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Herzog: Terrorists Slain in Beirut Were Plotting Oct. 7-Style Attack
Israeli President Isaac Herzog looks on during a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, not pictured, in Washington, DC, on Oct. 25, 2022. Stefani Reynolds/Pool via REUTERS
JNS.org – Hezbollah leaders killed in an airstrike on Friday were planning the same type of invasion Hamas carried out on Oct. 7 farther south, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said in an interview with Britain’s Sky News on Sunday.
“We do not want to get into a war with Lebanon, but Lebanon has been hijacked by a terror organization which is also a political party in Lebanon called Hezbollah,” the president told senior news presenter Sir Trevor Phillips via satellite feed from Jerusalem.
“It’s been armed to its teeth by the Iranian empire of evil, and all of these leaders who were eradicated on Friday by the Israeli attack, all of these leaders were meeting together in order to launch the same horrific, horrendous attack that we had on October 7 by Hamas, by burning Israelis, butchering them, raping their women, abducting and taking hostage old people and young, and little babies,” Herzog continued.
“So this is exactly the same plan that they’ve been planning for years under the empire of evil of Iran. So we are fighting, actually the war for the entire free world,” the president said.
On Friday, Israel bombed a building in Beirut, killing more than a dozen Hezbollah officers including Ibrahim Aqil, 61, who was the second top commander of Hezbollah killed since Oct. 7. This was preceded earlier in the week by a series of communication device explosions that killed dozens and wounded thousands of Hezbollah terrorists across Lebanon.
IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a video statement on Friday that Aqil and the Radwan Force commanders at the meeting were discussing plans to carry out an Oct. 7-style invasion of Israel, which they called “Conquer the Galilee.”
“These terrorists planned to do in northern Israel what Hamas did in southern Israel on Oct. 7,” Hagari said.
A source close to Hezbollah confirmed to Al–Monitor that the meeting in the Dahiya neighborhood of Beirut was convened to study “plans for a ground operation in the heart of the occupied territories [i.e., Israel]” in response to the communication device attacks.
During the Sky News interview, Herzog stressed that “we are working to change this equation, meaning we have to bring our hostages back from Gaza, and we have to make sure that this attack does not recur from Gaza, and we have to make sure that this attack does not recur again from Lebanon. That’s all there is. It’s very simple, and life can go on in a peaceful manner on an internationally recognized boundary between Israel and Lebanon.”
Herzog also had choice words from the government in London, which hasn’t always seen eye-to-eye with Jerusalem during the campaign against Hamas and other Iranian-supported terrorist groups.
“I believe our friends should understand that we are fighting their war too. In the long term, you have to understand that there is an empire of evil which really thinks and believes as part of an ideology in the jihadist ideology, in conquering the Middle East and moving on into Europe and the rest of the world,” he said.
“They call you Satans. They want to plant bombs in your cities all over the world. Hezbollah has terror cells situated in countries all over the world so and you ask yourself, why? How come Iran armed a tribe in Yemen called the Houthis on the shore of the Red Sea, and they’re affecting the cost of living of each and every British family or European family or American family [by attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea]?
“This cannot go on. We expect that all our allies will be side-by-side with us in combating this terrible situation and fighting like we are to bring back our hostages home. There are 101 Israeli hostages, already 352 days they are in the dungeons of Gaza,” Herzog said.
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Nazi Concentration Camp Secretary Convicted of War Crimes Dies at 99
Irmgard Furchner, a 96-year-old former secretary to the SS commander of the Stutthof concentration camp, is pictured at the beginning of her trial in a courtroom, in Itzehoe, Germany, Oct. 19, 2021. Photo: Christian Charisius/Pool via REUTERS
A German court on Tuesday announced the death of 99-year-old Irmgard Furchner, a former Nazi concentration camp secretary.
Furchner is believed to likely be the final person convicted of war crimes committed during the Holocaust. She died on Jan. 14, a fact that came to light this week as the result of an investigation by Der Spiegel.
During World War II, Furchner joined the infamous Nazi SS. At 18, she went to work as a secretary for Lieutenant Colonel Paul Werner Hoppe, the commandant of the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland, where between June 1943 and April 1945 she performed conventional clerical tasks like stenography and transmitting reports to SS headquarters.
In 2022, Furchner received a two-year suspended sentence following her conviction for war crimes — specifically complicity in the murder of more than 10,000 people at the Stutthof camp.
Historians estimate between 63,000 and 65,000 prisoners, including 28,000 Jews, died at the camp. Her conviction came as a result of a change in German law which enabled prosecutions of those who assisted in supporting work at concentration camps.
Jurors did not accept Furchner’s defense of ignorance of the atrocities at the camp. “She is guilty even if she just sat in an office and stuck the stamp on my father’s death certificate,” survivor Josef Salomonovic said.
Furchner would ultimately apologize for her role in mass murder. “I am sorry for what happened. I regret having been in Stutthof in those days. I cannot say more,” she said at her trial. A court shot down Furchner’s appeal that she filed in August 2024.
“Furchner’s carefully couched expression of regret minus an admission of guilt is noteworthy mainly for its timing shortly before sentencing. That’s an opportune time to try and gain the sympathy of the judges, and it’s only natural,” Holocaust historian Efraim Zuroff, then serving as director of the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, wrote for the Times of Israel before her sentencing. “Yet Furchner’s refusal to accept any criminal responsibility throughout all the previous proceedings and her feigned ignorance regarding the mass murders tell a different story: no shame, no acceptance of guilt.”
At the time of her conviction, Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said that the prosecution was “not about putting her behind bars for the rest of her life” but instead seeking to hold Furchner responsible to “answer for her actions and acknowledge what happened and what she was involved in.”
Schuster said that “the legal system sent an important message today: Even nearly 80 years after the Holocaust, no line can be drawn under Nazi crimes.”
One survivor of Stutthof who worked as an enslaved laborer in the camp questioned the potency of the message.
“My only disappointment is that a two-year suspended sentence appears to me to be a mistake,” Manfred Goldberg said. “No one in their right mind would send a 97-year-old to prison, but the sentence should reflect the severity of the crimes. If a shoplifter is sentenced to two years, how can it be that someone convicted for complicity in 10,000 murders is given the same sentence?”
Zuroff explained in 2022 that Furchner’s age at the time of her crimes and subsequent conviction in a juvenile court had impacted the seeming lightness of her sentencing.
“Today’s verdict is the best that could be achieved, given the fact that she was tried in a juvenile court since she was under the age of 21 during her service in the camp,” Zuroff said. “In view of Furchner’s recent statement to the court that she ‘regretted everything,’ we were concerned that the court might accept her defense attorney’s plea for an acquittal. Yet given her claim that she had no knowledge of the murders being committed in the camp, her regret was far from convincing.”
Goldberg also insisted that Furchner must have known of the slaughter she aided from her seat at the typewriter. “Everything was documented and progress reports, including how much human hair had been harvested, sent to her office,” he said.
In response to Furchner’s 2024 appeal, judges wrote that “the principle that typical, neutral professional activities of an ‘everyday nature’ are not criminal does not apply here, since the defendant knew what the main perpetrators were doing and supported them in doing it.”
Lawyer Onur Oezata represented three people who survived Stutthof.
“The secretary was rightly convicted of aiding and abetting murder in several thousand cases,” Oezata said. “The now legally binding guilty verdict is particularly gratifying for my clients. They never wanted revenge or retribution.”
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US Energy Secretary Sees Tighter Sanctions on Iran Without Deal
US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright speaks to the media, outside of the West Wing of the White House, in Washington, DC, US, March 19, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kent Nishimura
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Tuesday that Iran can expect tighter sanctions if it does not come to an agreement with President Donald Trump on its nuclear program.
“So absolutely, I would expect very tight sanctions on Iran, and hopefully drive them to abandon their nuclear program,” Wright said in an interview with CNBC.
Wright on Wednesday will launch a nearly two-week tour of three Middle East countries, including Saudi Arabia, marking his first visit as a US official to the de facto leader of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Wright also defended Trump’s executive order, expected later on Tuesday, to boost the coal industry as essential for artificial intelligence data centers, as well as steel production and other industrial activities.
“We need a growing supply of electricity to hit the AI boom and also for this re-industrializing of the United States. If we want to grow America’s electricity production meaningfully over the next five or 10 years, we’ve got to stop closing coal plants,” Wright said in the interview.
Asked about Trump’s comment that the European Union should buy more energy from the United States, Wright said he has had countries in Asia, in Europe and elsewhere reach out to express interest in buying more American energy.”
Wright said he does not think European countries will want to return to Russia for their energy supplies when the war in Ukraine ends.
“As I talk to European leaders, one thing they all share is a regret that they bet their energy future on Russia,” he said. “So, I don’t think there’s a huge desire right now that, when the war is over, we’re going to we’re going to re-count on Russia for a dominant share of our energy supply. I think that’s very unlikely to unfold.”
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Harvard Plans to Borrow $750 Million After Federal Funding Threats Over Campus Antisemitism Response
Demonstrators take part in an “Emergency Rally: Stand With Palestinians Under Siege in Gaza,” amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, Oct. 14, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Harvard University plans to borrow $750 million from Wall Street as part of contingency preparations, it said on Monday, days after President Donald Trump’s administration announced a review of $9 billion in federal grants and contracts to the Ivy League school in a crackdown on antisemitism on campuses.
In a letter to Harvard last week, the government listed conditions that Harvard must meet to receive federal money, including a ban on protesters wearing masks to hide their identities and other restrictions.
Harvard acknowledged receiving the letter but did not comment further.
“As part of ongoing contingency planning for a range of financial circumstances, Harvard is evaluating resources needed to advance its academic and research priorities,” Harvard University said in Monday’s statement.
Harvard‘s plans come less than a week after Princeton University said in a notice dated April 1 that it was also considering the sale of about $320 million of taxable bonds later this month. Princeton said last week the US government froze several dozen research grants to the school.
Harvard intends to issue up to $750 million of taxable bonds for “general corporate purposes,” a spokesperson said. The university had $7.1 billion of debt outstanding at the end of fiscal year 2024 and anticipated about $8.2 billion after the proposed bond issuance.
The university most recently issued $434 million in tax-exempt bonds in March 2025 and $735 million in tax-exempt bonds in spring 2024, its spokesperson said, adding it also issued bonds in 2022.
Harvard has a $53 billion endowment, the largest of any US university. Advocates, students, and several faculty members have called on university leadership to resist the demands from the Trump administration.
Trump has threatened to slash federal funding for US universities that his administration says have tolerated antisemitism on their campuses.
Such allegations have grown out of a wave of raucous, unsanctioned, and sometimes violent anti-Israel protests at Harvard and other schools against Israel’s military campaign targeting the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
The Israeli campaign followed an October 2023 attack inside Israel by Hamas, which took over 250 hostages. The attack killed 1,200 people.
Protesters say the Trump administration wrongly conflates their criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza and advocacy for Palestinian rights with antisemitism and support for Hamas.
But many Jewish students on campuses have said they have felt threatened by protesters, and that some academic courses are biased against Israel.
Rights advocates have also raised concerns about Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias during the Israel-Gaza war. The Trump administration has not announced steps in response.
Last month, the government warned 60 universities that it could bring enforcement actions if a review determined the schools had failed to stop antisemitism.
Harvard‘s student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, recently reported that two leaders of Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Director Cemal Kafadar and Associate Director Rosie Bsheer, were dismissed from their positions.
TRUMP CRACKDOWN
The Trump administration also planned to freeze grants to Brown University.
Last month, it canceled $400 million in federal funding for Columbia University, the epicenter of last year’s campus protests.
Columbia agreed to some significant changes that Trump’s administration demanded as a precondition for talks about restoring the funding.
Federal agents have detained some foreign student protesters in recent weeks from different campuses and are working to deport them. The government has revoked the visas of many foreign students.
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