Reporters in Gaza use generators and radios to keep the news moving
Gazan-Israeli Hostage Gaza Yocheved Lifshitz: A Metric Tale of Two Families, One Footstep Into Hell
The 85-year-old woman who had been held hostage by Palestinians for 17 days in Gaza described on Tuesday how she was beaten while being taken away on a motorcycle.
Ms. Lifshitz said she was marched through a network of subterranean tunnels under Gaza that she likened to “a spider web.” She said that she was later treated relatively well, offering the first public account to emerge from the more than 200 hostages estimated to be held by Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza.
After her release, Ms. Lifasitz sat in a wheelchair in a Tel Aviv hospital and told reporters that she had gone through hell.
She was freed along with Nurit Cooper, 79, on Monday and transferred from Hamas custody to Israeli forces via the International Committee for the Red Cross and Egypt. Both of their husbands are still being held hostage in Gaza.
She offered a glimpse of Israel’s difficulties as it considers whether to launch a ground invasion of Gaza to eliminate Hamas, which led the devastating October 7 attack against Israel.
Hamas has built a labyrinth of underground passages in Gaza for its fighters, military analysts said, complicating both Israel’s anticipated ground operation and any attempt to rescue the hostages.
The Gaza Disturbance: When Hamas and the Israeli Government Metacuted Israel, Not Even the Militant Regime
Ms. Lif Shitz said that many people had invaded their homes, beat people, and kidnapped them. It didn’t make a difference, they took the elderly and young.
She said her kidnappers hauled her onto a motorcycle and beat her painfully in the ribs, making it hard for her to breathe, and also took away her watch. They drove through the fields.
She said that they took her through the tunnels until they reached a large hall with 25 people in it. After about two to three hours, they separated five people from her kibbutz into their own room, where they were overseen by guards and a medic, she said.
Ms Lifshitz said that they were well taken care of and that they had the same treatment as their captives. She said that her abductors were afraid of disease and worked to rid the area of it. She said that they were treated well and all of their needs were met.
The Hamas-led attack against Israel’s border communities shocked and traumatized the country. Israel had repeatedly fought short battles with Palestinian militants in Gaza in recent years, but nothing approaching the scale and brutality of the assault.
The Shin Bet did not take warning signs of the threat to towns near Gaza seriously, says Ms. Lifashitz. The Israeli military’s chief of staff acknowledged after the attack that the military had failed to live up to its mission to protect Israel’s citizens.
Palestinians rioted near the Gaza border fence weeks before the assault, sparking fires in southern Israel.
The Gaza Problem: A Memoir with a Palestinian, and a Hamas Leader who was Tortured by the Israelis
With Said, I interviewed senior Hamas leaders and officials in Gaza, officials in Ramallah, retired terrorists in Nablus, and political dissidents in Jenin. We became friends. After Sept. 11, 2001, he called me in a panic because something I had written in The Wall Street Journal met with the displeasure of officials in the Palestinian Authority. He stated that the goon squad had paid for an admonitory visit in his family’s apartment, and wanted me to take the story down. I told him that was out of the question. We were never safe to work together again.
A missile did not hit the hospital but rather the parking lot next to it. It is certain that the explosion was caused by a missile fired from Gaza, which malfunctioned and fell to earth, according to intelligence and independent analyses. There is no solid reason to believe the death toll reached anywhere near 500. And the “Gazan health ministry” is not some sort of apolitical body but a Hamas-owned entity, towing and promoting whatever the terrorist organization demands.
The Palestinian territories are considered to be republics of fear because of the fear of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and of Hamas in Gaza. Palestinians are more honest than people who live in other countries. The risk of straying from the approved line is serious as in any fanatical regime.
For Hani al- Agha, a Palestinian journalist, was tortured by Hamas for weeks in the middle of the year. In that case, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate was the one to condemn al-Agha’s arrest and torture because they were subject to repressive police authority. Outside of a few news releases, the story was barely covered by the wider media.
The New York Times has reported on the horror and human cost of the conflict over the past two weeks. The photographs are hard to look at, but The Times publishes them to convey to readers the gravity of the devastation in the region.
The next time there’s a story about an alleged Israeli atrocity in Gaza, readers deserve to know how the information was acquired and from whom. It’s bad enough that Hamas tyrannizes Palestinians and terrorizes Israelis. We don’t need it misinforming the rest of us.
Bodies in black bags, lined up on the ground in the Israeli village of Kfar Azza. A woman holding the body of her grandson in Khan Younis, Gaza. People are at a funeral. A man is wounded and confused after an airstrike.
“These are images of loss and death. There were people caught up in the war. In some cases, they are proof of crimes,” said Gaia Tripoli, a senior photography editor for The Times.
Editors discuss placement of a photograph in an article if they decide that it should be published. Does the photo appear next to the headline, where it will immediately confront the reader? Or should it be placed a few paragraphs down in the text, so as not to disturb someone who isn’t expecting it? Should it be used to accompany posts on social media?
Gazan journalist Victor Zarifeh: Changing the face of Gaza from the day it was cut off for Israel’s destruction of the White Media
And for Zarifeh—who has lived in Gaza for 55 years and covered its conflicts for 30 of them—the destruction of White Media’s office was not going to put him off.
His team began to rebuild that first morning. The key requirement was power: Israel had begun to cut off Gaza’s electricity. So they got creative, harnessing solar energy, hunting down generators, and sourcing extra large portable batteries for on-the-go charging. Now, his journalists will often travel by foot across the 25-mile-long Gaza Strip in order to save fuel for their generators.
