Israeli troops push into southern Gaza
Official says hostages were drugged before being freed
Hostages freed by Hamas were drugged to make them appear calm and happy before being handed over to the Red Cross for transfer to Israel, an Israeli Health Ministry official said Tuesday.
Ronit Endevelt, director of the ministry’s nutrition division, told the Knesset’s health committee the drug Clonazepam could make the hostages appear upbeat despite suffering physical abuse, deprivation and psychological terror during nearly two months of captivity, the Times of Israel reported.
Endevelt did not say whether the drugging was determined through testing, testimony from freed hostages or both. In recent days, relatives of freed children have accused Hamas of drugging the youths during their captivity.
More than 240 people, most of them Israeli nationals, were seized when Hamas militants crashed across the border Oct. 7, killing an estimated 1,200 people before slipping back into Gaza with the hostages. More than 100 have been released. Family members say many returned malnourished, wounded, ill, infested with lice and/or traumatized.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to meet later Tuesday with families of hostages held in Gaza. His corruption trial, which began in 2020 and was put on hold after the Oct. 7 attacks, resumed Monday. He faces charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in an address Tuesday to a Gulf Cooperation Council summit in Doha, accused the Netanyahu administration of “endangering the security and future of our entire region in order to extend its political life,” and that Israel should not be allowed to “get away” with alleged crimes committed in Gaza.
Also at the summit in Doha, Qatari ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who has played a key role in mediating between Israel and Hamas, accused Israel of carrying out “crimes of genocide” in Gaza.
He said “all religious, ethical and humanitarian values have been violated in occupied Palestine through crimes the occupation forces are committing against humanity.”
Israel’s military pushed deeper south to Gaza on Tuesday in its effort to crush Hamas, although many leaders of the militant group’s political wing operate out of Lebanon, Qatar and Turkey. The war has already killed more than 15,000 Palestinians in Gaza and displaced most of the 2.3 million population. Israel does not dispute the death toll but says it has killed more than 5,000 Hamas members and blames civilian casualties on the militants operating in residential neighborhoods, using Palestinians as “human shields.”
CNN said at least nine family members of one of its producers, Ibrahim Dahman, were killed by an Israeli airstrike on his aunt’s northern Gaza house Sunday. Dahman, 36, had evacuated his young family to Egypt, but his childhood home in Gaza City was destroyed by another strike the same day.
Under U.S. pressure to prevent further mass casualties in the conflict, Israel says it is being more precise in its widened offensive into southern Gaza – but Palestinians say there are no areas where they feel safe, and many fear that if they leave their homes they will never be allowed to return.
Aerial bombardment and the ground offensive have already driven threefourths of the territory’s 2.3 million people from their homes – and new orders to evacuate areas around Khan Younis are squeezing people into ever smaller areas of the tiny coastal strip.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday that it was too soon to pass judgment on Israeli operations, but that it was unusual for a modern military to identify precise areas of expected ground maneuvers and ask people to move out, as Israel has done in Khan Younis.
“These are the kinds of steps that we have asked them to undertake,” he said.
At the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, ambulances brought dozens of wounded people in, including a young boy whose hand had been blown off.
“What’s happening here is unimaginable,” said Hamza al-Bursh, who lives in the neighborhood of Maan, one of several in and around the city where Israel has ordered civilians to leave. “They strike indiscriminately.”
The United States, Qatar and Egypt, which mediated the weeklong ceasefire that ended last week, say they are working on a longer truce even though Israel called its negotiators home over the weekend and Qatar’s ruler accused Israel of genocide. Hamas said talks on releasing more of the scores of hostages must be tied to a permanent cease-fire.
In the U.S., more than $1 million has been raised for the recovery of Hisham Awartani, one of the three college students of Palestinian descent who were shot in Vermont last month. Awartani was left paralyzed from the chest down after a bullet lodged in his spine, his family said.
The 20-year-old student at Brown University was walking with his childhood friends near the University of Vermont campus in Burlington on Nov. 25 when “all three were shot in an unprovoked attack,” Awartani’s family said on a GoFundMe page. All three were seriously injured.
The shooting came amid a surge of hate crimes across the United States, including increased threats against Jewish, Muslim, and Arab communities, since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. While officials in Burlington, Vermont, have yet to label the shooting a hate crime, the attack drew widespread condemnation from authorities and advocacy groups.
Meanwhile, the White House joined Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shaprio and others Monday in condemning the actions of pro-Palestinian demonstrators who targeted a Jewish-owned restaurant Sunday night in Philadelphia.
A large crowd of protesters gathered Sunday night outside the Jewish falafel restaurant Goldie’s, one of several restaurants owned by Philadelphia-based Israeli chef Michael Solomonov. Video on social media showed the crowd chanting: “Goldie, Goldie, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide.”
“It is antisemitic and completely unjustifiable to target restaurants that serve Israeli food over disagreements with Israeli policy, as Governor Shapiro has underlined,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement.