IMRA Middle East News Updates

Weekly Commentary: Spead the word: Gazans - Don't Sacrifice Your Kids

Fri, 08 Aug 2025 10:39:40 -0400

Weekly Commentary: Spead the word: Gazans - Don't Sacrifice Your Kids to the
Human Shield Moloch!
Dr. Aaron Lerner 8 August 2025

JOIN THE CALL AGAINST CHILD SACRIFICE!

Please reach out to everyone you have contact with who has a presence in the
media and/or social media - regardless of their stand on Israel - to call on
Gazans to choose life for their children.

Soon the IDF will be calling on Gazan civilians to evacuate to safety from
Hamas controlled areas.

Gazan parents will have to decide between evacuating their families to
safety or sacrificing their kids to the Hamas Human Shield Moloch.

Now is the time for anyone who has a scintilla of moral judgement to take a
clear and vocal stand against Gazan parents who choose not to evacuate to
safety.

Taking a stand against the morally repulsive act of child sacrifice in no
way implies endorsement of Israel's operations.

You can proclaim "from the river to the sea Palestine will be free" and
still condemn Gazans who knowingly choose to sacrifice their children as
human shields for Hamas instead of evacuating to safety.

This is not the time for silence.
________________________________________
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis

Since 1992 providing news and analysis on the Middle East with a focus on
Arab-Israeli relations

Website: www.imra.org.il

Prof. Azar Gat of INSS warns of Consequences of IDF Withdrawal From Gaza

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 18:08:56 -0400

Professor Azar Gat of INSS and TAU warns of Consequences of IDF Withdrawal
From Gaza

After Israel withdraws from the area, vast segments of Hamas's subterranean
networks are likely to remain intact. Moreover, new tunnels will almost
certainly be dug. These networks will pose a continued challenge to the
outposts the IDF is building in the security buffer zone along and inside
the Gaza border to protect Israeli communities around Gaza, and might even
enable raids on the communities themselves. Although not necessarily on the
scale of October 7, such incursions would still represent an ever-present
security threat. The fierce fighting in recent weeks around the underground
system in Beit Hanoun, right on the border, is a living reminder of this.

Most importantly, the remnants of Hamas's vast underground network that will
be rebuilt, even if partially, as well as new branches that will be dug,
will continue to serve Hamas in concealing its fighters, headquarters,
warehouses, and reconstructed missile workshops throughout the Gaza Strip.
The problem for the IDF is how to detect and locate these forces and
facilities in the subterranean spaces. Meanwhile, the rocket threat will
also resume - for both harassment and deterrence.

This is the difference between the Gaza arena and those of Lebanon and the
West Bank, which are often cited as supposedly relevant analogies. A
post-war Palestinian government in the Gaza Strip that is not Hamas -
whether the Palestinian Authority or a "technocratic government" - is highly
desirable for Israel for many reasons. However, such a government's ability
to militarily confront Hamas - even to the extent currently seen in the West
Bank - does not really exist, and the subterranean factor compounds the
challenge significantly. Israeli airstrikes and ground raids will face
similar obstacles to those now seen in the Gaza Strip - and even more so
once Hamas regains strength - requiring large-scale campaigns and battles.

All these factors must be considered in any discussion about ending the war
in the Gaza Strip and implementing an Israeli withdrawal.

Excerpt from: What Have We Not Yet Grasped About the Strategic Implications
of Gaza's Underground Challenge
Professor Azar Gat INSS Insight No. 2021, August 3, 2025
https://www.inss.org.il/publication/gaza-tunnels/

Professor Azar Gat is the Academic Advisor to the Executive Director of
INSS. He is the incumbent of the Ezer Weitzman Chair of National Security
and Head of the International and Executive MA Programs in Security and
Diplomacy in the School of Political Science, Government and International
Affairs at Tel Aviv University.

Weekly Commentary: Rabbis of Sodom Letter Rewarding Gazan Child Sacrifice As Human Shields

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 12:24:05 -0400

Weekly Commentary: Rabbis of Sodom Letter Rewarding Gazan Child Sacrifice As
Human Shields
Dr. Aaron Lerner 1 August 2025

Over the course of the Gaza war the IDF has repeatedly made huge efforts to
warn the civilian population to evacuate areas to safety before we launched
an attack.

This meant sacrificing an element of surprise which both degraded the
efficacy of the operations and endangered our soldiers.

While some Gazans opted to save the lives of their families, many others
chose to literally sacrifice their families as human shields in the defense
of Hamas.

Recently more than a thousand rabbis from around the world signed a letter
condemning Israel for the large number of civilian deaths in Gaza.

While it could be said that Hamas is responsible for the deaths, this
should, in no way, relieve the Gazan parents of their moral obligations,

Those grossly immoral Gazan parents who sacrificed their children as human
shields for Hamas deserved the condemnation of the world.

Instead, the rabbis who signed the letter effectively rewarded the Gazan
parents for participating in these acts of massive child sacrifice.

Hamas and its collaborators are PR experts.

I daresay that if from day one the pages of Haaretz, the New York Times and
social media were flooded with calls on Gazan parents to choose life for
their families that many of those children sacrificed by their Gazan parents
would be alive today.

These rabbis, along with all the others who failed to condemn child
sacrifice, also have the blood of these Gazan children on their hands.

Shame on them for their false morality.
________________________________________
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis

Since 1992 providing news and analysis on the Middle East with a focus on
Arab-Israeli relations

Website: www.imra.org.il

Weekly Commentary: Reject IDF War of Attrition Plan For Gaza - Choose Fast Defeat

Sat, 26 Jul 2025 16:54:56 -0400

Weekly Commentary: Reject IDF War of Attrition Plan For Gaza - Choose Fast
Defeat
Dr. Aaron Lerner 26 July 2025

Gili Cohen reported on 25 July on Kan11 that the security establishment has
presented the government with a plan to tighten the encirclement of areas
where Hamas is concentrated with the goal being to "exhaust Hamas and the
population."
www.kan.org.il/content/kan-news/politic/935163/

Honestly, this plan is so reckless that when I heard a broadcast of a
snippet of the report I went to the trouble to track it down in writing to
make sure I heard it correctly.

Here is the score:

#1. Hamas welcomes the starvation and suffering of the Gazan population for
its PR value.

#2. We face growing pressure to bring relief to the civilian population of
Gaza - regardless of either the cause of their situation or the veracity of
reports of their condition.

#3. There is also growing pressure inside Israel to end - one way or the
other - this stage of the conflict with Hamas.

#4. Any truly viable "post-war" arrangement in the Gaza Strip cannot be
implemented before the effective elimination of Hamas since, wishful
thinking notwithstanding from our perennial wishful thinkers, Hamas has no
intention to accept any arrangement in the Gaza Strip which effectively
prevents them from pursuing the goal of the destruction of Israel.

The absolute wrong plan for today is a drawn-out war of attrition.

So much so that I suspect that the security establishment presented the plan
to convince the Government to embrace what the ex-officio talking heads keep
pushing: to give Hamas whatever it wants!

There is a better alternative: defeating Hamas.

Yes. Defeating Hamas means endangering the perhaps 20 hostages who remain
alive.

And I understand those who argue that the lives of the hostages trump all
else.

But that isn't a viable position for a country.

Would the world criticize us for a fast, brutal operation, against the
concentrations of Hamas?

Yes. Just as they criticize us now. And then it would be behind us.

And what of the cost of an occupation?

We already have the technology to supervise an occupation which is, for the
most part, by remote control.

That's all aspects of an occupation. - including security.

And if the staff in the Kirya is so set in its ways that it can't figure
this out, there's more than enough really smart Israelis who can come up
with a winning program literally on the fly.

Yes to victory. No to a war of attrition.

________________________________________
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis

Since 1992 providing news and analysis on the Middle East with a focus on
Arab-Israeli relations

Website: www.imra.org.il

Watershed Event? Roads Not Blocked After IDF Launches Operation In Area Despite Possible Hostages There

Sun, 20 Jul 2025 18:47:18 -0400

Watershed Event? Roads Not Blocked After IDF Launches Operation In Area
Despite Possible Hostages There
Dr. Aaron Lerner 20 July 2025

Until this morning, Deir al-Balah was off limits for IDF operations out of
concern that Israeli hostages were being held there.

When the IDF announced that it was launching operations there, some hostage
families issued a statement criticizing the move.

IDF operations in the area including bombing three houses.

The Israeli street did not significantly react to this development.

There was no mass protest and no roads in Tel Aviv were blocked.

It remains to be seen if this was a one-off or a permanent dramatic change
in policy according to which, after close to two years of war, the lives of
hundreds of soldiers and Israel's existential need to defeat Hamas are given
priority.

________________________________________
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis

Since 1992 providing news and analysis on the Middle East with a focus on
Arab-Israeli relations

Website: www.imra.org.il

Weekly Commentary: In our neighborhood you talk with your hands

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 08:35:02 -0400

Weekly Commentary: In our neighborhood you talk with your hands
Dr. Aaron Lerner 17 July 2025

I read the following line and rolled over laughing:

"...U.S. President Donald Trump is working to advance coordination
agreements between Israel and Syria and seeks normalization between them. An
Israeli war against Al-Sharaa's regime, even if aimed at protecting the
Druze minority in Syria, does not align with those ambitions."
Zvi Barel (Middle East affairs analyst) - No Plan - Haaretz front page
print edition 17 July 2025

This is the Middle East.

We talk with our hands.

Ahmed al-Sharaa didn't tell his troops to stop participating in the
slaughter of Druze because of a friendly telephone call from someone in the
Trump team.

He did it because we started to bomb key locations in Damascus - including
some broadcast live on Syrian TV.

He heard us when we talked with our hands.

We are also talking all the time in Lebanon.

I daresay that if our "conversation" with Hamas had not been handicapped by
a curious morality that makes the hostages more important than the lives of
many hundreds of soldiers and possibly thousands of civilian lives in the
future, that the Gaza challenge would already be behind us.

And that's really the point.

If we succumb to talking western style when we face a security challenge in
our neighborhood, we will fail.

Our relationship with former and possibly current and future terrorist Ahmed
al-Sharaa isn't hurt by our talking with our hands. Its enhanced.

I don't know if one day President Trump's dream that Syria joins the
Abraham Accords will come true. But if such an event is to be more than a
photo op for a presidential scrapbook, it is critical that the leader of
Syria is convinced that we are not Westerners who can be impressed by nice
clothing and remarks crafted by high priced PR firms.

Ehud Barak was right. Our neighborhood is a jungle. And in a jungle you
need, when needed, to talk with your hands.

________________________________________
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis

Since 1992 providing news and analysis on the Middle East with a focus on
Arab-Israeli relations

Website: www.imra.org.il