Listening to National Public Radio or the British Broadcasting Company, one might be aware that Israeli security personnel entered the Muslim sanctuaries on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on Friday, were involved in “clashes” that left over 150 people injured, and arrested some 500 Palestinians. One might not realize, however, that the trouble began when Palestinians started throwing rocks and otherwise attacking nearby Jewish worshippers and Israeli police. But there is even more to the story, as David Horovitz explains:

Tens of thousands of Palestinian Muslim worshippers, including many from the West Bank, gathered at the Aqsa compound atop the Temple Mount, said their midday prayers, and headed quietly back home again on Friday in the early afternoon.

The difference, it should not need saying, is that the midday worshippers had genuinely gathered to say their prayers on the second Friday of Ramadan, and that’s what they did. The young Palestinians who rioted hours earlier, by contrast, had come to fight.

They had assembled piles of rocks and stones and barricaded themselves inside al-Aqsa mosque in preparation for the violence. Some had Hamas flags with them—incited by and affiliating themselves with the Islamist terror group that, with similar cynicism and indifference to true faith, has used Gaza’s mosques to store rockets when engaged in conflict with a Jewish state it openly seeks to destroy. And as with Hamas in Gaza, while ostensibly guarding their religion and its third-holiest shrine, the rioters were actually dishonoring it.

You only had to look at their feet: the stone-throwers who clashed with Israeli security forces in and around al-Aqsa Mosque had their shoes on—in breach of the Islamic tradition to remove impure footwear when entering the house of prayer.

Below, today’s newsletter will return to some other reflections on the one-year anniversary of the outbreak of the current war, but first something must be said of its recent progress. Israel has kept up its aerial and ground assault on Hizballah, and may have already killed the successor to Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader it eliminated less than two weeks ago. Matthew Levitt assesses the current state of the Lebanon-based terrorist group, which, in his view, is now “a shadow of its former self.” Indeed, he adds,

it is no exaggeration to say that the Hizballah of two weeks ago no longer exists. And since Hizballah was the backbone of Iran’s network of militant proxies, its so-called axis of resistance, Iran’s strategy of arming and deploying proxy groups throughout the region is suddenly at risk as well.

Hizballah’s attacks put increasing pressure on Israel, as intended, only that pressure did not lead Israelis to stop targeting Hamas so much as it chipped away at Israel’s fears about the cost of military action to address the military threats posed by Hizballah.

At the same time, Levitt explains, Hizballah still poses a serious threat, as it demonstrated last night when its missiles struck Haifa and Tiberias, injuring at least two people:

Hizballah still maintains an arsenal of rockets and a cadre of several thousand fighters. It will continue to pose potent military threats for Israel, Lebanon, and the wider region.

How will the group seek to avenge Nasrallah’s death amid these military setbacks? Hizballah is likely to resort to acts of international terrorism, which are overseen by one of the few elements of the group that has not yet lost key leaders.

But the true measure of whether the group will be able to reconstitute itself, even over many years, is whether Iran can restock Hizballah’s sophisticated arsenal. Tehran’s network of proxy groups—from Hizballah to Hamas to the Houthis—is only as dangerous as it is today because of Iran’s provision of weapons and money. Whatever Hizballah does next, Western governments must prioritize cutting off Tehran’s ability to arm and fund its proxies.