 Before news is ongoing coverage of Israel at war, I'm Ariel Levin Waldman. The U.S. believes that Israel could complete large-scale military operations in the south of Gaza Strip by January and then shift to more targeted attacks on specific Hamas terrorists and leaders. CNN was citing a senior administration official who also says that Israel appears unlikely to achieve full objectives by the end of this year. The Israeli forces will continue to pursue that goal as part of a longer-term campaign where the fighting evolves to a new phase. Last week U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warned Israel's war cabinet that it likely does not have months to fight Hamas as domestic and international pressure mounts on U.S. President Joe Biden's administration to end the war. On the ground, though, two more soldiers have died in Gaza, Sergeant First Class Yonatan Malka and Lieutenant Colonel Yochai Ger Hershberg. In the north, Israel offered a rare apology to Lebanon after an airstrike against terror targets also killed a Lebanese soldier. Israel affirmed that Lebanon was not the target of the strike. And in Israel, leadership is already pushing back against U.S. demands for the day after the war. A word about the day after Hamas, Gaza needs to be demilitarized. But in order for Gaza to be demilitarized, there is only one force that can demilitarize it, and that force is the IDF. No international force can be responsible for that. We've seen in other places what happened when they brought in international forces in order to demilitarize. I am not willing to shut my eyes and accept any other arrangement. And we're going to turn our eye to the south, where our correspondent, Pierre Klochenler, is standing by just outside the town of Sturro on the border with Gaza. Pierre, walk us the latest developments in the Gaza fighting. Well, for a thing, at least there was no rocket fire for the past 14 hours. The last rocket strike was on the area of the seashore town of Ashdod at 6.13 p.m. local time. The pounding of the eastern outskirts of Hanyunas is going on, according to Palestinian media reports, affiliated to Hamas. And we've heard yesterday the officer in charge of the Southern Command that said that ground forces have entered the heart of Hanyunas. The chief of staff, Elci Alevi, has said that Hanyunas was encircled. And at the same time, heavy fighting still going on in Gebalia, refugee camp, media reports emanating from the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, said that there are dozens of people wounded and killed in an airstrike just a few moments ago, and also fighting is going on in the southeast outskirts of the Gaza city in Shejaia. You've said already that two Israeli soldiers were killed, one in the Gaza Strip, the other one in a road accident in the southern sector of facing in Israeli territory. All in all, in 24 hours, that means notification of nine soldiers dead since the start of the operation on the 27th of October, 83 soldiers killed in operation, some of them in friendly fire, at least eight of them. And the thrust of the IDF is to try and eliminate the four battalions that constitute the Hamas Brigade in Hanyunas in the northern Gaza Strip. There's been a lot of success regarding tactical commanders, heads of battalions, heads of brigades that have been neutralized since the start of the operation. And the operation, the war, is going on. As you mentioned, U.S. officials expect that the high intensity fighting will go on until January. And this is something which is corroborated by IDF source officials who request anonymity. Well, thank you very much, Pierre, for the latest updates from the southern front. We'll be back with you throughout the day as things change. We are going to turn our eye to the northern front, though, where Zack Anders, our correspondent, is standing by to talk us through the latest developments there. Zack, from what I understand, the IDF issuing a very rare apology to Lebanon after taking out a Lebanese soldier during a strike against Hezbollah targets. And this was from a strike that occurred, not yesterday, but the day before, with several parent Hezbollah fighters that were firing upon IDF positions throughout the afternoon. And the IDF policy of retaliating against these Hezbollah posts does appear to have caught some Lebanese Army soldiers in the crossfire as well. Of course, the Lebanese Army has not as deep of a presence here in the southern border as Hezbollah has moved many of its personnel resources further into or closer to this border, rather. The retaliatory strikes, especially overnight, were considerable, quite heavy because Hezbollah does continue this pace of launching several heavy rocket launches towards these IDF bases on the Israeli side several a day, and yesterday not any different with Hezbollah claiming responsibility for five of those launches. And the IDF, we could see overnight striking with artillery and with airstrikes, heavy retaliatory strikes. Sir, any indication of what Lebanese soldiers were doing at Hezbollah position? Not at this point, no. That's one of the questions that may take some time to answer, and we don't see the IDF make any claims as to why the two were intermixing, and it is one of those things that does, at least to the general public, operate at somewhat of a vague scale. Media in Lebanon does not pick up on this element of the story very often. The sizable force of the Lebanese Army versus Hezbollah, the two in their ground forces and personnel are almost the same size, roughly over 80,000 attributed fighters in both armies. But the role of the Lebanese Army is found more prevalent around Beirut in the north as they secure the border in other places, really right now in the south, at least independent American estimates that the majority of the fighters that are in the south are attributed to Hezbollah. Well, thank you very much, Zach, for that report from the Northern Front. We'll be back with you as well as the situation on the ground develops. Now, for more on all of this, we are joined by Mary Eisen, director of the International Institute for Counterterrorism at Rachmont University. Mary, it's good to have you with us again. I want to open with the north because the IDF doesn't usually apologize when that happens, if that usually happens even. So I want to ask you the same question. What sort of overlap do we see between Hezbollah and the Lebanese Army? What was the Lebanese Army doing at Hezbollah position? Wouldn't that be the amazing question, Lario, that I wish we could answer in its own way? The Lebanese Army is a military similar in that sense to a lot of the countries around where the main focus of a country is not necessarily in the regular army, but rather in the forces that have to do with domestic security services, meaning against anybody who's against the country. Lebanese Army is built in a series of brigades, and those brigades are deployed all over Lebanon except for the south. In 2006, with the upgraded 1701 decision of the United Nations that upgraded the capabilities of Unifil, when Unifil was established in 1979, it's been there for so many years, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. It was in that area of the south because there was no Lebanese Army. But one of the big changes that was supposed to have happened from 1701 from 2006, and that's already 17 years ago, is that the Lebanese Army was supposed to be working with Unifil to stop to disarm in terms on anybody who is not the official Lebanese Army. So you have them there working with Unifil, but they're not supposed to be working with Hezbollah. In my very cynical way, Ariel, say that as if the Lebanese Army is supposed to be there to disarm Hezbollah, but sadly, as we know, this is not the way I completely appreciate the official Israel of absolutely stating clearly that we had no intention and would never target Lebanese Army. But there's no question that we were targeting a Hezbollah site and the Lebanese Army officer that was there. And so it's going to say that open kind of question. They're only supposed to be down there working with the United Nations Force to try to disarm anybody who is not Lebanese Army. And if they were inside a Hezbollah post, I don't think that they were trying to disarm them. Have we seen any sort of statement from the Lebanese government on this? So the Lebanese government immediately condemned, they were the first ones who put out that it had been a Lebanese officer that had been killed. And in this case, I can say that that's part of the challenge in itself, that the target would have been a Hezbollah target. In addition to the Lebanese officer that was killed, Hezbollah, two Hezbollah fighters, it was announced by Hezbollah were killed. So you have that connection between them. So Lebanon at this stage along the way has a very complicated arena that they're in. Hezbollah plays that double edge where they are both a political force inside Lebanon. And of course they have their enormous terror military army that they deploy not only in the south, but in the city of Beirut, in the Pukah Valley. They're part of the players, if you can call it that, inside Lebanon. So there was an official statement. It of course is against it. And I think that Israel responded in a very responsible way. We have no intention. And if we inadvertently killed a Lebanese soldier, whilst we were trying to attack Hezbollah that has been attacking us for the last 61 days up north every single day, we can handle that. We have shoulders big enough that we certainly did not target Lebanese. Mary, I want to move down to the south now. The United States now saying that they believe Israel's heavy kinetic action on the ground will be wrapped up by the end of January. That's not that far in the future. Is that realistic? It's realistic when you look at the goals themselves. This isn't about, you know, moving everything out and destroying the Gaza Strip as people would perhaps think in the background. This is about destroying the Hamas main military capabilities. You don't have to do it in your goals at high intensity all of the time. A high intensity takes out the different commanders that Pierre talked about before. It's trying to completely destroy their command, their control, and to get to the main cache of weapons. Afterwards, there are 2.2 million people there. You try to do it at a more low intensity, more similar to the type of operations perhaps that the IDF, Israeli Defense Forces does in some of the different cities of the West Bank, meaning you're outside and you go in and do specific activities. This is not applicable at this stage inside the Gaza Strip because Hamas, the terror organization, have ruled over it for 17 years because Hamas have built that infrastructure. So now the high intensity and afterwards most definitely turning to low intensity. I think that we'll be doing most of the military goals and then complete them at that low intensity stage. And I just want to remind people we're only at the beginning of December. January is over a month in that sense, the end of January. That's still a lot of high intensity fighting. Mary, one of the things you mentioned is the destruction of Hamas' infrastructure, something the IDF has begun work on. There's been much ado over the last few days about flooding the tunnel network. Do we know where that plan stands? There's been some unconfirmed telegram videos floating out that show while flooding it happening, Hamas, Nick's drowning in the tunnels, but nothing confirmed yet. I haven't seen anything official that's come out from Israel on this at all. I've seen all sorts of different types of things in the media. Ariella, as we know ourselves. There's no question that you want to be looking at that underground subterranean system, which is where the Hamas leaders are, where the Hamas hold their different cache of weapons. We've seen the challenges in the Northern Gaza Strip. You have to get to the shafts and the shafts only lead down to that subterranean arena. And it's hundreds of shafts and hundreds and thousands of kilometers in that sense of these underground different systems. So if they do things with flushing out different ideas, they're going to be local, they're going to be done. I'll remind our viewers that years ago when Israel uncovered tunnels that Hezbollah had built up north from Lebanon into Israel, and it'd be worthwhile to go and look and to find those photographs from that the IDF put out at the time, we actually closed those tunnels by flushing in concrete. And then you would see the concrete going in and coming out on the Lebanese side. So I have no doubt whatsoever that there are all sorts of ideas of what you do with the tunneling system, but I can't address any exact specific ways of the way that that's going to be done. It's going to be part of the ongoing battle. In that case, let's move to the rest of Khan Yunus. This is Hamas' last remaining major stronghold. You still have the ones in Jabali and some of the other camps across Gaza. But the battle in Khan Yunus has really only just started. Walk us through what we think there is to do on the ground there. The system itself is going to be different in its own way, but at the end, it's similar. We're talking about dense urban areas. That means that it's an urban type of warfare. That's a specific kind of warfare. You do that by collecting information to the street in front of you, to the road in front of you. You're looking for the areas where the shafts are coming out because that's where the terrorists come out and try to attack you. You try to understand terrain, and there's terrain inside urban areas as well. You encircle it so that the terrorists cannot get out. They have that subterranean arena, so you're looking for where the shafts go in. And all of this at the same time, when you're consistently telling the civilian population to leave and go to safe areas, that doesn't make it easy and nice, but we've consistently been telling them up front, up and go, and they're leaving so that you have this combination of the civilians trying to get out, weren't circling it and making sure that it's only the civilians that are getting out at this stage because we told them to leave before we came into Chavunas, and now it's going to be systematically going by, destroying, blowing up as you're showing in the different photographs, finding the cache of weapons, exploding the caches of weapons, attacking the targets in the buildings, it can be in an apartment building, in a mosque, in a school, where they use them as firing posts, where they're trying to do the different booby traps and they wanna do all sorts of different capabilities inside the urban area, and that's the way we're going to do it in Chavunas, which is the heart right now of where probably most of the leadership is, which means that they are going to battle, give battle and we need to do this systematically, clearly. It's harsh, it's not easy, but for us, we have no choice. We need to get to this leadership. This leadership is the one that planned the genocidal attack that has been executing it and has been saying clearly that not only will they hold our hostages as these bargaining chips, but that they will continue to attack as much as they can and do additional attacks like this, both against Israel and worldwide. This is something that has to be done systematically, slowly against these Hamas terrorists. And systematically, after Chavunas falls, after Jabalia falls, after most of the northern Gaza has been finished up, what's next? The question that we're always asking is what's next? And Arielle, I'm saying now to us and to our viewers, I don't know. I don't think anybody knows right now. Part of that is how efficient, how clear we are on the destruction of the Hamas military capabilities. Nobody in Israel plays with the idea that afterwards Hamas's ideology disappears. What we need to do is take care of 2.2 million people. That is both through the international humanitarian organizations that are already involved. It's to put together a plan with local leadership. I don't call it Palestinian. I don't know how to define it right now. I know what it won't be. It won't be the Hamas leadership, the Hamas bureaucrats. It's not going to be those people who are going to run the Gaza Strip. It means that Israel will be in its own way, as the Prime Minister stated clearly, take for itself that aspect of the demilitarizing, but absolutely enabling. It's not just allowing, but enabling some kind of local leadership together with the international organizations to rebuild, to reconstruct, to focus on giving a better future for the people of the Gaza Strip that's without Hamas and going out against that ideology. Hey, that's going to be in the future. That's all about education. That's not tomorrow morning. I don't even know to say when that is next year. It's going to be in steps that we're going to be taking in the upcoming months and years. Well, thank you very much, Mary. We'll save tomorrow's problems for tomorrow and focus on today's problems today. Now, America is trying to focus on some of the problems today. That's the fact of American universities seeming to raise the next generation of violent Jew-hating radicals. Well, Congress now trying to tackle that issue. A House hearing last night grilling the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania. In recent weeks, U.S. universities have become hotbeds of genocidal rhetoric with leftist and pro Hamas students gathering in the thousands, chanting, gas the Jews, chanting, globalize the Intifada, chanting there is only one solution, a direct reference to Hitler's final solution. This is often accompanied by physical attacks on Jewish students. These pro-Palestinian protests and Jewish students' reports of harassment were the center of the hearing held by the Committee on Education and the Workforce. The universities received billions of dollars in federal funding and the current atmospheric anti-Semitism on these campuses represents a clear violation of U.S. anti-discrimination laws. It's calling for the genocide of Jews, violate Penn's code of conduct when it comes to bullying and harassment, yes or no? It can be harassment. The answer is yes. And Dr. Gay, at Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no? It can be depending on the context. What's the context? Targeted as an individual. Targeted as an individual. It's targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals. Do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them? Do you understand that dehumanization is part of anti-Semitism? I will ask you one more time. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no? Anti-Semitic rhetoric. And is it anti-Semitic rhetoric? Anti-Semitic rhetoric when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation. That is actionable conduct. And we do take action. So the answer is yes. That calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard code of conduct, correct? Again, it depends on the context. It does not depend on the context. The answer is yes. And this is why you should resign. These are unacceptable answers across the board. Not just in the United States. You can see similar scenes across campuses in Belgium as well, more in this next report. On Belgium University campuses, Jewish students live in hiding. They no longer feel safe. Here at ULB, the Université Libre de Bruxelles, anti-Semitic incidents have been increasing since October 7. Actually, it's horrible. We feel really alone, isolated. We feel like we're shouting into the void. It's really, right now, it's a disaster what's happening on campus. Attacks on Jewish students and verbal aggression are a common phenomenon. In pro-Palestinian demonstrations, taking Israeli civilians hostage is legitimized. The October 7 massacre isolated Jewish students. No organization condemned the acts of Hamas. And what's worse, the UEJB, the Belgium Jewish Students Union, has been ostracized from student structures. Hamas propaganda is unprecedented. The terrorist organization that publishes crimes on TikTok and yet receives support from all over Europe. We've also noticed it with organizations we used to work with. Suddenly, nothing. There's no more talk of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, no more talk of the UEJB. And there you have it, the abandonment, the isolation of Jewish students. And it started from there. Confronted with this hostility, Jewish students no longer fit in. They're forced to hide their identity. It doesn't necessarily show on your face that you're Jewish. If you don't wear a kippah, if you don't wear a magendavid, nobody's going to know that you're Jewish. And so you're not going to be directly attacked on campus like someone else, like other people, other religions that have much more distinctive signs. So the acts we do record are those occurring when we identify ourselves as Jews on campus. But on the rare occasions when Jews do show up, they're targeted. There was a pro-Palestinian demonstration that was allowed on campus. As students, we used to presale for non-political events at lunchtime with the UEJB. It was our annual ball, which we do every year. We were simply attacked by students who were part of the event, who came to tell us that we were Zionists, that we were Zionist terrorists, that wherever we Jews are, we cause problems. Someone on our committee was called a Jewish spy. When they talk about the UEJB, because we put up posters for the release of hostages on campus, they say that they're going to organize purges. They're going to make patrols during the night to encircle us. And so it's perceived as a very complicated situation because it's a whole audience talking about someone who's in the group and who's now afraid to say she's Jewish. For the UEJB, the response from the University Libre de Bruxelles is too weak. Contacted by I-24 News, the university's press office gave no response. To students, the administration says it lacks concrete cases of antisemitism for taking action. We really felt we had no reaction from ULB. We had a meeting, but nothing concrete. What we're asking for is something concrete. They were waiting for concrete action, too, to the point of asking ourselves, and we asked ourselves, are we waiting for a Jew to be stabbed on campus before we get any concrete action? Confronted with these difficulties, however, Jewish students are not giving up. They continue to defend their values. Every day, they put up posters of the faces of Israelis taken hostage by Hamas. Of course, we ask ourselves questions about our future. I think that's natural. But if we're in the UEJB today, we're in charge of this organization. It's also because we hope and want to build a future for Jews in Belgium. We don't want to say to ourselves today, there's no future. We're leaving. No, we're not leaving. We'll stay here. We'll fight here for Israel, for the Jewish community here, for Jewish life in Belgium, and in Europe more generally. But today, it's not easy. But antisemitism goes beyond campuses. For the presidents of the UEJB, the wave of attacks facing the Belgium Jewish community must be a cause for concern at all levels, because it is the future of Jews in Belgium that is at stake. And Europe more generally has a huge responsibility to ensure that Jews are safe in Belgium and Europe. So this means measures taken by the academic authorities, but at all levels, or by political leaders who today are taking a stand to preserve the Jewish community. Are we now asking politicians to campaign for Israel? No, that's not what we're asking. All we're asking for today is to preserve Jewish life in Belgium, to make sure it has a future. And I think that's the least we can ask for. And that is all the time we have, at least for now. But we will see you again at the 9 o'clock broadcast local time lesson, just about a half hour. Until then, thank you for watching. Israel 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 line. But the general perception is something that certainly needs to be fought as well. News 24 en español trae el análisis y la información de los acontecimientos de la guerra, espadas de hierro. Entrevistas exclusivas reportes desde la zona de guerra, la reacción de los países hispanoparlantes. News 24, el único medio en español que te mantiene informado y conectado con la comunidad latina en Israel. News 24, únicamente en I24 News. I24 News is ongoing coverage of Israel at war. I'm Ariel Levin Waldman. The U.S. believes that Israel could complete large-scale military operations in the south of Gaza, stripped by January, and then shift to more targeted attacks on specific Hamas terrorists and leaders. CNN was citing a senior administration official who also says that Israel appears unlikely to achieve full objectives by the end of this year. The Israeli forces will continue to pursue that goal as part of a longer-term campaign where the fighting evolves to a new phase. Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warned Israel's war cabinet that it likely does not have months to fight Hamas as domestic and international pressure mounts on U.S. President Joe Biden's administration to end the war. On the ground, though, two more soldiers have died in Gaza, Sergeant First Class Yonatan Malka and Lieutenant Colonel Yochai Ger Hershberg. In the north, Israel offered a rare apology to Lebanon after an airstrike against terror targets also killed a Lebanese soldier. Israel affirmed that Lebanon was not the targets of the strike. And in Israel, leadership is already pushing back against U.S. demands for the day after the war. A word about the day after Hamas. Gaza needs to be demilitarized. But in order for Gaza to be demilitarized, there's only one force that can demilitarize it, and that force is the IDF. No international force can be responsible for that. We've seen in other places what happened when they brought in international forces in order to demilitarize. I am not willing to shut my eyes and accept any other arrangement. And we're going to turn our eye to the south, where our correspondent, Pierre Kloschenler, is standing by just outside the town of Sturro on the border with Gaza. Pierre, walk us the latest developments in the Gaza fighting. Well, for a thing, at least there was no rocket fire for the past 14 hours. The last rocket strike was on the area of the seashore town of Ashdod at 6.30 p.m. local time. The pounding of the eastern outskirts of Hanyunas is going on according to Palestinian media reports affiliated to Hamas. And we've heard yesterday the officer in charge of the Southern Command that said that ground forces have entered the heart of Hanyunas. The chief of staff, Elci Alevi, has said that Hanyunas was encircled. And at the same time, heavy fighting still going on in Jebalia, refugee camp. Media reports emanating from the Hamas-run Gaza Strip say that there are dozens of people wounded and killed in an airstrike just a few moments ago. And also, fighting is going on in the southeast outskirts of Gaza City in Shejaia. You've said already that two Israeli soldiers were killed, one in the Gaza Strip, the other one in a road accident in the southern sector facing in Israeli territory. All in all, in 24 hours, that means notification of nine soldiers dead. Since the start of the operation on the 27th of October, 83 soldiers killed in operation. Some of them in friendly fire, at least eight of them. And the thrust of the IDF is to try and eliminate the four battalions that constitute the Hamas Brigade in Hanyunas in the northern Gaza Strip. There's been a lot of success regarding tactical commanders, heads of battalions, heads of brigades that have been neutralized since the start of the operation. And the operation, the war, is going on. As you mentioned, US officials expect that the high-intensity fighting will go on until January. And this is something which is corroborated by IDF source officials who request anonymity. Well, thank you very much, Pierre, for the latest updates from the southern front. We'll be back with you throughout the day as things change. We are going to turn our eye to the northern front, though, where Zach Anders, our correspondent, is standing by to talk us through the latest developments there. Zach, from what I understand, the IDF issuing a very rare apology to Lebanon after taking out a Lebanese soldier during a strike against Hezbollah targets. And this was from a strike that occurred not yesterday, but the day before, with several parent Hezbollah fighters that were firing upon IDF positions throughout the afternoon. And the IDF policy of retaliating against these Hezbollah posts does appear to have caught some Lebanese Army soldiers in the crossfire as well. Of course, the Lebanese Army has not as deep of a presence here in the southern border as Hezbollah has moved many of its personnel resources further into or closer to this border, rather. The retaliatory strikes, especially overnight, were considerable, quite heavy, because Hezbollah does continue this pace of launching several heavy rocket launches towards these IDF bases on the Israeli side several a day and yesterday not any different with Hezbollah claiming responsibility for five of those launches and the IDF we could see overnight striking with artillery and with airstrikes, heavy retaliatory strikes. So any indication what Lebanese soldiers were doing at a Hezbollah position? Not at this point, no. That's one of the questions that may take some time to answer. And we don't see the IDF make any claims as to why the two were intermixing. And it is one of those things that does, at least to the general public, operate at somewhat of a vague scale. Media in Lebanon does not pick up on this element of the story very often. The sizable force of the Lebanese Army versus Hezbollah, the two in their ground forces and personnel are almost the same size, roughly over 80,000 attributed fighters in both armies. But the role of the Lebanese Army is found more prevalent around Beirut in the north as they secure the border in other places, really right now in the South, at least from independent American estimates that the majority of the fighters that are in the South are attributed to Hezbollah. Well, thank you very much, Zach, for that report from the Northern Front. We'll be back with you as well as the situation on the ground develops. Now, for more on all of this, we are joined by Mary Eisen, Director of the International Institute for Counterterrorism at Rachmont University. Mary, it's good to have you with us again. I want to open with the north because the IDF doesn't usually apologize when that happens, if that usually happens even. So I want to ask you the same question. What sort of overlap do we see between Hezbollah and the Lebanese Army? What was the Lebanese Army doing when Hezbollah had a Hezbollah position? Wouldn't that be the amazing question, L'Oreal, that I wish we could answer in its own way? The Lebanese Army is a military, similar in that sense to a lot of the countries around, where the main focus of a country is not necessarily in the regular army, but rather in the forces that have to do with domestic security services, meaning against anybody who's against the country. Lebanese Army is built in a series of brigades, and those brigades are deployed all over Lebanon except for the South. In 2006, with the upgraded 1701 decision of the United Nations, that upgraded the capabilities of UNIFIL. When UNIFIL was established in 1979, it's been there for so many years, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, it was in that area of the South because there was no Lebanese Army. But one of the big changes that was supposed to have happened from 1701 from 2006, and that's already 17 years ago, is that the Lebanese Army was supposed to be working with UNIFIL to stop to disarm in terms on anybody who is not the official Lebanese Army. So you have them there working with UNIFIL, but they're not supposed to be working with Chisvala. In my very cynical way, L'Oreal, would say that as if the Lebanese Army is supposed to be there to disarm Chisvala, but sadly, as we know, this is not the way, I completely appreciate the official Israel of absolutely stating clearly that we had no intention and would never target Lebanese Army, but there's no question that we were targeting a Chisvala site and the Lebanese Army officer that was there. And so it's gonna say that open kind of question, they're only supposed to be down there working with the United Nations force to try to disarm anybody who is not Lebanese Army. And if they were inside a Chisvala post, I don't think that they were trying to disarm them. Have we seen any sort of statement from the Lebanese government on this? So the Lebanese government immediately condemned, they were the first ones who put out that it had been a Lebanese officer that had been killed. And in this case, I can say that that's part of the challenge in itself, that the target would have been a Chisvala target in addition to the Lebanese officer that was killed Chisvala to Chisvala fighters. It was announced by Chisvala were killed. So you have that connection between them. So Lebanon at this stage along the way has a very complicated arena that they're in. Chisvala plays that double edge where they are both a political force inside Lebanon. And of course they have their enormous terror military army that they deploy not only in the south, but in the city of Beirut, in the Ka'a Valley. They're part of the players, if you can call it that, inside Lebanon. So there was an official statement. It of course is against it. And I think that Israel responded in a very responsible way. We have no intention. And if we inadvertently killed a Lebanese soldier whilst we were trying to attack Chisvala that has been attacking us for the last 61 days up north every single day, we can handle that. We have shoulders big enough that we certainly did not target Lebanese. Mary, I wanna move down to the south now. The United States now saying that they believe Israel's heavy kinetic action on the ground will be wrapped up by the end of January. That's not that far in the future. Is that realistic? It's realistic when you look at the goals themselves. This isn't about moving everything out and destroying the Gaza Strip as people would perhaps think in the background. This is about destroying the Hamas main military capabilities. You don't have to do it in your goals at high intensity all of the time. The high intensity takes out the different commanders that Pierre talked about before. It's trying to completely destroy their command, their control, and to get to the main cache of weapons. Afterwards, there are 2.2 million people there. You try to do it at a more low intensity, more similar to the type of operations perhaps that the IDF, Israeli Defense Forces does in some of the different cities of the West Bank, meaning you're outside and you go in and do specific activities. This is not applicable at this stage inside the Gaza Strip because Hamas, the terror organization, have ruled over it for 17 years because Hamas have built that infrastructure. So now the high intensity and afterwards most definitely turning to low intensity. I think that we'll be doing most of the military goals and then complete them at that low intensity stage. And I just wanna remind people we're only at the beginning of December. January is over a month in that sense, the end of January, that's still a lot of high intensity fighting. Mary, one of the things you mentioned is the destruction of Hamas' infrastructure, something the IDF has begun work on. There's been much ado over the last few days about flooding the tunnel network. Do we know where that plan stands? There's been some unconfirmed telegram videos floating out that show while flooding it happening, Hamas, Nick's drowning in the tunnels, but nothing confirmed yet. I haven't seen anything official that's come out from Israel on this at all. I've seen all sorts of different types of things in the media are real as we know ourselves. There's no question that you wanna be looking at that underground subterranean system, which is where the Hamas leaders are, where the Hamas hold their different cache of weapons. We've seen the challenges in the Northern Gaza Strip. You have to get to the shafts and the shafts only lead down to that subterranean arena and it's hundreds of shafts and hundreds and almost thousands of kilometers in that sense of these underground different systems. So if they do things with flushing out different ideas, they're gonna be local, they're gonna be done. I'll remind our viewers that years ago when Israel uncovered tunnels that Hezbollah that built up north from Lebanon into Israel, it'd be worthwhile to go and look and to find those photographs from that the IDF put out at the time. We actually closed those tunnels by flushing in concrete and then you would see the concrete going in and coming out on the Lebanese side. So I have no doubt whatsoever that there are all sorts of ideas of what you do with the tunneling system but I can't address any exact specific ways of the way that that's gonna be done. It's gonna be part of the ongoing battle. In that case, let's move to the rest of Khan Yunus. This is Hamas's last remaining major stronghold. You still have the ones in Jabaliya and some of the other camps across Gaza but the battle in Khan Yunus has really only just started. Walk us through what we think there is to do on the ground there. The system itself is gonna be different in its own way but at the end is similar. We're talking about dense urban areas. That means that it's an urban type of warfare. That's a specific kind of warfare. You do that by collecting information to the street in front of you, to the road in front of you. You're looking for the areas where the shafts are coming out because that's where the terrorists come out and try to attack you. You try to understand terrain and there's terrain inside urban areas as well. You encircle it so that the terrorists cannot get out. They have that subterranean arena. So you're looking for where the shafts go in and all of this at the same time when you're consistently telling the civilian population to leave and go to safe areas that doesn't make it easy and nice but we've consistently been telling them upfront up and go and they're leaving so that you have this combination of the civilians trying to get out, weren't circling it and making sure that it's only the civilians that are getting out at this stage because we told them to leave before we came into Khan Yunus and now it's going to be systematically going by destroying, blowing up as you're showing in the different photographs, finding the cache of weapons, exploding the caches of weapons, attacking the targets in the buildings. It can be in an apartment building, in a mosque, in a school where they use them as firing posts where they're trying to do the different booby traps and they want to do all sorts of different capabilities inside the urban area and that's the way we're going to do it in Khan Yunus which is the heart right now of where probably most of the leadership is which means that they are going to battle, give battle and we need to do this systematically, clearly. It's harsh, it's not easy but for us, we have no choice. We need to get to this leadership. This leadership is the one that planned the genocidal attack that has been executing it and has been saying clearly that not only will they hold our hostages as these bargaining chips but that they will continue to attack as much as they can and do additional attacks like this both against Israel and worldwide. This is something that has to be done systematically, slowly against these Hamas terrorists. And systematically after Khan Yunus falls, after Jabalia falls, after most of the northern Gaza has been finished up, what's next? The question that we're always asking is what's next? And Ariel, I'm saying now to us and to our viewers, I don't know. I don't think anybody knows right now. Part of that is how efficient, how clear we are on the destruction of the Hamas military capabilities. Nobody in Israel plays with the idea that afterwards Hamas's ideology disappears. What we need to do is take care of 2.2 million people. That is both through the international humanitarian organizations that are already involved. It's to put together a plan with local leadership. I don't call it Palestinian. I don't know how to define it right now. I know what it won't be. It won't be the Hamas leadership, the Hamas bureaucrats. It's not going to be those people who are going to run the Gaza Strip. It means that Israel will be in its own way, as the Prime Minister stated clearly, take for itself that aspect of the demilitarizing, but absolutely enabling, it's not just allowing, but enabling some kind of local leadership together with the international organizations to rebuild, to reconstruct, to focus on giving a better future for the people of the Gaza Strip. That's without Hamas and going out against that ideology. Hey, that's going to be in the future. That's all about education. That's not tomorrow morning. I don't even know to say when that is next year. It's going to be in steps that we're going to be taking in the upcoming months and years. Well, thank you very much, Mary. We'll save tomorrow's problems for tomorrow and focus on today's problems today. Now, America is trying to focus on some of the problems today. That's the fact of American universities, seeming to raise the next generation of violent Jew-hating radicals. Well, Congress now trying to tackle that issue, a House hearing last night, grilling the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania. In recent weeks, US universities have become hotbeds of genocidal rhetoric with leftists and pro Hamas students gathering in the thousands, chanting, gas the Jews, chanting, globalize the Intifada, chanting, there is only one solution, a direct reference to Hitler's final solution. This is often accompanied by physical attacks on Jewish students. These pro-Palestinian protests and Jewish students' reports of harassment were the center of the hearing held by the Committee on Education and the workforce. The universities received billions of dollars in federal funding, and the current atmospheric anti-Semitism on these campuses represents a clear violation of US anti-discrimination laws. I was calling for the genocide of Jews, violate Penn's code of conduct when it comes to bullying and harassment, yes or no? It can be harassment. The answer is yes. And Dr. Gay, at Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no? It can be, depending on the context. What's the context? Targeted as an individual. Targeted as an individual. It's targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals. Do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them? Do you understand that dehumanization is part of anti-Semitism? I will ask you one more time. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no? Anti-Semitic rhetoric. And is it anti-Semitic rhetoric? Anti-Semitic rhetoric when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation, that is actionable conduct and we do take action. So the answer is yes. That calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard code of conduct, correct? Again, it depends on the context. It does not depend on the context. The answer is yes and this is why you should resign. These are unacceptable answers across the board. Not just in the United States. You can see similar scenes across campuses in Belgium as well, more in this next report. On Belgium University campuses, Jewish students live in hiding. They no longer feel safe. Here at ULB, the Université Libre de Bruxelles, anti-Semitic incidents have been increasing since October 7th. Actually it's horrible. We feel really alone, isolated. We feel like we're shouting into the void. It's really, right now it's a disaster of what's happening on campus. Attacks on Jewish students and verbal aggression are a common phenomenon. In pro-Palestinian demonstrations, taking Israeli civilians hostage is legitimized. Why the ex-votel? It's just a consequence of the escalation of the apartheid that was brought by the Israeli state in the last decade. When there is no other possibility of a specific resistance, the resistance is to go to the other side of action. The October 7th massacre isolated Jewish students. No organization condemned the acts of Hamas. And what's worse, the UEJB, the Belgium-Jewish Students' Union, has been ostracized from student structures. Hamas propaganda is unprecedented. The terrorist organization that publishes crimes on TikTok and yet receives support from all over Europe. We've also noticed it with organizations we used to work with. Suddenly, nothing. There's no more talk of the Israeli-Palestinian consulate, no more talk of the UEJB, and there you have it, the abandonment, the isolation of Jewish students, and it started from there. Confronted with this hostility, Jewish students no longer fit in. They're forced to hide their identity. It doesn't necessarily show on your face that you're Jewish. If you don't wear a kippah, if you don't wear a maghendevide, nobody's going to know that you're Jewish, and so you're not going to be directly attacked on campus like someone else, like other people, other religions that have much more distinctive signs. So the acts we do record are those occurring when we identify ourselves as Jews on campus. But on the rare occasions when Jews do show up, they're targeted. There was a pro-Palestinian demonstration that was tolerated on campus. As students, we used to presale for non-political events at lunchtime with the UEJB. It was our annual ball, which we do every year. We were simply attacked by students who were part of the event. Who came to tell us that we were Zionists, that we were Zionist terrorists, that wherever we Jews are, we cause problems. Someone on our committee was called a Jewish spy. When they talk about the UEJB, they say, that they're going to organize purges. They're going to make patrols during the night to encircle us. And so it's perceived as a very complicated situation because it's a whole audience talking about someone who's in the group and who's now afraid to say she's Jewish. For the UEJB, the response from the university to the UEJB is that the UEJB is going to make patrols during the night to the UEJB. The response from the university is too weak. Contacted by I-24 News, the university's press office gave no response. To students, the administration says it lacks concrete cases of antisemitism for taking action. We really felt we had no reaction from ULB. We had a meeting but nothing concrete. What we're asking for is something concrete. They were waiting for concrete action too. To the point of asking ourselves and we asked ourselves are we waiting for a Jew to be stabbed on campus before we get any concrete action? Confronted with these difficulties, however, Jewish students are not giving up. They continue to defend their values. Every day they put up posters of the faces of Israelis taking hostage by Hamas. Of course we ask ourselves questions about our future. I think that's natural. But if we're in the UEJB today we're in charge of this organization. It's not because we hope and want to build a future for Jews in Belgium. We don't want to say to ourselves today there's no future. We're leaving. No, we're not leaving. We'll stay here. We'll fight here. For Israel. For the Jewish community here. For Jewish life in Belgium and in Europe more generally. But today, it's not easy. But antisemitism goes beyond campuses. For the presidents of the UEJB the wave of attacks facing the Belgium Jewish community because it is the future of Jews in Belgium that is at stake. And Europe more generally has a huge responsibility to ensure that Jews are safe in Belgium and Europe. So this means measures taken by the academic authorities but at all levels or by political leaders who today are taking a stand to preserve the Jewish community. Are we now asking politicians to campaign for Israel? No, that's not what we're asking. All we're asking for today is the future and I think that's the least we can ask for. And that is all the time we have at least for now but we will see you again at the 9 o'clock broadcast local time. That's in just about a half hour. Until then, thank you for watching. Altis.com.b.o. Selecciona recargas y digita el numero al que deseas colocarle la recarga. Ademas, ellos reciben el doble de balance en recargas de 8 dólares o mas. Altis, la red global de los dominicanas. 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. 24 news is ongoing coverage of Israel at war on Arielle Levin Waldman. The US believes Israel could complete large-scale military operations in the southern Gaza Strip by January and then shift to more targeted attacks on specific Hamas terrorists and leaders. CNN was citing a senior administration official who says Israel appears unlikely to achieve its full objectives by the end of this year and that Israeli forces will continue to pursue that goal as part of a longer-term campaign when the fighting evolves to a new phase. Last week, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warned Israel's war cabinet that it likely does not have months to fight Hamas as domestic and international pressure mounts on US President Joe Biden's administration to end the war. On the ground, two more soldiers have died in Gaza. Sergeant 1st Class Yonah Tanmalka and Lieutenant Colonel Yochai Ger Hershberg. In the north, Israel has issued a rare apology to Lebanon for the strike against terror targets also killed a Lebanese soldier. Israel affirmed that Lebanon was not the target of the strike. And in Israel, leadership already pushing back against US demands for the day after the war. A word about the day after Hamas. Gaza needs to be demilitarized. But in order for Gaza to be demilitarized, there is only one force that can demilitarize it and that force is the IDF. An international force can be responsible for that. We've seen in other places what happened when they brought in international forces in order to demilitarize. I am not willing to shut my eyes and accept any other arrangement. And we open in the north where our correspondent Zach Anders is standing by. Zach, give us the latest developments there and what's this statement coming out with the IDF apologizing to Lebanon? Well, we continue to see these Hezbollah strikes occurring daily here on the northern border of Israel at targeting for the most part IDF positions and bases along the northern border. Hezbollah then sees this retaliatory fire from the IDF with artillery and airstrikes targeting these positions where Hezbollah launches either heavy rockets or mortars at positions along the Israeli border. But not yesterday the day before with a strike the IDF says targeting a Hezbollah position in southern Lebanon apparently killed Lebanese army a soldier rather in that strike they said was targeting Hezbollah. This is a significant moment considering it is one of the first fatalities of the Lebanese army this differing then for this sectarian religious Hezbollah this being the armed forces of Lebanon the apology coming in as the IDF says they're investigating the incident but they do point out that their strike was targeting Hezbollah and they attribute this moment to Hezbollah and this Lebanese soldier being in close proximity to one another. We'll still have to wait for the outcome of the investigation more independent information to be released but already inside Lebanon is obviously enraged by the incident and frustrated that the fighting has spilled over beyond Hezbollah deaths which already amount over 80 since October 7th that have been killed by independent estimates in the south of Lebanon. Thank you very much Zach for that report and that update from the northern front. We're going to continue this further in studio with Dr. Jack Naria former deputy have assessment with Israeli military intelligence good to have you in here. We're seeing this in Lebanon now have we seen any statements from the Lebanese government any position on this and does it differ from Hezbollah's? Well you know the Lebanese government is playing on both sides I mean they're trying to accuse Israel of committing attacking Lebanese soldier in fact it was a position it was in position and that stands all I mean in contrast and complete with the 1701 resolution why is the Lebanese army deployed near Hezbollah? In fact Hezbollah should not be there and I don't understand the way Israel is apologizing because I mean this is something that stems from the resolution 1701 and instead of accusing the Lebanese government of deploying alongside with Hezbollah we are right now apologizing this is incomprehensible. I mean we do see that Lebanon at least at the governmental level does not want to see Beirut dragged into a war directly but they're also not writing in Hezbollah is there the threat that as the Lebanese army seems to get more interspersed with Hezbollah units it could force them to make a more direct action. Well you know if you follow the Lebanese press you can see that there are lots of talk about diplomatic movements that are initiated by United States vis-à-vis Iran in order to re-establish a new order in Lebanon to assure the election of a new president to Lebanon a new chief of the army and of course reforms in the whole structure the economic structure of Lebanon and this in return of withdrawing Hezbollah from its present lines to beyond the Litany River about 40 kilometers from the Israeli border. This is what is the talk about right now in Lebanon. I don't know how real this is and certainly I don't know if Hezbollah is willing to withdraw as it did in 2006 and finally came back easy and Israel did nothing in order to counter that. Before we continue this discussion we are going to turn our attention to the southern border our correspondent Pierre Klauschenler is standing by in Styro just outside Styro on the border with Gaza. Pierre walk us through the latest developments with the fighting in Gaza. Well there was an announcement by the IDF today that in the past 24 hours there were 250 aerial strikes on presumed terror targets such as terror infrastructure weapons depot weapons manufacturing assets as well as terrorists but that's not an extraordinary number so to speak. It's about the average of aerial strike that we've been communicated to every 24 hours so now what's important now is the two flash points in the northern Gaza Strip the Jabalia refugee camp the Sejaïa out south eastern outskirts of Gaza city where there are intense fighting close range fighting and hence the intensification of the fighting brings about the death of nine soldiers in the past 24 hours two of them were just announced to the public in the past hour or so in the central sector of the Gaza Strip you heard the officer in charge of the southern command Brigadier General Yaron Finkelman who said that the ground forces are operating already in the heart of Hanyounes and the chief of staff has said that Hanyounes is encircled so the heart and around Hanyounes is being under operation right now and that poses an acute humanitarian dilemma for the IDF on two-fold one is the fate of the 138 Israeli hostages remaining in the hands of Hamas Palestinian Islamic jihad other terror factions maybe clans maybe civilians and those who have been released last week are already saying that they were held in flats on earth and the buildings were trembling because bombardments by the IDF were very close by and the fear of course is that the IDF could by mistake target a building in which hostages are being detained there is the other humanitarian dilemma which of course finds a larger echo within the international community especially with the UN organizations civilian population which is not involved in the fighting the UNRA organization of the UN is speaking of 600,000 people that have received an evacuation order by leaflet or through the active map to move west of Hanyounes now over 75% of the total Gaza population is already now at the center and the south of the Gaza Strip that means that 1 million people from the northern sector of the Gaza Strip behind me have been displaced south because of the fighting so that saves human life but that poses humanitarian predicament because of the lack of infrastructure and that of course is also a dilemma that Israel needs to take into account because if it does not tackle the humanitarian issue of the non-involved Palestinian population that could shorten the war and the objectives of the war because of international pressure on the other hand when you give more humanitarian aid more fuel for instance you risk prolonging the terrible predicament of the Israeli hostages and that's the dilemma at this point definitely a challenge up ahead with the report from the front we're going to continue this discussion in studio also joining us now Mark Shulman editor at Newsweek and one of our political columnists thank you for being in the studio with us I want to open with you because we had Blinken in town saying Israel has only weeks to finish this US officials now saying you got to be done or it will be done by the end of January realistic statements, statements of intent empty words a little of both let's be honest a little point in terms of major major operations the fact that the IDF moved quickly shows that the IDF is moving a little bit quicker it understands there's a limit in terms of time the US has to show that it's making those statements in terms of the Arab world in terms of the American domestic politics excuse me can't just say nothing and it's been giving it's still incredibly supportive I heard an interview with Blinken on NPR this morning which was last night in America and he basically supported Israel's action and said yes it has to be more careful but even specifically mentioned the fact that Israel has divided Kanyunas and other areas into small blocks and that they've done something no other army has ever done so the American administration remains extremely supportive look they're concerned we should be concerned the pictures of 15,000 we've even admitted that it's almost 15,000 because it's a dead it's not a good look whether it's justified or not is irrelevant we still have to worry about the look and the support and everything else in the world Jack I want to turn to you with a similar question is one month actually realistic when it comes down to ending a war completing most of the kinetic operations of the war how much can be accomplished in that time if you're talking about the end of January I hope that will be finished because I mean that this is a long period of time and if we analyze the way the Israeli forces are advancing in Gaza certainly the next step will be to take over the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip the famous Philadelphia axis from which all the tunnels began and entered the Gaza Strip so this is more or less I mean I think that by today you could say that most of the mission of the Israeli army has been done by encircling Hanyunist now it's a war of attrition between us and Hamas and Hamas is in an inferior position because he's under attack so I think that by the end of January if this is the time frame we're talking about I think would be most of the operations would be entered one of the things that we've noticed here in the center of Israel and Tel Aviv is the rocket barrages are no longer regular used to be three times a night at set time intervals now it's every few days at random times is Hamas getting desperate are these attacks of opportunity because they can no longer maintain enough control on the ground well you know when you take a wounded beast and you put it in the corner and he must be very careful because it can be very violent so I mean this is what's happening with Hamas Hamas is trying its best to hurt Israel but he's not succeeding I mean this is really a disappointment every time he shoots he missiles towards Israel I mean the interception by the iron dome is such that I mean with all due respect nothing happens in Israel really I mean there's no real damage so this is the only thing that they can do the next thing as I said yesterday and they might turn into the new muscle the muscle meaning that they would initiate suicide attack attacks against Israeli forces be it by by individuals or by cars and then that are the full was explosive this is a situation where we might meet and we might have to deal with and certainly this as in muscle cost a lot of lives it's amazing they haven't dealt until now quite honestly I think we were expecting it earlier on and it hasn't happened until now so let's just hope that well we're going to continue this discussion in a brief moment but I do want to bring another angle into the discussion there's of course the international perception as we've mentioned in the studio as the war goes on there's backlash against Israel and nowhere is that more apparent than the next generation of Americans American universities seem to be raising a generation of radicals and the U.S. universities have become hotbeds of in some cases genocidal rhetoric with leftist and pro-homoss students gathering in the thousands chanting gas the Jews chanting globalize the interfauna chanting there is only one solution that's a direct reference to Hitler's final solution this is often accompanied by physical attacks on Jewish students these protests as well as Jewish students reports of harassment at the school were the center of the hearing held by the committee on education and the workforce the universities receive billions of dollars in federal funding and the current atmosphere of anti-Semitism on campuses represents a clear violation of U.S. anti-discrimination law is calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn's code of conduct when it comes to bullying and harassment yes or no it can be harassment the answer is yes and Dr. Gay at Harvard does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment yes or no it can be depending on the context what's the context targeted as an individual targeted at an individual it's targeted at Jewish students Jewish individuals do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them do you understand that dehumanization is part of anti-Semitism I will ask you one more time does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment yes or no anti-Semitic rhetoric and is it anti-Semitic rhetoric anti-Semitic rhetoric when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying harassment intimidation that is actionable conduct and we do take action so the answer is yes that calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard code of conduct correct again it depends on the context it does not depend on the context the answer is yes and this is why you should resign these are unacceptable answers across the board back to you Mark I know that the two of us in this studio have discussed ad nauseam the rise of the radical progressive fringe with its insane racial world view but now we're seeing that become the dominant world view it seems on these campuses Congress stepping in do they have power here they have limited power they have the power of getting the federal government to invoke its regulatory powers to do something about it of course it's very difficult when you get the issue of speech and free speech and where's the line clearly they've passed the line many times the big question and the big issue I think to all of us is look we've had a large group of anti-Israel sentiment I mean I saw the difference when I was in Columbia College I graduated in the 70s and I went back in the graduate school in the 80s and it changed dramatically in that period of time the reason I don't have a PhD right now is because of an incident with anti-Israel people on campus which is a whole other story long story but at any rate the reality is that there's been a jump jump that we don't really fully understand and we can explain it but it's gone from anti-Israel sentiment to anti-semitism straight out it's also gone the anti-Israel statement has grown tremendously because if previously the anti-Israel people on campuses were talking about 67 borders Palestinian rights they were never chanting to the river to the sea I never saw in Columbia both as an undergraduate as a graduate protests to eliminate Israel the protests were Israel isn't doing the right things in occupying territories all those sort of questions but never did I see that in all the years that I was in Columbia and that was in the 70s and 80s so there's been that jump both in terms of the rhetoric in terms of anti-Israel to eliminate us and plus the fact that it's jumped to absolute anti-semitism now we can explain part of it with the leftist view that suddenly the white Jews are part of the establishment and therefore they're the enemy it's so interesting because the right wing anti-semitists they were not part of the white we make believe whites so we have this situation where we're not good here we're not good there but it's an amazing transformation it's very very frightening everyone I speak to who's on a campus of kids on campus is really scared they don't know what to do at this point and this doesn't seem like a safe place to come to but it's probably the only solution these days these protests these movements on campus seem to be a direct manifestation of some of the polls that we've already discussed showing that something in the vicinity of 52% of young Americans under the age of 25 actually support Hamas in this war rather than Israel despite a large portion of them saying that October 7th the genocide and that it was justified anyway how did this radical fringe become the dominant school of thought among the progressive movement two things one social media and tiktok particularly all surveys show that 70% of the views on tiktok are anti-israel and only 30% of pro-israel and that's a major thing we don't know whether it's the algorithm or it's just because there are more Muslims in the world I don't know the answer to that but it's clearly the fact as a matter of fact if you look at the different social medias tiktok has 10 times the amount of people who become more anti-israel and being on it then let's say facebook does it's an amazing difference so that's a big thing and of course the under 25 use tiktok more than anything else the rest of us use other social media so that's number one number two it's the radical professors on the campuses that have been teaching this revolutionary theory that has gotten a lot of attention and a lot of kids in ways that we can't believe look we had the radical generation of the 60s and 70s became professors and their views are quite to the left and quite extreme in many cases and the universities have given them tenure and their positions that they can't be moved let's put it that way so you have these factors come together with a lack of knowledge people don't have a knowledge they're not really interested in real history we know how little history is actually taught and how many is actually learned how to work in history do you expect them to understand middle eastern history no but it sounds good hey come on revolutionary and we're with the left we're with them and so little young people like being on that side very much so a fashion very much what they want to be part of and that's part of the problem too we have a really lot of work ahead of us and I'm not sure we're even up to being taking this on at this point nonetheless we've seen these institutions college campuses for about a decade now become the official crackdown on their definition of hate speech going to the ends of the earth to make sure that people can't share what's considered offensive use this is even spilled over into the private sector with just about every social media company since the 2017-2018 or so pushing speech codes anti-hate speech even the US government pushing them to do the same thing why are the Jews excluded from that why is hate speech against the Jews perfectly fine well I think I've read recently a statement by Abba Ibn we're always excluded we're excluded from living in Moscow we're excluded from having land we're excluded to being you know all the different things the Jews have always been excluded so anti-semitism as well we're excluded you know we're not the group that you have to worry about we're strong white people why do we why do they have to care about us it's an amazing thing it's an amazing that so you know it's two generations after the Holocaust and everything's been forgotten without a question it's a world that's becoming a little crazier every day a little stranger and a little more frightening to say the least speaking of that we're also seeing other powerful powers involving itself in this conflict in many ways for months Russia building close ties with Iran around the war in Ukraine now Russian President Vladimir Putin set to build on that and to showcase his ties in the Arab world across the Gulf oil high on the agenda but of course the war in Gaza as well our senior diplomatic correspondent Owen Alterman on what's Putin's agenda this week around the table to set the table preparing for their leaders meeting later this week the Russian and Iranian foreign ministers meeting in Moscow Tuesday to sign an agreement on working together against us backed sanctions of course this is an important step in increasing the coordination of efforts of members of the international community to overcome illegal sanctions which the United States and its allies have made a substitute for diplomacy that sets the tone for a busy few days for Russian President Vladimir Putin set to travel to the UAE and Saudi Arabia Wednesday for meetings with leaders and then set to host Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Moscow on Thursday for Putin the war in Gaza continues to generate opportunities to change the subject from the war in Ukraine to boost Russia's soft power among the billions across the planet who identify with Gazans to needle the United States in the heart of the Middle East this is terrible and when you watch how operations are performed on children without anesthesia it certainly evokes particular feelings all these events in fact are a direct consequence of the United States desire to monopolize the mediation process a renewed Russian push into the Middle East will face limits in the long term the Biden administration still wants to move forward with its economic corridor and potentially to patch up ties with Riyadh for now the war gives Russia an opening Putin will be quick to seize it now toss back to today with you Jack because we are seeing Russia make its statements against Israel obviously their key security ally in the region Iran which is set to the destruction of the Jewish state and all its inhabitants where is Russia going to fall on this how much can they contribute to this well Russia right now is taking revenge on what the Americans and the West did on the north from gas gas pipeline in the north Russia lost about an income of more than $800 billion a year and the answer of Russia was to torpedo to sabotage the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel and now Putin is enjoying his victory he's coming to visit Saudi Arabia and the Emirates in order just as we said to put a finger in the eye of Biden and saying to him here we are present and you cannot ignore us and he will sign you will see he signed lots of agreements with Saudi Arabia including in the nuclear field which is an area that is almost prohibited by the Americans and this is to continue I mean the Russian presence and saying I mean we are back in fact to the Cold War. Well except they have the military presence at this point effectively I mean we were always concerned about the military presence in Syria the the Soviet army is a hollowed out of itself anything that can fight is now in Ukraine so they can talk about it they have no navy they couldn't fight the war and they lost the battle of the black sea basically and think about it they certainly don't have a blue water navy at this point to speak of whatsoever but the Ukraine war is not going to last forever Soviet, Russian again military capacity their industrial capacity will rev back up after the war maybe but they never were very good industrial capacity let's keep this in mind Russian arms have never been good that's the history of Russian arms they have been a Potemkin military except for the nuclear weapons for the longest period of time we you know at what point in our history did we not take on except during 73 when we were surprised but after 73 when we took on Russian arms at what point did we not defeat them quite quickly so I put it within a limit to what they were able to do in terms of oil they are an important factor and of course the fact that they have sanctions on them gives them a sort of ability to affect other markets so I think then geopolitically and economically they can have some sort of impact militarily I think it's going to be a long time and I still hope they're going to be defeated ultimately in Ukraine especially in Saudi Arabia doesn't need Russian weapons at all doesn't need Russian weapons what can Russia particularly give Saudi Arabia nuclear even nuclear technology is not particularly good I'm going to thank you both for explaining the whole situation that said we are out of time and we'll see you again in about a half hour for our next broadcast Israel is in a state of war families completely done down in their beds we have no idea where we see as our soldiers are fighting on the front lines but the general perception is something that certainly needs to be fought as well news is ongoing coverage of Israel at war the US believes Israel could complete large-scale military operations in the southern Gaza Strip by January and then shift to more targeted attacks on specific Hamas terrorists and leaders CNN was citing a senior administration official who says Israel appears unlikely to achieve its full objectives by the end of this year and that Israeli forces will continue to pursue that goal as part of a longer-term campaign when the fighting evolves to a new phase last week Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warned Israel's war cabinet that it likely does not have months in the future and that it will be the end of the war on the ground two more soldiers have died in Gaza Sergeant 1st Class Yonatan Malka and Lieutenant Colonel Yochai Ger Hershberg in the north Israel has issued a rare apology to Lebanon after an airstrike against terror targets also killed a Lebanese soldier Israel affirmed that Lebanon was not the target of the strike and in Israel leadership was looking back against US demands for the day after the war a word about the day after Hamas Gaza needs to be demilitarized but in order for Gaza to be demilitarized there is only one force that can demilitarize it and that force is the IDF no international force can be responsible for that we've seen in other places what happened when they brought in international forces in order to demilitarize I am not willing to shut my eyes to any other arrangement I am not willing and we open in the north where our correspondent Zach Anders is standing by Zach give us the latest developments there and what's the statement coming out with the IDF apologizing to Lebanon well we continue to see these Hezbollah strikes occurring daily here on the northern border of Israel at targeting for the most part IDF positions and bases along the northern border Hezbollah then sees this retaliatory fire from the IDF with artillery and air strikes targeting these positions where Hezbollah launches either heavy rockets or mortars at positions along the Israeli border but not yesterday the day before with a strike the IDF says targeting a Hezbollah position in southern Lebanon apparently killed Lebanese army soldier rather in that strike they said was targeting Hezbollah this is a significant moment considering it is one of the first fatalities of the Lebanese army this differing then sectarian religious Hezbollah this being the armed forces of Lebanon the apology coming in as the IDF says they're investigating the incident but they do point out that their strike was targeting Hezbollah and they attribute this moment to Hezbollah and this Lebanese soldier being in close proximity to one another we'll still have to wait for the outcome of the investigation more independent information to be released but already media inside Lebanon is obviously enraged by the incident and frustrated that the fighting has spilled over beyond Hezbollah deaths which already amount over 80 since October 7th that have been killed by independent estimates in the south of Lebanon well thank you very much Zach for that report and that update from the northern front we're going to continue this further in studio with Dr. Jack Naria former deputy have assessment with Israeli military intelligence Jack it's good to have you in here we're seeing this in Lebanon now have we seen any statements from Lebanese government any position on this and does it differ from Hezbollah's well you know the Lebanese government is playing on both sides I mean they're trying to accuse Israel of committing a sort of crime attacking Lebanese soldier in fact it was a position it was a position and that stands all I mean in contrast and complete with the 1701 resolution why is the Lebanese army deployed near Hezbollah in fact Hezbollah should not be there and I don't understand the way Israel is apologizing because I mean this is something that stems from the resolution 1701 and instead of accusing the Lebanese government of deploying alongside with Hezbollah we are right now apologizing this is incomprehensible I mean we do see that Lebanon at least at the governmental level does not want to see Beirut dragged into a war directly but they're also not raining in Hezbollah is there the threat that as the Lebanese army seems to get more interspersed with Hezbollah units it could force them to make a more direct action well you know if you follow the Lebanese press you can see that there are lots of talk about diplomatic movements that are initiated by the United States in order to re-establish a new order in Lebanon to assure the election of a new president to Lebanon a new chief of the army and of course reforms in the whole structure the economic structure of Lebanon and this in return of withdrawing Hezbollah from its present lines to beyond the Litany river about 40 kilometers from the Israeli border this is what is the talk about right now in Lebanon I don't know how real this is and certainly I don't know if Hezbollah is willing to withdraw as it did in 2006 and finally came back easy and Israel did nothing in order to counter that Before we continue this discussion we are going to turn our attention to the southern border our correspondent Pierre Klauschenler is standing by in Styro just outside Styro on the border in Gaza, Pierre walk us through the latest developments of the fighting in Gaza Well there was an announcement by the IDF today that in the past 24 hours there were 250 aerial strikes on presumed terror targets such as terror infrastructure weapons depot weapons manufacturing assets as well as terrorists but not an extraordinary number so to speak it's about the average of aerial strike that we've been communicated to every 24 hours now what's important now is the two flash points in the northern Gaza Strip the Jabalia refugee camp the Sejaïa out south eastern outskirts of Gaza city are intense fighting close range fighting enhance the intensification of the fighting brings about the death of nine soldiers in the past 24 hours two of them were just announced to the public in the past hour or so in the central sector of the Gaza Strip you heard the officer in charge of the southern command the Brigadier General Yaron Finkelmann who said that the ground forces are operating already in the heart of Hanyounes and the chief of staff has said that Hanyounes is encircled so the heart and around Hanyounes is being under operation right now and that poses an acute humanitarian dilemma for the IDF on two fold one is the fate of the 138 Israeli hostages remaining in the hands of Hamas Palestinian Islamic jihad other terror factions maybe clans, maybe civilians and those who have been released last week are already saying that they were held in flats and that the earth and the buildings were trembling because bombardments by the IDF were very close by and the fear of course that the IDF could by mistake target a building in which hostages are being detained there is the other humanitarian dilemma which of course finds a larger echo within the international community especially with the UN organizations it's the Palestinian civilian population which is not involved in the fighting the UNRA organization of the UN 600,000 people that have received an evacuation order by leaflet or through the active map to move west of Hanyounes now over 75% of the total Gaza population is already now in the center and the south of the Gaza Strip that means that 1 million people from the northern sector of the Gaza Strip behind me are displaced south because of the fighting that saves human life but that poses a humanitarian predicament because of the lack of infrastructure and that of course is also a dilemma that Israel needs to take into account because if it does not tackle the humanitarian issue of the non-involved Palestinian population that could shorten the war and the objectives of the war because of international pressure on the other hand when you give more humanitarian aid more fuel for instance you risk prolonging the terrible predicament of the Israeli hostages and that's the dilemma at this point definitely a challenge thank you Pierre for that report from the front we're going to continue this discussion in studio also joining us now Mark Shulman editor at Newsweek and one of our political columnists thank you for being in the studio with us I want to open with you because we had Blinken in town saying Israel has only weeks to finish this U.S. officials now saying you got to be done or it will be done by the end of January realistic statements, statements of empty words a little of both let's be honest I mean the end of January might be a reasonable point in terms of major operations the fact that the IDF moved quickly and the Kanyunis shows that the IDF is moving a little bit quicker but in terms of time the U.S. has to show that it's making those statements in terms of the Arab world in terms of the American domestic politics excuse me I can't just say nothing and it's been giving it's still incredibly supportive I heard an interview with Blinken on NPR this morning which was last night in America and he basically supported Israel's action that yes it has to be more careful but even specifically mentioned the fact that Israel has divided Kanyunis and other areas into small areas where they've done something that no other army has ever done so the American administration remains extremely supportive look they're concerned, we should be concerned the pictures of 15,000 we've even admitted that it's almost 15,000 it's not a good look whether it's justified or is irrelevant we still have to worry about the look and the support and everything else in the world Jack I want to turn to you with a similar question is one month actually realistic when it comes down to ending a war the kinetic operations of the war how much can be accomplished in that time if you're talking about the end of January I hope that will be finished because I mean this is a long period of time and if we analyze the way the Israeli forces are advancing in Gaza certainly the next step will be to take over the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip the famous Philadelphia axis from which all the tunnels began and enter the Gaza Strip so this is more or less I mean I think that by today you could say that most of the mission of the Israeli army has been done by encircling Hanyunist now it's a war of attrition between us and Hamas Hamas is in an inferior position because he's under attack so I think that by the end of January if this is the time frame we're talking about I think most of the operations will be ended one of the things that we've noticed here is the rocket barrages are no longer regular. It used to be three times a night at set time intervals. Now it's every few days at random times. Is Hamas getting desperate? Are these attacks of opportunity because they can no longer maintain enough control on the ground? Well you know when you take a wounded beast and you put it in a corner then you must be very careful because it can be very violent. So I mean this is what's happening with Hamas Hamas is trying its best to hurt Israel but he's not succeeding. I mean this is really a disappointment every time he shoots a missile towards Israel I mean the interception by the Iron Dome is such that with all due respect nothing happens in Israel really. I mean there's no real damage. So this is the only thing that they can do. The next thing as I said yesterday and they before that they might turn Haan Yunus into the new muscle the muscle meaning that they would initiate suicide attacks against Israeli forces be it by by individuals or by cars and then that are full with explosive. This is a situation where we might meet and we might have to deal with and certainly this as in muscle costs a lot of life. That's amazing they haven't dealt until now quite honestly I think we were expecting it earlier on and it hasn't happened until now so let's just hope that let's hope that well we're going to continue this discussion in a brief moment but I do want to bring another angle into the discussion. There's of course the international perception as we've mentioned in the studio as the war goes on there's backlash against Israel and nowhere is that more apparent than the next generation of Americans American universities seem to be raising a generation of radicals well that's now a fight going to Congress a house hearing last night grilled the presidents of Harvard MIT and the University of Pennsylvania in recent weeks US universities have become hotbeds of in some cases genocidal rhetoric with leftist and pro Hamas students gathering in the thousands chanting gas the Jews chanting globalize the Intifada chanting there is only one solution that's a direct reference to Hitler's final solution this is often accompanied by physical attacks on Jewish students these protests as well as Jewish students reports of harassment at the school with a center of the hearing held by the committee on education and the workforce the universe these receive billions of dollars in federal funding and the current atmosphere of high-semitism on campuses represents a clear violation of US anti-discrimination law calling for the genocide of Jews violate pens code of conduct when it comes to bullying and harassment yes or no it can be harassment the answer is yes and doctor gay at Harvard does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment yes or no it can be depending on the context what's the context targeted as an individual targeted as an individual it's targeted at Jewish students Jewish individuals do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them do you understand that dehumanization is part of anti-semitism I will ask you one more time does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment yes or no anti-semitic rhetoric anti-semitic rhetoric when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying harassment intimidation that is actionable conduct and we do take action so the answer is yes that calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard code of conduct correct it does not depend on the context it does not depend on the context the answer is yes and this is why you should resign these are unacceptable answers across the board back to you Mark I know that the two of us in the studio have discussed ad nauseam the rise of the radical progressive fringe with it's insane racial world view but now we're seeing that become the dominant world view it seems on these campuses congress stepping in do they have power here they have the power of getting the federal government to invoke its regulatory powers to do something about it of course it's very difficult when you get the issue of speech and free speech and where's the line clearly they've passed the line many times the big question and the big issue I think to all of us is look campuses always had a large group of anti-israel sentiment I mean I saw the difference in that when I was in Columbia college I graduated in the 70s and I went back in the graduate school in the 80s dramatically in that period of time the reason I don't have a PhD right now is because of an incident with anti-israel people on campus which is a whole other story long story but anyway the reality is that there's been a jump a jump that we don't really fully understand and we can explain it but it's gone from anti-israel sentiment to anti-semitism straight out it's also gone the anti-israel statement has grown tremendously because if previously the anti-israel people on campuses were talking about you know 67 borders Palestinian rights they were never chanting to the river to the sea I never saw in Columbia both as an undergraduate as a graduate protests to eliminate Israel the protests were Israelis in doing the right things in occupying territories all those sort of questions but never did I see that in all the years that I was in Columbia and that was in the 70s and 80s so there's been that jump both in terms of the rhetoric in terms of anti-israel to eliminate us and plus the fact that it's jumped to absolute anti-semitism now we can explain part of it with the leftist view that suddenly the white Jews are part of the establishment and therefore they're the enemy it's so interesting because the right wing anti-semitists they were not part of the white we make believe whites so we have this situation where we're not good here we're not good there but it's an amazing transformation it's very very frightening if you know everyone I speak to who's on campus have kids on campus is really scared they don't know what to do at this point and you know this doesn't seem like a safe place to come to but it's probably the only solution these days these protests these movements on campus seem to be a direct manifestation of some of the polls that we've already discussed showing that something in the vicinity of 52% of young Americans under the age of 25 actually support Hamas in this war rather than Israel despite a large portion of them saying that October 7th the genocide and that it was justified anyway how did this radical fringe become the dominant school of thought among the progressive movement two things one social media and tiktok particularly all surveys show that 70% of the views on tiktok are anti-israel only 30% are pro-israel and that's a major thing we don't know whether it's the algorithm or it's just because they're more Muslims in the world I don't know the answer to that but it's clearly the fact as a matter of fact if you look at the different social medias tiktok has 10 times the amount of people who become more anti-israel and being on it then let's say a facebook does it's an amazing difference so that's a big thing and of course the under 25 use tiktok more than anything else the rest of us use other social medias that's number one number two it's the radical professors on the campuses that have been teaching this revolutionary theory that has gotten a lot of attention and taught a lot of kids in ways that we can't believe look we had the radical generation of the 60s and 70s became professors and their views are quite to the left and quite extreme in many cases and the universities have given them tenure and their positions that they can't be moved let's put it that way so you have these factors come together with a lack of knowledge people don't have a knowledge of history they're not really interested in real history we know how little history is actually taught and how many is actually learned so they barely know American history do expect them to understand Middle Eastern history no but it sounds good hey come on revolutionary and we're with the left we're with them and so little young people like being on that side yeah very much so a fashion very much what they want to be part of and that's part of the problem too we have a really lot of work ahead of us and I'm not sure we're even up to being taking this on at this point nonetheless we've seen these institutions college campuses for about a decade now become the official crackdown on their definition of hate speech going to the ends of the earth to make sure that people can't share what's considered offensive views this is even spilled over into the private sector with just about every social media company since the 2017-2018 or so pushing speech codes anti-hate speech even the US government pushing them to do the same thing why are the Jews excluded from that why is hate speech against the Jews perfectly fine well I think I've read recently a statement by Abebe and we're always excluded we're excluded from living in Moscow we're excluded from having land we're excluded to being you know all the different things the Jews have always been excluded so anti-semitism as well we're excluded you know we're not the group that you have to worry about we're strong white people why do we why do we have to care about us it's an amazing thing it's an amazing that's so you know it's two generations after the holocaust and everything's been forgotten without a question it's a world that's becoming a little crazier every day a little stranger and a little more frightening to say the least speaking of that we're also seeing other world powers involving itself in this conflict in many ways for months Russia building close ties with Iran around the war in Ukraine now Russian president Vladimir Putin set to build on that and to showcase his ties in the Arab world across the Gulf oil high on the agenda but of course the war in Gaza as well our senior diplomatic correspondent Owen Alterman on what's Putin's agenda this week around the table to set the table preparing for their leaders meeting later this week the Russian and Iranian foreign ministers meeting in Moscow Tuesday to sign an agreement on working together against US backed sanctions of course this is an important step in increasing the coordination of efforts of members of the international community to overcome illegal sanctions which the United States and its allies have made a substitute for diplomacy that sets the tone for a busy few days for Russian president Vladimir Putin set to travel to the UAE and Saudi Arabia Wednesday for meetings with leaders and then set to host Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi in Moscow on Thursday for Putin the war in Gaza continues to generate opportunities to change the subject from the war in Ukraine to boost Russia's soft power among the billions across the planet who identify with Gazans to needle the United States in the heart of the Middle East this is terrible and when you watch how operations are performed on children without anesthesia it certainly evokes particular feelings all these events in fact are a direct consequence of the United States desire to monopolize the mediation process a renewed Russian push into the Middle East will face limits in the long term the Biden administration still wants to move forward with its economic corridor and potentially to patch up ties with Riyadh for now the war gives Russia an opening Putin will be quick to seize it now toss back today with you Jack because we are seeing Russia make its statements against Israel obviously their key security ally in the region Iran is set to the destruction of the Jewish state and all its inhabitants where is Russia going to fall on this how much can they contribute to this well Russia right now is taking revenge on what the Americans and the West did on the North from gas pipeline in the North Russia lost about the income of more than 800 billion dollars a year and the answer of Russia was to torpedo sabotage the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel and now Putin is enjoying his victory he's coming to visit Saudi Arabia and the Emirates in order just as we said to put a finger in the eye of Biden and saying to him here we are present and we we are you cannot ignore us and and he will sign you will see you sign lots of agreements with the Saudi Arabia including in the nuclear field which is an area that is almost prohibited by by the Americans and this is to continue I mean the Russian presence and saying I mean we are back in fact to the Cold War except they have no military presence at this point effectively I mean we're always concerned about the military presence in Syria the Soviet army excuse me the Russian army is a hollowed out of itself anything that can fight is now in Ukraine so they can talk about it they have no Navy they can't chip in they can't fight the war and you know they lost the battle of the Black Sea basically and think about it they certainly can't have don't have a blue water Navy at this point to speak of whatsoever but the Ukraine war is not going to last forever Soviet Russian again military capacity their industrial capacity will rev back up after the war maybe but they're never we're very good at industrial capacity let's keep this in mind Russian arms have never been good that's the history of Russian arms that make it they've been a Potemkin military except for the last period of time we you know at what point in our history do we not take on except during 73 when we're surprised but after 73 when we took on Russian arms at what point do we not defeat them quite quickly so I put it within a limit to what they're able to do in terms of oil they're an important factor they're an important factor in the oil markets in the world and of course the fact that they have sanctions on them gives them a sort of an ability to affect other markets so I think then geopolitically and economically they can have some sort of impact militarily I think it's been a long time and I still hope they're going to be defeated ultimately in Ukraine well especially in Saudi Arabia doesn't need Russian weapons at all no doesn't need weapons what can Russia particularly give Saudi Arabia nuclear but even nuclear technology is not particularly good I'm going to thank you both for explaining the whole situation that said we are out of time and we'll see you again in about a half hour for our next broadcast in their beds we have no idea where is she as our soldiers are fighting on the front line but the general perception it's something that certainly needs to to be fought as well news is ongoing coverage of Israel at war The US believes Israel could complete large scale kinetic military operations in the south of Gaza by January and then shift to more targeted attacks on specific Hamas terrorists and leaders CNN cited a senior administration official who says Israel appears unlikely to achieve full objectives by the end of this year and that Israeli forces will continue to pursue that goal as part of a longer-term campaign while the fighting evolves to a new phase last week US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warned Israel's work cabinet that it likely does not have months to fight Hamas as domestic and international pressure mounts on US President Joe Biden's administration to end the war on the ground another soldier died the enemy action in Gaza Sergeant First Class Yonatan Malka in the north Israel has issued a rare apology to Lebanon after an air strike against terror targets also killed a Lebanese soldier Israel has affirmed that Lebanon was not the target of the strike also in Israel leaders believe that another month of fighting will damage Hamas enough to force another hostage deal as the IDF expands its operations to dismantle Hamas in Gaza we have not lost sight not for one moment of our critical mission to rescue our hostages to do everything in our power to bring our hostages home our intelligence has been monitoring the situation of our hostages and I can say with absolute certainty every minute in Hamas captivity endangers their lives this is an urgent call for action the international community must take action the Red Cross must have access to the hostages that are in the hands of Hamas 138 hostages children women, men, the elderly have been in Hamas captivity for over 60 days in brutal and inhumane conditions some of the hostages in Hamas captivity have chronic illness and life-threatening conditions some of the men and women in Hamas captivity were injured during the massacre of October 7th some have been harmed since every day every hour every minute is critical the lives of our hostages are at risk those who claim to value women's rights do the lives of Israeli women mean less those who claim to value human life do the lives of 138 hostages lives that are at risk right now are their lives worse less international organizations know their mandate and they also know the facts Hamas is preventing them from doing their job the Israel Defense Forces will do everything in its power to rescue our hostages and bring them home we call others to do the same and we are going to look directly at what's going on in the south Pierre Kloschen there our correspondent is standing by just outside on the border with Gaza Pierre walk us through exactly what's happening now there's been yesterday one of the most intense days of fighting and it's going to go on today obviously because there are three intense spots of fighting the first one is the Jebalia refugee camp in the northern sector of the Gaza Strip then Sejaia which is a neighborhood on the southeastern outskirts of Gaza City and then the new targets of IDF of the IDF offensive since December 1st the Hanyunas area with the central refugee camps of Elburej, Direl Bala Nusserat at this point the IDF says that for the past 24 hours there's been 250 aerial strikes on presumed terror targets and infrastructure on the other hand the officer in charge of the southern command Brigadier General Yaron Finkelman said that the army is operating the ground forces are operating in the heart of Hanyunas already and the chief of staff of the Israeli military Jordan Colonel Ertzi Alevi has said that Hanyunas is encircled which means both inside and both around Hanyunas at the same time a new evacuation injunction has been published for the Palestinian population which is not involved in the fighting in the area of Hanyunas to move west to the Arunah Rashid coastal road in order to reach the safe zone that has been dedicated by the IDF in the Al-Muassi area between Hanyunas and Rafah Thank you very much Pierre for the update from the south. We are going to turn our eye to the northern front as well though our correspondent Zach Anders is standing by on the border with Lebanon Zach walk us through the developments on the northern front Yeah well the last 24 to 48 hours has been movement again with Hezbollah firing occasional mortar strikes and these ATGMs anti-tank guided missiles striking IDF positions 48 hours in the last 48 hours the IDF says that it was in the process of striking Hezbollah targets near a military base when Lebanese Army soldiers were caught in the crossfire one killed three others wounded apparently in this retaliatory strike and now the Lebanese Army is issuing strong reprimands for the death of their Turkish soldier that apparently was in the area where Hezbollah was operating and firing on IDF positions now this is a significant moment considering the obviously the several factions in the south here operate Hezbollah and Hamas even here firing on IDF positions but the Lebanese Army has been the somewhat neutral intermediary if you could use the equation here as they have not been the ones firing on the IDF and with the death of their soldier the question now becomes do they feel compelled to involve themselves or to do more than just use strong language and themselves become involved of course the fragmentation of the different groups is considerable the Lebanese Army has other bones to pick with Syria they have their security situation in the north and Hezbollah operates with a strong presence upwards of 80,000 fighters in all throughout the south and other areas throughout Lebanon so this is a considerable moment with already Hezbollah fighters that have been killed in the exchanges since October 7 now the Lebanese Army has been mostly operating elsewhere without its soldiers in the line of fire to see one of their soldiers fall now in strikes targeting Hezbollah nearby that is a considerable change in the tone of the fighting here have we seen any new threats being issued by Hezbollah's leadership in response to the actions on the ground in Gaza as the IDF gains momentum nothing beyond what we've already seen this again is rhetoric that is as high as it can go with their statements claiming that they will continue to retaliate against Israelis retaliate against the IDF the rhetoric includes that for every citizen that's killed in Lebanon that they will target Israeli civilians here in the north there's really not much more room to go up any higher once we've hit the ceiling here they've already targeted and killed Israeli civilians in the north as well as soldiers here since October 7 so it is the tone or at least the strength of the language has been consistent since October 7 there was of course the pause that did take place here since the ceasefire Hezbollah not party to the negotiations in Qatar not party to this ceasefire yet they abided by it for the most part and ceased hostilities here but since the ceasefire ended they have resumed exchanges well thank you very much for that update from the North Zack we're going to discuss this a little bit more in studio with our defense correspondent Jonathan Regov as well as our senior international correspondent Owen Ultraman Jonathan I want to open with you because we are seeing these massive gains on the ground in Gaza we have in the words of the American administration mere weeks before international pressure for a ceasefire amounts to an insurmountable level the IDF saying that they believe that by the end of January the American saying as well as some IDF saying similar statements by the end of January they're likely to see the end of the major kinetic operations is this realistic how much gains have there been on the ground it depends on what you see as the final outcome in 7 weeks from now will Hamas be totally defeated completely out of Gaza did Israel kill every last terrorist and reached every rocket the answer is no that will not happen in 7 weeks that will take months to happen but Israel can in 7 weeks create a reality which is something that Israel can live with meaning that Gaza is no longer a threat no more rockets the vast majority of the leadership I don't know if anybody everybody but the vast majority killed or captured or gone but can this be completely over is everything going to be peaceful 7 weeks from now the answer is no we have still 138 hostages there that have to be brought back one way or another and negotiating if it comes to a point of negotiating with Hamas to get them back it would be a very tough negotiation because the prices that Hamas would ask for would be very high now the IDF is actually directly saying now that they believe in another month of combat operations they can damage Hamas enough make them desperate enough to force another negotiation is this something that we expect is actually realistic is it realistic yes but we saw already a very heated debate yesterday between the war cabinet and some of the hostages and families of other hostages some of the hostages that came back and families of family members of hostages who are still in Gaza can they wait another month when we know that some of them are in difficult condition I'm not sure it might have to happen one way or another sooner Israel believes that applying strong military pressure will eventually facilitate another hostage deal Israel set three goals bringing back all the hostages eradicating Hamas all together and making sure that Gaza is no longer a threat can all the hostages be back within seven weeks I hope so can Gaza no longer be a threat in seven weeks I hope so can Hamas be completely gone no longer Hamas in Gaza seven weeks from now not so sure we brought up the hostages and I want to attract our attention to the families of the hostages how they met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last night to present their grievances unfortunately that meeting devolved into a shouting match families furious with the Prime Minister's statement that bringing back their loved ones is simply not possible at least at this moment another month of combat operations will make Hamas once again attempt to negotiate Hamas has already released a list of impossible demands including the release of every single terrorist held not just by Israel but also by Jordan as well as by America there are currently still 138 hostages held by Hamas since October 7th we are going to return to studio where we have our Defense Correspondent Jonathan Regev and our Diplomatic Correspondent Owen Ultraman Owen I want to open with you Netanyahu Prime Minister of Israel fighting with the families of the hostages not coming off as very sympathetic definitely not coming off as very sympathetic definitely not coming off as very sympathetic definitely not coming off as somebody who has their back at a time when the entire nation is watching he has to be very careful when he speaks to them everyone's hearts are with them and everyone empathizes with the families and everyone understands why the families are going to be and the freed hostages by the way were also in that meeting really a new development right over given what's happened over the course of the last week week and a half everyone understands that they are going to be advocates for their loved ones and for their colleagues who are hostages still in the tunnels of Gaza again and the sayings of our fathers right in the Jewish tradition if I'm not for myself who will be for me so everyone understands that their position of advocacy and the need for leaders to empathize with them that said again we are at a junction where at least at this moment the two goals undermine one another right the goal of winning the war the goal of freeing the hostages where the goals are consistent and reinforce one another where hitting Hamas hard actually brings them to the table and frees more hostages but sitting here on December 6 in the morning here in Israel that's not the case and the prime minister needs to delicately but still firmly make the case that at this junction the priority is on winning the war against Hamas for the reasons that Jonathan Regev described and for the reasons that the prime minister in a much more elegant way at that press conference last night Israel time made very clear Jonathan if the Israeli military is right that a month is enough time to force Hamas back to the negotiating table there's another ceasefire then does it interrupt the ability to finish the war especially given the international pressures I don't think so because we saw that there was a weak ceasefire and that specific ceasefire did not stop the war machine with that ceasefire end it wasn't Israel which initiated the end of the ceasefire but once it happened Israel was ready to go at it again so at least militarily speaking the answer is no diplomatically speaking I don't know it depends a lot on the United States which is now already an election year and has its own perhaps priorities but as far as the military is concerned they can take another a weeks pause is something that can be done a hostage release despite the military difficulties that it presents I think the vast majority of the people within the military were happy with the ceasefire not because they were happy with the ceasefire they were happy with the result which is more than 100 hostages coming back the army I think if it comes to that decision we'll say yes once again but the army as soon as the ceasefire ends they will be ready to go once again I'm going to go back to this the first ceasefire didn't have Anthony Blinken breathing down his little neck saying you have only a matter of weeks to finish this war look the reality is so far Ariel the Israeli government and military have done exactly the opposite of what Anthony Blinken said he wanted he said he wanted an operation that doesn't look like what happened in the north looks exactly like what happened in the north said he didn't want to see displacement of civilians yes there is now this more complicated and more targeted map at the end of the day the Israeli military is asking civilians to move and there are those same videos of people leaving Khan Yunus and making the trek similar videos in kind at least to what we saw from the north wanted to see more humanitarian aid come in there is to some degree more humanitarian aid coming in than the war let's say in the first week or two of the war but still nothing like what Anthony Blinken was talking about restocking store shelves with commercial goods obviously a very very different situation from what we have right now so for the moment the Israeli government is doing pretty much the opposite of what Anthony Blinken said he wanted during his visit here in Israel at his press conference here after meeting with Israeli leaders the administration's criticism has been muted if there at all so in the meantime the Israeli government is able to prosecute the war and to advance in its military operation without American criticism now will the American criticism come over time it stands to reason that it may although again I said weeks ago there was this idea that criticism would simply continue to mount and mount and mount and mount like a graph with a slope of one right at a kind of constant rate and I said that I thought that the pressure would start to taper off not that it would stop increasing but the increases would be at a lower rate that the slope would go down and I think that's what we've seen over the course of time for a variety of reasons but it does seem to me that the diplomatic logic here could actually be parallel to the military logic right if it's actually the case that the military goals can be achieved in a matter of weeks to high intensity war and then move on to a more low intensity conflict until essentially achieve Israel's military goals and the diplomatic needs of the Biden administration obviously that could be a good result for both sides and you mentioned the pressure caused by the election year well let's take a look at what that means as far as the younger voters are going particularly those that are still in university we're seeing violent juhading radicals becoming a major movement on American campuses this has actually become a fight for congress now a house hearing last night grilled the presidents of Harvard MIT and the University of Pennsylvania in recent weeks U.S. universities have become hotbeds of in fact genocidal rhetoric in many cases with leftist and pro-Hama students gathering in the thousands to gas the Jews to globalize the intifada to chant there is only one solution a direct reference to Hitler's final solution this is often accompanied by physical attacks on Jewish students pro-Palestinian protests and these Jewish students reports of harassment were the center of the hearing held by the committee on education and the workforce these universities billions of dollars in federal funding and that current atmosphere anti-semitism could put that at risk is calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn's code of conduct when it comes to bullying and harassment yes or no it can be harassment the answer is yes and Dr. Gay at Harvard does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment yes or no it can be depending on the context what's the context targeted as an individual targeted at an individual it's targeted at Jewish students Jewish individuals do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them do you understand that dehumanization is part of anti-semitism I will ask you one more time does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment yes or no anti-semitic rhetoric and is it anti-semitic rhetoric anti-semitic rhetoric when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying harassment intimidation that is actionable conduct and we do take action so the answer is yes that calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard code of conduct correct and it depends on the context it does not depend on the context the answer is yes and this is why you should resign these are unacceptable answers across the board I'm going to return to Owen Alterman in studio not just diplomatic correspondent but also you have a background as a lawyer so you can help us understand just why and what power congress really has here you also mentioned Harvard alum so obviously a personal issue too look this was less about I think the power directly that congress has at least in this instance and more about having the argument there right in that House committee and having a chance for those primarily Republican members of the committee although of course not only to grill those three university presidents look I'm going to have positions I think a lot of people are not going to agree with but in cases where there are ambiguities of language I think the decision has to be made in the doubt the benefit of the doubt given to allowing freedom of speech and I think the question here is less about what we heard from least a phonic there about whether calling for the genocide of Jews is against the code of conduct but whether the particular language used at the protests in most cases obviously there are different formulations used and some I think we all could agree clearly across the line but whether formulations like from the river to the sea and constitute calls for the genocide of Jews and obviously to many many Jewish years they do but for those who argue that they don't I think the doubt has to be resolved in their favor in terms of allowing freedom of speech in the campuses and I know a lot of people don't like that answer and I know it makes a lot of us uncomfortable and certainly it's very very frightening for Jewish students on those campuses and the challenge has to be met but I think the challenge has to be met not by grilling the university presidents but by the traditional answer Arielle to hateful speech which is more speech we need to see and we have seen we need to see even more pro-Israel speech even more anti anti-Semitism speeches with the broadest coalition possible you know I don't like the idea of forcing institutions to take positions right and I think there's now becoming a consensus that these institutions should follow the University of Chicago principles and not make institutional statements on political issues and that it was a mistake in retrospect even on a clear cut case like George Floyd in 2020 that it was a mistake to start and to set the precedent of institutional statements but everyone who is a member of these campus communities students faculty should be approached and asked to sign petitions to protest and to come out against hateful rhetoric and for Jewish students and pro-Israel groups and their allies to form the broadest coalition possible to have marches against anti-Semitism that dwarf those hateful protests that we've seen and I think that would be a more effective answer than bringing those presidents before Congress and you know I can't help but escape the impression that Claudine Gay sitting there is being scapegoated for shortcomings over decades over decades by America's Jewish community and by the pro-Israel movement who yes built up strong pro-Israel groups on campus with activism who yes led initiatives to found Jewish studies and Israel studies and campuses but did they do enough in terms of watching what was going on in the Middle Eastern studies departments right and in other currents in the society and it seems to me that these broader social issues and broader social problems where the challenge was not met where in some cases alliances were made with other minority groups without at the outset planting the seeds of asking those groups to also stand with Jews and not paint the bad guys as privileged white people but to understand our historical story and had those seeds been planted and allowed then we wouldn't they wouldn't have to be the scapegoating of Claudine Gay and those other presidents. In the last minute that we have, I have to ask though at what point does this cross over from free speech into something that is a a chilling effect or be directly actional and imminent against Jewish students? I am a favor, I am in favor and at least if I like there was not going in this direction of allowing speech on private universities that goes out to the outer bounds of the First Amendment. They're not obligated to do that but to me that's the right standard to use and as you know Arielle, the First Amendment in the United States protects speech that in many countries would not be allowed. It's a much, much broader protection for speech than in any other country on Earth there in almost every other country on Earth and that would include a lot of very, very hateful speech, a very, very, very hateful speech and again that challenge must be met. It's essential. It's essential for the well-being of Jewish students and for the well-being of American society but the challenge shouldn't be met by scapegoating Claudine Gay for American Jews own failures and the failures of the pros and movement of the wider society. There are other things that need to be done even at this late hour. Let's hope there's still time to do some of those. Oh and Ultimate, thank you very much for a breakdown of the legal basis here for everyone else though. We are out of time. We'll see you again in just about a half hour of this broadcast. Until then, thanks for watching. For news's ongoing coverage of Israel at war I'm Ariel Levin-Waldman. The U.S. believes Israel could complete large-scale kinetic military operations in the south of Gaza by January and then shift to more targeted attacks on specific Hamas terrorists and leaders. CNN cited a senior administration official who says Israel appears unlikely to achieve full objectives by the end of this year and that Israeli forces will continue to pursue that goal as part of a longer-term campaign while the fighting evolves to a new phase. Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warned Israel's war cabinet that it likely does not have months to fight Hamas as domestic and international pressure mounts on U.S. President Joe Biden's administration to end the war. On the ground, another soldier died to enemy action in Gaza. Sergeant First Class Yonatan Malka Israel has issued a rare apology to Lebanon after an air strike against terror targets also killed a Lebanese soldier. Israel has affirmed that Lebanon was not the target of the strike. Also, Israel leaders believe that another month of fighting will damage Hamas enough to force another hostage deal. As the IDF expands its operations to dismantle Hamas in Gaza, we have not lost sight not for one moment of our critical mission to rescue our hostages to do everything in our power to bring our hostages home. Our intelligence has been monitoring the situation of our hostages and I can say with absolute certainty every minute in Hamas' captivity endangers their lives. This is an urgent call for action. The international community must take action. The Red Cross must have access to the hostages that are in the hands of Hamas. 138 hostages children, women, men, the elderly have been in Hamas' captivity for over 60 days in brutal and inhumane conditions. Some of the hostages in Hamas' captivity have chronic illness and life threatening conditions. Some of the men and women in Hamas' captivity were injured during the massacre of October 7th. Some have been harmed since. Every day, every hour, every minute is critical. The lives of our hostages are at risk. Those who claim to value women's rights do the lives of Israeli women mean less. Those who claim to value human life do the lives of 28 hostages. Lives that are at risk right now are their lives worth less? International organizations know their mandate and they also know the facts. Hamas is preventing them from doing their job. The Israel Defense Forces will do everything in its power to rescue our hostages and bring them home. We call others to do the same. And we are going to look directly at what's going on in the south. Pierre Kloschen, our correspondent, is standing by just outside Sturro on the border with Gaza. Pierre, walk us through exactly what's happening now. There's been yesterday one of the most intense days of fighting and it's going to go on today obviously because there are three intense spots of fighting. The first one is the camp in the northern sector of the Gaza Strip. Then Sejaia which is a neighborhood on the southeastern outskirts of Gaza City. And then the new target of the IDF offensive since December 1st, the Hanyunas area with the central refugee camps of El Burej, Direl Balar, Nusserat. And at this point the IDF says that for the past 24 hours there's been 250 aerial strikes on presumed terror targets and infrastructure. On the other hand, the officer in charge of the southern command, Brigadier General Yaron Finkelman said that the army is operating, the ground forces are operating in the heart of Hanyunas already and the chief of staff of the Israeli military, Jordan Colonel Ertzi Alevi said that Hanyunas is encircled which means both inside and both around Hanyunas. At the same time a new evacuation injunction has been published for the Palestinian population which is not involved in the fighting in the area of Hanyunas to move west to the Aruna Rashid coastal road in order to reach the safe zone that has been dedicated by the IDF in the Al-Muassi area between Hanyunas and Rafah. Thank you very much Pierre for the update from the south. We are going to turn our eye to the northern front as well though our correspondent Zach Anders is standing by on the border with Lebanon. Zach, walk us through the developments on the northern front. Yeah well the last 24 to 48 hours has been movement again with Hezbollah firing. These heavy rockets, occasional mortar strikes and these ATGMs, anti-tank guided missiles striking the IDF positions 48 hours in the last 48 hours the IDF says that it was in the process of striking Hezbollah targets near a military base when Lebanese Army soldiers were caught in the crossfire one killed, three others wounded apparently in this retaliatory strike and now the Lebanese Army is issuing strong reprimands for the death of their soldier that apparently was in the area where Hezbollah was operating and firing on IDF positions. Now this is a significant moment considering the obviously the several factions in the south here operate Hezbollah and Hamas even here firing on IDF positions but the Lebanese Army has been the somewhat neutral intermediary if you could use the occasion here as they have not been the ones firing on the IDF and with the death of their soldier the question now becomes do they feel compelled to involve themselves or to do more than just use strong language and they themselves become involved of course the fragmentation here of the different groups is considerable the Lebanese Army has other bones to pick with Syria they have their security situation in the north and Hezbollah operates with a strong presence upwards of 80,000 fighters in all throughout the south and other areas throughout Lebanon so this is a considerable moment with already over 80 Hezbollah fighters that have been killed in the exchanges October 7th now the Lebanese Army has been mostly operating elsewhere without it's soldiers in the line of fire to see one of their soldiers fall now in strikes targeting Hezbollah nearby that is a considerable change in the tone of the fighting here and Zach one last bit have we seen any new threats being issued by Hezbollah's leadership in response to the actions on the ground in Gaza as the IDF gains momentum nothing beyond what we've already seen this again is rhetoric that is as high as it can go with their statements claiming that they will continue to retaliate against Israelis retaliate on the IDF the rhetoric includes that for every citizen that's killed in Lebanon that they will target Israeli civilians here in the north so there's really not much more room to to go up any higher once we've hit the ceiling here they've already targeted and killed Israeli civilians in the north as well as soldiers here since October 7th so it is the tone or at least the strength of the language has been consistent since October 7th there was of course the pause that did take place here since the ceasefire Hezbollah not party to the negotiations in Qatar not party to this ceasefire yet they abided by it for the most part and ceased hostilities here but since the ceasefire ended they have resumed exchanges well thank you very much for that update from the north Zach we're going to discuss a little bit more with our defense correspondent Jonathan as well as our senior international correspondent Owen Jonathan I want to open with you because we are seeing these massive gains on the ground in Gaza we have in the words of the American administration mere weeks before international pressure for a ceasefire amounts to an insurmountable level the IDF saying that they believe that by the end of January or the Americans saying as well as some IDF figures saying similar statements at the end of the major kinetic operations is this realistic how much gains have there been on the ground it depends on what you see as the final outcome in 7 weeks from now will Hamas be totally defeated completely out of Gaza did Israel kill every last terrorist and reached every rocket the answer is no that will not happen in 7 weeks that will take months to happen but Israel can in 7 weeks create a reality something that Israel can live with meaning that the Gaza is no longer a threat no more rockets the vast majority of the leadership I don't know if everybody but the vast majority killed or captured or gone but can this be completely over is everything going to be peaceful 7 weeks from now the answer is no and let's remember we have still 138 hostages there that will be brought back one way or another and negotiating if it comes to a point of negotiating with Hamas to get them back it will be a very tough negotiation because the prices Hamas will ask for will be very high now the IDF is actually directly saying now that they believe in another month of combat operations they can damage Hamas enough make them desperate enough to force another hostage negotiation is this something that we expect is it realistic yes but we saw already a very heated debate yesterday between the war cabinet and some of the hostages and families of other hostages some hostages that came back and family members of hostages who are still in Gaza can they wait another month when we know that some of them are in difficult condition I'm not sure it might have to happen but anyway Israel believes that applying strong military strong military pressure will eventually facilitate another hostage deal Israel set three goals bringing back all the hostages eradicating Hamas all together and making sure that Gaza is no longer a threat can all the hostages be back within seven weeks I hope so can Gaza no longer be a threat in seven weeks completely gone no longer Hamas in Gaza seven weeks from now not so sure we brought up the hostages and I want to attract our attention to the families of the hostages how they met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last night to present their grievances unfortunately that meeting devolved into a shouting match families furious with the Prime Minister's statement that bringing back their loved ones is simply not possible at least at this moment Israeli officials do believe that another month of combat operations will make Hamas once again attempt to negotiate Hamas has already released a list of impossible demands including the release of every single terrorist held not just by Israel but also by Jordan as well as by America there are currently still 138 hostages held by Hamas since October 7th we know that the hostages will be here wherever you are wherever you are in the country I will call you I will not leave my home I will not leave my home you are in the hotel we will be in the hotel we will be in the hotel it will be a very difficult time for people to come Hamas will come you will be in the hotel and you will be left behind. We are saying something to the outside world, and we will see how we will see everybody. We will hear you, we will hear you. And we will say the hard things you will say. Thank you. The artists that you are seeing, will be born, will be born, and will be born with you. No, no, no! You will be left behind. We're going to return to studio where we have our defense correspondent Jonathan Regov and our diplomatic correspondent Owen Ultraman. Owen, I want to open with you Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, fighting with the families of the hostages, not coming off as very sympathetic. Definitely not coming off as somebody who has their back at a time when the entire nation is watching. He has to be very careful when he speaks to them. Everyone's hearts are with them and everyone empathizes with the families and everyone understands why the families are going to be, and the freed hostages by the way, who are also in that meeting. Really a new development, right, over given what's happened over the course of the last week, week and a half, that everyone empathizes with them and everyone understands that they are going to be advocates for their loved ones and for their colleagues who are hostages still in the tunnels of Gaza again and the sayings of our fathers right in the Jewish tradition if I'm not for myself, who will be for me. So everyone understands that their position of advocacy and the need for leaders to empathize with them. That said, again, we're at a junction where at least at this moment the two goals undermine one another, right, the goal of winning the war, the goal of freeing the hostages. We may yet come to another point in time where the goals are consistent and reinforce one another. Where hitting Hamas hard actually brings them to the table and frees more hostages. But sitting here on December 6th in the morning here in Israel, that's not the case. And the Prime Minister needs to delicately but still firmly make the case that at this junction the priority is on winning the war against Hamas for the reasons that Jonathan Regev described. And for the reasons that the Prime Minister in a much more elegant way, and the Defense Ministry of Holland in a much more elegant way to a large extent, Benny Gantz as well in a much more elegant way at that press conference last night Israel time made very clear. And Jonathan, if the Israeli military is right that a month is enough time to force Hamas back to the negotiating table. There's another ceasefire then, does it interrupt the ability to finish the war especially given the international pressures? I don't think so because we saw that there was a weak ceasefire and that specific ceasefire did not stop the war machine. Soon as that ceasefire end, it wasn't Israel which initiated the end of the ceasefire but once it happened Israel was ready to go at it again. So at least militarily speaking the answer is no, diplomatically speaking I don't know. It depends a lot on the United States which is now already an election year and has its own perhaps priorities. But as far as the military is concerned, they can take another a week's pause is something that can be done to facilitate a hostage release despite the military difficulties that it presents. I think the vast majority of the people within the military were happy with a ceasefire not because they were happy with the ceasefire they were happy with the result which is more than 100 hostages coming back. The army I think if it comes to that decision we'll say yes once again but the army as soon as the ceasefire ends that they will be ready to go once again. But I'm going to go back to all of this. The first ceasefire didn't have Anthony Blinken breathing down the War Council next saying you have only a matter of weeks to finish this war. Look, the reality is so far the Israeli government and military have done exactly the opposite of what Anthony Blinken said he wanted, right? He said he wanted an operation that doesn't look like what happened in the north. It looks exactly like what happened in the north. So they didn't want to see displacement of civilians. Yes, there is now this more complicated and more targeted map. At the end of the day, the Israeli military is asking civilians to move. And there are those same videos of people leaving Khan Yunus and making the trek similar videos in kind at least to what we saw from the north, right? Wanted to see more humanitarian aid come in. There is to some degree more humanitarian aid coming in than the war let's say in the first week or two of the war. And still nothing like what Anthony Blinken was talking about, restocking store shelves with commercial goods. Obviously, a very, very different situation from what we have right now. So for the moment, the Israeli government is doing pretty much the opposite of what Anthony Blinken said he wanted during his visit here in Israel at his press conference here after meeting with Israeli leaders. And the Biden administration's criticism has been muted if they're at all. So in the meantime, the Israeli government is able to prosecute the war and to advance in its military operation without American criticism. Now, will the American criticism come over time? It stands to reason that it may. Although again, I said weeks ago, there is this idea that criticism would simply continue to mount and mount and mount and mount and mount, like a graph with a slope of one, right, at a kind of constant rate. And I said that I thought that the pressure would start to taper off. Not that it would stop increasing, but that the increases would be at a lower rate, that the slope would go down. And I think that's what we've seen over the course of time for a variety of reasons. But it does seem to me that the diplomatic logic here could actually be parallel to the military logic, right? If it's actually the case that the military goals can be achieved in a matter of weeks through high intensity war, and then move on to a more low intensity conflict and still essentially achieve Israel's military goals while meeting the diplomatic needs of the Biden administration. Obviously that could be a good result for both sides. And you mentioned the pressure caused by the election year. Well, let's take a look at what that means as far as the younger voters are going, particularly those that are still in university. We're seeing violent, Jew-hating radicals becoming a major movement on American campuses. This has actually become a fight for Congress now, a House hearing last night grilled the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania. In recent weeks, US universities have become hotbeds of, in fact, genocidal rhetoric in many cases, with leftist and pro-Humans students gathering in the thousands to gas the Jews, to globalize the Intifada, to chant, there is only one solution, a direct reference to Hitler's final solution. This is often accompanied by physical attacks on Jewish students. Pro-Palestinian protests and these Jewish students reports of harassment were the center of the hearing held by the committee on education and the workforce. These universities received billions of dollars in federal funding and that current atmosphere of anti-Semitism could put that at risk. I was calling for the genocide of Jews, violate Penn's code of conduct when it comes to bullying and harassment, yes or no? It can be harassment. The answer is yes. And Dr. Gay, at Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no? It can be, depending on the context. What's the context? Targeted as an individual, targeted at an individual. It's targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals. Do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them? Do you understand that dehumanization is part of anti-Semitism? I will ask you one more time, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no? Anti-Semitic rhetoric. And is it anti-Semitic rhetoric? Anti-Semitic rhetoric, when it crosses into conduct, that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation, that is actionable conduct, and we do take action. So the answer is yes, that calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard's code of conduct, correct? Again, it depends on the context. It does not depend on the context. The answer is yes, and this is why you should resign. These are unacceptable answers across the board. I'm going to return to Owen Alterman in studio. Not just diplomatic correspondent, but also you have a background as a lawyer. So you can help us understand just why and what power Congress really has here. You also mentioned a Harvard alum, so obviously a personal issue too. Look, this was less about, I think, the power directly that Congress has, at least in this instance, and more about having the argument there, right, in that House committee and having a chance for those primarily Republican members of the committee, although of course not only, to grill those three university presidents. Look, I'm going to have positions I think a lot of people are not going to agree with. But in cases where there are ambiguities of language, I think the decision has to be made and the benefit of the doubt given to allowing freedom of speech. And I think the question here is less about what we heard from Elise Stefanik there about whether calling for the genocide of Jews is against the code of conduct. But whether the particular language used at the protests, in most cases, obviously there are different formulations used and some I think we all could agree clearly across the line. But whether formulations like from the river to the sea and globalize the Antifada constitute calls for the genocide of Jews. And obviously to many, many Jewish years they do. But for those who argue that they don't, I think the doubt has to be resolved in their favor in terms of allowing freedom of speech in the campuses. And I know a lot of people don't like that answer. And I know it makes a lot of us uncomfortable. And certainly it's very, very frightening for Jewish students on those campuses. And the challenge has to be met. But I think the challenge has to be met not by grilling the university presidents, but by the traditional answer, Arielle, to hateful speech, which is more speech. We need to see, and we have seen, we need to see even more pro-Israel speech, even more anti-antisemitism speeches with the broadest coalition possible. So I don't like the idea of forcing institutions to take positions, right? And I think there's now becoming a consensus that these institutions should follow the University of Chicago principles and not make institutional statements on political issues, and that it was a mistake in retrospect, even on a clear cut case like George Floyd in 2020, that it was a mistake to start and to set the precedent of institutional statements. But everyone who is a member of these campus communities, students, faculty, should be approached and asked to sign petitions, to protest, and to come out against hateful rhetoric. And for Jewish students and pro-Israel groups and their allies to form the broadest coalition possible, to have marches against anti-antisemitism that dwarf those hateful protests that we've seen. And I think that would be a more effective answer than bringing those presidents before Congress. And I can't help but escape the impression that Claudine Gay sitting there is being scapegoated for shortcomings over decades, over decades, by America's Jewish community and by the pro-Israel movement, who, yes, built up strong pro-Israel groups on campus with activism, who, yes, led initiatives to found Jewish studies and Israel studies and campuses, but did they do enough in terms of watching what was going on in the Middle Eastern studies departments and in other currents in the society? And it seems to me that these broader social issues and broader social problems, where the challenge was not met, where in some cases alliances were made with other minority groups, without at the outset planting the seeds of asking those groups to also stand with Jews and not paint Jews as the bad guys, as privileged white people, but to understand our historical story and had those seeds been planted and allowed, then we wouldn't have to be the scapegoating of Claudine Gay and those other presidents. And the last minute that we have, I have to ask though, at what point does this cross over from free speech into something that is, A, a chilling effect, or B, directly actional and imminent against Jewish students? I am a favor, I am in favor, and at least if I'm like there was not going in this direction, of allowing speech on private universities that goes out to the outer bounds of the First Amendment. They're not obligated to do that, but to me, that's the right standard to use. And as you know, Ariel, the First Amendment in the United States protects speech that in many countries would not be allowed. It's a much, much broader protection for speech than in any other country on Earth, and that would include a lot of very, very hateful speech, a very, very, very hateful speech. And again, that challenge must be met. It's essential for the well-being of Jewish students and for the well-being of American society, but the challenge shouldn't be met by scapegoating Claudine Gay for American Jews, own failures and the privilege of the pros and movement of the wider society. There are other things that need to be done, even at this late hour. Well, let's hope there's still time to do some of those. Oh, and Ultimate, thank you very much for a breakthrough. Thank you very much for a breakdown of the legal basis here for everyone else, though. We are out of time. We'll see you again in just about a half hour at our next broadcast. Until then, thanks for watching. 24 News' ongoing coverage of Israel at war. The US believes Israel could complete large-scale kinetic military operations in the Southern Gaza Strip by January and then shift to more targeted attacks on specific Hamas terrorists and leaders. CNN was citing a senior administration official who said Israel appears unlikely to achieve all its objectives by the end of this year, and that Israeli forces will continue to pursue their goals as part of a longer-term campaign when the fighting evolves to a new phase. Last week, US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, warned Israel's war cabinet that it likely does not have months to fight Hamas as domestic and international pressure mounts on US President Joe Biden's administration to end the war. On the ground, another soldier died of enemy action in Gaza, Sergeant First Class Yonatan Malka. In the north, Israel offered a rare apology to Lebanon after an airstrike against terror targets also killed a Lebanese soldier. Israel affirmed that Lebanon was not the target of that strike. And we are going to turn our attention to the southern border where our correspondent, Pierre Kloschenler, is standing by just outside the border town of Steroz. Pierre, let us know what's going on behind you. There's heavy fighting around Gaza City with targets being bombed by the Israeli Air Force. We just heard from Palestinian media that on a street in Gaza City, Al-Nafaq Street, there's dozens of casualties due to an aerial strike. All in all, the IDF has performed 250 rounds of aerial strikes on the whole territory of Gaza, which is not unusual. There's an average of 200 aerial strikes every 24 hours, according to the IDF, and the numbers that we have received from them. There are heavy fighting in the Jebaliah refugee camp in the outskirts, southeast outskirts of Gaza City in Shejahia. And in Hanyunas, we know from the officer in charge of the Southern Command Brigadier General Yaron Finkelman, that the ground forces are already operating in the heart of Hanyunas in the central sector of the Gaza Strip. And according to the IDF Chief of Staff, Lieutenant Colonel Ertzi Alevi, the IDF has also encircled the area Hanyunas, the city of Hanyunas, which means that basically the ground forces are operating around and within Hanyunas at this point. What we know also is that the IDF spokesperson in Arabic has issued an evacuation injunction to the civilian population, which is not involved in the fighting, but is trapped in the battleground to evacuate waste of Hanyunas, use the coastal road, Aruna Rashid, and then find a way to reach the Al-Muassi safe zone that has been dedicated by the army between Hanyunas and Rafah on the western side of these two cities. And at the same time, there is a humanitarian truce oppose in the fighting for four hours in the El Shabura refugee camp in Hanyunas. Well, thank you very much, Pierre, from that update from the Southern Front. We are gonna turn our attention to the Northern Front as well, though our correspondent, Zach Anders is standing by on the border with Lebanon. Zach, what sort of developments have we seen on that front? Well, unlike yesterday, this morning has started quiet. There has yet to be a reported red alert or a Hezbollah strike that they claim responsibility for yesterday. There was as many as five that Hezbollah claimed. They threw Lebanese media channel that they were targeting IDF positions, no apparent injuries or direct hits with damage. There was a rocket fall in Kiryat Shemona that we saw last night that had already been patched, the hole in the road that was made by the impact of the strike. There has been in the last 48 hours, those significant developments with multiple injuries, no fatalities. But on the Israeli side, in the southern Lebanon on the Lebanese side, there has been fatalities. The IDF apparently striking a Hezbollah position and then report surfaces in Lebanese media that a Lebanon armed forces soldier was killed in the strike and three others wounded. So the question now becomes, were they operating in close proximity to Hezbollah? The IDF issuing a fairly rare statement regarding the incident and saying that they will investigate it and that the death of that Lebanese armed forces soldier was not intentional. Well, thank you very much for that update from the Northern Front, Zach. And we are going to analyze this a little bit more in studio. We have with us right now, Yaakov Leppin, military and strategic affairs analyst at the Jewish News Syndicate, Yaakov. Good to have you with us. I want to actually open in Gaza rather than in the North because right now the big battle is happening around Khan Yunus. This is one of Hamas' oldest strongholds that we were just talking just moments ago about how this was going back to the Second Intifada, the source of so many of Israel's sorrows. A long and dark history Khan Yunus has in terms of opposing security threats to the state of Israel. The home place of Yehiss and Muar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza. Muhammad Def, the military terrorist commander of Hamas all come from there. Currently, there are four Hamas battalions that are stationed in that area as part of the Khan Yunus brigade, those battalions played a very active role on October 7th during the mass murder attack, going across the border, kidnapping, murdering Israelis. And now the IDF is closing in on this last stronghold. It's really sort of the capital of Hamas in southern Gaza, Khan Yunus. So this is going to be a decisive battle. I mean, the IDF will be looking to eliminate systematically both the overground and underground targets that Hamas has built over the many years that it has controlled this place. Four battalions, what does that exactly mean? Has it stacked up to the resistance that Israel fought in the front and in the north? Well, the difference is that I think there are going to be more Hamas terrorists that are not going to vacate. In the north, I think what we saw was Hamas leaving some of its terrorists in the area underground and overground. For sure, they left them to fight, but I think it also moved many of its terrorists south and they took advantage of the evacuation of around a million people from northern Gaza south. A lot of Hamas terrorists went with them, I think. And here, they have nowhere to go. Some of them don't want to go anywhere. They want to stay and fight. And I think we're going to see much more intense engagements here on the ground between the IDF infantry armored units and all the other units that are on the ground, backed by air power, and by the Hamas terrorists. So those four battalions, I think, actually have been joined by terrorists from northern Gaza, from basically dismantled Hamas battalions from the north that have come and joined fellow terrorists in the south, it's probably bigger than four battalions in my view. And I think we're in for a major show down here in this area. And a lot of it will hinge on the underground aspect of this, the tunnels that are under Hanyunis. I mean, is there even a way to get an understanding of how much of a breakdown of above ground versus underground fighting that Israel's going to be looking at here? Well, I think that without seeing the real-time intelligence, it's very difficult to know precisely. But what we can say generally is that there is an extensive underground city under Hanyunis, large sections of tunnels, fortified tunnels dug tens of meters underground with bunkers. And Hamas's game plan is to stay in those tunnels, surface attack, come back out, send anti-tank units, missile squads to attack, set up ambushes, come back down. This is the kind of hit-and-run guerrilla terrorist tactics that Hamas has been training for for many years. And I think they're going to try to do it in Hanyunis. And the IDF's goal will be to destroy both the targets that are in residential buildings. It's like a 360-degree threat situation. They're being attacked from above, from high-story buildings, from the surface level, and from underground. And the IDF will be looking to gain intelligence and to convert that intelligence into firepower strikes in real time while meticulously following very careful targeting in order to try and reduce harm to the civilians that have not evacuated from that area, and many have. And to underscore that point, we've seen some Hamas propaganda videos released just yesterday showing them popping up in the middle of military encampments in the south of Gaza. Once Israel controls enough space on the ground, though, they have the capacity to take out the tunnels without having to actually fight inside them. We've seen this debate for the past few days about just flooding them with seawater and calling it a day. Right, so we've seen Israeli officials not denying that flooding the tunnels was on the table. And so far, what we've seen on the ground, what we know for sure has been happening is the systematic exposure of tunnel shafts. 800 of them have been found so far, and their destruction. About 500, at least as of a couple of days ago, have been destroyed. And that prevents Hamas from being able to surface. So if you destroy enough tunnel shafts, and then if you bomb the middle of a tunnel, the people inside are trapped. And then it becomes a death trap for them. It becomes a tomb. So that's certainly happening on the ground. There is, of course, the very delicate and critical question of hostages, how many of them are underground, locating that knowing where they are, avoiding striking those areas. I'm sure that's a major priority for the defense establishment going forward. So very complex urban warfare up ahead, at least in the weeks and months up ahead. Mr. Chairman, I speculate how long it's going to take to actually take out Hanyunas. Hanyunas, I think, is going to be several weeks because of the intensity and the way that the enemy is clustered in Hanyunas. There's just so much of Hamas there. And again, I don't think it's really going anywhere. So I think that's going to take several weeks. And the high intensity stage of this conflict in general, it seems to me there's at least a couple of months left of this. It's nice to point at January as a deadline. I don't know how realistic that is. It's probably going to extend beyond January. But after that, if Hamas is dismantled as an organized terror army, the idea of we'll be able to start downgrading some of its high intensity warfare and to downgrade that into a series of very focused security operations going forward next year. What does the ground situation have to look like for Israel to be able to decisively say Hamas has been dismantled as the ruling power as a functional terror army? I think that's a very important question. I would say most of the senior leadership of Hamas has to be eliminated in Gaza. It has to lose about half of its terrorist fighting force. There are 30,000. At least half of those have to be dead or seriously injured. I think for Hamas to be eliminated as a fighting force. And they have to lose their ability to do command and control, which is at its very core the ability of Hamas commanders to sit in these bunkers and to send anti-tank missile squads and to fire rockets at Israeli cities. Hamas has to lose the ability to do all of this in a coordinated manner. So it can survive as some sort of underground terrorist movement and as a concept, a jihadist concept, kind of going back to what it was in the late 80s. But as a terrorist army with command and control and brigades and battalions and all the things that the IDF is now dismantling, the underground infrastructure, the overground, the weapons manufacturing, that all has to go before Israel can say mission accomplished. And what about the north? Because as Israel is doing this, then Hassan Nasrallah is going to have to make a decision, whether or not he commits his forces to massive strikes against Israel to try to preserve Hamas' existence. We're not exactly sure where he falls on that just yet. Right, so I think there's two things we can say about that. First of all, if Hezbollah does make the decision to escalate further, I don't think he will be to save Hamas or even on behalf of Hamas. He will be on behalf of his own calculations and because of the instructions, the directives he'd be receiving from Tehran. I don't think the Iranian Shiite access is interested in going to war for Hamas, but it is risking more and nonetheless. And I think there are two reasons for that. First of all, because Iran has instructed its proxy in Lebanon to make sure that Israel can't fully focus on the southern Gaza arena to keep it distracted and to show solidarity. This is almost sort of a kinetic lip service, if you will. And second of all, I think this fits into the grander Iranian Hezbollah scheme of taking over Lebanon. And as part of that, they're trying to show the Shiite base, look at what Hezbollah can do. It can confront Israel. It can live to tell the tale. You'll be looking for some sort of victory picture. I think they'll find that very hard to market because they've already lost over 90 operatives. That's not nothing. That's a blow. That's more than they expected. So if they escalate, Israel will escalate. And even if they don't, they've already put Israel in the situation where it's going to have to make a decision on how to push back Hezbollah from the border, because otherwise, tens of thousands of Northerners will not come back to their homes. And they've forced Israel into that decision. So whatever the status quo was before October 7 to the North, I don't think we're going to be returning to that. This question is how they don't return to that in the North. Yakovar, thank you very much for that analysis. We're going to look at some of the events that happened here in Israel. The families of hostages meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last night to present their grievances. And that meeting devolved into a shouting match. Families were furious with the Prime Minister's statement that bringing back their loved ones is simply not possible at this moment. Israeli officials believe that after another month of combat operations, Hamas will be damaged and desperate enough for another ceasefire for hostages deal. Hamas has already released a list of impossible demands that includes releasing every single terrorist held by Israel, not just by Israel, but also by America there, all currently 138 hostages held by Hamas since October 7. We are saying that I am a slave. Where the hell are you? I am a slave. We have been arrested. We are going to kill you. We are going to kill you. The money that people and friends have. Don't give it to us. Don't kill us. We are very proud of what we are saying in the face of the situation outside. We really understand how to understand all of this. We are going to kill you. We are going to kill you. We are going to kill you. The hard thing is to kill you. We are going to kill you. The decision that you have made is to leave, leave, leave for the future. No, no, no. We are going to kill you. The family's grief and terror is very understandable. Israeli hostages who have been released from captivity in Gaza have recounted harrowing experiences of psychological terror and abuse. We've heard stories of children forced at gunpoint to watch videos of the October 7th massacres in crimes against humanity. Told they would be shot if they made a noise. Other reports that say that hostages were beaten regularly every single day. And of course of the unspeakable abuses that the female hostages have undergone. These are stories that the United States has attempted to explain to the world as well. And these are all the things that we do now. There are still so many things that we don't. And the fate of 138 hostages, young and old men and women, are still unknown. They're being held in these sort of dire conditions. More in this next report that delves into those testimonies. Is everything okay? My mother was kept in a one-and-a-half room apartment. She was in one small closed room, and the couple lived in the other room. It was a small window in the room, which they closed, and she couldn't see if it was day or night. As soon as she realized she was alone, she simply told us, listen, I decided, I read, I studied. All the stories from the Holocaust. I will keep a diary. I read that Gilad Shalit used to do some sports, and that's what kept her going. She realized very quickly that they prayed five times a day, and she would simply count prayers. She would record it in a journal. And the prayers and sound of the moazine, all these things gave her a complex of understanding what day it was, what night, what hour. And she revolved around that. When I come to them, they see the distress. You see the distress. Yola, Yael, all the time by their mother's side, she never leaves Adi. Until two days ago, she was split. She didn't speak at all, not out loud. Naveh a little more, but, you know, he is right away from the moment they were kidnapped what happened. He saw everything. He doesn't speak at all. Not asking. Not about the father, not about the grandfather. As far as we know, all six of them were in one place. Tal was not with them, no. We saw some of the children who came with our orthopedic injuries. There was a girl who needed surgery. Injuries to the legs, injuries to the hands, scars that were on children, a burn on a child's leg, which he said was a burn from a motorcycle. We saw very low hygiene. We saw a lot of injuries. We saw a lot of injuries. We saw a lot of injuries. We saw a lot of injuries. We saw a lot of injuries. We saw a lot of injuries. We saw very low hygiene conditions at levels I don't remember encountering on children, stories you hear from other areas, lice, rashes, skin infections. Some of them lost weight in a very, very significant way. What does that mean? Ten kilos in children, a lot. They arrived, and after the first meeting with the family, what is the first thing they want to give children who meet them? We let them eat, and at some point, we found ourselves taking food from the children's rooms so that they wouldn't eat too much when they arrived. That's why I pulled yogurts and rolls out of the children's hands so that it wouldn't be too much. We will have to continue to support them and give them everything they need, both now and in the future, but they are amazing. We've received an inspiring group of children. We know that she did not know, for example, what happened to her father. She was very pleasantly surprised to see her father in that famous video that she actually ran quickly at the speed of light into her mother's embrace, and suddenly she saw her father, and she was sure that her father had been kidnapped. She did not know that her father was saved and got out of it. The first thing she asked after looking around her and suddenly didn't see Lior, her brother, she asked about her brother, and the parents had to tell her, this is actually the first thing they told her after she returned, about her brother, that her brother was murdered. From what I know, and this is almost the first thing I heard from her when I saw her, this whole time she was without shoes. For almost two months, this girl was without shoes. She says that she was humiliated very much, that she had a very difficult experience, that she was treated badly, and this is now engraved in her heart. Everything she does, she remembers the experience from there. Was she there alone? She's very scared for the abductees who remained behind. They're still in danger. She was literally brainwashed there, really, and she doesn't live in our world right now, she's still there. It's impossible to cope there, it's impossible. We have to get the abductees out of there. If we don't get them out now, they won't get out alive. How did she keep her sanity? What did she do all day? She says that most of the time she just looked at the wall. That's what she had to do, and only occupied herself with thoughts of my daughters are fine, my daughters are fine, my daughters are fine, my daughters are fine. She kept trying to convince herself. I don't think that we don't see, but you can say that something has changed. Her enthusiasm for every little thing, from the most basic things she had before, I don't know, maybe a towel for the shower, some chocolate or something to drink, you suddenly see the light in her eyes that she accepts such things. Or used to, she was always, we'd waste our dinner, throw away food as usual. Today we're forbidden to throw away food. There's no such thing, save everything, put it in the fridge, find a place. We were privileged to take care of 29 returnees, now the 30th returnee, almost all of them without exception. The first thing they wanted to do when they met their families was to talk. We heard a lot from them about the psychological games that were played with them, as part of the psychological abuse they went through. So it's also related to the psychological abuse that they had to deal with, and the psychological abuse they had to deal with. They went through, so it's also related to information that they share and don't share. As part of the psychology of the captive, of creating dependence on the captives, but by my feeling from what I hear from the people, is that it has been refined at very high levels. What do you mean elaborate psychological terror? The feeling is that it was sophisticated, not random or unplanned, orchestrated, not some kind of relationship that develops by chance between a certain captor and a certain abductee, but to create the psychological infrastructure to play on their minds in a way that would achieve their goal. Was there also evidence of abuse? Yes. But I won't go into details. As I said, I can say it's about the whole range of abuse that a person can dream of, and want to hear some of the returnees that I want to talk, and I found myself sitting by their bedsides for hours and listening to their stories. It's no different from testimonies of people who survived the ghettos or concentration camps. It feels, it sounds the same. I think we can't sleep at night because of those who have returned and the stories that they have to tell. And I say again, we will take time for it to come out. We still have a lot of people there who are being held in bad conditions. And as the days go by, they're still there. There are still 138 Israeli hostages being held by Hamas under exactly those abusive and nightmarish conditions. That's ultimately the challenge that Israel has in the days and the weeks ahead of this war. And the reason that Israel must ultimately prosecute this war, too, is its inevitable conclusion. That said, we are out of time for now, but when we come back in just a half hour, we've got another broadcast, so stay tuned for that. Until then, thanks for watching. We'll continue to pursue their goals as part of a longer-term campaign when the fighting evolves to a new phase. Last week, U.S. Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, warned Israel's war cabinet that it likely does not have months to fight Hamas as domestic and international pressure mounts on U.S. military forces. The U.S. military forces will continue to pursue their goals as part of a longer-term campaign when the fighting evolves to a new phase. Last week, U.S. Secretary of State and international pressure mounts on U.S. President Joe Biden's administration to end the war. On the ground, another soldier died to enemy action in Gaza, Sergeant First Class Yonatan Malka. In the north, Israel offered a rare apology to Lebanon after an airstrike against terror targets also killed a Lebanese soldier. Israel affirmed that Lebanon was not the target of that strike. And we are going to turn our attention to the southern border where our correspondent Pierre Kloschenler is standing by just outside the border town of Steroge. Pierre, let us know what's going on behind you. There's heavy fighting in Gaza City or around Gaza City with targets being bombed by the Israeli Air Force. We just heard from Palestinian media that on a street in Gaza City, Al-Nafak Street, there's dozens of casualties due to an airstrike. All in all, the IDF has performed 250 rounds of aerial strikes on the whole territory of Gaza which is not unusual. There's an average of 200 aerial strikes every 24 hours according to the IDF and the numbers that we have received from them. There are heavy fighting in the Jebalia refugee camp in the outskirts, southeast outskirts of Gaza City in Shejaia and in Chanyounes, we know from the officer in charge of the Southern Command Brigadier General Yaron Finkelman that the ground forces are already operating in the heart of Chanyounes in the central sector of the Gaza Strip and according to the IDF chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Ertzi Alevi, the IDF has also encircled the area Chanyounes, the city of Chanyounes which means that basically the ground forces are operating around and within Chanyounes at this point. What we know also is that the IDF spokesperson in Arabic has issued an evacuation in Junction to the civilian population which is not involved in the fighting but is trapped in the battleground to evacuate waste of Chanyounes use the coastal road Aruna Rashid and then find a way to reach the Al-Muassi safe zone that has been dedicated by the army between Chanyounes and Rafah on the western side of these two cities and at the same time there is a humanitarian truce oppose in the fighting for four hours in the El Shabura refugee camp in Chanyounes well thank you very much Pierre from that update from the southern front we are going to turn our attention to the northern front as well though our correspondent Zach Anders is standing by on the border with Lebanon Zach what sort of developments have we seen on that front well unlike yesterday this morning has started quiet there has yet to be a reported red alert or a Hezbollah strike that they claim responsibility for yesterday as five that Hezbollah claimed they through Lebanese media channel that they were targeting IDF positions no apparent injuries or direct hits with damage there was a rocket fall in Kyrie at Shimona that we saw last night that had already been patched the hole in the road that was made by the impact of the strike there has been in the last 48 hours those significant developments with multiple injuries no fatalities but on the Israeli side in the southern Lebanon on the Lebanese side there has been fatalities the IDF apparently striking a Hezbollah position and then report surfaces in Lebanese media that Lebanon armed forces soldier was killed in the strike and three others wounded so the question now becomes were they operating in close proximity to Hezbollah the IDF issuing a fairly rare statement regarding the incident saying that they will investigate it and that the death of that Lebanese armed forces soldier was not intentional well thank you very much for that update from the northern front Zach and we are going to analyze a little bit more in studio we have with us right now Yaakov Leppin military and strategic affairs analysts at the Jewish news syndicate Yaakov Leppin I want to actually open in Gaza rather than in the north because right now the big battle is happening around Khan Yunus this is one of Hamas's oldest strongholds that we were just talking just moments ago about how this was going back to the second Intifada the source of so many of Israel's sorrows a long and dark history Khan Yunus has in terms of opposing security threats to the state of Israel the home place of Yehi Senwar the leader of Hamas in Gaza the military terrorist commander of Hamas all come from there currently there are four Hamas battalions that are stationed in that area as part of the Khan Yunus brigade those battalions played a very active role on October 7th during the mass murder attack going across the border kidnapping, murdering Israelis and now the IDF is closing in on this last stronghold it's really sort of the capital of Hamas in southern Gaza, Khan Yunus so this is going to be a decisive battle and the IDF will be looking to eliminate systematically both the overground and underground targets that Hamas has built over the many years that it has controlled this place. For battalions what does that exactly mean has it stacked up to the resistance that Israel fought in the front and in the north? Well the difference is that I think there are going to be more Hamas terrorists that are not going to vacate in the north I think what we saw was Hamas leaving some of its terrorists in the area underground and overground for sure they left them to fight but I think it also moved many of its terrorists south and they took advantage of the evacuation of around a million people from northern Gaza south a lot of Hamas terrorists went with them I think and here they have nowhere to go some of them don't want to go anywhere they want to stay and fight and I think we're going to see much more intense engagements here on the ground between the IDF infantry armored units on the ground backed by air power and by the Hamas terrorists so those four battalions I think actually have been joined by terrorists from northern Gaza from basically dismantled Hamas battalions from the north that have come and joined fellow terrorists in the south they're probably it's probably bigger than four battalions in my view and I think we're in for a major show down here in this area and a lot of it will hinge on the underground aspect of this the tunnels that are under Hanyunas is there even a way to get an understanding of how much of a breakdown of above ground versus underground fighting that Isra is going to be looking at here well I you know I think that without seeing the real-time intelligence it's very difficult to know precisely but what we can say generally is that there is an extensive underground city under Hanyunas large sections of tunnels fortified tunnels dug tens of meters underground with bunkers and you know Hamas's game plan is to stay under those tunnels surface attack come back out send anti-tank units missile squads to attack set up ambushes come back down this is the kind of hit-and-run you know guerrilla terrorist tactics that Hamas has been training for for many years and I think they're going to try to do it in Hanyunas and the IDF's goal will be to destroy both the targets that are in residential buildings you know it's like a 360 degree threat situation they're being attacked from above from high-story buildings from the surface level and from underground and the IDF will be looking to gain intelligence and to convert that intelligence into firepower strikes in real-time while meticulously following very careful targeting in order to try and reduce harm to the civilians that have not evacuated from that area and many have. And to underscore that point we've seen some Hamas propaganda videos released just yesterday showing them popping up in the middle of military encampments in the south of Gaza. Once Israel controls enough space on the ground though they have the capacity to take out the tunnels without having to actually fight inside them we've seen this debate for the past few days about just flooding them with seawater and calling it a day. Right so we've seen Israeli officials not denying that flooding the tunnels was on the table and so far what we've seen on the ground what we know for sure has been happening is the systematic exposure of tunnel shafts 800 of them have been found so far and their destruction of 500 at least as of a couple of days ago have been destroyed and that prevents Hamas from being able to surface so if you destroy enough tunnel shafts and then if you bomb sort of the middle of a tunnel the people inside are trapped and then it becomes a death trap for them it becomes a tomb. So that's certainly happening on the ground there is of course the very delicate and critical question of hostages how many of them are underground locating that knowing where they are striking those areas I'm sure that's a major priority for the defense establishment going forward so very complex urban warfare up ahead at least in the weeks and months up ahead I mean is there any way to speculate how long it's going to take to actually take out Hanyunas? Hanyunas I think is going to be several weeks because of the intensity and the way that the enemy is clustered in Hanyunas is just so much of Hamas there and again I don't think it's really going anywhere I think that's going to take several weeks and the high intensity stage of this conflict in general it seems to me there's at least a couple of months left of this you know it's nice to point at January as a deadline I don't know how realistic that is it's probably going to extend beyond January but after that you know if Hamas is dismantled as an organized terror army the idea of we'll be able to start downgrading some of its high intensity warfare and to downgrade that into a series of very focused security operations going forward next year What does the ground situation have to look like for Israel to be able to decisively say Hamas has been dismantled as the ruling power as a functional terror army? I think that's a very important question I would say most of the senior leadership of Hamas has to be eliminated in Gaza it has to lose about half of its terrorist fighting force there are 30,000 at least half of those to be dead or seriously injured I think for Hamas to be eliminated as a fighting force and they have to lose their ability to do command and control which is at its very core the ability of Hamas commanders to sit in these bunkers and to send anti-tank missile squads and to fire rockets at Israeli cities Hamas has to lose the ability to do all of this in a coordinated manner so it can survive as some sort of underground terrorist movement and as a concept a jihadist concept kind of going back to what it was in the late 80s but as a terrorist army with command and control and brigades and battalions and all the things that the IDF is now dismantling the underground infrastructure the overground the weapons manufacturing that all has to go before Israel can say mission accomplished And what about the north because as Israel is doing this then Hassan Nasrallah is going to have to make a decision whether or not he commits his forces to massive strikes against Israel to try to preserve Hamas's existence we're not exactly sure where he falls on that just yet Right, so I think there's two things we can say about that first of all if Hezbollah does make the decision to escalate further I don't think he will be to save Hamas or even on behalf of Hamas he will be on behalf of his own calculations and because of the instructions the directives he'd be receiving from Tehran I don't think the Iranian Shiite access is interested in going to war for Hamas but it is risking more and nonetheless and I think there are two reasons for that first of all because Iran has instructed its proxy in Lebanon to make sure that Israel can't fully focus on the southern Gaza arena to keep it distracted and to show solidarity this is almost sort of a kinetic lip service if you will and second of all I think this fits into the grander Iranian Hezbollah scheme of taking over Lebanon and as part of that they are trying to show the Shiite base look at what Hezbollah can do it can confront Israel it can live to tell the tale you'll be looking for some sort of victory picture I think they'll find that very hard to market because they've already lost over 90 operatives that's not nothing that's a blow that's more than they expected so if they escalate Israel will escalate and even if they don't they've already put Israel in a situation where it's going to have to make a decision on how to push back Hezbollah from the border because otherwise tens of thousands of northerners will not come back to their homes and they've forced Israel into that decision so whatever the status quo was before October 7th to the north I don't think we're going to be returning to that this question is how they don't return to that in the north Yakovar thank you very much for that analysis we're going to look at some of the events that happened here in Israel the families of hostages meeting with Netanyahu last night to present their grievances and that meeting devolved into a shouting match families were furious with the prime minister's statement that bringing back their loved ones is simply not possible at this moment Israeli officials believe that after another month of combat operations Hamas will be damaged and desperate enough for another ceasefire for hostages deal Hamas has already released a list of impossible demands that includes releasing every single terrorist held by Israel but also by America there are currently 138 hostages held by Hamas since October 7th what we're saying is we're going to return to that in the north and we're going to see how we're going to bring everyone everyone we're going to listen to them and tell them the difficult things but in the future the statistics that you showed we can we can we can we can the families grief and terror is very understandable Israeli hostages who have been released from captivity in Gaza have recounted harrowing experiences of psychological terror and abuse we've heard stories of children forced at gunpoint to watch videos of the October 7th massacres and crimes against humanity told they would be shot if they made a noise other reports that say that hostages were beaten regularly every single day and of course of the unspeakable abuses that the female hostages have undergone these are stories that the United States has attempted to explain to the world as well and these are all the things that we do know there are still so many things that we don't and the fate of 138 hostages young and old men and women are still unknown they're being held in these sort of dire conditions more in this next report that delves into those testimonies is everything okay? my mother was captain at one and a half room apartment she was in one small closed room and the couple lived in the other room there was a small window in the room which they closed and she couldn't see if it was day or night as soon as she realized she was alone she simply told us listen, I decided, I read, I studied all the stories from the Holocaust I will keep a diary I read that Gila Chalit used to do some sports and that's what kept her going she realized very quickly that they prayed five times a day and she would simply count prayers she would record it in a journal and the prayers and sound of the muazzin all these things gave her complex understanding what day it was what night, what hour and she revolved around that when I come to them they see the distress you see the distress all the time by their mother's side she never leaves Adi until two days ago she whispered she didn't speak at all she was a little loud now there a little more but you know he's right away from the moment they were kidnapped what happened he saw everything he doesn't speak at all not asking, not about the father not about the grandfather as far as we know all six of them were in one place Tal was not with them, no we saw some of the children there was a girl who needed surgery injuries to the legs injuries to the hands scars that were on children a burn on a child's leg which he said was a burn from a motorcycle we saw very low hygiene conditions at levels I don't remember encountering on children stories you hear from other areas lice, rashes, skin infections some of them lost weight in a very, very significant way what does that mean? 10 kilos in children a lot they arrived and after the first meeting with the family what is the first thing they want to give children who meet them? we let them eat and at some point we found ourselves taking food from the children's rooms so that they wouldn't eat too much when they arrived that's why I pulled yogurts from the children's hands so that it wouldn't be too much we will have to continue to support them and give them everything they need both now and in the future but they are amazing we've received an inspiring group of children we know that she did not know what happened to her father she was very pleasantly surprised to see her father in that famous video that she actually ran quickly at the speed of light into her mother's embrace and suddenly she saw her father and she was sure that her father had been kidnapped she did not know that her father was saved and got out of it the first thing she asked after looking around her and suddenly didn't see Lior her brother, she asked about her brother her parents had to tell her this is actually the first thing they told her after she returned about her brother that her brother was murdered from what I know and this is almost the first thing I heard from her when I saw her this whole time she was without shoes for almost two months this girl was without shoes she says that she was humiliated very much that she had a very difficult experience that she was treated badly and this is now engraved in her heart everything she does she remembers the experience from there was she there alone she is very scared for the abductees who remained behind they are still in danger she was literally brainwashed there really and she doesn't live in our world right now she's still there it's impossible to cope there we have to get the abductees out of there if we don't get them out now they won't get out alive how did she keep her sanity she says that most of the time she just looked at the wall that's what she had to do and only occupied herself with thoughts of if my daughter is fine my daughters are fine she kept trying to convince herself are there things that we don't see but she can say that something has changed her enthusiasm for every little thing from the most basic things she had before I don't know maybe a towel for the shower or some chocolate or something to drink you suddenly see the light in her eyes or used to she was always we'd waste our dinner throw away food as usual today we're forbidden to throw away food there's no such thing save everything, put it in the fridge find a place we were privileged to take care of 29 returnees now the 30th returnee almost all of them without exception the first thing they wanted to do when they met their families was to talk we heard a lot from them about the psychological games that were played with them as part of the psychological abuse they went through so it's also related to information that they share and don't share as part of the psychology of the captive of creating dependence on the captives but by my feeling from what I hear from the people is that it has been refined at very high levels what do you mean elaborate psychological terror? the feeling is that it was sophisticated not random or unplanned, orchestrated not some kind of relationship that develops by chance between a certain captor and a certain abductee but to create the psychological infrastructure to play on their minds in a way that would achieve their goal was there also evidence of abuse? yes but I won't go into details as I said I can say it's about the whole range of abuse that a person can dream of I want to hear some of the returnees who just want to talk and I found myself sitting by their bedsides for hours and listening to their stories it's no different from testimonies of people who survived the ghettos or concentration camps it feels, it sounds the same I think we can't sleep at night because of those who have returned and the stories that they have to tell and I say again we'll take time for it to come out and we still have a lot of people there who are being held in bad conditions and as the days go by they're still there there are still 138 Israelis 138 Israeli hostages being held by Hamas under exactly those abusive and nightmarish conditions that's ultimately the challenge that Israel has in the days and the weeks ahead of this war and the reason that Israel must ultimately prosecute this war too it's inevitable conclusion that said we are out of time for now but when we come back in just a half hour we've got another broadcast so stay tuned for that and we'll be right back there are other goals as part of a longer term campaign when the fighting evolves to a new phase last week US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warned Israel's war cabinet that it likely does not have months left to fight Hamas as domestic and international pressure mounts on US President Joe Biden's administration to end the war on the ground another soldier has died to enemy action in Gaza Sergeant First Class Yonatan Malkan and in the north a rare apology to Lebanon after an airstrike against terror targets also killed a Lebanese soldier Israel affirmed that Lebanon was not the target of the strike and we are actually going to open in the north right now with our correspondent Zach Anders who is standing by on the border to give us a breakdown of what's going on in the final against Hezbollah and Lebanon well last night we saw once again heavy strikes at positions inside Lebanon and it is remarkable to watch as the IDF and the Air Force here has been able to operate inside sovereign Lebanese territory to strike Hezbollah targets that operate within several miles of the border sometimes considerable distance away from that southern border as they fire heavy rockets sometimes mortars and these ATGMs the anti-tank guided missiles which require personnel to have a line of sight close to Israeli positions as they fire on bases outposts and sometimes on vehicles that as we've seen in the last several weeks also carry civilians the civilian count here is considerable along with the number of Israeli soldiers that are injured and wounded as it stands today over 80 Hezbollah fighters are said to reportedly have been killed according to reports in Lebanese media and then you add on in the last 48 hours this Lebanese Armed Forces soldier that was killed three others wounded in a strike that the IDF says was targeting Hezbollah it is unclear how that determination was made as to which position that they were firing upon was a Hezbollah position but the IDF has made clear that every strike, retaliatory strike that they have engaged in last several weeks since October 7th has been targeting the points of origin the wherever these launch sites for the projectiles the rockets, the drones sometimes even the command infrastructure that they say helps support this and Israel does have a significant intelligence advantage here they have the observational balloons with high range cameras that can see miles and miles into southern Lebanon to detect where these launches take place and then within minutes we can hear the outgoing artillery and the jets overhead as they strike these positions. Zach it's not just Hezbollah in Lebanon though there's an entire array of Iranian proxies in the region as well what have we seen from these other Iranian cats paws and militias how are they acting in the past couple of days and they operate with a level of a lower grade level functioning supporting their actions Hezbollah is the one that will publish on social media and post their exploits to try and drum up their base and encourage their fighters the other factions that even including Hamas that operates in a much smaller scale here do appear to at least have their actions fall somewhat under the umbrella of Hezbollah because Hezbollah takes credit for the majority of the launches and rocket attacks here that when the count of red alarms or of rocket incursions that we're able to receive independently reported or reported by the IDF does not match the number of strikes that Hezbollah claims to have launched that day then it does leave a gray area a zone of other strikes other launches that you are only left to attribute either to other factions or that Hezbollah is misrepresenting it their claims Thank you very much Zach for that report from the north. I want to go to the studio right now what we have with us Colonel Amit as a former member of the Israeli security agency also more famously known as the Shin Bet internal security services Amit I want to talk about some of the other arenas because it's not just Gaza we're going to be focusing mostly on that later I want to talk about what we're seeing escalation by Hamas in the West Bank as well and the stuff that your agency was largely doing to keep control of that talk us through the pulse of what's going on in the West Bank. As we know in the West Bank there is a lot of activity of Hamas actually they didn't want to do an election for a long period of time because the authorities didn't want the Hamas will ruin also in the West Bank so we know that's a lot of activity of Hamas in all of the area now Hamas have the ability to work as we saw in the Gaza Strip from the West Bank to the all cities and settlements and in the Central Israel so we have to act first and to do some actions before they will do something in order to get into our area. That's what the IDF and Shabak is doing now and you can see it by arrested dozens of people, hundreds of people that they did in the last few weeks a lot of people of the Hamas member are getting in hold and the reason is that we control the area we are there that we can do something it's not what we had when we have the Gaza Strip closed and we can't do anything to get into and they arm themselves better than the Hamas can do it in the West Bank we can say that we can control it better than in Gaza but we have to be very careful with this say because under the ground we can't never know how they are acting any attack simultaneously attack or anything to our cities from the West Bank Let's turn our attention right now to Gaza itself, our correspondent Pierre Kloschenler is standing by just outside Sturro on the border with Gaza. Pierre, welcome to the latest developments in the war there for what I understand there is now a humanitarian pause in effect in the Rafa region Right, no not in the Rafa region actually in the Al Shabura refugee camp in I think it's just northwest of Hanyunes, it's a humanitarian pause in the fighting for four hours and in addition as every day since the start of the ground offensive in October 7 but now with an interactive map with hundreds and hundreds of blocks I think there's 623 polygon blocks that are numbered and that are interactive throughout the whole Gaza Strip the IDF is urging the residents of Hanyunes and the vicinity to move west and connect to the coastal access of the Haruna Rashid road which is partly under control by the Israeli army and go to the safe zone that has been dedicated by the IDF the Al Mouassi zone which is southwest of Hanyunes and northeast of Rafa Now the IDF has just announced that it found a major weapon depot with hundreds and hundreds of offensive weapons such as RPGs, long range missiles that are supposed to target Tel Aviv and the central area central areas of Israel hand grenades all kind of weapons and the IDF stresses that this is probably one of the most important weapons depot it was discovered in the northern area of the Gaza Strip which is just behind me so the IDF is still cleaning the area of the northern sector fierce fighting in Jebalia refugee camp in the southeast outskirts of Gaza city El Sejaia with close range combat and a lot of aerial support the Palestinian media affiliated to Hamas speaking about dozens of casualties in the Jebalia refugee camp and in the Al Nafa street in Gaza city it's very difficult to confirm that but this is what they report and in addition we know since yesterday evening that Hanyunes is encircled and the ground forces are already penetrating in the heart of the city which means that the ground forces are operating within and without Hanyunes at this point and suddenly to underscore your point about combat operations you probably heard it behind you as you were talking but we definitely saw cloud of smoke go up right there as presumably an airstrike hit something in north Gaza behind you Pierre thank you very much for that update from the ground we are going to return to the studio with Colonel Amit Assa his discussion of Gaza one of the things that Pierre just mentioned was a massive massive strike on a weapons depot removing a large portion of Hamas's arsenal from the equation one of the things we've noticed here is that over the course of the war particularly in the past week or so Hamas's volume of fire has tapered off in fact dropped off in many cases they're still firing on Tel Aviv but it's no longer three times a day at specific intervals it's randomly a tax of opportunity Hamas's back is finally against the wall a few things that I want to mention here first this arsenal of ammunition and missiles that we can see is on the north because we are pressure very very good in the north and we are closing to see that all the northern side of Gaza Strip will be in our hand but in the other hand we know a lot of arsenal of weapons still in in Chanyones and in Rafah and they are launching missiles from there every day so we will have to clean it step by step and this is just an example of how many weapons was got into Gaza Strip and it's not from the air it's not that they are manufacturers that ammunition there they brought it from somewhere and the only way to bring it is under the ground in Philadelphia in Rafah area meaning from Egypt and we have to put this blame on the Egyptian that lead the Hamas to have this kind of ammunition quantity that they stored in the storage all these years and all this ammunition came from the south and we didn't control it it's also our blame that we didn't stop it anyhow but still they have a lot of ammunition and missiles still in in the Chanyones and in Rafah and we will have to go there and find it but as you said the Hamas is going to the wall I think not yet of course the first brigade in the north is mostly dead or finished but we have two brigades in the south that are still fighting and we have to put them also in the pressure that they will not be able to launch any missiles anymore into Israel and to eliminate this threat let's briefly talk about what we know about Hamas's deployment in the south you said two brigades in the south I heard out of analysts say it's four brigades in Chanyones just how much disposition of forces do they have in that area I think it's not just the brigades of Chanyones at the first place it's because a lot of people a lot of soldiers from the Hamas was not to the south while it was a pose you remember that it was a pose and there was dressed like civilians getting on our ways to the south to help the friends to fight the war in the south so it's partly the brigades that was originally in the south and partly soldiers of the Hamas and the terrorists from the Hamas getting to the south from the north there's still a lot of fighting left ahead thank you very much for breaking that down for us we are going to continue our coverage of this war by looking at some of the soldiers, the policemen and plain civilians who took up arms to defend their communities on October 7th knowing that they were simply the last line of defense for their families, their friends and their communities this story tells the story of Yossi Tahar an accomplished fighter in the IDF as well as Israel's internal security service who lost his life fighting to defend his community here's his story I miss him so much my heart is dead why couldn't he be more careful how? how could they not save him stay strong like you are you cheer me up all the time it's true it's so painful it's impossible I can't believe that Yossi was taken from me in fact I went there with the feeling that this wouldn't happen to me for what purpose why is he part of it Yossi the good lord protects him but no one defended him until October 7th Mazal and Elie Tahar knew nothing about them not what they looked like or what their real names were these are the friends of her son Yossi killed on October 7th who remained in the shadow I never knew them I've never seen them and I said to myself what a shame that Yossi never came home with them for dinner now when they come here they give me a little bit of strength but I miss Yossi a lot we spoke on Thursday morning maybe now is the time to show what he wrote to me it was Thursday you read it I can't dad I want to tell you how much I love you and really appreciate that you're here by my side you give me strength when I need it always thinking always thoughtful warm friendly with logic and always sincere it is important for me that you know how dear you are to me I love you Yossi those are three of the most valiant elite fighters in the secret and very special unit of the internal intelligence service the Shin Bet they are here to meet Yossi's parents and tell them about the side of Yossi they knew less about he had a strong personality those who knew him got attached to him in seconds at all levels from the simple soldier arriving at the unit the day before to the IDF chief of staff he knew how to connect with people just like that he gave so much of himself he would meet someone and two days later is invited over for a barbecue dinner we don't wear our ranks we don't treat people based on their position people follow us because of the leadership because of the personality of whoever leads the unit and Yossi was all of the above big time he knew how to speak to people and touch their hearts we cannot show Yossi's photo and his face will probably never be known to the public our slogan is protect and not be seen in 99% of cases we were the ones to surprise the enemy we are the initiators those who direct the situation on October 7th we were surprised by the intensity of the attack the way it was done the numbers and that was what put us in great difficulty in the first hours of the attack in many ways Yossi is like Emmanuel Moreno the heroic fighter of the famous special forces commando Sayyaredh Maktal but in the ranks of Shin Bet tales of his bravery and everything he did on October 7th will remain secret except for what the censors allow us to reveal it was half past six in the morning of the 7th of October I received the first phone call from Yossi he told me, you're not going to believe it there's something weird going on here he was talking to me from his shelter and told me that he will call me back when he's on the road to decide what we're going to do as we drove south we realized that one of our fighters was hit and Yossi, with another small team of fighters responded driving towards the terrorists under heavy fire he was in an area he didn't know and we could not yet understand the scale and complexity of the attack and the number of terrorists he was able to reach our struggling fighter after a few minutes and Yossi actually saved his life outside violent fighting was taking place on all sides and Yossi realized that the evacuation is well managed it's under control he analyzed the situation perfectly and said to himself that he's the first closest to the Kibbutz Mefalsim and decided to support the fighters in the area Yossi is an experienced fighter with a lot of hours of combat and his belt he comes from Shete Shaloshesre the Marine Commanders Yossi was in a different level than the rest of us he often faced terrorists participated in many operations against them and had a lot of experience pretty early in the fighting he was able to get hold of one of the terrorists' tactical radios at first he listened to what they were saying trying to figure out where the terrorists are they killed two terrorists in the van they saw another group of about 10 terrorists up the road he ran to an open area and the terrorists were hiding behind a concrete shelter at the entrance of the Kibbutz at this point he had been hit and that's where he died I heard on the radio that Yossi was wounded and the next call I got was not from Yossi it was from our medic he came by here he told me man, I can't keep fighting to save Yossi it's done and I know both of them very well and I know about the commitment we have towards each other here however, when he told me that he did everything he could but could not save him and that was the end I realized that we're dealing with a totally different situation here did he suffer? no he didn't suffer first few days after Yossi died I didn't want to deal with it I tried to keep busy don't think about it I tried to erase it sometimes I'd wake up at night saying to myself it can't be I'm on the side of the road and said I can't put it away anymore just like that I wanted a moment to process and I got on WhatsApp and listened to some of the messages he has sent me and the last one was a song this song suddenly hit me it cut off half my heart and I just stopped this repression disappeared all of a sudden emotions came pouring out it overwhelmed me because you hear Yossi in his own voice Yossi Yossi was the son of every parent here in Israel he defended them all by himself all of them he protected the state of Israel he even told us once if not me then who would do the job he's not here it's just the body physical matter here materiality I respect the cemetery and the burial which is important in Judaism in our heritage but for me this is just a stone like you said it's not him it's a stone I think that if there's as they say a world beyond this one I am sure that he's up there giving it all he's got I have no doubt grief hit Eli three times during his life his brother, Lieutenant Colonel Yossi Tahar a senior officer at the paratroopers brigade was killed in July of 1981 fighting in Lebanon it was a huge crisis in my life a very very difficult crisis I've carried it around for a long time 20 years later when Roy was killed then they asked me they told me you must be used to it but I said that that was not the case now I understand what my parents felt Roy, Eli's son fighter in the Nahal brigade was killed in a motorcycle accident on October 2001 when Roy died a part of me died it didn't hurt it was just that a part of me was dead Eli was sure he had already paid the ultimate price and that Yossi despite serving as a fighter who in the Navy commando would not be harmed that's what almost everyone thought those who knew Yossi at one point I said that's it I have the impression that that's it he's safe there with this protective layer around him I thought he was safe Yossi had something immortal about him in the eulogy his commander said that when Yossi would stare death in the eyes death would back down I don't know many Israelis owe their life to Yossi and they don't even know it beyond the fact that October 7th his actions stopped terrorists from entering in the kibbutz of Mefal Sime he is responsible for hundreds of foiled attacks over the years in service and only a handful of which we were allowed to mention Yossi is just one of many Israelis who have paid the ultimate price against terrorism so that their children and their communities can no peace just in the war in Gaza so far on the ground 83 more Israeli soldiers have paid that same price in combat fighting the war against Hamas so they can never commit the sort of atrocities they commit on October 7th again with the war not set to end anytime soon many more are likely to pay that same price going forward that is ultimately the challenge and the fight that Yossi finds itself in every single day of this war and every single day well before this as well those are the stakes and that is why this war is being fought but we are out of time at least for now so there will be another broadcast in just about a half hour follow that one for more and online at i24news.tv thanks for watching the world of the war and the information of the events in the war messages from the war and the reaction of the Spanish-speaking states news 24, the only Spanish-speaking news that is stuck and with the Latin community in Israel news 24, only on i24news.tv news 24 is ongoing coverage of Israel at war complete large-scale kinetic military operations in the southern Gaza Strip by January, and then shift to more targeted attacks on specific Hamas terrorists and leaderly to achieve full military objectives by the end of this year, and the Israel forces will continue to pursue their goals as part of a longer-term campaign when the fighting evolves to a new phase. Last week US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warned Israel's war cabinet that it likely does not have months left to fight Hamas, as domestic and international pressure mounts on US President Joe Biden's administration to end the war. On the ground, another soldier has died to enemy action in Gaza, Sergeant First Class Yonatan Malkan in the north. Israel has offered a rare apology to Lebanon after an airstrike against terror targets also killed a Lebanese soldier. Israel affirmed that Lebanon was not the target of the strike. And we are actually going to open in the north right now with our correspondent, Zach Anders, who is standing by on the border to give us a breakdown of what's going on in the final against Hezbollah and Lebanon. Well last night we saw once again heavy strikes at positions inside Lebanon and it is remarkable to watch as the IDF and the Air Force here has been able to operate inside sovereign Lebanese territory to strike Hezbollah targets that operate within several miles of the border. Sometimes a considerable distance away from that southern border as they fire heavy rockets. Sometimes mortars and these ATGMs, the anti-tank guided missiles which require personnel to have a line of sight and get close to Israeli positions as they fire on bases, outposts and sometimes on vehicles that as we've seen in the last several weeks also carry civilians. The civilian count here is considerable along with the number of Israeli soldiers that are injured and wounded. As it stands today over 80 Hezbollah fighters are said to reportedly have been killed this according to reports in Lebanese media and then you add on in the last 48 hours this Lebanese armed forces soldier that was killed three others wounded in a strike that the IDF says was targeting Hezbollah. It is unclear how that determination was made as to which position that they were firing upon was a Hezbollah position but the IDF has made clear that every strike, retaliatory strike that they have engaged in in the last several weeks since October 7th has been targeting the points of origin the the wherever these launch sites for the projectiles the rockets the drones sometimes even the command infrastructure that they say helps support this and Israel does have a significant intelligence advantage here. They have the the observational balloons with high-range cameras that can see miles and miles into southern Lebanon to detect where these launches take place and then within minutes we can hear the outgoing artillery and the jets overhead as they strike these positions. Zach it's not just Hezbollah and Lebanon though there's an entire array of Iranian proxies in the region as well. What have we seen from these other Iranian cats paws and militias how are they acting in the past couple of days? And they operate with a level of a lower grade level functioning when it comes to reporting their actions. Hezbollah is the one that will publish on social media and post their exploits to try and drum up their base and encourage their fighters. The other factions that even including Hamas that operates in a much smaller scale here do appear to at least have their actions fall somewhat under the umbrella of Hezbollah because Hezbollah takes credit for the majority of the launches and rocket attacks here that when the count of red alarms or of rocket incursions that we're able to receive independently reported or reported by the IDF does not match the number of strikes that Hezbollah claims to have launched that day then it does leave a gray area a zone of other strikes or their launches that you are only left to attribute either to these other factions or that Hezbollah is misrepresenting that their claims. Okay thank you very much Zach for that report from the north. I want to go to the studio right now what we have with us Colonel Amit as a former member of the Israeli security agency also more famously known as the Shin Bet internal security services. I mean I want to talk about some of the other arenas because it's not just Gaza we're going to be focusing mostly on that later. I want to talk about what we're seeing escalation by Hamas in the West Bank as well and the stuff that your agency was largely doing to keep control of that talk us through the pulse of what's going on in the West Bank. As we know in the West Bank there is a lot of activity of Hamas actually they didn't want to do an lecture for a long period of time because the authorities didn't want the Hamas will ruin also in the West Bank so we know that's a lot of activity of Hamas in all of the area. Now Hamas have the ability to work as we saw in the Gaza Strip from the West Bank to the old cities and settlements and Kibbutz is in the central Israel so we have to act first and to do some actions before they will do something in order to get into our area. That's what the IDF and Shabak is doing now and you can see it by arrested dozens of people hundreds of people that they did in the last few weeks. A lot of people of the Hamas member are getting in hold and the reason is that we control the area. We are there that we can do something. It's not what we had when we have the Gaza Strip is closed and we can't do anything to get into and they armed themselves better than the Hamas can do it in the West Bank. So we are we can say that we can control it better than in Gaza but we have to be very careful with this say because under the ground we can't never know how they are acting and how they want to plan any attacks simultaneously attack or anything to our cities from the West Bank. Let's turn our attention right now to Gaza itself our correspondent Pierre Kloschenler is standing by just outside on the border with Gaza. Pierre, welcome to the latest developments in the war there. If you want to understand there is now a humanitarian pause in effect in the Rafa region. Right now we're not in the Rafa region actually in the Al Shabura refugee camp in Hanyunas. I think it's just northwest of Hanyunas. It's a humanitarian pause in the fighting for four hours and in addition as every day since the start of the ground offensive in October 7 but now with an interactive map with hundreds and hundreds of blocks. I think there's 623 polygon blocks that are numbered and that are interactive throughout the whole Gaza Strip. The IDF is urging the residents of Hanyunas and the vicinity to move west and connect to the coastal axis of the Haruna Rashid road which is partly under control by the Israeli army and go to the safe zone that has been dedicated by the IDF the Al-Muassi zone which is southwest of Hanyunas and northeast of Rafa. Now the IDF has just announced that it found a major weapon depot with hundreds and hundreds of offensive weapons such as RPGs, long-range missiles that are supposed to target Tel Aviv and the central areas of Israel, hand grenades, all kinds of weapons and the IDF stresses that this is probably one of the most important weapons depots. It was discovered in the northern area of the Gaza Strip which is just behind me. So the IDF is still cleaning the area of the northern sector, fierce fighting in Jibalia refugee camp in the southeast outskirts of Gaza city El-Sajaya with close-range combat and a lot of aerial support. The Palestinian media affiliated to Hamas is speaking about dozens of casualties in the Jibalia refugee camp and in the Al-Nafa street in Gaza city. It's very difficult to confirm that but this is what they report and in addition we know since yesterday evening that Hanyunas is encircled and the ground forces are already penetrating in the heart of the city which means that the ground forces are operating within and without Hanyunas at this point. And something to underscore your point about combat operations. You probably heard it behind you as you were talking but we definitely saw cloud of smoke go up right there as presumably an airstrike hit something in North Gaza behind you. Pierre, thank you very much for that update from the ground. We are going to return to the studio with Colonel Amit Assa and continue this discussion of Gaza. One of the things that Pierre just mentioned was a massive massive strike on a weapons depot, removing a large portion of Hamas's arsenal from the equation. One of the things we've noticed here is that over the course of the war particularly in the past week or so Hamas's volume of fire has tapered off. In fact dropped off in many cases. They're still firing on Tel Aviv but it's no longer three times a day at specific intervals. It's random, a teamingly attacks of opportunity. This is a sign that Hamas's back is finally against the wall. Few things that I want to mention here. First this arsenal of ammunition and missiles that we can see is on the north because we are pressure very, very good in the north and we are closing to see that all the northern side of Gaza Strip will be in our hand. But in the other hand we know that they have a lot of arsenal of weapons still in in Chanyones and in Rafa and they are launching missiles from there every day. So we will have to clean it step by step. And this is just an example of how many weapons was got into Gaza Strip and it's not from the air. It's not that they are manufacturers that that ammunition there. They brought it from somewhere and the only way to bring it is under the ground in Philadelphia in Rafa area meaning from Egypt. And we have to put this blame on the Egyptian that lead the Hamas to have this kind of ammunition quantity that they stored in the storage all these years. And all this ammunition came from from the south and we didn't control it. It's also our blame that we didn't stop it anyhow. But still they have a lot of ammunition and missiles still in in Chanyones and Rafa and we will have to go there and find it. But as you said the Hamas is going with the back to the to the wall I think not yet. Of course the the first brigade in the in the north is mostly dead or finished. But we have two brigades in the south that are still fighting and we have to put them also in the pressure that they will not be able to launch any missiles anymore into Israel and to eliminate this threat. But let's briefly talk about what we know about Hamas's deployment in the south. You said two brigades in the south. I have heard out of analysts say it's four brigades in Chanyones. Just how much disposition of forces do they have in that area? I think it's not just the brigades of Chanyones at the first place in Rafa. It's because a lot of people a lot of soldiers from the Hamas was getting from the north to the south while it was opposed. You remember that it was a pause and there was rest like civilians getting on our ways to to the south to help the the friends to to fight the war in the south. So it's partly the brigades that was originally in the south and partly soldiers of the Hamas and wars and the and the terrorists from the Hamas getting to the south from the north. There's still a lot of fighting left ahead. Thank you very much Amit for breaking that down for us. We are going to continue our coverage of this war by looking at some of these soldiers, the policemen and plain civilians who took up arms to defend their communities on October 7th knowing that they were simply the last line of defense for their families, their friends and their communities. This story tells the story of Yossi Tahaar an accomplished fighter in the IDF as well as Israel's internal security service who lost his life fighting to defend his community. Here is his story. I miss him so much my heart is dead. Why couldn't he be more careful? How? How could they not save him? Stay strong like you are. You cheer me up all the time. It's true. It's so painful. It's impossible. I can't believe that Yossi was taken from me. In fact, I went there with the feeling that this wouldn't happen to me. For what purpose? Why is he part of it? Yossi, the good Lord protects him. But no one defended him. Until October 7th, Mazal and Eli Tahaar knew nothing about them, not what they looked like or what their real names were. These are the friends of her son, Yossi, killed on October 7th, who remained in the shadow. I never knew them. I've never seen them. And I said to myself, what a shame that Yossi never came home with them for dinner. Now when they come here, they give me a little bit of strength, but I miss Yossi a lot. We spoke on Thursday morning. Maybe now is the time to show what he wrote to me. It was Thursday. You read it. I can't. Dad, I want to tell you how much I love you and really appreciate that you're here by my side. You give me strength when I need it. Always thinking, always thoughtful, warm, friendly, with logic, and always sincere. It is important for me that you know how dear you are to me. I love you, Yossi. Those are three of the most valiant elite fighters in the secret and very special unit of the internal intelligence service, the Shin Bet. They are here to meet Yossi's parents and tell them about the side of Yossi they knew less about. He had a strong personality. Those who knew him got attached to him in seconds at all levels, from the simple soldier arriving at the unit the day before, to the IDF chief of staff. He knew how to connect with people. Just like that, he gave so much of himself. He would meet someone and two days later is invited over for a barbecue dinner. We don't wear our ranks. We don't treat people based on their position. People follow us because of the leadership, because of the personality of whoever leads the unit. And Yossi was all of the above, big time. He knew how to speak to people and touch their hearts. We cannot show Yossi's photo and his face will probably never be known to the public. Our slogan is protect and not be seen. In 99% of cases, we were the ones to surprise the enemy. We are the initiators, those who direct the situation. On October 7th, we were surprised by the intensity of the attack, the way it was done, the numbers. And that was what put us in great difficulty in the first hours of the attack. In many ways, Yossi is like Emmanuel Moreno, the heroic fighter of the famous Special Forces Commando, Syred Maktal. But in the ranks of Shin Bet, tales of his bravery and everything he did on October 7th will remain secret, except for what the censors allow us to reveal. It was half past six in the morning of the 7th of October. I received the first phone call from Yossi. He told me, you're not going to believe it. There's something weird going on here. He was talking to me from his shelter and told me that he will call me back when he's on the road to decide what we're going to do. As we drove south, we realized that one of our fighters was hit, and Yossi, with another small team of fighters, responded bribing towards the terrorists under heavy fire. He was in an area he didn't know, and we could not yet understand the scale and complexity of the attack and the number of terrorists. He was able to reach our struggling fighter after a few minutes, and Yossi actually saved his life. Outside, violent fighting was taking place on all sides, and Yossi realized that the evacuation is well managed. It's under control. He analyzed the situation perfectly and said to himself that he is the force closest to the Kibbutz Mefalsim and decided to support the fighters in the area. Yossi is an experienced fighter, with a lot of hours of combat on his belt. He comes from Sheta Shaloshesre, the Marine Commanders. Yossi was in a different level than the rest of us. He often faced terrorists, participated in many operations against them, and had a lot of experience. Pretty early in the fighting, he was able to get hold of one of the terrorist tactical radios. At first, he listened to what they were saying, trying to figure out where the terrorists are. They killed two terrorists in a van. They saw another group of about 10 terrorists up the road. He ran to an open area, and the terrorists were hiding behind a concrete shelter at the entrance of the Kibbutz. At this point, he had been hit, and that's where he died. I heard on the radio that Yossi was wounded, and the next call I got was not from Yossi. It was from our medic. He told me, man, I can't keep fighting to save Yossi. It's done. And I know both of them very well. I know about the commitment we have towards each other here. However, when he told me that he did everything he could but could not save him, and that was the end, I realized that we're dealing with a totally different situation here. Did he suffer? No. He didn't suffer? No, he didn't suffer. First few days after Yossi died, I didn't want to deal with it. I tried to keep busy. Don't think about it. I tried to erase it. Sometimes I'd wake up at night saying to myself, it can't be. It can't be true. But after about four days, I stopped on the side of the road and said, I can't put it away anymore. Just like that. I wanted a moment to process, and I got on WhatsApp and listened to some of the messages he had sent me. And the last one was a song. This song suddenly hit me. It cut off half my heart, and I just stopped. This repression disappeared all of a sudden. Emotions came pouring out. It overwhelmed me because you hear Yossi in his own voice, singing a song that is almost like a prophecy. Yossi was the son of every parent here in Israel. He defended them all by himself, all of them. He protected the state of Israel. He even told us once, if not me, then who would do the job? He's not here. It's just the body. Physical matter here. Materiality. I respect the cemetery and the burial, which is important in Judaism, in our heritage. But for me, this is just a stone. Like you said, it's not him. It's a stone. I think that if there's, as they say, a world beyond this one, I am sure that he's up there giving it all he's got. I have no doubt. Grief hit Eli three times during his life. His brother, Lieutenant Colonel Yossi Tahar, a senior officer at the paratroopers brigade, was killed in July of 1981 fighting in Lebanon. It was a huge crisis in my life, a very, very difficult crisis. I've carried it around for a long time. Twenty years later, when Roy was killed, then they asked me, they told me, you must be used to it. But I said that that was not the case. Now I understand what my parents felt. Roy, Eli's son, fighter in the Nahal brigade, was killed in a motorcycle accident on October 2001. When Roy died, a part of me died. It didn't hurt. It was just that a part of me was dead. Eli was sure he had already paid the ultimate price and that Yossi, despite serving as a fighter who in the Navy commando and later in the Shin Bet, would not be harmed. That's what almost everyone thought those who knew Yossi. At one point I said, that's it. I have the impression that that's it. He's safe there with this protective layer around him. I thought he was safe. Yossi had something immortal about him. In the eulogy, his commander said that when Yossi would stare death in the eyes, death would back down. Many Israelis owe their life to Yossi and they don't even know it. Beyond the fact that October 7th, his actions stopped terrorists from entering in the kibbutz of Methalsim. He is responsible for hundreds of foiled attacks over the years, in service, and only a handful of which we were allowed to mention. Yossi is just one of many Israelis who have paid the ultimate price in the fight against terrorism, so that their children and their communities can no peace. Just in the war in Gaza, so far on the ground, 83 more Israeli soldiers have paid that same price in combat, fighting the war against Hamas, so they can never commit the sort of atrocities they commit on October 7th. Again, the war not set to end anytime soon. Many more are likely to pay that same price going forward. That is ultimately the challenge and the fight that Israel finds itself in every single day of this war and every single day well before this as well. Those are the states.