After Hezbollah confirmed the death of its leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli strike, what – if anything – can it do next?

The next 72 hours are likely to be full of Hezbollah’s remaining commanders assessing who is left, how safe it is to communicate and meet, and exactly what level of pain tolerance it retains as it tries to formulate a response.

What we don’t know is how much disruption has been done to the group’s rocket inventory by the wave of Israeli airstrikes over the past two weeks.

Israel appears to have very accurate information as to the whereabouts of Hezbollah leadership in real time, and so that is likely mirrored in what it knows about where Hezbollah has kept its munitions.

So far, we have yet to see a barrage of rockets from Hezbollah that has caused significant (and known) damage to Israeli targets. That may still come if Hezbollah’s remaining leadership decides that it has to project some kind of military strength to try to salvage morale and relevance in the region. But if it tries to project strength and fails, owing to Israeli interceptions, that will just compound its loss of face.

What is unknown at this point is how fervently Iran feels it needs to be dragged into this.

It has shown an extraordinarily high threshold for pain over the past months and may have a longer view in hand. The West and Israel should be mindful over the apparent change in tempo of Iran’s uranium enrichment and be petrified of losing the wider war of non proliferation in a region unable to step back from the brink.

Yet most profoundly, it is Israel’s next steps that matter most. It has shown that it has the intelligence advantage, military might, and tolerance for international condemnation of civilian casualties to continue to strike at will. But this risks turning a fortnight of brutal strikes into another longer term loss to Israeli prestige.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a defining choice to make. Does the past fortnight salvage his domestic reputation for security and leave him better placed to face the music of the cases against him? Or does he again calculate that an ongoing war without clear strategic direction is his best way forward?

Ultimately a wider field of vision must win out. Lebanon’s civilians – and its southern neighbors – need political accommodation and a ceasefire now, regardless of what it means for the fate of Israel’s current political elite.

Hassan Nasrallah, whom Israel believes it killed in a strike on southern Beirut, turned Hezbollah into one of the most powerful paramilitary forces in the Middle East. His death caps a series of devastating blows for the group, already reeling from the humiliation of having its communications network comprehensively infiltrated, and suggests that one of Israel’s most formidable enemies is deeply wounded.

One of the founding members of the group formed four decades ago with the aid of Iran, Nasrallah ascended to the top of Hezbollah in 1992. He replaced his predecessor and mentor, Abbas Musawi, as secretary-general of Hezbollah, after he was killed by an Israeli helicopter strike.

Born to a grocer and his wife in Beirut in August 1960, Nasrallah spent his early adolescence under the shadow of Lebanon’s civil war.

His family were forced to flee the capital when the fighting erupted in 1975, moving further south to a village near the coastal city of Tyre.

One year later, Nasrallah moved to Iraq to attend a Shiite seminary. But he was swiftly expelled during the persecution of Shiite Muslims under Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s repressive regime – returning to Lebanon to study under his teacher, Musawi.

When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, Nasrallah rallied a group of fighters to resist the occupation – which would evolve into Hezbollah.

Israeli forces took almost half of Lebanon’s territory that year, and were held responsible for the killing of at least 17,000 people, according to reports and an Israeli inquiry into a massacre at a Beirut refugee camp.

Transformation of Hezbollah

Known for his fiery speeches, the leader oversaw the transformation of Hezbollah, from a rag-tag group of militants in the 1980s to an organization that mounted a concerted campaign to drive out Israeli occupation in 2000.

The Lebanese militant group became a regional fighting force under Nasrallah. He led the growth of Hezbollah’s forces – his fighters and reservists are thought to number 100,000 – as well as the proliferation of its arsenal, which boasts long-range as well as medium and short-range missiles and drones.

Nasrallah commands a dedicated following of hundreds of thousands of largely Shiite Muslims – in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. His influence in the Iran-backed so-called axis of resistance grew exponentially after the US assassinated Iran’s top general Qassem Soleimani, the architect of the region-wide axis, in 2020.

Hezbollah is the most robustly armed non-state group in the region – and is the most dominant political force in crisis-ridden Lebanon. Much of the Western world has designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

‘Lebanon will not stop supporting Gaza’

The Lebanese militant group has increasingly traded strikes with Israel since it launched its assault on Gaza after the Hamas-led October 7 attacks – inflaming tensions in the region.

Hezbollah says it has been firing on Israel in solidarity with Hamas, and Palestinians trying to survive Israeli attacks in Gaza, which have killed more than 41,000 people, according to the Ministry of Health there.

Days before he was killed, Nasrallah vowed to continue striking Israeli positions until Israel’s offensive in Gaza ends. “I say clearly: no matter the sacrifices, consequences, or future possibilities, the resistance in Lebanon will not stop supporting Gaza,” he said in a speech on September 19.

Fears of an all-out war peaked earlier this month, after Israel unleashed a wave of lethal explosions across Lebanon targeting Hezbollah fighters. Many of those killed were civilian bystanders.

In the days since, hundreds of thousands of people in Lebanon have been forced from their homes by Israeli attacks. In total, since October 7, more than 1,500 civilians in Lebanon have been killed and over 200,000 people displaced, according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Lebanese officials estimate the true number of displaced is closer to half a million.

Human rights advocates have fiercely condemned the violence – including UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who warned that Lebanon is suffering its bloodiest period “in a generation” and called on Israel and Hezbollah to “stop the killing and destruction.”

Israel’s audacious attack targeting Hezbollah’s leader on Friday has rattled the group, delivering its most severe blow since its founding. This has led its Iranian backers to warn that Israel has entered a dangerous phase of the conflict by altering the rules of engagement.

As Tehran watches its most prized non-state ally take a beating, questions are mounting about how it may respond.

The Jewish state significantly escalated its yearlong conflict with the group after expanding its Gaza war objectives on September 17 to include its northern front with Hezbollah. The following day, thousands of pagers used by its members exploded simultaneously, with walkie-talkies targeted the day after that. Israel then began an air assault that killed several Hezbollah commanders and led to the highest number of casualties in Lebanon in almost two decades.

And on Friday, Israel struck what it said was Hezbollah’s headquarters in the southern suburbs of Beirut, targeting its leader Hassan Nasrallah. The Israeli military has claimed that Nasrallah has been killed, but Hezbollah is yet to comment on the matter.

How much has Hezbollah been degraded?

“Hezbollah has taken the biggest blow to its military infrastructure since its inception. In addition to losing weapon depots and facilities, the group has lost most of its senior commanders, and its communications network is broken,” said Hanin Ghaddar, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute and author of “Hezbollahland.”

Despite its losses however, the group still retains skilled commanders and many of its most powerful assets, including precision-guided missiles and long-range missiles that could inflict significant damage to Israel’s military and civilian infrastructure, said Ghaddar. Most of those missiles haven’t been deployed yet.

Since Israel stepped up its campaign, Hezbollah’s military performance “has proven that it was able to absorb that shock and was able to bounce back and it has been striking hard at northern Israel for days now,” said Amal Saad, Hezbollah expert and lecturer in politics and international relations at Cardiff University in Wales.

On Wednesday, Israel intercepted a ballistic missile fired by Hezbollah near Tel Aviv, an unprecedented attack that reached deep into the country’s commercial heartland. Hezbollah said it targeted the headquarters of Israel’s intelligence agency.

While Nasrallah’s targeting is unlikely to disrupt the operational continuity of the movement it is “obviously a massive, massive demoralization amongst its ranks and supporters and absolute terror which will temporarily paralyze ordinary people” within the movement, said Saad.

“That doesn’t mean the organization is paralyzed,” she added. “Hezbollah is an organization that was built to absorb these types of shocks… it’s built to be resilient and outlast individual leaders.”

Few contenders for Hezbollah’s leadership can match Nasrallah’s popularity, said Ghaddar, as he is closely associated with the group’s “golden days,” including the end of Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000 and the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, both of which were viewed as major victories for the Lebanese group.

If the group’s leadership is truly dismantled and coordination between Iran and Hezbollah is disrupted, it could prompt Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to take the lead, according to Ghaddar.

“They (Iran) will have to find a way to do it themselves. But it’s not an easy option as they will (become) targets, and they don’t understand Lebanon.”

Under what circumstances would Iran intervene?

Ahead of the attempt on Nasrallah’s life, Iran’s official line was that Hezbollah is capable of defending itself, even as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei acknowledged on Wednesday that Israel’s killing of the group’s leaders was “definitely a loss.”

Following Friday’s attack however, Iran’s embassy in Lebanon indicated that Tehran’s calculations might now be shifting.

“There is no doubt that this reprehensible crime and reckless behavior represent a serious escalation that changes the rules of the game, and that its perpetrator will be punished and disciplined appropriately,” the embassy said on X.

Iran’s rationale for avoiding involvement in the conflict may no longer hold, said Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Washington DC-based Quincy Institute. “If it becomes clear (to Iran) that Hezbollah actually cannot defend itself following the bombing in Beirut, particularly if Nasrallah himself was killed, then the Iranian justification for staying out of the war has collapsed,” he said. “At that point, Iran’s credibility with the rest of its partners in the Axis will risk collapsing if Tehran does not react.”

Iran is likely “horrified by the effectiveness and efficiency” of Israel’s attacks but despite the targeting of Hezbollah’s top leadership, Tehran may still believe the group can defend itself and dictate the terms of an eventual ceasefire, which would help the group recover, according to  Farzin Nadimi, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute.

Tehran is most probably already helping Hezbollah rebuild its military command structure and providing tactical and operational advice to its leadership, he said. However, if the group nears collapse, it could “prompt a more assertive Iranian intervention,” potentially in the form of missile and drone strikes, as seen in April when Iran blamed Israel for attacking its diplomatic building in Damascus. Nadimi added that while a larger attack is unlikely, it’s not entirely out of the question.

Saad, the Hezbollah expert from Cardiff University, said an intervention by Iran would likely drag the United States into the war, noting that Tehran was “the weakest link” in the conflict.

“It’s the only member of the Axis that is an actual state. All the others are non-state or quasi-state actors. So, Iran has the most to lose if it participates,” she said.

“(Iran) is a conventional armed force, it would probably not fare anywhere near as well as Hezbollah would in a war because it’s a completely different military infrastructure,” Saad noted. “Hezbollah knows its terrain and adversary better than anyone else.”

Why Hezbollah matters to Iran

Since its inception 40 years ago, the Lebanese militant group has been the crown jewel of Tehran’s so-called Axis of Resistance, a group of mostly Shiite, Iran-allied Islamist militias spanning Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen that gives Iran strategic depth against its adversaries.

As a non-Arab, Shiite state, Iran sees itself as “strategically lonely” in the Middle East and therefore sees Shiites in the Sunni-dominated region “as the closest thing it has to natural allies,” Parsi said..

“From Tehran’s perspective, Hezbollah is central to the Axis because of its capabilities and discipline, its geographical placement, and its ideological and political proximity to Iran’s Islamic Republic,” Parsi added. “The destruction of Hezbollah is not in the cards in my assessment, but if it were to occur, that would be an existential blow to the Axis.”

The group is essential to “maintain a strong military component on the northern borders of Israel and keep Israel off-balance,” said Nadimi from the Washington Institute.

“It will be important to maintain Hezbollah as a viable and resilient actor and ally,” he said. “Iran has designed Hezbollah with resiliency in mind and believes they can take a lot more beating before Iran feels compelled to intervene directly.”

Iran looks to improve ties with the West

But Iran also has domestic considerations. The escalation between Hezbollah and Israel comes at a delicate time for Iran’s new reformist president, who campaigned on improving foreign relations to lift Tehran out of the isolation that has crippled its economy.

Just this week, President Masoud Pezeshkian said at the United Nations that his country is ready to engage with the West on its disputed nuclear program. He has named as his Vice President Javad Zarif, the seasoned, US-educated diplomat who became the face of Iran’s 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers, abandoned by the administration of former US President Donald Trump in 2018.

Parsi, from the Quincy Institute, said the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7 and the subsequent escalation with Hezbollah “were very badly timed” for Tehran, since they “risked prematurely bringing forward a confrontation between Iran, Hezbollah and Israel at a time that is much more strategically suitable for Israel than the Axis.”

At home, Pezeshkian must navigate between his reformist constituency, which favors detente with the West, and hardline elements within the regime that want a show of force against Israel.

On Monday, the day nearly 500 Lebanese were killed in Israeli airstrikes, Pezeshkian stated in New York that Iran was ready to “lay down arms if Israel does the same.” The remark sparked intense backlash from hardliners at home for appearing weak in front of the enemy, according to reports. His statement, along with his offer to reconcile with the West in his speech to the UN General Assembly the following day, also drew criticism in some Lebanese media.

Given the “profound unhappiness of much of the Iranian public” with the regime, Pezeshkian’s priority is national reconciliation, said Parsi.

Still, if Hezbollah is seriously degraded, “Tehran may face a situation in which it will conclude that war is at its doorstep whether it chooses it or not and that it is, as a result, better off responding before Hezbollah is further weakened,” he said.

Wary of Israel’s ‘trap’

He said that both Iran and Hezbollah had exercised restraint in the face of Israeli attacks, “but now the Israelis are crossing the line, in my view, and there is every prospect of the war getting more difficult to contain.” Hezbollah was capable of defending itself, he added, but it was incumbent on the international community to step in before the situation gets “out of hand.”

Iran has yet to carry out the revenge it promised Israel after the assassination of Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July.

This week however, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned that his country would not remain “indifferent” if a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah erupted in Lebanon.

“We stand with the people of Lebanon with all means,” he said at a news conference in New York ahead of a UN Security Council meeting.

A Thai crocodile farmer who goes by the nickname “Crocodile X” said he killed more than 100 critically endangered reptiles to prevent them from escaping after a typhoon damaged their enclosure.

Natthapak Khumkad, 37, who runs a crocodile farm in Lamphun, northern Thailand, said he scrambled to find his Siamese crocodiles a new home when he noticed a wall securing their enclosure was at risk of collapsing. But nowhere was large or secure enough to hold the crocodiles, some of which were up to 4 meters (13 feet) long.

To stop the crocodiles from getting loose into the local community, Natthapak said, he put 125 of them down on September 22.

Typhoon Yagi, Asia’s most powerful storm this year, swept across southern China and Southeast Asia this month, leaving a trail of destruction with its intense rainfall and powerful winds. Downpours inundated Thailand’s north, submerging homes and riverside villages, killing at least nine people.

Storms like Yagi are “getting stronger due to climate change, primarily because warmer ocean waters provide more energy to fuel the storms, leading to increased wind speeds and heavier rainfall,” said Benjamin Horton, director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore.

Natural disasters, including typhoons, pose a range of threats to wildlife, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Flooding can leave animals stranded, in danger of drowning, or separated from their owners or families.

Rain and strong winds can also severely damage habitats and animal shelters. In 2022, Hurricane Ian hit Florida and destroyed the Little Bear Sanctuary in Punta Gorda, leaving 200 animals, including cows, horses, donkeys, pigs and birds without shelter.

The risk of natural disasters to animals is only increasing as human-caused climate change makes extreme weather events more frequent and volatile.

Natthapak said his farm has been open for 17 years and has survived every rainy season until this year, when days of heavy rain eroded the walls of the crocodile tank.

“I had to make a decision in less than 24 hours when I saw the erosion progressed rapidly,” Natthapak said, adding that he electrocuted the crocodiles to kill them.

Pornthip Nualanong, the chief of Lamphun’s fishery office, said Natthapak informed her office as the heavy rains began to threaten the farm.

Killing the crocodiles “was a brave and responsible decision to take, since if any of those grown-up crocs were running loose in nearby paddy fields it would pose (a serious risk to) public safety,” she said.

Among the crocodiles killed was one named Ai Harn, the eldest male breeder and leader of the pack, at 4 meters (13 feet) long.

Videos showed a digger removing the bodies of the crocodiles.

Siamese crocodiles are critically endangered, but they are widely sold and bred in Thailand.

Crocodile farming is a lucrative industry there, with roughly 1,100 registered commercial farms generating between 6 billion and 7 billion Thai baht ($215 million) of revenue annually, Pornthip said.

They were once found across much of Southeast Asia, but hunting and large-scale farming have severely diminished the population of Siamese crocodiles in the wild, with some estimates putting it at just a few hundred.

Earlier this year, 60 Siamese crocodile eggs hatched in Cambodia, the largest recorded breeding event for the species this century.

Natthapak said his family’s original business was selling roasted suckling pigs and calves, but once he noticed how much waste was left over, he decided to use it to feed crocodiles. The family purchased five crocodiles, and the number has grown in the nearly two decades since.

The farm supplies crocodile skins to leather factories, sells frozen meat in Thailand and exports dried crocodile meat to Hong Kong.

He still owns 500 baby crocodiles, which are between 30-120 centimeters (1-4 feet) long.

Pope Francis has pledged to root out the “scourge” of clerical sexual abuse after Belgium’s prime minster urged him in unusually frank terms to take concrete action.

Francis was addressing political leaders on Friday at the official residence of the King of Belgium, a country where devastating clerical abuse scandals have erupted in recent years.

Before he spoke, both the Belgian king and Prime Minister Alexander de Croo raised the issue in their speeches, the latter speaking directly to the pope, in remarks that underline how the abuse crisis has come to dominate Belgian national attention.

“You are committed to a fair and equitable approach. But the road is still long,” the prime minister told Francis. “If something goes wrong, we can’t accept cover-ups. It harms the precious work done by everyone. And that’s why words are not enough today. Concrete steps are needed. The victims must be heard. They must occupy a central place. They have the right to the truth.”

He added: “In order to look forward, the Church must clarify its past.”

In his remarks, Francis compared the church’s abuse crisis to the biblical story of King Herod’s order that all male children aged two and older be executed.

“This is the shame, the shame that we must all take in hand today and ask for forgiveness and solve the problem, the shame of abuse, of child abuse,” the pope said. “We think of the time of the ‘Holy Innocents’ and say ‘what a tragedy. What did King Herod do?’ But today, in the Church itself there is this crime.”

He said that “the Church must be ashamed and ask for forgiveness and try to resolve this situation with Christian humility and put all the possibilities in places so that this doesn’t happen again.”

The 87-year-old pontiff, who is on a three-day visit to Belgium after spending a day in Luxembourg, insisted that abuse is a “scourge that the church is firmly and decisively by listening to and accompanying those who have been wounded, and by implementing a prevention program throughout the world.”

Appalling revelations of clerical sexual abuse have emerged in Belgium over the last 30 years including the case of a former bishop who abused two of his nephews. The scandal has loomed large over the pope’s trip, during which Francis was also expected to meet 15 abuse survivors.

Meanwhile, the Belgian church has also been caught up in a forced adoption scandal with an investigation by a Flemish newspaper indicating that Belgian nuns had been involved in an estimated 30,000 cases where newborns were taken from their mothers between 1945 and 1980. Most of the cases involved young, unmarried women whose parents wanted the pregnancies kept under wraps.

Francis also addressed this scandal in his remarks, saying: “I was saddened to learn about the practice of ‘forced adoptions’ that also took place here in Belgium between the 1950s and the 1970s. In those poignant stories, we see how the bitter fruit of wrongdoing and criminality was mixed in with what was unfortunately the prevailing view in all parts of society at that time.”

The pope said these cases occurred because the “family and other actors in society, including within the church” thought giving up children for adoption was a way to avoid the unfortunate stigma which fell on “unmarried mothers.”

He said the lesson from the adoption scandal is for the church “never [to] conform to the predominant culture” even if that culture superficially aligns with the church’s values. This, he said, can happen in a “manipulative way” and cause “suffering and exclusion.”

When pagers exploded across Lebanon last week, the year-long war with Hezbollah was not at the top of the Israeli political agenda.

Instead, the political class was convulsed with speculation that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to fire Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and replace him with a military neophyte, Gideon Sa’ar, to shore up his domestic power. National security heavyweights were scathing. “It’ll take him months on end to train for the job,” said Gadi Eisenkot, a highly respected former Israeli military chief and member of the opposition.

The pager and subsequent walkie-talkie explosions – which together killed dozens, maimed thousands, and rattled Lebanese nerves – put paid to that scheme, for now. The suddenly heightened tensions with Hezbollah gave Gallant a lifeline. Reports in the Israeli press suggest that the stay on Gallant’s dismissal is only temporary, and that Netanyahu still intends to fire him.

Policy and domestic politics are impossible to separate in any democracy, but especially in Netanyahu’s Israel – and especially now.

Political imperatives

The Israeli government says it needed to ramp up the war with Hezbollah to return 60,000 displaced civilians to their homes in northern Israel. Since the day after the October 7 attacks by Hamas, Hezbollah has been firing on Israel in solidarity with the militant group and Palestinians in Gaza. Hundreds of thousands have also been forced from their homes by Israeli bombardment in Lebanon.

Returning the northern residents home is a political imperative in Israel. And since the cabinet formally added the goal to its war aims, it’s a policy one too. But the heightened war with Hezbollah also stands in the way of Netanyahu’s desire to fire Gallant.

Just this week, after giving the green light to a US-backed mediation effort with Lebanon, the prime minister faced withering criticism from his right-wing allies, who say only a military conflict will remove Hezbollah from the border. Ben Gvir’s party held an urgent consultation – implicitly threatening to upend the coalition. The criticism forced Netanyahu to release a statement rejecting the idea of an imminent ceasefire. When he later put out another statement saying that he was engaging in the process with the United States, he only released it in English, not Hebrew.

In attacking Hezbollah, the Israeli government is trying to “decouple” Lebanon from Gaza. Hezbollah says that it’s attacking Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza; Israel wants to get Hezbollah to stop firing even without a Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal. And yet there is a widespread assumption among the national security class in Israel that Netanyahu is prolonging the war in Gaza because he knows that as soon as it is over, he will face enormous pressure to call an election.

The families of the 101 people still held hostage in Gaza regularly accuse the prime minister of playing for time and putting his political survival above the national interest.

“If Netanyahu wanted to end it, he could. So I guess that’s not his intention at this point.”

Long-running tensions

The prime minister and Gallant have long had strained relations, despite a period of unity following Hamas’ October 7 attack.

The two have often disagreed over the war in Gaza. In August, Gallant told a closed-door Knesset committee that Netanyahu’s goal of “absolute victory” in Gaza was “nonsense,” according to Israeli media. Netanyahu took the extraordinary step of releasing a press statement accusing Gallant of adopting an “anti-Israel narrative.”

Gallant was also highly critical of Netanyahu’s emphasis on Israeli control of a strip of territory along the Gaza-Egypt border, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, calling it a “moral disgrace.” In cabinet, he voted against continued occupation there, seeing it as a hinderance to a ceasefire and hostage deal. “If we want the hostages alive, we don’t have time,” he said.

With both the Philadelphi Corridor and Hezbollah, Netanyahu’s critics have questioned why, if they were so critical, he waited months to raise the stakes over those issues. Netanyahu has said in response that it was a “progression of military advancement.”

Indeed, when the prime minister previously attempted to dismiss Gallant, in March last year, it was over the defense minister’s opposition to Netanyahu’s proposed judicial overhaul – an issue that had the potential to bring down the government.

The idea that Gallant might be fired over the judicial reforms led immediately to mass protests that came to be known in Israel as the “Night of Gallant.” Ultimately, Netanyahu did not follow through. One of the factors weighing on Netanyahu in his hesitance to fire him now has been fear of a second such night.

The exemption question

Behind the headlines of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, Netanyahu’s ability to govern has long been threatened by a seemingly back-burner issue: the Israeli military’s recruitment of ultra-Orthodox Israelis, known in Hebrew as Haredim.

“The danger to the coalition connected to the draft law for the Haredim is very high,” Malach said. “So (Netanyahu) would do the things that will help him keep the coalition. And if Gallant is in his way to keep the coalition, he will do whatever he can to remove him from the office.”

The issue of ultra-Orthodox military service has long plagued Israel. Ultra-Orthodox Jews had since Israel’s founding been exempt from mandatory service, because they viewed Torah study as the highest calling. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court said that the exemption violated equal protection principles and mandated the IDF to start drafting.

Ever since, the ultra-Orthodox parties on whom Netanyahu relies to govern have been trying to draft legislation to enshrine a new exemption in law. Up until now, they have been notably unwilling to follow through on threats to leave the coalition – rarely have they had so much power. But their unhappiness with the IDF’s current mandate to recruit ultra-Orthodox men remains a sword of Damocles.

Gallant is a thorn in Netanyahu’s side, pushing him not to give in to the ultra-Orthodox desire for an exemption. He, like many military leaders, thinks that all Jewish Israelis should share the burden of military service – and has said he won’t support any law that doesn’t have broad political support.

Sa’ar, whom Netanyahu wanted to replace Gallant, was said to have much better relations with the ultra-Orthodox parties.

Eisenkot, the former IDF chief of the General Staff, said the ultra-Orthodox issue was central to Netanyahu’s desire to get rid of the defense minister.

“Firing Gallant – and I’m not a fan of Gallant – is meant to serve political needs, to pass the conscription law, consequently damaging the IDF,” he said. “This is more of Netanyahu’s cynical policy.”

With Netanyahu’s backing, the ultra-Orthodox parties hope to pass a military exemption when the Knesset returns following the Jewish High Holidays in October. Even if the law passes, the Supreme Court is almost certain to knock it down, Malach said.

“But the point is that you are getting time. And this is the most important thing for Netanyahu,” he said. “The short term is the whole term for him. Because until the Supreme Court will decide, he will get one year, two years – that’s enough.”

That short-term strategy may well come to apply to Hezbollah as well. Amid all the talk of whether Israel will invade Lebanon in the coming days, there is no discussion of what a long-term settlement with Israel’s neighbor might look like.

Michael Shemesh, a correspondent for Israeli broadcaster Kan traveling with Netanyahu to New York this week, said that reporters asked an aide to the prime minister about the potential that Gallant might be fired.

“We don’t do politics during wartime,” the aide replied. “There were reporters who couldn’t help but laugh,” Shemesh said.

It’s one of the biggest security operations in America: Protecting thousands of world leaders and their entourages at the annual high level United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York.

What is most impressive is seeing a huge wall of monitors in both. It was clear there are cameras everywhere – some well-hidden, scattered all over the UN grounds aimed at doors, the garage, UN hallways, and driveways. There are 1400 cameras in total, UN officials said.

High shots from cameras looking at nearby corners outside the UN are always on. The UN security officials said its impossible to monitor all 1400 cameras at the same time but there are personnel checking out the scene.

If a visitor – or more nefarious character – runs into problems using their credential to enter the complex, an alarm will sound in the security control rooms, with an automated voice warning that the individual has been “Rejected! Rejected! Rejected!”

Remind me to fix my tie when I am walking through the UN grounds.

It’s a team effort between the UN, New York Police Department, Secret Service and diplomatic security. They’ve got a lot of people to watch over – over 22,000 delegates were counted during this year’s UNGA attendees (pronounced like hunger).

Because its an annual event, security keeps a file. UN security says they learn a little bit each year.

“Knock on wood; we have never had a security incident related to heads of state here. We have pulled out all the stops,”, said US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield on the eve of this year’s global gathering.

New York police and diplomatic security are tasked with rushing long and short motorcades from hotels across Manhattan to the UN and back. And yes, that means traffic backups. More than ever, this year world leaders have spread across the city, from ringing in the New York Stock Exchange to meeting their constituents who live in in the US.

While the United Nations may be increasingly the target of criticism and forum for  “poisonous” barbs traded between ambassadors, handling unwanted attention and security threats has always been part of the job for staffers here.

Last year on New Years Day,  a woman having a “psychiatric episode” drove her vehicle up to the UN’s main entrance for cars and refused to leave. In 2002, a postal worker jumped the perimeter fence, tossed leaflets in the air, and fired shots at the soaring Secretariat building, hitting several floors. (The fence has been built higher now.)

UN security officials say their priority is providing a secure environment. So far so good.

Israel carried out part of its device attack targeting Hezbollah by concealing explosives inside the batteries of pagers brought into Lebanon, according to two high-ranking Lebanese security officials, who said the technology was so advanced that it was virtually undetectable.

Lebanese security officials watched a series of controlled explosions of some of the weaponized pagers, as investigations into who manufactured the wireless communication devices and how they made their way into Hezbollah’s pockets continued.

The pagers used in the controlled explosions were switched off at the time of the attack on September 17, which meant they did not receive the message that caused the compromised devices to detonate. The officials had a front-row seat to see just how catastrophic the blasts would have been to those carrying the devices and others around them.

Thousands of explosions struck Hezbollah members last week, targeting their pagers on Tuesday, and then walkie-talkies a day later. In all, the blasts killed at least 37 people, including some children, and injured nearly 3,000, according to Lebanese health authorities, many of them civilian bystanders. The attack blindsided the group, which had opted for analogue technologies after forgoing cell phones to avoid Israeli infiltration.

An improvised explosive device has five key components: A power source, an initiator, a detonator, an explosive charge and a case to put it all in. Sean Moorhouse, a former British Army officer and explosive ordinance disposal expert, said that only a detonator and explosive charge would have been needed to weaponize the pagers, which already have the other three components.

“It had to be done in such a way to make it invisible,” Moorhouse said, adding that one way to do that could have been modifying the battery itself – implanting an electronic detonator and small explosive charge inside of its metal casing, which would have made it impossible to detect with imaging, for example X-rays.

Other experts who reviewed footage of the blasts also said that explosive devices appeared to have been hidden in the pagers, suggesting a sophisticated supply chain attack involving a state actor.

That tallied with initial assessments by Lebanese authorities. Lebanon’s mission to the United Nations said in a letter sent to the UN Security Council last Friday that a preliminary investigation found that the communications devices were implanted with explosives before arriving in the country, tampered with “in a professional way” by “foreign entities.”

Mysterious supply chain stretches from Taiwan to Hungary

Multiple photos from the aftermath of last week’s attacks in Lebanon show remnants of the exploded pagers – also known as beepers – that were consistent with a model made by a Taiwanese firm, Gold Apollo, and fragments of walkie-talkies identified as the make of a Japanese firm, ICOM.

Lebanese authorities have said that the devices used in the attacks were Gold Apollo Rugged Pager AR-924 pagers and ICOM IC-V82 walkie-talkies. Both Gold Apollo and ICOM have distanced themselves from the compromised devices.

ICOM said that the IC-V82 model was discontinued a decade ago, and it could not determine whether the devices targeted in Lebanon were counterfeit or shipped from its company. Counterfeit versions are widely available for purchase on e-commerce websites, like Alibaba. Lebanon’s communications ministry said the IC-V82 radios used in the attacks were not supplied by a recognized agent, were not officially licensed and had not been vetted by the security services.

International investigative efforts have largely zeroed in on the Gold Apollo AR-924 pagers – tracing the model’s licensing and manufacturing from Taiwan to apparent shell companies to try to establish how the Israeli operation may have been carried out. The New York Times reported, citing three intelligence officers briefed on the operation, that Israel had set up at least three shell companies to disguise the identities of those making the pagers – Israeli intelligence officers.

The chairman and founder of Taiwan-based Gold Apollo, Hsu Ching-kuang, was questioned by Taiwanese prosecutors last Thursday before being released.

Wu set up a company called Apollo Systems Ltd in April of this year, listed under a Taipei address that appears to be a co-working space, according to corporate records. It is not clear if Wu was operating for BAC Consulting in Taipei under her new company name, Apollo Systems Ltd.

In December 2022 and February 2023, a YouTube channel for Apollo Systems HK uploaded two videos of the Gold Apollo AR-924 pager touting its “high-capacity lithium rechargeable battery” and other features. On its YouTube channel and website, Apollo Systems HK said that it had acquired the “sole distribution rights” to Gold Apollo pager systems. It also listed the AR-924 model as a product available for purchase.

Customs records in Taiwan, cited by the officials, showed that Gold Apollo shipped more than 20,000 pagers from Taiwan to the United States in the first eight months of 2024. More than 5,000 pagers were shipped to Hong Kong, while more than 3,000 pagers were shipped to Australia.

The Taiwanese officials said they had also checked the order history and the source of raw components for Gold Apollo pagers, adding that pager manufacturing was tightly controlled in Taiwan and that devices undergo regular inspections.

The Taiwanese prosecutors’ office is reviewing documents it obtained from Gold Apollo’s office. In a statement last Thursday, the prosecutors’ office said that there had “been no evidence found so far to suggest any involvements (sic) of Taiwanese nationals in the explosive terror attack.”

Investigations into the supply chain are also ongoing in Europe, where authorities are probing the Hungarian company, BAC Consulting, and another firm linked to Bulgaria and Norway, for any connections to the pager attack targeting Hezbollah.

There is no record of Gold Apollo exporting any pagers to Hungary in 2023 or 2024, the two Taiwanese officials said, citing custom records in Taiwan. In 2022, the company exported about 200 pagers to Hungary, they added.

Hungarian intelligence services have interviewed Bársony-Arcidiacono several times as part of their investigation into BAC Consulting but have not found any evidence that the pagers used in the attack were manufactured in the country, the government’s press office said in a statement. “The results have clearly established that the so-called ‘beepers’ were never present on Hungarian soil, and no Hungarian company or expert was involved in their production or modification,” it said.

Bulgarian authorities said they were investigating Norta Global Ltd after Hungarian media reported last week that the Sofia-based company was involved in the sale of the pagers to Hezbollah. Bulgaria’s national security agency DANS said that no pagers used in the attack were “imported, exported or manufactured in Bulgaria,” and that Norta Global Ltd had not carried out terrorist financing, or traded with anyone subject to sanctions. Bulgaria’s caretaker Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev told reporters last Friday that the company under investigation was “a cash flow, mailbox-type of firm,” and that its director “acted by proxy.”

Hezbollah digs into devices’ supply chain

Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, in an address last Thursday, said that the militant group had formed multiple internal investigative committees to get to the bottom of what happened, vowing a “reckoning” for those responsible.

“Regarding the explosions, we have reached an almost certain conclusion, but we still need some time to confirm it,” Nasrallah said. “This entire matter is under thorough investigation and review, from the company that sold the devices, to manufacturing, transportation, arrival in Lebanon, and distribution, all the way to the moment of the explosion.”

He added that while the apparent goal of the attack was to kill as many senior Hezbollah officials as possible, much of the leadership had been unaffected because they were carrying older pager models, suggesting that the form of communication has been used by the group for some time.

“These attacks represent a new development in warfare, where communication tools become weapons, simultaneously exploding across marketplaces, on street corners, and in homes as daily life unfolds,” UN human rights chief Volker Türk told the Security Council last Friday. “Authorities have reportedly dismantled unexploded devices in universities, banks, and hospitals.”

He added that simultaneously targeting thousands of people – whether civilians or armed forces – without the knowledge of who is in possession of the targeted devices and their surroundings at the time of the attack, violates international human rights law.

Iran’s delegate to the UN said that Israel had intended to kill at least 5,000 civilians, but some devices were deactivated or not distributed. The delegate said that Israel had again “crossed a red line,” noting that Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon was among those injured.

Senior UN officials warned that the devices attack marked a turning point, calling for de-escalation and a ceasefire in Gaza before a war consumes the whole of the Middle East. Others said that the technology apparently used marked “dangerous new territory” in the world of warfare.

South Korean lawmakers on Thursday passed a bill that criminalizes possessing or watching sexually explicit deepfake images and videos, with penalties set to include prison terms and fines.

There has been an outcry in South Korea over Telegram group chats where sexually explicit and illegal deepfakes were created and widely shared, prompting calls for tougher punishment.

Anyone purchasing, saving or watching such material could face up to three years in jail or be fined up to 30 million won ($22,600), according to the bill.

Currently, making sexually explicit deepfakes with the intention of distributing them is punishable by five years in prison or a fine of 50 million won ($37,900) under the Sexual Violence Prevention and Victims Protection Act.

When the new law takes effect, the maximum sentence for such crimes will also increase to seven years regardless of the intention.

The bill will now need the approval of President Yoon Suk Yeol in order to be enacted.

South Korean police have so far handled more than 800 deepfake sex crime cases this year, the Yonhap news agency reported on Thursday.

That compares with 156 for all of 2021, when data was first collated. Most victims and perpetrators are teenagers, police say.

Earlier this month, police launched an investigation into Telegram that will look at whether the encrypted messaging app has been complicit in the distribution of sexually explicit deepfake content.

Countries around the world are grappling with how to respond to the proliferation of deepfake material.

The US congress is debating several pieces of legislation including one that would allow victims of nonconsensual sexual deepfakes to sue, and one that would criminalize the publication of such imagery and make tech companies remove it.

Earlier this year, social media platform X blocked users from searching for Taylor Swift after fake sexually explicit images of the pop singer proliferated on social media.

Multan, Pakistan — Pakistan’s government said Thursday that police had orchestrated the killing of a doctor who was in custody after he was accused of blasphemy. Officers then lied about the circumstances of his death, claiming he was killed in a shootout between police and armed men, a provincial minister said.

The statement marks the first time the government has accused security forces of what the doctor’s family and rights groups have said amounted to an extrajudicial killing carried out by police.

The doctor, Shah Nawaz, from the southern Sindh province, had given himself up to police last week in the district of Mirpur Khas, following assurances that he would be given a chance to prove his innocence.

Days earlier in the city of Umerkot, a mob claimed he insulted Islam’s Prophet Muhammad and shared blasphemous content on social media, and demanded his arrest. The mob also burned Nawaz’s clinic.

According to the provincial Interior Minister, Ziaul Hassan, a government probe concluded that Nawaz was killed shortly after he gave himself up to authorities in what was a staged “fake encounter” engineered by the security forces.

There was no shootout with armed men as police had claimed, Hassan told reporters at a news conference in the southern port city of Karachi, and added that Nawaz’s family will be able to file murder charges against police officers who killed him.

Hours after Nawaz was fatally shot and his body handed over to his family, a mob snatched it from Nawaz’s father and burned it.

Hassan’s statement backed up Nawaz’s family allegations earlier this week.

Accusations of blasphemy, sometimes even just rumors, can spark riots and mob rampages in Pakistan. Although killings of blasphemy suspects by mobs are common, extrajudicial killings by police are rare.

‘Eye for an eye’

Under Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws, anyone found guilty of insulting Islam or Islamic religious figures can be sentenced to death, though authorities have yet to carry out a death sentence for blasphemy.

Nawaz’s father thanked the government for backing the family and demanded that his son’s killers face justice under the eye-for-an-eye concept under Sharia, or Islamic law.

“We have only one demand: Those police officers who staged the killing of my son … must also be killed in the same manner,” said Nawaz’s father, Mohammad Saleh.

Saleh told The Associated Press over the phone that he was grateful for all the support the family was given and to all those who condemned extremist clerics who had enraged the mob with calls for his son to be killed.

“Those who killed my son should be punished quickly so that others learn a lesson and not indulge in extrajudicial killings in the future,” said Nawaz’s mother, Rehmat Kunbar.

She added her son can no longer come back to her but that she wants to save the children of other parents from the hands of extremists.

Nawaz’s killing was the second case of an extrajudicial killing by police this month in Pakistan.

A week before, an officer opened fire inside a police station in the southwestern city of Quetta, fatally wounding Syed Khan, a suspect held on accusations of blasphemy.

Khan was arrested after officers rescued him from an enraged mob that claimed he had insulted Islam’s prophet. But he was killed by a police officer, Mohammad Khurram, who was quickly arrested. However, the tribe and the family of the slain man later said they had pardoned the officer.