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White House Confirms Israel Spoke to US Before Relaunching War Effort in Gaza

US President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office, on the day he signs executive orders, at the White House in Washington, DC, March 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

The White House confirmed on Monday night that Israel consulted the United States before resuming military operations against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza. 

“The Trump administration and the White House were consulted by the Israelis on their attacks in Gaza tonight,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News. “As President Trump has made it clear, Hamas, the Houthis, Iran – all those who seek to terrorize not just Israel but also the United States of America – will see a price to pay: all hell will break loose.”

She added that all of “the terrorists in the Middle East” should take US President Donald Trump “very seriously when he says he is not afraid to stand for law-abiding people … and our friend and our ally Israel.”

In addition, White House National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes defended Israel’s decision to resume its military campaign in Gaza

“Hamas could have released hostages to extend the ceasefire but instead chose refusal and war,” Hughes said in a statement.

On Monday night, Israel resumed airstrikes targeting Hamas in Gaza under the directive of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose office said in a statement that the military action followed “Hamas’s repeated refusal to release our hostages, as well as its rejection of all of the proposals it has received from US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff and from the mediators.”

The Israeli military attacked “targets of the Hamas terrorist organization throughout the Gaza Strip in order to achieve the objectives of the war as they have been determined by the political echelon including the release of all of our hostages, the living and the deceased,” the statement continued. “Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength.”

Around 400 Palestinians were killed from the Israeli airstrikes, according to data provided by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between terrorist combatants and civilians. Researchers have shown that casualty figures published by Gaza’s Hamas-run health authorities have been inflated to defame Israel.

Hamas lambasted Israel for resuming airstrikes in Gaza, vowing to hold Netanyahu and the Jewish state “fully responsible for the repercussions of the treacherous aggression on Gaza, and for the defenseless civilians and our besieged Palestinian people, who are subjected to a brutal war and a systematic policy of starvation.”

“Netanyahu and his extremist government have decided to overturn the ceasefire agreement, exposing the prisoners in Gaza to an unknown fate,” the terrorist group continued.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz repudiated the terrorist group over its refusal to release the remaining hostages and vowed to continue the war effort until the Jewish state successfully defeats Hamas. 

“If Hamas does not release all the kidnapped, the gates of hell will open in Gaza and Hamas’s murderers and rapists will meet the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] with forces they have never known before,” Katz said in a statement. “We will not stop fighting until all the kidnapped return home and all the war’s goals are achieved.”

Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists started the war in Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, when they invaded, southern Israel, murdered 1,200 people, and kidnapped 251 hostages. Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the captives and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.

Fighting stopped when a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas went into effect on Jan. 19.

Israel subsequently presented Hamas with a proposal for an extension of the Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal. The proposal would have mandated that Hamas release half of the remaining Israeli hostages who were kidnapped into Gaza at the beginning of the extension. The rest of the hostages would be released at the end, if Hamas and Israel can agree on a permanent ceasefire deal. Israel would retain the right to restart the war in Gaza if negotiations are unsuccessful by the 42-day mark.

According to Jerusalem, the ceasefire extension proposal was the brainchild of Trump’s Middle East envoy, Witkoff.

However, Hamas refused to extend the first phase of the ceasefire deal, leading Israel to announce that it would block humanitarian aid transfers into Gaza to pressure the terrorist group into accepting the ceasefire extension. 

Hamas is believed to still have 24 living hostages taken in the Oct. 7 attack, including Israeli-American Edan Alexander. It is also holding the bodies of 34 others who were either killed in the initial attack or in captivity, as well as the remains of a soldier killed in the 2014 Israel-Hamas war.

The post White House Confirms Israel Spoke to US Before Relaunching War Effort in Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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UK Parliament Group Publishes Major Report to Ensure Oct. 7 Massacre Is ‘Never Forgotten’

An aerial view shows the bodies of victims of an attack following a mass infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip lying on the ground in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, in southern Israel, Oct. 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg

A group of British lawmakers has released a new and extensive report documenting the atrocities of the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel to establish an irrefutable historical record of the massacre.

“The purpose of commissioning our report has been to chronicle the events of Oct. 7 with clarity and meticulous, fact-checking precision, to ensure it is never forgotten,” said Lord Andrew Roberts, a prominent historian who presided over the 318-page study.

“Holocaust denial took a few years to take root in pockets of society, but on Oct. 7, 2023, it took only hours for people to claim that the massacres in southern Israel had not taken place,” Roberts wrote in the report’s foreword. “Hamas and its allies, both in the Middle East and equally shamefully in the West, have sought to deny the atrocities, despite the ironic fact that much of the evidence for the massacres derives from film footage from cameras carried by the terrorists themselves.”

He continued, “The present report has been undertaken to counter such pernicious views, and to lay down incontrovertible proof — for now and for the years to come — that nearly 1,200 innocent people were indeed murdered by Hamas and its allies, and very often in scenes of sadistic barbarism not seen in world history since the Rape of Nanjing in 1937.”

The landmark report was produced by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for UK-Israel, an informal alliance of legislators from both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, through a year of research and writing.

Among other findings, the report revealed that more British citizens (18) were killed during the Hamas-led Oct. 7 onslaught than in any foreign terrorist attack since Al Qaeda struck the US on Sept. 11, 2001.

The report also provided details on the youngest death in the massacre, Naama Abu Rashed, who took a bullet while still in her mother’s womb and lived only 14 hours after being born.

In total, about 7,000 Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists killed 1,182 people, wounded more than 4,000 others, and kidnapped 251 hostages — 210 living and 41 dead bodies at the time of their abduction — on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the report.

“It was the largest single massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust and the deadliest per capita terrorist attack, with just over 1 in every 10,000 Israelis killed and the third overall deadliest terrorist attack in the world to date,” the study concluded.

Other chapters in the study detailed Hamas’s planning, the weapons used, and the violence which occurred at each location, including gristly details of kidnapping, sexual violence, torture, and the desecration of corpses.

“Statements from eyewitnesses confirmed multiple incidents of rape and gang rape, and the rape of corpses of women. Eyewitness testimony also recounted the abuse of female victims who were passed between multiple attackers,” the report stated. “While victims fled missile fire and attack, militants chased and actively hunted victims. Victims were found naked from the waist down or totally naked, many with their hands tied behind their backs or tied to trees or poles around the [Nova] festival site. Others also sustained gunshot wounds to the back of the head.”

The study also described how the concept of the Oct. 7 attack began to form as early as 2014, with official preparation beginning in 2021.

The report identified the men most responsible for deciding on the attack as “Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, Mohammed Sinwar (Yahya’s brother), Rawhi Mushtaha (a founding member of Hamas, also close to Sinwar), and Ayman Nofal, one of Deif’s close associates and the former head of Qassam Intelligence, the commander of the Brigades’ Central Brigade, and the head of the joint operations room for the resistance.” The report also profiled the groups which aided Hamas in the attacks, notably Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Palestinian Mujahideen Movement, the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), and Al-Ahrar.

“As a gentile, I believe that it is vital to prevent the emergence of another, more modern version of Holocaust denial, namely Oct. 7 denial,” Roberts wrote in the report. “After the Holocaust, non-Jews like me owe the Jewish people nothing less. This can only be done by the kind of facts-based, evidential work in this report, which is dedicated to Emily Damari, the British hostage who was held in Gaza for 471 days, and daughter of the superbly brave Mandy Damari who our investigation teams have met in Israel and London.”

Historian Sir Niall Ferguson called the report “invaluable” and “harrowing.”

The All-Party Parliamentary Group “has performed a vital service by providing such an irrefutable record of the terrorists’ crimes,” he said in a statement. “Those who wish to understand the repulsive, pathological nature of antisemitism should read the report. Those who doubt the truly evil character of Hamas and PIJ must read it.”

The post UK Parliament Group Publishes Major Report to Ensure Oct. 7 Massacre Is ‘Never Forgotten’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Hamas to Learn the ‘Hard Way’ It Can’t ‘Bring Israel to Its Knees,’ FM Sa’ar Says Amid Renewed Gaza Fighting

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar attends a joint press conference with Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani (not pictured), in Rome, Italy, Jan. 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar warned on Tuesday that Hamas will learn “the hard way” that it will not be able to “bring the State of Israel to its knees,” saying his country had no option but to resume military operations against the Palestinian terrorist group in Gaza after negotiations to extend a ceasefire had failed.

“In the last two and a half weeks, we have reached a deadlock where there is no fire and also no return of the hostages, and Israel cannot accept this,” Sa’ar said during an appearance at the Nevatim Conference for the Development of the Negev.

“Sincere efforts were made to advance toward a framework,” he continued, noting that US President Donald Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, “proposed two different offers, and Hamas rejected both of them.”

On Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced they conducted “extensive” strikes against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip overnight Monday.

“This follows Hamas’s repeated refusal to release our hostages, as well as its rejection of all of the proposals it has received from US presidential envoy Steve Witkoff and from the mediators,” the Israeli prime minister’s office said in a statement. “Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength.”

Israel recently imposed a total blockade on Gaza after the first phase of the ceasefire with Hamas expired without an agreement to extend the truce.

During the first phase, which went into effect on Jan. 19, fighting stopped for six weeks while Hamas released 33 Israeli hostages (25 living and eight dead bodies) in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom were serving lengthy sentences in Israeli jails for terrorist activity.

A second phase was supposed to involve a full Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza and the release of the remaining hostages kidnapped by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists from Israel. However, negotiations subsequently stalled, with Hamas rejecting a US proposal supported by Israel to release more hostages and extend the ceasefire while continuing to negotiate a permanent resolution.

The US, Qatar, and Egypt have been trying to bridge the differences between the Islamic terrorist group and Israel to restart negotiations in order to release remaining hostages held in Gaza and lift the blockade.

“If we had continued waiting, the situation would have remained stagnant,” Sa’ar said on Tuesday. “This strongly reminded me of the first 20 days after Oct. 7, until the ground entry into the Gaza Strip, when there was hope that perhaps Hamas would come to a deal. As long as we didn’t apply force, nothing happened.”

“Hamas will have to understand the hard way that it will not be able to bring the State of Israel to its knees,” he continued.

Israel appears to have support from Washington to renew its military operations in Gaza, the coastal enclave that borders the Jewish state to the south.

On Monday, the White House confirmed that Israel consulted the US before resuming military action against the Palestinian terrorist group in Gaza.

“The Trump administration and the White House were consulted by the Israelis on their attacks in Gaza tonight,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News. “As President Trump has made it clear, Hamas, the Houthis, Iran – all those who seek to terrorize not just Israel but also the United States of America – will see a price to pay: all hell will break loose.”

In a post on X, Sa’ar announced he had a conversation with the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, regarding Israel’s decision to resume military operations.

During his speech, Sa’ar also said that Hamas sought to divide Israeli society and dictate the terms of the ceasefire standoff. He dismissed claims by critics that a return to combat would harm the hostages’ chances of returning as “untrue and unfounded.”

“Returning to fighting is a continuation of our commitment to achieving the war’s objectives,” he said, reiterating that the goals remain the same: the return of all hostages, the destruction of Hamas’s power in Gaza, and preventing any future threats from the enclave.

On Tuesday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that Jerusalem will not cease military operations against Hamas until all the hostages are returned.

“Hamas must realize that the rules of the game have changed, and if it does not immediately release all the hostages, the gates of hell will open, and it will find itself facing the full intensity of the IDF in the air, sea, and land, until its complete elimination,” Katz said during a visit to the Tel Nof Airbase.

“We will not stop fighting until all the hostages are returned home and all threats to the southern residents are removed,” he added.

The post Hamas to Learn the ‘Hard Way’ It Can’t ‘Bring Israel to Its Knees,’ FM Sa’ar Says Amid Renewed Gaza Fighting first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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‘Malicious’ Wikipedia Editors Manipulated Site’s Coverage of Israel, ADL Report Alleges

Israeli soldiers operate in the Gaza Strip amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in this handout picture released on March 5, 2024. Photo: Israel Defense Forces/Handout via REUTERS

The Anti-Defamation League released a report on Tuesday accusing a group of “malicious” Wikipedia editors of violating the website’s policies for over two decades by coordinating the insertion of anti-Israel and antisemitic narratives and lies into articles on the online encyclopedia. 

The ADL report, “Editing for Hate: How Anti-Israel and Anti-Jewish Bias Undermines Wikipedia’s Neutrality,” analyzed thousands of edits and discussion logs from 30 Wikipedia editors who the ADL identified as “bad faith” actors. The group of researchers from the ADL’s Center for Technology and Society found evidence of coordinated efforts to modify pages on key topics related to Israel, including historical events and political conflicts, to advance anti-Israel narratives. It claimed that these editors removed references to antisemitic incidents, reframed Israel’s founding in a negative light, and engaged in “edit wars” to push their perspective.

“Most readers assume Wikipedia is a reliable online encyclopedia, but in reality, it has become a biased platform manipulated by agenda-driven editors on many topics,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement.

Wikipedia operates on an open-editing model, with articles curated by volunteers. While its guidelines emphasize neutrality, the ADL contended that this structure has allowed coordinated groups to exploit the system and shape public understanding of complex topics.

The report described Wikipedia’s existing moderation framework as insufficient to prevent such manipulation. It also highlighted cases in which editors removed material unfavorable to Hamas or softened language around the terrorist group’s actions, removing content that referenced antisemitic rhetoric, as well as efforts to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist.

In one example, an editor removed mention of a Gazan launching an incendiary balloon into Israel with a swastika on it. In an entry on Zionism, the Jewish right to self-determination in its ancestral homeland was redefined as “ethnocultural nationalist movement” that sought to “create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible.”

“Despite Wikipedia’s efforts to ensure neutrality and impartiality, malicious editors frequently introduce biased or misleading information, which persists across hundreds if not more entries,” the report stated.

Investigative journalist Ashley Rindsberg, who has previously reported on Wikipedia’s editorial violations, argued that the platform lacks the necessary tools to manage issues of this scale. “The fundamental problem that Wikipedia is facing is that it doesn’t have the means or the ability or the infrastructure to take on an issue as deep and complex as this one is,” he told The Algemeiner, adding that there were no domain area experts on the site.

The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that operates Wikipedia, disputed the findings of the report. “Though our preliminary review of this report finds troubling and flawed conclusions that are not supported by the Anti-Defamation League’s data, we are currently undertaking a more thorough and detailed analysis,” Wikimedia spokesperson Lauren Dickinson was cited as saying by The Jewish Insider. She added that the ADL did not seek input from Wikimedia before publishing its findings.

Following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel, disputes over Wikipedia’s handling of content related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict intensified. Wikipedia editors and administrators debated the inclusion of sources and language in key articles, reflecting broader tensions seen on social media and in public discourse. Last summer, Wikipedia editors voted to classify the ADL as an unreliable source on issues related to Israel and antisemitism, a decision that ADL officials say further complicates efforts to address bias.

More than 40 Jewish organizations wrote to Wikimedia in June 2024 urging reform. The ADL attempted to engage Wikimedia leadership but was met with limited response. Dickinson said Wikipedia maintains a commitment to neutrality and that content must be presented “as far as possible, without editorial bias.” The platform has more than 65 million articles, edited by nearly 260,000 volunteers worldwide.

Rindsberg argued that the Wikimedia Foundation lacked the ability to detect and address such editorial violations. “There is no investigatory mechanism to find these types of violations and to properly address them,” he said.

He further alleged that the foundation exacerbated the problem through its financial activities. “At the same time, what we’re seeing is Wikimedia Foundation pouring millions of dollars of grant money and donation money into radical NGOs further downstream, which push some of the very same types of perspectives that we’re seeing arise within the edit gangs or edit groups like the one identified in the ADL report.”

The ADL report recommended that Wikipedia implement stricter editorial oversight, enforce its neutrality policies more rigorously, and take stronger measures to prevent organized manipulation. It also called on policymakers to raise awareness of Wikipedia’s vulnerabilities and to convene discussions with academics and technologists to address systemic biases. The ADL urged search engines and artificial intelligence developers to limit reliance on Wikipedia for factual content and to direct users toward sources it deems more reputable.

“The values of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation reflect our commitment to integrity and accuracy, and we categorically condemn antisemitism and all forms of hate,” Dickinson said.

However, Rindsberg maintains that Wikimedia has resisted scrutiny. “Far from showing any desire to actually deal with the issue at hand, Wikimedia Foundation is actually trying to push back on these claims, deflect them, and deny them.”

In an October exposé, Rindsberg detailed how a network of about 40 Wikipedia editors had collectively made approximately 850,000 edits across nearly 10,000 articles, subtly shifting the framing of topics related to Israel, the Palestinians, and broader Middle Eastern geopolitics. Some changes involved minor revisions, such as downplaying historical ties between Jewish history and the land of Israel, while others were more significant, including the removal of references to sexual violence during the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. 

His reporting contributed to Wikipedia’s arbitration committee imposing “topic bans” on several editors, restricting them from editing content relating to Israel or the Palestinians, but stopping short of a broader, site-wide ban for all except one of them. The editors are free to appeal the topic bans in a year. Rindsberg noted that before the ban, many of those editors implemented a one-year moratorium on changes to the entry on Zionism – in other words, freezing their edits to be unalterable. 

The ADL report did not call for abandoning Wikipedia but warned users to be skeptical of politically sensitive entries. It called on Wikipedia to establish a committee of administrators to vet and appoint Wikipedia editors for contentious topics on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and on policymakers to create a task force aimed at combating antisemitic bias on the online platform.

The post ‘Malicious’ Wikipedia Editors Manipulated Site’s Coverage of Israel, ADL Report Alleges first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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