Last week, the American secretary of state arrived in Israel, visiting, among other places, the Golan Heights and the West Bank village of Psagot—where he toured a winery that has named a wine after him. Secretary Pompeo’s itinerary provoked outrage from the usual corners, with one commentator accusing him of “trolling the world.” But even the widely repeated claim that Pompeo was the first secretary of state to visit the Golan is false—Warren Christopher went there in official capacity in 1993. As for the criticisms, Dan Diker writes:

Pompeo’s visit to Psagot . . . reflected the agreed legal and diplomatic framework of the 1995 Oslo Interim Accords, which were internationally witnessed and guaranteed by the United States, Russia, Egypt, Jordan, Norway, and the European Union. The accords affirmed in no uncertain terms that Israeli and Palestinian Authority construction and building rights in areas under their respective jurisdictions would continue until the final status negotiated disposition of the territories.

Psagot is located in what Oslo designates as Area C, where Israel is given exclusive rights. Of course, writes Diker, these subtleties are lost on those who rush to proclaim it an “illegal settlement.”

It is regrettable that some uninformed or willfully blind journalists and commentators took the liberty of recasting Psagot and other Jewish communities east of the 1949 armistice lines as “illegal.” . . . Pompeo’s visit and his statements were correctives to [such] errors of judgment.

Likewise, Diker takes issue with the New York Times’s description of Pompeo’s visit, and his concomitant condemnation of anti-Israel boycotts, as “Trump’s gifts to Israel”:

Pompeo’s recognition of Jewish communities in Area C of Judea and Samaria and his condemnation of anti-Semitic product labeling and of the boycott, divest, and sanction movement (BDS) were the U.S. administration’s affirmations of . . . Jewish rights. They were also expressions of much needed moral clarity. Regrettably, political propagandists and various [self-styled] authorities in Israel and abroad have for years politicized Israel’s fundamental legal and historical rights.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.