Protesters are arrested and led away by law enforcement at Grand Central Terminal during a rally calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on October 27, 2023, in New York.
| Photo Credit: AP

Hundreds of protesters filled the main concourse of New York city’s famed Grand Central Terminal during the evening rush hour on October 27, chanting slogans and unfurling banners demanding a cease-fire as Israel intensified its bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Wearing black T-shirts and saying “Jews say cease-fire now” and “Not in our name,” at least 200 of the demonstrators were detained by New York Police Department (NYPD) officers and led out of the train station, their hands zip-tied behind their backs. The NYPD said the protesters were taken briefly into custody, issued summons and released, and that a more exact number of detentions would be available on October 28.

Some protesters hoisted banners as they scaled the stone ledges in front of leader boards listing departure times. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority asked commuters to use Penn Station as an alternative. After the sit-in was broken up by police, the remaining protesters spilled into the streets outside.

“Hundreds of Jews and friends are taking over Grand Central Station in a historic sit-in calling for a ceasefire,” advocacy group Jewish Voice for Peace said on social media.

The scene echoed last week’s sit-in on Capitol Hill in Washington, where Jewish advocacy groups, including Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now, poured into a congressional office building. More than 300 people were arrested for illegally demonstrating.

Israel stepped up airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Friday, knocking out internet and largely cutting off communication with the 2.3 million people inside the besieged Palestinian enclave. Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry says more than 7,300 people have been killed, more than 60% of them minors and women.

The Israeli military’s announcement it was “expanding” ground operations in the territory signalled it was moving closer to an all-out invasion of Gaza, where it has vowed to crush the ruling Hamas militant group after its bloody incursion in southern Israel three weeks ago. More than 1,400 people were slain in Israel during the attack, according to the Israeli government, and at least 229 hostages were taken into Gaza.

The U.N. General Assembly approved a nonbinding resolution calling for a “humanitarian truce” in Gaza leading to a cessation of hostilities. It was the first U.N. response to Hamas’ surprise October 7 attacks and Israel’s ongoing military response.

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees warned on October 25 that without immediate deliveries of fuel it will soon have to sharply cut back relief operations across the Gaza Strip, which has been blockaded and hit by devastating Israeli airstrikes since Hamas militants launched an attack on Israel more than two weeks ago.

The warning came as hospitals in Gaza struggled to treat masses of wounded with dwindling resources, and health officials in the Hamas-ruled territory said the death toll was soaring as Israeli jets continued striking the territory overnight into Wednesday.

The Israeli military said its strikes had killed militants and destroyed tunnels, command centres, weapons storehouses and other military targets, which it has accused Hamas of hiding among Gaza’s civilian population. Gaza-based militants have been launching unrelenting rocket barrages into Israel since the conflict started.

The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said the airstrikes killed at least 704 people between Monday and Tuesday, mostly women and children. The Associated Press could not independently verify the death tolls cited by Hamas, which says it tallies figures from hospital directors.

The death toll was unprecedented in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even greater loss of life could come when Israel launches an expected ground offensive aimed at crushing Hamas militants.

In Washington, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters the U.S. could not verify the one-day death toll. “The Ministry of Health is run by Hamas, and I think that all needs to be factored into anything that they put out publicly.”

Israel said on Tuesday it had launched 400 airstrikes over the past day, an increase from the 320 strikes the day before. The U.N. says about 1.4 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are now internally displaced, with almost 6,00,000 crowded into U.N. shelters.

Gaza’s residents have been running out of food, water and medicine since Israel sealed off the territory following the attack on southern Israel by Hamas, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction.

In recent days, Israel allowed a small number of trucks filled with aid to come over the border with Egypt but barred deliveries of fuel — needed to power hospital generators — to keep it out of Hamas’ hands.

The U.N. said it had managed to deliver some of the aid in recent days to hospitals treating the wounded. But the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, the largest provider of humanitarian services in Gaza, said it was running out of fuel.

Officials said they were forced to reduce their operations as they rationed what little fuel they had.

“Without fuel our trucks cannot go around to further places in the strip for distribution,” said Lily Esposito, a spokesperson for the agency. “We will have to make decisions on what activities we keep or not with little fuel.”

Meanwhile, more than half of Gaza’s primary healthcare facilities, and roughly a third of its hospitals, have stopped functioning, the World Health Organization said.

Overwhelmed hospital staff struggled to triage cases as constant waves of wounded were brought in. The Health Ministry said many wounded are laid on the ground without even simple medical aid and others wait for days for surgeries because there are so many critical cases.

The Health Ministry says more than 5,700 Palestinians have been killed in the war, including some 2,300 minors. The figure includes the disputed toll from an explosion at a hospital last week.

The fighting has killed more than 1,400 people in Israel — mostly civilians slain during the initial Hamas attack, according to the Israeli government. Hamas is also holding some 222 people that it captured and brought back to Gaza.

The conflict threatened to spread across the region, as Israeli airstrikes hit Syrian military sites in the south on Wednesday, killing eight soldiers and wounding seven, according to Syria’s state-run SANA news agency.

The Israeli military said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, its jets had struck Syrian military infrastructure and mortar systems in response to rocket launches from Syria.

Israel has launched several strikes on Syria in recent days, including strikes that put the Damascus and Aleppo airports out of service, in an apparent attempt to prevent arms shipments from Iran to militant groups, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Israel has been fighting the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah across the Lebanese border in recent weeks.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah met on Wednesday with top Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad officials in their first reported meeting since the war started. Such a meeting could signal coordination between the groups, as Hezbollah officials warned Israel against launching a ground offensive in Gaza.

Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Iran was helping Hamas, with intelligence and by “whipping up incitement against Israel across the world.” He said Iranian proxies were also operating against Israel from Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. Fighting also erupted in the West Bank, which has seen a major spike in violence.

Islamic Jihad militants said they fought with Israeli forces in Jenin overnight. The Palestinian Health Ministry in the West Bank said Israel killed four Palestinians in Jenin, including a 15-year-old, and two others in other towns. That brought the total number of those killed in the occupied West Bank since October 7 to 102.

Across central and south Gaza, where Israel told civilians to take shelter, there were multiple scenes of rescuers pulling the dead and wounded out of large piles of rubble from collapsed buildings. Graphic photos and video shot by the AP showed rescuers unearthing bodies of children from multiple ruins.

A father knelt on the floor of the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah next to the bodies of three lifeless children cocooned in bloodied sheets. Later, at the nearby morgue, workers prayed over 24 dead wrapped in body bags, several of them the size of small children.

“Buildings that collapsed on residents killed dozens at a time in several cases, witnesses said. Two families lost 47 members in a levelled home in Rafah,” the Health Ministry said.

In Gaza City, at least 19 people were killed when an airstrike hit the house of the Bahloul family, according to survivors, who said dozens more remained buried. The legs of a dead woman and another person, both still half buried, dangled out of the wreckage where workers dug through the dirt, concrete and rebar.

Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday that the proportionate response to the October 7 attack is “a total destruction” of the militants. “It is not only Israel’s right to destroy Hamas. It’s our duty,” he said.

On Wednesday, Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Gilad Erdan, said his country will stop issuing visas to U.N. personnel after U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that Hamas’ attack “did not happen in a vacuum.” It was unclear what the action, if followed through with, would mean for U.N. aid personnel working in Gaza and the West Bank.

“It’s time to teach them a lesson,” Erdan told Army Radio, accusing the U.N. chief of justifying a slaughter.

The U.N. chief told the Security Council on Tuesday that “the Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.” Mr. Guterres also said “the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”

Trucks carrying aid wait to exit, on the Palestinian side of the border with Egypt, as the conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas continues, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on October 21, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The border crossing between Egypt and Gaza opened on October 21 to let desperately needed aid flow to Palestinians for the first time since Israel sealed off the territory following Hamas’ bloody rampage two weeks ago.

Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, half of whom have fled their homes, are rationing food and drinking filthy water. Hospitals say they are running low on medical supplies and fuel for emergency generators amid a territory-wide power blackout. Israel has launched waves of airstrikes across Gaza that have failed to stem ongoing Palestinian rocket fire into Israel.

The opening came after more than a week of high-level diplomacy by various mediators, including visits to the region by U.S. President Joe Biden and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Israel had insisted that nothing would enter Gaza until some 200 people captured by Hamas were freed and the Palestinian side of the crossing had been shut down by Israeli airstrikes.

More than 200 trucks carrying roughly 3,000 tonnes of aid had been positioned near the crossing for days. But Egypt’s state-owned Al-Qahera news, which is close to security agencies, said just 20 trucks had crossed into Gaza on October 21. Hundreds of foreign passport holders also waited to cross from Gaza to Egypt to escape the conflict.

The Hamas-run government in Gaza said the limited convoy “will not be able to change the humanitarian catastrophe that Gaza is currently enduring,” calling for a secure corridor operating around the clock.

The opening came hours after Hamas released an American woman and her teenage daughter, the first captives to be freed after the militant group’s October 7 incursion into Israel. It was not immediately clear if there was any connection between the two.

Hamas released Judith Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter, Natalie, on Friday for what it said were humanitarian reasons in an agreement with Qatar, a Persian Gulf nation that has often served as a Mideast mediator.

“The two had been on a trip from their home in suburban Chicago to Israel to celebrate Jewish holidays,” the family said. They were in the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, near Gaza, when Hamas and other militants stormed into southern Israeli towns, killing hundreds and abducting 203 others.

Mr. Biden spoke with the two freed hostages and their relatives. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which transported the freed Americans to Israel, said their release was “a sliver of hope.”

Hamas said in a statement that it was working with mediators “to close the case” of hostages if security circumstances permit. The group said it is committed to mediation efforts by Egypt, Qatar and others.

There are growing expectations of a ground offensive that Israel says would be aimed at rooting out Hamas, an Islamic militant group that has ruled Gaza for 16 years. Israel said on Friday it does not plan to take long-term control over the small but densely-populated Palestinian territory.

Israel has also traded fire along its northern border with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, raising concerns about a second front opening up. The Israeli military said on Saturday it struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in response to recent rocket launches and attacks with anti-tank missiles.

Israel issued a travel warning on Saturday, ordering its citizens to leave Egypt and Jordan — which made peace with it decades ago — and to avoid travel to a number of Arab and Muslim countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Bahrain, which forged diplomatic ties with Israel in 2020. Protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza have erupted across the region.

A potential Israeli ground assault is likely to lead to a dramatic escalation in casualties on both sides in urban fighting. More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed in the war — mostly civilians slain during the Hamas incursion. Palestinian militants have continued to launch unrelenting rocket attacks into Israel — more than 6,900 projectiles since October 7, according to Israel.

More than 4,100 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry run by Hamas. That includes a disputed number of people who died in a hospital explosion earlier this week.

Speaking on Friday about Israel’s long-term plans for Gaza, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant laid out a three-stage plan that seemed to suggest Israel did not intend to reoccupy the territory it left in 2005.

First, Israeli airstrikes and “maneuvering” — a presumed reference to a ground attack — would aim to root out Hamas. Next will come a lower intensity fight to defeat remaining pockets of resistance. And, finally, a new “security regime” will be created in Gaza along with “the removal of Israel’s responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip,” Mr. Gallant said.

Mr. Gallant did not say who Israel expected to run Gaza if Hamas is toppled or what the new security regime would entail.

Israel occupied Gaza from 1967 until 2005, when it pulled up settlements and withdrew soldiers. Two years later, Hamas took over. Some Israelis blame the withdrawal from Gaza for the five wars and countless smaller exchanges of fire since then.

Over a million people have been displaced in Gaza. Many heeded Israel’s orders to evacuate from north to south within the sealed-off enclave on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. But Israel has continued to bomb areas in southern Gaza where Palestinians had been told to seek safety, and some appear to be going back to the north because of bombings and difficult living conditions in the south.

“Generators in Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, were operating at the lowest setting to conserve fuel while providing power to vital departments such as intensive care, hospital director Mohammed Abu Selmia said. Others worked in darkness. The lack of medical supplies and water make it difficult to treat the mass of victims from the Israeli strikes,” he said.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said it had received a threat from the Israeli military to bomb Al-Quds Hospital. It said Israel has demanded the immediate evacuation of the Gaza City hospital, which has more than 400 patients and thousands of displaced civilians who sought refuge on its grounds.

It was not clear if there was an agreement for generator fuel to be brought in through Rafah.

U.S. President Joe Biden. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

President Joe Biden said on October 20 he thought Hamas was motivated to attack Israel in part by a desire to stop that country from normalising relations with Saudi Arabia.

“One of the reasons … why Hamas moved on Israel, is because they knew I was about to sit down with the Saudis,” Mr. Biden said at a campaign fundraiser. The U.S. President indicated that he thinks Hamas militants launched a deadly assault on October 7 because, “Guess what? The Saudis wanted to recognise Israel” and were near being able to formally do so.

Israel-Hamas war, Day 15 LIVE updates | Biden says Hamas attacked Israel to stop historic agreement with Saudi Arabia

Jerusalem and Riyadh had been steadily inching closer to normalisation, with Mr. Biden working to help bring the two countries together, announcing plans in September at the Group of 20 summit in India to partner on a shipping corridor.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Mr. Biden on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in September and told him, “I think that under your leadership, Mr. President, we can forge a historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia.”

The Saudis had been insisting on protections and expanded rights for Palestinian interests as part of any broader agreement with Israel. An agreement would have been a feat of diplomacy that could have enabled broader recognition of Israel by other Arab and Muslim-majority nations that have largely opposed Israel since its creation 75 years ago in territory where Palestinians have long resided.

But talks were interrupted after Hamas militants stormed from the blockaded Gaza Strip where Palestinians live into nearby Israeli towns.

The October 7 attack coincided with a major Jewish holiday. It led to retaliatory airstrikes by Israel that have left the world on edge with the U.S. trying to keep the war from widening, as 1,400 Israelis and 4,137 Palestinians have been killed. Hamas also captured more than 200 people as hostages after the initial assault.

The normalisation push began under former President Donald Trump’s administration and was branded as the Abraham Accords. It is an ambitious effort to reshape the region and boost Israel’s standing in historic ways. But critics have warned that it skips past Palestinian demands for statehood.

What are Israel’s options after the Hamas attack? | Analysis

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said soon after the Hamas attacks that the militant group’s leadership may have been driven in part by a desire to scuttle the United States’ efforts at the sealing of diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Such a pact between Jerusalem and Riyadh would be a legacy-defining achievement for Joe Biden, Mr. Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Judith Tai Raanan and her daughter Natalie Shoshana Raanan, U.S. citizens who were taken as hostages by Palestinian Hamas militants, after they were released by the militants, on October 20, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Gaza’s Hamas rulers released two Americans on Friday among some 200 hostages they abducted in October 7 attacks in Israel and indicated that more could follow.

Judith Tai Raanan and her daughter Natalie Shoshana Raanan were back in Israel late Friday, the Israeli government said.

No details were given on their condition but U.S. President Joe Biden quickly said he was “overjoyed” at the news.

Hamas said it was working with Qatar and Egypt to free its “civilian” hostages, in a sign that more releases could follow.

The pair were met at the Gaza border by an Israeli envoy and the two women were taken to a military base in central Israel “where their families are waiting to meet them”.

The American mother and daughter were seized from the Nahal Oz kibbutz near the Israel-Gaza border on October 7. They were reportedly on holiday in Israel at the time.

Follow Israel-Hamas war, Day 14 LIVE updates here

The Ranaan family, like those of many of the hostages, had launched an international campaign to press for efforts to bring them out of Gaza.

Hamas said that following approaches by Qatar and Egypt “(Ezzedine) al-Qassam Brigades released two American citizens for humanitarian reasons.”

‘Sliver of hope’

Gaza’s Islamist rulers said they were “working with all mediators to implement the movement’s decision to close the civilian (hostage) file if appropriate security conditions allow.” It gave no details of its demands.

Israel says 203 people — Israelis, dual nationals and foreigners — were abducted by Hamas gunmen when they launched the deadliest attacks in Israel’s 75-year history. At least 1,400 people were killed, mostly civilians, according to the government.

Israel has responded with a relentless bombing campaign against the Gaza Strip that has left at least 4,137 people dead, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas administration.

The hostages have become a major issue in Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the government would use “any means available to locate all those missing and bring home all the kidnapped.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it helped transport the freed Americans to Israel.

Its president Mirjana Spoljaric said their release provided a “sliver of hope” for the families of other hostages and called on all sides in the conflict to show “a minimum of humanity”.

The release came two days after Mr. Biden made a solidarity visit to Israel to offer support over the attack.

Also read | Israel military confirms 199 hostages abducted by Hamas

“Our fellow citizens have endured a terrible ordeal these past 14 days, and I am overjoyed that they will soon be reunited with their family, who has been wracked with fear,” he said in a statement.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for more releases “immediately and unconditionally”.

Qatar is a major donor of aid to Gaza and two Hamas leaders are based in the Gulf state. A Qatari foreign ministry spokesman said the country had mediated between Hamas and the United States and that the release followed “many days of continuous communication between all the parties involved.

“We will continue our dialogue with both the Israelis and Hamas, and we hope these efforts will lead to the release of all civilian hostages from every nationality, with the ultimate aim of de-escalating the current crisis and restoring peace,” said the spokesman, Majid al-Ansari.

The Israeli military said earlier Friday that most of those abducted to Gaza were still alive even though some dead bodies have been found on incursions into Gaza.

The military said more than 20 hostages were minors, while between 10 and 20 were over the age of 60.

There are also between 100 and 200 people considered missing since the Hamas attacks, the army added.

The logo for Meta (R) (formerly Facebook) and the Google logo.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Meta and Google have pulled out of the Web Summit, one of the tech sector’s biggest annual events, after the organizer criticized Israel’s actions following the Hamas attacks, the companies said on Friday.

A spokesman for Meta confirmed to AFP that it would not take part in this year’s event, with Google telling the Irish Independent that it too would not be making the trip to Lisbon.

Irish entrepreneur Paddy Cosgrave, co-founder of the Web Summit, wrote on social media platform X last week that he was “shocked at the rhetoric and actions of so many Western leaders & governments.”

“War crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies, and should be called out for what they are,” Mr. Cosgrave wrote on October 13.

Hamas militants stormed into Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, and killed at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians who were shot, mutilated or burnt to death on the first day of the raid, according to Israeli officials.

Follow Israel-Hamas war, Day 14 LIVE updates here

Israel says around 1,500 Hamas fighters were killed in clashes before its army regained control of the area under attack.

More than 3,700 Palestinians, mainly civilians, have been killed across the Gaza Strip in relentless Israeli bombardments in retaliation for the attacks by the Palestinian Islamist militant group, according to the latest toll from the Hamas health ministry in Gaza.

The boycott by Meta and Google follows other exits by companies and tech figures, including Intel, Siemens and U.S. comedian Amy Poehler and X-files actor Gillian Anderson.

The Web Summit is due to host some 2,300 startups and more than 70,000 people on November 13-16 in Lisbon.

Silicon Valley figure Garry Tan, of start-up backer Y-Combinator, initially kicked off the boycott and other big names in the industry quickly followed.

Mr. Cosgrave issued an apology on Tuesday.

Also read | Misinformation spirals out of control on X amid Israel-Hamas war

“I understand that what I said, the timing of what I said, and the way it has been presented has caused profound hurt to many. To anyone who was hurt by my words, I apologise deeply,” he said.

“What is needed at this time is compassion, and I did not convey that,” the statement said.

Mr. Cosgrave said he “unreservedly” condemns Hamas’ “evil, disgusting and monstrous” attack on Israel and “unequivocally” supports Israel’s “right to exist and to defend itself.”

He also said that Israel should adhere to the Geneva Conventions, “i.e., not commit war crimes.”

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks to the press onboard of Air Force One en route from Israel, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, on October 18, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday said Egypt’s president has agreed to open a border crossing into Gaza to allow in 20 trucks with humanitarian aid.

Mr. Biden said he spoke with Egypt President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi after his visit to Israel, where leaders there agreed to allow the aid in.

Israel sealed off the Gaza Strip, stopping all entry of food, water, medicine, and fuel to its 2.3 million people following the Hamas attack on October 7.

White House officials said the aid would flow in the coming days. Mr. Biden said if Hamas confiscates the aid, “it will end”.

Modiin, Israel:

Yaakov Weissmann survived the horrors of the Holocaust by hiding with a non-Jewish family in France when he was just four years old during World War II.

Now 83, he survived the October 7 attack in Israel by Hamas gunmen that has drawn comparisons to Nazi atrocities for its brutality.

Yaakov Weissmann’s village Netiv Haassara is just 500 metres (1,600 feet) from the border with the Gaza Strip, from where Hamas Islamists under the cover of a hail of missiles, marched into Israel, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians.

Israel has declared war on Hamas, pounding Gaza incessantly since with air strikes that the densely populated enclave’s authorities said killed 2,750 people, most of them ordinary Palestinians.

Yaakov Weissmann heard rockets go off at around 6:00 am that Saturday, which was also the Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest.

“Rockets, rockets and booms. Well it’s not the first time,” said Yaakov Weissmann, whose village of 800 inhabitants is used to projectiles aimed by armed Palestinian groups at Israel.

Pistol in hand, he and his wife followed the drill to get into his fortified shelter — something that every home in the area is equipped with, securing the door and window within 15 seconds.

“Then I heard, with my wife, we heard machine gun fire. When we heard this, we know there has been an infiltration of enemy forces,” he said.

A deep sadness came over him, he said, “because as soon as there is gunfire, I know there are deaths”.

When he came out of the shelter, he found to his great relief that all 23 of his descendants — children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren — who live in the village were alive.

Anger

Twenty people in Netiv Haassara were killed, including many whom Mr Weissmann knew personally.

Five of them died with weapons in their hands. They were security volunteers, said Weissmann, who believes they had helped to prevent further bloodshed.

As the day went on, the scale and the horror of the attack became clear.

In the worst-hit villages, entire families, including babies, were killed in their homes, some of which were also set on fire.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the attacks were “savagery never seen since the Holocaust”.

US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said the Hamas fighters took “evil to another level” from Islamic State jihadists.

Ten days on, Mr Weissmann said the overwhelming emotion for him beyond sadness is “anger, because, how did our famous army get caught off guard?”

Born in France in 1940, Mr Weissmann said the attack had revived memories of his childhood hiding from the Nazis.

His Polish parents fled pogroms to move to France in 1933 but his father was arrested by Nazi-allied French militia in 1944.

He was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where 1.1 million people, most of them Jews, were killed.

A non-Jewish family took him and his sister in a village near the southeastern city of Lyon, pretending they were their nephew and niece on a visit.

After the war, Mr Weissmann moved to Israel, where he first lived close to the Jordanian border before resettling in Netiv Haassara, a farming village in the Sinai Peninsula after it was seized by Israel from Egypt during the 1967 six-day war.

But the village was evacuated in 1982 under the framework of a peace deal which returned control of the peninsula to Egypt.

It was then displaced to its current location close to the Gaza Strip, conserving its name.

‘Eradicate them’

At 83, Yaakov Weissmann has been displaced again — this time to a retirement home in central Israel’s Modiin.

Inhabitants of villages close to Gaza have mostly vacated their homes in recent days as Israeli troops massed in preparation for a ground invasion.

“I don’t want revenge, but I want the people responsible to pay,” said Yaakov Weissmann, adding that for him, “not only is Hamas at fault, but those Gaza” who “jumped in joy and distributed sweets” when the gunmen were carrying out their attack.

His greatest revenge against the Nazis was simply having stayed alive and built a family.

“You wanted to exterminate us, well, I had children and grandchildren and we keep on living,” he said, adding that he uses the compensation Germany pays him as a Holocaust survivor to take the family on vacation.

What he wants for Hamas is to “eradicate them from the map”.

Israel’s vow to “destroy” Hamas must be met, he said, adding: “Then I will calm down.”

After that, he says without hesitation that he plans to return to Netiv Haassara.

“But I can understand that my daughters may not want that,” he conceded.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Retired US General David Petraeus, who commanded America’s wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, condemned Hamas’ attack on Israel, calling it ”far worse than 9/11.” ”This is the equivalent of the US having experienced over 40,000 losses, rather than the 3,000 terrible losses that we sustained in the attacks of 9/11,” Mr Petraeus told CBS News.

Mr Petraeus, who also once served as director of the CIA, warned Israel to think carefully about its upcoming actions as it plans to invade Gaza. 

”This is going to be a very, very tough fight. I almost can’t imagine a more challenging contextual set of circumstances here than what they face. There are tunnels; there will be rooms that will have improvised explosive devices. You have to clear every building, every floor, every room, every basement, every tunnel. Civilian losses are inevitable, and tough Israeli losses lie ahead as well,” he added. 

He further expressed shock at how both Israeli and American intelligence were not aware of what was being planned. 

”This is a very substantial operation, and the planning of it alone would have been very considerable; then, the training and equipping and positioning of forces, then the actual conduct of it. That all of that could take place and not spark much increased military readiness is really quite stunning,” he said. 

When asked what the outcome of the war would be, Mr. Petraeus said, ”If the mission to the Israeli military is to destroy Hamas, if you have to destroy every headquarters, if you have to capture or kill the bulk of the leaders, if you have to do the same with the bulk of these terrorist fighters, the question is then, what do you do with Gaza once you retake it. You can’t walk away from Gaza.”

Previously, the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations also called it an “unprecedented” escalation and compared it with the 9/11 terror attack. The diplomat explained that because Israel’s population is smaller than the United States, the amount of casualties is proportional to the lives lost on 9/11.

”This is our 9/11. We are committed to changing the equation, to shatter the old paradigm. These animals will pay a heavy price and they will learn that these atrocities cannot be committed again against our civilians,” he added. 

Notably, the 9/11 attacks in 2001 on one of the then-iconic sites in New York, the World Trade Center,  were the deadliest attacks on US soil since the Pearl Harbour bombing. On September 11, 2001, planes crashed into New York City’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and a field in Pennsylvania. The terror attacks claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people and injured countless others. 

Tens of thousands of Muslims demonstrated on October 13 across the Middle East in support of the Palestinians and against the intensifying Israeli bombardment of Gaza, underscoring the risk of a wider regional conflict as Israel prepares for a possible ground invasion.

Follow Israel-Hamas war, day 7 LIVE updates here

From the typically sedate streets of downtown Amman in Jordan, to Yemen’s war-scarred capital of Sanaa, crowds of Muslim worshippers poured into the streets after weekly Friday prayers, angered by devastating Israeli airstrikes on Gaza that began after the militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented surprise attack on Israel last Saturday.

At the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City, Israeli police were permitting only certain older men, women and children to enter the sprawling hilltop compound for prayers, trying to limit the potential for violence. Only 5,000 worshippers made it into the site, the Islamic endowment that manages the mosque said. On a typical Friday, some 50,000 perform the prayers.

An Associated Press reporter watched police allow just a Palestinian teenage girl and her mother into the compound out of 20 worshippers who tried to get in, some of them even over the age of 50. Young Palestinian men who were refused entry gathered at the steps near Lion’s Gate, eyes downcast, until police shouted at them and shepherded them outside the Old City ramparts altogether.

“We can’t live, we can’t breathe, they are killing everything that is good within us,” said Ahmad Barbour, a 57 year-old cleaner, red-faced and seething after police blocked him from entering for prayers.

“Everything that is forbidden to us is allowed to them,” he added, referring to the Israelis.

The mosque sits in a hilltop compound sacred to both Jews and Muslims, and conflicting claims over it have spilled into violence before. Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third-holiest site in Islam and stands in a spot known to Jews as the Temple Mount, which is the holiest site in Judaism.

Also read | Palestinians rush to buy food, struggle under strikes as Israel readies possible ground operation

Hundreds of young Palestinian worshippers who had been turned away from the Old City threw down small prayer rugs on the street in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Wadi Joz and prayed in the open. When some of the men started shouting, Israeli police charged into the crowd with batons and fired rounds of tear gas at the worshippers, wounding at least six people, said the Palestinian Red Crescent.

Thousands demonstrated in Amman in neighboring Jordan, some crying out: “We are going to Jerusalem as millions of martyrs!”

“What do they want from Palestine? Do they expect them to leave?” asked protester Omar Abu-Sundos. “For what remains of Palestine to leave? They won’t leave.”

In Beirut, thousands of supporters of Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group waved Lebanese, Palestinian and Hezbollah flags, chanting slogans in support of Gaza and calling for “death to Israel.” The Iranian-backed militant group in neighboring Lebanon has launched sporadic attacks since the Hamas assault, but largely stayed on the sidelines of the war.

However, Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general warned that it would be “on the lookout” for the United States and British naval vessels heading to the Mediterranean Sea. U.S. officials, including President Joe Biden, have repeatedly warned Iran and the regional militias Tehran backs to stay out of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

“Your battleships do not interest us, nor do your statements frighten us,” Naim Kassim said at a rally in a southern suburb of Beirut. “When the time is right to take action, we will do so.”

In Baghdad, tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Tahrir Square — the protest hub of Iraq’s capital — for rallies called by the influential Shiite cleric and political leader Muqtada al-Sadr.

“We, as Iraqis, know the pain of having an occupier on our land,” said protester Alaa al-Arabyia, referring to the U.S. occupation of Iraq following its 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. “Palestinian women have husbands, loved ones and sons fighting the occupation. We stand with them in their struggle.”

Across Iran, a supporter of Hamas and Israel’s regional archenemy, demonstrators also streamed into the streets after prayers. In Tehran, they burned Israeli and American flags, chanting: “Death to Israel,” “Death to America,” “Israel will be doomed,” and “Palestine will be the conqueror.”

“The Palestinian people are fed up, now your idea is to destroy Gaza, the houses of the people,” Iran’s hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi said in a speech in the country’s southern Fars province. “The people of the world and Palestine will cause trouble for you.”

In the Syrian capital of Damascus, protesters — including Palestinians from the Yarmouk refugee camp formed after the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation — also rallied.

“I tell the people not to leave their homes otherwise they will be like our grandparents who left Palestine and came to Syria but never returned,” Ahmad Saeed, a 23-year-old Palestinian living in Syria, said, referring to the 1948 war.

In Yemen’s Sanaa, held by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels still at war with a Saudi-led coalition, demonstrators crowded the streets waving Yemeni and Palestinian flags. The rebels’ slogan long has been: “God is the greatest; death to America; death to Israel; curse of the Jews; victory to Islam.”

“We are ready to participate actively and send hundreds of thousands of mujahedeen … .to defend Palestine, the Palestinian people and the holy sites,” the Houthi government said in a statement Friday.

After Friday prayers, Egyptian demonstrators ringed the historic Al-Azhar Mosque in downtown Cairo, the Sunni Muslim world’s foremost religious institution, chanting that Israel remained their enemy “generation after generation.” They repeated the traditionally nationalistic slogan, “We give our souls and blood to Al-Aqsa.”

In Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad, some worshippers trampled on American and Israeli flags.

“International media and international courts turn a blind eye to the injustices with the Palestinians. But they only notice the actions that the Palestinians take to defend themselves,” said Faheem Ahmed, a worshipper in Karachi. “They call it terrorism.”