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Israel Expands War Aims to Include Returning Displaced Citizens to the North as Prospect of Hezbollah War Looms

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference in Jerusalem, Sept. 2, 2024. Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via REUTERS

Israel’s security cabinet has expanded its war goals to include returning displaced Israelis from the north back to their homes after they were forced to flee amid unrelenting fire from the Iran-backed terrorist organization Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The decision, which was made in a late-night meeting on Monday that extended into the early hours of Tuesday morning, was announced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Israel will continue to act to implement this goal,” Netanyahu said.

Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel — in which the Palestinian terrorist group murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages — the Jewish state’s war aims have been to return the hostages, destroy Hamas, and ensure Gaza cannot be used as a launching pad to attack Israel in the future.

On Oct. 8, Hezbollah joined Hamas’s war on Israel, pummeling northern Israeli communities almost daily with barrages of drones, rockets, and missiles from southern Lebanon, where it wields significant political and military influence. One such attack killed 12 children in the small Druze town of Majdal Shams.

About 80,000 Israelis have been forced to evacuate Israel’s north during that time due to the unrelenting attacks. Most of them have spent the past 11 months living in hotels in other areas of the country.

Israeli leaders have said they seek a diplomatic resolution to the conflict with Hezbollah along the border with Lebanon but are prepared to use large-scale military force if needed to ensure all displaced citizens can safely return to their homes. Efforts to make it safe for them to return have so far been unsuccessful, indicating a larger military conflict could be on the horizon.

“The possibility for an agreement is running out as Hezbollah continues to tie itself to Hamas, and refuses to end the conflict,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Monday in a meeting with White House Special envoy Amos Hochstein, according to a statement from his office. “Therefore, the only way left to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes will be via military action.”

Amid escalating tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, the US has warned both sides to refrain from larger military action.

Hochstein, who was visiting Israel on Monday, told Netanyahu and Gallant in meetings that the US does not believe that a full confrontation with Lebanon will serve Israel’s interests or return the residents of the north to their homes, according to Israeli media reports. The US envoy also reportedly added that the risk of a regional war was real and that the diplomaitc resolution to ultimately end it would be similar to the ones being discussed now anyway.

However, tensions do not seem likely to lower in the near future.

On Tuesday, thousands of members of Hezbollah, including fighters and medics, were seriously  when the pagers they use to communicate exploded.

A Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that the detonation of the pagers was the “biggest security breach” the Iran-backed group had been subjected to in nearly a year of war with Israel.

Up to 2,750 people were injured in Lebanon due to exploding pagers, and at least eight people were killed, according to Lebanon’s minister of health.

Hezbollah blamed Israel for the explosions and vowed revenge, although the Jewish state has so far neither confirmed nor denied responsibility.

The post Israel Expands War Aims to Include Returning Displaced Citizens to the North as Prospect of Hezbollah War Looms first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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The New Philosemitism: An age-old tradition has taken new shape—but who is this helping?

This piece originally appeared in the Fall 2024 edition of the quarterly magazine published by The Canadian Jewish News. Jews have always had our share of enemies, but some moments […]

The post The New Philosemitism: An age-old tradition has taken new shape—but who is this helping? appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

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Biden: Israel Should Mull Alternatives to Striking Iran Oil Fields

US President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, June 28, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz

JNS.orgUS President Joe Biden suggested on Friday that Israel should consider alternative targets rather than attacking Iranian oil fields in response to the Islamic Republic’s massive ballistic missile attack on the Jewish state earlier this week.

“The Israelis have not concluded what they’re going to do in terms of a strike, that’s under discussion. If I were in their shoes, I’d be thinking about other alternatives than striking oil fields,” Biden said during a rare appearance at a White House press briefing.

“No administration has helped Israel more than I have—none, none, none. I think Bibi should remember that,” added the president, using Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s nickname.

A day earlier, Biden said that the possibility of hitting Iran’s oil assets and infrastructure was “in discussion,” while noting that Jerusalem maintains freedom of action.

“First of all, we don’t ‘allow’ Israel. We advise Israel,” he said.

On Tuesday, Iran fired more than 180 ballistic missiles at Israel, leading the entire civilian population of the Jewish state to be ordered into bomb shelters. One Palestinian was killed and two Israelis were lightly injured by the attack.

In April, Iran conducted its first-ever direct attack on Israeli territory, launching some 300 missiles and drones, the vast majority of which were shot down in a multinational effort. One girl was wounded.

On Wednesday, Biden told reporters that he opposes an Israeli retaliatory strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, adding that he was crafting a response with the G7 group of leading democracies.

“The answer is ‘no,’” the president said when asked about targeting the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites. “We’ll be discussing with the Israelis what they’re going to do, but all seven of us agree that they have a right to respond, but they should respond proportionately.”

Biden declined to say what advice he was giving to the Jewish state and indicated that he had not spoken with Netanyahu since the Iranian attack.

“We’ve been talking to Bibi’s people the whole time. It’s not necessary to talk to Bibi,” he said.

“I’ll probably be talking to him relatively soon,” he added.

Biden spoke with the G7 leaders on Wednesday “to discuss Iran’s unacceptable attack against Israel and to coordinate on a response to this attack, including new sanctions,” per a White House readout.

Biden and the G7 “unequivocally condemned Iran’s attack against Israel,” the White House added. “President Biden expressed the United States’ full solidarity and support to Israel and its people and reaffirmed the United States’ ironclad commitment to Israel’s security.”

Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump said on Thursday that Iran’s nuclear infrastructure was fair game.

“They asked [Biden], what do you think about Iran, would you hit Iran? And he goes, ‘As long as they don’t hit the nuclear stuff.’ That’s the thing you want to hit, right?” Trump said during a town hall-style event in Fayetteville, N.C.

“I think he’s got that one wrong,” Trump said of Biden. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to hit? I mean, it’s the biggest risk we have, nuclear weapons. …

“The answer should have been: Hit the nuclear first, and worry about the rest later,” Trump added.

The post Biden: Israel Should Mull Alternatives to Striking Iran Oil Fields first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Nasrallah’s Possible Successor Out of Contact Since Friday, Lebanese Source Says

Smoke billows over Beirut’s southern suburbs after overnight strikes, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Sin El Fil, Lebanon October 5, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Joseph Campbell

The potential successor to slain Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has been out of contact since Friday, a Lebanese security source said on Saturday, after an Israeli airstrike that is reported to have targeted him.

In its campaign against the Iran-backed Lebanese group, Israel carried out a large strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs late on Thursday that Axios cited three Israeli officials as saying targeted Hashem Safieddine in an underground bunker.

The Lebanese security source and two other Lebanese security sources said that ongoing Israeli strikes on Beirut’s southern suburb – known as Dahiyeh – since Friday have kept rescue workers from scouring the site of the attack.

Hezbollah has made no comment so far on Safieddine since the attack.

Israeli Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said on Friday the military was still assessing the Thursday night airstrikes, which he said targeted Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters.

The loss of Nasrallah’s rumored successor would be yet another blow to Hezbollah and its patron Iran. Israeli strikes across the region in the past year, sharply accelerated in the past few weeks, have decimated Hezbollah’s leadership.

Israel expanded its conflict in Lebanon on Saturday with its first strike in the northern city of Tripoli, a Lebanese security official said, after more bombs hit Beirut suburbs and Israeli troops launched raids in the south.

Israel has begun an intense bombing campaign in Lebanon and sent troops across the border in recent weeks after nearly a year of exchanging fire with Hezbollah. Fighting had previously been mostly limited to the Israel-Lebanon border area, taking place in parallel to Israel’s year-old war in Gaza against Palestinian group Hamas.

Israel says it aims to allow the safe return of tens of thousands of citizens to their homes in northern Israel, bombarded by Hezbollah since Oct.8 last year.

The Israeli attacks have eliminated much of Hezbollah’s senior military leadership, including Secretary General Nasrallah in an air attack on Sept. 27.

The Israeli assault has also killed hundreds of ordinary Lebanese, including rescue workers, Lebanese officials say, and forced 1.2 million people – almost a quarter of the population – to flee their homes.

The Lebanese security official told Reuters that Saturday’s strike on a Palestinian refugee camp in Tripoli killed a member of Hamas, his wife and two children. Media affiliated with the Palestinian group also said the strike killed a leader of its armed wing.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike on Tripoli, a Sunni Muslim-majority port city that its warplanes also targeted during a 2006 war with Hezbollah.

Israel has meanwhile staged nightly bombardment of Dahiyeh, once a bustling and densely populated area of Beirut and a stronghold for Hezbollah.

On Saturday, smoke billowed over Dahiyeh, large parts of which have been reduced to rubble sending residents fleeing to other parts of Beirut or of Lebanon.

In northern Israel, air raid sirens sent people running for their shelters amid rocket fire from Lebanon.

ISRAEL WEIGHS OPTIONS FOR IRAN

The violence comes as the anniversary approaches of Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people and in which about 250 were taken as hostages.

Iran, which backs both Hezbollah and Hamas, and which has lost key commanders of its elite Revolutionary Guards Corps to Israeli air strikes in Syria this year, launched a salvo of ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday. The strikes did little damage.

Israel has been weighing options in its response to Iran’s attack.

Oil prices have risen on the possibility of an attack on Iran’s oil facilities as Israel pursues its goals of pushing back Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and eliminating their Hamas allies in Gaza.

US President Joe Biden on Friday urged Israel to consider alternatives to striking Iranian oil fields, adding that he thinks Israel has not yet concluded how to respond to Iran.

Israeli news website Ynet reported that the top US general for the Middle East, Army General Michael Kurilla, is headed for Israel in the coming day. Israeli and US officials were not immediately reachable for comment.

The post Nasrallah’s Possible Successor Out of Contact Since Friday, Lebanese Source Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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