He is hoping that Israel fights back when Hamas takes his family
Zeigen and Shnaider: Israeli hostages seized by Hamas fighters include a mother-and-her-children – a story that happened in Gaza
Despite their different views on how Israel should approach their campaign against Hamas, Zeigen and Shnaider were both waiting for the same thing – news from Israel’s government that they’re negotiating for the release of their loved ones. The radio version of this story was edited by Adam Bearne and Jan Johnson and produced by David West. The edited version was on the digital platform.
“She would drive sick Palestinians from Gaza to Israeli hospitals. So apart from being a wonderful mother and grandmother, that was her essence,” he added.
She is involved in an organization called Women Wage Peace. Since 2015, she also volunteered with an organization called The Road to Recovery,” noted Zeigen.
“If she’s being held there, I think it’s a situation that has to be resolved,” he said. “And I trust that the militant organizations in Gaza won’t hurt her. Her religious ethics were affected by her status as an elderly woman.
Amidst the raw pain he was feeling, Shnaider didn’t have much room to think about similarly innocent people in Gaza being caught up in Israel’s bombing campaign in response.
“It took me almost two days just to wake up. To understand that it’s not a dream. It’s not a nightmare. It’s something that really happened” Shnaider told NPR’s Morning Edition.
Source: He watched his family get taken by Hamas fighters. Now he wants Israel to fight back
The Israeli-Jewish Connection: The Birth of the Fatah Movement and Israel’s Nuclear Solution to the Gaza-Nir Oz Conflict
Frantically searching social media for any pictures or videos from the village, that’s when he found the video of Bibes and her children, 4-year-old Ariel and 9-month-old Kfir.
When he heard that Hamas fighters had crossed into Israel from Gaza, he tried to reach Bibes and her husband, Yarden Bibes, who live near the border in Kibbutz Nir Oz.
Hamas won 2006 parliamentary elections elections and in 2007 violently seized control of the Gaza Strip from the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority, dominated by rival Fatah movement, administers semi-autonomous areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The founding of Hamas and the first suicide attack took place when its spiritual leader, who was a paralyzed man, spent years in Israeli prisons.
The U.S. State Department has designated Hamas a terrorist group in 1997. The European Union considers it to be a terrorist organization.
The group has vowed to annihilate Israel and has been responsible for many suicide bombings and other deadly attacks on civilians and Israeli soldiers.
Hamas’ current leaders are Yehia Sinwar in Gaza and Ihsan Haniyeh in exile. They realigned the group’s leadership with Iran and its allies, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah. The group’s leaders relocated to Lebanon.
Israel has made peace deals with Arab countries without having to make concessions in its conflict with the Palestinians. There is an ongoing effort by the US to broker a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Hamas vs. Hezbollah: Support for a common cause of the 1967 Gazan-Jerusalem War
Its leaders say hundreds of its 40,000 fighters took part in the assault. Israel says the group has about 30,000 fighters and an arsenal of rockets, including some with a range of about 250 kilometers (155 miles), and unmanned drones.
Iran has been ruled by Shia fundamentalists since the 1979 revolution. Hezbollah was created shortly after, said Northeastern University associate professor Max Abrahms, to help export the Iranian revolution and project Iranian power in the region.
Abrahms called state sponsorship of terrorism a “risky game,” and he said Iran’s link to Hamas and Hezbollah “substantially increases the likelihood that Iran will be directly attacked by Israel.”
He doesn’t believe that the Hezbollah Secretary-General would authorize a major attack against Israel without the approval of the Iranians. He said that he didn’t know that Hamas waits for Iranian approval, but that this one might have been different.
The relationship between Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran is called the resistance camp by Israeli intelligence analysts. Neomi Neumann, who worked for the Israeli Security Agency, said they both wanted to weaken Israel and create a Muslim-run land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
Neumann, now a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said despite sharing the same goal, the groups operate on different levels. Hezbollah has a bigger fighting force than Hamas.
“Since 2021, Iran and [Hezbollah leader] Nasrallah have understood that Hamas is a better player than they thought. Hamas is needed in order to weaken Israel.
Neumann said Monday that they realized it, because Hamas sought to unify different groups of Palestinians during clashes with Israel in 2021, among them the Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.
The death toll continued to go up during the war. Israeli media said at least 1,200 Israelis have been killed from the Hamas attacks. Palestinian officials claim that at least 1000 Palestinians were killed by Hamas in Israel.
Iran’s IRNA news agency said Raisi held phone calls with leaders from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
He said that there were meetings in Syria and Lebanon, with the other leaders of the terror armies that surround Israel. Spokespeople for Hamas did not return requests for comment.
“Hezbollah’s response from southern Lebanon is not opportunistic,” said Lina Khatib, director of the SOAS Middle East Institute at the University of London.
The Gaza Strip is a Multifront Attack: Israel’s Military, Militia Forces, and Anti-Microsoft Forces
The fighting around the northern Israeli border is at a much smaller scale than in southern Israel near Gaza, the Palestinian coastal enclave to Israel’s southwest. But the double-pronged attacks at both poles of Israel left many fearing a more widespread, regional escalation of violence.
The region was bombarded with rocket and drone attacks on Sunday. The UN in Lebanon urged everyone to exercise restraint and de-escalate the situation after Hezbollah and Israel fired across the border.
The Israeli military said it killed several fighters in Lebanon. The Lebanese militant and political organization Hezbollah said one of its fighters was killed in Israel’s retaliation. A group called the Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed to have injured seven Israeli soldiers.
This week, militant groups in southern Lebanon escalated their attacks on neighboring northern Israel, prompting Israel to launch artillery and cross-border airstrikes.
The leaders of France and Germany said they are still looking for evidence of Iran being involved in the Hamas attacks. But analysts interviewed by NPR say the link is undeniable.
Western and Middle Eastern intelligence officials have accused Iran of providing training, money and other assistance to Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, who carried out an unprecedented, multifront assault on Israel on Saturday.
What is the Gaza Strip? Here’s what to know about the ravages of Israel’s occupation of the largest open-air prison
LONDON — Human rights groups call it “the world’s largest open-air prison.” The Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million people, has come under heavy bombardment from Israel in recent days, after Hamas militants launched an unprecedented ground invasion and thousands of rockets into Israel from Gaza.
Israel has ordered a “complete” blockade of the already besieged area, saying that “no electricity, food or fuel” would be allowed into the enclave and raising alarm among some in the international community over what this might mean for the people of Gaza, who, with borders mostly closed, cannot leave.
Gaza was part of what was known as Palestine, prior to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. As part of historic Palestine, it was part of the Ottoman Empire (1914-1918), before being occupied by Britain until 1948. In 1948 Palestinians were kicked out of their homes around Israel’s creation and then attacked by Arab armies, known as “Catastrophe.”
1.7 million people are Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip, according to the United Nation’s UNRWA relief agency.
The United Nations says more than 80% of Gazans live in poverty, with access to clean water and electricity at crisis levels even before the latest violence. 98% of the population of Gaza don’t have access to clean water, according to UNRWA. The unemployment rate in the second quarter of this year was 50%, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
During the 10-day war between Israel and Hamas in October of 2021, the United Nations Secretary-General said conditions for children werehell on Earth.
Abbas said that too much pressure is being applied on health professionals in hospitals. “Unless these borders are opened at once — for the fuel to run the generators and for medications, medical supplies to come at once together — there will be a collapse of the health system.”
Israeli strikes neighborhoods across Gaza as the war with Hamas intensifies: State Department of State Antony Blinken’s message to Israel
The Hamas movement won the elections in Gaza the following year. But after wrangling with the rival Fatah party, Hamas seized power by force in 2007. Gaza has not had elections since.
Israel carried out heavy bombardments across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, as its military repeatedly hit the enclave following last weekend’s deadly incursion by Hamas militants in Israel.
The Biden administration and the World Food Program both called for the creation of emergency humanitarian corridors.
The first shipment of U.S. weapons arrived in Israel, as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is traveling to Israel to deliver a message of solidarity and support, the State Department announced.
On Tuesday, In Washington, President Joe Biden called Hamas’ attack on Israel “pure unadulterated evil” and promised to “make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of itself.”
Biden said that 14 Americans had been killed in Israel and more than 20 were missing. In an interview on NPR’s All Things Considered, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said there are some Americans among dozens of those held hostage by Hamas but called it “a very small number of Americans that we know of.”
“There’s also a larger number of Americans that are just unaccounted for. They might be in the hostage pool. We don’t know. So, we’re, we’re trying to get as much information as we can,” Kirby said.
Source: Israel strikes neighborhoods across Gaza as the war with Hamas intensifies
The Israelis and Arabs vowed to end Israel’s war on the day of the Ramadhan eémisse
On the Simchat Torah holiday, violence began as Israel came under attack from Arab countries.
