Weekly roundup of world briefs

Bolivia severs ties with Israel over war in Gaza

By Gabe Friedman

(JTA) — Bolivia’s foreign ministry announced Tuesday that it is severing diplomatic ties with Israel over what it called Israel’s crimes against humanity in its war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Bolivia had previously cut ties with Israel in 2009 under President Evo Morales over another violent conflict in Gaza, but President Jeanine Anez restored relations in 2020.

Bolivia’s current president, Luis Arce, is a member of the country’s left-wing socialist party and was formerly finance minister under Morales.

Morales, who resigned after his 2019 election win was widely disputed, was sharply critical of Israel during his 13 years in power. In 2017, after Chile expelled nine Bolivians accused of smuggling and theft, he said, “Chile is the Israel of South America: It imposes political walls, invisible and mental,”

In 2021, the Organization of American States — a coalition of 35 countries in North and South America — designated Hamas, the group that killed over 1,400 Israelis on Oct. 7, a terrorist organization. Bolivia was one of a few countries in the OAS not to agree with the move.

Colombia’s president has also threatened to cut ties with Israel in recent weeks, leading Israel to stop arms sales to the South American country.

Lebanese prime minister calls Hezbollah ‘rational, wise’

(JNS) — Air-raid sirens sounded in the northern Israeli community of Elkosh on Monday afternoon, the IDF said.

Earlier in the afternoon, terrorists in Lebanon fired shots at several IDF posts, triggering sirens in Rosh Hanikra in the Western Galilee and in nearby towns, close to the Lebanon border. The IDF responded with artillery fire and mortar shells towards the source of the attacks. 

After a similar attack a bit earlier, the IDF struck Hezbollah “military” infrastructure in Lebanon.

The Iranian-backed Shi’ite terrorist group “has managed the situation rationally and wisely,” the Lebanese prime minister said in an interview with AFP.

“I am doing my duty to prevent Lebanon from entering the war,” Najib Mikati said. “Lebanon is in the eye of the storm,” he added.

Mikati then offered praise for Hezbollah, which has been firing at Israeli territory on a daily basis since Jerusalem declared war on Hamas after the Oct. 7 massacre of more than 1,400 persons in Israel.

“For now Hezbollah has managed the situation rationally and wisely, and the rules of the game have remained constrained to certain limits,” he said. 

Six Israelis—five soldiers and a civilian—have been killed at the Lebanese border since Oct. 7.

Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has said that the Lebanese government will be held responsible for any attacks by Hezbollah on Israeli territory.

31 journalists killed in Israel-Hamas war

(JNS) — Thirty-one journalists have been killed in Gaza, Israel and Lebanon since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Four journalists were killed during the terror group’s invasion of southern Israel, 26 had been killed in the Gaza Strip as of Oct. 30 and one was killed in Lebanon, allegedly in an Israeli strike targeting the Hezbollah terror group. 

Eight journalists have been reported injured and an additional nine are feared missing or detained.

“CPJ is also investigating numerous unconfirmed reports of other journalists being killed, missing, detained, hurt, or threatened, and of damage to media offices and journalists’ homes,” according to a statement by the watchdog.

Israel’s Government Press Office has processed more than 2,000 journalists who have arrived in the country to cover the conflict.

The leading countries in dispatching war correspondents are the United States (358), Great Britain (281), France (221) and Germany (102).

Other countries that have sent journalists include Turkey (71), Italy (63), Canada (56), India (55), Spain (49), Australia (36), Greece (33), Russia (24), China (19), Belgium (18), Argentina (16), Mexico (10), Azerbaijan (8), Nepal (4), Uruguay (4), New Zealand (3), Georgia (2), Ghana (1), Nigeria (1), Senegal (1) and Singapore (1).

“From the moment they are processed until they leave, the GPO provides the journalists with all of the horrors, the testimony, the pictures and the voices, all in order to prove the absolute justice of Israel in this war on the world’s media platforms,” said GPO director Nitzan Chen.

Top Hamas commander killed as Israeli forces push deeper into Gaza

By Joshua Marks

(JNS) — Israel struck over 300 Hamas targets and killed “numerous” terrorists in the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, including a senior commander, the Israel Defense Forces said on Tuesday morning.

Among the sites targeted were underground anti-tank missile and rocket launching positions and military compounds, according to the IDF. 

Nasim Abu Ajina, commander of the Beit Lahia Battalion of Hamas’s Northern Brigade, was killed in an Israeli air strike on Monday. According to the IDF, Abu Ajina directed the Oct. 7 massacre of Israeli civilians in Kibbutz Erez and Netiv Ha’asara. He previously commanded the Hamas Aerial Array and participated in the development of the terrorist organization’s drones and paragliders.

“His elimination significantly harms the efforts of the Hamas terrorist organization to disrupt the IDF’s ground activities,” according to the Israeli military.

Israeli ground forces also engaged and destroyed terrorist cells, as well as providing real-time direction for airstrikes on Hamas forces and infrastructure.

Israeli forces have been conducting “fierce battles” against Hamas “deep in the Gaza Strip,” in recent hours, the IDF announced on Tuesday afternoon.

Israel’s Arrow system intercepts Houthi missile from Yemen

(JNS) — Israel’s Arrow air defense system has intercepted a surface-to-surface missile launched at the Jewish state from the “Red Sea area,” the military said on Tuesday.

A spokesperson for Yemen’s Houthi rebels confirmed the Iran-backed terror group fired ballistic and cruise missiles and launched aerial drones at Israel on Tuesday.

Houthi spokesperson Gen. Yahya Sarea said the attacks will continue “until Israeli aggression ceases.”

The IDF said it intercepted two ballistic missiles, one cruise missile and several drones above the Red Sea heading in the direction of Eilat.

One of the missiles was tracked by the Israeli Air Force and intercepted by the Arrow system “at the most appropriate operational time and location,” according to the Israel Defense Forces.

The incident marks the first operational use of the long-range Arrow defense system in the current war, according to the IDF.

Also on Tuesday morning, Israeli fighter jets downed other “hostile targets”—believed to be drones—that were flying in the Red Sea area, according to the IDF.

“All the threats were intercepted outside the territory of the State of Israel. No intrusion into Israeli territory was detected,” according to an IDF statement. 

The Houthis earlier claimed responsibility for the Tuesday morning drone attack, which set off air-raid sirens in Eilat.

“These drones belong to the state of Yemen,” Abdelaziz bin Habtour, prime minister of the Houthi government, told AFP, adding that that attack was in retaliation for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

Some 30 minutes after sirens sounded in Eilat, the Israel Defense Forces released an update stating that an “aerial target” had been identified “approaching Israeli territory,” adding that “there was no threat or risk to civilians.”

The IDF initially did not confirm reports that a drone had been intercepted, or state from which direction the threat had approached.

However, Houthi rebels in Yemen appeared to threaten the Israeli city on Friday night, with senior Houthi leader Hizam al-Asad tweeting the single word “Eilat” in Arabic.

Earlier on Friday, the IDF said that a fighter jet had intercepted an “aerial threat” over the Red Sea, which came hours after a drone attack on the Egyptian resort town of Taba in the Sinai Peninsula that wounded six people.

Taba is located along the border with Israel, some six miles from Eilat, Israel’s southernmost city.

Two Egyptian security sources told Reuters that a projectile also fell in the Red Sea town of Nuweiba.

Last week, the USS Carney, a U.S. Navy destroyer, shot down missiles and drones from Yemen that could have been aimed at Israel, the Pentagon said.

“The crew of the guided-missile destroyer USS Carney, operating in the northern Red Sea earlier today, shot down three land-attack cruise missiles and several drones that were launched by Houthi forces in Yemen,” said U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Defense Department spokesman.

“They were launched from Yemen, heading north along the Red Sea, potentially toward targets in Israel,” he added.

Yad Vashem: Ambassador’s yellow-star UN protest dishonors Holocaust victims

By Etgar Lefkovits

(JNS) — The head of Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial on Tuesday criticized Israel’s U.N. ambassador for donning a yellow Star of David during an address to the U.N. Security Council, saying the stunt “dishonors both the victims of the Holocaust and the State of Israel.”

The very public dispute between the two Israeli officials comes despite calls for unity as the army is fighting Hamas on the ground in Gaza, and as pro-Palestinian students at campuses across the United States are vilifying Israel and overtly or covertly backing the Islamist terror group.

“The yellow patch symbolizes the helplessness of the Jewish people and being at the mercy of others. Today we have an independent country and a strong army,” tweeted Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan. “We are masters of our destiny. Today we place a blue-white flag on the lapel, not a yellow patch.”

Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Gilad Erdan told the Security Council Monday that he and his staff would wear the yellow stars, inscribed with the words “Never Again,” until members of the body condemned Hamas’s atrocities.

Dayan’s criticism came a day after the Yad Vashem chief urged caution in a statement to JNS with regard to comparing Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre with the systematic mass murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust. Such comparisons, he said, risked belittling or marginalize both the past and present events.

The Oct. 7 massacre was the deadliest one-day attack against the Jewish people since the Shoah, and leaders and journalists in Israel and abroad have drawn unprecedented direct comparisons between the Islamic terrorist group and Nazi Germany.