Terrorism

A comprehensive investigation has uncovered systematic sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas terrorists during the onslaught on Israel.

Erez Linn

(Israel Hayom via JNS)

Fresh testimony from survivors and witnesses demonstrates that Hamas terrorists systematically employed sexual violence during their Oct. 7, 2023, assault on Israel, according to a comprehensive investigation that documents previously unreported accounts of rape and sexual abuse.

The upcoming Dinah Project report presents evidence from 15 returned hostages who experienced sexual violence in captivity, with only one having spoken publicly before now, the U.K. newspaper The Sunday Times revealed.

The investigation, conducted by Israeli gender and legal experts with partial funding from the British government, found that sexual violence was “widespread and systematic” during the onslaught that killed approximately 1,200 people.

According to the Sunday Times, the report establishes that rape and gang rape occurred in at least six locations, though most victims were “permanently silenced”—either murdered during the assaults or left too traumatized to speak.

The Dinah Project will be published on Tuesday in Jerusalem, representing the most comprehensive documentation of sexual violence during the Oct. 7 attack, the newspaper reported.

The report draws from first-hand testimony of 15 returned Gaza hostages, a survivor of attempted rape at the Supernova music festival and interviews with 17 people who witnessed or heard the attacks, along with therapists treating traumatized survivors.

The project aims “to counter denial, misinformation and global silence” regarding what researchers describe as “one of the most under-reported dimensions of the attacks.”

The report states its mission is “to set the historical record straight: Hamas used sexual violence as a tactical weapon of war.

“Clear patterns emerged in how the sexual violence was perpetrated,” the report documents, “including victims found partially or fully naked with their hands tied, often to trees or poles; evidence of gang rapes followed by execution; and genital mutilation.”

The documented attacks occurred at the Supernova music festival, Route 232, the Nahal Oz military base, and three kibbutzim: Re’im, Nir Oz and Kfar Aza. Sexual abuse extended beyond the initial assault locations, the report reveals.

“Sexual violence continued in captivity, with many returnees reporting forced nudity, physical and verbal sexual harassment, sexual assaults and threats of forced marriage,” the investigation adds.

Examples from Islamic State and Boko Haram

Professor Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, director of the Ruth and Emanuel Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, initiated the project to “ensure recognition and justice for victims and survivors.”

She collaborated with Sharon Zagagi-Pinhas, an international law expert and former IDF chief military prosecutor, and Nava Ben-Or, a retired judge and former deputy state attorney specializing in sexual abuse cases.

The research addresses criticism of inadequate responses from international organizations such as UN Women (full name the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women) following reports of sexual violence by the Sunday Times and other outlets.

The project also deals with questions raised by false claims from first responders and arguments that Hamas, as an Islamic organization, would not commit rape—despite examples from Islamic State (ISIS) in the Middle East and Boko Haram in West Africa.

Some critics argued that the sexual violence issue had been “weaponized” by the Israeli government to justify its actions in Gaza.

This criticism particularly affected Halperin-Kaddari, who had worked for years on international cases of sexual violence, including Yazidis taken as sex slaves by ISIS and girls abducted by Boko Haram in Nigeria.

“We feel let down by other women around the world,” Halperin-Kaddari said. “If the standard is to believe survivors and witnesses, there is no excuse to keep quiet.

“Yet in this case, a different standard was employed and the victims were lost in politicization. The fact that so many kept silent or even denied what happened was devastating and a grave failure of international human rights.”

The project takes its name from the first rape victim in the Bible—Dinah, Jacob’s only daughter, who was raped by Shechem, son of a prince.

After the assault, Dinah’s brothers circumcised and killed the men of Shechem’s tribe and abducted their women, but Dinah’s voice was never heard.

Halperin-Kaddari explained that the project aims “to be a voice for those who cannot or can no longer speak.”

Previous fact-finding reports by the U.N. special representative for preventing sexual violence, a U.N. independent commission of inquiry and the International Criminal Court all found indications of sexual violence and gang rape.

However, the Dinah Project introduces new evidence, including first-hand witness testimony from 15 returned hostages who experienced sexual violence in captivity.

Among the hostages, only one has spoken publicly: Amit Soussana, a lawyer held for 55 days.

Two of the hostages were male, according to the report.

Zagagi-Pinhas explained that “sexual violence need not mean rape—also forced nudity, forcing some of the hostages to strip and shower while being watched, or trying to force them into marriage.”

The researchers also interviewed a victim of attempted rape at the Supernova festival who required 17 months to come forward. “We know from therapists there are more, but they are still too traumatized to speak,” Zagagi-Pinhas added.

The investigation included interviews with 17 people who witnessed or heard attacks, providing detailed descriptions of the violence.

These witnesses included two brothers who hid under bushes, and Tali Biner, a nurse who concealed herself inside a shipping container. They described 15 incidents including gang rapes.

Additionally, researchers spoke with 27 first responders who described “dozens of cases in different locations” while analyzing forensic evidence from photographs and videos.

Justice when many of the victims are dead

“What we found makes clear that sexual violence including rape and gang rape took place in multiple locations,” Halperin-Kaddari said.

“We found patterns of evidence,” Zagagi-Pinhas added. “Women found dead, naked and mutilated—with gunshots in their genitalia–and tied to trees. The fact that the same things happened in three to six locations can’t be coincidence, but proof that this was premeditated.”

She reported that “dozens” of bodies of young women were stripped and some were tied to trees or poles. “Many of the witnesses we spoke to talk of the victims being shot and perpetrators still trying to rape a dead body,” she said.

The report’s primary objective is to demand justice, providing what Halperin-Kaddari describes as “a blueprint for how to secure justice in cases of mass atrocities when many of the victims are dead and it is impossible to point at a specific perpetrator.”

“We see October 7 as a test case,” said Ben-Or, the retired judge. “Authorities are used to seeking justice on an individual case, but here we have mass cases and most victims were murdered or too traumatized to speak, which creates profound challenges for establishing accountability, so we needed to come up with a new legal framework and new ways to prosecute.

“Sexual violence in conflict is about destruction and dehumanizing a community, so the idea you have to find a specific perpetrator who harmed a specific victim is irrelevant,” she added.

“To say, ‘When I joined Hamas, I meant only to murder women and children, but I am very much against rape’ is ridiculous. Everything that was done within the framework of the attack, you are responsible for.”

The report calls for the U.N. secretary-general to send a fact-finding mission in light of the testimonies and to include Hamas in the blacklist in the U.N.’s annual report of those designated for using sexual violence as a weapon of war.

Originally published by Israel Hayom.

Image: Israeli hostage Amit Soussana, the only one who has spoken publicly. Left: During her release from captivity. Credit: Israel Hayom.

After my speech, Yaron approached me. He was thoughtful, insightful, kind, handsome. Twenty-four hours later, he was gone.

Yuval David

(JNS)

On Wednesday night, terror found its way into the heart of Washington.

Outside the Capital Jewish Museum in D.C., during an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee, a young couple was brutally gunned down—shot multiple times by a radicalized terrorist who shouted “Free, free Palestine” after he pulled the trigger. Sarah Milgrim, 26, and Yaron Lischinsky, 30, were murdered for being, or being perceived as, Jews.

Zichronam Livracha. May the memory of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky forever be a blessing.

They were two beautiful souls in love, expecting to build a future together. Staff members of the Israeli Embassy to the United States, they were optimistic and dedicated. They came to celebrate community, diplomacy and Jewish vitality. Instead, they were slaughtered.

I write this with tears in my eyes and an aching heart—as a Washingtonian, as a Jew, as a Zionist. As someone who believes in the beauty of our people and the promise of tomorrow.

But grief is not the only emotion I feel. There is urgency. There is duty. And there is the unshakable clarity passed down through generations of Jewish resilience: We must act. Each of us, all of us. For our people. For our future.

Just a day before the attack, I met Yaron.

We were both at the Middle East Forum conference in D.C., where I spoke about the very danger that would claim his life. As a speaker in a panel discussion, I addressed how radical Islamist terror movements have hijacked the language of justice and human rights, infiltrating Western progressive spaces, manipulating compassion into complicity, and radicalizing the ignorant and angry.

I warned that many so-called “pro-Palestinian” chants are not cries for peace; they are calls for violence. That Jews are increasingly unsafe—in Israel, in Europe, in the United States. That democracy itself is under siege.

After my speech, Yaron approached me. He was thoughtful, insightful, kind, handsome. We spoke—man to man, Jew to Jew—about the threats facing our people, our countries and our shared values. He was vibrant, full of promise and deeply committed. I thought, “What a remarkable man with such a meaningful future.”

Twenty-four hours later, he was gone. Shot alongside his partner in an act of pure evil.

This was not senseless violence. It was targeted, ideological and premeditated. It was a terrorist attack.

Fueled by calculated disinformation and incitement, Palestinianism has become a Trojan horse for global Islamist extremism. and Western institutions—paralyzed by fear, confused by moral relativism and seduced by performative activism—have enabled its spread.

The slogans of the street are not expressions of peace. They are marching orders for hatred.

And we, the Jewish people, have seen this before. Still, we cannot stay silent. We cannot afford complacency.

This tragedy demands accountability—not just from within our community but from the governments and institutions that profess to stand with us. Why was there not more security? How could this happen in the capital of the United States, outside a Jewish museum, during a Jewish event? These questions are not rhetorical. They require answers.

According to the FBI’s 2023 hate-crime report, 60.4% of all religiously motivated hate crimes in the U.S. targeted Jews, even though Jews make up just 2.4% of the population.

The Anti-Defamation League tracked 8,873 incidents of Jew-hatred in 2023—a 140% increase from 2022 and the highest number since the organization began keeping records in 1979. The surge in antisemitism has only intensified in early 2024, with hundreds more incidents recorded in schools, colleges and major cities.

This proves a devastating truth: Jews in America are not safe. Not in synagogues. Not on college campuses. Not at Jewish events. Not even in the heart of the nation’s capital.

The United States has failed to fully protect its Jewish citizens. We are targeted too often. And our grief is compounded by the knowledge that this attack, like so many others, could have been prevented.

This is why I continue my work—as a journalist reporting on rising extremism; as a news commentator clearly engaging in fact based scrutiny; as a speaker and panelist at policy and diplomatic forums; as an adviser to leaders and institutions fighting antisemitism, anti-Jewish hatred and bigotry, and terrorism; and through my social-media platforms, where I amplify voices committed to truth and justice. These efforts are not born of necessity but are movement-building, aiming to inspire Jews and allies to do more for our people and causes.

We must meet this moment with heartbreak and with hope.

To my friends and partners in Jewish advocacy at the American Jewish Committee and the Capital Jewish Museum: I know this is an unbearable time. What you built was meant to uplift and connect. It became a crime scene. But you are not alone. You are not to blame. And your strength is needed now more than ever; your work is paramount.

This tragedy sharpens our collective purpose. It lights within us a fire—not of rage but of resolve.

The Jewish people are not just survivors. We are creators, builders and dreamers. We carry the responsibility of our ancestors and the hopes of our children. Our cultural survival is not only for us; it’s a vital defense of Western democratic values.

Israel stands firm while much of the world falters. And we, the global Jewish people, carry with us the moral clarity and spiritual defiance needed to confront darkness with light.

Sarah and Yaron are no longer with us. But their memory must become a mission. We must build a world where no Jew is murdered for being a Jew, and where no ally is targeted for standing with us. Where love, like theirs, is allowed to grow old.

May their memory be a blessing. May our tears lead to truth. May our grief become our grit.

Image: Police tape cordons off the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., after the shooting of Israeli Embassy staff members Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, following an evening event hosted by the American Jewish Committee, May 21, 2025. Credit: Sdkb via Wikimedia Commons.

The demonstrators were also seen carrying Egyptian flags, apparently showing support for Cairo’s mediation efforts toward a ceasefire agreement and hostage deal in recent weeks.

Shachar Kleiman

(Israel Hayom via JNS)

Social media footage published on Wednesday, including by Israel’s Foreign Ministry, showed mass protests against Hamas in northern Gaza, with people holding up signs and chanting, “Hamas out,” “We want to live” and “Listen, listen, all people. Beit Lahia is not Hamas,” referring to the city in the northern Strip.

The demonstrators were also seen carrying Egyptian flags, apparently showing support for Cairo’s mediation efforts toward a ceasefire agreement and hostage deal.

These protests have continued sporadically for several weeks, featuring curses and calls against the terror organization. Hamas has attempted to suppress the demonstrations through threats and executions, but without success.

Originally published by Israel Hayom.

Image: Palestinians in northern Gaza take part in an anti-Hamas protest, calling to end the war with Israel on March 26, 2025. Photo by Flash90.

“These are people that have been really, really, horribly treated. I’ve never seen anything like it,” the U.S. president said.

JNS Staff

(JNS)

“We are trying very hard to get the hostages out,” U.S. President Donald Trump told the press during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House on Monday.

“We’re looking at another ceasefire. We’ll see what happens. But we … want to get the hostages out. Israeli people want the hostages out more than anything,” Trump said, adding that Netanyahu was working “very hard” toward that goal.

Referring to a meeting he held with former hostages in the Oval Office on March 5, Trump said he’d asked them if Hamas had shown any sign of human kindness, if they offered them extra food or told them that they would be OK.

“They said, “No, they didn’t do that. They’d slap us.’ The hatred is unbelievable,” he said.

“They lived in a pipe, not really a tunnel. It was a pipe. And they always thought they were suffocating. They were going to suffocate. And then they’d open up the pipe, and it was like three-and-a-half feet high. You know, we hear tunnels—bad—but pipes are worse,” the president said.

“They were amazing to me because they seemed to be pretty normal, not scarred. But I guarantee underneath, they have to be scarred,” Trump said.

“One was there for 356 days. Another was there for 180 days. … These are people that have been really, really, horribly treated. I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said.

Trump also expressed his surprise at how the parents of hostages who had died in captivity still talked about their children as if they were alive. “They said, ‘Sir, my son is dead. It is just as important to bring that body back home.’”

He noted that most of those in captivity are young, and yet only 24 of the 59 hostages are estimated to remain alive. He referred back to the three hostages, who emerged from captivity looking “exactly like the pictures that I saw from the 1940s, the concentration camps.”

“This is unbelievable. We’re going back into a chapter in history that is one of the worst ever,” he said.

Trump expressed shock at the time at the condition of Israeli hostages Or Levy, 34, Eli Sharabi, 52, and Ohad Ben Ami, 56, who were released after 491 days following their abduction during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

Speaking aboard Air Force One on Feb. 9, Trump said of the three men, who were released a day earlier, that they “look like Holocaust survivors. They were in horrible condition—emaciated. It looked like something from many years ago.”

At some point, we are going to lose our patience with Hamas, he warned. “They [the hostages] look like they haven’t had a meal in a month. There’s no reason for that. I don’t know how much longer we can take it.”

Image: U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House, April 7, 2025. Credit: Avi Ohayon/GPO.

Published on Mon, 07 Apr 2025 18:43:43 -0400. Original article link

Deif and Sinwar asked the Quds Force commander to finance “the annihilation of Israel and the fight against the U.S.—and they got it.”

(Israel Hayom via JNS)

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz revealed, for the first time, communications between Tehran and slain Hamas leaders Mohammed Deif and Yahya Sinwar.

“This is definitive proof of Iran‘s support for Hamas’s plan to destroy Israel and for the October 7, [2023], massacre,” Katz said. “Deif and Sinwar demanded $500 million from the Quds Force commander to support the annihilation of Israel and the fight against the U.S.—and they got it.”

Katz visited the IDF’s Intelligence and Technological Systems Unit (AMASHT) on Saturday and received a briefing from unit commanders on its intelligence and operational activities.

“I’m here today visiting the AMASHT unit—a special unit established during the Swords of Iron war and composed of reservists with extensive civilian-sector expertise, who developed national-level capabilities that did not yet exist,” he said.

He added that this intelligence capability holds critical material physically collected from deep inside enemy territory, including Hamas archives, Hezbollah documents and other sensitive intelligence sources.

“Today I am presenting, for the first time, a transcript of conversations found in the tunnels of senior Hamas officials in Gaza, which proves a direct connection between Iran and Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, as part of Iran’s support for Hamas’s plan to destroy Israel. The document shows they requested $500 million from the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force to help destroy the State of Israel,” Katz said.

According to the document, the head of the Quds Force’s Palestinian Affairs Branch, Hassan Izadi, responded affirmatively to the request, saying that despite Iran’s dire economic situation and the hardships faced by the Iranian people, the regime would continue funding Hamas, because the fight against Israel and the U.S. remains the regime’s top priority.

Katz concluded, “Iran is the head of the snake. Despite all its denials, it continues to finance and promote terrorism across all fronts—from Gaza, Lebanon and Syria to Judea and Samaria, and now even with the Houthis in Yemen—all under the banner of Israel’s destruction.

“Israel will do whatever is necessary to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and will continue to strike at its proxies across the region until the Iranian axis of evil is dismantled and defeated.”

Image: Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the ruins of his Gaza office, May 27, 2021. Credit: Courtesy.

Originally published by Israel Hayom.

The video showed the hostage with his brother Yair, shortly before the latter was released. Netanyahu slammed Hamas for its “cruel propaganda.”

JNS Staff

(JNS)

The Hamas terrorist organization released on Saturday evening footage of Eitan Horn, an Israeli abducted during the Oct. 7, 2023, Gazan invasion of the northwestern Negev and still held captive in the Strip.

The video was apparently filmed a short while before Eitan, now aged 38, was separated from his brother Yair, who was released from captivity on Feb. 15.

The brothers were shown in the footage holding each other and bursting in tears. Eitan Horn speaks to the camera, pleading with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to sign an agreement on the second phase of the ceasefire, so he can be freed as well.

The Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement, “The terrorist organization Hamas released another cruel propaganda video this evening, in which our hostages are forced to serve as tools for psychological warfare.

“Israel will not be deterred by Hamas’s propaganda. We will continue to work relentlessly to bring all our hostages home and achieve all of Israel’s war objectives,” the statement concludes.

The Horn family, authorizing the publication of the video, said in a statement: “It breaks our heart to see Eitan in this difficult situation, saying goodbye to his brother Yair, who is being freed while Eitan remains held in Hamas’s hell for 512 days now.”

It continues, “You can see the despair and fear in Eitan’s eyes. Since Yair returned to us, he hasn’t stopped thinking about and working for Eitan, and all the other hostages he met in captivity who are still there. We demand from the decision-makers: Look Eitan in the eyes. Don’t end the agreement that has already brought dozens of hostages back to us. They are running out of time! Bring everyone home, now, in all at once.”

At least three other hostages are seen in captivity with Eitan and Yair Horn, two of whom have their faces blurred.

The third abductee whose face is visible, American-Israeli Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36, was released on the same day that Yair was handed over to Israel, along with Alexander (“Sasha”) Troufanov, 29, a dual Russian-Israel citizen who had been held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another terrorist organization that operates in Gaza.

All three men were taken hostage from Kibbutz Nir Oz during the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist assault on the community, which was among the hardest hit. One in every four residents was killed or kidnapped.

Image: Eitan Horn, 38. Credit: Courtesy of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

A senior official from the terrorist group urged an escalation of “resistance in all its forms in Jerusalem.”

Shachar Kleiman

(Israel Hayom via JNS)

With Ramadan set to begin at sundown on Friday, Hamas is aiming to spark a wave of terrorist attacks in Jerusalem, including on the Temple Mount.

On Thursday, Harun Nasser al-Din, the head of Hamas’s Jerusalem Office, who is currently abroad, declared that there must be “full confrontation against the occupation’s incursions, an uprising against its projects, and no surrender to attempts at Judaization and expulsion.”

Another senior Hamas official urged an escalation of “resistance in all its forms in Jerusalem,” a clear incitement to terrorist attacks.

Al-Din also referenced the demolition of illegally built structures in Jerusalem, accusing Israel of implementing “malicious plans for expulsion and Judaization projects.” He further emphasized that “all plans and schemes will be shattered by the escalation of the resistance in all its forms.”

Throughout the week, Hamas seized on Israeli police recommendations to limit the number of Muslim worshippers allowed on the Temple Mount during Ramadan, proposing a cap of 10,000 people at a time.

In response, the terrorist organization declared that restricting the number of worshippers constitutes “a dangerous escalation and precedent aimed at undermining freedom of worship at Al-Aqsa mosque.”

Hamas further warned Israel about “the consequences of implementing these recommendations,” stating that it would bear full responsibility for any resulting escalation.

At the same time, Hamas is not ruling out an extension of the first phase of the hostage deal and ceasefire in Gaza. If additional phases proceed, they will coincide with the volatile period of Ramadan, which has seen terrorist attacks in the past.

Overnight on Wednesday, 642 terrorists were released as part of the deal, including individuals who were freed from prison and sent to eastern Jerusalem. This marks the last hostage release of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, during which 33 captives were returned, including eight who were dead.

Hamas spokesman Abd al-Latif al-Qanoua told the Al-Araby channel on Thursday morning that “the organization is ready to extend the first phase of the hostage deal or merge the two phases according to red lines.”

He further claimed that the first phase of the agreement has been completed and the terrorist organization upheld all its commitments despite Israel’s “ongoing stalling.” Hamas has set several conditions for the second phase, including a “permanent” end to the war in Gaza and a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Strip.

This is an edited version of a story originally published by Israel Hayom.

Image: Palestinians wave Hamas flags outside the Al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem during the last Friday of Ramadan, April 29, 2022. Photo by Jamal Awad/Flash90.

Finding a place is a thorny issue because each time Palestinians have moved elsewhere, they have caused trouble for their hosts.

A.J. Caschetta

(The Investigative Project on Terrorism via JNS)

When U.S. President Donald Trump proposed to relocate more than 1 million people from Gaza while the area is being rebuilt, many derided it as a combination of anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia. Others thought it too ridiculous to take seriously. But more people are coming around to his way of thinking. Journalist Liel Leibovitz now argues, “We must embrace this proposal, because at its heart is the one true and inescapable sentiment: Israelis can no longer be expected to live in proximity to those who desire nothing more than their death.”

Palestinians there who don’t want to fight Israelis and who have sought to leave the embattled strip of land are perhaps the world’s only genuine refugees not been permitted to leave a war zone, but where to send them and their bloodthirsty neighbors who live for the opportunity to kill is perhaps the biggest problem with the proposal. Those who protest the loudest about Trump’s alleged “ethnic cleansing” plan are more interested in exploiting Gaza residents for the purpose of destroying Israel than helping them. Don’t expect Spain, Norway or Ireland to welcome any of them.

And what about Muslim and Arab nations? Are they too racist or “Islamophobic” for endorsing the plan? The United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the United States, Yousef Al Otaiba, recently told an interviewer, “I don’t see an alternative to what’s being proposed.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Sadanand Dhume took up the topic in a recent column titled “If Indians and Pakistanis can relocate, why can’t Gazans?” Dhume noted that “many population transfers have taken place over the last century … Only in the Palestinian case has the refugee question festered endlessly.”

In a Jan. 26, press release, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called Trump’s proposal “dangerous nonsense,” invoking the ethnic cleansing trope. This is in stark contrast to the joy that CAIR executive director Nihad Awad expressed on Nov. 24, 2023, over the Oct. 7 attack which he likened to a jailbreak. Gaza is a “concentration camp,” and its people “decided to break the siege” and “throw … down the[ir] shackles,” he enthused.

Of course, the Gazans who carried out the Oct. 7 attack wanted out of Gaza. They wanted Israel. Now Awad wants them to stay in their “concentration camp” so that their resistance will continue.

Hamas supporters like Awad know that moving people out will make it more difficult for Hamas to survive. Without Palestinian children and Israeli hostages to use as human shields, Hamas doesn’t stand a chance of surviving the Israel Defense Forces’s efforts to eradicate it.

CAIR’s press release also claims that “the only way to achieve a just, lasting peace is to force the Israeli government to end its occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people.” A peaceful Gaza that is not part of a Palestinian state contradicts the generational imperative for a “Palestine from the river to the sea” and makes the chances of a “two-state solution” more remote. CAIR would love to see Hamas rewarded for the barbaric rape-torture-infanticide pogrom on Oct. 7, 2023, with a sovereign state.

The main reason for opposing Trump’s plan is sheer logistics. Where would the Gazans go while Gaza is being rebuilt, and which ones would be permitted to return? This is the thorniest problem because each time Palestinians have moved to a new diaspora they have caused trouble for their hosts. Throughout the Arab and Muslim world, Palestinian options are limited by their past conduct. Few nations are interested in taking the residents of Gaza because Palestinians have worn out their welcome wherever they have gone.

Egypt and Jordan are the two most likely destinations for Gazans relocated, either temporarily or permanently, due to propinquity and racial homogeneity. Aside from their desire to destroy and annex Israel, Gazans are ethnically, linguistically and culturally indistinguishable from Egyptians and Jordanians. However, both nations have been down this road before.

Egypt annexed Gaza after the 1948 War of Independence and refused to allow Arabs (who had not yet begun calling themselves “Palestinians”) Egyptian citizenship. It has had an uneasy relationship with both the PLO and Hamas ever since. Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (whom Trump once called his “favorite dictator”) has, from time to time, flooded Hamas tunnels, killing untold numbers of Gazans, because he felt threatened by their militancy. Unless it is forced into a corner, Egypt is unlikely to accept large numbers of Palestinians ever.

Likewise, Jordan knows what admitting more than a million Palestinians will mean to Jordanian sovereignty.

After the 1948 war, Jordan (unlike Egypt and the other Arab nations that attacked the nascent Jewish State) admitted hundreds of thousands of Arab refugees. The 1954 Nationality Law granted Jordanian citizenship to “any person who, not being Jewish, possessed Palestinian nationality before 15 May 1948 and resides ordinarily in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on the publication date of this law.”

After the Six-Day War, Israel expelled the PLO to Jordan along with some 200,000 more Palestinians. There, they began a civil war that only ended after some 70,000 Jordanians were killed and the PLO was again expelled, this time to Lebanon, where it promptly started a civil war.

In 1988, Jordanian citizenship was revoked from Palestinians. As Anis F. Kassim, a Jordanian lawyer put it, “more than 1.5 million Palestinians went to bed on 31 July 1988 as Jordanian citizens, and woke up on 1 August 1988 as stateless persons.”

The current king of Jordan, Abdullah II, seems unwilling to accept any Gazans beyond the 2,000 “cancer children” he told Trump he would admit for treatment.

What about other Arab nations? Kuwait will never accept Palestinians. Before the first Persian Gulf War, thousands of Palestinians lived in Kuwait, working jobs Kuwaitis didn’t want. But when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded in 1990, Palestinians were on his side, and Kuwaitis have never forgiven them. Any post-Gulf war Kuwaiti advocacy on their behalf is motivated by hatred of Israel not love of Palestinians.

How about Indonesia, the country with the greatest number of Muslims in the world? “Indonesia’s stance remains unequivocal: any attempts to displace or remove Gaza’s residents is entirely unacceptable,” said the country’s foreign affairs minister, according to the Jakarta Globe.

Morocco, a signatory to the Abraham Accords, has also been mentioned as a potential destination, but it clearly doesn’t want Palestinians within its borders. Besides, the United States already recognizes Morocco’s sovereignty over the western Sahara, so that carrot has been eaten.

The most interesting and unusual choices made public are Puntland and Somaliland, two autonomous regions within Somalia.

Puntland, which declared itself autonomous in 1998 and claimed in 2023 that it would function as an independent state, could benefit from a deal to accept Palestinians. Likewise, Somaliland declared itself independent from Somalia in 1992 and operates autonomously, even though no country has recognized its independence. Accepting Palestinians might pave the way for either Puntland’s or Somaliland’s recognition as a separate country, but it would also leave their fledgling states vulnerable to violence and susceptible to being taken over by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, the PLO and all the rest. It seems unlikely that either putative nation would risk achieving its goals by accepting Palestinian refugees.

Thus, Palestinians are left to live with the consequences of their decisions. Their inability to destroy Israel and unwillingness to abandon their dream of victory has kept them stateless and condemned their children to a life of misery. As Commentary’s John Podhoretz put it: “Like the Japanese and Germans in and after World War II, they have to be broken before they can be put back together as a functioning polis.”

After eight decades of militancy and refusal to accept any deal for a state that does not eliminate the State of Israel, Palestinians find themselves unwelcome throughout the world.

 Image: U.S. President Donald Trump hosts an expanded bilateral meeting and working lunch with King Abdullah II of Jordan and his son, Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah, at the White House, Feb. 11, 2025. Credit: Daniel Torok/White House.

The Israeli prime minister stated that the terror organization must give assurances that it won’t have future violations or stage humiliations.

(JNS)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated early on Sunday morning that the Jewish state is not releasing Palestinian prisoners who were slated to be freed as part of the deal with Hamas.

“In light of Hamas’s repeated violations, including the ceremonies that humiliate our hostages and the cynical exploitation of our hostages for propaganda purposes, it has been decided to delay the release of terrorists that was planned for yesterday until the release of the next hostages has been assured, and without the humiliating ceremonies,” Netanyahu stated, per an English translation provided by his office.

Image: Hamas terrorists watch a propaganda ceremony during which Israeli hostages are turned over to the Red Cross, Gaza Strip, Feb. 22, 2025. Credit: Ali Hassan/Flash90. | Ali Hassan/Flash90

There were no injuries as a result of the explosions.

(JNS)

Israeli security agencies are investigating multiple blasts that occurred in parked busses across the central Israeli city of Bat Yam on Thursday night as suspected terrorist attacks, according to local media reports.

There were no injuries as a result of the explosions, the Israel Police said.

This is a developing story.

Image: Courtesy JNS Article