Israel Update 14.8.25

HAMAS TERRORIST POSED AS “JOURNALIST”

 

On Sunday, Israel targeted Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif in Gaza and provided evidence of his Hamas affiliation. The IDF presented internal Hamas documents in which al-Sharif was registered as a soldier and team commander and which included rosters, terrorist training lists, and his salary records, as well as a photo showing him embraced by former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 attacks. Al-Sharif was identified as a member of Hamas’s East Jabaliya Battalion who enlisted in 2013 and was given journalistic cover by Qatari-funded Al Jazeera,

But the international media largely ignored this evidence and instead, al-Sharif’s photo in a press vest was widely circulated.Reports herehere& here

 

Footnote:

Al Jazeera was founded in 1996 with funding from the government of Qatar. In 2017, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain all banned Al Jazeera. Critics of the network throughout the region say it amplifies the voices of militant groups. Experts who track the network say its coverage and commentary echo many of Hamas’s claims and increases support for its actions. Report here (paywall)

GAZA AID

 

 The USAID inspector general’s office is compiling evidence that Hamas systematically steals UN aid in Gaza. U.S. officials said the investigations has obtained evidence of occasions in which Hamas “commandeered UN aid trucks,” embedded terrorist operatives in “UN agencies or at UN facilities,” and ensured humanitarian goods were “directly delivered to Hamas officials.” Report here

More than 1,300 trucks carrying aid supplies for civilians entered Gaza in the week up to 10/8/, the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) said Sunday.
Almost 1,900 trucks that had been waiting at the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom and Zikim crossings were collected and their supplies distributed by the UN and other international organizations.
Additionally, the IDF announced that more than 1,000 aid packages had been airdropped into Gaza since late last month by the UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Spain, France, Germany, Belgium, Canada and the Netherlands.
Last week, COGAT announced a pilot programme to allow Gaza merchants to bring goods in “to increase the volume of aid entering Gaza, while reducing reliance on aid collection by the UN and international organizations.” Report here

 

Hamas has been inflating the toll of Palestinians it says have died of malnutrition, and most of those who have died had pre-existing medical conditions. Israeli security officials and medical experts who reviewed Hamas’s starvation claims in Gaza found “an orchestrated campaign as part of a broader effort to discredit the State of Israel and achieve political gains.”
“The thorough review found that the documented cases do not represent the condition of the general population in Gaza but rather selectively present extreme cases involving preexisting illnesses.”
Report here

 

The core problem in Gaza is distribution. There are massive amounts of uncollected food and aid rotting away in the sun on the Gazan side of the border because the UN is unwilling to distribute it. According to COGAT only about 20% of the aid that gets to the Gaza border is actually distributed.
According to the UN, 85% of aid that they bring into Gaza is stolen by Hamas or other armed groups before it reaches those in need.

 

Hamas adamantly opposes the distribution of food by the Gazan Humanitarian Fund or any other organization that it does not control.
Hamas made more than $500 million in 2024 from diverting aid. By looting and reselling humanitarian aid at inflated prices, Hamas funds its attacks and recruits new terrorists. Report here

GAZA

 

The Israeli cabinet’s decision on the IDF’s next moves in Gaza aims to apply measured and escalating pressure on Hamas to return to substantive negotiations. The strategy is designed to avoid exacerbating risks to the hostages. For the first time, Israel has formally articulated the conditions under which it would agree to end the conflict, as well as its plans for the “day after.” Report here

 

The IDF spotted five armed terrorists in central Gaza earlier this week near a vehicle marked with the logo of World Central Kitchen (WCK) humanitarian organization “despite having no affiliation with the organization, while posing a threat to our forces. They deliberately affixed the emblem [on the vehicle] and wore yellow vests”  They were targeted in an airstrike. Report here & here

 

Hamas’s own data from the “Palestinian Health Ministry” demonstrates there is no genocide occurring in Gaza, according to research by the Tamaror research group for Israeli-Palestinian conflict studies, led by Professor Gilad Hirschberger…
As the conflict progressed, men aged 17-55 represented an ever-growing percentage of total fatalities. “Recent months show fighting-age casualties approaching 50% of the total…indicating military efforts focus on eliminating terrorists.”
“This indicates successful efforts to target terrorists while protecting civilians. If Israel intended population destruction, military operations would target all demographic segments equally, and Hamas’s own data would reflect this pattern. Current evidence shows no such pattern.”  Report here

HOSTAGES

 

In the 5 minute Hamas video of Israeli hostage Evyatar David, he appeared intentionally starved, barefoot in a hot tunnel, weak, and digging his grave.
He detailed on a makeshift calendar what he had eaten each day in the month. There were days when he received no food; sometimes two days went with no food.And for the entire month he only ate lentils. Report here

 

A detailed report on the condition of hostages freed from Gaza in the most recent deal earlier this year was released on Tuesday by the Health Ministry. The report also warns of the dire situation facing those who remain in captivity. The findings will be submitted to the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The ministry called for the immediate provision of food, water and medical care to those still held. Report here

ATTITUDINAL RESEARCH

 

Recent attitudinal research has found that a sizable slice of anti-Israel sentiment softens once reliable information is introduced…    In multiple surveys, when respondents were given concrete information – about (PA) incentives for terror, about the denial of Jewish history and rights, about the real-world implications of slogans, stated support for maximalist anti-Israel positions dropped, sometimes by double digits.
One study saw support for a Palestinian state fall by 24 percentage points after clarifying what kind of state was being imagined. Another found that 67.8% of students shifted their view of “from the river to the sea” once they learned what the phrase means in practice.Article here

THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY (PA)

 

In the Oslo Accords, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) committed to establishing a liberal democracy. In practice, in thirty years, the PA has only ever held two elections for the position of chairman (1996 and 2005) and two elections for the parliament (1996 and 2006)… Over the last 30 years, the international community has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to promote human rights in the PA, yet it is unclear what exactly has been achieved. Between 2007 and 2023, the EU donated 1.81 billion euros to promote “gender equality” – yet women in the PA still face institutionalized discrimination. Perpetrators of “honour killings,” in which a male kills his female relative based on a suspicion of impropriety, are still prevalent.
For the last 30 years, the PA has existed on handouts from the international community. Article here

POST-SCRIPT TO IRANIAN MISSILE ATTACKS

 

Olga Weissberg, 91, who was seriously injured by an Iranian missile during the 12-day war with Iran in June died on Saturday. She is the second Holocaust survivor whose death has been linked to the Iranian missile assault on Israeli cities during the war. Report here

HIZBOLLAH

 

 The French army and other UN peacekeepers said that they and the Lebanese Army uncovered “a vast network of fortified Hizbullah tunnels” containing shelters, artillery pieces, rocket launchers, hundreds of missiles and rockets, anti-tank mines and other explosives, in Southern Lebanon. As at Aug. 4, UNIFIL said it had identified 302 arms caches. report here

 

Israel’s northern military leadership made a strategic mistake in allowing Hezbollah to grow along the northern border, outgoing Northern Command commander Major General Uri Gordon has admitted. Report here

HOUTHI ATTACKS ON ISRAEL CONTINUE

 

Today (Thursday) the IDF intercepted a ballistic missile launched from Yemen towards Israel.Report here

 

On Tuesday, the Iran-backed terror group claimed to have launched six drones at Israel, targeting “vital targets” in Haifa, the Negev Desert, Eilat, and Beersheba. The IDF reported earlier shooting down one drone near Eilat. The other five drones likely fell short before reaching Israel. Report here

THE UK

 

Diplomatic sources said that Israel is considering withdrawing defence and security co-operation with the UK as one of a range of options if Britain presses ahead with Palestinian recognition next month.
In recent years, Israel intelligence has provided crucial information to Britain’s spy agencies about Iranian-backed threats in the UK, which now pose as big a threat to Britain as Russia.
The UK has also used of Israeli-made drones for surveillance operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israeli defence equipment has been credited with saving the lives of British soldiers in both countries.
Israeli companies also sell weapons systems, parts and software to British companies such as BAE.  Report here(paywall)

 

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee responded to UK PM Starmer’s Friday statement condemning Israel’s plan to expand operations in Gaza.
He said: “So Israel is expected to surrender to Hamas & feed them even though Israeli hostages are being starved? Did UK surrender to Nazis and drop food to them? Ever heard of Dresden, PM Starmer? That wasn’t food you dropped…”    “How much food has Starmer and the UK sent to Gaza? @IsraeliPM has already sent 2 MILLION TONS into Gaza & none of it even getting to hostages.”
“Maybe UK PM ought to sit this one out & follow Arab League who said Hamas should disarm & release ALL hostages immediately.” Report here

FRANCE

 

Over the past six months, French authorities have quietly stopped renewing work visas for El Al flight security personnel stationed in Paris. The work visas allowed the guards to live and work legally in France, but with renewals halted some now find themselves in the country illegally. Others have had to obtain temporary diplomatic visas through the Israeli Embassy, while some were forced to return to Israel. The guards are not considered El Al employees.Report here& here

 

The air traffic controller who shouted “Free Palestine” at El Al pilots at Charles de Gaulle airport was “stripped of all ability to practise until further notice,” the French Transport Minister confirmed on Tuesday. Report here

 DEFENCE

 

Elbit Systems has won the bid for a $1.635 billion contract to deliver “a range of defence solutions” to an unnamed European country.Report here

BUSINESS

 

Israeli financial software company Sapiens said Wednesday that it had signed an agreement to be purchased by U.S. private equity firm Advent International in a cash deal worth $2.5 billion. Its software platform is used by 600 customers across 30 countries.Report here

SPORT

 

At the World Games in China. As at 14/8, Israel was placed 9th out of more than 70 countries in the medals table. The events finish on 17/8.Medals table here scroll down

Amy Refaeli & Jonatan Fridman won bronze in the Mixed Pairs Dynamic.1 minute video here

Table tennis player Caroline Tabib won the US Open.Photo here

Amit Verbin won an U14 international orienteering competition in Hungary and Austria.Photo here

COMMENT & OPINION

 

Marc A. Thiessen: Far from deliberate starvation in Gaza, Israel is doing something no nation has ever done, or even been expected to do: Feed the population of the aggressor force that attacked it while the war is still going on.
The normal way to get humanitarian relief to civilians in wartime is allow them to leave the conflict zone as refugees. During the civil war in Syria, more than 4.2 million civilians fled that conflict. But Gaza’s neighbours Egypt and Jordan refuse to allow its civilian population to flee. The real reason is that they do not want to import Gaza’s problems.
Of course there is a policy of deliberate starvation in Gaza. It is being carried out by Hamas, which last week released photos of two emaciated Israeli hostages. In Hamas’s tunnels, the terrorists have plenty of food. The only ones starving are the hostages. To lay the blame for the situation in Gaza at Israel’s feet, rather than on Hamas, requires a stunning level of moral blindness. Full article here (paywall)

 

Dr. Dan Diker: The New York Times’ July 30th admission of misreporting of its front-page photograph of a Palestinian child suffering from cerebral palsy and genetic disorders, misrepresented as a starvation victim, is the latest example of years of coordinated information warfare against Israel, transforming humanitarian concerns into strategic weapons to isolate and subvert the one democratic, Jewish-majority state.
Iran’s Hamas proxy operatives have used disinformation warfare to win world opinion, defame Israel globally, and subvert it from within. The current media crusade accusing Israel of premeditated, systematic starvation of Gaza has successfully hijacked Western hearts and minds, increasingly isolating Israel internationally. Yet simple fact-checking would reveal the UN’s failure to deliver massive amounts of humanitarian aid that Israel has facilitated. Full article here

 

Catherine Perez-Shakdam: In Gaza, truth was methodically suffocated by a terror regime that understood the power of images and the vanity of Western press culture. For nearly two years, much of the global media served as the willing mouthpiece of Hamas’s grotesque narrative. Hamas waged an information war – and Western media helped it win.
While Hamas rocketed Israeli civilians from schoolyards and hospitals, while its foot soldiers hoarded aid and filmed hostages as trophies of war, foreign journalists turned their cameras toward outright manufactured imagery. They almost universally reported casualty numbers sourced exclusively from Hamas’s Gaza Health Ministry with no interest in truth and every interest in manipulation. When every casualty figure is taken at face value but every Israeli claim is treated as suspect, the scales of journalistic ethics are not merely unbalanced; they are weaponized.Full article here

 

Andrew Fox, Major (ret) interviewed by Brendan O’Neill:

Andrew Fox says that the reality on the ground in Gaza bears little resemblance to the Western media narrative. Gazans are indeed going hungry – not thanks to Israel, but mostly due to Hamas’s theft of aid and the UN’s complicity in this racket.

“There is enough food in Gaza for everyone. There are 3,000 calories per person a day that have gone into Gaza throughout the war, on average. That’s more than you or I would need to eat a day to stay healthy. The question then is why are people going hungry? Well, if you look at UN figures, 85% of its trucks transporting aid have been intercepted and didn’t make it to their destination. This is a staggering failure on the UN’s part….The UN’s one job is to distribute this aid in Gaza, and it has catastrophically failed to do so for the past year.”   Full interview here

 

Liel Leibovitz: For weeks, Hamas passed off photographs of people suffering from genetic disorders as evidence of Israeli cruelty; at the same time, it prevented ample aid supplies from reaching those very people by hijacking more than 90% of UN aid trucks, selling family aid packages – which enter Gaza for free – at insane markups… In pictures from actual famines, you see skeletal mothers along with skeletal babies. Not in Gaza, though. That’s because the point of the photographs was to provide onlookers with a fig leaf of an excuse to embrace the narrative of a terrorist organization whose aims are, in fact, openly genocidal.
How is a terror group that livestreamed hundreds of gruesome snuff films and posted them on YouTube ascendant, supported by the leaders of Europe, the Pope, and the editors and writers of nearly every newspaper and magazine and broadcast network on the planet? Full article here

 

Mick Hume: There is plenty of evidence to show that, in fact, Israel has done more than any army in history to limit civilian casualties, that Israel is probably the first nation at war to try to feed rather than starve its enemies, and that Hamas is ultimately to blame for all the suffering in Gaza. Indeed, unlike the Israelis, the Islamists really do have a policy of deliberately causing – and celebrating – the death of Palestinian civilians.
Those who started the war with the slaughter of families and festival goers are being rewarded for it by supposed leaders of Western civilization. Thus Macron, Starmer and the rest are giving Hamas a prize for launching a pogrom, a reward for mass rapes, a bouquet for butchering Jews. Little wonder that Hamas announced soon afterwards that it has no interest in discussing any peace deal until Israel surrenders. Full article here

 

David M. Weinberg: Israel has no choice but to dismiss Western protests and pressures, such as recognition of ersatz Palestinian statehood, and instead act independently to secure its future. This is because the world has been consistently wrong throughout Israel’s history about almost every security issue.
Western leaders were wrong about investing disastrous degrees of trust and billions of wasted dollars on the corrupt, dictatorial, human rights-abusing, antisemitic, and terrorist-sponsoring Palestinian Authority. For decades, they have ignored and even at times cooperated in the PA’s campaign to demonize and criminalize Israel in international forums, all the while perpetuating the Palestinian victim-refugee-martyrdom identity and applying the soft bigotry of low expectations to the Palestinians.
Western leaders and analysts have been consistently blind to the genocidal nature of the Palestinian national movement, both Fatah and Hamas. 3/4 of Palestinians in the West Bank supported the Oct. 7 Hamas-led massacre.
And they have been wrong about responsibility for the current war in Gaza, calling almost from day one on Israel to halt its military operations against Hamas. Instead, they tolerate Palestinian “Days of Rage,” “Nakba Day” riots, and missile barrage eruptions as expected behaviour. As if responsible and reasonable behaviour, such as negotiation, peaceful discourse, and normative state-building, cannot be demanded of the Palestinians.  Full article here

 

Melanie Phillips: Media outlets constantly use as reliable the Hamas totals of those killed in the war, even though these ludicrously fail to acknowledge that any of the dead were Hamas terrorists. The near daily reports by the BBC and other outlets falsely accusing Israel of deliberately firing on civilians queuing for food ignore the video coverage of Hamas deliberately shooting them dead for receiving this aid. They ignore the evidence of Hamas gunmen stealing the food from the trucks for themselves. And they ignore the Gazans in orderly queues at the American-Israeli aid points cheering Trump and the IDF for safely providing them with food by preventing it from being stolen by Hamas. Full article here

 

Amnon Lord: (recognition of Palestine moves by) These Western governments have lowered Hamas’s motivation to agree to a ceasefire or a hostage-release deal.
The fact remains that the Palestinians have no functioning governing or state infrastructure worthy of recognition. When they have been granted territory and the opportunity to govern, the entity created has descended into violent barbarism. Hamas’s brutal aggression is directed not only at Israel but also at the civilians of Gaza. Full article here

 

Sarah Tuttle Singer: The Toronto Film Festival refused to screen an Oct 7 documentary because the filmmakers did not obtain permission from the perpetrators of the massacre to show Hamas-shot footage which the terrorists themselves had broadcast to the world. Full article here

Update: Following an outcry, the CEO of TIFF has apologised and is “working to reinstate” showing the film.

 

Jonathan S Tobin: Many of those (Gazans) who crossed the border between Gaza and Israel on Oct. 7 and took part in the orgy of mass murder, rape, torture, kidnapping, and wanton destruction were ordinary Arab civilians. Palestinian civilians not only supported Hamas but cheered on the terrible deeds done in their name.
Almost all of the freed Israeli hostages reported that their captors, who sexually abused, starved and tortured them, were ordinary people and not just armed cadres. Not a single Palestinian civilian helped an Israeli escape, not even to collect the $5 million reward that Israel offered for information as to their whereabouts.  Full article here