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Q&A: Holocaust survivors Pinchas Gutter and Mariette Doduck talk about the state of Jew hatred after Oct. 7

Mariette Doduck and Pinchas Gutter have a lot in common. At ages 89, and 92, respectively, they are among the estimated 5,800 remaining Canadians who survived the Holocaust.

Both were children when the Nazis invaded their homes. Both have devoted their lives since coming to Canada as tireless Holocaust educators and community leaders in their respective cities of Vancouver, where Doduck eventually settled in 1947, as a war orphan, and Toronto, which has been Gutter’s permanent home since the 1980s. They’ve both joined March of the Living trips as educators. And just recently, on Dec. 18, 2024, the Governor General named both to the Order of Canada for their contributions to making the country a better place.

The nomination process began four years ago, started in secret by their friends and supporters. Now, the two honourees hope that their ongoing work to fight hatred, racism and antisemitism receives a big boost because the announcement of their awards came just ahead of this week’s 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

As world leaders joined a group of 50 survivors at the site of the notorious Nazi death camp in Poland on Monday Jan. 27, Doduck and Gutter remained at home, vowing to continue teaching the lessons of the Holocaust so they can fight their growing dread of a world with loud echoes of the social and geopolitical conditions of their own stolen childhoods.

“No child should live the five years that I lived in hiding,” said Doduck during an interview with The CJN Daily. “So I think this will be a way of maybe moving the awareness faster by this honour.”

When the Nazis invaded Belgium in 1940, Doduck was five years old and living in Brussels with her widowed mother and some of her 10 older siblings. Doduck’s mother sent her into hiding with non-Jews, where she survived the war by remaining silent. The Nazis murdered her mother and two of her brothers at Auschwitz. Doduck also worked as a messenger for the resistance. She came to Canada together with three older siblings who had also survived. They settled in Vancouver. (Doduck’s sister Esther Brandt died in that city on Jan. 7.)

Gutter was a Polish boy of seven when the war started, living in Lodz with his Hasidic family of winemakers and his twin sister. The family moved into the Warsaw Ghetto but after the uprising in 1943, the Nazis deported the Gutters to Majdanek, where his parents and sister were immediately killed. He survived six concentration camps, including two where he worked as a slave labourer. It would be another four months after the liberation of Auschwitz until Gutter was freed by Russian and Czech troops, who opened the gates to Theresienstadt in May 1945. After the war, Gutter lived in Israel and South Africa before moving to Toronto in the mid-1980s. He was the first survivor to participate in the USC Shoah Foundation’s digital hologram program

They both sat down to explain what receiving the Order of Canada means to them, and why they won’t retire, especially after Oct. 7. The interview took place over Zoom, and both survivors were wearing their new Order of Canada lapel pins.

Mariette Doduck: We decided to wear them because we’re supposed to wear them now. I got my first letter in the mail with the C.M. on it after my name. But it’s not complete, of course until we arrive in Ottawa/

Pinchas Gutter: There’s gonna be a ceremony. The ribbon and the whole order, where you get it. But of course, at the moment I think the Governor General is very busy with the Prime Minister resigning and things. So you know we should just be patient. We will be patient and wait.

MD: They told me it wouldn’t be, probably,  till the end of 2025. I’m not worried about it. I’m not thinking about it, that we will be called in, but I am delighted, I’ve got to say. 

Ellin Bessner: Do you know how you ended up getting nominated? Has anyone told you that they were the little birdies that did it?

MD: It was suggested by a girlfriend in Toronto who started the ball rolling, got in touch with my daughter, who just told me, and she did all the work with my friends. but they did it in 2020. It took 4 years. So that also was a surprise. I knew nothing about it. My children, my daughters never said a word. They did all the groundwork, So for me. It was a kind of a shock.

EB: Did you get a call from the Governor General?

MD: I was in Philadelphia visiting my newest great-grandchild. Benjamin.  and  I get this call, and this lady says ‘Congratulations!” and I said, ‘Excuse me. I think you’ve got the wrong number, and I hung up.’ Then she called me back, and she was laughing, and she said,’ Is this Mariette?’  She says, ‘It’s my first time on the job, and I’m being hung up on.’

And I said, “Are you playing a joke, is somebody playing a joke on me?” And she became very formal, and she says “We do not play jokes. I want to congratulate you on being bestowed this honour”. And I was like, in shock. I wanted to verify it. That thought, you know, I need papers. I needed documents, which she sent right away, and she said, “You must not tell anyone. You can tell your children, but you’re not to tell your family. Nobody. Not until December 18th when it will be announced.”

PG: I know several people who did that, but of course they don’t want me to tell anybody that they did so, but I knew that. One of them started actually, a few years ago. As Mariette told you, it’s a long process. It’s not something that happens overnight. They asked Eli Rubenstein (national director of March of the Living Canada].  Eli phoned me and told me that he not only did that, but he sent all the alumni from the March of Remembrance and Hope. You know mostly 95 percent of them are not Jewish people. They’re all from different universities doing their PhDs. 

But I can tell you it’s the same thing that happened to me, Mariette. I got this phone call but I didn’t answer. I thought it was one of these scams and things like that, so I didn’t answer it. 

The person said, “I’ve got a very important message for you and something, something.” And I thought to myself, this sounds like something genuine. So I better phone her back. And when I phoned her back the first thing she did was the same as what she said to Mariette. She said “Congratulations you’ve received the Order of Canada, and you can tell your children and your wife, but you mustn’t tell anybody else until the 18th of December”. 

And we just waited, and that was it. And then subsequently [we received] a little packet, where you got the pin you can wear. And so I’ve just put it on my jacket, and I’m waiting now for them to contact me when the ceremony is going to be. But I’m not concerned. I’ve got the Order of Canada, and I’ve had, like Mariette, I’m sure she’s had 50 to 60 phone calls. I had some from everywhere.

MD: I was in shock to receive this prestigious award, for my work has always been for children and not depending on public recognition. I’m also the co-founder of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. So I have always worked with this. I don’t think we’ve done this for recognition. We just wanted to make the world aware.

And for me, when I arrived here in Canada, in 1948, as a war orphan, I was told that I would die by the age of 30. That I wouldn’t see my 30th birthday. The government official also said that I would amount to nothing. That I would be a burden to the community or to the government.

I’ve worked all my adult life to make the world aware. So for me, I will use this award as an opportunity to draw attention to racism, to intolerance and antisemitism. Also I’m accepting this in recognition of all immigrants and child survivors who have arrived in Canada, in a place that originally did not want us. Like the book “None is Too Many” [by the late Irving Abella and Harold Troper documenting Canada’s racist policies which kept Jewish refugees from Europe out the country during the government of wartime prime minister Mackenzie King].

EB: Why did they say you were going to pass away by the age of 30? Because of your deprivation, and your being in hiding, and your malnourishment?

MD:  The thing was, the four of us (siblings) weren’t accepted [as war orphans] at the same time. We couldn’t have a cavity. We couldn’t have this. We couldn’t have that. There were rules that they gave. I was only 12 years old, and they made it so difficult. 

So I wanted a better world for children… because we then have a world where no child should live the five years that I lived in hiding. 

I am honoured to receive this (award). If this will teach more and then listeners become witnesses for us, to what happened to us children. Camp survivors that I’ve worked with, child survivors who are in their eighties and nineties, we’ve always with this. I’ve dedicated my adult life since I was really a kid to this. So I think this will be a way of maybe moving the awareness faster by this honour.

I happen not to like publicity. I am quite shy. I’m very easy to talk to. I can speak off the cuff, but I am not comfortable receiving something. So for me this was like a shock.

EB: Pinchas, we’ve heard how it sits a little bit uncomfortable for Mariette, but also a little bit, sort of, finally, like a circle for her. But how does this award land for you?

PG: My attitude was a bit different. I didn’t expect to receive this award. I am a person who kind of doesn’t believe that you get the awards and things like that. But what actually happened to me is different.

Let me tell you a story. When I was liberated in 1945, by the Russian army on the 8th of May, the last day of the war, in Theresienstadt, after a death march from Germany to Czechoslovakia, we arrived there about 2-3 weeks before we were liberated. Those people who could still stand, ran out. Because the gates were open. The Czech gendarmes who were guarding us disappeared. And we saw Russian infantry with bandoliers with rifles and bullets, and they had Mahorka, which is tobacco, in one boot. They had these white boots. They had food in the other boot. They were chasing Germans out. And there were women with prams and little babies, and young girls and old men, and they were being beaten. They were being abused. 

I was at that time going on 13, and I come from a Hasidic frum home. So I knew nothing about relationships between men, women, or sex, or anything like that. But I saw these Russians or Czechs or whoever grabbing young women, taking them away, and really being very nasty. and I felt compassion.

After five years and six concentration camps, and losing my extended family and my immediate family in Majdanek. My sister and my father and my mother were murdered the day we arrived in Majdanek, and there I felt compassion because I couldn’t feel anything else. I saw people suffering, and I felt compassion.  And from that time on, whenever I feel people that need help, I try to do that. 

And Mariette spoke about children. And when I came to Canada the first thing I did was I helped elderly people. Why? Because people don’t want to be volunteers at old age homes. People dribble. They don’t look very nice. You don’t want to see yourself when you get old, so it’s very difficult to get people to volunteer. So that was my first job, and it had nothing to do with the Holocaust.

And since then I’ve started doing a lot of Holocaust education. But I did it together with others: I worked with Indigenous people. I worked with Black people. I worked with all kinds of different people. I always worked with people that needed help, and it didn’t really make any difference to me. 

So I was very apprehensive about getting [the Order of Canada] and I felt extremely honoured that I got it. I really felt that it would create a climate where other people would try and do the same thing. If one person can do it, another person can do it, and every person that does just a little bit can make the world a better place.  You don’t have to go and solve all the problems of the world. It’s impossible. But you can do a little bit, and a little bit is important because it adds up, it adds up, and it adds up, and makes the world a better place.

EB: You see what Canada is like now since Oct. 7th, where antisemitism is tolerated in the highest levels of academics, of unions, of government, of police who are trying to do whatever they do. But it doesn’t seem like they’re doing a good job. So I’m wondering when you talk to your Jewish audiences, how can your life and your legacy be effective now? When we’re living in this world where Jew hatred for your great-grandchildren is back. 

MD: The question you’re asking about tolerance is understanding. Intolerance is ignorance. That’s what it means to me. I don’t know if that’s possible. We are trying to use tolerance because in our whole life, tolerance and patience and teaching is an important fact, and the teaching in our Judaism has always been about learning and teaching.

During all the years, just before COVID, I didn’t speak. Not on Zoom, not on anything, because I felt “What did we change?”

During COVID, I re-lived Europe because I was locked in.

Then came Oct. 7. I couldn’t breathe. With every IDF soldier that is dying out there, it’s like I’m losing a child.

Going back to tolerance and intolerance, I would say we made a niche. The Vancouver Holocaust Educational Centre, for example. It took us almost 50 years to get Holocaust education taught in Grade 6 and Grade 11 right now. The school board doesn’t want that. The B.C. government has agreed to put in a Grade 10 Holocaust education module. It’s been a fight uphill in Canada to teach about the past, about the Second World War.

But, I find I’ve got a bright light. I find my students today are better educated in history and I find their questions much more involved. Some. I’m not saying all those children ask me questions, but I mean when I speak, or even teachers when they’re asking

Oct. 7 didn’t just make the Jews hated. All children in the world were affected by it, by the news, by their parents talking about the hate that happened. So I’m saying now, again, the education [is key]

I find that in my symposium and everything there’s a long line up, and the questions are much better than they were just before COVID. So I have to say we are a light in the educational department of hate. Antisemitism has been an undercurrent our whole life, for 2,000 years we’ve had this current.

Even the first time I learned about the phrase “Jew them down” when I came to Canada. I said to my Canadian-born husband [Sidney Doduck]—I wasn’t going to marry a survivor—I said, ‘What does that mean?’

He had to explain to me. I didn’t know these slangs that people use. 

PG:  Every 100 years there’s a change. And there is this kind of uptick. In the 1930s nobody wanted to take refugees. Jewish refugees were anathema. They were not accepted anywhere except in one place in South America. They accepted a few people, and then there was this Evian conference, and everybody said, “Yeah, yeah, we feel sorry for them, but we don’t want them.”

Things have changed. I mean, the world has changed. I mean, according to the news, Canada has taken in 30,000 Syrian refugees that ran away. Then they took refugees from other places. Germany, who hates refugees, they have taken in first of all the Turks, and then they recently taken in Syrians and and others. So there is a change in the sense that people are actually doing things for refugees. You know. They put up tents. They give them some food. As bad things are, there is a change. So we do continue changing for the better.

I am a great believer. I was always an optimist. At the moment, I am a bit despondent, because, you know, things are going the other way from that point of view. But I still believe. And this is what I try to achieve in my teaching. And that’s why I don’t stop. I believe… the most important thing is not to be a bystander.

And that is why I’m not going to stop. I mean, like Mariette, there’s a limit to how much I can do nowadays. And, Dorothy, my wife, wants me to kind of do as little as possible, because she sees how much [mentally] it takes out of you. Of course it takes it out of you. People don’t realize you get liberated from the Holocaust, but you don’t get liberated from the Holocaust. The Holocaust is always inside you.

We’ve got my great grandchildren, who live in Pittsburgh… and a few weeks ago we were in Pittsburgh, and spent four or five days together with our grandchildren and great grandchildren. It was a Mechiya as they say in Yiddish, you know, it was really fantastic. And that’s basically what I want to do. I want them to enjoy themselves. I want them to grow up, and not to have any kind of suffering.

I’m scared for them, I am. I wasn’t scared in the Warsaw Ghetto. I was all of eight or nine or ten years old. I did everything that they didn’t allow you. I went to an underground cheder with seven other children, when my father could still have a Melamed to teach us, and we studied the Talmud.  I wasn’t scared of the Germans. I was fearful of something that they’re going to do to me, but I wasn’t scared inside me. Nothing at all. Today, I feel that I don’t want my children to have any kind of fears about it.

MD: I feel the same way. I have six great-grandchildren, and we are expecting my seventh. Only from three married grandchildren. So I’m lucky. So I’ve got a lot to live for. But I’m also fearful for them. We’ll keep on doing this, for them, to make their life a safer place. 

I never was afraid. The students asked me, “Are you afraid”?  I left home and I was four and a half years old, and I didn’t come out till 1945. I knew about life. When I came to Canada at 11 and a half, I was in a child’s body, but in an adult mind. When I tell the teachers “I don’t want your children to live in fear.”

I’m not fearing about Canada. I’ll tell you a story. My grandson-in-law, and granddaughter are a young Zionist couple. They have 3 kids. When Oct. 7 happened, they wanted to go to Israel.

I said, ”John, you were born in Canada. We are the front line people. You have to stay in Canada. We have to fight here. The IDF will always fight for us, but if you are thrown out of Canada, today you have a place to go, as I didn’t when I was a child. So you are safe. You must stay in Canada.

We are the front line. We must stay and fight here in our country. In every country in the world,  people shouldn’t run away. They should stay in the country where they are, and fight their government and fight their newspapers, fight the computers, all lines of communication. Because we are the front line. We are helping the IDF. Those are my last words. 

The post Q&A: Holocaust survivors Pinchas Gutter and Mariette Doduck talk about the state of Jew hatred after Oct. 7 appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

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US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese

Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

The Trump administration has imposed sweeping sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, citing the UN official’s lengthy record of singling out Israel for condemnation.

In a post on X, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions under a February executive order targeting those who “prompt International Criminal Court (ICC) action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.” He accused Albanese of waging “political and economic warfare” against both nations and asserted that “such efforts will no longer be tolerated.”

“Today I am imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt [International Criminal Court] action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives,” Rubio announced on X/Twitter.

“Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated,” declared the Trump administration’s top foreign affairs official. “We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense.”  

Rubio concluded: “The United States will continue to take whatever actions we deem necessary to respond to lawfare and protect our sovereignty and that of our allies.”

The decision to impose sanctions on Albanese marks an escalation in the ongoing feud between the White House and the United Nations over Israel. The Trump administration has repeatedly accused the UN and Albanese of unfairly targeting Israel and mischaracterizing the Jewish state’s conduct in Gaza. 

Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has held the position of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories since 2022. The position authorizes her to monitor and report on alleged “human rights violations” by Israel against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. 

Last week, Albanese issued a scathing report accusing companies of helping Israel maintain a so-called “genocide economy.” She called on the companies to cut off economic ties with Israel and warned that they might be guilty of “complicity” in the so-called “genocide” in Gaza. 

Critics of Albanese have long accused her of exhibiting an excessive anti-Israel bias, calling into question her fairness and neutrality.

Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize Hamas’ attacks on the Jewish state.

In the months following the Palestinian terrorist group’s atrocities across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Albanese accused the Jewish state of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people had been killed in the Gaza war as a result of Israeli actions. 

The action comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington, where he has received a warm reception from the Trump administration. Netanyahu has been meeting with US officials to discuss next steps in the ongoing Gaza military operation. 

Gideon Sa’ar, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Israel, commended the Rubio announcement with his own post on X/Twitter, exclaiming: A clear message. Time for the UN to pay attention!” 

The post US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Hardball: Trump Administration Reports Harvard to Accreditor Over Antisemitism Allegations

US President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. Photo: Kevin Lamarque via Reuters Connect.

The Trump administration escalated its showdown against Harvard University on Wednesday, reporting the institution to its accreditor for alleged civil rights violations resulting from its weak response to reports of antisemitic bullying, discrimination, and harassment following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 massacre across southern Israel.

The US Department of Education (DOE) announced the action on Wednesday. Citing Harvard’s admitted failure to treat antisemitism as seriously as it treated others forms of hatred in the past, the DOE called on the New England Commission of Higher Education to review and, potentially, revoke its accreditation — a designation which qualifies Harvard for federal funding and attests to the quality of the educational services its provides.

“Accrediting bodies play a significant role in preserving academic integrity and a campus culture conducive to truth seeking and learning,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Part of that is ensuring students are safe on campus and abiding by federal laws that guarantee educational opportunities to all students. By allowing anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination to persist unchecked on its campus, Harvard University has failed in its obligation to students, educators, and American taxpayers.”

The DOE, McMahon added, “expects the New England Commission of Higher Education to enforce its policies and practices, and to keep the Department fully informed of its efforts to ensure that Harvard is in compliance with federal law and accreditor standards.”

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism has acknowledged that the university administration’s handling of campus antisemitism fell well below its obligations under both Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its own nondiscrimination policies.

In a 300-plus-page report, the task force compiled a comprehensive record of antisemitic incidents on Harvard’s campus in recent years — from the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee’s endorsement of the Oct. 7 terrorist atrocities to an anti-Zionist faculty group’s sharing an antisemitic cartoon depicting Jews as murderers of people of color. The report identified Harvard’s past refusal to afford Jews the same protections against discrimination enjoyed by other minority groups as a key source of its problem.

Coming several weeks after President Donald Trump ordered the freeze of $2.26 billion in federal research grants and contracts for Harvard, the task force report found it was “clear” that antisemitism and anti-Israel bias have been fomented, practiced, and tolerated not only at Harvard but also within academia more widely.”

The university is now suing the federal government over the funding halt.

President Trump has spoken scathingly of Harvard, calling it, for example, an “Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institute … with students being accepted from all over the world that want to rip our Country apart” in an April post to his Truth Social platform.

In recent weeks, however, both Trump and McMahon had commended Harvard’s constructive response in negotiations over reforms the administration has asked it to implement as a precondition for restoring federal funds. The requested reforms include hiring more conservative faculty, shuttering diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI] programs, and slashing the size of administrative offices tangential to the university’s central educational mission.

The administration has since changed its tone in the wake of a report by The Harvard Crimson that interim Harvard President Alan Garber has said “behind closed doors” that he has no intention of doing anything that would make Harvard more palatable to conservatives.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism issued Harvard a formal “notice of violation” of civil rights law. Charging that Harvard willfully exposed Jewish students to a flood of racist and antisemitic abuse both in and outside of the classroom, it threatened to strip whatever remains of Harvard’s federal funding.

“Failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources and continue to affect Harvard’s relationship with the federal government,” wrote the federal officials comprising the multiagency Task Force. “Harvard may of course continue to operate free of federal privileges, and perhaps such an opportunity will spur a commitment to excellence that will help Harvard thrive once again.”

In Wednesday’s announcement, US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Harvard’s conduct “forfeits the legitimacy that accreditation is designed to uphold.”

“HHS and Department of Education will actively hold Harvard accountable through sustained oversight until it restores public trust and ensures a campus free of discrimination,” he said.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Hardball: Trump Administration Reports Harvard to Accreditor Over Antisemitism Allegations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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IDF Strikes Hezbollah Sites in South Lebanon as Terror Group Pushes to Rebuild Amid US Disarmament Talks

IDF operating in southern Lebanon. Photo: IDF Spokesperson

Israeli forces uncovered and destroyed Hezbollah weapons caches in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, as a new report indicated that despite ongoing U.S.-led efforts to secure a disarmament deal, the Iran-backed group is making repeated, largely concealed attempts to rebuild its military presence in the area.

Troops carried out several operations targeting Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon on Wednesday morning, destroying weapons depots, explosives and multibarrel launchers concealed in forested terrain, the IDF said, in violation of the November ceasefire, which requires Hezbollah to withdraw its forces 20 miles from the Israeli border.

A new report released this week by the Alma Research and Education Center found that Hezbollah is focused on rebuilding in three areas: operational deployment, weapons acquisition, and financial recovery. 

“Hezbollah didn’t give up its resistance narrative and motivation,” Alma’s director, Lt. Col. (Res.) Sarit Zehavi, told The Algemeiner

“It wants to rebuild its capabilities and infrastructures, whether it’s the villages that will be used as human shields or the military infrastructure in South Lebanon and in Lebanon in general.”

According to Zehavi, Hezbollah is attempting to return Radwan fighters to positions south of the Litani River as part of a wider plan to restore its elite forces to operational readiness. The IDF on Monday killed Radwan commander Ali Abd al-Hassan Haidar in a targeted strike. The action came hours after US Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack met with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Beirut to discuss a long-term deal that would include an Israeli withdrawal and complete disarmament of Hezbollah.

Barrack described the Lebanese response to the proposal as positive. Later, he issued a blunt warning to Hezbollah in response to a vow by the terror group’s leader, Naim Qassem, not to lay down its arms. “If they mess with us anywhere in the world, they will have a serious problem with us,” Barrack said in an interview with Lebanese news network LBCI. “They don’t want that.” 

Zehavi said it was premature to predict the outcome of the diplomatic efforts. She warned that the challenge of disarming Hezbollah remains enormous and emphasized that the Lebanese Armed Forces have not demonstrated the capability or willingness to confront the group.

“It’s too soon to be optimistic or pessimistic,” she said, noting that no firm commitments have emerged from the Beirut talks. 

Hezbollah’s efforts to smuggle and manufacture weapons have been complicated by both Israeli strikes and the regional realignment over recent months. While Israeli strikes have disrupted many supply routes, according to Zehavi, Syrian authorities have intercepted far more Hezbollah-bound weapons than the Lebanese Army, which claims to have uncovered 500 arms caches but has provided no evidence.

The financial front marks the third aspect of Hezbollah’s rebuilding effort. Last week, the group halted cash payments to Shiite civilians whose homes were damaged in the war, citing liquidity problems. Zehavi attributed the shortfall to disruptions in Iran’s funding networks — an outcome of the 12-day war against the regime in Tehran — and said the constraints would likely hamper Hezbollah’s ability to compensate its base and sustain operations. 

“I hope they will continue to have problems with the cash flow, that way it will be very difficult for them to recover,” she said.

The post IDF Strikes Hezbollah Sites in South Lebanon as Terror Group Pushes to Rebuild Amid US Disarmament Talks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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