The Israeli military said on Friday that one of the bodies released by Hamas did not belong to any of the hostages held in Gaza, accusing the Palestinian terrorist group of violating an already fragile ceasefire.

Two of the bodies were identified as infant Kfir Bibas and his four-year-old brother Ariel, while a third body that was supposed to be their mother, Shiri, was found not to match with any hostage and remained unidentified, the military said.

“This is a violation of utmost severity by the Hamas terrorist organization, which is obliged under the agreement to return four deceased hostages,” the military said, in a statement, demanding the return of Shiri and all hostages.

The family of hostage Oded Lifshitz, said in a statement that his body had been formally identified.

Hamas said on Friday it was investigating a possible error in identifying human remains handed to Israel under the ceasefire deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier vowed revenge on Hamas after the group released the remains of what it said were four hostages, including that of Kfir and Ariel, the youngest of those abducted during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

Palestinian militants handed over four black coffins in a carefully orchestrated public display as a crowd of Palestinians and dozens of armed Hamas terrorists watched, creating a spectacle which was condemned by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The purported remains of the boys, their mother, and Lifshitz, were handed over under the Gaza ceasefire agreement reached last month with the backing of the United States and the mediation of Qatar and Egypt.

Israelis lined the road in the rain near the Gaza border to pay their respects as the convoy carrying the coffins drove by.

“We stand here together, with a broken heart. The sky is also crying with us, and we pray to see better days,” said one woman, who gave her name only as Efrat.

In Tel Aviv, people gathered, some weeping, in a public square opposite Israel‘s defense headquarters that has come to be known as Hostages Square.

“Agony. Pain. There are no words. Our hearts — the hearts of an entire nation — lie in tatters,” said President Isaac Herzog.

In a recorded address released after the remains of the hostages were handed over, Netanyahu vowed to eliminate Hamas, saying “the four coffins” obliged Israel to ensure “more than ever” that there was no repeat of the Oct. 7 attack.

“Our loved ones’ blood is shouting at us from the soil and is obliging us to settle the score with the despicable murderers, and we will,” he said.

Over the course of the 16-month-old conflict, Israeli officials have repeatedly asserted that Hamas would be destroyed and the roughly 250 hostages abducted during the October 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel would be returned home.

During Thursday’s handover, one terrorist stood beside a poster showing coffins wrapped in Israeli flags. It read “The Return of the War = The Return of your Prisoners in Coffins.”

UN chief Guterres condemned “the parading of bodies and displaying of the coffins of the deceased hostages in the manner seen this morning, which is abhorrent and appalling,” his spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, said.

He said international law required remains to be handed over in a way that ensures “respect for the dignity of the deceased and their families.”

‘SYMBOL’

Kfir Bibas was nine months old when the Bibas family, including their father Yarden, was abducted at Kibbutz Nir Oz, one of a string of communities near Gaza that were overrun by Hamas-led attackers from Gaza.

Hamas said in November 2023 that the boys and their mother had been killed in an Israeli airstrike, but their deaths were not confirmed by Israeli authorities.

“Shiri and the kids became a symbol,” said Yiftach Cohen, of the Nir Oz kibbutz, which lost around a quarter of its residents, either killed or kidnapped, during the assault.

Yarden Bibas was returned alive in an exchange for prisoners this month.

Lifshitz was 83 when he was abducted from Nir Oz, the kibbutz he helped found. His wife, Yocheved, 85 at the time, was seized with him and released two weeks later, along with another woman.

He was a former journalist and in an op-ed in left-leaning Haaretz in January 2019, he listed what he said were Netanyahu’s policy failures.

LIVING HOSTAGES

The handover marked the first return of dead bodies during the current agreement.

The military said that the Bibas children had been murdered in captivity in November 2023 by “terrorists.” The prime minister’s office earlier said that Lifshitz was murdered in captivity by Islamic Jihad, another Iran-backed terrorist group in Gaza.

Chen Kugel, the head of the Israel National Center of Forensic Medicine, later said in a televised statement that Lifshitz had been murdered more than a year ago.

The Hamas-led attack into Israel killed some 1,200 people, and 251 individuals were kidnapped as hostages. Israel‘s subsequent military campaign aimed to free the hostages and dismantle Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in Gaza.

Thursday’s handover of bodies will be followed by the return of six living hostages on Saturday, in exchange for hundreds more Palestinians, expected to be women and minors detained by Israeli forces in Gaza during the war.

Negotiations for a second phase, expected to cover the return of around 60 remaining hostages, less than half of whom are believed to be alive, and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip to allow an end to the war, are expected to begin in the coming days.

The post Israeli Military Says Hostage Body Released by Hamas Is Not Shiri Bibas or Any Other Captive in Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Members of the Hamas terrorist group lambasted US President Donald Trump’s recent proposal to remove Palestinian civilians from the Gaza strip as a “bull— plan.” 

The remarks were made during what appears to be a rally in the Khan Yunis town of southern Gaza celebrating the transfer of the bodies of four hostages—Ariel Bibas, Kfir Bibas, Shiri Bibas, and Oded Lifshitz—back to Israel after they had been murdered by Hamas. In the video, a large crowd was circled around a dirt pit, attentively listening to a leader of the terrorist group both criticized Trump as an “unleashed bull” and promise that future generations of Palestinians would continue fighting against Israel. 

Hamas erected a large banner depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a blood-drenched vampire superimposed on pictures of the Bibas family and Lifshitz. Thousands of Palestinian civilians assembled to partake in the event, shouting chants of victory. 

“Do you really think that boy that attacked a tank barefooted with his bayonet and IED will leave his homeland because of fear?” the terrorist member said, “What do you think might frighten us? We’ve made very good friends with death lately.”

The Hamas member warned Trump to “think twice” about his proposal to vacate Gaza civilians from the war-torn strip, arguing that the terrorist group is capable of “delivering” death to its opponents. 

“The war criminal Netanyahu & his Nazi Army killed them with missiles from Zionist warplanes,” the banner read. 

Earlier this month, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was visiting the White House, held a press conference following their private meeting in the Oval Office. Trump asserted that the US would assume control of Gaza and develop it economically into “the Riviera of the Middle East” after Palestinians are resettled elsewhere.

“The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” Trump told reporters. “We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site.”

Trump has also referred to Gaza as a “demolition site” and said its residents have “no alternative” but to leave, suggesting Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states as possible relocation sites. 

Trump has called for Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states in the region to take in Palestinians from Gaza. Thus far, every state in the region has refused to absorb Palestinian migrants from Gaza. 

 

The post Hamas Leader Calls Trump’s Gaza Plan ‘Bulls—,’ Vows Palestinians Will Not Depart ‘Homeland’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania led a failed takeover of an administrative building that it was forced to abandon after just 11 hours, according to a recent report by The Phoenix, the school’s campus daily.

“Chaos and uncertainty ruled campus yesterday,” wrote staff writers Daniel Perrin and Ella Walker on Thursday, describing the welter of events which saw SJP occupy the Parrish Hall administrative building and security officials launch a frenetic operation to boot them out.

While SJP had announced an “emergency rally” scheduled for noon that day, there was little indication that it planned on commandeering the building and remaining inside of it indefinitely, according to the report in The Phoenix.

“Swarthmore students hold sit-in to demand accountability for political repression and complicity in genocide,” SJP said in a statement after revealing its intentions. “We will not rest until Swarthmore College divests from the genocidal Zionist entity and drops all charges against our peers. Free Palestine and long live the student intifada.”

Inside, the students dressed like Hamas fighters, wrapping their faces with keffiyeh in a style coined by the group’s members to avoid being identified as terrorists.

SJP members left the building before the 11pm deadline set by the College. Administrators told The Phoenix that they “do not expect to issue interim suspensions.”

Occupying campus property to protest Israel and Zionism is now an old phenomenon. Thousands of students did so during the conclusion of the 2023-2024 academic year, precipitating an epidemic of antisemitic hate crime assaults, property destruction, and hate speech which cost several university presidents their jobs. So-called “Gaza Solidarity Encampments” which sprung in campuses across the United States last year caught university administrators off guard, and they hesitated to discipline protesters who openly violated school rules, creating an impression that rule-breaking was acceptable so long as the students doing it were promoting left-wing viewpoints.

Swarthmore resolved on Wednesday not to make a similar mistake, The Phoenix reported. No sooner had the students captured the building than security officials moved to lock it down to prevent both SJP’s being joined by more students and receiving supplies such as food and water that would sustain and ultimately prolong the demonstration. But it was many hours before Swarthmore’s vice president of student affairs Stephanie Ives sent SJP a letter warning the group that its members were risking being placed on interim suspensions that would carry a ban from campus, as well as their losing “all academic privileges.”

By that time, the students had unleashed a barrage of misconduct, shouting slogans through bullhorns, attempting to break into offices that had been locked to keep them out, and pounding the doors of others that refused to admit them access. Meanwhile, SJP collaborators circumvented security’s lockdown of the building to smuggle food inside. Several students then grew impatient and attempted to end the lockdown themselves by raiding the building, and in doing so caused a physical altercation with security, whom they proceeded to pelt with expletives and other imprecations spoken in the style of inner-city vernacular.

“What the f— is your problem!?” a female student, captured in video shared by The Phoenix, can be heard screaming at an official who used his body to block a protester from forcing his way inside. “B—ch! F—ck you! Stop f—ing touching people bruh!”

In a letter to Swarthmore SJP, Ives said that the group’s activities, which it heavily promoted on social media, had drawn the attention of the local Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) office.

“Your actions, and the promotion of them on social media, have triggered a range of responses from within and beyond the community, including local and federal law enforcement agencies,” she wrote. “We have already identified several individuals involved in today’s actions. Those individuals, along with others we identify moving forward, will face interim suspension if the occupation does not end by 11 p.m. tonight.”

In a statement later issued to The Phoenix, Swarthmore College said, “The FBI contacted us based on the nature and volume of social media posts by Swarthmore SJP, along with other regional and national SJP and other accounts, calling for people from outside the campus community to come to Swarthmore and participate in the occupation.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post ‘Chaos’: Students for Justice in Palestine Forced to Abandon Building Occupation at Swarthmore College first appeared on Algemeiner.com.