 24 News is ongoing coverage of Israel at war. I'm Arielle Levin Waldman. You are looking at live images from both the north and the south right now as Israel fights a war on two fronts at once. 26 days in, the IDF announces the deaths of another nine soldiers killed fighting in Northern Gaza against Hamas terrorists, joining two more pronounced dead yesterday. Seven of the fallen from the Tzabar battalion and two more from the 77th. The IDF says the air force struck deep underground Hamas infrastructure in Jabalia in a strike that took out Ibrahim Bieri, the commander of Hamas's central Jabalia battalion and a central planner of the October 7th massacre. In the north, the IDF intercepted a surface-to-air missile fired from Lebanon and Israeli drone on Tuesday night. That's according to the IDF spokesman's unit. The IDF struck the site where the missile was fired from and the cell that fired the missile in response. The military says as well that an aerial threat was intercepted over the Red Sea near a lot on Tuesday night, but no alert was activated in the city. No threat was posed to civilians, and it did not enter Israeli territory. The incident comes just 24 hours, less than 24 hours. In fact, after drones and missiles fired by the Iran-backed Houthi militia towards a lot were intercepted by the IDF. The United States says that Saudi Arabia is still interested in pursuing a normalization agreement with Israel. U.S. National Security Council speaker John Kirby said he was confident that the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia have a path forward to get back towards normalization after the war. Bloomberg News is reporting that U.S. and Israel are exploring the possibility of a multinational force to manage Gaza after the war, one that may involve American troops. A second option could establish a peacekeeping force modeled after the one that oversees the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, while a third possibility could see Gaza put under temporary United Nations oversight. Our forces are currently fighting deep inside the Gaza Strip. They are killing terrorists in close-range combat, conducting coordinated strikes on terror targets from land, air, and sea. During the afternoon hours, infantry and armored forces secured a central Hamas stronghold in the west part of Jabalia. This stronghold served as a training center for the October 7th massacre, and as a passage to the coastline from where additional terrorists set off to perpetrate the October 7th massacre. In the course of the fighting, we eliminated many terrorists and destroyed terror infrastructure. This is complicated combat, some of which is face-to-face combat. During the combat, we lost soldiers. And for more, we're going to cross now to Israel's southern border, where our correspondent Pierre Kloschenler is standing by. Some very major developments on the southern front overnight, Pierre. Walk us through what's going on down there. Well, there is obviously an accrued intensification of the fighting on the eastern outskirts of the Jabalia refugee camp and Gaza city just behind me. We are hearing a lot of explosions from outgoing artillery shells, but also from fighter jets that are bombing intensely targets. We know from the IDF spokesperson unit that since the start of the war that Hamas waged against Israel on Israeli territory on October 7, there has been 11,000 targets, terrorist targets, struck by the Israeli Air Force, by the ground forces, by the Navy, and as well by the artillery. Just we hear that just yesterday evening, a vehicle carrying anti-tank missile was eliminated as it was dragged towards Israeli forces. We know that they are ferocious fighting in close range between terrorists and IDF forces of the Givati Infantry Brigade, which is sustaining the brunt of losses. 11 soldiers have been killed since the start of the ground operation five days ago. Two officers from Tank Unit and the rest from the Givati Infantry Brigade. Pierre, thank you for that report from the front. We're going to be back with you over the course of the day as the situation develops for more updates and more information. Now, for more on this, we are joined by Colonel Mary Eisen, Director of the International Institute for Counterterrorism. Thank you very much for being with us, Mary. I want to discuss something the IDF mentioned. 11,000 terror targets struck since the beginning of the war, yet Hamas still obviously having the ability to fire rockets and to wage war. What exactly does 11,000 terror targets mean and how many have to be taken out before we can actually see an impact on their fighting capacity? Marielle, Hamas has been preparing both a terror attack, but what they're going to call their defense for literally a decade, that underground subterranean arena has 25, 30,000 of the trained terror fighters. And in addition, Hamas has a lot of close supporters that are throughout the Gaza Strip. All of this within that urban civilian above ground arena, aside from the below ground. So what does 11,000 targets mean? It means that you're getting to the opening of a tunnel. And when you're attacking the tunnel itself, you could be attacking the building that the tunnel starts from. When you see the aerial visuals of the IDF or the Israeli air forces attacking something from the air, it could be that the ground forces have been inside the building, have seen the entrance to the tunnel, or they are nearby. You can see the different connections between anti-tank missile terror teams that are on vehicles, but they can also be in a building, in a window, coming out of a tunnel. Every single one of these is going to be a different target, the cache of weapons. All of this is information that we pretty much had before. And in that sense, it's something that you were building over the last month. The interaction of the troops going into the Gaza Strip are going to find more specific targets. So it's the combination of what we knew from before and did not attack in the past and are now doing so specifically. And I think the biggest event in that sense was the attack against the terror tunnels underneath the Jabalia refugee camp. That's the big attack of yesterday. Absolutely. And on the topic of getting into those tunnels, rescuing hostages in the light board, now hearing reports that US commando teams have showed up in Israel to help Israel with the intel side of this. What do they bring to the table here? What sort of necessary skill set needs to be brought to bear to tackle this situation? Well, sadly, in this world, it's the United States and a few of the other Western countries who have been in this type of more, it was caves and tunnels, both in Afghanistan and the area in Asia. Israel, in that sense, has done this in the past. This is not the first time we're meeting tunnels, but until now we met what I'm going to call the attack tunnels, the ones that Hamas built from the Gaza Strip into Israel, and of course the ones that Hezbollah built from Lebanon into Israel. Those we destroyed to a large degree, but right now we're talking about getting into them. How do you go underground? How do you find the entrances? What do you do inside that arena, which is very, very crowded? It can be booby trapped. What type of weapons can you use? How do you avoid those traps that they're putting? These are things that in learning you do systematically, clearly, and you try to learn from whoever has done it before. Again, nobody's ever done it in any way on the scale and the challenges that we're facing right now in that subterranean arena underneath the refugee camps in the city of Gaza, literally throughout the Gaza Strip. Definitely, Mary. We're going to come right back to you shortly on the northern front, but before we do that, we are going to turn our eye there where our correspondent, Mary McAuliffe, is standing by. Mary, it's good to have you with us. Can you walk us through the latest developments on the northern front as well? Good morning, Ariel. So it's been a quiet night overnight for many of the northern residents here in Israel. It's been some hours since we had some rocket sirens ringing out, but that doesn't mean there hasn't still been activity on the ground. Israel and Hezbollah continue to trade cross-border attacks, and in the wider region, the wider Middle East, we continue to have some worrying developments, and also a lot of diplomatic actors also now acting. The Russian foreign minister also now coming out last night saying that Israeli strikes calling them unacceptable and condoning Israeli aggressions in the region, saying that Israel's retaliation on Syria strikes was looking to destabilize the region. Of course, Israel was responding to strikes that originate in Syrian territory that was targeting Israeli civilians. So we've seen these worries and developments. The U.S. is also deploying additional troops to the Middle East that Pentagon specified that they would not be coming to Israel, but they will be coming to the region and joining those aircraft carriers and all of the different force deployments and mobilizations that we've seen the U.S. trying to posture to move more forces closer to the area. Thank you very much, Mary, for the updates from the northern front. We'll be back with you later for more as it develops. I'm going to turn back to Mary Eisen now to analyze the north a little bit more. Mary, one of the things that we're hearing is not just on the north, but those flaring up from Houthi rebels in Yemen, other reports saying from the Iraq border as well. Ultimately, Israel says they want to focus on Gaza right now, but Israel still has to respond to this sort of aggression, does it not? Israel is responding to these aggressions all the time, but look at this broader aspect. When we're talking about the Hamas attack, it's a Hamas attack, but to a large degree, and that's part of our failure of October 7th, Israel was looking at Hezbollah, who was planning a similar attack only even bigger than what Hamas did. So we're very focused on not just the preemptive idea, making sure that nothing expands there, being ready for any possibility, because the big question is, so why hasn't Hezbollah attacked? Why have they not brought out their forces in the way that they know how? And here, Ariel, I would say that perhaps to put up a big map of the greater Middle East, Iran over the last decade, certainly throughout the Syrian war, became the main backer and the state sponsor of different Shiite and non-Shiite forces throughout the Middle East, like the Houthis in Yemen, who have already been firing different types of weaponry towards Israel. The Houthis in Yemen have been fighting both in Yemen and against Saudi Arabia and against the Emirates. Again, if you look at the map, you'll see in the capabilities the Houthis in Yemen have are from Iran. When we say about Iraq, or for that matter, the Golan Heights on the Syrian side and throughout Syria, you have different Shiite forces that are built, sustained, and then manned by different Shiites from around the world, that all of their capabilities come from Iran. So Iran is poking. They're making sure that they say we're participating. Send it from Yemen, send it from Iraq, from the Shiites on the Golan Heights, and Hezbollah is keeping what I'm going to call a low-key, constant participation. But we all have to be aware. Hezbollah could go full-scale. And if Hezbollah goes full-scale, the Iranians are the ones that would tell them to do so, then we're all going to see a much harsher arena that we're in. So I say all of that as we look around. We're all aware. I'm very proud, as an Israeli, of the defenses that we've put up, if it's Aero that was used against incoming from Yemen in very long-range missiles, if it's the David Sling and, of course, Iron Dome that is protecting us. But those are all our protections against these incoming. The fact that they're all being used right now, these are the things we have defenses against. We will stand strong, but it keeps getting more and more, and we all need to be aware it could get worse. And because everyone believes that to be almost an inevitability at this point, ultimately, what is that going to look like if Israel is forced to split its military capabilities between the North as well as Gaza? First of all, we have the capabilities. It's something that we've been understanding for years. We always talked about two different arenas. We erroneously thought that Hezbollah would start, and Hamas would join in. Hamas started, definitely surprised us, and we've been waiting for Hezbollah to join in. So we have those capabilities. In this case, I'd also zoom out again in the map because the different Shiite forces, the Iranian-backed Shiite forces, the Iranian-trained armed Shiite forces that are all over different places in the Middle East, have been attacking U.S. forces, U.S. locations all over the Middle East over the last three weeks. It didn't even just start in the last week. So we're already talking about something where Iran states clearly, it's the U.S. and Israel. It's the big devil and the little devil, so that if you're talking about Israel's response, A, we are ready. That doesn't make it easy. Casualties, very harsh war, we are ready. In the United States and other countries are upping their understanding and their direct involvement in what is going on here, because this is not Israel against the world. It's not Israel against Islam. It is about both the Iranian very strong Iranian monster trying to bring out something that will be all over, dragging everybody in, and we're all going to be able to withstand it. But as they say, this isn't alone, though we could. It is together with the United States, and it is together with that Western world. Absolutely, Mary. And I want to point out to our viewers right now, the images you were just seeing on the screen are live images from strikes in Gaza as Israel's pounding Hamas terror infrastructure as support for the ground forces operating there. I'm going to turn back to you again, Mary, because we've been discussing that ultimately it is Iran's hand that is behind this situation. And we're talking about the response on the north, we're talking about the response on the south, but ultimately what is the response in Tehran itself? They are so supportive of the Al-Quds, whatever the Hamas have called this in that sense. And here it's part of that manipulation that we all need to be aware of, Ariel, meaning that Hamas, or it could have been Hezbollah, start a war, start a horrific genocidal terror attack unheard of, unprecedented, and immediately base it on the fact that they're trying to aid a free Palestine. They're not trying to free anybody. They're trying to destroy Israel. They're not freeing the Palestinians. Hamas is the worst thing that happened to them together with Iran. So Iran states clearly that they support the Palestinians. They're trying to frame this as part of being within the Palestinian arena, which it is not. It's about annihilating Israel. Hamas calls for our destruction. Hezbollah calls for our destruction. Their ideologies go hand in hand. I think, though, Ariel, people should be aware Iran is very, very scared, both of Israel and of the United States. And they want to be sure that they are not attacked, meaning they are using the proxies from Yemen, from Iraq, from Syria. For that matter, Hamas and the Palestinian arena and the Hezbollah up north, they're going to use the proxies. They don't want to be attacked themselves, and they've stated that clearly. Well, thank you, Mary, for that explanation. We're going to move to another topic now first. That, of course, being the international reaction to Israel at war for more than three weeks now, even as the United States in the Senate is discussing aid bills for Israel. We saw pro-Hamas protest inside the capital of the United States as well, terror supporters jeering from the observation area while the U.S. is discussing aid. This was addressed directly by US Secretary St. Anthony Blinken. Let's take a quick listen to that. I also hear very much the passions expressed in this room and outside this room. All of us are committed to the protection of civilian life. All of us know the suffering that is taking place as we speak. All of us are determined to see it end. But all of us know the imperative of standing up with our allies and partners when their security, when their democracies are threatened. That's what's happening now. We stand resolutely with them, even as we stand resolutely for the protection of innocent civilians. Could you? And we now turn to our senior correspondent Owen Alterman in studio to help us understand a little bit more about the international arena. Obviously, the United States is Israel's biggest ally, biggest backer militarily, diplomatically, and more. We're starting to see an undercurrent in the United States that supports not just the Palestinian side, but Hamas directly with a growing undercurrent fervor. Yeah, it's obviously disconcerting to people who support Israel. It's obviously disconcerting to Jews. A lot of it, of course, focused on university campuses. But are you out for all the pictures that make people so upset? I think there has to be an understanding of the bigger picture, which is there are a lot of people don't like these protesters. There are a lot of people don't like them being on the streets. There are a lot of people who don't like their messaging. There are a lot of people who don't like what they see as their extreme positions. And that's an opportunity for Israel, an opportunity for Israel's advocates to position Israel as the home for people who are in the political center, right? Not for people on the far right, where there are pockets of hostility to Israel, and not for people on the far left. But for people in the political center who want a calm, insane debate with moderate positions. And I think that's where Israel's advocacy should go, not trying to take on the protesters head on, but simply say we are the home for Americans, for that matter, Europeans of the political center. And we saw Blinken's full-throated support in that sound bite. He's also coming to Israel on Friday. What do we know about what he's bringing here? Well, I have to see. But again, one would imagine that just his last time when he came, he'll sit with that War Cabinet and tell them what he thinks. Obviously, the context is different than the first visit, right? In the immediate aftermath of the October 7th attacks, now the Israeli military is by its own statement deep inside the Gaza Strip. And the administration is going to want to continue to balance its strong support for Israel with its strong recommendations for the Israeli government and Israeli military about how it should be conducting the war. And about this issue of humanitarian aid, which has been a priority for the administration from the get go. And obviously they're going to want to see the humanitarian aid continue and increase. There are all sorts of interesting proposals on the table for how to make that happen and how to treat for injured and hospitalized patients in Gaza. Of course, we saw a small number of them cross over the Egyptian border yesterday, according to Egyptian officials. And one would imagine the Biden administration was involved behind the scenes with that. So I think more of the same in that sense. But of course, there is a symbolic importance of having the Secretary of State come here. In this case, not only to show his strong support for Israel, but there is that and think back to the emotional speeches that not only Joe Biden gave, but Anthony Blinken as well in that first week. But also I think showing America's allies, Israel's allies around the world, that they're also on board with trying to do what they can to affect the way the ground campaign and the war are conducted. And you actually just mentioned the aid issue. So I want to point out to our viewers, you were just looking at some visuals, some video from the Rafa crossing to Gaza Live, as you're seeing on screen right now. Actually, one of the focal points right now of U.S. interests. And before that, we are going to hear directly from the U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby talking about, well, the humanitarian situation in Gaza at the moment. Well, without getting into this specific moment that we're in right now or litigating this from the White House podium, we do believe that humanitarian pauses could be of value. But they have to be, you have to have, there has to be credible support on both sides here for where to do it, when to do it, for how long to do it, and for what purpose. And we're continuing to work with partners in the region, including those who have a direct line of communication with Hamas to see if that's possible. The goal would be to get aid in, to maybe get people out that want to evacuate. It also would be valuable, a humanitarian pause every now and then would be valuable for us, if in fact there's a serious effort to get hostages out, because you'd need some kind of pause of the fighting to be able to do that safely. I want to turn back to Owen Alterman here in studio. We're from John Kirby about international partners in the United States and Israel, both realizing at this point that alone they cannot manage this conflict, to manage this status quo and perpetuity. We're seeing a report in Bloomberg right now about some other regional partners, Saudis, and others possibly being brought in to manage Gaza the day after the war. Can you walk us through a little bit about what's under discussion? Yeah, I mean listen, these proposals have been out there since the beginning of the war and the beginning of the discussion of the day after. The consensus in Israel is there's no good solution, but the Israelis are sick of worrying about the devil that they don't know, given what we've seen from Hamas. The consensus in Israel is Israel's willing to take its chances on the day after, but that doesn't mean Israel shouldn't plan. If it were easy to find a different political solution for Gaza and international actors who would be interested in being in Gaza and policing it, it would have been done a long time ago. So again, the idea of bringing in Arab militaries and Arab policemen, let's say, to help manage the situation there is an old idea, but it's getting a kind of new lease on life. And maybe the cause for optimism here, Ariel, is that the Saudis have a real stake in this now. They seem to want to go forward with normalization with Israel. They obviously want to increase their influence in the region. They have an interest in stability. They could be an actor who might be able to be trusted. They have the resources, both financial and in terms of their military training, to help make these things happen, whether it be reconstruction or whether it be maintaining the security situation in Gaza. So that's why this idea and this concept may be a more realistic one than ideas that have been floated in the past. So you are right that Israel and the United States will need help from allies in the region and beyond. And again, just to go back to what John Kirby said about the humanitarian pauses, I think at the end of the day, if this is something Hamas agrees to Israel, we'll need to. Then this is different from a long term ceasefire. I think more similar to what we've seen in previous rounds of fighting in Gaza, a pause for a few hours. As he said, to get aid in and in this case, maybe people out. I want to turn back to Colonel Mary Eisen for some further discussion on that. The idea of a multinational peacekeeping force of regional partners in the United States or people in the United States can at least work with. How viable is this really from Israel's perspective given that one of the parties in discussion is Qatar, who's funded Hamas throughout the entire conflict? I'm not just conflict, but for years. But remember that Israel acquiesced with that. And I say that because at the end, Ariel, as Owen said before, and I wholeheartedly agree, there are only bad options, but they are options. And if you don't choose any of those bad options, then what are you going to do? Have Israel rule over? I think that the one thing that Israel understands very clearly is that we don't want to conquer. We don't want to rule over. We left in 2005 for a different kind of future. That doesn't mean right now that we're going to let Hamas stay, that we're not going to let. But I do think that these different partners that we do not like, none of the options are good, are the ones that are on the table. We need to keep that, as I say, it's an open mind about the bad options, but they are still options. And there are things that we need to look at clearly, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the different countries around. Nobody's going to want to be there, but there may be that necessity. And that's where it's going to go to. And you mentioned Saudi Arabia there at the end because they are the big wild card in this. They have a lot of power. They've paused any of the normalization. But what role might they have in actually managing or resolving this issue? Marielle, we're 24 days into a war that is unprecedented in between Israel and our surroundings. It's unprecedented because the terror group Hamas do not only challenge terrorized Israel. Hamas is Hamas Muslim brotherhood. There's a connection here that we don't talk a lot, that has to do also with all of the different, I'm not going to say moderate, but certainly the Sunni governments, not exactly, democracies throughout the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia. So in that sense, there's a very quiet aspect of what needs to be done with Hamas that impacts Saudi Arabia directly about the day after, about what that means. And I think that here there are interests that are not above. We're not going to be talking about them, but they are actually quite long term. And Mary, less than a minute left here, when we're talking about bad options, what can we say about this humanitarian pause the United States is asking for? That all of us want a humanitarian pause for the people in this Gaza Strip. It doesn't matter if we think that they themselves overwhelmingly support Hamas. As I look at that, I say, absolutely, get them water, get them medicine. I don't want anybody to starve to death. I want them to live. And that's why we've been telling them to move. And that's a pause. It has nothing to do with the ceasefire. It has nothing to do with the continuation of Israeli actions against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Thank you very much, Mary. I just want to understand all the background, the tactical, and the more in-depth intelligence behind this conflict. Thank you very much. And also Owen in the studio. Same thing with the analysis. Very much. Thank you for breaking down the international angles for us. For everyone else, we are just about out of time. But we're going to be back with you at the top of the next hour with breaking news updates from this war along multiple fronts. So join us again then. And until then, thank you very much for watching. 1,300 people murdered and more than 3,000 injured. And the war with Hamas 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 I-24 News. News 24, the only Spanish media that keeps you informed and connected with the Latin-Israel community. News 24, only on I-24 News. News is ongoing coverage of Israel at war. You are looking at live images from both the North and the South. Right now, as Israel fights a war on two fronts at once, 26 days in. The IDF announces the deaths of another nine soldiers killed fighting in Northern Gaza against Hamas terrorists, joining two more pronounced dead yesterday. Seven of the fallen from the Tzabar battalion and two more from the 77th. The IDF says the air force struck deep underground Hamas infrastructure in Jabalia, in a strike that took out Ibrahim Bieri, the commander of Hamas's central Jabalia battalion, and a central planner of the October 7th massacre. In the North, the IDF intercepted a surface-to-air missile fired from Lebanon and an Israeli drone on Tuesday night. That's according to the IDF spokesman's unit. The IDF struck the site where the missile was fired from and the cell that fired the missile in response. The military says as well that an aerial threat was intercepted over the Red Sea near a lot on Tuesday night, but no alert was activated in the city. No threat was posed to civilians, and it did not enter Israeli territory. The incident comes just 24 hours, less than 24 hours, in fact, after drones and missiles fired by the Iran-backed Houthi militia towards a lot were intercepted by the IDF. The United States says that Saudi Arabia is still interested in pursuing a normalization agreement with Israel. U.S. National Security Council speaker John Kirby said he was confident that the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia have a path forward to get back towards normalization after the war. Bloomberg News is reporting that U.S. and Israel are exploring the possibility of a multinational force to manage Gaza after the war, one that may involve American troops. A second option could establish a peacekeeping force modeled after the one that oversees the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, while a third possibility could see Gaza put under temporary United Nations oversight. Our forces are currently fighting deep inside the Gaza Strip. They are killing terrorists in close-range combat, conducting coordinated strikes on terror targets from land, air, and sea. During the afternoon hours, infantry and armored forces secured a central Hamas stronghold in the west part of Jabalia. This stronghold served as a training center for the October 7th massacre, and as a passage to the coastline from where additional terrorists set off to perpetrate the October 7th massacre. In the course of the fighting, we eliminated many terrorists and destroyed terror infrastructure. This is complicated combat, some of which is face-to-face combat. During the combat, we lost soldiers. And for more, we're going to cross now to Israel's southern border, where our correspondent Pierre Kloschenler is standing by. Some very major developments on the southern front overnight, Pierre. Walk us through what's going on down there. Well, there is obviously an accrued intensification of the fighting on the eastern outskirts of the Jabalia refugee camp and Gaza city just behind me. We're hearing a lot of explosions from outgoing artillery shells, but also from fighter jets that are bombing intensely targets. We know from the IDF spokesperson unit that since the start of the war that Hamas waged against Israel on Israeli territory on October 7th, there has been 11,000 targets, terrorist targets struck by the Israeli air force, by the ground forces, by the Navy, and as well by the artillery. Just, oh, we hear that just yesterday evening, a vehicle carrying anti-tank missile was eliminated as it was dragged towards Israeli forces. We know that they are ferocious, fighting in close range between terrorists and IDF forces of the Givati Infantry Brigade, which is sustaining the brunt of losses. 11 soldiers have been killed since the start of the ground operation five days ago. Two officers from Tank Unit and the rest from the Givati Infantry Brigade. Pierre, thank you for that report from the front. We're going to be back with you over the course of the day as the situation develops for more updates and more information. Now for more on this, we are joined by Colonel Mary Eisen, director of the International Institute for Counterterrorism. Thank you very much for being with us, Mary. I want to discuss something the IDF mentioned. 11,000 terror targets struck since the beginning of the war, yet Hamas still obviously having the ability to fire rockets and to wage war. What exactly does 11,000 terror targets mean and how many have to be taken out before we can actually see an impact on their fighting capacity? Marielle, Hamas has been preparing both a terror attack, but what they're going to call their defense, for literally a decade, that underground subterranean arena has 25,000, 30,000 of the trained terror fighters. And in addition, Hamas has a lot of close supporters that are throughout the Gaza Strip. All of this within that urban civilian above ground arena, aside from the below ground. So what does 11,000 targets mean? It means that you're getting to the opening of a tunnel. And when you're attacking the tunnel itself, you could be attacking the building that the tunnel starts from. When you see the aerial visuals of the IDF or the Israeli air forces attacking something from the air, it could be that the ground forces have been inside the building, have seen the entrance to the tunnel, or they are nearby. You can see the different connections between anti-tank missile terror teams that are on vehicles, but they can also be in a building, in a window, coming out of a tunnel. Every single one of these is going to be a different target, the cache of weapons. All of this is information that we pretty much had before. And in that sense, it's something that you were building over the last month, the interaction of the troops going into the Gaza Strip are going to find more specific targets. So it's the combination of what we knew from before and did not attack in the past and are now doing so specifically. And I think the biggest event in that sense was the attack against the terror tunnels underneath the Jabalia refugee camp. That's the big attack of yesterday. Absolutely. And on the topic of getting into those tunnels, rescuing hostages and the like, we're now hearing reports that US commando teams have showed up in Israel to help Israel with the intel side of this. What do they bring to the table here? What sort of necessary skill set needs to be brought to bear to tackle this situation? Well, sadly in this world, it's the United States and a few of the other Western countries who have been in this type of more, it was caves and tunnels, both in Afghanistan and the area in Asia. Israel in that sense has done this in the past. This is not the first time we're meeting tunnels. But until now, we met what I'm going to call the attack tunnels, the ones that Hamas built from the Gaza Strip into Israel, and of course, the ones that Hezbollah built from Lebanon into Israel, those we destroyed to a large degree. But right now we're talking about getting into them. How do you go underground? How do you find the entrances? What do you do inside that arena, which is very, very crowded? It can be booby trapped. What type of weapons can you use? How do you avoid those traps that they're putting? These are things that in learning you do systematically, clearly, and you try to learn from whoever has done it before. Again, nobody's ever done it in any way on the scale and the challenges that we're facing right now in that subterranean arena underneath the refugee camps in the city of Gaza, literally throughout the Gaza Strip. Bethany, Mary, we're going to come right back to you shortly on the northern front, but before we do that, we are going to turn our eye there where our correspondent, Mary McAuliffe, is standing by Mary. It's good to have you with us. Can you walk us through the latest developments on the northern front as well? Good morning, Ariel. So it's been a quiet night overnight for many of the northern residents here in Israel. It's been some hours since we had some rocket sirens ringing out, but that doesn't mean there hasn't still been activity on the ground. Israel and Hezbollah continue to trade cross-border attacks, and in the wider region, the wider Middle East, we continue to have some worrying developments and also a lot of diplomatic actors also now acting. The Russian foreign minister also now coming out last night saying that Israeli strikes, calling them unacceptable and condoning Israeli aggressions in the region, saying that Israel's retaliation on Syria strikes was looking to destabilize the region. Of course, Israel was responding to strikes that originate in Syrian territory that was targeting Israeli civilians. So we've seen these worrisome developments. The U.S. is also deploying additional troops to the Middle East, the Pentagon specified that they would not be coming to Israel, but they will be coming to the region and joining those aircraft carriers and all of the different force deployments and mobilizations that we've seen the U.S. trying to posture to move more forces closer to the area. Thank you very much, Mary, for the updates from the northern front. We'll be back with you later for more as it develops. I'm going to turn back to Mary Eisen now to analyze the north a little bit more. Mary, one of the things that we're hearing, it's not just on the north, but those flaring up from Houthi rebels in Yemen, other reports saying from the Iraq border as well. Ultimately, Israel says they want to focus on Gaza right now, but Israel still has to respond to this sort of aggression, does it not? Israel is responding to these aggressions all the time. But look at this broader aspect. When we're talking about the Hamas attack, it's a Hamas attack, but to a large degree, and that's part of our failure of October 7th, Israel was looking at Hezbollah, who was planning a similar attack only even bigger than what Hamas did. So we're very focused on not just the pre-emptive idea, making sure that nothing expands there, being ready for any possibility. Because the big question is, so why hasn't Hezbollah attacked? Why have they not brought out their forces in the way that they know how? And here, Ariel, I would say that perhaps to put up a big map of the greater Middle East, Iran over the last decade, certainly throughout the Syrian War, became the main backer and the state sponsor of different Shiite and non-Shiite forces throughout the Middle East, like the Houthis in Yemen, who have already been firing different types of weaponry towards Israel. The Houthis in Yemen have been fighting both in Yemen and against Saudi Arabia and against the Emirates. Again, if you look at the map, you'll see in the capabilities the Houthis in Yemen have are from Iran. When we say about Iraq or for that matter, the Golan Heights on the Syrian side and throughout Syria, you have different Shiite forces that are built, sustained, and then manned by different Shiites from around the world that all of their capabilities come from Iran. So Iran is poking, they're making sure that they say we're participating. Send it from Yemen, send it from Iraq from the Shiites on the Golan Heights, and Hezbollah is keeping what I'm going to call a low-key, constant participation. But we all have to be aware. Hezbollah could go full-scale. And if Hezbollah goes full-scale, the Iranians are the ones that were telling to do so, then we're all going to see a much harsher arena that we're in. So I say all of that as we look around. We're all aware. I'm very proud, as an Israeli, of the defenses that we've put up, if it's Arrow that was used against incoming from Yemen in very long-range missiles, if it's the David Sling and of course Iron Dome that is protecting us. But those are all our protections against these incoming. The fact that they're all being used right now, these are the things we have defenses against. We will stand strong, but it keeps getting more and more, and we all need to be aware it could get worse. And because everyone believes that to be almost an inevitability at this point, ultimately, what is that going to look like if Israel is forced to split its military capabilities between the North as well as Gaza? First of all, we have the capabilities. It's something that we've been understanding for years. We always talked about two different arenas. We erroneously thought that Hezbollah would start, and Hamas would join in. Hamas started definitely surprised us, and we've been waiting for Hezbollah to join in. So we have those capabilities. In this case, I'd also zoom out again in the map because the different Shiite forces, the Iranian backed Shiite forces, the Iranian trained armed Shiite forces that are all over different places in the Middle East have been attacking U.S. forces, U.S. locations all over the Middle East over the last three weeks. It didn't even just start in the last week. So we're already talking about something where Iran states clearly, it's the U.S. and Israel. It's the big devil and the little devil, so that if you're talking about Israel's response, A, we are ready. That doesn't make it easy. Casualties, very harsh war, we are ready. And the United States and other countries are upping their understanding and their direct involvement in what is going on here, because this is not Israel against the world. It's not Israel against Islam. It is about both the Iranian very strong Iranian monster trying to bring out something that will be all over dragging everybody in. And we're all going to be able to withstand it. But as they say, this isn't alone, though we could, it is together with the United States, and it is together with that Western world. Absolutely, Marin. I want to point out to our viewers right now the images you were just seeing on the screen are live images from strikes in Gaza as Israel's pounding Hamas terror infrastructure as support for the ground forces operating there. I'm going to turn back to you again, Mary, because we've been discussing that ultimately it is Iran's hand that is behind this situation. And we're talking about the response on the north. We're talking about the response on the south. But ultimately, what is the response in Tehran itself? They are so supportive of the al-Quds, whatever the Hamas have called this in that sense. And here it's part of that manipulation that we all need to be aware of, Ariel, meaning that Hamas, or it could have been Hezbollah, start a war, start a horrific genocidal terror attack unheard of, unprecedented, and immediately base it on the fact that they're trying aid of free Palestine. They're not trying to free anybody. They're trying to destroy Israel. They're not freeing the Palestinians. Hamas is the worst thing that happened to them together with Iran. So Iran states clearly that they support the Palestinians. They're trying to frame this as part of being within the Palestinian arena, which it is not. It's about annihilating Israel. Hamas calls for our destruction. Hezbollah calls for our destruction. Their ideologies go hand in hand. I think, though, Ariel, people should be aware Iran is very, very scared, both of Israel and of the United States, and they want to be sure that they are not attacked, meaning they are using the proxies from Yemen, from Iraq, from Syria. For that matter, Hamas and the Palestinian arena and the Hezbollah up north, they're going to use the proxies they don't want to be attacked themselves, and they've stated that clearly. Well, thank you, Mary, for that explanation. We're going to move to another topic now first. That, of course, being the international reaction to Israel at war for more than three weeks now. Even as the United States and the Senate is discussing aid bills for Israel, we saw pro-Hamas protest inside the capital of the United States as well, terror supporters jeering from the observation area while the US is discussing aid. This was addressed directly by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. Let's take a quick listen to that. I also hear very much the passions expressed in this room and outside this room. All of us are committed to the protection of civilian life. All of us know the suffering that is taking place as we speak. All of us are determined to see it end, but all of us know the imperative of standing up with our allies and partners when their security, when their democracies, are threatened. That's what's happening now. We stand resolutely with them, even as we stand resolutely for the protection of innocent civilians. Could you? And we now turn to our senior correspondent Owen Alterman in studio to help us understand a little bit more about the international arena. Obviously the United States is Israel's biggest ally, biggest backer, militarily, diplomatically, and more. We're starting to see an undercurrent in the United States that supports not just the Palestinian side, but Hamas directly with a growing undercurrent fervor. Yeah, it's obviously disconcerting to people who support Israel. It's obviously disconcerting to Jews. A lot of it, of course, focused on university campuses. But REL, for all the pictures that make people so upset, I think there has to be an understanding of the bigger picture, which is there are a lot of people don't like these protesters. There are a lot of people don't like them being on the streets. There are a lot of people who don't like their messaging. There are a lot of people who don't like what they see as their extreme positions. And that's an opportunity for Israel, an opportunity for Israel's advocates to position Israel as the home for people who are in the political center, right? Not for people on the far right, where there are pockets of hostility to Israel, and not for people on the far left, but for people in the political center who want a calm, insane debate with moderate positions. And I think that's where Israel's advocacy should go. Not trying to take on the protesters head-on, but simply say we are the home for Americans, for that matter, Europeans of the political center. And we saw Blinken's full-throated support in that sound bite. He's also coming to Israel on Friday. What do we know about what he's bringing here? Well, I have to see. But again, one would imagine that just his last time when he came, he'll sit with that war cabinet and tell them what he thinks. Obviously, the context is different than the first visit, right? In the immediate aftermath of the October 7th attacks, now the Israeli military is by its own statement deep inside the Gaza Strip. And the administration is going to want to continue to balance its strong support for Israel with its strong recommendations for the Israeli government and Israeli military about how it should be conducting the war and about this issue of humanitarian aid, which has been a priority for the administration from the get-go. And obviously, they're going to want to see the humanitarian aid continue and increase. There are all sorts of interesting proposals on the table for how to make that happen and how to treat for injured and hospitalized patients in Gaza. Of course, we saw a small number of them cross over the Egyptian border yesterday, according to Egyptian officials. And one would imagine the Biden administration was involved behind the scenes with that. So I think more of the same in that sense. But of course, there is a symbolic importance of having the Secretary of State come here. In this case, not only to show his strong support for Israel, but there is that and think back to the emotional speeches that not only Joe Biden gave, but Anthony Blinken as well in that first week. But also, I think showing America's allies and Israel's allies around the world that they're also on board with trying to do what they can to affect the way the ground campaign and the wars are conducted. And you actually just mentioned the aid issue. So I want to point out to our viewers, you were just looking at some visuals, some video from the Rafa crossing to Gaza Live, as you're seeing on screen right now. It's actually one of the focal points right now of U.S. interests. And before that, we are going to hear directly from the U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby talking about, well, the humanitarian situation in Gaza at the moment. Well, without getting into this specific moment that we're in right now, or litigating this from the White House podium, we do believe that humanitarian pauses could be of value, but they have to be, you have to have, there has to be credible support on both sides here for where to do it, when to do it, for how long to do it, and for what purpose. And we're continuing to work with partners in the region and including those who have a direct line of communication with Hamas to see if that's possible. The goal would be to get aid in, to maybe get people out that want to evacuate. It also would be valuable, a humanitarian pause every now and then would be valuable for us, if in fact there's a serious effort to get hostages out, because you'd need some kind of pause of the fighting to be able to do that safely. I want to turn back to Owen Alterman here in studio. We're from John Kirby about international partners in the United States and Israel, both realizing at this point that alone they cannot manage this conflict, manage this status quo and perpetuity. We're seeing a report in Bloomberg right now about some other regional partners, Saudis and others possibly being brought in to manage Gaza the day after the war. Can you walk us through a little bit about what's under discussion? Yeah, I mean, listen, these proposals have been out there since the beginning of the war and the beginning of the discussion of the day after. The consensus in Israel is there's no good solution, but the Israelis are sick of worrying about the devil that they don't know, given what we've seen from Hamas. The consensus in Israel is Israel is willing to take its chances on the day after, but that doesn't mean Israel shouldn't plan. If it were easy to find a different political solution for Gaza and international actors who would be interested in being in Gaza and policing it, it would have been done a long time ago. So again, the idea of bringing in Arab militaries and Arab policemen, let's say, to help manage the situation there is an old idea, but it's getting a kind of new lease on life. And maybe the cause for optimism here, Ariel, is that the Saudis have a real stake in this now. They seem to want to go forward with normalization with Israel. They obviously want to increase their influence in the region. They have an interest in stability. They could be an actor who might be able to be trusted. They have the resources, both financial and in terms of their military training to help make these things happen, whether it be reconstruction or whether it be maintaining the security situation in Gaza. So that's why this idea and this concept may be a more realistic one than ideas that have been floated in the past. So you are right that Israel and the United States will need help from allies in the region and beyond. And again, just to go back to what John Kirby said about the humanitarian pauses, I think at the end of the day, if this is something Hamas agrees to, Israel will need to. Then this is different from a long-term ceasefire. I think more similar to what we've seen in previous rounds of fighting in Gaza, a pause for a few hours, as he said, to get aid in. And in this case, maybe people out. I'm going to turn back to Colonel Mary Eisen for some further discussion on that. The idea of a multinational peacekeeping force of regional partners in the United States or people in the United States can at least work with. How viable is this really from Israel's perspective, given that one of the parties in discussion is Qatar, who's funded Hamas throughout the entire conflict? I'm not just conflict, but for years. But remember that Israel acquiesced with that. And I say that because at the end, Ariel, as Owen said before, and I wholeheartedly agree, there are only bad options, but they are options. And if you don't choose any of those bad options, then what are you going to do? Have Israel rule over? I think that the one thing that Israel understands very clearly is that we don't want to conquer. We don't want to rule over. We left in 2005 for a different kind of future. That doesn't mean right now that we're going to let Hamas stay, that we're not going to let. But I do think that these different partners that we do not like, none of the options are good, are the ones that are on the table. We need to keep that, as I say, it's an open mind about the bad options, but they are still options. And there are things that we need to look at clearly, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the different countries around. Nobody's going to want to be there, but there may be that necessity. And that's where it's going to go to. And you mentioned Saudi Arabia there at the end, because they are the big wild card in this. They have a lot of power. They've paused any of the normalization. But what role might they have in actually managing or resolving this issue? Marielle, we're 24 days into a war that is unprecedented in between Israel and our surroundings. It's unprecedented because the terror group, Hamas, do not only challenge terrorized Israel. Hamas is Hamas Muslim brotherhood. There's a connection here that we don't talk a lot, that has to do also with all of the different, I'm not going to say moderate, but certainly the Sunni governments, not exactly democracies throughout the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia. So in that sense, there's a very quiet aspect of what needs to be done with Hamas that impacts Saudi Arabia directly about the day after, about what that means. And I think that here there are interests that are not above. We're not going to be talking about them, but they're actually quite long term. And Mary, less than a minute left here, when we're talking about bad options, what can we say about this humanitarian pause the United States is asking for? That all of us want a humanitarian pause for the people on this Gaza Strip. It doesn't matter if we think that they themselves overwhelmingly support Hamas. As I look at that, I say, absolutely, get them water, get them medicine. I don't want anybody to starve to death. I want them to live. And that's why we've been telling them to move. And that's a pause. It has nothing to do with the ceasefire. It has nothing to do with the continuation of Israeli actions against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Thank you very much, Mary. I just hope I understand all the background, the tactical, and the more in depth intelligence behind this conflict. Thank you very much. And also, Owen in studio, same thing with the analysis very much. Thank you for breaking down the international angles for us. For everyone else, we are just about out of time, but we're going to be back with you at the top of the next hour with breaking news updates from this war along multiple fronts. So join us again then. Until then, thank you very much for watching. 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. More than a hundred soldiers and civilians have been kidnapped. Help us. We don't want to do it. 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. Morning from Tel Aviv, and welcome to I-24 News's ongoing coverage of Israel at war, where 26 days into the conflict in Israel is fighting on two fronts simultaneously. You're actually looking at images from both those on both the northern and the southern fronts. These defense forces announced the deaths of another nine soldiers killed, fighting in northern Gaza against Hamas terrorists, joining two more pronounced dead yesterday. Seven of the fallen from the Zabar battalion, two more from the 77th. The IDF says the Air Force struck deep underground Hamas infrastructure in Javalea in a strike that took out Ibrahim Biari, the commander of Hamas's Central Javalea Battalion and a central planner of the October 7th massacre. In the north, the IDF intercepted a surface-to-air missile fired from Lebanon at an Israeli drone. According to the IDF, the spokesman's unit, they struck the site where the missile was fired from and the cell that fired the missile as well. Israel has dispatched two missile ships to the Red Sea in an attempt to deter Iran back Houthi rebels after those militias have fired ballistic and cruise missiles at Israel. The military said one such aerial threat was intercepted over the Red Sea near a lot on Tuesday night, but no alert was activated in the city. No threat was posed to civilians and the threat did not enter Israeli territory, but the incident is coming less than 24 hours after other drones and missiles were fired by Houthis towards a lot and intercepted by the IDF. The United States is saying that Saudi Arabia is still interested in pursuing a normalization agreement with Israel. U.S. National Security Council John Kirby said he was confident that the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia have a path to get back towards normalization after the war. Bloomberg News is reporting that the U.S. and Israel are exploring the possibility of a multinational force to manage Gaza after the war, one that may very well involve American troops. A second option would establish a peacekeeping force model on the one overseeing the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, while a third possibility could see Gaza put under temporary United Nations oversight. Our forces are currently fighting deep inside the Gaza Strip. They are killing terrorists in close-range combat, conducting coordinated strikes on terror targets from land, air, and sea. During the afternoon hours, infantry and armored forces secured a central Hamas stronghold in the west part of Jabalia. This stronghold served as a training center for the October 7th massacre and as a passage to the coastline from where additional terrorists set off to perpetrate the October 7th massacre. In the course of the fighting, we eliminated many terrorists and destroyed terror infrastructure. This is complicated combat, some of which is face-to-face combat. During the combat, we lost soldiers. And for more, we are going to take a quick look at our southern border where our correspondent Pierre Kloschenler is standing by. Pierre, we had some extraordinarily heavy fighting overnight. Give us the updates from inside Gaza. Well, there is definitely an intensification of the fighting, not only from the ground forces that are progressing and coordinating off Gaza City from the southeast and north, but as well from the Israeli fighter jets that are bombing unrelentlessly Hamas and other terrorist targets. We've seen heavy bombing in the Jabalia area, in the Zeytun area, as well as in Bet Hanun and Bet Lahia. We hear all the time the slamming door bombing of fighter jets, as well as the outgoing shells of the artillery. We hear the heavy Ratata gunfire machine gun that is occurring as we speak. So there is definitely a progression of the ground forces, because if at the beginning of the ground invasion, they were on the northern tip of the Gaza Strip in Bet Hanun, Bet Lahia, now they're already on the outskirts of Gaza City. As you mentioned, 11 Israeli soldiers killed in the fighting between yesterday and overnight. We know that 11,000 targets have been struck by the IDF, by sea, ground and air since the start of the war, which Hamas waged on Israel on October 7. Well, Pierre, thank you very much for the updates from the front. We'll be back to you over the course of the day as the situation develops on the ground for more on this. We're going to be discussing this in studio, but first I want to bring in some live images that we're seeing from the Rafa crossing. Let's put those on screen where ambulances from Egypt are being allowed to cross through to allow wounded people from Gaza to be treated in Egypt. They're setting up a field hospital near the border to deal with some of that. I want to discuss further the situation in Gaza in studio with Rafael Ior Shalmi, former senior intelligence officer at the IDF, also sitting next to me is Mark Shalmi, editor-in-chief at Newsweek. Thank you both for being with me. I want to open with you first, Rafael, because it's a very heavy fighting overnight. Different reports, either 50 terrorists killed, some reports saying 300 killed, and of course that massive strike in Jabalia. Let's talk about some of the accomplishments so far. What sort of progress Israel is making on the ground? Well, Israel is now cutting the Gaza Strip in two, separating the north from the south, is isolating the north. This is being done by a huge push from the north on the Gaza Strip, but also from the east and from the sea. And we have now taken the highway Sarhaddin, and we are now closing the frame. It's getting completed, so they're going to be isolated in there. And once this is done, you also have to separate different zones inside the north of Gaza to cut the chain between the different battalions and brigades of the Hamas, so that they are dealt with separately and they cannot coordinate their actions, meaning we also have to break the chain of command and the chain of communication between them and deal with them that we did yesterday in Jabalia. In Jabalia, those who were there, the terrorists who were there, were isolated from most of their other battalions and brigades in the area. They had to fight on their own. This is a very big achievement that cost us, unfortunately, much too much, but we had to be taken into account because the anti-tank missiles that the Hezbollah has are very lethal. If they hit their target, there's nothing you can do about it. And the operation, apart from these casualties, was a success. Whether there were collateral damage or not collateral damage is of no importance at this stage because that collateral damage by the protocol number one of the Geneva Convention is according to rules of war, meaning those innocent people, unfortunately, that might have been killed there, represented less of a threat. I mean, the target that was hit represented a huge threat, the threatening hundreds of lives. So we had no choice than to eliminate these people. It's also disruptive, as I said, for that particular area. And we have to now secure area by area in the north of Gaza, which will take weeks. I want to bring in another front as well, because we're not just talking about Gaza now. The Israeli government, the military, said they want to focus on Gaza. And until now, haven't actually issued any direct response to Houthi rebels firing ballistic and cruise missiles from Yemen. Now we're hearing that two missile boats are being dispatched down there. What sort of capabilities are we looking at? Yes, there are the missile boats that are deployed. At least one of them is the SAR-6 naval boat. It's equipped with anti-aircraft equipment, defense equipment. We set missiles like the Barak that can intercept these kind of threats. We also have seen a success of the Hetz, the Arrow missile, and even from the air force downing drones. So we are there. I suppose that the rest is in coordination, of course, with the United States. What do we do? And I suppose that, as for the North, the Americans are going to ask us not to escalate, to keep things quiet. What might also enter into consideration here is what do the Saudis do, because they're also concerned about what is happening there. Are they going to do something? Or are we, again, the only people here in the Middle East who are taking care of the region? Big question. Before we continue this discussion with both of you, we are going to turn our eyes to the Northern border for an update from that front. And we're corresponding to Mary McAuliffe standing by there. How are things developing on the Lebanese front with Hezbollah right now? Well, Ariel, the big question was after Israel began its ground operation into Gaza, if this Northern border was going to explode and perhaps trigger a regional war. So far, we haven't seen any major significant change in the war for in this conflict that we have between Hezbollah and Israel continues to be a fairly low level intensity conflict, exchanging fires across the border. We saw a couple of that throughout the day yesterday, as well as fires burning on this hillside behind me. Those are controlled burns by the Israeli military who are trying to prevent any infiltrators from trying to approach this observation post on the Israel-Lebanon border. This is a post that's been tried to have been attacked numerous times in the past few weeks. We've been standing here, we've seen rockets being fired at it. Hezbollah, for its part, continues to say that it is trying to target Israel's surveillance and military infrastructure along the border. And we definitely can see that here on the ground Israel then responding back with anti-tank missiles. That's exactly what we saw yesterday as well. But in the meantime, we're also seeing a number of different attacks on U.S. forces throughout the Middle East, most notably in Syria and Iraq, but also on the Red Sea. Also this morning, an Iraqi group, an Iranian-backed Iraqi group said that they had once again launched another wave of explosive drones at a base housing American soldiers in Iraq. Last night, we saw a similar attack in Syria. Mary, one of the things that we've been mentioning over the course of the past few weeks is Hezbollah's low intensity conflict with Israel. But over the past week, they've been making statements in their local media that they cannot accept the fall of Hamas, of their key ally in the region. Do we have any indication what the trigger points of them joining the war in earnest might be? Exactly, as you said, Ariel. So we've heard from sources inside Lebanon, those who are close to Hezbollah in recent weeks, that since Israel began its operation, that the consensus now is it seems that while Hamas appears to be holding its own, at least that's what those Lebanese officials are saying. That's what Hezbollah is looking at Hamas and thinking they're not going to get involved. But that it comes to a point as this operation goes on, as Israeli tanks push further deeper into the Gaza Strip, continuing to pound airstrikes, taking out Hamas leaders. The question is whether or not at some point Hezbollah is going to understand that they need to try and help their partners in the south. Hezbollah has always positioned itself as a defender of the Palestinian cause, as well as Hamas. They have always stood behind them and always backed them up with rhetoric. As of yet, we haven't seen them backing them up with actual actions on the ground, rather just these small, little low conflict intensity attacks across the borders. And seemingly just to remind Israel that they're here and not to forget about them as it launches its war against Hamas. But we are expected to hear from the leader of Hezbollah this Friday, so we are all in the region anxiously waiting to hear what exactly he's going to say and whether or not Hezbollah will decide to take this to another level. Absolutely, Mary. Thank you very much for that report from the northern front and we'll be back with you over the course of the day as the situation develops there. We're going to return to studio now where we have sitting next to us as well, Mark Shalma, editor-in-chief. Newsweek, thank you for being with us. One of the things we've been talking about for weeks now, you were in studio when Biden was here talking about the aircraft carriers deterring Hezbollah. We can't ultimately deter them forever. And there is a sign in the United States that maybe aid to Israel has some complications. It can't even get a clear package passed to the House or the Senate right now. Biden's saying he's going to veto a standalone aid bill the Republicans are pushing. Republicans saying they're never going to let forward an aid bill that also has $60 billion for Ukraine. It's not sending good messages to the region right now. I don't know. I mean, look, we knew all along that we would get the aid eventually, but we'd have to work through the issues in the U.S., mostly House of Representatives. It's not the Republicans in the Senate that are a problem. It's the Republicans in the House of Representatives who even a majority of them actually support aid to Ukraine, the extreme right part of the party that seems to control everything is opposed to aid to Ukraine. And so that's where the complications lie. I also think, I don't think the United States is restraining us vis-a-vis Yemen. I think something will happen soon. The question is, who's going to do it? I'm sure we're talking to the Saudis as well. It wasn't by accident that was announced yesterday that the Saudis are still interested in normalizing relations with Israel. We both have the enemies now of the Hutus, Hutis, excuse me. They've been an enemy of Saudi Arabia now, the honor of a war for almost 10 years. The Saudis have not successfully dealt with them. I think they're hoping the United States or Israel will at this point. The other important thing to note is that the Army spokesman yesterday in his briefing mentioned how important it is that Israel is now part of SENTCOM, so that Israel has instantaneous communications with all American forces in the region, vice versa. The United States can inform Israel of the launch from Yemen, which they can see sooner than we can, even though we have overly rising radar, and instantly let us know that the launch has taken place from Yemen. So I think that's all important. I think there's that integration. Look, the politics in America are just messed up at this point. There's no other way of putting it. The Republican Party has a group of people who don't want anything done really. I mean, the logic of paying for aid to Israel by decreasing IRS tax collections. I mean, think about how insane that idea is. That's because the base hates the IRS. Well, everyone hates the IRS. No one wants to pay taxes. But they're actually supposedly responsible people, and that's what they want to do. Well, let's not talk about the challenges from the other side, because we have the progressive wing of the Democrats who've come out, I'm not going to say full, thoroughly endorsing Hamas, but not too far off from any of them. Some not almost all the way. And I looked into this matter because I had an understanding to be quite honest with you. I mean, I was, 50 years ago, I was very active on college campuses and, you know, propaganda, Hasbara for Israel, and working on that, even through my graduate schools, which was 35, 40 years ago, I just didn't understand it. Then I looked into it a little bit. And it turns out that this is this revolutionary, revolutionary author named France Farber, who wrote books that basically said that anything you do to colonists is okay. You can kill them, dead cadavers, everything you want to do, it's all okay. If they're colonists, you can do all these things. Well, lo and behold, I discovered that in the course of Columbia College, contemporary civilization, which every Columbia student has to take, I remember taking it, we would be disgusted. Aristotle and all these, all those sort of thought leaders is now required reading at Columbia College. So all these kids are learning this thing. And if we're colonists, then it's perfectly okay to slaughter us because we're colonists. And I think this is, I mean, this is Columbia, I don't know what was going on in other camps. I'll assume that other Ivy League schools have done the same sort of thing, the same sort of writings kids are learning. And this is really very frightening in that sense. They somehow think that we don't count because we're a colonist. And that's what we're seeing from the far left in the United States. So we have, the far right is just being anarchists in terms of Congress. And the far left, who thinks we're colonists and we should all die. And I want to really focus on that because it's not just crazy people on college campuses anymore. There was a Harvard Harris survey that came out just a couple of weeks ago showing about 50% of people under 25 in America support Hamas in this war. They say that these attacks are justified if you go to people under the age of 35. These are people that are going to have voting power and real power in the not too distant future. Some of them already do. Right, absolutely. But go back to what I said before. I don't know when they started teaching this in Columbia. I may assume it was long after I left, but I'm sure it wasn't after the people who are 35 went to these colleges. So I think we have a generation that have been brought up with these beliefs. Now it's not all of them, obviously, and some of them are smart enough to see through it, but it affects a large number of them. And it's affecting a large number of the young people in the United States. Now, we also have this problem of intersectionality that exists, which is if you support women's rights and if you support gay rights or LGBTQ rights and you support African-American rights or Black Lives Matter, then you have to support Palestinian rights because it's the same thing, don't you know? And so we have this problem there. They automatically think they have to support the Palestinians because you have to support all the causes of the left. And then on top of everything else, you have the issue that preceded this to some extent where the left decided the weakest party was always right, not necessarily checking the justice of a cause. If they're weak, we have to support them. So you take all these things together and we end up with a lot of young Americans who do not support us anyone, not only America. The situation is the same in France, the situation is the same in Great Britain. It's throughout the Western world, and it's for all the same reasons. I think we have a lot ahead of us and a big job ahead of us and I don't know if we can accomplish what we need to do in terms of Aspera in the world because it's not just Aspera. It's rethinking, it's getting people to think in a different sort of way. This progressive one that we're discussing makes up a large portion of the Democratic Party's voting base. Is that going to be a critical issue going forward, particularly in the upcoming elections? Look, I think one of the issues I think will be the progressive way of the Democratic Party is a little less enthusiastic with Biden because of his support for Israel. Now, it is more popular amongst independents. Will these progressives vote for someone like Trump as opposed to voting for Biden? No. Might they stay home? That could be a problem and that could be an issue, obviously. If Biden had a serious primary challenger right now, then it might be a problem for Biden, but he doesn't have a serious primary challenger. So that's not going to be that sort of problem. Also, still, as much as these young people count, the overwhelming percentage of Democratic lawmakers are some ways between the age of 40 and 80. So they don't fall into that category. They have different views of the world. They have more realistic views of the world, and then most of them are very pro-Israel in their bones. So you don't see any future situation, at least not a near-term future situation where impact support from America. Near-term, no. Medium and long-term, we need to worry. But near-term during this conflict, I don't think we have a problem. Again, we're lucky that Biden is the president, and not only does he act with his instinct, he knows what to do in terms of his instincts, and he also knows how to be empathetic, and we're lucky now. But what will happen after Biden? I don't know. Let's hope this war certainly ends long before Biden leaves the presidency, to say the least for all of us. And thank you both. I'm going to turn to another angle now, because we are looking at some of the events that happened on October 7th, still picking up the pieces, interviews with witnesses, survivors, security teams, and one such local security chief of Kibbutz Gevim in the Gaza envelope gave a rare look at life in the Kibbutz after the October 7th massacres, and an optimistic vision on the future for the area. Let's take a look. Kibbutz Gevim near the Gaza Strip adjacent to the southern city of Sderot was not severely hit by the brutal terror attack by Hamas on October 7th. But things could have been very different as Gil Schwartzman, a member of the Kibbutz, tells I-24 News about the dramatic moments. At around 7 a.m., I heard gunshots around the gate. I got a call from the local security coordinator. He said, I've been shot. I'm injured. I called the standby squad, and we came to help him. Another car was shot at, and the guy there was shot in his head, but he survived. Another car was also hit by gunshots and grenades. We counted 45 bullet holes in the car. The local security chief got hit in his leg, and I had to take his place. We also had a lot of luck, perhaps even divine providence. I want to show you something special. This gate took a lot of bullets. When we opened the gate, look at the shape of the bullet exit hole. Kibbutz Gevim was established in 1947, a few months before Israel declared its independence. Over the years, it's known many challenges due to its sensitive location. In the beginning, people lived here in tents. In July 1947, this structure was built to protect the residents from attacks by Egyptians. Members of the Kibbutz lived in tents and small cabins. Schwarzman is one of 16 people of the standby squad, the only ones who remain in the Kibbutz out of its 617 members. When we walk around, we see empty houses, but thanks to Schwarzman and the few people who were left here, the Kibbutz is not neglected, and even the local dairy is functioning. I was in Germany on a family vacation when the situation started. After a few days, I came back. It's a bit strange to be here. I'm alone here, except for a few people and soldiers, but what can I do? Outside the Kibbutz, we visit Sauter with Schwarzman Directs. This startup hub is home to dozens of high-tech companies, which develop revolution inventions from 3D printers to FSMP platforms. We've been active for six years now. All the companies have told me that they are not leaving this hub. Other companies have been interested in participating in this project. It's the first high-tech hub in the Negev, and one of the biggest and most successful ones. High-tech always has a future. I have no doubt that in two years, when you come back to visit, we'll have expanded to 50 companies. Despite the horrific tragedy, Schwarzman is still optimistic and says he believes that most of the residents will return to their home eventually, and that Kevim and the high-tech scene will flourish, perhaps a ray of hope in this dark time in the South. Then we're going to return to our discussion panel here in studio with Mark Schoeman and Rafa Ushralami. I want to turn to you, Mark, because you had some remarks. I haven't seen that. Right, so look, we saw this. We keep on seeing this. And unfortunately, what this proves is the old saying, if the Arabs stop fighting, we'll have peace. If the Jews stop fighting, we'll be killed. That's exactly what happened. Fighters weren't there. They weren't doing enough numbers, and they killed us. That's what we want to do. And that's what all Israelis are suddenly understood in the depths of their bones, that unless we fight, we'll be killed. And that's the reality. And it's a very sad reality, but there's no choice. And whatever happens in Gaza, I feel terrible for the innocents that are dying, but I don't want my children to die. I don't want my relatives to die. We're going to fight. We're going to win in Gaza because we have no choice. And whatever the price, and hopefully it will not be too great, but there will be a costly, we have no choice but to fight and win. That's why we're fighting. I want to turn back to Rafael for the how, because to accomplish this strategy is needed. And I want to talk more about the strategy being employed, this encirclement, cutting Gaza into pieces. Is this going to be effective? There's still 40,000 Hamas fighters to deal with. There's no other way to go about it, unless UBOMA and the whole Gaza strip out of existence, which is not possible. So this is the strategy. And when you say 40,000, you can multiply by five or six, because according to military doctrine, guerrilla warfare makes the one inside the city who's holding the city much more powerful, meaning these 40,000 you can count in like 100 or 120,000 even more, because they are in their own terrain. They have booby trapped every door, every window. They have snipers everywhere. Other surprises in store for us. It's going to be a very painstaking job. It's going to take a long time. We're going to have to have nerves, a lot of nerves, strong nerves, especially also at the back at the rear, where every soldier that falls is stabbed to our heart. This is going to go on for a long time. And we'll have to keep cool and do what we have to do. And according to the analysis that we heard, we also have to do what we need to do and how we want to do it. So far, the Central Command and Lloyd Austin gave us very good advice. And the Israelis have more or less listened to the Americans and changed their strategy accordingly. But this being said, if we want to strike the Hezbollah and if we decide to widen the conflict, I don't think the Americans will let us down. We can force their hands if we want to, if we need to. So I think this is also a big change. We are not the only ones who might enlarge the conflict here. The Houthis in Yemen can also inflame that particular area of the Middle East. Other Iraq also, American threats have been attacked. So it has come now to a point that we must continue and coordinate, of course, with our allies and continue to benefit of the sincere true friendship that Joe Biden feels for Israel. On the other hand, it's our skin, it's our lives, it's our kids that are falling there in this horrible place called Gaza, in this Kasbah. And at some point, we might have to decide, and I'm thinking about Hezbollah, especially everybody's waiting for the speech of Mr. Nasrallah on Friday. I'm not, I'm not waiting for a speech. I'm waiting for a speech of our leaders. What are we going to do? Are we going to stay like that? Are we just going to be reactive yet again? We have all the cards that we need. We have a massive American presence in the Mediterranean. We have already 350,000 reservists called back to arms. We're ready to strike now. I don't think we'll have that kind of opportunity later on. Definitely. And as we've seen so many times, and said so many times, there are no real other options. There's nowhere else. So this war has to be fought to its conclusion. Thank both of you for all the explanation we saw in studio and for everybody else. We are out of time for now, but we will see you again at the top of the next hour. So stay tuned. We'll be back with you soon. Thanks for watching. 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 I-24 News. Of war, 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. Tell us we don't want to do it. 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. Good morning from Tel Aviv, and welcome to I-24 News's ongoing coverage of Israel at war, where 26 days into the conflict in Israel is fighting on two fronts simultaneously. You're actually looking at images from both those on both the northern and the southern fronts. These are all defense forces announced the deaths of another nine soldiers killed fighting in northern Gaza against Hamas terrorists, joining two more pronounced dead yesterday. Seven of the fallen from the Zabar battalion, two more from the 77th. The IDF says the Air Force struck deep underground Hamas infrastructure in Javalea in a strike that took out Ibrahim Biari, the commander of Hamas's central Javalea battalion and a central planner of the October 7th massacre. In the north, the IDF intercepted a surface-to-air missile fired from Lebanon at an Israeli drone. According to the IDF's postman's unit, they struck the site where the missile was fired from and the cell that fired the missile as well. Israel has dispatched two missile ships to the Red Sea in an attempt to deter Iran-backed Houthi rebels after those militias have fired ballistic and cruise missiles at Israel. The military said one such aerial threat was intercepted over the Red Sea near Elat on Tuesday night, but no alert was activated in the city. No threat was posed to civilians and the threat did not enter Israeli territory, but the incident is coming less than 24 hours after other drones and missiles were fired by Houthis towards Elat and intercepted by the IDF. The United States is saying that Saudi Arabia is still interested in pursuing a normalization agreement with Israel. U.S. National Security Council John Kirby said he was confident that the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia have a path to get back towards normalization after the war. And Bloomberg News is reporting that the U.S. and Israel are exploring the possibility of a multinational force to manage Gaza after the war, one that may very well involve American troops. A second option would establish a peacekeeping force model on the one overseeing the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, while a third possibility could see Gaza put under temporary United Nations oversight. Our forces are currently fighting deep inside the Gaza Strip. They're killing terrorists in close-range combat, conducting coordinated strikes on terror targets from land, air and sea. During the afternoon hours, infantry and armored forces secured a central Hamas stronghold in the west part of Jabalia. This stronghold served as a training center for the October 7th massacre and has a passage to the coastline from our additional terrorists set off to perpetrate the October 7th massacre. In the course of the fighting, we eliminated many terrorists and destroyed terror infrastructure. This is complicated combat, some of which is face-to-face combat. During the combat, we lost soldiers. And for more, we are going to take a quick look at our southern border where our correspondent Pierre Klushenler is standing by. Pierre, we had some extraordinarily heavy fighting overnight. Give us the updates from inside Gaza. Well, there is definitely an intensification of the fighting, not only from the ground forces that are progressing and coordinating off Gaza City from the southeast and north, but as well from the Israeli fighter jets that are bombing unrelentlessly Hamas and other terrorist targets. We've seen heavy bombing in the Jabalia area, in the Zeytun area, as well as in Bet Hanun and Bet Lahiya. We hear all the time the slamming door bombing of fighter jets, as well as the outgoing shells of the artillery. We hear the heavy Ratata gunfire machine gun that is occurring as we speak. So, there is definitely a progression of the ground forces, because if at the beginning of the ground invasion, they were on the northern tip of the Gaza Strip in Bet Hanun, Bet Lahiya, now they're already on the outskirts of Gaza City. As you mentioned, 11 Israeli soldiers killed in the fighting between yesterday and overnight. We know that 11,000 targets have been struck by the IDF, by sea, ground and air since the start of the war, which Hamas waged on Israel on October 7. Well, Pierre, thank you very much for the updates from the front. We'll be back to you over the course of the day as the situation develops on the ground for more on this. We're going to be discussing this in studio, but first I want to bring in some live images that we're seeing from the Rafa crossing. Let's put those on screen where ambulances from Egypt are being allowed to cross through to allow wounded people from Gaza to be treated in Egypt. They're setting up a field hospital near the border to deal with some of that. I want to discuss further the situation in Gaza in studio with Rafa Yoroshalmi, former senior intelligence officer at the IDF. Also sitting next to me is Mark Shulman, editor-in-chief at Newsweek. Thank you both for being with me. I want to open with you first, Rafael, because it's a very heavy fighting overnight. Different reports, either 50 terrorists killed, some reports saying 300 killed, and of course that massive strike in Jabalia. Let's talk about some of the accomplishments so far. What sort of progress Israel is making on the ground? Well, Israel is now cutting the Gaza Strip in two, separating the north from the south, is isolating the north. This is being done by a huge push from the north on the Gaza Strip, but also from the east and from the sea. And we have now taken the highway Sarahaddin, and we are now closing, the frame is getting completed, so they're going to be isolated in there. And once this is done, you also have to separate different zones inside the north of Gaza to cut the chain between the different battalions and brigades of the Hamas, so that they are dealt with separately and they cannot coordinate their actions, meaning we also have to break the chain of command and the chain of communication between them and deal with them that we did yesterday in Jabalia. In Jabalia, those who were there, the terrorists who were there, were isolated from most of their other battalions and brigades in the area. They had to fight on their own. This is a very big achievement that cost us, unfortunately, much too much, and but we had to be taken into account because the anti-tank missiles that his Bala has are very lethal if they hit their target. There's nothing you can do about it. And the operation, apart from these casualties, was a success. Whether there were collateral damage or not collateral damage is of no importance at this stage, because that collateral damage by the protocol number one of Geneva Convention is according to rules of war, meaning those innocent people, unfortunately, that might have been killed there, represented less of a threat. I mean, the target that was it represented a huge threat, the threatening hundreds of lives. So we had no choice than to eliminate these people. It's also disruptive, as I said, for that particular area and we have to now secure area by area in the north of Gaza, which will take weeks. I want to bring in another front as well, because we're not just talking about Gaza now. The Israeli government, the military, said they want to focus on Gaza and until now haven't actually issued any direct response to Houthi rebels firing ballistic and cruise missiles from Yemen. Now we're hearing that two missile boats are being dispatched down there. What sort of capabilities are we looking at? Yes, there are the missile boats that are deployed. At least one of them is the SAR-6 naval boat. It's equipped with anti-aircraft equipment, defense equipment, with such missiles like the Barak that can intercept these kind of threats. We also have seen the success of the Hetz, the Arrow missile, and even from the Air Force downing drones. So we are there. I suppose that the rest is in coordination, of course, with the United States. What do we do? And I suppose that for the North, the Americans are going to ask us not to escalate, to keep things quiet. What might also enter into consideration here is what do the Saudis do? Because they're also concerned about what is happening there. Are they going to do something or are we, again, the only people here in the Middle East who are taking care of the region? Big question. Before we continue this discussion with both of you, we are going to turn our eyes to the northern border for an update from that front. Correspondent Mary McAuliffe standing by there. How are things developing on the Lebanese front with Hezbollah right now? Well, Ariel, the big question was after Israel began its ground operation into Gaza if this northern border was going to explode and perhaps trigger a regional war. So far we haven't seen any major significant change in the war for in this conflict that we have between Hezbollah and Israel. It continues to be a fairly low level intensity conflict, exchanging fires across the border. We saw a couple of that throughout the day yesterday, as well as fires burning on this hillside behind me. Those are controlled burns by the Israeli military who are trying to prevent any infiltrators from trying to approach this observation post on the Israel-Lebanon border. This is an Israel post that's been tried to have been attacked numerous times in the past few weeks. We've been standing here, we've seen rockets being fired at it. Hezbollah for its part continues to say that it is trying to target Israel's surveillance and military infrastructure along the border. And we definitely can see that here on the ground Israel then responding back with anti-tank missiles. That's exactly what we saw yesterday as well. But in the meantime, we're also seeing a number of different attacks on U.S. forces throughout the Middle East, most notably in Syria and Iraq, but also on the Red Sea. Also this morning, an Iraqi group, an Iranian-backed Iraqi group said that they had once again launched another wave of explosive drones at a base housing American soldiers in Iraq. Last night, we saw a similar attack in Syria. Mary, one of the things that we've been mentioning over the course of the past few weeks is Hezbollah's low intensity conflict with Israel. But over the past week, they've been making statements in their local media that they cannot accept the fall of Hamas, of their key ally in the region. Do we have any indication what the trigger points of them in joining the war in earnest might be? Exactly, as you said, Ariel. So we've heard from sources inside Lebanon, those who are close to Hezbollah in recent weeks, that since Israel began its operation, that the consensus now is it seems that while Hamas appears to be holding its own, at least that's what the Lebanese officials are saying, that's what Hezbollah is looking at Hamas and thinking they're not going to get involved, but that it comes to a point as this operation goes on, as Israeli tanks push further deeper into the Gaza Strip, continuing to pound the airstrikes, taking out Hamas leaders. The question is whether or not at some point, Hezbollah is going to understand that they need to try and help their partners in the South. Hezbollah has always positioned itself as a defender of the Palestinian cause, as well as Hamas. They have always stood behind them and always backed them up with rhetoric. As of yet, we haven't seen them backing them up with actual actions on the ground, rather just these small little low conflict intensity attacks across the borders, and seemingly just to remind Israel that they're here and not to forget about them as it launches its war against Hamas, but we are expected to hear from the leader of Hezbollah this Friday. So we are all in the region anxiously waiting to hear what exactly he's going to say and whether or not Hezbollah will decide to take this to another level. Absolutely, Mary. Thank you very much for that report from the northern front, and we'll be back with you over the course of the day as the situation develops there. We're going to return to studio now, where we have sitting next to us as well, Mark Shulman, Editor-in-Chief Newsweek. Thank you for being with us. One of the things we've been talking about for weeks now, you were in studio when Biden was here talking about the aircraft carriers deterring Hezbollah. We can't ultimately deter them forever, and there is a sign in the United States that maybe aid to Israel has some complications. They can't even get a clear package passed to the House or the Senate right now. Biden's saying he's going to veto a standalone aid bill the Republicans are pushing. Republicans saying they're never going to let forward an aid bill that also has 60 billion dollars for Ukraine. It's not sending good messages to the region right now. I don't know. I mean, look, we knew all along that we would get the aid eventually, but we'd have to work through the issues in the US, mostly House of Representatives. It's not the Republicans in the Senate that are a problem. It's the Republicans in the House of Representatives who even a majority of them actually support aid to Ukraine, the extreme right part of the party that seems to control everything is opposed to aid to Ukraine. And so that's where the complications lie. I also think, I don't think the United States is restraining us vis-a-vis Yemen. I think something will happen soon. The question is who's going to do it. I'm sure we're talking to the Saudis as well. It wasn't by accident that was announced yesterday that the Saudis are still interested in normalizing relations with Israel. We both have the enemies now of the Houthis. They've been an enemy of Saudi Arabia now, the honor of a war for almost 10 years. The Saudis have not successfully dealt with them. I think they're hoping the United States or Israel will at this point. The other important thing to note is that the Army spokesman yesterday in his briefing mentioned how important it is that Israel is now part of CENTCOM, so that Israel has instantaneous communications with all American forces in the region, vice versa. The United States can inform Israel of the launch from Yemen, which they can see sooner than we can, even though we have over the horizon radar, and instantly let us know that our launch has taken place from Yemen. So I think that's all important. I think there's that integration. Look, the politics in America are just messed up at this point. There's no other way of putting it. The Republican Party has a group of people who don't want anything done, really. I mean, the logic of paying for aid to Israel by decreasing IRS tax collections. I mean, think about how insane that idea is. That's because the base hates the IRS. Well, everyone hates the IRS. No one wants to pay taxes, but they're actually supposedly responsible people, and that's what they want to do. Well, I just want to talk about the challenges from the other side, because we have the progressive wing of the Democrats who've come out, I'm not going to say full, thoroughly endorsing Hamas, but not too far off from any of them. Some now almost all the way. I looked into this matter because I didn't understand it to be quite honest with you. I mean, I was, 50 years ago, I was very active on college campuses and up again to Hasbara for Israel and working on that, even through my graduate schools, which was 35, 40 years ago, and I just didn't understand it. Then I looked into it a little bit, and it turns out that this revolutionary author named France Farber, who wrote books that basically said that anything you do to colonists is okay. You can kill them, dead cadavers, everything you want to do, it's all okay. If they're colonists, you can do all these things. Well, lo and behold, I discovered that in the course of Columbia College, contemporary civilization, which every Columbia student has to take, I remember taking it, but it would be discussed. Aristotle and all those sort of thought leaders is now required reading at Columbia College. So all these kids are learning this thing, and if we're colonists, then it's perfectly okay to slaughter us because we're colonists. And I think this is, I mean, this is Columbia. I don't know what's going on in other camps, but I'll assume that other Ivy League schools have done the same sort of thing, the same sort of writings kids are learning, and this is really very frightening in that sense. They somehow think that we don't count because we're a colonist, and that's what we're seeing from the far left in the United States. So we have the far right who's just being anarchists in terms of Congress, and the far left who thinks we're colonists and we should all die. And I want to really focus on that because it's not just crazy people on college campuses anymore. There was a Harvard Harris survey that came out just a couple of weeks ago showing about 50% of people under 25 in America support Hamas in this war. They say that these attacks are justified if you go to people under the age of 35. These are people that are going to have voting power and real power in the not too distant future. Some of them already do. Right, absolutely. But go back to what I said before. I don't know when they started teaching this in Columbia. I may assume it was long after I left, but I'm sure it wasn't after the people who were 35 went to these colleges. So I think we have a generation that have been brought up with these beliefs. Now, it's not all of them, obviously, and some of them are smart enough to see through it, but it affects a large number of them, and it's affecting a large number of the young people in the United States. Now, we also have this problem of intersectionality that exists, which is if you support women's rights and if you support gay rights or LGBTQ rights and you support African-American rights or Black Lives Matter, then you have to support Palestinian rights because it's the same thing, don't you know? And so we have this problem that they automatically think they have to support the Palestinians because you have to support all the causes of the left. And then on top of everything else, you have the issue that preceded this to some extent, where the left decided the weakest party was always right, not necessarily checking the justice of a cause. If they're weak, we have to support them. So you take all these things together, and we end up with a lot of young Americans who do not support us anymore, not only America. The situation is the same in France. The situation is the same in Great Britain. It's throughout the Western world, and it's for all the same reasons. I think we have a lot ahead of us and a big job ahead of us, and I don't know if we can accomplish what we need to do in terms of Aspera in the world, because it's not just Aspera. It's rethinking. It's getting people to think in a different sort of way. This progressive one that we're discussing makes up a large portion of the Democratic Party's voting base. Is that going to be a critical issue going forward, particularly in the upcoming elections? Look, I think one of the issues I think will be the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is a little less enthusiastic with Biden because of his support for Israel. Now, it is more popular amongst independents. Will these progressives vote for someone like Trump as opposed to voting for Biden? No. Might they stay home? That could be a problem, and that could be an issue, obviously. If Biden had a serious primary challenger right now, then it might be a problem for Biden, but he doesn't have a serious primary challenger. So that's not going to be that sort of problem. Also still, as much as these young people count, the overwhelming percentage of Democratic lawmakers are some ways between the age of 40 and 80. So they don't fall into that category. They have different views of the world. They have more realistic views of the world, and then most of them are very pro-Israel in their bones. So you don't see any future situation, at least not a near-term future situation, where impact support from America? Near-term, no. Medium and long-term, we need to worry. But near-term, during this conflict, I don't think we have a problem. Again, we're lucky that Biden is the president. And not only does he act with his instinct, he knows what to do in terms of his instincts, and he also knows how to be empathetic, and we're lucky now. But what will happen after Biden? I don't know. Let's hope this war certainly ends long before Biden leaves the presidency, to say the least for all of us. And thank you both. I'm going to turn to another angle now, because we are looking at some of the events that happened on October 7th, still picking up the pieces, interviews with witnesses, survivors, security teams, and one such local security chief of Kibbutz-Givim in the Gaza envelope gave a rare look at life in the Kibbutz after the October 7th massacres, and an optimistic vision on the future for the area. Let's take a look. Kibbutz-Givim near the Gaza Strip adjacent to the southern city of Sderot was not severely hit by the brutal terror attack by Hamas on October 7th, but things could have been very different. As Gil Schwartzman, a member of the Kibbutz, tells I-24 News about the dramatic moments. At around 7 a.m., I heard gunshots around the gate. I got a call from the local security coordinator. He said, I've been shot. I'm injured. I called the standby squad, and we came to help him. Another car was shot at, and the guy there was shot in his head, but he survived. Another car was also hit by gunshots and grenades. We counted 45 bullet holes in the car. The local security chief got hit in his leg, and I had to take his place. We also had a lot of luck, perhaps even divine providence. I want to show you something special. This gate took a lot of bullets. When we opened the gate, look at the shape of the bullet exit hole. Kibbutz-Givim was established in 1947, a few months before Israel declared its independence. Over the years, it's known many challenges due to its sensitive location. In the beginning, people lived here in tents. In July 1947, this structure was built to protect the residents from attacks by Egyptians. Members of the Kibbutz lived in tents and small cabins. Schwarzman is one of 16 people of the standby squad, the only ones who remain in the Kibbutz out of its 617 members. When we walk around, we see empty houses. But thanks to Schwarzman and the few people who were left here, the Kibbutz is not neglected, and even the local dairy is functioning. I was in Germany on a family vacation when the situation started. After a few days, I came back. It's a bit strange to be here. I'm alone here except for a few people and soldiers, but what can I do? Outside the Kibbutz, we visit Sauta, with Schwarzman Directs. This startup hub is home to dozens of high-tech companies which develop revolution inventions from 3D printers to FSMP platforms. We've been active for six years now. All the companies have told me that they are not leaving this hub. Other companies have been interested in participating in this project. It's the first high-tech hub in the negative, and one of the biggest and most successful ones. High-tech always has a future. I have no doubt that in two years, when you come back to visit, we'll have expanded to 50 companies. Despite the horrific tragedy, Schwarzman is still optimistic and says he believes that most of the residents will return to their home eventually, and that Kevim and the high-tech scene will flourish, perhaps a ray of hope in this dark time in the South. And we're going to return to our discussion panel here in studio with Mark Schoeman and Raphael Isralami. I want to turn to you, Mark, because you had some remarks. I haven't seen that. Right, so look, we saw this, we keep on seeing this, and unfortunately, what this proves is the old saying, if the Arabs stop fighting, we'll have peace, if the Jews stop fighting, we'll be killed. That's exactly what happened. Fighters weren't there, they weren't there in enough numbers, and they killed us, that's what we want to do. And that's what all Israelis are suddenly understood in the depths of their bones, that unless we fight, we'll be killed. And that's the reality. And it's a very sad reality, but there's no choice. And whatever happens in Gaza, I feel terrible for the innocents that are dying, but I don't want my children to die. I don't want my relatives to die. We're going to fight, we're going to win in Gaza because we have no choice. And whatever the price, and hopefully it will not be too great, but there will be a costly, we have no choice but to fight and win. That's why we're fighting. I want to turn back to Raphael for the how, because to accomplish this, a strategy is needed. And I want to talk more about the strategy being employed, this encirclement, cutting Gaza into pieces. Is this going to be effective? There's still 40,000 Hamas fighters to deal with. There's no other way to go about it, unless Yuboma and the whole Gaza strip out of existence, which is not possible. So this is the strategy. And when you say 40,000, you can multiply by five or six because according to military doctrine, guerrilla warfare makes the one inside the city who's holding the city much more powerful, meaning these 40,000, you can count in like 100 or 120,000 even more because they are in their own terrain. They have booby trapped every door, every window. They have snipers everywhere. Other surprises in store for us. It's going to be a very painstaking job. It's going to take a long time. We're going to have to have nerves, a lot of nerves, strong nerves, especially also at the back here at the rear, where every soldier that falls is stabbed to our heart. This is going to go on for a long time and we'll have to keep cool and do what we have to do. And according to the analysis that we heard, we also have to do what we need to do and how we want to do it. So far, the Central Command and the Lloyd Austin gave us very good advice. And the Israelis have more or less listened to the Americans and changed their strategy accordingly. But this being said, if we want to strike the Hezbollah and if we decide to widen the conflict, I don't think the Americans will let us down. We can force their hands if we want to, if we need to. So I think this is also a big change. We are not the only ones who might enlarge the conflict here. The Houthis in Yemen could also inflame that particular area of the Middle East. Other Iraq also, American