Important Takeaways:
- Hamas and Israeli troops clash in Gaza as airstrikes intensify
- Hamas fighters and Israeli forces engaged in limited clashes inside Gaza on Sunday as the Israeli military ramped up airstrikes on the Palestinian enclave ahead of what its spokesperson described as the “next stage” of its war on the militant group.
- Hamas claimed its fighters had destroyed two Israeli military bulldozers and a tank in an ambush near the Gazan city of Khan Younis, forcing Israeli troops to retreat without their vehicles. The Israel Defense Forces confirmed its forces had been operating inside Gaza during the incident, and said an IDF tank struck militants who had fired on its troops.
- The episode appeared to be one of the first skirmishes between the two sides on the ground inside the strip since war broke out
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel At War: Day 17: 1,400+ Israelis Killed; IDF Increases Strikes Preparing For ‘Next Phase Of War’
- Over 1,400 Israelis (306 soldiers) have been killed, and over 5,400 have been injured.
- The IDF has notified families of 222 being held hostage in Gaza.
- Over 7,000 Rockets have been fired by Hamas toward Southern and Central Israel from Gaza (approximately 550 failed launches inside Gaza), with Lebanon and Syria also firing from the north.
- One day after the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, on Oct. 7th, thousands of Hamas gunmen Invaded southern Israel, kidnapping, raping, torturing, and killing Israelis, specifically targeting women, children, and the elderly.
- On Oct. 8th, the Israel Security Cabinet voted to officially declare war for the first time since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
- In an interview with Sky News, Israeli President Isaac Herzog revealed that information was found on Hamas terrorists via USB, which provided detailed instructions on the manufacturing of chemical weapons.
- The USB contained official material from Al Qaeda, according to the President. Adding that, it shows Israel is simultaneously “dealing with ISIS, Al Qaeda, and Hamas.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Son of Hamas founder says mainstream media ‘afraid’ to label group a genocidal religious movement
- The son of a Hamas founder said Hamas is even more dangerous than ISIS on Monday, claiming the mainstream media is afraid to call it a genocidal religious movement for fear of igniting a full-on religious war.
- “It’s their own comparison to say Hamas and ISIS because I think Hamas is a lot more dangerous,” Mosab Hassan Yousef told “FOX & Friends.”
- “Look at the division and the global confusion because of Hamas. They brought us to our knees somehow by their brutality and their barbarism. Brutality is even understating Hamas’ acts. Hamas is a religious movement, and they are a raging religious movement against Israel. The mainstream media cannot say this, because they are afraid to ignite a religious war. And what I say, it already is. They want to annihilate the Jewish people because they are Jewish people, because they are a Jewish state.”
- Yousef, who renounced the terrorist group and became an informant for Israel’s internal security service Shin Bet in the 1990s, said Hamas couldn’t be negotiated with since it wasn’t a national or political movement.
- “They are driven by dark hatred toward a race, toward a nation,” he said.
- Yousef said Hamas’ ability to withstand any ground invasion from the Israelis would predicate in part on its known practice of using “human shields.”
- “They have many tunnels. They used the funds and the aid that came to Gaza, they used it to dig tunnels,” he said. “It’s very hard to deal with this style of suicidal group of fighters who basically don’t appreciate life. They actually [are] looking forward to death.”
- He added it was possible to destroy Hamas, but it would begin with the destruction of its infrastructure, in addition to gathering intelligence and enforcing a suffocating siege.
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Important Takeaways:
- U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken offered reassurances of ongoing U.S. support to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, heading into a meeting in Tel Aviv, in the wake of bloody attacks perpetrated by Palestinian militant group Hamas against Israel over the weekend.
- Separately, Palestine Liberation Organization Secretary-General Hussein al-Sheikh said on X that Blinken will convene with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority on Friday.
- The U.S. has firmly denounced the Hamas attacks and previously proposed a humanitarian corridor for civilians in the Gaza Strip.
- The death toll meanwhile continues to mount in Israel and Gaza, as sirens blare and war wages.
- Israeli Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Israel Katz said Thursday that the Gaza siege will not be lifted until the country’s hostages, taken by Hamas, are returned home.
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Important Takeaways:
- The presence of scores of captives in Gaza, a large majority of them civilians, increases the risks involved in a possible Israeli invasion
- Among them were 49 people who appeared to be civilians — nine of them children — and 11 who appeared to be members of the Israeli military, according to The Post’s review. In four cases, it was not possible to determine whether the captive was a civilian or soldier.
- Hamas has said that it holds “tens” of people. Israeli authorities have said they estimate that Palestinian fighters took between 100 and 150 people hostage.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel Strikes 450 Targets as Scale of Hamas’ Massacre Rises: Babies Beheaded, 1,200 Civilians Dead
- Day 5 of the Israel-Hamas war.
- Israel says it struck at least 450 Hamas targets in Gaza in the last 24 hours, while Israeli ground forces mass on the border for an imminent invasion.
- The death toll in Israel continues to climb – more than 1,200 civilians dead, 170 soldiers slain, and more than 3,500 Israelis wounded. Forty murdered Israeli babies were found among the massacred civilians, and some of those babies had been beheaded.
- The health ministry in Gaza says some 1,055 people have been killed and 5,000 injured during Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Hamas in the sealed coastal enclave.
- In the Israeli community of Kfar Aza, soldiers discovered what’s been described as a “massacre.”
- Gen. Itai Veruv, who led the three-day campaign to retake Kfar Aza after Hamas militants invaded, said, “You see the babies, the mothers, the fathers in their bedrooms, in their protection rooms, and how the terrorists killed them. It’s not a war, it’s not a battlefield. It’s a massacre. It’s a terror activity.”
- Doron Spielman, Israel Defense Forces spokesman, added, “Who could do this? They must have shed their humanity, and what is left is something inhuman. To see baby carriages with bullet holes and blood? Who goes up to a baby and kills a baby? Who kills a mother? I see the bodies in their homes.”
- On Tuesday, Biden also announced the U.S. is rushing military assistance to Israel including ammunition and interceptors to help the Iron Dome.
- The president also said he’s instructed his team to share intelligence with Israel as they work together to safely bring home all the hostages.
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Important Takeaways:
- Rocket slams into Israeli hospital and supermarket in new wave of strikes from Gaza – as Benjamin Netanyahu posts horrifying image of blood-soaked child’s bed and labels Hamas ‘worse than ISIS’
- Hamas launched a fresh wave of rocket attacks in Israel this afternoon, destroying a children’s hospital and a supermarket.
- Shocking images and videos out of Israel’s southern city of Ashkelon purportedly showed how the Child Development wing of the Barzilai Medical Centre suffered a direct hit which reduced parts of the building to rubble.
- A spokeswoman for the center said: ‘The child development center at the Barzilai hospital in Ashkelon suffered a direct hit by a projectile from Gaza,’ while Deputy Director Dr. Gili Givati told Israeli public radio: ‘The development center was completely destroyed.’
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Important Takeaways:
- Report: Hamas calls for global Jihad, invasion of Israel, attack Jews worldwide on Oct. 13
- A leader and founding member of Hamas, Khalid Mashal, reportedly called for a global Jihad on Tuesday, asking Muslims around the world to target the people of Israel on Friday, Oct. 13.
- This is breaking news that will be updated as more information becomes available.
- Video of Mashal’s reported call to violence was posted on YouTube and remains up on the platform as of Wednesday at 10 a.m.
- According to a translation and analysis of the video by author Brother Rachid, Mashal referred to his proposed day of anger as “the Friday of Al-Aqsa flood,” which will “send a message of rage to Zionists and to America.”
- “The most important thing: He asked all Muslims around the world to carry Jihad by their souls; to fight and be martyrs for Al-Aqsa. He wants Muslims to fight against the Jews, starting with Muslims who live in the countries surrounding Israel: Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt (but also other countries), to go to the borders and try to enter, each by his own means,” Rachid explained. “He said: This is the time for Jihad to be applied on the ground rather than just in theory. He asked the Mujahedeen to go in long caravans to spell their blood on the land of Palestine.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Democratic senators break with Biden and call to refreeze $6 billion Iranian ‘ransom’ funds after horrific Hamas terror attack on Israel
- Influential Democratic senators have publicly pressed the Biden Administration to try to find a way to freeze $6 billion in Iranian funds over Tehran’s support for Hamas.
- The pressure from within the president’s own party comes as the White House says there is no confirmation of Iran’s support for the gruesome Hamas attack – even while acknowledging Iran’s longstanding support for the group.
- Jon Tester (D-Mont.), a Democratic centrist who is up for reelection in 2024, is among those calling for the funds to be refrozen.
- ‘As American intelligence officials continue to investigate the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas, we should review our options to hold Iran accountable for any support they may have provided,’ he said.
- ‘At a minimum, we should immediately freeze the $6 billion in Iranian assets and explore other financial tools we have at our disposal,’ he said, the Hill reported.
- Also weighing in was Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who is also facing reelection. ‘I wasn’t supportive of the initial $6 billion transfer. We should absolutely freeze Iranian assets while we also consider additional statements,’ he said.
- The administration negotiated the unfreezing of the funds in a deal last month that bought the release of five Americans held hostage in Iran. The then-frozen funds got transferred from South Korea to Qatar, where they are now being overseen.
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Important Takeaways:
- ‘Hamas is ISIS’: IDF Secures Border, Pounds Gaza as Hamas Terrorists Threaten to Execute Hostages
- Speaking in an address to the nation Monday night, Prime Minister Netanyahu said Israel is in “a war to ensure our existence, a war that we will win.”
- “Israel is at war. Israel didn’t want this war. It was forced upon us in the most brutal and savage way. But though Israel didn’t start this war, Israel will finish it … Hamas will understand that by attacking us they’ve made a mistake of historic proportions,” he said.
- “We have always known what Hamas is. Now the whole world knows. Hamas is ISIS,” Netanyahu said. “We will defeat [Hamas] precisely as the enlightened world defeated ISIS.”
- The IDF has called up a record 360,000 reservists to prepare for what many expect is a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip.
- There are more than 160 hostages in Hamas’ hands, and Hamas has warned they will kill one hostage on live TV every time Israel attacks “without prior warning.”
- “They were taken from their home, from their beds,” said one Israeli mother whose two sons are being held hostage.
- [During airstrikes from IDF] Gaza authorities say at least 687 Palestinians have died.
- Meanwhile, on Israel’s northern border, there have been several skirmishes between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, leading many to believe a second front could be a real possibility.
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