RSS
Dianne Feinstein, long-serving Jewish senator from California, dies at 90
(JTA) — Dianne Feinstein, the long-serving Jewish senator from California who rose to national prominence when she appeared before cameras with her hands stained with the blood of a murdered colleague, has died.
Feinstein, who had recently faced criticism for remaining in the Senate despite clearly failing health, was 90 years old. She died Thursday night, major news organizations are reporting.
Feinstein had served in the Senate for more than three decades as its longest-serving woman.
Feinstein became a national figure in 1978 when she was the president of the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco and found the body of fellow supervisor Harvey Milk.
Milk, who was Jewish, was the first openly gay elected official in the city’s history and was assassinated by a former colleague, Dan White. White also killed San Francisco Mayor George Moscone.
Feinstein announced the murders while her hands were still stained with Milk’s blood. She soon stepped in to replace Moscone, serving two terms as mayor.
“I remember it, actually, as if it was yesterday,” she recalled in 2008. “And it was one of the hardest moments, if not the hardest moment, of my life. It was a devastating moment. For San Francisco, it was a day of infamy.”
Feinstein’s father was a Jewish physician and her mother was a model who was born to an ethnically Jewish family but raised in the Russian Orthodox church. Feinstein was born on June 22, 1933, in San Francisco, attended a Roman Catholic school and said, when she was running for governor in 1990, that her parents left it up to her to decide which faith suited her.
When she was 20, she picked Judaism, she said, “because I liked its simplicity and directness.” She was twice widowed and once divorced; all three of her husbands were Jewish.
Dianne Feinstein, president of the board of supervisors, holds a press conference following the killing of Mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk, in San Francisco, Nov. 27, 1978. (Bettman Archive/Getty Images)
The trauma of the double murder propelled her to become an outspoken advocate for gun control, a cause she took with her into the Senate, when she won a special election in 1992 to replace Sen. Pete Wilson, a Republican who had defeated Feinstein in the 1990 election for governor.
Dianne Feinstein, running for Senate, speaks at the Democratic National Convention in Madison Square Garden, New York City, July 13, 1992. (Mark Reinstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
That election cycle became known as the Year of the Woman. Feinstein and three other newly elected women senators tripled the number of women in the Senate from two to six. One was Barbara Boxer, who, like Feinstein, was a Jewish Democrat from California.
Record numbers of women ran for office, spurred in part by the humiliating treatment Anita Hill got in the Senate the year previous when she testified about the sexual harassment she allegedly endured while employed with Clarence Thomas, a Supreme Court nominee.
Hill’s treatment helped galvanize Feinstein’s decision to run for the Senate. During the 2018 hearings for another Supreme Court nominee accused of sexual wrongdoing, Brett Kavanaugh, Feinstein recalled coming across a crowd of people watching the Thomas hearings at a TV in an airport in 1991, a year before her election.
Not a lot had changed, she lamented. “How women are treated in the United States, with this kind of concern, is really wanting a lot of reform,” she said during the Kavanaugh hearings.
With Boxer and Feinstein, California had a two-Jewish women representation in the body until 2017, and the effects of the Year of the Women were long lasting.
“I would be proud to carry on just a portion of their legacy,” Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who has signaled his intention to run for Feinstein’s seat, said in February when Feinstein announced she would not run for another term, regarding Feinstein and Boxer. Referring to a traditional Jewish imperative to repair the world, he added, “I would love to bring that passion for tikkun olam with me to the U.S. Senate.”
Laws long on the liberal wish list were suddenly ripe for passage, among them an assault weapons ban that Feinstein took the lead in passing in 1994. It lapsed after 10 years, and Feinstein since 2004 persistently, and unsuccessfully, sought to reinstate the ban.
Also in 1994, Feinstein joined then-Sen. Joe Biden in passing the Violence Against Women Act. When it lapsed in 2019, Feinstein led the charge to reauthorize it, but faced conservative resistance because the reauthorization bill added protections for LGBTQ partners and sought to close the “boyfriend loophole,” extending restrictions on gun ownership to people who had abused partners to whom they were not married.
It took until 2022 for Feinstein to overcome resistance and reauthorize the Act. It was a compromise: The LGBTQ protections remained in, but the boyfriend loophole was out; Feinstein was unable to overcome gun lobby resistance.
“This is a major advancement for protecting women from domestic violence and sexual assault – a tragedy faced by one in three women in this country,” Feinstein said then in a statement. President Biden, its original author, signed the reauthorization into law.
Feinstein stood apart from her liberal cohort in some respects. Her best known split with liberals was her championing the death penalty until 2018, when she said during her campaign for reelection that its unfair application had finally changed her mind.
Her enthusiasm for law and order was triggered when a far left group, the New World Liberation Front, detonated a bomb planted in a flower box outside her home in 1976, when she was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, part of a terrorist campaign targeting city leaders.
As outraged as she was at the easy access to guns that brought about the murder of Milk and Moscone, she was also furious that White got away with a manslaughter conviction by claiming he had been depressed. The tactic became known as the “Twinkie defense,” as a defense psychiatrist testified that junk food had contributed to White’s depression.
“Yes, I support the death penalty,” she said in 1990 when she was running for California governor, earning boos at a Democratic convention. “It is an issue that cannot be fudged or hedged.” She won the primary but lost to Wilson.
The episode displayed her political chops: She used footage of the boos in political ads in the general election for governor, reinforcing her image as a moderate and helping to propel her to the Senate in 1992. She managed to preserve the seat in 1994, her first full term election, a year that was otherwise disastrous for Democrats.
In 2004, she feuded with Kamala Harris, then the San Francisco District Attorney and now the vice president, when she learned at the funeral of a slain police officer that Harris opposed the death penalty for his killer. Feinstein said then she would not have endorsed Harris for the district attorney job had she known of her opposition to the death penalty. (The feud didn’t last; Feinstein and Boxer endorsed Harris in her 2016 Senate run to replace Boxer, key nods that helped propel Harris to victory.)
Feinstein was for years a centrist on Israel, allied with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, although she was a sharp critic of the country’s treatment of non-Orthodox Jews. In 1986, as mayor, she expanded commercial ties with San Francisco’s sister city, Haifa. It was her revulsion with deadly weapons that nudged her toward questioning Israel: She was appalled at Israel’s use of cluster bombs in its 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“What gives rise, in part, to my bill are recent developments in Lebanon over alleged use of cluster bombs by Israel,” she said in 2007, introducing legislation to restrict the sale of the weapons.
Remarkably, Feinstein chose to promote her proposed cluster bomb ban that year at the Arab American Institute, an organization frequently at odds with the mainstream pro-Israel community. “We will get this job done,” she said at the time to applause.
Within a few years she was departing from pro-Israel orthodoxy in other areas: She opposed proposed Iran sanctions in 2014 because she feared the underlying legislation would draw the United States into a war on Israel’s behalf.
“Let me acknowledge Israel’s real, well-founded concerns that a nuclear-armed Iran would threaten its very existence,” she said then on the Senate floor. “While I recognize and share Israel’s concern, we cannot let Israel determine when and where the U.S. goes to war.”
More recently, she championed renewed aid to the Palestinians, slashed to almost nothing by Trump and Republicans in Congress hostile to a Palestinian leadership they depict as bloodthirsty.
“Denying funding for clean water, health care and schools in the West Bank and Gaza won’t make us safer,” she said in 2019. “Instead it only emboldens extremist groups like Hamas and pushes peace further out of reach.”
Feinstein, who was the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee from 2009 to 2017, also differed from her colleagues — particularly Ron Wyden, the Jewish Democrat from Oregon — in defending the intelligence community even after a welter of leaks toward the end of the 2000s revealed its abuses.
She defended the intelligence agencies’ collection of American citizens’ metadata, the wealth of information that can track where a person is with whom they communicate and for how long, among other details. “It’s called protecting America,” Feinstein said in 2013, claiming the practice was routine.
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, speaks as Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, looks on during a confirmation hearing for Michael Casey and U.S. Air Force Lieutenant General Timothy Haugh before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, July 12, 2023. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
As her party moved left, however, so did she; In 2014, as committee chairwoman, Feinstein declassified a report on the CIA’s use of torture after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, over the objections of President Barack Obama. In 2017, she said her decision in 2002 to be one of just five Senate Democrats to authorize the Iraq War would haunt her, in part because she bought into the false claims the intelligence community was peddling.
“It is the decision I regret most and I have to live with it,” she told author Gail Sheehy.
One factor nudging her to the left was the election in 2016 of Donald Trump as president. Her deep experience in matters of intelligence helped spur her outrage with the new president as she uncovered evidence ahead of the election that Russia was interfering.
“Based on briefings we have received, we have concluded that the Russian intelligence agencies are making a serious and concerted effort to influence the U.S. election,” she and Adam Schiff, a House California Jewish Democrat who is now running to replace her in the Senate, said in a headline-making statement just weeks before election day.
“At the least, this effort is intended to sow doubt about the security of our election and may well be intended to influence the outcomes of the election,” the statement said. “We can see no other rationale for the behavior of the Russians.”
Republican obfuscation about Russia’s interference helped push her over the edge, a close friend, Orville Schell, told Sheehy in 2017. “Trump injects an entirely new level of outrage,” he said. “Dianne is like the canary in the mine shaft. The last bastion of bridge building in the Senate may be giving up.”
On one issue LGBTQ rights, Feinstein always tracked to the left of her party; in the 1990s she was one of just 14 Democrats to vote against the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as being between a man and a woman. She became a leader of a years-long effort to repeal the Act, which was successful in 2022.
In 2020, as the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Feinstein drew outrage from fellow Democrats for her friendly questioning of Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court nominee Republicans rushed through to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal Jewish icon who had died just before an election that returned Democrats to the Senate majority. It didn’t help that she hugged the committee chairman, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, after the hearing.
That along with signs that Feinstein’s mental acuity was diminishing led her to step down as the top Democrat on the key committee. Reporting described her as engaged during meetings and telephone calls, and then, hours and even minutes later, not remembering the exchanges. In early 2023, she announced that she would not run again for election in 2024.
Feinstein is survived by her daughter, Katherine Anne Feinstein, a former judge, and a granddaughter.
—
The post Dianne Feinstein, long-serving Jewish senator from California, dies at 90 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
Trump Holds 10-Point Lead Over Harris With New York Jews, Poll Finds
Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump speaks as he campaigns at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa, US, August 12, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump holds a commanding lead over her Democratic opponent Kamala Harris among New York Jewish voters in the 2024 election, according to the latest Siena College poll.
The poll found that Jewish New Yorkers prefer Trump, who previously served as the 45th US president, over Harris, the current vice president, by a margin of 54 percent to 44 percent when including third-party candidates. If the US presidential election were held today and it was just a two-person race, the figures would only change slightly, with Trump beating Harris among Jewish voters in the Empire State by a margin of 54 percent to 46 percent.
Conducted from Sept. 11-16, the findings suggest that Trump has made significant inroads with the Jewish community.
Additional polling data from Siena indicates that Jewish voters are rapidly warming up to Trump as Election Day in the US inches closer. Trump led Harris 50 percent to 49 percent among Jewish New York voters in August, according to Siena College. In June, Jewish voters preferred then-presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden over Trump 52 percent to 46 percent.
Trump’s favorability among Jewish voters has also significantly increased in recent months, according to the polling data. In July, 44 percent of Jewish voters indicated a “favorable” view of Trump and 52 percent indicated an “unfavorable” view of the former president. That number has surged since then, with 52 percent of Jewish voters revealing a “favorable” view of Trump and 48 percent revealing an “unfavorable” view of the Republican nominee in the latest poll.
The poll represents the latest indication that at least some Jewish voters could be fleeing the Democratic Party, potentially over frustrations stemming from the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war and surging antisemitism within traditionally-liberal institutions.
The data also indicates that Harris possesses notably weaker support among New York Jews than Biden, potentially suggesting dissatisfaction over the vice president’s positions on Israel or a lack of trust that she will forcefully defend the Jewish state’s interests.
Trump has made numerous overtures to the Jewish community in recent months, attempting to win over a significant share of the traditionally-liberal voting bloc. He has delivered speeches at various events catered toward the Jewish community, including the Republican Jewish Coalition. The former president also co-hosted an event focusing on antisemitism at his Trump National Golf Club Bedminster alongside prominent Jewish donor Miriam Adelson.
The former president has touted his former administration’s support for Israel as a centerpiece of his 2024 campaign. During his single term in office, Trump recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria. He also moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as the Jewish state’s capital. The Trump administration also helped to broker the Abraham Accords, which normalized Israel’s relations with four Arab countries in 2020.
Evidence of Trump’s success in wooing Jewish voters has been replicated by other polls. A July survey conducted by pollster Richard Baris showed that Jewish voters nationally prefer Harris over Trump by a margin of 52.7 percent to 45.9 percent.
However, a poll commissioned by the Jewish Democratic Council of America released earlier this month found that 72 percent of Jewish Americans plan on casting a ballot for Harris and 25 percent are poised to do the same for Trump.
The post Trump Holds 10-Point Lead Over Harris With New York Jews, Poll Finds first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Israel’s Ambassador Tells UN Security Council: ‘Wake Up,’ Stop Turning ‘Blind Eye’ to Iran’s Support for Terrorism
Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon addressing the UN Security Council on Sept. 19, 2024. Photo: Screenshot
Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon lambasted Iran for being a puppet master “pulling the strings” of terrorist groups across the Middle East, describing them as “Iran’s attack dogs” while addressing the UN Security Council on Thursday.
Danon stressed that the Islamic Republic of Iran, which he described as “the most oppressive regime in the world,” wants “dominance, not diplomacy.” The country’s “grand ambition” is the “creation of a Shiite supremacist empire that stretches across the entire Middle East and beyond,” he insisted.
“This council and the world must wake up to the reality of the threat Iran poses,” Danon added. “The dark force driving the violence we see today is not a collection of independent groups. It is Iran pulling the strings. The Iran proxies — Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis in Yemen, Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, and terrorist cells in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] — are all Iran’s attack dogs unleashed to spread death and destruction across the region.”
Danon also described the different terror cells as the “claws of a beast” that is Iran.
The ambassador then shifted his attention to the Palestinian Authority, accusing it of “standing by, utterly weak and impotent,” by turning a blind eye to Iran’s terrorist actions or “actively collaborating with these terror networks.” He once the PA’s leadership, including President Mahmoud Abbas, for refusing to condemn Hamas since the terror group’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
“With leaders such as them, is it any wonder that terrorism continues to worsen in Judea and Samaria?” he asked, before noting how Iran is funding, arming, and recruiting terrorists in the West Bank to target Israelis.
“Iran has transformed our region into a railway of terror” and is operating a “murderous Orient Express” that is “right under the world’s nose,” Danon said. He talked at length about the “dark web of terror Iran and its proxies continue to weave in Judea and Samaria, and said these reasons are why Israel must take “preventative steps” to protect its borders and civilians.
“Let me ask you all: What would your security forces do if they had intelligence about terrorists planning a massive attack on your civilian populations?” he asked the Security Council. “Think about your capital cities. Would there be any doubt about what to do? Well, we have no such doubts and neither do any of you … but when Israel takes reasonable steps regarding intelligence to neutralize a threat, preventing terror attacks against our civilians, we are condemned.”
“This council remains paralyzed by indecision,” he added. “We are not dealing with isolated acts of terror. We are dealing with an orchestrated campaign of distraction directed by the ayatollahs in Iran. And while this body debates restraint and diplomacy, Iran’s terror network grows stronger. The time for half-measures, blind eyes, and empty statements are over. What is required now is not talk about the symptoms, but action against the disease itself, which is the Iranian regime.”
He concluded his remarks by calling for Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to be designated as terrorist organizations worldwide, and urged the UN to apply more sanctions against the Iranian regime until its “capacity to support terror is completely diminished.”
“We expect this council to stop them at the root,” Danon said of Iran, before reiterating that Israel will take all measures necessary to protect itself.
“Israel will defend itself with all the force necessary to protect our people,” he said. “We will dismantle every terrorist network, uproot every Iranian proxy and strike down those who seek to harm us. The international community for must stand with us, for the very future of the Middle East. The stakes could not be higher [and the] time for inaction has passed.”
Also on Thursday, Danon sent a letter to UN Security Council President Samuel Zbogar that pressured the 15-member Security Council to condemn a ballistic missile attack from the Houthis in Yemen that hit central Israel on Sunday. The Israeli ambassador sent an identical letter to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
On Wednesday, the UN General Assembly passed with an overwhelming majority a non-binding Palestinian resolution that demands Israel end its “occupation” of the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and East Jerusalem within 12 months.
The resolution, which calls for the end of Israel’s “unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” was passed by a 124-14 margin with 43 abstentions. It backs an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in July, which ruled that Israel is illegally occupying the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip against international law.
The General Assembly resolution also called on states to “take steps towards ceasing the importation of any products originating in the Israeli settlements, as well as the provision or transfer of arms, munitions and related equipment to Israel … where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that they may be used in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” It further urged Israel to withdraw all military forces and Israeli Jewish settlements from those territories. Those who voted against the resolution on Wednesday included the United States, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Fiji, Hungary, Malawi, Nauru, Paraguay, and Papau New Guinea.
The resolution made no mention of Israel’s security concerns and terrorist threats from its neighboring countries, the state of Israel or the Jewish people’s historical ties to the land, or the deadly Oct. 7 terrorist attacks orchestrated by Hamas that took place across southern Israel.
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said that by omitting all these facts, the resolution “tells a one-sided, fictional story.” The MFA condemned the resolution in a released statement on Wednesday, describing the General Assembly as a “political theater” that has adopted “a distorted decision disconnected from reality, encourages terrorism and harms the chances for peace.”
“This is what being disconnected looks like; this is what cynical international politics looks like,” the MFA added.
“The General Assembly decision bolsters and strengthens the Hamas terrorist organization and the Iranian terrorist state that stands behind it,” the ministry continued. “The resolution sends a message that terrorism pays off and yields international resolutions. The decision only encourages Hamas’ rejectionism with regards to the deal for the release of the hostages and a ceasefire and further distances the possibility of reaching such a deal.”
Israel’s Foreign Ministry went on to argue that the resolution “undermines the foundation of any attempt to promote a peaceful solution to the conflict,” arguing that the PA, which initiated the measure, “is not interested in peace, but in defaming Israel.”
The Jewish state “will respond accordingly,” the statement warned.
Danon called the resolution “a shameful decision that backs the Palestinian Authority’s diplomatic terrorism.”
“Instead of marking the anniversary of the October 7 massacre by condemning Hamas and calling for the release of all 101 of the remaining hostages, the General Assembly continues to dance to the music of the Palestinian Authority, which backs the Hamas murderers,” he said.
“We will continue to defend Israel in the international arena and fight against the diplomatic terrorism of the Palestinians,” he added.
The UN General Assembly resolution politically isolating Israel was passed days before world leaders will assemble for the annual UN gathering. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are both due to address the 193-member General Assembly on Sept. 26.
The post Israel’s Ambassador Tells UN Security Council: ‘Wake Up,’ Stop Turning ‘Blind Eye’ to Iran’s Support for Terrorism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Israel Used Shell Company to Make Hezbollah’s Exploding Pagers: New York Times Report
An ambulance arrives at a hospital as thousands of people, mainly Hezbollah fighters, were wounded on Sept. 17, 2024 when the pagers they use to communicate exploded across Lebanon. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
A Hungary-based company suspected of supplying Hezbollah with the pagers that exploded across Lebanon on Tuesday was actually an Israeli shell company established by Israeli spies, The New York Times reported on Thursday citing three American intelligence officers.
The large-scale operation killed several Hezbollah members and injured thousands across Lebanon, where the Iran-backed terrorist group is based, and Syria.
Rather than tampering with existing devices during production or distribution, Israel actually “manufactured them as part of an elaborate ruse,” the report said. While the company did indeed manufacture standard pagers for other customers, these were “produced separately, [and] contained batteries laced with PETN,” a highly explosive stable material.
Following the first round of explosions, hundreds of walkie-talkies used by the group also detonated on Wednesday, causing mass panic across Lebanon.
According to The New York Times, the firm, BAC Consulting, was listed as an LTD in 2022 but its website was established in October 2020.
Two other shell companies were also reportedly created to obscure the connection between BAC and Israel, the unnamed officers said.
The devices reportedly began arriving in small numbers to Lebanon in 2022, with production increasing as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah publicly urged followers to avoid cellphones due to concerns they could be tracked by Israel.
Nasrallah warned supporters during a speech in February, saying, “The phone in your hands, in your wife’s hands, and in your children’s hands is the agent … Bury it. Put it in an iron box and lock it.”
“Israeli intelligence officials saw an opportunity,” the Times report noted.
With Hezbollah relying more heavily on the explosive-laden pagers, Israeli intelligence viewed them as “buttons” that could be triggered at any moment, ultimately leading to Tuesday’s explosions.
The pagers that detonated in Lebanon were branded with the logo of a Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo. While BAC was authorized to use Gold Apollo’s branding, the latter stated that “the design and manufacturing of the products are solely the responsibility of BAC.”
Lebanese authorities said the explosions were catastrophic, killing 12 people and injuring nearly 3,000 bystanders, most of whom were either Hezbollah operatives or civilians nearby. Another 20 died when walkie-talkies exploded the following day. Both devices, the report claimed, were rigged with PETN.
BAC Consulting denied any involvement, with its CEO Cristiana Bársony-Arcidiacono saying that her firm only acted as an intermediary in the transactions and was not responsible for manufacturing the pagers. “I don’t make the pagers. I am just the intermediary. I think you got it wrong,” Bársony-Arcidiacono told NBC News.
A Hungarian government spokesperson echoed this, stating that BAC merely facilitated the trade and that the pagers had never actually entered Hungary. “Authorities have confirmed that the company in question is a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary. It has one manager registered at its declared address, and the referenced devices have never been in Hungary,” wrote Zoltán Kovács on X.
Hezbollah holds Israel responsible for the explosions and has vowed retaliation. Israel has neither publicly confirmed nor denied responsibility for the blasts.
In a televised address on Thursday, Nasrallah admitted that the terror group had sustained a “major and unprecedented massacre.”
“We have undoubtedly experienced a significant security and military setback, one that is unparalleled in the history of the resistance and in the history of Lebanon,” Nasrallah stated in his address.
“This kind of killing, targeting, and crime may be unprecedented in the world,” he added, saying the attacks were “a declaration of war.”
“The enemy has lost all control, laws, and morals,” he said. “Israel intended to kill 4,000 people in one minute by detonating the pagers. Many of them were civilians,” Nasrallah said, despite the fact that the devices were carried exclusively by Hezbollah operatives. “The following day, 1,000 more in one minute. In two minutes, Israel intended to kill 5,000.”
He vowed that the more than 60,000 Israelis from northern Israel who have been evacuated from their homes would not return.
Hours after his speech, Israeli fighter jets targeted more than 60 Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon, in one of the biggest waves of attacks since the beginning of the war.
Earlier in the day, two Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers were killed and nine more wounded after Hezbollah launched a barrage of anti-tank missiles and drones in the north.
During a visit to Northern Command on Wednesday, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi alluded to the fact that Israel has yet unseen methods of war to be deployed against Hezbollah.
“We have many more capabilities that we have not yet used,” he said. “We are well prepared and we are laying the groundwork for these plans going forward.”
The post Israel Used Shell Company to Make Hezbollah’s Exploding Pagers: New York Times Report first appeared on Algemeiner.com.