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Resuscitating Israel’s Destitute North Should Begin Now
People rush to a soccer field hit by a Hezbollah rocket in the majority-Druze northern Israeli town Majdal Shams Photo: Via 924, from social media used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law
The deadly conflict between Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Israel has entered a new phase, as the threat of all-out war between the Jewish State and the Lebanese terror group looms.
Amid escalating tensions, Israel and its supporters can take immediate steps to equip Israel’s most vulnerable northern border communities with sorely needed defenses, paving the way for their eventual renewal.
Kiryat Shmona — Israel’s largest evacuated northern town and the economic hub of the northern Galilee — should be prioritized.
The Israeli government updated its longstanding war goals last week, vowing to return tens of thousands of displaced Israelis from northern communities to their homes. The announcement was followed by an unprecedented attack on the Hezbollah terror network, whereby thousands of personal communication devices belonging to Hezbollah members — beepers and walkie-talkies — appeared to be remotely detonated in what may be the biggest and most wide-spread simultaneous counter-terrorism precision strike in history.
Hezbollah began attacking Israel on October 8, 2023, forcing Jerusalem to evacuate over 40 communities along its northern border, while the Jewish State was still counting its dead and struggling to establish the number of missing persons from Hamas’ invasion and massacre in Israel’s south on October 7.
Hezbollah has been openly planning a similar attack and invasions of Israel for years. Mass evacuations of Israel’s northern border communities were the only way to ensure that other massacres and hostage scenarios would not play out along its border with Lebanon.
Given the lessons learned from October 7, and the IDF’s state of high readiness in the north, it is unlikely that Hezbollah could carry out an October 7-like invasion today. But the majority of Israel’s over 1.5 million residents remain vulnerable to Hezbollah rockets; terrorists in Lebanon have fired over 7,500 rockets at Israel since the war began.
Over the past decade, Tehran has spent billions of dollars building Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal. Today, the terror group is estimated to have more than 150,000 rockets, the vast majority of which are short-range rockets that would exclusively target Israeli border communities. Yet the most vulnerable communities in the north — including Kiryat Shmona — lack the means to withstand this threat.
Kiryat Shmona is situated in a lush green valley, surrounded by Lebanese territory on three sides. In 2021, the city celebrated a newly-launched innovation center — a venture capital funded food-tech research and development hub, which promised tens of thousands of jobs in the coming years. Before the war, there were 90 start-ups in Kiryat Shmona. Today, the majority of those companies have moved their operations south, away from the rocket fire — a devastating blow to the regional economy.
According to Ariel Frisch, Kiryat Shmona’s deputy director of security, the town’s population was 25,000 before the war, but only had sufficient bomb shelters for 50% of the residents. A school principal in normal times, Fricsh said that his town had absorbed over 750 direct hits on infrastructure since the war began, damaging homes, schools, and kindergartens.
A small number of Israelis have returned to their border communities, willing to face the rocket fire in order to regain some sense of normalcy. However, many others have no plans to return to the north. A poll conducted by the Kiryat Shmona municipality indicated that 14% percent of residents would not return to the town. A further 34% said that their decision to return would depend on the security outlook. The bottom line: providing security to Kiryat Shmona is critical to the town’s survival and to the future of the northern Galilee.
Israel must strengthen the ability of Kiryat Shmona to withstand rocket attacks, providing a safer alternative for the people who are ready to return home. The growing community of Sderot, near the Gaza border, is evidence that — if adequate protections are in place — many Israelis are willing to live under the threat of rockets (although it remains to be seen if this trend will continue in the long-term after October 7). But Jerusalem can take key steps now to help make that happen by investing in a more formidable security infrastructure.
The best short-term solution is to install what Israelis call miguniot — Hebrew for standalone concrete boxes with metal doors that residents can truck into Kiryat Shmona and place close to a home, business, or school, providing limited but essential protection from projectiles.
Domestically manufactured miguniot that are built in various sizes for different capacities, are advertised for sale on the Internet for anywhere between $7,000 and $40,000 and can be delivered within three weeks.
The utility of miguniot is limited though: Israelis in border communities only have 15 seconds to reach them in the face of incoming fire. Accordingly, Israelis must position miguniot strategically to be effective.
The better solution for hardening communities in the mid to long-term is building additions of reinforced concrete safe rooms attached directly to homes, schools, clinics, and other public spaces that residents can reach even faster. These safe rooms can be air-conditioned and wired to the home’s electricity, making them suitable for sheltering in place for longer periods of time.
Safe rooms are a more expensive, but more effective solution, and costs can range between $27,000 and $60,000 per unit. They also take longer to build, involve an architect and permitting, and require a team that is willing to work onsite to construct the safe rooms.
Israeli leaders should embark on a campaign to raise money for both types of these shelters, or find another way to allocate the funds immediately. Even if Hezbollah is trounced in a future war, the rocket threat isn’t going anywhere. Jerusalem should galvanize Diaspora Jewry and other supporters of Israel to help.
The work of hardening Kiryat Shmona must begin now. Lessons learned from Sderot and other communities that have thrived under rocket fire for over a decade in Israel can be applied. The longer Kiryat Shmona and other towns remain empty, the harder it will be to bring life back to the entire region.
Enia Krivine is the senior director of the Israel Program and the FDD National Security Network at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow her on X at @EKrivine.
The post Resuscitating Israel’s Destitute North Should Begin Now first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US House Members Ask Marco Rubio to Bar Turkey From Rejoining F-35 Program
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Nathan Howard
A bipartisan coalition of more than 40 US lawmakers is pressing Secretary of State Marco Rubio to prevent Turkey from rejoining the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, citing ongoing national security concerns and violations of US law.
Members of Congress on Thursday warned that lifting existing sanctions or readmitting Turkey to the US F-35 fifth-generation fighter program would “jeopardize the integrity of F-35 systems” and risk exposing sensitive US military technology to Russia. The letter pointed to Ankara’s 2017 purchase of the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system, despite repeated US warnings, as the central reason Turkey was expelled from the multibillion-dollar fighter jet program in 2019.
“The S-400 poses a direct threat to US aircraft, including the F-16 and F-35,” the lawmakers wrote. “If operated alongside these platforms, it risks exposing sensitive military technology to Russian intelligence.”
The group of signatories, spanning both parties, stressed that Turkey still possesses the Russian weapons systems and has shown “no willingness to comply with US law.” They urged Rubio and the Trump administration to uphold the Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) and maintain Ankara’s exclusion from the F-35 program until the S-400s are fully removed.
The letter comes after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed during a NATO summit in June that Ankara and Washington have begun discussing Turkey’s readmission into the program.
Lawmakers argued that reversing course now would undermine both US credibility and allied confidence in American defense commitments. They also warned it could disrupt development of the next-generation fighter jet announced by the administration earlier this year.
“This is not a partisan issue,” the letter emphasized. “We must continue to hold allies and adversaries alike accountable when their actions threaten US interests.”
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US Lawmakers Urge Treasury to Investigate Whether Irish Bill Targeting Israel Violates Anti-Boycott Law
A pro-Hamas demonstration in Ireland led by nationalist party Sinn Fein. Photo: Reuters/Clodagh Kilcoyne
A group of US lawmakers is calling on the Treasury Department to investigate and potentially penalize Ireland over proposed legislation targeting Israeli goods, warning that the move could trigger sanctions under longstanding US anti-boycott laws.
In a letter sent on Thursday to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, 16 Republican members of Congress expressed “serious concerns” about Ireland’s recent legislative push to ban trade with territories under Israeli administration, including the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.
The letter, spearheaded by Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY), called for the US to “send a clear signal” that any attempts to economically isolate Israel will “carry consequences.”
The Irish measure, introduced by Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Simon Harris, seeks to prohibit the import of goods and services originating from what the legislation refers to as “occupied Palestinian territories,” including Israeli communities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Supporters say the bill aligns with international law and human rights principles, while opponents, including the signatories of the letter, characterize it as a direct extension of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel as a step toward the destruction of the world’s lone Jewish state.
Some US lawmakers have also described the Irish bill as an example of “antisemitic hate” that could risk hurting relations between Dublin and Washington.
“Such policies not only promote economic discrimination but also create legal uncertainty for US companies operating in Ireland,” the lawmakers wrote in this week’s letter, urging Bessent to determine whether Ireland’s actions qualify as participation in an “unsanctioned international boycott” under Section 999 of the Internal Revenue Code, also known as the Ribicoff Amendment.
Under that statute, the Treasury Department is required to maintain a list of countries that pressure companies to comply with international boycotts not sanctioned by the US. Inclusion on the list carries tax-reporting burdens and possible penalties for American firms and individuals doing business in those nations.
“If the criteria are met, Ireland should be added to the boycott list,” the letter said, arguing that such a step would help protect US companies from legal exposure and reaffirm American opposition to economic efforts aimed at isolating Israel.
Legal experts have argued that if the Irish bill becomes law, it could chase American capital out of the country while also hurting companies that do business with Ireland. Under US law, it is illegal for American companies to participate in boycotts of Israel backed by foreign governments. Several US states have also gone beyond federal restrictions to pass separate measures that bar companies from receiving state contracts if they boycott Israel.
Ireland has been one of the fiercest critics of Israel on the international stage since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza, leading the Jewish state to shutter its embassy in Dublin.
Last year, Ireland officially recognized a Palestinian state, a decision that Israel described as a “reward for terrorism.”
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US Families File Lawsuit Accusing UNRWA of Supporting Hamas, Hezbollah
A truck, marked with United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) logo, crosses into Egypt from Gaza, at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, during a temporary truce between Hamas and Israel, in Rafah, Egypt, Nov. 27, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
American families of victims of Hamas and Hezbollah attacks have filed a lawsuit against the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, accusing the organization of violating US antiterrorism laws by providing material support to the Islamist terror groups behind the deadly assaults.
Last week, more than 200 families filed a lawsuit in a Washington, DC district court accusing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) of violating US antiterrorism laws by providing funding and support to Hamas and Hezbollah, both designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
The lawsuit alleges that UNRWA employs staff with direct ties to the Iran-backed terror group, including individuals allegedly involved in carrying out attacks against the Jewish state.
However, UNRWA has firmly denied the allegations, labeling them as “baseless” and condemning the lawsuit as “meritless, absurd, dangerous, and morally reprehensible.”
According to the organization, the lawsuit is part of a wider campaign of “misinformation and lawfare” targeting its work in the Gaza Strip, where it says Palestinians are enduring “mass, deliberate and forced starvation.”
The UN agency reports that more than 150,000 donors across the United States have supported its programs providing food, medical aid, education, and trauma assistance in the war-torn enclave amid the ongoing conflict.
In a press release, UNRWA USA affirmed that it will continue its humanitarian efforts despite facing legal challenges aimed at undermining its work.
“Starvation does not pause for politics. Neither will we,” the statement read.
Last year, Israeli security documents revealed that of UNRWA’s 13,000 employees in Gaza, 440 were actively involved in Hamas’s military operations, with 2,000 registered as Hamas operatives.
According to these documents, at least nine UNRWA employees took part directly in the terror group’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
Israeli officials also uncovered a large Hamas data center beneath UNRWA headquarters, with cables running through the facility above, and found that Hamas also stored weapons in other UNRWA sites.
The UN agency has also aligned with Hamas in efforts against the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an Israeli and US-backed program that delivers aid directly to Palestinians, blocking Hamas from diverting supplies for terror activities and selling them at inflated prices.
These Israeli intelligence documents also revealed that a senior Hamas leader, killed in an Israeli strike in September 2024, had served as the head of the UNRWA teachers’ union in Lebanon, where Lebanon is based,
UNRWA’s education programs have been found by IMPACT-se, an international organization that monitors global education, to contribute to the radicalization of younger generations of Palestinians.