GNITN – Special Edition

Israel At War – Day 66

Another Hostage Deal?

The Tide May Be Turning

We talk about the antisemitism on colleges and from many of their presidents who either demur when asked about the threats against Jews or outright defend it. We are seeing more and more boards taking action after three such leaders spoke before congress to defend their antisemitic stances as we read in an article from i24news.tv:

Harvard University President Claudine Gay's position was up for discussion during a Harvard board of directors meeting on Sunday, as her handling of threats against Jewish students has been in the spotlight during recent weeks.

The meeting took place amidst growing calls for Gay's removal, echoing the recent resignation of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill.

Although the agenda of the meeting was not publicly disclosed, insiders suggest that the controversy surrounding Gay's response to threats against Jewish students was a key topic. Last week, Gay, along with UPENN's Magill and MIT President Sally Kornbluth, faced congressional testimony where they failed to explicitly state that calls for the genocide of Jews would violate their schools' codes of conduct.

For her part, Gay offered an apology on X for her statements in front of congress:

“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.”

The X thread was filled with those who were basically saying too little, too late and questioned why she didn’t say this when questioned.

Another Hostage Deal Is In The Works

In an article from The Times Of Israel we read that another hostage deal is in the offing:

Channel 12 news quotes an anonymous senior Israeli source cautiously suggesting that the beginning of an effort to negotiate a partial new deal on hostage releases may be close at hand.

“The conditions are ripe for a framework in which it is possible to start to draft new agreements, from Hamas’s and Israel’s point of view,” the source is quoted as saying.

Such a deal would be designated as “humanitarian,” the report says, explaining that the “category” of hostages that such a deal might include would cover women, the injured, the sick, and the elderly. There are believed to be 15 non-military women among the hostages, and two children — Ariel Bibas, 5, and his baby brother Kfir.

According to the report, Israel is ready to listen if an offer is put on the table:

The report says Mossad chief David Barnea and the IDF’s point person Nitzan Alon have been “directed to hear what the intermediaries are proposing,” but not to initiate proposals of their own. “If the Qataris want to be heard, we will listen,” the unnamed source says.

The assessment is that no new deal is anticipated in the next week, but Israel wants to open the window to a possible deal amid the mounting IDF military pressure on Hamas, so that if Yahya Sinwar proves ready, the terms will be in place — as was the case with the weeklong truce in late November.

While such an offer is being worked on, recent war developments are making things harder:

Reported complicating factors include Hamas’s fraying command and control hierarchies, the fact that some Hamas leaders who were in Qatar have left, that some of the Hamas operatives who conveyed proposals between Qatar and Gaza have been killed, and that the IDF’s deployment on the ground in both northern and southern Gaza hampers Hamas’s communications within the Strip.

The IDF and Israeli leadership believe a deal for hostages is a direct result of the intense pressure they are putting on Hamas militarily.

Hostages Ration Supplies For Children

We are slowly getting testimonies from released hostages and recent reports found on i24news.tv tells us of how many helped those younger than them to survive:

In an interview with Reuters, Sharon Aloni-Kunyo, recently liberated from Hamas captivity along with her 3-year-old twin daughters Emma and Yuli vividly paints a picture of the daily life during their captivity.

Reflecting on the psychological toll, she shared, "Every slamming of a door, every passing plane - the girls clung to me."

Fellow hostages, facing their own challenges, chose to sacrifice their food for the well-being of Aloni-Kunyo's daughters. "All the abductees gave up food for my daughters. We didn't know if there would be bread in the evening, so in the morning we saved some for the evening."

She spoke about how this camaraderie and compassion offered a glimmer of humanity as she struggled to protect her daughters in the face of terrorists daily.

Aloni-Kunyo also talked about being separated from her husband and the father of her children:

The separation from her husband, David, just three days before their release, added another layer of anguish. Aloni-Kunyo expressed the daily heartbreak of her daughters asking where their father was.

"We are not just names on a poster. We are human beings, flesh and blood. My daughters' father is there, and many other fathers, children, mothers, brothers."

In the interview, Sharon called for the return of all those who were kidnapped, saying that every moment that they are in captivity is crucial.

Is The UN Helping Hamas?

As we hear reports of terrorists fighting from inside United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) run schools along with large amounts of weapons stored inside of them, there are some who believe it is not an accident or a coincidence. In a post from X account of Barry Tigay, we read this:

For 73 years, UNRWA has perpetuated the misery of Palestinians by teaching hatred, engaging in corruption, cooperating with terrorists, and refusing to settle refugees.

The war in Gaza has exposed the appalling extent of cooperation between UNRWA and the Islamist terror group #Hamas. They have shared personnel and facilities while cooperating in corruption by stealing food, fuel and materials meant for aid, and reselling them for profit or diverting them for terror operations.

UNRWA has made it its mission to expand the number of so called refugees, to bloat its budget and expand its power. It is worse than a failure, it is a serious impediment to peace and prosperity. The US is its biggest financial backer. It must stop.

In an interview with a watchdog agency called UN Watch seen on i24news.tv, Hillel C. Neuer, who is the Executive Director of UN Watch, responded to a report that an UNRWA teacher held one of the released hostages captive in an attic. He then said this about UNRWA:

Well, they’re indeed, as you said, Laura, there have been instances where Hamas terrorists were found to be part of UNRWA, where someone who was elected to Hamas Political Bureau was actually a senior official at UNRWA. Well, we’ve had that but in other cases, what we documented indeed, as you said several weeks ago, is that UNRWA teachers, school principals and other staff openly, publicly celebrated the October 7 atrocities. One director of Khan Younis Training Center, her name is Rawia Helles. She said that the one of the attackers of Hamas was a hero and a prince, others said we need to “sculpt the date of October 7, in history as a great day.” So systematically, we found UNRWA staff celebrating October 7. And you know, what UNRWA often will say, is that well, you only found 20, you only found 150. And these are just a few bad apples. But the fact is that we’ve seen that UNRWA staff completely endorse these acts of incitement, when a teacher, whose name was Riyad Nimr of Lebanon was suspended by UNRWA because he had on Facebook supported terrorism. He was embraced by the UNRWA teachers union. So these so-called few bad apples are completely embraced by the system of teachers. UNRWA has a systematic problem of support for antisemitism and jihadi terrorism. They refuse to address the problem and worse, our foreign affairs ministries, whether it’s Canada, whether it’s the State Department, whether it’s European foreign ministries, are siding with UNRWA and are not addressing the problem.

Corrupt, indeed.