IMPORTANT INFORMATION

The Israel Update for 23^rd October 2025 may be found at this link:

https://ksds.org.uk/2025/10/23/israel-update-23-10-25/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HOSTAGE RELEASE

 

 On Monday Israel rejoiced as the last 20 living hostages were released from Gaza, after 738 days in captivity, under the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.

Two years of chains, torture and isolation: What is known about the hostages’ time in captivity. Reports & hostages stories hereand here

 

 

HAMAS FAILED TO RETURN THE BODIES OF MURDERED ISRAELI HOSTAGES

 

Under the Trump deal Hamas had been set to hand over all hostages, both living and dead, by the end of Monday but has to date failed to return the bodies of all 28 who were either murdered on October 7th or killed in captivity.

Ten bodies were handed over. Nine were identified as belonging to Israeli hostages. The tenth was an Arab from the Palestinian Authority, whom Hamas falsely claimed was an Israeli soldier.

The Israeli government has warned that should Hamas choose not to uphold its end of the deal, the IDF will resume its Gaza campaign.

The deceased hostages returned by Hamas have been named as Bipin Joshi, Uriel Baruch, Daniel Peretz, Tamir Nimrodi, Muhammad al-Atrash, Yossi Sharabi, Guy Ilouz, Inbar Haiman, and Eitan Levy. Their stories are here

HEAVY COST OF TRUMP DEAL

 

 Israel’s Justice Ministry on Friday released a list of 250 prisoners serving life-sentences for murder and involvement in deadly attacks who were set to be released as part of the deal.
They included:

 Imad Qawasmeh, 52, who has been serving 16 life sentences since 2004 for involvement in a suicide bombing that killed 16 Israelis.
Qassem Aref Khalil al-Asafreh, 36, arrested in 2019 after being involved in the murder of soldier Dvir Sorek.
Muhammad Aref Samhan, 55, who dispatched several suicide bombers, and is responsible for a bus attack, in which 23 people were murdered and 130 others were wounded.

 Jihad a-Karim Azziz Rom, who participated in the lynching of IDF reservists Vadim Norzitch and Yosef Avrahami in 2000 and the abduction and murder of Yuri Gushchin in 2001.

Footnote: On Tal Hartuv’s chest is a jagged scar, one of 18 stab wounds from a brutal attack outside Jerusalem in 2010.
Among the Palestinian prisoners released is Iyad Hassan Hussein Fatafta, one of three men who tried to kill her and who were convicted of killing her friend Kristine Luken, an American tourist. Reports herehere and here

 

 

While in prison, the Palestinian Authority has paid the terrorists high monthly salaries, and now 160 new Palestinian terrorist millionaires are free. In total, the PA paid these killers a total of at least 229,523,000 NIS, or close to at least $70m.  These charts have the names of all the freed terrorists and how much money the PA has paid them

 

 

UPDATE ON TRUMP DEAL

 

 

No negotiations will begin on phase B of President Trump’s plan until Hamas returns all the bodies of the kidnapped hostages, senior Israeli officials said Wednesday. “Professional teams are currently in Egypt discussing methods for locating the bodies of the kidnapped fallen.” Turkey has also sent a delegation of 81 search personnel to Gaza, along with necessary equipment and vehicles, to assist in locating the bodies.
Israel does not intend to allow Hamas to “drag out” the process of returning the bodies of the fallen. The U.S. has also made clear to mediators that it opposes any delays in the return of the bodies.  Report here

 

Two senior Trump advisers said during a briefing that the U.S. is working with Israel to set up a safe zone inside the areas of Gaza still controlled by the IDF to which Palestinian civilians fearing Hamas retribution can flee. The safe-zone initiative is part of the U.S. response to the executions that Hamas has carried out since the ceasefire against dozens of Palestinians from rival groups.
The advisers also hope that limiting the redevelopment of Gaza to areas that are Hamas-free will help advance efforts at demilitarization. One asserted that all mediators agree that “no rebuilding money will go into areas that Hamas controls. “Hamas-free, terror-free zones” will be rebuilt first, and those areas “hopefully can be the examples for what could be possible in the whole place.”Report here

 

Note: Phase 1: The release of all the hostages, living and dead, in exchange for 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences and an additional 1,750 Gazans.

Phase 2: The disarmament of Hamas; Israel’s further withdrawal to a buffer just inside Gazan territory, with a complete withdrawal once Gaza no longer threatens the country; the creation of a board of peace to oversee the enclave’s governance and a technocratic group of Palestinians to administer it; an international stabilization force; and the actual reconstruction of and investment in the strip. It also includes genuinely reforming the Palestinian Authority.

SADLY ANOTHER OCT 7 VICTIM

 

 

Nova Music Festival survivor Roei Shalev took his own life last Friday.

He had been shot in the back on Oct 7. His partner, Mapal Adam, and his close friend, Hili Solomon, were murdered by the terrorists.

A week after the massacre, Raffaela, Shalev’s mother, also took her own life. Report here

 

POST CEASEFIRE IN GAZA

 

Horrifying video footage has emerged showing Gazans being executed by Hamas, on the streets of Gaza in front of crowds.

Hamas has already recalled around 7,000 members of its security forces to reassert control over areas of Gaza recently vacated by Israeli troops.  Report here (warning graphic video)

 

Hamas terrorists executed several people in Gaza on Monday evening before cheering crowds, some of whom filmed the events. Reports from Gaza said 52 members of the powerful Dagmoush clan were killed, along with 12 Hamas terrorists. Hamas gunmen reportedly used ambulances to storm the neighbourhood where the clan lives. “It’s a massacre,” one clan member’s daughter said. “They’re dragging people away, children are screaming and dying, they’re burning our houses.”
Under the Trump peace plan, Hamas was not supposed to govern Gaza and was expected to disarm – something the terror group has refused to do. Report here

 

CO-OPERATION

 

 

Even as key Arab states condemned the war in Gaza, they quietly expanded security cooperation with the Israeli military, leaked U.S. documents reveal. Over the past three years, facilitated by the U.S., senior military officials from Israel and six Arab countries came together for a series of planning meetings in Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan and Qatar. In May 2024, senior Israeli and Arab military officials convened an airbase in Qatar, with Israeli officials holding bilateral discussions with representatives from each of the attending Arab countries.
The threat posed by Iran was the driving force behind the closer ties, which have been fostered by the U.S. military’s Central Command.    A former U.S. defence official said that these engagements reflected the Gulf Arab states’ pragmatic ties with Israel.Report here (paywall)

 

 

NOBEL PRIZE

 

 

Israeli-American economist Joel Mokyr was named as one of a trio of researchers awarded the Nobel prize in economics for “having explained innovation-driven economic growth.” Mokyr, 79, a professor from Northwestern University, was born in Leiden in the Netherlands and raised in Haifa. He earned his undergraduate degree in economics and history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem before moving to the US to continue his academic career.Report here

 

 

SPORT

 

 

 Judoku Raz Hershko won gold In the women’s heavyweight category at the Lima Grand Prix.Report here Hatikvah here

 

Defending World Artistic Gymnastics Floor champion and two-time Olympic medallist Artem Dolgopyat won’t get the chance to defend his title in Jakarta on Sunday because Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, refused to grant visas to the Israeli team. Report here

 

 

UK football club, Aston Villa released a statement on Thursday announcing that no away fans will be permitted to attend the Europa League match against Maccabi Tel Aviv next month, amid ‘fears over safety and security’.

The decision has been criticised by (inter alia) UK PM Sir Keir Starmer, and opposition leader Kemi Badenoch. Former Labour MP Lord Ian Austin, a season-ticket holder at Aston Villa said: “ I am appalled that West Midlands Police said that no away fans should be allowed to come to the match…it looks like they have capitulated to a campaign by trouble-makers and abdicated their responsibility to ensure people can go about their lawful business safely.” Report here

 

 

A FORMER HOSTAGE’S TESTIMONY

 

Eli Sharabi “What 491 days as a hostage taught me about Hamas”

On Oct. 7, 2023, terrorists broke into my home in Kibbutz Be’eri. My wife, Lianne, our daughters Noiya and Yahel and I hid in our safe room as the gunmen burned and murdered their way through the kibbutz. After they took me, I was bound and dragged into Gaza, where an ecstatic civilian mob – men, women, children – tried to rip me limb from limb. I did not know my wife and daughters had already been murdered.

My first days as a hostage were spent in the basement of a well-off Gazan family’s home. The father, who had worked in construction in Israel, spoke fluent English and even some Hebrew. Life upstairs was normal for the family while I lay below, my shoulders in wrenching pain from the tight ropes that bound me.

I can speak Arabic and could understand perfectly well when the terrorists discussed their ideology. The murderers who broke into my house and slaughtered my wife and daughters were driven by blind hatred, which seemed to take precedence over all other motivations.

On day 52 of my captivity I was moved into a tunnel with other Israeli hostages, where conditions rapidly deteriorated. Food deprivation and disease were routine. The stench of sewage was unbearable, and there were worms everywhere.

Our captors also became more cruel. They replayed the Oct. 7 footage. Watching the murder and the torture seemed to invigorate them. Our legs were constantly shackled and we were regularly beaten and humiliated.

It’s important for the world to know that lasting peace can only come if the murderous ideology that we witnessed in Hamas and all those associated with them is defeated. Real change will require the wholesale rejection of a culture that fetishises death. Article here (paywall)

 

COMMENT & OPINION

 

Gazans write :

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib:
Strangely, activists and organizations formerly insistent on an immediate ceasefire suddenly appear quite opposed to ending the war in Gaza if it is based on the U.S. proposal, which they have denounced even though the plan literally stops the actual war. The lack of support from self-styled peace activists in the West is unsurprising. A lack of clarity, consistency, or levelheaded thinking has been a staple of Western-based activism that purports to care about the Palestinian people in Gaza.
As someone who has lived part of my life in Gaza, lost family members and my childhood homes in this war, and is dedicated to Gaza’s future rejuvenation and healing, I believe it is more urgent than ever to liberate Palestinians from the vicious cycles of violence brought on by Hamas’s 18-year rule.

Worse, I have watched the devolution of the pro-Palestine narrative into widespread adoption of Hamas’s views and positions. Nowadays, you can’t go to a mainstream pro-Palestine event or conference without proud, overt support for jihadi terrorism and Hamas’s armed-resistance narrative. The Hamas narrative has clearly been mainstreamed as thePalestinian narrative.
This lionization of Hamas in the West has come as actual Palestinians in Gaza have grown more vocal in their opposition to Hamas… One of the first steps to freeing Palestinians from the horrors of war is to free them from the “Free Palestine Movement” in the West Article here

 

 

Ezzideen Shehab:
Today, my family and I learned that our homes and our entire neighbourhood have been completely erased – flattened into a barren stretch of yellow dust. We have been living the full meaning of defeat. We now have no home to return to.
One of Hamas’s leaders appears on television declaring that “the people have not been defeated,” that “Gaza has stood firm.” So let history record this: I, Dr. Ezzideen Shehab from Gaza, together with my family, my friends, and their families, were the victims of an annihilation ignited by Hamas, while Hamas’s fighters vanished into their tunnels.
Let history record the truth: we have been defeated – utterly, painfully, and completely defeated. And it is we, the people of Gaza, who have the right to say whether or not we were defeated, not those who sit comfortably in Qatar or Turkey. We were crushed, humiliated, and broken after our city was destroyed. We were displaced, stripped of everything we had built, left to wander through the ruins of our own lives.
We were not “steadfast.” We were held hostage in our own land. We could not leave. We could not change those who claimed to rule us. Article here

Critiques and Analysis of Ceasefire Deal

 

Maj. (ret.) Andrew Fox:
There was always going to be a deal with Hamas. When neither side can eliminate the other at an acceptable cost, wars end in bargains with enemies. Any plan that assumes swift moderation of Gazans is wishful thinking; if change comes, it will be generational and will not be dependent on moral exhortation from abroad.
What is new is a lattice of external guarantees, with Qatari, Egyptian and Turkish security commitments. That makes it harder for Israel to re-enter Gaza at will. It also binds Hamas to patrons it cannot afford to alienate. Yet, Hamas remains in Gaza. Even if it yields front-stage administration, it will try to retain influence behind the scenes. For now, though, it is militarily neutered and unlikely to mount serious attacks any time soon. Article here

 

Clifford D. May:
For the past few days, large crowds of healthy, energetic men, women and children have been cheering, dancing in the streets and chanting “Allahu akbar!” – all recorded on their fully charged cellphones. These scenes make clear there is no Israeli-engineered famine in Gaza, much less a genocide. A central pillar of Hamas’s war strategy has been to cause maximum hardship in Gaza, confident that useful idiots in the West would blame Israelis.
Gaza had 36 hospitals, elegant restaurants, shopping malls and luxury auto dealerships. Such wonders were produced thanks to the river of foreign aid that flowed into Gaza after Hamas’s violent ascension to power in 2007, two years after Israel’s complete withdrawal from the territory. That left Hamas commander Yahya Sinwar free to devote his energies to war planning: importing munitions via Egypt, building weapons factories and constructing a subterranean fortress…
Hamas troops have now emerged from their tunnels, proudly wearing their uniforms and reasserting control by executing opponents, rivals and dissidents. Hamas leaders regard the ceasefire with Israel not as “peace” but only a “hudna,” a truce during which they can prepare for the next battle in the jihad. Article here

 

 

Tom Gross: Israelis can be brilliant at many things. But sometimes they get it very wrong. From the outset, it has been foolish for Israeli negotiators (and later President Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff) to even entertain the idea that they will release convicted mass murderers and suicide bomb planners in exchange for innocent Israeli kidnap victims.

 To take one example: Mahmoud Qawasmeh, a 45-year-old senior Hamas member who was previously released during the lopsided 2011 Gilad Shalit terrorist-for-hostage exchange. He then went on to orchestrate the 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers, for which he was re-arrested only last year in March. He is due to be released under the new Trump plan.

 What are the bets that in future Qawasmeh will go on to murder again and be arrested a third time (probably after hiding in some UN-affiliated hospital) and then released yet again in some future lopsided hostages for terrorists deal?  Article here (paywall)

 

 

The Problem with the West

 

 

Stephen Daisley : The marches were never about peace. They were about the destruction of Israel.

Today’s (last Saturday’s) demonstration in London must be the first recorded example of people protesting the end of a supposed genocide.

This is a movement more concerned with dismantling Israel than with building up Palestine.
There is a ceasefire. The killing has stopped. Aid is going in. Who in their right mind protests that? A movement that sees peace as an impediment to vilifying Israel. Article here (paywall)

 

 

Jake Wallis Simons: The West – meaning the democracies aside from the U.S. – must embark upon a soul-searching.
How can it be that almost every single leader allowed himself or herself to be brainwashed by Hamas and its international sympathizers to the extent that all the pressure and condemnation was directed at Israel?
How can so many countries have grown so damnably confused between enemies and friends?
We are possessed by a weakling and bloodless worldview which flows from two beliefs. Firstly, that an enemy is simply a friend you have not made yet. Secondly, that appeasement is the best route to peace.
You’d have thought that the entirety of history, particularly the Second World War, have adequately demonstrated the opposite.
The truth is the same as it has always been: evil exists in the world and sometimes the only alternative is to defeat it. Israel has never had the luxury of forgetting this. Article here (paywall)

 

 

Henry Donovan: Two years on from Hamas’s massacre and with Gaza lying in ruins, the West still refuses to look the real problem in the eye. The obstacle to lasting peace between Israel and Gaza is a widespread conviction in the West Bank and Gaza (and on university campuses and on London’s streets) that Israel is a mistake to be undone. Until that idea dies, no ceasefire and no “two-state solution” will hold.
The belief that Israel should someday cease to exist – still widespread among Palestinians and their sympathizers abroad – is at the heart of the conflict. Hamas is merely the current, most violent, manifestation of this idea. As long as the fantasy endures – in classrooms, refugee camps and UN speeches – every truce is an intermission, not a peace. Believing that Gaza can be “rehabilitated,” while its people are taught that their neighbour must disappear, is for the birds.
Israel’s demand is simple: to live without annihilation as a daily threat. The corresponding Palestinian demand is the reverse – to erase the Jewish state “from the river to the sea.” The lives of millions of ordinary Palestinians have been ruined by this obsession.
After 1945, millions of ethnic Germans were violently expelled from lands they had lived in for centuries: East Prussia, the Sudetenland, Silesia. The expellees built new lives in new homes and moved on. No international agency taught their grandchildren to dream of Breslau or Konigsberg. No politicians promised that someday the borders would be reversed. Out of that acceptance grew the stability on which modern Europe rests. The Middle East will find no peace until it learns the same lesson.
Peace will come when Palestinian leaders, educators and activists have the courage to tell their own people what European leaders once told millions of their displaced: that history does not run in reverse and that compromise is the price of peace. Until then, every slogan about “resistance” is a declaration of permanent war.  Article here (paywall)

 

 

Further reading:

 

Yoni Ben Menachem: Palestinians repeatedly choose leaders who destroy Palestinian society from within. Generations of Palestinian leadership preferred death to life, symbolism to reality, and revenge to a future. Tragically, there is currently no sign that Gazan society is about to recover. On the contrary, voices calling for jihad and chants of “Death to the Jews” are once again being heard in Gaza. Israel must draw the necessary lessons from the war and prepare thoroughly for the next conflict.Article here

 

 

Brendan O’Neill: For me, the ‘progressive’ silence on the stolen Israelis was one of the most sobering and illuminating moments of the 21st century so far. Cause-hungry celebrities studiously ignored this cause. Anti-fascists were spectacularly unmoved by this abduction of Jews by fascists. Feminists seemed utterly unstirred by the dragging of young, bloodied women into the misogynist hell of Hamas-ruled Gaza…

 ‘Progressives’ in the West were all but complicit in Hamas’s abduction of the Jews, either by ignoring it, or by making excuses for it, or by outright doing Hamas’s bidding and destroying the hostages’ posters. Today we celebrate the liberation of 20 men from the hell of fascistic persecution – tomorrow we ask why so many in our own societies took the side of their persecutors. Article here

 

 

Fraser Myers: Every time the keffiyeh-clad mob takes to the streets, you will hear chants for the destruction of Israel. You will see placards comparing Jews to Nazis. You will see Hamas apologists and fan boys leading the pack. So why can’t our leaders bring themselves to call out this obvious bigotry?

(Last) Saturday’s demo confirms that they are not protesting against a war – they are protesting against a people’s right to exist and to self-determination. To call them anything other than ‘hate marches’ would be to indulge a dangerous lie. Article here