Members of Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the "military" wing of the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas, stand guard in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Dec. 14, 2022. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90.
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US: Israel killed a third of Hamas terrorists
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Still, some 65% of Gaza's terror tunnels remain intact, according to U.S. intelligence.
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Israel has eliminated only around a third of the Hamas terrorists and tunnels in Gaza since the start of the war on Oct. 7, Politico reported on Tuesday, citing U.S. intelligence estimates.

"Although Hamas’ communications and military abilities have been degraded, only 30 to 35 percent of its fighters—those who were a part of Hamas before the Oct. 7 attack—have been killed and about 65 percent of its tunnels are still intact, U.S. intelligence indicates," the Virginia-based news outlet stated.

According to Western officials, thousands of Hamas terrorists have been able to evade the Israel Defense Forces by hiding in Gaza's vast subterranean tunnel network, while others have mixed into the civilian population.

Gen. Joseph Votel (ret.), who headed U.S. Central Command during the peak of fighting with the Islamic State, was one of several former top officials quoted by the publication who were critical of Jerusalem's war strategy. He urged the Israeli government to consider long-term plans for the Strip and its population.

“Everybody gets the fact that you have to destroy Hamas … , but then what?” asked Votel.

“What’s the plan to take care of the 2.5 million Palestinians that are left behind? What’s the plan to deal with the remainder of the Hamas fighters? It seems incomplete and I just don’t think that they have communicated or have thought through that as well as I would’ve hoped they would’ve.”

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  • Words count:
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    Feb. 11, 2025
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“We didn’t know which Ofer we would get back,” Eyal Kalderon, the cousin of ex-Hamas hostage Ofer Kalderon, told JNS on Monday. “The Ofer that we know is the happy, playful Ofer who jokes a lot and puts a smile on everyone’s face the second he enters a room. We didn’t know if we’d get that Ofer back,” he said. 

Yarden Bibas, Kalderon and Keith Siegel were freed on Feb. 1 after 484 days in Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip. Bibas and Kalderon were handed over to the Red Cross in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, while Siegel was released in Gaza City.

Eyal was reunited with his cousin four days after his release.

“The moment we saw him, he ran towards me, my dad and my sisters and hugged us," Eyal told JNS. "We felt that he really was here. Seeing him hug his four children and his brother Nissan made us realize that we completed our mission.”

Kalderon, 54, a dual Israeli-French citizen, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7, 2023, along with his son Erez, 12, and daughter, Sahar, 16. The children were among the 105 captives freed in November 2023 as part of a ceasefire agreement.

“We kept telling the world about his playful personality, but until [...] and people saw it, they didn’t know," said Eyal. "We feared his humor would vanish, but he's that strong, and his humor and joy of life helped him survive,” he added. 

However, he cautioned that as heartwarming as pictures of the family's reunion were, his cousin had been through hell. 

“He went through a Holocaust," he told JNS. "He spent 484 days in tunnels and did not see the light of day. He was barefoot for 16 days. He was starved and looked the same as Eli Sharabi, Ohad Ben Ami and Or Levy,” he added, referring to the three hostages freed by Hamas on Saturday. 

“He had no connection to the outside world. Terrorists played manipulation tricks on him and tormented him physically and psychologically. Aside from the terrorists, the only living things he saw were rats and spiders,” he continued.

“He didn’t shower for months. They took from him everything related to freedom and self-determination, but he survived and he helped other hostages survive, which I think helped him,” added Eyal.

A long and complex rehabilitation process awaits his cousin, he said. “He cannot have too many people around him all at once, and visitors must be chosen carefully. From hell, he came back as someone who is known to the public; it’s very extreme,” he added. 

“We need to protect him and his privacy, but at the same time he’s already said that he is determined to join the struggle to bring back the 76 remaining hostages. He knows what he went through, what everyone went through and what the 76 hostages are still going through,” in Gaza he said. 

“Until he knows they are all saved, we will start the rehabilitation but we cannot finish it. He is determined to join the struggle as soon as he can, and we will be there to support him together with his children, who will be able to start their own rehabilitation now that their father is back," he added. 

Slowly but surely, the family as a whole, including Ofer’s brother Nissan and his wife, Sharon, Oct. 7 survivors from Kibbutz Sufa, will now be able to start its rehabilitation. 

“This is what happens when people return. When they don’t, it’s all death, sadness and destruction. The real rebirth is to see a father hold his four children," Eyal told JNS. "This is the victory, not the destruction of Hamas," he added. While that needs to be done "in time," he continued, "the first priority on everyone’s agenda must be to bring back the 76 hostages. They don’t have time.” 

The issue is bigger than any one person, he said. “It’s about the future of Israeli society. We all grew up on the ethos that we do not leave anyone behind. Based on that, we drafted into the Israel Defense Forces, and based on it we raised our children and will continue to do so,” he said. 

“We must bring everyone home, otherwise it will be the end of our society as we know it.”

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  • Words count:
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    Feb. 11, 2025

Support for Israel among Hispanic evangelicals in the United States has reached unprecedented heights, the president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference said on Monday.

The remarks come just months after US President Donald Trump achieved a record share of Latino votes in the US elections, and offered a bastion of faith-based support in the predominantly Roman Catholic Latino community.

“The vast majority of the Hispanic evangelical community have a strong commitment to both Israel and the Jewish people around the world, and to build a multi-generational firewall against antisemitism,” Samuel Rodriguez told JNS. “Our commitment to Israel is without compromise and is stronger than ever before.”

Rodriguez delivered an invocation at Trump's first inauguration and has been named one of Israel's Top 50 Christian Allies by the Washington, D.C.-based Israel Allies Foundation. He is in Israel this week to receive the Jerusalem Award from the Friends of Zion Museum, reserved for Christian leaders who support Israel.

His organization serves millions of Hispanic born-again Christians through thousands of evangelical congregations based in the United States, along with thousands of affiliated churches globally.

In addition to domestic issues, Trump’s commitment to Israel and pushback against the antisemitism rife on U.S. college campuses are an additional “indicative marker” of Hispanic evangelical support for the U.S. leader, Rodriguez said.

“We believe that Trump is a quintessential deal maker who will bring people together and will advance public policies that will protect Israel and confront the Iranian nuclear threat,” he told JNS.

More than four out of every 10 Latinos—a sector that has traditionally voted Democrat—voted for Trump in the November elections.

The 55-year-old Latino leader and pastor, who was born to Puerto Rican parents in the United States, said that a muscular U.S. foreign policy in the region would be a stark contrast to the last four years.

“Weakness attracts adversity, and we saw the results of that,” he said.

About 65 million Hispanics live in the United States, making up nearly 20% of the population, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center report.

While most Hispanics are Catholic and tend to be sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians, the number of evangelical Latinos is on the rise.

“It’s a work in progress,” Rodriguez said of the Latino community at large.

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  • Words count:
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About 65% of the structures in the Gaza Strip were destroyed during the year-long Israel-Hamas war, littering the enclave with hundreds of millions of tons of scattered debris, Hebrew media reported on Tuesday.

Experts estimate reconstruction would take at least 10 years and cost tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars, according to Israel's Channel 12 News.

The outlet commissioned Adi Ben-Nun, a Geographic Information System (GIS) specialist and technical manager of the GIS center at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, to analyze satellite imagery of the Strip.

According to that analysis, approximately 84% (25,927) of the structures in northern Gaza were destroyed (25,927), while in Gaza City the figure was about 72% (35,722). In the central camps some 33% (10,375) of the buildings were destroyed, while the figures for Khan Yunis and Rafah in southern Gaza were 73% (32,908) and 52% (15,434)," respectively.

Three other areas stood out with regard to the level of destruction. In Jabaliya, located some 2.5 miles north of Gaza city, about 19,000 buildings were destroyed, or about 100% of the structures in the city.

Four thousand buildings within a mile of the Gaza-Israel border with Israel were also destroyed, also amounting to 100% of the structures in that area.

There was also total destruction for several miles to the north and south of the Netzarim Corridor separating northern and southern Gaza, according to the report.

Satellite images also show that a buffer zone between Israel and Gaza has been completed, according to Channel 12.

On Feb. 4, U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff, after visiting Gaza, said that the damage he witnessed had convinced him it is currently too dangerous to inhabit.

“There are 30,000 unexploded munitions. It’s buildings that could tip over at any moment. There’s no utilities there whatsoever—no working water, electric, gas. Nothing. God knows what kind of disease might be festering there,” he said.

Moreover, terrorist groups in Gaza had undermined the territory, he noted.

“They’ve dug tunnels underneath there that have basically degraded the stone that would form foundations. We have to examine that, and you do it with borings. You do it with subterranean surveys,” he said.

The effort would take “years on top of years,” he stressed, with the disposal effort alone requiring an estimated three to five.

“The president is intent on getting it all done correctly, so for me it is unfair to explain to Palestinians that they might be back in five years. That’s just preposterous,” said Witkoff.

He backed U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal to relocate Palestinians from Gaza, arguing that a better life is not necessarily tied to a given piece of land.

In an interview with Fox News, Witkoff emphasized that peace means improving financial conditions and opportunities.

“Peace in the region means a better life for the Palestinians. A better life is not necessarily tied to the physical space that you are in today,” he said.

“A better life is about better opportunity, better financial conditions, better aspirations for you and your family. That doesn’t occur because you get to pitch a tent in the Gaza Strip and you’re surrounded by 30,000 munitions that could go off at any moment,” he added.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said that the anti-government protests in the country had been "fueled" by "almost inconceivable" amounts of foreign funding.

"And speaking of the protests, you surely saw the reports yesterday about the massive sums of money—truly almost inconceivable amounts—that flowed here from foreign governments to fuel the opposition protests, the so-called ‘popular and spontaneous’ movement," said Netanyahu. He made the remarks to the Knesset plenum during a debate on no-confidence motions submitted by opposition parliamentary groups.

He was apparently referring to reports that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded Blue and White Future, an Israeli NGO that provides financial and organizational support to several groups actively protesting against Netanyahu’s government. The Trump administration is moving to dismantle USAID over accusations of wasteful spending, and plans to fold the agency into the U.S. State Department.

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  • Words count:
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U.S. President Donald Trump has proposed a "new and revolutionary vision" for Gaza's future, that will ensure it never again becomes a terrorist state, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.

In a speech to the Knesset plenum, Netanyahu rejected the opposition's call to return the Palestinian Authority to Gaza, condemning Ramallah for promoting hate and glorifying terrorists.

He reiterated his vision of a future for Gaza without either Hamas or the P.A., emphasizing that Trump's plan was a creative solution that would not repeat the mistakes of the Oslo process.

"President Trump’s vision is new, creative and revolutionary—and he is determined to implement it. You spoke about ‘the day after’—well, now you have ‘the day after’!" said the Israeli premier. "It just does not align with the Oslo vision. Because we will not repeat that mistake again and again, as you have," he continued.

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  • Words count:
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President Donald Trump’s call to move the Arab population in Gaza to Egypt, Jordan and other countries is a winning strategy. He is the first president to come up with a realistic and humane solution to one of the world’s greatest and most vexing problems.

The Arab world, with all its riches and oil wealth, has purposefully kept Gaza poor, underdeveloped and a hotbed of Muslim hatred of Israel and the West for its own selfish reasons. Had the money that was poured into Gaza for the building of tunnels and weaponry to attack Israel been used for peaceful purposes, no one would be talking about relocating the population.

The 2005 disengagement plan by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon removed Jewish communities from Gaza with the thought that Palestinian Arabs there would be interested in economic development rather than the destruction of Israel. The opposite was true. Gazans were more obsessed with wiping Israel off the face of the earth than they were with building farms and industry. A year later, U.S. President George W. Bush tried to bring democracy to Gaza by supporting elections there. Hamas was elected by a majority vote, leading to a radicalized Gaza. The Strip went from a simmering pot to a burning cauldron.

Israel went to war in Gaza in varying degrees in 2008-2009, 2012, 2014 and 2021. Then came Oct. 7, 2023. This completely changed the dynamics, Israeli attitude and narrative of the Mideast. The massacre, atrocities, rapes and kidnappings made it clear the situation in Gaza was unsustainable. The message was clear: Oct. 7 could never happen again.

Israel has seriously degraded Hamas and its leadership. Yet as the photos from the hostage releases attest, Hamas is far from being decimated. Many of those killed have been or are being replaced by younger recruits. The youth of Gaza have been indoctrinated from a very early age to hate Israel and the Jews. The influx of murderers with multiple life sentences released by Israel into Gaza in exchange for the hostages has only exacerbated the situation. With more than 70% of the Gazan population actively supporting Hamas, both politically and militarily, there is no alternative to bring stability to the region except to do as Trump has suggested and move the population of Gaza to countries like Egypt and Jordan, which receive billions in U.S. aid.

It is estimated that 2 million people live in Gaza. Moving large populations like that is not easy, but it has been done before in other places. For instance, nearly 7 million Ukrainians left their homes after the Russian invasion in February 2022. Germany took in 1.2 million of the Ukrainian refugees. Poland took in 958,000, while the United States and the United Kingdom each took in more than 230,000 people.

Annually, America gives $1.5 billion to Egypt and $1.65 billion to Jordan. It has given Yemen $5.9 billion since 2014. Turkey receives $100 million in American funds for humanitarian purposes and at least another $100 million in military assistance. America also gives Indonesia $100 million annually. Between these few countries, the Gazan population can be readily relocated. Many Gazans would welcome the opportunity. Trump is the only world leader who could make this happen.

If it does come to fruition, then it would be a win all the way around. Gaza would no longer be a festering sore of hatred and could become an agricultural paradise or more. Israel would no longer have to worry about another Hamas invasion from its neighbor. A new path for Gaza would help stabilize the Middle East making the world safer. This is a winning strategy and should be implemented as soon as possible.

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  • Words count:
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday extended his condolences to the family of Shlomo Mansour, 86, after the Israeli military confirmed his death during the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.

The terrorist group is still holding his body in the Gaza Strip.

"Shlomo was among those who built the country and one of the founders of Kibbutz Kissufim. In his youth he was saved from the pogroms of the Farhud in Iraq," said Netanyahu in a statement.

"We share in the family's deep mourning. We will neither rest nor be silent until he is returned for burial in Israel. We will continue to take determined and relentless action until we return all of our hostages—the living and the deceased. May his memory be blessed," added the statement.

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  • Words count:
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    Feb. 11, 2025

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday urged the Hamas terror group to abide by its obligation to release additional Israeli hostages in accordance with its ceasefire agreement with the Jewish state.

"We must avoid at all costs resumption of hostilities in Gaza that would lead to immense tragedy. I appeal to Hamas to proceed with the planned liberation of hostages. Both sides must fully abide by their commitments in the ceasefire agreement & resume serious negotiations," tweeted Guterres.

Hamas announced on Monday night that it would delay the hostage release scheduled for Feb. 15 until further notice due to what it alleged were Israeli violations of the truce.

Israel Defense Minister Israel Katz called Hamas’s announcement an “outright violation of the ceasefire” and said he had instructed the Israeli military "to prepare at the highest level of alert for any possible scenario in Gaza." He added: "We will not return to the reality of October 7."

Then-Foreign Minister Katz declared Guterres persona non grata in the Jewish state in October, hours before Rosh Hashanah began.

“Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran’s heinous attack on Israel, as almost every country in the world has done, does not deserve to step foot on Israeli soil,” Katz stated at the time. “This is a secretary-general who has yet to denounce the massacre and sexual atrocities committed by Hamas murderers on Oct. 7, nor has he led any efforts to declare them a terrorist organization.”

“Israel will continue to defend its citizens and uphold its national dignity, with or without António Guterres,” added Katz, referring to the secretary-general as “a stain on the history of the United Nations.”

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  • Words count:
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The family of Hamas hostages Gali and Ziv Berman has received the first sign of life from the twin brothers in nearly 500 days.

The brothers were abducted from Kibbutz Kfar Aza on Oct. 7, 2023, along with Emily Damari, Doron Steinbrecher and Amit Soussana, who have since been freed.

"On one hand, we can breathe a little easier, but we also know whose hands they are in and the grave danger to their lives," said the twins' aunt, Makabit Meyer. "They are alive, and we must save them. We know what they are going through. We saw on Saturday that they have no time," she added, referring to the release of hostages Or Levy, 34, Eli Sharabi, 52, and Ohad Ben Ami, 56.

"These are the images we will have to face from now on. We must finalize a deal to free every last hostage," said Meyer.

In an interview with Israel's Kan Reshet Bet radio, she stated that Gali and Ziv are not being held together, but are alive.

In every media interview, members of the kibbutz, as well as the survivors who returned from captivity, have vowed that they will not stop fighting for Gali and Ziv's release. One of those survivors is Damari, who was with Gali during the Oct. 7 attack.

Gali and Ziv worked together at a sound and lighting company, and as a result, many well-known figures have joined the fight for their release. Both are devoted fans of the Maccabi Tel Aviv and Liverpool soccer clubs, and even played soccer for their kibbutz team, the "Kfar Aza Foxes."

This past September, the twins marked their 27th birthday in captivity. Their mother, Talia, spoke at a gathering with their friends:
"My beautiful Gali and Ziv, we love you and miss you. I can barely breathe. Stay strong in the darkness. Hold on, we are here waiting for you, ready to embrace and help you heal with all the love in the world. My body keeps functioning, but my soul is shattered. Just a little longer, my princes, just a little longer."

Originally published by Israel Hayom.

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