Sortie not sortie: 7 things to know for July 9

1. Israeli jets apparently bombed the T-4 air base in north-central Syria late Sunday, with reports suggesting they were targeting something Iranian there.

• On Twitter, analyst Babak Taghvaee claims Israeli planes “destroyed 4 #IRGC targets in #T4/#Tiyas AB: -UCAV control station -SAM systems (most probably 3rd Khordad & Tor M1) -A gathering of #IRGC troops (high casualty is expected).”
• As of Monday morning, there were no official casualty figures, though some Israeli media outlets quote an opposition news source call Al-Jisr saying nine people allied with the regime were killed.
• Syria claimed to have hit an Israeli plane, though as ToI’s Judah Ari Gross notes, “Syria regularly makes false claims about its air defenses’ success rates.”
• However, the last time Israel bombed the T-4 base, during a massive sortie in response to an Iranian drone incursion, a plane was indeed shot down while bombing the drone command center.
• Yedioth, which writes that this is the third time Israeli planes have reportedly hit the base, claims different targets for past attacks: one time to hit Iranian anti-aircraft batteries and one time to hit a shipment of long-range missiles.
• Israel, natch, cops to none of it: “We do not comment on reports in the foreign media,” an IDF spokesperson tells AFP.

2. Perhaps it’s a sign of how commonplace Israeli attacks on Iranian targets in the heart of Syria have become that both major Israeli tabloids — Israel Hayom and Yedioth Ahronoth — bury the news in favor of coverage of the Thai cave rescue.

• Few details have emerged about the rescue of the first four boys from the cave Sunday, but Yedioth’s man on the ground in Thailand interviews a diver who sheds some light on the operation.
• “The ambulances were ready. They were swimming against the current to get to the boys, and it takes an hour more than the return trip. The rain falling is dangerous when it trickles into the cave and there were fears that it would rise despite the pumping,” the diver says.
• The paper also speaks to Israeli father and son Raphael and Shlomi Aroush, who are on the ground aiding in the operation, who explain the difficulties involved.
• “I’m a man of extremes,” the paper quotes Raphael saying. “I’ve flown small planes, dived, but when I went into this cave it was something else. The water comes up to your chest in places where you need to push your way through, and it’s very difficult to pass. If you put on just a tiny bit of weight you can get stuck with no way out. The flow of the water is strong. There are places where I could barely move my head.”
• In Israel Hayom, Silvina Aggi, who covered the rescue of the Chilean miners almost a decade ago, writes of the similarities between the cases.
• “They are asking for one simple thing, ‘a miracle,’ or as Mario Spolvada, one of the miners saved, put it better: ‘the world needs to know — miracles happen.’ That’s what they ask, hope and prayers — until the international and local rescuers can finish their jobs. Until the last moment. Until they are all out.”
• Speaking of rescuers, this is a good place to recommend the fascinating and tragic story of what happened to Robert O’Donell after pulling Jessica McClure out of a Texas well, told expertly by the New York Times over 20 years ago.

3. Haaretz reports that human rights groups are demanding that Israel stop arming neo-Nazis in Ukraine, because that’s apparently a thing they are doing.

• While Israel isn’t directly putting guns into the hands of anybody signaling a ‘Heil Hitler,’ the paper reports that arms exports to the country are ending up in the hands of a group known as the Azov militia.
• “The militia’s emblems are well-known national socialist ones. Its members use the Nazi salute and carry swastikas and SS insignias,” the paper reports.
• Lest one think this is a new development tied to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s embrace of nationalists in Europe, the paper notes that Israel has a long history of arming neo-Nazis and actual Nazis, including Klaus Barbie in Bolivia and anti-Semites in Argentina.

4. Israel Hayom reports that not everyone is happy with the plan for the US to rehab Gaza and bypass Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, with the Goldin family demanding any reconstruction of Gaza be tied to the return of their son’s remains and the remains of another soldier held in the Strip.

• “It’s not acceptable that they talk about a humanitarian solution for Gaza and don’t take into account Hadar [Goldin], and they don’t take into account that most of the government said that ‘there will be no deal like this before we bring our boys home,’” father Avi Goldin is quoted saying in the tabloid.
• He may not have to worry. Despite optimism out of the White House, former negotiator Aaron David Miller looks at the potential consequences of such a deal, should it actually have a chance of working.

Not me. But to make Gaza first work, you’d need an Israeli- Hamas Long-term deal; Egypt buy in w/Saudi/Emirati $$$. And what you’d be doing is paving way for a 3 State solution – a sustainable Hamasistan; Abbasistan (for awhile) and Israel. And they all lived happily ever after.

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— Aaron David Miller (@aarondmiller2) July 8, 2018

• Not even Hamas necessarily wants to see Gaza helped as a separate part of the peace plan, as official Moussa Abu Marzouk tweeted recently that the group wants Palestinian unity between Gaza and the West Bank with Jerusalem as its capital.
• In Haaretz, op-ed columnist Oudeh Bisharat writes about Israel’s seemingly shrill response to what looks like an innocuous tweet, getting Abu Marzouk blocked from Twitter in Israel.
• “Even a lily-white dove looks like a BDS devil here that must be done away with immediately,” he writes. “If you dig a little deeper you’ll discover that Israel’s leaders actually prefer Qassam rockets to the demonstrations along the fence. Bombs are preferable to diplomatic ‘terror.’ Suicide bombers are better than dealing with BDS.”

5. Israel’s not only rattled by a tweet, but the north of the country is actually getting jostled by a wave of earthquakes. What seemed like a nuisance has started to morph into something more serious, with Tiberias ordering three buildings evacuated over fears they could crumble.

• The Walla news site has pictures of drywall crumbling onto a bed and cracks in a pillar holding up a building, reporting that some quakes are being felt far from the Galilee.
• “We are on the eighth floor. The chairs and lights were swaying,” a resident of Tel Aviv suburb Ramat Gan tells the news site.
• While the little earthquakes have raised jitters of a bigger one that is supposed to hit any time now, experts say the small temblors are actually important for relieving pressure, ensuring that the big one, when it does come, will be slightly less damaging.

6. Between earthquakes in Israel, flooding in Japan, and hot weather in the US and Europe, one might think the earth has gone haywire and this is the end, but it’s not all bad.

• Britain’s Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales says that the hot, hot heat is actually revealing archaeological treasures. The heat is making the grass on top of antiquities turn a different shade than the rest, and revealing the outlines of farms and forts.
• While the mercury is also on the rise in Israel — temperatures are expected in the 90s in most places, with the Dead Sea and Jordan Valley seeing highs of 105 — it’s still not expected to get hot enough to get ancient finds to literally pop out of the ground.

7. Israel recently returned the watch of famed spy Eli Cohen to his family after somehow squirreling it out of Syria.

• Analyst Ronen Solomon wrote over the weekend that the Mossad found out about the watch when someone who happened into the timepiece reached out to it through the Contact Us page on its website.
• Possibly one upping that story in the annals of mundane skulduggery, Guardian editor Julian Borger tweets that he just came across a used cookbook which apparently previously belonged to famed spy Aldrich Ames.
• On top of being a KGB mole in the CIA, Ames seemingly also enjoyed seitan tempura and other Eastern vegetarian treats. That or the book is stuffed like a pepper with secret codes.

Bought a second hand cookbook in DC that had a notable previous owner pic.twitter.com/pTzuTIQDnm

— Julian Borger (@julianborger) July 9, 2018