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Israel’s AM Radio Pierces Gaza Tunnels in Bid to Soothe Hostages
Israeli soldiers operate at the opening to a tunnel at Al Shifa Hospital compound in Gaza City, amid the ongoing ground operation of the Israeli army against Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in the Gaza Strip, November 22, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun/File Photo
After conquering a Hamas tunnel in the northern Gaza Strip, a group of Israeli soldiers went down it with some unusual kit in hand – not explosives, robot probes or pistols for close combat, but rather: old-style, dial-operated transistor radios.
Their mission was to descend until the devices could no longer receive AM transmissions from Israel. That point, they found, was at about 10 to 12 metres depth, generally the upper “storeys” of Palestinian terrorists’ subterranean network.
The Jan 4 experiment was ordered by their commander at the behest of Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, who had just expanded the country’s most popular broadcaster, Army Radio, from industry-standard FM into complementary AM channels.
AM’s greater range meant emergency updates would have a better chance of being heard by civilians in bomb shelters. Troops in Gaza would also benefit, as they were being allowed transistor radios to keep themselves informed while being asked to surrender their cellphones lest those be geolocated by Hamas.
The tunnel experiment dangled another possibility for a country tormented with worry for 132 people held hostage by Hamas-led gunmen in the enclave: reaching out to them with custom-composed, morale-raising Army Radio broadcasts.
“It suddenly occurred to me that maybe some of those hostages also had access to transistor radios,” Karhi told Reuters. “If they had the means to hear their families’ voices it would have a huge value in terms of morale – and for their relatives, too.”
The gambit would likely need Hamas’ cooperation, a prospect its initiators hope is within the bounds of possibility.
Hamas officials in Gaza were not immediately available for comment on the idea – a testament to Palestinians’ shattered infrastructure under an Israeli offensive, as well as their reluctance to release information on the hostages’ conditions.
ACCESS TO TVS, RADIOS
Of scores of hostages freed in a November truce, several said captors had allowed them limited access to TVs or radios.
One of them learned from the radio that her husband and daughter, from whom she had been separated during the Oct. 7 cross-border Hamas killing and kidnapping spree that sparked the war, had survived. For another, an Israeli broadcast was the first notification that two relatives were among the dead.
But the accounts often left unclear whether the hostages were kept just under the surface, or in tunnels well out of range, or in above-ground safe houses with regular reception. Tunnels shown to journalists by advancing Israeli forces have sometimes included upper levels of about 10 metres depth.
Asked to respond to the Army Radio initiative, ex-hostage Nili Margalit said part of her captivity was spent 40 metres underground. “It is too deep,” she told Reuters, declining to discuss the matter further for fear “that the terrorists will use my words to hurt the captives that are still there”.
Dan O’Shea, a former Navy SEAL and hostage coordinator for U.S. forces in Iraq, said that while he “completely agrees” with the AM-radio initiative he saw scant chance of Hamas cooperating while Israel pursues search-and-rescue operations in Gaza.
“If Hamas knew that these radios could be picked up by Israeli forces, it’s the last thing they would want,” he said. “They’re paranoid about anything that’s going to track an IDF bomb to their position.”
Peter Duffett-Smith, emeritus reader in astrophysics at the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, said AM transistor radios, which are designed to passively receive broadcasts, cannot easily be traced. But he did not rule it out.
Most such radios use oscillators which emit faint signals, he said, “and it is possible that (these) could be detected at a distance using specialised equipment. These signals decrease rapidly with distance, especially through ground.”
Asked whether Israel could mount such location operations, Army Radio director Danny Zaken said: “We cannot. It (a broadcast received by the radio) is not coming back. I mean, it’s not like sonar … It’s only one-way, unfortunately.”
STAVING OFF DESPAIR
Karhi said he knew of neither Israel nor Hamas being able to track passive AM reception – hence the permission for troops in Gaza to use transistor radios.
Staving off despair or rebelliousness among the hostages might prompt captors to consider taking a risk on the radios.
But Ruth Pat-Horenczyk, a clinical psychology professor with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said if Hamas felt it would weaken its control of captives it would prevent them listening.
Army Radio‘s shift into AM is backed by the Defence Ministry’s National Emergency Management Authority and Israel’s largest telecom group, Bezeq. The station has been pre-recording messages by hostage families for airing several times a day.
“They’re telling them: ‘Stay strong. We are fighting for you. Don’t worry. We’ll get to you. Stay strong,” Zaken said.
At a Tel Aviv rally to mark the first birthday of Kfir Bibas, the youngest of the hostages, an Army Radio reporter approached one of the baby’s relatives, Yosi Shnaider, to explain the station’s new reach and ask to record an interview.
He agreed: “If they are hearing us … We want to tell you that the families love you, that no one has forgotten you.”
The post Israel’s AM Radio Pierces Gaza Tunnels in Bid to Soothe Hostages first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Says It Is Willing to Move Ahead With Gaza Ceasefire
Trucks carrying aid move, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Feb. 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hussam Al-Masri
The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas signaled on Thursday that a crisis threatening to unravel the Gaza ceasefire deal could be avoided despite uncertainty over the number of hostages due to be released on Saturday and disagreements over aid supplies.
The 42-day ceasefire has appeared close to failure this week amid accusations on both sides of violations to the agreement sealed last month with the help of Egyptian and Qatari mediators and US support.
Hamas said it did not want the deal to collapse, though it rejected what it called the “language of threats and intimidation” from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump. They have said the ceasefire should be canceled if the hostages are not released.
“Accordingly, Hamas reaffirms its commitment to implementing the agreement as signed, including the exchange of prisoners according to the specified timeline,” Hamas said in a statement.
Hamas, whose Gaza chief leader Khalil Al-Hayya is visiting Cairo for talks with Egyptian security officials, also said both Egyptian and Qatari mediators would press on with efforts “to remove obstacles and close gaps.”
This week Hamas accused Israel of failing to respect stipulations calling for a massive increase in aid deliveries and said it would not hand over three hostages due to be released on Saturday until the issue was resolved.
In response, Netanyahu ordered reserves to be called up and threatened to resume combat operations that have been paused for almost a month unless the hostages were returned.
Israeli minister Avi Dichter, a member of Netanyahu’s security cabinet, told Israeli public radio on Thursday that he did not believe Hamas would be able to get out of the agreement.
“There’s a deal, they won’t be able to give anything less than what is in the deal,” he said. “I don’t believe that Hamas can behave otherwise.”
Egyptian security sources told Reuters they expected heavy construction equipment to enter on Thursday and if that happened then Hamas would release hostages on Saturday.
The standoff between Israel and Hamas has threatened to reignite their conflict, which has devastated Gaza and taken the Middle East to the brink of a wider regional war.
Egyptian and Qatari officials have been working to avoid a breakdown and a Palestinian official close to the mediation effort said both sides had agreed to go ahead with the ceasefire and the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
TENTS
The talks in Cairo have focused on issues such as Israel‘s allowing the entry of mobile homes, tents, medical and fuel supplies, and heavy machinery needed for the removal of rubble, Hamas said.
Salama Marouf, head of the Hamas-run government media office in Gaza, told Reuters only 73,000 of the required 200,000 tents had arrived in the enclave, while no mobile homes had been permitted so far.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency overseeing aid deliveries into Gaza, said 400,000 tents had so far been allowed in, while countries meant to supply mobile homes had not yet sent them.
International aid officials confirmed that aid was coming in despite considerable logistical problems, though they cautioned that far more was needed.
“We have seen improvement in some ways, but certainly, the response is nowhere near enough to meet the needs of so many people who face so much destruction and loss,” said Shaina Low, an official from the Norwegian Refugee Council based in the Jordanian capital Amman.
She said shelter materials were going in, despite Israeli restrictions on so-called “dual use” materials, which could also be used for military purposes.
DOUBTS
Adding to doubts this week about the ceasefire deal has been hostile reaction in the Arab world to Trump’s comments that Palestinians should be moved from Gaza to allow it to be developed as a regional economic hub under US control.
Under the ceasefire, Hamas has so far released 16 Israeli hostages from an initial group of 33 children, women, and older men agreed to be exchanged for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees, who were largely imprisoned for involvement in terrorist activity, in the first stage of a multi-phase deal.
Hamas also freed five Thai hostages in an unscheduled release.
Negotiations on a second phase of the agreement, which mediators had hoped would agree the release of the remaining hostages as well as the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, were supposed to be already underway in Doha but an Israeli team returned home on Monday, two days after arriving.
The threat to cancel the 42-day ceasefire that formed the basis of the agreement has drawn thousands of Israeli protesters onto the streets this week, calling on the government to stick with the deal in order to bring the remaining hostages home.
The war in Gaza erupted after a Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed at least 1,200 people and saw more than 250 taken as hostages.
Israel responded with a military campaign in Gaza aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in the neighboring coastal enclave.
The post Hamas Says It Is Willing to Move Ahead With Gaza Ceasefire first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Vast Majority of US Jews Reject Jewish Voice for Peace, Other Anti-Zionist Groups, Polling Data Shows
Pro-Hamas protesters led by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) demonstrate outside the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 14, 2024. Photo: Derek French via Reuters Connect
A new poll released on Wednesday underscores how far removed Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and other anti-Zionist organizations that claim to represent Jews are from mainstream Jewish views on Israel, Zionism, and the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians.
Commissioned by The Jewish Majority, a nonprofit founded by a researcher whose aim is to monitor and accurately report Jewish opinion on the most consequential issues affecting the community, the poll found that the vast majority of American Jews believe that anti-Zionist movements and anti-Israel university protests are antisemitic.
The findings also showed that Jews across the US overwhelmingly oppose the views and tactics of JVP, a prominent anti-Israel group which has helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza.
Founded in 1996 at the University of California, Berkeley, JVP describes itself as “the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world.” It was infamously one of the first organizations to blame Israel following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the deadliest single day for Jews since the Holocaust.
“Israeli apartheid and occupation — and the United States complicity in that oppression — are the source of all this violence,” JVP said as Israelis were still counting their dead and missing.
American Jews who responded to The Jewish Majority’s poll overwhelmingly reject this line of thinking. Seventy percent said they believe that anti-Zionism of any stripe is antisemitic; 85 percent believe that Hamas, whom JVP described as “the oppressed,” is a genocidal group; and 79 percent support vocally pro-Israel groups such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organization JVP has defamed as “not a credible source on antisemitism and racism.”
Additionally, JVP’s methods of protest are unpopular among American Jews, The Jewish Majority added, noting that 75 percent disapprove of “blocking traffic” and only 18 percent approve of protesters’ wearing masks to conceal their identities. Sixty percent also disagree with staging protests outside the homes of public officials, a common JVP tactic.
“Plain and simple, Jewish Voice for Peace is an extremist group that does not represent the views of the overwhelming majority of American Jews,” Jonathan Schulman, The Jewish Majority’s executive director, said in a statement accompanying the poll results. “American Jews share a strong and consistent stance against anti-Zionists as well as a deep concern over rising antisemitism and the tactics used by organizations like JVP.”
He continued, “It is high time people see through the charade: JVP is not representative of anyone but a marginal fringe, even if a few radical Jews are involved in their movement.”
The Jewish Majority’s poll was conducted by Public Opinion Strategies.
Jewish Voice for Peace’s inner workings, messaging, and political activities were recently documented in a groundbreaking report on the group published last month by StandWithUs, a Jewish civil rights group based in Los Angeles, California.
Titled, “A Shield for Hate, Not a Voice for Peace,” the report noted that JVP has promoted a distorted history of Zionism and Israel, accusing the movement for Jewish self-determination of everything from training US police officers to violate the rights of African Americans to abusing “Jewish history.” In doing so, it has allied with extremist groups such as WithinOurLifetime — whose founder has threatened to set Jews on fire and led a movement to harass Jews on New York City’s public transportation — and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), which celebrated Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre and has proclaimed that “the Zionist entity has no right to exist.”
The report also stated that JVP has collaborated with anti-Israel entities such as Samidoun, which identifies itself as a “Palestinian prisoner solidarity network,” to hold rallies. Samidoun described Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities in Israel as “a brave and heroic operation.” The United States and Canada each imposed sanctions on Samidoun in October, labeling the organization a “sham charity” and accusing it of fundraising for designated terrorist groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
JVP has also compared Zionism to Nazism.
“This is Holocaust inversion — an antisemitic tactic in which the genocide Jews faced in the past is used to promote baseless hatred against Jews today,” the StandWithUs report said. “The only group benefiting from JVP’s Holocaust inversion is Hamas — a truly genocidal terrorist group. JVP has helped shield them from accountability for launching the war, ruthlessly militarizing civilian areas across Gaza, stealing humanitarian aid, and rejecting nearly every proposed ceasefire and hostage release deal.”
In June 2024, the Anti-Defamation League filed a complaint with the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) accusing the political fundraising arm of JVP of transgressing federal election law by misrepresenting its spending and receiving unlawful donations from corporate entities, citing “discrepancies” in the organization’s income and expense reports.
The complaint lodged a slew of charges against Jewish Voice for Peace’s political action committee (JVP PAC), including spending almost no money on candidates running for office — a political action committee’s main purpose. From 2020-2023, JVP PAC reported spending $82,956, but just a small fraction of that sum — $1,775, just over 2 percent — was spent on candidates, according to the complaint. The money went elsewhere, being paid out in one case for “legal services” provided by a company which “doesn’t appear to practice law” and other expenses.
JVP continues to have the support of powerful friends in the world of progressive philanthropy, a formidable subset of the American elite, amid these scandals and controversies.
Since 2017 it has — according to a 2023 report by the National Association of Scholars — received $480,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a philanthropic foundation whose endowment is valued at $1.27 billion. Between 2014 and 2015 alone, JVP brought in over half a million dollars in grants from various foundations, including the Open Society Policy Center — founded by billionaire George Soros — the Kaphan Foundation, and others.
According to the recent StandWithUs report, JVP has received substantial financial assistance from organizations tied to Lebanon and Iran.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Vast Majority of US Jews Reject Jewish Voice for Peace, Other Anti-Zionist Groups, Polling Data Shows first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Turkey’s Erdogan Demands Israel Pay Reparations for Gaza, Says Palestinian State ‘Must Not Be Delayed’
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a joint statement to the media in Baghdad, Iraq, April 22, 2024. Photo: AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/Pool via REUTERS
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday demanded Israel pay reparations “for the harm it inflicted through its aggressive actions in Gaza” and urged the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state.
During a press conference with Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in West Java, as part of his Asian tour to Malaysia and Pakistan, Erdogan rejected US President Donald Trump’s plan to “take over” the Gaza Strip to rebuild the war-torn enclave while relocating Palestinians elsewhere during reconstruction efforts.
Like many other Middle Eastern leaders who rejected Trump’s proposal, Erdogan also advocated for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The creation of a sovereign, territorially united State of Palestine within the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital cannot be delayed any further,” he said during the press conference, as aired by the Turkish TRT Haber TV channel.
“Any step, proposal, or project that undermines this matter is illegitimate in our view, and it means more conflicts, bloodshed, and instability,” he continued.
During Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House last week, Trump called on Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states to take in Palestinians from Gaza after nearly 16 months of war between Israel and Hamas.
“Until there is peace in Gaza, until the Palestinians achieve peace, peace in the region is impossible,” the Turkish president said.
With talks underway to extend the fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire, Erdogan also demanded that Israel must pay reparations “for the harm it inflicted through its aggressive actions in Gaza.”
“The cost of Israel’s 15-month attacks in Gaza is about $100 billion,” he said. “The law dictates that the perpetrator must compensate for the damage.”
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists started the war in Gaza when they murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages during their invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
Last month, both sides reached a ceasefire and hostage-release deal brokered by the US, Egypt, and Qatar.
Under phase one, Hamas agreed to release 33 Israeli hostages, eight of whom are deceased, in exchange for Israel freeing over 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are serving multiple life sentences for terrorism-related offenses.
So far, 16 of the 33 hostages have been released during the first phase, which is set to last six weeks.
During the press conference, Erdogan also announced that Turkey and Indonesia will join forces in the reconstruction of Gaza.
Last month, Erdogan met with Hamas leader Muhammad Ismail Darwish in Ankara.
Turkey has been one of the most outspoken critics of Israel during the Gaza war, even threatening to invade the Jewish state and calling on the United Nations to use force if it cannot stop Israel’s military campaign against Hamas.
Last year, Ankara also ceased all exports and imports to and from Israel, citing the “humanitarian tragedy” in the Palestinian territories as the reason.
Erdogan has frequently defended Hamas terrorists as “resistance fighters” against what he described as an Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. He and other Turkish leaders have repeatedly compared Israel with Nazi Germany and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Adolf Hitler.
The post Turkey’s Erdogan Demands Israel Pay Reparations for Gaza, Says Palestinian State ‘Must Not Be Delayed’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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