There Was No Cover-Up of Hamas’s Sexual Violence on October 7

One thing is true: Hamas and other Palestinian militants committed unspeakable sexual violence against Israeli civilians on October 7. “The full scale of the assault is yet to be uncovered,” according to a position paper published by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, a nongovernmental organization.

Two things are not true: That the October 7 rapes and sexual mutilation were ignored or covered up by the United Nations gender-equality organization U.N. Women and a conspiracy of Western feminists, global human rights organizations, and U.S. progressives. Or that behind this alleged rape denial lies antisemitism: “#MeToo, except if you’re a Jew.”

Israeli campaign to kill Hamas leaders likely to backfire, say earlier assassination targets

A worldwide campaign of assassinations of Hamas leaders announced by senior Israel officials is likely to be counterproductive, impractical and ineffective, targets of previous such efforts have suggested.

Benjamin Netanyahu first announced the new strategy two weeks after the 7 October attacks launched by Hamas into southern Israel which killed 1,200 people.

'Israel only responds to force’: support for Hamas soars in West Bank after October attack

Fluffy pink slippers on her feet and scarves thrown over her hair and pyjamas, Amal Abu Ghazi, 39, leaned against a wall as she watched her family clear out the rubble from their ruined house in the Jenin refugee camp, in the north of the occupied West Bank.

Her husband used a stick to smash the remaining shards of glass out of the window frames of their two-storey home and her brothers-in-law hauled out the remains of sofas and tables; somehow, a laptop had managed to survive intact. Israeli soldiers had burst in two nights ago, Abu Ghazi said, arresting her sons, 20 and 18, and ordering the rest of the family to wait outside before troops used explosives to demolish the building.

Hamas says Gaza mosque destroyed, urges UNESCO to save heritage

Hamas has said that Israel bombed Gaza’s medieval Omari Mosque, causing widespread destruction to the landmark site, and urged UNESCO to protect historic buildings in the besieged Palestinian territory.

Footage and images posted on social media by the Palestinian group on Friday appeared to show the Great Omari Mosque, the largest and oldest in Gaza City, reduced to rubble.

Only the minaret appeared to be intact, with the surroundings shattered. The site has been a Christian or Muslim holy site since at least the fifth century.

US intelligence community was not aware of Hamas’ plan to attack Israel, Kirby confirms

The U.S. intelligence community was not aware of Hamas’ plan to attack Israel, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Sunday, after the New York Times reported last week that Israeli officials obtained the plans more than a year before the Oct. 7 attack occurred.

“The intelligence community has indicated that they did not have access to this document,” Kirby told NBC’s Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press.” POLITICO reported Friday that there was no indication Israel had shared the blueprint for the attack with the United States.

How strong is Hamas and could there be another ceasefire in Gaza?

Now that fighting has begun again, how strong is Hamas?

In military terms, Hamas is significantly weaker than it was on 7 October.

The Israeli offensive has undoubtedly damaged the group’s military infrastructure, and killed a significant number of militants. Quite how many is unclear. It is now known that Hamas needed to mobilise auxiliaries such as police into Israel for the attacks that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, on 7 October alongside better trained fighters, which suggests that estimates that Hamas has 30,000 or more combat troops are exaggerated.

Netanyahu: Don’t accuse me of boosting Hamas with Qatari money

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vehemently denied accusations he allowed Qatar to fund and strengthen the militant group Hamas in order to divide Palestinians into rival political camps, slamming the claims as “ridiculous.”

Netanyahu’s opponents in Israel argue his government spent years actively boosting Hamas in Gaza by allowing Qatar to channel hundreds of millions of dollars to the coastal enclave in a risky game of “divide-and-rule,” that was meant to play the Islamist militants from Hamas off against the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

Israel’s trauma was compounded by talk of an existential threat

TEL AVIV — “Benjamin Netanyahu is not a brave leader,” says Tamir Pardo, a former director of the Mossad intelligence agency. “To make hard decisions for war or for peace, you have to be brave, and he isn’t, and he panics.”

That’s how Pardo views his former boss’ reaction to October 7 — as fitting a pattern of behavior he observed first-hand from 2011 to 2016, when Pardo led Israel’s vaunted external intelligence agency.

Israel-Hamas war is deadliest conflict on record for reporters, says watchdog

Israel’s military offensive in Gaza has produced the deadliest month for journalists since statistics began more than three decades ago, and created a news blackout in the embattled territory, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said.

The reporters’ watchdog has recorded the deaths of 48 reporters since Hamas embarked on a murderous killing spree in Israel on 7 October, triggering a concerted Israeli bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza in response.

Israel and Hamas appear close to hostage release deal, say officials

Israel and Hamas appear to be edging towards a deal that would see the release of a significant number of hostages, possibly in return for a limited ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.

Senior US and Israeli officials, as well as the Qatari prime minister, all suggested an agreement was close on Sunday, although observers have cautioned that public statements during such negotiations are often misleading and any potential deal could easily collapse.

New York Times Slams GOP Senator For 'Parroting Disinformation' About Its Staff And Hamas

The New York Times sent a letter to Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Friday condemning him for suggesting that its employees were involved in Hamas’ attack on Israel last month, calling him out for “parroting disinformation.”

The message came in response to a letter that Cotton sent to Times leadership Thursday citing “reports” that the newspaper’s journalists were “embedded with Hamas, knew about the attack, and ... accompanied members of Hamas as they carried out the attack.”

One day, the war between Israel and Hamas will be over

One day, the war between Israel and Hamas will come to an end. And when that happens, Israelis and Palestinians will need to re-engage in the essential question of what could constitute a peaceful settlement between them. But with each passing day of bombing, blockade, rocket attacks and hostages not released, it becomes more and more difficult to resume the process towards a two-state solution.

The war has reminded us that there is no viable alternative to a peace process and a two-state solution. The international community cannot continue to look the other way. We cannot allow another 30 years of occupation, war and unresolved conflict.

‘Nobody’s hands are clean’: Obama urges reflection amid Israel-Hamas conflict

Former President Barack Obama cautioned against ignoring the complexities of the Israel-Hamas war, warning that “all of us are complicit.”

“If you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth. And you then have to admit nobody’s hands are clean, that all of us are complicit to some degree,” he said in an excerpted interview with Pod Save America released Saturday. 

Reflecting on his presidency, Obama posed the question, “Well, was there something else I could have done?”

Hamas says it’s closely coordinating war’s next moves with Hezbollah in Lebanon

BEIRUT — Iran-backed militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah are closely coordinating their next steps in fighting against Israel, a senior Hamas representative in Lebanon told POLITICO on Tuesday, just hours after Tehran warned of “preemptive action” against Israel.

Ahmed Abdul-Hadi, the head of Hamas’ political bureau in Beirut, insisted Gaza-based Hamas had not given its ally Hezbollah any advance notice of its attacks against Israel on October 7, which killed more than 1,400 people. Despite this, however, he described a continual cooperation between the two groups, stressing Hezbollah was now “geared for a major war” against Israel in the north, while Hamas would burst Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “dream” of driving it out of Gaza.

Hamas says 250 people held hostage in Gaza

Hamas has said that 250 people are being held hostage in Gaza, and that they will be released “when conditions are ripe”.

In a televised statement late on Monday, Abu Ubaida, the spokesperson for Hamas’s military wing, said the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam brigades had been holding 200 people captive since the Hamas raid on 7 October.

He said about 50 others were being held by other “resistance factions and in other places” and claimed that at least 22 hostages had been killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.

To end Hamas, Israel may need to grieve first

When I called an Israeli defense analyst this week to talk about the terror visited on her country, I wanted to jump quickly to my questions: How long will Israel’s fight against Hamas last? What will victory ultimately look like? And what happens when the immediate clashes end?

But she had something to share first.

“I just came home from a funeral,” she said, her voice breaking. “It was awful. There aren’t enough slots to hold all the funerals. They’re running out of flowers. There are so many bodies. It’s insane, just insane.”

Across the Middle East, Mass Protests Erupt Over Israel’s Assault on Gaza

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets across the Middle East on Friday to protest Israel’s assault on the occupied Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 1,500 people, displaced more than 330,000, devastated the enclave’s infrastructure, and pushed its healthcare system to the brink of collapse.

Demonstrators in Jordan, Yemen, Iraq, Pakistan, Malaysia, Bahrain, Iran, Egypt, and Lebanon expressed outrage over Israel’s ongoing attack and the decadeslong occupation of Palestinian territory.

“This rally is aimed at condemning what is happening in occupied Palestine, the bloodletting, and the violation of rights,” Abu Kayan, an organizer of a rally in Baghdad, told Agence France-Presse.

Hamas Is Dragging Israel Toward the Abyss

The surprise attack by Hamas militants against Israel last Saturday now looks set to trigger a war potentially more destructive than any that the region has seen in years. Reeling from a series of armed assaults by the militant group that are believed to have killed around 1,300 Israelis, including many civilians, Israel’s newly formed unity government said that it is preparing for a decisive battle in the Gaza Strip.

Israel targets Hamas’s labyrinth of tunnels under Gaza

Israel says it is striking parts of a secret labyrinth of tunnels built underneath the Gaza Strip by Hamas, as it continues to retaliate for the Palestinian Islamist militant group's unprecedented cross-border attack on Saturday.

"Think of the Gaza Strip as one layer for civilians and then another layer for Hamas. We are trying to get to that second layer that Hamas has built," an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson said in a video on Thursday.

‘Not pro-Israeli’: Decoding Putin’s muted response to Hamas attacks

Kyiv, Ukraine – “I want to thank you, my friend, for what you have done,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin about four years ago.

His words followed Moscow’s transfer to Tel Aviv of the remains of Zachary Baumel, an Israeli serviceman who had been missing in action since 1982, the time of the first Israeli-Lebanese war.

Netanyahu expressed nothing but gratitude to Putin, even though the Russian soldiers who discovered Baumel’s remains were fighting for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, one of Iran’s closest allies.