Quotes of the Day:

"Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair." 

- Elie Wiesel

“We are all ready to be savage and some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.” 

- William James

“Nothing is more important than empathy for another human being suffering. Nothing. Not career, not wealth, not intelligence, certainly not status. We have to feel for one another if we're going to survive with dignity.” 

- Audrey Hepburn

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 24, 2023

2. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 24, 2023

3. There’s a big reason Biden is losing younger voters: Israel-Palestine

4. Disinformation campaigns are undermining democracy. Here’s how we can fight back

5. The frantic CIA, Mossad, Qatar, and Egypt efforts behind the Hamas-Israel truce deal

6. Happy but wary, displaced Palestinians try to head home to north Gaza

7. Russian and Chinese executives discuss Russia-Crimea tunnel project

8. ‘Zoom fatigue’ may take toll on the brain and the heart, researchers say

9. Opinion : In softening on China, West might be trying to avoid a nuclear arms race

10. China Isn’t Backing Off Taiwan

11. Pentagon turns to press flacks and academics to help fight information wars

12. Gaza Civilians, Under Israeli Barrage, Are Being Killed at Historic Pace

13. Surviving Winter in a Decimated Ukrainian Village

14. Two Years With America’s Elite Firefighters

15. Beijing hospitals overwhelmed with post-Covid surge in respiratory illnesses among children

16. Russian Propaganda Presents Fringe Views in US as Mainstream

17. Zelenskiy names 'three victories' Ukraine needs on international front

18. Why Netanyahu finally agreed to a hostage deal

19. China Holds Military Drills Near Myanmar Border After Convoy Fire

20. Israel-Hamas war: How quickly can Hamas recover from Gaza defeat?

21. Misunderstanding bin Laden’s 2002 “Letter to Americans”

22. One year after UN Xinjiang report release, pressure on China at the UN remains steady

23.  UN and Women’s Groups Ignore or Deny the Systematic Rape of Israeli Women by Hamas

24.Can US focus on Asia-Pacific while distracted by Ukraine, Middle East

25. US flexes muscles with ally in waters claimed by China

26. Alan Dershowitz: The Hamas PR Machine Is Ignoring Some Inconvenient Truths

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 24, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-24-2023

Key Takeaways:

• Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces began a renewed offensive effort towards Avdiivka on November 22, although likely with weaker mechanized capabilities than in the previous offensive waves that occurred in October.
• High-ranking Russian officials may be engaged in a wider scheme of forcibly adopting deported Ukrainian children.
• Ukraine’s Western allies declared their commitment to further develop Ukrainian air defense capabilities during the 17th Ramstein Group virtual meeting on November 22.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the Collective Security Treaty Organization’s (CSTO) Collective Security Council session in Minsk, Belarus on November 23 against the background of Armenia’s continued absence from recent CSTO events and exercises.
• Chinese businesses, including a prominent state-owned Chinese construction firm, are reportedly working with Russian businessmen to plan the construction of an underwater tunnel that would connect Russia with occupied Crimea.
• European states are responding to Russia's continued orchestration of an artificially created migrant crisis on its northwestern borders.
• The Russian Strelkov (Igor Girkin) Movement (RDS) called prior Russian regional elections and the upcoming Russian presidential election illegitimate, likely in an effort to establish Girkin’s inevitable presidential election loss as a long-standing grievance.
• Russian law enforcement reportedly detained about 700 migrants at a warehouse in Moscow Oblast and issued some military summonses, likely as part of an ongoing effort to coerce migrants into Russian military service.
• The Kremlin is reportedly renewing attempts to control all video surveillance systems in Russia, likely as part of ongoing efforts to intensify its tools of digital authoritarianism to increase domestic repressions.
• Russian forces conducted ground attacks along the Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, near Avdiivka, west and southwest of Donetsk City, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and marginally advanced in some areas.
• The Russian aviation industry is likely under significant constraints due to international sanctions and demands from the Russian defense industrial base (DIB).
• The Russian occupation authorities continue efforts to indoctrinate Ukrainian children in occupied Ukraine into Russian national and cultural identities.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, NOVEMBER 24, 2023

Nov 24, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 24, 2023

Christina Harward, Riley Bailey, Angelica Evans, Nicole Wolkov, Karolina Hird, and Frederick W. Kagan

November 24, 2023, 7:30pm ET 

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Click here to see ISW’s 3D control of terrain topographic map of Ukraine. Use of a computer (not a mobile device) is strongly recommended for using this data-heavy tool.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 2:30pm ET on November 24, and covers both November 23 and November 24 due to the fact that ISW did not publish a Campaign Assessment on November 23 in observance of the Thanksgiving Day holiday. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the November 25 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces began a renewed offensive effort towards Avdiivka on November 22, although likely with weaker mechanized capabilities than in the previous offensive waves that occurred in October. Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Commander Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi reported on November 23 that Russian forces launched a “third wave” of assaults as part of the Russia offensive operation in the Avdiivka direction, and Tavriisk Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Oleksandr Shtupun stated that this “third wave” began on November 22.[1] Shtupun reported a 25 to 30 percent increase in Russian ground attacks near Avdiivka on November 22 and stated that Ukrainian forces repelled several Russian columns of roughly a dozen armored vehicles in total during assaults.[2] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled at least 50 Russian assaults in the Avdiivka direction on November 23 and 24.[3] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces continued offensive operations on Avdiivka’s northern and southern flanks but did not characterize any Russian assaults as heavily mechanized.[4] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces continued to advance north of Avdiivka and made further gains in the industrial zone southeast of Avdiivka but did not make any territorial claims consistent with a successful renewed large-scale Russian offensive push.[5]

Shtupun stated that Ukrainian forces destroyed three Russian tanks and seven armored fighting vehicles on November 22, suggesting that Russian forces are currently conducting a smaller set of mechanized assaults than in October.[6] Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces lost 50 tanks and 100 armored vehicles in renewed assaults on Avdiivka on October 19 and 15 tanks and 33 armored vehicles during the initial large, mechanized assaults on October 10.[7] Russian forces have lost a confirmed 197 damaged and destroyed vehicles in offensive operations near Avdiivka since October 9, and the Russian military appeared to spend the end of October and all of November preparing for a wave of highly attritional infantry-led ground assaults to compensate for these heavy-equipment losses.[8] Large infantry-led ground assaults will likely pose a significant threat to Ukrainian forces defending in the Avdiivka direction but will not lead to a rapid Russian advance in the area.

High-ranking Russian officials may be engaged in a wider scheme of forcibly adopting deported Ukrainian children. BBC Panorama and Russian opposition outlet Vazhnye Istorii published investigations on November 23 detailing how Just Russia Party leader Sergei Mironov adopted a 10-month-old Ukrainian girl whom Russian authorities forcibly deported from a Kherson City orphanage in autumn of 2022 alongside over 40 other children.[9] The investigations found that Mironov's new wife, Inna Varlamova, traveled to occupied Kherson Oblast, where occupation authorities issued her a power of attorney to deport two children—a 10-month-old girl and a two-year-old boy.[10] Both BBC and Vazhnye Istorii noted that Varlamova falsely introduced herself to the leadership of the children's home as the "head of children's affairs from Moscow," a position which she does not hold and that still would not legitimize the deportations of the children under international law.[11] Russian court documents show that Mironov and Varlamova then adopted the girl in November 2022, changed her name from her Ukrainian birth name to a new Russian name and the surname Mironova, and officially changed her place of birth from Kherson City to Podolsk, Russia.[12] Neither investigation could confirm the whereabouts of the two-year-old boy. Mironov notably responded to the investigation and called it a "fake from Ukrainian special services and their Western curators" meant to discredit him.[13]

Mironov and his wife, who reportedly holds a low-level unspecified position in the Russian Duma, follow in the footsteps of Russian Commissioner on Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova, who has also adopted at least one Ukrainian child from occupied Mariupol.[14] While ISW can only confirm that these two Russian officials have forcibly adopted deported Ukrainian children at this time, the adoptions may be indicative of a wider pattern in which Russian officials adopt deported children in order to legitimize the practice in the eyes of the Russian public. Russian politicians may be adopting deported Ukrainian children to set administrative and cultural precedents for wider adoptions of Ukrainian children to further escalate Russia's campaign to deport Ukrainians to Russia. ISW continues to assess that the forced deportation and adoption of Ukrainian children likely amounts to a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.[15]

Ukraine’s Western allies declared their commitment to further develop Ukrainian air defense capabilities during the 17th Ramstein Group virtual meeting on November 22. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Germany and France will lead a coalition of 20 countries to further develop Ukraine’s air defenses, and Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov added that the coalition will help Ukraine further develop its ground-based air defense systems.[16] Zelensky noted on November 23 that improved Ukrainian air defenses will save lives and resources, allow Ukrainian citizens to return from abroad, and deprive Russia of the ability to terrorize Ukraine.[17] Ramstein Group members also agreed on issues such as additional equipment and weapons for Ukraine during the winter of 2023–24, mine trawling and other security measures in the Black Sea, Ukraine’s NATO Interoperability Roadmap, and additional security assistance packages from the US, Germany, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Finland, the Netherlands, and Estonia.[18]

Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the Collective Security Treaty Organization’s (CSTO) Collective Security Council session in Minsk, Belarus on November 23 against the background of Armenia’s continued absence from recent CSTO events and exercises. Putin attended the session alongside Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, and the CSTO’s Secretary General Imangali Tasmagambetov.[19] The summit marked the end of Belarus’ chairmanship of the CSTO, and Lukashenko stated that Kazakhstan will hold the chairmanship beginning December 31, 2023. Putin thanked the session’s attendees for contributing to the regional defense structure and highlighted expanding military-technical cooperation between CSTO member states. Putin stated during his bilateral meeting with Rahmon that Russia will deliver two air defense divisions equipped with S-300 air defense systems to Tajikistan as part of the CSTO’s unified air defense system.[20]

Russian sources widely noted Armenia’s absence from the CSTO summit on November 23.[21] Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan also did not attend the CSTO’s summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan on October 13 after Armenian forces refrained from participating in the CSTO “Indestructible Brotherhood-2023" exercises in early October.[22] Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitri Peskov stated on November 23 that the Kremlin regretted Armenia’s absence in Minsk but stated that Armenia remains “an ally and strategic partner” to Russia.[23] The Kremlin has previously attempted to dispel concerns about the deterioration of Russian-Armenian relations.[24] Kremlin newswire TASS reported that Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Mnatsakan Safaryan reiterated that Armenia is not considering leaving the CSTO or asking Russia to withdraw its forces from Russia’s 102nd Military Base in Gyumri, Armenia.[25]

Chinese businesses, including a prominent state-owned Chinese construction firm, are reportedly working with Russian businessmen to plan the construction of an underwater tunnel that would connect Russia with occupied Crimea. The Washington Post reported on November 24 that it corroborated information in emails provided by Ukrainian intelligence services that detail the formation of a Russian-Chinese business consortium that aims to build an underwater tunnel along the Kerch Strait connecting Russia to occupied Crimea.[26] Vladimir Kalyuzhny, identified by the emails as the general director of the consortium, reportedly messaged the Crimean occupation representative to the Russian President, Georgy Muradov, and stated that he has a letter from Chinese business partners attesting to the Chinese Railway Construction Corporation’s (CRCC) readiness to participate as a general contractor for the tunnel project.[27] The CRCC is under the supervision of China’s state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission and is one of China’s largest construction firms.[28] The emails reportedly indicate that the CRCC stipulated that its involvement would occur through an unaffiliated legal entity and that an unnamed Chinese bank was willing to convert dollar funds into rubles to fund the consortium's projects.[29] Kalyuzhny, Crimean occupation head Sergei Aksyonov, and Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitri Peskov denied the Washington Post’s reporting.[30] The reported Russian interest in the tunnel project, which would likely take years to complete, is an additional indicator of deep Russian concern about the vulnerability of ground lines of communication (GLOCs) between Russia and occupied Crimea along the Kerch Strait Bridge.

European states are responding to Russia's continued orchestration of an artificially created migrant crisis on its northwestern borders. The Finnish government announced on November 22 that Finland will close three more checkpoints on the Finnish-Russian border from November 23 to December 23, leaving only the northernmost checkpoint open.[31] Norwegian Prime Minister Johan Gahr Store stated on November 22 that Norway would also close its border to Russia “if necessary.“[32] Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur stated on November 23 that an increased number of migrants have also arrived at the Estonian-Russian border and that Russia is organizing the arrivals as part of an effort to “weaponize illegal immigration.”[33] Reuters reported on November 23 that the Estonian Interior Ministry stated that Estonia has undertaken preparations to close its border crossings with Russia if “the migration pressure from Russia escalates.”[34] Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina stated on November 24 that Latvia has experienced a similar influx of migrants on its border with Russia, and Silina and Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo stated that these are Russian and Belarusian “hybrid attacks.”[35] Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Maria Zakharova accused Finland on November 22 of “stirring up Russophobic sentiments” and interrupting border services that were an integral part of Russian–Finnish cooperation.[36] ISW previously assessed that Russia is employing a known hybrid warfare tactic similar to Russia’s and Belarus’s creation of a migrant crisis on the Polish border in 2021 that is likely similarly aimed at destabilizing NATO.[37]

The Russian Strelkov (Igor Girkin) Movement (RDS) called prior Russian regional elections and the upcoming Russian presidential election illegitimate, likely in an effort to establish Girkin’s inevitable presidential election loss as a long-standing grievance.[38] The RDS Congress issued a resolution on November 24 in which it claimed that unspecified actors are doing everything possible to preserve the existing system of power in Russia regardless of the political situation or Russian citizens’ will.[39] The RDS Congressional resolution issued a list of demands for Russian election reform and claimed that the RDS would not recognize any future elections as legitimate if the Russian government does not meet these demands.[40]

Russian law enforcement reportedly detained about 700 migrants at a warehouse in Moscow Oblast and issued some military summonses, likely as part of an ongoing effort to coerce migrants into Russian military service.[41] Russian sources reported on November 24 that Russian police and Rosgvardia raided a Wildberries (Russia’s largest online retailer) warehouse in Elektrostal, Moscow Oblast looking for migrants who had recently acquired Russian citizenship.[42] Russian law enforcement reportedly took about 135 detained migrants with Russian citizenship and transferred them to military registration and enlistment offices.[43] An unspecified Russian law enforcement official told Russian news outlet Interfax that Russian law enforcement conducted the raid as part of “Operation Migrant,” which aims to ensure that all naturalized citizens are registered for military service and issue them military summonses.[44] A Russian source claimed that Russian law enforcement also conducted a raid near the Wildberries warehouse on November 23, fined 16 migrants for violating migration protocols, and deported three.[45] The Wildberries press service stated this mass detention of migrants interrupted company’s shipments and put billions of dollars at risk.[46]

The Kremlin is reportedly renewing attempts to control all video surveillance systems in Russia, likely as part of ongoing efforts to intensify its tools of digital authoritarianism to increase domestic repressions. The Russian Ministry of Digital Development proposed an initiative to create a unified platform for storing and processing footage from all video surveillance systems in Russia, which would reportedly cost 12 billion rubles (about $134 million).[47] Kommersant reported that there are about 1.2 million surveillance cameras in Russia, about half of which are currently accessible to the Russian government.[48] The Russian Ministry of Digital Development reportedly plans to increase the number of surveillance cameras across Russia to five million by 2030 and integrate all of them with facial and image recognition software.[49] Kommersant also noted that the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations attempted a similar initiative in 2020 to 2022 as part of the Hardware and Software Complex “Safe City” project aimed at standardizing and installing surveillance systems with artificial intelligence software in Russian regions but faced criticism from the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs and Russian Ministry of Economy.[50]

Key Takeaways:

• Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces began a renewed offensive effort towards Avdiivka on November 22, although likely with weaker mechanized capabilities than in the previous offensive waves that occurred in October.
• High-ranking Russian officials may be engaged in a wider scheme of forcibly adopting deported Ukrainian children.
• Ukraine’s Western allies declared their commitment to further develop Ukrainian air defense capabilities during the 17th Ramstein Group virtual meeting on November 22.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the Collective Security Treaty Organization’s (CSTO) Collective Security Council session in Minsk, Belarus on November 23 against the background of Armenia’s continued absence from recent CSTO events and exercises.
• Chinese businesses, including a prominent state-owned Chinese construction firm, are reportedly working with Russian businessmen to plan the construction of an underwater tunnel that would connect Russia with occupied Crimea.
• European states are responding to Russia's continued orchestration of an artificially created migrant crisis on its northwestern borders.
• The Russian Strelkov (Igor Girkin) Movement (RDS) called prior Russian regional elections and the upcoming Russian presidential election illegitimate, likely in an effort to establish Girkin’s inevitable presidential election loss as a long-standing grievance.
• Russian law enforcement reportedly detained about 700 migrants at a warehouse in Moscow Oblast and issued some military summonses, likely as part of an ongoing effort to coerce migrants into Russian military service.
• The Kremlin is reportedly renewing attempts to control all video surveillance systems in Russia, likely as part of ongoing efforts to intensify its tools of digital authoritarianism to increase domestic repressions.
• Russian forces conducted ground attacks along the Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, near Avdiivka, west and southwest of Donetsk City, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and marginally advanced in some areas.
• The Russian aviation industry is likely under significant constraints due to international sanctions and demands from the Russian defense industrial base (DIB).
• The Russian occupation authorities continue efforts to indoctrinate Ukrainian children in occupied Ukraine into Russian national and cultural identities.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

• Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Russian Technological Adaptations
• Activities in Russian-occupied areas
• Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on November 23 and 24 but did not make any confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked in the Kupyansk direction northeast of Petropavlivka (7km east of Kupyansk) and near Synkivka (8km northeast of Kupyansk), Ivanivka (20km southeast of Kupyansk), and Stelmakhivka (25km northwest of Svatove) but did not conduct any offensive operations in the Lyman direction.[51] A Russian milblogger claimed on November 23 that Russian forces marginally advanced east of Petropavlivka.[52] A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations from Orlyanka (22km east of Kupyansk) and near Petropavlivka.[53] Another Russian milblogger claimed on November 24 that Russian forces are having widespread issues with electronic warfare (EW) systems along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, causing unnecessary casualties due to otherwise preventable drone strikes.[54] Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets stated on November 23 that Russian forces transferred an unspecified battalion of the Russian 380th Motorized Rifle Regiment (47th Tank Division, 1st Guards Tank Army, Western Military District) from Kursk Oblast to positions near Raihorodka (12km west of Svatove).[55] Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov claimed that the “Amura” detachment of Chechen “Akhmat” Spetsnaz are operating in the Serebryanske forest area (10km southwest of Kreminna).[56]

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on November 23 and 24 and reportedly advanced on an unspecified date. The Ukrainian State Border Guards published footage on November 24 showing Ukrainian forces advancing and capturing Russian positions in an unspecified area of the Svatove direction on an unspecified date.[57] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed on November 23 and 24 that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Vilshana (15km northeast of Kupyansk) and Hryhorivka (10km south of Kreminna).[58] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces counterattacked along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line and that fighting continues near Torske (15km west of Kreminna) and the Serebryanske forest area.[59]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked in the Bakhmut area near Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut) on November 23.[60]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations near Bakhmut on November 23 and 24 and made confirmed advances. Geolocated footage published on November 22 and 23 indicates that Russian forces advanced north of Klishchiivka.[61] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces advanced near Bohdanivka (6km northwest of Bakhmut), the Berkhivka reservoir (about 2km northwest of Bakhmut), Klishchiivka, and the railway near Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut).[62] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Bohdanivka, Ivanivske (6km west of Bakhmut), Klishchiivka, and Andriivka.[63] Russian milbloggers claimed that fighting continued near the railway north of Klishchiivka and the heights west of the settlement, which a Russian source claimed that Ukrainian forces continued to control as of November 23.[64] One Russian source claimed on November 23 that Klishchiivka is a contested “gray zone.”[65] Ukrainian military sources stated on November 23 and 24 that Russian forces in the Bakhmut direction are focusing on small tactical gains, probing the frontline, and conducting drone strikes at night.[66] A Ukrainian sergeant operating in the Bakhmut direction characterized fighting in his sector of the front on November 24 as "static, trench warfare."[67] The Russian MoD reported that elements of the Russian 106th Airborne (VDV) Division are operating in the Bakhmut direction.[68] Russian sources claimed that elements of the 58th Separate Spetsnaz Battalion (1st Donetsk People’s Republic [DNR] Corps) are also operating in the Bakhmut direction.[69]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations northwest of Horlivka (20km south of Bakhmut) but did not make any claimed or confirmed advances on November 23 or 24. A Russian milblogger claimed on November 23 that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Mayorske (6km northwest of Horlivka).[70] Another Russian milblogger claimed on November 24 that there are meeting engagements near the waste heap northwest of Horlivka.[71]

A Russian milblogger claimed on November 23 that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully counterattacked near Avdiivka southwest and west of Krasnohorivka (5km northeast of Avdiivka).[72]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations near Avdiivka but did not make any confirmed gains on November 23 and 24. Russian sources claimed that Russian forces advanced south of the Avdiivka Coke Plant northwest of Avdiivka; near the railways north and northwest of Krasnohorivka; in and near the industrial zone southeast of Avdiivka; near Novobakhmutivka (12km northwest of Avdiivka), Novokalynove (13km northeast of Avdiivka), Stepove (3km northwest of Avdiivka), Sieverne (6km west of Avdiivka), and Tonenke (5km west of Avdiivka); and in the direction of Keramik (14km northwest of Avdiivka), Berdychi (5km northwest of Avdiivka), and the “Tsarska Okhota” restaurant south of Avdiivka.[73] Russian sources also claimed that Russian forces attacked northwest of Avdiivka near Novobakhmutivka, Novokalynove, Stepove, Krasnohorivka, and the coke plant; south and southwest of Avdiivka near Pervomaiske (10km southwest of Avdiivka), Vodyane (7km southwest of Avdiivka), and Optyne (4km south of Avdiivka); and southeast of Avdiivka near the industrial zone.[74] Russian milbloggers claimed on November 23 that Russian forces conducted reconnaissance-in-force near Stepove, Vodyane, and Sieverne.[75] A Russian milblogger claimed on November 23 that Russian forces advanced 150-200 meters in the direction of Novokalynove and Ocheretyne (15km northwest of Avdiivka), but ISW has not observed visual evidence of this claim.[76] A Russian source claimed on November 22 that Russian forces control 80 percent of the industrial zone southeast of Avdiivka, and later claimed on November 24 that Russian forces control 95 percent of the area.[77] Another Russian source claimed on November 24 that Russian forces control the entire industrial zone but acknowledged that this claim is based on unconfirmed preliminary information.[78] A Russian milblogger claimed on November 23 that Russian forces are pushing Ukrainian forces out of Stepove but that Ukrainian forces still control a part of the settlement.[79] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on November 23 and 24 that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked east of Novokalynove and Novobakhmutivka; north of Lastochkyne (5km west of Avdiivka); and near Stepove, Pervomaiske, Sieverne, Avdiivka.[80] A Russian milblogger claimed on November 24 that Russian helicopters have to fly at very low altitudes to avoid Ukrainian air defense systems near Avdiivka.[81] Ukrainian Avdiivka Military Administration Head Vitaliy Barabash stated that Russian forces are struggling to use a large amount of military equipment due to weather conditions.[82]

Ukrainian forces did not conduct any claimed or confirmed offensive operations west and southwest of Donetsk City on November 23 and 24.

Russian forces conducted offensive operations west and southwest of Donetsk City but did not make any claimed or confirmed advances on November 23 and 24. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Marinka (on the western outskirts of Donetsk City) and Novomykhailivka (10km southwest of Donetsk City).[83] A Russian milblogger claimed on November 23 that Russian forces conducted offensive operations in Marinka but did not specify an outcome.[84]

Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Russian sources continued offensive operations in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on November 23 and 24 but did not make any claimed or confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported unsuccessful Russian assaults near and southwest of Staromayorske (10km south of Velyka Novosilka) on November 23 and 24.[85] The Russian Vostok Battalion, which is operating in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, claimed on November 24 that Russian forces currently have an advantage in terms of fire power in this direction.[86] Russian sources additionally claimed that Russian forces attacked near Staromayorske and Urozhaine (10km south of Velyka Novosilka) on the evening of November 22 and throughout November 23, and northwest of Staromayorske on November 24.[87] Geolocated footage posted on November 23 shows elements of the 336th Naval Infantry Brigade (Baltic Fleet) operating a Lancet drone against Ukrainian positions near Vesele (33km southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[88]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted limited and unsuccessful counterattacks in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on November 23 and 24. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported on November 23 and 24 that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Pryyutne (15km southwest of Velyka Novosilka) and elsewhere in the overall southern Donetsk Oblast direction.[89] A Russian milblogger claimed on November 23 that Ukrainian forces are trying to activate north of Pryytune and north of Novomayorske (18km southeast of Velyka Novosilka) but emphasized that Ukrainian forces are largely on the defensive on this sector of the front.[90]

Russian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on November 23 and 24 and made confirmed advances. Geolocated footage published on November 24 shows that Russian forces have marginally advanced southwest of Novopokrovka, about 9km northeast of Robotyne.[91] A Russian airborne (VDV) affiliated milblogger claimed on November 24 that elements of the 7th VDV Division, including the 108th Air Assault Regiment, recaptured positions north of Verbove (10km east of Robotyne and 5km south of Novopokrovka), which generally coincides with confirmation of Russian advances in the area southwest of Novopokrovka.[92] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attempted to improve their positions near Robotyne on November 23 and conducted unsuccessful assaults near Robotyne, Novopokrovka, and west of Verbove on November 24.[93]

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on November 23 and 24 and made confirmed advances. Geolocated footage published on November 22 shows that Ukrainian forces have recaptured the westernmost trench in a series of three trenches that lie about 1km southwest of Robotyne, and other geolocated footage published on November 23 shows that Ukrainian forces have also made advances further west of the westernmost trench.[94] Additional geolocated footage posted on November 22 and 23 indicates that Ukrainian forces have marginally advanced near the T0408 Orikhiv-Tokmak highway north of Novoprokopivka (just south of Robotyne), between the outskirts of the aforementioned trench system and the northern outskirts of Novoprokopivka.[95] Russian milbloggers widely claimed on November 23 and 24 that Ukrainian forces launched a renewed attack on Russian positions along the Robotyne-Verbove line with up to 100 personnel, five armored vehicles, and one Western-provided tank.[96] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Robotyne and Verbove on November 24, and the Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in the Melitopol (western Zaporizhia Oblast) direction on November 23 and 24.[97]

Ukrainian forces continued combat operations on the (east) left bank of the Dnipro River on November 23 and 24, and both Ukrainian and Russian forces have made confirmed gains in Krynky (30km northeast of Kherson City and 2km from the Dnipro River). Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces intensified attacks on the forest area near Krynky on November 23, and then claimed on November 24 that elements of the Russian 810th Naval Infantry Brigade (Black Sea Fleet) and 144th Motorized Rifle Brigade (of the 40th Army Corps of the newly formed 18th Combined Arms Army) counterattacked and knocked Ukrainian forces out of positions in the forest areas near Krynky.[98] Geolocated footage published on November 23 confirms that both Russian and Ukrainian forces have advanced within Krynky, suggesting that intense fighting is ongoing in the settlement and positions are frequently changing hands.[99] Russian sources claimed that elements of the 188th and 144th brigades are facing extremely poor conditions and a lack of resources while trying to defend the Krynky area.[100] Ukrainian military officials confirmed that Ukrainian forces maintain positions on the east bank of Kherson Oblast.[101]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces launched a large-scale drone strike against occupied Crimea on the night of November 23 to 24. A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces launched a total of 13 drones in three waves from Kherson Oblast towards railway and military infrastructure in occupied Crimea.[102] Kherson Oblast occupation head Vladimir Saldo claimed that this was one of the largest Ukrainian air attacks on occupied Crimea since the beginning of the war.[103] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian air defense shot down all 13 drones over Crimea, and that Black Sea Fleet naval aviation also hit 12 unmanned aerial boats traveling towards Crimea.[104]

Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

The Russian aviation industry is likely facing significant constraints due to international sanctions and demands from the Russian defense industrial base (DIB). The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported on November 23 that it obtained many documents from the Russian Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsiya) detailing widespread issues within the Russian aviation industry.[105] The GUR reported that the documents show that there were 185 civil aviation accidents and 150 cases of technical malfunctions in the first nine months of 2023.[106] The GUR reported that the Russian aviation industry is transferring large portions of aircraft maintenance assets to Iran, where repairs occur without certification, due to a lack of repair capacity and specialists in Russia.[107] Russian aviation enterprises are reportedly increasingly using existing planes for component for new production.[108] The Russian United Aircraft Corporation announced on November 22 that it transferred a new batch of Su-34 frontline bombers manufactured at the Novosibirsk Aviation Plant to the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD).[109] Widespread constraints on the civil aviation industry are likely also impacting defense aviation enterprises in Russia, but Russian officials are likely prioritizing military aviation production over the maintenance and production of civil aircraft.

Russian courts have reportedly considered over 4,000 criminal cases against Russian personnel for the unauthorized abandonment of their units since the start of partial mobilization. Russian opposition outlet Mediazona reported on November 24 that Russian courts considered 4,121 criminal cases for the unauthorized abandonment of a military unit and ruled in 3,740 cases as of November 21.[110] Mediazona reported that Russian courts have delivered sentences to roughly 100 Russian personnel a week on average since June 2023.[111]

Russian personnel from Russian federal subjects (regions) in Siberia and the Far East continue to represent a disproportionate number of Russian casualties in Ukraine. The BBC reported on November 24 that confirmed Russian military deaths per 10,000 males aged 16 to 61 in federal subjects of Russia show that the highest proportions of death happen in Siberian and Far Eastern regions.[112] The five highest proportions of military deaths occurred in the Tuva Republic (48.6 deaths), Republic of Buryatia (36.7 deaths), Nenets Autonomous Okrug (30 deaths), Altai Republic (26.5 deaths), and Transbaikal Krai (26.2 deaths).[113] St. Petersburg and Moscow have the lowest proportion of confirmed deaths with 2.5 and 1 per 10,000, respectively.[114]

Russian authorities continue to prevent the relatives of mobilized personnel from holding rallies calling for the demobilization of their relatives. Russian independent investigative outlet Verstka reported on November 23 that Russian authorities denied five applications for rallies by relatives of mobilized personnel in Moscow, Chelyabinsk, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, and Krasnoyarsk.[115] Russian opposition outlet SOTA reported that Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin denied an appeal to his office’s decision to refuse permits for a rally in support of demobilization by citing COVID-19 public health restrictions.[116] Russian opposition outlet Mobilization News reported that officials in Novosibirsk Oblast accepted demands from relatives of mobilized personnel that would cap mobilization periods at a year with rotations no less than every three months.[117] ISW cannot confirm that any Russian officials have accepted conditions from relatives to set forth terms for mobilization.

Russian Technological Adaptations (Russian objective: Introduce technological innovations to optimize systems for use in Ukraine)

Russian state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec debuted its new “Chistyulya” portable anti-drone system on November 24.[118] The device reportedly weighs eight kilograms (about 18 pounds) and can suppress drones within a one-kilometer radius.[119] Russian opposition outlet Vazhnye Istorii (iStories) reported that Chinese online retail service AliExpress sells a similar product with almost the same specifications.[120]

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

The Russian occupation authorities continue efforts to indoctrinate Ukrainian children into Russian national and cultural identities. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on November 23 that the Kremlin instructed occupation authorities to ensure that 70 percent of Ukrainian students in occupied areas participate in educational exchange programs in Russia.[121] The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that Russian occupation schools have started efforts aimed at indoctrinating as early as first grade.[122] The Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Militia claimed on November 24 that 248 children from occupied Luhansk Oblast returned from a trip to Moscow City that the Kremlin-funded pseudo-volunteer “Movement of the First” youth organization planned.[123] Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Head Denis Pushilin claimed on November 23 that over 60 students from occupied Donetsk Oblast are currently studying at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), an institute of higher education subordinate to the Russian Foreign Ministry.[124] Ukrainian Mariupol City Advisor Petro Andryushchenko published footage on November 23 showing Russian military personnel teaching children from occupied Zaporizhia Oblast basic military skills at an event in occupied Sevastopol, Crimea.[125]

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Nothing significant to report.

Significant activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus)

Belarusian military leadership reportedly hopes to increase the combat capabilities of Belarusian forces by equipping them with new drones and armored personnel carriers. Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets stated on November 24 that Belarus’ military leadership will equip Belarusian artillery brigades with Russian-produced “Supercam” S350 drones in early 2024.[126] Mashovets stated that Belarusian artillery brigades are currently equipped with quadcopter drones that do not provide adequate fire control and adjustment and that the Russian-produced drones have an increased range. Mashovets added that Belarusian forces are also testing the Belarusian-produced Volat V2 armored personnel carrier at the 227th Combined Arms Training Ground in Borisov, Belarus.

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

2. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 24, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-november-24-2023

Key Takeaways:

1. The Israel–Hamas four-day humanitarian pause went into effect on November 24. Israeli forces and Hamas have not claimed attacks in the Gaza Strip in accordance with the pause.
2. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad said it would adhere to the cessation of military activity in the Gaza Strip.
3. CTP-ISW has not verified reports of clashes or militia attacks in the West Bank since the Gaza Israel–Hamas pause in fighting went into effect.
4. Iranian-backed militias, including Lebanese Hezbollah (LH), have not conducted attacks into northern Israel since the pause in fighting went into effect. LH did not claim any attacks on November 24, nor did the IDF announce any launches from southern Lebanon into Israel.
5. The secretary general of Iranian-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Seyyed ol Shohada released statements that suggest the Islamic Resistance in Iraq will refrain from attacks on US forces during the Hamas-Israel pause in fighting. He also called upon the group to monitor the implementation of the pause in fighting and to act accordingly to support the Palestinian resistance.

IRAN UPDATE, NOVEMBER 24, 2023

Nov 24, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, November 24, 2023

Ashka Jhaveri, Andie Parry, Peter Mills, and Annika Ganzeveld

Information Cutoff: 2:00pm EST

The Iran Update provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities abroad that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests. It also covers events and trends that affect the stability and decision-making of the Iranian regime. The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) provides these updates regularly based on regional events. For more on developments in Iran and the region, see our interactive map of Iran and the Middle East.

Note: CTP and ISW have refocused the update to cover the Israel–Hamas war. The new sections address developments in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as noteworthy activity from Iran’s Axis of Resistance. We do not report in detail on war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We utterly condemn violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Click here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of Israeli ground operations. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Note: This update covers the 48 hours of activity from 2:00pm EST November 22 to 2:00pm EST November 24. CTP-ISW did not publish an update on Thursday, November 23, for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Key Takeaways:

1. The Israel–Hamas four-day humanitarian pause went into effect on November 24. Israeli forces and Hamas have not claimed attacks in the Gaza Strip in accordance with the pause.
2. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad said it would adhere to the cessation of military activity in the Gaza Strip.
3. CTP-ISW has not verified reports of clashes or militia attacks in the West Bank since the Gaza Israel–Hamas pause in fighting went into effect.
4. Iranian-backed militias, including Lebanese Hezbollah (LH), have not conducted attacks into northern Israel since the pause in fighting went into effect. LH did not claim any attacks on November 24, nor did the IDF announce any launches from southern Lebanon into Israel.
5. The secretary general of Iranian-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Seyyed ol Shohada released statements that suggest the Islamic Resistance in Iraq will refrain from attacks on US forces during the Hamas-Israel pause in fighting. He also called upon the group to monitor the implementation of the pause in fighting and to act accordingly to support the Palestinian resistance.

Gaza Strip

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Erode the will of the Israeli political establishment and public to launch and sustain a major ground operation into the Gaza Strip
• Degrade IDF material and morale around the Gaza Strip

The Israel–Hamas four-day humanitarian pause went into effect on November 24. Israeli forces and Hamas have not claimed attacks in the Gaza Strip in accordance with the pause. Israel and Hamas agreed to a prisoner/hostage swap but characterized it with different levels of detail on November 22.[1] The Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed on November 24 that 24 hostages were freed from the Gaza Strip, including 13 Israeli citizens, 10 Thai citizens, and one Filipino citizen.[2] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on November 22 that the deal allows Red Cross representatives to visit hostages in the Gaza Strip and deliver medicine.[3] Qatar confirmed that Israel freed 39 Palestinians from prison in return during the first stage of the swap.[4]

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson for Arab media said that Israeli forces will relocate during the temporary suspension of fire to sparsely populated areas inside the Gaza Strip.[5] The Israeli Southern Command commander approved plans for operational preparations at the ceasefire lines.[6] Israeli forces will continue administrative and logistical movements on the Netzarim axis and coastal road in the northern Gaza Strip.[7] The IDF spokesperson emphasized that “the war is not over yet” and warned civilians against returning to the northern Gaza Strip.[8] The Israeli Army Radio said Israel intercepted a rocket shortly after the ceasefire went into effect on November 24.[9] A Times of Israel military correspondent commented that a rocket launch after a truce begins is “tradition.”[10] Neither Hamas nor Israel has commented on any violations of the agreement since then.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) said it would adhere to the cessation of military activity in the Gaza Strip. The military spokesperson of the al Quds Brigades—the military wing of PIJ—said on November 23 that the militia is committed to the pause during the period of humanitarian truce.[11] The spokesperson said that the militia would release an unspecified number of its hostages.[12] The al Quds Brigades claimed that an Israeli hostage died due to Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip while in the militia’s custody on November 21.[13] The same Israeli hostage was part of the first 24 hostages Hamas released to Israel on November 24, however.[14] CTP-ISW has previously reported that Hamas and its allies attempted to prepare the information environment to blame Israel for the possible deaths of hostages in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas and PIJ thanked several Iranian-backed militias operating in the region for their support and attacks during the Israel–Hamas War. PIJ Secretary General Ziyad al Nakhaleh thanked Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) for its attacks on the northern Israeli border.[15] Nakhaleh also commended militias in Iraq for attacks on US bases in the region and the Houthis in Yemen for attacks into Israel.[16] Hamas Political Bureau Chairman Ismail Haniyeh similarly thanked LH, Iraqi militias, and the Houthis for their solidarity with Palestine.[17]

Israeli forces conducted clearing operations in the northern Gaza Strip before the pause in fighting began on November 24. The IDF said on November 23 that its forces operated on the outskirts of Jabalia and uncovered underground infrastructure.[18] Palestinian journalists and local media reported that Israeli forces cleared the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya on the night of November 23 after surrounding it.[19] Israel has repeatedly claimed that Hamas uses hospitals and civilian infrastructure for military activity such as hiding, including the Indonesian Hospital.[20] Israeli forces arrested the director of the al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on the grounds of allowing Hamas to use the hospital as a command headquarters.[21] Israel said that the director allowed Hamas to use the hospital’s electricity to strengthen the underground tunnel network.[22] The IDF destroyed a tunnel at al Shifa Hospital and shafts in the area of the medical complex.[23]

Palestinian militias attacked Israeli forces on the Israeli lines of advance across the northern Gaza Strip prior to the pause in fighting. The military spokesperson for al Qassem Brigades—the militant wing of Hamas—claimed on November 23 that its forces operated in Jabalia, Beit Hanoun, Sheikh Radwan, and Zaytoun neighborhoods, where Israeli forces have begun their stated advance into Gaza City.[24] The al Quds Brigades claimed it destroyed Israeli military vehicles in an unspecified location.[25] The militia fighters used tandem charge anti-tank rockets, rocket-propelled grenades (RPG), and anti-personnel weapons to attack Israeli forces and vehicles.[26] The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades—the militant wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)—claimed to fire mortars and rockets at Israeli forces on November 23.[27] CTP-ISW previously reported that the IDF faces a loose coalition of Palestinian militant groups in the Gaza Strip—not just Hamas.

Israeli forces conducted an airstrike on a Hamas naval force commander in Khan Younis on November 23. The IDF said that it conducted the airstrike with military and naval intelligence as well as Shin Bet guidance.[28] The IDF also destroyed the naval arm’s weapons depot, tunneling sites on the coast, and other military infrastructure.[29] The IDF has targeted Hamas’ naval capabilities throughout the Israel–Hamas war, which Hamas could use to target Israeli gas rigs and other infrastructure, according to an Israeli journalist.[30]

Palestinian militias continued indirect fire from the Gaza Strip into Israel prior to the pause in fighting. The al Qassem Brigades claimed it fired mortars and rockets at three Israeli military sites in southern Israel on November 23.[31] The al Quds Brigades claimed a mortar attack in southern Israel on November 23.[32]

NOTE: The IDF said that its forces are stationed along ceasefire lines across the Gaza Strip during the pause in fighting. CTP-ISW's map of Israeli clearing operations shows reported Israeli clearing operations and the claimed furthest Israeli advances. CTP-ISW will not map the shift in Israeli operating areas during the humanitarian pause.

Recorded reports of rocket attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.

Recorded reports of rocket attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.

West Bank

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Draw IDF assets and resources toward the West Bank and fix them there

CTP-ISW has not verified reports of clashes or militia attacks in the West Bank since the Gaza Israel–Hamas pause in fighting went into effect at 00:00 ET on November 24. Palestinian militia fighters engaged in six distinct clashes and conducted two IED attacks on Israeli forces on November 23 prior to the pause in fighting in the Gaza Strip.[33] Israeli forces arrested 10 Palestinians, including two Hamas associates, in overnight raids in West Bank towns. [34]

Palestinian militia fighters clashed with Israeli forces in two areas and detonated two IEDs during the November 22-23.[35] Israeli forces conducted raids into West Bank towns and arrested 40 Palestinians, three of whom were associated with Hamas.[36] The Ayyash Battalion conducted an indirect fire attack with a Qassem-1 rocket from Jenin at the Shaked settlement on November 23 before the temporary ceasefire.[37] The Ayyash Battalion conducted a similar rocket attack on August 15.[38]

Palestinians organized at least six demonstrations in response to the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails on November 24.[39] One of the demonstrations took place outside the Ofer Prison, from which the prisoners were released.[40] Palestinian media reported that Israeli forces opened fire into the crowd demonstrating in front of the prison, injuring several individuals.[41]

Some Palestinian militias reiterated calls for violence in the West Bank on November 23. The al Quds Brigades’ Tulkarm Battalion issued a military statement on November 23 that its soldiers are still engaged in the Battle of the Al-Aqsa Flood with full force on the front line.[42] It also claimed that the group’s weapons are deployed in all areas.[43] The Tulkarm Battalion took heavy causalities, including two commanders, in clashes with Israeli forces during a raid on November 22.[44] Al Qassem Brigades Spokesperson Abu Obaida called for confrontation with Israeli forces to escalate in the West Bank in a speech on November 23.[45] The al Qassem Brigades has repeatedly called for the mobilization of the West Bank to no great effect.[46]

This map is not an exhaustive depiction of clashes and demonstrations in the West Bank.

This map is not an exhaustive depiction of clashes and demonstrations in the West Bank.

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Draw IDF assets and resources toward northern Israel and fix them there
• Set conditions for successive campaigns into northern Israel

Iranian-backed militias, including Lebanese Hezbollah (LH), have not conducted attacks into northern Israel since the pause in fighting went into effect on November 24. LH did not claim any attacks on November 24, nor did the IDF announce any launches from southern Lebanon into Israel.[47]

Iranian-backed militias, including LH, conducted 24 attacks into Israel on November 23, the day before the pause in fighting began.[48] LH claimed 23 of the 24 attacks.[49] This is the largest number of attacks from Lebanon into Israel since November 2.[50] LH launched 48 rockets into northern Israel from southern Lebanon.[51] An IDF spokesperson said that some of those rockets failed and fell on civilian houses in southern Lebanon.[52] LH also fired a “Burkan” rocket, which carries a 300–500kg warhead, at an Israeli barracks on November 23.[53] Unspecified militants fired a surface-to-air missile at an Israeli aircraft over southern Lebanon on November 23, in a rare use of air defense in Lebanon.[54]

An Israeli airstrike killed the son of Muhammad Raad, the head of the LH political bloc, in southern Lebanon on November 22.[55] The IDF conducted multiple airstrikes targeting LH units conducting cross-border attacks, LH military infrastructure in southern Lebanon, and the LH Radwan Unit headquarters on November 23.[56] The IDF has not announced strikes into southern Lebanon since the pause in fighting began, however.

Iran and Axis of Resistance

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Demonstrate the capability and willingness of Iran and the Axis of Resistance to escalate against the United States and Israel on multiple fronts
• Set conditions to fight a regional war on multiple fronts

Abu Alaa al Walai—the secretary general of Iranian-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Seyyed ol Shohada—released statements that suggest the Islamic Resistance in Iraq will refrain from attacks on US forces during the Hamas-Israel pause in fighting. Walai framed the pause in fighting as a victory for Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance and stated that Iranian-backed Iraqi militias “forced the enemy to submit to the conditions of the resistance.”[57] Walai also called upon the Islamic Resistance in Iraq to monitor the implementation of the pause in fighting and to act accordingly to support the Palestinian resistance. [58]

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed responsibility for six attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria on November 23. The group has not claimed any attacks since the Hamas-Israel pause in fighting went into effect. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq and its affiliated groups have claimed 74 attacks against US forces in the Middle East since October 18.

• The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed two attacks on US forces in Syria on November 23. The group claimed it launched a rocket salvo at the US base Conoco Mission Support Site and launched a one-way attack drone targeting US forces near al Omar, in northeastern Syria.[59] The group has claimed six attacks on Conoco and three attacks on al Omar since October 18.
• The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed that it launched two waves of one-way attack drones targeting US forces at Ain Asad Airbase on November 23.[60] The group has claimed 21 attacks on Ain Asad Airbase since October 18.
• The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed that it launched two waves of one-way attack drones targeting US forces near Erbil airport on November 23.[61] The group has claimed seven attacks on Erbil airport since October 18.

The US destroyer Thomas Hudner shot down multiple one-way attack drones that the Houthis launched from Yemen on November 23.[62] The IDF intercepted a Houthi-fired cruise missile south of Eilat on November 22.[63] The Houthi military spokesmen stated on November 22 that the movement would continue carrying out military operations targeting Israel until there was a ceasefire in both Gaza and the West Bank.[64] The Houthis have not launched any missiles or drones towards Israel since the Israel–Hamas ceasefire went into effect on November 24.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq al Dhaferin Group disavowed its claimed attacks against US bases in Iraq and stated that the group was a disinformation operation.[65] CTP-ISW will remove the Dhaferin Group’s three claimed attacks from our data layer. CTP-ISW cannot assess the purpose of the Dhaferin group’s disinformation operation.

Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian discussed the four-day humanitarian pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas with senior Lebanese, LH, Hamas, and Qatari officials on November 22–23. Abdollahian met with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati and LH Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut on November 22 and 23, respectively.[66] Abdollahian emphasized the need for a “complete ceasefire” during his meeting with Mikati. Abdollahian additionally framed the agreement between Israel and Hamas to pause fighting as a sign of Israel’s “helplessness” during his meeting with Nasrallah. Abdollahian met with Hamas Political Bureau Chairman Ismail Haniyeh and Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman bin Jassim al Thani in Doha on November 23.[67] Abdollahian’s November 23 visit to Doha marks his third trip to Qatar since the start of the Israel–Hamas war on October 7.[68] Abdollahian and Haniyeh claimed that the United States and Israel were “forced” to accept a pause in fighting due to their failure to achieve military successes in the Gaza Strip. Haniyeh thanked Iran for its “special efforts and support” for a pause in fighting and described the pause as a “political victory” for the Axis of Resistance.

Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian is attempting to pressure Israel to extend the four-day pause in fighting by warning that Israel’s failure to do so will precipitate an expansion and intensification of the war. Abdollahian warned during his November 23 meeting with al Thani that “the conditions in the region will intensify" if Israel continues its attacks on the Gaza Strip after the end of the four-day pause.[69] Abdollahian made similar warnings in an interview with LH-affiliated al Mayadeen and in a post on X (Twitter) on November 23.[70] Abdollahian has repeatedly warned about the potential expansion of the conflict since October 7. Abdollahian warned on October 16, for example, that resistance groups would take “preemptive action” against Israel "in the coming hours.”[71] The Axis of Resistance notably did not follow through on Abdollahian’s threat in the hours after he issued it.

Iranian state media claimed on November 24 that Israel violated its agreement with Hamas to pause fighting. Raisi administration-affiliated IRNA claimed that the IDF violated the agreement by “attacking” Gazan civilians attempting to return to the northern Gaza Strip.[72] Hamas did not accuse Israel of violating the agreement on November 24.

3. There’s a big reason Biden is losing younger voters: Israel-Palestine

I offer this not for the political partisan aspect but instead because it illustrates one of the (many) divides in our country and the lack of understanding of history and national security among the younger generations (as a result of co-option by TikTok among other causes such as pundits like thi sone)

There’s a big reason Biden is losing younger voters: Israel-Palestine | Moira Donegan

The US president’s hawkish support for Israel has alienated younger voters, progressives, and Arab and Muslim Americans

The Guardian · by Moira Donegan · November 23, 2023

The 2024 presidential contest should not be close. Joe Biden’s opponent, Donald Trump, is a bigot, a liar and a crook, with dozens of credible sexual assault allegations, a disastrous track record of enabling sadistic racism in both his policy and his rhetoric, a frank admission of his own authoritarian ambitions, and 92 pending felony charges.

The Republican party that the former president leads has become beholden to a small but extremely powerful base of voters with wildly unpopular social views, particularly regarding abortion – views that have driven the Republicans to election losses in virtually all major contests since the summer of 2022. Voters hate them, and reject their vision for the US; few politicians have ever been so unpopular as Trump is, and few political platforms have ever seemed so determined to alienate and anger voters as the Republican party’s.

Billionaires are lining up to eagerly fund Trump’s anti-democratic agenda | Robert Reich

Read more

Yet Joe Biden could lose. If the election were held today, it’s likely that he would. Much was made of a New York Times/Siena poll, published earlier this month, that showed the US president losing to Trump in five key swing states. The Biden campaign largely downplayed the numbers, shrugging that the election is far away.

Now, a new NBC poll also shows Biden in dire straits, with his approval rating falling to the lowest it has ever been: 40%. The poll found that he was faring especially poorly with Democrats and young voters, large numbers of whom are dissatisfied with his handling of an issue that is exposing a growing divide within the party: Israel’s assault on Palestinians in Gaza following the October 7 Hamas attack.

From nearly the first moments of Israel’s war, the Biden administration has staunchly supported its Middle East ally, and allowed little public daylight between their own official statements and those of Israel’s rightwing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The aid and arms deals continue to flow to Israel unconditioned, even as Israeli bombings have now killed more than 14,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including more than 5,000 children and displaced upwards of a million people.

The hawkish support for Israel’s war has been intense, with rhetoric from the White House often appearing indifferent or outright hostile to concerns about the deaths of Palestinian civilians. On 10 October, Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre described calls for a ceasefire as “wrong”, “repugnant” and “disgraceful”. “There are not two sides here,” Jean-Pierre said, signaling that the White House would not brook any concern for Palestinian lives.

In an especially disturbing moment, Biden himself cast doubt on the official death toll from the Gaza health ministry – saying on 27 October that he had “no confidence in the number the Palestinians are using” – even though figures from this agency have been previously deemed reliable by the United Nations and international human rights agencies. The implication seemed to be that the Palestinians were cynically overstating the number of their dead, and that the real number was some smaller, supposedly more acceptable figure.

Since he made that comment, the Palestinian casualties in Gaza are said to have nearly doubled. It’s unclear whether Biden believes it.

As the corpses pile up and Gaza’s buildings tumble down, the Biden administration has seemed to hedge on this unqualified pro-Israel, pro-war stance, at least at the margins. People identified as “administration officials” have given off-the-record quotes expressing “frustration” and “concern” with the Israelis’ determination to press forward with a Gaza invasion without any long-term plan for the region. Asked if the Israelis were making any real effort to minimize civilian casualties, the US national security council spokesman, John Kirby, said: “We have seen some indications that there are efforts being applied in certain situations to try to minimize, but I don’t want to overstate that.”

Alon Pinkas of Haaretz interpreted those remarks as a signal of a growing distaste for the Israeli operation within the Biden US security state. This is what amounts to distancing from the Biden administration when it comes to Israel’s operation in Gaza: hedged off-the-record statements about long-term strategy, and a single response to a question of whether Israel is acting as if it cares about preserving innocent Palestinian lives that amounts to a coded and heavily euphemistic “no”.

That’s the official line. But there are growing indications that the Democratic party is heading for a revolt over the issue. Young voters are not the only ones who are angry. Arab and Muslim American voters are voicing outrage at Biden’s stance, endangering his re-election prospects nationwide but especially in the crucial battleground state of Michigan, which is home to a large Muslim American voting bloc.

Even within the party bureaucracy itself, there are signs of trouble. The state department has fielded an unusual number of internal complaint memos about US policy over the issue; large numbers of Democratic congressional staffers joined a Washington DC protest calling for a ceasefire.

The House voted to censure representative Rashida Tlaib, of Michigan, the only Palestinian American in Congress, over her calls for Palestinian liberation – particularly her use of the phrase “from the river to the sea”, which Tlaib explained was a call for peace, freedom, dignity and equality for all in the region, but which her detractors alleged was an antisemitic call for Jewish elimination. (Such has been the nature of much of the debate around the conflict in the halls of US power: arguments over rhetoric have frequently distracted from substantive issues of policy.)

But that did not stop a growing number of her fellow Democratic members of Congress from joining her in calls for a ceasefire. The White House may be calling them “repugnant”, but the pro-ceasefire camp in Congress looks more and more like the future of the Democratic party: it is younger, it is further to the left, and it is majority non-white.

Handwringing about Biden’s age and its relevance is overstated. But few issues have done more to highlight the problem of gerontocracy within the Democratic party, and of the growing generational gap in US politics, than this internal dispute over Israel-Palestine. In a way, the divide between Biden and his loyalists on the one hand, and the pro-ceasefire left and Democratic base on the other, might be a matter of historical references.

Biden comes from a generation that came of age much closer in time to the Holocaust; he is in that sense perhaps more acutely aware of Jewish vulnerability – and certainly more convinced that Zionism’s nationalist project can mitigate it – than younger people are. The younger staffers, state department functionaries, members of Congress, and voters, meanwhile, are not thinking of the second world War, but of the war on terror; of September 11, and the disastrous, brutal and ultimately futile wars of revenge that the US fought in its aftermath.

Each side is proceeding from what they feel are the definitive lessons of their era – the 20th century for Biden, and the 21st century for the pro-ceasefire camp. The results of the next election may well depend on whether they can find each other in time.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

The Guardian · by Moira Donegan · November 23, 2023

4. Disinformation campaigns are undermining democracy. Here’s how we can fight back

I hate to beat a dead horse but we should keep in mind this excerpt from the 2017 National Security Strategy. The responsibility is ours as citizens.

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Access NSS HERE

Disinformation campaigns are undermining democracy. Here’s how we can fight back

theconversation.com · by John Cook

Misinformation is debated everywhere and has justifiably sparked concerns. It can polarise the public, reduce health-protective behaviours such as mask wearing and vaccination, and erode trust in science. Much of misinformation is spread not by accident but as part of organised political campaigns, in which case we refer to it as disinformation.

But there is a more fundamental, subversive damage arising from misinformation and disinformation that is discussed less often.

It undermines democracy itself. In a recent paper published in Current Opinion in Psychology, we highlight two important aspects of democracy that disinformation works to erode.

The integrity of elections

The first of the two aspects is confidence in how power is distributed – the integrity of elections in particular.

In the United States, recent polls have shown nearly 70% of Republicans question the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. This is a direct result of disinformation from Donald Trump, the loser of that election.

Democracy depends on the people knowing that power will be transferred peacefully if an incumbent loses an election. The “big lie” that the 2020 US election was stolen undermines that confidence.

On January 6 2021, Trump supporters at the United States Capitol tried to stop a Congress session that was certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. Johnny Silvercloud/Shutterstock

Depending on reliable information

The second important aspect of democracy is this – it depends on reliable information about the evidence for various policy options.

One reason we trust democracy as a system of governance is the idea that it can deliver “better” decisions and outcomes than autocracy, because the “wisdom of crowds” outperforms any one individual. But the benefits of this wisdom vanish if people are pervasively disinformed.

Disinformation about climate change is a well-documented example. The fossil fuel industry understood the environmental consequences of burning fossil fuels at least as early as the 1960s. Yet they spent decades funding organisations that denied the reality of climate change. This disinformation campaign has delayed climate mitigation by several decades – a case of public policy being thwarted by false information.

We’ve seen a similar misinformation trajectory in the COVID-19 pandemic, although it happened in just a few years rather than decades. Misinformation about COVID varied from claims that 5G towers rather than a virus caused the disease, to casting doubt on the effectiveness of lockdowns or the safety of vaccines.

The viral surge of misinformation led to the World Health Organisation introducing a new term – infodemic – to describe the abundance of low-quality information and conspiracy theories.

A common denominator of misinformation

Strikingly, some of the same political operatives involved in denying climate change have also used their rhetorical playbook to promote COVID disinformation. What do these two issues have in common?

One common denominator is suspicion of government solutions to societal problems. Whether it’s setting a price on carbon to mitigate climate change, or social distancing to slow the spread of COVID, contrarians fear the policies they consider to be an attack on personal liberties.

An ecosystem of conservative and free-market think tanks exists to deny any science that, if acted on, has the potential to infringe on “liberty” through regulations.

There is another common attribute that ties together all organised disinformation campaigns – whether about elections, climate change or vaccines. It’s the use of personal attacks to compromise people’s integrity and credibility.

Election workers in the US were falsely accused of committing fraud by those who fraudulently claimed the election had been “stolen” from Trump.

Climate scientists have been subject to harassment campaigns, ranging from hate mail to vexatious complaints and freedom-of-information requests. Public health officials such as Anthony Fauci have been prominent targets of far-right attacks.

The new frontier in attacks on scientists

It is perhaps unsurprising there is now a new frontier in the attacks on scientists and others who seek to uphold the evidence-based integrity of democracy. It involves attacks and allegations of bias against misinformation researchers.

Such attacks are largely driven by Republican politicians, in particular those who have endorsed Trump’s baseless claims about the 2020 election.

The misinformers are seeking to neutralise research focused on their own conduct by borrowing from the climate denial and anti-vaccination playbook. Their campaign has had a chilling effect on research into misinformation.

How do we move on from here?

Psychological research has contributed to legislative efforts by the European Union, such as the Digital Services Act or Code of Practice, which seek to make democracies more resilient against misinformation and disinformation.

Research has also investigated how to boost the public’s resistance to misinformation. One such method is inoculation, which rests on the idea people can be protected against being misled if they learn about the rhetorical techniques used to mislead them.

In a recent inoculation campaign involving brief educational videos shown to 38 million citizens in Eastern Europe, people’s ability to recognise misleading rhetoric about Ukrainian refugees was frequently improved.

It remains to be seen whether these initiatives and research findings will be put to use in places like the US, where one side of politics appears more threatened by research into misinformation than by the risks to democracy arising from misinformation itself.

We’d like to acknowledge our colleagues Ullrich Ecker, Naomi Oreskes, Jon Roozenbeek and Sander van der Linden who coauthored the journal article on which this article is based.

theconversation.com · by John Cook

5. The frantic CIA, Mossad, Qatar, and Egypt efforts behind the Hamas-Israel truce deal

The frantic CIA, Mossad, Qatar, and Egypt efforts behind the Hamas-Israel truce deal | News24

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• The US has detailed some of five weeks of "excruciating" work behind the Hamas-Israel deal.
• The heads of Mossad and the CIA, and Qatar and Egypt, were deeply involved, as was US President Joe Biden personally.
• Hamas had offered to release up to 50 hostages since late October, but initially could not come up with a list.

A secret cell headed by CIA and Mossad chiefs, and multiple contacts between US President Joe Biden and leaders of Israel, Qatar, and Egypt underpinned an "excruciating" five weeks resulting in the truce agreement, a US official said.

In a detailed account to reporters by a senior US official speaking on condition of anonymity, a picture has emerged of a tense international effort beset by sudden communication cutoffs with Hamas, disputes over hostage lists, and safety concerns on the ground.

The US official said the "extremely excruciating five-week process" of negotiations began with a call from Qatar to Washington and the Israelis, in a bid to free some of the hostages snatched by Palestinian militants during their 7 October raids on Israel.

On Wednesday, Israel and Hamas announced a truce deal allowing the release of at least 50 hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Nurit Cooper and Yocheved Lifshitz, the second set of Hamas hostages to be released, arrive in Tel Aviv by helicopter, on 23 October 2023. (Photo by Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images)

Qatar, which brokered the agreement, "asked that a cell be established to work on the issue very carefully, very secretly, together with the Israelis", the US official said.

Qatar hosts a Hamas political office, and has behind-the-scenes diplomatic links with Israel. It is also home to the largest US military base in the region.

Biden administration officials were having "daily, sometimes hourly, senior level of engagement with Qatar, with Egypt and with Israel on the issue of the hostages," according to the official.

The US president himself entered the talks, holding Zoom calls with families of victims on 13 October, followed by his visit to Israel five days later.

The release of two American citizens on 20 October was seen as "a pilot process" for the overall negotiations, the official said.

"We were able to track, kind of in real time, the (hostages) as they moved from Gaza, ultimately across the border and into freedom," the American said.

Their safe return "gave us some confidence that... Qatar really could deliver through the cell that we had established."

Biden 'engaged daily'

Soon Mossad director David Barnea and CIA chief William Burns were also deeply involved.

A flurry of phone calls between Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu followed on 20, 22, 23 and 25 October.

Biden "was engaged daily as extremely difficult talks and proposals were traded back and forth," the official said, noting that discussions centered around transportation corridors, surveillance and timeframes.

Hamas came under intense pressure to produce a list of hostages.

Communication proved difficult as messages had to pass from Doha or Cairo into Gaza and back.

By 25 October, Hamas was saying it could guarantee about 50 releases in the first phase, but their formal list came up short: just 10 names.

On 9 November, the CIA's Burns rushed to Doha to help thrash out a deal text, but the identification of hostages remained a sticking point.

Biden called the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, on 12 November and "made very clear that where we were was not enough," the US official said.

Shortly afterwards, "Hamas produced the identifying criteria for the 50 hostages."

As Israel's bombing of Gaza intensified and civilian deaths soared, Biden called Netanyahu on 14 November urging him to "move forward with this deal," and the prime minister ultimately agreed, the official said.

But suddenly, with a deal in sight that day, "everything stalled again," the US official said. Hamas had broken off talks.

Biden called the Qatari emir on 17 November, according to the official, to make clear the deal "had to close."

Two days later, the Americans met with Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel and received assurances from Hamas "closing the gaps," the US official said.

"For the first time (they) really see this coming together."

6. Happy but wary, displaced Palestinians try to head home to north Gaza

Happy but wary, displaced Palestinians try to head home to north Gaza

Reuters · by Arafat Barbakh

• Summary
• Four-day Israel-Hamas truce starts in Gaza
• Some Palestinians emerge from shelters, head home
• U.N. says two-thirds of Gaza residents are homeless

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Many joyful but wary Palestinians emerged from makeshift shelters at the start of the four-day Gaza ceasefire on Friday to begin the long journey back to their homes.

In the southern town of Khan Younis, which has been housing thousands of displaced families including from heavily bombarded northern Gaza, streets were packed with people on the move.

Hundreds were heading towards the north, despite Israel dropping leaflets warning them not to go back to an area it described as still being a dangerous war zone.

Men, women and children carried their belongings in plastic bags, shopping bags and rucksacks. One family sat on the back of cart piled high with bags and pulled by a donkey.

Some people looked up to the sky as if to check they were not in danger of attack from Israeli warplanes.

"I am now very happy, I feel at ease," said Ahmad Wael, trudging along with a large mattress on his head.

"I am going back to my home, our hearts are rested, especially that there is a four-day official ceasefire, better than returning to live in tents. I am very tired from sitting there, without any food or water. There (at home) we can live, we drink tea, make bread using fire, and the oven."

The United Nations says around two-thirds of Gaza's 2.3 million residents are homeless, including most of the population of Gaza City and the rest of the northern half of the enclave, reduced to a wasteland by Israel's assault.

Khan Younis, the main city in the south, has also not proved safe. Many of its buildings are now in rubble, destroyed by Israeli strikes in its campaign in response to the deadly Hamas attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7.

Displaced Palestinians return to their homes as they walk near houses destroyed in an Israeli strike during the conflict, amid the temporary truce between Hamas and Israel, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip November 24, 2023. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa Acquire Licensing Rights

"Honestly it is a nice feeling for one to be able to go back home after all this time, to see their families and loved ones, but we are still hesitant and afraid," said Souad Abou Nasirat, a Khan Younis resident.

"A four-day truce is not enough, those (in the north) of Gaza, may God give them patience. We're worried about them."

U.N. agencies voiced hope that the truce would allow aid to flow to northern Gaza for the first time in weeks.

SOME PEOPLE STAY

Alaa Al Moubachar, sitting outside a Khan Younis medical centre with her children, said the neighbourhood where she lived in Gaza City had been destroyed.

"I see people coming and going, coming and going, and I swear my soul is crying, my heart is crying," she said. "I just want to go back, even if just for an hour to see my house and the neighbourhood, to see Gaza (City) and what happened to it."

"We went out with nothing, we only took some summer clothes," she said. "We are (housed) in schools, it is cold, windy and rainy and we don't have any winter things or anything. We are mentally exhausted. We stand in queues for the bathroom, we stand in queues for the bakery. Our lives have become very, very hard."

Some Palestinians in Khan Younis say they will wait until the end of the war before returning home.

"Even if I went back home, I fear I (would) go and there would be another attack on the area and I (would) die. I will only go back there once the war is over," said Ahmad Kabalan, 80, whose home is east of Khan Younis.

"I don't trust what Israel promises, I don't have faith in them, not even for an hour. What if there would be artillery shelling? I don't believe in this ceasefire. God knows what will happen, whether we will live or die."

Writing by Timothy Heritage, Editing by Peter Graff

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Reuters · by Arafat Barbakh

7. Russian and Chinese executives discuss Russia-Crimea tunnel project

Excerpts:

For Putin, Crimea has symbolic significance that makes it “important to connect it to Mother Russia,” said Maria Shagina, an expert on Russia and Western sanctions at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Over the past nine years, Russia has made Crimea dependent on water, power and communications lines tethered to Russia. A tunnel, Shagina said, would be “a physical extension of the narrative” Putin espouses.

For its part, China would probably insist on at least partial ownership of the tunnel, adding to its expanding inventory of global port and transportation infrastructure, experts said. China could also finance the project and extract payment either in tolls or from Russian oil and gas exports.

Subterranean work could proceed at minimal risk, engineering experts said, but the project would still put thousands of employees, costly pieces of equipment and sprawling construction sites within reach of Ukrainian missiles.

Because of the threat of attack, experts said, Russia and China would probably not be able to use newer construction methods involving giant dredging vessels on the water’s surface. Instead, they would have little choice but to use traditional tunnel-boring technology.

“That would be very difficult to sabotage unless you attack the entrances,” said an engineer who has worked on several of the world’s largest tunnel projects. Building a tunnel across the Kerch Strait would likely cost at least $5 billion and require Russia’s military to protect “not only the strait but the production sites you need” on shore, he said. “It is a high-risk operation.”

Russian and Chinese executives discuss Russia-Crimea tunnel project

By Greg Miller and Mary Ilyushina

November 24, 2023 at 2:00 a.m. EST

The Washington Post · by Greg Miller · November 24, 2023

KYIV — Russian and Chinese business executives with government ties have held secret discussions on plans to build an underwater tunnel connecting Russia to Crimea in hopes of establishing a transportation route that would be protected from attacks by Ukraine, according to communications intercepted by Ukraine’s security services.

The talks, which included meetings in late October, were triggered by mounting Russian concerns over the security of an 11-mile bridge across the Kerch Strait that has served as a key logistics line for the Russian military but has been bombed twice by Ukraine and remains a vulnerable war target.

The negotiations underscore Russia’s determination to maintain its grip on Crimea, a peninsula that it annexed illegally in 2014, as well as Moscow’s growing dependence on China as a source of global support.

Constructing a tunnel near the existing bridge would face enormous obstacles, according to U.S. officials and engineering experts who said work of such magnitude, probably costing billions of dollars and taking years to complete, has never been attempted in a war zone.

But despite questions about the viability of the plan, experts said, Russia has clear reasons for pursuing it. Having failed to achieve a decisive victory in the war, said Alexander Gabuev, an expert on Moscow-Beijing relations at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, Russia “faces [the] risk that Ukraine will try to disrupt the Kerch bridge for many years to come.”

The project would also pose political and financial risks for China, which has never officially recognized Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and whose companies could become ensnared in economic sanctions that the United States and the European Union have imposed on Moscow.

Nevertheless, intercepted emails indicate that one of China’s largest construction companies has signaled its willingness to participate. The messages were provided to The Washington Post by Ukrainian officials hoping to expose the project and China’s potential involvement. The authenticity of the messages was corroborated by other information separately obtained by The Post, including corporate registration files showing that a Russian-Chinese consortium involving individuals named in the emails was recently formed in Crimea.

Emails circulated among consortium officials in recent weeks mention meetings with Chinese delegates in Crimea. One dated Oct. 4 describes the Chinese Railway Construction Corporation, CRCC, as “ready to ensure the construction of railway and road construction projects of any complexity in the Crimean region.”

CRCC, a state-owned company, built many of the largest road and rail networks in China and has established substantial ties to Russia in recent years through projects including an extension of the Moscow subway system that was completed in 2021. The company did not respond to requests for comment.

A senior executive at the Russian-Chinese Consortium, based in the Crimean city of Sevastopol, refused to answer questions about the tunnel project when reached by a Post reporter.

Vladimir Kalyuzhny, a Russian businessman who is identified in documents as the general director of the consortium, dismissed the matter as “a lot of hot air” before declaring that he would not provide any information to the “enemy media” and abruptly ending the call.

His response was at odds with how the proposal has been depicted in internal emails. In a message sent last month to a Russian official who serves as one of Crimea’s main representatives in Moscow, Kalyuzhny said he had “a letter from our Chinese partners about the readiness of one of the largest companies in China, CRCC, to participate as a general contractor in the construction of a tunnel under the Kerch Strait.”

The email was addressed to Georgiy Muradov, who is listed as the permanent representative of the Republic of Crimea to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Muradov, who previously served as Russia’s ambassador to Cyprus, did not respond to requests for comment.

Ukraine has declared the recovery of Crimea as one of its principal war objectives, and is in the midst of a faltering counteroffensive that was aimed at cutting off Russia’s logistics lines to the peninsula.

The tunnel proposal comes as Russia is pushing ahead with other infrastructure projects in territories it has occupied since 2014 or seized since last year’s invasion. Recent satellite images have shown new sections of rail along the Sea of Azov coastline, part of an occupied land route that also connects Russia to Crimea.

The construction involves companies associated with Arkady Rotenberg, a childhood friend of Putin’s who amassed enormous wealth through Kremlin-backed projects including the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. The 71-year-old oligarch has acquired extensive property holdings in Crimea since its illegal annexation, when he was first placed under sanction by the U.S. Treasury Department, security officials said. His construction company, Stroygazmontazh, also served as the lead contractor on the Kerch bridge.

The consortium’s registration files show that six of the organization’s nine founding directors are not named in the public filings, which is allowed under Russian laws designed to protect targets of Western sanctions.

The emails also reveal Chinese efforts to maintain secrecy. One emphasizes that CRCC will participate only under a “strict provision of complete confidentiality” and that the company’s name will be replaced by “another, unaffiliated legal entity” on any contracts. Another email mentions a Chinese bank willing to “convert its dollar funds into rubles for their transfer to Crimea to fund [consortium] projects.”

The emails cite consortium discussions with a CRCC executive identified as Xu Huaxiang, a name that appears to match that of a Chinese national who is listed as a vice president and deputy general manager of the international arm of the company. Attempts to reach Huaxiang were not successful.

Given the risks of sanctions and sabotage, U.S. officials and experts expressed surprise that CRCC would risk involvement.

“It would be odd that either a consortium of major PRC firms or the government would support such a project,” said a U.S. official involved in sanctions policy, referring to the People’s Republic of China. “The project would seem like a pretty easy target for Ukrainians to destroy.” The official, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the subject.

Experts on major international transportation projects said that constructing a tunnel beneath the Kerch Strait is technically feasible and that China has the necessary expertise and equipment. Still, they said, it would be a huge undertaking, comparable in scale to a tunnel between Denmark and Germany that has been under construction for eight years, is projected to cost more than $8.7 billion, and would be the longest tunnel in Europe when it is completed near the end of the decade.

Experts said that it is unlikely that a Kerch tunnel could be completed in time to aid Russia in its war effort, but that Moscow may see it as a longer-term investment — one meant to provide a secure link to territory that could be contested for decades. The project’s backers appear to be worried about the economic atrophy that could take place without safe passage.

For Putin, Crimea has symbolic significance that makes it “important to connect it to Mother Russia,” said Maria Shagina, an expert on Russia and Western sanctions at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Over the past nine years, Russia has made Crimea dependent on water, power and communications lines tethered to Russia. A tunnel, Shagina said, would be “a physical extension of the narrative” Putin espouses.

For its part, China would probably insist on at least partial ownership of the tunnel, adding to its expanding inventory of global port and transportation infrastructure, experts said. China could also finance the project and extract payment either in tolls or from Russian oil and gas exports.

Subterranean work could proceed at minimal risk, engineering experts said, but the project would still put thousands of employees, costly pieces of equipment and sprawling construction sites within reach of Ukrainian missiles.

Because of the threat of attack, experts said, Russia and China would probably not be able to use newer construction methods involving giant dredging vessels on the water’s surface. Instead, they would have little choice but to use traditional tunnel-boring technology.

“That would be very difficult to sabotage unless you attack the entrances,” said an engineer who has worked on several of the world’s largest tunnel projects. Building a tunnel across the Kerch Strait would likely cost at least $5 billion and require Russia’s military to protect “not only the strait but the production sites you need” on shore, he said. “It is a high-risk operation.”

The Washington Post · by Greg Miller · November 24, 2023

8. ‘Zoom fatigue’ may take toll on the brain and the heart, researchers say

Uh Oh. More screeding questions for our physicals. Do you smoke, drink alcohol, or Zoom? How many drinks do you have per week? How many hours of Zoom sessions do you conduct per week?

Now we have a reason to run down a Zoom invitation: bad for my heart and brain.

‘Zoom fatigue’ may take toll on the brain and the heart, researchers say

Videoconference participants in a small study reported feeling tired, drowsy and ‘fed up,’ and testing revealed brain wave data backing that up

By Erin Blakemore

November 25, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EST

The Washington Post · by Erin Blakemore · November 25, 2023

Does a session on Zoom, FaceTime or Microsoft Teams leave you drained and listless?

You’re not the only one: Since videoconferencing skyrocketed in popularity with the early days of the pandemic, use of such technology has soared. So have anecdotal accounts of a phenomenon some call “Zoom fatigue” — a unique state of exhaustion reported by those who feel wrung out after video calls.

A recent brain-monitoring study supports the phenomenon, finding a connection between videoconferencing in educational settings and physical symptoms linked to fatigue.

The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, looked for physiological signs of fatigue in 35 students attending lectures on engineering at an Austrian university. Half of the class attended the 50-minute lecture via videoconference in a nearby lab and a face-to-face lecture the following week, while the other half attended first in person, then online.

Participants were monitored with electroencephalogram (EEG) and electrocardiogram (ECG) instruments that recorded electrical activity in the brain and their heart rhythms. They also participated in surveys about their mood and fatigue levels.

The researchers searched for physical changes correlated with mental fatigue, including distinctive brain waves, reduced heart rate and hints the nervous system might be trying to compensate for growing exhaustion during the lecture.

There were “notable” differences between the in-person and online groups, the researchers write. Video participants’ fatigue mounted over the course of the session, and their brain states showed they were struggling to pay attention. The groups’ moods varied, too, with in-person participants reporting they felt livelier, happier and more active, and online participants saying they felt tired, drowsy and “fed up.”

Overall, the researchers write, the study offers evidence of the physical toll of videoconferencing and suggests that it “should be considered as a complement to face-to-face interaction, but not as a substitute.”

They say the research should be replicated in business settings and homes to get a more accurate sense of how such sessions affect participants, calling for further studies that include more portions of the brain and a broader participant base.

The research was conducted as part of “Technostress in Organizations,” an Austrian-funded project devoted to collecting hard evidence about how technology affects human bodies and brains. Other studies published over the course of the project covered “digital detoxes,” workplace interruptions and social network use.

The Washington Post · by Erin Blakemore · November 25, 2023

9. Opinion : In softening on China, West might be trying to avoid a nuclear arms race

Intelligence informing (or influencing) policy?

Excerpts:

Lastly, and in an even greater surprise, was the appointment of Britain’s former prime minister David Cameron as the new foreign secretary on November 13. There has been much speculation about why the current British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, would bring Cameron back into the cabinet after he spent several years outside politics.

Among those reasons is likely to be that Cameron made high-level international contact when in office, not the least of which was crafting the “golden era” of relations with China, even having a pint of beer with Xi at a British pub.

Needless to say, one may argue that all the above are a series of unconnected coincidences. Yet, the collective West, as it is often referred to nowadays, has acted in unprecedented unison over the last year and a half in meeting great geopolitical challenges.

In this regard, the new Pentagon report on China’s substantial upscaling of its nuclear stockpile, no matter whether it is accurate or not, may have been all that was necessary to prompt Western decision-makers to act swiftly, and in concert, thus averting any escalation of geopolitical tensions that might imperil the West’s still dominant global position.

Opinion : In softening on China, West might be trying to avoid a nuclear arms race

• Weeks before Xi Jinping met various leaders in San Francisco, the US released an estimate of China’s nuclear stockpile
• Now, the EU and UK seem to be holding out an olive branch to China, especially with the surprise appointment of David Cameron as foreign secretary

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Bob Savic

+ FOLLOWPublished: 4:30pm, 25 Nov, 2023

By Bob Savic South China Morning Post3 min

November 25, 2023

View Original

In a much-publicised report issued on October 19, the US Department of Defence estimated China’s stock of operational nuclear warheads to be at 500, and exceeding 1,000 by 2030. This contrasts with its 2020 report that estimated a stockpile “in the low-200s”, which would grow to about 400 by the end of the decade.

Beijing has consistently dismissed these reports, asserting they are used to serve Washington’s strategic interest of portraying China as a threat to global security.

Irrespective of whether the reports are accurate or fictional, the West has probably decided to err on the side of caution and accept the findings. There has been a discernible shift as Western governments actively seek areas of mutual cooperation with Beijing.

Ultimately, this turn of events probably reflects Western concern over a nuclear arms race fuelled by dangerously destabilising great-power rivalry between China and the United States, at a time when the West is grappling with so-called fatigue in its conflict with Russia over Ukraine.

Further, there is the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza. The major Western powers’ failure to back a non-binding UN resolution calling for a truce, which was supported by China and the vast majority of non-Western states, has opened a yawning rift between the West and the Global South.

In any case, one cannot rule out both factors in the West’s approach to China. The most high-profile rapprochement with China was clearly reached when Chinese President Xi Jinping met US President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the Apec summit in San Francisco.

As widely reported, the meeting concluded with an agreement to resume military-to-military communications, deemed vital in the context of increasingly knife-edge naval and air activities, by both sides, in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea.

Also on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, Xi held talks with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for the first time in a year.

In San Francisco, Beijing and Tokyo agreed to launch high-level talks in advancing their mutual economic interests, as well as discussions about export controls on critical minerals. More broadly, they reaffirmed a 2008 commitment to advancing strategic and mutually beneficial relations, which covers both economic and security concerns.

At the summit in San Francisco, Xi also met Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr. Notably, the Marcos administration has aligned itself more closely with the US and the West than the previous Rodrigo Duterte administration, which pivoted towards China.

Marcos said he and Xi agreed that geopolitical issues should not be at the forefront of their bilateral ties.

Other leaders, further afield, may also be seeking to offer Beijing an olive branch. In early November, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said a summit with the Chinese government would take place in China in December, the first in-person European Union-China summit in four years.

China’s climate ambitions send an important message to the world

The EU leader revealed that four intensive high-level dialogues had taken place before the upcoming summit. Even so, her somewhat surprising announcement – given that Beijing had announced neither a date nor a venue for the meeting at the time – may be indicative of an easing of the EU’s recent combative approach towards China.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, delivers her state of the union address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, on September 13. Photo: Bloomberg

Lastly, and in an even greater surprise, was the appointment of Britain’s former prime minister David Cameron as the new foreign secretary on November 13. There has been much speculation about why the current British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, would bring Cameron back into the cabinet after he spent several years outside politics.

Among those reasons is likely to be that Cameron made high-level international contact when in office, not the least of which was crafting the “golden era” of relations with China, even having a pint of beer with Xi at a British pub.

Needless to say, one may argue that all the above are a series of unconnected coincidences. Yet, the collective West, as it is often referred to nowadays, has acted in unprecedented unison over the last year and a half in meeting great geopolitical challenges.

In this regard, the new Pentagon report on China’s substantial upscaling of its nuclear stockpile, no matter whether it is accurate or not, may have been all that was necessary to prompt Western decision-makers to act swiftly, and in concert, thus averting any escalation of geopolitical tensions that might imperil the West’s still dominant global position.

Bob Savic is head of international trade at the Global Policy Institute in London, UK, and a visiting professor at the University of Nottingham’s Asia Research Institute

10. China Isn’t Backing Off Taiwan

Excerpts:

The U.S. will hold its own election next year, and Mr. Xi might see an opening to strike while Americans are consumed with internal divisions. Mr. Xi has told his military to be ready to fight for Taiwan by 2027, but his economy is struggling and neighbors such as Japan are building up their defenses. He could perceive that his window of opportunity is closing.

A D-Day-style amphibious assault is not the only scenario the U.S. and Taiwan might face. Mr. Xi could provoke a crisis by seizing an outlying island. Taiwan this year accused Chinese-flagged vessels of “deliberately cutting the two undersea internet cables” to Taiwan’s Matsu Island, as the report to Congress details.

Beijing could also try to choke off Taiwan in a blockade, either on its own or as a prelude to an assault. Would America send the U.S. Navy to escort ships and risk a shooting war? Or watch as the island’s economy runs out of food and fuel?

The U.S. will wish it had deterred the crisis when faced with these grim choices. Far better to avoid this conflict than to fight it in any form. Call it an early new year’s resolution for President Biden: Arm Taiwan at a faster clip, and show U.S. national will by building up America’s Pacific defenses so Mr. Xi believes that taking Taiwan isn’t worth the cost.

China Isn’t Backing Off Taiwan

President Xi Jinping is using military pressure and propaganda to sway the island’s presidential election in January.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/taiwan-election-china-kuomintang-democratic-progressive-party-xi-jinping-172258b2?utm_source=pocket_saves

By The Editorial Board

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Nov. 24, 2023 4:54 pm ET

An Air Force aircraft takes part in military drills by the Eastern Theatre Command of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) around Taiwan, in this screen grab from a handout video released August 19, 2023. PHOTO: EASTERN THEATRE COMMAND/VIA REUTERS

President Biden’s recent meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in San Francisco has been portrayed by both sides as a step forward in relations. But for all the good vibrations, Mr. Xi isn’t giving up his ambition to retake Taiwan, not least by meddling in the island’s January presidential election.

Mr. Xi warned Mr. Biden in California to stop arming Taiwan and not to interfere in the election in favor of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) that China dislikes. Mr. Biden said he told Mr. Xi that he “didn’t expect any interference, any at all,” in Taiwan’s campaign.

But that’s not how Beijing sees it. China deploys propaganda and military intimidation to nudge Taiwanese toward the Kuomintang, the party friendlier to Beijing. Beijing works hard to infiltrate Taiwan’s civil society—from media to the business community.

One popular Chinese theme is to promote suspicion of the U.S. and its intentions. A recent report by the Information Operations Research Group in Taiwan found 84 examples over three years of Chinese government and media suggesting that Washington will abandon Taiwan, and that the elite of the U.S. and Taiwan are colluding to exploit Taiwan, among other propaganda.

The Communist Party is also ratcheting up its military harassment. Chinese military aircraft violate the island’s air defense zone “on an almost daily basis,” as the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said in a November report to Congress.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) ran 1,737 such sorties in 2022, according to the report, up from a mere 20 sorties in 2019. Jets flew over the Taiwan Strait’s dividing line in 2019 for the first time since 1999—and now those median incursions are routine.

Beijing is running increasingly sophisticated military exercises—joint operations to seize “control of the sea, air, and information domains around Taiwan,” as the report to Congress notes. These dress rehearsals are making the PLA more capable. Next year could be rough if the Taiwanese dare to elect the DPP’s Lai Ching-te on Jan. 13.

The U.S. will hold its own election next year, and Mr. Xi might see an opening to strike while Americans are consumed with internal divisions. Mr. Xi has told his military to be ready to fight for Taiwan by 2027, but his economy is struggling and neighbors such as Japan are building up their defenses. He could perceive that his window of opportunity is closing.

A D-Day-style amphibious assault is not the only scenario the U.S. and Taiwan might face. Mr. Xi could provoke a crisis by seizing an outlying island. Taiwan this year accused Chinese-flagged vessels of “deliberately cutting the two undersea internet cables” to Taiwan’s Matsu Island, as the report to Congress details.

Beijing could also try to choke off Taiwan in a blockade, either on its own or as a prelude to an assault. Would America send the U.S. Navy to escort ships and risk a shooting war? Or watch as the island’s economy runs out of food and fuel?

The U.S. will wish it had deterred the crisis when faced with these grim choices. Far better to avoid this conflict than to fight it in any form. Call it an early new year’s resolution for President Biden: Arm Taiwan at a faster clip, and show U.S. national will by building up America’s Pacific defenses so Mr. Xi believes that taking Taiwan isn’t worth the cost.

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Appeared in the November 25, 2023, print edition as 'Beijing Isn’t Backing Off Taiwan'.

11. Pentagon turns to press flacks and academics to help fight information wars

This raises a question. Is DOD effectively using all its organic resources for this mission? If not, why not? Are the PSYOP forces being effectively employed or are we more comfortable "outsourcing" this critical mission.  Remember in the strategy that DOD released PSYOP and MISO were mentioned once each and then only in a list of capabilities and organizations.

If we are not effectively using them then please just let me have them to focus on north Korea which should be a laboratory for PSYOP activities. 

Pentagon turns to press flacks and academics to help fight information wars

New strategy outlines revised approaches to meet Chinese, Russian deception

washingtontimes.com · by Bill Gertz

In this June 3, 2011, file photo, the Pentagon building is seen from air from Air Force One. The Pentagon is reportedly reviewing its information warfare operations after social media companies cracked down on a pro-American influence operation with potential … In this June 3, 2011, file … more >

By - The Washington Times - Saturday, November 18, 2023

A new U.S. approach to waging information warfare operations states that military and civilian defense organizations will rely on Pentagon public affairs officials with support from academics and non-government organizations to counter Chinese and Russian disinformation.

The 24-page report, titled “Strategy for Operations in the Information Environment,” and was made public Friday and signals a new awareness by U.S. security officials of the need to shape the information battlefield and dominate the online propaganda wars in the digital age.

“Make no mistake: America’s competitors and enemies are moving quickly in the information environment, hoping to offset our enduring strategic advantages elsewhere,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a preface to the strategy report.

In the report, information warfare operations called “operations in the information environment” — OIE — will join forces with the State Department and joint forces commanders to counter hostile or unfavorable foreign narratives.

All operations will integrate public affairs officers, a vast bureaucracy within the Pentagon, as “a key component of OIE across the competition continuum,” the report said.

Critics of past U.S. government information warfare efforts have said Pentagon public affairs officers are ill-suited for the mission and often share the biases of the news media reporters they assist.

Operations will range from psychological warfare, civil affairs, public affairs, joint electromagnetic spectrum operations, cyber operations and special technical activities and Pentagon “deception activities” — a rare public reference to the U.S. military’s willingness to use deception in its operations.

The strategy calls for four lines of effort in conducting information warfare: people and organizations, programs, policies and governance, and partnerships.

Under partnerships, the strategy report calls for using all government resources and to “consider the viewpoints and activities of academia to include university-affiliated research centers (UARCs), commercial entities, industry, federally funded research and development centers; [non-government organizations]; and state, local, tribal, and territorial governments and agencies.”

The use of university academics is likely to be controversial, considering the largely left-leaning political views of many in American higher education. Still, the report argues that no resource can be overlooked.

“The United States must embrace a whole-of-government approach to the development and employment of Information as an instrument of national power,” the report said.

Offsetting U.S. power

The report’s authors identified China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and terrorist groups as among those employing message-shaping information warfare techniques in a bid to offset American military and other advantages.

“Each is becoming more assertive, using their informational capabilities to deny information accessibility and propagate malign influence, misinformation, disinformation, propaganda and deception activities to influence and disrupt world order,” the report said.

China, for example, is boosting its information capabilities around the world as part of a plan it calls national “rejuvenation,” using intelligence and covert influence operations to support its political and economic goals.

“Beijing understands it must leverage information and apply asymmetric techniques to counter and dominate its adversaries,” the report said.

In the United States itself, China is emulating Russia in exploiting societal divisions through social media and other online platforms to weaken the country, the report said.

“Beijing’s growing efforts to actively exploit perceived U.S. societal divisions using its online personas move it closer to Moscow’s playbook for influence operations,” the report said.

One example of Chinese disinformation involved the 2018 Typhoon Jebi that stranded Chinese and Taiwanese passport holders at Osaka airport. Social media posts circulated criticizing the Osaka-stationed Taiwanese director of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representatives Office for not helping stranded Taiwan citizens, while the [Chinese] Consulate in Osaka reportedly dispatched buses to support rescue efforts,” the report said.

The online criticism caused the Taiwanese director to commit suicide, based on false, widely disseminated Chinese state media reports that praised Beijing’s response and claimed Taipei had to rely on China to save its nationals. Japanese authorities later discovered that the travelers were forced onto rented buses provided by Beijing even though the airport had arranged travel.

China uses information warfare techniques to bolster its territorial claims to ownership of most of the South China Sea, dismissing competing claims by the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan. The contested areas include deposits of natural gas, crude oil and significant fishing stocks.

“Since 2010, maps, globes, postcards, T-shirts, video games and at least one blockbuster film (the animated movie “Abominable”) depict or refer to the [Chinese territorial claim].” the report said.

Trying to divide

It’s not just China: Russia is using its intelligence services, proxy actors and a wide range of influence tools to “divide Western alliances and increase its sway around the world while attempting to undermine U.S. global standing, sow discord inside the United States, and influence U.S. voters and decision-making,” the report said.

Russian proxy websites are being used for disinformation and messaging, and Iran and North Korea are using disinformation tactics designed to create regional instability and threaten U.S. interests and allies.

North Korea sent out false information about its missile launches in 2012, first announcing the planned launch and then saying technical issues delayed it. Pyongyang pretended to remove parts of the missile from the launch pad but then launched it as originally scheduled.

The activities deceived U.S. intelligence and limited intelligence collection, the report said.

According to the latest national intelligence threat assessment, foreign states are systematically using digital information and communications technology to wage information warfare. Operations are expected to become “more pervasive, automated, targeted and complex during the next few years.”

The operations “further threatening to distort publicly available information and probably will outpace efforts to protect digital freedoms.”

“This strategy is an important step forward in swiftly and seamlessly synchronizing and integrating our own operations in the information environment so that we can continue to strengthen our deterrence — and position the United States to lead the way toward a 21st-century world that is more secure and free,” Mr. Austin stated.

• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.

Copyright © 2023 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

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12. Gaza Civilians, Under Israeli Barrage, Are Being Killed at Historic Pace

Will ISrael be able to sustain its defense against international pressure to halt this?

Note:

Source: Gazan officials (read Hamas)

Gaza Civilians, Under Israeli Barrage, Are Being Killed at Historic Pace

The New York Times · by Lauren Leatherby · November 25, 2023

In less than two months, more than twice as many women and children have been reported killed in Gaza than in Ukraine after two years of war.

Nov. 25, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET

By The New York Times

Israel has cast the deaths of civilians in the Gaza Strip as a regrettable but unavoidable part of modern conflict, pointing to the heavy human toll from military campaigns the United States itself once waged in Iraq and Syria.

But a review of past conflicts and interviews with casualty and weapons experts suggest that Israel’s assault is different.

While wartime death tolls will never be exact, experts say that even a conservative reading of the casualty figures reported from Gaza show that the pace of death during Israel’s campaign has few precedents in this century.

People are being killed in Gaza more quickly, they say, than in even the deadliest moments of U.S.-led attacks in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, which were themselves widely criticized by human rights groups.

Precise comparisons of war dead are impossible, but conflict-casualty experts have been taken aback at just how many people have been reported killed in Gaza — most of them women and children — and how rapidly.

It is not just the unrelenting scale of the strikes, which Israel put at more than 15,000 before reaching a brief cease-fire in recent days. It is also the nature of the weaponry itself.

Israel’s liberal use of very large weapons in dense urban areas, including U.S.-made 2,000-pound bombs that can flatten an apartment tower, is surprising, some experts say.

“It’s beyond anything that I’ve seen in my career,” said Marc Garlasco, a military adviser for the Dutch organization PAX and a former senior intelligence analyst at the Pentagon. To find a historical comparison for so many large bombs in such a small area, he said, we may “have to go back to Vietnam, or the Second World War.”

In fighting during this century, by contrast, U.S. military officials often believed that the most common American aerial bomb — a 500-pound weapon — was far too large for most targets when battling the Islamic State in urban areas like Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria.

The Israeli military points out that Gaza presents a battlefield like few others. It is small and dense, with civilians living next to, and even on top of, Hamas combatants who rely on tunnel networks to shield themselves and their weapons, putting residents directly in the line of fire, the military says.

Given these underground networks — which the military says enabled Hamas to wage its deadly attacks on Oct. 7 — Israeli forces say they use the “smallest available ordnance” to achieve their strategic objectives in order to cause the “minimal adverse effect on civilians.”

Civilian casualties are notoriously hard to calculate, and officials in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip do not separate the deaths of civilians and combatants.

Researchers point instead to the roughly 10,000 women and children reported killed in Gaza as an approximate — though conservative — measure of civilian deaths in the territory. International officials and experts familiar with the way figures are compiled in Gaza say the overall numbers are generally reliable.

The Israeli military acknowledged that children, women and older people have been killed in Gaza, but said the death toll reported in Gaza could not be trusted. The military did not provide a count of its own, but said that civilians “are not the target” of its campaign.

“We do a lot in order to prevent and, where possible, minimize the killing or wounding of civilians,” said Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesman. “We focus on Hamas.”

Still, researchers say the pace of deaths reported in Gaza during the Israeli bombardment has been exceptionally high.

More than twice as many women and children have already been reported killed in Gaza than in Ukraine after almost two years of Russian attacks, according to United Nations estimates.

Palestinians being buried in a mass grave at a cemetery in the Gaza Strip.Credit...Yousef Masoud for The New York Times

More women and children have been reported killed in Gaza in less than two months than the roughly 7,700 civilians documented as killed by U.S. forces and their international allies in the entire first year of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to estimates from Iraq Body Count, an independent British research group.

And the number of women and children reported killed in Gaza since the Israeli campaign began last month has already started to approach the roughly 12,400 civilians documented to have been killed by the United States and its allies in Afghanistan during nearly 20 years of war, according to Neta C. Crawford, co-director of Brown University’s Costs of War Project.

These comparisons are based on the thousands of deaths directly attributed to U.S. coalition forces over decades in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Far more people — hundreds of thousands in total — are estimated to have been killed in these conflicts by other groups, including the Syrian government and its allies, local militias, the Islamic State and the Iraqi security forces.

But while the overall death tolls in those wars were larger, the number of people killed in Gaza “in a very short period of time is higher than in other conflicts,” said Professor Crawford, who has extensively researched modern wars.

In the nine-month battle of Mosul, which Israeli officials have cited as a comparison, an estimated total of 9,000 to 11,000 civilians were killed by all sides in the conflict, including many thousands killed by the Islamic State, The Associated Press found.

A similar number of women and children have already been reported killed in Gaza in less than two months.

The bombs being used in Gaza are larger than what the United States used when it was fighting ISIS in cities like Mosul and Raqqa, and are more consistent with targeting underground infrastructure like tunnels, said Brian Castner, a weapons investigator for Amnesty International and a former explosive ordnance disposal officer in the U.S. Air Force.

Not only is Gaza tiny when compared with conflict zones like Iraq, Afghanistan or Ukraine, but the territory’s borders have also been closed by Israel and Egypt, giving civilians few, if any, safe places to flee.

More than 60,000 buildings have been damaged or destroyed in the Gaza Strip, satellite analysis indicates, including about half of the buildings in northern Gaza.

“They are using extremely large weapons in extremely densely populated areas,” Mr. Castner said of Israeli forces. “It is the worst possible combination of factors.”

A War ‘for Our Existence’

Israeli officials say their campaign is focused on degrading Gazan military infrastructure that is often built near homes and civilian institutions — or buried underneath them.

“To get to that target,” Lieutenant Colonel Conricus said, the military has to use “larger bombs with a higher yield.”

When an Israeli government spokesman, Mark Regev, was asked in an Oct. 24 interview with PBS about the pace of the strikes, he said Israel was aiming for a shorter campaign than the United States waged in Iraq and Syria.

“Hopefully, we get it done quicker,” Mr. Regev said. “That’s one of our goals. But it could take longer than many Israelis would hope, because Hamas has been in power for 16 years.”

Israel has directed Gaza residents to evacuate areas where the bombing campaign is especially concentrated, but it has continued to strike other areas as well.

More broadly, Israeli officials say this is a campaign on its own borders to wipe out Hamas, a group dedicated to Israel’s destruction. “The war here is for our existence,” one Israeli war cabinet minister, Benny Gantz, told reporters on Nov. 8.

The brutality of the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 traumatized Israelis, and some prominent members of the Israeli government have made clear that they are waging a ferocious campaign.

“Gaza won’t return to what it was before. Hamas will no longer exist. We will eliminate everything,” Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, said in the days after the Hamas raids.

After initially questioning the death toll in Gaza, the Biden administration now concedes that the true figures for civilian casualties may be even worse.

Barbara Leaf, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, told a House committee this month that American officials thought the civilian casualties were “very high, frankly, and it could be that they’re even higher than are being cited.”

International experts who have worked with the Gaza Health Ministry during this and other wars say that it gathers death figures from hospitals and morgues across the enclave, which tally the dead and report the names, ID numbers and other details of people killed.

While the experts urged caution around public statements about the specific number of people killed in a particular strike — especially in the immediate aftermath of a blast — they said the aggregate death tolls reported by the Gaza Health Ministry have typically proved to be accurate.

In the last few weeks, recording the dead in Gaza has become increasingly difficult in the chaos of the fighting, as hospitals come under direct fire, much of the health system ceases to function and other government officials have begun updating the number of killed instead of the ministry. But even before those changes, the number of women and children reported dead already outpaced other conflicts.

Women and children account for nearly 70 percent of all deaths reported in Gaza even though most combatants are men — an “extraordinary statistic,” Rick Brennan, the regional emergency director for the World Health Organization’s Eastern Mediterranean office, said at an event this month.

Normally, one would expect the opposite, Mr. Brennan said. In past clashes between Israel and Hamas, for example, about 60 percent of the reported deaths in Gaza were men.

Sources: U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (pre-2023 fighting), Gazan officials (2023)

By The New York Times

The Israeli military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Conricus, said the high percentage of women and children reported killed in Gaza is another reason to mistrust the figures, adding that Israeli forces have warned civilians of strikes in advance “where it is feasible.”

Beyond that, Israeli officials have pointed not just to U.S. actions in Iraq and Syria, but also to the conduct of America and its allies during World War II.

In an address on Oct. 30, for example, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited the accidental bombing of a children’s hospital by Britain’s Royal Air Force when it was targeting the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen in 1945. And during visits to Israel by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, Israeli officials privately invoked the 1945 U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which together killed more than 100,000 people.

Modern international laws of war were developed largely in response to the atrocities of World War II.

In 1949, the Geneva Conventions codified protections for civilians during wartime. International law does not prohibit civilian casualties, but it does say that militaries must not target civilians directly or indiscriminately bomb civilian areas, and that incidental harm and the killing of civilians must not exceed the direct military advantage to be gained.

Two 2,000-Pound Bombs

In the first two weeks of the war, roughly 90 percent of the munitions Israel dropped in Gaza were satellite-guided bombs weighing 1,000 to 2,000 pounds, according to a senior U.S. military official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Those bombs are “really big,” said Mr. Garlasco, the adviser for the PAX organization. Israel, he said, also has thousands of smaller bombs from the United States that are designed to limit damage in dense urban areas, but weapons experts say they have seen little evidence that they are being used frequently.

In one documented case, Israel used at least two 2,000-pound bombs during an Oct. 31 airstrike on Jabaliya, a densely populated area just north of Gaza City, flattening buildings and creating impact craters 40 feet wide, according to an analysis of satellite images, photos and videos by The New York Times. Airwars independently confirmed that at least 126 civilians were killed, more than half of them children.

Searching for bodies and survivors in the rubble of a refugee camp hit by an airstrike in northern Gaza.Credit...Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock

The Israeli military said it had been targeting a Hamas commander and fighters, but acknowledged that it knew civilians were present. Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli military spokesman, said the casualties were a “tragedy of war.”

The barrage on Gaza has been intense.

Every day, local journalists in Gaza report strikes that hit private homes, some of which kill a dozen or more people as families shelter together in tight quarters. On Oct. 19, Israel struck a Greek Orthodox church where hundreds of Gaza’s small Christian community were sheltering at dinnertime, killing 18 civilians, according to an investigation by Amnesty International.

Lieutenant Colonel Conricus, the Israeli military spokesman, said that Hamas and its deliberate strategy of embedding itself in — and underneath — the residents of Gaza are “the main reason why there are civilian casualties.”

He said that hundreds of Israeli strikes on Hamas have been diverted “because of the presence of civilians, children, women and others who appear not to be connected to the fighting.”

Still, Mr. Castner of Amnesty International said Israel appeared to be moving too quickly to reduce harm to civilians.

The United States itself has killed thousands of civilians in years of aerial bombardments. But it generally tries to assess civilians’ “pattern of life” before a strike, experts say. Analysts will watch to see whether people go out to get food or water, for example, to determine whether civilians are inside a building.

That kind of caution for every strike “is literally not possible for the Israelis to do if they’re doing this many strikes in as much time,” Mr. Castner said.

The Long Term

More children have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli assault began than in the world’s major conflict zones combined — across two dozen countries — during all of last year, even with the war in Ukraine, according to U.N. tallies of verified child deaths in armed conflict.

Women and children account for nearly 70 percent of all deaths reported in Gaza.Credit...Yousef Masoud for The New York Times

When civilian areas are in the cross hairs, the threat does not end when the bombing does, experts say. The destruction left in the wake of war leaves people facing a struggle to survive long after the conflict has ended. Decimated health-care systems and compromised water supplies alone can pose major public health risks, said Professor Crawford, the Costs of War Project researcher.

“In every war it’s like that,” she said. “But this is a scale of immiseration over such a short period of time that it’s really difficult to comprehend.”

John Ismay and Alan Yuhas contributed reporting.

Lauren Leatherby is a visual editor based in London. More about Lauren Leatherby

The New York Times · by Lauren Leatherby · November 25, 2023

13. Surviving Winter in a Decimated Ukrainian Village

While the focus is on Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel let us not forget what Putin is doing to the people of Ukraine. And let's admire and respect the resilience of the Ukrainian people and most importantly, let's help them.

Photos and video at the link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/24/world/europe/ukraine-winter-russia-war.html

Surviving Winter in a Decimated Ukrainian Village

The New York Times · by Visuals by Emile Ducke Text by Thomas Gibbons-Neff · November 24, 2023

Nov. 24, 2023

Winter in Ukraine’s eastern steppe brings an inescapable cold. The wind blowing through damaged homes, the shattered windows, the chill in your bones — it feels as if it will be permanent.

But winter is still weeks away. For a handful of families who live in a string of destroyed villages along what was once the front line near the city of Izium, these dwindling fall days are all the time they have to prepare for seasonal survival.

The villages Topolske, Mala Komyshuvakha, Brazhkivka and Sulyhivka were ravaged from relentless artillery barrages and airstrikes after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion early last year.

Families who have returned after Ukraine’s liberation of these enclaves lack basic amenities such as electricity, gas and running water. So they prepare for the long cold by gathering essential supplies: food, water and firewood.

On a cold November day, Victor Kaliberda, one of the four residents of Sulyhivka, trudged toward the pickup point for firewood in neighboring Brazhkivka. With no car, he hoped that one of his neighbors would help him move the aid that is provided by volunteers.

Firewood is essential to survive the winter months, but with forests still littered with landmines, gathering the vital material can be deadly. Growing and storing food is also critical.

A few minutes’ drive away, in the village of Mala Komyshuvakha, it is Oleksandr Kokovych’s 58th birthday. His wife, Halyna Iievleva, has prepared duck, potatoes and salad.

They endured last winter with a generator, but it has since broken. Their day ends at sunset — which comes increasingly earlier now. They heat water for tea and their meals on their gas stove.

What lies ahead for these residents is a complicated puzzle of resource management, perseverance and faith that will get them through the coming days and freezing nights.

For now, they are on their own. Everything, it seems, needs repair. The ground underneath power lines must be cleared of mines before they’re restrung. Gas pipes require mending. Damaged roofs and windows are in dire need of tarps, plastic and tin sheets.

The destruction of these villages is generational. They were cleaved apart during World War II, when Nazi and Soviet front lines surged over them, hugging the same terrain used by Russian and Ukrainian forces last year.

Residents here use the earlier war as a barometer of their current sacrifices. Stories passed down in yesteryears are now lessons of survival.

In Sulyhivka, Mr. Kaliberda and his friend Zhenia live a short walk from each other, past destroyed farm equipment plastered with Russian graffiti and homes overgrown by vegetation. To earn money, they sell the scrap metal that now litters their village. To pass time, they drink.

As the days grow shorter, warmth is more elusive, and the sounds of scurrying mice make sleep difficult.

Even the cats require warmth and care. They serve as the first line of defense against a rampant mice population that has overrun the villages at a level not seen since World War II.

“People have lived here for 80 years and have not seen mice like this,” said Vitalii, a local resident helping split firewood in the village of Topolske.

For the villages’ older residents, many tasks require help from those residents who have returned, or those who stayed behind during the Russian occupation.

Neighbors help one another with foraging, firewood, shepherding animals; they trade tactics on how to combat mouse infestations.

“On this street, we weathered through occupation like a family,” said Liuba Nilabovych, 66, one of the few residents in Topolske.

Vitalii, with his motorbike and sidecar, is vital in Topolske this time of year. He and his friends are handymen for hire. They buzz up and down village roads, slinging wood and chainsaws, overshadowed by the war’s destruction and an approaching winter chill.

The New York Times · by Visuals by Emile Ducke Text by Thomas Gibbons-Neff · November 24, 2023

14. Two Years With America’s Elite Firefighters

A good weekend read about some of America's unsung heroes. There are people who make America truly great with their selfless service. There are photos at the link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/21/us/hotshot-firefighters-wildfires.html

Two Years With America’s Elite Firefighters

The New York Times · by Max Whittaker · November 21, 2023

It’s been a relatively quiet wildfire season in the United States.

Fewer acres have burned than at any time in the last quarter-century.

Yet it was anything but “quiet” for the Tallac Hotshots, as they battled some of the most challenging blazes across the country.

Hotshot fire crews work on the front lines of the biggest wildfires in the American West. We rode along with them.

Photographs by

Max Whittaker has covered wildfires for over 20 years, and spent two seasons documenting the Tallac Hotshots and other crews.

Nov. 21, 2023, 5:01 a.m. ET

Early this summer, while many Americans were gathering for Fourth of July barbecues, the Tallac Hotshots were in triple-digit heat in Arizona, fighting a wildfire for 14 straight days and sleeping on the ground next to their trucks.

The federal firefighting crew had only three days off before darting to a fire raging in a thickly wooded evergreen forest in Oregon.

They then decamped to the Klamath National Forest across the border in California, working overnight in dense and steep terrain filled with poison oak.

After a few days of rest, they were dropped by helicopter in early September into some of the most remote wilderness in Northern California to battle a fire blazing despite near-freezing temperatures.

As always, there was no leisurely summer vacation — no real vacation at all — for the crew.

The fireline on the Happy Camp Complex fire in California in August.

Coriston Smith wipes down poison oak, in August 2022.

The Tallac Hotshots get a refresher on navigation using just a map and compass on the Mosquito fire in California, in October 2022.

There are more than 100 “hotshot” teams across the United States, most of them part of the U.S. Forest Service. The Times spent two years following the Tallac Hotshots and other crews.

The name, dating back to the 1940s, describes firefighters who go to the hottest, most treacherous and most technically challenging parts of the conflagrations that plague the American West.

Even during relatively slow years, like this one, their work can go largely unseen by the wider world.

On their two-week deployments — sometimes they go for three without a break if a fire is particularly urgent — hotshot crews often have no access to cellphone signals or showers.

Crew members often sleep in the open air.

There are more than 100 hotshot teams across the United States, most of them part of the U.S. Forest Service.

If the crew works nights, forest service administrators sometimes send trailers filled with bunk beds.

Instead of fire engines and hoses, they use hand tools and chain saws to carve out dirt tracks to choke the progress of a fire.

A standard shift on a fire is 16 hours. Crew members often sleep in the open air.

After weeks without bathing, team members say it can take two or three showers to scrub all the grime and soot that stay caked on like a chimney sweeper out of Dickens.

“It’s really physical but it’s extremely mental, too,” said Kyle Betty, the superintendent of the Tallac Hotshots, which are based near Lake Tahoe in California and named after Mount Tallac.

Even after 22 years as a federal firefighter, Mr. Betty says he still has trouble gauging who will make it and who will drop out.

“The things that you see, the things that you face — every day you have to get up and do it again,” he said. “You have to be relentless.”

The soundtrack to their jobs is the loud crack of flaming branches plummeting to the forest floor.

Sap-filled trees sizzle with a steady hiss like green logs in a fireplace.

Fully engulfed pine trees roar ominously as they light up the night sky.

If the crew works nights, forest service administrators sometimes send trailers filled with bunk beds — cryo chambers, the crew calls them — so that members can sleep with some air-conditioning, and the lights off.

Coffee helps. Many crew members carry packets of instant coffee in their fire gear. On long shifts, they empty the powder into their mouths and wash it down with water from their flasks.

Nineteen men and two women make up the Tallac Hotshots, hailing from across the country.

Michael Frogner, 29, who runs a chain saw for the crew, used to be a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman in Arizona.

Chris Kingston, 24, a rookie, graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine with a degree in economics.

The Tallac Hotshots wrestle during a slow day of patrolling, in October 2022.

The crew in California in September.

Crew members stretch before working an overnight shift, in August 2022.

Elsa Gaule, 37, one of the crew’s captains, spent her earliest years in Alaska in a house without a toilet or running water. She is known for laughing hard and loud when one of her crew members loses his footing and starts rolling down a hill.

But she would also do anything for her “fire fam,” as she calls her crew. “I spend more time with this group then I do with my family,” she said.

A dozen years ago, when Ms. Gaule was on a crew fighting the Motor fire west of Yosemite National Park — named as such because it spread after a motor home caught fire — a giant log barreled down the steep slope where she was working, knocked her over and rolled across her neck and back.

On another night, she was hit in the hip by a flaming boulder. The moss on the rock had ignited and looked like a fireball out of a movie.

They’re reminders of the extreme dangers of the job, especially at a time when desiccated forests and high temperatures brought on by climate change are making wildfires more intense.

The Tallac Hotshots in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., in May.

“I spend more time with this group then I do with my family,” said Elsa Gaule, one of the crew’s captains.

Fewer acres have burned in the United States this year than at any time in the last quarter-century.

One blaze that haunts hotshot crews is the Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona, which killed 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots in 2013.

As a fast-moving wildfire overtook them, they deployed emergency shelters, small tent-like coverings that are meant to shield them from the flames and heat.

A government investigation concluded that the fire exceeded 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

“It’s an extremely dangerous job with a lot of hazards and a lot of risk,” said Mr. Betty, the Tallac Hotshots superintendent. “It’s not summer camp.”

It’s also not a good way to get rich. Mr. Kingston, the economics graduate, says he often thinks of his college friends in New York or Boston who work highly paid white-collar jobs.

Being a hotshot, he said, “is Wall Street hours for not-Wall-Street money.”

Base pay for entry-level federal firefighters is $16 an hour, according to Brian Rhodes, the deputy fire director in California at the Forest Service.

Overtime and hazard pay somewhat compensate for the relatively low hourly wage, hotshots say.

But there is still a yawning gap between what federal firefighters and state firefighters earn in agencies like Cal Fire, California’s state fire agency, which has much more generous overtime policies.

A report published this year by the University of Washington concluded that on average, the base monthly pay of federal firefighters, including hotshots, was about 41 percent less than their counterparts in state agencies.

The pay disparity is at the heart of the Wildland Firefighter Paycheck Protection Act, legislation that would raise the base pay of entry level federal firefighters by 42 percent. The bill is currently pending before Congress.

Some of the Tallac Hotshots hanging out in between their tasks on the Mosquito Fire.

The Tallac Hotshots doing a sand table wildfire exercise in October.

Instead of fire engines and hoses, hotshot crews use hand tools and chain saws to carve out dirt tracks to choke the progress of a fire.

“They are the premier firefighting force in the U.S.,” Evan Pierce, one of the authors of the University of Washington report, said of hotshots. “But they are working longer and in more dangerous conditions — for less pay.”

Still, the Tallac Hotshots say they’re drawn to the outdoors, the deep sense of camaraderie and the solidarity with their fellow crew members. Some want to be tested in ways that other jobs cannot do.

“I’m not a very good sit-at-a-desk person,” Ms. Gaule said. “Until my knees and back give out, I’ll continue doing this.”

“It’s really physical but it’s extremely mental, too,” said Kyle Betty, the superintendent of the Tallac Hotshots.

The crew wriggles under a fence to access a fire in Washoe County, Nev., in August 2022.

Alex Ibarra, Sawyer Britt and Coriston Smith on their way to the Six Rivers Complex Fire in Willow Creek, Calif.

Dylan Ney, 32, says he revels in the physicality of the work. Like most people on the crew, he expends so many calories that he sheds 25 pounds every fire season.

But being away for such long deployments means that he misses key family milestones. He wasn’t there when his two young boys took their first steps. His wife sent him videos that he watched during breaks from the fire line.

He has a few more years in him as a hotshot, he said, but not more. “I will miss the woods,” he said.

The crew has worked most of this November in Tennessee tending to a series of fires fueled by extreme drought. Ms. Gaule said Thanksgiving would very possibly be spent swinging hand tools on the fire lines.

But she’s relentlessly optimistic. “Thanksgiving with the fire fam,” she said. “It’s all good.”

Thomas Fuller, a Page One Correspondent for The Times, writes and rewrites stories for the front page. More about Thomas Fuller

The New York Times · by Max Whittaker · November 21, 2023

15. Beijing hospitals overwhelmed with post-Covid surge in respiratory illnesses among children

Does Chinese air pollution make these conditions worse?

Beijing hospitals overwhelmed with post-Covid surge in respiratory illnesses among children

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/24/china/china-beijing-hospitals-surge-illnesses-children-intl-hnk/index.html?utm_source=pocket_saves

By Simone McCarthy and Nectar Gan, CNN

 5 minute read 

Updated 1:37 AM EST, Fri November 24, 2023

Children and their parents wait in a crowded outpatient hall at a children's hospital in Beijing on November 23, 2023.

Jade Gao/AFP/Getty Images

Editor’s Note: Sign up for CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, which explores what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world.

Hong KongCNN — 

Hospitals in Beijing and northern China are grappling with a surge of children with respiratory illnesses as the country enters its first winter since relaxing stringent Covid-19 controls nearly one year ago.

Wait times to see doctors stretch for hours, with hundreds of patients queuing at some children’s hospitals in major cities across northern China, according to CNN reporting and Chinese state and social media.

An official at the Beijing Children’s Hospital told state media Tuesday that the current average of more than 7,000 daily patients “far exceeds the hospital’s capacity.” The largest pediatric hospital in nearby Tianjin broke a record on Saturday, receiving more than 13,000 children at its outpatient and emergency departments, according to a local state-run outlet.

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When CNN called to inquire about appointment slots at the Beijing Friendship Hospital on Thursday, a staff member said it could take all day to see a pediatrician.

“Right now, we have a lot of kids here. Those who booked an emergency appointment yesterday still weren’t able to see the doctor this morning,” the staff member said.

Health officials in Beijing and other major cities in northern China have said typical seasonal illnesses, including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), as well as mycoplasma pneumonia – a bacterial infection that typically causes mild infection and commonly affects children – were driving causes.

The surge in cases across northern China comes amid a rise in seasonal respiratory infections around the northern hemisphere, including in the United States, where RSV is spreading at “unprecedented” levels among children.

But the situation in China raised global concern after the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday asked China to provide more information on an increase in respiratory illnesses and “reported clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia in children,” citing a post from open-source surveillance system ProMED.

After speaking with Chinese health and hospital officials Thursday, however, the WHO said the data indicated an increase in outpatient consultations and hospital admissions of children due to mycoplasma pneumonia in May and common seasonal illnesses RSV, adenovirus and influenza virus since October.

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“Some of these increases are earlier in the season than historically experienced, but not unexpected given the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions, as similarly experienced in other countries,” WHO said.

The agency added that Chinese authorities said there had been “no detection of any unusual or novel pathogens or unusual clinical presentations.”

Outside experts monitoring the situation also noted there was no evidence of a novel pathogen at work, but called for China to share more information about the situation with the public.

“We don’t think there is an unknown pathogen hidden somewhere,” Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong’s School of Biomedical Sciences, told CNN. “There’s no evidence for that.”

Catherine Bennett, an epidemiologist at Deakin University in Australia, said the main concern is if the rise in childhood pneumonia were to indicate a new pathogen, or new levels of disease severity.

“So far we have not heard reports of either,” Bennett said, adding that it was important to monitor sources of infection to rule out such concerns.

Children receive intravenous drips at a children's hospital in Beijing on November 23, 2023.

Jade Gao/AFP/Getty Images

Crowded hospitals

Over recent weeks, Chinese parents have complained on social media about the crowded situation at hospitals, where it takes hours for children to see a doctor before more lengthy waits to get a blood test or intravenous drip.

Given China’s relatively underdeveloped primary care system, sick people typically head to hospitals or emergency rooms as a first point of contact. Those facilities can become overcrowded during peak seasons.

On the Chinese social media platform Weibo, a widely shared photo showed a hospital screen notifying patients the queue had more than 700 people with an estimated wait time of 13 hours.

At a pediatric hospital affiliated with the Capital Institute of Pediatrics in Beijing, the halls were so full that some children with intravenous drips sat on the laps of their parents, who lined the hallways on folding stools, videos on social media showed.

China’s national health authorities and hospital officials have repeatedly urged parents not to rush children directly to large pediatric facilities, instead calling for them to take kids to be diagnosed at other health centers offering primary care or general services.

The National Health Commission (NHC) warned parents on Thursday that large hospitals could have “long wait times and a high risk of cross-infection,” directing them to other kinds of facilities for triage.

In a statement, the NHC said it had instructed “all localities” to strengthen their case management and treatment systems – including identifying severe cases among the influx of patients.

Beijing’s municipal government meanwhile republished a state media article featuring a doctor telling parents that they didn’t need to ask for intravenous fluids “as soon as a child has a fever.”

The WHO on Thursday said Chinese officials reported that “the rise in respiratory illness has not resulted in patient loads exceeding hospital capacities.”

Post-Covid surge

The surge in hospital visits coincides with China’s first full winter without its “zero-Covid” controls, which saw people maintain strict social distancing and wear face masks.

The controls were abruptly relaxed last December after rare protests erupted against pandemic measures which included strict lockdowns.

It’s unclear if there’s been an increase in respiratory illnesses or severe cases among children relative to pre-pandemic years because of limited public data released by China.

“During zero-Covid, these (common respiratory) diseases would be under-estimated (as people avoided hospitals), and because everyone was practicing some social distancing the incidence was low,” said Jin, the virologist at Hong Kong University.

“It’s absolutely normal that this year compared to last year would be a big increase. But whether it’s a big surge compared to 2018, 2019, that’s still to be determined.” he said.

Social factors could be at play in the current situation, Jin added, as parents may also be more concerned about their child’s health following the pandemic, prompting more to seek medical help.

More attention is being paid to disease outbreaks following the emergence of the pandemic coronavirus in late 2019. There are also calls for more transparency – including from China, which has been accused of hindering investigation in the origins of the virus and obscuring early information about its spread.

Christine Jenkins, a professor of respiratory medicine at UNSW Sydney, said a rise in viral respiratory tract infections in children at this time of year is not unexpected and is a phenomenon that has been observed over many decades worldwide at the onset of winter.

“However, in the context of the pandemic due to a relatively new virus such as (the novel coronavirus) and the potential for other new viruses or mutations to cause respiratory tract illness, prompt reporting and monitoring are essential,” she said.

16. Russian Propaganda Presents Fringe Views in US as Mainstream

As an aside, are any other media organizations reporting on this and coming to these conclusions or should we just thank the Russian Service of Voice of America for highlighting this?

Russia is still "employing useful idiots."

I wonder how those on the extreme left and extreme right feel about being described as "united."

Excerpts:

Extremes of the political spectrum are wrapped into Russian disinformation efforts to both amplify issues and lend an air of legitimacy to anti-Western and anti-Ukrainian narratives, said Nina Jankowicz, vice president of the Centre for Information Resilience and a former disinformation chief under the Biden administration.

“We see Russia identifying individuals on the left or right of the political spectrum who might already be critics of NATO, critics of Ukraine,” Jankowicz told VOA.

That strategy is employed by Vladimir Soloviev, a Russian TV presenter whose Telegram channel has more than a million subscribers. Soloviev gained notoriety by advocating for the invasion of Ukraine, actively supporting President Vladimir Putin and promoting the idea of nuclear warfare against the West.

...

What the Russian invasion of Ukraine really highlighted, the academic noted, is that populism and a rejection of the mainstream have significantly united those on America’s far left and far right.

Jankowicz said that while a certain percentage of Americans may share the views of some of these people, the reality is that opinion is far more varied.

“And so, I think showing these extreme viewpoints also hammers home the ideas about Ukraine or about U.S. foreign policy that the Kremlin wants its audiences to believe,” she said.

Russian Propaganda Presents Fringe Views in US as Mainstream

November 22, 2023 3:48 PM

• Alexey Gorbachev

voanews.com · November 22, 2023

From headlines taken out of context to the framing of fringe figures as representative of wider American views, Russian state-run outlets are cherry-picking U.S. content to back up Kremlin narratives.

And it comes with results. Headlines such as “Biden accused of concealing extent of corruption in Ukraine” and “US highlights NATO inability to withstand Russia for extended period” regularly propel state-run stories into the top five spots on Russian search engines, with a potential reach of millions of views.

Americans regularly cited by Russian media include former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, Republican Representative James Comer, and members of “The Squad,” a group of Democrats who push more leftist ideals in Congress.

Extremes of the political spectrum are wrapped into Russian disinformation efforts to both amplify issues and lend an air of legitimacy to anti-Western and anti-Ukrainian narratives, said Nina Jankowicz, vice president of the Centre for Information Resilience and a former disinformation chief under the Biden administration.

“We see Russia identifying individuals on the left or right of the political spectrum who might already be critics of NATO, critics of Ukraine,” Jankowicz told VOA.

That strategy is employed by Vladimir Soloviev, a Russian TV presenter whose Telegram channel has more than a million subscribers. Soloviev gained notoriety by advocating for the invasion of Ukraine, actively supporting President Vladimir Putin and promoting the idea of nuclear warfare against the West.

FILE - Tucker Carlson, shown here in Bedminster, N.J., on July 31, 2022, is one of the American commentators who figure prominently in Russian state-run media.

To reinforce those views, he regularly references Carlson. A search by VOA for Carlson references on the Telegram account between June 2020 and November 2023 returned more than 230 instances. The number of references spiked following the full-scale invasion.

The key narratives of Carlson selected by Soloviev and Russian propaganda channels include the conservative pundit’s false claims that Christians in Ukraine are persecuted, that America’s white population is oppressed and Tucker’s characterization of some U.S. media coverage of Ukraine as lies.

Other outlets take fringe commentators most Americans are unlikely to have heard and present them as having a wider influence.

These are often used to reinforce Russia’s narrative of a “declining” West, with state-run media citing figures such as Jackson Hinkle and Jack Posobiec, who are largely unknown in the United States but are favored among the far right and in conspiracy circles on X, formerly Twitter.

RIA Novosti, for instance, highlighted Posobiec's mocking comment about Kyiv's interest in Abrams tanks, presenting it as a view from a respected veteran and combining it with a quote from Putin emphasizing Moscow's purported aim to end, not escalate, the conflict.

Similarly, Russian news outlet Lenta.Ru used a headline quoting Hinkle's suggestion that the Ukrainian Armed Forces' counteroffensive be labeled as a suicide mission.

And Soloviev frequently references both Americans in his Telegram channel, portraying them as influential bloggers, talk show hosts, or renowned U.S. journalists.

The approach helps Russia create the appearance of more significant support for opinions that — according to analysts who spoke with VOA — are better characterized as fringe views.

And it can lead regular Russians to believe the views are more representative of how most Americans think, Jankowicz said.

Outlets such as Breitbart and Fox News on the right and The Grayzone on the left are also used by Russian state media, with stories circulating between the Russian and U.S. organizations, she said.

Jankowicz said that while she was in her role on the U.S. Disinformation Governance Board, American right-wing media outlets falsely characterized the board’s role as being to censor Americans.

“This was absolutely not true, and within a couple of days after that, we saw [the same report] on Russian Channel One with the same quotes, the same pictures, the same narratives overarching,” Jankowicz said.

The disinformation governance board — formed by the U.S. Homeland Security Department to counter misinformation — was disbanded after only a few weeks.

Featuring statements from American figures and media outlets lends a sense of credibility, she said.

“Showing these extreme viewpoints also hammers home the ideas about Ukraine or about U.S. foreign policy that the Kremlin wants its audiences to believe,” Jankowicz said.

Dominik Stecula, an assistant professor of political science at Colorado State University who focuses on political polarization, has seen similar trends. Stecula said the commentator Carlson has repeated Russian propaganda narratives on his TV show.

But Carlson’s departure from Fox in April, along with a shift in media attention to other news stories such as the Israeli-Hamas conflict, slightly changed the U.S. media landscape on the right, Stecula said. “Whoever is filling in his shoes hasn't really spent as much time on this topic at all. The general focus on Ukraine dissipated.”

Another aspect that unites some far-left and far-right political actors is populism, Stecula said. “They were repeating some of the Russian propaganda about Ukraine, about politicians in Ukraine, like President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy.”

The academic said that far-right actors in the U.S. root their narratives primarily in the idea of America-first nationalism, while those on the far left see it “through the lens of American imperialism wielded through the power of NATO.”

Overall, Carlson, Elon Musk and niche bloggers such as Hinkle and Posobiec have significant influence within their respective ideological echo chambers, Stecula said.

U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar, shown here in Washington on Nov. 13, 2023, is one of a group of congresswomen from the Democratic left whose words are frequently used in Russian state-run media.

At the same time, members of "The Squad" — U.S. Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib — have substantial influence within the Democratic Party, while not wholly representing the party's mainstream, Stecula said.

“They're not just your average social media influencer,” Stecula said. “These are people with significant platforms and actual positions of power. Which is why it was disappointing to see some of their behavior during the initial months of the Russian invasion and Ukraine, when they were taking stands aligned with some of right-wing Republicans.”

What the Russian invasion of Ukraine really highlighted, the academic noted, is that populism and a rejection of the mainstream have significantly united those on America’s far left and far right.

Jankowicz said that while a certain percentage of Americans may share the views of some of these people, the reality is that opinion is far more varied.

“And so, I think showing these extreme viewpoints also hammers home the ideas about Ukraine or about U.S. foreign policy that the Kremlin wants its audiences to believe,” she said.

This article originated in VOA’s Russian Service.

voanews.com · November 22, 2023

17. Zelenskiy names 'three victories' Ukraine needs on international front

The president needs to be careful about how he addresses and engages OUR congress. it is not his congress. And I am sure the EU has similar feelings.

That said, our Congress cannot take the position of fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian. We need to fully enable the Ukrainian military to win.

Excerpts:

"We need three victories. The first one is the victory with U.S. Congress. It's a challenge, it's not easy, but Ukraine is doing everything," Zelenskiy told a news conference in Kyiv.

...

"The second is we need the help from the EU on the 50 billion euro package," the Ukrainian leader said. "And the third is to open a dialogue about our future membership."

Zelenskiy names 'three victories' Ukraine needs on international front

Reuters · by Anna Voitenko

KYIV, Nov 24 (Reuters) - President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday said that Ukraine needed to secure three key "victories" abroad, including the approval of major aid packages from the U.S. Congress and the European Union, and a formal start of accession talks to join the EU.

Zelenskiy also announced the latest dismissals in the military, four deputy commanders in the national guard, but gave no reasons for their removal. The president and other officials have vowed to make the military's operations more efficient and responsive to the needs of servicemen.

Twenty months into Russia's full-scale invasion, fatigue has crept into the West's relations with Kyiv, which heavily relies on its allies for military, economic and humanitarian aid to battle on against the Kremlin's troops.

"We need three victories. The first one is the victory with U.S. Congress. It's a challenge, it's not easy, but Ukraine is doing everything," Zelenskiy told a news conference in Kyiv.

President Joe Biden asked Congress to approve many billions of dollars in assistance for Ukraine last month, but Kyiv's funding was omitted from a stop-gap spending bill passed last week, raising concerns it may not get through.

A vocal bloc of Republicans oppose sending more aid to Ukraine. Opponents have said U.S. taxpayer money should be spent at home, but a majority of Republicans and Democrats in Congress still support supplying aid.

Zelenskiy also zeroed in on a 50 billion euro package from the European Union that was announced earlier for Ukraine, but has not yet been approved and is so far opposed by Hungary.

"The second is we need the help from the EU on the 50 billion euro package," the Ukrainian leader said. "And the third is to open a dialogue about our future membership."

Kyiv hopes the European Union's members will agree at a summit on Dec. 14-15 to formally launch the long process of talks for Kyiv to join the bloc, a move which Zelenskiy said would be good for Ukrainian morale.

Zelenskiy made the comments at a news conference alongside Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics, who said he was sure the EU aid package would pass, though he added that it could take longer than expected.

The dismissal of the four deputy commanders was made public by presidential decrees -- along with three new appointments. No reasons were given for any of the moves.

Zelenskiy this week announced the removal of the commander of Ukraine's medical forces, saying "a new level of medical support" was needed for Ukraine's servicemen.

A Ukrainian news outlet had suggested earlier this month that her dismissal was imminent along with others.

Additional reporting by Olena Harmash; writing by Tom Balmforth; editing by Kirsten Donovan, Ron Popeski and Leslie Adler

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Reuters · by Anna Voitenko

18. Why Netanyahu finally agreed to a hostage deal

Excerpts:

A more recent IDI poll found that 63% of Israelis (including 52% of Right-wing Jews) think the Government has no plan for what comes after the war. They are probably right. America and some Arab states would like to see the Palestinian Authority (PA) return to power in Gaza after the war. This idea is probably far-fetched. The PA is already losing control over parts of the occupied West Bank; it is too weak and unpopular to effectively govern Gaza. But it is the only alternative, however unlikely, to a prolonged Israeli occupation of the enclave.

Netanyahu, though, has ruled it out in multiple public statements. Right-wing voters do not like the PA — one nationalist group put up a billboard in Tel Aviv showing Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, wearing a Hamas headband — and that is enough to scotch the idea.

For all his pandering to his base, though, it is hard to see how Netanyahu survives the next election. His prospects were shaky even before October 7, after a year of political turmoil caused by his controversial effort to hobble the supreme court. Now they look dismal. A survey published by Ma’ariv on Friday found that Likud would win just 18 seats, down from 32 in last year’s election. Gantz’s centre-right party, on the other hand, would swell from 12 seats to 43.

The final result may look different. Some of the Israelis who now support Gantz may end up voting for other candidates, such as Naftali Bennett, the former prime minister now mulling a return to politics. No one can predict the future mood of the electorate, though everyone thinks it will be in their favour. Last month, a prominent centrist lawmaker told me the war would swing Israelis to the centre, while a far-Right member of Netanyahu’s coalition said it would strengthen the Right.

Still, the trend is clear: survey after survey shows Netanyahu’s personal support has collapsed, with even Right-wing voters saying they will abandon his coalition and vote for change. For now, Israelis will spend the weekend fixated on a rare bit of good news. But when the truce ends, scores of hostages will still be in captivity, a brutal war will grind back to life, and the country’s political divisions will be just as stark as before.

Why Netanyahu finally agreed to a hostage deal

Israel's PM rejected similar proposals last week

BY GREGG CARLSTROM

unherd.com · by Gregg Carlstrom · November 25, 2023

For dozens of families in Israel, this weekend will bring joy; for scores of others, it will be bittersweet. Binyamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, will have his own swirl of emotions. The Israeli prime minister will want to take credit for reuniting 50 hostages with their families — but not too much, because the deal is unpopular with some of his Right-wing voters. Joyous scenes of Israelis returning home will be laced with stories of the trauma they have endured, a reminder of the colossal security failure over which Netanyahu presided last month.

Two things have been constant throughout Netanyahu’s long stint in power. He is notoriously indecisive, especially when it comes to military and security matters, and he is obsessed with his political survival. Those characteristics coloured his approach to hostage diplomacy, and to the broader war in Gaza. He is presiding over perhaps the most fateful moment in Israel’s history in half a century, an unprecedented situation that calls for clear, decisive thinking. And he is doing so at a time when he is historically unpopular (and under criminal indictment, to boot).

The agreement between Israel and Hamas began on Friday morning with a truce that will last for four days. Each afternoon, Hamas will release around a dozen hostages; for each one, Israel will release three Palestinians from its jails. After the initial four-day agreement, Hamas has the option to release additional captives. Each 10 that it frees will secure another 24 hours of quiet. It could prolong the lull by days or even weeks if it was so inclined.

It took weeks of negotiations to reach this point. At first Hamas leaders pushed an “all-for-all” deal: all of the hostages in exchange for all of the Palestinians in Israeli jails (they numbered about 5,200 before the war). On October 20 it did release two hostages, a mother and daughter with dual American-Israeli citizenship. That was a result of American pressure on Qatar, the tiny Gulf state that hosts some of the Hamas leadership. Three days later, it released a pair of elderly Israeli women — ostensibly as a humanitarian gesture, more likely as a public-relations move and a way to put pressure on the Israeli government.

Then Israel began its ground offensive in Gaza, and the negotiations changed. Instead of “all-for-all”, Hamas wanted to trade hostages for a truce. Israel was open to the idea, but only if the number was substantial: at least 100 captives. Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, wanted a lower number and refused to budge. That led to disagreements within the Israeli government.

The centrist members of Netanyahu’s war cabinet — Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, both former army chiefs — wanted to continue negotiating a smaller deal. So did David Barnea, the Mossad director, who represented Israel at the talks in Qatar. On the other side were Yoav Gallant, the defence minister, and the heads of the army and the Shin Bet security service. They wanted to keep fighting and argued that progress in the military campaign would help their position at the negotiating table.

Netanyahu, as is his wont, decided not to decide. A similar deal was on the table last week, but the prime minister decided not to bring it to a vote in the cabinet, only to reverse himself days later. What changed in the intervening time was pressure — some of it from America, but mostly from the families of the hostages in Israel.

From the start, those families have complained of inattention from Netanyahu’s government. The places that were attacked on October 7, and from which many of the hostages were taken, are not home to many Netanyahu voters. While the kibbutzim are not quite the socialist bastions of yore, they still lean Left. In Nahal Oz, a village on the Gaza border, Netanyahu’s Likud party received just 10% of the vote in last year’s election, compared to 23% nationwide. In nearby Be’eri it won less than 3%.

It took the prime minister more than a week to meet with them. When Joe Biden visited Israel last month, some Israelis marvelled at the scene: an elderly American president flew halfway around the world and showed more compassion for the families of Israeli hostages than their own prime minister had.

He stood in stark contrast with the coordinator Netanyahu appointed to oversee the hostage issue, Gal Hirsch — an army general who was forced to resign in 2006 because of his failures during the war in Lebanon. His main qualification for the job is that he is a Netanyahu crony and Likud activist. At a meeting with foreign diplomats last month, he berated them for supporting the Oslo Accords and suggested they were complicit in Hamas’s atrocities. “It’s time to wake up,” he yelled while pounding on the podium — a curious way for an Israeli official to build international support.

And so the families were left to fend for themselves, joining together to lobby Israeli officials and foreign leaders. They enlisted David Meidan, a former Mossad officer who negotiated a hostage deal with Hamas in 2011, to serve as an informal consultant. And they organised a protest march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to put pressure on the government.

They won over hearts and minds, but not the political establishment. Some Right-wing lawmakers are furious about the deal: they do not want Israel to make concessions, certainly not a truce (which could give Hamas militants time to regroup) or the release of Palestinian prisoners. It took weeks of intense pressure from the families to convince Netanyahu to prioritise their needs.

Such politicking has been a constant throughout the war. In the days after October 7, Netanyahu’s political and media allies put out a stream of messages that sought to place the blame on the army and security services. The prime minister was not to blame for the calamity, the generals were — a remarkable message to brief during wartime.

Then he dithered about whether to approve a ground offensive. The army called up 360,000 reservists, which brought parts of the economy to a standstill, and deployed them near to the border with Gaza. There they waited, for days and days. Officers grumbled that they could not keep soldiers at high readiness for much longer. Another jarring message came from Netanyahu’s camp: the army wanted to throw ground troops into the meat grinder of urban warfare before the air force had time to soften up northern Gaza. The intended message was that Netanyahu cared about the lives of soldiers; the generals did not.

The Israeli public, however, is not buying it. An October poll by the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), a non-partisan think-tank, asked Israelis who they trust more to run the war: Netanyahu or the army chiefs. 55% of Israeli Jews chose the army, while just 7% said the prime minister (the rest were split between “both” or “neither”). Even among Right-wing Jews, the army had a 31-point advantage.

This unpopularity has bred insecurity, and the fear of losing his base still overshadows every decision Netanyahu makes. Members of his coalition have variously talked about rebuilding the Israeli settlements in Gaza, which were evacuated in 2005; expelling Gaza’s population to tent cities on Egypt’s Sinai peninsula; and dropping a nuclear bomb on the enclave. A sensible prime minister would shut down such talk, which angers Israel’s allies and feeds a global narrative that it is committing a genocide in Gaza. But Netanyahu has not: better to risk Israel’s standing in the world than his standing with Israel’s Right wing.

A more recent IDI poll found that 63% of Israelis (including 52% of Right-wing Jews) think the Government has no plan for what comes after the war. They are probably right. America and some Arab states would like to see the Palestinian Authority (PA) return to power in Gaza after the war. This idea is probably far-fetched. The PA is already losing control over parts of the occupied West Bank; it is too weak and unpopular to effectively govern Gaza. But it is the only alternative, however unlikely, to a prolonged Israeli occupation of the enclave.

Netanyahu, though, has ruled it out in multiple public statements. Right-wing voters do not like the PA — one nationalist group put up a billboard in Tel Aviv showing Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, wearing a Hamas headband — and that is enough to scotch the idea.

For all his pandering to his base, though, it is hard to see how Netanyahu survives the next election. His prospects were shaky even before October 7, after a year of political turmoil caused by his controversial effort to hobble the supreme court. Now they look dismal. A survey published by Ma’ariv on Friday found that Likud would win just 18 seats, down from 32 in last year’s election. Gantz’s centre-right party, on the other hand, would swell from 12 seats to 43.

The final result may look different. Some of the Israelis who now support Gantz may end up voting for other candidates, such as Naftali Bennett, the former prime minister now mulling a return to politics. No one can predict the future mood of the electorate, though everyone thinks it will be in their favour. Last month, a prominent centrist lawmaker told me the war would swing Israelis to the centre, while a far-Right member of Netanyahu’s coalition said it would strengthen the Right.

Still, the trend is clear: survey after survey shows Netanyahu’s personal support has collapsed, with even Right-wing voters saying they will abandon his coalition and vote for change. For now, Israelis will spend the weekend fixated on a rare bit of good news. But when the truce ends, scores of hostages will still be in captivity, a brutal war will grind back to life, and the country’s political divisions will be just as stark as before.

unherd.com · by Gregg Carlstrom · November 25, 2023

​19. China Holds Military Drills Near Myanmar Border After Convoy Fire

Is China concerned? Is this an attempt at a show of force? What would make China intervene? (Based on my Track II experience with China on north Korea it would be either a UN mandate or an invitation from an "authority" in Burma/Myanmar. However, I expect that would change if there was a spillover into China that affected Chinese territory and people.)

So is this posturing preparation for an invite? Or just providing a warning? Or just prudent measures in anticipation of "spillover?"

Is the next step to provide Chinese military escorts for these convoys?

China Holds Military Drills Near Myanmar Border After Convoy Fire

voanews.com · by Reuters · November 24, 2023

SHANGHAI —

China's military will begin "combat training activities" from Saturday on its side of the border with Myanmar, it said on social media, a day after a convoy of trucks carrying goods into the neighboring Southeast Asian nation went up in flames.

The incident, which Myanmar state media called an insurgent attack, came amid insecurity concerns in China, whose envoy met top officials in Myanmar's capital for talks on border stability after recent signs of rare strain in their ties.

The training aims to "test the rapid maneuverability, border sealing and fire strike capabilities of theater troops," the Southern Theatre Command, one of five in China's People's Liberation Army, said on the WeChat messaging app.

The brief statement gave no details of timing or numbers of troops.

Friday's fire in the town of Muse came as Myanmar's military has lost control of several towns and military outposts in the northeast and elsewhere as it battles the biggest coordinated offensive it has faced since seizing power in a 2021 coup.

The surge in fighting has displaced more than 2 million people in Myanmar, the United Nations says.

voanews.com · by Reuters · November 24, 2023

20. Israel-Hamas war: How quickly can Hamas recover from Gaza defeat?

Good question. But what is the scale of their defeat? What remaining combat power and military capabilities remain? How quickly can the losses be reconstituted?  And what about political (and international) support? Will Iran continue to support it?

Excerpts:

The question about Hamas survival in the face of these losses revolves around many factors. Other terror groups, such as ISIS, have shown they can fight to the end, basically to the very last man. ISIS in Mosul fought to the last man, basically. In other cases ISIS members tried to surrender. For instance near Tal Afar some of them surrendered. They also tried to surrender near Baghouz on the Euphrates river in 2019. Therefore there are mixed examples of what happens when terror groups are surrounded.

Hamas has no way to replace its fighters in northern Gaza. The ceasefire will leave the men surrounded. They have short interior lines and can shift units around, but it unlikely they can regrow their units. A study conducted in 1986 about combat casualties and whether units remain effective may shed light on what comes next for Hamas. First, we need to understand how Hamas is organized. It isn’t just a terrorist group with cells and rabble. It has become a kind of terror army because it ran Gaza since 2007 and had to turn its terror cells into a kind of fighting force. It may have learned how to do this from other Iran-backed groups such as Hezbollah, Iranian militias in Syria, or Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq.

Israel-Hamas war: How quickly can Hamas recover from Gaza defeat?

Hamas units in northern Gaza have been surrounded. They have been pushed out of numerous neighborhoods such as Sheikh Ijlin, Shait, Beit Hanoun, Rimal, parts of Zaytun and Jabalya.

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN

NOVEMBER 23, 2023 16:29

Updated: NOVEMBER 23, 2023 23:34

Jerusalem Post

Hamas has suffered casualties in Gaza since the surprise attack on Israel on October. The overall number of Hamas casualties is impossible to know. Israel has put out various estimates on the number of Hamas members eliminated in certain areas or units. In general the IDF puts out details on number of targets struck. For instance on Thursday the IDF said that “during IDF activities in the Gaza Strip over the last day, aerial strikes were carried out on over 300 Hamas terror targets, including military command centers, underground terror tunnels, weapon storage facilities, weapon manufacturing sites, and anti-tank missile launch posts.”

Can Hamas recover from the losses it has suffered since October 7? Hamas units in northern Gaza have been surrounded. They have been pushed out of numerous neighborhoods such as Sheikh Ijlin, Shait, Beit Hanoun, Rimal, parts of Zaytun and Jabalya; as well as Beit Lahiya. Hamas has lost most of its territory in northern Gaza. The units that tried to stand and fight were eliminated.

The question about Hamas survival in the face of these losses revolves around many factors. Other terror groups, such as ISIS, have shown they can fight to the end, basically to the very last man. ISIS in Mosul fought to the last man, basically. In other cases ISIS members tried to surrender. For instance near Tal Afar some of them surrendered. They also tried to surrender near Baghouz on the Euphrates river in 2019. Therefore there are mixed examples of what happens when terror groups are surrounded.

Hamas has no way to replace its fighters in northern Gaza. The ceasefire will leave the men surrounded. They have short interior lines and can shift units around, but it unlikely they can regrow their units. A study conducted in 1986 about combat casualties and whether units remain effective may shed light on what comes next for Hamas. First, we need to understand how Hamas is organized. It isn’t just a terrorist group with cells and rabble. It has become a kind of terror army because it ran Gaza since 2007 and had to turn its terror cells into a kind of fighting force. It may have learned how to do this from other Iran-backed groups such as Hezbollah, Iranian militias in Syria, or Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq.

Reports on November 13 suggested that ten Hamas battalions in northern Gaza had been degraded. This means many of their commanders had been eliminated. Hamas has around 24 battalions in Gaza. In all Hamas is estimated to have 140 companies within these battalions. A company of men usually up to 100 fighters. A battalion can be several hundred. Hamas had around 30,000 fighters on October 7. Some of them were killed invading Israel. Some have been detained. Some special units, such as Hamas naval commandos, have been eliminated.

Golani soldiers inside the Hamas parliament building in Gaza, November 13, 2023 (credit: SCREENSHOT ACCORDING TO 27A OF COPYRIGHT ACT)

Hamas main fighting unit is the battalion level. It has “brigades” as well that include the battalions. The brigade level will include anti-tank missiles, snipers and rockets and mortar arrays.

Some Hamas battalions in Gaza appear to have been completely shattered. The Shati battalion was badly mauled because it fought the IDF not only in the area of Shati, near the beach northwest of Gaza City, but also around Shifa hospital. It was hammered by IDF units in this area and apparently lost 200 terrorists according to estimates.

Advertisement

The relationship between battle losses and performance

A report in 1986 compiled by Leonard Wainstein at the Institute of Defense Analysis near Washington, DC analyzed the “relationship of battle damage to unit combat performance.”

He surveys western armies in his discussion of whether units will break down when they suffer high casualties. It is generally assumed a unit in a western military that suffers a certain percent of losses, such as fifteen percent or twenty percent. “The impact of those casualties on the cutting edge--the rifle companies, tank crews, assault engineers--has clearly grown with time as the number of men in the cutting edge shrank and support echelons expanded. The capacity of the armies of the First World War to absorb tremendous losses and yet continue to function was due in part to the larger proportion of fighting men in the total,” writes Wainstein.

Another unclassified study from the 1950s for the US army asks “does a unit lose its combat effectiveness because it lacks a certain requisite number of bodies, each type of breakpoint being caused by a given depletion in numerical strength? If this be true, the arrival of sufficient replacements should restore the unit's ability to carry out its mission. But intuition suggests that, in addition to numerical strength, certain psychological factors closely related to losses also to length of time in combat, factors termed attrition."

Wainstein argued that morale of units can be affects by various things. “It can also be influenced by the awareness of the individual soldier of the personal well-being and fate of his immediate comrades. This need not always be negative. The most cogent example is obviously the effect on the individual of the sight of dead and wounded comrades. Casualties are certainly the most visible and forceful indications of the latent horror of combat. Soldiers not exposed to casualties close to them can view battle of the most savage degree in a somewhat detached manner, but the realization of the danger they face will be brought home vehemently when casualties begin to occur among their immediate ranks. The corrosion of motivation then begins,” he writes.

His conclusion is that “where morale of troops is high, even very heavy casualties will not put the formation ‘out of action.’” There are many complex elements involved. The overall sense when looking at casualties is that casualties alone will not determine whether Hamas continues to fight and whether it can recover quickly from the blows it suffered since October 7. The group has shown in the past that even if it suffers losses, it continues to exist. For instance during the Second Intifada Israel targeted Hamas leadership. Palestinian terror groups in Gaza have also been defeated in the past, such as operations in the 1970s, only to reappear decades later.

Terrorist groups can be defeated. Hamas may suffer some kind of organizational collapse if the pressure on its units becomes too high. If Hamas sought over the years to create a more disciplined force, with command and control, it will suffer if the command and control and commanders of units are eliminated. This appears to have happened to some degree in northern Gaza. Nevertheless the group is still there and holds ground in Gaza City itself. It doesn’t have very many civilians to use as human shields because

Jerusalem Post

21. Misunderstanding bin Laden’s 2002 “Letter to Americans”

I hope all those young people  influenced by the TokTok exposure of the bin Laden letter can read this. They need to cease the "romanticization" of bin Laden and their support for perceived "underdogs" and understand the world as it really is.  

Key excerpts:

Bin Laden and his cohorts were indeed concerned about the United States, Israel, the Palestinians, Iraq, and Afghanistan. But they have an explicit and highly developed religious worldview and so are especially concerned about Saudi Arabia’s holy sites and the Al-Aqsa mosque, and continually point to attacks by infidels in Lebanon, Tajikistan, Burma, Kashmir, Assam, the Philippines, “Fatani,” “Ogadin,” Somalia, Eritrea, Chechnya, Bosnia, “Bokhara,” Bangladesh, Turkey, Chad, Mauritania, South Sudan, Darfur, Algeria, the Philippines, Yemen, “Tashkent,” Indonesia, and East Timor.

Religious beliefs and ideology are not the only things we need to know to understand al Qaeda’s goals and actions. But we cannot understand these unless we take their religious beliefs seriously. Yet many in the West are fixated on their more familiar categories of globalization, ethnicity, the “West,” colonialism, and Middle Eastern nationalism, and thus miss the nature of terrorists’ beliefs, strategy, tactics, justifications, and goals. Hence, to the degree that we ignore the clearly articulated nature and goals of Islamist terrorism, we consistently misunderstand the nature of our conflicts.

Misunderstanding bin Laden’s 2002 “Letter to Americans” - Providence

providencemag.com · by Paul Marshall on November 24, 2023 · November 24, 2023

Recently TikTok has posted and highlighted Osama bin Laden’s 2002 “Letter to Americans.” This letter was originally intended to appeal to Western audiences but failed spectacularly when it was first promulgated. However, it has now drawn much attention especially from those now trying to re-interpret him in their own truncated image as a representative of anti-colonialism.

This is yet another example of “mirror-imaging” wherein many Westerners project their parochial interpretation of world events onto very different actors and interpret those other’s actions into preconceived secular categories. But bin Laden’s view of the world draws on a very different conceptual universe that can only be understood in terms of its deep religious roots.

The name usually given to bin Laden’s organization is “Al Qaeda,” but this is merely a nickname for an organization that has styled itself officially as the “World Islamic Front for Holy War against Jews and Crusaders.” The attacks perpetrated by this network have usually been accompanied by a plethora of videotapes, audiotapes, declarations, books, letters, fatwas, magazines, e-mails, and websites that present and explain its theology, its view of history and the political order, and its understanding of contemporary events, to explain and justify its actions in terms of its version of Islamic teaching, law, history, and practice.

These materials, now collected in several volumes, consistently expound a religiously shaped program that announces as its goal to unite Muslims worldwide into one people, the ummah, with one divinely sanctioned leader, a caliph, governed by a reactionary version of sharia (Islamic law), and organized to wage jihad on the rest of the world. It targets Muslim regimes in the Middle East that it regards as “apostates” from Islam, and opponents further afield, usually described as “Crusaders,” “followers of the cross,” “Jews,” or “infidels.”

Consequently, Al Qaeda’s attacks have not been confined to America or “the West.” Its members have sought to kill or silence those opposed to its version of Islam, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, on the Left or the Right, American, British, Israeli, Australian, French, Indian, Algerian, Sudanese, Indonesian, Thai, Timorese or Filipino. Most of its killings are now in West Africa, especially Nigeria, where it has contributed to deaths in the tens of thousands, whose lost Black Lives to terrorism are mostly ignored in the West.

Al Qaeda’s very own training manual begins not by recalling by American concerns such as the birth of Israel or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan but an event little noted in America: “the fall of [the] orthodox Caliphates on March 3, 1924.” That this same event and historical period is a source of continuing grievance is shown in Osama bin Laden’s November 3, 2001, videotape–his first statement after the September 11 attacks–which similarly proclaims: “Following World War I, which ended more than 83 years ago, the whole Islamic world fell under the Crusader banner.” For bin Laden, his followers, and his imitators, a key turning points in history was the ending of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent shattering of the Muslim ummah by Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk through his creation of modern secular Turkey and his abolition of the caliphate, the nominal leader of all Muslims.

This 2001 proclamation also declared his basic belief: “This war is fundamentally religious. . .. Those who try to cover this crystal-clear fact, which the entire world has admitted, are deceiving the Islamic nation. This war is fundamentally religious. . . . This fact is proven in the book of God Almighty and in the teachings of our messenger, may God’s peace and blessings be upon him. This war is fundamentally religious. Under no circumstances should we forget this enmity between us and the infidels. For, the enmity is based on creed.”

Also, apart from Middle East concerns, he also castigated the United Nations for its worldwide support for a purported attempt “to divide the largest country in the Islamic world. . . . This criminal, Kofi Annan [UN Secretary-General], was . . . putting pressure on the Indonesian government, telling it, you have twenty-four hours to divide and separate East Timor from Indonesia by force. The crusader Australian forces were on Indonesian shores, and, in fact, they landed to separate East Timor, which is part of the Islamic world.”

These proclamations received support among some Muslims, but clearly, they failed at convincing many in the West. Hence, for a brief time thereafter, bin Laden tried a different tactic in his “Letter to Americans,” posted on the internet in October 2002.

This was a very marked departure from his many previous statements as in this case he attempted to appeal to Westerners by submerging his clear and explicit religious agenda and instead temporarily harped on some peculiarly Western grievances. He mentioned the Kyoto accord on global warming, environmental problems, election campaign finances, and the use of nuclear weapons on Japan—matters he had consistently ignored in his numerous statements over the previous decade. He also mentioned President Clinton’s “immoral acts” in the Oval Office, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling, charging interest, and using women in advertising. So far these latter “moral” matters have drawn little attention from those attempting to recruit bin Laden as a posthumous ally in an anti-imperialist agenda.

But, even in this crude attempt to play to American prejudices, he still returned to his basic religious message and, above all, condemned the U.S. Constitution for not enshrining Islamic sharia and instead allowing the American people to make their own laws. He makes a fervent appeal to Americans to repent and become Muslim: “The first thing we are calling you to is Islam.”

This was the short-lived propaganda effort that is now gaining attention from those who now want to enlist bin Laden in their own very different political agenda. It failed in 2002 but recent attention to it shows our growing historical ignorance.

This brief 2002 attempt to appeal to Western sensibilities went nowhere, and so bin Laden then reverted to reiterating his fundamental beliefs. His January 2004 message not to the West but “to the Muslim nation” emphasized that because the West “invaded our countries more than 2,500 years ago[sic],” “It is a religious-economic war. . . . Therefore, religious terms should be used when describing the ruler who does not follow God’s revelations and path and champions the infidels by extending military facilities to them or implementing the UN resolutions against Islam and Muslims. Those should be called infidels and renegades. . . . [T]he confrontation and conflict between us and them started centuries ago. The confrontation and conflict will continue because the conflict between right and falsehood will continue until Judgment Day.”

Later, at the end of 2004, he warned Iraqis not to participate in the January 30, 2005, elections because the Iraqi constitution is “a jahiliyya [pre-Islamic] constitution that is made by man,” and Muslims may elect only a leader for whom “Islam is the only source of the rulings and laws.” On similar grounds, he forbade voting in Palestinian Authority elections because “the constitution of the land is a jahili made by man,” and added the religiously loaded claim that the then Fatah candidate, and now President, Mahmoud Abbas “is a Baha’i.” Since he regards Baha’is as apostates who should be killed, this was an especially damning view of the PLO.

Bin Laden and his cohorts were indeed concerned about the United States, Israel, the Palestinians, Iraq, and Afghanistan. But they have an explicit and highly developed religious worldview and so are especially concerned about Saudi Arabia’s holy sites and the Al-Aqsa mosque, and continually point to attacks by infidels in Lebanon, Tajikistan, Burma, Kashmir, Assam, the Philippines, “Fatani,” “Ogadin,” Somalia, Eritrea, Chechnya, Bosnia, “Bokhara,” Bangladesh, Turkey, Chad, Mauritania, South Sudan, Darfur, Algeria, the Philippines, Yemen, “Tashkent,” Indonesia, and East Timor.

Religious beliefs and ideology are not the only things we need to know to understand al Qaeda’s goals and actions. But we cannot understand these unless we take their religious beliefs seriously. Yet many in the West are fixated on their more familiar categories of globalization, ethnicity, the “West,” colonialism, and Middle Eastern nationalism, and thus miss the nature of terrorists’ beliefs, strategy, tactics, justifications, and goals. Hence, to the degree that we ignore the clearly articulated nature and goals of Islamist terrorism, we consistently misunderstand the nature of our conflicts.

providencemag.com · by Paul Marshall on November 24, 2023 · November 24, 2023

22. One year after UN Xinjiang report release, pressure on China at the UN remains steady

One year after UN Xinjiang report release, pressure on China at the UN remains steady

On 30 August 2022, the UN Human Rights Office concluded that the Chinese State may be responsible for committing crimes against humanity, in a report on human rights in the Uyghur region (Xinjiang). One year later, global pressure on Beijing remains high, ahead of a major UN human rights review in January.

ishr.ch · November 24, 2023

UN WebTV: UK Ambassador James Kariuki delivers joint statement on China at the UN General Assembly, 18 October 2023

China

Asia

24 November 2023

News

On 30 August 2022, the UN Human Rights Office concluded that the Chinese State may be responsible for committing crimes against humanity, in a report on human rights in the Uyghur region (Xinjiang). One year later, global pressure on Beijing remains high, ahead of a major UN human rights review in January.

More than one year after the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released its groundbreaking human rights assessment on the Uyghur region (Xinjiang), pressure by UN Member States and UN experts on the Chinese government remains steady. On 18 October, the United Kingdom spoke on behalf of 51 countries at the UN General Assembly urging China to ‘end its violations of human rights in Xinjiang, engage constructively with the OHCHR, and fully implement the recommendations of the assessment’.

The 51 signatories stress the assessment’s ‘independent and authoritative’ nature, and its findings of possible crimes against humanity on the basis of large-scale arbitrary and discriminatory detention of Uyghurs and other Muslim populations, building on a past statement led by Canada on behalf of 50 governments at the UN a year ago.

The signatories also recalled that ‘the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, called [in September] on China to follow the recommendations of the assessment and take “strong remedial action”’; yet, they regret ‘not having seen evidence of China taking any such action.’

Over a year has passed since [the UN Xinjiang] assessment was released and yet China has not engaged in any constructive discussion of these findings.

Joint statement on behalf of 51 UN Member States delivered by the United Kingdom at the UN General Assembly, 18 October 2023

The fact that 50 nations have affixed their signatures to this statement sends a powerful message: despite China's relentless efforts to stifle discussion and awareness about the genocidal treatment of Uyghurs, we have not lost our allies.

Rayhan Asat, Uyghur lawyer and human rights advocate

The statement was largely endorsed by Western governments, and a range of Global South governments, including Paraguay and Guatemala in Latin America, Liberia and Eswatini in Africa, Tuvalu, Palau and Nauru from the Pacific. Fiji, who initially endorsed the statement, regrettably announced its withdrawal through social media a few days later.

Pressure on China over the past months has only been mounting, as UN human rights bodies continue to step up documentation, including through a landmark ruling by the UN’s anti-racial discrimination committee. In a public statement released on 26 September, UN experts warned of the risk of ‘forced assimilation’ as a result of ‘forced separations and language policies for Uyghur children.’ UN experts issued similarly strong-worded statements on the detention of Tibetan activists, unfair trials under Hong Kong’s National Security Law, and the fate of Chinese activists Lu Siwei and Guo Feixiong.

Regrettably, the Chinese government continues to dismiss all concerns raised by UN experts and Member States, while solidarity from Muslim-majority countries remains weak. A statement read by Pakistan on behalf of 72 countries opposed ‘interference in China’s internal affairs.’ *

These devious actions by the Chinese government should serve as a wake-up call for Volker Türk, who continues to hope for meaningful engagement with China. It is abundantly clear that China has consistently ignored communication from the UN's human rights system.

Rayhan Asat, Uyghur lawyer and human rights advocate

The Pakistani statement’s language is weaker than previous years, while supporters for Beijing’s policies have not significantly increased, signaling a growing discomfort. At the same time, it is shameful that EU members Greece, Cyprus, Malta and Hungary, have never joined their peers in condemning Beijing’s abuses. It is equally shameful that key Global South democracies and Muslim-majority countries still allow for China and its allies to claim to speak on behalf of the developing world when defending atrocity crimes by Beijing.

Raphael Viana David, ISHR Programme Manager for China and Latin America

The Chinese Permanent Mission in New York also circulated notes verbales in an attempt to intimidate and prevent other State delegations from attending a high-level event with former UN High Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein, Uyghur and international advocates, hosted by the Atlantic Council on 19 September.

Major UN human rights review of China upcoming

This joint statement comes on the heels of China’s reelection as one of the 47 Member States of the Human Rights Council (HRC), the UN’s top decision-making body on human rights. Yet, China received the fewest votes among the four candidates running for the Asia-Pacific region, after having received the fewest votes amongst all candidates in its 2019 bid.

In January 2024, China will undergo its fourth Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a UN HRC-hosted human rights peer review that will constitute a temperature check on global criticism of Beijing’s ferocious crackdown on human rights.

The International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) released a UPR briefing paper summarising UN documentation of the Chinese government’s abuse of national security to persecute Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers and human rights defenders and lawyers. The briefing paper provides key recommendations for States to present at China’s upcoming UPR, including repealing Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location (RSDL), a form of enforced disappearance systematically used against human rights defenders.

During the 54th session of the Human Rights Council in September, similar concerns on the misuse of national security legislation were denounced by woman defender Sophie Luo, wife of jailed lawyer Ding Jiaxi, in a joint statement with ISHR (available in Chinese and English).

This crucial test of China’s human rights record also takes place ahead of the 10-year anniversary of the death of woman defender Cao Shunli, one of the most emblematic cases of deadly reprisals against human rights defenders for cooperating with the United Nations. In September 2013, Cao Shunli was detained en route to Geneva, ahead of China’s second UPR. Her subsequent death as a result of ill-treatment under custody in March 2014 remains unaccounted for, despite repeated calls by UN experts. As ISHR mobilised civil society in a moment of silence at the Human Rights Council, the Chinese delegation caused a 1h30-long meeting disruption to prevent any mourning of Cao’s death. Ten years later, ISHR urges States to pay tribute to Cao Shunli’s legacy, and echo calls for justice and accountability, during China’s January 2024 UPR.

The premise of the UPR is that governments will cooperate in good faith, not that they will retaliate against human rights defenders, in some cases lethally. This January, let us ensure that Cao Shunli’s efforts were not in vain, let us show that her legacy is still alive.

Raphael Viana David, ISHR Programme Manager for China and Latin America

*List of States signatories to the Pakistan joint statement: China, Sri Lanka, Belarus, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Palestine, Russia, Sudan, Djibouti, Myanmar, Serbia, Syria, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, Libya, Morocco, Nepal, Madagascar, Cameroon, Burundi, Cambodia, Zimbabwe, United Arab Emirates, Grenada, Saudi Arabia, Burkina Faso, Mali, Iran, Iraq, The Republic of Congo, Tonga, Chad, Laos, Algeria, Eritrea, São Tomé and Príncipe, Mauritania, Ethiopia, Niger, Gambia, Tajikistan, Gabon, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, Bahrain, Yemen, Egypt, Guinea, Honduras, Turkmenistan, Comoros, Uganda, Bolivia, Mozambique, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Equatorial Guinea, Suriname, Kenya, Togo, Guinea Bissau, Solomon Islands, Benin, Papua New Guinea, South Sudan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Author

Raphaël Viana David

Raphaël is ISHR's China and Latin America Programme Manager in our Geneva office. He joined ISHR in 2018.

ISHR contact

Raphaël Viana David

[email protected]

Twitter @vdraphael

23. UN and Women’s Groups Ignore or Deny the Systematic Rape of Israeli Women by Hamas

Why aren't these terrible atrocities being called out? ( a rhetorical question). But the answer is because of very effective information operations by Hamas and its supporters.

Let's understand that terroism is political violence. It is not a force for good.

  We may therefore now attempt to define terrorism as the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit of political change. All terrorist acts involve violence or the threat of violence. Terrorism is specifically designed to have far-reaching psychological effects beyond the immediate victim(s) or object of the terrorist attack. It is meant to instill fear within, and thereby intimidate, a wider `target audience' that might include a rival ethnic or religious group, an entire country, a national government or political party, or public opinion in general. Terrorism is designed to create power where there is none or to consolidate power where there is very little. Through the publicity generated by their violence, terrorists seek to obtain the leverage, influence and power they otherwise lack to effect political change on either a local or an international scale.

Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism

UN and Women’s Groups Ignore or Deny the Systematic Rape of Israeli Women by Hamas

‘#METOO UNLESS YOU’RE A JEW’

Many feminists and humanitarian groups strangely see no evil—when the victims of mass sexual assault are Israeli Jews.

Marisa Fox

Updated Nov. 25, 2023 8:54AM EST / Published Nov. 24, 2023 11:36PM EST 

The Daily Beast · November 25, 2023

opinion

Photo Illustration by Erin O'Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images

“Believe women” has been the rallying cry of the #MeToo movement, but after Oct. 7, as an American Jew who has watched many human rights and feminist groups turn a blind eye to the sexual violence Hamas unleashed on girls and women in Israel, I ask: Where’s the “me” in MeToo? Why is no one believing the women in Israel?

And I’m not alone.

Ahead of Nov. 25’s UN’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, the Israeli Foreign Ministry initiated the hashtag campaign #BelieveIsraeliWomen and announced a task force to investigate the sexual atrocities Hamas perpetrated against women and children on Oct. 7—after media attention, indifference from the international human rights community, and pressure from Israeli women’s groups.

Shortly after Oct. 7, an independent organization of international human rights experts and women’s rights groups in Israel formed the Civil Commission on Oct. 7 Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children. Concerned that no Israeli or international organization was documenting Hamas’ sexual violence, it set about collecting evidence of Hamas’ gender-based assaults and encouraging government bodies to further investigate these atrocities as war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Even as the first women and children hostages are being released and Israel’s Health Ministry has instructed the hospitals treating them to have women doctors and nurses on hand to conduct all physical exams, how to check for and document signs of rape and torture, and how to interview without retraumatizing them, the UN has shown little sign of caring whether Israeli women suffer violence, and hasn’t rallied for Red Cross access to those still held captive by Hamas.

UN Women executive director and under-Secretary General Sima Balhous, waited until Nov. 22 to first mention that she was “greatly alarmed by reports of sexual and gender-based violence,” but failed to mention the culprit was Hamas and the victims Israeli and foreign nationals.

Earlier this month, the hashtag #MeTooUnlessURAJew spread widely on social media as grassroots women’s groups in Israel and abroad launched campaigns to express outrage at the silence of the international community regarding the growing evidence that Hamas engaged in systematic rape on Oct. 7.

Women’s rights groups in Israel—including Bonot Alternativa, one of the organizations leading the nine-month-long protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s anti-democratic judicial reform in Israel—marched in solidarity with the Hostage and Missing Families Forum. A group of medics also called attention to the heightened health risks of female captives, who range in age from infants to teens to elderly women with heart disease, diabetes, asthma, and other health conditions, to say nothing of the mental health repercussions of such trauma.

But many prominent American feminists like Angela Davis have outright victim-blamed Israel, more interested in throwing around terms like “colonial feminism” than actually advocating for women. Others, like the avowed anti-sexual violence activist known as V (formerly known as Eve Ensler), in a long statement never acknowledged the shocking kidnapping and torturing of girls and women in Israel on Oct. 7—which Hamas was all too proud to share on social media, but that she carefully avoided mentioning. (This silence about systematic rape is coming from the same person who once said, “we should all be hysterical about sexual violence.”)

To them, I ask: If you can’t stand with all women, what do you stand for? How is rape an act of resistance?

Liad Gross, 36, weeps as she holds up a sign for her missing friend Sagui Dekel Chen, during a demonstration outside the Ministry of Defense headquarters in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 24, 2023.

Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times

The Civil Commission on Oct. 7 Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children is no longer waiting for these inhumane human rights celebrities to respond. They’ve begun collecting evidence of Hamas’ sexual violence and encouraging government bodies to further investigate these atrocities as war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“I wish I could go back in time,” says Dr. Cochav Elkayam Levy, the head of the new commission and a professor of International Law, Human Rights and Feminist Theory at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “I could never have imagined taking on this unimaginable task.” As she described her commission’s daunting work, the evidence they’ve gathered so far and the deafening silence of the global community, she paused to catch her breath in between tears.

“I thought my colleagues in human rights agencies would condemn such horrific attacks,” Elkayam-Levy, a 20-year scholar of international and human rights law, says. “I thought pretty naively that we must write to them and send them a report.” After issuing a short draft of her findings (signed by 160 prominent law and human rights scholars) to officials at the UN and its various bodies, including UN Women and the Committee on the Rights of the Child, her commission received no response.

“The fact that they keep silent is not just an insult to Israeli victims,” she says. “It’s an insult to all victims. International law loses its meaning when you fail to condemn the same crimes when they’re perpetrated against Israeli citizens, it weakens the legitimacy of global institutions, and it allows further violations not just in Israel but globally.

“The denial and silence of the international community provides fertile ground for the weaponization of women’s and girls’ bodies in warfare,” she adds. “If international law doesn’t apply to us, do they even consider Israeli women human? Seems like we’re not part of humanity.”

After the commission presented its case at a virtual forum called, “The Unspeakable Terror: Gender-Based Violence on Oct. 7,” hosted by various Jewish student groups at Harvard University a week ago, the group has gained traction.

So far the UN has shown no signs of caring whether Israeli women suffer violence. This can be interpreted as callous indifference, or outright victim blaming. You’d have to be under a rock not to have watched the many searing images of Hamas’ massacre in Israel, the most brutal of which featured women.

There was Noa Argamani, the young woman at the Nova Festival in Re’im, her eyes full of fear, crying for help as masked terrorists sped off with her on a motorbike. There was the naked, limp body of German-Israeli tattoo artist Shani Louk, shown on the back of a pickup truck paraded down the streets of Gaza like a prized hunting kill, as onlookers cheered and spat on her. She has since been confirmed dead, per DNA samples taken from skull fragments. She was decapitated. Her family is unable to give her a Jewish burial.

There was also Shiri Silberman-Bibas, clutching her 9-month-old and 3-year-old sons, sobbing as terrorists screamed and pushed her around. Subsequent Israeli police reports and footage released by the IDF show mothers who were sadistically killed by Hamas. Among them, charred remains that were later identified as a mother clutching her baby as they were burned alive.

“The violation of a body is a particularly heinous war crime, a wound so deep, it takes years, if not decades, for survivors to confront it. When it came to the Holocaust, most women, including my own mother, took such brutal truths to their graves.”

As someone who’s spent the past decade researching and documenting an untold story of slavery and sexual violence committed against Jewish women during the Holocaust, I recognized the pattern. Parents killed in front of children, children snatched from parents, families broken up, women stripped naked, corporally humiliated, raped in front of loved ones and in public—these forms of sexual violence were tactics the Nazis employed, but they never documented and for which they were never held accountable. The world turned a cold eye to Jewish women then, just as it is doing now.

It took more than 50 years from the end of World War II for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) to recognize rape as a weapon of war and prosecute perpetrators as war criminals. Ever since, there’s been a growing awareness of how gender-based violence (GBV) is used to terrorize and break up the fiber of a society and commit genocide.

The body of a woman represents the body of a nation, says Prof. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, director of the Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and a member of the new Israeli independent commission. There is no clearer symbol of genocide than systemic wartime sexual violence.

The violation of a body is a particularly heinous war crime, a wound so deep, it takes years, if not decades, for survivors to confront it. When it came to the Holocaust, most women, including my own mother, took such brutal truths to their graves. And their perpetrators were never indicted, charged, or even acknowledged.

The 2002 Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court recognized the systemic use of rape, sexual slavery or trafficking, forced pregnancy and sterilization, and other forms of bodily violation as war crimes and crimes against humanity. As Democratic Republic of Congo gynecologist Dr. Denis Mukwege, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for his work to end rape as a weapon of war, has said: “the woman who gets raped is the one who is stigmatized and excluded for it… We need to get to a point where the victim receives the support of the community, and the man who rapes is the one who is stigmatized and excluded.”

It was heartening to see Dr. Mukwege and global human rights organizations like UN Women swiftly condemn Russian forces for violating Ukrainian women and children shortly after they launched their invasion. So why aren’t they advocating for the women and children of Israel?

Even worse than their deafening silence is the ensuing gaslighting of Hamas’ 1,200-plus civilian victims—which include nationals from over 40 countries—UN Women waited until Oct. 20 to issue its first statement, in which it only condemned Israel. It made no mention of Hamas’ raped victims in Israel, or the quarter-million Israeli civilians displaced in Israel, nor did it push for humanitarian aid for the hostages held by Hamas. This glaring double standard isn’t just cruel, it makes a mockery of UN Women.

“We have been completely betrayed by the international community,” says Halperin-Kaddari. “The betrayal is not only to the hostages and to the victims of sexual abuse, but to the very integrity of the institutions, and of the international human rights framework at large.”

Halperin-Kaddari, formerly the vice president of the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) for 12 years, says in that role she advocated for women no matter their nationality, from Yazidi women trafficked by ISIS in Iraq to women in Central Africa and the DRC to Sri Lanka.

“But the level of the cruelty and brutality of Hamas against women and children in Israel on Oct. 7—nothing matches that,” she adds.

And that’s no exaggeration. Among the atrocities Dr. Halperin-Kaddari cites are gang rape until a woman’s pelvic bones are broken and her legs twisted in unnatural positions, genital mutilation, including slitting open a pregnant woman’s belly, removing her fetus while she was alive, slicing off women’s breasts and tossing them around as if they were volleyballs, and even necrophilia.

Perhaps because of this commission’s visibility, the Israeli government has finally announced the formation of its own task force investigating sexual violence on Oct. 7—something it failed to do as it began the gruesome and daunting task of identifying and burying the dead. Israeli police said they collected more than 1,000 statements and over 60,000 video clips and testimonies of rape, though it’s not clear whether any of the victims survived.

Police photographs of the carnage at the kibbutzim along the Gaza border and at the Nova Festival show women’s bodies, naked from the waist down, legs spread, blood visible, and underwear pulled down. One festivalgoer told police of a gruesome gang rape she witnessed:

“They bent her over and I realized they were raping her, one by one. Then they passed her to a man in uniform. She was alive. Standing up and bleeding from her backside. They were holding her by the hair. One man shot her in the head as he was raping her, while he had his trousers down, they cut her breast off.” In other words: she was murdered while her rapist was still inside her.

These sorts of testimonies have been confirmed by morgue workers, including a woman volunteer at Shura military base near Tel Aviv, who spoke of “very bloody underwear.” Another, Alon Oz who was tasked with identifying the remains of hundreds of soldiers, spoke of “women burnt with their hands and feet bound… I saw gunshot wounds to private parts, bursts of gunfire, shots to finish someone off, a missing head, and missing limbs.”

Though this sort of forensic evidence aligns with the type of systemic sexual violence that is considered a war crime, some, like Israeli Arab Knesset Member Iman Khatib-Yasin, said there was no proof rape occurred on Oct. 7, though she refused to watch footage of the Hamas massacre shown to Knesset members. She later recanted her denialism.

An investigation by The Times of Israel found there was little physical evidence collected of the victims of Oct. 7, including rape kits, which have a 48-hour window. In that time, Israel was still an active combat zone, and by the time investigators were able to access victims, bodies were in such a bad state, the retrieval of semen and DNA samples wasn’t possible or a priority. Many scholars say the lack of rape kits doesn’t matter, so long as factors like intention to commit large-scale rape as a weapon of war have been established.

Dr. Elkayam Levy points to an Arabic-Hebrew glossary purportedly belonging to Hamas and discovered among the carnage that instructs how to say 50 sexually explicit terms like “take your pants off” in Hebrew as evidence of war crimes. This is in addition to testimony from captured Hamas terrorists in which they revealed they were ordered to rape, behead and dismember as many civilians as they could, and even were given permission from their imams to do so because such atrocities go against the teachings of the Quran.

Dr. Mehnaz Afridi, director of the Holocaust, Genocide and Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan College calls such exemptions a total corruption of the teachings of the prophet Muhammad, who strictly forbade violence against women, children and the elderly, even during wartime, unless it is in self-defense As for the lack of rape kits to prove there was sexual violation perpetrated, she says such standards were never employed in the tribunals of Rwanda or Bosnia, the latter of which bears resemblance to Oct. 7.

“This attitude of proof is and has always been a problem in terms of the victimization of women and sexual violence during the war,” says Dr. Afridi, a Muslim woman.

As to why so many human rights and women’s groups are denying that Iran-backed Hamas engaged in genocidal acts and crimes against humanity, Prof. Halperin-Kaddari says there’s only one conclusion: antisemitism.

And many concur, including exiled Iranian women’s activist and journalist Masih Alinejad, who highlighted the fact that wiping the Jewish state off the map is at the core of Iranian and Hamas terrorism. Muslim reformer Asra Nomani—a former Wall Street Journal correspondent and friend of the late Daniel Pearl who was beheaded by al Qaeda terrorists in 2002—spoke out against Susan Sarandon’s antisemitic statement that “frightened” Jews are getting a taste of what it “feels like to be a Muslim in America.”

“Antisemitism can run deep to the point that those antisemites will always dehumanize the other, whether women or children,” says Dr. Afridi.

Fortunately, some university presidents are acting against antisemitic academics who are promoting Oct. 7 denialism.

On Saturday, the University of Alberta, Canada, fired the director of its Sexual Assault Centre for signing a letter denying sexual violence was perpetrated by Hamas on Oct. 7.

Meanwhile, David Katz—who heads cybercrime at Lahav 433, the Israeli police’s criminal investigation division—says it may take six to eight months to complete their investigations. But Halperin-Kaddari and Elkayam-Levy are holding out hope the world will respond sooner.

“The lead prosecutor of the International Criminal Court gave a speech in Cairo expressing interest the Oct. 7 atrocities,” says Elkayam-Levy, who will be meeting with diplomats and UN representatives in New York toward the end of the month, while Halperin-Kaddari will be bringing the case to Geneva. They have filed three petitions, one in the name of women, one by women’s rights organizations and one signed by international law scholars.

“It will be a new international tribunal,” she says, “representing victims from all around the world. In a year, we may get to the end of the beginning of our work.” As she adds, Israeli society has never encountered sexual violence on such a massive scale and there is so much that will sadly remain unknown because so far no victim of sexual atrocities has survived.

And that’s what makes the gaslighting of the global feminist community so particularly painful.

“One of my very early decisions was to collaborate with allies who show moral clarity on these issues,” she says. One of these was a scholar whose work has laid the foundation for rape as a weapon of war.

“She’s a non-Jewish American professor and we weren’t sure how she would react,” she says. “But the moment she said: ‘I know you’ve been through hell. I hope you’re OK,’ we all began to cry. This is what it means to be believed.”

Marisa Fox is a journalist and filmmaker whose upcoming documentary, My Underground Mother, reveals an untold story of women’s camps and sexual violence perpetrated against Jewish teenage girls during the Holocaust.

The Daily Beast · November 25, 2023

24. Can US focus on Asia-Pacific while distracted by Ukraine, Middle E

The bottom line iis the US has global interests and must be able to maintain a global focus. I think this attempt to prioritize one region over the other support of some kind of signalling is not helpful.

That said, as the article notes, the US alliance structure is critical to our mutual defense.

Can US focus on Asia-Pacific while distracted by Ukraine, Middle East conflicts?

• Washington will lean heavily on its regional allies to continue countering China amid ongoing conflicts elsewhere, analysts say
• But no other regional power carries the same clout – as resentment grows in some quarters about US support of Israel and lack of economic engagement

Maria Siow

+ FOLLOWPublished: 9:30am, 25 Nov, 2023

By Maria Siow South China Morning Post11 min

November 24, 2023

View Original

The US inevitably being distracted from the region is not a concern to which Secretary of State Antony Blinken would concede. Earlier this month, he told reporters that Washington will maintain an “intense” focus on the Asia-Pacific despite global conflicts elsewhere.

But history shows such promises are likely to go unfulfilled, according to Anu Anwar, a non-resident associate at Harvard University’s Fairbank Centre for Chinese Studies.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that Washington will maintain an “intense” focus on the Asia-Pacific despite conflicts elsewhere. Photo: Getty Images via AFP

“One of the ironies of contemporary US foreign policy”, Anwar said, is that the last three administrations “all sought to laser focus on the Indo-Pacific region”.

One need only go back to 2011 to find comparable circumstances. Then, in a bid to counter China’s growing influence, President Barack Obama’s administration announced that the US would “pivot” to Asia by rebalancing its resources and priorities towards the world’s most populous continent.

Why the US must engage Indonesia and Asean to restart its ‘pivot to Asia’

The pivot to Asia – aimed at strengthening everything from cooperation on climate change to regional security, trade and investment – unsurprisingly, found itself sidelined.

In 2017, at the start of Donald Trump’s administration, Washington sought to reassure its allies and partners of its continued commitment to the region by rolling out the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” concept. This was to ensure “the global commons are accessible to all” and “disputes are resolved peacefully” by embracing fair and reciprocal trade, as outlined by former US secretaries of state Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo.

But just days into his presidency, Trump pulled the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a comprehensive regional trade deal aimed at limiting China’s economic outreach.

Donald Trump holds up an executive order withdrawing the US from the TPP in the Oval Office of the White House on January 23, 2017. Photo: Bloomberg

The US once again pivoted back to the region following the election in 2020 of current President Joe Biden, who has hosted White House gatherings with leaders of Pacific nations and of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Apart from agreeing to sell nuclear submarines to Australia, Biden’s administration also came up with the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) as a replacement for the abandoned TPP.

But with a US presidential election looming next year, as well as ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, most analysts expect Washington’s attention to once again move away from its pivot.

The difference this time may lie in the strength of alliances that the US has forged with regional partners. When Blinken claimed on November 8 that the US could maintain focus on the Indo-Pacific while simultaneously handling multiple security issues, he cited a network of allies that the Biden administration has called one of the country’s “greatest strategic assets”.

The era of absolute US primacy in Asia may be over, but the US remains capable of bringing significant capabilities to bear across multiple regions

Alice Nason, foreign policy and defence researcher

“The era of absolute US primacy in Asia may be over,” said Alice Nason, a foreign policy and defence research associate at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre. “But the US remains capable of bringing significant capabilities to bear across multiple regions.”

The “empowerment” of allies has been “the overriding priority” of the US’ Asia strategy since Biden entered office, Nason said, adding that ongoing conflicts will slow down “rather than stall” the momentum of US defence and diplomatic partnerships in the region.

Relying on friends and allies

If Washington becomes overstretched, fewer resources spent on hemming in China’s activities would mean fewer “freedom of navigation operations” and reconnaissance sorties around the country’s periphery.

There would also be a slowdown in the forging of new alliances and the delivery of arms to Taiwan and other allies, Anwar said.

Concerns about China taking advantage of an overextended US military are the reason Washington has placed so much emphasis on fostering security-cooperation initiatives in the Indo-Pacific, according to Muhammad Faizal Bin Abdul Rahman, a research fellow on regional security at the Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS).

One example is the US military’s cooperation with the Philippines under the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), which allows US forces to position and store defence materiel, equipment and supplies in the Southeast Asian nation.

Philippine fighter jets join US aircraft on Tuesday in a joint maritime patrol over Batanes and areas in the West Philippine Sea. Photo: Philippine Air Force via AP

Another is the information-sharing deal between the US, Japan, and South Korea, struck this month but planned to begin in December, on North Korea’s missile activities, he said.

To deal with the prospect of a crisis in the South China Sea, Stephen Nagy, professor of politics and international studies at the International Christian University in Tokyo, said “new mini-lateral relationships” will continue to emerge, especially between the Philippines, Japan and Australia.

The Philippines recently said it had approached neighbours Malaysia and Vietnam to discuss a separate code of conduct regarding the disputed waterway, citing limited progress towards striking a broader regional pact with China.

Optimistic that Washington has the capacity to “keep its eyes” on the region, Nagy said it was not just the US that provides a framework for stability but also its partnerships and alliances, forged through Washington’s long-standing military engagement with the region.

Japan and Australia, he said, have stepped up to create reciprocal access agreements – defence pacts between countries aimed at providing shared military training and operations – and provide infrastructure and connectivity aid to the region.

Earlier this month, Japan and the Philippines agreed to seal a reciprocal pact that would allow their troops to enter each other’s territory for joint military exercises.

We should be clear that the US does not do this alone

Stephen Nagy, international-studies professor

Japan and Australia also have a similar treaty to facilitate joint drills and strengthen security cooperation, which came into effect in August.

“[These pacts] ensure that the US understands that they are increasing their burden sharing within the partnerships,” Nagy said, noting that if crises occur both in the Taiwan Strait and on the Korean peninsula, Japan, Australia and New Zealand would be focused on the former while South Korean forces, backed up by the US, would deal with the latter.

“We should be clear that the US does not do this alone,” Nagy said.

University of Sydney’s Nason agreed that “the US relies on capable partners now more than ever to meet its regional security objectives”, adding that Washington’s sustained attention on its Indo-Pacific alliances and partnerships since the war in Ukraine began in February last year was a source of assurance.

Blinken holds a meeting with Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape

“[It reflects] the Biden administration’s ability to ‘walk and chew gum’, attending to different regions simultaneously,” she said, noting that Washington has, for example, signed a defence pact with Papua New Guinea this year that will allow Port Moresby’s personnel to join US coastguard ships patrolling the region.

“Competing for influence in the Indo-Pacific has been elevated as a bipartisan priority in a Congress divided in almost every other area,” she added.

Part of that influence involves better arming its allies, Nason noted. Not only is the US helping Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines – the first of which are scheduled for delivery in the early 2030s – it has also announced four new EDCA sites in the Philippines.

Jacob Stokes, a senior fellow with the Centre for a New American Security think tank’s Indo-Pacific Security Programme who focuses on China, said Washington understood clearly that “China is not going away, far from it” and would thus not overcommit in another direction.

US neglect, shunned Muslims, extremists: Asia’s fears amid Israel-Gaza war

“While Washington staunchly supports both Ukraine and Israel, the US has not committed to fight directly on either’s behalf,” Stokes said. “That restraint stems in part from a recognition that US military power is needed in East Asia to deter aggression there.”

In addition to its growing aggression in the South China Sea, Beijing has also been carrying out military drills around Taiwan, including last Sunday, when nine of its aircraft crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait, which serves as a de facto dividing line.

Beijing regards the island as a breakaway province to be brought under mainland control – by force, if necessary. Many countries, including the US, do not officially recognise Taiwan as an independent state but oppose the use of force to change the status quo.

A big gap to fill

Despite the dense network of US-aligned security partners around the Asia-Pacific, analysts say Washington’s diminished focus on the region will still have a big impact.

While Japan and, to a lesser extent, India are expected to step up their efforts in the region if Washington is distracted, Anwar described their roles as “supplemental” and “not a substitution for the US”.

“The US does all the heavy lifting,” he said, adding that no other country was in a position to fill the gap.

Soldiers from Japan’s Ground Self-Defence Force’s Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade take part in a marine landing drill as a part of a nationwide military exercise earlier this month. Photo: Reuters

Kei Koga, an associate professor in the Public Policy and Global Affairs Programme at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, said that while Japan hopes to take on greater defence roles, it is limited both constitutionally and politically – though some of these constraints have been relaxed in recent years.

During and after former prime minister Shinzo Abe’s final tenure from 2012 to 2020, Japan increased its defence spending, expanded its alliance with the US, and reinterpreted its pacifist constitution in a way that would allow its troops to come to the aid of an ally under attack.

However, large pockets of the Japanese public have expressed concerns about their country’s growing defence capabilities, with 80 per cent saying they were opposed to tax increases aimed at financing defence spending in a poll conducted in May by Kyodo News.

“Japan’s role will be uncertain,” Koga said, noting that Tokyo could however coordinate its policies with other allies such as Canberra and Seoul as these would contribute to the “preparation for regional contingencies”.

Smoke rises following an Israeli strike on the northern part of the Gaza Strip on Thursday. A prolonged war could become a “geopolitical quagmire” for the US, analysts say. Photo: EPA-EFE

A long Israel-Gaza war could become a “geopolitical quagmire” for the US, RSIS’ Muhammad Faizal said, explaining that it would create doubts about whether the US and the West’s advocacy for international law and human rights were “principled or self-serving”.

“It creates diplomatic and propaganda opportunities for China and Russia,” Muhammad Faizal added, noting that Washington would find it tougher to convince the region of its Indo-Pacific strategy while sustaining its support for Ukraine.

As for Israel’s siege of Gaza, many critics have accused Western governments of failing in their responsibility to act in the face of credible accounts of war crimes being committed.

They have charged that calls for a ‘humanitarian pause’ are a distraction and an abrogation of humanitarian responsibilities, and say a ceasefire is the only way to stop the bloodshed.

Hundreds killed in Gaza hospital blast, Israel and Hamas trade blame

Already – through the use of visceral, emotional, politically slanted and often false narratives – Moscow and Beijing are using their state and social media platforms to disparage Washington and undercut Israel.

Case in point: a Russian overseas news outlet, Sputnik India, quoted a military expert as saying, without evidence, that Washington had provided Israel with the rockets that hit the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza on October 17.

Poor economic engagement

US attempts at realigning Asia-Pacific partners away from China are made more difficult by Washington’s lack of economic engagement with the region, analysts say – a state of affairs that is unlikely to change given the ongoing wars, and which stands in stark contrast to Beijing’s enthusiastic investments.

The collapse of the TPP under Trump came as a disappointment to the region and its replacement, Biden’s IPEF, does not promise the sort of trade deals and lowered tariffs that many countries were hoping for. Instead, the US says the IPEF will advance “resilience, sustainability, inclusiveness, economic growth, fairness, and competitiveness”.

Nagy said the framework was not the sort of deal that allows the US to “anchor itself into the region through concrete trade initiatives”.

Indeed, while this month’s negotiations on the IPEF led to agreements on subjects such as clean energy and anti-corruption, the section on trade remains in limbo after no deal was reached.

Even without the ongoing conflicts, Harvard University’s Anwar said Washington’s economic commitment to the Asia-Pacific via the IPEF was already “under serious question” since the deal was “incompatible” with China’s multitrillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative, as well as the volumes of trade and investment it does with the region.

“Now that these two wars have drained a large chunk of US economic resources, it will mean less investment in the region,” Anwar said.

Last year, total annual Chinese investment in belt and road infrastructure projects stood at US$67.8 billion, 34 per cent of which went to Asian countries, according to Statista, a German data-gathering platform.

Passengers board a train on the new Jakarta-Bandung High-Speed Railway, a flagship project under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative that opened earlier this year. Photo: Xinhua

In Southeast Asia, China disbursed about US$5 billion annually in development finance between 2015 and 2021, with infrastructure accounting for 75 per cent including projects in transport and storage, energy, communications, and water and sanitation.

By contrast, the US in 2018 announced a US$113 million Asian investment programme in new technology, energy and infrastructure initiatives in emerging Asia. This year, the US International Development Finance Corporation announced at least US$570 million in new financing for private-sector investments across Southeast Asia aimed at spurring economic growth, advancing financial inclusion, leveraging technology to expand access to education and healthcare, and supporting food and energy security.

Given the “stilted” progress of the IPEF from the outset, Nason said the US would continue “to walk on one leg in its Indo-Pacific Strategy” as it was militarily strong, but economically weak.

As for the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor announced in September, which is aimed at stimulating economic development through greater connectivity and economic integration across continents, Nagy said it would be unaffected.

“It has just been announced, it will take years for it to move forward,” he said, referring to the deal signed by the governments of the US, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, France, Germany, Italy and the European Union.

Under the vision, a railway is expected to link ports connecting Europe, the Middle East and Asia, while facilitating the development and export of clean energy and strengthening food security and supply chains.

Anwar predicted that progress on the project would be made more difficult by India’s deepening ties with Israel and its pro-Israel stance amid the ongoing conflict.

India’s Modi slammed for his ‘complete solidarity’ with Israel over Palestinians

“[These] may put Muslim-majority Middle Eastern countries on a pause as to how much deeper engagement they sought to build with India,” he said.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, Modi has thrown his support behind Israel, with India abstaining from voting on a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire.

25. US flexes muscles with ally in waters claimed by China

US flexes muscles with ally in waters claimed by China

Newsweek · by Aadil Brar · November 23, 2023

American and Philippine warships and fighter jets patrolled large strips of the sea and airspace in the South China Sea this week in a pointed show of force directed at Beijing.

The three days of joint patrols, scheduled to conclude on Thursday, involved aircraft and vessels of the U.S. Navy, Air Force, as well as their counterparts in the Philippines armed forces, according to images released by both militaries.

Their exercise, which the U.S. Seven Fleet described as "routine," took place exclusively in the West Philippine Sea, Manila's name for the stretch of water that falls within its exclusive economic zone, where China has been by far the most assertive of the half a dozen regional states that lay claim to the area's disputed islands, atolls and reefs.

1 of 2

U.S. 7th Fleet and the Armed Forces of the Philippine units began a Maritime Cooperative Activity (MCA) in the South China Sea on November 23, 2023. China has told U.S. and Philippines to not challenge its territorial sovereignty. Philippines Air Force

U.S. 7th Fleet and the Armed Forces of the Philippine units began a Maritime Cooperative Activity (MCA) in the South China Sea on November 23, 2023. China has told U.S. and Philippines to not challenge its territorial sovereignty. Philippines Air Force

U.S. 7th Fleet and the Armed Forces of the Philippine units began a Maritime Cooperative Activity (MCA) in the South China Sea on November 23, 2023. China has told U.S. and Philippines to not challenge its territorial sovereignty. Philippines Air Force

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines, who became the country's leader last summer, is managing existing tensions with China as well as Beijing's increased pressure on Manila's de facto control of vulnerable territories in the Spratly Islands archipelago.

This year, standoffs and clashes between their respective coast guards have occurred around Philippine-held Second Thomas Shoal as well as China-controlled Scarborough Shoal, which was seized from the Philippines in 2012.

The incidents have pushed Marcos closer to Manila's long-time treaty ally, the United States, which in turn is being called on to show its revolve to defend the Philippines in case the flashpoint escalates into a hot war.

1 of 2

The Armed Forces of the Philippines and the US Indo-Pacific Command conducted maritime tactical exercises as part of the three-day maritime cooperative activity (MCA) in the West Philippine Sea on November 23. China has carried out its own deployment to the area. Western Command of the Armed Forces of the Philippines

The Armed Forces of the Philippines and the US Indo-Pacific Command conducted maritime tactical exercises as part of the three-day maritime cooperative activity (MCA) in the West Philippine Sea on November 23. China has carried out its own deployment to the area. Western Command of the Armed Forces of the Philippines

The Armed Forces of the Philippines and the US Indo-Pacific Command conducted maritime tactical exercises as part of the three-day maritime cooperative activity (MCA) in the West Philippine Sea on November 23. China has carried out its own deployment to the area. Western Command of the Armed Forces of the Philippines

Pictures showed American F-15 fast jets flying alongside Philippine Air Force FA-50 aircraft in the vicinity of the South China Sea. U.S. and Philippine combat ships were also shown sailing in formation.

The cooperation was a demonstration of their shared commitment to "a free and open Indo-Pacific region," the U.S. Pacific Air Forces said on Tuesday.

"U.S. 7th Fleet is the U.S. Navy's largest forward-deployed numbered fleet, and routinely interacts and operates with allies and partners in preserving a free and open Indo-Pacific region" the Seventh Fleet said, describing the strategic arena—known to most as the Asia-Pacific—that joins together critical sea lines in the Indian and Pacific oceans.

In response, the Southern Theater Command of the Chinese People's Liberation Army said it had dispatched a navy frigate to conducted its own patrol in the South China Sea starting on November 21, overlapping with the U.S. and allied exercise.

China's forces would remain on "high alert," according to spokesperson Col. Tian Junli.

On Wednesday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said while the U.S. and the Philippines were free to conduct joint patrols, they "must not hurt China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests."

Earlier, the Global Times, a nationalistic state-run tabloid, had downplayed the significance of the U.S.-Philippines patrols, suggesting the threat to China was limited.

U.S. 7th Fleet and the Armed Forces of the Philippine hold joint patrols in the South China Sea on November 23, 2023. China has told U.S. and Philippines not to challenge its territorial sovereignty. U.S. Navy/Lt. Annie Rafferty

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek · by Aadil Brar · November 23, 2023

26. Alan Dershowitz: The Hamas PR Machine Is Ignoring Some Inconvenient Truths

Or is the public ignoring inconvenient truths by embracing Hamas propaganda?

I'm sure this will upset some in the international community. And I leave it to the lawyers to assess the legal arguments.

We should keep in mind that the loss of a single human being is a tragedy. (and no I am not involving Stalin who said: "The death of one person is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.")

Alan Dershowitz: The Hamas PR Machine Is Ignoring Some Inconvenient Truths

tampafp.com · by Opinion · November 24, 2023

Op-Ed By Alan M. Dershowitz

At the end of the Second World War, many Germans who actively supported Adolf Hitler and the Nazis acted as if they actually had nothing to do with genocide inflicted on the Jews.

They pretended that Hitler and a few handfuls of Nazis had suddenly come down from Mars and had taken over the bodies and souls of ordinary, innocent and decent German people.

In his masterful book, “Hitler’s Willing Executioners,” Daniel Goldhagen destroyed that myth and proved conclusively that Hitler and the Nazis had widespread support among ordinary Germans, and that many, if not most, of them were aware of Hitler’s final solution.

This historical reality did not necessarily justify the deliberate killing of German civilians by Great Britain and the United States in Dresden and other German cities, but it made the civilian adult “victims” of these bombings somewhat less sympathetic, and it made it easier to blame their deaths on the Nazis who started the war with widespread civilian support, if not enthusiasm.

A similar mythology is already emerging around the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israeli civilians. Government officials, the media, academics, and others pretend as if there is a sharp distinction between Hamas and the ordinary decent civilians of Gaza.

How many times have you heard the claim that the adult citizens of Gaza are not in any way responsible for the horrendous crimes of Hamas? Or that Israel is imposing “collective punishment” on the innocent civilians of Gaza?

The reality is far more nuanced and complex.

As in Nazi Germany, Hamas was elected by the citizens of Gaza in the last election, in 2006. Today, they would likely still be reelected by an overwhelming majority.

Indeed, support for Hamas has increased dramatically since the massacres of Oct. 7, which were wildly cheered by many civilians.

Recall the recording of the young terrorist who bragged to his father that he had just murdered 10 Jews “with my own hands,” and the proud father congratulating his mass murdering son on his holy “accomplishment.”

Is the father an innocent civilian who deserves our sympathy?

Hamas, itself, refuses to distinguish between combatants and civilians.

First, Hamas boasts that it has the widespread support of the vast majority of Gazans.

Second, it uses alleged civilians as human shields and declares them to be martyrs if they are then killed. At least some of these martyrs willingly served as shields for Hamas combatants.

Third, when the Hamas controlled health authorities release their phony statistics on deaths, they refuse to distinguish between combatants and civilians.

When they say that 11,000 Gazans have been killed, they hide the fact that many of them are either combatants or are complicit in Hamas crimes by willingly allowing their homes to be used for the storage and firing of rockets.

Hamas fully understands that the line between combatants and Gazan civilians is often an artificial one, and they use it as both a sword and a shield in the public relations war.

When Hamas deliberately attacked Israeli civilians, they knew full well that Israel would have to respond, that Hamas would use civilians as human shields, and that despite Israeli efforts to avoid civilian casualties, some Palestinians would become “collateral” damage — that is, be killed or wounded when Israel took military action necessary to prevent a recurrence of the massacres of Oct. 7.

Hamas is thus responsible — morally, legally, and politically — for the civilian deaths that were the predictable and indeed intended result of the Oct. 7 attack.

These civilian deaths were intended to shift the focus away from the Hamas barbarities and toward the collateral damage resulting from Israeli self-defense measures.

The adult civilians of Gaza who encouraged, supported, rewarded and cheered on the massacres of Israelis also bear some moral and political, if not strictly legal, responsibility.

This leaves the children.

It must first be determined what constitutes a “child” in the enumeration of Hamas?

That depends of course on the way children are used.

When it comes to recruiting child soldiers, Hamas considers 13, 14- and 15-year-olds as sufficiently mature to become terrorists.

But when it comes to publishing inflated figures about the dead, suddenly every 17-and-a-half-year-old mass murdering terrorist is counted among the poor “children” mercilessly killed by the bloodthirsty Israelis.

Also, every mass murdering woman, regardless of age, is separately listed, as if that suggest that their sex automatically makes them innocent civilians.

And the media and others willingly fall for these cynical bait-and-switches.

Let the Hamas authorities at least separate the terrorist combatants — including women and children — from the total numbers allegedly killed.

They should also separate out the Gazans who were killed by errant terrorist rockets, as well as civilians who were killed by Hamas trying to go south pursuant to Israeli safety instructions.

It is highly likely that a list of purely innocent civilians who deserve our sympathy —babies, very young children, non-supporters of Hamas — would be a fraction of the inflated numbers uncritically and often provocatively regurgitated by the media.

Alan Dershowitz is professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and the author of “Get Trump,” “Guilt by Accusation” and “The Price of Principle.” Andrew Stein, a Democrat, served as New York City Council president, 1986-94. This piece is republished from the Alan Dershowitz Newsletter.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect those of the Tampa Free Press.

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tampafp.com · by Opinion · November 24, 2023

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com