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Deif’s Elimination Would Be a Major Blow to Hamas
Illustrative. Smoke rises following Israeli airstrikes on Gaza. Photo: Reuters/Amir Cohen
JNS.org – The elimination of Mohammad Deif, head of Hamas’s military wing, would represent a significant blow to both Hamas’s morale and operational capabilities.
Deif, whose death in an Israeli airstrike on Saturday has not yet been confirmed, was the mastermind behind three decades of jihadist terrorism against Israel. He was also a key catalyst in Hamas’s ongoing efforts to team up with Iran and mortally wound Israel through a war of jihadist attrition from Gaza, Judea and Samaria and Lebanon.
He played a crucial role in transforming Hamas from a guerilla force into a full-blown terror army within Gaza, complete with command and control, a major rocket arsenal and an unprecedented network of combat tunnels. A terror army that would go on to unleash the deadliest attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
Israeli officials reported on Saturday that the Israel Defense Forces had carried out a targeted strike near Gaza’s Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone, close to Khan Younis. The two targets were Deif, the commander of Hamas’s military wing, and Rafa Salama, the commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade. Both were responsible for planning and carrying out Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, according to the officials.
The strike was a coordinated joint effort by the IDF Southern Command and the Israeli Air Force, with significant participation by IDF Military Intelligence and the Israel Security Agency. According to Israeli intelligence, most of the other casualties from the strike were also terrorists.
The targeted area was described as an open space surrounded by trees, several buildings and sheds, that functioned as an operational compound. At this time, there is no indication that any Israeli hostages were present in the vicinity of the strike.
The strategic significance of this operation cannot be overstated. Deif’s elimination will disrupt Hamas’s military hierarchy and operational planning, dealing a severe blow to its command structure. Over the years, Deif had become synonymous with Hamas’s military strategy. His expertise and leadership in guerilla warfare and mass-casualty terrorism, and his ability to adapt and transform Hamas’s military capabilities, made him an invaluable asset to the organization. Symbolically as well, he gained cult-like status among Palestinians, and his name was chanted by radical Islamists in Judea and Samaria and on the Temple Mount as well.
A military official noted that high-ranking Hamas officials deliberately chose Al-Mawasi for their operational activities, to avoid detection and complicate military action against them. The official stressed that Israel makes every effort to avoid harm to noncombatants, adding that Hamas’s human shielding is failing to protect its senior terrorists.
“We are attacking the most high-ranking Hamas commanders, who are masterminds of the Oct. 7 [attacks] and … conducted terror against Israel for years,” said the official.
By eliminating figures like Deif and Salama, Israel not only dismantles the leadership framework of Hamas, but also helps crush Hamas’s future hopes to rebuild an effective terror army, a key war goal.
The strike is also an indication of the quality of Israel’s intelligence regarding Gaza. The collaboration between the IDF and ISA, and the ability to locate and eliminate such high-profile targets is a testament to an increasingly tight intelligence grip on an area that was once Hamas’s comfortable home turf.
As such, the strike is a pivotal moment in Israel’s long-term war against the “ring of fire” with which Iran has attempted to surround the Jewish state. Hamas and its allies in Tehran and Beirut are bearing witness to Israel’s determination and ability to remove jihadist commanders, and to continuously degrade their hopes to force Israel into surrender.
The post Deif’s Elimination Would Be a Major Blow to Hamas first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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UCLA student government condemns campus Hillel for hosting former hostage
A campus event featuring freed Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov drew the condemnation of UCLA’s student government on Tuesday. In an open letter, the UCLA Students Associated Council said that bringing Tov to speak to students “served to legitimize and normalize” atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon.
Shem Tov, 23, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in Southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and held hostage in Gaza until his release in a prisoner exchange in February 2025. UCLA hosted him on April 14 for a Yom HaShoah event.
“While we affirm the humanity of all people impacted by violence, we reject the selective platforming of narratives that obscure the broader reality of ongoing state violence,” the student government letter wrote in the letter, which was addressed to the UCLA administration and UCLA Hillel among others. “Israel is currently continuing to carry out what has been widely identified by human rights advocates as a genocide in Gaza, while also expanding its illegal military campaign into Lebanon.
“In this context, elevating a single narrative, absent of critical political and humanitarian framing, serves to legitimize and normalize these ongoing atrocities.”
Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, UCLA Hillel’s director emeritus, called the statement “completely ridiculous.”
“You can’t present the narrative of your experience without it being called ‘one sided,’” Seidler-Feller said. “There has to be a counter-story to persecution. Is there a counter-story to killing people?”
UCLA Hillel executive director Daniel Gold dismissed the criticism in Tuesday’s letter as antisemitic.
“Hillel at UCLA and Students Supporting Israel UCLA would like to apologize…for absolutely nothing,” he wrote in a statement. “Members of UCLA student government have once again shown they are anti-dialogue, anti-learning, anti-truth, anti-student and antisemitic.”
The USAC did not respond to a request for comment.
As college campuses across the country became a hotspot for pro-Palestinian activism following the Oct. 7 attack, UCLA, with an activist history and a large Jewish population, stood out as a major flashpoint. Its student encampment was the site of a riot in April 2024 and eventually cleared by police in riot gear.
The USAC has sided with pro-Palestinian protesters throughout. In a Feb. 2025 letter titled “We Are All SJP,” the USAC, which is democratically elected by the roughly 30,000-member UCLA student body, condemned Chancellor Julio Frenk’s suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine. The letter referred to Israel only as “the Zionist state” or put the country’s name inside quotation marks.
The University of California has since been sued by the Department of Justice, which said that UCLA created a hostile work environment against Jewish and Israeli faculty in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
The post UCLA student government condemns campus Hillel for hosting former hostage appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump extends ceasefire with Iran, even after Iran balks at new round of negotiations
(JTA) — President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he would unilaterally extend the U.S.-Israeli ceasefire with Iran, even though Iran had not agreed to his conditions or even to return to the negotiating table.
Trump announced the decision on Truth Social just hours before the two-week-old deal was set to expire. Citing Iran’s “fractured” leadership, Trump wrote that he had been asked by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to “hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified proposal.”
Vice President JD Vance’s planned trip to Islamabad, where talks were set to take place, was postponed indefinitely after Iran failed to confirm its participation in negotiations.
Trump added that the United States would maintain its naval blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz, despite Iran’s repeated calls for the restrictions to be lifted.
The announcement marked a sharp departure from the president’s statements earlier in the day, telling CNBC that, if a deal was not made before the deadline, “I expect to be bombing.”
In a statement Tuesday, Sharif thanked Trump for his “gracious acceptance” of Pakistan’s request to extend the ceasefire, adding that the country would “continue its earnest efforts for a negotiated settlement of the conflict.”
The announcement adds to uncertain about the war’s future, including for Israelis who lived through six weeks of Iranian bombing, and renews questions about Trump’s commitment to achieving his war goals, which have varied and included blunting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, achieving regime change, and destroying Iran’s stockpile of ballistic missiles. He said earlier this week that he was asking Iran to limit its nuclear program for 20 years, five years longer than was required by the deal struck by Barack Obama in 2015. Trump exited that deal in 2018.
Last week, Trump announced a different ceasefire, between Israel and Lebanon, on Truth Social, contradicting Israel’s claim that the Iran ceasefire would not apply to its fighting with Hezbollah, an Iran-backed proxy in Lebanon.
Trump’s announcement of the ceasefire extension came during the night in Israel, after Israelis began their celebration of Independence Day. It drew criticism from one of his staunchest pro-Israel supporters, the Zionist Organization of America, whose national president Morton Klein said in a statement that “interminable delay is the standard Islamic Iranian regime negotiating tactic” and that acceding to it represented a victory for Iran. The statement did not mention Trump.
The post Trump extends ceasefire with Iran, even after Iran balks at new round of negotiations appeared first on The Forward.
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Alan Dershowitz quits Democratic Party, calling it ‘most anti-Israel party in U.S. history’
(JTA) — Alan Dershowitz, the prominent pro-Israel attorney whose clients have included Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, announced on Monday that he was leaving the Democratic party and registering as a Republican.
Describing himself as a “lifelong Democrat,” Dershowitz wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that he had decided to “bite the bullet and register as a Republican,” citing Democratic support for an arms embargo on Israel last week and the Michigan Senate candidate Abdul el-Sayed’s anti-Israel rhetoric.
“There is no denying that the hard left, anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party has moved from the fringe to the mainstream,” Dershowitz wrote, adding that “Republicans have their own antisemitic fringe, but for now it remains a fringe.”
The announcement formalized a political evolution for Dershowitz, who defended Trump during his first impeachment and has increasingly broken with Democrats over Israel in recent years.
In 2021, Dershowitz nominated Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Avi Berkowitz, Trump’s top Middle Eastern envoy during his first administration, for the Nobel Peace Prize over their hand in shaping the Abraham Accords.
Dershowitz — who has recently faced scrutiny over his ties to Epstein, and previously denied allegations of sexual misconduct made by one of Epstein’s accusers — panned the Democratic Party as the “most anti-Israel party in U.S. history” in the op-ed.
“I believe that the Democratic Party’s hostility to Israel represents a deeper and more dangerous shift away from the center and toward a radical approach that is bad for America and the free world,” Dershowitz wrote, adding that he intended to “work hard to prevent the Democrats from gaining control of the House and Senate.”
Dershowitz’s comments are in line with Trump’s statements about Jews and the Democratic Party. He has repeatedly expressed amazement at how any Jews could vote for the Democrats considering his own record when it comes to Israel.
The post Alan Dershowitz quits Democratic Party, calling it ‘most anti-Israel party in U.S. history’ appeared first on The Forward.