Israel continues to defend itself, the world continues to condemn Israel

It is a remarkable phenomenon. Israel is fighting a fierce kinetic, diplomatic and legal war, on many fronts, against Islamist terror. It is a war for the survival of the Jewish state. All the while, the world – including Western nations who share common values and interests with Israel – condemn and criticize Israel at every turn.

The situation in Gaza

The situation in the Gaza Strip remains complex and unresolved, without any clear pathway to its resolution.

Since Hamas rejected US-brokered cease-fire offers several weeks ago, Israel has announced it intends to take control of Gaza City, eliminate Hamas, and “control” Gaza until a new administration can be formed. The plan adopted by Israel’s Security Council early August listed five objectives:

1. Disarming Hamas
2. Returning all hostages
3. Demilitarizing the Gaza Strip
4. Taking security control of the territory
5. Establishing “an alternative civil administration that is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority”.

IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Effie Defrin said last week that the IDF had begun its first steps of its invasion of Gaza City. “Our forces already control the outskirts of the city,” he said. More Palestinian families left Gaza City on Tuesday after a night of shelling on its outskirts, as well as the city’s eastern suburbs.

Hamas continues to hold fifty hostages in Gaza, of which it is believed less than twenty are still alive. In Israel, hundreds of thousands are protesting against the government’s plans, demanding a cease-fire and deal with hamas for release of hostages. The issue is threatening to tear Israeli society apart.

US says it will “end the war” – but what happens then?

In Washington, the US Administration has announced it intends to “end the war” by the end of the year. President Trump hosted a “large meeting” in Washington DC yesterday to discuss Israel and the region. According to US envoy Steve Witkoff the USA is creating “a comprehensive plan” for the postwar management of Gaza. Administration officials downplayed this, and called the meeting – which included Trump’s son-in-law and former US diplomat Jared Kushner and former UK Prime Minister and Quartet leader Tony Blair – just another policy meeting. No statements or conclusions were issued.

Israel’s Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar are also both in Washington this week for talks with Administration officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Many states – including a number of Arab nations – agree that Hamas must be defeated, and must not have any role in Gaza government in the future. Yet the world also seems united in condemning Israel’s attempts to defeat and eradicate Hamas, many states are demanding a cease-fire.

Moreover, no-one has a credible plan for how Gaza should be governed in the event the war comes to an end. Many support the idea of a Palestinian state, with a government comprising the current leadership if the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu refuses to allow the PA to become the government of any Palestinian entity in Gaza. And for good reason. According to Meir Ben-Shabbat, Israel’s National Security Adviser from 2017 to 2021 and currently head of the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, the idea that [the] Palestinian Authority could govern Gaza reflects a dangerous historical amnesia. “Anyone who calls for entrusting the administration of Gaza to them forgets that this is what Israel did before 2005. We know what came of it. The Palestinian Authority is not even capable of dealing with the challenges in Judea and Samaria on its own,” he said, pointing to large-scale Israeli security operations in Jenin, Tulkarem and northern Samaria over the past year.

He also noted calls by senior sheikhs in Hebron to disconnect themselves from the PA and maintain independent ties with Israel under the Abraham Accords framework.

Palestinian statehood

German Chancellor Merz announced this week that Germany will not be supporting calls by France, Australia, Canada and other nations for recognition of a Palestinian state, stating that Germany does not believe the “requirements” for statehood have been met. The question is scheduled for discussion at the UN General Assembly in late September.

Proponents of Palestinian statehood seem to ignore the elephant in the room: the Palestinians simply do not have even a semblance of an independent and effective government. Ben-Shabbat stressed that any idea of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority assuming the role of a functional independent state ignores its fundamental flaws. “Without the crutches provided by Israel, it is doubtful the PA could even stand on its own in the face of its challenges,” he said. The problems, he added, include its limited legitimacy, internal structural weakness, inability to enforce order, support for terrorism and failure to confront security threats.

The site of an Israeli airstrike at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip | Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90

Israel strikes Nasser hospital in Gaza – killing 20, including journalists

Tank shelling carried out by the Israeli military on Nasser Hospital in the Khan Younis area of the southern Gaza Strip on Monday morning killed at least 20 people, including five journalists, according to media reports and the Hamas-run health ministry. According to the Foreign Press Association, the strikes “hit the exterior staircase of the hospital where journalists frequently stationed themselves with their cameras. The strikes came with no warning.”

The Israel Defense Forces confirmed that troops had carried out a strike in the area. Footage showed rescue workers, who had arrived at the site of an initial attack, engulfed in smoke and debris when a second strike hit. Witnesses said journalists and other people had also rushed to the site of the first strike. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir ordered an immediate inquiry into the strike.

Hospitals have been frequent sites of fighting in the Gaza war. Top Hamas official Ismail Barhoum was killed in a strike at Nasser Hospital in March. In May, a prominent Palestinian journalist, accused of being a Hamas operative, was killed in a strike at the Khan Younis medical center. Hamas has in the past held hostages at Nasser Hospital, according to the IDF. Shifa Hospital, in the north of the Strip, was also used by Hamas to hold some hostages and as a command-and-control center early in the war, and was the site of fierce battles between Hamas fighters and IDF troops.

Israel approves E1 development – and attracts international censure

Israel’s Security Cabinet in May approved 22 new Jewish communities across Judea and Samaria, including two in northern Samaria that were uprooted by Israeli forces as part of the 2005 Gaza disengagement. Some of the approved communities are existing outposts that had thus far been unauthorized under Israeli law, while others are new villages.

In addition, an Israeli government body gave final approval last week for a Judea housing project in the Jerusalem area known as “E1” that Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said “buries the idea of a Palestinian state.”

The project involves the construction of about 3,400 housing units in the so-called E1 area of Ma’ale Adumim, located between Jerusalem and the currently built-up part of Ma’ale Adumim.

Many countries have condemned the move, claiming that Israeli settlements are “illegal under international law”. Israel’s Foreign Minister Sa’ar responded, saying that unilateral moves to recognize a Palestinian state without Israel’s consent “will be met with unilateral moves by Israel.”

Israel holds the view that sovereignty in the so-called “West Bank” is “in abeyance”, that it has superior claims to sovereignty, and that it is entitled under the Oslo Accords to maintain and even expand Israeli communities in Area C of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) pending a final agreement with the Palestinians.

Israeli minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich and Ma’ale Adumim Mayor Guy Yifrach at a press conference announcing his plans to approve more than 3,000 housing units in the E1 settlement project between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim | Photo: Yonatan Sindel/FLASH90

Iranian revolutionary regime continues to promote global terror, and develop nuclear weapons

Australia has expelled Tehran’s ambassador after Australia’s intelligence agencies had shown that recent attacks on synagogues in Australia were directed by the Iranian government. Australia has become the latest Western government to accuse Iran of carrying out hostile covert activities on its soil.

Security services in Britain and Sweden warned last year that Tehran was using criminal proxies to carry out its violent attacks in those countries, with London saying it had disrupted 20 Iran-linked plots since 2022. A dozen other countries have recently condemned what they called a surge in assassination, kidnapping, and harassment plots by Iranian intelligence services.

These activities are managed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s agency for promotion of its revolutionary ideology worldwide. Australia has announced it intends to place the IRGC on its terror list, following the example of the United States and Canada. For many Jews in Australia, suffering under massive antisemitism since 7th October 2023, this measure is “too little, too late”.

Finally, but not least: the negotiations concerning Iran’s nuclear program between Iran and the UK, France and Germany have failed. The European countries have implemented the “snapback” of UN sanctions against Iran. The Security Council now has 30 days to consider the matter, and decide whether to extend the cessation of the UN sanctions that was introduced under the JCPoA agreement in 2015. Such a decision would require unanimity amongst the Council’s permanent members (US, UK, France, Russia and China), and thus is unlikely.

Gaza City evacuation is ‘inevitable,’ IDF’s Arabic spokesman says

JPost reports: Evacuating Gaza City “is inevitable,” IDF Arabic Spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote on social media on Wednesday. Adraee stated that there are “vast empty areas” in southern Gaza, just like the central refugee camps, and in the Al-Mawasi area.

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Australia Expels Iranian Ambassador after Iran Found to Direct Local Antisemitic Attacks

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday: “Since the terrible events of October 7, 2023, we have witnessed a number of appalling antisemitic attacks against Australia’s Jewish community…. Credible intelligence has now been gathered to reach the deeply disturbing conclusion that the Iranian Government has directed at least two of these attacks.”
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The numbers just don’t support the UN-backed Gaza Famine report

Dr. Mark Zlochin in The Jewish Chronicle: The IPC bent thresholds, ignored half the evidence and relied on assumptions, turning a situation of undeniable hardship into a claim of catastrophic collapse that the data simply does not support.
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The numbers just don’t support the UN-backed Gaza Famine report

Dr. Mark Zlochin in The Jewish Chronicle: The IPC bent thresholds, ignored half the evidence and relied on assumptions, turning a situation of undeniable hardship into a claim of catastrophic collapse that the data simply does not support.
> Read more..

‘Hamas is very popular in Judea and Samaria’

Yaakov Lappin at JNS: Former Israeli National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat tells JNS that PA criticism of Hamas is “hollow.” The bottom line is clear. Hamas thrives on bloodshed; the PA clings to power with Israel’s protection while glorifying terrorism; and international recognition of Palestinian statehood risks rewarding terror at the very moment it should be delegitimized.
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Empty Gestures Set Back the Cause of Palestinian Statehood

Editorial (Washington Post): On a symbolic level, Palestinians’ dream of an independent state has never appeared closer. At the UN General Assembly in September, Britain, France, Canada and Australia plan to join 147 other countries in recognizing one. But on the level that matters – the ground truth – rarely has the goal of Palestinian statehood seemed more distant. After nearly two years of war against Hamas in Gaza – sparked after the terrorist group killed 1,200 Israelis and took 250 people hostage – the vast majority of Israelis, 71%, oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state, compared to roughly half a decade ago. Recognizing a state now comes at the wrong time. It actually sets back efforts to find a lasting peace. The establishment of a Palestinian state was always envisioned as the end goal of a process in which Israelis agree to swap conquered land for a guaranteed peace. But at the core, the future Palestinian state must recognize Israel’s right to exist and renounce violence and terrorism.
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Six reasons to build in E-1

By David M. Weinberg: Building 10,000 homes in E-1 is critical for the future of Jerusalem and for Israel’s security. It also is appropriate pushback against the arrogant Western attempt to ram runaway, perilous Palestinian statehood down Israel’s throat.
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Current Gaza deal ‘no longer relevant,’ talks will resume on Israel’s terms, official says

JPost: A new venue for negotiations, outside of Qatar and Egypt, is reportedly to be up for debate, with a European capital or the United Arab Emirates (UAE) presented among the potential options.
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