LLX News

Israeli military strikes more than 100 Hamas sites in the southern Gaza city • Senior Israeli officials: Hamas ceasefire claims a stunt.

By: Joshua Marks – Israel Today; israeltoday.co.il

The Israel Defense Forces took control of the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing with Egypt on Tuesday morning, as tanks from the 401st Armored Brigade of the 162nd Division rolled right up to the station.

The Israeli flag was raised at the Rafah crossing and video showed an armored vehicle arriving at one of the buildings there, next to a sign that says “Gaza” in English. The IDF shared pictures and video of the moments that the Rafah crossing was captured.

“Following intelligence that indicated that the Rafah Crossing in eastern Rafah was being used for terrorist purposes, IDF troops managed to establish operational control of the Gazan side of the crossing,” the IDF said on Tuesday morning.

The General Authority for Crossings and Borders in the Gaza Strip has announced a complete halt to passenger traffic and aid into the Gaza Strip.

cont’d…

Six million Jews were murdered by the Nazi regime and its allies in the Holocaust from 1933-1945.

By: Jerusalem Post Staff; jpost.com

Life across Israel came to a halt on Monday morning as a two-minute-long siren sounded to mark a moment of silence for Holocaust Remembrance Day.

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, places of entertainment are closed, and memorial ceremonies are held throughout the country. The central ceremonies are held at Yad Vashem on the evening and the morning of the memorial day.

At Yad Vashem, wreaths were laid at the foot of the six torches lit on Sunday night by dignitaries and representatives of survivor groups and institutions.

cont’d…

ICRC administrator Haythem Abid marches in anti-Israel rallies and posts Hamas propaganda.

By: David Isaac – Israel Today; israeltoday.co.il

In the latest example of a deep-seated anti-Israel bias within the International Committee of the Red Cross, the head of the ICRC’s office in Algeria and director of the Libya subdelegation has been outed as a pro-Hamas shill.

Geneva-based, pro-Israel group UN Watch exposed the pro-terrorist sentiments of the ICRC official, who appears to be based in Montreal.

“Meet Haythem ‘Ethan’ Abid. He runs the International Red Cross in Montreal. His job is to be neutral. But Abid marches in ‘Free Palestine’ rallies, posts Hamas videos saying hostages love their captors and accuses Israel of ‘terrorism’ & ‘genocide.’ He says: ‘F*** neutral s***,’” tweeted UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer on April 30.

UN Watch found numerous questionable posts on Abid’s Facebook page, including one from Oct. 24, 2023, in which he is seen holding a large PLO flag at a protest two days earlier.

The rally was co-organized by “Montreal4Palestine,” an antisemitic group, which posted on social media on Oct. 7, the day of the Hamas massacre, an image of a bowl of candy with the words “Celebration” and “The Journey has Begun.”

cont’d…

The MIND-NUMBING poison of Palestinian propaganda

Amid the intense warfare provoked by the barbaric Hamas invasion of October 7^th comes an explosive new documentary powerfully challenging the false narratives of much Western media.

The controversy surrounding the rightful ownership of the Land of Israel is the focus of this brilliant 113-minute expose from established film-maker Hugh Kitson, to be premiered in the UK on May 30^th.

Narrated by Col Richard Kemp, former British army chief in Afghanistan, it features a host of international lawyers, professors, politicians, and military experts, and is set against the stunning backdrop of the territory in question.

Whose Land? Part II – The Law of Occupation and the Status of Jerusalem – explores the 76-year-old history of the modern nation’s legitimacy.

In terms of international law, correctly interpreted, the programme concludes that there is absolutely no question of Israel’s rightful inheritance to the land. But the nations have fallen hook, line, and sinker to Arab claims that Israel have stolen it from them.

https://www.israeltoday.co.il/read/explosive-truth/?mc_cid=a0404d9eb3&mc_eid=90fbf7be68

Former US presidential candidate says the administration “has been anything but supportive of Israel.”

By: Amelie Botbol – Israel Today; israeltoday.co.il

Former US senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum told JNS that US President Joe Biden is willing to abandon Israel to secure victory in the 2024 presidential election.

“To him, it’s all about winning elections, and he is willing to throw Israel under the bus,” Santorum told JNS at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Budapest, Hungary on Friday.

“The Biden administration has been anything but supportive of Israel. It has done the bare minimum to keep some sort of lid on the outrage that would come from America if it didn’t support Israel,” he added.

The US State Department’s top Middle East diplomat Barbara Leaf reiterated on Wednesday that contrary to reports, the Biden administration has not given approval to an IDF military operation in Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip, where four of Hamas’s six remaining battalions are entrenched.

“Absolutely not,” Leaf, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, told reporters. “We have not done any such thing. We have not green-lighted a military operation. I want to be very clear on that point.”

The deadlock in negotiations for the release of Israeli captives, coupled with American accusations against the group, has paved the way for the offensive.

By: Meir Ben-Shabbat – Israel Today; israeltoday.co.il

As signs of an imminent IDF operation in Rafah intensify, there is growing concern that Israel will unnecessarily exercise self-imposed restraint by acting with insufficient force, so as not to upset the Biden administration, the Egyptians, or the ICC prosecutor at The Hague.

Meanwhile, Hamas is exploiting the prolonged waiting period and preparing well for the ground operation in this sector, which will undoubtedly pose complex operational challenges for the IDF. Despite the political pressures, Israel’s decision-makers must make it a top priority to attain the objectives with minimal risk to the lives of our forces.

The deadlock in negotiations for the release of Israeli captives held by Hamas, coupled with American accusations against the terrorist group, has paved the way for Israel to launch the Rafah offensive.

The recent de-escalation with Iran allows Israel to shift its focus, without forfeiting political gains made, while continuing the fight against Hezbollah and dismantling terrorist networks in Judea and Samaria.

https://www.israeltoday.co.il/read/rafah-operation-must-take-place-even-in-defiance-of-the-us/?mc_cid=10245b983b&mc_eid=90fbf7be68

By: Samantha Kamman – The Christian Post; christianpost.com

An official with the Palestinian terror group Hamas and the supreme leader of Iran have praised the growing college campus protests in the United States against Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, including pro-Hamas demonstrations at Columbia University that have driven fear into the hearts of Jewish students. 

Columbia University in New York City announced a shift to hybrid classes after protestors set up a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” last Wednesday. This led to the arrest of more than 100 people after Columbia University President Minouche Shafik authorized police to clear the camp. The demonstrators resettled the encampment, and there have been multiple reports of Jewish members of Columbia’s community feeling unsafe due to the encampment. 

The demonstration has prompted calls for the Biden administration to take away the school’s federal funding and discipline the demonstrators, which some say should include revoking the visas of the students expressing support for terrorist groups.

On Wednesday, Izzat Al-Risheq, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, accused the Biden administration of violating student and faculty rights, claiming that they are only rejecting “the genocide that our Palestinian people are the subjected in the Gaza Strip at the hands of the neo-Nazi Zionists.”

cont’d…

https://www.christianpost.com/news/hamas-iran-praise-anti-israel-college-protests-in-us.html

A coordinated effort on April 15 (tax day) aimed to shut down economic activity at sites throughout the United States and in other countries.

As part of a coordinated effort of “blocking the arteries of capitalism and jamming the wheels of production,” anti-Israel protesters disrupted traffic at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Chicago O’Hare International Airport and the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, among other locations in the United States, on Monday.

Called A15 and centered on tax day in America, the effort involved a “multi-city economic blockade” in “solidarity with Palestine,” per the group’s site. It listed participating cities in multiple countries as well as major U.S. cities.

In San Francisco, where protesters blocked traffic for almost five hours, some “were linked together using a ‘sleeping dragon’ maneuver, in which protesters connect their arms inside PVC piping that must be cut through to separate them,” Gabe Stutman reported in J. The Jewish News of Northern California.

Sharing a news report that referred to “pro-Palestinian” protesters, Marc Levine, the Anti-Defamation League’s Central Pacific regional director, wrote that “a day after Israel is attacked by Iran, the media continues to get it wrong. These are not pro-Palestinian protestors. They’ve always been anti-Israel.”

cont’d…

https://www.jns.org/anti-israel-protests-at-brooklyn-bridge-chicago-ohare-golden-gate-bridge-many-other-sites/

‘Pro-Palestine people need to go to a mental asylum,’ says Hamas defector Mosab Hassan Yousef

By: Hannah Grossman – Fox News; foxnews.com

Pro-Palestinian activists were left seemingly dumbfounded after Dr. Phil brought a former Hamas member on his show to dismantle their arguments. 

One student tried to accuse the former Hamas member, who originally hails from Ramallah, of peddling “colonial rhetoric.”

“Dr. Phil Primetime” invited Palestinian activists — Salma and Zaynab from the University of Michigan — to debate the issues with Mosab Hassan Yousef, a Palestinian ex-militant who defected to Israel in 1997. Yousef, the son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, worked as an undercover agent for the Jewish state’s Shin Bet intelligence wing.

“It’s very disappointing to see Americans supporting Hamas and thinking that Hamas is a cool thing, while Hamas does not respect any of those followers, while those followers don’t know that Hamas would torture them and massacre them with no mercy. They call them useful idiots. They don’t know that Hamas is a dark black hole,” Yousef said on an April 2 episode of “Dr. Phil Primetime.” 

“[Pro-Palestinians are] absolutely idiots because they don’t know what they are supporting. They are supporting a monster that has been hijacking an entire society and endangering the entire Middle East, pushing the world towards a global war. … What’s happening is insanity. Those pro-Palestine people need to go to a mental asylum.”

cont’d…

https://www.foxnews.com/media/hamas-defector-tells-pro-palestinian-activists-they-belong-in-a-mental-asylum-in-brutal-debate

An individual who was briefed by Iranian regime leadership stated “no final decision has been made” as attack plans have been discussed.

By: Jerusalem Post Staff – jpost.com

Iran is expected to attack Israel between the next 24 to 48 hours, with an exclusive Thursday report by the Wall Street Journal saying that the Jewish state is “preparing for a direct attack” on the north or south of the country.

The report cited an individual who was briefed by Iranian regime leadership stated, “no final decision has been made” as attack plans have been discussed.

The attack is in response to the alleged Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, which killed several members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force. Tehran then publicly threatened to respond to the attack.

A previous Wednesday report from Bloomberg, citing US intelligence reports, said that the US and allies predicted that an Iranian attack on Israel “could be imminent.” However, the WSJ cited a source saying that the attack could be “within Israel’s borders.”

cont’d…

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-796680