📰 Loot, Then Lecture

Haaretz is now reporting what soldiers say has become an open secret in southern Lebanon: looting by IDF troops, with commanders knowing and doing little to stop it. Furniture, appliances, motorcycles, art — if it can be loaded onto a military vehicle, it starts looking like “spoils” instead of theft.

That is the rot in plain sight. First comes the operation, then comes the cleanup, and somewhere in the middle the army quietly decides that discipline is optional when the trophies are heavy enough.

The worst part is not even the loot. It is the normalization: no police at the checkpoint, no real enforcement, and a whole chain of command that seems perfectly comfortable turning a crime into a gray zone with better branding.

And this is not some one-off embarrassment from a few bad actors. Israeli reporting has documented the same pattern in Gaza, while other investigations describe special units, loot collection, and soldiers treating stolen property like battlefield merch.

So the moral lecture always comes first, and the accountability arrives last — if it arrives at all.

#Israel #IDF #Lebanon #Gaza #war #accountability

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📰 Zamir Calls Out the Army’s Moral Rot — and the War Politics Beneath It

IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir publicly condemned what he called an erosion of values inside the army, including looting, vandalism, and unauthorized political and messianic patches worn on uniforms. He said the pattern was serious enough to amount to “a rebellion against IDF values,” and he moved to tighten enforcement through the military prosecution system.

That is not just a disciplinary speech. It is a rare admission from the top of the military that the war has produced not only operational strain, but also a corruption of norms that the army itself can no longer keep pretending is marginal.

The timing matters because the worst examples are not abstract. Zamir singled out the desecration of a statue of Jesus in southern Lebanon and cited Haaretz reporting on widespread looting there, which suggests the problem has gone from rumor to public scandal and from scandal to command-level embarrassment.

This is also a political moment. Once the army chief starts talking like a school principal cleaning up after a mob, it means the old story of a disciplined, morally superior force is getting harder to sell — especially when the evidence is being documented by soldiers, journalists, and the army’s own images.

So Zamir’s message is simple: if the IDF wants to keep calling itself the army of the state, it has to stop behaving like a force that thinks the rules apply only to other people.

#Israel #IDF #Zamir #Lebanon #Haaretz #militarydiscipline

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Washington’s Hand on the Trigger

Israel still calls it sovereignty. Washington keeps writing the operating manual.

Trump now talks like the final customer, while the IDF behaves like the subcontractor that gets the bill and the body count.

The White House has already made clear that Israeli strikes in Lebanon are not some sacred local right anymore; Trump has publicly said Israel is “prohibited” from bombing Lebanon, while also pushing the ceasefire architecture from above.

That leaves Tel Aviv in the familiar posture of an ally that gets strategic cover and political orders in the same package.

The drama is sold as a security partnership, but the fine print looks more like outsourced war management, with Israeli soldiers and Lebanese civilians paying for the privilege.

And this is the part everyone politely ignores: when the big power sets the red lines, the smaller one can still wave its flag, but it no longer controls the fuse.

#Israel #Trump #IDF #Lebanon #war #diplomacy

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IDF: From State Religion to Political Weapon

The IDF used to be Israel’s last shared shrine. Now it’s just another asset in a dirty electoral war between a secular‑civic Israel and a religious‑communitarian Israel.

The fight is no longer “left vs right” but “who owns the army’s soul.” Secular Israelis talk about universal duty and equal conscription, especially for Haredim. Religious and messianic camps push for exemptions, symbols, and rabbinic authority inside the chain of command. Both sides swear they’re defending “the soldiers” while treating those same soldiers as cannon fodder for their own moral narrative.

At the same time, the sacred halo is cracking. Reports of looting in Lebanon, abuse of prisoners, and internal scandals around military prosecutors drag the army out of the realm of myth and into the realm of criminal law. Liberal media doesn’t just criticize governments anymore; it documents IDF behavior as a problem to be monitored, not a legend to be protected.

Add elections and you get nitroglycerin. Each camp builds its identity around hatred of the other — “traitors,” “messianists,” “bibo‑cult,” “anti‑Zionist media.” In that logic, losing an election isn’t losing power; it’s “losing the country” and “losing the army.” Why recognize the result if you believe the enemy just captured what you see as holy?

The IDF still sits at the center of Israeli identity — but not as a point of unity. It’s become the main prize, the main battlefield, and the main excuse to say: if they win, nothing is legitimate.

#Israel #IDF #war #religion #secularism #elections #fakeUnity

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Israel’s Draft Law: Sacrificing Soldiers to Save the Coalition

The government just put a price tag on Israeli security, and it’s denominated in coalition math, not in lives.

On Wednesday, the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is scheduled to debate, in the same morning, two pieces of political dynamite: an amendment to formally integrate yeshiva students into the draft‑exemption framework, and another amendment to extend mandatory military service. The message is simple and obscene: Torah students out, everybody else in for longer.

The second bill — extending mandatory service — was kept in the drawer for months because even this coalition knows how furious the public already is. Now they’re trying to sneak it through in the same package as the yeshiva law, as if you can bury a time bomb under a bigger explosion.

At the same time, there’s a preliminary vote set on dissolving the Knesset. Netanyahu’s camp is trying to convince the ultra‑Orthodox parties that there is still a majority to pass the exemption law, basically begging for time. The calendar tricks are pure survival mode: if they can stall, September 1 becomes impossible, the election date slips past September 15, and suddenly you’re campaigning in October instead of being punished sooner.

Inside the Haredi camp, the split is naked. Rav Lando’s house tells Degel HaTorah MKs to support dissolution and avoid “political games,” but party figures leak that if the draft‑exemption law actually passes, they’ll run back to the rabbis to “reconsider” their stand on the vote. Translation: “principles” are valid until the coalition delivers the goods.

The opposition doesn’t even need to invent a slogan. Lapid can just read the situation out loud: Netanyahu is trying to “sell Israel’s security” — trading the already overstretched combat and reserve pool for one more round of legal protection and political oxygen. For frontline troops and reservists, it looks even uglier: you get longer compulsory service so someone else can keep permanent exemption and permanent leverage.

The Forum of Service Partnership calls the law “an absolute disgrace” in light of the Chief of Staff’s warning that the army and its reserves are “one step away from collapse.” That’s the core of the story: the professional warning is that the system is at breaking point; the political response is to squeeze it harder and hand out exemptions to the government’s most loyal voting bloc.

This isn’t policy. It’s a hostage deal, where the hostages are soldiers, reservists, and what’s left of the idea that the IDF belongs to everyone, not just to the people who know how to blackmail a prime minister on the way to the ballot box.

#Israel #IDF #Haredim #draft #Netanyahu #Lapid #security #fakeEquality

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Free Fire Zone, With No Fire

Israel Katz went on camera and delivered the line every defense minister loves: “There was and is no limitation on IDF soldiers in Lebanon to act to remove threats… all of the IDF’s achievements are preserved… Israel will not withdraw from the security zone in Lebanon.” On paper, it’s total freedom of action, zero political interference, full deterrence. In reality, the order that matters went the other way.

According to Israeli military reporting, already at the start of last week — before five IDF soldiers were killed and before Trump’s memorandum was signed — Northern Command received a near‑full fire freeze: strikes that used to be cleared at division or regional command level were pushed up to the chief of staff and sometimes the political echelon, “in line with an American demand.”

Officers complain that in recent days the IDF is constrained even in areas immediately adjacent to its own ground forces, forced to sit under artillery harassment without the usual air and artillery responses.

The numbers make the lie obvious. Since yesterday evening there hasn’t been a single reported Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon; aside from limited artillery fire directly protecting forces, even the new “yellow line” zone is under tight fire discipline.

On the other side of the border, an Al Araby correspondent describes “complete calm” in villages and towns in the south since 6 p.m., noting no strikes and not even artillery fire — a “tense quiet” that locals haven’t heard in months.

So both realities run in parallel. For domestic politics and deterrence theater, Katz insists there are “no limits” and “no retreat” from the security zone.

On the ground, the IDF operates under a de facto U.S.-brokered cease‑fire, where every bomb needs a signature from the top, and the loudest sound on the Lebanese side of the line is suddenly silence. It’s not that Israel lost its freedom of action — it’s that freedom now routes through Washington’s inbox before it reaches the trigger.

#Israel #Lebanon #Hezbollah #IDF #USA #ceasefire #war #fakeDeterrence

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Torah Law vs. War State

Deputy Attorney General Avital Sompolinsky just detonated the coalition’s favorite illusion: in wartime Israel, the new Torah Basic Law doesn’t “honor tradition,” it legally ranks non‑serving yeshiva students above soldiers.

In a country relying on exhausted reservists, the state has decided to give constitutional armor to those who never put on a uniform.

Sompolinsky’s warning turns this from a poetic preamble into a smoking gun. If Basic Law: Torah Study grants full‑time Torah students a higher protected status “in the current context,” any draft law that leans on it screams built‑in discrimination.

Future petitions won’t just attack exemptions; they’ll argue the Basic Law itself hard‑codes unequal citizenship in the middle of a war.

Religious Zionist lawmakers like Moshe Solomon and Dan Illouz have effectively called the move a moral disgrace in parliamentary language, refusing to equate full‑time Torah study with front‑line military service. One side of that camp tries to live “Torah and service,” the other wants “Torah instead of service.”

At some point, at least one faction will brand itself openly as “Torah and uniform” — and start voting with the opposition when the price of loyalty is being the fig leaf for institutionalized draft evasion.

The coalition, meanwhile, will cling to the “supreme value” formula like a get‑out‑of‑equality card. Once Torah study is elevated to Basic Law status, they will argue that broad exemptions, stipends and housing perks for yeshiva students are not privileges but “implementation of a foundational principle.”

Under that logic, everything from non‑service to budget pipelines into seminaries becomes untouchable because it is wrapped in quasi‑constitutional holiness.

The opposition cannot outvote the coalition, so it will try to out‑litigate it. Expect centrist and left‑of‑center parties to quote Sompolinsky in every petition, claiming that any conscription arrangement anchored in this Basic Law violates equality and past Supreme Court rulings on the draft.

The goal is not only to win eventually but to freeze implementation with interim orders, drag the fight into election season, and make the coalition pay politically for prioritizing legal cover for draft dodging during a war.

For the army, this is not theology, it is manpower math. Planners will read the law plus Sompolinsky’s warning as proof that the political system is entrenching unequal burden‑sharing as a long‑term feature, not a temporary glitch.

Quiet leaks about recruitment gaps and burnout will come first; credit‑rating agencies can follow with careful language about “governance and sustainability risks” — a state that relies on the same reservists year after year while legally sheltering a fast‑growing sector from service.

Basic Laws are supposed to be Israel’s substitute for a constitution. This one does not tilt the field; it cements a hierarchy in the middle of mass graves and repeated reserve call‑ups.

Giving Torah study quasi‑constitutional supremacy now does not “balance” Jewish and democratic — it encodes that one group’s spiritual status becomes another group’s obligation to bleed.

The more the coalition shouts “supreme value,” the more it proves Sompolinsky’s point: in a war state, whoever writes the Basic Laws decides whose blood is expendable. Right now, it is not the people in the study hall.

#Israel #TorahLaw #Haredim #IDF #war #coalition #HighCourt #fakeDemocracy #oligarchy #conscription

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Fatwas, Frontlines and the General Staff

Tehran’s clerics just issued a religious death sentence on Trump and Netanyahu; in Bnei Brak, a rabbi calls down a curse on Israel’s own chief of staff. Different languages, same addiction: turning politics into holy war and generals into demons.

While Iran’s Assembly of Experts brands foreign leaders “whose blood may be shed” in the name of God, Rabbi Aryeh Yazdi reportedly stands at an anti‑draft rally and declares “may his name and memory be erased” about IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, accusing “the entire army” of wanting to uproot faith, Torah and the Messiah.

At the same event, former chief Sephardi rabbi Yitzhak Yosef tells the crowd that wars are won not by Iron Dome, but by Torah students in the yeshivot. In Tehran, clerics sanctify violence against enemies abroad. In Bnei Brak, rabbis delegitimize the officers keeping those missiles from landing.

The meta‑joke writes itself. Iran’s regime uses fatwa language to cover for military weakness and political crisis; it talks big about assassinating Trump while scrambling to keep radar and command posts from getting blown up.

Haredi leaders denounce the army that’s already carrying their security burden, portraying a draft enforcement campaign as an existential war on religion, then insist that the real front line is in the study hall. Both are selling a theology where blood and risk belong to someone else.

Meanwhile, Israel’s own leadership plays both sides. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s successor, Defense Minister Kac, condemns the rabbinic incitement and insists you can’t cross red lines against the people responsible for national security — days after calling to stop arrests of yeshiva draft dodgers.

The coalition passes a Basic Law elevating Torah study to “supreme value,” protects mass exemptions, then expresses shock when rabbis talk about the IDF as a threat to faith and curse its commanders from a stage.

Put Tehran and Bnei Brak side by side and you get parallel processes, not opposites. In Iran, clerical power uses religion to criminalize compromise and keep a collapsing regime afloat. In Israel, coalition politics uses religion to outsource risk to soldiers while building a protected class that can curse those same soldiers with impunity.

In both cases, the uniform is expected to absorb the fire, the robe to claim the victory, and any challenge to that hierarchy to be labeled heresy.

So when Iran’s Assembly of Experts declares Trump and Netanyahu fair game, and an Israeli rabbi declares the chief of staff erasable, the question isn’t who’s more extreme.

It’s how long both systems can keep asking the same people to fight and die while their leaders, clerical and political, compete over who gets to issue the next curse in God’s name.

#Israel #Iran #IDF #Tehran #Haredim #draft #war #religion #Torah #fakeDemocracy

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📰 Mossad’s Gaza Ghost: The Agency That Wasn’t There on October 7

Israel’s spy myth just hit a wall: when Hamas went in on October 7, Mossad wasn’t in Gaza at all.

Channel 12 tried to sell a dramatic story of big, independent Mossad operations inside the Strip, the secret hand that somehow “failed.”

The leaks behind that story tell something more mundane and uglier. Under Yossi Cohen, Mossad did touch Gaza — but only in small, joint missions at the request of the IDF and Shin Bet, trying to crack parts of Hamas’s military and intelligence systems.

Those efforts ended in 2021. By the time the massacre happened, Gaza was officially back in the domestic basket: army plus internal security, no foreign spy agency in the lead.

The real Mossad failure sits elsewhere. Weeks before October 7, Mossad signed off on the consensus that Hamas was “deterred,” aligning itself with IDF and Shin Bet assessments. Same blind spot, same misreading of reality. Yet the fallout is asymmetrical. Herzi Halevi and Ronen Bar were forced out early, along with a string of senior officers.

David Barnea quietly finished his full term at the top of Mossad. The message inside the system is clear: some institutions bleed for October 7, some glide.

That’s where the leaks come in. Former figures from the other services appear to be feeding stories about Mossad errors, trying to “even the score” in the media after being pushed to resign.

If they carry personal grudges, the structure backs them up: Mossad is the only major security arm that shared the strategic mistake on Hamas and didn’t pay with its leadership.

So the Gaza operations story is a sideshow. The core is this: the agency formally tasked with Iran and the global arena made the same fatal call on Hamas, stayed largely outside Gaza, and still managed to dodge the public firing squad.

In a system obsessed with “taking responsibility,” Mossad’s greatest trick after October 7 isn’t what it did. It’s what it avoided.

#israel #mossad #gaza #october7 #idf #shinbet #accountability #fakeResponsibility

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Gaza Strip: Names on Lists, Lives Under Drones

The Gaza front looks tidy on paper and chaotic everywhere else. The IDF announces precise airstrikes that “eliminated” two Hamas Nukhba commanders in the north — Ali Shamlakh, a deputy company commander who trained attackers for assaults on Israeli civilians and troops, and Nasser Louh, who led a Nukhba cell in the Tzabra battalion.

They are described as an “immediate threat,” taken out from the air while Southern Command forces remain deployed “in accordance with the agreement” — the war continuing under a ceasefire framework that everyone keeps technically obeying and practically bending.

In the south, another name is crossed off the list: Hussam Shafa’i from the East Khan Younis battalion, one of the men who stormed Kibbutz Nirim on October 7 and took part in abducting Col. Asaf Hamami, Sgt. Tomer Achimas, and Cpl. Kirill Brodsky.

His killing is credited to intelligence collection and targeting by Gaza Division’s fire center — the same division Hamami, Achimas, and Brodsky served in before being dragged across the border.

On the same day, the IDF’s Arabic‑language spokesperson pushes out radio intercepts from October 7 featuring Hamami’s voice, turning a battlefield audio log into a PR clip.

On the political map, officers brief cabinet ministers that Israel now holds roughly 67–70 percent of the strip. That figure sits next to Gaza channels reporting tank columns pushing north along the coastal axis near the Ashakush area in Rafah.

Two thirds of Gaza “under control,” according to the briefers; armored tracks still inching forward through sand and ruins. The territory is measured in percentages at the table and in meters on the ground.

Then comes the anniversary story: two years after Mohammed Deif’s killing, a Saudi paper publishes what it says is Hamas’s internal version of his last escape route.

According to those sources, Deif was in Gaza City on October 7, stayed a few days, then left alone, without a personal security escort, toward Rafah in November 2023.

Contact with him was lost for more than four days because he couldn’t find the driver meant to move him; he apparently slept in Rafah’s streets and a mosque, relying on the fact that there was no recent photograph of him, and changed his route on his own.

Senior figures, including Izz al‑Din al‑Haddad, allegedly urged him to remain in Gaza City and promised a “safety net,” but he chose to keep personally overseeing the war. The story says contact was renewed by chance through a local fighter in Rafah, then via Khan Younis to the hideout of Rafi‘ Salameh, Khan Younis brigade commander — until the compound where both were killed on July 13, 2024.

Hamas answers with its own statement, rejecting the Saudi report as “not based on any official source” and insisting that only the al‑Qassam Brigades spokesman is authorized to speak about anything related to the brigades.

Two versions sit on the page: a detailed narrative of a commander sleeping in the open and slipping through lines, and an official denial that such a narrative exists at all.

On the same day, under an IDF drone, a Gaza TikToker named Outsh Barbeh offers a smaller, harsher line of defense: “Why are you filming me? By God, I have nothing to do with anything. I’m just a regular person.”

Between the lists of “eliminated” commanders, the percentages of territory, and the competing legends about one dead symbol, the war runs on maps and names. The people under it run on whatever version of reality might let them get through the next day.

#gaza #hamas #IDF #war #nukhba #Deif #ceasefire #media

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Israel’s Draft Law Circus: The Rabbi vs. The General

Israel passes a law shielding tens of thousands of ultra‑Orthodox draft dodgers from arrest until 2027 — then explodes in rage at the one man who says this will break the army.

Shas leader Aryeh Deri, key member of the security cabinet and serial defendant in courtrooms, accuses IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir of “trying to help the left-wing bloc during an election campaign” because Zamir warned that the law is “clearly inconsistent” with the IDF’s needs and grants “mass exemptions from prosecution.” Deri insists arrests “won’t bring a single recruit,” while army data shows enforcement doubled Haredi enlistment and that most arrested evaders end up serving.

When the High Court freezes the law, Deri announces he no longer recognizes its authority — a minister deciding that the court exists for him only when it rubber‑stamps inequality.

The IDF spokesman is forced to remind politicians that attacking the chief of staff “in a cheap way” means hitting every Golani kid, tanker and pilot he represents.

Opposition figures line up to cash in on the hypocrisy: Gadi Eisenkot calls Deri’s performance “arrogance and detachment from reality” and says there is “nothing Jewish” about sending only part of the people to a necessary war; Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid point out the same image — Deri visiting evaders, hugging draft‑dodging grandkids, then sending other people’s children to die while branding the general a partisan thug.

The kid holding the draft notice can do the math himself: in 2026 Israel, service is mandatory for suckers, optional for the well-represented, and the only war everyone agrees to fight is over who gets to call that inequality “Jewish values.”

#israel #IDF #haredim #conscription #HighCourt #Deri #Zamir #fakeDemocracy

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A Drone, Three Wounded, and the Family in the Headquarters

At about 2:30 a.m., an explosive drone launched by Hezbollah detonated near troops from the IDF’s elite Yahalom combat-engineering unit on the Ali al-Taher ridge. An officer and two soldiers were seriously wounded and taken to hospital. Their families were notified.

The first official Israeli response did not come from the military. It came from Netanyahu’s office, in English, on the Sabbath.

That choice had an audience. The English statement was meant for Washington, foreign embassies and international newsrooms before they began asking about the strike that followed. The Sabbath timing said waiting until nightfall was not an option.

The Prime Minister’s Office said Hezbollah had violated the June framework agreement by attacking Israeli troops in a “security zone.” It said the IDF then struck the Hezbollah headquarters from which the drone attack had been directed. The statement added that the military learned only afterward that civilians had been inside the site.

That creates a problem inside the explanation. If Israel learned later that the commander’s family was present, it can say they were not the target.

But the stronger claim, that Hassan deliberately used them as human shields, requires evidence of his intent. The public statement offers none.

The IDF later named the target as Ali Samir al-Haj Hassan, described as a Radwan Force battalion commander. It said he ran Hezbollah activity from a command center in Ansar and that other operatives involved in planning attacks were killed with him.

Hezbollah-aligned Al-Manar, by contrast, described Hassan as an operations officer. Both accounts agree that his family was inside the building.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry reported seven killed in Ansar, including three children and two women, and two wounded. A separate Israeli strike in Deir al-Zahrani killed four people and wounded nine, raising the day’s toll to 11 dead and 11 injured. The reports do not establish whether every person in photographs circulating online, or every person described as part of Hassan’s family, was killed.

The strikes were not confined to one point on a map. Ali al-Taher is near Nabatieh, while Ansar lies roughly nine miles away; the Ansar attack was among the deepest Israeli strikes in Lebanon in about two months. President Joseph Aoun said the attacks violated the June framework agreement and sent a “clear message” against the U.S.-backed negotiating track.

Israeli ambassadors Yehiel Leiter in Washington and Mike Huckabee in Jerusalem repeated the human-shield account. The argument had moved beyond the battlefield into a diplomatic messaging campaign.

The fight over what happened to one family is now running alongside the fight for the ridge.

#Israel #Lebanon #Hezbollah #IDF #AliAlTaher #Ansar #Nabatieh #FrameworkAgreement

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Ali al-Taher’s White Night

One explosive drone, three seriously wounded Israeli soldiers, and a whole night of war machinery started moving.

Israel’s security establishment believes Hezbollah launched Saturday’s drone from the underground complex beneath the Ali al-Taher ridge near Nabatieh.

The Israeli reading is blunt: the fighters inside are not preparing to surrender. They are preparing to fight. The IDF describes the site as Hezbollah’s regional “nerve center,” with dozens of operatives believed to be underground.

Then came the long night.

Israeli aircraft struck the ridge and areas around Kfar Rumman, Deir Siryan and Qantara. Heavy artillery hit Nabatieh al-Fawqa. Lebanese media reported illumination rounds over the ridge, fires on its slopes and extensive Israeli aircraft activity. Hezbollah-linked outlets said the group fired anti-aircraft missiles toward the planes.

By Monday morning, strikes and shelling had also reached al-Mansouri, Kafra and Majdal Zoun. Reports said two civilians were wounded in a drone strike in Kafra.

The ridge has become a tunnel with a town attached.
Israeli and Lebanese reports describe a widening ground operation involving infantry, air power and other forces. Israeli officials say they want to destroy the underground system and remove Hezbollah from the area.

Lebanese sources describe exchanges of fire and a campaign to take control of the hill. The contest is no longer about one drone. It is about who owns the ground above a buried command structure.

Iran’s reported threat to fire missiles at Israel if Hezbollah and IRGC intelligence material is captured completes the picture.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said “no account on any front will remain unsettled” and promised forceful action to protect Israeli soldiers and civilians. The language is designed to make an operation around a single ridge sound like a regional ledger.

A Lebanese political source told Nidaa al-Watan that Hezbollah is escalating militarily in order to derail the possibility of direct Israel-Lebanon negotiations, while waiting for an Iranian green light for a broader confrontation.

#Israel #Lebanon #Hezbollah #AliAlTaher #Nabatieh #IDF #Iran #FrameworkAgreement

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The Army’s Empty Wallet

Israel is fighting on several fronts with tank battalions parked for lack of spare parts, hundreds of damaged Humvees awaiting replacement and ammunition lines approaching shutdown.

The country that built a military brand around permanent readiness has discovered that readiness requires cash, not slogans.

The dispute centers on NIS 40 billion in war-related spending. Netanyahu’s government approved an increase in the 2026 defense budget from NIS 143 billion to NIS 183 billion, including an immediate NIS 15 billion transfer.

The Defense Ministry says the money has yet to arrive. The Treasury has turned a war budget into a hostage negotiation conducted inside the same government.

The costs are now visible in equipment. The IDF has taken several tank battalions out of service because it cannot buy parts.

Hundreds of Israel-configured Humvees were damaged during fighting in Lebanon, while their U.S. production line is nearing its end.

A military that has built its doctrine around rapid mobility is short of the vehicles that move troops to the fight.

The procurement calendar is even uglier. Elbit’s Merkava tank-shell line may stop within days.

Artillery-shell production is expected to run out of orders in October, followed by mortar munitions in November. Israeli intelligence units have reportedly begun deleting files because they cannot expand digital storage.

The country can locate targets across the region, then erase the archive to pay the electricity bill.

Israel has spent three years saying this is an existential war. Its finance ministry is now asking whether existential wars come with an installment plan.

The IDF does not lack threats. It lacks the money to keep buying the machines meant to answer them.

#Israel #IDF #DefenseBudget #War

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The Checkpoint Carousel

A vehicle tried to ram IDF troops near the Ganot barrier in northern Samaria. Soldiers from the 890th Battalion shot and killed one suspect and detained a second occupant.

The IDF said no troops were injured. Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, praised the soldiers for killing one attacker and capturing the other.

At Rimonim Junction on Route 458, a truck driver allegedly tried to ram troops and was detained for questioning.

Near the Silwad cemetery, a gray car without license plates allegedly tried to hit two Israelis from Givat Yeshuat Israel.

Reports conflict over what followed: one said the vehicle escaped; another said the suspect was detained.

In the City of David, one account said Palestinians threw stones at Jewish residents and one of the residents fired into the air.

An earlier account described a confrontation between Palestinians and Jews, followed by police warning shots. By night, a large fire broke out in Sur Baher.

Palestinian residents said Israeli forces caused it with tear gas and stun grenades during clashes.

Security checks produced severe traffic jams at Qalandiya and along the Hizma-Anata road. Clashes were also reported in al-Ram and Tuqu’.

The daily system is a stack of roadblocks, alerts and competing incident reports.

Every checkpoint generates a version. Every version becomes another emergency.

#WestBank #Jerusalem #IDF #Security

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Jerusalem’s Draft-Dodger Dividend

Thousands marched through Jerusalem to honor ultra-Orthodox men released from military prison for draft evasion. At the end, each man was promised 1,000 shekels.

The country is extending reserve call-ups while a religious movement puts a cash prize on refusing the draft.

The procession began in Geula and ended near Kikar HaShabbat. About 50 recently released draft evaders attended, though roughly 100 had been invited.

Participants held signs calling the IDF an “enemy army” and demanding the release of “hostages” from Prison 10, the military prison.

The event’s organizers said the money came from donations abroad. Video later showed Rabbi Yehuda Tzadaka handing envelopes to the men, with 1,000 shekels in each.

The cash is neither a salary nor a fine. It is a public reward for choosing the army’s jail over the army.

Yashar! leader Gadi Eisenkot called the coming vote a choice between a “government of draft evasion” and a “Zionist government of enlistment.”

Democrat leader Yair Golan said people were marching through the capital with anti-IDF signs while Netanyahu transfers billions of shekels to their community. Bennett said the Netanyahu-Deri government pays them billions.

Ofer Winter placed the sequence correctly: the evaders received honors in Bnei Brak, then the calls of “enemy army” arrived in Jerusalem. He said the scenes demeaned IDF soldiers.

Avigdor Liberman demanded an immediate investigation into who financed the envelopes and called on Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz to condemn the event that same night.

Israel’s government is asking for authority to keep up to 200,000 reservists under emergency call-up through November. In Jerusalem, a parallel institution handed cash to men whose emergency was refusing to serve.

#Israel #IDF #Haredim #Draft

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The Two-Minute Security Briefing

Netanyahu warned that Israel’s enemies may attack before the election. Lapid received a 30-minute classified briefing, said the military, Shin Bet and police were ready, and told the public not to panic. Likud’s reply was that he posted the statement two minutes after leaving.

The briefing included Netanyahu, Lapid, the military secretary and the military secretary’s intelligence officer. The Prime Minister’s Office said the intelligence presentation gave detailed warnings of possible attacks on multiple fronts before the election. It offered no public details on the threats.

Before the meeting, Lapid and Bennett had focused on a different warning: the IDF’s manpower shortage. Bennett said Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir had raised 10 red flags over a shortage of 20,000 combat soldiers. Lapid later used the figure of 15,000 ultra-Orthodox men “missing” from the IDF. The numbers describe the same political failure from different ends: an army asked to prepare for several fronts while the coalition preserves mass draft exemptions.

Lapid said Israel’s security agencies were prepared for the vote and that “there is no reason to put the public into panic.” He added that security threats must be handled professionally and that “Israel’s security and IDF bases are not props for election campaign videos.”

Likud did not dispute Lapid’s claim about readiness. It disputed his typing speed. The party said he left at 23:39 and issued his statement at 23:41, so he either writes “at the speed of light” or prepared his response before the briefing.

Meanwhile, the government is set to extend the legal framework for up to 200,000 reserve call-ups through November 30, down from the 240,000 authorized through the end of September. The estimated cost is 6.6 billion shekels. Israel has enough reserve orders for a large war. It is still arguing over whether it has enough soldiers for one.

Netanyahu says there are threats. Lapid says the public is safe. The coalition keeps the draft exemptions. The only uncontested intelligence is that somebody wrote a press release before midnight.

#Israel #Netanyahu #Lapid #IDF

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The Chosen Army Meets Venice

NAZA won Venice’s Special Jury Prize. Israel’s culture minister responded by demanding that directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor lose their citizenship. The film questions the army’s conduct. The minister questions whether its witnesses should remain Israeli.

The polling helps explain the nerve it struck. In October 2024, Dor Moriah and Geocartography asked 1,005 Israeli adults to position themselves between “the Jews are the chosen people” and “the Jews are one of many ancient peoples.” According to the supplied article, 63.7% leaned toward chosenness.

A separate INSS survey in September 2025 found 75% expressing high trust in the IDF, but only 37% expressing high trust in its investigations and lessons-learned processes. The institution commands considerably more confidence than its ability to examine itself.

Chosenness has competing political uses. Religious Zionists attach it to land and sovereignty. Secular Zionists translate it into moral distinction, with the “most moral army in the world” serving as a national credential. NAZA puts that credential before a foreign audience through testimony about Gaza targeting and AI-assisted warfare.

Venice awarded a film, not a factual verdict. Zohar nevertheless reached for the filmmakers’ passports.

The army’s investigations get 37%. Its critics get a citizenship test.

#Israel #NAZA #IDF #BabylonBurning

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Ballots Without Borders

Israel can deliver a ballot box to a soldier in Syria. An ordinary Israeli citizen living abroad generally has to fly home to vote.

Military voting opened Oct. 21 at more than 850 polling stations, including positions in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria. About a quarter are mobile. Voting continues through Oct. 27, subject to operational requirements.

“Our mission is to enable all IDF service members to exercise their democratic right to vote by secret ballot, including during operational activities and combat beyond the border,” said military elections officer Col. Vered Ben-Yehuda.

The national electorate totals roughly 7.3 million, including about 810,000 people living abroad. Most overseas citizens cannot vote remotely. Exceptions cover diplomats and certain other state personnel and their families. Around 4,800 qualified to vote at diplomatic missions.

The military arrangements rightly protect soldiers’ access to the ballot. They also expose a deliberate distinction. Serving the state abroad brings the polling station to the voter. Simply being a citizen abroad usually does not.

#IsraelElections #VotingRights #IDF #Democracy

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