A man hiding in a pit during the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on an outdoor music festival in Israel said he heard someone nearby screaming she was being raped. Elsewhere in the area, a combat paramedic saw the body of a young woman with her legs open, her pants pulled down, and what looked like semen on her lower back. An army reservist who was tasked with identifying those killed by the militants said some of the women were found wearing only bloodied underwear.
Such accounts given to The Associated Press, along with first assessments by an Israeli rights group, show that sexual assault was part of an atrocities-filled rampage by Hamas and other Gaza militants who killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took more than 240 hostages that day.
While investigators are still trying to determine the scope of the sexual assaults, Israel’s government is accusing the international community, particularly the United Nations, of ignoring the pain of Israeli victims.
“I say to the women’s rights organizations, to the human rights organizations, you’ve heard of the rape of Israeli women, horrible atrocities, sexual mutilation — where the hell are you?” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a news conference Tuesday, switching to English to emphasize the point.
President Joe Biden called the reports of sexual violence “appalling” and urged the world to condemn “horrific accounts of unimaginable cruelty.”
Two months after the Hamas attacks on the music festival, farming communities and army posts in southern Israel, police are still struggling to put together the pieces.
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, priority was given to identifying bodies, not to preserving evidence. Police say they’re combing through 60,000 videos seized from the body cameras of Hamas attackers, from social media and from security cameras as well as 1,000 testimonies to bring the perpetrators to justice. It has been difficult finding rape survivors, with many victims killed by their attackers.
The group Physicians for Human Rights Israel, which has a record of advocating for Palestinian civilians in Gaza suffering under Israel’s longtime blockade of the territory, published an initial assessment in November.
“What we know for sure is that it was more than just one case and it was widespread, in that this happened in more than one location and more than a handful of times,” Hadas Ziv, policy and ethics director for the organization, said Tuesday. “What we don’t know and what the police are investigating is whether it was ordered to be done and whether it was systematic.”
Hamas has rejected allegations that its gunmen committed sexual assault.
Ron Freger fled the music festival when Hamas attacked and said he heard a woman screaming for help. “I was lying in a pit (and) I heard (a girl) yelling: ‘They’re raping me, they’re raping me!'” he told the AP.
Several minutes later, he heard gunshots close by and she fell silent, he said. “The feeling in that moment is one of complete powerlessness. I’m lying in this hole and I have no ability to do anything. I have no weapon, I have nothing, I’m surrounded by other people who are hiding with me and we’re completely powerless,” said the 23-year-old from the northern Israeli town of Netanya.
Last month, Israel’s police chief presented to the international news media videotaped testimony of a rape witness at the music festival. Her face blurred, she said she watched militants gang-rape a woman as she lay on the ground. The men then stood her up as blood trickled from her back, yanked her hair and sliced her breast, playing with it as they assaulted her. The last man shot her in the head while he was still inside her. The woman in the video described watching the militants as she pretended to be dead.
“I couldn’t understand what I saw,” she said.
A combat medic told the AP that he came across half a dozen bodies of women and men with possible signs of sexual assault when he reached one of the attacked communities.
One girl had been shot in the head and was lying on the floor, her legs open and pants pulled down, with what looked like semen on her lower back, said the medic who spoke on condition of anonymity because his unit was classified. Other bodies had mass bleeding around the groin with limbs at distorted angles, he said.
At the Shura military base where victims are being identified, Shari Mendes, a member of the army reserve unit that deals with the identification and religious burial preparation of female soldiers, said some of the women’s bodies came in with little clothing, such as parts of their pajamas. Some only had bloodied underwear.
Based on open-source information and interviews, the Physicians for Human Rights Israel report documents incidents at the music festival, homes around the Gaza Strip and an Israeli military base, all attacked by Hamas.
“It is becoming more apparent that the violence perpetrated against women, men and children also included widespread sexual and gender-based crimes,” it says.
Before this war, Hamas, an Islamic militant group sworn to Israel’s destruction, wasn’t known to use rape as a weapon, said Colin P. Clarke, director of research at The Soufan Group, a global intelligence and security consulting firm. Its tactics included suicide bombings and shooting attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians.
A country like Israel should have the means to do rigorous testing to confirm if people were sexually assaulted in a more systematic way, said Nidhi Kapur, a specialist on sexual abuse in situations of armed conflict.
“Forensic testing should have been a priority to build a full picture of the attack,” said Kapur, who has worked in the region. “In a conflict you first take care of the survivors, you don’t count bodies.”
Netanyahu and members of his war cabinet held a tense and emotional meeting Tuesday with recently released hostages and family members of hostages still held in Gaza. Some of the recently released hostages shared testimonies of sexual abuse during their time in Gaza, participants said.
Separately, a doctor who treated some of the 110 released hostages told the AP that at least 10 men and women among those freed were sexually assaulted or abused, but did not provide further details. He spoke on condition of anonymity to protect the hostages’ identities.
According to the Israeli military, 138 hostages, including 15 women, are still held by Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza. Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, a military spokesman, said the army is “absolutely” concerned about sexual violence against female hostages.
On Monday, Israel hosted a special event at the United Nations, where former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, I-Ariz., and top technology executive Sheryl Sandberg were among those who criticized what they called a global failure to support women who were sexually assaulted and in some cases killed.
But some groups say Israel isn’t making it easy to investigate.
The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said it requested access to Israel and the Palestinian territories to allow it to collect information from the events that took place on Oct. 7 and 8, and since then, but Israel has not responded to its requests, said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the U.N. Human Rights Office.
Israel says the office has preexisting biases against Israel and it will not cooperate with the body. Israeli officials said they would consider all options for independent international mechanisms to investigate.
Rights experts say the United Nations is best placed to conduct a fair, credible and impartial investigation.
“These accounts are horrifying and deserve an urgent, thorough, and credible investigation,” said Heather Barr, associate director for the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
In the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, there has been an uptick in antisemitic activity on college campuses. Across the country, students, faculty, and administrators have expressed their support for the Islamist slaughter of civilians, participated in pro-genocide marches, and physically accosted Jewish students. Campus antisemitism has gotten so severe — with more than 800 reported incidents as of Nov. 20 — that the Department of Education has opened up a series of investigations.
During the first third of November’s Republican presidential debate, candidates discussed how, if elected, their administrations would handle the ongoing eruption in antisemitism both on and off campus. Each condemned anti-Jewish bigotry, while some — notably former Ambassador Nikki Haley, Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Sen. Tim Scott — offered more nuanced insights as to how they would directly combat the issue. Possible solutions included threatening to freeze federal funding for universities allowing for antisemitism and collaboration with terrorists to go unpunished, deporting foreign students who openly support terrorism, and disbanding student organizations providing material support for Islamic terrorist groups.
All of these would be fantastic solutions. Not a single cent of taxpayer money should be sent to a university that tolerates racial bigotry or allows its membership to collaborate with foreign enemies. No foreign individual hostile to the American nation ought to be granted access to its institutions or resources, let alone allowed entry. And no one should be permitted to provide material support to terrorist organizations, Mohammedan or otherwise.
This is pretty basic stuff.
It appears there is a unified Republican front in opposing campus antisemitism, and this is good. But why can’t Republicans similarly coalesce around the systemic anti-white bigotry that is all too present in higher education?
Since the mid-20th century, leftist academics worked to proliferate and mainstream Marxist theories of social revolution and cultural subversion. Race was often the subject of their studies. In these instances, their goal was to exacerbate already existing resentments while inculcating new ones to overcome sociological and anthropological divides. European Marxists animated the masses by agitating socioeconomic frustrations. In the old world, the social order was rigid and limited economic mobility, but intranational ethnic conflict was generally less of an issue. In the U.S., social mobility was economically achievable while race remained a sore topic into the 20th century, so these academics opted to exploit it, seeing it as their best chance to immanentize the eschaton and bring about revolution.
These leftist ideologues viewed less-affluent black people as an exploitable lumpenproletariat with whom they could form a revolutionary vanguard alongside middle-class liberals. The demographic disparities in social and political outcomes this coalition sought to overturn were said to be the fault of bigoted institutional power differentials. Thus, the coalition pushed for radical change in America’s institutions through protest, subversion, infiltration, and, of course, violence.
Outcomes were not equivalent for people of different races. This was attributed to our no-good-very-bad racist progenitors’ fundamental flaws, so these intellectuals created a framework for revolutionary reconstruction.
It is here we find the genesis of critical race theory, DEI, and cultural Marxism. These ideologies are now thoroughly embedded in every major American institution but have made their home in higher education. For instance, for every 100 tenured faculty members on a college campus, DEI staff hold an average of 3.4 positions.
Universities teach people to think in terms of an “oppressed-oppressor” dialectic. World events and their inherent contradictions and resolutions are increasingly viewed exclusively through this lens. The oppressed are the revolutionary class with whom the intersectional coalition aligns itself, and the oppressors are whichever entity most closely resembles Western civilization and its “colonial” tendencies. In this framework, Western civilization and “colonialism” are further wrongly conflated and used interchangeably with “whiteness” to conveniently lump all the left’s enemies into one category.
In the Israel-Palestine conflict, adherents of this view identify Israel as the oppressor and Jews as its avatar. People opting to justify Hamas’ actions in the name of global revolution subsequently target them.
And this is why Republicans at the national level — and those who seek the highest office in the land — are sounding the alarm. This worldview leads to some pretty dark conclusions. Taken to its natural end, this worldview culminates in people getting killed. Its proponents are explicit about this. They applauded Hamas for slaughtering civilians, and they cheered on the rioters and looters who pillaged the country three summers ago. “Decolonization” is the focus of the intellectual movements justifying both events.
Just look at South Africa where, in August, Julius Malema, leader of the Marxist Economic Freedom Fighters Party, led thousands of his followers in chanting “Kill the Boer” amid skyrocketing Boer-murder rates. The corporate press merely brushed off his rhetoric as anti-colonial sentiment. After all, the Boers are the descendants of Dutch settlers in South Africa. Therefore, a prominent political figure calling for their slaughter, while they’re already being murdered, is simply a sign of the oppressed sticking it to the oppressor. An ethnically European population that had no active participation in the colonial era is nevertheless wrapped up in a dialectical power struggle. Their existence is associated with “whiteness,” which is associated with “colonialism,” which is associated with Western Civilization, so calling for their annihilation is morally justified within this framework.
While campaigning for the Democratic Party’s 1988 presidential nomination, Rev. Jesse Jackson led members of Stanford’s Black Student Union in chanting, “Hey-hey, ho-ho, Western Civ has got to go.” Since then, millions of people — students, faculty, and staff — have been subjected to virulent curricula and trainings where Western civilization is denigrated as an oppressive and parasitic colonial force, “whiteness” is treated as a malevolent sociological scourge, the history that ought to unite us is dishonestly rewritten to incite racial animus, and students who deviate from this toxic identitarianism are disenfranchised while others are encouraged to shame white students for the sin of their birth.
Leftist student organizations routinely engage in this activism by inviting speakers to peddle hateful anti-white rhetoric, and left-wing luminaries like Ibram X. Kendi use campus facilities while raking in tens of millions of dollars for “antiracist” research to try to “solve seemingly intractable problems of racial inequity and injustice.”
Frankly, there are innumerable examples of anti-white racism on college campuses. An exhaustive list would hardly be worth anyone’s time. We all know it exists, is systemic, and is supported with our tax dollars.
To add to this discussion, check out the following posting.
Blind tribal resentment will always exist to some extent; some people will always hate others merely for the crime of existing — that’s an unfortunate aspect of human nature. But the systemic anti-white racism and the outpouring of antisemitism in higher education are largely outgrowths of the same schools of thought.
It is good that Republicans are willing to take action against antisemitism, but that’s only one part of this problem. Bigotry should be condemned across the board, and universities should suffer for their role in it. But if the GOP is truly serious about tackling campus discrimination, it needs to rip it out at the roots and address anti-white racism as well.
Leftists will play semantic games, they’ll disingenuously moan about freedom of speech, but enough is enough. A smattering of red-state governments have shown how to root out “divisive topics” that install this worldview through public school K-12 curricula, but they must follow up at the college level. This can be done by reorganizing universities with trusted, ideologically aligned allies. And should a Republican win the White House in 2024, the president should direct the Department of Education to withhold federal funds from academic institutions that disseminate this worldview.
It may be impossible to eliminate bigotry from the hearts of man, but Republicans have the power to stop it from being rammed down our throats at taxpayer expense.
Samuel Mangold-Lenett is a staff editor at The Federalist. His writing has been featured in the Daily Wire, Townhall, The American Spectator, and other outlets. He is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. Follow him on Twitter @smlenett.
Ignited by Hamas’ terrorist attack against Israel, divisive domestic conversations about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have driven a new wave of campus censorship. But the problem of stifled speech on campus for both students and faculty has been around long before Oct. 7.
According to a forthcoming survey developed by our organization, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, about 1 in 10 college students say they have been threatened with disciplinary action – or worse, actually disciplined – for their speech.
Our 2022 survey of college faculty yields similarly depressing results. About one in six professors report that they have either been threatened with punishment or actually investigated for their academic freedom or free speech.
Students demonstrate in support of Palestinians and for free speech outside of the Columbia University campus on Nov. 15, 2023, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The common, but rarely discussed, thread linking this oppressive atmosphere on campus is college and university administrations. And as long as censorial administrators have disproportionate power over higher education, this problem will continue.
In the student survey, which was conducted by College Pulse between Sept. 5 and Oct. 20, students answered questions about their experiences with speech and the disciplinary process. Three percent said they had been punished for their speech, and 6% said they had been threatened with punishment.
Consider the scope of that number extended out to the larger student population. Given the total undergraduate population of the country, that’s well over a million students being threatened (or worse) by campus bureaucrats for their speech. It means a student is roughly as likely to face disciplinary censorship as they are likely to be left-handed.
And what kind of speech can get you investigated according to the study? For a New York University student, it was participation in a pro-Palestinian group. For a University of Pennsylvania student, it was expressing the opinion that the U.S. was right to have invaded Iraq. And for a Drake University student, it was simply being overheard by fellow students telling a professor about her mental health.
The survey also revealed that students should watch what they say in their most private of spaces. Of those who were threatened or disciplined, a quarter faced punishment for speech in their dorm room. That disturbing focus on living spaces isn’t unusual. For all of FIRE’s 24-year existence, “residential life” administrators who run the dorms have been major enforcers of university speech codes.
While the situation is clearly very bad for students, for professors it’s even worse. Given that faculty political diversity has never been lower, with some departments having left-leaning supermajorities and others having no conservative faculty at all, one would think that professors would not be targeted as often. And one would be wrong.
Since 2014, as Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott explain in their new book “The Canceling of the American Mind,” we know of over 1,000 attempts to get professors sanctioned for their speech or research.
About two-thirds of those attempts were successful, resulting in some form of punishment and almost 200 fired professors. This number dwarfs any period in U.S. higher education history since the early 1970s, when the Supreme Court cemented freedom of speech as a right on college campuses and academic freedom as a special concern within that right.
Facing a cancel culture that targets both students and faculty, how did administrators respond? With transparent political litmus tests that enable and encourage the purge.
More than half of the large universities in the country require “diversity, equity, and inclusion” statements, which are often vague and nebulously defined political litmus tests pressuring professors to adhere to the dominant ideology on campus. Wherever they appear, from student admission to faculty post-tenure review, these requirements reinforce the ideological status quo, suppress viewpoint diversity, and increase the risk that what passes for curriculum today will be dogma tomorrow.
One place those litmus tests appear is in the hiring of more administrators, and make no mistake: At most schools, administrators, not faculty, decide what happens, when it happens, and how much to spend in doing it.
Yale has a one-to-one ratio of administrators to students, with Harvard not far behind. At the U.S. News & World Report’s top 50 schools in the country, there are three times as many administrators and non-instructional staff as there are faculty, according to a recent report from the Progressive Policy Institute.
Once again, one might well think that hiring would slow down, giving the looming “enrollment cliff” – the demographic shift where the college-age population shrinks due to lower birth rates. But that’s never stopped colleges before. From 2015 to 2018, when enrollment and instructional employees declined, administrative staff grew over 6%. The surge in non-teaching positions is one of the primary reasons why the cost of educating a single student has gone up so dramatically over the past several decades.
Making matters worse, many of the new administrators consider policing the speech of students and faculty part of their job. Indeed, DEI administrators have been involved in some of the highest-profile cancellations, including federal Judge Kyle Duncan at Stanford this year, Harvard professor Carole Hooven last year, and University of Central Florida professor Charles Negy in 2021.
And if administrators are part of the Bias Related Incident team at a particular college, part of their job is to police speech on campus, often investigating anonymous reports of students or professors engaging in allegedly offensive speech. A study released this year by North Dakota State University found that nearly two-thirds of students favored reporting professors who engaged in “offensive speech,” made up of statements of opinion – or even fact – the students didn’t like.
The situation for free speech on campus has gone from bad to grim over the last decade. It will be no easy task to fix it. But one of the first steps to both a freer and less expensive college experience is to dramatically decrease the campus bureaucracy, eliminate positions that exist to police speech, and make sure every university employee is informed that their job is to protect free speech and academic freedom, not to squelch it.
BBC/Nik Millard “We see women of all ages… We see the bruises, we learn about the cuts and tears, and we know they have been sexually abused,” Captain Maayan told the BBC
The BBC has seen and heard evidence of rape, sexual violence and mutilation of women during the 7 October Hamas attacks.
WARNING: CONTAINS EXTREMELY GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND RAPE
Several people involved in collecting and identifying the bodies of those killed in the attack told us they had seen multiple signs of sexual assault, including broken pelvises, bruises, cuts and tears, and that the victims ranged from children and teenagers to pensioners.
Video testimony of an eyewitness at the Nova music festival, shown to journalists by Israeli police, detailed the gang rape, mutilation and execution of one victim.
Videos of naked and bloodied women filmed by Hamas on the day of the attack, and photographs of bodies taken at the sites afterwards, suggest that women were sexually targeted by their attackers.
Few victims are thought to have survived to tell their own stories.
Their last moments are being pieced together from survivors, body-collectors, morgue staff and footage from the attack sites.
Police have privately shown journalists a single horrific testimony that they filmed of a woman who was at the Nova festival site during the attack.
She describes seeing Hamas fighters gang rape a woman and mutilate her, before the last of her attackers shot her in the head as he continued to rape her.
BBC/Nik Millard Hamas fighters stormed the Nova festival on 7 October and killed hundreds
In the video, the woman known as Witness S mimes the attackers picking up and passing the victim from one to another.
“She was alive,” the witness says. “She was bleeding from her back.”
She goes on to detail how the men cut off parts of the victim’s body during the assault.
“They sliced her breast and threw it on the street,” she says. “They were playing with it.”
The victim was passed to another man in uniform, she continues.
“He penetrated her, and shot her in the head before he finished. He didn’t even pick up his pants; he shoots and ejaculates.”
One man we spoke to from the festival site said he heard the “noises and screams of people being murdered, raped, decapitated”.
To our question about how he could be sure – without seeing it – that the screams he heard indicated sexual assault rather than other kinds of violence, he said he believed while listening at the time that it could only have been rape.
A statement he made through a support organisation describes it as “inhuman”.
“Some women were raped before they were dead, some raped while injured, and some were already dead when the terrorists raped their lifeless bodies,” his statement says. “I desperately wanted to help, but there was nothing I could do.”
BBC/Dave Bull Israelis are still grappling with the Hamas attack in October
Police say they have “multiple” eye-witness accounts of sexual assault, but wouldn’t give any more clarification on how many. When we spoke to them, they hadn’t yet interviewed any surviving victims.
Israel’s Women’s Empowerment Minister, May Golan, told the BBC that a few victims of rape or sexual assault had survived the attacks, and that they were all currently receiving psychiatric treatment.
“But very, very few. The majority were brutally murdered,” she said. “They aren’t able to talk – not with me, and not to anyone from the government [or] from the media.”
Videos filmed by Hamas include footage of one woman, handcuffed and taken hostage with cuts to her arms and a large patch of blood staining the seat of her trousers.
In others, women carried away by the fighters appear to be naked or semi-clothed.
Multiple photographs from the sites after the attack show the bodies of women naked from the waist down, or with their underwear ripped to one side, legs splayed, with signs of trauma to their genitals and legs.
“It really feels like Hamas learned how to weaponise women’s bodies from ISIS [the Islamic State group] in Iraq, from cases in Bosnia,” said Dr Cochav Elkayam-Levy, a legal expert at the Davis Institute of International Relations at Hebrew University.
“It brings me chills just to know the details that they knew about what to do to women: cut their organs, mutilate their genitals, rape. It’s horrifying to know this.”
BBC/Dave Bull” It really feels like Hamas learned how to weaponize women’s bodies from ISIS in Iraq, from cases in Bosnia,” said Cochav Elkayam-Levy
“I spoke with at least three girls who are now hospitalised for a very hard psychiatric situation because of the rapes they watched,” Minister May Golan told me. “They pretended to be dead and they watched it, and heard everything. And they can’t deal with it.”
Israel’s police chief Yaacov Shabtai said that many survivors of the attacks were finding it difficult to talk and that he thought some of them would never testify about what they saw or experienced.
“18 young men and women have been hospitalised in mental health hospitals because they could no longer function,” he said.
Others are reportedly suicidal. One of those working with the teams around survivors told the BBC that some had already killed themselves.
Much of the evidence has come from the volunteer body-collectors deployed after the attacks, and those who handled the bodies once they arrived at the Shura army base for identification.
One of the body-collectors volunteering with the religious organisation Zaka described to me signs of torture and mutilation which included, he said, a pregnant woman whose womb had been ripped open before she was killed, and her foetus stabbed while it was inside her.
The BBC has not been able to independently verify this account, and Israeli media reports have questioned some testimony from volunteers working in the traumatic aftermath of the Hamas attacks.
Another, Nachman Dyksztejna, provided written testimony of seeing the bodies of two women in kibbutz Be’eri with their hands and legs tied to a bed.
“One was sexually terrorised with a knife stuck in her vagina and all her internal organs removed,” his statement says.
At the festival site, he says small shelters were “filled with piles of women. Their clothing was torn on the upper part, but their bottoms were completely naked. Piles and piles of women. […] When you took a closer look at their heads, you saw a single shot straight to the brain of each.”
Hundreds of bodies were collected from the attack sites by volunteers.
BBC/Dave Bull May Golan: “For the first five days, we still had terrorists on the ground in Israel. And there were hundreds, hundreds of bodies everywhere.”
Investigators admit that in those first chaotic days after the attacks, with some areas still active combat zones, opportunities to carefully document the crime scenes, or take forensic evidence, were limited or missed.
“For the first five days, we still had terrorists on the ground in Israel,” May Golan said. “And there were hundreds, hundreds of bodies everywhere. They were burned, they were without organs, they were butchered completely.”
“This was a mass casualty event,” police spokesman Dean Elsdunne told journalists at a briefing.
“The first thing was to work on identifying the victims, not necessarily on crime scene investigation. People were waiting to hear what happened to their loved ones.”
It was staff at the army’s Shura base, where bodies arrived for identification, who have provided investigators with some of the most crucial evidence.
This evidence emerged from a makeshift hub of tents and refrigerated shipping containers set up at the base to identify the bodies.
When we visited, hospital trolleys, their iron skeletons topped with khaki stretchers, stood neatly lined up in front of the containers that housed the dead; the white plastic overalls of those on shift translucent under the floodlights.
Fighter jets roared overhead, drowning out the cicadas, as Israel’s bombardment of Gaza continued.
Teams here told us they’d seen clear evidence of rape and sexual violence on the bodies coming in, including broken pelvises from sustained violent abuse.
“We see women of all ages,” one of the reservists on the forensic team, Captain Maayan, told the BBC. “We see rape victims. We see women who have been through violation. We have pathologists and we see the bruises, we learn about the cuts and tears, and we know they have been sexually abused.”
I ask her what proportion of the bodies she’s handled show signs of this.
“Abundant,” she said. “Abundant amount of women and girls of all ages.”
BBC/Dave Bull Debris litters the ground at the Nova festival site
The number of victims is hard to define, partly because of the state of the bodies.
“It’s definitely multiple,” said another serving soldier who asked us to use only her first name, Avigayil. “It’s hard to tell. I’ve dealt with more than a few burned bodies and I have no idea what they went through beforehand. And bodies that are missing the bottom half – I also don’t know if they were raped. But women that were clearly raped? There are enough. More than enough.”
“Sometimes we are left only with a very small part of the body,” Dr Elkayam-Levy tells me. “Maybe it’s a finger, a foot or a hand that they’re trying to identify. People were burned to ashes. Nothing was left. […] I want to say that we’ll never know how many cases there were.”
Privately some of those working on this talk in terms of “dozens” of victims but quickly caution that evidence is still being gathered and pieced together.
The civil commission headed by Dr Elkayam-Levy, to collect testimony on sexual crimes, is calling for international recognition that what happened on 7 October was systematic abuse, constituting Crimes Against Humanity.
“We see definite patterns,” she told me. “So it wasn’t incidental, it wasn’t random. They came with a clear order. It was […] rape as genocide.”
Avigayil agrees there were similarities in the violence visited on the bodies that arrived at the Shura base.
“There are patterns in that groups of women from the same place were treated in a similar manner,” she said.
“There might be a set of women who were raped in one way, and we’re seeing similarities in the bodies; and then a different set that were not raped but shot multiple times in the exact same pattern. So it seems that different groups of terrorists had different forms of cruelty.”
“This was a premeditative, systematic event,” police chief Yaacov Shabtai told journalists.
BBC/Dave Bull” Israel on 7 October is not the same country that woke up the following morning”: police chief Yaacov Shabtai
David Katz from Israel’s cyber crime unit which is involved in the investigation, told journalists that it was too early to prove that sexual violence was planned as part of the attack, but that data extracted from the phones of the Hamas attackers suggested that “everything was systematic”.
“It would be reckless to say we can already prove it […] but everything that was one there was done systematically,” he said. “Nothing happened by coincidence. Rape was systematic.”
Israel’s government points to documents it says were found on Hamas fighters that appear to support the idea that sexual violence was planned. It’s released clips of interrogations with some captured fighters in which they appear to say that women were targeted for this purpose.
Last week, UN Women put out a statement saying it “unequivocally condemn[ed] the brutal attacks by Hamas” and was “alarmed by the numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities and sexual violence during those attacks”.
Dr Elkayam-Levy said before the statement that international women’s rights organisations had taken far too long to respond to her call for support.
“This is the most documented atrocity humanity has known,” she told me.
“Israel on 7 October is not the same country that woke up the following morning,” said police chief Yaacov Shabtai.
Amid the horror of what happened to women here, Captain Maayan from the Shura identification unit says the hardest moments are when she sees “the mascara on their eyelashes, or the earrings they put on that morning”.
Israel is considering a plan to pump seawater into Hamas’ tunnel system underneath the Gaza Strip, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing U.S. officials. The Israel Defense Forces has assembled five large seawater pumps capable of transferring thousands of cubic meters of water per hour from the Mediterranean Sea into the tunnels, according to the report. Work was reportedly completed on the pumps around the middle of November. They are located roughly one mile north of the Al-Shati Camp along northern Gaza’s coastline.
Israel first informed the Biden administration of the plans in early November, the officials said, with discussions on the effectiveness of such an operation and the potential environmental impact, including on the Strip’s water supply. The officials said the reaction in Washington was mixed, with some supporting it and others privately expressing concerns, although “there wasn’t necessarily any U.S. opposition to the plan.”U.S. officials said that they didn’t know how close Israel was to carrying out the plans, with a final decision on whether to proceed still pending.
Israel has discovered around 800 tunnels so far during the Gaza ground operation that began on Oct. 27, with 500 of them destroyed or sealed. The IDF has also destroyed hundreds of miles of tunnels in addition to the shafts.
Hamas kidnapped over 200 people during the Oct. 7 massacre, with 137 still being held hostage.
A source familiar with the plan said that a flooding process over weeks would allow for Hamas terrorists and potentially hostages to move out.
“We are not sure how successful pumping will be since nobody knows the details of the tunnels and the ground around them,” the source said. “It’s impossible to know if that will be effective because we don’t know how seawater will drain in tunnels no one has been in before.”
The WSJ reached out to an IDF official, who declined to comment on the report, saying only that “The IDF is operating to dismantle Hamas’ terror capabilities in various ways, using different military and technological tools. “Republished with permission from Jewish News Syndicate.
Hell hath no fury like a leftist woman’s scorn if you’re Donald Trump, but Hamas raping and murdering innocent Israeli women on October 7th, 2023? No outrage and lame justifications.
In the current Through-the-Looking-Glass world, absurdity has become the norm. Israel has been accused of the unspeakable crimes of . . . protecting LGBTQ rights (you can’t do that – that’s #pinkwashing!), substantial participation by Arab citizens in all walks of civil life (you can’t do that – that’s #democracy), and protecting the environment by being a leader in environmental sustainability (you can’t do that – that’s #greenwashing!), all to cover up its alleged crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians.
The absurdity has reached peak levels since October 7 with the timely re-emergence of the Queers for Palestine bloc, marching alongside Hamas supporters who justify terrorist atrocities as a response to the “occupation.” Putting aside the fact that Gaza has been Judenfrei with Israel’s withdrawal in 2005, the lack of self-awareness is staggering.
It is, of course, a well-known fact that Arab countries, and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip in particular, are Edenic paradises to LGBTQ-identifying individuals and other minorities…
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
I have been hearing all weekend about the rapping Hamas has been doing. As I heard each report, my first reaction was grief for the victims, and anger at the coverage on all the news outlets, and internet.
Going back to the days of September 11, 2001, then the rise of ISIS, I have been reporting on the practices of radical Islam. I’ve published report after report on the common conduct of these so-called Islamic fighters (regardless of the banner they are operating under). The child to adult male marriages, the common belief that they have an approved expectation to rape every female captive, whether or not they intend to make them wives, or concubines (sex slaves). Mohammed had a 6-year-old bride. They are quick to say that he waited to consummate their marriage until she was 8.
Here is a lecture by an Islamic woman explaining the practice to listeners.
This video was taken by a Hamas animal on October 7. I have three daughts and a granddaughter. I can’t imagine my horror if one of them were on the bike, knowing what was about to be done to her.
Watch this video carefully. All those involved are civilians 👇
Some of the most horrendous crimes on October 7th were committed by civilians. https://t.co/i902xLaeq1
Here is a picture of the girl gang raped and killed described above.
Yoni Saadon, one of the witnesses, recounts in the Times:“I saw this beautiful woman with the face of an angel and eight or ten of the fighters beating and raping her. She was screaming, ‘Stop it — already I’m going to die anyway from what you are doing, just kill me!’ When they… pic.twitter.com/uEXCFpz7Pk
This is a dramatic display of Islamic fighters taking captive of a girl, savaging them, and then walking them around like a trophy. This was shot in Beverly Hills, California.
Woman walks around Beverly Hills dressed as one of the victims of Hamas to raise awareness of the October 7th attack.
The woman she is dressed as was seen in a viral video on Oct 7th with bloodied track pants after being violently raped.
Rep. George Santos, or, now-former Rep. George Santos, has denied allegations that he moonlighted as a drag queen named “Kitara Ravache.” But maybe he would have been smart to embrace it — no Democrat could have voted to expel a drag queen from the lower chamber!
On Friday, House Democrats voted nearly unanimously along with 105 Republicans to expel the freshman representative from New York. It’s worth noting that Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib, meanwhile, received a mere censure over her antisemitic activism and solidarity with Hamas terrorists.
Santos became the third member removed from the House since the Civil War. Rep. James Traficant of Ohio was removed by the lower chamber in 2002 after a conviction of 10 felonies and Rep. Michael Myers was kicked out in 1980 following a bribery conviction. The New York lawmaker was ostensibly removed over a potential scandal involving fraudulent campaign activity that was detailed in a report from the House Ethics Committee last month. Investigators found substantial evidence that Santos committed federal crimes, and the freshman lawmaker was handed a 23-count indictment in October. To date, however, Santos has yet to be convicted of a single crime after voters elected the Republican to replace his Democrat predecessor.
Tlaib, on the other hand, openly called for the destruction of Israel and spread lies about an explosion near a Palestinian hospital, blaming the Israeli military. The rocket that terrorist officials claimed killed hundreds of civilians at the hospital was actually a Palestinian device that misfired and landed in a nearby parking lot, killing dozens, not hundreds.
“Israel just bombed the Baptist Hospital killing 500 Palestinians (doctors, children, patients) just like that,” Tlaib wrote on X. “POTUS this is what happens when you refuse to facilitate a ceasefire & help de-escalate.”
In November, the Michigan congresswoman defended her use of the terrorist slogan “from the river to the sea” demanding the creation of a Palestinian state on Israeli land.
“From the river to the sea,” Tlaib claimed on X, “is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence.”
“‘From the river to the sea’ is the least ambiguous phrase imaginable,” explained Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi last month. “It quite literally and geographically lays out the genocidal aims of its chanters — from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, including all of the Jewish state, not just ‘occupied’ territory.”
That 105 Republicans joined Democrats to expel Santos, in an effort actually led by Republicans, is bad enough. But two of the Republicans who voted to expel Santos simultaneously voted against censuring Tlaib three weeks ago. Retiring Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, who is gunning for a gig at CNN, and freshman California Rep. John Duarte, apparently didn’t think their antisemitic colleague from Michigan deserved censure but voted to boot Santos from Congress despite his reliably red voting record.
Voters: please, Republicans, help the country Republican House: best we can offer is a continuing resolution Democrats love, tons more Ukraine funding, and ousting this liar because corporate media demanded it https://t.co/BZeUTjrRb9
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
Why are millions of people around the world supporting Hamas, the reincarnation of the Nazi SS? Hamas targets civilians for murder and rape; uses its own civilians as human shields; and hides beneath hospitals, schools, and churches. Pictured: Members of the Palestinian Youth Movement gather outside of the President’s Park to stage a pro-Palestinian demonstration and demand a ceasefire in Gaza during the National Christmas tree lighting in Washington D.C., on Nov. 30. (Photo: Celal Gunes, Anadolu/Getty Images)
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and author of the book “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.” You can reach him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.com.
Oct. 7 should have been an open-and-shut case of moral condemnation. During peace and holiday, invading Hamas gunmen murdered, tortured, mass-raped, decapitated, and mutilated some 1,200 Israelis. The vast majority were unarmed women, children, infants, and the elderly. The cowardly murderers proudly filmed their atrocities and then fled back to Gaza—to cheers from the Gaza street.
Before Israel even retaliated, the mass murdering of Jews earned praise from the Middle East, the international hard Left, and especially the faculty and students of elite Western campuses.
When the Israel Defense Forces struck back, the killers dispersed to the safety of their multibillion-dollar subterranean cities. The cowardly elite architects of the mass murder fled to Arab sanctuaries in Lebanon and Qatar. From its headquarters burrowed below hospitals, mosques, and schools, Hamas bartered hostages for a reprieve from the Israel Defense Forces and the release of its own convicted terrorists in Israeli jails. Hamas shot any of its own supporters who refused to shield Hamas gunmen. It continued launching rockets at Israeli civilian centers. It serially lied about its casualties, expropriating intended relief food and fuel for its underground tunnel city of killers.
Abroad, Hamas supporters also emulated the methods of the pro-Nazi demonstrators in Western cities of the 1930s. Unlike their pro-Israel critics, the pro-Hamas demonstrators in the U.S. and Europe turned violent. They took over and defaced private and public property. They chanted genocidal antisemitic slogans calling for erasure of the nation of Israel. They interrupted shoppers, blocked highways, attacked businesses, and swarmed bridges. They assaulted police. The majority wore masks to hide their identities in the fashion of antisemitic Klansmen.
Why did the doctrinaire Left, the youth of the Democratic Party, and the campuses outdo each other in their antisemitic venom toward Israel? For the first time in their lives, many of the ignorant protesters suddenly professed concern about refugees, colonialism, disproportionality, innocent civilians, and the rules of war. But none could explain why the Palestinians who fled Israel in 1947-48 still self-identify as victimized “refugees” when 900,000 Jews ethnically cleansed from Middle East Arab cities about the same time do not.
The 200,000 Greek Cypriots driven out from northern Cyprus by Turkey apparently do not warrant “refugee” status either.
Few protesters knew that Jews have lived in present-day Israel for over three millennia. The longest colonialist presence there was Muslim Turks who brutally ran the Holy Land for 300 years until they lost in World War I and were expelled.
How exactly did it happen that the eighth-century A.D. Al-Aqsa Mosque was built within King Herod’s earlier Second Temple enclosure?
The pro-Hamas crowd has little appreciation that colonizing Arab Muslims have one of history’s longest records of “settling” other countries far from their historic birthland.
They “settled” and “colonized” the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Middle East, Berber North Africa, and southern Spain. Millions of Middle Easterners migrated to—“settled?”—supposedly infidel European cities, where they often self-segregate and do not assimilate fully with their magnanimous hosts.
As far as “disproportionality”—it is the goal of every power at war, Hamas included.
What protesters are furious about is that Israel is more effective at being disproportionate in retaliation than Hamas and its Iranian supporters were in their preemptive mass murdering.
Targeting innocent civilians? Hamas is among the current greatest offenders in the world. It rockets Israeli cities without warning. It mass murders Jews in their beds during peace. It exposes Gazans to mortal danger by impressing them as human shields. Hamas shoots those who refuse.
The “rules of war” are violated by Hamas daily. Such protocols require combatants to wear uniforms so as not to blend in with civilians, not to use them as shields, not to murder noncombatants, not to rape them, not to mutilate them, and not to execute civilians without trial.
Why then would millions ally themselves with this odious reincarnation of the SS?
Are they ignorant of the history of the Middle East?
Are they arrogant since few challenge their hate and threats?
Are they opportunists who feel mouthing anti-Western shibboleths gains them career traction in leftist-run media, academia, and popular culture?
Are they bullies who count on the Western silent majority remaining quiet as they disrupt lives, trash Western tolerant culture, and commit violence?
Like Hamas that they support, do they despise Jews? Why else do they express an existential hatred toward Israelis that they never display to any other group?
Those now on the street utter not a peep about the Sudanese Arab mass killers in Darfur; Chinese oppressors of the Muslim Uyghurs; Russians targeting civilians in Ukraine; or ISIS, Syrian, and Yemeni murderers of fellow Muslims. Yet all of these terrorist killers are guilty of the very charges the protesters falsely attribute to Israel. But they are all not Jewish—and that explains the pass given them by our antisemitic, pro-Hamas street.
According to the corporate media, hundreds of high schoolers are taking it upon themselves to walk out of school to protest Israel’s right to defend itself. In New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and more, the nation’s budding humanitarians are banding together with the hope of ushering in a new era of peace, the stories say. As is the case with so many stories surrounding Palestinian terrorism and Israel’s response, the prevailing narrative is wrong.
These walkouts are not the result of well-meaning teenagers choosing to take a stand. These protests are being conceived of and then planned and executed by radical left-wing groups using children as political props.
The largest of these was the “#schools4Palestine” walkout, which disrupted learning in an estimated 100 New York City public schools on Nov. 9. A coalition of far-left groups, including New York Collective of Radical Educators, NYC Educators for Palestine, Palestinian Youth Movement, and Teachers Unite, authored a “toolkit” — a handbook aimed mainly at adults to show them how to turn students into pro-Hamas activists. The document purports to be for “students, teachers, and parents,” but its content is less relevant for students than for teachers who seek to influence them. Another far-left group in the San Francisco Bay Area created a toolkit of its own, full of the same hateful lies about Israel.
Though the New York City toolkit’s writers claimed, “High school students are organizing walkouts,” they don’t seem to believe their own words. The document, created by left-wing adults, provides a ready-made plan for students, with poster templates, instructions for identifying chant leaders, and even a sample schedule. The students are being organized by adults.
NYC high school students walking out from across the city in the hundreds today to demand a #CeasefireNow in Gaza!
They were showing up, at the behest of their teachers, to support a cause probably very few of them understand. The toolkit contained a sample script for teachers to encourage their students to participate, and it notes that teachers may “show support for their students … canceling tests or major paper deadlines or making the lesson more flexible to accommodate students who walk out.” Teachers who followed this advice placed their own radical politics ahead of learning and committed a major violation of professional ethics. They abused their positions of responsibility for the sake of their own agenda.
The toolkit put words in the mouths of children with a recommended chants list, including “Say it loud, say it clear, we don’t want Zionists here.” When they took to the streets, some of the students chanted, “F-ck the Jews,” thus flaunting their hatred and abandoning the façade that this protest was ever about peace.
Students Aren’t Being Taught the Truth
Students are being taught that it is good and noble to walk out in support of Hamas. What they are not being taught is that there was a ceasefire in place on Oct. 6, and it did not stop Hamas from slaughtering Israelis and taking hostages. They’re not teaching students that so many Palestinians live in poverty, not because of Israel, but because Hamas would rather spend money on rockets and tunnels and their own plush hideaways in Qatar than on basic infrastructure. They’re not teaching that supporting the Palestinian people means opposing Hamas, an enemy of peace and prosperity and the reason that Gazans are suffering today.
Some meager accountability for this indoctrination has come from parents who are angered about what their children are being taught. A principal in Montgomery County, Maryland, emailed the entire school community to “make them aware” of a walkout, noting that all absences due to the protest would be excused. Backlash was so swift and severe that the principal has since resigned.
These protests do not happen in a vacuum. In many schools, Jewish students are seeing their peers cheerlead for terrorism with their teachers’ encouragement. No student should be forced to face this kind of hostility and harassment. No parent should be forced to send his or her child to a school where this sort of teacher-sponsored bullying is allowed or encouraged.
As Hamas tightens its death grip on Gaza, pro-Hamas protesters will desperately attempt to appear thoughtful and mainstream. But not unlike the group these protesters are supporting, they’re experts at using children as pawns.
Angela Morabito is the spokesperson at the Defense of Freedom Institute and a former U.S. Department of Education press secretary.
A temporary cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war has been extended another day, according to mediator Qatar. The announcement Thursday morning came minutes before the cease-fire was set to expire. Hamas released two Israeli women from captivity several hours later, Israel’s military said.
Israel had agreed to extend the truce by one day for every 10 militant-held hostages who are freed. The cease-fire, which began Nov. 24 and was originally set to expire on Monday, has paused the deadliest fighting between Israel and Palestinians in decades.
Israel has vowed to resume the war in an effort to end Hamas’ 16-year rule of Gaza, but it’s facing mounting international pressure to spare southern Gaza a devastating ground offensive like the one that has demolished much of the north.
Roughly 240 hostages were captured by Hamas in its Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that ignited the war. More than 13,300 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, according to the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in Gaza, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants. About 1,200 people have been killed in Israel, mostly during the initial incursion by Hamas.
— Truce in Israel-Hamas war is extended by a day, minutes before it was set to expire.
— Jake Sullivan says the White House is not seeking conditions on military aid to Israel, despite Biden’s comment.
— Israel compares Hamas to the Islamic State group. But the comparison misses the mark in key ways.
— U.S. Senate Majority Leader Schumer warns that antisemitism is on the rise as he pushes for Israel aid.
— A friendship forged over 7 weeks of captivity lives on.
Here’s what’s happening in the war:
The Israeli military said Thursday that two Israeli hostages were released from captivity in the Gaza Strip. In a statement, the army said the Red Cross had transferred the two women to Israeli forces. They were to be taken to an Israeli military base. The two hostages are among a larger group of Israelis expected to be released Thursday as part of the latest extension of a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Israel was to free some 30 Palestinian prisoners later Thursday.
TEL AVIV, Israel — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is reminding Israeli leaders of the need for Israel to comply with international law as it prosecutes its war against Hamas in Gaza. Blinken also said it is imperative that Israel take great care to avoid civilian casualties if it starts major military operations in southern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have sought shelter after fleeing their homes in the northern part of the territory. He said the U.S. places great importance on the resumption of a peace process that would eventually lead to the creation of a Palestinian state, something that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposes.
Speaking Thursday just hours after Israel and Hamas agreed at the last minute to a third extension of their cease-fire agreement, Blinken told Netanyahu that the U.S. will continue “support for Israel’s right to protect itself from terrorist violence in compliance with international humanitarian law and urged Israel to take every possible measure to avoid civilian harm,” the State Department said.
The message aligned with the Biden administration’s shifting rhetoric on the war, which began as a full-throated embrace of Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks but gradually tempered as the number of Palestinian civilian casualties began to rise, prompting widespread international criticism. To prevent a further exponential increase in civilian casualties, Blinken “stressed the imperative of accounting for humanitarian and civilian protection needs in southern Gaza before any military operations there and urged immediate steps to hold settler extremists accountable for violence against Palestinians in the West Bank,” the State Department said Blinken told Netanyahu.
Blinken met with Netanyahu and his war Cabinet in Jerusalem before traveling to the occupied West Bank for talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
The Israeli army has confirmed that Ofir Tzarfati, an Israeli believed to be held hostage in Gaza, is dead. Tzarfati was thought to be among the approximately 240 people taken hostage by Hamas on October 7. He had been celebrating his 27th birthday at a music festival with his girlfriend when Hamas militants stormed into Israel and killed at least 364 people at the festival and kidnapped many others. Tzarfati’s family was originally unclear what happened to him, but a few weeks later, the army notified the family that they believed that Tzarfati was being held in Gaza, according to media reports.
The army did not specify where Tzarfati’s body was identified
TEL AVIV, Israel — Two gunman opened fire on a crowded bus station at the entrance of Jerusalem, killing at least three people and wounding several others, according to Jerusalem police.
Another blatant violation of the ceasefire. A terrorist attack, murdering people waiting for the bus. https://t.co/0Vtbse4CMB
“The bus station was very crowded, which is why so many people were wounded,” said Magen David Adom spokesperson Zaki Heller told Army Radio. According to police, the two gunmen drove toward the bus stop armed with a handgun and an M16 rifle and opened fire. Both were killed at the scene by two soldiers who were near the bus stop.
Jerusalem police chief Doron Turgeman said police believe both attackers were from east Jerusalem. It was unclear if the attack was carried out by a Palestinian militant group or individuals acting on their own, or if it would have any impact on the truce in Gaza.
One 24-year-old woman was pronounced dead at the scene and another man died later at the hospital.
A year ago, a bomb exploded at the same bus stop, killing a 16-year-old boy and wounding 18.
JERUSALEM — Israel and Hamas agreed to extend a temporary truce by another day just minutes before it was set to expire, said Qatar, which has been mediating between the two sides. The truce was set to expire Thursday morning. Negotiations on extending it came down to the wire, with last-minute disagreements over the hostages to be freed by Hamas in exchange for another day of a halt in fighting.
The Qatari Foreign Ministry said the truce was being extended under the same terms as in the past, under which Hamas has released 10 Israeli hostages per day in exchange for 30 Palestinian prisoners.
Israel released another group of Palestinian prisoners early Thursday in exchange for 16 hostages freed hours earlier by the Islamic militant group Hamas in Gaza. A bus carrying some of the Palestinian detainees arrived in the West Bank city of Ramallah before dawn. The releases came on the sixth day of a temporary truce in the Israel-Hamas war.
Most prominent among those freed was 22-year-old Ahed Tamimi, an activist who gained worldwide fame in 2017 after a video of her slapping an Israeli soldier went viral on social media. Israeli troops arrested her at her West Bank home on Nov. 6 for “inciting to terrorism” on her Instagram account. Her mother said Tamimi’s account had been hacked.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Terrorist sympathizers are out in full force spreading fake news about Israel’s treatment of its prisoners, as the country executes a swap with Hamas for hostages taken by the terrorist group on Oct. 7. Here are four of the most outrageous lies circulating on social media.
1. Israel Is ‘Only Country That Keeps Children As Prisoners’
This week, American supermodel Gigi Hadid shared a post to her more than 79 million Instagram followers condemning Israel as “the only country in the world that keeps children as prisoners of war.” The post, which has been deleted, claimed Palestinian terrorist Ahmed Mansara was “abducted” by Israeli officials at 12 years old and “has endured solitary confinement despite his severe health condition.”
According to the New York Post, Mansara went on a “stabbing rampage” in East Jerusalem with his 15-year-old cousin in 2015 that left a 20-year-old security guard and a 13-year-old boy with critical injuries. Mansara was convicted of two counts of attempted murder after his cousin was killed in the attack by a police officer.
“He initially received a sentence of 12 years in prison, which was later reduced” to nine and a half years, the Post reported. “During his incarceration, Mansara has repeatedly attempted to harm himself and others. He has been in and out of solitary confinement, drawing the ire of Amnesty International, a nongovernmental human rights advocacy group.”
Terrorist sympathizing aside, Hadid’s post claiming Israel is “the only country in the world that keeps children as prisoners of war” is fake news on its face. Roughly 30 children — some of whom still remain in captivity nearly two months later — were taken hostage by Hamas, after the terrorist group slaughtered Israeli women and children in the Oct. 7 massacre which killed at least 1,200.
Unsurprisingly, child hostages held by Hamas have been subject to physical and emotional abuse. A 12-year-old was even reportedly placed in solitary confinement for more than two weeks.
🚨 Hamas forced hostages to watch videos of the 7/10 atrocities.
This is Eitan (13), He spent 51 as a hostage of Hamas. terrorists killed his father in front of him and took him to Gaza.
While held hostage, Hamas forced him to view videos of the 7/10 Atrocities.
2. Israel at Fault for Injuries Sustained by Suicide Bomb
In another episode of terrorist-sympathizing disinformation, anti-Israel pundits spread false narratives online about Israa Jaabis, who was released from Israeli custody in a prisoner swap on Monday. They claimed Jaabis’s disfigured condition was a result of Israeli brutality after nearly a decade of incarceration.
“For those of you who don’t know who Israa is, this is a photo before and after what the [Israel Defense Forces] has done to her,”wrote one user on X. The side-by-side images show Jaabis with a permanently scarred face from severe burns. But the IDF didn’t do that to her; she did it to herself in 2015 when she attempted to kill scores of civilians by detonating a suicide bomb.
3. Hamas Held Hostages in ‘Reasonable Conditions’
Dominic Waghorn, the international affairs editor for Sky News, wrote on X that hostages held by Hamas were “held in reasonable conditions.”
“Hamas leader Yehya Sinwar met with the Israeli hostages a day after they were taken in tunnels under Gaza and told them they would not be harmed and would be returned as part of a hostage deal,” Waghorn wrote. “Undermines the Israeli Hamas = ISIS storyline.”
Testimony from released prisoners, however, has revealed “horrors” endured by those held captive. Hostages were reportedly forced to use plastic chairs for beds and were given irregular meals. One 84-year-old hostage was even hospitalized in critical condition upon being released.
4. Israeli Hostage Looks ‘Thankful’ For Captivity
Maree Campbell, who claims in her bio on X to be an international relations analyst and “journalist,” contended that a released Israeli hostage looked appreciative to her captors.
“I’m not a facial expression expert,” Campbell professed on X, “but judging by the look in her eyes and the expression on her face, I’d say that is a look of appreciation and thanks.”
“Might it be that she is saying thanks for being treated unexpectedly well whilst in captivity?” Campbell asked.
A community note on the platform clarifies that the hostage in the photo, Mia Regev, was shot by Palestinian terrorists before her abduction.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
Israel confirms release of 5th hostage group by Hamas as final day of cease-fire nears
Israel confirmed a list of 50 female Palestinian prisoners it is willing to release in exchange for 20 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza over the next two days. Israel and Hamas agreed to a two-day extension to their cease-fire. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Tony Blinken is set to return to the Middle East to negotiate the flow of aid into Gaza.
Israel and Hamas entered the first day of a two-day extension to their cease-fire agreement on Tuesday as Israel continues to stay its hand in exchange for hostages.
Israel secured the release of at least 69 hostages since the cease-fire began on Friday, exchanging them for 150 Palestinian criminals held in Israeli prisons
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Israel-Hamas war: IDF announces custody of 12 newly-released hostages
Members of the Red Cross prepare to transport hostages released by Hamas in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip on November 28, 2023. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced on Tuesday night that the 12 newly-released hostages are currently inside Israeli territory.
In a statement, the IDF said that their special forces division is “currently with the 12 released hostages.”
“After an initial medical assessment, the released hostages will continue to be accompanied by IDF soldiers as they make their way to Israeli hospitals, where they will be reunited with their families,” the press release added. “The Israel Defense Forces salutes and embraces the released hostages upon their return home.”
The Israeli military said that they remain determined to bring home all of the hostages that were kidnapped by Hamas from Israel.
“The IDF, together with the entire Israeli security establishment, will continue to operate to bring home all the hostages,” the press release continued. “The IDF Spokesperson reiterates the importance of demonstrating patience and sensitivity during this time out of respect for the released hostages and their families.”
Israel-Hamas war: Mother of hostage says she is concerned for son but ‘thrilled’ at captive releases
The mother of a hostage who was taken captive by Hamas terrorists says that she is overjoyed to see hostages being released during the Israel-Hamas cease-fire.
Rachel Goldberg, whose son Hersh Goldberg-Polin was kidnapped on October 7, appeared on “America Reports” Tuesday to talk about the latest developments with the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.
“I am actually thrilled with the how the progression of these hostages being returned…I just saw that a dear friend of ours, wife and daughter, were released tonight,” Goldberg explained. “I can’t describe how happy these last few nights of seeing these children going back to their families [make me].”
The mother said that while she feels hopeful, she also remains concerned for her son. Goldberg-Polin was reportedly injured by terrorists and lost a limb.
“I worry about my son, who I know was in critical condition…and will now permanently live the rest of his life without a limb,” she explained. “I’m concerned for his health. I don’t know if he’s getting the antibiotics that he needs. I’m hoping that he got the surgery that he needed.”
“But I am thrilled with the releases of all of these hostages,” Goldberg added.
Israel-Hamas war: Iranian drone flies close to USS Eisenhower in Persian Gulf
U.S. maritime posture in Middle East as of November 28, 2023.
A U.S. official told Fox News that an Iranian drone flew near a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Middle East on Tuesday.
The drone allegedly flew near the USS Eisenhower in the Persian Gulf. The ship was in international waters at the time.
The Iranian drone reportedly ignored multiple warnings, according to the U.S. official. The U.S. military is considering the incident unsafe and unprofessional on Iran’s part.
Fox News Digital’s Liz Friden contributed to this report.
Jewish students at Indiana University denounce antisemitism on campus
Entrance sign into campus at Indiana University in Bloomington Indiana. (Photo by: Don & Melinda Crawford/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Jewish student organizations at Indiana University (IU) issued a statement Tuesday denouncing antisemitism on their campus amid the Israel-Hamas war
IU student Ethan Fine posted the statement on X, in response to allegedly antisemitic remarks made by IU’s student government president.
“The Jewish groups who signed onto the letter represent the vast majority of the estimated 4,500 Jewish students at IU,” Fine wrote on X. “After a meeting with the student body president, it was clear to us that she is no longer fit to serve.”
“We are calling on [the student body president] to resign and for the members of her executive branch to be replaced,” Fine added. “We stand together. We stand united against antisemitism.”
Israel-Hamas war: Senator Chuck Schumer to give speech about antisemitism tomorrow
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks during a news conference following a closed-door lunch meeting with Senate Democrats at the U.S. Capitol November 28, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Senator Chuck Schumer announced on Tuesday that he will be making a “major address” about antisemitism on Wednesday, as the Israel-Hamas war continues.
Schumer, who serves as the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senator, called hatred against Jews “a crisis” in the United States.
“Antisemitism is a crisis in the country,” Schumer wrote on X. “As the highest-ranking Jewish elected official, I feel compelled to speak out about it.”
“I’ll be giving a major address on it tomorrow,” the senator added.
The U.S. military on Tuesday delivered its first of three rounds of humanitarian aid intended for the people of Gaza, according to the Pentagon.
Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Ryder told reporters that the U.S. airlifted 24.5 metric tons of U.N. humanitarian supplies to provide “vitally needed medical supplies, warm clothing, and food and nutrition assistance to the people of Gaza.”
USAID requested that the supplies be transported via a US Air Force C-17 cargo plane, Ryder said. The aircraft arrived earlier Tuesday in Egypt where it was to be transported into Gaza and distributed by U.N. agencies.
Israel-Hamas war: Senator Thom Tillis recalls watching ‘horrific’ video of Hamas attack
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) arrives to the U.S. Capitol Building on September 26, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) announced on X that he and other Senators watched graphic footage related to Hamas’ terrorist attacks on Tuesday.
“Today, my Senate colleagues and I watched footage of the devastation caused by Hamas’ horrific terrorist attack against Israel,” Tillis wrote on X. “What we saw was not for the not for the faint-hearted. “
The North Carolina Republican then said that Hamas was “pure evil and must be destroyed.”
“Hamas has made it clear that they will stop at nothing to eliminate Israel and its people,” the senator added. “As Israel’s longtime ally and friend, we must do everything we can to support its efforts to defend itself and destroy Hamas.”
DOD says US Navy, Israeli-owned ship not intended target of Houthi missiles
In an undated photo released by Zodiac Maritime, the tanker Central Park is seen. Attackers seized the tanker linked to Israel off the coast of Aden, Yemen, on Sunday, Nov. 26, 2023, authorities said. (Zodiac Maritime via AP)
The Pentagon said Tuesday that the USS Mason and Central Park, an Israeli-owned tanker, were not the intended target of Houthi missiles that fired from Yemen over the weekend.
The missiles came after five armed assailants attempted to seize the MV Central Park, an Israeli-owned tanker operated by Zodiac Maritime, in the Gulf of Aden on Sunday. The vessel sent out a distress call and forces from the USS Mason, an American destroyer, responded.
The five assailants attempted to flee in their small boats, but the U.S. forces pursued them and fired warning shots, resulting in their eventual surrender, according to Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder.
Israel-Hamas war: 4-year-old hostage Avigail Idan discharged from hospital
Avigail Idan was held in captivity by Hamas.
Avigail Idan, the 4-year-old girl who was released by Hamas captors on Sunday evening, was discharged from Schneider Children’s Medical Center on Tuesday.
“Avigail aged 4, was discharged from hospital earlier today,” Schneider Children’s Medical Center announced in a statement. “The staff at Schneider Children’s Medical Center were excited alongside her at this achievement.”
“Avigail was discharged today following treatment from the moment of her return to Israel on Sunday, November 26, 2023, in the specially assigned department at Schneider Children’s Medical Center,” the statement continued.
The hospital said that Idan was treated by “psychosocial” providers after being held in captivity for nearly two months. Her parents were killed by Hamas terrorists on October 7 before she was kidnapped.
“Since her arrival, the medical and psychosocial team at Schneider accorded her all-embracing medical and emotional care,” the press release added.
US Dept of Education opens investigation of Harvard over antisemitism on campus
Supporters of Palestine gather at Harvard University at a rally in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Oct. 14, 2023. (JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is opening an investigation into Harvard University following antisemitism on campus in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, Fox News has learned.
In a letter obtained by Fox News Digital dated Tuesday, Kristi R. Harris, Chief Attorney for the OCR Boston Office said that the OCR will be opening an investigation into whether Harvard “failed to respond to alleged harassment of students based on their national origin (shared Jewish ancestry and/or Israeli) in a manner consistent with the requirements of Title VI.”
“Please note that opening the complaint for investigation in no way implies that OCR has made a determination on the merits of the complaint. During the investigation, OCR is a neutral factfinder, collecting and analyzing relevant evidence from you, the University, and other sources, as appropriate,” the letter says.
Israeli doctor gives update on 84-year-old hostage Elma Avraham’s condition: ‘She is conscious’
A Red Cross vehicle carrying newly released hostages drives towards the Rafah border point with Egypt, in the southern Gaza Strip on November 28, 2023. (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED/AFP via Getty Images)
An Israeli doctor says that 84-year-old hostage Elma Avraham is in better condition after she was rushed to a hospital upon being released from Hamas.
Avraham “suffered from many underlying illnesses and received medication essential to her life on a regular basis before she was kidnapped,” according to Soroka Medical Center director Moti Klein.
“Elma was evacuated in a very difficult condition when all vitals, all her vital signs, level of consciousness, pulse, blood pressure, blood, body temperature and blood sugar were extremely, extremely low,” Klein explained. “This is the reason for the definition of immediate danger to her life.”
Klein added that her condition was “most likely caused by not receiving those essential medications.” He reported that upon arrival, she was “unconscious in a very difficult situation while she was breathing and receiving support for her collapsed buddy system.”
“I am happy to inform that in the last few hours there has been improvement in her condition,” the doctor continued. “She is conscious, she is breathing on her own and does not need the same level of support she needed upon arrival. She was responding well to the treatment given to her and is receiving and still receiving.”
Hamas’ youngest hostage, 10-month-old Kfir Bibas, has been handed over to another terrorist group in Gaza along with his family, according to the IDF, and the news is leaving a distraught relative to plead for her loved ones’ safe return.
“I can’t say we are surprised about the level of cruelty and inhumane behavior from Hamas in this deal, in this cease-fire,” Yifat Zailer, cousin of Kfir’s mother Shiri, told “FOX & Friends” on Tuesday.
“They signed an agreement to release all women and children. Tomorrow is the last day supposedly of this cease-fire, of this agreement as it was signed. And there is still no news about my family, if they’ll be returned or not.”
10 Israelis, 2 others held by Hamas are freed, IDF says
10 Israelis, 2 others held by Hamas are freed, IDF says
The International Red Cross has taken custody of 12 hostages released by Hamas on Tuesday, Israel says.
Israeli Defense Forces say 10 of the hostages are Israeli citizens and two more are foreigners. It did not clarify the nationality of the non-israelis, however.
The announcement marks the 5th group of hostages to be released by Hamas since Israel agreed to a cease-fire with the terrorist group on Friday. The cease-fire is expected to continue through Wednesday.
“A short while ago, Red Cross representatives transferred the 12 hostages to Egypt,” the IDF said in a statement. “The released hostages’ convoy is currently making its way through Egypt to the meeting point with our soldiers at Kerem Shalom. Security representatives will verify the identity of the released hostages at the meeting point. The families of the hostages are being updated by IDF representatives with the latest available information.”
The Israeli hostages released Tuesday have been identified as Ditza Heiman, 84; Tamar Metzger, 78; Ada Sagi, 75; Merav Tal, 53; Rimon Kirsht, 36; Ofelia Roitman, 77; Gabriela Leimberg, 59; Mia Leimberg 17;.Noralin Agojo Babadilla, 60 and Clara Marman, 62.
Jewish groups sue University of California over ‘unchecked spread’ of antisemitism
The Sather Tower on the University of California, Berkeley campus in Berkeley, California, U.S., on Friday, June 4, 2021. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
A coalition of Jewish groups filed a lawsuit agains the University of California on Tuesday, alleging the institution is allowing the “unchecked spread” of antismeitism across its campuses.
The Brandeis Center and Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education, filed the lawsuit in California early Tuesday. The lawsuit comes as antisemitic incidents have skyrocketed across the country and the globe, especially on college campuses.
The lawsuit points to 23 student groups at UC Berkeley Law School that require new members of guest speakers to disavow Israel, according to Politico.
“Conditioning a Jew’s ability to participate in a student group on his or her renunciation of a core component of Jewish identity is no less pernicious than demanding the renunciation of some other core element of a student’s identity — whether based on race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual identity,” the lawsuit says. “No such imposition is required — or would be remotely tolerated — of other students.”
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are facing a closing window to approve new funding for Israel and Ukaine as the two countries continue their war efforts.
President Biden’s administration has called on Congress to fund both Israel and Ukraine in a single bill, but many Republicans oppose such an idea. While Republicans overwhelmingly support funding for Israel’s war agaisnt Hamas, the party’s opposition to funding for Ukraine’s military has slowly grown since Russia’s invasion.
UN ‘downplayed’ Hamas violence to perpetuate image of Israel as ‘the aggressor’: Israeli professor
UN ‘downplayed’ Hamas violence to perpetuate image of Israel as ‘the aggressor’: Israeli professor
Israel is attempting to get the United Nations to recognize and condemn Hamas’ sexual crimes against Israeli women and girls, allegedly perpetrated during the Hamas-led terror attack on Oct. 7.
During a meeting at the U.N. in Geneva on Monday, Israeli officials attempted to raise awareness of the alleged sexual violence against women and urged the international body – which often condemns global injustices and human rights violations – not to keep quiet about the issue.
Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, an associate professor at the Bar-Ilan University, who spoke at the event, told Reuters that the U.N. rights bodies have “downplayed” and “minimized” sexual violence to perpetuate Israel as “the aggressor” in the current conflict.
“Among the war crimes and the crimes against humanity that Hamas committed on October 7th were also sexual crimes, sexual assaults, rapes, that were part, that were a systematic part of their attack, of the massacre and we are expecting a strong condemnation,” she said. “We expected recognition of that. We expected a clear and loud statement that says that there is no justification for using the bodies of women as a weapon of war. None of this came until now.”
The professor said she was “deeply concerned, because of the complete lack of acknowledgment, of recognition by United Nations bodies and entities and by the international human rights world, lack of recognition that indeed Hamas committed horrific sexual crimes against women, against women and girls, on October 7th in Israel.”
Israeli hostage briefly escaped Hamas before locals handed him to terrorists
Israeli hostage briefly escaped Hamas before locals handed him to terrorists
One of the recently released Hamas hostages had previously escaped imprisonment and survived for days in the rubble of Gaza before locals recaptured him, according to a report.
“He tried getting to the border. But he didn’t have the capacity to understand where he was or where he needed to go, so he couldn’t navigate through the open field,” Ron Krivoi’s aunt, who spoke about his struggle during an appearance on KAN’s Reshet Bet radio on Monday morning.
Russian-Israeli Krivoi departed Gaza as part of the third group released as part of a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas brokered through Qatar. Both parties agreed Tuesday to extend the cease-fire by two days, conditional on the release of more hostages.
The 25-year-old was working at the Supernova festival on Oct. 7 as a sound technician when Hamas terrorists attacked, according to The Times of Israel. Russian President Vladimir Putin had personally requested Hamas include Krivoi in the second wave of released hostages as part of a separate deal.
Krivoi’s aunt claimed that he had not remained imprisoned the entire time, having briefly escaped and survived for four days in the ruins of the Gaza Strip, The Jerusalem Post reported.
She explained that Hamas had kept him in a residential building during his imprisonment, but then the Israel Defense Force’s bombing had collapsed part of the building and allowed him to escape.
The exchange comes following a tumultuous morning in which both Israel and Hamas accused one another of breaching the cease-fire agreement. Multiple Israeli soldiers were lightly injured when three separate explosions went off in northern Gaza.
Israel and Hamas agreed to extend the cease-fire through Wednesday.
Fox News foreign correspondent Trey Yingst explained Israel’s claim that Hamas violated the temporary cease-fire agreement with three explosions in Northern Gaza that injured a number of IDF troops on Tuesday.
Both Israel and Hamas accused one another of breaching the cease-fire, which has so far held for five days. Israel says the three explosions occurred in close proximitty to IDF soldiers, lightly injuring a number of them.
Both parties say the other instigated a fire-fight that took place at the site of one of the detonations. Neither party has indicated plans to call off the cease-fire, however.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., accused the Biden administration of enabling “gross human rights violations” in Gaza by sending military aid to Israel as it seeks to eradicate Hamas.
The progressive lawmaker held a tele-town hall on Monday evening where she fielded multiple questions on the Middle Eastern conflict, including a constituent who said the U.S. should “just defund Israel and send funding and aid to Gaza.”
She also encouraged pro-Palestinian activists to keep putting pressure on Democratic lawmakers to support a cease-fire, even as heightened tensions around the issue have led to instances of vandalism and threatening behavior.
“Forces that are recipients of U.S. military aid cannot be engaging in gross human rights violations,” Ocasio-Cortez said, citing a set of statutes known as the Leahy law. “And if they are engaged in gross human rights violations, then that aid must be either pulled, reconsidered, conditioned, etc.”
The Leahy law stops the government “from using funds for assistance to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights,” according to the State Department.
“What we are witnessing is the gross violation of human rights in Gaza, and that is being done with U.S. military assistance,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I don’t think that the American people want to see our public resources going to finance gross human rights violations.”
Israel urges UN to highlight Hamas’ sexual crimes against women on Oct. 7
Israeli diplomats held a meeting at the United Nations in Geneva calling attention to the sexual violence committeed by Hamas during its Oct. 7 massacre in Israel on Tuesday.
Israel has widely documented rape, murder, and other crimes against women committed by Hamas during the attack. While the U.N. has already condmened the Oct. 7 massacre, experts who spoke at Israel’s Tuesday event say U.N. rights bodies “downplayed” and “minimised” the sexual violence.
“We expected a clear and loud statement that says that there is no justification for using the bodies of women as a weapon of war. None of this came up until now,” said Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, an Associate Professor at the Bar-Ilan University. “It turns around the conventional framing of viewing Israel as the aggressor, and Palestinians as the ultimate victim.”
Meanwhile, the U.N. Human rights office says it has not been granted access to visit Israel to investigate the crimes committed on Oct. 7.
“The Office is attempting to carry out remote monitoring of these and other human rights violations reported in Israel and the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories). Lack of direct access to Israel and the OPT has hampered the work,” U.N. spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told Reuters. “We have repeatedly stressed the need for rigorous investigations and accountability for all serious breaches of international human rights and humanitarian law, irrespective of the identity of the alleged perpetrators,” she added.
Top Israeli commander says IDF is ‘prepared’ to continue war on Hamas after cease-fire
Top Israeli commander says IDF is ‘prepared’ to continue war on Hamas after cease-fire
A top Israeli military official delivered an update on the conflict with Hamas and the progress in rescuing hostages in Gaza on Tuesday.
Chief of the General Staff, LTG Herzi Halevi says Hamas has so far released 76 hostages. Herzi said Israel will not be satisfied untill every hostage has returned home, however.
“Each one who is released brings great relief, but there is no ounce of relief in the fact that more remain. We will operate to bring them all back,” Herzi said.
“The IDF is prepared to continue fighting. We are using the days of the pause as part of the framework to learn, strengthen our readiness and approve future operational plans,” he added.
Israel’s cease-fire agreement with Hamas began Friday, and the groups agreed on a two-day extension on Monday. It is unclear whether Israel will agree to further extensions later this week.
Herzi went on to assure Israeli citizens that there will be thorough investigations into how the IDF and Israel’s intelligence community failed to prevent Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre.
NYC chancellor denies students who stormed halls demanding Jewish teacher’s ouster are ‘radical’
NYC chancellor denies students who stormed halls demanding Jewish teacher’s ouster are ‘radical’
New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks on Monday staunchly denied allegations that the approximately 400 students who swarmed the halls of Hillcrest High School last week demanding the ouster of a Jewish teacher who supports Israel had been in any way “radicalized.”
“This is a really good school with wonderful young people. And I’m so taken aback by this notion that these kids are terrorists … or radicalized. Even that kind of language is just terrible, and it’s irresponsible,” Banks said at a press conference, confirming that some students had been suspended or faced disciplinary action after the incident. Viral video showed students acting out after the teacher’s social media profile showed she attended an off-campus rally in support of Israel.
Citing privacy and confidentiality laws, Banks declined to say how many students were disciplined or provide more details but said he did not suspend all the hundreds in the hallway.
On November 20, a teacher at Hillcrest High School “was targeted based on her support for Israel expressed in a permissible way outside of school hours and her Jewish identity,” Banks said, outlining how the “safety of multiple of our staff and students were put at risk after approximately 400 students acted disruptively during class changing time, roving the school and calling for the removal of a Jewish educator.” Officials said the Jewish teacher was on a different floor at the time the crowd of students stormed the halls.
Israel has identified 300 Palestinian prisoners who it says are elligible to be released under the current cease-fire exchange agreement with Hamas. Roughly 80% of those prisoners are listed only as “detained,” meaning they have not faced formal charges, according to a report from CNN.
So far, Hamas has released 69 hostages from Gaza and Israel has in turn released 150 Palestinian prisoners. Of those prisoners, 98 were being detained without charges, according to CNN.
Israel says cease-fire terms violated by 3 detonations, gunfire; IDF soldiers injured
Israel accuses Hamas of breaching cease-fire following after explosions, gunfire in northern Gaza
Israeli Defense Forces accused Hamas violating the cease-fire agreement after a trio of explosions and an exchange of gunfire in northern Gaza on Tuesday.
The IDF says the three explosives were detonated in close proximity to Israeli troops, causing some light injuries. While Israel stated that the explosives violated the cease-fire, it did not indicate plans to withdraw from the deal as of early Tuesday morning.
“Over the last hour, three explosive devices were detonated adjacent to IDF troops in two different locations in the northern Gaza Strip, violating the framework of the operational pause. In one of the locations, terrorists also opened fire at the troops, who responded with fire,” the IDF said in a statement.
“A number of soldiers were lightly injured during the incidents,” the statement continued. “In both incidents, the troops were located in positions as per the framework of the operational pause.”
Hamas released a statement saying it remains committed to the terms of the cease-fire, and it in turn accused Israel of violations.
“As a result of a clear violation by the enemy of the truce agreement in the northern Gaza Strip today, field friction occurred and our mujahideen dealt with this violation. We are committed to the truce as long as the enemy has committed to it, and we call on the mediators to pressure the occupation to adhere to all the terms of the truce on the ground and in the air,” Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades wrote in a statement.
Large plumes of smoke could be seen rising over the Gaza skyline on Tuesday, but Israel says they are not the result of airstrikes or any other offensive action.
IDF spokesman Peter Lerner joined Fox News on Tuesday to discuss the issue. He said ISrael has yet to determine a cause for the pillars of smoke. Israel and Hamas are in the first day of their newly-extended cease-fire, with Hamas expected to release 10 additional Israeli hostages later in the day.
Hamas officials accused Israel of a “clear violation” of the cease-fire agreement, claiming an Israeli aristrike occurred.
Mother of Vermont shooting victim says son ‘may have to be in a wheelchair’
The mother of one of the three Palestinian students shot in Vermont over the weekend says her son has a bullet lodged in his spine and doctors overseeing his recovery aren’t sure if he will be able to walk again, according to a report.
Elizabeth Price, whose 20-year-old son Hisham Awartani attends Brown University, told ABC News, “I’m shaking. I’m hollow inside. I’m aching to be with my son” following the incident that happened Saturday night in Burlington.
“He’s lying immobilized in a bed, but he had very high spirits in the beginning. And I think now it’s beginning to sink into him the extent of — the enormity of — the challenge that faces him,” Price reportedly said. “He may have to be in a wheelchair. … I believe that he’ll be able to walk, but his life has been taken away from him as it is, and he’s gonna have to recreate this new life.”
“Justice to me means making sure that the man who shot my son is behind bars,” Price also told ABC News. “Justice to me is making sure that crimes like this don’t happen again. Justice to me is also about my son finding a way to rebuild his life.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday morning said that federal authorities are probing whether the shooting was a hate crime.
Israeli journalists are blasting tech billionaire Elon Musk’s visit to Israel this week as the X owner is facing accusations of antisemitism.
On Monday, Musk met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu, Israeli President Isaac Herzog as well as the families of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas. He also toured an Israeli kibbutz where civilians were murdered on Oct. 7 during terrorist attacks.
But his trip wasn’t welcomed by everyone in Israel, particularly members of the media.
“Blatant antisemite & publisher of antisemitism Elon Musk should be persona non grata in Israel,” Haaretz editor in chief Esther Solomon posted on X. “Instead, Netanyahu – plumbing new depths of amoral sycophancy – gifts him a PR visit to the kibbutzim devastated by Hamas. Profane, venal, bilious, both of them.”
“Hard to stomach welcoming someone who just days ago endorsed a virulently antisemitic trope, has dabbled for years in antisemitism and has turned this platform into a cesspool of hate. It’s quite frankly gross,” Times of Israel reporter Amy Spiro similarly wrote.
Israel-Hamas war: US looks to increase aid into Gaza through Egypt, includes warning for Israel
Israel-Hamas war: US looks to increase aid into Gaza through Egypt, includes warning for Israel
The United States will accelerate its humanitarian assistance into Gaza, including food, fuel and medical supplies, with the first of three relief flights beginning this week, Fox News has learned.
The U.S. military will be sending a series of items, which also include supplies to help Palestinians survive the upcoming winter conditions, to North Sinai and Egypt on Tuesday, according to senior administration officials. Additional plane loads of supplies and aid will then be sent in the coming days, the officials said.
Additional talks are in the works with the Israeli government on how to allow even more assistance to the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, many of whom have been displaced from their homes and face unsustainable living conditions in south and central Gaza, where about 80% of the Gaza Strip population now lives.
These supplies and fuel are not linked to the release of hostages, the officials said. As of Tuesday, Hamas has released at least 69 hostages, 51 of them Israeli, while Israel has released roughly 150 Palestinian prisoners.
Hamas is expected to release 10 more Israeli hostages Tuesday as the extended cease-fire between the two sides holds.
Fox News Foreign Correspondent Trey Yingst reported on the latest developments as the first day of the extended cease-fire began. Yingst said the majority of the hostages released so far have been women and children. Each of the hostages released on Monday still have fathers and husbands in Hamas custody.
Hamas transfers 10-month-old Israeli hostage, family to separate Palestinian terror group in Gaza
Hamas transfers 10-month-old Israeli hostage, family to separate Palestinian terror group in Gaza
Hamas transfered custody of a 10-month-old Israeli hostage and his family to another terrorist group in southern Gaza, Israeli Defense Forces said Tuesday.
The IDF’s Arabic spokesman Avichay Adraee announced the transfer late Monday night. The family consists of the infant, Kfir; his 4-year-old brother Ariel, and their parents. The IDF did not specify precisely which organization they have been transfered to.
“In Hamas prison, infants under one year old who have not seen the light of day for more than 50 days are detained. Hamas treats them as if they were spoils and sometimes hands them over to other terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip,” Adraee wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
“For example, the Bibas family, the two red-haired children “The Reds,” who were kidnapped from their home in Nir Oz by a member of the Hamas terrorist organization (pictured) and are being held in the Khan Yunis area by one of the Palestinian factions.”
Israel-Hamas war: U.S. Navy says Houthis fired 2 ballistic missiles toward Israel-linked ship
Israel-Hamas war: U.S. Navy says Houthis fired 2 ballistic missiles toward Israel-linked ship
U.S. intelligence officials told Fox News on Monday that the Iran-backed Houthis are the group that fired two ballistic missiles toward the USS Mason.
The assessment was done by the U.S. Navy. Officials believe that the Yemeni Houthis more likely wanted to target the MV Central Park, a vessel linked to Israel, based on the missiles’ trajectory.
One of the two missiles splashed in the ocean, five nautical miles from the MV Central Park and 10 nautical miles from the USS Mason.
Two U.S. officials told Fox News that the second missile exploded midair.
Fox News Digital’s Jennifer Griffin and Andrea Vacchiano contributed to this report.
Video shows Eitan Yahalomi and his mother BatSheva greeting each other.
The temporary cease-fire agreement includes the swap of hostages taken by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack against Israel for Palestinian prisoners held in the Jewish State.
More than 15,000 people have been killed in Gaza and Israel since Hamas launched its largest attack against Israel in decades on Oct. 7, leading to a military response from Israeli forces.
Thousands more have been wounded, and many others have been taken hostage by Hamas and raped, tortured and murdered.
California GOP Rep. David Valadao’s office vandalized by anti-Israel protestors
California GOP Rep. David Valadao’s office vandalized by anti-Israel protestors
A California congressman is the latest victim of antisemitism attacks happening across the country as Rep. David Valadao’s (R-Calif.) Hanford office was vandalized Monday morning, according to a post on X from Rep. Valadao.
Rep. Valadao posted a photo of his Hanford office Monday afternoon covered in “Murdered by Israel” posters and fake blood.
“This morning, my Hanford office was vandalized by anti-Israel protestors. I strongly support the right to peaceful protest, but violence and vandalism are never acceptable. In a democracy, harassment and intimidation is not how you make your voice heard,” Rep. Valadao posted.
Hamas has reportedly handed over a fifth group of hostages to the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to Egyptian officials, with the report coming after Israel reported the deaths of three soldiers captured during the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7.
The group of 10 hostages was turned over to the Red Cross in Gaza, with Israeli officials expecting them to arrive in the country shortly thereafter, according to The Wall Street Journal, quoting the unnamed Egyptian sources.
Video from southern Gaza on Tuesday showed trucks and vans driving through the streets that were believed to contain some of the hostages, according to Hebrew-language media reports, noted The Times of Israel. Some of the vehicles in the video, which the site said has not been independently confirmed, had multiple gunmen hanging from their sides.
The hostages’ release comes after Israel and Hamas agreed to extend the four-day cease in hostilities for two more days while more hostages are released.
The military Tuesday declared three soldiers as being dead, identifying them as Sgt. Shaked Dahan, 19; Staff Sgt. Tomer Yaakov Ahimas, 20; and Sgt. Kiril Brodski, 19, reported The Times of Israel. They were described as being “fallen soldiers held hostage by a terror group” who were earlier reported as being abducted during the Hamas raids.
The military’s chief rabbi declared their deaths based on various findings obtained by the IDF, but reportedly, only Ahimas and Brodski can be buried according to Jewish law.
Dahan’s mother, Sigalit Gal, said on Facebook on Tuesday that she is not going to observe the traditional seven-day Jewish mourning period until her son’s body is returned to her from Gaza.
“I did for you what I needed to as a mother. I managed to keep you safe and protect you in many situations,” she said. “You’ve been taken from me forever. They took you and didn’t bother to return you, not even your body.”
Meanwhile, The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club on Tuesday published the names of 30 people to be released from Israeli prisons as part of the ongoing hostage release deal, reports Israeli newspaper Haaretz. One of those is Marwat al-Azza, a journalist living in East Jerusalem, who was indicted Monday for statements made on social media including one that mocked an elderly woman abducted by Hamas on Oct. 7.
Al-Azza, a freelancer for NBC News, has been accused of incitement to terrorism and identifying with a terrorist organization.
The latest release of hostages taken by Hamas comes after the Israeli government accused the organization of breaking the cease-fire agreement Tuesday. Several members of the Israel Defense Forces were injured when three explosive devices and gunfire targeted forces in northern Gaza.
“Over the last hour, three explosive devices were detonated adjacent to IDF troops in two different locations in northern Gaza, violating the framework of the operational pause,” said the military, according to the Jewish News Syndicate.
Earlier Tuesday, Israel received a list of 10 hostages that were to be released, with the list being reviewed and the captives’ families being notified, according to the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, reported the Jewish News Syndicate.
So far, 50 Israeli women and children, plus one Israeli man, have been freed since the initial four-day cease-fire started on Friday morning, along with 17 Thais, one Filipino, and one American, a child.
Meanwhile, Israel has vowed to resume the war with the “full force” needed to destroy Hamas once the prisoner releases stop, and the Biden administration has told Israel it must avoid “significant further displacement” and mass casualties among Palestinian civilians if it resumes the offensive.
The administration has also insisted that Israel must operate with more precision in southern Gaza than it has used in its strikes in the north, according to U.S. officials.
The Hamas mantra is “from the river to the sea” to the Jews in Israel, but with Biden and the Democrat’s open border policies, how long before it comes to America? Many people on the terrorist watch list have already been apprehended at the border, and they suspect many more than that have escaped into the country. So, more than likely, it isn’t a matter of if it is a matter of when the mantra will be “from the Atlantic to the Pacific,” with terrorist attacks happening on a grander scale than what happened on 9-11
Biden and the Democrats seem to be so blinded by their Globalist Leftist ideology they don’t care or can’t see the danger.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
The Israeli military says 11 hostages have been released from Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip and returned to Israeli territory. Military officials said late Monday that the hostages were on Israeli soil and undergoing initial medical checks before being reunited with their families.
It is the fourth such release under a cease-fire deal with the Hamas military group. Israel is to free 33 Palestinian prisoners later Monday. The cease-fire had been set to expire early Tuesday. But Qatar, which has been mediating between the sides, said they agreed to extend the truce by two more days.
The war broke out Oct. 7 when Hamas militants burst across the border into Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 240 others captive. Israel declared war, and over 13,000 Palestinians have been killed in weeks of Israeli strikes, according to health authorities in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Israeli media said the hostages included two women and nine children. Two of the children are 3 years old.
The release of 11 Israeli hostages and 33 Palestinians under the original ceasefire agreement, which had been due to end Monday night, dominated the day’s flurry of truce activity. According to a Reuters report, the Israeli hostages released from Gaza on Monday include three French citizens, two Germans and six Argentinians. The news service cited a Qatari foreign ministry spokesman on social media platform X.
The White House said U.S. officials had hoped two American women would be among the latest group to be freed from Gaza, where it believes eight or nine U.S. citizens are being held.
Hamas said it had received a list of Palestinians to be released from Israeli jails. It said these included three female prisoners and 30 minors.
The Israel Defense Forces shared a video of a mosque, alleging that Hamas had been using the
facility to make and store weapons.
“Hamas used this mosque as a weapons storage facility and a laboratory for Hamas’ rockets. Finding dozens of mortars, warhead missiles, thermobaric weapons, RPGs and a tunnel shaft,” the IDF tweet about the facility declared.
The post included a video with English captions as someone walked into the mosque and showed footage of it.
“In the mosque’s basement, there is a weapon storage facility, a Hamas rocket manufacturing lab, and lots and lots of explosive devices as well as explosive materials,” the captions on the video read. “Hamas built entire walls to hide the lab” the captions continued, “we had to destroy them in order to expose the lab.”
Holy places, such as mosques, should not be used as fronts for terrorism.
Hamas used this mosque as a weapons storage facility and a laboratory for Hamas’ rockets. Finding dozens of mortars, warhead missiles, thermobaric weapons, RPGs and a tunnel shaft.
The Jewish state went to war last month after Hamas perpetrated atrocities in Israel, including murders, rapes, and kidnappings. Israel has approved a temporary ceasefire with Hamas that will involve the release of some of the hostages.
“The Government of Israel is obligated to return home all of the hostages,” the Israeli government noted in a statement. “Tonight, the Government has approved the outline of the first stage of achieving this goal, according to which at least 50 hostages – women and children – will be released over four days, during which a pause in the fighting will be held,” the statement added. “The release of every additional ten hostages will result in one additional day in the pause.”
“The Government of Israel, the IDF and the security services will continue the war in order to return home all of the hostages, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that there will be no new threat to the State of Israel from Gaza,” the statement concluded.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this evening, at the start of the Government meeting:
While this meeting is to discuss the return of our hostages, I would like to start with something that should be self-evident: We are at war – and will continue the war. pic.twitter.com/YaICV89yEU
Two journalists working for a Lebanon-based TV channel and a third person were killed by a rocket strike near Lebanon’s border with Israel on Tuesday, the Lebanese state news agency reported. The agency said the incident took place near the town of Tir Harfa, about a mile from the Israeli frontier. The strike came less than a day after Hezbollah hit Israeli Defense Forces’ military positions near the border, according to reports.
“According to Israeli Media, Hezbollah has launched upwards of 40 Rockets and 3 Attack Drones against IDF Positions in Northern Israel this morning causing Significant Damage to at least 1 Military Outpost along the Border, with this being seen as a Serious Escalation,” an open-source intelligence monitor posted Monday on X.
Israeli aircraft Tuesday struck three-armed terror cells in Lebanese territory close to the border, as well as a number of Hezbollah targets, the army said, according to Jewish News Syndicate. Sirens sounded in northern Israel on Tuesday morning due to a potential hostile aircraft intrusion from Lebanon, with the IDF later giving the all-clear.
Three anti-tank missile launches from Lebanon toward the area of Metula near the Israel-Lebanon border were identified by the IDF on Tuesday morning. No injuries were reported, and the IDF struck the source of the launches. Later on Tuesday morning, the IDF reported that terrorists fired mortar shells at a military post in northern Israel.
Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen TV, which the two killed reporters were working for, said Israel had carried out the attack and deliberately targeted the journalists. Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah broke out after Hezbollah’s Palestinian ally Hamas launched an attack on Israel on Oct. 7. The border violence has escalated, raising Western fears of a widening war in the Middle East that could draw in both the United States and Iran.
It is the worst violence at the border since Israel and Hezbollah fought a war in 2006 and has so far killed more than 70 Hezbollah fighters, 13 Lebanese civilians, seven Israeli troops and three Israeli civilians.
Newsmax writer Eric Mack and JNS.org contributed to this report.
The Hamas tunnel that the Israeli army revealed under Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital is one of many in the terrorist organization’s vast network, said Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an IDF spokesman.
“This is just one of the many, many long kilometers of tunnels that Hamas has invested in over the course of the last 16 years,” Lerner said on Newmax’s“National Report.”
Lerner said that in the very poor conditions in which the Palestinians live, the terror tunnels built by Hamas, which is the ruling authority there, are the “most expensive construction project ever to exist in the Gaza Strip, all at the expense of the people of Gaza.”
BREAKING:
The Israeli Army took control of the Rantisi children’s hospital in Gaza & found a secret tunnel leading 20 m below ground to a Hamas command & control center.
Weapons, baby bottles & motorcycles in the tunnel indicate hostages were held there pic.twitter.com/ArFWOqfkgl
After describing the details of the sophisticated tunnel, including that it is some 10 meters deep under ground, Lerner said “this is how they have built extensively their tools of death and terror throughout the Gaza Strip, and we have been finding it everywhere we proceed, everywhere we advance.”
Lerner also noted the reality that the Israeli army faces is that hospitals are “being used as a base of operations for terrorist activities.”
Lerner said the Israeli army found weapons and other military equipment in the tunnel, even though Hamas knew the IDF was on its way and almost assuredly tried to cover its tracks, leading the army to believe that as it presses its attack forward it will discover more evidence of weapons in other tunnels.
Lerner also said that while negotiations over the fate of the hostages are being handled on the diplomatic front, Israel remains steadfast.
EXPOSED: In the Shifa Hospital complex, IDF troops found a hidden booby-trapped vehicle containing a large number of weapons, including: · AK-47s · RPGs · sniper rifles · grenades · other explosives
“The army is very, very much focused on advancing our military activities in order to achieve our objectives of dismantling and destroying Hamas to make sure that they can never do this again,” he said.
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
Siblings Ido (left) and Yonatan (right) Lulu-Shamriz say they have not been able to find any peace since Hamas took their little brother hostage on Oct. 7. (Photo: Philip Reynolds/The Daily Signal)
Yonatan Lulu-Shamriz’s daughter was celebrating her 2nd birthday on Oct. 7 in Israel. Inside the safe room of their home one mile from the border of Gaza, Lulu-Shamriz’s little girl was delighted that she was allowed to eat her birthday cake with her fingers as her parents had not had time to grab forks as they fled into the safe room. The child was unaware of the Hamas terrorists outside, and her parents did everything they could to ensure it stayed that way.
“I told her that we were going to play a game,” Lulu-Shamriz said, “the whisper game, that if we whisper, we get the balloons after.”
For the 22 hours he, his 7-month pregnant wife, his daughter, and their two dogs were in the safe room, they tried to remain as silent as possible, and if his daughter started to sing or talk loudly, he reminded her of the game and the prize of balloons if she remained quiet. After being in the safe room for a few hours, Lulu-Shamriz, who is 33 and the oldest among three boys, received a text from his 26-year-old brother Alon Lulu-Shamriz telling the family he heard Hamas terrorists in his house.
“I wrote him that I love him, and he’s strong, and this is the last time we spoke,” Lulu-Shamriz told The Daily Signal during a recent interview.
Lulu-Shamriz’s youngest brother was taken hostage by Hamas during the attack in October. At first, the family thought he was among the 1,200 Israelis killed in the terrorist attack, but later, the Israel Defense Force confirmed that he was taken hostage.
Lulu-Shamriz and his brother Ido Lulu-Shamriz, 32, recently traveled from Israel to Washington, D.C., to share their story and advocate for their little brother and the release of about 240 hostages being held in Gaza.
The oldest Lulu-Shamriz said he and his family have not found any peace since his little brother was kidnapped, but instead said he feels “blame all the time.”
“You wear these clothes, you eat food, you go to bed, you brush your teeth in the morning, and you always ask yourself if Alon get the same conditions,” the oldest brother said. “When you put your blanket at night, you ask yourself, is Alon cold now?”
Alon Lulu-Shamriz was taken hostage by Hamas Oct. 7. Photo compliments of JDA Worldwide.
Ido Lulu-Shamriz, the middle brother, had a different experience on Oct. 7. The middle brother is part of the civilian emergency squad in his kibbutz near the Gaza border in Israel. Every kibbutz near the Gaza Strip has a civilian squad that can respond to threats until the Israel Defense Force arrives, Ido Lulu-Shamriz explained.
Around 6:30 a.m. on Oct. 7, Ido Lulu-Shamriz received a message from a squad member that someone had parachuted into his kibbutz with a gun. He then started to hear missiles go off and alarms sound and realized that “this is not just the missile attack.”
“This is something unique, something that never happened to us,” he said.
Ido Lulu-Shamriz and the members of his civilian emergency squad were instructed via a group WhatsApp message to go to the shelter in the kibbutz where their guns are stored. He reached the shelter and got his gun and he and the other squad members began to fight “dozens of terrorists around the shelter,” he recalled.
“Seven of my friends were killed,” Ido Lulu-Shamriz added. “Seven of them fought shoulder to shoulder with me, and the other seven guys survived.”
“At the beginning, we thought about attack,” he said, but “then you realize you need to defend because there are so many, they were everywhere. And then you realize it’s self-defense, you know, everyone needs to rescue himself before you’re going to be dead like your friends.”
Ido Lulu-Shamriz and his good friend retreated back to his house, but before they made it to safety, Ido Lulu-Shamriz saw that his neighbor’s door was open. His neighbors, a husband and wife, had two 10-month-old twins.
“When I saw the door open, I realized that they are not with us anymore,” he said, bluntly.
Ido Lulu-Shamriz entered the safe room in his home with his friend and initially believed that Hamas terrorists had killed the parents and their twin babies. Later, however, through the walls of the safe room, they heard the babies crying. “They didn’t stop for 12 hours,” the middle brother said.
He sent a message to Israel Defense Force soldiers alerting them to the twin babies, but “they didn’t reach them for 12 hours, 12 hours that I’m hearing those twins crying nonstop while their parents are dead between their beds.”
Reflecting on the events of Oct. 7, Ido Lulu-Shamriz added, “Nothing can prepare you for those moments, you know, for such a battle, such a sight to fight with your best friends that are now alive and a couple of minutes later, they are dead. It’s terrible. You can’t prepare for those moments in your life.”
When asked what message they have for President Joe Biden and America’s leaders, Yonatan Lulu-Shamriz, the eldest brother, said America needs to put “pressure on Qatar” because the nation has a “direct channel to Hamas” and Qatar could play a role in negotiating the release of the hostages.
Victoria Coates, vice president of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal that “Qatar does have leverage with Hamas.” But Coates noted that the hostage negotiations are complex and that there is no simple answer to moving negotiations forward. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of Heritage.)
Yonatan Lulu-Shamriz said he hopes U.S. citizens understand that what “happened in Israel on the seventh of October, it’s not aimed only for Jews, for Israelis, and Zionists.”
“They killed everyone,” he said, referring to Hamas. “They kill Thai people, they kill Americans, they killed Russian, and Europe is next. America is next.”
After Hamas massacred 1,400 men, women, and children in Israel last month, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that the terror group “and its allies” could inspire attacks on Americans “here on our own soil.” He also told the Senate that the FBI is conducting “multiple, ongoing investigations” into people affiliated with the U.S.-designated terrorist group.
What Wray didn’t say is that the FBI has been investigating Hamas’ biggest ally in America for the past 30 years — without seeking any charges. Launched in 1994 as a secret front organization to support Hamas, according to declassified FBI wiretap transcripts and FBI testimony, the Council on American-Islamic Relations has, in the decades since, become an accepted member of Washington’s lobbying community. The New York Times and other influential newspapers routinely describe CAIR as a “Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization.”
Although it has not repudiated its support for Hamas — which is committed to the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people — CAIR was enlisted by the Biden administration in May to take part in a White House initiative to fight antisemitism.
On Oct. 7, the day Hamas terrorists butchered 1,400 Jews, including 33 Americans — raping many and abducting some 240 others to Gaza from southern Israel — CAIR’s national executive director, Nihad Awad, delivered an anti-Israel message in Arabic which seemed to justify what Hamas did. Translated into English, it read: “All Arab peoples must go out on Sunday, Oct. 8 — and every day — in demonstrations in support of the Palestinians and in rejection of normalization with the occupier and the apartheid regime [Israel].”
On Saturday afternoon, CAIR helped rally more than 100,000 Muslims in D.C. to instead condemn Israel for supposedly carrying out “genocide” in Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 attacks. Multiple speakers called for the destruction of Israel — and, by implication, the Jewish people there — by demanding Palestinians take all the lands “from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea.”
Awad was front and center, delivering a fiery speech bashing Israel and President Biden for not calling on Israel to stop bombing Hamas targets inside Gaza, which he called “genocidal attacks.” He threatened to hurt Biden at the ballot box in 2024 if he does not urge a ceasefire.
“We have discovered the language that President Biden understands: ‘No ceasefire, no votes,’” Awad bellowed to the crowd, which erupted into a chant repeating his words. “No votes in Michigan, no votes anywhere if you do not call for a ceasefire now. He then led a chant: “Free, free Palestine!”
Also, Awad promised to provide legal support to Muslim Americans who protest in support of Palestine. “We are with you,” he said. “The people of Gaza rely on your voices and activism.”
Protesters later marched on the White House, where they defaced the white brick gate of the Executive Mansion with red paint symbolizing the blood of Gazans who have died from the Israeli army’s counterstrikes. Awad is on record declaring his support for Hamas. At Barry University in 1994, for example, he said: “I am in support of the Hamas movement.”
CAIR did not respond to requests for comment, but without addressing specifics, it has previously argued it “is not a ‘front group for Hamas.’” The White House declined to comment, while the FBI claimed charging CAIR or its executives was outside its authority. “The FBI is an investigative agency and we don’t make the decisions about filing charges or prosecuting a case,” FBI spokeswoman Susan McKee said. “Prosecutors make those decisions.” The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.
While CAIR is now a mainstay of American politics — headquartered just three blocks from the U.S. Capitol, with 35 offices across the country — its history reveals its close connections with terror groups such as Hamas, as detailed in the 2009 book this reporter co-authored with counterterrorism expert P. David Gaubatz, Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America.
The story began in the Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan in the 1960s, where Awad and a co-founder of CAIR, Omar Ahmad, were born. Both men eventually came to the United States for university studies. By 1992, Awad was a key member of the so-called Palestine Committee in America, which helped finance Hamas. According to a 1992 letter from the Gaza Strip, Hamas asked the Committee for money to buy “weapons, weapons, our brothers.” The letter continued: “The meaning of killing a Jew for the liberation of Palestine cannot be compared to any jihad on earth.”
Around the same time, the FBI was eavesdropping on several Hamas leaders in connection with terrorist activities, which produced tapes documenting the incarnation of CAIR in 1993. At a secret meeting that October, Omar Ahmad called to order the Hamas summit in Philly at a Courtyard by Marriott hotel in Philadelphia to discuss the formation of a new front organization to support their “movement” in America. Awad also attended the meeting.
According to court testimony by FBI agent Lara Burns, who runs a major counterterrorism program for the bureau, Ahmad, Awad, and the other leaders who gathered there hatched a scheme to disguise overseas payments to Hamas terrorists and their families as charity. FBI wiretaps also recorded them stating the need to deceive Americans about the true aims of their planned American front group as Hamas launched a campaign of terror attacks on Israel known as the “Intifada.”
They compared the deception to the “head fake” in basketball, where a shooter tricks an opponent guarding him into moving in a different direction. The group, according to the wiretap transcripts, envisioned an “alternative” organization whose pro-Palestinian stripes were “not very conspicuous.” Burns testified CAIR was what they had in mind. During the talks, they tried to mislead any authorities who might be listening in by referring to Hamas as “Samah” — Hamas spelled backward.
Ahmad would co-found CAIR in 1994, hiring Awad as executive director that same year. Both men have expressed hatred toward Israel and resentment toward their adopted country for helping fund and arm the Jewish nation.
Burns testified during the 2008 terrorism trial of a charitable front for Hamas known as the Holy Land Foundation. It was the largest terror funding case in U.S. history. As part of the court filings, the Justice Department included CAIR on a list of co-conspirators underwriting Hamas terrorism — though CAIR and its founders were never indicted in the case. The HLF, busted up as the main fundraising arm of Hamas in America, commingled funds, assets, and personnel with CAIR, according to tax records and court documents.
“CAIR has been identified by the government as a participant in an ongoing and ultimately unlawful conspiracy to support a designated terrorist organization [Hamas] — a conspiracy from which CAIR never withdrew,” said former Assistant U.S. Attorney James Jacks, who was the lead prosecutor in the case.
A federal judge agreed. “The government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR with Hamas,” then-U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis wrote in a July 2009 ruling.
A number of FBI counterterrorism agents were frustrated that CAIR’s national office and executives were never charged in the conspiracy, although the founder of CAIR’s Texas chapter was sentenced to prison. They said politics intervened. After 9/11, they said FBI headquarters viewed CAIR as a link to the Muslim community through which they might obtain tips about terror threats to the homeland. Brass even invited CAIR officials up to the executive suites located on the seventh floor of the Hoover building to discuss outreach policy.
“We said, ‘These are the bad guys, this is Hamas. What are you doing?’” former FBI Special Agent John Guandolo said, describing how he and other agents protested the special treatment afforded CAIR.
After CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF’s criminal scheme to funnel more than $12 million to Hamas terrorists, the FBI finally disengaged from the group. The agency stopped conducting formal outreach with CAIR’s national office until, it said, it could resolve issues with Awad and other worrisome leaders.
“Until we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas, the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner,” then-Assistant FBI Director Richard Powers said in a 2009 letter to the Senate.
But some investigators say the FBI should have shut down the group, not just the outreach program, issuing search warrants and conducting more intrusive surveillance, which they say would have allowed the government to run the Hamas front out of business.
“CAIR is the leading Hamas entity inside the United States, and the FBI has taken no action to prosecute them,” said Guandolo, who helped lead several major counterterrorism probes at the Washington field office after 9/11. He explained that “politically correct” FBI leadership is hesitant to go after a minority religious group and is overly sensitive to charges of “Islamophobia” often leveled by CAIR against its critics.
The FBI’s reluctance to roll up the Hamas front has pushed private investigators to take matters into their own hands. In 2008, a counterterrorism specialist led a team of investigators in a daring undercover operation of CAIR that included infiltrating its national headquarters located on New Jersey Avenue in Washington, D.C., near the Capitol building. Working as interns, the investigators, who posed as recent converts to Islam wearing traditional Muslim garb, secretly video-recorded conversations with CAIR officials. During the six-month operation, they also intercepted more than 12,000 pages of documents CAIR intended to shred as trash. The evidence, which was turned over to the FBI, is documented in Muslim Mafia, which also features an appendix with several key internal CAIR documents reprinted.
Among other things, the book revealed that CAIR employed violent Islamic terrorists, and then supported the terrorists behind the scenes even after they were convicted. It also uncovered an influence operation against members of key homeland security committees in Congress that included planting CAIR operatives in congressional offices. Internal CAIR documents laid out a plan to elect dozens of pro-Hamas Muslims to Congress. CAIR even started holding Muslim prayer sessions each Friday in the basement of the Capitol.
Muslim Mafia also traced the deeper roots of Hamas back to the secretive Muslim Brotherhood, the pro-jihad group founded in Egypt that built a sophisticated network of Islamic nonprofits inside the U.S. several decades ago. The book documented how Muslim Brotherhood leaders wrote a secret blueprint for “destroying [America] from within … so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” FBI investigators discovered the manifesto stashed in a sub-basement of a Brotherhood leader’s home in Annandale, Virginia, after raiding his residence as part of a terrorism probe.
Several alarmed Republican members of Congress held a press conference about the book’s findings, warning a Hamas terror front group was infiltrating Congress.
Besides exposing Hamas’ political arm in America, the book exposed the inner workings of the broader anti-Israel lobby, which includes several left-wing groups aligned with CAIR. This lobby is now revealing itself in the wake of Israel’s own 9/11.
“The seeds for 9/11 were planted in 1948,” according to a draft of a “Proposed Muslim Platform” found at CAIR’s headquarters. “A resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict needs to be based on recognizing and correcting the harm that was done to the Palestinians since 1948,” when the United Nations partitioned land for Israel.
Guandolo said Hamas proved just how dangerous it is on Oct. 7. He warned that the terrorist group has already penetrated American society, and CAIR is the tip of the spear.
“Currently, CAIR is directing efforts at the ground level across the United States with organizations known for violent extremism,” he added in a recent interview with RealClearInvestigations. “Again, the FBI is doing nothing to adhere to their oaths of office and protect the American people.”
This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations.
Investigative journalist Paul Sperry is a regular contributor to RealClearInvestigations and has written news or op-ed pieces for the New York Post, New York Times and Wall Street Journal. His books include ‘The Great American Bank Robbery’ (2011), and ‘Crude Politics: How Bush’s Oil Cronies Hijacked the War on Terrorism’ (2003).
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released video on Friday showing what it says is a stash of mortar bombs hidden in the vicinity of a kindergarten classroom. The short video shows a damaged kindergarten classroom and then pans into a small storage area, revealing a pile of mortar shells.
An IDF spokesman said the mortar shells and other weapons were recovered by soldiers in schools inside the Gaza Strip.
A photo of mortar shells next to a school classroom. (IDF)
Additionally, IDF troops also found numerous Hamas weapons hidden in the Al-Karmel elementary school, the IDF said. Those weapons are understood to consist of rocket-propelled grenades and other military equipment.
U.S. and Israeli officials have said the Hamas terrorist organization uses civilian infrastructure like schools, homes and hospitals as cover for its military activities.
The IDF also released an image of a stockpile of weaponry and ammunition it says were seized from the Al-Quds Hospital, located in the Tel al-Hawa area of Gaza City. The IDF says terrorists are using tunnels beneath hospitals to conduct its operations.
The IDF also released an image of a stockpile of weaponry and ammunitions it says were seized from the Al-Quds Hospital, located in the Tel al-Hawa area of Gaza City. (IDF)
The IDF also announced on Friday that it had captured a post in Gaza belonging to the Palestine Islamic Jihad, a Sunni Islamist militant group, where they seized many rockets and other weapons.
The IDF post was a major asset for weapon production used to attack Israeli civilians and train terrorist fighters, the IDF said. It was located next to a courthouse and a Turkish hospital, according to the Israeli military.
“IDF troops searched the post and removed two trucks full of weapons, including Badr-3 rocket parts (a surface-to-surface rocket), UAV parts, and intelligence materials belonging to the [Palestinian Islamic Jihad],” an IDF spokesperson said.
The Israel Defense Forces seized a large weapons cache from a post belonging to the terrorist group, the Palestine Islamic Jihad. (Israel Defense Forces)
IDF troops also found a training tank used by terrorists to train fighters on how to capture an Israeli tank, the IDF said.
“During the operation, an anti-tank missile was launched at the troops from an adjacent building. The troops directed a helicopter to strike the terrorist cell that launched the missile,” the military said. “Furthermore, a terrorist cell fired additional shots at the troops from an adjacent courthouse and was struck by an IDF tank.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP)
The seizures come as the Israeli military continues to target Hamas leadership in northern Gaza and has captured several of the terrorist group’s key bases in the region.
The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry claims more than 11,200 Gazans have been killed in the fighting, though they do not distinguish between Palestinian civilians and Hamas terrorists.
The war was sparked after Hamas launched a series of brutal terror attacks on Oct. 7.
Louis Casiano and Elizabeth Pritchett contributed to this report.
Michael Dorgan is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business.
You can send tips to michael.dorgan@fox.com and follow him on Twitter @M_Dorgan.
These days, you’re not allowed to criticize George Soros for any of his evil anti-humanitarian deeds, or you’re automatically labeled as anti-semitic because he is supposably of Jewish descent. Many of my good Jewish friends say he’s done more harm to the Jewish community than anyone in America. He’s donated millions of dollars that have funneled their way into anti-semitic leftist groups such as BLM, Defund Police, and prosecutors that ignore actual crime while targeting political adversaries (conservatives), Making all communities less safe. He’s also supported left-wing groups and politicians that push for open borders, allowing Fentanyl, murder, child labor, and human trafficking.
Maybe Elon Musk was right. He “hates humanity,” and that has nothing to do with his Jewish heritage.
Democrats have one huge, unavoidable problem. And his name is Joe Biden.
According to recent polls, GOP front-runner and former President Donald Trump would beat Biden if the 2024 election were held today. A Quinnipiac poll out Wednesday shows Biden with 46 percent and Trump with 48 percent among registered voters, still within the margin of error and too close to call. However, a new Fox News poll, also out Wednesday, shows that in a head-to-head, the former president would prevail with 50 percent to Biden’s 46 — a number Trump has never garnered in a Fox poll going back to October 2015.
Do these numbers and thin margins mean anything? Maybe not. We are still a year from the election. And if 2016 taught us anything, it’s that polls are traditionally garbage and are used far more often as tools to shape public opinion than to reflect it. But there are deeper and far more meaningful insights to mine from the survey, and they don’t spell good things for the Democrat Party.
For instance, it’s worth noting that not only does Biden appear to be losing generally to Trump, but the incumbent is losing his own dependable voters to his rival. Polls show Biden is hemorrhaging black, Hispanic, suburban, and young voters — all demographics that reliably vote Democrat. It could have something to do with how Biden has handled major crises he’s either caused or exacerbated. According to Quinnipiac, voters disapprove of his response to the Hamas attack and subsequent fallout (54 percent disapproval to 37 percent approval), his economy (59 to 37 percent), his foreign policy (61 to 34 percent), his border crisis (65 to 26 percent), and his response to the Russia-Ukraine war (49 to 47 percent).
The implications are simple. Voters are confronting a rare moment in U.S. history in which they can actually compare what it’s like to live under the leadership, or lack thereof, of the two major presidential candidates. Do they want Bidenomics or the affordable grocery and gas prices of the Trump era? Do they want war in the Middle East — or Eastern Europe or the South China Sea — or peace? Do they want an open border or national security? The Trump-Biden decision is an increasingly easy calculation for voters to make.
So, Democrats are stuck. And they did this to themselves, largely by closing off the possibility of a primary and instead committing to dragging Joe’s corpse across the finish line.
And yes, that really is the strategy. It’s not that Biden is a strong candidate by any measure, save for maybe his incumbency, but again, even that’s in doubt after his disastrous first term. He’s a demonstrably weak candidate, especially compared to Trump — another reality easily extrapolated from the polls.
On the Republican side — which, in contrast to Democrats, is still choosing to slog through primary election theatrics — the second-tier candidates are a notable governor and former governor, both beloved by their states and beyond. And Trump is still leading them by some 50 points. He’s got 48 points on Ron DeSantis and 51 on Nikki Haley. If prominent leftist governors such as Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer were to challenge Biden for the Democrat nomination, there’s no way he’d have that kind of lead.
This week there have been murmurs of a potential challenger — just maybe not who you would have expected. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was on Capitol Hill hobnobbing with Sen. Chuck Schumer on Wednesday and refused to answer reporters’ questions about whether he’ll run for president. This after he divulged last week that the parties did approach him last year. And you can see the twinkle in Democrats’ eyes at the thought of dumping weak, old Biden for his antithesis. Here’s Schumer flirting with The Rock on X after their meeting, posting cutesy little lyrics from one of the actor’s Disney roles.
But while Democrats might view The Rock as an exit strategy, they still have a monumental problem to overcome: Voters aren’t just fed up with Biden, they’re fed up with Democrat policies both foreign and domestic.
There’s no denying Democrats have become the party of mass illegal immigration. Every town is a border town, and even urbanites are done with the Democrat policies overrunning their cities with aliens who suck resources dry. Speaking of cities, left-wing policies have destroyed them, from Portland and Seattle to Washington, D.C. Democrats’ soft-on-crime policies have caused violence in these places to skyrocket, with carjackings up more than 100 percent since last year and violent crime up 40 percent in our nation’s capitol. In fact, just this week D.C.’s disaster of a mayor declared a state of emergency because youth violent crime has gotten so bad. Meanwhile, Democrats have also become the party of inflation, war, no-limits abortion, transing kids, weaponizing the federal government, terrorist sympathizing, and every other anti-America policy position you can imagine.
That takes a strong leader to overcome. Sure, The Rock does a magnificent job at the role he plays in every movie, but he’s not that leader. And besides, would today’s Democrat Party really vote for a candidate who’s a Joe Rogan bro and friends with Trump supporters?
So, Democrats are left to lie with sleepy Joe in the bed they made for themselves. It’s hard to feel sorry for them.
Kylee Griswold is the editorial director of The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religion, and the media. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.
The United Nations Security Council called for a days-long pause in fighting in Gaza on Thursday as Israeli forces continued to strike against Hamas leaders in Gaza City. Israeli forces took control of the Al-Shifa Hospital and are working to “destroy” Hamas in the region.
The Israeli military continues to target Hamas leadership in northern Gaza and has captured several the terrorist groups’ key bases in the region
There remain up to 238 Hamas hostages in Gaza, and 10 of them are believed to be Americans. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claims more than 11,200 Gazans have been killed in the fighting, though they do not distinguish between Palestinian civilians and Hamas terrorists.
After weeks of gridlock, the United Nations Security Council voted to call for a days-long humanitarian pause in fighting
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IDF soldiers recover body of Hamas hostage found near Al-Shifa Hospital
IDF soldiers recover body of Hamas hostage found near Al-Shifa Hospital
Israeli Defense Forces say they found the body of a hostage taken in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Thursday.
Israeli forces say they found Yehudit Weiss’ body in a building adjacent to the Al-Shifa Hospital, which Israel says Hamas had been using as a headquarters until early this week. The IDF did not offer any details about Weiss beyond her name, but noted that her family has been contacted.
Soldiers searching the building say they also found military equipment including Kalashnikov rifles and RPG’s inside.
Weiss was one of roughly 240 people taken hostage by Hamas duirng its Oct. 7 massacre in Israel. She is now among a small number of hostages confirmed to have been killed since Israel’s war on Hamas began.
Israeli troops discovered a hidden booby-trapped vehicle inside the complex of a Hamas-run hospital in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces said Thursday.
In a video posted to X, the IDF said the vehicle contained AK-47 rifles, grenades, RPGs, sniper rifles and other explosives.
“This is what Hamas is trying to hide from you,” an IDF spokesperson said in the footage.
Near the vehicle were weapons, ammunition and other items, including handcuffs and knives displayed on the ground, the IDF said.
“And where they’re hiding all this equipment is in the hospital,” the spokesperson said. “A place that’s supposed to be for humanitarian aid. They have all this evil hidden here.”
“This is where they choose to hide everything because they know the IDF won’t attack, the air force won’t attack here,” he added. “They use the hospital as human shields.”
Israel has long claimed tat Hamas has used hospitals and other sensitive locations as cover to conceal its military operations.
On Tuesday, John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, said that intelligence supports Israel’s claims about Hamas activities in hospitals.
“I can confirm for you that we have information that Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad use some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them, to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages,” Kirby told reporters on Air Force One.
IDF chief of staff says Israel close to ‘destroying’ Hamas’ military system in Gaza’s north
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi talks with troops Thursday in the Gaza Strip. (Israel Defense Forces)
The chief of staff for the Israel Defense Forces on Thursday credited his troops with moving closer to destroying Hamas’ “military system” amid its weeks-long campaign against the terror group.
Herzi Halevi visited soldiers on the ground inside the Gaza Strip, where he spoke of Israel’s response to Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israeli border communities.
“As the campaign move forwards, with what you have done here with these battalions, Division 36 and 252, we are quite close to destroying the (Hamas) military system that existed in the north of the Gaza Strip,” he said, according to a press release. “We will complete it, we still have some things to do, but we are getting closer.”
He said the IDF will continue its military operations and that “as much as it depends on us, area after area, we’re going to kill the commanders and kill the operatives and destroy the infrastructure.”
“You have done it excellently so far, take what you’ve learned so far – for almost three weeks, and do it even better,” Halevi added.
Israel has battered Gaza with continuous airstrikes in the weeks since the attack, resulting in thousands dead and an escalating humanitarian crisis.
It’s highly unlikely that Israeli military operations will eliminate the ideology of Hamas, White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby suggested Thursday.
Israel has pummeled the Gaza Strip for six weeks with airstrikes as Israeli leaders have vowed to eliminate the terror group.
“What we have learned through our own experiences … through military and other means, you can absolutely have a significant impact on [a] terrorist group’s ability to resource itself, to train fighters, to recruit fighters, to plan and to execute attacks,” Kirby said Thursday during a briefing.
He noted that Hamas leaders have repeatedly said they plan to attack Israel for the foreseeable future.
Military operations against a particular group, no matter how precise and targeted, cannot eliminate an idea, he said, citing the defeat of other terror groups in recent years.
“I mean, look at the shadow of itself that ISIS is right now, look at the shadow of itself that al Qaeda is right now. That doesn’t mean that the ideology also withers away and dies,” he said. “But you can absolutely have a practical, meaningful effect on a terrorist organization’s ability to conduct and execute its attacks.”
Fox News Digital’s Greg Norman contributed to this report.
Israel released video footage that purportedly shows part of a tunnel on the grounds of a hospital complex in Gaza.
The tunnel was near the Al-Shifa hospital, which Israel has said is used by Hamas to plan attacks and military operations.
On Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces released footage showing weapons and military equipment inside the hospital, which has shelter thousands of civilians amid Israeli shelling.
Israeli officials claim that the facility is being used as cover by Hamas terrorists and that the group has set up its main command center underneath the building.
“A few of the most interesting things that we found totally confirms, without any doubt, that Hamas systematically uses hospitals in their military operations, in violation of international law,” IDF Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said as he walked through an MRI building at the hospital.
Shelling ramps up at Israel-Lebanon border with Hezbollah, IDF trading missile strikes: report
Smoke rises from an Israeli airstrike, left, and artillery shelling, right, on the outskirts of Aita al-Shaab, a Lebanese border village with Israel in south Lebanon on Monday. Israeli troops and Hezbollah militants and their allies have been clashing along the border since the Israel-Hamas war started five weeks ago with a bloody incursion into southern Israel by Hezbollah ally Hamas. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
The Israel Defense Forces and Lebanon-based Hezbollah have ramped up shelling against each other as both sides continue to trade airstrikes.
Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, said it has struck eight targets so far in Israel on Thursday, including Israeli soldiers and a military barracks, “in support of our steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip,” according to Reuters.
In response, the IDF said it hit a site in Lebanon that has tried launching anti-tank missiles toward its territory and that artillery strikes have been directed at other locations, the news agency adds.
Israel’s counterattack has impacted several villages along Lebanon’s southern border, a source told Reuters. There were no reported injuries. Both sides have repeatedly traded airstrikes since Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israeli border communities.
Since Hamas launched its war on Israel, more than 70 Hezbollah fighters and 10 civilians have been killed in shelling in Lebanon, Reuters reports.
Fox News Digital’s Greg Norman contributed to this report.
Pro-Palestinian protesters block bridges in Boston, San Francisco during rush hour
Pro-Palestinian protesters block bridges in Boston, San Francisco during rush hour
Pro-Palestinian protesters blocked traffic on bridges in Boston and San Francisco during rush hour Thursday morning to call for a cease-fire in Gaza as Israel continues to target Hamas leadership more than a month after the militant group’s deadly incursion into Israel.
On the Boston University bridge, the group IfNotNow, which says it represents members of Boston’s Jewish community, chanted “Cease-fire now!” and demanded that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., support an immediate cease-fire and use her influence to stop the Israeli government’s military action in Gaza.
The protest slowed traffic to a trickle on the bridge, which connects Boston and Cambridge, as the group held signs that said, “Let Gaza Live,” and unfurled a banner across the roadway that read, “Jews say: Ceasefire now.”
“We care about Palestinian lives, we only want to hurt Hamas,” one protester on the bridge told NBC Boston, while another said, “There can’t be peace for Jews unless there is peace for Palestinians.”
Meanwhile, Pro-Palestinian protesters also shut down the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, where President Biden was courting world leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
Fox News’ Stephen Sorace contributed to this report
Republicans blast pro-Palestinian protests at DNC: ‘Nation’s capital is under siege’
I am on Capitol Hill right now and it’s on lockdown. No getting in or out of our offices. We have officers that were pepper sprayed by pro-Hamas protestors with a lot of people attempting to break into the Democratic HQ. Anyone else notice how violent the so-called “ceasefire”… pic.twitter.com/UbtMmLe7Ei
The Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C., saw fireworks on Wednesday night when pro-Palestinian protesters clashed with police in front of the DNC.
Republicans weighed in on the protests online, with Florida Rep. Kat Cammack posting a video of the protest while she was on Capitol Hill.
“I am on Capitol Hill right now and it’s on lockdown,” Cammack wrote. “No getting in or out of our offices.”
“We have officers that were pepper sprayed by pro-Hamas protestors with a lot of people attempting to break into the Democratic HQ,” she continued. “Anyone else notice how violent the so-called ‘ceasefire’ crowd is?”
Fox News’ Houston Keene contributed to this report
The Guardian removes Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ after TikTok unearths pro-terror screed
The Guardian removes Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ after TikTok unearths pro-terror screed
The Guardian removed Osama bin Laden’s infamous “Letter to America” this week as the words of the terrorist mastermind behind the attacks of September 11, 2001, went viral after being unearthed by social media users.
The left-wing outlet had the anti-American and antisemitic letter published on its website since 2002 and was the first Google search result when searching for the document. But the publication deleted bin Laden’s letter amid a sudden spike in traffic.
A spokesperson for The Guardian told Fox News Digital, “The transcript published on our website 20 years ago has been widely shared on social media without the full context. Therefore we have decided to take it down and direct readers to the news article that originally contextualized it instead.”
The Guardian declined additional comment.
The 9/11 attacks killed nearly 3,000 people, with many thousands more injured and suffering from long-term illnesses, after Islamic terrorists crashed four hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania; the latter was forced down by heroic passengers. In the letter to the American people translated in English, bin Laden justified al-Qaeda’s attacks against the U.S. because “you attacked us” and “you attacked us in Palestine.”
“Palestine, which has sunk under military occupation for more than 80 years. The British handed over Palestine, with your help and your support, to the Jews, who have occupied it for more than 50 years; years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion, destruction and devastation,” bin Laden alleged.
Suspect arrested in death of pro-Israel demonstrator Paul Kessler
Suspect arrested in death of pro-Israel demonstrator Paul Kessler
California police have arrested Loay Abdelfattah Alnaji, 50, in relation to the death of Jewish man Paul Kessler at an Israel protest last week.
Alnaji has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and has a bail set at $1,000,000. The arrest comes roughly a week after Kessler, 69, died in the hospital after striking his head on the concrete during an altercation with Alnaji.
Footage showed Kessler bleeding on the ground following the incident. Alnaji, a pro-Palestinian protester had allegedly manhandled Kessler and caused him to fall.
The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department stated last week that they had identified a 50-year-old suspect in the case, but they had not yet identified him nor made an arrest.
AOC leads two dozen Democrats calling for Israel cease-fire over ‘violations against children’
AOC leads two dozen Democrats calling for Israel cease-fire over ‘violations against children’
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is leading renewed calls for President Biden to support a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas over the “grave violations” being committed against children in the war.
“We write to you to express deep concern about the intensifying war in Gaza, particularly grave violations against children, and our fear that without an immediate cessation of hostilities and the establishment of a robust bilateral ceasefire, this war will lead to a further loss of civilian life and risk dragging the United States into dangerous and unwise conflict with armed groups across the Middle East,” the progressive lawmaker wrote.
She and 23 other progressives wrote to Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday, asking for details on the U.S. plan to de-escalate tension in the region.
They cited figures from both Israel and the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza about how many children have been killed or abducted since Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing hundreds of civilians.
Israel has responded by bombarding Gaza with rocket fire and a ground invasion.
“We reaffirm our unequivocal condemnation of the Hamas attacks on Israel that took place on October 7th, in which Hamas killed over 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, and captured over 200 hostages, who were subsequently taken to Gaza,” the Democrats wrote.
Massachusetts town flying Palestinian flag sparks backlash from residents, Jewish congregation
Massachusetts town flying Palestinian flag sparks backlash from residents, Jewish congregation
A local Jewish leader spoke out on “FOX & Friends” Thursday after his Massachusetts town approved a permit to allow a Palestinian flag to fly in town.
Marc Freedman, president of Congregation Ahavat Olam in North Andover, said the flag was now a “symbol of antisemitism” following the Oct. 7 attacks.
“It is a symbol to just eliminate the entire Jewish population,” he said.
Town officials approved a permit Monday allowing the Palestinian flag to be flown on the North Andover Town Common.
“I think they’re just a bunch of cowards. They took a legal initiative, a legal statement from council that said you need to follow specific guidelines and must raise this flag, when in their hearts, in their hearts, I know every single one of them did not want to raise their flag,” he said.
He said the council put personal concerns ahead of the town and added, “that’s not what leadership does.”
Fox News’ Hanna Panreck contributed to this report
IDF footage shows Hamas rockets stashed under child’s bed inside Gaza terrorist’s home
IDF footage shows Hamas rockets stashed under child’s bed inside Gaza terrorist’s home
Israeli Defense Forces released footage of troops searching the home of a Hamas terrorist in Gaza and uncovering a stash of rockets hidden under a young child’s bed on Thursday.
IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari says the rockets and other weapons found inside the home were destroyed soon afterward. Footage shows an Israeli soldier walking past a pink “baby girl” sign before revealing several rockets inside a compartment in the bed.
“Rockets were found inside a bed in the children’s bedroom inside the house of a Hamas terrorist during operational activity carried out by the troops of the 551st Brigade. The terrorist was a part of a Hamas terrorist cell in Beit Hanoun,” Hagari said in a statement.
“During the operational activity, the troops uncovered a significant amount of weapons including rockets, explosive devices, and dozens of kilos of explosives. The weapons were subsequently destroyed by the forces,” he added.
Rockets were found inside a bed in the children's bedroom inside the house of a Hamas terrorist during operational activity carried out by the troops of the 551st Brigade. The terrorist was a part of a Hamas terrorist cell in Beit Hanoun >> pic.twitter.com/25SneQfOkF
— דובר צה״ל דניאל הגרי – Daniel Hagari (@IDFSpokesperson) November 16, 2023
Information, photos about Hamas hostages found on laptop inside hospital: IDF
Information, photos about Hamas hostages found on laptop inside hospital: IDF
Israeli Defense Forces uncovered information about hostages taken by Hamas on a laptop found inside the Al-Shifa Hospital on Thursday.
Israel says the laptop had photos and videos taken of hostages after the Oct. 7th massacre in Israel. Israeli forces say evidence indicates Hamas was using Al-Shifa Hospital as a base of operations “within the last few days.”
“At the end of the day, this is just the tip of the iceberg,” Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told the BBC. “Hamas aren’t here because they saw we were coming. This is probably what they were forced to leave behind. Our assessment is that there’s much more.”
Fox News’ foreign correspondent Trey Yings and cameraman Yaniv Turgeman visited the hospital with Israeli special forces early Thursday.
Israel says Hamas took some 239 hostages on Oct. 7, though the U.S. has said there is no way to know how many of those are still alive.
Online personality and pro-Palestinian activist Lynette Adkins urged her over 175,000 TikTok followers on Tuesday to read the words of the terrorist mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks.
“I need everyone to stop what they’re doing right now and go read- It’s literally two pages. Go read ‘A Letter to America,” Adkins said the video. “And please come back here and just let me know what you think because I feel like I’m going through, like, an existential crisis right now and a lot of people are, so I just need someone else to be feeling this.”
Her video received roughly 800,000 views and over 80,000 likes on TikTok.
Fox News Foreign Correspondent Trey Yingst and cameraman Yaniv Turgeman went inside the Al-Shifa hospital with Israeli special forces on Thursday, sharing images of weapons found inside the complex.
Israeli forces say the weapons are evidence that Hamas had used the facility–and tunnel systems under it–as a base of operations.
Footage from Yingst and Turgeman’s visit showed rifles stashed behind an MRI machine as well as other supplies.
President Biden says he thinks Israel’s military operation in Gaza will stop when Hamas “no longer maintains the capacity to murder, abuse, and do horrific things to the Israelis.”
Speaking at a press conference after his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Biden called on the Israeli military to exercise caution as they pursue Hamas military targets near civilian infrastructure. He said the Israel Defense Forces has “an obligation to use as much caution as they can in going after their targets.”
However, he added, “Hamas said they plan to attack Israelis again and this is terrible dilemma.”
Biden and his administration have remained steadfast in support for Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas. U.S. officials have strongly condemned the Oct. 7 terror attacks on Israel, in which Hamas terrorists infiltrated the Jewish state and massacred as many as 1,200 people, taking some 240 back to Gaza as hostages. Other world leaders have condemned Israel’s military actions in Gaza, specifically attacks on hospitals and other civilian infrastructure, pointing to the staggering death toll figures released by the Hamas-led Gaza Health Ministry. Israel has said, and the White House confirmed, that Hamas uses Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in Gaza City, as a military base to store weapons and plan terrorist attacks.
The U.S. government has rejected calls for a cease-fire in the conflict, insisting that Israel has a right to defend itself. At the same time, the Biden administration has pressured Israel to allow short-term pauses in the fighting so humanitarian aid, including food and medical supplies, can be delivered to the Palestinians living in Gaza.
Fox News’ Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report
Israeli military gains ‘operational control’ over Gaza harbor used by Hamas
Israeli Defense Forces have gained “operational control” over the Harbor in Gaza city, previously a Hamas stronghold.
Israeli Defense Forces have gained “operational control” over the Harbor in Gaza city, previously a Hamas stronghold.
The IDF announced its successful oepration in the harbor on Thursday, saying Hamas had used the area to train maritime forces.
“The IDF has gained operational control over the Hamas-operated Gaza Harbor,” The IF wrote in a statement. “Disguised as a civilian area, the harbor was used by Hamas as a training facility for their naval commando forces to plan and execute terrorist attacks.”
“During the operation, conducted by soldiers of the 188th Armored Corps’ Brigade and Flotilla 13, numerous terrorist tunnel entrances and terrorist infrastructures were destroyed,” the statement continued.
Israel has conducted a relentless campaign against Hamas terrorists cells in Gaza City. The terrorist group has maintained a labyrinth of tunnels beneath the population center.
The IDF has gained operational control over the Hamas-operated Gaza Harbor.
Disguised as a civilian area, the harbor was used by Hamas as a training facility for their naval commando forces to plan and execute terrorist attacks.
Hamas has agreed to release dozens of hostages from Gaza under terms of a tentative deal that the Israeli government is now considering, the Washington Post reported Thursday.
While the exact terms of the deal remain unclear, it is believed to involve the release of some Palestinian prisoners held in Israel in addition to a multi-day pause in fighting in Gaza. The deal may already have been rejected, however.
Hamas terrorists took up to 240 hostages during their Oct. 7 massacre inside Israel. That number includes 10 Americans and many other foreign nationals who were in Israel.
UN rights chief calls for international investigation into alleged Israel-Hamas war crimes
UN rights chief calls for international investigation into alleged Israel-Hamas war crimes
UN human rights chief Volker Turk appeared to call for an international investigation into alleged war crimes commited by Israel in its war against Hamas on Thursday.
Turk made the comments after returning from a visit to the Middle East, though he was not allowed to access Israel or Gaza. The official condemned Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and argued that some in Israel have no qualms about killing civilians.
“Extremely serious allegations of multiple and profound breaches of international humanitarian law, whoever commits them, demand rigorous investigation and full accountability,” he said during a U.N. briefing in Geneva, going on to decry the “intensification of violence and severe discrimination agaisnt Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”
“It is apparent that on both sides, some view the killing of civilians as either acceptable or collateral, or a deliberate and useful weapon of war,” he continued.
Driver rams barrier at Israeli embassy in Tokyo, injures police officer
Driver rams barrier at Israeli embassy in Tokyo, injures police officer
Police in Tokyo arrested a lone driver who rammed his vehicle into a barrier outside the Israeli embassy on Thursday.
Israeli ambassador to Japan Gilad Cohen confirmed the incident in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Japanese police say they arrested the suspect, a 53-year-old man who was suspected to be a member of a “right-wing organization.”
A police officer outside the embassy received minor injuries in the incident.
“Shocked by the suspected vehicular ramming attack on a police officer on guard near the Israeli embassy in Tokyo. This matter is under investigation by the local police. I would like to express gratitude to the Japanese government and Tokyo Police for their commitment to ensuring our security. Wishing a speedy recovery to the injured police officer,” Cohen wrote on social media.
Top media outlet marred by string of retractions and apologies related to Israel-Hamas war
Top media outlet marred by recent string of retractions and apologies related to Israel-Hamas wa
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has been blemished with a string of apologies and retractions related to stories detailing developments in the Israel-Hamas war.
England’s premiere outlet, which celebrated its 100th anniversary last year, is the oldest and largest local and global broadcaster and has been heralded as an integral source of worldwide news.
But the broadcaster’s reputation has been questioned in recent weeks after a series of inaccurate news reports led critics and social media users to wonder why the BBC’s mistakes erred on behalf of Hamas and Palestinians.
On Tuesday, BBC News Channel aired a report that claimed Israeli forces had descended on Al Shifa hospital in Gaza and targeted “medical teams and Arab speakers” inside.
While reports did indicate the IDF had entered the hospital, no reports corroborated the claim that soldiers had targeted those inside.
The error led the BBC to issue an on-air apology, retraction and a written statement.
“As BBC News covered initial reports that Israeli forces had entered Gaza’s main hospital, we said that ‘medical teams and Arab speakers’ were being targeted. This was incorrect and misquoted a Reuters report,” the BBC said. “We should have said IDF forces included medical teams and Arabic speakers for this operation. We apologize for this error, which fell below our usual editorial standards.”
Fox News’ Nicholas Lanum contributed to this report
Chicago college professor justifies Hamas attack ‘after 75 years of Israeli white supremacy’
Chicago college professor justifies Hamas attack ‘after 75 years of Israeli white supremacy’
A Chicagoland sociology professor sent a mass email to her students and department colleagues attempting to rally support for Palestinians who she claims have faced “75 years of Israeli White supremacy.”
Brooke Johnson, an associate professor and sociology department coordinator at Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU), argued “As critical sociologists we are trained to analyze power and inequality in society” and that “this importantly comes with the responsibility to speak up when we witness harm, injustice, and violence,” stressing “What is currently happening in Palestine is one of those moments.”
“After 75 years of Israeli White supremacy, including displacement, human rights violations, and systemic violence, Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th which resulted in 1400 deaths and 240 hostages,” Johnson wrote in a Nov. 8 email obtained by Fox News Digital. “Israel is now collectively punishing Palestinians. The Palestinian death toll from Israeli airstrikes exceeds 10,000, and almost half of these are children. This number increases daily as airstrikes continue; water, food and medical aid are cut off; and demands for a humanitarian cease-fire increase.”
One student who received the email was left “really upset” by what Johnson wrote, calling the accusations she made against Israel including being guilty of “White supremacy” as “just not true.”
“I called my mom and I started crying,” the student, who did not wish to be identified, told Fox News Digital.
The student accused Johnson of “justifying” the Oct. 7 attack.
Fox News Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report
Police in the nation’s capital responded to the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters Wednesday evening as pro-Palestinian demonstrators grew violent while calling for an immediate cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war.
About 150 people were “illegally and violently protesting” near the DNC headquarters building in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C., according to U.S. Capitol Police.
Six Capitol police officers were injured during the clash on Wednesday evening, according to the agency. Their injuries stemmed from minor cuts, pepper spray burns and punches thrown by protesters who turned violent alongside peaceful protesters.
Videos on social media showed protesters shoving police officers and trying to hold on to metal barricades at the DNC headquarters while officers attempted to remove them.
Capitol police and the Metropolitan Police Department, who also responded to the protest, did not immediately confirm to Fox News Digital how many arrests were made at the event.
Protesters included members of “If Not Now” and “Jewish Voice for Peace.” Both organizations have organized other demonstrations in Washington D.C. since Hamas’ unprecedented Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Fox News Digital’s Sarah Rumpf-Whitten, Adam Sabes, Kelley Kramer and Michael Ruiz contributed to this report.
Israeli Air Force strikes home of Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’ Political Bureau: IDF
The Israel Defense Forces said Thursday its air force conducted a strike on the home of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Haniyeh, who is the head of Hamas’ Political Bureau, is accused of using his residence in Gaza as terrorist infrastructure and a meeting point for Hamas’ senior leaders to direct attacks on Israel.
It’s not clear if anyone was killed in the strike as Haniyeh lives in Qatar, according to the Times of Israel.
Overnight, IDF fighter jets struck the residence of Ismail Haniyeh, the Head of Hamas’ Political Bureau.
The residence was used as terrorist infrastructure and a meeting point for Hamas’ senior leaders to direct terrorist attacks against Israel. pic.twitter.com/kljYYN6O0U
Israeli soldiers and tanks rolled into al-Shifa Hospital, the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip and location of a major Hamas terrorist compound, according to Israel. The military is conducting a “precise and targeted operation” inside the hospitals, where hundreds of medical patients and personnel remain. Hamas has denied Israeli accusations it uses the hospital as a shield.
The Israeli military captured Hamas government buildings in Gaza and has fought its way to the gates of the region’s largest medical facility, Al-Shifa Hospital.
The Israel Defense Forces said troops killed Hamas terrorists and encountered explosive devices and terror cells during its “precise and targeted operation” at the al-Shifa Hospital.
There remain up to 238 Hamas hostages in Gaza, and 10 of them are believed to be Americans. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claims more than 11,200 Gazans have been killed in the fighting, though they do not distinguish between Palestinian civilians and Hamas terrorists.
Israel-Hamas war: IDF finds weapons inside al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released video early Wednesday showing weapons found inside the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
“IDF troops are continuing the precise and targeted operation against Hamas in the Shifa Hospital complex, in which the troops are conducting searches for Hamas terrorist infrastructure and assets,” the IDF said in a statement.
“As the soldiers entered the hospital complex, they engaged with a number of terrorists and killed them,” the statement added. “Following this, during searches in one of the departments of the hospital, the troops located a room with technological assets, along with military and combat equipment used by the Hamas terrorist organization.”
The footage shows Israeli officers sorting through the firearms, ammunition and weapons reportedly left by Hamas fighters.
The IDF says that “technological assets and extensive intelligence information” found in the hospital are being reviewed by authorities.
Biden allies condemn far-left calls for cease-fire in Israel-Hamas war
U.S. President Joe Biden departs the White House November 14, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
President Biden’s strong backing of Israel and his response to its war with terrorist organization Hamas speaks to the mainstream of the Democratic Party and the majority of Americans, according to supporters of the president, despite progressive Democrats publicly opposing the administration’s rejection of a cease-fire.
Multiple Biden allies told Fox News Digital that the administration’s stance against a cease-fire protects Americans and national security interests at home and abroad.
Nearly a dozen Biden allies defended the president’s policies in interviews with Fox News Digital after more than 400 government officials within the administration signed onto a letter opposing the president’s handling of the war, and demanding a cease-fire.
NYC Columbia University faculty and students protest suspension of 2 far-left groups
A protester holds a sign at a “All out for Gaza” protest at Columbia University in New York on November 15, 2023. (Photo by BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP via Getty Images)
Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters stood outside of Columbia University in New York City on Wednesday, holding signs while chanting and demanding the removal of Jewish people from Gaza, while others boycotted the suspension of two far-left student-led groups by the school’s administration.
The “emergency protest” was shared on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, by groups such as WOLPalestine (Within Our Lifetime) and CUNYPalestine, noting the event was scheduled for Nov. 15 at 2 p.m.
“All Out for Gaza at Columbia University,” the post read. “In solidarity with Columbia SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine) and JVP (Jewish Voices for Peace) who were recently unjustly suspended by the university administration.
NYU hit with lawsuit for fueling ‘virus of antisemitism,’ ‘abusing Jewish students with impunity’
A New York University (NYU) flag flies outside of the NYU business school on August 25, 2020. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
New York University was hit with a groundbreaking lawsuit, the first of what is expected to be a series against elite universities, for allegedly allowing antisemitism to fester on its campus and also “deliberately” seeking to “make the campus environment even more… frightening for Jewish students,” according to court documents.
“NYU is among the worst campuses for Jewish students, and NYU has long been aware of the festering Jewish hatred permeating the school,” the suit filed by Kasowitz Benson Torres, an influential firm based in New York City, said.
It alleged that NYU was aware of “ongoing and disgraceful acts of anti-Jewish bigotry,” and refused to act in violation of Jewish students’ Title VI civil rights and sought remedial measures and financial penalties. The suit made startling allegations, including that NYU’s administration’s actions, or lack thereof throughout the years, added fuel to antisemitism on campus.
The “Outnumbered” co-hosts reacted to the rise of antisemitism and Tuesday’s March for Israel rally, as the war between Hamas and Israel continues.
Fox News contributor Morgan Ortagus, who is Jewish, thanked the show for lending her support amid rampant antisemitism.
“I’m so grateful to this show, to all of you, to the producers. I’ve never cried on air,” Ortagus explained. “And a couple of weeks ago, just seeing the images and the rampant anti-Semitism, having a daughter, it has been so hard to talk about it. But I’m so appreciative of you guys for for giving us the voice, giving us the opportunity.”
“I never have felt unsafe in this country for my daughter the way I do now,” she continued, adding that she was appreciated for the 300,000 people who showed up to the March for Israel rally.
“Between October 7th and November 7th, there have been 832 anti-Semitic attacks,” co-host Kayleigh McEnany said. “Do the math, that means 28 per day. That means more than one every hour.”
Comedian Jon Lovitz blasts HBO’s John Oliver for shaming U.S. over alliance with Israel
Jon Lovitz arrives at the Mike Tyson Cares and We2Matter’s 100 Women Matter Celebrity Fundraiser Gala on August 17, 2023 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
Legendary comedian and actor Jon Lovitz blasted HBO host Jon Oliver this week after the British talk show host reprimanded the United States for supporting Israel and the “suffering” it has caused in Gaza following Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre.
Lovitz replied to a social media post from Oliver’s talk show with an X post noting how the U.S. would obviously support its “democratic ally” Israel over the radical terror group that killed 1400+ people in the country last month.
Pushing back against the British HBO host’s skepticism of America’s alliance with Israel, Lovitz declared, “God bless America. #IstandwithIsrael.”
Netanyahu’s wife writes Jill Biden a letter urging her to save ‘suffering’ Hamas child hostages
Former Israeli Prime Minister and Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara Netanyahu at an election-night event on November 1, 2022 in Jerusalem, Israel.
The wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has written a letter Wednesday to first lady Jill Biden, urging her to call for the “immediate release” of child hostages who are “suffering” in the captivity of Hamas terrorists.
Sara Netanyahu opened her plea by saying that “I’m writing to you not only as Bibi’s wife but first and foremost as a mother.”
“For over a month now, 32 children have been held kidnapped in Gaza, brutally torn from their parents and their homes,” Netanyahu said. “These children are surely suffering from untold trauma, not only by being kidnapped, but having witnessed the brutal murder of their parents and siblings on that horrific October 7th.”
Biden’s favorite columnist urges him to use Trump’s peace proposal for two-state solution
Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist and bestselling author Thomas L. Friedman on February 26, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Sean Zanni/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
New York Times opinion columnist Thomas Friedman, one of President Biden’s favorite writers, is urging him to follow in part former President Trump’s plan for a two-state solution in the Middle East.
After visiting Israel and the West Bank, Friedman came to the conclusion that America needed an active “vision for how the Gaza war must end” in a column published Tuesday.
“The Biden plan — are you sitting down? — could actually use as one of its starting points President Donald Trump’s proposal for a two-state solution,” Friedman wrote, “because [Benjamin] Netanyahu embraced that in 2020, when he had a different coalition. (Netanyahu and his ambassador in Washington practically wrote the Trump plan.)”
‘Will & Grace’ star Debra Messing blasted for speech at pro-Israel rally in DC
Debra Messing speaks during ‘March For Israel’ at the National Mall on November 14, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images)
Social media users criticized “Will & Grace” star Debra Messing after she gave a speech in defense of Israel during a pro-Israel rally in Washington, D.C., this week.
Users on both sides of the political spectrum slammed Messing for her impassioned speech condemning the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, with pro-Israel conservatives hitting her for voting for Biden, who has given aid to Israel’s enemies, as well as pro-Palestinian leftists accusing her of defending “genocide” in Gaza.
Messing, a Jewish person and Hollywood liberal, gave the speech in front of thousands at the “March for Israel” in D.C. on Tuesday. The Jewish Federations of North America organized the event to support Israel amid its war with Hamas and to call out terror and hatred being shown towards the Jewish community.
Bipartisan lawmakers push Biden to investigate Hamas’ cryptocurrency financing
From left: House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, President Biden and Rep. Ritchie Torres (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll, Ting Shen/Bloomberg, Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call)
Top House lawmakers are investigating the breadth and depth of the digital wealth owned by terror groups like Hamas just over a month after the Gaza-based organization’s surprise attack on Israel.
“Reports indicate that Hamas-linked digital wallets received about $41 million and Palestinian Islamic Jihad-linked digital wallets received about $93 million between August 2021 and June 2023. Yet, it remains unclear how much, if any, of the publicly identified digital assets are accessible to or remains in the possession of Hamas,” the lawmakers wrote to President Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
“According to reports, Hamas shut down its digital asset fundraising campaign in April 2023 citing the ability of government officials to identify and prosecute donors.”
The bipartisan letter is led by House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., Financial Services Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., Digital Asset subcommittee Chairman French Hill, R-Ark., and Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y.
“We request the White House and the Treasury to utilize the open blockchain ledger to assess the footprint of Hamas’ digital asset fundraising campaign. In doing this, Congress can better understand the United States’ available tools and capabilities to target bad actors on blockchain and support legitimate digital asset use and innovation,” Emmer told Fox News Digital.
A top United Nations humanitarian aid official is being ripped Wednesday by an Israeli ambassador after sharing an image on X showing him shaking hands with Iran’s foreign minister, who reportedly helped Hamas plan its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths posted that he held a meeting in Geneva with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian about the “devastating” situation unfolding in the Gaza Strip and the “critical” need to deliver aid to the area.
The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Amirabdollahian had taken part in at least two planning meetings in Lebanon with the terrorist groups Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad ahead of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which launched the Middle East war.
“Tell me @UNReliefChief, what role do you see Iran playing in such regard?” Israeli Ambassador to Geneva Elion Shahar wrote in response to Griffiths’ post. “What role do you see for the prime sponsors of a terrorist organization who murdered, raped, and tortured over 1,200 Israelis?”
“Did you ask him about the weapons Iran has transferred to Hamas through aid shipments, which were used to kill Israelis on October 7th?” she continued. “Did you ask him about the money Iran has transferred to Hamas, which pays for its leaders’ 5-star hotels in Qatar where they cheered when young Israelis were murdered on TV?”
“Iran is part of the problem, not the solution,” she concluded. “It is about time the U.N. starts to understand this simple truth.”
Fox News Digital’s Greg Norman contributed to this update.
Destroyer USS Thomas Hudner shot down a drone from Yemen in the Red Sea
BOSTON, MA – NOVEMBER 26: The USS Thomas Hudner, named after Concord’s Medal of Honor recipient Thomas Hudner, arrives in Boston for its commissioning ceremony later in the week on Nov. 26, 2018. (Photo by David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
The USS Thomas Hudner, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, shot down a drone from Yemen in the Red Sea, two U.S. defense officials confirm to Fox News.
A defense official said the drone was shot down in self-defense. “The drone was heading towards the Hudner,” the official said.
On Tuesday, during the Pentagon news briefing, Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin asked Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh about the lack of U.S. military response to the Houthis in Yemen who downed the $32 million MQ-9 drone over the Red Sea last week.
“Isn’t the lack of response by the US military inviting more actions, aggressive actions by the Houthis?” Griffin asked.
“I wouldn’t say that it’s inviting more aggressive or further response from the Houthis,” Singh replied. “We’ve seen the Houthis do this before.”
“I’m not saying that we’re not going to respond. We always reserve the right to respond at a time and place of our choosing. But I just don’t have anything to forecast for you right now,” she added.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited troops at the Zikim military base near north Gaza and said, “There is no place in Gaza that Israel will not reach.”
Netanyahu was briefed on the fighting that occurred on Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel and attacked residences and military posts in southern Israel. Hamas killed more than 1,200 people in the assault, mostly civilians, and took some 240 people hostage back to Gaza.
Standing next to soldiers at the base, Netanyahu said: “Do you remember when we were told that we would not break into Gaza? We broke through. We were told that we would not reach the outskirts of Gaza City – we arrived. We were told that we won’t enter Shifa – we entered.
“There is no hiding, no shelter, no refuge for the murderers of Hamas,” Netanyahu said. “We will arrive and eliminate Hamas and return our abductees – these are two sacred missions.”
Hundreds gathered Sunday at a Ventura County, California, intersection where a week earlier, a 69-year-old Jewish man struck his head on concrete and later died after a confrontation with an unnamed pro-Palestinian protester.
Flowers, wreaths, candles and letters surrounded the spot in front of the gas station at Westlake and Thousand Oaks Boulevards, where Paul Kessler sustained his fatal injuries.
One man held a sign that read, “We want justice for Paul,” per footage shared with Fox News Digital. Others bandied Israeli flags and sang “Oseh Shalom” — a Hebrew song praying for peace for the country, its people and the world.
Blood still marked the ground where Kessler’s head struck the sidewalk in widely-shared footage from around 3:30 p.m. on Nov. 5 showing medics attending to a bleeding but alert Kessler at the scene as police questioned onlookers.
Kessler was pronounced dead at nearby Los Robles Hospital about 10 hours after the incident. Per the Ventura County Medical Examiner during a press conference Tuesday, Kessler’s non-lethal injuries were noted on the left side of his face, while internal injuries included skull fractures, swelling and bruising to the brain.
Kessler’s manner of death was determined to be homicide, Medical Examiner Christopher Young said.
Fox News Digital’s Christina Coulter contributed to this update.
BBC News Channel has apologized for an inaccurate report that claimed Israeli forces were targeting “medical teams and Arab speakers” inside of Gaza’s main hospital.
On Tuesday, a BBC News program reported that Israeli forces were carrying out an operation against Hamas forces inside Al Shifa hospital.
The news anchor then claimed that the soldiers were targeting individuals, including hospital workers and Arab speakers, inside the hospital, which would constitute a war crime. The BBC News anchor cited Reuters as the source of their information. However, reporting from Reuters on Israeli troops entering the hospital contradicted the BBC.
“Israel said its troops uncovered unspecified weapons and “terror infrastructure” inside the hospital compound after killing fighters in a clash outside. Once inside, they said there had been no fighting and no friction with civilians, patients or staff,” an article from Reuters noted.
“Witnesses who spoke to Reuters from inside the compound on Wednesday described a situation that appeared calm, if tense, as the Israeli troops moved between buildings carrying out searches,” the outlet added.
One of the most influential news organizations in the world, BBC issued an on-air apology for its claims about the Al Shifa hospital the following morning.
“BBC News, as it covered initial reports that Israeli forces had entered Gaza’s main hospital, we said that medical teams and Arab speakers were being targeted,” the anchor said. “This is incorrect and misquoted a Reuters report which said IDF forces included medical teams and Arabic speakers for this operation. We apologize for this error, which fell below our usual editorial standards.”
The anchor also noted that the correct version of events was broadcast “minutes later.”
Fox News Digital’s Nikolas Lanum contributed to this update.
Pro-Palestinian protesters marched in Staten Island on Tuesday, chanting anti-Israel slogans and burning the Israeli flag.
“From the river, to the sea,” hundreds of people shouted, a phrase that appears in the founding charter of the terrorist group in Hamas and calls for the destruction of Israel.
Protesters were also filmed burning an Israeli flag.
Police arrested six people, including at least one minor, in connection to the pro-Palestinian rally in St. George, SILive.com reported.
The rally was organized by the pro-Palestinian group WIthin Our Lifetime and held outside of Borough Hall. NYPD officers forced the demonstration to relocate onto Richmond Terrace, disrupting traffic, the report said.
Protesters also criticized President Bident and the U.S. government’s support for Israel in th ewar against Hamas. People chanted, “Israel bombs, USA pays. How many kids have you killed today?”
“What other words can be used for this besides ethnic cleansing? Besides genocide? Words that these mainstream media outlets still refuse to use,” Nerdeen Kiswani, founder and chair of Within Our Lifetime, told SILive.com.
“There are Palestinian men, women and children, every day, on our screens begging people to look at the world and tell the world to stop this genocide. But they are not stopping it. In fact, countries like the one we live in, like the United States, are funding it,” she said.
Israeli forces continue operations inside al-Shifa Hospital, Hamas official says
Israeli soldier stands near boxes labelled “Medical Supplies” at the Al Shifa hospital complex, amid their ground operation against Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, during what they say is a delivery of humanitarian aid to the facility in Gaza City, November 15, 2023 in this handout image. Israeli Defence Forces/Handout via REUTERS
A senior official with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry told the Associated Press that Israeli forces are still operating inside al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical facility in the territory.
Speaking by phone from the hospital, Munir al-Boursh said Israeli soldiers ransacked the basement and other buildings, including those housing the emergency and surgery departments.
“They are still here … patients, women and children are terrified,” he said. He said doctors vowed to stay with their patients “till the end.”
The White House confirmed Tuesday that Hamas terrorists are using al-Shifa Hospital and the tunnels beneath it as a base for military operations and to hold hostages. The Israel Defense Forces said earlier Wednesday it is carrying out a “precise and targeted operation against Hamas” in a specific part of the hospital away from patients and medical staff. The IDF also said it delivered medical supplies.
Al-Boursh told the AP he spoke with an Israeli official by phone on Wednesday and asked him to join the forces searching the facility, but he refused.
The IDF says it recovered weapons from the basement of the hospital.
The mood in the nation’s capital ranged from somber to jubilant Tuesday, as tens of thousands of people rallied in support of Israel and the Jewish community.
“I feel like it’s my duty right now to be here, to be advocating for my people,” Tal told Fox News.
Demonstrators draped themselves in American and Israeli flags as they congregated at the National Mall for the “March for Israel.”
“We love America, and we’re so happy that America is standing behind Israel,” Elliot from New Jersey said. “It’s really great to all be here together, show support to each other and say thank you to the country.”
A coalition of Jewish organizations planned the march to show support for Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7 terror attacks in which Hamas killed around 1,200 people, primarily Israeli civilians. More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its counterattack, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.
“I came to stand with Israel during this really crazy time … and stand up for the hostages to come home, and for peace, once and for all,” Cillia from Michigan said.
Fox News Digital’s Hannah Ray Lambert and Jon Michael Raasch contributed to this update.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib is part of a secret social media group in which its members have glamorized Hamas in its war battle with Israel after the terror group attacked and killed hundreds of innocent Israeli civilians last month, Fox News Digital has found.
The Michigan Democrat is a member of the Palestinian American Congress group on Facebook. The group is hidden from non-members and does not appear on the platform’s search engine, though Fox News Digital was able to gain access to it.
The group’s founder, Maher Abdel-qader, who has extensive ties to Tlaib and has also been linked to other liberal politicians, has come under fire in the past for his antisemitic social media posts, including questioning if the Holocaust ever occurred.
The Palestinian American Congress group, of which Tlaib is a member, has featured pro-Hamas posts in the wake of the deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
On Oct. 12, one group member posted: “We don’t want to throw you in the sea…we want you to ride it back from where you came.” The message was accompanied by a picture of an elderly Israeli woman and a Hamas fighter holding her captive.
Fox News Digital’s Joe Schoffstall and Peter Hasson contributed to this update.
UN official condemns Israeli raid on Gaza hospital, insists Hamas not use it as a ‘shield’
UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief, Martin Griffiths speaks during an international humanitary conference for civilians in Gaza, at the Elysee Presidential Palace, in Paris, on November 9, 2023. (Photo by LUDOVIC MARIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
The United Nations’ top emergency relief official on Wednesday condemned the Israeli military operation in Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital and said Hamas must not use it as a ‘shield’ for their activities.
“Look, Hamas must not, should not, use a place like a hospital as a shield for their presence,” said Martin Griffiths in a video statement, adding that “hospitals should not become a place of – a war zone – of danger.”
Earlier on X, Griffiths said he was “appalled” by overnight reports of Israeli military operations inside the hospital.
The U.N. World Health Organization says Shifa patients have needs that are “well beyond basic care.” Images reportedly from the facility showed medics trying to keep newborns warm in blankets because power for incubators had failed.
“The babies have no incubators,” Griffiths said. “Some are dead already. We can’t move them out. It’s too dangerous.”
“I understand the Israelis’ concern for trying to find the leadership of Hamas, that’s not our problem,” he added. “Our problem is protecting the people of Gaza from what’s being visited upon them.”
Maryland middle school DEI teacher under investigation for Israel-Hamas comments
A Diversity, Equity and Inclusion teacher at a Maryland middle school is being investigated over social media posts suggesting Hamas terrorists’ attack on Israel was a hoax. (Google Maps)
A Diversity, Equity and Inclusion teacher at a Maryland middle school is being investigated over a social media posts suggesting the Hamas terrorists’ attack on Israel was a hoax and other posts about the war in the Middle East.
Sabrina Khan-Williams, a World Studies teacher and a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team leader at Tilden Middle School, made a series of posts doubting reports about Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack against Israel, according to Facebook screenshots obtained by The Daily Wire.
“Debunked!! No music festival attack. Babies were not burned. Women were not violated,” she wrote in one post.
More than 11,000 people have been killed in Gaza and Israel since Hamas launched its largest attack against Israel in decades on Oct. 7, prompting a military response from Israeli forces. Thousands more have been wounded, and many others have been taken hostage by Hamas and raped, tortured and murdered.
Kahn-Williams suggested in another post that Hamas did not start the war against Israel.
“Hamas did not start this. They were just the perfect vehicle for Zionists to continue its apartheid,” she wrote.
Fox News Digital’s Landon Mion contributed to this update.
Turkish President Erdogan labels Israel ‘terrorist state’
ANKARA, TURKIYE – NOVEMBER 15: Turkish President and the Leader of the Justice and Development (AK) Party Recep Tayyip Erdogan makes statements as he attends his party’s group meeting at the Turkish Grand National Assembly in Ankara, Turkiye on November 15, 2023. (Photo by Emin Sansar/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made incendiary anti-Israel comments on Wednesday, calling Israel a “terrorist state” intent on destroying Gaza and its residents.
In a speech to members of his own political party, Erdogan also vowed to bring Israeli political and military leaders before an international tribunal to be tried for war crimes.
“Israel is implementing a strategy of total destruction of a city and its people,” Erdogan said. “I say openly that Israel is a terrorist state.”
In the same speech, Erdogan referred to Hamas terrorists as “resistance fighters” trying to protect their land and people.
Turkey recently normalized relations with Israel but its war with Hamas in Gaza has again strained their ties. Israel recalled its diplomats from Turkey last month after Erdogan accused Israel of committing war crimes. Turkey later also recalled its ambassador from Israel.
Turkey has found itself at odds with its NATO allies, most of whom have backed Israel’s right to defend itself following the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7, while Turkey has echoed the stances of other Middle Eastern nations in questioning Israel and defending the Palestinians.
Fox News Digital’s Peter Aitken and the Associated Press contributed to this update.
Reports of a potential hostage deal between Israel and Hamas is evidence that the terror group is reeling from the IDF’s barrage of Gaza, a top adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told FOX News Tuesday.
Hamas and Israel are reportedly close to to a deal that would exchange as many as 70 women and children held hostage by Hamas in return for the release of female Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.
Mark Regev, who recently served as Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom and is now a senior adviser to Netanyahu, said one aspect of the deal should underline how evil Hamas truly is.
He cited a figure of 240 people estimated to be held by Hamas, including 32 children and infants.
“I always ask us to remember what sort of people kidnap babies and infants, what sort of people can kidnap a 9-month-old baby. They really are sick. They really are depraved. What more could one say about Hamas?” Regev said.
“But if they are moving towards releasing hostages, it’s not because they have suddenly become humanitarians. It’s because they’ve been on the receiving end of the IDF’s (Israeli Defense Force) military might. And they are feeling the pain, feeling the pressure.”
Regev said he is hopeful for a deal soon, while reiterating the IDF’s pressure campaign must continue in order to expedite the possibility of future prisoner releases by a potentially teetering Hamas.
Fox News Digital’s Charles Creitz contributed to this update.
IDF emphasizes hospital operation targets Hamas, not civilians
An aerial view shows the compound of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on November 7, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images)
The Israel Defense Forces emphasized Wednesday that its forces conducting a “precise and targeted operation” at the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza are targeting Hamas.
The White House confirmed Tuesday that Hamas terrorists are using Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa, and the tunnels beneath it as a base for military operations and to hold hostages. Both Hamas and hospital officials have denied the allegation.
“Israel is at war with Hamas, not with the civilians in Gaza,” said Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, a spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces. “The IDF has publicly warned time and again that Hamas’s continued military use of Shifa Hospital jeopardizes its protected status under international law.”
Hagari said Israeli forces in Gaza included medics and Arabic speakers to try and provide assistance in the “complex and sensitive environment.”
Israel continues to attack Hamas military targets in Gaza with a relentless campaign of airstrikes. Thousands of Palestinians have moved southward toward the Rafah border crossing into Egypt as the Israeli military has urged civilians to evacuate the warzone in the north.
Fox News Digital’s Brandon Gillespie and the Associated Press contributed to this update.
An Israeli practises using a newly acquired gun, at a weapons distribution point for people allowed to carry arms, at the Ayyelet HaShahar Kibbutz, in northern Israel, near the Lebanese border on October 12, 2023. (Photo by JALAA MAREY/AFP via Getty Images)
Israeli citizens are rushing to arm themselves in the wake of the deadly Oct. 7 terror attacks.
A news release from the Ministry of National Security said more than 236,000 new requests for gun permits have been filed since the attack – a figure equal to the number filed over 20 years, the ministry said.
Israelis feel uneased after Hamas terrorists caught the country off-guard, infiltrating through the south and slaughtering more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, at a music festival and in their homes.
Armed civilian security squads entered the breach in the army’s absence to fight off some of the attackers. Shortly after, Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir said he would expand and arm such squads with 10,000 assault rifles that would be distributed particularly in border towns, mixed Jewish-Arab cities and West Bank settlements.
Some 1,700 permits are being issued daily after the Ministry of National Security eased restrictions, the report said. By comparison, an average of 94 were issued daily in November 2022, and an average of 42 a year earlier.
Israeli soldiers killed in war against Hamas rises to 49: IDF
Israel Defense Forces said captains Omri Yosef David(left) and Yedidya Asher Lev(right) were killed in Gaza on Tuesday. (Israel Defense Forces)
The Israel Defense Forces announced two more soldiers were killed on Tuesday as Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists continues.
The fallen have been identified as Omri Yosef David, 27, and Yedidya Asher Lev, 26, and their families have been notified. Both David and Lev were captains, according to the IDF’s memorial page.
As of Wednesday morning, there here have been 49 IDF soldiers killed since ground operations began in Gaza.
On Wednesday, the IDF said its forces have entered Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital after surrounding the facility earlier.
The army said its forces were carrying out “a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area” at al-Shifa Hospital. It gave no further details but said it was taking steps to avoid harm to civilians.
In a statement, the Israeli military said it had warned “the relevant authorities in Gaza once again that all military activities within the hospital must cease within 12 hours. Unfortunately, it did not.”
Fox News’ Yonat Friling and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Israel ‘will not stop’ operations in Gaza until Hamas destroyed, hostages released: defense minister
ISRAEL – NOVEMBER 11: Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visits the 91st Division’s base in northern Israel, November 11, 2023. (Photo by Israeli Defense Minister/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said the Jewish state “will not stop its operations in Gaza” until Hamas is obliterated and hostages are back home with their families during a Wednesday meeting with U.S. Special Coordinator Brett McGurk.
The meeting between Gallant and McGurk, U.S. Special Coordinator for the Middle East, took place at the Ministry of Defense’s headquarters in Tel Aviv. The two discussed operational developments in Israel’s war against Hamas and the complexity of fighting the terrorist group given that it operates in civilian buildings.
Intelligence and additional details related to the hostages being held by Hamas and efforts to bring them home were also discussed.
The two leaders spoke on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and how to overcome the challenges in facilitating aid to the civilian population, as well as the international community’s role in getting more urgent supplies delivered to the area.
Gallant also expressed his appreciation for America’s ongoing support and deep partnership, and the two agreed to remain in close contact.
Medical supplies provided by Israeli forces arrive at Gaza hospital
Israel Defense Forces said medical supplies provided by the force have arrived at the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. (Israel Defense Forces/X)
The Israel Defense Forces said medical supplies, including baby food and incubators, have arrived at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza amid the targeted attack on Hamas terrorists inside the building.
“We can now confirm that incubators, baby food and medical supplies, provided by the IDF, have successfully reached the hospital,” the IDF wrote on X.
The supplies arrived Wednesday morning after Israeli soldiers began a “precise and targeted operation” against Hamas, which operates out of the hospital. The operation remains active, according to the IDF.
Arabic-speaking soldiers and the IDF’s medical team are reportedly at the hospital to ensure the supplies make it to those in need.
The Israeli army alleges the main command center for Hamas is hidden inside the hospital, in underground tunnels beneath the structures that house hundreds of patients and medical staff. Both Hamas and al-Shifa Hospital staff deny the allegations.
More than 11,200 Palestinians — two-thirds of them women and minors — have been killed since the war began, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths. About 2,700 people have been reported missing.
Israel Defense Forces said troops killed Hamas terrorists and encountered explosive devices and terror cells during its “precise and targeted operation” at the al-Shifa Hospital.
The area of the hospital where the operation is taking place was decided upon by intelligence indicating Hamas activity was coming from the area, the IDF said.
Before entering, troops discovered explosive devices and terrorist cells, which prompted an “engagement” that left Hamas terrorists dead, according to the IDF.
A Hamas training camp containing terror tunnel shafts, classrooms, intelligence material and dozens of weapons, including rockets and loaded RPGs, was located in the area on Tuesday by Israeli forces.
In addition, the IDF said it struck two terrorists with a UAV after it identified a terrorist cell exiting a building with an anti-tank missile launching post in the northern Gaza Strip. The terrorists were carrying suspected IEDs, which were planted in the area.
Israeli forces seized the Hamas terror organization’s military headquarters in Gaza this week. On Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces revealed new details about Hamas’ subterranean “pit” command center. Israeli soldiers were reportedly surprised by the level of sophistication of Hamas’ underground high command quarters, drawing comparisons to the IDF’s own “pit” beneath its Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv.
The Hamas subterranean headquarters includes a special shaft with an elevator that can reportedly reach a depth of 30 meters (nearly 100 ft.) and fit seven people inside. The elevator descends to a specially- designed tunnel that is air conditioned and outfitted with oxygen. In addition, the tunnel includes advanced communication equipment, suggesting that top Hamas officials hide in there, including Gaza’s Hamas chief Yahiya Sinwar and Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif.
The Israeli military doctrine has traditionally focused on deterrence rather than dismantling the Hamas terror organizations. However, following the unprecedented Hamas massacre on Oct. 7 that claimed the lives of 1,200 Israelis and foreigners, mostly civilians, Israel has vowed to dismantle Hamas from the Gaza Strip.
IDF Division 162 Commander Brig. Gen. Itzik Cohen stressed that the Israeli military is currently implementing the goal of eliminating Hamas’ military and governing capabilities in Gaza City.
“We created conditions which could lead to taking apart the military and governance capabilities of Hamas in Gaza City,” Cohen explained.
“Since the start of the invasion, the IDF and Division 162 have been taking apart the centers of gravity of Hamas and the capabilities that it spent years building. Since the start of the invasion, divisional forces have killed over 1,000 Hamas terrorists and reduced rocket fire from northern Gaza at Israel by around 80%,” the IDF general added.
Earlier this week, Israeli forces from the Golani Brigade seized Hamas’ parliament building in Gaza City, an important symbol of the Iranian-backed terror organization’s political power in the coastal enclave.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, a retired IDF general and former commando from the Shayetet 13 naval elite unit, recently said Hamas is unable to stop the Israeli advances throughout the Gaza Strip.
“Hamas isn’t capable of stopping the IDF. The IDF is advancing to every (necessary) location,” Gallant stated.
“The Hamas terrorist organization has lost control of Gaza, terrorists are fleeing south, civilians are looting Hamas bases, and they have no confidence in their government,” he assessed.
The Israeli army announced on Wednesday morning that it had launched “a precise and targeted operation against Hamas” in one part of the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The medical center has emerged as a hub for Hamas activities, including its command centers below the hospital.
“The IDF is conducting a ground operation in Gaza to defeat Hamas and rescue our hostages. Israel is at war with Hamas, not with the civilians in Gaza,” the Israeli military confirmed in an official statement.
Hamas has systematically used hospitals, mosques, kindergartens, schools and private homes for storing weapons and hiding terrorist operatives. The IDF recently revealed that the Rantisi Children’s Hospital, named after Hamas founder Abdel Aziz Rantisi, was being used for weapons storage and has likely been the location where Hamas has been hiding hostages for more than five weeks.
Over the weekend, Ayaan Hirsi Ali revealed in an essay at Unherd that she has become a Christian. For Christians, this is welcome and joyous news. But it’s also instructive. A former Muslim who very publicly rejected Islam and became an avowed atheist in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Ali has been speaking and writing in defense of Western civilization and liberal values for decades.
Now she has come to the conclusion that there is no way to maintain Western civilization and no way to preserve its liberal values apart from Christianity. Just as she came to discover the fundamentalist Islam of her youth was a dead end, she has also discovered the atheism she adopted in response to it is also a dead end.
Ali is right, of course, although the reasons she gives for her conversion might raise some eyebrows. “Part of the answer is global,” she writes. Ali says the West is under threat from three different but related forces: “the resurgence of great-power authoritarianism and expansionism in the forms of the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin’s Russia; the rise of global Islamism, which threatens to mobilise a vast population against the West; and the viral spread of woke ideology, which is eating into the moral fibre of the next generation.”
She’s also right about that but wrong to think Christianity is primarily about countering those forces or preserving a particular civilizational or political project. As great as Western civilization is, it arose as a byproduct of the Christian faith, the sole object of which is communion with Almighty God by means of salvation through Jesus Christ. Things like freedom of speech, rule of law, and human rights are fruits of the Christian faith, but they are not what Christianity is about.
Still, Ali’s conversion is instructive in an important way. As Hussein Aboubakr Mansour noted on X (formerly Twitter) over the weekend, Ali was “the poster child of what the New Atheists promised Islam.” There was a lot of discussion after 9/11 about how Islam needed its own Reformation to tame and secularize it, as Christianity had supposedly been tamed and pacified by the Protestant Reformation (never mind the century of continental war that it triggered). What the atheists promised Ali and other disillusioned Muslims was rationalism, freedom of inquiry and expression, and scientific objectivity — all of which would flourish in Muslim societies just as it had in the West, if only Muslims would set aside their backward religion and embrace the secular humanism of Western elites.
According to this theory, Christianity itself had served its purpose in the West, bestowed all its gifts, and could safely be discarded. We could live forever, drawing on its capital, which we assumed would never run out. The Islamic world needed to do likewise, and all would be well.
But something very different happened instead. It turns out, the capital was gradually spent and never replenished. Liberalism always depended for its vitality on something it cannot itself supply: the Christian faith, active and alive among the people. As the French philosopher Rémi Brague wrote back in the 1990s, “Faith produces its effects only so long as it remains faith and not calculation. We owe European civilization to people who believed in Christ, not to people who believed in Christianity.”
Ali’s conversion, which is laudable on its own (even if she doesn’t quite yet grasp the true object of her new faith), is a stark reminder that the liberal, secular West cannot survive without the Christian faith from which it emerged. Indeed, the secular elites who once promised apostate Muslims like Ali that they could have all the benefits of Christianity without Christianity itself are now abandoning the principles they once espoused.
In recent weeks, we have seen this abandonment most potently in the Red-Green alliance between the global left and the pro-Hamas crowd, who have been marching through the streets of Western cities in a show of force reminiscent of the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020. The naked antisemitism of the Hamas people, together with the deafening silence of the elites of the global left, tells you everything you need to know about the durability of secular humanism.
There is no room anymore for freedom of speech, open inquiry, or rational debate among the people and institutions that once espoused these ideals. There is only the brute force of the mob. It’s easy to see this at work throughout Western society, not just on the Israel-Hamas issue. What commitment do our elites really have to liberal totems like science and rationality, after all, when they insist that a man can become a woman, or that children can consent to castration and sterilization? When a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court insists she cannot define what a woman is because she is not a biologist, we’ve stepped firmly into what C.S. Lewis called the void, where nothing is objectively true and all that matters is will and power.
“Unless we offer something as meaningful, I fear the erosion of our civilisation will continue,” writes Ali. “And fortunately, there is no need to look for some new-age concoction of medication and mindfulness. Christianity has it all.”
Indeed it does, and it has given us all that is good in our civilization. Having first rejected the Christian faith, however, our secular elites are now rejecting all those other good things that sprang from it, and positing a very different sort of society. Instead of a society that embraces rationality and freedom and human rights, they offer something from the pagan past: a society that embraces power and violence and domination. If we’re honest with ourselves, we can already see, on the streets of London and New York and Paris, what that society will look like.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come, to be published in March 2024. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
“Piers Morgan Uncensored” host Piers Morgan repeatedly pressed UK member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn to label Hamas a terrorist organization during a heated exchange on Monday.
“Are Hamas a terror group? Yes or no?” Morgan asked Corbyn in a verbal battle that has since gone viral online. “I’ve asked you two questions: should Hamas stay in power and are they a terror group. You’re refusing to answer either of them. That is very telling. And you wonder why people believe you had a problem with Jewish people.”
“That is not very telling at all!” Corbyn yelled back. “What is very telling is your inability to keep quiet for 30 seconds to allow anyone to answer a question.”
“Piers Morgan Uncensored” host Piers Morgan repeatedly asked UK member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn if Hamas was a terror group in a heated exchange on his show Monday. (Getty Images)
“On my show, I ask people questions,” Morgan responded. “Normally they answer them.”
“No, you don’t, you shout at people,” Corbyn said back.
“Only when they don’t answer the question,” Morgan said.
At one point, Corbyn repeatedly asked Morgan “are you done?”
Commentators online weighed in on the verbal battle between Morgan and Corbyn.
Journalist Yashar Ali wrote that the exchange was “extraordinary.”
“A reminder that Corbyn took payments from Press TV in the past. Press TV is funded and controlled by the Islamic Republic,” Ali told followers.
Author Hen Mazzig took Morgan’s side in the verbal battle. “I totally understand why Piers is aggravated, imagine speaking to a politician who cannot condemn a group which beheaded and burned babies alive, and violated little girls. For shame.”
Piers Morgan asks Jeremy Corbyn 15 times whether the former Labour leader thinks Hamas is a terror group.
Morgan referenced previous accusations of antisemitism against Corbyn, which have plagued him and his Labour Party for years. A 2019 poll showed that a whopping 87 percent of Jewish people in Great Britain believed Corbyn was antisemitic, pointing to many incidents and remarks, many of them involving his staunch support for Palestinians and a perceived hostility toward Israel. Recent reports also showed Jewish members of the Labour Party repeatedly expressing concerns of what they saw as growing anti-Semitism within the party.
Corbyn was eventually suspended from the Labour Party from the party over charges of antisemitism. He also once referred to “friends” from Hamas coming to address Parliament.
Corbyn did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Fox News’ Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
For more Culture, Media, Education, Opinion, and channel coverage, visit foxnews.com/media.
Jeffrey Clark is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. He has previously served as a speechwriter for a cabinet secretary and as a Fulbright teacher in South Korea. Jeffrey graduated from the University of Iowa in 2019 with a degree in English and History.
Evidence showing how Hamas terrorists used Gaza’s Rantisi Hospital for Children as a terror base was revealed by the Israeli army on Monday.
“Hamas hides in hospitals. Today, we will expose this to the world,” IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Daniel Hagari said as he presented the evidence at a press conference.
Atypically, Hagari, himself was featured in the video footage, as he accompanied the Israeli Navy commando Shayetet 13, the unit he once commanded, on a raid deep inside the Gaza Strip, Hagari, at first, showed evidence of a weapons depot under the Rantisi Hospital that included suicide bombs, AK-47 rifles, grenades, RPGs and more.
BREAKING:
The Israeli Army took control of the Rantisi children’s hospital in Gaza & found a secret tunnel leading 20 m below ground to a Hamas command & control center.
Weapons, baby bottles & motorcycles in the tunnel indicate hostages were held there pic.twitter.com/ArFWOqfkgl
On Sunday, the IDF presented footage showing terrorists firing RPGs from the entrance of al-Quds Hospital.
“Hamas uses hospitals as an instrument of war,” Hagari confirmed while standing in front of the displayed weapons. He was standing in a room painted with trees and other children’s drawings above the weapons displayed on the floor.
Hagari then went to another room, showing motorcycles that were used by terrorists during the Oct. 7 massacre of Israel’s Gaza border communities, suggesting that the terrorists likely brought some of the Israeli hostages to Rantisi Hospital.
More evidence of this was found in the room next door, where a woman’s clothing lay on a chair with pieces of rope attached to it. Above the chair, a baby’s bottle was found and diapers lay on the floor nearby.
The IDF suspects that Israeli hostages, including small children and their mothers, were held in the complex and is analyzing the evidence to gain more clues as to the identity and the whereabouts of the hostages, Hagari said.
Army Radio later reported that a bloody knife found in the basement was also being analyzed.
This area of the hospital basement was closed off from the rest of the hospital and contained improvised sanitary installations, including toilets, showers and a kitchen, and had its own ventilation system.
Hagari also showed a list of guard shifts hanging on the wall of a room decorated like a living room, with the title “Al-Aqsa flood” (the Hamas name for the war) and began with Oct. 7.
“Our war is against Hamas, not against the people in Gaza. Especially not the sick, the women, or the children,” Hagari reiterated at the press conference. “Our war is against Hamas who uses them as human shields.”
Rantisi Hospital as well as other hospitals in northern Gaza were evacuated with the help of Israeli forces, Hagari added.
Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., told Newsmax on Monday that the recently opened investigation into alleged terrorist group contributions by American Muslims for Palestine, while also donating to Democrats, including members of the “Squad,” show just how “embedded” the left is with antisemitic organizations.
“I think what it really shows is how embedded on the left anti-Israel and antisemitic organizations have become,” Steil said on “Newsline.” “I’m incredibly concerned about the funding structure that Hamas has. This administration has not done enough to limit the funds that are going, in particular, from Iran into Hamas.
“We have legislation that we’re going to be working on to move forward this week, in particular, as it relates to that, but broadly speaking, I think it really shows how the radicalized left his really driven forward an agenda that’s anti-Israel. It’s not surprising to me that those individuals are funding Democratic members of Congress.”
Virginia Attorney General Jason S. Miyares’ office announced Oct. 31 that it was investigating the AJP Educational Foundation, Inc., which is also known as American Muslims for Palestine, for possibly violating Virginia’s charitable solicitation laws by asking for contributions without being registered with the state and using those contributions “for impermissible purpose” like funding terrorists.
The organization put out a statement denying the allegations and accused Miyares of “smearing” them and inciting hate.
“Instead of working to protect the people of Virginia from the wave of Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian hate sweeping across our nation, Jason Miyares is contributing to the hate with tired Islamophobic tropes and promises of a witch hunt straight from the McCarthy-era,” the organization’s statement read. “American Muslims for Palestine is a duly registered non-profit organization that has stood up for justice here and abroad for over a decade in compliance with the law.”
Newsmax reported that the organization donated money to all four Democratic Squad members: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.; Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., but Steil said he is more concerned about President Joe Biden’s administration not clamping down on overall terrorist funding.
“This administration needs to do far more than they currently are to limit the access to funds to Hamas and other terrorist organizations across the globe,” Steil said. “The fact that this administration allowed millions and billions of dollars to be transferred from South Korea to a bank account in Qatar shows you the lack of concern this administration has as it relates to funding for terrorists.”
“Hamas has been hit hard; it is taking blow after blow,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told reporters on Thursday night.
“Our soldiers are progressing and succeeding in their missions. I will repeat this again tonight — there will be no ceasefire without the return of hostages. We will take any action necessary for this,” said Gallant.
“Right now, there are [Israeli] children in Gaza. Some of them saw their own parents die in front of their eyes. Savages have kidnapped them and are holding them hostage. We will not stop fighting until we bring our children home. As a father, I wish to ask the whole world — what kind of father would stop searching for his children? I see these children as my own. I will not stop fighting, and I will not stop searching for them until I reach them,” added the defense minister.
Earlier Thursday, U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Israel had agreed to observe daily four-hour “humanitarian pauses” in its operation against Hamas terrorists in the northern Gaza Strip. Gallant noted that the Israel Defense Forces are currently operating “in the heart of Gaza City. They are on the outskirts of Shati; they are near the Shifa Hospital; they are very close to the Gaza port.
“The terrorists located in the basements of Shifa [Hospital] tonight, can hear the thundering sound of our tanks and bulldozers. They [terrorists] hear it underground; they hear it and tremble with fear,” said Gallant.
The minister revealed that the military has started employing new methods to reach Hamas terrorists located in attack tunnels, as well as to eliminate the subterranean passageways.
“This will continue and improve in the coming days,” Gallant said. “Our forces are working to find unique solutions for these missions, they are working and succeeding. I repeat: We will reach every person who has acted against the citizens of Israel — anyone who kidnapped and harmed women and children. We will get to them all, whether it takes a week, a month, a year, and if necessary, even years. We will not let anyone go. We will eliminate them [terrorists] all, they have no place under the sun.”
Gallant then pivoted to the north, where Hezbollah “tries to harm the citizens of Israel, it tries and takes blow after blow. Our forces in the northern arena are prepared, the pilots are sitting in the cockpits, ready for any command, prepared and facing the north.
“This is the most justified and righteous war that the people of Israel have experienced since the establishment of the state 75 years ago,” said Gallant. “We are fighting against evil; we are fighting against an enemy who is trying to harm us; we are fighting against those who wanted to show murder and brutality in order to deter us.”
The world is asking for a cease-fire. We had a cease-fire until the Palestinians slaughtered 1400 innocent Israeli citizens in a barbaric, unprovoked sneak attack.
All people, including Israel, have the right to defend themselves despite what the woke communist brainwashed left in America. How anyone can think this bloodbath of innocent men, women, and children is justified is mind-blowing to any reasonable human being.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
Tens of thousands of migrants are expected to flee south from Gaza City in the coming days as Israel continues its campaign against Hamas. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claims more than 10,300 Gazans have been killed in the fighting.
The Israeli military continues to tighten its grip on Gaza, working to root out Hamas terrorists in the maze of tunnels beneath Gaza city.
The U.S. says Israel has agreed to daily pauses in fighting to allow aid into Gaza, but both the U.S. and Israel oppose a cease-fire.
There remain roughly 240 Hamas hostages in Gaza, and 10 of them are believed to be Americans. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claims more than 10,300 Gazans have been killed in the fighting, though they do not distinguish between Palestinian civilians and Hamas terrorists.
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Netanyahu-addresses ‘pause’ in fighting in Israel-Hamas war
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News’ Bret Baier in a “Special Report” exclusive interview about the pauses in fighting planned to help civilians in Gaza.
When asked if he was surprised by by all the pushback happening across the world, Netanyahu did not hold back.
“Well, the river to the sea, from the river to the sea means there’s no Israel, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, which is a tiny area, by the way, that encompasses Israel. There is no Israel. And so what this congresswoman is calling for is Palestine and genocide, the elimination of the Jewish state, the one and only Jewish state of the Jewish people,” said Netanyahu. “That’s absurd. And I salute the Congress for censuring her. But it’s beyond that. I think the protest that you’re seeing, I’m sure it includes some naive people, but there are a lot of people who know exactly what they’re saying.”
FOX News Channel’s chief political anchor Bret Baier will present an exclusive interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Special Report (weekdays, 6 PM/ET) on Thursday, November 9th. The pre-taped interview will cover the latest on the Israel-Hamas war, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s relationship with President Biden, the potential of ceasefire and global pressure on Israel, among other topics.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained the reasoning behind sending troops into Gaza and calls for humanitarian pauses from other world leaders in an interview with Bret Baier.
“We don’t want to seek to govern Gaza. We don’t seek to occupy, but we seek to give it and us a better future in the entire Middle East. And that requires defeating Hamas. I’ve set goals. I didn’t set a timetable because, you know, it can take more time,” said Netanyahu.
When asked about the United States and how firm the push has been by President Biden and his administration for the humanitarian pauses, Netanyahu says he has not agreed with everything.
“Well, one thing we haven’t agreed to is a cease fire. A cease fire with Hamas means surrender to Hamas, surrender to terror and the victory of Iran’s axis of terror. So there won’t be a cease fire without the release of Israeli hostages,” said Netanyahu.
Netanyahu further addressed the pause pushed by the Biden administration to allow for hostages to safely exit Gaza.
“The fighting continues against the Hamas enemy, the Hamas terrorists, but in specific locations for a given period, a few hours here, a few hours there, we want to facilitate a safe passage of civilians away from the zone of fighting. And we’re doing that,” said Netanyahu.
FOX News Channel’s chief political anchor Bret Baier will present an exclusive interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Special Report (weekdays, 6 PM/ET) on Thursday, November 9th. The pre-taped interview will cover the latest on the Israel-Hamas war, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s relationship with President Biden, the potential of ceasefire and global pressure on Israel, among other topics.
Two Ivy League students have called out their colleges and are demanding them to stop accepting the hate speech they say is running rampant on their campuses.
“The past few weeks have been incredibly difficult. It started with, you know, the usual, the chants and the terrorist sympathies,” Talia Draw, a junior at Cornell University told Fox News.
Draw says those chants have now become death threats.
“Jewish students were truly afraid to go on campus. Students began using pepper spray to defend themselves, not being able to go to classes. People started doing classes from Zoom. I mean, it’s absurd that Jewish students right now feel like they can’t be part of the campus community,” said Draw.
Gabriel Diamond, a senior at Yale University echoed Draw’s concerns on college campuses across the U.S.
“Everywhere on campus, there are signs that say Israel is committing genocide and it says ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’, calling for the elimination of the Jewish state,” said Diamond. “Students are, in some cases, afraid to go to classes. And overall, there’s a really, really bad sense in the air that these campuses are not safe spaces.”
Draw added what’s even worse is that it’s not just students spear heading the hate — it’s also coming from professors.
“When you have professors using their captive audience, professors telling their students these biased narratives and shouting out all of these buzzwords without giving any of the context, they are indoctrinating their students,” says Draw. “Why are we having these professors in our Ivy League institutions? This is absurd. We are having anti-Semites in our classrooms indoctrinating our students. And not only that, we’re paying a fortune for it.”
Diamond and Draw say overall, it’s a tough time on campus, a hostile environment, and many students do not feel safe right now.
“It’s time that universities really step up to the challenge and that they take action, not just issue statements, because it’s long past time for doing that and that we restore our campuses to a sense of civility and decency,” said Diamond.
The Islamic Jihad released two hostage videos showing an elderly Israeli woman and a young boy both kidnaped and taken into Gaza on Oct. 7 where they’ve been held ever since.
Richard Hecht, the lieutenant colonel and a spokesman for the Israeli military said this is psychological terrorism.
“Hamas and Islamic Jihad are trying to basically bend the arm of Israel into getting a cease fire. But we understand that it will be incredibly difficult because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says they’re going to push forward with operations inside Gaza until they destroy Hamas leadership and get rid of all of the weapons inside the strip.”
On the West Bank, the Israelis were seen operating in the city of Jenin and claim they have killed ten militants in different cells that are currently fighting inside the West Bank.
When it comes to the hostages, there is some progress taking place in Doha as Qatari negotiators are meeting with the head of Mossad and also CIA director William Burns.
An official with knowledge of that visit says the talks have been progressing well toward a deal.
As the operations continue on the ground and the fighting inside Gaza escalates, Israel is facing other fronts, and that includes a drone attack and a ballistic missile attack today from Yemen.
The Israelis say the arrow defense system was able to intercept one of those missiles that was trying to target the southern city of Bin Laden.
In his recent briefing, Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel will not back down.
“We will not stop the fighting until we bring the hostages back. We will do what ever it takes,” said Gallant. “As a father I want to ask the world, “I see those kids as my kids, I will not stop the fighting and I will not stop looking for them until I find them,” Gallant emphasized.
Gallant added that the IDF started using new tactics for dealing with Hamas’ tunnels and said those efforts will improve in the coming days.
“We are fighting against evil, we are fighting against an enemy who tries to harm us. We want all Palestinian out of Gaza. This is important in order for us to have freedom of action, we do not want to harm them,” said Gallant.
Gallant said that Israel shares the same goal as America: to eliminate Hamas.
“This phenomenon should stop from exist here and anywhere else. As much as the pressure on Hamas increase, the better the chances we will succeed to release hostages and bring them back home,” said Gallant.
Turkey’s Erdogan, on Israel-Hamas war, says West is ‘too weak to even call for a cease-fire’
Turkey’s Erdogan, on Israel-Hamas war, says West is ‘too weak to even call for a cease-fire’
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is accusing the West Thursday of being “too weak to even call for a cease-fire” in the Israel-Hamas war, a report says.
Erdogan, who previously has called Israel a “war criminal” for its military actions against Hamas, made the comment during a meeting of the 10-member Economic Cooperation Organization in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, according to The Associated Press.
Erdogan said Western nations and organizations are observing these “massacres by Israel” from afar but are “too weak to even call for a cease-fire, let alone criticize child murderers.”
“If we, the Economic Cooperation Organization, as Muslims, are not going to raise our voices today… when will we raise our voices?” he added.
The Economic Cooperation Organization consists of Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Erdogan ripped the West on the same day the White House announced the Israeli military has agreed to honor four-hour daily pauses in fighting to allow humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the new Israeli policy began “today.”
Pentagon confirms four new attacks on US forces in Iraq, Syria following airstrike
Pentagon confirms four new attacks on US forces in Iraq, Syria following airstrike
The Pentagon say U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria have faced four attacks in the hours after the U.S. carried out a retaliatory airstrike on a weapons depot in Syria.
The four new incidents bring the total for attacks on U.S. forces since October 17 to 46, the U.S. military says. Three of the attacks occurred in Syria, with two involving rockets and another being a drone attack. The attack in Iraq used drones, the Pentagon says.
The U.S. reported three minor injuries in one of the Syria attacks, but the other three attacks caused no injuries and no damage to infrastructure. The three servicemembers injured have already returned to duty.
The U.S. sough to deter Iran from entering Israel’s war on Hamas, deploying considerable assets to the region. Critics argue the dozens of attacks indicate that the operation is failing, however.
Squad Dem says humanitarian pause in Gaza not enough: ‘Ethnic cleansing’ happening ‘before our eyes’
Squad Dem says humanitarian pause in Gaza not enough: ‘Ethnic cleansing’ happening ‘before our eyes’
Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., held a press conference demanding a cease-fire in Gaza on Thursday, saying “humanitarian pauses” are not enough.
Bush railed against Israel for allegedly commiting “ethnic cleansing” against Palestinians in Gaza.
“The idea that we get a break for 4 hours, a break so that we can have food–I saw someone spoke about it and they said, “thank you for giving us raisins for a few hours.” And then do we go back to bombing?” Bush said. “I never personally called for humanitarian pause, and I’m not going to call for a humanitarian pause, and I don’t want to see even though that is what’s happening. A four hour a day humanitarian pause because what we need is to stop the bombing. What we need is what does that what is that mental anguish when you know? Well, we get a break for 4 hours, but as soon as that 4 hours is over, then what? How dare we treat humans in that way?”
The White House says Israel agreed to a 4-hour daily pause in fighting to allow humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza on Thursday. Nevertheless, both Israel and the U.S. continue to dismiss the idea of a full cease-fire.
CNN’s Van Jones praises GOP for defending ‘Jewish kids’ on campuses, claims Dems in ‘disarray’
CNN’s Van Jones praises GOP for defending ‘Jewish kids’ on campuses, claims Dems in ‘disarray’
CNN’s Van Jones praised the Republican Party for sticking up for “Jewish kids” on college campuses amid the rash of antisemitism that cropped up after Hamas’ attack on Israel last month.
During his commentary on the third GOP presidential primary debate on Wednesday night, the CNN political contributor remarked that Republicans “forcefully” defended Jewish students while claiming that Democrats found themselves in “disarray” over the issue.
Jones made the comments after complimenting former South Carolina governor and 2024 presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s performance on the debate stage that evening.
He began, “I thought Nikki Haley gave a masterclass on foreign policy. I thought she gave a masterclass on abortion. If you just took those two clips, you could teach a course on political communication, conversation. She’s a force. She’s a force.”
He began, “I thought Nikki Haley gave a masterclass on foreign policy. I thought she gave a masterclass on abortion. If you just took those two clips, you could teach a course on political communication, conversation. She’s a force. She’s a force.”
The commentator noted that members of the GOP “came very, very forcefully, saying Jewish kids shouldn’t be scared to leave their dorm rooms in this country.”
“I thought that was an important development in the conversation overall,” he added.
House Republican campaign arm accuses Dems of fueling antisemitism: ‘Cause and Effect’
House Republican campaign arm accuses Dems of fueling antisemitism: ‘Cause and Effect’
The House Republican campaign arm is accusing Democrats of fueling “Jewish hate” and antisemitism in a new ad in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent protests in the U.S.
“Extreme House Democrats’ words promoted hate,” the new ad by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) says.
The video includes quotes from ‘Sqaud’ Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., in addition to top progressive Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., about the Israel conflict, which began after a brutal terrorist attack by Hamas early last month.
Those Democrats, and others, have been supportive of Palestinians and critical of Israel’s military response and have called for a ceasefire. The video shows Omar standing by remarks in which she accuses Israel of committing “acts of terror.”
Meanwhile, the video references a statement by Jayapal in which she said Israel is a “racist state.” She later issued a lengthy statement clarifying those remarks, saying she doesn’t believe “the idea of Israel as a nation is racist” but that the country’s “extreme right-wing government” has engaged in racist policies.
Separately it quotes Tlaib saying that progressives cannot back Israel’s “apartheid government.”
Gen Z House Democrat says he regrets not voting to condemn Hamas support on college campuses
Gen Z House Democrat says he regrets not voting to condemn Hamas support on college campuses
Freshman Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., admitted that he should not have voted against a resolution condemning support for Hamas on college and university campuses.
“After days of reflection, multiple conversations with my constituents and local leaders, and a difficult, but important listening session with students at UCF Hillel’s chapter — I have come to realize that I should have voted differently on H.Res. 798, to send a clear message that I stand against antisemitism,” Frost said in a statement earlier this week.
The resolution, a symbolic piece of legislation, criticized “the support of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist organizations at institutions of higher education, which may lead to the creation of a hostile environment for Jewish students, faculty and staff.”
It overwhelmingly passed in a bipartisan 396-to-23 vote last week. Only 22 Democrats, including Frost, and one Republican voted against it.
Frost said he was wary of “a few of the falsehoods” he said were in the Republican resolution and that he was hoping to be able to “vote on the Senate resolution condemning antisemitism, that passed unanimously, but didn’t include those falsehoods.”
“I truly worried that this would open the door for Republicans to infringe on the free speech of students and young people. Which is why I chose to support and co-sponsor the House version of that same Senate resolution,” Frost said.
Fox News’ Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report
Hamas adviser tells NY Times he hopes war with Israel is ‘permanent’
Hamas adviser tells NY Times he hopes war with Israel is ‘permanent’
The Hamas terror group told The New York Times that it hopes the war with Israel will “become permanent on all the borders” and the Oct. 7 massacre “succeeded in putting the Palestinian issue back on the table, and now no one in the region is experiencing calm.”
A Times report headlined, “Behind Hamas’s Bloody Gambit to Create a ‘Permanent’ State of War,” featured a subhead that “Hamas leaders say they waged their Oct. 7 attack on Israel because they believed the Palestinian cause was slipping away, and that only violence could revive it.”
The terror group achieved violence, killing at least 1,400 civilians including women, children and the elderly while kidnapping hundreds of civilian hostages. Israel has responded with force, and the Times reported that “carnage is not the regrettable outcome of a big miscalculation” but instead a “necessary cost of a great accomplishment — the shattering of the status quo and the opening of a new, more volatile chapter in their fight against Israel.”
The Times spoke with Khalil al-Hayya, a member of Hamas’s top leadership body, who told the paper that the terror group “succeeded in putting the Palestinian issue back on the table, and now no one in the region is experiencing calm.”
Actress Gal Gadot’s private screening of disturbing film detailing the crimes in Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attack in Israel caused brawls outside the venue on Wednesday.
Pro- and anti-Israel demonstrators clashed outside the screening, which was held at Los Angeles’ Museum of Tolerance. The audience at Gadot’s private screening included multiple Hollywood executives.
The film, which has been shared with the press in Israel and in New York City, is roughly 47 minutes long. It is a compilation of footage from security cameras, cellphones and Hamas’ own recordings showing the brutal atrocities committed on October 7.
White House: Israel expected to begin ‘4-hour pauses’ daily in northern Gaza
White House: Israel expected to begin ‘4-hour pauses’ daily in northern Gaza
The Israeli military has agreed to honor 4-hour daily pauses in fighting to allow humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza, the White house said Thursday.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby announced the move on Thursday. He said the new Israeli policy began “today.”
“We understand that Israel will begin to implement 4-hour pauses in areas of northern Gaza each day, with an announcement to be made three hours beforehand,” Kirby said. “There will be no military operations in these areas for the duration of these pauses.”
The agreement comes after the directors of both the CIA and Mossad met in Qatar for negotiations surrounding such pauses. CIA Director William Burns and Mossad Director David Barnea were in talks with the Qataris for multiple days, an official with knowledge of the visit told Fox News.
Pentagon confirms ‘multi-rocket attack’ on US forces near Baghdad embassy
Pentagon confirms ‘multi-rocket attack’ on US forces near Baghdad embassy
Pentagon officials confirmed that a “multi-rocket attack” targeted U.S. and coalition forces near the U.S. embassy complex in Baghdad, Iraq on Thursday.
Military officials say the attack occurred on Wednesday and no injuries or damage to infrastructure has been reported. It was the 42nd attack on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17.
Iran-backed terrorist groups have ramped up aggression toward U.S. forces in the region amid Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza. The U.S. has transfered considerable assets to the region in an effort to deter Iran and its terror proxies from joining the conflict.x new
Israeli brigade kills 50 Hamas terrorists in Gaza City operation: IDF
Israeli brigade kills 50 Hamas terrorists in Gaza City operation: IDF
Israeli Defense Forces say a brigade of Israeli soldiers killed 50 Hamas terrorists during an operation in the heart of Gaza City on Thursday.
IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari says the Israeli division has been operating in Gaza city for several days. The city is the both the heart of the Gaza Strip and a key command structure for Hamas.
“Division 162 has been operating in recent days in the center of Gaza City in the area of the security quarter of the Hamas organization,” Hagari said in a statement. “Givati Brigade combat team forces eliminated over 50 terrorists.”
In addition to the 50 terrorists, Israel says “intelligence documents were found and a number of significant tunnel shafts, factories for the production of anti-tank missiles, and anti-aircraft launchers were destroyed.”
The IDF says Gaza City played host to Hamas’ central intelligence headquarters as well as its air defense headquarters.
MI couple recounts fearful escape from Gaza during war outbreak
MI couple recounts fearful escape from Gaza during war outbreak
A Detroit-area couple trapped in Gaza like hundreds of other U.S. citizens described the roar of bombs and the fear of not making it home after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.
Unable to leave, Zakaria and Laila Alarayshi hunkered down.
“I was crying,” Zakaria Alarayshi, 62, told reporters Wednesday at the Arab American Civil Rights League offices in Dearborn, Michigan. “Everyone was scared. Bombs everywhere. When I go to sleep, we cannot sleep. Maybe I’ll sleep in a chair for 30 minutes a day.”
He feared the bombs eventually would find them.
“If I’m going to die, OK, I don’t care. Die, die,” he said.
The Alarayshis were among the U.S. residents who were able to evacuate from Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas militant group surprise attack on southern Israel and the subsequent Israeli bombing campaign and ground invasion.
Some 500 to 600 U.S. citizens had been trapped in Gaza since the start of the war, according to the White House. President Joe Biden said 74 Americans with dual citizenship were evacuated on Nov. 2.
Iran launched waves of cyber attacks against key Israeli companies after Oct. 7 massacre: Report
Iran launched waves of cyber attacks against key Israeli companies after Oct. 7 massacre: Report
Iranian hacking groups launched cyber attacks against key Israeli companies in the wake of the October 7 massacre by Hamas last month, according to a new report.
Hackers linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targeted Israeli companies with ties to transporation, logistics and technology, according to a Thursday report from the Messenger. The hacks have largely taken the form of site outages, but they have also attempted to wipe data from Israeli computers.
The hacking efforts have yet to yield any major successes for Iran, but it is yet another threat posted by the Middle East power.
The U.S. has sought to deter Iran and its proxy terrorist organizations from joining Israel’s war against Hamas, deploying an array of assets to the Eastern Mediterranean and Iraq and Syria.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rejected calls for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war on “The View” Wednesday, instead throwing her support behind “humanitarian pauses.”
“Remember, there was a ceasefire on Oct. 6 that Hamas broke by their barbaric assault on peaceful civilians and their kidnapping, their killing, their beheading, their terrible, inhumane savagery,” Clinton said.
“It did not hold because Hamas chose to break it,” she added.
“Hamas is a terrorist organization,” she said, adding that Hamas has “consistently broken cease-fires over a number of years.”
Also important, Clinton emphasized, was that “Israel should conduct itself by the laws of war and do everything it can to prevent and limit civilian casualties.”
Clinton also argued that a cease-fire would not uphold the laws of war.
“But a cease-fire done prematurely benefits those who do not abide by any laws, by any rules, by any human character value about the value of life,” she said.
Fox News’ Jeffrey Clark contributed to this report
Germany marks 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht with pledge to protect Jews amid antisemitism surge
Germany marks 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht with pledge to protect Jews amid antisemitism surge
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz marked the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht on Thursday, pledging to protect Jews against the current surge in antisemitism.
Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, was the anti-Jewish pogrom that preceeded the Holocaust in Germany. Scholz stated in a speech that the time to make good on the promise of “Never Again” is now, according to the Agence France-Presse.
“This is about keeping the promise given again and again in the decades since 1945,” Scholz said.
He then went on to address the rising antisemitism in Germany and the world, saying “It outrages and shames me deeply.”
The U.S. military says it destroyed an Iran-linked weapons depot with an airstrike in Syria on Thursday.
The Pentagon says Iran-backed terrorist organizations in the region had used the depot to carry out attacks on U.S. bases in Syria. Since October 17th, U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria have been attacked 42 times.
Houthi rebels in Yemen shot down a U.S. MQ-9 reaper drone in Yemen on Wednesday, the Pentagon says.
The U.S. military has carried out multiple airstrikes in Syria in retaliation against drone attacks on U.S. bases as well as attacks on Israel. The drone is believed to have been on an intelligence-gathering mission when it was shot down.
US reaper drone shot down near coast of Yemen
Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have harried Israel’s war against Hamas alongside Hezbollah.
The U.S. has warned Iran and its proxy terrorist groups not to intervene in the conflict.
Israel says it has no plans to ‘reoccupy’ Gaza after Hamas war
Israel says it has no plans to ‘reoccupy’ Gaza after Hamas war
Israel says it does not plan to “reoccupy” Gaza nor control it for long following the end of its war against Hamas.
A senior Israeli official made the comments to reporters on Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“We assess that our current operations are effective and successful, and we’ll continue to push,” the Israeli official said. “It’s not unlimited or forever.”
“It’s not Israel’s intention to reoccupy Gaza or control it for a long time. The idea behind Israel going in militarily is to destroy Hamas’ ability to threaten us,” the official added. “We understand that will take time and that, even if we complete this phase of our military operation, we’ll still have to take some action against their remaining military infrastructure.”
The statement comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised eyebrows earlier thiis week by stating that Israel would control Gaza’s security for an “indefinite period” following the war.
President Biden had previously warned that a full reoccupation of Gaza would be a “mistake.”
The Israel Defense Forces said Thursday soldiers found a Hamas-operated weapons production and storage facility inside a residential building next to a child’s bedroom.
The facility was used to produce and store unmanned aerial vehicles and weapons, the IDF said, and was located inside a residential building near schools in the center of the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in northern Gaza.
Explosives and operational plans were found right next to a bedroom that belonged to children, according to the force.
Fox News Digital’s Yael Rotem-Kuriel contributed to this report.
Head of Hamas’ anti-tank missile unit killed in Israeli fighter jet strike: IDF
Head of Hamas’ anti-tank missile unit killed in Israeli fighter jet strike: IDF
Ibrahim Abu-Maghsib, the head of Hamas’ anti-tank missile unit in the Central Camps Brigade, was killed in a fighter jet strike Thursday, Israeli officials announced.
The terrorist is accused of directing and carrying out “many anti-tank attacks” against Israeli citizens and military members, the Israel Defense Forces said.
Intelligence with the IDF and the Israel Securities Authority determined Abu-Maghsib was killed in the strike.
The Israeli Navy also struck Hamas anti-tank missile launching posts used to attack IDF troops operating in the Gaza Strip as part of the assistance offered to forces on the ground.
Supporters of Palestinians demonstrate near the Israeli Consulate on May 18, 2021, in Houston. Hundreds of protesters chanted slogans of “Free, free Palestine. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” (Photo: Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle/Getty Images)
Left-wing American Jews feel betrayed by the Left.
It’s the Left that remains anti-Israel even after the greatest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and even though most Palestinians and their supporters explicitly call for the destruction of the Jewish state: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Progressive American Jews are shocked by their fellow progressives. But the only thing that is shocking is their shock. Here’s why:
The Left has been calling for an economic boycott of Israel for decades and has labeled Israel an “apartheid” state.
The Left labels America, the most tolerant, multiethnic society in history, “systemically racist.”
The Left called for “defunding the police,” supports attorneys general who abolish bail for violent criminals, and praised demonstrations against America—including many that included vandalism and violence—for more than half a year.
The Left supports all-black dorms and all-black graduations on college campuses. The Left has almost destroyed every liberal ideal regarding race. The University of California, among many other left-wing institutions, has labeled “racist” the liberal ideal of being colorblind, and labeled “racist” the beautiful anti-racist sentiment “There is only one race, the human race.”
The Left—specifically, schools of education and teachers unions—has ruined elementary schools and high schools. And it has destroyed universities as institutions that allow open dialogue.
The Left affirms the lie that men can become women and women can become men, and it
works to crush the life and career of anyone who denies that people can become the other sex. The Left supports the demise of women’s sports by fighting to allow any man who says he is a woman to compete in women’s sports. The Left supports putting children who say they are the other sex on hormone-blocking drugs and supports allowing girls under the age of 21 (and sometimes under 18) who say they are boys to have their breasts surgically removed.
The Left has been waging the most successful war against free speech in American history. As a result, almost half of America’s young people say they believe in free speech but not for “hate speech,” which, of course, means they do not believe in free speech.
The Left asserts that the human fetus at any stage of development is, literally, worthless, certainly worth less than a dog, if the woman carrying it wants an abortion.
The Left has essentially destroyed mainstream journalism. Mainstream media no longer hold truth as an ideal. They promoted the lie for nearly two years that Russia colluded with the Trump presidential campaign in 2016. (Many still do.) They continue to promote the lie that having to present an ID when voting is “racist.”
The Left has poisoned American medicine. The American Medical Association has announced that birth certificates should no longer list the sex of a child. Medical boards threaten to suspend or even revoke the medical licenses of physicians who question the efficacy of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine or prescribe hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin to patients in the early stages of COVID-19.
The Left has enthusiastically supported the America-hating and Israel-hating Black Lives Matter organization and the flag-defaming athletes who refused to stand for the national anthem.
The Left has promulgated the racist doctrine in most American schools and businesses that all whites are racist.
The Left teaches schoolchildren that they should be ashamed of their past and that their future is awful (due to carbon emissions), and that capitalism is bad and socialism good.
The Left, in short, hates the West, the most decent civilization ever created, and hates America, the most decent country ever created.
The Left, for decades, has declared Zionism racist—meaning that Israel’s existence is inherently immoral—and has charged Israel with “genocide” against the Palestinians.
Yet, now Jews on the Left are simply shocked that the people who hold all these contemptible positions either morally equate Hamas with Israel or actually support those who chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which is in fact a call to genocide. Specifically, genocide of the Jews.
Unlike the liberal Jew, the left-wing Jew—the professor, the columnist, the teacher—is a destructive fool. But the liberal Jew is inexcusably naive about the Left, nearly all of whose positions have nothing in common with liberalism, not to mention with the Torah.
President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a call on Monday that a three-day fighting pause could help secure the release of some hostages, Axios reported on Tuesday, citing two U.S. and Israeli officials. Citing the U.S. official, Axios reported that under a proposal being discussed between the U.S., Israel and Qatar, Hamas would release 10-15 hostages and use the pause to verify the identities of all the hostages and deliver a list of names of the people it is holding.
In a statement on Monday, the White House said Biden and Netanyahu discussed “the possibility of tactical pauses to provide civilians with opportunities to safely depart from areas of ongoing fighting, to ensure assistance is reaching civilians in need, and to enable potential hostage releases.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Axios report.
Cartoon – Obama is trying to play the middle in the Hamas-Israeli conflict by taking a position that seems to give leniency to Hamas in spite of their subhuman bloody attacks on innocent Israeli citizens. Obama has a lot of blood on his hand from when he gave Iran pallets of cash to Iran in an effort to get a ridiculous nuclear deal that has quite possibly been used in this attack or ones similar to this. At least when Trump eluded that there are “Very fine people on both sides,” he wasn’t referring to the Nazis or white supremacists’ part of the crowd and made that very clear. However, the media leaves that part out.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
A Cartoon that hits Minnesota Teachers who are supporting Hamas terrorism in schools and other evil social topics when they should be teaching things like math, English, and real history in class. This is what happens when students of higher learning graduate and enter our society. They create more woke monsters turning our world upside down.
So many left-wing groups are supporting Hamas terrorists, like Gay and Lesbian groups, LGBTQ+, Transgenders, Liberal Democrat Jews, etc., but don’t seem to understand that if any of them ventured to Gaza, they would be thrown off the top of a building to their death for the lifestyle or politics they have. DEI groupthink and American universities have warped and brainwashed our kids minds to the point they can’t see who is actually on their side—the side of freedom and democracy.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
The United States urged Israel on Friday to ensure more humanitarian aid gets into Gaza and to do more to protect Palestinian civilians, as Israel’s prime minister said there would be no cease-fire in the nearly month-old war until Hamas releases hostages.
The leader of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group stoked fears that the conflict could widen by promising more attacks along the Lebanon border.
Israeli troops tightened their encirclement of Gaza City, the focus of their campaign to crush the enclave’s ruling Hamas militants, who launched a brutal attack on Israeli communities that started the war.
But ever since that Oct. 7 assault, there have been concerns the conflict could ignite fighting on other fronts, and Israel and the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah have repeatedly traded fire along the Lebanon border.
In his first public speech since the war began, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said his group had “entered the battle” with the past weeks’ unprecedented cross-border fighting. “We will not be limited to this,” he said, suggesting escalation was possible. Still, Nasrallah stopped short of announcing that Hezbollah is fully engaging in the war.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on his third trip to Israel since the war began, reiterated U.S. support for Israel in the war, saying it has the right to defend itself. But he said a “humanitarian pause” was needed to boost aid deliveries to Palestinian civilians amid growing alarm over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
After meeting Blinken, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel “refuses a temporary cease-fire that doesn’t include a return of our hostages,” referring to some 240 people Hamas abducted during its attack. He said Israel was pressing ahead with its military offensive with “all of its power.”
Blinken said there had to be a substantial and immediate increase in humanitarian aid to Gaza, where “we need to do more to protect Palestinian civilians.” Without that, “there are no partners for peace,” he said, adding that it was critical to restore the path toward a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, attacked Israeli military positions in northern Israel with drones, mortar fire and suicide drones on Thursday. The Israeli military said it retaliated with warplanes and helicopter gunships, and spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said civilians were wounded in the Hezbollah attacks.
“We are in a high state of readiness in the north, in a very high state of alert, to respond to any event today and in coming days,” he said.
Blinken said the U.S., which has deployed aircraft carriers and other forces in the eastern Mediterranean, was committed to ensuring that no “second or third front” opens in the conflict, referring to Hezbollah.
In his speech, Nasrallah said his militia is not deterred by U.S. warnings, saying: “Your fleets in the Mediterranean … will not scare us.”
A war with Hezbollah would be devastating for both Israel and Lebanon. Hezbollah is much stronger than Hamas, with an arsenal of some 150,000 rockets and missiles, some believed to be precision-guided weapons capable of striking deep inside Israel.
Israel has promised to unleash vast destruction in Lebanon if all-out war erupts, accusing Hezbollah of hiding its military installation in the midst of residential areas. The two enemies fought an inconclusive monthlong war in 2006. Renewed fighting could also risk drawing Iran, which backs both Hamas and Hezbollah, into the conflict.
More than 9,200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza so far, mostly women and minors, and more and than 23,000 people have been wounded, the Gaza Health Ministry said, without providing a breakdown between civilians and fighters.
More than 1,400 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during Hamas’ initial attack, when some 240 people were also taken hostage. Some 5,400 have also been injured.
Twenty-four Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the start of the ground operation. Since the start of the war, seven Israeli soldiers and a civilian have been killed in different incidents along Israel’s border with Lebanon.
As American officials have before, Blinken pledged unwavering support for Israel and its right to defend itself.
“We stand strongly for the proposition that Israel has not only the right but the obligation to defend itself, and to make sure that October 7 should never happen again,” said Blinken, who also plans to visit Amman, Jordan. It follows President Joe Biden’s suggestion for a humanitarian “pause” in the fighting. The aim would be to let in aid for Palestinians and let out more Palestinians who hold foreign passports and wounded.
Around 800 people left Gaza over the past two days — the first time people departed the besieged territory other than four hostages released by Hamas and another rescued by Israeli forces.
Blinken first held talks with Netanyahu behind closed doors before starting wider discussions with the leader and his War Cabinet and meeting with President Isaac Herzog.
More than 3,700 Palestinian children have been killed in 25 days of fighting, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. Bombardment has driven more than half the territory’s 2.3 million people from their homes. Food, water and fuel are running low under Israel’s siege, and overwhelmed hospitals warn they are on the verge of collapse.
Israel has allowed more than 260 trucks carrying food and medicine into Gaza, but aid workers say it’s not nearly enough. Israeli authorities have refused to allow fuel in, saying Hamas is hoarding fuel for military use and would steal new supplies.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. was not advocating for a general cease-fire but a “temporary, localized” pause.
Israel has not openly responded to Biden’s suggestion. But Netanyahu, who has previously ruled out a cease-fire, said Thursday: “We are advancing. … Nothing will stop us.” He vowed to destroy Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip.
Israel and the U.S. seem to have no clear plan for what would come next if Hamas rule in Gaza is brought down — a key question on Blinken’s agenda during the visit, according to the State Department.
Meanwhile, military officials said Israeli forces have now completely encircled Gaza City, a densely packed cluster of neighborhoods that Israel says is the center of Hamas military infrastructure and includes a vast network of underground tunnels, bunkers and command centers.
Israeli forces are “fighting in a built-up, dense, complex area,” said the military’s chief of staff, Herzi Halevy.
Hagari, the military spokesperson, said Israeli forces were in “face to face” battles with militants, calling in airstrikes and shelling when needed. He said they were inflicting heavy losses on Hamas fighters and destroying their infrastructure with engineering equipment.
Hamas’ military wing said early Friday that its fighters battled Israeli troops in several areas in Gaza and claimed they killed four soldiers on the northern edge of the city of Beit Lahiya. It also claimed to have destroyed several tanks with locally made anti-tank rockets.
Neither the reports from Israel nor Hamas could be independently verified.
Casualties on both sides were expected to rise as Israeli troops advance toward the dense residential neighborhoods of Gaza City. Israel has warned residents to immediately evacuate the Shati refugee camp, which borders Gaza City’s center.
But hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain in the path of fighting in northern Gaza, despite Israel’s repeated calls for them to flee. Many have crowded into U.N. facilities, hoping for safety.
Still, four U.N. schools-turned-shelter in northern Gaza and Bureij were hit in recent days, killing 24 people, according to Philippe Lazzarini, general-secretary of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA.
In the occupied West Bank overnight, Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians in different places and arrested many more, according to the Israeli military and Palestinian health officials.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
The Woke culture infecting our society today is the direct offspring of the Liberal Democrat party and the radical left. Woke has permeated our government institutions, Universities, and corporate America, Mainly because of the radical left that have become professors in higher learning, brainwashing students to believe it’s okay to mass-murder, rape, and torture innocent people in Israel and attack the Jews in America.
Although many Democrats try to separate themselves from the Wokesters, they are directly responsible for this Diversity-Equity-Inclusion that plants the seed for division and the balkanization of our country.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
“Canceling” people who disagree with you over ordinary political issues is bad for civil society. Ruining someone’s life because he wore a MAGA cap or tweeted something stupid or supported the wrong initiative creates an oppressive environment for open discourse.
“Canceling” people who sign petitions and hold up signs that openly celebrate or justify the targeted, brutal murders of women and babies, on the other hand, is good for civil society. Stopping malevolent ideas from being normalized is good. Exercising your First Amendment right to free speech and free association to shun and call out people who spread odious ideas in public life is a moral imperative.
Because people who walk around ripping down posters of kidnapped children and women aren’t pondering the future of a “two-state solution” or the Gazan refugee situation, they are moral degenerates. In the same way you wouldn’t hire the guy who stands in front of Disney World waving around a swastika flag, you shouldn’t hire someone who marches with a sign that reads “from the river to the sea.” Both convey the same sentiment. The ethical line is bright and obvious. If you don’t see it, something is broken in you.
Yet, a bunch of Hamasapologists are calling out conservatives for their alleged hypocrisy on “cancel culture” when it comes to “pro-Palestinian” advocates.
Though I’m not a fan of mobs, I’ve never been a big critic of cancel culture, either. Looking back, I could find only one piece I’ve written on the topic — and it concerned itself with double standards. It’s a slippery term. And there is facet to the debate that’s often overlooked. Americans have no obligation to associate with those who attack their deep-seated values. To hire someone who signs a pro-Hamas petition can be an endorsement of that outlook. Your company is not an open social media platform which exists as a forum for debate, it has a reputation and customers. (Not that I believe the state should be able to compel social media companies to host opinions, either.)
And it’s not as if you asked these people to give you their opinion on genocide. They did so by their own volition. The Harvard petitions blaming Jews for their own murders were signed and released for public consumption. They were released before Israel had even counted the dead, much less invaded Gaza. If law students were celebrating 9/11 on 9/12, would New York firms have a responsibility to provide them with gainful employment? No, they would be rejected in the real world and compelled to get jobs in academia, where such views are welcome.
Of course, the contention that “pro-Palestinian” advocates, or even those who talk about Israel as if it was some authoritarian proto-Nazi state, are being mass canceled is a myth, anyway. They fill the op-ed pages of major newspapers and cable news. They dominate campuses. They aren’t canceled. They are rewarded. When someone like “porn star” Mia Khalifa was “canceled,” it is because she was quite literally rejoicing in the murder of innocent people in real time.
Ibrahim Bharmal, who one suspects is dumber than the average internet prostitute, is the editor of the Harvard Law Review, not some rando trying to wind people up on the internet. He is out there physically and verbally abusing a Jewish student during a pro-Hamas rally on campus like some kind of Brownshirt. Does Harvard have a responsibility to have him on campus? Why should a firm with Jewish partners — or any decent people — hire him?
Harvard, by the way, has assembled a special task force to help students who signed pro-Hamas statements deal with the blowback. Apparently, some people are under the impression they’re the only ones allowed to speak.
The notion that anti-Israel pundits are concerned about double standards, by the way, is risible. You might recall that Harvard rescinded its offer to pro-Second Amendment Parkland kid Kyle Kashuv, ostensibly over things he tweeted as a 16-year-old. No one cared. Today, Georgetown thinks it’s fine to cancel Ilya Shapiro for a single inarticulate tweet, but it will not cancel a professor who complains online about “Zio bitches.” The New York Times cancels an editor for running a column from a sitting senator but hires a writer who praises Hitler (true story).
When I say I’m a free-speech absolutist, I mean it. The state should do absolutely nothing to inhibit or censor pro-Hamas Americans from expressing their opinions. Free speech isn’t contingent on your position. Hate speech is free speech. The government has no business prodding or even suggesting limitations on our rhetorical interactions. Even outside state intervention, we should be upholding the values that promote free expression. We can peacefully coexist with colleagues, neighbors and friends who hold contradictory opinions within the normal parameters of political debate.
Likewise, Americans have a right to use their freedom to call out and disassociate themselves from people who take the side with nihilistic murder cults.
When a tragedy happens, there are inevitably a rush of “how to talk to your children…” articles about how to break down what happened into manageable, kid-appropriate language.
Jews right now are facing a different issue: how not to talk to your kids about what happened on October 7th when it’s all you want to talk about.
How do we move on with life, yell at the kids to put on their shoes or do their homework, while also hugging them too often in our despair for the people whose lives cannot move on.
We are consumed by it. Jews around the world, who don’t know each other, are all posting the same thing. We haven’t slept since that Saturday. We see each other and our eyes are wide saucers, dark circles, full of pain. We refresh the news and absorb new, horrifying, details.
How do we protect our children from our despair and rage but also our fear?
We consider where we can no longer send our Jewish children to college, which countries we can no longer visit. We pass around the familiar stories of Jewish-owned businesses targeted, Jews shouted at, Jews chased, Jews beaten. We parse which friends are suddenly not. We think about which of our neighbors would happily load us on the train.
Pro-Hamas protesters at Harvard surround Jewish student and shout “Shame” “Shame” “Shame” pic.twitter.com/wy4n64KcQ8
My own children are blessedly too young for most of it. They know something bad happened and they know Israel is at war. The eldest, at 13, knows there was an attack in southern Israel where many died, knows hostages were taken but not much else.
I don’t want her to know about the rapes, the details I can’t unknow about the way children who look just like her were killed. In a few years she will be going to music festivals. I don’t want her to live a life of fear, worried that someone is coming to kill her. I don’t want her to know what monsters live on the earth with us and what they are capable of doing.
Our sons are 10 and 7. The eldest boy is a history buff. He knows about historical atrocities. He’s read about torture. But he’s still a baby who calls for me when he’s sick, reaches for me when he’s hurt. I don’t want him knowing that kids were stolen while screaming for their mama, that their parents could not save them. I don’t want him to hear that parents were killed in front of their children and children in front of their parents. And that’s before the truly gruesome particulars. I don’t want him to also not be able to sleep at night thinking of beheaded, burned, baked babies. I want him to believe it when I say I will always protect them, that no one is getting by me. I want to believe it too.
The youngest is too young for any of it. Israel is a faraway land he doesn’t know. He knows he has family there but still can’t quite put together who is related to who. His grandmother’s twin, her husband, her children and grandchildren, we go over the connections to him. He doesn’t know Israel is a safe haven for Jews around the world who are just like him. I’ll tell him, someday, about the hatred and the violence, but when I look at his sweet, innocent face, I think “not yet.”
Not telling them anything is no cure either. Recently a Jewish acquaintance wrote a long piece about how Israel just doesn’t matter to him. I knew before he noted it that his family had been in America since the turn of the last century. Those are always the Jews shrugging their shoulders. They did not experience the Holocaust and they also did not know pogroms in Russia, mass graves in Ukraine, murder and expulsion from Arab states. They have lived ensconced in a safety and security that has simply never been the norm for Jews. So sure, who needs Israel, pass the lox.
🚨 Breaking: Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad says they will repeat October 7-like massacres until Israel is annihilated.
I will have failed as a parent if that is my child. It’s my life goal to not raise my children to feel so blindly privileged. It was the luckiest twist of fate that they were born Jews in America and I will not let them forget that.
I want to tell them the truth, that we’re mostly alone in this world, that most people will not stand up for you. That will include their fellow Jews who had spoken up for others, posted all the right things, but when they see their own comrades are against them, they will quiet and shrink from view until they nearly disappear. Do not count on these Jews. Remember that there are always Jews who imagine they will be killed last. They won’t be. It’s a lesson they never seem to learn.
But if you do life right, there will be people who do reach out to you in bad times like these and offer support. They will pray for you, offer you safety should you need it, say the words to defend you and feel your fear.
I don’t say all this. I tell them for the 5th time to get their cleats on and to put their plate in the sink. I try not to show the darkness I’m feeling. They’ll know it all someday. It can wait.
Karol Markowicz is a columnist for the New York Post and writes frequently for Fox News Opinion. She has also written for Time, USA Today, The Observer, Heat Street, Federalist, Daily Beast and other publications. She is the co-author of the new book, “Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation.” Follow her on Twitter @Karol.
Three weeks after Hamas brutally murdered more than 1,400 Israelis and two dozen Americans during a sneak attack, Southern Poverty Law Center President and CEO Margaret Huang published a 779-word statement lamenting “all acts of hate violence” in the Israel-Hamas war. A few days later, the activist group that made a brand out of tarnishing organizations with Christian missions or conservative ties covertly edited the statement to modify language that insinuated Israel intentionally attacked children in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. In her statement posted on Oct. 28, Huang acknowledged that “Hamas led an unconscionable attack against Israeli civilians, killing more than 1,000 people and kidnapping hundreds,” but couched the SPLC’s response by condemning Israel’s retaliation against the terrorists.
“The tragedy has only continued as Palestinian civilians in Gaza — many of whom are children — have been killed by airstrikes and cut off from food, clean water, medical care and life-saving supplies,” Huang wrote. “It is a humanitarian crisis of unspeakable proportions that has already left thousands dead. Our hearts are with all those who are suffering.”
An earlier version of Huang’s words, Daily Signal Managing Editor Tyler O’Neil reported, suggested that children in Gaza were “targeted” by Israel.
Instead, Huang reiterated that “we reject any attempt to prejudice or persecute communities pushed to the margins.”
The leftist organization claims to “monitor hate groups and other extremists throughout the United States,” including many of which it says are “far right” antisemitic organizations.
Huang, however, hardly mentioned the rising antisemitism Jews all around the world faced after Hamas’ attack. Instead, she joined her concern about “a dramatic increase in the targeting of Jewish” communities with her worries that “Muslim communities” are also suffering.
The SPLC statement also claimed to “denounce all acts of terrorism.” Still, it invoked language such as “ongoing systemic injustice,” which pro-Hamas demonstrators and Palestine activists have used for years to scrutinize Israel, to describe the ongoing Middle East conflict. SPLC previously refused to tell The Federalist whether it had plans to designate the left-wing organizations like Black Lives Matter and Democratic Socialists of America that responded positively to Hamas’ massacre in Israel as “hate groups.”
It was also minimized by the fact that the SPLC Union flatly accused Israel of genocide last week, in a statement which went publicly unpunished or condemned by the SPLC, and a lead attorney for the organization allegedly participated in the pro-Palestine takeover on Capitol Hill.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
The Israeli military reported additional casualties inside the Gaza Strip as the Israel-Hamas war enters its 26th day. Israeli forces entered the second stage of their war with Hamas in what is expected to be a lengthy military operation. Until this week, Israel had largely relied on airstrikes and artillery to retaliate against Hamas’ massacre in Israel on Oct. 7. More than 9,900 people have been killed in the war on both sides since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack.
Israel has entered its fourth week of war against Hamas after the terrorist group infiltrated the country on October 7, firing thousands of rockets at residential areas and butchering civilians
As many as 9,900 people have been killed in the war on both sides, including at least 1,400 Israeli civilians and soldiers and 35 Americans. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claims 8,525 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and 111 in the West Bank. At least 10 Americans are feared to be among the 240 people held captive by Hamas
Israel has greatly expanded its ground operations in Gaza over the weekend, marking a new stage in the conflict
The first foreign passport holders were permitted to leave Gaza and enter Egypt through the Rafah crossing, although American citizens are still struggling to leave the warzone
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Hamas terrorist gives graphic details about shooting children to Israeli authorities
A Hamas terrorist told an Israel Securities Authority (ISA) official he and another man shot and killed crying children who were inside a safe room, until the sounds could no longer be heard, while acknowledging he entered the house simply to kill.
In a video posted by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, the Hamas terrorist is seen wearing prison garb while sitting in a chair with an Israeli flag behind him.
The unnamed man tells the ISA official, who cannot be seen in the video, that he and other members of Hamas entered a house through the window. While checking the house, he told the official, they heard sounds of young children in the safe room and shot at the safe room.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Doron Spielman appeared on “America Reports” to discuss recent Israeli strikes against Hamas, as the war between the two militaries continues.
Host Sandra Smith asked Spielman about a recent attack that killed a Hamas commander in the Jabalia refugee camp, but also several civilians in the process.
“This was a pinpointed strike against the Hamas commander that has been controlling and commanding the anti-tank warfare unit in the Gaza Strip, which they’ve been employing both in the Gaza Strip, towards our tanks, towards people, towards our soldiers,” Spielman explained. “In fact, one of those did result in some of the deaths that we experienced. He was a senior commander and he is confirmed dead, along with a number of other terrorists that were with him.”
The official also explained that Hamas terrorists have been fleeing into civilian areas amid the fighting.
“They are fleeing, I can tell you, into underground bunkers,” Spielman said. “We see them inside of medical clinics, inside of schools. They go in, you open the doors, you can’t find anybody. You walk a few feet in, you pull up a hatch and they’re underneath the ground.”
“They are so embedded within the civilian structures,” he added.
Israel-Hamas war: 5 American aid workers leave Gaza for Egypt
Foreign passport holders board a bus after arriving in the Egyptian part of the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip on November 1, 2023. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)
Fox News has learned that 5 Americans are part of the civilian group that left Gaza for Egypt on Tuesday.
The evacuation was conducted with the help of the Special Operations Association of America, which worked with the U.S. State Department.
The Americans were all aid workers, part of a group of around 30. The other 25 workers had different nationalities.
The civilians departed through the Rafah crossing after a deal was struck between Egyptian and Palestinian authorities, amid Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant says Hamas has two options: ‘Die or surrender’
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant speak during a press conference in Tel Aviv, Israel on October 25, 2023. (Photo by Elad Malka (IMoD)/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant released a statement on civilian losses in Gaza amid the Israeli military’s war against Hamas terrorists.
The statement was released as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continues airstriking the Jabalia refugee camp for the second day in a row, killing an unknown number of Palestinians.
“The IDF is advancing on the way to defeating Hamas,” the official said. “War has a heavy price, I share in the sorrow of the families who lost their loved ones in the hard battles in Gaza City.”
In the press release, Gallant also referenced Israel’s determination to secure victory over Hamas.
“We are determined to win. The enemy has only two options: die or surrender unconditionally – there is no third option,” the statement read. “The arena of the war is wider, we are on the attack in the Gaza Strip area, but we are defending in the north and are prepared in additional fronts.”
“We are at the forefront of the free world against a world of darkness and all evil,” Gallant concluded. “We must win.”
Fox News Digital’s Yael Rotem-Kuriel contributed to this report.
Hamas official vows to attack Israelis ‘again and again’ until Israel is destroyed
Hamas Spokesman Ghazi Hamad speaks on May 23, 2021 in Gaza City, Gaza. (Photo by Laurent Van der Stockt/Getty Images)
Hamas official Ghazi Hamad said in an interview that Hamas will repeat terrorist attacks against Israel “again and again” until the Jewish nation is destroyed.
“Israel is a country that has no place on our land,” Hamad argued. “We must remove that country, because it constitutes a security, military, and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nation, and must be finished. We are not ashamed to say this, with full force.”
The official argued that Hamas was willing to repeat the attacks until they achieved victory, calling Palestine “a nation of martyrs.”
“We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again,” he explained. “The Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight. Will we have to pay a price? Yes, and we are ready to pay it. We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs.”
“We are the victims of the occupation. Period,” Hamad added. “Therefore, nobody should blame us for the things we do. On October 7, October 10, October 1,000,000 – everything we do is justified.”
Hamas took power in the Gaza Strip after winning elections in 2006, a year after Israeli occupation of Gaza ended.
Palestinian official says Gaza’s only cancer hospital is inoperable, faces fuel shortage
This picture taken on April 22, 2021 shows a general view of nurses and patients at the COVID-19 coronavirus intensive care unit , at the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital in Gaza City. (Photo by Emmanuel DUNAND / AFP)
The only hospital in the Gaza Strip that treats cancer patients has reportedly gone out of service Wednesday after running out of fuel.
The development surrounding the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital now means 16 out of the 35 hospitals in Gaza are not operating, Reuters is reporting, citing Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila.
“The lives of 70 cancer patients inside the hospital are seriously threatened,” she was quoted by the news agency as saying. “The number of cancer patients in the Gaza Strip is about 2,000 living in catastrophic health conditions as a result of the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Strip and the displacement of a large number.”
The Israeli government has maintained a blockade over Gaza in response to terrorist attacks from Hamas fighters, who have launched around 8,000 rockets since the war began.
Jordan recalls ambassador from Israel in protest of war in Gaza
Seen on a large screen the King of Jordan Abdullah II attends the International Peace Summit hosted by the Egyptian president in the New Administrative Capital (NAC), about 45 kilometres east of Cairo, on October 21, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (Photo by KHALED DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images)
Jordan recalled its ambassador from Israel in protest of the “humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
Jordan’s deputy prime minister, Ayman al-Safadi, who is also the foreign minister, said the return of the ambassadors is linked to Israel “stopping its war on Gaza … and the humanitarian catastrophe it is causing.”
Jordan signed a peace deal with Israel in 1994, the second Arab country after Egypt to do so.
King Abdullah II of Jordan has called for peace between Gaza and Israel but said Israeli-Palestinian relations could never be stable without a “two-state solution.”
Such a proposal includes Palestinian people getting their own land and country, which Israel opposes.
“There will be no security, no peace, no stability without just and total peace that comes through a two-state solution,” King Abdullah II told the Jordanian parliament earlier this month, calling for a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
The King of Jordan has also mobilized medical and humanitarian aid teams to the blockaded Gaza Strip through Egypt.
Fox News Digital’s Lawrence Richard and the Associated Press contributed to this update.
Democrats could be split for a ‘generation’ as left tears ‘itself apart over Israel’
The Democratic Party is divided over pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian factions in a major split that may tear the party apart for a “generation,” according to a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. (Getty Images // Fox News Digital)
The Democratic Party is divided over pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian factions in a major split that may tear the party apart for a “generation,” according to a recent Wall Street Journal report.
Some of the biggest names in progressive and leftist politics are expressing concerns that the Democratic Party is no longer unified as politicians and commentators continue to battle it out in the public square over Israel. The article, headlined “The Left Is Tearing Itself Apart Over Israel,” was published on Tuesday.
“It has been an incredibly clarifying and terrifying moment at the same time for many progressive Jews,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt told the WSJ’s Molly Ball. “They’re calling me, tweeting, messaging, expressing shock and sadness that the people they marched with, the causes they marched for, have abandoned them in their hour of need.”
Others were disappointed that the Democratic Party was not doing enough for pro-Palestinian factions.
“If you are Arab-American, Muslim-American or Palestinian, you feel like you don’t matter, you feel invisible,” said Waleed Shahid, former spokesman for the Justice Democrats. “If you are advocating at all that Palestinian and Israeli lives should be treated equally, there’s a feeling that the party doesn’t care about you at all.”
Shahid also pointed to flagging poll numbers for President Biden among “young and minority voters,” according to the story. A recent Gallup poll found that Biden’s “job approval rating among Democrats has tumbled 11 percentage points in the past month to 75%, the worst reading of his presidency from his own party. This drop has pushed his overall approval rating down four points to 37%, matching his personal low.”
“It shouldn’t be that hard to condemn the murder of innocent women and children and seniors, yet many have either said nothing or equivocated,” said Maryland state delegate and congressional candidate Joe Vogel. “We have a serious problem in our party right now.”
Fox News Digital’s Jeffrey Clark contributed to this update.
Biden says American citizens will leave Gaza through Rafah border crossing
RAFAH, GAZA – NOVEMBER 01: Ambulances carrying Palestinians, injured in ongoing Israeli attacks, arrive Rafah border crossing on November 01, 2023 in Gaza. Injured Palestinians are to receive medical treatment in Egyptian hospitals. (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)
President Biden on Wednesday said the United States secured safe passage for wounded Palestinians and for foreign nationals to exit Gaza.
“We expect American citizens to exit today, and we expect to see more depart over the coming days,” Biden wrote in a post on X.
He added, “We won’t let up working to get Americans out of Gaza.”
Egypt, Israel and Hamas earlier came to an agreement allowing limited evacuations out of Gaza and into Egypt through the Rafah crossing after Qatar mediated talks.
The deal allows for foreign passport holders and some critically injured Gaza residents to evacuate, though no timeline has been set for how long the crossing will remain open, a source briefed on the deal told Reuters.
Dozens of foreign passport holders reportedly could be seen entering the crossing Wednesday morning in evidence of the deal.
The negotiations came as the Israeli military has been carrying out the second stage of its war against Hamas. The Israel Defense Forces have greatly expanded ground operations in Gaza, clearing Hamas terrorists out of their fortified positions and tunnels.
Military officials have warned that the campaign will be a long and difficult affair. So far, at least 16 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the fighting.
Fox News Digital’s Anders Hagstrom contributed to this update.
Cornell University junior Patrick Dai was arrested on a federal complaint Tuesday for allegedly calling for the deaths of Jewish people online and threatening to shoot up an on-campus dining hall.
The 21-year-old engineering student hails from Pittsford, New York, about 80 miles northwest of the Ithaca campus.
His mother told the New York Post that Dai suffers from “severe depression” and was on the brink of suicide before his arrest.
In a string of disturbing posts on a Greek life message board that was not affiliated with the school, Dai allegedly threatened to “shoot up 104 West,” a campus dining hall that serves kosher food, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York.
The cafeteria is next door to the Cornell Jewish Center, which provides housing for Jewish students.
“In another post, Dai allegedly threatened to ‘stab’ and ‘slit the throat’ of any Jewish males he sees on campus, to rape and throw off a cliff any Jewish females, and to behead any Jewish babies,” the press release says. “In that same post, Dai threatened to ‘bring an assault rifle to campus and shoot all you pig jews.’”
The deranged threats come in the midst of heightened hostilities and a spike in antisemitism on college campuses across the U.S. spurred by the Israel-Hamas War.
Fox News Digital’s Rebecca Rosenberg contributed to this update.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., accused a pro-Israel political action committee (PAC) of being an “extremist organization” that “destabilizes” American democracy.
The leader of the progressive “Squad” attacked the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Tuesday night amid Israel’s war with the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas.
Ocasio-Cortez — who accused Israel of committing “war crimes” last month — accused the pro-Israel PAC of being “racist” and “bigoted” toward lawmakers of color.
Ocasio-Cortez also accused AIPAC of being an “extremist organization that destabilizes US democracy.”
“AIPAC endorsed scores of Jan 6th insurrectionists,” the Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) congresswoman said. “They are no friend to American democracy.”
“They are one of the more racist and bigoted PACs in Congress as well, who disproportionately target members of color,” she continued.
“They are an extremist organization that destabilizes US democracy,” she wrote.
AIPAC responded to Ocasio-Cortez’s post, blasting the democratic socialist congresswoman over her peddling “of the same tired lies [and] spin.”
“[Ocasio-Cortez] and the Squad summed up: People who disagree with us are racist,” AIPAC posted on Wednesday. “AIPAC stands with pro-Israel Democrats and Republicans of all races, genders, and backgrounds who support the US-Israel alliance.”
“And we oppose those who don’t, like you,” the group added.
Fox News Digital’s Houston Keene contributed to this report.
A Florida doctor is offering a helping hand in Israel after his family’s vacation to the Holy Land took a turn for the worst during Hamas’ surprise attacks on Oct. 7.
“It’s been a very chaotic period of time,” Dr. Cory Harow, medical director of the emergency department of West Boca Medical Center, told “FOX & Friends First” on Wednesday.
“This is not something that you plan for. We had a phenomenal family vacation. We were touring, visiting with friends, extended family, and it was all fantastic being together until air raid sirens woke us up October 7th. We padded out into the hallway of our hotel, and the images that we saw on the televisions were just chilling.”
Harow, a dual American and Israeli citizen, joined the IDF while attending Tel Aviv University.
He currently serves in a unit that specializes in battlefield triage, assessing, treating and stabilizing battlefield injuries.
“We’ve been training every year. We meet for one week a year to maintain a high state of readiness. And then we were mobilized on October 7th when the hostilities began in an attempt to save as many battlefield lives as possible,” he explained.
After Hamas terrorists launched their surprise attacks last month, his phone rang, and he confirmed he was in the country and ready for emergency mobilization.
While his family flew back home to the U.S. the next day, he stayed behind to work with first responders to help treat wounded IDF soldiers.
Fox News Digital’s Taylor Penley contributed to this update.
Yale Daily News (YDN) , the independent student newspaper and oldest college daily in the country, retracted editor’s notes that targeted a pair of recent pro-Israel columns after a huge backlash. The editor’s notes took issue with statements in both pieces that “Hamas raped women,” calling them “unsubstantiated claims.”
An Oct. 12 column by Yale student Sahar Tarak titled, “Is Yalies4Palestine a hate group?” was hit with an editor’s note without Tarak’s initial knowledge, reading, “This column has been edited to remove unsubstantiated claims that Hamas raped women and beheaded men.”
Another column published on Oct. 13, titled “Stop justifying terrorism,” similarly accused the terror group of raping women during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and also had an editor’s note added.
“The News was wrong to publish the corrections,” the newspaper later wrote on Tuesday. “By the time of the first correction on Oct. 25, there had been widely reported coverage from outlets such as Reuters publicly verifying that Hamas raped and beheaded Israelis.”
There have been multiple reports that Hamas terrorists committed rape during their rampage. Israel released footage of one captured attacker who said they were given permission to rape the corpse of a girl, according to The Times of Israel. NBC News reported on “signs of rape” in videos of the attack presented to journalists last week. Military forensic teams in Israel also said they found signs of torture and rape among the victims, according to Reuters.
Additionally, Shani Louk, a German-Israeli citizen who was kidnapped by Hamas and paraded unconscious on the back of a truck, as seen in footage of the Oct. 7 massacre, was discovered dead and beheaded, according to Israeli government officials.
The Yale newspaper wrote that it “failed to ensure that the columnists’ statements were properly cited and attributed” during its editing process because “[a]t the time of the columns’ initial publication, those specific forms of violence during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack were not independently confirmed by the cited source.”
Fox News Digital’s Jeffrey Clark contributed to this update.
The Israel Defense Forces confirmed three more casualties in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, bringing the total number of soldiers killed in the second phase of the war to 15.
Israel earlier reported that 10 soldiers were killed when hit by an anti-tank guided missile while operating in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.
Israeli forces entered the second stage of their war with Hamas in what is expected to be a lengthy military operation. Until this week, Israel had largely relied on airstrikes and artillery to retaliate against Hamas’ massacre in Israel on Oct. 7.
Military officials have warned that the war will be long and difficult, potentially spanning months or longer.
The IDF began expanded ground operations this week and ground troops are now tasked with clearing out a complex network of Hamas tunnels and other fortified strongholds. IDF says it has attacked 11,000 targets in Gaza Strip since Oct. 7.
More than 320 soldiers have been killed since the start of the war, many in the initial Oct. 7 attack.
Fox News’ Thomas Ferraro contributed to this update.
A sophomore Yale student whose pro-Israel column published in the Yale Daily News was edited without her knowledge spoke out on Tuesday.
An Oct. 12 column by Sahar Tarak titled, “Is Yalies4Palestine a hate group?” was hit with an editor’s note on Oct. 25, reading, “This column has been edited to remove unsubstantiated claims that Hamas raped women and beheaded men.”
Tartak wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Free Beacon this week about how the Yale Daily News, the university’s independent student newspaper, edited a section referring to Hamas’ atrocities in their terrorist attack against Israel.
Tartak said she found out about the edits over the weekend. “The Yale Daily News editor in chief told me that at the time my piece was published—five days after Hamas carried out a pogrom reminiscent of the bloodiest 19th-century atrocities—’there was swirling unsubstantiation [sic] of the rape and beheading claims,'” she wrote, while pointing to several sources substantiating the allegations.
She also reported that another column by a friend, titled “Stop justifying terrorism,” was updated by the Yale Daily News without the author’s knowledge to include a similar editor’s note that read, “This column has been edited to remove unsubstantiated claims of rape.”
But Tartak said, “Yale Daily News editors are not such sticklers when it comes to lobbing accusations at the Jewish state,” in reference to other anti-Israel op-eds they published.
She warned about “history repeating itself” and how the attitudes of Yale students on campus reverberate into the greater media ecosystem when they graduate.
“I wish I could write off my classmates’ foibles as youthful stupidity, but I see professional journalists making the same mistakes. It’s not an accident: The Yale Daily News is their breeding ground, and in a few years, the editors who wrote and approved that correction will go on to careers in the mainstream press, which is chock-full of Yale Daily News editors and reporters. Take the New York Times, where the author of the flagship daily newsletter, the paper’s diplomatic and Supreme Court correspondents, and the host of the paper’s hit podcast The Daily are all Yale Daily News alumni,” she wrote.
“This pipeline is full of sewage, and it shows. The Yale Daily News is now a home for modern-day Holocaust denial, where brutalizing Jews does not need to be justified. It’s just denied outright,” Tartak concluded.
Fox News Digital’s Hanna Panreck and Alexa Moutevelis contributed to this update.
Heads of Israeli universities sent a letter to colleagues around the world expressing concern about rampant antisemitism on some college campuses after the bloody Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks.
The Association of University Heads in Israel also criticized the failure of academic leaders to clamp down on antisemitism on their campuses amid the Israel-Hamas war.
“It’s unsettling to note that many college campuses have become breeding grounds for anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiments, largely fueled by a naïve and biased understanding of the conflict,” the letter said, according to the Associated Press.
“Freedom of speech is a cornerstone of academic freedom, but it should not be manipulated to legitimize hate speech or to justify violence.”
At campuses across the U.S., anti-Israel protesters have organized massive demonstrations since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7. The surge in incidents has been paired with antisemitic rhetoric and violence against Jews, leaving many students feeling unsafe and fearful of attending class.
Fox News Digital’s Madeline Coggins and the Associated Press contributed to this update.
Cornell Jewish students described still feeling “terrified” after threats from a self-identified “Hamas fighter” led to the arrest of a suspect from the student body in interviews with Fox News Digital.
On Tuesday, the Department of Justice announced it had a suspect – 21-year-old Patrick Dai –, who is a junior at Cornell, in custody for allegedly posting about threatening to “stab” and “slit the throat” of Jewish males, to “rape” Jewish women and throw them off a cliff and to behead any Jewish babies, according to its press release. Court documents show numerous posts allegedly made by Dai, where he allegedly used usernames like “Hamas fighter,” “jew evil” and “glorious Hamas”
“It’s both scary and sad that a member of our own campus community could be so hateful… To see that a student believes and was willing to make comments such as these shows that Jew-hatred can be anywhere and everywhere, even among our fellow students,” said Cornell student Netanel Shapira. He added it was “scary to think that people around you, especially… at an Ivy League school people take pride in… being well-educated and knowing the facts of what’s going on, and [are] believing in that… Just no words.”
Another student, Amanda Silberstein, criticized the university’s professors for peddling what she believed was propaganda against Israel in response to the arrest. She said it was “terrifying to be on campus right now.”
“Upon discovering that the suspect was, in fact, a fellow student at Cornell, rather than an anonymous individual unaffiliated with the university, the situation took on a heightened sense of reality,” said Amanda Silberstein.
“It’s a stark acknowledgment that harmful ideologies and antisemitic rhetoric persist and spread. This includes the propagation of untruths, the denial of atrocities, the tolerance of hate speech under the guise of free speech, the repetition of propaganda by some professors, and the falsehood that anti-Zionism is anything other than a form of hatred against the Jewish community,” she continued.
Cornell did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding Silberstein’s opinion of the “propaganda.”
Fox News Digital’s Hannah Grossman contributed to this update.
On October 7, Hamas launched a multi-pronged terror attack on multiple Israeli army bases, civilian communities and a music festival. The Hamas paragliders who murdered teens and young adults at the music festival have been touted by some as a symbol of the attack, such as the Chicago Black Lives Matter chapter, which posted a graphic of a paraglider with the Palestinian flag that read “I Stand With Palestine.”
After asking about the prospect of revoking visas from foreign students calling for the destruction of Israel and Jewish people, Hawley read one such social media post and asked for Mayorkas’ opinion on the rhetoric.
“What about people who say things like, on October the seventh, ‘F Israel’ — I’m cleaning up the language here — ‘F Israel, the government and its military, are you ready for your downfall?’ People who say things like, ‘F Israel and any Jew who supports Israel. May your conscience haunt your dreams until your last breath. Palestine will be free one day. F apartheid Israel,’ This is pretty extreme rhetoric, don’t you think?”
After Mayorkas argued there is a distinction between “espousing or endorsing terrorist ideology and speech that is odious,” Hawley followed with some key details.
“This person works for you,” he said, noting the DHS worker in question is “an employee of the Department of Homeland Security who posted these comments on October the seventh.”
He went on, “That’s not all she posted,” noting the department employee also posted a “fake graphic” depicting a “Hamas paraglider” armed with a machine gun and flying into Israel.
Hawley noted that this employee posted it with the celebratory caption, “Free PALESTINE.”
Hawley addressed Mayorkas and asked if this “asylum and immigration officer who is posting these, frankly, pro-genocidal slogans and images on the day that Israelis are being slaughtered in their beds” is “typical of people who work for the DHS.”
Mayorkas initially denounced the premise of the question, “Your question to suggest that that is emblematic of the men and women of the Department of Homeland Security is despicable.”
“I’m sorry, this person works for the Department of Homeland Security, have you fired her?” Hawley replied.
Fox News Digital’s Alexander Hall contributed to this update.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said most U.S. companies likely do not want to hire someone who proverbially links arms with a terrorist organization, telling FOX News that those who demonstrate with signs and chants in favor of Hamas should be publicly identified.
Haley said that as a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, she knows that most member nations believe Hamas is a terrorist organization, and that she believes the intergovernmental organization is a farce – and that the ideologically corrupt viewpoints expressed are similar to the reason why she wanted America to split from the World Health Organization during COVID.
“I expected this from the UN, you expect all kinds of ridiculous things at the UN. I fought this battle every day for two years. What I don’t expect is to see what’s happening in our cities and what’s happening on our college campuses, because these protests that we’re seeing,” she told “Hannity.”
“Are you telling me that these professors, these college students, they are supporting a terrorist organization?”
She noted Hamas has murdered at least 33 Americans and taken at least 20 hostage while members of the Palestinian-governing party have chanted “Death to America, and the like.
Haley asked whether the Americans who are demonstrating in favor of Hamas or in agreement with Hamas’ massacre of Israeli civilians therefore also want America to be destroyed.
“If they do, every one of them is dangerous to our country… because that’s what Hamas preaches, is ‘death to America’. So when they get up there, and they hold those signs, or they get upset on why people won’t hire them: it’s because companies don’t want to hire someone who wants to destroy our country,” Haley said.
“That’s why I think every name needs to be … published. Every face needs to be published. And we need to call this out for the hate that it is.”
Fox News Digital’s Charles Creitz contributed to this update.
Israeli mom recounts last call from terrified daughter as group vows to find Hamas hostages
“Mommy, I think I’m going to die,” Romi Gonen, 23, said while shot and bleeding in the back seat of a car during the October 7, 2023 Hamas terror attacks on Israel. Her fate is unknown. Gonen is possibly among the 243 people believed held hostage by Hamas in Gaza. (Courtesy of Bring Them Home Now)
Meirav Gonen listened in real-time terror as her daughter, bleeding in the back seat of a car and fearing death, described by phone the surprise attack by Hamas on a music festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
“Mommy, I’m shot. Mommy, I think I’m going to die,” said daughter Romi to her mother during the militant incursion into Israel, as the elder Gonen relayed to Fox News Digital on Tuesday from Tel Aviv.
“I heard her crying very quietly. I heard the shooting all around them,” said the anguished mother.
Gonen does not know the fate of the middle of her five children. But Romi’s best friend, Gaya Halifa, was killed — apparently in the same vehicle.
If Romi Gonen survived, she’s likely one of about 243 people — citizens from up to 20 different countries, including the United States — believed to be kidnapped and held hostage by terrorists in the Palestinian territory of Gaza.
Bring Them Home Now, a grassroots humanitarian movement with international volunteers, is determined to find every one of them.
“We demand the safe return of all citizens who have been taken hostage by the terrorist group Hamas,” the group says on its website, story.bringthemhomenow.net.
“We will not rest until every hostage is released and returns home safely,” the group says.
Fox News Digital’s Kerry J. Byrne contributed to this update.
Iran’s leader says countries should ‘block the flow of oil and food’ to Israel
TEHRAN, IRAN – OCTOBER 25: Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting in Tehran, Iran on October 25, 2023. (Photo by Iranian Leader Press Office / Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is calling on countries Wednesday to block the flow of food and oil to Israel over its military action against Hamas inside the Gaza Strip.
Khamenei’s remarks to students in Tehran come after he praised the Palestinian terrorist group for launching its Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel.
“What the Islamic governments should insist is an immediate halt to the crimes [the Israelis] are committing in Gaza. The bombardments should immediately stop,” Khamenei was quoted by state media as saying, according to The Associated Press. “They should block the flow of oil and food to the Zionist regime. Islamic governments shouldn’t have economic cooperation with the Zionist regime.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian called on Iran’s Arab-majority neighbors in mid-October to impose an oil embargo on Israel and for nations within the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to expel all Israeli ambassadors.
However, OPEC, the organization of largely Arab nations that overseas oil production in the Middle East, has no plans to impose such an embargo, Reuters reported at the time.
“We are not a political organization,” one OPEC source told Reuters.
Fox News Digital’s Greg Norman and the Associated Press contributed to this update.
Massachusetts family stranded in Gaza speaks out about situation on the ground
The Massachusetts family stranded in Gaza amid the ongoing war between Israeli forces and Hamas terrorists said they continue to struggle to access drinking water, fuel and other resources and are hoping for safety as they await updates from the U.S. government about a possible exit plan.
Abood Okal, Wafa Abuzayda and their 1-year-old son, Yousef, were visiting family in Gaza when Hamas launched its largest attack against Israel on Oct. 7. The family has been in the region since late September, and had intended to return home to Medway, Massachusetts, on Oct. 13 before the violence delayed their plans.
In an audio recording obtained by Fox News Digital, Okal explained that the family ran out of drinking water on Sunday and that a nearby desalination station had run out of fuel needed to power generators. He said they have been roaming the main roads and streets in Rafah City, where they are staying in a single-family home with 40 other people including his sister Haneen and her three kids, in search of trucks or carriages carrying tanks of 1,000 or 2,000 liters of drinking water. Haneen and her children are also Americans.
“We stood in line, I think it was for maybe about two hours, to fill one gallon. They tried to limit the portions, so ours was a gallon. And we’re hoping that would last us for the rest of the day today and for most of tomorrow until we could find another place to get drinking water from,” Okal said in the recording created on Monday.
Israel’s military announced Wednesday that more than 11,000 terrorist targets have now been hit inside the Gaza Strip, while the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) shot down a surface-to-air missile fired from Lebanon at one of its drones.
The Israeli air force said in a series of posts that “During the fighting yesterday, IDF fighters identified many terrorists of the terrorist organization Hamas who had barricaded themselves in a multi-story building in the Jabalia area in the northern Gaza Strip.”
“The building is located near a school, a medical center and government offices. The fighters directed air forces that attacked the terrorists,” it added.
The Israeli air force said as military activity in the Gaza Strip continues “since the beginning of the fighting, the IDF has attacked more than 11,000 targets of the terrorist organizations.”
“In addition, IDF forces identified a vehicle carrying anti-tank missiles as it drove towards the forces operating in the Gaza Strip. Following this, the ground forces directed an aircraft that fired at the vehicle. A hit has been detected,” it also said.
Farther north, the IDF shot down a “surface-to-air missile” fired from Lebanon at an IDF remotely-piloted aircraft, according to the Israeli air force.
“In response, Air Force aircraft attacked the source of the fire from which the missile was launched as well as the squad that carried out the launch,” it said.
Fox News Digital’s Greg Norman contributed to this update.
Bolivia cuts diplomatic ties with Israel while Chile and Colombia recall their ambassadors
Israeli security forces inspect the damage at a residential building after it was hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashdod, southern Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023. (AP Photo/Ilan Assayag)
Left-wing governments in several South American countries have taken actions against Israel this week, criticizing the reported number of Palestinian deaths in the ongoing war with Hamas.
Bolivia cut diplomatic relations with Israel on Tuesday, accusing the Jewish state of “crimes against humanity.” Meanwhile, Chile and Columbia recalled their ambassadors to Israel and criticized the country’s military offensive against Hamas terrorists.
Bolivian officials cited the number of Palestinian casualties in Gaza that have resulted from the latest Israel-Hamas war, but made no mention of the Hamas attack on Israel at the start of the conflict.
“Bolivia decided to break diplomatic relations with the state of Israel in repudiation and condemnation of the aggressive and disproportionate Israeli military offensive taking place in the Gaza Strip,” Freddy Mamani, Bolivia’s deputy foreign minister, said at a news conference.
Chile recalled its ambassador “in the face of the unacceptable violations of international humanitarian law committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip,” the South American country’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Neither country mentioned the Oct. 7 attack perpetrated against Israel by Hamas, in which 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians, were butchered by terrorists.
Columbian President Gustavo Petro also said he was recalling his country’s ambassador to Israel.
The Hamas-led Gaza health ministry claims more than 8,500 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli airstrikes and ground operations since the start of the war. Gaza authorities do not distinguish between civilians and terrorists in their reports, which cannot be independently verified.
Massie clashes with pro-Israel group over opposition to $14B aid package
WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 20: U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) leaves a closed-door House Republican meeting at the U.S. Capitol on October 20, 2023 in Washington, DC. The House Republican caucus is searching for a new Speaker of the House candidate after Rep. Jim Jordan failed on three separate attempts to achieve a majority of votes in the House of Representatives. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican, responded to criticism from a pro-Israel group after he announced he would vote against a $14.3 billion aid package for Israel.
The aid package for Israel, which is backed by most House Republicans, includes allocating $1.2 billion for the development of the Iron Beam defense system and $4 billion for the country’s Iron Dome and David’s Sling defense systems.
“If Congress sends $14.5 billion to Israel, on average we’ll be taking about $100 from every working person in the United States,” Massie wrote Monday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “This will be extracted through inflation and taxes. I’m against it.”
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee pointed out that the congressman voted last week with nine progressive Democrats, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, against a resolution defending Israel’s right to defend itself and condemning Hamas.
Massie responded to the post on Tuesday by saying the AIPAC was “intentionally misrepresenting” his intent in voting against the resolution. The congressman has condemned Hamas’ terror attack against Israel, but said last week he opposed the resolution because it calls for sanctions and “asserts the necessity of foreign aid commitments which I have voted against.”
“AIPAC always gets mad when I put America first. I won’t be voting for their $14+ billion shakedown of American taxpayers either,” he wrote on Tuesday. “Let them know what you think by replying to their post. They are intentionally misrepresenting my intent and the resolution I voted against.”
The group replied, “The U.S. is stronger when Israel is secure. No misrepresentation, your vote says it all: NO to standing with Israel, NO to condemning Hamas, NO to helping Israel win this war.”
A drone attack on a U.S. base in Syria was thwarted on Wednesday, according to a report.
Two drones targeting Syria’s al-Tanf region were disabled or destroyed by the base defense system, an Iraqi government source told Reuters.
The thwarted attack comes as U.S. and Coalition Forces at Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) installations in Iraq and Syria have been attacked at least 27 times between Oct. 17-31.
Of these attacks, 16 happened in Iraq and 11 took place in Syria. They included a mix of one-way attack drones and rockets.
Most of these attacks were successfully disrupted by military forces and most failed to reach their targets, thanks to robust defenses. One U.S. contractor died as a result of cardiac arrest, when warned of an attack. Several other injuries were reported.
Defense officials have said Iranian-forces are believed to have backed the attacks.
Senior U.S. officials, including President Biden, Vice President Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have discouraged Iran from getting involved. They have also vowed retaliation if U.S. forces are intentionally targeted but have not specified which actions they would take.
The U.S. has deployed carrier group and other forces in the Mediterranean Sea and sent an additional 300 more troops on Wednesday.
Fox News Digital’s Lawrence Richard and Liz Friden contributed to this update.
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis took issue with President Biden’s tact of sending detachments of U.S. troops to the Middle East amid the Hamas invasion of Israel, saying the numbers of troops are too small to be effective but large enough to be a target of America’s enemies.
While Vice President Kamala Harris recently said the administration has “absolutely no intention” to deploy troops to fight in Israel or Gaza, several hundred have been deployed elsewhere and about 2,000 were reportedly told to prepare for potential deployment earlier this month.
The Pentagon has said there have been 27 attacks against American troops in the Mideast in October.
DeSantis, who is running for president, told FOX News on Tuesday that the U.S. taken ineffective actions against Iran – the suspected sponsor of Hamas terror – in that the response to attacks on U.S. servicemembers has been “abysmal.”
“I look at all these attacks that are going against US positions in the Middle East, and it seems like Biden has people there that are effectively sitting ducks,” he said on “Your World.”
“They’re there in probably too small a number to really do a whole lot. But they’re in sufficient numbers where they’re an inviting target.”
Fox News Digital’s Charles Creitz contributed to this update.
An Israeli woman who was taken hostage by Hamas recently told Israeli outlet Ynet that her fellow captives are still alive.
Kibbutz Nir Oz resident Nurit Cooper, 79, was released last week after being kidnapped on October 7. According to an English translation of the Ynet piece, she is “slowly recovering” from the traumatic experience. Cooper’s husband is still in custody of Hamas.
“The abductees are alive,” Cooper is quoted as saying. “Everything must be done to bring them back. I want all the families to be as happy as my family is.”
Cooper’s son told the outlet that her recovery is “not easy at all.”
“She remembers details, but doesn’t always share,” he explained. “She prefers to focus on the future. Father is still kidnapped and she worries about him very much. They were kidnapped together and held together in the same underground room, along with five other kibbutz members.”
“Father must have realized that mother and Yochaved were released,” he added. “The event is very traumatic for her, because the kidnapping was very violent.”
Foreign passport holders were seen entering the Rafah Crossing from Gaza to Egypt Wednesday morning.
These individuals are the first travelers to enter the crossing since the war between Israeli forces and Hamas terrorists began on Oct. 7.
This, after Qatar mediated an agreement between Egypt, Hamas and Israel in coordination with the U.S. to open the Rafah Crossing on Wednesday. The agreement allows foreign passport holders and some critically injured civilians out of Gaza.
It is unclear how long the crossing will remain open.
More than 9,700 people have been killed in Gaza and Israel since Hamas launched its largest attack against Israel in decades on Oct. 7, leading to retaliatory action from Israeli forces. Thousands more have been wounded, and many others have been taken hostage by Hamas and raped, tortured and murdered.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
The Ivy League student who allegedly made threats of a mass shooting and antisemitic violence at Cornell University has been criminally charged.
Court documents show that 21-year-old Patrick Dai, a junior at Cornell has been federally charged in connection with the threats following an investigation by the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
“It is concerning, of course, that the threats came from within the campus. It must be particularly frightening for students to think that someone they sat in class with or socialized with could make such threats,” said William A. Jacobson, a Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Securities Law Clinic at Cornell Law School. “I hope that there will be a full and transparent investigation of his connections, if any, to any groups or others who may have known of the threats.”
Fox News Digital’s Stepheny Price contributed to this update.
Nearly three dozen U.S. citizens were killed when Hamas terrorists executed a sneak attack on Israel on Oct. 7, according to the U.S. State Department.
“At this time, we can confirm the deaths of 35 U.S. citizens who were killed in the October 7 attacks,” the spokesperson said, adding that an additional U.S. citizen died as a result of continued violence after the attacks.
As far as the number of Americans who have died in Gaza, the State Department spokesperson said they are not aware of any, but information about U.S. fatalities in Gaza is “extremely limited” because of the situation.
“We extend our deepest condolences to the victims and to the families of all those affected,” the spokesperson said on behalf of the department.
Of the 35 U.S. citizens the State Department said have died, 26 have been confirmed.
Fox News’ Lawrence Richard and Greg Wehner contributed to this report.
The Israeli military reported additional casualties inside the Gaza Strip, the day after it said its first two soldiers were killed during its ground invasion against Hamas Tuesday morning, the first such casualties in Gaza since Israel began its ground operations there.
According to Fox News’ Trey Yingst, who is in Israel, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were hit by an anti-tank guided missile while operating in the northern part of the strip, leaving at least 10 dead.
Israeli forces entered the second stage of their war with Hamas in what is expected to be a lengthy military operation. Until this week, Israel had largely relied on airstrikes and artillery to retaliate against Hamas’ massacre in Israel on Oct. 7.
Military officials have warned that the war will be long and difficult, potentially spanning months or longer.
The IDF began expanded ground operations this week and ground troops are now tasked with clearing out a complex network of Hamas tunnels and other fortified strongholds. IDF says it has attacked 11,000 targets in Gaza Strip since Oct. 7.
“Combined forces of the IDF attacked many terrorist targets throughout the Gaza Strip during the night, including operational headquarters and squads of Hamas terrorists,” a translated statement from the IDF Wednesday read.
Fox News’ Lawrence Richard and Trey Yingst contributed to this report.
U.S. intelligence agencies virtually disregarded Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups in the years following the 9-11 attacks, The Wall Street Journal reported. Instead, the focus was on leaders of al-Qaida and the Islamic State, according to U.S. officials.
Mainstream media reports in the past several weeks have asked how Israeli and U.S. intelligence failed to discover what Hamas had planned for Oct. 7, when the group’s terrorists attacked Israel. More than 1,400 Israelis have been killed, and more than 200 others were taken to Gaza as hostages. AP reported that the death toll among Palestinians has exceeded 8,000, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Current and former U.S. officials said intelligence agencies had a handful of analysts tracking events in the Gaza Strip before the attacks, but the U.S. ceded the responsibility for monitoring Hamas to Israel, the Journal reported Wednesday.
“In terms of intelligence failures, which really do lie mostly on Israel, I think we should also share some blame for missing this event,” Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired CIA operations officer with extensive counterterrorism experience, told the Journal. “Ceding the target to the Israelis now looks to have had consequences.”
Israel’s intelligence services have relied on human intelligence, eavesdropping, and other technical means throughout the West Bank and Gaza.
“It is almost inconceivable how they missed this,” Polymeropoulos told NBC News.
“True intelligence failures result not simply from a lack of information but also an inability to understand it,” Ignatius wrote. “Israelis knew the malevolent hatred that animated Hamas and its backers in Iran. What they didn’t appreciate was the creativity and competence of their adversaries. This was a level of organized malice that was, literally, unthinkable.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a comment Sunday on X, formerly Twitter, blamed the security failures on the country’s defense and intelligence services. However, he soon deleted the post and apologized. Members of Netanyahu’s Likud party have said Israel needs to focus on defeating Hamas before analyzing what went wrong.
Neither Hamas nor Gaza were mentioned in the U.S. director of national intelligence’s Annual Threat Assessment, which was issued in February.
Jonathan Schanzer, who tracked Hamas as a U.S. Treasury terrorism finance analyst, now is at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He said the Oct. 7 attacks should prompt a review of U.S. policy toward Iran-backed proxy groups.
“There should be one. If there isn’t, it’s foreign policy malpractice,” Schanzer told the Journal.
The House Republican Conference has drafted a bill that would provide military aid to Israel funded by redistributed funds from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
On Oct. 19, President Joe Biden delivered a speech from the Oval Office calling on Americans to support his administration’s proposed legislation that sends $100 billion of military aid to both Ukraine in its war against Russia and Israel in its conflict against Hamas, with some money being appropriated for border security and immigration processing. Amid widespread opposition among Republicans regarding aid to Ukraine, the House Republican Conference unveiled a bill that would allocate $14.3 billion for military aid only to Israel, offsetting the cost with repurposed funds from a portion of the $80 billion to the IRS enacted in the Inflation Reduction Act. (RELATED: ‘The Worst Thing For Israel’: House Republicans Quickly Dismiss Biden’s Latest Aid Package For Israel And Ukraine)
The bill, known as the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, calls for the spending of money to procure weapons, ammunition and missiles, according to its text. It also allocates $1.2 billion to support Israel’s efforts to develop a laser-based missile defense system against rocket attacks from Hamas in Gaza, known as the “Iron Dome” program, which is also a priority that the administration’s proposed legislation would fund.
The bill was reportedly introduced by Republican Rep. Kay Granger of Texas’ 12th District, the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, according to the New York Post. A similar bill was introduced in the Senate by Republican Sens. Roger Marshall of Kansas and J.D. Vance of Ohio.
The bill would also allocate $100 million to increase security for U.S. diplomatic missions in Israel and the surrounding region that have faced threats following the United States’ declaration of support for Israel after the attacks. It would further allocate $5o million to evacuate U.S. citizens from the country during hostilities.
The demand for a single bill regarding Israel, aid to which enjoys bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress, has been a refrain of Republican members of Congress since Biden announced his package. However, the reduction of funds from the IRS, which has been a target of House Republicans during the 118th Congress, is likely to be opposed by the Democratic-controlled Senate.
The White House and the office of the speaker of the House of Representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Iran-backed forces across the Middle East have attacked American positions and allies at least 23 times in the last two weeks, the Pentagon said Monday, adding that a U.S. military response will occur “at a time and place of our choosing, and we’re going to continue to do so.”
Since October 17, in the wake of Hamas’s war on Israel, Iranian terror forces have launched 14 attacks on American assets in Iraq and nine in Syria “through a mix of one-way attack drones and rockets,” a senior Defense Department official told reporters during a press briefing. The U.S. military responded last Thursday to these strikes by bombing Iranian positions in Syria, and American forces will continue to target Tehran’s proxy groups at will, the official said. Iran, the Pentagon assesses, is targeting American forces, threatening to drag the United States into a larger regional war.
“It’s about Iran and the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], who use infrastructure, militants, and proxies on the ground across the Middle East to include both Iraq and Syria,” the Defense Department official said, speaking only on background. “We reserve the right to respond at a time and place of our choosing, and we’re going to continue to do so.”
“Let me be clear,” the official added: “We’re going to continue to respond when the president decides that’s necessary for U.S. force protection.”
In the weeks since the Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel, killing more than 1,400, Tehran’s allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen have stepped up their terrorism activities. These activities include rocket fire and shelling on Israel from areas in both Syria and Lebanon, where Hezbollah forces are stationed.
Iran’s assets in Iraq have also increased their strikes on American forces in the country, resulting in last week’s military response by the United States. The Pentagon also said that Hamas militants are using hospitals and other civilian structures to conduct their terrorism operations against Israel.
The Israeli military’s foray into civilian areas of the Gaza Strip has fueled accusations that the country is intentionally targeting innocents, claims that have been amplified by anti-Israel U.S. lawmakers such as Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.). The Pentagon, however, says it has seen evidence that Hamas is using civilian structures as command centers.
“What I would say about Hamas is [its] use of civilian structures for command-and-control facilities and to hide weapons,” the official said. “There is an abundance of public reporting about the ways in which Hamas uses civilians as human shields and civilian structures to hide and obfuscate tunnels, as well as weapons.”
This includes “Hamas’s use of hospitals to emplace command-and-control infrastructure or other weapons that can be used against Israeli civilians.”
As of Monday afternoon, the Pentagon said it has no plans to facilitate “military-assisted departures” for American citizens stuck in the region.
The attack by Hamas on Israel will inspire the most significant terror threat to the U.S. since the rise of ISIS nearly a decade ago, FBI Director Christopher Wray said at a congressional hearing Tuesday. Wray said that since the start of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza earlier this month, multiple foreign terrorist organizations have called for attacks against Americans and the West, significantly raising the threat posed by homegrown U.S. violent extremists.
“The actions of Hamas and its allies will serve as an inspiration the likes of which we haven’t seen since ISIS launched its so-called caliphate several years ago,” Wray said.
The remarks came during a hearing before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee focused on threats to the United States. The U.S. government has seen an increase in threats against Jews, Muslims and Arab Americans since fighting broke out in Gaza, officials have said. The number of attacks on U.S. military bases overseas by Iran-backed militia groups have risen this month, Wray said. Cyber attacks against the U.S. by Iran and non-state actors will likely worsen if the conflict expands, he said.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
During the hearing, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that hate directed at Jewish students in the U.S. following the start of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza has added to an increase in antisemitism. The White House expressed alarm this week at reports of anti-Jewish incidents at U.S. universities as tensions have prompted university officials to tighten security.
At a ransomware summit organized by the White House on Tuesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland said he had directed the U.S. Justice Department to assist Israeli investigators probing financial flows to Hamas, including those involving cryptocurrency. (Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Andrew Goudsward in Washington; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)
Shani Louk, a German-Israeli woman who was thought to have been kidnapped by Hamas during the attack on a music festival on Oct. 7, was killed at some point during that attack and possibly beheaded, according to Israel’s president.
Louk, 22, came to international attention after she was seen being paraded half-naked and apparently unconscious in the back of a pickup truck in Gaza after Hamas attacked a music festival in Re’im on Oct. 7. Louk was initially believed to be kidnapped, but Israeli officials recently informed her family that human remains were matched to her DNA.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog told the German newspaper Bild that Louk’s “skull was found,” and added, “This means that these barbaric, sadistic animals simply chopped off her head as they attacked, tortured and killed Israelis.” Though Israeli officials have not publicly revealed Louk’s cause of death or confirmed many details, some reports state that she was shot in the head and that her head was later found but not the rest of her body.
German and Israeli mediareport that the Israeli Defense Forces and Zika, an organization of volunteer emergency responders, informed Louk’s family that a bone from the base of her skull had been located and matched to her DNA and that medical experts determined a person could not live without this bone, and therefore there is no possibility that Louk is still alive.
“For me, this news is terrible,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told reporters while on an official trip to Africa. “This shows all the barbarism that lies behind Hamas.”
The United States is not trying to dictate limits for Israel, the White House said on Friday, as the Israelis expanded their military operation in Gaza against Hamas militants. The fresh military onslaught by Israel comes as the United States scrambles to arrange a humanitarian pause for deliveries of fuel and relief aid to Gaza civilians. How the expanded ground operation will impact efforts toward a pause was unclear.
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby, at a news briefing, would not comment on the Israeli expanded ground operation. But he said Washington supported Israel’s right to defend itself after Hamas militants killed 1,400 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7. “We’re not drawing red lines for Israel,” he said. He said the United States continued to discuss with Israel the aims of its operation, the need to protect civilians in Gaza, the effort to gain the safe return of Israeli hostages and the need to consider what comes after ground operations in Gaza.
“Since the very beginning, we have had and will continue to have conversations with them about the manner in which they’re doing this. And we have not been shy about expressing our concerns over civilian casualties, collateral damage, and the approach that they might choose to take. That’s what friends can do, and we’re friends,” he said.
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BBC/Nik Millard “We see women of all ages… We see the bruises, we learn about the cuts and tears, and we know they have been sexually abused,” Captain Maayan told the BBC
BBC/Nik Millard Hamas fighters stormed the Nova festival on 7 October and killed hundreds
BBC/Dave Bull Israelis are still grappling with the Hamas attack in October
BBC/Dave Bull” It really feels like Hamas learned how to weaponize women’s bodies from ISIS in Iraq, from cases in Bosnia,” said Cochav Elkayam-Levy
BBC/Dave Bull May Golan: “For the first five days, we still had terrorists on the ground in Israel. And there were hundreds, hundreds of bodies everywhere.”
BBC/Dave Bull Debris litters the ground at the Nova festival site
BBC/Dave Bull” Israel on 7 October is not the same country that woke up the following morning”: police chief Yaacov Shabtai
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