GNITN - Special Edition

Israel At War – Day 243

The North Is Heating Up

Heating Up In The North

As Hezbollah is shooting at targets in Northern Israel, some of those attacks started fires that are burning areas where Israelis were living and want to return to. The attacks are increasing daily and Prime Minister Netanyahu sent a very strong message to anyone who thinks Israel isn’t going to just take it as we read in a report from The Times Of Israel:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Wednesday that Israel was prepared with an “extremely powerful” response to attacks from Hezbollah in Lebanon, which have escalated significantly in recent days.

“Anyone who thinks that they can harm us and we will sit on our hands is sorely mistaken,” Netanyahu during a visit to the northern city of Kiryat Shmona, which has been largely evacuated since the Lebanon-based terror group began attacking Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis on October 8.

Netanyahu spoke after an IDF leader also mentioned what they will do next:

His comments came after Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said on Tuesday that Israel was close to making a decision on how to address Hezbollah’s daily attacks, which the terror group says are to support Palestinians in Gaza amid Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in the wake of the terror group’s shock October 7 onslaught.

The PM also pointed out that Lebanon was also hit while the fires in Israel were dealt with:

The prime minister visited the area hours after firefighters confirmed that they had gained control of a series of major blazes in northern Israel sparked by Hezbollah rocket and drone attacks, following some 48 hours of intense firefighting efforts.

“The ground burned yesterday and I am happy you put it out,” Netanyahu told firefighters, “but the ground also burned in Lebanon.”

During the visit, he also met with troops from the IDF’s 769th “Hiram” Regional Brigade to discuss operations against Hezbollah.

The fires raised awareness for the need to let Hezbollah know Israel is preparing to respond:

The large blazes prompted a spike in calls for military action by some northern residents and members of the coalition and increased concerns that Israel may soon find itself engaged in ground operations on two fronts.

Around 60,000 residents of towns and villages along Israel’s northern border have been displaced from their homes since October due to the near-daily cross-border rocket and anti-tank missile attacks by Hezbollah and other terrorists in southern Lebanon.

I’ve said from the start of this war that Hamas was only one of the terrorist fronts and if Israel is going to be free of imminent terrorist attacks it will have to fight on at least 4 or 5 fronts. This report just solidifies that thinking. But I’m not the only one.

What We Already Suspected

In an article from the Jewish News Syndicate we learn that one of Israel’s political leaders sees a coordinated attack against them in the near future:

“The State of Israel must understand that Iran is planning an all-out attack within two years, of the entire axis of evil against the State of Israel,” Avigdor Liberman, chairman of the Yisrael Beitenu Party, warned on Monday.

He named the actors who he says will form that axis:

The “coordinated and synchronized attack” would emanate from Iran and its proxies: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Shi’ite militias operating in Iraq and Syria, and the Houthis in Yemen, the former defense minister told 103FM radio hosts Ben Caspit and Aryeh Eldad.

Liberman doesn’t think anyone is preparing for it:

“I don’t get the impression that the decision-makers at both the political and military levels understand this, have internalized it, and are preparing for it,” Liberman said.

“Everything we see right now from Hezbollah is a promo. They are trying to learn our defense system, the reactions of our anti-aircraft, the nature and speed of the reaction, this is a learning process,” he said.

He tells us how long into the future he thinks the attacks will occur:

Liberman based his prediction on the time it would take Iran to complete the military aspects of its nuclear program.

“They have already passed from the stage of enriching the uranium to the deployment of the military part. The military part will take them two years,” he said.

He believes that Iran wants more than commercial use of nuclear power:

Iran wants to have an umbrella of nuclear weapons, not just the possession of enriched uranium, he explained.

Liberman sees the smaller counter attack against Iran as enabling their nuclear weapons goal:

“The erosion of Israeli deterrence brought them to the conclusion that they can sprint [towards nuclear weapons],” Liberman said, referring to Israel’s failures on Oct. 7 and its muted counter-attack to the Iranian aerial assault on the Jewish state in April.

He mentions that terrorists like Hamas, Hezbollah and all of Iran’s proxies see weakness and Israel needs to realize that and find out why:

Liberman sharply criticized Israel’s policy of containment where it attempts to manage aggression rather than decisively defeating it.

“The fact that we don’t know how to defeat a terrorist organization like Hamas for eight months requires examination,” he said.

He alludes back to Israel’s history to point out how his country has fallen in how it handles its enemies:

“It can’t be that for six days a small country with a much smaller population, with equipment and weapons not as advanced as compared to what we have today, fought on three fronts against three countries,” he said, referring to the 1967 Six-Day War.

“Now we do not know how to fight against two terrorist organizations at the same time,” he said.

Unfortunately, we may see that attack much sooner. As we will see, the threat isn’t going away.

He Should Know

In a report from The Jerusalem Post we hear from the son of the founder of Hamas about the threat of radical Islam to not just Israel, but to the world:

“Palestine depends on the destruction of Israel. If there is any definition of Palestine, it means the absence of Israel,” Mossab Hassan Yousef, otherwise known as the Green Prince, told Dr. Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs at The Jerusalem Post Annual Conference on Tuesday.

Yousef is the son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef. A Palestinian ex-terrorist, he defected to Israel in 1997 and worked as a spy for the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) until he moved to the United States in 2007.

He addressed the issue of Palestine:

Yousef said that you have to ask: “What is Palestine? Is it an ethnic group? A religion? A distinct language? Do you have scripture? Are you a nation? Were you a country? None of that. So what is Palestine? What is the purpose of Palestine?” he rhetorically asked the audience at the conference.

He then moved to talk of a two-state solution:

He voiced his opposition to a two-state solution with a Palestinian state led by the Palestinian Authority. “For those representing a two-state solution, they either want Israel to cease to exist, or they are not aware of this existential threat,” he declared. In his opinion, the PA is an even greater threat than Hamas.

“All this global chaos is managed by the PA – by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). It’s not Hamas propaganda: It’s the ones who sit in Ramallah, who pay all the advocates worldwide through their embassies – those are the ones fighting against Israel and its legitimacy.”

Yousef said that it is too costly to institute a hostile Palestinian state. “You cannot give them Judea, Samaria, the mountains, the valley – this is a defense line,” he resolutely explained.

The former terrorists speaks about all the terrorist roots next:

Yousef told the audience that the PA comes from the same terrorism as Hamas or any other group that originated from the Muslim Brotherhood.

He brought up Yasser Arafat, former chairman of the PLO, which later became the PA. “I was in his meeting when he gave my father the authority to blow up markets, buses, and beaches during the Second Intifada.”

A Little History Lesson

At the very start of his interview Yousef outlined how far back the hatred of the Jews went:

At the beginning of the discussion, Yousef brought up the history of the “slaughter of Jews by the hands of Muslims for approximately 14 centuries.” He criticized the Jewish people for being in denial of that fact. “I understand why: If the Jewish people acknowledge this fact, they will have to confront a majority of Muslims.”

He brought up a very good reason for why the hatred continues:

He told the audience that Muslims believe that Allah hates the Jewish people, and “why would you be against the belief of one you pray to five times a day?”

This is why there has been so much propaganda against the Jewish state across social media, he said. When people see it a thousand times a day, they start believing it.

“Hundreds of millions of people out there want us dead,” he told the audience.

Yousef then issued a sober warning:

“If we don’t fight Islam, the world is in danger,” the Green Prince warned. “We have a big problem; we need to wake up. And if we keep ignoring and denying the existential threat, we will have to face it when it is too late.”

He did offer some ways to stop things from escalating:

At the end of the conversation, Yousef spoke of potential solutions to the conflict. He believes that “Arabs [should] rule Arabs.” He told the audience that maybe Arabs should be drafted to the IDF and be responsible for ruling over the West Bank. He also floated an idea of Egyptian and Jordanian intelligence looking over the Palestinians.

Education should play a part as well:

Yousef also believes that mandatory Holocaust education across the Arab world should be part of the solution, as well as teaching that “to be a victim and stay in victimhood is unacceptable.”

Yousef ended with his strong feelings about the PA:

However, he believes that allowing the PA to rule over a Palestinian state would be the destruction of Israel. “You give them east Jerusalem tomorrow, and they will want West Jerusalem next. If you give them 1967 [borders], they will say they want the whole thing.”

As I said earlier, his words should have significant weight in any discussions on how to bring peace to the Middle East. Afterall, he should know.