Recent weeks have seen a spate of vigorous Israeli defense measures against the Lebanon-based terror group Hezbollah, which have drawn interest from around the world.

Just last week, the IDF bombed Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut, killing Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hezbollah.

Nasrallah’s bloody reign over the past 40 years led to the death of not only Israelis, but also Americans, Syrians, and Lebanese people.

While many people know that Hezbollah is a military proxy of Iran, and that it has targeted Jews around the world, the Israeli actions over the past few weeks caught many by surprise.

So what are the roots of this conflict, and why is it coming to the fore now?

On October 8, 2023, Hezbollah launched rocket and mortar attacks on Israel, in what it called “solidarity” with the Gaza-based Hamas. On the previous day, Hamas murdered approximately 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped another 240, in the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

Israel, it must be repeated, is a small country about the size of New Jersey.

From the Mediterranean near Tel Aviv to Judea and Samaria, Israel’s width is about 9 miles — walkable in two hours at a brisk pace.

From a military perspective, Israel has no strategic depth. This means that Israel cannot withdraw behind its frontiers and absorb an enemy blow before gathering its strength and responding, as a large nation might.

What is sometimes forgotten overseas, but never in Israel, is that Hezbollah’s continuing attacks on Israel’s North affected the country’s lived reality over time — perhaps even more than Hamas’ attack in the South.

In the past year, Hezbollah has launched more than 8,000 rockets at Israeli cities and military targets. More than 21,500 acres in the Galilee and Golan Heights, much of them forest preserves, have been burnt by fires sparked by Hezbollah rockets.

As a result of the incessant bombardment, more than 60,000 Israelis are internally displaced from Israel’s North, down from 100,000 earlier this year.

Agriculture is devastated in this region, which accounts for about a third of Israel’s agricultural lands, and about 73% of its domestic egg production. Kiryat Shmona, with a prewar population of over 20,000 and a major incubator for food tech startups, is down to 20% of its population from last year, with those remaining hunkered down against the incoming Hezbollah missiles.

Worst of all, Hezbollah is also targeting and killing civilians on the Israeli side of the border, including 12 children playing soccer in the Golani village of Majdal Shams.

Unfortunately, every Israeli also knows that this situation could worsen. In 2006, Israelis spent a wartime summer in bomb shelters, reminding many of the London Blitz. Hezbollah is still believed to possess an estimated 150,000 rockets and missiles, and is specifically training its “Radwan Forces” for a ground invasion of northern Israel, intended to be similar to October 7.

Israel has responded with a series of highly targeted strikes to downgrade Hezbollah’s ability to commit atrocities against Israeli civilians, short of a full-scale war.

On July 30, Israel eliminated Fuad Shukr, who played a central role in Hezbollah’s 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 US servicemen and women. For his long standing crimes against Americans and others, the US State Department was offering a reward of up to $5 million for tips on Shukr’s whereabouts, which the US government can now use for something else.

On September 20, 2024, Israel conducted an airstrike in Beirut, eliminating senior Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil, along with 15 other top commanders. Aqil had been orchestrating immediate plans for a large-scale Hezbollah invasion of northern Israel, and had ties to the 1983 US embassy bombing in Beirut.

Most dramatically of all, in a move right out of a spy thriller, on September 17 and 18, a series of explosions rocked Hezbollah’s communications network. This surgical strike exclusively impacted devices belonging to members of the terror network.

Thousands of pagers (on the 17th) and walkie-talkies (on the 18th) equipped with explosives detonated, killing at least 37 Hezbollah operatives and wounding thousands more. Though Israel didn’t claim responsibility, Hezbollah vowed retaliation.

Another crucial element here is the weak Lebanese state.

After Hezbollah assassinated Lebanon’s Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005, the Syrian army was forced by popular outrage to withdraw from its occupation of Lebanon.

However, Hezbollah refused to budge, and started a war with Israel the following year. In 2011, Hezbollah saved Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad from being overthrown by his people, helping him brutally slaughter over 500,000 Syrian civilians.

Israel is a small country, Lebanon is a weak one, and Iran — Hezbollah’s master — believes that this is a moment of Western weakness and navel-gazing, the perfect chance to commit atrocities that would never be possible in ordinary times.

As Hamas did on October 7, Hezbollah has indicated that it would commit genocidal acts against Israeli civilians, given the chance.

Israel is defending itself to ensure that this never happens — as any other country in the world would do, and as every other country in the world should support.

Hen Mazzig is an Israeli writer, speaker, and Senior Fellow at the Tel Aviv Institute. He’s appeared as an expert on Israel, antisemitism, and social media in the BBC, NBC News, LA Times, Newsweek, and more. Follow him on: @henmazzig

The post Israel’s Struggle for Survival in the North Is Existential first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

The evening of October 2, 2024, will launch the Jewish New Year of 5784. Rosh Hashanah underscores the fallibility of human beings, and the potential of universal self-enhancement through the commemoration of critical precepts of Judaism:

1. Self-examination. Rosh Hashanah initiates a wake-up call of 10 days of self-examination and repentance, which are concluded on Yom Kippur (the Day of Repentance). The holiday teaches us that we should never underestimate the capabilities to enhance our fortunes, when guided by morality-driven tenacity, determination, humility, and faith.

The root of the Hebrew word Shanah (שנה) is both “repeat” and “change.”

Rosh Hashanah (ראש השנה) constitutes an annual reminder of the need to enhance one’s behavior through systematic self-examination, re-studying moral values, and avoiding past errors.

The New Jewish Year is the only Jewish holiday that is celebrated upon the (monthly) appearance of a new moon — signaling our emergence out of the darkness.

2. Genesis. Rosh Hashanah is celebrated on the sixth day of Creation, when the first human-being, Adam, was created.

Adam is the Hebrew word for a human-being (אדמ), which is the root of the Hebrew word for “soil” (אדמה) — a metaphor for humility. The Hebrew word for Adam is, also, an acronym of Abraham, David, and Moses, who were role models of humility.

Rosh Hashanah is celebrated on the first day of the Jewish month of Tishrei — “the month of the Strong Ones” (Book of Kings A, 8:2) — when the three Jewish Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) and the Prophet Samuel were born.

Tishrei means beginning/”genesis” in ancient Acadian.

The Hebrew letters of Tishrei (תשרי) are included in the spelling of Genesis (בראשית). Furthermore, the Hebrew spelling of Genesis (בראשית) includes the first two letters in the Hebrew alphabet (אב), a middle letter (י) and the last three letters (רשת) — representing the totality of the Creation.

3. Responsibility. The late Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, the iconic Talmudic scholar, compared the calendar year to a human body, consisting of the head/brain (the epicenter of the thought process), the heart (the intersection of blood supply), and the liver (the crux of the digestion process).

Thus, on Rosh Hashanah (the head/brain of the year), one contemplates the vision, strategy, tactics, and norms/values of the coming year. The rest of the year facilitates the implementation of this vision.

4. The Shofar. Rosh Hashanah is announced and celebrated by the blowing of the (bent, thus humble) shofar, the horn of the humble and determined non-predator ram. The roots of blowing the Shofar are in the book of Leviticus 23:23-25 and the book of Numbers 29:1-6: “a day of blowing the shofar” and “the day of commemorating the blowing of the shofar.”

The Hebrew spelling for Shofar שופר)) is a derivative of the verb to enhance and improve שפר)), enticing people to persist in the eternal voyage of improved behavior.

The sound of the Shofar was used to alert people to physical challenges (e.g., facing military challenges). On Rosh Hashanah, the Shofar alarms people to spiritual challenges and enhancement. It serves as a wake-up call for the necessity of cleansing one’s behavior.

5. Commemoration. The 100 blows of the Shofar commemorate:

The creation of Adam, the first human-being;
The almost-sacrifice of Isaac, which was prevented by a ram and an angel;
The receipt of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai;
The tumbling of the walls of Jericho upon re-entering the Land of Israel, which was facilitated by the blowing of the Shofar;
Judge Gideon’s war against the Midianites featured the blowing of the Shofar;
The reaffirmation of faith in God, the Creator (“In God We Trust”); and
The path of our despondency (the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem and the resulting exiles) to fulfilled optimism (the ingathering to the Land of Israel);

The 100 blows of the Shofar are divided into three series, honoring the three Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), the three parts of the Old Testament (the Torah, Prophets, Writings) and the three types of human beings (pious, mediocre, and evil).

6. Pomegranate. On Rosh Hashanah, it is customary to eat seeds of a pomegranate, which is one of the seven Biblical species of the Land of Israel (wheat, barley, grapes, dates, figs, olives, pomegranates).

This fruit representing health, righteousness, fruitfulness, fertility, learning, and wisdom.

7. Honey. Rosh Hashanah meals include honey, for sweetening the coming year. The bee is the only insect that produces this essential food. It is a community-oriented, constructive, and diligent creature.

The Hebrew spelling of bee (דבורה) is identical to “the word of God” (דבור-ה’), and Deborah דבורה)) who was one of the seven Jewish prophetesses, as well as a military leader.

May this be a year of victory and liberation of the Gaza hostages.

The author is a commentator and former Israeli ambassador. 

The post A Rosh Hashanah Guide for the Perplexed — 2024 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Three things stand out in Ryu Spaeth’s 7000-word, flattering profile of Ta-Nehisi Coates in New York magazine.

Coates’ apparent blindness to any facts that don’t support his anti-Israel premise;
Coates’ desire for Jews to return to a state of powerlessness and vulnerability;
And the pretense that Coates has done something brave and daring, without regard to whether it will hurt his career.

Spaeth’s profile focuses on The Message, Coates’ new book, which has been released just in time for the one-year commemoration of October 7, 2023 — the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

Unlike New York, my organization wasn’t given an advance copy of the book, so I must take Spaeth’s descriptions of Coates and his work on faith. But even in an otherwise fawning profile, Spaeth ever-so-gently points out that Coates doesn’t have a firm grasp on the events surrounding Israel’s re-establishment in 1948, and that the book overlooks “terrorist groups set on the state’s annihilation,” and “intifadas and the failed negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders going back decades.”

Coates, at least according to Spaeth, is heavy on moral judgments, but light on history.

Spaeth writes of Coates, “the point he is trying to make is that anybody can see the moral injustice of the occupation. ‘What is the experience that justifies total rule over a group of people since 1967?’ he asked me. ‘My mother knows that’s wrong.’”

Why Coates has invoked his mother isn’t clear, but perhaps his mother doesn’t know that Israel got into this situation as a result of a defensive war, or that Israel offered the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza a state in 2000 — and many times before or since.

Perhaps his mother doesn’t know that former President Bill Clinton faults Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat for rejecting the 2000 peace offer, or that the Palestinians again passed up independence in the West Bank in 2008, and again in 2014.

Perhaps she doesn’t understand that the walls and checkpoints in Israel are a response to terrorism. Perhaps she also doesn’t know that Israel’s experiment with unilateral withdrawal in Gaza was proven to be a failure by 2007, when Hamas started throwing its political opposition off of rooftops, and that this failure was confirmed with absolute certainty on October 7, 2023.

A better question is, does Coates know these things? Does he choose to ignore them?

Israel cannot get out of the West Bank by agreement, and cannot get out unilaterally, but Coates issues his moral condemnation freely, without regard to the facts.

Like others who promote the dissolution of the one Jewish state in the world, Coates feigns concern over the Holocaust.

On the topic of Yad Vashem he wrote, according to New York, “in a place like this, your mind expands as the dark end of your imagination blooms, and you wonder if human depravity has any bottom at all, and if it does not, what hope is there for any of us?” And yet, he is also able to say, at the same time, “‘Does industrialized genocide entitle one to a state? No.’ Especially, he said, at the expense of people who had no hand in the genocide.”

The statement is shocking as much for its ignorance as for its callousness.

The League of Nations Mandate “in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” was created in 1922, two decades before the Holocaust.

Moreover, about half of Israel’s Jewish population is descended from those who, after centuries of second-class status, fled or were expelled from other Middle Eastern countries. Does he realize that more than half of Israeli Jews would be considered “BIPOC” in the United States?

He also doesn’t seem to know that there would actually have been a Palestinian state if the Palestinian Arabs had accepted the 1947 Partition Plan. Instead, they — along with five Arab armies — tried to conquer the Jewish State, and kill or expel its Jewish residents.

More to the point, while it is not the Holocaust that entitles the Jews to a state, it was the Holocaust that opened many people’s eyes to the existential necessity of one.

But not Coates.

To the contrary, Coates, at least according to Spaeth’s telling, wants Jews returned to the stateless and powerless situation that were the predicate conditions for the Holocaust to occur.

After the above description of Yad Vashem, Spaeth writes, “but what Coates is concerned with foremost is what happened when Jewish people went from being the conquered to the conquerors, when ‘the Jewish people had taken its place among The Strong’….”

And later in the essay, he reiterates, “in [Coates’] hands, the story of Israel is a cautionary tale of the corrupting influence of power, a warning to the oppressed who might dream of one day exerting their will over an otherwise unkind world.”

And while many saw the events of October 7, 2023, as proof of what Hamas and other jihadist groups would like to do to Jews without the protection of the state of Israel, Coates — as he has in the past — excuses the attack in his interview with Spaeth: “‘part of me is like, What would I do if I had grown up in Gaza, under the blockade and in an open-air prison …. And if that wall went down and I came through that wall, who would I be? Can I say I’d be the person that says, “Hey, guys, hold up. We shouldn’t be doing this”? Would that have been me?’”

The conceit of the New Yorker article, however, is that writing all of this about Israel is brave and risky for Coates, with the always-insightful Peter Beinart declaring that, “Ta-Nehisi has a lot to lose.”

Spaeth writes, “what matters to Coates is not what will happen to his career now – to the script sales, invitations from the White House, his relationships with his former colleagues at The Atlantic and elsewhere. ‘I’m not worried,’ he told me, shrugging his shoulders. ‘I have to do what I have to do. I’m sad, but I was so enraged. If I went over there and saw what I saw and didn’t write it, I am f***ing worthless.’”

In certain circles, Israel is today’s most fashionable bogeyman. Taking rhetorical aim at the Jewish State while it is under physical attack from multiple directions, is likelier than Coates’s unmade movie scripts to bring him more of the accolades and attention to which he seems to have become accustomed — certainly more so than the chapter of the book on Senegal will. (Just look at how much of the New York essay discusses Senegal.)

The type of one-sided analysis that New York describes can appeal only to the most uninformed of readers. Time will tell whether there are enough of them to make Coates’ book the success he seems to be looking for.

Karen Bekker is the Assistant Director in the Media Response Team at CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.

The post Ta-Nehisi Coates Jumps on the Anti-Israel Bandwagon Using Ignorance and Sympathy with Terrorists first appeared on Algemeiner.com.