[IMPORTANT] Hamas launches foot assault against settlements.

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Roni Eshel told her father many times that she could see Hamas militants training for an attack near the Nahal Oz base where she served in a surveillance unit. The scale of the preparations left her frightened for her life.

She detailed the activity in daily reports over the summer and early autumn of 2023, raising the alarm together with dozens of other young women “spotters” – charged with watching a tiny section of the border in intense detail – who were posted along Israel’s border with Gaza.

A cocktail of chauvinism, ­arrogance and complacency meant their ­warnings were ignored or dismissed by senior commanders for the region, most of them men.

The senior officers were ­convinced Gaza was locked down by Israel’s ­layers of hi-tech defences, but 19-year-old Eshel proved a more accurate observer of the strip than many of the country’s top generals.

She paid for their mistakes with her life, killed along with 14 other ­spotters when their base was overrun. A last recording captured her detailing with calm precision the movements of Hamas fighters as they breached the border just 500 metres away.

Seven spotters were taken to Gaza. Their families and hundreds of other women who served in the same role over decades sprang into action, ­campaigning to bring them back.

Yahel Oren, 31, was one of them. This week she stood in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square wearing a T-shirt that said “once a spotter, always a spotter”, to watch the last of those women, Agam Berger, return to Israel under a ceasefire deal after 15 months in captivity.

One of the seven, Noa Marciano, was killed in Gaza. The remaining six have all returned – one rescued by the military in October 2023, and the other five released last month. Now the campaign group is shifting focus.

They want Israel, which has largely deferred an institutional reckoning with the security failures of 7 October, to have an official inquiry into why the spotters were so tragically ignored ahead of the attack, and abandoned to their fate that morning.

“Unfortunately I just have my story, my timeline,” Eyal Eshal, who often told his oldest daughter not to worry, because Hamas was no match for the IDF. “All of us believed we had the strongest army, but it was a joke.”

Roni herself mostly believed that, he said. Survivors said even when Hamas flooded over the border, the spotters were so sure they would be saved they agreed none of them would call their parents, to avoid ­worrying them.

That was despite months of ­watching Hamas preparation, and Israeli failures – broken cameras, ­predictable patrols, problems at the fence – with increasing apprehension.

Weeks before the attack, Roni told Eyal: “Dad I’m afraid, you must understand they know everything about us.” The details she told him also went into reports, and he wants to know what happened to them.

“For months before, none of the senior officers in the IDF listened to them, they didn’t pay any attention to them,” he said. “I miss her a lot. I think over and over what could have happened if someone had listened to them, to all the beautiful girls.”

The women who serve in the ­observation units are mostly young, in their late teens or very early 20s, often dubbed the “girls” by their families and in Israeli media. But their role is intense and demanding, mentally and emotionally.

“For four hours you just look at the screen, you can’t look to left or right, you report what you see. For four hours you are on call, available, then four hours looking at the screen again,” said Oren.
They are unarmed, but are posted to the border for liaison with units patrolling on the ground. In Nahal Oz they kept different hours from the regular soldiers, and formed a tight unit, cooking together during shifts when the base kitchen was closed.

“Our next steps will be ­demanding the truth about what happened at Nahal Oz. For the sake of future ­spotters, we have to get answers,” Oren said.

Like many other Israeli women, she thinks the spotters died partly because of the sexism of a country which celebrates women soldiers but rarely promotes them to top ­command positions, and has never had a female minister of defence or internal security.

“I think the entire hierarchy needs restructuring, they need more women in high command. Even in the ­spotters divisions, the commanders were all men.”

Military chief Herzi Halevi has said he will step down in March, ­submitting a letter that laid out his “terrible failure” to protect Israel in 2023. But the government has batted away requests for a state commission of inquiry into the attacks.

Oren served in Nahal Oz around a decade before Eshel, but much of what she has learned about the events on and leading up to 7 October 2023 feels painfully familiar.

She served unarmed beside the Gaza border. She knew the shelter where the girls taken hostage were cornered by their captors; designed to protect them only from rockets, it didn’t even have doors to lock. She knew the nearby “war room” where those on shift were killed. And she knew the sense of being ignored.

Oren also warned of suspicious activity before a breach of the ­border in 2014, when Hamas fighters burst out of a tunnel and targeted a ­pillbox, but she got no response. Five Israeli soldiers were killed in the attack. “I don’t know where our reports went. Probably nowhere,” she said.

The Israeli military destroyed almost two dozen buildings in Jenin, a city in the occupied West Bank, as Israel turned to the territory since it withdrew some of its troops during the ongoing ceasefire across the border in Gaza.

Video captured by Reuters showed a series of explosions tearing through the city, sending towering plumes of smoke into the sky.

In a statement Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces said it demolished 23 buildings in Jenin that were “used as terrorist infrastructure.

Hamas called for an “escalation in the resistance” against Israel after the demolition in Jenin.

The number of casualties, if any, is unknown.

On Sunday, a 16-year-old boy was among five people killed by Israeli airstrikes on Jenin, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

And Israel's most recent offensive in January was launched just hours after President Donald Trump rescinded American sanctions on far-right settler groups and people accused of involvement in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

In Gaza, the IDF said an Israeli aircraft fired on a vehicle it said was traveling outside the “agreed inspection route,” which it claimed violated the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.

“The IDF is prepared for any scenario and will continue to take any necessary actions to thwart immediate threats to its soldiers,” the statement read.

Both attacks coincided with Netanyahu’s departure Sunday for the United States, where he is set to meet with Trump.

Netanyahu, the first foreign leader to visit Trump since he was inaugurated last month, left Israel as negotiations for the second phase of talks were expected to begin Monday.

Meanwhile, the deputy head of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzouk, will lead a delegation to visit the Russian capital, Moscow, on Monday, the RIA state news agency reported Sunday.

Authorities in Gaza have updated the death toll from Israel’s war on the enclave to 61,709, having added thousands who are missing and now presumed dead.

The head of the Gaza Government Information Office told a news conference that the bodies of 76 percent of the Palestinians killed in the conflict have been recovered and brought to medical centres. However, at least 14,222 people are still believed to be trapped under the rubble or in areas inaccessible to rescuers.

Speaking at Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, Salama Maarouf told reporters that among the death toll are 17,881 children, including 214 newborn infants.

“More than 2 million people have been forcibly displaced, some more than 25 times, under dire conditions lacking basic services,” the official added, noting that 111,588 people have also been injured.

Homes have become graveyards
The pause in fighting, set to continue until at least early March, has given room for Palestinian rescuers to reach parts of Gaza they could not reach before.

Humanitarian and medical teams have shifted from rescue to recovery missions,” said Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzom, reporting from Gaza’s al-Rashid Street, a route many Palestinians are taking to head back to their northern hometowns.

“Hundreds of homes have become graveyards.”

Maarouf also noted the heavy toll on health, humanitarian and media workers in the enclave. At least 1,155 medical personnel, 205 journalists and 194 civil defence workers are reported to have been killed during Israel’s onslaught.

Newly released Israeli hostages have revealed the brutal conditions they endured in Hamas captivity – severe malnutrition, psychological torment, and forced confinement in cages. Families of those freed on Saturday described the physical and emotional toll on their loved ones.

Keith Siegel, one of the freed hostages, lost a significant amount of weight due to a severe lack of food. His family told N12 News that he never received meals on a regular schedule and was often left starving.

A lifelong vegetarian, he was forced to eat meat to survive. In one of the few moments of hope, he learned from a smuggled radio broadcast that his son had survived the October 7 attack.

Ofer Kalderon, another released hostage, also managed to listen to radio reports while in captivity. Two weeks before his release, according to N12 News, he saw his uncle speaking on Gazan television but had no idea his own son was still alive until shortly before his return to Israel.
The testimonies paint a grim picture of life in captivity. According to N12 News, some hostages were locked in cages, while others were made to perform tasks. They were only taken out once a day to eat with other captives.

Many were forced to wear traditional jellabiyas (traditional garments) and, instead of showers, were given cloths soaked in cold water to wipe themselves down. Several lost more than 30 lb. due to starvation.

Some hostages required sedatives because of the overwhelming psychological distress. Many described reaching a breaking point, with some saying they had lost all hope of survival.

Psychological abuse
In the final days before their release, Hamas reportedly increased the hostages’ food portions, likely in an attempt to make them appear healthier when they were handed over to Israeli authorities – according to a report on Kan News.

At the same time, the hostages were subjected to additional psychological abuse, including being forced to sign documents thanking their captors. According to Kan News, Hamas filmed these coerced statements, as well as staged video messages in which hostages were instructed to speak to their families.

In some cases, hostages were even forced to record farewell messages, not knowing whether they would be executed or released.

The West Bank town of Tammun hasn't seen sights like these for years, if ever – Israeli soldiers raiding the town in armored vehicles, taking over homes and forcing families to leave. The residents say they have no idea when they will be able to return.

Tammun, located in the northern West Bank around five kilometers south of Tubas, has a population of 17,000. Older residents say since Israel captured the West Bank in 1967, there have been numerous incidents – the first and second intifadas, raids, arrests and curfews.

But they have never before had the army evict people from homes and take them over, as has happened this week, they added.

Haj Riad Sabaa, 55, said dozens of soldiers came to his house Sunday morning and demanded that he and his family leave immediately. "We are eight people, including my 100-year-old mother," he said.

He told the soldiers they couldn't leave immediately, and "we started arguing. The army insisted that it wants to take over the house."

Eventually, he was forced to give in. "They said they wanted to stay for a week," he added. He called an ambulance to take his mother to another house in the town.

"I'm 55 years old," Sabaa continued. "I lived through the first and second intifadas. But I've never experienced something like this. There were incidents in the past. There were gun fights, there were curfews. But forcing people to leave their homes? That we never experienced before."

"I'm constantly calling my neighbors, but they tell me the army is still in the house," he said, "I hope this will end very soon. I hope we won't lose our house."

Tammun's mayor, Najeh Bani Odeh, said this was collective punishment. He has been trying to draw international attention to what is happening in the town in hopes of putting pressure on Israel and the army. He said the army has already caused massive damage to Tammun's water and electricity infrastructure, and the town has been completely cut off from the rest of the West Bank.

"The situation is getting worse from day to day," he added. "The army has damaged the infrastructure. The entire town has been disconnected from the water supply and many neighborhoods don't have power. We're dealing with problems we haven't experienced in the past. They want to punish the entire community over security incidents that happened a few weeks ago."

Bani Odeh also spoke about an Israeli airstrike on the city hall, where the army said armed men had been staying. Ten Palestinians were killed in the attack. The army said two of them were Omar Bisharat and Muntaser Bani Odeh, who were involved in setting off an improvised explosive device in the village that killed Sgt. 1st Class (res.) Eviatar Ben Yehuda, 31, in January.

Yet both the mayor and other residents say that since the airstrike on city hall, there has been no sign of resistance to the army. Consequently, residents are convinced that the operation in their town is no longer about arresting or killing armed men but merely collective punishment for the soldier's killing.

Two weeks before the attack that killed Ben Yehuda, two children were killed in a drone strike on Tammun – Hamza and Rida Bisharat, aged 10 and 8, along with their 23-year-old uncle, Adam Khair al-Din Ahmed Bisharat. The army's investigation of the incident said it was "hard to discern that they were minors."

On Sunday, the army said its Operation Iron Wall, which began 10 days ago in Jenin, was being expanded to Tammun. Over the past two days, at least 24 residents of the town have been arrested. Residents said army drones monitor all movement in the town, and any attempt to go shopping is met by gunfire from either the soldiers or the drones.

Residents of both the town and the refugee camp are demanding that someone provide them with basic necessities, such as food, water, medicines and baby formula. They said the army has destroyed a lot of infrastructure, especially in the refugee camp.

President Donald Trump on Thursday will sign an executive order sanctioning the International Criminal Court, accusing the body of improperly targeting the United States and Israel, according to a copy of a fact sheet supporting the order obtained by NBC News.

The order will include both financial sanctions and visa restrictions against unspecified ICC officials and their family members found to have assisted in investigations of U.S. citizens or allies.

The expected signing of this order this afternoon appears timed to the Netanyahu's visit to Washington, which included an Oval Office meeting Tuesday.

Neither Israel nor the U.S. recognizes the jurisdiction of the ICC, which is based in The Hague, Netherlands, and has no police to enforce its warrants. Under the Rome statute that created it, signatories are obliged to carry out arrest warrants, no matter the rank of the accused. But most governments also abide by the international legal principle that heads of state have legal immunity from other courts

16th century nuns, Venetian courtesans, & Jewish badges and their connections to the bizarre behavior of IOF forces dressing up in women’s underwear.

An elementary school teacher in Kochav Yair showed a class of fifth graders on Wednesday a video which documented the October 7 Hamas attacks, Walla reported.

The video, produced by Magen David Adom, shows uncensored footage of the massacre, including people who were shot and killed in vehicles, severed limbs, and people screaming for help. After turning the video on, the teacher walked out of the room and left the students to watch it alone.

The parents of the students were outraged, some of whom said their children now suffer from nightmares and anxiety due to the film.

"How dare they do such a thing to our children?" One of the student's fathers told Walla. "Parents are saying that their children aren't sleeping at night ebcause of the many nightmares. We tried to shelter them from these things throughout the war, and then a teacher comes along and showers them with horrors? Now they need psychological therapy to overcome this."

Other parents said that the children left the classroom crying. "Why did they have to be exposed to something like that?" One of the mothers said. "They were left traumatized, they didn't know how to deal with what they saw. It's an experience that children of this age shouldn't go through."

School taking swift actions
The school staff took swift action after finding out about the incident and provided the students with emotional and mental support, in collaboration with the local education department.

The educational psychological service team was brought in on Thursday to help the children and their parents cope with the troubling experience.

The school fired the teacher immediately and demanded that the contract with the company the teacher was hired from to be broken.

Israel-Hamas swap to go ahead despite claim child hostages were killed with ‘bare hands’
Ceasefire deal still on track amid uproar over fate of two Israeli boys and false return of their mother’s body

Bethan McKernan in Jerusalem
Fri 21 Feb 2025 12.09 EST
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Israelis and Palestinians are bracing for another tense exchange of hostages, prisoners and detainees on Saturday after uproar in Israel over allegations that two child hostages were “brutally murdered” by Hamas, and the group’s failure to deliver the body of their mother, instead returning the corpse of an unidentified woman.

The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement on Friday afternoon that autopsy results and military intelligence concluded that members of Hamas “used their bare hands” to kill Ariel Bibas, four, and his 10-month-old brother, Kfir, when they were seized in October 2023.

“Their father, [the recently released hostage] Yarden Bibas, looked me in the eyes and asked that the whole world know and be shocked by the way they murdered his children,” the military spokesperson R Adm Daniel Hagari said in a video address.

...

Hamas said early in the conflict that the boys and their mother, Shiri, 32, were killed in an Israeli bombing in November 2023. There was no immediate comment from the militant group on the IDF’s allegation.

The remains of the Bibas children, 85-year-old Oded Lifshitz, and a fourth unidentified person who was supposed to be Shiri Bibas, were handed over to Israel on Thursday as part of the first stage of a fragile ceasefire agreement.

After 15 months of war, and dramatically reduced access to food and medicine, Gaza’s 2.1 million people have endured unimaginable suffering. Children have borne the brunt of it—with at least 14,500 reported killed, thousands more injured, an estimated 17,000 unaccompanied or separated from their parents, and nearly one million displaced from their homes.

It’s horrifying, just like the deaths of thousands of kids who were slaughtered in Gaza. Bombs don’t just kill everyone quick and painlessly, not that murdering innocent people, especially children, is ever okay. Many were buried under rubble suffering horrible deaths or were injured, even losing body parts, and brought to hospitals without the means to adequately care for them or ease their pain due to a lack of supplies.

https://www.unicef.org/sop/stories/unic ... s-children

How would you propose bringing guilty parties to justice? It appears that’s been tried and resulted in a massive humanitarian disaster.

The result is the same as if they had done it with their bare hands. The IDF knew full well what they were doing and that it was resulting in a huge number of innocent deaths, and yet, they continued for many months. Thus, their behavior is similarly devoid of humanity. It just happened on a much larger scale.

I knew what they were saying. I meant that the slaughter of children in Gaza was just as bad as if the IDF had done it with their bare hands as Hamas did to the Bibas children. I don’t think it’s useful to make distinctions when it comes to willful and informed behavior leading to the horrific suffering of children. As I mentioned in a previous post, the IDF was fully aware of the innocent deaths and suffering they were causing but continued for many months anyway. That demonstrates an extreme level of callousness and brutality.