leaving Wednesday for Saudi Arabia as part of his 11th visit to the region since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
Both sides appear to be dug in. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to annihilate Hamas and recover dozens of hostages held by the group. Hamas says it will only release the captives in return for a lasting cease-fire, a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the release of Palestinian prisoners.

UNRWA Calls for Truce in North Gaza ‘Even if for Few Hours’
Gaza: Asharq Al Awsat/October 23, 2024
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) called on Tuesday for a temporary truce to allow people to leave areas of northern Gaza as health officials said they were running out of supplies to treat patients injured in a three-week-old Israeli assault. Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UNRWA relief agency, said the humanitarian situation had reached a dire point, with bodies abandoned by roadsides or buried under rubble, according to Reuters. “In northern Gaza, people are just waiting to die,” he said in a statement on social media platform X. “They feel deserted, hopeless and alone.”“I am calling for an immediate truce, even if for a few hours, to enable safe humanitarian passage for families who wish to leave the area & reach safer places,” he added. The call came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel for talks in which he urged its leaders to capitalize on the military’s killing last week of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar by taking steps to end the shattering year-old war. Sinwar was the leader of the Palestinian group that runs the Gaza Strip. ashington has called on Israel to allow more humanitarian supplies into northern Gaza and Israel says aid has been delivered in scores of trucks as well as air drops, but Gaza medics say the aid has not reached them. n Tuesday, Gaza health officials said more than 20 people were killed by the Israeli forces. The bodies of dozens of people were on roadsides and under rubble, inaccessible to rescue teams because of ongoing strikes, they said. Many wounded have died before our eyes and we couldn't do anything for them,” said Munir Al-Bursh, the director of the Gaza health ministry, who is currently in northern Gaza. Hospitals also ran out of coffins to prepare the dead and we have asked people to donate any fabric they have at home.”The Israeli military, which launched an assault against Hamas militants holding out in the northern town of Jabalia this month, says it is evacuating people along designated routes and has filtered out dozens of militants from civilians going south.

Israel Has Denied Requests to Deliver Aid to Northern Gaza, UN Humanitarian Office Says
Asharq Al Awsat/October 23, 2024
The United Nations humanitarian office said Palestinians under an Israeli siege in northern Gaza “are rapidly exhausting all available means for their survival,” and Israel has denied UN requests to deliver life-saving aid to the area.The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs also reports that Israeli authorities are still denying its requests to help rescue dozens of people trapped under their collapsed homes in the Falouja area of the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north, UN spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters Tuesday. The requests by the humanitarian office, known as OCHA, that were denied include planned missions by UN agencies and their partners to deliver supplies including blood, medications, food parcels and fuel to hospitals and water facilities, he said. The United States warned Israel earlier this month that it must increase the amount of humanitarian aid it is allowing into Gaza within 30 days or it could risk losing access to US weapons funding. It said at least 350 trucks a day need to get into Gaza and Israel must provide additional humanitarian pauses and increased security for humanitarian sites.OCHA reported that 25 trucks entered Gaza on Sunday, 25 on Saturday, and 65 on Friday. Haq said the director of Kamal Adwan, one of the last functioning hospitals in north Gaza, which is seeing a constant influx of casualties, reported Monday that blood supplies have run out and medical teams are working non-stop with no food.

IDF soldiers should refuse orders that may be war crimes, Israeli ex-security adviser tells BBC
Fergal Keane - Special correspondent/BBC/October 23, 2024
As someone who served four Israeli prime ministers and was deputy head of the country’s National Security Council, Eran Etzion’s judgement was trusted at the highest levels of the state. A longstanding critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he is also someone whose years of public service earned him widespread respect. But now Mr Etzion, a former soldier himself, is warning that Israel’s military - the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) - might be committing war crimes in northern Gaza. And he is suggesting that officers and troops should reject illegal orders.
“They should refuse. If a soldier or an officer is expected to commit something that might be suspected as a war crime, they must refuse. That's what I would do if I were a soldier. That's what I think any Israeli soldier should do,” he tells me.We are sitting on the balcony of his home in Shoresh in central Israel. Here there is the quiet sunshine of an autumn morning. A peaceful neighbourhood where some builders are working on house improvements.
An emotional man is comforted by other men at the Kamal Adwan Hospital
Less than 40 miles down the road is the Gaza neighbourhood of Jabalia.
As Mr Etzion and I are speaking, doctors and medical staff at the Indonesian Hospital in Jabalia are sending desperate voice notes to the international community begging for aid. One senior nurse - in a message heard by the BBC - speaks in an exhausted voice of relentless privations allegedly imposed by the Israelis besieging Jabalia. “My friend, I’m so so tired,” he says. “I can’t explain how tired I am. The water is empty. We don't have water. We contacted the Israeli force to allow us to charge water to the tank, but they don't accept that.... And we don't know what will happen tomorrow. The situation is very very bad.” Another nurse says: “I am sorry for my language, I can't talk well. I am very fatigued and dizzy. I haven't eaten since yesterday. We try to give the food that we found to the patients and families and we don't eat ourselves.”Tens of thousands of people are now fleeing Jabalia as the Israeli army continues its offensive against what it says is an attempt by Hamas to regroup.
Mr Etzion is worried for the civilians of Jabalia and his country. “There is a very dangerous erosion of norms. There is a very widespread sense of revenge, of rage,” he says. This is because, Mr Etzion says, Israel is in the grip of trauma after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks in which around 1,200 Israelis were killed and more than 200 taken hostage into Gaza. “The will to revenge could be understood. It's human, but we're not a gang, we're not a terror organisation, and we're not a militia. We're a sovereign country. We have our history, we have our morals, we have our values, and we must operate under international law and under international standards if we want to continue to be a member of the international community, which we do.” He is speaking out as a former soldier, as someone whose children served in the IDF, and whose family and friends still serve. “I'm just a concerned citizen trying to raise my voice. So that's what I'm doing. I want to make sure that no soldier is involved in anything that could be constituted as a war crime.”Israel has faced mounting international criticism over its conduct during the war. The United States has threatened to cut arms shipments if Israel does not surge aid into Gaza. The UN has accused the Israelis of repeatedly blocking or impeding the transfer of aid, most recently into northern Gaza. The IDF has consistently rejected allegations that it is implementing a deliberate policy of starvation to force residents to flee from Jabalia. Israel has long accused Hamas of using the civilian population as human shields, launching attacks from schools and medical facilities.
“Hamas does not hesitate to abuse Gazans, exploit them, steal aid from them, and forcefully prevent them from evacuating when it is necessary for them to do so,” the IDF said in May.
One of Britain’s most prominent war crimes lawyers, Prof Philippe Sands KC, told me that that while Israel had a right to self defence after the 7 October attacks, it was now violating international law.
“It has to be proportionate. It has to meet the requirements of international humanitarian law. It must distinguish between civilians and military targets. "It doesn't allow you to use famine as a weapon of war. It doesn't allow you to forcibly deport or evacuate large numbers of people.
"So it's impossible to see what is going on now in Gaza, as it's impossible to see what happened on 7 October, and not say crimes are screaming out.”Prof Sands has led the genocide case against Myanmar, and the case for Palestinian statehood at the International Court of Justice in the Hague. His book East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity won the Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction. The book also details his own Jewish family’s experience of the Holocaust. War crimes lawyer Prof Philippe Sands KC told the BBC Israel is violating international law [BBC]
I ask if the crisis in Gaza makes him worry about the survival of international law. He points to the fact that the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is seeking arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and defence minister.
The prosecutor also sought warrants for three Hamas leaders. All three, including Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, are now dead. "It [international law] is not working on the ground in relation to Russia and Ukraine. It's not working on the ground in relation to Sudan. It's not working on the ground in relation to Palestine and Israel. "There's just no ifs and buts. We just have to, we have to recognize that. But that is not a reason to tear up the entire system. "If you ask yourself what the alternative is, which is basically no pieces of paper with the words Treaties written on it, you're back to the 1930s, and at least what we have now is a system of rules which allows people to stand up and say: ‘This is a violation of a treaty'.”
We asked the IDF for an interview but they said no spokesperson was available today, and referred us to an earlier statement which says: “The IDF will continue to act, as it always has done, according to international law.”And today the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the army’s humanitarian relief wing, said it was their policy to facilitate the entrance of aid into Gaza “without limits”.This is Israel’s narrative. But as scenes of civilian suffering continue to emerge from Jabalia it is being widely challenged. With additional reporting by Rudabah Abbass, Haneen Abdeen and Alice Doyard

Israel names Al Jazeera reporters as Gaza militants, network condemns 'unfounded allegations'
Reuters/October 23, 2024
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Israeli military named on Wednesday six Palestinians in Gaza as Al Jazeera reporters who it said were also members of the Hamas or Islamic Jihad militant groups, an allegation which the Qatari network rejected as an attempt to silence journalists.
"Al Jazeera condemns Israeli accusations against its journalists in Gaza and warns against (this) being a justification for targeting them," the network said in a statement. The Israeli military published documents which it said it had found in Gaza that proved the men had a military affiliation to the groups. Reuters was not able to immediately verify the authenticity of the documents. The Israeli military said the papers included Hamas and Islamic Jihad lists of personnel details, salaries and militant training courses, phone directories and injury reports. "These documents serve as proof of the integration of Hamas terrorists within the Qatari Al Jazeera media network," the military said. Al Jazeera said that "The Network views these fabricated accusations as a blatant attempt to silence the few remaining journalists in the region, thereby obscuring the harsh realities of the war from audiences worldwide."Israel has long accused Al Jazeera of being a Hamas mouthpiece and over the past year its authorities have ordered it to shut down its operations for security reasons, raided its offices and confiscated equipment. Al Jazeera has said the Israeli actions against it were criminal, draconian and irresponsible and that the latest allegations were "part of a wider pattern of hostility" towards it. The network says it has no affiliation with militant groups and has accused Israeli forces of deliberately killing several of its journalists in the Gaza war, including Samer Abu Daqqa and Hamza AlDahdooh. Israel says it does not target journalists. Qatar established Al Jazeera in 1996 and sees the network as a way to bolster its global profile. Along with Egypt and the United States it has mediated ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, though the talks have been deadlocked for months.

Israel's military accuses 6 Al Jazeera journalists of acting as Hamas operatives
Chris Benson/UPI/October 23, 2024
Israel's military said it uncovered documents that it says proves six journalists with the Middle East-based news source Al Jazeera are operatives with Hamas and other Palestinian-linked terror squads. However, a New York-based international journalism association was skeptical of Israel's accusations against the journalists. On Wednesday, the Israeli Defense Forces said documents recovered in the Gaza Strip -- including spreadsheets, training course lists, telephone and salary records -- "unequivocally prove" that six journalists with Al-Jazeera were operatives who also functioned as members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist syndicates. The IDF named Anas Al-Sharif, Alaa Salama, Hossam Shabat, Ashraf Saraj, Ismail Abu Amr, and Talal Aruki as the accused. In May, the Israeli government banned Al Jazeera from the country because of its coverage of Israel's war in Gaza. The ban was extended, too. "These documents are proof of the involvement of Hamas terrorists in the Qatari media network, Al Jazeera," Israel's military said in a statement. Israel claimed the accused staff journalists are "spearheading" propaganda for Hamas by using Al Jazeera's global platform. It's alleged that al-Sharif was head of a rocket launching squad. Salameh, IDF officials claimed, was deputy head of a propaganda outfit and a sniper. And al-Sarraj, according to the IDF, was a member of an Islamic Jihadist military unit while Abu Omar had been a training company commander previously wounded in an IDF airstrike several months prior. It's also alleged that al-Arrouqi was a team commander in a Hamas batallion. On Wednesday, the international Committee to Protect Journalists took to social media to say it was aware of the IDF's accusations against the Al Jazeera reporters and it voiced skepticism over the IDF claims. "Israel has repeatedly made similar unproven claims without producing credible evidence," the New York City-based nonprofit posted on X close to noon. The global Al Jazeera network has fiercely denied Israel's claims and accused the IDF of targeting Al Jazeera staff working in Gaza. In January, the Israeli government iclaimed that an Al Jazeera staff reporter and a freelancer killed in an airstrike also were Hamas operatives. That was followed a month later by accusations that another Al Jazeera journalist who had been wounded in a different IDF strike was a Hamas leader, as well. According to the CPJ, Israel was responsible for the July killing of Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail Al-Ghoul. However, Israel's military "previously produced a similar document, which contained contradictory information, showing that Al-Ghoul, born in 1997, received a Hamas military ranking in 2007 -- when he would have been 10 years old," the journalist watchdog group added on Wednesday. This follows an incident in May this year when Israeli officials wrongly detained journalists it incorrectly believed were working for the Israeli-banned Al Jazeera news broadcaster

Blinken urges Israel to seek deal after tactical gains as truce efforts remain stalled
Farnoush Amiri And Samy Magdy/TEL AVIV, Israel (AP)/October 23, 2024
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that Israel needs to pursue an “enduring strategic success” after its tactical victories against Hamas, urging it to seek a deal that would end the war in the Gaza Strip and bring back dozens of hostages.
He spoke before traveling from Israel to Saudi Arabia on his 11th visit to the region since the outbreak of the war. Air raid sirens sounded in Tel Aviv shortly before his departure as Israel intercepted two projectiles fired from Lebanon, and a puff of smoke could be seen in the sky from Blinken's hotel. “Israel has achieved most of the strategic objectives when it comes to Gaza," Blinken told reporters before boarding his plane. “Now is the time to turn those successes into an enduring strategic success.”“There really are two things left to do: Get the hostages home and bring the war to an end with an understanding of what will follow,” he said.
No sign of a breakthrough after killing of Hamas leader
The United States sees a new opportunity to revive cease-fire efforts after the killing of top Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar by Israeli forces in Gaza last week. But there’s no indication that either of the warring parties have modified their demands since talks stalled over the summer.
There was also no immediate sign of a breakthrough after Blinken met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials on Tuesday. Israel blamed the failure of the talks on a hard-line stance adopted by Sinwar, but Hamas says its demands for a lasting cease-fire, full Israeli withdrawal and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners have not changed following his death. Hamas blamed the failure of the talks on Israel's demand for a lasting military presence in parts of Gaza.
There's talk of a more limited cease-fire and hostage release
Egypt has suggested the possibility of a short pause in fighting in which Hamas would release a handful of hostages and humanitarian aid deliveries would be ramped up, especially in northern Gaza, an Egyptian official told The Associated Press.
The official, who was not authorized to brief media and spoke on condition of anonymity, said Egypt and fellow mediator Qatar had discussed the idea with the United States but it was not yet a firm proposal. The official said Israel and Hamas were aware of those discussions.
A senior State Department official confirmed that a proposal for a limited hostage release has been discussed in recent days but that no determination had been made, even after Blinken's meetings with Israeli officials and families of the hostages on Tuesday.
There was no immediate comment from Israel or Hamas. The militant group has rejected such ideas in the past, saying it is intent on securing an end to the war. It is still holding around 100 hostages captured in its Oct. 7, 2023, attack that triggered the war, around a third of whom are believed to be dead. Israel is warned on aid as it wages offensive in northern Gaza
Israel has meanwhile dramatically reduced the amount of humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza as it wages another major operation in the hard-hit north of the territory. Blinken reiterated a warning that hindering humanitarian aid could force the U.S. to scale back the crucial military support it has provided to Israel since the start of the war. “There’s progress made, which is good, but more progress needs to be made," he told reporters, without elaborating. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says Israel has severely restricted aid operations since the start of its offensive in Jabaliya, a densely populated urban refugee camp in northern Gaza dating back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation. It said one critical mission, to rescue around 40 people trapped in the rubble in Jabaliya, had been repeatedly denied since Friday. Northern Gaza, including Gaza City, was the first target of Israel's ground operation and has been completely encircled by Israeli forces since late last year. Most of the population heeded Israeli evacuation warnings early on in the war, but an estimated 400,000 people have stayed there. The U.N. estimates that 60,000 people have been displaced within northern Gaza since the start of the operation in Jabaliya, the latest in a series of mass displacements since the start of the war. The north has been more heavily destroyed than other areas of Gaza, with entire neighborhoods obliterated. Israel has prevented Palestinians who fled the north from returning to their homes, a key demand from Hamas in the cease-fire talks.
Blinken says US rejects any reoccupation of Gaza
The renewed offensive in the north has raised fears among Palestinians that Israel intends to implement a plan proposed by former generals in which civilians would be ordered to leave the north and anyone remaining would be starved out or killed. Far-right ministers in Netanyahu's Cabinet say Israel should remain in Gaza and re-establish Jewish settlements there. Blinken said the U.S. officials “fully reject” any Israeli reoccupation of Gaza and that it was not the policy of the Israeli government. Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted another 250 when they stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead. Israel’s offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, who don’t distinguish combatants from civilians but say more than half the dead are women and children. It has displaced around 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, forcing hundreds of thousands into squalid tent camps.

Saudi Crown Prince, Blinken Discuss Efforts to Stop Escalation in the Region
Asharq Al Awsat/October 23/2024
Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister, met in Riyadh on Wednesday with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, with whom he reviewed bilateral relations and cooperation. Discussions covered the latest regional and international developments, particularly the situations in Gaza and Lebanon, and efforts to end military operations and address their security and humanitarian ramifications, SPA reported. Crown Prince Mohammed and Blinken discussed their “common efforts to end the conflicts in the region and establish greater peace and security,” said a State Department statement. Blinken emphasized “the need to end the war in Gaza, free the hostages, and enable the people of Gaza to rebuild their lives free from Hamas.. They discussed efforts toward “a diplomatic resolution in Lebanon that allows civilians on both sides of the Blue Line to return to their homes.”
They continued discussions on the need to establish lasting regional stability, including through greater integration among countries in the region. They also tackled the importance of ending the conflict in Sudan, protecting civilians, and advancing a political transition to a civilian government. Blinken expressed appreciation for Saudi Arabia’s role in promoting stability and peace in the region. Attending the meeting were Saudi Minister of State, Cabinet Member and National Security Adviser Dr. Musaed bin Mohammed Al-Aiban, and General Intelligence President Khalid bin Ali Al-Humaidan. On the American side, US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Michael Ratney and Blinken’s accompanying delegation attended the meeting.

An attack targeting a Turkish defense company leaves 4 dead and 14 wounded
The Associated Press/October 23, 2024
Assailants set off explosives and opened fire in an attack Wednesday on the premises of the Turkish state-run aerospace and defense company TUSAS, killing four people and wounding several, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. At least two of the attackers died, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said. “We have four martyrs. We have 14 wounded. I condemn this heinous terrorist attack and wish mercy on our martyrs,” Erdogan said during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the sidelines of a BRICS meeting in Kazan, Russia. Putin offered him condolences over the attack. Selim Cirpanoglu, mayor of the district of Kahramankazan, told The Associated Press that the attack on the company in the outskirts of the capital, Ankara, had abated but could not provide more details.
It was not clear who may be behind it. Kurdish militants, the Islamic State group and leftist extremists have carried out attacks in the country in the past. Security camera images from the attack, aired on television, showed a man in plainclothes carrying a backpack and holding an assault rifle. Turkish media said three assailants, including a woman, arrived at an entry to the complex inside a taxi. The assailants, who were carrying assault weapons, then detonated an explosive device next to the taxi, causing panic and allowing them to enter the complex. Multiple gunshots were heard after Turkish security forces entered the site, the DHA news agency and other media reported. Helicopters were seen flying above the premises. TUSAS designs, manufactures and assembles both civilian and military aircrafts, unmanned aerial vehicles and other defense industry and space systems. The UAVs have been instrumental in Turkey gaining an upper hand in its fight against Kurdish militants in Turkey and across the border in Iraq. Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz said the target of the attack was Turkey's “success in the defense industry.”“It should be known that these attacks will not be able to deter the heroic employees of defense industry,” he wrote on X.

he Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on October 23-24/2024
'The House With Nobody In it' - In Washington D.C.?
Lawrence Kadish/Gatestone Institute/October 23, 2024
Our White House is not just a residence, it is a command post. The Free World depends on it. If there is no apparent occupant, how will the U.S. contend with threats to our allies and us?
"The House with Nobody In It" by Joyce Kilmers (1886-1918), brings to mind a certain house in Washington, D.C. -- the White House. Our White House is not just a residence, it is a command post. The Free World depends on it. If there is no apparent occupant, how will the U.S. contend with threats to our allies and us?
China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are "the new 'Axis of Evil,'" according to Politico, hardly a right-wing outlet. How worried should we be? Probably very.
The United States is already facing two wars at full tilt, and another, it seems, on the way. Russia is still trying to seize Ukraine the same way it seized Crimea. In the Middle East, Israel, the size of New Jersey, is fighting a defensive war on seven fronts to protect its existence and that of civilization from a genocidal Iran -- about to have nuclear weapons -- and its proxies. In the Pacific this month, warships from Communist China have been encircling Taiwan, threatening Japan and the Philippines, and seemingly preparing to crush US naval assets should they try to intervene.
At home, the United States has in recent years been overrun by more than 10 million illegal migrants, including an estimated 1.7 million "gotaways" about whom nothing is known, such as how many there actually are. More than 323,000 children who have crossed the border are "missing." No one even knows their names or where they are, or who might be abusing them. Presumably they have been forced into slavery, sex slavery or dangerous labor. All those are in the U.S. in addition to an estimated 10.5 million illegal migrants who were here before 2021.
Violent gangs, such as MS-13 and Tren de Aragua, which are made up of youths mainly from South America, have been increasingly infiltrating the U.S. been commandeering apartment blocks at gunpoint and terrorizing people in Colorado, Texas and New York.
An unprecedented surge of 55,000 illegal migrants from China have entered the U.S. in recent months. China does not grant visas to its people to vacation in the Adirondacks. While some of these migrants might be seeking a better life, others seem to have the "the makings of a Chinese army" inside the US. There has been a "massive surge" of unaccompanied "military-age Chinese men," with "many of them having 'known ties' to the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and People's Liberation Army," according to Rep. Mark Green. They are possibly waiting for orders from CCP headquarters to sabotage the US electric grid, air traffic control, bridges, ports and other infrastructure. Some of these men have been trying to enter US military facilities. FBI Director Christopher Wray has already warned that Chinese hackers might be waiting for "just the right moment to deal a devastating blow."
China has already exported cargo cranes, loaded with hidden listening devices, which are installed in US ports. "A great concern is that they could remotely operate these cranes, and therefore disrupt these port operations at critical times," says China expert Gordon Chang. The Chinese Communist Party could, in a crisis, use them to shut down all maritime commerce or drop shipping containers onto US vessels to destroy them.
The US also has China to thank for the death by poisoning of more than 100,000 Americans each year in the last few years, from fentanyl and other synthetic opiates. The Biden-Harris administration has warned them to stop murdering Americans, and China has said that it will -- but so far, two weeks before a presidential election, has does nothing.
Then of course there was Communist China's spy balloon. It hovered over the most sensitive US military sites and sent information to Beijing in real-time for a week. When it was back out at sea, the president had it shot down.
Americans have also been plagued with mushrooming inflation, called "the silent tax." It eats away at one's income as the cost of staples skyrockets. People are reportedly having to choose between "heat or eat" -- and that does even include medicine or rent. Much of the inflation has been propelled by the administration's effective hobbling of domestic energy exploration from its first week in office. The move resulted a spike in the price of oil and gas, tripling the price of oil -- from less than $42 a barrel in 2020 to $130 a barrel in 2022 -- and producing enough financing for Russia to invade Ukraine, and for Iran and its proxies -- thanks to oil-sanctions lifted or waived by the Biden-Harris administration -- to attack Israel on October 7, 2023 and every day thereafter.
A U.S. national debt of $34 trillion-and-counting threatens to collapse the US dollar as the world's reserve currency. The cost of interest on the debt is now higher than the entire US defense budget – and in a world that is aggressively militarizing to replace the US as the world's leading superpower.
Education in the US is, bluntly, a disaster. It is the most expensive in the world per student but is graduating youths who can barely read or do the simplest arithmetic. With a disadvantage like that, how can they ever hope to participate in the American Dream?
Our children are also being manipulated on social media by the Chinese Communist Party's anti-American propaganda on TikTok, and all of us have been manipulated on social media by an administration that is censoring speech with which it disagrees. This suppression has gone from the real origins of the Covid-19 virus, to possible cures for it, to the "Russia Hoax" -- lies by government officials "to clear Hillary Clinton and frame Donald Trump," that he was under the influence of the Russians – and cover up and deny the authenticity of Hunter Biden's laptop and alleged influence-peddling. The administration even tried to establish a "Disinformation Governance Board," until a court swiftly ruled that it was a vehicle for censorship by the government.
The journalist Wayne Allen Root wrote that in addition to failing to increase the US defense budget, the government has instead been "rooting patriots and warriors out of the military and replacing them... brainwashing our children with critical race theory; and using the FBI to arrest and intimidate parents speaking out at local school board meetings."
As we head to the polls, perhaps we should vote for a White House with somebody in it?
*Lawrence Kadish serves on the Board of Governors of Gatestone Institute.
© 2024 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.

Yes, It’s Time for Painful Decisions
Tariq Al-Homayed/Asharq Al Awsat/October 23/2024
Our newspaper published a story yesterday titled: “US Urges Hezbollah and Iran to Make ‘Painful Decisions.’” This title captures the reality that Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas are facing difficult choices right now. The time for painful decisions is not driven by Washington's wishes but by changing realities on the ground. Iran now faces confrontation directly, rather than through its proxies. Washington acts as a messenger until a new president is in place, after which conditions are expected to worsen. This shift is due to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu disrupting the balance of power in Gaza and Lebanon, allowing Israel’s powerful military to operate without significant Iranian interference. Iran is now experiencing a “painful patience” rather than a strategic one. Hezbollah has captured the situation well. Yesterday, its media relations official, Mohammed Afif, said: “There are no negotiations under fire; what cannot be achieved by force cannot be obtained through politics.”
This accurately reflects Israel’s current approach.
Afif's comments are less about wisdom and more about defending Iran, which is now reluctant to confront Israel. He claimed that Hezbollah takes “full, complete, and exclusive responsibility” for targeting Netanyahu’s home. This reinforces Iranian claims distancing themselves from the drone attack, implying that if Israel wants to retaliate, it should focus on Lebanon, not Iran. This suggests confusion and a sense of defeat. We are indeed in a time of painful decisions, and the future appears even more challenging, especially after the killing of senior Hamas leader Yehya Sinwar in Gaza and the recent targeting of Hezbollah leaders. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran want to turn back the clock to Oct. 6, 2023, which is impossible. Neither the US nor France, nor Iranian diplomatic efforts can make this happen. For over four decades, the region has been stagnating, with each unresolved crisis complicating matters further. All parties, including Israel after the Oct. 7 attack, are paying a heavy price. It's crucial to understand each party's objectives. Iran seeks expansion and influence and is nearing the point of paying the price. Meanwhile, Arab nations want to resolve a crisis that has become almost trivialized, but most Arab solutions are poorly timed. For Israel, especially under Netanyahu, the focus is not on a two-state solution but on weakening its enemies. Israel aims to cut Iranian influence and is close to drawing Washington into direct conflict with Tehran.Everyone, including Iran, recognizes that we are facing a dangerous shift.
Yet some Lebanese politicians still believe there is room for “smoothing over differences,” which is a disastrous mistake. Tehran, its proxies, and Israel will not hesitate to escalate the situation in their fight for survival, prioritizing their interests over Gaza or Lebanon.
This is the harsh reality, requiring painful decisions, whether made willingly or in response to changing circumstances.

Israel Does Not Intend to Stop
Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Asharq Al Awsat/October 23/2024
The sun rises again over Gaza and Lebanon, but this time without the dominance of Hezbollah and Hamas, whether we see them as resistance movements or extensions of Iranian influence. A new and a different scene is about to unfold, demanding a Palestinian, Lebanese, Arab, and international effort to minimize human and political losses and to prevent further collapses. Following the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and the destruction of Hamas’ power, Israel finds itself in a stronger position than before, largely due to mismanagement of the crisis earlier in the year. Israel is no longer pressured to negotiate hostage exchanges or accept the compromises that were discussed during Cairo negotiations over the administration of Gaza. Proposals from Paris are now off the table, and no one can dictate to Israel how it will manage border crossings, including the key “Philadelphi” corridor.
With the death of Hassan Nasrallah and most of Hezbollah’s leadership, Lebanon too is in a different position. Israel is no longer content with just the demands of Resolution 1701, which required the cessation of rocket fire and the disarmament of Hezbollah fighters in exchange for Israeli restraint.
The Lebanese army can take full responsibility for protecting the borders and dismantling Hezbollah’s military role. Without this, Israel will continue its military operations until the spring, aiming to eliminate every last fighter in Lebanon. This could lead to the complete destruction of Lebanon and the end of Hezbollah’s political and military presence.
The war is not over yet. A new confrontation is looming, potentially on a third front in Syria and a fourth with Iran. After its success in destroying Hamas and most of Hezbollah’s capabilities, Israel fears that these threats could resurface unless it cuts off Iran’s influence stretching from Iraq through Syria. Although not officially stated, Israel’s current goal seems to be driving Iran out of Syria, as reflected in its actions on the ground. For example, Israel has cleared mines on the Golan Heights and called for the removal of international forces, indicating plans for further military operations. Although Syria has avoided getting involved in the Hamas and Hezbollah conflicts, not giving Israel any excuse to target it, Netanyahu’s government is determined to eliminate surrounding Iranian threats, which include Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian bases in Syria.
Israel’s attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus in early April was a clear message: Iran must pack its bags and leave Syria. If Iran withdraws peacefully, it will be a gain for the Syrian government, which no longer needs Iran’s presence as it did during the civil war. Now, Iran’s presence has become a burden on Syria. Netanyahu may seem reckless, firing in all directions, but in reality, he is following a well-structured plan with a clear objective. Few expected him to be capable of this—dismantling the major regional Iranian threats surrounding Israel. It is anticipated that he will strike Iran this week, aiming for more than just Yahya Sinwar. If the attack happens, Iran will face two choices: accept Israel’s conditions and curb the activities of its external Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), or face an even more dangerous conflict, both for Iran and the entire region.

Kurdish Democracy’s Last Chance
Lahur Sheikh JangiAsharq Al Awsat/October 23/2024
Amid aggravating regional escalation and major developments in the Middle East that would develop into a multi-front war, the residents of Kurdistan headed to the polls on October 20 to elect a new parliament. Everyone knows that state institutions and the legislative and oversight authorities in the region are short on legitimacy in light of the absence of a legislative body, parliament. The vacuum means that the democratic process, a pillar of the region’s political model, has been largely disrupted. Thus, holding elections was a necessary step for legitimizing its institutions and its model of shared governance between the two long-dominant parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. The election was held amidst intractable crises that cast a shadow over the future of the region, which faces numerous political, security, and economic challenges. Voters are seeking to improve their economic conditions and push back against outside intervention in the autonomous region's affairs, which have put the path of governance, its unity, and its institutions at risk. In this context, assessing the extent to which these elections meet basic democratic standards is crucial. It is critical that we ensure the integrity and transparency of these, and that the results are recognized by the influential parties, especially since change through the ballot box is inevitable.
The Kurdistan Region, whose autonomy is recognized by Iraq’s federal constitution, is currently undergoing a phase of unprecedented fragility as a result of the paralysis of its executive body and legislative institutions and oversight, as well as the suspicions regarding the role of the judicial authorities and courts.
The Kurdistan Region is the only formal autonomous zone of the Kurdish people, who are divided between four neighboring countries - Iraq, Iran, Türkiye and Syria. It has held five legislative elections, which were all overseen by local institutions affiliated with political entities. Thus, the results of those elections have always been questionable, and they have never been up to standard in terms of integrity and transparency.
Despite all the doubts, the Kurdistan Region has been distinguished by its democracy for over three decades, and it has been a beacon of political, ethnic, religious and intellectual pluralism. This is a fundamental feature of the Kurdistan Region, which may be the only thing it can embody among its neighbors. However, the paralysis of legislative, oversight, and governmental institutions in recent years has undermined the democratic process and popular trust and engagement in it.
Therefore, the elections were an excellent opportunity to advance the democratic process and ensure political continuity by rebuilding citizens' trust and encouraging them to participate by exercising their democratic right to choose their representatives. They are particularly significant because they had been postponed for two years due to divisions and conflicts among the influential parties, which repeatedly brandished empty slogans and populist rhetoric that did little to address actual needs. Ultimately, this led to the suspension of the electoral process, with a variety of excuses and justifications raised to defend the decision. These factors opened the door for the intervention of the Federal Supreme Court, which decided to task the Independent High Electoral Commission with managing the process instead of the two parties, and the electoral process was a test of its ability to prevent violations and fraud.
During the war on terror and extremist organizations, the Kurdistan Region gained the favor of the international coalition led by the United States, which has always emphasized the importance of good governance, respect for human rights, freedom of speech, safeguarding of public freedoms, and constructive cooperation between Baghdad and Erbil, which enhances domestic unity. Additionally, allied and friendly countries consider the elections a significant achievement. As for Washington, its stance is crucial for ensuring the Kurdistan Region retains the legitimacy of its institutions, renews its mandate, and maintains its status in the constitution.
Real legitimacy can come only from the strength of the people, and history shows that any regime and ruler can be replaced, but there is no alternative to the people.
Political lexicons consider elections a fundamental pillar of democracy. Even amid the turbulent conditions in the region and what seems to be a monopoly on power, we hope that influential forces will take on the task of transitioning from a semi-militarized democracy to a genuine civic democracy through the frameworks that are available and draft and write a constitution for the Kurdistan Region. Article 120 of the Iraqi constitution acknowledges this as a step toward establishing the fundamental rules of administration and governance in the region.
The priority, in the next stage, should be to work on drafting this constitution, as the political process cannot overcome its chronic deficiencies and setbacks without a constitution that regulates the role of institutions and authorities, ensuring that the law is sovereign. All communities and segments of society would feel secure and assured regarding the desires and aspirations of its individuals. The goal of drafting the constitution is to protect citizenship, which is a crucial objective of the modern democratic process. This would enhance opportunities for participation and reinforce the principles of freedom, democracy, human rights and citizenship. The lion’s share of the responsibility that will fall on the shoulders of the next parliament is to establish a unified military force tasked with protecting the Kurdistan Region rather than serving narrow party interests. This armed force should be politically neutral and keep an equal distance from all political actors. Additionally, parliament must work to eliminate the repercussions of dual administrations and the sharp divisions that the Kurdistan Region has been suffering from since the domestic conflict began in the 1990s.

Yair Lapid urges deal to free all captives at once, pushes for Saudi normalization - interview
Elav Brueer & Tova Lazaroff/Jeruselem Post/October 23/2024
The politician who heads the centrist Yesh Atid party spoke to the 'Post' a year into the country's multi-front war against Iranian proxies.
Until October 7, opposition leader Yair Lapid could always shut down any conversation questioning why Jews should live in Israel by recalling his father’s story as a child Holocaust survivor.
“I have great answers. Always have. My father’s ghetto Jewish history – and it used to kill the conversation in five minutes,” Lapid told The Jerusalem Post.
“It is not killing the conversation in five minutes anymore. The questions have become deeper and more bitter” as Israel faces an unprecedented barrage of external and internal existential threats, he said. The silver-haired politician who heads the centrist Yesh Atid party spoke with the Post from his small Tel Aviv office a year into the country’s multi-front war against Iranian proxies – that began with the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7 and quickly expanded to include Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Tehran itself.
Lapid, who lost the premiership in November 2022, had already been in battle mode as one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s harshest and most vocal critics, warning against the internal threat to Israeli democracy posed by Netanyahu’s judicial reform program. October 7 added a new dimension to that battle, underscoring Lapid’s belief that the prime minister and his government posed a threat to Israel – and deepening the soul-searching societal crisis within the country. “Even in 2023, during the judicial revolution or reform, if you asked me what the State of Israel would look like three or four years from now, I would say, ‘You know what? We’re going to win this struggle,’” Lapid said as he sat behind his wooden desk. “We had the basic idea of what the country was going to look like. Now we don’t.”
Moving forward, he said, “We don’t even know how we are going to feel, what kind of people we’re going to be.” Young parents are telling me: ‘I’m not willing to raise children this way,” Lapid said, and he understands them.
He has experienced that same sentiment watching his daughter and six-month-old granddaughter race for shelter during a missile attack.
“We’re not going to live like this,” he said. A self-described 'depressed optimist'
Describing himself as a “depressed optimist,” Lapid said that the depth of the problem has distressed – but not overwhelmed – him as he pushes for a new diplomatic and political reality for Israel.
“We now understand that we cannot keep on ignoring the more fundamental problems this country has, and I actually welcome the discourse that is asking: ‘What’s gonna make Israel more powerful?’”
A basic necessary first step, aside from the removal of the Netanyahu government, Lapid said, was ending the war in Gaza in exchange for a deal that would see the release of the remaining 101 hostages held in that enclave.
“Right now, the stoppage of the war is actually an Israeli interest,” he said. Initially, it was critical for Israel to fight the war, but that, he explained, has changed since July.
The IDF’s assassination of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar last week, Lapid said, has only underscored the urgency he feels regarding the importance of concluding a hostage deal and ending the war.
“The elimination of Sinwar” sends “an important message to the Middle East: Whoever messes with us will die. It may take as long as it takes, but we will reach everyone who threatens us and eliminate them.”
It also opens a new opportunity for a deal.
Israel needs to do two things, he said. First, it must announce that it will offer significant financial incentives and a safe exit from Gaza to anyone who brings hostages. Second, it must simultaneously strive for a comprehensive hostage deal rather than the three-phased agreement put on the table in May.
“The stage of gradual releases is over,’ he said. “We need a single deal that will release the living and return the bodies of the dead for burial.”
THE IDF should end the war before it has totally eliminated Hamas, he explained, “so that there can be a hostage deal because the captives “are dying.”
Israel can afford to take this step because it has already destroyed the basic components of Hamas’s military power – and vanquishing it completely could be a prolonged process, he said. That destruction should be a strategic priority for Israel, but he believes the IDF can afford to finish the process after the war ends and the hostages are home.
Lapid dismissed the argument that Hamas cannot be annihilated because ideas cannot be destroyed. Bad ideas can be vanquished, he said.
“Nazism was a bad idea, and therefore we have eliminated it... Communism was a terrible idea, at least the Russian concept, and the world has succeeded in eliminating this idea. Hamas is a horrible idea. It should be eliminated.
“But those of us who live in the real world understand it’s going to take a long time,” he added.
One of the first and most critical steps, he said, was addressing the “day after” plan for Gaza in a way that could solicit rather than discourage regional and international cooperation.
Discussing Gaza's 'day after'
“We need to start discussing what the ‘day after’ in Gaza looks like,” so that Hamas does not return to areas where it has been eliminated.
“Vacuums in nature are filled with something. And right now the something is Hamas,” he said. It needs to be replaced with some sort of international governing body that could include regional players such as the Saudis, the Emiratis, and the Egyptians, as well as a “‘symbolic’ branch of the Palestinian Authority, nothing, nothing more than that.”
“You take this structure” and “implement it into Gaza. It’s a process. It’s not going to happen in a day.”
The IDF would have to retain control of the critical Philadelphia security corridor and the Rafah crossing, as well as have the ability to re-enter Gaza for security reasons when needed. It would be an arrangement similar to that which exists in Areas A and B of the West Bank, he explained.
LAPID IS among those Israelis who, even in the aftermath of October 7, are still willing to give a nod in the direction of Palestinian statehood and a two-state resolution to the conflict.
As prime minister in 2022, Lapid recalled, he stood at the podium in the United Nations General Assembly and stated: “An agreement with the Palestinians, based on two states for two peoples, is the right thing for Israel’s security, for Israel’s economy, and for the future of our children. Peace is not a compromise. It is the most courageous decision we can make.”
Even now, he said, “I still do believe in the two-state solution, but not the state they’re talking about.” A Palestinian state has to be “a peaceful one and a peace-seeking one.” He added, “The ‘burden of proof’ is not on us but on them. “We are saying that we are willing to consider the possibility, even though we have learned the bitter lesson that we have learned” on October 7, he said.
Such a step would need to include a rehabilitated PA to ensure that a Palestinian state would not turn into yet another terror state, he said. The time frame will also be protracted, Lapid explained, given that for at least five or six years, “it’s not possible to have a Palestinian state.”
“We were just attacked in the most vicious way by Palestinians,” he said as he referenced the October 7 attack in which over 1,200 people were killed and another 251 seized as hostages. PA President Mahmoud Abbas “has declined even now to condemn it,” Lapid pointed out.
ISRAEL’S FOCUS, he explained, has to be on self-preservation.
“The next political issue will be the ability of the State of Israel to regain the confidence that we will not be killed [upon] waking up in the morning. It’s just more important right now than the self-recognition or world recognition of the Palestinian state.
Lapid preferred to focus on the importance of “separating from the Palestinians,” but said that the option for Palestinian statehood had to be on the table so that Israel could move forward with the process of normalization with Saudi Arabia, a step essential to combating Iran and its proxies.
“You have to have some sort of a vague goodwill to[ward] the concept, and then you can start working with the Saudis and the Emirates,” he said.
“We have a regional problem and it needs a regional solution.”
The Saudi deal is more of a conceptual regional framework that involves the United States and the Abraham Accords countries. “This is the right coalition to deal with the hegemonic wishes of the Iranians and the nuclear problem. So this is where we should go,” he said.
Netanyahu, Lapid said, should have moved on this issue, but as in so many other instances, he has not done so out of concern that it would break up his far-Right coalition.
THE CURRENT government, Lapid contended, was not going to move forward with a hostage deal or with a regional peace agreement, and therefore, replacing it was a pressing strategic necessity.
Already on October 7, Lapid reached out to Netanyahu and said he would be willing to enter the government if the prime minister removed the two far-Right parties, Religious Zionist Party and Otzma Yehudit, from the governing coalition. However, not only did Netanyahu not consider the offer, he did not even use it as leverage to keep his far-Right partners in check, Lapid said.
“He couldn’t care less and was not interested in the possibility – even remotely.”
Contrary to general estimations, United Right chairman MK Gideon Sa’ar’s decision to reenter the government with his four MKs in September did not give the government more breathing room, Lapid said. He explained that the government’s problems were in the “real world” and could not be swept away by political maneuvering.
Sa’ar’s move is widely believed to have strengthened Netanyahu’s coalition, as it both raised its majority from 64 to 68 MKs and neutralized the threat by Otzma Yehudit Chairman and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to bring down the government with his six MKs.
“The two basic problems of this government are actually not political,” Lapid said, referring to the ultra-Orthodox parties’ attempt to continue evading IDF service and to the upcoming 2025 budget – which is expected to include heavy tax increases.
“The fact that Gideon Sa’ar and three guys came in doesn’t mean you have the money you didn’t have before... nor the fingers [votes] for this absurdity of releasing tens of thousands of future soldiers [from service],” Lapid said.
When discussions on a new haredi draft bill began, the IDF said it was lacking some 10,000 soldiers. Add to that an additional 11,000 soldiers who have been injured in the war, alongside 750 killed, and you have a need for some 22,000 soldiers. There is no manpower pool of this size to recruit from other than military-age ultra-Orthodox men, Lapid said.
“You cannot solve this with political maneuvering because it is happening in the real world... the real world in which money doesn’t grow on trees, and the real world in which there are no other 18-year-olds who are healthy and can be part of the existential effort we are engaged in.”
Asked why the government will not succeed in at least delaying treatment of these problems, Lapid said that “weirdly enough, the pressure on the [draft] dodging bill is not coming from Israeli society... but from the ultra-Orthodox [establishment],” such as United Torah Judaism Chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf threatening not to support the 2025 budget if yeshiva students do not receive legal exemptions from IDF service.
In addition, politics isn’t mathematics, and things can change quickly, Lapid said. “I understand why journalists want me to say that by the end of 2024... we might go into an election,” but “it’s a fluid world.”
DURING THE struggle over the government’s controversial judicial reforms in 2023, no one could have imagined where Israel would be a year later, and with the state’s demographic shifting steadily toward religious conservatism and right-wing militarism, Lapid was asked whether he was fighting a lost cause.
“I do not accept the premise,” he answered.
“I think that what is happening now... is that we now understand that we cannot keep on ignoring the more fundamtal problems this country has.”
He proposed considering which version of Israel would be stronger – a religious, bigoted country or a liberal democracy with a technological inclination. While he understood the instinct for revenge, he said that “The only smart option is the one that we are offering,” and that a majority of Israelis acknowledged this.
Lapid explained that rather than the old Israeli Right vs Left on issues of national security, the new political divide was between liberals and religious conservatives, and according to polls, there were “way more” of the former – including figures who are right-wing on national security issues, such as Yisrael Beytenu Chairman MK Avigdor Liberman and former prime minister Naftali Bennett.
“We don’t know where Israel is going, but if we don’t have a death wish... we cannot go the Ben-Gvir-Smotrich route,” Lapid said.
“If we want to be radical and deplorable, then Yemen and Syria are so much better than us at this. We are better than them at being smart and technological.”
According to Lapid, the basic idea of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state is being challenged by people who believe that Israel can no longer be both Jewish and democratic, and have chosen the former over the latter. But he thought that most Israelis recognized that Israel’s greatest threat, even in wartime, was internal.
Another example of the path on which the government was leading the country was judicial reform, the threat of which still exists, he said, noting Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s ongoing attempt to “sabotage” the election of a permanent Supreme Court Chief Justice.
Israel would not be out of the woods of the judicial reform as long as there are “neo-fascist” parties in government, Lapid concluded.
HE ALSO blamed Netanyahu and his government for the current tensions with France and the Biden administration, including with the American people.
“We have a real, huge crisis even with the next generation of Jews [in the United States], let alone the next generation of intellectuals,” he said, adding: “I know it is very fashionable to look down at elites these days, but eventually [the] elites are the ones who are carving the paths countries are taking.”
Lapid said, “This has come from years of negligence,” as well as a preference by ministers for “talk-backs” and meme-style comments over dialogue.
Statements by government ministers such as Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli – who publicly threw his support behind Republican presidential contender Donald Trump – have not helped.“I am reminding you, he is the one in charge of the Diaspora,” Lapid said.
Lapid was careful, when speaking of Trump and Democratic presidential contender Vice President Kamala Harris, to describe both of them as supportive of Israel.
“These are two very pro-Israeli candidates,” he said, recalling Trump’s historic relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018. “I sat in the event in which the American Embassy was opened in Jerusalem – I had tears in my eyes.”
Harris, he said, is part of a US administration that has “supported Israel in this war in ways that are unprecedented.”
Israel-US relations have to be handled wisely and in a long-term strategic manner, something that this government is not capable of doing, Lapid said.
Instead, Netanyahu and his ministers have been airing video clips aimed against the US president, even though the Biden administration has sent Israel $17 billion in military aid.
“An American friend who is a high-ranked officer of this [Biden’s] government, told me, ‘It might not be a lot of money for you guys, but for us in the US, it is considered a lot of money,” Lapid said.
“We have the fundamentals to maintain this friendship, but we have a government who’s doing nothing about it,” he added.
Lapid said he did not believe that Israel was in danger of losing US military support in the short term.
The US, he said, instinctively sees Israel as “an asset and not a burden,” and he believes that sentiment has not disappeared, “but I am hearing doubts that I did not hear before. It can be reversed because the basic sympathy is there, it’s part of American culture, but not with this [Netanyahu’s] government,” Lapid said. THE CRISIS with France was born of a similar form of neglect, he explained. “You don’t wake up in the morning” and discover that French President Emmanuel Macron is calling for an arms embargo against Israel, this is something that the Israeli government should have known about in advance and worked to thwart, through intelligence and dialogue.
“You are talking to him, you are reminding him of the bond you have with him,” Lapid said, stressing that ties with France can be repaired. “You just have to be smart and non-populist about it,” he said, rather than engaging in demagoguery.
“They [the Israeli government] are not doing this because they are so addicted to the immediate response of the political base that they are not capable anymore of just doing the job.”
On the walls of Lapid’s office hang two photographs that remind him of the complexity of Israeli politics and how time changes the lens through which historical figures are viewed.One is of Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion of the Mapai party which eventually became the Labor party; and the other is of the country’s sixth prime minister Menachem Begin who was the founder of the Likud party.
“We know one thing,” Lapid said as he stood by their photos to better explain his relationship to the two men. “Neither of these gentlemen would have a political place today because Ben-Gurion was way too militaristic for today’s Israeli Left. He wouldn’t pass the primaries.”
Pointing to Ben-Gurion, Lapid said, “he’s too hawkish and too biblical, he is the one who said the Bible is the mandate we have over this country. So he was too hawkish and biblical for the Israeli Left, and he was way too democratic for Likud today. So he [Begin] is not passing Likud these days and he [Ben-Gurion] is not passing Labor these days. So they came here for political asylum,” he jokes.
“They will not be accepted by the political establishments of their own parties,” but they will be accepted by the Israeli public, he said.
Lapid noted that his centrist Yesh Atid party, which he founded in 2012, sits right in the middle, in the narrow space between the two men.
A return to the premier's seat?
Lapid affirmed that he still has his sights set on the premiership.
“There are so many moving particles on the way that you can never tell,” he said, as he slipped his speech into the royal “we.” “We want to go back there,” he said.
Among the issues he would tackle upon his return, he said, would be rehabilitating the economy and reorienting it “toward the working people.”
Referring to his term as 14th prime minister (from 1 July to 29 December 2022) Lapid said: “I think we did a good job for the kind of challenges we have: religion and state, Palestinians, and relations with the United States.”

Israel must not end war yet despite Sinwar success - opinion
Gil Troy/Jerusalem Post/October 23/2024
We, who want this war to end yesterday, must keep fighting tomorrow and tomorrow, until the aggressors – Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran – cave in.
When Israel’s soldier-heroes killed Yahya Sinwar, President Joe Biden declared: “This is a good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world.” Vice President Kamala Harris agreed, echoing Biden that “Israel has a right to defend itself, and the threat Hamas poses to Israel must be eliminated.”Even Thomas Friedman, who has spearheaded The New York Times’ condemnation of Israel’s war and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for supposedly prolonging the campaign for political reasons, acknowledged: “it is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the death of the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.” Yet somehow, these military geniuses – like most others – failed to add four words: “and I was wrong.” But they were – and still are.
They were wrong by constantly pressuring Netanyahu and Israel to end the war – months ago. They were wrong by opposing Israel’s entry into Rafah, where Israeli soldiers caught Sinwar in the broad net Israel needed to cast so wide and for so long after Hamas’s bloodbath. They were wrong by unfairly politicizing Netanyahu’s stubborn determination to crush Hamas. And they were – and are – wrong, to treat this war as some video game that only kills really, really bad guys, with no innocents getting caught in the crossfire as the fight ends quickly and painlessly.
Urban warfare is grueling – especially with Hamas terrorists cowering behind Palestinians who also hate Israel. Don’t forget: “There has rarely been a military campaign like this, with Hamas leaders living and moving through hundreds of miles of tunnels, organized in multiple stories underground, determined to protect themselves with no care for the civilians suffering above ground.” Guess who said that? Biden last week. Israelis appreciate the munitions America has supplied, and Biden’s tremendous moral support. Still, the obsessive attempts to restrain Israel terrify me as an American historian.
SUCH MORAL and strategic confusion does not bode well for America’s defense posture. It telegraphs weakness to America’s enemies, who see the disdain with which too many pro-Israel Democrats treat Israel, along with so many Americans’ impatience with the kind of sustained conflict required to defeat evil. Such callowness cultivates among America’s population a sniveling, simplistic, and unrealistic approach to foreign relations that underestimates the need to unleash tremendous firepower when fighting totalitarians and terrorists. And this remote-control moralizing has stained Israel’s reputation among too many Americans – let alone the rest of the world.
Sinwar’s reign of terror ended only because Netanyahu and Israel defied conventional wisdom and world opinion – including most American leaders and many American Jewish leaders. Deploying unremitting, prolonged pressure on Gaza worked. The Wall Street Journal headlined: “Israel Killed Sinwar by Forcing Him From the Tunnels.”The IDF has destroyed over 40,000 military targets this year. Nevertheless, both Southern Lebanon and Gaza still overflow with weapons depots, command-and-control centers, and Jihadists vowing to destroy the Jewish State. Consider the stockpile’s scale.
Imagine the courage, military prowess, weaponry and determination required to eliminate so many threats – while also actively repelling attacks. And maybe, just maybe, Americans and others should question their “conceptzia” – (mis)conception. They, too, tolerated this buildup.
They then decided the war could be lightning short. And, even now, many resist learning the lessons of the need to grind down the enemy, a valiant effort that eventually ensnared Sinwar.
Alas, refusing to incorporate new, inconvenient, politically incorrect facts into their worldviews, Biden, Harris, and Friedman instantly returned to the same stale rhetoric they used to try to restrain Israel for months. Harris, whose words most count now, insisted: “This moment gives us an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza, and it must end such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.”
We in Israel crave those goals. But this year has confirmed that achieving them requires a long, bloody process – and much more patience.
Indeed, we cannot “end the war in Gaza” until “Israel is secure.” And if the Gazans are truly innocent, they should turn on Hamas and force it to surrender, while freeing the hostages.
Until that happens, Israel must maintain the military pressure, and prepare its security zone along the Gaza border, including taking Gazan territory, so the Palestinians learn that every future attack will result in more territorial losses. MEANWHILE, let’s end the hostage negotiation farce – by exposing the self-destructiveness of Israel’s Hostage Deal movement. Politicizing the issue keeps raising Hamas’s price to free the hostages.
The movement should only protest – and harass within the limits of the law – Qatari and Turkish diplomats, as well as those in North America, Australia, and Europe. Qatar and Turkey host and bankroll Hamas. Bibi-bashing may feel good – but it’s counterproductive.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Sinwar kept “urging” Hamas officials “to refuse a hostage deal. Hamas had the upper hand in negotiations, Sinwar said, citing internal political divisions within Israel, cracks in Netanyahu’s wartime coalition and mounting US pressure to alleviate the suffering in Gaza.”
A more unified global front against Hamas might have freed the hostages sooner; it remains the only way to end their suffering, which weighs on all people of conscience.
In short, we, who want this war to end yesterday, must keep fighting tomorrow and tomorrow, until the aggressors – Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran – cave in.
Only then, once Israel is secured, will those Palestinians who actually want “dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination” – rather than Israel’s destruction – have a shot at making progress, too.
**The writer, a senior fellow in Zionist thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian. His latest book, To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream was just published.

Will Israel assassinate Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei? - opinion
Salem Alketbi/Jerusalem Post/October 23/2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/10/136081/
The idea of assassinating the supreme leader may recede slightly in favor of more vital targets. These could include Iran’s nuclear and missile program facilities.
The image of Israeli assassination targets recently shown on Israel’s Channel 14 and picked up by the BBC featured several figures allegedly wanted by Israel but did not include the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Those listed included Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Ali Al Sistani, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar (killed by the IDF last week), Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem, Yemeni Houthi leader Abdul-Malik Al Houthi, and Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani.
However, recent strikes and intelligence breaches targeting Iranian security institutions and their affiliated proxies, particularly Hezbollah in Lebanon, make the scenario of assassinating Khamenei highly plausible. This possibility is compelling Iranian security agencies to exercise extreme caution. The situation is especially critical given the collapse of the tacitly agreed-upon rules of engagement and conflict boundaries between Iran and Israel. Several factors place Khamenei within the scope of potential Israeli targets, even if his name was absent from the publicized “assassination list.”
Indeed, this very omission could be considered an indicator of purposeful misdirection and deception. Such tactics are highly likely in these circumstances.
A list that included Sistani
FIRST, THE list was not limited to military leaders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iranian proxies. It also included Sistani, a Shi’ite religious authority of stature. This is noteworthy because Sistani does not carry the same weight as Khamenei in managing the conflict with Israel.
He also lacks the authority to direct Iran-aligned proxies to participate in the so-called “axis of resistance.” While Sistani’s political and ideological views are akin to those of Khamenei, he lacks authority over the militant Iraqi Shi’ite organizations. These groups receive orders directly from the IRGC. It can be said that Sistani’s relationship with these groups is limited to the spiritual aspect, particularly in terms of Shi’ite unity from Iran to Lebanon and beyond. Sistani’s statements about the ongoing conflict between Hezbollah and Israel in Lebanon follow the Iranian political line; however, they focus on providing aid and emphasizing the necessity of helping the Lebanese face this crisis.
He also issued an emotionally charged statement mourning Hassan Nasrallah, describing him as the “great martyr.” His sons held a three-day mourning period for Nasrallah in Najaf and Karbala, the two holiest cities in Iraq for Shi’ites. Sistani strongly endorses the “support” operations carried out by Iranian-backed proxies against Israel which contributes in great measure to the alignment of pro-Iran Shi’ite organizations and their execution of missile strikes against Israel.
Here, we can point to Sistani’s role in mobilizing Iraqi Shi’ite power during the confrontation with ISIS by issuing his famous Sufficiency Jihad fatwa in 2016 and rallying all factions under the banner of what is known as Iraq’s Shi’ite Popular Mobilization Forces. However, Sistani does not appear directly in the conflictual relationship between Iran and Israel. This conflict involves dimensions that go beyond religious issues and include struggles for hegemony and strategic influence amid the increasing clash between the Iranian expansionist project and Israel’s desire to ensure its security and stability.
With Sistani capable of mobilizing most, though not all of the Iraqi Shi’ite front, it stands to reason that Israel might be considering adding Khamenei himself to the assassination list.
The political and security costs would involve only slight differences in both cases. Both are major Shi’ite leaders, and the expected Shi’ite anger in the event of the assassination of either would be comparable. It might even be greater in Sistani’s case, given the factor of power struggle within the circle close to the Iranian supreme leader.
Khamenei enters the circle of Israel's potential targets
SECOND, THE current geopolitical climate – which Israel considers unique – pushes Khamenei into the circle of potential Israeli targets. This is true in terms of the successive victories Israel is achieving in weakening Iran’s power and its regional proxies; it is also applicable to the current international and regional support for Israeli military operations to neutralize the Iranian threat.
It is evident that the succession and escalation of Israeli assassination operations against prominent Iranian leaders or Iran loyalists has not resulted in any significant cost to Israel; the reaction of the Islamic Republic did not exceed verbal threats and the firing of antiquated missiles – which were intercepted by Israel and its allies – to satisfy the psychological needs of the pro-Iranian public.
These minimal consequences will encourage Israel to target Iran’s top leaders, including Khamenei himself. It turns out Israel’s successive and escalating assassinations of prominent Iranian or pro-Iranian leaders have not, as of now, resulted in a cost that would compel the Israeli security establishment to discontinue of these bold operations, even if they hit the head of the Iranian regime.
What are the strategic assessments?
THIRD, THERE are strategic assessments that view the scenario of targeting Khamenei as potentially the least costly and most impactful. This scenario would have implications for disrupting the calculations of Iranian regime leaders and igniting conflict within the narrow circle of power. It could also create the conditions to spark popular unrest among those already primed to challenge the regime. This is being fueled by deteriorating economic and security conditions and the country’s preoccupation with ongoing external confrontations and conflicts. The scenario of the assassination of Khamenei has become a genuine Iranian concern. It is no longer dismissed by the security apparatus there, especially after the series of targeted attacks by Israel against Nasrallah – and reportedly against Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Doubts and unanswered questions surrounding the death of Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, when his helicopter crashed in May, have also contributed to this concern.
This explains reports confirming the rush to move the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader to a secure location after receiving news of Nasrallah’s assassination. The depth of Israeli intelligence penetration of IRGC security agencies and its proxies has become apparent. This makes the possibility of reaching the head of the Iranian power hierarchy a real concern for many, especially for the leaders of the IRGC. The decisive factor in all of the above hinges on the assessment by Israeli decision-makers of the cost-benefit analysis being conducted during this period, which aims to maximize Israel’s strategic gains from the turbulent regional scene. In my opinion, the idea of assassinating the supreme leader may recede slightly in favor of more vital targets. These could include Iran’s nuclear and missile program facilities. This depends on Israel’s operational capability to carry out an effective strike against these facilities without the risk of facing a second strike. It also depends on the IRGC’s capability to retaliate against the potential Israeli attack. In this case, the scenario seems open to all possibilities, including all-out war. Subjecting Iranian nuclear and missile capabilities to a failed or limited-impact strike could compel the IRGC to use all available offensive capabilities against Israel. They might do so without restraint or political calculations.
*The writer is a UAE political analyst and former Federal National Council candidate.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-825719

Netanyahu must put his ministers in order to make successful 'day after' plan - editorial
Editorial/Jerusalem Post/October 23/2024
Netanyahu must put his house in order and instruct the MKs in his party and the ministers in his coalition to wait with these ambiguous statements regarding settlements.
With more than 100 hostages still unaccounted for in Gaza and Israel a year deep into the war in Gaza as well as now also being entrenched in Lebanon, 500 activists gathered near Kibbutz Be’eri close to the Gaza border for a rally concluding a two-day “Preparing to Settle in Gaza” festival.
The “revival” celebration was attended by the usual suspects of settler leaders and hard-right activists and was organized by the Nahala pro-settlement organization.
Monday’s gathering’s main premise was to promote the idea that Israelis must resettle in Gaza to prevent future attacks similar to those that occurred on October 7 last year. The attendees consider the 2005 Disengagement from Gaza to be a fatal mistake that enabled Hamas to take over and use it for the next two decades as a launching pad for rocket fire in southern Israel. Nahala leader Daniella Weiss, who played a prominent role in opposing the 2005 withdrawal, said Nahala had already reached an agreement worth “millions of dollars” to set up temporary housing units near the Gaza border, which she said would eventually make their way into the Gaza Strip. She quoted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said several months ago in an interview on Channel 14 that the matter was “unrealistic,” and she responded that many people believed the same about West Bank settlements, but the fact that there were now 330 settlements and 850,000 people living there, according to Weiss, proved that it was feasible.
In a country that touts free expression, there’s nothing wrong with Weiss promoting that plan, no matter how farfetched and potentially damaging to Israel’s image, which she and her compatriots think will make Israel more. However, take a look at who else attended the rally: National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (Otzma Yehudit), Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (RZP), Women’s Advancement Minister and Social Equality Minister May Golan (Likud), and Development of the Negev and Galilee Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf (Otzma Yehudit), who all spoke passionately.
Calling to renew settlements in Gaza
MKs who attended the rally included Ariel Kallner, Avichay Boaron, Osher Shekalim, Tally Gotliv, and Sasson Guetta from the Likud; Zvi Sukkot from the Religious Zionist Party; and Limor Son Har-Melech from Otzma Yehudit.
“If we want it, we can renew settlements in Gaza,” Ben-Gvir told the crowd to roaring applause. He also called for Israel to “encourage emigration” of Palestinians from Gaza. “It’s the best and most moral solution, not by force but by telling them, ‘We’re giving you the option; leave to other countries; the Land of Israel is ours,’” he said. A minister like Ben-Gvir attending a fringe rally and promoting a position that contradicts the government’s stated position is bad enough, and it points to the anarchy within the coalition.
The Jerusalem Post’s Eliav Breuer, who attended the rally, reported that several people wore Kahane Chai (“Kahane is Alive”) apparel in support of the Jewish supremacist Kach movement formed by Rabbi Meir Kahane. During Ben-Gvir’s speech, some of his supporters shouted “Kahane Chai.” But what is really astounding about Monday’s event was the participation of the Likud ministers and MKs. They are from the leading party of the coalition and are led by Netanyahu.
In a period of time in which the world is looking at Israel with magnifying glasses, the fact that nearly a third of the members of the prime minister’s party in the Knesset are in favor of a policy that not only Israel’s allies oppose but that the government of Israel opposes is staggering.
Israel is in the worst diplomatic situation it’s been in since its establishment. Allies such as France and the UK have been discussing different types of arms embargoes on Israel, and the international media are dying to show the extreme, perhaps racist elements of Israeli society.
Netanyahu must put his house in order and instruct the MKs in his party and the ministers in his coalition to wait with these ambiguous statements for the time being.
As we focus on day-after plans, we should think of realistic solutions.

Arab Advocates for Israel Speak Out on Social Media
Hllel Kuttler/The Magazine/October 23/2024
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/arab-advocates-israel-social-media
While their numbers remain small, a dam may have broken for others with similar feelings
Rawan Osman interviews writer Yossi Klein Halevi on her Instagram forum, Arabs Ask
Born in Damascus to secular Muslim parents and raised in the village of Chtaura in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, Rawan Osman, 40, was on her fourth trip to Israel this year when we dined outdoors at a Jerusalem restaurant in mid-September. She plans to move here for good. In preparation, she spent two months this summer studying modern Hebrew in Jerusalem. (“I’m at Level 4,” she told me in Hebrew, during an interview otherwise conducted in English. “I attended an intensive ulpan.”)
Osman has been a vocal advocate on social media for Israel and against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran—including launching an Instagram forum, Arabs Ask, shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, to answer questions about Israel in Arabic. She’s a central figure in a new documentary, Tragic Awakening, about the plague of antisemitism. In May, while visiting Israel on an all-female European delegation, Osman addressed a parliament committee and condemned Hamas’ rape of Israeli women during the terrorist group’s invasion. “I never felt prouder,” she told me. “When I spoke at the Knesset, I officially and publicly announced my recovery from antisemitism. That day was an act of atonement for me.”
Osman is also in the process of converting to Judaism; when we met, she was wearing a gold necklace with a Star of David pendant.
It’s been a dramatic evolution for a woman reared on what she considers the brainwashing of youth to despise Israel and Jews, and who admits to having been an antisemite. Only after moving to France and then Germany, where she lives now, did Osman realize that her parents and teachers had lied to her.
Osman experienced several turning points in her understanding of Jews and Judaism. The first point came in her mid-20s, at a grocery store in Strasbourg, France: When she realized that the other shoppers were Jewish—the first Jews she’d ever encountered—she ran out of the store. But back at her apartment, Osman felt ashamed of her reaction. She returned to the store and, in a conversation with the Jewish shopkeeper, revealed her background.
“On that day, he converted me from an enemy to an ally through kindness,” Osman told an audience at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center across town a few hours after our meal together.
Another Jewish man would play a pivotal role in her reorientation. At a German university, Osman took a course on Judaism. The teacher, a rabbi, taught that “to be a good Jew, you have to become a better person every day,” she told me. “It hit me at my core. I had an epiphany. I was thinking about what he said. Months later, I told him, ‘Judaism is real. Judaism is humane.’ The recipe—everyone can work with it. You can work on yourself bit by bit. There’s no standard [to meet]. It’s you who have to be a bit better.
“It is open for everyone, and the universal morality that Judaism brought to the world is open for everybody,” Osman continued. “It is idiotic to destroy the source that brought order and kindness to the world.”
The experience, she said, “showed me the way back home, the source of light.”Her final turning point came on Oct. 7, 2023, she said, when she understood after the Hamas massacre that everyone “had to choose” between evil and good—and she went all-in on Israel and the Jewish people
The post-Oct. 7, 2023, darkness enveloping the United Nations, European city centers, American university campuses, and Middle Eastern streets is enough to depress Israel partisans with the certainty that moral pollution is rotting the earth, that Orwellian doublespeak is the world’s new language, that the struggle between right and wrong is lost.
But then, six months ago, Osman appeared in my social media feed, advocating for Israel and against barbarism. I heard her high-pitched voice speaking English fluently in an Arabic accent, and sensed her no-nonsense eyes, determined mouth, and empathetic heart delivering wisdom through Arabs Ask’s short video clips—filmed in places like her Heidelberg apartment or a Jerusalem market or a burned-out shell of a home of a kibbutz that Hamas terrorists had desecrated.
Some of the clips are personal, like Osman explaining why she left the Middle East—“Back where I come from, we don’t demand. We are grateful if we find the means to feed our children”—but most tackle broader themes: Is antisemitism embedded in the Arab world? Are Jews evil? What is a kibbutz? Are all Israelis white?
Take the video clip of Osman’s meeting in January with Ayelet Levy Shachar, whose soldier-daughter Naama Levy was kidnapped on Oct. 7. “I think it’s important for the Arab world, for women, for mothers, to hear your voice and to understand that this could happen to any of them,” Osman told Levy Shachar in English, with simultaneous subtitles appearing in Arabic.
Hers was a breath of fresh air fumigating the stench of inhumanity. Maybe not representative of Arab masses or their leadership or their advocates worldwide, but a necessary crutch to navigate the minefield out.
Osman is sure other Arab allies are out there. She said she hears from supporters, most communicating privately due to safety concerns.
Cairo native Dalia Ziada, another Muslim woman I interviewed who publicly, including on social media, supports Israel and opposes Iran and its anti-Israel military proxies, stated that she, too, hears from Arabs who back her but fear saying so aloud. Israeli Arabs Joseph Haddad and Jonathan Elkhoury, both Christians, stridently speak and tweet on the subject. A British-American Muslim, Elica Le Bon, has appeared regularly on television interviews and on social media to denounce her parents’ homeland of Iran and support Israel’s fight. So has Matthew Nouriel, a British-American Jewish activist whose parents also are Iranian. Another stalwart has been Mossab Hassan Youssef, a Muslim-turned-Christian native of Ramallah who in 2010 attained asylum in the United States and whose father was a founder of Hamas.
For now, they are among the anecdotal examples. Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Center for Foreign and Security Affairs think tank, believes others, perhaps many, are in Israel’s corner, or at least oppose the “axis of resistance,” but surreptitiously.
It’s a sentiment that Brigitte Gabriel, a Christian Lebanese émigré who’s long been an outspoken critic of radical Islam, understands. Gabriel said she’s been able to freely speak out—she lives in Virginia—since her parents died and other close relatives no longer live in Lebanon, so she needn’t fear repercussions on them. For more than 20 years, Lebanese friends have been “afraid to say” anything against Hezbollah, she said. But Gabriel told me that these friends have encouraged her to speak out on their behalf, saying, “Please be our voice.”
“There are many goodwilled, intelligent, wise, forward-thinking, moderate Arab voices, and [social media] influencers, who recognize the truth about these terrorists, that they are as threatened as Israel is by [them],” Diker said of people throughout the Middle East with whom he and his staff have spoken. Among Christians in the Middle East they’ve been in touch with, he estimated that 5%-10% identify with Israel far more than with Muslims. One reason, Diker explained, is that “the Muslims treat the Christians with the same disgust and rage as they do the Jews.” Osman doesn’t know the backgrounds of the Arabs who contact her, but said that Muslims open to dialogue “are in most cases secular or ex-Muslim.”
Osman said, “It is easier for persecuted minorities to relate to the Israelis or the Jews. By that I mean even Muslims if they are nonbelievers or gay. That said, it surely is more significant to meet someone who is or was a Muslim, who grew up in that culture and had an antisemitic upbringing and yet managed to break out of it and emerged a righteous person.”
Diker said that some, like Ziada, a senior fellow at the center, “feel safe enough to weigh in and heavily criticize the Arab extremists and side with Israel. The problem is that people are afraid.”
They represent a “Jekyll and Hyde syndrome in the Arab public,” said Diker, a native of Manhattan. “In a large part of that public, they suffer from a type of psychiatric syndrome, a split-personality syndrome: Half support what Israel is doing and are afraid to come out and say it. Some are still victims of Islamic and Arab propaganda.”On a video call, Ziada, 42, told me that she feared for her life after condemning the Oct. 7 attacks and secretly fled Egypt hours after a fatwa, or religious edict, called for her death. Ziada said she notified Cairo police officials, who refused to protect her on the grounds that she supported Israel. She’s since lived in Washington, D.C.
Ziada’s journey began 24 years before, during an anti-Israel protest at Cairo’s Ain Shams University, where she studied English literature. Along with burning Israeli and American flags, the crowd torched an Egyptian flag. That flummoxed the patriotic Ziada. It was a “cognitive dissonance moment,” she said. Ziada researched Israel and Judaism, and discovered that Jews were accomplished citizens of Egypt until being evicted a few decades before. “Since then, it’s been my mission to fight against radical Islamists and for Arab-Israeli dialogue, with the understanding that this will bring stability to the region,” she explained. Just since May, she’s spoken at about 20 American campuses to both Jewish and Arab groups, delivering pro-Israel talks to Israel advocates and pro-Palestinian talks to advocates of the Palestinians. Ziada said she’s dismayed by Jewish students’ isolation but also by their lack of understanding of the threats against them and of the Middle East’s reality. She’s since worked to “help them see the truth, to see how the other side is thinking,” to combat their threats, she said. “It will not happen overnight, but we have no option [other] than to keep pushing for the change to happen.”
Ziada’s image as a practicing Muslim—she wears a hijab, including during our interview—might enhance her credibility. “I have an advantage: the fact I’m Egyptian,” she said. “They’re disarmed. I’m not a conservative Muslim woman; I’m liberal. I keep my religion. I’m proud of my religion, but at the same time I don’t force it on other people. This appearance makes me more approachable.”
Signs hint at the Arab rank and file becoming emboldened by Israel’s dramatic gains over the past month that include the air force’s destroying thousands of Hezbollah’s missiles and killing its leadership up to Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and his presumed successor, Hashem Safieddine; Israeli intelligence pulling off the beeper and walkie-talkie caper that decimated thousands of Hezbollah operatives; Israeli ground troops continuing to uncover Hezbollah tunnels and weapons-storage depots near Lebanon’s southern border; and Iran bracing for Israel’s expected strike to avenge Tehran’s launching of 181 ballistic missiles against the Jewish state on Oct. 1. Even before Nasrallah’s assassination, videos made in Lebanon mocked him for some Hezbollah strikes against Israeli farms that killed only hundreds of chickens. Christian villages in northern Lebanon reportedly are refusing admission to Hezbollah officials seeking refuge there. Ordinary Lebanese and Iranians are said to be cheering on Israel’s victories that, the thinking goes, could ultimately topple Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic, respectively. All of that is on top of the moderating influence of the 2020 signing of the Abraham Accords that brought peace between Israel and four Arab countries and heralded a breakthrough for the Jewish state with Saudi Arabia that many see as imminent postwar.
Altering attitudes takes time, though. Gabriel said that those she knows in the region have become more cowed in the past two decades because the “Islamic influence has gotten worse.” Paul Gross, a senior fellow at the Begin Center, said: “I think it’s going to be a very long game. I don’t think in the short term there’ll be a lot of change in the Arab world.” Ziada is optimistic about continued, small steps toward moderation, saying that “it doesn’t matter in terms of numbers, [but] the mere fact that there’s an alternative” to radical Islam being articulated.
Osman related that her mother, who lives in Europe with Osman’s father, wouldn’t speak with her for eight months after Arabs Ask was launched. “She couldn’t believe. These were her words: ‘You can’t seriously believe Muslims would do this!’” Osman said of the Oct. 7 massacre. The two have since reconciled. But Osman is ready to move on from Germany, where things got so bad that authorities recommended that her son not invite friends over so they wouldn’t know the family’s address. In Germany, she said, “I don’t feel at home.”
“In Jerusalem, I’m at home. I’m pretty sure I’ll get married here. I’m pretty sure I’ll replace all the friends and relatives I lost with better relatives and friends,” Osman said before adding, as Israeli Jews sometimes do when wishing for God’s positive intervention: “B’ezrat Hashem.”
*Hillel Kuttler, a writer and editor, can be reached at hk@HillelTheScribeCommunications.com.

Why Canceled Christopher Columbus Sailed West (Hint: Islam)
Raymond Ibrahim/The Stream/October 23/2024
Another Columbus Day — or as it is increasingly known, “Indigenous Peoples Day” — has come and gone, with more and more institutions ignoring it or worse, repeating the hackneyed allegation that the Italian explorer committed a “genocide” against the natives.
One need look no further than to the current star of the “left,” Kamala Harris, for all the usual woke grandstanding and bromides against the Italian explorer. Not only is she on record affirming that she wants to officially cancel Columbus Day and replace it with Indigenous People Day, but in 2021, as vice president, she condemned America’s “shameful past” in the context of Columbus:
Since 1934, every October, the United States has recognized the voyage of the European explorers who first landed on the shores of the Americas. But that is not the whole story. That has never been the whole story. Those explorers ushered in a wave of devastation for Tribal nations — perpetrating violence, stealing land and spreading disease. We must not shy away from this shameful past, and we must shed light on it and do everything we can to address the impact of the past on Native communities today.
Earlier this week, a Trump campaign spokesperson slammed Harris for this position:
Kamala Harris is your stereotypical leftist. Not only does she want to raise taxes and defund the police — she also wants to cancel American traditions like Columbus Day. President Trump will make sure Christopher Columbus’ great legacy is honored and protect this holiday from radical leftists who want to erase our nation’s history like Kamala Harris.
Columbus’s “great legacy,” along with words like “radical” and “erasing history,” are a reminder of something else — something almost always forgotten in the debate about the explorer: why he sailed west in the first place. The answer isn’t “for spices,” as we were taught in school, but to circumnavigate and fight “radical” Muslims, in what is now an “erased history.”
A Lifetime of Jihad
When he was born, the then-more than 800-year-old war against Islam — or rather, defense against jihad — was at an all-time high. In 1453, when Columbus was two years old, the Turks finally sacked Constantinople, an atrocity-laden event that rocked Christendom to its core.
Over the following years, Muslims continued making inroads deep into the Balkans, leaving much death and destruction in their wake, with millions of Slavs enslaved. (Yes, the two words — Slavs and slaves — are etymologically connected for this very reason.)
In 1480, when he was 29, the Turks even managed to invade Columbus’s native Italy. In the city of Otranto, they ritually beheaded 800 Italians — and sawed the local archbishop in half — for refusing to recant Christianity and embrace Islam.
It was in this context that Spain’s monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella — themselves avowed Crusaders, especially the queen, who concluded the centuries-long Reconquista of Spain by liberating Granada from Islam in 1492 — took Columbus into their service.
They funded his ambitious voyage in an effort to launch, in the words of historian Louis Bertrand, “a final and definite Crusade against Islam by way of the Indies” (which culminated in the incidental founding of the New World).
The True Story
Many Europeans were convinced that if only they could reach the peoples east of Islam — who, if not Christian, were at least “not as yet infected by the Muhammadan plague,” to quote Pope Nicholas V (d.1455) — together they could crush Islam between them. The plan was centuries old and connected to the legend of Prester John, a supposedly great Christian monarch reigning in the East who would one day march westward and avenge Christendom by destroying Islam.
All this comes out in Columbus’s own letters: in one he refers to Ferdinand and Isabella as “enemies of the wretched sect of Muhammad” who are “resolve[d] to send me to the regions of the Indies, to see [how the people thereof can help in the war effort].” In another written to the monarchs after he reached the New World, Columbus offers to raise an army “for the war and conquest of Jerusalem.” (That his voyages centered on liberating Jerusalem from Islam is further evident in the title of one 2011 book, Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem.)
Nor were Spain and Columbus the first to implement this strategy. Once Portugal was cleared of Islam in 1249, its military orders launched into Muslim Africa. “The great and overriding motivation behind [Prince] Henry the Navigator’s [b. 1394] explosive energy and expansive intellect,” writes historian George Grant, “was the simple desire to take the cross — to carry the crusading sword over to Africa and thus to open a new chapter in Christendom’s holy war against Islam.” He launched all those discovery voyages because “he sought to know if there were in those parts any Christian princes” who “would aid him against the enemies of the faith,” wrote a contemporary.
Actually Not Racists
Does all this make Columbus, and by extension Ferdinand and Isabella — not to mention the whole of Christendom — “Islamophobes,” as those few modern critics who bother mentioning the true motivation of Columbus’s voyage allege? For example, in an LA Times op-ed, Yale historian Alan Mikhail wrote:
A primary force behind Columbus’ Atlantic crossings was a fear and hatred of Islam…. This shaped how white Europeans engaged with the “New World” and its native peoples for centuries, and how today’s Americans understand the world.… Columbus was born into Europe’s anti-Islamic mind-set in 1451…
While much of this is true, Mikhail does not bother explaining why there was such a “fear and hatred of Islam,” or why Europe had an “anti-Islamic mind-set” in the first place. Rather, “white Europeans” were just unenlightened bigots (“racists” in contemporary, if infinitely overdone, parlance).
But therein lay the irony: Yes, Columbus and Europeans were “Islamophobes” — but not in the way that word is used today. While the Greek word phobos has always meant “fear,” its usage today implies “irrational fear.”
However, considering that for nearly a thousand years before Columbus, Islam had repeatedly attacked Christendom to the point of swallowing up three-quarters of its original territory, including for centuries Spain; that Islam’s latest iteration, in the guise of the Ottoman Turks, was during Columbus’s era devastating the Balkans and Mediterranean, slaughtering and enslaving any European who dared travel east through their domains; and that, even centuries after Columbus, Islam was still terrorizing the West — marching onto Vienna with 200,000 jihadists in 1683 and provoking America into its first war as a nation — the very suggestion that Western fears of Islam were, or are, “irrational” is itself the height of irrationalism.
**Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West and Sword and Scimitar is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Today in History: Muslims Worship Allah Atop 2,400 Christian Heads
Raymond Ibrahim/The Stream/October 23/2024
Today in history, a battle that radical Muslims venerate took place between Muslims and Christians in Spain (known back then as al-Andalus).
In 1085, Alfonso VI of Leon-Castile captured the Muslim city of Toledo, launching the Reconquista. Great was the lamentation among Muslims and the rejoicing among Christians. The Muslim emirs of al-Andalus — notorious for their disunity and dissipated lifestyles — had to act fast, for “the arrogance of the Christian dogs” had “waxed so great.”
So the emirs called on their fanatical coreligionists in North Africa, the Almorivades, a sect devoted to waging jihad and enforcing sharia. Its elderly leader was Yusuf bin Tashfin, “a wise and shrewd man,” who had “passed the greater part of his life in his native deserts; exposed to hunger and privation, he had no taste for the life of pleasure.”Dressed in black with a veil cloaking all but the zeal in his eyes, the 76-year-old sheikh accepted the invitation and entered al-Andalus. The Moorish emirs quickly “acknowledged his sway, hoping that he would stop the victorious course of the infidel, and thus open, for the prosecution of jihad, those gates which they had hitherto kept criminally locked,” thereby “propping up the tottering edifice of Islam, and humbling the pride of the insolent Christian.”
Eradicating Two Enemies at Once
By October 1086, a vast coalition of thousands of Almorivades and Andalusians under Yusuf’s command found themselves facing King Alfonso and his knights at Sagrajas, near Badajoz. While exact numbers are unclear, the Muslims outnumbered the Christians by roughly three to one. According to a Muslim chronicler,When the two armies were in the presence of each other, Yusuf wrote to Alfonso offering him one of the three [conditions] prescribed by the law; namely, Islam, tribute, or death.
On October 23, 1086, the Christians finally charged the front lines of the Muslim army, where Yusuf had placed the Andalusian emirs, while he and his African warriors held the rear. The battle soon “became fiercer than ever, and the furnaces of war burned with additional violence; death exercised its fury.” As expected, before long the Moorish line began to crumble and retreat before the Christians, who “repeated their attacks with increasing fury.”
Yusuf’s unperturbed reaction belied the contempt he held for his “moderate” Muslim allies: “Let the slaughter continue a little while longer,” he told a concerned general. “They no less than the Christians are our enemies.” Moreover, once the Christians had tired themselves out, added the shrewd sheikh, “we shall vanquish them without great difficulty.”
By then, Alfonso and his knights had penetrated to the rear of the Muslim encampment, but Yusuf was nowhere to be found. He had divided his forces into three: one (finally) to aid the nearly routed Andalusians, and one to engage Alfonso; the last, led personally by the wily emir, had circumvented the field of battle. “Advancing with drums rolling and banners flying,” they went straight to and put the Christian rear camp to fire and sword.
The Drums of Doom
Upon realizing he had been outflanked, Alfonso, rather than continuing to rout his foes, ordered an about-face back to his own camp. This was a mistake. The Christian knights crashed into their own fleeing men, even as “the Moslems began to thrust their swords into their backs and their spears into their flanks.”
Always in the background was “this weird drum beating, which …dumbfounded the Christians.” It was, in fact, a tactic of the Almorivades, whose units rhythmically advanced to the beat of drums. As one historian explains:
The thundering roll of the Almoravide drums, now heard for the first time on Spanish soil, shook the earth and resounded the mountains. And Yusuf, galloping along the serried ranks of the Moors, nerved them to bear the fearful sufferings inseparable from holy war, promising Paradise to the dying and the richest booty to those who survived the day.
Soon, even the most effete of Moorish kings had returned to the fray. Now “the clash between the two kings was terrific,” writes a Latin chronicler:
the earth quaked under the hoofs of their horses; the sun was obscured by the clouds of dust rising under the feet of the warriors; the steeds swam through torrents of blood. Both parties, in short, fought with equal animosity and courage.
Muslim accounts concur:
the stormy din of drums, the clash of clarion and trumpet, filled the air; the earth quaked [under the weight of the warriors], and the neighboring mountains echoed the thousand discordant sounds.
At just the right moment, Yusuf unleashed his elite black guard — 4,000 bellowing Africans, armed with light blades, spears, and hippo-hide covered shields — toward Alfonso and the bulk of his most stalwart knights holding their ground. He ordered them “to dismount and join the fight, which they did with awful execution, hamstringing the horses, spearing their riders when on the ground, and throwing confusion into the enemy’s ranks,” to quote from an Arab source:
In the middle of the conflict Alfonso attacked, sword in hand, a black slave who had spent all his javelins, and aimed at his head; but the black avoided the blow, and, creeping under Alfonso’s horse, seized the animal by the bridle; then, taking out a khanjar [J-shaped dagger] which he wore at his girdle, he wounded the Christian king in the thigh, the instrument piercing both armour and flesh, and pinning Alfonso to his horse’s saddle. The rout then became general, the gales of victory blew, and Allah sent down his spirit to the Moslems, rendering the true religion triumphant.
Exhausted, bloodied, and now impaled, Alfonso and his few remaining men — just 500, almost all seriously wounded — retreated, even as the relentless Muslims gave chase deep into the night and slaughtered some more. In the words of the historian al-Maqqari, Alfonso “fled from the field of battle like the timid hare before chasing dogs, and reached Toledo, beaten, dejected in spirits, and wounded.”
Historically Grotesque
To mark the Islamic bona fides of this triumph, a grisly scene soon unfolded on the field of battle. In keeping with the modus operandi of more than four centuries of Muslim heroes and caliphs, stretching back to Muhammad’s treatment of the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza in AD 627, “Yusuf caused the heads of all the Christian slain [to the number of 2,400] to be cut off and gathered together in massive piles.”
And from the tops of those gruesome minarets the muezzins called to morning prayers the victorious soldiers, now worked into a frenzy by the sight of this bestial treading underfoot of human remains, ‘In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.’
The emir later had the by-then-rotten heads hauled off in carts to the kingdoms of al-Andalus as material proof of victory — and a reminder of the fate of all who resist Islam.
Yusuf bin Tashfin is still revered among Muslims, particularly those of the jihadist bent, for his pious exploits at this battle. Indeed, with the exception of perhaps the battle of Yarmuk, few if any other jihads of Islamic history are as extolled in Muslim historiography as Sagrajas, though it is known by a different name in Arabic: the battle of al-Zallaqa, meaning “slimy” — an apparent reference to the slippery conditions caused by the copious amount of blood shed on the battlefield, as echoed by a chronicler:
For many years after the field of battle was so covered with carcasses of the slain, that it was impossible to walk through it without treading on the withering bones of some infidel.
In the end, “this memorable battle and defeat of the Christian forces … inspired new life into the body of [Andalusian Islam],” and set the stage for the next 150 years, which saw the fiercest fighting between Christian and Muslim forces in Spain. But that is another story.
*Raymond Ibrahim is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum. Portions of this article were excerpted from and are documented in his book, Sword and Scimitar.