First Time Here? Readers suggest starting with the expanded Gaza Explainer in #133 and #120.
Tags: 9 Min Read; Context city; Relief
Update: Updated 12/24 after email release to add the fifth front (Yemen) to the list of fronts where the IDF is active. The time of day was added to the Houthi missile attack on Ramat Gan.
Art for People's Sake: Social Experiment in New York Highlights Hostage Crisis
No, not The Bobs' song (I wish). But like The Bobs' song, corruption is in the backstory.
From the Hostages and Missing Families Forum Headquarters (4 min, in English):
On a Tel Aviv Street:
He was a paratrooper and now I am falling...
[I am] One who is completely lost.
Peace/Peace/Peace.
(I interpret this as: Her partner was killed in battle. It is a play on words: "Paratrooper" and "falling" are the same root: He was a tzanchan and now I tzonechet.)
That School in Ramat Gan
A few days ago, Adina was going to send this blog along to a few new contacts. I said, "The war is winding down, and so is the blog."
Then this:
Above: School in Ramat Gan (next to Tel Aviv) hit by an Iranian missile launched by the Houthis in Yemen four days ago, at around 2 AM. Had the attack been 12 hours earlier or later, hundreds of kids would have been killed.
Haaretz: For the vast majority of Israelis, the past two weeks have brought a false sense of normality – as if the war that began on October 7, 2023, is effectively over. Not for everyone, of course: Not for the families of the 100 hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza. Not for the residents of communities along the Gaza border that haven't returned home. Not for soldiers still fighting on the southern front, and their families who anxiously await their return. [You mean, not for soldiers or their families, period. IDF soldiers are active to this day on five fronts: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Yemen (in unknown capacities). -RZ]
(And not for anyone in Gaza or Shiites in Lebanon's south. Also not for residents of Israel's north who largely have not returned. Also, I suppose, not for anyone in Syria….)
Tel Aviv Sky, for some hours on Dec 16
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, December 18, NYC
Context: It turns out that the Israeli and U.S. intelligence estimates regarding conflict with Hezbollah were far off the mark. Mr. Sullivan remarks:
“... the speed, the scope and the scale of the remaking of the Middle East in this short amount of time — I think you’d find very few people who could have predicted all of that and that we would be sitting here in December of 2024 with the picture looking the way that it looks."
Similar to the fall of the Berlin Wall and end of the Cold War. (Why does this keep happening to me?)
Commentary
It is going to take some time for this all to sink in.
Mail
RE #156: The resemblance to Zelensky is even stronger and makes the same point. -M.T.
Ya think? (Raf likes #156 better.)
Dept of The Invisible
Items invisible in the Western media.
Lebanon
Wiam Wahhab, the Druze leader who heads the Lebanese Al-Tawhid Party (formerly an Assad supporter), made surprising statements last week:
"The nation [Lebanon] is not interested in war, and if you ask me, it would be better to make peace with Israel."
"I suggest to the [Lebanese] Shiites that they normalize and make peace with Israel and let us live in peace."
The [Shiite Resistance] axis ended after the deaths of Qassem Soleimani and Hassan Nasrallah.
Below: Antoine Zahra, a member of the (Christian) Lebanese Forces party, stated:
Lebanon should thank Israel for destroying Hezbollah’s infrastructure in southern Lebanon… it’s doing the work of the Lebanese Army.
Syria
Above: Southern Syria: Documentation of contact between the population of the village of Rafid (within the buffer zone opposite Ani'am) and IDF soldiers. It is clear that there is no tension. Neither side is afraid.
Below: Syrian rebels throw stones at Russian military trucks that are evacuating on the way to western Syria (the coastal strip).
Below: The Turkish Foreign Minister just visited Damascus. (The most senior member of the Turkish government to visit so far.) The rebel leader, al-Julani, wore a tie! His sartorial evolution:
Syria: Clueless American Media, Part n+5,000,000
CNN reporter duped in Syria's Sednaya prison:
A CNN reporter was admitted to Sednaya prison after the fall of the Assad regime and was awarded a "rare journalistic scoop" - during her visit, a prisoner in poor mental condition, named Adel Gharbal, was brought out. He had been abused by the guards... .
After the broadcast, the truth became clear: This was a senior officer in the Assad regime's Syrian intelligence named Salameh Salameh, who himself abused prisoners in Sednaya prison.
Should this be expected from an organization (CNN) that has been repeating Hamas’ lies and half truths for a year?
Tehran, Iran
The Iranian Opposition Presents: Netanyahu Street in Tehran
Social Media channels affiliated with the opposition in Iran published a video and photos taken in Tehran, where regime opponents have changed the name of one of the streets to "The Cleanser of Evil - Benjamin Netanyahu, - Netanyahu St."
1 Min, English subs
West Bank
Hamas-allied groups of Palestinians (Hamas itself and Palestinian Islamic Jihad-PIJ) continue to be in open armed conflict with the Palestinian Authority (the P.A.). Recently detonating multiple IEDs against P.A. vehicles. The P.A. crackdown on Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad is now in its 18th day, and includes raids by P.A. forces in West Bank hospitals.
One way of understanding the escalation in the West Bank is that the Sunni radicals—Hamas and PIJ—are emboldened by the success of their “brother” organization in Syria and seek to do the same thing in the West Bank. The IDF was recently instructed to collaborate more extensively with the P.A. in this conflict.
Ministry of Truth: Middle East Edition
Iran
Yesterday, Iran's Supreme Leader said in a sermon on the occasion of the birthday of Fatima al-Zahra (daughter of the Prophet Muhammad) that Iran has no proxy forces... [He said every actor in the Middle East is independent.]
Channels affiliated with the Iranian opposition brought to him from the depths of the abyss a reminder from one of Nasrallah's speeches before the war:
"Hezbollah's budget, its money, its food, its drink, its weapons, its missiles, all of them originate from the Islamic Republic of Iran..."
Gaza
Hamas and Islamic Jihad have been publishing (false) reports of valorous victories over IDF troops, including killing many IDF troops.
Hamas on social media: One of the operatives of Hamas' military wing managed to kill an IDF sniper and the sniper's assistant in a point-blank range battle in the Jabaliya RC in the northern Gaza Strip.
Afterwards, that "fierce warrior" disguised himself as an IDF soldier, approached a force of 6 IDF soldiers, and then carried out a suicide attack using an explosive belt....
Some responses:
Below: The "Jabalia Ambush"
Al Jazera, bastion of inflammatory propaganda:
December 1: Every day Al Jazeera reports on fabricated and inflated death tolls coming from its journalists in the Gaza Strip, most of them Hamas operatives who use Al Jazeera's platform to rally support in the Western world against the "genocide in Gaza."
For example, Al Jazeera reported November 30 about 100 dead in the Gaza Strip since Saturday morning.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza reported 47. (This is a Hamas controlled entity that is also prone to exaggerate.)
Postmark
Syria
Just over a week ago, Hama was captured, and the city's traffic police are already operating normally.
The rebels are making a significant effort to show that life in Hama has returned to normal in the areas they have captured / liberated.
For the same reason, they announced that foreign consulates and embassies can continue operating without interference.
They reiterated this today, even after today's unusual incident involving UN forces (the rebels the issued a statement declaring that international institutions must not be harmed).
It is important for them to show that they can create a "new and improved Syria" that functions like any other state, in contrast to the corrupt and totalitarian state governed by the Ba'ath Party over the last 61 years, 54 of which were under the rule of the Assad family (first Hafez al-Assad, and later his son Bashar).
Lebanon
Tunnel of the day...
And a partial tour (you can turn on Auto Generated Hebrew subtitles and then turn on Auto Translate to English)
And its destruction
More Einat Wilf
1 hour, in English
Sweden to Stop Funding UNRWA
Benjamin Dousa, Minister for Foreign Trade and International Development Cooperation, announced today that Sweden will cease its funding of UNRWA and will seek other channels for providing assistance to residents of the Gaza Strip.
I suspect Ms. Wilf would approve. Frankly, so do I. UNRWA should be replaced by the UNHCR. The Palestinians would benefit the most from the arrangement: They would have a path out of the limbo UNRWA has stuck them in for the last 60 years. Instead of a helpless people dependent on an (in practice) unlimited and unending U.N. agency, they would be given personal agency and a roadmap to participate in the world. (As recipients of UNRWA aid, Palestinians are generally denied assistance by U.N. agencies and most governments.)
Gaza
A number of articles have analyzed casualty data from Hamas. Turns out... Hamas has been lying about percentage of children killed. Surprised? No. Even Sinwar himself is counted by Hamas as a civilian casualty. One set of charts says it all.
Hamas follows the same strategy as Hezbollah, Iran and Assad: Tell lies non stop. Assad allegedly lied to his own senior officers just an hour before he hopped on a plane and left the country. He is said to have told them that Russian help was imminent, and they needed to hang on for just a few more hours.
The lies are copious and constant.
Good News Dept
Poll shows: Arab Israelis show increasing sense of ‘shared destiny’ with Jews and Israel.
A new Tel Aviv University study has revealed “encouraging data regarding coexistence in Israel,” with 57.8% of Arab Israelis saying they “believe that the ongoing war has fostered a sense of shared destiny between Arabs and Jews in Israel,” the university says in a press release.
…“the current figure represents a statistically significant increase in this metric,” the release notes.
Relief Area
Alef: Now? After all of Hezbollah has been eliminated?
Lebanon's Ministry of Public Security issues new warning to Lebanese citizens:
The Waze app was developed by Israelis and funded by hostile elements - do not use it! Switch to alternatives like Google's navigation app.
(Did they forget that while Waze was originally developed in Israel, Google acquired it in 2013?)
Bet: Where Money has Little Currency...
When you don't like the dictator on the bill and the money isn't worth much:
Gimmel
(Part of this is the running joke that Petah Tikva is a boring “non place” — it is the butt of many jokes.)
Dalet
(If this doesn't bring to mind the short story "Reb Kringle" now you know what to get yourself for Hannukah!)
Hey
Vav
("rn" means: Right Now)
(Explanation: It isn’t enough that Jews get blamed for the actions [and inactions] of the Israeli State, they also get blamed when Muslims do things.)
Zayin
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson:
”The new government in Syria will bear all of Syria's financial debts to Iran.”
Good luck collecting!
Send the Iranian collection agents to Moscow? Assad may have more financial liquidity right now than the new regime in Syria?
In the "USB-C is taking over" department: Most public transportation in Israel, already for ten or more years, has had USB ports for charging. Increasingly, I observe this includes USB-C ports, such as on this electric bus in Tel Aviv:
The trains have always had AC outlets at the seats. I notice that the newer train cars have AC plus USB-A and USB-C. Ditto the benches at the train stations.
Puppy Yoga Update...(from #152) Now has an adjacent coffee shop. Although closed when I stopped by today, I now understand their agenda: Puppy adoption. You just go and take a Yoga or Pilates class. The puppies are “just there" to play with. The time is enhanced by having a puppy to play with, and the hope is that you will take one home.
What an angle!
To Peace,
Raf
(Thank you A.K., M.T.)