![Israel must continue to be able to deter Hezbollah, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar stressed on Wednesday, speaking amid efforts to reach a ceasefire with Iran's Lebanese terrorist proxy. "We need to keep the freedom to act if there will be violations. And we will have to act in time, before the problem will grow," the minister told a gathering of nearly 100 foreign ambassadors in Jerusalem, the Times of Israel reported. A deal to end more than a year of fighting on the northern border must be durable, Sa'ar said, saying Jerusalem “would like to reach an agreement that will stand the test of time." He added that a ceasefire would be an "opportunity" for Lebanon to regain its sovereignty after the Israeli military severely degraded the Iranian-backed group in recent months. He called for the Lebanese Armed Forces to be strengthened and urged the international community to invest more in the economically devastated country, which is drowning in debt following years of mismanagement and corruption. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz also emphasized on Wednesday the necessity for Jerusalem to be able to act against any Hezbollah threats that may arise after a ceasefire deal is implemented. “The condition for any political settlement in Lebanon is the preservation of the intelligence capability and the preservation of the [IDF’s] right to act and protect the citizens of Israel from Hezbollah,” Katz said. Meanwhile, U.S. special envoy Amos Hochstein remained in Beirut for a second day on Wednesday to discuss "technical details" of an American ceasefire proposal with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who heads the Hezbollah-allied Amal movement. President Joe Biden's point man in the Land of the Cedars announced he would travel to Israel on Wednesday night, speaking after he made "additional progress" in a second meeting with Berri. Hochstein was scheduled to meet with Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer shortly after his arrival, followed by a tête-à-tête with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the following day. “The meeting today built on the meeting yesterday, and made additional progress,” Hochstein said. “So I will travel from here in a couple hours to Israel to try to bring this to a close if we can.” The Biden envoy added that he will work with the incoming Trump administration on ceasefire efforts, saying that he has kept the president-elect's transition team informed of progress. Hochstein described as "very productive" his meetings with Lebanese officials on Tuesday. “We have a real opportunity to end the conflict, and now is the moment to decide. We are committed to doing everything we can to work with Lebanon and Israel to end this conflict,” Hochstein said at a press conference on Tuesday. Hochstein also met on Tuesday with Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, and he was scheduled to meet with Lebanese Armed Forces commander Gen. Joseph Aoun. Mikati emphasized that Lebanon’s primary objectives are achieving a ceasefire and safeguarding its sovereignty. He highlighted the need to implement international resolutions and bolster the Lebanese Armed Forces in the southern part of the country. Lebanon delivered its written response to the latest U.S. proposal on Monday. According to Ali Hassan Khalil, an aide to Berri, the response included “comments” that were “presented in a positive atmosphere.” He did not provide details on the nature of the comments, saying only that they “affirm the precise adherence to [U.N. Security Council] Resolution 1701 with all its provisions,” according to Reuters. Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem said in a speech on Wednesday that the terrorist group had "read the ceasefire proposal. "We have our comments, and Nabih Berri has comments, and ours and the Lebanese government's comments are, Inshallah ['God willing'], identical," Qassem said. "We have decided not to discuss these ceasefire proposals or our comments in the media. All I will say is that Israeli is trying to obtain through negotiations what it couldn't through war." The terrorist leader vowed to “continue our efforts on the ground, whether the negotiations succeed or not. “We are confronting a savage enemy, and we will remain on the ground, no matter the cost, as we will also increase the cost for the enemy. We are facing Israeli human monsters supported by American human monsters,” threatened Qassem. Disarm and retreat Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War, stipulated that Hezbollah must disarm and retreat north of the Litani River, but was never enforced. The Litani lies some 20 miles from the Israel-Lebanon border. Its enforcement, along with Israeli freedom of operation in Lebanon should Hezbollah violate the terms of a ceasefire agreement, are the key sticking points in the current negotiations. Netanyahu emphasized during a speech in the Knesset plenum on Monday that Israel will not allow Hezbollah to “return to the state it was in on Oct. 6, 2023. “We will be required, in order to ensure our security in the north, to systematically carry out operations—not only against Hezbollah’s attacks, which could come. Even if there is a ceasefire, nobody can guarantee it will hold. So it’s not only our reaction, a preventive reaction, a reaction in the wake of attack but also the capacity to prevent Hezbollah from strengthening,” he said. Hezbollah has launched some 16,000 rockets, missiles and drones from Lebanon at Israel since joining the war in support of Hamas on Oct. 8, 2023, a day after the Gaza-based terrorist group’s massacre in southern Israel. More than 60,000 residents of northern Israel remain internally displaced due to the ongoing rocket and drone attacks from Lebanon. Seventy-six people in northern Israel have been killed by Hezbollah cross-border rocket, missile and drone attacks since the start of the war, including 31 soldiers and six foreign citizens, according to the latest data provided by the Prime Minister’s Office, updated on Sunday. In addition, 729 people have been wounded, including 497 civilians and 232 soldiers. Of these, 29 civilians and 37 soldiers were severely injured; 63 civilians and 38 soldiers were moderately injured and 405 civilians and 157 soldiers were lightly injured. Hezbollah’s leadership has been left in tatters following a series of targeted killings by Israel, including that of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut on Sept. 27. This was preceded by Israeli sabotage of Hezbollah communication devices that killed 39 people and wounded more than 3,400 members of the terrorist group. Israel has been waging a devastating aerial campaign against Hezbollah throughout Lebanon, including its stronghold of Dahieh south of Beirut. According to Israeli estimates, the terrorist group has lost most of its arsenal to the ongoing strikes. Then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in late October that Hezbollah had lost an estimated 80%-plus of its long-range rockets since the start of the war. Israel also continues to battle Hamas terrorists in Gaza. The terrorist group still holds 101 hostages in the Strip, 97 of whom were kidnapped on Oct. 7. Many of the captives are believed to be dead. Brazil summit Meanwhile, G20 leaders gathered in Rio de Janeiro for a summit put out a joint statement on Monday calling for “comprehensive” ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon. The leaders of the world’s biggest economies called for U.S. proposals to end fighting in Gaza and free the hostages, and one for Lebanon “that enables citizens to return safely to their homes on both sides of the Blue Line.” The 13-point U.S. proposal presented to Lebanese officials on Nov. 14 includes a 60-day truce, during which Lebanon would redeploy its troops along the border. The proposal also calls for Moscow to prevent Hezbollah from resupplying itself via Syrian land routes. Hezbollah would retreat north of the Litani River, with the border area then being under control of the Lebanese Armed Forces, overseen by the United States and Britain. Israeli officials are emphasizing, however, that the Israel Defense Forces must retain freedom of operation in Lebanon to thwart attempts by Hezbollah to violate the agreement and rearm and reestablish itself. A senior Israeli diplomatic official told Israel Hayom on Saturday that the IDF will retain operational freedom to respond to any security threats from across the northern border, regardless of any diplomatic arrangements. However, a source close to Hezbollah told The Washington Post that the group’s “condition for progress remains clear: Israel must be prohibited from conducting operations within Lebanese territory.” Berri emphasized at the time that any ceasefire agreement must not include the ability for Israel to attack by land, sea or air, Channel 12 reported. “Otherwise, what’s the purpose of an agreement?” he remarked. Another sticking point is Lebanon’s objection to the United Kingdom and Germany monitoring the implementation of U.N. Resolution 1701. Beirut reportedly favors the United States and France. If the ceasefire efforts fail, there are plans in the works to expand ground operations in Lebanon, an Israeli military official told the Post. Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer discussed the proposal with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump during a visit to his Florida estate earlier this month, as well as with senior Biden administration officials in Washington. Dermer also traveled to Russia to discuss the ceasefire proposal. Tehran is telling its Lebanese terrorist proxy Hezbollah that it supports ending the war against Israel, The New York Times reported over the weekend. Ali Larijani, senior adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, met with senior Lebanese officials in Beirut on Nov. 15 to discuss the matter. Two Iranians affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps told the Times that Larijani conveyed messages to Hezbollah from Khamenei that he supported the end of the war and that the regime would assist with rebuilding the terrorist group’s forces and recovering from the war.](https://jewishwebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Gideon-Saar-1320x880-2-218x150.jpg "Sa’ar: Israel must be free to act against Hezbollah truce violations")
How often have you heard about discoveries of artifacts hidden in an attic for decades that turn out to be gems of historical significance? Multiply that on a grand scale and that’s what happened when the National Library of Israel (NLI) moved in October from its old home on Hebrew University’s Givat Ram Campus to its new building located between the Israel Museum and the Knesset.
Apart from the four million books that form the nucleus of the NLI collection, the library is also the repository of more than a thousand personal archives that bear witness to Jewish life over many centuries and in a multitude of places.
According to Matan Barzilai, head of Archives and Special Collections at the NLI, a significant portion of those priceless artifacts had been languishing in boxes in the basement of the old building for decades.
Now, a $1 million grant from the Seattle-based Samis Foundation is enabling the NLI to catalog and digitize many important archives of Sephardi heritage that had been left untouched for so long.
A formal dedication of the Sephardic archives project took place recently at the library in the presence of several trustees of the foundation, its Board Chair Eli Genauer and CEO Connie Kanter, who traveled from Seattle for an up-close look at some of the cultural treasures now coming to light.
The Samis Foundation carries on the legacy of Sam Israel, who was born and raised in the Juderia (Jewish quarter) of Rhodes in 1899, emigrated to Seattle in 1919 and parlayed the earnings of his shoe repair business into purchasing real estate in the city’s downtown.
Israel never married and lived a modest and solitary life on a ranch in eastern Washington state.
Before his death in 1994, Israel established the Samis Foundation whose goals are funding Jewish education in the Seattle area, as well as six specific areas of concern in Israel: Archaeology, aliyah and immigrant absorption, educational support, poverty and social mobility, widows and orphans, and wildlife. To date, Samis has contributed more than $13 million to these projects.
Preserving archives doesn’t fit any of these categories, but as Genauer explained at the dedication on March 12, “Sam never said anything about supporting Sephardi culture or heritage, but he didn’t have to. He was Sephardi through and through. That’s why the trustees decided that when we were given the opportunity to support a Sephardi archive initiative, we jumped all over it. It made us feel we have to do this for Sam.”
In a private presentation, archivist Dr. Nimrod Gaatone showed examples of some of the rare documents available to the public for the first time online, thanks to the Samis donation.
One item is a 1915 letter announcing the appointment of the first Jew to hold the title of professor at the Central University of Madrid. It is stamped with the official seal of the king of Spain. It’s part of the largest Sephardi archive in the Samis project, that of renowned Sephardi scholar Professor Avraham Shalom Yehuda (1877-1951).
Yehuda, who was born in Jerusalem and died in New York, was a collector and a bibliophile and the materials in his 229-box collection include correspondence in several languages, photographs, documents and diaries.
Gaatone said there was a fight over the Yehuda archives between his family and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, “but finally they’re here and when the whole archive is open it will be a reason for you all to come back here.”
“Samis should be proud that the Yehuda archive will be under their name,” Barzilai told JNS. “There’s a great interest in the academic world in the Yehuda archive.”
Another significant archive being processed thanks to Samis funding belongs to Moshe David Gaon (1889-1958), father of Israeli singer Yehoram Gaon. Moshe Gaon was a scholar of Sephardi Jewry, a journalist and a poet. In 1928 he became the general secretary of the Sephardi community of Jerusalem, a post he held until he died.
The Gaon archive contains 50 boxes of Ladino newspapers from the beginning of the 20th century, including many from the Jewish community of Bosnia that was destroyed in the Shoah, providing a window into Jewish life that no longer exists. Another item in the Gaon archive files is a collection of photos of Jews in pre-state Gaza.
The Gaon archive, which has never been cataloged, is of great importance to Ladino studies, said Barzilai. “The cataloging is a way to expose the connections between communities,” he added.
NLI Director General Oren Weinberg told the visitors from Seattle, “It’s a very emotional moment for us. People think the library is about the books, but first and foremost it’s about the people who come here. It’s a home for many communities whose different narratives are embedded in the collection.”
Weinberg explained that the Samis grant would help expose and make the items of Sephardi interest in the collection useful for researchers.
“Over the past few years, we have been working to make the diversity of the Jewish people a significant part of the NLI collection and that’s what you’re helping us to do here. It’s certainly a great way to connect Seattle and Jerusalem,” he added.
Barzilai told JNS that archives are expensive to store and digitize, and the Samis grant will help in NLI’s efforts to acquire another 30 archives of Sephardi interest. “It’s very exciting to find new treasures every day,” he said.