 I'm Sarah Martinez, live from Tel Aviv. Today marks day 89 of the Israel Hamas War, but today, all front with Lebanon. Hezbollah is vowing revenge following the killing of senior Hamas official Salah Al-Aroori in an alleged Israeli strike in Beirut Tuesday evening. The mastermind of Hamas terror operations in the West Bank celebrated and praised the October 7th massacre from exile in Doha. As a result of the targeted assassination, Hamas has frozen all negotiations with Israel on a hostage exchange deal to release the 129 Israeli hostages still held captive in Gaza. Now, according to US intelligence, some of the hostages were held at Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital, but were moved to another location before Israeli forces raided the area. American spy agencies also assessed that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic jihad used that very same hospital and sites beneath the complex to command forces fighting against Israel. Now, fighting has shifted to the southern part of the Gaza Strip. The military reportedly struck Hamas sites and gunmen in Janyunis and hit drone squads in Gaza City. Now, they had it for announcing this morning the death of yet another soldier killed in combat in the northern Gaza Strip, 21-year-old first-class sergeant Mehron Moshe Gersh of the Combat Engineering Corps Elite Yalom Unit. 175 Israeli troops have been killed in just 11 weeks since the ground operation to dismantle Hamas was launched. Let's cross over to I-24 News correspondent Pierre Kloschender, who's on the Israel-Lebanon border. Pierre, Israel is on high alert for potential retaliation from Hezbollah. What's the situation on the ground at this hour? Routine, totally normal. People are just, you know, walking around in the city. They're in Haifa, the northern city, maybe the city that could be a target of Hezbollah missile fire because of the sensitive sites that are in Haifa, such as the petrochemical industry or the harbor of Haifa, which is just behind me. But really, there is no sense of urgency or emergency here. We know that the air defense of the IAF has been, have been boosted. We know also that shelters are open in Haifa, but that's not unusual. It's since the start of the war. And at this moment, up until now, there haven't been any rocket alerts on the northern border between Israel and Lebanon. The last incident occurred at midnight, at around midnight. An anti-guided, an anti-tank-guided missile was fired on an Israeli military outpost in Nirmennahra, which is in the Galilep, and Hendo. There were two soldiers that were lightly wounded. But that's within the realm of the Tifotat war of attrition between Israel and Hezbollah since October 8th. So nothing out of the realm of what's happened for the past three months. And beside, there is only a very laconic message from the spokesperson of the IDF, Riyad Mirol Daniel Agari, who said that Israel is focused on fighting Hamas, no mention of Hezbollah. And that's a subliminal message to Hezbollah that Israel is not interested into an escalation. But vengeance is a dish that is best served cold, so we're going to have to wait first. And it's a waiting period, waiting for Hassan Nasirallah, the supreme leader of Hezbollah, to pronounce his speech at 6 p.m. local time. The Lebanese are waiting, Israelis are waiting, and we'll see. Jack Lejeander, thank you very much for that update from Northern Israel. Salih al-Arouri was a terror mastermind and one of the most wanted criminals in the world with a big bounty on his head. I-24 News correspondent Robert Swift has a profile of Arouri's long history of terrorism. Until his death and what is alleged to be an Israeli assassination, Salih al-Arouri was a senior Hamas official living in exile in Beirut. He mixed political and military responsibilities acting as the deputy chairman of the organization's political bureau and as the commander for West Bank operations. A founding member of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, a bounty of five million dollars was placed on information leading to his capture by U.S. officials. Al-Arouri acted as a spokesperson for Hamas on prisoner affairs, as shown here speaking in 2010. The rising level of capturing and torturing in the last few months has pushed this issue up the agenda. If there is a way for prisoners to be released other than through a deal with Israel to force Fatah's hand, that option may be raised. And as a senior official, he acted in a diplomatic capacity. Closely linked to the West Bank, he was born in Ramallah and studied at Hebron University, where his activity with Hamas began. His home in the West Bank was demolished by Israel following the 7th of October attacks. Having spent 15 years in Israeli prisons at times being held on administrative detention, Al-Arouri was exiled in 2007. He spent the following years living in Syria, Turkey and finally Lebanon. Patriot here with other Hamas officials, including Ismail Hania, following the 7th of October attack, Al-Arouri is the most significant Palestinian assassinated in nearly 20 years. And with me in studio is Yaakov Lapin, Military and Strategic Affairs Analyst for the Miriam Institute and the Jewish News Syndicate. And also joining me today is Hezbollah expert, retired major Shadi Khalul. Thank you both for joining me today. Shadi, I want to start with you and get your take on the significance of Salah Al-Arouri's killing in your eyes. Well, let's talk about first of all how significant this assassination actually is. It is in the stronghold of Hezbollah al-Dahi, as it is called. It is very, very secure area for Hezbollah. Nobody actually can be in this area without consent of Hezbollah. It's all Shia area, very well protected. And if Israel or anyone else, I'm not sure Israel, but let's say anyone else who can assassinate this leadership inside this area should really have very accurate intelligence. And I think we have also some traitors inside this area, as they call them, Hezbollah traitors, that are very well penetrating this area. And Hezbollah should be worried about his leadership, too, if they continue in the future to escalate the situation with Israel. This is a strong message of Israel toward the leadership of Hezbollah as well, toward Hezbollah and other leadership of Hamas in the region. Yes, go ahead. No, no, please continue. I would recommend also another thing. I am not actually sure that we are going like to a very strong escalation here at this time, since Hezbollah is not really the one who is really affected on that issue. It is more Hamas. It's a Sunni group. It's a Jama'a Islamiyah, which is also a Sunni group that is not really those guys that Hezbollah like them that much. And they are willing to sacrifice them, actually, for their own interest of controlling Lebanon for that. That's the main, actually, goal of Hezbollah, which is controlling Lebanon and creating Islamic regime in Lebanon at the end. And that's the Iranian Islamic Revolution goal to control the region from Iran through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon with the Islamic Revolution regime. So I think Hamas leadership being assassinated here is might be a little bit escalation, might bring a little bit escalation. But this is not the reason why we might go for a war at the end. So in your eyes, we shouldn't be too worried about any sort of potential retaliation from Hezbollah who did say that this killing would not go unanswered. No, I am saying they will retaliate. But this is not the retaliation that they want to go for a full scale war. Okay, we will go for retaliation. But at the end, it's our decision in Israel. If it is our interest to get rid of Hezbollah now and their risk and their threat to our citizens and their existence in northern fronts, which are evacuated for more than 88 days now, or we want to continue playing with them in a low scale war and firing rockets, which is a normal situation. Nobody can normalize this situation here in northern borders, where I am sitting now, allowing this threat. I can go from my home and I am worried because I don't know who is actually looking at us from the other side of the border, which I see them actually in front of our eyes. This is an abnormal situation to keep the situation as it is today. So if they retaliate, it's our decision if we want to go and eliminate this threat from our northern borders now, or maybe wait and be patient and try to find another solution. You mentioned there the dangers for those northern Israeli communities who have something like 15 to 30 seconds to run for shelter, the closer you are to the border, the smaller amount of time you have. Hezbollah has a much larger and more powerful weapons arsenal than Hamas does. Yes, it indeed. Hezbollah has more than about 150,000 mortar shells. They have about 65,000 long, short and medium range missiles. They have precision guided missiles. They have UAVs like the ones we saw in Russia attacking Ukrainian cities, and they also already used them also here in our forces. We know that they have also tunnels, infiltrating tunnels, explosion tunnels, and also tunnels that get close to the border. They actually have 10,000 troops of elite force called the Radoan unit, about 10,000, and more than that, about 50,000 geographical troops of geographical units. This all together, together with Hamas from Palestinian refugee camps, they were planning actually to infiltrate Israel with a large amount of people. It's not the same scenario like in Gaza where Gaza is isolated. It's an open front from Lebanon to Iran that can be infiltrated as they planned with a huge amount of fighters and terrorists that we would be in a different scenario if Israel actually were being attacked in October 7th. So we should not like sit here and now say, oh, we accept this situation in northern front. We should eliminate it. We should work to actually in a peaceful way, maybe at the beginning, as we're trying now to do it. And if not, at the end, I don't see any other solutions than going to full-scale war and eliminate Hezbollah. Because 1701, let me remind you, will allow Hezbollah to strengthen itself more and prepare himself more. We were in 1701 till October 7th. They kept operating and infiltrating our borders. And the only solution that might be if we go to implement 1559 UN resolution, which is dismantling Hezbollah from its arm and all foreign militias in Lebanon, and only the official force of Lebanon, which is the army of Lebanon, is allowed to carry a weapon and protect the borders of Lebanon. This is what France and USA should push Lebanese government to do. Chadi, I want to ask you, what's holding Hezbollah back from an immediate retaliation as they vowed from the beginning of this war that any sort of strike within Lebanon on Hamas targets would be immediately retaliated for? That's exactly what I was saying, because if Hezbollah, I'm not expecting a lot from Hassan Nasrallah speech, honestly. Because if they want, you know, to do something, they would do it from yesterday. And they won't wait for Hassan Nasrallah speech. He can do a speech during a wartime like he did before. But he didn't do it yesterday. And he didn't do it like he didn't attack yesterday. And he's waiting and holding us now, like in patiently to look for what he has to say. I don't see it's only a game. That's what actually strengthening my thinking that they might be actually part of this assassination for interior issues. And there's a lot of things that we should talk about it in the future. What are those interior issues between Hamas and Hezbollah? Yeah, Kov, with me here in studio, I want to get your assessment of this killing. Well, the assassination itself is, I think, a collapse of what Hassan Nasrallah has built since the Second Lebanon War, which is this sort of umbrella of deterrence, this equation that he has gradually forced on the state of Israel, which has said, look, you can continue your shadow war in Syria, but you cannot strike in Lebanon. You cannot strike in Beirut, especially Beirut. We know that southern Lebanon as well as northern Israel are now combat zones because of this low-scale controlled escalation that's underway since the 8th of October, a day after the massacre with Hezbollah signaling its solidarity with Hamas, but not wanting to be dragged into a full-scale war because of Hamas' attack, not wanting to play second fiddle to Hamas. But that doesn't mean that Hezbollah is deterred by war. On the contrary, if we look at Hezbollah's actions over the past two years, what we see on the ground is a series of escalations that appear actually designed to drag Israel into war. And so the question now, when we're looking at what are the response options, first of all, we have to be completely honest and say, nobody knows. There is a full scale of options that Hezbollah and his Ashura Council, which includes, by the way, likely includes Iranians. I would refer viewers to the Alma Center's website. There's a very interesting research on that council. This is likely the form where the decision will be made, the Ashura Council, the Ashura Council of Hezbollah. And there they will have to decide, will this be the trigger that will send Lebanon, Hezbollah, and Israel into a full-scale war or not? That's going to be their primary decision. And then they'll tailor their response in line with that decision. And we just don't know at this time. We'll probably find out soon enough. And the question on everyone's mind, as you just say, is when will Hezbollah retaliate? And how deadly of a blow could it deliver to Israel? Pardon. I-24 News correspondent Rob Swift have the details. Amid ongoing hostilities between Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese terror group, Hezbollah has sent clear warnings to Jerusalem against conducting targeted killings on its home turf. Any assassination on Lebanese soil will be met with a decisive response. We will not tolerate this. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said recently. Following the assassination of Salah al-Aruri in what foreign media says was an Israeli drone strike, Hezbollah warned that its finger is on the trigger. Its ability to strike Israel is not being underestimated. Hezbollah holds one of the world's largest rocket arsenals, with missiles surpassing the weapons in Hamas's armory in range, accuracy, and quantity. Missiles that could pose a threat to cities if Israeli air defenses are overwhelmed by mass launches. Officials in Jerusalem have stressed that they're fighters with Hamas and not Hezbollah. We are focused on the battle against Hamas from the beginning, and we will continue to do so. It remains unclear if Hezbollah will back up its threats with action. The Iranian proxy may talk large, while simply continuing or escalating its skirmishes along the border with Israel. As it has reasons not to gamble on all-out war, while Lebanese politicians and media condemned Jerusalem for al-Aruri's death, community leaders in the country have also recently urged Hezbollah not to provoke Israel. Lebanon's chronic economic and political stagnation makes a confrontation with Israel highly risky for Hezbollah, which holds responsibilities as part of the ruling coalition. How it reacts in the coming days and hours may prove to be a pivotal decision in this war. So with me here in studio, Yaakov Lapin as well as joining us is retired major Shadi Khalul. Shadi, I want to ask you, this marks the end of an era for Hamas leaders who have enjoyed impunity abroad in Beirut, in Doha, in Istanbul. Well, as you know, all our leadership in Israel here include the military leaders and political leaders declared that Hamas leaders that were in charge for the October 7th brutal massacres of Israeli citizens have no impunity and they will be assassinated wherever they are. So we are implementing this strategy now, like we did in Munich with the terrorist in Munich. Now, I suspect that this would be the last one of assassination to see because there is some more very serious leaders of Hamas that should be taking down as well. On the other hand, what I care about in this matter is what Hezbollah is and less about Hamas because Hezbollah here shows actually weakness and it shows that he's infiltrated in his own stronghold and that we actually ready to go further if he want to develop the situation to a full scale war and that Israel doesn't fear that scenario. So this is the message that we are sending here to Hezbollah and it will be very interesting this evening to see what he has to say about this incidence, but let's not let him fool us that Hassan Nasrallah is not here, the one who decide it's us who will decided to go fully inside Beirut as well according to the sources to take down this leader and knowing that this might bring a full retaliation from Hezbollah. So what I can tell you about that is that I cannot accept the reality that we are now facing in North Israel. No one can accept that 80,000 citizens that are evacuated cannot accept that. Israeli leadership cannot accept that. We cannot economically accept it that citizens here cannot work on their fields. They cannot work in their factories. They cannot live in their homes for more than 88 days because of terrorist ISIS group called Hezbollah. We should eliminate them and impose 1559 again. I stress this 1559 because 1701 is a joke. It's not reliable resolution and it cannot be implemented. So please, this is my message today. Don't let Hezbollah fool us. We are the ones here to decide what we should do next. And with you, Yakov Lapin with me here in the studio. I want to discuss with you the timing of this targeted assassination because as this assassination occurred, Prime Minister Netanyahu was meeting with hostage families as negotiations were reportedly ongoing. Those negotiations have now been frozen. Where does that leave things? In terms of negotiations, look Hamas, its intrinsic interests with these negotiations is to buy itself time and to hold off what we can call the IDF's final maneuver in terms of its stronghold in Kanyunas and the underground strategic tunnels. What Hamas wants to do is to use the hostages as a bargaining chip and a sort of insurance policy to buy itself time in immunity. And that's what it's going to try to do regardless of whether an assassination takes place or not. So it's not that the entire hostage negotiation situation hinges on this killing. I don't think it would be correct to tie that in. And I would consider this freezing to be a temporary measure. Strategically speaking though, is the timing of it right? Knowing that this prolongs the time of these hostages still being held captive in unknown conditions in Gaza down in tunnels underground with Hamas at their next? Because I don't believe that it's actually influencing Hamas's decision making when it comes to these negotiations. I don't think the two questions are inherently linked. So I don't see a problem with the timing. Again, Hamas is holding these negotiations for its own survival interest and for no other reason. And because that interest remains under a question mark, it still has motivation to try and continue to secure a release. So even if it freezes these talks for a few days, we can expect it to thaw them again and to try and once again buy itself time to try and survive this war. That's what Hamas is going to try to do regardless of this assassination. And Shadi al-Adhuri was one of the Hamas officials most closely connected to Iran and to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Tell me a little bit about that alliance between Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. Yeah, Salih al-Adhuri was actually one of the main guys for what we call the unification of fronts or I call it one front Iran. We are facing here Iran. Iran is in Lebanon. Iran is in Syria. Iran is in Iraq. And Iran is in Iran. So all this front in the north to the northeast is one front Iran and Salih al-Adhuri was part of it. And he was actually organizing the forces of Hamas as well in Lebanon, in the Palestinian refugee camps to join Hezbollah, an elite unit of Radawan Force to join them to the Galilee, to the occupation of Galilee plan as they call it. And so Salih al-Adhuri actually deserved what destiny he had yesterday and or let's call it the death. And then Salih al-Adhuri is considered a very, very strategic leader inside Hamas, even stronger than actually what is called the leader of Hamas or political leader of Hamas Hania. And the other one in Gaza that he's still hiding in the tunnels there. So they are competing between each other's on the leadership of Hamas and this is actually the most dangerous among them. And you mentioned that Hamas political chief Hania who is reportedly in Qatar. Tell me about the message that this assassination gives to them? Well, this message is clear that they are next and they could have the same destiny like he faced, like Aruri faced and that Israel can reach them as well and the Mossad and other intelligent sources, Israeli sources and American ones. Let's not forget that Americans had a reward of five million dollars on Salih al-Adhuri in 2018. And he was on the list of the Treasury, a U.S. Treasury in 2015 with other members of Hamas since 2015. And Hania actually could be there too. And the other can be also on that list. And they have the same destiny. Unfortunately, we have to go to a break. Shadi Khalul, Yaakov Lapin, I want to thank you very much for joining us today on this panel. Thank you. We're going out for a quick break. Don't go anywhere. I 24 years will be back at the top of the hour with more rolling coverage. Israel is in a state of war. Families completely done down in their beds. We have no idea where is she as our soldiers are fighting on the front line. But the general perception is something that certainly needs to to be fought as well. Well, welcome back. And thanks for staying with us. Here on I-24 News as we continue our rolling coverage of the Israel Gaza War. Some 200,000 Israelis have been internally displaced because of the war and constant attacks from Hezbollah in Lebanon. Josiah De Kano is a resident of the northern Israeli town of Nituah, which sits right on the Lebanese border. He and his family were evacuated after Hezbollah began firing rockets at their community on October 8th. Josiah, thank you very much for joining me today. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Tell me a little bit about how you and your family's life has changed since October 7th. Wow. October 7th. Well, by the 8th we were retrofitting bomb shelters. There's nine bomb shelters in this town. And maybe two of them had water put in Wi-Fi. And by the night, by the 9th, I'm standing on a bomb shelter with my son. And we're hearing artillery fire from behind us and hearing the explosion in front of us. And we realize we're somewhere in the middle. Not a good place to be. I was with three of my daughters and my wife and five grandchildren. My son and my son-in-law were all called up into Mellawame or the Kitat Kona Newt. So I was the only guy there. And we didn't even have enough vehicles to get us out of town if we had to. And tell us a little bit about your life now. Where are you and your family located now? So we've actually moved three times. We weren't evacuated until, I believe, the 16th, where we were moved to a hotel down in Netanyah with most of the population of this town. We've now moved twice. And we have a house not far from here. It actually is a safe distance away. Yet I still come up here to help out with the Kitat Kona Newt. I've brought supplies and those kind of things to my son-in-laws and the reserve forces. Tell me, Josiah, are you? I'm actually in to it right now. You're there in to it right now helping those troops that are stationed there. Tell me, are you worried about Hezbollah's retaliation? Since yesterday. Yeah, that was a major concern. But I'll tell you that it's been a worry the whole time. As the news came out more and more of what Hamas did on the southern border, this was one of three towns that was in the gravest concern of an incursion. We were the first of the three towns to be evacuated. So there is obviously a concern. I wouldn't bring my family back here now or my grandkids until we have a resolution here. But, you know, there are heroes in this town. There are heroes. There are heroes that left the town and were evacuated to get out of the way of the IDF so they could do their job. And there are heroes that stayed to help. And I'm surrounded by heroes. So, you know, it's truly the, as frightening as it is, it's the privilege of my life. Josiah, tell me, has the government told you when you and your family can expect to go home? No. Yeah, no, we're it's inevitable that this is going to escalate. You know, we even in this town, we had a farmer out in an orchard that was hit by anti-tank missiles that flies beneath the iron dome that flies beneath the sirens. So there's no warning of that. And, you know, that can't be tolerated. We can't live like that. And that's the consensus of the North. Yeah, I see on the screen, this is where two soldiers, this house that you see on this screen, I believe, is four blocks from me. You could see it out these windows. And but there's an amazing story that hit there is the head of the Kitat Konanut broke protocol and went immediately. And had he not done that, at least one, if not two of those soldiers wouldn't have survived. And so, like I said, there are heroes here and there are miracles that are happening. That tell me, you mentioned that your house is so close to the border that sometimes those missiles, you're caught in between the missile and the target and that there aren't even rocket sirens. How much time do you have to run to shelter? So I think we've been told immediate. We've had sirens where it's the blast happens maybe 10 seconds. I've also been told 15 seconds. We have a safe room in this house. This office, this my office is this is a makeshift office because my office was a safe room that we turned into our kids sleeping room for the first week or week and a half. But we're staying safe. The family is safe. And and the folks here are very, very vigilant. Everyone in this town right now knows points of what you call a line of sight, right? The anti tank missiles have to be line of sight. And we know where they can see us and where they can't. And we're very, very cautious of that. Josiah De Canu, I stay safe and I sincerely hope you and your family will be able to go home soon in the near future. Thank you very much. And you too. Thank you. The chaotic aftermath of the October 7th massacre Israeli authorities and forensic teams have struggled to identify the over 1300 dead bodies. Their bodies sometimes so dismembered that only DNA samples remain. Dozens of bereaved families have been notified of their relatives death, but were unable to give their loved ones the proper burial they deserve without a body to grieve on. So how do you pronounce someone dead without a body? This next report by Israel's Channel 12 news on the special committee assigned the difficult task. I just never thought or imagined that I would ever face the situation. It's really not a simple decision. And it's not a decision to be taken lightly at all. It has enormous significance. Dr. Agar Mizrachi did not learn this in medical school to make one of the most shocking decisions of her career to pronounce death without first seeing a body. The event is foreign to the world in general and to the world of medicine in particular because we have very strict rules on how to determine death. There is a pulse and an ECG should be done. We still look for all the signs and all the doubts to resolve them in order to give the family an answer that is clear and unambiguous. Until the harsh news about Judy were received, she had been thought kidnap. The last time she made contact was during the morning walk with her husband near Niroz. Last week the family was informed of Gadi's death. Now it's Judy, one of the open cases that Dr. Mizrachi and the committee of which she is a member for many weeks. One of the very complex cases, we received a description of the circumstances of the incident, but we also heard the phone call she made to the Magandavida Dome hotline. We read WhatsApp messages with friends and family and watched relevant videos. We understood that there was a very, very serious injury here. We sat more than once to try to understand what happened. That black Sabbath raised many dramatic issues, one of which is whether it is possible to declare the death of a hostage while in captivity. Some were murdered and taken to the Gaza Strip. Some were taken there wounded and did not survive the injury. Others were murdered in Gaza. The Ministry of Health has established a committee to assess the situation of the hostages headed by Dr. Hagar Mizrachi, a committee of experts trying to decide what happened to kidnapped citizens, collecting every scrap of information, watching hours of video. We are on this committee by virtue of our position as doctors. We want evidence whose essence is a medical basis. It's not just watching videos. It's literally sitting and analyzing and looking for breathing movements. You look for movements of the eyelids, movements of the body, a reaction to pain, simply analyzing the movies frame by frame. We also deal mainly with analyzing gunshot wounds, where they hit, where organs were hit, and everything together with the fact that there is no medical treatment leads us to our conclusions. This is how they came to determine that Aviva Tzili, Ofra Kedar, and Inbar Haiman were murdered. Unlike legal matters where reasonable doubt is enough. Here, the three doctors on the committee, Dr. Mizrachi, Dr. Kugel, and Dr. Marin, CEO of Sharitz at a hospital, need to be completely convinced before they tell the family. We sit, and if we don't come to a conclusion, then we say we haven't yet decided. Additional material will arrive. Hamas will release something, some additional information will be received. We will incorporate the new bits and watch one more time from beginning to end, and then we'll make a decision. Each decision is made unanimously. How much certainty do you need to determine? Is 99 percent enough? We wait and check the points until we are all convinced. For me, it is 100 percent. 100 percent. As far as I'm concerned, not knowing is the worst thing. I can't stay up in the air. I need to know. Danny Engel was informed that his brother Ronan was kidnapped with his family from their home in Nirooz, but his gut feeling said he was probably killed. After all, Ronan was armed, fighting the terrorists who entered the apartment, and no one has seen him since. It was very alarming. Me, too, in this whole situation, I hung on to some kind of optimism and forced myself not to eulogize him or to talk about him in the past tense. So not to create, you know, this situation, that there is no Ronan. Four days after his wife and daughters returned from captivity, the news was received. Ronan was murdered and the body was snatched. The death was determined according to a video and other findings that were in the house. Karina said that there was a large pool of blood where Ronan was standing. Other people who returned said that they saw his body being dragged outside, out of the house. I have this kind of closure, they told me, and beyond any doubt, Ronan is gone. It's the better option than not knowing and continuing to hope. The message the Eeluz family received about the death of Guy, the 26-year-old musician who was at the party in Reim, was a little different. In his case, there was no video, only the knowledge that he was injured and kidnapped. But about a month ago, they were informed that Maya Regev, who returned from captivity, gave detailed testimony about their son. I asked them, tell me, are you really serious? You want me to state as an axiom that my son died in light of the fact that she was a prisoner who was in the room with Guy, that she saw him through the curtain, and she was full of drugs, and I have no idea what, and in light of all the psychological warfare they are doing. Listen, I'm not ready to accept it, but I would love to meet with Maya Regev. They really tried to give him CPR, and he died from his wounds, and at first I refused to believe it, and after they took him, I said that I had to see that it was really him. I have this duty to go and talk to his family. In the end, I'm the only person who knows what really happened. So I moved the curtain and saw that he really wasn't with us, that he was gone. After the parents heard Maya, the subtleties, the details, how she described how they put him in a white bag for the dead, they were convinced. They sat Shiva and said goodbye to their boy. Saying goodbye is hard to bear. It's not goodbye when you can say I'm saying goodbye because I saw that he died. We didn't see. We didn't see that guy is indeed no longer with us. We separated from him based on testimony, based on information. The returning hostages brought with them a lot of new information to the committee, about the fate and condition of those who were left behind. But they say they are not satisfied with this evidence as a sole parameter. For example, we knew that someone had been shot and we saw the type of injury. And we understood that in this condition, he was taken to the Gaza Strip. And in this condition, we know that in order to treat the gunshot, we need very intensive, very advanced treatment, if at all. And over time, and on and on, it's a culmination of things, especially if one of the abductees later states that he has passed away. As long as this body does not arrive in Israel, it's not doubt, really. It's not a question of doubt. He won't be knocking on the door tomorrow and entering the house. But for me, the story hasn't ended. The bodies of the hostages who did return to Israel were thoroughly examined by Dr. Mizrachi's committee to confirm the circumstances of their death. The CT scan shows us whether there are bullets, whether there are clots. So far, bodies have arrived, and apparently Hamas said they were killed because of an IDF attack. This is not true. These are not the conclusions. It is difficult in some cases to determine the exact cause of death. But it does not appear that people were injured and the injuries match injuries from shelling. The committee deals not only with the dead, but also with those who return alive from captivity. As a doctor, Hagar Mizrachi also tries to understand something about the medical treatment they received. To her surprise, she discovered that they were not given only prescription drugs, but also dangerous ones. Apparently they were given treatment, not exactly known in Israel, which among other things causes some kind of sedation. There was also ketamine in some of the cases. Ketamine is a drug that is given under anesthesia for surgery, and today it is a drug that is used, of course illegally, and indeed there was testimony of people who came who received ketamine unnecessarily as a form of sedation. I'm not sure you want to emerge from captivity as a drug addict. There was a prior claim that the terrorists had been given drugs before. I don't have any proof of this, but I can tell you honestly, I can't understand from what I've seen how they did it without it. I say they are not animals because it is unimaginable. Turning to the United States now, Harvard University President Claudine Gaye resigned on Tuesday over recent accusations of plagiarism, and most notably her response to antisemitism on campus at the onset of the Israel Hamas War. Her step down from power caps weeks of uproar over her testimony at a House congressional hearing, where she was unable to say unequivocally that calls on campus for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard's conduct policy. The Ivy League School president said it was a context-dependent issue. Let's take a listen to that heated congressional hearing. And Dr. Gaye, at Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no? It can be, depending on the context. What's the context? Targeted as an individual, targeted at an individual. It's targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals. Do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them? Do you understand that dehumanization is part of antisemitism? I will ask you one more time. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no? Anti-Semitic rhetoric. And is it anti-Semitic rhetoric? Anti-Semitic rhetoric, when it crosses into conduct, that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation. That is actionable conduct, and we do take action. So the answer is yes. That calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard code of conduct. Correct. Again, it depends on the context. It does not depend on the context. The answer is yes, and this is why you should resign. These are unacceptable answers across the board. Joining me now in studio is journalist and activist Blake Fleet and Blake. Thank you for joining me today. Thank you for having me. I want to get your your initial reaction to Claudine Gaye stepping down. Look, so first of all, I say that it brings out no joy. It brings out no excitement. I happen to believe very strongly that this problem, this sickness of anti-Zionism or anti-Zionism, I should put it in quotes and hatred of Israel, putting Israel as the face of all evil in the world is a widespread problem at our academic institutions across the United States. And I don't think that that problem is going to necessarily go away just by taking out somebody at the top. It needs to be a bottom up type of situation. It needs to be a bottom up type of solution. But that's only one of the reasons why there was an outcry to get her to step down. The other one reason, of course, is because she has over, I think, close to 50 allegations, credible allegations of plagiarism, literally entire paragraphs lifted from other scholars' work and placed into her own published work. And that's really what the focus is on here, just the how are you able to profess that you are leading an academic institution with credibility and with candor when a look at your own history has all of these mistakes and has all of this fraudulent evidence a part of it. So it's those two things. So listen, I'm not optimistic that this is going to make any headway on the anti-Zionism front on college campuses. But I do think that this is the appropriate step to take ensuring academic credibility. All right. And Gay is the second Ivy League school president to resign in the past month following that congressional hearing, a testimony that we just heard. She joins Liz McGill. And as you said, it's the first step, but the damage is done, essentially. Yeah. So I work very closely with Dr. Aina Wilf, who's a former member of Knesset, and something that she brings up constantly in her writing and in her work is that anti-Zionism, when it becomes popular in a given space, is evidence in and of itself of institutional rot and foundational crises. It's evidence that the society is no longer organizing themselves around any unifying ethos that they have lost their way and they have turned to paranoia and scapegoating in the same way that anti-Semitism did this in a given society before the year 1948. I mean, you look at the Arab world, you look at the Soviet Union, you look at Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, and now you look at Western universities and academia. And the first three are totally failed projects. The Arab Islamic world has totally failed in providing stability and resources for their citizens. The Soviet Union is obviously no longer here. And Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, thank God, was swept up into the dustbin of history pretty quickly because of Jewish solidarity. And so it is evidence that this is a failing movement, that this is a failing project. And I think when it comes to universities, we ask ourselves what is failing? And I will say, look, I attended a quote-unquote good American university. And apart from my history of theater class, the only thing I really learned or the predominant thing I learned at school was about different groups and their relationship to each other in America, oppressed versus oppressor, white versus non-white. So it's that rhetoric that those institutions are feeling to explain doesn't necessarily apply to other conflicts outside the United States. Exactly, exactly. I mean, look, they've lost their way as academic institutions. There's not a lot of learning going on. There's not a lot of standards. There's not a lot of rigor in the actual course material. Instead, there is a massive replacement of academic theory with politics. And listen, I'm a political person, politics are okay. But I think that is the first step in realizing how these institutions have failed and then why they are so quick to adopt such a dangerous ideology like anti-Zionism. Well, we look past these institutions and we look at the wider phenomenon that's happening with this generation, specifically these Gen Z-ers that are basically a TikTok educated generation who know nothing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, calling for Jews to go back where they came from, which is not something that 60% of Israelis who come from North African or Middle Eastern countries is even a realistic opportunity here. Praising terror organization, they know nothing about praising the Houthis, praising Yemen, praising Hamas, even praising Bin Laden who orchestrated 9-11. This is very concerning because these Ivy Luke school students who are praising these terror organizations are future leaders, future CEOs, future politicians. Yes, and I've said it quite often that students who are marinating in these ideologies that are being taught by not only professors, but by other faculty members, by student organizations, by diversity, equity and inclusion officers, they're not jettisoning these ideas once they graduate. Andrew Sullivan, a famous blogger, wrote a couple years ago an article called We All Live On Campus Now. And basically, the thesis was if you don't think that our politics, our culture, our entertainment, our media, our journalism, our law is going to reflect these newly popular ideologies that are festering on American campuses, then you've got another thing coming. And in fact, we've already seen it happen. And this idea that academia is somehow equal to morality because it's made up of a bunch of smart people who, apart from Claude and Gay, the vast majority of them have earned their place. It's just not true. Nile Ferguson, a Scottish historian wrote a great piece a couple weeks ago in the Free Press called The Treason of the Intellectuals about how during Nazi Germany, it was actually the role of academics and intellectuals to sanitize and to justify Hitler's regime and to pave the way intellectually for justification of Nazism. And so academia is not only not able to accept evil ideology and propagate it, but it's actually even more vulnerable to accepting those types of narratives and those demonizations of particular people because of the intellectual exercises that they themselves go through that are in themselves harmful. I want to talk about a little bit of a video that's been going around on social media a couple days ago. Jewish American teen was harassed in a mall in New Jersey for wearing an IDF sweatshirt. Let's take a look. Like your reaction to what we just saw there? I mean, it's been happening for a while. I remember when I was in Brooklyn, there was a young man named Blake. We had the same name who was attacked for wearing an IDF sweatshirt. And look, all I can say to people is you should keep wearing your IDF sweatshirts if you want to wear your IDF sweatshirts. And if you get any reaction or any antagonism on the street, make sure that your safety is ensured. They look like they had someone setting them up in that fight there. But it does go to the larger problem of people being more afraid and more apprehensive about expressing Judaism in public. More emboldened to take that so-called freedom of speech because that's something that some critics have said, oh, this is a question of freedom of speech. And turning that free speech and going into hate speech. Right. I mean, basically it comes down to the double standard. What we've seen in America for the past couple of years is this hyper encouragement of minorities. Black Americans, LGBT Americans, Hispanic Americans to wear their identities on their sleeve and to say, yes, I'm here and I contribute to my culture and my society. And my advancement in society is a good thing, a thing that progressives and my proudness is a thing that progressives must champion. That sort of encouragement does not exist for Jews period. In fact, when Jews do do that, when Jews dare to express a majority opinion or, you know, show solidarity with Jewish people in Israel, they're demonized and belittled. Blake, Flake, thank you very much for joining us today. We're going off a quick break. Don't go anywhere. Israel is in a state of war. Families completely done down in their beds. We have no idea where is she as our soldiers are fighting on the front line. But the general perception is something that certainly needs to be fought as well. Thanks for staying with us here on I-24 News. If you're just joining us, here's a recap of day 89 of the Israel Hamas War. All eyes are now on the northern front with Lebanon. Hezbollah is vowing revenge, following the killing of senior Hamas official Sarah Arory and an alleged Israeli strike in Beirut Tuesday evening. The mastermind of Hamas terror operations in the West Bank was seen celebrating and praising the October 7th massacre from Doha. As a result of the targeted assassination, Hamas has frozen all negotiations with Israel on a hostage exchange deal to release the 129 Israeli hostages still held captive in Gaza. Now, according to US intelligence, some of the hostages were held at Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital, but were moved to another location before Israeli forces raided the area. American spy agencies also assessed that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic jihad used that very hospital and sites beneath the complex to command forces fighting Israel. Fighting has shifted to the southern part of the Gaza Strip. The military reportedly struck Hamas sites and gunmen in Hanyounis and hit drone squads in Gaza City. The IDF announcing this morning the death of yet another soldier killed in combat in the northern part of the Strip, 21-year-old first class sergeant Mehron Moshe Gersh of the Combat Engineering Corps Elite Yalom Unit. 175 Israeli troops have been killed in just 11 weeks since the ground operation to dismantle Hamas was launched. Now, the question in everyone's mind is when will Hezbollah retaliate and how deadly of a blow will it deliver to Israel? I-24 News correspondent Rob Swift details. Amid ongoing hostilities between Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese terror group, Hezbollah has sent clear warnings to Jerusalem against conducting targeted killings on its home turf. Any assassination on Lebanese soil will be met with a decisive response. We will not tolerate this. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said recently. Following the assassination of Salah al-Arouri in what foreign media says was an Israeli drone strike, Hezbollah warned that its finger is on the trigger. Its ability to strike Israel is not being underestimated. Hezbollah holds one of the world's largest rocket arsenals, with missiles surpassing the weapons in Hamas's armory in range, accuracy and quantity. Missiles that could pose a threat to cities if Israeli air defenses are overwhelmed by mass launches. Officials in Jerusalem have stressed that they're fighters with Hamas and not Hezbollah. We are focused on the battle against Hamas from the beginning and we will continue to do so. It remains unclear if Hezbollah will back up its threats with action. The Iranian proxy may talk large while simply continuing or escalating its skirmishes along the border with Israel, as it has reasons not to gamble on all-out war. While Lebanese politicians and media condemned Jerusalem for al-Arouri's death, community leaders in the country have also recently urged Hezbollah not to provoke Israel. Lebanon's chronic economic and political stagnation makes a confrontation with Israel highly risky for Hezbollah, which holds responsibilities as part of the ruling coalition. How it reacts in the coming days and hours may prove to be a pivotal decision in this war. Joining me now in studio is IDF Brigadier General in the reserves, Hanan Geffen, former commander of the 8,200 intelligence units. Thank you very much for joining me today, Hanan. I want to get your first initial reaction assessment of this killing. Well, this kind of war of killing and targeting leaders, terror leaders, is ongoing as started in 1972 when Israel followed an attack and get rid of all perpetrators of the Munich Olympics there. And this is a deadly weapon in any meaning of the world. In the last, I would say, 10 or so years, it wasn't used so much because one of the conducting the ceasefire with the Hamas and trying to get Hamas into a line with some kind of negotiation was a precondition of Hamas not to target its leaders. Now, this precondition was on the 7th of October, is no more valid. And Israel really attacked. Now, as to the question of Hezbollah and he was hitting the center of Beirut, the Dakhia, which is the center of Hezbollah there, where Nasrallah is living. This area was hit very badly on 2006 war and was the main reasons for the Hezbollah giving in, I would say, almost caving at that time. And he remembers it well. Not only that, he promised the Hamas leaders that they are safe in this area. So it's a problem to decide. We will hear him today at eight o'clock. He will speak. I would guess that he will find a virtuous way to explain that while he support the Hamas and will do everything to support the Hamas, he will not let Israel drag him into a war that unwanted war that will cause Lebanon this or that harm. This equation, this kind of work we see, talking, we see from day one of this war, Israel constantly is testing the equation that Nasrallah said, bypassing, overpassing these kind of equation. This one was, as you, as one mentioned, precondition. They said, conditionally said last August said, if there is somebody, someone will hit inside Lebanon, it changed the equation. Now, we will wait to see whether his mouth and his talk are the same. And then stay with me. I want to cross over to I-24 news correspondent, Pierre-Coulos Chandler, who's in northern Israel in Haifa. Pierre, what's the latest on the ground there on the border? Well, we know that the Lebanese channel, Almai Adin, which is close to Hezbollah, has stated that there were three anti-tank-guided missile attacks on Israeli positions without elaborating. But we know there's been no casualties. And that's in the realm of the tit-for-tat war of attrition that Hezbollah waged on Israel starting on October 8 in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. So nothing of the unusual up until now. That doesn't mean that there could be some retaliatory actions either by Hamas in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, or Hezbollah itself. Haifa, for instance, is a prime target in the sense that it has sensitive sites such as the harbor that is behind me or the petrochemical industry, which will be dismantled only in five years from now. So it's still very actual. We know that the air defense forces have been boosted in order to intercept any rocket or missile strike, especially that Hezbollah has guided missiles and a lot of them. But what we understand at this point is that maybe with all the vows of vengeance that leaders of Hezbollah, of Hamas have pronounced, everybody's waiting for the pronouncement of Hassan Nasrallah's speech at 6 p.m. local time, which will be exactly 24 hours after the targeted killing of Salah el-Aroori, which nobody has really taken responsibility for, except that the Lebanese media attributes it to Israel. Now, there was a subliminal message pronounced by the head of the Mossads by agency Dedi Barneha, who assisted at the funeral of a former Mossad chief. He said that every Arab woman whose son has participated in the October 7 massacres should know that the blood of his son is that his son's life is in peril. So that maybe is the sole subliminal understanding that it might be Israel who was behind the targeted killing. Thank you very much for that update. So with me here in studio, a quick update for our viewers, Iranian state media reporting an explosion in Iran near the ceremony to mark the four-year anniversary of the death of Haasem Soleimani. Can we expect Israel to be carrying out more of these targeted killings or at least sending more of a message to Hamas Hezbollah? But at the end of the day, it's Iran that it shouldn't mess with the idea. In case of here in Iran right now, it's something that if I can guess, it's something that the Iranian opposition is run. And this is only a symbolic one. It's not too real. It doesn't have a real effect. Israel on the other hand has this kind of policy of getting rid of the Hamas or any terror leaders. And this one is now in action in Israel as the American already said. And so one of the American administration guys said, this is only the beginning of a kind of killing. And I believe this will be one of the weapons that Israel, in parallel to the ground forces, in parallel to other activities, will enforce because we have to understand. And it settles down even to the Arabs. This is a war. Israel means a war. It is not the case that they get usually in the past that after this or that time, amount of time, Israel has agreed to ceasefire and then coming back to the usual way of conduct. This time, they understand that this is a war, a real war, and they're attacking precautions. I believe Hezbollah will do the same. I believe that the terror leaders will now change the way they behave. They were so sure of themselves appearing in Beirut or other places of the Arab world so freely attacking Israel, believe that Israel, after the 7th of October, is changed, is more fragile. Now they will have to reconsider everything. And this might be one of the reasons for attacking these kind of leaders to get back and to reconstruct some of the fear and understanding that Israel is not fragile, Israel is not going anywhere, and they have to be more cautious. And I believe this is a measure that as far as we see today has been received by the other side. It certainly marks the end of an era where Hamas political achieves or Hamas operatives are able to freely operate from Lebanon, from Beirut, from Doha, from Istanbul. But when I ask you about this specific operation here, Israel, of course, has not commented specifically on the strike. But tell us about the major intelligence efforts that go into a targeted killing of this magnitude. Well, I may tell you that Israel is the Israeli intelligence or all the branches, and we have dozens of intelligence collection branches targeting these leaders for years. It's not a new thing. It's not nothing that started today. The only difference is the decision of the political side to go after if the situation is asked for. In the Middle East, you have so many sources of information starting from people through observation. Many, many other ways to know the people were about. People are meeting, people are gathering. The only one that understood it, I believe, was Hassan Asrallah himself. He secluded himself in a bunker, which go between, he's not going free because he understood. From there, he stopped the war in 2006 with all the casualties that he caused. He understood that he will be a target. Now, I believe that the other will follow his steps now. Do you think that Hamas Chief Hania understands that? I have no doubt that he is on the list. I have no doubt at all. The Prime Minister said so, the Defense Minister, so everybody was talking, said no one of the Hamas leaders, the Hamas commander will get free of it. I want to talk about this targeted killing because it seems to go along with what the Biden administration has been pushing for, which is the next phase of the war. They've spoken about the IDF slowing down its operation in Gaza and focusing more on these high-level Hamas operatives. Is this a sign that Israel is moving into the next phase of the war? It's already moved. We don't need this sign because Israel actually, in the last days, gradually moved into a different phase. There are less forces on the ground, but the activities, the targeting is more accurate. We're taking the advantages of these Israeli capabilities with air force, air at runs all over Gaza all the time, and now we get more and more information by the IDF, all controlled by the IDF, of course, of targeting people on the ground from the air with the forces moving very carefully. So it's very pinpointed, less damage, the collateral damage, the less damage to the population. At the same time, the pressure on Hamas is growing, and this will give Israel, on one hand, the ability to carry on this war for months, and for the American to be able to give us the support without the pressure of the people that were in the first phases of the war, where the breaking into Gaza was the problem and trying to get to the centers of command of Hamas, like the Shifa hospital that you've mentioned, which probably once the investigation of the Shifa hospital will be over, we'll hear how Hamas was part of the population, part of the infrastructure of Gaza, and why the damage, the collateral damage was so big, because there's no other way to get to the Hamas, to people who did not listen to the calls of the IDF to evacuate areas that stuck to their places, believing the hospital is immune, not knowing that this was the headwater of Hamas. Let's talk about Salah Al-Rouri, the terror mastermind and one of the most wanted criminals in the world with a big bounty on his head. I-24 News correspondent Robert Swift has a profile of Al-Rouri's long history of terrorism. Until his death and what is alleged to be an Israeli assassination, Salah Al-Rouri was a senior Hamas official living in exile in Beirut. He mixed political and military responsibilities acting as the deputy chairman of the organization's political bureau and as the commander for West Bank operations. A founding member of the Is-Ad-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, a bounty of $5 million was placed on information leading to his capture by US officials. Al-Rouri acted as a spokesperson for Hamas on prisoner affairs, as shown here speaking in 2010. The rising level of capturing and torturing in the last few months has pushed this issue up the agenda. If there is a way for prisoners to be released other than through a deal with Israel to force Fatah's hand, that option may be raised. And as a senior official, he acted in a diplomatic capacity. Closely linked to the West Bank, he was born in Ramallah and studied at Hebron University, where his activity with Hamas began. His home in the West Bank was demolished by Israel following the 7th of October attacks. Having spent 15 years in Israeli prisons at times being held on administrative detention, Al-Rouri was exiled in 2007. He spent the following years living in Syria, Turkey, and finally Lebanon. Patred here with other Hamas officials, including Ismail Hania, following the 7th of October attack, Al-Rouri is the most significant Palestinian assassinated in nearly 20 years. So with me here in studio IDF Brigadier General in the reserves, Hanan Geffen, former commander of the Shmone Mataim, that's the 8200 intelligence unit. Thank you for staying with me here in studio. I want to ask you, by limiting these top Hamas commanders, will Israel be able to eliminate the terror organization, knowing full well that the ideology of Hamas still very much remains? Yeah, what we see in this war, and we are in the middle of the war, we have to understand it. If we're talking about Hamas, we have at least three fronts now. We have the Gaza front, we have the West Bank front, and we have the Lebanese front, active front. People are shooting from Lebanon. People are demonstrating and killing from, or trying to go after, to action in areas in the West Bank, which is very close to Israel in the center of activities, the center of Israel, and the Gaza strip, of course. So now this killing, I don't believe it will change dramatically situation, is that we have to go after the people. From the 8th of October, Israel is arresting all the activists that they know by today. There are already 1,300 of these prisoners already captured. These are the leaders, these are the financial people that support these activities. And we have to go on after these activities, because the Palestinian authorities were supposed to do so and neglected it or doing it only marginally. I believe that there are dozens of places in the Gaza, in the West Bank, where the Hamas people are taking a very strong hold, and these are the places where Israeli day after day are going after them. So it will be, we have to get used to, it will be a very prolonged effort for months to get rid of these, all these people, all their heads. And even then, this won't be a ceasefire, not in the West Bank and not in Gaza, we have to get used to it. And that was our leader, the chief of staff and others, are trying to convert to the Israeli public. It's a long way to get rid of the Hamas. I want to talk to you about the timing of this killing, because as this strike occurred, there was negotiations on the table with Hamas for a possible exchange deal to bring some of those 129 hostages still held in Gaza home. Those talks now are frozen in your eyes. How soon can we expect those talks to resume? And was it the right timing for the strike? The question of, there are two separate things, because the hostages and the willingness of the commander, the military commanders right now in Gaza is not dependent on any factor. The only one is they're hoping, they're asking, they're praying, they do any effort to get a ceasefire. They want a prolonged ceasefire. Israel will not agree to it. Now they will settle probably for a temporary ceasefire. They need this ceasefire because they're already hearing the tanks over their heads. They're hearing the bombs. The Israeli forces are very close to them. They need it for their survival. Hoping, and this is the strategy, this was the strategy in the past, that in a way the three weeks ceasefire will be extended to a longer one or to a constant ceasefire. So that is why I believe that a few days, I would say sooner than later, they really resume the negotiation because it's their interest, not less than hours. A quick update to that earlier report, 20 people are reportedly dead in that explosion in Iran. Four years to the death of Soleimani's death and also report out of the Red Sea, Houthis have reportedly attacked an Israel-bound container ship. Are we seeing an escalation in violence here in this proxy war between Israel and Iran? Yes, we see, especially the Houthis trying with the Iranian corvette or that approach that we'll see. They are not giving up yet. They are trying to target Israeli-bounded ships, but it's contained in a way that Iranians are keeping saying it, it's a Houthi decision, an independent decision. So they are trying to stay behind, not going into engage, engage into this war. The Houthis themselves, I believe, understand that they are exposed to the international powers that are gathering there. So it's still, I would say, contained no way, nothing changed here. In Iran, I would say to the expositors to guess, again, it was probably done by some of the opposition, the stronger position in Iran, working constantly. And we see them, we hear them, might be a worker of a local opposition trying to, for the regime, it's a very important event. Everybody will attend it. So they're trying to gain attention to their causes. You've mentioned several times the concept of the situation being contained. And it seems like in Israel, that's sort of been the strategy here with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, with Hamas in the West Bank, with Hezbollah in the Northern Front. But my question is, will Israel ever be able to live in a situation where it's not just contained, and where these Israeli residents will be able to live peacefully, truly peacefully, without the threat of rockets on the Gaza border or on the Lebanese border? Yeah, right now, the Israeli targets are breaking the Hamas, no stopping the war. This is one of the things that the Hamas understood, the Palestinian Authority understood, they're trying to find ways to let Hamas survive in a way, or they're starting this negotiation. So the pressure is constantly on them and in mounting. And in Lebanon, what we have seen in Lebanon, it's not contained because the equation that I mentioned are broken constantly by Israel. And the Hezbollah said Israel is trying to drag us to war. This is there. They started initiating these activities on the 8th of October and gradually, because of the Israeli reaction, including yesterday's one, is that Israel is constantly breaking any equation that Hezbollah said. And Hezbollah is translating it to Israel policy of trying to solve the problem in the northern border and trying to let Hamas start the war. Hezbollah, sorry, start this kind of war. Israel will respond. And this was Hamas' cause. This will be Hezbollah explanation why they are not engaging in this war. Netanyahu met with some of those hostage families last night as the strike was taking place. He reportedly said that there are talks of the possibility of exiling Hamas' leadership, including Yahya Sinov and Mohamed Dayef. This was an answer to a question. This was the question, and he answered yes. I don't believe that this will be the Israeli first option. If Israel will be able to to get Yahya Sinov, it get it. If there is a picture of victory, any picture in this war, which is impossible to have, this getting Yahya Sinov to try in Israel, this will be the only thing that will resemble any kind of victory picture. Hanan Geffen, I want to thank you very much for your insight today. Thank you. That wraps this hour's broadcast. I-24 News will be back at the top of the hour with more coverage of the Israel Hamas war. Until then, you can always stay up to date on our website, I-24 News dot TV, or on social media. I'm Sarah Martinez. Thanks for watching. Is in a state of war, families completely done down in their beds. We have no idea where is she as our soldiers are fighting on the front line, but the general perception is something that certainly needs to to be fought as well. What I saw today is was unbelievable. The devastation on the homes, the destruction, the scene still that you could imagine of what happened. It was like something out of a movie and still also the smell overpowering. It was an important day for me and to show the viewers of I-24 News, but it was but it was a difficult challenging day. This was the home of Yanniv Ohana to see basically a modern-day pogrom and to feel the vulnerability. You know, we live in Israel. We're so dependent on the army and the government and authorities to provide security to see how all of that can be overturned in the course of one day. I think it really makes us understand how fragile our lives are and how much we're going to have to fight for our existence, our very existence in this corner of the world. Welcome to this special broadcast on I-24 News. I'm Khaled Ben-Devi. This month marks the 38 years since I started as a journalist in Israel and nothing was like the last two months. This has been the most challenging, most emotional, most heartbreaking and in some ways the most complex story that I've had to cover is during that time and never I felt the kind of responsibility that I had to present this story to the world in the right context with the right facts and to really speak truth to power in this situation. Back and thanks for staying with us here on I-24 News. If you're just joining us here's a recap of day 89 of the Israel Hamas War. All eyes are now on the northern front with Lebanon. Hezbollah is vowing revenge following the killing of senior Hamas official, Sarah Arouri and an alleged Israeli strike in Beirut Tuesday evening. The mastermind of Hamas terror operations in the West Bank was seen celebrating and praising the October 7th massacre from Doha as a result of the targeted assassination. Hamas has frozen all negotiations with Israel on a hostage exchange deal to release the 129 Israeli hostages still held captive in Gaza. Now according to US intelligence some of the hostages were held at Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital but were moved to another location before Israeli forces raided the area. American spy agencies also assessed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic jihad use that very hospital in sites beneath the complex to command forces fighting Israel. Fighting has shifted to the southern part of the Gaza Strip. The military reportedly struck Hamas sites and gunmen in Hanyounis and hit drone squads in Gaza City. Now the IDF announcing this morning the death of yet another soldier killed in combat in the northern part of the Strip. 21 year old first class sergeant Mehron Moshe Gersh of the Combat Engineering Corps elite Yalom unit. 175 Israeli troops have been killed in just 11 weeks since the ground operation to dismantle Hamas was launched. Now the question of everyone's mind is when will Hezbollah retaliate and how deadly of a blow will it deliver to Israel? I-24 News correspondent Rob Swift with the details. Amid ongoing hostilities between Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese terror group, Hezbollah has sent clear warnings to Jerusalem against conducting targeted killings on its home turf. Any assassination on Lebanese soil will be met with a decisive response. We will not tolerate this. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said recently. Following the assassination of Salah al-Arouri in what foreign media says was an Israeli drone strike, Hezbollah warned that its finger is on the trigger. Its ability to strike Israel is not being underestimated. Hezbollah holds one of the world's largest rocket arsenals, with missiles surpassing the weapons in Hamas's armory in range, accuracy, and quantity. Missiles that could pose a threat to cities if Israeli air defenses are overwhelmed by mass launches. Officials in Jerusalem have stressed that their fight is with Hamas and not Hezbollah. We are focused on the battle against Hamas from the beginning. It remains unclear if Hezbollah will back up its threats with action. The Iranian proxy may talk large while simply continuing or escalating its skirmishes along the border with Israel, as it has reasons not to gamble on all-out war. While Lebanese politicians and media condemned Jerusalem for al-Arouri's death, community leaders in the country have also recently urged Hezbollah not to provoke Israel. Lebanon's chronic economic and political stagnation makes a confrontation with Israel highly risky for Hezbollah, which holds responsibilities as part of the ruling coalition. How it reacts in the coming days and hours may prove to be a pivotal decision in this war. Joining me now in studio is IDF Brigadier General in the reserves, Hanan Geffen, former commander of the 8,200 intelligence units. Thank you very much for joining me today, Hanan. I want to get your first initial reaction assessment of this killing. Well, this kind of war of killing and targeting leaders, terror leaders, is ongoing from, started in 1972 when Israel followed an attack and get rid of all perpetrators of the Munich Olympics there. And this is a deadly weapon in any meaning of the world. In the last, I would say, 10 or so years, it wasn't used so much because one of the conducting the ceasefires with the Hamas and trying to get Hamas into a line with some kind of negotiation was a precondition of Hamas not to target leaders. Now, this precondition was on the 7th of October, is no more valid. And Israel really attacked. Now, as to the question of Hezbollah, he was hitting the center of Beirut, the Dakhia, which is the center of Hezbollah there, where Nasrallah is living. This area was hit very badly on 2006 war and was the main reasons for the Hezbollah giving in, I would say, almost caving at that time. And he remembers it well. Not only that, he promised the Hamas leaders that they are safe in this area. So it's a problem to decide. We will hear him today at 8 o'clock. He will speak. I would guess that he will find a virtuous way to explain that while he support the Hamas and will do everything to support the Hamas, he will not let Israel drag him into a war, that unwanted war that will cause Lebanon this or that harm. This equation, this kind of work we see talking, we see from day one of this war, Israel constantly is testing the equation that Nasrallah said, bypassing, overpassing this kind of equation. This one was, as one mentioned, a precondition that he said, a condition he said last August, said, if there is somebody, someone hit inside Lebanon, it changed the equation. Now we will wait to see whether his mouth and his talk are the same. And then stay with me. I want to cross over to I-24 news correspondent, Pierre-Claude Chandler, who's in northern Israel in Haifa. Pierre, what's the latest on the ground there on the border? Well, we know that the Lebanese channel Al-Mayadeen, which is close to Hezbollah, as stated that there were three anti-tank guided missile attacks on Israeli positions without elaborating. But we know there's been no casualties. So, and that's in the realm of the tit-for-tat war of attrition that Hezbollah waged on Israel starting on October 8 in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. So nothing of the unusual up until now. That doesn't mean that there could be some retaliatory actions either by Hamas in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, or Hezbollah itself. Haifa, for instance, is a prime target in the sense that it has sensitive sites, such as the harbor that is behind me or the petrochemical industry, which will be dismantled only in five years from now. So it's still very actual. We know that the air defense forces have been boosted in order to intercept any rocket or missile strike, especially that Hezbollah has guided missiles and a lot of them. But what we understand at this point is that maybe with all the vows of vengeance that leaders of Hezbollah, of Hamas have pronounced, everybody's waiting for the pronouncement of Hassan Nasrallah's speech at 6 p.m. local time, which will be exactly 24 hours after the targeted killing of Salah el-Arouri, which nobody has really taken responsibility for, except that the Lebanese media attributes it to Israel. Now, there was a subliminal message pronounced by the head of the Mossads by agency, Dedi Barneha, who assisted at the funeral of a former Mossad chief. He said that every Arab woman whose son has participated in the October 7 massacres should know that the blood of his son is, that his son's life is in peril. So that maybe is the so subliminal understanding that it might be Israel who was behind the targeted killing. Thank you very much for that update. So with me here in studio, a quick update for our viewers, Iranian state media reporting an explosion in Iran near the ceremony to mark the four-year anniversary of the death of Haasem Soleimani. Can we expect Israel to be carrying out more of these targeted killings or at least sending more of a message to Hamas, Hezbollah, but at the end of the day it's Iran that it shouldn't mess with the idea. In the case of here in Iran right now, it's something that if I can guess it's something that the Iranian opposition is run and this is only a symbolic one. It's not too real. It doesn't have a real effect. Israel on the other hand has this kind of policy of getting rid of the Hamas or any terror leaders. And this one is now in action in Israel as the American already said. And so one of the American administration guys said this is only the beginning of a kind of killing. And I believe this will be one of the weapons that Israel in parallel to the ground forces, in parallel to other activities will enforce because there is we have to understand and it settles down even to the Arabs. This is a war. Israel means a war. It is not the case that they get usually in the past that after this or that time, amount of time, Israel was agreed to ceasefire and then coming back to their usual way of conduct. This time they understand that this is a war, a real war, and they're attacking precautions. I believe Hezbollah will do the same. I believe that terror leaders will now change the way they behave. They were so sure of themselves appearing in Beirut or other places of the Arab world. So freely attacking Israel believe that Israel after the 7th of October is a change is more fragile. Now they will have to reconsider everything. And this is one of might be one of the reason for tackling this kind of leaders to get back and to reconstruct some of the fear and understanding Israel is not fragile. Israel is not going anywhere. And they have to be more cautious. And I believe this is a message that as far as we see today has been received by the other side. It certainly marks the end of an era where Hamas political achieves or Hamas operatives are able to freely operate from Lebanon, from Beirut, from Doha, from Istanbul. I want to ask you about this specific operation here. Israel, of course, has not commented specifically on the strike, but tell us about the major intelligence efforts that go into a targeted killing of this magnitude. Well, I may tell you that Israel is the Israeli intelligence of all the branches. And we have dozens of intelligence collection branches targeting these leaders for years. It's not a new thing. It's not nothing that started today. The only difference is the decision of the political side to go after if the situation is asked for. In the Middle East, you have so many sources of information starting from people through observation. Many, many other ways to know the people were about. People are meeting, people are gathering. The only one that understood it, I believe, was Hassan Asrallah himself. He secluded himself in a bunker, which go between, he's not going free because he understood. From there, he stopped the war in 2006 with all the casualties that he caused. He understood that he will be a target. Now, I believe that the other will follow his steps now. Do you think that Hamas Chief Hania understands that? I have no doubt that he is on the list. I have no doubt at all. The prime minister said so, the defense minister, so everybody was talking, said no one of the Hamas leaders, the Hamas commander will be get free of it. I want to talk about this targeted killing because it seems to go along with what the Biden administration has been pushing for, which is the next phase of the war. They've spoken about the IDF slowing down its operation in Gaza and focusing more on these high-level Hamas operatives. Is this a sign that Israel is moving into the next phase of the war? It's already moved. We don't need this sign because Israel, actually, in the last days, gradually moving to a different phase. There are less forces on the ground, but the activities, the targeting, is more accurate. We are taking the advantages of these Israeli capabilities with air force, air drones all over Gaza all the time, and now we get more and more information by the IDF, all controlled by the IDF. Of course, of targeting people on the ground from the air with the forces moving very carefully, so it's very pinpointed, less damage, the collateral damage, the less damage to the population. At the same time, the pressure on Hamas is growing, and this will give Israel, on one hand, the ability to carry on this war for months and for the American to be able to give up the support without the pressure of the people that were in the first phases of the war, where the breaking into Gaza was the problem and trying to get to the centers of command of Hamas, like the Shifa Hospital, which probably once the investigation of the Shifa Hospital will be over, we'll hear how Hamas was part of the population, part of the infrastructure of Gaza, and why the damage, the collateral damage was so big because there's no other way to get to the Hamas, to people who did not listen to the calls of the IDF, to evacuate areas, they stuck to their places, believing the hospital is immune, not knowing that this was the airport of Hamas. Let's talk about Salah Al-Rouri, the terror mastermind and one of the most wanted criminals in the world with the big bounty on his head. I-24 News correspondent Robert Swift has a profile of Al-Rouri's long history of terrorism. Until his death and what is alleged to be an Israeli assassination, Salah Al-Rouri was a senior Hamas official living in exile in Beirut. He mixed political and military responsibilities acting as the deputy chairman of the organization's political bureau and as the commander for West Bank operations. A founding member of the Is-Ad-Din Al-Qasam Brigades, a bounty of $5 million was placed on information leading to his capture by US officials. Al-Rouri acted as a spokesperson for Hamas on prisoner affairs, as shown here speaking in 2010. The rising level of capturing and torturing in the last few months has pushed this issue up the agenda. If there is a way for prisoners to be released, other than through a deal with Israel to force Fatah's hand, that option may be raised. And as a senior official, he acted in a diplomatic capacity. Closely linked to the West Bank, he was born in Ramallah and studied at Hebron University, where his activity with Hamas began. His home in the West Bank was demolished by Israel following the 7th of October attacks. Having spent 15 years in Israeli prisons, at times being held on administrative detention, Al-Rouri was exiled in 2007. He spent the following years living in Syria, Turkey and finally Lebanon. Patred here with other Hamas officials, including Ismail Hania, following the 7th of October attack, Al-Rouri is the most significant Palestinian assassinated in nearly 20 years. So with me here in studio, I have Brigadier General in the reserves, Hanan Geffen, former commander of the Shmone Mataim, that's the 8200 intelligence unit. Thank you for staying with me here in studio. I want to ask you, by limiting these top Hamas commanders, will Israel be able to eliminate the terror organization, knowing full well that the ideology of Hamas still very much remains? Yeah, what we see in this war, and we are in the middle of the war, we have to understand it. We have, if we're talking about Hamas, we have at least three fronts now. We have the Gaza front, we have the West Bank front, and we have the Lebanese front, active front. People are shooting from Lebanon. People are demonstrating and killing from, or trying to go after, to action in areas in the West Bank, which is very close to Israeli center of activities, the center of Israel, and the Gaza Strip, of course. So now this killing, I don't believe it will change dramatically situation, is that we have to go after the people. From 8th of October, Israel is arresting all the activists that they know, by today, there are already 1300 of these prisoners already captured. These are the leaders, these are the financial people that support these activities. And these are, we have to go on after these activities because the Palestinian authorities were supposed to do so and neglected it or doing it only marginally. I believe that there are dozens of places in the Gaza, in the West Bank where the Hamas people are taking a very strong hold, and these are the places where Israeli day after day are going after them. So it would be, we have to get used to, it would be a very prolonged effort for months to get rid of these, all these people, all their heads. And even then, even this war, there won't be a ceasefire, not in the West Bank, and not in Gaza, we have to get used to it. And that was our leader, the chief of staff and others are trying to convert to the Israeli public. It's a long way to get rid of the Hamas. I want to talk to you about the timing of this killing because as this strike occurred, there was negotiations on the table with Hamas for a possible exchange deal to bring some of those 129 hostages still held in Gaza home. Those talks now are frozen in your eyes. How soon can we expect those talks to resume? And was it the right timing for the strike? The question of, there are two separate things because the hostages and the willingness of the commander, the military commanders right now in Gaza is not dependent on any factor. The only one is they're hoping, they're asking, they're praying, they do any effort to get a ceasefire. They want a prolonged ceasefire. Israel will not agree to it. Now they will settle probably for a temporary ceasefire. They need this ceasefire because they're already hearing the tanks over the heads. They're hearing the bombs. The Israeli forces are very close to them. They need it for their survival. Hoping, and this is the strategy, this was the strategy in the past, that in a way, the three weeks ceasefire will be extended to a longer one or to a constant ceasefire. So that is why I believe that a few days, I would say sooner than later, they will resume the negotiation because it's their interest, not less than hours. A quick update to that early report. 20 people are reportedly dead in that explosion in Iran, four years to the death of Soleimani's death and also report out of the Red Sea, Houthis have reportedly attacked an Israel-bound container ship. Are we seeing an escalation in violence here in this proxy war between Israel and Iran? Yes, we see, especially the Houthis trying with the Iranian Corvette or that approach there. We'll see they are not giving up yet. They are trying to target Israeli-bounded ships, but it's contained in a way that Iranians are keeping it. It's a Houthi decision, an independent decision. So they're trying to stay behind, not going to engage into this war. The Houthis themselves, I believe, understand that they are exposed to the international powers that are gathering there. So it's still, I would say, contained. No way, nothing changed here. In Iran, I would say to the expositors to guess. Again, it was probably done by some of the opposition, the stronger opposition in Iran working constantly. And we see them, we hear them. Might be a local opposition trying to, for the regime, it's a very important event. Everybody will attend it. So they're trying to get attention to their causes. Hanan, you've mentioned several times the concept of the situation being contained. And it seems like in Israel, that's sort of been the strategy here with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, with Hamas in the West Bank, with Hezbollah in the northern front. But my question is, will Israel ever be able to live in a situation where it's not just contained, and where these Israeli residents will be able to live peacefully, truly peacefully, without the threat of rockets on the Gaza border or on the Lebanese border? Yeah, right now, the Israeli targets are breaking the Hamas, no stopping the war. This is one of the things that the Hamas understood, the Palestinian Authority understood, they're trying to find ways to let Hamas survive in a way, or they're starting this negotiation. So the pressure is constantly on them and in mounting. And in Lebanon, what we have seen in Lebanon, it's not contained because the equation that I mentioned are broken constantly by Israel. And the Hezbollah said Israel is trying to drag out the war. This is there. They started with initiating these activities on the 8th of October and gradually, because of the Israeli reaction, including yesterday's one, is that Israel is constantly breaking any equation that Hezbollah said. And Hezbollah is translating it to Israel policy of trying to solve the problem in the northern border and trying to let Hamas start the war. Hezbollah, sorry, start this kind of war. Israel will respond. And this was Hamas' cause. This will be Hezbollah's explanation why they are not engaging in this war. Netanyahu met with some of those hostage families last night as the strike was taking place. He reportedly said that there are talks of the possibility of exiling Hamas' leadership, including Yahya Sinwar and Mohamed Dayef. This was an answer to a question. This was the question, and he answered yes. I don't believe that this will be the Israeli first option. If Israel will be able to get Yahya Sinwar, it gets it. If there is a picture of victory, any picture in this war which is impossible to have, this getting Yahya Sinwar to try in Israel, this will be the only thing that will resemble any kind of victory picture. Hanan Geffen, I want to thank you very much for your insight today. Thank you. That wraps this hour's broadcast. I-24 News will be back at the top of the hour with more coverage of the Israel-Hamas war. Until then, you can always stay up to date on our website, I-24 News dot TV or on social media. I'm Sarah Martinez. Thanks for watching.