GAZA — Going into Gaza remains a rare opportunity for journalists. Access has been tightly controlled throughout the Israel-Hamas war, and even now, months into a ceasefire that has paused the fighting without resolving it, entry is neither routine nor casual. Last week I had the opportunity to interview Nadav Shoshani of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) inside the Gaza Strip itself, as he walked me through the so-called “Yellow Line” roughly dividing the enclave between east and west, the strained reality on the ground, and the directions in which this conflict may now move.

Shoshani is the IDF’s international spokesperson, one of the most visible Israeli figures to emerge since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of the Jewish state. For months he has been a fixture in global media, correcting casualty claims and explaining operations in real time. In modern conflict, the spokesman is not an afterthought to the battlefield but an extension of it. What is said publicly shapes diplomatic reaction, public opinion, and operational latitude. English-language briefings in particular are conducted with as much care as any military deployment.

Spokesmen can be dry to interview: They do not reveal classified plans or freelance personal views. Instead, they articulate the institutional position. They present what Israel wants seen, understood, and, ideally, repeated. But even this is useful data for us journalists, and for our readers, too. It is a form of evidence, explaining the narrative the army — and the state — wants to be repeated. From this embed, and from this conversation, the message was consistent: tense but disciplined control in a moment of relative calm (but not peace), determination without appetite for escalation, action in response to violations rather than initiative for renewed war. It was almost as if they wanted to portray a sense of disciplined, determined boredom.

We met at an IDF post a few hundred meters from what is now called the Yellow Line, the boundary dividing Israeli-controlled territory from areas still under Hamas control. Just beyond it lay Deir al-Balah and the central camps, dense urban belts whose origins stretch back to the aftermath of 1948 and whose political culture has long been shaped by displacement, factional rivalry, and Islamist terrorist organizations.

Shoshani’s own trajectory mirrors the way this war has pulled figures back into public roles. During his initial decade-plus in the IDF he served in key communications positions, including spokesperson for Military Intelligence and head of the IDF’s social media desk. In 2022 he moved into politics, advising Gadi Eisenkot in Israel’s parliament, known as the Knesset. He briefly entered private consulting. After Oct. 7, he was called back into uniform at Eisenkot’s request. Since then, he has become one of the IDF’s most recognizable English-language voices.

As we moved between locations in a military jeep, he spoke about operating in a conflict that is scrutinized but rarely visited, as a result of Israel’s own decision to bar free movement of journalists in the area. The informational theater runs parallel to the physical one. Every strike, every claim, every casualty figure is contested. The spokesman stands at the junction between battlefield and broadcast.
From the vantage point near the Yellow Line, the broader strategic dilemma came into focus.

Hamas continues to control significant internal areas of Gaza. Israeli assessments indicate that weapons accumulated earlier in the war remain dispersed across the enclave. Tunnels are still being uncovered even in the southern city of Rafah, where the IDF has operated for an extended period. “The IDF are world class experts in dealing with terror tunnels,” Shoshani said. “And still, after a year plus in Rafah, there are still tunnels.” He described the network as vast and deeply embedded.

In the sector we were visiting, Shoshani said, there are dozens of tunnel shafts. “Single digits” are dismantled each week. It is a steady, grinding process rather than a decisive sweep. As the Israelis are still discovering new shafts and tunnels, the assumption is that the network is even more vast than they know. And for Israel, destroying the tunnels is part of Hamas’s commitment to disarmament in accordance with the US-backed ceasefire.

“The first line of the agreement says Gaza will be a terror free zone,” Shoshani told me. “The agreement speaks about Hamas disarming.” Israel, he said, is committed to that outcome.

Yet Hamas leaders abroad have recently made clear that disarmament is not under consideration. Khaled Meshaal has described surrendering weapons as removing the “soul” of the resistance. Instead, he has floated the prospect of a long “hudna” — a five, seven, or ten-year truce in which weapons remain intact. A pause, not a conclusion. The way things are at the moment it seems like America remains undecided, torn between the momentum of building on the relative calm of the ceasefire and the inclination toward helping Israel defeat its jihadist enemies.

That divergence defines the uncertainty of this moment. A ceasefire predicated on demilitarization rests on a premise one side openly rejects.

Israel currently controls somewhere between 51-58 percent of the Gaza Strip. Within Israel’s political and security leadership, the argument is not over whether Hamas must be weakened, but over how far that effort must go. One school supports sustained operational control and calibrated pressure, judging that persistent attrition imposes manageable diplomatic costs while limiting Israeli exposure. Another warns that leaving Hamas organizationally intact, even in a diminished form, merely postpones the next confrontation and preserves its capacity to reconstitute. The dispute turns on a single question: Can Hamas be contained, or must it be eradicated to prevent recurrence?

“We are literally standing between Hamas and our civilians,” Shoshani said, pointing toward Israeli communities only a kilometer or two away. The distance is short enough to be visible. Oct. 7 lingers as the unspoken baseline of risk. I walked through the burnt-out homes of Be’eri shortly after the massacre. I cried quietly among the makeshift memorials at Re’im for the Nova party victims slain by the barbarous Palestinian terrorists full of bloodlust. I met survivors from Nahal Oz, evacuated for months from their beloved home and living as a family of four in a single kibbutz bedroom in the north. The scars will remain in the psyche of Israel and Jews for decades to come.

The atmosphere at the post was quiet but taut. Occasional distant fire cracked and faded. Wind carried sand across the position. A short drive away, at the Kissufim crossing, pallets of humanitarian aid sat stacked inside Gaza, inspected and approved. “Every week, 4,200 trucks are going into Gaza,” Shoshani said. He emphasized that the Israeli depot on the other side was empty because everything cleared had been transferred into the Strip, awaiting collection by international agencies.

Humanitarian logistics and sniper fire exist side by side. Reconstruction frameworks are discussed internationally while tunnel shafts are dismantled meter by meter.

US President Donald Trump is expected to announce billions in funding for Gaza and provide an update on an international stabilization force at the next meeting of his Board of Peace. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has now formally joined the initiative, signing a back-dated letter during his US trip last week. Public language emphasizes transformation and demilitarization.

Questions surrounding the proposed international stabilization force are also occupying serious attention among policymakers. Under the framework advanced during the Trump administration’s post-war planning, the concept envisages a multinational force deployed in Gaza after the cessation of major combat operations. Its stated purpose would be to oversee demilitarization, support reconstruction, assist in training local security forces, and provide a transitional security umbrella while Israeli forces reduce their footprint.

Within the proposed international architecture, Indonesia has emerged as a potential contributor. Jakarta signaled its readiness, in principle, to supply a substantial contingent to such a force, positioning itself as a Muslim-majority state willing to participate in post-conflict stabilization. The rationale is clear. Indonesian involvement would lend broader regional legitimacy to any arrangement and dilute the perception that Gaza’s future security is being shaped solely by Western actors or by Israel. But everyone knows that nobody can truly disarm Hamas other than the IDF.

Legitimacy is only one dimension of the problem. For Israeli decision-makers, the critical issues are structural and operational. Under what mandate would such an international force operate? Would it be authorized to conduct active counter-terror operations, or confined to monitoring and training? How would intelligence be shared? What happens if armed factions attempt to regroup or test the limits of the force’s authority? These are the foundations upon which success or failure rests.

The Indonesian proposal illustrates the wider tension embedded in the international force concept. A deployment designed primarily for peacekeeping and humanitarian support may stabilize the optics of the post-war environment, but stabilization in a territory where armed networks have deep roots requires more than presence. It requires enforceable authority, coherent command structures, and the political will to confront spoilers — all things I witnessed in the IDF outpost in Gaza but cannot imagine will be present among foreign forces.

I ask LTC Shoshani about the Indonesian rumors and statements. On the ground, foreign troops are absent. “I think that’s more in the in the level of declaration and statements made by politicians,” he said. “It’s not something on the ground happening right now. As you can see, there’s only IDF soldiers in Gaza, but we’re working within the [US-led Civil Military Coordination Center] CMCC for the different solutions that have been agreed upon.” For the IDF, political declarations have yet to alter operational reality.

The central questions remain stark. Can Hamas realistically be disarmed without permanent occupation? If not, can Israel accept a reduced but armed Hamas presence? And if neither path proves viable, how long before the present equilibrium fractures? My embed in the Gaza Strip seems designed not to answer these questions, but to prompt them to the rest of the world to ponder. Criticism is easy, but Israel has to deal in solutions.

Meanwhile, the yellow line is clearly marked, by fluorescent yellow blocks of concrete dotted along the length of the strip. “It is not the type of area where you cross by accident,” Shoshani said. The IDF post we were standing in was deliberately positioned 200 to 300 meters back, allowing time for warnings, leaflets, shots into the air if necessary. Escalation is designed to be gradual.

Yet he seems keen to point out that ceasefires erode incrementally. A sniper attack. A targeted strike in response. Another violation. The cumulative weight builds.

From inside Gaza, the picture is neither triumphant nor chaotic. It is controlled, watchful, provisional. Israel is holding territory, responding to attacks, dismantling infrastructure, insisting on disarmament as the stated end state. As Trump and his two key negotiators — Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — talk publicly about reconstruction and rebuilding, and as Britain, France, and Canada deal in fantasies of Palestinian statehood, the Israeli soldiers I meet are tasked with the boring, grinding, slow process of degrading Hamas, pushing back when it ventures forward, and keeping alert as it declares it will not disarm.

That thick mud wall Shoshani and I stand behind wasn’t here a few weeks ago. It has been built because the line did not hold well enough. Though the line itself remains in place, what lies beyond it, and what may yet cross it again, remains unresolved.

British pop legend Boy George reaffirmed his love for his Israeli fans and the Jewish state on Monday in a post on X, in which he also referenced the deadly Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

A video was posted on X that showed a past performance by Lady Gaga in Israel, in which she shouted to the audience, “You are strong, you are brave, you are confident, and I f–king love you Israel.” Boy George replied to the video on Monday afternoon and started off by saying, “I love Israel too.”

“Blaming an entire people is moronic,” added the Culture Club lead singer, who has been a long-time supporter of Israel. “You can be against war and still love humanity. Good for her,” he noted. “She loves her Israeli fans. Like I do. Some of them were probably killed on Oct 7th. I have DJ’d in Tel Aviv a number of times. I hope I will in the future!”

After the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, Boy George uploaded a since-deleted post on social media that said, “When you hurt women, children, and the elderly, your cause is doomed. I stand with Israel.”

In the past he has also criticized Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters for comparing Israel to Nazi Germany. “I always thought Pink Floyd was part of [the] solution but Roger has fallen out of the dream,” Boy George told The Jewish Chronicle in 2023. “When you mix your own hostility with more hostility there is never any peace! Antisemitism is not rock ‘n’ roll!”

Boy George performed in Tel Aviv in 2011 and 2017, rejecting pressure from the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel. During the 2017 concert at Tel Aviv’s Menora Mivtachim Arena, the musician performed a segment while wearing a bright yellow outfit adorned with Star of Davids. He was joined on stage by three other original members of the band Culture Club and also performed a duet with Israeli singer Dana International.

In 2020, he collaborated on a song with Israeli artist Asaf Goren titled “Rainbow in the Dark,” which features both English and Hebrew lyrics. Boy George also joined other celebrities in signing an open letter in 2024 that supported Israel’s inclusion in the Eurovision Song Contest that year.

The North Carolina Democratic Party is at war with itself over Israel and antisemitism.

Earlier this month, I reported that leaders from the North Carolina Democratic Party’s (NCDP) Muslim Caucus had recently made hateful posts on social media. Elyas Mohammed, president of the caucus, described Zionists as “Nazis” and “a threat to humanity.”

Jibril Hough, first vice president of the same caucus, said “Zionism is a branch of racism/white supremacy and must be fought with the same intensity.” He described Zionists as the “worst of humanity.”

This month, Hough posted that Jeffrey Epstein could be alive and in hiding in Israel as part of a US/Israel conspiracy.

Now, two prominent North Carolina Democratic leaders have strongly condemned the statements by Muslim Caucus leaders.

Gov. Josh Stein told Jewish Insider (JI), “Antisemitic comments and conspiracy theories have no place anywhere, including in the North Carolina Democratic Party.”

Former Gov. and current Senatorial candidate Roy Cooper (D) told JI, “These reprehensible posts were an unacceptable expression of antisemitism and I condemn them in the strongest of terms.”

Stein and Cooper’s comments came promptly after many letters were sent by community members, including a powerful letter co-signed by the four local Jewish Federations directed to Gov. Stein and party officials. The Federations explained:

As Jews in North Carolina who support the existence of the State of Israel, and who represent broad cross-sections of our state’s Jewish population, we find this language hate-filled, insensitive, inflammatory, and threatening. It is incompatible with the standards of responsible civic leadership and it should disqualify any individual from holding a leadership role within a political party structure. Immediate corrective action is required.

The American Jewish Congress thanked Stein and Cooper for “making clear that antisemitism and conspiracy theories are unacceptable in the North Carolina Democratic Party.” The NCDP Jewish Caucus also thanked Stein and Cooper.

Mohammed and Hough responded by quickly doubling down on their statements, likely knowing that many in the party would support them.

Mohammed pinned (placed) his post calling Zionists “Nazis” to the top of his Facebook account.

Hough shared The Algemeiner column reporting his comments to social media, proudly quoting himself saying Zionists are the “worst of humanity.”

Rather than apologize, the Muslim Caucus issued a statement defending Mohammed, proclaiming, “We will not be silenced.” The NCDP Arab Caucus also re-posted a statement defending Mohammed.

Last week, the Jewish Democrats were asked on Facebook, “Do you accept Zionists?” Without answering directly, the Jewish Democrats of NCDP responded, “we accept everyone who treats human beings with dignity.” These comments were then promptly removed or hidden from public view.

Rev. Dr. Paul McAllister is chair of the NCDP’s Interfaith Caucus. The day after Stein and Cooper forcefully rejected Mohammed and Hough’s comments, McAllister posted a photo of himself on social media standing with Hough.

This comes as no surprise. McAllister is well known as a man who promotes hatred towards Israel. For example, McAllister endorsed and spoke on a panel, “The Genocide in Palestine,” which prominently featured Leila Khaled on the flyer. Khaled is a convicted hijacker and member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, designated as a terrorist organization by the US government.

A small Jewish, anti-Israel subgroup of McAllister’s Interfaith Caucus posted on social media, “WE STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH ELYAS MOHAMMED.”

This subgroup, or sub-caucus, calls itself Jewish Democrats of NCDP and is openly referred to by supporters as the “non-Zionist caucus.”

Many Democrats believe this non-Zionist group was created to confuse the public into believing that Jews in North Carolina do not support Israel. The confusion is real and likely widespread.

For example, in a recent social media post, a commenter expressed confusion trying to distinguish between the much larger NCDP Jewish Caucus — which represents broad Jewish interests and statewide constituencies — and the very small Jewish Democrats of NCDP, which is the anti-Zionist sub-caucus.

Jewish Democratic leaders across the state have told me they believe the NCDP is violating its own rules by essentially allowing two Jewish caucuses. The NCDP’s Plan of Organization clearly states, “The party will recognize a single auxiliary or caucus for any specific purpose.”

Democrats point out that, for example, there are not two African-American caucuses or two LGBTQ caucuses that are trying to push different viewpoints. Democrats emphasize this is another example of how state party leaders implicitly allow, or even encourage, targeting and demonization of Israel and Zionists.

Jeffrey Bierer is a current member of the Democratic Party’s State Executive Committee. Speaking for himself and not any organization, he told me, “At least four of us [Jewish Caucus members] paid dues to the Interfaith Caucus and we never received any confirmation or information back.”

Bierer also told me he paid separate dues to the Interfaith Caucus’ Jewish Democrats group with the same result.

Bierer said, “We were 100% friendly and respectful and said we would like to get involved. We didn’t get any response. Zero response.”

I reached out to the Jewish Caucus regarding this issue. They provided me a statement that began:

In an effort to bridge religious and political divides, a few of our members attempted to join the NCDP Interfaith Caucus. Initially their membership fees were accepted, then when those members inquired about the lack of regular communication and meeting times, their money was later returned.

It is evident that the North Carolina Democratic Party should investigate this potential discrimination against Jewish members and members who identify with Israel.

The Muslim Caucus is newly formed and currently in the review process seeking “final approval” by the NCDP. The Muslim Caucus is prominently displayed on the NCDP’s website featuring Elyas Mohammed under the heading, “OUR PEOPLE.”

According to the NCDP’s Plan of Organization, caucuses are not just advocacy groups — they are included in, and contribute to, significant decision making and planning within the party.

The document explains, “Caucuses shall be represented on the NCDP Executive Council, the NCDP State Legislative Policy Committee and the Platform and Resolutions Committee by the State President or designated representative and participate in strategic planning for the NCDP.”

I have contacted State Chair Anderson Clayton and First Vice Chair Jonah Garson twice over the past few weeks, sending them quotes, links, and screenshots regarding the comments from Muslim Caucus leaders. They have not responded. Unlike Stein and Cooper, Clayton and Garson have not publicly denounced the comments made by caucus leaders.

Antisemitism within the NCDP is a systemic problem that goes well beyond a few caucus leaders. The NCDP has been targeting Israel for years. For example, on Saturday, June 28, 2025 — during Shabbat — the party passed six anti-Israel resolutions. One of these resolutions even accused Israel of taking “Palestinian hostages.”

Clayton has appeared in smiling photographs with Mohammed and Jibril over the past few years. It is expected and normal that a chair of a state party stands with caucus leaders. But now that Mohammed and Jibril have clearly distinguished themselves as hateful and have targeted a large share of the Jewish Democrats in North Carolina who believe Israel has a right to exist, it is also expected that Clayton and Garson publicly denounce these hateful statements. They have not.

Their silence sends a message that Jewish members of the North Carolina Democratic Party, and all members who support Israel’s right to exist, are not valued or respected.

Rabbi Emeritus Fred Guttman of Temple Emanuel in Greensboro, who formerly served on the executive committee of the state’s Democratic Party, explained:

What has occurred demonizes Jewish supporters of Israel and increases the risk of violent acts against Jews in North Carolina. This is extremely serious…Those in leadership positions should continue to speak out clearly and condemn it…Leadership carries responsibility, and failure to address antisemitism undermines the safety and integrity of the community. We certainly do not need a repeat in North Carolina of tragedies such as Bondi Beach, Manchester, England, or the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

The North Carolina Democratic Party should take prompt action to unequivocally demonstrate that antisemitism, and discrimination against Jews and those who identify with Israel, will not be tolerated. Jewish safety — and equal treatment for all — depends on it.

Peter Reitzes writes about antisemitism in North Carolina and beyond.