“Oct 7 2023”

Eight Israeli soldiers have been killed in a blast that engulfed their armoured vehicle in southern Gaza, in the biggest loss of life for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in a single incident since January.

The deaths came amid continuing fighting around Rafah in which at least 19 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes.

According to the IDF, the squad of combat engineers were in a convoy of half a dozen armoured vehicles returning from a mission at about 5am on Saturday morning in the Tal al-Sultan area of the southern Gaza city when their vehicle was destroyed.

A senior Hamas official has admitted the terror group has no idea how many of Israel’s remaining 120 hostages in Gaza are alive or dead.

Osama Hamdan, a Hamas spokesman and political bureau member, told CNN that “no one has an idea” how many of them are still living, and said that any deal to release them must include guarantees of a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces.

The limited release of Israeli hostages is a crucial part of a three-part ceasefire plan that international brokers including the US, Qatar and Egypt are trying to help negotiate between Hamas and Israel.

It has been more than 250 days since Hamas plunged the people of Gaza into war by slaughtering more than 1,100 people in southern Israel and taking some 250 hostages back across the border into the Palestinian-controlled territory.

And while western media coverage indicates that the ensuing suffering among Gazans hasn’t seriously dented Hamas’s popularity, one dissident on the ground is speaking out about a clandestine movement within Gaza to displace the terrorist organization from power.

There is no such a thing as a “moderate Muslim”.

Every day is a Charlottesville now, but hardly anyone notices.

The small central-Virginia city is a metonymy for the 2017 white-nationalist “Unite the Right” rally that created national shock waves and rocked the presidency of Donald J. Trump.

The antisemitic rhetoric and menacing nature of that event — in a different, left-wing form — are being replicated all over the country in openly hateful pro-Hamas protests.

A Palestinian journalist reportedly held Israelis hostage, underscoring the Gazan media’s violent connections.

The heroic rescue of four Israeli hostages after eight months of captivity brought an uncomfortable reality to the fore: Hamas and other terrorist groups’ systematic domination of Gazan media. Soon after the extraction, it became increasingly clear that a Gazan “civilian”—who also doubled as a Hamas operative and a frequent contributor to a U.S.-based, tax-exempt media platform—was holding three of the hostages in his family home.

As Israelis in northern areas of the country beseech their government to end Hezbollah’s eight months of military aggression, President Biden is reportedly concerned that Jerusalem is “rushing to war” in Lebanon, from which the terrorist organization operates.

Hezbollah spokesmen say the organization has launched its “most extensive” attack on northern Israel Thursday, boasting that the group has hit 15 military bases in the Galilee region and the Golan. According to Israeli officials, two civilians were injured but not seriously, and while there was extensive property damage, no bases were hit.