1) At the INSS, Tammy Caner analyses ‘Trends and Challenges in Humanitarian Assistance to the Gaza Strip’.
“The UN and its agencies have joined the campaign against Israel, effectively granting Hamas the operational space needed to maintain its control. Instead of addressing Hamas’s control mechanisms, the looting of aid, intimidation, and gunfire directed at civilians, as well as widespread distribution failures, the UN has focused its criticism on Israel. It claimed that the allegations against Hamas were not supported by evidence, despite the extensive documentation provided by Israel as well as testimonies from people in Gaza.”
2) The BESA Center provides a report ‘Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Re-examination of the Israel-Hamas War from October 7, 2023 to June 1, 2025’.
“This research offers a thorough historical exploration and a quantitative-statistical analysis of the allegation that the State of Israel committed genocide against the Gazan population during the period from the October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel to the conclusion of our study on June 1, 2025. Specifically, we address the claims that Israel intentionally starved the Gazan population, that IDF ground forces deliberately massacred civilians, and that the Israeli Air Force (IAF) carried out indiscriminate bombings, failing to distinguish between combatants and civilians and conducting disproportionate strikes.”
3) At the JISS, Ari Heistein explains why ‘Aid Diversion in Yemen Is a Game of Musical Chairs’.
“Despite repeated pledges of reform from the UN/INGOs, aid agencies seem to have made little progress in reducing the risk of aid diversion in Houthi-controlled Yemen. This failure raises significant questions about whether effective aid distribution in Gaza is feasible while another Iran-backed terrorist group, Hamas, remains in control of the territory.”
4) At the JCFA, Dalia Ziada discusses ‘Syria’s Al-Sharaa and the Most Dangerous Mutation of Political Islamism’.
“Syria’s interim self-appointed president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who served for two decades as a militant in the al-Qaeda terrorist organization under the alias Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, told the press recently that he does not see himself as an extension of political Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood or classical Salafi-jihadists like ISIS and al-Qaeda. To those who are blind to the many shades of jihadism, these statements might seem to signal that al-Jolani is abandoning his jihadist beliefs or that Syria is entering a post-Islamist era. In reality, these statements are a declaration of the evolution of an even more volatile and dangerous hybrid ideology: neo-Jihadism.“
5) At the Middle East Forum, Jonathan Spyer looks at the role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“The notion of foreign intelligence or covert warfare agencies carrying out assassinations or acts of sabotage related to their states’ interests on foreign soil is a familiar one. The Russian SVR and GRU services, for example, have engaged in such practices in a variety of western countries. Foreign agencies seeking to infiltrate the political systems of target countries in order to acquire information or influence and to subvert political processes is also a familiar element of international affairs. But the Melbourne and Sydney fires don’t fit with either of these contexts. They were the kind of acts one might more readily associate with a local hate group or with a racist domestic terror organisation. These kind of acts, however, fit squarely within the particular modus operandi of the IRGC, and offer clues regarding the nature of this organisation.”
6) At the Alma Center, Boaz Shapira explains ‘The Iranian Threat to the Strait of Hormuz’.
“The notion of closing the Strait of Hormuz, thereby obstructing the flow of goods and oil from the Arabian Gulf to the wider world, is not new. This threat has been raised repeatedly in various contexts and functions as one of Iran’s strategic levers of pressure, employed within the framework of its foreign policy (and, as some contend, its domestic policy as well) in pursuit of its objectives.”
7) The ITIC reports on ‘The Global Sumud (“Perseverance”) Flotilla in the Service of Hamas’.
“On August 31, 2025, the Global Sumud Flotilla set sail from Barcelona with the objective of “breaking the blockade on the Gaza Strip,” and to be joined by vessels from Italy and Tunisia. The organizers said they expected dozens of vessels carrying “thousands” of activists, the largest since Israel imposed the naval blockade on the Gaza Strip in 2007.
The groups organizing the flotilla claimed they were independent and had no connection to any government or political party, but among the organizers was the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, which was behind the Mavi Marmara flotilla in 2010 and the voyages of the Madeleine and Handala in June and July 2025. One of the coalition’s leaders is Zaher Birawi, a Hamas -Muslim Brotherhood activist in Britain.”
