 I'm at 11th all thanks for joining me it's day 17 of war here in Israel the IDF launched overnight strikes on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip killing senior members of the terror group as well continuing air campaign against Hamas also comes amid an attack on Israeli troops on Sunday operating in the enclave which saw one soldier killed and three others wounded the operation is part of the military searches for bodies of missing Israelis and to clear the area for Israel's upcoming ground offensive meanwhile the exchange of fire on its northern border with Lebanon continues to heat up the Israel Defense Forces says it again targeted a cell of Hezbollah terrorists in southern Lebanon attacked its military infrastructure and destroyed an anti-tank missile launcher Israeli media estimates that the number of Hezbollah operatives killed thus far is over 30 including field commanders let's cross our live to our correspondent Pierre Kloschenle who is standing by for us in the south of Israel Pierre this morning was quiet does that still remain the case there in the south absolutely a 13 hour lull in rocket fire that doesn't mean that the front over the Gaza Strip is quiet their ongoing Israeli air force bombardment of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets all in all in the past 25 hours the IDF spokesperson unit has said that over 320 targets were hit by the Israeli air force in parallel there was a ground a small ground incursion in the central sector of the Gaza Strip west of the security area in which infantry units of givati and armored units neutralized anti-tank squads as well as probably cleaning the area from IEDs and other things which could put in peril the the the incursion of certain units inside the Gaza Strip when this will happen at the same time they're also calming the area in order to try and find some signs regarding the hostages in that are held in the Gaza Strip. Pierre the IDF has said that it's used the iron string precision mortar for the first time against Hamas what more do we know about this defense technology and also its usage well we know you know that every war is a testing ground for the new tools in you know in the war against terror but also in in more conventional wars so that's not surprising Israel there were even rumors that Israel used the laser beam in order to neutralize rocket fire and that proved to be false that proved to be a fake news but there are definitely ammunitions new ammunitions used as well as probably ammunition sent by the US Army to Israel part of the over 40 cargo planes of ammunition and other stuff that were shipped to Israel and probably there as well there are some ammunition that Israel may not have we're talking for instance about the bunker blasters do does Israel has this ammunition we don't know but we know that the Israeli army is very eager to get those ammunition because that will probably help very much in destroying the tunnels that are dug in the Gaza Strip what what Israel calls the Metro of Gaza. Correspondent Pierre Clashendale giving us an update on the southern border thank you very much for that and joining me now from Ramassa Sharon in central Israel is retired Colonel Mary Eisen the former head of IDF combat intelligence and the former advisor to Prime Minister it would almost Mary thank you so very much for being with me here this morning I want to start by asking a statement was put out just yesterday being Sunday that four million shekels is now going to be given as a project that will be launched to urgently renovate over 4000 shelters in the north surely this is a little too late you want to do whatever you can do at any stage along the way when we look at the numbers I don't look at the four million shekel this is about the intent but we're trying to protect our civilians we're trying to protect the citizens and the people in the state of Israel we're trying to protect the poor people of the Gaza Strip that have put in the forefront and in that sense when you ask it that way it's part of our own resilience people don't want to leave their homes we want people to be able to stay there and if you can help out nowadays to let more people be in their homes not removed because of these different terror threats it's a good investment it makes us feel stronger is it a lot of money is it too little too late it's something that's being done as we speak right and with regards to the renovating of thousands of these shelters but also the fact that the United States has said that it's willing to put out loans for its citizens in Lebanon can we assume that the combination of this means that's something imminent and perhaps more escalatory than what we currently seeing is going to begin with Hezbollah in the north I don't even want to go down that track I think we're all sitting here right now wondering what's going to happen in Batia we don't have clear answers that's part of the challenge it's not just what Hezbollah will do it's what Hezbollah and then Iran will do we've already seen that there are actions by the Houthis the Yemen in from Yemen meaning it isn't just Hezbollah it isn't just Hamas and Hezbollah you suddenly get Hamas, Hezbollah, Yemen, Iran and most definitely everybody is wary of something that could explode into something so big so yes we're all in fear Hezbollah is testing us day by day it doesn't mean that we don't have the will and the capability to handle that but you do want to be as responsible as you can be to protect your citizens to do it in the way that we've always tried to do and failed so horrifically on October 7th that doesn't mean that you don't do anything right now Mary stay with us because speaking of the topic of Israel's northern border I do want to cross now to our correspondent Mary McCauliffe who is standing by for us near the Israel-Lebanon border Mary it's been a quiet morning has anything changed thus far what's the situation on the ground there nobody we don't really have any changes here now it's been about 20 hours since we had sirens in northern israeli communities those where those sirens sounded was due to a mortar attack yesterday in the afternoon that's actually this community right behind this hill Yiftakh where sirens did ring out in the day but no injuries were reported Yiftakh of course is a settlement and this is an area in northern Israel that has been completely evacuated to one of 42 communities in this area where residents have been told to flee to safer parts of the country we also spoke to one of the residents who are deciding to remain here they're about some 5 000 residents it's estimated that are still staying here in their homes and we can take a listen to what she had to say about why they're staying here in the we have dedicated our lives to education especially to education for peace and dialogue 20 years ago at the height of the Intifada we established a multicultural theater of Jewish and Arab youngsters they became like brothers like brothers and sisters we did projects with them with Palestinians and Jordanians with the european parliament we reached the pope with our plays and now the heart is broken Yehuda my husband is in charge here in the kibbutz so i did not agree to evacuate alone we stayed here there's a lot of sadness a lot of sadness about what was done and above all now about the hostages i don't know if we all already understood that we are in trauma the mind and soul as wide as it is cannot bear this terrible pain i'm just now starting to wake up at night and i don't know if i'm crying because the young boys and girls are in the army or because of the babies and children who are kidnapped there i was thinking today have they showered or changed clothes during these weeks yesterday we received an order to evacuate the kibbutz very painful and very sad in fact it has been two weeks that a large part of residents have not been here children and adults were already evacuated two weeks ago a large part of those who remained are being evacuated today and tomorrow but a standby security team remains here to guard the kibbutz and another 20 to 30 people to operate all the essentials and mary we just spoke to mary eisen who pointed out the fact that this is very painful and very difficult for many residents in the north and the south to be evacuating their homes their livelihoods for the for the sense of safety and security in the state of israel but perhaps a stark difference to what's going on across the borders at the moment in both lebanon and gaza absolutely so we're seeing settlements residents who are evacuated from the communities in many different areas with the gaza board community and here in the north here these have extended to many more different communities a lot of these communities here are much smaller but you heard in that sound bite it was a very emotional conversation talking to these people who stayed there in their community they have some 400 people who live there on a regular basis now they're down to just about 30 and most of them are those who've stayed to guard the kibbutz so they're most who are staying just because they feel so passionately about their home and because also they don't know how long they're not going to be able to return to their home so she wanted the woman that we talked to she said she didn't know how to pack for three months one month two weeks she really had no idea so for now to her it was more important to stay with her husband who is in charge of guarding the kibbutz of course it's very near the israel lebanon border and they of course are bracing for infiltration attempts like we saw down south and that's why we see these private military forces normally ex-soldiers who live in the kibbutz deciding on their own to stay and guard the kibbutz correspondent mary mccall of giving us an update on the northern border there with lebanon thank you very much for that and still with me from central israel has retired colonel mary isan and here in studio our senior defense correspondent jonathan reggae jonathan l l israel's national airline carrier perhaps the only airline that is still flying up and down to uh to and from israel says that they have brought over 30 tons hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment for the war effort what exactly is it that they bring to the front lines everything beginning with armored vehicles vests for for uh soldiers ammunition everything and let's remember that there's a a a thought which was portrayed for quite some time but by many former and current generals that israel in in recent years fell in love with with uh fighting wars only from the air and through intelligence and not putting its soldiers on the ground in in in any in any battle and eventually it brought the um the the ground army being the armored forces or infantry into a situation that that they're not ready and the army is not ready for them in in meaning in equipment meaning in training meaning in everything and and now we understand that it's it's not enough you cannot if if you want to have an operation here and there in gaza as we had in recent years maybe that can be done from the air but if you want a war a decisive war in a decisive victory you need the ground forces at their best trained equipped and all these things that too much much of that had to come from abroad because the army the ground army as it was two and a half weeks ago was simply not ready emiri i wanted to ask you the idf was said to have carried out strikes near a pair of hospitals in in gaza city how how imperative is it that the idf explains uh which we've had to do anyway as a nation regardless our right to self-defense versus needing to do what they need to do to root out terror and i'm batia i've been on i-24 for years and every time we talk about hamas and chizpala and i say in the next conflict how are you i'm talking now to the viewers going to feel when hamas and chizpala build their headquarters their cache of weapons where they put their missiles and their rockets into the school under the hospital into the mosque and i say it sadly that's exactly where the hamas and chizpala terrorists feel that they're not vulnerable that doesn't mean that we're attacking hospitals hospitals are such a hard aspect but i can promise you that right now all of the hamas terrorists are hiding under the hospitals so in that sense it's going to be the distinction israel has been very clear we have told everybody to leave the northern gaza strip we have 150 000 israelis that we have told to leave their homes because hamas keep firing rockets and because chizpala keeps attacking kiriach munab north was evacuated so when you look at that idea of us targeting hamas targets remember hamas is a terror organization and for the last decades it has always built its headquarters the safe places for them under the mosque under the hospital under the school that's our challenge and jonathan another challenge that's facing the country at the moment is the mix between politics and the military they're supposed to be two separate entities but evidently in an area like israel where the country is so politicized the two seem to overlap just yesterday the the far right's leader of benjamin and senya's coalition it's about being very slammed israel saying that we should not be giving continuous aid to the gaza strip that can be confiscated by hamas until we get the release of hostages at the end of the day where is the disconnect between the politics that are ultimately leading the military decisions or is the military guiding the politics here i'm i'm i'm afraid it's the first one i'm afraid it's the politics leading the the military i'm afraid that there are too many political considerations walking into anything there's a very big headline today in one of the biggest israeli dailies idiota chrono saying that the very bad relations between etaniao prime minister and etaniao and defense minister you have gallant and the bad relations of bad blood between prime minister and etaniao and the army officials are preventing the army from from eventually making decisions and making decision making very difficult and israel was so politicized and in such a wide divide before this began that the politics are infiltrating into everything there's a very big distrust among the wide parts of the population with this government with a prime minister and it's infiltrating into into everything and it seems as if many people are already thinking about the the the investigative committee that we all know will be created once the war is over which will investigate everything that led to this fiasco of october 7th and many of them it seems are already making their considerations thinking about that as well are the military considerations the only one being being put on the table i'm afraid not mary we spoke earlier that there was a poll by the israel victory project which said that 70 percent of israelis being the majority want eliminating chamas to be the so gaza objective our politicians have changed the rhetoric this time around with regards to gaza saying not that we're going to deal a decisive blow that we are going to wipe chamas off the face of this earth is there an alternative option here or is that what not only israel is seeking but it actually needs for its survival that isn't it the sort of question that we need to ask right now the people the tens of thousands of people who have been dislocated from their homes from sderota city netivot that's attacked let alone the kibbutzim and moshevim established in the 1940s and 1950s on israel's border next to the gaza strip why am i posing it in that way would you about y'all want to go right now move back to your home that is 800 meters from the gaza strip when you know that in it chamas still have capabilities now i pose it as a question i don't have an exclamation mark the price at the end both with the hostages with what it does to israel can we live with an entity with the atrocity brutal terror organization that rules over the gaza strip and right now is trying to change the narrative worldwide to the degree of of denying everything that they did on october 7 if you don't destroy that if you don't show that you cannot do an attack like that in the way that it was done it's really hard to tell people to go back home afterwards to live next door so these are the dilemmas on the table i'm not making it any easier and i agree that the the sense i say is an israeli citizen that it isn't that there's harmony and trust inside the decision-making circles right now does not make me as an israeli citizen feel any better having said that they have a really challenging decisions absolutely and i completely agree with you that living 800 meters away from an enemy that wants nothing more than to murder you is just unacceptable to to put it very but the question is everyone keeps mentioning the day after so assuming that Hamas does get completely eradicated in the gaza strip which is the operational goal of the military as well as israeli politicians and many have said that perhaps we replace it with the palestinian authority we still have a head of the palestinian authority that has not condemned the atrocities that happened on october 7 and all the follow-out from that but also continues to voice anti-semitism amongst jews and anti-zionism against israelis in in the region you know bacha nobody really liked the palestinian authority president before i'm more angry in that sense the king of dalla lovely king of dalla the second of jordan queen rina who has amazing following in the world has also not condemned Hamas's attack so i could go in and around right now all the different countries that we have better relationships with that we have strong important connections with if it's egypt or jordan or the emirates you know you could go around and say none of them have actually come out maybe perhaps aside from the emirates and really condemned the Hamas attack i'm not saying this is a complicated world to me this is part of the achievements of Hamas right now Hamas as a terror organization has implemented a very clear-cut media campaign which is attack and say how wonderful we're doing and then send out our leaders and come on board and that is something that threatens all of the countries around and the palestinian authority and now we're at the third stage they're into denial they are into it in the worst holocaust denial way they are erasing the content and saying it never happened so when you say palestinian authority in the day after i'm still within it i'm still worried about what's going to happen tomorrow morning and next week i can't even think of what's going to be in the Gaza Strip in the months to come all right miri stay with us i want to switch now to a different angle the prospects of a prolonged israel-hamas war is already adding economic havoc onto the human toll oil prices are falling and have been bouncing around since the war began asian shares are lower jobs in the region have stalled the hi-tech industry here in israel is seeing a slight fallout with the shekel slumping toward the u.s. dollar a widening conflict would test israel's economic resilience while worsening an already bleak outlook for the palestinian economy and joining me on this topic i want to go now to ithica in greece where i am joined by dr alex coman an economy expert at televiv university dr alex coman thank you so very much for being with me here this morning but if we can try and sum up how in general economies are impacted by a war and why this is being brought to the fore such a serious issue well we see a direct damage that's the damage when you think about like we've seen that the catastrophe in the south where you see whole cities or villages being burned and destroyed so this is the visible damage then you have the damage of paralyzed economy and we see an economy which is to a large extent which to a large extent resembles the covid pandemic in the sense that people do not do not go out they do not celebrate they do not have weddings so so a whole part of the economy is paralyzed we're talking about 200 to 300 000 people who are mobilized so they do not go to work this is particularly visible in the high tech sector which is the locomotive of israel's economy so a significant proportion of high tech workers are now in the military and so they do not do their their daily jobs and you can also see the long-term damages in the sense of small businesses israel unfortunately does not recognize the significance of the small business and as a result these businesses are really devastated 67% of them are frozen a third of small business owners say they give the government a rating of zero in terms of treating them so this is the the general view of the the impact of war on the economy and how are speaking internally with regards to israel funds being redistributed in order to aid the war effort as we've been speaking about we have 200 000 people that are having to evacuate their homes needing to go to hotels which evidently need to be state funded obviously there's also the upgrading of bomb shelters in the north and the south how do all these funds get redistributed and where does it get taken from in terms of israel's economy well first of all the the problem is that israel's leadership i mean you cannot use the word leadership in the sense that the government consists of individuals who disagree with each other and you are not competent in particular if you think about the minister of finance smotridge who not only does not understand economics but his goals are completely different from what we want the good news about that is that the original budget was very very focused on helping religious religious communities who are not contributing to the economy so if i try to see something bright light at the end of the tunnel is that apparently or hopefully or if there is a god the money would not go to this sector and would be redirected to the war to recovering to the people who suffered tremendously due to the current attack and people who will continue suffering and i hope that if the government is actually disciplined enough which i'm sceptic about they would redirect the funds from from this population from this sector into into recovering into winning the war and recovering from it and doctor just finally i by no means mean to be equating what's happening at the moment between israel and khamas to what's occurring between ukraine and russia evidently this is not a territorial conflicts but we have seen the economies on that side of the world seem to almost stabilize a little bit with regards to how long war goes on are we looking at at some kind of and i say it like it very lightly but optimism with regards to the economy that it will drop in times of war but at some point will stabilize well the analogy is is a little tricky because when you think about russia much of the russian economy is is is not high-tech it's particularly oil natural resources and oil luckily the prices went up so this this to a significant extent offset the fact the impact of the war they actually europe was so dependent that they could raise prices so basically russia came out uh rather unheard by the war in israel this is not the situation the situation is the tourism which is a significant uh component of the israel economy is completely devastated and i'm afraid that the damage is not in the just in the short term it's going to be a longer term the damage i i hope that the high-tech industry would recover quickly um and uh one one thing that would offset is the weapons industry which which which will thrive uh unfortunately in the near future dr alex koeman an economy expert at televiv university joining me from greece i want to thank you so very much for being with me and i also want to thank from ramata sharon in central israel retired colonel miry eisen the former head of id of combat intelligence and the former advisor to prime minister erud albert as we've been discussing obviously a large issue um different angles different complexities with regards to war and in particular in a small nation at the moment and so what i want to say to our viewers just wrapping up again it's been 13 hours of quiet necessarily on the gaza border no rockets have been fired over from khamas into israel and on the northern border it's been quiet since yesterday evening being sunday evening both correspondents in those areas have been giving us updates all throughout the day and no doubt we'll be touching base with him in just a little bit but for the meantime for anything you've missed make sure to check out our website at i24news.tv we'll be right back israel is officially in a state of war this is a very active scene and we need to get in the car as we're talking within a hundred soldiers and civilians have been kidnapped we don't want to do we just don't know anything entire families including babies and children and elderly were butchered in their beds awaken the giant and we are ready and we are strong everyone is showing up this is the unity on i24news i'm about to 11th all thanks for joining me it's day 17 of war here in israel the idf launched overnight strikes on khamas targets in the gaza strip killing senior members of the terror group as well a continuing air campaign against khamas also comes amid an attack on israeli troops on sunday operating in the young plague which saw one soldier killed and three others wounded the operation is part of the military searches for bodies of missing israelis and to clear the area for israel's upcoming ground offensive meanwhile the exchange of fire on its northern border with lebanon continues to heat up the israel defense forces says it again targeted a cell of khasbala terrorists in southern lebanon attacked its military infrastructure and destroyed an anti-tank missile launcher israeli media estimates that the number of khasbala operatives killed thus far is over 30 including field commanders let's cross our live to our correspondent pia clausian leu who is standing by for us in the south of israel pia this morning was quiet does that still remain the case there in the south absolutely a 13 hour lull in rocket fire that doesn't mean that the front over the gaza strip is quiet there ongoing israeli air force bombardment of hamas and palestinian islamic jihad targets all in all in the past 25 hours the idf spokesperson unit has said that over 320 targets were hit by the israeli air force in parallel there was a ground a small ground incursion in the central sector of the gaza strip west of the security area in which infantry units of givati and armored units neutralized anti-tank squads as well as probably cleaning the area from ids and other things which could put in peril the the the incursion of certain units inside the gaza strip when this will happen at the same time they're also calming the area in order to try and find some signs regarding the hostages that are held in the gaza strip pia the idf has said that it's used the iron sting precision mortar for the first time against hamas what more do we know about this defense technology and also its usage well we know you know that every war is a testing ground for new tools in you know in the war against terror but also in in more conventional wars so that's not surprising israel there were even rumors that israel used the laser beam in order to neutralize rocket fire and that proved to be false that proved to be a fake news but there are definitely munitions new munitions used as well as probably a munitions sent by the us army to israel part of the over 40 cargo planes of ammunition and other stuff that were shipped to israel and probably there as well there are some munitions that israel may not have we're talking for instance about the bunker blasters do does israel has this ammunition we don't know but we know that the israeli army is very eager to get those ammunition because that will probably help very much in destroying the tunnels that are dug underneath the gaza strip what what israel calls the metro of gaza correspondent pia klush and leg giving us an update on the southern border thank you very much for that and joining me now from ramata sharon in central israel is retired colonel miri eisen the former head of id of combat intelligence and the former advisor to prime minister it would almost miri thank you so very much for being with me here this morning i want to start by asking a statement was put out just yesterday being sunday that four million shekels is now going to be given as a project that will be launched to urgently renovate over four thousand shelters in the north surely this is a little too late you want to do whatever you can do at any stage along the way when we look at the numbers i don't look at the four million shekel this is about the intent but we're trying to protect our civilians we're trying to protect the citizens and the people in the state of israel we're trying to protect the poor people of the gaza strip that hamas have put in the forefront and in that sense when you ask it that way it's part of our own resilience people don't want to leave their homes we want people to be able to stay there and if you can help out nowadays to let more people be in their homes not removed because of these different terror threats it's a good investment it makes us feel stronger is it a lot of money is it too little too late it's something that's being done as we speak right and with regards to the renovating of thousands of these shelters but also the fact that the united states has said that it's willing to put out loans for its citizens in lebanon can we assume that the combination of this means that something imminent and perhaps more escalatory than what we currently seeing is going to begin with chesbollah in the north i don't even want to go down that track i think we're all sitting here right now wondering what's going to happen in batia we don't have clear answers that's part of the challenge it's not just what chisbala will do it's what chisbala and then iran will do we've already seen that there are actions by the hotis the yem in from yemen meaning it isn't just chisbala it isn't just hamas and chisbala you suddenly get hamas chisbala yemen iran and most definitely everybody is wary of something that could explode into something so big so yes we're all in fear chisbala is testing us day by day it doesn't mean that we don't have the will and the capability to handle that but you do want to be as responsible as you can be to protect your citizens to do it in the way that we've always tried to do and failed so horrifically on october 7th that doesn't mean that you don't do anything right now mary stay with us because speaking of the topic of israel's northern border i do want to cross now to our correspondent mary macaulah who is standing by for us near the israel-lebanon border mary it's been a quiet morning has anything changed thus far what's the situation on the ground there no batia we don't really have any changes here now it's been about 20 hours since we had sirens in northern israeli communities where those sirens sounded was due to a mortar attack yesterday in the afternoon that's actually this community right behind this hill yiftah where sirens did ring out in the day but no injuries were reported yiftah of course is a settlement and this is an area in northern israel that has been completely evacuated to one of 42 communities in this area where residents have been told to flee to safer parts of the country we also spoke to one of the residents who are deciding to remain here they're about some 5 000 residents it's estimated that are still staying here in their homes and we can take a listen to what she had to say about why they're staying here we have dedicated our lives to education especially to education for peace and dialogue 20 years ago at the height of the intifada we established a multicultural theater of jewish and arab youngsters they became like brothers like brothers and sisters we did projects with them with palestinians and jordanians with the european parliament we reached the pope with our place and now the heart is broken yehuda my husband is in charge here in the kibbutz so i did not agree to evacuate alone we stayed here there's a lot of sadness a lot of sadness about what was done and above all now about the hostages i don't know if we all already understood that we are in trauma the mind and soul as wide as it is cannot bear this terrible pain i'm just now starting to wake up at night and i don't know if i'm crying because the young boys and girls are in the army or because of the babies and children who are kidnapped there i was thinking today have they showered or changed clothes during these weeks yesterday we received an order to evacuate the kibbutz very painful and very sad in fact it has been two weeks that a large part of residents have not been here children and adults were already evacuated two weeks ago a large part of those who remained are being evacuated today and tomorrow but a standby security team remains here to guard the kibbutz and another 20 to 30 people to operate all the essentials and mary we just spoke to mary eisen who pointed out the fact that this is very painful and very difficult for many residents in the north and start to be evacuating their homes their livelihoods for the for the sense of safety and security in the state of israel but perhaps a stark difference to what's going on across the borders at the moment in both lebanon and gaza absolutely so we're seeing about settlements residents who are evacuated from their communities in many different areas with the gaza bore community and here in the north here these have extended to many more different communities a lot of these communities here are much smaller but you heard in that soundbite it was a very emotional conversation talking to these people who stayed there in their community they have some 400 people who live there on a regular basis now they're down to just about 30 and most of them are those who've stayed to guard the kibbutz so they're most who are staying just because they feel so passionately about their home and because also they don't know how long they're not going to be able to return to their home so she one of the women that we talked to she said she didn't know how to pack for three months one month two weeks she really had no idea so for now to her it was more important to stay with her husband who is in charge of guarding the kibbutz of course it's very near the israel lebanon border and they of course are bracing for infiltration attempts like we saw down south and that's why we see these private military forces normally ex soldiers who live in the kibbutz deciding on their own to stay and guard the kibbutz correspondent mary mccall of giving us an update on the northern border there with lebanon thank you very much for that and still with me from central israel has retired colonel mary eisen and here in studio our senior defense correspondent jonathan reggae jonathan l l is national airline carrier perhaps the only airline that is still flying up and down to and from israel says that they have brought over 30 tons hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment for the war effort what exactly is it that they're bringing to the front lines everything beginning with armoured vehicles vests for for soldiers ammunition everything and let's remember that there's a a a thought which was portrayed for quite some time but by many former and current generals that israel in in recent years fell in love with with fighting wars only from the air and through intelligence and not putting its soldiers on the ground in in any in any battle and eventually it brought the the the ground army being the armoured forces or infantry into a situation that they're not ready and the army is not ready for them in meaning in equipment meaning in training meaning in everything and and now we understand that it's it's not enough you cannot if if you want to have an operation here and there in gaza as we had in recent years maybe that can be done from the air but if you want a war a decisive war and a decisive victory you need the ground forces at their best trained equipped and all these things that too much much of that had to come from abroad because the army the ground army as it was two and a half weeks ago was simply not ready and miri i wanted to ask you the idf was said to have carried out strikes near a pair of hospitals in in gaza city how how imperative is it that the idf explains which we've had to do anyway as a nation regardless our right to self-defense versus needing to do what they need to do to root out terror and i'm about to have been on i-24 for years and every time we talk about hamas and chizpala and i say in the next conflict how are you i'm talking now to the viewers going to feel when hamas and chizpala build their headquarters their cache of weapons where they put their missiles in their rockets into the school under the hospital into the mosque and i say it sadly that's exactly where the hamas and chizpala terrorists feel that they're not vulnerable that doesn't mean that we're attacking hospitals hospitals are such a hard aspect but i can promise you that right now all of the hamas terrorists are hiding under the hospitals so in that sense it's going to be the distinction israel has been very clear we have told everybody to leave the northern gaza strip we have a hundred and fifty thousand israelis that we have told to leave their homes because hamas keep firing rockets and because chizpala keeps attacking kiri atshmon alp north was evacuated so when you look at that idea of us targeting hamas targets remember hamas is a terror organization and for the last decades it has always built its headquarters the safe places for them under the mosque under the hospital under the school that's our challenge and jonathan another challenge that's facing the country at the moment is the mix between politics and the military they're supposed to be two separate entities but evidently in an area like israel where the country is so politicized the two seem to overlap just yesterday the the far right leader of benjamin sanny's coalition it's about being very slammed israel saying that we should not be giving continuous aid to the gaza strip that can be confiscated by hamas until we get the release of hostages at the end of the day where is the disconnect between the politics that are ultimately leading the military decisions always the military guiding the politics here i'm i'm i'm afraid it's the first one i'm afraid it's the politics leading the the military i'm afraid that there are too many political considerations walking into anything there's a very big headline today in one of the biggest israeli dailies the very bad relations between etanyao prime minister etanyao and defense minister yuv galant and the bad relations of bad blood between prime minister etanyao and and the the army officials are preventing the army from from eventually making decisions and making decision making a very difficult and israel was so politicized and in such a wide divide before this began that the politics are infiltrating into everything there's a very big distrust among the wide parts of the population with this government with a prime minister and it's infiltrating into into everything and it seems as if many people are already thinking about the the the investigative committee that we all know will be created once the war is over which will investigate everything that led to this fiasco of october 7th and many of them it seems are already making their considerations thinking about that as well are the military considerations the only one being being put on the table i'm afraid not mary we spoke earlier that there was a poll by the israel victory project which said that 70 percent of israelis being the majority want eliminating hamas to be the so gaza objective our politicians have changed the rhetoric this time around with regards to gaza saying not that we're going to deal a decisive blow that we are going to wipe hamas off the face of this earth is there an alternative option here or is that what not only israel is seeking but it actually needs for its survival that isn't it the sort of question that we need to ask right now the people the tens of thousands of people who have been dislocated from their homes from sderota city netivot that's attacked let alone the kibbutzim and moshevim established in the 1940s and 1950s on israel's border next to the gaza strip why am i posing it in that way would you about you i want to go right now move back to your home that is 800 meters from the gaza strip when you know that in it hamas still have capabilities now i pose it as a question i don't have an exclamation mark the price at the end both with the hostages with what it does to israel can we live with an entity with the atrocity brutal terror organization that rules over the gaza strip and right now is trying to change the narrative worldwide to the degree of of denying everything that they did on october 7 if you don't destroy that if you don't show that you cannot do an attack like that in the way that it was done it's really hard to tell people to go back home afterwards to live next door so these are the dilemmas on the table i'm not making it any easier and i agree that the the the sense i say is an israeli citizen that it isn't that there's harmony and trust inside the decision making circles right now does not make me as an israeli citizen feel any better having said that they have a really challenging decisions absolutely and i completely agree with you that living 800 meters away from an enemy that wants nothing more than to murder you is just unacceptable to to put it very bluntly but the question is everyone keeps mentioning the day after so assuming that hamas does get completely eradicated in the gaza strip which is the operational goal of the military as well as israeli politicians and many have said that perhaps we replace it with the palestinian authority we still have a head of the palestinian authority that has not condemned the atrocities that happened on october 7th and all the follow-out from that but also continues to voice anti-semitism amongst jews and anti-zionism against israelis in in the region you know bacha nobody really liked the palestinian authority president before i'm more angry in that sense the king of dala lovely king of dala the second of jordan queen rina who has amazing following in the world has also not condemned hamas's attack so i could go in and around right now all the different countries that we have better relationships with that we have strong important connections with if it's egypt or jordan or the emirates you know you could go around and say none of them have actually come out maybe perhaps aside from the emirates and really condemned the hamas attack i'm not saying this is a complicated world to me this is part of the achievements of hamas right now hamas as a terror organization has implemented a very clear cut media campaign which is attack and say how wonderful we're doing and then send out our leaders and come on board and that is something that threatens all of the countries around and the palestinian authority and now we're at the third stage they're into denial they are into it in the worst Holocaust denial way they are erasing the content and saying it never happened so when you say palestinian authority in the day after i'm still within it i'm still worried about what's going to happen tomorrow morning and next week i can't even think of what's going to be in the Gaza Strip in the months to come i'm iris stay with us i want to switch now to a different angle the prospect of a prolonged israel hamas war is already adding economic havoc onto the human toll oil prices are falling and have been bouncing around since the war began asian shares are lower jobs in the region have stalled the high tech industry here in israel is seeing a slight fallout with the shackles slumping toward the u.s. dollar a widening conflict would test israel's economic resilience while worsening an already bleak outlook for the palestinian economy and joining me on this topic i want to go now to ithica in greece where i am joined by dr alex koman an economy expert at televiv university dr alex koman thank you so very much for being with me here this morning if we can try and sum up how in general economies are impacted by war and why this is being brought to the fore such a serious issue well we see a direct damage that's the damage when you think about like we've seen the catastrophe in the south where you see whole cities or villages being burned and destroyed so this is the visible damage then you have the damage of paralyzed economy and we see an economy which is to a large extent which to a large extent resembles the covid pandemic in the sense that people do not do not go out they do not celebrate they do not have weddings so so a whole part of the economy is paralyzed we're talking about 200 to 300 000 people who are mobilized so they do not go to work this is particularly visible in the high-tech sector which is the locomotive of israel's economy so a significant proportion of high-tech workers are now in the military and so they do not do their their daily jobs and you can also see the long-term damages in the sense of small businesses israel unfortunately does not recognize the significance of the small business and as a result these businesses are really devastated 67 percent of them are frozen a third of small business owners say they give the government a rating of zero in terms of treating them so this is the the general view of the the impact of war on the economy and how are speaking internally with regards to israel funds being redistributed in order to aid the war effort as we've been speaking about we have 200 000 people that are having to evacuate their homes needing to go to hotels which evidently need to be state funded obviously there's also the upgrading of bomb shelters in the north and the south how do all these funds get redistributed and where does it get taken from in terms of israel's economy well first of all the problem is that israel's leadership i mean you cannot use the word leadership in the sense that the government consists of individuals who disagree with each other and you are not competent in particular if you think about the minister of finance smotridge who not only does not understand economics but his goals are completely different from what we want the good news about that is that the original budget was very very focused on helping religious religious communities who are not contributing to the economy so if i try to see something bright light at the end of the tunnel is that apparently or hopefully or if there is a god the money would not go to this sector and would be redirected to the war to recovering to the people who suffered tremendously due to the current attack and people who will continue suffering and i hope that if the government is actually disciplined enough which i'm sceptic about they would redirect the funds from from this population from this sector into into recovering into winning the war and recovering from it and doctor just finally i by no means mean to be equating what's happening at the moment between israel and khamas to what's occurring between ukraine and russia evidently this is not a territorial conflict but we have seen the economies on that side of the world seem to almost stabilize a little bit with regards to how long war goes on are we looking at at some kind of and i say it like very lightly but optimism with regards to the economy that it will drop in times of war but at some point will stabilize well the analogy is is a little tricky because when you think about russia much of the russian economy is is it is not high tech it's particularly oil natural resources and oil luckily the prices went up so this this to a significant extent offset the fact the impact of the war they actually europe was so dependent that they could raise prices so basically russia came out rather unheard by the war in israel this is not the situation the situation is that tourism which is a significant component of the israel economy is completely devastated and i'm afraid that the damage is not in the just in the short term it's going to be a longer term damage i i hope that the high tech industry would recover quickly um and one one thing that would offset is the weapons industry which which uh which will thrive uh unfortunately in the near future dr alex koeman an economy expert at tell aviv university joining me from greece i want to thank you so very much for being with me and i also want to thank from ramata sharon in central israel retired colonel miri eisen the former head of id of combat intelligence and the former advisor to prime minister erud omert as we've been discussing obviously a large issue um different angles different complexities with regards to war and in particular in a small nation at the moment and so what i want to say to our viewers just wrapping up again it's been 13 hours of quiet necessarily on the gaza border no rockets have been fired over from khamas into israel and on the northern border it's been quiet since yesterday evening being sunday evening both correspondents in those areas have been giving us updates all throughout the day and no doubt we'll be touching base with him in just a little bit but for the meantime for anything you've missed make sure to check out our website at i24news.tv we'll be right back over 1300 people murdered and more than 3000 injured and the war with khamas continues we bring you first-hand testimonies from the front lines from those who survived and all the records of the atrocities by hamas follow us as israel fights terror from the south and north get the inside scoop on what's going on only on i24news or this is a very active scene and we need to get in the car as we're talking more than a hundred soldiers and civilians have been kidnapped we just don't know anything entire families including babies and children and elderly were butchered in their beds awaken the giant and we are ready and we are strong everyone is showing up this is the unity playing and breaking news coverage on i24news i'm basi 11th all thanks for joining me it is day 17 of war here in israel the idf launched overnight strikes on hamas targets in the gaza strip killing senior members of the terror group as well continuing air campaign against hamas also comes amid an attack on israeli troops on sunday operating in the enclave which saw one soldier killed and three others wounded the operation is part of the military searches for bodies of missing israelis and to clear the area of israel's upcoming ground offensive the idf has just released updated figures on the hostages after notifying their families the number of confirmed captives held in the gaza strip by hamas is now 222 meanwhile the exchange of fire on the northern border with lebanon continues to heat up the israel defense forces says it again targeted a cell of hezbollah terrorists in southern lebanon attacked its military infrastructure and destroyed an anti-tank missile launcher israeli media estimates that the number of hezbollah operatives killed thus far is over 30 including field commanders let's cross now live to our correspondent mary mccauliffe who is standing by for us in northern israel mary it's been quiet on both the southern and northern france but i'm afraid that i'm jinxing it by saying that because in the last couple of days we have had quiet in the morning and then the skirmishers break out throughout the rest of the day absolutely but just here in the north it was actually quite volatile yesterday morning there were a number of different cross border attacks and those really continued throughout the day yesterday evening the idf as you mentioned launching a number of different attacks into southern lebanese territory striking what they say are tear cells that were trying to launch anti-tank missiles into israeli territory targeting both communities but also civilian troops who are stationed on the border here in this area so far we haven't had any sirens ring out in northern communities actually it's been almost 24 hours now since sirens did ring out here but we're here standing outside the z medical center in spots in northern israel it's one of the closest hospitals to the northern border and they're very much on war footing here in preparations for war footing they've reduced the capacity of the hospital for non-emergency cases prioritizing emergency cases that they may begin to see coming into this hospital in addition to moving all of those hospital beds and all the patients who are currently here for long term into bunkers underneath the hospital so that they can be protected from shelters we spoke to one of the directors here at the hospital who said this hospital has been targeted before in 2006 and since then they have been preparing for the eventuality that that could happen again and they are taking every step they can to try and prepare and take care of the patients who are stationed here and for those they do foresee might be coming as these border clashes continue right obviously very concerning for hospitals like as you mentioned that are not used to coming under the line of fire like in the south and on the very northern borders our correspondent Mary McCall of giving us an update there from the country's north and joining me now from Morien in central israel is Xenia Svetlova a senior non-resident fellow at the atlantic council good morning to you and thank you very much for being with us here on this breaking news edition Iranian foreign minister is speaking with the heads of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic jihad to stop Israel's quote crimes in Gaza really this is the conversation that's happening at the moment well we don't expect much of Iran but I have to tell you that the line is being crafted very very carefully of course they denounce everything that Israel does they oblivious to what Hamas does to their own people to the Palestinians let alone the Israelis but through all this time and now it's more than two weeks Iran makes sure to also distance itself from the planning of the attack from the execution of the attack and also from direct involvement in the war between Hamas and Israel it also of course you know concerns everything that's happening in the north they're also this ballot takes responsibility it seems responsibility from time to time on a shelling Israeli northern border but at the same time it also uses Hamas as its proxy to take responsibility Hamas in Lebanon to take responsibility for at least some of these launches right but as we've been mentioning quite a lot on the channel both the united states israeli politicians and even politicians in europe are claiming right out that Iran is behind the attacks that are happening on both the south and the northern border so surely the iranian foreign minister meeting with both Hamas the palestinian islamic jihad and potentially in phone calls to lebanon to hezbollah does imply by de facto of having this connection some connection to what's happening at the moment well i think that everybody who follows the iranian and connection with Hamas of course with islamic jihad which was basically created by iran and by its military establishment Hamas was not it was not created by iran its origins are very different but of course in the last few years the relations between the organizations are growing and of course the funding grows as well and we know we know also that before the murderers attack on israeli civilians uh on september the on october the seventh uh the leaders of iran and islamic jihad visited uh iran and they also met with iranian officials hisbala leaders uh vile and lebanon so you know for me the you know the iranian uh uh the iranian control the iranian support the iranian perhaps helped with designing you know these attacks i think it's quite evident and we do hear voices in iran they are not official voices but yeah but they're coming from the press they're coming from the you know retired generals and so on who indicate you know one of them said just yesterday that uh we train the militants of kamas this is called he calls them we call them host terrorists as they deserve uh we train them for four years for four years so what does it mean that in these years uh iran was actively involved with preparing for this mega attack and i think that you know while time will pass we will know through the intelligence hopefully more and more details about how iran was uh directly involved in planning the israeli civilians it would not be of course the first time and this is what the this is what this country does best it fails miserably in running the lives of ordinary iranians and it kills them as well just as we speak you know we have a lot of executions we have a lot of arrests of the protesters against the iranian regime in iran everybody's silent about it take notice how what is happening in gaza has completely eradicated every memory of you know the atrocities that are happening in iran that russia is founding idlib in north eastern syria and also bombs their hospitals and also kills their civilians of who of course did not provoke a russia at all they are not in war with russia and they did not attack russia so everything all of this just disappeared completely so we have two different levels we have the officials in european countries in the u.s. who understand very well uh you know what is the nature of iranian support to hamas and islamic jihad and isballah and you know they of course know that there was a direct involvement and you have the media uh that is for now absolutely oblivious about the malign role of iran whose goal is to destabilize this whole region not only israel and gaza but also of course the wider circles and we heard like yesterday ismail hania the leader of hamas who resides in qatar right now called for jordanians to go and protest basically essentially also against you know the government policies and so on and eventually the goal is maybe to over from the jordanian regime you know so again we are looking at this wide wide circles of you know affected countries regimes and so on and we understand you know that the beneficiary here is of course iran that always aimed to not only to hurt israel but through israel and it's a conflict with the pristinians of course to harm and destabilize the arab governments this is the danger i think they begin to understand it and this is what we heard over the last few days at least from the south is uh and hopefully we'll hear also from the rest understand that this is the iranian uh iranian proxy this is the iranian arm uh they are not representing the pristinians pristinians have represented him this is the plo this is the government of makul abbas it's evidently hard to deny both the complicity and the involvement of the iranians in what's currently happening at the moment between israel and its southern border being gaza and shelling hamas but i want to ask you you touched on it briefly how russia is involved here we know that the russian foreign minister surgey lavrov is set to be in terran in the capital of iran today russia is involved in its own war in ukraine and no doubts there will be a discussion about shoring up more support from the iranians including weapons we know that russia has been using iranian weapons namely armed drones in ukrainian territory but how does this politics and and the geopolitics around what's currently happening between israel and hamas impacts russia evidently we are seeing a decline in russian-israeli relations but is there something wider to it well first of all to your last point for now i did not see any decline unfortunately in russian-israeli relation i did not see that following the horrific statements that were made by president putin who compared between the blockade of leningrad during the second world war and that killed million and a half people and between what is happening right now in gaza stream so i didn't hear i didn't see that you know the ambassador was summoned by the minister of foreign affairs again you know that there was some kind of reaction even to that you know on behalf of the ministry on behalf of the prime minister's office and so on so for now israel is just taking it and ignoring or you know when making itself quiet but the geopolitics of this is of course very important because russia was the first country to say that all of the accusations against iran they are nonsense this is what we heard from the russian ministry of foreign affairs that are said by this you know very words this is nonsense and this is also a conspiracy against iran so if you know prior to the war against ukraine the russians tried to distance themselves from the iranians they felt uncomfortable you know because this country was a pariah now russia became a pariah itself it has not much to lose and iran is of course essential to the continuation of its war in in ukraine so therefore you know they stand firmly on the side of the iran and this is of course you know if you're looking from israel then this is just the opposite side from where we are with the us with the european countries and so on and of course against hamas and let alone you know the deputy minister of foreign affairs michael bakdanov said it was just a few days after the massacre we didn't even have a chance to bury our dead in fact many of them are still not identified and are not buried and he said well we are not a girl about about to cut our relations with the hamas distant relations but i continue from 2006 since hamas won the parliamentary elections in palestinian autonomy so instead of saying you know this is you know because of what happened and russian citizens died more than 20 and some were kidnapped as well we are cutting you know sharply our relations with this murderous organization and we will also add them to the list of terror organizations russia that understands that well israel is an ally of the united states they do not have much to gain here and therefore you know they reach out to the the part of the air world that supports hamas of course to the iranian allies and that they try to pretend that they are defenders of the palestinians although they did absolutely nothing to really promote you know the peace accords the negotiations they did not provide humanitarian aid to palestinians they also do not provide it now okay so this is something that you know it's we see a lot of hypocrisy we see a lot of attempts to uh give in gaza it means that we have also the the the you know the right to do the same and just burn the ukraine all together you know let alone of course israel doesn't burn gaza ksenia svetlova senior non-resident fellow at the atlantic council who joined me from moody in in central israel thank you so very much for your time as well as your analysis now earlier we mentioned that there has been an update from the idf the number of those israelis inside the gaza strip being held captive by hamas has risen to 222 earlier rea admiral dangle hagari gave a statement addressing the latest figures 222 hostages this number is getting updated according to our intelligence gathering but it also stems from the fact that there are quite a few foreign citizens among them that it took us time to classify them and understand who these foreign citizens are this is part of the reason for the increase in the number i have just announced this is the number the families of 222 abductees have been updated we are in contact with all the families of the missing through the idf officers who accompany them each family personally and closely we continue and will continue to act in all possible ways all possible ways in order to return the captives home safely let's go now live to our correspondent pia klushendler who is standing by for us in the south of israel pia on friday as we said in the studio and also across to you we may mention of the fact that there were 203 captives that we knew being held in the Gaza Strip by ramaz obviously with the release of two american-israeli citizens that number went down to 201 but this is striking that every day that number seems to increase and we're now sitting at 222 absolutely and yesterday the number was 212 these stems like uh rea admiral daniel agari the idf spokesperson said from the fact that they need to cross the information especially when there are foreigners amongst the abductees but there is also another problem first of all not all of them are in the hands of hamas some are in the hands of palestinian islamic jihad at the onset of the war declared by hamas palestinian islamic jihad spoke about 30 kidnapped israelis the other problem stems from the fact that civilians who came as a third wave on october 7 palestinian civilians from the Gaza Strip abducted also israeli citizens and others and these are in the hands probably of families of clans and there could be a trade-off between hamas and those clans for money or for other things so that creates a problem because at least three different factors are holding these hostages now another thing that daniel agari mentioned was the confirmed number of humanitarian trucks which crossed the rafa border crossing between egypt and the gaza strip into the gaza strip with food water and medicine only he says there are 14 such trucks today i think yesterday the number was 20 trucks or the day before yesterday and now it's 17 but according to us president joe biden israel and the united states have agreed on a continuous flow of such humanitarian aid another element which was stressed by rhea admiral agari is the fact that this evening amongst the 320 air attacks on hamas and palestinian islamic jihad targets throughout the 24 past hours there was a tunnel in which we're hiding terrorists who was the tunnel was annally hated and the assumption of the israeli army is that those terrorists hiding in the tunnel were preparing to repel any sign of ground offensive now pier it's been some 14 hours of calm and quiet there in the south but we know a volatile region that can erupts at any moment with rockets being fired from hamas or palestinian islamic jihad in the gaza strip into israel and there's a fortune of unprecedented events that are happening with regards to this war between israel and hamas one of which being the amounts of haridim those in the ultra orthodox community that are being drafted as volunteers into the army i'll remind our viewers just a few weeks ago before this war broke out we were reporting on the fact that members in the coalition were pushing a draft bill and now we're seeing an unprecedented situation where the ultra orthodox are no longer quote-unquote draft dodging but actually volunteering to serve knowing that the situation where you are pier can erupt at any moment absolutely there was a draft law which would allow the kharidi communities not to serve in the israeli army that has changed not because there's been a decision amongst the coalition partners especially the kharidi parties but simply because many kharidis have decided to voluntarily join the israeli army we are talking about a hundred to two hundred and the israeli army has been so surprised by this wave of support and volunteering by the kharidi community that they're not even sure that they can absorb such numbers and these are not big numbers per se but it shows in a sense that the kharidi community feels very much affected by the massacres of october 7 many of them by the way are working and today the economy is in a very strong slowdown so as a result also some of them some professionals have decided to be volunteer in the israeli army for the time to come as long as it needs most of them stress correspondent pier clash and low reporting for us in the south of israel thank you very much for that and on to a different angle thousands of pro-palestinian demonstrators have gathered in major capitals around the world demanding a ceasefire and relief for the people in Gaza while also strongly condemning israel at the same time thousands of people have also joined vigil since cities like berlin london and elsewhere over the weekend to oppose anti-semitism support israel and demand the release of hostages held by Hamas and other terror groups in the Gaza Strip i'm sure they do everything in their power to get back the people taken kidnapped but at the end of the day they they have to deal with Hamas they have to it can never ever ever happen again my family win the holocaust and my grandmother died in Auschwitz we said never again it's kind of never we can never let it happen again we're asking for everybody around the world sorry hoots foreign ministers from the 30 countries where their hostages to scream let in the medical care we've talked to doctors the doctors have said if he gets the treatment that he needs he has a decent chance if he still hasn't gotten it it's a dire situation he needs surgery he needs antibiotics intensive antibiotics and we're screaming to anybody who will listen let in the medical care and bring all 200 of these people home to their families i am here as a muslim and as a human being and i stand in solidarity against anti-semitism in germany it is terrible what has happened in the last few weeks and also before that and i stand together with my friends here against anti-semitism and because of his background so we are from different backgrounds but we are still friends and i hope this can be a role model for other people as well and here in studio to discuss this with me in more detail is our correspondent nicole zedek nicole thank you for being here with me this morning um as the media perhaps magnify is the wrong word but we tend to shine a light on the majority of these protests not just us but other media outlets as well and and what it does is it almost brings them to the very fore where a lot of people living in these cities don't particularly feel them but a hundred thousand people showing up in london is not a small protest and it's hard to imagine that people there don't feel the amount of anti-semitism and anti-zionist rhetoric we're hearing exactly batia from many of these people specifically in london and some of these major cities where as you said nearly 100 000 people took to the streets not just chanting about stop the bombing but also free palestine from the river to the sea let palestine be free that in itself means the destruction of israel correct so while they're chanting these very anti-israel sentiments many jewish people are left feeling terrified we're hearing stories about jewish people hiding their Judaism not wearing any migendavid stars you're hearing from different jewish schools saying be careful letting your children come to school today so many people right now almost feel safer to be in israel as we are in a state of war an active state of war than they do to feel abroad in some of these countries because you're seeing just this increase in anti-semitism anti-israel anti jewish sentiments that are being portrayed not it's not just these pro-palestinian organizations also might i add that are that are spearheading these these protests we also saw in london someone as simple as a metro conductor a train conductor chanting through his speaker phones chanting free palestine and the whole train the the metro car erupts in applause can you imagine being on that train as you hear that i know myself personally on that train and so the fact that anyone who doesn't agree it seems like they are the silent minority uh so we have seen in london now a display of pro-israel protests about 20 000 people taking to that as well not only voicing almost a vigil as you said there we heard uh the mourner scottish a hebrew prayer for all the lives that were lost and also a major demonstration calls for the government to do everything they can to get those now 222 at least hostages that remain in the hands of hamas now even though this protest was significantly smaller than the pro-palestinian protests in london i want to note just the difference scene that you see london was the best example because we had 20 000 people 100 000 people when you look at these images of the pro-israel protest it's people coming together it's people singing people singing a prayer for the lives lost the innocent lives lost there's no calls for the destruction of gaza there's no calls for anyone to to get back and any of the even the hamas terrorists it's really more of just people coming together versus when you look at these pro-palestinian protests in in london they were violent clashes there were people waving the al-qaeda flag there are people waving the isis flag so it's not just the palestinian flag as well you're seeing very different rhetoric when it comes to this one side of the protest is is saying we're just standing with israel after such a horrific attack on our country on october 7 versus the other side is saying in a sense we want to continue to see these attacks because because it's what you're doing right now stop bombing gaza let is let gaza be free let palestine be free that ultimately leads to the destruction of israel and just briefly in the last minute of the broadcast that we have left we were speaking just before coming into studio about the rhetoric that seems to be changing in the u.s. with the largely liberal and progressive jewish population that tends to lean democrat and support that sort of narrative feeling very alone and isolated at the moment many of these liberal jews democratic jews who have been fighting for minority rights in the united states they were some of the spear heading protesters for blm black lives matters for immigrants for lgbtq plus rights well now that they're my the minority and that they're staging some of these protests throughout the united states they're finding it's just them none of the people that they have supported over the past countless years and they've been vocal advocates for no one is advocating for them there now so so many of the american jews the the liberal jews they're feeling very abandoned by the same people in their party that they have supported for countless years so this this rhetoric it is very concerning for so many people and they feel very alone right now perhaps also a rude awakening is to exactly who stands with them and who doesn't correspond and he calls it a thank you for that we'll have more updates at the top of the hour stay with us 1300 people murdered and more than 3000 injured and the war with hamas continues we bring you firsthand testimonies from the front lines from those who survived and all the records of the atrocities by hamas follow us as israel fights terror from the south and north get the inside scoop on what's going on only on i24 news and breaking news coverage on i24 news and basia 11th all thanks for joining me it is day 17 of war here in israel the idf launched overnight strikes on hamas targets in the guards the strip killing senior members of the terror group as well continuing a campaign against hamas also comes amid an attack on israeli troops on sunday operating in the enclave which saw one soldier killed and three others wounded the operation is part of the military searches for bodies of missing israelis and to clear the area of israel's upcoming ground offensive the idf has just released updated figures on the hostages after notifying their families the number of confirmed captives held in the guards is stripped by hamas is now 222 meanwhile the exchange of fire on the northern border with lebanon continues to heat up the israel defense forces says it again targeted a cell of hezbollah terrorists in southern lebanon attacked its military infrastructure and destroyed an anti-tank missile launcher israeli media estimates that the number of hezbollah operators killed thus far is over 13 including field commanders let's cross now live to our correspondent mary macaulah who is standing by for us in northern israel mary it's been quiet on both the southern and northern fronts but i'm afraid that i'm jinxing it by saying that because in the last couple of days we have had quiet in the morning and then the skirmishers break out throughout the rest of the day absolutely but just here in the north it was actually quite volatile yesterday morning there were a number of different cross-border attacks and those really continued throughout the day yesterday evening the idf as you mentioned launching a number of different attacks into southern lebanese territory striking what they say are terror cells that were trying to launch anti-tank missiles into israeli territory targeting both communities but also civilian troops who are stationed on the border here in this area so far we haven't had any sirens ring out in northern communities actually it's been almost 24 hours now since sirens did ring out here but we're here standing outside the z medical center in spots in northern israel it's one of the closest hospitals to the northern border and they're very much on war footing here in preparations for war footing they've reduced the capacity of the hospital for non-emergency cases prioritizing emergency cases that they may begin to see coming into this hospital in addition to moving all of those hospital beds and all the patients who are currently here for long term into bunkers underneath the hospital so that they can be protected from shelter as we spoke to one of the directors here at the hospital said this hospital has been targeted before in 2006 and since then they have been preparing for the eventuality that that could happen again and they are taking every step they can to try and prepare and take care of the patients who are stationed here and for those they do foresee might be coming as these border clashes continue right obviously very concerning for hospitals like ziv as you mentioned that are not used to coming under the line of fire like in the south and on the very northern borders our correspondent mary mccall of giving us an update there from the country's north and joining me now from woody in in central israel is ksenia svetlova a senior non-resident fellow at the atlantic council good morning to you and thank you very much for being with us here on this breaking news edition um iranian foreign minister is speaking with the heads of hamas and the palestinian islamic jihad to stop israel's quote crimes in gaza really this is the conversation that's happening at the moment well we don't expect much of iran but i have to tell you that the line is being crafted very very carefully of course they denounce everything that israel does they are oblivious to what hamas does to their own people to the palestinians let alone the israelis but through all this time and now it's more than two weeks iran makes sure to also distance itself from the planning of the attack from the execution of the attack and also from direct involvement in the war between hamas and israel it also of course you know concerns everything that's happening in the north there also is valid takes responsibility it seems responsibility from time to time on the shelling israeli northern border uh but at the same time it also uses hamas as its proxy to take responsibility hamas in lebanon to take responsibility for at least some of these lounges right but as we've been mentioning quite a lot on the channel both the united states israeli politicians and even politicians in europe are claiming right out that iran is behind the attacks that are happening on both the south and the northern border so surely the iranian foreign minister meeting with both hamas the palestinian islamic jihad and potentially in phone calls to lebanon to hezbollah does imply by de facto of having this connection some connection to what's happening at the moment well i think that everybody who follows the iranian and uh connection with hamas of course with islamic jihad which was basically created uh by uh iran and by its military establishment uh hamas was not uh it was not created by iran uh its origins are very different but of course in the last few years the relations between the organizations are growing uh and of course the funding grows as well and we know we know also that before the murderous attack on israeli civilians uh on september there on october the seventh uh the leaders of iran and islamic jihad visited uh iran and they also met with iranian officials his bala leaders uh vile and lebanon so you know for me they you know the iranian uh uh the iranian control the iranian support the iranian perhaps helped with designing you know these attacks i think it's quite evident and we do hear voices in iran they are not official voices but yeah but they're coming from the press they're coming from the you know retired generals and so on who indicate you know one of them said just yesterday that uh we train the militants of kamas this is how he calls them we call them of course terrorists as they deserve uh we train them for four years for four years so what does it mean that in these years uh kamas iran was actively involved with preparing for this mega attack uh and i think that you know while time will pass we will know through the intelligence hopefully more and more details about how iran was uh directly involved uh in planning the israeli civilians it would not be of course the first time this is what they're gonna this is what this country does uh best uh it fails miserably in running uh the lives of ordinary iranians and it kills them as well just as we speak you know we have a lot of uh executions we have a lot of uh arrests of the protesters against the the iranian regime in iran everybody silent about it take notice how uh what is happening in gaza has completely erraticated every memory of you know the atrocities that are happening in iran that russia is pounding idlib uh in northeastern syria and also bombs their hospitals and also kills their civilians of who of course did not provoke a russia at all they are not in war with russia and they did not attack russia so everything all of this just disappeared completely so we have two different levels we have the officials in european countries in the u.s who understand very well uh you know what is the nature of iranian support to hamas and islamic jihad and ispala and you know they of course know that there was a direct involvement and you have the media that is for now absolutely oblivious about the malign role of iran whose goal is to destabilize this whole region not only israel and gaza but also of course the wider circles and we heard like yesterday ismail hania the leader of hamas who resides in katar right now called for jordanians to go and protest basically essentially also against you know the government policies uh and so on and eventually the goal is maybe to over throne uh the jordanian regime you know so uh again we're looking at this wide wide circles of uh you know affected countries regimes and so on and we understand you know that the beneficiary here is of course iran that always aimed to not only to hurt israel but through israel and it's a conflict with the Palestinians of course to harm and destabilize the Arab governments this is the danger i think they begin to understand it and this is what we heard over the last few days at least from the Saudis uh and hopefully we'll hear also from the rest understand that this is the iranian iranian proxy this is the iranian arm uh they are not representing the Palestinians Palestinians have represented him this is the PLO this is the government of makul abbas it's evidently hard to deny both the complicity and the involvement of the iranians in what's currently happening at the moment between israel and its southern border being gaza and shelling but i want to ask you you touched on it briefly how russia is involved here we know that the russian foreign minister sir gay lavrov is set to be in terran in the capital of iran today russia is involved in its own war in ukraine and no doubts there will be a discussion about shoring up more support from the iranians including weapons we know that russia has been using iranian weapons namely armed drones in ukrainian territory but how does this politics and the geopolitics around what's currently happening between israel and hamas impact russia evidently we are seeing a decline in russian-israeli relations but is there something wider to it well first of all to your last point for now i did not see any decline unfortunately in russian-israeli relation i did not see that following the horrific statements that were made by president putin who compared between the blockade of leningrad during the second world war and that killed million and a half people and between what is happening right now in gaza stream so i didn't hear i didn't see that you know the ambassador was summoned by the minister of foreign affairs again you know that there was some kind of reaction even to that you know on behalf of the ministry on behalf of the prime minister's office and so on so for now israel is just taking it and ignoring or you know when making itself quiet but the geopolitics of this is of course very important because russia was the first country to say that uh all of the accusations against iran uh they are nonsense this is what we heard from the russian ministry of calling your bears uh that are said by this uh you know very words uh this is nonsense uh and this is also a conspiracy against iran uh so if um you know prior to the war against ukraine the russians tried to distance themselves from the iranians they felt uncomfortable you know because this country was a pariah now russia became a pariah itself it has not much to lose and iran is of course essential to the continuation of its war uh in uh in ukraine uh so therefore you know they stand firmly uh on the side of the iran and this is of course you know if you're looking from israel then this is just the opposite side uh from where we are uh with the us with the european countries uh and so on and of course against hamas and uh let alone you know the um deputy minister of foreign affairs michael bakdanov said it was just a few days after the massacre we didn't even have a chance to bury our dead in fact many of them are still not identified and are not buried and he said well uh we are not about about to cut our relations with the hamas distant relations uh but here continue from 2006 uh since hamas won the parliamentary elections in paristinal autonomy so instead of saying you know this is you know because of what happened and russian citizens died more than 20 and some were kidnapped as well uh we are cutting you know sharply our relations with this murderous organization and we will also add them to the list of terror organizations uh russia uh that understands that well israel is an ally of the united states uh they do not have much to gain here uh and therefore you know they reach out to the the part of the air world that supports hamas of course to the iranian allies uh and they try to pretend that they are defenders of the palestinians although they did absolutely nothing to really promote you know the peace accords uh the negotiations uh they did not provide humanitarian aid to palestinians they also do not provide it now okay so this is something that uh you know it's we see a lot of hypocrisy we see a lot of attempts uh to uh give in gaza it means that we have also the the the you know the right to do the same and just burn ukraine all together you know let alone of course israel doesn't burn gaza xanea svetlova senior non-resident fellow at the atlantic council who joined me from modi in central israel thank you so very much for your time as well as your analysis now earlier we mentioned that there has been an update from the idf the number of those israelis inside the gaza strip being held captive by hamas has risen to 222 earlier rhea admiral dangle hagari gave a statement addressing the latest figures 222 hostages this number is getting updated according to our intelligence gathering but it also stems from the fact that there are quite a few foreign citizens among them that it took us time to classify them and understand who these foreign citizens are this is part of the reason for the increase in the number i have just announced this is the number the families of 222 abductees have been updated we are in contact with all the families of the missing through the idf officers who accompany them each family personally and closely we continue and will continue to act in all possible ways all possible ways in order to return the captives home safely let's go now live to our correspondent pia klushendler who is standing by for us in the south of israel appear on friday as we said in the studio and also across to you we may mention of the fact that there were 203 captives that we knew being held in the Gaza Strip by hamas obviously with the release of two american israeli citizens that number went down to 201 but this is striking that every day that number seems to increase and we're now sitting at 222 absolutely and yesterday the number was 212 this stands like rhea admiral daniel agari the idf spokesperson said from the fact that they need to cross the information especially when there are foreigners amongst the abductees but there is also another problem first of all not all of them are in the hands of hamas some are in the hands of palestinian islamic jihad at the onset of the war declared by hamas palestinian islamic jihad spoke about 30 kidnapped israelis the other problem stems from the fact that civilians who came as a third wave on october 7 palestinian civilians from the Gaza Strip abducted also israeli citizens and others and these are in the hands probably of families of clans and there could be a trade off between hamas and those clans for money or for other things so that creates a problem because at least three different factors are holding these hostages now another thing that daniel agari mentioned was the confirmed number of humanitarian trucks which crossed the rafa border crossing between egypt and the gaza strip into the gaza strip with food water and medicine only he says there 14 such trucks today i think yesterday the number was 20 trucks or the day before yesterday now it's 17 but according to u.s. president joe biden israel and the united states have agreed on a continuous flow of such humanitarian aid another element which was stressed by rhea admiral agari is the fact that this evening amongst the 320 air tax on hamas and palestinian islamic jihad targets throughout the 24 past hours there was a tunnel in which we're hiding terrorists who was the tunnel was annually hated and the assumption of the israeli armies that those terrorists siding in the tunnel we're preparing to repel any sign of ground offensive now pier it's been some 14 hours of calm and quiet there in the south but we know a volatile region that can erupts at any moment with rockets being fired from hamas or palestinian islamic jihad in the gaza strip into israel and there's a fortune of unprecedented events that are happening with regards to this war between israel and hamas one of which being the amount of haridim those in the ultra-orthodox community that are being drafted as volunteers into the army i'll remind our viewers just a few weeks ago before this war broke out we were reporting on the fact that members in the coalition were pushing a draft bill and now we're seeing an unprecedented situation where the ultra-orthodox are no longer quote on quote draft dodging but actually volunteering to serve knowing that the situation where you are pier can erupt at any moment absolutely there was a draft law which would allow the haridi communities not to serve in the israeli army that has changed not because there's been a decision amongst the coalition partners especially the haridi parties but simply because many haridis have decided to voluntarily join the israeli army we are talking about a hundred to two hundred and the israeli army has been so surprised by this wave of support and and volunteering by the haridi community that they're not even sure that they can absorb such numbers and these are not big numbers per se but it shows in a sense that the haridi community feels very much affected by the massacres of october 7 many of them by the way are working and today the economy is in a very strong slowdown so as a result also some of them some professional have decided to be volunteer in the israeli army for the time to come as long as it needs most of them stress correspondent pier clash and low reporting for us in the south of israel thank you very much for that and onto a different angle thousands of pro-palestinian demonstrators have gathered in major capitals around the world demanding a ceasefire and relief for the people in gaza while also strongly condemning israel at the same time thousands people have also joined vigil since cities like berlin london and elsewhere over the weekend to oppose anti-semitism support israel and demand the release of hostages held by chamas and other terror groups in the gaza strip i'm sure they do everything in their power to get back the people taken kidnapped but at the end of the day they have to deal with chamas they have to it can never ever ever happen again my family win the holocaust and my grandmother died in our swiss we said never again it's kind of never we can never let it happen again we're asking for everybody around the world sorry hoots foreign ministers from the 30 countries where there are hostages to scream let in the medical care we've talked to doctors the doctors have said if he gets the treatment that he needs he has a decent chance if he still hasn't gotten it it's a dire situation he needs surgery he needs antibiotics intensive antibiotics and we're screaming to anybody who will listen let in the medical care and bring all 200 of these people home to their families i am here as a muslim and as a human being and i stand in solidarity against anti-semitism in germany it is terrible what has happened in the last few weeks and also before that and i stand together with my friends here against anti-semitism and because of his background so we are from different backgrounds but we are still friends and i hope this can be a role model for other people as well and here in studio to discuss this with me and more details i'll correspond it nicole zedek nicole thank you for being here with me this morning um as the media perhaps magnify is the wrong word but we tend to shine a lights on the majority of these protests not just us but other media outlets as well and what it does is it almost brings them to the very fore where a lot of people living in these cities don't particularly feel them but a hundred thousand people showing up in london is not a small protest and it's hard to imagine that people there don't feel the amount of anti-semitism and anti-zionist we're hearing exactly batia from many of these people specifically in london and some of these major cities where as you said nearly 100 000 people took to the streets not just chanting about stop the bombing but also free palestine from the river to the sea let palestine be free that in itself means the destruction of israel correct so while they're chanting these very anti-israel sentiments many jewish people are left feeling terrified we're hearing stories about jewish people hiding their Judaism not wearing any magendavid stars you're hearing from different jewish schools saying be careful letting your children come to school today so many people right now almost feel safer to be in israel as we are in a state of war an active state of war then they do to feel abroad in some of these countries because you're seeing just this increase in anti-semitism anti-israel anti- jewish sentiments that are being portrayed not it's not just these pro-palestinian organizations also might i add that are that are spearheading these these protests we also saw in london someone as simple as a metro conductor a train conductor chanting through his speaker phones chanting free palestine and the whole train the the metro car erupts in applause can you imagine being on that train as you hear that i know myself personally on that train being a jew and so the fact that anyone who doesn't agree it seems like they are the silent minority so we have seen in london now a display of pro-israel protests about 20 000 people taking to that as well not only voicing almost a vigil as you said there we heard the mourners coddish a hebu prayer for all the lives that were lost and also a major demonstration calls for the government to do everything they can to get those now 222 at least hostages that remain in the hands of hamas now even though this protest was significantly smaller than the pro-palestinian protest in london i want to note just the different scene that you see london was the best example because we had 20 000 people 100 000 people when you look at these images of the pro-israel protest it's people coming together it's people singing people singing a prayer for the lives lost the innocent lives lost there's no calls for the destruction of gaza there's no calls for anyone to to get back and any of the even the hamas terrorists it's really more of just people coming together versus when you look at these pro-palestinian protests in in london they were violent clashes there were people waving the al-qaeda flag there are people waving the ices flag so it's not just the palestinian flag as well you're seeing very different rhetoric when it comes to this one side of the protest is is saying we're just standing with israel after such a horrific attack on our country on october 7th versus the other side is saying in a sense we want to continue to see these attacks because