Is an Israel-Hezbollah war inevitable?

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 27 December 2023

In his much-trumpeted speech on November 3, Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, predictably praised Hamas’s October 7 invasion of Israel, the subsequent massacre of 1200 civilians and the abduction of some 240 hostages.  However he was at pains to emphasize that it had been a purely Palestinian enterprise. He asserted, whatever the truth of the matter, that neither Iran nor Hezbollah had had any part in planning or carrying out the operation, and that in present circumstances neither found it expedient to support Hamas by opening full-scale hostilities against Israel.  He wanted the subsequent conflict to remain Palestinian. 

Even so, changing circumstances could trigger an escalation of the fighting to encompass Israel’s northern border.  The initiative could come from Iran.  An unequivocal defeat of Hamas, known to be funded and equipped by Iran, could be the trigger.  Israel could not be seen to glory in victory over Iran's proxy, so the baton could be passed to Hezbollah to continue the conflict. 

It might come from Nasrallah.  If Hamas was about to be destroyed, he might feel that Hezbollah could be the next target, and move to launch a full-scale pre-emptive attack on Israel.  Britain’s prestigious Royal Institute of International Affairs, otherwise known as Chatham House, in a recent wide-ranging survey of the prospects of an Israel-Hezbollah war, believes so.  It maintains that the closer Israel gets to defeating Hamas, the more likely it is that Nasrallah will widen the war.  It points out that he heads an army of more than 100,000 battle-hardened fighters equipped with thousands of missiles, rockets, and armed drones that can hit targets deep inside Israel with pinpoint accuracy. 

.           Incidentally, provided the Iranian ayatollahs are able to continue fighting Israel by way of their Hezbollah proxy, they are unlikely to grieve overmuch at the destruction of Hamas.  Although happy to use Hamas, to fund, equip and support it, Iran must always have regarded it as expendable.  Hamas is a Sunni organization.  The ultimate ambition of Iran’s Islamic Revolution is to impose the Shi’ite tradition of Islam across the whole world.  Unlike Shi’ite Hezbollah, Hamas could never form part of Iran’s Shia Crescent.  It would eventually have been cast aside.

Meanwhile, with Iran’s connivance, the Shi’ite Houthis have ramped up their attacks against shipping in the Red Sea, while the cross-border armed exchanges between Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been increasing in number and ferocity.  There are incidents on a daily basis.

Throughout December 24, for example, air raid sirens were sounding south of the Lebanon border in Avivim, Margaliot, Yiron, Shlomi, and the border Bedouin village of Arab al-Aramshe.  The IDF attacked the source of rockets launched towards Avivim, and bombed Hezbollah infrastructure with a tank near Kibbutz Yiron.

There were also alerts in Sasa, Matat, and Dovev following a suspected enemy drone infiltration and rocket attack.  Several rockets were also fired from Lebanon at the Keren Naftali peak in the Galilee Panhandle.  The IDF said it shelled the source of the fire with artillery, and attacked the source of Hezbollah fire and a cell of Hezbollah operatives close to the border near Shtula in the Western Galilee.

And so it goes on, day after day, while the toll in fatalities and casualties mounts.  Seven Israeli soldiers and four civilians have been killed since October 7, as have 121 Hezbollah fighters and 10 Lebanese civilians.   

Chatham House has pointed out that the initiative for a full-scale escalation of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict is not restricted to Hezbollah or Iran.  It could also come from the Israeli side.  It asserted that there are those in the Israeli government, including certain ministers, who see an opportunity in the present situation to neutralize the threat to Israel’s northern front once and for all.  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not yet reached that conclusion, said Chatham House, implying that it is not beyond possibility.  If ministers threatened to resign over this issue, for example, he might change his mind in order to maintain the integrity of his government.

Chatham House is not alone.  In early November the media were reporting concern in Washington about Israel’s intentions on its northern border. The worries may have been accelerated by the mass evacuations of Israeli towns and villages within easy striking distance of the Lebanon border.  Almost certainly undertaken by Israel to pre-empt any possible Hezbollah invasion on the lines of Hamas’s murderous incursion of October 7, suspicious minds in Washington may have seen in it preparations by Israel for a second front.

Under the headline: “Scoop”, the on-line news media Axios reported on November 12 that US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin had phoned his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, the previous day to urge restraint in the escalating tensions along the Israel-Lebanon border. According to Axios there was growing anxiety in the White House that Israeli military action in Lebanon could lead to a regional war.

Moreover, according to Chatham House, the White House believes some senior officers in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) believe that a war in the north is inevitable.  It is the possibility of a pre-emptive Israeli strike, leading to a forceful Hezbollah response, that concerns Washington, since the US would inevitably be drawn into such a conflict. The last thing US President Joe Biden wants during re-election season is a war between Israel and Hezbollah that could lead the US into a direct confrontation with Iran.

So the US is intent on avoiding all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah. In an attempt to deter Hezbollah from launching deadlier attacks against northern Israel, Biden has ordered the deployment of a substantial amount of additional military assets to the Middle East, including an aircraft carrier, warships, a nuclear-powered vessel, attack helicopters, fighter jets, and 5,000 sailors.

On December 15 US National Security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters that the US believes the threat to Israel from Hezbollah “can be dealt with through diplomacy and does not require the launching of a new war.”  The best way to ensure that the tens of thousands of Israelis who have evacuated their homes in the north can return, he said, “is to come up with a negotiated outcome.” 

Is an Israel-Hezbollah war possible?  Certainly.  Is it inevitable?  Surely not.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 27 December 2023, and in the Jerusalem Post online as "Israel-Hezbollah war is possible but not inevitable":
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-779648

Published in Eurasia Review, 29 December 2023:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/29122023-is-an-israel-hezbollah-war-inevitable-oped/#:~:text=Britain's%20prestigious%20Royal%20Institute%20of,Nasrallah%20will%20widen%20the%20war.

Published in the MPC Journal, 2 January 2024:

https://mpc-journal.org/is-an-israel-hezbollah-war-inevitable/

What’s in store for Hamas and its leaders?

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 18 December 2023

The leaders of Hamas responsible for the pogrom of October 7 will be hunted down and eliminated, even if it takes years

          On November 30 the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), in what appears to have been a world exclusive, published a detailed report of discussions said to have taken place between US and Israeli officials about possible plans for shortening the war in Gaza.

 The report indicates that these official level discussions are following up options suggested by Israel’s political and military leadership of ways to disempower Hamas.  One favoured approach turns to a precedent set in 1982.   At that time the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) under Yasser Arafat had entrenched inside within Lebanon, and then–prime minister Ariel Sharon had authorised Israeli forces to invade and advance into the country.  In an attempt to dislodge the PLO, Israel was besieging the capital Beirut.  The US brokered a deal with Israel under which US, French and Italian troops entered Beirut and oversaw the departure of Arafat and his organization for a new base in Tunisia.. 

There is, of course, no question of offering the Hamas leadership the chance to escape with their thousands of followers to some country prepared to accept them. Planners are aware that though neither Hamas nor the PLO has any qualms about the use of terrorist tactics, the PLO is essentially a secular, political organisation while Hamas is a jihadist group inspired by extremist Islamist philosophy.  Hamas, unlike the PLO, would not respond favourably to a deal involving expulsion from what they consider their land. 

The idea under consideration is to capture  and expel thousands of lower-level Hamas fighters from the Gaza Strip, thus cutting away Hamas's power base – namely the tens of thousands of Hamas fighters it controls.  If achieved, this would undoubtedly contribute to the collapse of Hamas and shorten the war.  It would also prevent the group from ever retaking power, thus enabling Gaza to become governable in the future.

The process may have started.  In a statement released on December 11, the IDF announced: "More than 500 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists have been apprehended by the IDF and Shin Bet over the past month and transferred for further questioning.”  

As for the Hamas leadership, the WSJ had yet another revelation up its sleeve.  On December 1 it asserted that, according to  Israeli officials, the intelligence services were preparing a covert operation akin to that following the Munich Olympics massacre in 1972. The report was later confirmed by Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar in a domestic broadcast on December 3.  Those leaders of the Hamas organization responsible for planning, organizing and perpetrating the invasion and pogrom of October 7, he said, would be hunted down and eliminated, even if it took years and no matter where they were living, or wherever they might choose to settle after their defeat.

The WSJ, citing unnamed senior Israeli and US officials, says another option, floated by the Israel Defense Forces, is to form a “Gaza Restoration Authority” backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, tasked with rebuilding a Hamas-free Gaza.

A major obstacle to this plan, the report says, is a fundamental disagreement between Israel and the US about whether the Palestinian Authority (PA) would, or should, be part of such a solution.  US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and a number of Washington spokespersons, have said repeatedly that the settled US vision of the post-war future is the unification of the governance of Gaza and the West Bank under the PA, leading to peace negotiations with a two-state solution as their goal. 

This unchanged US view was repeated by vice-president Kamala Harris, speaking at the Cop28 summit in Dubai on December 2. 

Post-war reconstruction efforts in Gaza, she said, must be undertaken “in the context of a clear political horizon for the Palestinian people towards a state of their own, led by a revitalized Palestinian Authority…”

Netanyahu, however, has made it clear that Israel would not agree to allow the PA, as presently constituted, to have any part in the future governance of Gaza.  On December 12, after a conversation with US President Joe Biden, he virtually rejected  the US aspiration of an eventual two-state solution.  He would not allow Gaza, he said, to be ruled by those who “teach, support or fund terrorism”, thereby ruling out both Hamas and the Fatah-run PA.

Biden sees the right-wing elements in Netanyahu’s government behind this.  In a speech on December 12, he is reported as saying that Netanyahu “has to change this government,” adding that Israel ultimately “can’t say no” to a Palestinian state.

A problem given little emphasis so far in the media is that, in addition to Hamas, other groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), control thousands of gunmen who not only took part in the October 7 atrocities, but are also holding hostages.  On November 27 CNN, based on a highly-placed diplomatic source, reported that more than 40 hostages taken from Israel into Gaza on October 7 are not currently in the custody of Hamas, but were being held by PIJ or other unidentified groups or individuals.  If accurate, this report complicates not only any future truce agreement, but also the wider issue of what an Israeli victory in the Gaza Strip might mean.

On November 28 the armed wing of PIJ, the Al Quds Brigades, said that it had handed over “some civilian detainees” as part of an exchange with Israel.  And indeed, together with Hamas gunmen, fighters from PIJ were seen handing over 17-year-old Mia Leimberg.  This was the first time that PIJ, or any other party, had publicly acknowledged being involved in negotiations.

As regards future truce agreements, the terms have so far required Hamas to hand over hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. They depend on Hamas actually possessing the hostages to fulfill their part of the agreement.  If Hamas does not, and cannot persuade other groups to participate in any future deal, the only recourse left to Israel would be to locate the hostages itself by achieving a complete victory over opposing forces in the Strip.  Subsequently, Israel would have to treat all militant groups and their leaders exactly as how they plan to deal with Hamas and its leadership.

 Whichever way they look, the future for Hamas, its allies and their leaders seems bleak.  Perhaps on October 7 they bit off rather more than they could chew.

Published in Jerusalem Post, 18 December 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-778420

Published in Eurasia Review, 23 December 2023:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/23122023-whats-in-store-for-hamas-and-its-leaders-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 25 December 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/whats-in-store-for-hamas-and-its-leaders/

The governance of post-war Gaza

 Published in the Jerusalem Report, issue dated 25 December 2023

            Stated briefly, Israel’s war aims as articulated by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, government ministers and Israel Defense Force (IDF) leaders are to destroy Hamas and ensure the safe return of the 240-odd civilians it is holding hostage.

The realization is growing that by the time the IDF have succeeded, a plan for Gaza's future governance must have been developed, agreed by those involved, and be ready for Implementation.  On November 2 the Reuters news agency, citing authoritative sources, reported that the US and Israel were exploring options for the future of the Gaza Strip, including a possible multinational force to keep the peace until a more stable leadership is established.  Such a scenario builds on US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s concept, laid out during his recent visit to Israel.  He said that he understood that Israel did not want to control Gaza, and he believed a revitalized Palestinian Authority (PA) should eventually be in charge of the territory.

On November 6 both the rumoured US-Israel negotiations and Blinken’s suggestion were apparently nullified.  In a TV interview Netanyahu said for the first time: “Israel will, for an indefinite period, have the overall security responsibility, because we have seen what happens when we do not have it.” 

His statement was as surprising for what he said as for what he omitted.  Maintaining that IDF forces would be stationed in Gaza for an indefinite period after the fighting had ceased seems to imply an intention for Israel to repossess the Strip.  What Netanyahu omits is any indication of how he sees Gaza being administered post-Hamas, and by whom.  Who would be responsible for redeveloping the ruined city, for housing the displaced people returning to their home areas, for administering the essential services?  Surely Netanyahu does not envisage a military occupation of Gaza on the lines of Area C in the West Bank.

Speaking in Japan on November 8, Blinken, while acknowledging that "some transition period" might be needed at the end of the conflict, virtually rejected Netanyahu’s vision of continued and indefinite IDF presence in Gaza post-war.  He strongly advocated a united and Palestinian-led government for a united Gaza–West Bank after the war ends, as a step toward Palestinian statehood.  “We’re very clear on no reoccupation,” he said, “just as we’re very clear on no displacement of the Palestinian population.”

            A few weeks into the war, the Washington Institute published a thoughtful analysis of what might follow an Israeli victory over Hamas.

As a starting point they acknowledged that it would be a mistake for Israel to destroy Hamas and then leave Gaza as an ungoverned space without a clear sense of what comes next. They insisted that the US and others must ensure that a plan is ready to be implemented once the IDF withdraws.  What the Institute did not consider was Netanyahu’s latest proposal – that the IDF might actually remain in place to guarantee that the Strip no longer posed any sort of security threat to Israel.

            The idea of a Gaza administered under some as yet undefined group or consortium, with the IDF as its security force, bristles with difficulties, and is almost certainly a non-starter.  Moreover Blinken’s idea that the PA would eventually take over the administration of Gaza simply could not work with the PA in its present condition. 

The PA is currently riddled with corruption and inefficiency.  President Mahmoud Abbas, who is scarcely capable of controlling the situation in Areas A and B of the West Bank, areas nominally under its control, is profoundly unpopular with the Palestinian public. In the most recent poll of Palestinian opinion, nearly 80% said he should step down.  So an essential prerequisite before Blinken’s ideas could be put into effect would be meaningful, substantive PA reform.  Without obvious and significant changes to its administrative structure and methods of operation, neither local Palestinians nor international donors would have confidence in the its ability to extend its authority to Gaza.

The Washington Institute hypothesized that a proposed Gaza Interim Administration (GIA) should have three main components:  a civilian administration; a law enforcement system; and an international coalition for reconstruction and development.

They believe that the civilian administration of post-Hamas Gaza should be led and run by Palestinians. The departments of a fully functioning local government – health, education, transportation, judiciary, social welfare – should, they maintain, be operated by a mix of technocrats and administrators from Gaza, the West Bank, and the Palestinian diaspora.

They envisage public safety and law enforcement being directed by a consortium of those Arab states which have reached peace or normalization agreements with Israel. Only those states, it opines, would have Israel’s confidence, which is essential for the effort to succeed.

They suggest that a new Arab-run agency responsible for repair, reconstruction, and development should be established.  Billions of dollars would be needed to reconstruct Gaza city and to fund projects such as creating a new Gaza port and building new industrial zones to provide employment options.

Finally, the Institute believes that while Arab administrators, officers, and officials, obviously including Palestinians, should take the lead in all these efforts, the US and other supporters of a peaceful, constructive future for Palestinians would have a vital role to play in conceiving the plans, and in supporting those entrusted to carry them forward.

Whether the ideas put forward by the Washington Institute come to fruition, or others, perhaps more radical, emerge, how Gaza is to be governed after the IDF have achieved their victory over Hamas clearly requires urgent and detailed consideration. Diplomatic efforts, led by the US, must be initiated as soon as possible aimed at establishing an effective mechanism for planning Gaza’s post-war future.

Published in the Jerusalem Report issue dated 25 December 2023, and on the Jerusalem Post website under the title: "Israel-Hamas War: Finding rulers for Gaza when the fighting ends" on 23 December 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-779070

UN chief Guterres: right problem, wrong solution

Published in Jerusalem Post, 11 December 2023

          On December 5 UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, wrote to the 15 members of the Security Council invoking Article 99 of the UN Charter. This article states that the secretary-general may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which, in his opinion, “may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.”

          In his letter, Guterres called on the Security Council to vote in favor of a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict in order to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.  He said that the weeks of fighting had “created appalling human suffering, physical destruction and collective trauma across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory” (the UN persists in regarding the Gaza Strip as territory occupied by Israel, despite the fact that Israel  totally evacuated the enclave in 2005).  He warned that “an even worse situation could unfold, including epidemic diseases,” and concluded: “The international community has a responsibility to use all its influence to prevent further escalation and end this crisis.”

UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said this was the first time Guterres had felt compelled to invoke Article 99 since taking office in 2017, and he hoped the Security Council “will be moved to push and put in place a humanitarian ceasefire.” 

Soon after Guterres’s letter was published, a resolution drafted by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was submitted to the Security Council.  It demanded an immediate ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. 

To pass, a Security Council resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the five permanent members – US, Russia, China, France or Britain.  When put to the vote on December 8 the UAE resolution received 13 votes in favor, the UK abstained, and the US exercised its veto. 

While in the drafting phase the US had proposed substantial amendments to the text, including a condemnation of "the terrorist attacks by Hamas in Israel, including those on 7 October 2023."  The UAE did not add this to the text.

   Britain's UN Ambassador Barbara Woodward said her country abstained because there was no condemnation of Hamas.  "Israel needs to be able to address the threat posed by Hamas,” she told the council, “and it needs to do so in a manner that abides by international humanitarian law so that such an attack can never be carried out again."

Deputy US Ambassador to the UN, Robert Wood, told the council that the draft resolution was a rushed, unbalanced text "that was divorced from reality…We do not support this resolution's call for an unsustainable ceasefire that will only plant the seeds for the next war."

Guterres was right to draw attention to the dire and deteriorating living conditions within the Gaza Strip, but his proposed solution – the Security Council voting in favor of a ceasefire – is misconceived on practical grounds, if on no other. “Ceasefire” is universally defined as an agreement between two armed forces to stop fighting.  The Security Council cannot impose one.  The UN could certainly request Israel, a sovereign member, to lay down its arms unilaterally, but how can the Security Council, in Dujarric’s words, “put in place a humanitarian ceasefire”?  What influence does the Security Council have on Hamas that could induce it to stop firing rockets indiscriminately into Israel?  

 In reality what Guterres is seeking is for Israel to cease its efforts to eliminate Hamas, thus allowing the terrorist organization to retain its control of the Gaza Strip, continuing into an indefinite future its unremitting intention of destroying Israel.

Instead of throwing a lifeline to Hamas by way of a ceasefire, Guterres should be urging the Security Council to encourage an increased flow of humanitarian aid into the Strip.  At present the provision of aid is haphazard.  Agencies send what they can when they can,  A special UN agency could be established, charged with coordinating the efforts of the UN, governments, non-governmental agencies and charities to bring much enhanced relief to the civilian population, adequate to provide for its needs. 

Among the partners providing the humanitarian cargoes are the US, the EU, the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Food Program (WFP), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).  The work of these agencies needs to be coordinated and enhanced by recruiting other partners willing to contribute to a major humanitarian effort, so that the flow of aid can be brought up to the level required.  Here is where Guterres should be devoting his efforts.

As for Israel, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are taking the greatest care to avoid violating internationally accepted laws of war.  Information released to the public daily demonstrates the steps they are taking, over and above what is strictly required of them, to minimize the effect on the civilian population of their anti-Hamas campaign.  They are even distributing maps indicating exactly where they next intend to attack Hamas - while on December 7 Israeli military spokesman Elad Goren told reporters that the Kerem Shalom border crossing will open “in the next few days “as another inspection station to expedite the entry of more humanitarian assistance into Gaza.

There is another button Guterres could be pressing – urging the Security Council to demand that Hamas and its allied terrorist groups release all hostages immediately, on pain of being charged in the International Criminal Court as war criminals.  Taking hostages is accepted universally as a war crime under international law, and if found guilty its perpetrators can be arrested and tried in over 170 countries world-wide. Perhaps a word from the UN’s secretary-general underlining the legal consequences of holding hostages would help bring about their release.

Deputy US Ambassador Wood said recently, “we remain focused on the difficult and sensitive diplomacy geared to getting more hostages released, more aid flowing into Gaza, and better protection of civilians.”  These are the issues that should also be Guterres’s top priorities in the on-going Israel-Gaza conflict .

Meanwhile the faster the IDF can finish the job of disempowering Hamas and its allies, the faster Gazans can take the first steps towards recovery, and a future free from the baleful influence of the Islamist terror group which has deprived them of freedom and prosperity for seventeen years.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and in the Jerusalem Post online titled: "UN Secretary-General has the wrong solution", on 11 December 2023:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-777458

Taking hostages is a war crime

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 5 December 2023

The events of October 7 have proved too flagrant to be ignored by the body that is supposed to be the world’s watchdog on protecting and advancing human rights. 

The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) was established in 2006 with one over-riding purpose – to rectify the egregious faults of its predecessor body, the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR). Over the 60 years of its existence the Commission had accrued a raft of objectionable practices, high among them an obvious anti-Israel bias.

UNHRC is UNHCR with just one letter transposed, and it soon became obvious that all the UN had done was to substitute Tweedledee for Tweedledum.  It did not take long before the same anti-Israel stance began to emerge from the new Council.  Since its founding it has passed more than 90 resolutions condemning Israel – more than against Iran, Syria, North Korea, China, Russia, Cuba and Venezuela combined. The Council would have the world believe that Israel is more guilty of human rights abuses than all the blatant abusers of human rights put together.

Its determined anti-Israel position was actually codified in a decision in 2006 to include as a permanent feature of its sessions a review of alleged human rights abuses by Israel.   Even Human Rights Watch, no friend of Israel, urged the Council to look as well at international human rights and humanitarian law violations committed by Palestinian armed groups. This proposal was not followed through.

Now the Council’s commission of inquiry has undertaken an investigation on “possible international crimes and violations of international human rights law in Israel and the Palestinian territories since October 7, 2023.”  The Commission’s findings will be delivered to the Human Rights Council in June 2024.

Given the long-standing anti-Israel bias of the chairperson, Navi Pillay, as well as several commission members, what sort of picture it will eventually present is a matter for speculation.  But it is perhaps a hopeful sign that on October 10 the commission included the following in a media release: “The taking of hostages is a violation of international law and constitutes an international crime.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has a unique role in the system of international humanitarian law.  It works on battlefields, reports on the problems encountered, and makes practical proposals for improving international humanitarian law.  Its proposals have led to the revision and extension of international humanitarian law, notably in 1906, 1929, 1949 and 1977.  This special role of the ICRC is now formally recognized by the states party to the Geneva Conventions – that is, practically the whole world.

According to the ICRC, the prohibition on hostage-taking is now “firmly entrenched in customary international law and is considered a war crime.”

Among the elements of the offence in international armed conflict are:

1. The perpetrator seized, detained or otherwise held hostage one or more persons.

2. The perpetrator threatened to kill, injure or continue to detain such person or persons.

3. The perpetrator intended to compel a State…to act or refrain from acting as an explicit or implicit condition for the safety or the release of such person or persons.

On October 11 the Lieber Institute published a lengthy, detailed and explicit survey of the provisions in international law regarding the taking of hostages. The Lieber Institute is situated at West Point and is part of the US Military Academy.  Its purpose is to contribute to the global dialogue on the complex issues surround the law of war, and to maintain the primacy of law in today’s armed conflicts.  It seeks to bridge the divide between legal scholarship and battlefield experience.

   The Lieber document explains that the provisions of the law of armed conflict depend on how a conflict is classified. The ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas is best characterized as non-international in character. Therefore the applicable treaty law is Common Article 3 of the four 1949 Geneva Conventions, and this unequivocally forbids hostage-taking. The International Court of Justice has determined that “The taking of hostages is prohibited.”

The Lieber document goes on to explain that as a war crime, the offence of hostage-taking is subject to universal jurisdiction.  That means that any State, even those with no connection to the hostage-taking, is free to  prosecute offenders. Many States have accordingly criminalised the offence in their penal codes.

On the matter of hostage-taking alone – the unspeakably brutal onslaught on innocent civilians is an issue in its own right – the Lieber paper adjudges that Hamas has “without the slightest doubt” violated the law of armed conflict.  It concludes: “Hostage-taking was a central feature of Hamas’s opening salvo in its conflict in Israel…those involved are subject to worldwide prosecution as war criminals under international criminal law.” 

The basis for this conclusion is the International Convention against the Taking of Hostages, a UN treaty under which states agree to prohibit and punish hostage taking. The creation of an anti-hostage-taking treaty was a project initiated by the Federal Republic of Germany in 1976.  The convention was adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 1979 and came into force in 1983.  As of October 2016, 176 states are party to the convention.

Too little public consideration has been given to the likelihood of the Hamas organisation eventually being found guilty by the UN and other international bodies of the war crime of hostage-taking, and consequently that its leaders would then be liable to be arrested, charged and imprisoned in virtually any part of the world.  

Ismail Haniyeh may believe himself safe in Qatar, but in Qatar he would have to stay.  If Yahya Sinwar, who masterminded the October 7 onslaught, is not captured by the IDF within the Gaza Strip, he would be on the run for the rest of his life. Mohammed Deif, architect of the Hamas tunnel complex, Marwan Issa, Khaled Meshaal, Mahmoud Zahar – they and a host more leaders of Hamas would have nowhere to hide but in the few states not prepared to fulfil their obligations under the International Convention against the Taking of Hostages, and prosecute them.  Even so, they would all, no doubt, have in mind the fate of the perpetrators of the Munich Olympics massacres, given the remarks by Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar in a domestic broadcast on December 3.  Israel will hunt down the Hamas leaders, he said, even if it takes years

All provided that Israel achieves its primary war aim, and destroys Hamas.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online, 5 December 2023: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-776542

Published in Eurasia Review, 8 December 2023:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/08122023-taking-hostages-is-a-war-crime-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 11 December 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/taking-hostages-is-a-war-crime/

The Houthis declare war on Israel

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 30 November 2023

          In the early days of November a considerable amount of journalistic ink was spilled countering a report that appeared on several social media sites. On October 31 a post on X, formerly Twitter, stated: "Breaking: Yemen declared they are now at war with Israel." According to Newsweek, it was viewed 7.1 million times. The news site USA Today reported that a similar post had appeared on Instagram, and went on to state categorically that the story was untrue. One after another, the news media scrambled to deny the report.

          In fact the internationally recognized government (IRG) of Yemen, led by Rashid al-Alami, has not attacked Israel by word or deed. But for the past nine years Yemen has been in the throes of a vicious civil war initiated by the Houthis, a Shia-allied group that emerged in the early 2000s in opposition to former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh. Supported, financed and equipped by Iran, the Houthis have gained control of a considerable portion of Yemen, including the capital Sana’a.

          The Houthis, rallying behind a banner which reads in part: “Death to America; death to Israel, a curse on the Jews”, needed little prompting from their Iranian paymasters to support the Hamas massacre of October 7. It was no doubt at Iran’s behest that the Houthis went on to plan a series of assaults on Israel. Not all went according to plan. Three cruise missiles fired from Yemen on October 19 were intercepted by the US navy. A drone attack launched on October 28 apparently went off-course and resulted in explosions inside Egypt.

          On October 31 Houthi military spokesman, Yahya Saree, announced on TV that a "large number" of drones and ballistic missiles had been launched toward Israel. In reality they had little chance of hitting anything. More than 2,000 km (1,240 miles) away, Israel is at the very limit of even the longest-range Houthi missile. Moreover, to reach Israel, Houthi missiles must first evade US Navy ships patrolling the region, and then Israeli Navy missile corvettes stationed in the Red Sea.

          Israel has said it destroyed an unidentified “aerial target” over the Red Sea on the morning of October 31 using the “Arrow” aerial defense system for the first time since the outbreak of war with Hamas. “There was no threat or risk to civilians,” said the official report, but the incident triggered air raid sirens in the tourist resort of Eilat.

          In announcing the strike, Saree declared that Houthi military activity against Israel would be maintained "to help the Palestinians to victory." His statement was a virtual declaration of war, but the fact that the attacks would emanate from Yemeni territory certainly does not mean that the state of Yemen would be in any way involved.. The legitimate government of Yemen, supported by Saudi Arabia, is fighting the Houthis – and through them Iran – for control of the country. Nine years of conflict have seen the Houthis well entrenched in the area they have overrun, but still far from their goal of total control. In fact, according to Gregory D. Johnsen, a Yemen expert with the Arabian Gulf States Institute in Washington, in recent months anger has grown against Houthi rule within the area they control as the civil war grinds on without resolution.

          “The Houthis view the war between Israel and Hamas as an opportunity to mute some of this domestic criticism,” Johnsen wrote in an analysis earlier this month. “If they are attacking Israel, their local rivals will be less inclined to attack them.”

          This may be the motive behind the seizure on November 19 of a cargo ship connected at some remove to an Israeli businessman. Houthi rebels boarded the ship in a crucial Red Sea shipping route, and took its 25 crew members hostage.

         “All ships belonging to the Israeli enemy or that deal with it will become legitimate targets,” they announced.

          It suits Houthi propaganda to use the terms Houthi and Yemeni without distinction. For example, when a senior Houthi official told an international news agency about its drone attack on southern Israel, Abdelaziz bin Habtour, prime minister of the Houthi government, added: “These drones belong to the state of Yemen.”

          Later Mohammed Abdul-Salam, the Houthis’ chief negotiator, in a deliberately misleading statement that identified the Houthi militia with Yemen’s armed forces, declared: “The detention of the Israeli ship is a practical step that proves the seriousness of the Yemeni armed forces in waging the sea battle, regardless of its costs and costs. This is the beginning.”

          The ship, the Galaxy Leader, flies the flag of the Bahamas, and is operated by the Japanese NYK Line. Its crew is drawn from five different countries, none of which is Israel. The ultimate owners are Ray Car Carriers, founded by Abraham “Rami” Ungar, an Israeli billionaire. A ship linked to him experienced an explosion in 2021 in the Gulf of Oman which Israeli media blamed on Iran. Again on this occasion prime minister Netanyahu's office condemned the seizure as an “Iranian act of terror." Since 2021, Iran has harassed, attacked or seized nearly 20 internationally flagged merchant vessels.

          The Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza are all part of an unofficial alliance that the Iranian regime likes to call “the Axis of Resistance.” It includes other groups in Iraq and Syria, which have also been busy targeting US forces in those countries. Over the past three weeks at least 40 separate drone and rocket attacks have been launched at US forces by Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria, where a total of 3,400 American troops are based. Fortunately many of the rockets and one-way attack drones were intercepted by US air defenses, and only minor injuries have resulted so far. By manipulating events and avoiding any direct involvement, the Iranian regime has succeeded in souring the political atmosphere in the Middle East to the point, they hope, that any normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel - very much on the cards only a few short weeks ago - has become out of the question.

          As for the Houthi organization, it has responded as ever to the self-interest of its Iranian masters and has willingly assumed the role of combatant against Israel on their behalf.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "The Houthis, not Yemen, declared war on Israel", 30 November 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-775740

Published in Eurasia Review, 1 December 2023:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/01122023-the-houthis-declare-war-on-israel-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 6 December 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/the-houthis-declare-war-on-israel/

Qatar: We talk to everyone

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 23 November 2023

 “We don’t do enemies,” a one-time foreign minister of Qatar once said. “We talk to everyone.” 

This is the policy pursued with determination over the past thirty years by the tiny Gulf state of Qatar in its long-term effort to become a major player on the world stage – and it has succeeded.   Qatar was absolutely central in negotiating the complex deal that has led to the release of a batch of the 240 hostages captured by Hamas.   

It already had two successes to its credit.  On October 20 Qatari officials negotiated the release of Judith and Natalie Raanan, mother and daughter, and then helped broker a deal for the release on October 23 of two elderly Israeli women held by Hamas —  Yocheved Lifshitz and Nurit Cooper.

            Two days later Qatar's prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said that negotiations on the release of all the hostages captured by Hamas were progressing.

   Yet there has been strong opposition in Washington to the Biden administration’s close working collaboration with Qatar – especially in light of Qatar’s statement, issued after the horrific Hamas assault on Israel of October 7.  It declared that Israel is “solely responsible for the ongoing escalation due to its continuous violations of the rights of the Palestinian people…”  Critics of the US-Qatar relationship also point to the fact that Hamas has been largely financed by Qatar for years,  Since 2021, Qatar has reportedly funneled an estimated $360 million a year to Hamas. Between 2012 and 2021, Qatar is estimated to have given Hamas $1.8 billion in total.  What Hamas spent the money on must be left to the imagination, since no accounts have ever been published.  Certainly very little went to improving the lot of the citizens of the Strip. 

            Winston Churchill once described Russia as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Qatar is close to meriting the same epithet . Dubbed “the wild card of the Middle East”, Qatar makes for an intriguing case study.  Not much is generally known about this stand-alone and gas-rich Gulf state except perhaps that it is the wealthiest country in the world on a per capita basis, that it has established what is now a global media empire called Al-Jazeera, that its national airline is a long-time sponsor of Britain’s Sky News TV channel, and that it won the hosting rights for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in somewhat dubious circumstances.

Qatar has long pursued a foreign policy that appears self-contradictory, if not bizarre.  While offering itself as a key US ally in the Middle East, it has also consistently backed hardline Islamists — from Hamas in the Gaza Strip, to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, to Sunni jihadist opposition fighters in Syria.

It was back in 1995 that Qatar’s emir at the time, Sheik Hamad Bin Khalifa al-Thani, set the nation on its friends-with-everyone journey. 

In 2002, when the US military began pulling forces out of Saudi Arabia, the emir offered his country as a home for the US Central Command’s forward headquarters.  Ever since, Qatar has hosted a large US military presence, one of the biggest in the region, at Al Udeid Air Base.

Yet as the Arab Spring dawned in 2011, with popular revolutions toppling dictators and autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, the emir had no hesitation in allowing hardline members of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, as well as other jihadists, to establish a presence in his capital, Doha.  He gave them a fair degree of freedom of action, too, much to the irritation of Qatar’s neighbors who actually severed relations with the country for a period. 

In the years leading up to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, Qatar played a pivotal role in hosting meetings between US officials and members of the Taliban.  While the talks ultimately failed, they demonstrated the reliance the US places on Qatar as a key intermediary.  Qatar certainly played an important role in the events leading to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.  Collaborating closely with the US, Qatar acted as mediator between the Taliban and what was left of the previous Afghan administration in assisting the evacuation of refugees.  Qatar's role in coordinating the safe exit of tens of thousands of people — including US citizens and contractors — was invaluable to the American government. Nearly 40% of all evacuees were taken out via Qatar.

As a direct result, on March 10, 2022, President Joe Biden formally confirmed his grant to Qatar of the status of “major non-NATO ally”.  MNNA,  a US legal designation conferred on nearly 20 countries including Australia, Israel, Japan and Brazil, is a powerful symbol of friendship and close collaboration.  It provides foreign partners of the US with a range of benefits and privileges, especially in the areas of defense, trade and security cooperation. By conferring the designation on Qatar, the Biden administration was signaling it wanted an even closer relationship with the Gulf state than it already enjoyed.

Biden’s gesture toward this paradoxical nation state certainly paid off.  Qatar's working relationships with traditional US adversaries such as Iran and Russia — or nonstate groups like Hamas and the Taliban — have made it an invaluable partner for the US and other Western countries.  All turn a Nelsonian blind eye to its questionable friends and alliances deep in the jihadist and terrorist worlds, since it is precisely these relationships that make Qatar such a valuable contact.

On October 13 US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to reporters at a press conference in Doha.   

“Qatar,” he said, “has been a very close partner to the United States on a broad range of issues that are crucial to both of our countries and to this region — from working together on evacuating Americans, Afghans and others from Afghanistan, to cooperating very closely in responding to humanitarian emergencies, like the devastating earthquakes in Turkey and in Syria."  He diplomatically made no mention of Qatar’s sensitive role, being undertaken as he spoke, in attempting to negotiate a deal involving both Israel and Hamas to release the hostages.

            Qatar’s bid to punch well above its weight has succeeded.  The tiny state – less than half the size of Israel – has followed its own star by maintaining good relations with a vast spectrum of global players while still being a strategic partner to the US.  Doing so, it has placed itself at the very heart of world affairs.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and in the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Qatar punches above its weight by talking to everyone", 23 November 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-774645

Published in Eurasia Review, 6 November 2023:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/25112023-qatar-we-talk-to-everyone-oped/

Published in the MPC Journal, 6 December 2023:
https://mpc-journal.org/qatar-we-talk-to-everyone/

Israel’s war: lessons from the past

Published in the Jerusalem Report, issue dated 27 November 2023 

           Speaking in Tel Aviv towards the end of his one-day visit to the Middle East on October 18, US President Joe Biden compared Israel’s situation after Hamas’s invasion and pogrom to the US’s crisis after the attacks of 9/11. His country had “sought and got justice,” he said, but also “made mistakes.”

          A catalogue of those mistakes was laid out in uncomfortable detail by Garrett M Graf in The Atlantic journal a few years ago. Taken together, they add up to a damning indictment of US foreign policy in the years following the al-Qaeda attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Among the errors, failures and misjudgments listed by Graf, the US-led invasion of Iraq on unverified intelligence, undertaken while the invasion of Afghanistan was still in progress, is particularly noteworthy. Many commentators believe that America’s cardinal error was to begin those operations without either a clear objective for each nation post war, or an exit plan for the invading forces.

          In short Biden, while approving Israel’s intention of destroying Hamas root and branch, was pointing to the need for a viable vision of what was to follow its success – for both Gaza and the IDF.

          Historical parallels always require special factors to be taken into account, but they do allow lessons to be learnt. Take the document issued from Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) just before the end of World War II, when victory was assured but before it was achieved. It laid out one of the major war aims of the United Nations ­– the de-Nazification of Germany. The objective? To destroy the Nazi Party, its political organizations and government agencies; to purge and re-organize the police; and to dismiss from government offices and other position of influence all active Nazis, their sympathizers and leading military figures. Very shortly after the end of the war, the program was set in train.

          Why was it done? Because Nazism, with its wild-eyed philosophy of Aryan racial superiority, its virulent antisemitism, its brutal disregard for human rights, was seen as a virus that had infected the German state and its population, and had to be eliminated.

          The programme was fraught with enormous difficulties. It was only made possible because the Allies had won total victory.

          The same applies to Gaza. Hamas is an extremist political and military organization that shares much of the Nazi philosophy. It is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose leaders in the 1930s and 1940s were actively involved in carrying through the Nazis’ ”Final Solution to the Jewish problem”. They supported and were actively involved in implementing the Holocaust.

          The Hamas charter expands on its theme of the God-approved duty of every Muslim to kill Jews for, as article 28 asserts: “The Zionist invasion of the world…[aims] at …annihilating Islam. Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslim people.”Like the perverted Nazi philosophy, this perversion of Islam needs to be countered. The essential pre-requisite for mounting a de-Hamasification program in the Gaza strip is a decisive victory by Israel. Also vitally necessary is a well-conceived, comprehensive and fully worked-out plan, ready to be put into action as soon as the moment is ripe. The object would be to dislodge the leaders and adherents of Hamas, with their malevolent anti-Jew, anti-Judaism and anti-Israel ideology, from their positions of power within Gaza. Only with Hamas out of the picture could any form of reactivated peace process become possible.

          Israeli leaders have already said that Israel has no interest in the post-war administration of Gaza. Palestinian or wider Arab input will be necessary to recruit the army of non-Hamas administrators and executives required for its reconstruction and governance. Nevertheless Israel could be party to devising a viable political strategy.

          Out-of-the-box thinking is called for. A possible answer could lie in a renewed peace process, aimed this time at establishing a new regional configuration. One possibility out of many is the idea of expanding the Abraham Accord normalization structure to encompass a Palestinian entity.

          Another is to consider establishing a new legal entity – a confederation embodying Jordan, Israel and a demilitarized Palestinian state including the Gaza Strip. A confederation is a system like the European Union, in which nation states, while retaining full sovereignty, agree to collaborate in certain spheres such as security, defence, economic development or infrastructure.

          Coming into legal existence simultaneously with the new Palestine, a confederation structure could bring Jordan, Israel and Palestine into a mini-EU dedicated to providing hi-tech security and economic growth for all its citizens. It might also conceive a pragmatic status for Jerusalem satisfactory to all parties. The Israel Defense Forces would act in collaboration with the forces of the other parties to guarantee the security of Israel and that of the confederation as a whole.

          Rid of the Hamas-inspired rejectionist agenda, a three-state confederation covering the whole of what was originally Mandate Palestine might open a hitherto unexplored path leading away from unending Israel-Palestinian discord.

Published by the Jerusalem Post online as: "Can Israel's war on Hamas be helped by lessons from the past?", 25 November, 2023:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-773675 

Who's behind Britain's anti-Israel rallies?

 Published in the Jerusalem Post, 16 November 2023

          November 11 is known in Britain as Armistice Day. A two-minute silence is observed nationally to commemorate the end of the First World War in 1918 – at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. This year it fell on a Saturday. Ever since Saturday, October 28, when a reported 100,000 pro-Palestinian supporters marched through central London, waving anti-Israel banners, chanting anti-Israel and antisemitic slogans, and calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, mass rallies – although on a smaller scale – have taken place every Saturday in London and in cities across Britain.

           Leading up to Armistice Day this year, influential voices throughout the UK, including the prime minister himself, Rishi Sunak, urged the head of the Metropolitan Police to prevent the pro-Palestinian march from taking place, but the police chief confined himself to requesting the organizers to postpone it. They refused, and he maintained that the police do not have sufficient powers under the law to ban an event that does not pose the threat of extreme violence.

In a final gesture of exasperation the then-home secretary, Suella Braverman, penned an article in The Times, deploring the failure of the Metropolitan Police chief to act, and asserting that the force has demonstrated bias in their handling of political rallies. She claimed they favored left-wing groups, citing the pro-Palestinian rallies which she called “hate marches”.

“Terrorists have been valorized,” wrote Braverman. “Israel has been demonized as Nazis, and Jews have been threatened with further massacres.”

A political storm burst around her. There was an instant demand from the Labour Party and its supporters, joined by some in her own Conservative party, for the prime minister to sack her. On November 13 Sunak announced a reshuffle of his Cabinet, and Braverman lost her job. 

On Armistice Day, the pro-Palestinian rally went ahead with some 300,000 people taking to the London streets. The marchers took more than four hours to proceed along a route starting in central London and ending at the US embassy on the south bank of the River Thames.

The antisemitic rhetoric had been toned down, if not entirely eliminated, but anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian slogans abounded, many advocating a ceasefire in the Gaza war. There are media reports that the police spotted a few pro-Hamas banner holders, and are trying to identify them. It is illegal to support the terrorist group. But the march proceeded peacefully, and few arrests were made.

A counter-protest, however, by far-right groups, did turn violent. Police battled with aggressive protesters and made more than 90 arrests.

The police and Britain’s counter-terrorism services are well aware that such protest demonstrations are a highly complex operation, requiring detailed organization ranging from assembling vast numbers of supporters and controlling the routes of marches, to the location of rallies, devising slogans to be chanted, and providing banners and placards telling the same story.

On November 7, an exclusive report in The Daily Telegraph revealed that a former Hamas chief, Muhammed Kathem Sawalha, said to have been active in Hamas as recently as 2019, is behind one of the six groups organizing the pro-Palestine protests. 

Sawalha, 62, came to Britain in the late 1990s and founded the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB). He was granted British citizenship in the early 2000s. The Daily Telegraph further discovered that, in addition to the MAB, at least two more of the groups that organized the November 11 march have links to Hamas.

On October 27, an exclusive report in The Times revealed that hostile state activity in the UK has been directly linked to the Iranian regime, including the spread of disinformation online and lodging Iranian agents in the crowds attending marches. Following that report, the police announced that Iranian agents are hijacking Britain’s pro-Palestinian rallies.
None of this should have come as a surprise. On October 19, Robin Simcox, head of the independent Counter-Extremism Commission, gave a long and thoughtful address to the highly prestigious Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

Simcox began by endorsing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s description of the Hamas onslaught of October 7 as a pogrom. “Hamas reveled in this bloodshed,” he said. “It was sadism.“

          He went on to say that, in the UK, support for Palestinian rights too often translates into rhetoric supportive of Hamas. “Too many in positions of prominence have praised them or their leadership; or sought to rationalize or excuse their acts of terror… The Hamas support network in the UK is entrenched.”

Simcox continued: “What is underappreciated is the scale of Iranian-backed activity in this country; and the extent to which Iran attempts to stoke extremism here.”
In March 2023, the UK government revealed that since 2022, there have been 15 credible threats by the Iranian regime to kill or kidnap British or UK-based individuals.

The Director General of MI5, Britain’s domestic counter-intelligence and security agency, has said that “Iran projects a threat to the UK directly, through its aggressive intelligence services.”

Now that the UK government has proscribed Hamas as a terrorist organization, Simcox strongly advocates that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) should be similarly proscribed because of its role in plotting violence. Despite the urging of some government ministers, Britain’s Foreign Office has opposed a ban because it claims it would cause permanent damage to diplomatic relations with Iran.

“The IRGC has operated like a terrorist organization ever since its inception, over four decades ago,” said Simcox. “And yet it is legal, at present, for the IRGC to be, for example, hosted in UK institutions.” He believes that the IRGC is operating Iran’s destabilizing policies in the UK but also worldwide.

In February 2023, acting on police advice, the independent Iran International TV closed its operation in Britain because of threats to its staff from operatives acting for the Iranian regime.

“I cannot believe it has come to this,” said Mahmood Enayat, the station’s general manager. “A foreign state has caused such a significant threat to the British public on British soil that we have to move.”

The channel will continue its output from its Washington DC site. “We refuse to be silenced by these cowardly threats,” said Enayat. “ We will continue to broadcast. We are undeterred.”

         Valiant words, and an intrepid attitude – but the truth is that, on police advice, a media outlet operating legally on British soil has succumbed to Iranian threats. That is scarcely a satisfactory position. Some in the police have called for legal clarification and enhanced powers to deal with terrorism and incitement to violence on Britain’s streets. That would seem a step in the right direction. Unmasking, charging, and expelling foreign agents masterminding illegal antisemitic activity would be another.

Published in the Jerusalem Post 16 November 2023:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-773427

Published in Eurasia Review, 17 November 2023:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/17112023-whos-behind-britains-anti-israel-rallies-oped/  

Published in the MPC Journal, 20 November 2023:

https://mpc-journal.org/whos-behind-britains-anti-israel-rallies/