Israel raids a Syrian village and detains suspected militants; 1 person is killed
The Israeli military said those detained during the pre-dawn raid on Beit Jin were suspected of planning attacks against Israel, and that weapons also were found in the area. They were taken back to Israel for questioning, the military said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Atlantic
25 minutes ago
- Atlantic
The Limits of Recognition
On a prominent ridge in the center of Toronto stands a big stone castle. Built in the early 20th century, Casa Loma is now a popular venue for weddings and parties. The castle is flanked by some of the city's priciest domestic real estate. It is not, in short, the kind of site that usually goes unpoliced. On May 27, Casa Loma was booked for a fundraiser by the Abraham Global Peace Initiative, a pro-Israel advocacy group. The gathering was to be addressed by Gilad Erdan, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and United States. A crowd of hundreds formed opposite the castle. They temporarily overwhelmed police lines, closing the street to the castle entrance. Protesters accosted and insulted individual attendees. One attendee, a former Canadian senator now in his 90s, told me about being pushed and jostled as police looked on. Eventually, two arrests were made, one for assaulting a police officer and the other for assaulting an attendee. Last year, the city of Toronto averaged more than one anti-Jewish incident a day, accounting for 40 percent of all reported hate crimes in Canada's largest city. Jewish neighborhoods, Jewish hospitals, and Jewish places of worship have been the scenes of demonstrations by masked persons bearing flags and chanting hostile slogans. Gunmen fired shots at a Toronto Jewish girls' school on three nights last year. A synagogue in Montreal was attacked with firebombs in late 2024. On Saturday, an assailant beat a Jewish man in a Montreal park in front of his children. David Frum: There is no right to bully and harass Canadian governments—federal, provincial, municipal—of course want to stop the violence. But their inescapable (if often unsayable) dilemma is that many of those same governments depend on voters who are sympathetic to the motives of the violent. Canadian authorities of all kinds have become frightened of important elements in their own populations. Just this week, the Toronto International Film Festival withdrew its invitation to a Canadian film about the invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023. The festival's statement cited legal concerns, including the fear that by incorporating footage that Hamas fighters filmed of their atrocities without ' legal clearance,' the film violated Hamas's copyright. (In polite Canada, it seems that even genocidal terrorists retain their intellectual-property claims.) Another and more plausible motive cited by the festival: fear of 'potential threat of significant disruption.' A small group of anti-Israel protesters invaded the festival's gala opening in 2024. The legal violations have been larger and more flagrant this year. All of this forms the backdrop necessary to understand why the Canadian government has joined the British and French governments in their intention to recognize a Palestinian state. The plan began as a French diplomatic initiative. In July, France and Saudi Arabia co-chaired a United Nations conference on the two-state solution. Days before the conference began, French President Emmanuel Macron declared that his nation would recognize a Palestinian state in September. The French initiative was almost immediately seconded by the British government. Canada quickly followed. This week, Australia added its weight to the group. Anti-Jewish violence has been even more pervasive and aggressive in Australia than in Canada, including the torching of a Sydney day-care center in January. (Germany declined to join the French initiative but imposed a limited arms embargo on Israel.) All four governments assert that their plan offers no concessions to Hamas. All four insist that a hypothetical Palestinian state must be disarmed, must exclude Hamas from any role in governance, must renounce terrorism and incitement, and must accept Israel's right to exist. Those conditions often got omitted in media retellings, but they are included in all the communiqués with heavy emphasis. As Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters on July 30: 'Canada reiterates that Hamas must immediately release all hostages taken in the horrific terrorist attack of October 7, that Hamas must disarm, and that Hamas must play no role in the future governance of Palestine.' All those must s make these plans impossible to achieve, from the outset. How do the French, British, Canadian, and Australian governments imagine them being enforced, and by whom? Even now, after all this devastation, Hamas remains the most potent force in Palestinian politics. A May survey by a Palestinian research group, conducted in cooperation with the Netherland Representative Office in Ramallah, reported that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians reject the idea that Hamas's disarmament is a path to ending the war in Gaza, and a plurality said they would vote for a Hamas-led government. Observers might question the findings from Gaza, where Hamas can still intimidate respondents, but those in the West Bank also rejected the conditions of France, Britain, Canada, and Australia. What does recognition mean anyway? Of UN member states, 147 already recognize a state of Palestine, including the economic superpowers China and India; regional giants such as Brazil, Indonesia, and Nigeria; and the European Union member states of Poland, Romania, Slovenia, and Sweden. About half of those recognitions date back to 1988, when Yasser Arafat proclaimed Palestinian independence from his exile in Algiers after the Israeli military drove Arafat's organization out of the territory it had occupied in Lebanon. Such diplomatic niceties do not alter realities. States are defined by control of territory and population. In that technical sense, Hamas in Gaza has proved itself to be more like a state than has the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Even the mighty United States learned that lesson the hard way over the 22 years from 1949 to 1971, when Washington pretended that the Nationalist regime headquartered in Taipei constituted the legitimate government of mainland China. Macron, Carney, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese are savvy, centrist politicians. All regard themselves as strong friends of Israel. Starmer in particular has fought hard to purge his Labour Party of the anti-Semitic elements to whom the door was opened by his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn. If they're investing their prestige in a seemingly futile gesture, they must have good reason. They do. All four men lead political coalitions that are fast turning against Israel. Pressure is building on the leaders to vent their supporters' anger, and embracing the French initiative creates a useful appearance of action. The Canadian example is particularly stark. Prime Minister Carney has pivoted in many ways from the progressive record of his predecessor, Justin Trudeau. He canceled an increase in the capital-gains tax that Trudeau had scheduled. He dropped from the cabinet a housing minister who had championed a major government-led building program. (The program remains, but under leadership less beholden to activists.) Carney has committed to a major expansion of the Canadian energy sector after almost a decade of dissension between energy producers and Ottawa. The new Carney government is also increasing military spending. Many on the Canadian left feel betrayed and frustrated. Recognizing a Palestinian state is a concession that may appease progressives irked by Carney's other moves toward the political center. But appeasement will not work. In the Middle East, the initiative by France, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom has already pushed the region away from stability, not toward it. Cease-fire talks with Hamas 'fell apart' on the day that Macron declared his intent to recognize a Palestinian state, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Hamas then released harrowing photographs of starved Israeli hostages, one shown digging his own grave. Embarrassed pro-recognition leaders had to deliver a new round of condemnations of Hamas at the very moment they were trying to pressure Israel to abandon its fight against Hamas. Nor does the promise of Palestinian recognition seem to be buying the four leaders the domestic quiet they had hoped for. On Sunday, British police arrested more than 500 people for demonstrating in support of a pro-Palestine group proscribed because of its acts of violence against British military installations. Those arrests amounted to the largest one-day total in the U.K. in a decade. Hours before Prime Minister Albanese's statement promising recognition, some 90,000 pro-Palestinian demonstrators blocked traffic on Sydney Harbour Bridge. Their organizers issued four demands—recognition was not one of them. 'What we marched for on Sunday, and what we've been protesting for two years, is not recognition of a non-existent Palestinian state that Israel is in the process of wiping out,' a group leader told CNN. 'What we are demanding is that the Australian government sanction Israel and stop the two-way arms trade with Israel.' On August 6, 60 anti-Israel protesters mobbed the private residence of former Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, banging pots and projecting messages onto her Montreal dwelling—an action especially provocative because Canadian cabinet ministers are not normally protected by personal security detachments. The present foreign minister, Anita Anand, had to close her constituency office in Oakville, a suburb of Toronto, because of threats to the staff who worked there. From the December 2024 issue: My hope for Palestine The issue for protesters is Israel, not Palestine. During the Syrian civil war, more than 3,000 Palestinian refugees in the country were killed by Syrian government forces, hundreds of them by torture. Nobody blocked the Sydney Harbour Bridge over that. It's Israel's standing as a Western-style state that energizes the movement against it and that is unlikely to change no matter what shifts in protocol Western governments adopt. After all, on October 6, 2023, Gaza was functionally a Palestinian state living alongside Israel. If the pro-Palestinian groups in the West had valued that status, they should have reacted to October 7 with horror, if nothing else for the existential threat that the attacks posed to any Palestinian state-building project. Instead, many in the pro-Palestinian diaspora—and even at the highest levels of Palestinian official life—applauded the terror attacks with jubilant anti-Jewish enthusiasm. The chants of 'from the river to the sea' heard at these events reveal something important about the pro-Palestinian movement in the democratic West. The slogan expresses an all-or-nothing fantasy: either the thrilling overthrow of settler colonialism in all the land of Palestine, or else the glorious martyrdom of the noble resistance. It's not at all clear that ordinary Palestinians actually living in the region feel the same way. The exact numbers fluctuate widely depending on how the question is framed, but at least a significant minority—and possibly a plurality—of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza would accept coexistence with Israel if that acceptance brought some kind of state of their own. But their supporters living in the West can disregard such trade-offs. They can exult in the purity of passion and still enjoy a comfortable life in a capitalist democracy. These are the people that Albanese, Carney, Macron, and Starmer are trying so desperately to satisfy. They are unlikely to succeed. The Hamas terror attacks of October 7 provoked a war of fearsome scale. Almost two years later, the region is almost unrecognizable. Tens of thousands have been killed, and much of Gaza laid to ruin. Almost every known leader of Hamas is dead. Hezbollah has been broken as a military force. The Assad regime in Syria has been toppled and replaced. The United States directly struck Iran, and the Iranian nuclear program seems to have been pushed years backward, if not destroyed altogether. In this world upended, the creative minds of Western diplomacy have concluded that the best way forward is to revert to the Oslo peace process of 30 years ago. The Oslo process ended when the Palestinian leadership walked away from President Bill Clinton's best and final offer without making a counteroffer—and gambled everything on the merciless terrorist violence of the Second Intifada. Now here we are again, after another failed Palestinian terror campaign, and there is only one idea energizing Western foreign ministries: That thing that failed before? Let's try it one more time. But this time, the hope is not to bring peace to the Middle East. They hope instead to bring peace to their own streets. The undertaking is a testament either to human perseverance, or to the eternal bureaucratic faith in peace through fog.
Wall Street Journal
25 minutes ago
- Wall Street Journal
Israeli Minister Strikes at Palestinian State With Move to Expand Key Settlement
Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Israel would move ahead with a controversial settlement expansion near East Jerusalem that would isolate key Palestinian communities and significantly complicate prospects for a Palestinian state. Smotrich, who also oversees civil affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories via a separate post in the defense ministry, said construction plans have been approved for a project that 'finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state.'
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
KOREN: TIFF's shameful erasure of the Israeli perspective
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has long prided itself on being one of the world's premier cultural events — an institution that champions artistic integrity, fearless storytelling, and the exchange of ideas. This week, it abandoned all of that. TIFF quietly dropped The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue from its lineup. The documentary, by Canadian filmmaker Barry Avrich, tells the harrowing true story of Noam Tibon, who drove from Tel Aviv to Kibbutz Nahal Oz on October 7 to rescue his son and two young granddaughters trapped in a safe room while Hamas terrorists rampaged through southern Israel — murdering, raping, and kidnapping civilians. These atrocities were proudly recorded by the terrorists themselves, often on GoPros, and broadcast for the world to see. The film is not propaganda. It is not even political. It is a deeply human story about courage, family, and survival in the face of unimaginable evil. By any honest standard, it belongs at TIFF. After public criticism, TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey apologized and said he would explore ways to reinstate the film. That's welcome — but it only underscores how quickly the festival's first instinct was to sideline the Israeli perspective, and how reluctant it remains to defend that perspective on principle. The official reason for the removal? Copyright concerns. According to the festival, the filmmakers did not have permission to use some of the October 7 footage. In other words, TIFF is faulting them for not obtaining a release form from Hamas terrorists. This is not just absurd — it is shameful. The decision is also a betrayal of TIFF's own stated mission: To 'enlighten, enrich understanding, and foster empathy.' How can you foster empathy while erasing an entire perspective from the public square? Let's be clear about what is happening. TIFF is not just avoiding controversy; it is preemptively silencing the Israeli narrative. The festival is operating on the same three principles adopted by Arab leaders at the Khartoum Conference of 1967: No peace, no recognition, no negotiations. The anti-Israel movement in the West has embraced these principles more rigidly than many Arab states themselves. And now, TIFF has chosen to comply — whether out of fear, convenience, or both. This is not an isolated act. Across North America and Europe, the Israeli perspective is being pushed out of cultural spaces. Plays cancelled. Exhibits pulled. Speakers shouted down. Filmmakers told to find another platform. The goal is not debate — it is erasure. The irony is that Israel's enemies often claim they want dialogue, 'critical conversations,' and 'multiple narratives.' But in practice, their position is simple: The Israeli narrative has no right to exist. It must be excluded, shamed and buried. And the more violent and disruptive the threats, the faster institutions fold. TIFF's decision comes at a perilous time. Canada is moving toward recognizing a Palestinian state, even as Hamas openly calls on supporters to escalate violence worldwide. In recent months, Jewish Canadians have been assaulted in Victoria, Montreal, and Saint John. Synagogues, schools, and businesses have been vandalized. The message from extremists is unmistakable: There is no place for Jews — physically or narratively — in public life. By caving to that pressure, TIFF has sent a chilling message to Toronto's Jewish community, which has played an integral role in the festival's history: Your stories are not safe here. This is more than a snub to one filmmaker. It is a test of whether our cultural institutions have the courage to live up to their own values. TIFF's choice makes the answer clear: When forced to choose between artistic integrity and political convenience, it will choose convenience every time. WARMINGTON: TIFF film censorship shows Toronto's antisemitism to the world KINSELLA: Public humiliation a familiar tactic for antisemites There was a time when film festivals understood their role. They were guardians of expression, even when the stories they screened were uncomfortable or unpopular. They believed audiences were capable of engaging with difficult truths. They knew that empathy cannot be selective — that the whole point of art is to bridge human experience, not narrow it. By uninviting The Road Between Us, TIFF has failed that role. It has told the world that the Israeli perspective is too dangerous to be shown — not because it is false, but because it might make some people uncomfortable. That is not integrity. It is capitulation. And it will not end here. If the precedent stands, it will be easier to erase the next Israeli story, and the one after that, until an entire people's lived experience is absent from our cultural record. That is how erasure works — not with one grand act of censorship, but with a thousand small acts of cowardice. TIFF now has a second chance. It can follow through on the CEO's apology and reinstate the film, standing by the principle that art is for everyone — not just those with the loudest, angriest voices. To do otherwise is to abandon the very foundation of artistic freedom. There is still time for TIFF to prove it has the courage to live by its mission. But every day it delays, the damage grows — not just to its reputation, but to the cultural fabric of this city. Because if a film about a grandfather rescuing his family from terrorists can't be shown at a festival supposedly dedicated to truth and empathy, then TIFF is no longer a festival. It's a filter. And the stories it filters out are the ones we most need to see. — Daniel Koren is the Founder and Executive Director of Allied Voices for Israel
