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The shock Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas gunmen has rallied Israelis to one another.

By Steven Scheer

Ever since Hamas’s barbaric invasion of Israel on Oct. 7—a Shabbat morning that also happened to herald the end of the Jewish holiday of Succoth and fell one day after the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the 1973 Yom Kippur War (the symbolism runneth over)—I have been thinking of Tal Mazliach.

Middle East have taken note of three events that many believe may be linked to biblical prophecies about the end of the world. The speculations started The Mirror published an article recently. Event No. 1: The Birth of a Red Cow in Israel The first event that has raised eyebrows involves the birth of a red cow in Israel after 2,000 years.

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Emily Rose

JERUSALEM (Reuters) — The Israeli army said on Saturday it was aware of the incident in southern Lebanon in which a Reuters journalist was killed and that it was being investigated.

El Deif' or the Guest, because, for decades, he has stayed in different houses every night to avoid being tracked, and killed, by Israel and he is now in charge of the militant group's military wing, the Al Qassem Brigades, the media reported. Thought to have been born in the 1960s, El Deif is little known to ordinary Palestinians, CNN quoted Mkhaimar Abusada, a professor of political science at Al Azah University in Gaza, as saying. “He’s very much like a ghost to the majority of the Palestinians,” he said. The Al Qassem Brigades were opposed to the peace process embraced by Yassir Arafat, then-leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the 1993 Oslo Accords that were supposed to pave the way to a two-state solution of a new Palestine living in peace alongside Israel. In 1996, El Deif, an accomplished bomb maker, was behind a wave of four suicide attacks that killed 65 people in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and other outrages intended to derail the peace process, CNN reported. The tighter the Israeli and Egyptian control over Gaza’s borders – the more Hamas (and other groups) developed military means to fight back. Chief among them is rockets. Primitive at first, the missiles have been improved and refined over years of help from Iran. The Tehran theocracy, also dedicated to the eradication of the Jewish state, trained engineers, organised technology transfers and guided developments to create rockets capable of hitting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, CNN reported. Men like El Deif, the bomb makers and decision takers, were hunted by Israel. In 2014, an air strike killed his wife and daughter.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -More than 1 million Palestinians in northern Gaza faced an Israeli deadline on Saturday to flee south, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had only just begun to retaliate for last week's Hamas rampage across southern Israel.

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Jonathan Saul

What is the genesis of this crisis? It’s an incendiary mix of politics, religion and economics. Modern Palestine was populated with Jews from the global diaspora—a British imperial drive—in 1948. Around 750,000 Palestinians were expelled as Jews captured 78% of the land.

military cemetery of Jerusalem, mourners streamed in for the funerals of young Israeli soldiers, with only the stifled cries of anguish piercing the steely silence. Mount Herzl cemetery, named after the founder of political Zionism, has in the past few years seen more remembrance ceremonies than funerals. But mounds of ochre earth now mark freshly dug graves as Israel buries its soldiers fallen in the battle against Hamas militants whose shock assault unleashed Saturday has claimed 1,200 lives in the country. Most of the victims are civilians, but at least 169 Israeli troops have been killed in the battles to repel Hamas fighters. Eleven of them were laid to rest at the cemetery in the night to Wednesday. A few steps from the tomb of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, the brothers in arms of 20-year-old Noam Elimelekh Rottenberg lowered the coffin draped with Israel's blue-and-white flag into the grave. «Noam, this war will be the last.

Hamas last week, Mohammed Deif, the secretive mastermind behind the assault, has provided insights into the motives behind what Israel has likened to its '9/11 moment.' This revelation comes amid escalating tensions between Israel and Hamas, with the recent assault marking the most substantial breach in Israeli defenses since the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict. Deif's audio message, broadcast as Hamas launched thousands of rockets from the Gaza strip on Saturday, underscores the message of retaliation for Israeli raids at Jerusalem's Al Aqsa mosque. This mosque, a long-standing flashpoint for violence over matters of sovereignty and religion in Jerusalem, was stormed by Israeli forces in May 2021, sparking widespread anger in the Arab and Muslim world.

Israel calls last week's devastating attack by Hamas its 9/11 moment. The secretive mastermind behind the assault, Palestinian militant Mohammed Deif, calls it Al Aqsa Flood. The phrase Israel's most wanted man used in an audio tape broadcast as Hamas fired thousands of rockets out of the Gaza strip on Saturday signalled the attack was payback for Israeli raids at Jerusalem's Al Aqsa mosque. It was in May 2021, after a raid on Islam's third holiest site that enraged the Arab and Muslim world, when Deif began planning the operation that has killed more than 1,200 people in Israel, according to a source close to Hamas in Gaza. «It was triggered by scenes and footage of Israel storming Al Aqsa mosque during Ramadan, beating worshippers, attacking them, dragging elderly and young men out of the mosque,» the source said.

Fauda, which is Arabic for chaos, premiered as a TV series on Netflix in 2015, developed by Avi Issacharoff and lead actor Lior Raz, who was as real in his role of the protagonist as the story the series told. In its stylised action, breathless suspense, eerie intrigue and lyrical portrayal of revenge and loss, Fauda gave a face to the conflict. In its four seasons, Fauda showed how Israel-Palestine conflict is not just a war of ideologies or a battle for land but also a story of husbands, wives, parents, children, siblings and lovers.

The Israeli police cyber unit have frozen cryptocurrency accounts used by Hamas to raise donations via social media, Jerusalem Post reported. 

Major airlines are suspending flights to Israel after it formally declared war following a massive attack by Hamas

Meghalaya, including Rajya Sabha Member Wanweiroy Kharlukhi, who were stranded in Israel, have successfully crossed over to Egypt and are expected to reach India soon. A senior Meghalaya official, preferring anonymity, informed ET, «They are currently in Egypt and are expected to return to India in the near future.» Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma mentioned on October 7 on social media platfom X, formerly known as Twitter, «27 citizens of Meghalaya who traveled for the Holy Pilgrimage to Jerusalem are stuck in Bethlehem due to the tension between Israel and Palestine.

By Steven Scheer and Ari Rabinovitch

Israel by air, land and sea.Millions of Israelis in the country’s south awoke to incoming rockets and the inevitable thud of impact. Air raid sirens wailed as far north as Tel Aviv.

Gaza in which Hamas fighters, armed with rockets, broke through Israel's security barrier, and rampaged through nearby communities. The war wherein Israeli forces are battling Hamas fighters in the streets of southern Israel, entered a second day on Sunday, even as the death toll mounted to over 300.

Saturday's attacks by Hamas shocked leaders across the world, but they came after decades of a relentless and deadly conflict that has killed thousands of people, forced entire generations to grow up under occupation, or created constant anxiety of impending rocket fire or bombings. Here is a summary of the main events of the conflict, which spans two centuries. — On several occasions this year, hundreds of Israeli forces carried out military raids in the Palestinian city of Jenin. In January, a Palestinian man killed seven people at a synagogue in east Jerusalem. — After a spate of terrorist attacks in Israeli cities in 2022, Israeli forces killed at least 166 Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. — In May 2021, Israeli police raided Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the third-holiest site in Islam, which set off an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas that killed more than 200 Palestinians and more than 10 Israelis.