[IMPORTANT] Hamas launches foot assault against settlements.

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The purpose of propaganda is often to make one look good. This Jerusalem Post article is saying we’re f****d.

Hagar Brodutch is haunted by many memories of her 51 days in Hamas captivity, but teaching her children to cry without making a sound is the most searing.

“It’s impossible for 4-year-olds to cry silently,” she told NBC News, speaking of her son Uriah, and her then 3-year-old neighbor Avigail Idan, whose parents were murdered in front of her, and whom Brodutch cared for along with her other children, Ofri, 10, and Yuval, 8.

Brodutch, 40, says her captors, a Palestinian family with 10 children in Gaza, were afraid neighbors or Israeli forces would be alerted that hostages were inside their house. Still, despite her family’s life-altering experience, she and her husband, Avihai, 42, say that the return of the remaining 134 hostages should take priority in the war.

That sentiment from Brodutch, of the hard-hit Kfar Aza kibbutz, and dozens of other returned hostages and their families interviewed by NBC News appears to be gaining traction among some of the Israeli leaders directing the war.

In comments broadcast late Thursday, a member of Israel’s war Cabinet for the first time said publicly that the release of hostages should take precedence.

Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief of staff, not only called for the government to pursue a deal to release the hostages in Gaza, he criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the war and called for elections to choose a new leader within a few months. These were stunning statements from a member of a war Cabinet convened precisely to maintain unity and run the country during war time.

“For me, the mission to save civilians is before killing the enemy,” said Eisenkot in a recorded interview with “Uvda,” an Israeli television news program.

Eisenkot, a nonvoting member of Israel’s war Cabinet, won widespread sympathy in Israel after his son, Gal Eisenkot, was killed while fighting in Gaza.

The Israeli public feels a sense of urgency to get the remaining hostages out, but they are not willing to give up on Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas. Two-thirds of Israelis said they don’t think the Israel Defense Forces should reduce heavy bombing of densely populated areas in Gaza, according to a recent poll by the Israel Democracy Institute.

“Israelis understand that time matters in order to get as many hostages out alive as possible,” said Nadav Eyal, a columnist for the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. “They also understand that you should prioritize the lives of these hostages who are being murdered by Hamas and you can always destroy Hamas later.”

NBC News has spoken to dozens in the hostage community, including former hostages and the families of current and former captives, since Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack killed more than 1,000 people, mostly civilians, and resulted in the kidnapping of 240, according to Israeli officials.

Chen Goldstein-Almog, 49, watched in desperation as her husband and daughter were murdered right in front of her on Oct. 7. She and her three surviving children were kidnapped and held captive in Gaza for 51 days.

Goldstein-Almog, also from Kfar Aza, said she and the children would talk to their captors as a survival tactic during the seemingly endless hours of captivity.

“There were difficult conversations, sometimes to the root and depth of the conflict, which according to them we were the ones who expelled them and murdered them in 1948 when the state of Israel was established,” she told NBC News in a phone interview Friday. “We tried to maintain good relations with them because we were in their hands.”

Now that some of the hostages are home and beginning a new journey to process the trauma and loss they’ve experienced, some are returning to their kibbutzim to check on homes that are still uninhabitable following the attack

A UN report says Israel approved only seven of 29 humanitarian aid missions to the northern Gaza Strip in the first half of January and denied 95 percent of fuel and medicine delivery attempts to the area.

Palestinian men were held by Israeli forces for between 30 to 55 days, Ajith Sunghay said in a report on Friday during his visit to Gaza, where he met some of the released detainees.

There are reports of men who are subsequently released, but only in diapers without any adequate clothing in this cold weather,” he said, adding that it was not clear why they were made to wear diapers but that “they were clearly visibly shocked and even shaken when I met them”.

According to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, multiple freed prisoners said that after being made to curse themselves and disparage Palestinian groups and political figures, they were transferred in trucks to open-air detention facilities where they endured beatings and other forms of mistreatment.

“Israel must take urgent steps to ensure that all those arrested or detained are treated in line with international human rights and international humanitarian law norms and standards, notably with full respect for their due process rights,” Sunghay asserted.

Separately on Friday, several prisoners released by Israeli forces in Gaza arrived at the Abu Youssef Al Najjar Hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza, accusing the Israeli army of mistreating them.

“We were arrested by a special Israeli force in the al-Saftawi area. We were then subjected to torture and beatings. Then they … transferred us to a detention centre at the Israeli army headquarters,” Muhammad Abu Samra told Al Jazeera.

“The army … threatened to shoot us while we were naked in the cold. Then female soldiers attacked us and we were subjected to obscene insults.”

‘Pressure cooker’
The UN’s Sunghay, who was in Rafah, said people were continuing to arrive in southern city, “in desperate situations, setting up makeshift shelters with any material they can get their hands on”.

“I’ve seen men and children digging for bricks to be able to hold in place tents made with plastic bags. This is a massive human rights crisis,” he said.

It is a pressure cooker environment here, in the midst of utter chaos, given the terrible humanitarian situation, shortages, and pervasive fear and anger,” Sunghay noted, adding that there was an urgent need to scale up humanitarian aid for the coastal enclave.

Hamas has sufficient munitions and manpower to counter Israeli military operations in Gaza for several months, according to US officials.

As well as maintaining its capacity to strike Israel with rockets and fight Israeli forces in Gaza, Hamas has even been able to reconstitute its police force in parts of Gaza City, unnamed officials told the Wall Street Journal, citing classified intelligence reports.

The officials added that Tel Aviv has only managed to kill between 20-30 percent of Hamas fighters in Gaza since 7 October 7, despite waging an intensive air and ground campaign on the Palestinian enclave.

Hamas, which has been in power in Gaza since 2007, has seemingly adjusted its tactics in the face of Israel’s multi-frontal attack. The group reportedly operates in smaller units, employing guerrilla tactics to ambush Israeli troops, while individual fighters are taking on more tasks to account for losses among their ranks, military analysts said.

By the standards of US military doctrine, the loss of 20-30% of a fighting force would usually render such a force as “combat ineffective”. However, the US military analysts say that this doesn’t apply to Hamas, as it is a non-conventional “irregular” group that is fighting a defensive war in a dense urban environmen

This has led the Biden administration to scale down its expectations for Israel’s war, aiming for a degradation in its capabilities rather than its complete destruction. The US has also allegedly urged Israel to shift the war toward more targeted operations aimed at Hamas’s leadership.

Though Hamas has suffered thousands of casualties, according to US and Israeli assessments, it aims simply to survive this conflict, current and former Israeli military officials said.

Iran's president said an air strike on the Syrian capital that killed five senior members of Iran's security forces will not "go unanswered".

Ebrahim Raisi said Israel was to blame for the attack, which also killed a number of Syrian forces.
Israel has not commented. For years it has carried out strikes on Iranian-linked targets in Syria.
Such strikes have intensified since the Israel-Gaza war began following Hamas's 7 October attacks on Israel.

Senior figures among the Iranian Revolutionary Guard - a major military, political and economic force in Iran - have been present in Syria since the civil war began there in 2011, helping to support the regime of President Bashar al-Assad against widespread rebellion to his rule.

Saturday's attack took place in the Mazzeh neighbourhood, south-west Damascus, an area home to a military airport, as well as the UN headquarters in Damascus, embassies and restaurants.
Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency said the attacks killed the IRGC's Syria intelligence chief and his deputy, as well as other Guard members.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based campaign group, said 10 people were killed in the strikes, including leaders of the Revolutionary Guard.

The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency quoted a military source as saying it had managed to stop some of the missiles, but that the attacks - which it said had hit a residential building - killed and injured some civilians. Buildings were also destroyed, it said.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Friday that the only peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict included the creation of a Palestinian state, and he suggested this might need to “be imposed from the outside,” without Israel’s agreement.

Borrell, in a speech at the University of Valladolid in Spain, said that without international intervention, the “spiral of hate will continue generation after generation,” according to multiple Spanish media outlets.

“The actors are too opposed to be able to reach an agreement autonomously,” Borrell said. “If everyone is in favor of this solution, the international community will have to impose it.”

Talks over the release of hostages in Gaza remain at an impasse over Hamas' demand for a permanent cease-fire, a diplomat with knowledge of the talks told NBC News.

American, Qatari and Egyptian officials continue to push for an agreement that would free an estimated 130 captives believed to remain in Gaza, most likely hidden underground in tunnels or in private homes.

Hamas is demanding the permanent halt of fighting, a complete withdrawal of Israel forces from Gaza and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including some who carried out the Oct. 7 attack, according to Israeli officials.

A Hamas official said in an interview that the group will not move forward with anything until it has a promise that the war will stop and all Israeli troops will leave Gaza. “This is the core of the discussion,” the Hamas official said.

Israeli officials say their efforts to secure the release of the hostages have never stopped, but they balked last week at Hamas’ demands for a permanent cease-fire, according to a senior Israeli government official.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly dismissed Hamas’ demands Sunday.

“I reject outright the terms of surrender of Hamas,” Netanyahu said at a news conference. “If we agree to this, we will not be able to guarantee the security of our citizens. We will not be able to return the evacuees safely to their homes, and the next Oct. 7th will only be a matter of time.”

A diplomat from a third country briefed on the talks said some of the mechanics of a potential future exchange have been agreed upon.

“A big portion of the details are agreed. The sticking point is the Israelis don’t want to agree to a permanent cease-fire,” said the diplomat, who asked not to be named. “The deal would include a halt in the fighting of over a month with hostages released in phases in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.”

An Israeli official called that description “nonsense.”

U.S. officials said that they continue to try to move talks forward and that the White House’s Middle East coordinator, Brett McGurk, will travel to Egypt and Qatar this week.

“I wish I could tell you that there was a deal imminent, that we were right on the cusp of one," National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Sunday on MSNBC. "I don’t think that we are right now, but I can tell you we’re working at it every day.”

The Hamas official said the group is “receiving a lot of proposals and ideas from different mediators, mainly the Egyptians and the Qataris,” for the timing and rollout of a potential release of Israeli hostages in exchange for a significant pause in the fighting and the release of Palestinians jailed in Israel.

The mediators’ current proposal envisages releasing the hostages in three phases over 30 days, officials said. The first phase would involve the remaining civilian hostages, the second would include female soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces and the bodies of hostages who have died in Gaza, and the third would include male hostages, including IDF soldiers. Palestinian prisoners would be released in exchange for each group of Israeli hostages.

The diplomat briefed on the discussions said the talks about the “day after the war” are happening on a separate track from a hostage deal.

The Hamas official said the group hopes to play a role in governing Gaza after the cease-fire it is demanding. “We are talking about the forming of a unity technocratic government with a national reference to supervise the rebuilding process, the unification of the Palestinian institutions and to prepare for elections,” he said in a WhatsApp voice message Sunday.

The idea of rewarding Palestinian in the wake of the brutal Oct. 7 attack is unpalatable to the vast majority of Israelis, opinion polls show, even though a sense of urgency about the release of the hostages is also top of mind. The attack killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and led to the kidnappings of 240.

“Israelis are not willing to surrender to the terms of Hamas and announce that they are acknowledging defeat,” said Nadav Eyal, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

( Causes me to think if there is some kind of One World Order behind this mentality ) IMHO

"One World Order"? A buzzword that suggests you are getting at least some of your info from grand conspiracy ideology sources. Please be more discerning about your sources.

There are plenty of real reasons to oppose Israel's destruction of Gaza. No need to invoke grand conspiracy ideology.

Family members of Israelis held hostage in the Gaza Strip have stormed a parliamentary meeting in Jerusalem to demand that Israel’s government does more to return their loved ones, as fighting in Khan Younis reached unprecedented levels.

About 20 relatives of people seized as captives by the Palestinian militant group in the 7 October attack disrupted a Knesset finance committee meeting on Monday, chanting: “Release them now, now, now!”

One woman, who has three family members taken by Hamas, cried: “Just one I’d like to get back alive, one out of three.” Other protesters held up signs reading: “You will not sit here while they die there.”

On Sunday, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, rejected new Hamas conditions for ending the war and releasing the hostages including the Islamist group retaining control of Gaza and Israel withdrawing completely. In response, a Hamas official in Qatar said Netanyahu’s refusal to end the military offensive in Gaza meant there was “no chance for the return of the captives”.

The families of the remaining 130 hostages, worried that their relatives’ plight now comes second to Israel’s objective of destroying Hamas, appear to be turning to more drastic measures in pursuit of another release deal, including further demonstrations outside Netanyahu’s private home.

An admission from the Israel Defense Forces last week that three hostages, whose bodies were recovered in the Jabaliya area in December, may have been killed by an airstrike on a Hamas tunnel, has also stoked relatives’ fears. At least 27 hostages are believed to have died in Gaza, including three men who were shot and killed by Israeli soldiers after escaping captivity and approaching the troops for help.

In Gaza, Israel’s nearly four-month-old offensive has accelerated during the past week in Khan Younis, southern Gaza’s largest city, in what Israeli officials have described as the last large-scale ground assault before a shift to lower-intensity, more targeted operations to eradicate Hamas, as demanded by US allies.

Ground manoeuvres in the south and west of the city began in earnest overnight, with local authorities reporting that approximately 50 people were killed and 100 others wounded in airstrikes and shelling. More casualties are believed to be trapped beneath the rubble.

Israeli tanks reached the gates of two Khan Younis hospitals on Monday, residents in the area said, in the bloodiest fighting of 2024 to date and the worst violence in the south of Gaza since the war began on 7 October, when Hamas killed 1,200 people in its attack on southern Israel.

More than 25,200 people in Gaza have now been killed in the fighting, the majority women and children, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory says.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said on Monday it had lost all contact with its staff at Khan Younis’s al-Amal hospital, adding that tanks had surrounded both al-Khair hospital and the nearby al-Aqsa University, where thousands of displaced people were sheltering.

It’s very difficult to leave the [hospital] complex and go to any cemetery and bury bodies because we’re under siege and anyone who leaves the complex is targeted,” Abdelkarim Ahmad, who was helping burying the dead, told Reuters.

At Nasser hospital, the only big hospital still accessible in Khan Younis and the largest still functioning in Gaza, witnesses said the trauma ward was overwhelmed with wounded being treated on the floor and in hallways.

The majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are now penned into two towns: Deir al-Balah, north of Khan Younis, and Rafah, on the border with Egypt. Most are crammed into public buildings and vast camps of makeshift tents as disease and hunger stalk the trapped population.

Support for the war remains high among Israelis, but opinion polls show lagging support for Netanayahu and his far-right coalition. Weekly Saturday night rallies demanding the release of hostages have been supplemented in recent weeks by growing calls for elections.

If I had a family member that was a hostage I probably would feel no different then the protesters. But governments need to do what is best for their entire citizenry not a small group. Everybody says “we will not negotiate or reward terrorists”, but in some way or form they usually do. As long as hostage takers get rewarded they have no reason not to take hostages. We should rethink the policy of negotiating with political hostage takers (a person having a breakdown different story) but I am not optimistic we will. If we truly stopped negotiating the hostage takers will send body/body parts and the political and emotional pressure will be too much to resist.

Israel has given Hamas a proposal through Qatari and Egyptian mediators that includes up to two months of a pause in the fighting as part of a multi-phase deal that would include the release of all remaining hostages held in Gaza, two Israeli officials said.

Why it matters: While the proposal doesn't include an agreement to end the war, it is the longest period of ceasefire that Israel has offered Hamas since the start of the war.

Driving the news:More than 130 hostages are still being held in Gaza. Israeli officials say several dozen hostages either died on October 7 or in the weeks since then.

President Biden's adviser Brett McGurk travelled to Egypt on Sunday and will continue to Qatar afterward for talks aimed at making progress in the negotiations to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas.

Qatari and Egyptian mediators have been trying for weeks to bridge the gaps between the parties in order to make progress towards a deal.

U.S. officials told Axios that reaching such an agreement might be the only path that could lead to a ceasefire in Gaza.

Behind the scenes: Two Israeli officials said the Israeli war cabinet approved ten days ago the parameters of a new proposal for a hostage deal, which are different from past aspects of deals rejected by Hamas and more forward-leaning than previous Israeli proposals.

Israeli officials said they are waiting for a response from Hamas but stressed they are cautiously optimistic about the ability to make progress in the coming days.

According to the proposal, the deal would include the release of all remaining hostages who are alive and the return of the bodies of dead hostages in several phases. The first phase would see the release of women, men over the age of 60 years old and hostages who are in critical medical condition, the officials said.

The next phases would include the release of female soldiers, men under the age of 60 years old who are not soldiers, Israeli male soldiers and the bodies of hostages.

Details:The officials said Israel proposed the overall period of pause for the completion of the release of all hostages in the different phases could reach up to two months.

Under the proposed deal, Israel and Hamas would agree in advance on how many Palestinian prisoners would be released for each Israeli hostage in each category and then separate negotiations on the names of these prisoners would take place, the officials said.

The Israeli officials said the proposal includes Israel redeploying Israeli Defense Forces so that some would be moved out of main population centers in the enclave and allowing a gradual return of Palestinian civilians to Gaza city and the northern Gaza strip as the deal is being implemented.

The Israeli officials said the proposal makes clear Israel will not agree to end the war and will not agree to release all 6,000 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons.

Between the lines: Israeli officials said they are ready to release a significant number of Palestinian prisoners if Hamas agrees to the offer.

They admit if the deal is implemented, IDF operations in Gaza would be significantly smaller in scope and intensity after the two month pause in fighting.

Israeli forces said Monday they were deepening their ground offensive "to the west" of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, and Palestinian health officials said the forces had stormed a hospital and engaged in heavy fighting near another.

Dozens of people were killed and injured, and thousands were forced to flee, as Israeli forces maneuvered through western Khan Younis before they allegedly stormed Al-Khair hospital, west of the city, Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra said in statements Monday.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society also warned Monday on X of an "extremely dangerous" situation around al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis, where, it said, ambulance teams were struggling to reach patients because of the "continuous bombardment."

Al-Qudra said earlier in the day that at least 50 people had been killed and more than 100 had been injured in the area of Khan Younis.

Dr. Nahud Abu Taima, the director of surgery at al-Nasser, a major hospital in Khan Younis, provided NBC News with the same death toll.

Abu Taima said there was an “acute shortage” of supplies to treat the injured and warned the hospital could become "a repeat of the scenario that occurred in hospitals in the northern and central Gaza Strip."

NBC News was not able to independently verify the number of casualties or the exact situation on the ground.

Reports of violence around hospitals in southern Gaza sparked alarm among human rights and health officials.

At a briefing Monday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Israel has a right to defend itself, but he said he expected its forces to do so “in accordance with international law and to protect innocent people in hospitals, medical staff and patients, as well, as much as possible."

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces said it was deepening its ground maneuver “to the west” of Khan Younis and reiterated allegations that Hamas “embeds itself in the civilian population” and “sites such as hospitals and schools.”

The IDF did not respond to questions about whether forces were operating at or around Al-Khair or al-Amal hospitals

U.S. doctor in Gaza as part of a mission to provide medical care to civilians said it was a “horrible day” as he described a “mass exodus” of people fleeing south from Khan Younis and Al-Mawasi, which is southwest of Khan Younis. Reuters reported that troops had advanced into Al-Mawasi district, near the Mediterranean coast, "for the first time."

Al-Mawasi has been considered a humanitarian zone where civilians can seek relative safety.

The IDF did not respond to specific questions about whether its forces were operating in Al-Mawasi but said, "Al-Mawasi is considered a safer zone.”

“Roads are crowded with families leaving by all means,” said Dr. Zaher Sahloul, the president of MedGlobal, an organization that provides medical help during humanitarian crises.

He said that most medical staff members and patients had fled al-Nasser hospital and that patients who had been rushed into the facility with fresh injuries had “no staff to treat them.”

In video captured by NBC News’ crew on the ground, families could be seen fleeing Khan Younis farther south toward Rafah in search of relative safety as clouds of dark smoke billowed into the sky. Many carried what few possessions they managed to flee with, while others cradled babies in their arms.

They’re destroying us,” Ayad Abed said as she was pushed down the road in a wheelchair with a baby bundled in her arms.

The infant, she said, was her grandchild. “They killed my daughter-in-law,” she said, referring to the baby’s mom.

Abed said that her family lived in Khan Younis near al-Nasser hospital and that they were forced to flee after bombs dropped “all night. ... It didn’t stop even one minute.”

Outside her home, she said, there were “bodies everywhere in the street. Tens of bodies in the street.” Now, she and her family just hope to make it to Rafah.

Back home, she said, “there’s nothing left for us now.”

This would be tantamount to a declaration of war against Israel by the EU. Well they might as well call the caterers so the planning meetings here:

can go forward.

He's talking about the international community, not the EU, imposing international law.