 stress situation is getting severe. I know he needs us to take him out. International Court of Justice hears charges against Israel. Welcome to our viewers around the world. I'm Albert Lewerton reporting from the I-24 News headquarters in Tel Aviv. You're watching rolling coverage of the war, day 97, Thursday, January 11, 2024, and here are the headlines. All eyes are on the Hague in the Netherlands today. The International Court of Justice, the UN's top court, will hear accusations that Israel has committed genocidal acts during its war against Hamas and Gaza. We will have live team coverage of the first day of the hearings. The UN Security Council has demanded Yemen's Houdi to stop attacking ships in the Red Sea. The vote was 11-0 in the Security Council with four abstentions, Russia, China, Algeria, and Mozambique. Israeli troops operating in the Chanyunis area of southern Gaza have found a tunnel where hostages had been held by Hamas. This comes as battles continue between IDF forces and Hamas. And in the northern front, White House special envoy Amos Haqstein will meet with officials in Beirut later today to try to calm nerves down. There's also word a senior IDF officer has returned from Egypt after holding talks to increase humanitarian aid into Gaza. Also reportedly on the agenda, the future of the Philadelphia route, which runs along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is clear Israel has no intention of reoccupying Gaza. Take a listen. I want to make a few points absolutely clear. Israel has no intention of permanently occupying Gaza or displacing its civilian population. Israel is fighting Hamas terrorists, not the Palestinian population. And we are doing so in full compliance with international law. The IDF is doing its utmost to minimize civilian casualties while Hamas is doing its utmost to maximize them by using Palestinian civilians as human shields. The IDF urges Palestinian civilians to leave war zones by disseminating leaflets, making phone calls, providing safe passage corridors, while Hamas prevents Palestinians from leaving at gunpoint and often with gunfire. Our goal is to rid Gaza of Hamas terrorists and free our hostages. Once this is achieved, Gaza can be demilitarized and de-radicalized, thereby creating a possibility for a better future for Israel and Palestinians alike. We have live team coverage of the war from every angle. Pierre Klosch under I-24 News correspondent right now. He's at the Nova Festival party grounds at Reyim in southern Israel. Pierre, the ICJ opens its hearings today where South Africa will allege Israel committed genocide. But no doubt the Hamas actions on October the 7th, where you're standing, won't be brought up. Well, first of all, I'm not at the Nova Fest. I'm going to be there later during an event called up by the families of the 136 hostages. But what we understand is that the Israeli government has published a website not for Israeli consumers, but for international consumers that show some of the atrocities that were perpetrated by Hamas and Palestinians. By the way, also by Palestinian civilians who use the opportunity of the breaches on the fence between Israel and the Gaza Strip in order to also participate in their own atrocious festival. Nonetheless, I don't know if this will have an influence on the international court of justice. They probably also got some documents, but that's more for public opinion, probably, in order to try and explain Israel's position in its war against Hamas and not against the Palestinians. The families who you're going to be meeting later on today want to make sure that what has happened there isn't forgotten, isn't lost in all of the discussion today. Absolutely. There's rumors of some points of a Qatari Egyptian mediation that is going around and the war cabinet of the Israeli government yesterday reassessed the situation regarding the hostages and evaluated the validity of that mediation plan, which calls basically for the release of all hostages versus an end of the war, which is Hamas's position to end the war before the hostages are being released. The Israeli government does not intend to close the door on the mediation efforts. There were no declarations, but the door is still open for further mediation. Great. Pierre Klosch under joining us now from the southern part of Israel. Thanks again for joining us. And I'm back now in studio with Colonel Jack Nairia, the former deputy head of assessment for Israeli military intelligence. I'm also joined by Tom Gross, Middle East expert and journalist. Thanks so much. I'm going to start with you, Tom, first. Why is Israel being singled out by the ICJ? I mean, the conflict's all over the world. Is Russia Ukraine? There's the Darfur. Why this? Well, I mean, it's preposterous, isn't it? And in the end, it has to be antisemitism or what I would even say, it's a kind of possibly subconscious Holocaust guilt. In other words, it was famously said the Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz. We could say the world will also never forgive the Jews for having actually been the prime victims of the worst genocide in human history. And therefore, if they can somehow portray Israel, the Jewish state of somehow carrying out some kind of genocide, which is of course ridiculous, they can somehow alleviate their guilt or they don't have to study the Holocaust anymore or so on. But I'd also say that it's not only Israel and Jews a victim of this evil act of accusing Israel of genocide, but everybody else who suffered from genocides, not just Jews, but in Cambodia and Rwanda, the Yazidis in Iraq and so on, God help us. We already see how ignorant students, even at Harvard and top universities, are of history. They're rewriting what a genocide is by even using the word genocide. It's all over the world news media, Israel genocide, genocide, genocide. It is terrible. I'd also say, since Israel is accused of apartheid, which of course is also not true, that South Africa is doing a disservice to its own population who are victims of apartheid by rewriting the meaning of apartheid. Modern-day South Africans won't understand how much Black South Africans suffered under real apartheid. And finally, I'd say the Palestinians are also suffering from this because it makes a resolution that's a piece for everyone, including the Palestinians, less likely this confrontation or ridiculous stance of the world body singling out Israel. The international media seems to have forgotten the word allegations when they make mention of it. Journalism School 101, we will tell you that anything that occurs, it's alleged to have until it's adjudicated. I'll bring the example of the BBC that had to put out apology after apology after apology, the BBC. Right. When it's more than just allegations, I happen to listen to the BBC on the way to the studio this morning, the BBC World Service, which has listened to about 150 million people around the world. We were told, for example, that Israel has been occupying Gaza for 70 years without any rebuttal to such ridiculous untrue assertion. I would argue further, they shouldn't even say the allegation, because the allegation is without merit. It shouldn't lead the international news. There is a lot else happening in the world. We have 68 countries having democratic elections this year, including Taiwan today. The American primaries are starting in Iowa in a few days. There are conflicts throughout the world, well-known ones like Ukraine, but also lesser ones. And even giving airing this word, even if it had had allegations, they're doing a disservice, not just Israelis and Palestinians, they're doing a disservice to the people listening to them. And if I could just make one final point, no one's pushing back on things that are just not true. So we're told time and time again that the Palestinian fatalities in Gaza have reached 23,000 without being told that Hamas, who are making these allegations, have a track record of lying for decades. And we're also not told that, according to Israel, which is more accurate, about 8,500 of those people are Palestinian combatants, which means, if we take Hamas figures, a 2,500 to 1 ratio of combatant to civilian, the average conflict since World War II has been nine civilians killed for every combatant. Iran in the Iraq War and the Afghan War was about four, five to one. So somebody should explain to BBC listeners that even if Hamas figures are accurate, Israel is killing less civilians per combatant than almost any other conflict. I'm going to have you hold on one second because in an interview with Andrew Mitchell Lee on MSNBC yesterday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked about the killing of two journalists from Al Jazeera, so-called journalists from Al Jazeera, Hamza Al-Daudou and Mustafa Tureya by an Israeli air strike in Gaza. Now the US Secretary of State Blinken said that he was heartbroken by their death. And we use these quotes now, the worst possible loss. Take a listen. My heart goes out to him. It goes out to the many, the far too many innocent people who've lost their lives in this conflict. And when it comes to Palestinian men, women and children or for that matter, when it comes to journalists. Here's where I'm going to go to Jack Neria for this. The moments later, the IDF came out and showed that these journalists... These two journalists were in fact terrorists. They were on the list of Hamas and they had even a matriculation. So I mean, to claim that these are journalists, this is definitely not true. And then part of being the team of Al Jazeera, when if you open Al Jazeera, you really are the spokesman of Hamas. There's no way that there is something objective being aired in Al Jazeera media at all. It's all the time accusing Israel of killings and of genocide. And this is the line. One shouldn't be surprised that those two that were killed were automatically considered to be not only martyrs, but the martyrs of journalism. So this is what it is today. And it's a pity. Well, the fact that the U.S. Secretary of State legitimized it is an issue. Well, you should have expected from the Secretary of State to be much more responsible and before airing such remarks concerning the two journalists to have checked with the intelligence agencies in the States in order to know that these two were in fact terrorists. But I don't think... I think the issue more than anything is that somebody like Andrew Mitchell or someone in MSNBC would turn around and say, they don't have that intelligence, right? So they're going to try to push somebody against the corner and say, ah, you see, you have two journalists who were killed. You have the journalist up in Lebanon who was killed. You see, the IDF is targeting journalists. And I imagine, and maybe you can help me with this, is that the Secretary of State felt that he has to answer it somehow. Well, you know, the IDF is doing all it can in order to explain the situation. Only yesterday, a group of journalists were taken to a tunnel where the hostages were being held in Khan Yunus, in order to show them what's going on. In an unprecedented cases, we have seen the idea of during this war asking for journalists to join the active units on the ground in order to see the reality that all what is claimed is not correct. And this is a big battle that we are waging. Unfortunately, we are fighting prejudice. We are fighting anti-Semitism. We are fighting the people who want the news, I mean, to claim news and news without even checking. This information war is actually important. I want to talk to you about because yesterday, the IDF, actually the Ministry of Foreign Affairs put out a big booklet where they went through statistics as to the casualties that occurred in Gaza and they broke it down. I mean, I could have cross-matched it five ways through data science as to which way a lot of these horrible cases, 1200 deaths and murders in October the 7th, plus the hundreds that have been killed since. Hamas hasn't done that and the we don't know how many people. Hamas is a specialist, is a chief in forging information. Now, if you take the case of the hospital, of the early hospital, Mahmadan, it was a minute later, a minute later, they claimed that there were 500 people killed. And then after all the agencies, everybody took that number, of course, in order to attack Israel and say Israel was in repulsion. And then they realized that it was a misfire of the Jihad, the Islamic Jihad. And then they just checked the numbers and finally got to the number that between 10 and 50 in the parking lot and not on the hospital. Well, how much of it over time? I'm sorry, you wanted to bring a point. No, I just want to say these are either media. I would recommend honestreporting.com and NGO put out a report yesterday with video evidence of journalists working, photojournalists for both Reuters and Associated Press participating along with Hamas in the October 7th massacre. They didn't kill anyone, but they watched on, they laughed as someone was lynched and so on. That's one thing. Another thing I want to say is people will be forgiven for not knowing this because the BBC yesterday buried on its website a small clarification about its report, which was aired six times on Christmas Eve on both its domestic and world service. That report said that Israel had executed 187 civilians and buried them in unmarked graves in Gaza in the north of Gaza. This report is completely made up. The BBC admitted they got it from Hamas and should have checked it further. This isn't the first time this happened, not just in this conflict. I've been covering as a journalist this conflict for decades. In the second interfata, for example, the so-called Janine massacre, again and again and again, the BBC and other so-called respectable, reliable news media just lapped up the worst information against Israel that was fed to them, not just by Hamas, but also by Fatah, the other Palestinian body, and they just repeated it as fact. I mean, this is just do you think that's done because there hasn't been access into Gaza, for example. So, BBC has a correspondent that's based inside Gaza. They're all Palestinians. They're all Palestinian. They're not reporters coming from outside. They are local Palestinians, and they're just serving the Palestinian cause. I mean, they're just reporting, for instance, that Israel is stealing the bodies from the graves. What for? What for? No, but I just want to say, the BBC or CNN or whoever, New York Times, they wouldn't believe every word that comes out of Vladimir Putin's mouth. They'd qualify it. They'd say, this, this sound right. If the Russian Ministry of Information suddenly said, Ukraine had massacred 5,000 civilians on the outsorts of Moscow, they might say, we haven't verified this. They might not report it at all, because it's so preposterous. But they also do that with Netanyahu, and when they claim IDF says something, there's always a ledge. There's always, reportedly, there's, still needs to be verified, but it's not the other way around. They also don't explain that Israel is a functioning democracy with a vigorous media, independent media and social civil groups. And if Israel carries out some massacre, you can be for sure it will be on Israeli TV news. There'll be condemnations. Arets will do special editions. Those special groups, I mean, leftists and extremists, would take every opportunity to attack its own state. Now, Jack, I want to talk to you a little bit about if you're such a difference, you were a foreign policy adviser to prime ministers in the past. We have gone from in the 1970s and 80s, the way that we had, that Israel had portrayed outside there, anything like this versus what's happened today. It's a different ball game completely. Well, you know, the rules have been reversed. And we are no more David. We are Goliath. And the Palestinians are David. This is basically the thing. I mean, we are a huge state, the most powerful army in the region and so on and so on. And as such, we are expected to have higher values. And this is why the world is judging us very hard, because they expect from us to be, I mean, saints almost, which is in a war like this. And you don't have even the time to think, I mean, about what to do. I mean, because of friendly fire, we have 10 percent of our troops are being killed. And we are trying to do the utmost. As the prime minister said, leaflets are sent. There's no army in the world that does this kind of prevention for not to kill civilians. And we prefer not to hit targets. We hear that, the pilots saying, there are civilians there, there are kids here, we are not firing, we are not targeting. And this is something that is not is uncomparable in the world. Sorry, please. I would even go further and say that the world has kind of set Israel up. In any other conflict, let's take Ukraine and Russia, for example, within days of Russia invading Ukraine, about five to seven million Ukrainians have sought refuge in Poland and other neighboring states, even though Central and Western Ukraine were actually quite safe. What would be the nor, let's say in the Syrians of all war, four million Syrians civilians took refuge in Turkey, one million in Lebanon, two million in Jordan. We'll have a million killed inside Syria. Yes, but what I want to say is this. What would be the reasonable thing if people actually cared about Palestinian civilians is to allow Palestinian civilians to temporarily take refuge in the Sinai just across the border, Qatar could, which could funds the World Cup and build a whole metro and masses of stadiums in no time, could easily build perfectly comfortable living quarters for those poor Palestinian civilians. And meantime, if Renan Hamas will fight it out, and then the civilians can move back to Gaza. That's what happens in every other conflict. The world, and I would include the Biden administration, would not let Palestinian civilians get out of harm's way. It therefore becomes inevitable that Hamas, mixing him with civilians, some, unfortunately, many too many civilians have died or been injured. But their blood is not just on Hamas's hands. It's on the world's hands for applying different rules to this conflict than any other conflict on earth. But then look at the hundreds who are taking to the streets of New York, blocking all of Manhattan or Paris or London. That doesn't fit in that narrative. Yeah, but they shout free Palestine. They don't even know what is Palestine. I mean, they're free Palestine from the sea to the river. I mean, and exterminate Israel. Israel does not exist free Palestine. What do you mean free Palestine? Are we occupying? Are we occupying the Gaza? Since 1993, we have left Gaza. In 2005, we have totally left Gaza. So we don't have any inch of Gaza inside Israel. Jacques, just to show you a point, there's a video going around social media that I watched of a young Israeli woman who went in front of these protesters in New York with the bring them home now t-shirt. And she put out an Israeli flag and they assaulted her. And all she was saying is what about my family that's being held hostage? What about my family members who are there? There was such a venom against her. I mean, it wasn't even respectful venom. It was ridiculously disrespectful. Yeah, well, you know, this is the rebirth of anti-Semitism and it has been latent all the time and now it's up. I mean, after the Holocaust, some wishful thinking that anti-Semitism would just disappear after being prevalent for 2000 years in Europe and beyond. Where do people think it all went? It's just been waiting there. And I don't just blame these idiotic protesters in Manhattan or Los Angeles or London or Paris. I blame their educators at elite universities. I blame the media for lying to them, for encouraging them. So doesn't today give them ammunition today or not even ammunition, give them evidence, credence for if they're going to see the stuff that's going to be shown in the hay because they can say, ah, you see, there it is. The court won't rule on this genocide accusation apparently for years. So of course, just the broadcast is enough to whip people up. I mean, look, if I didn't know what was happening and I was told that somebody was committing genocide against someone else, I would also take to the streets in protest. I mean, it's a natural reaction. They're being whipped up by the big lie. We haven't seen anybody accusing Syria at the ICG, the ICG. He killed 500,000 of his own people. Where are the Chinese with the Uyghurs? And what are the Burmese with the Rohingya? Rohingya Muslims. I mean, it's all about bashing Israel. If they cared about Muslims, as Jack just pointed out, they are serious genocidal intent towards the Uyghur by China, Burma, Rohingya, so on. Yes. Tom Gross and Chuck Nehria, thank you so much for joining us here. Yesterday there was a mass prayer that was held at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Our Emily Francis has more from there. The Gates of Heaven opened when the chief rabbis of Israel did a prayer at the holiest place in the world. The rabbis led a special Yom Kippur Katan, which means small, service, referring to the custom of fasting and reciting slighalt prayers on the eve of the new month, known as Roj Chodesh. Explain why it's so important to have this energy to be at the Kotel and to really ask God for help on Roj Chodesh. As I understood from one of the rabbis that I visited yesterday, a thing like that, a prayer like that happened only 50 years ago. That only shows us how important this prayer is to bring everybody here. Everybody means everybody. It doesn't matter if you're religious or not. Tens of thousands of people came to the Western Wall Plaza to take part in the opportunity to pray for the safe return of the hostages held by Hamas terrorists and the IDF soldiers fighting the war in Gaza. One thing I've noticed over the course of the month or so interview families is how much faith all of you have. Where does that come from? It's an inspiration to not just me but the whole world. I think when you don't have anything to do because we can go to Gaza and bring Shlomi back. So what we have is God is praying, is faith and hope. Sunday, January 14th, will mark the 100th day that over 130 hostages have remained in captivity. I have one target. It's to bring my home and my daughter and all the other 135 people back here to Israel to make sure they're okay, they're safe. And this is one big mission. I don't have time now to be either depressed or to lie in bed. We have to make actions. We are a part of something very, very big. I think we have a lesson to learn. And unfortunately, Shlomi is one of the hostages there and they need to come back. But despite this prolonged nightmare, the sister of hostage Shlomi Svi and the mother of Romy Gonan know it in their bones that they're remaining strong. She's so positive. She has such an inner strength. She knows how to make fun of herself, which shows a lot of a person. And she has a lot of friends. She knows how to, you know, how to communicate with people. And I'm trusting, I'm counting on that, that she knows we are doing everything to make sure she will come back. I'm sure of that. What kind of big brother is he? He's a good conversation man. He talks with everyone. And with kids, he's a kid. And with grown-ups, he's a grown-up. A big brother. He is a big brother. And have unwavering faith that they will come home safely. The Jerusalem air, you feel here, all the together, the faith, the Emona, you can hear now, they are praying and all of the people that are coming here to support us. Mirav Leshem Gonan refuses to let doubt and fear enter her soul and has a special message to everyone around the world on how to help turn the tides of fate. What is your message to them? Because so many are watching and wondering how to remain strong and not really being able to do anything so far away. Wow, they are able to do a lot of things. First to, you know, to hold the positivity. That's first. Second to hold the faith and believe but really believe that they will come back home. This is two things which, you know, it's a must. It's, you know, you're waking up in the morning. That's what you have to do. And then explain. Explain it's not about Israel and Palestinian. It's about good and bad. It's about good and evil. Sorry, it's about light and darkness, and we are part of a light. At the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Emily Francis, I-2040. I'm Albert Lewitton in Tel Aviv. The news continues. Israel is in a state of war. Families completely done down in their beds. We have no idea where she is. Our soldiers are fighting on the front line, but the general perception is something that certainly needs to be fought as well. 24 Israel, Bajo Ataque. News 24 en Español trae el análisis y la información de los acontecimientos de la guerra, espadas de hierro. Entrevistas exclusivas reportes desde la zona de guerra, la reacción de los países hispanoparlantes. News 24, el único medio en español que te mantiene informado y conectado con la comunidad latina en Israel. News 24, únicamente en I-24 News. International Court of Justice hears charges against Israel. Welcome to our viewers around the world. I'm Albert Lewitton reporting from the I-24 news headquarters in Tel Aviv. You're watching rolling coverage of the war, day 97, Thursday, January 11th, 2024, and here are the headlines. All eyes are on the haig in the Netherlands today. The International Court of Justice, the UN's top court, will hear accusations that Israel has committed genocidal acts during its war against Hamas and Gaza. We will have live team coverage of the first day of the hearings. The UN Security Council has demanded Yemen's Houdi to stop attacking ships in the Red Sea. The vote was 11-0 in the Security Council with four abstentions, Russia, China, Algeria, and Mozambique. Israeli troops operating in the Chanyunas area of southern Gaza have found a tunnel where hostages had been held by Hamas. This comes as battles continue between IDF forces and Hamas. And in the northern front, White House Special Envoy Amos Haqstein will meet with officials in Beirut later today to try to calm nerves down. There's also word a senior IDF officer has returned from Egypt after holding talks to increase humanitarian aid into Gaza. Also reportedly on the agenda, the future of the Philadelphia route, which runs along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is clear Israel has no intention of reoccupying Gaza. Take a listen. I want to make a few points absolutely clear. Israel has no intention of permanently occupying Gaza or displacing its civilian population. Israel is fighting Hamas terrorists, not the Palestinian population. And we are doing so in full compliance with international law. The IDF is doing its utmost to minimize civilian casualties, while Hamas is doing its utmost to maximize them by using Palestinian civilians as human shields. The IDF urges Palestinian civilians to leave war zones by disseminating leaflets, making phone calls, providing safe passage corridors, while Hamas prevents Palestinians from leaving at gunpoint and often with gunfire. Our goal is to rid Gaza of Hamas terrorists and free our hostages. Once this is achieved, Gaza can be demilitarized and de-radicalized, thereby creating a possibility for a better future for Israel and Palestinians alike. We have live team coverage of the war from every angle. Pierre Kloschunder, I-24 News correspondent, right now, he's at the Nova Festival Party grounds at Ryeem in southern Israel. Pierre, the ICJ opens its hearings today where South Africa will allege Israel committed genocide, but no doubt the Hamas actions on October 7th, where you're standing, won't be brought up. Well, first of all, I'm not at the Nova Festival. I'm going to be there later during an event called up by the families of the 136 hostages. But what we understand is that the Israeli government has published a website, not for Israeli consumers, but for international consumers that show some of the atrocities that were perpetrated by Hamas and Palestinians. And by the way, also by Palestinian civilians who use the opportunity of the breaches on the fence between Israel and the Gaza Strip in order to also participate in their own atrocious festival. Nonetheless, I don't know if this will have an influence on the international court of justice. They probably also got some documents, but that's more for public opinion, probably, in order to try and explain Israel's position in its war against Hamas and not against the Palestinians. The families who you're going to be meeting later on today want to make sure that what has happened there isn't forgotten, isn't lost in all of the discussion today. Absolutely. There's rumors of some points of Qatari Egyptian mediation that is going around and the war cabinet of the Israeli government yesterday reassessed the situation regarding the hostages and evaluated the validity of that mediation plan, which calls basically for the release of all hostages versus an end of the war, which is Hamas's position to end the war before the hostages are being released. The Israeli government does not intend to close the door on the mediation efforts. There were no declarations, but the door is still open for further mediation. Great, Pierre Klosch under joining us now from the southern part of Israel. Thanks again for joining us and I'm back now in studio with Colonel Jacques Nairie, the former deputy head of assessment for Israeli military intelligence. I'm also joined by Tom Gross, Middle East expert and journalist. Thanks so much. I'm going to start with you, Tom, first. Why is Israel being singled out by the ICJ? I mean, the conflict's all over the world. Is Russia Ukraine? There's the Darfur. Why this? Well, I mean, it's preposterous, isn't it? And in the end, it has to be anti-Semitism. What I would even say, it's a kind of possibly subconscious Holocaust guilt. In other words, it was famously said the Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz. We could say the world would also never forgive the Jews for having actually been the prime victims of the worst genocide in human history. And therefore, if they can somehow portray Israel, the Jewish state, of somehow carrying out some kind of genocide, which is of course ridiculous, they can somehow alleviate their guilt or they don't have to study the Holocaust anymore or so on. But I'd also say that it's not only Israel and Jews a victim of this evil act of accusing Israel of genocide, but everybody else who suffered from genocides, not just Jews, but in Cambodia and Rwanda, the Yazidis in Iraq and so on, God help us. We already see how ignorant students, even at Harvard and top universities, are of history. They're rewriting what a genocide is by even using the word genocide. It's all over the world news media, Israel, genocide, genocide, genocide. It is terrible. I'd also say, since Israel is accused of apartheid, which of course is also not true, that South Africa is doing a disservice to its own population who are victims of apartheid by rewriting the meaning of apartheid. Modern-day South Africans won't understand how much Black South Africans suffered under real apartheid. And finally, I'd say the Palestinians are also suffering from this because it makes a resolution that's peace for everyone, including the Palestinians less likely, this confrontational ridiculous stance of the world body singling out Israel. The international media seems to have forgotten the word allegations when they make mention of it. Journalism School 101, we will tell you that anything that occurs, it's alleged to have until it's adjudicated. I'll bring the example of the BBC that had to put out apology after apology the BBC. Right. Well, it's more than just allegations. I happened to listen to the BBC on the way to the studio this morning, the BBC World Service, which has listened to about 150 million people around the world. We were told, for example, that Israel has been occupying Gaza for 70 years without any rebuttal to such ridiculous untrue assertion. I would argue further, they shouldn't even say the allegation because the allegation is without merit. It shouldn't lead the international news. There is a lot else happening in the world. We have 68 countries having democratic elections this year, including Taiwan today. The American primaries are starting in Iowa in a few days. There are conflicts throughout the world, well-known ones like Ukraine, but also lesser ones. And even giving airing this word, even if it had had allegations, is they're doing a disservice, not just to Israelis and Palestinians, disservice to the people listening to them. And if I could just make one final point, no one's pushing back on things that are just not true. So we're told time and time again that the Palestinian fatalities in Gaza have reached 23,000 without being told that Hamas, who are making these allegations, have a track record of lying for decades. And we're also not told that, according to Israel, which is more accurate, about 8,500 of those people are Palestinian competence, which means, if we take Hamas figures at 2,500 to 1 ratio of competent to civilian, the average conflict since World War II has been nine civilians killed for every competent. Iran in the Iraq war and the Afghan war was about four or five to one. So somebody should explain to BBC listeners that even if Hamas figures are accurate, Israel is killing less civilians per competent than almost any other conflict. I'm going to have you hold on one second because in an interview with Andrew Mitchell on MSNBC yesterday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked about the killing of two journalists from Al Jazeera, so-called journalists from Al Jazeera, Hamza al-Daudu and Mustafa Tureya by an Israeli air strike in Gaza. Now, the US Secretary of State Blinken said that he was heartbroken by their death. And we use these quotes now, the worst possible loss. Take a listen. My heart goes out to him. It goes out to the many, the far too many innocent people who've lost their lives in this conflict. And when it comes to Palestinian men, women and children, or for that matter, when it comes to journalists. Here's where I'm going to go to Jack Nehria for this. The moments later, the IDF came out and showed that these journalists... These two journalists were in fact terrorists. They were on the list of Hamas and they had even a matriculation. So, I mean, to claim that these are journalists, this is definitely not true. And then part of being the team of Al Jazeera, when if you open Al Jazeera, you really are the spokesman of Hamas. There's no way that there is something objective that being aired in Al Jazeera media at all. It's all the time accusing Israel of killings and of genocide. And this is the line. And this is the... One shouldn't be surprised that those two that were killed were automatically considered to be not only martyrs, but the martyrs of journalism. So, this is what it is today. And it's a pity that... Well, the fact that the US Secretary of State legitimized it is an issue. You should have been expected from the Secretary of State to be much more responsible and before airing such remarks concerning the two journalists to have checked with the intelligence agencies in the States to know that these two were in fact terrorists. But I don't think... I think the issue more than anything is that somebody like Andrea Mitchell or someone at MSNBC would turn around and say they don't have that intelligence, right? So, they're gonna try to push somebody against the corner and say, ah, you see, you have two journalists who were killed. You have the journalists up in Lebanon who was killed. You see the IDF is targeting journalists. And I imagine, and maybe you can help me with this, is that the Secretary of State felt that he has to answer it somehow. Well, you know, the IDF is doing all it can in order to explain the situation. Only yesterday, a group of journalists were taken to a tunnel where the hostages were being held in Khan Yunus, you know, to show them what's going on. In an unprecedented case, we have seen the IDF during this war asking for journalists to join the active units on the ground in order to see the reality. And that all what is claimed is not correct. And this is a big battle that we are waging. Unfortunately, we are fighting prejudice. We are fighting anti-Semitism. We are fighting the people who want the news, I mean, to claim news and news without even checking. This information war is actually important I want to talk to you about because yesterday the IDF, actually the Ministry of Foreign Affairs put out a big booklet where they went through statistics as to the casualties that occurred in Gaza and they broke it down. I mean, I could have cross-matched it five ways through data science as to which way a lot of these horrible cases, 1200 deaths and murders in October 7th, plus the hundreds that have been killed since. Hamas hasn't done that and the other, we don't know how many people. Hamas is a specialist, is a chief in forging information. Now, if you take the case of the hospital, of the early hospital, Mahmadan was a minute later, a minute later, they claimed that there were 500 people killed. And then after all the agencies, everybody took that number, of course, in order to attack Israel, say Israel was a response. And then they realized that it was a misfire of the jihad, the Islamic jihad. And then they just checked the numbers and finally got to the number that between 10 and 50 in the parking lot and not on the hospital. How much of a time, I'm sorry, you wanted to bring a point? I just want to say easily in the media, I would recommend honestreporting.com and NGO put out a report yesterday with video evidence of journalists working, photo journalists for both Reuters and Associated Press, participating along with Hamas in the October 7th massacre. They didn't kill anyone but they watched on, they laughed as someone was lynched and so on. That's one thing. Another thing I want to say is people will be forgiven for not knowing this because the BBC yesterday buried on its website a small clarification about its report, which was aired six times on Christmas Eve on both its domestic and world service. That report said that Israel had executed 187 civilians and buried them in unmarked graves in Gaza, in the north of Gaza. This report is completely made up. The BBC admitted they got it from Hamas and should have checked it further. This isn't the first time this happened, not just in this conflict. I've been covering as a journalist this conflict for decades in the second interfader, for example, the so-called Genine Massacre. Again and again and again, the BBC and other so-called respectable, reliable news media just lapped up the worst information against Israel that was fed to them, not just by Hamas but also by Fatah, the other Palestinian body, and they just repeated it as fact. Do you think that's done because there has been access into Gaza, for example. So, BBC has a correspondent that's based inside Gaza, Al Jazeera does as well. They're all Palestinians. They're all Palestinians. They're not reporters coming from outside. They're local Palestinians and they're just serving the Palestinian cause. I mean, they're just reporting, for instance, that Israel is stealing the bodies from graves. What for? What for? No, but I just want to say, the BBC or CNN or whoever in New York Times, they wouldn't believe every word that comes out of Vladimir Putin's mouth. They'd qualify it. They'd say, this, this sound right. If the Russian Ministry of Information suddenly said Ukraine had massacred 5,000 civilians on the outsourced of Moscow, they might say, we haven't verified this. They might not report it at all, because it's so preposterous. And they also do that with Netanyahu. When they claim IVF says something, there's always alleged. There's always reportedly. There's still needs to be verified, but it's not the other way around. They also don't explain that Israel is a functioning democracy with a vigorous media, independent media and social civil groups. And if Israel carries out some massacre, you can be for sure it will be on Israeli TV news. There'll be condemnations, harrots will do special editions. Those special groups are my leftist and extremism that would take every opportunity to attack its own state. Now, Jack, I want to talk to you a little bit about if you're such a difference, you were a foreign policy advisor to prime ministers in the past. We have gone from in the 1970s and 80s, the way that Israel had portrayed outside there, anything like this versus what's happened today. It's a different ball game completely. The rules have been reversed. We are no more David. We are Goliath. And the Palestinians are David. This is basically the thing. I mean, we are a huge state, the most powerful army in the region and so on and so on. And as such, we are expected to have higher values. And this is why the world is judging us very hard, because they expect from us to be saints almost, which is in a war like this. And you don't have even the time to think about what to do. Because of friendly fire, we have 10% of our troops are being killed. And we are trying to do the utmost. As the prime minister said, leaflets are sent. There's no army in the world that does this kind of prevention for not to kill civilians. And we prefer not to hit targets. We hear that. The pilots saying, there are civilians there. There are kids here. We are not firing. We are not targeting. And this is something that is not is uncomparable in the world. Sorry, please. I would even go further and say that the world has kind of set Israel up. In any other conflict, let's take Ukraine and Russia, for example, within days of Russia invading Ukraine, about five to seven million Ukrainians have sought refuge in Poland and other neighbouring states, even though Central and Western Ukraine are actually quite safe. What would be the, let's say in the Syrians of all war, four million Syrians, civilians took refuge in Turkey, one million in Lebanon, two million in Jordan? Half a million killed inside Syria. Yes, but what I want to say is this. What would be the reasonable thing if people actually cared about Palestinian civilians, is to allow Palestinian civilians to temporarily take refuge in the Sinai just across the border, Qatar could, which could funds the World Cup and build sort of whole metro and masses of stadiums in no time, could easily build perfectly comfortable living quarters for those poor Palestinian civilians. And meantime, if Renan Hamas will fight it out, and then the civilians can move back to Gaza. That's what happens in every other conflict. The world, and I would include the Biden administration, would not let Palestinian civilians get out of harm's way. It therefore becomes inevitable that Hamas, mixing him with civilians, some unfortunately many too many civilians have died or been injured. But their blood is not just on Hamas's hands, it's on the world's hands for applying different rules to this conflict than any other conflict on earth. But then look at the hundreds who are taking to the streets of New York, blocking all of Manhattan or Paris or London, that doesn't fit in that narrative. Yeah, but they shout free Palestine. They don't even know what is Palestine. I mean, they're free Palestine from the sea to the river. I mean, and exterminate Israel. Israel does not exist free Palestine. What do you mean free Palestine? Are we occupying? Are we occupying the Gaza? Since 1993, we have left Gaza. In 2005, we have totally left Gaza. So we don't have any inch of Gaza inside Israel. Jacques, just to show you a point, there's a video going around social media that I watched of a young Israeli woman who went in front of these protesters in New York with the bring them home now T-shirt. And she put out an Israeli flag and they assaulted her. And all she was saying is, what about my family that's being held hostage? What about my family members who were there? There was such a venom against her. I mean, it wasn't even respectful venom. It was ridiculously disrespectful. Yeah, well, this is the rebirth of antisemitism and it has been latent all the time. And now it's up. I mean, after the Holocaust, some wishful thinking that antisemitism would just disappear after being prevalent for 2000 years in Europe and beyond. Where do people think it all went? It's just been waiting there. And I don't just blame these idiotic protesters in Manhattan or Los Angeles or London or Paris. I blame their educators at elite universities. I blame the media for lying to them, for encouraging them. So doesn't today give them, give them ammunition today or not even ammunition, give them evidence credence for if they're going to see the stuff that's going to be shown in the head and say, ah, you see, there it is. The court won't rule on this genocide accusation apparently for years. So of course, just the broadcast is enough to whip people up. I mean, look, if I didn't know what was happening and I was told that somebody was committing genocide against someone else, I would also take to the streets in protest. I mean, it's a natural reaction. They've been whipped up by the big lie. We haven't seen anybody accusing Syria at the ICG. The ICG? He killed 500,000 of his own people. Where are the Chinese with the Uyghurs? And what are the Burmese with the Rohingya Muslims? I mean, it's all about bashing Israel. If they cared about Muslims, as Jack just pointed out, they are serious genocidal intent towards the Uyghur by China, Burma, Rohingya, so on. Yes. Tom Gross and Chuck Neary, thank you so much for joining us here yesterday. There was a mass prayer that was held at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Our Emily Francis has more from there. The Gates of Heaven opened when the chief rabbis of Israel did a prayer at the holiest place in the world. The rabbis led a special Yom Kippur Katan, which means small service, referring to the custom of fasting and reciting slighalt prayers on the eve of the new month, known as Roj Chodesh. Explain why it's so important to have this energy to be at the hotel and to really ask God for help on Roj Chodesh. As I understood from one of the rabbis that they visited yesterday, a prayer like that happened only 50 years ago. That only shows us how important this prayer is to bring everybody here. Everybody means everybody. It doesn't matter if you're religious or not. Tens of thousands of people came to the Western Wall Plaza to take part in the opportunity to pray for the safe return of the hostages held by Hamas terrorists and the IDF soldiers fighting the war in Gaza. One thing I've noticed over the course of the month or so interview families is how much faith all of you have. Where does that come from? It's an inspiration to not just me but the whole world. I think when you don't have anything to do because we can go to Gaza and bring Shlomi back. So what we have is God, is praying, is faith and hope. Sunday, January 14th will mark the 100th day that over 130 hostages have remained in captivity. I have one target. It's to bring my my home and my daughter and all the other 135 people back here to Israel to make sure they're okay, they're safe. And this is one big mission. I don't have time now to be either depressed or to lie in bed. We have to make actions. We are a part of something very, very big. I think we have a lesson to learn. And unfortunately Shlomi is one of the hostages there and needs to come back. But despite this prolonged nightmare, the sister of hostage Shlomi Svi and the mother of Romy Gonan know it in their bones that they're remaining strong. She's so positive. She has such an inner strength. She knows how to make fun of herself, which shows a lot of the person and she has a lot of friends. She knows how to you know how to communicate with people and I'm trusting. I'm counting on that that she knows we are doing everything to make sure she will come back. I'm sure of that. What kind of big brother is he? He's a good conversation man. He talks with everyone and with kids, he's a kid and with grown-ups, he's a grown-up. A big brother. He is a big brother. And have unwavering faith that they will come home safely. The Jerusalem air. You feel here all the together, the faith, the Emona. We can hear now they are praying and all of the people that are coming here to support us. Mirav Leshem Gonan refuses to let doubt and fear enter her soul and has a special message to everyone around the world on how to help turn the tides of faith. What is your message to them because so many are watching and wondering how to remain strong and not really being able to do anything so far away? Wow, they are able to do a lot of things. First to you know to hold the positivity. That's first. Second to hold the faith and believe but really believe that they will come back home. This is two things which you know it's a must. It's you know you're working up waking up in the morning. That's what you have to do and then explain. Explain it's not about Israel's and Palestinian. It's about good and bad. It's about good and evil. Sorry, it's about light and darkness and we are part of a light. At the western wall in Jerusalem, Emily Francis, I-2040. I'm Albert Lewington in Tel Aviv. The news continues. Luther King's famous 1968 mountaintop speech was based on his trip to the Promised Land. 55 years later, his prophetic words are coming true. Hundreds of African American women took a journey of a lifetime to the Holy Land. We'll introduce you to the amazing female spiritual and religious leaders who are infusing new energy into the next generation of African Americans. Now who says Israel has no intention of occupying Gaza? This as the International Court of Justice hears charges against Israel. Welcome to our viewers around the world. I'm Albert Lewington reporting from the I-24 news headquarters in Tel Aviv. You're watching rolling coverage of the war day 97 Thursday, January the 11th and here are the headlines. We're going to start with breaking news just into I-24 news of foil terror attack the Shin Bet says two terrorists with allegiance to ISIS had planned on carrying a bomb attacks in Jerusalem. Two men in their 20s have been arrested. One of them allegedly had child porn on his phone also. We're monitoring this story. We'll have more details as it develops. All eyes are on the Hague in the Netherlands today. The International Court of Justice, the UN's top court will hear accusations that Israel had committed genocidal acts during its war against Hamas and Gaza. We will have live team coverage of the first day of this hearing. The UN Security Council has demanded Yemen's Houthi to stop attacking ships in the Red Sea. The vote was 11 to 0 in the Security Council with four abstentions Russia, China, Algeria and Mozambique. Israel's troops operating in the Khanunas area of southern Gaza have found a tunnel where hostages had been held by Hamas. This comes as battles continue between the IDF forces at Hamas and on the northern front White House special envoy Amos Hoxden will meet with officials in Beirut later today to try to calm nerves down. There's also word now let's go back to Gaza. There's also word that senior IDF officer has returned from Egypt after holding talks to increase humanitarian aid into Gaza and also reportedly on the agenda the future of the Philadelphia route which runs along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Now all this happens as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that he is very clear Israel has absolutely no intention of reoccupying Gaza. Take a listen. I want to make a few points absolutely clear Israel has no intention of permanently occupying Gaza or displacing its civilian population. Israel is fighting Hamas terrorists not the Palestinian population and we are doing so in full compliance with international law. The IDF is doing its utmost to minimize civilian casualties while Hamas is doing its utmost to maximize them by using Palestinian civilians as human shields. The IDF urges Palestinian civilians to leave war zones by disseminating leaflets making phone calls providing safe passage corridors while Hamas prevents Palestinians from leaving at gunpoint and often with gunfire. Our goal is to rid Gaza of Hamas terrorists and free our hostages. Once this is achieved Gaza can be demilitarized and de-radicalized thereby creating a possibility for a better future for Israel and Palestinians alike. That was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joining me now in studio is Orius Sakha the head of research for Israel Defense Security Forum. Thanks so much for joining in. Why did the Prime Minister feel the need to say this? I thought from the get go that was the plan. I think it's just saying the obvious to be honest and that's okay to sort of calm some actors international scene that would want to hear such statements. Sometimes you have to say the obvious. I don't think Israel ever intended to permanently occupy the Gaza Strip but in the civil level that's what I mean. The two levels for the day after in Gaza the military and civil. In the civil level I don't see any need that Israel would you know run the sewage and you know any day-to-day business in the city hall chief. Exactly there's no need that an IDF officer would be the city hall chief. What we propose at the IDSF to have you know local mayors and administrative councils that would run everyday life but and that's a big but. There is the military plane as well. Israel cannot disengage from Gaza once again. We have to understand that and I think Netanyahu knows that as well. Israel in the day after in Gaza should have complete frame of operation around the Gaza Strip much like we do in Nablus and Janine to arrest terrorists and to foil ticking time bombs. That's what we should do in Gaza in the day after to have three or four Jeeps not in an entire brigade to go to Gaza City and arrest a terrorist who's plotting an attack. I think we have without playing international in the international scene with that would that be enough sufficient. I think Israel should be extremely clear in the international community and with the United States to tell the truth. We are the only people in the world but after having but being butchered and murdered and raped and kidnapped we still think how to appease and how to improve the lives of our enemies. It doesn't work like that. We have security needs. Israel should remain in the Gaza Strip forever in terms of the military plane control the Philadelphia route and there are no goods that would be entering Gaza without an Israeli eye surveilling them. That's a iron condition for Israel in the day after or we want to just turn that time that turn the hourglass back to the next October 7th. That's another option but we don't want that. So we cannot go back to October 6th. We cannot go back to disengaging from Gaza and having promises of a responsible revitalized revamp Palestinian Authority. This is not something we can agree to. Now the idea here to go back to October 6th. There was a report that Qatar had a plan. The plan was is that in exchange for release of the hostages in exchange for disengagement by the IDF the heads of Hamas would disappear would go to another country be banished and never be allowed back in Hamas. Basically almost what our fat and PLO did in 1980s. Your thoughts on any of that idea not going to happen. Israel cannot. I said again Israel cannot disengage from the Gaza Strip and we cannot agree also to sort of a facade a theater where Yahya Sinwar Muhammad Defend more one Issa are being banished from Gaza and then their deputies take over it's not going to happen. We saw the results in Judea and Samaria where Arafat died as you said and the bus replaced him didn't change much. I know that Arafat was much more bellicose but then again this is still Hamas. We cannot agree to a scenario. I'm talking as a security analyst. We cannot agree. Israel cannot agree to a situation where a Hamas puppet government is controlling the Gaza Strip. The whole idea of sitting in the other side of the fence and letting the enemy build up its force should be a thing of the past. And I think if there's something we learn on October 7th is that we cannot put our security in the hands of others. And also you won't see Sinwar, anyone going on pro-Gosian airlines for anywhere? I don't see that happening to be honest. From talking to people who have he's been in prison in Israel prison for over 20 years, you know that. And speaking to prison officials who interrogated him and basically were his you know, quote unquote his managers whether it's responsible for him and they interrogated him and they know him very well. It's not going to happen at least in my estimation and it could be wrong. But then agreeing to take a flight ticket to Qatar. I think if we do that allowing Sinwar and Def and Issa to take a flight ticket to Qatar, that means that we'll have to eliminate them there alongside with Ismail Hania and the others. They have finished their business in this world. People who have ordered and masterminded the murder of 1400 Israelis have no place in the world and I think that will advance peace as well. If you see, if you take a look at the Middle East principles for peace, this is the power principle that's controlling the Middle East, not agreed upon documents and MOUs. That's not the way the Middle East works. If Nasrallah and Khomeini leader of Hezbollah, the leader of Iran will see the results in Gaza, what happens to anyone who mastermind such an attack against Jews in the Middle East, trust me, they would not mastermind such an attack themselves. If Israel begins to hesitate and having dilemmas and internal questions and internal doubts, then it will look as a failure by anyone in Israel. It will look like a failure. It would look like weakness to be honest. I don't see Israel agree to such a scenario where the Gaza Strip should, I'm telling you, if Nasrallah understands that Lebanon would look like the Gaza Strip in the day after and he himself would be the first victim, then we'll have peace on the Lebanon border. Orisaka, I'm going to have you hold on one second. We have live team coverage of the war from every angle. Let me go now to Pierre Cluchender. He's in the southern part of Israel on the border with Gaza. Pierre, it looks as though that the IDF is continuing, it's step by step, block by block, road by road attacks in Gaza. Relentlessly, Albert, I would say there was just an outgoing of artillery fire directed at probably presumed terror targets in support of the ground forces in the central sector of the Gaza Strip, which is behind me, where Division 36 of combined combat teams are operating right now in El Borej refugee camp in the El Mugazi refugee camp at the gate of the El Nusera refugee camp according to Palestinian media affiliated to Hamas. Further south, the 98th Division of commando units and combined combat teams are operating within and without Han-Yunas. They just announced yesterday evening that the brigade number five took over a community village one kilometer away from the border from that community, the Nourba commando units of Hamas launched their October 7th massacre on three Israeli communities, Niroz, Nireem and Enash Loshan, which were the sites of maybe the worst massacres. In Kherbet El Huzah, the fifth brigade found objects belonging to families that were either massacred or abducted in the Gaza Strip and will be returned to their relatives. That operation in Kherbet El Huzah ended on Sunday and was announced only yesterday, but the IDF also found a tunnel inside Han-Yunas where DNA tests are showing that hostages were held there in a damp tunnel in human condition according to the IDF Chief Spokesperson Daniela Garry. But there were no indications of the whereabouts of those hostages right now. The army estimates that the high intensity warfare in Han-Yunas will last several more weeks, but there is one spot which hasn't been taken by the ground forces. It's the city of Rafah on the Egyptian Gaza border. Because of the proximity with Egypt, this is a politically sensitive site. There were 200,000 inhabitants prior to the war now with the displaced Palestinian population. The city numbers 1.3 million Palestinians according to UN organizations estimates, so it's a very difficult place to operate from within because of the civilian population. But at the same time, there is a 13 kilometer long corridor between Israel, sorry, between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, and underneath which there are probably tunnels which could allow the smuggling not only of weapons and ammunition, but also of hostages and of the political and military leadership of Hamas. So we don't know what will happen there, but it's a blind spot. Pierre-Claude Chunder, I have one question I have for you in terms of the hostages that are there. You mentioned that they found a tunnel, they found an area where the hostages were being kept. That would assume that this is yet another place, another place within Gaza that these hostages were kept, that they moved them along. So is there any indication as to whether they're male, female, anything at all, anything for the families you're seeing of those families later on today? Well, there were DNA tests, so I suppose that the army might know the identity of the hostages that were held in that specific tunnel. I don't know whether the findings were already shared with the relatives of those hostages. We don't know about that. But eventually, once the inquiry is conducted and accomplished, those findings will probably be given, shared with the relatives of those families, but I doubt that they will be shared with the public in general in order not to foil any other attempts of trying to liberate the hostages under military pressure. That's been the conception of the army, the more military pressure and the best the chances are to find the hostages. But as we are getting closer and closer to the heart of Hanunez and to what's underground, the belief in the army that the army could find itself in a terrible dilemma where most of the hostages are being held with the political and military leadership of Hamas, and then what do you do? That's the big question. It is indeed, Pierre-Claude, joining us from the southern part of Israel or the border with Gaza. Thanks so much for the report and keeping us up to date with what's going on throughout the day. Let me go back into you again now with Ori Sakhar, or Pierre brings up a good point. Here's the situation where the IDF will come get closer and closer and closer to Sinmar, and it's possible that he has the hostages with him. The idea number one from the get-go from October the 7th at night was hostages are first, then the military taking care of Hamas, and then it was put together as the joint target. So now what does Israel find itself in this situation now? I think from the get-go, the objective was to free the hostages and defeat Hamas. And I got to tell you that it is probable and possible that not only possible, it's probable that Sinmar is surrounding himself with hostages. And we hear from reports, various reports. But to be honest, the IDF knows how to handle tunnels in various means. They do it progressively. We hear the IDF spokesperson talk about progressive or advanced modern means that they cannot declassify. We heard reports about flooding with the ocean water, etc. But then the idea really is to go step by step. Hamas was allowed to construct a whole network of tunnels, a whole city, underground city for over a decade. And this is something Israel allowed to happen. And if you saw videos of Israeli soldiers around the Tulkarm and Nablus area, the district, finding beginnings of shafts and diggings toward the Sharon area in Israel, central Israel, you understand why it's so vital for Israel to be present in the territory, for Israel not to allow the forced buildup of the enemy in such a way. And I got to tell you that defeating Hamas is a much larger objective. Killing Sinwar and death is, of course, will be a turning point in the war. But what if Hamas turns around and says, okay, you know what? Here's your hostages. You step out of Gaza and just let's stop. Not realistic. It's not realistic. I think Israel not only takes care of the 136 hostages inside, it takes care of the 9 million outside. We are all hostages of Hamas. We are in one point, and that's a father of one of the hostages told me. We are all hostages by Hamas, because we cannot leave home without making the calculation whether there'll be a red alert, sign or a siren light to go to the basement. And this cannot continue. Hamas cannot keep dictating the rhythm of life here. And to be honest, I seriously doubt that Hamas will free all hostages in return for anything. Hamas will not do such a step that would doom it on the following day. Think about the reason they took hostages in the first place. Had there not been hostages in Gaza, what would stop Israel from completely go over the heads of Hamas? And they know it precisely well, so they keep it. They keep them as bargaining chips, honestly. And these are brothers and sisters. We should not agree to such a game. Only military pressure combined with realistic and active diplomatic proposals on Israel's part to Qatar and other parties, maybe to Iran through the United States would eventually free the hostages. What about this Philadelphia route here that everyone was talking about? For those viewers watching outside of Israel who don't understand the geography and what's the necessary meaning behind the IDF taking control of the Philadelphia area? Yeah, the Hamas has had the capacity to build up its force to amass so much ammunition thanks to the Philadelphia route. That means the border between Gaza and Egypt. Everybody in the world say Israel is besieging Gaza, is having complete siege on Gaza before October 7th. Only they forgot the land border 14 kilometers between Gaza and Egypt, on which Israel has no control. Now, this is a different game. Now Israel has to demand a full control over the Philadelphia route you see on the map, and not just on a road on the Philadelphia route. It has to control the whole space, let's say several hundred meters or even a kilometer deep into the territory in order not just to go above ground, but to also go underground. We have to remember that the network of tunnels underneath the Philadelphia route between Egypt and Hamas, that would enable Hamas to amass so much ammunition in the first place. Where did the ammunition come from of October 7th? Egypt has turned a blind eye to this for decades now, and it cannot continue this way. That means that the Egyptians have to be hand-in-hand partners in this. Are they willing to do that though? Look, Egypt will have to be willing to do that. We cannot keep a low situation where Egypt simply turns a blind eye to tunnels smuggling ammunition into Gaza, murdering Israeli civilians, and we'll just live with that. That was a policy of detente, the policy of containment before October 7th, and that cannot be a policy after October 7th. I think that eventually Egypt will have to go hand-in-hand with Israel. This is their interest at the end. To be honest, I think they're pretty pleased to see Israel having this headache of Gaza above our head, on our head, rather than Egypt's head. I remind you that Egypt used to be the landlord in Gaza before 1967, and this is a part where a political wisdom has to play. United States guaranteeing budgetary benefits to Egypt in return, etc. But Israel will have to be present in the Philadelphia route. Otherwise, the whole network of tunnels underground will eventually cause us to turn the hourglass back to the next October 7th. Israel cannot let it happen. Great, Arish Sakhar, thank you so much for your insight. As always, I'm going to now, let's talk a little bit about Israel. That's a country the size of New Jersey. It's been attacked dozens of times. It's been resilient throughout, even through its darkest day on October 7th. I'm joined now by Saul Slinger, the co-author of The Genius of Israel, the surprising resilience of a divided nation in a turbulent world. He's joining me live now from Jerusalem. Good morning, Saul. Good morning. One of the things that makes Israel so amazing, and I'm a recent transplant from the US, is that ability to be resilient. But also what it provides for the whole world. I mean, one of the things that, and I want you to talk about that as you see that occurs on now, this International Court of Justice hearing. And so much has been done online in a social media justice warrior saying, oh, Israel is a horrible, horrible country. They seem to forget what Israel actually brings to the table. Yes, well, I think that particularly this time, we need to understand the strength of Israeli society and where it comes from. This is a society that has solidarity, a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging, a sense of togetherness that I don't think exists in any other society. And you wouldn't be able to see the amazing coming together that's going on now. The complete mobilization of society, volunteering, going to their front, fighting without this base that already existed in this country. And then we're going to have to build on in the future. But Saul, one of the things that was interesting, if you look back a year ago, a year ago, we were reporting on a country that had been fighting with each other internally. And then things change on October the 7th. Is that just a bandaid put over a problem that's occurring within Israel itself? Actually, most of this book was written before the protests and before October 7th. And so this is something much more fundamental. And it's based on facts. You have something in the United States and other countries called deaths of despair, which is deaths from suicide and drug overdoses and things like that. And Israel has about a quarter of the United States, about a much lower than all the average of the rich countries. If you look at teen suicide, we have one third of the OECD average, one quarter of the US, Australia and Canada. So these are facts that we observed. We also have a very high life expectancy, ninth in the world. Again, a year above the UK, Germany, Denmark, four years above the United States. And this is a sign not just of general health, but of mental health is a big factor here. And third, we're young and growing. In Japan, there are more people over 70 than under 20. In Japan, there are more adult diapers sold than baby diapers. And if you look at Israel in 2050, we're going to be 14 years younger than the average of rich countries, about 50% younger than other rich countries. So this is an incredible difference. And what it means is we're young and growing while the rest of the rich world is aging and shrinking. So this means a lot in terms of the optimism of society, the dynamism, the sense that we have a future. We're not spiraling downward like what feels like in the rest of the West. But after October the 7th, I'm sure that's taken a bit of a baseball bat hit. So here's the real challenge. And this is what we have to understand as Israelis, is if we lose the togetherness we have today, we have a big problem that our central mission as a country is to maintain this sense of unity. Now we're not going to be able to maintain it at the level we are now. That's pretty much impossible. But I think that if we look at the Israel after the, let's say the current administration that we have now, with a new government that's more united, that's more centrist, and we're back to rebuilding the country, I think we have a very good chance of actually being more together than we were on October 6th. So what is the one, in writing your book, what was the one fact that you saw that, in doing your research for this book where you sat back and went, oh my god, I had no idea? Well, the biggest was this thing of the deaths of despair, this huge disparity. But the way we got to that was this strange, very strange thing. Israelis know that we're very high on the world ranking of happiness. You might think that we would be about number 50 in that, or 25 when we're fourth in the world. And comparing countries on happiness is a little tricky. And that's why we went to look at these other facts, and we found out that there's a lot of real data behind it. And I saw, do you think that there's an issue with Israel being able to send this outwards? There seems to be some, and we only have another minute or so, but what is the PR challenge for getting this out? Well, the key challenge is really building on the strengths of our society. We have this society where there is much more of a sense of belonging. In the book, we talk a lot about a concept called gibush, a word in Hebrew that doesn't really exist in English. And it's basically this way in our culture that we're doing all the time to bring people together. We're not just individuals here. That's a critical thing in other countries. It's all about you. Here, we're also individuals, but we care about the group. We care about the society. We care about our families. We come together as families every week, which is incredible. We have three kids instead of an average of one and a half in the rest of the rich world. This family orientation, this way our culture is good at bringing us together. These are the strengths we have to build on going forward. Great, Saul Slinger, the co-author with Dan Sinor of The Genius of Israel, The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World. He's joining me from Jerusalem. Thank you again for the time. Thanks again, and good luck. Now, we are just monitoring some major stories. We're just getting word into the I-24 news that said there has been an attack by Houthi rebels on a British ship in Oman. We are going to get live coverage as soon as we can sometime throughout the day on this. And we'll have live team coverage of the International Court of Justice hearing that you're going to see in The Hague. You can watch that here on I-24 News and get push alerts on your phone. I'm Albert Lewitton in Tel Aviv. The I-24 News continues right after the break. You're watching I-24 News online and on TV. Is in a state of war. Families completely done down in their beds. We have no idea where she is. Our soldiers are fighting on the front line, but the general perception is something that certainly needs to to be fought as well. Attention of occupying Gaza, this as the International Court of Justice hears charges against Israel. Welcome to our viewers around the world. I'm Albert Lewitton reporting from the I-24 News headquarters in Tel Aviv. You're watching rolling coverage of the war, day 97, Thursday, January the 11th, and here are the headlines. We're going to start with breaking news just into I-24 News, a foil terror attack that Shin Bet says two terrorists with allegiance to ISIS have planned on carrying bomb attacks in Jerusalem. Two men in their 20s have been arrested. One of them allegedly had child porn on his phone also. We're monitoring this story. We'll have more details as it develops. All eyes are on the Hague in the Netherlands today. The International Court of Justice, the UN's top court, will hear accusations that Israel had committed genocidal acts during its war against Hamas and Gaza. We will have live team coverage of the first day of this hearing. The UN Security Council has demanded Yemen's Houthi to stop attacking ships in the Red Sea. The vote was 11-0 in the Security Council with four abstentions, Russia, China, Algeria, and Mozambique. Israel's troops operating in the Khanunus area of southern Gaza have found a tunnel where hostages have been held by Hamas. This comes as battles continue between the IDF forces at Hamas. And on the northern front, White House special envoy Amos Hoxden will meet with officials in Beirut later today to try to calm nerves down. There's also word, now let's go back to Gaza. There's also word that senior IDF officer has returned from Egypt after holding talks to increase humanitarian aid into Gaza and also reportedly on the agenda the future of the Philadelphia route which runs along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Now all this happens as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that he is very clear Israel has absolutely no intention of reoccupying Gaza. Take a listen. I want to make a few points absolutely clear. Israel has no intention of permanently occupying Gaza or displacing its civilian population. Israel is fighting Hamas terrorists, not the Palestinian population. And we are doing so in full compliance with international law. The IDF is doing its utmost to minimize civilian casualties while Hamas is doing its utmost to maximize them by using Palestinian civilians as human shields. The IDF urges Palestinian civilians to leave war zones by disseminating leaflets, making phone calls, providing safe passage corridors while Hamas prevents Palestinians from leaving at gunpoint and often with gunfire. Our goal is to rid Gaza of Hamas terrorists and free our hostages. Once this is achieved, Gaza can be demilitarized and de-radicalized thereby creating a possibility for a better future for Israel and Palestinians alike. That was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Joining me now in studio is Orius Sacha, the head of research for Israel Defense Security Forum. Thanks so much for joining in. Why did the Prime Minister feel the need to say this? I thought from the get go that was the plan. I think it's just saying the obvious, to be honest, and that's okay to sort of calm some actors in our national scene that would want to hear such statements. Sometimes you have to say the obvious. I don't think Israel ever intended to permanently occupy the Gaza Strip. But in the civil level, that's what I mean. The two levels for the day after in Gaza, the military and civil. In the civil level, I don't see any need that Israel would run the sewage and any day-to-day City Hall Chief. Exactly. There's no need that an IDF officer would be the City Hall Chief. What we propose at the IDF is to have local mayors and administrative councils that would run everyday life. But, and that's a big but, there is the military plane as well. Israel cannot disengage from Gaza once again. We have to understand that. And I think Netanyahu knows that as well. Israel in the day after in Gaza should have a complete frame of operation around the Gaza Strip, much like we do in Nablus and Janine to arrest terrorists and to foil ticking time bombs. That's what we should do in Gaza in the day after, to have three or four Jeeps not in an entire brigade to go to Gaza City and arrest a terrorist who's plotting an attack. I think we have to- Without playing international, in the international scene, would that be enough sufficient? I think Israel should be extremely clear in the international community and with the United States to tell them the truth. We are the only people in the world that after having being butchered and murdered and raped and kidnapped we still think how to appease and how to improve the lives of our enemies. It doesn't work like that. We have security needs. Israel should remain in the Gaza Strip forever in terms of the military plane, control the Philadelphia route and there are no goods that would be entering Gaza without an Israeli eye surveilling them. That's an iron condition for Israel in the day after. Or we want to just turn the hourglass back to the next October 7th. That's another option, but we don't want that. So we cannot go back to October 6th. We cannot go back to disengaging from Gaza and having promises of a responsible, revitalized revamped Palestinian Authority. This is not something we can agree to. Now the idea here to go back to October 6th, there was a report that had a plan. The plan was that in exchange for release of the hostages, in exchange for disengagement by the IDF, the heads of Hamas would disappear, would go to another country, be banished and never be allowed back in Hamas. Basically, almost what Arafat and PLO did in 1980s. Your thoughts on any of that idea? Not going to happen. Israel cannot, I said again, Israel cannot disengage from the Gaza Strip. And we cannot agree also to sort of a facade, a theater, where Yahya Sinwar, Muhammad Defend Murawan Issa are being banished from Gaza. And then their deputies take over. It's not going to happen. We saw the results in Judea and Samaria where Arafat died, as you said, and Mahmoud Abbas replaced him. Didn't change much. I know that Arafat was much more bellicose. But then again, this is still Hamas. We cannot agree to a scenario. I'm talking as a security analyst. We cannot agree. Israel cannot agree to a situation where a Hamas puppet government is controlling the Gaza Strip. The whole idea of sitting on the other side of the fence and letting the enemy build up its force should be a thing of the past. And I think if there's something we learn on October 7, is that we cannot put our security in the hands of others. And also, you won't see Sinwar, anyone going on pro-Gosian airlines for anyone? I don't see that happening, to be honest. From talking to people who have, he has been in prison, in Israel prison for over 20 years, you know that. And speaking to prison officials who interrogated him and basically were his, quote unquote, his managers, what are responsible for him. And they interrogated him and they knew him very well. It's not going to happen, at least in my estimation, it could be wrong. But then agreeing to take a flight ticket to Qatar, I think if we do that, allowing Sinwar and Def and Issa to take a flight ticket to Qatar, that means that we'll have to eliminate them there, alongside with Ismail Hania and the others. They have finished their business in this world. People who have ordered and masterminded the murder of 1400 Israelis have no place in the world. And I think that will advance peace as well. If you see, if you take a look at the Middle East principles for peace, this is the power principle that's controlling the Middle East, not agreed upon documents and MOUs. That's not the way the Middle East works. If Nasrallah and Khamenei, leader of Hezbollah, the leader of Iran, will see the results in Gaza, what happens to anyone who mastermind such an attack against Jews in the Middle East, trust me, they would not mastermind such an attack themselves. If Israel begins to hesitate and having dilemmas and having internal questions and internal doubts, then it will look as a failure by anyone in Israel. It would look like a failure. It would look like a weakness, to be honest. I don't see Israel agree to such a scenario where the Gaza Strip should, I'm telling you, if Nasrallah understands that Lebanon would look like the Gaza Strip in the day after, and he himself will be the first victim, then we'll have peace on the Lebanon border. Orisaka, I'm going to have you hold on one second. We have live team coverage of the war from every angle. Let me go now to Pierre Klushender. He's in the south, the southern part of Israel, on the border with Gaza. Pierre, it looks as though that the IDF is continuing. It's step by step, block by block, road by road attacks in Gaza. Relentlessly, Albert, I would say there was just an outgoing of artillery fire directed at probably presumed terror targets in support of the ground forces in the central sector of the Gaza Strip, which is behind me, where division 36 of combined combat teams are operating right now in El Borej refugee camp in El, in the El Mugazi refugee camp at the gate of the El Nuseira refugee camp, according to Palestinian media affiliated to Hamas. Further south, the 98th division of commando units and combined combat teams are operating within and without Han Yunes. They just announced yesterday evening that the brigade number five took over a community village one kilometer away from the border, Chirbet El Chouda'a. From that community, the Nukhba commando units of Hamas launched their October 7th massacre on three Israeli communities, Niroz, Nireem, and Enna Shlosha, which were the sites of maybe the worst massacres. In Chirbet El Chouda'a, the fifth brigade found objects belonging to families that were either massacred or abducted in the Gaza Strip and will be returned to their relatives. That operation in Chirbet El Chouda'a ended on Sunday and was announced only yesterday, but the IDF also found a tunnel inside Han Yunes, where DNA tests are showing that hostages were held there in a damp tunnel in inhuman condition, according to the IDF chief spokesperson, Daniel Agari. But there were no indications of the whereabouts of those hostages right now. The army estimates that the high-intensity warfare in Han Yunes will last several more weeks, but there is one spot which hasn't been taken by the ground forces. It's the city of Rafah on the Egyptian-Gaza border. Because of the proximity with Egypt, this is a politically sensitive site. There were 200,000 inhabitants prior to the war now. With the displaced Palestinian population, the city numbers 1.3 million Palestinians, according to UN organizations estimates. So it's a very difficult place to operate from within because of the civilian population. But at the same time, there is a 13-kilometer-long corridor between the Gaza Strip and Egypt and underneath which there are probably tunnels which could allow the smuggling not only of weapons and ammunition, but also of hostages and of the political and military leadership of Hamas. So we don't know what will happen there, but it's a blind spot. Pierre-Claude Chandra, I have one question I have for you in terms of the hostages that are there. You mentioned that they found a tunnel, they found an area where the hostages were being kept. That would assume that this is yet another place within Gaza that these hostages were kept, that they moved them along. So is there any indication as to whether they're male, female, anything at all, anything for the families you're seeing those families later on today? Well, there were DNA tests, so I suppose that the army might know the identity of the hostages that were held in that specific tunnel. I don't know whether the findings were already shared with the relatives of those hostages. We don't know about that. But eventually, once the inquiry is conducted and accomplished, those findings will probably be given, shared with the relatives of those families. But I doubt that they will be shared with the public in general in order not to foil any other attempt of trying to liberate the hostages under military pressure. That's been the conception of the army. The more military pressure and the best the chances are to find the hostages. But as we are getting closer and closer to the heart of Hanyunas and to what's underground, the belief in the army that we could, that the army could find itself in a terrible dilemma where most of the hostages are being held with the political and military leadership of Hamas. And then what do you do? That's the big question. It is indeed. Pierre Kloscher, they're joining us from the southern part of Israel and the border with Gaza. Thanks so much for the report and keeping us up to date with what's going on throughout the day. Let me go back in studio again now with Ori Sakhar or Pierre brings up a good point. Here's the situation where the IDF will come get closer and closer and closer to Sinwar. And it's possible that he has the hostages with him. The idea number one from the get-go from October the 7th at night was hostages are first, then the military taking care of Hamas. And then it was put together as the joint target. So now what does Israel find itself in this situation now? I think from the get-go, the objective was to free the hostages and defeat Hamas. And I got to tell you that it is probable and possible that not only possible, it's probable that Sinwar is surrounding himself with hostages. And we hear from reports, various reports. But to be honest, the IDF knows how to handle tunnels in various means. They do it progressively. We hear the IDF spokesperson talk about progressive or advanced modern means that they cannot declassify. We heard reports about flooding with ocean water, etc. But then the idea really is to go step by step. Hamas was allowed to construct a whole network of tunnels, a whole city, underground city for over a decade. And this is something Israel allowed to happen. And if you saw videos of Israeli soldiers around the Tulkarm and Nablus area, the district, finding beginnings of shafts and diggings toward the Sharon area in Israel, central Israel, you understand why it's so vital for Israel to be present in the territory, for Israel not to allow the forced buildup of the enemy in such a way. And I got to tell you that defeating Hamas is a much larger objective. Killing Sinwar and death is of course will be a turning point in the war. But what if Hamas turns around and says, okay, you know what, here's your hostages. You step out of Gaza and just let's stop. Not realistic. It's not realistic. I think Israel not only takes care of the 136 hostages inside, it takes care of the 9 million outside. And we are all hostages of Hamas. We are in one point and that's a father of one of the hostages told me. We are all hostages by Hamas because we cannot leave home without making the calculation whether it be a red alert, a sign or a siren light to go to the basement. And this cannot continue. Hamas cannot keep dictating the rhythm of life here. And to be honest, I seriously doubt that Hamas will free all hostages in return for anything. Hamas will not do such a step that would doom it on the following day. Think about the reason they took hostages in the first place. Had there not been hostages in Gaza, what would stop Israel from completely go over the heads of Hamas? And they know it precisely well. So they keep it. They keep them as bargaining chips, honestly. And these are our brothers and sisters. We should not agree to such a game. Only military pressure combined with realistic and active diplomatic proposals on Israel's part to Qatar and other parties, maybe to Iran through the United States would eventually free the hostages. What about this Philadelphia route here that everyone was talking about? And for those viewers watching outside of Israel who don't understand the geography what's the necessary meaning behind the idea of taking control of the Philadelphia area? Yeah, the Hamas has had the capacity to build up its force to amass so much ammunition thanks to the Philadelphia route. That means the border between Gaza and Egypt. Everybody in the world say Israel is besieging Gaza, is having complete siege on Gaza before October 7th. Only they forgot the land border 14 kilometers between Gaza and Egypt, which on which Israel has no control. Now this is a different game. Now Israel has to demand a full control over the Philadelphia route you see on the map and not just on the road on the Philadelphia route. It has to control the whole space. Let's say several hundred meters or even a kilometer deep into the territory in order not just to go above ground, but to also go underground. We have to remember that the network of tunnels underneath the Philadelphia route between Egypt and Hamas, that's what enabled Hamas to amass so much ammunition in the first place. Where did all the ammunition come from of October 7th? Egypt has turned a blind eye to this for decades now and it cannot continue this way. That means that the Egyptians have to be hand-in-hand partners in this. Are they willing to do that though? Look, Egypt will have to be willing to do that. We cannot keep a lot of situation where Egypt simply turns a blind eye to tunnels smuggling ammunition into Gaza, murdering Israeli civilians, and we'll just live with that. That was a policy of detent, the policy of containment before October 7th. And that cannot be a policy after October 7th. I think that eventually Egypt will have to go hand-in-hand with Israel. This is their interest at the end. To be honest, I think they're pretty pleased to see Israel having this headache of Gaza above our head, on our head, rather than on Egypt's head. I remind you that Egypt used to be the landlord in Gaza before 1967. And this is a part where a political wisdom has to play. United States guaranteeing budgetary benefits to Egypt in return, etc. But Egypt will have to be present in the Philadelphia route. Otherwise, the whole network of tunnels underground will eventually cause us to turn the hourglass back to the next October 7th. Israel cannot let it happen. Great, Orysaka, thank you so much for your insight, as always. I'm going to now, let's talk a little bit about Israel. All right, that's a country the size of New Jersey. It's been attacked dozens of times. It's been resilient throughout, even through its darkest day on October 7th. I'm joined now by Saul Slinger, the co-author of The Genius of Israel, The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World. He's joining me live now from Jerusalem. Good morning, Saul. Good morning. You know, one of the things that makes Israel so amazing, and I'm a recent transplant from the US, is that ability to be resilient, but also what it provides for the whole world. I mean, one of the things that, and I wanted you to talk about that, as you see that occurs on now, this International Court of Justice hearing. And so much has been done online, and a social media justice warrior saying, oh, Israel is a horrible, horrible country. They seem to forget what Israel actually brings to the table. Yes, well, I think that particularly this time we need to understand the strength of Israeli society and where it comes from. This is a society that has solidarity, a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging, a sense of togetherness that I don't think existed in any other society. And you wouldn't be able to see the amazing coming together that's going on now. The complete mobilization of society, volunteering, going to their front, fighting without this base that already existed in this country, and that we're going to have to build on in the future. But Saul, one of the things that was interesting, if you look back a year ago, a year ago, we were reporting on a country that had been fighting with each other internally. And then things change on October the 7th. Is that just a band-aid put over a problem that's occurring within Israel itself? Well, actually, most of this book was written before, before the protests and before October 7th. And so this is something much more fundamental, and it's based on facts. You have something in the United States and other countries called deaths of despair, which is deaths from suicide and drug overdoses and things like that. And Israel has about a quarter of the United States, about a much lower than all the average of the rich countries. If you look at teen suicide, we have one third of the OECD average, one quarter of the US, Australia, and Canada. So these are facts that we observed. We also have a very high life expectancy, ninth in the world. Again, a year above the UK, Germany, Denmark, four years above the United States. And this is a sign not just of general health, but of mental health is a big factor here. And third, we're young and growing. In Japan, there are more people over 70 than under 20. In Japan, there are more adult diapers sold than baby diapers. And if you look at Israel in 2050, we're going to be 14 years younger than the average of rich countries, about 50% younger than other rich countries. So this is incredible difference. And what it means is we're young and growing, while the rest of the rich world is aging and shrinking. So this means a lot in terms of the optimism of society, the dynamism, the sense that we have a future. We're not spiraling downward like what feels like in the rest of the West. But after October the 7th, I'm sure that's taken a bit of a baseball bat hit. So here's the real challenge. And this is what we have to understand as Israelis, is if we lose the togetherness we have today, we have a big problem that our central mission as a country is to maintain this sense of unity. Now we're not going to be able to maintain it at the level we are now. That's pretty much impossible. But I think that if you, we look at the Israel after the, I'd say the current administration that we have now, with a new government that's more united, that's more centrist, and we're back to rebuilding the country. I think we have a very good chance of actually being more together than we were on October 6th. So what is the one, in writing your book, what was the one fact that you saw that, in doing your research for this book, where you sat back and went, oh my god, I had no idea? Well, the biggest was this thing of the deaths of despair, this huge disparity. But the way we got to that was this strange, very strange thing. Israelis know that we're very high on the world ranking of happiness. You might think that we would be about number 50 in that, or 25, when we're fourth in the world. And comparing countries on happiness is a little tricky. And that's why we went to look at these other facts. And we found out that there's a lot of real data behind it. Sol, do you think that there's an issue with Israel being able to send this outwards? There seems to be some, and we only have another minute or so, but what is the PR challenge for getting this out? Well, the key challenge is really building on the strengths of our society. We have this society where there is much more of a sense of belonging. In the book, we talk a lot about a concept called gibush, a word in Hebrew that doesn't really exist in English. And it's basically this way in our culture that we're doing all the time to bring people together. We're not just individuals here. That's a critical thing. In other countries, it's all about you. Here, we're also individuals, but we care about the group. We care about the society. We care about our families. We come together as families every week, which is incredible. We have three kids, instead of an average of one and a half in the rest of the rich world. This family orientation, this way our culture is good at bringing us together, these are the strengths we have to build on going forward. Great. Sol Singer, the co-author with Dan Sinor, the genius of Israel, the surprising resilience of a divided nation in a turbulent world. He's joining me from Jerusalem. Thank you again for the time. Thanks again and good luck. Now, we are just monitoring some major stories. We're just getting word into the I-24 news that said there has been an attack by Hootie Rebels on a British ship in Oman. We are going to get live coverage as soon as we can sometime throughout the day on this. And we'll have live team coverage of the International Court of Justice hearing that you're going to see in The Hague. You can watch that here on I-24 News and get push alerts on your phone. I'm Albert Lewinton in Tel Aviv. The I-24 News continues right after the break. You're watching I-24 News online and on TV. Luther King's famous 1968 mountaintop speech was based on his trip to the Promised Land. Well now, 55 years later, his prophetic words are coming true. Hundreds of African American women took a journey of a lifetime to the Holy Land. We'll introduce you to the amazing female spiritual and religious leaders who are infusing new energy into the next generation of African Americans. My son was kidnapped 95 days ago. He's sick. He has a colitis disease and his stress situation is getting severe. I know he needs us to take him out. Intervistas exclusivas reportes desde la zona de guerra. La reacción de los países hispano parlantes. And to the unbelievable tale of the Broadage family, Avijai was fighting off terrorists on October 7th, only to find out that his wife, Agar, and her three children have been kidnapped into Gaza along with their neighbor's daughter, four-year-old Avigay Lidan. Her parents were murdered. After 51 days of homoskeptivity, they were all reunited now for the first time there. They're talking about how they survived, how they managed to remain sane, how the kids learned to cry silently, and how Avigay became a family member in an instant. A very powerful piece. You have to watch. Take a look. You look at them like that. Do you still see that science remains of Gaza of October 7th? Yes, yes. It was a war of survival. I was always thinking about when will be the next time your children will get food, when the sun will rise. There will be some light in the room and you won't be in complete darkness. Every day you think you've reached the bottom of hell. There's no getting lower. But one day after another, you find out there's another step and you take one more step down to hell and you carry your children together with you on your back. 51 days, they were in hell. Agar with her three children, 10-year-old Ofri, 8-year-old Yvonne, 4-year-old Aurea, and the one who in captivity became Agar's fourth daughter, Avigal Iddan, also only four years old. For 51 days, Avigay, their father, fought for the family that was kidnapped from their home while he was out fighting with the Kubuts' security squad. In the morning when it all started, Avigay called me to come and lock the door after him. He looked through the door's people to see that there was no terrorist or anything like that. I saw that he noticed something. He saw Avigay through the people. When he stepped out, she just ran away. He ran after her and shouted, Guli, Guli, stop. She didn't stop. So he had to grab her and bring her over to me. I immediately locked the door after him. She was covered in blood, not hers, but of her parents. I hugged her, wrapped her, tried to clean her up. She said her older brother said that the mom and dad were dead and that she had to run away. And so she did. I didn't realize the magnitude of the events until the moment the terrorists entered our home, four hours later. And what happened when they entered? I asked the children to cover themselves with blankets. They covered themselves. I turned off the light and hid. There's a space between the door of the safe room and the closet. I hid there and held the door as much as I could. I'm not particularly strong. In the end, they managed to get in. There were at least 15 terrorists inside the house. And when they came in and turned on the light in the safe room, I started screaming. They're just kids. Don't do anything to them. And then the children took off their blankets and started crying and screaming. They took us in my car, the five of us, with three other terrorists, two sitting in the front, one sitting in the back. The way we entered Gaza, it was one big show for them. They hung the horn of the car, opened the car doors, hit me, pulled my hair. And, oh, free, the terrorists kept grabbing her by the shirt to show everyone what a price he had grabbed. It was scary, scary. This is a moment when you lose control. You lose the protection, everything you've created for your children. Those minutes are the minutes that broke everything. Just moments of horror. When you were in Gaza, what did you think happened to everyone? I don't know. Sometimes I thought I wouldn't see you again. Sometimes I thought I wouldn't see Rodney anymore. I'll tell you what I was thinking in the car. I thought they were going to kill us in the car. Really? Yes, because they had guns. It was stressful. We were told to be quiet. I thought they were going to kill us all in the car instead of at home. What do you think after so much time had passed and you still stayed there? That we'll never return and that we'll have to live in Gaza. That's really what I thought. How do you survive there? So it turns out that the body and mind are able to create so many mechanisms of survival that you don't feel anything. You don't get sick. Your mind is empty. You're not hungry. You don't smell. You just survive for these four little children. You're not crying. How can I cry? I have four little children that I have to look after, that I have to protect in this hell. How did you spend your day there? What did it look like? So in the first house we were in, we had two notebooks and unsharpened pencils. And we messed around with that, trying to sharpen them and draw or play. We played a lot of country, city, me and the big ones. And the time passed slowly. The days never ended. In the second house we were in, I asked them if they had playing cards. So they brought me cards and also some sort of imitation of Taki. And we would spend most of the day playing card games. Lots of talking. Lots and lots of talking and whispers because it was forbidden. It was forbidden to speak loudly. They didn't want the neighbors to hear us. There might be a snitch who would report that there was Israelis in the house. It was forbidden to cry. And it was forbidden to laugh. And it was forbidden to shout, obviously. How do you deal with not being allowed to cry? Wow. A free learn to cry quietly. UV, it was hard for him to learn to cry quietly. But he eventually succeeded. In the little ones, it was hard. You can't teach a four-year-old kid to cry quietly. We celebrated Ohri's 10th birthday there. And overnight she turned 20. She was my partner. She was the angel that watched over me in this whole story. And UV, who was my sensitive boy, who always needed me the most, was suddenly a man. He suddenly saw that I had not one for your child to take care of, but two of them. And he knew how to help me with that. And with Orya and Abigai, it was difficult. It was very difficult. Orya is my baby. And now I had another little girl who went through hell. When you eat, you eat a little so that you can leave most of it for them. Because you have no other choice. They're hungry. There was great hunger. They were starving. When I begged for food, they told me, our children eat only pita a day as well. So your children will only eat a pita a day. Yeah, for 24 hours, this is what each one of us could eat. I don't wish any mother, wherever she is, to be in a situation where she begs for food to give her children. I don't wish that. That day was Abigai's birthday, November 24th. And she kept saying, I'm still three years old. I'll celebrate my fourth birthday when I return home. We drove in the Red Cross's car. And when we arrived, I met Hen Goldstein and her children. And Hen, when she saw me, she shouted to me, Abigai is waiting for you. I heard it on the radio. The abdictee who was with me at the beginning was with her at the end. And she had told her about us. That's when I found out Abigai was alive. All the barriers came down and the tear started falling. And the truth is that what awaited us in Israel, it was something that I really did not expect. For 51 days in captivity, I was sure they forgot about us. It was simply unbelievable. Everyone coming together from citizens who do not know me at all to the doctors in Schneider Medical Center, people who really gave to us from the bottom of their hearts. I can't believe four weeks have already passed. I've been here four weeks and they haven't. There are 129 hostages, which is an astronomical number. We're not here. In the end, we're lucky. We got our family back. It will be a long process, but they will be fine. We will work on it. We will do everything so that the joy will return, that the security will return to them. There's no other choice. What, my child? Western militaries have been shifting the ways of war. What lessons will be learned from Ukraine and also from the war that Israel has with its borders. Let's get to Robert Swift with this report. The Israel gas offence was protected by some of the best border security technology in the world. Remote gun turrets, underground sensors to detect tunneling and surveillance balloons. The aqua barrier was built on the assumption that we have a very high technology, singing, visiting the other thing that we will tell us when someone is approaching the fence. This one collapsed. Hamas simply went through it with demolition charges and pickup trucks, overwhelming the defences with force of numbers and a few drones. Believing that its high-tech defences sufficed, Israel let other more basic considerations fall by the wayside. Israel adopted in the last, I think, 20 years a symmetric balance between technology and the number of units, manpower that it needs on the field. It looks like Israel thought in its calculation that the high technology will bring advantage to the battlefield instead of represent of manpower inside it. Since the October 7th attack, a number of former Israeli generals have argued for an expanded IDF budget and footprint. Ukraine, fighting on a very different battlefield, also sees its manning levels as a problem. Unfortunately, manpower is still super important because we get back to the scales of massive armies, of millions strong armies, which is absolutely weird, which is absolutely unnatural to the state of our modern society. Locked in a stalemate with a larger foe, its chief of staff argues that advances in technologies like electronic warfare are needed to break the deadlock. In the 21st century, the development of science and as a result the advancement of armaments and military equipment inevitably led to the changes in the tactics of its use. The enemy didn't stay behind either. You see what is happening specifically in the last few days. We have a powerful confrontation specifically in the technological aspect. Both of the wars defining 2023 show a blurring of low and high technologies on the battlefield. In Ukraine, the first large example of state-on-state drone warfare, the howitzer, the shovel and the trench, as seen on the fields of the First World War, are as important as the quadcopter. And in Gaza, urban siege warfare reminiscent of Stalingrad is being waged by the Middle East's most technologically advanced military. But low and high-tech solutions should not be viewed as opposites in conflict but as complementary. Israel will continue to be a country that relies very much on technology but we have to understand that there are areas and places that you cannot rely only solely on technology. You have to go sometimes back to human beings and sometimes to technologies that are not always the cutting edge. The infantry soldier on the ground present in war for millennia can become a high-tech tool when equipped with the latest weapons, sensors and communications devices. Even a badly equipped insurgent can become part of the developing information war space when kitted out with a GoPro and an internet connection. Kyiv has repeatedly demonstrated the significance of this front in modern war. Ukraine and Gaza's battles have shown that often a low-tech solution can be the best counter to a high-tech innovation. So we have a pretty weird situation in which simple but smart and cheap solutions really change things on the battlefield. As can be seen in the use of trenches or cage armor to protect from the prying eyes and drop munitions of drones. Both wars have also shown that quantity has a quality all of its own and that high-tech doesn't need to mean expensive. Whether that means in terms of expendable munitions or massed infantry, a lesson that Western militaries, many of which have downsized in recent decades, may wish to heed. Don't be in a hurry as Israel did to move ahead and to make your armed forces let's say much more smaller in order to give the technology to serve you instead of them of them. No, it's coming together. As the threat of state-on-state warfare grows, Western militaries will take heed to the developing technological shifts on the battlefields of Ukraine and Israel or sooner or later learn the hard way. It's not sure that the era of wars is over. Unfortunately, that's not true. No peace is guaranteed, absolutely not peace is guaranteed. And moreover, there is an illusion that Western nations can have small armies, well-armed armies of motivated professionals who want to do that. Unfortunately, that may not be true because the epoch of universal peace that we hoped for in the West, in here, it seemed to be over. 629, October 7, it was the dawn of the day that never ended. The Nova Rave, held adjacent to the Gaza Strip, was suddenly stopped by a different music, the sound of sirens, announcing the Hamas attack. From land and air, perpetrating the deadliest terror attack in Israeli history, murdering 364 civilians at the rave alone and kidnapping 40 others. We were quite close to the borders, unfortunately, and this community that has around 10,000 members was the biggest community that was hit. Third of all the victims, the murdered victims from the 7th of October are coming from the party, almost 400 people, and the number is still rising. There are still hostages. Now we saw that Hamas is keep murdering people in captivity and some of them are dancers in the party. And this is how my life has been going on for the last three months, notifying the death of my friend, finding out new information about how they died, and notifying new information about how my friends escaped from this area. At the Expo Tel Aviv, the reminders of a fateful day, straw mats, tints, hammocks, all retrieved from the place of the massacre. The Nova 629 exhibit takes you back to that morning, October 7th, so you can feel even if a little bit as if you were there, this large expo center becomes a memento to the victims of the festival. All the objects you can see here, they were retrieved as they were left in Tibus Reim, portable toilets, riddled with bullets, cars burned down. This is the result of Hamas killing spree. This exhibition was made because Tibus Veri and Tibus Neroz, the villages around Gaza, they have something to show. They can show the world. This is what was done for us, and we had nothing. Our parties are being built and reassembled in around five hours, so we decided we're going to rebuild it here. And we're going to add to it the burnt cars of our friends, even one of the burnt cars here is the one I rode to in this party. And the bathroom cells with the shooting guns, everything we could have shown to the world, because we have to explain it. We were in such a big high for this party. We were in such a good place at 628, and at 629, my whole world collapsed. The earth was just blanked around my feet, and everyone else in this party. 3,500 people were there. 15% were murdered. And this exhibition is there to show what happened to us and to show who is the Nova community and what we stand for. The lost and found area is filled with the shoes, clothes, bags, and other items from the thousands of participants of the rave who had to live all behind in the hope of surviving the massacre, an image that alludes to the millions of personal items left by the Jews during the Holocaust, an image that impacts all visitors. For me, it's really emotional to be here. My best friend was murdered in the party. He had a painting store, so we painted all the night, and then many people came to see his painting. In the end, he tried to get out and escape, and him and the other best friends were murdered in the car. I think this presentation is amazing. It really makes people feel what they felt, and to feel what they've been going through in this terrible, terrible time when the attack appeared. So it's like a small taste of what happened. The Hostage Square Tel Aviv. It's become a focal point in the campaign to raise awareness of the Israelis abducted together and keep the plight in the public eye. One of the items here is quite unique, a solitary piano with a slogan on it, alone, you are not alone. I felt that I need to do something that will make people maybe understand about him more and learn about him more, and by playing, they will be in contact with him. The piano is dedicated to Alon Oil, 22-year-old, who was kidnapped to Gaza from the Nova Festival on October 7. Alon is a talented musician, planned to study music at the prestigious Rimon Academy in Ramata Sharon, north of Tel Aviv. But October 7 changed everything. On that night, Friday night, we had dinner with our family. We came home, he got ready, played the piano, left the piano open, and his brother took him to a friend's house, and then from there he drove to the Nova Festival. They got there about five in the morning, so he was like there for maybe an hour, an hour and a half, and it's all started. It started with rockets falling down, knowing that we have to get cover from the rockets. They got into a car, into their car, and started to drive north. But the police stopped them and told them that they can go forward, so they went south and found a shelter, a bomb shelter near Reim. At that time, in Reim, the Hamas came in and started to throw grenades into the bomb shelter. At that time, the Hamas came inside and took my son and three others. The piano has become one of the most iconic items in this sad square, as people occasionally stop and play on it. Some of the players are famous Israeli musicians, such as singers Rami Kleinsten and Marina Maximilian. For me it was important to say alone, you're not alone, because it's very important for me to think of him not being alone, and the fact is that we are not alone, and the fact that we are thinking about him makes him and us not being alone. So it's like a whole, you know, thing that has to do with that. Ever since October 7, Alon's mother, Edith, has been traveling the world as part of advocacy campaign to promote the message, bringing them home now. I can say now, after all that, all this time it's been 81 days now, today. Then when I'll see him, I will, the first thing I'll tell him that I know him better now, because of the beautiful things that his friends are telling me about him, and everything that people writing me things and sending me things about him that I have not been able to know before, because as a mother, you know, you don't know everything your son is doing. And now I know, and it's beautiful, and I want to meet him, and how he is now, and I'll give him a big hug for that day. After two months of intense fighting in Gaza, IDF paratroopers are being treated to a well-deserved spa day, courtesy of a small Israeli-owned company. The owner of the outfit, Alex Shemesh, and manager, Tal El Nazarian, decided to use their expertise to turn a bus into a barbershop to help soldiers serving in the war. These additions help the bus look and feel like the real thing. You can't mess with William Manino, a hairdresser who's come all the way from Natanya because he just loves to cut hair and wants to help the paratroopers in any way he can. I am volunteering. We are very happy to do so. I'm giving my own time to the cause. I came here this morning on my day off, and this is what I'm doing, cutting the hair of the soldiers. I also saw chefs cooking for some soldiers. It's a treat for these soldiers who've been fighting since October 7th without a break. They haven't even had the chance to take off their boots for weeks. This is a wild feeling. Seeing all of this support have baited the transition from fighting in the war to here really smooth. Everyone is helping, depending on their skill set, and it's a very pleasant feeling for us. The IDF is spending a lot of time and effort to ensure an easy transition for us. Once again, as Israel fights on, civilian volunteers find ways to help the fighters, taking the pressure off the soldiers for a few days before they go back into battle. Israel is in a state of war. Families completely done down in their beds. We have no idea where she is. Our soldiers are fighting on the front lines, but the general perception is something that certainly needs to to be fought as well. But decisively, the IDF is moving deeper into Gaza. In practically every corner here, signs of terrorism are found. As the forces raided the private residence of a senior Hamas official, this is what they found. Suitcases containing 5 million shekels, roughly 1.5 million US dollars, meant purely for terrorism, as well as weapons and rocket launchers. Yes, all this in a private residence. Along with the ground maneuver and the aerial activity, there is a constant search for hostages. Following the tragic incident in which three hostages were mistakenly shot by the IDF, Chief of Staff Herzi Alevi came to visit the forces in order to reinforce the rules of conduct in these very delicate situations. If it's two Gazans with a white flag coming out to surrender, would we shoot them? Absolutely not. That's not the IDF. Even those who fought us and now lay down their arms and raised their hands, we arrest them. We don't shoot them. It may be somewhat unfair to judge the soldiers acting in this very tense environment, but even if he doesn't say directly, the Chief of Staff believes this incident could have had a different outcome. Three people came out. They took the risk of approaching the IDF troops. To minimize that risk, they took off their shirts so that no one would think they have an explosive device, and they held a white cloth on a pole to identify themselves. The Friday incident and the desperate Hebrew signs found in the home where the hostages were held surveys a reminder of this tragic reality, a reality that needs to be resolved. Yagil and his 16-year-old brother Orr were held for weeks by Hamas terrorists before they were released on November 27 as part of a temporary ceasefire deal. Their father, though, remains at the hands of the terrorists more in this report. Our light, the light of all of us, is your return home. Let the light illuminate their way back and a great miracle will be here. Just before they lit the seventh cannel of Hanukkah in a lot, we met Renanna, a mother whose two boys returned home only two weeks ago. Their father is still in Gaza, in captivity. My brothers came to accompany me during these difficult days and forced me to go down here and enter the sea and snorkel to pass the time. So on the day when my children went through this whole process and I was waiting nervously, I snorkeled. I went in from here until we were there. To the bridge and back, we spent another hour. Oren Yagil were released in the fourth exchange. I put crazy pressure on the members of the cabinet so that Yagil was on the list because he was held by the Islamic jihad. He had to be transferred to Hamas. It was not clear if he was transferred, and until there was family reunification, they were not ready. That was a condition, right? Family reunification. Our condition. So they weren't ready to release both of them. And they had to transfer Yagil? Yes. Everyone knows that Yagil was with the jihad. He was their presenter. They chose the best presenter there was. He said they did 50 takes. They harassed him all night before that to probably get him to the studio. They gave him a message sheet. The first thing that was the most important for him to say, Bibi, are you listening? The most important thing for him was to say that he didn't mean what he said there at all. My sons were alone in my house sleeping. They got into the safe room. They called me scared to death. They said they hear someone breaking into our home. The door to the safe room was pushed open. They were taken from the same house. They threatened them with a knife, put him up in boxers, a boy in boxers with a knife to his throat. They put him on an electric bicycle, and after he left, they took his brother. Renana, who until October 7th was the head of Kibbutz Holit, on October 16th took a new role. She led the initiative for the return of the kidnapped children. The discussion at that moment was about freeing foreign citizens, Israeli citizens with foreign passports. There was no prioritization for children. It took me 48 long hours to get the children's lists. I turned to Khvaraza, I turned to Berri, and we started working. Etan Stivar brought the money to the initiative. Professor Tsehanover was involved, along with many other important people. And the civic initiative led to four meetings of the parents of the kidnapped children with Qatari representatives. Now the initiative is changing its face, fighting for the return of men who remain captive. Men remained. Like it's okay, my children's father came out injured. Probably seriously, we don't know exactly what his condition is. We haven't received any sign of life. It keeps me awake, and I admit that until you see my son, he has to celebrate bar mitzvah. We didn't even have the going up to the Torah because he wants his father. What did your children say? There were very complex descriptions of loneliness because they were not together. So one was really lonely and the other was with other people from our community to my delight. The fact that you are with people who know you and care for you and you have someone to care for is something very significant. The other one was really alone. Alone, alone? Alone, alone. Then he spent another 10 days with a seriously injured Thai worker. What does a child do alone for 30 days? Looks out the window, learns the azan by heart, watches lots and lots of al-Jazeera, unfortunately, learns Arabic, talks to his captors. How he puts it, I was without a phone so the brain started working. He learned about them, who they were and how many children they had, and he looked and learned about the family sitting across the window. He used his head. The children are very, very, very worried about the condition of both their father and other fathers who stayed there, including all those they met and were with. The knowledge that he is there and the terrible place they were in, they know, unlike us, they also know exactly what it looks like. This fact is unbearable for them. And how is Sheer? Sheer is relatively okay. Singing is very difficult since they returned. It's very difficult for her to bear the fact that her father is still there. The discourse has become a discourse of another attack in Kanyunis and another rocket hit in Tel Aviv. In the next step, in the strategy game you're playing, you moved on to Kanyunis and then you will move on to Rafa, and it is unbelievable. Under all this destruction, there are 137 people sitting today waiting for you to get them out of there. It's insane. I'm not a great general. The only thing I can say is that at the level of the state's contract, moral agreement, with its citizens, you owe them. You owe them. Get them out of there now. You owe it to them. These are people whose only sin was that they believed in you enough to sit there and maintain a community on the border. Between the lighting of the Chanukah candles and the meeting with the president, the children, as Renana says, returned to the regular thing from the past. They quickly adapted their new life, living in a hotel. But every morning, the first thing they ask is if there is a hostage deal and if dad is on the list. And here in Israel, citizens are increasingly furious at the international Red Cross for lackluster efforts to secure access to Israeli hostages. While the ICRC says they have no power to force the issue with the Hamas terror group, the ICRC has not even made the token effort to get hostages their necessary medications, something that Israelis have noticed. My son is suffering from asthma. He needs to use his inhaler. And at that time, you say that you will do everything in order to help them. And I'm sure I'm sure you try and you try to do your best. But my son cannot wait anymore. And I'm sorry, I cannot wait anymore. This is his inhaler. Please make sure that he will get it. I don't know the address or is it in Gaza, but we need the inmates to get it. And by the way, this is your job, right? This is the job of the Red Cross. Please do your job. It's worth noting that the International Red Cross was founded with the explicit purpose of ensuring humanitarian protections and assistance for the victims of war and other situations of violence. But for so many Israelis, the ICRC is failing that mission entirely when it comes to the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, the Red Cross being quite vocal publicly about the humanitarian situation of the Palestinians in Gaza. But when it comes down to Israeli hostages, not so much. This is drawn ire by the families of those hostages and the loved ones of those held captive in Gaza. We're going to have so much more on that in this report, adapted from local Channel 12 news. Many emotions on display at the demonstration in front of the Jaffa home of Alessandra Menagon, the Red Cross representative in Israel. These voices are from all over Israel and testify to the broad feelings among the public. Israelis simply do not like the Red Cross. I don't think she should be here. I don't think she should be sharing the same oxygen with me right now. So these are some of our offices for our operations. We have cooperation, some economic security. This week we receive permission to visit the offices of the International Red Cross in East Jerusalem, a body that acts discreetly. Its officials say this is the most successful way to deliver humanitarian aid to war victims around the world. We do also have more teams operating in Gaza and in the West Bank area. But the fact is for over 70 days the organization has not met any of the scores of hundreds of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. They have not provided any humanitarian aid or medicine. The Red Cross says it's not that it doesn't want to, it's that it can't. People sometimes have the idea that the Red Cross is an organization that can achieve anything in conflict, that we can swoop in anywhere, we can access anywhere, and while we work so that we can do this, we always need the agreement of parties in conflict. One of the fundamental principles of the Red Cross is the fact that it is neutral. It must not take sides in any conflict in order to be acceptable to both parties. Our neutrality means that sometimes publicly we don't say things, so that behind the closed doors in the direct discussions with the people involved, with the parties involved, with Hamas, we can say what needs to be said and know that we can have that dialogue, that we can engage with them. But when Red Cross president Mirjana Spoliarec visited Gaza two weeks ago, she released a video that outraged many. I've just visited the European Gaza hospital and the things I saw there is beyond anything that anyone should be in a position to describe. It took her a minute and a half to mention the Israeli abductees and then it appeared only casually. We have to protect the rights of the hostages. When she arrived in Israel for a short visit, she met the members of the families of the abductees. They had harsh words for her. In recordings obtained by Yulan Cohen, the tone of the meeting is clear. I left the meeting shaken. I don't know how you can sit so coldly in front of people who tell you that their loved ones are in such a difficult situation and your answer is so correct and so measured. My son has a colitis disease and it's his medicine. I don't want my son that will come back in a black plastic bag. You've been at Gaza last week at the Palestinian hospitals. If they afford you to go inside Gaza, you need to ask or maybe to condition it by making sense for our kids or beloved that are injured and sick. The members of the families also brought up Spaliaric's message from Gaza. As I saw it, I thought the ICRC is going only on one side. So I'm asking you if the Hamas don't give you any operation to go to the hostages or to give us the sign of life, the gold inside Gaza. Israel and the abductees families expect the Red Cross to take a clear position against Hamas. The organization claims it cannot do this. It's not going to work because if the more public pressure we seemingly would do, the more they would shut the door. I'm not sure. A condemnation by the Red Cross, which has such a large platform and so many international connections can change the narrative in the entire world as soon as it condemns Hamas. And that will change the story here as well for the abductees. About three weeks ago, Israel held its breath when some released abductees made their way from Gaza to the Egyptian Rafa crossing in Red Cross Jeeps. That sparked the criticism that this is what the organization's activity is all about, a shuttle service. You're like a taxi cab. You're an Uber. You should be ashamed of yourself. You call it Uber. You call it taxi. You call it not enough. And I might even agree not enough. But everything we could, we have done it. Maybe we're only taxi, but we did it. Nobody else did it. After the disappointment of the meeting with the president, the abductees families campaign headquarters decided to intensify the fight against the organization by placing a container to collect medicines and sanitary equipment in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv. They intend to pass it on to the Red Cross offices and from there to the Kerim Shalom crossing on the border of the Gaza Strip. Well, some 800 Israeli children from the city of Steuart have been unable to return to their homes since the attacks on October 7th. They're currently staying in the Red Sea city of Elat. These kids grew up under constant threat of Hamas rockets. Now, though, they are longing to go home. Still no idea, though, when they will be able to do that. We've got more in this report from Channel 12. We did not want to disrupt the class, but the rumor about the camera in the school's halls spread quickly. Only Nicole kept to herself. She had something more important to do. For the last 67 days, the children of Sderot are scattered in different hotels in Elat. Even though they were born to a reality of sirens and rockets, they still can't comprehend the events of that morning when they woke up to terrorists walking around their city. Since then, they have been here between the hotel, the temporary school, the promenade, and other attractions. We came here to hear from them a little bit of what they're going through. Do you like the house? Yes. Where? I like it. I like it. I like it. What do you like the most about the house? I like the kitchen, the house, the kitchen. The bathroom. The bathroom? It's free. I know, but can I ask you a question? The bathroom? Do you know? No. But in my hand, it's not free. It's not private. They're close friends and family. Where are they? They're friends and family members of Sderot, as far as I know. There are those who have been separated. They're friends and family members. I don't know. Okay. The reason I like it so much is to stay at home. Why is that? Because it's kind of scary. It's like coming out of the window. No. The educational staff here at Amichai School is composed of Sderot's teachers who know every child personally, along with IDF teachers and many volunteers that do everything they can to embrace the children. It's not always easy. Some of the kids lost the people they love more than anything, like Halel, whose uncle went on a morning jog on October 7th and never came back. How do you feel? He came all over the place. And he's trying to make me feel like he's gone. I'm sure of it. Do you feel he's bringing you a lot? Yes. But I don't feel he's trying to make me feel like he's gone. It's impossible to feel. What do you remember from that day? We were all in school, and we were in the classroom, and in the classroom, and in the classroom, and in the classrooms, and all those things. At first, we thought there were really no students, and that it was something, and then, we said to ourselves, this blue jeep with the students and the teacher, and we went to school together. Were there any students from you? Yes. For our sake, we didn't enter school, because I really don't know about it, but again, it didn't work out, and it didn't affect the world, and there was a girl who entered the house, and I tried to understand her, but we didn't understand what it was. Because it's impossible to understand. Children in the school don't need to know what it's like to die. It's something that you can't get rid of. And today, the more you look at the child, the more you don't feel like it. Not at all. It's impossible to understand it. It's not something you can do. You can hear it everywhere, people talking about it, and it's still not... They're not talking about it. It's clear that people who are close to you, or people who... People, even though we don't know families who speak on TV, and who are very difficult to them, and people who have... It's horrible. It's already a whole different story. It's not possible to eat more. You can eat more, and more, and more, and more, and more, and more, and more, and more. It's impossible. I don't even want to talk about what's going on, about the current situation in Gaza, and what's happening to families who... who are also afraid of it, that they might be afraid of it. You think about it a lot? Do you want to go back home for a while? I really want to. But it's really hard to go back home. It's really hard to get up in the morning, and there's no other way, that there's some kind of confusion, or that suddenly there's a person, or that suddenly starts to look at you. You don't know what's going on, because we really don't know. I want to, but I'm afraid to go back. Before the war, I used to be friends, to say and do things, but now, I don't know how to do it. They say that there's only one way to go. I said to my father, I want to go back home, and he said, yes, I want to go back home. I said, no, I want to go back home. I want to go back home. I don't have anything to do with it. Do you think you're going to ask him what he said to you? He said, if I go back home, it's like I have to go back home. They pick up trucks roaming the streets. It's not, even Hamas won't be there, and it won't be Gaza, and Gaza will be ours, and it won't be Hamas. I believe Hamas won't be there. They have their rights, and we'll do what they say. What does he say? I don't know. Do you think we're going to leave? Of course. Because it takes a lot of time. You don't know? The music is so different. They don't know. How? They don't know that there are places. I want to go back home. They're always going to the airport. They're going to the airport, and they don't know how to get there. They don't have any access to the airport. They don't have access to the airport. You're going to leave them? Yes, we're going to the airport. Okay. I want you to go. If there is anything that crushes the heart, it is listening to children that lost their innocence, and furthermore, their optimism. Children that in one moment became adults that like all of us are still living through that morning. To this day, no one can tell them when the hands of the clock that stopped on October 7th will move again. Luther King's famous 1968 mountaintop speech was based on his trip to the Promised Land. Well, now, 55 years later, his prophetic words are coming true. Hundreds of African-American women took a journey of a lifetime to the Holy Land. We'll introduce you to the amazing female spiritual religious leaders who are infusing new energy into the next generation of African-Americans. The Court of Justice hears charges against Israel. Welcome to our viewers around the world. This is an I-24 News Special Report. I'm Albert Lewitson, reporting from the I-24 News Headquarters in Tel Aviv. You're looking at a live picture of the Great Hall of Justice in the Peace at the Hague in the Netherlands, the International Court of Justice. It is there that South Africa will allege that Israel has committed genocide in its war against Hamas. 97 days into a war that began on October 7th, when Hamas terrorists broke through a gate and pillaged Israeli communities across the border, butchering, torturing, burning alive babies, children, mothers, the elderly, the frail, civilians, 1,200 of them, and then abducted more than 130 others and have been holding them hostage at gunpoint without visits from the International Red Cross against the Geneva Convention. And since October the 7th, Hamas has lobbed thousands of rockets indiscriminately against civilian targets inside Israel. But it is Israel that is standing trial right now. Israel, defending itself, fire back. Thousands have been killed inside of Gaza. Yes, those are the facts. But what constitutes the legal definition of genocide versus a very unfortunate amount of civilian deaths? And who is responsible? We will have the oral arguments for you to hear right here on I-24 News, with this special live coverage over the next couple of hours. Joining me now, joining me in studio now are three of our guests here. We have Shiri Fine Grossman, member of the Forum at Dvorah, the woman in Foreign Policy of National Security. She's also the former head of regional affairs for the Israel National Security Council, Yaqui Dayan, the former Israeli consul in Los Angeles. And Professor Emmanuel Gross, expert on criminal law, faculty of law for University of South Africa. Thank you all, the University of Haifa. Thank you for joining us here. South Africa has produced this lawsuit, 84 pages, I printed it out, I read through it. I'm going to ask you, Professor, if I'm a student of law outside of Israel, what am I trying to understand what's happening today? Two things, mainly two things. First of all, what kind of relief they ask the court? The relief is the interim order asking Israel to stop immediately. The war in Gaza. The second question is whether, for the long run, Israel indeed committed genocide. Those are the two main questions. But people who watch TV shows, they see there's a defense, there's a prosecution. This isn't how this is going to run. Explain to us how this will run. Well, it's not quite a court the way we are used to. It's not a criminal court with a prosecutor and attorney for the defense and law of evidence and criminal procedure and so on. They have rules how to conduct the court, but not the kind that we are used to, which means that they will hear arguments. Both sides are actually required to bring their arguments before the court. First, the South African will do it today and we are going to do it tomorrow. But it's only argument. Now, they will support their arguments on a sort of evidence. They already mentioned in the articles that you are holding now. We're watching now the judges. I just want to let our viewers know around the world. We're watching the judges come into the Hall of Justice here. These are 15 judges. Let me let everyone know that the way that these are 15, they are appointed by the United Nations. Israel and South Africa are allowed to have a judge of their own. If I may, Shiri, who will be representing Israel in this? Yeah, Mr. Malcolm Shaw is an international expert. We're sitting there on the table, Tal Becker from Minister of Foreign Affairs. We're seeing the Deputy Director for International Law, Dr. Gilad Noam, and a lot of former colleagues of mine sitting there from different international law departments of the Israeli government. They're all Ivy League graduates, doctorates, very, very good at what they do. I feel proud that they're representing us. And I think all Israelis watching should know that these are very professional people. Shiri, I'm going to have you hold on one second right now. We're going to go to Alex Kajie. He's an I-24 News contributor. He's outside the courthouse right now with the very latest on what is going on inside the courthouse. Alex? Yeah, well, absolutely. You can see to my left, you can probably hear the Palestinian supporters protesting outside of the Peace Palace, the International Court of Justice to my right. We see a group of protesters supporting the Israeli defence. And stuck in between them is the Peace Palace. It's the International Court of Justice metaphor for what will be going down here in the next few hours. In the next couple of days, we know the accusations leveled by South Africa against Israel of genocidal acts. In Gaza, President Herzog calling that, of course, atrocious accusations and of course denying any of those accusations as well. Quite a tense environment in the air here in the hay. You have a lot of police. We had a line of police horses coming past us just a few moments ago, keeping these two sides separate. Really tense atmosphere in the air, as I said, at the Peace Palace at the International Court of Justice. The arguments will start in just about an hour's time, give or take. We'll wrap up in about an hour's time, I should say. And that will be the start of these proceedings hearing for the first time this landmark case. Great, Alex Keje, who's live out front of the courthouse. I'm going to have you stand by one second. Let me come back in studio right now with Yaqui Dayan, the former Israeli consul general in Los Angeles. Yaqui, when I went through the lawsuit, 84 pages. We don't even get to October 7th until page 28, and it's three paragraphs. And that's all they make mention. Yes. So, South Africa is obviously a proxy here. They are bringing the case into the court, but definitely behind them are, no doubt, the Iranians, the Palestinians, and others. So, South Africa is the proxy. Basically, what South Africa is trying to do here is to prove two things. One, the intention, obviously. And the second thing is the execution. Those are the two things. And when they say the intentions, they bring also lots of quotes from high officials in Israel saying all kinds of remarks and things, saying that there was an intention. And the execution is to commit the intention. Okay, let's go back a step forward a second. As part of the three paragraphs, there's no mention whatsoever that three South African citizens were killed on October the 7th. No mention of that. No mention of that at all. No mention. I mean, look at the irony here. I mean, no mention of the Hamas executing all these atrocities on October 7th at all. I mean, they just moved to what Israel and what Israel's intentions are. No defense war. Israel is intending to commit a genocide. All of that, no context whatsoever. This is the loss to what they're bringing the South Africans here. So that the people at home are watching right now. This is the Hague inside the Hague. This is the International Court of Justice. They are just doing some preliminary, basically let the rule of order, let people know how things will be accomplished. We're monitoring the situation at some point. We'll have you listen in on what's going on the proceedings inside the courthouse. I want to go back again one more time. I have a question in terms of, again, let's go back to the October 7th issue. Because one of the things that they make mention is that the Prime Minister and others in the high government, as you mentioned, put out statements, and this goes to their case of intent. The idea that their statements, they were aimed at Hamas, not necessarily the Palestinian people, but they don't make that distinction in this lawsuit. Not at all. I mean, what they're saying is that this is against the Palestinian people. They are not differentiating at all between the Hamas and the Palestinians and the civilians. Over there in Gaza. And it's not by coincidence that the Prime Minister, only yesterday, tweeted that Israel is differentiating completely between the civilians in Gaza and the Hamas. Israel has no intention of occupying permanently the Gaza Strip. And they have no intention, we have no intention of staying over there. So this was clarified. It was clarified all the time. Israel is actually working according to the international law. So there is no, there will be no surprises. What we have to remember at the end of the day that out of those 15 judges, at least half of them, and I'm being, I think, I'm being, it's an understatement, at least half of them come with destructions from home. So yes, there would be a lot of arguments, very convincing, appealing arguments, but at least half of them are coming with the instructions from home. We're going to go to those proceedings in just a moment. But first I want to go to Pierre Kloschender, who's right now at the site of one of the atrocities from October the 7th. Family members of the hostages and the victims of October the 7th are there right now with Pierre. Go ahead, Pierre. Right. There's going to be an event here with some of the relative hostages. And you can see here the portraits of 364 young people, beautiful people, women, boys, girls, men, who were butchered some raped during the October 7 massacre at the Nova Fest. Most of them were killed. Some of them here you might see with a sign bringing home are probably still living in the dark tunnels of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic jihad. And they're going to come here with a simple message that will be carried on with loudspeakers. We love you. We don't forget you. We press on the international community and our government to work for your release. Simple words, but almost 100 days after these people were abducted or killed, that's a very important message as the international criminal court is gathering in the Hague. From time to time you see a gunship, an Apache gunship hovering here and the sound of an artillery battery bombing presumed terror targets. We're not far from the border, but I understand that some of the families will go to Nile Oz, the site of one of the worst massacres and from where many were abducted and shot from there as well. Although this is a close military area and I'm not sure they can manage to send their message from there. I don't even know if their message will be heard loud and clear by the abductees, by the hostages because in Hanyunas, for instance, the site of fighting. Great. Pierre Kloschunder at the site of the Nova Music Festival where on October the 7th hundreds were killed by Hamas terrorists. I want to go back now in studio. I want to talk to Shari Fine Grossman for just one second about the idea of what is being alleged here. We talked about intent, but there's also discussion of displacement. There's discussion of the West Bank. Somehow the West Bank got lopped into this because what they're trying to point out, and correct me if I'm wrong, is they're trying to point out that there's an Israeli policy against Palestinians as a whole. Look, I want to say this is an historic day. It's historic for many reasons. These kinds of cases will be taught in law schools, as you say, for decades to come. And it's a crucial point for the international law community and international law itself. I'm sorry to interrupt. We're going to dip into the proceedings right now. They're starting ahead. Go ahead. I can't. Take all reasonable measures within their power to prevent genocide. For the State of Israel shall in accordance with its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in relation to the Palestinian people as a group protected by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, desist from the commission of any and all acts within the scope of Article 2 of the Convention, in particular, a, killing members of the group, b, causing serious bodily or mental harm to the members of the group, c, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in all or in part, and d, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. Five, the State of Israel shall pursuant to Point Four C above in relation to Palestinians desist from and take all measures within its power, including the rescinding of relevant orders of restrictions and or of prohibitions to prevent, a, the expulsion and forced displacement from their homes, b, the deprivation of, b, one, access to adequate food and water, b, access to humanitarian assistance, including access to adequate fuel, shelter, clothes, hygiene and sanitation, b, medical supplies and assistance, and c, the destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza. Six, the State of Israel shall, in relations to Palestinians, ensure that its military as well as any irregular armed units or individuals which may be directed, supported or otherwise influenced by it and any organizations and persons which may be subject to its control, direction or influence, do not commit any acts described in four and five above or engage in direct and public incitement, incitement to commit genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, attempt to commit genocide or complicity in genocide. And in so far as they do engage therein, that steps are taken towards their punishment, pursuant to articles one, two, three and four of the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. Seven, the State of Israel shall take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope of article two of the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. To that end, the State of Israel shall not act to deny or otherwise restrict access by fact finding missions, international mandates and other bodies to Gaza to assist in ensuring the preservation and retention of said evidence. Eight, the State of Israel shall submit a report to the court on all measures taken to give effect to disorder within one week as from the date of disorder and thereafter at such regular intervals as the court shall order until a final decision on the case is rendered by the court. Nine, the State of Israel shall refrain from any action and shall ensure that no action is taken which might aggravate or extend the dispute before the court or make it more difficult to resolve. End of court. I thank the registrar. Immediately after the application containing the request for the indication of provisional measures was filed, the deputy registrar transmitted an original copy thereof to the government of Israel. He also notified the Secretary General of the United Nations. According to article 74, I request indignation. I'm watching live proceedings inside the International Court of Justice at the Hague, and they're going through formalities right now to kind of let everyone present. That was a registrar, and here is one of the judges in there. I'm joined in studio by Professor Emmanuel Gross, who's an expert in international law and terrorism from the School of Law at the Natanic Academic College. I have a question for you when it comes to what exactly is going to be done here because there's a difference between genocide and unfair, sadly unfortunate cases of civilian deaths in war. So how do you delineate the two? The jurisdiction of the court is according to what we read in the statute against genocide, the treaty against genocide and punishment of... And for our viewers around the world who don't know what that is, explain what that is. Okay. Following the Second World War, the lessons, we actually instituted the United Nations. And the main judicial organ of the United Nations is the International Court of Justice. That... I'm looking at it right now. And we missed the swearing keen of Barack just a moment ago, which is a... I think this is... Let's go back to this, guys. It's an honor and a privilege for me to appear before you today on behalf of the Republic of South Africa. I wish to express my gratitude to the court for convening this hearing on the earliest possible date to entertain South Africa's request for the indication of provisional measures in this matter. In our application, South Africa has recognized the ongoing nakba of the Palestinian people through Israel's colonization since 1948, which has systematically and forcibly dispossessed, displaced and fragmented the Palestinian people, deliberately denying them their internationally recognized inalienable right to self-determination and their internationally recognized right of return as refugees to their towns and villages in what is now the state of Israel. We are also particularly mindful of Israel's institutionalized regime of discriminatory laws, policies and practices designed and maintained to establish termination, subjecting the Palestinian people to apartheid on both sides of the green line. Decades-long impunity for widespread and systematic human rights violations has emboldened Israel in its recurrence and intensification of international crimes in Palestine. At the outset, South Africa acknowledges that the genocidal acts and omissions of the State of Israel inevitably form part of a continuum of illegal acts perpetrated against the Palestinian people since 1948. The application places Israel's genocidal acts and omissions within the broader context of Israel's 75-year apartheid, 56-year occupation and 16-year siege imposed on the Gaza Strip, a siege which itself has been described by the director of UNRWA affairs in Gaza as a silent killer of people. As the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination warned on December 21, hate speech and dehumanizing discourse targeted at Palestinians raising severe concerns regarding Israel and other states' party's obligation to prevent crimes against humanity and genocide in the Gaza Strip. This warning has been followed by a succession of warnings, including by 37 United Nations special reporters of the failure of the international system to mobilize to prevent genocide in Gaza. Today we are joined in court by representatives of the Palestinian state, the Palestinians who work in the fields of human rights, including residents of Gaza, who were in Gaza just a few days ago. They are some of the lucky ones who managed to get out of Gaza. Their future and the future of their fellow Palestinians who are still in Gaza depend on the decision this court will make on this matter. With the leave of the court, I now call upon His Excellency, Mr. Ronald Blamola, Minister of Justice of the Republic of South Africa, to make South Africa's substantive opening remarks. I thank the agent of South Africa for his statement, and I now invite the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services of the Republic of South Africa, His Excellency, Mr. Ronald Blamola, to take the floor. You have the floor, Excellency. Thank you, Madam President and distinguished members of the court. It is an honor for me to stand here in front of you on behalf of the Republic of South Africa on this exceptional case. In extending our hands across the miles to the people of Palestine, we do so in full knowledge that we are part of a humanity that is at one. These were the words of our founding president, Nelson Mandela. This is the spirit in which South Africa acceded to the convention on the prevention and punishment of crime of genocide in 1998. This is the spirit in which we approach this court as a contracting party to the convention. This is a commitment to all, to the people of Palestine and Israelis alike. As previously mentioned, the violence and the destruction in Palestine and Israel did not begin on the 7th of October 2023. The Palestinians have experienced systematic oppression and violence for the last 76 years, on 6th October 2023 and every day since October the 7th 2023. In the Gaza Strip, at least since 2004, Israel continues to exercise control over the airspace, territorial waters, land crossing, water, electricity and civilian infrastructure, as well as over key government functions. Entry and exit by air and sea to Gaza is strictly prohibited, with Israel operating the only two crossing points. Given that continuing effective control by Israel and over the territory of Gaza, Israel is still considered by international community to be under beligrant occupation by Israel. South Africa unequivocally condemned the targeting of civilians by Hamas and other Palestinians armed groups and the taking of hostages on the 7th of October 2023. And as again expressly recorded, there is condemnation, mostly recently and it's not verbal to Israel on the 21st of December 2023. That said, no armed attack on a state territory, no mental house serious, even an attack involving atrocity crimes, can provide any justification for or defends two breaches to the convention. Whether as a matter of law or morality, Israel's response to the 7th of October 2023 attack has crossed this line and give rise to the breaches of the convention. Faced with such evidence and our duty to do what we can do to prevent genocide, as contained in article one of the convention, the South African government initiated this case. South Africa welcomes the fact that Israel is engaged with the case in order to have the matter resolved by the court after careful and objective consideration of the facts and submission put before it as the parties to the convention have intended. This hearing is concerned with South Africa's request to the court for the indication of provisional measures and will necessarily have a narrow and particular focus. I invoke the words of Martin Luther King when he said, the art of the moral of the universe is long, always bending towards justice. South Africa's case will be presented by a team of six legal counsels, comprising of Dr. Adila Asim, Mr. Tambagan Gugaitobi, Professor John Dugart, Ms. Blim Likron, Mr. Max Dupris, and Professor Wagon Low. Dr. Adila Asim, Senior Counsel, will provide an overview of the risk of genocidal acts in the perpetual vulnerability to acts of genocide. Mr. Tambagan Gugaitobi, Senior Counsel, will examine Israel's alleged genocidal intent. Professor John Dugart, Senior Counsel, will focus on the prima facie jurisdiction. Professor Max Dupris, Senior Counsel, will discuss the various rights currently under threat. Blyny Kral, King's Counsel, will present the argument of agency and potential irreparable harm. And Professor Wagon Low, King's Counsel, will speak on the provisional measures. I now request Madam President to call on Dr. Asim. I thank you. His Excellency, Mr. Lamola, and I now invite Ms. Adila Asim to address the court. You have the floor, Madam. Thank you. Madam President, distinguished members of the court, it is a privilege to appear on behalf of the Republic of South Africa in this case of exceptional importance. It's a case that underscores the very essence of our shared humanity as expressed in the preamble to the Genocide Convention. It's my task to address the court on the genocidal acts that have led to this urgent request for provisional measures under Article 41 of the statute of the court. South Africa contends that Israel has transgressed Article 2 of the Convention by committing actions that fall within the definition of genocide. The actions show a systematic pattern of conduct from which genocide can be inferred. Allow me to place these acts in context. Gaza is one of the two constituent territories of the occupied Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967. It is a narrow strip of approximately 365 square kilometres as depicted in the map now displayed. Israel continues to exercise control over the space, territorial waters, land crossings, water, electricity, electromagnetic sphere, and civilian infrastructure in Gaza, as well as over key governmental functions. As the Honourable Minister has said, entry and exit by air and sea to Gaza is prohibited with Israel operating the only two crossing points. Gaza, which is one of the most densely populated places in the world, is home to approximately 2.3 million Palestinians, almost half of them children. For the past 96 days, Israel has subjected Gaza to what has been described as one of the heaviest conventional bombing campaigns in the history of modern warfare. Palestinians in Gaza are being killed by Israeli weaponry and bombs from air, land and sea. They are also at immediate risk of death by starvation, dehydration and disease. As a result of the ongoing siege by Israel, the destruction of Palestinian towns, the insufficient aid being allowed through to the Palestinian population, and the impossibility of distributing this limited aid while bombs fall, this conduct renders essentials to life unobtainable. At this provisional measures stage, as this Court has made clear in the Gambia-Myanmar case, it is not necessary for the Court to come to a final view on the question of whether Israel's conduct constitutes genocide. It is necessary to establish only whether at least some of the acts alleged are capable of falling within the provisions of the Convention, analysing the specific and ongoing genocidal acts complained of. It is clear that at least some, if not all of these acts, fall within the Convention's provisions. These acts are documented in detail in South Africa's application and confirmed by reliable, often UN, sources. It's thus unnecessary and impossible for me to recount all of them. I will highlight only some in order to illustrate the pattern of genocidal conduct. The UN statistics that are relied upon are up to date as of 9 January 2024. In South Africa's oral submissions, we will illustrate the facts that we rely on with limited use of audiovisual material. Madam President, we do so with restraint and only where necessary and always with respect to the Palestinian people. Against this background, I move now to demonstrate in turn how Israel's conduct violates articles 2A, 2B, 2C and 2D of the Convention. The first genocidal act committed by Israel is the mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza in violation of article 2A of the Genocide Convention. As the UN Secretary General explained five weeks ago, the level of Israel's killing is so extensive that nowhere is safe in Gaza. As I stand before you today, 23,210 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces during the sustained attacks over the last three months. At least 70% of whom are believed to be women and children. Some 7,000 Palestinians are still missing, presumed dead under the rubble. Palestinians in Gaza are subjected to relentless bombing wherever they go. They are killed in their homes, in places where they seek shelter, in hospitals, in schools, in mosques, in churches, and as they try to find food and water for their families. They have been killed if they failed to evacuate, in the places to which they have fled, and even while they attempted to flee along Israeli-declared safe routes. The level of killing is so extensive that those whose bodies are found are buried in mass graves, often unidentified. In the first three weeks alone, following 7 October, Israel deployed 6,000 bombs per week. At least 200 times, it has deployed 2,000 pound bombs in southern areas of Palestine designated as safe. These bombs have also decimated the north, including refugee camps. 2,000 pound bombs are some of the biggest and most destructive bombs available. They are dropped by lethal fighter jets that are used to strike targets on the ground by one of the world's most resourced armies. Israel has killed an unparalleled and unprecedented number of civilians, with the full knowledge of how many civilian lives each bomb will take. Then 1,800 families, Palestinian families in Gaza, have lost multiple family members, and hundreds of multi-generational families have been wiped out, with no remaining survivors. Mothers, fathers, children, siblings, grandparents, aunts, cousins, often all killed together. This killing is nothing short of destruction of Palestinian life. Three hours. Three hours? Three hours. We're back. We're back. Hold on one second. Let me just be sure you're fine. Gorax, when you were watching this proceeding, what's the initial reaction to what you're seeing? Well, it's going to be a tough day because it's going to be a day where we just, you know, listen to atrocities that the other side is claiming to. And my initial reaction is that the fact that they mentioned 1948 is astonishing, and it's exactly the point. The fact that millions around the world deny Israel's right to exist, that's genocide. That millions around the world, thousands around the world are in protest saying enough of Israel. This is exactly what we're trying to prevent the genocide. The October 7 onslaught is a crime against humanity and a genocide. And this is the context. Obviously, war is terrible. There are loss of lives. Israel and the IDF has acted in many ways to try to prevent loss of lives. The, you know, modus operandi of Hamas, entrancing itself in civilian institutions, hospitals, U.N. facilities, mosques is exactly what she said is actually is the point of, is the reason we're seeing what we're seeing. And I just hope this is really historic because this is a test for international law. Are we going to let terror organization conduct their operation in this way and blame the people who are trying to stop it? So whatever will happen here will be a test for how Western armies are supposed to tackle non-state organizations and terrorist organizations. And while I'm saying this, ISIS is on the rise in Syria and other places. So Western armies should be very watchful of what's going on here today. I think Israel is being singled out. I hope that that would be an international case. And then all the other countries would look at it and say, oh, Israel is the right side here. But we have to remember that at the end of the day, this is a political case first and foremost. Before it is a legal case. And I, you know, I agree with my colleagues here that when we speak about fronts in war, no doubt that when we speak about the political front and we speak about the military front, there is also a legal front here that we have to conduct. But at the same time, we are being singled out. Because when we hear the statements about colonization of Israel in 1948, we don't hear about the UN resolution in 1947, the partition resolution of the UN. We don't hear about the invasion of the Arab armies in 1948. Everything is out of context. 48, 73, 57. Exactly. And as Shiri is mentioning very correctly, I mean, at the end of the day, nobody speaks about the genocide that they are trying to commit to the Jewish people, preventing them from having a Jewish state. This is the case here. But at the end of the day, I'm afraid that this is not a test case for the international armies. Eventually, this is a test case of, again, singling out Israel in the international arena. So add on to that, Yaqa. I'm going to turn to Professor Manuel Gross. There are other very sad situations around the world. Darfur, there's the Congo there. But before that, allow me to join my colleagues. You asked me at the beginning as a professor of law what I'm going to teach my students. This will be one of the most important cases. I'm going to present of this misjustice. And I wrote a book about the way a democracy should conduct war against terrorism. This is the most important example. How Israel is a real democracy. How is it following the international law. And how many other states should follow the Israel the way we are conducting the war again. That brings up a very good point, Professor, if I may, that Israel is held at a standard that's very western oriented, right? Israel is held to a very American, European standard of the way things are supposed to be in the world. But at the same time, we're in the Middle East where things are not done the same way. You won't find, you find me a court in Syria that handles anything like this. Find me a court somewhere around the... Nonetheless, we are on the side of the West. And we are committing ourselves to follow the exact international rules of war. And you are right. Sometimes we are paying a very high price because we are not like the terrorism. We are not like the other countries in the region. But that's our norms. Those are our values. And we are following them. And I'm pretty sure that we did exactly the same in this war. We are conducting ourselves in accordance with the ethics and the legal norms of the international law. So I think that we are actually now looking on the distortion of the picture. What is the real picture? Distortion or weaponization? Distortion. Distortion, I think that... We forgot that the main reason Israel is in Gaza right now is the notion of self-defense. We are defending ourselves against those terrorists. If they wouldn't do the atrocities of October 7, we wouldn't be in Gaza. So we have to... It's an act of aggression, which is now... Now, if we are speaking about genocide, exactly what the Palestinians were doing on October 7 is an act of genocide. And that's what presumably what the Israeli government tomorrow will be presenting in front of the court. One question I have for you in terms... You heard what the South African Minister said, and the barrister heard that speaking. Their claim, and I'm going to take Devil's advocate here, their claim is that, yes, what's happened on October 7 was terrible, but does not require the response to which Israel put out. Well, I don't know any other response. I don't know that any other country would respond differently. The legal way, though. The legal way is the way that we are conducting ourselves. I mean, we are defending ourselves, and we want to make sure that Hamas is not going to impose any danger in the future. That's exactly what we are going to do. They're showing now here, you're watching live coverage. This is evidence being put in front of the court now where they're showing here the supply and the aid supply. Just a little unbelievable, because Hamas is robbing its people from military aid. We've just seen the price range. Yeah, humanitarian. They're selling it back to the civilians. On the black market, and also by Hamas. They had like a regulatory prices just that he published a week ago. This is exactly the cynicism, and I'm sure the Israeli government will prove of this, of how many trucks of Hamas deliberately taking it for its armed forces and utilizing for its tunnels. It's trenching itself in the tunnels. It needs solar for that. It needs food for its fighters underneath the ground, and it's taking it from the mouth of civilians. Shari, if I may, hold on. Shari, thank you so much. We want to go to Alex Kadya, the I-24 News correspondent, who's actually now out front of the courthouse right now, where we understand there's been some action going on. Alex. Yeah, you're absolutely right. As you can see around me, hundreds of Israeli flags, protesters here supporting Israel. If you went a few hundred meters down the road to my left, you can see behind those police horses, hundreds of Palestinian flags, reporting that South African case brought forward, accusing Israel of genocidal acts in Gaza. An accusation President Herzog has described as atrocious and preposterous. We will be hearing those arguments for preliminary measures. South Africa asking the court to order Israel to stop all military action in Gaza, South Africa putting its case right now at the International Court of Justice here in The Hague. Alex, how many people Israel protesters are there behind you, versus how many Palestinian protesters are behind you? Well, it's very difficult to estimate exactly. We know that the groups are being controlled by the police and held back in certain instances to keep them apart. I'd say roughly about somewhere between 500 and 1,000 protesters in support of the Israeli cause, and roughly a similar number from the Palestinian side. But from where I'm standing, clearly two large groups wanting to make their voices heard on both sides of this argument are of course stuck in between them at the Peace Palace of the International Court of Justice. And are they able to watch the proceedings inside, or is it for them they're watching it on their phones? How are they able to see what's happening inside? Yeah, watching on their phones is probably their best bet. Access to the Peace Palace itself is very heavily restricted. They've even limited the number of journalists who are able to get in there. And of course, you are able to see all of the proceedings streamed. You will hear any pronouncements from the court in the next couple of hours as well, streamed online. A lot of people here are waiting for those moments, trying to hear those arguments. Of course, we will not have a decision today. We most certainly won't have a decision on the preliminary measures until a couple of weeks. Today the South Africans make their case, and tomorrow the Israelis will mount their defense. And Alex, final question. How far away are they being separated? I'm sure the police are making sure that there's no confrontation. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And we've seen some moments where one protester from the Israeli side went towards the Palestinians and was brought back very quickly by the police. A moment where a Palestinian protester came here within the pro-Israeli protest and was also pulled back by police. I'd estimate about 300 metres, a few hundred feet between them. A good dozen of police officers, a handful of police horses, as well as a real desire from the Dutch authorities to allow both of these protests to happen but to happen peacefully and not too disruptive for the people of the Hague. At the moment, things seem relatively calm, but certainly no love lost between both sides at the moment. Great. Alex Kage, I-24 News contributor joining us from the Hague in the Netherlands with the update outside of the courthouse of the International Court of Justice. Thanks so much for joining us. Let me come back in studio right now with Yaqed Dian, a former Israeli consul general for Los Angeles. You were trying to make a point before we went... Yes, when we saw the humanitarian aid, we shouldn't forget that the UN Refugee is actually handling part of it. And we just saw a day or two days ago the correspondent between the different teachers in UNRU that are teaching in different schools that a lot of weaponry was found hailing the October 7th atrocities. Let me give our viewers up to speed as to what that is. So basically it was a telegram group of the UNRU teachers and it's thousands that belong to this telegram group. And it was on October the 7th, there's evidence that on October the 7th, they were touting the attacks on Israel on October the 7th, hailing them as heroes, hailing the Hamas terrorists as heroes. Exactly. So my point is that part of this UN mission that tries to control the humanitarian aid is controlled by Hamas as well. So Hamas has fully operated and fully controlled the humanitarian aid. So they're stealing the humanitarian aid. They're selling it to the black market. They have full control on that. And we have to remember that when we speak about humanitarian aid we still have 136 hostages in Gaza that are not getting any humanitarian aid. No talk from the ICRC for that. Exactly. No talk from the ICRC. I mean, all of that shows the hypocrisy of this legal claim. Shira, you mentioned that you know some of the people that are inside the courtroom right now that'll make Israel's case. They must have a lot of responsibility on their shoulders. I mean, they're carrying the country on their shoulders. Yeah, they are our warriors in the law fair and they're giving their entire career to Israel. And I have to say, we've seen in recent years how much international lawyers and lawyers in general from the government are actually beaten by public figures in Israel. And there have been, you know, it's been decades that they're trying to argue, hey, we have to watch what we say. We have to definitely watch what we do and you have to listen to us. And case in point, this is the time for them also to show how much they were so vital in Israel operations in recent years and they will show it because they are Shomer Asaf. There were the ones that were in charge of Israel, conducted itself in accordance of international law. Obviously, they don't like to see states that buy Israeli politicians that have no relations to reality whatsoever. I know it's mind-blowing to others and from outside of Israel how much, you know, there's no accountability for words that you say and being populist. But having said that, I think if you're watching from a democratic country, please keep in mind what's going on in social media and in populist movements around the world that our people are saying irresponsible things with no real concrete measures behind it. So we have to watch what Israeli politicians say with a grain of salt and this is exactly what they're going to say. There's no government resolution that ever said anything like some of the statesmen that we've seen, our action on the ground, yes, there are displaced people. There's also displaced people on the Israeli side. Right, 250,000. Exactly. And this is kind of to say the war. There have been warning issues to civilians to get out of harm ways. I'm sure they're going to show this, but we had actually hundreds of intelligence court people calling people and telling them please go to this location where we'll be safe. And this is not known to the international community how much effort Israel has actually put into this, giving warning to civilians. So I'm sure it's going to be part of Israel's case and I'm confident, again, and on the political side, I have to say, Yaki, that I was trying to say before Western countries should definitely be very watchful of this court because this is the standard that will be set for the democracy's armies. And so they have an interest to vote and they have an interest to weigh in and make sure this court is giving a reasonable verdict. We have to remember that part of the 15 judges come from Lebanon, Morocco, Somalia, China. So when we speak about Western armies and all of that, we have to remember who is combining those judges. That's exactly the point I wanted to bring up with Professor Grosh. Shiri mentioned the word lawfare. I don't know if that was an intentionally word. No, it isn't. It's a word. It's a legal word, lawfare, yeah. So here's the thing, and this goes back to what Yaki said. What's to prevent the International Court of Justice to turn around and say, oh, well, you know what? The Americans went into Afghanistan and shouldn't have done that. And here's the reason Mosul is potentially a genocidal claim on Afghanistan. Let's go back. If you want to go back in time, we'll go back to time to Vietnam, where you know what, let's hold the United States responsible for Vietnam. What level do we play this game? I don't think that's the way we have to defend ourselves. I mean, on the merits we have, you know, to show the world and the court that we are following exactly the rules of war. What other countries have done and what was their reaction? It's not relevant to our defense. And I wouldn't recommend to follow that kind of defense. Mainly show the world and show your people that you followed exactly the rules and the ethics that we are sharing for so many years. But this also brings up, this is the first time that Israel has been put on trial. So to speak, right? Formally on trial. I mean, it's being put on trial every day, but this is formally on trial. We're actually engaging there because the other, in other ways, we were actually reluctant to cooperate. We remember the Goldstone report. The Goldstone report. Talk to our viewers what that is. What I mean to say is that the right defense is your truth. Stick to the truth. Show the world exactly what you have done. We have nothing to be afraid of or be ashamed of. And that's exactly the way. And don't forget, we have a supporter on the court now. Justice Barak. You will keep your note to make sure that as much as you can, that only legal arguments will be... Can I ask you something? How does it work with the judges? I mean, everyone eventually at the end of the day writes his own opinion or there is a brainstorming before they write their... Well, it depends on the president of the court that what exactly he will want you to conduct. But yes, each one of the judges writes his opinion and shares with the others. They are actually showing each other the opinion. But it is going to be a very, very long proceedings. This won't take... Even though they want to try to get an injunction to stop the war in Gaza. It will take a couple of days. I don't think that we... Days of weeks. Because it's days of weeks. Days. But nonetheless, days. It's not going to... I mean, we are going to argue tomorrow, Friday. I don't think that the weekend we shall have the answer. We shall have to wait a couple of days. You know, one of the things that they mentioned in... I'm looking through the lawsuit and at the very end, and by the way, it's 84 pages. I read through all of it. At the end of it, what they're asking for in terms of... I want to say almost every legal case is at least 80 pages. No, I know that. I understand that. But it takes me back to my law school day. One of the things that I'm looking at is in terms of... What are they asking for? They're asking for the cessation of hostilities in Gaza. I got that part. But one of the things they're also saying is reparations. They want reparations... Well, you know, for the damage, it's humbling that we have done. I don't think that the court is going to engage in ordering a reparation. The most important thing for us is not the remedy of reparation, but rather, you know, the injection that we are actually... The cessation of hostilities. But we have to remember that the intermodal, the injection doesn't have to be about the cessation of war. It can speak about the humanitarian aid. It can speak about other things. So the injection can be on other issues not necessarily about the cessation of the war, the intermodal. It's only one way the cessation of force. But other remedies, you know, is the aid, speeding the aid or leveling the aid. It's also another option. So we... I don't believe that they are going to issue an injection about stopping the war. Right. And this is a jump-off for any three of you. The fact that Israel is even accepting to appear tomorrow is a big step for Israel. And I want to speak to what is the idea being that Israel has nothing to hide. No. And it's not only that. It's beyond that, because Israel was part of the initiators of this genocide and this convention on genocide. And we believe strongly on that. So we were behind that. And now we have a case to show. So I think it would have been a mistake to not to show up. If I may. I'm going to thank Yaqadayyan, the former Israeli consul general of Los Angeles, Sherry Fine Grossman, former head of regional affairs for the National Security Council. And Professor Emmanuel Gross, School of Law for the Natanya Academic College. I want to thank the three of you. We're going to dip in a moment now to listen in on this is more evidence that the South African government is putting out at the International Court of Justice. Let's listen in a little bit. Thank you. Deputy Speaker of the Kenneset, Israel's parliament has called for the erasure of the Gaza Strip from the face of the F. The Defense Force agrees. On 9 October, the Defense Minister, Joav Galant gave a situation update to the army where he said that as Israel was imposing a complete siege on Gaza, there would be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything would be closed because Israel is fighting human animals. Speaking to troops on the Gaza border, he instructed them that he has released all the restraints and that Gaza won't return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything. We will reach all places. Eliminate everything. Reach all places without any restraints. The theme of destruction of human animals was reiterated by an Israeli army coordinator of government activities in the territories. On 9 October, 2023, who, in an address to Hamas and the residents of Gaza, stated that Hamas has become ISIS and that the citizens of Gaza are celebrating instead of being horrified. He concluded that human animals are dealt with accordingly. Israel has imposed a total blockade on Gaza, no electricity, no water, just damage. You wanted hell, you will get hell. The language of systematic dehumanization is evident here. Human animals, both Hamas and civilians, are condemned. Within the Israeli cabinet, this is also a widely held view. The Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, Israel Katz, called for the denial of water and fuel as this is what will happen to a people of children-killers and slaughterers. This admits of no ambiguity. It means to create conditions of death of the Palestinian people in Gaza. To die a slow death because of starvation and dehydration or to die quickly because of a bomb attack or snipers, but to die nevertheless. In fact, Heritage Minister Amichai Eliahou said that Israel must find ways for dozens that are more painful than death. It is no answer to say that neither are in command of the army. They are ministers in the Israeli government. They vote in the Knesset and are in a position to shape state policy. The intent to destroy Gaza has been nurtured at the highest levels of state. As President Isaac Herzog has joined the ranks of those signing bombs destined for Gaza. Having previously noted that the entire population in Gaza is responsible and that this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved is absolutely not true. We will fight until we break their backbone. Later attempts by the President and others to neutralize this speech have not altered the sting of his words, which was to tar all Palestinians as responsible for the actions of Hamas. No, as I will show below, has it affected how state policy is understood within government. The Minister of National Security repeated the President's statements that Hamas and civilians are responsible in equal measure. On 10 November 2023, in a televised interview, he stated that when we say that Hamas should be destroyed, it also means those who celebrate, those who support and those who hand out candy. They are all terrorists and they should also be destroyed. These are orders to destroy and to maim what cannot be destroyed. These statements are not open to neutral interpretations or after the fact rationalizations and reinterpretations by Israel. The statements were made by persons in command of the state. They communicated state policy. It is simple. If the statements were not intended, they would not have been made. The genocide intent behind these statements is not ambiguous to the Israeli soldiers on the ground. Indeed, it is directing their actions and objectives. On 7 December 2023, Israeli soldiers proved that they understood the Prime Minister's message to remember what the Amalek has done to you as a genocide. They were recorded by journalists dancing and singing. We know our motto. There are no uninvolved that they obey one commandment to wipe off the seed of Amalek. The Prime Minister's invocation of Amalek is being used by soldiers to justify the killing of civilians including children. These are the soldiers reputing the inciting words of their Prime Minister. Coverage of the International Court of Justice hearing in the Hague, in the Netherlands, that was the South African government putting out evidence. What they claim was where IDF soldiers heralding the attacks on Gaza that's been going on for the past 97 days as part of war. I'm joined in studio by Shari Finegroce from the former head of regional affairs for the National Security Council and also with Rafael Urelshalmi, security analyst and a 924 contributor. Shari, let's talk a little bit about the South African evidence that they put out. They're basically saying everyone from Prime Minister Netanyahu to ministers have basically been calling on genocide of Palestinians just by virtue of some of their comments made public. They're also using lyrics from songs that are pop music lyrics from songs. I looked at some of the case and some of the evidence. What's the intent here? Well, the intent is to show that actually even if it's a government will say like I said just 10 minutes before that there was no real intention behind what they say they affected the soldiers and actually the soldiers there's like a hidden intention and like inspiration they're meant to inspire soldiers to commit genocide on the ground and if I was defending Israel I would so statement after public statement of the public statement from Israelis either from the people and from politicians as well that are saying that oh the IDF lawyers are holding us back and we can't do a lot of things that we want to do and that's exactly the point where a professional there's a professional army over here there are a big international law law unit inside the IDF it's actually part of any plan military plan military action there's a number there's a formula to how many uninvolved citizens can be hit by a military attack and that's what the Israeli government will show again we have a very good team defending us. But Rafael if I may like in a matter of war it's war so if there's a soldiers that are dancing it's no different than the US so was for the US back in World War two right bring that up. First of all soldiers can dance ministers can talk rubbish like some of our ministers do unfortunately for us but it's just talk now you are talking of an army at war they are orders they are written given orders from the top to the bottom they can be consulted those who are not classified where you will not find any orders given by any commander to any soldier in the IDF to kill civilians that's it. Let's make that part one more time please because I don't think the people in social media understand what that is go ahead please one more time. When you are at war you are a soldier and you are an officer you have above you generals the generals give you an order of march they tell you you're going to destroy this target that target you're going to use that weapon to do it by air force by infantry okay so all the orders that have been given from 1948 but let's say from the 7th of October to the IDF can be consulted. These orders are written and they are recorded if it's by radio and you will not find any order from any officer to any soldier at any level saying oh look there are civilians to kill them the only order you will do find is please if you see civilians please beware please avoid if you can avoid shooting if you're not in danger yourself do not shoot abort abort you will find abort abort in the air force orders when they bomb the Gaza Strip all the time abort all this is documented it's so documented that unfortunately all I'm saying is still useless because we are dealing with a corrupt court political court but in any case everything has been documented that's why we can confront all these lies every soldier has a camera on his helmet or his chest every mortar that has been shot by the artillery has been documented at what time it was shot from where it was shot what target it hit what damage it caused and if there was collateral damage also it will be written so everything can be proven explained there's nothing left in the dark so that we are prepared so now there are there is collateral damage war is a war is a war and in this case there is by the Geneva Convention the protocol number one who takes into account collateral damage and specifies the proportionality of collateral damage what does it mean it means if you hit a target and around this target there are 10 innocent civilians but by hitting this target you will avoid the killing of 1000 civilians because that target is a target then you are entitled to do so by the Geneva Convention because it's the law of proportionality how many lives you save as compared to how many lives you sacrifice of innocent civilians the last comment I would like to make because that will not be mentioned in that court and I don't think it's a legal point and I'm certainly not a legal advisor when you speak of innocent civilians it's one thing for me an innocent civilian in Gaza it's mostly children when you speak of civilians in Gaza they are far from all being innocent far from it there are at least 200 to 300,000 Hamas employees civil servants Hamas supporters UNRWA workers all are complicit to terrorism I call them white color terrorists so not every civilian that was eliminated or killed by an offensive is an innocent civilian I want to say I wanted to ask that first of all I want to say there are innocent civilian lives in Gaza and even those aid workers that are complicit with Hamas are not military targets for the IDF what Hamas and we've seen countless videos come out of the Gaza Strip that actually terrorists are wearing civilian arms there's very difficult to distinguish between civilian and non-civilians and when they bury the bodies and they say they don't even know sometimes actually these are terrorists that they're burying and that's legitimate targets and I should make mention of it also that one of the part of the Geneva Conventions is that an army is supposed to be uniform you're supposed to wear uniform you're supposed to show that you are not a civilian but actually military personnel the IDF does it otherwise you think the IDF would be dressed up as exactly and these kinds of claims that we're just discussing are much stronger than World War II by the way the Geneva Conventions are post World War II and a lot of international law and law of conflict and customary law has been codified ever since so we have good argument that we acted in coordinates of the law and we should on merit and we should stick to that and I think I believe that's what the Israeli team will do. What do you think will happen in terms of so let me bring in a couple of the idea of what's happening on the ground in Gaza as part of this they're saying that oh there's not enough shelters not enough water there's not enough they're being all housed in one section it's very dangerous there's disease about to and they're putting the blame on Israel versus Hamas. So again the IDF has put up specific measures for that it declared humanitarian zones and then tried to move the population there tried even it actually called the people up and I think it's unprecedented in military operation it gave advance warning it's urged to evacuate and it's trying to bring in humanitarian aid again being stolen by Hamas sometimes deliberately to cause that this kind of argument of preventing humanitarian aid and trying to cease the military operation by Israel. The context is important the onslaught of October 7 crimes against humanity genocide by Hamas to the residents of Loezer and also not just the hostages 136 hostages is taking in trying to keep them as human shield preventing the Israeli attack but also rockets are still fired even today it's statistical it's not accurate rockets where it can be it can be pinpointed toward military operation we're talking rockets that are throughout Israeli civilian life. Exactly Israeli civilian that can't distinguish between so that in itself is a war crime and they're hiding in schools and that also is a war crime so you're looking at live pictures from inside the International Court of Justice this is at the Hague this is in the Netherlands there are 15 judges that are now on the dais right now they're hearing arguments from the South African ministry this is the person you're seeing there is a human rights lawyer that's representing South Africa he actually helped bring down the government of Zuma the president of South Africa we are covering this we're showing it to you here you're also going to be able to see it on 924news.tv on video on demand in case you wanted to watch it in its entirety and there's a reason we're doing that we're doing that so that you have an idea as to what's being presented as a charges against Israel I'm joined now I'm going to go live now to Alex Kajie he's the I-24 news reporter he is out front of the courthouse in the Hague Alex I just want to ask you how many people from the world are focused at right that spot for example I'm from Morocco yeah you're absolutely right as many foreign media outlets as you can think of are all here we're looking at about two dozen reporters a lot of cameras a lot of tripod it is really a historic landmark moment a historic case and it's really had the attention of the world brought here to the Hague just a few moments ago we were bringing you the situation with those protest groups pro-israeli Palestinian protests here in the Hague they've been separated quite severely by the Dutch police they've been put into different places we have the Palestinian protesters that were to my left pushed back they've started marching in one direction and the Israeli protesters have been marching in another about a thousand people assembled on either side so certainly a bit of a tense atmosphere we've seen some small flashes of tension between the two sides before they were separated by police and then have you been able to listen in and saying how they've been reporting I imagine that depending on what country you're coming from you have their media who has sort of a tint if you will Yeah you're absolutely right and look it's fair to say that this case has been polarizing has been divisive you hear outlets from one part of the world being very sympathetic or at least understanding of the South African case and perhaps presenting a view that the Israeli public would really object to so you have other media outlets that will present a different perspective and of course that was really a metaphor for how a lot of the world has looked at this conflict we know the United States for example has been firmly critical of this case brought by South Africa whereas the organization of Islamic nations have also offered its support to the South African case here in the European Union a bit of a nuanced view I asked the European Union's Foreign Affairs spokesperson about the EU's view on this particular case they said we support the ICJ we support countries' rights to bring cases forward but we are not a part of this case so we will not comment on the details Alice Kajie, I-24 News Reporter who is standing out front of the International Court of Justice in The Hague in the Netherlands thanks so much for joining us I just want to now go inside the courthouse right now we're going to listen in a little bit on the case President it is now my honor to request you to call Mr. John Dugart on the subject of jurisdiction I thank Mr. and I now invite Professor John Dugart to take the floor. You have the floor Professor. Madam President distinguished members of the court it is a great privilege to appear before you today on behalf of the Republic of South Africa in my speech I will address the question of jurisdiction full of South Africa and of Israel both have a history of suffering both states have become parties to the genocide convention in the determination to end suffering in the spirit neither has attached a reservation to Article 9 of the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide it is in terms of this convention dedicated to saving humanity South Africa brings this dispute before the court the prohibition on genocide is a peremptory norm obligations under the genocide convention or Urga Omnes obligations owed to the international community as a whole states parties to this convention are obliged not only to desist from genocidal acts but also to prevent them that the obligation of state parties to prevent acts of genocide is the foundation of the convention is clear from its placement in Article 1 of the convention Article 9 of the genocide convention makes it clear that state parties are guardians of the genocide convention unlike other treaties designed to protect human rights it does not oblige states to pursue negotiations as a prelude to approaching this court it does not treat the ending of genocidal acts as a bilateral affair between states instead it envisages a situation in which a state acting on behalf of the international community as a whole the jurisdiction of the court as a matter of urgency to prevent genocide South Africa has a long history of close relations with Israel for this reason it did not bring the dispute immediately to the attention of the court it watched with horror as Israel responded to the terrible atrocities committed against its people on the 7th of October with an attack on Gaza that resulted in the indiscriminate killing of innocent Palestinian civilians most of whom were women and children the South African government repeatedly voiced its concerns in the security council and in public statements that Israel's actions had become genocidal on 10 November in a formal diplomatic day it informed Israel that while it condemned the actions of Hamas it wanted the international criminal court to investigate the leadership of Israel for international crimes including genocide as the court will know the definition of genocide in the Rome Statute repeats that of the genocide convention on 17 October South Africa referred Israel's commission of the crime of genocide to the international criminal court for vigorous investigation in announcing this decision President Ramaphosa publicly expressed his abhorrence for what is happening right now in Gaza which is now turned into a concentration camp where genocide is taking place to accuse a state of committing acts of genocide and to condemn it in such strong language is a major act on the part of a state at this stage it became clear that there was a serious dispute between South Africa and Israel which would end only with the end of Israel's genocidal act South Africa repeated this accusation at a meeting of BRICS December and at an emergency special session of the United Nations General Assembly on 12 December no response from Israel was forthcoming none was necessary by this time the dispute had crystallized as a matter of law this was confirmed by Israel's official and unequivocal denial on 6 December that it was committing genocide in Gaza as a matter of courtesy before filing the present application on 21 December South Africa sent a note verbal to the embassy of Israel to reiterate its view that Israel's acts of genocide in Gaza amounted to genocide that it as a state party to the genocide convention was under an obligation to prevent genocide from being committed Israel responded by way of a note verbal that failed to address the issues raised by South Africa in its note and neither affirmed nor denied the existence of a dispute this was emailed later on 27 December this note was received by the relevant South African team on 29 December after the present application was filed on 4 January South Africa replied to this note verbal highlighting Israel's failure to prevent any response to the matters raised by South Africa over the previous months as reiterated in this note verbal South Africa made it clear that given Israel's ongoing conduct against Palestinians in Gaza the dispute referred to in its note verbal of 21 December remained unresolved and was plainly not capable of resolution by way of a bilateral meeting nevertheless South Africa proposed a meeting on 5 January again out of courtesy Israel responded to this note verbal by proposing that we reconnect to coordinate a meeting at the earliest opportunity after the close of hearings in the present case to this South Africa understandably replied that such a meeting would serve no purpose Madam President, these notes verbal ought to be found in the judges folder the existence of a dispute is a matter to be determined by an objective determination of the facts as they existed at the time of the filing of the application at this time South Africa had already accused Israel in the Security Council the General Assembly and other public fora of engaging in genocidal acts it had conducted a diplomatic march on Israel warning it that it viewed its conduct as genocidal it had requested the International Criminal Court to vigorously investigate crimes under the Genocide Convention committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip and it accused Israel into alia of the deliberate targeting of civilians intentionally causing starvation and impeding relief supplies it had accused Israel leaders of expressing the intent of committing genocide Israel had flatly denied South Africa's accusations despite these harsh accusations Israel has persisted in its genocidal acts against the population of Gaza what more evidence could be required to establish a dispute it is precisely because of a situation of this kind affecting the international community as a whole that Article 9 of the Genocide Convention does not require negotiations as a precondition to seizing the jurisdiction of the court certainly a respondent state cannot prevent a referral by claiming that there is no dispute and that it wants discussions on this matter when the existence of the dispute is clear for a state to insist on a time frame for negotiations would simply be a license to commit genocide and would run counter to the object and purpose of the Geneva of the Genocide Convention and in presently question of the crystallization of the dispute has been addressed by this court in preliminary objections at the marriage stage where the burden of proof is higher although the court has generally adopted a flexible approach to the subject it has laid down a number of tests for the existence of a dispute first it must be shown that the claim of one party is positively used by the other second the date for determining the existence of the dispute is the date of the application by subsequent conduct may be considered three whether the dispute exists must be determined by an objective determination of the facts and four viewers around the world on I-24 news you've been watching the hearing South African hearing the South African part of the hearing the International Court of Justice we're showing to you live so you have an idea we're being very transparent about what exactly is occurring in the International Court of Justice I'm joined in studio by Sherry Fine Gross from the former head of regional affairs for the National Security Council also with Raphael Yorshami former IDF intelligence agent thanks so much for both of you joining as we're doing this rolling coverage and what they're bringing out is the fact that there was one mention here that the South Africans had written a letter to the Israelis saying hey guys we think that there's a problem here you should take a listen to it you should watch it and the Israelis excuse us we have a war going on don't don't give us a letter that's gonna ask well that's not really an argument right if you're fighting a war even a friend would say and I doubt that we can so as this is what they're doing you know our greatest friend the US is actually telling us you know maybe you should consider doing this and consider that and what do we tell the Americans we say hey hey let's sit at the table come join our war cabinet listen to our dilemmas and we're happy happy to hear any consultation any advice on how do we prevent the next genocide how do we prevent another Hamas slot like the ones we saw October 7 how do we take away this threat this daily war crime to our citizens the threat of us going into shelters every day and Israel tried doing that at the United Nations they went in front of the Security Council and they said help us and it went on deaf ears exactly exactly this so this is this is kind of the hypocrisy that we're seeing this is kind of the the challenge that we're we're facing I think a lot of people if they're even Palestinian supporters will be surprised at some of the evidence and the videos the Israeli government has will show and how much it went to which length it went to try to prevent civilian death toll but you can't just accept the fact that a terrorist's agrinization is entrenched in civilian population and use it as humans shields and expect democracy like is it just to ignore it and not to retaliate there's no there's no moral standard for that there's no ethical standard for that there's no legal standard for that I'm going to bring in Rafael one question here that they had a discussion and as part of their case they point out the fact that 22,000 Gazans have been killed and since October the 7th in terms of bombing but what they did not do is separate what considered a civilian what's considered a combatant part of Hamas how will the IDF tomorrow in Israel's rebuttal or Israel's case be able to show the world because right now if you go on social media right now all they're talking about is like ah you see you see there is genocide being occurred there it is right there what does the what proof does the IDF have to show to say that's not the case they might even have been regretful collateral damage beyond what we thought we could avoid the play on words is about genocide what is a genocide and the second thing is as I said before how can they determine and they can't that it was a planned voluntary action that is collateral damage it was there we cannot deny it some people that were innocent were killed in the combat zone was this intentional was it part of a strategy by the IDF was it an order given by the Israeli government to the army it wasn't Rafael I'm going to hold on one second what's happening right now is that they've all been the judges are all now leaving the international court of justice this is the live picture you're seeing from the Hague these are 15 judges many of them are from all over the world Morocco Libya I believe a couple of them from there's one American judge that's part of this of course Israel has a judge on the panel as does the South Africans and then this wraps it up for the day in terms of that the proceedings but then what happens tomorrow is the whole thing is we'll repeat again tomorrow and this time the Israeli government will go up in front of the judges and will make the case against the South Africans charges of genocide that this is tomorrow a lot of the country a lot of Israel's reputation is at stake in the eyes of the world tomorrow and if you're the IDF what are you putting out as evidence to show so first of all as you see genocide or no genocide lunchtime is lunchtime so we're going to a good restaurant now to mourn the Palestinian people and second of all we've heard the long technical speech of one of the judges there in the court we've heard it it was quite boring and technical and let's hope it will continue that way because right now with all the respect to our reputation abroad we have a war to fight and short if it will not be imposed ceasefire I think if I'm not mistaken even if they do ask for that it's not I think I mean the Israelis do not have to obey but let's say if they will not to their tomorrow ask for a complete ceasefire then let this circus continue for years to come with the hope as you're mentioning that we can clean our name we can save our reputation but you know you have to be realistic the Jewish people has been through this kind of staging trials over centuries in the court as you see it visually and how the judges are dressed and how they speak and the tone of voice that is used holier than thou tone of voice reminds us of the Spanish Inquisition and we've survived the Spanish Inquisition the Inquisition didn't survive so we have to brace ourselves we have to be strong we have our conscience for ourselves we are moral we are the most ever ethical army we have done more than any army in the history of mankind has ever done during a war we are faced by a tribunal who is political, who is biased who are unfortunately for me the saddest if already so speaking of reputation is how South Africa's image is being besmeared by a government that is sold to the jihadist that is working hand in hand with terrorists that legitimizes the rape of Israeli women and is very sad for South Africa I think Mr. Mandela must be turning in his grave to see what has become of the country he saved from the horror of apartheid and to have such a government a racist government sitting today in Johannesburg so this is the saddest thing I think that he comes from a country to be one of the last in the world to be so racist and biased and it's a sad day it's also a sad day for the international community not such a sad day for us because we are fighting back I would have personally thought we shouldn't go to this appear in front of this court but you know what, it's very brave to fight back to explain to the world and to explain even to ourselves what is going on I'm very confident that the most important thing will not be the verdict the most important thing is how we see ourselves how we judge ourselves not how we are judged by this ridiculous circus Good ref, I'll have you hold on one second the viewers around the world looking on the screen right now what you're seeing on the right hand part of the screen is a pro-Palestinian demonstration that's at the Hague in front of the international court of justice now this says there is a pro-Israel a little bit more respectful about 300 meters down the road from there Look at the sharp contrast look, it's a soccer match it's not a soccer match, it's not a football match it's a serious court case which will make an important precedent to the law and law of conflict as we move on this is a historic day I have to disagree with my colleague here we shouldn't have been in this position at all, this is a dark day for Israel because it could have been the case would be much weaker if we didn't see some irresponsible comments by irresponsible ministers totally not in touch with reality of what the IDF is actually doing conducting itself on the ground and they should have been more careful and I hope they learn the lesson, I hope they they really learn from this because we shouldn't have gotten here because the whole argument it's not based on the conduction so much as for the intent the intent of genocide that is only gathered by again, irresponsible statesmen by politicians that has nothing to do with how the IDF conducts itself on a daily basis Sherry, I'm going to have you hold on one second let's take away from this demonstration for one minute because the whole idea of today's International Court of Justice was really to bring about to have an argument by South Africa against Israel for taking action after October the 7th now you remember October the 7th, 13 weeks ago 1200 1200 Israelis were butchered murdered in every horrific possible way known to mankind in fact tomorrow what the Israelis will do in front of the International Court of Justice is to show that if there was anything that resembles genocide is actually what's being done by Hamas against Israelis there are also 136 hostages being held by Hamas right now at gunpoint these are children, babies women, frail, elderly people Holocaust survivors and more and more of the Israeli hostages who were freed as part of that ceasefire deal with Hamas have been speaking out about their experiences with Gaza one of them is Lia Adzili who is trying her best to process what she went through her story might be one of those that's going to be shown tomorrow at the ICJ and while she's keeping the spotlight on the 136 people still being held hostage in Gaza more will have more on what she has to say in this report that's been adapted from Israel's channel 12 I think people are afraid to talk about it with me about that time when I wasn't around I understand that for a long time they didn't know at all what was going on with me they didn't know what to say I think there was a very very great fear among many people people who eulogized me and suddenly I came back from the dead a month ago Lia Adzili returned from captivity today is the first day she's gone back to teaching where's the teacher's room here I have no idea we just arrived oh it's your first day here too right yes, yes really this is a particularly festive day not only for Lia Adzili but also for these students although the war separated them the 12th grade students of the Nofi HaShor school fought to finish this year together and from today they will all live here in Ngeti, study here and sleep at night in a boarding school you were there with me and I thought about you a lot and these thoughts gave me strength to return to teaching today to day meeting with you they really strengthened me a lot this is by far the happiest event that I have had in the last few months but I think that at every event we have some kind of obligation to remember our friends who are still in captivity and think of them and pray for their safety and their return home soon Lia Adzili is one of the 75 members of Niroz who were kidnapped on October 7th in a small apartment only 5 kilometers from her Kibbutz the hardest 54 days of her life took place I watched some TV I knew the number of victims I knew the number of abductees I didn't know that Niroz was hit so hard I knew about 3 abductees from Niroz most of the time me, a girl who was with me and a guy I went out with from the Kibbutz and it seemed crazy to me 3 kidnapped from Niroz at that point I saw another family on TV a father and 2 children and I was shocked how can it be that 6 people were abducted from little Niroz it seemed to me like a hallucination what did you think about your family members I knew nothing about the boys and Aviv I was doing a year's service and all the time that's something that kept me going I said even if the worst happened at least she remained alive yes, it crossed my mind that my 18 year old remained to deal with the loss of both her parents and her 2 brothers and I was very afraid for her there is, I can't describe I can't describe the shrinking of everything inside from this fear did you eulogize them in your head them and myself the day when I turned on the TV and saw that there was a subtitle saying that Hamas was threatening to execute prisoners that night I had a conversation with myself I said, you might not get out of here alive and that's how I said goodbye to each of them parted from them and I got up in the morning and said, okay, you've done it you're getting out of here and returning to your family and returning to your life there were 2 of them in the apartment where she was kept both from near Oz but they had not previously known each other and yet from the first night they slept holding hands and they shared everything the food and the tears they counted the never ending days on board slots, ladders and ropes did you cry? sure, every day in the mornings mostly all the longing and all the anxiety and stress and uncertainty then they were telling us, listen the deal, 50 are getting out every day 12 or 13 they told us, you will not be the first stage of the deal no, it's old women, it's children suddenly we realized how many children and how many elderly women there were and we were really shocked just before the end of the ceasefire Hamas informed the mediators that wished to extend the ceasefire by 4 more days and this night continued and continued and never ends at some point we said to each other well no, they're not coming to take us today cry and enough enough, it doesn't mean we aren't going home we have to be strong a knock came on the door at this point when she was being held in the hospital in Kanyunis just before her release the two days that were Liat's most difficult days in this entire period began she met her friends from near Oz who told her everything she hadn't known until now I didn't imagine that that there were no Kibbutzim no school, that everything had changed you asked her about the names of people in the Kibbutz and she knew who was alive and who was dead and who was kidnapped she knew a lot, but she couldn't talk about my family I asked her, I told her you really, really don't know or you're not telling me during times, do you really not know you really don't know she told me no, I don't know someone accompanied every freed hostage and the first thing I said to mine was you must tell me I can't take it anymore, you have to tell me and she said to me, your children all three are fine they're waiting for you in a hospital and Aviv was injured and kidnapped then I breathed a sigh of relief it kept going through my mind I can kiss their beautiful faces I can kiss their beautiful faces we hugged and couldn't let go to suddenly touch them after all this time still it was a meeting that was missing something because Aviv was not there 12 hours after you were reunited you received the most difficult message ever it was clear to me what they were going to say I didn't cry at that moment I was mainly interested in why the message was coming now how for two months did they not know that he was killed and now they came to the conclusion that he was what did they tell you that as soon as the information is available it is handed over to the family we tend to venerate all the dead but Aviv Atsili was truly a unique man perhaps because he had faced a difficult disease he maximized every moment in life 13 years ago he informed the Kibbutz that the family was going to the east for six months they didn't like the idea but he insisted at every opportunity he rode motorcycles and bicycles skied, met with an incredible circle of friends and painted dad you are a hero I admire you you taught me what a man is a real man, a man who loves people a field boy a tailor and a painter and a terrible singer and such a bad dancer that every time I saw you dance I felt the need to protect you and hold you so you wouldn't fall thank you for every day that I was privileged to be near you and under your protection you are the stuff heroes are made of goodnight dad Aviv lived as if every day was his last this is his legacy to all of us live, live do everything you dream dream more and more and more and accomplish everything possible and if you want to honor his memory start now to Netta or free and Aya Aviv used to say that in order to gain experiences in life you have to miss the dinners so they decided that his funeral would also be an experience and they would dance his brother brought him the ugliest John Deershirt in the world from Australia and I forbade him to wear it and one day he went out into the field and sent me a picture with the shirt I asked him why are you sending me this thing he answered me so that you don't forget me there is no chance of that there is no chance it amazes me that he loved me 136 people remained held hostage at gunpoint by Hamas, babies, children young people girls, boys adults, they're frail elderly and members of the families of those hostages are now at the Nova Festival party grounds in Rayayman that's where Pierre Kloschender, I-24 news correspondent is right now, Pierre this scene behind you is solemn, tell us more Right, the families of the hostages are actually a few kilometers away from here in a closed military area the army has allowed them to shout their broken shouts cry their broken cries their broken hearts toward Gaza toward Chanyunas calling their relatives that are being held hostages 136 many of them were abducted from the Rayim Nova Fest where all the portraits of those who were killed 364 who were killed butchered, massacred some raped and some were abducted and the families we can hear from here what they're saying they're saying we're doing everything for you we're doing everything in our might to release you we're working with international community we're working with the Israeli government in order to release you and they're just sending pleas you hear one of them saying Idan this is your parents Idan Shtibi will never give up will come and save you the whole world and the countries with you be hopeful and this is what you hear listen Israel God king of the world get the hostages out now this is what they're shouting at the border fence where we can't go with loudspeakers backed up with the sound system in the hope that in the dark tunnels of Hamas and palestinian Islamic jihad these hostages will hear their plea it's an absolutely moving moving moving moment to hear this and just the idea of that is so sad it's very sad 136 hostages babies, children, young people like Idan's parents who are screaming for him to come home Pierre Kloschunder thanks so much for joining us live from the Nova Festival party grounds and you'll be there throughout the day thanks again I'm going to go back in studio here with Shiri Feingrosman and with Raphael Roshalmi that's tough it's hard to follow that yeah so while we have this moment we have about two minutes give us 30 seconds of what you're expecting tomorrow so the Israeli team will go on you'll understand that the legal advisor of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Tal Becker and also Gilad Noam who is the deputy attorney for international law deputy attorney general who speaks and of course Professor Malcolm Shaw and others that could be there could be some changes probably the first thing is to say that Israel has the right to exist and this is the root cause of everything and there was show videos of what Raphael mentioned before of how we aborted some of the operations they'll bring evidence of how we call people up to ask them to evacuate and we'll bring a lot of context to this Raphael what do you expect tomorrow quickly I think I don't know what line of defense the Israeli team has chosen I think for me the main point is to separate what happened from intent whatever happened is regrettable there was no intent after that you can extrapolate and call it all kind of crazy name I think that the only positive point for us today was the exaggeration in the case that was put by the South Africans they absolutely exaggerated in this proportionate way so that might be a weak point for them later on Raphael or Shalmy thank you so much thank you so much we'll have live covers of the proceedings all day here on I-24 news I'm Albert Lewitton in Tel Aviv I-24 news continues after the break with her king's famous 1968 mountaintop speech was based on his trip to the promised land well now 55 years later his prophetic words are coming true hundreds of African American women took a journey of a lifetime to the holy land we'll introduce you to the amazing female spiritual religious leaders who are infusing new energy into the next generation of African Americans