Uncategorized
US, Israel Pressure Lebanon as Hezbollah Rebuilds Military Arsenal, Risk of Renewed Conflict Looms
Lebanese army members and residents inspect damage in the southern village of Kfar Kila, Lebanon, Feb. 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Karamallah Daher
With Hezbollah reportedly rebuilding its military arsenal, the United States and Israel are intensifying pressure on the Lebanese government to disarm the terrorist group and establish a state monopoly on weapons, as tensions rise along Lebanon’s southern border and the risk of renewed conflict grows.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Monday that it killed two Hezbollah operatives in separate precision strikes in southern Lebanon. The announcement came one day after the Israeli military said in a statement that it had eliminated four members of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force.
Last week, Israel launched airstrikes targeting Hezbollah terrorists and operatives responsible for the Islamist group’s logistical network in Lebanon, claiming they were working to rebuild Iran-backed Hezbollah’s terrorist infrastructure in the region.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Sunday that Hezbollah was seeking to rearm and that Israel would exercise its right to self-defense under last year’s ceasefire accord if Lebanon, which borders the Jewish state to the north, failed to disarm the Lebanese terrorist group.
“Hezbollah is constantly taking hits, but it’s also trying to rearm and recuperate,” Netanyahu said at the start of a weekly cabinet meeting,
“We expect the Lebanese government to uphold its commitments, namely, to disarm Hezbollah. But it’s clear that we’ll exercise our right to self-defense as stipulated in the ceasefire terms,” he said. “We won’t let Lebanon become a renewed front against us, and we’ll do what’s necessary.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israeli Katz expressed similar sentiments, specifically calling out Lebanon’s president.
“Hezbollah is playing with fire, and the president of Lebanon is dragging his feet,” Katz said in a statement. “The Lebanese government’s commitment to disarm Hezbollah and remove it from southern Lebanon must be implemented. Maximum enforcement will continue and even intensify – we will not allow any threat to the residents of the north.”
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun last week ordered the army to confront IDF incursions along the southern border, after accusing Israel of hindering prospects for negotiations by escalating its military operations inside the country.
“Lebanon is ready for negotiations to end the Israeli occupation, but any negotiation … requires mutual willingness, which is not the case,” Aoun said Friday during a joint press conference with German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul in Beirut.
Israel “is responding to this option by carrying out more attacks against Lebanon … and intensifying tensions,” the Lebanese leader continued.
According to Hanin Ghaddar, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, US and Israeli officials have sent a clear message: if Lebanon fails to properly implement the ceasefire agreement and take stronger action to disarm the Iran-backed terrorist group by the end of the year, Israel will continue to step up its operations along the southern border.
“Lebanon prefers to avoid confronting Hezbollah — essentially, it would rather let Israel do the job than have the Lebanese army face the group directly,” Ghaddar told The Algemeiner.
She explained that the Lebanese government has reportedly considered a plan to disarm Hezbollah south of the Litani River, located roughly 15 miles from the Israeli border, and contain it to northern areas, but noted that such an approach is unlikely to succeed, as Israel will not tolerate the terrorist group’s presence anywhere in the country.
An Israeli official told the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV channel on Sunday that there are “serious estimations” Hezbollah is rebuilding its military capabilities and has smuggled hundreds of short-range missiles from Syria.
“Israel has relayed a message to the Lebanese side that it might again bomb Beirut’s southern suburbs if Hezbollah is not disarmed,” the official told Al Arabiya. “We will not allow the rebuilding of the Lebanese villages that lie directly on the northern border.”
The Israeli added that the IDF will continue occupying five Lebanese hilltop locations and has no plans to withdraw in the “foreseeable future.”
Amid rising tensions and increasing chances of renewed conflict with Jerusalem, new reports indicate that Hezbollah has been actively rebuilding its military capabilities, in violation of last year’s ceasefire agreement with the Jewish state.
On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Hezbollah is restocking rockets, anti-tank missiles, and artillery, effectively rebuilding its armaments and battered ranks.
With support from Iran, Hezbollah is intensifying efforts to bolster its military power, including the production and repair of weapons, smuggling of arms and cash through seaports and Syrian routes, recruitment and training, and the use of civilian infrastructure as a base and cover for its operations.
“The Iranians are much more involved in Lebanon today since Nasrallah was killed, because there is no clear leadership,” Ghaddar told The Algemeiner, referring to Hezbollah’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed during last year’s war with Israel.
“It’s more of an Iranian occupation now, not just a proxy influence,” she continued. “The stronger Hezbollah becomes, the weaker Lebanon gets, and the prospects for disarmament and peace will continue to diminish.”
At a conference in Bahrain on Saturday, US Special Envoy Thomas Barrack warned that Hezbollah maintains an estimated 40,000 fighters in the country, along with 15,000 to 20,000 rockets and missiles. He also described Lebanon as a “failed state” and said it probably won’t be able to comply with the US demand that it disarms Hezbollah.
In recent weeks, Israel has conducted strikes targeting Hezbollah’s rearmament efforts, particularly south of the Litani River, where the group’s operatives have historically been most active against the Jewish state.
For years, Israel has demanded that Hezbollah be barred from carrying out activities south of the Litani.
According to Ghaddar, Jerusalem is considering further escalation in Lebanon, but what form that might take remains unclear.
She explained that a new conflict could involve continued strikes against Hezbollah’s arsenal and personnel, or expand to residential areas where the group is hiding strategic weapons.
“Israel has more opportunity to act now because Hezbollah is at its weakest. The terror group is trying to rearm but hasn’t succeeded yet,” Ghaddar told The Algemeiner. “If Israel waits, Hezbollah will only grow stronger.”
Even though the US is giving the Lebanese army until the end of the year to finish operations south of the Litani River and begin moving north, Ghaddar warned that if the government does not start the second phase immediately, Washington could give Israel the green light to take military action.
For the Lebanese government, the challenge is not just stepping up efforts to meet the ceasefire deadline to disarm Hezbollah but also preventing the country from plunging into a civil war.
Hezbollah has repeatedly defied international calls to disarm, even threatening protests and civil unrest if the government tries to enforce control over its weapons.
Last week, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem once again refused to lay down the group’s arms, insisting that its military arsenal is a “legitimate tool for resisting Israel’s occupation and threats.”
Earlier this year, Lebanese officials agreed to a US-backed disarmament plan, which called for the terrorist group to be fully disarmed within four months — by November — in exchange for Israel halting airstrikes and withdrawing troops from the five occupied positions in the country’s southern region.
According to Ghaddar, the main problem is that the Lebanese forces’ plan to disarm Hezbollah lacks a clear timeline.
So far, they have only set a deadline to complete operations south of the Litani River by the end of the year, with the next phase moving north of the river and eventually covering the rest of the country.
“It is definitely unrealistic for the Lebanese army to achieve full disarmament by the end of the year,” Ghaddar said, noting that the subsequent phases, for which they refuse to provide a timeline, could take months or even years.
“The goal should be to reach a better agreement now. The ceasefire was a good start, but it lacked a clear timeline, and Hezbollah is using this period to rearm and rebuild itself militarily, financially, and politically,” she continued.
Ghaddar also said any new agreement should require Lebanon to engage in direct peace negotiations in order to politically weaken Hezbollah and secure an end to the conflict through a negotiated settlement.
In these efforts, she argued that the US could play a central role by pressuring the Lebanese government through sanctions, intensified diplomatic efforts, and conditional support for the Lebanese army to ensure meaningful progress.
Uncategorized
PEN America president, defending Israel’s critics, resigns after report warns of threats to Jewish authors
(JTA) — The president of PEN America resigned over the weekend in protest of a report on boycotts targeting Jewish and Israeli authors, part of yet another round of internal division over Israel at the literary free-speech institution.
Dinaw Mengestu, an Ethiopian-American novelist and Bard College professor, told The Atlantic he was stepping down because he believed the PEN report, “A Silent Moratorium,” failed to defend the free-speech rights of participants in the movement to boycott Israel.
“It’s the First Amendment that allows all of us to engage in boycotts, not PEN America,” Mengestu told the publication. “PEN America as a free expression organization is supposed to defend that right.”
The author did not respond to multiple Jewish Telegraphic Agency requests for comment, but in an Instagram post Monday alluded to an interest in creating a new organization to rival the prominent nonprofit, which defends the free expression rights other writers.
In response to an interview request, PEN sent a statement to JTA saying it was “grateful” for Mengestu’s leadership and would “respect” his decision. The statement also alluded to PEN’s own past turmoil: “We tell hard stories, in politically challenging moments, about writers from a range of perspectives, even when it’s uncomfortable for us given our own recent history.”
In its report, published on its blog, PEN described “Jewish and Israeli writers who feel that the mainstream literary world is increasingly shutting them out because of their identity, nationality, or views.” Interview subjects include several Israel critics, as well as literary agents who assert that they face more difficulties signing Jewish authors after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and amid the subsequent war in Gaza. The report also repeatedly cited a JTA report about a 2024 viral list of “Zionist” authors to boycott.
Among other details, PEN’s report revealed that Israeli novelist Etgar Keret and public radio host Ira Glass had cancelled a planned live event in Australia over fears of threats and protest.
“This silencing and exclusion of writers is a threat to what PEN America is fundamentally committed to defending: a culture of free expression for all,” according to the report.
In addition to the report, PEN also altered its institutional policy toward cultural boycotts, which the organization has long opposed. Although its report on Jewish authors asserted that boycotts “threaten the free expression rights” of their targets, the revised guidelines say that the group will also defend the right of writers to participate in boycotts.
Mengestu’s resignation comes at a perilous moment for Jews facing cultural boycotts, both within the standard-bearers of PEN and elsewhere. PEN’s Jewish former longtime CEO stepped down in 2024 following months of blowback from rank-and-file authors who felt the organization was insufficiently critical of Israel and caused PEN to cancel a festival for global authors.
Since the leadership change, PEN leadership has published and retracted a condemnation of a boycott effort trained at an Israeli comedian and also published a report cataloguing Israel’s “cultural destruction in Gaza.”
Mengestu had assumed the role of board president in 2025. But PEN’s report about Jewish and Israeli writers on Thursday, he wrote, “makes clear that [change] will not happen.”
The Anti-Defamation League said it was “deeply troubled” by Mengestu’s resignation Monday. “Freedom of expression means opposing efforts to boycott, silence, or exclude writers because of their identity or nationality,” the organization tweeted, saying that the author’s decision to leave PEN over his objections to the report on Jewish authors “sends a chilling message.” Jewish authors also objected.
“Imagine running a free expression org and resigning because it refuses to blacklist authors based on their nationality,” the author David Zweig wrote on X, musing whether Mengestu would object to boycotting authors from his birth country: “Ethiopia doesn’t exactly have a good human rights record.”
In response to The Atlantic’s story that quoted sources from inside PEN who were critical of his resignation, Mengestu wrote a lengthy Instagram post Monday in which he stated, “This piece is about trying to suppress constitutionally protected speech,” criticized past PEN reports critical of the BDS movement, and added, “What PEN America fails to understand is that boycott is a form of dialogue.”
He announced his intention to “help make something better,” receiving affirmative comments from notable authors including Viet Thanh Nguyen, Angela Flournoy, Jewish pro-Palestinian novelist Jess Row and Pulitzer Prize-winner Benjamin Moser, author of a forthcoming history of Jewish anti-Zionism.
Other Jewish authors on the left were among those defending Mengestu’s decision to step down.
“Dinaw is one hundred percent correct that this kind of fake victim propaganda can be used to support anti-Boycott legislation which violates the First Amendment and is everywhere as popular support for Palestinians grows,” author Sarah Schulman wrote on Facebook. Calling PEN’s blog about Jews “one of those fake anti-semitism pieces,” Schulman added, “If PEN wants to survive, they have to get out of the Israel/Zionism business.”
The post PEN America president, defending Israel’s critics, resigns after report warns of threats to Jewish authors appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Church of England backs study of Palestinian Christian document accusing Israel of genocide
(JTA) — The Church of England’s legislative body voted Monday to encourage churches across England to engage with a document produced by Palestinian Christians that accuses Israel of genocide despite requests from Jewish organizations and Britain’s chief rabbi to reject it.
The document is titled “Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide” and is also known as Kairos II, after the Palestinian Christian movement Kairos Palestine that produced it. It describes Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as a genocide, states that Israel is a “colonial enterprise built on racism,” and says decades of “occupation,” “apartheid” and “settler colonialism” are at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The vote on Monday does not adopt the accusations as church doctrine but says the church should hear the documents as “heartfelt expressions of the lived experience of Palestinian Christians,” and to engage with them in order to better understand the conflict.
Ahead of the debate in York, several Jewish organizations expressed concerns, and Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis asked Synod members to reject the amendment. Mirvis called Kairos II “deeply concerning” and that it “risks undermining decades of careful relationship-building” between Christians and Jews.
“It is truly shocking that a document which purports to speak in the name of truth contains so much falsehood,” he said.
Afterwards, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Phil Rosenberg, issued a statement calling the passage of the motion “highly problematic.”
“Kairos Palestine may come from a place of genuine pain, but the falsehoods and distortions of Kairos II, including its erasure of Jewish identity and experience, is a prescription for more division and not the answer to conflict in the Middle East,” he said.
“This document reflects the pain and trauma of the Palestinian people. As a pastor, I hear the cry of our Palestinian Christian sisters and brothers — a cry that rises from the ruins of Gaza, and from the violence and oppression of the West Bank,” she said.
She added, ”I also hear the concerns of the chief rabbi, the co-leads of the Movement for Progressive Judaism, and the Board of Deputies, and I thank them for their honesty.” She said the church remained opposed to antisemitism and committed to safety for Israelis as well as Palestinians.
The Synod debate followed Mullally’s visit to the West Bank in June, where she met Palestinian Christian communities in Birzeit. During the visit she said, “I will use my role as Archbishop to seek the peace you desire and the freedom you deserve.”
The debate marks the ascendance of Israel-related issues in another major church, after the Catholic Church’s Pope Leo XIV angered Jewish groups soon after being elected last year by endorsing an investigation into whether Israel committed genocide in Gaza.
The post Church of England backs study of Palestinian Christian document accusing Israel of genocide appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Mike Pence denounces alleged arson of Israeli flag in his Indiana hometown
(JTA) — Former Vice President Mike Pence has weighed in against antisemitism after officials in his Indiana town say a costly fire may have been caused by arson to an Israeli flag displayed on a local barn.
The alleged arson broke out early Friday morning, damaging a historic home in Zionsville, Indiana, where Pence lives, and causing an estimated $150,000 in damages, according to the Zionsville Police Department.
Zionsville Mayor John Stehr said during a press conference on Friday that officials believed the fire began when an individual set fire to an Israeli flag that had been displayed outside the building alongside an American flag. The town later announced that the FBI had joined the investigation and that officials were examining whether the arson “may have been motivated by bias” but said no determination had been made.
“Absolutely despicable,” Pence tweeted on Sunday. “There can be no tolerance in America for Antisemitism or political acts of violence, and it is heartbreaking to see in our adopted hometown of Zionsville, Indiana. We thank God no one was hurt and urge anyone with information to contact law enforcement.”
Pence has long cast himself as a staunch supporter of Israel, including after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, and has also repeatedly spoken out against antisemitism in the conservative movement and beyond.
Republican Indiana Sen. Jim Banks also condemned the alleged arson in a post on X Saturday. “Antisemitism will not be tolerated. Not in Zionsville. Not in Indiana. Not anywhere,” Banks wrote. “Thank you to the federal, state, and local officials working to bring the perpetrators of this despicable arson attack to justice.”
On Sunday, the Jewish community in central Indiana hosted a rally condemning the alleged arson attack, chanting, “We will stand up,” according to local outlet Fox 59. While Zionsville does not have a large Jewish community of its own, other suburbs of Indianapolis have significant Jewish populations, and Zionsville is also the longtime home of a Reform movement summer camp, the Goldman Union Camp Institute, which is in session now.
“The founding fathers founded a country where we have the ability to resolve differences among each other; we don’t do it by firebombing homes,” rally organizer David Schiller told Fox 59. “It’s inexcusable and unacceptable.”
The Zionsville Police Department did not respond to an inquiry from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the status of the investigation on Monday.
The post Mike Pence denounces alleged arson of Israeli flag in his Indiana hometown appeared first on The Forward.
