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Israel Says Hezbollah Trying to Rebuild, Smuggle in Arms From Syria
Hezbollah artillery gun is seen in Jroud Arsal, Syria-Lebanon border, July 31, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Ali Hashisho
The Israeli military accused Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah on Tuesday of seeking to rebuild its combat abilities in south Lebanon to the point of threatening Israel‘s security and undoing last year’s ceasefire deal.
Military spokesman Nadav Shoshani said Iranian-backed Hezbollah was operating south of the Litani River in violation of the truce accord and that Israeli forces were conducting strikes on Hezbollah targets in that area. Hezbollah, which has refused to disarm in accordance with the ceasefire, nonetheless says it is committed to the deal.
Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam say Israel is violating the truce deal, pointing to the occupation of five hilltop positions in southern Lebanon by Israeli troops as well as Israeli air strikes and ground incursions into Lebanese territory.
TENSION OVER DISARMAMENT PUSH
Shoshani told a news briefing that Hezbollah was also trying to smuggle in weapons from Syria and via other routes to Lebanon. “We are working to prevent that from happening and to block the ground routes from Syria into Lebanon to a high level of success, but they still pose a threat to us,” Shoshani said.
“We are committed to the agreement, but it must be held. We will not return to the reality of Oct. 7 [2023] with a threat of thousands of terrorists on our border within walking distance of our civilians.”
Several recent reports have said that Hezbollah is, with support from Iran, intensifying efforts to bolster its military power, including the production and repair of weapons, smuggling of arms and cash through seaports and Syrian routes, recruitment and training, and the use of civilian infrastructure as a base and cover for its operations.
Hezbollah denies it is rebuilding its military capabilities in south Lebanon. It has not fired at Israel since the ceasefire came into force, and Lebanese security officials told Reuters that Hezbollah has not obstructed Lebanese army operations to find and confiscate the group’s weapons in the country’s south.
In a televised speech on Tuesday, Hezbollah head Naim Qassem said Hezbollah remained committed to the 2024 ceasefire and that there was “no alternative” to that deal.
He said if Israel withdrew, stopped its attacks on Lebanon, and released Lebanese nationals detained in Israel, then northern Israeli towns would have “no problem” with security.
But he reiterated Hezbollah‘s rejection of full disarmament and said Israel‘s destructive and deadly strikes “cannot continue,” adding: “There is a limit to everything.”
The comments came after Hezbollah recently threatened protests and civil unrest if the government tries to enforce control over its weapons.
Israel has been pressing Lebanon’s army to be more aggressive in disarming Hezbollah by searching private homes in the south for weaponry, according to Lebanese and Israeli officials.
The army is confident it can declare Lebanon’s south free of Hezbollah arms by the end of 2025, but has refused to search private dwellings for fear of reigniting civil strife and derailing a disarmament strategy seen by the army as cautious but effective, Lebanese security officials told Reuters. The terrorist group still wields considerable power among Shi’ites in Lebanon’s fragile sectarian-based system of governance.
Experts have expressed a different assessment.
Under last year’s ceasefire agreement, the Lebanese government committed to disarm Hezbollah, which for years held significant political and military influence across the country while maintaining large-scale terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon, which borders northern Israel. The deal was reached after Israel decimated much of Hezbollah’s leadership and military capabilities with an air and ground offensive following the Islamist group’s attacks on northern Israeli communities — which Hezbollah claimed were a show of solidarity with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas amid the war in Gaza.
Earlier this year, Lebanese officials agreed to a US-backed disarmament plan, which called for the terrorist group to be fully disarmed within four months — by November — in exchange for Israel halting airstrikes and withdrawing troops from the five occupied positions in the country’s southern region.
The Lebanese government is now facing mounting pressure from Israeli and US officials to follow through and establish a state monopoly on weapons.
“It is definitely unrealistic for the Lebanese army to achieve full disarmament by the end of the year,” Hanin Ghaddar, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told The Algemeiner, noting that the subsequent phases, for which they refuse to provide a timeline, could take months or even years.
“The goal should be to reach a better agreement now. The ceasefire was a good start, but it lacked a clear timeline, and Hezbollah is using this period to rearm and rebuild itself militarily, financially, and politically,” she continued. “The stronger Hezbollah becomes, the weaker Lebanon gets, and the prospects for disarmament and peace will continue to diminish.”
Hezbollah last week rejected any talks between Israel and Lebanon, even as the Jewish state ramps up military operations amid rising border tensions.
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Iran’s Water Crisis Worsens as President Warns Tehran May Need to Be Evacuated
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian speaks during a meeting in Ilam, Iran, June 12, 2025. Photo: Iran’s Presidential website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
Iran has endured an extreme drought in recent months, depleting the country’s reservoirs and leading President Masoud Pezeshkian to warn that the capital may even need to be evacuated.
“If rationing doesn’t work, we may have to evacuate Tehran,” Pezeshkian said last week, adding that the Iranian regime will start restricting water supplies in the city next month if there isn’t more rain.
According to Abbasali Keykhaei of the Iranian Water Resources Management Company, 19 major dams comprising 10 percent of the country’s reservoirs have run dry. In Tehran — a city with 10 million people in the city itself and 18 million in the metropolitan area — five dams that provide drinking water have hit “critical” levels, with one at below 8 percent capacity.
Hossein Esmaeilian, managing director of the Water and Wastewater Company in Mashad, the country’s second largest city with four million residents, told state media that reserves have fallen below 3 percent and that “the current situation shows that managing water use is no longer merely a recommendation – it has become a necessity.”
Esmaeilian added that “only 3 percent of the combined capacity of Mashhad’s four water-supplying dams — Torogh, Kardeh, Doosti, and Ardak — remains. Apart from Doosti Dam, the other three are out of operation.”
Iranian Energy Minister Abbas Ali Abadi has stated that “some nights we might decrease the water flow to zero.” He said on Iranian state television on Saturday that this was needed “so that reservoirs can refill.”
“If people can reduce consumption by 20 percent, it seems possible to manage the situation without rationing or cutting off water,” Esmaeilian urged Iranians, suggesting that those consuming the most would see cuts to their water supply first.
However, environmental researcher Azam Bahrami told German media outlet DW that “reduced consumption among the population is nowhere near enough to overcome this crisis.”
“One look at the water consumption pyramid shows that the agriculture sector consumes about 80-90 percent, the biggest share,” Bahrami continued. “As long as other sectors are positioned as priority … the water saving measures will not be very successful.”
The BBC reported that Iranian weather officials do not expect rain in the next 10 days. Mohammad-Ali Moallem, who manages the Karaj Dam, said that there was a 92 percent decrease in rain compared to last year.
“We have only 8 percent water in our reservoir — and most of it is unusable and considered ‘dead water,’” he added.
Stuttgart University researcher Mohammad Javad Tourian told DW about the rate of water loss Iran has seen in recent years.
“Iran loses a volume the size of Lake Constance almost every three years,” Tourian said. “In total, some 370 cubic kilometers have disappeared over the last 23 years. This means the problem is very serious.”
The question of a potential evacuation of Tehran remains unresolved. Former Tehran Mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi stated that fleeing the city due to the drought “makes no sense at all.”
Tourian identified actions that Iran could take to provide “rapid relief,” saying that prioritizing drinking water in key cities and the “temporary diverting of less critical usage” could be effective as quick, short-term steps.
However, actions to create a sustainable solution to the water crisis remain elusive.
While the Islamic regime in Iran struggles to quench the thirst of the Iranian people, its military reportedly remains stocked in its missiles targeting Israel.
“Our missile power today far surpasses that of the 12-day war,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said last week, referring to the regime’s brief conflict with Israel in June. “The enemy in the recent 12-day war failed to achieve all its objectives and was defeated.”
Brig. Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh likewise boasted of Iranian military might, saying on Monday that the country’s “defense production has improved both in quantity and quality compared to before the 12-day Israeli-imposed war in June.”
Last week, a US official confirmed that Iran had initiated a plan to assassinate Ambassador Einat Kranz Neiger, Israel’s emissary in Mexico City.
“The plot was contained and does not pose a current threat,” the official told i24 News. “This is just the latest in a long history of Iran’s global lethal targeting of diplomats, journalists, dissidents, and anyone who disagrees with them, something that should deeply worry every country where there is an Iranian presence.”
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Pope Leo names Italian Holocaust film ‘Life is Beautiful’ as one of his 4 favorites of all time
(JTA) — Pope Leo XIV included the 1997 Holocaust movie “Life Is Beautiful” among his four favorite films of all time.
“Life Is Beautiful,” a melodrama by Italian filmmaker and comedian Robert Benigni, follows an Italian Jewish father and his son as they are sent to a Nazi concentration camp. There the father uses humor and misdirection in an effort to hide the truth of the camps from his son.
The film was a global box-office hit and received seven Oscar nominations, winning three. Another movie set during Nazi rule, the 1965 musical “The Sound of Music,” also made the pope’s list, which was rounded out by the Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” and Robert Redford’s stark family drama, “Ordinary People.”
Pope Leo did not elaborate on his reasons for the selections in the truncated video posted by Variety announcing a convening of filmmakers at the Vatican that will begin Saturday.
“Life Is Beautiful” has long been a controversial film among Jews. While some embraced it as a fable of spiritual resistance, critics recoiled at the juxtaposition of broad humor with the Holocaust and said it distorted the experience of concentration camp victims and survivors. Among its critics is Mel Brooks, who also objected that Benigni was not Jewish and couldn’t fully understand the Holocaust. (The actor-director’s Catholic father reportedly was held prisoner in Bergen-Belsen during the war.)
The Vatican also announced that several global filmmakers would be attending the upcoming cinema convening, to begin Saturday. Those include Jewish comedy director Judd Apatow; Pawel Pawlikowski, a Polish filmmaker of Jewish descent and the director of the Oscar-winning Holocaust film “Ida”; and Marco Bellochio, the Italian director of a historical film about the 19th-century kidnapping of Italian Jewish boy Edgardo Mortara by the Catholic Church.
The pope, who formerly studied under a Catholic leader of Jewish-Catholic relations in the U.S., recently held an event marking the 60th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the declaration that overturned centuries of Catholic doctrine by absolving Jews of killing Jesus. At the event, a member of the pope’s Swiss guard allegedly made a spitting gesture toward a Jewish woman guest; the Vatican recently announced an internal investigation into the matter.
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Gal Gadot wins Genesis Prize for her ‘defense of Israel’ as Gaza war divides Hollywood
(JTA) —Actor Gal Gadot has won the Genesis Prize, sometimes called the “Jewish Nobel,” for supporting Israel even as backlash against the country’s actions in Gaza rocked Hollywood.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, Gadot has been an outspoken advocate for Israelis taken captive by Hamas. Calling herself “a proud Jew and a proud Israeli,” she said in a statement that she would dedicate the $1 million award to “organizations who will help Israel heal.”
Recipients of the prize, first awarded in 2014, customarily donate it to causes they choose, which have included advancing women’s equality, racial and economic justice, and combating antisemitism and “efforts to delegitimize the State of Israel,” according to a release from the Genesis Prize Foundation, which is based in Israel.
Stan Polovets, the co-founder and CEO of The Genesis Prize Foundation, praised Gadot’s “moral clarity” in a statement.
“The award recognizes her bravery and moral courage — her steadfast defense of Israel at great personal and professional risk, her advocacy for the hostages, her compassion for victims of terror, and her empathy for all innocent victims of this terrible war unleashed by Hamas,” he said.
Gadot, who served two years in the IDF as part of Israel’s compulsory service before being cast in the title role in the 2017 superhero film “Wonder Woman,” has repeatedly used her platform to campaign for the release of Israeli hostages. On Oct. 12, 2023, she was among 700 celebrities and entertainment leaders, including Jerry Seinfeld, Jamie Lee Curtis and Chris Pine, who signed a letter condemning Hamas for “evil” and “barbaric acts of terrorism.”
That same day, Gadot posted an Instagram story that said, “Killing innocent Palestinians is horrific. Killing innocent Israelis is horrific. If you don’t feel the same, I think you should ask yourself why that is.” The post sparked outrage from some Israelis over her comparison of Palestinian and Israeli deaths.
Gadot deleted the story and apologized. Since then, she has not used the words “Palestinians” or “Gaza” on social media.
Gadot also helped organize a screening of graphic Oct. 7 footage in Los Angeles in November 2023, prompting a demonstration by pro-Palestinian activists who said the film was “Gal Gadot military propaganda” used to justify Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
Though Israel garnered sympathy in some parts of Hollywood after Oct. 7, its devastating war in Gaza over the next two years has roiled the entertainment industry. Israel and Hamas agreed to a fragile ceasefire last month.
More than 3,000 celebrities, including Emma Stone, Bowen Yang and Jewish creatives such as Jonathan Glazer, Andrew Garfield and Hannah Einbinder, signed onto a boycott of Israeli film institutions in September. Another letter from celebrities opposing the boycott amassed 1,200 signatures.
The Genesis Prize was most recently awarded to Argentina’s president Javier Milei for “his steadfast commitment to the State of Israel during one of the most difficult years in the history of the Jewish state,” according to the prize committee. Milei went to Jerusalem in June to accept the prize
The Israeli-American actor Natalie Portman was awarded the Genesis Prize in 2018, but she declined to attend the Jerusalem ceremony because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to speak there. At the time, Israeli forces had killed dozens of Palestinians in response to protests on the Gaza border.
Gadot, who recently starred as the Evil Queen in a live-action adaptation of “Snow White,” is set to play a Holocaust survivor in an upcoming film, “Ruin.”
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