Hamas
July 6, 2026 — Scott Johnson
In his It’s Noon In Israel newsletter Amit Segal recounts the story behind the wedding of former October 7 hostages Sasha Troufanov and Sapir Cohen in Israel over the weekend: Sapir was released…during the November 2023 ceasefire, not knowing whether Sasha was still alive. For Sasha, the nightmare stretched on for more than 400 days. He was shot in the legs by his captors, and by the time he was
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July 1, 2026 — Scott Johnson
Rom Braslavski is a former Israeli hostage held in Gaza. He was working as a security guard at the Nova music festival during the October 7 massacre as an active-duty soldier on leave from the Logistics Corps. In captivity he was tortured and assaulted. In the video below he is informed by an Israeli security official that his chief tormentor in captivity — a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad
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June 29, 2026 — John Hinderaker
This depressing report comes from Israel National News: Senior officials in the IDF Intelligence Directorate and Southern Command warned IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir last week that Hamas’ military wing is rebuilding its capabilities and preparing for another round of fighting, Kan News reported on Sunday. According to the report, the officers said Hamas is manufacturing hundreds of explosive devices and anti-tank missiles each month, recruiting operatives
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June 12, 2026 — Scott Johnson
“Paranoia strikes deep,” goes the classic Buffalo Springfield song. How about the hatred of Jews? It doesn’t have quite the same ring, but a federal indictment emanating from a cast of characters associated with the University of Michigan provides a glaring example of how deeply it strikes. The indictment handed up by a grand jury in the Eastern District of Michigan runs to 63 pages and variously alleges ten counts
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May 12, 2026 — Scott Johnson
Eil Lake assesses the New York Times column by Nicohlas Kristof that I discussed in “The Times strikes again.” Lake’s Free Press column runs under the headline “Nick Kristof’s ‘Dog Torture’ Claim About Israel Doesn’t Pass Muster.” In my own comments on Kristof’s column, I expresssed the desire to see a sidebar to Kristof’s column in which some enterprising reporter or columnist would explore the training of the alleged Israeli
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May 12, 2026 — Scott Johnson
Nicholas Kristof writes a column for the opinion page of the New York Times. He is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. Kristof has just unveiled a new libel against Israel in “The silence that meets the rape of Palestinians.” You have to read it to disbelieve it. Among other things, Kristof cites “Palestinian prisoners and human rights monitors” who report “police dogs being coached to rape prisoners.” The Times has
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May 9, 2026 — Scott Johnson
Having been appointed a federal district judge by President Reagan, Michael Mukasey stepped down from the bench to serve as President George W. Bush’s last and best Attorney General. He is of counsel to Debevoise & Plimpton in New York. Judge Mukasey presided over the trial of the Blind Sheikh in 1995. Then-Assistant United States Attorney Andrew McCarthy prosecuted the case and wrote the memoir Willful Blindness to recount what
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May 8, 2026 — Scott Johnson
We took a look at the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times photojournalist Saher Alghorra in “The Pulitzers strike again.” The Washington Free Beacon now follows up with a review of Alghorra’s social media posts to establish that, if not a formal member of Hamas, he supports the lying party line in every jot and tittle: “New York Times Pulitzer-Winning Photographer Calls Hamas and Jihadist Militants ‘Martyrs’ and ‘Resistance,’
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May 6, 2026 — Scott Johnson
The Washington Free Beacon’s Ira Stoll reviews the 2026 Pulitizer Prize awarded to Saher Alghorra in breaking news photography. In the linked Free Beacon story Stoll reports that the Times is scrambling to defend the integrity of its Gaza-based photographer and his work after the press watchdog organization Honest Reporting accused him of “staged scenes” that were closely coordinated with Hamas. Stoll’s backgrounder draws on the work of Honest Reporting
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February 25, 2026 — John Hinderaker
I have been meaning to write about this story for a couple of days: “Scoop: Dems working on secret report found Gaza cost Harris votes.” Top Democratic officials who worked on the party’s still-secret autopsy of the 2024 election concluded that Kamala Harris lost significant support because of the Biden administration’s approach to the war in Gaza, Axios has learned. Why it matters: The Democratic National Committee’s research on what
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February 9, 2026 — Scott Johnson
Michael Herr titled one chapter of Dispatches, his Vietnam memoir, “Illumination rounds.” It’s a powerful book and a memorable chapter, separately available from the publisher. The title of that chapter serves as a useful metaphor. My flight home from DC having achieved liftoff, I would like to borrow Herr’s metaphor to fire off these illumination rounds on Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza. Round one: How many journalists, politicians, and
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December 30, 2025 — Scott Johnson
At her Blacklisted site, Eve Barlow has posted a subtitled video of the full interview with released Israeli hostage Romi Gonen here. The interview appeared on Israel’s Channel 12. I posted a clip from the interview last week along with an excerpt from this Times of Israel story on what Gonen had to say. With the full interview now out, Barlow brings her brand of righteous fury to Romi’s story.
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December 26, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday Israel’s Channel 12 public affairs program Uvda brodacast Romi Gonen’s first major interview following her release from Hamas captivity in Gaza in January. Sitting cross-legged without costume or script or gimmickry, Gonen stares directly across at her interviewer and fights through her darkest memories to tell us that she was raped by her captors in Gaza. From as early as the fourth day of her captivity, Gonen was assaulted.
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November 20, 2025 — Scott Johnson
The IDF has just posted the video below under the caption “NEW IDF INTELLIGENCE FROM BEIT HANOUN.” The IDF writes on X: The city of Beit Hanoun is a central Hamas terror stronghold in Gaza. Underground: Beneath civilian homes, Hamas built an extensive tunnel network. Above ground: Thousands of structures served as weapons storage facilities, firing positions, and command centers for terrorists. Additionally, armed terrorists operated from inside an elementary
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November 20, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Palestinan Authority President-For-Life Mahmoud Abbas has long rewarded the murder of Israelis with the pay-for-slay program administered by the PA’s so-called Martyrs Fund. The fund paid regular stipends to families of terrorists imprisoned or killed by the Israel Defense Forces for their acts. “Martyrdom” by the killing of innocent Israelis was to be rewarded. The payments were supposedly terminated earlier this yeaar, but I would subject that supposition in this
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November 16, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Daniel Greenfield reports on a phenomenon that may not come as a complete surprise to Power Line readers. The alleged Gaza famine was mythical: After two years of barraging social media with lies about a famine in Gaza, Hamas propaganda channels are now trying to cover up their obesity by claiming that Israel is making them fat. One recent Hamas media story clamored that “they’re forcing us to gain weight,”
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October 28, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Amit Segal reports in today’s edition of his It’s Noon In Israel newsletter (received a little over an hour ago): [T]he remains that Hamas returned to Israel overnight belong to the body of a hostage that Israeli forces recovered from Gaza in late 2023. To avoid confusion: when the body, belonging to Ofir Tzarfati, 27, was first recovered from Gaza, some remains were missing. Hamas has now handed over additional
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