Israel’s actions against Hezbollah and the Nuseirat-Bureij Refugee Camps in the Gaza Strip
Israel’s military warned Palestinians to evacuate along the strategic Netzarim corridor in central Gaza that was at the heart of obstacles to a cease-fire deal. The refugee camps of Nuseirat and Bureij were told to evacuate to a coastal area designated as a humanitarian zone by the military.
Israeli strikes killed at least nine people on Saturday in the Gaza Strip. The Health Ministry in Gaza says that one in the northern town of Beit Hanoun killed five people, including two children. At least four people were killed in the Nuseirat refugee camp when another hit a house.
The deadliest single attack in Israeli history led to the deadliest war in Palestinian history, with more than 41,000 Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip this past year, according to health officials there.
Israel’s military said it was carrying out ground raids against Hezbollah. It said troops dismantled tunnel shafts that Hezbollah used to approach the Israeli border.
Syria’s First Attempt at a Comprehensive Intergovernmental Plan: Israeli Bombing of a Syrian Refugee Camp in Beirut on Oct. 8, 2023
Other displaced families now shelter alongside Beirut’s famous seaside Corniche, their wind-flapped tents just steps from luxury homes. “We don’t care if we die, but we don’t want to die at the hands of Netanyahu,” said Om Ali Mcheik.
A Syrian refugee in Lebanon who is heading back said that they were on the road for two days. “The roads were very crowded … it was very difficult. We almost died getting here.” Some children whimpered or cried.
MASNAA BORDER CROSSING, Lebanon — Powerful new explosions rocked Beirut’s southern suburbs late Saturday as Israel expanded its bombardment in Lebanon, also striking a Palestinian refugee camp deep in the north for the first time as it targeted both Hezbollah and Hamas fighters.
Israel’s military earlier Saturday said about 90 projectiles were fired from Lebanon into Israeli territory. Most were intercepted, but several fell in the northern Arab town of Deir al-Asad, where police said three people were lightly injured.
In late September, Secretary of State Antony Blinken summed up the U.S. position, saying, “Israel has the right to defend itself against terrorism. The way it does so matters.”
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told reporters in Damascus that “we are trying to reach a cease-fire in Gaza and in Lebanon.” The minister said the unnamed countries putting forward initiatives include regional states and some outside the Middle East.
On Oct. 8, 2023, Hezbollah began launching rockets against Israel in support of the Palestinian militants fighting in Gaza. It was a low-level conflict along the Lebanon-Israel border for months. Iran, Hezbollah’s main backer, mostly stayed out of the conflict. But an Israeli attack in April against an Iranian diplomatic base in Syria that killed several of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers changed the dynamic. Less than two weeks later, Iran retaliated with a large-scale drone and missile strike on Israel. The Israeli air defense units fought back quickly after the attack was heavily telegraphed by Tehran.
The Hamas military wing’s official along with his family were killed on Saturday by an attack by Israel at the northern Beddawi camp. Hamas later said another military wing member was killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley. There were smashed buildings, scattered bricks and stairways to nowhere in the aftermath.
A building used by Hezbollah in the past was struck near a road leading to the international airport in Lebanon. The owner of the company that owns the Oxygen tank storage facility denied the reports of one of the strikes hitting the facility.
The strong explosions began near midnight and continued into the early hours of Sunday after Israel asked residents in Dahiyeh to leave. AP video showed the blasts illuminating the densely populated southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has a strong presence. They followed a day of sporadic strikes and the nearly continuous buzz of reconnaissance drones.
There were rallies in many parts of the world, including Lebanon, to mark the anniversary of the beginning of the war in Gaza.
We can and should sympathize with Palestinian statelessness and Arabs in the West Bank living under the duress of Israeli settlements and restrictions, but to my mind, there is nothing that can justify what Hamas attackers did on Oct. 7 — murdering, maiming, kidnapping and sexually abusing any Israeli they could get their hands on, without any goal, any story, other than to destroy the Jewish state. If you believe, as I do, that the only solution is two states for two indigenous peoples between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, the Hamas rampage set that back immeasurably.
This story is a part of an NPR series reflecting on Oct. 7, a year of war and how it has changed life across Israel, the Gaza Strip, the region and the world.
And what story is Iran telling? It’s right under the UN’s Charter to help create failed states in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq so that they can be used to destroy Israel. Hezbollah dragged Lebanon into a war with Israel that the people of the country had no say in and now the government is paying a heavy price for it.
The Israeli Hostile Crisis: A Day in the Life of a Judicial Reformer and a Thousand and One Questions from the Inferno
Thousands of Israelis with the means to do so have chosen to leave Israel since Oct. 7; others are considering or planning emigrating. The marches against the judicial reform began before the October 7 attacks, and have continued week after week, with a new focus on the hostage crisis. There were pictures in September of the former Israeli army chief of staff being forcibly removed by the police from the street at a sit-in in front of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private residence.
A year into a long war between Israel and Hezbollah, many Israelis are wondering if saving the lives of its civilians is worth sacrificing the value of a Jewish homeland. Will I ever feel safe again? What kind of future would I have here if the only vision our leaders have is endless war?
At a recent mass demonstration in Tel Aviv, one protester held up a sign with the phrase “Who are we without them?” written on it. Another placard read: “Give me one reason to raise kids here.”
“Questions from [the] inferno, really,” says Merav Roth, a prominent Israeli psychologist, and the sister of former Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid, who has counseled the kibbutz members all year long.
Silence helped the survivors survive the attack. They hid from their safe rooms along the Gaza border to a hotel on the Dead Sea.
Israel october 7 (beeri-hamas attack-anniversary): The Israeli village grieving the biggest loss from one year later
“I’m so exhausted after every funeral that we have to deal with again,” said Gal Cohen, the head of the kibbutz. “Because it brings [back] everything, and we cry again.”
The people in this tight-knit community are digging up the dead from the temporary graves away from the Gaza border and putting them back to where they came from.
Then she saw the man she had heard all day loading gun cartridges in her home. She says that he was stripped naked and guarded by an Israeli soldier while sitting outside.
When she was finally rescued that night, and led out of her safe room, she found her living room floor covered in rows of grenades, gas canisters, explosives, rocket-propelled grenades and rifles. She understood: The attack headquarters had been transformed into her home. Neighbors all around her were gunned down.
He says that survivors of the attack are taking sleeping pills to cope with the trauma and can’t see the destroyed homes. I believe we’ll have to take them all down.
A short walk away, though, are the homes that were attacked last year. Bullet holes, shattered windows, a pair of children’s shoes in the debris: Oct. 7 frozen in time.
Source: The Israeli village grieving the biggest loss from Oct. 7, one year later
A family in Kibbutz Be’eri and reburials of a single mother and her two-year-old son
A couple hundred families have moved back to Kibbutz Be’eri. Cohen, the head of the community, is overseeing an ambitious project to bring the residents back within two and a half years.
I asked myself what I wanted. To continue living? I can also not. I really thought about it. And then I decided that I wanted to continue to live,” she says. I have a lot of people with me, I have a family. I draw. I’m learning to kayak to deal with my fears. I try to give meaning to life now that they’re gone.
She wanted to be with his body at the moment it was unearthed. She had not lived on the kibbutz any longer and felt guilty she wasn’t with her brother and family in their worst moment on Oct. 7.
Batya Ofir was at the funeral. She recently reburied her own brother and his family in the kibbutz cemetery, after viewing his partially decomposed body be exhumed from its temporary grave.
At Kibbutz Be’eri, one recent afternoon, teens and parents walked quietly out of the neighborhood cemetery after a funeral for a mother and her 15-year-old son — two of the many reburials of recent months.
The Holocaust arose in Kibbutz Be’eri: a village where many lost loved ones were kidnapped in the Holocaust
“When I gave guidelines to the therapists in Be’eri at the beginning, I said, smile and say, how are you? Because these people don’t know that it still matters. You have to show them that their wellbeing is still relevant. The life instinct would like to see someone call him back.
They’re extremely worried about the future of this place. Many of them leave the country. She says that their parents told them that there were people who died in the Holocaust. “Hopelessness and helplessness are so strong. The trauma is national.”
A boy in a kibbutz lost members of his family, two parents and two siblings. So do we tell him about each separately or do we tell him about all of them together?” she says.
Former hostages who returned to Gaza from Hamas, the families of those killed in the conflict, and Israelis who haven’t lost a loved one are some of the people who have been counseled by Roth.
It took many weeks to account for everyone: who was dead, who was captive in Gaza. Roth sat with the survivors of Kibbutz Be’eri in the Dead Sea hotel basement as the village secretary read the names of 27 identified bodies and 108 people unaccounted for.
The Israeli military found that about 340 attackers were able to get into the Kibbutz Be’eri community and that it took seven hours for Israeli forces to fight off the invaders.
Up First Newsletter : Israeli-Hamas War Disrupts Lives in a Daze, and How a Year of War disrupts Israel-Michigan Voters
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He often meets a young girl named Habiba at the hospital in central Gaza. She’s been colorblind since birth. One day, she told Anas she saw a man drowning with water coming out of his nose. It was blood, not water.
There is a hospital in southern Israel. The waiting room was full of parents in a daze, waiting for word about their children who had come under attack at an outdoor techno rave near the Gaza border. In Gaza, Anas took photos of families fleeing their homes as Israeli warplanes rained down.
I think about Batya Ofir, a woman my colleague Itay Stern and I met the other day at Kibbutz Be’eri, the Israeli village that suffered the greatest loss — 102 people there were killed. Her brother was dead with his family. She felt survivor’s guilt, and she told us she asked herself whether she wanted to keep on living.
Source: How a year of Israel-Hamas war disrupted lives. And, key factors for Michigan voters
The State of Michigan and the Iraq War: How a Year of Israel-Hamas War Disrupted Lives. and Key Factors for Michigan Voters
Vice President Harris has his clearest path to the White House coming from the state of Michigan. The win will not be easy. Harris and former President Donald Trump remain in a close battle. These are a few factors that could affect how Michigan swings.
People in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank tell us how one year of this war has changed their lives. NPR has a special series page about this anniversary.
The war in the Middle East is personal in the swing state of Michigan. The Republicans and Democrats focus on the voting bloc of Arab and Muslim Americans and the state has the largest Lebanon American population in the country. Many in the state have families living in the areas of Lebanon that are being bombed right now.
A new report has found that both Harris’ and Trump’s economic plans would increase the national debt. According to the Committee for Responsible FederalBudget, Trump’s plan would increase the nation’s debt by an estimated $7.5 trillion over the next decade, while Harris’ proposals would cost the government an estimated $3.5 trillion. The committee has cautioned that there could be a future fiscal crisis if politicians do not take more decisive action on the national debt. Let’s take a closer look at the details of both economic plans.
Source: How a year of Israel-Hamas war disrupted lives. And, key factors for Michigan voters
What Happens When Israel and Iran Comes to a Peaceful End: The Morning Edition of Israel’s War with the Palestinians in Gaza
NPR is going to swing states that could decide this year’s election. This week, Morning Edition is in Michigan to listen to voters about what matters to them and how that will affect their vote.
Thousands of people crossed a border fence. Others arrived in speedboats. Some even came by paraglider in a dawn attack by Hamas fighters a year ago that caught Israel by surprise, leaving 1,200 people dead and another 250 as hostages. It also set in motion events that now threaten to turn Israel’s long-running conflict with Iran’s proxies into a direct and dangerous war with Tehran.
Although Israel and Hamas managed a brief cease-fire in November that allowed for the exchange of more than 100 hostages for nearly 250 Palestinian prisoners, the truce lasted just a week. Hamas did unilaterally release four hostages, and eight others were rescued by Israeli forces. The bodies of hostages were recovered by Israel’s military.
Benjamin Netanyahu came under intense pressure to halt the fighting in Gaza and secure the release of the hostages as he was weathering intense criticism for intelligence failures in the lead up to the surprise attack.
Israelis worried about the safety of their hostages after the Hamas attack. Hostages Square is in the center of Tel Aviv and was quickly turned into a gathering place for the captives’ families and supporters. “Bring them home now!” was a potent cry and posters showing the faces and names of hostages became ubiquitous. Many Israelis began wearing special necklaces, bracelets and T-shirts to show their support for the captives. Large groups of people attend the daily vigils in Hostages Square.
The UN Secretary-General has said the humanitarian situation in Gaza is a moral stain, while the aid group Refugees International said that Israel’s military response has caused disproportionate death and suffering among civilians in Gaza.
The second largest city in Gaza and considered to be a Hamas stronghold by Israel, saw some of the most intense bombardment of the conflict.
International relief organizations are providing food, drinking water and materials for temporary shelters because of a shortage of food and drinking water. More than 50,000 children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years are not getting adequate food due to the situation in Gaza.
U.S. efforts to speed aid to Gaza have also floundered. The Joint Logistics Over-the-Sized system (JLOTS), a special floating pier built for $236 million, was only occasionally operational due to damage from rough seas in the eastern Mediterranean.
Repeated rounds of peace talks have not made much progress despite a brief cease-fire. There are deep-seated animosities in the Palestinian leadership which makes it difficult to make a peace deal.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has tried to walk a fine line between diplomatic and military support for its long-term ally, Israel, and a desire to mitigate the suffering in Gaza while trying to contain a wider war that increasingly has dragged Iran and Israel into direct conflict and could engulf the rest of the Middle East.
Meanwhile, public opinion in the U.S. has been split largely along partisan lines, with conservatives showing support for Israel, but some people, younger and more liberal, turning out for pro-Palestinian rallies on college campuses.
Among Democrats, more than half say that Israel bears “a lot” of responsibility for the continuation of the war in Gaza, while only about 4 in 10 Republicans do, according to a Pearson Institute/AP-NORC poll published last week.
The political dichotomy affects the U.S. presidential race, and some democrats believe Netanyahu is trying to tip the election in favor of Donald Trump. Meanwhile, voters in key battleground states give Trump higher marks than his opponent, Vice President Harris, on foreign policy matters, according to a recent poll by the New York-based Institute for Global Affairs.
The Last Day of Israeli-Israeli War: A Palestinian Perspective on a Crucial Day in the Gaza Strip, and the Last Year Israel-Hamas Interaction
Last month: Fast- forward to then. At least a dozen people died and thousands were wounded when Hezbollah electronic pagers exploded across Lebanon, in an attack attributed to Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad.
Multiple residential buildings in southern Lebanon were demolished as Israeli airstrikes continued. On September 27th, Israel announced that Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah had been killed in one of the strikes. His death was confirmed by Hezbollah.
Hamas, designated a terrorist group by the United States and several other nations, has seen its control over territory in Gaza diminish over the past 12 months, leaving a political and logistical vacuum that international aid groups have struggled to fill.
Cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas brokered by the United States were put on hold so for civilians in Gaza, the forced displacement that began in October is not over.
The father of seven comes from the same area of northern Gaza where civilians were once again ordered to evacuate Monday, and he’s been displaced four times in the last year.
Israeli officials say that when Hamas-led fighters attacked communities in southern Israel a year ago they killed more than 1,200 and took 250 hostages. Musleh was a teacher on his way to school that day.
He told NPR that he empathizes with the plight of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, but that the only way peace can be attained is if Israeli citizens oust their prime minister.
Violence between Palestinians in the West Bank and Israeli settlers and the Israeli military has increased over the past year.
In Ramallah, the Israeli-occupied West Bank’s biggest city, dozens of Palestinians gathered in the main square Monday, waving Palestinian flags and carrying anti-occupation signs.
Basma Abu Sway said she had come to mark one year since the war in Gaza began, and called last Oct. 7 one of the most important days in Palestinian history.
Israeli military arrests of 45 civilians in the West Bank during the weekend of October 7 and November 7, 2013 in a message to the Palestinian people
The Israeli military arrested 45 people in the West Bank over the course of Sunday and Monday.
Rima Nazzal felt concerned about the situation in Palestine and worried that the situation would get worse after October 7, last year.
