THE EMPIRE
Mathew Murphy, Kelly Weill
Sat, October 7, 2023
AMIR COHEN
The Palestinian Health Ministry says at least 198 people have been killed in Gaza and more than 1600 wounded amid Israeli retaliation following Hamas attack.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said it is launching ‘Operation Swords of Iron’ to strike back.
“Dozens of [Israeli military] fighter jets are currently striking a number of targets belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip,” the Israeli military said.
On Saturday night, local time, Israel's infrastructure minister announced that he has ordered the Gaza Strip's electricity to be cut.
Earlier, Hamas fighters launched an unprecedented attack on Israel from air, land and sea, firing thousands of rockets from the Gaza Strip early Saturday and killing at least 70 people.
“We are at war,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised address. “Not an ‘operation,’ not a ‘round,’ but at war.”
“The enemy will pay an unprecedented price,” he added, saying Israel would “return fire of a magnitude that the enemy has not known.”
The Israeli military said it had killed hundreds of Palestinian militants in southern communities along the Gaza border since Saturday morning.
The initial attack by Hamas caught Israel off-guard coming on Simchat Torah, a religious holiday and 50 years to the day since the 1973 Mideast war.
Smoke is seen in the Rehovot area as rockets are launched from the Gaza Strip.
ILAN ROSENBERG
Hamas fired over 2,000 rockets toward Israel, according to the Israeli authorities, and claimed to have captured several Israeli soldiers. One resident of Kibbutz Nir Oz told the country’s Channel 12 television station that militants were trying to break into their homes.
Israel’s health ministry said at least 779 wounded have arrived in hospitals so far. At least 198 Palestinians were killed in Gaza on Saturday, with 1,610 injured, the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said.
Hamas, which rules Gaza, said it was behind the operation it dubbed “Al-Aqsa Flood.”
“Enough is enough,” Mohammed Deif, the leader of the group's military wing, said in a recorded message.
“If you have a gun, get it out. This is the time to use it—get out with trucks, cars, axes. Today the best and most honorable history starts,” he said, according to CNN.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned in a televised address that Hamas had made “a grave mistake” and promised that “the state of Israel will win this war.”
The Israel Defense Forces have released video of what it says are retaliatory airstrikes on Hamas in Gaza.
“Since this morning, the State of Israel has been at war,” Netanyahu said at the beginning of a political-security cabinet meeting. “Our first goal is first of all to cleanse the area of the enemy forces that have infiltrated and restore security and peace to the towns that were attacked. The second goal, at the same time, is to exact a huge price from the enemy, also in the Gaza Strip. The third goal is to fortify other arenas so that no one makes the mistake of joining this war. We are at war, in war you have to keep calm. I call on all citizens of Israel to unite, to achieve our highest goal—victory in the war.”
People react near a fire after rockets were launched from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, Israel.
AMIR COHEN
Hamas fighters have taken hostages in Kibbutz Be’eri in Israel’s south, according to Haaretz. A resident told there told Haaretz that he and his family have been hiding in bomb shelter since Saturday morning.
President Joe Biden issued a statement condemning the “terrorist attacks in Israel,” saying he told Netanyahu that the U.S. stands ready “to offer all appropriate means of support to the Government and people of Israel.”
“Terrorism is never justified. Israel has a right to defend itself and its people. The United States warns against any other party hostile to Israel seeking advantage in this situation. My Administration’s support for Israel’s security is rock solid and unwavering,” he said.
Biden added that he and his wife Jill were “keeping in our prayers all of the families who have been hurt by this violence. We are heartbroken by the lives that have been tragically cut short and hope for a swift recovery for all those who have been wounded.”
Israel’s opposition leader Yair Lapid said Saturday that he is willing to establish an emergency government with Prime Minister Netanyahu to “oversee the difficult, complex and protracted campaign which lies before us.”
“In the current state of emergency, I am right to put aside differences, to establish with him a professional, limited emergency government, which will oversee the difficult, complex and protracted campaign which lies before us,” he said.
The attack comes amid surging violence between Israel and Palestinian militants in the West Bank, which is part of the territories where Palestinians have long tried to establish a state.
An injured soldier is brought into Tel Aviv's Surasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv.
AMIR LEVY
Commentators remarked on surprise nature of the attack, which escaped notice of Israeli intelligence.
Olga Glikstein, a political analyst based in Tel Aviv, said people were shocked by the news. “Everybody is talking about how Netanyahu missed the invasion, where was our security, our intelligence?” she said.
After sleeping through air raid sirens on Friday night, she heard a big boom at 2 p.m. “This is very serious. Iran, Saudi, Turkey and many other players in the Muslim world are suspected of helping Hamas. Israel, which was too relaxed during the Shabbat, is now going to demonstrate a massive retaliation. But the questions to Netanyahu will remain,” she said.
The Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah congratulated Palestinian fighters for the attack, saying the operation was a “decisive response to Israel’s continued occupation and a message to those seeking normalization with Israel.”
The Daily Beast.
Israel vows 'mighty vengeance' after deadliest day for 50 years
Hamas' surprise attack came on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur war.
Hamas gunmen enter Israel in unprecedented attack
*
At least 200 Israelis reported dead, more than 1,000 wounded
*
Hamas says it has taken many Israeli captives
*
Israel says Hamas has launched 'cruel and wicked war'
*
At least 230 killed in Israeli retaliation on Gaza
By Maayan Lubell, Nidal al-Mughrabi and Ammar Awad
JERUSALEM/GAZA/SDEROT Oct 7 (Reuters) - Gunmen from the Palestinian group Hamas rampaged through Israeli towns on Saturday, killing more than 200 people and escaping with hostages in by far the deadliest day of violence in Israel since the Yom Kippur war 50 years ago.
More than 230 Gazans were also killed when Israel responded with one of its most devastating days of retaliatory strikes.
"We will take mighty vengeance for this black day," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
"Hamas launched a cruel and wicked war. We will win this war but the price is too heavy to bear," he said. "Hamas wants to murder us all. This is an enemy that murders mothers and children in their homes, in their beds. An enemy that abducts elderly, children, teenage girls."
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said the assault that had begun in Gaza would spread to the West Bank and Jerusalem.
"This was the morning of defeat and humiliation upon our enemy, its soldiers and its settlers," he said in a speech. "What happened reveals the greatness of our preparation. What happened today reveals the weakness of the enemy."
Bodies of Israeli civilians were strewn across the streets of Sderot in southern Israel, near Gaza, surrounded by broken glass. The bodies of a woman and a man were sprawled across the front seats of a car.
"I went out, I saw loads of bodies of terrorists, civilians, cars shot up. A sea of bodies, inside Sderot along the road, other places, loads of bodies," said Shlomi from Sderot.
Terrified Israelis, barricaded into safe rooms, recounted their plight by phone on live TV.
"They just came in again, please send help," a woman identified as Dorin told Israel's N12 News from Nir Oz, a kibbutz near Gaza. "My husband is holding the door closed ... They are firing rounds of bullets."
Esther Borochov, who fled a dance rave party attacked by the gunmen, told Reuters she survived by playing dead in a car after the driver trying to help her escape was shot point blank.
"I couldn't move my legs," she told Reuters at the hospital. "Soldiers came and took us away to the bushes."
In Gaza, black smoke and orange flames billowed into the evening sky from a high rise tower hit by an Israeli retaliatory strike. Crowds of mourners carried the bodies of freshly killed militants through the streets, wrapped in green Hamas flags.
Gaza's dead and wounded were carried into crumbling and overcrowded hospitals with severe shortages of medical supplies and equipment. The health ministry said 232 people had been killed and at least 1,700 wounded.
Streets were deserted apart from ambulances racing to the scenes of air strikes. Israel cut the power, plunging the city into darkness.
BIDEN OFFERS SUPPORT TO NETANYAHU
Western countries, led by the United States, denounced the Palestinian attack and pledged support for Israel.
At the White House, President Joe Biden said Israel had the right to defend itself "full stop".
"We will never not have her back."
Across the Middle East, there were demonstrations in support of Hamas, with Israeli and U.S. flags set on fire and marchers waving Palestinian flags in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.
The Hamas attack was openly praised by Iran and by Hezbollah, Iran's Lebanese allies.
By nightfall on Saturday in southern Israel, residents had yet to be given the all-clear to leave the shelters where they had hidden from the gunmen since the early hours.
"It’s not over because the (army) hasn’t said the kibbutz is clear of terrorists," Dani Rahamim told Reuters by telephone from the shelter where he was still hiding in Nahal Oz, close to the Gaza fence. Gunfire had subsided but regular explosions could still be heard.
Hamas said it fired a fresh volley of 150 rockets towards Tel Aviv on Saturday evening in retaliation for an Israeli air strike that took down a high rise building with more than 100 apartments.
Hamas deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri told Al Jazeera that the group was holding a big number of Israeli captives, including senior officials. He said Hamas had enough captives to make Israel free all Palestinians in its jails.
The Israeli military confirmed Israelis were being held in Gaza. A military spokesman said Israel could mobilise up to hundreds of thousands of reservists and was also prepared for war on its northern front against Lebanon's Hezbollah group.
Hamas, which advocates Israel's destruction, said the attack was driven by what it said were Israel's escalated attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, Jerusalem and against Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
"This is the day of the greatest battle to end the last occupation on earth," Hamas military commander Mohammad Deif said, announcing the start of the operation in a broadcast on Hamas media and calling on Palestinians everywhere to fight.
Gaza has been devastated by four wars and countless skirmishes between Hamas and Israel since the militants seized control of the strip in 2007. But the scenes of violence inside Israel itself were beyond anything seen there even at the height of the Palestinian Intifada uprisings of past decades.
That Israel was caught completely off guard was lamented as one of the worst intelligence failures in its history, a shock to a nation that boasts of its intensive infiltration and monitoring of militants.
In Gaza, a narrow strip where 2.3 million Palestinians have lived under an Israeli blockade for 16 years, residents rushed to buy supplies in anticipation of days of war ahead. Some evacuated their homes and headed for shelters.
Scores of Palestinians were killed and hundreds wounded in clashes at the border into Israel, where fighters captured the crossing point and tore down fences. Some of those dead were civilians, among crowds that attempted to cross into Israel through the damaged gates.
"We are afraid," a Palestinian woman, Amal Abu Daqqa, told Reuters as she left her house in Khan Younis.
BACKDROP OF SURGING VIOLENCE
The escalation comes against a backdrop of surging violence between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Israeli occupied West Bank, where a Palestinian authority exercises limited self-rule, opposed by Hamas that wants Israel destroyed.
In the West Bank, there were clashes in several locations on Saturday, with stone throwing youths confronting Israeli troops. Four Palestinians including a 13-year-old boy were killed. Palestinian factions called a general strike for Sunday.
Israel itself has been experiencing internal political upheaval, with the most right-wing government in its history attempting to overhaul the judiciary.
Meanwhile, Washington has been trying to strike a deal that would normalise ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, seen by Israelis as the biggest prize yet in their decades-long for Arab recognition. Palestinians fear any such deal could sell out their future dreams of an independent state.
(Reporting by Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Ammar Anwar in Sderot Additional reporting by Henriette Chacar, Emily Rose and Dan Williams in Jerusalem, Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Writing by James Mackenzie, Tom Perry, Michael Georgy and Peter Graff; Editing by William Mallard, Robert Birsel, Alex Richardson and Nick Macfie)
Israeli officials are calling on armed civilians to stand guard following Hamas attacks
Jordan Parker Erb
Sat, October 7, 2023
Tour guide Ziv Cohen stands guard in his town, Mazkeret Batya, where some homes were hit by rockets.Ziv Cohen
Israeli officials called on armed civilians to guard their towns following attacks by Hamas.
Hamas launched an attack from Gaza on Saturday. Israel has since declared a "state of war."
Ziv Cohen, a tour guide from Mazkeret Batya, is one of the civilians who volunteered to stand guard.
Ziv Cohen woke up at about 6:30 a.m. on Saturday to the rumble of someone moving furniture in the apartment above him.
"Then, suddenly, after it continued again and again, it came to my head that I'm on the top floor," Cohen told Insider. "There is no one above me to move a chair. It was an attack."
Cohen, 54, was actually hearing "barrages of rockets" launched early Saturday by Hamas, the political and military organization governing the Gaza Strip that the United States designates a terrorist organization. The attack has so far killed 150 people and wounded hundreds more.
In the following hours, Israel officially declared "a state of war," launching air strikes on densely populated Gaza in response. Israel has held Gaza under a severe blockade since Hamas gained power in 2007, restricting the movement of goods and people. The Palestinian Health Ministry said at least 200 have so far been killed in Gaza.
Local municipalities in Israel are now calling on armed civilians to guard their own communities.
Cohen, a tour guide from Mazkeret Batya, a small town about 24 miles from Gaza, is one of them.
A home in Mazkeret Batya that was hit by rockets on Saturday.Ziv Cohen
Cohen told Insider that officials from Mazkeret Batya, close enough to Gaza to be targeted by this morning's rockets, called for all civilians who are armed and willing to volunteer to do so.
"They said everyone who has a licensed weapon with him is being called to join the group that is guarding and watching the community," Cohen said. "Israel is in a war. We have to protect ourselves in every house, in every home, in every town."
Cohen, who has a pistol, volunteered to stand guard at one of the town's entrances.
Cohen said he's stationed at one of the town's main gates for his three-hour shift, which will stretch into Saturday night. There, he parked his car — a minivan, which on a typical day he'd use to guide tourists around Jerusalem and nearby historical sites — in the road, creating a blockade to slow down traffic.
He said his team's responsibility would be to speak with drivers and inspect their cars as they come into town.
Though the rockets struck homes and cars in his neighborhood this morning, Cohen said he wasn't nervous to stand guard. He said the job comes with an inherent risk, "but this is something that you don't think about. You make your duty, and everything has a risk in life."
Hamas' surprise attack came on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur war.
"Citizens of Israel, we are at war, not in an operation or in rounds, but at war," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video address. "This morning, Hamas launched a murderous surprise attack against the State of Israel and its citizens. We have been in this since the early morning hours."
Hamas' surprise attack came on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur war.
Hamas gunmen enter Israel in unprecedented attack
*
At least 200 Israelis reported dead, more than 1,000 wounded
*
Hamas says it has taken many Israeli captives
*
Israel says Hamas has launched 'cruel and wicked war'
*
At least 230 killed in Israeli retaliation on Gaza
By Maayan Lubell, Nidal al-Mughrabi and Ammar Awad
JERUSALEM/GAZA/SDEROT Oct 7 (Reuters) - Gunmen from the Palestinian group Hamas rampaged through Israeli towns on Saturday, killing more than 200 people and escaping with hostages in by far the deadliest day of violence in Israel since the Yom Kippur war 50 years ago.
More than 230 Gazans were also killed when Israel responded with one of its most devastating days of retaliatory strikes.
"We will take mighty vengeance for this black day," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
"Hamas launched a cruel and wicked war. We will win this war but the price is too heavy to bear," he said. "Hamas wants to murder us all. This is an enemy that murders mothers and children in their homes, in their beds. An enemy that abducts elderly, children, teenage girls."
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said the assault that had begun in Gaza would spread to the West Bank and Jerusalem.
"This was the morning of defeat and humiliation upon our enemy, its soldiers and its settlers," he said in a speech. "What happened reveals the greatness of our preparation. What happened today reveals the weakness of the enemy."
Bodies of Israeli civilians were strewn across the streets of Sderot in southern Israel, near Gaza, surrounded by broken glass. The bodies of a woman and a man were sprawled across the front seats of a car.
"I went out, I saw loads of bodies of terrorists, civilians, cars shot up. A sea of bodies, inside Sderot along the road, other places, loads of bodies," said Shlomi from Sderot.
Terrified Israelis, barricaded into safe rooms, recounted their plight by phone on live TV.
"They just came in again, please send help," a woman identified as Dorin told Israel's N12 News from Nir Oz, a kibbutz near Gaza. "My husband is holding the door closed ... They are firing rounds of bullets."
Esther Borochov, who fled a dance rave party attacked by the gunmen, told Reuters she survived by playing dead in a car after the driver trying to help her escape was shot point blank.
"I couldn't move my legs," she told Reuters at the hospital. "Soldiers came and took us away to the bushes."
In Gaza, black smoke and orange flames billowed into the evening sky from a high rise tower hit by an Israeli retaliatory strike. Crowds of mourners carried the bodies of freshly killed militants through the streets, wrapped in green Hamas flags.
Gaza's dead and wounded were carried into crumbling and overcrowded hospitals with severe shortages of medical supplies and equipment. The health ministry said 232 people had been killed and at least 1,700 wounded.
Streets were deserted apart from ambulances racing to the scenes of air strikes. Israel cut the power, plunging the city into darkness.
BIDEN OFFERS SUPPORT TO NETANYAHU
Western countries, led by the United States, denounced the Palestinian attack and pledged support for Israel.
At the White House, President Joe Biden said Israel had the right to defend itself "full stop".
"We will never not have her back."
Across the Middle East, there were demonstrations in support of Hamas, with Israeli and U.S. flags set on fire and marchers waving Palestinian flags in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.
The Hamas attack was openly praised by Iran and by Hezbollah, Iran's Lebanese allies.
By nightfall on Saturday in southern Israel, residents had yet to be given the all-clear to leave the shelters where they had hidden from the gunmen since the early hours.
"It’s not over because the (army) hasn’t said the kibbutz is clear of terrorists," Dani Rahamim told Reuters by telephone from the shelter where he was still hiding in Nahal Oz, close to the Gaza fence. Gunfire had subsided but regular explosions could still be heard.
Hamas said it fired a fresh volley of 150 rockets towards Tel Aviv on Saturday evening in retaliation for an Israeli air strike that took down a high rise building with more than 100 apartments.
Hamas deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri told Al Jazeera that the group was holding a big number of Israeli captives, including senior officials. He said Hamas had enough captives to make Israel free all Palestinians in its jails.
The Israeli military confirmed Israelis were being held in Gaza. A military spokesman said Israel could mobilise up to hundreds of thousands of reservists and was also prepared for war on its northern front against Lebanon's Hezbollah group.
Hamas, which advocates Israel's destruction, said the attack was driven by what it said were Israel's escalated attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, Jerusalem and against Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
"This is the day of the greatest battle to end the last occupation on earth," Hamas military commander Mohammad Deif said, announcing the start of the operation in a broadcast on Hamas media and calling on Palestinians everywhere to fight.
Gaza has been devastated by four wars and countless skirmishes between Hamas and Israel since the militants seized control of the strip in 2007. But the scenes of violence inside Israel itself were beyond anything seen there even at the height of the Palestinian Intifada uprisings of past decades.
That Israel was caught completely off guard was lamented as one of the worst intelligence failures in its history, a shock to a nation that boasts of its intensive infiltration and monitoring of militants.
In Gaza, a narrow strip where 2.3 million Palestinians have lived under an Israeli blockade for 16 years, residents rushed to buy supplies in anticipation of days of war ahead. Some evacuated their homes and headed for shelters.
Scores of Palestinians were killed and hundreds wounded in clashes at the border into Israel, where fighters captured the crossing point and tore down fences. Some of those dead were civilians, among crowds that attempted to cross into Israel through the damaged gates.
"We are afraid," a Palestinian woman, Amal Abu Daqqa, told Reuters as she left her house in Khan Younis.
BACKDROP OF SURGING VIOLENCE
The escalation comes against a backdrop of surging violence between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Israeli occupied West Bank, where a Palestinian authority exercises limited self-rule, opposed by Hamas that wants Israel destroyed.
In the West Bank, there were clashes in several locations on Saturday, with stone throwing youths confronting Israeli troops. Four Palestinians including a 13-year-old boy were killed. Palestinian factions called a general strike for Sunday.
Israel itself has been experiencing internal political upheaval, with the most right-wing government in its history attempting to overhaul the judiciary.
Meanwhile, Washington has been trying to strike a deal that would normalise ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, seen by Israelis as the biggest prize yet in their decades-long for Arab recognition. Palestinians fear any such deal could sell out their future dreams of an independent state.
(Reporting by Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Ammar Anwar in Sderot Additional reporting by Henriette Chacar, Emily Rose and Dan Williams in Jerusalem, Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Writing by James Mackenzie, Tom Perry, Michael Georgy and Peter Graff; Editing by William Mallard, Robert Birsel, Alex Richardson and Nick Macfie)
Israeli officials are calling on armed civilians to stand guard following Hamas attacks
Jordan Parker Erb
Sat, October 7, 2023
Tour guide Ziv Cohen stands guard in his town, Mazkeret Batya, where some homes were hit by rockets.Ziv Cohen
Israeli officials called on armed civilians to guard their towns following attacks by Hamas.
Hamas launched an attack from Gaza on Saturday. Israel has since declared a "state of war."
Ziv Cohen, a tour guide from Mazkeret Batya, is one of the civilians who volunteered to stand guard.
Ziv Cohen woke up at about 6:30 a.m. on Saturday to the rumble of someone moving furniture in the apartment above him.
"Then, suddenly, after it continued again and again, it came to my head that I'm on the top floor," Cohen told Insider. "There is no one above me to move a chair. It was an attack."
Cohen, 54, was actually hearing "barrages of rockets" launched early Saturday by Hamas, the political and military organization governing the Gaza Strip that the United States designates a terrorist organization. The attack has so far killed 150 people and wounded hundreds more.
In the following hours, Israel officially declared "a state of war," launching air strikes on densely populated Gaza in response. Israel has held Gaza under a severe blockade since Hamas gained power in 2007, restricting the movement of goods and people. The Palestinian Health Ministry said at least 200 have so far been killed in Gaza.
Local municipalities in Israel are now calling on armed civilians to guard their own communities.
Cohen, a tour guide from Mazkeret Batya, a small town about 24 miles from Gaza, is one of them.
A home in Mazkeret Batya that was hit by rockets on Saturday.Ziv Cohen
Cohen told Insider that officials from Mazkeret Batya, close enough to Gaza to be targeted by this morning's rockets, called for all civilians who are armed and willing to volunteer to do so.
"They said everyone who has a licensed weapon with him is being called to join the group that is guarding and watching the community," Cohen said. "Israel is in a war. We have to protect ourselves in every house, in every home, in every town."
Cohen, who has a pistol, volunteered to stand guard at one of the town's entrances.
Cohen said he's stationed at one of the town's main gates for his three-hour shift, which will stretch into Saturday night. There, he parked his car — a minivan, which on a typical day he'd use to guide tourists around Jerusalem and nearby historical sites — in the road, creating a blockade to slow down traffic.
He said his team's responsibility would be to speak with drivers and inspect their cars as they come into town.
Though the rockets struck homes and cars in his neighborhood this morning, Cohen said he wasn't nervous to stand guard. He said the job comes with an inherent risk, "but this is something that you don't think about. You make your duty, and everything has a risk in life."
Hamas' surprise attack came on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur war.
"Citizens of Israel, we are at war, not in an operation or in rounds, but at war," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video address. "This morning, Hamas launched a murderous surprise attack against the State of Israel and its citizens. We have been in this since the early morning hours."
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