News Digest — 9/11/26
Ahead Of Holiday: Surprise Drill Begins In Judea And Samaria
The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit announced Friday morning (11th) that a surprise exercise had begun in the Judea and Samaria Division, with divisional battalions mobilized to test and improve operational readiness.
The drill is expected to run through the afternoon, bringing increased movement of security forces across the sector.
According to the IDF, the drill is designed to assess readiness for various surprise scenarios as part of operational preparations ahead of the upcoming holiday season.
Military officials added that the exercise is part of a broader series of drills conducted across the area in recent weeks. These exercises have focused on practicing diverse operational scenarios, including refining coordination with other local security and rescue services. The IDF emphasized that the drill was scheduled in advance, reassuring the public that no active security incident is taking place.
Earlier in the week, the IDF conducted a separate multi-sector exercise covering ground, aerial, and maritime raid scenarios. Forces also trained for rocket and mortar fire, shooting attacks, mass-casualty incidents, abductions and hostage situations.
The exercise tested the IDF’s defensive doctrine and sector-specific protocols, incorporating both ground and airborne deployments of alert forces, as well as the live mobilization of reserve battalions and special forces.
Units were dispatched to various sectors to practice rapid-response tactics while testing inter-service coordination among the Air Force, Navy and ground forces.
Additionally, the drill evaluated decision-making processes and operational response times across all command levels – from regional commands and branch directorates up to the General Staff.
The IDF will conduct a comprehensive debrief to review lessons learned and identify operational gaps, aiming to continuously improve Israel’s defenses and overall military preparedness.
Herzog’s Rosh Hashanah Message: ‘We Are Here, We Are Strong’
Israeli President Isaac Herzog published a video statement on Thursday (10th) wishing Jews in Israel and around the world a Happy New Year in a special message ahead of Rosh Hashanah.
“Brothers and sisters, from the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, I wish the Jewish people around the world a Shana Tovah, a very happy New Year,” Herzog began.
The President described the shofar as the “defining sound of Rosh Hashanah,” saying that it captures the range of emotions experienced during the High Holidays.
“It is a call our people have sounded for generations, asking for forgiveness and to be written and inscribed in the Book of Life,” he said. “It is as our tradition teaches us, a call back to ourselves, urging us to refocus our lives and our goals.” Herzog said that the cry of the shofar also expresses the pain felt by the Jewish people over those who have been lost.
“Most poignantly, the piercing cry of the shofar carries pain: the pain of those we have lost, those who defended our only Jewish state, those who are victims of terror within our borders, and those who are victims of the tide of antisemitism around the world,” he said.
At the same time, Herzog said, the shofar carries three additional calls in response to that anguish, the first of which is a message of pride.
“The shofar proclaims: We are here, we are strong, we are Jews, and we are Israelis, and we are very proud,” Herzog stated.
He said he sees that pride in Jewish communities around the world and among those who visit Jerusalem, highlighting in particular the young Jews he meets and their sense of responsibility toward the Jewish people.
Herzog added that the shofar’s second message is a call to action and to continue working to improve the world, particularly during difficult times.
“It is a call to keep making the world a better place,” he said, adding that it is also a call to confront the major challenges facing the future of the Jewish people.
He pointed to Voice of the People, an initiative and council he founded representing different parts of Israeli and Jewish society, which is set to begin a new cohort this autumn.
The third message of the shofar, Herzog said, is a call to listen and respect one another.
“And finally, the shofar calls us to listen: not just to it, but to each other, and in doing so, to respect one another,” he said. “For Israelis, and for Jews in the diaspora watching closely, this is a call we must all heed.”
Herzog said the sound of the shofar transcends differences of language, time, and place and brings the Jewish people together for “a moment of reflection, pride and renewed commitment to our faith, to each other and to the world.”
Concluding his message, Herzog cited the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, who said that the shofar reminds the Jewish people of their ultimate destination and “how far we still have to go.”
“The Jewish people and the State of Israel have always known our destination and the journey we are on,” Herzog said. “As we move into the New Year, may we all continue this journey together, and may we all be inscribed in the Book of Life for a year of blessing, harmony and peace.”
“Shanah Tovah, am Yisrael chai.”
IDF Blows Up Hezbollah’s Strategic Complex Beneath South Lebanon’s Ali Taher Ridge
Using 1,100 tons of explosives, the Israeli military said on Thursday (10th) that it had demolished a “strategic” underground facility belonging to the Hezbollah terror group beneath a mountainous ridge in southern Lebanon.
The Ali Taher Ridge is located within Israel’s southern Lebanon buffer zone, near Nabatieh. According to the Israeli Defense Forces, the tunnel systems under Ali Taher served as the “nerve center” of the terror group’s Badr regional division — a unit tasked with the area of southern Lebanon that is north of the Litani River.
Last week the military said it had completed capturing and clearing out the tunnel system of Hezbollah operatives, killing some of them while others died.
Iran ostensibly warned the US that it would respond to any Israeli offensive against the Hezbollah facility beneath the hill, according to a report by Reuters last week, although that came after the IDF had already captured and cleared the site.
A military official said after the tunnels had been blown up that “the IDF is prepared for a variety of scenarios, including the multi-arena scenarios.”
A massive blast was heard throughout the region as the IDF demolished the two tunnel routes under the hill with 1,100 tons of explosives. Footage showed a massive fireball erupting above the mountain. Seismic systems also detected the explosion as a 4.1-magnitude earthquake, the United States Geological Survey said.
The IDF described the facility as a “strategic infrastructure that was built over two decades,” an activity it said was financed and planned by Iran. Dozens of Hezbollah operatives were believed holed up under Ali Taher when a new ceasefire took effect in June.
Inside the two tunnels – spanning over two kilometers – troops found dozens of Iranian-made rockets, missiles and drones, along with firearms, anti-tank missiles, and hundreds of mines and other explosives, the military said.
The tunnel also featured “command centers, weapons rooms, generator rooms, living quarters, showers and a kitchen,” which the IDF said enabled Hezbollah operatives “to conduct fighting and remain there for extended periods.”
In a separate joint statement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said that the underground facility was destroyed following their directive, and the IDF has now “completed the organization of the security zone in southern Lebanon.”
“The terror infrastructure and headquarters under the ridge were intended to serve as a base for the conquest of the Galilee, and surveillance and fire over Metula and Kiryat Shmona,” Netanyahu and Katz said.
Netanyahu and Katz said that following the blast, the IDF is “preparing for defense in the area and to prevent the enemy from returning to the territory.”
Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the broader Middle East conflict in March by launching rockets at Israel in support of its sponsor Iran, which had come under attack by a US-Israeli air campaign. Israel responded to the Hezbollah attacks with a heavy air campaign and ground invasion.
Fighting had persisted despite the ceasefire declared in Lebanon in April, but at a reduced rate. Israeli forces continue to operate inside a self-declared “security zone,” which runs around six miles deep inside Lebanese territory along the border.
In June, Israel and Lebanon signed a framework agreement committing Lebanon to restoring sovereignty over its territory through the “verified disarmament of non-state armed groups,” which would in turn enable a progressive Israeli withdrawal. The State of Lebanon, along with Israel and the US, signed the agreement, but Hezbollah and its allies are opposed to it.
Israel pulled out of three pilot zones into which the Lebanese army entered, but has said it will not carry out any further withdrawals before Hezbollah is disarmed.
Israel and Lebanon have been holding negotiations to advance the framework deal since April, and an Israel official told The Times of Israel on Thursday (10th) that the next round of talks will take place next week in Rome.
The talks will extend for two days, but it has not yet been finalized whether they will begin on Tuesday (15th) or Wednesday (16th), the official said.
Meanwhile, a US State Department official said in a statement to querying reporters that Washington is closely monitoring “calls from Southern Lebanon, where people are demanding their government assert sovereignty and stop Hezbollah from firing and storing weapons in their communities.”
“We applaud those communities and support the Government of Lebanon’s receptiveness to their requests,” the official continued. “We urge the Government of Lebanon to formulate a plan for disarmament in all Lebanese territory, as laid out in the Trilateral Framework.”
Why Britain’s Eastern Jerusalem Consulate Had To Go – Shlomo Kates
When news broke that Israel would be closing the British Consulate in eastern Jerusalem in response to the UK’s recent sanctions, to me, this decision was long overdue. The consulate’s very existence was built on a diplomatic fiction and Israel has finally chosen to stop indulging it.
During my time as head of communications at the British embassy in Tel Aviv in 2023, I was responsible for communicating the UK’s official policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The core message was: peace can only be achieved when Israel retreats to the pre-1967 lines, with Jerusalem as a shared capital. But I never believed it. It was a mantra from another era, disconnected from the lived reality of Jerusalem and the political landscape that has evolved over decades.
The eastern Jerusalem consulate existed to serve Palestinians exclusively, even though it sat squarely inside the Jerusalem municipality under full Israeli control. It wasn’t designed to serve everyone in its geographic area. It wasn’t even located in a place that made practical sense. Meanwhile, Jewish residents of eastern Jerusalem were told to go to Tel Aviv for consular services.
The consulate was a political symbol, a relic of the UK’s insistence on treating Jerusalem as a divided city even though it hasn’t functioned that way since 1967. Israel’s decision to close the consulate is a correction. A sovereign state has every right to decide which foreign missions operate within its capital. Closing the consulate doesn’t undermine peace; it undermines a fantasy.
Israel Is America’s Most Important Combat Multiplier – Col. (Ret.) Richard Kemp
Whether you like Jews and the Jewish state or not, Israel is an indispensable component of U.S. national security. America’s adversaries, especially China and Russia, attach great importance to undermining U.S. backing for Israel and make massive efforts to bring this about. Both countries (as well as Iran, Qatar and Turkey) have been running extensive and highly effective political warfare campaigns against Israel. This is a carefully orchestrated foreign state campaign of manipulation and sedition, all built on lies and distortion of the truth.
Israel’s defensive activities preserve multiple billions of dollars Washington would otherwise be obliged to spend; relieve the U.S. of the burden of having to maintain far greater combat forces and intelligence resources in the Middle East, also at vast expense, and save many American soldiers’ lives.
The Israeli military battle-tests advanced American weapons systems supplied to it, such as the F-35 combat plane, enabling enhancements and development that improve U.S. global military capabilities. I met several American military commanders and pilots in Israel during the war with Iran this year. All of them explained how much benefit they gained from IDF experience and hard-earned battlefield capability. Add to that the immense advantages to the U.S. economy accrued through foreign-weapons sales as a result of Israeli endorsement of American combat equipment.
Israeli intelligence is just as much a multiplier of American capabilities. Jerusalem provides Washington with vital information on enemy weapons and technology capabilities, including nuclear proliferation and cyberwar, enhancing American countermeasures. With unrivaled coverage of international jihadists, Israel also shares vital pre-emptive intelligence that has saved many American lives at home and around the world.
Note how Israel’s actions have led to the hasty withdrawal of Russian forces from Syria since the fall of Bashar Assad in December 2024. Note also how Israel easily neutralized Chinese and Russian air defenses, ballistic missiles and combat planes in Iran.
Israel is America’s most important combat multiplier. Those who actively work to harm Israel, including boycotting Israeli companies and sanctioning democratically elected politicians, are indirectly sabotaging U.S. security.
The writer, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, was chairman of the UK’s national crisis management committee, COBRA.
(jns.org)
