This week’s edition of the Action Update is focused on the two fronts of Israel’s war against the enemies who have said they want to kill the Jewish state and its people.

On Sunday, speaking with those on the frontlines in Rafah just one day after Israel faced some of its heaviest losses of the war, IDF Southern Command Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman said, “We are here after a painful incident… we lost fighters and we lost commanders during the attack. These are our best sons... our imperative is to continue moving forward. You are attacking [Hamas’s] Rafah Brigade, and we will continue until we defeat it.”

On Monday, IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said, “Hezbollah’s increasing aggression is bringing us to the brink of what could be a wider escalation, one that could have devastating consequences for Lebanon and the entire region.”

Jerusalem knows far too well the costs of war, but they likewise know that when an enemy tells you they plan to kill you, believe them.

The Southern Front

Over the weekend, 16 Israeli soldiers (may their memories be a blessing) were killed fighting terrorists in Gaza. From the beginning of Operation Iron Swords, the IDF cautioned that it would be a difficult and long war.

That has, tragically, proven true. But Israel has made immense military gains. Northern and Central Gaza have no militarily effective Hamas presence. The terrorists and their sympathizers are still there, and they can still kill, but they do not constitute an effective fighting force.

In Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, Israel has made significant gains but at significant cost. As fighting continues in Hamas’s last stronghold, there will be more stories of triumph and tragedy – all of which would be unnecessary were Hamas to release the hostages and lay down their arms.

Earlier this week, Israel also opened an additional humanitarian corridor for the free flow of humanitarian goods during daylight hours. This “strategic pause” in fighting in the area will enable goods to flow more easily to Palestinian civilians.

Despite claims to the contrary, the primary challenge, as the war has gone on, has not been getting goods into the coastal enclave. Since the beginning of the war, more than 35,000 trucks carrying nearly 670,000 tons of humanitarian goods have entered the Gaza Strip. As of this writing, there are currently 1,000 truckloads worth of humanitarian goods sitting on the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom crossing awaiting distribution.

The UN is scared to distribute the aid. It’s a warzone so such fear is understandable. But the answer is not pressuring Israel – unless the goal of such an answer is not to find solutions to aid distribution but rather to find excuses for the UN’s (consistent) ineffectiveness.

At the end of the day, Israel is doing everything it can to provide aid to the Palestinian people while Hamas is doing everything it can to prolong everyone’s suffering, and the Biden administration is jumping – without any discernible pattern – from doing the right thing to appeasing the fringe-left.

The Northern Front

Headlines in recent days have indicated a sincere concern amongst Western leaders that the increasingly violent and deadly exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah could explode into a full-blown war.

Those Western leaders are concerned that one errant Hezbollah shell could spark a conflagration, and they’re right to have such concerns. But to limit one’s focus to preventing that one scenario opens the door for other, less random by their very nature, scenarios that are likely to start a regional war.

Hezbollah has sent spy drones to analyze targets over Israel’s major northern port city, Haifa. Likewise, they have been using increasingly sophisticated drones and large, heavy rockets to target Israel.

Since 10/7, Hezbollah has been doing everything it can to make Israel feel squeezed in the north, in order to benefit Hamas, but initially tried to avoid the full extent of Israel’s wrath. They crossed certain unspoken redlines – tested the boundaries as does a child.

What they found, and what their overlords in Tehran found, is that the Israelis are in no mood for child’s play. Most recently Hezbollah learned this as Israel conducted a targeted strike eliminating the head of Hezbollah’s central region rocket division – which has been focused on bombarding Israel’s Galilee region.

More than 60,000 Israelis have been forced to flee their homes in northern Israel. They are refugees in their own land. So, while we do not want to see an errant rocket provoke a war, we understand that the errant rocket is not the only way that war starts. The more likely scenario is that if the status quo remains along Israel’s northern border, Jerusalem, which knows all too well the consequences of war, will be forced to push Hezbollah back (something the Action Fund has warned Congress about for years).

If the UN, Western leaders and the like want to prevent a wider war in the Middle East, they’re going to have to get tough with Doha, Ankara, Beirut, Damascus and Tehran. War and/or peace are decided the same way in every language, in every age, and in every culture – through strength.

We thank God for the hostages’ safe return. But as we do, we mourn the tragic loss of Israel Border Police Chief Inspector Arnon Zmora (36) of blessed memory. The operation was named in Chief Insp. Zmora’s honor. He leaves behind a wife and two children. The bravery and tenacity displayed by Israel’s warriors to save these four people is truly praiseworthy, but war has a cost.

Israel is a nation at war. Week-by-week, more soldiers fall. Day-by-day, an entire country feels a catch in its throat with each breaking news alert. Was someone’s loved one killed by Hamas? Did a hostage family receive the worst news? The best? And for tens of thousands, these daily terrors are not even experienced in the peace of their homes, as they are refugees in their own country, pushed far from its borders due to the bloodlust of their neighbors.

How to Harm a Relationship

As Israeli leaders were giving the order to rescue hostages, it appears the Biden administration was negotiating with Hamas directly for the release of the Americans still held in terrorist captivity. We hope and pray for the release of every hostage, and if the Biden administration can figure out a way to bring the American hostages home alive without ensuring more death and destruction by Hamas, we wish them Godspeed in their efforts.

There are those who would argue that the Biden administration is negotiating behind Israel’s back, and we understand the position. After all, the Biden administration has nothing we know of that it could trade, save sellout Israel. But if the trade is pressuring Israel and thereby enabling Hamas to engage in spreading more carnage, no American could tolerate such a deal to empower the devil.

At the end of the day, if the Biden administration strikes a deal to see the Americans freed, the Israelis will facilitate it. The U.S. can always count on Israel; that’s not even a question. Moreover, the question we should be asking is far deeper than the specifics of any Biden-Hamas trade; the tragic question of this moment is can Jerusalem trust Washington?

There’s a reason it’s cliché to say that it is at moments like this that you find out who your true friends are.

The Mastermind of 10/7

There’s also a reason that the Obama-Biden approach to the Middle East is a failure: they do not want to acknowledge what the enemy really is for fear of angering the fringe left.  Instead of the Sen. John Fetterman approach to the conflict, which seems to be to just call it as he sees it regardless of the politics, the Obama-Biden approach views the conflict first through politics and only later as agents of governance.

The linchpin to the Obama-Biden approach is to ignore the central abomination that has allowed Hamas to remain extant: hiding behind Palestinian women and children. But ignoring that great sin should get a lot harder.

This week, The Wall Street Journal published letters attributed to the aforementioned Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar - the IDF’s current Ace of Spades. 

In the letters, Sinwar betrays that he has completely shed the basic moral burdens of humanity. His approach to humanity is monstrous. He lauds and welcomes Palestinian deaths for their public relations value. He desires death and destruction on both sides of the Gaza border. As war rages, he claims to have Israel exactly where he wants her.

The list of bloodcurdling anecdotes from his missives goes on, but the truth is no one should be surprised by any of this. We already know of Hamas’s brutality; we’ve seen it on tape. We can never and should never remove the images seared into our brains of what Sinwar and his barbarians wrought.

Nonetheless, the Biden administration now has yet another window into the brain of the mastermind of the deadliest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust. Yahya Sinwar is a bloodthirsty terrorist with extreme delusions of grandeur who is using the Palestinian people as pawns in a 7th-century war-ravaged fantasy. Perhaps the pressure then, should be on Hamas and its patrons in Qatar and Turkey, not on our ally fighting a madman’s terrorist army. After all it is Hamas that on Tuesday rejected yet another cease-fire, not Israel.

Sincerely,

The CUFI Action Fund Team