By David Israel, JEWISH PRESS  4 January 2024

Nasrallah’s deputy Hussein Yazbek was assassinated in south Lebanon, January 3, 2024./Twitter Screenshot

It appears that Israel is honing its message to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, to get his army behind the Litani River or else. On Wednesday night, 90 minutes after Nasrallah finished his speech that included references to the previous day’s assassination of Hamas bigwig Saleh al-Arouri in Dahieh, the Shiite neighborhood of Beirut and Hezbollah’s stronghold, an air strike destroyed a house in Naqoura on the Mediterranean shore in southern Lebanon, killing Nasrallah’s deputy Hussein Yazbek and three underlings.

Hezbollah acknowledged on Wednesday morning the killing of four of its members, including Yazbek, identifying the others as Ibrahim Afif, Hadi Ali Reda, and Hussein Ali Muhammad Ghazala.

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By A Correspondent on the Ground, AMWAJ.MEDIA  2 Jan 2024

Senior Hamas commander Saleh Al-Arouri and former Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani at a commemoration ceremony in Tehran, Iran on Jan. 16, 2018. (Photo via Fars News Agency)

A suspected Israeli drone strike has killed senior Hamas military commander Saleh Al-Arouri in southern Beirut. The rare precision attack targeted an office of the Palestinian movement in Dahiyeh, a suburb known as home to many supporters of the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement. Given the choice of target as well as the location and timing, the incident is seen as a major escalation by Israel, which is mired in bloody fighting in Gaza.

The assassination of Arouri, who for the past six years was deputy political bureau chief of Hamas, has significant dimensions in the context of the Gaza war and the regional confrontations it has sparked. Importantly, the killing also puts the spotlight on the triangle of relations between Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran’s Quds Force—and what may be next.

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Peloni: Also, Alan Dershowitz Asked to Represent Israel in the ICJ Hearing on the Gaza Genocide

Alan Dershowitz  COMPACT, January 3, 2024

Critics of Israel have charged the Jewish state with committing atrocities and even “genocide” in its ongoing war with Hamas. The South African government has even brought these charges before the International Court of Justice. The accusations are without merit: Israel has committed no war crimes in seeking to degrade and destroy Hamas in Gaza. Hamas, by contrast, has committed at least four categories of war crimes.

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By Gadi Taub and Michael Doran, TABLET  JAN 02, 2024

Gadi Taub and Mike Doran see Israeli politics returning with a vengeance. The Israeli left, with an assist from elements in the military, is promoting a campaign depicting “settler violence” in the West Bank as the impediment to a two-state solution. Meanwhile the Israeli Supreme Court has nullified an amendment to a semi-constitutional Basic Law, thus taking for itself veto power over the formation of what Israel has for a constitution. The campaign against the settlers and the move to overturn the law both target the right. These developments come as the Biden administration pushes Prime Minister Netanyahu to ride roughshod over his rightwing coalition partners who oppose the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza.

T. Belman.  Both Mudar and Abed spoke at my 2017 Conference and 2022 Webinar.

Abed Amaala tweeted:

Queen Rania gave orders to the intelligence services of the Royal Hashemite Court regarding assassinations to develop a secret plan to assassinate the leaders of the Jordanian foreign opposition and the leaders of the new Jordan, namely Dr. Mudar Zahran, who lives in London, and Abdul-Ilah Al-Mualla, who lives in Washington. Western intelligence services obtained intelligence information about Queen Rania’s plan and her decision to carry out the assassination plan. In turn, we warn Queen Rania and King Abdullah II against playing with fire against these satanic attempts, which will not deter us from the new Jordan project, which is the savior of the Jordanian, Palestinian and Arab people and stopping the series of violence, terrorism, displacement and starvation.

Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer, INN     Jan 1, 2024, 7:34 PM 

Oct. 22, 2023 — Israel next faces the compelling existential urgency to undertake a very horrible ground invasion into Gaza. Had she done it fifteen or even ten years ago, it would have been like the way Ariel Sharon crushed the “Palestine Authority’s” PLO and Fatah (same thing) in Jenin and throughout Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) in 2002 during Israel’s “Operation Defensive Shield” that substantially ended the Second Intifada.

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T. Belman. Chuck Freilich said a lot of things that I disagree with but was he more realistic then I tend to be. In other words, am I living in a fantasy world?

INSS researcher Adi Kantor sits down with INSS senior researcher Prof. Chuck Freilich, who served for over 20 years in Israel’s national security establishment, as a senior analyst and then as deputy national security adviser.

Peloni: The same people who exposed the systemic ballot harvesting described in 2000 Mules have won a very important victory for election transparency against the combined opposition of Stacy Abrahms, Marc Elias, and the Biden DOJ in  a judgement handed down by an Obama appointed judge.

Catherine Englebrecht and True the Vote (TTV) announces a major court victory in Georgia for their efforts to ensure voting integrity.

 Sundance, Conservative Treehouse | January 2, 2024 |

Hamas is a less significant existential threat than the collapse of US leadership

By DAVID P GOLDMAN     DECEMBER 21, 2023

And the word of the Lord came unto me the second time, saying, What seest thou? And I said, I see a seething pot; and the face thereof is toward the north.

Then the Lord said unto me, Out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land. – Jeremiah 1:13-14

Strictly speaking, Israel’s Gaza war is not a tragedy, but rather a hideous accident. Many wars wait for years to happen until they can’t be stopped. Those are the tragedies.

The Israel Democracy Institute’s yearbook on the Haredi sector, which has been published for eight years and reviews the changes that have taken place in recent decades in various fields in ultra-Orthodox society, sheds light on just how far along Haredi women have come in joining the workforce.

By  Sonia Gorodeisky     01-02-2024 14:09

In recent weeks, the importance of core studies in the Haredi sector has been widely discussed in the context of coalition funds, which include billions of Shekels for Haredi educational institutions that do not teach core studies, thus reducing the chances of Haredi children integrating into the future job market.

In the meantime, data on the ground show a considerable improvement in recent years in some of the numbers related to Haredi education and employment.
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Senior official says Jerusalem working on postwar resettlement of Palestinians from Strip; some ministers tout Saudi Arabia as destination for Gazans seeking construction work

By SHALOM YERUSHALMI Today, 12:09 pm

Palestinians cross to the Egyptian side of the border crossing with the Gaza Strip in Rafah, Nov. 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Hatem Ali)

The “voluntary” resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza is slowly becoming a key official policy of the government, with a senior official saying that Israel has held talks with several countries for their potential absorption.

Zman Israel, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew sister site, has learned that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition is conducting secret contacts for accepting thousands of immigrants from Gaza with Congo, in addition to other nations.

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Mudar Zahran tweeted,

With one strike, the complete removal of the Hamas West Bank operations command, HQ targeted was based in Beirut, Lebanon. In total, seven top Hamas leader were killed during a supposedly “secret” meeting they were having… Here they are 1-Commander Saleh Al-Arouri 2-Commander Samir Fendi 3-Commander Azzam Al-Aqra’ 4- Mahmoud Zaki Shaheen 5-Mohamed Al-Rayes 6-Muhammad Bashasha 7-Ahmed Hammoud

Dr. Gada Ennab tweeted

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When encountering Palestinian Arabs in Gaza, surveys show an 80%+ likelihood that they are terrorists, supporters, or sympathizers.

By Dr. Avi Perry, INN  Jan 3, 2024, 8:06 AM

The international community, encompassing the global media, social media, political figures, and even supporters of Israel, tends to criticize the Jewish state’s defensive war for causing harm and casualties among “innocent” civilians in Gaza, rather than holding Hamas accountable. There is often a disregard for the reality that eliminating Hamas involves unavoidable collateral damage, given their use of civilians, hospitals, schools, private homes, mosques, and other civilian infrastructure for military purposes.

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Defense minister says Hamas battalions in northern Gaza ‘destroyed,’ fighting in Strip’s south to remain at ‘high intensity’ until goals achieved; Staff Sgt. Sufian Dagash killed

By EMANUEL FABIAN, TOI     2 January 2024, 9:52 pm

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is seen with IDF troops in the central Gaza Strip, January 2, 2024. (Ariel Hermoni/Defense Ministry)

His comments came a few hours before top Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri was killed in a blast in Beirut widely attributed to Israel.

Gallant’s remarks were made during a tour of the Strip’s main north-south highway, Salah a-Din road, in the central Gaza Strip, where the 99th Division has been operating over the past week.
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By JNS, JEWISH PRESS,  2 January 2024

Hamas deputy political chief Salah al-Arouri presents an image of Jerusalem to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, July 22, 2019.

An Israeli drone strike on a Hamas office in Beirut eliminated top terror chief Saleh al-Arouri on Tuesday night, Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Radio announced.

The explosion rocked the south Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, a Hezbollah stronghold. In addition to al-Arouri, at least three other Hamas terrorists were also killed in the blast, Reuters reported.

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The Caroline Glick Show

TIERNEY’S REAL NEWS  Jan 2/24

By Jeremy Sharon, TOI   1 January 2024

All 15 High Court justices preside over a court hearing on petitions against the government’s ‘reasonableness law’ at the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, September 12, 2023. /Yonatan Sindel

In a monumental, highly controversial decision, the High Court of Justice strikes down legislation passed earlier this year that curtailed judicial oversight of the government, annulling for the first time in Israel’s history an element of one of its quasi-constitutional Basic Laws.

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