The two sections at the end, personal stories and Dark Legacy - The Abandonment of October 7th Hostages are very important to read, as important or more than the news of the day.
Red Alerts - Missile, Rocket, Drone (UAV - unmanned aerial vehicles), and Terror Attacks and Death Announcements
*5:25pm yesterday - north - rockets/missiles
*6:40pm yesterday - north - hostile aircraft - Yesod Hama'aleh Hotel *11:35pm yesterday - north - rockets/missiles *12:00am - north - rockets/missiles
*12:10am - north -rockets/missiles *6:15am - north - rockets/missiles *6:15am - north - hostile aircraft - Rosh Hanikra, Batzet, Milu'ot, Leeman, Gesher Haziv, Goren, Gordot Hagalil, Arab al Aramsha *6:20- north - hostile aircraft - Zra'it, Yinoch Jat, Hila, Goren *6:25am - north - hostile aircraft - Yinoch Jaat, Yarka, Even Menahem, Gordot Hagalil, Shomera, Ein Yacub, Kfar Veredim, Pelach, Majdel Crum, Zurit Gilon *6:30am - north - hostile aircraft - Gita, Sha'ab, Lapidot *6:45am - north - rockets/missiles *6:50am - north - hostile aircraft - Arab al Araamsha, Gesher Haziv *6:55am - north - hostile aircraft - Gesher Haziv *6:55am - north - rockets/missiles *7:15am - north - rockets/missiles *7:25am - north - rockets/missiles *8:05am - north - rockets/missiles *8:10am - north - rockets/missiles *8:45am - north -rockets/missiles *8:55am - north - rockets/missiles *9:35am - north -rockets/missiles *10:00am - north -rockets/missiles *10:05am - north - rockets/missiles *10:10am - north - rockets/missiles *10:15am - north - rockets/missiles *10:50am - north - rockets/missiles *10:55am- north -rockets/missiles *11:20am - north - rockets/missiles *11:30am - north -rockets/missiles *11:45am - north -rockets/missiles *12:10pm - north - rockets/missiles *12:50pm - Center - rockets/missiles - Petach Tikva, Rosh Haayin, Yehud, Hod Hasharon, Savyon, Ramat Gan, Tel Aviv, Bnei Brak, Kiryat Ono, Kfar Saba, and all areas around Gush Dan -Several people have been wounded in the Hezbollah rocket attack on central Israel, medics say.
In Petah Tikva, Magen David Adom says it is treating a 70-year-old woman in moderate condition who is suffering from smoke inhalation from a car that caught fire following a rocket impact. A 23-year-old man was lightly hurt by the blast, MDA says. Several others are treated for acute anxiety and for minor injuries after falling while running to shelter, MDA adds.
*12:55pm - center - Tel Aviv, Bnei Brak, Elad, Ramat Gan, Savyon, Kiryat Ono, Ramat Gan, Hod Hasharon, Rosh Haayin, Petach Tikvah, Herzlia and all areas around Gush Dan - rockets/missiles *1:00pm - north - rockets/missiles *1:05pm - north -rockets/missiles *1:10pm - north -rockets/missiles *1:15pm - north -rockets/missiles *1:25pm - north -rockets/missiles *1:35pm - north - rockets/missiles *1:45pm - north -rockets/missiles *2:10pm - north - rockets/missiles *2:25pm - north - rockets/missiles *2:30pm - Kinneret areas - rockets/missiles *2:35pm - north - rockets/missiles -Magen David Adom says the man in his 60s wounded by shrapnel in the Kfar Blum area is listed in serious condition.
He was hit by shrapnel in the stomach while working in a field, according to MDA. MDA says it is taking him to Ziv Hospital in Safed.
*2:55pm - north - rockets/missiles *3:00pm - north -rockets/missiles *3:30pm - Haifa and Acre areas - rockets/missiles *3:35pm - north - rockets/missiles -After some 180 rockets were launched from Lebanon at Israel today, the IDF has issued evacuation warnings for two buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs, ahead of airstrikes on Hezbollah assets. *3:45pm - north - rockets/missiles *4:30pm - north - rockets/missiles
Hostage Updates
My son also needs to come home
Parents of slain hostage Hersh give twin sermons at Tel Aviv rally: ‘We’ve lost too many cherished souls’
Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, parents of slain hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, promise the other hostage families they will stick with them until all the captives return.
Both say they are not making a political statement, but are advocating for the remaining 101 hostages.
In twin sermons in English and Hebrew, the two speak about the weekly Torah portion, Hayei Sarah, in which the eponymous matriarch dies at the age of 127, leaving the hundreds-strong crowd at Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square entranced.
Jon Polin, in Hebrew, describes the new widower, Abraham, at 137: with one son childless and the other estranged, he is a far cry from God’s promise that he will beget a great nation.
“Does Abraham expect miracles? No” Polin asks. “He proceeds to act,” buying a gravesite and sending his manservant to find a wife for his son Isaac.
“I call on all decision-makers: be like Abraham in the weekly Torah portion,” says Polin.
“Focus on the most important mission. Bring the hostages home,” he says. “Don’t accuse, don’t point fingers. Be human beings.”
Rachel Goldberg, in English, notes the traditional opinion of “our biblical commentators, our meforshim,” was that Sarah died when she heard her only son Isaac had been sacrificed.
“We have lost too many cherished souls,” she says. “There are too many parents like us who have lost their children.”
Addressing the hostages, she says: “Everyone here loves you.”
“Stay strong. Survive,” she adds.
A group that provides legal representation to anti-government protesters says one person was detained while demonstrating outside the home of Negev and Galilee Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf in south Tel Aviv. Footage on social media shows about 50 people outside the minister’s building, with police pushing some protesters behind a safety perimeter.
In central Tel Aviv, meanwhile, in front of the Begin Road entrance to the IDF headquarters, hundreds of anti-government protesters chant slogans demanding an end to the war in Gaza and a deal to release the hostages.
On either side of the protesters, anti-government groups sell merchandise and try to enlist activists to their cause.
One group promotes “civil disobedience” — refusal to go to work or send children to school, whether or not the Histadrut labor federation declares a strike.
A fundraising page for the group shows it is affiliated with “The Front,” a coalition of groups demanding the hostages’ release and the ouster of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
A block away at so-called Hostages Square, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum holds its central rally. Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai stands in the audience.
Israelis attend a rally calling for the release of hostages held by Hamas terrorists in Gaza, at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, November 23, 2024. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)
‘Bring them home from hell’: Jerusalem protesters urge hostage deal; man detained for blocking Karkur junction
Hundreds of protesters march through central Jerusalem, joining thousands of others at locations around Israel demanding that the government close a deal to free hostages held by Hamas in Gaza since October 7, 2023.
Protesters call for a hostage deal during a rally in Jerusalem, November 23, 2024. (Orna Kupferman/Pro-Democracy Movement)
Some protesters bang drums as they march, while others hold signs reading, “The war is over. Bring them home!” and, “Bring them home from hell.”
At Karkur Junction in the Sharon region, anti-government protesters say one activist has been detained for blocking the road.
Alongside the main rally in Tel Aviv this evening, smaller protests are also being held in cities and towns, including Beersheba, Modi’in, Haifa and Rehovot. linkIt is actually thousands that attend the demonstration in Jerusalem every Saturday night. I know because I am there every week. At some of the other demonstrations around the country, the numbers are hundreds except in Tel Aviv where there are tens of thousands every week. We are all there every week, not understanding why there aren't hundreds of thousands and truly not understanding how Netanyahu and the rest of this failed, corrupt, morally bankrupt government can sleep at night knowing that they are responsible for October 7 and for allowing 101 hostages to still be in Gaza after 415 days of their failures and refusals to bring them home.
IDF can neither confirm nor deny Hamas claim female hostage was killed recently in northern Gaza
The IDF says it can neither confirm nor deny claims made by the military wing of the Hamas terror group this evening that a female hostage was recently killed in the northern Gaza Strip.
Hudhaifa Kahlout — known by the nom de guerre Abu Obeida — the spokesman for the al-Qassam Brigades, claimed in a statement issued on Telegram that “one of the enemy’s female prisoners was killed in an area that is under a Zionist aggression in the northern Gaza Strip, while the danger still threatens the life of another female prisoner who was with her.”
Alongside the statement, Hamas published a blurred picture of a body that it claimed belonged to the slain hostage.
The IDF says it’s “checking the information and at this stage, we are unable to verify or refute it.”
“IDF representatives are in contact with her family and are updating them with all the information available to us,” the military says, adding that “Hamas continues to use psychological terror and behave in a brutal manner.”
Israel has dismissed Hamas’s statements on the deaths of hostages as deplorable psychological warfare.
At the beginning of the war, Abu Obeida threatened to execute Israeli hostages and release footage of the killings. linkWe are all hoping that this report is nothing more than Hamas' continuous psychological warfare, but many past reports have proven too true. The families of the women hostages are in terrible shape now waiting to hear if this news is true and if it is, who the latest victim is. And if it is true, it is another case of the increased military pressure literally killing the hostages.
Hostage families claim Netanyahu ‘needs war to continue’ to avoid testifying in his criminal trial
Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan Zangauker has been held hostage by Hamas in Gaza since October 7, 2023 charges that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “needs the war to continue so he can avoid trial.”
The prime minister will begin giving testimony in his criminal trial next month, weeks after a court denied his request to delay due to the time pressures of managing the current, multi-front conflict.
“The price is paid by 101 kidnapped people,” Zangauker says at the hostage families’ weekly press conference outside the Kirya base in Tel Aviv, ahead of the main anti-government rally at the Begin Road entrance to the IDF headquarters.
Yifat Calderon, whose cousin of Ofer Calderon has also been held in Gaza for 414 days, says that a $5 million reward for anyone who can assist in the release of Israeli hostages announced by Netanyahu earlier this month is in fact “endangering the captives’ lives” by instigating a “gang war at their expense.”
She calls for the government to secure a single-phase deal to free all of the 97 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 that remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 37 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
Gaza and the South
Hamas' sexual crimes: Uncollected evidence come to light
Previously undocumented indicators of sexual violence by Hamas during October 7 attacks now emerging through new report compiling evidence and survivor testimonies; findings aim to shed light on scope of atrocities
Warning: This article contains content some readers may find disturbing
In the chaos at the IDF's Shura base on the days following the October 7 massacre, bodies of the murdered – soldiers, civilians and the occasional body that, after examination, turned out to be that of an abominable Nukhba terrorist, were piling up.
On one body alongside grenades, they found an open packet of condoms. “I read about this in the newspaper. It was part of a journal kept by a guy from Shura,” says leading Israeli lawyer, Prof. Yifat Bitton. “Our investigator contacted him and asked, ‘Tell me, did you report this to anyone?’ He said, ‘No. We had to deal with neutralizing the grenades. Why should I be dealing with condoms?’”
What might have been regarded on the ground as a rather marginal detail, for Prof. Bitton leading the struggle for recognition of Hamas’s sexual offenses, it was a warning sign. “For me, a terrorist with condoms indicates sexual offense. Maybe the packet of condoms was on him because he’d had consensual sex just before that, and the box had simply remained in his pocket.
"However as, in the wave of terrorist incursion incidents, we have no way of verifying this, and as we know that when armed men are in an environment where women are helpless, there’s a very high risk of sexual harm, these condoms may attest to sexual assault. If Hamas can, they’re welcome to prove otherwise. Until October 7, we hadn’t seen sexual assault as part of organized Hamas operations. This perception, however, needs to change.”
What does this story prove in terms of our investigations? That condoms are marginal to grenades?
“Not just marginal. It’s about seeing an outright indication right before your eyes, and erasing it from your mind. Not just because it’s not important.
"Yes, some people thought it was less important - like the senior Division of Identification and Forensic Science (DIFS) official who told me, ‘Listen, when I have the worst crime of all, murder, I don’t have to, and can’t, deal with this too.' But what they were looking at was sexual offense. Conditions also play a role: under any other circumstances, I’d examine the body in great detail, but I had 500 more bodies waiting in line.”
The mass of bodies meant you couldn’t tell the whole story.
“Yes. Everyone in the Hell that was Shura had a very specific task in identifying the bodies. They remained within the area and didn’t leave it. Either their eyes didn’t look over the entire body, or they did, and decided that they couldn’t really see it and couldn’t deal with it. Psychologists we interviewed told us that this is how it works – so as to protect the workers’ mental health from permanent damage. But this, apparently minor, story is a new way of looking at what happened here.”
'The dead are dead'
December 2023, a few months prior to that conversation, Bitton gave a speech at a conference she had initiated at the UN to promote world awareness of the horrific massacre’s incorporation of systematic gender-based violence. On returning home to Herzliya, however, she felt something wasn’t right. Something in the way the story was framed was distorting the big picture.
"A lieutenant colonel told me that he saw a woman tied to a pole, naked from the hips up. When I asked him what he did, he told me that he took her off the pole and completely covered her up."
“I revisited my speech’s opening sentence in which I said that nothing in my 20 years of representing victims of sexual offenses and researching the issue, had prepared me for this moment. I asked myself why I’d opted for this sentence. Why had nothing prepared me for this? After all, it’s no surprise that women are harmed on the battlefield. Why weren’t we prepared for this moment? I felt I knew only parts of what had happened. The entirety of what happened, however, was unprecedented and so demanded new decoding tools.
Notebook of interviews deatiling Hamas' sexual crimes
(Photo: Dana Kopel)
“We’re trying to use existing tools to understand something that hasn’t happened in the past. This is severely detrimental to our professional ability to prove what happened and explain why the evidence is so sparse relative to the scope of attacks. I realized it would be best to listen to people who were on the ground at the time, and through them, identify the true scope of sexual offenses on October 7.”
This realization led Bitton, President of Achva Academic College and head of Israel's Public Colleges Association, to an almost year-long quest resulting in an extremely comprehensive, in-depth report on October 7 sexual offenses. Alongside attorneys Vardit Avitan and Shir Burka and lawyer, Hodaya Shaked, she questioned and interviewed dozens of people from the field who saw the worst things a person could imagine.
This culminated into 80 pages in Hebrew, translating into 100 English pages, to serve Israel - not just in Hasbara terms, but also for international legal purposes. In their own personal time, and modestly funded by two foundations, the researchers set out with a clear mission.
“I asked myself, why this had gotten me so much. Why couldn’t I just deal with the other horrors that occurred there? I eventually realized that the situation I was now seeing, is one so often exposed when it comes to assaults - mainly against women – and that are sidelined. This isn’t very different from what we know about sexual violence in general. It needs working on, pushing, and explaining why it matters.
”The last thing I wanted was for the sexual offenses to be used as yet one more tool with which to goad the enemy. I was looking for a way to forge recognition for the victims. I was looking to find out how, knowing what we do about these incidents, we could set up dedicated treatment and investigation structures. This was my prime motive. And no one really wanted to do it.”
Did exposure to these materials affect you personally?
“The material was, obviously, very difficult. I am sadly, however, very experienced when it comes to the horrors of sexual offenses. Although it was unprecedented in terms of its scope and malevolence, I must stress that as soon as the project was about means for identifying and gathering evidence, that’s what we focused on.
Body containers in IDF base after October 7
(Photo: Yair Sagi)
"It’s also been very hard to prove the degree to which the interviewees were repressing what they’d seen or felt or were experiencing secondary trauma - that arose from the interviews. Some felt guilty, and it was important for me to explain to them that, considering the shock and chaos of what happened to us, there was nothing to feel guilty about.”
The report - whose findings were forwarded to officials at Israel’s National Security Council (NSC), terrorism specialists and the authorities at the United Nations Security Council responsible for dealing with sexual violence - reveals obstacles faced by various systems, that have prevented widescale documentation of the scale of the sexual assaults.
These obstacles are expressed by “first respondents,” professionals who, on October 7, encountered what we couldn’t have imagined in our worst nightmares. These include Zaka, police and Border Police, personnel as well as doctors at Camp Shura.
This failure touched on not only gathering evidence, but also the preliminary inquiry. It turns out that Israeli combatants in the massacre areas weren’t asked questions about sexual offenses. A senior police officer says in the report that this was sometimes a conscious decision, “so as to keep soldiers’ spirits robust, as they were returning to the battlefield.”
Another senior ranking Border Police officer told the investigator that she saw, “Loads of bras and underwear strewn around the party ground.” Bitton says, “She hadn’t told anyone before, as she wasn’t asked questions about indications, but rather about sexual offenses.
"If you ask, ‘Did you see sexual assaults,’ the answer would be no. But if you were to ask, ‘Did you see anything relating to women that looked odd to you,’ she’d say, ‘Actually yes.’ For me, this constitutes an indication of sexual offenses. That same officer did not photograph what he saw, and also instructed her subordinates not to photograph them either.”
Why?
“Because they were told, ‘We need to focus on the people who are alive. The dead are dead.' I heard this cited by both soldiers and psychologists. ‘This is what matters,' ‘This is what’s relevant.' These are the quotes. We’re now talking about an accumulation of almost 500 pieces of digital evidence.
"I remember two burned bodies whose legs were spread. In real time, we wanted to identify the bodies, not find out what had happened to them."
"In the videos, you don’t have to look for gang rape. You need to look for pictures of underwear on the ground. Understanding that we have to ask about indications, rather than the sexual offenses themselves, is groundbreaking.”
Many interviewed said that they didn’t forward the evidence they had photographed on their personal phones. “For example, pictures including very serious indications of sexual offenses, not passed on for fear of violating the victim’s privacy,” says Bitton. A senior Zaka official, who was present at the massacre scene, said he had a whole gallery of pictures he’d taken on his phone that he didn’t know what to do with.”
“A lieutenant colonel told me that he saw a woman tied to a pole, naked from the hips up. When I asked him what he did, he told me that he took her off the pole and completely covered her up. ‘It was important for me to put an end to her denegation, and certainly not document her in this horrific condition.' I understand the compassion by which he was guided, but that shouldn’t negate the importance of documentation, as long as there are clear and ethical guidelines as to how to do it.”
Hodaya Shaked, who collaborated on the report alongside Prof. Bitton, says, “One interviewee told me that, while surveying and clearing the bodies, he found a used condom on a bed in a house in the Gaza Periphery. He didn’t think to report it, and only thought about it differently when we talked about it.”
From these examples, we learn of the lack of readiness for terrorism that incorporates sexual violence - not just in the field, but afterward too, at Camp Shura. “Naked, or partially naked, bodies were showing up at Shura, and no one documented it,” says Bitton. “At Shura, they photographed operational injury. They didn’t, for example, photograph bruising adjacent to sexual organs.”
Coining a term: Sexual terror attack
Dr. Naama Samet, oral and maxillofacial surgery specialist, who has been volunteering with the IDF’s victims’ identification unit for the past 15 years, encountered this in the six weeks she spent identifying hundreds of bodies at Shura. She supports Prof. Bitton and her investigation team’s grim conclusions.
“The thought of sexual assault didn’t cross our minds,” she says. “We just opened up the top part of the body bags. On the second or third day, a Zaka guy rolled in a body in a cart. Helping him bring it in, I said, ‘There’s something strange here.' I thought there was another body inside. We then removed the body bag and saw that the pelvis was very clearly broken. This is how we understood that sexual assaults had occurred.”
Israelis fleeing the Nova Music Festival
Did it change the rest of the examinations?
“No. There wasn’t time for that. At some stage, you close up, just to get through. I remember two burned bodies whose legs were spread. In real-time, we wanted to identify the bodies, not find out what had happened to them. That was a mistake, but it would have taken months had we acted otherwise. There were horrific stories there.”
Bitton continues, “We suddenly realized that burning the houses and bodies or shooting the sexual organs was, in part, means to conceal the sexual assaults. Pramila Patten (United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, who came to Israel in January and then compiled a report concluding that sexual assaults by Hamas had indeed occurred), confirmed there had many gunshots at sexual organs, mainly but not only, of women.”
“At first, we viewed it as some kind of sexual obsession of theirs or efforts to eliminate sexuality. I now tell myself that this, in and of itself, constitutes sexual assault and that I can perhaps use this as an indication of covering up acute sexual assaults.”
In hindsight, we understand that assaults were on a greater scale, that so much evidence has been buried.
“Definitely. We’re proving that very clearly.”
Legal research and security expert Capt. (res.) Att. Shir Burka, who has been serving as war room commander at the Gaza Division for over a decade, was called on the afternoon of October 7 to the Northern Brigade’s improvised war room in the south of the country.
“As a war room officer, I experienced first-hand the tremendous chaos on the ground in the first days after the attack. Our priorities were clear: protecting human life, evacuating the dead and wounded, and preparing for an attack. At no stage were we briefed about sexual offenses.”
“With my background representing victims of sexual assault, as our work on the report progressed, I saw evermore gaps in the evidence and I could only scream out against the omission and the possibility that so many forces on the ground could have contributed toward identifying and documenting sexual offenses. But hindsight‘s 20/20. Had there been any awareness of it, things would have certainly looked different.”
Hamas terrorists infiltrating Israel on October 7
Bitton: “Visiting one of the Gaza Periphery communities, I asked a local man to show me where the horrors had taken place. I wanted to be there, to smell it, hear the silent voices of the people I’m trying to make heard. As he was talking, I realized that he was, inadvertently, showing me a strong, horrific indication of the acute sexual abuse of two women.
"Realizing this, and not wanting to upset him, I asked him questions around the subject. With my tools, I continued the investigation in the house, went back to my interviewees, reconfirmed that what I had heard was correct, and learned that I was correct in my assessment. Talking to a police representative, I found that the police didn’t know about it.”
What did he say constituted an indication?
“He said that something just didn’t hang together about the house we were in. It was clear that what happened here, wasn’t what he had thought, and that he had no explanation as to what had happened, and that was telling himself the same story everyone probably tells themselves: They see an indication, but don’t regard it as demonstrating a high chance of sexual assault.”
Didn’t that put you in the position of police investigator?
“Definitely not. I’m not here to replace the police. We always forwarded new stories or evidence to which we were exposed. That’s not my role, and shouldn’t be anyone else’s role. That’s the state’s role.”
"It’s critical the state should adopt this report, the bodies mentioned in it read it, understand what’s missing in their work, and make corrections accordingly."
In their report, Bitton and her partners present new perceptions. Firstly: the obstacles faced in collecting and documenting evidence of sexual offenses, are rooted in this being a totally different kind of attack. And secondly: it may well happen again.
Let’s start with the first. The investigators called the October 7 terrorist attack an “incursive incident.” Bitton says, “This short-term attack on the land of a sovereign Westen state is a world-first. It’s an incursive terrorist incident in that they were invaders, they wandered around in the field, caused destruction, and left.
"Sexual offenses in Ukraine, for example, were part of an ongoing war. This is in no way similar to an incursive incident whose main purpose was killing as many people as possible, in which the victims were killed systematically.”
Prof. Boaz Ganor, President of Reichman University and the founder of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT), who ranks among the world’s top terrorism experts, reiterates this. “I don’t remember any similar incident in modern times. Perhaps, the Boko Haram attack in Nigeria where they kidnapped girls from school, hurt them, and sold them as concubines. We also saw ISIS do this to the Yazidi women.”
Ganor addresses another terrifying report conclusion regarding the likelihood of a second such attack in the wider world. “In the history of modern terrorism, attacks carried out against the State of Israel, serve as a model copied by other organizations. In the 1960s, Israel ranked among the countries suffering most from airplane hijackings.
"We then saw it spread to other places, among other things, because Israel found ways to better address the issue. It was similar with suicide attacks that started here in 1992, and a decade later became familiar in Europe and the U.S. So, one must ask whether October 7 could serve as a model to be imitated in other Western countries.”
And what do you think?
“I think that an incursive terrorist attack like this can be imitated in places adjacent to territories over which the state has no effective control. If we look at Europe and the US, it doesn’t seem likely. However, we’re beginning to see areas over which the state has little, or no, effective control.
"Even in Europe, there are areas - like Brussels’ Molenbeek neighborhood, that the police and law enforcement authorities seldom, or fear to, go. Paris also has quarters like this. I believe we’ll probably see incursive terrorist attacks from such neighborhoods in Europe, similar in essence to the October 7 incursion attack.”
What do you feel this report contributes?
“It has two important aspects. Firstly: casting light on the horrific sexual offenses committed on October 7. Secondly: addressing the challenges faced by first respondents arriving at the scene of such a huge incursive terrorist attack, who are busy dealing with other issues like saving lives, fighting, and obviously not collecting the facts required to prove sexual offenses.
"In the wider world, some people are still saying that these claims are some kind of Israeli scam. This report says that, alongside other activity, it’s also important to have clear guidelines and operating methods to gather the evidence, not only for indictment purposes, but also to show the world.”
Challenges in making sense of evidence
“It was important for me to investigate how these various structures operated,” says Bitton. “Was there any kind of awareness, and what did they do? The answer is that people on the ground were not aware of it, and so did almost nothing. I’m not criticizing them. It’s Hell. Guilt must rest on Hamas who caused the chaos.”
The report, however, presents the state’s failures.
“We have to view them as shortcomings - the inability to imagine. I call it, ‘When the unimaginable becomes a reality.' It’s a nightmare. It no use judging in hindsight.”
Att. Vardit Avidan, Bitton's team’s sexual protection expert, supports this. “It was important for us to cast blame on Hamas. Yes, a response could have been better in some cases, but if we prepare correctly, we’ll be able to get better evidence in the future.”
Israelis fleeing terrorists on October 7
How?
Bitton: “I learned that the DIFS is the only organization that can identify dead civilians in Israel. This is the only body in the country authorized to conduct this procedure. The identification process involves taking fingerprints, dental photos and conducting DNA tests. This means that Israel’s number one investigation body was conducting an activity that’s very easy to train people on the ground to do.”
“The sheer workload meant that that it was a month before DIFS got into the field, by which time the crime scenes had been corrupted, damaged or destroyed. This was the case for the Nahal Oz outpost where dozens of male and female soldiers - and the highest number of women - were murdered.
"The army’s surveillance unit, with its forensic documentation expertise (which it may utilize in the future) didn’t manage to get there at all. Instead, Zaka evacuated the bodies from the scene to another kibbutz. One interviewee told me ‘By that stage, you couldn’t understand who was who.'”
“These are evidentiary problems from Hell. There was also a lack of collaboration between the various respondents who were working under fire and the fear of being kidnapped. And yet, when we finally come to talk about sexual offenses, they have the tenacity to ask us, ‘Where’s your evidence?.'”
Has anything changed in procedures since then?
“The answer is not yet. That’s why I believe it’s critical the state should adopt this report, the bodies mentioned in it read it, understand what’s missing in their work, and make corrections accordingly. We know that this doesn’t generally happen on its own, so we need a body to handle these incidents and oversee that it really does happen.”
“As for overseas, I’m supposed to meet international organizations in the United States soon to explain to them what this means for them. I’m working with the embassy to present it at Congress. The German parliament’s representative to the United Nations has also asked me to forward the report to her, and there’s a coalition of sorts of politicians from across the globe, set up by Yesh Atid MK Shelly Meron, who want to address the matter at an international level.”
Hamas terrorists infiltrating Israel on October 7
This is impressive, but how willing is the world to listen to Israel while the war is still ongoing?
“Our story isn’t making waves - to say the least. I think the world isn’t listening to the story from the Israeli angle, or even the women’s angle. It might be of interest to various terrorism experts and anyone fighting terror.
"Transferring the burden of proof to the terrorist organizations in a structured manner, as the report does, is of great interest to them. In this respect, I think they are listening, as it’s a story with universal implications. Explaining that this is a universal story, rather than just an Israeli story, is part of the issue. And as a universal feminist, it’s important for me to protect women – whoever they may be.”
Although the world’s women’s organizations messed up.
“Lots of them behaved shamefully because, among other things, I think, it’s connected to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and they believe it couldn’t happen to women in the middle of Europe. In my dealings with these organizations, I don’t behave as if I’m angry with them, but rather I’m critical of their failure to fulfill the role they’ve been mandated to perform.
"This professional report, which explains how these situations should be managed, is a strong tool to address the international community’s disgraceful conduct and one that can be relevant later for indictment purposes. Presenting this to the world is, essentially, part of the new challenges that terrorism poses to humanity. Under no circumstances should this story be sidelined.” link
Northern Israel - Lebanon/Hizbollah/Syria
Syrian media reports Israeli airstrikes at crossing used by Hezbollah to smuggle Iranian weapons into Lebanon
Syrian media reports Israeli airstrikes on the border with Lebanon a short while ago.
The state-run SANA news agency says the strikes targeted the Jusiyah Crossing in the Homs Governorate, close to Lebanon’s northeastern border with Syria.
The IDF does not immediately comment on the strike.
Last month, the military confirmed striking the Jusiyah Crossing after it was being used by Hezbollah to smuggle Iranian weapons into Lebanon.
Israel has struck several other border crossings between Lebanon and Syria in recent months, amid efforts by Iran to supply Hezbollah with weapons.
The IDF apologizes for striking a Lebanese Army post in southern Lebanon earlier today, killing a soldier and wounding 18 others.
“The incident took place in an area where fighting is ongoing against the Hezbollah terror organization,” the Israeli military says in response to a query by The Times of Israel.
The strike hit a Lebanese Army center in the town of Al-Amiriya on the Al-Qalila-Tyre road.
“The IDF regrets the incident and clarifies that it is fighting in a targeted manner against the Hezbollah terror organization, and not against the Lebanese Army,” the military says, adding that the incident is under further investigation.
West Bank and Jerusalem and Terror attacks within Israel
Settlers from illegal outpost in southern West Bank attacked several Palestinians as IDF soldiers looked on
Israeli settlers from the illegal outpost of Havat Maon in the southern West Bank descended on the nearby village of At-Tuwani and assaulted several Palestinians as IDF soldiers looked on without intervening, Palestinian media reports.
Two Palestinians were injured in the attack on activist Hafez al-Harini, who was subsequently detained by Israeli security forces.
There is no immediate comment from the IDF.
Another terror attack. Today, settler from Maon terror outpost descended to al-Tuwani, Masafer Yatta. The settlers, protected by soldiers, injured two & escaped without being held accountable. The attacks are systematic and are clearly supported by the occupation government. pictures and video from the settler attack. It is clear that Defense Minister Katz's elimination of administrative detention for terrorist settlers and Ben Gvir's encouragement of settler violence of Palestinians are the prime enablers and motivators of these attacks. Since this government's start, settler violence has grown exponentially and we will see more exponential growth because of Katz's actions (inactions)
IDF: Dozens of settlers, some masked, hurled stones at security forces in West Bank earlier today; 5 detained
Dozens of settlers, some of them masked, hurled stones at Israeli troops and Border Police officers near the West Bank settlement of Itamar earlier today, the military says.
The IDF says troops and police officers dispersed the riot and detained five suspects. No injuries are reported.
“The IDF strongly condemns and denounces violence of any kind against the security forces and views incidents of this type very seriously,” the military adds.
Last night, dozens of Israeli youths chased after the head of the IDF Central Command Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth in Hebron, calling him a “traitor.” Five suspects were also detained by police there.
Both incidents come after Defense Minister Israel Katz announced on Friday an end to administrative detention orders for West Bank settlers, meaning Israel will now be using the controversial policy of holding suspects without charge only against Palestinian terror suspects.
Two days after Jewish extremists in Hebron tried to attack IDF Central Command head Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “firmly condemns” the violence in a statement from the cabinet. full article. It is unbelievable that it took him 2 full days to condemn this attack on an IDF Major General. I have no doubt that his cronies had to run the condemnation by his extremist ministers to make sure it wouldn't ruffle their feathers because keeping his coalition partners happy so he can remain prime minister is far more important to him than giving the backing to our security forces.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin raised the Biden administration’s alarm over Defense Minister Israel Katz’s decision to end the practice of administrative detention for Jewish settlers during their call earlier today, a US official tells The Times of Israel.
The administrative detentions against a handful of Jewish extremists have been virtually the only step Israeli authorities have taken to reign in on such suspects, as police arrests in near daily settler attacks on Palestinians are highly rare.
The failure of Israeli authorities to clamp down on the phenomenon has led the US and other Western countries to begin issuing sanctions against extremist settler individuals and entities earlier this year.
Katz’s decision to end the practice of detention without trial against Jews only, while maintaining the practice en masse against Palestinians as well as a handful of Arab Israeli raises significant concerns about discrimination, the US official says, confirming reporting in the Axios news site.
Politics and the War (general news)
Netanyahu ignored warnings over Hamas threat for years, ruled against assassinating terror leaders — TV report
In an in-depth report, Channel 12 news claims that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for years ignored warnings from security chiefs about the growing Hamas threat from Gaza and turned down repeated proposals to kill Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Muhammad Deif.
Netanyahu’s office flatly denies the allegations.
According to the TV report, Netanyahu received detailed intelligence in 2014 about Hamas’s plans to invade Israel. In the ensuing years, Hamas operatives repeatedly approached the border fence, but the prime minister blocked any significant Israeli response.
Instead, Netanyahu chose a strategy based on defense and paying Hamas off, according to the report. He invested billions of shekels in a new border fence to block tunnels into Israel, only three percent of which was invested in the above-ground portion of the fence that Hamas easily penetrated on October 7.
In 2018, according to Channel 12, Netanyahu turned down a proposal from the Shin Bet and then-defense minister Avigdor Liberman to kill senior Hamas leaders — including Sinwar and Deif — instead choosing to send then-Mossad chief Yossi Cohen to Qatar to convince the Gulf emirate to send money to Hamas in exchange for quiet in the south.
According to the report, Netanyahu chose to ignore intelligence that Qatar was also sending funds to Hamas’s military. He even sent the then-head of the IDF Southern Command Herzi Halevi to Qatar in 2020 to convince its leaders to keep funding Hamas after Doha indicated it wanted to stop sending money to the terror group.
Netanyahu also ruled against plans to kill Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders and West Bank Hamas terrorists, along with an opportunity to assassinate the powerful Iran Revolutionary Guards Corp leader Qassem Soleimani, according to the report. Soleimani was assassinated in 2020 in a US drone strike.
After a Hezbollah operative carried out a bombing attack deep inside northern Israel in March 2023, Halevi and Bar warned Netanyahu that chances of a war erupting were high and that he should take offensive action against terror leaders, Channel 12 reports. He once again refused.
Six days before the October 7 attack, Bar reportedly presented Netanyahu with a plan to kill Hamas leaders, while Halevi said that Israel must prepare for war with the Palestinian terror group.
Netanyahu demurred, and National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi went on the radio to say that Hamas was deterred.
In a statement, the Prime Minister’s Office calls the report “a recycling of baseless lies that have been refuted in the past, and which are intended to discredit Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is leading Israel to unprecedented achievements on seven fronts.”
The PMO rejects a claim in the report that Israel didn’t have the capabilities to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2018, along with the claim about Soleimani, again insisting that the prime minister was only presented with intelligence about a Hamas plan for a mass raid into Israel after October 7.
Netanyahu’s office also asserts that he extended Operation Guardian of the Wall in 2021 to try to kill Deif, and that he oversaw the killing of PIJ leader Baha Abu al-Ata in 2019.
The PMO says that the intelligence community agreed that Hamas was deterred, and could be incentivized to agree to long-term ceasefires through economic deals. It also says that there was never any intelligence that Qatari money was being used for terrorism.
The main threat according to Israeli intelligence, says the PMO, was from subterranean tunnels, which was thwarted when Netanyahu built the underground barrier, despite opposition from security chiefs.
“No attempt to rewrite history will change the facts,” says the PMO. linkOnce again, if we need to choose who to believe, the PMO or legitimate investigative news reports from trusted news reporters, we all need to believe the news reporters. The PMO and Netanyahu are deliberately compulsive liars to protect Netanyahu, to provide good publicity and try to kill bad publicity, and deflect the truth. In so many instances, their lies are caught and proven, yet there is never a retraction, only dead silence every time it happens.
Feldstein’s lawyer: He was acting in the PM’s name when sending IDF intel document to Bild
The lawyer representing Eli Feldstein, who was charged Thursday with offenses regarding harming national security that could carry a life term, says he was hired by the defendant’s family because Feldstein’s father feared, when Feldstein was arrested, that “this good soul” might ‘lay on the fence’ in order not to involve anybody from the Prime Minister’s Office.”
The father wanted a lawyer who would represent Feldstein’s interests, “and not those of anybody else… That’s why they turned to me,” attorney Oded Savoray tells Channel 12.
Feldstein has fully cooperated with the investigators, says Savoray. “He told them everything,” and the text of the indictment shows this. It makes clear, says Savoray, “that Feldstein did not work for himself. He was a media adviser in the Prime Minister’s Office. He worked for the prime minister.”
When, as the indictment shows, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s aide Jonatan Urich wrote to Feldstein after Germany’s Bild published material from a classified document allegedly leaked to it by Feldstein, and told him, “The boss is happy,” Savoray says this “closes the circle. Feldstein knows that he is working for the prime minister.”
Savoray explains: “The prime minister is the person authorized to overrule the [military] censor in Israel,” which had barred domestic publication of the sensitive document. “The prime minister gets all the intelligence material, knows what is permitted for publication, what is barred from publication.”
Asked why Netanyahu is not standing by Feldstein, and making clear that Feldstein was acting on his behalf, Savoray suggests that Channel 12 direct the question to Netanyahu.
When details of the probe were first revealed more than three weeks ago, the PMO said in a statement that nobody employed by the office was under investigation. Earlier this evening, however, Netanyahu spoke in defense of Feldstein and the second defendant in the case, who he said were patriots who would never harm the state, and also claimed that vital classified material was being kept from him and that this is why the suspects in the case passed them from the IDF to the PMO.
Asked if Feldstein feels “betrayed,” Savoray declines to answer, but says his client “didn’t lay on the fence for anyone. He spoke about the workings of the Prime Minister’s Office in this specific matter… It’s completely clear that Feldstein is a minor figure who worked, as he understood in real-time, with permission and authorization.”
When it was put to him that Feldstein knew that the document he leaked to Bild was barred from publication by the censor, and that Feldstein maneuvered to get into the public domain by leaking it to a foreign outlet, Savoray insists he knew and did nothing of the kind.
“Eli Feldstein did not act on his own behalf,” the lawyer repeats. “He provided advisory services in the Prime Minister’s Office.”
“If there are claims, they should be directed to the Prime Minister’s Office. In real time, he was convinced that the figure, to whom he turned and said, ‘I need the prime minister,’ is someone who is trusted by the prime minister and has worked there for a decade. When that figure comes back to him and says, ‘Get [the document] out, get it out,’ and connects him to someone who referred him to Bild, [Feldstein is certain] that he is working on behalf of the prime minister,” Savoray continues.
Asked whether the “figure” to whom he is referring is Urich, Savoray says he won’t name names. The indictment indicates that Urich is indeed the figure to whom Feldstein turned for guidance. Urich has reportedly twice been questioned under caution in the case.
Asked whether Feldstein knew he was committing a serious offense by giving a classified IDF document to a foreign outlet, outflanking a censorship ban, Savoray says, “The answer is no. He did not know why the censor had barred publication of the document.” And as soon as the PMO official told him to get it published, “he was convinced that he was doing so legally.”
He says he hopes Feldstein will be released to house arrest.
Savoray says Feldstein comes from a wonderful ultra-Orthodox family whose parents send their children to serve in the IDF. full articleWhen Feldstein was first arrested and his name was barred from publication, Netanyahu and the PMO came out with statements denying that anyone from the PMO was arrested or involved. When his name and position in the PMO came out, we heard crickets from Netanyahu and his cronies and then when more news came out about the leaked documents and others in the PMO, Netanyahu began making statements that Feldstein is a patriot and would never do anything to help and enemy as well as the all too familiar claims that his is a a political witch hunt, his typical go to statement to deflect his own guilt and involvement.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s legal team requests a new, 15-day postponement of the beginning of his testimony in court in his ongoing criminal trial, saying that despite their best efforts the prime minister and his defense attorneys will not be prepared by the scheduled date of December 2.
Earlier this month, Netanyahu’s defense team requested a 10-week delay, but the court rejected the request, saying it had given him five months to prepare when it originally scheduled the date back in July.
Netanyahu’s lawyers say that since the court rejected that request on November 13, and even in the months before that, they and the prime minister had made “a supreme effort” to prepare for his giving testimony, including daily meetings at very late hours in order.
“Despite this supreme effort, the defense is not prepared, and will not be able to meet the goal of being prepared, for beginning the defense by December 2,” Netanyahu’s defense team says.
His lawyers said that preparations were further encumbered by the decision by the International Criminal Court on Thursday to issue an arrest warrant for Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
They therefore request that Netanyahu begin his testimony on December 17.
Netanyahu’s trial on corruption charges for bribery, as well as fraud and breach of trust, began in 2020. linkThis additional request for a delay has nothing to do with his defense teams readiness. They have had more than a year to be ready. This is entirely about Netanyahu's continued attempts to delay as long as needed for his failed government to overthrow the judicial system which would then cancel his indictments and court cases. It's all about his plans to escape justice. After the court turned down his request for another delay, he ordered the Shin Bet to tell the courts that it would be dangerous for him to be in court on a regular basis as Iran is trying to assassinate him. The Shin Bet turned down his request/demand and said, instead it was preparing everything to ensure his safety while he is court testifying. As a result, Netanyahu is looking to fire the head of the Shin Bet and bring in a yes man, like he did with the defense minister. It is all done for his self interest and to hell with the interests and needs of the State.
The Region and the World
Report: Rabbi missing in Abu Dhabi is nephew of rabbi who was murdered in 2008 attack on Mumbai Chabad House
A rabbi from Abu Dhabi’s Chabad chapter who is missing and reportedly feared kidnapped or murdered is the nephew of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, who was murdered along with his wife in a terror attack at the Nariman Chabad House in Mumbai in 2008, Channel 12 news reports.
Rabbi Zvi Kogan has been missing since Thursday, with Israeli authorities treating the incident as a suspected act of terrorism.
The Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement earlier this evening that the Mossad intelligence agency has launched an “extensive” investigation into the incident alongside Emirati authorities.
Kogan is a dual Israeli-Moldovan citizen and has been part of the Abu Dhabi Chabad chapter since Israel normalized ties with the UAE in late 2020.
The car of a missing Chabad rabbi has been found abandoned in Al Ain in the United Arab Emirates, Ynet news reports.
The Ynet report adds that three Uzbeks are suspected of kidnapping Rabbi Zvi Kogan and fleeing to Turkey.
Al Ain is around 150 kilometers (93 miles) from Abu Dhabi, where Kogan is based.
Israeli authorities are investigating Kogan’s disappearance together with the Emirates’ security services, amid growing concern that he was kidnapped and murdered. The incident is being treated as a suspected act of terrorism.
Kogan is a dual Israeli-Moldovan citizen and has been part of the Abu Dhabi Chabad chapter since Israel normalized ties with the UAE in 2020.
Body of missing Chabad rabbi found in UAE; Israel: ‘Despicable antisemitic act of terror’
Emirati authorities have found the body of Rabbi Zvi Kogan, the Prime Minister’s Office and Foreign Ministry say in a joint statement.
Kogan, a Chabad rabbi in the UAE, had been missing since Thursday.
Israel’s embassy in Abu Dhabi has been in contact contact with Kogan’s family in the UAE, says the statement. Family members living Israel have also been updated.
Israel calls the murder “a despicable antisemitic act of terror,” and pledges to use all available means to bring the killers to justice.
Survivors
Personal Stories
Taken captive: Omer Wenkert, suffers from autoimmune condition
The 22-year-old restaurant manager was at the Supernova festival on October 7
Omer Wenkert, 22, was taken captive by Hamas terrorists at the Supernova desert rave on October 7, as they attacked the party, killing some 360 partygoers and abducting at least 40.
Wenkert was in touch with his parents that morning, telling them he was “scared to death.” Their last communication with him was at 7:50 a.m.
Wenkert’s parents scrambled to find any information they could, frantically combing social media, calling friends, trying to figure out what had happened to their son.
At 11:11 a.m., they were sent a Hamas video of Omer, tied up on the flatbed of a white pickup truck, in his underwear, confirming that he had been taken hostage in Gaza.
“I feel him here,” said his father, Shai, touching his stomach. “We believe he will come back.”
Wenkert, vibrant and social with a wide circle of friends, has a brother, Ran, 18, and a sister, Maya, 13. He works as a restaurant manager and plans to become a restaurant critic.
Wenkert’s mother, Niva, said she saw his eyes in the video, “I saw that he’s alive,” she said. “He has to come back alive.”
**"Chose to live, left the shelter - and was kidnapped": The last correspondence between Omer and his mother, October 7**
Omer Wenkeret was kidnapped to Gaza from the Re’im party. His parents, who have yet to rearrange his room since then, share the last messages (“He wrote that he was terrified”), his condition in captivity (“A fellow hostage who was with him and released said the conditions were very harsh”), their struggles (“Sometimes I feel like screaming”), and their hope (“He will overcome captivity”).
**A special project**
In recent months, the side table at the entrance to the Wenkeret family home has turned into what they call an "energy corner." "It used to be a cluttered table, like at the entrance of every home," explains Shay, Omer's father. "Today, it holds photos of Omer and various items related to the struggle to bring him back home." His room, however, remains exactly as he left it. Piles of folded clothes that he had planned to hang on a new rack he bought still lie on the couch next to his bed, left untouched since that night he went to the party, from which he was kidnapped to Gaza on October 7.
Shai and Niva Wenkeret
“We have three children, and Omer is our eldest,” his mother, Neva, shares. “He’s an amazing brother. I know every parent says that, but the bond between him and his siblings is very special. He’s always full of positive energy, smiling, people-loving, very sociable—a magnet for others. In recent years, he fell in love with the culinary world: gourmet restaurants, fine wine. He’s invested a lot of time and money into learning about it. His dream is to become a restaurant critic. He’s independent and hardworking, starting to support himself at age 17. He managed a fine dining restaurant, working hard to get there. When he was kidnapped, he was 22, and last month, he turned 23 in captivity.”
### October 7
Omer was abducted on October 7 from the Nova Festival in Re’im. “When the sirens started here, we called him,” recalls Neva. “We know he left the festival area with Kim Damti, may she rest in peace, in a car heading toward Re’im. They found a shelter and stopped there. It was one of the two shelters that were attacked the most.”
“At 7:01 AM, he wrote to us, ‘It’s terrifying; rockets are overhead,’” she says while scrolling through their last conversation. “At 7:12, he wrote, ‘Mom, there’s shooting here.’ That was the turning point for us. Until then, we thought he was safe in the shelter from the rockets. Once we understood there was gunfire, we realized the shelter couldn’t protect him. He wrote, ‘I’m waiting it out; no reception in the shelter; there’s gunfire, I don’t know who’s shooting; we’re waiting for things to calm down. No sign of the IDF.’”
Omer's phone, found a month after his abduction
Neva pulls Omer’s shattered phone from a single-use glove stored in an envelope. It was found by a soldier about a month after the abduction. The phone, broken to pieces, might hold clues about the horrors that occurred there. Despite consulting professionals, they were unable to recover data from its memory card—the blows and explosions it endured that morning rendered it lifeless.
“At 7:36, he wrote, ‘We still hear gunfire; the explosions won’t stop,’” Neva continues recounting their final exchange. “I asked if he was okay, and he said no. At 7:50, he wrote, ‘I’m terrified,’ and that was the last message we received from him.”
Eight grenades were thrown into the shelter where Omer was. His friend Kim was killed, and he was one of the few who survived. “Apparently, they also shot from outside,” Neva explains. “We visited the shelter after Omer was taken, and you can clearly see the bullet marks on the walls. From what we know, at some point, the terrorists burned something at the shelter entrance to suffocate those still alive. The survivors tried to escape and were shot. Omer chose not to die of suffocation, even though he knew anyone leaving the shelter was being shot. He decided to come out. Liam Orr, who was with him in captivity, told us that when Omer first stood, his legs gave out, and he fell. ‘I chose to live a second time,’ Omer said. Then he walked out and was kidnapped.”
### His Condition in Captivity
“Liam was with him in captivity from day one, along with four Thai hostages abducted from Re’im,” says Neva. “We know they paraded him around several locations in Gaza to showcase him. Omer called it a ‘show-off tour.’ Liam said that when they met in a tunnel, he asked Omer, ‘Do you think they’ll kill us?’ and Omer replied, ‘Don’t lose hope.’ That became their motto. They maintained positive energy, optimism, and belief in their return. They laughed a lot, sang, and encouraged each other.”
“The physical conditions were extremely harsh,” she continues. “Liam said they met other released hostages, and compared to them, Omer and Liam’s conditions were worse. They slept on plastic sheeting and only received a mattress near Liam’s release. There were no bathrooms; they used a bucket outside the room. They bathed twice in 54 days, using a 1.5-liter bottle of seawater. Food was scarce—three dates a day and sometimes a piece of pita at night. Most of the time, there was fluorescent lighting, but power outages made it so dark they couldn’t tell if their eyes were open, so they’d touch their eyelids.”
Omer suffers from ulcerative colitis, a chronic condition that can be life-threatening if untreated. “Even a healthy person would deteriorate in this situation, let alone someone with a compromised immune system,” Neva says. “He takes medication to prevent flare-ups, which, if unmanaged, cause unbearable pain and life-threatening complications. Omer must be released; he’s without medical care in conditions that exacerbate his illness—stress, poor hygiene, malnutrition. No one, not even an animal, should live like this. It’s unthinkable. He needs to see a doctor.”
### Moments of Despair
“I feel somewhat helpless,” says Shay. “In recent interviews, I apologized to Omer if he’s listening—sorry it’s taking so long.” Neva adds, “Weekends are harder, as are the ends of the day when you’re alone with your thoughts. Sometimes I feel like screaming. My son is less than 100 kilometers away, and I have no idea what’s happening to him. It’s a horrible helplessness.”
The Wenkeret family with Omer
“Time has stopped,” she continues. “We have no routine. We don’t go to work; we are solely focused on bringing Omer home. The kids try to maintain their routines, and we try to keep the house cheerful and optimistic. But if you ask my kids, they’d say they miss the home we had before October 7. This isn’t the home we’re used to. We wake up, get dressed, and stay busy, but the pain—the longing, frustration, helplessness—remains.”
### The Hope
“Our hope is Omer,” his parents say. According to Neva, “Omer stayed optimistic; he sang in captivity. We sleep in our bed, surrounded by family. When I cry, someone hugs me. He’s alone. If he hasn’t broken under the harshest conditions imaginable, we won’t break either. He’s overcoming captivity. Omer, if you’re reading this, know that we’re strong for you—so be strong for us. You’ll be home soon.” link
Dark Legacy - The Abandonment of October 7th Hostages
We Are All Hostages
Orna Banai
Actress.
On the 7th of October we were humiliated. We were humiliated by Hamas who dealt us a strong blow, a blow that killed and murdered thousands of us and injured thousands more, both physically and psychologically.
There are those responsible for this horrific failure; responsible on the military level and on the political level.
The military leadership took responsibility. Benjamin Netanyahu and his horrific government did not.
When I realized, on October 7th, the dimensions of the disaster that had befallen us, a disaster of biblical proportions, I said to myself: What a terrible price, what an unimaginable price we have paid because of a government headed by a man who is responsible for the gravest dereliction of duty in Israel's history.
And that's it, I thought naively, it's over. Now he will go, leave our lives, there is no other option. I never imagined that he would stay, that he would continue to run the battered and bloody country we have turned into. A man without an ounce of shame or remorse, is he the one who will be responsible for the restoration of our shattered nation? Will he be responsible for bringing home over two hundred hostages from Gaza? Will he lead? Will he manage the war with our heroic soldiers? The man who made it his goal to save only himself and his family, and as far as he is concerned, the country can go up in flames?
So, yes. Unfathomable and improbable as it may seem, he has not gone; he is still here and my beloved country is on fire.
For over nine months we have been living in a horrendous reality. We are being abused by a cruel and unscrupulous government. We weep, we hurt, we have trouble sleeping, we have trouble breathing. Wonderful and good soldiers die and are wounded in body and soul, and over a hundred and twenty hostages are still rotting in captivity!
Today it is common knowledge that Netanyahu sabotages negotiations for the return of the hostages, the result of despicable political motives.
On the morning of June 8th, when four hostages were rescued from captivity in a heroic operation by the Israel Defense Forces, Netanyahu hastened to take pictures with them in the hospitals. What a coward and a cynic is the man who until now has not bothered, or does not dare, to visit the families of those murdered and taken hostage, rotting in Hamas captivity.
That morning, when news of the return of our brothers and sister from captivity was announced, people burst into tears of relief and happiness. Most of the people in our country want a deal, want the hostages alive! At home!
And there are also those who don't, and their names are Itamar Ben Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich and Orit Strook; people whose worldview is not much different from the worldview of Hamas. They too, like Hamas, sanctify death, revenge and land - not life, humanity and peace.
And there is Benjamin Netanyahu. He doesn't want a deal for one simple reason: His continued rule is more important to him than anything else.
The Emperor has no clothes. The Emperor is a criminal. We have no choice but to depose him. We are fighting for our lives.
We are all hostages!
Our brothers and sisters, some of whom are no longer alive, were abducted to Gaza, and we, the citizens, are being held hostage by a dangerous dictator.
But we can be saved. We have a chance. We have no choice but to continue protesting and demonstrating with all our might. Until he goes. Until he goes, and sanity is restored.
Acronyms and Glossary
COGAT - Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories
ICC - International Criminal Court in the Hague
IJC - International Court of Justice in the Hague
MDA - Magen David Adom - Israel Ambulance Corp
PA - Palestinian Authority - President Mahmud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen
PMO- Prime Minister's Office
UAV - Unmanned Aerial vehicle, Drone. Could be used for surveillance and reconnaissance, or be weaponized with missiles or contain explosives for 'suicide' explosion mission
Join my Whatsapp update group https://chat.whatsapp.com/IQ3OtwE6ydxBeBAxWNziB0 Twitter - @LonnyB58
We are continuously learning of more and more of the information that the powers that be had prior to October 7 and did little to nothing. So much is still not known. Most will come out in the Official Committee of Inquiry after the war, but some of that information will not be made public due to security concerns. Following is the information that is public knowledge as of today and is documented. It is presented relatively chronologically but some aspects ran in parallel throughout same and different periods of time. 1. Six years ago, Hamas launched its own television station: Al-Aqsa TV. The station quickly became a highly-effective propaganda tool, which Hamas continues to use to preach its message of hatred of the West, Jews, and Israel. “A fictional series on Palestinian TV last year seemingly predicted key elements of Hamas’ Oct. 7 sneak assault on Israel — from the terrorists’ white vans to targeted kibbutzim and the abduction of Israeli soldiers.” 1 ...
My son also needs to come home
Notebook of interviews deatiling Hamas' sexual crimes (Photo: Dana Kopel)
Body containers in IDF base after October 7 (Photo: Yair Sagi)
Israelis fleeing the Nova Music Festival
Hamas terrorists infiltrating Israel on October 7 
Hamas terrorists infiltrating Israel on October 7 
Shai and Niva Wenkeret
Omer's phone, found a month after his abduction
The Wenkeret family with Omer
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