DAY 248 OF THE WAR: Combat in the North and Gaza, Draft Bill, Smotritch and Hostage Families, UN Security Council, Polling Gen Z

Tel Aviv Diary, June 10, 2024

TWO NOTES:

Tomorrow Night is Erev Shavuot. Unless there are major developments, good or bad, there will be no Israel Update entries tomorrow or Wednesday.

Our next Zoom Briefing on the state of the war is scheduled for Sunday, June 16th, at 6 pm Israel time, 4 pm London time, 11 am EDT, and 8 am PDT.

Significant combat occurred today in both main theaters. Northern Israel faced 21 separate barrages, including six direct anti-tank attacks and six drone strikes. One of the drone strikes in the Golan Heights ignited a blaze and wounded five individuals, who were subsequently evacuated to the hospital in Safad in fair condition. Additionally, Hezbollah also shot down an Israeli Hermes 900 drone, valued at $10 million, over Lebanon using a ground-to-air missile. In response, Israel launched a series of additional air strikes on Southern Lebanon. Since the beginning of the war, Hezbollah has fired 19,000 rockets and 150 drones at Israel.

In the South, the Army has advanced beyond the Philadelphia corridor on the border and has entered other areas of Rafah. There has been heavy combat in these regions today.

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The video below is from the body cam of one of the commandos who freed the hostages:

KNESSET AND THE DRAFT BILL

The Knesset is scheduled to vote on a military draft bill late tonight. The vote is technical in nature, reintroducing the bill, initially introduced by Benny Gantz before the war, as an interim step to skip the first reading of the bill—which the coalition hopes will postpone the Supreme Court’s decision to end the ultra-Orthodox draft exemption farce.

Despite the opposition of Defense Minister Gallant and a number of Likud MKs, the vote is expected to pass. The opposing members justify their reticence to vote against the bill by claiming they will amend the legislation in committee. However, I doubt this rationale will influence the Supreme Court, as the judges made it clear during the deliberations that they have heard every possible argument over the past few years.

SMOTRICH AND THE HOSTAGE FAMILIES

Finance Minister Smotrich appeared before the Knesset Finance Committee to present a report, where family members of hostages were waiting for him. After being confronted with the accusation that he is not doing enough to secure the release of the hostage, Smotrich responded as follows:

Is there a deal that Hamas agrees to accept? Do you know of such a deal? I will not support the proposed deal; but the question is whether there is actually a deal at all. There is not one person who doesn't want to bring back the hostages. I have their picture next to my bed, I pray for them every night before I go to sleep. I go to sleep with the photo at night and wake up with the photo in the morning. I wake up with great pain; I deal with this out of a deep commitment to do a lot to bring the hostages home. The question of the price is one of the most complex and tormenting ethical, moral, and national dilemmas. Suppose Sinwar asks for 20 residents of our Gaza border area to be handed over for every living hostage so he can kill them, is that a fair price? No. What Sinwar is demanding now is to release hundreds of murderers with blood on their hands. This could lead to the murder of many Jews. We will turn over every stone, but we will not commit collective suicide.

UN. SECURITY COUNCIL

The UN Security Council voted unanimously — with Russia abstaining— on a resolution that calls on Hamas to accept the most recently proposed ceasefire proposal. Here is part of what US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said regarding the resolution:

Colleagues, today, this Council sent a clear message to Hamas: Accept the ceasefire deal on the table. Israel has already agreed to this deal. And the fighting could stop today if Hamas would do the same. I repeat: the fighting could stop today. This Council and countries across the region and the world have endorsed this agreement.

Hamas can now see that the international community is united. United behind a deal that will save lives and help Palestinian civilians in Gaza start to rebuild and heal. United behind a deal that will reunite hostages with their families after eight months in captivity.

Read the whole speech

POLICE INVESTIGATION INTO MIRI REGEV

Today, the police conducted a search of the offices of Minister of Transportation Miri Regev. The action followed an investigative report concerning Minister Regev’s management of her Ministry. According to the report, Regev made almost every decision in the office based on her own political gain. The report conducted by Channel 13’s Raviv Drucker revealed that Regev maintained a color-coded chart of every region in the country (a kind of “traffic light,” green, yellow, and white, to indicate levels of support for her in the Likud). One of the primary allegations contends that Regev would decide whether or not to visit and/or assist a municipality based on the color she assigned to that municipality.

WEST BANK

While we’ve been paying most attention to what is happening at our northern border and in Gaza, a persistent low-intensity war continues in the West Bank. Today, the Army Spokesman described yesterday’s events in the West Bank as follows:

IDF and Shin Bet forces launched a brigade-level operation last night to thwart terrorism in the Far'a area within the Jordan Valley and Samaria Brigade.

The forces have so far arrested three wanted individuals, destroyed explosives, and are currently engaged in exchanges of fire with armed terrorists. During these confrontations, one terrorist was killed and hits were confirmed on additional terrorists. The operation is ongoing.

In the villages of Fakua, Rumana, and Danaba within the Menashe Brigade, the forces arrested four wanted individuals and killed an armed terrorist.

The forces arrested three wanted individuals in Bita and Dora within the Judea Brigade, and in Tarkumia within the brigade's area, they arrested another wanted individual and confiscated weapons.

In Qalqilya within the Ephraim Brigade, the forces confiscated two pistols, and in the villages of Tel and Zawata within the Samaria Brigade, three wanted individuals were arrested. In Rimon and Beitunia within Binyamin, two wanted individuals were arrested and weapons were confiscated.

The arrested individuals and confiscated weapons have been handed over to security forces for further handling. No casualties were reported among our forces.

Since the beginning of the war, approximately 4,150 wanted individuals have been arrested across the Judea and Samaria Division and the Jordan Valley and Samaria Brigade, about 1,750 of whom are affiliated with the Hamas terrorist organization.

SECRETARY BLINKEN RETURNS TO ISRAEL

Secretary Blinken arrived in Israel today as part of his attempt to promote a ceasefire and a hostage deal. In Cairo, Blinken stated that Hamas was the only thing standing in the way of a ceasefire. A few days ago, I was asked by a neighborhood acquaintance if Blinken is the American Secretary of State who has visited here the most. For those of you who have been reading the history section of the Israel Update, you know that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has Blinken beat by a mile. Kissinger was the man who invented shuttle diplomacy.

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By happenstance and not by plan, in order to write the current sections of Israel’s history, I have re-immersed myself in the period of the Yom Kippur War, which I once knew well but whose details I had forgotten. Below is an excerpt from Kissinger's book “Years of Upheaval,” describing how his shuttle plane was about to make the final trip to Damascus. This trip represented a pivotal point where the diplomatic shuttles could either conclude successfully or in failure (spoiler: it ended in success).

By now, all passengers on my plane had been caught up in the strange mood composed of equal parts of exaltation, total exhaustion, and despair. Whatever their assignments — diplomats, staff, journalists, airplane crew, security personnel, communicators — they seemed all to share the sense of being part of a common enterprise. I had warned those of the Jewish faith that a few more shuttles would qualify them as Israeli citizens under the Law of Return and see them drafted into the Israeli army.

The journalist captives of my mission had taken to wearing display buttons with the legend, Free the Kissinger 14. These champions of the First Amendment, watchdogs of the public weal, thought of themselves as detached, skeptical, personally uninvolved. It is to their credit that they were not. All seemed to absorb by osmosis the hope and fear in Israel and the grudging experimentation with new departures in Syria. They knew that while success did not guarantee peace, failure would make war all but inevitable. They were glum as we boarded the plane for what all of us thought would be the last visit to Damascus.

Normally eager to visit Egypt, they did not look forward to the overnight stop in Alexandria; it would be a symbol of failure. Marvin Kalb, one of the most sensitive and scholarly of the reporters, came into my little cabin on the short hop to Damascus: "Hang in there, Mr. Secretary," he said. "We believe in you; you can make it.

Of course, Blinken is not Kissinger; for better or worse, there has only been one Kissinger. However, the one thing that makes this situation so different is that our two proxy enemies are not states. They are both terrorist organizations and do not share the same interests as nation-states. Kissinger knew how to exploit those interests to achieve the outcomes he sought to achieve. I fear that even though much of the world identifies Hamas as terrorists, they still seem to normalize and try to engage with them as state actors, expecting them to behave in the same manner that nations typically do. Reports today, confirmed by Prime Minister Netanyahu, indicate that the U.S. is seeking to negotiate directly with Hamas for the five American-Israelis held by Hamas. Netanyahu stated he welcomed the move. I doubt this deal will happen.

POLLING “GEN Z”

Last week, I interviewed Robin Lemberg Greif, a principal at The Heart Monitors — a public opinion consultancy that has been doing significant pro bono work in the Jewish community, with a primary focus on researching Generation Z.

Here is some of what Robin shared about their polling of Gen Z students regarding the Holocaust and the ongoing Israel-Gaza war:

We've lost Gen Z Jews, and the problem is they have a very different dynamic and makeup in their population. It is diverse, almost majority Brown, LGBTQ, and there's a massive amount of acceptance of all these differences. So, the “oppressor-oppressed” mentality holds true for Jewish kids too. We found in January that a third of Gen Z Jewish kids actually think [Israel’s actions constitute] apartheid.

We are a religion that is empathetic. On the other side, there is massive anger masked as civil rights, but it's really Malcolm X. For instance, only 22% of Gen Z Muslims had empathy for the Israeli hostages; whereas Gen Z Jews had 54% empathy for Palestinian victims and 56% for Israeli hostages, showing no significant difference between the two groups.

I'll give you an example. “Never again” is [a phrase] about the Holocaust. We tested it, and 25% interpreted it [the phrase] as meaning no more Holocaust, 25% interpreted it as meaning no more Palestinian genocide, 25% interpreted it as meaning no more war in the Middle East, and 25% interpreted it as meaning something else.

You’re never going to convert the extreme Muslim population or Arabs; they're just not receptive. Our optics are terrible. I think with Gen Z overall, we can win if we have an overarching message. This includes the idea of civility, discourse, dialogue to make progress, fairness, equity, and a bit of separation from what Netanyahu is doing because he's seen as extreme. I'm not making a political statement here, but the optics are horrible.

Some interesting findings that Heart Monitors Found:

•  Gen Z Jews are more closely aligned with their peers than with their parents regarding their views on the Hamas/Israeli conflict.