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The onslaught comes a day after the IDF killed three Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders.

By JNS

Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip unleashed a massive barrage of rockets at Israel on Wednesday afternoon, breaking a daylong tense calm following the IDF’s targeted killing of three top Islamic Jihad members.

Rocket alert sirens blared across communities located along the Gaza border and in Ashkelon.

Sources in Hamas told Lebanon’s pro-Hezbollah Al-Akhbar newspaper earlier Wednesday that “the response will be unified through the joining military of the resistance factions, and it will teach the occupation [Israel] a great lesson, and the responses will not be limited to a specific faction or a specific front, but rather all fronts are nominated to participate in the response.”

Thousands of Israelis living near the Gaza border have been evacuated since Tuesday’s targeted killings, with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant having approved the move in anticipation of rocket fire.

שבע רקטות נורו לעבר שדרות – כיפת ברזל יירטה שש מהן@ItayBlumental @gal_sade pic.twitter.com/QAMHSRcvfd

— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) May 10, 2023

Evacuees are being bussed to hotels, hostels and guest houses throughout Israel, where they will be able to stay for three days, with the possibility of an extension depending on the security situation.

Many other Gaza-area residents have temporarily relocated to other parts of the country on their own initiative.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday night said that he authorized Tuesday morning’s targeted killings after more than 100 rockets were fired at Israel last week.

The IDF identified the targets as Khalil Bahitini, PIJ’s commander in northern Gaza; Jahed Ahnam, a senior member of the terror group’s “military” council; and Tarek Azaldin, who directed its activities in Judea and Samaria.

“Israel’s policy is clear: Those who seek to harm Israel will be harmed. Those who kill our citizens will pay a heavy price. And those who fire on our cities and civilians will be held responsible for their actions,” Netanyahu said.

The post Massive barrage of rockets hit Israel from Gaza day after IDF targets senior terror leaders appeared first on World Israel News.

The Texas Republican also called on his government to work with Israel to “confront terrorists that threaten our nations.”

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Senator Ted Cruz voiced firm support Tuesday for the IDF attack on the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) group in Gaza that began very early that morning.

“Israel has taken necessary action against terrorist leaders in the Gaza Strip to protect its citizens and maintain national security,” the Texan Republican said in a statement regarding the operation the IDF is calling “Shield and Arrow.”

“The government of Israel has the responsibility and obligation to defend its citizens, and I stand with our ally as it confronts those who seek chaos and destruction,” he added.

He noted that the United States is also threatened by PIJ, due to its state sponsor, and that the allies must work together against such menaces.

“Such Iran-controlled terrorists pose a direct threat not only to Israel but also to the safety and security of the American people…. Our partnership with Israel is built on shared interests, and together we must confront terrorists that threaten our nations and American interests in the Middle East and beyond,” he said.

The White House sent its own message of support through its Israeli embassy for the operation, in which three very senior PIJ terrorists were killed in the first minutes in surgical airstrikes on their apartments.

“Israel has the right to protect itself and its people from indiscriminate rocket attacks launched by terrorist groups,” the embassy said. “We are also aware of reports that 10 civilians were tragically killed in the Israeli strikes. We call for all parties to de-escalate the situation.”

The civilians who were killed including neighbors and family members of the terrorists, among them children. The UN Security Council has already scheduled an emergency meeting for Wednesday afternoon to discuss the “concerning developments” in the region.

The meeting was called by the UAE, which condemned the operation and called on Israel “to halt the escalation “and avoid exacerbating tension and instability in the region.”

The U.S. can use its veto power to nix any one-sided resolution that may result from the meeting. It has done so often over the years when the international body castigates Israel for counter-terror operations while ignoring the Palestinian attacks that precipitated them, which may be the case this time as well.

Cruz may have been alluding to such aid when he said in another part of his statement that “The United States must continue to support Israel’s right to defend itself, and ensure it has the military resources and diplomatic support it needs.”

While PIJ political bureau head Mohammed al-Hindi promised that “The Israeli enemy will pay for its cowardly crime,” there have been no attacks as yet, whether by land or air. The IDF has said that it has hit a few teams of PIJ terrorists on their way to try firing rockets in retaliation for the assassinations.

There have been reports Wednesday of Israeli jets striking rocket-launching infrastructure in Gaza, but Jerusalem has said that it has no interest in widening its operation. Shield and Arrow was purely an answer to the violent group’s launches last week of 104 rockets at southern Israel, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday. The delayed reaction had been due to technical as well as tactical reasons.

In the early afternoon Wednesday, Gaza-based terror groups retaliated by firing a massive barrage of rockets into Israel, triggering sirens in Gaza border towns.

The post Senator Cruz voices firm support for IDF operation in Gaza appeared first on World Israel News.

Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan called on member states to not give in to the Palestinian leadership’s “slanderous campaign to rewrite history” and to boycott the “antisemitic event.”

The post WATCH: In first, United Nations to commemorate Nakba Day appeared first on World Israel News.

Instead, the House of Representatives Speaker will host a bipartisan discussion on Israel-U.S. ties.

By World Israel News Staff

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) canceled a Palestinian “Nakba Day” event headlined by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) at the U.S. Capitol, and replaced it with an event marking 75 years of Israel-U.S. ties.

The original event, which was slated to be held at a 400-person auditorium at the Capitol Building, would commemorate the Nakba — arabic for “catastrophe” — which condemns the founding of the Jewish state.

“This event in the US Capitol is canceled. Instead, I will host a bipartisan discussion to honor the 75th anniversary of the US-Israel relationship,” McCarthy tweeted on Tuesday.

Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said he was “grateful Speaker McCarthy took rapid action. There’s room to talk about the issues – but not at an event co-sponsored by people who traffic in antisemitism and hate.”

The event, titled “Nakba 75 & The Palestinian People,” was organized in collaboration with several organizations that support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, including Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP, as well as NGOs that have expressed support for terrorism.

The ADL has condemned JVP as a “radical anti-Israel activist group” that honors terrorists.

Tlaib, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, routinely refers to Israel as an apartheid state and has made statements that perpetuate the antisemitic stereotype of Jews controlling the world.

Last week, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan said Tlaib’s “ignorance and hate toward Jews and Israel know no bounds” after she posted a tweet about the Nakba, calling Israel an “apartheid state” that “was born out of violence and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians”.

“Tlaib’s ignorance and hate toward Jews and Israel know no bounds. The facts are clear: the Arabs rejected the U.N.’s resolution to establish a Jewish state and started a war to annihilate it,” wrote Erdan, referencing the fact that in 1948, five Arab armies attacked the nascent state, with full support from the Palestinian leadership.

“Palestinian leadership is leading its people to catastrophe by inciting hate/terror and rejecting peace,” Erdan wrote.

The post McCarthy torpedoes Rashida Tlaib’s planned Palestinian Nakba Day event at Capitol appeared first on World Israel News.

China and India will lead the world through their contribution to the global gross domestic product expansion, followed by the US, according to a recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) report

Transmashholding (TMH) the largest manufacturer of locomotives and rail equipment in Russia, won a global bid to supply produce, supply, and maintain 120, 16-car long-distance Vande Bharat trains for the Indian Railways

India is set to overtake China as the world’s most populous country by the end of June, U.N. estimates, posing huge challenges to a nation with creaking infrastructure and insufficient jobs for millions of young people

Arab countries, including those who have peace deals with Jerusalem, slam Israel for Gaza airstrikes that killed senior terrorists.

By Adina Katz, World Israel News

Countries throughout the Arab world, including those who have signed peace agreements with Israel, condemned IAF airstrikes that killed three senior Islamic Jihad commanders, along with 10 other people, in the Gaza Strip overnight Tuesday.

Qatar, a major patron of Hamas that is believed to provide millions of dollars in funding each year to the terror group, framed Israel’s targeting of terrorists as a human rights violation.

The Gulf Kingdom called the bombings “a new episode in the series of horrific occupation crimes against the defenseless Palestinian people, especially women and children,” without mentioning the more than 100 rockets fired at Israel by Gaza-based terror groups last week.

The country placed the blame for rising tensions squarely on Jerusalem, bemoaning the “fading chances of peace and the widening of the cycle of violence due to the provocative Israeli escalation.”

The United Arab Emirates, which inked the Abraham Accords normalization agreement with Israel in 2020, rushed to condemn the “Israeli operation that targeted areas in the Gaza Strip, which resulted in the death and injury of numerous people.”

The statement, from the UAE Foreign Ministry, did not place any responsibility on terror groups for firing a volley of rockets at communities in southern Israel last week, and instead demanding “Israeli authorities to halt escalation and avoid exacerbating tension and instability in the region.”

Jordan, another Arab nation that signed a peace deal with Israel, slammed Jerusalem for the airstrikes.

A spokesman for the Jordanian Foreign Ministry said the bombings illustrated “the need for the international community to move immediately and effectively to stop this aggression, and to provide protection for the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and in all the occupied Palestinian territories.”

Egypt stressed that the airstrikes “are inconsistent with the rules of international law,” but did not mention in its statement that the indiscriminate firing of rockets at Israeli civilians in communities bordering the Strip is a war crime.

Palestinian Authority officials released statements which failed to acknowledge that the targets of the bombings were terror leaders, instead falsely claiming that all those killed in the airstrikes were civilians.

“We condemn this dangerous Israeli escalation against our people, which targeted children, women, and homes in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including Jerusalem, the latest of which was the killing of 13 civilians, including women and children, in the Gaza Strip, and the injury of 13 people from bullets in Nablus, in addition to the ongoing storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque,” said PA Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas’ spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh.

Echoing that falsehood, Abbas’ spiritual adviser Mahmoud Al-Habbash condemned the airstrikes, saying that all those who died were civilians.

“We hold the Israeli government fully responsible for this dangerous escalation that drags the region into the square of violence, tension and instability.”

PA President Mohammed Shtayyeh said that the “aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip is organized state terrorism and an attempt to export the internal crisis that the government of extremism in Israel suffers from… a practical translation of the doctrine of killing, incineration, and genocide, which those in power in Israel have long professed… [it is] an extension of the Nakba (catastrophe) that befell our people in 1948.”

The post ‘Horrific occupation crimes’ – Arab world responds to Gaza airstrikes appeared first on World Israel News.

A security guard from a nearby base attacked the ancient Djerba synagogue during Lag B’omer festivities, also killing two police guards and injuring nine.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Two Jewish men and two Tunisian police officers were murdered Tuesday night in a synagogue shooting in Djerba, Tunisia.

The ancient El Ghriba synagogue was packed with hundreds of Jews, both locals from the tiny extant community on the island and overseas visitors, including from Israel, who were celebrating Lag B’omer, a minor Jewish holiday that has become a local five-day festival.

According to the Tunisian Interior Ministry, a guard at a nearby naval base fatally shot his colleague before heading towards El Ghriba. He opened fire “indiscriminately” at the personnel securing the site, the ministry said, killing two guards and two worshipers. Nine more people sustained bullet wounds, five guards and four worshipers. The ministry did not give the medical status of those injured.

The assailant was then killed by the police in an exchange of fire. According to one report, this occurred when he was already fleeing the scene.

Social media was full of threads describing the scene,  with people commenting on the “great hysteria” and saying they were “besieged” within the walls of the synagogue.

In one video uploaded to social media, people appeared to be panicking inside the synagogue while the man holding the camera says “Everyone is closed in,” “everyone is scared,” and repeating the words, “there’s some kind of terror attack going on here.”

The two Jewish victims were cousins, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday, and one of them held Israeli citizenship. Tunisian authorities identified them as a 30-year-old Tunisian and a 42-year-old French national. They were later identified as Aviel and Ben Hadad, who were in the parking lot of the synagogue when they were shot and killed.

The foreign ministry said it was “in contact with the family members of the deceased and is prepared to assist additional Israelis as needed.”

Tunisian authorities, who said the synagogue had been secured, have not yet determined officially that this was a terror attack.

“Investigations are continuing in order to shed light on the motives for this cowardly aggression,” they said in a statement.

Both the Israeli government and the Jewish Agency have been working towards encouraging members of the the local Jewish community to immigrate to Israel, amid growing threats against them in Djerba.

Al Jazeera reported that the attacker was a member of the country’s security forces who had been removed from his position.

Tunisian security forces allowed the crowds to leave the site a few hours after the incident was over.

El Ghriba is a popular year-round Jewish tourist destination due to its status as Africa’s oldest synagogue. According to legend, the first Jewish settlers came to the island after the destruction of the First Temple. A stone, supposedly from the Temple, lies in a cave in the synagogue complex, and it is believed that eggs placed near it during the Lag B’Omer pilgrimage will help infertile women to conceive.

The site is heavily guarded since Al-Qaeda terrorists blew up a truck bomb at the synagogue in 2002, killing 21 tourists, mostly from Western Europe.

Senior Tunisian officials had attended the synagogue for the opening ceremony Monday night, along with American ambassador Joey Hood and visiting US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt, in what the ambassador tweeted was an “example of coexistence in Tunisia” that “reinforces our shared commitment to multiculturalism and the protection of religious freedom.”

The post Jewish cousins, two policemen, murdered in Tunisian synagogue attack appeared first on World Israel News.

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