Israel at War - What happened on day 27?

Over 130 terrorists have been killed by the IDF during recent ground operations in Gaza, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit said on Thursday.

The IDF also took out terror infrastructure in Gaza and destroyed many weapons caches alongside Hamas operating bases.

"IDF fighters continue to wage fierce battles against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip," the IDF spokesperson said.

The IDF struck Hamas bases using a combination of air, ground and sea forces.

A delegation of university provosts from across Israel visited the site of the October 7th massacre at Kibbutz Be'eri on Thursday.

The delegation included Bar-Ilan University Prof. Amnon Albeck, Ben Gurion University of the Negev Prof. Chaim Hames, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Prof. Tamir Sheafer, Tel Aviv University Prof. Mark Staif, and Open University Prof. Guy Miron.

"Nearly one month since the massacre, it still hurts to enter the burnt and destroyed homes of Kibbutz Be'eri, to smell the stench, to discover the remains of personal belongings, and a baby's bed full of bloodstains,” the delegation said in a joint statement. 

130 civilians were murdered by Hamas in the kibbutz during the October 7 massacre, while homes were ravaged and an eerie energy filled the air of what was once a bustling kibbutz full of young, vibrant families.

“We spoke to someone standing in front of his mother's burnt house, and his mother is still missing. What can you say to soothe his pain?” the statement somberly declared. 

The destruction caused by Hamas Militants in Kibbutz Be'eri, near the Israeli-Gaza border, in southern Israel, October 14, 2023. (credit: ERIK MARMOR/FLASH90)

Hope amid the horror

Amid the horrorous scenes at Kibbutz Be’eri, which has been evacuated amid Operation Swords of Iron, the university provosts noticed a ray of light and hope – an IDF officer and her parents were cleaning out their burnt home from the debris and destruction and getting ready to repair the damage.

Even after the trauma they endured, residents of Kibbutz Be’eri look forward to returning and living their lives on their kibbutz after the war ends.

The supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, tweeted in Hebrew against Israel on Friday, accusing Israel of deceit and threatening Israel. 

היישות הציונית משקרת לכם, והיא גם משקרת כשהביעה דאגה לגבי האסירים שלה אצל הפלסטינים. אלא היא גם מחסלת אותם בהפגזות שהיא עושה.
היישות הכובשת חסרת אונים ומבולבלת עכשיו, וללא התמיכה האמריקאית תשותק בתוך ימים

— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) November 2, 2023

"The Zionist entity is lying to you, and it is also lying when it expresses concern for Palestinian prisoners. (Israel) also destroys them with shelling," the Ayatollah wrote.

"The occupying entity is helpless and confused now, and without American support will be silenced within days," he wrote.

Khamenei's controversial social media presence

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei meets with Palestinian group Hamas' top leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, Iran June 21, 2023. (credit: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS)

Iran's Khamenei has taken to social media in the past to attack Israel, the United States, and other parties Iran sees as adversarial – despite calls to remove the controversial ruler of Iran from Twitter.

Three days after Hamas' October 7th terror attacks, Khamenei tweeted: "Heads of the Zionist regime and their backers should know that the massacre and mass murder of the people of #Gaza will cause a larger calamity to come upon them." 

Shas MK Arye Deri’s son Yanki, an ultra-orthodox haredi Jew, enlisted for the IDF reserves on Thursday. Deri, 40, has served as the chairman of a department in the Zionist Organization over the last few years. 

Yanki is one of roughly 3,000 ultra-Orthodox Israelis who have enlisted in the IDF since the onset of Operation Swords of Iron. Most of the recruits are exempt from mandatory IDF service and are 26 years old or older, meaning they did not conscript when they became of military age and are volunteering at a more advanced age for the sake of the country. 

The IDF has thus far recruited 200 ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews. While some applicants await their enlistment amid the backlog of new applicants, officials in the ultra-Orthodox recruiting office claim that the response is the fastest they can remember. 

"We hope that after the first batch – it will be possible to increase the pace," recruiting officials said.

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men who decided to join in the IDF following the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas arrive at the IDF recruiting offices in Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv, October 23, 2023 (credit: AVSHALOM SASSONI/FLASH90)

Will the increase in Haredi recruits become the new normal?

The increase in recruits is primarily among married ultra-Orthodox who are employed and has no effect on tens of thousands of young yeshiva students who are exempt from military service until the age of 26 in order to allow them to study Torah.

The war also caused a pause to the legislative program allowing ultra-Orthodox Jews an exemption from enlistment in the IDF, though it is likely that in the future, Haredi parties like Shas and Torah Judaism will insist on continuing this exemption.

The video, making the rounds in this northern West Bank Palestinian village, showed an Israeli settler firing a rifle in the air above a group of Palestinians harvesting olives in a field not far from an Israeli settlement.

Standing in a small olive grove, the settler told the Palestinians that he would “put a bullet in their head” if they return. Later in the day, anonymous flyers were found on cars elsewhere in the village, warning its residents of a coming “forced expulsion” or “Nakba,” the Arabic word for “catastrophe” that Palestinians use to describe the dispersion and expulsion of Palestinians during Israel’s 1948 War of independence.

The incident last week comes amid an escalation in violence in the West Bank following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s ensuing war against the terror group in Gaza. The eruption of West Bank clashes has been dwarfed in attention by the war, in which thousands have been killed and wounded and an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza is ongoing.

But this year is already the bloodiest in the West Bank in nearly two decades, and fears are compounding of the situation escalating further amid a dangerous mix of dynamics, including, since Oct. 7, economic insecurity after Israel suspended the permits that some 140,000 West Bank Palestinians rely on to work.

Since Oct. 7, according to the Times of Israel, more than 130 West Bank Palestinians, including dozens of children, have been killed by Israeli forces, and a number by settlers, while one Israeli soldier has been killed by Palestinians.

Palestinians mourn Nasser Barghouti during his funeral in the West Bank village of Beit Rima, northwest of Ramallah, Sunday, Oct. 29, 2023. Barghouthi was killed during an Israeli army raid in Bait Reema early morning, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said (credit: FLASH90)

More than 100 incidents of settler violence since Oct 7

The past three weeks have also seen more than 100 incidents of violence toward Palestinians by Israeli settlers, according to the Israeli legal rights group Yesh Din, which said more than 800 West Bank Palestinians have been forced from their homes during that period.

Meanwhile, more than 1,200 Palestinians from the West Bank have been arrested, a majority of them affiliated with Hamas, according to the Israel Defense Forces. And on Thursday, an Israeli man was shot to death in the West Bank as he drove home from his army reserve duty.

The spike in West Bank violence has led to differing and at times contradictory responses from Israeli officials. One lawmaker in the country’s right-wing government has called for “a Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of ’48,” while another far-right lawmaker was recently appointed to head a subcommittee focusing on the West Bank. The army is also planning to train and arm residents of Orthodox settlements without army experience to guard their settlements, according to a report Thursday in Haaretz.

Local leaders and those tasked with security, meanwhile, have condemned vigilante attacks and urged residents to leave law enforcement to Israeli troops.

“There is a big difference between a feeling of security and security,” Oded Revivi, the mayor of the West Bank settlement of Efrat, posted on Facebook on Wednesday praising the IDF brigade that protects the settlement. “A feeling of security is a very important feeling, but sometimes it turns out that the action that led to the feeling did not contribute to security. Conversely, actual security always brings a sense of security.”

IDF: doing everything possible to keep the peace

The rising tide of West Bank settler attacks has led Israel to begin taking active measures to respond, placing extremist Israeli settler Ariel Danino in a four-month period of administrative detention, a term that signifies arrest without charges and is largely used for Palestinian detainees. On Monday, an off-duty IDF soldier from a unit of Orthodox soldiers was arrested for involvement in the killing of a 40-year-old Palestinian, Bilal Muhammed Saleh, who was shot dead on Saturday while harvesting olives near the village of As-Sawiya in the northern West Bank.

“We absolutely condemn any form of violence, whether it is against Jews or Palestinian civilians,” Betty Ilovici, the media and foreign affairs adviser for Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Administrative detention is used as a tool to stop anyone that poses an imminent threat to civilians.”

She added, “The military is doing everything in its power to maintain this arena as stable as possible, and again we condemn any form of violence and will do what is necessary to prevent it or stop it if necessary.”

That posture has come as the violence and string of evictions has increased. A Haaretz report said that in one instance, several Palestinians were stripped and tortured by soldiers and settlers. And in recent days, human rights groups have reported that two communities in the South Hebron Hills were evacuated following continued harassment from Israeli settlers. According to Comet-ME, an Israeli-Palestinian organization providing basic energy and clean-water services to Palestinians living off the grid in the West Bank, since Oct. 7 there have been 12 reported incidents of vandalism on energy and water infrastructure.

“Palestinian herding communities and farmers throughout Area C are being forced off their land and forcibly transferred into the enclaves of area A and B,” said activist Yehuda Shaul, co-director of the human rights organization Ofek, referring to farmers being forced from Israeli-governed areas into Palestinian-run districts. Shaul said the number of Palestinians displaced during the first three weeks of the war is approaching the 1,100 who were displaced in all of 2022.

Palestinians protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza, in the West Bank city of Nablus, on October 26, 2023. (credit: Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash90)

Suspension of work permits threatens local economy

The violence has converged with rising economic insecurity in the West Bank, which is currently at the peak of the olive harvest, an annual tradition at the heart of the Palestinian identity in villages such as Deir Istiya, which are surrounded by thousands of olive trees. This year, in addition to a poor overall crop of olives, the increase in settler attacks has scared some farmers from harvesting their crop.

“Palestinian farmers are particularly vulnerable at this time, during the annual olive harvest season, because if they are unable to pick their olives they will lose a year’s income,” reads a recent statement signed by 30 Israeli human rights organizations urging the international community to intervene.

Adding to the peril to the area’s economy is the status of 140,000 Palestinians who have had their Israeli work permit suspended. For the past three weeks, following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s ensuing war against the terror group in Gaza, they have largely sat idle at home.

Within Israel, townships across the country have frozen construction projects that rely heavily on Palestinian as well as Arab-Israeli workers. Israeli settlements across the West Bank have likewise issued bans on Palestinian entry.

“As of today, there are no Palestinian workers entering Efrat,” Efrat announced on Oct. 27. Regarding Israeli Arabs, the announcement said, “Although we are aware of the feelings and concerns of the residents, at this time, we do not have the authority to prevent their entry.”

Permit system has been in place since Oslo Accords

The work permit system has existed for decades, since the 1993 Oslo Accords led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority, which governs daily life in some Palestinian areas of the West Bank. The permits are managed by Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, which oversees civilian life in the West Bank, and are given to a predetermined number of workers who pass a security screening.

The permits give their holders access to work opportunities in Israel and the relatively higher salaries that come with them. They are also one of the only ways most Palestinians and Israelis encounter each other outside the context of military engagements. In addition to the West Bank permits, before the war more than 15,000 Gaza Palestinians had authorization to work in Israel. Now, that system is in limbo as Israel prosecutes a war in Gaza and killings and arrests have escalated in the West Bank.

“My permit is finished,” said Jamal, a construction worker from Deir Istiya who works with contractors across Israel and declined to share his full name out of concern for his physical safety. He displays the COGAT application on his phone: The screen for his work permit is now blank; applications to enter Israel, it says, are only available for “medical” or “travel” purposes.

A representative from COGAT told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that while all entry into Israel for work is temporarily illegal, Palestinian laborers in the West Bank are permitted to continue working in Israeli West Bank factories for “essential purposes” related to the war effort.

But cracks in the ban have begun to appear, demonstrating the extent to which both Palestinians and Israelis rely on the permit system. This week, a temporary exemption was granted for 8,000 workers to enter Israel due to a labor shortage.

Members of the emergency squad of Beitar Illit and Israeli soldiers seen during a drill of Infiltration of a terrorist into Beitar Illit, in the West Bank, October 24, 2023. (credit: Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

For some, the situation has grown untenable

Meanwhile, Palestinians employed at Israeli companies are figuring out how to get through this period. In Deir Istiya, the economic impact of the war is already being felt, Jamal said. He said a local shopkeeper has allowed him to run up a tab, and that as long as he has “oil, pita and zaatar,” he can survive many months without work. He lamented that the Palestinian Authority has not provided assistance to workers in his position.

“For someone who has not put money in the bank, it is problematic,” he said. “I go to the mini-mart and ask for a few things — give me a few weeks or months and I will return to work and pay you the money.”

Some Palestinian workers were in Israel during the attack. Diaa, a 25-year old from the Deir Istiya, recalls working late into the night of Oct. 6, and into the next morning, at an Israeli restaurant in Rishon Lezion, a large coastal city south of Tel Aviv.

“We finished cleaning up around 2 a.m., I remember having a cigarette and falling asleep,” he recalled. “At 6:30 a.m. we woke up to the sound of rockets and ran to the shelter.”

He was able to split a taxi back to Deir Istiya with a friend. Since that day, Diaa, Jamal and others are sitting at home, following the war in Gaza.

“I was very unhappy about Oct. 7 seeing the children dying, people’s bodies being decapitated,” Jamal said, though he acknowledged that other Palestinians in the West Bank had a different reaction. “There were some people that were happy that they broke out of the Gaza jail and are fighting for Allah.”

Jamal said many people have stopped watching TV in order to avoid the graphic wartime images, though most still get updates on the war through their phones. At one point, he opened a post on Telegram, a messaging platform, with videos of Palestinian children lying dead in a Gaza hospital.

Others have attempted to keep working at their jobs, but Jamal said that for some, the situation has grown untenable. His cousin Abu-Ghazal, who works in a steel factory in the northern West Bank’s Barkan industrial area, said he kept going to work “until the police told us to go home.” All his boss could do is promise to call the workers back when they are allowed to return to the factory.

And Jamal added that some of the Palestinian workers who still have permission to work in the Barkan industrial zone have chosen to return home, citing the war climate and changes in Israeli society, where calls for private gun ownership have jumped since Oct. 7.

As of the beginning of the war, he said, “All the owners have weapons, they do not let you move around even to go to the bathroom without supervision.”

He added, “It’s very stressed there. There are people saying, ‘I will go home and wait until this is over, because it is so tense.’”

The Yale Daily News apologized on Tuesday for issuing an editor's note on two opinion pieces published shortly after Hamas's October 7 terrorist attack on Israeli civilians. The note in question challenged the piece's statement that Hamas terrorists had raped and beheaded some of their Israeli victims, asserting that these allegations were not confirmed.

In fact, as the paper acknowledged this week, by the time that note was added, several credible news organizations had confirmed that both rape and beheading had taken place.

The first piece, published October 12, was a condemnation of Yalies4Palestine, a pro-Palestinian student group that first celebrated, then blamed Israel, for the October 7 attacks. "Is Yalies4Palestine a hate group?" Sahar Tartak, an Israeli-American who is a sophomore at the university, asked.

"There is no place," Tartak wrote, "for student organizations who publicly celebrate the murder and kidnapping of innocent civilians. Y4P glorifies terrorism, cloaking it in the language of justice and human rights to feign innocence. For shame." The second piece, called "Stop justifying terrorism," made similar criticisms of that group and others.  

On October 25, the newspaper edited Tartak's article and removed references to rape and beheading by Hamas terrorists on October 7. "This column has been edited to remove unsubstantiated claims that Hamas raped women and beheaded men," an editor's note read at the bottom of the piece. 

A student walks on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut November 12, 2015. (credit: REUTERS/SHANNON STAPLETON)

'Corrections' came well after atrocities were proven

The corrections were "modeled on reporting and corrections from other outlets," wrote Anika Seth, the paper's Editor-in-Chief, in the apology on Sunday, linking to an article from the American Jewish newspaper The Forward and an article in the blog Politico. Both articles were published on October 11, prior to the publication of the Yale Daily News articles in question, and said that while there were reports of rape and beheading, neither was confirmed at time of publication. 

By the time that the Yale Daily News issued the 'corrections,' however, both rape and beheadings had been confirmed by credible sources. The newspaper "retracts those editor’s notes," Seth wrote, "in their entirety and without qualification." Seth added that it was "never the News’ intention to minimize the brutality of Hamas’ attack against Israel." The post concludes by noting that the staff of the newspaper has received threats in recent days and condemns those threats. 

"The News remains committed to reporting the facts and to creating a forum for free, fair, and honest campus and community dialogue," it closes.

The editor's notes had garnered criticism online. "This is Holocaust denial in real-time," said Bari Weiss, the former New York Times columnist and author of 'How to Fight Antisemitism," on X. 

This is Holocaust denial in real time at @yaledailynews. https://t.co/tK0gAZ2EoN

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) October 30, 2023

Already a sensitive topic

It is now well-documented that Hamas terrorists raped and beheaded Israeli civilians on October 7, however, denial of those and other atrocities remains widespread. A frequent target of skepticism is the US government's supposed claim that Hamas 'burned 40 babies,' a claim that in fact was never made. A photograph of a burned baby shared on X by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro was widely alleged to be AI-generated. This claim has been debunked.

Doubt has also been cast on reports that children were beheaded, although this too has been confirmed. Forensic examiners have said, however, that it is unclear whether the children in question were killed by beheading, or whether their bodies were decapitated once they had already been killed. 

Today, members of the Knesset sat through a screening of video footage showing atrocities committed by Hamas during the October 7 massacre.
Many of them couldn't watch the entire thing. pic.twitter.com/DMTdpGiBwJ

— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) November 1, 2023

In recent weeks, the Israeli government has hosted screenings of a collection of footage from the attacks, made largely out of footage recorded by the terrorists themselves. The film was shown first to foreign journalists, and then to Ministers of Knesset in Israel, some of whom can be seen in videos sobbing outside the screening room. On Thursday, November 2, Israel also launched a website, http://hamas-massacre.net, with footage of the atrocities, and urged viewers to share the website with others.  

These efforts have been compared to the Allies' tours of Nazi concentration camps following the defeat of Germany in World War II.

The United States has been flying surveillance drones over Gaza in search of hostages taken by Hamas when the Palestinian militant group attacked Israel on Oct. 7, two US officials said on Thursday.

The two US officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the US was flying intelligence-gathering drones over Gaza to assist with hostage location efforts. One of the officials said they had been carrying out the drone flights for over a week.

US officials have said 10 Americans who remain unaccounted for may be among the more than 200 people taken as hostages into Gaza, where they are believed to be held in Hamas' extensive tunnel network.

Israeli forces on Thursday encircled Gaza City - the Gaza Strip's main city - in their assault on Hamas, which resisted with hit-and-run attacks from underground tunnels.

The city in the north of Gaza has become the focus of attack for Israel, which has vowed to annihilate the Islamist group's command structure and has told civilians to flee to the south.

Hamas fighters launched a surprise attack into Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials, in the deadliest day of the nation's 75-year history.

The IDF shot down a surface-to-air missile that was launched from Lebanese territory at an IDF tank on Friday morning, Israeli media reported.

In response to the missile fire, Israeli Air Force aircraft attacked the source of the fire as well as the squad that carried out the launch.
 

The IDF is began conducting military operations in the Jenin refugee camp early Friday morning, the IDF said.

Exchanges of fire took place, and explosions were reported. IDF forces report that they hit a number of terrorists and there are no casualties among IDF forces.

This is a developing story 

The Republican-controlled US House of Representatives passed a bill on Thursday providing $14.3 billion in aid to Israel, despite Democrats' insistence that it has no future in the Senate.

The vote was 226 to 196, largely along party lines.