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Israeli aircraft bombed several Hezbollah observation posts early Wednesday after Israeli soldiers came under cross-border fire. It is believed to be the first time that Israel conducted aerial strikes against Hezbollah targets inside Lebanon since the 2006 war.
The Israeli response came in the wake of the security incident along the shared frontier that forced residents in the North to remain inside their homes.
“We will not allow [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah to harm our soldiers or our country,” Defense Minister Benny Gantz said following the conflagration. “We will respond forcefully to any incidents on our border.”
#BREAKING!: #Israel> IDF launched 10s of flares along the border w/ #Lebanon amid concerns of a possible infiltration near Kibbutz Menara in the Galilee & has ordered residents in 5 communities to remain indoors.#Hezbollah #Syriahttps://t.co/akuDrCGX4G
— Hezbollah Watch® (@HezbollahWatch) August 25, 2020
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Tensions are running high along the Israel-Gaza border, with the IDF striking Hamas targets in the coastal enclave in response to the continued launching by Palestinian terrorists of incendiary balloons into Israel. The IDF said it targeted underground infrastructure belonging to Hamas.
In a bid to prevent further escalation, a Qatari delegation led by envoy Mohammed Al-Emadi entered the Gaza Strip Tuesday night. According to reports, Hamas is demanding that Doha transfer $40 million into its coffers in exchange for temporary calm.
Meanwhile, the US condemned Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for meeting senior Hamas figures in Istanbul last week. The Hamas delegation was lead by the head of its political bureau Ismail Haniyeh and included deputy chief Saleh Al-Arouri.
We strongly object to President Erdogan hosting two Hamas leaders. Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S and EU. This outreach isolates Turkey and undercuts global efforts to counter terrorism. https://t.co/RVEuZPFg6d
— Morgan Ortagus (@statedeptspox) August 25, 2020
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On the heels of the normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, the United States is planning a Middle East peace summit that will likely be held in one of the Gulf states. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is currently on a multi-nation tour of the region and has reportedly received positive feedback regarding the proposed initiative from Bahrain, Oman, Morocco, Chad and Sudan.
Nevertheless, Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok told Pompeo during a meeting in Khartoum that his transitional governing council was not authorized to forge official relations with Israel and that the issue should not be linked to Sudan’s effort to be removed from the US State Sponsors of Terrorism list.
The Sudanese government sacked its foreign ministry spokesman last week after he called the UAE decision to normalize relations with Israel “a brave and bold step.”
It comes as an Israeli delegation and top aides to US President Donald Trump are slated next week to travel to the United Arab Emirates for talks on cementing the accord.
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The United States’ bid to reimpose “snapback” UN sanctions on Iran has failed. The move, which was opposed by 13 of the 15 UN Security Council members, would have also extended an arms embargo on the Islamic Republic that is due to expire in October in accordance with the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal.
Britain, France and Germany, which along with Russia and China remain parties to the accord, all claimed that Washington had no legal basis for the move given US President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement in May 2018.
For his part, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday left the door open to jump-starting talks with the Trump administration but insisted that the US would first have recommit to the nuclear deal.
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Antisemitism Watch: Antisemitic posters blaming Jews for the coronavirus pandemic have appeared in the southern Argentine city of Neuquen, located some 700 miles south of Buenos Aires. The posters contained phrases such as “The Jews are the virus” and “Argentines Awake to the World Jewish Dictatorship.” Neuquen has a population of 230,000, about 300 of whom — or just over a tenth of one percent — are Jewish.
Concurrently, British rapper Wiley has doubled down on his antisemitic rhetoric, repeating tropes about Jewish power and money that previously got him banned from social media platforms. In an interview, Wiley claimed that Jews “run the Earth,” are very rich and “stick together.”
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A stormy debate is expected in the Knesset on Wednesday over a controversial bill that aims to redefine who is eligible to become an Israeli citizen in consonance with the Law of Return. Since 1970, the law has allowed anyone with a Jewish grandparent to immediately move to Israel and acquire citizenship. One of the reasons for the policy was that the Nazis’ Nuremberg Laws applied to anyone with a Jewish grandparent. If passed, the new legislation would limit acquisition of automatic immigration and citizenship to those with a Jewish parent.
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An 88-year-old Holocaust survivor who described as a “profound regret” never having had a formal education was awarded a high school diploma. Miriam Schreiber was presented with the honorary degree from the New England Jewish Academy in Hartford, Connecticut.
Schreiber and her family hid in villages and forests in Poland for several months beginning in 1939, when the Nazis invaded the country. She then spent nearly six years in a slave labor camp in Siberia. Liberated at the age of 14, Schreiber was sent to a displaced persons camp in Germany, where she quickly got married and had her first child the following year. The family immigrated to the United States in 1960.
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