JEWISH KING JESUS IS COMING AT THE RAPTURE FOR US IN THE CLOUDS-DON'T MISS IT FOR THE WORLD.THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY- WHEN THE PLAIN SENSE MAKES GOOD SENSE-SEEK NO OTHER SENSE-LEST YOU END UP IN NONSENSE.GET SAVED NOW- CALL ON JESUS TODAY.THE ONLY SAVIOR OF THE WHOLE EARTH - NO OTHER. 1 COR 15:23-JESUS THE FIRST FRUITS-CHRISTIANS RAPTURED TO JESUS-FIRST FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT-23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.ROMANS 8:23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.(THE PRE-TRIB RAPTURE)
ISRAEL TO CONQUER GAZA FINALLY.
WORLD POWERS IN THE LAST DAYS (END OF AGE OF GRACE NOT THE WORLD)
EUROPEAN UNION-KING OF WEST-DAN 9:26-27,DAN 7:23-24,DAN 11:40,REV 13:1-10
EGYPT-KING OF THE SOUTH-DAN 11:40
RUSSIA-KING OF THE NORTH-EZEK 38:1-2,EZEK 39:1-3
CHINA-KING OF THE EAST-DAN 11:44,REV 9:16,18
VATICAN-RELIGIOUS LEADER-REV 13:11-18,REV 17:4-5,9,18
WORLD TERRORISM
GENESIS 6:11-13
11
The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with
violence.(WORLD TERRORISM,MURDERS)(HAMAS IN HEBREW IS VIOLENCE)
12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
13
And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the
earth is filled with violence (TERRORISM)(HAMAS) through them; and,
behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
GENESIS 16:11-12
11
And the angel of the LORD said unto her,(HAGAR) Behold, thou art with
child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael;(FATHER OF
THE ARAB/MUSLIMS) because the LORD hath heard thy affliction.
12 And
he (ISHMAEL-FATHER OF THE ARAB-MUSLIMS) will be a wild (DONKEY-JACKASS)
man;(ISLAM IS A FAKE AND DANGEROUS SEX FOR MURDER CULT) his hand will be
against every man,(ISLAM HATES EVERYONE) and every man's hand against
him;(PROTECTING THEMSELVES FROM BEING BEHEADED) and he (ISHMAEL
ARAB/MUSLIM) shall dwell in the presence of all his
brethren.(LITERAL-THE ARABS LIVE WITH THEIR BRETHERN JEWS)
ISAIAH 14:12-14
12
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer,(SATAN) son of the
morning!(HEBREW-CRECENT MOON-ISLAM) how art thou cut down to the ground,
which didst weaken the nations!
13 For thou hast said in thine
heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars
of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the
sides of the north:
14 I (SATAN HAS EYE TROUBLES) will ascend above
the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.(AND 1/3RD OF
THE ANGELS OF HEAVEN FELL WITH SATAN AND BECAME DEMONS)
JOHN 16:2
2
They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that
whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.(ISLAM
MURDERS IN THE NAME OF MOON GOD ALLAH OF ISLAM)
GODS PROMISED LAND FOR ISRAEL.
And
here are the bounderies of the land that Israel will inherit either
through war or peace or God in the future. God says its Israels land and
only Israels land. They will have every inch God promised them of this
land in the future.
Egypt east of the Nile River, Saudi Arabia,
Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, The southern part of Turkey and the
Western Half of Iraq west of the Euphrates. Gen 13:14-15, Psm 105:9,11,
Gen 15:18, Exe 23:31, Num 34:1-12, Josh 1:4.ALL THIS LAND ISRAEL WILL
DEFINATELY OWN IN THE FUTURE, ITS ISRAELS NOT ISHMAELS LAND.12 TRIBES
INHERIT LAND IN THE FUTURE.
Joel 3:2-King James Version (YOU
DIVIDE JERUSALEM IN HALF - YOUR POKING GOD IN THE EYE - GOD SAYS AN EYE
FOR AN EYE AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH- YOU WANNA DIVIDE JERUSALEM IN HALF
- HALF OF EARTHS POPULATION 4 BILLION DIE ON EARTH.
2 I will also
gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of
Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my
heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted
my land.
DANIEL 9:26-27
26 And after threescore and two weeks
shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the
prince that shall come (ROMANS IN AD 70) shall destroy the city and the
sanctuary;(ROMANS DESTROYED THE 2ND TEMPLE) and the end thereof shall be
with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.
27
And he( EU ROMAN, JEWISH DICTATOR) shall confirm the covenant with many
for one week:( 7 YEARS) and in the midst of the week he shall cause the
sacrifice and the oblation to cease,( 3 1/2 YRS) and for the
overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the
consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
PROOF HALF ON EARTH DIE DURING THE 7 YR TRIBULATION PERIOD (8 BILLION ON EARTH)
REVELATION 6:7-8 (8 BILLION- 2 BILLION = 6 BILLION)
7 And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
8
And I looked, and behold a pale horse:(CHLORES GREEN) and his name that
sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given
unto them over the fourth part of the earth,(2 BILLION) to kill with
sword,(WEAPONS) and with hunger,(FAMINE) and with death,(INCURABLE
DISEASES) and with the beasts of the earth.(ANIMAL TO HUMAN DISEASE).
REVELATION 9:15,18 (6 BILLION - 2 BILLION = 4 BILLION)
15 And the four(DEMONIC WAR) angels were loosed,
18
By these three was the third part of men killed,(2 BILLION) by the
fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their
mouths.(NUCLEAR ATOMIC BOMBS)
HALF OF EARTHS POPULATION DIE DURING THE 7 YR TRIBULATION.(THESE VERSES ARE JUDGEMENT SCRIPTURES NOT RAPTURE SCRIPTURES)
LUKE
17:34-37 (8 TOTAL BILLION - 4 BILLION DEAD IN TRIB = 4 BILLION TO JESUS
KINGDOM) (HALF DIE DURING THE 7 YR TRIBULATION PERIOD JUST LIKE THE
BIBLE SAYS)(GOD DOES NOT LIE)(AND NOTICE MOST DIE IN WAR AND
DISEASES-NOT COMETS-ASTEROIDS-QUAKES OR TSUNAMIS)
34 I tell you, in
that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken,(IN
WW3 JUDGEMENT) and the other shall be left.(half earths population 4
billion die in the 7 yr trib)
35 Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken,(IN WW3 JUDGEMENT) and the other left.
36 Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken,(IN WW3 JUDGEMENT) and the other left.
37
And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto
them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered
together.(Christians have new bodies,this is the people against
Jerusalem during the 7 yr treaty)(Christians bodies are not being eaten
by the birds).THESE ARE JUDGEMENT SCRIPTURES-NOT RAPTURE
SCRIPTURES.BECAUSE NOT HALF OF PEOPLE ON EARTH ARE CHRISTIANS.AND THE
CONTEXT IN LUKE 17 IS THE 7 YEAR TRIBULATION OR 7 YR TREATY PERIOD.WHICH
IS JUDGEMENT ON THE EARTH.NOT 50% RAPTURED TO HEAVEN.
MATTHEW 24:37-42 (THESE ARE JUDGEMENT SCRIPTURES-SURE NOT RAPTURE SCRIPTURES)
37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
38
For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and
drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe
entered into the ark,
39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
40 Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken,(IN WW3 JUDGEMENT) and the other left.
41 Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken,(IN WW3 JUDGEMENT) and the other left.
42 Watch therefore:(FOR THE LAST DAYS SIGNS HAPPENING) for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.
2 Peter 3:6-7 Amplified Bible (AMP) (HOT SUN, NUKES ETC)
6 By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.
7
By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire,
being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
ISAIAH 66:7-8
A Nation Born in a Day
7 Before she was in labor, she gave birth.Before her pain came, she delivered a male child.
8
Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Can a land be
born in one day? Can a nation be brought forth at once? For as soon as
Zion was in labor, she gave birth to her children.
Isaiah 2:19
19
Men will go into caves of the rocks And into holes of the ground
(BUNKERS,UNDER GROUND TUNNELS) Before the terror of the Lord , And the
splendor of His majesty, When He arises to make the earth
tremble.(EARTHQUES,NUKES)
JOB 30:6
6 They are living on the slopes of the wadis,among the rocks and in holes in the ground.(TUNNELS, BUNKERS)
DR DOCTORION-ANGEL OF THE MIDEAST
"The
angel showed me that the United Nations shall be broken in pieces
because of the crisis in the Middle East. There shall be no more United
Nations. The angel with the sickle shall reap the harvest.
MARK 13:8
8
For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against
kingdom:(ETHNIC GROUP AGAINST ETHNIC GROUP) and there shall be
earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles:
these are the beginnings of sorrows.
LUKE 21:11
11 And great
earthquakes shall be in divers places,(DIFFERNT PLACES AT THE SAME TIME)
and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall
there be from heaven.
REVELATION 16:3-7
3 And the second angel
poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead
man: and every living soul died in the sea.(enviromentalists won't like
this result)
4 And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters; and they became blood.
5
And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Lord,
which art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus.
6
For they(False World Church and Dictator) have shed the blood of saints
and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are
worthy.
ZECHARIAH 14:12-13
12 And this shall be the plague
wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against
Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their
feet,(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB) and their eyes shall consume away in
their holes,(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB) and their tongue shall consume
away in their mouth.(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB)(BECAUSE NUKES HAVE BEEN
USED ON ISRAELS ENEMIES)(GOD PROTECTS ISRAEL AND ALWAYS WILL)
13 And
it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the LORD
shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of
his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his
neighbour.(1/2-3 BILLION DIE IN WW3)(THIS IS AN ATOMIC BOMB EFFECT)
EZEKIEL 20:47
47
And say to the forest of the south, Hear the word of the LORD; Thus
saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall
devour every green tree in thee, and every dry tree: the flaming flame
shall not be quenched, and all faces from the south to the north shall
be burned therein.
ZEPHANIAH 1:18
18 Neither their silver nor
their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the LORD'S wrath;
but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for
he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land.
MALACHI 4:1
1
For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven;(FROM ATOMIC
BOMBS) and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be
stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of
hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
REVELATION 8:7
7
The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with
blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees
was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.
REVELATION 9:18
18
By these three was the third part of men killed,(2 BILLION) by the
fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their
mouths.(ATOMIC BOMBS)(RUSSIA CHINA DESTROYED BY ISRAELS ATOMIC BOMBS)
JEREMIAH 50:3,24
3
For out of the north (RUSSIA) there cometh up a nation against her,
which shall make her land desolate, and none shall dwell therein: they
shall remove, they shall depart, both man and beast.
24 I have laid a
snare for thee, and thou art also taken, O Babylon,(NEW YORK) and thou
wast not aware: thou art found, and also caught, because thou hast
striven against the LORD. (RUSSIA A SNEAK ATTACK ON NEW YORK)
ISAIAH 66:15-18
15
For, behold, the LORD will come with fire,(NUKES) and with his chariots
like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with
flames of fire.
16 For by fire and by his sword will the LORD plead with all flesh: and the slain of the LORD shall be many.
17
They that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in the gardens
behind one tree in the midst, eating swine's flesh, and the abomination,
and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith the LORD.
18 For I
know their works and their thoughts: it shall come, that I will gather
all nations and tongues; and they shall come, and see my glory.
ISAIAH 26:21
21
For, behold, the LORD cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants
of the earth for their iniquity:(GOD/ISRAEL HATE AND BRAKING OF HIS
COMMANDMENTS) the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more
cover her slain.(WW3,1/2 earths population die - 3 BILLION).
ISAIAH 13:6-13 KJV
6 Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty.
7 Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man's heart shall melt:(FROM FRIGHT)
8
And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them;
they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed
one at another; their faces shall be as flames.
9 Behold, the day of
the LORD cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land
desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it.
10 For
the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their
light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall
not cause her light to shine.
11 And I will punish the world for
their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the
arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the
terrible.
12 I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir.
13
Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of
her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his
fierce anger.
ISAIAH 24:17-23 KJV
17 Fear, and the pit, and the snare, are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth.
18
And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth from the noise of the
fear shall fall into the pit; and he that cometh up out of the midst of
the pit shall be taken in the snare: for the windows from on high are
open, and the foundations of the earth do shake.
19 The earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly.
20
The earth shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, and shall be removed
like a cottage; and the transgression thereof shall be heavy upon it;
and it shall fall, and not rise again.
21 And it shall come to pass
in that day, that the LORD shall punish the host of the high ones that
are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth.
22 And they
shall be gathered together, as prisoners are gathered in the pit, and
shall be shut up in the prison, and after many days shall they be
visited.
23 Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed,
when the LORD of hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and
before his ancients gloriously.
Not to save Netanyahu, but to
save hostages'Gantz urges Netanyahu, Lapid, Liberman to form temporary
‘hostage-redemption government’Blue and White chairman calls on PM to
put together six-month coalition committed to freeing captives,
resolving Haredi enlistment; Yisrael Beytenu says it ‘won’t take part in
any spin’By Stav Levaton-and ToI Staff 23 August 2025, 11:06 pm
MK
Benny Gantz on Saturday evening called on Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu as well as fellow opposition leaders to establish a temporary
emergency government tasked with tackling two of Israel’s most urgent
challenges: securing the release of all remaining hostages held by Hamas
in Gaza and advancing legislation on the ultra-Orthodox military
draft.The Blue and White-National Unity chairman made the offer at a
primetime press conference, addressing Netanyahu, Opposition Leader Yair
Lapid, and Yisrael Beytenu chief Avigdor Liberman.Evoking Holocaust
imagery to describe the state of the captives, Gantz warned that “the
hostages are in mortal danger” and that military reservists “are
collapsing under the burden” after nearly two years of war since Hamas’s
October 7, 2023, onslaught.He proposed forming what he termed a
“government of hostage redemption and equality in the [military]
burden,” with a clear six-month mandate, after which the country would
head to new elections — moving up the current timetable from October
2026.Making it clear he believed Netanyahu was currently avoiding a Gaza
deal due to political pressure from his far-right allies rather than
valid security considerations, Gantz called on him to ditch them and
think first of the nation.“In Hamas’s tunnels, there are 50 hostages…
Every hostage whose life is at risk could be our son, your son,” Gantz
said, underscoring the urgency of reaching a political framework that
could enable a deal with Hamas.The former defense minister emphasized
that his initiative was not about bolstering Netanyahu’s political
standing, but about addressing two national crises.To his critics on the
center-left, he said, “I don’t want to save Netanyahu, but to save the
hostages.”Last week, as reports emerged that he was considering joining
Netanyahu to pass a Gaza deal, his party responded to a Walla news
article calling Gantz a “useful idiot,” saying: “An idiot, and not too
useful, is someone who hates Bibi more than they want to bring back the
hostages.”Less than an hour after Gantz’s press conference, Liberman’s
Yisrael Beytenu party issued an ambivalent response.“Yisrael Beytenu
calls for all the hostages to be returned now, without conditions,” the
party said in a statement. “The only government that we will be part of
is a wall-to-wall Zionist government, and we won’t take part in any
spin.”Liberman has publicly clashed with Netanyahu over security policy,
the ultra-Orthodox draft, and accusations of corruption in recent
years.Gantz’s proposal marks the third time in recent years that he has
proposed entering a unity arrangement under Netanyahu. In 2020, amid the
COVID-19 pandemic, he joined an emergency unity government that
collapsed after less than a year, after Netanyahu was widely seen to
have wriggled out of his power-sharing agreement with Gantz.Gantz’s
decision to join Netanyahu’s government in 2020, despite his campaign
promise not to, cost him significant public support. Many of his voters
felt betrayed, and the then-Blue and White alliance quickly fell apart
as Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid and Moshe Ya’alon’s Telem broke away. Left
with a smaller faction, Gantz saw his party’s standing in the polls
collapse.He again joined Netanyahu in the aftermath of Hamas’s October
7, 2023, onslaught, when his party, now titled National Unity, entered a
wartime emergency government. That arrangement ended in June 2024, when
Gantz withdrew, citing frustrations with Netanyahu’s management of the
conflict and lack of a clear strategy for the war.Gantz’s current Blue
and White-National Unity party is struggling in the polls, especially
since his key party colleague Gadi Eisenkot resigned almost two months
ago, and has lately been predicted to fail to win any seats if elections
were held today.Beyond saving the hostages, key to Gantz’s new proposal
is the contentious issue of mandatory military service for
ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students. Israel’s coalition, heavily reliant on
the support of Haredi parties, has resisted sweeping reforms to the
decades-old exemption system. Critics argue that the arrangement
unfairly burdens non-Haredi Israelis, particularly at a time when tens
of thousands of reservists have been mobilized for extended periods
since October 7.Gantz framed his initiative as an opportunity to
legislate a more equitable system while addressing the mounting social
and military strain on IDF reservists. By setting a six-month timeline,
he emphasized that the emergency government would have a narrow focus
before returning power to the voters.It remained unclear how Netanyahu
or Lapid would respond to Gantz’s proposal. Lapid has in the past called
for broad national unity but has been reluctant to join a government
under Netanyahu.Gantz’s gambit comes as pressure intensifies on the
government to reach a deal for the remaining hostages in Gaza, and as
the IDF grapples with the long-term sustainability of its reserve
system.
Explainer-Israel is planning to conquer Gaza City – what
legal obligations will that incur? Displacing the estimated one million
residents of Gaza City will heighten Israel’s responsibility to ensure a
humanitarian catastrophe is avoided, say legal experts-By Jeremy
Sharon-22 August 2025, 12:05 pm
The government and the Israel
Defense Forces are currently moving resolutely ahead with plans to
conquer Gaza City, with the military having begun the process of calling
up 60,000 reservists to participate in or support the new offensive.As
part of the operation, dubbed Gideon’s Chariots B, the IDF intends to
evacuate Gaza City of its estimated one million residents and relocate
them south of the Netzarim Corridor, between the southern Gazan cities
of Khan Younis and Rafah.Such a complex operation, both to conquer Gaza
City and to move such a massive population, will inevitably raise
questions about Israel’s legal obligations toward Gaza’s civilian
population and the legality of the operation itself.Belligerent
Occupation-Under the laws of armed conflict, states may occupy foreign
territory in the context of armed conflict, and indeed, it is a common
phenomenon of war.Dr. Eran Shamir Borer, director of the Israel
Democracy Institute’s Center for Security and Democracy and former head
of the IDF international law division, notes that an occupation is
considered in effect if a territory comes under the “effective control”
of a hostile force.“Effective control,” he explains, means having “boots
on the ground” in terms of troops being present in the territory in
question, while at the same time, the hostile power must be able to
exercise governance over the territory, and the previous government must
no longer have that capability.In March this year, the High Court of
Justice ruled that Israel was not an occupying power in Gaza at the
time, since it did not have the ability to govern the Strip and because
Hamas was still able to exercise its own rule over the Gazan
population.Today, Israel is in control of some 75 percent of Gaza’s
territory, but at present, most of the territory it holds includes
almost no Palestinian civilians. Most civilians are instead concentrated
in the Muwasi humanitarian zone in the south, in Gaza City in the north
and the Deir al-Balah governorate in the center.Shamir Borer says that
even today, Israel could argue it is not in occupation of those areas
where Gazans are currently present, since Hamas still exercises
effective governmental control over the population centers, and controls
aspects of civilian life there.He noted, however, that other legal
arguments hold that since Israel controls so much of Gaza’s territory,
as well as all entry and exit points to and from the Strip, Israel is in
effect already an occupying power in Gaza. This has been the position
of states such as the UK.The cabinet resolution of August 7 seems to
instruct the IDF to establish “operational control” over Gaza City,
rather than to occupy it, perhaps in an attempt to avoid acknowledging
Israel’s legal responsibilities that come with the status of an
occupying power.Writing for the legal blog Just Security, Prof. Eliav
Lieblich of Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Law said of the cabinet
resolution to occupy all of Gaza that “claiming that one can ‘take over’
territory – or achieve ‘operational control’ over it – without
occupying it, is nonsense.”He also noted that Netanyahu has repeatedly
stated that part of the planned operation is to remove Hamas from power,
but pointed out that in so doing, Israel would in effect be fulfilling
the conditions of a belligerent occupation.Legal obligations of
occupation-The issue of whether an occupation has been established in a
legal sense is critical, because if a state is considered to be
occupying a territory, its legal responsibilities to the civilian
population under its control are much greater than its obligations to
that population simply as a warring party.In an occupation, the
occupying power has a legal duty to provide for the civilian population
under its control and ensure security and public order.For Israel in its
current war, this would include in the immediate term being legally
responsible for providing food, water, shelter, medical services, and
other critical needs of the Gazan civilian population, including from
its own resources if necessary.In the longer term this would include
fulfilling all responsibilities of national and municipal authorities,
from education and sanitation to economy and trade regulation.That
compares to the legal obligations under the laws of armed conflict when
there is no belligerent occupation, when a warring party is only
obligated to “allow and facilitate“ the provision of food and medical
supplies by third parties to a civilian population, subject to certain
conditions aimed at preventing enemy forces from taking advantage of
such aid, and does not hold ultimate responsibility for its supply.Under
the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is signatory, free
passage of all medical supplies must be allowed into territory under its
control, although the treaty states that the facilitation of food is
only obligatory for children under 15, expectant mothers and “maternity
cases.”But Article 70 of the Additional Protocol I of the convention, to
which Israel is not a party, is broadly seen as requiring the provision
of food to all civilians.Shamir Borer points out that although Israel
is not a signatory to Additional Protocol I, it has, in court
proceedings, indicated that it regards the core aspect of Article 70 as
reflecting International Customary Law, a body of law arising from
“general practice accepted as law” and norms of international
law.Israeli military officials and cabinet ministers have been careful
not to describe the pending operation against Gaza City as a plan to
“occupy” it, using instead the phrase “take control,” likely due to the
legal consequences of a formal occupation.Attorney General Gali
Baharav-Miara pointed out this issue when the cabinet took the decision
on August 8 to conquer the entire Gaza Strip, telling Netanyahu that
this would make Israel responsible for the needs of the entire
territory. The prime minister, in response, told the attorney general
the intention was to merely “take control” of the territory, not
“occupy” it.Lieblich, in his article, alleged that Netanyahu’s use of
the term “take control” is designed specifically to establish “an
occupation of the maximum possible territory with the minimum possible
civilians.”But the absence of civilians from the territory Israel takes
control of would be a result of Israel’s actions in order to claim that
there is no occupation to begin with,” he asserted.“While this is a
non-starter legally, it is part of a wider political discourse of
denying any responsibility for the welfare of Gaza’s civilians,” wrote
Lieblich.Legal consequences of evacuating civilians-Israel intends to
evacuate Gaza City’s civilian population to areas where it does not seek
to establish effective control, which would help reduce civilian
casualties during the subsequent offensive there, and would also bolster
claims it is not occupying the civilian population and therefore does
not bear the broader legal responsibilities arising from the law of
occupation.But there would nevertheless exist a legal obligation for
Israel not to create a situation of dire humanitarian conditions in
which some one million people evacuated from Gaza city are left without
adequate provisions for food, shelter and medicine, Shamir-Borer
said.“There is an obligation to facilitate the provision of aid. if
you’re moving [Gazans] somewhere where they can’t get aid, then you may
be violating those laws,” he asserted.“Israel would be exposing itself
to accusations already out there that it is deliberately creating dire
humanitarian conditions.”These accusations have taken on additional
weight in light of comments by senior Israeli cabinet ministers in
recent months of an intention to create difficult humanitarian
conditions to compel Gazans to emigrate.Doing so would likely constitute
forced displacement.In May this year, leader of the far-right Religious
Zionism party and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that it was
the government’s intention to “concentrate” the Gazan population in the
south of the Strip where they would be confined to a “humanitarian”
zone.“They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no
hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation
to begin a new life in other places,” Smotrich said at the time.Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly made similar comments
regarding the destruction of Gaza’s housing stock by the IDF during
operations, saying in a closed door session of the Knesset Foreign
Affairs and Defense Committee — according to media reports — “We are
destroying more and more houses, they [Gazans] don’t have anywhere to
return to,” and adding, “The only expected result will be a desire for
Gazans to emigrate outside the Strip.”Publicly, at least, Netanyahu has
said that moving the population to the south will be carried out for the
safety and protection of Gazan civilians, which the Fourth Geneva
Convention permits.Avoidance measures-It appears that Israel is making
some effort to avoid a situation in which it deepens the humanitarian
crisis in Gaza if and when it evacuates Gaza City’s civilian
population.The provision of tents and shelter equipment to Gaza was
renewed at the beginning of this week, “as part of the IDF’s
preparations to move the population from combat zones to the southern
Gaza Strip for their protection.”Such items have not been allowed into
the Strip for the last 26 weeks,And Israeli liaisons to Gaza began
telling medical officials and aid groups in the northern part of the
Strip this week “to prepare for the population’s movement to the
southern Gaza Strip,” including transferring medical equipment to that
region.The provision of aid to Gaza has also been ramped up in the last
two months, although it remains well below the levels of aid allowed in
during 2024, with the UN and aid agencies insisting that the
humanitarian situation in the territory remains dire.The UN Office for
the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Wednesday that to cope
with the current shelter needs of the Gazan population would require the
entry of some 3,500 truckloads of tents, tarpaulins and basic household
items, without factoring in further displacement from Gaza City.OCHA
also said that the plan to conquer Gaza City “will have a horrific
humanitarian impact on people already exhausted, malnourished, bereaved,
displaced, and deprived of basics needed for survival.”It warned the
operation was “a recipe for further disaster,” and said it could also
amount to “forcible transfer.”Israel’s Coordinator of Government
Activities in the Territories (COGAT) has pushed back against these
claims, publishing on Thursday images and videos of food being prepared
and distributed in Gaza.COGAT head Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian accused the
UN on Thursday of making “unfounded claims about hunger in Gaza,” and
said Israel was working to “facilitate the entry of massive quantities
of food, medicine, and humanitarian aid.”“Instead of issuing statements
and publishing political and distorted reports, the UN and international
organizations should direct their efforts toward real assistance for
the residents, and not be dragged into false narratives that serve
terrorism,” said Alian.
Katz vows to destroy Gaza City unless
Hamas frees hostages, lays down arms-IDF chief says army ‘expanding
activity in Gaza’; Hamas calls for open borders for aid after UN famine
report; PMO calls famine declaration ‘outright lie’ and ‘modern blood
libel’By Emanuel Fabian,Agencies and ToI Staff 22 August 2025, 7:16 pm
Defense
Minister Israel Katz on Friday vowed that Israel would destroy Gaza
City unless the Hamas terror group releases the hostages and lays down
its weapons.Katz noted that the government on Thursday approved the
IDF’s plans to open the “gates of hell” and “defeat Hamas in Gaza,” as
the military prepares to push into Gaza City in a new offensive aimed at
conquering the Palestinian territory’s largest population center.The
comments came hours after a global hunger monitor declared for the first
time that famine had struck northern Gaza, a charge Israel swiftly
denied, and as mediating countries made a final push to reach a
ceasefire and hostage release deal before Israel launches its planned
assault.“The gates of hell will soon open over Hamas murderers and
rapists in Gaza — until they agree to Israel’s conditions for ending the
war, primarily the release of all hostages and their disarmament,” Katz
said.If Hamas doesn’t capitulate, Gaza City “will become Rafah and Beit
Hanoun” — two cities that have been largely turned to rubble by Israeli
military activity, he declared.While the planned expansion of military
operations in Gaza City has yet to fully get underway, IDF Chief of
Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said Friday during a visit to the West Bank
that the army is “expanding activity in Gaza.”Israel, which has called
up tens of thousands of army reservists, is pressing ahead with its plan
to seize Gaza’s biggest urban center despite international criticism of
an operation likely to force the displacement of many more
Palestinians, and despite concerns by top security officials that it
could endanger the hostages.On the ground, Gaza’s Hamas-run civil
defense agency said Israeli fire killed at least 46 people on Friday,
more than half of them in Gaza City. Hamas figures cannot be verified
and do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.Umm Mohammed
Nasr, a 42-year-old mother of four from Gaza City, said that “the
bombing hasn’t stopped since this morning… but we have no idea where to
go.”“We are dying,” she said.Ahead of the IDF’s upcoming offensive in
Gaza City, Israel on Thursday warned medical facilities and
international organizations in the northern Strip to gear up for mass
evacuations of civilians.Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza City have
already left their homes as Israeli forces have escalated strikes on the
Sabra and Tuffah neighborhoods. Some families have left for shelters
along the coast, while others have moved to central and southern parts
of the enclave, according to residents there.Hamas demands Gaza border
crossings open-Also on Friday, Hamas called for an immediate end to the
war in Gaza and lifting of Israeli-imposed restrictions on the flow of
aid into the Strip after the United Nations Integrated Food Security
Phase Classification (IPC) system officially declared a famine in parts
of the territory earlier in the day.In a statement published online, the
terror group called for “immediate action by the UN and the Security
Council to stop the war and lift the siege” and demands that border
crossings into Gaza be opened “without restrictions to allow the urgent
and continuous entry of food, medicine, water and fuel.”According to the
IPC report, an estimated 514,000 people — or nearly a quarter of Gaza’s
population — are experiencing famine, and that number is expected to
rise to 641,000 by the end of September.According to the hunger monitor,
Israel’s total blockade on aid from early March to mid-May — which came
after the collapse of a ceasefire with Hamas — was followed by
“critically low volumes through July” and “coupled with the collapse of
local food production,” leading to “extreme food shortages.”Israel
resumed the supply of aid in May, but the flow remained well below what
it had been prior to the blockade; it was only in July, after reports of
imminent famine, that Israel announced a series of actions to boost the
flow of aid into Gaza, while denying there was starvation in the
enclave.Israel swiftly denied the report, saying that the IPC relies on
Hamas sources and accused the system of having “twisted its own rules”
in declaring a famine.PMO: IPC report is ‘modern blood libel’In a Friday
statement, the Prime Minister’s Office called the IPC famine
declaration an “outright lie” and “modern blood libel.”“Israel does not
have a policy of starvation. Israel has a policy of preventing
starvation,” the PMO said.The statement said the report by the IPC
report ignores Israel’s humanitarian efforts and fails to mention a drop
in the prices of oil, sugar, salt, flour, yeast and chickpeas in Gaza
that the PMO attributes to the entry of humanitarian supplies into the
Strip. The source of the information on the prices is unclear.Citing
data from the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in
the Territories, Israel has facilitated the entry of millions of tons
of aid into Gaza since war there was triggered by the Hamas onslaught of
October 7, 2023, the PMO said.The statement also said the controversial
US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, as well as NGOs
facilitated by Israel, have served millions of warm meals to Gazans.On
the other hand, the PMO cited UN data as saying that in July, “of 1,012
aid trucks collected, only 10 reached warehouses; the rest were looted
before distribution.” The PMO also accused the UN of having refused to
deliver “hundreds of pallets of food” from the Kerem Shalom Crossing.The
PMO did concede that there had been “temporary shortages” of aid in
Gaza “which Israel overcame with airdrops, maritime deliveries, safe
transport routes and GHF distribution points manned by American
companies,” but blamed the shortages on “Hamas’s systematic theft.”The
statement did not mention the 11-week aid blockade Israel imposed on the
Strip following the collapse of the last ceasefire-hostage deal on
March 2.The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, in which
some 1,200 people were killed in Israel and 251 were taken hostage to
the Strip.The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 62,000
people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the
fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not
differentiate between civilians and fighters.
At least 34 said
killed by IDF in Gaza; hospital preps for Gaza City evacuation
orders-Local media says six killed near aid site in northern Gaza, 14 in
Khan Younis; European Hospital prepares to reopen ahead of expected
influx of Palestinians displaced from north By Emanuel Fabian,Agencies
and ToI Staff 23 August 2025, 6:03 pm
Israeli attacks in the Gaza
Strip killed at least 34 people on Saturday, according to Palestinian
media, as a major hospital in southern Gaza prepared for imminent Israel
Defense Forces evacuation orders of Gaza City, ahead of its planned
offensive to conquer the metropolis.The death toll in Gaza was not
independently verified and does not differentiate between combatants and
civilians.Israel has yet to launch its planned major offensive to
capture the enclave’s largest city, but according to local aid workers,
there has been a marked increase in Israeli bombardments since the
beginning of August.According to the reports, six of the people killed
died while waiting for aid in the Zikim area of the northern Gaza Strip;
two were killed in a drone strike on a tent in Khan Younis, and one was
killed in a drone strike on a house in al-Sabra, south of Gaza
City.According to health officials at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis,
Israeli strikes killed at least 14 people in southern Gaza, more than
half of them women and children. The officials said the strikes targeted
tents sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis.Mohamed Saada was
among thousands of people who sought food from a delivery in the Zikim
area on Saturday, and one of many who left empty-handed.“I came here to
bring food for my children, but couldn’t get anything, due to the huge
numbers of people and the difficulty of the situation between the
shootings and the trucks running over people,” he said.The IDF has
acknowledged firing warning shots at crowds that get too close to its
soldiers at aid distribution sites in Gaza, but has called the death
tallies exaggerated, though it hasn’t provided alternate numbers.“The
entire Gaza Strip is being bombed … In the south. In the north.
Everywhere,” Abu Agala, uncle of two children killed, told The
Associated Press.Another grieving relative, Hekmat Foujo, pleaded for a
truce.“We want to rest,” Foujo said through her tears. ‘’Have some mercy
on us.”The IDF has yet to comment on reported strikes on Saturday.Aid
group Doctors without Borders, or MSF, said its clinics around Gaza City
are seeing high numbers of patients as people flee. Caroline Willemen,
MSF project coordinator in the city, noted a marked increase in
airstrikes since early August.“Those who have not moved are wondering
what they should do,” she told the AP. “People want to stay; they have
been displaced endlessly before, but they also know that at some point,
it will become very dangerous to remain.”Southern hospital preps for
evacuees-Palestinians on Saturday began to clean up and renovate the
European Hospital in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, as part of
preparations for the evacuation of Gaza City ahead of the IDF’s planned
offensive in the area.The planned campaign has sparked a major
international outcry, with governments and humanitarian groups warning
of potentially disastrous consequences for Gaza’s civilians, noting
widespread malnutrition that has recently worsened significantly amid
the 22-month war.Earlier this week, the IDF said that the European
Hospital, which was closed after the military raided and sealed a Hamas
tunnel running underneath it, was slated to resume operations to
accommodate the expected influx of people fleeing northern Gaza.On
Thursday, Israeli authorities warned medical facilities and
international organizations in the northern Gaza Strip to gear up for
mass evacuation.According to the IDF, Gazan medical officials were told
that “the hospital infrastructures in the southern Gaza Strip are being
adapted for the absorption of the sick and wounded, alongside an
increased entry of necessary medical equipment in accordance with the
requests of the international aid organizations.”A security official
said the UN and international aid groups were formulating a plan to
restart the hospital “as an additional medical response” for the
estimated one million Palestinians who are set to be displaced from Gaza
City when the IDF launches its offensive there. The military also
warned medical officials in northern Gaza to prepare to move their
equipment to hospitals in the Strip’s south.Footage published by
Palestinian media on Friday showed medical staff cleaning up the
hospital, as well as an excavator at work in the compound, after the IDF
allowed them to enter the area.On May 13, Hamas’s then-leader in Gaza,
Mohammed Sinwar, and other top commanders in the terror group were
killed in an airstrike on a tunnel running underneath the hospital. The
military raided the medical facility in June, capturing their bodies and
sealing the tunnel underneath it with concrete.Sinwar, a senior Hamas
military commander, was the younger brother of the former Hamas leader
in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, who was also killed by the IDF during the ongoing
war.The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 62,000 people in
the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far,
though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between
civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed over 22,000 combatants
in battle as of August and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel
during the October 7 onslaught.Israel has said it seeks to minimize
civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as
human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals,
schools, and mosques.Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas
in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip
stands at 459.
Yemen’s Houthis fire missile, drone at Israel;
missile breaks up mid-air; no injuries-IDF downs Houthi drone over
southern Israel after several failed attempts; missile fired at center
apparently disintegrates en route, fragment causes minor damage-By
Emanuel Fabian-22 August 2025, 5:36 pm
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi
rebels fired a drone and a ballistic missile at Israel on Friday, the
military said. The drone was downed after several failed interceptions
on Friday afternoon, while the missile apparently broke up in mid-air
during its descent some four and a half hours later.There were no
injuries reported in either incident, and a missile fragment caused
minor damage after it struck a yard of a home in a central town.The
drone set off sirens in several communities near the borders with the
Gaza Strip and Egypt. The military said it made several attempts to
shoot it down before successfully intercepting it with the Iron Dome air
defense system.Footage showed the drone exploding in the air over
southern Israel, while a fighter jet swooped past.Shortly before 9 p.m.,
the Houthis fired a missile that set off warning sirens across much of
central Israel as many were sitting down for the Friday evening Shabbat
meal.The IDF confirmed that the missile likely broke up in the air
during its descent.The Israeli Air Force launched several interceptor
missiles to shoot down the fragments, the military said, adding that the
results of the interceptions were under investigation.At least one
missile fragment struck the yard of a home in the central town of
Ginaton, causing minor damage.The Magen David Adom rescue service said
there were no reports of injuries.The Houthis took responsibility for
carrying out both the ballistic missile and drone attacks.In a
statement, the Iran-backed terror group claimed to have successfully hit
Ben Gurion Airport with the ballistic missile.The Houthis also claimed
to have launched two drones at Israel, targeting “Israeli enemy targets”
in the Tel Aviv area and in Ashkelon.While the IDF shot down the first
drone in the south, a second, if fired, likely fell short before
reaching the country, as many Houthi drones have in recent months.The
incidents were the latest in ongoing Houthi attacks on Israel.On Sunday,
they fired a ballistic missile, claiming to have targeted Ben Gurion
Airport.The missile set off sirens in central Israel and the Jerusalem
area, forcing millions of Israelis to seek cover before it was shot down
without causing injury or damage.The missile fire came hours after the
Israeli Navy launched strikes against a power plant south of Sanaa, the
Houthi-controlled capital of Yemen.The Houthis — whose slogan calls for
“Death to America, Death to Israel, [and] a Curse on the Jews” — began
attacking Israel and maritime traffic in November 2023, a month after
the October 7 Hamas massacre.The Houthis held their fire during a
ceasefire that was reached between Israel and Hamas in January 2025. By
that point, they had fired over 40 ballistic missiles and dozens of
attack drones and cruise missiles at Israel, including one that killed a
civilian and wounded several others in Tel Aviv in July, prompting
Israel’s first strike in Yemen.Since March 18, when the IDF resumed its
offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Houthis in Yemen have
launched 71 ballistic missiles and at least 23 drones at Israel. Several
of the missiles have fallen short.
Iran, European powers agree
to resume nuclear, sanctions talks next week-Germany warns Iran that
sanctions would snap back into effect unless it reached a verifiable and
durable deal to defuse concerns about its nuclear ambitions-By Reuters
and ToI Staff 22 August 2025, 8:18 pm
DUBAI — Iranian Foreign
Minister Abbas Araghchi and his French, British and German counterparts
agreed on Friday to resume talks next week on nuclear and sanctions
issues, Iranian state media reported.The three major European powers
have threatened to re-activate United Nations sanctions on Iran under a
“snapback” mechanism if Tehran does not return to negotiations on a deal
to curb its disputed uranium enrichment program.German Foreign Minister
Johann Wadephul confirmed talks next week and warned Iran that
sanctions would snap back into effect unless it reached a verifiable and
durable deal to defuse concerns about its nuclear ambitions. He
reiterated that time was very short and Iran needed to engage
substantivelyIranian state media said Araghchi and the British, French
and German foreign ministers agreed during a phone call for deputy
foreign ministers to continue the talks on Tuesday.During the call,
Araghchi “emphasized the legal and moral incompetence of these countries
to resort to the (snapback) mechanism, and warned of the consequences
of such an action”, Iranian media reported.The European trio, along with
the US, contends that Iran is using the nuclear energy program to
potentially develop weapons capability in violation of the
Non-Proliferation Treaty.Iran, which openly seeks Israel’s destruction,
has consistently denied seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. However, it
enriched uranium to levels that have no peaceful application, obstructed
international inspectors from checking its nuclear facilities, and
expanded its ballistic missile capabilities. Israel, which targeted
Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs during a 12-day war in
June, said Iran had recently taken steps toward weaponization.The
Islamic Republic suspended nuclear negotiations with the United States,
which were aimed at curbing its accelerating enrichment program, after
the US and Israel bombed its nuclear sites during the war in June.Since
then, IAEA inspectors have been unable to access Iran’s nuclear
installations, despite IAEA chief Rafael Grossi stating that inspections
remain essential.Iran and the three European powers last convened in
Geneva on June 20, while the war was still raging, and there were few
signs of progress.Iran’s state broadcaster said an Iranian delegation
was due to travel to Vienna on Friday to meet with IAEA officials. It
gave no further details.
Atlanta man fired for joining wife’s
antisemitic tirade at father of fallen officer-Video shows Mark and Anna
Bouzyk shouting slurs at David Lubin, father of Border Police cop Rose;
pair had posted pro-Palestinian lawn signs, including one featuring
‘kikes’ 24 times By Grace Gilson 23 August 2025, 9:39 am
JTA – A
couple in a suburb of Atlanta are facing consequences after being
accused of yelling antisemitic slurs at the father of an Israeli Border
Police officer who was killed in 2023.Mark Bouzyk has been fired after
he and his wife were taped lobbing insults at David Lubin, the father of
Sgt. Rose Ida Lubin, 20. A so-called “lone soldier” who served in
Israel’s Border Police, Lubin was stabbed to death by a 16-year-old
Palestinian boy in Jerusalem on November 6, 2023.Lubin told Atlanta News
First that the incident began earlier this month as he was distributing
stickers honoring his daughter’s memory.“When I heard her say, your
daughter deserved to die and called me a kike, that’s when I walked
across the street,” he said.In a video of the confrontation posted on X
by the watchdog group Stop Antisemitism, Anna Bouzyk, can be heard
telling Lubin that his daughter went to Israel “to kill.”“You are
calling yourself a kike, you know what you are. You know what you are
better than me,” Bouzyk can be heard saying alongside her husband, Mark,
who periodically joined in the altercation.“You are a corrupt
politician with a daughter in the IDF that went there to kill, and she
was killed maybe by friendly fire because the Israeli soldiers they kill
each other all the time, and you know very well,” continued
Bouzyk.Bouzyk later confirmed to Atlanta News First that she had called
Lubin the derogatory term prior to the filmed confrontation, telling the
outlet, “I don’t regret what I said, and I’ll it say a million times
again.”She blamed Lubin — who ran unsuccessfully for Georgia State
Senate in 2024, aiming to unseat a politician who did not sign onto an
antisemitism bill — for the interaction.“He started calling me a Jew
hater. He started calling me names, so I called him a kike,” Bouzyk told
the outlet. “He was provoking me. He was putting his phone in my face.
He didn’t have the right to do that, because I went to talk to him about
vandalizing.”Lubin told the outlet that he heard in Bouzyk “that same
hate that happened during the Holocaust towards Jews.” He is also
considering involving the police, according to the outlet.Tensions
between the neighbors in Dunwoody, Georgia, had been building since last
year, when Anna and Mark Bouzyk allegedly posted pro-Palestinian signs
in their front yard. On one sign posted this month that read “Stop
Funding War Criminals,” the word “kikes” was written 24 times.Dunwoody
Mayor Lynn Deutsch condemned the signs in a post on Facebook last week,
writing that they were “deeply disturbing and offensive.” She later
updated the post thanking a local resident for convincing the homeowners
to remove the signs.Mark Bouzyk has since been fired from his job as
the co-founder and chief scientific officer at AllaiHealth, an AI-driven
patient medical history platform, the company announced on Thursday.“We
are deeply disturbed and disheartened by the video circulating
involving Dr Mark Bouzyk,” CEO Robert Boisjoli said in the statement.
“The behavior displayed in that footage is reprehensible, completely
inconsistent with our values, and has no place in our organization or
society.”The incident joins another recent attack on the family of an
American who moved to Israel to join its army. In St. Louis, a hate
crime inquiry was opened by local police after three cars were set
ablaze and “Death to the IDF” was written outside of the home of a
family whose son recently completed two years serving in the IDF.Times
of Israel staff contributed to this report.
North Korea test-fires two new air defence missiles: KCNA.
Seoul,
Aug 24 (AFP) Aug 24, 2025-North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has overseen
the test-firing of two new air defence missiles, state media said
Sunday, after Pyongyang accused Seoul of fomenting tensions on the
border.The test-firing, which took place Saturday, showed that the two
"improved" missile weapon systems had "superior combat capability", the
Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.The KCNA report did not
explain the new missiles in any detail, only that their "operation and
reaction mode is based on unique and special technology". It also did
not specify where the test had been conducted."The firing particularly
proved that the technological features of two types of projectiles are
very suitable for destroying various aerial targets," KCNA said.Photos
released by KCNA showed air defence missiles soaring into the sky and
the flash of the purported interception of an incoming projectile.Kim is
pictured listening to a briefing by a military official, a pair of
binoculars sitting next to him on his desk.The North Korean leader
separately communicated an "important task" for the defence science
sector to carry out before a key party meeting, the report added.South
Korea's military said Saturday it had fired warning shots at several
North Korean soldiers who briefly crossed the heavily militarised border
separating the two countries earlier in the week.UN Command put the
number of North Korean troops that crossed the border on Tuesday at 30,
Yonhap news agency reported Sunday.Pyongyang state media quoted Army
Lieutenant General Ko Jong Chol as saying the incident was a
"premeditated and deliberate provocation"."This is a very serious
prelude that would inevitably drive the situation in the southern border
area where a huge number of forces are stationing in confrontation with
each other to the uncontrollable phase," Ko said.- Ukraine lesson
-Analysts say Pyongyang appears to be accelerating the development of
air defence missiles aimed at countering drones, citing the KCNA report
that specifically mentioned "drones and cruise missiles"."The North is
bolstering air defence missiles against low-altitude flying drones and
cruise missiles," said Hong Min, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute
for National Unification.The development of such air defence missiles
attests to "Pyongyang's recognition of the necessity to enhance its
capabilities... based on lessons it learned" fighting in Russia's war
against Ukraine, he added.South Korean and Western intelligence agencies
have said the North sent over 10,000 soldiers to Russia in 2024 --
primarily to the Kursk region -- along with artillery shells, missiles
and long-range rocket systems.Around 600 North Korean soldiers have been
killed and thousands more wounded fighting for Russia, Seoul has
said.New South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has sought warmer ties
with the nuclear-armed North and vowed to build "military trust", but
Pyongyang has said it has no interest in improving relations with Seoul.
Maduro rails at 'illegal' US deployment off Venezuela.
Caracas,
Aug 23 (AFP) Aug 23, 2025-President Nicolas Maduro on Friday hit out at
the US deployment of three warships off the coast of Venezuela as part
of efforts to curb drug trafficking, calling the operation an "illegal"
attempt at regime change.President Donald Trump's administration has
stepped up the pressure on Maduro, doubling its bounty to $50 million
earlier this month on drug charges against the leftist strongman.Earlier
this week, a US source confirmed to AFP that three Aegis-class guided
missile destroyers were heading to international waters off the South
American country. US media reported that 4,000 Marines could also be
deployed."What they're threatening to do against Venezuela -- regime
change, a military terrorist attack -- is immoral, criminal and
illegal," Maduro told lawmakers."This is a matter of peace, of
international law, for Latin America and the Caribbean. Anyone who
commits an act of aggression against a country in Latin America is
attacking all countries," he said.In 2020, during Trump's first term in
office, Maduro and other high-ranking Venezuelan officials were indicted
in US federal court on several charges including participating in a
"narco-terrorism" conspiracy.The US Justice Department accused Maduro of
leading a cocaine trafficking gang called "The Cartel of the Suns" that
shipped hundreds of tons of narcotics into the United States over two
decades, earning hundreds of millions of dollars.Washington does not
recognize Maduro's last two election victories.Maduro said this week
that he would be deploying 4.5 million militia members across Venezuela
in response to US "threats," and called for weekend rallies decrying
Washington.
Silver was key currency in Israel long before
invention of coins, study finds-Researchers reexamine hoards of silver
discovered throughout the land, investigating its commercial use in
Bronze, Iron Ages-By ToI Staff 22 August 2025, 11:41 am
Silver
was used as currency in ancient Israel more than 1,000 years before the
invention of the coin, and earlier than in Egypt and Greece, a new
University of Haifa interdisciplinary study published this week
found.The study published in the Journal of World Prehistory was
conducted on hoards of silver dating from the Bronze and Silver Ages,
spanning from circa 2000–600 BCE that were discovered at archaeological
sites across Israel.Researchers already knew that silver was used as
currency in Mesopotamia, Anatolia and Syria by the third millennium BCE,
but the same was not evident for Israel, as the country has no natural
silver deposits.The study, led by Dr. Tzilla Eshel of the University of
Haifa’s School of Archaeology, was the first to examine and compare
hoards from multiple locations around Israel, rather than focus on one
at a time.The team noted each hoard’s date, location, social and
economic context, and what items were found. They also conducted
chemical analyses of the silver items to see whether they had been mixed
with additional metals and to track purity over time.Based on the test
results and the presence of weights alongside many of the hoards, the
researchers concluded that silver was used in Israel as currency and was
valued by weight as early as the mid-Bronze Age. They also noted that
the evidence suggested silver was used as a form of payment in Israel
earlier than in nearby areas such as Egypt and Greece.While some hoards
were dated earlier than that, the researchers believe those particular
hoards were used for ritualistic purposes rather than commercial.Silver
was not consistently the main form of currency in the area throughout
these periods. The study notes that gold dominated for a time during the
Late Bronze Age (circa 1550–1200 BCE) before once again being
overshadowed by silver.In another shift, evidence suggests that silver
was not widely available during the early Iron Age. However, the
researchers postulate that it was not replaced by gold or copper this
time and instead, continued to be used as an index value.Silver was then
used as the main currency regularly until the end of the Iron Age.Such
changes, the study notes, were indicative of the state of the population
and the economy in the region at any given time.The researchers also
found evidence in later hoards of tampering with the silver’s purity.
Mixtures of silver with copper or arsenic seem to point to an attempt to
create forgeries or lower the value of the silver.“The first coins were
only invented in the 7th century BCE, but the principles of a monetary
system were already operating here hundreds of years earlier, with
features such as uniformity, value control, and even forgery,” said
Eshel.“The continuous use of silver demonstrates a progressive economy
that evolved gradually from within society itself.”
Analysis-‘Politically
unpalatable’: Shifting sentiments in Australia fueled row with
Israel-Canberra’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state, drawing
Israel’s ire at Australian PM, came after 22 months of eroding support
for Israel, as showcased by huge Sydney protest-By Agencies and ToI
Staff 22 August 2025, 1:50 pm
SYDNEY, Australia — Australia’s
decision to recognize a Palestinian state came after the government
sensed a major shift in the domestic mood over the war in Gaza, and
showed that Canberra was unafraid of upsetting Israel, historically one
of its staunchest allies.The August 11 announcement came days after some
90,000 people marched across Sydney’s iconic Harbour Bridge, in a
protest whose organizers called for sanctions on Israel, an Israeli
withdrawal from Gaza and an end to restrictions on aid deliveries to the
enclave.“It just became politically unpalatable to be continuing to
defend Israel and lay all the blame at the feet of Hamas,” said Martin
Kear, an academic at Sydney University specializing in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.The Hamas terror group’s October 7, 2023,
invasion and mass slaughter in southern Israel triggered the ongoing
war. The group continues to hold 50 hostages, 20-22 of whom are believed
by Israeli authorities to be alive.The Palestinian statehood decision
has strained relations between Israel and Australia to a degree not seen
in decades.Senior politicians in both countries have traded barbs, with
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launching personal attacks on
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. The visas of Australian
diplomats working in the West Bank have been revoked and an Israeli
lawmaker was barred from entering Australia.A leading Jewish group in
Australia has called for calm, while offering a rare rebuke of
Netanyahu. Some Jews in Australia say the tension makes them feel
unsafe, after a spate of antisemitic attacks in the country over the
last year.Opinion polling in Australia about the Gaza war now indicates
increasing sympathy towards the Palestinian cause.August polling by
DemosAU showed 45% supported Australia recognizing a Palestinian state
before a negotiated peace deal, with 23% opposed. Support was up from
35% a year previously.The Sydney Morning Herald, one of Australia’s
leading newspapers, said in an editorial this month that public sympathy
for Israel in the country began to “rapidly erode once the apocalyptic
specter of famine rode into Gaza.”Images of malnourished children in
Gaza — which were widely disseminated last month, in some cases omitting
crucial details about the subjects’ medical conditions — have also
hardened the resolve of lawmakers, said Charles Miller, a lecturer in
international relations at the Australian National University.“I think
they have changed an awful lot of minds among policymakers in Australia,
as they have in other countries,” he said.Jewish umbrella group urges
‘measured’ language from leaders-The political fallout has alarmed the
Executive Council of Australian Jewry, an umbrella group for more than
200 Jewish organizations, which sent letters to Albanese and Netanyahu
on Wednesday, urging them to de-escalate tensions.“If things need to be
said publicly, they should be said using measured and seemly language
befitting national leaders,” the letters read.“When the temperature of
the political discourse in the media is so focused on criticizing
Israel, there will be ramifications for the local Jewish community, and
that’s something that we need to reflect on,” said Eli Feldman, the
rabbi at Newtown Synagogue in Sydney, which was defaced with antisemitic
graffiti in January.Australia’s Jewish community, which numbers around
120,000 and makes up about 0.4% of the country’s population, has been
among the hardest hit by the global surge in antisemitism since October
7, 2023.The country experienced more than 2,000 anti-Jewish incidents
between October 2023 and September 2024, more than quadruple the number
from the year before Hamas’s October 7 assault that sparked the Gaza
war, according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ). In
recent months, Jews there have seen synagogues, schools and homes
firebombed, as well as two nurses threatening to kill Jewish patients in
their hospital.Australian leaders ‘don’t want to be left
behind’Australia was an early supporter of the creation of a Jewish
state, and has long advocated for Israel in international disputes,
though both main political parties back a two-state solution in
principle.While Albanese had personally long supported a Palestinian
state until now, his political pragmatism had made him wary of backing
official recognition.That changed with the shift in the public mood
while his landslide victory in May’s general election reduced the risk
of domestic pushback, said Jessica Genauer, an academic at Flinders
University specializing in international conflict.Key allies, the United
Kingdom, France and Canada, all said they would recognize a Palestinian
state in the weeks before Australia, which also made Albanese’s job
easier, analysts said.“They don’t want to lead on carving new pathways
in terms of their policies on this, but on the other hand, they don’t
want to be left behind by key allies around the world,” Genauer said.
“Albanese is still a pragmatic and cautious person by nature.”Netanyahu
has repeatedly attacked Albanese in a series of interviews and social
media posts since August 11, calling the Australian leader “weak” and
accusing him of “betraying” Israel.While Albanese has played down the
feud, Netanyahu shows no sign of backing down. He kept up the rhetoric
with an interview with Sky News Australia that aired late on
Thursday.“I’m sure he has a reputable record as a public servant, but I
think his record is forever tarnished by the weakness that he showed in
the face of these Hamas terrorist monsters,” he said.
THIS
BETTER BE THE FIRST OF MANY RAIDS ON LIBERAL TRUMP DERANGEMENT
NUTJOBS.AND IN CALIFORNIA THAT GAVIN REROBATE NEWSCUM IS A COMPLETE
LUNATIC MUSLIM, IMMIGRANTS AND BUM JUNKIES ALL OVER SUCKUP. A TYPICAL
LIBERAL, DEMOCRAP. HE IS THE WORST FAKE, FRAUD, PHONY, REPROBATE IN
AMERICA.AS THE LIKES OF HITLER 2ND CLINTON.OBAMA MAMMA BARRY SOTORO.BILL
CLINTON.CHICKEN NECK ADAM SCHIFTY SCIFF. BRAIN-DEAD-BIDEN, HARRIS.AOL,
AND ALL THE REST OF THE DEMOLIB REPROBATE ANY SIN GOES CREW.
FBI
searches home and office of ex-Trump national security adviser John
Bolton-Bolton was not detained and has not been charged with any crimes;
searches raise fears Trump administration is using its law enforcement
powers to go after the president’s foes-By AP 22 August 2025, 5:36 pm
WASHINGTON
(AP) — The FBI is searching the Maryland home and Washington office of
John Bolton, who served in US President Donald Trump’s first
administration as national security adviser but later became critical of
the president, as part of an investigation into the handling of
classified information, a person familiar with the matter said
Friday.Bolton was not detained and has not been charged with any crimes,
said the person, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation by
name and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of
anonymity.After the search at Bolton’s home started, he was spotted
Friday morning standing in the lobby of the Washington building where he
keeps an office and talking to two people with “FBI” visible on their
vests. He left a few minutes later and appeared to have gone upstairs in
the building. Agents were seen taking bags into the office building
through a back entrance.The searches appear to be the most significant
public step the Justice Department has taken against a perceived enemy
of the president, and they’re likely to elicit fresh criticism that the
Trump administration is using its law enforcement powers to go after the
Republican’s foes. The searches of Bolton’s home and office come as the
Trump administration has taken steps to examine the activities of other
critics, including by authorizing a grand jury investigation into the
origins of the Trump-Russia probe.Messages left with a spokesperson for
Bolton were not immediately returned, and a lawyer who has represented
Bolton had no immediate comment.The White House did not comment and
referred questions about the probe to the FBI. The Justice Department
also had no comment, but leaders appeared to cryptically refer to the
search of Bolton’s home in a series of social media posts Friday
morning.FBI Director Kash Patel, who in a 2023 book he wrote included
Bolton in a list of “members of the Executive Branch Deep State,” posted
on X: “NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission.” Attorney
General Pam Bondi shared his post, adding: “America’s safety isn’t
negotiable. Justice will be pursued. Always.”The Justice Department is
also conducting mortgage fraud investigations into Democratic Sen. Adam
Schiff of California and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who
brought a civil fraud lawsuit against Trump and his company, and
ex-Trump prosecutor Jack Smith faces an investigation from an
independent watchdog office. Schiff and James have vigorously denied any
wrongdoing through their lawyers.In an ABC interview earlier this
month, Bolton was asked about whether he was worried about the Trump
administration taking action against him. Bolton said Trump had “already
come after” him by taking away his security detail, and he added: “I
think it is a retribution presidency.”Bolton served as Trump’s third
national security adviser for 17 months and clashed with him over Iran,
Afghanistan and North Korea. He faced scrutiny during the first Trump
administration over a book he wrote about his time in government that
officials argued disclosed classified information, but the Justice
Department in 2021 abandoned its lawsuit and dropped a separate grand
jury investigation.Bolton’s lawyers have said he moved forward with the
book after a White House National Security Council official, with whom
Bolton had worked for months, said the manuscript no longer contained
classified information.On his first day back in office this year, Trump
revoked the security clearances of more than four dozen former
intelligence officials, including Bolton. Bolton was also among a group
of former Trump officials whose security details were canceled by Trump
earlier this year.Bolton’s scathing book, “The Room Where It Happened,”
portrayed Trump as grossly ill-informed about foreign policy and said he
“saw conspiracies behind rocks, and remained stunningly uninformed on
how to run the White House, let alone the huge federal government.”Trump
responded by slamming Bolton as a “crazy” war-monger who would have led
the country into “World War Six.”Bolton served as US ambassador to the
United Nations under President George W. Bush and also held positions in
President Ronald Reagan’s administration. He had considered running for
president in 2012 and 2016.In 2022, an Iranian operative was charged in
a plot to kill Bolton in presumed retaliation for a January 2020 U.S.
airstrike that killed the country’s most powerful general. Bolton had by
then left the Trump administration but tweeted, “Hope this is the first
step to regime change in Tehran.”
THE EVIDENCE OF THE 10 PLAGUES AGAINST EGYPTS ARMY AND RAMSES 2 THE LEADER.
LUKE 19.40
40 Jesus replied, “I tell you, if these [people] keep silent, the stones will cry out [in praise]!”
Egypt
unveils 2,000-year old ruins carefully extracted from waters off
Alexandria-Cranes and divers rescue merchant ship, statue of Roman
nobleman and ancient sphinx bearing name of Ramses II, among other
precious artifacts in Ptolemaic city drowned by time-By AFP 22 August
2025, 8:31 am
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt — Egypt on Thursday unveiled
parts of a sunken city submerged beneath waters off the coast of
Alexandria, revealing buildings, artifacts and an ancient dock, all
dating back over 2,000 years.Egyptian authorities said the site, located
in the waters of Abu Qir Bay, may be an extension of the ancient city
of Canopus, a prominent center during the Ptolemaic dynasty, which ruled
Egypt for nearly 300 years, and the Roman Empire, which governed for
around 600 years.Over time, a series of earthquakes and rising sea
levels submerged the city and nearby port of Heracleion, leaving behind a
treasure trove of historical remains.On Thursday, cranes slowly hoisted
statues from the depths, while divers in wetsuits, who had helped
retrieve them, cheered from the shore.“There’s a lot underwater, but
what we’re able to bring up is limited, it’s only specific material
according to strict criteria,” Egyptian Tourism and Antiquities Minister
Sherif Fathi said.“The rest will remain part of our sunken heritage,”
he added.The underwater ruins revealed by the ministry on Thursday
include limestone buildings that may have served as places of worship,
residential spaces and commercial or industrial structures.Reservoirs
and rock-carved ponds for domestic water storage and fish cultivation
were also uncovered.Other notable finds were statues of royal figures
and sphinxes from the pre-Roman era, including a partially preserved
sphinx with the cartouche of Ramses II, one of the country’s most famous
and longest-ruling ancient pharaohs.Many of the statues are missing
body parts, including a beheaded Ptolemaic figure made of granite, and
the lower half of a Roman nobleman’s likeness carved from marble.A
merchant ship, stone anchors and a harbor crane dating back to the
Ptolemaic and Roman eras were found at the site of a 125-meter (410
feet) dock, which the ministry said was used as a harbor for small boats
until the Byzantine period.Alexandria is home to countless ancient
ruins and historic treasures, but Egypt’s second city is at risk of
succumbing to the same waters that claimed Canopus and Heracleion.The
coastal city is especially vulnerable to climate change and rising sea
levels, sinking by more than three millimeters (0.1 inches) every
year.Even in the United Nations’ best-case scenario, a third of
Alexandria will be underwater or uninhabitable by 2050.
Archaeologists
dig in against antiquities bill aiming to deepen Israel’s hold on West
Bank-A push to shift oversight of excavations in the territory to a
civilian authority sparks worries of creeping annexation, with
researchers fearing they’ll bear brunt of any backlash By Rossella
Tercatin-23 August 2025, 7:07 am
For centuries, the ruins of a
fortress on a low hill in the Judean Desert known as Tal‘at ed Damm were
mostly untouched. Recently, however, archaeologists have begun
excavating the site to see what secrets may lie in its neglected
ruins.One day earlier this year, as storm clouds billowed overhead, a
group of archaeology enthusiasts made their way to the fortress to see
the preliminary findings firsthand.Standing on the ancient route between
Jerusalem and Jericho in today’s West Bank, the fortress is immersed in
a serene landscape that looks as if it has barely changed since the
Hebrew Bible and the Gospels were redacted millennia ago. Before the
dig, the site had been known to contain remains from the Crusader
period, which lasted from 1099 to 1260, and then was used as an inn for
travelers in the following centuries.But as the group looked on,
archaeologist Yodan Fleitman removed two sandbags from the floor and
revealed a surprise the excavators had unexpectedly discovered: a
mosaic.“Mosaics were not common in the Crusader period,” he said. “This
likely means that the Crusader fortress stood on a Byzantine structure
[dated between the 4th and 7th centuries CE].”Fleitman and his team were
not from the Israel Antiquities Authority, which oversees most of
Israel’s digs, but rather the Archaeology Unit of the Defense Ministry’s
Civil Administration, the Israeli body that governs civilian matters in
the disputed, antiquities-rich West Bank.The cradle of monotheism and
crucible of kings, armies, rebels and prophets, the West Bank is a
veritable treasure trove of history, home to a tapestry of thousands of
archaeological sites spanning from prehistoric times to the centuries of
Ottoman rule that ended with World War I.But it is also home to some
three million Palestinians and a deeply entrenched Israeli military
occupation that is increasingly taking on civilian characteristics.
Politics, religion and history swirl together, creating an environment
where unearthing, documenting, preserving and studying antiquities —
much of it intensely significant to hundreds of millions of people
worldwide — can be both fraught and byzantine.In recent years, Israel
has launched several new excavations in the area — including a massive
mission to search for more documents from the time of the Dead Sea
Scrolls — bringing the neglected state of many of these sites to the
public’s attention.Yet understanding the scope of Israel’s
responsibility — and rights — when it comes to antiquities in the region
is a complex, highly politicized issue that reaches into the very core
of Israel’s entire relationship with the West Bank.The Oslo Accords of
the mid-1990s sliced the West Bank into three zones: In Area A, the
Palestinian Authority is supposed to exercise full control, in Area B
the PA manages civilian affairs but Israel has security control, and in
Area C (which includes over 60 percent of the West Bank and all of its
Israeli settlements), Israel’s military wields full control, including
over Palestinian civilians.Under the demarcation, the Defense Ministry’s
archaeologists have the license to deal with antiquities in Area C
alone, leaving areas B and A to the PA to excavate or grant licenses for
digs. Because Israel’s control of the West Bank is a military affair,
civilian bodies like the Israel Antiquities Authority, or IAA, are meant
to remain out of the territory altogether.But that may be changing.A
bill introduced last year proposes transferring the responsibility for
antiquities in the West Bank from COGAT to the IAA in response to claims
of widespread neglect of important historical sites.But while experts
admit that there are serious problems with how archaeology in the West
Bank is handled, archaeologists and others are nearly unanimously
opposed to the measure, accusing the government of seeking to use
antiquities as a pretext to deepen the de facto annexation of the West
Bank.Digging in-In February 2023, the government put forward a bill
aimed at reassigning responsibility for antiquities in the West Bank to
the IAA, ostensibly to protect archaeology in the West Bank.Under the
1989 Law of the Israel Antiquities Authority, the IAA is responsible for
overseeing archaeology and archaeological sites in Israel’s sovereign
territory, including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, which were
effectively annexed in the 1980s.The IAA is a statutory authority, a
body established by law that operates independently but with some
governmental supervision. The IAA budget comes mostly from the
government.The IAA’s governing council, which also appoints its
director, is composed of 16 members, including officials from various
government ministries and experts selected in consultation with the
ministries.The law describes the IAA’s primary function as “to attend to
all antiquities’ affairs in Israel.”In its original version, the bill
was set to add the term “and the area” after “in Israel,” with “area”
described explicitly as “Judea and Samaria” — the biblical name for the
West Bank and the standard term used in most Hebrew-language
discourse.The small textual change would have represented a serious
shakeup, scooping responsibility for antiquities in the West Bank away
from the Defense Ministry’s Civil Administration and placing it directly
under the aegis of the IAA.Organizationally, the Civil Administration
manages civilian affairs in the West Bank through several staff officers
in various fields, who are tasked with implementing policies analogous
to their civilian counterparts across the Green Line. The staff officers
are hired and funded by civilian bodies inside sovereign Israel, though
they work under the Defense Ministry.Days before the law was
introduced, the government voted to move the archaeology staff officer
away from the Culture Ministry and into the Heritage Ministry, headed by
far-right firebrand Amichay Eliyahu of the extremist Otzma Yehudit
party.In a press release announcing the change, the government said the
move would “bolster activities to counteract and prevent the destruction
of antiquities.”“I plan to place special emphasis on rescuing and
preventing destruction at heritage sites in Judea and Samaria, for the
coming generations,” Eliyahu said in the statement.All the experts who
spoke with The Times of Israel recognized that there is widespread
damage plaguing ancient sites in the West Bank. Most blamed the local
Palestinian population, though the left-leaning Emek Shaveh group also
accused Israeli settlers.Nonetheless, the bill has been met with
widespread criticism, with the IAA itself rejecting outright the idea of
taking over archaeology in the West Bank.“Antiquities in Judea and
Samaria have been in a horrible situation for decades,” Likud MK Amit
Halevi, who introduced the bill, told The Times of Israel over the
phone.“This is, in my opinion, the most important place in the world —
where the Jewish nation was born,” Halevi said. “Abraham stood here some
3,700 years ago, our people returned from Egypt 3,200 years ago, and
our history unfolded here for centuries to come.”This is the most
important place in the world. Abraham stood here some 3,700 years ago,
our people returned from Egypt 3,200 years ago, and our history unfolded
here for centuries to come’According to the Civil Administration’s
Archaeology Unit website, there are over 2,600 archaeological sites in
the West Bank.Notable biblical sites listed on the unit’s website
include the capital of the Kingdom of Israel, Sebastia; the Tomb of the
Patriarchs in Hebron; and Tel Shiloh, where, according to the Bible, the
Jewish Tabernacle was housed for some 400 years. Several Hasmonean
fortresses, the palace of the 1st century CE Jewish-Roman King Herod,
and the Qumran Caves, where most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were
discovered, are also located in the West Bank.Though the West Bank is
rich in Christian and Muslim sites as well, none are mentioned by the
unit on its website.For both Israel and the Palestinians, archaeology in
the West Bank isn’t only about the past but about the future. Many
Israelis who support holding onto the West Bank do so not only on
security grounds, but based on the argument that the territory
represents the heart of the Jews’ ancient promised land.For them,
archaeology represents a way to bolster the argument that their hold on
the land is rooted in history, said international law expert Tal Mimran,
an associate professor at Zefat Academic College.“It serves very well
in the battle of the narratives, but also as a legal claim about the
rights to the territory,” he said.But under international law, Israel
can only do archaeological work in the West Bank if a site is threatened
and in need of preservation, and currently that work can only be
carried out by the Civil Administration’s relatively small Archaeology
Unit.Halevi claimed that the bill is needed because “Palestinians have
been robbing and destroying every archaeological site.”However, neither
an army spokesperson, the officer in charge of the Archaeology Unit, nor
a Heritage Ministry spokesperson provided The Times of Israel with data
about damaged sites or perpetrators.And while both have boasted of
efforts to crack down on Palestinian looting of antiquities sites, they
have been largely silent regarding damage wrought by settlers, including
a July incident in which extremists allegedly set fire to an area next
to the ruins of the 1,500-year-old Church of St. George.The attack next
to the important Christian site in the Palestinian town of Taybeh drew
international condemnation, but no charges have been brought.There was
no response from COGAT or the Heritage Ministry when asked about harmful
settler activity.In 2020, Preserving the Eternal, a right-wing
organization with ties to the settlement movement, released a survey
alleging widespread damage among 365 archaeological sites it surveyed in
the West Bank.
The report found that 80 percent of the survey
sites had suffered some form of damage: 41% moderately and 39% severely.
It described the selected sites as bearing “the greatest significance
for national and world cultural heritage.”While the group maintained
that the report was conducted by “senior archaeologists and skilled
field explorers,” the names of the archaeologists were not mentioned,
and the study was not published in an academic journal.A separate survey
by a group of Palestinian archaeologists in 2024 found evidence of
looting at 309 of 440 West Bank sites, according to Salah Al-Houdalieh,
an archaeology professor at al-Quds University.Israeli military actions
and policies restricting movement were to blame for the increase in
looting, Al-Houdalieh charged in a January article in anthropology
magazine Sapiens.“Curfews and checkpoints have severely hindered the
efforts of the West Bank’s Palestinian archaeologists, heritage
organizations, and security personnel to access, monitor, and safeguard
these vulnerable sites,” he wrote. “Looting has always been an issue,
but the recent escalation of hostilities by Israel against Palestinians
has led to an increase in antiquities looting, as tens of thousands of
unemployed people struggle to meet their most basic needs.”Preserving
the Eternal founder Moshe Gutman called for the protection of all
antiquities sites of interest regardless of cultural affiliation and
identity of the perpetrators, acknowledging that Israelis were also
among them.Gutman, who has no formal background in archaeology, says he
got interested in the topic after noticing looters digging around the
West Bank during bike rides around the region. He started the group in
2016.“We started to receive testimonies [of damage] from many sites of
archaeological or touristic interest,” he told The Times of Israel over
the phone. “This is how Preserving the Eternal was first
established.”The group has partnered with Regavim, a pro-settlement
organization founded by far-right Religious Zionism party head Bezalel
Smotrich to campaign against illegal Palestinian construction in the
West Bank and by Bedouin inside Israel.Gutman claimed that dozens of
archaeologists cooperate with Preserving the Eternal, but do not wish
for their names to be made public for fear of backlash.“We need to make
order in the law, determine the rules on how and what we are taking care
of,” Gutman said of the new bill. “A law does not solve anything [by
itself], but it is part of the answer.”Civil dispute-An IAA spokesperson
declined to speak to the Times of Israel about the legislative
initiative, but pointed to a written objection to the bill it sent to
the Knesset Education, Culture and Sports Committee ahead of a February
discussion on the legislation.In it, the IAA warned that “the proposed
law in the current form could cause great damage to the academic ties of
the Israel Antiquities Authority and the State of Israel with
international entities and damage their professional reputation.”“The
Council of the Israel Antiquities Authority agrees that supervision and
enforcement should be increased with respect to damage to antiquities in
Judea and Samaria, but only through other alternatives,” the statement
read.‘The proposed law in the current form could cause great damage to
the academic ties of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the State of
Israel with international entities and damage their professional
reputation’Even without the law, the IAA already collaborates with the
Civil Administration’s Archaeology Unit, including on an ambitious
survey of some 500 caves in the Judean Desert it has spearheaded since
2017.To get to the caves, which researchers think may contain treasures
related to the ancient Jewish sect that created the Dead Sea Scrolls,
archaeologists must rappel down rockfaces and set up work camps on sheer
cliffs.The unprecedentedly wide-ranging operation is being undertaken
by the IAA in cooperation with the COGAT Archaeology Unit, which is
headed by Benny Har Even, who holds the title of staff officer of the
department. The project is funded in equal parts by the two bodies and
the Ministry of Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage.The inter-office
cooperation is key to the success of the operation: About half of the
Judean Desert, including the original source of most of the Dead Sea
Scrolls at Qumran, is located in the West Bank beyond the Green Line,
where the IAA does not have jurisdiction. But the COGAT archaeologists
have been seamlessly enfolded into the teams, said Amir Ganor, the head
of the IAA’s anti-theft unit during a 2021 press conference, enabling
work in the entire Judean Desert. Taking note of the IAA’s position,
Halevi has proposed creating a new body vested with the same powers as
the IAA and a dedicated budget. A new version of the bill has been
discussed but not yet formally introduced.“Up until today, the IDF has
been responsible for the antiquities in Judea and Samaria, without
having the knowledge or ability to do it, and this is the reason we find
ourselves in the current situation,” Halevi said, noting that the army
cannot prioritize protecting antiquities over other security
concerns.According to Halevi, the IAA, with its expertise and resources,
would be the best for the job, but as long as the responsibility is
assigned to a dedicated civilian entity as opposed to the military, the
bill’s goals will be fulfilled anyway.‘What we suggest is to work under
the current legal arrangement and invest more money’Opponents of the law
say that the real cause of neglect at archaeological sites in the West
Bank is a lack of resources, arguing that the Civil Administration’s
Archaeology Unit should be expanded rather than handing responsibility
to a civil body.COGAT did not provide information about staffing levels
for the Archaeology Unit when requested, but The Times of Israel learned
from a source familiar with the issue that 39 people were working for
the unit at the beginning of 2025. Halevi claimed most of them are only
temporary staff, with only Har Even and his deputy full-time employees
of the unit.The IAA, in contrast, employs around 800 people, according
to its website.“[The West Bank] is at the heart of the history of the
Holy Land, but what we suggest is to work under the current legal
arrangement and invest more money, allowing the Archaeology Unit to hire
more staff and professional archaeologists to enforce the law,” said
Prof. Guy Stiebel from Tel Aviv University, who chairs Israel’s
Archaeology Council, which advises the government and public entities,
including the IAA, on matters related to antiquities.The council is made
up of 23 members from all academic institutions and organizations that
work in the field.Many archaeologists say there has been a marked
improvement in the status of antiquities in the West Bank since the
Archaeology Unit was moved to the Heritage Ministry — and apparently
given a larger budget — with Har Even put in charge.“He has the correct
priorities and he cares about this — so he has been putting in a
tremendous amount of effort to protect the antiquities and there’s been a
huge change,” said Yonatan Adler, an associate professor in Archaeology
at Ariel University, Israel’s first university in the West Bank.The
army, the Heritage Ministry, and Har Even’s office did not provide The
Times of Israel with information about the budget for the Archaeology
Unit.However, the comprehensive budget for the Heritage Ministry has
increased significantly since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s
right-wing, religious government took power in late 2022. According to
data collected by Aviad Houminer-Rosenblum from the Berl Katznelson
Foundation based on public records, the ministry budget rose from NIS 48
million ($14 million) in 2021 to NIS 104 million ($30 million) in 2023,
though it fell back to NIS 77 million ($23 million) last year.‘I ask
Halevi to be honest and just admit this is about sovereignty’
According
to Stiebel, the bill may end up hurting efforts to protect antiquities
in the West Bank by putting more limits on enforcement efforts against
looters in line with civil statutes.“The laws [applied in the West Bank]
are more severe than Israeli law,” he said. Israeli law affords
protections for the accused that military law in the West Bank does not,
and has a more onerous burden of evidence.Har Even himself expressed
similar concerns during the February committee meeting, noting that he
was currently empowered to act under his own authority.“I’m afraid we’ll
shoot ourselves in the foot,” he said. “If I go by Israeli law, I will
have to ask a judge for a warrant for every search of antiquities [I
conduct].”Adler said many experts were worried that the bill was
counterproductive.“We all think it will damage our ability to protect
antiquities,” he said.He accused lawmakers of being misleading about the
real purpose of the bill, which he suggested is linked to a push toward
the annexation of the West Bank.“I ask Halevi to be honest and just
admit this is about sovereignty — in the small corner of archaeology,”
he said.Stiebel noted that before proposing the bill, Halevi had not
consulted with the council or with any other professional body.“We [the
council] have right-wing and left-wing members, and we all unanimously
agree that this solution is bad,” Stiebel told The Times of Israel by
phone. “It will not improve the condition of antiquities in the West
Bank, and will put us all in a corner.”Israeli archaeologists are
respected professionals at the forefront of the field, Stiebel argued.
If the new law were passed, it would offer ammunition to those who push
for academic boycotts.“This move could play into the hands of BDS,” he
said, referring to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement
against Israel. “I believe this law is politically and ideologically
driven, rather than pursued out of concern for the status of
antiquities.”Archaeology without borders? Adler spoke with The Times of
Israel in February on the sidelines of the first international
archaeology conference devoted to the archaeology of the West
Bank.Titled “Archaeology and Site Conservation of Judea and Samaria,”
the four-day event took place at the posh Dan Hotel in Jerusalem, with
funding from the Heritage Ministry.The conference was sponsored by Ariel
and Bar-Ilan universities, and the academic committee steering the
summit featured figures from other major Israeli universities.Despite
the serious subject matter, the conference had a festive atmosphere,
with dozens of scholars presenting their work before large
audiences.Participants included foreign scholars from major academic
institutions such as the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Cornell, an
Ivy League university in New York.“There seems to be a consensus that
science is science, and there are no borders to science,” said Adler,
who was a member of the conference committee. “We don’t distinguish
between race, gender, sex, or nationality. We are interested in what’s
coming out of the ground, and that’s what this conference is
about.”Unsurprisingly, the event ignited criticism.Ahead of the
conference, Emek Shaveh, which describes its mission as “protecting
ancient sites as public assets that belong to members of all
communities, faiths, and peoples,” accused organizers of “whitewashing”
Israeli archaeological activity in the West Bank.‘Israel and the
settlers whom you have joined have weaponized archaeology in Jerusalem
and the West Bank, using it as a lever to dispossess
Palestinians’“Israel and the settlers whom you have joined have
weaponized archaeology in Jerusalem and the West Bank, using it as a
lever to dispossess Palestinians,” charged Emek Shaveh chairman, Prof.
Rafi Greenberg of Tel Aviv University, in an open letter to
participants.“If the true interest of the organizers was the salvage and
safeguarding of sites, they would have been better served by a low-key
professional meeting,” he added.The conference also drew international
criticism.Hebrew University of Jerusalem archaeologists finished their
second season of excavations at the Hyrcania fortress in the Judean
Desert in the West Bank in January 2025 in cooperation with the Staff
Officer of Archaeology of Judea and Samaria. In the Byzantine compound,
they uncovered a medallion mosaic which had been intentionally defaced
with a column drum from the Herodian period. (Oren Gutfeld/The Hebrew
University of Jerusalem)“This conference normalizes academic activities
which are in breach of international law,” the Palestine Exploration
Fund, a body established in London in 1856 for the study of the Southern
Levant, wrote in a statement, accusing the event of “erasing the
geographical identity of that region, the West Bank of the Occupied
Palestinian Territories.”Illustrating how much gravitas the PEF
organization still holds, after the circulation of its letter, at least
one international scholar mentioned to journalists covering the
conference that he was worried he might lose his job if word reached his
university that he took part.Adler expressed outrage at the PEF
statement, noting that contrary to the group’s claims that the
conference excluded Palestinian archaeologists, they in fact had been
invited but did not wish to participate.‘These are people that represent
a colonialist power, sitting in their office in London and complaining
against Jews excavating in certain areas’“These are people that
represent a colonialist power, sitting in their office in London and
complaining against Jews excavating in certain areas,” Adler
said.Several Palestinian archaeologists contacted by The Times of Israel
declined to comment.The PEF says it boycotts all archaeological work in
“occupied territories.” The Fund’s ethical policy states that the group
“does not collaborate with institutions founded by an occupying power
based in any occupied territory, and will not support, encourage, fund,
or publish research by any academic associated with such institutions.”
It added that it “does not associate itself with excavations conducted
illegally in the occupied Palestinian territories, the occupied Golan,
or in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.”Recently, Charlotte
Whiting, editor-in-chief of the PEF’s peer-reviewed publication
Palestine Exploration Quarterly (PEQ), told the Israeli news agency TPS
that research conducted in the West Bank can only be considered for
publication if the archaeologists “have cooperated with the relevant
Palestinian authorities” — a near impossible feat for Israeli
archaeologists in the West Bank.Other academic journals also have
guidelines discouraging publication of work conducted under Israeli
auspices in the West Bank, East Jerusalem or the Golan Heights.In 2016,
the World Archaeological Congress passed a resolution urging
“international academic publishers to refuse to publish articles by
Israeli and international scholars that relate to archaeological
excavations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories” as a way to place
pressure on Israel.While those wishing to excavate in Israel get
permission from the IAA, those wanting to excavate in the West Bank must
seek a license from the Civil Administration staff officer.Data on
licenses from 1968 to 2007 shows that nearly all West Bank excavations
not carried out by the Civil Administration itself have been conducted
by Israeli institutions, aside from a handful of digs by evangelical
researchers and one in 1971 by a University of Toronto
archaeologist.Many at the conference were surprised by a closing
discussion that bluntly addressed the question of whether Israeli
universities should be excavating in the West Bank at all.Panelist Prof.
Aren Maeir from Bar-Ilan University said the answer is no.“The
archaeological activity conducted in the West Bank is under the auspices
of the Civil Administration, and the reason for that is so that Israel
stays within the international law of how we are supposed to act in an
area that’s under Israeli occupation,” Maeir told The Times of Israel in
a phone interview.“My opinion is that both the staff officer and
anybody else who works in the West Bank should only be doing salvage
excavations, which means only excavating when a site is about to be
destroyed, and there is no choice,” he added. “Israel, as an occupying
party, should not be initiating archaeological projects outside of this
context.”‘The Staff Officer and anybody else who works in the West Bank
should only be doing salvage excavations, which means only excavating
when a site is about to be destroyed’Nonetheless, as the head of
Bar-Ilan’s Institute of Archaeology, Maeir said he still signs off when
colleagues wish to conduct academic excavations in the West Bank.“I
think that the interpretation of the law in Israel is not sufficiently
clear-cut for me to be able to tell a colleague of mine that he or she
can’t do it,” he noted.‘Confusing by design’According to Mimran, who is
also a researcher at the Hebrew University, the way Israeli law and
authorities treat the status of the West Bank is “confusing by
design.”“The West Bank or Judea and Samaria is what we call in
international law ‘a disputed territory,’ namely a territory without a
clear sovereign but with several entities which have competing claims,
specifically Israel and the Palestinian national movement, both of which
present a connection to the territory,” Mimran told The Times of
Israel.According to Mimran, Israel upholds a narrow interpretation of
international law that maintains that international statutes and
treaties are only relevant for regulating the relationship between
states, meaning they do not apply to the West Bank.“This piece of land
was never a part of a modern state,” he noted. “It was either run by
colonial powers or by occupying powers, namely Israel and, before it,
Jordan.”Despite rejecting the notion that its presence in the West Bank
constitutes an occupation, Israel still applies the laws of belligerent
occupation (a body of laws based on the 1907 Hague Regulations, Fourth
Geneva Convention of 1949, and customary international humanitarian law)
almost in their entirety, Mimran said.“Israel contests the full
application of the law of occupation, but it states that it is willing
to follow norms of a humanitarian character out of goodwill,” the expert
explained.When it comes to archaeological sites and cultural heritage
in the West Bank, no treaty is more important than the 1954 Hague
Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed
Conflict, and its two additional protocols, according to lawyer Shlomy
Zachary.Zachary, whose expertise includes protecting cultural property
in situations of armed conflict, represents several Israeli human rights
organizations operating in the West Bank. In the past, he has often
represented the left-leaning Yesh Din.“These laws shape what can and
cannot happen during conflict — for example, the current situation in
Gaza — or during an occupation, which is the case for the West Bank,” he
told The Times of Israel.According to the convention, historical and
archaeological sites should be excluded from battlefields and cannot be
designated as military zones. Salvage excavations are the sole types of
digs that are permitted.‘These laws shape what can and cannot happen
during conflict’“A strict approach entails that only excavations that
are required to save a site or artifacts to prevent their destruction
are allowed,” Zachary said.Israel’s long-term presence in the West Bank
also includes building roads and other infrastructure, activities that
often also require salvage excavations, Zachary said. He charged that
Israel had used this argument to expand the scope of its archaeological
activity.Some in Israel also employ a different legal approach, which
maintains that regular excavations can also be conducted.“According to
international law, the military commander [of an occupied territory]
must maintain all legal arrangements that were in force before the
occupation,” Zachary said. “In this case, the Jordanian antiquities law
allowed excavations, and therefore, some believe the military ruler can
also do the same.”According to Zachary, however, most international
lawyers reject this interpretation because it goes against the 1954
Hague Convention.Even the Oslo Accords, which included an appendix
noting the importance of certain antiquities sites to Jewish tradition
and carving out Israeli access, did not supersede international laws
regarding archaeology, he said.“With the Oslo Accords, the PA
acknowledged that the Jewish people have roots in the area,” said
Zachary. “For example, the IDF can maintain Israeli entrance to Joseph’s
Tomb in Nablus in Area A. However, it is important to highlight that
even these agreements cannot nullify or cancel international
humanitarian law provisions.”The lawyer also noted that the State of
Israel itself has so far acknowledged the difference between its
sovereign territory and the West Bank, although the distinction was no
longer as sharp as it once had been.“The main storage for archaeological
findings [in the West Bank], for example, is located in Ma’aleh Adumim,
which is in the West Bank itself, not in Israel — even though today an
increasing number of findings are being transported by Israeli
authorities to outside the West Bank,” he said, noting that removal of
antiquities from an occupied territory is illegal.“In the last two
decades, the involvement of Israeli universities and researchers is
blurring the lines more and more,” Zachary added.What’s really being
protected? According to Zachary, there is no dispute that the Civil
Administration is responsible for protecting archaeological and
historical sites, including from looting and damage. However, he
suggested that effective means could include fencing and cameras, rather
than active excavations.“Since it is an occupied territory, most
experts would argue that everything should be interpreted with a narrow
approach and for the benefit of the occupied population, not for the
occupier researchers or political activists,” he said.Both Zachary and
Alon Arad, executive director of Emek Shaveh, suggested that Israel’s
claims of protecting antiquities seemed insincere, given its selective
enforcement when Israeli settlers are involved in destroying or looting
antiquities.“In Battir, Israeli settlers from an illegal outpost in the
area have been destroying with heavy machinery a site that is recognized
as a UNESCO heritage site,” Arad said, referring to a village southwest
of Jerusalem recognized for its terraced hillsides. “The staff officer
for archaeology is not there to prevent it.”Arad noted that Israel is
one of the few modern countries in the world where it is legal to trade
antiquities, under a law that allows artifacts discovered before 1978 to
be bought and sold. This represents a considerable incentive for
looters, he said.He also accused the staff officer of a lack of
transparency.“Since 2017, they have refused to provide any information
regarding their work, including their budget, the archaeologists working
for them, the licenses they granted, and more,” Arad said.The Defense
Ministry body did not respond to a request for a response.Similar to
what was heard from the archaeologists who spoke with The Times of
Israel, Arad suggested that the right approach to protect antiquities in
the West Bank would consist of checking what is not working in the
current system to find solutions within the present legal
framework.However, Arad emphasized that contrary to other voices, Emek
Shaveh is clearly stating that Israel should not pass the bill nor annex
the West Bank because it is morally wrong, rather than out of fear of
boycotts.‘Israel cannot and should not use archeology to justify acting
against the Palestinians’Even if looting and destruction are happening
in the West Bank, it does not give Israel the legitimacy to eschew
international law and expand its hold on the territory, Arad
said.“Israel cannot and should not use archaeology to justify acting
against the Palestinians,” he said.Under the Oslo Accords, Israel’s
involvement in West Bank antiquities is only supposed to extend to Area
C, the 60% of the West Bank where it maintains civil and military
control. Areas A and B are ostensibly under Palestinian control, though
tending to heritage sites appears to be largely beyond the means of the
cash-strapped and relatively power-starved PA.“Even if there are
Palestinian archeologists who care about these things, they don’t have
the power or the resources to prevent it,” said Maeir. “The Palestinians
also have to be responsible adults and take charge of protecting
antiquities in the areas under their responsibility.”But according to
Arad, even if the PA had the resources, it is largely prevented from
acting by Israel.“The body that would be in charge of enforcing against
looting in Area B is the Palestinian Tourism Police,” he said. “However,
as a security organization, the police are not allowed to work in Area
B. The solution would be to allow them to operate, but Israel is not
doing it.”Annexation exultation-Though his bill waits to be resubmitted,
Halevi told The Times of Israel that he was convinced it will
eventually pass, dismissing the nearly wall-to-wall opposition.“I think
archaeologists are motivated by fear because they have European friends
who are against our sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, or even on the
entire Land of Israel,” he said.As for the claim that the legislation is
really aimed at the annexation of the West Bank, his only qualm was
with the word “annex.”“Israel cannot annex land that is its own,” he
argued. Regardless of the West Bank’s legal status, Israel should treat
it like its part of its sovereign country.“I want to start [with
antiquities] because I believe that it is the most important [area] and
no one can argue that our history should be under military rule,” he
said. “However, I believe that all civil issues in Judea and Samaria
should be under Israeli civil authorities.”Archaeologists raising a hue
and cry hadn’t done anything to help the state of antiquities in the
West Bank until now, he claimed, and they had yet to put forward a
reasonable argument against transferring the responsibility of West Bank
antiquities to a civil body.“The archaeologists are worried about
losing funds,” he said. “I told them that a nation should stand by its
values.”
Trump suggests fewer than 20 hostages remain alive;
families demand new information-‘The 20 is actually probably not 20
because a couple of them are not around any longer,’ US president says;
Israeli hostage envoy insists ‘no change’ in figures-By ToI Staff and
Jacob Magid-23 August 2025, 12:21 am
US President Donald Trump
indicated during a press conference in the Oval Office on Friday that
fewer than 20 hostages held by terror groups in Gaza are still alive,
sparking despair from the families of the captives and a denial from
Israel’s hostage point man.Speaking to reporters in the White House,
Trump took credit for the release of hostages during the last ceasefire
deal between January and March, decried Hamas’s “extortion,” and spoke
about efforts to bring the final group of captives back home.“So now
they have 20,” he said, “but the 20 is actually probably not 20 because a
couple of them are not around any longer.”In his statement, the
president did not elaborate on his assertion that fewer than 20 hostages
are alive, and insisted that “We’re doing everything we can to get the
hostages out, it’s not easy.”“The situation has to end, it’s extortion
and it has to end,” he said, referencing Hamas’s hostage taking and
negotiations, and added that he thinks it would be “safer, in many
ways,” to free the hostages militarily, instead of through a deal with
Hamas.In the Oval Office, Trump was also asked why the US appears to be
backing the Israeli decision to take over Gaza City when the hostage
families are opposed and worry that it will condemn their loved ones to
death.“Not all of them,” Trump replied, apparently referring to a
minority of relatives of hostages who back the expanded Gaza
operation.“And you have to understand, I’m the one who got all of the
hostages out,” he said, taking credit for the release of “hundreds” of
hostages, though fewer than 150 captives remained in Gaza when he took
office on January 20.After the president’s comments to the press, the
Hostages and Missing Families Forum released a statement reading: “Mr.
President, there are 50 hostages. For us, each and every one of them is a
world in itself.”“If [Strategic Affairs Minister Ron] Dermer, who only
talks to the Americans and doesn’t bother to talk to or meet with the
families of the hostages, knows something different, he should have
informed the families first,” the families said.Gal Hirsch, the
government’s point man on the hostages, issued a statement following the
remarks: “According to the information we have, there is no change in
the number of living hostages.”“Twenty of the hostages are alive, two
[others] are in grave danger for their lives, 28 are no longer alive and
have been declared deceased,” Hirsch wrote to the families.Israel has
long stated that terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 50
hostages, including 49 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on
October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 28 confirmed dead
by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive, and there are grave
concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said.
Hamas is also holding the body of an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in
2014.Trump’s comments came as Israel prepares to launch a large-scale
operation to conquer Gaza City and amid a flurry of international
efforts to bring the sides back to the negotiation table to forestall
the operation.Israel is expected to launch its new offensive on Gaza
City in mid-September, some two weeks after newly called-up reservists
are set to report for duty on September 2, Channel 12 reported on
Friday.Some one million Palestinians currently in Gaza City will be
called upon to evacuate as soon as Sunday, the network said.According to
the report, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the political echelon
are pushing to speed up the launch of the operation, while the military
wants to first take steps to safeguard the hostages and the troops, and
also evacuate the Palestinians from Gaza City and ensure there is
international legitimacy for the operation.The network cited Israeli
officials as saying it is urgent to get out the hostages as soon as
possible due to their dire condition. Sources cited by the outlet added
that there are currently no substantive disagreements between Israel and
Hamas on a ceasefire-hostage deal, but “it all depends on
Netanyahu.”“There are no magic solutions,” the sources were quoted as
saying. “If [we] want to bring back the hostages [we] can do that
now.”The terror group recently said it accepted a phased
hostage-ceasefire deal that Israel had agreed to in the past, while
Netanyahu has vowed to push on in Gaza City and to negotiate only for a
deal that would release all the hostages. A source cited by Channel 12
said a partial deal was never on the table, and that Israel has only
sought a comprehensive deal in two phases.Despite the apparent impasse
in the ceasefire talks, Israel is expected to send negotiators to
renewed talks in the coming days, Channel 12 reported, adding that talks
have already begun on setting the time and place for the negotiations,
which have stalled since Israel and the US recalled their negotiators
from Doha last month.The network added that it is unclear where the
renewed talks will take place, and that they will commence in a location
other than Doha or Cairo, where they have taken place until now.Israel
reportedly assesses that the impending operation in Gaza City is placing
great pressure on Hamas, possibly leading to greater flexibility in the
talks.According to the network, Netanyahu seeks to drive that point
home by renaming the operation “Iron Fist,” rather than the name
“Gideon’s Chariots 2” that has been used until now, following the
original Operation Gideon’s Chariots that was launched in May.Sources
present in Netanyahu’s consultations say he has been using the name
Operation Iron Fist over the past couple of days, Channel 12
reported.Israel, which has called up tens of thousands of army
reservists, is pressing ahead with its plan to seize Gaza’s biggest
urban center despite international criticism of an operation likely to
force the displacement of many more Palestinians, and despite concerns
by top security officials that it could endanger the hostages.The
Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 62,000 people in the Strip
have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though
the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians
and fighters. Israel says it has killed over 22,000 combatants in
battle as of August and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during
the October 7 onslaught.Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian
fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human
shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals,
schools, and mosques.Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas
in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip
stands at 459. The toll includes two police officers and three Defense
Ministry civilian contractors.
Israel said to assess that ‘one or
two’ hostages are in life-threatening condition-Officials unsure why
Trump suggested some hostages ‘not around any longer’; Smotrich said to
tell IDF chief anyone in Gaza City who doesn’t evacuate ‘can die of
hunger or surrender’By ToI Staff Today, 1:39 am-AUG 24,25
Israel
has assessed that “at least one or two” hostages held in Gaza are in
life-threatening condition, according to a Hebrew media report on
Saturday, a day after US President Donald Trump suggested that fewer
than 20 hostages remain alive, bucking Israel’s official figures and
sparking despair from the captives’ families.According to Israel’s
Channel 12 television network, Israeli officials fear that several of
the living hostages are in serious danger of death and in dire need of
medical attention.“Releasing the hostages is an urgent need,” an unnamed
senior official told Channel 12.”However, the report said the officials
were unsure what led Trump to conclude that “a couple of them are not
around any longer” during a press conference on Friday.In the wake of
Trump’s remarks, Israel’s hostage point man Gal Hirsch told the families
that “According to the information we have, there is no change in the
number of living hostages.”“Twenty of the hostages are alive, two
[others] are in grave danger for their lives, 28 are no longer alive and
have been declared deceased,” Hirsch wrote to the families.Not
satisfied, the families then demanded that Israel present them with all
information regarding their loved ones’ conditions.Israel has long
stated that terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 50 hostages,
including 49 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7,
2023. They include the bodies of at least 28 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Twenty are believed to be alive, and there are grave concerns for the
well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said. Hamas is also
holding the body of an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in 2014.The heightened
concern for the hostages came as Israel prepares to launch a
large-scale operation to conquer Gaza City and amid a flurry of
international efforts to bring the sides back to the negotiation table
to forestall the operation.According to a Channel 13 report, Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided Saturday to send a negotiating
delegation to participate in talks with mediators to reach a ceasefire
in Gaza, almost a week after Hamas said they agreed to a proposal for a
partial deal that Israel had agreed to prior.The outlet reported that
Netanyahu’s decision came after he was told in a meeting that the
hostages could be executed by their captors or killed by IDF munitions
if the army presses on with its planned takeover of Gaza City.Despite
Netanyahu reportedly acquiescing to send a delegation to the upcoming
talks, Channel 13 said that there was currently no agreed-upon date or
location for the talks.Meanwhile, Arab mediators Qatar and Egypt have
grown increasingly frustrated with Netanyahu over the “zig-zag” that he
has plotted over recent months regarding his position on a potential
hostage release and ceasfire deal, Channel 12 reported on Saturday.The
two mediating countries were able to successfully convince Hamas to walk
back from almost all of its demands and agree to a framework that it
had rejected in the past, and which Israel had previously agreed to,
only to discover that they would now be forced to try and convince
Israel to restart talks on the phased agreement.The deal that Hamas
agreed to earlier this week would allow for a 60-day ceasefire in the
Gaza Strip and the release of 10 living hostages. During the truce,
additional talks would be held on freeing the remaining hostages and
permanently ending the war.Although Israel agreed to this framework
months ago, Netanyahu has shifted away in recent weeks from supporting
this option and instead now insists on a comprehensive deal rather than a
partial, phased agreement.Netanyahu’s vision for a comprehensive deal
to end the war includes the disarmament of Hamas and the
demilitarization of the Gaza Strip, as well as the transfer of
governance to a body that is not Hamas or the Palestinian Authority.His
apparent U-turn regarding a partial deal has caused significant
displeasure with the mediators, and with Egypt in particular. A senior
official in Cairo was quoted by Channel 12 as saying that “Israel’s
conditions are unworkable and harm the chances of reaching a
ceasefire.”Trump growing impatient with Gaza war plans-Another Channel
12 report aired Saturday said that Netanyahu and his top adviser,
Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, assessed during a recent meeting
that Israel has Trump’s full support for its military offensive in Gaza
City, but only for a limited period.The network quoted the two as saying
that Trump wants a quick and decisive operation, and doesn’t want the
war against Hamas to drag on more than necessary.During the same
meeting, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir was said to have clashed
with far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, who
assailed him for saying the military wasn’t sure how long it would take
to evacuate Gaza City’s civilian population.“We ordered you [to carry
out] a quick operation. In my opinion, you can besiege them. Whoever
doesn’t evacuate, don’t let them. No water, no electricity, they can die
of hunger or surrender. This is what we want and you’re capable [of
doing it],” the network quoted Smotrich as telling Zamir.Ben Gvir then
asked the IDF chief whether he was “scared of the military advocate
general’ — the IDF’s top attorney — to which Zamir pointed out that the
military is “operating in other areas, in Khan Younis and Rafah.”“This
isn’t what the political leadership ordered. You don’t want to defeat
[Hamas],” Smotrich declared of Zamir, who was said to have retorted:
“You don’t understand anything. You don’t know what a brigade or
battalion is. This takes time.”The planned campaign to capture Gaza City
has sparked a major international outcry, with governments and
humanitarian groups warning of potentially disastrous consequences for
Gaza’s civilians, noting widespread malnutrition that has recently
worsened significantly in the Palestinian enclave throughout the
22-month war.It has also sparked fear from the families of the hostages,
who fear that it will serve as the final nail in the coffin for their
loved ones, as Hamas has vowed to execute captives if IDF troops
approach their positions.
Palestinians fear it’s ‘too late’ after
UN declares famine in northern Gaza-American doctor working in Gaza
City says he’ll leave famine declaration to experts, but says ‘degree of
weight loss, post-operative complications and starvation’ is clear-By
AFP, Reuters and ToI Staff 23 August 2025, 11:26 pm
Desperate
Palestinians clutching pots and plastic buckets scrambled for rice at a
charity kitchen in Gaza City on Saturday, a day after the United Nations
declared a famine in parts of the war-battered territory, a charge that
Israel vehemently denied.On Friday, the United Nations Integrated Food
Security Phase Classification (IPC) system officially declared a famine
in parts of the Gaza Strip, saying that nearly a quarter of the
enclave’s two million residents are experiencing famine, and that number
is expected to rise by the end of September.Israel swiftly denied the
report, saying that the IPC relies on Hamas sources, and accused the
system of having “twisted its own rules” in declaring a famine, calling
the report an “outright lie” and “a modern blood libel.”In the 24 hours
following the UN announcement, eight people in Gaza died of
malnutrition-related causes, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health
ministry, whose figures cannot be verified and do not distinguish
between combatants and civilians. According to the ministry, the overall
toll of such deaths during the war is 281.Israel has largely dismissed
these figures and has pointed out that many of those included were
suffering from preexisting conditions prior to their deaths, describing
the reports as “an orchestrated campaign” by Hamas to discredit
Israel.In Gaza, one Palestinian woman said the UN famine declaration
came “far too late.”The children are “staggering from dizziness, unable
to wake up because of the lack of food and water,” said the 34-year-old
Umm Mohammad, at a charity kitchen in Deir al-Balah.In Gaza City, which
Israel plans to seize as part of an expanded military offensive, footage
showed women and young children among the chaotic jostle of dozens
clamoring and shouting for food.“We have no home left, no food, no
income… so we are forced to turn to charity kitchens, but they do not
satisfy our hunger,” said Yousef Hamad, 58, who was displaced from the
northern city of Beit Hanoun.“We’re starving. We eat once a day. Will we
be more hungry than we are now? There’s nothing left,” said Dalia
Shamali, whose family has been repeatedly displaced from their home in
nearby Shejaiya.She said they spent most of their money over the last
two years moving from one part of Gaza to another as the Israeli
military issued evacuation orders. With Israel allowing more food in
recently, the price of flour and other food items has been dropping, but
the family still can’t afford them, Shamali said.American surgeon
describes ‘heartbreaking’ scenesIn the city, an American surgeon working
at a local hospital described the levels of desperation he has
witnessed since arriving in the Strip earlier this month.“The level of
hunger is really what’s heartbreaking. You know, we saw malnutrition
before, back in November, already starting to happen. But now the level
is just, it’s beyond imagination,” said Mohammed Adeel Khaleel, a spinal
surgeon from Texas on his third volunteer stint in Gaza.He said that
shortly after he arrived at the hospital, a 17-year-old was brought in
with gunshot wounds to both legs and one hand, sustained when he went to
collect food at an aid site.In the emergency room, Khaleel said he
noted the ribs protruding from the teen’s emaciated torso, an indication
of severe malnutrition. When doctors at Al-Ahli Hospital stabilized the
patient, he raised his heavily bandaged hand and pointed to his empty
mouth, Khaleel said.Khaleel, who spoke to The Associated Press ahead of
the UN famine announcement, said the evidence of deprivation was already
clear, but said he would leave it to others with more expertise to
measure exactly what constitutes famine.“Just the degree of weight loss,
post-operative complications and starvation that we’re seeing. That
wouldn’t surprise me at all if it was called famine,” said Khaleel, who
traveled to Gaza as an independent volunteer via the World Health
Organization.But he knows what he saw in three weeks of treating
patients in Gaza, most of the time at the hospital in Gaza City. Again
and again, medical workers cut open patients’ clothing to treat
injuries, revealing a loss of muscle and fat caused by hunger that left
skin stretched tight over protruding bones.“These patients, a number of
them that we’re seeing are just exposed ribs, severely skinny
extremities,” he said. “And you know that they’re just not getting
calories in.”At Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital earlier in the week,
nutrition director Dr. Mohammad Kuheil led an AP journalist to the
bedside of a thin-limbed girl. Aya Sbeteh, 15, was wounded in an
airstrike. But her recovery has been set back by weakness from lack of
food, which her family says has reduced her weight by more than a
third.“All we have are grains like lentils, sometimes,” said her father,
Yousef Sbeteh, 44. “Even flour is unaffordable.”Another patient, Karam
Akoumeh, lay with sunken cheeks, his thin skin stretched like plastic
wrap across his rib cage. His intestines were seriously damaged when he
was shot while going out to collect flour, his family said, compromising
his digestive system and requiring hard-to-find intravenous nutritional
supplements.According to the UN, over 1,000 Palestinians have been
killed by Israeli gunfire while seeking aid in recent months. Israel has
disputed the figures and has said it only fires warning shots if crowds
get too close to its forces.Akoumeh’s father, Atef, said the lack of
supplements compounded the hunger that reduced Karam’s weight from 62
kilograms (136 pounds) to just 35 kilos (77 pounds).“I checked
throughout all Gaza’s hospitals for [the supplements], but I have not
found any,” he said.“There are no protein sources, only plant-based
protein from legumes. Meat and chicken are not available. Dairy products
are not available, and fruits are also unavailable,” said Kuheil, the
doctor in charge of nutrition at Shifa.Earlier this week, Israel warned
medical facilities in northern Gaza to prepare for mass evacuation ahead
of the IDF’s planned offensive to capture Gaza City. On Saturday, a
major hospital in southern Gaza began working to reopen, after it was
shut for months due to IDF operations.According to the IDF, Gazan
medical officials were told that “the hospital infrastructures in the
southern Gaza Strip are being adapted for the absorption of the sick and
wounded, alongside an increased entry of necessary medical equipment in
accordance with the requests of the international aid
organizations.”The planned campaign has sparked a major international
outcry, with governments and humanitarian groups warning of potentially
disastrous consequences for Gaza’s civilians, noting widespread
malnutrition that has recently worsened significantly amid the 22-month
war, which was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught.The
Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 62,000 people in the Strip
have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though
the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians
and fighters. Israel says it has killed over 22,000 combatants in
battle as of August and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during
the October 7 onslaught.Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian
fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human
shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals,
schools, and mosques.Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas
in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip
stands at 459.
Portugal suffers new wildfire death as Spain beats back blazes.
Madrid,
Aug 23 (AFP) Aug 23, 2025-A fourth Portuguese firefighter died of
injuries sustained battling a wildfire Saturday as Spain slowly got the
upper hand over fires that have scorched vast swathes of territory.Eight
people have now died in the two countries that have been gripped by a
summer of fires fuelled by heatwaves, tinderbox conditions and strong
winds.Portugal's presidency said that a firefighter had died of injuries
suffered this week in Sabugal in the northeast. Media said the
45-year-old had been working for a private company battling the
fires.Spain has also counted four deaths.But with weather conditions
improving, Spanish authorities said that the tide appeared to have
turned in the fight against the fires, mainly raging in the country's
west and northwest.The head of Spain's civil protection and emergencies
service, Virginia Barcones, said there were still 18 "treacherous" fires
burning.But she added that Spanish emergency services, backed by
European reinforcements, had almost contained the blazes."We will need a
final push to be done with this horrible situation," she told TVE
television. "There are fewer of them and the end is a lot nearer."-
Hard-hit regions -The Spanish regions of Castile and Leon, Extremadura
and Galicia have been hardest hit by the fires that flared during the
latest heatwave that saw temperatures soaring to 40C and above.In
Portugal, the office of President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa sent
condolences to the family of the fireman "who tragically lost his life
after directly combating the forest fires in Sabugal municipality".The
amount of land burnt across the Iberian peninsula has hit a total area
about the size of the US state of Delaware, based on EU statistics.The
European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) said Spain had lost a
record 403,000 hectares (996,000 acres), while Portugal lost 278,000
hectares this year. The total is about 6,810 square kilometres (2,630
square miles).- Accusations crisis was mishandled -The fire emergency
has thrown a spotlight on climate change and trends that have left
Spain's countryside vulnerable.Castile and Leon has suffered from
decades of rural exodus, an ageing population and a decline of farming
and livestock grazing that once helped keep forests clear of tinder.The
fires have fuelled accusations in Spain that politicians mishandled the
crisis.The main opposition Popular Party has accused Prime Minister
Pedro Sanchez, a Socialist, of having withheld aid to damaged regions
where its officials govern.According to EFFIS data analysed by AFP,
Spain is one of four European Union countries experiencing their worst
year for wildfires since statistics began in 2006, along with Cyprus,
Germany and Slovakia.Scientists say climate change is driving longer,
more intense and more frequent heatwaves worldwide.Lower humidity in the
air, vegetation and soil make it easier for wildfires to ignite and
harder to control.
7.5 magnitude earthquake in the Chilean Antarctic.
Santiago,
Aug 22 (AFP) Aug 22, 2025-A 7.5 magnitude earthquake rattled the
Chilean Antarctic region and the southern Drake Passage on Thursday, the
US Geological Survey said.There was no threat of a tsunami from the
quake, which took place at 10:16 pm (0216 GMT Friday), at a depth of 6.7
miles (10.8 kilometers), the survey said in a statement.Drake Passage
is a turbulent, 500-mile-wide strait between South America and
Antarctica, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.The National
Tsunami Warning Center confirmed that a tsunami was not expected.Chile's
national disaster response service (Senapred) described the earthquake
as "medium intensity" and said a "precautionary alert" had been issued
for the Antarctic territory.A source from the Chilean interior ministry
said "there is no danger for the Magallanes region," the southernmost
inhabited area of the South American continent.The state of precaution
"requires abandoning beach areas" and "rocky shores" of the national
Antarctic territory, according to Senapred.
Comet water analysis strengthens link to Earth origins-by Clarence Oxford.
Los
Angeles CA (SPX) Aug 18, 2025-New research using the Atacama Large
Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has revealed that water in comet
12P/Pons-Brooks closely matches the composition of Earth's oceans,
bolstering theories that comets contributed significantly to our
planet's water and possibly life-building molecules.An international
team led by Martin Cordiner of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center mapped
ordinary water (H2O) and heavy water (HDO) in the comet's coma during
its approach to the Sun. This marks the first detailed spatial mapping
of both water types in a comet.The ALMA data were paired with NASA
Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) measurements to determine the comet's
deuterium-to-hydrogen (D/H) ratio, a key chemical marker of water's
origin. The result, (1.71+/-0.44)+ 10-4, is the lowest D/H ratio ever
recorded in a Halley-type comet and aligns closely with Earth's
oceans."Comets like this are frozen relics left over from the birth of
our Solar System 4.5 billion years ago," Cordiner said. "Our new results
provide the strongest evidence yet that at least some Halley-type
comets carried water with the same isotopic signature as that found on
Earth, supporting the idea that comets could have helped make our planet
habitable."Halley-type comets, with orbital periods between 20 and 200
years, rarely enter the inner Solar System. Past comet studies often
showed mismatched D/H ratios, leaving the role of comets in delivering
Earth's water uncertain. These new findings point to 12P/Pons-Brooks as a
potential contributor of water and life-essential compounds to early
Earth.Mapping also confirmed the gases originated from the comet's
nucleus rather than forming in its surrounding gas cloud. "By mapping
both H2O and HDO in the comet's coma, we can tell if these gases are
coming from the frozen ices within the solid body of the nucleus," said
NASA's Stefanie Milam, a study co-author.ALMA's sensitivity enabled
detection of faint heavy water emissions from deep within the coma-an
observational first for any comet.
