RSS
Israel Releases Palestinian Terrorists After Delay Over ‘Horrific’ Gaza Mobbing of Freed Hostages
Palestinian terrorists surround hostage Arbel Yehoud, held in Gaza since the deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attack, on the day they hand her over to members of the International Committee of the Red Cross as part of a ceasefire and a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, Jan. 30, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Israel on Thursday released 110 Palestinian prisoners after delaying the process due to outrage over the chaotic mobbing of freed Israeli hostages at a handover point in Gaza, the Prime Minister’s Office confirmed.
“Israel insists that the lessons be learned and that strict care be taken in the next phases regarding the safe return of our hostages,” the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.
The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas freed three Israeli and five Thai hostages after 482 days in captivity on Thursday, with the handovers taking place in both northern and southern Gaza.
In the southern city of Khan Younis, armed terrorists transferred the hostages to the Red Cross amid chaos — with people chanting for Hamas’s military wing, known as the al-Qassam Brigades, and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who masterminded the terrorist group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 and was killed by Israeli forces a year later — while the hostages looked fearful and struggled to walk through the crowd.
WATCH: Arbel Yehoud – a defenseless young woman – is swarmed by a crowd of armed terrorists and Gazan civilians.
If this is just her last moment in captivity, imagine what the past 482 days have been like. #letthemgonow
pic.twitter.com/3dlZIYfnWN
— Government Press Office
(@GPOIsrael) January 30, 2025
Israeli civilians Arbel Yehud, 29, and Gadi Mozes, 80, were handed over by Hamas to representatives of the Red Cross in Khan Yunis. In photos and videos shared on social media, Yehud was seen scared as she walked through a chaotic crowd, surrounded by rifle-wielding militants, toward the Red Cross convoy.
After the incidents, Netanyahu, along with Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, ordered a delay in the release of the Palestinian terrorists scheduled to be freed under the Gaza ceasefire deal with Hamas until the safe exit of hostages in the next phases of the agreement could be assured.
Jerusalem demanded that mediators Qatar and Egypt, who helped negotiate the ceasefire, “guarantee the safety of our hostages,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement, describing the “horrific scenes” of Yehud and Mozes being taunted and mobbed.
“This is further proof of the unimaginable cruelty of the Hamas terrorist organization,” the statement continued.
Following Netanyahu’s demand, however, “the mediators have conveyed a commitment, according to which the safe exit of our hostages who are due to be released in the next phases has been assured,” his office said.
Earlier on Thursday, Israeli soldier Agam Berger, 20, who was kidnapped from an Israeli military field observers’ base in Nahal Oz, was transferred into Red Cross custody following a Hamas handover ceremony in northern Gaza.
All three Israelis were among the 251 hostages who were kidnapped during the Hamas-led rampage across southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were murdered, on Oct. 7, 2023.
The five released Thais were all foreign agricultural workers who were also taken hostage during the Oct. 7 onslaught. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) named them as Thaenna Pongsak, Sathian Suwannakhan, Sriaoun Watchara, Saethao Bannawat, and Rumnao Surasak.
Returnee Gadi Mozes (80), reuniting with his family at the Ichilov Medical Center.
Maayan Toaf, GPO pic.twitter.com/pGjYes430q
— Government Press Office
As part of the ongoing Gaza ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, 110 Palestinian prisoners were released in the third hostage-for-prisoner swap. During the first 42 days of the agreement, Hamas pledged to release 33 hostages in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, where they have largely been imprisoned for involvement in terrorist activities.
Of those set to be released in the coming weeks, 32 were sentenced to life and 48 were serving long sentences, including Zakaria Zubeidi, Mohammad Abu Warda, and Sami Jaradat, according to Israel’s Channel 12 News.
Zubeidi, who led the Palestinian faction Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Jenin and briefly escaped from Israel’s Gilboa Prison in 2021, will not be deported due to his conviction on terrorism offenses rather than murder, and is expected to return to the West Bank.
Abu Warda and Jaradat, responsible for attacks that killed 66 Israelis in the late 1990s and early 2000s, are scheduled to be deported and banned from re-entering Israeli territory.
The post Israel Releases Palestinian Terrorists After Delay Over ‘Horrific’ Gaza Mobbing of Freed Hostages first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
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.
RSS
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.”
RSS
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.