Israel at War - What happened on day 32?

The White House accused Hamas of “genocidal intentions” against Israel, as it pushed back against criticism of the IDF’s military campaign in Gaza and its high Palestinian civilian death toll.

“Hamas actually does have genocidal intentions against the people of Israel. They would like to see it wiped off the map, they said so on purpose,” US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters in Washington on Tuesday.

“That is what is at stake here,” he stressed.

He spoke amid sharp criticism for US President Joe Biden’s support of Israeli actions in the Gaza war, which Hamas asserts has cost over 10,000 Palestinians lives, including those of over 4,000 children.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that thousands of those killed were military combatants but has not provided an actual death count.

Palestinians at the rubble of a destroyed building after an Israeli airstrike in the central Gaza Strip, on November 5, 2023 (credit: ATIA MOHAMMED/FLASH90)

US Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), who is of Palestinian descent, has accused Biden of supporting the genocide of the Palestinian people in a video she posted on her X account. 

The video included chants from a pro-Palestinian rally that called for the destruction of the state of Israel through the chant, “from the river to the sea.” 

Kirby, in defending Israel’s military campaign, acknowledged the painful reality of Palestinian civilian deaths in Gaza.

“We are also keeping in our prayers, this one month in, the many thousands of innocent Palestinians who have been killed in the conflict since October 7th and the many more who are injured and wounded,” he said.

Israel not targeting civilians

He rejected, however, accusations that Israeli actions in Gaza were solely aimed at killing innocent people. He referenced in that defense, Hamas’ killing of over 1,400 people and its seizure of over 240 people hostage when it infiltrated southern Israel on October 7.

“We ought not to forget what happened one month ago, 1,400 people slaughtered in their homes [and] at a music festival,” Kirby said. 

“When Hamas decided to conduct operations, it was with the intent of killing people,” he stressed, as he underscored the extent to which the terror group used civilians as human shields.

“When you are fighting in urban warfare you have to make tough choices about your targets,” he said.

“We are going to keep urging them to be as discriminate and careful as possible,” he said.

But Israel, he said, “has a right and responsibility to defend itself” agaisnt “what was clearly an existential threat to their society and their people.”

The US is “going to continue to make sure that they have the tools and the capabilities that they need” to do so, he said.

Israel is bracing for a significant increase in Jewish immigration, or aliyah, in the coming year, according to Aliyah and Integration Minister Ofir Sofer in a statement his ministry published on Tuesday. There has been a striking rise in the number of people exploring the possibility of immigration to Israel, with a 149% increase in France and an 81% increase in North America, according to the minister.

Sofer conveyed the country's readiness to face what he described as "a state of emergency" due to the rise in antisemitic events as a result of Operation Swords of Iron in Israel.

National Unity Party head Benny Gantz stressed that Israelis need to discuss what will happen in Israel after the war is over during a speech marking a month since the October 7 massacre on Tuesday evening.

Gantz urged Israelis to stay united, even after the war is over.

Tears welled in May Hayat's eyes as she stood in silence on an emotional return to the site of an Israeli music festival where she narrowly escaped death in a Hamas attack a month ago.

Hayat, 30, was working as a bartender at the open-air Nova music festival a few kilometers from the Gaza security fence when Hamas terrorists attacked on Oct. 7, killing 260 festival-goers and taking others hostage.

She survived her ordeal by hiding under a stage, smearing a victim's blood on her face and pretending to be dead.

Same-sex partners of fallen IDF soldiers will now be recognized as IDF widows and widowers after the Families of Fallen Soldiers Law was amended on Monday.

Previously, the law defined an IDF widow specifically as a woman who had been married to or "known in public" with a man who was killed in combat and a widower specifically as a man who had been married to or "known in public" with a woman who had been killed in combat.

President Isaac Herzog sent an urgent letter to the presidents of 700 universities and colleges in the US on Tuesday, demanding that they take action against rising antisemitism on campuses across the country.

"The events on the campuses are not a debate, but a denigration of the university institution and a desecration of its basic principles. How is it possible that those who support, encourage, explain, and glorify the atrocities of Hamas have a place in any academic institution or in general - in the cultural and enlightened world?"

"We all know that evil ideologies that are directed towards Jews always signal a much wider intellectual collapse. The events we are witnessing are not a threat just to Jewish students, but to the very healthy existence of the institutions essential to our human culture, in other words - it is a threat to humanity itself."

"Each of the higher education institutions can and should lead the fight against the scourge of antisemitism, among other things by establishing a task force that will develop a campus and institutional work plan and be an important anchor for the entire community."

For at least seven hours on October 7, 2023, the most shocking massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust took place. The areas most affected were the kibbutzim and villages closest to the border, where entire communities and generations of families were destroyed in a single day.

Still reeling from the shock, the people of Israel immediately mobilized, even as thousands of rockets rained down on them and even as the army was still going door to door, hunting for armed terrorists. 

There has been a sharp rise in misinformation in reporting about Israel in the international media, according to Adam Levick, director of the public diplomacy (hasbara) organization CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis).

"Lately, we have seen a sharp rose in misinformation and biased reporting against Israel," Levick told Maariv, The Jerusalem Post's sister publication. 

The first group of Canadians has been evacuated out of the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen said on Tuesday.

"They are now safe and sound in Egypt and we're very, very happy," he told reporters.

Some 20 rockets were fired from Lebanon toward the Golan Heights and Upper Galilee in northern Israel on Tuesday afternoon, with IDF artillery firing at the locations where the rockets were fired from in response, according to the IDF Spokesperson's Unit.

Hezbollah stated later in the afternoon that it had fired the rockets to target IDF artillery in response to Israeli strikes on a Hezbollah position in southern Lebanon.