LLX News

One of the six bodies recovered from a Rafah tunnel bore signs of having been tied up, and all showed evidence of neglect, according to the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute.

By: Jewish News Syndicate; jns.org

The six hostages whose bodies were recovered by Israeli forces from a Rafah tunnel in southern Gaza overnight Saturday were shot multiple times at close range just days before their discovery, Israel’s Health Ministry said on Sunday.

According to examinations conducted by the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute in Tel Aviv, the captives were murdered 48 to 72 hours before the autopsies, which would place their deaths at some point between Thursday and Friday morning.

That the captives were shot at short range suggests that they were executed by their Hamas captors.

“According to our initial assessment, they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists shortly before we reached them,” IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said on Sunday.

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Qaid Farhan Alkadi, 52, from the Arab Bedouin Negev city of Rahat, was rescued in a “complex operation.”

Israeli forces have rescued a hostage alive from Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces and Israel Security Agency said in a joint statement on Tuesday.

Qaid Farhan Alkadi, 52, from the Bedouin city of Rahat in the Negev Desert, was rescued from a tunnel in southern Gaza in a “complex operation” by the Israel Defense Forces Shayetet 13, 401st Brigade and Yahalom, together with ISA forces under the command of the 162nd Division. He was alone at the time of his rescue.

The father of 11 is in stable condition and was undergoing medical testing at Soroka Hospital in Beersheva, according to the military. His family has been updated and the IDF is accompanying them.

Soroka said that “he is fully conscious and in good general condition, and has already met with a family member with great excitement.”

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https://www.jns.org/israeli-forces-rescue-alive-a-hostage-in-the-southern-gaza-strip

By: JTA Staff – jta.org

Minouche Shafik, the Columbia University president whose campus became an epicenter of unrest this year following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, has resigned weeks before the start of the school year.

Shafik’s resignation, tendered Wednesday, means she is stepping down after about a year in the role. Her decision comes after widespread, sustained criticism of how she handled pro-Palestinian protests that have convulsed the Ivy League university since Oct. 7.

“I write with sadness to tell you that I am stepping down as president of Columbia University effective August 14, 2024,” Shafik wrote in an email to the university on Wednesday evening. She said she had achieved progress in her role but added that “it has also been a period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community.”

She wrote, “This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community. Over the summer, I have been able to reflect and have decided that my moving on at this point would best enable Columbia to traverse the challenges ahead.”

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Instead of fleeing the Galilee, hundreds of Zionist Arameans are digging in as they brace for a major escalation

By: Canaan Lidor – The Times of Israel; timesofisrael.com

JISH, northern Israel — In plain view of a Hezbollah stronghold, Shadi Khalloul scanned a fig tree for the best fruit to offer his guests.

“Take some if you have a plastic bag,” Khalloul, 48, said on Monday on a hilltop in his village, about 3.5 kilometers (2 miles) from the border with Lebanon.

Khalloul’s disregard for Hezbollah snipers wasn’t due to ignorance. A Jish native, he’s aware of the terrorists’ capabilities — also thanks to his past service as an IDF Paratrooper Brigade officer and his current reserve duty with the IDF Operations Directorate.

Like most of his neighbors, Khalloul has stayed in Jish despite frequent shelling, because he won’t be cowed by the Lebanese terror group.

His defiance is characteristic of Jish and its small but tight-knit community of Aramean Christians: a Catholic ethnoreligious group of just a few thousand people who threw their lot in with the State of Israel. They trace their heritage to the ancient Arameans who lived here 3,000 years ago.

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By: Jenny Hill, reporting from Haifa, Israel – BBC News; bbc.com

Deep under the northern Israeli city of Haifa, there’s a vast underground hospital. Hundreds and hundreds of beds are lined up within its concrete walls. There are operating theatres, a maternity ward, and medical supplies stacked up in corners. But there are no patients – yet.

Rambam Medical Centre excavated this bunker after the Israel-Hezbollah war of 2006. It’s normally a multi-storey car park but it can be converted into a hospital in less than three days. It’s been on standby since shortly after the Hamas attacks of 7 October and Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza.

The facility has more than 2,000 beds. In the event of a major attack on Israel, it would take in existing patients from the overground medical centre and other nearby hospitals. And there’s room too to treat injured casualties. As the threat of an all-out regional war looms large following the killing of Hamas’ political leader Ismael Haniyeh and Hezbollah senior commander Fuad Shukr last week, doctors here say they’re prepared for a major attack on Haifa.

“When, when, when is it going to happen? Nobody knows. We talk about it a lot,” says Dr Avi Weissman, the medical director of the centre. People, he adds, are anxious. He and his staff just hope that any escalation of violence doesn’t last long.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg799l4eel1o

‘I’ve never had anything like this happen in my entire career,’ Zach Sage Fox says

Comedian and social media influencer Zach Sage Fox traveled to the West Bank to see if Palestinian people truly support the Hamas terror group. He almost didn’t make it out alive. 

Fox, who went viral earlier this year when his “Gaza Graduation” video featured anti-Israel protesters in New York City struggling to correctly answer basic questions about the Israel-Hamas war, has been on a crusade to educate his followers since the terror attacks of October 7. He recently brought his popular man-on-the-street style interviews to the West Bank, a contentious territory that Palestinians hope to establish as an independent state along with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Fox, a “loud and proud” Jewish American, was in Israel to create content when a member of his production team offered him the opportunity to enter the West Bank alongside a Muslim producer and cameraman. Fox knew it could be a dangerous project but was interested because American journalists are rarely able to secure unfettered access to Palestinians.

“Israelis are literally not allowed into Palestine; they’re not allowed into the West Bank. However, I’m not Israeli, I’m an American Jew, and it doesn’t say ‘Jew’ on my passport. So, I was told, ‘As long as you don’t say you’re Jewish, you know, they’re not going to kill you on the spot,’” Fox told Fox News Digital.

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https://www.foxnews.com/media/influencer-went-west-bank-see-palestinian-support-hamas-he-almost-didnt-make-out-alive

The 1972 Munich Olympics massacre scarred Jewish history. Now, with Israeli athletes facing death threats ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics, it’s clear little has changed.

By: Zina Rakhamilova – The Jerusalem Post; jpost.com

The 1972 Munich Olympic Games massacre was a moment in history that evokes profound devastation and Jewish trauma. With the recent targeting, threats, and harassment of Israeli athletes leading up to the Paris Olympics, it is evident that in 2024, nothing has changed since those horrific games.

The Munich Olympics were nicknamed die Heiteren Spiele, “the Happy Games,” attempting to overcome the specter of Germany’s previous Olympic Games held in Berlin in 1936. Instead, Jewish people around the world witnessed the murder of their athletes on live television while 900 million viewers watched and did nothing. The world failed us, Germany failed us, and Palestinian terrorists slaughtered eleven Israeli athletes and coaches.

Much like October 7, the Munich massacre demonstrated that cruelty and inhumanity toward Jewish people knows no bounds. Even more disheartening is that this atrocity did not affect the rest of the Olympics; it was business as usual. Despite knowing that Palestinian terrorists were holding Israeli athletes hostage and slaughtering them, Avery Brundage, the president of the Olympic Committee, declared that the games must go on. The parallels between this and October 7 are uncanny.

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https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-811589

The Israeli prime minister thanked the United States for its friendship and support, and emphasized the need to eradicate Hamas and to counter the Iranian threat.

By: Akiva Van Koningsveld – Jewish News Syndicate; jns.org

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received bursts of applause and frequent standing ovations—often from both sides of the aisle—as he delivered an address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on Wednesday afternoon.

In his remarks, which ran about an hour, Netanyahu praised the longevity and closeness of the U.S.-Israeli relationship; called for a decisive victory over the Hamas terror group; and urged the United States to help defeat the Iranian regime that, he said, continues to threaten both the Jewish state and the rest of the world.

He also said it was a “profound honor to address this citadel of democracy for the fourth time.”

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https://www.jns.org/netanyahu-our-victory-will-be-your-victory

The nation is on high alert in this dangerous phase.

By: Yossi Aloni – Israel Today; israeltoday.co.il

Israel expects a major attack by the Houthi rebels in Yemen soon, in response to the successful Israeli airstrike on the Yemeni port city of Hudaydah. About 25 warplanes bombed the heart of Yemen, 1,800 km from the Israeli border. The port of Hudaydah is the Houthis’ very lifeline for supplies. Will the Houthis drag Israel and Iran even further into a multi-front war? All this is happening during the week that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting the US. That is why Netanyahu has postponed his flight.

The Houthis could use everything they have, and that is not a small amount: the Iranians have equipped them with hundreds of suicide drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. They have turned Yemen into their weapons testing ground, and Israel is therefore expecting a swarm attack to be launched towards Israel.

The Israeli air defense system is on high alert. With the help of Israel’s allies – the US, the UK and possibly Saudi Arabia – a large scale defensive is being made to repel any attack from Yemen and possibly simultaneously from the Shiite militias in Iraq that are synchronized with the Houthis. If the Houthis launch hundreds of missiles and drones, this defensive operation could be reminiscent of the April 13 defensive operation in which Israel and its allies repelled an Iranian attack with a 99 percent success rate. That time, it was a retaliatory strike for the killing of an Iranian general in the Iranian consulate in Damascus.

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The motion opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state “on any piece of land west of the Jordan River.”

By: Israel Today Staff – israeltoday.co.il

The Knesset plenum voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday in favor of a resolution rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state.

The resolution, put forward by MK Ze’ev Elkin of the New Hope-National Right party with support from the Yisrael Beiteinu Party and the Land of Israel Caucus, passed by 68 to 9.

The Land of Israel Caucus, the mission of which is to strengthen Israeli control of Judea and Samaria, includes members from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition as well as Benny Gantz‘s centrist National Unity Party.

The caucus is co-chaired by MKs Simcha Rothman, Yuli Edelstein and Limor Son Har Melech.

“The Israeli Knesset opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state on any piece of land west of the Jordan River. The existence of a Palestinian state in the heart of Israel will pose an existential threat to the State of Israel and its citizens, will further extend the Israel-Palestinian Arab conflict and be a source of destabilization for the entire region,” the resolution states.

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