Tag: Hamas

What a Terror Attack in Israel Might Reveal About Psychedelics and Trauma

One Israeli said that being high on LSD during the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7 prompted a spiritual revelation that helped him escape the carnage at a desert rave. Another is certain the drug MDMA made him more decisive and gave him the strength to carry his girlfriend as they fled the scene. A third […]

Read More

Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh Defiant After Israeli Strike Kills 3 of His Sons

An Israeli airstrike on Wednesday killed three sons of one of the most senior leaders of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, who said the strike would not weaken the group’s negotiating position or its resolve in its fight against Israel. Mr. Haniyeh, who leads the Hamas political bureau from exile, is a longstanding leader of the group. […]

Read More

Hamas Does Not Have 40 Hostages Who Meet Terms of Potential Swap With Israel, Officials Said

A senior Hamas official said on Wednesday that Hamas does not have 40 living hostages in Gaza who meet the criteria for an exchange under a proposed cease-fire agreement with Israel being negotiated. A senior Israeli official said Israel had been relayed Hamas’s claim, and the senior Hamas official said that the group had informed […]

Read More

Biden Says Israel Has Improved Aid Delivery to Gaza but Has to Do More

Israeli authorities have improved aid delivery to Gaza but still “need to do more,” President Biden said on Wednesday, offering a measured assessment of how well Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is living up to promises he made last week. In a call with Mr. Netanyahu last Thursday, Mr. Biden said that the United States could […]

Read More

What War by A.I. Actually Looks Like

In November the left-wing Israeli outlets +972 magazine and Local Call published a disturbing investigation by the journalist Yuval Abraham into the Israel Defense Forces’ use of an artificial intelligence system for identifying targets in Gaza — which one former intelligence official described as a “mass assassination factory.” Toward the end of a year clouded […]

Read More

World Central Kitchen Let Him Serve Gaza. He Paid With His Life.

Saifeddin Abutaha, an aid worker for World Central Kitchen, was on his way home to see his mother when an Israeli missile struck the car he was driving in a humanitarian convoy last week. Mr. Abutaha, 25, doted on his parents, and he texted them frequently while out delivering aid across the Gaza Strip, which […]

Read More

Israel: Cease-Fire, Get Hostages, Leave Gaza, Rethink Everything

Israel today is at a strategic point in its war in Gaza, and there is every indication that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is going to choose the wrong path — and take the Biden administration along for a very dangerous and troubling ride. It is so dangerous and troubling that Israel’s best option, when all […]

Read More

Germany Rebuffs Claim Its Arms Sales to Israel Abet Genocide in Gaza

Germany on Tuesday defended itself against accusations that its arms sales to Israel were abetting genocide in Gaza, arguing at the International Court of Justice that most of the equipment it has supplied since Oct. 7 was nonlethal and that it has also been one of the largest donors of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. […]

Read More

Iran Smuggles Arms to West Bank, Officials Say, to Foment Unrest With Israel

Iran is operating a clandestine smuggling route across the Middle East, employing intelligence operatives, militants and criminal gangs, to deliver weapons to Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to officials from the United States, Israel and Iran. The goal, as described by three Iranian officials, is to foment unrest against Israel by flooding the […]

Read More

Active Fighting Subsides in Gaza, but the War Is Not Over, Officials Say

The Israeli military’s departure from southern Gaza over the weekend has left the devastated territory in a state of suspense as active fighting there receded on Monday to its lowest ebb since a brief truce with Hamas in November. But even as some observers hoped Israel’s withdrawal from the area might portend a new cease-fire, […]

Read More

Israel Withdraws Troops From Southern Gaza as War Hits 6-Month Mark

The Israeli military said Sunday that it had withdrawn a division of ground troops from the southern Gaza Strip, as international mediators gathered with hopes of brokering a temporary cease-fire six months into a war that has now become the longest involving Israel since the 1980s. Israel has significantly reduced the number of troops it […]

Read More

At Rally for Hostages, Nadler Is Booed After Calling for Gaza Aid

Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York was booed on Sunday at a demonstration in Manhattan calling for the release of hostages held by Hamas after he encouraged attendees to also push for humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza. “As we remember the heinous crimes committed by Hamas, we must continue to press for lifesaving humanitarian […]

Read More

Hillary Clinton’s Return to Wellesley Met With Protests and Ceasefire Calls

Hillary Clinton returned on Saturday to her alma mater, Wellesley College, to celebrate the opening of a new research and study center that bears her name, more than half a century after she graduated and set off on the path that would make her its most famous alumna. She was met, as ever, by Wellesley […]

Read More

Gaza War Turns Spotlight on Long Pipeline of U.S. Weapons to Israel

In the fall of 2016, the Obama administration sealed a major military agreement with Israel that committed the United States to giving the country $38 billion in arms over 10 years. “The continued supply of the world’s most advanced weapons technology will ensure that Israel has the ability to defend itself from all manner of […]

Read More

In Threatening Israel, Biden Hopes to Avoid a Rupture

By the time President Biden hung up the phone, he had finally delivered the threat he had refused to make for months: Israel had to change course, he told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or the United States would take action. But as the conversation ended on Thursday, aides to Mr. Biden said, the president had […]

Read More

After 6 Months of War, Some Israelis Ask: Is Netanyahu Dragging It Out?

Nearly six months since it began, Israel’s war in Gaza is dragging on. So, too, is the tenure of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In Israel, some are now asking: Are the two are linked? To his allies, Mr. Netanyahu’s refusal to agree to a cease-fire in Gaza is a necessary one, made in the national […]

Read More

‘Stop It Now’: Jill Biden Privately Urges an End to Conflict in Gaza

One of the strongest voices inside the White House urging an end to civilian casualties in Gaza is the person closest to the president: Jill Biden. At a meeting with Muslim community members at the White House on Tuesday evening, one guest told the president that his wife had disapproved of him coming to the […]

Read More

World Central Kitchen Workers Delivered Aid. Then Their Convoy Was Hit.

Lalzawmi Frankcom’s text message was short and sweet: a heart emoji reply at 10:38 p.m. on Sunday to her friend Josh Phelps, who had sent along photos of their humanitarian work together on a reservation in South Dakota. Ms. Frankcom, an Australian known as Zomi, had a big day ahead on Monday. She and her […]

Read More

World Central Kitchen Workers Delivered Aid. Then Their Convoy Was Hit.

Lalzawmi Frankcom’s text message was short and sweet: a heart emoji reply at 10:38 p.m. on Sunday to her friend Josh Phelps, who had sent along photos of their humanitarian work together on a reservation in South Dakota. Ms. Frankcom, an Australian known as Zomi, had a big day ahead on Monday. She and her […]

Read More

Biden Outraged After Israel’s Military Claims Aid Convoy Attack Was a Mistake

President Biden said he was “outraged and heartbroken” by the killing of seven humanitarian aid workers in a strike by Israeli forces, strongly condemning the attack just hours after Israel’s top military commander acknowledged its military had made a “grave mistake.” Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi made a rare admission of fault by Israel in the […]

Read More

Israeli Strikes Kill 7 Aid Workers in Gaza

Israeli strikes on an aid convoy run by the charity group World Central Kitchen killed seven of its workers in the Gaza Strip, setting off international outrage and underscoring the risks to humanitarian workers trying to alleviate a looming famine. The aid workers — a Palestinian, an Australian, a Pole, three Britons and a dual […]

Read More

A Timeline of Iran and Israel’s Shadow War Across the Middle East

For decades, Israel and Iran have fought a shadow war across the Middle East, trading attacks by land, sea, air and in cyberspace. Iran has largely used foreign proxies to strike Israeli interests, while targeted assassinations of Iranian military leaders and nuclear scientists have been a key part of Israel’s strategy. Israel’s strike in the […]

Read More

Strike in Damascus Escalates Israel’s Undeclared War With Iran

Israel’s bombing of an Iranian Embassy building in Damascus, which killed senior Iranian military and intelligence officials, is a major escalation of what has long been a simmering undeclared war between Israel and Iran. But while the strike is a vivid demonstration of the regional nature of the war, Iran has been careful since Hamas […]

Read More

Israeli Army Withdraws From Major Gaza Hospital, Leaving Behind a Wasteland

Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, once the fulcrum of Gaza’s health system and now an emblem of its destruction, stood in ruins on Sunday, as if a tsunami had surged through it followed by a tornado. The emergency department was a tidy, off-white building until Israeli troops returned there in March. Two weeks later, it […]

Read More

Israeli Strike in Syria Kills 7, Including 3 Iranian Commanders

At least three senior commanders and four officers overseeing Iran’s covert operations in the Middle East were killed on Monday when Israeli warplanes struck a building in Damascus that is part of the Iranian Embassy complex, according to Iranian and Syrian officials. The strike in Damascus, the Syrian capital, appeared to be among the deadliest […]

Read More

Trump’s Call for Israel to ‘Finish Up’ War Alarms Conservatives

Two Israeli journalists traveled to Palm Beach, Fla., a little over a week ago, hoping to elicit from Donald J. Trump a powerful expression of support for their country’s war in Gaza. Instead, one of them wrote that what they heard from Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago “shocked us to the core.” “Both U.S. presidential candidates, […]

Read More