[IsraelTimes] Several Jewish journalists at the BBC have quit their union after it called on members to wear clothes in Paleostinian colors or a keffiyeh as part of a Day of Action for Paleostine, the UK’s Jewish News reports.
Several members of the National Union of Journalists felt that the call crossed the line in violating the BBC’s neutrality.
Ya think?!
One BBC staffer tells the Times, "BBC journalists, who pride themselves on impartiality and who fought to keep their NUJ free of politics, are being encouraged to break the BBC’s editorial guidelines by supporting a political cause."
The staffer says they are reconsidering their NUJ membership after the "hypocritical and antisemitic" action.
[IsraelTimes] The Swiss government, which previously drafted a law explicitly banning Hamas activities and support for the Palestinian terror group, decided this week against doing the same for Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Parliamentary security policy committees had called for a ban on Hezbollah, but in its response, published today, the federal government says the conditions had not been met.
Switzerland’s Federal Council says the group could not be banned as a threat to security under the country’s intelligence act because the existing law required sanctions or a ban by the United Nations to be in place for such a move to be applied.
It said it banned Hamas over the “unprecedented terrorist attacks” of October 7, 2023, in line with the practice of proscribing organizations on a case-by-case basis only “for extremely serious reasons.”
“Bans on organizations must continue to follow this political line,” it says, judging that it was “not appropriate” to create a new law to ban Hezbollah.
The lower house of parliament’s security committee had said that “like Hamas, Hezbollah is a radical Islamic terrorist organization responsible for numerous acts of violence and human rights violations” which “represents a threat to the stability of the entire region.”
It demanded that the government “issue a comprehensive ban on Hezbollah.”
Parliament will consider the government’s position during its December 2-20 session, and will also vote on the law to ban Hamas, Swiss news agency Keystone-ATS reports.
[BerlinerZeitung] Half a year after the knife attack on activist Michael Stürzenberger in Mannheim, he has now been convicted for a rally in 2020, according to a report.
The anti-Islam activist and blogger Michael Stürzenberger was sentenced to a fine by the Hamburg Regional Court on Monday for incitement, as the portal Endstation Rechts reports. The 60-year-old had denigrated refugees and Muslims at a rally. According to the portal, this was Stürzenberger's first public appearance since an Islamist attempted to stab him in May. During the attack in Mannheim, the Afghan attacker injured Stürzenberger and killed the 29-year-old police officer Rouven Laur by stabbing him in the neck.
That would be Suleiman Atayi, 25, from Herat, who went hunting for unbeliever victims with a large hunting knife.
STÜRZENBERGER WAS SENTENCED TO PRISON BY THE DISTRICT COURT
The trial in which Stürzenberger has now been legally convicted relates to a rally the activist held with the anti-Islam organization “ Citizens’ Movement Pax Europa ” in Hamburg in October 2020. There, in the presence of numerous counter-demonstrators, he made statements that the regional court condemned as incitement to hatred.
The Hamburg District Court had previously sentenced him to a six-month prison sentence in 2022, according to the report by Endstation Rechts. In the subsequent appeal proceedings at the regional court, the sentence was then converted to a suspended sentence. Due to formal errors, the case was appealed, with the sentence announced on Monday of a fine of 120 daily rates of 30 euros as the result.
Michael Stürzenberger has already been convicted in the past, for example for insult and incitement . The alleged attacker from Mannheim was charged with murder by the Federal Prosecutor's Office in November. He is in custody at an unknown location.
#2
"A Mohammedan man of Herat
Hurt a hater, in Germany..."
"Drat."
"And at the same time
Killed a cop."
"Ach, mein Heimat!
Wait... can't we blame Michael for that?"
[Free Beacon] Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.), the chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, unveiled a bipartisan bill that would prohibit federal aid from flowing to universities that boycott Israel.
Foxx unveiled the measure, the "Protect Economic Freedom Act," alongside Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D., N.J.) on Tuesday. It would amend the Higher Education Act to bar universities that engage in the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement from receiving federal student aid. Under the legislation, universities must submit annual certifications to the Department of Education, showing they are not engaged in a commercial boycott of Israel.
"Enough is enough. Appeasing the antisemitic mobs on college campuses threatens the safety of Jewish students and faculty, and it undermines the relationship between the U.S. and one of our strongest allies," Foxx said in a statement. "If an institution is going to capitulate to the BDS movement, there will be consequences—starting with the Protect Economic Freedom Act."
Pain avoidance is a necessary teaching tool for the stupidly stubborn. Don’t forget to reintroduce it in the next congressional session, when it won’t be blocked by the Democrats in the Senate. — in the meantime it is nothing more than a powerless statement of intent.
In the wake of Hamas's Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel, student radicals across the country mobilized to introduce BDS resolutions aimed at compelling their schools to divest from companies with ties to the Jewish state.
[IsraelTimes] Minister in the Finance Ministry Ze’ev Elkin reiterates that the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah does not include Iran’s proxies in Yemen and Iraq.
“There is no such commitment. They are not acting to help Hezbollah, but to help Hamas. They are Iran’s proxies and there is no ceasefire with them,” Elkin tells Army Radio.
The Yemeni Houthis have attacked Israel and global shipping for over a year, saying they were doing so in support of Palestinian terror group Hamas. Hamas led an invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage, sparking the war in Gaza.
Israel has also been repeatedly attacked by Iraq’s Islamic Resistance in Iraq.
[IsraelTimes] As long-moribund ceasefire talks ramp up, New York Times says terror group may give up core demands after ‘reality started to sink in’ following Sinwar’s death and truce in Lebanon
Hamas ..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,... is displaying increased flexibility in long-stalled talks for an elusive ceasefire and hostage deal in the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... Strip, and may agree to the Israel Defense Forces temporarily remaining on the enclave’s border with Egypt, a report said Thursday.
Citing unnamed US officials, The New York Times
...which still proudly claims Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... reported that the Paleostinian terror group could give up on core demands and accept a ceasefire deal that Israel could back.
Given the New York Times is “reporting” it, this may or may not be utter hogwash imagined during a drunken debauch. Or possibly a sober one. Who knows what fabulists like that do when they’re supposed to be working?
According to the outlet, even before a ceasefire was reached between Hezbollah and Israel this week, both Paleostinian and US officials had said they thought Hamas was ready to give up on the strategy professed by slain leader Yahya Sinwar and move toward a deal.
Oh. Well if anonymous, undefined Palestinian and Harris-Biden administration officials say it…
Shortly before his death, Sinwar had told Hamas’s leadership that a long war against Israel was beneficial: "The longer it lasts, the closer we get to liberation," senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan recounted Sinwar saying.
Citing two people familiar with the terror group’s thinking,
…more anonymous sources…
the report said leaders of the terror group have been discussing allowing Israel to maintain a temporary presence in the Philadelphi Corridor, the strategic border area between Egypt and Gaza that Israel’s leadership has pledged not to withdraw from.
So generous of Hamas under the circumstances! (Yes, yes, dear Reader, the sarcasm is indeed implied.)
Jerusalem has insisted that troops remain in Gaza to prevent arms smuggling from Egypt and says it is prepared only for a temporary halt in its campaign to destroy Hamas.
According to the New York Times report, "reality started to sink in" after Sinwar’s death in October, as it became clear that Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... was not looking to open a direct conflict with Israel, and Hezbollah was being hit hard by the IDF. Hamas had hoped its allies in the Iranian axis would join in the fight and force Israel to accept a ceasefire on Hamas’s terms.
No worries, guys — Iranian sockpuppets in Iraq and Yemen are still in the game. Granted neither could consistently hit Israel, even when their missiles and drone get through, but surely they get credit for trying.
Hamas leaders are split over the role it should have after the war
…none…
and over the compromises it should make to achieve a ceasefire, according to the American outlet.
Decision-making is hampered by the fact that Hamas has not chosen a leader to replace Sinwar.
Of course. They don’t want him and his successor immediately killed by Israel.
"The solution to Hamas’s military losses is simpler — there’s a pyramid of command and each commander or soldier can be replaced," Hamas member Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh told the newspaper. "But on the political level, things are far more complicated. There will ultimately need to be elections. There are different factions and balances of power. All this makes it hard to predict."
Furthermore, US officials believe that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is waiting for US President-elect Donald Trump ...The tack in the backside of the Democratic Party... to take office in January before making any decisions on his positions around a deal with Hamas, said the outlet, echoing reporting by The Times of Israel.
An Egyptian security delegation was reportedly in Israel on Thursday to jump-start talks to secure a Gaza ceasefire deal and to present Israel with a "comprehensive vision" for an agreement.
According to a report in The Wall Street Journal Thursday, Egyptian officials have been in contact with Trump’s staff to gauge whether he could make inroads on softening Israel’s positions in the negotiations, namely regarding control of the Gaza-Egypt border and the creation of a buffer zone between Israel and the Strip.
Egyptian officials have also seemingly sought to soften Hamas’s stance, the paper reported, conveying to the group that its negotiating position had weakened since being "isolated" by the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Leb ...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... The officials told the group it would unlikely be able to continue insisting on a full Israeli withdrawal, according to the report.
Since Qatar ...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi... withdrew from the mediation and kicked Hamas leaders out of Doha earlier this month, Egypt has emerged as a potential key conduit between the warring parties, alongside The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the occupiers of Greek Asia Minor... , where most of Hamas’s big shotship have relocated.
The Kan public broadcaster reported Thursday that a Hamas delegation was set to head to Cairo in the near future to discuss a potential deal.
According to a report late Wednesday, US President Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. Sleazy Dem machine politician, paterfamilias of the Biden Crime Family... pressed Netanyahu in a call this week to immediately shift attention back to Gaza with the end of fighting in Lebanon. Meanwhile,
...back at the precinct house, Sergeant Maloney wasn't buying it. It was just too pat. The whole thing smelled phony, kind of like a dead mackeral but without the scales... Trump’s incoming administration was also reportedly being approached about pushing Israel toward a deal.
Hamas indicated on Wednesday that it was ready for a truce in Gaza after a ceasefire came into effect in Lebanon with the Iran-backed Hezbollah, which had attacked Israel in support of its ally Hamas starting October 8, 2023, prompting reprisals and later an intensified IDF military campaign that destroyed much of the group.
Officials had expressed hopes that taking the key Hamas ally off the battlefield could help push the Gazook terror group toward an agreement ending the war and freeing hostages in exchange for Paleostinian security prisoners.
Indirect talks aimed at a deal freeing the 101 hostages held in Gaza and ending some 14 months of fighting there have stalled since the summer after multiple rounds of negotiations mediated by the US, Egypt and Qatar failed to bring the sides together.
Hamas has demanded that any agreement bring a complete end to the war in Gaza, along with a full Israeli withdrawal from the enclave. It also seeks the release of large numbers of Paleostinian prisoners in exchange for the hostages, who were among 251 kidnapped during the terror group’s October 7, 2023, rampage in southern Israel; some 1,200 people were massacred during the attack, which prompted the war.
It is believed that 97 of the hostages kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
[IsraelTimes] It is too early to say whether Israel’s ceasefire deal with Hezbollah in Lebanon has “significantly and sustainably” reduced the risk that led Moody’s to downgrade Israel’s sovereign credit rating, the agency says.
“It is too early to say whether these risks will be significantly and sustainably reduced,” Moody’s says.
The agency downgraded Israel’s credit rating to Baa1, from A2, in September.
[IsraelTimes] Move pushed by Biden administration comes after Smotrich insisted on month-by-month renewals; Ben Gvir votes against the measure he says will allow Ramallah to limp on
The security cabinet on Thursday extended a waiver allowing Israeli banks to work with Paleostinian ones for another year — a move pushed by the Biden administration and its Western allies, who feared that failure to do so ahead of a deadline at the end of the week would lead to the collapse of the Paleostinian Authority, an Israeli official confirmed to The Times of Israel.
Without hard, real life consequences, they ‘ll never learn to do better. The odds are that with such consequences they still won’t learn, but the not learning will be cheaper and less fraught for all involved.
For the past two months, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich had only agreed to extend the corresponding banking agreement one month at a time, adding to uncertainty regarding whether the far-right minister would act on his repeated calls to bring down the PA ahead of US President-elect Donald Trump ...Perhaps no man has ever had as much fun being president of the US... ’s return to the White House.
While it stalled the longer extension, Israel said it wanted proof that PA-regulated banks complied with international statutes on counter-terrorism and anti-money laundering. The Treasury Department said in October that the PA had met both of the requirements laid out by Israel.
Uh huh. Sure they did.
Ahead of the security cabinet vote, ministers were presented with the National Security Council’s position in favor of a one-year extension, due to concerns that failure to do so would have major security and diplomatic repercussions, the Israeli official said, confirming a report on the Axios news site.
After the security cabinet vote, Smotrich suggested that he had leveraged Israel’s extension of the banking deal to ensure that the US would not allow the Security Council to pass a resolution recognizing a Paleostinian state. A Biden administration official told The Times of Israel that no such initiative had been in the cards.
Nonetheless, Smotrich had been concerned that it was and told associates of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he would [not] authorize another extension of the banking deal unless the US made clear that it would not advance a UN Security Council Resolution against Israel, the US official said. Netanyahu aides reached out to their counterparts in the Biden administration, who assured them that Washington’s policy on the matter had not changed.
The administration has repeatedly come out against efforts to unilaterally recognize a Paleostinian state, asserting that the outcome should be the culmination of negotiations between the parties. But some in Jerusalem feared the step would be reconsidered before US President Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women created ... by the — you know — you know, the thing... wraps up his term in office.
The US official said the administration was still considering other steps to boost prospects for a two-state solution before the end of the lame-duck period.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir tweeted on Thursday evening that he had voted against extending the banking cooperation deal, blasting fellow cabinet members who have talked of collapsing the PA only to back a measure that would allow Ramallah to limp on.
The Paleostinian economy relies heavily on the banks’ relationships with their Israeli counterparts to process transactions made in shekels, as the PA does not have its own currency. Some NIS 53 billion ($14 billion) were exchanged at Paleostinian banks in 2023, according to official data.
US officials have warned that failure to maintain banking relations between Israel and the Paleostinians would turn the West Bank into a "cash economy," which would benefit terrorist organizations in the territory and make it harder for the already-weakened PA to fight such groups.
It can’t possibly be harder — PA staff are involved up to their eyebrows.
The West Bank economy has been in dire straits over the past year, as tens of thousands of Paleostinian day laborers were denied entry into Israel during the war in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
[IsraelTimes] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that he would accept a pause in the war in Gaza, speaking in his first interview since the ceasefire in Lebanon. “I am ready for a ceasefire in the south when we think we can achieve the release of the hostages,” he says to the rightwing Channel 14. “I am ready for a ceasefire at any time.”
At the same, he stresses that he will not accept an end to the war, a core Hamas demand. Without going into details, Netanyahu says Israel is doing “many many things” to try to reach a deal.
Now that there is a ceasefire in Lebanon and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is dead, the conditions have significantly improved for a hostage deal with Hamas, he argues.
“Hamas hoped that Iran would come to save it, it did not happen; it hoped that the Houthis would come to save it – it did not happen,” he says, “but above all it hoped that Hezbollah would come to save it, and indeed Nasrallah said on the second day when he attacked, ‘We will continue until Israel stops its attacks on Hamas.’ There is no Hezbollah [at Hamas’s side now]. That’s why I think the conditions have changed very much for the better, not only because of the separation of the theaters but also because of the… elimination of Sinwar.”
He says the conditions in Lebanon are different than in Gaza: Israel is trying to destroy Hamas, whereas in Lebanon at this stage it is working to prevent Hezbollah from rearming. While Israel can prevent arms smuggling in Lebanon by bombing border crossings and striking in Syria, that can’t happen in Gaza, because Israel won’t attack Egypt. Therefore, Israel has to remain on the Philadelphi corridor, the road on the Egypt-Gaza border, he insinuates.
Netanyahu says that he accepted a ceasefire in Lebanon because “we achieved exactly what we intended to achieve.”
[IsraelTimes] In his first interview since the ceasefire in Lebanon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that if Hezbollah doesn’t adhere to the rules, there will be “intensive war.”
“I gave the IDF instructions,” says Netanyahu, speaking to the right-wing Channel 14, “if there is a massive violation of the agreement, not only will we operate surgically like we are doing now, and with force, every time. I said, if there is a massive violation of the agreement, I instructed the IDF to prepare for an intensive war.”
Netanyahu was gathering advisors tonight for a meeting on the continuation of the war on its various fronts, Channel 13 reports.
To Channel 14’s Yaakov Bardugo, Netanyahu says the ceasefire in Lebanon “can be short,” and that Israel “enforced it on its first day.”
Asked why Israel is not creating a buffer zone in southern Lebanon, Netanyahu notes that the “threat of a ground invasion has been removed.”
He says that the IDF destroyed the aboveground infrastructure on the border, and the underground bunkers and tunnels.
Residents of the north “will return in stages, when they feel that what I’m saying is correct.”
On Iran’s nuclear program, Netanyahu will not promise that Iran won’t attain a nuclear weapon, instead saying “I will do everything so that Iran won’t be nuclear.”
[IsraelTimes] UK, France and Germany to participate in talks with Tehran despite backing IAEA censure, as Islamic Republic seen willing to engage with West ahead of Trump taking office
Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... has begun inserting uranium gas into newly activated advanced centrifuges, the country’s top nuclear official said Thursday, ahead of planned talks with European powers aimed at curbing its enrichment activities and stepping up inspections.
The agenda includes discussions, earnest discussions, clarifying discussions, frequent breaks for snaks and meals, and the finest of hired companions for amusement in between. Nowhere will actual commitment to desist enrichment occur.
The announcement by Iran Atomic Energy Agency head Mohammad Eslami came after Britannia, La Belle France, and Germany joined with the United States to have Tehran censured by the ineffective International Atomic Energy Agency’s Board of Governors last week for continuing to ramp up uranium processing while failing to cooperate with inspectors.
The insertion of uranium gas is a necessary step to activate the centrifuges, which work by rapidly spinning the element to increase the proportion of the fissile isotope U-235.
In a defiant response to the UN watchdog’s resolution, Tehran announced this week it was activating "new and advanced centrifuges," further advancing its nuclear program, which already enriches uranium at near-weapons-grade levels and boasts a stockpile enough for several nuclear bombs if it chooses to pursue them.
The IAEA said in June that Iran had begun spinning new centrifuges, and planned to deploy more.
Despite last week’s resolution, Iranian officials have also signaled a willingness to engage with the West ahead of the return of US President-elect Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and whatever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th and 47th President of the United States... , whose last administration pursued a policy of "maximum pressure" against the Islamic Theocratic Republic.
Iranian diplomat Majid Takht-Ravanchi, who serves as the political deputy to Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, is scheduled to represent Iran in talks Friday with Britannia, La Belle France, and Germany.
[IsraelTimes] Iran has informed the UN nuclear watchdog of plans to install more uranium-enriching centrifuges at its Fordow and Natanz plants as well as bring machines recently installed there online, a confidential report by the watchdog says.
The International Atomic Energy Agency report to member states seen by Reuters makes no mention, however, of Iran’s enrichment to up to 60% purity, close to nuclear weapons-grade. Eight new cascades, or clusters, of advanced IR-6 centrifuges at Fordow would enrich to up to 5% purity, Iran informs the IAEA.
#2
They agreed to pause their program, as I recall. The plan was that they would eventually get their nukes, just with a long enough timeline that the Joooos and the Saudis would have time to become accustomed to the idea of their subsequent, peaceful subjugation.
[IsraelTimes] IDF spokesman says military ‘will act’ against all weapon deliveries to Lebanese terror group, including in Syria; Netanyahu says Assad ‘playing with fire’
A series of Israeli strikes on border crossings between Leb ...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... and Syria just before a ceasefire with Hezbollah took effect Wednesday morning were intended to set back the terror group’s smuggling efforts, while driving home as a stark warning to Damascus that Israel will take severe action to prevent attempts to rearm Hezbollah with Iranian weapons via Syrian territory.
The Israel Defense Forces has said that amid the truce it would continue to act to prevent all weapon deliveries to the Lebanese terror group, including by striking shipments anywhere in Lebanon or Syria.
"We struck on Syrian soil all attempts to transfer weapons to Hezbollah. If we detect intentions to transfer weapons to the organization — we will act," IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a presser Wednesday night.
In a briefing Wednesday, a senior military official said that the IDF would not just strike the weapon shipments, but Syrian President Bashir al-Assad’s regime would pay for aiding Hezbollah.
"If Syria helps Hezbollah to rebuild, they will pay direct prices. Not only the convoys will be attacked, but there will be prices to pay in Syria as well," the official said.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that "Assad must understand that he is playing with fire" by enabling Iranian shipments to Hezbollah to pass.
In the hours before the ceasefire early Wednesday, the IDF carried out a series of strikes against Hezbollah’s missile program and smuggling routes.
Three border crossings between northern Lebanon and Syria, which the military said were used by Hezbollah to smuggle weapons, were destroyed. The IDF assessed that it would take time to repair the crossings, and during that time, Hezbollah would have limited routes to bring in weapons, which would be easier for Israel to monitor.
Also in the hours before the ceasefire, Israeli fighter jets destroyed the terror group’s largest underground precision-guided missile manufacturing site in Lebanon, near the town of Janta in eastern Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley, the IDF said.
Another major missile manufacturing site, in Syria, was allegedly raided by Israeli special forces in September.
The raid, in the Masyaf area, was said to have been carried out alongside Israeli Arclight airstrike ...KABOOM!... s on military facilities in the area that reportedly killed at least 14 people and maimed 43.
Local Syrian media reported at the time that the strikes hit the area surrounding the Scientific Studies and Research Center, known as CERS or SSRC, which according to Israel is used by Iranian forces to manufacture precision surface-to-surface missiles for Hezbollah.
Various reports in foreign media claimed that Israeli troops operated on the ground during the action at Masyaf, which lies about 200 kilometers (124 miles) north of Israel, though only about 30 kilometers (18 miles) from Syria’s western coastline.
The reports said that commandos of the Israeli Air Force’s Shaldag Unit rappelled down from helicopters and raided CERS. Israeli troops removed equipment and documents and then laid explosives to destroy the facility.
The IDF has not publicly confirmed the details of the operation.
Earlier this week, the Israeli military detailed its operations against Hezbollah’s weapons smuggling unit.
According to the Israeli military, Unit 4400 was established in 2000 and built numerous "strategic routes" along the Syria-Lebanon border with Tehran’s support to deliver weapons from Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... and its proxies to the terror group in Lebanon.
Thousands of trucks and hundreds of planes carrying missiles and other components for Hezbollah have traveled from Iran to Syria, and later to Lebanon, in recent years, the IDF said.
The strikes against Unit 4400 during the war have included the liquidations of the head of the unit, Muhammad Ja’far Qassir, in Beirut in early October, and his replacement, Ali Hassan Gharib, in Damascus, several weeks later, alongside other top commanders.
The IDF said that it has been striking Hezbollah’s smuggling routes between Syria and Lebanon "not only in the last few months, but in a years-long effort."
Reports of Israeli strikes on Hezbollah weapons shipments began to emerge in early 2013, with Israel officially keeping mum to avoid blowback from Damascus and its allies amid the civil war there.
It has increasingly opened up in recent years about the sorties, which have complemented a longstanding aerial campaign aimed at keeping Iran from gaining a foothold near Syria’s border with Israel.
The military official said Wednesday that preventing Hezbollah from rearming itself, after significant damage to its missile, rocket, and drone stockpiles amid the fighting, was "a central issue" that Israel would be focusing on.
The IDF assesses that Hezbollah retains some 20% of its rockets and missiles and some 30% of its drones, which is still thousands of rockets and hundreds of drones.
If Israel does not act, the official said, the IDF may find itself in another war with a rebuilt Hezbollah in several years.
And if so, it will be the Harris-Biden administration’s delayed legacy.
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#1
From the article: "Israeli troops removed equipment and documents and then laid explosives to destroy the facility."
I suspect the IDF got info like:
* Weapons inventories & locations
* Personnel lists
* Purchasing info
* Contact/cutout lists
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
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Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[BerlinerZeitung] Half a year after the knife attack on activist Michael Stürzenberger in Mannheim, he has now been convicted for a rally in 2020, according to a report.
..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,...
[IsraelTimes] It is too early to say whether Israel’s ceasefire deal with Hezbollah in Lebanon has “significantly and sustainably” reduced the risk that led 
[IsraelTimes] Move pushed by Biden administration comes after Smotrich insisted on month-by-month renewals; Ben Gvir votes against the measure he says will allow Ramallah to limp on
...46th president of the U.S. 
[IsraelTimes] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that he would accept a pause in the war in Gaza, speaking in his first interview since the ceasefire in Lebanon. “I am ready for a ceasefire in the south when we think we can achieve the release of the hostages,” he says to the rightwing Channel 14. “I am ready for a ceasefire at any time.”
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for 
Despite last week’s resolution, Iranian officials have also signaled a willingness to engage with the West ahead of the return of US President-elect 
...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
