Israel News, Sunday, 03.08.2025 

  The Palestinian Red Crescent said that one of its staffers was killed in an IDF strike on its HQ in Khan Yunis. The IDF said it was not aware of any strike in the area at the time. France’s Macron said the “unbearable images” of Israeli hostages in Gaza are proof of Hamas’ “unlimited inhumanity,” demanding its total demilitarization and exclusion from any form of governance in Gaza. Far-right Israeli minister Smotrich called the videos of hostages released last week an emotional manipulation meant to stop the war, which he insisted will not happen.
Far-right minister Ben-Gvir ascended the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa Compound, singing Jewish prayers loudly in violation of the status quo.  What happened today 
 ■ GAZA: The Hamas-run Health Ministry said that 119 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours, adding that six died from hunger and malnutrition. Medical sources in the Strip also reported that 16 people were killed while waiting for humanitarian aid.

• The Palestinian Red Crescent said that one of its employees was killed and three were wounded in an IDF strike on the organization’s headquarters in Khan Yunis on Saturday night. The IDF said in response that it was not aware of any attack in the area at the time.
  
• Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of the liberal pro-Israeli group J Street, said that he was “persuaded rationally by legal and scholarly arguments that international courts will one day find that Israel has broken the international genocide convention.” Ben-Ami wrote in a statement that “until now, I have tried to deflect and defend when challenged to call this genocide, but I cannot and will not argue anymore against those using the term. I simply won’t defend the indefensible.”
  
• A coalition of anti-war groups held a protest against the Gaza war at Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Square, where several dozen activists held discussion circles on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
  
• 2,300 Israeli artists and cultural figures signed one of two petitions calling for Israel to stop committing atrocities in Gaza and put an end to the war. One petition stated opposition to the “killing of children and civilians, the starvation and displacement of the population, and the destruction of cities across the Gaza Strip.”

“U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff told the hostage families that Netanyahu wants to end the war. Regrettably, he’s fallen into a trap, as he will soon realize. Netanyahu has set conditions that he knows Hamas will reject, in order that Hamas will reject them, so that he can maintain the status quo in Gaza without being considered the obstacle. His demand for ‘demilitarizing Gaza’ is unclear, and his aides even add a demand that a ‘map of the tunnels’ in the Gaza Strip be provided” – Chaim Levinson

■ HOSTAGES/CEASE-FIRE: PM Netanyahu’s office said he spoke at length with the families of Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski after Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad released videos of them in captivity last week. On Sunday, Netanyahu’s office said the PM asked the Red Cross to provide foodand medical care to hostages in Gaza, saying “Hamas’ lie of starvation resonates around the world, while the systematic starvation is against our hostages who suffer brutal physical and mental abuse.”

• Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called the videos an emotional manipulation meant to stop the war before Hamas is destroyed, which he insisted will not happen.
  
• Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar called on his counterparts from around the world to “publicly express a moral and ethical stance and to exert every possible influence to end the terrible suffering of the Israeli hostages.”
  
• French President Macron said that “the unbearable images showing Israeli hostages held in Gaza” are proof of Hamas’ “unlimited inhumanity,” adding that “France’s absolute priority and imperative is the immediate release of all hostages” and that it demands “the total demilitarization of Hamas, its complete exclusion from any form of governance, and recognition of Israel by the State of Palestine.”
  
• Hostages’ family members and protesters calling for a hostage deal blocked the Ayalon Highway near Tel Aviv on Sunday morning.
  
• Released hostage Gadi Moses said during a protest that “the suffering and concern [for the hostages] is endless, and in contrast to them, the government’s indifference and heartlessness.” Moses stressed that the Israeli public must “stop everything, refuse to normalize this life, refuse to lose values, refuse war and stop everything.”
  
• Anat Angrest, mother of hostage Matan, told Israel’s public broadcaster that she glanced briefly at the video Hamas released of hostage Evyatar David and immediately closed it, saying, ” A human skeleton, my Matan is going through the same Holocaust that my father went through.”
  
• Iris Haim, the mother of Yotam Haim, who was held hostage by Hamas and was accidentally shot and killed by Israeli soldiers after escaping his captors in December 2023, told Israeli radio that “we have to surrender. I’m not afraid to say it. Surrendering is less terrible than letting the hostages starve to death. This war should not continue for 20 years.”

“Barring that one week in September 2024 when Israelis protested the murder of six hostages in captivity in Rafah, past experience indicates that the Israeli public is largely indifferent to the calls of the hostages’ families begging them to take to the streets and join the protests. If the pictures of skin-and-bone Israelis, a step away from corpses, don’t bring the public to the streets to demand an end to the war, it is painful to think what will” – Bar Peleg

■ WEST BANK: The Palestinian Health Ministry said on Saturday that Mo’in Asfar, 24, was shot and killed by settlers who attacked the villages of Aqraba and Jorish. Seven other people were wounded by gunfire during the attack, the Palestinian Red Crescent reported. According to the head of the Aqraba Council, about 20 settlers arrived from the direction of a recently established outpost located on land that lies within Aqraba and attacked residents.

• Israeli settler Yinon Levi, suspected of fatally shooting Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen in a deadly incident in Umm al-Kheir last week, was released from house arrest on Friday, after an Israeli court rejected the police’s request to extend his detention.
  
• The judge said suspicion against Levi had weakened, and that Levi acted in self-defense. The Israel Police representative said that the victim’s body showed entry and exit wounds from the bullet that caused his death, but that the bullet itself was not found.
  
• Hathaleen’s wife filed a petition with the High Court of Justice on Sunday against Israel’s holding of his body despite the autopsy having been completed last week. The police and the IDF are refusing to hand over the body to his family unless they agree to the army’s terms for the funeral, which the family has refused to do. The state was ordered to submit a preliminary response by Monday.
  
• Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir ascended the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa Compound, singing Jewish prayers loudly, a violation of the status quo at the holy site, which does not allow Jews to enter to pray loudly. In response, Netanyahu’s office said that Israel’s policy on the Temple Mount “has not changed and will not change.”

■ HOUTHIS: The IDF said it intercepted a drone launched from Yemen after sirens sounded in Israeli communities near the Gaza border. 

 Israel declared war after Hamas killed at least 1,200 Israelis and wounded more than 3,300 on October 7. In Gaza, the Hamas-controlled health ministry reports that at least 60,138 Palestinians have been killed. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad hold 53 hostages, soldiers and civilians, dead and alive, including foreign nationals.

The war erupted after 10 months of an intense domestic political and social crisis, due to legislation promoted by the Netanyahu government aimed at dramatically weakening Israel’s judiciary and the prime minister’s corruption trial, amid an escalation of violence between West Bank Palestinians and Israeli settlers, the latter empowered by Israel’s most right-wing government ever.