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Israel’s Urban Warfare Experience in Gaza Can Benefit Allies

Israeli soldiers operating in the Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters/IDF Handout

JNS.orgThe Israel Defense Forces’ experience in fighting Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, an area described by observers as the most challenging urban warfare environment in history, likely holds important benefits for Israel’s allies.

One of the key lessons, according to Col. (res.) Dr. Eran Lerman, vice president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, is the IDF’s use of what he described as “three-dimensional warfare.”

This concept relates to creating an unprecedented capability to generate a 3D picture of the battlefield in real-time, one that shows available friendly firepower sources in the air and the ground, and the location of enemy targets. This data is then pushed to ground forces and the Israeli Air Force, enabling new levels of cooperation.

“This means that when IDF soldiers enter an alleyway, they can see what’s behind the house because someone gives them the picture of what’s in front of them,” said Lerman.

“This is definitely the most significant and heaviest complex military campaign conducted to date under these conditions, to my understanding,” Lerman, a former deputy director for foreign policy and international affairs at the National Security Council in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, and an ex-IDF Military Intelligence officer, told JNS.

Lerman said that the IDF and the U.S. Armed Forces have been engaged in a process of mutual learning for years, adding that “the Americans had their share of urban battles. It’s not that we invented the wheel, but it seems to me that there is one central component that was implemented in combat in Gaza by the IDF with very great effectiveness, and it is three-dimensional warfare.”

The unparalleled degree of integration between advancing ground forces and the air force accompanying them from above, all working on the basis of a common battlefield picture featuring continuous updates on enemy and friendly force positions, meant that the IDF gained a major advantage against “an enemy that under normal conditions would be invisible,” said Lerman.

IDF ground forces have visual assistance through tablet-like devices that inform their combat needs at any given moment, and work more closely than ever with fighter jets, combat helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as the navy.

The ground forces’ “control of the battlefield is exceptional,” said Lerman, “both at the tactical level and at the micro-tactical level. This compensates to a great extent for the advantage that Hamas had within its own territory, which Hamas is familiar with, and where it was hiding.”

A battle management system, made by Israeli defense company Elbit Systems and called Torch 750 (also known in the IDF as Digital Ground Army), played a central role in generating this ability.

“This battle picture also prevents many friendly fire incidents, though not entirely, to our sorrow,” said Lerman. “I think these are things that will be learned.”

Israeli combat history

A glance at the casualty ratio between the IDF and Hamas reveals that in many battles, the average was around 50 terrorist casualties to one IDF casualty. Some operations, such as the IDF’s second raid on Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in March, saw some 200 terrorists killed versus three Israeli combat casualties.

This wouldn’t be the first time that battle lessons were shared between Israel and its allies. While Israel is heavily dependent on American military supplies, it has also exported products developed in the wake of lessons from Israeli combat history.

In 2018, the U.S. Army purchased the Israeli-made Trophy active-protection system for four brigades of its Abrams tanks. Trophy, which is made by Israeli defense company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, has proven to be a revolutionary system for Israel’s own Merkava 4 tanks because it can instantly detect and intercept lethal armor-penetrating threats such as anti-tank guided missiles and rocket-propelled grenades. It can also share the location of enemy threats with others.

The system was developed out of the lessons learned by Israel’s defense establishment from the 2006 Second Lebanon War, when Israeli tanks were vulnerable to Hezbollah cells armed with anti-tank missiles.

In the realm of passive armor, Plasan Sasa, an Israeli company, has played an important role in boosting the survivability of the U.S. military’s Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles. In 2008, Plasan was chosen to provide armor for 1,955 vehicles of the U.S. Marine Corps.

Allied and adversary military doctrine

Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former U.S. Army officer who taught at West Point, stated, “I think there’s much to learn for foreign militaries from the experience in Gaza. I’m confident that the United States and its allies are taking copious notes.”

Bowman, a former national security adviser to members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, added, “Unfortunately, many of our adversaries are also learning.”

These lessons will shape allied and adversary military doctrine, training, and operations, he assessed. “The degree to which militaries learn from this experience will have direct consequences on future battlefields,” said Bowman.

“The U.S. military is the most powerful military in the world, arguably the most powerful military in human history, but we make mistakes and have shortcomings. We can learn much from our allies and partners, including our Israeli allies,” Bowman continued.

He described the ongoing war in Gaza as “one of the most significant urban warfare battles in recent history,” arguing that it would be a mistake to assume it is such an anomaly that few lessons are transferable.

“If there’s a ground warfare component, there’s very likely to be an urban warfare component. Why? Because a large portion of humanity lives in cities, and because the seats of government are in cities and many military objectives are in or near cities. And some military bases and headquarters themselves are essentially urban warfare environments,” Bowman said.

He drew attention to the IDF’s impressive achievements in detecting and destroying tunnels in Gaza.

“I think part of the reason for that is because they had a running start. They’ve been working on terror tunnel detection and destruction for many years with U.S. cooperation and support, but primarily focused on tunnels designed to come underneath the borders of Israel, to infiltrate Israel, to kill men, women and children in the night.”

While such detection technology previously required the IDF to be above or near the ground where the tunnel was located, the IDF in this war was able to bring tunnel detection capabilities into enemy territory, he said.

The IDF’s ability to call up large numbers of reserve forces and send them on successful missions was also notable, Bowman added, saying that partners such as Taiwan could learn from Israel’s experience with reservists.

Hezbollah, for its part, will likely learn from the Gaza war that it needs to double down on its human-shield tactics.

An additional key lesson is the sheer magnitude of munitions required in such conflicts, Bowman said. That lesson remains relevant to Israel’s operations in Gaza, Bowman said, “but even more relevant to stockpiling the weapons Israel needs for the bigger fight that’s coming sooner or later with Hezbollah and Iran.

“And if I’m Israel, what do I do with that information? I prioritize, above all else, the stockpiling of weapons that Israel will need for a major war with Hezbollah and Iran. The weapons, the munitions—particularly the air-launched precision-guided munitions that could be cut off in the future by the U.S. Congress—as Hezbollah learns from Hamas’s use of human shields to increase civilian casualties and create concern in Washington to create political pressure to deprive Israel of the means of self-defense,” he said.

“Israel should get those weapons and munitions it needs now and stockpile them so that Israel has what it needs, when and if things get much worse,” Bowman warned.

The post Israel’s Urban Warfare Experience in Gaza Can Benefit Allies first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote

Demonstrators holding a “Stand Up for Internationals” rally on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California, US, April 17, 2025. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.

The University of California (UC) Faculty Assembly has rejected a proposal to establish passing ethnic studies in high school as a requirement for admission to its 10 taxpayer-funded schools for undergraduates.

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the campaign for the measure — defeated overwhelmingly 29-12 with 12 abstaining — was spearheaded by Christine Hong, chair of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department at UC Santa Cruz. Hong believes that Zionism is a “colonial racial project” and that Israel is a “settler colonial state.” Moreover, she holds that anti-Zionism is “part and parcel” of the ethnic studies discipline.

Ethnic studies activists like Hong throughout the University of California system coveted the admissions requirement because it would have facilitated their aligning ethnic studies curricula at the K-12 level with “liberated ethnic studies,” an extreme revolutionary project that was rejected by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023. Had the proposal been successful, school officials of both public and private schools would have been forced to comply with their standard of what constitutes ethnic studies to qualify their students for admission to UC.

Being indoctrinated into anti-Zionism and “hating Jews” would essentially have become a prerequisite for becoming a UC student had the Faculty Assembly approved the measure, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, executive director of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner on Friday. AMCHA Initiative first raised the alarm about the proposal in 2023, calling it “a deeply frightening prospect.”

“Ethnic studies never intended to be like any other discipline or subject. It was always intended to be a political project for fomenting revolution according to the dictates of however the activists behind the subject defined it,” Rossman-Benjamin explained. “And anti-Zionism has been at the core of the field, and this became especially clear after Oct. 7. Most of the anti-Zionist mania on campuses that day — the support for the encampments, the Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapters — it was a project of Ethnic Studies. At UC Santa Cruz, 60 percent of Faculty for Justice in Palestine members were pulled from the ethnic studies department.”

Founded in the 1960s to provide an alternative curriculum for beneficiaries of racial preferences whose retention rates lagged behind traditional college students, ethnic studies is based on anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, and anti-Western ideologies found in the writings of, among others, Franz Fanon, Huey Newton, Simone de Beauvoir, and Karl Marx. Its principal ideological target in the 20th century was the remains of European imperialism in Africa and the Middle East, but overtime it identified new “systems of oppression,” most notably the emergent superpower that was the US after World War II and the nation that became its closest ally in the Middle East: Israel.

UC Santa Cruz’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) department is a case study in how the ideology leads inexorably to anti-Zionist antisemitism, AMCHA Initiative argued in a 2024 study.

Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CRES issued a statement rationalizing the terrorist group’s atrocities as political resistance. Additionally, the department days later participated in a “Call for a Global General Strike,” refusing to work because Israel mounted a military response to Hamas’s atrocities — an action CRES called “Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” Later, the department held an event titled, “The Genocide in Gaza in our [sic] Classrooms: A Teaching Palestine Workshop,” in which professors and teaching assistants were trained in how to persuade students that Zionism is a racist and genocidal endeavor.

Imposing such noxious views on all California students would have been catastrophic, Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner.

“The goal of admissions requirements is to make sure that students are adequately prepared for college,” she noted. “Their goal was to use their power to force students to take the kind of Critical Ethnic Studies that is taught at the university, with the goal of revolutionizing society. The idea should have been dead on arrival, being rejected on the grounds that there is no evidence that it is a worthwhile subject that should be required for admission to the University of California.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations

Paraguayan President Santiago Peña praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Dec. 12, 2024. Photo: The Western Wall Heritage Foundation

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar praised Paraguay’s decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, and to broaden the country’s previous designation to include all factions of Hamas and Hezbollah.

The top Israeli diplomat congratulated the South American country and described President Santiago Peña’s decision as a “landmark move” in addressing security challenges and fostering international peace.

“Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens regional stability and global peace,” Sa’ar wrote in a post on X. “More countries should follow suit and join the fight against Iranian aggression and terrorism.”

On Thursday, Peña issued an executive order designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization “for its systematic violations of peace, human rights, and the security of the international community.”

The executive order also expanded Paraguay’s 2019 proscription of the armed wings of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group in Lebanon, to encompass the entirety of both organizations, including their political wings.

“With this decision, Paraguay reaffirms its unwavering commitment to peace, international security, and the unconditional respect for human rights, solidifying its position within the international community as a country firmly opposed to all forms of terrorism and strengthening its relations with allied nations in this fight,” Peña wrote in a post on X, emphasizing the country’s strategic relationship with the United States and Israel.

Iran is the chief international backer of Hamas and Hezbollah, providing the Islamist terror groups with weapons, funding, and training. According to media reports based on documents seized by the Israeli military in Gaza last year, Iran had been informed about Hamas’s plan to launch the Oct. 7 attack months in advance.

Last year, Peña reopened Paraguay’s embassy in Jerusalem, making it the sixth nation — after the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea — to establish its embassy in the Israeli capital. During the same visit, he condemned the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, calling the perpetrators “criminals” in a speech at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.

The Trump administration also praised Paraguay’s decision to officially label the IRGC as a terrorist organization, describing it as a major blow to Iran’s terror network in the Western Hemisphere.

“Iran remains the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world and has financed and directed numerous terrorist attacks and activities globally, through its IRGC-Qods Force and proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.

The US official said Paraguay’s action will help disrupt Iran’s ability to finance terrorism and operate in Latin America — particularly in the Tri-Border Area, where Paraguay borders Argentina and Brazil, a region long regarded as a financial hub for Hezbollah-linked operatives.

“The important steps Paraguay has taken will help cut off the ability of the Iranian regime and its proxies to plot terrorist attacks and raise money for its malignant and destabilizing activity,” the statement read.

“The United States will continue to work with partners such as Paraguay to confront global security threats,” Bruce added. “We call on all countries to hold the Iranian regime accountable and prevent its operatives, recruiters, financiers, and proxies from operating in their territories.”

During his first administration, Trump designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), citing the Iranian regime’s use of the IRGC to “engage in terrorist activities since its inception 40 years ago.”

At the time, Trump said this designation “recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a state sponsor of terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.”

“The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign,” he continued.

The post Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’

Yale University students at the corner of Grove and College Streets in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S., April 22, 2024. Photo: Melanie Stengel via Reuters Connect.

As darkness fell over Yale University on Wednesday evening, Jewish students faced intimidation that echoed history’s darkest chapters. The following day, as the sun rose on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the world solemnly reflected on the devastating consequences of unchecked hatred.

Yet, disturbingly, at Yale, the shadows of that same hatred linger once again.

For several nights now, radical anti-Israel activists, primarily organized by “Yalies for Palestine,” an anti-Israel hate group, have targeted Jewish students at Yale — in many cases, based solely on their outwardly Jewish appearance. 

On Wednesday, protestors blocked walkways, physically intimidated Jewish students, and hurled bottles and sprayed liquids at them — all while campus police stood by and did nothing.

One Jewish student described her chilling encounter with the protesters the night before, on Tuesday: “When I tried to get through, they blocked me, ignored my requests to pass, and handed out masks to those obstructing me. Yale security told me they couldn’t help.”

The immediate trigger for this harassment is the invitation extended by Shabtai, a Yale Jewish society, to Itamar Ben-Gvir, an Israeli government minister. Whether one supports or opposes Ben-Gvir’s politics is beside the point. Notably, Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister, was also protested and disrupted during a separate campus event in February, underscoring a broader trend of hostility toward Israeli speakers regardless of their political affiliation.

These events signal more than isolated protests; they constitute a redux of hatred that historically escalates when met with institutional silence or indifference. 

Yale’s administration, under President Maurie McInnis and Dean Pericles Lewis, has failed to adequately respond. Though Yale revoked official recognition from Yalies for Palestine, its tepid actions have not halted the dangerous slide toward overt hostility. The silence — from both the university and the Slifka Center, Yale’s center for Jewish life — is deafening.

This isn’t the first troubling instance at Yale. A year ago, similar demonstrators disrupted campus life with vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric, silencing dialogue and fostering an atmosphere hostile to Jewish students. 

Earlier this year, CAMERA on Campus documented Yale’s Slifka Center pressuring students to erase evidence of anti-Jewish harassment during a pro-Israel event, effectively whitewashing antisemitism and emboldening extremists.

As CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander has powerfully documented, the rhetoric of anti-Zionism today often revives the antisemitic patterns of the past, particularly those propagated by the Nazi regime in the 1930s. These tactics, she explains, echo Nazi-era propaganda that portrayed Jews as subhuman, sinister, and uniquely malevolent — a narrative used to justify marginalization and, ultimately, genocide.

These dynamics — scapegoating, dehumanizing, and ostracizing Jews under the guise of “anti-Zionism” — are not relics of history. They are alive and active across elite American campuses. And now, unmistakably, they have taken root at Yale.

McInnis must break the silence and condemn the open harassment and assault of Jewish students. She must also hold the perpetrators of the heinous actions and those responsible for the safety of students accountable for their inaction. 

This week has revealed a grave failure of moral and institutional duty on many fronts. When law enforcement stands by as Jewish students face intimidation and assault, it sends a chilling message: their safety matters less.

We must demand a full investigation and real accountability. Condemnations of antisemitism are not enough. Policies must be changed to ensure Jewish students and organizations can freely exercise their right to free expression without being subject to harassment and assault. Anything less would betray Yale’s stated values — and the promise of “never again.”

Douglas Sandoval is the Managing Director for CAMERA on Campus.

The post Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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