world news
Women held hostage by Hamas in Gaza kept in cages – report
Women who were abducted from Israeli territory and held hostage by Hamas in Gaza were kept in cages, according to a report by Israeli media, citing a statement from a member of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
This claim is not the first of its kind; in the days immediately following the October 7th attacks, videos from Hamas’s Telegram channel showed child hostages being kept in cages for the majority of their time in captivity.
Hamas distributed a letter on Monday allegedly written by Danielle Aloni, was was kidnapped alongside her 5-year-old daughter Emilia and held in captivity. In the letter, written in Hebrew and translated into Arabic, she reportedly thanked Hamas for the “extraordinary humanity” provided to her daughter, who “felt like a queen.”נשים שהוחזקו בשבי חמאס שהו רוב הזמן בכלובים.כן, קראתם נכון, בכלובים.אל תתרגשו ממכתבים שחמאס הכריח אותן לכתוב.
— ישי כהן (@ishaycoen) November 27, 2023
The letter also read, “I will forever be a prisoner of love because [Emilia] did not leave here with psychological trauma forever.” The Aloni family has not confirmed this letter nor the statements made in it, though widely distributed on social media by the Hamas terror organization.
This letter is one of many that hostages were forced to write, according to Israeli media reports.
Hamas shares a picture of the Israeli hostage’s letter thanking them for their good treatment.So, Hamas’ plan was to kill the largest number of children, women, and elderly, then kidnap as many innocents as possible, and finally treat them well to present a positive image of… pic.twitter.com/zb7ou6tygg
— Ehab Hassan (@EhabH91) November 27, 2023
Survivors reported being provided limited food while being held hostage, without clear reports of physical abuse or torture, though they were given minimal food. Of the small rations they received – rice and pita at best – the hostages were often left to cook the food for themselves and the children left held with them. They also said how their final two weeks had seen supplies running low.
Supplies running low
Merav Mor Munder, the cousin of Keren Munder who was released on Friday, told N12 “There were days when there were no supplies, so they only ate pita bread. They were not tortured, but there were days when they barely had any food, in the last few days they only ate very little rice.
She says how one of the hostages, Hannah Katzir, who was also released, learned of her son’s murder on one of the few occasions they would be permitted to listen to Israeli radio. It was upon her own release that she learned of how her husband had also been kidnapped and remained in Gaza.
Some of the hostages spoke of their worry about last-minute attempts by Hamas or Gazans, who had thrown stones at the vehicle taking them to Egypt, to attack them before they got home. “Until the last moment we weren’t sure,” a hostage said: “We thought they would lynch us on the way to Israel.”
Sinwar visits hostages in tunnels
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the man behind the planning of the October 7 massacre, spoke to Israeli hostages while they were held in Gaza, one Israeli who was released from captivity this week told her family, Israeli media reported on Monday evening.
Sinwar allegedly arrived in a tunnel where she and other hostages were being held, checked how they are, and told them in fluent Hebrew that they would not be harmed.
Israel’s Channel 12 claims that this report was verified by her investigators in Israel’s security systems.
Current concerns among Israel’s defense and military analysts relate to Sinwar’s plans for the rest of this war – namely, the exploitation of the humanitarian crisis among Palestinian civilians in order to advance Hamas’s terror goals.
Neglect at the hands of the Red Cross
After Elma Avraham, 84, was returned to Israeli custody, she was immediately airlifted for emergency medical care. Her family claimed that she was “medically neglected” by international medical organizations that failed to provide her with the immediate medical treatment she required at the time.
“My mother did not deserve to be treated like this” stated Elma’s daughter, Tal Amano.
According to Amano, her mother was the victim of a “double betrayal that began on October 7 when she was kidnapped by Hamas, and continued with the failure of international organizations that were supposed to help her in the condition that she was in at the time of her release.”
Prior to her kidnapping on October 7, Elma was in relatively good health. However, she did have some underlying health issues that required medication.
“No one from the international organizations bothered to create a list with the medications she required,” her daughter continued.
“Clalit [an Israeli medical health fund] was the one who fought for us. It delivered the medication that Elma required to my brother in person. Yet, when my brother attempted to pass on the medication to a Red Cross representative at a meeting they held together, he was told no, they cannot do that.”
Elma’s family returned to the Red Cross building a few days after and were once again rejected.
“My mother should not have come back like this. What is the Red Cross there for? What is the UN Women organization for?” Tal demanded to know.
Dr. Nadav Davidovitz, who is currently treating Elma, said “We were in meetings with the Red Cross and asked them to make every effort to bring the medications to her, because some hostages are just dying. From a medical and nursing standpoint, what we witnessed is unlawful neglect.”
Keshet Neev and Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.
IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi on Monday told the IAEA Board of Governors that he has corresponded with new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and is hopeful that a near future meeting will lead to progress regarding the nuclear standoff.
At the same time, Grossi noted that since Pezeshkian’s inauguration on July 30, there has been no progress whatsoever with the Islamic Republic despite public statements some of its officials have made about trying to improve the situation with the West.
Grossi said, ” There has been no progress in the past 15 months towards implementing the Joint Statement of 4 March 2023,” in which Tehran had promised to start to fix a number of its nuclear violations and lack of cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog.
Further, he said, “It has been more than three and a half years since Iran stopped implementing its nuclear-related commitments under the JCPOA, including provisionally applying its Additional Protocol, and therefore, it is also over three and a half years since the Agency was able to conduct complementary access in Iran.”“Consequently, the Agency has lost continuity of knowledge in relation to the production and inventory of centrifuges, rotors and bellows, heavy water and uranium ore concentrate,” stated Grossi.
Inconsistent Iranian statement
Moreover, the IAEA chief noted, “Iran says it has declared all nuclear material, activities and locations required under its NPT Safeguards Agreement. However, this statement is inconsistent with the Agency’s findings of uranium particles of anthropogenic origin at undeclared locations in Iran. The Agency needs to know the current location(s) of the nuclear material and/or of contaminated equipment involved.”
Grossi was referring to extensive evidence of Iranian nuclear violations, which Mossad exposed when it raided Tehran’s nuclear archives in 2018.
In addition, Grossi highlighted that the Islamic Republic continues to increase its 20% and 60% enriched uranium stock as well as the number of cascades it has for enriching uranium – all in violation of the 2015 nuclear deal.
Every few months in recent years, the IAEA Board has met to confront the Iran nuclear issue, with it issuing a condemnation of Tehran in June of this year and in 2022, but to date, it has failed to refer the issue to the UN Security Council where global sanctions could potentially be “snapped back” on Iran.
Pezeshkian is viewed as more moderate than his predecessor, Ebrahim Raisi, and more moderate than the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but so far, there are no clear signs that he will have the power or be able to make the concessions to the West necessary to end the ongoing stalemate.
Some police officials have accused the IDF and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) of withholding security threat information overnight between October 6 and 7, which, if it had been shared with the police, could have saved the lives of 364 civilians who were killed at the Nova party and the 44 hostages who were taken.
First reported by Channel 12 at the end of the weekend, the Acting Police Commander for the Negev Area in the South Eyal Azulai is quoted as saying that the police had always been unsure about the safety of the Nova party attendees and that if they had known about the enhanced security threat, they might have ended the party before the invasion took place.
The warnings that Azulai was referring to led to at least two consultations among and between the Shin Bet and the IDF in the middle of the night between October 6 and 7.
It appears that an aspect of these warnings were IDF intelligence seeing somewhere between dozens to hundreds of Israeli SIM cellphone cards switching on within Gaza, something drawing suspicion of a potential attempted penetration into Israel since Israelis cannot safely reside in Gaza.The various warnings eventually led to a decisive conference call between IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi, Shin Bet Chief Ronen Bar, and other senior IDF officials in which the Shin Bet decided to send a small additional crew of reinforcements to the border, and all of the security officials agreed to discuss the situation more the next day.
However, either because the security chiefs did not view the threat as terribly significant or because they did not want to widen the circle of intelligence sharing to the police, who they might have trusted less with such sensitive information, they did not even tell the police that anything problematic was afoot.
Asked to respond to the allegations, the IDF gave a generic non-denial denial, saying only that it is still probing the Nova party incident and that it will present its findings to the public when it concludes the probe.
However, given that the IDF had originally said it would publish the probe in June and then sometime over the course of July and August, IDF and police officials have been now regularly leaking findings from all of the different military probes in order to try to frame the public’s view of them before the official reports are issued.
In the past, certain IDF officials have tried to blame the police for allowing the Nova party to go forward in such a secure area and for reacting slowly to save the Nova party attendees, given that technically, it had more direct responsibility for their safety than for the many Gaza border towns which Hamas invaded and which were supposed to be protected by the IDF.
This latest leak places the onus on the IDF and the Shin Bet (which has been even more opaque than the IDF, not providing a single public update to date about its October 7 failures) for failing to warn the police of the increased danger they knew about overnight between October 6 and 7.
No Israeli official had any idea of the scale of Hamas’s invasion
Even though no one in the IDF or the Shin Bet had any idea of the scale of the size of the impending invasion, even a warning of a small penetration, which they were worried about, might have been enough to get the police to close the Nova party and evacuate the attendees.
Next, the Channel 12 report tries to compliment the police for evacuating a significant percentage of the Nova party attendees once Hamas’s invasion started, as well as for setting up a defense position on Route 232, which slowed Hamas’s advance against some of the attendees.
However, the report also said that then-Israel Police chief Kobi Shabtai did not even call Halevi for more help until 11:45 a.m., by which time it was already too late to save many of the Nova party residents.
Also, at that point, neither Halevi nor Shabtai made any bold moves to send a larger amount of reinforcement forces rapidly to the Nova party despite the fact that there were far more civilians there than in the many other locations that Hamas was invading.
As has become clear by a variety of IDF briefings, top IDF officials were either still in shock or lacked a clear picture of myriad places where Hamas had invaded and did not even assign field commanders to certain areas until around 1:00 or 2:00 p.m. in the afternoon, and full reinforcement forces did not arrive in some places until even later.
By then, the entire police position at Route 232 had been overrun, and most Nova party civilians who had stayed near police were either killed or kidnapped.
There is an ongoing unresolved disagreement between the IDF and the police about which side had more doubts about holding the Nova party and which side was more negligent in allowing it to go forward in such a dangerous area so close to Gaza in the first place.
A variety of IDF officials have said they had not even been updated by other IDF officials that the party was taking place.
Yet, IDF Southern Command Chief of Staff Brig.-Gen. Manor Yanai had told Azulai that there was no security issue with the Nova party, and despite that statement, did not later update Azulai or any other police officials that the situation had changed, according to Channel 12.
The lack of updates to the police from ]IDF Southern Command would stand even more since IDF Southern Commander Maj.-Gen. Yaron Finkleman, Yanai’s boss, abandoned his vacation in northern Israel in the middle of the night to rush south to his base at Beersheba to have a closer hand on the situation.
Everyone wants the Mossad on their side when it comes to the debate over the Philadelphi Corridor.
The Jerusalem Post has reported multiple times since May that the unchanging position of the Mossad is that Israel can and should withdraw from the corridor if that would bring back between 18-30 hostages and provided Phase 1 of the hostage deal with Hamas would allow the IDF to return to attacking Hamas in the corridor after around 45 days.
The Post and other outlets have also reported that Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the IDF high command favor a deal under such terms, including temporarily withdrawing from the corridor to get some of the hostages back.
Yet on Sunday, an anonymous source who was present during the most recent diplomatic-security cabinet meeting leaked to the media that Mossad Director David Barnea supported Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s position not to withdraw from the corridor.In fact, the anonymous source went even further saying that Barnea did not think Netanyahu should move toward Hamas on the issue “even one millimeter.”
Although… actually, that is not what the anonymous source said if the leaked statement is looked at carefully. Rather, it made a messy and hazy statement about Barnea supporting the Israeli position on the corridor to the extent that it would be acceptable to the US.Anyone who has followed the US position knows that it wishes Israel had stopped the war in December-January and for sure by May, and has tried everything it could to pressure Netanyahu to withdraw from the corridor.
Now, once the US said it could not get Netanyahu to completely withdraw from the corridor, it started to explore if it could get Hamas and Egypt to agree to a small Israeli presence in portions of the corridor, while otherwise generally withdrawing. That is not the same thing as thinking that Netanyahu’s stance on the corridor is the right move.The Mossad is in a somewhat similar position.
Mossad’s current position
There are some points where the Mossad’s position is tougher than the US position, but generally, since May, Barnea has been closer to the US, IDF, and Gallant’s view that it is time to cut a deal, even temporarily sacrificing control of the corridor, than he has been to Netanyahu’s staunch opposition to concessions in that area.
Also, usually, when the Mossad puts something out backing Netanyahu in negotiations, it is in its own name, not in the name of some anonymous cabinet official.The absence of a direct statement of support for Netanyahu from the Mossad itself is deafening.
So why is someone (from Netanyahu’s side) trying to pretend that the Mossad stands with the prime minister on this? Bodies of six hostages, who had been alive until last week, were just recovered.Netanyahu is under the greatest domestic pressure in Israel to compromise that he has been under possibly since the start of the war.
As he explains his position to the public, if he can claim that the defense establishment is split – IDF versus the Mossad – then he does not stand alone. His position looks principled and part of a serious strategy instead of about politics. Likewise, Gallant and the IDF want the Mossad on their side so they can present a united professionals’ front versus a political front. The truth is even without the Mossad, there is some principled opposition to cutting a deal if the question is saving the most Jewish lives on a long-term basis by ensuring Hamas is destroyed. But this also requires saying out loud that Netanyahu would be willing to let hostages die as a price to achieve that goal – because that is what happened this past week. Netanyahu is not ready to do this, so instead he would prefer if the battle can be about who supports who and a divide within the defense establishment.However, the more hostages die, there also becomes less incentive for a deal to save the shrinking total number of them still alive.
Whatever the Mossad’s view is, there is no question at this point that Netanyahu is the decider about the question of saving hostages versus keeping the corridor.
-
Solar Energy3 years agoDLR testing the use of molten salt in a solar power plant in Portugal
-
world news10 months ago
Gulf, France aid Gaza, Russia evacuates citizens
-
Camera3 years agoCharles ‘Chuck’ Geschke, co-founder of Adobe and inventor of the PDF, dies at 81
-
TOP SCEINCE5 months agoCan animals count?
-
Camera10 months agoDJI Air 3 vs. Mini 4 Pro: which compact drone is best?
-
Solar Energy10 months agoGlencore eyes options on battery recycling project
-
world news10 months ago
Strong majority of Americans support Israel-Hamas hostage deal
-
Camera3 years ago80,000MP panoramas: EarthCam announces world’s highest-resolution robotic webcam
