Israel-Hamas war: What happened on day 209?

The reported funding of anti-Israel protests and pro-Hamas encampments throughout US campuses sparked a wave of conspiracy theories on social media, going even further than other libels have gone so far.

One of these modern-age blood libels, which once again showcases Jews in a conspiratorial scheming light, accuses Soros and his funding of progressive organizations of being Israel’s pawns in an attempt to either flame inner conflicts or distract public discourse from the ongoing war in Gaza.

In a post reaching almost 120,000 views, fringe conspiracy theorist David Icke similarly accused Soros of being “Israel’s man,” accusing “Ultra Zionist Sabbatian Cultists” of ‘funding both sides’ in an attempt to stir civil war in the US, all the while controlling both Biden and Trump, pointing at the ethnoreligious background of high ranking members in the US administration.

Israel Air Force jets carried out an overnight attack on Hezbollah military infrastructures in the Chebaa area in southern Lebanon, the military said on Thursday. 

In addition, on Thursday, an IDF observer identified a terrorist in a military compound belonging to the terror group in the Markaba area. The compound was subsequently struck by IAF jets, the military added. 

Paris' Sciences Po university has rejected demands by protesters to set up a working group to review its relations with Israeli universities, its interim director Jean Basseres told reporters on Thursday, following a town hall with students and staff.

The townhall was one of the conditions last week for students to call off for now their protests over the war between Israel and Hamas and its allies.

Many were also asking for the university to cut all ties with Israel, and Basseres said he was aware that refusing to hold such a working group could anger some protesters.

"I'm calling on all to show a sense of responsibility," he said, urging all to allow exams to go on.

The elite political sciences university would work on how best to organize internal debate on major topics, he said.

Masked youths take part in the occupation of a building of the Sciences Po University, Paris, France, April 26, 2024. (credit: REUTERS/BENOIT TESSIER)

Campus protests have spread from USA to Europe

"The last ties that should be severed are the ones between universities," said Arancha Gonzalez, who heads Science Po's School of International Affairs. The university already has rules to review partnerships, she added.

Students at several French universities, including Sciences Po Paris, Sciences Po Lille and Lille's journalism school, have blocked or occupied their institutes in the wake of rallies in campuses across the United States against the conflict.

On Monday, French police moved in to clear dozens of protesters who had set up tents in a courtyard at the Sorbonne University in Paris.

However, those protests in France and elsewhere in Europe have not reached the same scale as seen in the United States.

A delegation from the Palestinian movement Hamas is set to visit Egypt soon for further hostage negotiations, a statement by the group said on Thursday.

The statement added that Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh affirmed the group's "positive spirit in studying the ceasefire proposal."

Hamas said on Saturday that it had received Israel's latest position and would study it before submitting a reply.

Hundreds of helmeted police muscled their way into a central plaza of the University of California at Los Angeles early on Thursday in a move to disperse a pro-Palestinian protest camp attacked the previous night by pro-Israel supporters.

The pre-dawn police crackdown at UCLA marked the latest flashpoint for mounting tensions on U.S. college campuses, where protests over Israel's conduct of the war in Gaza have led to student clashes with each other and law enforcement.

Live footage from the scene showed that officers in tactical gear began filing onto the UCLA campus adjacent to a complex of tents occupied by throngs of demonstrators around sunset on Wednesday.

Local television station KABC-TV estimated that 300 to 500 people were hunkered down inside the camp, while around 2,000 more had gathered outside the barricades in support.

But the assembled police stood by on the periphery of the tents for hours before finally starting to force their way into the encampment around 3:15 a.m. PDT (1015 GMT) to arrest occupants who refused to leave. The raid was led by a phalanx of California Highway Patrol officers carrying shields and batons.

Law enforcement officials clash with demonstrators, as they try to enter the protest encampment in support of Palestinians at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), May 2, 2024 (credit: REUTERS/AUDE GUERRUCCI)

Demonstrators, some carrying makeshift shields and umbrellas, sought to block the officers' advance by their sheer numbers while shouting, "push them back," and flashing bright lights in the eyes of the police.

Protesters prepared for clashes with police

Palestinian security officers killed a Palestinian Islamic Jihad gunman in the West Bank on Thursday, a rare intra-Palestinian clash whose circumstances were disputed and which the terrorist faction described as an Israeli-style "assassination."

Palestinian Authority security services spokesperson Talak Dweikat said a force sent to patrol Tulkarm overnight came under fire and shot back, hitting the gunman. He died from his wounds in hospital.

Videos circulated online, and which Reuters was not immediately able to confirm, showed a car being hit by gunfire.

A local armed group, the Tulkarm and Nour Shams Camp Brigades, claimed the dead man, Ahmed Abu al-Foul, as its member with affiliation to the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Al-Foul was "treacherously ... targeted in his car" without provocation, the brigades said in a statement. "This crime is just like any assassination by Israeli special forces."

Palestinian police officers stand guard during a protest over the death of Nizar Banat, a critic of the Palestinian Authority, in Ramallah in the West Bank, June 26, 2021 (credit: REUTERS/MOHAMAD TOROKMAN)

Israel and PA have fragile security agreement

Udi Segal and Tal Shalev spoke this Wednesday morning on 103FM radio with Omer Lubaton Granot, an Israeli master's student at Columbia University, who shared his feelings after the widespread pro-Palestinian protests on campus as a reaction to the Israel-Hamas conflict.

"I'm okay, but outside, it's chaotic like you wouldn't believe," he shared, "There are dozens, if not over a hundred, detainees. We are following directions. The students from the protest yesterday broke into the building and shattered windows."

Despite the chaos, Granot recognized some good things that came out of the campus protests.

"It gave the university a reason to investigate matters they've avoided for a long time. There is a lot of criticism about maintaining freedom of expression because it is sacred here, but the students went too far. They closed the campus today. No one could enter."

Lubaton Granot continued, "It's been disrupting the daily routine here for two weeks already. There are people with covered faces walking around here, waving terrorist flags, shouting 'Zionists out,' preventing Israelis from freely walking on campus."

Protests continue at Columbia University in New York during the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, April 22, 2024 (credit: REUTERS/CAITLIN OCHS)

"At a certain point, we waited for the police to come and take assertive action against them. The president asked the police to stay on campus until May 17. There is a need for constant police presence even though they are not a mob, this is not London, and there are not 100,000 protesters here," he noted.

The idea that Israel carried out mass summary executions and covered them up in mass graves is preposterous.

There is not only no evidence connecting Israel to such an act, but the IDF, with all of the criticism, has shown unprecedented openness to international media to see and learn what it is doing in Gaza.

In fact, many of the accusations from global critics have come not only from Palestinian social media reports, but straight from IDF public admissions or exposure.

So actual mass executions or mass graves is not Israel’s real problem with the controversy.

The real problem is that, according to The Jerusalem Post’s findings to date, it seems that Israel and the IDF did not adequately vet and calibrate its policy of searching for dead Israeli hostages in Palestinian graves with  international law and perceptions abroad of acceptable conduct.

Put simply, international law permits exhuming bodies in certain circumstances such as Israel’s search for dead Israeli hostages. But the IDF did not always follow the nuances of the law or it did not present its adherence to those nuances to the world in a way that would promote a belief in Israeli good faith.

Exhuming bodies allowed for certain 'necessities'

Let’s start with explaining why the mass graves claims are demonstrably nonsense.

IDF soldiers operate in the Gaza Strip, April 2024. (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

The IDF has facilitated hundreds of media visits to Gaza and while only a small number have been on the very front lines during close combat, there have been enough to give a pretty clear account of how Israel has fought the war: the good, the bad, and the gray.

The Israel Air Force and fighters of the 99th Division struck an operational tunnel shaft and a mortar launch post in the center of the Gaza Strip, from which several launches were identified on Wednesday, the IDF announced on Thursday.

Additionally, fighter jets and soldiers from the 679th Brigade eliminated a squad of terrorists in the center of the Gaza Strip. Another terrorist was identified by the 99th Division using a UAV and was eliminated by an IAF fighter jet.

The IDF has discharged some of the reserve troops that were designated to participate in a possible Rafah operation, according to a Ynet report.