Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and coalition whip Ofir Katz seen in the Knesset, 2026. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

It’s Thursday, May 14, and there comes a point in the life of every aging car when you realize you’re spending a fortune just to keep it wheezing down the highway. In the grand scheme of things, the difference between throwing in the towel at 300,000 miles versus 310,000 is relatively minor. The same logic applies to aging political coalitions. Amid threats from ultra-Orthodox factions to dissolve the Knesset over the lack of military draft legislation, Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to drive the vehicle off a cliff—but he gets to pick the cliff.

Last night, Likud MK Ofir Katz finally signaled for the tow truck by submitting a bill to dissolve the Knesset. Crucially, the legislation does not set a specific date for the ballot, instead delegating that decision to the Knesset House Committee—a panel conveniently chaired by Katz himself. By keeping the date unresolved in a committee he controls, Netanyahu sets the pace of dissolution and keeps his coalition together until the last minute.

Due to the legally mandated 90-day campaign period, the earliest the elections could be set is late August. In Israel, an August election is a logistical wreck; between the mass exodus of families traveling abroad and the nightmare of converting schools into polling stations during summer break, it is a path rarely taken. S

trip away August and strike out the Tuesdays compromised by the High Holidays, and only two viable dates remain: September 1 or September 15. September 1 is the first day of school, and the prospect of converting newly prepared classrooms into polling stations excites neither parents nor teachers. If I were putting money on Polymarket, the 15th is the far better bet.

But why are the Haredim threatening to walk away in the first place? After all, when the opposition’s entire campaign is fundamentally framed against them, their bargaining power in any future, non-Netanyahu government seems negligible at best.

Degel HaTorah chair Moshe Gafni (R) and United Torah Judaism party chair Yitzhak Goldknopf attend a plenum session at the Knesset in Jerusalem, 2026 (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The most obvious answer is deterrence. An ultimatum only works if you are actually willing to walk away. If the Haredim fold on the draft exemption and decide to stay comfortably seated in the coalition, their political leverage evaporates. But the ultra-Orthodox have also put thier faith in a higher power—hatred for Netanyahu. The Haredi parties are gambling that, when push comes to shove, the opposition will happily trade the draft issue for the keys to the prime minister’s office.

For Netanyahu, the electoral math is simple: more mandates are always better. He calculates that early elections will yield a stronger result than waiting out the clock, especially when factoring in the exorbitant price he would have to pay to survive those extra few months. That price—passing the Haredi draft legislation—is broadly unpopular with his base and presents an almost insurmountable legislative hurdle within his own party.

Before the general election, Likud holds internal primaries to determine the placement of candidates on its Knesset list. With the exception of a single media outlet, every current poll shows Likud bleeding seats. Fewer seats mean fewer viable spots, which sparks cutthroat competition among Likud MKs. Ramming the draft legislation through would demand an unprecedented cracking of the whip to enforce party discipline, with no guarantee of success. It is a massive expenditure of political capital, only to leave MKs standing at the general polls a month later covered in whip marks and anchored to a wildly unpopular law.

Netanyahu’s decision also signals a shift in calculations beyond Israel’s borders. The prevailing theory was that he intended to refresh his own mandate only after Iran had finished refreshing its own—ideally with a change in regime. Campaigning against the backdrop of a headless Ayatollah would have made for an invaluable electoral image. By pulling the deadline forward to September, Netanyahu is signaling one of two things: either he expects a monumental regional shift before September 15, or he has concluded that the “big event” he was banking on simply won’t materialize by late October.

Calling an early election also offers a tactical advantage: stealing a march on the opposition. While Democrats party head Yair Golan responded to the news of dissolution with a social media meme of Arnold Schwarzenegger applying war paint, the opposition may be less prepared than the post suggests.

Despite Naftali Bennett’s recent unification with Yair Lapid, Bennett’s grip on the opposition bloc is shaky. He wrongly assumed that former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot would simply fall in line; instead, Eisenkot is continuing his dark-horse premiership campaign and appears to be gaining speed.

Ultimately, the early elections may actually play to Bennett’s advantage. Political chaos often breeds a desire for consolidation. While his new “Together” alliance has yet to fully live up to its namesake, its underlying premise remains attractive: the opposition is stronger together than apart. But then again, in Israeli politics, the only certainty is that nothing is certain.

President Donald Trump arrives in Beijing last night. (White House/X)

The local press primarily mined Netanyahu’s 60 Minutes interview for headlines regarding enriched uranium and Donald Trump. As a result, his response to an unusual question about Chinese involvement in the war in Iran was largely overlooked. It has been a long time since the prime minister appeared so cautious—so intentionally vague. “Look,” he told the interviewer, “different countries have different interests... Does China want its supply chain to be with the Iranians? It’s not a zero-sum game... There are dangers and opportunities in everything... like in AI... there President Trump and President Xi will talk about AI... there too are dangers and opportunities...”

The PM wasn’t squirming for nothing. He too knows that China is too important to clash with head-on. On one of the days of the war, someone in the Israeli top echelon wondered what would happen if the Chinese turned on the camera in the robotic vacuum cleaner in the home of an IDF major general, and what if they decided to pass information to the Iranians about impact zones using the enormous number of [Chinese] vehicles they have in Israel (much more than in the US or Europe).

From Beijing’s perspective, Israel is not a sales target, it is a strategic target—a deliberate and systematic chipping away at American influence in the heart of the Middle East and gaining a foothold in a technological-military power. While the Americans operate on the top floor through the government, politics, and military cooperation, the Chinese infiltrate through the floorboards. Perhaps Israelis should feel flattered that the two superpowers are bickering over our attention, but we need to remain careful.

President Donald Trump arrives in Beijing last night. (White House/X)

China, unlike Qatar, does not support Iran out of love for the Ayatollahs, nor out of hatred for Israel. It does so because it needs chaos in the Middle East that will drain US resources and attention away from Taiwan and the South China Sea. For Xi Jinping, every dollar the US invests in interceptors for Israel is a dollar not invested in submarines in the Strait of Malacca. This quiet war is China’s way of buying time in the clash of titans against the United States. The Iran war is where the Chinese are testing American boundaries and their willingness to go all the way.

The event is only getting more complicated. Take the Strait of Hormuz, for example. The Iranians are trying to create a new equation and control the world through violent control over the straits. This might be good for the Iranians, but for the Chinese, it is terrible. Why? Because while transit through Hormuz is important to the Chinese, transit through the Strait of Malacca is much more important. This is a narrow strait between Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore, practically controlled by the US. Eighty percent of China’s oil imports pass through it. If the method of blocking shipping lanes becomes a legitimate means, it means the US will acquire almost absolute control over the Chinese. And that is just one example.

Another example comes specifically from Israel: the amount of military knowledge and capabilities built and tested here over the past three years is historically unprecedented. Israel is considered today around the world as a formidable power with field-tested experience. The war is the world’s largest testing lab for artificial intelligence on the battlefield. When Israel disrupts UAV swarms or eliminates 20 scientists in Iran in a few seconds, it makes its superiority practical. Trump brings receipts showing that Chinese technology is inferior to the Israeli-American mind, clarifying to them that he holds the tap to the knowledge and the blockade against everything they are trying to achieve. In this battle, Israel is the US’s combat R&D department, and for Trump, this is a tremendous bargaining chip.

Trump knows that the one keeping Iran alive today, even if quietly, is the empire from the East. They are the ones still trading with the Iranians while bypassing sanctions; they are the ones providing them with intelligence and even certain types of weaponry. For the Chinese, for example, air defense batteries are considered offensive weapons, but ballistic missiles are somehow defined as defensive weapons. Go figure.

Just as Israel set a goal for itself to break the Middle Eastern axis of evil, Trump set a goal for himself to break the Chinese-Russian-Iranian-North Korean axis of evil. If he disconnects the Chinese from the axis—he will weaken it significantly and bring it closer to the goal he desires so much: an absolute and indisputable victory, in a short time, and with a relatively low number of casualties.

This is an excerpt from my weekly column in Israel Hayom

English Editor: Ari Tatarka

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An Israeli Centurion tank rolls past destroyed vehicles on the Golan heights during the Yom Kippur War, 1973. (Henri Bureau)

The phone rang through the night’s silence. Then another machine came to life, and then another. The telephones had been installed in every corner of the large, empty apartment and all started ringing at once, but nobody answered. The elderly woman living in the apartment knew exactly what the sound of the phone ringing meant, and she was afraid to pick up.

Then she woke up with a jolt. She sat up in bed, covered in a cold sweat. It was 4:00 a.m., and Golda Meir could not get back to sleep. “It was the same nightmare, repeating itself,” Israel’s fourth prime minister told a close friend in the morning. Together, they tried to work out what her subconscious was trying to say.

It was the summer of 1973, and Israel’s situation, or so people thought, had never been better. Golda Meir was a sharp-tongued and active politician, especially in the field of social policy. Until her dying day, she never forgot the darkest days of her life, as a young, penniless woman in Jerusalem. She had to wash the dirty laundry of all the children at her local kindergarten just so that her daughter could go there too. The experience remained etched in her memory, all the way to the top.

The number one rule of investment states, “Diversify risk.” Never put all your eggs in one basket and all your money in one place. Put some in the local stock market and some on Wall Street, some in dollars and some in bonds, some in gold and some in Bitcoin. If your investment adviser ever advises you to dissolve all your savings, sell your house, break open your mutual funds, and put all your money in a single stock—you should demand his dismissal.

But that is exactly what happens in politics. The only thing that makes modern-day Israelis different from previous generations or neighboring countries is the fact that they can replace their leaders at the ballot box. But in modern democracies, voters only cast one ballot, once every four years. All of Israel’s hopes, beliefs, prayers, and hidden fears get funneled into a single vote—or, in economic terms, into a single long-term investment in a blind trust.

An ultra-orthodox Jewish man casts his ballot at a voting station on the morning of the Municipal Elections, in Bnei Brak, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Did you vote for former IDF chief Benny Gantz in 2020 because he promised “just not Netanyahu” about a week before jumping into Netanyahu’s arms? As the kids say, “That’s life.” Did you vote Likud in 2003 in order to prevent unilateral territorial withdrawals, only for the hawkish Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to mastermind the Gaza disengagement about a month later? In chess, that’s called the “touch-move rule.” Did you vote for a party that promised to lower taxes and ended up hiking them? Imagine a sign: “If you break it, you buy it.” There is no point calling the Central Elections Committee and demanding a new voting slip, because unlike your local department store, the returns policy here is extremely strict: no returns.

Since you only get one vote, only one consideration truly matters when you cast your vote. The second-most important consideration is not really second: it is simply not important. All around the world, voters’ main consideration is money, but not in Israel.

The word “politics” comes from the Greek polis, meaning “city.” Imagine being a citizen of Athens 2,500 years ago. You have just discovered that the fearsome Persian army is advancing on the city. There is only one small problem: The city is unwalled. Actually, there is another problem—just a teensy-tiny one: The city’s treasury is empty. “There is no such thing as public money,” said British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher two and a half millennia later, “there is only taxpayers’ money.”

But now the city needs to urgently raise money from its citizens in order to defend itself. At that exact moment, politics was born. It raised several questions: Should a family with ten children be taxed the same amount as an aging bachelor? Should the rich be taxed more heavily than the poor? Should residents of the rural periphery be taxed more than the relatively safe metropolis? And if the city is already building a wall, then why not seize this festive occasion to open a school for Athenian children?

In sum, how much money should the state take from me, and what should it give me in return? At the far-left extreme is the former Soviet Union or the old Israeli kibbutz, which followed the rule from Karl Marx: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”—in other words, 100 percent income tax. The treasury would take the fruits of your labor, but in return it would be expected to provide you food, housing, education, and healthcare. This unprecedented experiment on human beings ended in a searing failure, and nobody wants to go back to it.

On the right-wing end of the scale is the United States of America, or at least what it used to be: the land of unlimited opportunity. It was a country where a penniless immigrant could step off a ship at Ellis Island and become a millionaire within a couple of years, simply because the state did not push its grubby hands into his pockets and took basically no income tax. But the dark side of America is that it is also a land of impossible limitations: At the feet of its colossal steel and glass skyscrapers, countless homeless people go to sleep every night covered only in newspaper sheets.

This miserable reality was on clear display during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, when the most economically powerful empire in history revealed itself to be a third-world country when it came to public health, at least for those who could not afford to buy their own health insurance. Everywhere in the world, politics is conducted between these two poles, and the main question is, “To what extent do I trust the state and want it to use my hard-earned money to supply the public good known as ‘equality’?”

This is the situation almost everywhere in the world. But in one country, a Hebrew-speaking land, things work a little differently. Like people anywhere else, Israelis also care about their financial situation and want affordable housing and functioning public transport. They too are fed up with being stuck in traffic for hours, and they too wrestle with questions about the free market versus social solidarity.

But most Israelis, for most of Israel’s history, have been worried about something much greater than their quality of life: life itself. In the professional lingo, we call that “security.” A more precise definition would be “insecurity.” But if we are being honest—the right word is “fear.”

If you are in Israel, it doesn’t matter where you might be reading this article, even if you are in a Scandinavian-style apartment and sipping a cocktail. A ninety-minute drive, at most, is all that stands between you and someone who wants to kill you with a knife, gun, rocket-propelled grenade launcher, or surface-to-surface missile. Hamas’s terror tunnel squads in Gaza, Hezbollah’s elite forces training in Lebanon to conquer Israeli border villages, and armed militant battalions entrenched in the alleyways of Judea and Samaria—none of these are more than half a tank of gas away.

A border policeman looks onward at the greenhouses, from the view point of his watch tower, near the Jordan border. (Nati Shohat/Flash90)

Israelis might imagine themselves part of the West, but in the end, they are in the Middle East. Israeli parents want their children to speak native-level English, but all around them are people who speak a range of Arabic dialects. I shall never forget listening to the IDF Army Radio in the summer of 2014, during the conflict with Hamas known as Operation Protective Edge. “Next up, Beyoncé’s new hit single,” said the presenter. “But first, an update: There’s heavy traffic on Route 6 heading south because of convoys of tank transporters.” Israel in a nutshell.

Beneath Israelis’ Western exterior lurks a terrible fear: One morning they will wake up and discover that Israel suddenly stopped existing overnight. There are historical reasons for this, of course. The sovereign State of Israel was built as a safe haven to put an end to two thousand years of anti-Semitic persecution, massacres, and pogroms. Less than ninety years, the blink of an eye in historic terms, have gone by since the fires of the Auschwitz crematoria.

Holocaust survivors still live among us today, bearing the blue numbers tattooed onto their forearms by the Nazis. There is not a single Israeli who is not a descendant of Holocaust survivors, personally acquainted with Holocaust survivors, or at least educated about them in school.

From the moment of Israel’s independence, it was clear to its citizens who would have to provide security. The army of the young state was built on the scaffolding of the pre-state Haganah. The army was the key to integration; the General Staff, to politics. Mapai, Israel’s founding socialist party, leveraged its battlefield glory from the War of Independence—and its subsequent victories in the 1956 Sinai campaign and the crowning achievement of the 1967 Six-Day War—to bolster its standing. Mapai operated almost as a party with its own state; early on, officers like Moshe Dayan even attended election rallies in full uniform, long before modern “cooling-off” periods existed.

Defense Minister Moshe Dayan marched through the Lions’ Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem next to IDF Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin, in khakis. The first eight generals who entered Israeli politics all parachuted into the ruling camp. In stark contrast, Likud leader Menachem Begin was merely a former private in the Free Polish Army, and the historical exploits of the Irgun and Lehi had been practically erased from the national curriculum. Security was the ruling party’s absolute monopoly. That is why even in the 1973 elections, the Likud hardly saw any point in campaigning on security issues, as the prevailing calm along Israel’s newly expanded borders was fully credited to the ruling left-wing Alignment.

However, in 1973, Begin was joined by another former Mapai member, a hawkish reserves major general by the name of Ariel Sharon. Suddenly the Likud could also boast military ranks. The countdown toward war had begun and so had the countdown to a great electoral upheaval. But the Likud was focused back then, quite rightly in its view, on economic issues. Just one day before the outbreak of hostilities, a Likud advertisement promised war—but against “the rule of bureaucrats and nepotists.”

There is no point recounting for the millionth time how Israel sleepwalked into the war; it is enough to note that at the age of seventy-five, Golda Meir had good enough instincts to sense that something was not quite right, but she lacked the courage to bang her fist on the table. At 4:00 a.m., on October 6, 1973—Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar—the phone rang. For real this time, not in a dream. “There’s going to be a war today,” said a voice over the line. “I knew it,” said Golda and hung up.

Something inside her died when she heard the first siren. “I am only an old woman,” she later lamented. She later told a senior general a terrible secret: In the darkest days of the start of the war, she had seriously contemplated taking her own life. Little did she know at the time, but Israel’s military fortifications were not the only defenses that were about to collapse: so were the defenses of the Alignment’s grip on power.

State Election Day, 1977. Late in the evening, following the historic television exit poll, the Likud gained a majority, breaking the Labor movement’s 29-year monopoly on power. Likud supporters celebrate by holding up a photo of leader Menachem Begin. (GPO)

The electoral upheaval of 1977 represented the transfer of the role of national guardian from the Labor movement to the Likud. Since 1977, the Likud’s winning message has remained the same: cautious pessimism. Security incidents have shaped the results of most Israeli elections to date: In 1981, the bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor; in 1996, a wave of suicide bombings; in 2001, the Second Intifada.

As Likud Defense Minister Moshe Arens summarized: “Security is the beating heart of Israeli politics.” The most absurd thing is that after the fiasco of the Yom Kippur War, the number of generals in Israeli politics skyrocketed. Sixty-five officers have sauntered into the Knesset over the years. But for most, life in the Knesset has proven extremely frustrating. In politics, there are no captive audiences.

When newly retired IDF Chief of Staff Ehud Barak transitioned to civilian politics, Sharon warned him about the difference: 'When you kill someone in the army, he’s dead. Here... the next morning, you’ll bump into the people you’ve eliminated, alive and well and hungry for revenge, in the Knesset canteen.

In the summer of 2011, a wave of protests swept Israel without a single word about security or Iran. The people demanded social justice. It was a desperate attempt to say that it was time to talk about something else. For the first time, Israelis turned their attention away from the “jungle” and instead to the “villa” itself. To their astonishment, they discovered damp walls and outrageous electricity bills.

The next elections, in 2013, witnessed a massive swing toward parties that focused on the economy. Yair Lapid’s centrist Yesh Atid, running on the slogan “Where’s the Money?”, was just one seat away from blocking Netanyahu. But once in every few years, Israelis receive rude reminders of the purpose of their rocket shelters. Security returns to being the number one issue.

War and peace, fear and hope, were intermingled on that rainy day in December 1978, when Golda Meir’s coffin was led through the streets of Jerusalem. As the procession passed, one mother in the crowd shook her fist. “Golda!” she screamed. “Send regards to Eli, who died in the war!”

English Editor: Ari Tatarka

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Incoming Mossad Director Maj. Gen. Roman Gofman in 2025. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

It’s Monday, May 11, and in one of the most famous scenes in cinematic history, Jack Nicholson’s Colonel Nathan Jessep snarls at Tom Cruise’s Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee from the witness stand: “You can’t handle the truth!” The truth Jessep is fiercely defending is the brutal, extrajudicial cost of national security—the dark, unseemly work required by the men who “stand on that wall” so a polite society can sleep safely. That same tension between the rule of law and the shadowy demands of state survival is at the center of a fierce battle over the leadership of Israel’s legendary spy agency, the Mossad.

In the sweeping overhaul of Israel’s defense and intelligence establishment since October 7, the Mossad has been the sole agency to retain its chief. Now, current Director David Barnea is slated to be replaced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new pick: Maj. Gen. Roman Gofman. A former combat commander and the prime minister’s military secretary, Gofman would be the first outsider to take the helm since Meir Dagan in 2002. While Netanyahu has authorized the move and the Advisory Committee for Senior Appointments has cleared it by a majority vote, the transition has hit a roadblock. As is often the case with executive power in Israel, the appointment cannot proceed until Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has her say, which is almost always no.

So why is Gofman on the stand?

Baharav-Miara argues that the committee’s approval of Gofman is legally flawed because it contained a flaw “in the factual basis on which the committee majority’s opinion relied.”

That factual basis is the 2022 Elmakayes affair.

While commanding the 210th Regional Division on the Syrian border, Gofman oversaw the unauthorized recruitment of 17-year-old Ori Elmakayes to run an online influence campaign against enemy states. Bypassing the Shin Bet—the only agency legally authorized to handle civilian proxies—IDF officers fed the minor classified intelligence to post on social media.

When the Shin Bet detected the unauthorized data transmissions, they arrested Elmakayes for espionage. Unaware he was an IDF asset, the state held the teenager in harsh isolation for two months, followed by 18 months of restrictive house arrest. The charges were only dropped in late 2023 when the military’s involvement was finally exposed. However, the core of the outrage against Gofman stems from his conduct following the arrest. He reportedly disavowed the teenager to investigators, denying knowledge of the boy’s age, his recruitment, or the use of classified materials, effectively abandoning his own operative to the Shin Bet’s interrogators.

It is difficult to cast Baharav-Miara as the crusading Kaffee in Israel’s version of A Few Good Mefakdim (commanders). After all, her opposition to Netanyahu’s executive decisions is hardly selective. But the attorney general is not the only one standing against the appointment; the man Gofman is slated to replace is also opposing the move.

The traditional narrative in Jerusalem is that the Mossad simply despises outsiders, and that institutional bias is likely part of the friction. However, in his letter submitted to the High Court hearing regarding the appointment, Barnea made no mention of “stranger danger.” Instead, he issued a stark warning about the architecture of Israeli intelligence: the Mossad functions outside the law. Because it has “no minister to supervise or a committee to be accountable to,” and answers solely to the prime minister, Barnea argued that its director must be a figure guided by rigid “self-criticism, warning signs, and clean hands.”

The argument of those standing with Barnea in opposing the appointment would sound as follows: Stripped of its diplomatic veneer, the Mossad operates much like a state-sanctioned crime family—an organization that tracks, smuggles, and assassinates enemies of Israel. The only safeguard preventing it from devolving into a rogue cartel is the internal moral compass of its leader. The fact that Gofman allegedly failed to oversee or take accountability for an off-the-books intelligence operation may suggest he lacks the ironclad ethical boundaries necessary to rein in one of the world’s most lethal espionage agencies.

Gofman maintains that he was unaware of the asset’s age or civilian status, believing the operation relied entirely on open-source information. In this view, the decision to utilize a minor and classified intelligence was an unauthorized initiative taken by junior officers. While this does not remove his ultimate command responsibility, it might be unreasonable to expect a division commander to vet the tactical details of every minor operation on a broad front. The affair is undeniably a black mark on his record, but whether it is truly disqualifying remains debatable. Ultimately, it will be up to the court to decide who stands on that wall.

The flags of the U.S., United Arab Emirates, Israel and Bahrain seen on the side of a road in the Israeli city of Netanya, 2020. (Flash90)

On the surface, Bahrain is the perfect Abraham Accords ally. Relations between the small island monarchy and Israel are officially described as “excellent” and have developed steadily since the agreements were signed in 2020. Even today, a large portion of the Bahraini public shows genuine interest in expanding business ties with Israel.

But according to Yedioth Ahronoth’s Smadar Perry, a threat is quietly boiling beneath the surface. Roughly two-thirds of Bahrain’s 1.6 million residents belong to the Shia majority—a demographic reality that the Sunni-led government of King Hamad bin Isa avoids highlighting with updated, accurate data. The internal tension is stark: despite 523 drones and 190 missiles falling on Bahraini territory during the war, wild flash protests supporting Iran’s Ayatollah regime continue to erupt on the streets.

In response, a covert crackdown against the Shia community has been underway for three months. In March, seven local residents were sent to detention centers and effectively vanished. Two weeks later, a larger group was arrested, including 20 locals and five Afghans. By April, the situation escalated further when the state revoked the citizenship of 69 Shia residents; it remains unclear if they will be deported or if they will ever manage to restore their status.

Last week brought another severe escalation when Bahraini authorities arrested 41 leading Shia clerics and sent them to prison incommunicado. With no visits or outside information allowed, they face the State Security Court on charges of maintaining secret ties with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

This friction is hardly unprecedented. Since the 1980s, Tehran has actively interfered in Bahrain—sponsoring militant groups and pushing political narratives that question the island’s sovereignty. Iran does not hide its ultimate goal: to topple the “first among equals” and strike a fatal blow to Bahrain’s Sunni population.

Perry reports that, in intelligence circles, Bahrain is widely considered the “front yard” of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, separated by only a 20-minute, barrier-free drive from the mainland. It is an incredibly convenient setup for an intelligence agency seeking a secure, deniable channel to Riyadh without the glare of public diplomacy. Yet, the Israelis, who appreciate the quiet of Bahrain’s unmarked offices, may be dangerously ignoring the reality outside. The Abraham Accords may have secured the kingdom’s elite, but the street may attempt to guide Bahrain in a different direction.

A Palestinian inspects the damage to a sanitary warehouse following an attack by Jewish settlers in the town of Deir Sharaf, west of Nablus, in Judea and Samara, 2025. (Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash 90.)

Ask 100 people to name the primary accusation leveled against Israel, and “genocide” would likely top the list, with “settler violence” a close second. Much like the first, it is a shame that an issue of such weight is so often defined by mistruths and exaggerations.

Before proceeding, it is important to state clearly: settler violence does exist, it is a serious problem, and it must be dealt with accordingly. However, as with much in the region, the reality and the narrative are simply miles apart.

Let’s begin with the data. The most often cited number comes from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which recorded 2,047 incidents of violence against Israelis and 6,285 against Palestinians between April 2023 and January 2026. A closer examination of these numbers reveals that the majority of the latter do not actually involve violence, and many don’t even include settlers.

Of the 6,285 alleged incidents against Palestinians, 1,704 occurred in Jerusalem, not in settlements. Another 1,361 relate either to Jewish visits to the Temple Mount or to clashes there between security forces and rioting Muslim worshipers. Neither settlers nor violence feature in these instances. Yet, in the UN’s ledger, a Jewish visit to Judaism’s holiest site is automatically classified as settler violence.

Of the remaining 3,220 reported incidents in Judea and Samaria, many consist of generalized complaints—such as “trespassing” during tours or hikes—involving no assault or damage to persons or property. Another 96 cases relate to state projects, like road and infrastructure construction, which involve neither violence nor settlers. 2,039 of the complaints allege property damage or assault without bodily harm; while unacceptable, this hardly aligns with the violent image frequently depicted in the media.

Beyond these questionable classifications, there is a fundamental problem with how data on these incidents is collected. This was highlighted in a 2024 defamation case involving the left-wing NGO B’Tselem. According to the testimony of a B’Tselem field researcher with 20 years of experience, the organization operates under a protocol where Palestinian accounts are not independently verified beyond a site visit and discussions with additional “eyewitnesses” (who may or may not have actually seen the event). In the specific episode at the center of the case, the “facts” published by B’Tselem were directly refuted by the victim’s medical files and contemporaneous IDF reports.

In this regard, B’Tselem is not unique. Most NGOs and UN agencies claiming to perform fact-finding in the Arab-Israeli conflict operate similarly. They frequently base their publications on hearsay and second-hand accounts without properly verifying the allegations. (Even if they intended to, these NGOs generally lack the tools, expertise, and access required for rigorous verification.)

Israel Police data shows that between 2014 and 2024, approximately 1,356 complaints of “Jewish violence” in Judea and Samaria were filed. Only about 40 percent (roughly 537 cases) met the threshold to open an investigation. Furthermore, a substantial share of these cases involved property offenses, vehicle theft, drug possession, and other criminal incidents entirely unrelated to nationalist violence.

A clear example of a false complaint generating headlines occurred in February 2026 regarding a fire in a sheep pen. The media widely reported that “settlers burned a sheep pen, killing dozens of animals,” and politicians leveraged these reports to make serious accusations that were amplified internationally. Within a day, Israel Police released its findings: the fire was actually caused by an illegal electrical connection installed by the owner himself.

Similarly, in 2024, the central investigator for Judea and Samaria testified that in the South Hebron Hills, roughly 90 out of 191 cases filed since the start of the October 7 war (nearly 50 percent) were found to be false complaints. In the Jordan Valley, a comparable half of all complaints proved to be false.

When exaggerations eclipse the facts, we sacrifice truth for impact. This does not solve the issue; it merely weaponizes it. It alienates those in the middle seeking practical change, while handing extremists on the fringes the perfect excuse to further entrench themselves. Ultimately, we cannot address a problem if we are fighting a narrative instead of reality.

We are taking a break; we will be back on Wednesday.

English Editor: Ari Tatarka

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Members of the Yamas special forces counter-terrorist unit seen during a training operation with military helicopters in southern Israel, 2022. (Nati Shohat/FLASH90)

It’s Sunday, May 10, and in mid-March, while the war rages in Iran, a shepherd in Iraq’s western desert witnesses helicopters and gunfire illuminating the horizon. Following the publication of his testimony by Iraqi state media, the military sent forces to investigate this “unusual military activity,” only to be repelled by airstrikes.

What was happening in this remote region of a hostile country? According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, the IDF was operating a secret military base.

Citing U.S. officials and other sources, the report claims Israel established the base shortly before the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran commenced. Serving as a logistical hub for the IAF, the site reportedly housed special forces and search-and-rescue teams on standby to recover any downed pilots. This marks the first time Israel has established a base in Iraq—or at least the first time we know about it. The outpost is likely what IAF Chief Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar was alluding to when he noted that the air force’s special units were carrying out “extraordinary missions that can spark one’s imagination.

During the high-stakes rescue of an American F-15 crew in early April, while U.S. forces performed the lion’s share of the extraction, Israel provided suppressive airstrikes—likely launched from this very base.

Following the skirmish with Iraqi forces, a member of parliament for the local Karbala governorate stated that a force, likely American, had “carried out a rapid landing under air cover in the Najaf-Karbala desert.”

Satellite imagery of the temporary Israeli base in Iraq. (N12)

His suspicion that a foreign power was operating there was well-founded. An expert told the WSJ that the western desert is a perfect spot for a clandestine outpost due to its vast size and sparse population, noting that U.S. special forces made extensive use of this region in 1991 and 2003. Locals had noticed unusual helicopter activity before the war but had “learned to stay away” given the history of the site.

The crown jewel of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” was Hezbollah in Lebanon; the Ayatollahs had successfully created a land border with their enemy to support and launch operations. It appears that years later, Israel has done the same.

Photographs of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah posted near Begin Boulevard in Jerusalem, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

In the Middle East, there is an entity that believed it could wipe out its arch-enemy in one grand operation. In pursuit of this goal, it dragged its allies into a war they did not believe in, and one they would ultimately lose. I speak, of course, of Hamas.

According to an analysis of captured Hamas documents by the Hebrew University’s Dr. Daniel Sobelman, Hamas’s thinking was the precise opposite of Israeli intelligence assumptions. By 2019, the terror group had come to believe that it was Israel that was deterred from action. In the words of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh, “Any violation of the red lines... the resistance will be capable of deterring.”

The turning point came in 2021. In early January, a top-secret Hamas military command document emphasized the need to bring Jerusalem into its “rules of engagement.” That May, Hamas initiated a 12-day conflict over tensions on Temple Mount. Israel responded with Operation Guardian of the Walls. Israel’s head of IDF Military Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, came out of the operation with the now-painfully overconfident assessment that “five years of complete calm with Gaza” was achieved.

In Gaza, however, Hamas was celebrating a paradigm-shifting strategic victory. The fighting had sparked unprecedented Arab Israeli uprisings—an internal vulnerability Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar realized could be weaponized as a “nuclear bomb” to destroy Israel. The war had also seen the organization’s first active wartime coordination with Iran and Hezbollah via a joint situation room. Most of all, Hamas watched Israel scramble to contain the domestic violence and avoid a larger regional war. Paraphrasing Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, they assessed Israel was “weaker than a spider’s web.” Far from a deterrent, the 2021 conflict was a highly successful “dress rehearsal” for the full liberation of Palestine.

But to fund their big plan, they needed Tehran. In June 2021, Sinwar, Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif, and deputy commander Marwan Issa sent urgent telegrams requesting $20 million a month and training for 12,000 fighters to “uproot this dirty entity.” By the spring of 2022, Hamas’s leadership had coined a name for the impending war: “the big project.”

That timing wasn’t a coincidence. In late 2022, Israel swore in a new, right-wing government. In a “Top Secret” internal assessment, Hamas’s leadership concluded that the unprecedented domestic political crisis protesting the new government was “melting the glue” that held the Zionist entity together. Furthermore, Sinwar believed that the highly publicized actions of Israel’s new ministers regarding Muslim holy sites would provide the ultimate religious catalyst to convince his hesitant regional allies that an immediate, coordinated attack was justified.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei meets with the head of the Political Council of Hamas, Mohammed Ismail Darwish, and senior officials of Hamas, in 2025. (Leader.ir)

But even with a plan in place, Hamas had not secured a solid commitment from the Axis of Resistance. In June 2022, ahead of a critical diplomatic trip to Lebanon, Sinwar sent Haniyeh a five-page letter titled “Uniting the Fronts and the Decision to Seize the Opportunity.” Noting that his military wing was fully prepared for immediate implementation, Sinwar outlined three distinct scenarios for joint action:

• Scenario One (The Promise of the Hereafter): A full-force, multi-arena surprise confrontation involving Hamas, Hezbollah, and other regional forces (with Iran supporting from the sidelines) to immediately bring down and end the State of Israel. Crucially, this relied on simultaneous, massive uprisings in Judea and Samaria and among Arab Israelis.

• Scenario Two (The Medium-Level Battle): Designed to humiliate Israel and crush its morale. Hamas would enter with full force, but Hezbollah would commit only a third or a quarter of its capabilities. The goal was to trigger mass Israeli emigration, release prisoners, and liberate Judea and Samaria—driven by violent internal revolts from Arab Israelis and Palestinians.

• Scenario Three (The Scenario of Necessity): Hamas goes it alone. Hezbollah does not join the fight, but remains on standby and permits Hamas to activate its own forces from within Lebanese territory. To compensate for the lack of foreign military support, Hamas planned to “blow up the situation” from within, banking heavily on an Arab Israeli uprising to destabilize the country.

Days later, Haniyeh sat down in Beirut with Nasrallah and Said Izadi, the head of the IRGC Quds Force’s Palestine Branch. In a highly urgent telegram back to Gaza, Haniyeh reported a massive breakthrough: Nasrallah had expressed “clear and resolute” support for the first scenario, believing the immediate end of Israel’s existence was “realistic and achievable.” Izadi, however, pumped the brakes. He supported the plan “in general,” but insisted they needed to study capabilities and investigate hurdles before moving forward.

Sinwar had actually accounted for this from the start. He had long assessed that the Axis operated on a “completely different” strategic calculus, prioritizing the protection of Iran’s nuclear program over Gaza’s ambitions. His suspicions were explicitly confirmed a year later, during a June 2023 visit to Tehran. There, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei bluntly rejected Hamas’s push for an immediate, decisive battle, advising them instead to focus on Judea and Samaria while Israel was “gradually” encircled.

Still, Sinwar gambled that once the first shots were fired, even if his allies didn’t fully commit to his grand vision, the sheer scale of the attack would drag them into the battle as at least a secondary force.

Israeli police on the streets of the central Israeli city of Lod, where synagogues and cars were torched by Arab rioters, 2021. (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)

But while he was willing to gamble on foreign support, Sinwar left nothing to chance regarding his most indispensable ally: the internal front. Violent uprisings in Judea and Samaria and among Arab Israelis were an absolute requirement in every single scenario. Even in the minimal “scenario of necessity”—the contingency where Hezbollah decided to sit the war out entirely—Hamas planned to “blow up the situation in the West Bank and the inside,” banking heavily on Arab Israelis to destabilize the country from within.

To light that internal powder keg, Sinwar needed a spark. This necessity explains one of October 7’s most gruesome aspects. Sinwar was convinced that capturing and broadcasting “explosive images” right at the start of the offensive would “trigger a surge of euphoria, frenzy, and momentum” among Palestinians and Arab Israelis. The goal was to spur a violent mass uprising while simultaneously paralyzing the Israeli public with terror. That is why Hamas terrorists wore body cameras and gleefully livestreamed their own atrocities.

Hamas originally intended to spring this trap in April 2023, timing the slaughter with the Jewish holiday of Passover. The only reason October 7 didn’t happen in April is that the IDF picked up on faint intelligence signals and raised its alert level. Tragically, when the holiday passed without incident, Israeli intelligence concluded it had been a false alarm, plunging them even deeper into a false sense of security.

A Palestinian stands on an Israeli tank at the border fence on October 7, 2023. (Yousef Mohammed/Flash90)

Yet when zero hour arrived, Hamas’s foreign allies were caught completely off guard. According to Israeli intelligence, leadership in Beirut and Tehran were “deeply surprised.” As the slaughter unfolded, Hamas commanders Deif, Sinwar, and Issa fired off desperate telegrams to Nasrallah and the IRGC, begging them to “hurry to take part.” They believed a concentrated, immediate bombardment from Hezbollah would finally trigger Israel’s “quick collapse.”

But the Axis of Resistance was furious at being handed a fait accompli. In his first public speech following the attack, Nasrallah delivered a veiled rebuke of Hamas’s attempt to inflict a single “decisive blow.” He stated flatly that the Axis had not yet acquired the capacity to defeat Israel that way, and that resistance movements instead must “win by points” through an “accumulation of achievements.”

Privately, the backlash was even more blunt. One senior Hezbollah official later summarized Hamas’s grand operation with two bitter words: a “catastrophic success.”

It is tempting to dismiss fanatics as simply irrational, but Sinwar’s blueprints reveal a remarkably shrewd calculator. He accurately predicted Tehran’s hesitancy and understood exactly how to force his allies’ hands. But in the end, his allies were right. Israel was not as weak as a spider’s web, and the Axis did not have the capability to destroy it for good. By forcing their hand, Sinwar didn’t achieve a “Promise of the Hereafter”; he merely ensured that almost every name in these documents would eventually be found in a rubble-strewn grave.

English Editor: Ari Tatarka

If you enjoy the newsletter, you can show your support by becoming a paid subscriber—it really helps keep this going. I’m also offering a special monthly briefing for a small group of premium members. I’d love to have you join us—just click below to find out more.

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A delegation from the Peshmerga ministry convening with Iraq’s interior and defense ministries in 2024. (GOV.KRD)

It’s Friday, May 8, and it was an ambitious plan—some would say almost absurdly so. A Kurdish invasion comprising thousands of fighters crossing from Iraq into Iran, intended to liberate the Kurdish regions, home to eight million people, including tens of thousands of armed men. Together, they were supposed to advance eastward while, simultaneously, armed militias of other minority groups would bite into Iranian territory from all directions, pushing all the way to Tehran.

The problem with Mossad operations, unlike military ones, is the lack of precedent to rely on. The pager operation surely also seemed fantastical—exclusive to the realm of fantasy—before it was executed.

The reports indicating an Israeli attempt to drag President Trump into a doomed regional adventure ignore one critical fact: The CIA was also a full partner in the planning.

After all, the Kurdish parties are a lot like the Israeli opposition: five parties that do not speak to one another. The idea was to bring them all together on a shared platform, namely toppling the despised Ayatollah regime. For the move to even be considered, the Kurds had to agree to a form of “Seven Noahide Laws”: an agreement not to murder, not to loot and, above all, not to harm Iran’s territorial integrity. The IDF had already begun attacking Revolutionary Guard bases in the border area to clear the ground. One can only guess what weapons were placed at the Kurds’ disposal and from which front they arrived. In the Middle East, weapons you buy in the first act are sometimes turned against you in the third.

The plan is too good to be true, and for now, indeed, it isn’t. When Fox News reported that the attack was beginning, Turkish President Erdogan called Trump and, in a furious phone call, talked him out of the idea. It didn’t help that the party affiliated with the PKK, despised by the Turks, was not a partner in the move. In fact, two phone calls significantly slowed down the plans to topple the regime. The call from Erdogan halted the Kurdish offensive, and the call from the emir of Qatar, following the strike on an Iranian energy facility, halted the continued destruction of the Revolutionary Guards’ economy.

Could the plan still materialize? Has the disruption of these plans soured relations between Washington and Jerusalem? Top officials deny this, claiming coordination is even tighter now than at the start of the campaign. Nevertheless, it seems the Kurds will have to keep warming up on the bench for a while longer.

This is an excerpt from my weekly column in Israel Hayom.

To read this article on my website, click here

Palestinian supporters of Hamas attend a rally marking the 25th anniversary of the Islamist movement’s foundation in Ramallah, 2012. (Issam Rimawi/Flash90)

Hamas is currently dividing into three factions, observes a senior official in the Peace Council: those who want to die as martyrs, those who do not want to die as martyrs, and those who want to buy time without the population rebelling against them. The first faction shrank significantly during the war because, as we know, most of them indeed got what they asked for. The question of whether the demilitarization of Gaza will succeed depends heavily on the current balance of power.

Hamas has discovered a very different kind of American than the ones they encountered during the hostage release negotiations last year. Last year, they were spoken to as equals, befitting an entity holding dozens of Israelis. Now, the Americans look down on them and issue direct orders.

Last year, the whole world courted them, and they enjoyed the mediation services of numerous countries seeking proximity to the center of global attention. Since then, four Arab countries have already announced the severing of ties with Hamas. It is no coincidence that these are four countries that were attacked by Iran. “We are being bombed and you remain silent?” they raged at Hamas.

The most prominent of these is Qatar, which effectively expelled Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official. The man left Doha and has not been allowed to return since. Senior Hamas officials are now relocating their residences to Turkey, their last remaining supporter in the world. We’ll always have Istanbul.

All this is well and good, but what will actually come of it in the Gaza Strip? After all, an atmosphere of gloom prevails in Israel amid claims that Hamas is strengthening its position in the areas it still controls within the Strip. When Hamas wants to cheer itself up, it reads the Hebrew press, and when Israelis want to cheer themselves up, they go on social media to look at accounts from Gaza.

Well, the Peace Council believes that in the coming months (even before Oct. 27, for the attention of reader Netanyahu), some areas of Gaza will be cleared of weapons and tunnels and formally handed over to the new entity. Israel will be required to withdraw only after the entire cleanup is complete, certainly not at its start. The pressure is heavy, backs are against the wall, international isolation is worsening—all that remains is for Hamas to be convinced as well.

To read this article on my website, click here

Israel Beyteinu party leader Avigdor Liberman speaks with Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid, with Naftali Bennett, then head of Jewish Home, in the foreground, 2015. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)

The Likud is closely monitoring the strengthening of premier candidates Gadi Eisenkot and Avigdor Liberman with a mix of hope and apprehension. Hope—because for two years, the Likud machine was exclusively calibrated to fight the previous front-runner, Naftali Bennett, constantly battling over the right-wing votes he supposedly brought as his political dowry. Apprehension—because Eisenkot and Liberman will be much harder to dismantle.

Bennett and Lapid are familiar foils—the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of Israeli politics—complete with a heavily loaded archive of past missteps to exploit. But the Likud has repeatedly failed in its attempts to push Liberman below the electoral threshold, and Eisenkot arrives with a record free of political zigzagging and a biography of service that makes him very difficult to attack.

The working assumption within the Likud is that the ultimate rival for the premiership will be Gadi Eisenkot. Perhaps this is why the “Change Bloc” is in a relentless frenzy of recruiting, mergers and acquisitions, while on the right, there is nothing new.

The organizing principle in the Likud until today was: We will hit Bennett with a pincer movement. We on the right will brand him a leftist, and the left-wing parties will brand him a rightist. Once he weakens and loses the leadership of the bloc, his desire to form another “change government” will vanish, since he wouldn’t be leading it. That would open the door for his return to the Netanyahu fold. This maneuver forced Bennett into an earlier and fiercer-than-expected battle for the opposition’s votes, which culminated in a unification with Yair Lapid.

That was the idea, but the composition of the “Together” list pretty much thwarts this possibility. So far, there is not a single kippah wearer or identified right-winger on Bennett’s list. Even if Bennett wanted to crawl into Netanyahu’s coalition tomorrow morning, he has no one to bring with him.

And just as Bennett’s list reflects a pivot toward the opposition’s electorate, Liberman’s list reflects a pivot toward the coalition’s base. The party that began its journey with a clear majority of former Soviet Union immigrants is changing its face. The latest additions are Rafi Ben Shitrit, a bereaved father; Sharon Sharabi, the brother of a hostage; Yisrael Ben Shitrit, a reserve combat soldier; and a senior settler figure, Kobi Eliraz. This reflects an understanding that the Russian electorate, once estimated at 17 seats, is steadily fading, and on the day after, it will be difficult to form a government reliant on Arab parties.

How exactly a coalition emerges from all this math is anyone’s guess.

To read this article on my website, click here

English Editor: Ari Tatarka

If you enjoy the newsletter, you can show your support by becoming a paid subscriber—it really helps keep this going. I’m also offering a special monthly briefing for a small group of premium members. I’d love to have you join us—just click below to find out more.

Thanks for reading It’s Noon in Israel! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

An IAF pilot prepares for a sortie over Iran. (IDF)

It’s Thursday, May 7, and a severe dispute has erupted—and still persists—between the army and the Mossad over the ultimate goal of the war in Iran. The IDF views the removal of uranium from Iranian territory as the ultimate achievement. The Mossad, however, believes the objective is toppling the regime. Even today, contrary to the retrospective cover-your-ass culture prevalent in our region, the Mossad insists on this. While the IDF settled for the amorphous definition of “creating the conditions to topple the regime,” the Mossad simply dropped the first four words.

From here, reality splits into two perspectives, sometimes entirely opposed. Senior IDF officials are intensely frustrated by the American decision not to seize the enriched uranium in a military operation. Thus, Operation Roaring Lion was halted with almost no improvement in the struggle against the Iranian nuclear program compared to Operation Rising Lion. Uranium, uranium, uranium, they chant. Take it, and you’ve erased the nuclear program.

The second approach argues: What good does it do to extract it via an operation or an agreement? If the regime stands, and even if tons of 3 percent enriched uranium remain, you’ve only set them back a few years—a blink of an eye in geopolitical terms. A regime without sanctions will be richer, more despicable, and will want to destroy Israel just as before. Only regime change will uproot the plans for Israel’s destruction from the source. This contrasts with senior defense establishment figures who would gladly welcome the liberation of tens of millions of Iranians from the yoke of dictatorship, but for whom the priority remains strictly Israel first.

The practical expression of this lies in a hypothetical question: What happens if President Trump tells Israel, “You have a green light for one operation”? Most of the defense establishment would say thank you and send the Air Force to raid the uranium stockpiles. The Mossad, one might guess, would support destroying energy plants and refineries, literally plunging Iran into total darkness. This would drastically accelerate the population’s rebellion process. Their anger threshold has already surpassed the levels recorded during the January riots, but simultaneously, the fear threshold has also spiked. When there is no electricity—and with starvation expected to begin in Iran in two months—that wall of fear will collapse.

Which goal is more ambitious? At first glance, toppling the regime seems like a monumental task, while destroying the uranium appears to be a localized, manageable event. But history suggests otherwise: regimes have fallen throughout history, but no country has ever willingly surrendered or lost its enriched nuclear material while the government survived. As the old Talmudic proverb goes, the dilemma is whether to take a “short path that is long”—a quick tactical strike that fails to solve the root problem—or a “long path that is short”—the arduous task of regime change that permanently removes the threat.

This is an excerpt from my weekly column in Israel Hayom

To read on my website click here.

The moment the Radwan Force commander was eliminated last night in Dahyeh, Beirut. (IDF)

Google claims logging is the most dangerous job on earth, citing a fatality rate of over 100 per 100,000 workers. It’s a tough gig, sure, but if we’re talking pure survival rates, an enemy of Israel would be better off picking up an ax. If the search results reflected that reality, the now-former commander of Hezbollah’s Radwan Force might have thought twice before taking a job that his predecessor explosively vacated in 2024. Hezbollah must have excellent hazard pay.

Regardless, Israel delivered a kinetic reality check last night with a precision strike in the majority-Shiite suburb of Dahyeh. While the Radwan commander was the primary target, his deputy and other senior officials were also in the crosshairs; reports suggest the deputy survived, but the message was sent regardless. This marks a serious escalation, as it is Israel’s first strike on the Lebanese capital since the mid-April ceasefire began.

The agreement, forged with the intent of affording the U.S. room to maneuver in negotiations with Iran, is still technically in place. While it granted Washington the quiet it was craving, it has proven less satisfying for Jerusalem. The IDF was hoping for a return to the “pre-Roaring” status quo with Hezbollah—which one might call an airstrike equivalent of “I get to punch you and you don’t get to punch me back.” But the circumstances have changed. The shadow of Donald Trump looming over Israel has emboldened the terror group; knowing the president is holding Israel back, Hezbollah has been poking at the north and throwing jabs at Israel’s security zone in southern Lebanon.

The IDF appears to have accepted this possibility, assuming Hezbollah didn’t have the capacity to inflict significant damage. That was until they introduced their deadly new weapon: fiber-optic FPV drones.

These devices are effectively commercial drones rigged to explode, tethered to their operators by miles of physical wire thinner than dental floss. Since there are no radio signals to jam and no GPS coordinates to spoof, the drones are essentially invisible to electronic shields and advanced drone defenses. Unlike traditional rockets that follow a predictable arc, these drones creep at low altitudes, using electric motors and nonmetallic frames to evade radar and acoustic detection.

The drones are also equipped with another weapon: video cameras. For anyone familiar with Israel’s history in southern Lebanon, that sentence likely triggers a bout of PTSD. Hezbollah was notorious in the 1990s for poorly shot propaganda films showing their embellished victories over IDF positions in the security zone. Despite the low production value, they were a critical component in building Lebanese support for the fledgling terror group. For Israelis, it was intensely demoralizing; combined with the constant fatalities of low-intensity guerrilla warfare, the footage contributed directly to the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000.

Smoke rises from southern Lebanon during an Israeli military operation, May 6, 2026. (Ayal Margolin/Flash90)

That’s the strategy Hezbollah is trying to revive in the new security zone: a grinding, low-intensity war of attrition. By ensuring a steady drip of casualties from the front, they are banking on the Israeli public to eventually lose its nerve and demand a withdrawal. While that possibility seems far off in today’s post-October 7 Israel, remember that it took Hezbollah 15 years to get Israel out of the last one; they are willing to play the long game.

Still, this marks a sharp departure from their previous doctrine of saturating the Israeli home front with rockets. They didn’t change approaches out of choice; after most of their arsenal and command structure were retired by IDF munitions, the group has been forced back to its guerrilla origins.

The drones themselves are an adaptation to this forced devolution. Before the Assad regime collapsed and severed the Iranian land bridge, Hezbollah could easily smuggle heavy ballistic missiles through Syria. Now, choked off from advanced weaponry, they have pivoted to cheap, consumer-grade Chinese components that are easily hidden in standard commercial transit and assembled locally.

Ironically, countering this rudimentary threat is forcing the IDF into a regression of its own. After decades of optimizing for futuristic, multilayered air defenses, the military is scrambling to dust off relics like the cannon-based Vulcan systems of the 1970s, pairing them alongside AI-integrated rifle sights. It is an uncomfortable reversion—and so far, an unsuccessful one. If Israel cannot find a way to neutralize this threat, the security zone will have an expiration date.

Still, the asymmetry cuts both ways. Hezbollah is devolving because it has to; Israel is doing it by choice. When it comes to sheer firepower, the IDF can escalate to a degree the terror group simply cannot match. That is exactly what last night’s strike in Dahyeh was about: a reminder that Israel still dictates the stakes.

There is, however, one crucial difference between this new security zone and the last: this one might eventually become obsolete. The channel between Beirut and Jerusalem remains busy, and the current Lebanese government certainly harbors the desire—if not the actual capacity or spine—to disarm Hezbollah. But Israel has another hope that rests on a different capital entirely. The prevailing assumption within the IDF is straightforward: if the regime in Tehran collapses, Hezbollah falls with it.

English Editor: Ari Tatarka

If you enjoy the newsletter, you can show your support by becoming a paid subscriber—it really helps keep this going. I’m also offering a special monthly briefing for a small group of premium members. I’d love to have you join us—just click below to find out more.

Thanks for reading It’s Noon in Israel! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

(Gemini AI)

It’s Wednesday, May 6, and according to my colleague at Channel 12, Barak Ravid, within 48 hours, the U.S. expects Iran’s response to a framework that brings both sides closer to a deal than at any point during the war. The proposed pact trades an Iranian uranium enrichment freeze for U.S. sanctions relief, unfrozen assets, and a mutually reo…

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IAF fighter squadron flying over Jerusalem yesterday.

It’s Tuesday, May 5, and yesterday, shortly after news broke that the UAE was attacked by Iran, Jerusalem shook with a massive sonic boom as a squadron of Israeli Air Force fighter jets tore overhead. Naturally, the exact same thought popped into every head in the city at once: “Looks like the war is …

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Head of Rafael Systems Yuval Steinitz and former head of Military Intelligence Tamir Hayman (Tomer Neuberg/Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)

It’s Monday, May 4, and Donald Trump has officially unveiled “Project Freedom”—a humanitarian operation launching today to safely escort neutral commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The ostensible goal is to re…

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Palestinians stand next to a burning tank inside the border fence, October 7, 2023. (Yousef Mohammed/FLASH90)

It’s Sunday, May 3, and two months ago, the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee convened for a pivotal discussion on one of the most sensitive questions of the post-October 7 era: how will the trials of the perpetrators be conducted? Accordin…

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MK Avigdor Lieberman attends a special plenary session at the auditorium in the Knesset. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

It’s Friday, May 1, and this week, the prediction market site Polymarket raised Bennett’s chances of becoming prime minister to 40 percent, roughly tying him with Netanyahu. If I had a million dollars to risk, I would probably diversify and i…

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A U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer enforces the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports. (CENTCOM/X)

It’s Thursday, April 30, and Iran is desperately trying to slip the American noose in every way but negotiation. The Iranian military-affiliated Defa Press published a list of options to break the crippling U.S. naval blockade on its ports. The proposals? Everyt…

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9th OPEC International Seminar. (OPEC)

It’s Wednesday, April 29, and the United Arab Emirates has announced its departure from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). As the group’s third-largest producer, the move is monumental. By way of comparison, it is akin to a permanent member of the Security Council leaving the United Nation…

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Drilling operations in the Forouzan oilfield in Iran, 2021. (NIOC)

It’s Tuesday, April 28, and Iran is beginning to crack. Vindicating Donald Trump’s Saturday claim that Iranian officials could “come to us, or they can call us,” Iran has reportedly presented a new proposal, offering to “reopen” the Strait of Hormuz and end the current hostilities, provid…

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Opposition Leader and Head of the Yesh Atid party Yair Lapid and former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett speak during a press conference announcing a joint list named “Together” ahead of upcoming elections, to be led by Bennett. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

It’s Monday, April 27 and it’s happening again. In 2013, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid joined forces to…

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Donald Trump delivers remarks at a Turning Point USA event in Phoenix, Arizona. (White House)

It’s Sunday, April 26, and Iran has scorned Trump’s negotiations after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi departed Pakistan Saturday without meeting U.S. officials. Add that to another attempted assassination, and Trump is not having a good start to his wee…

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara attend a state memorial ceremony for victims of terror, at Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem. (Dor Pazuelo/Flash90)

It’s Friday, April 24, and before we dive into today’s analysis, a shocking letter has just been released by the Prime Minister’s Office. It was revealed that in late 2024…

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U.S. forces patrol the Arabian Sea as the Iranian-flagged vessel’s container cargo is searched after U.S. Marines boarded and seized the ship when it attempted to violate the U.S. naval blockade. (CENTCOM/X)

It’s Thursday, April 23, and the war with Iran is no longer about oil or gas; it is a battle over a single resource: time. The question that will de…

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Israeli soldiers stand at attention during a Memorial Day ceremony at the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, in Jerusalem's Old City, as Israel commemorates its fallen soldiers and victims of terror. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

It’s Tuesday, April 21, and Israel’s Memorial Day. Two years ago, I found myself at a Shabbat gathering for bereaved families in…

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Donald Trump speaks with members of the media before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House. (White House)

It’s Monday, April 20, and according to Donald Trump, talks with Iran are scheduled to resume tomorrow, though the Islamic Republic has stated it will not send a delegation. Despite the posturing, a senior official confirmed to me …

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