Today In Issues:
FDD Research & Analysis
The Must-Reads
War within a war: Israel takes aim at Hamas militants in Lebanon US to present Gaza proposal ‘in coming days,’ Blinken says AEI’s Tunku Varadarajan: The Jews stand unbowed—but alone US calls on Big Tech to help evade online censors in Russia, Iran Iran recruited European criminals to attack Jewish targets Putin drives home a perilous point: Ukraine’s East is Russia’s main goal Alleged Hezbollah financier expected to plead guilty in US sanctions case WINEP’s Michael Knights: Iraq’s watergate and the fallout for U.S. relations Japan's Kishida, South Korea's Yoon call to sustain momentum in improved ties China is not pushing Africa into debt trap, South African president says WSJ Editorial: France gets a centrist Prime Minister U.S. indicts members of Russian military intelligence over cyberattack on UkraineIn The News
Israel
After the killings of six hostages by Hamas, more than 200,000 Israelis flooded into the streets calling for a deal to free those remaining in captivity. The country’s leading labor union took the rare step of calling for a wartime general strike. – Wall Street Journal
Hours before families in Gaza lined up on Thursday to start the second phase of an emergency polio vaccination campaign, a deadly Israeli airstrike hit near a hospital in an area where a previous round of inoculations had just concluded. – New York Times
Israeli forces have withdrawn from the city of Jenin and a refugee camp there, following a 10-day episode of “violent aggression”, the Palestine news agency (WAFA) said on Friday. – Reuters
The Biden administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were sharply at odds Thursday over prospects of reaching a deal for a Gaza cease-fire and hostage release, with Netanyahu saying it was “exactly inaccurate” that a breakthrough was close. – Associated Press
The US, Qatar and Egypt will present a new cease-fire proposal to Israel and Hamas in the coming days, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday, as the Biden administration struggles to find a way to end the war in the Gaza Strip. – Bloomberg
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu downplayed the prospect of reaching a cease-fire agreement with Hamas soon, blaming the militant group for stalling talks. – Bloomberg
Hamas on Thursday released a propaganda video of slain hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, which his grieving family described as a “wakeup call” for the world to act for the release of the remaining captives in Gaza. – Times of Israel
Amnesty International on Thursday said there should be a war crimes probe into Israel for razing homes and farms in eastern Gaza to expand a buffer zone between Israeli communities and the coastal enclave as part of its war against the Hamas terror group there. – Times of Israel
Rawhi Fattouh, speaker of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) parliament, on Thursday condemned Israel’s elimination of terrorists who threatened IDF soldiers. – Arutz Sheva
Tunku Varadarajan writes: That evil, which Mr. Lévy witnessed when he traveled to kibbutzim near Gaza in October, will remain with him forever. “I will never forget my first impressions: the smell of sour milk that filled the bullet-pocked, blasted, half-burned houses.” Still, he’s confident Jews will emerge stronger. “I see light, because the Jews don’t accept darkness anymore,” he says. “They don’t disarm themselves. They fight back. They behave as they should. They are proud.” Most important, “they don’t hide who they are anymore.” – Wall Street Journal
Liat Collins writes: The deaths of the hostages aren’t on Hamas’s conscience. It doesn’t have a conscience. It has a goal – written in its charter – to destroy Israel. It’s happy to see destruction resulting from terror attacks or through the domestic turmoil it deliberately foments. Hamas killed the hostages, but it can’t force Israel to commit suicide. And the world risks being dragged down into those deep, dark terror tunnels if it doesn’t extend a helping hand to Israel in its fight against the terrorists and their Iranian sponsor. – Jerusalem Post
Iran
The tools, supported by the U.S.-backed Open Technology Fund (OTF), have seen a surge of usage in Russia, Iran, Myanmar and authoritarian states that heavily censor the internet. – Reuters
A report in Der Spiegel on Thursday revealed that Iran recently enlisted members of criminal organizations to carry out terror attacks against Jewish institutions in Germany and France. – Arutz Sheva
Kayhan’s daily’s frequent attacks on pro-reform and even hardline governments is well known in Tehran. However, many agree that the hardline paper has launched its offensive against the Pezeshkian administration unusually early. – Iran International
Iran’s Ambassador to the UN, Amir-Saeid Iravani, has once again dismissed international claims about Tehran’s supporting Russia’s war on Ukraine as “baseless and misleading.” – Iran International
Editorial: Even Ayatollah Khamenei is saying that he might allow Mr. Pezeshkian to negotiate with the “enemy.” Vice President Harris is surrounded with true believers in Iranian diplomacy. So if elected she might stumble into the never-ending negotiation trap. For now, the incredibly shrinking topic that once topped America’s worst fears is off the radar. Which is why it isn’t hard to predict that soon a nuclear-armed Iran will be our biggest global headache. – New York Sun
Russia & Ukraine
Russian leader Vladimir Putin said he hadn’t given up on peace negotiations with Ukraine, in comments apparently aimed at the West ahead of a U.S. visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to try to elicit more military backing. – Wall Street Journal
Ukraine’s parliament voted Thursday to appoint Andrii Sybiha, the country’s former ambassador to Turkey and past deputy head of the presidential office, as foreign minister, just hours after accepting the resignation of his predecessor, Dmytro Kuleba. – Washington Post
The Kremlin on Thursday denied attempts to influence the American election after the U.S. Justice Department indicted two employees of the state-owned RT network, alleging a covert operation to influence public opinion and sow social divisions through Russian propaganda. – Washington Post
As Kyiv raced reinforcements to eastern Ukraine to try to stabilize its buckling defensive lines there, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia amplified his threats against the region on Thursday, calling Moscow’s offensive in the area his military’s “first-priority goal.” – New York Times
Ukraine has achieved “a lot” in its Kursk offensive into Russia but it’s hard to say how the situation will develop next, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters in Oslo on Thursday. – Reuters
Ukraine said 75 countries and international organisations have agreed a “shared vision” of measures to ensure the uninterrupted supply of Ukrainian agricultural products and help global food security, a major concern following Russia’s 2022 invasion. – Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that China, India and Brazil could act as mediators in potential peace talks over Ukraine. – Reuters
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will meet Friday, a spokesman for Germany’s government said. – Bloomberg
Jonathan Sweet and Mark Toth write: The speed of Biden has been detrimental to Ukraine’s ability to prevail on the battlefield. Biden has one last opportunity, as he often states, to be “on the right side of history.” He must lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of U.S. and NATO supplied long-range weapons and allow them to strike the list of targets they presented to senior officials in Washington last week. – The Hill
Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan write: Not many countries are ready to accept Russian crypto transfers, although many Russian bankers expect the UAE to become a leader in such operations. As for China, its bankers have already indicated that while operations in cryptocurrency with Russia are quick, they are also costly, raising the price for imports to Russia even more than before. The shift to payments in extremely volatile cryptocurrency could cost the Russians dearly. – Center for European Policy Analysis
Lebanon
Hamas operative Nidal Hleihel was sitting in his car last month outside an apartment block in this Lebanese port city when he heard a loud crack above him. Spooked, he said, he scrambled out of the vehicle. He had just reached a nearby stairwell when the Israeli missile struck. – Washington Post
Lebanon’s justice ministry formally accused former central bank governor Riad Salameh of financial crimes on Thursday, the state news agency and judicial sources said, echoing charges brought against him by state prosecutors when he was arrested this week. – Reuters
A dual Lebanese-Belgian citizen accused by the United States of financing Lebanese armed group Hezbollah is expected to plead guilty in a criminal case charging him with sanctions evasion and money-laundering conspiracies. – Reuters
More rockets were fired at Israel from Lebanon in August than in any previous month since war broke out almost a year ago, according to data published by the Shin Bet security agency Thursday. – Times of Israel
Middle East & North Africa
The hours have been long, the heat extreme and the work painstaking for forensic experts extracting human remains from a mass grave in northern Iraq, evidence of one of this century’s most blatant cases of genocide — the murder of the Yazidi people by the Islamic State. – New York Times
Tunisian police late on Thursday re-arrested presidential candidate Ayachi Zammel, just minutes after he was released from jail on a judge’s order, lawyers said. – Reuters
Tunisian legal scholars warned on Thursday that the legitimacy of next month’s presidential election will be damaged if the electoral commission does not respect court decisions last week to reinstate three disqualified candidates. – Reuters
Egypt’s army chief of staff Lieutenant General Ahmed Fathy Khalifa made a surprise visit to the country’s border with the Gaza Strip to inspect the security situation, state television reported on Thursday, citing the army’s spokesperson. – Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Thursday for his role in the historic U.S.-Russia prisoner swap. – Newsweek
Michael Knights writes: These and other agencies have been deeply penetrated in the same manner as INIS—a trend that began before 2022 but has greatly accelerated since then due to the Coordination Framework’s domination of Iraq’s executive, judicial, and legislative branches. The main lesson for U.S. officials is that the character and political will of Iraqi prime ministers is the most important factor in deciding the extent of this Iran-backed state capture, and thus the severity of potential damage to U.S.-Iraq relations. – Washington Institute
Korean Peninsula
When cybersecurity company KnowBe4 was filling a remote IT job in July, it hired a highly skilled applicant who gave his name as Kyle and spoke accented English. He asked the company to ship his company laptop to an address in Washington state. – Wall Street Journal
A South Korean executive accused of stealing semiconductor information developed by Samsung Electronics, has been detained again on fresh allegations related to the theft of chip processing technology, a court official and his lawyer said on Friday. – Reuters
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called on Friday to maintain the momentum behind an improvement in relations with South Korea during a summit with President Yoon Suk Yeol in Seoul on Friday. – Reuters
The latest North Korean diplomat to defect to South Korea paints a grim picture of hopelessness among North Koreans fed up with the country’s dictatorial Kim dynasty rule as perpetuated by third-generation leader, Kim Jong-un. – New York Sun
North Korea on Thursday accused the United States and its South Korea ally of maximizing regional tensions by conducting provocative military drills, warning they would have to “pay a dear price.” – Newsweek
China
Two China-owned financial institutions have agreed to merge, creating an entity with $228.28 billion in assets, as Beijing pushes to strengthen its domestic financial market. – Wall Street Journal
China is bracing for one of its strongest storms in a decade as Super Typhoon Yagi, equivalent to a strong Category 4 hurricane, is poised to make landfall on Friday afternoon local time. – Washington Post
The commander of the U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific will speak to a southern theater commander of China’s armed forces in the next few weeks, with the aim of preventing any military misunderstandings between the superpowers, the U.S. ambassador to China said on Thursday. – Reuters
The United States should immediately lift all tariffs on Chinese goods, the Chinese commerce ministry said on Thursday, ahead of an announcement by the Biden administration on expected hikes in levies on Chinese-made items, including electric vehicles. – Reuters
Editorial: The lesson of these varied experiences should be clear. China views diplomacy and espionage as only slightly different tools in its pursuit of a singular agenda. Namely, the domination of CCP interests over the ideals and interests of all others. Beijing likes to claim its most sacred foreign policy principle is noninterference in the affairs of others. The exact opposite is true. – Washington Examiner
South Asia
Pakistan’s unprecedented arrest and court-martial of a former spy chief raises the heat on Imran Khan and could be the precursor to prosecuting the jailed former prime minister on charges of treason and attempting to incite a mutiny in the military, according to government officials and analysts. – Reuters
India’s main opposition Congress party set up a new internal group this week to promote LGBTQ+ rights, while another party has named a person from the community as its spokesperson, in the first such political recognition after many setbacks. – Reuters
Myanmar’s military long viewed the insurgency among persecuted Rohingya Muslims as an existential threat to the majority Buddhist nation, but as the Arakan Army rebel group makes sweeping gains, the junta and some Rohingya fighters now face a common foe. – Reuters
Thousands of people rallied Thursday in Bangladesh’s capital to mark one month since former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was ousted in a mass uprising sparked by students over government job quotas. – Associated Press
Karishma Vaswani writes: The India of the past was not an outwardly muscular right-wing Hindu nation, despite housing a deeply misogynistic society, and discrimination in the now outlawed but still widely practiced caste-system. Modi would be wise to take that lesson from ancient history, as he fashions a modern narrative about the world’s largest democracy. – Bloomberg
Asia
Japan’s biggest steelmaker hoped it could counter China’s export onslaught with a deal in the U.S., where it would enjoy protection from Chinese rivals. Instead, it found U.S. politics was an equally challenging foe. – Wall Street Journal
The Maori of New Zealand named a new monarch on Thursday, selecting a 27-year-old queen in a symbolic but weighty role as some of the Indigenous group’s hard-fought rights have been rolled back. – New York Times
Former Philippines mayor Alice Guo, accused of ties to Chinese criminal syndicates and laundering more than 100 million pesos ($1.79 million), arrived in Manila early on Friday after being deported from Indonesia. – Reuters
Japan’s former environment minister and leading prime ministerial candidate Shinjiro Koizumi said on Friday he would call a snap election “at the earliest date possible” if he were to win the ruling party’s leadership election this month. – Reuters
Taiwan President Lai Ching-te told sailors aboard a combat-ready warship at a major base in the Taiwan Strait on Friday that he had their backs, thanking them for safeguarding Taiwanese security at a time of heightened tensions with Beijing. – Reuters
Australia and Japan on Thursday criticised China for what they called “dangerous and coercive” acts against the Philippines in the South China Sea. – Reuters
A former Taiwanese presidential candidate who was once mayor of the capital Taipei has been returned to custody as part of a sprawling corruption investigation. – Associated Press
Cambodia’s leader on Thursday condemned international human rights groups for criticizing the arrest of nearly 100 people for protesting against a decades-old regional development agreement with neighboring countries. – Associated Press
Europe
President Emmanuel Macron appointed Michel Barnier, the European Union’s former Brexit negotiator, as prime minister in an attempt to find a path out of the political crisis that has gripped the country since the French leader called snap elections months ago. – Wall Street Journal
German police fatally shot an armed man Thursday morning in a shootout after he opened fire near the Israeli Consulate and a Nazi Documentation Center in central Munich. – Washington Post
The founder of the Telegram messaging app, Pavel Durov, under investigation in France, said early on Friday that French authorities should have approached his company with their complaints rather than detaining him. – Reuters
The Netherlands will increase defence spending by more than 10% next year, investing in new tanks, fighter jets, frigates and air defence systems in a push to strengthen its forces in the face of new security threats, the Dutch government said. – Reuters
Top U.S. military leaders will be in Germany to discuss Ukraine’s wartime needs as Russia has conducted one of its deadliest airstrikes in the conflict and Ukraine presses its offensive in Russia’s Kursk region. – Associated Press
The Romanian government is in the final stages of donating a Patriot missile system to Ukraine in the midst of Ukraine’s ever-increasing calls for more support from the West. – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
Editorial: Perhaps the plan is to brazen it out. Mr. Barnier’s opponents likely lack the votes to oust him, at least for now, and some of his policy ideas on the environment may be able to cobble together support from centrist and leftist lawmakers. Still, chaos and deadlock seem assured for one of Europe’s largest countries at least until the next presidential election scheduled for 2027. The risk for France is that such gridlock will turn the voters toward even more radical populist directions. – Wall Street Journal
Adrian Wooldridge writes: None of the leading candidates in the current Tory leadership election have the right qualifications: Both Robert Jenrick, who gained the most votes from MPs, and Kemi Badenoch, who came second, come across as scolds. (The arguably strongest candidate, Penny Mordaunt, lost her seat in the election.) But when the Labour Party’s dour earnestness undoubtedly turn into a vulnerability, the Tories will learn how to exploit it. – Bloomberg
Africa
A Ugandan Olympic athlete based in Kenya died after being set on fire by her ex-boyfriend, her father said on Thursday, the latest incident in an epidemic of domestic violence against female athletes in this East African nation. – Washington Post
After Boko Haram fighters threatened them, they could not risk staying. Over a decade, the extremist group had killed tens of thousands of people in the cross-border scrubland around them. So the residents of Mafa, a village in northeast Nigeria’s Yobe State, fled in terror. – New York Times
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Thursday that he did not believe Chinese investments in Africa were pushing the continent into a “debt trap” but were instead part of a mutually beneficial relationship. – Reuters
The first batch of mpox vaccine arrived in Congo’s capital on Thursday, the country’s authorities said, three weeks after the World Health Organization declared mpox outbreaks in 12 African countries a global emergency. – Associated Press
Families of those killed in what authorities called an attempted jailbreak in Congo’s biggest prison are demanding answers from the government as activists denounce what they say are inhumane conditions in the nation’s overcrowded penitentiaries. – Associated Press
Michael Rubin writes: U.S. adversaries always take advantage of Washington distraction during election season, believing they will face no serious pushback. With Biden no longer seeking reelection, he has the opportunity to repair his legacy and defend America’s strategic interests. Whether or not Liberia’s and Sierra Leone’s leaders are willing, it is time for Washington to stop Wagner’s drive to the Atlantic. – Washington Examiner
The Americas
Canada’s efforts to seize a massive Russian cargo plane are running into legal headwinds, foreshadowing hurdles other countries could face as they try to expropriate Russian assets to help Ukraine fund its reconstruction. – Wall Street Journal
Canada is reviewing an application to impose sanctions on four Chinese surveillance-gear companies, including the world’s largest maker of the equipment, over their alleged role in human-rights violations in Xinjiang. – Wall Street Journal
Nicaragua’s dictatorial government on Thursday freed 135 political prisoners, including 13 members of a Texas-based evangelical Christian organization, in a secret operation negotiated by the Biden administration, officials announced. – Washington Post
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken visited Haiti on Thursday in a display of American support for international efforts to wrest the nation from the grip of tyrannical violent gangs. – New York Times
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado on Thursday vowed to keep the pressure on President Nicolás Maduro to leave office in January. – Associated Press
A growing number of Puerto Rican government officials on Thursday demanded answers from two private electric companies as the U.S. territory struggles with persistent power outages. – Associated Press
United States
Georgia officials charged the father of the suspected Apalachee High gunman with two counts of second-degree murder Thursday — the most severe ever filed against the parent of an alleged school shooter. – Washington Post
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump told Jewish donors on Thursday that U.S. universities would lose accreditation and federal support over what he described as “antisemitic propaganda” if he is elected to the White House. – Reuters
U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration is engaged in urgent discussions with Congress to allow it to use up $6 billion in military aid for Ukraine before a Sept. 30 deadline, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. – Reuters
The Defense Department said lifting restrictions on Ukraine’s ability to carry out strikes deep inside Russia would have “very little strategic value” because the country’s military has already moved almost all of its armaments out of range. – Bloomberg
China’s top diplomat in New York has left the United States amid a intensifying foreign agent scandal following the arrest of a former aide to Gov. Kathy Hochul on spying charges. – Newsweek
US officials are reportedly at odds with their British counterparts over the UK’s decision to suspend some arms export licenses to Israel amid the Jewish state’s ongoing war with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. – Algemeiner
Editorial: The United States should use the time between now and the election to speak up in defense of free and fair balloting, an honest count, and respect for the results. The citizens of Georgia need to hear from President Joe Biden and from Congress that they will not tolerate a one-party state in Georgia. If the United States treats the situation with benign neglect, democracy may die in yet another politically promising corner of the post-Soviet world. – Washington Post
Josh Rogin writes: There is one good-faith argument some make against the Nippon Steel deal: Japan itself is notoriously protectionist about its domestic industries, and any U.S. president should insist on more reciprocity as a matter of trade fairness. But that’s not the argument Biden and Harris are making. They, like Trump, are invoking a national security concern that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Japanese investment in U.S. manufacturing jobs is a good thing. And if Japan really is a valued ally, we ought to treat it like one. – Washington Post
Cybersecurity
The United States expanded its hunt on Thursday for Russia’s most elite cyberwarriors, indicting five members of the country’s military intelligence agency for attacks on Ukraine and American companies in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. – New York Times
Recorded Future’s Insikt Group, in research published Thursday and shared exclusively with CyberScoop, said it has observed new infrastructure and domains connected to the infamous spyware, which has targeted members of the U.S. Congress, United Nations officials and more. – CyberScoop
Employee contact information and hashed passwords were stolen by hackers who breached the systems of Microchip Technology, one of the largest American semiconductor manufacturers. – The Record
The powerful commercial surveillance tool Predator may have taken a beating in March when U.S. officials announced sweeping sanctions against the spyware purveyor’s parent company and leadership, but in just the latest example of the industry’s astonishing resilience, there is now evidence that Predator is back and even securing new customers. – The Record
Defense
Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro violated the Hatch Act for statements voicing support for President Joe Biden during a work trip to the United Kingdom in January, according to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. – Defense News
Plans for the Space Force’s Space Development Agency to kick-start its next phase of launches this month is on hold due to supplier delays, according to its director Derek Tournear. – Defense News
Japan’s Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade could join Australian and U.S. in training, including with Marine Rotational Force-Darwin (MRF-D), reads a statement following the annual Australia-Japan 2+2 meeting of their defense and foreign ministers in Queenscliff, Victoria on Thursday. – USNI News
The Defense Department and National Nuclear Security Administration recently inaugurated a new supercomputer in California, via a joint pursuit envisioned to expand U.S. computing capacity and simultaneously generate additional chemical and biological defense capabilities. – DefenseScoop