In the past several months, the State Department has announced a series of sanctions on individual Israelis on the grounds that they have been involved in right-wing radicalism or violence against Palestinians. Michael Doran looks into what’s behind this effort:

The White House has established an interagency initiative to produce sanctions against Israeli entities and individuals. . . . The team convenes frequently to meet the goal, set by the president and his top advisers, of rolling out packages of sanctions with regularity. By my count, six tranches have been rolled out so far. The next tranche, I have learned, is already prepared, waiting for release after Iran attacks Israel, so that the administration can dodge the accusation of weakening Israel in time of war.

The regularity of the rollouts, which average about one tranche per month, matter to the administration more than the specific content of the sanctions. The goal is not to reverse any policy by the Israeli government but to create a climate of controversy around Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition partners. President Biden did not create this sanctions machine in response to any development on the ground in the Middle East other than the surprise attack by Hamas on October 7.

The administration’s cover story, that it is issuing sanctions in reaction to events on the West Bank, evaporates when one examines the specific content of the sanctions.

Doran also notes that the National Security Council official Ilan Goldenberg has been playing “a very enthusiastic role” in the sanctions efforts. Goldenberg was previously an adviser to Kamala Harris, and her campaign recently named him its Jewish community liaison.

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.