Six newborns die as cold snap grips Gaza: civil defense

NIR ‘OZ, Israel: Hundreds of people gathered on Tuesday at a small cemetery in a southern Israeli community to bid a final farewell to Oded Lifshitz, a kibbutz founder who died in captivity in Gaza.
Palestinian militant group Hamas returned Lifshitz’s body to Israel last week, part of an ongoing truce deal that has halted the Gaza war — triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack in which the veteran journalist was abducted from his home.
“Dad, now you’re home,” said his son Arnon Lifshitz at the cemetery in Nir Oz.
Among the attendees at the funeral were lawmakers, activists, European diplomats and Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who asked for “forgiveness that the State of Israel did not protect you, your family and your kibbutz.”
“In the face of such inhuman cruelty, you were left to stand alone,” said the president.
Lifshitz, then aged 83, was taken hostage from his home on the kibbutz during Hamas’s 2023 attack. His wife, Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, was also seized but released by Hamas after 18 days.
Israeli officials said Oded Lifshitz was murdered by his captors from militant group Islamic Jihad, which has fought alongside Hamas in Gaza.
In addition to Lifshitz, the bodies of three other Nir Oz residents taken hostage and killed in captivity — Shiri Bibas and her two young sons — were returned last week.
The three members of the Bibas family will be buried on Wednesday.
At Lifshitz’s funeral, Hen Avigdori, whose wife and daughter were taken hostage from a neighboring kibbutz and released in the war’s first truce in November 2023, said that “it should have ended differently, he should be here with us.”
To Avigdori, seeing the row of graves “of people who were murdered here on October 7, and those who are waiting for their loved ones to be returned, is a difficult feeling.”
“This kibbutz has become a symbol of the neglect.”
Lifshitz had a long career with the now defunct, left-leaning newspaper Al Hamishmar, and was a long-time defender of Palestinian rights.
In 1972, he defended Bedouins who were expelled from the Sinai Peninsula by occupying Israeli authorities.
A decade later, during the Lebanese civil war and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, he was one of the first journalists to report on the Sabra and Shatila massacres in which Israeli-backed Christian militias killed between 800 and 2,000 Palestinians in Beirut refugee camps.
More recently, Lifshitz, an Arabic speaker, had been actively involved for years with Road to Recovery, an organization which helps Palestinians receive medical treatment in Israel.
Shlomo Margalit, also one of the founders of Nir Oz and a friend of Lifshitz, said that “Oded was a man of peace.”
“All his life, he worked for the well-being of our neighbors.”
Yocheved Lifshitz said that in their 67 years together, she and Oded “fought... for social justice and peace.”
“Unfortunately, we received a terrible blow from those we had helped on the other side.”
Hamas and its militant allies took 251 people hostage during their October 2023 attack.
Of those, 62 are still being held hostages in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military says are dead.
Bibas and her two sons, Kfir and Ariel, had become symbols of the ordeal suffered by the Israeli hostages.
Ariel was aged four at the time of the attack, while Kfir was the youngest hostage, just nine months old.
At the cemetery, one of Lifshitz’s grandsons Dekel Lifshitz told AFP that the cactus garden his late grandfather had cultivated on the kibbutz was a sign of his “determination.”
“It takes years to succeed in growing a garden like this, and it reminds me that he was always active.”

JERUSALEM: In a rare acknowledgement of the agency’s covert operations, Israel’s spy chief declared on Tuesday that last year’s “pager operation” against Hezbollah “turned the tables” on the Lebanese militant group in its war with Israel.
“This operation marked a turning point in the north, during which we turned the tables on our enemies,” said David Barnea, head of Mossad, speaking at a conference in Tel Aviv.
“A direct line can be drawn from the pager operation to the elimination of (Hassan) Nasrallah and the ceasefire agreement. Hezbollah suffered a devastating blow that shattered the organization’s spirit,” he added, referring to Israel’s assassination of the Hezbollah leader.
On September 17 and 18, an Israeli operation detonated hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah. Lebanese authorities reported that the attack killed 39 people and wounded thousands.
The bombs detonated all across Lebanon, including in shops and homes, and were called a violation of international law by the United Nation’s human rights chief Volker Turk.
Just days later, on September 27, Israel assassinated Nasrallah in a massive air strike on southern Beirut, which was swiftly followed by an Israeli ground offensive against Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon.
By late November, Israel and Hezbollah reached a ceasefire agreement, bringing more than a year of hostilities to an end.
However, Israel continues to hold five “strategic military positions” along the border inside Lebanese territory.
In a rare disclosure of Mossad’s tactics, Barnea provided new details of the pager operation.
Saying his agency had “devised an unconventional method to strike,” Barnea revealed that the groundwork for the operation began in 2022, with the first shipment of 500 pagers reaching Lebanon weeks before Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
“When the operation was finally launched, ten times that number of beepers were detonated than we had in the start of the war and twice the amount of radios,” he stated, adding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally approved the mission.
“The day thousands of pagers exploded in the hands of Hezbollah operatives will be remembered as the moment that changed the course of the war,” Barnea declared. “It was a day when deception in warfare proved more powerful than brute force.”
In a symbolic gesture earlier this month, Netanyahu presented US President Donald Trump with a golden pager, commemorating the operation’s impact on Hezbollah.