Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday condemned the crowds of Gazans that mobbed three Israeli hostages as they were being released by Hamas. “I view the shocking scenes during the release of our hostages as very serious,” wrote Netanyahu after the release of Arbel Yehud, Gadi Mozes, Agam Berger and five Thai citizens, all of whom were abducted to Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023. “This is further proof of the unimaginable cruelty of the Hamas terrorist organization. I demand that the mediators ensure that such horrific scenes do not recur, and guarantee the safety of our hostages. Those who dare harm our hostages do so at their own peril,” Netanyahu wrote. Footage from the release shows massive crowds, apparently in a state of jubilation, swarming around cars transporting the hostages and around the Hamas terrorists escorting the Israelis from the vehicles. Otzma Yehudit Party leader Itamar Ben-Gvir, a critic of the ceasefire deal who recently took his party out of the government because of it, called the display a “horror” scene demonstrating that “this is not a total victory but a total failure, in a reckless deal like no other. The government, he continued, “could have withheld humanitarian aid, fuel, electricity and water from the bloodthirsty mob that is now trying to lynch our hostages and crushed them militarily.” Israel has agreed to release 110 terrorists in exchange for the latest group of hostages... https://www.jns.org/netanyahu-condemns-unimaginable-cruelty-of-hamas-after-hostages-mobbed/ US President Donald Trump's Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff said Thursday that the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip following the war between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization could take between ten and fifteen years. “People are moving north to get back to their homes and see what happened and turn around and leave…there is no water and no electricity. It is stunning just how much damage occurred there," Witkoff told Axios after visiting Gaza this week. He added that there is “almost nothing left” in Gaza following the war and that the security arrangements at the Philadelphi and Netzarim corridors are working "better" than he expected. "This is why I went to Gaza — to inspect the implementation because it is so important. How this happens will influence our ability to get to phase two of the deal," he said. According to him, "There has been this perception we can get to a solid plan for Gaza in five years. But it's impossible. This is a 10 to 15-year rebuilding plan." Witkoff also said that he had not discussed President Trump's suggestion that many Gaza residents be relocated to other countries during the reconstruction process with the President. Seven old Jews, a locked synagogue, and a ruin. That’s what remains of the Jewish community of Syria. By Jonathan Spyer, The Middle East Forum In Damascus again after a hiatus of nearly eight years, I decided to see what remained of the city’s once flourishing Jewish community. The dictator was gone. The new Islamist rulers had yet to fully stamp their authority on the city and the country. It seemed an ideal time. The Jewish Quarter of Damascus is located in the old city. There were 50,000 Jews in Syria at the beginning of the 20th century – an ancient and historic community dating to antiquity. The Jews of Syria were divided by city origin, with two old communities – Damascus and Aleppo – maintaining a rivalry. A third, newer community had been established later in Qamishli, in the Kurdish-majority northeast. Of these, the Jews of Aleppo and Qamishli have departed in their entirety. The seven or eight elderly Jewish residents of Damascus are the last remnant. (The exact number is disputed). My friend Firas and I set out from Bab Touma one Saturday morning to see what we could find. Firas is a Syrian Kurd, a former YPG (People’s Defense Units) fighter, and a former resident of Damascus. I had read that one of the three synagogues of the neighborhood, the Elfrange, still had services. I had the vague idea that I might arrive for the Saturday morning prayers and make the acquaintance of whomever I might find there. It took us a while to find the entrance to the synagogue. When we did, the door was padlocked. No one was around. We asked a neighboring shop owner what he knew about the “Jewish synagogue.” “Abu Ibrahim has the keys,” he replied. “He runs a school here. But he isn’t here today. Give me your phone number and I’ll pass it on to him.” We did so without much hope. “Do you know where we could find any of the Jews still living in the city?” I asked Dejected, and with a growing sense of absurdity, we wandered past the dilapidated houses, asking various passersby for clues. “There’s a Jewish man living in that street right there,” a woman told us, pointing to a street on the left. “His name’s Ibrahim.” We went down the small, dusty street and asked the owner of a small hummus restaurant whether he knew which house was Ibrahim’s. Our question caused an argument between the young man and his friend who was with him. “Don’t know,” the friend told us. “No idea. Don’t know.” Damascus is a city of deep suspicions, covered by a layer of slightly too-sweet politeness. But in this case, the young hummus restaurant owner took pity on us, and pointed to a ramshackle house opposite. “He’s there. He lives there alone. But he might not answer.” “He doesn’t want to speak to anyone,” his friend added. WE WENT over and Firas hammered on the door. Once. Twice. And then, more or less despairingly, a third time. As we were about to leave, a small, elderly man appeared on the balcony facing the street. Firas shouted that I was a Jewish journalist who had come to find out about the Jews of Damascus. After a long pause, the old man pulled a string on the balcony that was attached to the front door and it clicked open. Inside, we found everything in an astonishing state of dereliction. Old bicycles, clocks, and ornaments, and rotting carpets and packing cases were all piled up in the courtyard and the adjoining rooms. This had very obviously once been a house owned by a wealthy family. Nothing remained of that. The old man motioned to us to come upstairs. We sat with him next to the balcony. While speaking Damascus Arabic, laced with Hebrew words here and there, he produced a phone with a Channel 11 report on the Jews of Damascus on it. He motioned to me to read the Hebrew. I did so and, satisfied, he began to tell us about himself and his family, the Hilwanis of Damascus. His name is Fuad Hilwani. Most of the family had left in 1992, he said, when Hafez Assad chose to allow the remaining 4,000 Jews in Syria to depart. He described the severely curtailed lives they had lived up to that point, under the pervasive surveillance of the regime’s intelligence branches. Jews needed permission even to leave the neighborhood. He had stayed to look after his ailing mother, who died a few years later. He had a brother in New York, and one in Israel. I congratulated him on his family’s house, saying it must have been illustrious at one time. He gave me a searching look, as though suspecting me of mockery. Then he said: “This wasn’t our house. It belonged to the Totah family. I’m just watching it so that Abu Ibrahim and those behind him don’t come and take it.” Then he launched into a complicated account of efforts by a power structure connected to the old regime to move in on remaining Jewish properties in the city. He then mentioned a general connected to Maher Assad’s notorious 4th Division, a by-word for criminality and cruelty under the Assads. (Maher is former president Bashar al-Assad’s younger brother.) There had been violence and intimidation, and even an act of murder. I haven’t been able to fully verify these claims, so I won’t repeat them. At the end of this, Hilwani offered to read our fortunes, and following this bade us goodbye. “Shabbat Shalom,” he wished me, as we stood on the stairs. Back at my hotel in Bab Touma, I searched for anything I could find on the Totah family and their properties in the Jewish Quarter. On a site that collects memories of the vanished Jewish communities of the Arab world, I found the following description: “The Beit Tuta (also known as Beit Totah) was an opulent Damascene courtyard house owned by the Tuta family from the mid-19th to early 20th century. It boasted both traditional, open-air reception rooms and Western-style reception rooms.” I thought of the junk piled high in the courtyard and the rooms around it, and the old Jewish man, alone, its curious sentinel. THERE WAS still one synagogue I wanted to see – the Eliyahu Hanavi, in the neighborhood of Jobar, a couple of kilometers from the old city. It is described by the 13th-century Jewish traveler Samuel ben Samson as a “beautiful synagogue situated outside the city” and by Israel Joseph Benjamin in 1864 as “supported by 13 marble pillars, six on the right and seven on the left side, and everywhere inlaid with marble.” However, the synagogue was destroyed in 2014 during the Syrian civil war by a regime artillery shell. We found a local Jobar man to take us there, but there wasn’t much to see except rubble. Part of a single wall is still standing. I had heard that the area where the synagogue had stood was mined, but our guide immediately clambered up on it, so we followed suit. I saw that there was an UNRWA school close by, and I remembered that the Assad regime had a practice of housing Palestinian refugees close to traditionally Jewish areas of Damascus. After a couple of minutes, we had company. A motorcycle roared up. Two young men, both in black, one with a long black beard, the other wearing a leather jacket, climbed off. Representatives of the new regime. They climbed up to the highest point of the rubble that once was the Jobar synagogue and called us to join them. Out of breath, we did so. “You can’t film there,” the bearded young man told us matter-of-factly. “And no photos. This is a Jewish religious site. And of course, we respect all religions.” “Who are you?” asked Firas, though it was obvious. “We’re from the ‘organization’ [haya in Arabic, referring to Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham],” the bearded young man replied. “And if you want to photograph, you should go to the Air Force Intelligence building at the Abbasin Circle, and get permission.” It wasn’t quite clear why having respect for all religions involved forbidding photography of a ruined synagogue. But we didn’t contest the point. After escorting us about 45 meters from the ruin, the two climbed back on their motorcycle and roared off through the dust. So that was the “mukhabarat” (secret police) of the new regime, it occurred to me. Still learning the trade. The old lot would have checked my camera to see if I had already taken some pictures. They would learn quickly, no doubt. Fuad Hilwani had scoffed at my question whether he thought that the fall of Assad would change anything. Abu Ibrahim, he had said, would make a deal with the new regime, that was all. Fifty-fifty (i.e., of mutual benefit – to the new regime and to Abu Ibrahim). Seven old Jews, a locked synagogue, and a ruin. That’s what remains of the Jewish community of Syria. US President Donald Trump has reiterated his call for Egypt and Jordan to accept residents of Gaza into their territory, as part of arrangements to end the current war with Israel. Further explaining his idea on Monday, the President said that he would ‘like to get [Gazans] living in an area where they can live without disruption and revolution and violence so much’. It’s difficult to see anything coming of this idea. Both Egypt and Jordan have already, predictably, rejected it absolutely. Hamas, which is currently re-establishing itself as the de facto ruler of the Gaza Strip, would obviously act to prevent any attempt to implement it. Nevertheless, Trump’s statement was useful, in that by making it, the US President cast light on one of the enduring absurdities of the situation in the Middle East. Namely, that while Arab and Muslim states profess loyalty to the Palestinian cause, this rarely – if ever – extends to measures to actually help the plight of actual, living Palestinians. Observe: for the last year, we have been told, endlessly, by Al Jazeera and other ‘pro-Palestinian’ media outlets, that a ‘genocide’ was taking place in Gaza. Where a genocide is taking place, the first and most obvious measure to be taken, before political considerations, should surely be to offer safe haven to any of the potential victims who manage to extricate themselves from the area where it is taking place. Neither Arab nor other states have, however, offered such refuge to Gazans. Of course, the claims of genocide are refutable. What was taking place in Gaza was war, the result of the Islamist rulers of Gaza choosing to initiate war on 7 October 2023. But even then, it is a normal and a natural thing for civilians to flee war, as observing Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Israel itself over the last decade will quickly confirm. Only Palestinians have been denied that option. They weren’t denied it by Israel. It may be taken as read that had Egypt and other neighbouring states expressed their willingness to admit Gazans wishing to flee, Israel would not have sought to corral them. But no such offer was ever made. And when the US President suggests that perhaps it should be, the idea is met with flat, horrified and outraged rejection, even as declarations of solidarity with the people of Gaza continue. ...the politics of the Arab and Islamic world require that ritual obeisance be paid to the ‘Palestinian cause’ – that is, the belief that the verdict of the 1948 Jewish-Arab war may still at some future date be reversed. ...actual living Palestinians – in this case Gazans – must be denied the usual option available to civilians caught up in conflict: namely the right to flee for as long as the fighting continues. They must continue to play their allotted roles as the victims of the Zionists, so that a series of neighbouring dictatorships can cry crocodile tears for them. https://worldisraelnews.com/trump-has-exposed-the-hypocrisy-of-gazas-allies/ Amir Tsarfati [his feed has reappeared], February 1: So what’s next according to the deal with Hamas? According to Israeli intelligence assessments, at the conclusion of Phase 1 of this deal, it is estimated that 65 hostages will still be held by Hamas, with 21 believed to be alive and 44 thought to be dead. Keep in mind, these figures are based on intelligence assessments and thus are not guaranteed to be precise, but they offer a general outline of the situation. The smuggling of money into Lebanon, and certainly into the hands of a murderous terrorist organization, strengthens this possibility. If this happens, it means that serious international investors and donor countries will have difficulty operating in Lebanon. A country on the blacklist also means that it is essentially cut off from the global banking system and is therefore "leper" from a global financial perspective. This is why inside Lebanon, authorities are being called upon to act against the smuggling of cash through the country's only airport. You know well enough that it's not about protecting the Palestinians but about protecting themselves from them! As Daniel Shapiro, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East Policy, writes, the meeting will announce the start of negotiations for the next Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on military aid. The current MoU expires in 2028, and the new one will take effect in 2029 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump are expected to meet twice on Tuesday. A working meeting is scheduled for noon and later that evening the world leaders will have a casual dinner along with their spouses White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed at a press conference on Friday. Early last week, Trump extended to Netanyahu an invitation to the White House. On the announcement, the Republican Jewish Coalition said, “The most pro-Israel president picking up right where he left off: making the U.S.-Israel relationship great again.” The Prime Minister’s Office reported that Netanyahu is the first world leader Trump invited to the White House in his second term. An image of a letter, reportedly an invitation from Trump to Netanyahu, began circulating on social media. Dated January 28 and signed by Trump, the letter reads: “I would like to formally invite you to the White House next week.” It continues, “I look forward to discussing how we can bring peace to Israel and its neighbors, as well as efforts to counter our shared adversaries.” The letter concludes with, “It will be my honor to host you as my first foreign leader during my second term.” The two leaders will discuss the hostage deal and the likelihood of extending the Gaza ceasefire beyond six weeks. The “elephant in the room” is the issue concerning the future of Hamas. Netanyahu promised the Israeli public that Hamas would be completely destroyed and it’s not clear if Trump will go along with that. Trump and Netanyahu will also deal with issues concerning Iran and the ceasefire in Lebanon. https://worldisraelnews.com/netanyahu-to-meet-twice-with-president-trump-on-tuesday/ In her first press conference, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced on Tuesday that the Trump administration halted a $50 million disbursement for “condoms in Gaza.” The Office of Management and Budget and the newly-formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) “found that there was about to be $50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza,” Leavitt told reporters. “That is a preposterous waste of taxpayer money. Elon Musk, the head of DOGE, tweeted, “My guess is that a lot of that money ended up in the pockets of Hamas, not actually condoms.” The Jerusalem Post reported in 2020 that Hamas used enormous numbers of condoms filled with helium to float IEDs (Improvised Explosive and Incendiary Devices) over southern Israel. The tactic proved successful, destroying thousands of acres of land and causing millions of shekels of damage. David Friedman, the former US ambassador to Israel, noted the absurdity of the cost. “Any idiot would know these condoms were not earmarked for their intended use. Indeed, Hamas wanted to fill them with helium to carry bombs over the border. It’s absolutely insane that Biden’s staff approved this.” https://israel365news.com/399929/trump-admin-cancels-50-million-for-condoms-in-gaza/ Amir Tsarfati, February 2: The Egyptian "civilians" sent by Egyptian intelligence to protest against the transfer of Gazans to Egypt - looted the aid trucks. [Almost 2 hours, but the first 30 minutes is music] [Over 2 hours, starts at about the 18 minute mark]
Netanyahu condemns ‘unimaginable cruelty’ of Hamas after hostages mobbed:
Steve Witkoff: Almost nothing left in Gaza, reconstruction will take 10-15 years:
The last Jews of Damascus: A journey through memory and ruins:
The shop owner considered for a moment. “There’s an old woman living close by. But she’s lost her mind and can’t tell you much. Then there’s another old woman, two doors down from here. You see that black iron door? That’s where she lives. I think she’s there now. Go and knock and maybe she’ll answer.” So we did. No answer again.Trump has exposed the hypocrisy of Gaza’s allies:
- Next Saturday: 3 live hostages will be released.
- The Saturday following: Another 3 live hostages will be released.
- Throughout the last week of the deal: 6 live hostages and 8 dead hostages are scheduled for release.
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Israel's latest complaints raise grave concerns in Lebanon
The latest Israeli complaints reported yesterday that cash smuggling to Hezbollah continues are raising real concerns among the Lebanese leadership that the country's reconstruction process will be significantly slowed. Lebanon is currently on the "gray list" of the FATF (an international body for combating the financing of terrorism and money laundering, of which Israel is a member). Next year, the organization must decide whether Lebanon will be blacklisted.
(Doron Peskin)
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Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Jordan issued a joint statement opposing the Trump plan: "We oppose the transfer of Palestinians from their lands in any situation and circumstance."
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Sign in Gaza: "Egypt's official and popular position: We will not accept the displacement of our Palestinian brothers"
Or in less sleazy terms: The Egyptians do not want Palestinians in their territory.
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The White House announced that a meeting between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled for Tuesday, which will "demonstrate continued support for Israel."
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US authorities revoked the student visa of Liu Lijun, a UCLA student who was documented supporting Hamas.
The student, accused of making life for Jewish students on campus unbearable, is expected to leave the country after violating the terms of her visa.
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Pentagon has announced a new annual media rotation program that will see NBC, The New York Times, NPR, and Politico vacate their long-held office spaces.
The New York Post, One America News Network, Breitbart News, and HuffPost News will replace them.
This move is part of an effort to diversify the media presence within the Defense Department, according to Pentagon officials.
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Trump ordered strikes on ISIS leaders in Somalia.
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TRADE WAR
Canada and Mexico have imposed 25% tariffs on American products. As you may recall, the US has imposed 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada.
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Netanyahu Heads to Washington Tomorrow as First World Leader to Meet Trump Post-Inauguration.
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https://t.me/s/beholdisraelchannel Stakes are high: Netanyahu to meet twice with Trump on Tuesday:
Trump admin. cancels $50 million for “condoms in Gaza”
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Jordan's King Abdullah II will meet with US President Trump at the White House on February 11 (next Tuesday).
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Defense Minister Israel Katz in Lebanon: "Either there will be no drones or there will be no Hezbollah. Israel will not accept the launching of drones from Lebanon.
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Members of Parliament from 14 different European countries have appealed to the UN Secretary-General to "remove UNRWA from the UN agencies."
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Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, in a desperate and last-ditch attempt to prevent the US from taking over the Panama Canal: "We will not renew the contract with China that allows it preferential use of the canal."
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BREAKING: President Trump just CUT all funding to South Africa!
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Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has issued a statement for Mexicans living in the USA, telling them that they will be welcomed with open arms if they wish to move to Mexico.
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Prime Minister Netanyahu landed in the US, at the US Air Force base Andrews.
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https://t.me/s/beholdisraelchannel Sunday Morning Calvary Chapel East Anaheim with Amir Tsarfati:
Pastor Barry Stagner & Amir Tsarfati - LIVE at Calvary Central OC: The Truth About God - Barry Stagner:
