Entering a new phase: Israel "is in the midst of the second phase of a three-phase Gaza war plan that ends with the military in full control of the strip," according to current and former officials who provided "previously undisclosed details about the structure, timeline, and goals of the plan" to our Andrew Tobin.
Phase Two began last week and is expected to last roughly two months. During that time, the IDF plans to "take control of about 75 percent of Gaza, move all civilians into three areas in the remaining 25 percent, and work with an American organization to control the entry and distribution of humanitarian aid in the strip," reports Tobin. The goal, one Israeli official said, "is to eliminate the Gazan population's dependence on Hamas" and thus undermine the terror group's "governing foundations."
Israel intends to use Phase Two to compel Hamas to release all the remaining hostages and surrender. If Hamas refuses, its leaders will proceed to Phase Three, which "would involve relocating all the civilians to the Hamas-free zone, laying siege to the rest of Gaza, and completely destroying Hamas."
READ MORE: Exclusive: Inside Israel’s Three-Phase Plan To End the Gaza War
Stealth editing the first draft of history: The Washington Post on Sunday, while searching for the motive of the terrorist who yelled "Free Palestine" before tossing Molotov cocktails at a crowd of Jews, accused Israel of killing "over 30" Gazans near a U.S. aid site in Rafah. The paper cited the ever-reliable Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. The truth is nowhere near as clear.
Israel denied the charge, and security footage of the aid site at the time of the alleged killings did not show any shooting. By Sunday night, the Post updated its story to remove language blaming Israel. It neither explained the change nor issued a correction. A spokesman for the paper did not respond to our request for comment on whether the Post's editorial policy gives more weight to Hamas's claims than Israel's.
"The Post took a different approach from other mainstream outlets in its coverage of the story," our Zach Kessel notes, with the New York Times and Wall Street Journal covering the ordeal without blaming it on Israel. The Post's more aggressive slant could be explained by one of the reporters on the story, Louisa Loveluck, a former Al Jazeera correspondent "who recently made headlines for delivering an anti-Israel diatribe to the Post newsroom." Loveluck was, naturally, part of a team that was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war.
The latest out of Boulder: Mohamed Soliman, the Egyptian national behind Sunday's anti-Semitic terror attack in Colorado, is now facing federal hate crime charges. An affidavit supporting those charges shows that the 45-year-old illegal immigrant admitted during an interview with police that he specifically targeted the group of elderly Jews he firebombed because he "wanted to kill all Zionist people" and "would do it again."
Think that’ll be enough for the mainstream press to nail down a motive and connect the dots between this attack, the murder of a young couple in Washington, D.C., last month by a young man yelling "Free Palestine," and the arson in April of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s mansion by an assailant who said he "did it for Palestine"? Pattern recognition, when it comes to violence against Jews, is not a media strong suit.
In addition to the hate crime, Soliman "is facing state charges of 384 years for 16 counts of attempted murder, 48 years for 2 counts of using an incendiary device, and 192 years for 16 counts of attempted use of an incendiary device," Boulder district attorney Michael Dougherty said on Monday. The federal government has not ruled out terrorism charges.
READ MORE: Suspect in Colorado Anti-Semitic Terror Attack Says He Wanted To 'Kill All Zionist People'
In other news: