RSS
We Are All Israel: Our Neighbors Are Fighting for Our Lives
The body of a motorist lies on a road following a mass-infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in Sderot, southern Israel October 7, 2023. REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Sderot is located less than a mile from the Gaza Strip. Approximately 90 percent of the town’s 30,000 residents fled on October 7, after Hamas invaded southern Israel. My wife’s cousin, Ilan, is currently stationed with his infantry unit in what used to be a Sderot elementary school. Now, the happy, high-pitched yelping of children has been replaced by the metallic sounds of assault rifles being taken apart, cleaned, and reassembled by soldiers.
We were visiting Ilan’s family in Nahariya, Israel’s northernmost coastal city, when his mom told us that she had just gotten off the phone with him. Ilan had been given a 48-hour pass, was on a bus with a few fellow northerners from his platoon, and would be arriving in a few hours.
Since my wife, our four children, and I needed to catch the final train to Haifa before the Sabbath kicked in, we were not sure we would be able to see Ilan. Sderot is in the western Negev, a good 200 kilometers from Nahariya.
But as we were packing our things and saying our goodbyes, in walked my wife’s cousin.
Ilan, wearing a wrinkled combat utility uniform, had picked up a farmer’s tan down south. His hair had grown shaggy. As we embraced, I saw how bloodshot his eyes were.
My twin sons had never seen Ilan in army fatigues, much less slinging an M-16 over his shoulder. When the two seven-year-olds started to pepper their 27-year-old relative with questions about what he was doing in Sderot, Ilan kept his answers pleasantly vague. My boys’ eyes lit up when he told them about the green parakeet that greeted him and his army buddies when they got to the school.
When one of my sons asked him what kind of food he was eating where he is stationed, Ilan told him that Netivot, a city not far from Sderot, has the best hummus and pitot in Israel.
When Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel on October 7, Ilan was a full-time Civil and Environmental Engineering student at the Technion, one of Israel’s top universities.
Now, he was showing us the inside of his M-16, and explaining how the weapon worked — the explosion creating the gas pressure needed to push the bullet down and out of the barrel.
Ilan, along with 300,000 other civilians, was drafted in response to Hamas’ multi-front attack against Israel. As these soldiers fight to free Israel from the constant threat of annihilation, their lives, loves, and livelihoods are in a state of suspended animation.
I had to cut short the boy’s interrogation of Ilan short, because we had to huff it to the train station.
Back home, we lit a ninth Hanukkah candle. This year, many Israelis decided to extend the Festival of Lights by one day. The traditional Hanukkah prayers include a recitation of previous attempts to destroy the Jewish people — Pharaoh in Egypt, Haman in Persia, the Babylonian kingdoms, the Seleucid-Greek monarchy. Now, there is also a call for the destruction of Hamas, and the safe return of all the hostages.
Since their meeting with Ilan, our sons have been boning up on Sderot. When their stream of questions exhausted their parents’ patience, the boys broke out the maps, becoming pint-sized experts on Sderot’s geography and even topography.
Yet no matter how far Sderot is from our home up here in Haifa, there is no real distance between the two cities. On October 7, Israelis from every corner of the country became citizens of Sderot, Netivot, and all the other southern communities.
Gidon Ben-Zvi is an accomplished writer who left Los Angeles for Jerusalem in 2009. After serving in an Israel Defense Forces infantry unit from 1994-1997, Ben-Zvi returned to the United States before settling in Israel, where he and his wife are raising their four children.
The post We Are All Israel: Our Neighbors Are Fighting for Our Lives first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War
Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.
Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.
“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”
GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’
Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.
“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.
“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.
“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.
After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”
RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL
Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”
Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.
“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”
RSS
Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests
A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.
People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.
“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”
Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.
On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.
Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.
On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.
“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.
Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.
RSS
Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan
Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.