Huckabee Demands Our Attention (Noam Shelef - March 31, 2025)

Noam Shelef (he/him) joined New Jewish Narrative in 2025 as the Vice President of Communications. The issues that NJN champions have always been close to his heart, and he began his career in 1997 as an intern for Americans for Peace Now. In the years since, Noam has advocated in support of progressive causes in Israel, fighting for LGBTQ rights, and to end practices harmful to girls in Africa.

Eight years ago, when President Trump's nominee to serve as ambassador to Israel was announced, our community -- American Jews committed to progressive values -- mobilized in opposition. The nominee, David Friedman, had been a major financial backer of the settler movement. With the Senate under Republican control, there was little hope that his nomination could be stopped. But we still needed to send the message that this nomination was at odds with the views of the American mainstream and the American Jewish community.

In this, we succeeded. While all previous ambassadors to Israel were confirmed by more than 90 senators, only 52 voted for Friedman. 

Last week, President Trump's new nominee for ambassador to Israel, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for a hearing. In light of President Trump's "Flood the Zone" strategy -- and Netanyahu's imitation of many of Trump's neo-authoritarian tactics (not to mention the hostilities in Gaza and across Israel's northern border) -- you could be forgiven for missing the news about this hearing. We at New Jewish Narrative, however, are paying attention. And we are working to mobilize our community and our allies to make sure that this nomination is not understood as an endorsement of Huckabee's radical views by the public at large. 

Here's a sample of what we know about Huckabee's views:

1.  Huckabee strongly opposed the ceasefire deal that freed 38 hostages from Gaza. He said that “there’s no valid reason to have a cease-fire with Hamas” and that a ceasefire should not even be entertained until after the hostages are released.

2. Huckabee has repeatedly denied national Palestinian identity, claiming that there “isn’t such a thing” as a Palestinian. 

3. Huckabee argued that Israel’s rule over the West Bank and Gaza is not an “occupation,” and that the Israeli connection to the West Bank is stronger than the American connection to Manhattan.

4. Huckabee has actively participated in actions that undermine US diplomatic credibility, including ceremonial cornerstone laying ceremonies in settlements. 

5. Huckabee compared the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration to the Holocaust, saying it was leading Israelis "to the door of the oven." 

In his hearing last week, Huckabee had the opportunity to renounce these views. He did not. 

If all of these were not sufficient reasons to oppose Huckabee, I have one more: I find myself deeply concerned by the religious language that Huckabee deploys to express his views on Israel, on Jews, and on the conflict. I came of age at a time when secular political movements -- the Israeli Labor party and the Palestinian Fatah party -- embarked on a peace process that offered the best hope for Israel's survival and would allow both Israelis and Palestinians to have a future worth living in the same land. I remember what the violence perpetrated by religious zealots like Baruch Goldstein and Hamas suicide bombers did to shake confidence in the peace process. At this moment, when the impact of religious fanatics is growing in the bodies politic of both Israeli and Palestinian society, we do not need an American envoy guided by his own end-of-days-motivated reasoning. 

I am privileged to be part of the push-back to this extremism in the American Jewish community. That's why I joined New Jewish Narrative one month ago. It’s about pushing back on Huckabee (and NJN will be in touch with you when it’s time for you to reach out to your senators) and about all the other opportunities when our narrative -- as Jewish, as progressives, as people who care about Israel, peace, and justice -- needs to be heard. I’m thankful for NJN and the work we’ll get done together. 

Is Israel Veering Towards Civil War? (Dina Kraft- March 24, 2025)

Dina Kraft is a journalist, podcaster and the co-author of the New York Times bestseller, My Friend Anne Frank, together with Hannah Pick-Goslar. She lives in Tel Aviv where she's the Israel Correspondent of  The Christian Science Monitor and a creator of the podcast Groundwork, about activists working in Israel and Palestine. She was formerly the opinion editor of Haaretz English.

So much is happening these days. Sometimes it’s the snapshots that say the most.

A Jerusalem sky heavy with storm clouds looming over a group of anti-government protesters opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to fire Ronen Bar, head of the Shin Bet. It’s another anti-democratic step they say in the government’s slide towards autocracy.  Israeli flags flap in the wind. In the foreground an older man in a black wool hat is being shoved by five border police.

A leaked quote: “Yesterday you accused me of treason. Today you are threatening to send me to jail. Tomorrow you will execute me,” Bar reportedly told government ministers, according to a Channel 12 report.

A tweet by Netanyahu liked by Elon Musk: “In America and in Israel, when a strong right-wing leader wins an election, the leftist Deep State weaponizes the justice system to thwart the people’s will. They won’t win in either place! We stand strong together.”

A text from my daughter while babysitting for our neighbors’ young children upstairs: “If there’s an azaka (Hebrew for air-raid siren) can one of you come help bring them down to the shelter?”

In the last week Israel resumed fighting with Hamas in Gaza, in a surprise air assault that has killed and wounded hundreds, shattering 42 days of a cease-fire, the beginning of relief in Gaza, the emotional return of some of the hostages to Israel. 

And if war resuming was not enough, the some 70 percent of Israelis who don’t support the government felt the gut punch of a resumption of its plan to overhaul the judiciary (code opponents say for a power grab to weaken the courts) and attempts to fire not just Bar but the attorney general too, accusing Gali Baharav-Miara of blocking its agenda.

Tens of thousands of protesters have been packing the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for the past seven days straight, mass demonstrations of the likes not seen since before the war. On Saturday night in Tel Aviv over 100,000 marched through the streets.  They are back to chanting not just “Why are they still in Gaza?” referring to the remaining hostages and demanding a truce and a deal for all of them to be released from the Hamas tunnels under the rubble of Gaza, but also to chanting “Democracy! Democracy.”

Netanyahu appears indifferent to the sounds of protesters literally outside his home, on Gaza Street (yes, Gaza Street) near the official prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem. He is laser focused instead on pleasing the 68 members of his government, ensuring they will vote for the state budget Tuesday. Shoring up that solid government majority has meant assuring the ultra-Orthodox they will continue to be exempt from being conscripted into the army. It’s also featured welcoming back far-right Itamar Ben-Gvir to his job as national security minister along with his party back into the government.

Amid the government’s latest moves and the deep fracture they are creating – and at wartime no less – and the spiking police violence against demonstrators, former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak said he fears the country could be being pushed towards civil war.

Noting “the severe rift between Israelis and themselves,” he told Yediot Ahronot, the Israeli daily. “This rift is deteriorating and in the end, I fear, it will be like a train that goes off the tracks and plunges into a chasm causing a civil war.”

Shmuel Rosner, a political analyst and senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, says of potential civil war, “We need to define it before we can say if [it is] close or remote. If we are talking about people putting up barricades in streets or taking out pistols, I don’t think we are close to that.”

One of the potential dangers is people regarding the police as Ben-Gvir’s militia rather than the government body intended to also protect them, he notes.

Those warning of civil war, Barak among them, are “not alarmists, but are raising the flag early… It’s important to say we [Israelis] are not that unique to assume that no such thing can happen in Israel,” he adds. 

As a measure of the growing sense of lawlessness, and the fear and uncertainty that accompany this moment, I offer another snapshot. This one from Monday evening. A post on Bluesky, a social media network, from Yuval Abraham, the Israeli co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land.”

It reads: “A group of settlers just lynched Hamdan Ballal, co-director of our film ‘No Other Land’. They beat him and he has injuries in his head and stomach, bleeding. Soldiers invaded the ambulance he called, and took him. No sign of him since.”

Escalation x2 (Yossi Alpher- March 17, 2025)

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.

Q. On Sunday, PM Netanyahu announced that his government intended to fire Shin Bet head Ronen Bar, radically exacerbating relations between the government and the security community and fueling an atmosphere of national crisis. What happened?

A. The backdrop is criticism of Netanyahu by the Shin Bet domestic security service that has emerged into public view. Of special note is an investigation into suspicious links between Netanyahu’s senior aides and the Qataris (“Qatargate”) when Qatar was, with Bibi’s okay, funding Hamas prior to October 7. 

A public threat by Bar’s predecessor, Nadav Argaman, to expose additional problematic acts by the prime minister helped escalate the situation. The Prime Minister’s Office accuses both Shin Bet heads, current and former, of losing the PM’s trust and undermining an elected government that enjoys a popular mandate.

The Bar firing, an affair that is developing as we write, is linked to Gaza, which in turn is linked to Yemen and the Trump administration. See more below. But first, the second front of escalation.

Q. On Saturday, the US launched an air and naval offensive against the Houthis in northern Yemen. The IDF is attacking select terrorist targets in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. Hostage talks with Hamas are stalled and Israel is threatening to renew the Gaza war. Can we expect missiles and rockets on Tel Aviv?

A. The short answer is: we should be prepared at least for missiles from Yemen and possibly for symbolic rocket fire from Gaza. That could mean cancellations by airlines and security-related complications for daily life in parts of Israel, not to mention possible casualties.

Q. US President Trump has vowed to end Middle East wars (and the Russia-Ukraine war). Why has the US attacked Yemen?

A. This is the first major use of force by the second Trump administration. It is totally inconsistent with Trump’s declared policy of employing negotiations and ‘deals’ to end Middle East and other wars. Trump’s rationale for the attack appears to reflect frustration over deadlocked US efforts to deter the Houthis from disrupting Red Sea shipping and to deter their backers in Tehran, and frustration with deadlocked Gaza hostage and ceasefire talks that feed into Houthi aggression. 

Nor could Trump miss a chance to try to “one up” the Biden administration’s earlier efforts to deter the Houthis: “Joe Biden’s response was pathetically weak, so the unrestrained Houthis just kept going. The Houthi attack on American vessels will not be tolerated. We will use overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective.”

The Houthis, and Iran which arms and backs them, are tough adversaries. They are almost certain to escalate against Israel, whose retaliatory attacks have failed to deter them. Unless Trump plans to conquer the Houthis’ mountain redoubt in northern Yemen at a heavy cost in American lives, he too could fail. So this is a risky and disturbingly paranoid departure for his administration.

Q. Exactly how does this link up with Gaza, which is well over 1000 miles away from Yemen?

A. The immediate Middle East backdrop to the US attack is failure by Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Adam Boehler, to bring about a renewed Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage-release process. Boehler, who broke precedent by directly engaging Hamas, has been relieved by Trump of his mandate to gain release of US citizens held as prisoners by Hamas. The impression in Israel is that Boehler’s direct approach to Hamas, and its failure, actually ended up setting back efforts to renew the process.

Suspension of the Gaza ceasefire, coupled with the hostage freeze, have led Israel to cut off humanitarian aid to the Strip, causing renewed civilian hardship there. Not surprisingly the Houthis, who ceased firing their Iranian missiles at Israel when the ceasefire with Hamas went into effect in January, responded with renewed threats against Israel and immediate renewal of their attempt to blockade the Bab al-Mandeb Straits at the southern entrance to the Red Sea. 

Note the domino effect: global shipping via Egypt’s Suez Canal link between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, which was virtually shut down by the Houthis after October 7, 2023 when Hamas attacked Israel, is once again threatened. This in turn affects the global economy. Trump’s surprising gambit to directly attack the Houthis could at least in the interim make things worse for Israel, Egypt, and--indirectly by prolonging the Gaza hostage crisis--Gazan Palestinians. 

Q. Is there an Israeli political backdrop to this new escalation threat?

A. Definitely. Prime Minister Netanyahu is constantly trying to balance Trump’s pressure to renew the Gaza ceasefire and prisoner-hostage exchange with counter-pressures within his coalition. Netanyahu’s messianic Orthodox coalition partners oppose any ceasefire, even at the cost of hostages’ lives. His ultra-Orthodox Haredi partners are holding the coalition hostage until they get a new law enshrining their very unholy exemption from military service. 

If the squabbling coalition does not pass a budget by the end of March, new elections are automatically mandated. Netanyahu wants to avoid elections for fear lest loss of power affect both his standing in a long-running court case and his stonewalling of efforts to launch an inquiry into his own role in the October 7 disaster. That means bribing these coalition extremists by avoiding hostage deals and at least threatening more war with Hamas.

Netanyahu’s relations with the security community, which supports a renewed ceasefire while nevertheless is obliged to prepare an exhausted IDF for yet another round of fighting in Gaza, are strained. His decision Sunday to fire Bar exacerbates those relations to an unprecedented level. Bar has made clear that he will not go quietly: he is challenging Netanyahu’s motives. Attorney General Gali Baharav Miara, another key national gatekeeper whom Netanyahu mistrusts and wants to remove, is intervening.

Q. Efforts by Trump emissaries to forestall renewed Gaza-related violence ended up focusing on an exchange, thus far abortive, for one live IDF hostage and four dead hostages, all US-Israeli dual citizens. Why?

A. The US is traditionally, and understandably, committed to rescuing its citizens from prison in hostile countries or from entities like Hamas. This is Boehler’s mission. The stalemate in broader efforts to restore the Israel-Gaza ceasefire/hostage/prisoner momentum and avoid renewed Gaza fighting reportedly led to an American proposal for a US-Hamas deal involving only five US citizens, dead and alive.

The Israeli public reacted to reports of this deal negatively. Awarding priority to US dual citizens over the remaining two dozen or so live Israeli hostages suffering in Hamas captivity and a like number of dead Israelis had a bad taste to it. Moreover, if there are no more US citizens held in Hamas tunnels in the Strip, might Trump conceivably lose interest? On the other hand, Israelis do not hide their gratitude to the Trump administration for all it is doing on behalf of the hostages. 

The abortive American-Israeli hostage deal was reportedly one of the factors in Boehler’s removal from the Gaza file. In parallel, the very stalemate exacerbated by that deal could well be a factor in the US decision to commence bombing the Houthis in Yemen. If a hostage-prisoner exchange and ceasefire renewal were in the offing, the US would presumably hold its fire to avoid sabotaging it. 

So would the IDF, which has apparently now commenced pinpoint Gaza attacks as a prelude to ending the ceasefire or as a way of renewing military pressure on Hamas without restarting all-out war. Or even, conceivably, with a new chief of staff anxious to please Netanyahu, as an escalatory measure ‘inadvertently’ leading to a full-fledged renewed conflict seemingly mandated by Hamas’s insistence that Israel agrees to end the conflict and leave it in power in Gaza.

Q. Bottom line?

A. Lest we forget, the Shin Bet under Ronen Bar was responsible on October 7 for early warning of a Hamas attack from Gaza. It bears a lot of the blame for that intelligence failure, which has led to the Houthis’ involvement in the conflict. Bar has acknowledged his responsibility and declared his intention to resign. In this context, the head of IDF intelligence and a number of additional key figures have already resigned. 

The only senior official bearing responsibility for the October 7 massacre and the ensuing war who has not acknowledged his failure and offered to resign is Netanyahu himself. It is Netanyahu’s in-your-face refusal to do so that lies at the heart of the current escalation on two fronts: domestic and distant. 

The Trump administration's offensive against the Houthis is totally inconsistent with Trump’s rhetoric about generating and maintaining peace in the Middle East. We must stop trying to rationalize Trump’s strategic thinking. It is clearly unpredictable and hence dangerous.

Israelis must prepare for renewed missile and rocket attacks with all their attendant ramifications for the economy, the burdens of IDF reserve call-ups, and Israelis’ peace of mind. If fighting in and around Gaza now escalates, Netanyahu will have found a new/old way of distracting the public from his evasion of responsibility, his coalition difficulties, and his legal problems. 

In the déjà vu department, I am reminded of the history of US passports in the hands of IDF soldiers. Until around 1970, an American who entered IDF service was obliged to give up his US citizenship. In 1964 I was one of a bare handful of Americans who did so. Eventually, the US Supreme Court changed all of that. Compare to today, when Israelis are speculating ruefully that their sons and daughters heading for IDF service should arrive in the army with a second passport as a potential ‘get out of jail free’ document…

Could Trump ‘Pull a Zelensky’ on Netanyahu? (Yossi Alpher - March 10, 2025)

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.

Q. Two weeks ago at the UN General Assembly, Israel voted with Russia and North Korea and against most of the world on the Ukraine issue. Does this sort of morally repugnant maneuver protect Israel from President Trump’s capricious international behavior, as demonstrated recently with Zelensky in the Oval Office?

A. That February 24 UN vote was something of a milestone for Israel, which had previously tried to demonstrate neutrality towards the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Indeed, a few years ago PM Naftali Bennett briefly tried to mediate between Moscow and Kiev. 

So did PM Netanyahu buy Israel an insurance policy against unfriendly Trump initiatives with that UN vote? Hardly. In the ensuing two weeks, it has emerged that Trump has initiated a direct US-Hamas negotiating track and is moving toward direct negotiations with Iran on the nuclear issue. Both are initiatives that Netanyahu opposes. 

(Even though moving in those directions would long ago have made sense for Netanyahu, too. See below.)

Q. But at both the moral and the global level, what is the significance of Israel siding so openly with Washington and Moscow regarding Ukraine? Surely it could have abstained at that UN General Assembly vote.

A. In view of the Israeli public’s preoccupation with rescuing the hostages and with the Netanyahu government’s renewed efforts at ‘judicial reform,’ that UN vote more or less passed under the radar in Israel. But it is significant. It appears to reflect a number of highly problematic short-term considerations on the part of the Netanyahu government.

For one, despite or perhaps in view of Trump’s near-daily change of tactics on a variety of issues, Netanyahu seemingly reckons he needs not only Trump in the Middle East, but Putin too. For example, in neighboring Syria, where Russian influence and presence (however residual in the aftermath of the fall of Bashar Assad) is preferable in Israeli eyes over Islamist Turkey, which is trying to turn Syria into a vassal state. Regarding Iran (where Moscow presumably opposes a military nuclear program as much as does Washington) Russia has reportedly agreed to mediate the issue between Washington and Tehran. 

Recently, Netanyahu sent his military secretary, Major General Roman Goffman, to Moscow for consultations. He sends no-one to Kiev.

Syria and Iran are areas of concern where Ukraine has neither influence nor interest. Add to this Jerusalem’s lingering Holocaust-era suspicions of Ukrainian anti-Semitism and corresponding WWII-era gratitude toward Russia. Then factor in Netanyahu’s reflex impulse to do Trump’s bidding regarding Russia and Ukraine. All these considerations ostensibly trump whatever moral qualms Netanyahu may have regarding Zelensky’s fate. 

Q. Indeed, Israel appears to have been ‘freed’ by Trump’s administration to take unprincipled and immoral stands regarding issues far closer to home. . . 

A. Precisely. In recent weeks Netanyahu has allowed himself to violate Israel’s US- and Qatari-brokered commitment to Hamas to open negotiations regarding phase II of the hostage/ceasefire agreement and has blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza. And the IDF is taking an unusually free hand on several other fronts. It remains on Syrian territory on the Golan and has even threatened to intervene in Syria on behalf of beleaguered Syrian Druze. It remains inside Lebanon despite the ceasefire agreement there. It is destroying entire neighborhoods in rebellious West Bank refugee camps in Jenin and Tulkarm. 

Q. All this freedom of maneuver, in return for toeing the line on Ukraine. But surely there is going to be a price to pay… 

A. Trump has kicked Zelensky out of the White House, cut off all weapons supplies to Ukraine, taken Russia’s side in the two countries’ war, ordered a cessation of US cyber operations targeting Russia and paused intelligence-sharing with Ukraine. What else, then, is he capable of doing regarding so-called allies like Ukraine and so-called enemies like Russia? Here is veteran commentator Nachum Barnea in Yediot Aharonot just a week ago regarding ramifications for Israel and Netanyahu’s blind support for Trump:

“In the short term this may pay off: As long as Trump backs Israel, it enjoys immunity. But, as Zelensky learned in person, Trump’s support is fickle. When Netanyahu watched the broadcast [of Zelensky, Trump and Vance] from the Oval Office, I reckon his stomach churned. Just a few weeks earlier, he had sat on the same chair. In the absence of shared values, betrayal is always waiting around the corner.”

Q. What sort of betrayal?

A. The Israeli intelligence community is already wondering whether Israeli intelligence shared with the US now flows to Russia (Europeans and Australians are also wondering). If Trump is talking to Iran and Hamas, what is he telling them about Israel? Could his next step be a Ukraine-style reduction of arms and intelligence supply to Israel to leverage pressure, based on his bilateral understandings with the Russians, the Iranians, or even Hamas?

Q. Granted that Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine reflects a lack of moral foundation in his approach to international relations and that Netanyahu is buying into this. But where does it end?

A. In opting for Russia over NATO and Europe with regard to Ukraine, Trump is making a major strategic choice in American policy. Presumably, because he leads the world’s preeminent superpower, he can get away with this and zigzag back and forth at will. But Netanyahu? The Israeli leader’s choice of Russia over Europe with regard to Ukraine and his abandonment of minimal moral principals could have serious long-term consequences for Israel. Not only is Europe Israel’s biggest trading partner, not too long ago UK and French aircraft defended Israel against Iranian missiles and drones . . .  

What’s more, if in Trump’s case the abrupt changes in international orientation can tentatively be explained as a reflection of his sentiment-free transaction-based approach to perceived US interests, this is not the case with Netanyahu. For Bibi, the principal motive is his own and his coalition’s political survival. The hostages, the Hamas ceasefire, the Iranian threat, Israel’s attitude toward a hostile Russia-- all are subordinate to Israeli politics and Netanyahu’s personal fate.

Q. And to Trump’s totally unpredictable policy zigzags and lack of moral and strategic foundation.

A. Amen.

Q. One more issue that you just raised: you suggest that Netanyahu should consider offering direct Israeli contact with Hamas and Iran. But both call for Israel’s destruction and refuse to talk to it.

A. If nothing else, a repeated Israeli call for direct negotiations would highlight to the world exactly who the hardliner is here. Besides, people like me have had unofficial contacts with Iranians and Palestinian Islamists for decades. Asking intermediaries like Russia and Turkey to facilitate negotiations with Islamists is good for Israel’s image in everyone’s eyes-- except Israel’s own Jewish extremists.

New Jewish Narrative- Winter Letter 2025

Read the letter HERE.

The World Zionist Congress Is Our Chance to Demand a Better Future. Don’t Pass It Up. (Maxxe Albert-Deitch, March 3, 2025)

Maxxe Albert-Deitch (she/her) is New Jewish Narrative’s Deputy Director of Communications. In her previous life as a historian, she spent several years researching and working on archaeology projects in the field of conflict transformation in Israel and Palestine. Maxxe is also the primary host of PeaceCast, the podcast dedicated to exploring issues and trends relating to peace and progress for Israel.

"Your generation is going to change the world someday.” At first, I took that remark as praise, as a lofty goal to try to live up to. But then it became, “you’re going to fix the world,” and “you young people are going to save the world.” That phrase has since curdled my sense of optimism into raw determination. It’s difficult to change, let alone fix or save, anything when my generation’s voices are underrepresented in government and, especially in my case, Jewish community institutions alike. But as Shirley Chisholm once said, “if they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” So I found the largest nearby table – the World Zionist Congress – and I brought a folding chair: I attached my name to the Hatikvah Slate for the election cycle of 2025.

I can’t fix all the horrors of the modern world, certainly not as an individual. What I can do is ensure that voices like mine – a 26-year-old female progressive Jewish voice – are heard within my own community. The World Zionist Congress is the “parliament of the Jewish people.” Representatives elected to the WZC make key decisions surrounding the allocation of roughly $5 billion over a five-year term. These elections determine and respond to the most pressing needs across Israel and Diaspora Jewish society. I am resolved that democracy, human rights, gender equity, and the pursuit of peace be at the forefront of the Congress’s mission. In addition, voting is a concrete action that signals to the broader Jewish community what our values are and where time, money, and attention should be allocated. Change begins in our homes, in our communities, and in the organizations that speak in our voices. As an American Jew, the Hatikvah Slate is my chance to be heard – and it can be yours, too.

Like so many American Jews, I have grown increasingly frustrated with the establishment Jewish organizations who respond to Israel’s Occupation of Palestinian territories with silence, if not approval. We rightly grieve in shock at the horrific events of October 7th, and the plight of the hostages since then. We rightly guard our safety carefully as antisemitism rises around the world. But our pain does not justify turning a blind eye toward extremist settlers committing heinous acts of violence in the West Bank. That does not explain away the tens of thousands killed in Gaza. From kindergarten to Sunday school to the speeches on the last day of summer camp, Jewish leaders taught me that it’s our community’s job to repair the world and speak out against injustice. I have watched too many in my community stand silent and fail to do so. 

The World Zionist Congress elections might seem like an unusual place to take a stand, especially for someone as outspoken about Israel’s issues as I am. It isn’t. The Hatikvah Slate has long been a quietly revolutionary side of an established structure, and now it provides a chance for my generation’s voice to be heard. I still believe in an Israel that lives up to the best of its ideals: an inclusive, diverse country that provides a safe home to the peoples whose cultures and histories have been rooted there for millennia. Hatikvah represents the chance to channel funds away from radical settlers and extremists, to advocate for gender equity and women’s and LGBTQIA+ voices in traditionally male, Orthodox spaces, and to demand that Israel live up to its promise to be a light unto the nations. 

Voting is open between March 10 and May 4, 2025. I urge everyone in the Jewish community, particularly those who feel disconnected or disaffected in today’s political and religious climate to vote, even (or maybe especially) if you’ve never participated in a WZC election before. Make your voice heard. Help ensure that the governing body that represents our voice and that our community stands for our beliefs. It's in the name: Hatikvah. Vote for hope.

The Israelis and Palestinians Speaking of Reconciliation Amid Rising Calls for Revenge (Dina Kraft, February 24, 2025)

Dina Kraft is a journalist, podcaster and the co-author of the New York Times bestseller, My Friend Anne Frank, together with Hannah Pick-Goslar. She lives in Tel Aviv where she's the Israel Correspondent of  The Christian Science Monitor and a creator of the podcast Groundwork, about activists working in Israel and Palestine. She was formerly opinion editor of Haaretz English.

On Friday morning I woke up along with the rest of the country to the gruesome news that it was not Shiri Bibas’ body that had just arrived to Israel from Gaza along with the bodies of her two red-headed young sons and their peace activist neighbor, Oded Lifshitz,  but that of an unidentified woman from Gaza. It was yet another nauseating plot twist in the ongoing trauma of the October 7 attack and its aftermath, one in which the Bibas’ family’s kidnapping and plight had become the most high-profile symbol.

On my calendar that morning was to go hear peace activists Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah. Inon is an Israeli whose parents were burned to death the morning of October 7 on their moshav Netiv Asara, and Abu Sarah, a Palestinian whose brother was killed from injuries sustained after being held in Israeli prison, and they were headlining at an event entitled “It’s Time”. It’s tagline: “It’s time to stop the war, to bring the hostages home, and to make peace.”  

I momentarily hesitated, feeling overwhelmed by the heaviness and fresh horror of the moment. I had gone to sleep with the news of not just image of the Bibas family members and Lifshitz returning in coffins swirling in my mind, but the late-breaking story that several empty busses – it turned out to be five in total – had exploded at a bus depot at a southern suburb of Tel Aviv. It was a botched mass terror attempt. For Israelis it was an instant flashback to the Second Intifada era of suicide bombings.

I felt a familiar feeling creep up -- this sense that every time Israelis and Palestinians step an inch closer to some kind of respite from the storm of this war – it is again snatched away. The current uncertainty is whether or not the ceasefire deal that despite its fragility has being holding and halting the bloodshed, and ending the agony for some hostages and their loved ones as well as that of Palestinian detainees held after a mass sweep of arrests following post-October 7 in Gaza who, were also being released. (Among the hundreds of Palestinian prisoners being released there have also been those convicted of killing or planning attacks against Israeli civilians).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing “revenge” Friday for the false return of Shiri Bibas’  body (her actual remains were returned later in the day), and stalling the handover of the next group of Palestinian prisoners, and an Israeli public seething over the family’s fate as well as the spectacle of the most recent Hamas ceremony and the near-miss of the bus attacks the Israeli public is boiling with rage.

Social media pages posts and tweets brim with calls to “Never forgive, never forget” (the same slogan Israeli prison authority officials printed in Hebrew on the sweatshirts they made Palestinians prisoners wear last week as they were releasesed), Kahanist-style language has been mainstreamed including rousing enthusiasm for “Trumpsfer”  (slang for Trump’s “suggestion” to empty Gaza of Gazans)  alongside calls for Shiri Bibas’ and boys’ “blood to be avenged.” (Notably the Bibas family themselves rejected calls for revenge, speaking out instead for the ceasefire to hold so that the remaining 63 hostages can be returned, over 20 of whom are presumed to be alive).

Against this backdrop, the words of Inon and Abu Sarah made the case for peace and argued they represent a larger piece of the Israeli-Palestinian public than polls or social media anger suggest.  They dismissed those who might call them naive, calling war the solution that despite its ongoing deployment since the history of Israel’s creation has, although it’s played a key role in protecting Israelis, has ultimately yet to prove itself as anything but a harbinger of more doom.

Echoing their Ted Talk from last spring that became one of the most watched of 2024, they described how they are working to help forge a joint Israeli-Palestinian coalition fixed on reconciliation and peace, not more war. “Hope is action,” said Inon. “We have to work together so that another future can be possible – one based on clear principles including reconciliation and security for everyone.”

Abu Sarah, like Inon, works in tourism, leading the dual narrative travel company company, Mejdi.  He says it’s not by chance that both he and Inon come from that world – it’s “a place of dreams, of getting out of your comfort zone, of seeking something different.”

They called on those gathered to join them in The People’s Peace Summit, a two-day event scheduled for May in Jerusalem.

The words and vision were uplifting, but it was the music performed by a Jewish-Palestinian music ensemble that was perhaps the most potent balm on the hearts of those listening, hungry for an alternative to the drumbeat of war.

The pianist thundered through minor chord improvisations invoking intense longings before breaking into the melody of John Lennon’s song, “Imagine”.

Three days later I was on Kibbutz Be’eri, reporting a story on efforts to rebuild the kibbutz, a ground zero of October 7. The remains of many of the homes that were torched during Hamas’ massacre in which 96 people were killed and 26 taken hostage, have been knocked down, leaving muddy plots behind, awaiting what might come next.

Rebuilding efforts are underway, some businesses have reopened including its well-known printing factory a beloved bakery, Lalush, and a dairy shop. About 100 residents, most of them older members, have moved back although the hope is that families with children will return in the next two years. Some are already picking out the tiles and doors for their new homes being built in a new neighborhood of the kibbutz.

The refrain I heard repeatedly is that everyone is aching to return home to the sense of community, to the pastoral views, but what they say, will determine everything, is if people feel safe -- if there is a feeling of security, a pathway to lasting peace with the Palestinians strong enough to break the memories of the trauma.

In 2018, the last time I had been to Beeri, that time for a story on Israeli peace activists  reaching out to people in Gaza,  I interviewed a resident named Tami Suchman, one of the most vocal advocates on the kibbutz for peace, along with her neighbor Vivian Silver. Both women were murdered October 7.  

That day, when we met in a clothing shop she helped run that no longer exists – it was burned down by Hamas, Suchman told me words that still resonate today: “I don’t see anyone working on the diplomatic front … Even if there is war it will not solve anything. Everyone knows that without negotiated deals there are no solutions.”

The Antisemitism Awareness Act is Our Latest Self-Inflicted Existential Threat (Larry Gellman- February 17, 2025)

Larry Gellman currently serves on the board of NJN, J Street, and CLAL. Over the last 40 years he served as a founding member of the AIPAC board in Tucson and was a national leader and honoree of Israel Bonds, a founder of the Milwaukee Jewish Day School, and named Jewish Man of the Year in both Milwaukee and Tucson after chairing Federation annual campaigns in both cities. He spent his career as a widely recognized financial advisor and won awards as a television news reporter in Ohio and Wisconsin. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.

It is very significant that the leaders of Americans for Peace Now and Ameinu decided to call our new combined organization "The New Jewish Narrative". The basic fundamental definitions of what it means to be Jewish or a Zionist or pro-Israel or what constitutes antisemitism have never been less clear or more the source of passionate disagreement and confusion among caring Jews.

There has never been a time when Jews were more in need of a New Narrative to provide a framework for enabling fact-based, civil, and respectful conversations regarding the meanings of those terms and how to support Israel and move forward as a Jewish community--assuming that is even possible.

Throughout Jewish history, there have been several decent periods and many more very challenging periods. The most common storyline is that Jews have repeatedly faced vicious and brutal discrimination from powerful gentile neighbors who have sought to literally or figuratively humiliate, hurt, or destroy us. We are familiar with legitimate feelings of victimhood and until recently we have had no experience at all regarding how to deal with the power and control over our own destiny that the State of Israel and American Jews enjoy today. In short, we developed narratives and organizations to help us deal with our victimhood but we have no cultural norms regarding how to deal with victory and success.

As I said in my column for APN last July, the term "antisemitism" has been weaponized and politicized (most notably through laws, college policies, and statements) that establish the unconstitutional Israelist International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) definition which overwhelmingly deals with criticism of Israel and those who "target" Israel and claim to care too much about Israel as the one and only definition of antisemitism. 

President Biden--to his credit--resisted huge pressure from AIPAC and Israelist Jews and Republicans to anoint the IHRA definition as the one and only legal definition two years ago and instead said it was one of several (including the Nexus and Jerusalem definitions which were far less Israel-centric) that are both useful and essential. 

And last year, Senator Chuck Schumer bravely and wisely refused to even allow the Antisemitism Awareness Act to be voted on in the Senate after passing the House. But now--one election and a few months later--Schumer and many of his fellow Democrats have succumbed to pressure from AIPAC and Jewish legacy organizations and pressure from the Trumpenyahu Cult and are SPONSORING the same bill which is now certain to pass by a large margin and become law. 

The bill does not provide a single example of how to fight antisemitism. It simply states that the unconstitutional IHRA definition--which outlaws free speech and states that anyone who suggests that some Jews (most of the Jews I know including myself) are loyal to both the U.S. and the State of Israel-- is the sole legal definition and can be used by the government to charge those who criticize Israel too effectively with a crime and cost them their jobs and their businesses and could perhaps even send them to prison.

In short, in the same way that abortion was criminalized and enabled zealous prosecutors to send providers and recipients of abortions to prison and have their lives ruined, so too this bill risks doing the same to those who are critical of the actions of the Israeli government and branding them as antisemites and criminals. 

This is yet another victory for the Israelists and billionaires who run some legacy organizations and now our government in their fight to remove Jewish and American values as our defining principles and replace them with arbitrary and clearly unconstitutional mandates and laws that make the exercise of those guaranteed rights as criminal activity.

Meanwhile, some Jewish organizations have abandoned most references to "Judaism," and the Jewish ethics and wisdom traditions that most of us were raised with and which for many of us have been the magnet and the glue that attracted us to Jewish study and activism and community leadership. Today, those organizations are all about unequivocally supporting the Israeli government no matter how it behaves and wallowing in very real Jewish victimhood and antisemitism without ever acknowledging how great it is to be a Jew today or any inconvenient truths about the consequences of the Occupation or Israeli government policies in the West Bank and Gaza. For decades, Federations and JCCs sponsored Torah and Talmud classes which attracted thousands. Today virtually all of those classes are sponsored by Chabad or synagogues on a local basis.

There is still Jew hatred among some on the far left who equate Jews as being unequivocal supporters of the Israeli government and its actions but that hatred mostly related to the behavior of Israel. The real existential threats to Jews and Israel are from White and Jewish Supremacists and the political AIPAC/Evangelical/Republican alliance that now is clearly in control of Congress and legacy Jewish organizations. The AAA and the IHRA definition are loaded with examples of antisemitism related to criticism of the behavior of Jews and Israel but provide not a word about the actions of someone like Elon Musk who twice gave a Nazi salute during Trump's inauguration and then told German neo-Nazis they should stop feeling guilty about the Holocaust.

We are getting more and more troubling news every day about the actions of our new president and his cult of enablers and how they plan to use and abuse the absolute power granted them by this election to destroy democracy and a civil caring society. Now, for purely political reasons, some of our Democratic leaders and champions have chosen to join them.

There has never been a better time in history to be a Jew than it is in the U.S. today and the differences between what it was like back when Jews were getting nose jobs and changing their names here just a generation ago are overwhelming. And the term Zionism has never been more confusing since virtually everyone who uses it does so to convey very different views about what it means since it was created as an aspirational term before that dream was realized.

To create space and civility and pluralism in the Jewish community to deal with the many new challenges that have come from winning multiple victories and living lives that are beyond the wildest aspirational dreams of our parents and grandparents and any other Jews in history, we desperately need a New Jewish Narrative to help us move forward and to get us to stop digging the semantic hole in which we are being voluntarily buried.

Gaza Week in Review: Buchenwald, Riviera, Israel’s Wholesale Prisoner Release (Hard Questions, Tough Answers- February 10, 2025)

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.

Q. Your title reads like a bizarre stream of consciousness…

A. It was quite a week. Every event (Gaza), bombastic statement (Trump), or low-key yet momentous mass prisoner release by Israel called up a troublesome association from the past. Even the comparisons of freed Israeli hostages to Nazi camp survivors, while historically problematic, were understandable to anyone who knows the US Army photos of Buchenwald and Bergen Belsen survivors from 1945.

Q. Perhaps you can start with the Israeli release of Palestinian prisoners. That got the least media attention.

A. Every time we see three or four Israeli hostages released by Hamas after being paraded before a ludicrous terrorist pseudo-tribunal, with Red Cross participation and a mass Gazan audience, Israel responds by releasing over 100 (183 on Saturday) convicted or recently captured Palestinian terrorists from its jails--with minimal ceremony and fanfare. 

There are several reasons for Israel to downplay its weekly release of Palestinian prisoners. First, it is extremely unpopular among Israelis, who are well aware that they are potentially setting free the next Yahya Sinwar, the next Hamas or Islamic Jihad suicide bomber. 

Shin Bet statistics show that around 12 percent of Palestinian terrorists who are convicted and later released by Israel are terrorism recidivists. Recall that Sinwar, the Hamas leader who orchestrated the October 7 attack on Israel, was released in 2011 as part of the deal for captured IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.

Second, Hamas quite understandably trumpets the release by Israel of its incarcerated Palestinian terrorists and fighters--some, frankly, also looking emaciated and abused--as a victory. The price Hamas extracts from Israel for a single Israeli--dozens of terrorists--is indeed mind-boggling in the annals of prisoner exchanges. Compare for example to Russians and Ukrainians, whose POW exchanges are roughly one-on-one.

Is one Israeli really the equivalent of dozens or even scores of Palestinians, some of them mass murderers? At a certain philosophical level, there is something insulting here to both sides. Israel, for its part, has no need to help Palestinians celebrate. Indeed, the ceremonies Hamas choreographs in the Strip on Saturdays, with emaciated Israelis thanking their tormentors, are designed to play up Hamas’s ‘victory’ and obvious ongoing control of the Strip and, correspondingly, humiliate Israel.

Releasing terrorists in exchange for emaciated Israelis is one primary price that Israel is paying for the sins of October 7, 2023 that are widely attributed to the leadership under Netanyahu and the security establishment. The Netanyahu government is not comfortable reminding Israelis of that, either.

Q. Along comes President Trump with his scheme to transfer out all Gazans and rebuild the Strip as a luxury Riviera. Anything to add to the near universal condemnation of this latest real estate project?

A. It is “something that will be magnificent”, according to the president of the United States. But wait: this is not going to happen.

First of all, I direct Trump’s attention to the weekly Hamas hostage-release ceremonies, in Gaza City, Khan Yunis, Dir al Balach, etc. Note that there are cities sporting functioning built-up neighborhoods in the Strip. Not everything was destroyed by the Israel Air Force. 

Secondly, one way or another most Gazans will not budge, if only because all Palestinian and other Arab leaders will insist they stay. The Trump-Kushner-Witkoff real-estate-messianic settler understanding of the Arab and Islamist world is abysmal. A more constructive approach than exiling 1.8 million Gazans and building a pie-in-the-sky Riviera would recognize that a certain percentage of homes in Gaza, rarely shown by media intent on displaying rubble, survived this war and can be expanded with emergency housing. Indeed, apparently some 30 percent of structures are still usable.

Second, my personal association upon encountering Trump’s Riviera balloon was Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, two far more down-to-earth leaders in their day, whose visions for Gaza were as bizarre as Trump’s. Peres envisioned the Strip as Singapore on the Mediterranean. Rabin day-dreamed out loud of the Strip sliding into the sea and disappearing. And let’s not forget Netanyahu, who in years past openly espoused the notion of ‘economic peace’ for Gaza with its extremist Islamist leadership and now proposes that Gazans be resettled in Saudi Arabia. 

It turns out that an intractable problem inspires extreme, and ultimately disastrous, visions of solutions.

Q. Then there was Paraguay . . . 

A. After Israel conquered the Strip in 1967, a host of schemes were launched to alleviate its poverty and overcrowding. 

I was then in the Mossad, where I encountered the most advanced program. In the late 1960s Gazans were offered $10,000 apiece to emigrate, with Israel’s logistic help, to Paraguay, which apparently needed an influx of immigrant manpower. Everything went quietly and smoothly, until a disgruntled Gazan migrant attacked the Israel embassy in Asuncion, killing one Israeli. That ended that.

It was not always this way. In 1949 the Strip was occupied by Egypt in the aftermath of Israel’s War of Independence. Its population was primarily Palestinian refugees from southern Israel (whose great-grandchildren were the barbarian Hamas invaders of southern Israel on October 7--that is the meaning of ‘historic conflict’). Prime Minister David Ben Gurion offered to repatriate to Israel 100,000 Palestinian refugees from Gaza (according to another version, even 200,000, meaning most of the refugees; in yet another version, Israel takes in everyone, including native Gazans). 

Ben Gurion’s condition was that Israel occupy and annex the Strip and that the Arab world make peace with Israel. Egypt and the other Arab countries refused.

Israel in 1949 numbered around 700,000 Jews. Holocaust survivors were flooding in. Absorbing even 100,000 Palestinian refugees would have been a huge burden. Ben Gurion wanted the territory of the Strip as a military buffer against an Egyptian invasion targeting Tel Aviv, which the nascent IDF rebuffed at great cost in 1948. 

In the ensuing decades, Israel and Egypt made first more war, then peace. The Strip lost its military significance. Until October 7 . . . 

Q. Bottom line?

A. Notwithstanding Netanyahu’s statements to credulous and compliant American TV interviewers to the effect that Israel is poised to defeat Hamas, Israel is actually withdrawing and the hostage-for-prisoner exchange continues apace. Hundreds of Palestinian terrorists are being released back to Gaza. 

Israel has no viable plan for defeating Hamas, which can legitimately claim to have survived this war despite awesome losses in both leadership and rank-and-file. Absent a working alternative--which Israel refuses to offer--Hamas is the leader of Gazans. 

With all due respect to Trump, he too has no viable plan. Netanyahu cannot bring himself to embrace phase II of the Gaza withdrawal plan. His repeated postponements over the past year of a hostage deal in favor of more death and destruction in Gaza and his own political survival have cost the lives of countless Gazans, hundreds of IDF soldiers and dozens of hostages. One stomach-churning outcome was evident in the Dir al-Balah hostage release on Saturday.

Fantasy check: Were Trump’s transfer scheme actually to transpire, we would likely see another chapter of the Arab-world domino effect that recently toppled the Assad regime in Syria. Remember, the Arab state system is undemocratic and fragile. Hundreds of thousands more Palestinians in Jordan could topple a regime that is militarily allied with Israel and promotes regional stability. Hundreds of thousands of Hamas supporters in Egypt could strengthen the Muslim Brotherhood there that threatens a regime friendly to Israel. King Abdullah II and President a-Sisi will presumably explain this to Trump in person in the days ahead when they visit Washington.

Singapore, Riviera, Atlantis (Rabin’s dream), ‘economic peace’? Let’s face it: We are stuck with the Strip. 

But here is an unintended positive-outcome scenario--whose likelihood is impossible to predict--to conclude with. Netanyahu embraces Trump’s Gaza transfer idea. His defense minister has already set the wheels in motion. Along come the Saudis and offer normalization if only Netanyahu will abandon transfer. 

Sounds incredulous? That is what the UAE did in 2019-20, at least at the declarative level: normalization in return for Netanyahu backing off from annexing the West Bank. Never mind that the transfer idea is not feasible and that West Bank annexation (three million more Palestinian Israelis is not a serious idea) was not really in the cards. Back in 2020, Trump actually got some credit.

And here on earth? Netanyahu and his government are delaying negotiating another phase of hostage release. They refuse to appoint a national commission of inquiry to investigate the events of October 7 that they helped trigger. They prefer to dream of destroying Hamas and ‘relocating’ two million Gazans. And they are selling these fantasies to gullible Israelis.

All Quiet on All Fronts? (Hard Questions, Tough Answers- February 3, 2025)

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.

Q. Until recently, you spoke of no fewer than seven active war-fronts. Now all are quiet?

A. The ceasefire and the hostage/prisoner exchange with Gaza-based Hamas have indeed, at least temporarily, silenced almost all fronts. The Hezbollah/Iran front was already quiescent. Now the Yemeni Houthis and Iraqi pro-Iran militias have also ceased firing missiles at Israel in deference to the ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon. 

Q. You said “almost” all fronts?

A. The IDF has switched its focus of attention to the West Bank, and particularly the northern West Bank towns of Jenin and Tulkarm. There in recent months militant groups, in part inspired by Hamas and in part in response to settler-extremist territorial provocations, have been targeting Israel and Israelis. IDF and Shin Bet intelligence assess that the cumulative release, under ceasefire provisions, of hundreds of Palestinian terrorists from Israeli jails, many of them to homes in the West Bank, will further augment anti-Israel incitement there. Hence the IDF West Bank offensive is understood to be punitive, preventive and deterrent.

Q. Sounds familiar. Déjà vu?

A. That’s understatement. Way back in the 1930s, during what was known as the Arab Revolt, British mandatory forces fought a radical Palestinian uprising that centered on the northern West Bank ‘triangle’ of Nablus, Tulkarm and Jenin. Then (by the RAF), as now (by the IAF), militant strongholds were bombed from the air, meaning resorting to bombing territory ostensibly under one’s own strategic control in view of the tenacity of the enemy. The northern triangle Arab towns also led the Palestinian cause in the course of two intifadas in the 1990s and early 2000s.

One key difference today is that the IDF is working in tandem with Palestinian Authority forces that are as concerned as Israel about Hamas-inspired militancy in the West Bank.

Q. Quiet is guaranteed on the Lebanon front?

A. No. Political stability is not yet assured in Lebanon--negotiations over a new governing coalition continue apace--and the Lebanese Army has not yet deployed throughout the south in accordance with ceasefire stipulations. The US and the Lebanese have agreed to extend the redeployment deadline until February 18. Until and unless everything is in place, fighting could again break out between Israel and Hezbollah/Iran, thereby potentially triggering renewal of missile attacks from Yemen and Iraq.

Q. So the ceasefire is delicate. This week, Israel enters negotiations with Hamas, hosted by Qatar, Egypt and the US, regarding phase II of the Gaza hostage/prisoner release and ceasefire deal. In parallel, PM Netanyahu meets President Trump in Washington. What is at stake?

A. Phase II is supposed to free the remaining hostages, alive and dead, render the ceasefire permanent, and provide for a number of Israeli, Palestinian and international moves that include further IDF withdrawal and opening of Gaza Strip borders. The PA and Egypt are already taking up roles alongside the European Union at the Rafah crossing between the Strip and Egypt. Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, with whom Netanyahu also meets in Washington, has been playing a hands-on dynamic role.

Note, in this context, that Israel for its part has no known proposals for the ‘day after’ in Gaza. Hamas last week helpfully and accurately summed up Israel’s recent history of abortive proposals: “Here is the list of evil Israeli projects that [Hamas] succeeded in thwarting: the ‘generals’ plan [to empty out northern Gaza], rule by clans, a floating harbor, humanitarian ‘bubbles’, military rule, renewed settlement, Palestinian migration to Sinai, and fragmenting the Strip by means of the Netzarim [central Gaza] and Philadelphi [Rafah, southern Gaza] strips.”

Sounds familiar? Netanyahu, it now emerges, has failed to defeat Hamas in Gaza, yet he either does not know or will not acknowledge that fact. Netanyahu and Trump will presumably discuss this Israeli lack of a strategy against a backdrop of a host of key controversial issues that could affect political stability in Israel as well as strategic stability in the Middle East.

Q. Start with political stability in Israel . . . 

A. If the Gaza ceasefire becomes permanent, the Kahanist-messianists in Netanyahu’s coalition, let by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, are threatening to leave, thereby potentially bringing down the government and precipitating elections. Smotrich, along with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir who has already resigned, want to settle the Gaza Strip, not withdraw from it. 

Then too, the unresolved crisis with the ultra-Orthodox or Haredi parties in the coalition over compulsory national service for Haredi young men--a crisis sparked by losses and manpower shortfalls in the war--also threatens coalition stability.

Q. And regional strategic stability . . . 

A. Trump is likely to press Netanyahu to commit to phase II in the Strip, potentially at the cost of coalition stability in Jerusalem. Here Trump’s primary concern is avoidance of war in the Middle East on his watch. Besides, he apparently genuinely believes he can persuade Arab countries, led by Jordan and Egypt, to absorb hundreds of thousands of destitute refugees from the Gaza Strip--a territory whose Mediterranean coastline is in his eyes essentially prime real estate: “You know, we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know, it’s over.’ . . . I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location . . . .“

Trump’s real estate and mass migration ideas for Gaza and the Gazans are non-starters. They may deceive right-wing Israelis who covet Gazan land and misunderstand Trump’s support. But they are at the very least serious irritants for the Arab world. Above all, Gazans under ongoing Hamas rule or even PA rule will never agree to leave Palestinian territory. 

As Palestine-expert Michael Milstein wrote in Yediot Aharonot, “Like many of Trump’s proposals [Greenland, Panama, Canada], the [Gaza] ‘deal’ has material logic while ignoring ideological and cultural dimensions, historical memory, and tensions between Israel, the Arab world and the Palestinians that are stronger than any other consideration in the Middle East post-October 7.” Trump and his Israeli supporters completely misunderstand the Palestinian issue, not to mention the tenets of Hamas-style militant Islam that is almost certain to continue to rule Gaza. And not to mention international legal prohibitions of ‘transfer’.

Beyond the discomfort of Trump’s abortive Gaza real estate and demographic ideas, Netanyahu will conceivably acquiesce more easily in an ongoing Gaza ceasefire if he receives reassurances, however tentative, about both normalization with Saudi Arabia and joint US-Israel planning for military measures/pressure against Iran over its nuclear program. 

Q. Will Trump accommodate Netanyahu on these issues?

A. True, both steps could prove politically popular with Netanyahu’s constituency. But the Saudis need real promises regarding a Palestinian state, however distant in the future. And Trump does not relish the idea of war anywhere in the Middle East, whether Gaza or Iran.

Q. Bottom line: your best guess for Israel and the region in the months ahead?

A. Elections in Israel in 2025, which leave the nationalist and messianic right wing in power. A stalemate between Trump and the friendly Arab world over the disposition of the Gaza Strip, leaving hundreds of thousands of Gazans in homeless poverty. Trump-sponsored ‘normalization’ between Saudi Arabia and Israel postponed by these events and developments. A Trump administration attempt to negotiate with Iran over nuclear issues, possibly using an Israeli military threat as a ‘stick’.

All this, at barely over 50 percent probability. After all, this is the Middle East. 

And all this while Israel, which has criminally neglected the ‘day after’ in Gaza, is left to contemplate the meaning of October 7 for the Zionist reality; while Hamas remains in power in Gaza because Netanyahu will not back a Palestinian alternative; and while Palestinians and other Arabs contemplate the 50,000 dead, buried and unburied, in Gaza.

Meanwhile, US-Israel relations face dangerous complications regarding Gaza: over the fate of the ceasefire; over population transfer schemes of Trump and the Israeli messianist right-wing; and over the role being played by American mercenaries (“private military companies”), with their doubtful reputation from Iraq and elsewhere, in policing the ceasefire and its population-movement provisions.

As for Netanyahu, he has backed down by doing a deal with Hamas inside the Strip. He has backed down by allowing the PA to return to the Rafah crossing. What next?

As Israel celebrates the return of the young women hostages whose warnings of a Hamas attack were ignored, will the deadly hubris & sexism be acknowledged? (Dina Kraft, January 27, 2024)

Dina Kraft is a journalist, podcaster and the co-author of the New York Times bestseller, My Friend Anne Frank, together with Hannah Pick-Goslar. She lives in Tel Aviv where she's the Israel Correspondent of  The Christian Science Monitor and a creator of the podcast Groundwork, about activists working in Israel and Palestine. She was formerly opinion editor of Haaretz English.

In the weeks and months before Israel’s nightmare scenario unfolded at dawn on October 7, 2023, a unit of young female soldiers reported seeing streams of white pick-up trucks, vans, and motorcycles of Hamas militants near the border fence with Israel. Some paused to use binoculars to get a closer look into Israel.

The “spotters”, posted to 24-hour shifts at Nahal Oz base on Israel’s border with Gaza, studied surveillance cameras for suspicious activity and reported to their superiors what they were seeing.

They also listed other unusual Hamas activity unusually close to the border fence – the flying of drones, attempts to down army security cameras and even what appeared to be practice at shelling tanks. They suspected, they told their higher-ups, some kind of cross-border raid was afoot. They could not imagine the scope of what it would turn out to be a rehearsal for – but they passed on the concerning information – only to be ignored.

Their direct officers, also women,  persisted -- only to be warned by one high-ranking officer in Southern Command that if they continued to pester him, they would be court-martialed. They were trained to be the “eyes” of the Israeli army, they were told, but not the brains.

On October 7,  15 of the spotters, “tatzpitaniot” in Hebrew, were among the over 50 soldiers slaughtered on Nahal Oz base. Seven others were taken hostage, dazed and bloodied into Gaza by Hamas and a handful of others survived hiding, some of them huddled among dead bodies of their fallen friends. One was rescued early on. Another was killed in captivity.

On Saturday Israelis were glued to screens watching four of the five surviving spotters begin their journey to freedom 477 days after being taken captive. They were first seen emerging from a Hamas vehicle in northern Gaza. Across the border in Israel, loved ones shed tears of joy, joined by strangers who feel like they now know them after over 15 months of struggle for their return.

They could be seen walking on their own two feet, even smiling as they walked together, surrounded by masked gunmen and then taken up the steps of a stage erected especially for this moment - intended to be paraded as spoils of the war. But these four brave, strong young women, Naama Levy, Daniella Gilboa, Karina Ariev, all 20, and Liri Albag 19, flipped the script. They appeared defiant and strong on that stage, hoisting their arms in the air, even giving a thumbs up. It was their own victory march – they had survived.  

Soon after they were transported from the awaiting Red Cross officials to the Israeli army and then rushed into the arms of their mothers and fathers who had been put through a parallel version of hell along with their daughters.

Watching in the Channel 12 studio on air was Eyal Eshel, whose daughter, Sgt. Roni Eshel was one of the 15 spotters killed at Nahal Oz.  He said seeing the reunions he was both happy and relieved, but also jealous of the parents since he will never have his daughter back again.  

“I won’t lie, I am so jealous,” he said. “We miss Roni so much.” 

He said he wants to bring the truth to light – for all of Israel to know what happened before the morning of October 7 and what happened that day of blood, fire and abandonment on Nahal Oz. His daughter was apparently burned to death among others in the control room after it was set alight by Hamas. It took weeks to identify her remains.

There is so far no state commission of inquiry into the colossal failures of the army on October 7, including the events at Nahal Oz, which was supposed to be the first line of defense against Hamas in Gaza. So Eshel and other parents whose daughters in the unit were killed have done their own research.

“I understood one thing,” Eshel told the New York Times regarding the parents’ investigation. “Their abandonment and the disdain for them was so great.”

Surviving members of the unit have told Haaretz sexism played a role in their warnings being ignored. “It’s a unit made up entirely of young women and young female commanders,” a soldier said on condition of anonymity. “There is no doubt that if there were men sitting at those (surveillance) screens, things would look different.”

And I wonder, will the older men who dismissed the warnings from the young women pay a price – will the system itself try to make amends? Will there be justice, including for the senior officer who threatened to court-martial them for doing their job? It’s not just a matter of justice. Learning the lessons of that day and correcting the sexist pattern of treatment of these “eyes of the army,” which stretches back decades, is essential for Israel’s security and its soul.

Will the story of their dismissal and deadly abandonment be remembered as vividly as the emotional return Saturday of the brave hostages – and the fifth, Agam Berger, scheduled to be come on Thursday?

Their tale is a cautionary one. We know hatred can kill. So can hubris and sexism.

Imagine had these young women been listened to. Just imagine. 

Ceasefire and the Fight to Come (Jan 20, 2025)

Madeleine Cereghino (she/her) joined APN in the spring of 2021 after seven years educating lawmakers on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at J Street. An experienced government affairs strategist, Madeleine credits a Birthright trip to Israel for inspiring her to shift her professional focus to anti-occupation work.

Although she resides in Washington, D.C. with her husband, son, and dog, Madeleine will forever be loyal to Bay Area sports. Madeleine is a graduate of Whittier College.

---

Ceasefire and the Fight to Come

Yesterday, the first Israeli hostages since November 2023 were released from Gaza, marking the beginning of a six-week ceasefire. This agreement will see 33 hostages returned to Israel while Palestinians in Gaza are allowed to return to what remains of their homes in the North. The ceasefire will also enable a massive increase in humanitarian aid, which will hopefully alleviate the famine that has devastated the civilian population.

This moment marks what I hope will be the end of the war, with a provision for a second round of more permanent negotiations scheduled to begin sixteen days after the start of this ceasefire.

There is a sense of catharsis now that the ceasefire has begun—a long exhale after holding our collective breath. But even this fragile peace carries the weight of unbearable loss.

The reality is that the general parameters of this agreement were known months ago, and every moment of inaction cost lives. Each casualty is a profound tragedy, a reminder of the futility and horror of this conflict. These are not abstract numbers; these are individuals, each with dreams, families, and futures stolen by the delays, the political machinations, and the failure to act sooner.

After fifteen months of grief and horror, this nightmare may finally be coming to an end. But if you’re feeling exhausted, I understand. I am, too. I am so tired of this war and all that has come with it. Yet, I also know that today marks the beginning of a new kind of fight. 

Today, Donald Trump will once again be sworn in as President. After enduring his previous term and the heartbreak of November’s election loss, it’s natural for those on the left to feel devastated and drained. But this is precisely what Trump and his allies are counting on.

Lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace requires security, self-determination, and dignity for both peoples. Yet, President Trump is already laying the groundwork to undermine these principles. The Trump administration is poised to support Israeli annexation of the West Bank. Key appointments signal this intent. Both Senator Marco Rubio, Trump’s choice to lead the State Department, and Mike Huckabee, the nominee for Ambassador to Israel, have referred to the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria.” Such language is not incidental; it’s a deliberate precursor to supporting claims of Israeli sovereignty over the territory—something Huckabee has actively promoted in the past.

Today also serves as a stark reminder of the challenges we face domestically. 

At the end of last year, Republicans in Congress pushed to pass H.R. 9495—a law that would have granted President Trump broad powers to target ideological opponents by revoking the tax-deductible status of nonprofits, effectively shutting them down. In response, advocacy groups from diverse issue areas united in a remarkable display of coalition building to oppose the bill. This groundswell of opposition led to its initial defeat, a stunning reversal given the near-unanimous support it had received earlier in the year when concerns about the abuse of presidential power were less pronounced.

While Donald Trump has promised reprisals for political enemies and we can certainly expect to see future legislation like H.R. 9495, there's a lesson to be gleaned from the legislative fight last year. Unity across the sector and a commitment to coalition building were pivotal in defeating this bill. Advocacy groups with little in common and vastly different issue areas came together in solidarity to protect the broader principles of democracy and civil society. This collaboration underscores the strength and necessity of collective action in the face of significant threats.

The same spirit of unity is required now as we confront the challenges ahead. 

As exhausted as we may feel, we cannot afford to disengage. This moment demands vigilance and resolve. The fight for a just and lasting peace for Israelis and Palestinians is far from over. Nor is the fight for the soul of our democracy here at home. We owe it to every life lost to fight for that future with all the resolve we can muster.

Why is the IDF Occupying (so many of) its Neighbors? (Hard Questions, Tough Answers- January 13, 2025)

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.

Q. The fate of the Gaza occupation is obviously the most pressing issue. But perhaps you can start by discussing the most recent Arab land occupied: the Israel-Syria border no-man’s land and the Mt. Hermon peak.

A. Occupation in Syria is not only the most recent but also the most complicated issue internationally. Turkey (in the northwest) and the US (in the east) also occupy Syrian lands--far more than does Israel. Nowhere are there clear guidelines or conditions for ending any of these occupations.

Israel, for its part, insists that the relatively small parcel of border area no-man’s-land that it occupied after the fall of Bashar Assad in December of 2024 will be abandoned when Jerusalem is convinced that the new regime in Damascus can ensure stability and that it harbors no threatening Islamic extremist intentions. Meanwhile IDF units in the new Syria buffer zone are providing medical aid to Syrians--but also clashing with anti-Israel demonstrators. 

Israel’s suspicions are understandable, for three reasons.

First, Syria has not yet been stabilized. Regime forces are fighting Alawite supporters of Assad in Homs and along the Mediterranean coast. Alawite sources cite growing unrest among this religious minority that previously anchored the Assad regime. There is also unrest among Druze in and around Suwayda near the Syria-Jordan border. Not to mention unresolved Kurdish-Arab-Turkish issues in a huge swath of territory in Syria’s northeast.

Second, Syria’s new rulers previously fought in the ranks of al-Qaeda and ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Today they claim to be more moderate and pluralistic. They say they do not seek conflict with Israel. Having fought militant extremists for the past 16 months, Israel is not yet convinced it can abandon its new buffer zone.

Third, the Turkish factor. Turkish leader Recip Tayyip Erdogan, who supported and sheltered the new Syrian leaders for years in their northwest Syria redoubt, is widely seen as the patron of the new Syrian regime. His aggressive anti-Israel rhetoric gives Jerusalem cause for concern. 

The previous Syrian regime, under Assad, hosted Iranian forces that used Syria as a transit point for moving weaponry to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Now Israel harbors similar fears regarding Erdogan with his neo-Ottoman geostrategic ambitions.

One way or another, the presence in Syria of both Turkish and American armed forces is seen by Israel as a mitigating factor in its occupation considerations. And speaking of occupation, there are reports that the Shiite-majority government in neighboring Iraq has asked Washington not to withdraw its 2,000-strong armed contingent from eastern Syria, alleging that it buffers Iraq against any possible aggressive intentions on those now ruling Damascus.

Q. Apropos Hezbollah, IDF occupation of southern Lebanon is scheduled to end later this month. Will that happen?

A. Lately, Israel has alleged that the Lebanese army is not fulfilling its ceasefire obligation to move south and police the Lebanon-Hezbollah-Israel agreement reached last November with US mediation. Israel has attacked suspicious Hezbollah armed activity and has hinted that its forces might remain in Lebanon an extra 30 days. But the election last week--after two years of delays and political intrigue--of a new Lebanese president, army chief Joseph Aoun, appears to bode well for Israeli withdrawal. US mediator Amos Hochstein was in Beirut last week and reportedly vouched for the January 26 deadline.

Q. That brings us to Gaza. This week marks yet another negotiating round in Doha, Qatar, aimed at clinching a deal on Israeli withdrawal and hostage release. Are we about to witness the end of Israel’s military presence withn the Strip?

A. Full IDF withdrawal from the entire Gaza Strip is Hamas’s ultimate condition for releasing all 98 hostages, dead and alive, that Israel claims Hamas is holding deep underground in the Strip. The innovative factor in the current round of talks is the Trump ‘hellfire’ threat (against whom? to do what?) if a deal is not reached by January 20. 

The threat is not likely to impress Hamas. But it may have some effect on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, an ardent Trump supporter who obviously wants to get off on the right foot at the start of Trump’s second presidency.

A Netanyahu pledge of full withdrawal from Gaza will be supported by the IDF and most Israelis. Yet it will pit Netanyahu against his own coalition’s messianists who threaten to bring down the government unless it enables them to exploit the occupation infrastructure that the army is building and paving in Gaza to begin settling at least the northern Strip. His coalition’s collapse would leave Netanyahu at the mercy of both the voters and the courts. 

In other words, Netanyahu needs the occupation of Gaza and ongoing (and endless!) war with the remnants of Hamas for his own political survival. Perhaps that is why Defense Minister Katz just pathetically and bombastically directed the IDF, which is currently trying to clear out terrorists from some parts of Gaza for the fourth time (!) in a year, to bring him a plan for “decisive victory”.

This is where the open questions arise. Trump already has his own mediator, Steve Witkoff, shuttling between Doha and Jerusalem. Is Witkoff empowered by Trump to make Netanyahu ‘an offer he can’t refuse’ in return for an Israeli commitment to a full withdrawal in stages? Can a Netanyahu pledge to withdraw be designed with sufficient loopholes to enable him to convince his coalition hawks that Israel will be free down the line to renew the war in Gaza?

Or is Trump (surprise surprise!) bluffing, and unlikely to take any significant action if his January 20 ‘hellfire’ deadline is not met? In any event, Witkoff’s presence in Doha sends Hamas the message that, at least on the hostage/ceasefire issue, Trump and Biden are working in tandem during the presidential transition.

Q. You haven’t mentioned the West Bank . . . 

A. Of all four occupations--Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, West Bank--the latter is not in ‘danger’ of ending any time soon. On the contrary, under the current Israeli government settlements are spreading in the West Bank, Palestinians are being displaced, and nothing is likely to change.

Q. Bottom line #1?

Trump’s ‘hellfire’ threats and his demand to end the Gaza war before he takes office on January 20 are understood to be a factor, at least psychologically, in motivating both Hamas and Israel to do a deal. Yet this is the same Trump who talks very aggressively about American territorial expansion: annexing Canada, retaking the Panama Canal, and occupying Greenland.

Accordingly, look for Israel’s land-greedy right-messianists who dominate Netanyahu’s coalition to cite Trump’s inspiration in spinning their schemes to annex both Gazan and West Bank territory. As one sympathetic IDF reservist in the Strip recently stated to a friendly TV camera, “We won’t stop until we complete the task assigned to us: conquer, evict, settle. Hear that, Bibi? Conquer, evict, settle.”

Q. Bottom line #2?

Iran has been beaten by Israel in Lebanon and has been forced out of Syria. Another Iranian proxy, the Houthis in Yemen, are absorbing heavy blows from the US and UK as well as from Israel. Tehran is also gearing up for Trump administration sanctions and pressures on the nuclear issue. 

All of which suggests, perversely, that something has to ‘give’ in Tehran. It points to the danger of deniable Iranian-sponsored provocations--along a border, missiles, a terrorist attack?--any day now.

Q. Bottom line #3?

A. Note the undeclared partnership between Netanyahu and Hamas in Gaza. Prior to October 7 Netanyahu made sure that suitcases of dollars from Qatar were delivered to Hamas. He avoided assassinating Hamas leaders and heralded ‘economic peace’ with them. That is what triggered the events of October 7, 2023. 

Now Netanyahu makes sure no alternative Palestinian leadership is introduced into the Strip. And he pursues a war without end with Hamas. This seemingly guarantees yet more occupation, either now or at a later stage.

2024 (Hard Questions, Tough Answers- January 6, 2025)

Q. What is your take on Israel’s fortunes during the outgoing year?

A. Seen from a distance of barely a week, 2024 represents yet more descent down the slippery slope toward a conflicted, non-democratic, immoral, isolated, messianic and binational entity between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. That is one end of the scale. Yet at the other end there had emerged by the end of the year one very significant and positive exception to this dynamic.

Q. Start with the exception. It makes for more encouraging reading . . .

A. In recent months, Israel’s security community registered dramatic victories over Iran, Hezbollah and almost the entire Axis of Resistance or Shiite Crescent. In a fascinating domino dynamic, the pro-Iran Assad regime in Syria fell and Iraq’s Shiite militias ceased attacking Israel. 

Only Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen, neither a strategic threat, continue to attack Israel. In September, a dramatic IDF commando operation targeting an Iranian missile factory deep in Syrian territory sent yet another message to Iran about the vulnerability of its nuclear project.

Note that Israel’s Sunni Arab neighbors, from Egypt to Bahrain via Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, actively assisted it in combating Iran. This means that for the first time in its modern history, Israel was allied with major actors among its neighbors, while those few neighbors that remain openly hostile have been beaten into retreat. Even countries critical of Israel in the West have allied with it in combating Iran and the Houthis.

This is very good news for Israel’s overall security, and it happened in 2024. 

Q. Now back to the bad news from 2024: Slippery slope? Immoral? Isolated?

A. In 2024 Israel lost a great deal of international support at the moral level due to the IDF’s behavior in the Gaza Strip. What began as a legitimate war of retaliation for the brutal Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023, deteriorated over the past year into death and destruction in Gaza on a horrific scale. 

While much of the Gaza destruction can theoretically be justified in terms of the cost of eliminating Hamas, by the dawn of 2025 the IDF had not eliminated Hamas, could not declare victory in Gaza, and must contemplate what looks like the loss of its moral compass.

Worse, while the world recognizes this, the majority of Israelis apparently do not. The IDF continues to force hundreds of thousands of Gazans out of the northern Strip while the messianists in the government lay plans to settle that territory. Israel had every right and obligation to defeat Hamas by conquering the Strip. But everything it did beyond that in 2024 is a moral stain on the army and the country.

Q. Yet you began by noting that the events of 2024 allied Israel with its neighbors. That is hardly isolation or moral reprobation.

A. Israel’s neighbors are either failed states (Lebanon, Sudan, Libya) or autocratic police states (all the rest, again stretching from Egypt to Bahrain). That the events of 2024 rendered Israel more acceptable to the neighborhood says a lot more about Israel and its changing values than about the neighborhood.

Take, for example, the Israeli hostages in Gaza. Traditional Israeli and Jewish values embodied in Maimonides’ famous dictum that “there is no greater mitzvah [religious obligation] than redeeming captives” have been set aside by a government full of ostensibly pious Jews who regularly quote Maimonides. Keeping Netanyahu in office despite his moral and legal bankruptcy, allocating copious funds to building settlements and promoting religious ‘values’, and postponing creation of a commission of inquiry likely to blame it for the war--all are more important to this government than stopping what has become a pointless war and saving those hostages who are still alive. 

Israel’s elected leaders do not want to inquire what happened on October 7: why the Palestinian issue exploded and why the country was so unprepared. That is deplorable, and it lays the foundation for the next destructive strategic surprise. Yet Israel’s neighbors could not care less. They never appoint commissions of inquiry. Their leaders have no real empathy for the Palestinians, much less for Israelis slaughtered on October 7. They simply know how to identify shared strategic interests with Israel. 

Q. On December 31, 2024, Israel’s population passed the ten million mark. Significant?

A. Yes. This is critical mass. It is significant at the strategic level. But little noticed in statistical analysis of the past year was the fact that over 80,000 Israelis left the country, many not planning to return. These are by and large young professionals representing the economic backbone of the country. The absence of hi-tech workers may not be so noticeable insofar as in the short term they can continue to participate in the Israeli economy from abroad. But the absence of medical professionals is already increasingly glaring. Try to get an appointment with a medical specialist in less than two months.

These Israelis no longer believe in a future for themselves and their families in Israel. They are setting up expat colonies in Cyprus, Greece and beyond. 

This too happened in 2024. And in 2025, many additional Israelis are contemplating a similar move. Not because they are afraid of Iran or Hamas. They are afraid of Netanyahu and his messianic, fascistic allies in government--all democratically elected.

Q. The crisis over military conscription belies the claim of demographic ‘critical mass’.

A. Indeed, despite crossing that ten million landmark and despite Israel’s cyber and hi-tech advantages, a war lasting more than a year and being waged on multiple fronts revealed in 2024 that the IDF does not have enough combat soldiers. Compulsory service has been extended. Reserve duty has been stretched for some to hundreds of days. The toll on families, on mental well-being and on the economy is enormous. The term ‘critical mass’ proves deceptive because the entire Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) community, well over a million strong, has been exempted from service while its young men study Torah, grow huge families and otherwise live off government funding. 

In 2024 it emerged that traditional Jewish veneration of devout Jewish youth studying holy books no longer holds, particularly when many of these youth are actually enjoying their exemption while idle or working. Notably, the protest against the Haredi exemption was led by equally religious Jews from the National Religious sector who have served, and died in combat, above and beyond the call of duty.

Q. This points to the equally prominent role played by the National Religious in 2024 in prosecuting the war in Gaza for messianic religious reasons . . . 

A. While Haredi Jews have cultivated Torah study as a principled and sacred alternative to military duty, the National Religious have over recent decades (the turning point was alarm over the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza) cultivated participation in the security community as a messianic duty. In the IDF, they are increasingly prominent at the senior officer level.

And so are the messianic values they bring with them and which they disseminate among the ranks. Professor Yagil Levy of The Open University, probably Israel’s most prominent sociologist of the military, does not hide his alarm: “Talk of Armageddon, a war of Gog and Magog that will drown the region in blood and fire, was there before October 7,” he states. “[But] the war has normalized it. . . . [In Gaza] a moral disaster is taking place.” 

Q. Bottom line?

A. After 2024, Israel’s future seems assured from a security standpoint. But what kind of Israel? The more the country resembles its neighbors and the less liberal and less democratic it becomes, the more it signals both moderate Israelis and the Diaspora that a day of reckoning is approaching. That is the message of 2024.

Will Israel and a Trump White House Miss a Historic Window of Opportunity with Syria? (Dina Kraft, December 23, 2024)

Dina Kraft is a journalist, podcaster and the co-author of the New York Times bestseller, My Friend Anne Frank, together with Hannah Pick-Goslar. She lives in Tel Aviv where she's the Israel Correspondent of  The Christian Science Monitor and a creator of the podcast Groundwork, about activists working in Israel and Palestine. She was formerly opinion editor of Haaretz English.

One evening last week a flutter of reports appeared in the Israeli media in quick succession with what at first appeared to be breakthrough news – Benjamin Netanyahu on his way to Cairo ostensibly to finalize a deal with Hamas, a Saudi-Israeli normalization agreement at hand. 

The reports, however, were swiftly proven to be baseless, even wishful thinking. 

But where was Netanyahu who had requested to excuse his absence that day in the courtroom hearing the corruption case against him on account of official state business? Was he not hard at work on major diplomatic advances – especially as the country remains on exhausted on edge waiting for a truce with Hamas that would lead to the release of its 100 hostages being held in Gaza? 

The answer revealed itself quickly in the release of a photo of the Israeli prime minister wearing a flak jacket and sunglasses, standing alongside his new defense minister and about 25 Israeli soldiers clasping M-16s on the snowcapped peak of Mount Hermon, on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights. 

The area is part of a narrow buffer zone between the two countries inside Syria that Israel seized just as Syrian rebel forces were taking control of Damascus earlier this month, describing the move as defensive and temporary. But by the time of the photo op, ten days later, Defense Minister Katz declared it essential, promising Israel would stay there “for as long as is needed.”

He justified the open-ended time frame saying Israel needs to be there to bolster Israel’s security and to deter both Hezbollah and the rebel forces in Damascus who, he said, “pretend to present a moderate image but belong to the most extreme Islamic sects.”

No doubt Israel has to proceed with caution, and its blitz of hundreds of air and missile strikes on Syrian military installations, since Assad fell, including chemical weapons sites (lest in fall into the “wrong hands”)is evidence that it is being extremely proactive. 

But there are many Syria experts in Israel who see a Syria focused more on recovering from decades of Assad’s dictatorship than a risk to Israel, hailing it as a moment of historic potential. Some, including Eyal Zisser, a professor of Middle East history at Tel Aviv University, see Israel sinking its boots into the Syrian side of the Golan Heights in violation of a 1974 post-Yom Kippur War agreement that set up the area as a no-man’s land, as more a show of muscle flexing than real defensive need. 

Carmit Valensi, director of the Syria research program at the Institute for National Security Studies, a think tank in Tel Aviv, told the Economist. “There are more opportunities for Israel in Syria than threats now … With Assad gone and Iran no longer powerful in Syria, Israel has a chance to use diplomacy with the new players in Syria and try to ensure security.”

Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of the Syrian rebel group with jihadist roots that helped overthrow Bashar Assad has said he would not let Syria become a base of operations for attacks on Israel. He also called on Israel to back off from the attacks on military sites and to withdraw from the buffer zone. 

In recent days Al-Sharra has shed his military garb for a suit as he continues to present himself as a pragmatist who will unite a fractured Syria and work with the international community to help it rebuild. 

Among his most recent visitors, the U.S. Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf who came to a Damascus to meet him in person at a Damascus hotel. After what was described by US diplomats as a “very productive” meeting reviewing the political transition of the country, a decision was made to remove a 10 million dollar bounty on his head. The group he leads, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, was originally affiliated with al Qaeda. 

But Leaf was careful to leave with cautionary words, saying “We will judge by deeds, not just by words. Deeds are the critical thing."

On Monday Israel’s Channel 12 reported that American officials are urging Israel to open ties with al-Sham, sending a report that reads, “Cooperation and communication channels of yours with al-Julani (al-Shaham’s nom de guerre) will bolster Israel’s influence in the entire area … We are talking about a pragmatic leader who wants to develop strategic relations with the nations of the region.”

On the night of September 27 Netanyahu stood in front of the United Nations General Assembly and in during his address held up two maps, one he called “a map of blessing” highlighting Israel, Egypt, Sudan and Saudi Arabia in green and another as a “map of a curse” highlighting Iran, Iraq, and Syria in black, which he described as a “a map of an arc of terror that Iran has created and imposed from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean.” 

While Netanyahu was speaking that night in New York, back home in Israel air force jets were preparing to take off to strike Hezbollah’s headquarters in a basement building in Beirut, targeting and killing Hezbollah’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah. 

Since then the “Axis of Resistance” has further crumbled not just with the decimation of the Hezbollah leadership, but the toppling of the Assad regime which for years had served as Iran’s highway for transporting weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The October 7 Hamas attack has reset a new regional order in the Middle East but not as its leaders imagined thanks in part to Israel’s offensive moves in the past three months against Hezbollah and Iran. 

But military operations should, experts argue, help set up diplomatic, political openings, not just serve as a conduit for more military force. 

In a recent analysis in Foreign Affairs, Amos Yadlin a retired Israeli general and former head of military intelligence and  Amos Golove, a former director of Israel’s national security council, argue for Israel to take advantage of this turning point moment in the Middle East to make bold political moves. 

“It has both the opportunity and the responsibility to steer the region’s trajectory toward a new, more peaceful and sustainable reality. Currently, Israel’s ability to force regional changes militarily outpaces its readiness to articulate and enact a cohesive strategic vision; its operational successes do not, as yet, have clear strategic ideas to go along with them. Israel should push for a political framework to match its battlefield successes,” they wrote.

Their suggest to make that happen, “An Arab-Israeli coalition backed by the United States could repel threats from Shiite and Sunni radicals, provide the Palestinians with a realistic political future, safeguard Israel’s security interests, secure the return of the Israeli hostages still in Gaza, and prevent another attack on Israeli soil.” 

But with an incoming Trump administration with an isolationist outlook that has already indicated the United States will not intervene in Syria and a hardline Israeli government that seems more interested in military action over diplomacy – will the window of opportunity to help stabilize Syria slam shut at everyone’s peril? 

Year End Appeal 2024

Gaza and the Hostage Issue (Hard Questions, Tough Answers- December 16, 2024)

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.

Q. Following upon the defeat of Hezbollah, the fall of Assad in Syria and multiple setbacks for Iran, the prospects for an Israel-Hamas hostage deal appear to be improving. And after the deal: what fate awaits the Gaza Strip itself?

A. All relevant parties--Israel, Hamas, Egypt, Qatar, the US--have stepped up the pace of multilateral negotiations over a hostage deal and ceasefire in Gaza. A resurgent Turkiye, after its Islamist allies triumphed over Assad in Syria, is bidding for a role. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu appears finally to be pushing a majority of his right-messianic coalition toward agreeing to the prolonged ceasefire that will be necessary for a prisoner-for-hostage exchange. The heads of Mossad, Shin Bet and the IDF have been in Egypt for talks.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan just visited Israel, Egypt and Qatar and expressed optimism that a deal could be finalized before President Biden leaves office on January 20, and possibly even this month. US President-elect Donald Trump, waiting in the wings, has threated Hamas that it will “have hell to pay” if it does not free the hostages before he takes office (though what new punishment he could possibly inflict on Gazans after more than a year of death and destruction is not clear). Trump’s designated hostage affairs envoy, Adam Boehler, will arrive in Israel this week.

US pressure and incentives, by both Biden and Trump, appear to be having some effect. It is fascinating to note the degree of apprehension and expectation in Israel projected by Trump’s impending second term when most likely, beyond bluster, he himself has little idea what he will do in the Middle East.

Q. Do we know the outlines of a hostage deal?

A. Not really. This time around, the negotiators are avoiding leaks. Based (cautiously) on informed speculation, it would appear that the deal will play out in stages. It will begin with release of women, children and elderly and ill hostages--sadly, those that Hamas can locate in the ruins of Gaza. Israel will withdraw at least temporarily from some occupied territory such as the Philadelphia Strip separating Gaza from Egyptian Sinai.

At least some of the Hamas prisoners Israel frees will be repatriated not to Gaza but to the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority will possibly play a role supervising a reopened Rafah crossing to Egypt. Augmented humanitarian aid will flow.

The hostage-release phases are expected to generate further negotiations regarding IDF withdrawal. But this is where the picture gets murky.

Q. Why? What is Israel’s strategic plan for post-war Gaza?

A. Officially, there is none. This reflects the weakness of Israeli governance in general, along with dissent within the governing coalition where extremists demand to remain in the Strip. Yet in historical context, the absence of a viable strategy for Gaza follows an Israeli-Palestinian tradition that goes all the way back to the War of Independence. The fate of this strip of sandy land, 25 miles (41 km.) long and 10 km wide, has been uncertain ever since it filled up with Palestinian refugees from Jaffa, Beersheva and nearby villages in 1948.

Q. Can you illustrate the failed strategies for Gaza?

A. Here are a few brief and tragic examples. In 1949-50, PM Ben Gurion offered to take over the Strip, then held by Egypt and understood since the 1948 War as the launch point for an Egyptian attack on Tel Aviv, and absorb an Arab population of one or two hundred thousand refugees in return for peace with the Arab world. There were no Arab takers. In 1956, Israel conquered the Strip from Egypt along with the neighboring Sinai Peninsula. International pressure forced Israel’s withdrawal and Egypt returned. Until 1967, Egypt used the Strip as a base for Palestinian guerilla attacks on Israel.

In 1967, Israel again conquered the Strip and occupied it militarily. Recognizing Gaza’s overcrowding, Israel launched a clandestine scheme to encourage emigration from the Strip to South America. This ended violently when disgruntled Gazan immigrants attacked the Israel embassy in Paraguay. In 1977-81, when Egypt and Israel negotiated peace and Israel withdrew from Sinai, PM Begin offered the Strip to Egypt. President Sadat refused, noting that Gaza, as part of Mandatory Palestine, was an issue for Israel to solve.

Meanwhile the Gazan population was growing apace. And Israeli settlements had arisen in Gaza. Thus did demography now complicate the Strip’s fate. When in 1992 the Oslo Process began, Yitzhak Rabin wistfully (and not seriously) suggested that the Strip should sink into the sea, while Shimon Peres, ever the visionary, saw Gaza as a future Singapore on the Mediterranean. Gaza, minus its settlements, became a patchwork part of the PLO-administered Palestinian Authority.

Then, in 2000, came the Second Intifada with its suicide bombings. Within a few years, PM Ariel Sharon decided to dismantle all the Gaza settlements and turn over control of the Strip to the PLO. Israel even withdrew from the Philadelphi Strip and gave the PLO/PA/Fateh movement sovereign control over passage from Gaza to Egypt.

From 2005 to 2023, this unfettered link between a Palestinian entity and the Arab world was the greatest dimension of sovereignty ever enjoyed by the Palestinians in the history of the conflict. With Israel having completely withdrawn, between 2005 and 2007 international aid flowed to Gaza in an effort to assist Palestinian state-building there.

That international effort crash-landed in 2007 when Hamas brutally ousted the PLO and its main component, Fateh. Hamas continued until the current war to control the Gaza-Egypt international border. But as is today crystal clear, Hamas devoted whatever funds it could recruit--from Qatar (encouraged by Israel), from Iran, from UN and other agencies and internationally-sponsored projects--to building a terror state. Now that strategy too is in tatters.

Q. Every scheme failed. And today?

A. Today, perhaps more than ever, the need for a viable strategy for Gaza is intertwined with both international and local Israeli and Palestinian politics. Nearly everywhere on the international and inter-Arab scene, and despite decades of failure, the demand is for Gaza to become part of a Palestinian state that includes all or part of the West Bank. Nearly everywhere, the designated sovereign in Gaza is the PLO.

Nowhere is there a readiness in the Arab world or, for that matter, elsewhere, to take in Palestinians from war-torn and overcrowded Gaza. About 100,000 (out of some 2.3 million) Gazans with means have managed, since October 7, 2023, to buy or bribe their way into Egypt. But Cairo is absolutely adamant in its refusal to absorb Gazans and resettle them, say, in Sinai, whether in wartime or as part of a peace plan: it is the Israelis’ and the Palestinians’ problem.

As for the PLO, between 1994 and 2007 it failed spectacularly (as the Palestinian Authority) to rule a semi-autonomous Gaza Strip. Today, under an aging and faltering Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), the PA barely rules over areas A and B of the West Bank. It needs new leadership and a rejuvenated security apparatus before it can hope to transplant itself into Gaza with its residual Hamas movement and Islamist and tribal traditions.

As matters stand, there is no viable Palestinian strategy for ruling and rebuilding the Strip. Indeed, Fateh and Hamas recently failed yet again to negotiate an agreed governance plan for post-war Gaza. Fateh, like everyone else, insists that Hamas disarm completely in favor of a single internationally-approved security force. Yet Hamas survives, both politically and (however weakened) militarily.

Additional Arab volunteers? The UAE is mentioned as an interim presence, but only to keep order while a permanent scheme of governance is put in place. Former Gaza security chief under the PLO, Mohammad Dahlan, now in exile in Dubai, is mentioned as a possible UAE-sponsored facilitator. But none of this implies the formulation of a viable long-term strategy.

Q. And on the Israeli scene?

A. The increasingly dominant messianic right in the Netanyahu government, in the settlement movement and in society at large has its own strategic plan for Gaza: thinning or even eliminating the Arab population, particularly in the northern Strip, and rebuilding settlements there. It is that same messianic right that seeks to annex all or most of the West Bank--at least Area C, comprising 60 percent of the territory. Finance Minister Smotrich, who is increasingly in charge of Israeli plans for the West Bank, envisages 2025 as the year of annexation in both the West Bank and Gaza.

Is this a viable strategy? As noted, no one in the Arab world will absorb Palestinians ‘transferred out’ by extremist ministers Ben Gvir, Smotrich and Strook. The entire international community will oppose such a plan. A few Israeli settlements in the northern Strip, if built, will be lightning rods for Palestinian opposition. Not to mention the disastrous effect settling Gaza and/or expelling its Palestinians would have on international and Israeli ambitions to expand normalization to include Saudi Arabia, to say nothing of the economic boycotts and war-crimes accusations that can be anticipated.

There are other schemes on the Israeli right, such as renewing post-1967 military government, which even the IDF and Shin Bet oppose as counter-productive. Indeed, Israel’s security establishment opposes all the right-wing and messianic schemes, citing long-term damage to Israel’s overall security and regional relations.

So there is no viable Israeli strategy, either.

Q. And the US, Europe and others who never tire of pointing out that a two-state solution is the only truly viable strategy, even when Israel and Palestine are deep in the throes of war and extremism?

A. In his previous term as president, Donald Trump presented Palestinians and Israelis with a map for a two-state settlement. The map was dismally out of touch with realities on both sides. But at the strategic level it did the trick of facilitating normalization between Israel and three Arab states: Morocco, the UAE and Bahrain (Sudan too, but it has since fallen apart), all geared to buy into Trump’s transactional style of diplomacy even without a Palestinian solution.

Will Trump try again, perhaps in the hope of persuading the Saudis, too, to normalize with Israel? Trump is of course unpredictable, and not a strategic thinker. But if nothing else, he seems to be better at intimidating the Netanyahu government than Biden has been. Still, thus far there is no viable strategic thinking about Gaza on either side of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

Q. Bottom line #1: why has Gaza failed?

A. Lack of resources, over-population, absence of civil society foundations, Israeli mismanagement, Arab insistence that Gaza’s refugees remain refugees, abysmal failure of state-building by any and all, and isolation from the Arab world--reinforced, paradoxically, by neighboring Egypt. None of this bodes well for the future.

Q. Bottom line #2: what will release of hostages, even in prolonged stages, mean for Israelis?

A. For those Israelis who cling to the foundational values of Zionism--in other words, all but Haredim, messianics, and Netanyahu’s many groupies--it will mean confronting the abject failure of the state and its institutions on October 7, 2023 to live up to those values. It will mean prolonged, gut-wrenching months of reckoning, crisis and meltdown.

Assad Falls (Hard Questions, Tough Answers- December 9, 2024)

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.

Q. A rebel coalition has taken over large swaths of Syrian territory including the capital, Damascus. The rebels are mainly Islamist and are backed by Turkey. President Bashar Assad has fled and the Syrian army has collapsed. Iranian and Russian allied forces have abandoned the regime. What does this mean for Israel, the region, and the world?

A. Once again, and not surprisingly, events are not unfolding as expected in the Middle East. Israel’s battlefield achievements in Lebanon and against Iran appear to have ended up, in neighboring Syria, weakening some actors and empowering others in a manner anticipated by almost none.

This is a major strategic and intelligence surprise on all fronts--for all parties, Israel included, with the sole exception of Turkey. One obvious interim conclusion at the intelligence level is that the degree of Syrian military dependency on Iranian, Hezbollah and Russian forces, meaning the inherent weakness of the Assad regime, was vastly underestimated by not only Israel but practically everyone else.

The rebels are led by Hayat Tahrir a-Sham, an offshoot of al-Qaeda that survived the years since the Qaeda defeat in Iraq and Syria by sheltering in the northwest corner of Syria under the auspices of Turkiye, which is led by the Erdogan government with its Islamist leanings. But the rebel coalition includes non-Islamist Arabs as well as non-Arabs: Kurds and Druze.

The dust has not even begun to settle yet, so this is a very preliminary assessment of the strategic consequences for Israel and for additional regional and global actors.

Q. Let’s start with the Israel-Hezbollah-Syria-Iran dynamic . . .

A. In the course of recent months, Israel inflicted heavy losses on Hezbollah as well as its patron, Iran. This had the effect of weakening the Assad regime in Syria, which Iran and Hezbollah had been supporting in its conflicts with Syrian Islamists and Kurds. And while Bashar Assad was no friend of Israel and the Iranian and Iranian-proxy presence in Syria was seen as a threat, the specter of resurgent Islamists setting up shop in Damascus is hardly welcomed by Jerusalem.

Under prevailing geostrategic circumstances, there is no ideal neighbor for Israel across the Golan border with Syria. Israel confronts the reality of its battlefield accomplishments in southern Lebanon contributing to a dangerous destabilization in Syria and a possible Islamist threat on Israel’s northern border with Syria. This is particularly worrisome insofar as those same battlefield accomplishments against Hezbollah will not necessarily lead to a stable ceasefire on the northern border with Lebanon.

Not necessarily, yet with Hezbollah weakened and no longer supported by an Iranian arms pipeline via Syria, the balance of power within Lebanon is changing. Admittedly, Lebanon is a largely dysfunctional state. But if relatively moderate Lebanese actors--Christians, Sunni Muslims, Druze, moderate Shiites--now even begin to get their political act together, Israel may be able to contemplate a more tranquil Lebanon border and even genuine cooperation in the maritime gas sector.

On the other hand, a resurgent Sunni Islamist Syria could seek to empower Lebanon’s Sunnis or to reassert hegemony in Lebanon. In other words, too many options are opening up to be able to project the future course of Syrian-Lebanese and Israeli-Lebanese relations.

At the very least, a million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, a similar number in Jordan, and several million in Turkiye--another Erdogan concern--may now go home. On the eve of this revolution, roughly a third of all Syrians were refugees or internally displaced.

Q. And within Syria?

A. Remember Caesar? “Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est”: ‘All Gall is divided into three parts’, the opening sentence of The Gallic Wars. (Well, you’ll remember only if you’re old enough to have studied Latin.) The notion of fragmented countries brings Syria to mind.

At the heart of the Levant, Syria is divided territorially among US-backed Kurds in the northeast, a Sunni Arab majority in the center, Alawites along the Mediterranean coast, Druze in the south around Suweida near both Jordan and Israel, and important contingents of Christians, Ismailis and Shiites. Iraq, Libya and especially Lebanon are also badly fragmented ethnically, but Syria is in the worst shape. At the time of his demise, Bashar Assad ruled over less than 70 percent of his country.

The Assad clan, Alawites, ruled for 57 years by coopting the Sunnis economically, bringing the other minorities into the armed forces and, once confronted by Sunni Islamists and additional rebels in 2011, falling back on Russian, Iranian and (Iranian-proxy) Lebanese Hezbollah forces. This was a mafia-family regime and a major Middle East drug manufacturer and smuggler. Hafez the father and Bashar the son each murdered hundreds of thousands of their own citizens, some by using lethal gas. Good riddance!

Now the Sunni majority has retaken power. But these are primarily Sunni Islamists, not the Sunni merchants who in past centuries made the Levant a trading center. At least for now, the rebels’ 42-year-old leader, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, projects an enlightened image on CNN.

How will the Sunni merchants respond? How will the new regime treat Syria’s minorities, especially Assad’s Alawites who oppressed so many Syrians? And how will the minorities react? Then there are Syria’s Arab Muslim neighbors in Jordan and Iraq, who fear a Sunni Islamist neighbor and a domino effect.

One way or another, there will now be hostile Syrian forces near Israel’s border. The IDF is already digging a deep boundary trench. It has stepped up the ‘Campaign between Wars’ bombing of Assad’s chemical and additional strategic weapons stockpiles lest they fall into Islamist hands.

The IDF could potentially be drawn into Syrian territory. It has already quickly occupied no-man’s land east of the Golan border. It has grabbed the highest Hermon peak, which dominates Syria to the east. All this makes sense at least until the dust settles.

But Israel learned a bitter lesson in 1982 in Lebanon about meddling in its neighbors’ domestic affairs. The Netanyahu government will hopefully now apply this lesson to Syria. Meanwhile, with its prominent Druze minority, Israel is concerned for the fate of fellow Druze in and around Al-Suwayda on the Syria-Jordan border.

Q. Bottom line?

A. An incredible and totally unanticipated chain of events has just transpired in the heart of the Middle East. Looked at through the (admittedly simplistic) lens of chaos theory, the beating of the butterfly’s wings that set this off was Netanyahu’s ‘judicial reform’ initiative of January 2023. The angry response of leading sectors of the Israeli public, who saw this as an attempt to dismantle Israeli democracy, and Netanyahu’s persistence, were seen by Israel’s Iran-led Islamist enemies as a sign of historic weakness of the Zionist enterprise. They attacked.

The IDF, caught on October 7, 2023 with its guard down, recovered, fought back and, in recent months, defeated the Islamists--particularly the Iranians and Iran-led Shiites in Lebanon who had been the mainstay of the Assad regime in Syria. Iran was now weak; so, incidentally, was Russia thanks to its Ukraine adventure. Together with Iran, Russia had sustained the Assad regime and rescued it from its ‘Arab Spring’ revolution. Now Assad’s Sunni Islamist enemies, led by a remnant of al-Qaeda and egged on by the Erdogan-led Islamist government in neighboring Turkey, sensed Assad’s isolation and attacked. Iranian and Russian support forces disappeared. The Assad regime and its army collapsed.

Israel may well have exchanged its Shiite Islamist enemies (Iran, Hezbollah, proxies in Yemen and Iraq) for Sunni Islamist enemies--the remnant of al-Qaeda that led a hodge-podge of anti-regime forces against Assad in Syria and that now sits on Israel’s Golan border. How the new Syrian regime will behave is impossible to say. Syria is full of dissident minorities, some of which could conceivably make common cause with Israel or with factions in Lebanon and all of which will now have to be either ‘managed’ or subdued by the new regime.

The IDF has provided humanitarian aid to warring Syrian factions in the past. This may again become advantageous in the future.

Q. Are there any state winners and losers here?

A. Turkiye appears to be a winner. It has installed a friendly regime in Damascus, one that presumably will now confront and weaken the Kurds who have developed autonomy along the Syrian border with Turkiye and tend to incite Turkiye’s large Kurdish minority. Still, it is not known whether Hayat Tahrir and Turkiye share the same end-goal for Syria. It is very possible that Erdogan simply wanted to set in motion a process that allows him to clear his eastern border with Syria of Kurdish dissidents and to return millions of Syrian refugees to Syrian soil.

Iran is clearly a loser, a development over which few in the region, Israel included, are shedding tears. Iran’s proxy, Lebanese Hezbollah, has now lost not only in Lebanon; its own expeditionary force helping Assad in Syria has fled. The vaunted ‘Shiite Crescent’ Iran created, linking Tehran via Baghdad and Damascus to Beirut--for years the focus of Israel’s ‘Campaign between Wars’--is, thankfully, in tatters.

The United States, incidentally, must tentatively be listed in the loser column. Its small but strategically-located forces stationed in Tanf near Syria’s borders with Iraq and Jordan and in eastern Syria, supporting Kurdish and other non-Islamist anti-Assad forces, will now be challenged by Syria’s new Islamist regime. Recall: Syria’s new rulers are a reemerging remnant of al-Qaeda and ISIS, the sworn enemies of the United States, which a US-led coalition once defeated. ISIS prisoners are still held by the Kurds and others in the eastern Syrian desert.

US forces have already bombed residual ISIS forces in eastern Syria to keep them from joining the victorious rebels. But the Biden administration has also reached out to the prospective new regime to test its declared moderation. In contrast, President-elect Trump professes to evince indifference to Syria’s fate right now. He should beware lest the new Syria ends up challenging American interests.

Russia has ‘lost’ Syria, its Middle East stronghold and a warm-water port. Will the new regime in Damascus now expel Moscow from its bases on the Syrian Mediterranean coast? Or will it seek accommodation?

Israel, tentatively, is a winner. The Iranian and Iranian-proxy threat has been significantly weakened. Al-Qaeda redux along the border is not nearly as bad. Meanwhile, there still is no resolution of Israel’s conflict in Gaza and, despite intensive US, Egyptian and Qatari efforts, no hostage release. Hamas may bear much of the blame, but the very same counter-functional Netanyahu government that indirectly helped launch the chaos in Syria is also a primary cause.

Sunni Islamist Hamas could now conceivably draw encouragement from the Sunni Islamist victory in Syria. Then too, events in Syria pose the prospect of new grand-strategic regional developments that could divert Israel’s immediate attention. Still, it is most likely that Hamas now feels more isolated than ever, hence more inclined to do a hostage-for-ceasefire deal with Israel.