Israel Brief: Friday, December 5
Tunnels Fall, North Heats, Israel Wrestles Its Own Angels.
Shabbat shalom, friends.
Rafah’s last serious Hamas battalion just lost its commander and deputy in the tunnels, while the only meaningful anti-Hamas militia working with Israel in that same pocket tore itself apart and handed Hamas a propaganda trophy. To the north, the IDF is now openly striking Hezbollah depots in villages it told civilians to evacuate, as the UN quietly tells aid agencies to prepare for a wider war. Tehran is caught using Thai hostages as leverage to strangle Israel’s agriculture, and in Jerusalem the government is locking the security chain of command into place while writing a budget that treats Judea, Samaria, the Negev, and the Jordan Valley as the country’s shield.
⚡️Flash Brief: The Day in 90 Seconds or Less
Gaza: IDF kills Hamas’s Eastern Rafah battalion commander, his deputy and inner circle; Abu Shabab’s anti-Hamas militia implodes internally. See The War Today.
Hostages: Israeli delegation in Cairo presses Egypt for an “intensive and immediate” effort to recover the body of the last slain hostage, Ran Gvili. See The War Today.
North: After evacuation warnings, Israel strikes Hezbollah weapons sites in Jibaa and Mahrouna; UN agencies activate contingency plans for nationwide IDF airstrikes. See Developments to Watch.
Iran / Axis: Report shows Iran tried to trade Thai hostage help for a mass pullout of Thai farm workers from Israel; Bangkok mostly refused. See The War Today & Developments to Watch.
Chain of command: Netanyahu taps Roman Gofman as next Mossad chief, Katz blocks promotion of a “Brothers in Arms” general, and a NIS 112B 2026 defense budget prioritizes borders and belts. See Inside Israel.
Info-war & Diaspora: EU probes Microsoft over IDF surveillance data while mobs besiege synagogues, academic boycotts surpass 700 cases, and Birthright reopens with 10,000 new visitors. See Israel and the World & Briefly Noted.
Soft boycotts: Israel stays in Eurovision 2026 as Spain, Ireland, Netherlands and others walk out; European universities escalate “shadow boycotts” of Israeli academia. See Israel and the World & Briefly Noted.
The tunnels under Rafah are behaving like a cornered animal: senior commanders are trying to bolt, their pocket is being whittled down one cell at a time, and the “rogue unit” fairy tale is dead now that every shaft still reports straight up the Hamas chain of command. The Abu Shabab experiment shows what happens when you try to grow a local militia in soil plowed by 17 years of Hamas mafia rule — a leader who vowed to inherit Gaza dies from his own men’s boots and fists, and Hamas gets to hang his body on the wall as a warning to anyone tempted to work with Israel. In the north, “managed friction” is giving way to mapped strike boxes, public evacuation orders, and precision hits on Hezbollah depots in civilian villages — the kind of groundwork you do when a year-end “disarm or else” deadline rapidly approaches. Inside the house, the state is welding its sword arm back together: Gofman to Mossad, refusal-preachers blocked from promotion, a budget that funds Judea, Samaria, the Jordan Valley and the Negev as real security projects, not talking points.
A small pre-Hanukkah interruption before we go back to Hezbollah’s terrible week:
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