 Israel's story to the world. Good afternoon and welcome to I-24 News' ongoing coverage of Israel at War on RL11 Waldman. As we speak, IDF troops are encircling the Hamas stronghold of Jabalaya in the northern Gaza Strip with troops of the 551st Brigade and the Navy's 13th Shayeta Special Forces raiding inside the sector and hitting Hamas' general security headquarters, and yet another high-profile strike against symbols of the jihadist regime. The military engineering corps has set up massive seawater pumps to begin the long and arduous process of flooding out Hamas' underground fortresses, though they are still waiting for final approval for military leadership. The fate of 137 hostages still in the terrorist hands hangs in the balance. Soldiers in Jabalaya located and destroyed launch platforms and rocket stockpiles, all backed up by air power and airstrike yesterday at the details of which were only just now revealed. Eliminate a group of Nukba operatives, Hamas' elite soldiers who led the October 7th massacres and crimes against humanity. Military intelligence with more damning revelations of that black day. The IDF believes a Hamas spy inside the military created detailed maps of at least one military base in the south that was used by terror commandos during the massacres. Intelligence says the level of detail that the enemy had could only have been constructed with inside knowledge. And more damning reports still for military intelligence, though reveal further forewarning of the October 7th attack, that the risk was taken seriously enough to begin moving military assets towards Gaza, but just a single helicopter and a few drones on standby, even as two companies of soldiers were moved away and to the West Bank instead. We are going to open though with a look from the south where our correspondent Pierre is standing by in Sturroat, just outside that city on the outskirts of Gaza. Pierre, walk us through the latest developments of the fighting in Gaza. Well, fighting is going on on the double-barreled offensive, I would say. First of all, the offensive in the northern sector of the Gaza Strip, which is just behind me, which you can rely upon only by hearing from time to time explosions because this is the fog of war, but it also hazy weather. And the second offensive started on December 1st in the central sector of the Gaza Strip. And the IDF pray in that sector is Hanyunes, the city, and the central sector refugee camps such as Dirl Balach, Elborej, Nuseirat, Banisuhela. So right now, in the northern sector, the IDF is fighting sometimes at close range with Hamas terrorists in Jibalia refugee camp in Zaitun in Gaza City and on the outskirts of Gaza City in the southeast in Shejaiya, fighting fierce fighting and in the central sector, fierce aerial bombing and pounding in preparation of more advance by the ground offensive. The ground offensive progresses on two axes at this moment, from east to west, from Israeli territory straight into towards Hanyunes. And on the Salahadin axis, which was earlier, even during the lull in the fighting, used as a humanitarian corridor for non-involved Palestinian civilians who wanted to flee the battlefield. Now, this axis is in full control of the Israeli army up to Hanyunes, more or less. And the IDF spokesperson in Arabic urges the residents to flee Hanyunes and its eastern outskirts and northeastern outskirts to the west to the coastal road, the Aruna Rashid road, in order to find a safe haven in the dedicated place that the IDF has allocated during the operation, the Almawasi region between Hanyunes and Rafah. Well, thank you very much for that report from the front, Pierre. We are, though, going to turn our attention to the northern border as well, while the main front is in the south. We are seeing escalating action with Hezbollah terrorists attacking Israel and firing into Israel from Lebanon and our correspondent, P. S. Dekalbach, is standing by in Israel's north border to let us know what's going on on that front. Right, Ariel, well, Hezbollah's cross-border attacks have resumed this morning so far until this hour. Hezbollah has claimed responsibility for four such cross-border attacks. Now, we do know that they were focused on the eastern part of the Israel-Lebanon border. One attack was conducted towards the Hardov-Irea, the Shaba'a farms that is a disputed area right at the point where the Golan Heights, Syria and Lebanon come together and the remaining three attacks were conducted in the area of Kiryat Shmona, Kiryat Shmona, a city of more than 20,000 residents. Almost all of them have been evacuated. That area exactly was targeted yesterday by a number of rockets. They fell in open area, causing no casualties. But when we speak about yesterday, Hezbollah claimed responsibility for in total 12 attacks. And that really just gives you an impression of how much these cross-border skirmishes have resumed after the relative come during the ceasefire. The Israeli army has been striking back towards any origin of any fire, both via air but also with artillery. We could hear the artillery even outgoing from here. We're just south of Kiryat Shmona. We could hear the outgoing artillery towards southern Lebanon. The Israeli army is saying that throughout the day and also throughout the night, they have been striking Hezbollah positions, such as, of course, launch sites and also weapons depots in southern Lebanon. In addition to that, there was a foreign aircraft that entered the Margaliot area again in the very eastern part of the Israel-Lebanon border. That aircraft fell down again, not causing any injuries, any casualties. But that really just gives you an impression of how the routine basically has resumed. We're seeing exactly what we've seen before the ceasefire, Hezbollah and also other factions in southern Lebanon conducting those cross-border attacks. The Israeli military responding via air and also with their artillery. And we're not expecting to see an end to these cross-border attacks anytime soon because Hezbollah has made it clear time and time again that they are reacting to Israel's actions in Gaza and the north is still or remains to be a very tense region. Again, dozens of communities here, including the city of Kiryat Shmona, have been widely evacuated. And the question that is remaining and that is pressing is really when or if at all these residents, these thousands of people, will be able to get back to their homes. Well, thank you very much, Pia, for that update from the northern front. We'll be back with you over the course of the show. Once you see some more developments there. And it is now 60 days into the Gaza War, the ground operation. The southern Gaza Strip is fully underway as we speak, even as the IDF is still fighting in the northernmost parts of the Gaza Strip as well. I-24 News senior defense correspondent Jonathan Rega breaks this all down for us. Fighting is raging all across the Gaza Strip as Hamas strongholds are being targeted one after the other. One of those is Jabalia, just to the north of Gaza City. It is a very densely populated area where terrorists can pop up from a tunnel shaft practically anywhere. IDF forces, striking from the ground and from the air, have now encircled Jabalia, one of the last standing strongholds in the northern Gaza Strip, and are now carrying out the dangerous mission of clearing this area of terrorists to further establish Israeli control here. There should be no stopping. Keep on pushing forward until victory here, and you should know that the next missions are already planned. This is the next mission. Chanyounis is the biggest city in the southern Gaza Strip. This is the birthplace of I-18 war and Muqam Adef, the political and military leaders of Hamas in Gaza. This is also the place Israel believes many of the hostages are being held. There has been no ground incursion here yet, but the very heavy artillery and airstrikes suggest that it is coming. We pursued them in northern Gaza, we're now pursuing Hamas in southern Gaza too. We will operate in maximum force against Hamas terrorists and infrastructures, while minimizing harm to the civilians that Hamas places around them as shields. It will be a difficult challenge as the vast majority of the Gaza Strip population, more than 2 million people, is concentrated in this area. While Israel is trying to protect them, Hamas has no problem, or maybe even an interest, in sacrificing them all. And now to break this down in studio, we are joined by Yaakov Lapin, military and strategic affairs analyst at the Miryam Institute, as well as our defense correspondent Jonathan Regev. Thank you both for being here in this studio with me. I want to open with you Jonathan, that is the next major theater of operations, one that's currently underway, but ultimately the fighting happening there while the hostages are still very likely in that city. That is why I think we're not seeing the Israeli army going in in full force because you understand that when you're looking for targeting Hamas targets, looking for the Hamas leadership and doing it with all force, you can maybe hurt your own hostages. And that is why Israel is very careful at all this. On the one hand, there's a clear desire to go with massive force, which Israel can do, and try and target one by one everything possible there. But there's an understanding that in the vast tunnel network, or even above the ground, some of the 137 hostages may be, and they may be hurt. So that is why this very carefulness in the way Israel acts. Just about an hour ago we saw a report in local media that Hamas likely has exceptionally deep tunnel shafts and networks hundreds of meters underground, well outside the range of Israel's ground penetrating munitions. What happens when Hamas leadership is holed up there, when they have the hostages so far underground that Israel can't hit them? If this is the case, then the only option would be fighting in those tunnels and the Israeli army as superior as it is above the ground would be inferior below the ground, because this is the, for Hamas this is the home court. They know this very extensive network, which Israel of course not aware of every alleyway or every option there is within those tunnels, so that would be a major problem, a major challenge indeed. I want to turn to you, Yaakov, because we saw for the first month of the war the massive air campaign against the Gaza city that we're not really seeing replicated in the south. As Jonathan pointed out, the hostages likely being the main reason why, but also international pressure from the United States. Are we seeing different tactics being used and what sort of effectiveness are we likely to see different tactics have rather than the heavy bombing that we saw in the early stages? I think there will definitely be different tactics because not only have you both just discussed the presence of the hostages, there are also many, many more civilians, Gaza civilians in southern Gaza as opposed to the north. We had a million people leaving northern Gaza, Gaza city, and they went south. And now in the south, we had local evacuations of about 400,000 Gazans, but they haven't gone north. They're still in the south. So what that means is that the IDF has to operate according to a very localized understanding of where that civilian population is. It's actually built a very impressive map which divides Gaza into hundreds of polygons and sectors, and it's constantly being updated. And only when that polygon is sort of green, when there's 75% or more people who have left that area, will the IDF feel confident in sending large numbers of ground forces into that area. So it's really operating with a lot of intelligence here and slower, I think it's going to be slower compared to the north because of the presence of the civilians, which the IDF is trying to push into two large humanitarian areas, one west of Hanyunas on the coast and one in the Rafah area. Some are complying, some are not. It's complicated. It's going to take time. I think we're going to need a lot of patience to see this staged through. But these restrictions that Israel seems to be placing on the battle in Hanyunas seem to be coming at a cost. We're seeing a rate of IDF losses far faster than we were seeing in the last few weeks of the war before the temporary pause. There are also, I think, just a lot more terrorists in southern Gaza, both above ground and, as you've discussed, below ground. I think Hamas is going to put up a stronger fight in southern Gaza because Hanyunas is really the last major stronghold of Hamas. It's lost Gaza City. It's lost northern Gaza. These were its centers of gravity. After Hanyunas, it doesn't have that much left to go. That will be the toppling of this terror army and regime. So I think they're going to be fighting harder fears, sir. They're going to try and surface from tunnels. And unfortunately, this brings with it the tragic cost that it does. And do we have any indication how long this might take? You said it's a very long road ahead, but the northern part of Gaza was about a month to, it's not finished yet, admittedly, largely incapacitate. I think the high intensity phase of this war has got at least a couple of months left in it. After that, it could start downgrading, but we're still at least a couple of months, I think, away from the end of the high intensity phase of this war. And because we're discussing that, there's always the topic of the day after the war. So I want to bring in another angle here. That's because the IDF, while waging this war, is still having to deal with what's going to happen after the war. What happens when Hamas is toppled and destroyed, as our senior correspondent Owen Altman explains, there are only a few likely scenarios for the future of Gaza. Hold on a moment. Maybe we will. Before the day after in Gaza, the day itself has to end. But if the war, in fact, drives Hamas out of power, then three different types of regime could rule the strip. We have said that any security responsibility that they take on because of the military operation in Gaza needs to be temporary. The first, reoccupation by Israel, with Israel governing two million Gaza's, seen by almost all as a bad outcome, but still the default. If the war ends with Israel in control, then Israel would need to find a taker to replace it, fail to find someone, and Israel would be stuck. In defining that future, in shaping that future for Gaza, for the West Bank, and ultimately for a Palestinian state, Palestinian voices have to be at the center of that. And so the second option, Palestinians governing Gaza, either the Palestinian authority, revitalized Palestinian authority, or some other structure run by Palestinians, in Washington and beyond seen as the better choice. A skeptical Israel will try for deep change in Palestinian education and policies toward terrorism. We will do everything to ensure that Gaza does not return to pose a threat to Israel, and that there is no element in it that educates its children in terrorism. And then the third option, an international force, enticing, say, Saudi Arabia or the UAE to take on influence in Gaza, to show goodwill to the Arab world, and to project power against Iran. The outside actor could work through a Palestinian authority, its sponsors, showing options can be mixed and matched to find something key players can rally around. And we're going to return to our team here in the studio to break that down further. I'm going to open with you, Yaakov. One of the options being floated is a coalition of the Arab world, the Saudis, the Emiratis. But the Arab world has not exactly been very supportive of Israel's war, at least in their public statements. And in fact, some of them are downright aggressively against Israel, such as what we've seen coming out of Turkey. Things coming out of Qatar accusing Israel of systematic and deliberate killing of innocent civilians. How much can Israel really trust the Arab world to govern Gaza's security? So I think we have to divide the Arab Muslim world into a couple of blocks, at least. And Turkey and Qatar are on the Muslim Brotherhood side of this equation. They are not our friends. They never, or at least under their leaderships, have not been, even if there has been some utilitarian dealings with them. The natural allies of Israel will be Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt to a very large extent because of the shared interests here. The moderate Sunni bloc in Israel have a shared interest in seeing this region free of murderous jihadists, of Iranian influence, of the spread of destabilizing proxies, and Iran's ongoing attempt to take over the region and spread the Islamic revolution. Instead of that, all of these countries want economic prosperity and peace and quiet essentially. So that is enough of a glue, I think, to make sure that this bloc actually survives this war. I'm sure that behind the scenes, the moderate Sunni states are very much hoping for an Israeli victory here. The last thing they want is to see the Islamists grow stronger, which would threaten their own domestic security too. I mean, the moderate Sunni states, as you mentioned, it's largely their governments that are holding this position. They're people less so, the example of Egypt being a government that almost failed to the Muslim Brotherhood not that long ago. So how long and how realistically can these governments hold their people as Iran is trying to spread instability? That's an important question. We don't know. The Middle East is unpredictable. I will note just that the UAE hosted very recently in the middle of this war, Israeli President Isaac Herzog. I think that that's not trivial. That is a statement of intent. Publicly hosting the Israeli president in the middle of the largest war in a long time in this region involving Israel. And I'm sure my hunch is that behind the scenes there are ongoing Saudi-Israeli contacts. Hamas is illegal in Saudi Arabia. Hamas is an enemy of the Saudi royal court. I don't think Mohammed bin Salman has any sympathy whatsoever for Islamist jihadis. I want to turn to you, Jonathan, because one of the options on the table was also an Israeli military reoccupation of the Gaza Strip. Everyone seems to admit that would be a terrible idea, but might that be a necessary one? I don't think so. I don't see it happening. I think I would go as far as saying there's a global consensus against it. And I think there's a wide, even within Israel, there's a wide opposition to it. Not everybody in Israel disagrees. There are those who actually, it could be even their dream, reoccupy Gaza, rebuild the Gush-Katif neighborhood, the Gush-Katif settlement block, which was dismantled in 2005. But even within the Israeli society, I think there's quite a large majority, which does not want to stay in Gaza. Let's remember, Gaza brings with it two million Palestinians. Period. What do you do with them? Who cares for their education? Who cares for their welfare? School taking garbage off the streets. Who does that? This is something that Israel does not want to do. Therefore reoccupying Gaza and controlling Gaza for decades to come, I think the answer is no. In the short term, this is something that Israel will have to do because Israel, first and foremost, is to make sure that the security of the people living in just on the Gaza border has to be maintained, something that did not happen for the past 20 years. Therefore, for the short term, Israel will be there occupying for some time. But the notion, which is, again, I'm saying there's a consensus in the world for that and even a wide majority within Israel is saying after some time, after we find some kind of a mechanism to control Gaza, Israel has to withdraw. And that brings us to the third, still bad, but possibly most realistic option, that being, as the United States calls it, a reinvigorated Palestinian authority. But the Palestinian authority is barely holding onto power even in the West Bank. They're not even in the streets. When you have marches of tens of thousands of people waving Hamas flags and toting Kalashnikovs, I mean, you look at that sort of situation and is the PA really an option? Look, I think that, at least from a military and strategic perspective, I think what is realistic is that there will be an attempt to install some sort of civilian autonomy in the Gaza Strip. Who that will be, I really don't know. But I think the ground rules will be they can't be an Iranian-funded jihadist entity. They cannot use the Gaza Strip to build weapons. And they cannot enable mass brainwashing of children to hate and jihad. Whoever holds up to those criteria, I think will be acceptable to Israel. And that is a day after question. And I think from a security perspective, the most important thing here is to keep the West Bank model in mind in which there is an autonomy there, but the IDF has not given up any of its freedom of movement whenever it detects a threat anywhere in the West Bank. It moves in. It doesn't need a lot of forces usually except in certain areas like Janine to move in and neutralize that threat. I think that's the model that Israel is going to go for in the Gaza Strip alongside the civilian autonomy, which could, going back to what we were discussing earlier, enjoy some level of support, possibly from Saudi Arabia, which could invest in industry with Egyptian support. There could be the moderate Sunni bloc getting behind this autonomy and turning Gaza into a completely different story one day in the future, possibly. And Jonathan, are there any people on the PA roster that Israel feels they might be able to work with? Because it doesn't seem like a boss is in that position. A boss is not in that position. And let's remember, even if it's somewhat uncomfortable to say, I don't know if a boss is in any position at all. The man is 88 years old, the man is ill, and the man is unacceptable as far as most Israelis simply because he does not really control the West Bank. Let's put it on the table loud and clear. Had it not been for Israel's presence in the West Bank and the fact that Israeli forces come in night after night after night, I don't think the PA would have stayed in power. Hamas would have taken the West Bank, too. Hamas enjoys wide popularity in the West Bank even more than it does in Gaza. And only the fact that Israeli forces are present is what keeps the Palestinian authority in place. So Mahmoud Abbas, no. There are certain people within the Palestinian authority that are more acceptable for Israel, Salam Fayyad, for example, who was a former prime minister of the Palestinian authority, I think. And some other people, Mohamed Ahlan, perhaps, who was a native of Gaza and was part of the Palestinian Authority roster when it was created back in the mid-90s. At least for the moment, I don't see anyone in the Palestinian authority which is acceptable for Israel. And let's remember one thing. The Palestinian Authority controlled the Gaza Strip. It had control of the Gaza Strip with no Israeli forces at all from 2005 from the disengagement until 2007 when Hamas took over. It had two years. And in those two years, an Israeli soldier was abducted from Israel to Gaza and was not found by the Palestinian Authority who was controlling the area. Why should it be any different in 2024 when comparing with 2006, when the mechanism and the people are the same people? I think the answer is no. Therefore, this is probably a solution that will be unacceptable for Israel, certainly for this government. I don't think for any other future government because the Palestinian Authority, if we want someone in control of the area who will also be able to fight terrorism, I don't think the Palestinian Authority can do that. Can the Palestinian Authority control the lives of people as far as education, welfare, collecting the garbage? Kind of. Security, no. So what's it going to end up looking like? And even given that what you just said, if Israel found a new generation of leader in the PA, well, Abbas already said he's not going to come into Gaza riding on an Israeli tank. He knows he wouldn't be accepted. So anybody acceptable to Israel isn't going to be acceptable to anybody in Gaza. Well, I'm not sure that that would necessarily be the equation going forward. We have a lot of unknowns. We're trying to peer into the future. But I think after this large scale war and the devastation that Hamas brought onto the Gaza Strip, there could be an opportunity for some kind of resets. This is something that Gaza has never experienced before. And of course, again, Hamas brought this devastation on it through its October 7th mass murder attack. But what comes after that could be a new opportunity for the moderate players in this region to join hands with Israel and to start building some kind of autonomy. Who will be in that autonomy? I do believe that it's too early to know. But I think there is an opportunity. We should look for those opportunities after this war is over. And we should try to think a little bit outside of the box as much as possible while never giving up security freedom of movement as we've been discussing. Thank you both for explaining the situation, both tactically and politically. Let's hope that there is some cause for optimism in the future, because the last few decades have not really given a lot, Yaakov. Anyway, we are about to go on a break. But we will be back in just about three minutes for so much more coverage of this war. So definitely stay with us. We will see you again very soon. Is in a state of war, families completely done down in their beds. We have no idea where is she. As our soldiers are fighting on the front line, but the general perception is something that certainly needs to be fought as well. Thank you for staying with us as we turn to a much more dark part of the show. Testimony from survivors of Hamas' captivity about the inhumane and damaging, torturous treatment from their captors. The brother of Sharon Aloni-Cuneo said that Hamas separated Sharon's three-year-old twins a few days into their captivity, and Sharon did not know for almost 50 more days if the toddler was alive or dead. Now the twin girls, Emma and Yuli, are physically healthy, at least will stable, but deeply scarred psychologically. A bunch of people, more than 10 people, in a very, very small room, when they needed something, they needed to knock on the door, and maybe someone would come there to them after one hour, maybe four hours, they weren't sure. Think about how people managing their own bodies in this small room, especially kids, in a different location they were at. Food was not a given. They weren't sure when they will be given food or how much. I understood that there were arguments between the hostages around water. Noam, my 12-year-old daughter, don't allow me to leave the house, to leave her promise for more than... I just asked her, can I get the trash down? And she wouldn't permit it. So she's like hanging out to me very closely. She have worked sometimes during the night, screaming for more than 48 hours. All the kids were still whispering to each other, and all the communication was only whispering 48 hours after they were released, all of them. The kids, the mothers, all the hostages that were released by now, all of them lost weight, between 10% to 15% of their body weight. There was a limitation of water, limitation of drinking water, and the limitation, of course, of water to take a shower, because we have one family who took three showers in 54 days, and one of the kids who took none shower at all on 54 days. And you can imagine from that point, the medical hygiene that they came back, every family that we were talking to, they were psychologically abused on a terrible way, from nobody cares for you, nobody will look for you. One of the kids told me that, one of the teenager, that they told him every day, several times a day, that don't worry, you will be here at least for a year, if you go back at all. We are joined now by Rachel Goldberg, the mother of Hirsch Goldberg-Poland, who was kidnapped by Hamas during the October 7th attack. Rachel, I'm sorry that I have no words of consolation, but I'm glad that you are here to tell your story. I understand there's a meeting between families like yourselves and the Prime Minister today around three o'clock. Are you planning to go to that meeting? What do you expect to hear, and what do you have to say? My husband's on his way to that meeting now, and I have no idea what any of us are expecting them to say. He's just going with an open mind, and to hear, in general, these meetings, I don't think that we find out very much. I think it's an opportunity for the families to share what they're going through with the people who are actually making decisions about our children's lives and our parents' lives, and siblings, and spouses, and loved ones. So I think it's an opportunity for people who are in anguish and despair to talk to the people who actually seem to be deciding the fate of our loved ones. I don't even understand what's going through your mind when you have to hear things like this. How do you get through your day? What's it even look like? What are you going through? You should know that I was horrified when you started your segment three minutes ago, and I muted it, I didn't listen to one word. I actually was so upset that I would be asked to be participating in something where it would be expressing something that could be happening to my son. So I have no idea what was just discussed. And so if that's what you're referring to, I- Just in general. In general. So in general, it's, I don't know if you have children, but you certainly have or had a mother. So you can imagine what she would be going through if she knew that you were grievously maimed, wounded, permanently disabled, and traumatized, and taken away and have been hidden for 60 days and not being seen by any international humanitarian aid organization, what she would be going through. So that's what we've been going through and what all the hostage families are going through. As a father myself, I really can't imagine as you brought up there, do you, do you have you heard anything at all? What do you know at this point? I mean, I know from the hostages that were released that told people in our team that people who were wounded, but grievously wounded, but fixable were taken to hospitals. So we're hopeful since we have the video of Hirsch without his arm, but walking on his own two feet, seeming composed. I'm sure it's because he was in shock, but he was composed and got himself onto the pickup truck at gunpoint and was able to and stayed conscious. So our hope is that he was taken and given the treatment that he needed for his amputated arm. And that's all we know, just like everybody else who, there's been no information that's come out except for the people who thankfully thank God last week were released. Do you have a message for the rest of the nation that's going through so many other families like yourself right now? What do you wanna tell them because they're experiencing the same grief? Look, I think our whole country is going through a serious trauma. We're 60 days out. So on the one hand that feels like it's a long, long way out. And on the other hand, someone said, it's October 66th, 67th. It's just been this one long drawn out slow motion day of trauma. I feel that the nation is with us. I feel that a lot of people like you just said, say, my God, I'm a parent. I can't imagine what you're going through. And we've gotten hundreds of thousands of messages of support and we're just one family, which means spread that out over all the hundreds of families that are going through this. And we appreciate your support. We hope that it doesn't wane. And we also are very supportive of these families with soldiers who are there who are fighting desperately for a huge goal to protect our country and to protect our people who are there. We're going through a really difficult time as a nation and I hope we can stay together and support each other because we're in a lot of pain and psychic trauma. Rachel, I don't know if there are any words that can comfort, but all of us, the nation, us here, myself, we're all praying for you, praying for your family, praying for the safe return of Hirsch for everyone else that has been taken so cruelly from us. Stay strong yourself, your family, the entire nation. Thank you. And the United States State Department says, it appears that Hamas is refusing to release the remaining Israeli woman because the terror group doesn't want negative global publicity from them speaking out about what they've endured. It has been suspected for days that the Qatar-led negotiations broke down specifically because Hamas didn't want the kidnapped woman to speak out. However, this is the first time a top U.S. official has confirmed that this is the likely reason. Matthew Miller says the U.S. is still working to secure an additional hostage deal. I've obviously seen the reports that Hamas has committed sexual violence, they've committed rape. We have no reason at all to doubt those reports. When you look at all of the atrocities that Hamas carried out on October 7th and the atrocities that they have carried out since, the fact that they continue to hold women hostages, the fact that they continue to hold children hostages, the fact that it seems one of the reasons they don't want to turn women over, that they've been holding hostage and the reason this pause fell apart is they don't want those women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time in custody. Certainly, there is very little that I would put beyond Hamas when it comes to its treatment of civilians and particularly its treatment of women. And joining us in studio is the host of the Ronda and Caleb Ben David. We've just been following this issue so closely. Caleb, when we have the United States saying that Hamas doesn't want bad publicity, this is a terror organization that live stream crimes against humanity, sadistic tortures that we haven't seen in the world since the Middle Ages for God's sakes, bad publicity. No, I think the thing is the issue of the sexual abuse of women rape that took place, not just on October 7th but afterwards, those stories we first heard even in the days following October 7th but they didn't really gather much steam, much international condemnation. It's only just yesterday, the UN finally even addressed the issue. One reason is because it's been coming out is because, for example, some of the hostages that were released were able to provide witness, first witness testimony to what happened with some of the women. Why there were no women that could testify that of October 7th is because according to that testimony, Hamas killed those women that they raped. In fact, silence them and silence their voices. But some of them, the hostages who have come out were there on the scene, were able to give firsthand account of what they witnessed. There's also more gathering of forensic evidence that took time, interrogation of people that have come out. And I think Hamas is aware, and listen, there are, I'm not gonna say supporters of Hamas though, some have argued that is, but excuses of Hamas have been able as apologists for Hamas who have been denying these atrocities. And Hamas is aware it has that constituency internationally. And these kind of stories are damaging to it and help reinforce Israel's case against carrying the fight against Hamas. Simultaneously, we see organizations like UN Women was silent for just about two months. The international network of women's organizations that should have been as loud as humanly possible, completely silent still. And in fact, using the time to condemn Israel rather than Hamas in the first place. Whose interests are they serving if not their explicit interest in serving women? Right, I'm gonna quote Gal Gadot to put out on Instagram. And Gal Gadot, we should note, probably the most prominent Israeli in the world perhaps, is always been a supporter of Israel, but usually he's very circumspect because she's aware of her position in the entertainment world. She put out a message on Instagram. The first line is the world has failed the women of October 7th. And the world has failed, but it's very specifically calling out organizations that are supposed to be acting defense of women and protect women and talk about these charges and investigate charges of sexual abuse, like UN Women, like some of the progressive female politicians. There was one, Pramila Jayapal, a congresswoman, one of the so-called progressive wing of the Democratic Party who gave a very equivocal answer when asked about this on American TV. So there is a feeling, certainly among many people, that some of the very organizations and people that have spoken out for women's rights when it comes to the rape, sexual abuse, torture and even murder and mutilation of Israeli women and girls on October 7th, and beyond that have not failed to do their job. Has the progressive movement simply lost its moral compass so is it always this morally culpable? I don't want to paint that broader brush. There are progressives who have spoken out about it and people who see themselves as progressive or have spoken about it. But yes, there certainly is one area of this, one aspect where there's a blind eye and that has become, it's clear, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And I do think there is a, what we call in Israel, among certain quarters a hashbone nephish at account taking of that. But unfortunately, it should be much more wider in those particular political circles. And with the US making statements like the one we just saw from Matthew Miller there, is it ultimately just moral support or is there anything fundamental behind it? Well, there is something important, which is that strength Israel's case, the urgency to free the hostages. Free the hostages who are undergoing abuse. Some of the hostages, of course, we've learned just in the past week have died. And that gives an urgency to Israel's claim that it has to carry out this fight against Hamas in order, the two goals, defeat Hamas or we can't do this again, but also to free the hostages who have, we have learned and we've heard the stories and you've played that, who are undergoing daily abuse. So time is of the essence here for Israel to press its case and to press its offensive in Gaza to free those hostages. How much of this fundamentally comes down to the age-old canards of anti-Semitism. We saw, me too, unless you're a Jew, was the trending item when we saw this sort of wave of silence. And we see even now, while there is this high level support of Israel from the American establishment, you see in cities across America, just attacks on Jews, burning down Jewish businesses, students on college campuses, demanding genocide of the Jewish people. It paints a picture that this silence is born of a dark core that simply hates Israel and the Jews. Right, I'm gonna be, again, be careful and not to paint too broad a brush, but there is an issue, which is for many years certainly some have distinguished between what they say, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. But that anti-Zionism to a point where you demonize Israel out of all proportion, you deny Israel or the Jewish people the same right of self-determination, you would give to the Palestinians and other groups. And that demonization of Israel certainly in some quarters has led people to the point where basically they can justify any actions taken against Israelis because Israel is rotten to its core or illegitimate and illegitimate enterprise from the beginning, and that does bleed over. That's the point where anti-Zionism as opposed to criticism of Israel, that bleeds over into a more classic anti-Semitism. So there are some people who are taking this position, you won't normally say you're anti-Semitic or say, no, I'm not against the Jews, but I'm against the state of Israel. But again, if you turn Israel to use one formulation into the Jew among nations, you are crossing the line into anti-Semitism. Seems that once you have enough resentment, you can justify literally anything. Caleb, thank you for breaking down the moral failings of the world as a whole. Now, despite all these tales we've told of horror from October 7th, there were also some tales of heroism as well as survival, some even more unlikely than others, such as one 97-year-old woman's tale of evasion and escape on that fateful day. Today's newspaper has arrived. Here, more hostages have been released. It's all from the party at Reim. He wasn't at the Reim party at all. No, he was at home. He ties in Gaza? Yes, he might get lucky. Right, right. Let's hope he gets lucky. Tough questions, if I know. Everything gets mixed up. What can I do? It's been eight weeks since she was brought here on the Black Sabbath. She sits in fake tranquility in the home of one of her children in Kochav Yair, grieving over the destruction of the Kibbutz and the death of her loved ones. Grandma Aviva has only one hope left to celebrate a birthday next month with her grandson, Itai, who is a prisoner of Hamas. You have to tell me what you will ask me. How old I am? I think I'm 97 years old. I don't believe it either. I was born in 1927. Do the math. I think that it's true. Yes, soon. I have no complaints about my age. I have no complaints. Not about the health, not even about the mind. It's hard for the mind to contain everything. What happened to Aviva that Saturday? How did she manage to get out on her own from the Baeri massacre? I remember Arabs came. They said it was actually their house. I told them, welcome, come visit. Come visit. I thought we could talk to them, but they were by my balcony. I know that, sure. But what happened then, I no longer remember. Well, that's history. The truth is that mom remembers it, but Gracie, the nanny, was there. At our house? Yes. Gracie, the devoted caregiver. She even managed to send a picture of herself in Aviva, cuddled under the blanket in the safe room, until her last post, help, people are entering the house. At around 12, she wrote for the first time that the terrorists have entered. 10 to 3? This is her last message. And at some point, Gracie disappeared and was murdered. The full picture was completely by the family members, eyewitnesses who survived to tell their story. They say that mother's house, the balcony was the war room, and all your lawn, mother, was actually their ops room, full of weapons, and that's where their activity was concentrated. And where was mom at the time? On the swing. That's what they say, that mom was on the swing on the porch. A plate full of fruit was placed in front of her, which Gracie, the nanny, must have prepared for her. To the war room that opened on Aviva's balcony, the terrorists brought more people from the kibbutz. Some were kidnapped later, some injured, like a kibbutz member who arrived there seriously injured with their two remaining children. This woman is mother's neighbor, and she herself, her husband was murdered, and her baby was murdered, and brought her there. She says that thanks to mom, she survived, because mom kept talking to her. And that's how she didn't lose consciousness. She also says that her son vomited all the time because he inhaled a lot of smoke, and she told him, it's okay, everything is fine. She also said that the mother kept talking, and they kept telling her to shut up, but she talked. I hear, I'm listening. Nothing ringing? This is what we were told about you, people who were with you. What? You're a hero, and you don't even remember? Probably the bad things I don't remember. Memory is deceptive, the fog of the senses and forgetfulness probably leaves the bar of consciousness, only with what the soul can bear. I only remember one thing about myself, and I'm not, I can't believe it was like that. I decided I was going, that I was leaving the kibbutz. Can you take my kibbutz? Aviva decided to go, walking slowly, alone, from her house toward the parking lot, with the walker, without the glasses, and without a hearing aid. She remembers complete silence. But when she's in a bubble of silence, from around the fighting at its peak, there were still many terrorists in the kibbutz. There were many battles. It was half past five, five in the afternoon. Fortunately for me, there was a ride, and I got on this ride, and he was on his way to Tel Aviv, and on the way I called my daughter. She didn't agree to go until she knew where Orit was. She asked what happened to Gracie. She said, how can it be that I went without her? Ten days later, they got bitter news. Orit, Aviva's daughter and son-in-law Rafi were murdered. Their son, Itai, the grandson who came to visit Aviva, was taken hostage to Gaza. It's okay. It's just I can't hide it. This is our family truth. Grandma knows it, that both parents were murdered, each in his own home, and that Itai was kidnapped. We actually talked about it. They talk about it every day. There are three of us left out of a family of six. Meirav, Itai's sister, the only one from the family who doesn't live in the south, received the first sign of life in recent days through one of the hostages who was released. Save me now. He wants to tell me that he is alive and that he asks us to do what is necessary to get him out. And today we know that he was simply taken. When he knows that mom, he saw her murdered in front of his eyes, he doesn't know what happened to my father because the connection went out 15 minutes earlier. He is just sensitive and gentle, and we take great care of him. It's very hard to think about him there. And now that we know for a fact that the fighting continues, it is unbearable. Because he's 38 years old and without children, he is suddenly without rights. A person who is in what could be the prime of his life, currently becoming the bottom of the list. Now if he has no children, but I have children who need their uncle. They haven't talked about the men yet. It's like it's not something that... is it perhaps a victim of the war? Should I tell you about Itai, a handsome, smart and kind-hearted guy? The thing that was most important to him was coming to visit you. Yes, always. For him, the most important was being at grandma's. Last Friday, Aviva decided for the first time to leave the protected house, Mkochav Yeir. With her measured steps, she walked to the hostages square in Tel Aviv. When did you put the picture of Itai? We placed it now. We organized it. As a child, I remember we were always in the shadow of events. But here it comes in this way at such an old age, in a much more brutal way even. I must be optimistic. We have no other choice. This is our place. You know, I tell the kids, I promise them that what happened will never happen again, so that they have faith that it's possible to live here. That's right. Because when you go through something like that, it's really hard to believe. And as the ground operation in Gaza expands into the south, particularly into Khan Yunus, there is a new critic of Israel's operation, that being, of course, the United Nations. As you can see right there in those live images of some of the destruction in Gaza, well, the UN is saying there are no such things as safe zones. Israel has been trying to reduce civilian casualties by creating a grid map of Khan Yunus, so that people and civilians in those areas could flee from areas where there would be combat operations. But UNICEF is telling reporters that there are no actual rational safe zones in this. Though it's worth noting, the UN has not provided any alternative ideas to Israel's attempts to keep down civilian casualties. We're going to be discussing this and so many more aspects of the war after a short break, though. So stay with us. We're going to be back in just three minutes on this and so much more. Is in a state of war families completely gunned down in their beds. We have no idea where she is. Our soldiers are fighting on the front lines, but the general perception is something that certainly needs to be fought as well. This week on News 24, Israel under attack. News 24 in Spanish brings the analysis and information of the events of the war, Iron Spades. Exclusive interviews and reports from the war zone. The reaction of the Spanish-speaking countries. News 24, the only media in Spanish that keeps you informed and connected with the Latin community in Israel. News 24, only on I-24 News. Thanks for staying with us. In fact, just over that break, we had some rock alert sirens going off in Ashkelon as the war continues around us. That said, we have to bring you some testimony and direct evidence of Hamas' crimes against humanity. This is chilling new footage of an Israeli hostage who was being kidnapped on October 7th by the terrorists. This is new video that we have permission from the woman to share this publicly if you have a weak stomach before warned of some of what you are going to see and hear over the next few minutes, but the world has no right to look away or to ignore this. This is Amit Susana. She lived alone in an apartment in Kibbutz, Kfar-Aza, near the Gaza border that was overrun with terrorists. Security camera footage shows her heroically and bravely trying to fight off her Hamas kidnappers. She single-handedly fights seven Hamas fighters, some of them armed with automatic weapons as they try to pull her inside Gaza. Ultimately, she was dragged over the border, carried into Gaza. Amit was released from Gaza last week in the seventh and final group of hostages. But this is underscoring a collection of chilling testimonies that detail Hamas' use of rape as a weapon of war, one of the highest categories of crimes against humanity. As international women's agencies remain silent or issue late and tepid condemnations at best, victims are demanding answers. Here are their ordeals, as well as some gruesome testimony from the perpetrators themselves. On October 7th, Hamas committed crimes against humanity. They raped, murdered, and violated Israeli women. Usually, the United Nations is a place where Israelis have to defend their actions. But this time, they had center stage calling out the brutal violence against women on October 7th. Hamas had committed rapes. We saw bodies of naked women. Morg workers say the bodies show trauma consistent with rape. They bent someone down and I realized he was raping her and then he shot her in the head. Her pants are pulled down and she is half naked. The legs will spread out. And women's organizations chose to be silent against Hamas' violence. And calling out the deafening silence, denial, and vocal vitriol against Jewish people that ensued. The world has to decide who to believe. Do we believe the Hamas spokesperson who said that rape is forbidden, therefore it couldn't have possibly happened on October 7th? Or do we believe the women whose bodies tell us how they spent the last minutes of their lives? Who are we going to believe? We found a woman's body dumped outside. Without pants. Without underpants. Burn. Barely any hair left on her. They even displayed horrific eyewitness testimonies. A lot of rape. There are also rape cases in the area of women. We believe that's a lot. There are many cases of rape. There are also cases of rape in women. People who came to us as victims of rape, we see them as victims of rape. Or only victims of rape. Just rape from one side to the other. They come to us as victims of rape. They don't get away. They're just trying to get away. Just trying to get away. They're just trying to get away. They're just trying to get away. They're just trying to get away. What's more, is the overwhelming amount of women protesting in hate and anti-semitic rallies around the world, especially when it's taken so many decades and centuries for women to find a voice and speak out against rape and violence. When people use the language of feminism while brushing aside gender-based violence because of the identity of the victims, they're sending a clear signal that women's rights are negotiable, that rape is sometimes okay, that some women have more dignity than others. That is more than hypocrisy. It is a betrayal of all women because when our agency can be traded away, none of us are safe. Israeli authorities also called out the propaganda of Hamas and the fact that Hamas uses rape as a weapon of war while the world watches. Israel suffered the most brutal massacre since the Holocaust. The atrocities committed by Hamas were more barbaric than ISIS. Some say more cruel and barbaric than the Nazis. Babies were murdered and beheaded. Families were bound together and burnt alive. Children were executed in front of their parents and parents in front of their children. We are joined now by Tamar Herzeg, Vice Dean for Research in the Faculty of Humanities at Tel Aviv University. Tamar, we just heard those testimonies. Hamas live-streamed their savage crimes against humanity. The evidence is overwhelming of the acts of pure sadistic evil that we saw on October 7th. How does the world, particularly women's organizations, dare to deny or remain silent? This is something that never ceases to amaze me. I think it is not only a betrayal of Israeli or Jewish women, pretty much, but also puts all the girls and women across the globe in danger because not believing when there are so many different kinds of evidence, and we just heard about the bodies, the corpses of the mutilated women and rape women, and there are video footages not believing this actually is undoing one of the greatest achievements of feminism in the last few decades. I believe you became the motto of the last few years, but here, when faced with so many proofs and evidence, there is just refusal to believe, and I think this refusal to believe is the result of the fact that this massive systematic rape of Israeli women complicates the narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because this is something that never for part of this local conflict in the Middle East. It is something that is foreign to the conflict, and which shows us that the Hamas attack really is a watershed in the history of this area. If these feminist movements, these women's organizations, aren't serving the interests of women by remaining silent by this treachery, as you call, then just what interests are they serving? What purpose do they have if they can't fulfill their clear mission statement? Well, I do think they have certainly failed us and other women, and in many cases, I assume this is just the result of ignorance or of sympathizing with the Palestinians, especially in Gaza, who we have to say are also victims of other kinds of violence, but not of this sexual violence, which, as I said earlier, has just not been a part of this conflict in that definitely not anything like what we've seen recently about October 7th, the assault of October 7th. No mass raping, group raping, mutilation, this was not part of the conflict. So the refusal to see, I think, reflects also a failure of the historical burden that the world today has to acknowledge a watershed of historical magnitude and conflict. But this regarding and silencing the victimization of women, Israeli women, as this is something that cannot be justified in any way, definitely not in sympathizing with the suffering of Palestinians. You can sympathize with the suffering of Palestinian civilians and still not be complicit in sexual violence of the kind that occurred on October 7th and silence, as feminists have been arguing for quite a few years now, silence is complicity and by keeping silence in the face of such gender-based atrocities these feminist movements indeed are betraying their mission. Have we ever in the history of world conflict seen this sort of targeted willful silence applied a scale like this before and does it set a precedent going forward? There are well, historically sexual violence against women has been silenced for several reasons usually in conflicts it has been more important to compare the numbers of casualties and when referring to casualties, the dead bodies were accounted not raped bodies this did not form part of the calculation but since the conflict in Bosnia in the early 90s we know that massive systematic rape is canon, is used and is a crime not only against women but against humanity because when a woman is raped there is an intentional attempt to deprive her of her humanity and we certainly saw examples of this in the kind of sexual violence and gender-based violence that was inflicted on Israeli women on October 7 but since the 1990s this kind of sexual violence as part of ethnic, religious and national conflict has been acknowledged as a prosecutable crime and there were always feminist movements that were mobilized for voicing the claims that this kind of violence should be prosecuted to the best of my knowledge this kind of really deafening silence is really unique and I cannot say that it's unprecedented because it's not as if the West has been particularly attuned to conflicts in Africa for instance or to the sexual violence that is taking place there I mean it's now no coincidence that the international organizations became concerned with sexual violence and rape as a weapon of war after a conflict in Europe in Bosnia in the 1990s however there has not been any kind of well documented and abundantly documented use of sexual violence against girls and women that remained silenced and even downright denied to this extent Tamar the shock and the horror that we are both feeling right now after seeing that testimony is testament to how this is something that is a weapon against a society as a whole society as a whole how do we respond to seeing something like this well Israeli society and I'm speaking for myself and for people that I know we are still pretty much in undergoing this trauma this collective trauma of the greatest program against Jews since 1945 since the Holocaust which also and probably intentionally comprised of elements that were intended to remind us Israelis and Jews across the globe of historical programs it is no and rape is also part of that rape, the dehumanization, the degradation the secretion of corpses in very specific ways were supposed to remind Israeli Jews of programs and I think we're still grappling with how to cope with this trauma in a way everyone in Israel has suffered a trauma many people directly because their relatives and friends were affected or they had to evacuate their homes but even those of us were not directly affected are still undergoing trauma I think we should speak up talk about what happened especially in the face of denial that sadly has become very widespread in places where we did not expect them to be I think Europe for instance does bear moral and historical responsibility to not looking the other way when this kind of testimony is shown and I do know from speaking to European journalists that in some television news channels for instance this kind of testimony was censored was just taken out in order to maintain a kind of biased reporting on what is happening in the Middle East but there is no there is no equivalent to this kind of sexual violence on the Israeli side this is something that was perpetuated by terrorists and should be acknowledged as such tomorrow we are looking at the Israeli society it's not simply confronting an enemy but confronting evil itself and it seems the world is failing to acknowledge that around us tomorrow thank you very much for breaking that all down for us thank you and the enemy fully understands that last point Israel is fighting an asymmetric war in Gaza they have no rules they are using every dirty tactic imaginable to attack the will of the Israeli people as well as them physically to attack the resolve of the free world that backs Israel dirty games played around ceasefire terms and hostage releases carefully constructed propaganda and of course these terrible torments and abuses heaped upon helpless captives all make up Hamas's weapons of psychological warfare analysts of this form of combat say we are losing the war in the mind even as the IDF is dominating on the battlefield with us now is Ofer Rosenbaum expert in psychological warfare joining us from Natanya Ofer what exactly does that mean that we are losing the battle psychologically even as we went on the ground well let's start speaking about the base of psychology warfare now the basic of this says that it doesn't matter what you are capable to do to your enemy the one thing that is important in what your enemy is sure that you can do to him now if we understand that this is the base of psychology warfare we understand it in October 7 our conception as collapse now in the past two months what Israel is trying to do, what the IDF is trying to do is try to the long, very long process of reconstruction the psychology the threat that we must have against our enemy against the Hamas Ofer on October 7th the Israeli people witnessed the worst things that can be done to a human being things that we have not seen since the Holocaust things that have not been seen since medieval warfare in many cases the Hamas knows that Israel will not do that to them this creates a sort of force imbalance, a discrepancy in the psychological warfare arena can you win if the enemy is not afraid of defeat but your side is afraid of all the horrible abuses that you will be subjected to well this is the problem you see that there is one word that I keep hearing in all the interviews that I'm making and this word is proportion now I don't like this word but probably you will be agree with me now let's suppose that you will slap me and let's suppose that the response for your slave you slapping me is me slapping you back now this will be a proportional response and you will know that in the next time that you slap me you will get another slap and there is a very big possibility that you decide to slap me one more time now if you will slap me and instead of slapping back I will cut your end off it will never and I will never slap me or anyone else again now Hamas slapped the state of Israel our responsibility as a state, as an army our responsibility not to cut their end off is to cut their end off to make sure that it will never and ever happen again and what you are saying that this is true because us being non-proportional is our duty right now because Hamas and Gaza is one small problem what we need to remember is around Israel and on our first test there are many, many wolves and those wolves, this is Hezbollah this is Iran and those wolves are just trying to see what we are going to do and how we are going to act now for those wolves Israel must make sure that in this story we will not be nor the grandma or the little girl with the red hoodie in this story we must be the unders of the enemy, each and every one of them we don't have any other possibility now one of the things you mentioned there the concept of proportionality interestingly enough in international law it doesn't mean that the response is of the same proportion as the attack it means that the response is of the proportion needed to end the threat the threat from Hamas is a genocidal one the threat from the northern border is Hezbollah, the exact same ideology with much more weapons, does that mean I guess the question, what does that mean Israel has to do with Hamas to make sure that psychologically Lebanon gets the message too you know, Israeli army the IDF, we used to learn the crown, we had the crown for many many years, we called ourselves the most moral army in the world like it was a big context of all the army in the world and we won this contest now we forgot that the IDF doesn't supposed to be the most moral army in the world, it must be the most terrifying army, the most protective and this is our response right now against the Hezbollah and against any other threat because as he said we must make sure that we will have no other threat we must make sure that the people from the northern people of the town will have the possibility to get back to their home, right now they don't have this possibility I don't see them back to their home in the next 2-3-4 months there is a lot of work to do on the north side and on the south you make a good point if I want to talk morality I'll ask my rabbi not my military, but we still have the United States breathing down Israel's neck demanding that it reduces the way it does its operations to reduce any collateral damage, how does Israel get the psychological message across the United States too that the threat and the nature of the threat is as evil, sadistic and genocidal as the two of us can see quite clearly because let me tell you something the United States is probably the entire world right now they tell us something very simple they tell us listen, it's okay you need to be the Hamas but just remember this is not all the Gazan people, not all the people from Gaza the Palestinians but now we need to remember something that I teach my 8 years old this is the responsibility of your life and even my 8 years old know this, the Palestinian people should know this as well now just as in Germany we need to remember that Palestinian people are the ones that put Hamas in power in the Gaza Strip one thing that we also need to remember is that October 7 when the terrorist vehicles came back from Israel to Gaza and on the vehicles there was a body there was a the people there kidnapped I didn't see, I haven't seen even one Palestinian stop them and say this is wrong don't do it, what this is is thousands and thousands of people Gaza people that they ravaged the bodies and eat the people now this is not a minority this is not a minority this is a DNA of the Gaza Strip and if we understand this is the DNA of the Gaza Strip we understand that there is a lot of work that we need to do to make sure that this will never be can happen again because the Hamas is a terror organization but it's not only a terror organization Hamas is an idea it's a movement and we need to kill the idea of the Hamas and only then we will be safe to get back to our homes in the south this is the only way that we can do it now I've seen some of your work on social media before one of the things in the early days of the wars that Israel needs to learn to start speaking Arabic to talk to the enemy the same way they interact with us do you think Israel society has undergone a psychological shift since October 7th do you believe they are now better equipped to respond on a level that the enemy will understand I think that there is much much different between what the Israeli people want and what the Israeli government and the IDF are doing right now because the Israeli people as you said we started to speak Arabic in another language if we remember the days before the October 7 everybody we were in a big mess and right now I don't see much left or much right I see much of Israelis just believe that we need to be together and make sure that our enemy will get destroyed now my problem right now is that you speak the language and I speak the language and the Israeli people speak the language and let me tell you something guys I'm in a very strong connections with military commanders soldiers who are on front they are right now on the ground on the street they want to finish this work they don't want to leave anything over there now the problem is as you say we need to respond to what the Americans have to say what the French have to say but it doesn't need to be that way because if we need to learn to run sing only one thing from the Russian Ukraine war is that we are alone in the world just remember Ukraine they came to each country that agreed to speak with them and they wanted help and everybody was very sympathetic for the situation say oh we are with you and we love you and good luck Godspeed but they were alone we are alone as well the Israeli people the state of Israel have a responsibility to the Israeli life we got to understand it right now definitely and going forward let's hope that message actually sticks Ofer thank you very much for breaking down the psychological aspect of the war for everyone else though we do have to go for a short break we'll be out for three minutes when we get back we have so much more to cover so stay with us Israel is in a state of war families completely done down in their beds we have no idea where she is our soldiers are fighting on the front line but the general perception is something that certainly needs to be fought as well there have been countless memorable moments broadcasting with i24 news in the past six years but for me the one that stands out the most was the first time that I had ever personally heard a rocket siren sounding in Tel Aviv and at that moment we were live on air in studio I will never forget the moment our senior producer said to me in my ear the sirens of sounding in Tel Aviv the control room is going to the shelter with me in studio at the time were Michael Herzog a former Brigadier General today the Israeli Ambassador to the United States and Arson Ostrovsky an international human rights lawyer and their responses were completely different Michael Herzog was calm and composed and on the other hand Arson Ostrovsky was trying to phone his family and check in to make sure that his loved ones were okay the camera that normally faces us hoisted from above there was an overhead shot of the three of us in studio you could see colleagues going to the shelter if you looked at the glass behind the studio and obviously we lost contact with our team on the ground our reporters in Ashkelon and all the witnesses that we were speaking to during that time when rockets are coming towards a residential area they don't distinguish between race, religion political views cultural views they just intend to harm civilians and that moment being in studio hearing those interceptions overhead was the most real coverage I've ever been involved in thank you for staying with us Israel has prepared plans to flood Hamas system of tunnels under the Gaza Strip with water pump from the Mediterranean Sea this coming from the Wall Street Journal citing US officials the report says the IDF set up last month five massive water pumping stations near the Shati camp in Gaza city which are capable of flooding the subterranean network within weeks by pumping thousands of cubic meters of water per hour into the tunnels while Israel did alert the US about the plan last month they have not yet decided on whether or not to implement to our Middle East correspondent plan to tackle a serious threat the Wall Street Journal reported late Monday that Israel finished assembling a system of large pumps to flood Hamas's vast underground tunnel network with seawater according to the report the IDF set up five large water pumps near the Shati camp in northern Gaza capable of flooding the terror tunnels under the Strip when we talk about the tunnel system we have to understand that there are two aspects to it there's the vertical which is the shafts of which there are hundreds and hundreds 800 have already been found 500 have been destroyed and they present a tactical threat to any Israeli forces operating in Gaza but there's the other aspect of it and that's the 500 kilometers of underground tunnels I call that the horizontal part of it which not only are networks under the cities but connect the cities to each other the goal of the weeks long process would be to gradually flush out Hamas terrorists and potentially hostages from the tunnels with the aim to render them unusable it's one of many methods to destroy the tunnels and it's a great important to the Israeli military to destroy the tunnels because this is the way that the Hamas is trying to to survive this war and after that cause to claim that he is the victorious in other words the destruction caused by the IDF above ground would force the international community to impose a ceasefire with Hamas protected from Israeli strikes Israel reportedly informed the US of the option early last month prompting a discussion in Washington regarding its costs and benefits there are two downsides one is for sure and the other one is a we don't know the one for sure is damaging the aquifer under Gaza in other words there's an environmental question here that has to come into play but even leaving that aside the substrate of Gaza is sand as you can see in what you're showing on the screen right now it absorbs water and it's not clear at all whether these tunnels will actually flood even with massive amounts of water being pumped into them they may get a foot or two of water on the ground but will they actually flood to the point where they can't be used is an open question the idea of flooding tunnels in Gaza is not new back in 2015 Egypt flooded hundreds of underground tunnels between Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula and by Islamist groups the Egyptians destroyed everything within 20 days the flooding of the tunnels caused them more damage than 50 days of Israeli air strikes all the tunnels have collapsed while some of the hundreds of tunnels did survive the flooding the benefit of such a strategy seemed clear now the question is whether the leaked information is intended to only frighten Hamas or is indeed Israel's next move a campaign to uproot Hamas from beneath the ground and our Middle East correspondent Ariel Oceran is with us now in the studio to discuss this further I mean it seems like a perfect plan you don't send people in you let nature in its course and the enemy just drowns suffocates or has to flee the tunnels where ground forces can send them all to whatever awaits them in eternity one might think that and that is I would imagine the thought process that is leading the IDF in its decision-making but there are a lot of unknown factors here we assess that we're talking about 500 kilometers of tunnels but there is no mapping of every inch of Hamas's and Palestinian Islamic Jihad's tunnels under the Gaza Strip and so this is based on what we know not what we don't know as far as Israel's concerned now there is the obvious benefits of it is not a violent tactic it could have some environmental implications moving forward which does should be taken into consideration but it's considered a low kind of a low bar of retaliation or of offensive actions against Hamas and that's one of the reasons why it is seen as a positive course of action for Israel also the fact that indeed nature can find its ways through different nooks and crannies and it will also put to the test the construction quality of these tunnels but indeed the thought process is the IDF does not want to fight in these tunnels but there is a threat in the tunnels that wants to get the threat out it also wants to get the hostages out of there and so it is seen as an ideal tactic but indeed there are still many issues many elements in this that are unknown and that I think could explain why we haven't seen it implemented yet but we're hearing reporting about it could be to send a signal to Hamas but also it could be that they're waiting for a more significant and unified approval on behalf of the White House but are there even other alternatives there are some reports in Israeli media today that Hamas's most sensitive locations were built in extremely deep tunnels far beneath any of the other tunnels we've seen hundreds of meters underground does there still have any other way to crack those well it's what we're seeing the IDF carry out is a kind of a joint effort because many of the strongholds that are underground and connected via these tunnel routes are under hospitals for instance the IDF exposing it was taken down but a command center that was underground a significant root of tunnel and so it really depends on once the IDF identifies a shaft or identifies a certain part of tunnel some often they do go down with a robot sometimes they connect a camera to a dog to try and get an assessment of the immediate vicinity of what's going on but indeed the main goal is to once it is understood what is in that part of section of the tunnel complex to destroy it it can be done with bunker busters but ideally it's a more the surgical approach is more preferred by the IDF you mentioned the bunker busters because there was a just report in Israeli media as well as a little bit in the American there was a line item on the munitions supplied by the Biden administration to Israel 100 of the 2000 pound bunker busting munitions now these are capable of hitting some deep underground targets the problem is only a hundred of them that means Israel would have to use them very judiciously to try to take out key nodes in the tunnel network rather than the whole thing that's one problem I believe that the most sensitive structures underground or kind of rooms are beneath urban and populated areas we saw that in Jabalia when a underground tunnel headquarters was bombed and the entire neighborhood sank a little bit to the ground and created a massive crater that crater wasn't caused entirely by the bomb simply because what was beneath it sank and so using these bunker busters in urban population is very challenging the IDF is not jumping on the occasion to use that kind of munition in that kind of a target or in a setting and so the idea of flooding these tunnels even if it could cause sinkholes elsewhere is seen as lower in the aggression ladder and in a way that helps it maintain proper operation under international law and not have to maintain proportionality under international law and not just using tons of bunker busters on every tunnel that Hamas has. Israel could do that but it chooses now to for one reason to avoid innocent casualties on the Palestinian side. Well if the IDF can't bomb the entire area Hamas has already undermined it so that provides a solution if they're willing to take these non-conventional tactics. Ariel, thank you very much for breaking down the situation we are going to turn our attention to some of our live reporters in the field right now we have two of them with us on the line on a split screen and we'll be back in a minute to talk about how we correspond in northern Israel as well as Pierre Kloschenler who is standing by in the south in Steroz I actually want to open with you Pierre from what I understand there has been some heavy rocket fire in the last few minutes including a direct hit on a building in Ashkelon Right about half an hour ago there were three interceptions just in this direction it had a direct impact on one of the buildings now Ashkelon is the hardest hit city in Israel from rocket fire in this case there were two women in their sixties that were lightly wounded by shrapnel two kids that were four people including two kids that were stricken by anxiety but Ashkelon is the hardest hit city in the country with over 1300 rocket fire on the city while 70% of the population sorry 70,000 people out of the population of 130,000 is without private shelter so Ashkelon always is facing grappling with a difficult situation when rocket fire is launched we are going to return to you in a moment because I want to turn to our attention in the north with Piaz Tekelbach because even as there is this active fire situation coming out of Gaza we are seeing constant exchanges of fire with Hezbollah and Lebanon as well We've seen an example of that also this morning Hezbollah so far until now has claimed responsibility for four cross border attacks they for now focus on the eastern part of the Israel-Lebanon border the Lebanese college of our farms that is right at the border point where both the Golan Heights but also here in Lebanon meet the other three attacks were conducted in the area of Kiryat Shmona which is also located at the very eastern part that is an area that has been hit very very hard by those Hezbollah cross border attacks yesterday it was hit by rockets they all fell into open area no casualties also today by all those skirmishes that we've seen military striking back to the origin of any fire coming out of southern Lebanon both from the air but also with artillery according to an Israeli army statement they targeted Hezbollah infrastructure including weapons depots we've seen that also during the night that Israeli military planes were targeting Hezbollah infrastructure also really throughout yesterday throughout yesterday alone Hezbollah claimed responsibility for 12 of those cross border attacks including and mortar shells what we've also seen is rocket fire yesterday that Hezbollah did not claim responsibility for but we do know that there are also other militias operating under Hezbollah's command sort of in southern Lebanon now these communities that we're talking about that are regularly being targeted really alongside the border there mostly evacuated on the Israeli side especially when we speak about the area of Kiryat Shmona a city of more than 20,000 residents that is almost void of any civilians there because that area especially in the east but really also alongside the Israel-Lebanon border those communities in a proximity of 5 km to the border are massively endangered and many areas are closed off to civilian movement another incident that the Israeli army published that today was the interception of a foreign aircraft or the entry of a foreign aircraft into Israeli space in the area of Mar-Galiot again in the east coming from southern Lebanon that aircraft fell down again not causing any injuries those are incidents that need to be thoroughly investigated but those are exactly the skirmishes that we have seen between Hezbollah and Hezbollah before the ceasefire and they're expected to continue at least as long as the Israel-Gaza war continues and we're going to turn back to Pierre in the south once again Pierre we just heard about the combat operations in the north and I want to turn our attention to the combat operations that we're seeing today in the south the main target appearing to be Khan Yunus as well as Jabalia talk us through the targets there and the IDF's goals now well there's a double-barreled offensive right now there's an offensive behind us in the hazy weather you can't see much but you hear still the pounding of residues of pockets of resistance in the northern sector the offensive which started on October 27 the fighting and the fighting is fierce in three areas of the northern sector the Jabalia refugee camp which was home to something like 180,000 residents before the war the Zeytun neighborhood inside Gaza City and on the outskirts of Gaza City in the southeast which is also a site of fierce fighting including close combat now the second offensive which started on December 1 is focusing mostly in the central sector of the Gaza Strip in Khan Yunus the forces tanks armored vehicles and infantry are progressing on two axes the Salahadin axis that cuts the eastern part of the Gaza Strip from north to south and it's under control of the Israeli forces that axis was used as a humanitarian corridor prior and during the ceasefire now it's used as an operational axis the second axis is from east to west from Israeli territory to Khan Yunus which is quite near Kibbutzim like Enash Loshah Nireem where you have mortar fire probably on site on gathering points of IDF troops because not all of them have already entered the central sector of the Gaza Strip now this fighting is focusing right now in terms of ground fighting on the north and south eastern outskirts sorry on the eastern and north eastern outskirts of Khan Yunus but yesterday evening already witnesses, Palestinian witnesses relayed by media reports emanating from Gaza and affiliated to Hamas obviously said that they could see tanks within one kilometer distance to the city center of Khan Yunus the army is allowing the population to flee west of the battle ground to flee to the direction of the Mediterranean coast to take the Aruna Rashid axis which is along the coast and reach the dedicated humanitarian zone in El-Muassi which is between Rafah and Khan Yunus now there is also intense bombing in Khan Yunus and also in Rafah but in Khan Yunus especially in Khan Yunus just yesterday evening Palestinian media reported 100 aerial strikes within half an hour during that day the IDF announced that within 24 hours they had stricken 100 targets sorry so within half an hour half of that was targeted by the Air Force it's incredible it's staggering figures and this is preparing the ground for getting into Khan Yunus which is to be believe maybe the last important stronghold of Hamas in the Gaza Strip well thank you very much Pierre thank you very much Pierre we have five reports from two fronts of Israel at war now we are going to turn our attention to other tensions that we are seeing in the region from the Red Sea now Yemen's Houthi rebels continuing to target commercial ships the Pentagon reports multiple attacks on vessels from 14 countries highlighting a broader global implication and threatening of vital trade routes here's more Yemen's Houthis are escalating attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea raising concern for the safety of key trade routes the naval forces of the Yemeni armed forces with the help of Allah Almighty carried out this morning a targeting operation against two Israeli ships in the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait the targeted ships were the unity explorer and ship number nine the first ship was targeted with a naval missile and the second ship was targeted with a naval drone the Iranian-backed militia said attacks like those on Sunday would continue until Israel ends its strikes on Gaza but the IDF denied the ships had any connection to Israel and accused the Houthis of endangering the freedom of navigation in the region one of the ships was damaged in a very serious way and it seems that it could be in danger of sinking and other one was lightly damaged this is an event stemming from negative sabotage by the Houthis we need to see how the world will answer this issue this past weekend saw four attacks against three separate commercial vessels operating in international waters in the southern red sea three vessels that are connected to 14 different nations which goes to show you the extent to which this is truly a source of global concern and a threat to international peace and stability the Bahamas flagged unity explorer was attacked in the morning and then again in the afternoon by anti-ship missiles then the Panamanian flagged number nine reported damage but no casualties caused by a missile from Yemen a third ship the Sophie 2 which also sails under Panama's flag said it was struck as well but suffered no significant harm the Arleigh Burke class destroyer USS Carney responded to the distress calls from these ships and provided assistance in doing so it detected three UAVs at three different times heading in its direction and it took action against all three of those UAVs we have every reason to believe that these attacks while they were launched by the Houthis in Yemen were fully enabled by Iran this is also one of those allegations aimed at projections which are made in line with efforts to deviate public opinion of nations and to cover up crimes by the Zionist regime and the US government the US says it will consider all appropriate responses in full coordination with its international partners but in the absence of significant action such attacks off the coast of Yemen will only increase in frequency and severity and international aid isn't just coming from governments nor is it motivated solely by worldly geopolitical interest evangelicals from the United States from Canada and from around the world have arrived in Israel to do their part motivated not just by common morality but also a sense of divine duty with us now is Mikhail Mastretta CEO of the Fellowship of Israel Related Ministries Michael thank you for being here and for the volunteering that you're doing describe just what it is that you and your agencies are doing Yeah Ariel, thanks for having me I think we just have a heart to say we work with a lot of Christians around the world that love Israel and they want to do more than just give financially and pray from afar and so we know when someone's hurting it's the people that are closest to you that show up for you in your time of need and so we invited an open invitation three weeks ago to see what Christians would want to come volunteer we were surprised to have 75 Christians from 10 different countries around the world Europe, Africa, North America Asia all coming here with the heart to get their hands dirty and just show Israel they care and they want to love them this time So what sort of needs did you find in Israel and how are your volunteers able to help and fill them? So we run an organization with a number of local amutot or non-profits here in Israel and we've responded by hosting we're hosting about seven different hotels in Kibbutzim right now with 1,500 displaced families helping to care for their kids also providing food, water, supplies like bulletproof vests and so the volunteers have come into that yesterday we did a Yom Kef, a fun day carnival for about 400 kids up in the north to Kibbutzim around the Sea of Galilee area packing food boxes tomorrow we'll be down in the Gaza border communities helping to harvest crops and also helping prepare for some of the first communities that will be returning home that didn't have major structural damage I want to get a little into the spirituality side of this because what I just described is people share not just a common morality but also a divide due to the 75 volunteers you have what are their ultimate motivations here? Yeah, people around them, their family think they're crazy but they have a connection to that so many of them because of their faith in Jesus Yeshua being a Jewish man born here in Israel they feel a connection to this land they feel a connection to the people and they're coming to say we don't want to just say we love you we don't just want to post on Instagram that we love you we really want to come and show you that we love you and just even yesterday seeing some of these Christians just hug families that have been displaced now 4, 5, 6, 8 weeks some from the Lebanese border it really makes an impact for people it's very grateful for the tourism and for people buying food and so that's a huge impact as well Absolutely, you mentioned yourself it's about not wanting to do things from a distance and we see so much aid organization which is just ship some money abroad and hope it gets to the right place how do you see it as different when you have people physically on the ground working with their own hands to make a difference? I think as being a Jewish person in Israel we know that there are Jews that want to come and serve but to have non-Jewish people to put money, buy a flight all the logistics some from upper west coast of Canada took 6 airplanes to get here many of them packed their bags full of supplies for the IDF, for kids toys so to put your time into it I think that really speaks volumes and it says this is more than just financial for us we really care about you and want to be here for you in your time of need I think we're going to see more of this happen we're hoping to host a few hundred in January as we're looking to rebuild communities in the border area and given we'll stick with the spirituality do you have a message for Christians around the world at this time when there's so much uncertainty and so much need but we've seen the Jewish community really gather together united the Christian community what's your message to them? I think for the Christian community it's important that we're standing strongly with Israel in a time of crisis and we're showing that love in very very practical ways it's great to have all the political support post online but I think encouraging increasing tourism here countering the lie that this is a part hide state is so very critical and important when people see people here serving it starts to give other people the belief that maybe they can do something as well to contribute to the cost so we've seen a little bit in the videos that we're just showing of the work that your organization was doing what's still ahead of you? we're looking ahead right now we went from emergency crisis mode to how can we really provide what we think is most needed in Israel right now is hope and healing there's a lot of hopelessness as I'm talking to a lot of these families businesses that have been really seriously affected families that have been out of their homes so we're looking how can we rebuild homes rebuild lives and really provide long term support going forward and I think it's important that the Christian community hears this that this crisis is not over just because the days are taking since October 7 that the work to rebuild is going to be significant I think there's an amazing opportunity for Christians to actually come here we can build decks we can build yards we can really help in practical ways using skilled laborers to come from the nations and come here to Israel absolutely thank you very much for all the work that you've done and the volunteering you're doing as well for speaking to us about it because as you mentioned there is so much to actually do here well so let's hope that there's enough people to actually show up and get it done Michael thank you very much for being with us for everyone else though we're out of time but there is going to be another broadcast showing up in just about 3 minutes after the show so you can tune in for that and of course follow us online at i24news.tv