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New York Times Unloads Immense New ‘1619-Project’-Style Attack on Israel
A boy walks home in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Kida, Aug. 31, 2010. Photo: REUTERS/Nir Elias
The New York Times has unveiled a new, 1619-Project-style attack on Israel — an error-ridden, overwrought, extensively hyped, self-referential, self-congratulatory, and super-long article.
Like the 1619 Project, this latest article comes with a catchy, short headline: “The Unpunished.”
Like the 1619 Project, this project is a product of the New York Times Magazine.
And like the 1619 Project, it comes with an introduction and display text that overstates and oversimplifies its claims: “How Extremists Took Over Israel” and “After 50 years of failure to stop violence and terrorism against Palestinians by Jewish ultranationalists, lawlessness has become the law.” Not to mention: “This story is told in three parts. The first documents the unequal system of justice that grew around Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. The second shows how extremists targeted not only Palestinians but also Israeli officials trying to make peace. The third explores how this movement gained control of the state itself. Taken together, they tell the story of how a radical ideology moved from the fringes to the heart of Israeli political power.”
The Times article itself is so mind-numbingly long that the newspaper published a Cliffs-Notes-style summary of it that unfortunately isn’t much help, either.
The summary complains about what it calls a “two-tier situation” in which West Bank Arabs face military law while Israeli citizens there “are treated according to the civil law of the State of Israel.” Yet nearly all countries, including the United States, distinguish between citizens and non-citizens in their legal system. The Times, in all its many words, doesn’t explain why or how the distinctions Israel makes are different or worse or unjustified given the extraordinary and unusual violent terrorist threat the country faces from Arabs opposed to its existence and determined to eradicate the Jewish presence there.
The paper also claims that, “in the West Bank, a new generation of ultranationalists has taken an even more radical turn against the very notion of a democratic Israeli state. Their objective is to tear down Israel’s institutions and to establish ‘Jewish rule’: anointing a king, building a temple in place of the Jerusalem mosques sacred to Muslims worldwide, imposing a religious regime on all Jews.”
That’s a sweeping over-generalization. Jews have prayed since the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in ancient times for its rebuilding, speedily and in our days, as part of the messianic redemption. That hasn’t been a threat to anyone.
Many West Bank residents, as the Times itself has acknowledged frequently, are both “secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews” who “moved there largely for cheaper housing.” The New York Times reported in February 2023 about “religious right-wingers,” residents of Efrat in the West Bank, who “have become a visible presence at weekly anti-government protests in Tel Aviv, a bastion of secular and liberal Israelis.” It described them as “more liberal-minded religious Zionists, who support a more pluralist approach to Jewish life and a more tolerant approach to Palestinians, even while still opposing Palestinian sovereignty.” That level of nuance and complexity is absent from the summary of the latest Times investigation, rendering it inaccurate and misleading.
The full Times article is no better. The Times asks, “How did a young nation turn so quickly on its own democratic ideals, and at what price? Any meaningful answer to these questions has to take into account how a half-century of lawless behavior that went largely unpunished propelled a radical form of ultranationalism to the center of Israeli politics.”
There is a passing, brief acknowledgement that “many Israelis who moved to the West Bank did so for reasons other than ideology, and among the settlers, there is a large majority who aren’t involved in violence or other illegal acts against Palestinians.” Yet the Times‘ focus is relentlessly on the extremists, distorting the reality.
The language the Times chooses to use echoes the debate over civil rights for black Americans. “Two separate and unequal systems of justice: one for Jews and another for Palestinians.”
The Times mischaracterizes Jewish history. “While the Zionism of the earlier period was largely secular and socialist, the new settlers believed they were advancing God’s agenda,” the Times claims. “Largely” is not “exclusively.” Some of the earlier Zionists also believed they were advancing God’s agenda. To the First Zionist Congress in 1897, Rabbi Samuel Mohilever sent a message, quoted in Gil Troy’s The Zionist Ideas, saying “the resettlement of our country … is one of the fundamental commandments of our Torah.” Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence begins by stating that “the Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious, and political identity was shaped.” The document adds, “It will be based on freedom, justice, and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel.”
The Times also mischaracterizes Palestinian history. It refers to a mayor of Nablus, Bassam Shaka, as among “prominent Palestinian figures,” without mentioning that he was a supporter of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) when it was a terrorist group and was jailed by Jordan as a member of the Syrian Baath Party — as was reported earlier by the Times itself.
The Times is unremittingly pessimistic. It quotes a former Shin Bet director, Ami Ayalon, saying, “We are not discussing Jewish terrorism. We are discussing the failure of Israel.” Yet Israel has not failed. It is a nuclear power with a strong economy, loyal and patriotic citizens, and strong support from the US Congress. Every year, tens of thousands of Jews from around the world voluntarily choose to leave countries such as France and the United States and move to Israel.
The Times is so negative that it manages to attack Israelis for planting trees. A photo with the article has a cutline that says, “Settlers planting trees near an illegal settlement called Mitzpe Yair, in the South Hebron hills, as a way of claiming territory.”
The Times predictably blames Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for inviting extremists into his coalition. “Netanyahu, who is now on trial for bribery and other corruption charges, repeatedly failed in his attempts to form a coalition after most of the parties announced that they were no longer willing to join him. He personally involved himself in negotiations to ally Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party and Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism Party, making them kingmakers for anyone trying to form a coalition government. In November 2022, the bet paid off: With the now-critical support of the extreme right, Netanyahu returned to office.”
Yet Netanyahu also wooed Arab and centrist parties. Indeed, Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid refusing to join a Netanyahu-led coalition also turned Ben-Gvir and Smotrich into kingmakers. The political situation is such that nearly anyone who wanted could have been a kingmaker.
The Times reports, “Shin Bet had monitored Ben-Gvir in the years after Yitzhak Rabin’s murder, and he was arrested on multiple charges including inciting racism and supporting a terrorist organization. He won acquittals or dismissals in some of the cases, but he was also convicted several times and served time in prison.” Ironically, the arrests, convictions, and prison time undercut the whole Times narrative about “a sometimes criminal nationalistic movement that has been allowed to operate with impunity.” It’s not “impunity” if there are arrests, convictions, and imprisonment. And if there’s no possibility of acquittal or dismissal, then that’s not due process or the rule of law, either.
The errors are compounded in the Times‘ “The Morning” newsletter, which explains, “Some geographical background: Mark and Ronen’s story focuses on the West Bank, which, like Gaza, is a Palestinian territory that Israel occupies.” Declaring the West Bank “a Palestinian territory that Israel occupies” denies that Jews have lived in places such as Hebron for thousands of years and that the Jewish people have longstanding historical and religious ties to the place — the West Bank literally includes Judea. The newsletter also refers to “Israel’s endorsement of settler lawlessness,” which goes beyond even the magazine article in falsely claiming an official Israeli government endorsement of violent crime.
The Times promotes this series with a video featuring New York Times magazine reporter Ronen Bergman, the Nikole Hannah-Jones of this adventure when it comes to self-regard. Text on the screen says, “How Israel Became Radicalized” and has Bergman stating, “What is happening in the West Bank is a total separation of two sets of law, one for Jews, one for the local Palestinians.”
Bergman makes much in the video about how “what is unique in the story we are publishing in the magazine, the New York Times,” is that the material is “almost in its entirety coming from Israeli officials … the professionals, in the defense establishment, and the intelligence community.” This is ironic, because the claim comes after the Times, in fine print, credits video provided by B’Tselem, a far-left Israeli human rights group that gets nearly half its funding from outside Israel, including from the UN, the European Union, and the Ford Foundation. Somehow Bergman doesn’t have the juice with the defense establishment to get video footage and needs to rely on B’Tselem?
Anyway, the claim that this is in any way “unique” is nonsense. Israel’s version of WASPs — white, Ashkenazi sabras with protektzia — have disdain for religious Jews, for West Bank settlers, and for Netanyahu. They’ve tried to undercut Likud prime ministers with leaks to friendly New York Times journalists dating back to the Begin days. Bergman has been the mouthpiece of those Israeli defense establishment types to the New York Times dating back to 2016, at least.
Nor is it unique that the Times would attack Israel in wartime by trying to falsely depict its government as being captured by extremists who, if anything, have in fact been largely sidelined since Oct. 7, 2023. Netanyahu has consistently not given them what they ask for. They aren’t in the war cabinet, not even as observers. Nor is it unique for the Times to try to define the Israeli “occupation” of the West Bank as the main problem in the Middle East rather than, say, other problems such as Islamist, Iranian, and Arab extremism, corruption, antisemitism, and rejection of Israel’s right to exist.
None of this is to say that there are not some bad apples among Israel’s West Bank settlers or that Israel has sometimes struggled with policing the West Bank. Yet criminal justice in America is imperfect, too, and criminal justice in the Palestinian Authority amounts to paying official government stipends to the families of terrorists. So why the relentless focus on Israel’s shortcomings?
Just as the 1619 project monocausally blamed racist white slave owners for everything in American history, including the American Revolution, the Times wants to claim that a handful of extremist West Bank settlers explain all of Israel’s problems, and that Israel explains all of the Middle East’s problems. That is deceptive. It leaves out plenty of important factors, including, but not limited to, the Obama-Biden incorrect conviction that paying off Iran and surrendering in Afghanistan and Syria would make America or Israel safer, the State Department-Israeli left’s incorrect conviction that peace could be successfully negotiated and kept with the PLO, and the majority of the Israeli public’s correct understanding that their security couldn’t be assured by Antony Blinken or Martin Indyk absent vast changes in Arab society.
The problem is, if you make more limited claims for the importance of the settler story, it becomes much harder to justify the immense investment of reader and reporter and editor time, space, and money to devote to it. Call it the 1619 paradox. The more excessive the space and years devoted to a New York Times investigative project, the more hyperbolically excessive will be the author’s claims for its importance, and the less likely they are to be empirically true. Or, to put it simply, the bigger a New York Times investigative project, the less likely it is to give a reader an accurate understanding of the real world.
“Unpunished,” sadly, is whichever Times editor had the poor judgment to greenlight this overly ambitious and fatally flawed project. Punished, sadly, will be any Times readers or future Pulitzer Prize jurors unfortunate enough to waste any of their time reading it.
Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here. He also writes at TheEditors.com.
The post New York Times Unloads Immense New ‘1619-Project’-Style Attack on Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Polio Vaccination Campaign Gives Lie to Claims of Israeli ‘Genocide’
Dr. Jonas Salk, an American virologist and medical researcher who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. Photo: WIkimedia Commons.
JNS.org – States that commit genocide do not make distinctions between military personnel and civilian populations. They don’t agree to pauses in their military campaigns to allow the delivery of humanitarian relief. They seek to obstruct, rather than cooperate with, international agencies dealing with the emergency housing and medical needs of the targeted population. Should fatal diseases break out among the displaced and dispossessed, as is often the case, they seek to cover these up, instead of acknowledging and countering them.
All of which means one of two things. In the Gaza Strip, Israel is either waging the strangest genocide in the ghastly history of that phenomenon, or it isn’t waging one at all.
Over the last week, Israel has helped the World Health Organization and UNICEF, the U.N. children’s fund, roll out a major vaccination campaign in Gaza against polio following the first case of the virus there in 25 years. More than 1.25 million doses of the vaccine arrived in Gaza on Aug. 25, facilitated by Israel through its Kerem Shalom crossing into the coastal enclave. On Aug. 31, COGAT—the Israeli Ministry of Defense unit responsible for the humanitarian situation in Gaza—formally announced the start of the vaccination campaign aimed at Gaza’s children, specifying both times and locations where the vaccine could be obtained. Israel also transferred cooling equipment into Gaza to preserve the vaccines.
The goal is to inoculate 640,000 Gazan children against the disease. A statement from WHO on Sept. 4 confirmed that in the first phase of the inoculation campaign, in central Gaza, 187,000 children had received the vaccine, exceeding the target for that area by 30,000.
“It has been extremely encouraging to see thousands of children being able to access polio vaccines, with the support of their resilient families and courageous health workers, despite the deplorable conditions they have braved over the last 11 months. All parties respected the humanitarian pause and we hope to see this positive momentum continue,” commented Richard Peeperkorn, WHO’s representative for Gaza, which is probably the closest Israel will get to receiving a vote of thanks from this agency, which is not exactly known for its warmth towards the Jewish state. The campaign has now moved to southern Gaza, where crowds of Palestinian families gathered to receive the vaccines, before being completed in the northern part of the strip in its final phase.
It’s hard to think of another state, particularly one enveloped in a war of survival, which would go to such lengths to protect children in the combat zone from this devastating illness that can paralyze parts of the body. Russia, which has been kidnapping children in Ukraine, certainly wouldn’t do the same. Nor would Turkey, which has sent its armed forces into neighboring Syria and continues its genocidal campaign against its Kurdish minority. Ditto for China, Burma/Myanmar, Sudan and all the other countries where real genocides are underway, prosecuted by political and military leaders whose aim is for the victims they are targeting to die as rapidly and in as great a number as possible.
As befits a movement that places its hands over its ears whenever inconvenient facts crop up, the global pro-Hamas mob has either been silent on the vaccine campaign or promoted ridiculous conspiracy theories accusing Israel of planting the virus and then rolling out a fake vaccine. Ironically, most Palestinians do not seem to share this perspective. When Bisan Owda, a Gazan social-media influencer, warned that the emergence of polio was the consequence of an anti-Palestinian conspiracy, she received short shrift from Nour Alsaqa—another Gazan influencer and hardly a friend of Israel—who pointed out that the first polio case was registered and publicized by the Hamas-run Health Ministry! Alsaqa pointedly asked Owda why her video denouncing the vaccination effort was posted in English “when the targeted population is Gazans who speak Arabic.” She concluded that Owda was simply “seeking attention online … again.” I am not going to disagree with that assessment.
To be crystal clear, I’m not arguing that the vaccination campaign means that Gaza’s Palestinian population suddenly views its Israeli neighbors through rose-colored spectacles. What I am saying is that the vaccine drive, which absolutely would not have been possible without Israel’s consent and practical assistance, is important evidence in countering the monstrous lie that Israel’s goal is to exterminate every last Palestinian. If this was a war on civilians, there would be no vaccine. But it isn’t. It’s a war against Hamas, the terrorist organization that sparked this conflict in the first place with its Oct. 7 pogrom and whose actions have caused misery for the people they claim they want to liberate.
Yet one can hardly expect the Israel-hating protesters on American and European campuses to show some humility when too many of their governments are bolstering the view that Israel is a rogue state deliberately committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. I’m not talking here about Iran or Turkey or Qatar—states whose leaders have fawned over the Hamas rapists for almost a year now. I’m talking about ostensible allies of Israel (and the United States) who have tried to tie Israel’s hands militarily, by unilaterally recognizing Palestinian statehood and cutting off supplies of weapons to the Israel Defense Forces.
The latest example of this shameful behavior involves the newly elected Labour government in the United Kingdom, whose foreign secretary, David Lammy, announced on Sept. 2 that 30 of 350 arms export licenses to Israel had been suspended out of concern that the Jewish state would use this materiel in violation of international humanitarian law. Lammy made the announcement as Israeli troops discovered the bodies of six hostages, including Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, after they were brutally executed by their Hamas captors in Gaza, as well as in the wake of Israel’s announcement that it was transferring the polio vaccines as a matter of urgency. Hiding this shabby political maneuvering behind the excuse of impartial legal advice, both Lammy and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer have distinguished themselves by rounding on Israel in a moment of excruciating pain for the entire nation. Israelis are unlikely to forget that insult for a long time, if at all.
The United Kingdom, which happily supplies weapons to abusers like Turkey and China without worrying about legal advice, has joined a list of other countries that have implemented similar restrictions, among them Spain, the Netherlands and Canada. None of this will have much impact on Israel’s fighting capabilities since more than 90% of the IDF’s imported weaponry comes from the United States and Germany. The threat these measures represent is political, encouraging neutral observers to draw an equivalence between the IDF and Hamas, and to reinforce the view that while Israel may theoretically have the right to defend itself, in practical terms it doesn’t. At the same time, such measures suggest to Israel’s implacable enemies that their positions are essentially correct and that the power of the “Zionist lobby” is what prevents their governments from endorsing their line wholesale. That Israel rises above the fray and makes the right decisions regardless is to its eternal credit.
The post Polio Vaccination Campaign Gives Lie to Claims of Israeli ‘Genocide’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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The Philadelphi Conundrum
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands before a map of the Gaza Strip, telling viewers that Israel must retain control over the “Philadelphi corridor,” a strategic area along the territory’s border with Egypt, during a news conference in Jerusalem, Sept. 2, 2024. Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via REUTERS
JNS.org – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visibly frustrated and at times even rightfully furious, addressed a hostile foreign press Wednesday evening, condemning defeatist elements who advocate for Israel’s withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor—a move demanded by Hamas, the international community, some of the prominent leftist representatives in Israel’s political and defense establishments, and a minority of Israeli civilians.
Clearly under pressure from the international community to leave the corridor, Netanyahu warned repeatedly during the press conference that such a retreat would enable Hamas to maintain power and smuggle in weapons, preventing the demilitarization of Gaza and posing a grave threat to Israel’s security.
National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz and Knesset member Gadi Eisenkot held their own press conference on Tuesday evening, accusing Netanyahu of obstructing a potential hostage deal with Hamas. They also disputed his stance that Israel should maintain control of the Philadelphi Corridor.
But many Israelis believe this type of thinking is misguided and part of the failed “conceptzia” (governing assumptions) that preceded the Oct. 7 attacks.
As Gallant, Gantz and Eisenkot, as well as opposition leader Yair Lapid, have demonstrated in recent days, they and other high-ranking political and military figures still hold on to these defeatist views.
According to Enia Krivine, senior director for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Israel Programs and National Security Network, “Since day one of the war there has been tension between two of the primary war goals—to bring the hostages back and dismantle Hamas.”
Some in Israel’s political and military echelon, said Krivine, “have decided that bringing the hostages home alive has become the paramount war goal and that this moral imperative supersedes the other two goals,” she said.
Thousands of Israelis siding with this view are currently demonstrating against Netanyahu, accusing him of obstructing a hostage deal.
Netanyahu has been criticized by Israelis on the right for not entering Rafah sooner and taking control of the Philadelphi Corridor immediately after the initial military invasion of Gaza on Oct. 27.
Now that Israeli forces are there, Israelis on the left want Netanyahu to withdraw them to facilitate a deal to get more hostages released.
But many experts, including Krivine and former Israeli National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat, agree with Netanyahu that contrary to what some Israeli defense officials believe, Israel will not be able to easily return to the corridor once it withdraws, as the international community will place heavy pressure on Jerusalem to keep it from doing so.
“There are those who believe that we can temporarily relinquish control—for 42 days—until the first phase of the deal is completed, and then, if the deal does not progress, return and regain control of the area,” said Ben-Shabbat.
“Of course, the IDF has the ability, operationally, [to] reoccupy this corridor even after 42 days, but it’s not just a matter of military capability,” he added. “Everyone understands that once we leave, Israel will face immense diplomatic pressure from the U.S. and other countries not to return.”
Ben-Shabbat, now the head of the Misgav Institute for Zionist Strategy & National Security, in Jerusalem, warned that since we are in the final stretch before the U.S. elections, the expected American pressure “will be extremely heavy.”
“The legitimacy Israel had to occupy this corridor following Oct. 7 will not exist after we leave it,” he said.
Krivine agreed, saying Israel “would [not] have the legitimacy or the support necessary to accomplish this; not from the United States, not from Egypt and not from the international community.”
Part of the reason for Israel’s insistence, she told JNS, is because the third primary goal of the war is “to make sure that Hamas can no longer pose a threat to Israel.”
Part of the confusion leading up to the press conference was that Netanyahu seems to now be saying he does not intend to withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor, but media outlets had reported that he had agreed to withdraw from parts of the corridor that are heavily populated, in the second phase of a proposed ceasefire deal.
Netanyahu clarified on Wednesday that Israel would be willing to withdraw if a suitable foreign entity is found that is able to properly monitor the border and prevent smuggling there.
It is worth mentioning that the European Union Border Assistance Mission (EUBAM) was supposed to monitor the Rafah border after Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, but in 2007, after Hamas took over, EUBAM officials simply ran away, fearing for their own security.
Israel is not interested in, nor can it afford, a repeat of such a scenario.
The Philadelphi Corridor was problematic from the very beginning
When Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice overrode strong Israeli objections to giving up control over the Philadelphi Corridor.
Israel knew that without effective control of this strip of land, it would become a conduit for smuggling weapons into Gaza. But heavy pressure from the Bush administration, and Rice specifically, forced Israel to pull its forces from the area.
Rice urged Israel to vacate the corridor as a “peaceful gesture” to the Palestinians. Unfortunately, Israel’s leader at the time, Ariel Sharon, caved to this dangerous request.
While today Egypt denies it has allowed the smuggling of weapons into Gaza, we know this is not true.
Already in 2008, Rice said Cairo must improve border patrol efforts after Israeli officials complained that Egypt was doing a “terrible” job on the Gaza border, failing to stop smuggling of weapons and ammunition into Gaza through tunnels under the Philadelphi Corridor.
“We think that Egypt has to do more. Those tunnels need to be dealt with,” Rice said at the time.
Israeli officials said they had sent a video to Washington showing Egyptian security forces helping Hamas terrorists smuggle arms across the border into Gaza.
Egypt responded that it was “doing its best” with the number of personnel it was allowed to deploy at the border under the 1979 peace treaty and a subsequent agreement with Israel.
When Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi came to power in 2013, he allegedly moved to destroy many of the tunnels.
But having uncovered and blocked off 150 smuggling tunnels so far in just the past few months, the IDF has proven that Egypt cannot be trusted and Israel cannot again leave the corridor since Hamas, or other terror organizations, will swiftly return to building new ones.
That decision by the Americans—the type of thinking that continues to pervade the U.S. State Department through the present day—directly led to the tragic events of Oct. 7, the ensuing war over these last 11 months and the continuing tragedy of the hostages in Gaza.
This thinking is the reason Israel was forced to pause fighting for three months earlier in the war, was behind the American pressure on Israel not to enter Rafah and is the leading reason the Americans insist the war “must end now.”
Demonstrating more common sense, Israel’s Security Cabinet voted last Thursday night in favor of maintaining a continued IDF presence in the corridor, even at the cost of a hostage deal.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant voted against the decision, while National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir abstained.
Following news of the execution by Hamas of six hostages, whose bodies were found on Saturday in a Rafah tunnel, Gallant on Sunday called for the Cabinet to reverse its decision, claiming that the corridor is one of the biggest obstacles to a ceasefire deal.
U.S. President Joe Biden expressed his shock and anger over the hostages’ murders and said Hamas leaders must be held accountable.
However, when asked if he felt Netanyahu had done enough to get the hostages released, Biden said “no.”
During a local press conference on Monday, Netanyahu dismissed reports that Biden had criticized him for not doing enough to secure a ceasefire deal, saying he “does not believe Biden said that” in light of the murders.
“What message does this send Hamas?” said Netanyahu.
“I don’t believe that either President Biden or anyone else serious about achieving peace and achieving [the hostages’] release would seriously ask Israel to make these concessions. We’ve already made them. Hamas has to make the concessions,” he added.
What if Israel withdraws?
Ben-Shabbat told JNS that relinquishing control of the Philadelphi Corridor “would encourage Hamas, signal to the residents of Gaza that the terror organization will continue to be the dominant force in the Strip and might even embolden the ‘resistance axis,’ particularly Hezbollah, to take a harder stance against Israel.”
He added: “If, after Oct. 7, and after seeing the implications of military buildup, we don’t insist on this, then it essentially means Israel can be forced to fold on any issue.”
Ben-Shabbat went on to say that “past experience does not allow us to rely on the goodwill of others, especially after what happened to us on Oct. 7.”
He recalled what happened in January 2009 on the eve of the conclusion of “Operation Cast Lead,” when then-Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni signed an agreement with the United States and NATO for joint efforts to counter the smuggling threat.
“This agreement did not prevent even a gram of gunpowder from being smuggled into Gaza,” he said.
While some argue that it’s not wise to occupy the corridor because it’s a narrow strip of land, and staying there would expose Israeli forces, Ben-Shabbat told JNS that “now is precisely the time for the IDF to carry out all the necessary engineering work in the area to improve conditions for the safety of our forces,” adding, “Who said we have to settle for a 14-meter-wide strip?”
Ensuring the security of Israeli forces “justifies making the necessary changes to the terrain, and the width of the corridor should be determined accordingly,” he said.
In Krivine’s view, Israel may eventually be able to allow the Egyptians or Americans physical control of the corridor, but it would be irresponsible to do so today.
“There is no way to prevent arms getting in—or terrorists and potentially hostages—being smuggled out of the enclave without a credible inspections regime in the corridor both below ground and above ground,” she said. “Until there is a credible inspections regime established that deprives Hamas the ability to rearm, the Philadelphi corridor must remain in the hands of the IDF.”
[Hamas leader] Yahya Sinwar “understands that the hostages are his only remaining leverage over the government of Israel,” she said, adding that Sinwar’s “wicked decision” to execute the hostages when IDF forces were so close to rescuing them “was a ploy to create a wedge in Israeli society and pressure Netanyahu into making tough concessions at the negotiating table.”
Sinwar, she said, “knows that Israel’s Achilles heel is its deep valuing of human life, and he understands how to drive a stake into the heart of Israeli society.”
According to Krivine, giving in to Hamas’s demands means that the terror group survives and begins the process of rebuilding.
“There is no third party—not the P.A. and not the moderate Arab states—that will step into the void unless the IDF can ensure that Hamas is unable to regroup and rearm,” she said.
Israel’s path forward
Brian Carter of the American Enterprise Institute seems to agree.
He told JNS that “either Israel or another capable entity must control the Philadelphi Corridor for Israel to prevent Hamas from rebuilding its capabilities to the same level the group reached by Oct. 7.”
Otherwise, he warned, “Hamas will gradually rebuild itself and undo the progress Israel has made toward defeating the group.”
Any outcome that results in a rebuilt Hamas is “unacceptable and would constitute an Israeli defeat,” he said.
According to Carter, the way forward is to find a party that is capable of and willing to control the Philadelphi Corridor.
He believes it is “unlikely” that any force could prevent smuggling under the corridor without a presence on the corridor.
Ben-Shabbat told JNS that Israel can take more steps to ensure it achieves its objectives in this war.
First, Israel must “completely deprive Hamas of control over the supplies entering the Strip,” he said. “This is its lifeline and the main means of maintaining its governance.”
Second, Israel should “divide Gaza into more sections, beyond what currently exists.”
Third, as another former head of the Israeli National Security Council, Giora Eiland, proposed, Israel should launch a “broad operation” in northern Gaza. This means evacuating Gaza City and the northern Strip, closing it off as a military zone, cutting off supplies to the area, and then conducting a thorough military operation to destroy terrorists.
“In my opinion, it is a good option,” Ben-Shabbat told JNS.
“The plan does have its drawbacks though as Israel can expect resistance from the United States and the international community, and the fact that it involves returning many IDF forces to the Gaza Strip,” he noted.
Finally, Ben-Shabbat suggested Israel could “take action” against Hamas leaders abroad.
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Yemen’s Houthis Say They Shot Down US MQ-9 Drone over Marib Governorate
Newly recruited fighters who joined a Houthi military force intended to be sent to fight in support of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, march during a parade in Sanaa, Yemen, Dec. 2, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
i24 News – Yemen’s Houthi jihadists claimed Saturday night that they successfully ambushed and downed an American MQ-9 drone in Yemen.
“The Yemeni air defenses shot down an American MQ-9 aircraft while it was carrying out hostile activities in the airspace of Ma’rib Governorate,” said the jihadist group’s spokesman Yahya Saree. “This is the eighth plane of its type that the Yemeni Armed Forces have succeeded in shooting down during the Battle of the Promised Victory and the Holy Jihad in support of Gaza.”
“The Yemeni Armed Forces continue to perform their jihadist duties in solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian people and in defense of beloved Yemen,” he went on.
“And with the help of Allah Almighty, they are in the process of strengthening their defensive capabilities to confront and respond to the American-British aggression by targeting its hostile military movements in the naval operations zone.”
The post Yemen’s Houthis Say They Shot Down US MQ-9 Drone over Marib Governorate first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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