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Former IDF chief’s son killed in Gaza fighting as Israel presses forward with costly counteroffensive
(JTA) – The son of an Israeli government minister and former military chief of staff was killed in combat in Gaza on Thursday, as Israel continued its war against Hamas, killing some of the terror group’s senior officials amid mounting civilian and troop casualties.
Gal Meir Eisenkot, 25, the son of former Israel Defense Forces chief Gadi Eisenkot, died in Gaza while serving as a reservist in a commando unit. Another soldier, reservist paratrooper Jonathan David Deitch, was declared dead at the same time, bringing the number of Israeli troops who have been killed in the ground invasion of Gaza to 89.
The elder Eisenkot led the IDF from 2015 to 2019. He is a member of the National Unity party led by Benny Gantz, who preceded Eisenkot as IDF chief of staff. Eisenkot is a member of Israel’s emergency wartime government and is an observer in the war cabinet directing the Gaza campaign.
In Israel, where most Jewish 18-year-olds across social and economic sectors are conscripted into the army and many serve in reserve duty for years afterward, few are immune from the possible consequences of the war. More than 300,000 reservists were called up two months ago for Israel’s current campaign, and its casualties have spanned a range of ages and backgrounds.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “heartbroken” in a public statement to Gadi Eisenkot.
“We weep with you. We embrace you,” Netanyahu said. “The government of Israel and the citizens of Israel mourn together with you. Our heroes did not fall in vain. We will continue to fight until victory.”
Gantz said, “On the eve of Hannukah, Gal’s light was extinguished.”
He continued, “In this terrible moment, I know that the strength of you and yours will withstand the loss. We will be with you.”
The casualties occurred as Israel is deepening its campaign in southern Gaza, which began nearly a week ago following a seven-day ceasefire with Hamas. The IDF is now focusing its firepower on the area surrounding the city of Khan Younis, where Hamas leaders, including its Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar, live.
Hamas, which controls Gaza, began the war on Oct. 7 with an invasion of Israel in which terrorists killed 1,200 and took some 240 hostages, the majority of whom are still in captivity. Israel has vowed to depose the terror group and has responded with extensive airstrikes as well as a ground invasion that began in Gaza’s north and has shifted south.
The IDF also said Thursday that it had killed two senior Hamas operatives, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi and Ahmed Aiush, in a recent airstrike. Rantisi was responsible for intelligence operations in Gaza and was involved in the planning of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and Aiush was a senior intelligence operative, the IDF said.
The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza says more than 17,000 people have been killed in the war. The figure is not verifiable and does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, or those killed by misfired Palestinian rockets.
Israeli authorities said that Hamas has continued to fire rockets from civilian areas, as the IDF attempted to evacuate civilians in Gaza from combat zones. A significant proportion of the Gazan population has been displaced by the fighting, and humanitarian groups say many are lacking essential supplies.
The growing death toll has led to a rising tide of calls among international leaders and progressive activists for a ceasefire, which Israel rejects because it would leave Hamas in power. The United Nations secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, on Wednesday invoked a rarely used article of the U.N. charter to appeal for a ceasefire, warning of a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen lashed Guterres for the move, saying on social media that the U.N. leader was a “danger to world peace” and that his call for a ceasefire “constitutes support of the Hamas terrorist organization and an endorsement of the murder of the elderly, the abduction of babies and the rape of women.”
Also Thursday, an Israeli civilian was killed by a Hezbollah anti-tank missile in an agricultural area near the community of Mattat near the Lebanese border, Hebrew media reports said. The area has seen sporadic strikes between Hezbollah forces and Israeli troops since the outbreak of the war.
The IDF said it had launched airstrikes against Hezbollah “terror infrastructure” in Lebanon in response. On Thursday night, rocket alert sirens sounded in northern Israeli communities.
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The post Former IDF chief’s son killed in Gaza fighting as Israel presses forward with costly counteroffensive appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel Agrees to Talks on Lebanon Border, to Free Five Lebanese, PM Office Says
An Israeli flag flies in Lebanon, near the Israel-Lebanon border, following the ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, as seen from Metula, northern Israel, Dec. 3, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov
Israel said on Tuesday it had agreed to hold talks to demarcate its border with Lebanon, adding it would release five Lebanese detainees held by the Israeli military in what it called a “gesture to the Lebanese president.”
A statement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel had agreed with Lebanon, the US, and France to establish working groups to discuss the demarcation line between the two countries.
Though Israel has largely withdrawn from southern Lebanon under a ceasefire deal agreed in November, its troops continue to hold five hilltop positions in the area with airstrikes in southern Lebanon citing what it described as Hezbollah activity.
The ceasefire deal ended more than a year of conflict between Israel‘s military and the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah that was playing out in parallel with the Gaza war.
The fighting peaked in a major Israeli air and ground campaign in southern Lebanon that left Hezbollah badly weakened, with most of its military command killed in Israeli strikes.
The post Israel Agrees to Talks on Lebanon Border, to Free Five Lebanese, PM Office Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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UN Security Council to Meet Over Iran’s Growing Stockpile of Near-Bomb-Grade Uranium
Members of the Security Council cast a vote during a United Nations Security Council meeting on the 3rd anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at UN headquarters in New York, US, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
The United Nations Security Council will meet behind closed doors on Wednesday over Iran’s expansion of its stock of uranium close to weapons grade, diplomats said on Monday.
The meeting was requested by six of the council’s 15 members – France, Greece, Panama, South Korea, Britain, and the US.
They also want the council to discuss Iran’s obligation to provide the UN nuclear watchdog – the International Atomic Energy Agency – with “the information necessary to clarify outstanding issues related to undeclared nuclear material detected at multiple locations in Iran,” diplomats said.
Iran’s mission to the UN in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the planned meeting.
Iran has denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon. However, it is “dramatically” accelerating enrichment of uranium to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level, the IAEA has warned.
Western states say there is no need to enrich uranium to such a high level under any civilian program and that no other country has done so without producing nuclear bombs. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful.
Iran reached a deal in 2015 with Britain, Germany, France, the US, Russia, and China – known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – that lifted sanctions on Tehran in return for restrictions on its nuclear program.
Washington quit the agreement in 2018 during Donald Trump’s first term as US president, and Iran began moving away from its nuclear-related commitments.
Britain, France, and Germany have told the UN Security Council that they are ready – if needed – to trigger a so-called snap back of all international sanctions on Iran to prevent the country from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
They will lose the ability to take such action on Oct. 18 this year when the 2015 UN resolution on the deal expires. US President Donald Trump has directed his UN envoy to work with allies to snap back international sanctions and restrictions on Iran.
The post UN Security Council to Meet Over Iran’s Growing Stockpile of Near-Bomb-Grade Uranium first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Entire Families Killed in Syria’s Military Crackdown, UN Says
A man inspects a damaged car in Latakia, after hundreds were reportedly killed in some of the deadliest violence in 13 years of civil war, pitting loyalists of deposed President Bashar al-Assad against the country’s new Islamist rulers, Syria, March 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Haidar Mustafa
Entire families including women and children were killed in Syria’s coastal region as part of a series of sectarian killings by the army against an insurgency by Bashar al-Assad loyalists, the UN human rights office said on Tuesday.
Pressure has been growing on Syria’s Islamist-led government to investigate after reports by a war monitor of the killing of hundreds of civilians in villages where the majority of the population were members of Assad’s minority Alawite sect.
“In a number of extremely disturbing instances, entire families – including women, children, and individuals hors de combat – were killed, with predominantly Alawite cities and villages targeted in particular,” UN human rights office spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan said, using a French term for those incapable of fighting.
So far, the UN human rights office has documented the killing of 111 civilians and expects the real toll to be significantly higher, Al-Kheetan told a Geneva press briefing. Of those, 90 were men; 18 were women; and three were children, he added.
“Many of the cases documented were of summary executions. They appear to have been carried out on a sectarian basis,” Al-Kheetan told reporters. In some cases, men were shot dead in front of their families, he said, citing testimonies from survivors.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk welcomed an announcement by Syria’s Islamist-led government to create an accountability committee and called for those investigations to be prompt, thorough, independent, and impartial, the spokesperson added.
The post Entire Families Killed in Syria’s Military Crackdown, UN Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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