Today’s Image
This is Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah. He has been living underground, deep below the city of Beirut for more than 20 years in fear of being assassinated by Israel. On Monday the following message was posted on his X account, in Hebrew:
Perhaps tonight, perhaps tomorrow or perhaps in another week,
He is referring, of course, to an expected attack by Hezbollah on Israel in the aftermath of the assassination of his Chief of Staff, Fuad Shukri. He, and Iran, think that part of their strategy is that by stalling out their response they are putting Israel into a state of anxiety.. as part of our “punishment”. I was alerted to this post via Haviv Rettig Gur who referred to it from his X account, providing the translations to these Israeli response originally written in Hebrew:
Me starting a diet,
The cable guy’s text message,
When you ship your missiles by Israel Post,
My wife when I ask for sex,
Me about to study for an exam,
His plan is to bore us to death, and it’s working
And here are a few more…
Is that what your wife said? My condolences. Now I understand why you are so distraught. On the other hand, I can understand her,
Eat foods rich in fiber, in the end your constipation will be over,
This is what I tell my dietician,
Maybe with a missile from an airplane, maybe with a submarine missile, maybe with a shell from a tank, maybe with a sniper bullet, maybe with a bomb, we can help you find your 70 virgins.
Typical Israeli humor….
Excuse this Interruption
In various ways some of you have asked me why Israel must retaliate when Iran, Hezbollah or Hamas attack in one form or another. The short answer is “to establish a deterrence level” that causes the party initiating the attack to think very carefully should it decide to repeat the attack. Most Americans do not understand the importance of this because so few have been directly exposed to war and conflict. Or because “they forgot”. But, this principle is extremely important, particularly here in the Middle East where your adversaries view any weakness as an opportunity to seize an advantage. And this principle works. Let me provide a few examples for illustration purposes….
Prior to July 19, the Houthis had dispatched more than 200 drones or cruise missiles up the Red Sea in an attempt to attack inside Israel. Some were intercepted by US CENTCOM defensive Surface to Air Missiles, but most were taken out by IDF SAMs. But, on July 19th one of their drones made its way over Egyptian air space, entered Israel and struck a site in Tel Aviv near the US Embassy, killing one Israeli. The next day, the IDF struck the Yemen port of Al-Hodeidah, used primarily by the Houthis to import weapons from Iran and export oil. Since that attack, nearly three weeks have passed and not a single drone or missile has been launched by the Houthis against Israeli territory. One reason that target was chosen was knowing that the images of an oil storage and shipping facility in total flames would be on the front pages of all newspapers in the Middle East and all our neighbors will fully understand what happens when you piss off the IDF.
And here is another example. After the Iranian missile and drone attack on Israel in April, the IDF dispatched a couple fighter jets that destroyed a major radar facility protecting the Natanz nuclear site in Iran. So, now Iran understands that the IDF has the ability to encroach on its air space without being detected and with just two missiles destroy a strategic facility. And then escape undetected. Don’t you think now that the leaders in Iran must be thinking that Israel, at any time, can destroy all its port, oil storage facilities and oil wells in a few missions with well placed missiles?? If you were the president of Iran and cared at all about your country don’t you think it would give you pause? And this is after you fired more than 300 aerial drones and missiles at Israel. Half those missiles either blew up on the launch pad or blew up on their own. And among all the rest, only two made their way into Israeli air space. Sure, Israel had a lot of help in taking those object down, but most were destroyed by the IDF. Maybe this might explain why there are many, many articles appearing in the last couple of days reporting that the new Iranian President, Pezeshkian, is pleading with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp IRGC to severely curtail its response to the killing of Ismail Haniyeh or find targets outside of Israel. What do you think the loss of oil exports from Iran would do to its economy?? You can read about this here.
And here is a third example. You can be sure that images of Gaza have appeared on the front pages of Lebanese newspapers. Al-Jazeera shows them non stop on their cable news network. Then, a single IDF fighter jet enters Lebanese air space fires two missiles at a building in Beirut without impacting any buildings nearby and in the process takes out Hezbollah’s Chief of Staff Fuad Shukr and much of his staff. And then flies off without a trace. Then a week later three Israeli fighter jets fly at low altitude over Beirut, breaking the sound barrier just before and during a speech by Hassan Nasrallah. Now if you were a resident of Lebanon what would you be thinking? Because of Hezbollah’s recklessness, killing 12 children and non stop rocket fire on Israel for 9 months, I am going to see my country look like Gaza??? Don’t you think that there is enormous pressure now on Hezbollah from within Lebanon to hold back on what it does to Israel??
But this type of deterrence does not always work. When you have an authoritarian regime which genuinely either does not care about governance, the welfare of its population nor consequences of destruction in its country, it won’t work. And Hamas governance of Gaza is a great example. Part of Hamas’s strategy is to see more of its civilians killed because it thinks (to a large extent correctly) that with each dead civilian in Gaza, it erodes support for Israel. Prior to October 7, the IDF and Netanyahu’s government incorrectly assumed that its actions in Gaza resulting from aerial missions had deterred Hamas. And that assumption cost Israel dearly. All this, of course, is 20:20 hindsight. So a different strategy must be put into play with Hamas. And that is to eradicate its leadership and block its ability to rule Gaza. That is because this is what its leaders fear the most. They have spent the good part of 30 years slowly creating a society built on hate, eagerness to be a martyr, how to kill, etc. In their vision, with a country like that and the ability to train more generations of martyrs, they can envision their jihadi view of overrunning the Middle East and more. The only way to stop them is to take that away. No level of deterrence will affect authoritarians like that. The Hamas leadership must be eradicated. There is no alternative.
Gaza Rockets
Two rockets were fired from Gaza today landing in open areas. No injuries or damage reported.
Casualties
No IDF casualties have been reported in the past 13 days. But one civilian died from injuries suffered from an Hezbollah kamikaze drone attack on Tuesday. Mikhail Samara - 27 (Z’’L) died in the hospital today. According to reports he was actually struck by shrapnel after the drone was hit by an Iron Dome missile.
Gaza Operations
During operations in central Gaza, not far from the Netzarim Corridor patrolled by IDF troops a large 3 km tunnel was uncovered and destroyed. The tunnel contained several rooms for storing weapons and other equipment as well as rooms where the combatants could sleep and rest. Here you can read more and see a video of the tunnel and the explosion when they blew it up. As I wrote in previous posts, there are so many tunnels under Gaza there aren’t enough explosives available in the world to destroy them all.
The IDF reports that fight in Rafah over the last two days resulted in the killing of dozens of armed Hamas combatants. One IDF officer was seriously injured during the fighting from anti-tank missile fire. And similar activity seems to have taken place in central Gaza along the Netzarim corridor.
As I reported yesterday, the IDF has launched a third operation into Khan Younis after evacuating the civilians. It has intelligence that Hamas was regrouping there. Active fighting is taking place there as the troops uncover more weapons, arms storage facilities and some underground tunnels.
Lebanon Operations
Late this morning Hezbollah launched a 15 rocket barrage on the Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona. Most of the rockets were intercepted but two hit the city causing damage. There were no injuries because there are practically no Israelis living there anymore. All have been evacuated. You can see videos and read more about it here. What you should note is that the city is a “ghost town’. For ten months now, the residents have been blocked from returning to their homes by Hezbollah rocket fire. And there is no basis for dispute between Lebanon and Israel. There is no “occupation”. There is no border dispute. We do not have any Lebanese in our prisons. There is no basis for these attacks from Hezbollah.
Earlier this morning two Hezbollah combatants were killed by missiles launched by an IDF drone in southern Lebanon. Their identity has not been announced yet.
Last night, IDF fighter jets fired missiles destroying several Hezbollah rocket launchers and nearby sites from where the militia operated.
Yemen Operations
Yesterday I wrote about reports from the UK Maritime Agency UKMTO about attempted attacks on a Commerical ship near Yemen. It appears that this ship, whose identity has not been announced yet, was exposed to threats from the Houthis multiple times. Once when it was leaving port and a Rocket Propelled Grenade was fired at ti. then again when it was attacked by a marine drone operated by the Houthis. And finally a missile was fired at it out to sea, but exploded a few hundred meters away. Lucky, I guess!
Syria/Iraq/Egypt/Jordan/Turkiye/Iran
Iran announced today that in its arsenal it has developed “undetectable” cruise missiles that are highly explosive. If that is true it is a very powerful weapon since cruise missiles travel at very high speeds. They are apparently designed to be launched from naval ships. You can read more here.
And fighting has broken out in the eastern part of Syria near Deer Ezzor. This area is mostly populated by the Kurds. The fight broke out when a pro-Iranian militia launched an attack on one of their villages killing six children.
IDF General
There is a new twist in this case of five IDF soldiers accused of abuse of an imprisoned Hamas commander. It turns out that one of the soldiers is Druze and the Druze community in Israel is furious that he, and the others, would be subject to arrest. Not sure where this is going yet.
And in another bizarre twist, the Canadian government has decided that it must interfere with this investigation as well. Why must this Trudeau government feel compelled to insert itself into all our affairs? You can read more here.
Aid
I read today on COGAT’s site that there are 13 bakeries operating in Gaza now. Together they are producing 3 million pita loaves a day.
Hostages/Ceasefire
Hamas has introduced a new demand into the negotiations. They are now insisting that a prisoner, Marwan Barghouti, be released to Gaza as part of the first phase in the ceasefire. Barghouti was the leader of the Tandem brigade within Fatah. Fatah is the leading party in the Palestinian Authority today. Barghouti is serving five serial life sentences in an Israeli prison due to the number of Israeli’s he killed or ordered to be killed during the Second Intifada. The man stood trial as was convicted. It is hard for me to imagine that the government could agree to such a new demand. The thinking here is that this new demand is because Hamas is starting to see that it is losing the war and it will not be able to hold onto power there. According to this line of thinking, they believe that Barghouti has the leadership skills and ruthlessness to carry on their mission. I am not sure I believe all this. I suspect that Sinwar threw this in, to try and get something else instead or to stall the negotiations. You can read more here.
The Israeli government announced that it would dispatch its team of negotiators to Cairo on August 15 to resume the ongoing negotiations for an hostage/ceasefire deal.
International
Today, a senior Biden Administration official issued a statement saying that
There’s absolutely no legitimate basis whatsoever for Iran to launch a military attack against Israel, which it continues to threaten. There’s been a sense out there that somehow, Iran now has the right to attack Israel militarily, and we completely reject that logic. We have moved an awful lot of military force into the region, including F-22s that arrived today… We’re doing all we can to deter such an attack, to defeat an attack if it comes, and also to demonstrate to Iran that there’s a better path forward here than a military attack. The consequences of such a direct attack could be quite significant, including for Iran and Iran’s economy, which I know their new government is concerned about.
The International Federation of Medical Students Association announced today that it was suspending Israeli students from its organization for two years due to The War and accusations of genocide. This is absurd!
And In Your Copious Spare Time…
Here is another in depth analysis coming to us courtesy of the Wall Street Journal. It is a description of the machinations within Hamas leadership after the death of Ismail Haniyeh. For those of you who can’t get past the paywall, here are a few choice quotes:
As Hamas’s political leader, Sinwar is likely to complicate U.S. efforts to gain a cease-fire, according to Arab cease-fire negotiators. While much of Hamas’s leadership is made up of U.S.-designated terrorists, there are hard-line factions and moderates who want a cease-fire. Sinwar is a hard-liner whose approach is to take maximalist positions that attempt to force compromise from Israel.
Freed (sic Sinwar) in a 2011 swap along with about 1,000 other Palestinians in Israeli custody for one Hamas-held hostage, Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Sinwar emerged from prison at a time when Hamas’s relations with Iran were fraught. Iran and Hezbollah backed Bashar al-Assad’s repressive crackdown against his Sunni population in Syria, where Hamas was based at the time. Hamas supported the Sunni uprisings and later relocated to Doha,
Here is a worthwhile read from the online magazine Jewish Insider. It quotes the analysis of an Israeli Arab, Khaled Abu Toameh, who has always been “spot on” with his understanding of what is going on inside both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. You should read it. In essence, he describes the importance that Iran placed on having Sinwar appointed the leader of Hamas and pushed the internal leaders to elect him, despite the fact that he is in some tunnel underground in Gaza, unable to communicate with Iran.