Swords of Iron: Here is what happened on days 1 and 2

The IDF attacked extensively in the Gaza Strip on Monday, a military spokesperson said in an official statement. 

"The IDF continues to attack the Gaza Strip at these moments and inflict fatal damage on the capabilities of the terrorist organization Hamas," the statement said.

During the attack, a building where Hamas operatives were staying was bombed.

Amidst the ongoing war, stories of tragedy persist, touching even the lives of journalists and media professionals.

In a deeply distressing series of tweets, Yuval Segev, a political reporter with Army Radio, recounted in painstaking detail how terrorists mercilessly attacked his family residing in Kibbutz Be'eri.

'We lost all contact'

Last night, on Saturday, Segev shared, "We have no word on the situation of our uncles and cousins in Be'eri. We lost all contact with them. About two hours ago, they fled for their lives due to the intense heat, taking refuge in the bushes near their incinerated home. Their last update came from that hiding spot, where they witnessed the presence of terrorists. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I hope they are among the hostages in the dining room, praying that their situation isn't any grimmer."

As the hours passed, Segev desperately sought assistance, making a heartfelt plea, "I apologize for the personal nature of this request, but I implore you, send all available help to Kibbutz Be'eri. Deploy tanks, launch air strikes, drop in soldiers—anything. My uncles' house is engulfed in flames, and they are trapped with their four children, their lives hanging by a thread. Please, do something."

אחרי שעות שהסתתרו כל המשפחה בשיח אחד המחבלים קלט אותם. והתחיל לירות. טבח במשפחה שלי. שני הילדים הקטנים בני 11 ו8 ראו הכל והצליחו לברוח. כנראה היו מאחורי אבא שלהם ולא ספגו ירי. הם עם בני משפחה בים המלח, עם מה שנשאר מהקיבוץ.
אף אחד לא מעדכן אותנו, לא יודעים אם חטפו את הגופות. שבר https://t.co/9mmev6P0Iy

— יובל שגב | Yuval Segev (@Segev_Yuval) October 8, 2023

'My entire family was brutally massacred'

The next day, the grim reality unfolded.

"After hours of my entire family cowering in the bushes, one of the terrorists discovered them and opened fire. My family was brutally massacred. The two young children, aged 11 and 8, bore witness to the horror but miraculously managed to escape. Perhaps they were shielded by their father and escaped the bullets. They are now with surviving family members by the Dead Sea, in what remains of the kibbutz.

"We are left in the dark, uncertain if the terrorists took away their bodies. Our hearts are shattered," the reporter lamented.

The IDF spokesperson declined to comment on the matter at this stage.

Jeremy Corbyn, who was fired from the United Kingdom’s Labour Party for antisemitism, has refused to condemn Hamas’ attacks against Israeli civilians.

“Yesterday, I sent out a statement calling for a ceasefire, calling for peace and calling for an end to the occupation of Palestine, which of course is fundamentally the background to the whole issue,” Corbyn told journalists. “Obviously, all attacks are wrong…”

'Do you condemn Hamas?'

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn refuses to say if he condemns Hamas but insists 'obviously all attacks are wrong' when questioned in Liverpool https://t.co/Hve2m5YCHK pic.twitter.com/eAYybIWuYb

— ITV News Politics (@ITVNewsPolitics) October 8, 2023

Corbyn, on October 7, released a post on X stating that: “The unfolding events in Israel and Palestine are deeply alarming. We need an immediate ceasefire and urgent de-escalation. And we need a route out of this tragic cycle of violence: ending the occupation is the only means of achieving a just and lasting peace.”

The unfolding events in Israel and Palestine are deeply alarming.

We need an immediate ceasefire and urgent de-escalation.

And we need a route out of this tragic cycle of violence: ending the occupation is the only means of achieving a just and lasting peace.

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) October 7, 2023

Jeremy Corbyn participating in Munich Massacre terrorist's memorial, Tunis 2014 (credit: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/HM)

Jeremy Corbyn’s relationship with Hamas terrorists

Since Corbyn’s statement, resurfaced clips have been shared online of Corbyn describing Hamas and Hezbollah as "friends." Corbyn had invited the two groups, who are registered as terrorist organizations, to speak at an event in parliament. 

“It will be my pleasure, my honor,” Corbyn said at the prospect of the terrorists’ visit.

Remember that the murderers Hamas have influential 'friends' in this country. pic.twitter.com/mKn8Ukxcn0

— Corbyn in the Times / Crime from Times Past (@TimesCorbyn) October 8, 2023

Presidential hopeful Nikki Haley has called upon Americans to support Israel following Saturday's massacre by Hamas in a viral interview with Fox News that she posted on her social media channels.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Nikki Haley (@nikkihaley)

"This should be personal for every woman and man in America," Haley said. "Why? Because when [Hamas] did this, when they made this surprise attack, when they took these hostages, when they murdered these families, they were celebrating. 

"And what were they celebrating?" Haley asked. "They were saying 'Death to Israel,' 'Death to America.' This is not just an attack on Israel. This is an attack on America."

Haley told the public that it needed to unite around "making sure our enemies do not hurt our friends." 

"America can never be so arrogant to think we don't need friends, just like we needed them on 911," she said, asking the American people to support Ukraine against Russia and Israel against Hamas.

Haley tells Netanyahu: 'Finish them'

"I say this to Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu: Finish them. Finish them. Hamas did this. You know Iran is behind it. Finish them."

Haley continued, "They should have hell to pay for what they've just done."

The United Arab Emirates’ foreign ministry spoke out against the assault by Hamas on Israel in a statement on Sunday.

“The ministry stressed that attacks by Hamas against Israeli towns and villages near the Gaza Strip, including the firing of thousands of rockets at population centers, are a serious and grave escalation,” the statement begins.

It went on to note that it is “appalled” by reports that Israeli civilians had been kidnapped and taken as hostages from their homes, adding that international law prohibits such treatment of non-combatant civilians.

Additionally, the UAE foreign ministry expressed its condolences to the families of those who have been killed or taken hostage before stating that it “deeply mourns” both the Israelis and Palestinians who have been killed. It went on to call on “both parties” to de-escalate the violence.

Additionally, it noted that the UAE is calling on the international community to prevent the violence from spilling over elsewhere or creating wider instability.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid welcomes Emirati foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan ahead of the Negev Summit (credit: BOAZ OPPENHEIM/GPO)

Hamas is trying to derail peace efforts

It added that the international community must oppose the efforts to “derail ongoing regional efforts aimed at dialogue, cooperation, and co-existence,” and not allow malicious actors to perpetuate and exacerbate violence in an already violence-stricken region.

The statement concluded by stating that the UAE is involved with its partners both regionally and internationally in efforts to “de-escalate the situation and restore calm in Israel and the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories),” and to work towards a two-state solution. Lastly, the UAE statement emphasized that both Israelis and Palestinians “deserve to live in peace and dignity.”

Abdullah bin Zayed reiterates the UAE's calls for de-escalation and the protection of civilians amid the recent developments in the region during discussions with his counterparts in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, France, and Türkiye. pic.twitter.com/uE1Il6j330

— OFM (@OFMUAE) October 8, 2023

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), the UAE foreign ministry stated that the foreign minister, Abdullah bin Zayed, “reiterates the UAE's calls for de-escalation and the protection of civilians amid the recent developments in the region during discussions with his counterparts in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, France, and Turkey.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Hamas' terror attacks against Israel, which have killed more than 700 Israelis as of Monday morning.

"I encouraged Turkey's advocacy for a ceasefire and the release of all hostages held by Hamas immediately," Blinken posted on X.

A building in Ashkelon was directly hit by a rocket early Monday after a barrage of rockets were fired on the city from the Gaza Strip.

Another barrage of rockets was fired towards the city minutes later.

Police quickly arrived at the scene of the building that had been struck the police spokesperson stated that evening. 

Immediate efforts to secure the area and check for explosive devices went underway in preparation for rescue teams to arrive and evacuate potentially injured people.

The spokesperson noted that the police were urging civilians to remain in protected areas, to follow instructions from the security forces, and to refrain from approaching areas that had been hit by rockets.

As the death toll from Saturday’s attack on Israel has mounted, Israelis and Jews around the world have reached for analogies to explain the magnitude of the tragedy, calling the invasion “Israel’s 9/11” or “Israel’s Pearl Harbor.”

Others have tried to put the death toll — now at 700 soldiers and civilians — in perspective by setting it against a far bloodier tragedy: the Holocaust.

“Not since the Holocaust has this large a number of Jews been killed in a single day. Let that sink in,” read an Instagram post from Daniella Greenbaum, a former producer for “The View.” Greenbaum added, “I have no words. My heart is broken. My soul is aflame.”

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A post shared by Daniella Greenbaum (@djgreenbaum)

Eylon Levy, a former spokesperson for Israeli President Isaac Herzog, posted online: “It’s no exaggeration to say yesterday was the darkest day in Jewish history since the end of the Holocaust.” Lazar Berman, a reporter for the Times of Israel, made the same reference: “October 7, 2023 saw the most Jews slaughtered in a single day since the Holocaust.”

It’s no exaggeration to say yesterday was the darkest day in Jewish history since the end of the Holocaust.

— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) October 8, 2023

Remembering those who were killed in mega terrorist attack (credit: Canva)

The claim appears to be accurate. There have been bloody days in Israel’s history and for Jews around the world since 1945, but none has had a civilian death toll this high. Israeli wars have had higher casualty totals overall, but none has seen this many civilians murdered in a single day.

Israel’s bloodiest war was its War of Independence, which saw 6,000 citizens of the nascent state die in the fighting. But that number is generally counted from No. 29, 1947 into 1949, when the fighting stopped — a period of close to two years. The majority of casualties were soldiers, not civilians.

Saturday’s attack is also being compared to the Yom Kippur War, a conflict in which the Israeli military was taken by surprise on a holy day. Hamas’ attack came one day after that war’s 50th anniversary.

Two of the country’s rival newspapers ran near-identical headlines on Sunday, both declaring that a war had broken out and comparing the Hamas attack to the 1973 war. One read, “The negligence of ’73, the negligence of ’23.”

But while more than 2,000 soldiers died over the course of more than two weeks, the war had a very low Israeli civilian death toll.

שערי העיתונים להיום, 8.10.2023. גלריית השערים המלאה עכשיו באתר. בוקר טוב ☀️ https://t.co/1ByJZtZrvl pic.twitter.com/LSSaYT2bCI

— העין השביעית (@the7i) October 8, 2023

In more recent memory, Israelis approximate that 1,000 people died in the terror attacks of the second intifada, a period that is traditionally counted from late 2000 to mid-2005. The deadliest single bombing of that intifada was an attack on the Park Hotel in Netanya — which, like Saturday’s attack, came on another Jewish holiday (in that case, Passover). Thirty people were killed in that attack.

Large-scale murders of Jews have happened outside Israel since 1945

Large-scale murders of Jews have also happened outside of Israel since 1945, though with smaller death tolls than Saturday’s attack. In 1946, a pogrom in Kielce, Poland, killed at least 42 Jews. The bombing of the AMIA Jewish Center in Buenos Aires in 1994, which the American Jewish Committee called “the deadliest antisemitic attack outside Israel since the Holocaust,” killed 85 people.

By contrast, while the figures are still being tallied, it’s clear that at least several hundred Israeli civilians were killed on Saturday in addition to soldiers.

Roni Shvalb is a resident of Ofakim in southern Israel, one of the communities recently under siege by Hamas gunmen. She spoke with The Media Line about Saturday’s attack on her community and about her missing family members from nearby Kibbutz Nir Oz, where she works as a teacher.

On Saturday morning, Israel woke up to the harshest terror incursion in the country’s history. Hundreds of Hamas gunmen from Gaza overwhelmed the border by land, sea, and air, attacking Israel’s civilian communities along the border, where they indiscriminately killed or wounded soldiers and civilians alike. The Israeli government has so far reported over 700 dead and more than 2,000 injured, including women, children, and the elderly. Scores were kidnapped and moved into Gaza. Simultaneously, some 3,000 rockets were fired from Gaza into neighboring Israeli communities and into cities in central Israel, including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

TML: First of all, I wanted to say that I cannot imagine what you’re going through, and I wanted to thank you for being with me here today. Can you please describe what happened yesterday?

Shvalb: Yesterday, around 6:30 in the morning, we woke up to the sound of the rocket sirens. I live in Ofakim, which is close to the Gaza border. We started to chat with our family in Kibbutz Nir Oz. Karina, Ronen, Yuval, and Mika are missing. While I was chatting with my sister Karina, she sent me a joke, saying, “Ha-ha-ha, you will not have to go to work tomorrow.”

We knew that there were already terrorists in our city, Ofakim, and I told her, “They’re here in my neighborhood, I can hear them.” She said, “Yes, also here there are [terrorists].” And that is it, my communication with her was broken from 9:30 to 10 am.

I later spoke with my second sister, Paola, who was speaking to Karina by phone and said that she told her that she had seen blood on her balcony and went out to see what had happened to her husband and screamed, “They’re here, they’re here!” and the conversation was disconnected.

Karina, Mika and Yuval Engel. (credit: Courtesy)

TML: Do you know what’s happening in Nir Oz right now? Do you know what is the situation there?

Shvalb: The situation in Nir Oz, from what I know, there are a lot of [people] killed, there are kidnapped children, kidnapped families, missing families, and houses that were burned. I do not know where I am coming back to work. How are the children, if there are children at all to teach them? I do not know what happened to my sister or her daughters. I do not have much information because they are not giving me information. We tried to reach out to many hotlines, but no one had information. Not at the kibbutz, not outside, and I already started to lose hope.

TML: Did you manage to speak to anybody that is in the kibbutz right now?

Shvalb: We managed to speak to some people at the kibbutz, but they do not know what happened to my family. But from what I understood, they checked their house and there was no one.

Only Tom, my sister’s son, who is a soldier and was at the base, is now at my brother’s house in Kfar Saba.

TML: How is he? How is he feeling?

Shvalb: He is in a really bad situation emotionally. A 19-year-old boy who does not know what happened to his family. We have no way to help him, we do not have a way to give him information because we are in the same boat. He went to give a DNA sample and the brother of my brother-in-law did as well.

We’re all day monitoring the media, in front of the TV to see if from any video we manage to identify one of them or have a hint of their whereabouts—but nothing, nothing.

TML: What answers do you get when you call the government’s hotlines to look for information about them?

Shvalb: Nothing, they ask us to give them their details. That is what they answer to me. Then they do not return the call nor give an answer, no nothing.

TML: You were in Ofakim, where one of the harshest battles with terrorists that infiltrated into your city. Do you know how much time it took for the army to arrive at the scene?

Shvalb: We do not know, but we did hear about the shootings. We were locked up in the house. And also now we are still locked up. The children do not leave the bomb shelter.

TML: Did you sleep in the bomb shelter yesterday night?

The kids slept in the bomb shelter. I was in the living room in front of the TV and my husband in the room also in front of the TV. Of course, I did not manage to sleep. I am already awake for more than 24 hours.

TML: How are the kids doing?

Shvalb: For my daughter Noam, it’s very hard. For my other daughter, Noia, it’s also really difficult because her boyfriend is fighting somewhere in the middle of the ocean. I have another nephew who is fighting somewhere.

As Israel continued to clear the Gaza border area of Hamas attackers, and came to grips with an attack that killed 700 people, hundreds of people came to rally in support of the country outside the United Nations on Sunday afternoon.

But for at least one demonstrator, the focus wasn’t on decrying what happened, but making sure to support Israel if it gets criticized for its response to the violence.

“We’re here to show support for Israel which has been attacked in the most savage way by Hamas terrorists,” said Ofer Jacobowitz, who holds both US and Israeli citizenship and has lived in the United States since he was a child. “Israel needs all the support they can get. As soon as it retaliates for what happens and tries to end the Hamas terror, it will be demonized in the media.”

Israel has declared war following the outbreak of bloodshed, and — judging by another rally just blocks away — Jacobowitz’s concern was not unfounded. At Times Square, hundreds of demonstrators staged their own gathering to condemn Israel.

Pro-Palestinian chants

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” one chant at the Times Square rally went. “New York City you will see, Palestine will be free.”

A DEMONSTRATOR holds a Free Palestine flag at a Black Lives Matter rally held in Pasadena, California, last year. (credit: CHRISTIAN MONTERROSA/REUTERS)

The rallies, just blocks apart in the heart of New York City, came one day after a major attack by Hamas on Israel and resulted in multiple showdowns between demonstrators, including a shouting match across 42nd Street as police stood in the middle of the road to maintain their distance.

The rallies reflected the depth of emotion felt by New Yorkers in the wake of the attack, which left hundreds of Israelis dead, thousands wounded and 100 taken captive to Gaza. Israeli officials have promised an extended campaign in Gaza, the territory that Hamas controls.

Organized by an array of far-left groups including the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Times Square rally drew condemnation from elected officials, including Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Gov. Kathy Hochul, who called it “abhorrent and morally repugnant.”

One organizer who did not share their name called the violence in Israel a “great escalation of a historic struggle” and “not a terrorist attack,” but instead a manifestation of Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

Irene Siegel, who carried a sign identifying herself as a Jewish supporter of the movement to boycott Israel, said she had been “horrified” by what happened in Israel — just as she had been for a long time about what was happening to Palestinians. She said she had come to the protest out of concern about Israel’s response to the onslaught.

“Palestinians really need people to stand with them right now,” she said. “It’s a really easy moment for militarist rhetoric and escalations around support for Israeli militarism.”

Ending Jew hatred, condemning attacks on Israel

The rally near the United Nations was called by the group End Jew Hatred. (A separate rally held by UnXeptable, the protest movement of Israelis in the United States, took place 40 blocks south around the same time.)

The two constituencies clashed multiple times. Supporters of Israel jeered at the pro-Palestinian rally and sought to drown out its chants by singing “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national anthem, loudly from across the street.

Later, pro-Palestinian demonstrators approached the people who had come to the End Jew Hatred rally, screaming, “Hey hey, ho ho, Israel has got to go” from one side of the street while people waving Israeli flags on the other side screamed chants including, “Israel is peace.”

The pro-Palestinian rally had been promoted by New York City’s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, which has long taken anti-Israel stances including asking City Council candidates whether they would commit not to traveling to Israel.

Some in attendance said they supported socialism but opposed Hamas’ attack on Israelis and had come to make sure their perspectives were represented.

“Can we ever condone civilian targets? Never,” said Lea Sherman, a Socialist Workers Party candidate for New Jersey’s General Assembly. “Socialists are opposed to antisemitism and Jew hatred. This has nothing to do with socialism.”

Hannah Simpson, a writer and activist on transgender issues who is Jewish, came to Times Square waving a rainbow Israeli flag.

“I was tremendously dismayed when I saw that the Democratic Socialists of America had co-sponsored the Palestine rally today,” she said. “It baffles me when I think of Hamas as being neither democratic nor socialist, nor anything but reprehensible, especially to members of the LGBT community within the Gaza Strip.”

Simpson added, “I think it’s important to show that New York is not letting this go unanswered.”