 dozens of correspondents throughout the world, hundreds of millions of people in scores of countries. They are completely chun down in their beds. The frontier that separates Israel, the state of emergency and war in Israel. Bringing Israel's story to the world. I-24 News Channels, now on Hot. Tell me, watching I-24 News, we're coming to you live from Tel Aviv. Source, close to Hamas, says the group is willing to extend a temporary truce for four days in exchange for the release of more hostages. During the past six days, Hamas has freed 60 Israeli hostages, all but one are women and children, along with a number of Thai nationals. Israel has freed 180 Palestinian prisoners. Ten more hostages are due to be released tonight on the final day of the current agreement. A member of the Be Best family says that 10-month-old Qubir, his four-year-old brother Ariel and their mother Shiri are not on the list. Nine children, including the Be Best children, are still being held by terrorist groups in Gaza. More and more Israeli families are being partially reunited. Scenes of those reunions are a source of great joy and relief here in Israel. Take a look. Well, joining us now, our correspondent Pierre Closh and Laia is down in central Tel Aviv at the newly named Hostages Square, where some of the families of the hostages and their supporters are gathered. And Pierre, waiting with baited breath up with the whole country, really, on what could be the final night of hostage releases? Hopefully it won't be the final night for these hostages, for their families, for those who have mobilized and you see them behind me. Hundreds of people are already here offering their support to the families of the hostages and calling for their release. Hopefully not the last batch, because Hamas has already intimated via the AFP news agency that it's willing to extend the truce or the pose in the fighting or the ceasefire, whatever you call it, for four more extra days, which would mean four more extra batches of 10 people each for the release of hostages. Now, Israel has some conditions. First of all, Hamas has to release all women and children before they start dealing with the release of other hostages. And now they're starting to talk about categories. The willingness of Hamas to extend the release of hostages, the truce for four extra days, is not a surprise because they've already agreed in principle that there would be a 10-day lull in the fighting if the release of hostages was going on. According to the same terms of agreements, three Palestinian prisoners accused of terror acts against one innocent hostage. That's the ratio. And four extra days would mean until Sunday, which is the end of the 10-day period. Now, they're talking about categories of release of further hostages, but they're still 30 to 40 women and eight to nine children that are still held by Hamas. So the first demand is to finish the release of all the women and children. And then to start talking about the elderly, male Israelis, the female soldiers, the reservists in the Israeli army, male, also the bodies of those who have been kidnapped and were murdered inside Gaza. Now, we know that there are at least three soldiers that were kidnapped. Their bodies were kidnapped to Gaza. So that would be also another category. But then there could be obviously a harsh dilemma for the Israeli government and for the Israeli people because Hamas will obviously want to extend the truce, maybe extend it into a full ceasefire, maybe a one-year ceasefire, a couple of years ceasefire. And that goes contradict to what the Israeli government has committed to, the full destruction of Hamas, be it militarily, administratively, politically. That would go beyond that sense of mission. And that sense of mission is shared by many Israelis. So there is a real harsh dilemma here. All right, Pierre, thanks very much. Pierre, Klaus Schendler, they're down at Hostage Square as it's been renamed in Central Tel Aviv. With me in the studio this hour, Yakov Lapin is a military and strategic affairs analyst at the Jewish New Syndicate and the Miriam Institute. Good to see you, Yakov. So that is the dilemma Israel now finds itself in, an offer to keep prolonging the ceasefire in exchange for hostages. But as Pierre just said, that means that one of the aims of the war to destroy Hamas could be compromised. So I'm going to risk going against the conventional wisdom here and say that there is no dilemma. As long as Israel can keep getting 10 hostages a day, at least, saving the lives of 10 people, I think it will continue to do that. That is the moral thing to do. That was one of the central war aims. The sanctity of life is to get everybody back. As soon as that no longer becomes an option, for whatever reason, either all the hostages have been released or Hamas stops. Well, there's 190 hostages around about. So if we're talking about 10 hostages a day. 19 days. And then the war resumes, in my opinion. Or the Hamas will stop well before that, which is, I think, much more likely because it wants to build an insurance policy for itself. And then the war resumes. So whichever way you look at it, I think the war is going to resume. I simply cannot believe that there will be any Israeli government that would even survive a decision to let Hamas stand on its feet at the end of this war. And I think after the events of October 7th, that's simply not a viable option. All right. OK, thank you. I'll stay with us. Let's talk a bit more about some of the hostages who have already been released and who have been reunited with their families. And we have been hearing about some of the horrific things that they've had to go through. The 12-year-old Eitan, for example, kept alone in a room for 16 days, forced to watch Hamas atrocity videos of his family members and neighbors being murdered. We'll talk more about that in a moment. Let's go down, though, to Shiba Medical Center in central Israel, which we'll be expecting to receive some of the hostages tonight. Ariel Levy-Waldman is there for us. This will be the first stop for some of the hostages who are free tonight, won't it, Ariel? There's also been a place for those already released to be reunited with their family members. Absolutely. In fact, eight of the 10 people released by Hamas just last night were brought here, which is going to be a quick list of who was totally, who was released in total just last night. There's 10 people beginning with Mia Limeberg. That was age 17, the only actual youngest person on the list, along with her mother, Gabriella Limeberg, as well, age 59. Ditsa Haiman, age 84, was the oldest. And most people are at the higher end this year. Tamar Metzger, age 78. Ada Sagai, age 75. Nora Agojo, age 60. Ramon Burshtov, age 36. Clara Marman, age 62. Ophelia Reutman, age 77. And Mirov Tal, age 54. Were the ones released last night. Now, the hospitals all around the country said that these 10 people were released, none of them in any sort of threatening condition, which is good. But doctors have directly said there are still a lot of medical threats on the table. And one of those are actually these psychological threats, as well. You mentioned just one case of a psychological torture that was inflicted on a child. That's just one of many stories. The stories of making children watch videos of the seventh. At gunpoint, being told if they made a noise or cried, they would be shot. Even during the release, they were subject to psychological abuses, surrounded by an angry mob, spitting, hurling abuse, cursing, and mocking them, mocking powerless children, even as they are being released. That was more or less par and parcel for the course, but it's not just the psychological stuff. People that are held underground for 53 days face a whole bevy of psychological and physical conditions. We spoke to a doctor earlier here who told us what some of those conditions could be. It's very complicated regarding medical challenges and psychosocial challenges. So the main issue for our point of view is psychosocial. We speak about people that 50 days were in captivity, sometimes alone, isolated from the world. Some of them were underground without knowing if we speak about day or night. No sun exposure for a few weeks. It can make also some problems like depression. And if you speak about the medical challenges, so it's mainly shortage of vitamins, malnutrition issues, immobility, issues and coagulation problems that could also initiate. Those people, luckily, they are part of very good communities. The Kibbutz is a very good community. The families are strong and united. And it's a very good starting point to start a very long road of recovery and rehabilitation. State of Israel and of course also Shiba Medical Center are giving them everything they need. And we hope and we are quite optimistic that it will be on the positive side. Yeah, it's horrendous to hear what those children went through. We're only getting a tiny snapshot of it, aren't we, Ariel? And we don't know if those children will ever be the same. I'm thinking of Emily Hand. Her father says she won't raise her voice above a whisper because she was told to keep quiet for so long. And what about the older people? People in their 70s and 80s, as you say, kept underground. Some of them deprived, of course, of medication. And we're hearing that they were also on the brink of starvation. They lost so much weight. Absolutely. I mean, with the older people, they are physically a lot more fragile and there's a lot more that can go wrong when they're held in that sort of circumstances. I mean, you have so many people that are dependent on life-saving medications just to maintain home ecostasis. When that's taken away, they start to degrade very quickly. One of the hostages released this week, still in critical condition, released on the verge of death and exactly that sort of circumstances. When I spoke before about some of the conditions they're facing, you're held underground for 53 days in the dark and in the dank. That is a recipe for breeding lung conditions and elderly people already have weakened lungs, weakened immune systems. When they're kept in the dark, when they're kept in the moisture, that can escalate to full blown pneumonia. And that could be fatal at those ages. So, again, it's just a small sampling of what some of these hostages went through, some of the medical challenges they're facing. And while they're saying that everyone's been released or most people have been released in stable conditions, stable isn't exactly the same as good. There's still a very long road to recovery ahead for many of these people. Yeah, that's right, Ariel. Thank you very much, Ariel. I live in Wildland there down at the Sheba Hospital, which will hopefully be receiving more hostages tonight. All right, well, we've got more detail now of the horrific conditions those children, women, elderly people were kept in. Here's Robert Swift. As Israeli hostages return home, the stories of their days spent in captivity underground or being moved between bombed buildings are filtering out. They were kept in the houses for a few days, and then they took them to the tunnels. Emily Hanne's father described how his daughter returned from Gaza thin, pale, and believing that she had spent a year inside what she refers to as the box. The most shocking, disturbing part of the meeting was she was just whispering. I had to put my ear on her lips like this close and say, what did you say? Some hostages have described being treated without abuse. After the initial brutal violence of their capture, others have spoken of beatings, repeated threats of violence, and of children being made to watch footage from the October 7th massacres. Eitan apparently experienced horrors over there. Hamas forced them to watch horrific films. Maybe I'm naive, but I wanted to hope that he was well treated, but apparently not, they're monsters. As the war has run on, conditions for captives appear to have deteriorated, with the quantity and variety of their food reducing. And they haven't eaten well, they're a thing, they're exhausted. Hamas has attempted to portray itself well, releasing video of smiling and waving captives being handed over to the Red Cross. But some of the hostages, even under duress, have not played along with their game. A long path to recovery awaits those recently returned to their families and to freedom. They're not talking too much, but they are telling us some details that help us to help them. A process that for each of the returned begins with a reunion. A little bit of a glimpse into the horror that those hostages have been going through over the past almost two months. And when we talk about the number of hostages being held, it is said to be around 155 Israelis, among them nine children, still being held in Gaza. And the Bebas family, that's the family of baby Kveer, the 10-month-old, they have said that they are not on the list of hostages to be released tonight. So we'll have to wait and see. Yaakov Lapin is still with us. And that's kind of a reminder, isn't it, when we hear about what these kids went through, those old people went through. A reminder of why Israel needs to continue the war against Hamas. I couldn't agree more. This is the clearest reminder that we are facing Jihadist savages. There's no other way to describe what Hamas is, what they have proven themselves to be. And there's no way that this kind of presence can be allowed to remain on the border. All of the stories coming out should not be surprising. They are shocking and horrific, but not surprising, knowing what we know about Hamas and what it did on October 7th. There's no reason to believe that they're capable of being humane to these hostages. They are as the ant of Eitan Yalomis said, monsters. So, you know, this is all absolutely a reminder of who's on the other side of the border. And if there's any way for Gaza itself to have a horizon and to not produce a terror army and to produce these kinds of deranged values, Hamas is going to have to go. However, the war is going to get a lot more complicated, isn't it? Once it does resume, if it does resume, because it will have to move eventually to the south of Gaza, where the vast majority of Palestinian civilians are now. Do you think that Israel can retain the support, for example, of the United States as it moves ahead with this? I think that's a critical question. The United States has been indicating that it expects the war when it expands to the south to do so in a certain way, in a more targeted way, in a more surgical way. And now the war cabinet is going to have to make its decision. How much of that, how much of those requests slash demands from Washington will be complied with? And, you know, these are very, very difficult decisions. Time will tell. Certainly the fact that the million-plus people who have left northern Gaza and Gaza City are in shelters and tent cities in the south is going to require much more focus targeting. But the idea is fully capable of doing that. It's got the digital command networks that enable it to know exactly where to direct its firepower, where not to, where to send forces, where not to. In real time, it has the technology to do that kind of coordination. So I think this is fully within the IDF's wheelhouse to continue south and to remain very, very targeted as it does. And of course, it is very much in the interest of Hamas to get pictures of Palestinian suffering out to the world. Are we going to see members of the international press into Gaza, do you think, as the ceasefire continues? It's possible, I'm not sure. But, you know, I think Hamas' end game, I think, you know, we have to put it on the table. They want this ceasefire to become solidified because the interest of the regime is to survive. To serve that end goal, they will do everything. They will try to harness the international media. They will try to harness the international community and create pressure. That's their secret weapon that they've been using in every conflict so far since they've taken over the Gaza Strip. This time, I believe it's not going to work because Israel knows that it's continuity. It's on the line and that it cannot allow this regime and terror army to survive. How Hamas will be eliminated going forward, I think that is certainly up for debate. But it's a question of how, in my mind, and not if... Okay. Well, it is a debate that is raging in Israel. And some of the family members who still have their loved ones in Gaza remember around 155 people still being held, including 10-month-old Kvair. Hundreds of Israelis gathered earlier in front of the headquarters of the IDF to demand that the government do more to bring home their family members. We want to pressure the government to release not only the children, also the children, but their parents. I would say we need to give anything they would like to as much gas, as much as electricity, as many prisoners that we have within the country to bring everybody home, including soldiers, men, and everyone. I mean, women and children, it's beautiful to see them coming home. We're all extremely relieved to see each and every one of them. But we need all of them back. Well, understandably, a lot of Israelis are calling on the government to do whatever it takes to get their loved ones back and it's hard to imagine being in that position. But Israelis paying a pretty heavy price, isn't it? Not only the ceasefire, which some say could put the troops in additional danger. They've also released and will release up to 300 Palestinian prisoners, some of whom were jailed for attempted stabbings, carrying out stabbings, attempted suicide bombings, that kind of thing. These are some quite dangerous people, aren't they? 100%, I would just add, this is something that I've been saying in recent days that over 1,000 security prisoners have been arrested in recent days by the IDF, most of them Hamas members. So when you look at the net assessment of prisoners that have been released versus security prisoners that have been taken in, it's actually much more in Israel's favor. And I think that's something that Hamas would be, is very much trying to make Palestinians forget. But far more, because of its attack, far more Palestinian security prisoners are right now behind bars than freed. And yes, of course, Israel is taking a calculated risk, letting dangerous terrorists go, but it seems absolutely worth it to secure the lives of its civilians. This is part of Israel's commitment to its people, and I think there's a national consensus around that. Okay, Yakov, thank you very much, Yakov Laffin, there. Well, Ayat Young helped to defend his friends and neighbors from Hamas terrorists when they invaded his kibbutz, Alumim, on October 7th. With their courage and their quick thinking, they managed to prevent a much bigger tragedy. Our Ori Shapira caught up with Ayat at the Rehabilitation Center in Tel Aviv. Here in the Rehabilitation Hospital in Tel Aviv, Ayat Young from kibbutz, Alumim, continues his battle, a battle which started on October 7th and is still not ended. That day began with a missile attack. Like many other residents of the south, Ayat rushed to the safe room. It was too quiet for me, so I checked my phone again and I saw about 20 messages on the same group, and one of the messages was clearly one of my neighbors. One of his, also in the immediately respond group, said terrorists inside the kibbutz on motorcycles, everyone to go to the armory to take their weapons and gear, so I told my wife there is something unusual inside the kibbutz, going inside the kibbutz, and I need to go out. They all found out that the terrorists infiltrated the kibbutz and killed some of the Thai and Nepali workers. When he came out to rescue his neighbor who was shot by terrorists, he realized that the situation was even worse than he thought. I saw about 16 terrorists running like soldiers, like we are trained in basic training, in pairs with distances between each pair, so if we shoot them, we won't hit everyone. And I could count about 16 terrorists running towards us, and with the other three, it was about at least 20 terrorists coming to the kibbutz. When my friend got back, we said to each other, we need to go to a better place. And just when we went on the high ground over the stairs, the stones, one terrorist saw us. We didn't know he was already there. He shot us first. He shot my friend in his leg, and I got ricochet from the bullet inside my cheek here, and it went down under the ear and stayed there. I shot him back. I killed him. He lay down. There was another terrorist there. A few seconds later, I got shot in an eye-fell pain in my back. Luckily, Ayal was not killed. He was evacuated to Soroko Hospital in Bersheva, where he stayed in intensive care. His next stop was Reut Hospital. Ayal came with an amazing motivation to improve. He was working more than he had to work every day. So it's a rehabilitation process. It's really a story of success, because in rehabilitation, we don't aim only to function. For me, Ayal is a true story of a successful rehabilitation process. Ayal and his family moved to a hotel in the coastal city of Natania. He says he misses the life in the kibbutz. In the meantime, he's focused on healing himself and watching his favorite football team Tottenham Hotspur. He even got special videos from Manor Solomon, the Israeli who plays in the team. I want to say thank you for everything he does for Israel. That he's not afraid to be active and publish things and take a stand for Israel. I felt it was very good for me in my soul and my head to see what's happening and be a bit running away for two hours, running away from the news, from my injury, because when I watch football, even though we don't always play well for the last three games, still it's very good for me, because that's normal for me. To watch the games, to be happy, to be disappointed, to feel like normal. More than 50 days after October 7, Ayal continues his treatment and hope to be fully recovered soon. He is still expected to have more surgery to remove one of the bullets in his back. This is just another story of courage and survival out of many we heard since the Hamas onslaught. One of the many, many Israelis trying to recover after the horrors of October 7, just to remind you where we are this hour, Israel says it has released a list of 10 hostages due to be released by terrorists in Gaza tonight. This on the final day of a six-day truce, which has already been extended once, and Hamas has reportedly offered to free more hostages in return for that ceasefire being extended even further. The Israeli government has said previously that it will not extend the truce any more than 10 days, but with more than 150 hostages still being held in Gaza. We do not have any confirmation of how long that ceasefire deal will be extended for nine children still being held in Gaza, and the family of Kofir Bebas say that he is not on the list of hostages to be free tonight. Stay with us. We'll keep you updated with all the latest details. Don't go away. 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 be fought as well. Welcome back. Many Israeli families being partially reunited here in Israel this Wednesday. The terrorist group Hamas has freed dozens of women and children from Gaza over the past five days as part of a temporary ceasefire agreement which has seen Israel forced to release dozens of Palestinian prisoners as well. Among them these boys, 12-year-old Yagil and his 16-year-old brother Orh. Yagil, you remember, was used in a Hamas propaganda video weeks before his release. The boy's father, Yair, is still being held. Well, we can take a listen now to their father, Renan Agome, here's what she has to say. On behalf of Orh Yagil, myself and the whole Jacob family, I wish to thank the State of Israel and everyone who were enlisted to the efforts in releasing them and bringing them back home. I can't even start to explain how it feels to have them back here. It feels like the end of a bad dream and we can finally start our lives together. But it's not over until it's over. There are still so many hostages left behind, including their father, Yair, who is still held hostage in Gaza and we want everyone back home. One of the Israeli mothers who has thankfully got her children back. Hamas and other terrorist groups are still holding nine children in Gaza along with 155 hostages. Well, a warning, what I am about to say is disturbing. Investigators have been collecting evidence of widespread rape and sexual assaults, abuse and mutilation perpetrated by Hamas terrorists and their supporters on October 7th. The corpses of women and girls tied up and mutilated, some with broken pelvises. Over 1,500 testimonies have been collected from survivors as well as by the Zaka search and rescue teams who were among the first to the scene after the terrorist attacks of October 7th. But there has been silence from the Me Too movement and from other global feminist movements and from UN Women. UN Women have ignored all of our requests for an interview, but one of their members did speak to CNN and here's what she said when asked why UN Women wouldn't condemn Hamas specifically for rape. Indeed, UN Women always supports impartial independent investigations into any serious allegations of gender-based or sexual violence. And within the UN family, these investigations are led by the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights. And just to provide a little bit of context in terms of UN Women's role, UN Women specifically provides and has extensive knowledge on gender-based violence and provides and supports investigations as we do with all UN investigations. And so consequently, in this context and within the UN system, it is the Independent International Commission of Inquiry, which for us has the mandate to investigate all alleged violations. Did you get that? A lot of words, quite a convoluted sentence. Not quite sure what she was saying, but she certainly didn't condemn Hamas. Well, with me in the studio, Miriam Schlaer is the Executive Director of the Tel Aviv Crisis Centre for Sexual Assault. Miriam, thank you for being with us. You were rolling your eyes during that clip. What was she trying to say exactly? No idea, but it's completely outrageous and that's part of the thing that we're feeling actually a real sense of betrayal as far as we're concerned. The feminist movement, human rights organizations, how can they possibly stay silent to something like this, that's what's going on completely, the silence is deafening and it's absolutely, it's in addition to everything that happened and in addition to all the horrible atrocities that happened on October 7th, one of the things that's breaking our hearts is the silence of these women's organizations and these feminist organizations that are completely ignoring what happened and completely refusing to condemn and this goes in contrary to all the solidarity that feminist movements are supposed to have in sisterhood and believing the victim and all the things that we learned and it's just completely setting us back lots and lots and lots of years and it's a complete travesty. Yeah, believe all women was the mantra, wasn't it? Believe all women, absolutely. All of a sudden the director of a rape crisis center in Canada is looking and it doesn't believe victims or they're looking for forensic evidence. This is something that stands in complete opposition to everything that we believe in and everything that we fought for all over the years. So I guess that it holds true unless you get to the Israeli border and then all of a sudden all these ideologies and all these guidelines that we have just completely fall apart. Alright, well that collapsed the morality aside for those who are trying to cast out on the fact that there was mass rape and there was sexual abuse and there was sexual torture talk us through the evidence that there is that the Israeli police are putting together. First of all there's evidence of the interrogation of the Hamas terrorists by themselves who actually testified about the fact that this was their intent, there's written materials that were found about it, there's Zaka that were the first responders that found, there's pathologists that have forensic evidence about it. Who have examined the women's corpses. There's testimonies of people who are at the music event, the NOVA event. I actually have been astonished because now I heard that that's even being denied that it was a music event and it wasn't actually on something on social media it was called some sort of army get together that the Israeli soldiers are the ones that did the crime. The 12 year old girl in the wheelchair who was murdered along with her father clearly in military. So I guess as far as we're concerned we feel the rape crisis center was formed and established under the slogan you're not alone and today a lot of Israeli women and a lot of Israeli women organizations and rape crisis centers and male victims as well just feel extremely alone and we just can't understand how this hypocrisy and how this silence and the most outrageous thing is that there's an actual justification and excuse. Even the fact that they're saying even people who do believe that it happened Susan Saradin or all these other comments that came out that actually come and say October 7th it happened but it's because of the occupation. How could there ever be an excuse or justification for rape? When did that happen? When can rape be a legitimate source, when that could be a weapon of war? How could that possibly be true? And it is a weapon of war. And in addition to that there are people that are actually justifying the actions it's not even everybody that's denying that it happened there are people that say okay it happened these atrocities happened we have to understand that in the context there is no context for sexual assault ever. There's no context for kidnapping a child there's no context for that as much as we may feel we may have similar opinions about the occupation about the suffering of the Palestinian civilian population it has nothing to do with what happened any kind of sense of morality has to come out 100% and say that what happened on October 7th is completely unacceptable this is a terrorist organization that did things that are completely out of the realm of what's acceptable and what's common morality. I want to talk about what happened because there is testimony of comparisons with the Holocaust how the Holocaust also used rape to humiliate women in front of their families their husbands to brutalize them and also there's a lot of comparison with what happened in Bosnia Serbs raped thousands of Bosnian women and that is when the UN actually said rape is a war crime there's an investigation going on right now into the use of rape by Russian soldiers against civilians in Ukraine is there any kind of UN investigation planned for what happened there? Not that we know you just heard the UN comment and it's absolutely outrageous that the UN women who were supposed to be coming their entire reason of existence is to protect women and women's rights and the fact that they won't meet with women's organizations the fact that they won't come and talk about the subject the fact that they're denying that it actually happened is just completely outrageous and we know at the rape crisis centers and everyone that were talking to by the way there's been a surge of calls by all these victims who have been feeling completely triggered by these events and having really detrimental effects of post-trauma we know that these kind of denials and these kind of things is considered to be like a second rape by all these people and all these victims and all these survivors it's not enough what they went through they actually have to stand up now and defend themselves against a world that is either denying it or saying it's not that bad and you know it's part of the tools for liberation which is absolutely obscene we're in 2023 and people are actually just as a legitimate tool of war or legitimate means of liberation yeah it's pretty shocking isn't it well we as I say at I-24 news we reached out to UN women they didn't return our calls they haven't got back to us we extend our invitation for an interview anytime you like Miriam Schler thank you very much indeed I want to say that anyone who is listening to me if you're in Israel anywhere across we have lines that were here for you 24-7 1202 line for women, 1203 line for men we're here for you and we do believe you alright thank you Miriam, Miriam Schler there well there have been large anti-Israel pro-Palestinian demonstrations in major European cities in recent weeks in Sweden you might have seen this this is the young climate change activist Greta Thunberg she was chanting not about the environment but to crush Zionism well the Palestinian cause is popular with Sweden's Muslim population which stands at about 8% of the country Sweden has taken in millions of immigrants in recent years from countries like Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan and Syria my next guest was born in Yemen but grew up in Stockholm Loi Ahmad thank you very much for joining us Loi you're a journalist at Bulletin you're also a content creator on X and other social media networks thank you very much for being with us your first time in Israel I understand what do you make of the country and how does this fit in with what you knew about Israel and what you were told about Israel before you came here well I was told many things about Israel obviously I actually grew up in Yemen for 20 years not Sweden I moved to Sweden when I was 20 and I've lived in Sweden for 10 years what I learned about Israel growing up in Yemen is that it's an occupation that needs to be destroyed we learn about Jews that they're disgusting that they are an abomination that we need to just get rid of and it is something that is taught in schools it's something that is taught in mosques to try to say that we need to end this kind of hatred and madness but sadly even in Sweden we have the same kind of anti-Semitism that is blossoming everywhere and we're trying the Swedish government and people in Europe are trying to kind of level out how do you treat a mass migration from places where anti-Semitism is the status quo and how do you deal with it and Europe is finding itself in a very chaotic phase right now so for the first time I want to say that I'm very happy to be in Israel I think it's a fantastic country and the people have been treating me with absolute respect and just before coming here I was at a store and a guy was telling me he was very kind and he said would you like to have a Pepsi and I was like no thank you he was like no no I'm paying for it and I was completely shocked because I have never been treated like that in Sweden or in Europe and in the Middle East also exist in Israel and that is something that I wish that the Arabs and Muslims outside of Israel and who hate Israel would learn to understand because the people who live in Israel are people who deserve respect and love and peace it's not just the people in Palestine who deserve it and that is kind of the lack of humanity that I'm trying to fight against in my social medias Yeah I remember when I first came here the fact that all of the signs were in Arabic is a reflection of how Jews and Arabs live together here it's not a perfect country but it is a country the slur against Israel is that it's an apartheid state but you go around and you see these mixed communities I just wanted to ask you as well about what is going on in Europe because presumably your family left Yemen for a better life in Europe free country, free press, democracy there seems to be people do that, they're escaping persecution but there seems to be some people who want to import the cultures that they left behind you see them marching on the streets of London for the Pakistani terrorist group or supporting Hamas and other Islamist groups where does that come from do you think? I think it comes above all it comes from the very fact that European politicians and European journalists have failed Europe they have failed the Jewish community in Europe they have failed the LGBTQ community in Europe they have done everything to dismantle any sense of harmony and community in Europe the fact that like a country like Sweden that in the past 25 years they have imported more than 2 million people the vast majority of them come from dysfunctional countries where the status quo is to hate Jews, to hate LGBTQ people too we have an honor culture where we kill women who take off their hijab and it's not a fringe extremist this is something that we struggle with in the Middle East it is something that my family and liberal Arabs get silenced and killed for trying to speak again so this is an extreme and hostile culture that we need to fight against we need to educate against we need to eradicate the culture of violence and extremism and extreme religious interpretation in every school and in every mosque in most countries in the Middle East so it is disheartening to see that Europe and especially countries like Sweden where liberalism and freedom of speech are something that is so respected and so admired but when it comes to migration from the Middle East they believe that people who come from there are just going to automatically become Swedish and that is not the case that is happening we see how anti-Semitism in Sweden is flourishing in a city like Malmo where more than 2,000 Jews used to live today there are barely any because of mass migration from Muslim countries and this is something that Swedish journalists and Swedish politicians have been covering and lying about and today they have a very stupid tactic of trying to pretend like no but we never silenced people who spoke about these things what are you talking about when literally every journalist or opinion builder or issues have been called far-right and Nazi and racist and now they are all trying to pretend that is not the case it is just absolutely disgusting to see even you, you have had a lot of backlash some people have actually called you Islamophobic they said that you are lumping all Muslims together you wrote a letter and it says dear Muslims people are afraid of us is that a little unfair are you bunching all Muslims together when you say that am I lying when I say that I am a secular Muslim I am a secular Muslim but people are still scared of me and they think that I might have an agenda and people even say that I am using Taqiyyah which is lying within Islamic theology but I am not a religious Muslim and I think that we have to confront our demons in the Islamic community and realize that it is not the Jews and it is not the West who are destroying ourselves in our communities it is the fact that we ourselves have come up with policies we have come up with doctrines that oppress half of our population the women that oppress our minorities that hate the Jews that eradicate difference and difference in opinion we absolutely hate difference in opinion in the Middle East especially if it is directed at the Islamic culture and the religion I mean in Israel here a country that people claim is so oppressive and hateful and non-democratic I can say anything I want about Judaism or the prime minister now if I were in Saudi Arabia and I say that Islam is not a religion of peace I would be put in prison for at least 10 years like Raif Batwe and he was flogged in prison for 10 years the Saudi blogger and that's just not Raif Batwe that's every liberal writer but many liberal writers write to me right now and say thank you for voicing these opinions and saying these things that we cannot dare to say in Qatar in Saudi Arabia and Yemen they're killed and I'm pretty much just saying that we have to support these voices we have to support these people and we have to politically dismantle the extremism that exists in schools and mosques in the West and in the East and it's so tragic that it exists in the West right now as a result of journalists and politicians being absolute failures well just talking about that looking forward what is your outlook for Europe because we are seeing a bit of a backlash to these policies that you've been talking about we just had Erhard Vilders elected in the Netherlands he has said he wants to ban mosques in the past he says he wants to ban immigration from Muslim countries in Sweden too the government's moving more to the right do you think that this could be the trend if something isn't done about it well you know as it's said for every reaction there is an opposite and equally a strong reaction and I do think that Europe now is going through a paradigm shift where they realize that oh no we have actually created chaos and we ourselves have created this chaos and the rise of the right is just a result of the naive Europe that believed that the people who would come from Africa and the Middle East would become Europeans and would have European ideals Europe is slowly waking up and it's shifting to the right obviously and I think we will continue to see this trend when you have Swedish women walking on the street and they get harassed and they get called whores it's like the most terrible these people have opened their hearts and their homes for you they thought you were coming from war and that you were really running away and you were trying to integrate and become a part of the society that you moved to and you were trying to contribute but a big number of the people who have come have not come with that agenda they have come with a very vile anti-west colonial mindset where people believe that you Europeans have colonials colonized Africa and the Middle East and now it's our turn to do the same thing to you which is absolutely horrific and Sweden never colonized Syria for example yet you have people from Syria who say well Europe is colonial and we have the right to do what we're doing it's just absolutely disgusting to see and it's no wonder that Europe is turning right and they're saying okay we've had enough of this I think that the politicians who have allowed for this are responsible and they need to admit it and they need to apologize to Europeans especially in countries like Europe and Britain where they're gas-lighting their populations and pretending like that was never their plan and they never had a hand in this they need to be held accountable it's certainly a hot issue in Europe and they will be demating it for years to come I thank you for coming to Israel thank you for coming to see us Well the Sheba Medical Center in Central Israel is preparing to receive more of the hostages we're hoping that some 10 hostages will be freed tonight our correspondent Ariel Levin Wildman is at the Sheba Medical Center and he's with us now Ariel Yes so that is generally the idea of what's going to happen we have seen an extension of the ceasefire by two days to allow 20 more hostages to be released that first stop is always at one of Israel's hospitals now the good news as of today stated by all the hospitals nobody released last night was in any sort of life-threatening condition that said we don't actually know the statuses of who's going to be released in the next round because the entire list has not been made public just yet we don't know what conditions they've been in what age range we're talking about last night it was the majority of people on the list were above the age of 60 it was 8 out of the 10 and most of them being at least 75 so there were definitely a lot of complications from medical perspective there because older people have compromised immune systems and generally more fragile systems overall to be held in the ground for 53 days under horrific conditions so that's definitely going to be a medical challenge but also a psychological one going forward and the care here is originally primarily for the physical issues that said there is a small army of therapists standing by to provide whatever assistance they can on the psychological front because on top of the isolation the depression and the constant terror of being held by their Hamas tormentors for close to two months you have the fact that they were actively abused we've seen videos at this point of the mobs cheering and jeering and attempting to intimidate helpless children that they took a great deal of sadistic mirth in tormenting out from the hostages families of freed hostages where they directly state that Hamas made children watch videos of the October 7th massacres at gunpoint telling if they cried or made noise they would be shot that was only at the beginning of some of the stories that we heard so yes everyone is looking forward to more hostages being returned that is definitely a happy day for Israel but at the same time people have to remember that just because they are no longer in Hamas custody we've seen that the fight for each of these hostages is anywhere near at its end there's still a very long road to go before there's any semblance of normality let alone recovery Thank you very much Ariel Levin Wildman there at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv Yakov Lapin is with me in the studio from the Miriam Institute Yakov I want to talk about how the release of the hostages has gone so far here we are on day 6 10 hostages due to be released it has become increasingly chaotic and alarming hasn't it the way these releases have gone about over the last few days last night we saw an actual mob yelling alahu akbar chasing the red cross vehicles you know that inside those vehicles women and young children who have already gone through an incredible torment what is Hamas trying to do here do you think it's trying to stage manage these releases and present them domestically as some sort of great achievement and to Israel trying to broadcast the message that is still in control of large sections of the Gaza Strip this is stage managed propaganda I think you know when you look at it from the defense establishment's perspective every 24 hour block is seen actually in isolation the goal is really just to put one step forward get these people back release the Palestinian security prisoners and make sure that everybody crosses the border down this long chain through the crossing up into you know air base and then onto the hospitals there's a protocol in place and every 24 hours is just seen as the next step forward and one day can go smoothly another day can go chaotically the main thing is that the 10 people come out safely every day going forward until as I've said earlier until the agreement will come to an end and the war will resume 155 hostages still being held that's the approximate number isn't it those scenes last night when you had Hamas terrorists shaking hands with terrorists in the slightly different uniform from Palestinian Islamic jihad of course Hamas has said it can't locate some of the children because it outsourced them if you like to other terrorist groups but what message were they trying to send there do you think so this was again more of a domestic thing trying to give a little bit of credit to their sort of junior terror factions in the Gaza Strip Palestinian Islamic jihad the assessments in Israel are that 90% Hamas's custody and being held in their captivity and the other 10% if Hamas wants to get them out it knows exactly what it needs to do and who to contact so Hamas is playing games and terrorizing Israeli public opinion and trying to build insurance policies essentially that's what it's doing keeping the Bebas family off the release lists very deliberately knowing that this is the family that the nation wants to see out that desperately wants to see the baby and his brother and the two parents out separating fathers from their children these are you know savage jihadist war crimes that's what we're seeing and it's all designed to keep the Hamas leadership alive and surviving and they hope that ultimately they'll create these dynamics that will solidify the truth and enable them to survive I personally think that that's a delusional long-term goal on their behalf but in the short term they are buying themselves another day and another day and there is a report about the leader Yahya Sinwar trying to get himself out of Gaza in exchange for the release of the hostages any chance of that happening? Right you know the president I guess we have of that would be the first Lebanon war and the PLO leadership was willing to leave Beirut to Tunis the thing is that Hamas is a different organization it's jihadist and has a sort of death cult around it and their willingness to leave the Gaza Strip I'm not ruling it out completely but it seems unlikely knowing their entire ethos which is murder and sacrifice that's the two things that they keep drumming into their population so if they would just leave the Gaza Strip that would seem to go against that but who knows the main goal as far as Israel is concerned is that Hamas stops existing as a terror army and as a political regime in the Gaza Strip and it's probably open to various ways to achieving that but that's the end state here and Qatar presumably would be the choice destination for Sinwar at this stage I would assume so, I mean it's already hosting Khaled Mashal and Ismail Aniyah the political bureau chief of Hamas so it's able to host these people and everything that Qatar has been doing until now I think has been damage control primarily in the eyes of the United States trying to show that it can play a constructive role after hosting Hamas ISIS Fascinating to hear what's going on behind the scenes when it comes to relations between Washington and Doha Thank you Yaakov, thank you for all my guests Doha and Miriam as well, thank you We're going to take a very short break Don't go away, more updates for you right after this Good evening ladies and gentlemen 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 I24 News More hostages are due to be released tonight, the government says it has received a list of 10 people but this family not on the list, according to their family members, this is Shiri Bebas and her two children 4 year old Ariel and his baby brother Kvea just 10 months old, they are reportedly not on the list they are among 9 children still being held by terrorist groups in Gaza there you can see their faces on the screen now these children are still being held in Gaza and hopefully some of them will be released tonight but the Israeli government has not yet made public the list of names it has received, well more and more Israeli families are being partially reunited and the scenes of those reunions are source of great joy and relief here so many of the children reunited with their mothers, if their mothers are indeed still alive, others with their grandparents, most of the children's fathers are still being held in Gaza and that means that not everyone can reveal exactly what went on during the time they were held by terrorists in Gaza, well our Ariel Living Wildman is at the Sheba Medical Center in Central Israel where we are hoping some of the hostages will be received later in Ariel, we are hoping that some of the children, those elderly people, those women went through while they were being held by terrorists in Gaza. We're hearing a combination of two things, there's not just disastrous physical conditions they were held under but also applied psychological torture that the victims were held under while they were in Hamas's hands, now for the children this consisted of being forced to watch videos of the October massacre and that was at gun point, Hamas's terrorist point in Kalashnikov that they've been telling them if they cried or made a sound at all they would be shot, now that's just one of many forms of psychological torture they were under, some of them only whispering now they've returned because they were conditioned to be silent all the time, not the only form of sadistic torture they received while they were in Gaza there's also plenty of videos showing not just Hamas but the engaging in exactly the same sort of vicious mockery and sadism you see videos even as the hostages are released to the international red cross of mobs forming around them to mock these innocent children, these helpless children as they're on their way out to spit at them, to curse them to jeer at them, so you can understand that there's a lot of psychological pressure they've all been under and that's just one side there's also the physical conditions that these people were held under as well now we're talking about held underground for 53 days in many cases no light of day in very dark damp and cold tunnels lung conditions cropping up according to the doctors that we're seeing, high risk of pneumonia, also they were more or less starved, intermittently fed and only rice and bread so they're very severely malnourished as well, adds to that sleep deprivation which is used as a form of torture all around the world classified as a form of torture all around the world, they were basically forced to sleep on plastic chairs or lying down on a concrete floor so as you can imagine none of them are in very good condition even if they are being listed as stable, as more stories come out we get more picture of the cruelty of Hamas every single day and it's completely irredeemable what we learn it's absolutely horrific it's a lot to take in, Ariel thank you very much, Ariel Levin Wildland down at the Shiba medical center and many people here in Israel can't stop thinking about young Eitan 12 years old, forced by terrorists to watch Hamas atrocity videos, having a gun pointed at him if he cried really horrific testimony that we're hearing from, let's go down to Central Tel Aviv, our Pierre Kloschendler is in the newly named hostages square with some of the families and their supporters, Pierre so we're still waiting to hear aren't we if Israel will agree to extend the ceasefire by another four days in return for some more hostages 155 people are there about still being held I think that Israel's demand is first and foremost to free the 30 or 40 women held hostage in Israel and the eight additional kids including the B-bass family Ariel B-bass, four year old and Kfir B-bass 10 month old that's the condition that Israel demands for the next few batches of hostages but there is a good chance that this will happen in the sense that Hamas has already expressed its willingness to extend the truce or the pose in the fighting or the ceasefire whatever you call it to four more extra days if Hamas supplies this list of hostages the women and the children then the pose in the fighting will be extended until Sunday if that's not the case then the next day at 7am the ceasefire will end and fire will resume according to Benny Gantz now the big problem is whether Hamas is inclined to liberate all these women and children at this moment we don't know for instance Kfir and Ariel B-bass are yet still not on the list even of the sixth batch of released hostages so there it's a mean of pressure by Hamas to extract some sort of concession by Israel but Israel is adamant women and then the kids thank you very much indeed in Central Tel Aviv where the supporters of the hostages have gathered but with me in the studio Avni Avoham is a former Mossad agent and the founder of the spy legends agency thank you very much for being with us I just said you were in the Mossad you have a history of dealing with situations similar to this like this in the history of Israel or indeed I believe the world where so many women and children innocent people are being held how do you think it is going so far is Israel on the right path this kind of drip drip drip of hostages being released night by night so my personal opinion is that the release of the hostages is a success and I just heard that they want to continue with four more days so day by day each day we have 10 hostages and each one of them is the whole world so I'm looking here and I see the pictures this is the main goal now to release most of them all of them it is the main goal but there is another goal and that is to destroy Hamas once and for all can Israel still do that will Israel recover the momentum of course we are there and we will continue after we will finish this deal there is some talk about what will happen or what should happen once Hamas is destroyed and many of its leaders are either killed or captured whether there should be a public trial in Jerusalem of people like Yahya Sinwar if he's captured alive and whether he should face the death penalty the only person who has been executed in Israel was Eichman the Nazi what are your thoughts on that? okay so before I retired from Mossad I was in charge of the SPA museum and I became expert in old Mossad operations and people didn't compare the holocaust to anything but after the massacre on October 7 we started also to compare it because the thing that they made in some places were let's worse than the Nazis so people also compare about Eichman and that's the only case that Israel, the state of Israel, hanged someone and people talking about this maybe we shouldn't arrest them maybe we need to hang them because of course Sinwar was in an Israeli jail for many years on multiple offenses of murder and acts of terrorism he was given medical treatment he learned Hebrew he studied Israeli society and here he is I mean for this terrorist the Israeli jail became a university they have a better condition and they became Hebrew the family got support from the Palestinian Authority and I think that this is the first time people compare this massacre to Perel Harbour they compare it to September 11 I think that we need to really think about hanging some terrorists and of course there is a special unit by Shabbat because it is legal in Israel there are laws that exist for Israel to use the death penalty but it isn't used yes it isn't used but maybe this is the time to change to think again about this and my history of Mossad people also compare it to Entebbe Road and in Entebbe the terrorists separated for those who don't know tell us about the Entebbe operation okay so in 1976 a terrorist hijacked a plan that took off from Tel Aviv to Paris and in the stop in Athens they captured and they took the people to Uganda and in the third day they decided to make to separate between the Israelis and non-Israelis by the passports but they also separated the Jews and non-Jews because they saw with KIPA and Kharedik and the operation that the IDF made also together with the Mossad to release them it was a very big success but it was in a different country it wasn't in the enemy of the area in operation for example a bayonet after the massacre of 72 Golda Meir or the Mossad to kill to find the people that are responsible for this massacre and find them and kill them the athletes the Israeli athletes who were murdered in Munich at the Munich Olympics and it's also similar to the special unit in Shin Bet well I was going to ask you about that because you've got Khaled Mashaal and Ismail Haniye the Hamas political leaders they live you know by all accounts in the lap of luxury in Doha do you think they will be on a Mossad list one day I think they are in the list but not in Doha okay so maybe Doha is the why because of the fear of provoking Qatar yes, yes but I mean if you compare how they lived in Qatar and you see the poor people in Qatar okay I mean all the money that they get they use it for for the tunnels right when you talk about the money it's 6 billion dollars in aid went into Gaza at least between I think 2016 and 2021 including in 2020 the 2 billion dollars via Anra and also direct aid from Qatar so billions of dollars have been poured into Gaza we don't see that as you say being used for reconstruction of the terrorist network some of the money they took it for themselves and the Hamas leaders very rich they have money different places they have real estates the kids living outside I think the Palestinians need to separate them themselves from the Hamas the Hamas is a terror organization and this time after we finish the hostages this time Gaza will never be the same like before this I mean no one from Gaza could enter or walk in Israel we will not give them thousands of garrsons, ordinary people they would come into Israel wouldn't they every day they have special permits we also give them electricity we give them water, medical care it will be different it will be completely different relationship I believe that we are going to occupy two kilometers from the border and it will be what we call a death zone so no one can enter to this zone because we must make the borderline wider okay but there was already in place a very sophisticated border yes but it wasn't the wall was shorter than they didn't enter from the wall they enter from other places so it will be different and we will continue after, we will continue after dealing with the hostages and it's not the time to talk about what we are going to do in the future with Hamas this is the time to negotiate and release 10 hostages is a great success each one of them is a great success absolutely each life is a whole world thank you very much indeed well the October 7th attacks happened 50 years to the day after the Yom Kippur war another surprise attack on another Jewish holiday the similarities are all too real for Yael Alon her father was killed in the Yom Kippur war her son was murdered by Hamas the grief is unbearable we are in the support she stands at the entrance to the military base in Tel Aviv opposite the Azraeli centre alone with her sign or with her daughter Noam holding the picture passes by do not know how to deal with the difficult caption usually they try not to meet her gaze make a small detour or pass her by as if they didn't see sometimes someone stops her father and son were killed 50 years apart so now it's a small family of only women from Moshev Argot in southern Israel the grandmother sits on the balcony chain smoking I see him all the time I don't know I can't get it out of my eyes he can't talk to me but I'm constantly talking to him he really loved me this grandson I loved him I remember they came to pick him up with an open truck Yom Kippur probably after noon and that's it I haven't seen him since I've been an orphan since the age of 7 what did it do to your little family dismantled it made that family very sad my father was a very happy man with a sense of humour I always say I lost a father but I also lost a mother because after something like that it was very difficult for her that needed managing and she had to continue to manage it somehow as a child I learned that to leave my mother because it's hard for her anyway and not to bother her with my difficulties with my affairs Yael a social worker remained on the same farm as her mother Mina and father Yitzchak she gave birth to a son Dore after two daughters Dore grew up to be a child of values focused a quiet leader very compassionate towards the weak and vulnerable he identified around him after the morning period Yael began rummaging through the notebooks that Dore had written for himself I am naturally endowed with a desire for excellence I came into the world to work and not waste time I'm going to do something great with this life I have been given and do as much good as possible in the world Grandpa Yitzchak who fell in battle was always there in the background we grow at home and in the land that was here there are trees here in the farm that he planted 60 years ago and they are here so it is so present it is here here in the Moshev there is a tombstone which is a name on it we as small grandchildren from age zero I remember laying a wreath together with Dore when I was an officer and when Dore was an officer my grandfather and the flag on Memorial Day he wrote why am I going to fight he writes I want to contribute in the best way possible to the country as my grandfather Yitzchak contributed and my family after him he enlisted in the Egoz unit were you anxious? of course I was anxious I mean as far as I am concerned there are three possibilities he will be wounded or he will get PTSD like there was no way he was going to come out of it okay how could you send a child to the army like this? I worked on myself to calm down all the time but these were my thoughts on Wednesday night at 10 o'clock I left home for a moment and suddenly I saw two officers in uniform I understood it once well wait maybe it wasn't for me and I asked who are you working for he asked me are you Yael I said yes and then I collapsed I heard her screaming screams of terror and I was sure there were terrorists here and that I was going to see them shoot my mother that's the thought I had so I ran outside with the phone and I saw two officers more than that to understand and this is the same news that my mother received 50 years ago on the same sidewalk more or less in the same yard my father was killed on the 23rd of the Hebrew month of Tishrei Dor was killed in the night between the 23rd and the 24th I mean I don't know a creepy coincidence and how did your mother react? she's in shock she's been in shock ever since she doesn't talk too much depression barely eats barely functions he's in front of my eyes the child he does not leave me immediately after the morning period she started her protest why? because I think the failure could have been avoided this disgrace could have been avoided whoever fights to be in power is responsible a week ago we stood with a sign on Caspi Street in Jerusalem near the billionaire's houses where Benjamin Netanyahu has lived since the beginning of the war Shin Bet agents started coming out and they didn't know what to do with me they looked, lowered their heads left, came back at some point they tried to move me away I didn't agree they don't know how to behave in front of me they don't know what to do with me I come to them with the truth in their faces weren't you concerned that you were mixing bereavement with politics but in the end it is related it's connected my bereavement is related to politics and they come out with a sign the price I paid there will be more prices for more people if this government continues to exist because it does not see the citizens even today no one came during the morning period no member of the government nor the funerals the prime minister's convoy enters the headquarters I hope he saw me if it was him you are a social worker so you know the stages of grief so maybe this is one of the stages anger, you need to take it out on someone but it's beyond that I can be angry a door who went against me I can be angry with myself for allowing him for not fighting it I can be angry at the army I can be angry as a child I was angry at the army that my father was killed and stuff like that but I think there is something much bigger here it's anger out of concern for our future here my mother grew up in a tragic home and she told me our home will not be sad we will live and these are words that came during the morning period during this initial shock and I take them with me and I think this whole struggle is so that we will live we'll live in security, unity and peace with whomever lives with us here at least people live in this country and we'll strive to make it good this is a war to make it good absolutely heart breaking alright well reminder of what we know this hour the Israeli government has received a list of 10 hostages 10 Israelis who will be released tonight according to Hamas on this the final day of that ceasefire agreement extended once sources say that Hamas is offering to release more hostages if the truth is extended for another four days so we could see dozens more hostages released over the next few days if the Israeli government agrees to that offer but 10 Israelis set to be released tonight the family of baby Kvibas a cousin a member of the family has said that Kveer his brother and his mother are not on that list he is perhaps the most high pro-hostage 10 month old baby being held by terrorists in Gaza but 10 Israelis due to be released tonight there are 9 Israeli children including Ariel and Kveer still being held by terrorists in Gaza and the country is waiting with baited breath to see them freed and reunited with their families tonight I-24 News, stay with us 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 there have been countless memorable moments broadcasting with I-24 News in the past six years but for me the one that stands out the most was the first time that I had ever personally heard a rocket siren sounding in Tel Aviv and at that moment we were live on air in studio I will never forget the moment our senior producer said to me in my ear the sirens are sounding in Tel Aviv the control room is going to the shelter with me in studio at the time were Michael Herzog a former Brigadier General today the Israeli ambassador to the United States and Arsene Ostrovsky an international human rights lawyer and their responses were completely different Michael Herzog was calm and composed and on the other hand Arsene Ostrovsky was trying to phone his family and check in to make sure that his loved ones were okay the camera that normally faces us was hoisted from above there was an overhead shot of the three of us in studio you could see colleagues going to the shelter if you looked at the glass behind the studio and obviously we lost contact with our team on the ground our reporters in Ashkelon and all the witnesses that we were speaking to during that time when rockets are coming towards a residential area they don't distinguish between race, religion political views cultural views they just intend to harm civilians and that moment being in studio hearing those interceptions overhead was the most real coverage I have ever been involved in welcome back you're watching i24 news we're coming to you live from Tel Aviv the October 7th massacre was the biggest intelligence failure in this country's history now there are reports that more and more warnings were ignored by those high up in the security establishment one former officer who's been named in the media as V told his or her superiors multiple times that Hamas was preparing to attack the border communities V says that they were ignored our defence correspondent Jonathan Regev has this report he's seen by many as the best in the world filled with talented people and outstanding resources but as we now learn also filled with plenty of arrogance leaders of Hamas being interviewed three or four days before the attack saying that we are going to attack in a few days the whole area where are the people there were they asleep were they absent as opposed to the previous thought there was no intelligence regarding the attack of October 7th various reports in Israeli media now suggest sources within the intelligence community coming from the esteemed 800 unit warned about it but were ignored they even heard communication in Hamas drills saying we killed the entire kibbutz why were they ignored the reports suggest those warning were not high ranking officers and those above them ignore the warning saying there's no chance Hamas will attack the intelligence community the behavior of the high ranking officers is far from surprising vanity vanity vanity I know all I know better than you who are you a sergeant to tell me that the Hamas is going to attack I am the responsible cynically enough October 7th came 50 years in a day after the previous time Israel was surprised in similar circumstances junior officers presented plenty of evidence of an incoming attack but those above them refused to listen the people who fought back then gave their advice to the current commanders but were also ignored so we must never think that we know everything and that we are protected from everything we should always be worried and careful 50 years later the lessons were clearly not learned well to talk more about that I'm joined now by Brigadier General Hanan Geffen former commander of the intelligence unit at the IDF hello Hanan thank you very much for being with us it's a shocking report isn't it multiple warnings apparently ignored how could that happen well let's sort out these reports and some of them are in these tense days and everybody is looking for who is to blame for what and this is very important issue that will be dealt and should be dealt and must be dealt after the war but I would point out to some of the reports that are emerging right now with little connected to the early warning but seems so let's say let's take this communication that at least there are two reports that are circling around in the media one is on the southern major that very good worker of this unit 8200 and they followed and prepared a very good report on the Hamas intentions Hamas target and so on but it was a basic work nothing to do with early warning it just described partial part of Hamas what Hamas is targeting it's add up to other reports but these are what we call intelligence a basic report it's not even intentions of what they are trying what capabilities they are trying to establish it's a long process it's nothing to do with specific day nothing to do with early warning but let's let people know one point Israel media this last couple of weeks was rushing to try to find out this lieutenant colonel death colonel but it's nothing to do this information was spread to all of the military months ago but it was not an early warning it was what the Hamas is planning not planning short planning it was planning nothing to do with early warning as some of the media indicated the same goes with the this case that the other one is that A200 stop monitoring this or that network which again is two years ago by the way and it's going down into deep into the works of very sophisticated unit and the reasons for this kind I'm not sure I'm not into the details I don't want to be into the details at this point but at the end of the war but from my experiences when such an end in this part of A200 some of the communication became useless as the technology evolves as the wellness of the other side is growing bigger and then there's nothing to do and somebody it's okay but I mean you can understand why people are alarmed when they read this report that a security official actually warned Hamas was preparing to murder people in the Kibbutz team I'm not an intelligence person by any means but for something so blatant so clear and then on top of that you had the young soldiers who were watching Hamas training, preparing setting up kind of mock villages and attacking them and then people will ask themselves why on earth was the government was the army with the intelligence sources not more on top of this why didn't they see Hamas as more of a threat that's a question that's a big question that we are asking all the Israelis are asking themselves and we ask them after the war we will have to ask the people that should give the answer are engaging in this war right now working 24 hours a day in a very tough war we cannot replace them we shouldn't replace them they are the best people that they are and they will give the best answer but I would like to point out that some of the information is going back not to military not to intelligence we have some ideas what is the the heads of the head of the Hamas they are going for peaceful they are going for peace and then we stop now we have to be very accurate information and that information we don't have because in the last 15 years operation after operation our capabilities the way we operated were this close to the other side and it took the necessary preparation they were mentioned in the news in the media and not I don't know the details but in the media it was mentioned that Hamas knew that the Israelis are monitoring the Israelis are watching so on the side of the monitoring they took all the equipment and give them back very few hours before the operation and on the side of the of the observation point there were hundreds of gathering of various kinds day by day we are used to it and we are less aware of the things that started to work on it certainly going to be some big questions to answer once the war is over Brigadier General thank you our senior editor Guy Azriel is with me in the studio so let's just look at where we are so far Israel has received a list of 10 hostages due to be released tonight we can expect the whole process to begin again later this evening the Be Best family say they're not on the list they're not on the list nor is their mother this could possibly be the final day of a hostage handover if Israel doesn't agree to that possibly we're also speaking about two more hostages that will be released separately today to Israeli-Russian nationals as a gesture from Hamas to Israeli-Russian they have Israeli citizenship I would assume so like Ronny Krivoy who was released a few days ago by the way in his case he was very born his parents born in Israel in 1998 his parents just issued with him a Russian passport and that was in retrospect a very good decision that aided his release from Gaza we are hearing from your Secretary of State Anthony Blinken just over the past hour he says we will all work to extend the pause over the ceasefire of more hostages plus humanitarian aid we heard yesterday that there was an agreement in principle on extension of two more additional days and as we see so far these negotiations always take time it's always down to the wire I think in that respect both the willingness of Hamas and as long as the conditions are the same as well we will definitely be happy to do more of that that is of course very different when you speak about the possibility of a much wider agreement for release of other Israeli captives and the concessions that Israel would have to make Blinken is quoted as saying the plans to we discuss are not just of the day after the war meaning not just who is going to rule the Gaza Strip immediately but speaks of a much wider political solution in terms of what the Americans see is the prospect of a two state solution both for Gaza and for the West Bank okay we'll pick up on that in a moment but let's go to the Shiba Medical Center in central Israel our correspondent Ariel Levin Weldman Ariel it should be in a couple of hours or so if we go by what's happened in recent days that the hostages will be transported through Gaza handed over to the Red Cross and then hopefully quickly on their way to Israel absolutely and from there they generally go to one of the hospitals here we're standing at Shiba where 8 out of the 10 people that were released last night were brought the hospitals around that country said that those hostages once released were in stable condition there was no threatening injuries or illness which is a good sign but stable and good are necessarily the exact same thing remember these people have been through a grueling ordeal by a sadistic and torturous terror organization they've been kept underground in dark dank tunnels for 53 days very little access to the sun so they are definitely very sunlight deficient and undergoing severe mental duress they are malnourished in many cases they have been fed to bread and rice for almost two months in this case and that leads to severe nutrient deficiencies and a lot of serious issues they are sleep deprived in the extreme having been told and forced to sleep on the dark and damp floors of concrete tunnels so physically their conditions might be stable that does not mean there is not a road to recovery at the same time there is also according to doctors far greater psychological damage that is detailed over the course of this show many of the traumas and the torments that these people were forced to endure that Hamas' people inflicted willfully and happily on children forcing them to watch videos of the slaughters of October 7 while pointing guns at them telling them not to make a noise or they would be shot some of the children released not able to speak above a whisper for their precision traumas from this ordeal with that said families are happy to get their loved ones back at all despite knowing there is a long road to recovery ahead we spoke to the families of some of the hostage earlier and this is what they said on a personal level there was a great relief on a general level we are still worried for about a month and a half that she was there my mother did not receive any medical treatment she didn't even get a doctor's visit the sanitary conditions were bad they had very little food these are conditions in which even a young person has great difficulty surviving in not to mention an 84 year old woman who is not healthy this underscores our concern for the remaining hostages there are old and sick people there heart patients and injured people we demand from the whole world and also from the state of Israel that they do everything to get them as soon as possible alright thank you Ariel Levin Welburn there thank you very much alright well Guy Azrael our senior correspondence with me in the studio Guy should all start happening in a couple of hours shouldn't it when the hostages will be handed over to the Red Cross I have to say we've seen some pretty unsettling scenes particularly last night when the hostages were handed over kind of crowds of people in Gaza yelling, booing, jeering the hostages it must be very intimidating first as we've heard from several of the hostages that were released over the past week of not just the suffering and the torturing that they've endured in the Hamas tunnels under the threat of these terrorists but also just on the way with the Red Cross vehicles to the Rafa crossing as either their cars were escorted by these armed Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists as well yesterday but also just regular Gazans who threw stones and other materials at their cars fearing they may be lynched it is a completely surreal situation in which those Hamas terrorists who have committed those crimes against them are the ones that allegedly are protecting them from the crowds who are looking for some more Jewish blood obviously ecstatic by the look of those Israelis on the streets of Gaza and something very interesting actually this is quite an incredible story we're reading this morning as we well know Yahisinov Hamas leader actually met with some of the Israeli hostages in those underground Hamas tunnels he spoke to them of course he speaks perfect Hebrew from his time in Israeli prison and as we also know very well many of these hostages that were taken were some of the most active peace activists the communities of Bari Bari, Neroz and all of the Kibbutzes really really have a very large population of people who really believed in the coexistence who employed the Palestinians who were very active in all sorts of initiatives well one of the hostages that met Yahisinov apparently was Yechavit Lipschitz one of the first Israeli hostages to be released and what she tells the Israeli media is that she met Sinwar and she asked him the following question aren't you ashamed to do this to those who supported peace for so long he said Yahisinov remained quiet and did not answer that question obviously many will have things to say about the faith that she had in Sinwar even asking him this question and the fact that obviously he did not answer many would say that they were wrong all along believing the possibility of coexisting with a murderous organization like Hamas who in its charter is calling to eliminate the state of Israel and to slaughter all the Jews here nonetheless she did ask him that question and that's another extremely surreal moment there in those tunnels and of course they're still holding her husband aren't they yes her husband are among many Israelis still remaining in Gaza so far we've only seen the release of one Israeli man that is the Russian Israeli national Loni Krivoi who was in a separate deal from that and people seem to forget that when they see the Hamas propaganda videos because Hamas is going all out for these propaganda videos they've got drones with lighting they've planned the whole scene they've dressed them they shouted them hearing that the hostages weren't allowed to shower for a long time before they were released but people forget that they are still holding their family members they're still holding fathers they're still holding you know grandmas grandfathers that kind of thing so when people say oh look the hostages look like they were well treated something perhaps to bear in mind obviously there's no doubt when you speak to those Israelis who returned about what they've gone through we heard the children in particular how they were threatened with weapons whenever they even attempted to speak the girls of the Alkaya family were told nobody wants you in Israel nobody's asking for your return and they were shocked to see the entire both their father his wife and their step brother were all murdered on that day alright well let's go to Tel Aviv, our Pierre Klashendler is there Pierre here we are again waiting for the first news of the hostages being handed over to the Red Cross still a few hours to go though probably right, the sixth night of waiting and it's not over yet because there's about 150 Israeli hostages still held in Hamas Jails and Palestinian Islamic Jails and what you name it is a lot of actions jails so it's a long wait and that wait is going to still persist for quite a long time if there is a ground offensive or without a ground offensive the long wait is a long hold I want to say something about this day the 44th, 54th day of hostages being jailed is also the 76th anniversary of the partition plan in November 29, 1947 when there was a vote at the UN Security Council to partition Mandatory Palestine into two states a Jewish state and an Arab state living side by side in peace and security and yet Israel or future Israel accepted the plan but the Arabs didn't and that was followed by an existential war the war of independence for Israel on indefensible borders and there is a sense in this country today after the October 7 massacre and the pledge by Hamas to do other October 7 massacres that Israel is fighting an existential war on the hostage issue and on the battleground as well and there is a sense also that the Arab world is watching especially the pro-Iranian axis be it Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen Hamas, Palestine, Islamic jihad all of them are waiting to see what will happen and there is one sense one consensus in Israel aside from the liberation of hostages it's the don't mess with us anymore don't do it again never again and this is something which strengthens on one hand Israeli society but puts it in a very stark dilemma because what do you do now there is going to be 10 day lull in the fighting because Hamas has expressed its willingness to prolong the lull in fighting for another four extra days and that was already part of the outline of the plan agreed by Hamas and Israel at the onset of the hostage liberation drive now the question is what do you do after Sunday do you restart the ground offensive or do you negotiate on different parameters the hostages that have to be liberated according to categories that are being told in Doha and that's the big question and that's the big dilemma and I don't know what is going to happen on Sunday but I know for sure that both Israelis and the Israeli government are both united in two missions to destroy Hamas on one hand but also to liberate all the hostages how do you square the circle I don't know yeah it's a difficult dilemma but yeah it's very much is Pierre, thank you very much and Guy thanks to you as well for that Guy Azrael, our senior editor and before we go some news from New York City where a famous Israeli chef has just opened up a new restaurant but it isn't just the excellent food that is bringing in the patrons our Mike Wagenheim has this report New York City opening night at Malka the newest restaurant of Hamas it's not a restaurant but it's a restaurant that is very certain but the event carried a deeper meaning serving as a fundraiser for the victims of Hamas's October 7th massacre who were forced out of their homes in Israel you are walking through the streets of Tel Aviv and you see refugees to give them personally it's a big hope that somebody is caring about them Shelley and Mike Pittman have turned their charity the non-profit Laurids Foundation from one focused on helping people immigrate to Israel to a full on war focused mission raising around one million dollars since October 7th they organized last week's event at Malka to further the cause we began with supporting financing planes flying to Israel with reserves we purchased a lot of military gear after a week we decided this is our time to support the families, the surviving families we decided to support the families with nice brand of $2,500 going directly to their bank account not going to any other organization believing they need this immediate direct support I'm Israeli, I grew up in Israel and something you tell people a simple question how you doing it's kind of difficult to answer for them to answer it but what we try to do is to help with our foundation with financial issue because I think this is one of the big issue that they use right now to get the financial situation solved immediately the event's keynote speaker was Ophry Hagai whose uncle and aunt, both American citizens have been missing from Kibbutz near Oz 27th the benefit also featured an exhibition of Israeli artist Omer Kaplan called Gaza Anvalo showcasing works that document demonstrations in New York City and which connect personal stories of war to the broader historical context it's a celebration but it's a celebration that based on a big pain that we are carrying in our arts so the celebration is for the future to keep the hope inside the heart they are not becoming happy out of that but you feel that you are doing maybe you are doing the right steps for the future from the new Malka restaurant in New York City Mike Wangenheim, I-24 News I-24 News alright, that report from New York some delicious food on offer there and getting some good support stay with us at I-24 News we're going to take a short break we'll have more updates for you as we all await their release of the next batch of hostages 10 Israeli hostages should be on their way home within a few hours stay with us, this is I-24 News