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Hamas claims Jerusalem shooting attack that kills 3 as Gaza truce is narrowly extended
(JTA) — Hamas has claimed responsibility for a shooting attack in the Ramot neighborhood of east Jerusalem that killed three and wounded six on Thursday morning, in what the Palestinian terror group said was retaliation for Israel’s war against it in Gaza and an Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Jenin.
The attack was carried out by two brothers from east Jerusalem who had each served sentences in Israeli prisons for terror-related crimes, according to the Shin Bet, Israel’s security service. Ibrahim Namr, 30, and Murad Namr, 38, exited their vehicle and began firing on a group of civilians waiting at a bus stop located by the city’s entrance at around 7:40 a.m. Thursday.
The brothers were quickly shot and killed by two soldiers, one of whom was returning home from active duty in Gaza. That soldier, Roee Eizenbach, had left Gaza just hours earlier and was lightly injured in the incident.
The dead include Elimelech Wasserman, 73, who was reportedly on his way to Ashdod where he worked as a rabbinical judge; Libiah Dickman, 24, who was reportedly pregnant with her first child; and Chana Ifergen, 60, who died at an area hospital. Two of the other shooting victims are hospitalized in serious condition.
The two Namr brothers were both affiliated with Hamas when they were imprisoned in Israel, Murad from 2010 to 2020 and Ibrahim in 2014. The terror group said on Thursday that it was calling for “an escalation” of violence in response to Israel’s war against it in Gaza, declared after Hamas attacked Israel Oct. 7, killing 1,200 and taking hundreds of hostages, and in retaliation after two children were among four people killed during an Israeli army raid in the West Bank city of Jenin on Wednesday. The Israeli army said two senior terror operatives who were killed were the targets of the raid.
The attack occurred shortly after Israel’s 7 a.m. ceasefire deadline with Hamas was narrowly extended for another day. Instead of releasing 10 hostages, as it has been required to do each day since the truce went into effect last Friday, Hamas is releasing six women and two children, as well as the bodies of three hostages who died in Gaza, according to Israeli media reports. Two Russian-Israeli women released Wednesday as a “gesture” to Russian President Vladimir Putin are being counted in the daily tally.
It was not immediately clear which hostages were dead or which children would be released. There are only four children known to be held hostage in Gaza: teen siblings Aisha and Bilal Ziadna and Kfir and Ariel Bibas, toddlers who with their mother have become a symbol of the crisis. Hamas claimed on Wednesday that the Bibas brothers had been killed along with their mother; Israel has not confirmed or refuted the claim.
The shooting attack took place as U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was in Jerusalem to weigh in as Israeli officials plan the next phase of their war on Hamas. Herzog described the attack to Blinken as “another example of the condition we find ourselves in, a never-ending war against terror organizations and in particular Hamas.” Blinken also met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who reiterated after their meeting that Israel has committed to destroying Hamas. Blinken reportedly told him that the United States expects Israel to protect civilians in further fighting. According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, 14,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, a figure that does not distinguish between combatants and civilians or denote casualties from misfired Palestinian rockets.
The shooting at the Ramot bus stop comes just over a year after a bomb attack occurred at the same place, killing two. In both cases, far-right Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir appeared shortly at the scene of the attack calling for harsher measures in response to terror and for civilians to arm themselves. Ben-Gvir has said his party would resign from the government if the war is not resumed in short order.
The background of the shooters is certain to add fuel to the debate in Israel over the dangers of releasing prisoners in order to redeem hostages. Israel has released three prisoners held on security offenses for each hostage released from Gaza, but is expected to face pressure to release more prisoners if it wants to see male adults and soldiers released.
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The post Hamas claims Jerusalem shooting attack that kills 3 as Gaza truce is narrowly extended appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.