Smoke billows over Beirut’s southern suburbs after an Israeli strike, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Hadath, Lebanon October 19, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

JNS.org — Israeli troops reached the Litani River on Tuesday, for the first time since the Israel Defense Forces’ withdrawal from southern Lebanon on May 24, 2000, the IDF reported.

Soldiers from the 91st Division carried out intelligence-driven raids on Hezbollah targets, engaged in close-quarters combat with terrorists, and uncovered and destroyed dozens of rocket launchers, thousands of rockets and missiles, as well as concealed weapons storage facilities, according to the military.

The raids near the Litani River involved forces from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, including reservists from the 769th Brigade, the Golani Reconnaissance Battalion, and the Israeli Air Force’s Shaldag commando unit.

In the Wadi Saluki area of southern Lebanon, the Commando Brigade Combat Team carried out a targeted raid on terrorist infrastructure. The troops uncovered hundreds of weapons, underground facilities, and dozens of rocket launchers ready for immediate use.

Maj. Gen. Ori Gordin, the chief of the IDF Northern Command, also visited the Litani River during the operations.

Thirty Hezbollah terror targets struck in southern Lebanon

Since Tuesday morning, the IAF has struck 30 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, the military announced in the afternoon. The strikes targeted weapons storage facilities, anti-tank missile depots, and arms caches belonging to Hezbollah’s Aerial Defense unit in the Bint Jbeil area.

Storage facilities associated with the “Nasser” unit, responsible for many terror attacks against northern Israeli communities and IDF troops, were also targeted, as was the launcher used to attack the Western Galilee area on Monday, according to the military.

Strikes on Dahieh continue

On Tuesday, the IAF targeted six Hezbollah sites in the terror group’s stronghold of Dahieh, south of Beirut. Over the past week, 30 Hezbollah targets have been hit in the Dahieh district, including operational hubs of the terrorist group’s intelligence unit and Unit 4400, which oversees weapons smuggling from Iran to Lebanon via Syria.

The IDF highlighted that, despite Hezbollah’s practice of embedding its infrastructure within residential neighborhoods, using the population as human shields, the military took extensive precautions to minimize harm to civilians. Measures included issuing advance warnings before the strikes.

On Tuesday, the IDF issued evacuation orders for approximately 20 buildings in Dahieh in preparation for strikes on Hezbollah assets.

Lebanese media also reported an Israeli strike in central Beirut on Tuesday, which was carried out without warning, potentially targeting a high-profile individual. The IDF confirmed that it was carrying out strikes on Hezbollah terrorist targets in Beirut, noting that further details would be provided later.

Hezbollah coastal commander killed

The IDF announced on Tuesday that Ahmad Sabhi Hazima, the commander of Hezbollah’s operations unit in the coastal sector, had been killed in an airstrike in the Tyre area.

According to the IDF, Hazima was responsible for orchestrating numerous terror attacks, including plans to infiltrate Israeli territory and launch anti-tank missiles at communities in the Western Galilee prior to the “Northern Arrows” operation.

Previously, Hazima served as deputy to the former coastal sector commander, who was killed on Nov. 17.

“This operation significantly weakens Hezbollah’s ability to plan and execute terrorist activities from southern Lebanon targeting Israeli civilians along the northern border,” the IDF stated.

Israeli Security Cabinet to vote on Lebanon ceasefire

According to the reported terms of a draft ceasefire agreement expected to be approved by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet during its meeting on Tuesday at 5:30 pm local time, all IDF soldiers are to withdraw from southern Lebanon over a 60-day transition period.

Hezbollah will relocate its “heavy weapons” north of the Litani River, while the Lebanese Armed Forces are to deploy near the border areas.

A key unresolved issue is Israel’s insistence on maintaining operational freedom in Lebanon should Hezbollah violate the truce by rearming or attempting to reestablish its forces south of the Litani River.

The agreement reportedly includes a US-led oversight committee to monitor implementation and address violations. Israel has pledged to limit military action against Hezbollah violations to situations where the Lebanese Armed Forces fails to neutralize the threat, and only after consulting with the United States.

United Nations Resolution 1701, which brought an end to the 2006 Second Lebanon War but was never fully enforced, mandated the complete demilitarization of Hezbollah south of the Litani River and prohibited the presence of armed groups in Lebanon except for the official Lebanese Army and UNIFIL.

Iran-backed Hezbollah has launched near-daily attacks on Israel for over a year, firing thousands of rockets, missiles and suicide drones at the Jewish state.

The post IDF Forces Reach Litani River as Israeli Cabinet Set to Vote on Lebanon Ceasefire first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Israeli soldiers respond to an alert of an apparent security incident, in Ashkelon, southern Israel, Oct. 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen

i24 News — The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Tuesday that Sergeant First Class Yona Betzalel Brief, who was wounded fighting Gazan terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, had died after succumbing to his wounds.

The 23-year-old combat medic from from Modi’in-Maccabim-Re’ut was critically wounded and spent more than a year in hospital care.

The post IDF Soldier Wounded During Hamas Oct. 7 Massacre Succumbs to Wounds first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Illustrative: A pro-Hamas demonstrator uses a megaphone during a demonstration held on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. Photo: REUTERS/Mike Segar

The student government of Clark University in Massachusetts is enacting a series of policies based on the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement — which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination — despite their failing to receive the support of the majority of the student body.

According The Scarlet, the university’s official campus newspaper, the Undergraduate Student Council (CUSC) will enforce student clubs’ “compliance” with BDS, which includes coercing them, under the threat of defunding, into purchasing goods exclusively from vendors the BDS movement deems acceptable. This effort reportedly has the support of the university’s office for Student Leadership and Programming, as it has supplied student clubs with “tax-exempt vouchers” for making purchases while CUSC orders their leaders to “regularly check the BDS Movement’s website to ensure compliance.”

So far, The Scarlet added, only the university’s food vendor, Harvest Table, has resisted CUSC’s edicts, arguing that it has no “political stance” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or any issue. However, it was still forced to go along, The Scarlet said, having agreed to “buying from local vendors and providers to better comply with the movement.” It is not yet clear how the BDS policies have affected the university’s kosher vendors.

BDS proponents in the CUSC await the endorsement of the university administration, but it has not come, The Scarlet reported.

The university’s president, David Fithian, as well as its dean, Kamala Keim, reportedly held a meeting with members of the pro-BDS party during the summer to “begin charting a path toward divestment,” but they have not corresponded with them since. Additionally, Clark University’s board of trustees has declined a formal request for a discussion on BDS — which aims to destroy Israel, the world’s lone Jewish state, by crumbling its national security, alliances, and economy.

The Algemeiner has reached out to Clark University for comment for this story.

Several CUSC Equity and Inclusion Representatives — Molly Joe, Jordan Alexandre, Melissa Bento, and Stephen Gibbons — told The Scarlet in a statement which alluded to conspiracies of Jewish influence and control that their efforts, despite achieving some successes, have been stymied by hidden forces.

“We as representatives have limited power so long as those above us are unwilling to change,” the group said in a statement to the paper. “We, like you, are only students navigating an opaque and bureaucratic system that is designed to protect certain interests. Our goal will only be achieved if enough of us are unwavering and persistent.”

CUSC’s actions were, on paper, mandated by a spring referendum which asked students if they want the university to divest from Israeli companies and those that do business with it and apply BDS to campus dining options. Eighteen percent of the student body, or 772 students, ultimately “participated” in voting, a phrase CUSC has stressed, and of them an average of 658.6 students, just 15.8 percent of students, voted to approve those items. Even fewer students voted to approve two more on mandating clubs to “adhere” to BDS and initiating a boycott of Amazon. However, in its public statements, CUSC has manipulated student enrollment data to describe BDS as the expressing the will of the students, intentionally excluding from its count the number of graduate students who were enrolled at the university during the 2023-2024 academic year.

For months, CUSC has employed double-speaking in discussing the student body’s reaction to the BDS movement, saying at once that enthusiasm for it is “overwhelming” while also acknowledging that the referendum saw “low voter turnout” and “low engagement numbers.” It has never addressed its disenfranchising 84.2 percent of the student body, which includes the Jewish students who will be affected by the imposition of a political movement which is widely denounced for being antisemitic.

Clark University Hillel, a chapter of the largest Jewish campus organization in the world, has already denounced CUSC’s polices.

“While it may not have been the intention of CUSC and the student body, there are serious consequences of adopting this referendum,” the group said in April, following the vote. “BDS referenda claim to be about changing university policy, but they ultimately discourage dialogue, normalize extreme hatred of Israel, and empower the targeting of Israeli students and those for whom Israel holds cultural or personal significance.”

It continued, “We will not allow Israeli-affiliated products to be banned from the Kosher Kitchen and we will not tolerate our funding being bound to BDS Movement principles. We will do everything in our power to ensure that discriminatory practices are not implemented on our campus.”

The BDS movement is threatening to take hold at other universities.

Yale University will soon hold a student referendum on the issue of divestment from Israel, an initiative spearheaded by a pro-Hamas group which calls itself the Sumud Coalition (SC). According to the Yale Daily News,  students will consider “three questions” which ask whether Yale should “disclose” its investments in armaments manufacturers — “including those arming Israel” — divest from such holdings, and spend money on “Palestinian scholars and students.”

The paper added that a path for the referendum was cleared when a petition SC circulated amassed some 1,500 signatures, or “roughly 22 percent of the student body.” Despite that over three-fourths of Yale students did not sign the petition, its proponents — including a representative of the Yale College Council (YCC), an ostensibly neutral body — have taken to describing it as “so popular.” The final vote could wind up being even less representative of the opinion of the student body, as it only has to be approved by “50 percent or more of respondents” who constitute “at least one third of the student body.” Should that happen, Sumud Coalition will — as has happened at Clark University — claim victory and forward the results to Yale University president Maurie McInnis, with a note claiming that SC has received a mandate from the people.

Beyond ideological concerns, the BDS movement could wreak havoc on the financial health of the schools which adopt it. JLens, a Jewish investor network that is part of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), published a report in September showing that colleges and universities will lose tens of billions of dollars collectively from their endowments if they capitulate to its demands.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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