Israel - Palestinian militants launch massive attack, 7 Oct 2023

[Arkay]

Israeli PM vows to defeat Hamas and says they will pay amid abductions

Hamas gunmen have kidnapped Israeli grandmothers and have taken them into the Gaza Strip on golf carts and motorcycles, amid reports that they have snatched more than 50 civilians.

www.dailymail.co.uk

I snipped these from the Daily Mail, but since the video is from Hamas I would rather screenshot than give them any more views.

This was widely publicized yesterday here.
The DM said that some of the kidnapped elderly appear to have dementia.

This poor woman, making a V for Victory sign with her captor, smiling, with a gun in her lap that I WISH she were able to use to kill her captor.

The other elderly woman with the pink blanket has already been identified by her granddaughter, as another poster has shared.

My mom is 90 with dementia, and God forbid she was in this situation she also would not understand and would smile politely.

 

[PommyMommy]

2min ago

IDF spox: There are still terrorists in Israel, but we will find them ‘wherever they are’​

The Israel Defense Forces’ top spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, says the Air Force carried out a major attack against Hamas assets in the northern Gaza Strip.

In a press conference, Hagari says more than 50 fighter jets targeted 120 sites in the Beit Hanoun neighborhood, demolishing Hamas assembly areas used to launch attacks against Israel. In all, the IDF has struck some 800 sites since the fighting began early Saturday, Hagari says.

There are still Hamas terrorists in Israel, and Israeli troops are working to find them and kill them, he says.

“We will purify the area and attack terrorists wherever they are,” he says.

“Hamas has inflicted a great disaster on the residents of the Gaza Strip. Hundreds dead, and thousands injured. We took dozens of terrorists captive, including in the last few hours,” he says.

“There will be a time for hard questions and tough investigation, but now we are at war and are busy attacking the enemy and winning,” Hagari adds.

 

[Sjöberg]

I would rather screenshot than give them any more views

Honestly, I can stomach a lot of things, but the moment someone starts abusing animals or elderly ladies, I just rage quit and cannot read about it. I can feel the psychopathic brain behind such actions and it just makes me sick in my stomach.

 

[Herat]

Honestly, I can stomach a lot of things, but the moment someone starts abusing animals or elderly ladies, I just rage quit and cannot read about it. I can feel the psychopathic brain behind such actions and it just makes me sick in my stomach.

They are the same people who were going house-to-house kidnapping toddlers and small children from their beds

 

[Chelly]

Middle East leaders praise and condemn Hamas attacks against Israel

Some countries condemned the attacks against Israel and urged for restraint, while others praised the resistance groups.

www.cbsnews.com

*Some countries condemned the attacks against Israel and urged for restraint: ​

*Egypt, who signed a historic peace treaty with Israel in March 1979, urged restraint on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry warned of the repercussions of this escalation and called on the international community to ask Israel to stop its attacks against the Palestinian people.

**Jordan's Foreign Ministry called for calm, self-restraint, protection of civilians, and respect for international humanitarian laws, and stressed "the necessity of stopping the dangerous escalation in Gaza and its surroundings.

**Other countries praised the Hamas militant attacks against Israel. ​

**Iraq said on X in a statement from the media office of the Iraqi Prime Minister that "the operations carried out by the Palestinian people today are a natural result of the systematic oppression they have been subjected to for many years at the hands of the Zionist occupation authority, which has never adhered to international and UN resolutions."

**Qatar, which has hosted the Hamas Political office since 2012, said "Israel alone bears the responsibility for the current escalation due to its ongoing violations of the rights of the Palestinian people, the latest of which being the repeated raids on al-Aqsa Mosque under the protection of the Israeli police."

**Iran and Syria issued statements of support for the Hamas attacks on Israel through government news media. Iranian Foreign Minister Nasser Kanaani "congratulated" the Palestinian people and said, "Today's operation has opened a new chapter in the resistance and armed action against the occupiers in the occupied territories."

**Lebanese Hezbollah congratulated Hamas on the "large-scale, heroic operation" into Israel, saying they are "closely following the important developments on the Palestinian scene with great interest," according to a Hezbollah statement posted on a media site.

 

[PommyMommy]

OCT 8, 2023

Israeli music festival: 260 bodies recovered from site where people fled in hail of bullets

Festival-goers describe mass panic as they fled and hid in bushes as a trance music party came under attack.

www.bbc.com

For weeks, excited music-lovers had looked forward to the Supernova festival, held in the desert in southern Israel to coincide with the Jewish festival of Sukkot.

[...]

"They turned off the electricity and suddenly out of nowhere they [militants] come inside with gunfire, opening fire in every direction," she told Israel's Channel 12.
"Fifty terrorists arrived in vans, dressed in military uniforms," she said.

People tried to flee the site, she said, running across the sand and getting into their cars to drive away - but partygoers said there were jeeps full of gunmen, shooting at the cars.

[...]

The festival site - with three stages, a camping area and bar and food area - was in the Negev desert, near Kibbutz Re-im. It is not far from the Gaza Strip, from where Hamas fighters crossed over at dawn to launch their attack. They infiltrated towns and villages, taking dozens of people hostage.

[...]

Esther Borochov told Reuters she was driving away when her vehicle was rammed into. She saw a young man driving another car, who told her to get in. She did - but the man was then shot at point blank. Esther said she played dead until she was finally rescued by Israeli military.

[...]

Many festival-goers - like Ortel - hid in nearby bushes and fruit orchards for hours, hoping for the military to arrive and rescue them.

"I put the phone on mute mode, and then I started crawling through an orange grove," Ortel said. "Live fire was whistling above me."

[...]

The number of people killed and wounded at the festival is not yet clear. It is also not known whether Hamas took anyone hostage from the party, as they have done in other towns and villages.

But Yaniv, an emergency medic who was called out to the party, told public broadcaster Kan News: "There are at least 200 bodies of Israelis in the area I was in."

"It was a massacre," he said. "I've never seen anything like it in my life. It was a planned ambush. As people came out of the emergency exits, squads of terrorists were waiting for them there and just started picking them off.

"There were 3,000 people at the event, so they probably knew it. They had intelligence information."

 

[bestill]

Israeli PM vows to defeat Hamas and says they will pay amid abductions

Hamas gunmen have kidnapped Israeli grandmothers and have taken them into the Gaza Strip on golf carts and motorcycles, amid reports that they have snatched more than 50 civilians.

www.dailymail.co.uk

I snipped these from the Daily Mail, but since the video is from Hamas I would rather screenshot than give them any more views.

This was widely publicized yesterday here.
The DM said that some of the kidnapped elderly appear to have dementia.

This poor woman, making a V for Victory sign with her captor, smiling, with a gun in her lap that I WISH she were able to use to kill her captor.

The other elderly woman with the pink blanket has already been identified by her granddaughter, as another poster has shared.

My mom is 90 with dementia, and God forbid she was in this situation she also would not understand and would smile politely.

View attachment 452246
View attachment 452248

I think I read that her granddaughter is posting on social media that her grandmother was a holocaust survivor, it actually may have been posted here. I'm reading so many places I can't keep straight what I've read and from where!

 

[PommyMommy]

7min ago

IDF says it strikes Hamas tunnel underneath Gaza high-rise​

Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike, in Gaza City, October 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)

The Israel Defense Forces says it struck a Hamas tunnel built underneath a high-rise tower in the northern Gaza Strip.

“A mosque is located adjacent to the tunnel, proving once again that Hamas deliberately embeds its military infrastructure in civilian areas,” the IDF says in a statement.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1711042713578012942

 

[sds71]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1711049315274129559

 

[Chelly]

OCT 8, 2023

Israeli music festival: 260 bodies recovered from site where people fled in hail of bullets

Festival-goers describe mass panic as they fled and hid in bushes as a trance music party came under attack.

www.bbc.com

For weeks, excited music-lovers had looked forward to the Supernova festival, held in the desert in southern Israel to coincide with the Jewish festival of Sukkot.

[...]

"They turned off the electricity and suddenly out of nowhere they [militants] come inside with gunfire, opening fire in every direction," she told Israel's Channel 12.
"Fifty terrorists arrived in vans, dressed in military uniforms," she said.

People tried to flee the site, she said, running across the sand and getting into their cars to drive away - but partygoers said there were jeeps full of gunmen, shooting at the cars.

[...]

The festival site - with three stages, a camping area and bar and food area - was in the Negev desert, near Kibbutz Re-im. It is not far from the Gaza Strip, from where Hamas fighters crossed over at dawn to launch their attack. They infiltrated towns and villages, taking dozens of people hostage.

[...]

Esther Borochov told Reuters she was driving away when her vehicle was rammed into. She saw a young man driving another car, who told her to get in. She did - but the man was then shot at point blank. Esther said she played dead until she was finally rescued by Israeli military.

[...]

Many festival-goers - like Ortel - hid in nearby bushes and fruit orchards for hours, hoping for the military to arrive and rescue them.

"I put the phone on mute mode, and then I started crawling through an orange grove," Ortel said. "Live fire was whistling above me."

[...]

The number of people killed and wounded at the festival is not yet clear. It is also not known whether Hamas took anyone hostage from the party, as they have done in other towns and villages.

But Yaniv, an emergency medic who was called out to the party, told public broadcaster Kan News: "There are at least 200 bodies of Israelis in the area I was in."

"It was a massacre," he said. "I've never seen anything like it in my life. It was a planned ambush. As people came out of the emergency exits, squads of terrorists were waiting for them there and just started picking them off.

"There were 3,000 people at the event, so they probably knew it. They had intelligence information."

Shocking and horrific. Hamas appears to have been very well prepared. AFAIK, the U.S had no advance intelligence of these attacks...Does this surprise and concern anyone in our government? moo

 

[LaborDayRN]

My neighbour is visiting her grandparents in Tel Aviv right now. I am feeding her cat until Oct 12th.

What a nightmare to see the news footage. She was going to be taking them on a trip down the coast. I hope they are OK.

I tried to text but her phone seems to be turned off.

I'm so sorry @katydid23
Please let us know if you hear from your neighbour.

 

[PommyMommy]

Israel Gaza live updates: More than 600 Israelis killed after Hamas attacks - BBC News
9:10

Here's the latest​

The attacks launched by the Hamas militant group on Saturday marked the biggest escalation in this conflict in decades. Israel launched air strikes in retaliation, and fighting is ongoing inside Israeli territory. Here's the latest:

• Israel says 600 people have been killed since Hamas launched the attacks from Gaza. It says 100 people have been kidnapped and more than 2,000 have been injured
• Some 370 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli strikes, according to the health ministry in Gaza. It says 2,200 people have been injured
• The armed wing of Hamas said this morning it would release the number of Israeli soldiers and civilians it had captured
• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says there have been reports of US citizens who have been killed. Other countries, including France, Ukraine and Thailand, have also reported deaths
• Two British citizens are missing in Israel - London-born Jake Marlowe and photographer Dan Darlington. Nathanel Young, 20, a British man serving with the Israeli military has been killed
• Police patrols have increased in Londonafter videos emerged of what appears to be people celebrating the attack

 

[Momoffourboys]

Israel Gaza live updates: More than 600 Israelis killed after Hamas attacks - BBC News
9:10

Here's the latest​

The attacks launched by the Hamas militant group on Saturday marked the biggest escalation in this conflict in decades. Israel launched air strikes in retaliation, and fighting is ongoing inside Israeli territory. Here's the latest:

• Israel says 600 people have been killed since Hamas launched the attacks from Gaza. It says 100 people have been kidnapped and more than 2,000 have been injured
• Some 370 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli strikes, according to the health ministry in Gaza. It says 2,200 people have been injured
• The armed wing of Hamas said this morning it would release the number of Israeli soldiers and civilians it had captured
• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says there have been reports of US citizens who have been killed. Other countries, including France, Ukraine and Thailand, have also reported deaths
• Two British citizens are missing in Israel - London-born Jake Marlowe and photographer Dan Darlington. Nathanel Young, 20, a British man serving with the Israeli military has been killed
• Police patrols have increased in Londonafter videos emerged of what appears to be people celebrating the attack

Not sure people understand that 600 Israelis killed includes Israeli Arabs, Bedouins. Hamas is, literally, killing their own people.

 

[PommyMommy]

6min ago

Sister of missing IDF soldier says terrorist answered his phone, said he was dead​

The sister of missing IDF soldier Boaz Yogev says that their family called his cellphone and a terrorist answered and told them he was dead.

Harel Yogev tells the story to the Kan public radio station, saying that her mother called “and a terrorist answered, said my name is Mohammed… I’m so sorry, your son is dead.” Harel says the man on the phone claimed to be an IDF officer on her brother’s base, but that the IDF confirmed there was no officer by that name.

3min ago

Israel calls on its citizens to leave Egypt, not visit Mideast countries with travel warnings​

After today’s deadly shooting in Egypt, the National Security Council urges Israelis in Sinai and Egypt to leave the country as soon as possible.

In a statement on its website, the council also asks Israelis to refrain from traveling to Middle Eastern countries and other nations with travel warnings.

1min ago

IDF carrying out new airstrikes in Gaza​

The Israel Defense Forces says it is carrying out a new wave of airstrikes in the Gaza Strip.

The IDF says it is hitting targets belonging to the Hamas terror group.

Further details will be provided soon, the IDF adds.

 

[JennieM]

The UK Foreign Office has issued a travel advisory advising against all but essential travel to Israel and Palestine.

British nationals requiring consular assistance should call the following numbers: +972 (0)3 725 1222 or +972 (2) 5414100. If you experience technical difficulties with these or if you are in the UK, call +44 20 7008 5000, the advisory said.

It also warned that the international air and land borders in Israel and Palestine could close at “short notice.”

“The security situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories can be fast moving, tense and unpredictable. You should be vigilant at all times and keep up to date with local media and travel reports.
Terrorists are very likely to try to carry out attacks in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Attacks could be indiscriminate, including places visited by foreigners including the Old City in Jerusalem, on public transport, and in busy public spaces,” it added.

Hundreds of bodies recovered from Israel music festival – as it happened

This blog is now closed

www.theguardian.com

 

[JennieM]

The scene in southern Israel as night falls​

Alice Cuddy
Reporting from southern Israel

A dead body lies on the road to Ashkelon.

We can hear rockets overhead, as military vehicles speed past and helicopters circle above us.

On our drive down, we saw two men being held by armed police, partially stripped and blindfolded.

Night is falling here, and people in these southern Israeli communities are still waiting and watching for the potential of an Israeli ground operation into Gaza.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-middle-east-67037895

 

[JennieM]

In a recent interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, the former UN ambassador and 2024 Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said: “It’s not Israel that needs America. America needs Israel.”

Americans need to remember, it’s not that Israel needs America. America needs Israel. Israel is the frontline of defense for the Iranian regime and terrorists that want to hurt us and want to hurt our friends and we need to be honest with the American people about that,” said Haley.

Hundreds of bodies recovered from Israel music festival – as it happened

This blog is now closed

www.theguardian.com

 

[Inthedetails]

The scene in southern Israel as night falls​

Alice Cuddy
Reporting from southern Israel

A dead body lies on the road to Ashkelon.

We can hear rockets overhead, as military vehicles speed past and helicopters circle above us.

On our drive down, we saw two men being held by armed police, partially stripped and blindfolded.

Night is falling here, and people in these southern Israeli communities are still waiting and watching for the potential of an Israeli ground operation into Gaza.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-middle-east-67037895

I'm nervous for the journalists too.

jmo

 

[Sundog]

I don't think it is reasonable to compare them either, but I understand where this emotion is coming from.

Russia did an unprovoked attack on Ukraine. Even analysts had trouble understanding the aim. To conquer land that used to have crimean Tatars that the soviets forcibly moved from the region? To scare Ukraine away from friendly relations with Europe? There was no rhyme or reason behind it, but there was plenty of war crimes. So much death and destruction. And the sheer shock, that an actual physical war still happens in Europe in the 21st century. That people are actually willing to kill and torture others for no reason.

Palestine-Israeli conflict has way more sides to it. Israel state has done horrific things as well, documented by human rights groups. Not all Palestinians are terrorists. And not all Israelis have the same view on things, either. The hate, racism and religion fuel the conflict from both sides, there are probably also problems that stem from kids in some areas growing up in the situation of wars, poverty, violence and misleading information. Both countries are also being used as pawns by other countries with their own interests. The situation is such a mess that picking words to describe any of it is really complicated. I strongly condemn violence from any side, but politically, I humbly accept that the situation is way too complicated to make any statements about the correct solution. And without a solution, I'm afraid it will never calm down.

27 July 2023: Surge in Israeli-Palestinian Violence Must be ‘Wake-up Call’ for Global Community to Redouble Efforts towards Achieving Peace, Delegate Tells Security Council

Something has to be done. But how do you fix a situation like that? When it has reached the depths of crowds cheering over tortured and killed girls bodies, how do you make everyone live in peace? How do you find and help those who just want to live their lives?

Edit: I wonder about the support rates for Hamas (and then, about the support rates for starting an actual war).

Terrorism is never justified. Iran wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Hamas is their instrument.

 

[Inthedetails]

"The Israeli government formally declared war Sunday and gave the green light for 'significant military steps' to retaliate against Hamas for its surprise attack from the Gaza Strip, portending greater fighting ahead."

Israel declares war and approves 'significant' steps to retaliate for surprise attack by Hamas

The Israeli government formally declared war Sunday and gave the green light for “significant military steps” to retaliate against Hamas for its surprise attack from the Gaza Strip, portending greater fighting ahead as the toll from the conflict passed 900 dead and thousands wounded on both...

www.yahoo.com