**I highly recommend listening to Dan Senor’s podcast this week (link below), as he sits down for a longform interview with former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. **

U.S. citizen Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36, Alexander Sasha Troufanov, 29, and Iair Horn, 46, were freed today in the fifth round of releases since the 42-day ceasefire agreement went into effect on January 19, 2025. Horn’s brother, Eitan, is still held by Hamas in Gaza. Sagui and Iair were held captive by Hamas, and Sasha was held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Freed hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen is reunited with his wife Avital. At Kibbutz Nir Oz, he was ripped away from his pregnant wife, daughters Bar (7) and Gali (3). Today, he was informed she successfully gave birth to their third daughter, Shachar, born two months after his abduction.

Freed hostage Iair Horn (back to camera) embraces his brother Amos and mother Ruth Strom at an IDF facility near the Gaza border.

Sasha Troufanov is reunited with his mother and partner. His father, Vitaly was murdered on Oct 7. His mother (50), grandmother (75), and girlfriend were kidnapped by Hamas and returned in the November 2023 hostage release.

Below, friends of Sasha gathered in Ramat Gan cheer as he is released from Hamas captivity.

Once again, Hamas took the opportunity to terrorize them one last time with a propaganda parade alongside of the Red Cross.

Watch the moment Sasha, Iair, and Sagui are transferred from the Red Cross to the IDF

Watch as Sagui Dekel-Chen is reunited with his wife and parents

Iair Horn is reunited with his family after being held in Gaza for 498 days. His brother Eitan though, is still being held captive.

Watch as Sasha Troufanov is reunited with his mother Yelena and partner Sapir Cohen.

Hours after release, freed hostages talk of Hamas torture, psychological torment by the Times of Israel

• All three of them were held in Khan Younis throughout their captivity, mere hundreds of meters from their homes in Kibbutz Nir Oz. While they were mostly held in tunnels, they were taken to apartments in the lead-up to their release, Kan reported.
• All of them learned to speak Arabic during their 498 days in Gaza, and Troufanov also learned to read it, Channel 12 said.
• Upon his release, Horn’s captors gave him an hourglass with a picture of Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is held hostage and who has emerged as a leading figure in the movement for the hostages’ return.
• Dekel-Chen, who was abducted while battling against invading terrorists with the kibbutz security team on October 7, 2023, was held in a Gaza hospital for the first weeks of his captivity, Channel 12 reported. He was held along with other hostages, including Itzik Elgarat.
• He was “tortured during interrogations” by his captors, Channel 12 said and has scars on his body to show for it.
• The Israeli-American citizen was cut off from the outside world, with no access to any media or information, and didn’t know what had become of his family.
• Troufanov was held alone, as was the case with previously freed hostages Gadi Mozes and Arbel Yehoud, both of whom were also held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
• He was barely exposed to television or radio in captivity, and had no idea that his family was fighting for his release.
• Link: Hours after release, freed hostages talk of Hamas torture, psychological torment

Hostage Update

• There are now currently 70 hostages taken on 10/7 currently in captivity in Gaza (there are 73 hostages remaining in total)
• 24 hostages have been released so far in the first phase of the agreement
• 14 are now remaining on the list for release during the first stage of the ceasefire (pictures below)

  

  • 6 of the 14 remaining hostages still to be freed are alive and 8 are dead
    • 3 are members of the Bibas family (Shiri Silberman Bibas and her two children, Ariel, who was 4 years old when taken captive, and Kfir, who was 9 months when taken captive)
  • 5 hostages are Americans: Meet the Five American Hostages Still Held By Hamas: Edan Alexander and Itay Chen are assumed to be alive, while Gadi Haggai, Judi Weinstein Haggai, and Omer Neutra have been confirmed to have been killed.
• 24 hostages will remain in captivity after Phase I and have not been declared dead.
  • 4 are soldiers
  • 7 are residents of the Gaza border communities
  • 11 were abducted from the Nova music festival
  • 2 are foreign workers, one from Thailand and one Nepal
• Link: These are the hostages to be released (and left behind) in the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal’s first phase – Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Ohad Ben Ami, who was released from Hamas captivity last Saturday along with Or Levy and Eli Sharabi, shared his first video statement:

• On October 7^th, a total of 261 Israelis were taken hostage.
• During the ceasefire deal in November of 2023, 112 hostages were released.
• 182 hostages in total have been released or rescued
  • The bodies of 40 hostages have been recovered, including 3 mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
• 8 hostages have been rescued by troops alive
• Of the 73 hostages still theoretically in Gaza
  • 35 hostages have been confirmed dead and are currently being held in Gaza
  • Thus, at most, 38 living hostages could still be in Gaza.
  • Hamas is also holding 2 Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015 (civilians Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who have been held in Gaza for a decade), as well as the body of 1 IDF soldiers who was killed in 2014 (Lt. Hadar Goldin’s body remains held in the Gaza Strip)

Casualties (no change)

1,850 Israelis have been killed including 846 IDF soldiers since October 7th (no change since Wednesday)

• The South: 407 IDF soldiers during the ground operation in Gaza have been killed (no change since Wednesday)
• The North: 131 Israelis (84 IDF soldiers) have been killed during the war in Northern Israel (no change since Wednesday)
• The West Bank: 63 Israelis (27 IDF and Israeli security forces)
• Additional Information (according to the IDF):
  • 2,580 (no change since Wednesday) IDF soldiers have been injured during ground combat in Gaza, including at least 497 (no change since Wednesday) who have been severely injured.
  • 5,710 (+1 since Wednesday) IDF soldiers have been injured since the beginning of the war, including at least 848 (no change since Wednesday) who have been severely injured.

• The Gaza Casualty Count:
  • According to unverified figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, 51,600 total deaths have been reported, with a civilian/combatant ratio: 1:1.
  • [MUST READ] Report: Questionable Counting: Analysing the Death Toll from the Hamas-Run Ministry of Health in Gaza by Andrew Fox with The Henry Jackson Society
  • On October 7th, Ohad Hemo with Channel 12 Israel News – the country’s largest news network, a leading expert on Palestinian and Arab affairs, mentioned an estimate from Hamas: around 80% of those killed in Gaza are members of the organization and their families.”
  • Read this well documented piece from Tablet published in March: How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers
  • The Associated Press, an outlet with a demonstrated anti-Israel bias, conducted an analysis of alleged Gaza death tolls released by the Hamas-controlled “Gaza Health Ministry.” The analysis found that “9,940 of the dead – 29% of its April 30 total – were not listed in the data” and that “an additional 1,699 records in the ministry’s April data were incomplete and 22 were duplicates.”
• The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes official details on every civilian and IDF casualty.

Listen

[PODCAST] Call Me Back with Dan Senor: FORMER DEFENSE MINISTER YOAV GALLANT: Part 1 – Four Days In October

• Link: Call Me Back – with Dan Senor: Part 1 – Four Days In October

Watch

Georgetown’s Daughter of Hamas: Camera on Campus, a nonpartisan organization helping North American, UK & Israeli students share accurate education & correct misinformation about Israel on campus, reveals that Mapheze Ahmad Yousef Saleh, a graduate student at Georgetown, has family ties to Hamas, a terror group, and has celebrated its attacks on Israel.

• She is the daughter of Hamas adviser Ahmed Yousef (who served as a top adviser for the terrorist organization under Ismail Haniyeh’s leadership) is a graduate student at Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.

Georgetown’s Daughter of Hamas by David M. Litman with National Review

• Mapheze Ahmad Yousef Saleh was recently listed as a graduate student at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS). She also happens to be the daughter of Ahmed Yousef, who served as a top adviser for the terrorist organization Hamas under Ismail Haniyeh’s leadership.
• An archived biography for Mapheze that was posted on Georgetown’s CCAS’s website states that ‘she has worked with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Gaza.’ Since its violent takeover of the territory in 2007, Hamas has exercised de facto control over Gaza and established a ‘government’ by force.
• In Arabic-language media that has been reviewed by our translation team, Mapheze—whose name is sometimes transliterated differently—has been open about her own role with the Hamas government. She served with the Hamas government’s Committee to Break the Siege in Gaza, which happened to be chaired by her father.
• Since the October 7 attack, Mapheze repeatedly expressed support for the terror attack and glorified those who carried out the atrocities. Among her posts was a propaganda video that claimed Hamas was forced to carry out the attack because Israel is supposedly a ‘fascist occupation state.
• Her social-media profiles continue to glorify Hamas terrorists. More recently, however, she has posted footage of the Israeli hostages being dragged in front of hostile crowds.
• Mapheze has also expressed hatred for the United States, declaring: ‘America is the plague.’
• Her history also includes a connection to the Qatari regime, which has spent years funding and sheltering Islamist terrorists, including Hamas. Mapheze’s Georgetown profile indicated that she ‘worked as a researcher at the Qatar Embassy in New Delhi.’
• There are also concerns as to how much Georgetown University knew about these potential violations and the risk the situation posed to other students, particularly Georgetown’s Jewish community, given Hamas’s openly antisemitic charter.
• When asked about its knowledge of Mapheze’s work in Gaza, Georgetown University provided no response. However, within hours of CAMERA’s inquiry, Mapheze’s profile, which acknowledged her ‘work with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Gaza,’ disappeared from the university’s website.

• Link: Georgetown University Graduate Student Has Family Ties to Hamas

Antisemitism

[REPORT] ‘APPALLING FALSE EQUIVALENCE’ A comprehensive analysis of BBC News’s biased coverage of the release of the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas on October 7th 2023. By The Campaign for Media Standards

• Danny Cohen, a former Director of BBC Television, warned of mounting evidence that reporters and guests were playing into the hands of Hamas propaganda.
• He also warned the BBC about making “offensive comparisons” between the horrific treatment of Israeli hostages and hundreds of Palestinian terrorists and killers released from Israeli jails as part of the ceasefire exchange deal.
• Despite extensive hours of live coverage each weekend, the BBC News channel makes little to no mention of the horrific crimes of hundreds of Palestinians scheduled for release and minimises the horrors endured by Israeli hostages in the Hamas terror tunnels.
• The BBC’s editorial guidelines state that false equivalence does not achieve impartiality. Yet BBC coverage has repeatedly drawn false equivalence between hostages kidnapped by Hamas, and prisoners convicted and jailed for violent terror offences
• Interviewing Israel’s president, Laura Kuenssberg challenged him to “justify” the “appalling conditions” for prisoners which she seemed to equate with “dreadful suffering for the hostages”
• Another BBC reporter commented on how some released prisoners were “extremely thin”, just as images of hostages who had been forcibly starved emerged.
• Mr Cohen, former Director of BBC Television, said: “In their rush to gloss over the undeniable torture, starvation and beatings that hostages have endured and their determination to highlight claims of poor conditions in Israel’s jails, the BBC is repeatedly drawing offensive false equivalence between victims of war crimes and hundreds of convicted violent offenders.
• Link: Appalling False Equivalence

Next, Defund the United Nations by Eugene Kontorovich with the WSJ

• President Trump has cut funding to some egregious United Nations agencies and ordered a review of all funding for the U.N. and other international organizations. Executive orders cutting taxpayer funding for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and trans ideology won’t fully ensure the U.S. taxpayer isn’t paying for such programs without taking on the global deep state. These priorities are baked in to the institutional structure of international organizations that the U.S. underwrites.
• Even the most innocuous-sounding international organizations have institutionalized woke ideology. Nearly every U.N.-affiliated organization seeks to make climate and gender issues (including abortion and transgenderism) an integral part of their work. DEI offices abound. The International Organization for Migration lists as among its central areas of activity ‘gender equality,’ ‘environmental sustainability’ and ‘reducing global inequalities.’ It sponsors programs like ‘Strengthening Women’s Resilience in the Face of Climate Change in El Salvador.’ The U.N. Commission on Human Rights promotes a variety of transgender propaganda campaigns, such as helping Nepalese ‘LGBTIQ+ writers to tell their own story.’
• Apart from ideological absurdity, this leads to massive inefficiency, with the U.S. funding numerous entities with overlapping missions. The U.S. funds the U.N. Environment Program, the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Program, the Global Environment Facility, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, the Montreal Protocol and others. If that weren’t enough, the Global Fund for HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria says ‘climate change is the largest global health challenge of the 21st challenge,’ and thus part of its mission.
• If an America-first approach means anything, it should be that the U.S. won’t pay international bureaucrats to do what it forbids its own employees to do. Most federal workers are at least U.S. citizens, voters and taxpayers. Employees at international organizations generally aren’t, and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency should seek to cut U.S. contributions to these agencies by significantly more than it cuts the federal bureaucracy. Only about a sixth of U.S. spending goes to mandatory membership dues to organizations. The rest is voluntary.
• Durable reform involves ending the U.S. relationship, as Mr. Trump has already done with the World Health Organization. Because these are treaty organizations, rejoining would be subject to congressional approval. DOGE and the State Department should review U.S. membership in these organizations with the same determination to make permanent cuts that they have shown domestically. Take one example: The International Labor Organization has been around since the League of Nations, despite massive changes in the global economy and labor relations. But the ILO has kept up with the times by embracing DEI and LGBT issues.
• The Trump administration can also cut U.S. contributions to the U.N. peacekeeping system. Peacekeeping is one of the biggest parts of the U.N.’s budget, and the U.S. pays the lion’s share. Unlike other U.N. programs, peacekeeping operations must be regularly reauthorized by the U.N. Security Council, and the U.S. can veto them. Missions to be vetoed should include the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, which has shielded Hezbollah, and the U.N. Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, whose function has been made moot by U.S. recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara.
• Link: Next, Defund the United Nations

Combatting Antisemitism on Campus by Tal Fortgang in The University of Texas at Austin Civitas Institute

• President Trump’s new executive order activating ‘additional measures to combat anti-semitism’ is mostly ‘encouragement.’ It encourages federal agencies to think about and eventually use the tools at hand to combat discrimination against Jews, which has become a rampant problem on college campuses.
• But its most significant provision requires the State, Education, and Homeland Security secretaries to develop a process that would lead ‘as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove’ non-citizens who support terrorism in various ways.
• The broadest and most controversial provision of the statute cited in the order, the Immigration and Nationality Act, allows for the deportation of any ‘alien who…endorses or espouses terrorist activity.’
• College students, many of whom are foreigners on student visas, have been parading around campus in precisely those groups aiming to intimidate Jews (and non-Jewish Zionists) out of the public discourse to make support for Israel look like a fringe position. Deporting them would get these rule-breakers away from their targets and liberate the academy to talk about complex issues.
• The Immigration and Nationality Act has long given the executive branch broad authority to exclude or remove foreign nationals who endorse or espouse terrorist activity. Courts have consistently upheld these provisions, recognizing a legitimate national interest in preventing the importation of non-citizens who espouse ideologies antithetical to American interests and values.
• Foreign terror ideologies are a real threat to the rule of law in America, and they spread with significant proselytizing done by foreigners who have no inherent right to be here—much less use their time here to chant their support for Hamas murdering Jews.
• Foreigners seeking visas must disavow support for terrorism as part of their application. Subsequent expressions of support for terrorism, therefore, amount to a form of fraud regarding their visa eligibility.
• Abstract free speech concerns ring hollow when the students in question routinely violate campus policies, create hostile environments for Jewish students, and respond to American educational opportunities with anti-American extremism.
• Link: Combatting Antisemitism on Campus

At USAID, Funding for Terror-Tied Groups and Internal Hostility Toward Israel Goes Back Years by Adam Kredo with Washington Free Beacon

• As the Trump administration works to shutter the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), current and former U.S. officials who worked closely with the embattled aid group say they watched for years as it funneled millions of dollars to anti-Israel advocacy groups and entities linked to terrorism.
• In November 2022, for instance, USAID awarded $100,000 to a Palestinian activist group whose leaders hailed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated terror group. Just six days before Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault on Israel, USAID handed $900,000 ‘to a terror charity in Gaza involved with the son of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.’
• Under Samantha Power, former president Joe Biden’s pick to run USAID, agency officials fought pro-Israel policymaking at the State Department, often urging their colleagues at Foggy Bottom to pare down statements that praised the Jewish state, former officials said.
• USAID staffers went as far as to urge the Biden State Department to end military aid to Israel. Former secretary of state Antony Blinken rejected the request.
• A February report from the Middle East Forum think tank found that USAID had awarded ‘millions of federal dollars’ to ‘organizations directly in Gaza controlled by Hamas.’ In one Biden-era case, USAID funded an ‘educational and community center in Gaza’ controlled by a local group called the Unlimited Friends Association. The association openly collaborated with Hamas, inviting the terror group’s officials to its office and boasting of U.S.-funded projects in Hamas-controlled newspapers.
• When it resumed funding for the Palestinians in 2021, the Biden State Department issued an internal warning that there was a ‘high risk’ Hamas would steal U.S. aid. But information about terror-tied grant recipients in Gaza and elsewhere came mostly from watchdog groups. When members of Congress pressed USAID on those grants, they were often obstructed.
• Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) described similar interactions with USAID staffers. In some cases, he told the Free Beacon, USAID ‘refused to disclose what groups were getting money and gave tens of millions in American cash to be distributed without American supervision.’
• Link: At USAID, Funding for Terror-Tied Groups and Internal Hostility Toward Israel Goes Back Years

Israel/Middle East Related Articles

Israel and US must cut Hamas off from Tehran by Yossi Mansharof with The Jerusalem Post

• Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s statements to a Hamas delegation in Tehran on Saturday regarding the need to rebuild Gaza leave no doubt about Iran’s ambition to restore Hamas’s infrastructure, which was severely damaged during the war. Experience shows that this reconstruction will focus on Hamas rather than Gaza’s civilian population.
• The Iranian force responsible for facilitating Hamas is the Quds Force, specifically Unit 190, which handles smuggling operations. This unit relies on a variety of alleged civilian infrastructures, including humanitarian aid organizations and religious associations. It has gained significant expertise, as evidenced by the diverse arsenal Hamas possessed on the eve of its October 7 massacre.
• Khamenei’s order to rebuild Hamas highlights Tehran’s role in the war and the importance of restoring the resistance axis for Iran’s security. Iran can no longer be allowed to remain behind the scenes, hiding behind its network of proxies. Tehran has already suffered significant blows during the war, including the loss of senior Quds Force officers on a scale not seen since the Islamic Revolution.
• Israel and the US must exert maximum effort to prevent the Quds Force from rebuilding Hamas, as its restoration would erase Israel’s military achievements in the war and enable the terrorist organization to carry out another massacre.
• Furthermore, Israel and the US should promote a comprehensive strategic plan for an all-out war against Hamas. A key element of this strategy is cutting it off from Iran, which serves as its primary source of financial and military support – resources that Hamas now needs as desperately as air to breathe.
• Link: Israel and US must cut Hamas off from Tehran

If Indians and Pakistanis Can Relocate, Why Can’t Gazans? by Sadanand Dhume in the WSJ

• Many population transfers have taken place over the past century. In the 1920s, Greece and Turkey agreed to a forced population swap: Greek Orthodox Christians in Turkey moved to Greece, while Muslims in Greece moved to Turkey. After World War II, millions of Indians and Pakistanis were forced to find new homes, as were ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. In the 1970s, Uganda expelled Indians. Only in the Palestinian case has the refugee question festered endlessly.
• Nonetheless, the discussion highlights a double standard. Following the creation of Israel in 1948 and the first Arab-Israeli war, some 600,000 to 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes. Yet the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East today supports nearly six million Palestinian ‘refugees.’ That’s because the U.N. counts not only displaced Palestinians but also their descendants as refugees. ‘A great-grandchild of Palestinian refugees born in Damascus today is considered a Palestinian refugee,’ Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, said in a phone interview.
• Contrast this with other countries. In the turmoil following Israel’s creation, some 800,000 Jews fled or were expelled from their homes in North Africa and the Middle East. Today the descendants of these Mizrahi Jews make up about half of Israel’s population. Israel never stuck them in permanent refugee camps or used them as a geopolitical bargaining chip.
• Both India and Pakistan worked hard to integrate the new arrivals. Two Indian prime ministers (Inder Kumar Gujral and Manmohan Singh) were partition refugees, as were two Pakistani military rulers (Zia ul-Haq and Pervez Musharraf). Had the U.N. set up a special agency to look after the Indian and Pakistani refugees’ descendants, it would be responsible for tens of millions of people today.
• Arab states deserve blame for the plight of Palestinians. ‘The ironic thing about Palestinians in Arab countries is that their cause is sacrosanct, but the people themselves are treated badly,’ said Mr. Pipes. Jordan, unlike most Arab states, has extended citizenship to most Palestinian refugees within its borders, yet about 160,000 of them—mostly those displaced from Gaza—remain stateless. Lebanon, meantime, houses some 250,000 stateless Palestinians, nearly half in refugee camps.
• ‘In the last 100 years, populations have moved repeatedly,’ David Friedman, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, said in a phone interview. ‘Sometimes it’s not fair. Sometimes it’s justified from a humanitarian perspective. But whatever happens, when it’s over, it’s over. This is the only place where it’s weaponized.’
• Link: If Indians and Pakistanis Can Relocate, Why Can’t Gazans?

What next for Gaza? On Andrew Fox’s Substack

• However, in Gaza, clarity is beginning to emerge. Options are solidifying. My thesis is that Trump’s clumsy intervention has worsened the situation, whichever way it turns out.
• The ceasefire itself is a bad deal—a bad deal when Biden proposed it and a bad deal when Trump enforced it. While the IDF had not completed its military mission, this premature ceasefire created a mess of partial withdrawal, partial hostage release, and a chance for Hamas to reconstitute and rearm, and now we find ourselves no closer to a solution to the problem.
• It is a classic trolley problem: the lives of 251 hostages, measured against the lives of IDF soldiers and the future security of the wider Israeli population, now further threatened by the release of hordes of malevolent extremist prisoners, free to resume their terrorist ways.
• For as long as Israel prioritises the lives of the hostages, Hamas will always have the upper hand in ceasefire negotiations.
• Hamas won their strategic battle. They survived, and they retained power in Gaza. Through a ruthless disinformation campaign of emotional manipulation, they have grossly degraded Israel’s standing in the wider world. Israel will be bogged down in international legal wrangling for years to come, and this “genocide” will be used as a stick to beat Israelis and Jews forever more.
• …the main reason is likely that Hamas cannot afford two things: the relocation of Gaza’s population, and a renewed military campaign in a hostage-free Gaza.
• Trump’s interventions have now guaranteed that Hamas has no incentive whatsoever to release the hostages. They are the only thing standing between Hamas and total destruction for as long as Israel continues to prioritise their lives over the completion of the military mission in Gaza.
• There is much chatter that, should military operations resume, the IDF will be able to operate ‘with the gloves’ off, backed by a full-throated Trump White House instead of a milquetoast Biden administration. I am not sure this holds water. With the exception of the four-month pause before the Rafah operation, Biden’s US was far more supportive of Israel than they have been given credit for.
• Whilst Israel is committed to following humanitarian law, the evacuation of civilians will always see Hamas moving with them. All these fighters have to do is keep their heads down, and they survive.
• What can resumed military operations realistically achieve? The IDF can continue to expend blood and treasure, grinding through Hamas goons (both what remains of their original cohort and their new recruits). They can continue to destroy Hamas infrastructure where they find it. Whilst the IDF values hostage lives, however, they cannot destroy or eradicate Hamas.
• Israel and Gaza find themselves no better off than three weeks ago (with the exception of the small number of hostages who have been returned), and instead, the situation more broadly is far worse. There is no point backing Israel to the hilt, without reservation, if it sends the whole Middle East up in flames or running into China’s arms.
• Link: What next for Gaza?

Regular sources include JINSA, FDD, IDF, AIPAC, The Paul Singer Foundation, The Institute for National Security Studies, the Alma Research and Education Center, Yediot, Jerusalem Post, IDF Casualty Count, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Institute for the Study of War, Tablet Magazine, Mosaic Magazine, The Free Press, and the Times of Israel