Israel Update 14.5.26

“SILENCED NO MORE”: THE UNTOLD ATROCITIES OF OCT 7 & AGAINST HOSTAGES IN CAPTIVITY

After more than two years of work, a new report by the Civil Commission on Oct. 7 Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children describes the systematic pattern of sexual violence, humiliation and abuse committed by terrorists and civilians who infiltrated from Gaza during the Oct. 7 massacre.
At the centre of the report is a digital archive cataloguing and documenting thousands of videos, photographs and testimonies from survivors, rescue forces and relatives relating to the sexual and gender-based crimes committed by the attackers. Article here Full text of report here

THE WAR AGAINST HEZBOLLAH

Master Sgt. (res.) Alexander Glovanyov, 47, a transport vehicle driver, was killed on Sunday by an explosive drone impact inside Israel near the Lebanon border.Report here (paywall)

Three IDF reservists were injured after explosive drones launched by Hizbullah struck inside Israel on Saturday. Earlier Saturday, the IDF said it had struck 85 Hizbullah infrastructure sites over the previous 24 hours, hitting weapon storage facilities and launchers. Report here

A Hizbullah explosive drone struck the of the Rosh Hanikra grottoes near the Lebanese border today Thursday, wounding three Israeli civilians, one critically, one seriously and the third, lightly. Metula Mayor David Azoulay said that the current situation in the North was untenable.Report here

Even though three soldiers and one civilian have been killed and 50 wounded by exploding drones launched from Lebanon since the ceasefire there on April 17, the IDF views the drone threat as a tactical problem for which solutions are steadily being developed.

A series of capability tests to deal with fibre-optic and racer drones were completed on Wednesday. Reports here& here

In the southern Lebanese town of Khiam, Israeli soldiers recently uncovered a tunnel complex beneath a clothing store 80 feet (25 meters) below ground that was used by Hizbullah fighters. Troops found a communications room used to gather intelligence on Israeli troop movements, along with weapons storage areas, ready-to-eat food packages, batteries and mattresses. Maj. A., a deputy battalion commander, said, “I don’t see a situation in which we leave and Lebanese civilians return here. We learned from Oct. 7. If we leave, they will rebuild this infrastructure immediately.Report here

After a 48-hour covert advance, IDF troops crossed the Litani River, fought Hizbullah at close range, and uncovered underground compounds stocked for a planned invasion of Israel…During the five days of clearing operations after the battle, inside underground compounds 10-15 metres deep, “we found everything there: food, water, ammunition, motorcycles and ATVs. It was a full preparation for a raid. Their intention was clear: to invade our communities. Seeing that with your own eyes gives you an enormous sense of responsibility.” Report here

IRAN WAR – SECRET OPERATIONS

Israel set up a clandestine military outpost in the sparsely populated western desert region of Iraq to support its air campaign against Iran.
The installation housed special forces and served as a logistical hub for the Israeli air force. It was set up just before the war started with the knowledge of the U.S.
Israeli air force special forces, trained to carry out commando operations in enemy territory, were also present on the base. Report here (paywall)

Saudi Arabia launched numerous, unpublicized strikes on Iran in retaliation for attacks carried out on the kingdom in late March, Report here

The United Arab Emirates has carried out military strikes on Iran; its military is well-equipped with Western-made jet fighters and surveillance networks. The strikes, which the UAE hasn’t publicly acknowledged, have included an attack on a refinery on Iran’s Lavan Island in the Persian Gulf in early April…The U.S. quietly welcomed the participation of the UAE and any other Gulf states that wanted to join in the fight.
Iran has focused much of its fire on the UAE, targeting it with more than 2,800 missiles and drones – far more than on any other country, including Israel. Report here (paywall)

Saudi fighter jets bombed targets linked to Tehran-backed Shi’ite militias in Iraq during the Iran war, while retaliatory strikes were also launched from Kuwait into Iraq. They targeted sites from which drone and missile attacks were launched at Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.Report here

Footnotes

As Pakistan positioned itself as a diplomatic conduit between Tehran and Washington, it quietly allowed Iranian military aircraft to park on its airfields, potentially shielding them from American airstrikes.Report here

The U.S. has gathered intelligence that Chinese companies and Iranian officials have discussed arms transfers, plotting to send the weapons through other countries to mask the origins of the military aid. Since the beginning of the war, China has given Iran intelligence and access to a spy satellite that has tracked the positions of U.S. forces in the region. China has also supplied dual-use components that Iran needs to produce drones, missiles and other weaponry.Report here (paywall)

IRAN

According to information reaching Western intelligence agencies, Iran’s unemployment rate has passed 50%.
The economic situation continues to deteriorate for the Revolutionary Guards, soldiers, and the regime’s Basij militia.
Pakistan’s chief of staff, Gen. Asim Munir, promised the Americans that he could secure Iranian agreement on the unconditional opening of the Strait of Hormuz and a nuclear arrangement aligned with U.S. demands. So far, he has not succeeded.
Each time Iran’s political echelon showed willingness to agree, Revolutionary Guards commanders blocked the move.Report here

TURKEY

Hamas operatives have been training in Turkey, Israel’s Channel 11 reported. They train on the use of small arms and tactics at public shooting clubs and receive training in drone operations. They have even received official licenses to fly drones in Turkey. After training, they will return to Lebanon, Jordan, and the West Bank to carry out attacks on Israel. Report here

and see first article below in Comment & Opinion section.

DEFENCE

Even though Norway is one of the European countries most critical of Israel, Germany has begun supplying Norway with Leopard 2A8NOR tanks which are equipped with Israeli technology. Each tank has the Eurotrophy system, the European version of the Trophy active protection system for military armoured vehicles produced by Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defence Systems. Trophy, operational since 2010, was sold to the U.S. Armoured Forces in 2018 and was selected for German Leopard and British Challenger tanks in 2021. Report here

GAZA

Half a year on from the ceasefire that formally ended fighting between Israel and Hamas, Gaza remains a wasteland.
And so it will remain as long as U.S.-led peace talks continue to stall over the issue of demilitarizing the strip – a precondition for reconstruction.
Israelis remain deeply sceptical that the threat from Hamas – a movement whose founding covenant commits it to the destruction of Israel – can be neutered by these talks. Report here (paywall)

Public opinion in Gaza is shifting, with more residents supporting the disarmament of Hamas, according to an Israeli Channel 11 report citing Western intelligence findings on Saturday. The report said a majority of the Gazan public supports the push for Hamas to give up its weapons, seeing disarmament as a way to fully end the war with Israel and begin the reconstruction of Gaza. Report here

DONATION

Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Centre has received a $200 million donation from Jan Koum, the Jewish-Ukrainian co-founder of WhatsApp, marking the largest philanthropic contribution ever made to a medical institution in Israel. Report here

PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY (PA)

The West has helped PA President Abbas, 90, keep the Palestinian people “hostage,” Fatah political leader Samer Sinijlawi has said, referring to the president who has held his position for 21 years. “I don’t have any hard feelings towards Israelis, none. I have lots of hard feelings towards the West that keeps seeing us [Palestinians] as not 100% human beings who deserve democracy and internal human rights and keeps endorsing and embracing a leader who has been proving that he is a burden on his people for years.”
Sinijlawi learned to speak Hebrew during his five-year prison sentence for throwing stones at Israelis during the First Intifada. He described how his ideology shifted during his detention, a shift he thinks Palestinian society should make. Part of this change would mean direct dialogue with Israel and a recognition that Palestinian freedom depends on Israeli security. He said Abbas “does not explain that if we, as Palestinians, did not place Israeli security as the basis of our national strategy, we would not proceed. And we do it not because we are doing them a favor, but we do it because it is the only way to achieve our national interest. You cannot promote the two-state solution and deny the historical rights of Jews in this land….It’s not only the textbooks. It is the narrative that this leadership is continuing to push and does not have the guts to tell the Palestinian people that we should think differently.”
Sinijlawi explains that the “pay-for-slay” payments were a mistake. The “Palestinian leadership could say, ‘From today on, we are not paying anything. So we are totally against any violence…'” Report here

WINE

The lack of water in the Negev desert helped vintners create a fruity grape that’s unique and easy to drink. Now the dry, sandy landscape stretching from Kiryat Gat to Eilat is being officially recognized as the Negev appellation, an international wine region, placing Israel’s south and its distinctive desert terroir on the global wine map.Report here

EUROVISION

Irish writer Graham Linehan has accused Ireland’s public broadcaster RTE of antisemitism for airing his “Father Ted” comedy instead of the Eurovision Song Contest in protest at Israel’s participation. He said “I did not give my permission for Father Ted to be used as a prop in an antisemitic political gesture” Reports here& here

Noam Bettan representing Israel qualified for the Eurovision Final on Saturday night. His semi-final performance: View here

SPORT

Israel’s Youth Pom national team, composed of 18 girls aged 12 to 14, recently secured third place, winning bronze medals at the International Cheerleading Cup in Orlando, Florida.
Senior athlete Anna Privalova said, “Training in Haifa while the sirens were active taught us a level of focus other teams don’t have”. Report here

Football fans are doing what they can to try to beat exorbitant prices for next month’s World Cup. Shem Magnezi, 37, a software engineer from Israel, has developed a Chrome extension for Fifa’s resale platform that monitors price trends, allowing supporters to see if there’s a lull in the market, and alerts fans when tickets for their team’s matches drop below a certain threshold. Magnezi shared the software on Reddit and is now regularly thanked by users from across the world who have used the extension to source cheaper tickets. “I’m really happy to have helped, because at the end of the day the World Cup is nothing without the fans,” he said. Report here (paywall)

COMMENT & OPINION

Turkey

Khaled Abu Toameh:

Turkey has evolved from a diplomatic supporter of Hamas into a primary operational and financial hub for the terrorist organization.

Israeli security investigations show Hamas operatives participating in firearms and combat training at civilian shooting clubs across Turkey. Hamas members are enrolling in professional drone-pilot courses in Turkey and obtaining official licenses. By allowing Hamas members to develop drone capabilities on Turkish soil, Ankara is deliberately grooming terrorists for future wars against Israel.

The IDF and Shin Bet recently identified a major Iranian-directed money-laundering network in Turkey. This system is managed by Gazan expatriates and exchange companies that funnel funds to terror cells.

High-ranking Hamas officials are welcomed as honoured guests in Ankara, with some reportedly receiving Turkish passports and residency permits to facilitate their movement.

Turkey’s “double game”—acting as a NATO ally while sponsoring Hamas—is a direct threat to Middle Eastern stability and the security architecture of the West. Article here

Hamas

Wall St Journal Editorial: Reading “Silenced No More,” the new report by the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children, we were transported back to Oct. 2023, and a screening of the raw footage of Hamas’s atrocities. The new report is a catalogue of Hamas depravity….(graphic description)… We regret having to relate such details, but it is crucial to remember when the understandable human impulse is to forget such horrors. All the more so because the sexual violence by Hamas has been aggressively denied. Denial serves to distort Israel’s defensive war as if it were wanton violence. Such deniers prefer anything to reminding the world why Israel has no choice but to fight for its life.Editorial here (paywall)

Iran

Sogand Fakheri:
Iran today is the only country in the Middle East where the population is almost entirely united against its own government. Every ethnicity and every region speaks with one voice: the Islamic Republic must go. Have you ever heard of a population welcoming an attack on its own country by a foreign military? Iranians did, because for them, the enemy is the regime, not the bomber.
At least 114 people have been executed in the past three weeks alone. More are dying under torture in prison. It is far more effective to remove the people in power permanently than to spend years hunting for its weapons across hostile territory.Article here

Dr. Dan Diker:
The U.S.-Israel strikes on the Iranian regime are definitive military responses to 47 years of religiously-fuelled terror carried out by the world’s foremost radical regime of the modern era. This formidable challenge to the West is compounded by the Free World’s hesitation to acknowledge the jihad Iran has waged against Israel and the U.S.-led Western alliance since 1979. Article here

New York Times

Honest Reporting: The day before an independent civil commission released a 300-page report titled Silenced No More detailing Hamas’ systematic sexual violence, Nicholas Kristof published a New York Times op-ed making outrageous claims of alleged Israeli sexual and gender-based violence. His sourcing raises serious questions: the primary NGO cited has documented ties to Hamas and key witness accounts have already shifted or contradicted themselves.

The timing and sourcing disparity of the two reports are stark. One report (Silenced No More) underwent rigorous independent scrutiny and contains hundreds of pages of evidence. The other relies on compromised sources and a narrative that has already begun to unravel—yet it ran in the paper of record, on the front page of global opinion—after they received advanced notice of the Silenced No More report and passed on it.

The piece relied heavily on allegations from unreliable sources, which remain disputed, or lacking corroborating evidence while downplaying the broader context of Hamas terrorism. Article here

Sylvan Adams: The New York Times has officially abandoned journalism for the dark arts of the blood libel.

By publishing the deranged, evidence-free, and physiologically absurd, claim that Israeli soldiers are training dogs to commit sexual assault against Hamas prisoners, the Times has crossed the line from “biased” to “journalism malpractice”, reporting irresponsibly unverified accounts, which are easily and demonstrably provable outright lies.

Why would a reporter write such a vile article? And, why would the NYT editors accept such a foolish and irresponsibly reported account? Of course, such accounts are a politically motivated attempt to create a moral depravity equivalence with the barbarism that Hamas perpetrated on Israeli civilians, while filming and distributing their snuff videos, on October 7th.

Hideously wrong and irresponsible, this is nothing less than a modern-day Der Stürmer headline designed to incite hatred and justify violence against Israel and Jews. FaceBook post here

Scott Jennings (American journalist, commentator & writer): This New York Times “article” about Israel is such a journalistic atrocity that I actually feel stupid reading it out loud. If everyone at the NYT who is responsible for this is not fired, then the publication will lose whatever shred of credibility it has left. X post here