Israel at war: What happened on Day 38?

On Monday morning, Margie Maidman boarded a caravan of 10 buses from Boston to Washington, DC, headed to a massive demonstration in support of Israel and against antisemitism.

The journey is eight hours each way, and most of the people on her bus, like her, are in their 60s and 70s. It isn’t the first time she’s gone to the National Mall to attend a mass rally. In 1987, she was one of more than 200,000 people to descend on Washington for another cause trumpeted by a wide range of Jewish activists: advocacy for Jews in the Soviet Union.

“The last time I did something like this was in the late 1980s,” Maidman, whose transport is organized by her local Jewish federation, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Aside from maybe women’s rights in Boston or something, I have not really been part of something on this scale.”

Tuesday’s march, organized by a big tent of pro-Israel and Jewish groups — including the Jewish Federations of North America and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations — is expected to draw crowds in the tens of thousands. It’s attracting attendees who have long been active in local Jewish groups as well as those who aren’t familiar with Jewish organizational life but feel called to trumpet the rally’s message.

Pro-Israel supporters are pouring into DC

Buses and flights are being organized by local Jewish federations, schools, synagogues and Jewish community centers. Other Jewish and Israeli expatriate groups are bringing delegations of their own. Still others are driving, flying or riding to DC on their own. Organizers asked for a permit for 60,000 people to gather, though Jewish leaders hope for more than that to come. A pro-Israel rally in 2002, at the height of the Second Intifada — a Palestinian uprising that included a spree of terrorist attacks and clashes with Israeli police — brought more than 100,000 people to the capital.

FILE PHOTO: The U.S. Capitol Building is seen in Washington, U.S., August 15, 2023. (credit: REUTERS/Kevin Wurm)

“I have to do this, because I have to be there for the Jewish people,” Danielle Werchowsky, a resident of Arlington, Virginia, told JTA. “I feel very strongly about that, that we have to show solidarity because we’re getting so many of the messages from the pro-Palestinian big marches. And I don’t want the world to think that those voices are the only ones that count.”

Werchowsky, the mother of a college student, is one of thousands of American Jews who has become increasingly active in pro-Israel advocacy and efforts to fight antisemitism since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. She is a member of multiple online activist groups, including Mothers Against College Antisemitism, the Facebook group that began following the attack that now has nearly 50,000 members. And she started her own local group, Arlington Parents Against Antisemitism.

As civilian casualties have mounted in Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, mass demonstrations across the world have condemned Israel and called for a ceasefire. In response, attendees told JTA they felt an imperative to show up and make a large showing of their own — changing their work schedules, overcoming their fears of being in large crowds and in some cases deciding to bring their children with them to Washington.

“I’m kind of uncomfortable being in large crowds of Jews. I am,” Werchowsky said. “I’m going against my comfort zone by going, honestly, but I’m doing it. If I don’t do it now, why should I expect — you know that old saying: if not me, who?”

Tomer Shani, an Israeli lawyer who has lived in New York for more than four years, is bringing his sons Jonathan and Ethan to the march. They will be traveling on a bus chartered by UnXeptable, an Israeli expatriate group that previously protested the Israeli government’s judicial overhaul but which pivoted after Oct. 7 to organizing relief efforts for Israel.

“We’ve been fighting for the most important thing, which was our democracy, and now we’re fighting for our very existence,” Shani said.

“I think desperate times call for desperate [measures] and traveling to DC seems to be not that desperate,” he added. “It’s the little we can do from here to support our people back in Israel and actually the whole western civilization, as far as I’m concerned, in my humble opinion.”

Maidman said that a highlight of the eight-hour bus ride was seeing familiar faces from the Boston area. Like other attendees, she’s not only hoping to make a political statement. During what can feel like an isolating moment, she’s also excited to rally among tens of thousands of other American Jews.

“I even cheer up a little with the idea of just being with so many Jews who care so much about Israel,” Maidman said. “I think the purpose of this march is not simply to make a statement to support Israel, but to support Jews in this country and to let people know: we are here and we matter.”

An Israeli delegation of families of Israelis kidnapped during the October 7th massacre has arrived in Mexico on Sunday as part of a global campaign to secure the release of Israeli captives held by Hamas in Gaza. 

The delegation of met with the Deputy Cardinal of Mexico, Bishop Salvador González Morales.

"Bishop González Morales listened attentively to the families, and their stories touched his heart," a statement revealed after the meeting. "He reiterated the message of the Pope that it is important to release the captives. Bishop González Morales conducted prayers for the release of the captives at the beginning and end of the meeting."

The delegation, organized by the Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Ministry, including family members of the captives, is part of a broader series of explanatory tours aiming to raise international awareness and support.

The Ministry's statement on Monday emphasized the urgent need for the Red Cross to focus on Israeli captives, highlighting personal stories of affected families and their calls for immediate action. Meetings with Mexican legislative members and other key officials form a crucial part of this campaign, reflecting Israel's intensified efforts to address this humanitarian issue on an international stage.

Deputy Cardinal of Mexico, Bishop Salvador González Morales prays for the release of the hostages in Gaza. (credit: Israeli Embassy in Mexico)

In a message from the Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Ministry, the focus is sharply on the Red Cross: "Take care of the Israeli hostages, not just the Palestinians." This call to action coincides with the arrival of an Israeli delegation in Mexico, part of an international campaign to secure the release of Israeli captives held by Hamas in Gaza.

The delegation was organized in cooperation with the Foreign Ministry and AM"I,  the National Alliance Strengthening Israelis’ Connection to World Jewry.

"All hostages must be returned immediately"

Diego Engelbert, whose daughters Mika (18) and Yuval (11) are in captivity, expressed urgency in a statement from the Ministry: "All hostages must be returned immediately."

Engagements with members of both chambers of the Mexican legislature and with Mexico's Catholic Cardinal Deputy, Bishop Salvador Gonzalez Morales, are part of the delegation's packed schedule. These meetings, along with discussions with top officials from the Mexican Foreign Ministry and the local Jewish community, are aimed at amplifying global support and raising awareness about the actions of Hamas.

Natalia Cassaroti, mourning the loss of her son Keshet, shared her emotional journey and resolve in the Ministry's release. "I lost the biggest part of my life, my son, who was a symbol of connecting between people," she expressed. She added that er participation is fueled by a desire to boost public support for Israel and to strengthen bonds with Jewish communities worldwide, emphasizing the necessity of Israel's defensive measures in light of such tragedies.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology will suspend a handful of students from “non-academic” activities after they participated in a recent pro-Palestinian “die-in.”

The decision was announced in a Nov. 9 letter from MIT President Sally Kornbluth, who did not specify how many students will be suspended. The protest, which occurred that day, was put on by a campus group known as the Coalition Against Apartheid. The action was taken because “a line had been crossed” in the protesters’ occupation of a university building, Kornbluth wrote.

“Today’s protest – which became disruptive, loud and sustained through the morning hours – was organized and conducted in defiance” of guidelines the university had issued to the students ahead of time, wrote Kornbluth, who was appointed president of MIT last year, on Thursday. 

Combatting campus anti-Israel activism

The episode is the latest example of a university taking concrete action against anti-Israel activism on its campus. It comes after Columbia University and Brandeis University announced suspensions of pro-Palestinian student groups surrounding their opposition to Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Columbia suspended the groups, including Jewish anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, for violating school policy. Brandeis said it suspended Students for Justice in Palestine because the group “‘openly supports Hamas,” which the United States designates as a terror group.

PRO-ISRAEL advocates protest across from a JVP rally in Atlanta, last Tuesday. (credit: Cheryl Dorchinsky/Atlanta Israel Coalition)

The war has enflamed tensions on campuses nationwide and led to increased fears of antisemitism. The Florida state university system has also been ordered to ban all SJP chapters at its schools, and major donors and politicians have applied additional pressure to schools to take more determined action against anti-Israel activity.

The Coalition Against Apartheid had held the “die-in” in MIT’s main entrance to protest Israel’s actions in Gaza; pro-Israel counter protesters also showed up. Administrators had warned the students that they could not use the entrance or disrupt research as part of their protest. Many students left after the school said they could be “subject to suspension,” but some did not, Kornbluth wrote.

The school is prohibiting the students from attending “non-academic campus activities” while keeping them enrolled at the school. Administrators stopped short of suspending students outright because of “serious concerns about collateral consequences for the students, such as visa issues,” Kornbluth wrote. 

The president added that MIT’s investigation into the protest, including individual actions taken by both protesters and counter-protesters, would continue. Kornbluth said that members of a counterprotest may also have violated MIT policies and did not specify the viewpoints of the suspended students. Photos of the protest taken by the student newspaper, The Tech, show students setting up displays in the building with both Israeli and Palestinian flags. 

MIT Hillel’s director did not immediately respond to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment.

In an open letter shared on the social network X, formerly known as Twitter, by Israeli MIT professor Retsef Levi, a group calling itself the MIT Israel Alliance criticized the administration for not outright suspending the offending students. The group claimed that Jewish and Israeli students had been physically prevented from attending classes and that members of the pro-Palestinian group had harassed Jewish MIT staff in their offices. 

“They have shown that actions against Jews at MIT do not have consequences,” the letter states.

The IDF is coordinating the transfer of incubators for newborns from an Israeli hospital to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, the IDF stated early on Tuesday morning.

The announcement comes as the IDF conducts an ongoing effort to provide humanitarian assistance to the Gazan hospital. 

“The IDF remains committed to upholding its moral and professional responsibilities to distinguish between civilians and Hamas terrorists,” the IDF spokesperson said. “The IDF is willing to work with any reliable mediating party to ensure the transfer of the incubators.”

In a phone call released by the IDF, an officer from the Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA) to Gaza, speaking with the Director General of Al-Shifa Hospital, can be heard offering the incubator as well as helping evacuate children and patients from the facility.

Israel ready to provide assistance to Al-Shifa Hospital

“We are ready to provide you with any assistance you wish to evacuate children and patients. We are ready to provide you with any assistance. We’ll even provide you with an incubator,” the officer said.

An IDF soldier moves an incubator to be delivered to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. November 14, 2023. (credit: IDF)

Asked if there was anything else he needed, the Director General of the hospital said that they needed respirators for some children who were in need of oxygen.

The Israeli officer vowed to do what he could to secure the needed equipment.

“Anything, despite all the difficulties, whatever I can do, I will try to help you,” the CLA officer said. “I will help you protect the injured and the patients.”

“Ok, and also the medical staff,” the Director General said.

“Of course, of course,” the CLA officer replied.

In a video released by the IDF along with the recording of the phone call, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) spokesperson, Shani Sasson, standing in front of the incubators that are to be sent to Al-Shifa, stated “extensive efforts are underway to ensure that these incubators… can reach babies in Gaza without delay. Our war is against Hamas, and not the people of Gaza.”

Previously, however, Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have said that A–Shifa hospital has refused Israeli assistance.

"We just offered Shifa hospital the fuel, they refused it," Netanyahu claimed on Sunday.

Earlier this month, a Gaza health official stated in a phone call intercepted by the IDF that Hamas takes fuel provided to Al-Shifa.

Another intercepted call recorded a health official saying that the director general of Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry, Yusef Abu Rish, had prevented a delivery of fuel from getting to the hospital.

Prior to the offer of incubators, the IDF spokesperson, Daniel Hagari, said that the army would help evacuate babies from the hospital.

The evacuation offer came as the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza had claimed that two babies had died in an incubator as a result of the hospital running out of fuel. 

Vivian Silver, a Canadian-Israeli peace activist who had been presumed kidnapped by Hamas, was declared dead after her remains were found at her home.

Her death was confirmed to JTA by multiple activists who said they were in touch with Silver’s family. Shifra Bronznick, a prominent Jewish social justice activist and lifelong friend of Silver’s, learned from Silver’s son that her remains were identified via her DNA. 

“Vivian was always persistent in the pursuit of peace and justice,” Bronznick told JTA on Monday evening. “She was a lifelong feminist, a committed activist, a fearless leader, an exceptional friend and a loving mother, wife and grandmother.”

Until Monday, Silver, 74, was assumed to be among the more than 200 people held captive by Hamas. She is now among the approximately 1,200 people murdered by the terror group in its Oct. 7 attack. Hamas terrorists killed more than 100 people at Silver’s home community, Kibbutz Be’eri, in one of the day’s worst massacres. 

The life of Silver

She is one of several peace activists to have been killed or captured by Hamas on Oct. 7. Hayim Katsman, 32, who worked with Palestinians in the southern West Bank, was killed in his home in another community on the Gaza border. Yocheved Lifschitz, who helped ferry Palestinians from Gaza to medical care in Israel, was taken captive by Hamas and released in late October; her husband Oded, also involved in peace work, remains missing.

POSTERS BEARING the photos of Israelis being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza are seen on a street in Port Washington, NY (credit: SHANNON STAPLETON/ REUTERS)

“A woman of infinite, deep, ongoing compassion, humanity and dedication to Arab-Jewish partnership and peace. Yes. Peace,” Anat Saragusti, an Israeli writer and feminist activist, wrote on social media in a post announcing Silver’s death. John Lyndon, the executive director of the Alliance for Middle East Peace, wrote that “she wanted to be free & at peace. Rest in power, Vivian.”

Silver’s sons, like the family members of many of those presumed hostage, lobbied extensively for her release, traveling the country and speaking to journalists around the world to call attention to her story. One son, Yonatan Zeigen, stood out for his calls for a ceasefire, an unusual position in Israel. He said he had learned from his mother to seek peace above all else.

“I would tell her, ‘Israel is dead. It’s hopeless,’ and she would say, ‘Peace could come tomorrow,’” Yonatan, a social worker in Tel Aviv told the Washington Post in a story published last week.

Chen Zeigen, her other son, is a doctoral student in archaeology at the University of Connecticut. She is also survived by four grandchildren.

On the day of the massacre, according to the Washington Post story, Silver took a call with a radio station where she pushed back against the idea that the Palestinians were “insane.” In messages with Yonatan, she expressed fear, frustration and love. “I’m with you,” he wrote to her. Her last message back to him was, “I feel you.”

Born in Winnipeg, Canada, she was the longtime director of  the Arab Jewish Center For Empowerment, Equality, and Cooperation, which organized projects joining communities in Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In 2014, after the last major war between Israel and Hamas, she helped found Women Wage Peace, which promotes peace-building actions among women from all communities and across the political spectrum.

Speaking to Forbes in 2021 for a series on women who assist the vulnerable, Silver said she remembered feeling relief after the government built bomb shelters in Kibbutz Be’eri, which had been subject to rocket fire from Gaza for more than a decade.

“In 2009, the [Israeli] government only built shelters for communities that were four kilometers from the border. The community I live in is four and a half kilometers from the border, so we didn’t have shelters then,” Silver told Forbes. “Now we do, so psychologically we feel better, and we feel safer, and in fact, we are safer, we’re a lot safer than the people in Gaza.”

At a 2018 Women Wage Peace event on the Gaza border in 2018, she said that the Israeli government needed to change its approach in order to bring peace to the area. “Show the required courage that will bring changes of policy that will bring us quiet and security,” she said then, addressing the government. “Returning to the routine is not an option.”

Appealing to women across the border, she said, “Terror does not make anything better for anyone, you too deserve quiet and peace.”

Bronznick first met Silver in the early 1970s when both were involved in organizing a national conference of Jewish women. They remained friends and, for a period of six years, took an annual trip together — the last one was to Santa Fe, New Mexico. When Silver would stay at Bronznick’s home, she would prepare an Israeli breakfast, Bronznick recalled. 

“She would be passionately advocating for peace right now,” Bronznick said, referring to Israel’s war against Hamas, launched following the Oct. 7 attack. “She never gave up on bridge-building. She never gave up on making change. She never gave up on people… She always focused on people, children, what motivated them, what meant something to them.”

Before Oct. 7, Silver was due for another stay at Bronznick’s home in New York City in early December. On top of each of the days in Bronznick’s calendar, she had written “Viv.”

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Satellite imagery shows progress in the construction in Russia of a plant that will mass produce Iranian-designed kamikaze drones that Moscow is expected to target against Ukrainian energy facilities, a research organization said on Monday.

Despite the headway, neither the United States nor its allies have imposed sanctions on the plant's owner, JSC Alabuga, or its associated companies, said the Institute for Science and International Security report.

The White House, the Russian embassy and Iran's UN mission did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The leaked documents

The report said a mid-September satellite image showed that new construction at the plant "directly" correlated with a leaked building floor plan that the Washington Post shared with the institute earlier this year.

A part of an unmanned aerial vehicle, what Ukrainian military authorities described as an Iranian made suicide drone Shahed-136 and which was shot down near the town of Kupiansk, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, is seen in Kharkiv region, Ukraine, in this handout picture released September 13, 2022 (credit: MIL.GOV.UA/CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)/VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)

The building, according to other leaked documents, will be used for the mass production of Iran's Shahed-136 that will include improving Iranian fabrication processes "and ultimately advancing the drone's capabilities," the report said.

The satellite image also showed the construction of other structures and new security perimeters with checkpoints, the report said.

"With winter fast approaching ... Russia can be expected to accelerate its Shahed-136 attacks against Ukraine's vital energy infrastructure, causing brutal living conditions for the civilian population," the report said.

"A key overdue step" is for Washington to sanction Alabuga and its associated companies, the report continued.

Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskiy on Sunday warned his country to prepare for Russian strikes on energy infrastructure. Last winter - about 10 months into its invasion - Russia unleashed waves of such attacks, prompting rolling blackouts.

The plant is located 500 miles (800 km) east of Moscow in the Tartarstan Republic. Alabuga JSC is 66 percent owned by the federal government and 34 percent by the republic, the report said.

The White House in June said Russia and Iran appeared to be deepening their defense cooperation and that in addition to supplying drones, Tehran was working with Moscow to produce Iranian drones in Alabuga.

IDF fighter jets pummeled Hezbollah terror infrastructure in Lebanon, the IDF stated shortly after midnight on Tuesday.

Among the targets hit by the Israeli aircraft were Hezbollah-operated operational command centers.

The IDF operation came after missile launches from Lebanon were aimed at an IDF post in the area of Kibbutz Malkiya in northern Israel. 

One of the launches was intercepted by Israeli aerial defenses while the other fell in an open area. 

The IDF visited the family of Noa Marciano, a young woman kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, after the terror organization released a video featuring the Israeli on Monday.

Our hearts are with the Marciano family whose daughter, Noa, was brutally kidnapped by the Hamas terrorist organization,” the IDF stated. “The IDF and all the relevant bodies will continue to support her family, as well as all of the families of the hostages and missing persons. We are using all means, both intelligence and operational, to bring the hostages home.”

The IDF went on to state that a representative of the military visited Marciano’s family are their home to inform them of the publication of the video.

Hamas uses psychological terror

The statement also noted that Hamas engages in psychological terrorism and that the release of hostage videos such as the one featuring Marciano is one way in which they do so.

It is yet unclear where in Gaza the hostages are being held. 

IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari addresses the nation on October 21, 2023. (credit: screenshot)

Also on Monday, during a press briefing, IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari revealed an underground Hamas command center beneath the Rantisi Hospital that showed evidence that it had been previously used to hold hostages.

The video, which was released to one of Hamas’s Telegram channels at 9:35 p.m., shows little aside from Marciano herself in front of what appears to be a banner bearing the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades insignia.

The European Union has delegated too much of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to the United States and must now be more involved in a two-state resolution to the conflict, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters in Brussels on Monday.

“We have been far too absent,” Borrell said ahead of his anticipated trip to Israel and the Palestinian territory in the West Bank this week. He will also visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Jordan.

“We have delegated the solution of this problem to the United States but now Europe must become more involved,” Borrell said.

“We must commit ourselves to this process because if we don’t find a solution, we will experience a perpetual cycle of violence moving from generation to generation from funeral to funeral.”

He spoke in the aftermath of a meeting of the foreign ministers and as the Israel-Hamas war entered its second month with no end date in sight.

EU FOREIGN Policy Chief Josep Borrell addresses a plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, last week. Borrell has condemned Israel, claiming there is no evidence of wrong-doing by the seven NGOs closed by Israel. (credit: YVES HERMAN/REUTERS)

"There has to be a two-state future"

Israeli soldiers were poised to attack Hamas bunkers under hospitals in Gaza city. Hamas has asserted that over 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in war-related violence.

The IDF’s campaign to oust Hamas from Gaza was sparked by the terror group's killing of over 1,200 people and its seizure of over 239 people hostage.

“There is a failure politically and morally of the international community” when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said.

“A solution is indispensable. There has to be a two-state future,” Borrell stressed. “It's not just about reconstructing Gaza” once the war is over. “We have to construct a state for the Palestinians, that means that we have to look at the day after,” he said.

Borrell said he supported a framework to the foreign ministers for movement forward that involves a number of yeses and nos to the situation.

'no forced displacement outside of Gaza'

There can be no forced displacement of Palestinians to territory outside of Gaza, no reduction in the territorial scope of Gaza for Palestinians and no reoccupation by the Israeli Defense Forces, Borrell said.

He clarified, however, that Hamas can not return to Gaza.

There has to be a “yes” to the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza, “yes” to the involvement of the Arab states and greater involvement of the EU in the region, particularly in the construction of a Palestinian state.

The 27-member bloc issued a joint statement expressing its concern about the “deepening humanitarian crisis in Gaza” as it called for “immediate pauses in hostilities” so that aid can reach the civilians.

The document emphasized Israel’s “right to defend itself in line with international law and international humanitarian law.”

The EU called on Hamas to release its hostages and for the International Committee of the Red Cross to be granted access to them.

It also condemned Hamas’s use of hospitals and civilians as human shields even as it “urged Israel to exercise maximum restraint to ensure the protection of civilians.”