ISRAEL AT WAR - DAY 584
The Times of Israel is liveblogged Thursday’s events as they happened.
Lebanon’s health ministry raises the toll of Israeli strikes on Beirut to 22 killed and 117 injured — the deadliest attacks in the center of the capital since Israel escalated its campaign last month.
“The Israeli enemy’s attacks on the capital Beirut this evening resulted in a new toll of 22 people killed and 117 injured,” the ministry says in a statement, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants
Israel reportedly targeted senior Hezbollah official Wafiq Safa in one of those strikes.
Canada, which has been largely supportive of Israel’s military offensive in Lebanon, says an incident in which Israeli troops fired on UN peacekeepers was “alarming and unacceptable.”
The UNIFIL force said two of its peacekeepers were injured when an Israeli tank fired at a watchtower at the force’s main headquarters in Ras al-Naqoura.
“Canada calls for the protection of peacekeepers and humanitarian workers, and for all parties to comply with international humanitarian law,” the foreign ministry says in a statement posted on social media platform X.
“We are going to heal,” Rachel Goldberg tells Channel 12 at the end of her first interview since her son Hersh Goldberg-Polin was killed.
“There are people who walked out of Auschwitz and went on to have a good life. They never forgot their parents and their siblings and their spouses and their children who they lost there. But they went out and they decided — and it took tremendous effort — and they had good lives.”
“And there are people who walked out of Auschwitz and never left Auschwitz,” she adds.
“We’re in mourning. We’re suffering, but we are making a choice personally that we are going to live life. We need to do it for ourselves. We need to do it for our daughters, and we need to do it because Hersh would want us to, so we will live life,” Jon Polin says.
Asked during a Channel 12 interview about this next unknown chapter of their lives, Jon and Rachel Goldberg-Polin admit to still being uncertain regarding how they’ll move forward.
Jon indicates that they have received encouragement to enter public life.
“We talk about, ‘Do we go back to our former selves? Do we slip back into the jobs that we were in on October 5 last year, or should we be doing something else?”
“One of the things that we’ve seen clearly is Israelis and even the world are hungry for something. And I’m not saying it’s John and Rachel, but we have people who come to us and say, ‘We need voices of clarity, of sanity. And we say to ourselves, ‘Well, we’re just bereaved parents. I’m not sure that we’re those voices.’ But we do talk a lot about what we do from here. We don’t know yet,” Jon says.
Rachel admits having a hard time no longer being anonymous and of being “the trigger for someone to be in emotional pain.”
“I know everyone’s coming from a good place. No one would ever, ever do anything to intentionally cause us pain. But it’s painful,” she says.
Asked if Israel’s leaders chose not to save the hostages, Jon Polin says there were various moments throughout the past year where the government missed opportunities to bring about their release.
“The rationale for not doing it changed every time, whether that be something about the Netzarim Corridor or Philadelphi, or how to move Gazan citizens back from the south to the north [of Gaza], or the length of a pause,” Jon says.
While he notes that Israel’s entire security establishment backed the compromises necessary for making a deal, there was also “political pressure” in the other direction. Jon cites a letter signed by prominent national religious rabbis “who I think never even understood the content of a deal that could be done, and in principle, were rejecting a deal.”
“There were political decision-makers who, for whatever reasons, did not seize that opportunity, and we missed it,” Jon laments.
He reveals that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did reach out to them after Hersh’s funeral asking to speak but that they declined. “We elected at the time not to [speak with him]. I don’t really know what we would say to political decision-makers, to certain rabbis, to other people in positions of leadership who we think failed us,” Jon says.
“I found it very interesting that people of power tried to come to us during shiva. We actually said, ‘Please, we don’t want those people here’ — in a kind way,” Rachel shares.
“When you make a choice to do something that you know is wrong, you can’t — at least according to Jewish law. Leviticus talks about when you do a sin intentionally, you bear the punishment for that sin,” she continues. “Don’t come and ask me to forgive you for that sin. I’m not the right address. Real repentance is when you find yourself in the exact same situation where you did the thing that you know was wrong, and you choose differently.”
“What I would challenge those people who wanted to come to us after they chose not to save the six: You have 101 chances now do it, and that’s the repentance. You don’t have to come to me and ask for forgiveness,” Rachel says.
Senior Hezbollah figure Wafiq Safa has survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Beirut, three security sources tell Reuters.
Safa was apparently targeted as part of Israeli airstrikes that struck two areas of Beirut, which the Lebanese health ministry reported killed 22 and injured 117, marking the deadliest attacks in the center of the capital since Israel escalated its campaign against Hezbollah last month.
Rachel Goldberg details the conditions under which Hersh and the other five hostages were held — an “airless, completely pitch-black tunnel with no plumbing.”
Throughout the tunnel were bottles filled with very dark urine, indicating how dehydrated they were. A plastic bucket was placed at the end of the tunnel so the hostages could have a degree of privacy when they used the bathroom.
Hersh, 23, was nearly six feet tall but only weighed 117 pounds when he was buried. He had a bullet go through his remaining, right hand, which apparently was trying to shield the rest of his body during the execution. He had bullet wounds in his shoulder and neck and back of the head. He was found collapsed on his knees with 24-year-old hostage Eden Yerushalmi leaning on his lap.
“It was a horrifying scene. All of them were so thin, all of them were shot multiple times at close range,” says Rachel.
Rachel Goldberg expresses her fear that the hope that the hostage families tried to exude that their loved ones could be returned might have lulled decision-makers into complacency.
“Maybe part of our hope was too infectious, too positive during a dark time, that it even made the people who were at the table and the people with power to believe everyone’s coming home — [that] everybody [could] just calm down [because] they’re coming home. It’s just going to take some time,” she tells Channel 12 in an interview.
“Now that we know how they were found, it is so vastly obvious that there is not one second to waste. We need to move now. There are people today, as we’re sitting here talking, who are in those same conditions, and it’s probably gotten worse.”
The parents of slain American-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin say they were repeatedly dismissed by decision-makers when they warned of the possibility that their son and other Hamas captives would be executed if urgent action wasn’t take to free them.
“We had lots of meetings in the 330 days that we were actively in the struggle [for their release], and we challenged decision-makers. We said, ‘You’re lacking urgency.’ We need to bring these people home today. Why are you confident that we have time and that this isn’t going to lead to a situation where too much [Israeli] military pressure [will] lead to captors lining up hostages, shooting them one by one in the head,'” says Jon Polin.
“And we were told by people all over the place, ‘No, no, it’s not going to end like that.’ We asked that very question: ‘Why won’t it end this way?’ We were immediately told each time… They’re an asset. There are reasons why it’s not going to that way,'” he tells Channel 12 in an interview alongside his wife Rachel Goldberg. It is their first interview since Hersh’s body was found with those of five other hostages. The IDF believes that their captors executed them upon fearing that Israeli troops were closing in on them in late August.
At least 11 people were killed and 48 injured in a preliminary toll of Israeli attacks on Beirut on Thursday, Lebanon’s health ministry says in a statement that doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants.
Israel reportedly targeted a senior Hezbollah official earlier tonight in a major missile strike.
The Houthi rebels in Yemen say they have targeted a ship it identified as the Olympic Spirit in the Red Sea and St. John vessel in the Indian Ocean, as they launch attacks on global shipping over Israel’s war in Gaza.
The Israeli military says that its troops operated earlier today in the area of Naqoura in southern Lebanon, near a UNIFIL base, adding that it instructed the UN forces in the area to remain in protected spaces, following which the Israeli forces opened fire.
The statement appears to be a confirmation of UNIFIL claims that IDF tank fire injured two of its soldiers.
The IDF says that it conducted an airstrike on a terror cell in the Tulkarem area of the West Bank.
Israeli airstrikes have gradually become more common in the West Bank since October 7.
In her first interview since being arrested by police at the encouragement of far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, an Arab Israeli educator says she was kept overnight in a police car with her eyes covered and her hands and feet cuffed after she was picked up for posting a video of her dancing with an October 7 timestamp.
“I couldn’t believe that this was happening to me. I’ve never hurt anyone before,” Entisar Hijaze tells Channel 12.
Hijaze explains that on the day of October 7, she had arrived early at the school where she works in Yafa an-Naseriyye in northern Israel and filmed a video of herself dancing. She says she was not aware of what was unfolding on the Gaza border that day.
Her feed includes countless other such videos in addition to one shortly after the Hamas onslaught in which she mourned a Jewish friend from Kibbutz Beeri who was murdered that day.
Earlier this week, TikTok sent her a reminder of the video, and she decided to post it. The app then includes the original date when it was published in what led to attention on social media — something that was passed along to Ben Gvir who urged police to investigate the matter on suspicion that she was supporting terrorism.
“I didn’t write anything on the post or have any intention to hurt anyone or do something bad,” Hijaze tells Channel 12.
She describes the mistreatment she endured from officers at the police station in Nazareth who cuffed her hands and feet and blindfolded with a flannel material that is typically reserved for Palestinian suspects in the West Bank, leading to accusations of racism.
After being forced to sleep in the police car, Hijazi was ordered to stand in front of an Israeli flag and raise her handcuffed hands for a picture while she was still blindfolded — another tactic police have began employing against Arab suspects since Ben Gvir took over as minister overseeing the force. Photos of Hijazi were then passed along to Ben Gvir and released to the public.
Hijazi says officers throughout her detention yelled at and mocked her, ordering her to dance while she was still handcuffed. When she asked to go to the bathroom, one of the officers told her to go in her pants.
Channel 12 says Hijazi is planning to file a wrongful arrest suit against the police and a libel suit against Ben Gvir, who called her a terror supporter.
The network says legal experts expect her to win both cases.
Hijazi was released late last night as criticism over the police’s conduct compounded.
The Israel Defense Forces announces that three reserve soldiers were killed amid fighting with Hamas in the northern Gaza Strip.
The three, all soldiers in the 5460th support unit of the 460th Brigade, are named as:
Master Sgt. (res.) Ori Moshe Borenstein, 32, from Moreshet.
Maj. (res.) Netanel Hershkovitz, 37, from Jerusalem.
Master Sgt. (res.) Tzvi Matityahu Marantz, 32, from Bnei Adam.
Their deaths bring the number of Israeli troops killed in the ground offensive in Gaza to 353.
Hebrew and Arabic media reports that the target of the IDF’s major airstrike this evening in central Beirut was Hezbollah’s Liaison and Coordination Unit chief Wafiq Safa.
Safa was sanctioned in 2019 by the US Treasury Department, which described him as Hezbollah’s interlocutor to the Lebanese security forces.
“As the head of Hezbollah’s security apparatus, which is directly linked to Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, Safa has exploited Lebanon’s ports and border crossings to smuggle contraband and facilitate travel on behalf of Hezbollah, undermining the security and safety of the Lebanese people, while also draining valuable import duties and revenue away from the Lebanese government,” the Treasury Department wrote at the time.
A Lebanese security source confirms to Reuters that the Israeli strike on central Beirut targeted at least one senior figure in Hezbollah.
This is the third such attack beyond the southern suburbs of Beirut since Israel escalated its campaign against Hezbollah last month.
דיווחים: יעד התקיפה הישראלית בביירות הוא ופיק ספא, האחראי על התיאום והקישור בחיזבאללה, היה האיש למשימות מיוחדת של נסראללה https://t.co/2BKcxldfQK pic.twitter.com/WXJmYiNAil
— roi kais • روعي كايس • רועי קייס (@kaisos1987) October 10, 2024
An unconfirmed report from Sky News Arabic claims that top commander of Iran’s Quds Force Esmail Qaani suffered a heart attack during an interrogation conducted by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps over his potential involvement in Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah late last month.
Rumors about Qaani have swirled since the assassination of Nasrallah, since he has not been seen publicly since.
France says it was waiting for explanations from Israel after UN peacekeeping troops were targeted in Lebanon and that it was an obligation to ensure their safety.
“France expresses its deep concern following the Israeli shots that hit the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and condemns any attack on the security of UNIFIL,” the foreign ministry says in a statement, adding that none of its 700 troops in the mission had been wounded.
“We await explanations from the Israeli authorities. The protection of peacekeepers is an obligation that applies to all parties to a conflict.”
Gulf states are lobbying Washington to stop Israel from attacking Iran’s oil sites because they are concerned their own oil facilities could come under fire from Tehran’s proxies if the conflict escalates, three Gulf sources tell Reuters.
As part of their attempts to avoid being caught in the crossfire, Gulf states including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar are also refusing to let Israel fly over their airspace for any attack on Iran and have conveyed this to Washington, the three sources close to government circles say.
Israel has promised Iran will pay for its missile attack last week while Tehran has said any retaliation would be met with vast destruction, raising fears of a wider war in the region that could suck in the United States.
The moves by the Gulf states come after a diplomatic push by non-Arab Shiite Iran to persuade its Sunni Gulf neighbors to use their influence with Washington amid rising concerns Israel could target Iran’s oil production facilities.
During meetings this week, Iran warned Saudi Arabia it could not guarantee the safety of the Gulf kingdom’s oil facilities if Israel were given any assistance in carrying out an attack, a senior Iranian official and an Iranian diplomat tells Reuters.
A thick plume of smoke can be seen rising from central Beirut after missiles were heard flying over the city on Thursday, Reuters witnesses say.
It is not immediately clear what was struck.
A Lebanese security source says an Israeli strike targeted the Beirut district of Noueri.
The IDF’s Home Front Command has announced the easing of restrictions on gatherings in the northern Galilee, central Galilee and southern Golan Heights regions.
Educational activities will now be able to go ahead in the central Galilee, so long as they are located near shelters. In the Upper Galilee, they will also now be allowed to take place, but only from within shelters.
In the southern Golan Heights, Lower Galilee, the Carmel and Wadi Ara areas, gatherings will now be allowed to take place outdoors with a cap at 100 people and a cap of up to 350 when indoors, the Home Front Command says.
בהתאם להערכת המצב בפיקוד העורף, הוחלט לעדכן את ההנחיות.
המדיניות בתוקף החל מיום חמישי, 10 באוקטובר 2024, בשעה 18:00 ועד ליום שבת, 12 באוקטובר 2024, בשעה 20:00ההנחיות המלאות מפורטות בקישור הבא: https://t.co/S1h1hksJF3 pic.twitter.com/WOlZmNsAAE
— פיקוד העורף (@PikudHaoref1) October 10, 2024
IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari films a message to foreign media while embedded with troops operating in south Lebanon.
“We are raiding every house, seizing all equipment, and dismantling Hezbollah’s ability to carry out its plan,” Hagari says.
Follow IDF spokesperson RAdm. Daniel Hagari inside a Hezbollah terrorist stronghold in southern Lebanon. pic.twitter.com/cckNIAdr8Y
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 10, 2024
Police have barred a Jaffa theater from screening a film about the Israeli takeover of Lod during the 1948 Independence War.
The decision follows a request from Likud Culture Minister Miki Zohar, who argued that the film slanders the state of Israel and its soldiers.
Police told the head of the al-Saraya Theater that the screening was cancelled because he didn’t request a permit to screen the film, even though it has not been banned in Israel, Haaretz reports.
The theater director said police also ordered him to submit every film that he plans to screen for permission from here on out. Officers also summoned him for questioning at a local police station.
The film “Lyd” tells the story of Lod, with emphasis on the Palestinian narrative and includes never-before published footage of the deportation of the city’s Arab residents in 1948.
The film was co-directed by Rami Younis and Sarah Ema Friedland and anti-Israel singer Roger Waters is one of the producers.
Police confirmed the decision to ban the screening, citing a pre-state, 1927 ordinance that required local councils to approve film screenings ahead of time. The penalty for violating the law is listed as a month in prison or a 50 lira fine.
The police decision followed an appeal from Zohar earlier today in which he said those behind the film support boycotting Israel.
Zohar hailed the police decision. “The time has come to put an end to the wild incitement against the heroic IDF soldiers who sacrifice their lives for the people of Israel, especially in these days.”
A spokesperson for UNIFIL tells the Walla news site that the multinational peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon has rejected an Israeli request to evacuate posts along the Israeli-Lebanon border.
Israel made the request over concerns UNIFIL troops would be harmed during its ground incursion into the Lebanese side of the border to dismantle Hezbollah sites there.
The spokesperson calls on Israel and Hezbollah to abide by UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which requires Israel not to cross the Blue Line and for Hezbollah to disarm and pull its troops north of the Litani River 18 miles from the border.
UNIFIL has failed to ensure Hezbollah’s compliance with the resolution virtually since it was enacted in 2006.
Israel is focused on fighting Hezbollah and recommends that the United Nations peacekeeping force (UNIFIL) in southern Lebanon move north, Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon says after Israeli forces fired on several UN positions, injuring two peacekeepers.
“Our recommendation is that UNIFIL relocate 5 km (3 miles) north to avoid danger as fighting intensifies and while the situation along the Blue Line remains volatile as a result of Hezbollah’s aggression,” Danon says in a statement.
He says that “Israel has no desire to be in Lebanon, but it will do what is necessary” to force Hezbollah away from its northern border so 70,000 residents can return to their homes in northern Israel.
The IDF and Shin Bet announce that an airstrike the army conducted yesterday targeting a terror command center in north Gaza’s Jabaliya resulted in the killing of 12 fighters from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, including several who participated in the October 7 onslaught.
“Large quantities of weapons were stored inside the command and control center, and it was used by the terrorists to plan and execute terror attacks against IDF troops and the citizens of the State of Israel,” the the joint statement says, adding that the site previously served as a medical compound.
Those killed also include a platoon commander in Hamas’s military intelligence unit, a deputy platoon commander in a Hamas anti-tank unit, a Hamas engineer operative and two platoon commanders in Hamas’s elite Nukhba force.
The IDF says it took steps to mitigate civilian harm ahead of the strike.
Humanitarian pauses have been agreed to, allowing a second round of polio vaccinations targeting 590,000 children under the age of 10 to start in the Gaza Strip on October 14, the head of the UN children’s agency UNICEF says.
“Area-specific humanitarian pauses have been agreed. It is critical that these pauses are respected by all parties. Without them, it is impossible to vaccinate the children,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell says in a statement.
Israel has yet to comment on the announcement.
Germany will supply more weapons to Israel soon, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz says, after a significant drop in deliveries this year prompted opposition accusations that Berlin deliberately delayed the exports.
“We have not decided not to supply weapons. We have supplied weapons and we will supply weapons,” Scholz tells parliament at an event to commemorate the victims of the October 7 Hamas attack, countering an accusation from opposition leader Friedrich Merz.
The government had made decisions “that also ensure that there will be further deliveries soon,” the chancellor says.
Merz, leader of Germany’s conservative opposition, accused the government of delaying arms exports to Israel, including ammunition and tank spare parts.
“For weeks and months, the federal government has refused to grant export permits for ammunition and even spare parts for tanks,” Merz says at the parliamentary session.
“We are aware of several specific cases where the government has withheld approval for equipment and material that Israel urgently needs to defend itself,” Merz added.
Germany’s approvals for arms exports to Israel dropped sharply this year, with only 14.5 million euros’ worth granted from January to August 21, according to data provided by the Economy Ministry in response to a parliamentary question.
In 2023, Germany approved arms exports to Israel worth 326.5 million euros including military equipment and war weapons, a 10-fold increase from 2022, data from the ministry, which approves export licenses, showed.
The IDF says the Air Force moments ago intercepted a drone that crossed into the Upper Galilee from Lebanon.
Sirens were triggered in the area due to concerns that the interception would lead to falling fragments but there were no reports of injuries, the army says.
Less than an hour ago, the IDF said it had intercepted a “hostile aircraft” over the Western Galilee.
Italy’s defense minister slams the “shooting” at the headquarters of the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon as “intolerable,” after the force said it had been hit by Israeli tank fire.
“The shooting at the UNIFIL headquarters” and other incidents involving “small arms fire” are “intolerable, they must be carefully and decisively avoided. For these reasons, I protested to my Israeli counterpart and the Israeli ambassador to Italy,” Minister Guido Crosetto says in a statement.
The IDF has yet to comment on the matter.
A Western diplomatic official says the IDF tank fire toward a UNIFIL position is a “very serious” incident.
“Expect a round of condemnations at the UN Security Council,” says the official.
The UN peacekeeping force says that “this morning, two peacekeepers were injured after an IDF Merkava tank fired its weapon toward an observation tower at UNIFIL’s headquarters in Naqoura, directly hitting it and causing them to fall. The injuries are fortunately, this time, not serious, but they remain in hospital.”
It also accuses the IDF of firing on UN position 1-31 in Labbouneh, “hitting the entrance to the bunker where peacekeepers were sheltering, and damaging vehicles and a communications system. An IDF drone was observed flying inside the UN position up to the bunker entrance.”
Yesterday, according to UNIFIL, Israeli troops “deliberately fired at and disabled the position’s perimeter-monitoring cameras. They also deliberately fired on UNP 1-32A in Ras Naqoura, where regular Tripartite meetings were held before the conflict began, damaging lighting and a relay station.”
The IDF says the Air Force intercepted a “hostile aircraft” that crossed into the Upper Galilee from Lebanon.
Sirens were triggered in the area as a result of the incident, but there were no casualties, the army says.
Italy’s defense minister has summoned the Israeli ambassador, a government source tells AFP, after the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon said it had been hit by Israeli tank fire.
The UNIFIL force, which has some 10,000 peacekeepers in south Lebanon, said that Israeli tank fire on its headquarters wounded two members, as Israeli troops battle Hezbollah on the border.
Italy is the largest contributor of soldiers to UNIFIL and the head of the mission is an Italian general.
The Yesh Din rights group publishes footage of what it says is an armed Israeli settler stealing olives from a grove in the Palestinian village of Awarta in the northern West Bank.
Israel is deliberately targeting health facilities and killing and torturing medical personnel in Gaza, UN investigators say, accusing the country of “crimes against humanity.”
“Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza,” the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry says in a statement.
Israel says that Hamas fighters operate from the cover of built-up populated areas including private homes, schools and hospitals and that it will strike them wherever they emerge, while also trying to avoid harming civilians.
The Palestinian Red Crescent raises the death toll from the strike that the IDF carried out in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah from 21 to 28.
It says that 54 others have been wounded.
The strike targeted a former school sheltering displaced people in the Gaza Strip.
The IDF says the Rufaida School was being used as a command post used by terror operatives within the compound.
“Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence,” the military said.
It is not clear how many of the dead are terror operatives.
Israel says Hamas and other terror groups routinely use schools, shelters and other protected facilities for their operations, using the civilians there as human shields. It says it will continue to strike the operatives wherever they are, while making efforts to minimize harm to nearby civilians.
The security cabinet is slated to convene this evening, with Hebrew media reporting that ministers will be asked to sign off on Israel’s response to last week’s Iranian missile attack.
In the past, the cabinet has sometimes simply been asked to authorize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to make the decision themselves based on consultations with the rest of the security establishment.
The IDF says a barrage of 50 rockets from Lebanon triggered the sirens heard in Acre, Nahariya and other towns in the Western Galilee moments ago.
A number of impacts have also been identified.
There are no immediate reports of casualties.
Rocket sirens have been triggered in the northern coastal towns of Nahariya and Acre.
There are no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
Palestinian and Dutch organizations file a legal complaint against the state of the Netherlands, accusing it of failing to prevent Israel from allegedly violating international law in the war in Gaza.
The case argues that the Netherlands has a legal obligation to do everything in its power to stop alleged violations of international law and the 1948 Genocide Convention by Israel.
It is backed by Palestinian human rights organizations, Dutch social justice organizations, and Jewish organizations that do not support the Israeli government.
Israeli troops opened fire at three positions held by UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon on Thursday, a UN source tells Reuters, without immediately being able to specify the type of fire.
The source says one of the locations that was fired at was UNIFIL’s main base at Naqoura.
There is no immediate comment from the military.
Israel has no intention of taking military action against Turkey, President Isaac Herzog stresses, after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that his country might be next to face attack after Lebanon and Gaza.
“I saw that there were some comments made by the leader of Turkey regarding Israel’s supposed plans against Turkey,” Herzog says during a meeting with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem. “I want to make clear Israel has never had any plans against Turkey.”
“On the contrary,” he continues, “we have great respect to the people of Turkey, and they have great respect for the people of Israel. We have longstanding relations between the peoples, and the peoples will prevail over all voices that are adverse to friendship and coexistence.”
Last week, Erdogan said that “the Israeli government, which has gone mad in the Holy Land, will possibly target our homeland with its religious fanaticism after Palestine and Lebanon.”
He also claimed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu harbors fantasies of occupying Turkey.
Herzog says that Israel’s military operations will lead to “a historic change that will enable the sons of Abraham to dwell together in the region, and to move together towards peace, to contribute to each other, from the well-being of the region and their own respective peoples and humanity at large. This is our vision. That is why we are fighting evil, and that is why we are offering the people of Gaza, the people of Lebanon, the people of Iran… a different path and a different future.”
The Chief Rabbi Election Assembly announces that it will hold a second round of voting for Israel’s next Ashkenazi chief rabbi on October 31, after a first ballot ended in a tie between two candidates.
Two days ago, the Attorney General’s Office informed the Religious Services Ministry that a runoff between candidates Micha Halevi, chief rabbi of Petah Tikva, and Kalman Bar, chief rabbi of Netanya, must be held as soon as possible.
Both received 40 votes apiece from the 140 voting members of the assembly, while the rest of the votes went to other candidates who were eliminated from the running. After the election it was discovered that an empty envelope had been submitted in the Ashkenazi race while an envelope containing a ballot for Halevi had been submitted, apparently mistakenly, in the Sephardic election.
In a letter to the Religious Services Ministry’s legal adviser, Deputy Attorney General Avital Sompolinsky stated that because it was placed in the wrong envelope, the additional vote for Halevi could not be counted and the voter’s intent could not be reliably inferred.
In light of this legal advice, the assembly decided to hold the second round at the end of the month, it says in a statement.
The fiscal deficit climbed to 8.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), or NIS 8.8 billion ($2.3 billion) in September, as the government continues to pour billions of shekels into financing the year-long war with Hamas and Hezbollah, according to preliminary figures released by the Finance Ministry.
It marks the sixth month the deficit is above the annual government target of 6.6% of national output set for the end of 2024. Israel posted a budget deficit of 4.2% in 2023.
The deficit widened from 7.6% of GDP in June, 8.1% in July and 8.3% in August, amid growing military and civilian spending on the ongoing war.
In September, government expenditure amounted to NIS 51 billion ($13.5 billion), taking spending since the start of the year to about NIS 450 billion ($120 billion), a cumulative increase of 31% compared with the same period in 2023. War costs since the outbreak of the fighting in October last year ballooned to NIS 103.4 billion ($27 billion).
More rocket launches are reported from Lebanon, activating sirens in northern Israel.
There are no immediate reports of casualties.
An Israeli strike on a former school sheltering displaced people in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 21 people, medical officials say.
The IDF says the strike on the Rufaida School in Deir Al-Balah, in central Gaza, targeted a command post used by terror operatives within the compound.
“Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence,” the military says.
It is not clear how many of the dead are terror operatives.
Israel says Hamas and other terror groups routinely use schools, shelters and other protected facilities for their operations, using the civilians there as human shields. It says it will continue to strike the operatives wherever they are, while making efforts to minimize harm to nearby civilians.
Chief Rabbi David Yosef puts out a message ahead of Yom Kippur urging synagogues around Israel and throughout the world to add a prayer for hostages held in Gaza and for the safety of security forces ahead of the traditional Kol Nidre prayer.
He also asks for a prayer for the murdered and the fallen in the ongoing conflict and for all those injured to recover soon.
The expanding geographical sweep of the conflict in the Middle East to Lebanon is having catastrophic consequences for the region, the Kremlin says.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov makes the comments when asked about the possibility of Israel preparing for military action in Syria, a close Russian ally.
Jerusalem has give no indication it plans to ramp up action in Syria. It is widely reported to regularly conduct airstrikes against Iran-allied forces in the country as part of efforts to prevent Iranian entrenchment on its border, though it rarely acknowledges such attacks.
Diplomatic communications have intensified in recent hours, before a UN Security Council meeting discussing the situation in the Middle East, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati says in a statement on X.
“There are contacts taking place between the United States and France with the aim of reviving a ceasefire declaration for a specific period in order to resume the search for political solutions,” he is quoted as saying.
The IDF says it brought down a small drone launched from Gaza into Israel.
The army says the drone was under surveillance and brought down as it crossed the border.
No one was hurt in the incident.
Police and the Shin Bet security service announce they recently thwarted a plot by five Arab Israeli citizens to carry out a car-bombing attack at Tel Aviv’s Azrieli Mall, under the banner of the ISIS terror group.
The five residents of Taybeh in central Israel formed a terror cell allied to ISIS, the fanatical terror group that originated in Iraq and Syria.
The five were arrested after a month-long clandestine investigation and will face charges in the coming days. The cell’s leaders were named as Mahmoud Azam and Ibrahim Sheik Yousef. They recruited three others — Sajed Masarwa, Abdullah Baransi and Abdel Kareem Baransi
Police and the Shin Bet say the five studied terror attacks in Syria and discussed the amount of explosives needed to bring down the iconic Azrieli towers. They say Azam and Yousef were in contact with foreign ISIS agents and planned to travel abroad to meet with ISIS operatives.
They say the plan was uncovered with the help of “precise and effective intelligence operations,” and was stopped in its preliminary stages.
A man gravely wounded in yesterday’s terrorist stabbing attack in Hadera has died of his injuries.
The victim is named as Rafael Mordechai Fishof, 35, a father of six.
Fishof was hospitalized in intensive care at Hillel Yaffe Medical Center since the attack.
The other five victims include another man in serious but stable condition, one in moderate condition and three in good condition.
The suspect used a moped to drive between four locations in the city, attacking people at each place. He was identified by Hebrew-language media as an Arab Israeli resident of Umm al-Fahm.
The terrorist was apprehended by police with the help of armed citizens at the scene.
Swedish police say they are investigating a shooting near an Israeli target in the city of Gothenburg.
There are no reports of injuries, police said in a statement.
A young suspect was apprehended at the scene and a preliminary investigation into suspected attempted murder and serious weapons crime has been initiated, police add.
The shooting took place near a Swedish unit of Elbit Systems, Swedish public broadcaster SVT reports, citing police.
A police spokesperson declines to comment on the suspected target. Elbit Systems in Sweden did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The army says it carried out over 110 airstrikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon over the past day, striking infrastructure above and below ground.
It says troops operating on the ground in southern Lebanon clashed with and eliminated “many” Hezbollah operatives, with air force assistance.
They also uncovered and destroyed weapons, including rockets and anti-tank missiles.
The military says it killed dozens of terror operatives in an operation in Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, including some who launched anti-tank missiles at Israeli troops.
It says troops captured weapons including rifles, RPG launchers, and ammunition.
In Rafah, forces located and destroyed rocket launchers, weaponry, and underground tunnel shafts used by terror operatives.
In central Gaza, it says troops eliminated numerous gunmen, uncovered weapons and demolished military infrastructure.
In addition to the ground operations, the Israeli Air Force hit around 30 Hamas targets in Gaza within the past 24 hours. The strikes targeted terror cells, weapon stockpiles, launchers, buildings, underground infrastructure, and other assets of terror groups.
An Israeli who was arrested in Lebanon in recent days after entering the country with a foreign passport has been freed and deported to the US, Hebrew media reports.
According to previous reports on the matter, Joshua Tartakovsky — a 42-year-old Israeli citizen, born in the United States — entered the country at some point in the last two weeks on a British passport, with a group of other journalists.
Ynet says Tartakovsky was freed following American pressure.
After the High Court ruled that the Tel Aviv municipality must allow a planned Yom Kippur prayer in a public space to take place with gender separation, organizers say they have decided to cancel it.
The Orthodox outreach organization Rosh Yehudi says it is doing so due to “fears of provocations.”
“Unfortunately, we’ve heard of plans to ruin this legally permitted prayer service. We are opting for the responsible step of not offending even when being offended, and will pray in the synagogue,” it says.
“In wartime, with our soldiers bravely endangering themselves, and with the whole nation praying for the safe return of our hostages, the path to victory and defeating the enemy as well as bringing back our hostages lies in greater holiness, in unity and internal peace,” it adds.
“With God’s help there will yet be many public prayers across the country,” it adds.
Dozens of rockets were launched from Lebanon at northern Israel a short time ago.
Some of the rockets were intercepted, while others impacted in Israel.
Ynet reports that a home in the community of Margaliot was hit, with no casualties.
Hurricane Milton has plowed into Florida as a Category 3 storm, bringing misery to a coast still ravaged by Helene, pounding cities with winds of over 100 mph (160 kph) after producing a barrage of tornadoes, but sparing Tampa a direct hit.
The storm tracked to the south in the final hours and made landfall Wednesday night in Siesta Key near Sarasota, about 70 miles (112 kilometers) south of Tampa. The situation in the Tampa area is still a major emergency as St. Petersburg recorded over 16 inches (41 centimeters) of rain, prompting the National Weather Service to warn of flash flooding there as well as other parts of western and central Florida.
St. Petersburg residents can no longer get water from their household taps because a water main break led the city to shut down service.
The storm knocked out power across a large section of Florida, with more than 2.6 million homes and businesses without power as of early Thursday, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility reports.
Before Milton even made landfall, tornadoes were touching down across the state. The Spanish Lakes Country Club near Fort Pierce, on Florida’s Atlantic Coast, was hit particularly hard, with homes destroyed and some residents killed.
“We have lost some life,” St. Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson told WPBF News, though he wouldn’t say how many people were killed.
Washington sees Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah as an opportunity to push the terror group out of the country’s politics, The Wall Street Journal reports.
It says US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been lobbying Arab leaders to back the election of a new president. Lebanon has been without a president since 2022 amid a failure by the country’s factions to reach an agreement on a candidate.
At the same time, the paper says Egyptian and Qatari officials have downplayed the prospects of sidelining Hezbollah, saying any such plans are unrealistic, with no one wanting to be seen as gaining from the Israeli offensive.
A ship was struck and damaged by an “unknown projectile” in the Red Sea, a British maritime agency says, following months of attacks by Yemen’s Houthis.
“The master of the vessel reports being hit by unknown projectile and the vessel has sustained damage, no fires or casualties reported,” says the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, which is run by the British navy.
The ship, which was not identified, also reported two more explosions nearby as it came under attack 70 nautical miles southwest of Hodeida, which is held by the Iran-backed Houthis, UKMTO says.
“The crew are reported safe. Vessels are advised to transit with caution and report any suspicious activity,” the agency adds.
The Houthis, part of the “axis of resistance” of Iran-linked groups, have targeted ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden since November in what they describe as support for Palestinians during the Israel-Hamas war.
The IDF says air force jets struck and killed two Hezbollah commanders in south Lebanon.
According to the army one the slain terrorists was Ahmad Mustaga Alhaj Ali, responsible for the firing of hundreds of rockets and anti-tank missiles at the city of Kiryat Shmona.
The other was Muhammad Ali Hamdan, commander of anti-tank corps in Meiss Ej Jabal, across the border from Kiryat Shmona. He too was behind many attacks on northern communities, the army says.
In addition, the IDF says that yesterday and overnight it struck weapons caches in south Lebanon and Beirut. It says that ahead of the strikes in Beirut it took various steps to limit harm to civilians, including advance warnings to evacuate.
The IDF announces that Sgt. Maj. (res.) Ronny Ganizate, of the Alon Brigade’s 5030th Battalion, was killed during fighting with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
Another reserve soldier from the 5030th Battalion was seriously wounded in the same incident and taken to a hospital, the military adds.
Ganizate, 36, of Givat Shmuel, is the 12th Israeli soldier killed in the ground offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon and during operations on the border.
Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu brands members of Jaffa’s al-Nuzha Mosque “terrorists,” even though they called the police to alert authorities of an ongoing shooting attack in the city last week.
Police issued a recording shortly after the terror attack in which one of the mosque’s members can be heard telling officers that one of the shooters had just entered, warned those inside not to leave and began opening fire outside.
Shortly before that recording was released, the head of Eliyahu’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, threatened to demolish the mosque if it was revealed that its members were tied to the attack. At that point, there was no such evidence and police have since only further exonerated the mosque members.
The mosque has still come under heavy criticism due to Ben Gvir’s comments, leading Adina Bar Shalom, the daughter of the late chief Sephardi rabbi Ovadia Yosef, to pay a solidarity visit on Wednesday, which was organized by the Tag Meir grassroots coexistence group.
Eliyahu tweets an article about Bar Shalom’s visit and writes, “Supporting terrorists is not my Judaism.”
BEIRUT — Over 2,000 Turkish citizens and some foreign have started boarding a Turkish military ship that brought in aid and will take them out of a country being hit by Israeli airstrikes targeting Hezbollah.
Zehra Cibbin, an ethnic Arab from the southeastern Turkish city of Mardin who lives in Beirut with her Lebanese husband, got off a bus packed with the other evacuees, her two children in tow and luggage in hand.
“It’s indescribable. They bombed the street below our house. From that moment on, it was over for me, I said I didn’t want to stay in Beirut anymore,” says Cibbin, 46.
Cibbin says they decided to leave Beirut out of fear for their lives, putting no thought into what will happen when they arrive in Turkey.
She speaks to The Associated Press before getting in line to board the TCG Bayraktar amphibious landing vessel, which along with the TCG Sancaktar will take on evacuees.
They are part of a six-ship convoy including escorts that set sail from the southern Turkish port of Mersin early Wednesday, transported 300 tons of humanitarian supplies, including food, hygiene kits, kitchenware, tents, beds and blankets.
Besides the Turkish citizens, people from Bulgaria, Romania and Kazakhstan were among those who applied to evacuate on the ships. Officials did not provide numbers.
An Israeli “aggression” is happening on Hasiya industrial city in Syria’s Homs countryside, Syrian state TV says.
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield slams Israel’s handling of the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip along with its effort to ban UNRWA from operating in the Jewish state.
On Sunday, the IDF said that its troops had encircled the Gaza city of Jabaliya in a new ground operation targeting efforts by Hamas to reestablish itself in the northern Strip. Ahead of the operation, the IDF issued a fresh batch of evacuation orders for towns in the area and said it was readying to order the evacuation of all northern Gaza where tens of thousands of Palestinians still reside.
“The United States is concerned by the situation in northern Gaza, including the announcement by Israel of a new evacuation order for several communities. We are particularly concerned that Palestinian civilians have nowhere safe to go,” Thomas-Greenfield says during a Security Council session on the Middle East.
“Already, there are devastating reports of the squalid conditions in the humanitarian zone in southern and central Gaza, where more than 1.5 million displaced civilians have fled. These catastrophic conditions were predicted months ago, and yet, have still not been addressed. That must change, and now. We call on Israel to take urgent steps to do so, and I reiterate the United States’ expectation that Palestinian civilians, including those evacuated from the north be permitted to return to their communities and rebuild,” the US envoy adds.
“We are also concerned by recent actions by the Israeli government to limit the delivery of goods into Gaza. When combined with new bureaucratic limits placed on humanitarian goods arriving from Jordan, and the closure of most border crossings in recent weeks, these restrictions would only have the effect of intensifying suffering in Gaza,” says Thomas-Greenfield.
Turning to the Knesset’s recent advancement of legislation aiming to outlaw UNRWA’s operations in Israel and bar Israeli authorities from contacting officials from the UN relief agency for Palestinians, Thomas-Greenfield says the US is “deeply concerned” by the proposals.
Noting the allegations facing UNRWA, she says only “a small percentage” of its staffers have ties to terror groups and participated in the October 7 onslaught.
“At the same time, we know that UN personnel, including from UNRWA, are vital to the humanitarian response in Gaza and face tremendous danger while performing their work,” the US envoy says, calling on Israel to provide more information regarding allegations against UNRWA and for the agency to do a better job addressing those concerns.
BEIRUT — The Lebanese army says it has arrested two Syrians on suspicion of having been recruited to work for Israel, as its military bombs Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.
Lebanese army intelligence arrested two Syrians “for photographing different places… and documenting the results of enemy airstrikes,” an army statement on social network X says.
The arrests were “a result of surveillance and follow-up of Israeli spy networks and enemy agents,” it says in the statement.
The pair had also documented “search and rescue operations and the recovery of bodies” at Israeli strike sites and were “recruited through social media,” the statement says, adding that judicial authorities are investigating.
Lebanese security services have arrested dozens over the years on suspicions of collaborating with Israel, with some receiving jail terms of up to 25 years.
Suspicions are running particularly high after Israel killed senior Hezbollah commanders in recent weeks, including the terror group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
Transportation Minister Miri Regev welcomes the European Union Aviation Safety Agency’s (EASA) decision to lift a recommendation to avoid Israeli airspace, which she presents as a personal vindication.
Tweeting a photo of herself with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Regev laments the “mountains of muck and poison” aimed at her for her recent trip to Budapest to lobby for EASA to reverse its guidance and pledges that “together we will continue to act for the benefit of the citizens of Israel.”
Last week, as Iran launched a massive ballistic missile attack on Israel, Regev was photographed outside a Budapest jeweler, sparking domestic criticism. She claimed that the photo was framed to make her look like she was shopping when she was only passing outside.
נתחיל מהסוף הטוב: רשות התעופה של האיחוד האירופי ביטלה את החלטתה לאסור טיסות לישראל ובקרוב החברות האירופאיות יחזרו לטוס ארצה. הררי רפש ורעל הוטחו ברשתות כלפיי על נסיעת הבזק שקיימתי בשבוע שעבר להונגריה >>> pic.twitter.com/dusNnvMDSr
— מירי רגב (@regev_miri) October 9, 2024
The military says it intercepted a drone in the Red Sea area headed toward Israel, as the Iran-backed Islamic Resistance in Iraq releases a statement claiming an attack on Eilat.
The Israel Defense Forces says the drone never entered Israeli territory.
