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Edited by: Fern Sidman
President Joe Biden refused to accept the idea of supporting a ceasefire in Israel until the Hamas terror organization releases of the remainder of the hostages that it is holding in captivity in Gaza, according to a report on the USToday.com web site.
Biden, speaking at the White House on Monday, was asked if he supported calls for a ceasefire in order to enter advanced hostage negotiations with Hamas. “We should have those hostages released and then we can talk,” Biden told reporters when asked about the potential for a ceasefire in exchange for Hamas releasing approximately 220 hostages, including Americans, believed to be in the Gaza Strip, according to the USAToday.com report.
Some liberal Democrats in Congress have urged Biden – who has stood in complete solidarity with Israel since the Hamas attack on October 7th to facilitate a cease-fire agreement amid rising casualties among Palestinians in Gaza and warfare that has complicated the delivery of humanitarian resources.
According to the USA Today report, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller seemed to reject the idea of a ceasefire early Monday, arguing it would hurt Israel’s ability to defend itself amid continued terrorist threats.
“Any ceasefire would give Hamas the ability to rest, to refit, and to get ready to continue launching terrorist attacks against Israel,” Miller said, as was indicated in the USAToday.com report. “You can understand perfectly clearly why that’s an intolerable situation for Israel, as it would be an intolerable situation for any country that has suffered such a brutal terrorist attack.”
Hamas released two additional hostages, both Israeli women, on Monday after releasing two Americans, a mother and daughter, on Friday.
“We should have those hostages released, and then we can talk,” the president responded.
John Kirby, a White House spokesman on national security matters, said the U.S. “has added additional military forces to the region and more forces will be coming in days and weeks ahead, to try to deter any action from widening or deepening this conflict.”
USAToday.com reported that the moves come after Kirby said the U.S. has identified an “uptick” in rocket and drone attacks by Iranian-backed proxy groups against military bases housing US personnel in Iraq and Syria.
Kirby declined to specify what the additional military presence would like. The Pentagon has already distant two carrier strike group to the region.
“We’re deeply concerned about the potential for any significant escalation of these attacks,” Kirby said, adding that Biden has ordered Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to take steps to ensure the U.S. is “postured appropriately.”
USA Today also reported that Kirby said the U.S. knows Iran is “closely monitoring” these events “and in some cases, actively facilitating these attacks” and spurring others who want to exploit the conflict for their “own good.”
“We know Iran’s goal is to maintain some level of deniability here. We’re not going to allow them to do that,” he said.
In other related news, French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Israel on Tuesday to express “full solidarity” with the Jewish state amid its ongoing war against the Hamas terror group, as was reported by the Jewish News Syndicate.
The French leader is pressing for the “preservation of the civilian population” in the Gaza Strip, “halting the colonization” of Judea and Samaria and the “resumption of a genuine peace process” to create a Palestinian state, according to his office.
“The only way to be useful is to one, show solidarity with Israel; two, make commitments against terrorist groups very clear; and three, to open up a political perspective,” added Macron, according to the JNS.org report.
He met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog and other top officials.
Also on Tuesday, World Israel News reported that one of the two elderly hostages freed Monday by Hamas gave details of her 17 days as a hostage at a live news conference, calling her kidnapping “hell.”
Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, who was released along with 79-year-old Nurit Cooper, told of being thrown over the back of a motorcycle by one of the dozens of Hamas terrorists who took over Kibbutz Nir Oz in an invasion of over 2,500 terrorists into the Gaza envelope villages and two towns, Ofakim and Sederot, on October 7, as was indicated in the WIN report.
Speaking from Ichilov Hospital, where the two were taken for medical treatment, she said her captor “flew through the plowed fields” back to Gaza.
The terrorists stole her watch and jewelry, and mistreated her on the way to captivity, she said, according to the WIN report.
“I was lying on my side across the motorcycle, head on one side, legs on the other, and the Shabab young Arab men beat me with sticks. They didn’t break my ribs,” she noted, “but they hurt and it made it hard for me to breathe,” WIN reported.
They were then divided into groups of kibbutz inhabitants and other Israeli residents, she said, “and they led us through tunnels for kilometers on damp ground. It’s a huge network of tunnels, it looked like a spider’s web.”
They reached a big hall, she continued, and “When we got there, they said that they were people who believed in the Koran and that no harm would come to us and we would have the same conditions they had in the tunnels,” as was reported by WIN.
After about two or three hours, five from Nir Oz were put in a different room, she said, where they were treated decently and had mattresses to lie on.
“We each had a guard and a medic was there all the time. A doctor also came every two or three days and made sure that we would get, more or less, the same medications,” Lifshitz added.
One young kibbutznik had been badly wounded in his hands and legs, she noted, and the paramedic “sat with him every day for an hour, an hour and a half, to treat him,” and he received antibiotics until he improved.
“They were very careful regarding the sanitary conditions, that we shouldn’t God forbid get sick,” she said, noting that the guards even cleaned the bathrooms for the hostages, according to the WIN report,
The terrorists seemed to be ready for their victims, she said.
“They prepared for a long time, they had all the things women need, men need,” she noted, including “shampoo and hair conditioner.”
Astoundingly, she said the captors were very friendly, talking with their prisoners all the time, although the Israelis, she said, told them “no politics,” as was indicated in the WIN report. They ate the same food, which consisted of a meal each day of pitot, white cheese and cucumbers.
Still, she said, “it was very hard,” and her experiences keep coming up again and again in her memory.
WIN also reported that Lifshitz blamed the IDF for failing to prevent the attacks, calling the day of the invasion “hell.”
“They blew up the electronic fence they built specially for $2.5 billion and it didn’t help a whit. Masses invaded our homes,” she said, later adding, “The lack of knowledge of the IDF and Shabak hurt us a lot and we were the government’s scapegoat…. They sent balloons to burn our fields, and the IDF just didn’t take it seriously. And then suddenly on Saturday morning … there was a huge barrage of rocket fire and mobs broke in,” Lifshitz said as was reported by WIN.
Shushan clarified that “no government or security agency briefed me or gave me procedures regarding media conduct vis a vis the abductees who were returned from captivity,” Israel National News reported.
Kan News reported that officials involved in public diplomacy criticized the decision to allow Lifshitz to speak live, probably due to her praise of her captors, the WIN report said.
“This was a mistake,” they said. “It’s not certain that someone had a discussion on this issue beforehand raised all the necessary questions. This is a public diplomacy attack.”
In New York City on Tuesday morning, the families of the hostages participated at the series of meetings at the United Nations on Manhattan’s east side and on Tuesday afternoon a press conference and demonstration in support of the immediate release of the hostages was held at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza near the UN where the gathering of thousands hear addresses from a variety of speakers including Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen who spoke of Hamas as the new Nazis and the intense animus towards Israel that emanates from the United Nation.
Both Cohen and Israeli UN ambassador Gilad Erdan blasted United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres for suggesting that the impetus for the Hamas terror group’s devastating October 7 attack on Israel was the Jewish state’s continued control of Palestinian territories, according to a report on the Times of Israel web site.
“It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” Guterres said at a UN Security Council meeting on the Israel-Hamas war, which erupted when the terror group ravaged Israeli border communities, killing some 1,400 people, the vast majority of them civilians.
“The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing,” Guterres said, as was indicated in the TOI report.
Guterres added that “the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people,” an apparent reference to Israel’s ongoing campaign of airstrikes in the Gaza Strip that Hamas officials say has killed thousands.
Guterres said he was “deeply concerned about the clear violations of international humanitarian law that we are witnessing in Gaza. Let me be clear: No party to an armed conflict is above international humanitarian law.”
“The relentless bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces, the level of civilian casualties, and the wholesale destruction of neighborhoods continue to mount and are deeply alarming,” he said, as was stated in the TOI report.
Guterres was roundly condemned in the strongest of terms by the top Israeli officials. The Times of Israel reported that Gilad Erdan called Guterres’ remarks “shocking” and Foreign Minister Eli Cohen canceled a meeting with Guterres, the TOI report said. Moreover, Minister Benny Gantz labeled the UN chief a “terror apologist.”
Erdan said the remarks were “horrible,” and “completely disconnected from the reality in our region.”
“His comments… constitute a justification for terrorism and murder,” Erdan said, charging that they expressed “understanding” for the massacres, as was reported by the TOI.
“It’s sad that a person with such views is the head of an organization that arose after the Holocaust,” he said. “It’s really unfathomable.”
The TOI also reported that Foreign Minister Cohen, who had traveled to New York to take part in the meetings on the war, posted to X (formerly Twitter) that he was canceling a planned meeting with Guterres. After what happened on October 7, he wrote, “there is no place for an even-handed approach. Hamas needs to be wiped off the face of the earth.”
In response to Guterres’ remarks, Cohen asked: “What world do you live in, certainly not our world?”
INN also reported that in his address before the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday morning, Cohen said, “Saturday, October 7th, will go down in history as nothing less than a brutal massacre. Saturday, October 7th, is a wakeup call for the entire free world. A wakeup call against extremism, religious fanaticism and terror.”
He continued his remarks by telling the UNSC, “On that day, over 1500 terrorists of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad infiltrated Israel from the South. With viciousness exceeding even ISIS, they killed over 1400 babies, children, women and men and wounded over 4,000.
They went from house to house, slaughtering families and individuals in their beds, on the streets, on their way to synagogue, raping and maiming, dancing and chanting on people’s bodies. You have not been there, you haven’t seen the horror. The smell.
Let us pause for a moment, think about the many innocent people, so many of them are not yet brought to final burial. And let’s recite the immortal words of the Jewish prayer for the dead – the Kaddish.
This massacre will go down in history as more brutal than ISIS. Hamas are the new Nazis. Just as the civilized world united to defeat the Nazis, just as the civilized world united to defeat ISIS, the civilized world has to stand united behind Israel to defeat Hamas.”
The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday was to have voted on the U.S.-drafted resolution that suggests an unprecedented level of support for Israel amid its war against Hamas.
The document condemns the terrorist attacks that have taken place since October 7 as well as “the taking and killing of hostages, murder, torture, rape, sexual violence, and continues indiscriminate firing of rockets,” as was reported by i24 News.
The document also calls for humanitarian pauses. Meanwhile ceasefire is not mentioned in the draft. The text also urges Hamas to release the hostages that remain in the Gaza Strip.
Also on Tuesday, i24News reported that two rockets were launched from Syrian territory into the Golan Heights.
These rockets landed in an open area, causing no casualties or significant damage. In response, the IDF swiftly targeted the sources of the rocket fire with artillery. The Israel-Syrian border and Golan Heights have been relatively quiet up until this point during the war, according to the i24 News report.
Earlier in the day there were more developments on the northern front with Lebanon, when the IDF targeted three terrorist squads engaged in hostile activities, as was reported by i24 News. A remotely operated aircraft effectively neutralized two terrorist squads that had been firing mortars and anti-tank missiles at IDF positions in the Netua and Alkosh areas along the Lebanese border.
(Sources: USAToday.com, worldisraelnews.com, israelnationalnews.com, JNS.org, i24News.com)
