Threats

Today's D Brief: Israel resumes Gaza strikes; US drops social-media warnings; Ukraine polling; One confirmed dead in Osprey crash; And a bit more.

Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston

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By Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston

After a weeklong pause, Israel’s war with Hamas has resumed as more rockets arc toward Israel and more airstrikes pound positions across the Gaza Strip on Friday. 

Israel says Hamas triggered the resumption when someone launched a rocket shortly before the truce was set to expire. A separate attack in east Jerusalem left three Israelis dead before the gunmen were shot near the scene Thursday. Hamas later claimed responsibility for that attack. However, on Wednesday, “at about 18:00, Israeli troops reportedly opened fire at Palestinians in northern Gaza city, killing two of them,” the United Nations reported Thursday, and added, “the circumstances remain unclear.” Qatar’s foreign ministry shared its frustration toward Israel on Friday, accusing the country of “complicat[ing] mediation efforts and exacerbat[ing] the humanitarian catastrophe.”

Negotiators in Qatar on Thursday failed to reach a new extension of the temporary ceasefire brokered last week in Doha, which had led to the release of 240 Palestinians, 86 Israelis, and 24 foreign nationals over the past seven days, according to the UN. Now with the collapse of the truce, Israel’s military is again pursuing its seemingly ambitious goal of killing Hamas leaders in the hopes of crushing the group and ending its reign in Gaza once and for all.  

“Our forces are charging forward,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote on social media Friday. The military reportedly dropped leaflets in southern Gaza warning residents to flee their homes to avoid future fighting. “We continue to fight with all our strength until we achieve all our goals: the return of all our abductees, the elimination of Hamas, and the promise that Gaza will never be a threat to Israel again,” Netanyahu vowed. 

There’s little reason so far to think Israel will be more restrained in its resumption of war against Hamas. Indeed, “Within hours of the truce expiring, Gaza health officials reported that 109 people had been killed and dozens wounded in air strikes that hit at least eight homes,” Reuters reported Friday. Israeli air and artillery strikes have already killed an estimated 15,000 Palestinians, including about 6,150 children and 4,000 women. 

Israel may be using artificial intelligence to find targets more quickly, Jerusalem-based journalist Yuval Abraham reported Thursday. The alleged AI-based system is known as Habsora (or, “The Gospel”), and it creates targets “almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible,” Abraham writes. Continue reading, here.  

Evidence seems to be growing for an apparent Israeli intelligence failure. Since at least last year, Israeli intelligence officials were reportedly sitting on detailed plans from Hamas to carry out their October 7 attacks, officials told the New York Times this week after last week telling Haaretz much the same thing. “The approximately 40-page document, which the Israeli authorities code-named ‘Jericho Wall,’ outlined, point by point, exactly the kind of devastating invasion that led to the deaths of about 1,200 people,” the Times reported Thursday. 

The problem: Israel “didn’t seem to believe that the Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, intended to implement the plan,” Amos Harel of Haaretz reported last Friday. The Times also reported that “experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities.” 

Additional reading:

Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Like the newsletter? Share it with a friend or sign up here.  On this day in 1969, the U.S. held its first draft lottery since 1942, affecting men between the ages of 18 and 26. CBS News remembered the day in a two-minute video report from 2019, here. 

New: More Russians say they support withdrawing from Ukraine compared to those who fully support Vladimir Putin’s ongoing invasion. That’s according to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, citing the recent work of independent Russian opposition polling organization Chronicles. The data was gathered in a telephone survey from mid-October. Among their findings: “40 percent of respondents supported a withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine without Russia having achieved its war aims,” whereas “33 percent of respondents did not support a Russian withdrawal and favored a continuation of the war,” according to Chronicles.

At least one other recent Russian public-opinion surveys has found solid resignation about the war, including one from Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center and the Levada Center. “A significant part of the population has reconciled itself to the idea that they will be living under the current state of affairs for quite some time, and that they must therefore adjust to reality, which ordinary Russians are in any case unable—and often unwilling—to change,” the accompanying report says.

Russia’s faltering autumn offensives in Ukraine are yielding “a steady flow” of prisoners of war, the Wall Street Journal reported this week near the contested city of Avdiivka. The Journal spoke to several of the POWs, most of whom say they did not expect to wind up anywhere near Avdiivka. 

According to Ukraine’s president, “We are losing people,” he told the Associated Press on Friday. “We didn’t get all the weapons we wanted,” he continued, but added, “I also can’t complain too much.” The confirmed onset of winter in the region has marked the beginning of a “new phase” of the war, he said. 

When asked about declining U.S. public support for Ukraine, President Volodymir Zelenskky replied, “The choice of Americans is the choice of Americans.” However, he added, “if resilience fails today due to lack of aid and shortages of weapons and funding, it will mean that Russia will most likely invade NATO countries. And then the American children will fight.” Read more, here. 

Developing: Ukrainian forces allegedly attacked portions of a key Russian railroad about 2,480 miles from the frontlines. Reuters reported Thursday “four explosive devices were detonated overnight as a cargo train was moving through the Severomuysky Tunnel in Buryatia region, which borders Mongolia.” Politico reports two locations were struck, and both were on lines linking Russia with China. 

Additional reading:

U.S. stops warning some social-media networks about foreign intrusions. Officials from Facebook and Pinterest confirm that they no longer receive notifications about foreign disinformation campaigns on their platforms, “ reversing a years-long approach to preventing Russia and other actors from interfering in American politics less than a year before the U.S. presidential elections,” the Washington Post reported Thursday.Why? “The developments underscore the far-reaching impact of a conservative legal campaign against initiatives established to avoid a repeat of the 2016 election, when Russia manipulated social media in an attempt to sow chaos and swing the vote for Donald Trump,” the Post reports.

Update: At least one airman died in the Wednesday crash of an MV-22 Osprey off the coast of Japan, the Air Force has confirmed. U.S. officials had declined to confirm Japanese officials’ report of the death until early on Friday morning. One “Set of remains” has been found, and the search continues for the other seven airmen who were aboard the aircraft. 

Japan has suspended flights of its own Ospreys; the Pentagon has not, D1’s Audrey Decker reported Thursday.

NEXT STORY: US military still flying Ospreys after deadly crash off Japanese coast