T. Belman.  “The (US) officials said, the terrorists ‘need to understand that Washington will help Israel defend itself’ against any counter-aggression”. Defend, not attack. Remember that the US has two battled formations in the area to enable them to do so.

Mark failed to deal with the possible escalation into a regional war.

By Mark Dubowitz, FDD  Chief Executive

Less than 72 hours before the first debate of the US presidential election, Joe Biden’s White House is bumbling.

On Sunday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Charles Q. Brown made the extraordinary claim that America will not protect Israel in a war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah terrorists.

‘The U.S. won’t likely be able to help Israel defend itself against a broader Hezbollah war as well as it helped Israel fight off an Iranian barrage of missiles and drones,’ Brown told reporters.

By Monday, U.S. officials were backtracking, reportedly issuing a rare warning through intermediaries to the Iranian-backed terror group.

Read more…

June 26, 2024 | Israel at War Situation Report

By Jonathan Schanzer, FDD

Today’s Issue: | IAF Eliminates Hamas Weapons Smuggler Wissam Abu Ishaq in Southern Gaza | IAF Kills ‘Significant’ PIJ Operative in Gaza City Airstrike | IDF Announces Arrest of Tulkarem Resident for Shooting Attacks Against Bat Hefer | Urban Warfare Expert John Spencer: ‘Israel is Winning’ | Latest FDD Analysis

IAF Eliminates Hamas Weapons Smuggler Wissam Abu Ishaq in Southern Gaza: The IDF on Wednesday announced that the Israeli Air Force, with intelligence from Aman military intelligence, carried out a targeted strike yesterday against Wissam Abu Ishaq in the southern Gaza Strip. According to the IDF, Ishaq was involved in weapons smuggling for Hamas and in recent years, conducted smuggling through the Rafah crossing and through tunnels. The IDF also reported Wednesday that overnight, IAF aircraft, directed by the Southern Command, carried out a strike in Rafah against a launch site where rockets ready for launch were being stored. In addition, IAF drones and fighter jets struck dozens of terror targets in Gaza over the past day, including terrorist squads, military buildings, and tunnel shafts.

Read more…

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— Rabbi Jacob Y. Herzog ??????? ????? ??????? ?????? (@RabbiHerzog) June 27, 2024

Peloni:  An important series of discussion.

Peloni:  As if this story were not outrageous enough already.

At Columbia, the antisemitic plot thickens.

Hugh Fitzgerald | June 26, 2024

“Three Columbia Deans Placed on Leave Pending Investigation,” by Eliana Johnson, Washington Free Beacon, June 20, 2024:

Three of the Columbia University deans caught exchanging dismissive text messages during a May 31 panel on anti-Semitism have been placed on leave as the university investigates the incident, a spokesman for the school said Thursday.

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Peloni: Today’s decision by SCOTUS to overturn the stay placed on the Murthy v. Biden case does NOT overturn the actual Murthy v. Biden case, as the injunction associated with the case was all that SCOTUS was hearing.  Also, the case which was brought to SCOTUS was criticized at the time it was brought as being poorly argued and badly presented, inviting today’s decision.  It is none the less regretful that the injunction was not upheld, and the use of standing to once again dodge an important ruling does little to raise hopes for SCOTUS, but the primary case, Murthy v. Biden continues as DC Draino explains below, and will likely come to be ultimately assessed by SCOTUS at a later date.  Hopefully when that eventuality does come to be, the presentation will be better prepared and better argued than during the case on the injunction.

There is a lot of doom and gloom about the 6-3 SCOTUS decision in Murthy v. Biden and how it impacts the 1st Amendment

I would like to quell some of those concerns

This decision reversed the injunction based on *standing*

SCOTUS said that without the plaintiffs having…

— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) June 26, 2024

Reading ‘American Pastoral’ in the wake of October 7

By Irina Velitskaya, COMMENTARY

AP Photo/Richard Drew, file

The historical conundrum of the Jewish people has no clear parallel in the long chronicle of civilizations that have come and gone, and those that have survived and prevailed, in humankind’s vast history. Consider other ancient, preexisting non-Islamic tribes in the Middle East. The Samaritans today number fewer than 1,000 living individuals. The Copts of Egypt are under severe pressure. The Yazidi, subject to centuries of forced conversions to Islam and more recently massacred and sold into sexual slavery by ISIS, continue to hold on in profoundly diminished form, predominantly in Iraq. Other tribal or ethnic groups, including the Philistines, Amorites, Edomites, Lydians, Moabites, and Hittites, are long extinct. As Carl Sagan once put it in a broader context, “Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.”

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Very important data showing MAGA Republicans are more pro-Israel than traditional Republicans. Contrary to all the conventional wisdom but something I always understood. https://t.co/vWCv8eYo7B

— David M Friedman (@DavidM_Friedman) June 25, 2024

By Barry Shaw

Since Hamas’s savage attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the Israeli Defense Forces have been operating in Gaza to eliminate Hamas’s military and governance capabilities and to attempt to free the Israeli hostages.

During this operation, a wealth of new intelligence has been gathered on Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terror organizations.

Israeli forces have retrieved millions of documents of captured enemy material.

This new intelligence exposed two related issues:
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T. Belman. Col Macgregor says Israel will defeat Hezbollah and may even use Tactical Nuclear Weapons to do so in order to limit the damage Hezbollah can visit upon Israel.  Once this happens it is probable that we will have a regional war at a minimum. Iran will probably try to help Hezbollah with troops and munitions and Israel will probably attack Iran to put an end to their nuclear program at a minum and maybe an end to the regime itself. It is likely that Russia will help Iran and so on. And Turkey may join in.

Meanwhile the US is trying to prevent this from happening. She fears a regional war because they will not win it. The US don’t have enough of anything. According to him, Netanyahu is betting on the US helping Israel.

Macgregor thinks the US should put an end to this war as soon as possible.. But doesn’t think they will.

Why history is repeating itself on campus.

Daniel Greenfield | June 26, 2024

The Nazi cheers of Sieg Heil didn’t start out in Munich, but in Massachusetts.

The Nazi chant was borrowed from Harvard football cheers and imported to Germany by Ernst “Putzy” Hanfstaengl, a Harvard man in good standing who befriended Hitler and helped build a more respectable brand for the National Socialists.

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T. Belman. For Ettinger, the only issue is whether Israel can defy the US. I take that as a given, but for me, the issue is, is State Dept, Guterres, Macgregor andc Sachs wrong to worry about a regional war that the US can’t win. Or can they?

The question of who will dominate the Indian Ocean—powers committed to values of moderation and restraint, or powers committed to fundamentalism and fanaticism—is one that must be seriously addressed

Martin Sherman  | June 24, 2024

The following essay is not intended to be a comprehensive tour d’horizon of the post-independence evolution of the relations between Israel and India, nor even of the overall scope of defense ties that have developed so rapidly since the early 1990s. Rather, it has a narrower focus: The importance that the maritime theater—i.e. the Indian Ocean and its adjacent waters—has for both countries and the scope of cooperation and potential benefits that could accrue to both from close collaboration in this sphere.

However, some deference to the wider general context cannot be totally avoided.

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Peloni:  So what might Assange have given up to gain his freedom after all of these years and finally being within the ultimate control of the American Deep State?

Wikileaks Founder Released from London Prison Heading Back to Australia

Sundance | June 25, 2024

With an announcement of his departure from prison, many people are excited about the possibility of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange revealing information about the Obama/Biden surveillance state. I would urge everyone to temper those sentiments.

The Biden DOJ is a malicious leftist political targeting machine, with only one intention carried out with the Lawfare that underpins their mission. Main Justice, and especially the DOJ National Security Division within the DOJ, is the center of all corrupt justice operations.

Read more…

By Seth J. Frantzman

Today’s Issue: | 401st Brigade Raids Hamas Training Sites in Rafah Area, Finding Weapons and Tunnel Shafts | Gazans Seeking Medical Treatment Abroad Will be Permitted to Leave Through Kerem Shalom Crossing | COGAT: 275 Aid Trucks Entered Gaza on Sunday, Only 159 Collected | In West Bank Operations, IDF Arrests Wanted Persons, Confiscates Materials for Producing Explosives | Latest FDD Analysis

401st Brigade Raids Hamas Training Sites in Rafah Area, Finding Weapons and Tunnel Shafts: On Sunday, troops from the IDF’s 162nd Division were continuing operations in the Rafah area. During “precise, intelligence-based operations,” the division’s 401st Armored Brigade destroyed the Abu Said compound, which Hamas’s Tel Sultan Battalion used for training. Troops also found tunnel shafts and weapons storage facilities as well as the office of battalion commander Mahmoud Hamdan and the office of Hamas commander Yasser Natat, who was in charge of Rafah Brigade rocket fire against Israel and soldiers in Gaza. The 401st Brigade also carried out another operation in a Hamas training complex, finding tunnel shafts used for attacking IDF troops as well as a large quantity of weapons and intelligence documents.

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By Jacob Olidort  Former Director of Research, JINSA

Israel, unlike the United States, has demonstrated its resolve to respond with force to each and every attack against it by Iran or its proxies. However, it is not just Israel’s willingness to use force that is noteworthy but its disposition to do so in a way that coerces and constrains Iranian power.

The United States should learn from Israel’s approach, particularly its April 19 strike inside Iran, and apply, together with Israel, a coercive strategy that seeks to constrain, degrade, and eventually collapse the Iranian regime.

The Biden administration has only recently come around to appreciate this approach when it took out an Iranian proxy commander in response to Iran’s January 28 drone attack that killed three U.S. servicemembers. Since then, Iran appears to have paused attacks against U.S. personnel. Up until that point, the United States had responded to Iranian proxy escalation by striking token weapons depots and killing low-level Iranian military bystanders, describing each response as “self-defense.” Unsurprisingly, those responses only encouraged Iranian escalation.

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by Jonathan Spyer June 24/24

(Photo: Shutterstock)

Tensions on Israel’s northern border are currently at their highest point since the outbreak of hostilities in October last year. On Friday, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: ‘One rash move – one miscalculation – could trigger a catastrophe that goes far beyond the border, and frankly, beyond imagination.’

The latest reports indicate that the US has declared it will give Israel its ‘full support’ in the event of war with Hezbollah. This appears to go hand in hand, however, with an American determination to prevent any Israeli action which might precipitate such a war. So what is the current situation? And where are things heading?
Read more…