JNS.org – “Early this morning, Israeli authorities informed my national security team that a mission they conducted in Gaza likely killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. DNA tests have now confirmed that Sinwar is dead. This is a good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world.

As the leader of the terrorist group Hamas, Sinwar was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Israelis, Palestinians, Americans, and citizens from over 30 countries. He was the mastermind of the October 7th massacres, rapes, and kidnappings. It was on his orders that Hamas terrorists invaded Israel to intentionally—and with unspeakable savagery—kill and massacre civilians, a Holocaust survivor, children in front of their parents, and parents in front of their children.

Over 1,200 people were killed on that day, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, including 46 Americans. More than 250 were taken hostage, with 101 still missing. That number includes seven Americans, four of whom are believed to still be alive and held by Hamas terrorists.  Sinwar is the man most responsible for this, and for so much of what followed.

Shortly after the October 7 massacres, I directed Special Operations personnel and our intelligence professionals to work side-by-side with their Israeli counterparts to help locate and track Sinwar and other Hamas leaders hiding in Gaza.

With our intelligence help, the IDF relentlessly pursued Hamas’s leaders, flushing them out of their hiding places and forcing them onto the run. There has rarely been a military campaign like this, with Hamas leaders living and moving through hundreds of miles of tunnels, organized in multiple stories underground, determined to protect themselves with no care for the civilians suffering above ground. Today, however, proves once again that no terrorists anywhere in the world can escape justice, no matter how long it takes.

To my Israeli friends, this is no doubt a day of relief and reminiscence, similar to the scenes witnessed throughout the United States after President Obama ordered the raid to kill Osama Bin Laden in 2011.

Israel has had every right to eliminate the leadership and military structure of Hamas. Hamas is no longer capable of carrying out another October 7.

I will be speaking soon with Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders to congratulate them, to discuss the pathway for bringing the hostages home to their families, and for ending this war once and for all, which has caused so much devastation to innocent people.

There is now the opportunity for a ‘day after’ in Gaza without Hamas in power, and for a political settlement that provides a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike.  Yahya Sinwar was an insurmountable obstacle to achieving all of those goals. That obstacle no longer exists. But much work remains before us.”

The post President Biden’s Statement on the Death of Yahya Sinwar first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Thursday, Egypt’s presidency said in a statement.

The meeting focused on regional developments, with al-Sisi reiterating Egypt’s call to avoid the expansion of conflict and the need to halt escalation to prevent a full-scale regional war.

Araqchi emphasized the importance of continuing efforts to explore prospects for mutual development of relations between the two countries, the statement added.

Araqchi landed in Cairo late on Wednesday for talks with Egyptian officials, the first such visit in years as part of a Middle Eastern tour amid concerns of a wider confrontation in the region with Israel.

Tensions are high in anticipation of an Israeli attack on Iran in retaliation for Iran’s missile attack on Oct. 1. That followed a rapidly spiraling conflict between Israel and Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Araqchi arrived for “important talks with Egypt’s high ranking officials that will be held tomorrow [Thursday],” Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said in a post on X on Wednesday, after stops in countries including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq and Lebanon.

Relations between Egypt and Iran have generally been fraught in recent decades but the two countries have stepped up high-level diplomatic contacts since the eruption of the Gaza crisis last year as Egypt tried to play a mediating role.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty traveled to Tehran in July to attend the country’s presidential inauguration.

The post Egypt’s Sisi Meets with Iran’s Foreign Minister first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

i24 News – A new reports sheds light on the sophisticated Israeli plot that saw pagers held by Hezbollah members across Lebanon explode and decimate the jihadist group’s ranks.

According to Reuters, one of the operation’s main challenges consisted in coming up with a plausible backstory to diffuse suspicion of the deceptively designed weaponized pagers that arrived in Lebanon in early 2024.

To this end, Israelis created fake online stores, pages and posts that could deceive Hezbollah due diligence, a review of web archives conducted by Reuters shows.

The stealthy design of the pager bomb and the battery’s carefully constructed cover story were key to the execution of a years-long operation that has struck unprecedented blows against the jihadist militia.

A thin, square sheet with six grams of white pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) plastic explosive was squeezed between two rectangular battery cells, according to the Lebanese source and photos obtained by Reuters.

The remaining space between the battery cells could not be seen in the photos but was occupied by a strip of highly flammable material that acted as the detonator, the source told the news agency.

This “three-layer sandwich” was inserted in a black plastic sleeve, and encapsulated in a metal casing roughly the size of a matchbox, the photos showed.

The assembly was unusual because it did not rely on a standard miniaturized detonator, typically a metallic cylinder; without any metal components, the material used to trigger detonation had an edge: like the plastic explosives, it was not detected by X-ray.

Upon receiving the pagers in February, Hezbollah looked for the presence of explosives, two people familiar with the matter said, putting them through airport security scanners to see if they triggered alarms. Nothing suspicious was reported.

It is understood that the devices were set up to generate a spark within the battery pack, enough to light the detonating material, and trigger the sheet of PETN to explode.

Since explosives and wrapping took about a third of the volume, the battery pack carried a fraction of the power consistent with its 35-gram weight, two battery experts said.

At some point, Hezbollah noticed the battery was draining faster than expected, the Lebanese source said. However, the issue did not appear to raise major security concerns as the group was still handing its operatives the pagers hours before the attack.

On September 17, thousands of pagers simultaneously exploded in the southern suburbs of Beirut and other Hezbollah strongholds, in most cases after the devices beeped, indicating an incoming message.

Among the victims rushed to hospital, many had eye injuries, missing fingers or gaping holes in their abdomens, indicating their proximity to the devices at the time of detonation. In total, the pager attack, and a second on the following day that activated weaponized walkie-talkies, killed 39 people and wounded more than 3,400.

The post New Details Shed Light on Israel’s Stunning Pager Plot that Ravaged Hezbollah first appeared on Algemeiner.com.