Rescued hostages Andrey Kozlov, Almog Meir Jan and Shlomi Ziv arrive at Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, June 8, 2024. Photo by Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90.
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Rescued hostages suffered ‘severe psychological abuse’ in captivity
Intro
New details have filtered out about the torments the rescued hostages experienced at the hands of their captors.
text

While Israeli security officials have requested that the four hostages rescued by the Israel Defense Forces on Saturday keep their experiences secret, some details have nevertheless emerged.

The four—Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 21, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 40appeared to be in good health when first seen on camera on June 8, the day of the raid.

But two days later, Dr. Itay Pessach of the Sheba Medical Center revealed they were in a “state of severe malnutrition."

"They all suffered from all types of abuse—physical abuse and mental abuse, and for a long time,” he said. “We’ve heard stories that are beyond anything you can imagine.”

Details will take time to come out. More than a month passed before the full picture emerged of what hostages had endured following an earlier prisoner swap. It turned out they suffered torture, sexual abuse, lack of food and medical care. 

In a Wednesday interview with Channel 12, Kozlov's girlfriend, Jennifer Master, revealed that Kozlov couldn't join the interview due to his weakened condition.

"He blames himself for being kidnapped...He just came back a fragile and different person," she said.

"They were subjected to very, very severe psychological abuse, more than the physical," she added.

As an example, terrorists would tell him that his government wanted him dead, she said.

In terms of physical punishment, terrorists would pile blankets on him during the hottest part of the day and lock him in the bathroom if he forgot to knock before requesting to be let out.

Although they had only been together for three months prior to his kidnapping by Hamas, Master became a spokesperson for his release at demonstrations and in media interviews.

Jennifer Master (r) with Andrey Kozlov's mother, Yevgenia, at a demonstration for the hostages. Credit: Instagram/bringhomenow.

That Kozlov was originally from Russia didn't help him at all. In fact, it worked against him. The terrorists said that the other hostages were born Israelis but he had chosen to come to Israel, which made him more guilty in their eyes.

"Why did you come to Israel? Don't you know it's an occupation," they would tell him, she said.

Kozlov was held together with Jan and Ziv the entire eight months. They became close friends and that helped them through the captivity.

“Sometimes the terrorists abused us but we remained strong and supported each other very much. We are very united,” Jan told Channel 12 in an earlier interview.

Jan's uncle said the three "hadn't seen the sun for eight months."

Argamani was held separately. Little is yet known of what she went through.

All four had been at the Nova music festival near Kibbutz Re'im, where 364 of the 1,200 people killed by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 met their end. Kozlov was working security at the event.

Netanyahu Noa Argamani
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with rescued hostage Noa Argamani at Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, Israel on June 8, 2024. Credit: Maayan Toaf/GPO.

Sadly, Jan's father, Yossi Meir, 59, died only hours before his son was rescued. Reports said he had "died of grief" due to his son's capture and had lost 44 pounds.

Argamani's mother, Liora, who suffers from terminal cancer, had her final wished fulfilled when she was reunited with her daughter.

“Unfortunately, her mother is in very poor condition,” Noa's father, Yaakov, told Ynet. “She barely looked at Noa. They met after eight months, but it was very difficult.”

He said he believed that his wife understood, however. “There was a kind of response. Liora understood but simply couldn’t express her emotions or say what she had longed to tell Noa when she finally met her.”

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Alicia Verdugo, a student at the University of California, Los Angeles, announced on Tuesday that she is resigning as cultural affairs commissioner of the UCLA Undergraduate Students Association Council two days before she was slated to appear before the student government’s judicial board amid allegations of Jew-hatred, the Daily Bruin, a student paper, reported.

Screenshots attributed to Verdugo appeared to show her directing staff not to hire “Zionist” applicants. Bella Brannon, a senior at UCLA, filed a complaint, stating that Verdugo’s actions violated university policies, as well as state and federal anti-discrimination laws by intentionally discriminating against Jewish students, per the paper. (The Daily Bruin referred to Verdugo with both the pronouns “she” and “they.”)

Students at the public university who self-identified as Jewish without mentioning Israel had their applications rejected by Verdugo’s office, the New York Post reported. (JNS sought comment from UCLA.)

In a post on a Cultural Affairs Commission at UCLA social-media account on Wednesday, Verdugo wrote, “I am so proud of how we have led the commission this past year.” She added that the student group’s “extensive cultural and political history on this campus has shown how we will always prioritize the safety and empowerment of our black, indigenous, students of color on our campus.”

Hillel at UCLA welcomed Verdugo’s resignation.

“It is no surprise that this comes ahead of this week’s judicial board hearing that intended to hold them responsible for a pattern of antisemitism, including the most recent incident of clear discrimination against Jewish students when hiring for roles within” the student government, the student board of the UCLA Hillel told JNS.

“We commend and stand with Bella Brannon, who courageously took a stand publicly against the Cultural Affairs Commission to call for this judicial hearing, as well as with all other Jewish students who have faced similar antisemitism hate and antisemitic discrimination on our campus,” the student board said.

“Antisemitism has no place at UCLA, and we hope that the Cultural Affairs Commission’s resignation stands as an example that we will not stand idly by to those who continue to think they can get away with promoting antisemitic rhetoric and discriminatory actions,” the student board added. It also called on the UCLA administration to “do their part in supporting Jewish Bruins.”

The UCLA Undergraduate Students Association Council still lists Verdugo as an officer on its site. 

“In May 2024, Verdugo was arrested while protesting at UCLA’s unlawful anti-Israel protest encampment,” according to Canary Mission.

“In a video published on May 1, 2024, Verdugo called for Israel’s destruction during an interview as UCLA’s ‘encampment media liaison,’” the watchdog added. “When a reporter accused Verdugo of promoting the ‘destruction of Israel,’ Verdugo replied, ‘Yes! Because the destruction of Israel will put an end to the siege on Gaza and an end to the occupation!’”

In the final days of the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Education announced in January that it was closing an investigation after finding that UCLA did not violate Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act in its response to Jew-hatred in 2018 during a Students for Justice in Palestine event on campus.

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Kanye West, the rapper who goes by Ye and has a long history of Jew-hatred, posted another series of antisemitic, expletive-ridden messages on social media to 32.4 million followers on Friday morning.

Among West's posts were that "any Jewish person that does business with me needs to know I don't like or trust any Jewish person and this is completely sober with no Hennessy" and a post stating that "I’m going to normalize talking about Hitler."

In another post, Ye wrote that "I'm never apologize for my Jewish comments," adding in another, "call me Yaydolf Yitler."

"Kanye West descends deeper and deeper into the abyss of antisemitism," wrote Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.). "Yet he continues to be invited to the Grammys as if he had done nothing wrong. West should be ostracized for his rabid antisemitism."

The rapper "continues to purposefully use his platform to spew anti-Jewish hatred. While some may dismiss his hateful rants, we cannot overlook the dangerous influence they can have on his millions of followers, particularly on social media, where a significant portion of today’s antisemitism thrives," stated the American Jewish Committee.

"Hate, left unchecked, only multiplies. At a time when antisemitism is skyrocketing to terrifying levels worldwide, Ye is actively endangering Jews," the AJC added. "We urge others with a platform like Ye’s—particularly in the entertainment industry—to call out this blatant hatred."

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, stated that West's was "another egregious display of antisemitism, racism and misogyny."

"Just a few years ago, ADL found that 30 antisemitic indents nationwide were tied to Kanye’s 2022 antisemitic rants," Greenblatt stated. "We condemn this dangerous behavior and need to call it what it is: a flagrant and unequivocal display of hate."

"We know this game all too well. Let's call Ye's hate-filled public rant for what it really is: a sad attempt for attention that uses Jews as a scapegoat," he added. "But unfortunately, it does get attention because Kanye has a far-reaching platform on which to spread his antisemitism and hate. Words matter, and as we’ve seen too many times before, hateful rhetoric can prompt real-world consequences."

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It is easy to understand President Donald Trump’s proposal regarding Gaza. For years, all of the ideas from authoritative sources that offer peace with the Palestinians there have included removing the terror civilization, but none have hit the mainstream media, which makes this appear to be a total rethinking of a solution to the perpetual violence emanating from the Strip. This plan—that the United States adopt an active role in the form of control—does separate Trump’s from the rest.

It took the political and the media worlds by storm, and produced acres of print for and against the idea. By and large, the perspective taken has been immediate and short-term, as the idea has itself been. However, it is a long-term proposal. Gaza will not be rebuilt in two years—it will take 10 or 20—and an American presence will be equally long, so it must be considered in that context.

Trump’s proposal is a no-brainer. He loves game-changing strategies. For all the right reasons, they destroy the restrictive encumbrances of repeatedly recycled failed efforts. This plan also gives the United States a coveted goldmine in international power brokerage in the form of a port on the Mediterranean Sea. The Russians have tried for decades to secure such a prize—first in their losing efforts in Egypt before 1967 and then with similar tactics in Syria. America lost its purchase in Haifa when Israel signed port management over to China. The Gaza resettlement plan, coupled with a Gaza port, is part of a serious global strategy.

It is also highly inappropriate.

There is nothing in Israel’s history that would preclude Israel from overseeing the future of Gaza. In fact, everything Israel has ever done there indicates that Jerusalem best understands the natural, economic and social potential and realities of Gaza better than anyone. Israel has a history and the potential to make Gaza blossom as it never has under any other sovereignty. The Jewish state has also paid for Gaza, yet again, in absolute terms with the lives of Israeli soldiers and civilians, making it perfectly reasonable for it to retain control and sovereignty there. After Israel has worked for 16 months to eliminate the scourge that has been Gaza—at its own “expense”—it is a bully move for the United States to step in and say, “We’ll take that now.” That is the short term.

In the long term, it is also potentially explosive for at least two reasons.

First, friends across the ocean are one thing but friends on the same small piece of property are another. It may work well in the cleanup, but tensions change significantly when decisions need to be made as to what will be built there and who will be planning and building it, along with who will be living and working there. It’s not a good idea to put an American elephant beside the Israeli menagerie even, or especially, if it is led by the Lion of Judah.

Secondly, the entire situation becomes more fraught and even intolerable when the elephant changes its ideas or becomes the donkey of a Barack Obama fourth term in a future U.S. election. In the past 16 years, 12 have been Obama administrations that have shown that American elections or electors can be very fickle, and so the more distance Israel can maintain from the United States the better. Israel cannot afford to give away the long term with a hateful American administration in Gaza. As an easy path in the very short term, however, the idea remains on the table.

At the same time, it would be just as short-sighted not to recognize the advantages of an American presence in Gaza. The possibility is that Israel’s greatest threat coming out of the present war against Iran could be Egypt, which has managed a cold peace brilliantly, if hostilities with Israel are the plan. Their troops have trained simulated attacks on Israel, constructed multiple tunnels big enough to drive tanks through under the Suez Canal, a highway road network across the Sinai to Israel with a major fuel depot along the way—all in the demilitarized Sinai that has become thoroughly militarized under the guise of stopping illegal drug and migration activities in Gaza. And that continues unabated, even as Egypt has profited handsomely by supplying Hamas in Gaza with massive quantities of arms to fight Israel through a second extensive network of tunnels under the blockaded Philadelphi corridor. Some peace partner.

Surely, Israel could benefit greatly from having America with boots on the ground in Gaza, smiling southward. But not as a sovereign power.

Leadership is challenging, as there are many big and small decisions to be made every day. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is faced with that very publically.

There are people suggesting that the proposal to make Gaza American is so radical that it should be dismissed out of hand—that it can never happen. Ignore Trump’s radical ideas at one’s peril because they have a way of becoming reality. It would be foolish to deny the immediate logic and solid reasoning behind this one, though there are much better long-term solutions. But they all start with the total removal of the terrorist threat from Gaza.

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the issue of normalization with Saudi Arabia and the establishment of a Palestinian state, saying such a state would be a "giant reward for terrorism," in a Feb. 6 interview with Israel's Channel 14.

Saudi Arabia has made the creation of a Palestinian state a precondition for normalization of relations with Israel. Most recently on Feb. 5, the Saudis swiftly contradicted U.S. President Donald Trump, who said on Tuesday that the Saudis were not demanding a Palestinian homeland in exchange for ties with Israel.

Asked whether the contradictory statements of Trump and the Saudis could be bridged, Netanyahu said simply, "I will not make any agreement that endangers the State of Israel. I will not do it."

The prime minister said this applied "especially" if that meant creating a Palestinian state. "After the seventh of October [2023], do you know what that is? There was a Palestinian state. It was called Gaza. Look what we received. The biggest massacre since the Holocaust.

"To establish a Palestinian state after October 7 is a huge prize not only for Hamas [but] for Iran," Netanyahu added.

The Saudis view the attrition and near-destruction of Hamas as a positive development and have aligned themselves with the Palestinian Authority, which controls Arab-populated areas in Judea and Samaria, advocating for that entity to take over the Gaza Strip.

“The Palestinian Authority is capable, with the support of the international community, of controlling the West Bank and Gaza Strip,” said Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud at last year's Munich Security Conference.

Netanyahu has emphasized that he would not support a P.A. takeover of the Strip. “I will not allow us to replace Hamastan with Fatahstan,” he said during a nationally broadcast press conference on Dec. 17, 2023, referring to Fatah, the controlling party in the Palestinian Authority.

“I will not allow the State of Israel to repeat the fateful mistake of Oslo, which brought to the heart of our country and to Gaza the most extreme elements in the Arab world, which are committed to the destruction of the State of Israel and who educate their children to this end," he said.

Despite the gap between the parties, Netanyahu told Channel 14 that normalization with Saudi Arabia was on the table. "We will have not only a normalization agreement, perhaps a peace agreement, with Saudi Arabia, but also with many other countries."

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When histories of the war in the Gaza Strip are written—a war triggered by the Hamas pogrom in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023—the name of Alice Nderitu probably won’t garner more than a footnote at best. That’s an enormous shame because Nderitu’s courage in confronting the institutionalized obsession of the United Nations with the Palestinians takes us to the heart of the great issues wrapped up in this conflict—its purpose, the manner in which it has been fought and the manner in which it has been presented to the outside world.

The story of Nderitu’s ordeal as the U.N.’s Special Advisor for the Prevention of Genocide was the subject of an engaging piece by Johanna Berkman published last week by the online magazine Air Mail. Nderitu took over the unpaid position during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. She lasted for nearly four years in the post before U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres decided against renewing her commission last November following a sustained and often abusive campaign directed at Nderitu—a storied human-rights advocate from Kenya—for her refusal to label the fighting in Gaza as a “genocide.”

At the time, Guterres’s decision to effectively sever Nderitu was the subject of a scathing Wall Street Journal editorial that accused the international organization of a “new low” in its efforts to tarnish Israel as the worst offender among its member states, which include such human-rights luminaries as Russia, China and North Korea. But by and large, the scandal passed unnoticed among the chattering classes, despite their tendency to dip their toes into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with agonized appeals on behalf of the “people of Gaza” from time to time. The same was true for the Air Mail piece profiling her; while the Free Press republished it, everyone else pretty much ignored it.

One key reason why was identified by Nderitu herself in her interview with Berkman. For nearly three of the four years of her U.N. tenure, she was incredibly busy but also mostly unnoticed. Her work took her to refugee camps in Bangladesh and Iraq, to the Brazilian interior to monitor the fates of indigenous tribes, and to Chad, where she saw firsthand the impact of the burgeoning ethnic slaughter that has raged, largely outside the media’s view, in neighboring Sudan. “For these other situations,” she said, “nobody seems to bother with what I say.”

The core point that emerges from the profile of Nderitu is that she desperately wants to make these forgotten conflicts a central topic of discussion and action. Reading her comments, I felt a distinct mix of disgust and shame when she related being told by Sudanese refugees: “Right now, nobody is paying attention to our country. If there is ever peace and the cameras go in, you will face the most shocking thing of the century, a genocide that was completely ignored.” That observation is unarguable.

But after the slaughter on Oct. 7, suddenly everyone wanted a piece of Alice Nderitu. They did so not to beseech her to call the Hamas atrocities, which she condemned, a “genocide,” but to compel her to apply the “genocide” determination to Israel, even before the Israel Defense Forces launched its campaign to destroy the Hamas rape squads in Gaza.

This is a good juncture to note that Nderitu is not an advocate of Israel’s side in this war. Nor is she, as far as I am aware, a supporter of Israel more generally. And that’s fine because as a consummate professional, she understands that her personal leanings are not relevant to her work as a genocide prevention expert. As she says, a genocide determination can only be made by a court of law, and no court—despite the efforts of South Africa; Ireland; Karim Khan, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague; and sundry others—has done so thus far.

But in the eyes of those for whom Gaza is all-consuming, Nderitu’s determination to stick to the correct procedure was an unmistakable sign of collusion with the hated “Zionist entity.”

“Filthy zionist rat, you will burn in hell forever,” read one of the more unhinged emails that arrived in her inbox. Her other detractors essentially said the same, albeit in politer language.

As Nderitu emphasizes, the rush to excoriate Israel is the flipside of the absence of any loudly expressed, ongoing advocacy for populations suffering in conflict zones from Kurdistan to the Democratic Republic of Congo. It’s why the U.N. Human Rights Council and the World Health Organization each have a dedicated agenda item to condemn Israel but no other country; why there is a dedicated agency, in the form of UNRWA, for the descendants of Palestinian refugees but no one else; and why U.N headquarters in New York City houses a Division for Palestinian Rights but not the rights of any other beleaguered nation.

Alice Nderitu, Genocide, United Nations
From left: Thiago Pampolha, vice governor of Rio de Janeiro, and Bruno Dubeux, prosecutor general of the State of Rio de Janeiro, meet with Alice Nderitu, special assessor for genocide prevention on May 15, 2023. Credit: Aline Massuca via Wikimedia Commons.

These institutions are the concrete expression of a strategy that relies on maintaining the status of the Palestinians as victims by not integrating them into the Arab countries where most of them live—in marked contrast to Israel’s integration of thousands of Mizrachi Jews ethnically cleansed from the Islamic world—and by keeping alive the preposterous and morally reprehensible notion that they will one day “return home” and displace their “colonizers.”

That is why, despite many potential flaws on a practical level, U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal to offer the mass of Gazans voluntary, assisted resettlement in other countries while the coastal enclave is rebuilt should be seen as another attempt to break this mold. Because for as long as the Palestinian question is understood as a purely Israeli creation—one for which the Jewish state alone must atone and pay the price, and one that the world must prioritize at the expense of everything and everybody else—there will never be peace. At best, we will have troughs and peaks of mostly containable conflict, as has been the case for the last century.

Many years ago, I read an interview with the Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, who remains imprisoned in Turkey, in which he expressed hope for a resolution of the Palestinian issue since that would allow other issues that receive less attention, like Kurdish self-determination, to enter the spotlight. Neither the Kurds nor anyone else should be forced to wait in line anymore.

If Trump’s proposal compels a shift in how the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis is conceptualized and presented, along with the realization that the peace of the world doesn’t hinge upon it, then it will have been worth it for that reason alone.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government scored record high numbers in a new poll, with his Likud Party winning 33 Knesset seats if an election were held now.

Together with his right-wing coalition, Netanyahu would control a total of 63 seats in the 120-seat parliament, according to Direct Polls, which conducted the survey for Israel's Channel 14.

The opposition parties would take 57 seats, including 10 for the Arab parties.

The numbers show a continued recovery for Likud, up two seats from a Direct Polls survey on Jan. 23, when the Likud Party scored 31 mandates.

A Direct Polls survey reported by Channel 14 on Jan. 16 found the Likud's popularity dropping sharply on news of an impending truce with the Hamas terrorist group, securing only 29 seats, down five since a previous survey published on Jan. 2.

Excluding that poll, Netanyahu's coalition has been showing a consistent climb upward by Direct Polls. The firm accurately predicted the results of the Jewish state’s most recent general election on Nov. 1, 2022.

The Democrats Party, a new party combining the former Meretz and Labor parties, scored the the next highest result with 16 seats in the current survey. However, that was a drop of one seat from the Jan. 23 poll.

Results for the coalition parties are: Shas (11), United Torah Judaism (8), Religious Zionism (6) and Otzma Yehudit (5).

The opposition results are: Yisrael Beiteinu (15), National Unity Party (10) and Yesh Atid (6); the Arab parties dropped one mandate from the previous polls with Hadash-Ta'al and Ra'am (the United Arab List) each at five seats.

In head-to-head matchups as to who would be best suited in the role of prime minister, Netanyahu defeated National Unity Party's Benny Gantz, 50%-to-17% (33% of respondents said neither).

In a matchup with National Unity's Benny Gantz, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wins 50%-to-17% in a Jan. 6, 2025 poll. Credit: Flash90.

In a matchup with Yesh Atid's Yair Lapid, Netanyahu won 51%-to-29% (another 29% said neither).

The poll also found that 68% of coalition supporters believe that Otzma Yehudit leader Itamar Ben-Gvir and the rest of his party should return to the coalition.

On Jan. 19, Ben-Gvir resigned from Netanyahu’s government in protest of the ceasefire-for-hostages deal, saying it signified “the end of the war before Hamas is beaten.”

Ben-Gvir said he would return to the coalition on condition that the war against Hamas resumed.

The poll was conducted on Feb. 6 and sampled 506 adults (18+), consisting of a representative sample of the population. The statistical sampling error 4.5% ± with a 95% confidence level.

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On Friday, the Hamas terrorist organization was due to publish the names of three live hostages to be released from Gazan captivity on Saturday.

Once again, in a nerve-wracking manner, the families will receive the news one day before the release. Currently, before the fifth batch, 20 Israeli hostages remain on the release list for the first phase of the ceasefire, including members of the Bibas family—Shiri, Ariel and Kfir—following the return of the family's father, Yarden, last Saturday.

However, it should be noted that according to Hamas's statements, eight of the 20 are no longer alive, though their identities remain uncertain.

The terrorist organization previously said that Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas were killed in Gaza.

The other 17 hostages on the release list are men aged 50 and above or who are ill or wounded.

"The families are under immense pressure," a source close to the families said on Thursday.

The delegation departing for Doha this weekend to negotiate Phase 2 of the deal will consist only of lower-ranking officials, mostly newcomers who weren't involved in previous rounds in Qatar, without the leadership of the Shin Bet chief and the Mossad director, and without Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, who was supposed to replace them.

Against this backdrop, a diplomatic source told Israel Hayom: "There's concern that the other side's response to the seriousness of this move could be severe, and might even jeopardize the continuation of Phase 2 of the deal."

Negotiations for the second phase are set to begin this weekend in Doha, but in reality, the departing team has no mandate to move forward, and according to the diplomatic source, its members don't command much trust from the Qatari side since they're staff who haven't previously been to the Gulf country. According to the Security Cabinet decision that accompanied the approval of the first phase of the deal, meaningful talks can only begin after the Security Cabinet convenes to discuss the matter.

As demanded by Finance Minister and Security Cabinet member Bezalel Smotrich, negotiations won't proceed automatically. Instead, the negotiating team will need to receive an updated Israeli position before talks can practically begin.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed this week, following his conversation with President Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff, that an Israeli team would depart for talks as required this weekend.

A source familiar with the details told Israel Hayom that initially, the team will only listen to the demands raised by the mediators. On Thursday morning, Hostages and Missing Persons Coordinator Brig. Gen. (res.) Gal Hirsch arrived in Israel from Washington, having advanced his return home to prepare the working-level delegation heading to Qatar.

Originally published by Israel Hayom.

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Negotiating with the United States would be neither "wise, intelligent nor honorable," Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 85, said during a meeting with air force members on Friday.

“Negotiating with such a government should not be done," he said, according to Iran International, a London-based, anti-regime news outlet.

Khamenei added that talks with the U.S. would not solve any of Iran's outstanding issues. "We must understand this correctly and not be misled into thinking that sitting at the negotiation table with that government will resolve certain matters. No, negotiations with the United States will not solve any problems.”

The Iranian leader spoke after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday to reimpose “maximum pressure” sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

The president said he was “torn” about signing the order. “It’s very tough on Iran,” Trump said. “Hopefully, we are not going to have to use it very much.

“I’m unhappy to do it,” he added.

Khamenei, in apparent response, said, “They make statements about us, express opinions and issue threats. If they threaten us, we will threaten them. If they act on those threats, we will do the same. If they undermine our nation's security, we will undoubtedly respond in kind.”

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Two weeks ago, the idea of “transfer” was as close to politically incorrect as possible in the context of Israeli politics.

“Transfer” is an umbrella term in Hebrew, referring to a family of policies, varying in their breadth and implementation, but unified in one characteristic: the movement of Arab populations out of contested areas as a method of resolving the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Left-wing politicians have dismissed the policies as “messianic” or a form of ethnic cleansing. Right-wing politicians have dismissed the idea as impractical or have refused to advance it through sheer political inertia.

However, after almost a year and a half of attack and retreat in Gaza, of thousands of rockets, terror attacks, ballistic missiles, exploding pagers, assassinations, hostage deals and terrorist releases, we found ourselves at the history-shifting moment when a United States president, of all people, put the “transfer” policy back on the political map.

In a joint press conference on Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump announced his administration's intention to “take over the Gaza Strip.”

Trump unfolded his vision to remove the entire population of Gaza “to several other countries,” after which Gaza would be leveled, cleared of rubble, and turned into an international economic development.

“This proposal has tremendously shifted the Overton window. People who were recently afraid to even broach the possibility of 'transfer' are now talking about it absolutely openly,” Martin Sherman, a senior researcher at the Israeli Defense and Security Forum, told JNS.

(The Overton window is the range of subjects and arguments politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time.)

Certain corners of Israel’s news punditry responded with shock at Trump’s proposal, apparently confused as to why he did not receive the memo that you are not allowed to discuss the idea of ‘transfer’ in polite society. However, according to recent polling, Trump is more in line with the Israeli street than many of the talking heads who have been bashing the new proposal.

'A practical plan'

A Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) poll published on Feb. 3, before the White House press conference, showed that a majority of Israeli Jews thought that the proposition "Arabs from Gaza should relocate to another country" was a "practical plan that should be pursued." 

According to the study, 52% of Israeli Jews thought the plan was both realistic and positive, while 30% of Israeli Jews thought the plan was “not practical, but desirable.” Meanwhile, 13% of Israeli Jews said the plan was “a distraction,” and only 3% of Israeli Jews thought that the plan was “immoral.”

When broken down by political affiliation, there is a clear growth in support the further right down the spectrum you travel. JPPI found that 81% of right-wing Israelis, and 57% of center-right respondents, thought that transfer was an actionable solution to the Gaza crisis. Meanwhile, even among left-wing respondents, only 27% said the idea was immoral.

A poll by Israel's Channel 13 shows that the support may have gone up since the press conference on Monday. According to the study, 93% of Likud voters, 98% of Religious Zionism Party voters, 88% of haredi voters, and 100% of Yisrael Beiteinu voters support Trump’s plan. Even center-left voters from the Yesh Atid and National Unity parties support the plan at the rate of 74% and 80%, respectively. When comparing this to polling data from the mid-2000s, one can see an almost 30-point rise in support for “transfer.” 

To summarize, the idea of “transfer” broadly, and Trump's proposal specifically, boasts one of the broadest levels of consensus on any issue in Israeli politics.

Beyond being popular, many commentators believe “transfer” is the only practical solution to the Gaza crisis.

“For a long time, Israel has been faced with a difficult dilemma: either there will be Jews in the Negev or Arabs in Gaza, but there cannot be both," Martin Sherman explained. "If the Jewish state is to continue to exist, Gaza must be vacated of its population.

“All of the alternative proposals on the table so far are just reruns of old failed ideas that led us to October 7. They're all predicated on the yet-to-be-proven idea that somewhere out there there is a Palestinian leader who has both the will and the authority to impose some form of peace agreement on the wider population. There's never been evidence of such an option existing. We have been operating under this false assumption for the past 40 years,” he said.

Sherman further pointed out that the movement of the civilian population is an entirely normal direction in times of military conflict, and that the forceful containment of Gaza's civilian population was a deeply unprecedented decision.

“Wherever there has been warfare, whether it's in Syria or Ukraine, you see civilian populations fleeing the combat. Only here in this one case in the world has the population been trapped where the battles are happening and the entire world has just refused to let them go,” Sherman said.

Humanitarian grounds

Lt-Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch, director of the Palestinian Authority Accountability Initiative at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA), expanded on this point, calling the refusal to let Gazans leave “disgraceful.”

Hirsch explained that the current policy of refusing to let Gazans leave was problematic purely on humanitarian grounds.

“The first question when considering ‘transfer’ is do you actually care about the Gazans. According to possibly embellished U.N. reports, between 75% and 80% of the homes in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed. There are thousands of unexploded munitions lying around the entire area. There's no water, no electricity, no utilities, no shops. To put it simply, the Strip is uninhabitable.

"Throughout the war, the Gazans were not allowed any kind of refuge in any other country. The entire world talked a bunch about helping Gaza, but no one took them in and no one forced Egypt to open its border. The Turks and the Jordanians opened their borders for Syrian refugees but for the Palestinians, the doors were closed,” Hirsch told JNS. “If you care about the well-being of the Gazans at all you have to provide them with an alternative for a better life,” he added.

Both Sherman and Hirsch further agreed that it was likely possible to get a significant amount of the population out with Hamas still operating in Gaza. (Hamas has in the past killed and tortured Gazans who have acted in ways that the group felt were counter to their interests.)

Hirsch said, “I think it's likely possible to move the Gazans out without first destroying Hamas. There is a massive difference between Gazan support for Hamas when they have no alternative and are being held prisoner by Hamas and the international community. If they had a different choice, the math would change. Hamas would have substantial difficulty preventing movement of the population.”

Sherman added that in his view, “Hamas was too weak militarily to prevent such a movement.”

With calls for “transfer” from Gaza on the rise, a similar shift in approach seems around the corner for the terrorist infestation in Judea and Samaria.

Sherman said that the current situation in Judea and Samaria is deeply volatile and likely to explode in violence similar to what was seen on Oct. 7 from Gaza.

“It's just a matter of time,” he said. “It is clear that we are facing similar threats from Judea and Samaria as we did from Gaza, and it is likely that similar solutions may be applicable there.”

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