It’s Noon in Israel: A World Without the Ayatollahs
Also, Phase Two of Trump's peace plan is looking more like Phase 1.5, and no more starvation in Gaza, Where is the confetti?
It’s Thursday, January 15, and before today’s news, a note on the situation in Iran—and a harrowing testimony from the city of Isfahan:
The bodies of the massacre victims are being kept in fruit and vegetable refrigerators because hospitals have run out of space. In some cases, families came and identified severely wounded people in the refrigerators.
The shooters in the streets are often Afghans and Arabs brought in by the regime.
Heavy machine guns have been brought to the main street.
Only the father and mother are allowed to attend the funerals.
At this point, it’s no longer a protest. People have stopped going to the streets—they know it means certain death. Casualties may already exceed 20,000, disregarding regime propaganda, this is several times the death toll of the 1979 Iranian Revolution that brought them to power.
Armed citizens are now clashing with government forces in multiple cities. It may be more accurate to call what’s unfolding the early stages of a civil war.
On to today’s news.
American missiles launching to intercept Iraqi Scud missiles over Tel Aviv in 1991. (GPO)
This is not the first time Israel has gone on high alert ahead of an attack by a Republican president on a dictator to our east. In 2003, for long months, panic gripped the country on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq. In the First Gulf War, Scud missiles fell on Israel, and the fear this time was that once Saddam realized he had nothing to lose, he would launch hundreds of such missiles—this time with chemical warheads.
In the end, it turned out that the chemical weapons never existed, and that dictators have two states of mind: in the first, they believe they will survive and therefore do not smash the furniture; in the second, they are already on the run, without the ability to strike back. The transition between the two is usually too fast to plan an attack on the “Little Satan.”
Despite the concerns here, there is no decision-maker in Israel who would not vote in favor of an aggressive American move against the ayatollahs’ regime. The potential damage pales in comparison to the benefits Israel would reap from the regime’s collapse. A senior figure in the system recently calculated how much money—and how many divisions—the IDF would save if a revolution were to occur.
Hezbollah’s collapse, he estimated, would happen within weeks, once the money for salaries, reconstruction, and weapons runs out. The organization’s fate in Lebanon would be bitter—not because of the IDF, but because of the Lebanese. Hamas would fall into a severe cash-flow crisis. The Houthis would not be eliminated, but their situation would also deteriorate. The Palestinian problem would not disappear, but it would no longer be fueled by money and weapons.
Without a nuclear project and the threat of ballistic missiles, vast sums could be redirected to other challenges. The immediate benefit to national security is estimated at 100 billion shekels. Amen.
What can Donald Trump do? Perhaps take an interest in what Israel planned to strike on the very day he himself turned the planes back, a few hours after the cease-fire began. The operation our pilots were about to carry out would have caused a cascading, severe, unprecedented blow to regime targets. It would have produced, among other things, many columns of smoke in Tehran and deepened the damage to the institutions of a brutal government that represses the public.
“They don’t know what the hell they’re doing,” Trump raged to the cameras then, about Israel and Iran. Now he is on his way to doing something even bigger and more consequential.
This is an excerpt from my weekly column in Israel Hayom.
To read on my website click here
IDF laying markers for the Yellow Line in November. (IDF)
Yesterday, Phase Two began. Well, more like Phase 1.5. It seems the new Gaza technocratic committee won’t be entering Gaza in the near future, and IDF control isn’t going away anytime soon.
But first, some context.
Earlier this week, reports emerged that the formation of a new technocratic board—intended to take over Gaza’s civil governance under Phase Two of Trump’s peace plan—has begun. There’s now talk of Hamas handing over control to this new committee, but not in the way you might think.
Hamas’s plan is likely to relinquish civilian administration so it can focus on its passion—exploiting Gazans and terrorizing Israel. Handing over its weapons—the critical element of the peace plan—would interfere with that mission. So, as has been made clear over the past couple of months, the task of disarmament won’t fall to the still-on-paper International Stabilization Force—it will fall to the IDF. That’s why the army is already planning an operation against Hamas’s home base, Gaza City, expected to begin in the coming months.
So where does the committee come in?
According to my sources, it will take charge of a new city in IDF-controlled Rafah, the first to be rebuilt under Project Sunrise—Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff’s $112 billion reconstruction plan. This “New Rafah” will serve as the committee’s seat of power and the keystone of the West Berlin strategy: build a place free of Hamas, and let Gazans vote with their feet.
Map illustrating the Yellow Line with Gaza city labeled “Gaza” in the north of the strip and Rafah in the south. (INSS)
So what about the IDF?
Well, the IDF will secure the borders of this new enclave, but policing and internal security will be handled by the ISF.
Honestly, this is the only way the ISF will make its way off paper. No country was going to go to war with Hamas in place of Israel—but many more would police streets already made safe by the IDF.
But that’s not all. While this initiative gets off the ground, Israel stays—and even expands—the Yellow Line. Project Sunrise has a 20-year timeline, and Gaza City, which may soon be under IDF management, sits at the far end of that plan.
Bottom line: The committee is a civil attack on Hamas, but the military reality hasn’t changed. The lines haven’t moved, and disarmament—the most important step of Phase Two—won’t happen without the IDF.
Shipping pallets packed with cans of XL energy drink headed for Gaza this week.
The halls of the UN must be still be filled with happy employees and the left overs of celebratory confetti—according to their spokesman, as of last week, the famine in Gaza is over. The streets of London, Paris and New York must have been jammed with music and dancing. The atrocity they have so bravely and fervently fought for over the past two years is over. The Gazan children have food—it’s time to celebrate!
No? A deafening silence? No mention in the mainstream media? Strange—almost like all of the attacks on Israel weren’t about the people of Gaza at all.
In their statement on January 5, the UN announced some great news: humanitarian aid to Gaza in January meets 100 percent of the minimum caloric standard, and there is sufficient stock for all of Gaza’s citizens.
It’s worth mentioning that doesn’t mean there was a famine before hand—even if the amount of aid were below 100 percent, famine requires a certain number of deaths from malnutrition, which Gaza never reached. (The committee that reached the opposite conclusion fudged their numbers.)
More surprisingly—or perhaps less surprisingly—is that more than a week later, according to The Jerusalem Post’s Mathilda Hiller, not a single international mainstream media outlet has covered the news. She reports that The Jerusalem Post searched in seven languages and found coverage only in fringe outlets.
No offense intended to the prestigious Senegalese news agency Pana Press and the well-respected Radio Algeria—but that’s odd.
The mainstream press certainly hasn’t lost interest in Gaza’s food situation. The BBC alone published dozens of reports on the subject in the past few months, including one titled “UN-backed Experts Say Gaza Food Supplies Improving, but 100,000 Still in ‘Catastrophic Conditions,’” on December 29. Yet now they’re silent?
It’s almost—almost—like it was about the narrative, not the starvation.
I, for one, can say that I’m glad the Gazans have food—I’m not sure if the reporters at The New York Times and the BBC can say the same.
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So is trump attacking or just talking? I can't stand JD Vance. I'm sure he's trying to save the regime in iran
Sounds suspiciously like status quo