Inside Israel News

Week of July 31, 2025

In This Week’s Issue

President of Lebanon Orders Hezbollah to Disarm Before IDF Withdrawal Completed
IDF Spokesperson Attests That Humanitarian Aid is in Full Operation in the Gaza Strip
Germany Steps up to Help Israel Release Gazan Hostages of Eastern European Ancestry
The American Jewish Community Helps Kibbutzim and Settlements Near Gaza Rebuild and Return to Normalcy After October 7, 2023

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President of Lebanon Orders Hezbollah to Disarm Before IDF Withdrawal Completed

n this photo released by the Lebanese Presidency press office, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun speaks during a ceremony marking Army Day at the country's Defense Ministry in Yarzeh, near Beirut, Lebanon, on Thursday, July 31, 2025. (Lebanese Presidency press office via AP)

The Lebanese faction of the Shi’a Islamist movement Hezbollah (“Party of Allah”) was founded in 1982 in response to the war that broke out between that nation and Israel, her southern neighbour. Hezbollah originated in the late 1970s in Iran with the endorsement of then incumbent Iranian ruler Ayatollah Khomeini, and it coincided with the Islamic Revolution there.

Hezbollah incursions into northern Israel began on October 8, 2023, in solidarity with the invasion and attack of Gaza-based Sunni Muslim Hamas terrorists on southern Israel the day before. Hezbollah operatives sporadically fired rockets on northern border villages until a cease-fire was declared between Israel and Hezbollah in November 2024.

Joseph Aoun was elected President of Lebanon on January 9, 2025, replacing his predecessor, construction billionaire Najib Mikati. General Aoun is a lifelong soldier who rose to the rank of Commander-in-Chief of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). Though his career has transitioned into federal politics, he nonetheless retains a vested interest in preserving the military might of his nation.

Along with his numerous civilian campaign and election promises, General Aoun is committed to upholding the 2006 United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution restricting weapons possession in southern Lebanon exclusively to the LAF and UNIFIL peacekeepers. However, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem protested that disarming his troops would be “serving the Israeli project”.

The United States has urged both the Lebanese government and the United Nations (UN) to enforce the mandated Hezbollah retreat to a boundary at least 30 km north of the border of Israel. Sheikh Qassem has accused the US of resorting to “intimidation and threats” and “aiding Israel”. General Aoun stated he will still dismantle both Hezbollah and Palestinian refugee camp arsenals in his country.

President Aoun has proposed to his cabinet that ten billion USD be earmarked over the next decade to weaken terrorist groups, strengthen LAF and UNIFIL security forces, and rebuild and modernize civilian infrastructure. He also wants to expel all foreign occupation in Lebanon—including the presence of IDF troops and their weaponry and ordnance north of the Israeli border.

Pray for the successful disarmament of forces in Lebanon hostile to Israel and a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace, among all peoples in both nations.

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IDF Spokesperson Attests That Humanitarian Aid is in Full Operation in the Gaza Strip

Al-Sahaba market in the Gaza Strip, July 28, 2025. (credit: TPS-IL)

According to the mainstream media and the International Food Security Phase Classification, there is a lethal humanitarian aid crisis in Gaza. By contrast, spokespersons for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) assert that they have consistently delivered food, water, electricity, and medicines to Gaza throughout the Iron Swords War.

Israel has sent thousands of aid trucks to Gaza since October 7, 2023, and established trade routes and checkpoints where inbound cargo is inspected, counted, and inventoried. Though there are multiple internal Israeli access points to Gaza from Israel proper, humanitarian aid also arrives via the Rafah Crossing (Egypt) and the Allenby Bridge (Jordan).

Aid delivery logistics are managed by up to seventy non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the UN, and medical missions. Israel has repaired power lines and a seawater desalination plant in Gaza destroyed by Hamas early in the war. An Egyptian pipeline feeding potable water into northern Gaza is being expanded to supply the southern part of the Strip.

Israeli and Palestinian authorities have collaborated to install, maintain, and repair telecommunications and fuel supplies for UN and NGO agencies supporting hospitals, convoys, and generators. Israel has set up and operated field hospitals in Gaza in collaboration with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Jordan, and the Red Cross and other agencies. Thousands of Gazan patients have been medically evacuated.

Based on the reports of international partners, intelligence networks, and Gazan residents themselves, UN agencies monitor food security, food safety, hygiene, and healthcare in Gaza on a weekly basis. Multiple humanitarian aid societies have coordinated material delivery to, and distribution within, Gaza, as well as personnel transport into and out of the region.

Delivery and distribution bottlenecks are attributable mainly to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas—not Israeli bureaucracy or red tape—despite the abundance of trucks and convoys within Gaza. IDF spokespersons have emphasized time and again that their war is against Hamas, not the civilian population. Unfortunately, however, Hamas enclaves are embedded in schools, mosques, and hospitals.

Deficiencies in perishable food (mainly seed oils and fresh produce) have been offset by the fact that farms and greengrocers have continued to operate in Gaza throughout the war. The transport of blood products, infant formula, and other fragile nutritional and medical supplies has been expedited by bypassing war-obstructed routes and moving the materials from the West Bank to Gaza.

Pray that the transport of essential goods and services to Gaza continues unimpeded. Pray for the safe return of all remaining hostages in Gaza to their homes and families. Pray for a speedy end to the war and a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ among those on all sides of the conflict.

Read more at The Jerusalem Post

Germany Steps Up to Help Israel Release Gazan Hostages of Eastern European Ancestry

Portraits of the Hamas-held hostages hang in front of the Neue Synagogue in Berlin, December 2024. (Bart Schut)

The world is all too familiar with the dark past of Germany between eighty and ninety years ago. In the wake of the Third Reich and World War Two, however, Israel was established as a nation and restored as the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. Since that time, the government and people of Germany have borne much shame over their Nazi legacy.

Prior to 2021, the Republic of Germany recognized the citizenship of the descendants of Holocaust casualties and survivors whose status had been stripped from them under Nazism. That year, however, the German government decreed that even those with non-German Jewish ancestors who were expelled from Germany in 1933 would be accorded full citizenship as well.

Jewish people of Eastern European heritage are referred to as Ashkenazi—and it so happens that most of the Jewish residents of the kibbutzim (communal settlements) on the border of Gaza are of that ethnicity. Hence, it is no surprise that so are many of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. While only seven of the fifty remaining hostages hold German citizenship, others there may still qualify for it.

Of the 251 kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023, thirty had German citizenship, and fourteen were released during the truce of November 2023. Another nine were either killed or liberated in subsequent ceasefire agreements. The bodies of the deceased were returned home. Relatives of the German hostages have met with various officials in Berlin seeking help to free their imprisoned loved ones.

German ambassadors, ministers, and even the Chancellor himself have proven to be highly cooperative in assisting the cause of Gazan hostage liberation. They launched awareness campaigns, lobbied the Netanyahu Administration for a ceasefire, organized vigils, set up a symbolic hostages square in Berlin, negotiated the exchange of Hamas/Hezbollah prisoners for Israeli captives, and more.

Nevertheless, the German embassy in Tel Aviv concedes that their nation has far less political clout in this matter than either the US or Russia. For this reason, they have been trying to forge stronger diplomatic ties with their Middle Eastern allies such as Qatar and Türkiye.

Since 2021, nearly four thousand Ashkenazi Israelis have applied for German citizenship—and most of the applications were submitted during wartime periods. Applicants sought symbolic recognition as German citizens, travel benefits, justice…and a safe haven from the seemingly endless violence and turmoil in Israel.

Pray for the safe release of all Gazan hostages—whether to their families in Israel or to their new homes in Germany. Pray for an end to the hostilities in the Holy Land once and for all, and a saving knowledge of the Prince of Peace Yeshua the Messiah among Jews and Gentiles there.

Read more at The Times of Israel

The American Jewish Community Helps Kibbutzim and Settlements Near Gaza Rebuild and Return to Normalcy After October 7, 2023

Community leaders from Israel's Gaza envelope area meet with the CEO of UJA-Federation of New York, Eric Goldstein, third from left, and Itzik Shmuli, the director general of UJA’s Israel office, second from left. (photo credit: Yarden Cohen)

In New York in 1939, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the United Israel Appeal, and the National Coordinating Committee Fund consolidated to form the United Jewish Appeal for Refugees and Overseas Needs (later shortened simply to the United Jewish Appeal or UJA) to provide relief and safe passage for persecuted European Jewry.

In 1986, the UJA merged with the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York to create UJA-Federation which is currently the largest philanthropic entity in the world. UJA-Federation funds social services, healthcare, NGOs, Jewish institutions, and community organizations in the US, Israel, and seventy other countries.

In March 2024—five months after the horrific attack of Hamas terrorists on southern Israel at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles in 2023—UJA-Federation launched its Project Horizon campaign in Israel. Its aim was to facilitate community resilience, trauma care, informal education, and employment in the Gaza Envelope—the region most heavily assaulted on October 7.

The Gaza Envelope houses over thirty thousand residents of fifty kibbutzim, towns, and villages. Of these, the most severely damaged were Be’eri, Holit, Kfar Aza, Kissufim, Nahal Oz, Netiv Ha’Asara, Nirim, and Nir Oz. Upon its inception, Project Horizon allocated eight million USD to the aforementioned communities, and the funds were managed and distributed by Totzeret Ha’aretz (“Made in Israel”).

Project Horizon then disbursed four million USD to Kibbutz Erez—a war-ravaged settlement of 560 people about one kilometer from the Gaza Strip boundary—as well as eleven other communities within six or seven kilometers of Gaza. Currently, the Project is sending five million USD in aid to another thirty-three kibbutzim and residential areas adjacent to the Gaza region.

Since October 7, 2023, UJA-Federation has furnished over two hundred million USD to Israel primarily to purchase the materials and labour required to rebuild the infrastructure of the foregoing residences. However, the funding has also covered the costs of grief and trauma counselling as well as relocation, educational, and recreational programmes.

Pray for the restoration of the settlements in the Gaza Envelope and complete mental and emotional healing for those living in them. Pray for an end to the ongoing hostilities in the region and a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ on all sides of the conflict.