Observing Hizballah’s increasingly effective use of rockets, drones, and anti-tank missiles against not only the Israeli civilian population but also strategically sensitive targets, Yaakov Lappin argues that the IDF’s campaign of limited strikes and the killing of key commanders is insufficient:

Hizballah’s widespread attack on the north on Wednesday demonstrates that the core threat lies not in any individual commanders but in the substantial firepower array that is entrenched deeply throughout 200 southern Lebanese Shiite villages, as well as in Beirut and in the Bekaa Valley.

Hizballah’s military-terrorist infrastructure and expansive manpower pose the largest conventional threat to Israel. The limitations of targeted strikes as an approach are becoming increasingly evident, as [are those of] IAF’s ongoing campaign to strike at Hizballah weapons-storage centers and command posts in a limited fashion, in line with the Israeli war cabinet’s directive.

Yet, short of invading southern Lebanon, Jerusalem has few other options. Lazar Berman argues that the time is far from ripe for an all-out war:

The challenges the IDF would face in Lebanon would be orders of magnitude greater [than in Gaza]. Hizballah has far more advanced anti-tank weapons and attack drones. Fighting in prepared defenses in open territory, they would be able to target IDF forces from kilometers away.

The IDF could take every square inch of territory ten—even twenty—kilometers from the border, and Hizballah would still be able to rain rockets down across Israel. . . . And it would end in a ceasefire agreement, one that residents of the north are unlikely to put much stock in.

One of the greatest, and most baffling, of America’s errors since October 7 has been its indulgence of Qatar, a nominal ally that tends to act as anything but. Over the next week, I’m going to use this space to point to some of this regime’s bad behavior, and its deadly consequences. Today, I’ll focus on Al Jazeera, a state-sponsored media conglomerate that churns out anti-Israel and anti-American propaganda in a variety of languages. Douglas Murray calls attention to some of its employees in Gaza:

Take Muhammad Washah, whom Al Jazeera presented as a stellar part of the press corps merely reporting the truth. Unfortunately for them, their man is also a senior commander in Hamas. He used to be in Hamas’s anti-tank missile unit, but since 2022 he has been in charge of research and development for aerial weapons. Known to you and me as “rockets.”

It’s quite something to pull off. On the one hand, Washah can spend his days making rockets to fire at Israel. But in the evenings he can report on the terrible destruction in Gaza caused by the “Zionist entity.” . . . He might have kept getting away with it if IDF soldiers in Gaza had not managed to get a hold of his laptop.

And that’s why, Elliott Abrams explains, supporters of freedom of the press should have no qualms about Washington pressing Doha about the network—or about Israel’s decision to prevent it from operating within its borders:

While organized as a private company, Al Jazeera is the voice of Qatar’s regime. It was founded and financed by the then-emir of Qatar. Whenever I am told that this is not true, and that Al Jazeera is really an independent news source, I ask a simple question: show me one time since its founding nearly 30 years ago that it has voiced one criticism of the Qatari government. I’m still waiting.

And it’s not just Al Jazeera: Qatar owns other news media that are equally awful. . . .

These news sources are not free; they need to stay close to the Qatari official line and never contradict it in significant ways. . . . And that is what makes their pernicious role so consequential: Qatar could turn them off, or turn them into actual independent news sources, if it wished. Instead it wishes to promote and laud violence.