(The Times-UK) Michael Knights - The Houthis are celebrating the 12th anniversary of their violent overthrow of the UN-backed Yemeni government this week, after their forces overran the last government-held enclaves on the Red Sea coastline this month. Now they can reach out and touch global shipping with greater ease than ever before, controlling the coast at the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, astride the shipping lanes. Saudi Arabia looks weak, as do the kingdom's long-established partners (the U.S. and Europe) and its new Mecca Joint Defense Agreement allies (Pakistan and Turkey). None of these military giants did anything to stop the Houthi advance, or to prevent Iran-backed militias in Iraq from crippling Saudi Arabia's east-west oil pipeline with drone strikes earlier this month. I was embedded with the Yemeni government forces on all main front lines as they confronted the Houthis while researching my military histories about the post-2015 Yemen war. I first saw the Houthis as a bedraggled band of tribesmen being beaten up by the dictator then leading the country. I had a clearer view by the time the Houthis took over Yemen in 2014. They are quite nasty ethnic supremacists who believe only their caste can rule Yemen. Since the 1980s, their leaders have used Iranian and Lebanese support to try to turn themselves into a clone of Hizbullah. They have now surpassed Hizbullah as Iran's foremost partner. When the Houthis attacked this month, they employed drone warfare that would put the Ukrainians to shame, and broadcast deepfake withdrawal orders that would make any Russian spymaster proud. The Yemeni front line fell back. The failure to defend the Red Sea terrain is a damning indictment of the feebleness of the dysfunctional coalition that is trying desperately to neuter the Iranian regime and its Yemeni, Lebanese and Iraqi partner militias. We should not exaggerate; the situation on the Red Sea coast today is not totally transformed from the picture before the recent Houthi offensive. Since 2024, the group has used its Iran-supplied anti-shipping missiles, drones and mines to effectively close off the southern Red Sea on various occasions to most shippers, who are now taking the long way around Africa. It is in no respectable state's interests to see the Houthi pirate regime astride the Red Sea shipping lanes, on a roll, looking for new worlds to conquer. The writer is an adjunct fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

(Jerusalem Post) Miriam Sela-Eitam - An Israeli man in his 30s was killed in a shooting attack in the area of Neveh Tzuf in southwestern Samaria, north of Ramallah, on Sunday afternoon.

(Jerusalem Post) Miriam Sela-Eitam - The IDF killed one Palestinian and arrested another who attempted a car-ramming attack against soldiers in the Ganim area of Samaria, the military said on Sunday afternoon.

(Jerusalem Post) Amir Bohbot - Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has been diverting most of the country's resources, from tax revenues to international aid, toward building a large standing army and acquiring weapons systems while working to conceal its military expansion, according to Israeli security assessments. Sharaa's operational plans are to reach the point at which he can strike Hizbullah in Lebanon, which he despises, as well as pro-Iranian Shi'ite militias in Iraq. One security official said, "Ahmed al-Sharaa wants to build Syria under his leadership into a regional power that will look in every direction. The moment he decides to, he will also direct military force against Israel." A future confrontation is only a matter of time, security sources assess.

(Jerusalem Post) Amir Bohbot - The U.S. informed Israel that it intends to sell F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia in a $25 billion deal, an Israeli official confirmed to Walla on Friday. Israel is expected to seek "compensation" from Washington in the form of weapons systems that the U.S. has so far declined to sell to Israel. A source said the IDF would prefer that no other country in the Middle East receive the stealth fighter, in order to preserve Israel's qualitative edge. However, even if the deal is signed soon, Saudi Arabia would receive its first aircraft only in five years.

(Globes) Dean Shmuel Elmas - Despite a tough diplomatic stance against Israel in Europe, sales of defense products are growing rapidly, usually through joint ventures with local operations. Politically, this trend compels nations to maintain sound relations with Israel, as the transfer of advanced technology and know-how would otherwise be jeopardized. Economically, the host country benefits from job creation and tax revenue generated by the local entity. From a security standpoint, in the event of war, Israel could procure Israeli-designed products manufactured in Europe for its own operational needs. Germany serves as the prime example of this trend. Between 2021 and 2025, Germany accounted for 21% of Israel's defense exports, while India accounted for 29% and the U.S. 7.8%. According to Cypriot news site Philenews, Israeli defense industries are exploring the establishment of manufacturing facilities on the island, as well as establishing management headquarters. Cyprus's status as both an EU member state and a country in close proximity to Israel provides potential benefits of a substantial Israeli defense-industrial presence.

(Ynet News) Amine Ayoub - On Friday, Turkey's Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK) quietly revoked the operating license for the Istanbul main branch of Bank Mellat. The decision formally terminated the banking operations of one of Iran's largest state-linked financial institutions on Turkish soil, degrading Iran's ability to conduct large-scale commercial transactions.

(Makor Rishon-Hebrew, 18Sep2026) Zeev Kam - The 21st battalion of the Carmeli reserve infantry brigade, where I serve, was recently called up for its seventh round of duty since the war began. It may be hard to believe, but the number of reservists that arrived in the latest call-up was even higher than the number that showed up after Oct. 7, when there was a greater than 100% turn-out. This was made possible because more than 100 new soldiers joined the battalion since the last call-up. Who were these new soldiers? Young men who completed two-plus years of fighting during their mandatory service, were released, and now joined the IDF reserves. They had just finished fighting and came straight back to fight again.

(Jerusalem Post) Miriam Sela-Eitam - 150,000 people participated in the final slihot prayer service at the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem ahead of Yom Kippur on Saturday night. The gathering was also broadcast on giant screens at the outskirts of the plaza and on the walls of Jaffa Gate at the entrance to the Old City. The prime minister, chief rabbis, the Jerusalem mayor, and former Gaza hostages took part in the ceremony. Rabbi of the Western Wall and the Holy Sites Shmuel Rabinowitz said, "The Western Wall is the beating heart of the Jewish people. From every corner of the country and from all parts of the people, multitudes came here: members of every community, opinion, and outlook, those who wear a kippah and those who do not, and stood together as one person with one heart."

(Substack) Lenny Ben-David - Israeli women were captured by the Jordanians in the 1948 War of Independence at the overrun Gush Etzion communities, the hydroelectric works at Naharayim, and Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter. An IDF journal listed 89 women in Jordanian hands. About 240 defenders and residents died in the campaign for the four Gush Etzion communities, including 22 women killed in the final fighting before their surrender on May 14, 1948. The writer, a former AIPAC official and Israeli diplomat, is a research fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.

(Times of Israel) Lt.-Col. (res.) Sarit Zehavi - I was one of the founders of the unit within the IDF that deals with warning populations on the other side of enemy lines and preserving civilian lives. We built the processes that define how to issue evacuation warnings, and how to track evacuations. I was personally involved in formulating target approval processes and operational discussions. If the creators of the recent documentary, "NAZA" (a Hebrew military acronym for collateral damage), had spoken with me, I would have explained that the chart shown at the beginning of the film's promotional material is not a "killing chart," but rather a planning chart for a target identified as being used by Hamas. Its purpose is to determine whether to strike at all, who in the command echelon is authorized to approve the strike, with what munitions, and under what conditions. Noting the collateral damage on the target sheet does not signify an intention to kill civilians or commit genocide; it is intended, first and foremost, to prevent civilian deaths. There are hundreds of soldiers and officers in the IDF whose sole role is protecting civilians in enemy territory. That is what they think about from the moment they wake up in the morning. The IDF has invested massive resources - intelligence personnel, legal experts, operational personnel from the air and ground forces, and technological experts - to develop command and control systems designed to accurately assess where civilians are present and where they are not. From my experience, I can testify that a whole world of intelligence stands behind this effort. In the Intelligence Directorate, there are several desks whose exclusive role is tracking the percentage of the population that has evacuated from areas after the IDF has issued warnings. If a high percentage of the population has evacuated, the collateral damage assessment drops, and only then is a strike on the terror infrastructure permitted. The difference between us and our enemies is enormous. Hamas and Hizbullah have a radical Islamic ideology and publicly declare and demonstrate that their goal is to kill Israeli civilians. By contrast, we state clearly that we have no intention of killing civilians in enemy territory. This is how we educate our children - civilians are not a target. The writer, who served for 15 years in the Israel Defense Forces, specializing in military intelligence, is founder and CEO of the Alma Research and Education Center, specializing in security challenges on Israel's northern border.

(Jerusalem Post) Micha Danzig - The film "NAZA" (collateral damage) claims that the killing of Gazan civilians in the war following Oct. 7 was, by design, based on artificial intelligence systems. The IDF has flatly denied this, stating that targeting decisions are made by trained personnel under military and international law, not algorithms. The logic the film asks its audience to accept collapses before any fact gets checked: If the goal was genocide - actual mass killing of a civilian population - why would anyone build an AI targeting system to do it? Genocide does not require precision. It requires the opposite. A military bent on erasing a population does not build software to identify individual operatives inside specific apartments. It carpet bombs the map to kill more people faster and cheaper than any precision system. Any AI machine would slow and narrow a slaughter that indiscriminate ordnance could finish in a fraction of the time. An AI system that scores targets, ranks militant affiliation, and attaches a projected casualty count to each strike is not a genocide machine. It is a crude triage system, built to distinguish combatants from civilians. You do not build a discrimination tool to commit an indiscriminate crime. The tool's function is to sort combatants from civilians and target only the former, the opposite of genocide, which sorts nobody. That Israel built systems to identify individual operatives is evidence of an institution straining to discriminate inside an environment its enemy engineered to make discrimination nearly impossible, not evidence of an army that wanted to kill everyone. A collateral damage calculation is not an Israeli invention. It is the standard legal process every modern Western military has run before nearly every airstrike since NATO formalized collateral damage estimation in the 1990s. "NAZA" argues that running it, something every other Western army runs routinely, becomes genocidal only when the flag on the jet is Israeli.

(Wall Street Journal) Miad Maleki - Have years of sanctions failed in Iran? The recent war is a story of the sanctions' success in enabling military victories. Years of economic isolation left Iran unable to contest its own skies when Israel and the U.S. attacked on Feb. 28 because sanctions had previously denied Iran the capital, technology, and parts that a modern, capable defense requires. The danger now is diplomatic - that Washington will let Iran out of its chokehold before the regime taps out. Instead, now is the moment to close off what commerce with Iran remains. Every month the blockade holds is a month Tehran can't buy its way back. Washington shouldn't sign a deal that front-loads relief and would finance what four decades of pressure prevented. The writer, a senior sanctions official at the Treasury Department (2017-25), is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

(Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) Sogand Fakheri - In the series "Tehran," for me, the hijab was a costume, something I could take off when the scene was over. For millions of other women, you cannot simply call "cut" and return to another life. Jina Mahsa Amini was detained by the morality police because her head covering did not conceal all of her hair. She later died from her injuries. Yet she became a catalyst for revolution in Iran. From that moment on, the hijab was no longer merely a symbol of coercion. It also became a symbol of resistance to it. Women removed it in the streets, in front of cameras, police officers, families, and an entire world that had grown accustomed to seeing Iran as a place where nothing could ever change. Today, hundreds of thousands of women and young girls walk through the streets of Tehran without hijabs and ride bicycles. This represents the greatest degree of freedom Iranian women have experienced in the past 48 years. The regime is so afraid of new protests because they inspire courage in us as human beings. Once a person sees that someone else has dared to act, something changes within them as well. Boundaries that once seemed permanent begin to look temporary. Fear that was once personal becomes a shared experience, and that shared experience can become a political, social, and cultural force. Revolutions are psychological. The revolution in Iran has already taken place, in the way people's thinking has changed, both in how they see themselves and how they see reality. The writer, an Iran analyst at the Jerusalem Center, is an Iranian-Israeli actress who appeared in the Emmy-winning TV series "Tehran."

(Times of Israel) Sabine Sterk - Why should the opinion of a singer, actor or artist be important to Israel? Do they honestly believe the average Israeli cares what they think? Do they imagine that Israelis waiting for loved ones to return from reserve duty are checking the social media accounts of musicians for moral guidance? Do they believe that families living under the threat of rockets need political instructions from entertainers? The international campaign to vilify Israel has been going on for years. What has changed is that attacking Israel has become fashionable. Famous people can now present themselves as courageous humanitarians simply by repeating the opinion of the largest and loudest crowd. When you earn your living from remaining popular, most celebrities understand exactly which message will generate applause, headlines, likes and attention. Condemning Israel requires very little courage when thousands of people are already waiting to reward you for doing it. How many of them have studied Hamas, the wars launched against Israel, or the realities of fighting terrorists embedded within a civilian population? How many have spoken seriously with Israelis whose children were murdered, kidnapped or sent to defend their country? The writer is CEO of Netherlands-based NGO Time to Stand Up for Israel.

(Telegraph-UK) Michael Deacon - The London-born pop singer Paloma Faith, 45, told Britain's Channel 4 News last week that when she tucks her children into bed at night, the last thing she says to them is: "Free Palestine!" She sounded proud of it. Her children are 9, 5, and 6 months, meaning she's chanting "Free Palestine!" at a baby. Will this be his first words? Perhaps in certain circles this sort of behavior is considered perfectly normal and healthy. For all I know, there are thousands of London mothers who send their children off to sleep each night with half an hour of Palestinian propaganda. Imagine. "Mummy? Please can we have a bedtime story?" "Of course, my darlings. Once upon a time, there was a happy, peaceful, tolerant and fabulously LGBTQIA-inclusive land called Gaza. But then one day, along came the wicked Zionists, and for absolutely no reason at all, they..." "But Mummy, you tell us that story every night. Can't we have something different? How about a nursery rhyme?" "Very well. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall / Humpty Dumpty had a great fall / All the king's horses and all the king's men / Presented conclusive proof to the UN that Humpty had been brutally pushed off the wall by the IDF as part of Israel's ongoing genocide."

(Gatestone Institute) Khaled Abu Toameh - Dr. Fadel Ashour - a Palestinian psychiatrist, behavioral-science professor and political analyst - described to the Arabic-language Jusoor News the psychological, social and political damage caused by Hamas and its ideology, which is rooted in rejection of Israel's existence, armed struggle, and the establishment of an Islamic Palestinian state in its place. His message is: Gaza cannot be rebuilt merely by putting up new buildings, repairing roads, or providing humanitarian assistance. The Palestinians' entire mindset must be rebuilt. Ashour warns that for the past two decades, Gaza has experienced a process of social conditioning in which violence and death are universally acclaimed and celebrated. Palestinian society, he states, has been taught to associate victory with death rather than with construction and development. Ashour rejects the notion that Hamas should be treated simply as another political party. "They view the rest of society with a sense of superiority, as if they are the chosen ones and the rest are just commoners." The broad picture he presents is of an Islamist terrorist group that claims to exist for the Palestinian people but has instead become an instrument for controlling, exploiting, and indoctrinating them. The question is not whether Hamas will hand over some weapons. The question is whether Gaza can ever develop a fundamentally different political and social culture while Hamas's ideology remains embedded in its society and institutions. Ashour is warning the international community not to make the mistake of believing that Gaza's problem can be solved simply by reaching an agreement with Hamas's leaders. A society cannot simultaneously teach its children that martyrdom and violence are heroic and expect these same children to build peaceful institutions and a functioning political system. Allowing Hamas to retain a political and military role - particularly by including Hamas-affiliated political figures in future elections - would only perpetuate the problem.

(Substack) Jake Wallis Simons - Ostensibly, the reason that Britain sanctioned Israel was its building plans for E1, a 4.5-mile strip of land connecting Jerusalem to the nearby community of Ma'ale Adumim. Jews want to live in Judea and Samaria, the land their ancestors inhabited 3,000 years before anyone had heard of Palestine. Israel has put a full, sovereign Palestinian state on the table more than once, most memorably at Camp David in 2000 and again under Ehud Olmert in 2008. On both occasions, the Palestinians failed to accept. This is a matter of historical record. Any debate that overlooks this fact is not being conducted in good faith. The wars launched by the Arabs to annihilate Israel - in 1948 and again in 1967 - were fought before a single settlement existed. Israel faced liquidation before holding an inch of the West Bank. So the claim that settlements are the obstacle to peace is, by the historical record, a myth. This myth fraudulently recasts the obstacle to peace as land rather than hatred, which lets a rejectionist Palestinian leadership off the hook and hands Israel's critics in Britain a grievance that sounds reasonable at a dinner party.

(Israel Hayom) Prof. Eyal Zisser - Pressure on Israel, or even punitive measures imposed against it like the sanctions initiated by Britain, has never advanced peace. Instead, it has hardened Palestinian positions and reduced their willingness to engage with Israel or make compromises in negotiations. After all, why negotiate or compromise if, as the Palestinians believed, the international community would in any case pressure Israel, force it to capitulate and compel it to make concessions? The writer is a lecturer in the Middle East History Department at Tel Aviv University.

(Jerusalem Post) Amb. Danny Danon interviewed by Herb Keinon - When Danny Danon returned to the UN in 2024 for his second stint as Israel's ambassador, the atmosphere was extraordinarily hostile. Israel's enemies were highly motivated, its allies exhausted, and ambassadors who had once met him regularly reluctant to be seen with him publicly. Two years later, he said in an interview, things are getting better. "When I came back after Oct. 7, I was shocked by the level of hostility and the hatred - the isolation. I think now the situation is improving." Danon sees a change behind closed doors. Following Israel's operations against Hizbullah and Iran, he said, diplomats - including from Muslim countries - quietly admired Israel's capabilities. The private admiration produces concrete results away from the UN floor: intelligence cooperation, trade, and growing interest in Israeli defense technology. Some deals are public; others remain discreet. The pager operation in Lebanon and Israel's ability to maneuver over Iran and rapidly establish air superiority were closely studied by military attaches in New York. They took notice, and this helped Israel regain both respect and deterrence. Danon rejects responding to UN hostility by abandoning the arena. "If we are not in the room and our allies are not in the room, it is much easier to isolate us. We have to be there. We have to be vocal, we have to build coalitions, and we have to demand changes in this organization."

(Israel Ministry of Diaspora Affairs-JNS) This website compiles nearly 100 documents, articles and testimonies from official, academic and independent sources documenting systematic informational bias in UN agencies' reporting on the Gaza war, reflecting an overarching systemic failure spanning data production, personnel choices, and public messaging.

(Tablet) Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Mohamed Atta, who steered American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11, sacrificed his life to Allah in the confidence that Allah will reward his martyrdom in the life to come. Atta was not poor. He was not radicalized by American support for Israel. Rather, he had an uncompromising and militant commitment to Islam that he was ready to die for. In the Western experience, men had not killed other men over religious questions en masse since the end of the great religious wars of the 17th century. Saying that cultural differences exist and should be respected was a foundation of the multicultural order. The idea that some cultures might lead people to murder each other, for reasons that do not appear in the Western rationalist list of sane causes, struck many Westerners as too close to racism. America and the West have chosen to enmesh themselves with dysfunctional Muslim societies, opening their doors to mass Muslim migration. While the prediction that this might bring about a meaningful social transformation was correct, what Western optimists failed to imagine was that their own societies would be reshaped in the image of the newcomers. The Muslim Brotherhood believed that the West was weak, and that they were strong. Osama bin Laden had launched his attack not out of desperation and weakness, but in the belief that he was an agent of history, and that he would win. But time and again, I saw people throughout the West who subscribed to the condescending belief that all their foes wanted was more jobs, a better economy, and a taste of the luxuries of the West. It is frankly insane to demand that the West recognize the right of our enemies to destroy and replace the civilization that we built according to the values of the Reformation and the Enlightenment with the values of other cultures distinguished by centuries of stagnation and decay. The writer, a former member of the Dutch parliament, is a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.