Feds' disbanded 'censorship nerve center' faces hellish afterlife amid lawsuits, Hill probes - Greg Piper

 

by Greg Piper

State ignoring FOIA requests for its communications related to Europe's pro-censorship Digital Services Act, requester says in suit. First Amendment disinformation police boycott suit on hiatus until Feb. 18.

The State Department laid to rest the alleged "censorship nerve center" of the federal government last week after Congress refused to reauthorize the interagency Global Engagement Center, known for teaching youth to distrust populism and allegedly squelching American small businesses online.

While it may have a peaceful afterlife – State plans to "realign" GEC staff with other entities that handle purported "foreign information manipulation and interference activities" – GEC also faces an unquenchable fire and undying worm on multiple fronts.

The Functional Government Initiative (FGI) filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit Monday against State, with nine exhibits, because it "has produced no records and has failed to assert any claims that responsive records are exempt from production" in response to three FOIA requests whose statutory due dates have passed.

Two seek discussions within GEC and State's Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy, and their talks with the White House, on the European Union's Digital Services Act (DSA), whose stated goal is stopping "illegal and harmful activities online and the spread of disinformation."

The third asks for "internal press guidance" mentioned in a New York Post article Sept. 13 in which State officials mulled how to discredit journalists reporting on GEC's funding of disinformation police NewsGuard and Global Disinformation Index (GDI), and Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., for supporting a ban on "federal funding of anti-free speech groups."

It's not the first FOIA to State for internal press guidance related to GEC's funding. The agency hid the vast majority of emails, and even the names of public officials, in a FOIA production to former Department of Education lawyer Hans Bader in 2023.

Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson has also been warning he'll aggressively wield his substantial subpoena powers as chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and demand transparency from agencies.

He called on President-elect Donald Trump to create something like a "secretary of information extraction" to coordinate with Trump's incoming secretaries on exposing agency records he's seeking, and for binding budget caps based on the last surplus year of 1998 in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Then-EU Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton repeatedly invoked the DSA to threaten X owner Elon Musk, starting with his purchase of the former Twitter, which also prompted President Biden to float a potential security review.

The EU distanced itself from Breton's final threat, to preempt Musk's planned X interview with then-GOP presidential nominee Trump, which prompted Musk to respond with a meme telling Breton to "literally, f*** your own face!"

The Frenchman resigned a month later, accusing President Ursula von der Leyen of trying to get France to replace him – days after House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, demanded a briefing from Breton on his threats against X, use of EU law to censor American speech and communications with the White House to "bypass the First Amendment." 

Breton didn't let his departure stop him from saber-rattling against Musk, demanding Europe enforce the DSA against Musk on Dec. 21 for his "foreign interference" in German elections by endorsing the "far-right" Alternative for Germany party, which favors lower immigration.

"Only the AfD can save Germany," Musk had written, using its German acronym, in response to presumptive German Chancellor Friedrich Merz refusing to cooperate with AfD "no matter how many" seats it won in upcoming elections against his Christian Democratic Union.

Suspected U.S. interest in copying Europe's DSA

FGI's first FOIA request Sept. 27 asks for cyberspace bureau records from October 19, 2022 – when the DSA was adopted – to the start of the records search.

It pertains to Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Jennifer Bachus, Special Envoy and Coordinator for Digital Freedom Eileen Donahoe, Ambassador at Large Nathaniel Fick, Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Cyberspace Security Liesyl Franz, U.S. Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy Steve Lang and Director for Strategic Planning and Communications Shawn Powers.

It also sought their communications with the National Endowment for Democracy, Cambridge University Social Decision-Making Lab, Atlantic Council, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, Meedan, National Conference on Citizenship, Algorithmic Transparency Institute, Stanford Internet Observatory, International Republican Institute, National Democratic Institute, Google Jigsaw, Microsoft Democracy Forward, Internews, Wilson Center, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Center for Democracy and Technology.

FGI's second FOIA request Sept. 27 pertained to GEC Acting Coordinator Leah Bray, Special Envoy and Coordinator James Rubin, and its "media contacts" email, "staff who manage the incoming messages" and any others with media duties using the group email or their own. It asks for communications with the same 16 external organizations.

The third FOIA request Oct. 7 was prompted by the Post article on internal press guidance. It sought records since Jan. 1, 2023, on who was involved, "its preparation and implementation" and the guidance itself, and records that name or refer to journalists Matt Taibbi, Gabe Kaminsky and his publisher The Washington Examiner, the Post, GDI, National Endowment for Democracy, "disinformation risk measurement," "conservative media outlets," "blacklist" and Park Advisors, which ran GEC's Disinfo Cloud platform that several agencies used.

FGI sought such records from Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Deputy Secretary Kurt Campbell, Chief of Staff Suzy George, acting Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Lee Satterfield, acting Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Global Public Affairs Stephanie Sutton, that bureau's Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Kristin Kane, Office of Press Operations Director Jennifer McKewan, Bureau of Legislative Affairs Assistant Secretary Naz Durakoglu, that bureau's Deputy Assistant Secretary for Senate Affairs Roy Awabdeh and Deputy Assistant Secretary for House Affairs Stacy Thompson, GEC's Bray and Rubin, and GEC media staff.

A First Amendment lawsuit against State and GEC, for funding disinformation police that pressured advertisers to boycott conservative publishers as "risky" and "unreliable," is going on hiatus as the plaintiffs decide how to proceed with GEC's nominal closure.

The New Civil Liberties Alliance, representing The Daily Wire and The Federalist, said Thursday the case had been stayed until Feb. 18 but it is "continuing to review and obtain discovery aimed at exposing the true depth of the government’s egregious censorship regime."

They received expedited discovery last spring, which forced State officials and third parties to answer subpoenas and sit for depositions by summer.

Nearly four years ago, Facebook's typewritten notes from a Biden White House meeting show then-top official Rob Flaherty, now being sued in his personal capacity in a vaccine-injury censorship suit, asked executives whether they could "change the algorithm" so people would see news from "any authoritative source" and specifically not The Daily Wire.

The conservative publishers are "very likely to succeed in their ultra vires [beyond legal authority] and First Amendment claims," NCLA said, noting the State-funded National Endowment for Democracy quickly cut off funding to NewsGuard and GDI once their boycott roles were exposed.

Margot Cleveland, counsel to NCLA and a legal writer for The Federalist, said the public interest firm is worried by State's description of realigning GEC personnel and funds within the department "and to date has refused to even provide a copy of the notice of the realignment the agency shared with Congress nearly a month ago."

State did not answer Just the News queries about FGI's suit and NCLA's claim it's withholding the notice it gave Congress.

 
Greg Piper

Source: https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/feds-disbanded-censorship-nerve-center-faces-hellish-afterlife-amid

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How 'Pro-Palestinian' Protestors Actually Harm Palestinians - Khaled Abu Toameh

by Khaled Abu Toameh

The "pro-Palestinian" activists just keep showing that all they have to offer is hatred for Jews and Israel. The real "pro-Palestinian" advocates are those who want to see a good life for the Palestinians, not those who encourage them to embrace a brutal and corrupt Hamas.

 

• Is there a free media in "Palestine?" No. Is there a functioning parliament? No. Are there general elections? No. Are there no consequences for protesting against the leaders' abuses?

• The "pro-Palestinian" activists just keep showing that all they have to offer is hatred for Jews and Israel. The real "pro-Palestinian" advocates are those who want to see a good life for the Palestinians, not those who encourage them to embrace a brutal and corrupt Hamas. Would they encourage the Iranian people to submit to the ayatollahs, or the Uyghurs to embrace the Communist Chinese Party?

• Instead of sitting in a comfortable campus where no one will arrest, torture or kill them for speaking out, these activists should be urging Hamas to release the 100 Israeli hostages it has been holding in the Gaza Strip since the atrocities of October 7, 2023. That would be the best and fastest way to end the current war in the Gaza Strip. The real message is: if you do not want your people killed, do not start a war.

• If these protestors in the West really want to help Palestinians, instead of offering messages of hate, they could offer good salaries and jobs.

• Sadly, "pro-Palestinian" protests have shown themselves to be nothing more than a backdoor way of spreading hate, delegitimizing Israel and demonizing Jews.

The "pro-Palestinian" activists just keep showing that all they have to offer is hatred for Jews and Israel. The real "pro-Palestinian" advocates are those who want to see a good life for the Palestinians, not those who encourage them to embrace a brutal and corrupt Hamas. Pictured: Pro-Hamas and anti-Israel protesters outside of Columbia University on April 24, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

The organizers and leaders of the anti-Israel protests in the US and Canada, including on university campuses, continue to ignore the real suffering of the Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and the Iran-backed Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

These Palestinians are living under two corrupt dictatorships, both of which place the interests of their leaders above those of the people.

We never hear the voices of these protesters when the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas commit human rights violations against their own citizens.

The massive violations of Palestinian leaders against their own people for the past 30 years include ruthless crackdowns on journalists, political opponents, human rights activists, lawyers and university students.

It is hard to say that the anti-Israel protesters are unaware of these violations, They have been widely documented by Palestinian and foreign human rights groups.

Is there a free media in "Palestine?" No. Is there a functioning parliament? No. Are there general elections? No. Are there no consequences for protesting against the leaders' abuses?

The last parliamentary election was held in 2006; the last presidential election in 2005. This means that PA President Mahmoud Abbas is about to enter the 19th year of his four-year-term.

Even when Palestinian and international human rights organizations have expressed alarm about the human rights violations committed by the PA and Hamas, we do not see or hear any protests at university campuses in the US, Canada or Europe.

The so-called pro-Palestinian individuals and groups in the West deliberately turn a blind eye to the predicament of the Palestinians living under the PA and Hamas. The reason? As long as Israel cannot be blamed for the human rights violations, the "pro-Palestinian" protesters apparently do not care. As far as most of the international media is concerned, these unremitting abuses against the Palestinian people never took place.

Foreign journalists covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict tend to look the other way when Palestinians complain about the oppression at the hands of the PA and Hamas. These journalists appear to be busy searching exclusively for any story that will reflect negatively on Israel. They are only interested in stories if they have an anti-Israeli angle.

One has to ask, are the protesters really pro-Palestinian or are they just looking for a "respectable," politically correct, way to vent a loathing for Jews?

Had the "pro-Palestinian" activists in the US and Canada paid attention to Hamas's repressive measures against their own people in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians there would have been in a far better situation today. They would have a real education system instead of one designed to indoctrinate them with hate. They would have been taught skills to enable them to find lucrative jobs. They would have had responsible governance, freedom of speech and the press, and equal justice under the law – liberties the protesters freely enjoy but appear to take for granted.

Did we ever hear a word from these activists when Hamas was depriving their people of international aid and diverting international funds to build a vast network of tunnels and manufacture weapons instead of creating a "Dubai on the Mediterranean"? Not once.

Did we ever hear a word from these self-righteous protesters when Hamas police officers and militiamen were beating, arresting and shooting residents of the Gaza Strip who took to the streets to protest economic hardship or when journalists were arrested, tortured or killed ? Never.

The same is true for the Palestinians in the West Bank. We have rarely, if ever, heard "pro-Palestinian" individuals and groups in the West speak out against the financial and administrative corruption in PA's governing institutions. Pro-Palestinians there know all too well what could happen to them if they did.

In the past few weeks, Palestinian Authority security officers shot and killed six Palestinians in Jenin Refugee Camp in the northern West Bank. One of the victims, journalist Shatha al-Sabbagh, was reportedly shot by a PA sniper as she was standing in front of her home in the camp.

There have also been many reports about human rights violations by the PA, including beatings, torture and arbitrary arrests (such as here, here, here, here and here).

We are still waiting to see if "pro-Palestinian" activists on Western university campuses will organize a protest against any of the PA crackdowns. No one organized such protests when PA security officers beat to death prominent Palestinian human rights activist Nizar Banat in 2021.

It is probably not realistic to expect the "pro-Palestinian" protesters to come out against human rights violations by the PA and Hamas. Deep down, one suspects, these professors and students do not really care about Palestinians at all, only about hating Jews.

The "pro-Palestinian" individuals and groups might try to see that by siding with Hamas, they are harming, not helping, the very people -- the Palestinians -- they claim to support. They also might try to see that by directing their hate against Israel, they are emboldening Hamas and the radicals among the Palestinians to increase their abuse.

The "pro-Palestinian" activists just keep showing that all they have to offer is hatred for Jews and Israel. The real "pro-Palestinian" advocates are those who want to see a good life for the Palestinians, not those who encourage them to embrace a brutal and corrupt Hamas. Would they encourage the Iranian people to submit to the ayatollahs, or the Uyghurs to embrace the Communist Chinese Party?

Instead of sitting in a comfortable campus where no one will arrest, torture or kill them for speaking out, these activists should be urging Hamas to release the 100 Israeli hostages it has been holding in the Gaza Strip since the atrocities of October 7, 2023. That would be the best and fastest way to end the current war in the Gaza Strip. The real message is: if you do not want your people killed, do not start a war.

Instead of calling for boycotts and sanctions against Israel, the "pro-Palestinian" students might invite Israelis and Palestinians to their campuses to build, not destroy, bridges between the two peoples. If these protesters in the West really want to help Palestinians, instead of offering messages of hate, they could offer good salaries and jobs.

Sadly, "pro-Palestinian" protests have shown themselves to be nothing more than a backdoor way of spreading hate, delegitimizing Israel and demonizing Jews.

• Follow Khaled Abu Toameh on X (formerly Twitter)

 

Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21269/pro-palestinian-protestors

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Dramatic footage: Over 100 Shaldag soldiers raided, dismantled Syrian missile factory - Israel National News

 

by Israel National News

In September, troops from the Shaldag Unit raided and destroyed an underground compound for manufacturing precision missiles in the Masyaf area, deep in Syrian territory.

 

The IDF announced that on September 8th, 2024, during a special operation by the Israeli Air Force, troops from the Shaldag Unit raided and destroyed an underground compound for manufacturing precision missiles in the Masyaf area, deep in Syrian territory.

For years, the Intelligence Directorate conducted extensive intelligence gathering and monitoring, confirming the value of the target. In the months leading up to the operation, a plan was launched for the Israeli Air Force to destroy it.

The soldiers landed using helicopters, with fire and intelligence-gathering support from aircraft, fighter jets, and naval vessels of the Israeli Navy. The raid's target was an underground compound deep in Syrian territory, funded and supported by Iran. The compound was a flagship project for Iran's efforts to arm its terror proxies on Israel’s northern border. The compound included advanced assembly lines designed to manufacture precision-guided missiles and long-range rockets, significantly increasing the supply of missiles to Hezbollah and other Iranian terror proxies in the region.

During the operation, the forces reached critical machinery for manufacturing precision missiles, including a planetary mixer, numerous weapons, and intelligence documents.

"The IDF will continue to act strategically and professionally with various methods and tactics to remove threats directed at the citizens of Israel," the IDF stated.

IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi commended the operation: "The Shaldag Unit’s operation deep inside Syrian territory joins a series of courageous missions the IDF has conducted over the past few months in Gaza, the Dahieh in Beirut, and Iran, with the goal of destroying the Iranian Axis’ missile manufacturing capabilities. For years, Iran formed a ring of rocket and missile fire around Israel’s borders, and we have struck both the ring and its head."

The planetary mixer  IDF Spokesperson

The weapons that would have been manufacturedIDF Spokesperson

credit: IDF Spokesman

credit: IDF Spokesman

credit: IDF Spokesman

credit: IDF Spokesman

credit: IDF Spokesman

credit: IDF Spokesman

credit: IDF Spokesman

credit: IDF Spokesman

credit: IDF Spokesman

credit: IDF Spokesman

credit: IDF Spokesman

Israel National News

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/401712

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‘Hatred for America, Israel far exceeds hatred for actual terror,’ Torres says of pro-Hamas NYC march - JNS Staff

 

by JNS Staff

"The governor and the mayor must put an end to this nonsense—now. Silence is not an option," wrote Rep. Mike Lawler.

 

Anti-Israel activists with the Within Our Lifetime group march in New York City, Oct. 7, 2024. Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images.

Hours after a man drove a pickup truck with an ISIS flag into a crowd in New Orleans, killing 15 and injuring 35, in the wee hours of the morning on New Year’s Day, hundreds of anti-Israel protesters supported Palestinian terror in a march in New York City.

“These protesters in New York City are marching not to condemn the ISIS terrorist attack against their own country but to falsely accuse their own country, as well as Israel, of terrorism,” wrote Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.).

“The hatred for America and Israel far exceeds the hatred for actual terror, apartheid and genocide in the world,” the pro-Israel congressman added. “For an ideologue, ideology has more reality than reality itself.”

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) wrote that “hours after a jihadist sympathizer killed 10 Americans, pro-Hamas agitators are marching through New York City calling for a global intifada.” (New Orleans police first said that 10 people had been killed, but authorities now say at least 15 are dead.)

“The governor and the mayor must put an end to this nonsense—now,” he wrote. “Silence is not an option.”

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The New York Post reported that hundreds of anti-Israel protesters, many with Palestinian flags, chanted “there is only one solution: intifada revolution” as they marched in New York City on New Year’s Day. Many Jewish organizations and scholars have long said that language calls for violence against Jews.

There was also a chant of “we will honor all our martyrs,” per the Post.

Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) called the protesters “the enemy among us.”

Earlier in the day, Jessica Sarah, the Jewish commissioner of the New York City Police Department, wrote that investigations hadn’t turned up any ties between the New Orleans attack and New York City.

“However, in an abundance of caution, the NYPD will continue to enhance presence across the city at relevant locations as warranted,” she stated. She had not commented publicly at press time about the anti-Israel protest.

“There’s little distinction between the actions of Shamsud Jabbar in New Orleans, who used a truck as a weapon and terrorist attacks in the West Bank where cars are used to run over Israelis,” wrote Joe Truzman, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and editor of its Long War Journal.

“It’s terrorism, yet there are people in this country who support ‘resistance’ and ‘intifada,'” he wrote.

The Israeli diplomat Yaki Lopez wrote that “pro-Hamas demonstrators chanted ‘intifada revolution’ in New York City while Jihadist terrorists carried out a deadly attack in New Orleans, killing over a dozen Americans.”

“This is the grim reality of the ‘globalization of the intifada’ they called for,” Lopez wrote. “It’s terror, pure and simple.”

 
JNS Staff

Source: https://www.jns.org/hundreds-calls-for-intifada-in-times-square/

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Yemen’s Houthis can be stopped through a Saudi-led anti-Iran alliance - Mark Lavie

 

by Mark Lavie

It’s time for the West, and especially the US, to change its response to violence and aggression by bad actors, especially Iran and its proxies.

 

Supporters of Yemen's Huthi group attend a rally in solidarity "with the people of Gaza" in the Huthi-controlled capital Sanaa on December 13, 2024.

(photo credit: Mohammed Huwais/AFP via Getty Images)

It’s safe to say that few people outside the Middle East had heard of the Houthis before they started targeting shipping in the Red Sea and firing rockets at faraway Israel.

For more stories from The Media Line go to themedialine.org

However, the Houthis of Yemen have been causing serious regional trouble since 2004. They are militant, extremist Shi'ite Muslim Islamists guided by Iran, determined to take over all of Yemen and also to subvert neighboring Saudi Arabia—all under the West’s radar.

The Houthis have mostly succeeded in their first goal of gaining control of Yemen, though some active opposition persists. Saudi Arabia has backed away from the struggle despite the ongoing Houthi threat.

Israel plays little part in this, except as a foil for the Houthis’ Iranian sponsors.

The Saudis and Houthis traded blows for a decade, with multiple casualties on both sides, until the US brokered a cease-fire in 2022. That is in keeping with an American knee-jerk reaction to world violence: Stop it, the sooner the better, usually with a cease-fire.

Footage released by Houthi Military Media says to show a launch of missile, which the Houthis say they fired at Israel, at an unknown location in this screen grab obtained from a handout video released on December 19, 2024. (credit: HOUTHI MILITARY MEDIA/via REUTERS)

The US and its allies are learning, hopefully, that cease-fires work only if both sides actually want to stop the fighting. If that’s not the case, then cease-fires just give time for one or both sides to rearm and prepare for the next round of fighting.

Sound familiar? The UN and others started clamoring for Israeli cease-fires with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon just days after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, pogrom in southern Israel and Hezbollah’s almost immediate joining in with thousands of rockets. Israel has mostly resisted international calls for cease-fires, pushing instead for decisive military victories.

The Israeli concept largely worked in Lebanon, but the presence of 100 Israeli hostages in Hamas tunnels has complicated the Gaza military picture above ground.

Israeli policymakers insist that if Israel had heeded the strident calls for a cease-fire with Hezbollah early in the conflict, Hezbollah would have just waited for the next opportunity to unleash another deadly rocket barrage at Israel. Now, with its leadership eliminated, its weapons destroyed, and many of its terrorists disabled or dead, Hezbollah is no longer in the position to launch an all-out attack.

A diplomatic initiative

What is needed on both fronts is a diplomatic initiative to solidify a cease-fire and provide for a stable future. That isn’t happening in Gaza and Lebanon—or in Yemen.

Iran has adopted the Houthis as a fellow Shi'ite extremist Islamist military force. The Houthis were a party to Yemen’s civil war, starting in 2004. Yemen joined the regional uprising of the Arab Spring in 2011 when demonstrators overthrew dictatorial regimes in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. By then, though, the Houthis were well on their way to deposing Yemen’s president and taking over large parts of the country.

Not content to wreak havoc in Yemen, the Houthis turned their murderous attention to the Sunni Muslim kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They fired about 1,000 missiles and 350 drones at Saudi military installations, oil rigs, and other civilian targets between 2015 and 2022 alone. Eager to turn their attention inward, Saudi leaders looked for a way to de-escalate the conflict with Yemen—accepting the US-inspired cease-fire.

That move has backfired. Directed by Saudi Arabia’s arch-enemy, Iran, the Houthis began attacking shipping off the Saudi coast in the Red Sea last year, daring the West to do something about it. When little happened, besides some ineffective airstrikes in Yemen, the Houthis started firing rockets at Israel—another provocation aimed more at the West than at the Jewish state.

Given the West’s skittish attitude toward conflict, it’s no surprise that Israel is the one that has carried out the most effective counterstrikes against the Houthis so far, with airstrikes on ports and Houthi installations.

Unfortunately, Israel is too far away to accomplish much more. Its warplanes need to be refueled on their way to and from Yemen, 2,000 kilometers away. An Israeli ground incursion appears out of the question.

While there are calls for an Israeli attack against the mother ship—Iran— that would be a strategic error.

Just as Iran is not exclusively an Israeli problem, neither is the Houthi aggression. The Houthis are targeting world shipping through the vital Bab el-Mandeb Strait as part of the Iranian war plan to destabilize the Middle East and undermine the US and its allies.

All this shows that it’s time for the West, and especially the US, to change its response to violence and aggression by bad actors, especially Iran and its proxies. Instead of automatically calling for cease-fires, the West should push for some level of victory.

The tools for a coordinated Western response are in place. Saudi Arabia is well positioned to be the front for an alliance to smash the Houthis once and for all and weaken Iran in the process. All those billions of dollars worth of American weapons the Saudis have been amassing for decades would be at the disposal of the alliance.

Other countries, including Israel, would need to take part. There might be a political cost to that, like a meaningless nod in the direction of the Palestinians. This would be meaningless because the Palestinians have demonstrated again and again during the past three decades that they do not want peace with Israel—they want peace without Israel.

Such an anti-Iran alliance led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the West could help stabilize the region, especially if Israel goes along with it.

But first, lessons must be learned: Israel is not at the center of every conflict, not every problem has a solution, and not every military conflict needs to be stopped as quickly as possible.

Mark Lavie has been covering the Middle East for major news outlets since 1972. His second book, Why Are We Still Afraid?, which follows his five-decade career and comes to a surprising conclusion, is available on Amazon.

Source: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-835793

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Germany’s New Morgenthau Plan - Victor Davis Hanson

 

by Victor Davis Hanson

Eighty years ago, Germany’s former conquerors rejected wrecking the defeated nation as too harsh. But now Germany is willfully pastoralizing, disarming, deindustrializing—and destroying—itself.

 

 

Less than a year before the end of World War II, then U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau drew up a nightmarish plan to punish postwar Germany.

After the serial 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War, World War I, and World War II—along with the failed Versailles peace treaty of 1919—the Allies in World War II wanted to ensure there would never again be an aggressive Germany powerful enough to invade its neighbors.

When the so-called Morgenthau Plan was leaked to the press in September 1944, at first it was widely praised. After all, it would supposedly render Germany incapable of ever starting another world war in Europe.

Morgenthau certainly envisioned a Carthaginian peace, designed to ensure a permanently deindustrialized, unarmed, and pastoral Germany.

Postwar Germany would have resembled something akin to the ancient, pre-civilized frontier that the first-century AD historian Tacitus wrote about in his Germania.

The plan would have ensured that within six months of Germany’s surrender, all of its industrial plants and equipment were to be dismantled.

The Ruhr, the renowned center of European industrial strength, was to be permanently neutered, starved of its energy, raw materials, and infrastructure.

After the war, the plan demanded virtual complete disarmament of Germany. Its once-feared armed forces were to be rendered nonexistent.

There were also promised massive reductions in Germany’s borders. Various countries, such as the Soviet Union, Poland, and France, were to be given large slices of the old Third Reich.

Future German security would hinge only on the power and goodwill of the victorious United States and its allies.

When the dying Nazi Party got wind of the plan, Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels had a field day. He screamed to Germans that they were all doomed to oblivion if they lost the war, even growing opponents of the Nazi Party.

Even many Americans were aghast at the plan.

Gen. George Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff, warned that its mere mention had galvanized German troops to fight to the end, increasing American casualties as they closed in on the German homeland.

Ex-president Herbert Hoover blasted the plan as inhumane. He feared mass starvation of the German people if they were reduced to a premodern, rural peasantry.

But once the victorious allies occupied a devastated Germany, witnessed its moonscape ruined by massive bombing and house-to-house fighting, and discovered that their “ally” Russia’s Joseph Stalin was ruthless and hellbent on turning all of Europe communist, the Truman administration backed off the plan.

There is a tragic footnote to the aborted horrors of the Morgenthau Plan. Currently, Germany is doing to itself almost everything Morgenthau once dreamed of.

Its green delusions have shut down far too many of its nuclear, coal, and gas electrical generation plants.

Erratic solar and wind “sustainable energy” means that power costs are four times higher than on average in the United States.

Once-dominant European giants Volkswagen, BMW, and Mercedes are now bleeding customers and profits. Their own government’s green and electric vehicle mandates ensure they will become globally uncompetitive.

The German economy actually shrank in 2023. And the diminished Ruhr can no longer save the German economy from its own utopian politicians.

The German military is all but disarmed and short thousands of recruits.

German industries do not produce enough ammunition, tanks, ships, and aircraft to equip even its diminished army, navy, and air force.

Just a few hundred miles from Germany in Ukraine, more than a million Ukrainians and Russians are dead, wounded, or missing—in the costliest European battle since the horrors of Stalingrad.

Yet the once postwar German dynamo nation now lacks the manpower, munitions, and money to aid Ukraine in any meaningful way against an ascendant Russian invader.

More than 1 million immigrants have entered the country illegally, the vast majority of them from the Middle East. Many of them are hostile to European values and culture, as recent terrorist killings have shown. One-fifth of the population was not born in Germany.

The shrinking German people are growing angry, divided, and depressed. Their 1.4 percent fertility rate is one of the lowest in the Western world.

A tragic irony now abounds.

After World War II, the Truman administration rejected the notion of a pastoral, deindustrialized, and insecure Germany as a cruel prescription for poverty, hunger, and depopulation.

But now the German people themselves voted for their own updated version of Morgenthau’s plan—as they willingly reduced factory hours, curtailed power and fuel supplies, and struggled with millions of illegal aliens and porous borders.

Germans accept that they have no military to speak of that could protect their insecure borders—without a United States-led NATO.

Eighty years ago, Germany’s former conquerors rejected wrecking the defeated nation as too harsh. But now Germany is willfully pastoralizing, disarming, deindustrializing—and destroying—itself.

Victor Davis Hanson

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2025/01/02/germanys-new-morgenthau-plan/

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Feds warned a year ago that U.S. ill-prepared for attacks on ‘soft targets and crowded places’ - John Solomon

 

by John Solomon

Tragic start to 2025 prompts worries about a new era of terrorism foretold in a 2023 Rand Corp. report to the Homeland Security Department.

A year before twin New Year’s Day incidents in New Orleans and Las Vegas darkened the start of 2025, the Department of Homeland Security commissioned a study that warned America was facing a new era of terrorism and was ill-prepared to protect its citizens from that threat.

“Attacks on soft targets (STs) and crowded places (CPs) (ST-CPs) represent a significant challenge in the 2023 security environment,” Rand Corp’s Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center reported to the agency, urging a significant change in posture for a security apparatus that spent two decades hardening defenses against the sort of foreign-inspired and spectacular attacks that al-Qaeda pulled off on Sept. 11, 2001.

Rather than flying planes into hardened security targets of major institutions like the Pentagon or World Trade Center towers, a growing number of foreign-inspired or domestic-grown terrorists and mass shooters have deployed low level tactics – vehicles, improvised explosive devices and guns – on targets with less security but that still house large numbers of potential human victims, the report noted.

Drivers in Wisconsin in 2022 and Germany in 2024 plowed through Christmas Day gatherings with extreme lethal consequence. Shooters from Buffalo, N.Y.; to Charleston, S.C.; and Orlando, Fla.; to San Bernandino, Calif.; claimed numerous victims by focusing on stores, schools, and houses of worship with lower security postures. Plots to plant improvised explosive devices multiplied in the last decade too, a Just the News review of tens years of mass casualty incidents showed.

Meanwhile, such soft targets have been provided little training and security guidance, Rand warned.

“We found little specifically on how to secure open spaces and non-secured buildings that, almost by definition, do not have more-intensive security measures,” the report warned. “What little is present sometimes includes surveillance cameras and other sensors (for areas that have shot detection). The only reliable security measure present, however, is the bystanders themselves.”

You can read the full report here.

RAND_RRA2260-1.pdf

Rand’s report was as academic as it was prescient. On Wednesday, police said, an Army veteran apparently radicalized to support ISIS drove his vehicle bearing an ISIS flag into a crowded French Quarter in New Orleans, where scores were still celebrating New Year’s Eve, claiming 15 lives and injuring many more.

The driver, identified as 42-year-old Shamsud Din Jabbar of Texas, also came armed with guns to shoot officers and had explosives both inside his car and planted in the neighborhood he targeted.

FBI officials said it was a terror attack, and they believed others, still uncaptured, assisted it.

Meanwhile, another driver pulled up to the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas a few hours later on Wednesday morning and detonated a rented Tesla Cybertruck filled with fireworks and explosive materials, killing one and injuring seven.

FBI officials said they were trying to determine if it was a terrorist attack and whether it was related to New Orleans. Both drivers, authorities said, rented from the same rental company, heightening concerns.

Whatever the final outcome, the incidents reaffirmed that soft targets remain soft and easily accessed, creating potential catastrophic opportunities for bad actors when they are crowded like a hotel and public celebration area were on the New Year’s holiday. 

The vulnerabilities coupled with four years of an insecure border under President Joe Biden and liberal defund the police movements in big cities have created a perfect storm, one key lawmaker told Just the News on Wednesday night.

"With the Democrats defund the police and open borders policy fiascos, it was always just a matter of time before America would experience these terrorist type of attacks,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., a member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee and soon to be chairman of the Senate’s most powerful investigative body.

Johnson’s home state experienced the Christmas parade massacre carried out by a lone driver in 2022 in Waukesha, Wis., and he has warned for years that America has too many soft targets for bad actors to strike.

“President Trump has some major Democrat-created messes to clean up,” he added.

The question of local police capabilities has already surfaced in the New Orleans tragedy, where officials admitted security barriers known as bollards that were intended to protect pedestrians from vehicles had been temporarily removed and were to be replaced because they malfunctioned at times before the attacker drove through Bourbon Street shortly after 3 a.m. Wednesday.

“Bollards were not up because they are near completion, with the expectation of being completed before the Super Bowl,” Mayor LaToya Cantrell admitted Wednesday afternoon.

The lack of barriers and the ease the driver found in driving into the French Quarter is particularly alarming for experts given that the city was hosting a major college championship football game, the Sugar Bowl, on Wednesday and the NFL's Super Bowl a month later.

"There's obviously a lot of blame to go around for this terrorist attack in New Orleans,” former CIA analyst and National Security Council chief of staff Fred Fleitz told Just the News. “Security barriers in the street that were put in place to prevent this type of attack were not activated. That is the fault of New Orleans police and officials. “

But Fleitz said the federal government and the Biden administration also deserved blame, focusing on issues like opening the borders to more illegal aliens, imposing ideologies like Diversity, Equity and Inclusion on security agencies, and equating political dissent with terrorism.

“The Biden administration has admitted at least 250 of the known migrants were on the U.S terrorist list.  I believe a much larger number of terrorists entered the country as illegal migrants across the southern border since 2021,” he said.

“We also have a Homeland Security Department and an FBI that has lumped radical Islamist terrorists, a non-politically correct term government employees are forbidden to use, with peaceful protesters such as parents who attend PTA meetings, pro life protesters, and the January 6 protesters.

Fleitz said he is "very concerned that Biden's mismanagement of our homeland security agencies has seriously undermined their ability to defend the American people against real domestic security threats like radical Islamist terrorism."

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., who was briefed on the New Orleans tragedy, suggested Americans will be more alarmed when all the details are eventually made public.

“Here’s what I want to ask from the federal government: Catch these people and then tell the American people the truth,” Kennedy said. “Now, I don’t want you to tell us yet anything is going to interfere with the investigation. And there are things that I’ve been told that I think are true that I’m not sharing with you today because it could interfere with their investigation.”

John Solomon

Source: https://justthenews.com/government/security/feds-warned-year-ago-us-ill-prepared-attacks-soft-targets-and-crowded-places

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Katz: IDF will intensify fight unless Hamas frees hostages - JNS

 

by JNS

The Israeli Air Force conducted over 1,400 strikes on Hamas terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip during December.

 

Defense Minister Israel Katz visits an IDF post in Southern Lebanon, Dec. 22, 2024. Photo by Ariel Hermoni/Ministry of Defense.

If Hamas does not release the 100 hostages it has been holding for 454 days and halt its rocket attacks on the Jewish state, Israel will deal it “blows with a force not seen in Gaza for a long time,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday.

“The IDF will intensify its activities against the terrorist nests in Gaza until the release of the hostages and the elimination of Hamas,” Katz warned during a visit to the southern Israeli city of Netivot.

Hamas terrorists welcomed 2025 by firing two rockets towards the Netivot area. No damages or injuries were reported in the attack.

“I call on Gaza’s residents to rise up against the murderous Hamas group, which also uses you as human shields, and to bring about the release of the hostages, to prevent suffering and end the war,” Katz said.

The defense minister in his remarks highlighted Israel’s “willingness to make far-reaching compromises in accordance with the principles outlined by the U.S. president.”

Israeli ground forces entered Gaza on Oct. 27, 2023, following weeks of airstrikes in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks, in which terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, wounded thousands more and took more than 250 men, women and children back to the Gaza Strip as hostages.

Israeli Air Force aircraft conducted more than 1,400 strikes on Hamas terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip during the month of December, the Israel Defense Forces said on Wednesday.

The IAF strikes—which were carried out by fighter jets, helicopter gunships and drones—targeted Hamas terrorist operatives, tunnel systems, weapon depots and attack positions, the military said.

“Air Force aircraft and control rooms are in direct contact with the fighting [ground] forces and support the fighting in the various sectors,” the statement continued, adding that the IAF has managed to kill terrorists “within a few meters” of Israeli soldiers.

Jerusalem’s year-plus-long offensive against Hamas and other Iranian-backed groups has greatly curbed rocket fire from Gaza, although the Palestinian terrorists still intermittently target the Jewish state.

Following Wednesday’s assault on Netivot, the IDF issued a warning to noncombatants in the Bureij camp, located near the IDF’s Netzarim Corridor dividing Gaza, ahead of a retaliatory strike on Hamas.

“This is an early warning. Terror groups are again firing rockets from this area, which has been warned several times in the past. For your safety, immediately move to the humanitarian zone,” the IDF notice read.

JNS

Source: https://www.jns.org/katz-idf-will-intensify-fight-unless-hamas-frees-hostages/

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Obama’s ‘Censorship’ Office Goes Bankrupt - Gabe Kaminsky

 

by Gabe Kaminsky

The State Department's Global Engagement Center, accused of censoring U.S. media while combating disinformation, lost funding and was shut down after allegations of overreach and bias.

 

 

The Global Engagement Center, an office housed within the State Department and aiming to thwart disinformation and misinformation, has been forced by Congress to close up shop. It’s no mystery why; the taxpayer-backed GEC violated its mandate to work only overseas and devolved into a partisan enabler of speech suppression in the United States.

Here’s how.

Founded in 2016 and technically the product of an Obama-era executive order on counterterrorism, the GEC lapsed in December and lost congressional funding. Over the last two years, my investigative reporting in the Washington Examiner as well as that of Racket News journalist Matt Taibbi pulled back the curtain of the GEC’s ties to foreign and domestic NGOs trying to defund news outlets they say peddle disinformation – including RealClearPolitics. My reporting showed that the GEC and the State Department-funded National Endowment for Democracy combined granted almost $1 million to the British Global Disinformation Index, which created a blacklist of U.S.-based websites that published content it determined to push “adversarial narratives” and then pressured advertisers to shut them down (think the Hunter Biden laptop story and COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis).

The GEC, moreover, was involved with the Election Integrity Partnership, a consortium of left-wing nonprofit groups, universities, and federal agencies that pressured Twitter and Facebook to remove GOP-aligned content in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election. The GEC also bankrolled New York-based company NewsGuard, a “misinformation” tracker that, along with the Global Disinformation Index, has found itself at the center of a lawsuit brought by the Federalist, the Daily Wire, and the State of Texas against the GEC for allegedly funding an unconstitutional “censorship scheme” that suppressed voices on the right.

Taibbi, the former Rolling Stone writer, demonstrated that the GEC pressured social media platforms in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic to moderate extensive content, testifying to Congress in March 2023, “We learned Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation ‘requests’ from every corner of government: the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at State, even the CIA.”

In turn, these revelations and others culminated in a high-level pressure campaign in December that resulted in the GEC losing out on a one-year lifeline through a congressional spending package. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy joined President-elect Donald Trump in demanding that House Speaker Mike Johnson – who had initially brokered a controversial deal to allow the GEC to continue to receive more of your tax dollars – remove the pro-GEC provision. Once this powerful trio came out against more GEC funding, the nail was squarely in the coffin. It didn’t help Johnson that conservative lawmakers with clout in Trump World such as Dan Bishop, Trump’s pick for a high-ranking role at the Office of Management and Budget, fervently opposed the bill.

Soon, the bill was dead. And the GEC with it.

As Taibbi and I investigated the GEC, the taxpayer-funded office even circulated internal guidance with the aim of discrediting our reporting and unfairly linking a congressman whom I interviewed to a Russian state news outlet. The saga, first reported by the New York Post, demonstrated the lengths to which the GEC would go to try to save itself from First Amendment scrutiny.

The campaign was wildly unsuccessful. It arguably backfired.

The congressman who was targeted, Jim Banks, launched a House investigation into the matter – writing in a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, “In response to Mr. Kaminsky’s reporting, the State Department sent out press guidance defending its attempted suppression of U.S. news organizations. That guidance misleadingly changes a quote that I sent to Gabe Kaminsky and the Washington Examiner criticizing the GEC.”

“The intentional misquotation gives the impression that I had been speaking with a Russian propaganda outlet,” the Indiana Republican wrote to Blinken in a recent letter. A watchdog group then filed a Freedom of Information Act request for more details on the internal memo. And Darrell Issa, who had helped lead the charge in investigating the GEC for its ties to apparent censorship, also wrote a letter to Blinken pressing for the GEC to close its doors over “the outright censorship of Americans by the State Department under your tenure.

“By smearing anyone who disagrees with it as a Russian stooge, this network conflates U.S. citizens with a U.S. adversary, as State Department talking points did to my colleague Representative Jim Banks and the award-winning journalists Gabe Kaminsky and Matt Taibbi in a scheming sleight of hand that ruled out of bounds political opinions and fact-based reporting it opposed but cannot refute,” Issa, a California Republican and senior House Foreign Affairs Committee member, wrote in a letter to Blinken in September.

While the GEC is no more, the employees who helped lead the office over the years are being reassigned elsewhere in the U.S. government, likely within the State Department, the agency said in a recent court filing.

The GEC’s failure to win reauthorization is a further vindication of our reporting on its seemingly unlawful activities.

But make no mistake: We will be watching to see where the federal officials accused in court of facilitating “one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation” end up next on the taxpayers’ dime. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

***

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics

Gabe Kaminsky

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2025/01/02/obamas-censorship-office-goes-bankrupt/

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Senior IDF officer: Key positions in Lebanon vital to safeguarding border - Joshua Marks, Amelie Botbol

 

by Joshua Marks, Amelie Botbol

Israel plans to build an advanced border barrier to protect against Hezbollah attacks.

 

Israelis in Metula view damage from an IDF operation across the border in Lebanon, Dec. 9, 2024. Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90.

A senior IDF Northern Command officer, in closed discussions on Tuesday, stressed the importance of maintaining strategic positions in Lebanon to protect the Galilee panhandle town of Metula and the northern border.

These positions would leverage elevated locations for tactical and defensive advantages against Hezbollah attacks, including long-range fire, Israel Hayom reported the officer as saying.

Metula, the northernmost town in Israel, north of Kiryat Shmona, is in ruins after the 13-month war with Iran’s Lebanese terrorist proxy Hezbollah, with more than 60% of its homes damaged by rocket fire.

MK Avigdor Liberman, head of the Yisrael Beiteinu Party, told JNS on Tuesday that the IDF should not withdraw from Lebanon until the Lebanese Army fully deploys along the border, Hezbollah ceases its activities near Israel, and its weapons are eliminated. Until then, “the IDF is not allowed to move a single millimeter,” he said.

A home that was hit by a Lebanese missile in Metula, in the Galilee panhandle, Nov. 27, 2024. Photo by Ayal Margolin/Flash90.

Hezbollah launched some 16,000 rockets, missiles and drones at Israel since joining the war in support of Hamas on Oct. 8, 2023, a day after the Gaza-based terrorist organization’s massacre in southern Israel. Nearly 70,000 residents were internally displaced as 43 communities near the Lebanese border were evacuated.

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According to the Alma Research and Education Center, which monitors the northern fronts, 45 Israeli civilians and 83 IDF soldiers were killed during the war, which ended when a 60-day ceasefire took hold on Nov. 27.

The Israeli Finance Ministry estimates that property damage along the northern border has reached 1.5 billion shekels ($410 million). Additionally, indirect damages in Israeli communities near the border are projected to total between 3.5 billion and 4 billion shekels ($960 million-$1.1 billion).

Plans are also underway to construct an advanced border barrier, featuring anti-vehicle measures and inspired by recent Syrian border upgrades, to address evolving security threats.

Israeli soldiers patrol the border with Lebanon, Dec. 29, 2024. Photo by Ayal Margolin/Flash90.

Religious Zionism Party Knesset member Ohad Tal underscored the need to protect Israeli citizens and enforce agreements preventing Hezbollah from rearming or remaining south of the Litani River.

“What we should do is fulfill the promise we made to our people by allowing them to return to their homes safely without any threat coming from Lebanon,” Tal told JNS on Tuesday.

“The [ceasefire] agreement says Hezbollah cannot go back to the Litani river, rearm, get weapons from Iran. If it’s fulfilled, we can leave, but as long as we see that they are trying to rearm themselves we will have to stay and make sure they don’t pose a threat to our citizens,” he said. 

“It’s very hard to predict what will happen. On one hand, we have to remember that Hezbollah is a radical terror organization with one goal, which is to destroy the one and only Jewish state. I don’t think that they will give up their desire to do so,” Tal said. 

“On the other hand, they do understand that they are weak, their leadership was destroyed, they lost most of their ammunition and many of their officers and manpower. They also know that Iran is in a time of weakness and can’t back them, Syria is no longer part of their coalition. They are much more isolated, weaker and maybe they’ll give up,” he added. 

“This might lead them to maintain a situation where the ceasefire is kept. If not, we will have to act and make sure the agreement is respected and that they will no longer pose a threat to our citizens,” Tal said. 

Knesset member Ohad Tal attends a committee meeting at the parliament in Jerusalem on Dec. 6, 2022. Photo by Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90.

Meanwhile, Lebanese villages near the border remain heavily affected by the war, with displaced residents and slow reconstruction efforts. As the ceasefire nears its end in three and a half weeks, Israeli forces remain on high alert, prepared to resume operations if Hezbollah initiates further hostilities.

Under the terms of the agreement, Israeli forces are supposed to gradually withdraw from Southern Lebanon, where they have been operating since early October.

As the IDF withdraws, Lebanese Army and United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) forces are required to enter these areas and ensure that Hezbollah retreats north of the Litani River, located some 18 miles north of the border with Israel.

The United States and France are overseeing compliance by receiving regular updates from diplomats and military officials.

Israeli troops continue to find massive weapons caches and terrorist infrastructure in Southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah has repeatedly violated the truce, with the Alma Center on Dec. 30 recording 99 ceasefire violations since Nov. 27.

Hezbollah weapons seized during Israeli military operations in the Saluki area of Southern Lebanon, December 2024. Credit: IDF.

Military sources emphasized to Israel Hayom that while post-ceasefire operations in Lebanon depend on political decisions, the IDF is prepared to secure the northern border by any means necessary.

The IDF is monitoring agreement compliance via U.S. intermediaries and sharing intelligence with Lebanese forces, though assessments indicate Lebanon may struggle to meet deployment requirements due to resource limitations and competing priorities, especially on the Syrian border.

Mahmoud Qamati, a member of parliament in Beirut and the deputy head of Hezbollah’s political council, told Hezbollah-affiliated Al Manar television on Monday that “our patience extends 60 days. Day 61 brings change. Forces in Lebanon become occupiers, and we will respond accordingly.”

Likud lawmaker Tsega Melaku highlighted to JNS on Tuesday that Israel’s conflict is with Hezbollah, not the Lebanese people, describing the group as an Iranian proxy aimed at Israel’s destruction.

“We don’t need Lebanese territory, and we don’t want to settle in Lebanon or live there, but we have to defend ourselves. In 2006, after the [Second Lebanon] War ended, the U.N. [Security Council] Resolution [1701] stipulated that the Lebanese side of the border with Israel would be defended by UNIFIL, but they didn’t help us,” she said.

“Everyone is losing in this war but especially the Lebanese people; the situation is bad. In the past, Arab countries especially the UAE supported Lebanon economically, but today it is not the case. Israel does not need to stay in Lebanon, but we have the right to protect ourselves,” Melaku said.

“Lebanon today is led by terrorist groups. The Lebanese regime doesn’t control its territory. Still now, Hezbollah’s army has a presence in Southern Lebanon, and I don’t think the ceasefire helps because they want to exterminate us and the Lebanese government is very weak,” she said.

Hezbollah weapons facility and vehicle

Israeli Air Force strikes targeted a weapons storage facility and a vehicle on Tuesday after soldiers observed Hezbollah terrorists transferring weapons to a vehicle in Southern Lebanon, the military said on Wednesday morning.

אתמול, זוהו פעילים של ארגון הטרור חיזבאללה מעבירים אמצעי לחימה ממחסן אמצעי לחימה בדרום לבנון לרכב סמוך. בסגירת מעגל מהירה הרכב ומחסן אמצעי הלחימה הותקפו מהאוויר להסרת האיום>> pic.twitter.com/b3ro9k2XMf

— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) January 1, 2025

“The IDF is operating in accordance with the ceasefire understandings between Israel and Lebanon. The IDF remains deployed in Southern Lebanon and will operate against any threat to the State of Israel and its citizens,” it added.

Hidden Hezbollah weapons

The IDF on Tuesday night highlighted efforts by the 769th “Hiram” Brigade, under the command of the 91st “Galilee” Division, to dismantle Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure Southern Lebanon in line with the ceasefire agreement.

Over the past week, Golani Brigade soldiers and Erez Program troops, operating under the 769th Brigade’s command in the Saluki region, conducted searches and uncovered a hidden weapons storage facility in difficult terrain. The facility contained a large cache of weaponry, including launchers, missiles and other explosive devices.

During a subsequent raid on nearby structures, additional weapons were found, including missile launchers, explosives, dozens of AK-47 rifles, grenades, wire-guided missiles, mines, surveillance equipment, explosive devices and tactical combat gear.

Troops dismantled the weapons storage facility and confiscated the armaments.

The Erez Program (Unit 169) is an elite program for the training and development of combat commanders for IDF field units. It is named after Brig.-Gen. Erez Gerstein, who commanded the Lebanon Liaison Unit and died in an explosion in Southern Lebanon in March 1999.

Joshua Marks, Amelie Botbol

Source: https://www.jns.org/senior-idf-officer-key-positions-in-lebanon-key-to-safeguarding-border/

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