Smoke billows after an Israeli Air Force air strike in southern Lebanon village, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, as seen from northern Israel, Oct. 3, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Jim Urquhar

Israel is seeking to normalize ties with Lebanon in upcoming talks that could potentially bring an end to decades of tensions and conflict, according to Israeli media reports.

Upcoming discussions between Beirut and Jerusalem to demarcate their countries’ shared border are part of “a broad and comprehensive plan,” with Israel aiming to establish formal diplomatic relations with Lebanon, unnamed sources told multiple Israeli news publications on Wednesday,

“The prime minister’s policy has already changed the Middle East, and we want to continue the momentum and reach normalization with Lebanon,” a political source told the Israeli news outlet Ynet. “We and the Americans think that this is possible after the changes that have occurred in Beirut.”

“Just as Lebanon has claims regarding borders, we also have claims and we will discuss these matters,” the source continued.

Israel’s Channel 12 reported similar quotes, as did the Times of Israel, the latter of which cited an unnamed official as saying that “the goal is to reach normalization.”

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced that Israel and Lebanon will begin negotiations to resolve border disputes.

“During the meeting, it was agreed to establish three joint working groups aimed at stabilizing the region which will focus on the following issues: the five points over which Israel controls southern Lebanon, discussions on the Blue Line and points that remain in dispute, and the issue of Lebanese detainees held by Israel,” the statement read.

Following US and French mediation, Israel and Lebanon agreed to establish “working groups” to discuss the demarcation line between the two countries and keep the process on track. The groups would also address Israel’s ongoing presence at five strategic points in southern Lebanon, which borders northern Israel.

“Everyone involved remains committed to maintaining the ceasefire agreement and to fully implement all its terms,” US Deputy Presidential Special Envoy Morgan Ortagus said in a statement. “We look forward to quickly convening these diplomat-led working groups to resolve outstanding issues, along with our international partners.”

Despite a brief peace agreement in 1983 and past military and economic ties with Christian factions in Lebanon, Israel’s relations with Beirut have remained tense, with no formal diplomatic ties, an unstable border, and ongoing concerns about a major conflict.

A key reason for conflict has been the role of Hezbollah, an Iran-backed terrorist group that for years has wielded significant political and military influence in Lebanon, especially the country’s south. Hezbollah leaders have long stated their goal is to destroy Israel.

Since 2020, as part of the Abraham Accords — a series of historic US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries — Jerusalem has expanded defense and economic cooperation with the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Bahrain, and Morocco. Israel also has long-standing peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan.

On Wednesday, the editor of the Hezbollah-affiliated news outlet Al-Akhbar said that Israel is trying to disarm Hezbollah by force, arguing that this”“will lead to civil war” and “devastating results.”

“Opening the door to negotiations under these conditions means that there are those in Lebanon who do not read history and who do not know the risks inherent in such a step,” editor-in-chief Ibrahim al-Amin said. “Those responsible must understand that they bear responsibility for everything that results from this process of normalizing relations, and there will be devastating results.”

He also accused Israel of kidnapping Lebanese prisoners from their villages and forcibly occupying Lebanese territory.

“There are no security or military considerations that justify their continued occupation, other than to exert pressure on the residents of the border villages to prevent their return to their villages and to prevent the rehabilitation process,” Amin said.

According to local media reports, a total of 11 Lebanese nationals are currently being held by Israel. In a post on X, the Lebanese president’s office announced that Beirut had already received four Lebanese “hostages” from Israel, with a fifth to be handed over on Wednesday.

In November, Lebanon and Israel reached a US-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended a year of fighting between the Jewish state and Hezbollah. Under the agreement, Israel was given 60 days to withdraw from Beirut’s southern border, allowing the Lebanese army and UN forces to take over security as Hezbollah disarms and moves away from Israel’s northern border.

However, Israel announced last month that it would keep troops in five locations in southern Lebanon past a Feb. 18 ceasefire deadline for their withdrawal, as Israeli leaders sought to reassure northern residents that they can return home safely.

Tens of thousands of residents in northern Israel were forced to evacuate their homes last year and in late 2023 amid unrelenting barrages of rockets, missiles, and drones from Hezbollah, which expressed solidarity with Hamas amid the Gaza war.

Last fall, Israel decimated much of Hezbollah’s leadership and military capabilities with an air and ground offensive, which ended with the ceasefire.

The post Israel Seeking to Normalize Ties With Lebanon in New Border Talks: Reports first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

UC Santa Barbara student Tessa Veksler in the documentary “October 8.” Photo: Briarcliff Entertainment

More than 100 movie theaters across the United States will release on Friday a scathing documentary that examines how antisemitism exploded on college campuses, social media, and the streets across America starting the day after Hamas-led terrorists went on a deadly rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

From Briarcliff Entertainment and award-winning filmmaker Wendy Sachs, “October 8” dives deep into the surge of antisemitism in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks, while Israel was still counting the number of people murdered and taken hostage by the terrorist group.

The documentary shows that on Oct. 8, 2023 — just one day after the largest massacre of Jews to take place since the Holocaust — people across the US were already trying to justify and celebrate the Hamas atrocities and use them as an excuse to spread hatred against Jews and Israel. It features footage from Time Square, New York, where less than 24 hours after the Hamas attack, thousands gathered to protest against Israel and applaud Hamas for murdering 1,200 people and kidnapping 251 hostages ranging in age from nine months to 93 years old.

“Rather than the outrage being directed against those slaughtering the Jews, the outrage was being directed at the Jews for objecting to being slaughtered,” says author and podcast host Dan Senor in the documentary.

After sharing harrowing footage from the Oct. 7 massacre and testimony by survivors, the documentary scrutinizes how Hamas has been celebrated as freedom fighters rather than terrorists for orchestrating the attack and exposes how the anti-Israel narrative promoted by the US-designated terrorist organization has become mainstream on college campuses through its numerous ties to student groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). It is estimated that SJP has roughly 200 branches on college campuses across the country.

Sachs was visiting her daughter at the University of Wisconsin on Oct. 7, 2023, and learned about the terrorist attack through the images and videos shared on television and social media. “It was horrifying and gutting,” she told The Algemeiner. “I think we all as the Jewish diaspora community felt completely gutted, as if a generational trauma had been unleashed.”

Seeing the immediate surge in hatred against Israel and Jews after the attack made her want to start filming the phenomenon and share it with the world, she explained. Sachs filmed the documentary “October 8” for 10 months around the world, including on college campuses, in Israel, London, and across the US.

“Really it was on October 8 when I saw the protest in Times Square, where they were celebrating Hamas as freedom fighters rather than as terrorists. And then on October 9 we saw that more than 30 student groups at Harvard had signed on to a letter blaming Israel for the attack on itself. And then we saw everything unfolding at all these college campuses and I realized that something epic was going on,” Sachs noted. “And as a journalist, documentary filmmaker, and a Jewish American, I knew there was a story here and I wanted to document what was happening.”

“It absolutely felt like this was a Kristallnacht, a pogrom, something that we never experienced before,” she added, referring to the infamous Nazi assault on the German Jewish community on Nov. 9-10, 1938. “And the reaction by universities, by what we were seeing in the streets of America, on social media, by the silence of so many people, was so shocking to me that I felt like I needed to document this moment and the explosion of antisemitism that we were seeing.”

The documentary largely focuses on pro-Hamas narratives that are flourishing on college campuses across the US with the help of SJP. One striking audio clip featured in the documentary is an FBI wiretap from 1993, when 25 senior members of Hamas held a meeting at a hotel in Pennsylvania to discuss strategy for how to expand the organization’s influence in North America through American media outlets, universities, and research centers. Viewers are also shown evidence proving that SJP’s tactics have direct links to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and how the student organization is perpetuating violence and not doing anything to advance peace in the Middle East.

“To me what was most surprising and shocking was honestly what I discovered about SJP,” Sachs told The Algemeiner. “I think like most other people, you see SJP and you think it’s just another student group. What I didn’t understand was that it’s really connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, American Muslims for Palestine, and Hamas, and the tentacles lead back to Iran. I think that level of understanding of how sophisticated SJP is, and that it is not just a student group and that the messaging is coming from Hamas in America and Hamas abroad. And that revelation from that 1993 Marriot hotel room in Philadelphia where we have FBI wiretap of members of Hamas in America talk about how to make their messaging more palatable to an American audience and how when they’re speaking to people on the left, they’re going to speak in terms of social justice and apartheid. That understanding was really mind-blowing to me, my editors, and our production team. That was really a revelatory moment in making the film.”

“They’re not taking about a two-state solution and they’re not talking about peace,” she continued, blasting SJP. “I was filming at Columbia University and they’re talking about one state, we want it all we want it all. That to me was also really shocking because I think so many of us just assume that they’re protesting a war or a situation. But they’re protesting that Israel exists. Let’s start with that. They’re protesting that there is a Jewish state of Israel and until we understand that — it’s fundamental to any conversation of lack of conversation that we can have about the issue. They’re not talking about peace. They say it for themselves.”

“October 8” profiles several college students — including the student body president of the University of California, Santa Barbara – who have been targeted with antisemitic abuse and are trying to counter anti-Israel hatred at their schools, such as Columbia University, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania. The film includes footage from the 2023 congressional testimony of three university presidents who had a hard time answering questions about their failed to protect Jewish students from harassment on campus and if calls for the genocide of Jews violated their school’s code of conduct.

Other topics examined in the documentary include the demonization of Israel by human rights groups and the media – such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and UN Women — the publishing of false news about Israel, and the normalization of violence against Jews online. The documentary also condemns the widespread silence by celebrities about the Oct. 7 attack and Hamas’s hostage-taking, in comparison to the public outrage expressed after schoolgirls in Nigeria were abducted by Boko Haram in 2014.

“I felt completely betrayed by Hollywood,” actress Debra Messing says in the film.

Sachs conducted more than 80 interviews for the documentary and spoke to college students and professors, politicians, social media experts, antisemitism experts, journalists, academics, and celebrities.

Filming for “October 8” was completed in October 2024, when there were still 101 hostages being held by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip. There are currently 59 Israeli hostages still held captive in Gaza and at least 35 are dead.

Sachs told The Algemeiner one thing she hopes viewers realize after seeing “October 8” is that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism today. There is no gray anymore.”

“And that the exceptionalizing of Israel has really led to this moment,” she added. “We see it in the bias that we see in the media. We see it from NGOs, like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and the propaganda being fed to young people. It is the perfect storm that has led to this moment, where this irrational obsessive hate of Israel has led to Hamas being celebrated as freedom fighters rather than as terrorists. And that’s really what I want people to walk away with — to understanding that when they see ‘Zionists Not Allowed’ [signs], that means ‘Jews Not Allowed.’”

“October 8” will have a week-long nationwide theatrical release at AMC theaters starting on Friday. Advance tickets are now available.



The post ‘October 8’ Documentary on Eruption of Antisemitism, Hatred of Israel After Hamas Attack to Premiere in US first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

A Houthi fighter mans a machine gun mounted on a truck during a parade for people who attended Houthi military training as part of a mobilization campaign, in Sanaa, Yemen, Dec. 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

Yemen’s Houthis said on Tuesday they would resume attacks on Israeli ships passing through the Red and Arabian seas, the Bab al-Mandab Strait, and the Gulf of Aden, ending a period of relative calm starting in January with the Gaza ceasefire.

The Iran-backed Houthis had launched more than 100 attacks targeting shipping from November 2023, saying they were in solidarity with Palestinians amid the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

During that period, the group sank two vessels, seized another, and killed at least four seafarers in an offensive that disrupted global shipping, forcing firms to re-route to longer and more expensive journeys around southern Africa.

The leader of Yemen’s Houthis had warned on Friday that the group would resume its naval operations against Israel if Israel did not lift a blockage of aid into Gaza within four days.

On March 2, Israel blocked the entry of aid trucks into Gaza as a standoff over the truce escalated, with Hamas calling on Egyptian and Qatari mediators to intervene.

“This ban will remain in effect until the crossings to the Gaza Strip are reopened and humanitarian aid, including food and medical supplies, is allowed to enter,” the group said in an emailed statement on Wednesday, adding that the ban would take place with immediate effect.

The US State Department said earlier this month it was implementing the designation of the movement as a “foreign terrorist organization” after President Donald Trump’s call for the move.

In January, Trump re-designated the Houthi movement as a foreign terrorist organization, aiming to impose harsher economic penalties in response to its attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea and against US warships defending the critical maritime area.

The post Yemen’s Houthis to Resume Attacks on Israeli Ships After Gaza Aid Deadline Ended first appeared on Algemeiner.com.