Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, who was released last month before the cease-fire, said she and other captors slept on mattresses on the floors of the tunnels.

“I went through hell," Lifshitz told reporters at a hospital in Tel Aviv the day after her release.

Lifshitz said she was beaten while her Hamas captors abducted her on the back of a motorcycle. She said she was then taken through a "spider web" of subterranean tunnels − passages where Hamas hides its fighters and weapons.

One of the hostages, recently released from Gaza, revealed on Wednesday that he was held for nearly 50 days in an attic by a teacher from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

The story was publicized on X by Channel 13 journalist Almog Boker.

The hostage also said that the teacher who held him captive was a father of 10 children. He had barely been provided food or medical attention, and was locked away by the teacher, he said.

Furthermore, Boker's report also cites another hostage saying that he was held hostage by a Gazan doctor as he was treating children patients.
The UNRWA school in Nablus

A report from the beginning of the month saw a UNRWA-run school in Nablus in the West Bank posting a video to its official Facebook page in which a young student called for the victory of Hamas’s “jihad warriors” in Gaza.

Nurit Cooper, 79, was held in the warren of tunnels beneath Gaza with four older Israelis in the early days of the war. They were kept in a small room with little light or ventilation, according to Rotem Cooper, her son.

Ms. Cooper’s shoulder was broken “as part of the brutality of the kidnapping,” Mr. Cooper said. The group of hostages, all in their 70s and 80s, he added, struggled to walk in the dark, sandy tunnels.

Jewish hostages were held in tougher conditions than Thai hostages and were beaten with electric cables, according to a report on N12 on Wednesday evening. According to the report, Thai hostages released by Hamas in recent days told Israeli security personnel: “Occasionally, we were put in captivity with the Israelis, they were constantly guarded. [Hamas] had a tougher attitude towards the Jews, they were beaten with electric cables.”
One of them added, according to the report, “We ate one pita a day, and a can of tuna was divided among four people.”

Adar and Keren Munder, 54, returned much thinner than before, relatives said. “They were eating, but not regularly and not all of the time,” said Merav Mor Raviv, Munder’s cousin. Munder and her mother, Ruth, 78, had lost between 13 and 17 pounds, Raviv said.

They slept on rows of three chairs tied together, like benches in a waiting room

Three people were killed and five other people were wounded in a shooting attack at the entrance to Jerusalem on Thursday morning, according to emergency services.

A 73-year-old man, a woman in her 60s, and 24-year-old woman were killed in the attack, while three other people were seriously wounded, and two more were in light to moderate condition.

--snip--

The two terrorists were identified as Murad and Ebrahim Nemer, brothers from Sur Baher in east Jerusalem who were affiliated with the Hamas terrorist movement. Murad was imprisoned in Israel from 2010-2020 because of his intention to carry out terrorist operations in Gaza; Ebrahim was imprisoned in 2014 due to terrorist activity.

Hamas announced as well that the two terrorists were part of the terrorist movement, saying that the attack came as "natural response to the occupation’s unprecedented crimes."

Negotiators from at least five countries were working feverishly toward an extension of a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip while Hamas announced Wednesday that three Israeli hostages have died, including a 10-month-old child.

--snip--

The Israeli military said it was investigating the veracity of a Hamas announcement Wednesday that three Israeli hostages have died "as a result of a former Zionist bombing on the Gaza Strip," apparently prior to the start of the cease-fire. Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, said in the Telegram post that Shiri Silverman Bibas, 32, her 4-year-old son Ariel and her 10-month-old son Kfir had died.

“The Hamas terror organization continues to act in a cruel and inhumane manner,” the Israeli military said in a statement. "The responsibility for the safety of all the abductees in the Gaza Strip lies fully with the terrorist organization Hamas."

The Bibas family released a statement to Israel's i24 news saying it was awaiting the report "to be confirmed or hopefully refuted soon by military officials."

The Times is attempting to do that, beginning with two conversations with scholars once dubbed the “New Historians” — a loose group of Israeli revisionists who, in the 1980s, reexamined their country’s heroic origin story. As the interviews — one with Benny Morris...

The history of this land is riven by two incompatible narratives, Israeli and Palestinian. What can we definitively say about what happened in 1948?

At the end of 1947, the United Nations proposed to divide the country into two states. In 1948 there were 1.3 million Arabs in Palestine and 650,000 Jews there. The Jews said yes, but the Arabs of Palestine said no and started shooting. It evolved into a full-scale Arab-Israeli war. Israel eventually won and 700,000 Arabs were uprooted from their homes, most ending up as refugees in the West Bank and in Gaza. [Some accounts put the number at 750,000.]

Both sides did awful things, which is what happens in wars. The Arabs were the losing side and my view is that if people commit major mistakes in history they pay for them and perhaps that's how it should work out. The Palestinians should have agreed to a two-state solution.

Ukrainian forces have gained control of the Dnipro left bank’s floodplain in Kherson Oblast, forcing the Russians to build new defensive lines on hills farther from the river, former Aidar Battalion company commander Yevhen Dykyi told Radio NV.

"In fact, the Dnipro floodplain is effectively under Ukrainian control. And now the Russians are trying to prevent any further steps. They have essentially ceded the floodplain to us, but they are trying to dig in and fortify themselves where the terrain begins to rise. Although it's not accurate to call them hills, there is a slight elevation compared to the mostly flat terrain. At the moment, they are trying to dig in, fortify themselves, and establish some sort of defensive line along this elevation," Dykyi said, noting that the Russians have nothing similar to the so-called Surovikin defensive line.

"They built the Surovikin line for nine months, and now no one is giving them that much time, not even close. That's why, if we use World War II comparisons from time to time, we can say that our ’Normandy landing’ has already happened, and now, let's say, our Ardennes is ahead of us. That is, to break through from the beaches, so to speak, ‘from Normandy,’ in our case, from the Dnipro River floodplain, to break through into a wide operational space."

--snip--

Ukrainian forces have successfully deployed three brigades on the left bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast as the broader southern counteroffensive culminated, The Guardian reported on Nov. 16, citing unnamed Western officials.

The marine infantry officially confirmed on Nov. 17 that Ukrainian fighters had secured several beachheads on the occupied left bank of the Dnipro. More than a thousand occupiers and dozens of pieces of equipment were destroyed during the operation.

The IDF says fighters from its Brigade 401 operating on the outskirts of Gaza’s Jabaliya have located four “significant” tunnels dug deep underground, as well as a stash of weapons hidden under the beds of a senior Hamas member’s kids and in closets.

The military says the tunnels are connected to an electricity network and were used by Hamas. One of them was found in a search of the home of a different senior member of the terror group.

At the home of the first official, in addition to weapons, troops also located many documents and battle plans, which have been handed to intelligence forces for examination.

The troops also found shafts used to launch rockets, alongside long-range rockets of the type used to target central Israel.

Israel’s military released footage with blurred faces that it says shows Hamas militants taking hostages into Al-Shifa Hospital on Oct. 7. WSJ spoke to friends and colleagues of captured Nepali student Bipin Joshi, whom they believe to be one of the men in the video.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has confirmed that it has detained the director of the Al-Shifa Hospital for questioning.

Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya was earlier reported to have been arrested while evacuating the embattled Al-Shifa Hospital as part of a convoy organized by the World Health Organization.

Abu Salmiya was "apprehended and transferred for ISA questioning following evidence showing that the Shifa Hospital, under his direct management, served as a Hamas command and control center," the IDF said Thursday in a joint statement with the Israeli Security Agency, also known as Shin Bet.

The statement said Hamas' "tunnel network situation under the hospital also exploited electricity and resources taken from the hospital. In addition, Hamas stored numerous weapons inside the hospital and on the hospital grounds."

“In the hospital, under his management, there was extensive Hamas terrorist activity. Findings of his involvement in terrorist activity will determine whether he will be subject to further ISA questioning,” the statement said.

NEW YORK – A large group that turned out to support a Palestinian-American man convicted of taking part in a hate crime beating of a Jewish man in a Times Square protest was ejected from a Manhattan courthouse Tuesday after shouting at the judge during his sentencing.

Mahmoud Musa was among a group of men who brutally beat Joseph Borgen after spotting him in public wearing a yarmulke in 2021. They set out that morning “to attack Jewish people,” according to prosecutors, and they found Borgen, who was headed to a pro-Israel rally.

They pummeled him to the floor, kicked him while he was down and doused him with pepper spray.

BERLIN (AP) — Hundreds of police officers searched the properties of Hamas members and followers in Germany on Thursday morning following a formal ban on any activity by or in support of the militant group.

The German government implemented the ban on Nov. 2 and dissolved Samidoun, a group that was behind a celebration in Berlin of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Germany’s domestic intelligence service estimates that Hamas has around 450 members in the country. Their activities range from expressions of sympathy and propaganda activities to financing and fundraising activities to strengthen the organization abroad.

“We are continuing our consistent action against radical Islamists,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said. “By banning Hamas and Samidoun in Germany, we have sent a clear signal that we will not tolerate any glorification or support of Hamas’ barbaric terror against Israel.”