Archive | 2024/09/18

Izraelczycy umieścili materiał wybuchowy w pagerach Hezbollahu. “Zemsta będzie potężna”

Sep18

Ludzie gromadzą się przed szpitalem, ponieważ ponad 1000 osób, w tym bojownicy Hezbollahu i lekarze, zostało rannych, gdy pagery, których używają do komunikacji, eksplodowały w Libanie. (Fot. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir)

Izraelczycy umieścili materiał wybuchowy w pagerach Hezbollahu. “Zemsta będzie potężna”

Marta Urzędowska

Jedenaście ofiar śmiertelnych i kilka tysięcy rannych to wynik eksplozji pagerów tysięcy członków Hezbollahu, do których doszło we wtorek w Libanie. “New York Times” potwierdza: To Izraelczycy podłożyli w pagerach materiał wybuchowy.
Na dziesiątkach zdjęć i ujęć z kamer przemysłowych widać ludzi, którzy spokojnie stoją przy kasie, wybierają owoce w supermarkecie, idą chodnikiem czy jadą motorem. Nagle, w ułamku sekundy gwałtownie podskakują, po czym padają na ziemię. Jedni leżą nieruchomo, inni zwijają się z bólu, wołając o pomoc. Świadkowie cytowani przez światowe agencje opisują, że z kieszeni spodni ofiar wydobywał się dym, zanim wybuch zwalał je z nóg.
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Izraelczycy majstrowali przy partii pagerów z Tajwanu

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Według nagrań pagery eksplodowały w całym Libanie o godz. 15.30. Należały do członków Hezbollahu, najpotężniejszej regionalnej bojówki i największego ruchu polityczno-społecznego Libanu, uznawanego przez Zachód za terrorystów.

Choć Hezbollah od początku oskarżał o atak Izrael, z którym jest w stanie wojny, Izraelczycy dotąd nie potwierdzili, że za nim stoją. Jednak „New York Times” cytuje ważnych urzędników z Ameryki i regionu, którzy przyznają, że to Izraelczycy umieścili w pagerach niewielkie ilości materiałów wybuchowych – ok. 50 gramów na urządzenie.

Chodziło o partię 3 tys. pagerów modelu AR 924 zamawianych przez Hezbollah z tajwańskiej firmy Gold Apollo i importowanych do Libanu. Hezbollah rozdał je swoim ludziom w całym kraju, niektóre trafiły też do Iranu i Syrii, do ludzi, z którymi grupa utrzymuje bliskie kontakty.

Poza materiałem wybuchowym w każdym pagerze zainstalowano mechanizm, który pozwalał zdalnie go zdetonować. We wtorek w tym samym momencie wszystkie urządzenia dostały wiadomość wyglądającą na powiadomienie od dowództwa Hezbollahu. To właśnie ta wiadomość zdetonowała materiał wybuchowy i sprawiła, że w jednym momencie wybuchły tysiące urządzeń. Pagery, zanim eksplodowały, przez kilka sekund wydawały ponoć pulsujący dźwięk.

Według libańskich władz zginęło jedenaście osób, a ponad 2,7 tys. jest rannych. Wśród ofiar śmiertelnych jest ośmiolatka – prawdopodobnie córka członka Hezbollahu. Wśród rannych jest z kolei ambasador Iranu w Libanie Mudżtaba Amini, któremu pager wybuchł w dłoni, raniąc rękę i twarz. Iran to sojusznik i sponsor zarówno Hezbollahu, jak i Hamasu.

Kilkanaście osób zostało rannych też w Syrii.

Nasrallah kazał swoim ludziom przejść na pagery. Smartfony mieli “zniszczyć albo zakopać”

Libański premier Nadżib Mikati potępił „przestępczą agresję Izraela” i nazwał atak „poważnym naruszeniem libańskiej suwerenności”.

Atak w Libanie to kolejny etap trwającej od miesięcy intensywnej eskalacji na granicy Libanu z Izraelem – Hezbollah śle na izraelskie terytorium pociski i rakiety, Izrael odpowiada ostrzałem i nalotami. Po obu stronach granicy zginęło już kilkaset osób, a setki tysięcy musiało opuścić swoje domy.

Eskalacja to efekt wojny w Strefie Gazy, trwającej od października 2023 roku. Hezbollah twierdzi, że atakuje izraelskie terytorium w ramach solidarności z palestyńskimi terrorystami z Hamasu.Także w środę od rana trwa wymiana ognia na granicy, a w przygranicznych izraelskich miejscowościach zawyły syreny, przy czym – jak podają agencje – nie widać szczególnego nasilenia ostrzału.

Choć do tej pory wymiana ognia na granicy Izraela z Libanem była umiarkowana, bo żadnej ze stron nie opłaca się konflikt na wielką skalę (Izraelczycy mają na głowie wojnę w Gazie, a w Libanie trwa olbrzymi kryzys finansowy i polityczny chaos), w ostatnich dniach władze Izraela zapowiadały większą operację wymierzoną w Hezbollah.

Izraelczycy zaatakowali wyjątkowo zmyślnie. W związku z trwającą eskalacją na granicy szef Partii Boga Hassan Nasrallah w lutym b. roku mocno ograniczył możliwość używania przez swoich ludzi smartfonów. Publicznie stwierdził, że są niebezpieczne, bo Izraelczycy łatwo je namierzają, dlatego członkowie Hezbollahu mieli je “zniszczyć albo zakopać”. Znacznie trudniejsze do namierzenia pagery, których wcześniej używali sporadycznie, teraz miały stać się powszechne. Po ataku zapewne zrezygnują z ich używania i przejdą na komunikację całkowicie analogową, co znacznie utrudni im działanie.

Szef libańskiego MSZ: Zemsta Hezbollahu będzie potężna

Atak na pewno podkopie morale Hezbollahu i uświadomi jego ludziom, że Izrael jest w stanie dopaść ich wszędzie. W dodatku forma, w jakiej zaatakowali Izraelczycy ujawniła tożsamość wielu członków Partii Boga – na nagraniach jakich pełno w sieci, można zobaczyć w czyjej kieszeni wybucha urządzenie.

Wtorkowa operacja na pewno oznacza dalszą eskalację na linii Izrael-Hezbollah. Partia Boga już sypie pogróżkami, zapowiadając „surowe ukaranie Izraela za tę odrażającą agresję”.

Także szef libańskiej dyplomacji Abdullah Bu Habib przyznał w rozmowie z „New York Timesem”, że Libańczycy liczą się z odpowiedzią Hezbollahu. – Na pewno się zemszczą i to potężnie. Jak? Gdzie? Nie mam pojęcia – przekonywał

Izraelczycy zdecydowali się na atak mimo napomnień sojuszników, by nie eskalowali sytuacji na granicy z Libanem. Jeszcze w poniedziałek przedstawiciel administracji USA Amos Hochstein spotkał się w Tel Awiwie z ministrem obrony Izraela Joawem Gallantem, prosząc, by Izraelczycy nie pakowali się w kolejną wojnę.

Izraelczyka nie przekonał. – Okno na osiągnięcie rozwiązania na drodze dyplomatycznej zamyka się, bo Hezbollah zdecydował się związać na stałe z Hamasem – skwitował Gallant po spotkaniu. – Dziś jedynym sposobem, by mieszkańcy północnego Izraela mogli wrócić do domów, są działania militarne – dodał.

Minister mówił o setkach tysięcy Izraelczyków, którzy z powodu eskalacji na granicy z Libanem musieli opuścić swoje domy i przenieść się do innych regionów Izraela. O ile mieszkańcy pogranicza ze Strefą Gazy, którzy uciekli tuż po październikowym ataku Hamasu, dawno wrócili do domów, Izraelczycy z granicy z Libanem na razie nie mają na to szans.

Amerykanie przyznają, że atak na pagery ich zaskoczył. – Nie braliśmy w tym udziału, nie zostaliśmy uprzedzeni, zbieramy informacje – przekonywał rzecznik Departamentu Stanu Matthew Miller. – Jednak nasz przekaz zarówno do Izraela jak i innych stron konfliktu pozostaje ten sam: Liczymy na rozwiązanie dyplomatyczne – dodał.Jednocześnie podkreślił, że Ameryka „wzywa Iran, by nie wykorzystywał tego incydentu do siania niestabilności i zwiększania i tak już dużych napięć w regionie”.

Waszyngton boi się eskalacji nie bez powodu. Wojna Izraela z Hezbollahem oznaczałaby katastrofę dla Libanu, gwałtowny wzrost napięć na linii Izrael-Iran i chaos w całym regionie. Libańska Partia Boga jest bez porównania potężniejsza niż Hamas, a wojna Hezbollahu z Izraelem sprawiłaby, że obecny konflikt w Strefie Gazy wyglądałby zaledwie na małą rozgrzewkę.

Red. Ludmiła Anannikova

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New York City’s Laboratory for Hate

Sep18
New York City’s Laboratory for Hate

Emily Benedek

Pro-Palestinian students at Hunter College in New York argue with counterprotesters at a rally to demand an end to the war in Gaza, May 6, 2024 / Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images

CUNY threatens to spiral into antisemitic violence once again this fall unless Mayor Eric Adams and the NYPD start enforcing the law

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On Tuesday night, Sept. 3, Ilya Bratman—U.S. Army veteran, CUNY English teacher, and Hillel executive director at eight CUNY and SUNY schools—hosted a welcome-back dinner for Hillel students at a kosher restaurant near Baruch College. Soon after their entrance into Mr. Broadway, guests were surrounded by a chanting, braying, mob.

“CUNY, CUNY, You can’t hide. You support genocide!”

“Terrorist! Terrorist! Terrorist!”

“All Zionists are racist!”

They blocked the doorway, preventing students and other diners from leaving, held photos of murdered babies in the students’ faces, and even hit a Hillel staffer. One of the male protesters, his face concealed by a mask, shoulders draped in a kaffiyeh, creepily formed his fingers in the shape of a triangle—Hamas’ symbol for a military target.

Then the slurs got personal. To a clearly Jewish-looking couple walking down the street, “You ugly ass bitch! Go back to Brooklyn!”

And, then, the kicker: “Where’s Hersh?”

For an hour.

When the cops arrived after 30 minutes of the melee, they moved the protesters “5 feet away” from the entrance, according to Bratman, placing them close to the restaurant windows, which they then hammered with their hands. There was nothing they wouldn’t say, from “You ain’t going home tonight,” to “Dogs off campus.”

Bratman grew up in the Soviet Union, so he believes that he understands where all this is headed. His instincts now tell him that violence is coming.

Bratman says the tenor of the violence worsened over the summer, with demonstrators becoming more frustrated and volatile, last week marching outside Hillel with a white sign painted in red letters reading: “Bring the war home,” illustrated with a machine gun. “These people are not just insane,” says Bratman. “They’re criminally insane. We have a lot of insane people in New York on every block. But these people are dangerous. They’re not the regular guy that throws shit at the wall in Times Square.”

A seasoned Army veteran who saw action in Iraq, Bratman is naturally cool, engaging, and funny—a genuine hail-fellow-well-met. But his instincts now tell him that violence is coming. It’s the very beginning of the school year and everyone is distracted, and he desperately needs more press coverage to get the attention of the CUNY administration.

“What’s new about this round of protests?” I asked Bratman. To propose a story to my editor, I’ll have to say what’s new. Bratman just about lost it. “Protesters stalked, menaced, harassed, and followed Jewish students to a kosher restaurant, like they would have done on Nov. 9, 1938, and blocked the entrance, screamed obscenities, and banged on windows calling for violence against Jews,” he told me. “They not only terrorized students, but also other Jews, random New York Jews having dinner. The cops came, didn’t do anything, even though they heard distinct, specific threats against the lives of the Jews inside.”

Bratman grew up in the Soviet Union, so he believes that he understands where all this is headed if brave and well-intentioned people don’t step up and insist on what should not require saying: Jewish people enjoy the same rights as any other citizen of the U.S. “This is not a freedom of speech story,” he states. “These people are breaking the law. Free speech rights end when the speech is menacing, threatening, or intimidating—or when the speaker prevents me from moving freely through a public space. For whatever reasons,” he says, “the police are not enforcing the law.”

A lawyer and Navy SEAL named Bill Brown, who is trying to help Jewish students fight hate on campus, happened to be visiting Baruch College just as the protests began. He told Tablet, “These were not demonstrators. Demonstrators do not follow students to a restaurant and spew racial hatred and use derogatory language. These were criminals who wore kaffiyehs over their faces to intimidate, and they blocked the entrance to the restaurant so the victims felt trapped.” He praised the “bravery” of the Hillel students “who did a good job staying together in a group and looking out for each other.” He encouraged them to continue to document the violence and urged others both inside and outside the Jewish community to “stand up and peacefully make their voices heard.” He encouraged everyone to document all incidents via video, because it “helps others see just how bad things are” and provides evidence to support possible legal action.

The day after the restaurant melee, CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez issued a statement: “I was deeply disappointed to learn demonstrators disrupted a Hillel welcome dinner for students from CUNY and universities across the City, turning an event designed to help freshmen acclimate to college life into a disruptive hate-filled display that has no place in our city.” He affirmed that he was investigating the “incident” and said the school “will not hesitate to enforce CUNY disciplinary actions, as appropriate, if any of the demonstrators are members of the CUNY community.”

Bratman reported several students and one faculty member he saw at the protest. The ADL called on Baruch College President David Wu to condemn the violence. Wu did not return a request from Tablet for comment. William C. Thompson Jr., the chairman of CUNY’s Board of Trustees, responded to Tablet via his press spokesman on Sunday, calling the protesters’ behavior “deplorable.” He said, “We will not condone hateful rhetoric and any member of the CUNY community who participates in any actions that intimidate, threaten, or promote hate and violence, will face disciplinary consequences.”

Bratman believes that the large Jewish organizations like ADL and AJC should put their money where their mouths are and hire teams of lawyers to sue the colleges and students and faculty who are breaking the law—often repeatedly, and for months on end. He says that he’s tired of hearing excuses from the funders like: “the wheels of justice turn slowly.” In response, he says “we need to make the wheels turn faster. I guarantee you, if it was about a merger of two financial firms, lawyers would make that happen quickly.” The famed Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Right Under Law “is great,” he says, but its capacity is too limited to help the numerous colleges that are in need.

CUNY would certainly appear to be a prime target for a massive and costly lawsuit defending the civil rights of Jewish students, assuming that there are judges in New York state and federal enforcement bureaucrats who are willing to defend such an unpopular cause. Even before the Al Aqsa flood convulsed American college campuses, CUNY had been called “America’s most anti-Semitic university” in an April 2023 opinion piece by CUNY business professor Jeffrey Lax in The New York Post. Lax pointed out that “in the metropolis with the world’s largest Jewish population,” CUNY had “successfully completed a years-long initiative to expunge all Jews from its senior leadership.” Lax wrote that in a city that is 20% Jewish, it would be “the first time since its 1961 founding that CUNY’s senior leadership will be Jew-free or Judenrein.”

While recruitment at the city’s top Jewish schools “had all but ceased” for CUNY schools, Lax argued, the university was also “hell-bent on replacing its Jews with anti-Semites.” Recent CUNY hiring decisions would seem to support this allegation. In 2021, Chancellor Rodríguez tapped Saly Abd Alla, a BDS supporter and civil rights director for the Minnesota chapter of CAIR—the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a pro-Hamas group—as “chief diversity officer” at CUNY. In 2022, Abd Alla was tasked with investigating claims of antisemitism and anti-Zionism which Lax had made internally—an assignment that the Post’s Melissa Klein called “a master class in ‘gaslighting.’”

The problems at CUNY garnered national attention in May 2023 when Fatima Mousa Mohammed, a graduate speaking at CUNY Law School’s commencement, called for a “revolution” and expressed hope that the “rage” of her fellow graduates would be “fuel for the fight against capitalism, racism, imperialism and Zionism around the world.” She said she had chosen to attend CUNY Law because it recognized that “the law is a manifestation of white supremacy that continues to oppress and suppress people in this nation and around the world.” With her head covered in a hijab, the Yemen-born, Queens-raised future lawyer lashed CUNY for continuing “to train and cooperate with the fascist NYPD, the military” and scorned the university for continuing “to train IDF soldiers to carry out that same violence globally.”

Trying to stave off legal consequences, in December 2023, Gov. Kathy Hochul issued a letter to the presidents of New York’s colleges and universities declaring that failure to address “calls for genocide” made on college campuses “would constitute a violation of New York State Human Rights Law as well as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” In October, after the outbreak of campus protests, Hochul had asked former state Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman to review “CUNY policies and procedures,” with an eye to recommending actions for the CUNY Board of Trustees “to bolster its anti-discrimination policies and help protect Jewish students and faculty.”

Lippman told the Post at the time he wanted to “analyze the actual atmosphere at CUNY and not just focus on formal written policies” in an administrative handbook. “How does it look on the ground? … And what can we recommend systemically, that will make it better?” Bratman was interviewed by Lippman’s team in January and said it included top lawyers from his current firm, Latham & Watkins, who seemed to be conducting a thorough study. But the report, which was supposed to be released last spring, has not seen the light of day. The governor has yet to explain the delay, and whether, as rumor has it, it is election related.

In another apparently PR-minded attempt to ward off lawsuits, Chancellor Rodríguez made showy announcements of several campus efforts to fight hate, including a new Center for Inclusive Excellence and Belonging (CIEB), and a student-run social media campaign called “Our CUNY: Hate Divides Us, Diversity Defines Us”—announcements that were conveniently made this summer, when school was out of session. This year, the New York City Council reportedly allocated $600,000—up $50,000 from last year—to CUNY for all the fancy portals, information gathering, training, and social messaging it has in mind to expand its “anti-hate initiatives”—a category that dilutes antisemitism in a pool of other “hatreds,” namely “Islamophobia.”

Who is investigating the claims the students make? Bratman said each of the 25 campuses in the CUNY system has one (or fewer) DEI personnel. And the single DEI officer might be an elderly person who receives hundreds of reports. If each report requires 10 hours of investigation, how would the task be possible—even if the employee were by chance a seasoned investigator who could analyze and write clearly? “The person will get to the 17th incident by November, and then the 60-day resolution window that they’ve put in place has already passed,” Bratman said.

But the more fundamental problem at CUNY, Bratman pointed out, is that the basic job of educating children has been abandoned. “Academia has been lost,” he said. “The essence of academia—open discourse, civil dialogue, and academic excellence—is gone. Academia used to be about growth, research, exploration, discovery, openness. Now it’s about boycotts. Today, the teachers believe their job is indoctrination.”

A faculty member in the physics department of another CUNY school who preferred to remain unnamed told me that students have stopped asking questions. “People don’t even know how to talk and think here. In some physics classes, we all notice that people don’t ask questions anymore. They don’t think about what they might want to know or say and ask questions. The intellectual level is very low.”

Along with a colleague, this professor is starting a club to show the students how to discuss an issue—ask questions, gather facts, make up a hypothesis and form an argument in a civil, academic manner. “They don’t know how to have a reasoned discussion based on facts, where you have some respect for the other side,” he said, adding optimistically “we want to show them what it is.”

Bratman said the baby boomers and the millennials are gone; the faculty is made up of people raised as social justice warriors. “The faculty is the scariest entity in this struggle,” he told me. “The faculty are the troublemakers, the faculty drives the context, the faculty sets the agenda, the faculty indoctrinates our students instead of educating them, instead of allowing them to grow.”

“They only want one voice to be heard and one solution: ‘intifada revolution.’ That’s what they will tell you is their agenda.”

A colleague in the English department told him that he plans to teach English 101 based on “Palestine and trans rights.” When Bratman “pushed back,” the faculty member told him he wants the students “to feel how I feel and how every Palestinian feels under their oppression and genocide.”

According to Bratman, “It’s fascist. It’s 1984, and it must be said very, very clearly.”

He asked me to step into the shoes of an 18-year-old student.

“You send your 18-year-old kid to school, right? They’re an impressionable, young, scared person, anxious. They come to class, their professor says, ‘In the class, you’re going to take on a queer identity, or the role of an oppressor.’ So what can the kids do? They can try to drop the class, which is going to be very hard for them because it’s their first year.

“Two, they can be a fighter in the class. It’s going to be terrible. They’ll have to take a stand every day, which is very hard for a young person to do.

“Or three, they’ll have to acquiesce. And most students will choose to acquiesce for the grade and to not make waves. That’s what’s happening to our students. They’re not just indoctrinated. They’re bamboozled, bombarded, propagandized by these faculty members who have lost their minds or worse, and who only have an agenda, only teach through bias, only teach through one perspective. Their whole goal is to minimize the opportunity for young people to grow.”

Bratman pointed out that every semester, teachers submit their curricula and syllabi to the provost, who is free to determine if they are or are not acceptable. “No one is saying no because they’re too afraid. Or too lazy.”

Emily Benedek has written for Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Newsweek, The Washington Post, and Mosaic, among other publications. Her sixth book, Hometown Betrayal: A Tragic Story of Secrecy and Sexual Abuse in Mormon Country, will be published on October 15.

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Israeli Cyber Expert: Explosives Planted in Hezbollah Pagers in Op Planned Months Before War

Sep18
Israeli Cyber Expert: Explosives Planted in Hezbollah Pagers in Op Planned Months Before War

Debbie Weiss

An ambulance arrives at a hospital as thousands of people, mainly Hezbollah fighters, were wounded on Sept. 17, 2024 when the pagers they use to communicate exploded across Lebanon. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

An Israeli cyber and national security expert has claimed that the exploding pagers carried by Hezbollah members in Lebanon, which left thousands wounded and killed at least nine people on Tuesday, were part of a sophisticated attack that was planned at least half a year before the war in Gaza erupted.

Dr. Eyal Pinko, a former navy commander and senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, dismissed theories that the blasts were caused by lithium batteries that were hacked to become overheated, and said that the nature of the wounds seen in footage emerging from Lebanon was consistent with those caused by explosives such as TNT and HTB.

“To get this kind of wound you need to have between one to two grams of type of explosives, which is not a big technological issue — you just need to open the beeper,” Pinko said during a briefing with reporters on Tuesday evening. He added that a stable explosive that wouldn’t detonate accidentally would have been inserted into the device, along with a small control mechanism capable of receiving remote commands via a call or page.

Such an operation would have required significant infiltration of Hezbollah’s communication systems, according to Pinko, and planting explosives in pagers would necessitate a serious breach of the supply chain. “This is an intelligence operation that was very well planned, prepared for more than one and a half years,” Pinko said.

Pinko alluded to the possibility of a coordinated effort, suggesting that Israel may not have acted alone if it was behind the attack in Lebanon, where Hezbollah wields significant political and military clout. He noted efforts by Germany, France, the US, and the UK to prevent escalation in the region.

Israel has so far been quiet about the explosions, but senior Lebanese officials have blame the Jewish state. So too has Hezbollah, which said Israel would receive “its fair punishment.”

The operation clearly appeared to serve as a message to Hezbollah, showcasing vulnerabilities in its security apparatus and serving as a form of deterrence, Pinko said. “It’s saying that, ‘you’re already being penetrated. We know where you are and what you do. Now look what we can do: In one single shot, in less than a second, we can eliminate almost 3,000 terror operatives.’”

Meanwhile, Sky News Arabia quoted an Israeli military source as saying that Hezbollah’s supply chain was infiltrated with the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, placing PETN, a highly explosive stable material, on the batteries of the devices.

A source close to Hezbollah, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that the pagers were “sabotaged at the source” before being imported by Hezbollah, an Iran-backed terrorist organization based in Lebanon.

Al Jazeera said that the pagers had been in use by Hezbollah operatives for five months.

Brigadier General (res) Amir Avivi, founder of the Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF), told The Algemeiner that the attack “had the Mossad’s fingerprints all over it.”

“Hezbollah certainly got the message,” Avivi said, adding that war between Israel and the Iran-backed terror group was “imminent.”

However, Pinko said that Tuesday’s coordinated attacks were not a prelude to a full ground invasion into Lebanon and that Israel was likely to adopt a “wait and see” approach. “Israel doesn’t want to go towards further escalation; not in the north, and not with the Houthis in Yemen. They just want to finish the business in Gaza.”

The explosions came hours after a revelation by the Israeli Shin Bet security agency that a Hezbollah cell had infiltrated Israel with the intent to assassinate a former senior defense official in Tel Aviv using a mobile phone, camera, and remote detonation.

Hezbollah has fired barrages of rockets, missiles, and drones at northern Israel almost daily following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists on the Jewish state’s southern region. Since then, both sides have been exchanging fire constantly while avoiding a major escalation as war rages in Gaza to the south.

About 80,000 Israelis have been forced to evacuate their homes in northern Israel and flee to other parts of the country amid the unrelenting attacks from Hezbollah.

Israeli leaders have said they seek a diplomatic resolution to the conflict with Hezbollah along the border with Lebanon but are prepared to use large-scale military force if needed to ensure all citizens can safely return to their homes.

On Monday night, Israel’s security cabinet expanded its war goals to include returning the displaced Israelis from the north.

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