Israel's War Against Hamas - Updates

[Sixties Fan]

Part 1

ust as neo-Nazis both celebrate the Holocaust and deny it, so do those who rapturously greeted the stories of slaughtered and decapitated Jewish babies and men, and raped and dismembered Jewish women and girls, insist that Hamas didn’t commit any of those crimes.

A notable aspect of the atrocities is that Hamas’s mass murderers didn’t try to hide them. Instead, they broadcast them worldwide as they carried them out. Armed with Go Pro cameras and the cellphones of their victims, the Palestinian terrorists in southern Israel filmed the rape, dismemberment, torture and execution of their victims on their victims’ own phones, posting them in their victims’ family WhatsApp groups and Facebook pages as they carried them out. They did the same with their own social-media platforms. No one needed researchers to comb through Hamas archives. The directions for the slaughter were found in documents that the terrorists carried with them into Israel.

So why are supporters of Hamas tearing down posters of kidnapped Israeli children, women and men being held hostage in the Gaza Strip? They celebrate the hostage-taking on their social-media postings. Why are they insisting to their fellow students on campuses or subway riders in New York and Johannesburg that there are no hostages in Gaza, and this is all a Zionist conspiracy? A gas-lighting?

To understand what is happening and what it represents, we need to look at the most popular and powerful form of Holocaust denial today. As Izabella Tabarovsky meticulously demonstrated in a Tablet magazine article last January, this form of Holocaust denial was coined by the Soviets. It was popularized by a Palestinian terrorist of some repute: Palestinian Authority chairman and Palestinian Liberation Organization chief Mahmoud Abbas.

In 1982, Abbas wrote a doctoral dissertation at the KGB’s Institute of Oriental Studies, which he later turned into a bestselling book. His thesis, titled “The Relationship Between Zionists and Nazis, 1933-1945,” is the basis for Holocaust education in Palestinian schools.

Abbas claimed that the Zionists were Nazis. He insisted that just as the Nazis defined themselves as Aryan racial supremacists, the Zionists defined themselves as Jewish racial supremacists. Abbas claimed that the Holocaust was a collaborative effort between the Nazis and the Zionist leadership in the land of Israel. David Ben-Gurion, he wrote, had agents in Europe who collaborated with the Nazis. Their goal, Abbas said, was to support the genocide of European Jewry in order to win international sympathy for the Zionist effort to establish a Jewish supremacist state in the land of Israel, aka “Palestine.”

As Tabarovsky explained, the allure of Abbas’s claims for Palestinian Jew-haters and Soviets alike is clear. First, it enables them to avoid accounting for the role they played in the murder of 6 million Jews. It was the Palestinian Arab leader Haj Amin al-Husseini—not Ben-Gurion or any other Jew, Zionist or not—who collaborated with Hitler to annihilate the Jews in Europe and throughout the world. And it was the Soviet Union,—not the Zionist leadership—that signed a non-aggression pact with the Nazis. By insisting that it was the Jews who collaborated with their own destruction, both the Soviets and the Palestinians were able to project their own culpability onto their enemy: the Jews. They were also able to deny the Jews moral legitimacy as victims.

After all, if the Jews did it to themselves, then no one else had anything to own up to. And more importantly, the Jews’ alleged venality meant that the Nazis were right. The Jews are evil and deserve to be wiped off the map.

Why are the Oct. 7 atrocities being denied? - CarolineGlick.com

If the Jews are the villains, then it is moral to hate them. It is moral to stand with Hamas. And it is immoral to support the Jews and the State of Israel.

carolineglick.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Part 2

Sifting through the ashes

The same malevolent, genocide-supportive rationale guides Hamas’s supporters worldwide today.

Over the past several days, more and more information has come out about how the victims of Hamas’s atrocities were murdered and tortured with a sadism that was inconceivable until Oct. 7. And as that information is disseminated, Hamas supporters’ efforts to demonize those disseminating the information have expanded exponentially.

Consider just one example. Over the weekend, Eli Beer, the head of United Hatzalah rescue organization, told an American Jewish audience the story of a baby from Kfar Aza. The baby, he said, was placed in an oven and burned alive. It was later reported that the baby’s father was shot and left to bleed to death as his wife was gang-raped and executed, and his baby burned alive.

I posted the story on my X-platform (formerly Twitter) account. Within hours, the post went viral. By Wednesday morning, it had been viewed by more than 2.5 million people. Thousands had reposted, and thousands more had responded.

By Monday afternoon, I realized that most of the reposts and comments were supportive of Hamas. Many made jokes about the atrocity. But most of the posts were sheer denials that the crime even took place. Posters demonized me as a “Zionist Nazi” who propagates lies. Some pro-Hamas posters created memes declaring me a liar.

Once I understood what was happening, I asked multiple people for confirmations, which I received directly and indirectly from the Israel Defense Forces, the Israeli government, the American government, ZAKA (the body retrieval society, and in this case, body parts) and other sources. I also learned that the case that Beer revealed was not a lone event. Several bodies of babies were found with grill marks, indicating they had been burned alive in ovens.

Professor Chen Kugel, head of the Israel National Institute of Forensic Medicine, oversees the process of identifying the bodies of the victims. In media appearances since Oct. 7, Kugel has repeatedly described the corpses of victims who were burned alive. They can be distinguished from victims whose bodies were burned after they were executed by the presence of soot in their lungs. The soot indicates that they were breathing while they were burning.

The process of identifying the victims is protracted because Hamas directed its murderers to burn the bodies of their victims. Kugel and others have described the remains of many of the bodies as what can be seen from a crematorium. Avigail Gimpel, a volunteer at the Jewish burial society Chevra Kadisha who prepared dozens of victims’ bodies for burial, shared that several of the bodies she and her colleagues received were balls of charcoal. Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority have been brought in to sift through the ashes of burned-out homes to separate the human remains from burned furniture and walls.

Despite the mounting forensic and testimonial evidence, the denials continue and expand. When seen in the context of Palestinian Holocaust denial, they can be understood to serve three related goals.

Why are the Oct. 7 atrocities being denied? - CarolineGlick.com

If the Jews are the villains, then it is moral to hate them. It is moral to stand with Hamas. And it is immoral to support the Jews and the State of Israel.

carolineglick.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Part 3

First, the denials enable people who are accustomed to supporting the Palestinians, but who like to be seen as truthful, to feel comfortable casting doubt on the truth. For example, Eric Levitz, a progressive writer for New York magazine published the following on X on Oct. 22:

“Last night I asserted that this report [related to the slaughter of October 7] indicated that babies were beheaded. This was an overstatement. I should have said that the report established that babies were found headless, a fact that lends plausibility to claims of beheading, but which does not prove them.”

This week, the Yale Daily News published a similarly depraved correction of an opinion column that related to the fact that Hamas terrorists beheaded and raped their victims. The Yale student paper insisted the allegations had not been substantiated.

The second purpose of Hamas supporters’ denial is to criminalize Israel. If Hamas isn’t guilty, then obviously Israel is. Abbas accused the Jews of responsibility for the Holocaust in order to reject the moral legitimacy of the State of Israel. He did it as well to avoid contending with Palestinian culpability for the genocide despite Husseini’s role in blocking Jewish emigration to pre-state Israel and his direct role in carrying out the Holocaust. Just so, Hamas supporters are now accusing Israel of killing its own people or fabricating their victimization at the hands of the terrorist organization in order to build a case that Israel is the villain of this story. This enables Jew-haters worldwide to feel comfortable expressing their own loathing of the Jews. If the Jews are the villains, then it is moral to hate them. It is moral to stand with Hamas. And it is immoral to support the Jews and the State of Israel.

Finally, once truth is cast into doubt and Israel is castigated as the villain, the denials of Hamas’s crimes facilitate the continuation and expansion of those crimes. Hamas’s declared goal, like Abbas’s Fatah Party, is the elimination of the Jewish state. That is, its goal is to enact another Holocaust. With Israel castigated as a liar and the villain, the next step is to wipe it out.

To Jews and their supporters, Hamas apologists now terrorizing Jews on college campuses and in cities throughout the United States and Europe, and running rampant on social-media platforms seem crazy. How can they deny the undeniable fact of Hamas culpability?

But Hamas’s boosters are not delusional. They know exactly what they are doing.

They are waging a psychological war against Western governments and publics. Their purpose is to gaslight hundreds of millions of people, to cause them to question their own grip on reality and intimidate them into silence. At the same time, they seek to embolden their allies and fellow travelers to stand openly with Hamas by showing they have nothing to lose from doing so.

If they are successful, their efforts will produce an international climate conducive to the achievement of their common goal of eradicating the Jewish people and the Jewish state. If they are partially successful, Israel’s war effort will be undermined, and assaults on Jews worldwide will increase.

Why are the Oct. 7 atrocities being denied? - CarolineGlick.com

If the Jews are the villains, then it is moral to hate them. It is moral to stand with Hamas. And it is immoral to support the Jews and the State of Israel.

carolineglick.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Almost immediately after the Oct. 7 slaughter, Hamas’s supporters began denying that any atrocities took place.

My guest on the Caroline Glick show this week was Avigail Gimpel, a volunteer at Chevra Kadish burial society. Avigail and other volunteers prepared the bodies of the victims for burial.

To watch her bear witness to what she saw, click below.

 

[bendog]

Part 3

First, the denials enable people who are accustomed to supporting the Palestinians, but who like to be seen as truthful, to feel comfortable casting doubt on the truth. For example, Eric Levitz, a progressive writer for New York magazine published the following on X on Oct. 22:

“Last night I asserted that this report [related to the slaughter of October 7] indicated that babies were beheaded. This was an overstatement. I should have said that the report established that babies were found headless, a fact that lends plausibility to claims of beheading, but which does not prove them.”

This week, the Yale Daily News published a similarly depraved correction of an opinion column that related to the fact that Hamas terrorists beheaded and raped their victims. The Yale student paper insisted the allegations had not been substantiated.

The second purpose of Hamas supporters’ denial is to criminalize Israel. If Hamas isn’t guilty, then obviously Israel is. Abbas accused the Jews of responsibility for the Holocaust in order to reject the moral legitimacy of the State of Israel. He did it as well to avoid contending with Palestinian culpability for the genocide despite Husseini’s role in blocking Jewish emigration to pre-state Israel and his direct role in carrying out the Holocaust. Just so, Hamas supporters are now accusing Israel of killing its own people or fabricating their victimization at the hands of the terrorist organization in order to build a case that Israel is the villain of this story. This enables Jew-haters worldwide to feel comfortable expressing their own loathing of the Jews. If the Jews are the villains, then it is moral to hate them. It is moral to stand with Hamas. And it is immoral to support the Jews and the State of Israel.

Finally, once truth is cast into doubt and Israel is castigated as the villain, the denials of Hamas’s crimes facilitate the continuation and expansion of those crimes. Hamas’s declared goal, like Abbas’s Fatah Party, is the elimination of the Jewish state. That is, its goal is to enact another Holocaust. With Israel castigated as a liar and the villain, the next step is to wipe it out.

To Jews and their supporters, Hamas apologists now terrorizing Jews on college campuses and in cities throughout the United States and Europe, and running rampant on social-media platforms seem crazy. How can they deny the undeniable fact of Hamas culpability?

But Hamas’s boosters are not delusional. They know exactly what they are doing.

They are waging a psychological war against Western governments and publics. Their purpose is to gaslight hundreds of millions of people, to cause them to question their own grip on reality and intimidate them into silence. At the same time, they seek to embolden their allies and fellow travelers to stand openly with Hamas by showing they have nothing to lose from doing so.

If they are successful, their efforts will produce an international climate conducive to the achievement of their common goal of eradicating the Jewish people and the Jewish state. If they are partially successful, Israel’s war effort will be undermined, and assaults on Jews worldwide will increase.

Why are the Oct. 7 atrocities being denied? - CarolineGlick.com

If the Jews are the villains, then it is moral to hate them. It is moral to stand with Hamas. And it is immoral to support the Jews and the State of Israel.

carolineglick.com

yet the irony is that the more Palestinian civilians are killed and maimed, the "less horrible" Hamas's terrorist attack seems ... even though the IDF does not attack civilian areas unless Hamas is thought to be hiding there. And an even greater irony is that Netanyahu's policy of illegally expanding Israel's territory, while avoiding any possibility of a two state existence, has made Israel simple poison with the liberal minded, religiously tolerant progressives that once identified with Israel. I mean, if we were looking for a western oriented democracy with human rights as its bedrock .... nobody in their right mind would pick Israel as poster-child.

Still, if you think there's anything the Pales could do to stop Likud's illegal expansions, I got something to sell you. And if you think there's anything the Israelis could do to stop Hamas (they're all Palestinians, btw) from planning more terrorist attacks with the intention of destroying the Israeli nation, then I got something else to sell you.

 

[Sixties Fan]

yet the irony is that the more Palestinian civilians are killed and maimed, the "less horrible" Hamas's terrorist attack seems ... even though the IDF does not attack civilian areas unless Hamas is thought to be hiding there. And an even greater irony is that Netanyahu's policy of illegally expanding Israel's territory, while avoiding any possibility of a two state existence, has made Israel simple poison with the liberal minded, religiously tolerant progressives that once identified with Israel. I mean, if we were looking for a western oriented democracy with human rights as its bedrock .... nobody in their right mind would pick Israel as poster-child.

Still, if you think there's anything the Pales could do to stop Likud's illegal expansions, I got something to sell you. And if you think there's anything the Israelis could do to stop Hamas (they're all Palestinians, btw) from planning more terrorist attacks with the intention of destroying the Israeli nation, then I got something else to sell you.

You have not really read anything, by choice. You are holding on to what you have read in Pro Palestinian sources.

You are not paying attention on how the IDF is advancing and arresting and killing Hamas terrorists.


You have sold yourself all you want to believe in.

 

[bendog]

You have not really read anything, by choice. You are holding on to what you have read in Pro Palestinian sources.

You are not paying attention on how the IDF is advancing and arresting and killing Hamas terrorists.


You have sold yourself all you want to believe in.

project on.

 

[Sixties Fan]

PA Chairman Abbas’ Fatah Movement doesn’t want to play second fiddle to Hamas and has been calling for terror and murdering Jews since Hamas launched its terror war on Israel with the massacre on Oct. 7. Palestinian Media Watch reported yesterday that Fatah also bragged of its own participation in the atrocities, gloating that it helped Hamas.

And Fatah continues to call for terror. Mentioning the names of Palestinian terrorist murderers and terror leaders – and their “spirit of heroism” – Fatah urges everyone who owns a weapon to join the war against Israel. The allegedly secular movement appealed to Palestinians’ religious sentiment as well, packaging its call for terror in praise for Allah – “Call out Allahu Akbar from the rooftops... Call out Allahu Akbar from your mosques”:

Posted text: “We will not abandon anyone
O sons of the West Bank, O people of [former PA President] Yasser [Arafat], [Ahmed] Yassin (i.e., Hamas founder), and Abu Ali [Mustafa] (i.e., former Secretary-General of the PFLP), has the spirit of heroism within us died? ... Where are the sons of [Raed] Al-Karmi (i.e., terrorist, responsible for murder of 9), the sons of [Ahmed] Yassin and [Fathi] Shaqaqi (i.e., Islamic Jihad founder), where are the eagles of the [Popular] Front [for the Liberation of Palestine], and where are we in relation to the Gaza Strip
The Zionist occupation is continuing its massacres and annihilating our people, and we are still harvesting our Martyrs...
Call out Allahu Akbar (i.e., “Allah is greatest”) from the rooftops, and this is the minimum action.
Call out Allahu Akbar from your mosques – Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar
This is a call of mobilization to all those who have a weapon
Shame and disgrace on everyone who abandons [the struggle]”

[Fatah Movement – Bethlehem Branch, Telegram channel, Oct. 23, 2023; Tulkarem Brigade, Telegram channel, Oct. 23, 2023]​

In fact, Palestinian youth in the West Bank have already heeded this call and taken to the streets to show their support for Hamas and the religious terror war against Israel, chanting “Allahu Akbar” – “Allah is greatest”:

Protesters in Jenin and Nablus:
Leader of chant: “Call out – Allahu Akbar (i.e., “Allah is greatest”)”
Crowd: “Allahu Akbar!”

[“The Palestinian Center for Information” (Hamas),
Twitter account, Oct. 29, 2023]​

Protesters in Beita:
“Allahu Akbar ...
O you who carry a rifle, if only you were prepared”

[Shehab news agency (Hamas), Twitter account, Oct. 29, 2023]​

Protesters in Qarawat:
“O mother of the Martyr, lucky are you,
If only my mother were in your place
Leave the Martyr in his blood [during burial],
And 1,000 blessings to his mother...
The people of the weapons will take care of him...
The Al-Aqsa Mosque gate, from here –
Only the Martyr will open it...”

[Quds New Network, Twitter account, Oct. 29, 2023]​

"Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar”

[Shehab news agency (Hamas), Twitter account, Oct. 29, 2023]​

Palestinian Media Watch exposed a similar chant that was led by a teacher in the West Bank who taught young schoolgirls that “Jihad is our path,” and that the goal is to “blow up the Zionist’s head.”

Protesters in Tubas:
Chant leader: “O Muslim, call out ‘Allahu Akbar’”
Crowd: “O Muslim, call out ‘Allahu Akbar’”
Chant leader: “Blow up the Zionist’s head!”
Crowd: “Blow up the Zionist’s head!”

Fatah’s Nablus Branch Secretary Muhammad Hamdan has also stressed Fatah’s joint mission with Hamas and its willingness to attack Israelis:

(full article online )

Fatah calls for terror in the West Bank â âCall out Allahu Akbar from the rooftopsâ | PMW Analysis

Fatah calls for terror in the West Bank

palwatch.org

 

[Sixties Fan]

project on.

[ A reminder why there are more civilian deaths in Gaza. Hamas is keeping those who want to flee south from leaving. Hamas uses Human shields hoping that Israel will not strike their military positions. In the end, all Gaza deaths are Hamas' doing. It does not matter if the world believes it or not, Hamas is done for ]

Mark Dubowitz, FDD CEO

“Hamas has been lying to the international community for years with inflated casualty numbers and libelous accusations against the IDF, while cynically targeting innocent Israeli civilians and using the Palestinian people as human shields. The world has consistently turned a blind eye to the lies and war crimes of Hamas. There can be no denying it anymore: Hamas is a terrorist organization consisting of war criminals and should be treated as such.” — Enia Krivine, Senior Director of FDD’s Israel Program and National Security Network

Hamas’ Record of War Crimes​

Terrorist groups use human shields to cause Western militaries, such as Israel’s, to either refrain from lawful attacks or risk being blamed for civilian casualties that are in fact the fault of the terrorist group. This time, Hamas is using not only Gazan civilians as human shields but also the more than 150 people it has kidnapped from Israel. Hamas has a long history of using human shields as a tactic of war, storing weapons, hiding terrorists, and launching rockets amid densely populated civilian areas, including schools, mosques, and hospitals.

Hamas Acts to Prevent Northern Gazans from Fleeing South

Since October 13, Israel has repeatedly called — in Hebrew, English, and Arabic — on the civilian population northern Gaza to move south of the Gaza River for their safety.

www.fdd.org

 

[Sixties Fan]

Israeli soldiers have continued to discover enormous piles of household and personal items stolen by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 from homes they attacked, then ransacked, near the Gaza border, the Tazpit Press Service has learned.

Found in open areas between the Israeli communities and the Gaza border were suitcases stuffed with stolen clothing, agricultural equipment, children’s toys, eyeglasses, electrical equipment, and even wall posters.

Enormous piles of stolen goods were even found in large garbage dumpsters, which would have been carried by tractors or bulldozers.

Adele Raemer, a resident of Kibbutz Nirim who spent hours hiding in a safe room during the rampage told TPS, “The thing that broke me most was to see who came after the terrorists.”

“After the terrorists came the riff-raff. Gazans of all ages, all sizes and shapes, and they came into our community and rampaged, destroyed, and stole everything they could. They just took stuff. If they wanted something, they stole it, just out of meanness, out of hate and evil,” she recalled.

All along, I was telling people I truly believed that most Gazans are good, most Gazans just want the same things we do, to put food on the table, have good health and clothing for their children,” Raemer said. “After I saw what happened on Oct. 7, — aside from the Hamas terrorists — all the looters that came in and rampaged through the kibbutz, I’m not so sure anymore. Where were all the good Gazans on Oct. 7?”

It’s possible that further looted possessions will be found over time.


Video footage of the Oct. 7 attacks circulating on social media showed Palestinian civilians and children accompanying the terrorists stealing items, such as television sets and bicycles.

Some of the videos were Israeli security footage, others were filmed by the terrorists, who wore GoPro body cameras to capture their massacring men, women and children.

‘After the terrorists, came the riff-raff’: Soldiers find piles of stolen Israeli items | World Israel News

'The thing that broke me most was to see who came after the terrorists' said one of the kibbutz residents.

worldisraelnews.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

[ The Israeli interest is to stop the PA from continuing to pay for slay and other disgusting programs they have invented which are designed to incite the Muslim population towards killing Jews. The education to killing Jews must stop. The education that Israel is their land must stop. The education that Judea and Samaria belongs to them must end. From 1948 to 1967 the Muslim population had that area all to themselves. They were occupied by Jordan. They could not care less then. No talk about a Palestinian state, no attacks on Jordan. From 1917 till now, it is all about keeping the land in Muslim hands. Destroy Israel is what they want and get the land back into Muslim hands]

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Wednesday rejected calls to reverse his decision to withhold tax revenues from the Palestinian Authority.

“I hear that there are those who think that while our heroic soldiers and commanders are sacrificing their lives for the defense of the homeland, we should transfer money to this despicable enemy in Judea and Samaria,” the minister tweeted.

“We do not repeat mistakes and concepts that we paid dearly for.”

His comments came after a report on Tuesday in Axios that the Biden administration “expressed alarm” after Monday’s announcement by Smotrich that he instructed the Finance Ministry to halt the transfer of funds to the P.A.

“We do not repeat mistakes and concepts that we paid dearly for.”

His comments came after a report on Tuesday in Axios that the Biden administration “expressed alarm” after Monday’s announcement by Smotrich that he instructed the Finance Ministry to halt the transfer of funds to the P.A.

Smotrich also urged the Cabinet to reconsider its policy of transferring money to Ramallah, due to “senior P.A. officials’ support for the horrific massacres of the Nazi terrorist organization Hamas.”

In a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he listed 12 inflammatory statements P.A. officials made in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 slaughter of more than 1,400 persons in Israel. The terrorists also wounded more than 5,000 others and took over 200 hostages back to Gaza.

“The P.A. has once again proven the fact, about which we have been raising our voices for years, that it is a terror-supporting organization,” Smotrich wrote in the letter.


“Therefore, beyond the connection of these funds to the Gaza Strip and its residents, these funds are used for activities against the State of Israel and its citizens. It is inconceivable that in this reality we will continue to transfer these funds as if nothing has happened.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday told the Senate Appropriations Committee that the administration asked Israel to release the money to the P.A.

U.S. officials asked Netanyahu’s office and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer for clarification on Smotrich’s decision, according to the Axios report.

“We told them that such a move undermines the Palestinian Authority and the stability in the West Bank and goes against Israeli interests. We can’t just let everything collapse,” a U.S. official said.

Smotrich doubles down on decision to withhold tax revenues from PA | World Israel News

'We do not repeat mistakes and concepts that we paid dearly for'.

worldisraelnews.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

[ This is how it should have been all along with most Jews and Arabs. But in 1920 a Muslim clan decided otherwise and won over those Clans which wanted a Jewish Nation rebuilt on its Jewish Ancient Homeland. Jews and Muslims living in peace as many still do in Israel and all over the world ]

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Sixties Fan]

 

[Failzero]

Israel learned from the “ Surrounding of Beirut “ and can do this one ( Gaza City) better

 

[Sixties Fan]

The FindMe platform uses a database of scores of photos and descriptions of the missing people uploaded by their families and friends. The descriptions range from general information such as hair and eye color to more detailed reports on scars and tattoos and even dental records.

The forensic scientists now tasked with identifying the remaining victims input any characteristics they observe into the database and within seconds receive a list of prospective names, ranging from most to least likely.

Dozens of people have already been identified through the FindMe platform, says its creator.

“It dramatically reduces the time it takes to determine the identity of a person,” Reuven Zolotarevsky, a senior software engineer at US cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks, tells NoCamels.

Prior to the search engine’s creation, he says, the Israel Police did not have any kind of technology that made it straightforward to search for and access data on a missing person.

“Even when the police do have sufficient data, it is not easy to manage and it is not concentrated in one place,” explains Zolotarevsky. “They also have no system that can compare possible matches.”

For while the data filed in a missing person report usually helps police to determine someone’s identity, it is an inefficient method when trying to identify dozens of victims at the same time.

Many government bodies now have access to the FindMe search engine and database, including the Israel Defense Forces, but the National Center of Forensic Medicine has used it the most so far.

(full article online)

Specialist Search Engine Created To Identify Final Oct. 7 Victims

The FindMe platform uses a database of scores of photos and descriptions of the missing Oct. 7 victims uploaded by their families and friends.

nocamels.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

Hamas tried to sneak its fighters out of the Gaza Strip in ambulances that evacuated dozens of wounded Palestinians to Egypt earlier this week, a senior Biden administration official said Friday.

Hamas had compiled a list of the seriously wounded that it wanted to evacuate from Gaza for treatment in Egypt, along with thousands of foreign nationals looking to flee the enclave.

The list was then vetted by Egypt and the United States, which found that a third of the names on it were of Hamas fighters, the administration official said, adding that the list was rejected and none of the 76 wounded Palestinians who were ultimately evacuated in ambulances out of Gaza were members of the terror group.


Meanwhile, two senior Israeli officials told The Times of Israel that Israeli inspectors earlier this week uncovered, hidden in an aid truck, several oxygen concentrators meant to aerate the tunnels operated by terror organizations in Gaza.

“These weren’t for use in the hospitals, but below them. That’s why they were smuggled among boxes of cookies,” one of the senior Israeli officials said, adding that the entire truck in which the oxygen concentrators were found was barred from entering Gaza.


(full article online)

Hamas tried to send fighters to Egypt in ambulances for wounded Gazans — US official

Israeli officials say inspectors uncovered oxygen concentrators for tunnels used by Palestinian terror groups inside truck carrying aid to Strip

www.timesofisrael.com

 

[Sixties Fan]

In the square in front of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, an unlikely mixture of Israeli artists dropped their paint brushes and charcoal pencils and ran for cover as a siren signaling an incoming rocket wailed on October 26.

After waiting in a nearby bomb shelter until they heard the rocket’s detonation, the group members — which included a middle-aged Orthodox woman in a headscarf and a tattooed woman in her 20s wearing a black halter top — returned to their easels and refocused their attention on the photos mounted beside them.

The photos were of Israelis reported as missing or kidnapped following the bloody massacre by Hamas terrorists on October 7, which left 1,400 dead — most of them civilians, including women, children, the elderly and entire families. To date, some 240 families of hostages have been notified by the military that their relatives are now being held in Gaza.


Each artist in that Tel Aviv square was directing their talent toward a singular cause: the creation of a portrait of one of the hostages as part of a project called This Is Us, which seeks to call attention to the plight of the missing and help bring them home safely.

The artists worked in two shifts of 10 every day last week. Others painted from their own studios as well, bringing the total number of participants up to 150, organizers said.

“It was a very intimate experience for me to paint the portrait of one of the kidnapped hostages,” said Hodaya Gilad, who lives in the central Israeli city of Elad and chose to portray 18-year-old Liri Albag. “I kept on thinking about what she was going through and I felt that somehow I was getting to know her personally.”

Hodaya Gilad paints a portrait of Liri Albag at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, October 26, 2023, as part of the This Is Us project. (Bernard Dichek)

(full article online)

In Tel Aviv, diverse mix of artists shines spotlight on Israeli hostages

From around the country, artists come to city's museum square to paint victims held in Gaza, in the hopes of drumming up support -- and one day gifting portraits to their subjects

www.timesofisrael.com