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 and Gaza.
What to Watch and Read Today
- FOLLOW: CFI Instagram and Twitter
- WATCH & READ: New ground and aerial insights from Lt. Col. Richard Hecht
- WATCH: Iran’s Cultural Heritage and Tourism Minister: Iran supplied rockets to “Hezbollah and the Palestinians” and IRGC General on Gaza War: “We did what we had to do”
- WATCH: Pedestrians narrowly dodge falling rocket fragment in Tel Aviv
Prime Ministers Rishi Sunak and Benjamin Netanyahu discuss “urgent efforts” to free hostages
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak spoke to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday.
The two “discussed urgent efforts to ensure all remaining hostages are safely freed and allow any remaining British nationals in Gaza to leave”, according to a Downing Street spokesperson. Sunak also addressed concerns about increasing attacks by Iran-backed Houthi militants, escalation on Israel’s northern border and tensions in the West Bank.
CFI Parliamentary Vice Chair Andrew Percy MP Chaired the UK-Israel All Party Parliamentary Group’s second screening of the October 7th massacres, in a collection of footage shown to policymakers or journalists by Israel. 27 Conservative MPs and Peers also attended the event, including CFI Honorary President Lord Polak CBE.
Robert Courts MP attended the first Bring Them Home Vigil organised by the Board of Deputies today outside Parliament. The vigils will occur twice-weekly at the same location.
As Chair of the Defence Committee, he also welcomed the deployment of the UK’s “Shadow R1” surveillance aircraft for use in Gaza during the Urgent Question session yesterday and raised concern for the safety of crews in the region given “the presence of Iran”.
Rt. Hon. Mark Francois MP said that “Hamas and Hezbollah are funded and trained by Iran”, and asked when the Government “will finally declare that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps should be banned”. Rt. Hon. Ranil Jayawardena welcomed “HMS Diamond joining HMS Lancaster” to “send a signal to Iran that its support for terror groups is not acceptable”.
Reports emerge of hostages sexually assaulted by Hamas, as evidence grows of Hamas using sexual violence on 7th October
Reports have emerged that at least 10 of the Israeli civilians released by Hamas, both men and women, were sexually assaulted or abused while in captivity. The reports come from a doctor who treated some of the 110 hostages released from Hamas captivity. They also corroborate similar accounts shared at a meeting on Tuesday between Israel’s war cabinet and a group of released hostages and family members of those still held in Gaza.
The latest reports about sexual assaults on hostages follows growing evidence of Hamas’ deliberate use of violence against women and girls during their 7th October massacre.
Aviva Siegel, who was freed from Hamas captivity last week and whose husband, a U.S. citizen, is still a hostage, has said that women hostages were “being touched”.
U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller has said that Hamas is still holding onto some hostages because it does not want them to testify about the sexual abuse they experienced in captivity. He said: “The fact that they continue to hold women hostages, the fact that they continue to hold children hostages, just the fact that it seems one of the reasons they don’t want to turn women over they’ve been holding hostage, and the reason this pause fell apart, is they don’t want those women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time in custody”.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for greater action around Hamas’ use of sexual violence: “I say to the women’s rights organisations, to the human rights organisations, you’ve heard of the rape of Israeli women, horrible atrocities, sexual mutilation – where the hell are you?”
Israeli Police say that rape survivors from October 7th were not common, with analysis of bodies found showing many victims were killed by their attackers.
Some of the testimonies released so far have been very graphic (TRIGGER WARNING).
“I was lying in a pit (and) I heard (a girl) yelling: ‘They’re raping me, they’re raping me!’”, Ron Freger testified to the Associated Press. Moments later, he heard gunshots and she fell silent, he said. “The feeling in that moment is one of complete powerlessness”.
At the Nova music festival, a rape witness testified that she watched terrorists gang-rape a woman, stood her up as blood trickled from her back, yanked her hair and sliced her breast, playing with it as they assaulted her. The last man shot her in the head while he was still raping her. In a recorded testimony to Israeli police presented to international media, the woman described watching the terrorists as she pretended to be dead.
A combat medic found half a dozen bodies of women and men with possible signs of sexual assault across one of the communities attacked by Hamas, according to reports.
One girl had been shot in the head and was lying on the floor, her legs open and pants pulled down, with what looked like semen on her lower back, said the medic who spoke on condition of anonymity because his unit was classified. Other bodies had mass bleeding around the groin with limbs at distorted angles, he said.
The umbrella family group has also reported that hostages were dressed “in hijabs and head coverings so that Israel wouldn’t distinguish us from them”.
Senior officials in Iran disclose supplying and supporting Hamas attacks on Israel
Iranian senior officials have recently disclosed Iran’s supply of rockets to Hamas and describe teaching the terror organisations to utilise them.
Iranian Cultural Heritage and Tourism Minister and retired IRGC General, Ezzatollah Zarghami, told Iranian media that his “first mission” as “production manager” of Iranian-manufactured rockets was transporting them to “Hezbollah and the Palestinians”, and that he provided “training about the usage and specification of rockets” whilst residing in Hamas’ terror tunnels “for some time”.
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Commander General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh said with regard to Iran’s involvement in the Gaza that Palestinians used to use “stones” and now use “rockets”. “We did what we had to do”, he stated.
Largest-ever weapons stockpiles found in Gaza beside schools, hospitals, civilian buildings
One of the largest weapons stockpiles in the history of its operations in Gaza was discovered by the IDF near a school and hospital in Al Shati. Hundreds of missiles, launchers, long-range rockets, anti-tank missiles, UAVs, and explosives were found.
Hamas’ “cynical use of civilian areas”, including nurseries, schools and homes, transformed them into “terrorist stronghold[s]”, according to IDF Battalion Commander LTC Dotan.
After evacuating “the entire [civilian] population” of the area on the outskirts of the Al Shati neighborhood of Gaza, the IDF secured a terror compound consisting of nurseries, schools and civilian homes.
A nursery, doubling as a “direct combat” post, was directed by an operating room in the “principles office”. Many weapons and munitions were found on the building after the battle.
Large amounts of weapons, including rockets and firearms, were also discovered at a school, from which terrorists released fire on IDF forces. Hamas used a civilian structure adjacent to the school as a lookout post during the conflict, and a secondary school as cover during the fighting.
Weapons and lathes, discovered in a tunnel shaft, were found in the basement of a civilian home used for weapons manufacturing, and further firearms were found within a separate civilian home.
In northern Gaza, a terror cell operating beside a school, and subterranean infrastructure found in its vicinity, were both destroyed. Troops found weapons and munitions in another local school.
Worst global antisemitism “since the 1930s” – Israel’s Diaspora Minister
Evidence of Hamas and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) activity in major European cities was sent to the continents leaders in a letter by Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli.
Antisemitism has risen by 500% globally, the Minister told the Jerusalem Post, adding that to say the prejudice “is the worst since the 1930’s” is not an exaggeration.
“The radical left works hand-in-hand with radical Islam”, disturbingly at “top universities, which have unfortunately been remaining silent after October 7”, he said. The social democratic or neo-Marxist “red”, and the Islamist “green” has established a partnership built on a shared critique of corporate and capitalist institutions, and left-leaning values, according to Chikli.
“Because there is no truth, there is also no good or bad”, the Minister explained, after calling academic relativism “the main problem of the world”.
The IDF enters Khan Younis
The IDF has surrounded and entered the centre of Khan Younis, it reported today. The cities brigade force is “one of the two most dominant Hamas brigades” and a “centre of gravity” for Hamas.
Troops located Hamas weapons and intelligence materials after capturing the terror-groups strongholds. Around 30 tunnel shafts and “many” terror operatives have been killed so far in the ongoing battle.
Houthi, Hezbollah rocket attacks intercepted
The Iran-backed Houthi terror group fired a rocket bound for Eilat today. Israel’s long range Arrow air defence system intercepted the projectile over the Red Sea before it entered Israeli airspace.
The Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group also fired rockets toward IDF posts today, as part of its ongoing stream of low-level attacks and clashes since October 7th and prior. The IDF has shelled the sources of rocket fire with tank and artillery throughout the day, and deployed a drone to destroy two sites, including a Hezbollah command room.
The Houthis and Hezbollah, together with Hamas and other terror groups funded by Iran, have called themselves part of an “axis of resistance”. Daily exchanges between Israel and Iran’s proxies have raised fears of a wider conflict.
Hundreds of terror targets struck over past 24 hours
Over the past 24 hours, the Israel Air Force (IAG) struck approximately 250 targets in Gaza, including terrorist infrastructure such as tunnel shafts and explosive devices and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror cells.
Two Hamas rocket launchers, used for Tuesday’s rocket barrage into central Israel, were also destroyed by the IDF.
Jenin raid finds firearms, weapons equipment
The IDF conducted an overnight raid in the Jenin refugee camp, the West Bank, detaining 10 wanted personnel, seizing firearms and other weapons equipment, identifying two tunnel shafts and three bomb-making labs.
Soldiers clashed with gunmen in the vicinity, who also utilised explosive devices. 16 other suspects were detained across the West Bank in separate operations.
Civilian narrowly misses falling shrapnel in Tel Aviv
Rocket fragments narrowly missing pedestrians has been captured in footage by Tel Aviv surveillance cameras. Shrapnel, such as those resulting from Hamas’ barrage on Tuesday, takes a few minutes to fall after Israel’s Iron Dome defence system intercepts and destroys Hamas’ missiles.
For this reason, the Home Front Command warns people to shelter 10 minutes after sirens. 15 rockets were fired by Hamas in Tuesday’s attack.
