Fox News senior foreign affairs correspondent Greg Palkot joined "Special Report" on Wednesday evening to provide the latest updates on the Israel-Hamas war.
Palkot reported that Israeli forces have moved into Khan Younis, the second largest city in Gaza. Previous reporting revealed Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar is believed to be in Khan Younis.
"The Israeli Defense Force[s] claim troops have encircled the home of the Gaza leader of Hamas and October 7th mastermind Yahya Sinwar," Palkot explained. "Israel also said to have uncovered in central Gaza the biggest Hamas weapons cache so far. Long-range rockets, anti-tank missiles, drones."
The correspondent also touched on American involvement in the war.
"The U.S. could be getting more involved here," Palkot said. "Attorney General Merrick Garland saying today that the Justice Department is investigating and may seek charges against Hamas members who killed 30 Americans on October 7th and kidnapped more."
The Israel Defense Forces said on X, formerly Twitter, that Hamas launched 12 rockets toward southern Israel on Wednesday.
In the post, the IDF asked the United Nations if it heard a "loud noise" and added a map showing the UN facility not far from the site where the rockets were launched.
"Hamas is the enemy of humanity and makes itself a threat to the entire world," the IDF wrote.
Thursday marks two months of war between Israel and Hamas since the terrorist group conducted its attack on the Jewish State on Oct. 7.
Fox News' Trey Yingst reports the latest from southern Israel in the video above.
Jewish and Israeli employees of the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok are beginning to speak out about what they say is an increasingly hostile and insecure work environment, including harassment, personal attacks and even boycotts, since Hamas carried out its massacre in Israel Oct. 7 and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza.
In interviews with Fox Business, Jewish employees said they have received little support from senior management since Hamas attacked Israel and believe the company has lost control over the app’s 40,000 moderators, who, they maintain, allow claims proven to be false and antisemitic and anti-Israel content to remain on the site based on their personal views with little fact-checking.
Jewish employees told Fox Business antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiments are expressed freely by other employees on the company’s internal chat system, Lark, which includes a recently created support group dedicated to the Palestinians but no such option for Israelis because the company considered it too political.
The company told employees to utilize an existing Jewish support group, even though not all Israelis are Jews and Hamas targeted both Jews and non-Jews. A spokesperson for TikTok said the company disputed these claims and said they "do not reflect the experience of the majority of our employees."
"TikTok has strong policies against discrimination and harassment in the workplace, and employees are encouraged to report their concerns – anonymously if they so choose," the spokesperson said. "Every incident is investigated by the appropriate internal team."
"Our CEO sent a message to all employees denouncing the attacks of Oct. 7, and the company published a statement on our website as well," the spokesperson added. "TikTok has had an internal group called MazalTok, to provide resources and a community for our Jewish and Israeli employees that has doubled in size since the start of the war.".
Read more on this exclusive report from Fox News' Ruth Marks Eglash here.
{{#rendered}}A left-wing professor emeritus at Harvard, Laurence Tribe, praised New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik for how she questioned Harvard president Claudine Gay about rampant calls for violence against Israel and Jewish people on campus.
Stefanik, a Harvard alumni herself, questioned Gay at a Committee on Education & the Workforce hearing on "Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism." Gay was specifically questioned about Harvard’s failure to condemn antisemitism and anti-Israeli rhetoric on campus after the October 7 terror attacks and ensuing war and protests that followed.
Stefanik shared a clip from the hearing that made news headlines, where she repeatedly asked Gay about whether calls for "genocide of Jews" on campus qualify as a violation of Harvard’s rules against bullying and harassment, as Gay repeatedly dodged.
Read the full article about Laurence Tribe by Alexander Hall
"The View" co-hosts Alyssa Farah Griffin and Sunny Hostin clashed on Wednesday while discussing the rise in antisemitism on college campuses and Ivy League university presidents being grilled by lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Hostin argued that Tuesday's congressional hearing on the rise in antisemitism on college campuses should have been about free speech. "The most hateful and heinous speech is the most protected speech," she said.
Co-host Sara Haines declared that college campuses "have not been good for free speech in years."
Read the full article on "The View" by Hanna Panreck
Democrat Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown on Tuesday reinstated a member of his state's hate crime task force who posted numerous antisemitic social media posts, including a claim that the babies murdered in the brutal Oct. 7 Hamas attack were "fake."
Zainab Chaudry, an anti-Israel activist who serves as the director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' (CAIR) Maryland office, was suspended from the Maryland Commission on Hate Crimes Response and Prevention on Nov. 21 after her posts surfaced.
"Upon further review, it was determined that the law establishing the Commission directs the Attorney General to appoint members to a 4-year fixed term but does not provide the Attorney General the authority to remove a Commissioner before the expiration of their term nor the authority to suspend a Commissioner during their term of service," Brown wrote in a press release.
Read the full article on Zainab Chaudry by Brandon Gillespie
{{#rendered}}Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter on Wednesday, a first during the high-ranking official's tenure.
Article 99 allows the Secretary-General to "bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.”
"Facing a severe risk of collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza, I urge the Council to help avert a humanitarian catastrophe & appeal for a humanitarian ceasefire to be declared," Guterres said in a statement.
Israel's Minister of Foreign Affairs Eli Cohen responded by saying that Guterres is "a danger to world peace."
"His request to activate Article 99 and the call for a cease fire in Gaza constitutes support of the Hamas terrorist organization and an endorsement of the murder of the elderly, the abduction of babies and the rape of women," Cohen wrote on X.
"Anyone who supports world peace must support the liberation of Gaza from Hamas," the Israeli official added.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The president of the University of Michigan said he has barred students from voting on two "controversial and divisive" resolutions related to the Israel-Hamas war.
"The proposed resolutions have done more to stoke fear, anger and animosity on our campus than they would ever accomplish as recommendations to the university," Santa Ono said in an online post Tuesday.
One pro-Palestinian resolution presented to student government asks the university to "recognize the millions of people undergoing genocide in Gaza" and to acknowledge "settler colonialism" there by Israel.
Read the full article on the University of Michigan by the Associated Press
Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., appeared on "America Reports" Wednesday to react to the rise of anti-Israel sentiment on Ivy League campuses.
During the interview with host Sandra Smith, Moskowitz said that the school presidents who did not check antisemitism on their campus are "a terrible example for their students."
Moskowitz focused on a soundbite where Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-NY, asked Harvard President Dr. Claudine Gay if calling for a genocide against Jews counted as bullying. Gay responded that it depended on the context.
"They are a terrible example for their students, and the boards of these schools should watch that hearing and decide if they should stay in their jobs," Moskowitz argued. "Because the idea, the idea that they came to Congress and made it worse, they made it worse."
"I expected them to come and be like, 'Listen, we were a little slow reacting. We're working on it now. Here are the steps,'" he continued. "But they actually made it worse and made Jews even more uncomfortable when they can't say advocating for the killing of Jews is harassment. "
{{#rendered}}Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on Wednesday said the University of Pennsylvania’s leadership has failed after its president did not unequivocally condemn anti-Jewish chants on campus as harassment.
Penn President Elizabeth Magill appeared Tuesday on Capitol Hill for a hearing on antisemitism on college campuses and was asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews violates the university's codes of conduct regarding bullying and harassment.
She told Congress that if the speech turned into conduct, it would be considered harassment, adding that it was a "context-dependent" situation that would constitute bullying and harassment if it was "directed," "pervasive" and "severe."
Shapiro, who is Jewish, told reporters that Magill’s comments were "unacceptable" and showed the university was under a "failed leadership," Jewish Insider correspondent Gabby Deutch reported on X.
Read the full article on Josh Shapiro by Stephen Sorace
Harvard President Dr. Claudine Gay issued a statement Wednesday clarifying the university had a staunch position against calls for violence against the Jewish community, after she seemed to equivocate on the issue while testifying before Congress a day earlier.
"There are some who have confused a right to free expression with the idea that Harvard will condone calls for violence against Jewish students. Let me be clear: Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account," Gay said in a statement posted to Harvard's X account.
Gay and the presidents of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Pennsylvania testified on Capitol Hill Tuesday about the rampant antisemitism on their campuses following Hamas' October 7 terror attacks on Israel. They came under sharp criticism and even some calls to resign under fierce Republican questioning about the rise of antisemitism, with observers saying their campuses had hardly been bastions of First Amendment freedom before their stated commitment to free speech on Tuesday.
Read the full article on Claudine Gay by Kendall Tietz
MSNBC sparked outrage among progressive viewers last month when it announced it was canceling far-left favorite Mehdi Hasan's program but assured them he would remain with the network as an on-air analyst and fill-in host.
However, his current on-air presence has completely diminished since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks against Israel, Fox News Digital has found. Critics railed against the move by MSNBC to pull the plug on his Sunday network and streaming program "The Mehdi Hasan Show," which will officially end in early January, as part of an overhaul by the network to revamp its struggling weekend lineup.
Many prominent figures including Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., called out the timing of the cancellation as Hasan has been an outspoken anti-Israel commentator on the network.
Read the full article about Mehdi Hasan by Joseph Wulfsohn
{{#rendered}}Amid rising anti-Israel sentiment at Ivy League universities like Harvard and Yale, some Jewish parents are pledging not to send their children there, and commentators like Bill Maher and Ben Shapiro are encouraging it.
This is misguided. The economic considerations of investing in an Ivy League education are valid, as families must weigh the financial burden against potential long-term benefits.
However, boycotting these institutions is counterproductive. If we remove Jewish voices, we will only intensify the one-sided narrative on Israel and Jewish issues. Instead of alleviating the problem, this approach amplifies the echo chamber.
Read the full opinion piece on Ivy League schools by Eli Federman
Artificial intelligence could help flag antisemitic and terrorist content online, one tech expert said, but only if social media companies prioritize fighting Jew hatred.
"Social media platforms are capable of investing in technologies when it affects their bottom line," CyberWell founder and CEO Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor said. "It's high time that we started demanding that they do it when it comes to violent content and to antisemitism online."
CyberWell is an Israeli nonprofit that created the first open database of online antisemitic content. It uses a host of open-source intelligence techniques and tools, including an AI dictionary Montemayor developed over the course of three years that monitors antisemitism in real time across social media platforms. Humans then review and vet the data to identify trends in online antisemitism, Montemayor told Fox News.
Read the full article about AI by Hannah Ray Lambert
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., accused a House Republican of sharing an "antisemitic" meme that suggested Congress has been snubbing "American patriotism."
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., posted a meme on X that depicts the rapper Drake representing "Congress these days" by gesturing away from the words "American patriotism" and then smiling next to the word, "Zionism," implying that American lawmakers as a whole prefer the latter over the former.
"Rep. Massie, you’re a sitting Member of Congress. This is antisemitic, disgusting, dangerous, and exactly the type of thing I was talking about in my Senate address. Take this down," Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in American history, wrote in response to Massie's post.
Read the full article about Chuck Schumer by Danielle Wallace
{{#rendered}}Progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., laid into Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s proposed $110 billion aid package in a letter to Senate colleagues on Tuesday night over funds allocated toward Israel in its ongoing war against Hamas.
"At a time when some 16,000 Palestinians have been killed in the last two months, two thirds of whom are women and children, and more than 40,000 have been injured… No, I do not think we should be appropriating $10.1 billion for the right-wing, extremist Netanyahu government to continue its current military strategy," Sanders wrote.
Senate Democrats unveiled the details of their $110 billion aid proposal earlier on Tuesday. It includes money for Ukraine, Israel, humanitarian aid for Gaza and elsewhere, and some funding for the U.S. border.
Read the full article about Bernie Sanders by Elizabeth Elkind
Billionaire and Harvard graduate Bill Ackman is demanding that the presidents of three prestigious universities "resign in disgrace" after they refused to say that calling for the genocide of Jews on their respective campuses breached their rules and amounted to harassment.
In a furious post on X, Ackman, the CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, blasted the presidents for failing to call out antisemitic protests that have taken place on their campuses since the Hamas Oct. 7 terrorist attacks and the subsequent onset of the Israel-Hamas war.
The presidents – Dr. Claudine Gay of Harvard, Liz Magill of UPenn, and Dr. Sally Kornbluth of MIT – were grilled Tuesday by Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., during a House committee hearing on the rise of antisemitism on college campuses with Ackman writing that their answers reflect the "profound educational, moral and ethical failures that pervade certain of our elite educational institutions due in large part to their failed leadership."
Stefanik, the House GOP chair, asked the presidents if they considered calls for a "global intifada" against Jews on campuses as tantamount to a call for violent armed resistance against the state of Israel and the genocide of Jews. She asked whether such rhetoric violated the code of conduct or rules regarding bullying or harassment at those institutions.
Read the full article by Fox Business' Michael Dorgan
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israeli forces have encircled the home of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar on Wednesday.
Netanyahu clarified that the IDF does not expect to find Sinwar in the complex, but said it is "only a matter of time" before the terrorist leader is found.
"Two short updates: Last night I said that our forces can reach anywhere in the Gaza Strip. Now they are encircling Sinwar's house. So his house is not his fortress, and he can escape, but it's only a matter of time before we get him," Netanyahu said.
"Secondly, we exert pressure to allow the Red Cross visits of our hostages. Further to that, today I spoke again with the president of the Red Cross and told her to turn to Qatar, which has been proven to have leverage on Hamas, and demand Red Cross visits to our hostages, and of course the supply of medicine for them," he added.
{{#rendered}}The presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and The University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) shocked and angered social media users with testimony given during a congressional hearing on antisemitism.
The school leaders arrived at Capitol Hill on Tuesday to answer questions about rising antisemitism on their campuses before the House Education and Workforce Committee.
During the hearing, MIT President Sally Kornbluth was asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews violates the private land-grant research university's codes of conduct regarding bullying and harassment.
"If targeting individuals, not making public statements," Kornbluth replied.
Barstool Sports owner and founder David Portnoy released a lengthy statement on the testimony to his website, admitting he "couldn't keep his mouth shut" after watching the video from Congress. He said the responses from the school left him "speechless" and "irate."
Read the full article by Fox News' Nicholas Lanum
Ivy League presidents testified before Congress Tuesday over antisemitism on their campuses, prompting outrage from some Jewish students who fear for their own safety on campus.
Harvard graduate student Shabbos Kestenbaum called out President Claudine Gay during "FOX & Friends First" on Wednesday after Gay declined to answer "yes" when asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews violates the university's code of conduct.
"This was a softball question of ‘do you condemn the rising rhetoric and violence against Jewish students?’ And none of them would condemn it," Kestenbaum told Todd Piro Wednesday. "If Claudine Gay had a heart, she would resign, and if the Harvard Board of Trustees had a brain, they would fire her."
"She's an absolute disgrace to this university," he continued. "She has let down Jewish students repeatedly, and Harvard is simply not a safe place for Jewish students anymore. There is a moral rot at the center of all of these Ivy League universities."
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., questioned Ivy League presidents on the surge of antisemitism on college campuses during a hearing on Capitol Hill Tuesday. She pressed them on whether the concerning trend violates the rules of the universities, but each of them insisted it would depend on the "context."
Read the full article by Fox News' Bailee Hill
A U.S. Navy vessel opened fire on and shot down a drone operated by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen on Wednesday.
The area has seen heigtened tensions in recent weeks as Iran proxies attack both U.S. Navy ships and international trading vessels. The U.S. has sought to prevent Israel's war against Hamas from spreading into a wider conflict. The USS Mason was operating in the Red Sea at the time of the incident.
“It was close enough that they made that judgment call," a source told Fox News Digital, saying it was not clear that the Mason was the target of an attack.
Fox News' Jennifer Griffin contributed to this report
{{#rendered}}Fox News' Greg Palkot reported from a staging area for Israeli forces near the Gaza border on Wednesday.
IDF troops are preparing for a further ground assault on Khan Younis, the second-most populous city in Gaza and the final stronghold in the region for Hamas. Palkot says Israeli artillery and airstrikes have thundered in Gaza throughout the day.
Interns at the White House are urging that President Biden push for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war, according to a letter shared with NBC News.
"The letter, first shared with NBC News and addressed to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, is supported by more than 40 interns who work in the White House and other executive branch offices, according to the text," the outlet reported.
"We, the undersigned Fall 2023 White House and Executive Office of the President interns, will no longer remain silent on the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people," the interns wrote, although none put their actual names on the letter.
"We are Palestinian, Jewish, Arab, Muslim, Christian, Black, Asian, Latine, White, and Queer. We heed the voices of the American people and call on the Administration to demand a permanent ceasefire," the letter continued. "We are not the decision makers of today, but we aspire to be the leaders of tomorrow, and we will never forget how the pleas of the American people have been heard and thus far, ignored."
The White House interns also wrote that they decided to work for the Biden administration believing in "shared values" and a nation of "justice and peace," but criticized the Israeli government for "ongoing violence" and "dehumanizing rhetoric targeting Muslims and Arabs."
Read the full article by Fox News' Jeffrey Clark
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza during a Wednesday phone call.
While Kishida did not accuse Israel of any wrongoding, his office said he expressed the importance of "calming" the situation in Gaza. Israel has shown no signs of slowing down its campaign against Hamas, however.
"Prime Minster Kishida stated continued growth in the number of civilian casualties should be avoided, and that it is important to calm the situation swiftly, minimize civilian casualties and observe international law including international humanitarian law," Japan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement on the call.
Reuters contributed to this report
{{#rendered}}UPenn student Eyal Yakoby joined 'America's Newsroom' to discuss President Liz Magill's refusal to say whether calling for the genocide of Jews violates the university's code of conduct.
Magill's refusal, along with peer officials at Harvard and MIT, shocked the nation on Tuesday. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., repeatedly asked the trio of administrators whether calling for "genocide" against Jewish people consituted bullying or harassment under their policies. All three officials said it would "depend" on the situation.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived in the Middle East, where he is meeting with the leaders of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia to shore up support from the major oil producers.
Putin, who has not visited the region since July 2022, is meeting for talks with President Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi. Despite relying on America for its security, ties between Russia and the UAE have tightened with the onset of the war as Russian investors have poured money into UAE real estate.
Putin is then due to travel to Saudi Arabia for his first face-to-face meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman since October 2019 to discuss oil production, OPEC+ and the war in the Gaza Strip, and the war with Ukraine.
The trip comes as Putin faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the war in Ukraine. The ICC has charged him with the unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia, but neither Saudi Arabia nor the UAE has signed the ICC founding treaty, meaning they do not face any obligation to detain Putin.
Read the full article by Fox News' Michael Dorgan
The top U.S. and Chinese diplomats agreed Wednesday to keep building on recent progress in bilateral ties and work together to keep the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza from spreading.
Both Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken referred in a telephone call to last month's closely watched meeting between the two countries' leaders in San Francisco following years of frigid ties.
"The important task for both sides at present is to continue the positive impact of the San Francisco meeting, implement the consensus reached by the two heads of state, and consolidate the momentum of stabilizing Sino-U.S. relations," Wang said, according to China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Blinken also emphasized that the two sides should build on progress at the summit, according to the U.S. State Department.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
{{#rendered}}A panel of voters joined 'Fox & Friends' to discuss their take on Trump's town hall with Sean Hannity in Iowa on Wednesday.
Voters said that with the war in Israel, combatting anti-semitism is likely to be a major issue in the 2024 presidential election as well as elections across the country. While support for Israel remains overwhelmingly bipartisan, the Democratic Party has a minority of radical progressives who have viciously criticized Israel, calling it an apartheid state and accusing the Israeli government of committing genocide.
The Israeli military says it has killed roughly half of Hamas' mid-level battalion commanders, greatly hampering the terrorist organization's ability to act cohesively in Gaza, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Israel said earlier this week that it has killed some 5,000 Hamas troops, but the terrorist groups' leaders remain alive. Those top targets are Yahya Sinwar, the terrorist' group's leader in Gaza, and Mohammed Deif, who leads the organization's militants. Israel says both leaders may be hiding in tunnels beneath the city of Khan Younis, WSJ reported.
Khan Younis is the second most populated city in Gaza, and it remains Hamas' final stronghold in the region as Israel continues to press its advance. Israel says 88 of its troops have been killed in the fighting since the ground invasion began.
A few hundred Jewish people on their way from Toronto to Ottawa for a pro-Israel protest were abandoned when over a dozen drivers did not show up, with protest organizers accusing the company responsible for driving the buses of antisemitism.
"We were shocked that, of more than 70 buses UJA booked, 17 did not show up," United Jewish Appeal (UJA) president and CEO Adam Minsky said in a statement on Tuesday. "Those 17 buses were the responsibility of a particular subcontracted company."
"Despite charging in full in advance and confirming its participation, the company did not send a single bus and has declined all communications while refusing to provide any explanation," Minsky explained.
"Given the absolute silence of the subcontractor and with no other explanation, we are driven to the view that this shameful decision is intended to disrupt our peaceful rally out of hatred toward Jews," he added, calling the act "sickening and outrageous" and promising to take legal action.
"Hate and discrimination against any community can never be tolerated in Canada," Minsky declared.
Read the full article by Fox News' Peter Aitken
{{#rendered}}Israeli forces released footage of a massive Hamas weapons stockpile uncovered near a medical clinic and school in southern Gaza on Wednesday.
Footage shows Israeli Defense Forces troops hauling away multiple large rockets on their shoulders. Dozens of RPGs, grenades, small arms and other equipment also littered the ground.
"The weapons were taken by Israeli forces, some were bombed in the field and some were sent for further investigation. All of the terrorist infrastructures were found near civilian buildings in the heart of a civilian population," IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a statement.
President Biden said Tuesday that Hamas had repeatedly raped women and mutilated their bodies during the Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel, citing accounts from survivors and witnesses to the attacks.
While at a political fundraiser in Boston, the president called on the world to condemn the "unimaginable cruelty" of Hamas' sexual violence "without exception."
"Reports of women raped — repeatedly raped — and their bodies being mutilated while still alive, of women's corpses being desecrated, Hamas terrorists inflicting as much pain and suffering on women and girls as possible and then murdering them. It is appalling," Biden said, according to Reuters.
Israeli police are investigating possible sexual crimes by some of the few hundred Hamas members that they arrested after the Oct. 7 attack. Israel's justice ministry said "victims were tortured, physically abused, raped, burned alive and dismembered."
In a statement on its Telegram channel, Hamas said it denounced Biden's "attempt to falsely accuse" its fighters of committing sexual violence and rape on Oct. 7.
The Palestinian terror group accused Biden and Israel of covering up war crimes in Gaza and spreading misinformation to sway public opinion.
Read the full article by Fox News' Chris Pandolfo
A Jewish-American columnist who is the descendant of Holocaust victims lambasted top women's groups for their silence against documented evidence of widespread rapes, dismemberment and torture of Israeli women by Palestinian Hamas terrorists.
Daniella Greenbaum Davis told FOX News she is outraged at the silence or countervailing comments from women's rights activists and those who proclaim to be part of the #MeToo movement or other liberal causes.
In one case cited by "The Story" anchor Martha MacCallum, a volunteer member of Israel's October 7 Response Team appeared shellshocked at a podium as he recounted some of the horrors he and his team viewed as they recovered bodies of those murdered by Hamas.
"Her body was brutal (sic) in a way that we cannot identify her from her head to toes. She was abused in a way that we could not understand and cannot deal with," said Simcha Greinman in public remarks.
MacCallum reported to Davis that the World Health Organization, Planned Parenthood, the Women's March group, and EMILY's List have all said little or nothing about the abuse and murder of women by Hamas.
Read the full article by Fox News' Charles Creitz
{{#rendered}}Israeli Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari issued a "call for action" to the international community Wednesday, saying that the International Red Cross must be allowed to visit the 138 hostages who remain in Hamas custody.
Hamas has so far refused to allow the Red Cross to visit the hostages, a contributing factor to the collapse of a cease-fire late last week.
"This is an urgent call for action. The international community must take action. The Red Cross must have access to the hostages that are in the hands of Hamas," Hagari said.
While Israel says there are still some 138 hostages in Hamas custody, the U.S. has warned that there is no way to know how many of those are still alive. Many hostages who have already been released have told stories of horrific treatment by their Hamas captors.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Tuesday that the Israeli military will maintain security control over Gaza long after the war against Hamas ends.
Netanyahu made the comments during a Tuesday press conference, potentially angering President Biden's administration. Biden has repeatedly stated that an Israeli occupation of Gaza would be a "mistake."
“No international force can be responsible for this,” Netanyahu told reporters. “I’m not ready to close my eyes and accept any other arrangement.”
Israel is quickly grinding down Hamas militarily, but the fate of the roughly 137 hostages still in Gaza remains uncertain.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
The Israeli Air Force struck approximately 250 Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip in the past day, the Israel Defense Forces said.
In addition to the IAF strikes, the IDF said troops on the ground are still locating weapons, tunnels, explosives and additional military infrastructure in Gaza. Troops are also directing fighter jets to strike terror targets once found.
"We also know they're targeting launching sites responsible for a number of rocket barrages that took place as recently as yesterday targeting Israel's second largest city of Tel Aviv," Fox News' Trey Yingst said from southern Israel Wednesday.
Fox News' Trey Yingst and Elizabeth Pritchett contributed to this report
{{#rendered}}A group of Israeli hostages told government officials about the physical and sexual abuse they endured in captivity in Gaza.
According to Haaretz, the hostages told Netanyahu's cabinet about being beaten and degraded by their Hamas captors.
"They touch girls, and everyone knows it," a female hostage said. "I won't recount details, but we had a procedure that no one moves without someone guarding them."
"Medications ran out, and they gave us the wrong drugs," she added.
Another ex-hostage told Israeli officials that male captives lived in worse conditions than female hostages.
Fox News Digital's Andrea Vacchiano contributed to this report.
Coverage for this event has ended.