“Oct 7 2023”

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Oct 22 (Reuters) – Israeli aircraft struck a compound beneath a mosque in the occupied West Bank early on Sunday that the military said was being used by militants to organise attacks, and Palestinian medics said at least one person was killed.

The Israeli air strike is at least the second in recent days to hit the West Bank, where violence has surged since Hamas gunmen from Gaza carried out a deadly Oct. 7 rampage in Israel.

ICYMI:

Last night a joint IDF and Shin Bet raid foiled a terrorist plot by Hamas and PIJ. The Israeli raid targeted the Al-Ansar mosque in the West Bank city of Jenin. IDF said the mosque was being used by Hamas and PIJ to plot and execute terrorist attacks and the cell was… pic.twitter.com/ZAsEs6xqzA

— FJ (@Natsecjeff) October 22, 2023

With many family members living in Israel, the current Israel-Hamas war weighs heavily on the mind of Toronto teen Lior Markus. “I think about it — literally — constantly,” the Grade 11 student said.

Over the past two weeks, he expected some mention of the situation at school — an acknowledgement during morning announcements, maybe, or one of his teachers touching on the subject during law class or sociology.

The 16-year-old said he’s shocked that talk of the ongoing violence has pretty much been only among students themselves: at a Jewish heritage club meeting he attended and in casual chats with Jewish and non-Jewish classmates.

Dave Chappelle weighed in on the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas during a recent standup gig in Boston, The Wall Street Journal reports. On stage at the TD Garden, the comedian condemned the attacks by the militant group on Israel before questioning the country’s own increasingly severe retaliations, proclaiming, “two wrongs don’t make a right.”

According to two people who attended the show, Chappelle criticized the Israeli government for cutting off water and electricity to civilians in the Gaza Strip and accused it of “killing innocent women and children” with American taxpayer dollars “while the whole world sits silently and watches.” At one point, a heckler shouted for the comedian to shut up, but after doubling down, other audience members cheered for Chappelle and broke into a chant of “Free Palestine.”

“You’re damn right, Free Palestine,” Chappelle reportedly responded, before discussing his Muslim faith.

At kibbutz Nir Oz – a tranquil haven of 400 farmers until, mind-bogglingly, a quarter of the population were kidnapped by Hamas snatch squads – Mail photographer Roland Hoskins and I came across sights we wished we had never seen.

At a home with a colourful children’s play house in the garden and toddler toys everywhere, there was an upturned child’s cot, right next to a large, thick pool of congealed blood. A putrid stench of death hung in the air, which was thick with buzzing flies, and I came very close to vomiting.

Elsewhere, a girl of about six, a boy aged seven – kneeling, with their heads down, and their hands tied behind their back.

Ottawa has a “high degree of confidence” that Israel did not strike the al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday after an independent review by the Canadian military, Defence Minister Bill Blair said in a statement late Saturday evening.

Canada believes the more likely scenario is that the strike was caused by an “errant rocket” fired from the Gaza Strip, Blair’s statement said.

The pronouncement from Ottawa came days after the United States said its own review found that Israel was not responsible for the hospital blast, which the Gaza Health Ministry said killed hundreds of people.

“Almost every single Jew in Europe today feels threatened,” Chair of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin told journalists on Thursday, October 19th. He was referring to a steep rise in antisemitic incidents across Western Europe. The rabbi cited a recent report by the Antisemitism Cyber Monitoring System, which says there has been an unprecedented 1,200% escalation in online calls for violence against Israel, Zionists, and Jews in the aftermath of the war between Israel and Hamas.

A New York Times reporter who came under fire last year for a praising Adolf Hitler in multiple resurfaced Facebook posts was rehired by the Gray Lady to cover the Israel-Palestine war.

Palestinian filmmaker Soliman Hijjy hailed the Nazi leader as recently as 2018 in a post on Facebook, when he shared a photo of himself captioned that he was “in a state of harmony as Hitler was during the Holocaust,” per a translation from Arabic by pro-Israel media watchdog site HonestReporting.

Where are the widespread calls across Canada to release the Israeli hostages? That’s the question that we should be asking whenever we see a livestream of a pro-Palestinian protest or watch as a politician calls for a ceasefire.

That’s the whole reason this mess is happening. The despicable actions of Hamas on Oct. 7 are what brought us to this point. Everything else is secondary to that issue. If you want to deal with the problems that have arisen since then, you first have to get the hostages released.

The talking point of the week for opponents of Israel is that it should accept a ceasefire with Hamas in order to pursue a political solution, rather than a military one. That is the theme even of the UN ceasefire resolution proposed by Russia (that noted opponent of armed conflict) and supported by China, which was voted down in the Security Council earlier this week due to united opposition by the U.S., Britain, France, and Japan.

Anti-Semites see Jewish people as the personification of evil.

Why do they want to kill us? It is a question most Jews have probably asked themselves in private. Perhaps when among a group of close confidantes.

It is an understandable question. The Holocaust posed it in the most brutal manner possible, after six million Jews were systematically slaughtered by the Nazis. They murdered others, too, including Roma and Sinti, of course. But it was always Jews who were the Nazis’ primary target.

It’s no surprise that terrorists support terrorists. Like birds of a feather, Antifa anarcho-communists and Islamist extremists are bound by a shared goal of overthrowing the U.S. constitutional republic and its institutions that enforce law and order. Despite being divided by varying ideological differences, they’re united by an agenda to wage war against the common enemy: America.

Toronto – October 21st – Pro-Hamas rally organizers "Toronto4Palestine" harass diners at Jewish-owned Cafe Landwer and demand to boycott the "Zionist Cafe". #Antisemitism #AntisemitismCanada @TorontoPolice 1/2 pic.twitter.com/ISjlkyX0Xg

— Documenting Antisemitism (@AntisemitismCA) October 21, 2023

In one day, Hamas militants massacred, tortured, and abducted residents of a kibbutz, leaving their homes charred and their community in ruins.

At 6:31 a.m. on Saturday, October 7th, Gal Cohen’s morning run was interrupted by a flurry of rockets. Cohen, who lived in Kibbutz Be’eri, barely three miles from Israel’s border with Gaza, was used to the projectiles, and to the sound of their midair interceptions by Israel’s missile-defense system. But this barrage was unusually loud and intense. His dog, running beside him, went wild. Cohen, who is fifty-eight, bald, and soft-spoken, returned home and went to pick up his daughter—who also lived in the kibbutz and who, his wife had told him, was frantic. On the way over, Cohen spotted two men on a motorcycle, carrying rifles. They wore camouflage uniforms and “those green Hamas bandannas,” Cohen told me this week. Ducking his head out of view, he spoke to the kibbutz’s chief security officer, Arik Kraunik, by phone to report what he’d seen.

Link fixed.