i24 News – Israel has made contact with Syrian and foreign officials in a renewed effort to locate and repatriate the remains of spy Eli Cohen, according to the Lebanese Al-Akhbar newspaper on Saturday. This confirms an earlier report by i24NEWS after the fall of the Assad regime.

Cohen, who had infiltrated Syria under the identity of Kamel Amin Thaabet, a supposed businessman from a Syrian family that had emigrated to Latin America, had managed to weave an impressive network of influence, establishing relationships with the highest Syrian political and military officials before being unmasked. He was executed in Marjeh square, in the center of Damascus, on May 18, 1965. Since then, Syrian authorities have always kept the location of his tomb secret, rejecting all mediation attempts proposing exchanges with Arab prisoners.

Israel is also reportedly seeking to establish contacts with groups that collaborated with Palestinian factions to find the body of one of three soldiers who disappeared during the Battle of Sultan Yacoub in the Bekaa during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. This battle, which pitted Syrian and Israeli forces against each other on June 10, 1982, remains a painful chapter of history for Israelis after the bodies were taken. Two years ago, Russia allowed the return of the bodies of two of these soldiers as part of an agreement.

This double Israeli approach is part of Israel’s policy to make every effort to repatriate its soldiers and agents, alive or dead.

After Cohen’s execution by hanging, the assumption is that the burial site has changed several times, and that he was buried in different points over the years in an effort to thwart Israeli efforts to locate his final resting place. Sources in Israel believe that finding him depends on reaching the Assad family or those close to former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

Nadia Cohen, widow of Eli, referred to the publication and said in an interview with Miri Michaeli on the i24NEWS Hebrew channel’s central edition.

“We have begun the 60th year that Eli is buried in Syria, I lived my life alone and I think I will also remain alone after,” she said.

“Every time there are developments with Syria and there is hope, disappointments follow,” she said.

“Dedi Barnea cautioned me that they might not find the body,” she concluded, referring to Mossad chief David Barnea.

The post Israel Intensifies Efforts to Retrieve Body of Spy Eli Cohen from Syria first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

JNS.org – A rigorous analysis published on Saturday of Hamas authorities’ death statistics in Gaza shows they were vastly inflated and methodologically flawed.

The report by the London-based Henry Jackson Society security think tank breaks down the figure of about 44,000 deaths since Oct. 7, 2023, that the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza has published, and which international media have reported without scrutiny.

The scale of civilian deaths in Gaza is a key element in a legal and propaganda push attempt by Israel’s enemies to isolate it internationally using false allegations of genocide.

The figure, which does not distinguish between civilians and the 17,000 terrorists Israel says it has killed in Gaza, also includes about 5,000 people who die of natural causes each year, states the report.

“This report raises serious concerns that the Gaza MoH figures have been overstated,” wrote Andrew Fox, an analyst who specializes in defense, the Middle East and disinformation, who wrote the report for the Henry Jackson Society.

The report was reported on Saturday in mainstream media, including the New York Post and The Telegraph, whose article the Israel Foreign Ministry reposted on X.

‘Questionable Counting’

“The data behind their figures contains natural deaths, deaths from before this conflict began and deaths of those killed by Hamas itself; it contains no mention of Hamas combatant fatalities; and it overstates the number of women and children killed,” reads the report, titled “Questionable Counting: Analyzing the Death Toll from the Hamas-Run Ministry of Health in Gaza.”

Some cancer patients were listed as requiring treatment after they had already been listed as war causalities. Jihad Mahmoud Adeeb Al-Taweel, ID number 950130153, was described in an April 15 list as a patient with laryngeal cancer, two weeks after being listed as a war fatality.

The report outlined additional statistical inconsistencies in the data collection process, including in the hospitals that reported it to the health ministry.

A “dramatic change happened in reports from al-Aqsa hospital [in Deir al-Balah], where the claimed number of fatalities jumped from 4,994, as per the 31 March 2024 report, to 6,608 just a week later. At the same time, the number of children jumped from 1,294 to 2,142, meaning children were responsible for 52.5% of the sharp increase,” the report said.

In a Dec. 10 article about the latest death statistics by the health ministry in Gaza, The Palestine Chronicle reported that “Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children”—a claim that anti-Israel activists often cite to promote the genocide charge against the Jewish state.

But Fox’s report found that “most fatalities are men aged 15–45, contradicting claims that civilian populations are being disproportionately targeted.” Deaths reported by families, as opposed to how they are listed by the health ministry, “suggests that many fatalities classified as civilian may be combatants, a distinction omitted from official reporting,” the Fox report states.

On Dec. 10, Hamas’s Government Media Office wrote that nearly 44% of 44,758 reported fatalities in the Gaza Strip were children. The report disputes this data, showing cases of adults being listed as children. The document also shows that the Government Media Office, which says its data come from the health ministry, routinely inflates the share of women and children in the statistics.

The health ministry data also shows that men have been misclassified as women, the Fox report states. “In the August 2024 list, 103 names were marked as female who had a male first name (e.g. Mohammed).”

The report comes as Israel is on trial for alleged genocide at the International Court of Justice and prosecutions for alleged crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court against Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel and the United States, among other countries, have categorically rejected and condemned those charges.

Israel’s advocates have said that even Hamas’s unreliable statistics, when combined with the Israeli estimates on the number of terrorists killed in the Gaza Strip, reveal a relatively low rate of civilian deaths. Considering the urban warfare conditions of the Gaza Strip, and Hamas’s strategy of using civilian shields, Israel’s defenders say the statistics reflect a major effort to avoid civilian loss of life during IDF operations to dismantle Hamas and free Israeli hostages.

An estimated 6,000 Palestinian terrorists invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting another 250. About 100 hostages remain in the Gaza Strip, though dozens of them are believed to have died. Israel and Hamas are engaged in indirect talks for a ceasefire. The condition of the hostages is unknown as Hamas has not allowed aid organizations, including the Red Cross, to visit them.

The post Hamas Vastly Inflated Gaza Death Statistics, Study Shows first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Metula is the northernmost town in Israel, with homes literally a stone’s throw from the border with Lebanon—which is fitting, as the origin of the town’s name is al-Mutallah (Arabic for “the lookout”). It was founded as a Jewish settlement in 1896 when the land was purchased by Baron Edmond de Rothschild.

At the end of the First World War, Metula was in the zone of the French military occupation until the British assumed control in 1924. (From 1920 to 1924, Metula residents could vote in the election for the Lebanese parliament.) The site of Metula determined the northern border of the State of Israel. It is surrounded on three sides by Lebanon, with the closest Lebanese village, Killeh, only 150 meters from its residential areas.

This photograph shows a kindergarten in Metula in the Upper Galilee on a trading card issued in Palestine in 1938. It is part of a series of 200 cards distributed by the Dubek Cigarette Company featuring photographs from the archives of the Keren Kayemet LeYisrael (the Jewish National Fund).

Before Oct. 7, 2023, Metula was home to about 2,000 people. The Canada Centre (Merkaz Canada) was one of the town’s major attractions with an Olympic-size ice rink, 10 bowling alleys and other entertainment and sports facilities.  

Metula was evacuated after Oct. 7 to protect people from Hezbollah shelling. Residents were scattered all over the country, which has made it nearly impossible to maintain a sense of community. More than 60 percent of its homes have been damaged or completely destroyed by Hezbollah missiles. Streets and municipal infrastructure such as electricity and water have also been damaged, as has the Canada Centre. It will take about four years for the town to be rehabilitated.

At least 30 percent of the population says they will not return, especially families with young children who don’t feel safe enough to live in Israel’s northernmost town.

The recent ceasefire in Lebanon gave the residents of Metula an opportunity to return and visit their homes. Most of them haven’t been home in over a year and did not know the extent of the damage. Even if their houses were not hit directly by a rocket, there is still damage caused by the blasts, rodents that overtook the empty houses, mold and other problems.

Metula is one of the five towns in the Galilee Panhandle that is twinned with communities across Canada under the leadership of Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA. Meytal Novidomsky-Mazeika, a JFC-UIA director in Israel who handles Canada’s relationship with the region, is a longtime resident of Metula—and now an evacuee. She and her young family now face a “very difficult decision,” she says.

“On the one hand, we have only lived in Metula as a family, and we planned on staying there for our entire lives. In addition, we understand the importance of living close to the border. On the other hand, we have small children that we need to protect and give them the safest opportunity to grow up without a constant threat of rockets or, even worse, infiltration. Metula, before this war, was one of the most beautiful places in the whole world. We hope and pray that it can return safely to that in the very near future.”

We also hope that one day soon another photograph of happy children at a Metula kindergarten can be taken.  

The post Treasure Trove looks at life in Israel’s northernmost town and the challenges post-Oct. 7 appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.