“Oct 7 2023”

The White House is in receipt of Hamas’s reply to Israel’s proposed ceasefire deal and is evaluating it now, National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby told reporters on Tuesday afternoon less than an hour after negotiators reported Hamas’s response.

Kirby declined to provide a detailed answer on Hamas’s response saying he didn’t want to get ahead of the White House’s evaluation.

The White House’s assumption is that Hamas’s response delivered to Qatar came with Yaha Sinwar’s approval, according to Kirby.

For months, a steady stream of world leaders has flocked to Israel to pressure it not to defend itself. Israel has now been attacked incessantly for eight months by Iran and its proxies in Gaza and Lebanon: Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Since October 7, 2023, they have rained down more than 10,000 rockets, missiles and attack-drones on a democratic country smaller than New Jersey, presumably in attempts to obliterate it, or at least cause mass slaughter.

OTTAWA—The federal government says it has raised concerns directly with Israel over allegations of a “co-ordinated” and “Islamophobic” misinformation campaign that targeted Canadians online.

The government disclosed this to the Star when asked about a recent report in a prominent Israeli newspaper, which alleged a branch of the Israeli state hired a private firm that conducted an operation to sway public opinion in Canada and the United States over its conduct during the ongoing war in Gaza.

The Star did not cover the Walk with Israel beyond a sanitized CP News piece.

TEL AVIV/CAIRO, June 11 (Reuters) – Hamas accepts a U.N. resolution backing a plan to end the war with Israel in Gaza and is ready to negotiate details, a senior official of the Palestinian militant group said on Tuesday in what the U.S. Secretary of State called “a hopeful sign”.

Conversations on plans for Gaza after the Israel-Hamas war ends will continue on Tuesday afternoon and in the next couple of days, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Tel Aviv after talks with Israeli leaders. “It’s imperative that we have these plans.”

The US is considering holding talks on a unilateral deal with Hamas to secure the release of the five American hostages thought to be among those still held in Gaza.

Negotiations would be opened through officials in Qatar if there is no progress on the latest three-phase peace plan outlined by President Biden, NBC News reported.

Biden is anxious to show progress on bringing hostages home and also repatriate the remains of three US citizens whose bodies are believed to be held by Hamas after being killed during the attack on Israel on October 7.

The University of Toronto says pro-Palestinian protesters who set up camp on campus more than a month ago have rejected a proposal similar to what protesters at other schools have accepted.

The university says the proposal sent last Thursday offered expedited processes for considering the protesters’ demands around divestment of companies profiting from Israel’s offensive in Gaza and greater transparency on investments.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) freed four hostages over the weekend in a daring rescue mission wherein special units ventured deep into the heart of Hamas territory.

The four former hostages were kidnapped from the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, when Palestinian terrorists violated an existing ceasefire with Israel to kill more than 1,160 people. The rescue mission carried out in central Gaza was a triumph for the Israeli military, which was forced to enter civilian areas to free the hostages. The Israeli military placed the casualty count from Saturday’s rescue mission at below 100 after it initiated a bombardment to kill off the Hamas terrorists shooting at the rescuers.

The courageous Israeli operation that resulted in the rescue of four Israeli hostages on June 8 has confirmed what many Israelis and Palestinians have known for some months: that Palestinian civilians were, and continue to be, complicit in the crimes carried out by the terrorist organization Hamas prior to October 7, 2023, and onward.

The four hostages, Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv, were abducted, together with more than 250 Israelis, during the Hamas-led attack — backed by Qatar and Iran — on Israel eight months ago.

“This is not a grassroots movement. This is an organized effort.”

That’s the professional opinion of Kelly Sundberg, tenured professor of criminology at Calgary’s Mount Royal University (MRU), when I ask him what’s behind the anti-Israel student encampments at post-secondary campuses across Canada.

If diplomats have groundhog days, when they are condemned to reliving the same 24 hours, perhaps Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, felt a certain weariness as his jet approached the Middle East on his latest trip.

It is his eighth diplomatic tour of the region in the eight months since the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October last year.

The politics of trying to negotiate an end to the war in Gaza and an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners were already complicated.

A Palestinian journalist was hiding Israeli hostages in his home for Hamas, Israel said on Sunday.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that Abdullah al-Jamal, who wrote for the Palestine Chronicle, a US-based non profit news website, was keeping Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomiz Siv captive in his family home.

The IDF stormed the home by ladder and killed Jamal, his father Dr Ahmed, and his wife, Fatima in the raid that freed the trio on Saturday.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says an Israeli raid on a refugee camp – which led to the rescue of four hostages – killed 274 people, including children and other civilians.

On Saturday Israel’s forces, backed by air strikes, fought intense gun battles with Hamas in and around the Nuseirat refugee camp, freeing the captives.

Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrei Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41, who were abducted from the Nova music festival on 7 October have been returned to Israel.

Convo Summary:

BBC: I won't congratulate you on the return of the hostages. Why didn't you warn the Palestinian civilians imprisoning hostages of the raid to save them?@jconricus: If you warn t3rrorists you're about to save hostages, hostages won't be alive when you arrive. pic.twitter.com/HzWKroOF0x

— dahlia kurtz ✡︎ דליה קורץ (@DahliaKurtz) June 9, 2024

h/t Mauser