IDF soldier killed as Israel begins ground invasion into Gaza
(JNS.org) Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Nahal Brigade Staff Sgt. Eitan Barak, 20, was killed as Israel on Thursday began a ground operation in Gaza with the goal of eliminating the threat of terror tunnels.
“We cannot solve the issue of the tunnels from the air alone and therefore our troops are doing so on the ground,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters on Friday.
Hamas fired more than 100 rockets at Israel on Thursday after a five-hour humanitarian cease-fire ended at 3 p.m. In advance of its ground operation, the IDF warned the citizens of Gaza to evacuate their homes by dropping 100,000 leaflets over the area and leaving recorded phone messages for hundreds of thousands of civilians.
“The IDF has outstanding ethics,” Netanyahu said. “We do not seek to harm so much as one innocent person, we only operate against terror targets, and we lament any harm that erroneously comes to civilians. Those responsible for civilian deaths are those who attack our civilians while using their own as human shields.”
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Egypt slams Hamas for rejecting cease-fire, blames terror group for Palestinian deaths
(JNS.org) Egypt’s foreign minister slammed Hamas for rejecting an Egyptian cease-fire proposal and laid the blame on the terror group for the recent deaths of Palestinians.
“Had Hamas accepted the Egyptian proposal, it could have saved the lives of at least 40 Palestinians,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri said, the Egyptian state-run news outletMENA reported.
The statement by Egypt’s foreign minister comes as Israel has launched a ground invasion into Gaza to destroy Hamas’s tunnel system, which the terror group has used to fire rockets at the Jewish state and to infiltrate the country.
Meanwhile, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday, with both officials reiterating their calls for an immediate cease-fire, Ahram News reported.
A top-level Israeli delegation was also in Egypt for talks about a Gaza cease-fire. The delegation headed by Shin Bet Chief Yoram Cohen includes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s envoy, Isaac Molho, and the head of the Israeli Defense Ministry’s political-security department, Amos Gilad.
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20 rockets found at U.N.-run school in Gaza
(JNS.org) A cache of 20 hidden rockets was found in a U.N.-run school in Gaza on Wednesday.
The school is operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which said in a statement that the rockets were found in “the course of the regular inspection of its premises.” Although the school was vacant at the time, UNRWA stressed that it “strongly condemns the group or groups responsible for placing the weapons in one of its installations.”
“This is a flagrant violation of the inviolability of its premises under international law,” said UNRWA.
This incident was “the first of its kind in Gaza,” UNRWA said, and “endangered civilians including staff and put at risk UNRWA’s vital mission to assist and protect Palestinian refugees in Gaza.”
Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Ron Prosor said, “This [incident] proves that there is no line Hamas won’t cross. Using [Palestinian] children as a propaganda tool is losing us the next generation, which is the future leadership [in Gaza].”
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Five abducted Iraqi Christians released
(JNS.org) Five Iraqi Christians, including two nuns and three orphaned children, were released this week after being abducted in the city of Mosul by Islamic terrorists in late June, according to the charity organization Middle East Concern.
The nuns and children went missing around the same time that jihadists from the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) terror group were shelling and attacking the Christian villages near and outside of Mosul, which forced more than 40,000 Christians to flee.
The nuns, Sister Miskintah and Sister Utoor, lived and worked in an orphanage that was attached to a Chaldean Monastery of Maskenta in Mosul. The three orphans were identified as Hala Salim, Sarah Khoshaba, and Aram Sabah.
According to Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Sako, the five hostages were released on July 14 without anyone paying ransom, and they were all in good health.
“It is widely assumed that they were held by militants from the extremist group ISIS that seized control of Mosul and surrounding areas in early June,” Middle East Concern said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the Vatican’s Fides News Agency reported July 16 that ISIS jihadists had instructed Iraqi government workers not to hand out food and cooking rations to all remaining Christians, Kurds, and Shi’a Muslims in Mosul. Abandoned Christian houses are also being marked with the first letter of the Arabic word “Nazarat,” meaning Christian.
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American Christian leaders begin year-long study in Israel
(JNS.org) Eighteen American Christian leaders this week began the Christian Leadership Initiative (CLI), a year-long intensive study of Judaism in Israel with the goal of further bolstering interreligious dialogue and understanding between the two Abrahamic faiths.
“CLI provides open space for Christian leaders and scholars to experience and study Judaism and Israel from a Jewish perspective,” said Rabbi Noam Marans, the American Jewish Committee’s director of Interreligious and Intergroup Relations, which is co-sponsoring the program with the Shalom Hartman Institute.
“Interreligious understanding is deepened when Christian influentials engage in Jewish learning in ways that enable them to better understand Jewish texts and traditions,” he said.
The 18 leaders participating in the program include scholars from leading seminaries and theological schools across the American Christian spectrum such as the Baptist Church, Catholic Church, and Lutheran Church, and the Presbyterian Church, which has garnered headlines for its recent to decision to divest from Israel.
According to the Shalom Hartman Institute, the theme of the opening seminar will be “God and Judaism,” which introduces the multifaceted approach of Jewish doctrine, spirituality, and theology.
More than 40 American Christian leaders have participated in the program since its introduction in 2008, and they have maintained close ties with their Israeli and Jewish counterparts.
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U.S. firefighters arrive in Israel to combat rocket-induced fires
(JNS.org) A delegation of 13 firefighters from the U.S. has arrived in southern Israel to help the Jewish state extinguish fires caused by Hamas rocket attacks.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington connected with an initiative called the Emergency Volunteer Project to arrange to bring the senior firefighters and officers from Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Texas.
“We were all part of the massive tragedy that was 9/11. There we undertook search and rescue missions. When we heard that hundreds of rockets are falling on Israel, we decided to join forces and come and help,” said firefighter 51-year-old Billy Hearst of Texas, reported Yedioth Ahronoth.
Hearst called the situation facing southern Israeli communities “insufferable.”
“We cannot ignore this reality, when Israeli firefighters work hour after hour to save human life,” he said.
Reshef Tzvika Moyal, the head of the Ashdod District Fire Services, said that the U.S. volunteers have been distributed “across the stations facing the heaviest workload since the operation began and they are in the fire trucks and stations together with their Israeli counterparts, working side by side.”
Thirty additional elite U.S. firefighters are expected to arrive in Israel to asset in the upcoming day, said the head of the Emergency Volunteer Project, Adi Zehavi.
“We cannot sit idly by in the U.S. while here in Israel there is war for 10 days straight,” Hearst said.
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IDF thwarts attack by 13 terrorists attempting to infiltrate from Gaza
(JNS.org) Israel thwarted the efforts of 13 Hamas terrorists who attempted to infiltrate the Jewish state through a tunnel and carry out an attack on Kibbutz Sufa near the Gaza border. Most of the terrorists were likely killed in a strike by the Israeli Air Force on Thursday, according to reports.
“We can assume the terrorists were planning to kidnap civilians or conduct a mass-casualty attack,” Israel Defense Forces Spokesman Brig. Gen. Moti Almoz said.
Hamas claimed responsibility for the attempted infiltration, saying in a statement that “during the withdrawal after the completion of [their] mission,” the terrorists were hit by “jet fighters.” But Hamas denied that the terrorists were killed.
The incident took place just before the start of a five-hour humanitarian cease-fire requested by the U.N.
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