Shlomi Eldar, an Israeli journalist, told the interviewer that hospital staff supporting Hamas should not be surprising because most of the doctors and nurses were appointed by Hamas.

Former hostage Judith Raanan said in an interview with the US-based network NewsNation on Wednesday that hospital staff cheered as Hamas brought them in.

Judith and her daughter Natalie were kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 from Kibbutz Nahal Oz. They live in the United States but had come to Israel to celebrate Judith's mother, Tamar's, 85th birthday.

In her first interview since her release, she described to the host the immediate moments after capture.
"The minute we came in, all the nurses were standing there and going like this [mimics ululation]... They were all so happy that they came back with prey, with Israeli, Jewish prey. Although I told them that I'm an American."

Israeli Arab Ali Ziadna, who has family members held hostage in Gaza, confronted Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour on Monday after the UNSC debate on sexual violence committed by Hamas, and criticized him for allowing his family members and other fellow Muslims to wallow in Hamas captivity, according to a video posted on X.

Ziadna was part of a delegation of family members of hostages in Gaza, that accompanied Foreign Minister Israel Katz and Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan to a UNSC debate over the recently submitted UN report on sexual violence committed by Hamas on October 7.

The debate was held in the UN building in Manhattan, which can be seen in the background of the video.

The dialogue between the two is in Arabic, however, multiple accounts on X have posted the video with roughly similar translations of what was being said.

Ziadna told Mansour, "Why did they kidnap my family? What crime did they commit that Hamas kidnapped them? They have been in the tunnels for 5 months, and for what? On what basis? They returned the Thai workers without a deal and the Muslims who are like me and you are left in the tunnels hungry, in pain, and naked...".

Designate Hamas as a terror organization and do more to pressure it to release the remaining 134 hostages, Foreign Minister Israel Katz told the 15-member body during its Monday debate on the sexual violence committed by Palestinians during the October 7 attack against the Jewish state. “For too long the UN has been silent on Hamas actions,” Katz said.

During the five months that have passed since the attack, the “UN never condemned nor disapproved these Hamas brutal crimes,” he said. Nor in that time has the UN recognized Hamas as a terror organization, he added. “Hamas crimes are even worse than the terror actions carried out by al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other terror organizations that were sanctioned by the UN,” he explained.

“Many countries have declared Hamas as a terror organization including the US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Paraguay, New Zealand, the UK, the EU, and others,” but the UN has not taken similar steps. “Hamas must be declared as a terrorist organization and face the heaviest sanctions possible,” he said.

--snip--

Although these were “crimes against humanity,” the UN has not considered this attack an “act of war.”

The Mossad spy agency said Saturday that the Hamas terror group prefers an escalation of violence during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan to a hostage deal, adding that Mossad chief David Barnea met CIA Director Bill Burns this weekend as part of efforts by mediators to reach a temporary truce.

In the rare statement, carried by the Prime Minister’s Office, the Mossad said Barnea met on Friday with his American counterpart, “as part of the ceaseless effort to advance another deal for the return of the hostages.” The meeting reportedly took place in Amman, Jordan.

“At this stage, Hamas is fortifying its position as if it is not interested in a deal, and it strives to ignite the region during Ramadan at the expense of the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip,” the Mossad said.

The Mossad added that “the talks and cooperation with the mediators continue all the time in an attempt to narrow the gaps and advance agreements.”

The Wall Street Journal published an interview with Senior Hamas official Husam Badran on Saturday, discussing Hamas's hard-line stance of only agreeing to a permanent ceasefire and shedding light on details of the negotiation process that are lesser known to the public.

Badran begins the interview by claiming that Hamas is still willing to negotiate a ceasefire deal, saying claims of Hamas disinterest come from Israel and America. “We didn’t declare negotiations have been stopped. We are the party most keen to stop this war,” he said.

According to Egyptian and Hamas officials, Qatar has threatened to expel Hamas officially from their base in Doha if they don't come to an agreement, but Badran denied this claim.

--snip--

Arab and Israeli officials said that they fear that Sinwar is deliberately undermining the talks in the hope that Ramadan will galvanize popular Arab support for Hamas and that there will be an escalation of tensions in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Hamas official Basem Naim said on Monday to AFP that the terror group did not know which of the hostages were dead or alive.

Basem also added that the hostages were held by many terror groups in different locations in the Gaza Strip.

According to Basem, a ceasefire is necessary for Hamas to ascertain how many and which hostages it is still holding.

The same Hamas official, in an interview with the BBC, said that the hostages "are in different areas with different groups" and Hamas "have asked for a ceasefire to collect that data [on which hostages are alive and where.]"

Continuing the BBC interview, Naim asserted that information relating to the hostages was "valuable" and could not be given "for free."

Israel's permanent representative to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, said the Middle Eastern country was "working to provide Ukraine with early warning systems" in a speech on Wednesday.

Such systems would help "save civilian lives from Russia's indiscriminate missile and drone attacks," Erdan said.

A spokesperson for Israel's foreign ministry told Business Insider that the system was "not Iron Dome," Israel's most advanced air defense system. Rather, it would be an "alarm system" that would help "get people into shelters." It would likely be very similar to Israel's Tzeva Adom radar system, the spokesperson told BI.

--snip--

Erdan referred to Ukraine as Israel's "allies" and "friends in need." Both countries are "fighting a battle for our survival," he said, adding that "the state of Israel has always and will continue to remain committed to Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity."

Chair of urban warfare studies at West Point, John Spencer, published an in-depth analysis of Hamas's unprecedented sub-terranean tunnel network, and the measures taken by the IDF to effectively neutralize it, based on his two visits to Israel, which he shared on X on Friday.

Based on now two visits to Israel/Gaza since the war began, Israel and the IDF have destroyed Hamas’s strategy at every turn from tunnels to historic civilian harm mitigation steps while methodically and rapidly clearing every inch of Hamas territory. @GAvrilingi “Hamas’s…
— John Spencer (@SpencerGuard) March 1, 2024

--snip--

He then noted the immense investment Hamas has made in constructing these tunnels, which he believes may have cost the organization up to a billion dollars over fifteen years.

According to Spencer, Hamas's strategy is not centered on territorial gains or defeating their enemy militarily, like most combatting forces, but on leveraging time (the second pillar of Hamas's strategy) as a political tool. By prolonging the conflict and garnering international attention through the use of human shields and allegations of war crimes, he argues that Hamas seeks to exert pressure on Israel rather than gain the previously mentioned incentives.

This makes the case study of Hamas as the first one to use tunnels politically rather than just militarily, according to him.

Fatah Official Yasser Aby Sido appeared on Egypt’s Sada Al-Balad TV on February 23, where he claimed that the Holocaust was a necessary action because the “Jews planned to control Germany," according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Sido began the interview by commenting on international condemnations of a potential IDF military operation in Rafah, comparing it to the Holocaust.

--snip--

“The Jews and the Zionists were offered various places in the world - in Argentina, in Uganda, in the north of Sinai, in the south of Iraq- but they chose Palestine for other reasons we may mention later.

“They planned to take over Germany. They started to bring down Germany in terms of the economy and moral values. Hitler reacted by making the Jews go on the streets and lick the sidewalks. They know this very well. Kristallnacht [the night of broken glass] is well known in Jewish history, but so is the Night of the Long Knives, when Jews were ordered to put Stars of Davids on their breasts, and they were called ‘filthy Jews.’

“Let me say this loud and clear - the Jews distorted many verses in the Torah in order to make them more agreeable for them. I do not want to cite examples because some might consider me an antisemite, although it is us Arabs who are Semites - not them.”