Note to reader: We wanted to give you a trigger warning on what you may read below. We have chosen, as with every night of these briefings, to not share horrific images, however we want to alert you as sensitively as we can to the reports coming out of Israel.
Prime Minister Netanyahu: “calls for a ceasefire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak today spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterating “the UK’s resolute backing for Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism”.
Prime Minister Sunak “said the UK is focused on securing the safe return of hostages and urgently ensuring British nationals and others can leave Gaza, via the Rafah crossing or other routes”.
Transport Minister Richard Holden said today that “you cannot have Israel laying down its arms”. Speaking to Nick Ferrari on LBC, Holden underscored that Hamas “want to obliterate… Hamas and their supporters want to see Israel wiped off the face of the earth”. “You cannot allow a terrorist organisation to go into somewhere and kill hundreds…take hostages indiscriminately and then there be no response to that terrorist organisation”, he added.
Reiterating his opposition to a ceasefire on Times Radio, the Transport Minister stated that “the idea of a ceasefire is just the wrong thing to do, because… it’s allowing Hamas to be able to act essentially with impunity in this situation”.
Comparing Israel’s response with the aftermath of 9/11, Holden exclaimed that “people understood that… the US had a right to defend itself. Nobody said sit down with Osama bin Laden and put down your arms. You know what, it’s exactly the same here”.
UCL call for intifada
UCL University College Union (UJS) called for an “Intifada until victory!” in a recent motion in “solidarity with Palestinian workers and youth”.
The Union of Jewish Students in an online statement said voting for “Intifada until victory” and a “mass uprising” against Israeli civilians “is a horrific incitement to violence and terror”.
UJS “have written to UCL’s Provost to express disgust at the motion & call for urgent action in the wake of this”.
Minister for Higher Education Robert Halfon in an online statement said: “Appalling motion from UCL London UCU Members, calling for ‘Infitada’ and ‘Uprising’ against Israel. This should be condemned both by UCL and national UCU union. A fifth column of Hamas’s ‘useful idiots’ far too prevalent at some of our Universities”.
Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party Nickie Aiken on X, formally known as Twitter, said: “Yesterday I met a group of Jewish primary school children visiting Parliament. All were wearing baseball caps to hide their kippahs. I hope those who voted [in the UCL UCU motion] appreciate that many British Jews are currently fearing for their safety and children hiding their identities”.
Lord Roberts writes in the Telegraph
“In professing to believe that it can expel the Jews from the river to the sea, Hamas has been selling a dream that has brought only tragedy and rubble”, writes Conservative peer Lord Roberts in the Telegraph.
“Just as Hamas is using roadblocks to prevent Palestinians from moving south and away from the Israeli attack on northern Gaza, so is it also preventing the Palestinians from moving on from the utterly doomed hope of retaking the land of Israel”.
The deadly massacre carried out by Hamas on 7th October has left 96 Israeli children without a parent. 20 Israeli children lost both parents, and 18 people between 18 and 25 lost both parents.
These numbers are not final as Israel learns more about the condition of the 240 hostages taken from Israel into Gaza.
So far 826 civilians murdered on 7th October have been identified. Dozens of bodies have yet to be identified due to the severity of violence committed.
Over 8,000 rockets have been launched from Gaza towards Israel over the past three weeks.
Four have been reported as injured in two separate rocket attacks in Ashdod including a 50-year-old man in serious condition. There has also been direct impacts to a home in Netivot and one in the Eshkol region earlier today. Two rockets in a barrage fired towards central Israel landed in the sea.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry has released an “interactive map which provides a comprehensive representation of the atrocities committed by Hamas” on 7th October.
Regional involvement
For the third time since the Hamas-Israel war began, the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen launched UAVs and rockets towards Israel. Yemen is 2000 kilometres away from Israel.
This morning a drone fired from Yemen was intercepted over the Red Sea in Eilat’s airspace.
A surface-to-surface missile was successfully intercepted by Israel’s ‘Arrow’ – long range defence system, the first time it has been used since the beginning of the war.
A further barrage of rockets were launched from Yemen early this afternoon.
A spokesperson for the Houthis said that “we are part of the axis of resistance and nothing will hinder us despite the geographical distance”.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Amir Abdullahian said that “the brutal Zionist aggression against the Gaza Strip with American support will lead to the expansion of reactions in the region – the resistance factions will not agree to American support for the continuation of the occupation crimes in the Gaza Strip.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “calls for a ceasefire are calls for Israel to surrender”
In a press statement yesterday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that “calls for a ceasefire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas, to surrender to terrorism, to surrender to barbarism”, and “that will not happen”.
“Israel did not start this war, Israel did not want this war, but Israel will win this war”, he vowed.
“Hamas launched this war by perpetrating the worst savagery our people have seen since the Holocaust. Hamas murdered children in front of their parents. Murdered parents in front of their children. They burnt people alive. They raped women. They beheaded men. They tortured Holocaust survivors. They kidnapped babies. They committed the most horrific crimes imaginable”, he said.
“In fighting Hamas and the Iranian axis of terror, Israel is fighting the enemies of civilisation itself. Victory over these enemies begins with moral clarity. It begins with knowing the difference between good and evil, between right and wrong. It means making a moral distinction between the deliberate murder of the innocent and the unintentional casualties that accompany every legitimate war, even the most just war. It means holding Hamas responsible for the double war crime it commits every day by deliberately targeting Israeli civilians while using Palestinians civilians as human shields”.
The Israeli Prime Minister warned that “as long as Hamas’s use of Palestinian human shields results in the international community blaming Israel, Hamas will continue to use it as a tool of terror, and so will others”.
“While Israel is doing everything to get Palestinian civilians out of harm’s way, Hamas is doing everything to keep Palestinian civilians in harm’s way”, Prime Minister Netanyahu said.
“Israel urges Palestinian civilians to leave the areas of armed conflict, while Hamas prevents those civilians from leaving those areas at gunpoint”.
“Hamas is also preventing foreign nationals from leaving Gaza altogether. And most despicably, Hamas is holding over 200 Israelis hostage, including 33 children. Holding them, terrorising them, keeping them as hostages”.
“Every civilised nation”, he stated, “should stand with Israel in demanding that these hostages be freed immediately and freed unconditionally”.
“I hope and pray that civilised nations everywhere will back this fight, because Israel’s fight is your fight. Because if Hamas and Iran’s axis of evil win – you will be their next target”.
That’s why Israel’s victory will be your victory. But make no mistake, regardless of who stands with Israel, Israel will fight until this battle is won, and Israel will prevail”.
Operation Swords of Iron
170 trucks carrying medical supplies, food and water have entered Gaza from the Rafah crossing.
The Egyptians are building a field hospital next to Rafah. They have also stationed tanks and armoured vehicles near the Rafah crossing.
The IDF have struck 300 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets in the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, including military compounds located in underground tunnels.
The IDF have revealed this morning that it has killed five more prominent Hamas operatives including Nasim Abu Ajina, Commander of Hamas’ Beit Lahia Battalion, responsible for commanding the atrocities on Kibbutz Erez and Netiv Ha’asara on 7th October.
Also listed as killed are Jamil Baba – Commander of Hamas’s naval forces in its Central Brigade, Muhammad Safadi – Commander of the anti-tank missile unit in the Tuffah Battalion, Muwaman Hijazi – operative in Hamas’s anti-tank missile unit, and Muhammad Awdallah – senior operative in Hamas’s production department.
This evening, the IDF confirmed they have killed Ebrahim Biari, the Commander of Hamas’ Jabalia Center Battalion. Ebrahim Biari has led the fighting in the northern Gaza Strip against IDF troops since 7th October. Biari was also involved in dispatching terrorists in the Ashdod port attack in 2004, where 13 Israelis were killed, and was responsible for directing rocket fire at Israel.
Biari was killed along with approximately 50 other terrorists in Jabaliyah today according to the IDF. Jabaliyah is “a Hamas terrorist stronghold…used for training and execution of terrorism activities”. Entrances to terrorist tunnels and weapons were also destroyed.
According to the Gaza Report, Jabaliyah residents claimed that “several minutes after an Israeli airstrike the ground around them began to collapse”, indicating that Hamas built tunnels underneath the area had given way.
IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said this evening that “this is complex face-to-face combat. In the fierce battles that took place today, we lost troops”. Two Givati soldiers were killed today “bravely in battle”.
Gaza: “UN’s responsibility”
Mousa Abu Marzouk, an official from Hamas’s political bureau has stated that Palestinian civilians living in Gaza are the UN’s responsibility and not Hamas’.
Speaking to Russia Today, he said that Hamas “have built the tunnels because we have no other way of protecting ourselves from being targeted and killed. These tunnels are meant to protect us from the airplanes. We are fighting from inside the tunnels”.
“Everybody knows that 75% of the people in the Gaza Strip are refugees, and it is the responsibility of the United Nations to protect them”, he added.
During this difficult time please consider donating to Magen David Adom’s urgent appeal https://mdauk.org/
Please also email your MP to share your support with Israel. You can do this via We Believe in Israel: https://tinyurl.com/mr2rcbej
