Video: The incident in the Gaza Strip / Credit: IDF Spokesperson

According to details of the incident, a group of at least 14 terrorists emerged from a subterranean tunnel near the IDF outpost. They opened fire with antitank missiles and machine guns on IDF personnel at the location.

The soldiers stationed at the outpost returned fire, neutralizing at least eight terrorists during the intense exchange. The remaining terrorists attempted to escape, prompting the IDF to deploy aircraft and tanks to engage them. Three soldiers sustained injuries during the attack.

Some 10 terrorists were killed in face-to-face clashes and from aerial strikes. About eight terrorists fled back into the tunnels. One Nachshon Battalion soldier from the Kfir Brigade was seriously wounded in the clash and evacuated to a hospital for treatment. His family has been notified. Two additional soldiers sustained light injuries. IDF ground and air forces continue to scan the area in search of the terrorists. The army assesses that the cell had planned to infiltrate the outpost and possibly abduct soldiers.

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Israel is conducting negotiations with Iran for the release of Elizabeth Tsurkov, who was abducted in Iraq in March, Saudi outlet Asharq Al-Awsat said Sunday.

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According to the report, Israel will in exchange release an Iranian the Mossad arrested on suspicion of planning an attack on Israelis in Cyprus.

Video: Kataib Hezbollah training in Iraq, Arab media

Meanwhile, the Iraqi government has opened an investigation into the kidnapping of Israeli citizen Elizabeth Tsurkov in Baghdad in March, a government spokesperson told Reuters on Friday.

Tsurkov went missing after going to Iraq for research purposes on behalf of Princeton University, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said on Wednesday.

The office said that she is being held there by Shiite militia Kataib Hezbollah, a group backed by Iran.

"Elizabeth Tsurkov is still alive and we see Iraq as responsible for her fate and well being," the statement said, adding that the situation is being handled by the relevant bodies in Israel.

The Iraqi spokesperson said the government was waiting for the results of the investigation and had no further comment. A spokesperson for Kataib Hezbollah could not be reached.

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An Italian judge has issued an international arrest warrant for Shmuel Peleg, the grandfather accused of kidnapping his grandson, Eitan Biran, the Italian press reported Wednesday.

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Biran, 6, is the sole survivor of a cable car crash in northern Italy in May that killed 14 people, including his father, Amit Biran, his mother, Tal Peleg, his one-year-old brother, Tom, and his great-grandparents Barbara Cohen Konisky and Itshak Cohen.

After the tragedy, the boy was assigned to the custody of his paternal aunt, Aya Biran, who lived near Eitan's family in the city of Pavia, where Amit, his father, studied medicine.

Peleg, the child's maternal grandfather, allegedly abducted the boy by taking him to Israel in September.

A warrant was also issued for Gabriel Abutubul Alon, a 50-year-old Israeli man who allegedly drove the car in which Eitan was taken to the Swiss city of Lugano and then flown to Tel Aviv on a private jet.

According to the Italian prosecutor, Peleg and Alon carried out "a well prepared strategic plan" for the abduction of the child and bringing him to Israel with them.

Judge Iris Ilotovich-Segal of a Tel Aviv family court ruled on October 25 that the child must be returned to Italy and to the care of his paternal aunt.

The decision was released in view of the Hague Convention regarding the abduction of minors.

"We are waiting to see what will happen at the international level, i.e. the response of the Israeli authorities to the international arrest warrant," Pavia Prosecutor Mario Venditti told the Italian wire service Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata (ANSA) following the judge's ruling. "Then we will proceed with the closure of the investigation and the request for a trial."

On Thursday, a Tel Aviv family court is expected to hear the appeal submitted by Peleg and his wife, Eitan's grandmother, against its October 25 ruling. The family is reportedly also working via legal channels in Italy to annul the aunt's guardianship.

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More than 30 years after the murders of Nissim Shitrit and Avi Edri in 1986 and 1990, respectively, three suspects –two men and a woman, all in their 60s – have been arrested in connection with the killings, police reported late Sunday after a gag order was lifted.

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The investigation is being handled by the Jerusalem District Police's major crimes unit, which is still trying to solve the murders of Shitrit and Avi Edri, who was a taxi driver and maintenance workers at the Shuvu Banim Yeshiva in Jerusalem.

The latest development in the case came after Kan 11 broadcast a miniseries about Rabbi Eliezer Berland, head of the Shuvu Banim Hassidic sect, titled "Harav Hanistar"  ("The Hidden Rabbi). The series, which aired about a year and a half ago after its creator, Shany Haziza, spent years researching it, probed the connection of the Shuvu Banim community to the disappearance of Shitrit and the murder of Edri, four years later. The series also claimed that members of the Shuvu Banim "modesty patrols" were supposedly behind both acts.

Shitrit, a resident of Jerusalem who was a student at a yeshiva in Ashdod, disappeared in January 1986 and was last seen in the car of a person known as Mike, whom he had met a week earlier. A few weeks before he vanished, Shitrit filed a police complaint that he had been abducted and severely beaten by the Shuvu Banim modesty squads after they accused him of having relationships with girls. Shitrit named one of his alleged attackers, who was arrested and questioned, but because the police did not have sufficient evidence against him, the suspect was released.

The main suspect now under arrest has already testified after police brought him in, suspecting he was involved in Shitrit's disappearance, but his questioning did not yield sufficient evidence for police to arrest him. At the time, the suspect was also fingered in the Edri murder, but now he is suspected of involvement in both incidents.

Edri, who was 41 at the time of his death, worked as a taxi driver and a maintenance man at Shuvu Banim Yeshiva. His body was found in Ramot Forest and bore signs of violence. He was murdered after a night out with his wife. Even at the time of his murder, police thought he had been killed by members of the modesty patrol, who suspected him of involvement with married Haredi women.

The three suspects in police custody are accused of murder, aiding and abetting murder, and abduction. A female suspect admitted she was forced to act as a honey trap to entice Edri, and possibly Shitri, to the place where they could be attacked. All three suspects have been remanded for an additional seven days.

The police announced that they plan to continue the investigation, and that additional arrests could follow. Police also plan to investigate Berland himself to see if the rabbi was involved in the cases. In 2016, Berland was convicted after admitted to two counts of indecent sexual acts and one count of sexual assault. In June 2021, he was convicted on charges of fraud, exploitation, attempted intimidation, tax offenses, and money laundering.

Shitrit's older brother, Meir Shitrit, told Israel Hayom that after Shitrit filed the police complaint, the family was bombarded with telephone threats in efforts to convince Shitrit to take back the complaint, but the teen refused to comply.

"My dad was the one who got the threatening phone calls. They wanted the case closed, but he refused. And then the threats that they would kidnap and kill him [Nissim] started. They identified themselves as part of [Rabbi] Berland's 'modesty patrols,'" Meir Shitrit said.

Meir also said that a few years ago, he held a phone conversation with one of the three suspects now under arrest, who told him that Nissim had been buried in the Eshtaol Forest, located north of Beit Shemesh.

"If the original burial location is found, it will be possible collect DNA and we can sit shiva for him," Meir said, adding that the family had not recovered from the blow of Nissim's murder.

"My dad couldn't realize that he wouldn't come back. Any time anyone knocked on the door, he jumped up to see if it was his lost son who'd returned. He couldn't take it, and a year and four months later, he had a heart attack. My mom couldn't accept that Nissim wouldn't come back, either. I hope we can reach closure," Meir said.

i24NEWS contributed to this report

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The story of Sgt. Nachshon Wachsman is imprinted on the nation's collective memory after the heroic rescue attempt by Sayeret Matkal soldiers on Oct. 14, 1994.

Under direct orders from then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the elite fighters set out to rescue Wachsman from the home in the village of Bir Nabala where he was being held. But the terrorists killed Wachsman before he could be extracted, and in the gunfight that ensued Capt. Nir Poraz was also killed.

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"Time doesn't help. I've become weaker, and sick. It's very hard to deal with it," says Yehuda.

Despite the difficulty, Yehuda remains optimistic and says that on Nov. 7, a memorial service for his son (according to the Hebrew calendar date of his death) is planned that will include soldiers from the Sayeret Matkal and from the Orev Unit in the Golani Brigade, where Nachshon served.

"I'm still in touch with them, and with Nir Poraz's sisters," Yehuda says.

"Nachshon was 19, a symbol of innocence. He wanted to defend Israel, the people of Israel, and the Torah of Israel, with our ancient traditions and met his death at the hands of a Hamas terrorist cell. He took things as they were like he was told to. He served in Lebanon for six months, against Hezbollah, and did the best work he could."

Yehuda does not bear a grudge for what happened in the failed rescue attempt.

"I'm not angry. It's been 25 years and most of the people involved in the [rescue] operation aren't alive anymore. Is there a reason to be angry at the dead? Aside from that, I'm sure that they wanted the best, and what happened, happened."

Yehuda connects that same dark week when hundreds of thousands were praying for Nachshon's safe return, to the current polarization in Israeli society and the unstable political situation, calling for an immediate end to political fighting.

"While Nachshon was abducted, a lot of people of all ethnicities came to the Western Wall – religious and secular – to pray he would be saved. There was great unity among the people. That's what I would like our leaders to learn from – that we have to come together to form a government soon, and remember the time of Nachshon's abduction."

Yehuda points out that Nachshon was a captive and the Sayeret Matkal set out to rescue him, "without asking if he voted for the National Religious Party or anyone else. They were ready to sacrifice their lives to save an Israeli soldier, and it didn't matter where he was from or where he was aligned. Somehow, 25 years after that phenomenon of responsibility for one another and sacrifice … has become weaker. We are being separated, which is a big danger to our existence in Israel."

Q: Are you afraid that in the future, soldiers won't want to go on missions to rescue abducted soldiers?

"That is a concern, given what we're seeing in politics," Yehuda says.

"We're always in a war, and we don't have the luxury of such big [internal] divisions. Everyone needs to compromise so we can unite and strengthen the people who make decisions. We are surrounded by very strong enemies. They have missiles pointed at us, and Iran wants to wipe us off the map. At a time like this, we should split? Nachshon symbolized innocence."

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Media watchdog organization CAMERA is raising questions about an upcoming HBO series, "Our Boys," about the brutal murder of a Palestinian teenager Muhammad Abu Khdeir by a Jewish gang in 2014.

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"When HBO released the trailer for the series, several news publications promoted the show as a story about the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers by Hamas operatives just prior to the 2014 Gaza war," said Andrea Levin, CAMERA's executive director. "However, the trailer spends less than a minute on the killing of the Israeli boys."

Levin went on to say that "their murder is depicted with hardly any pathos and seems simply to be the inciting incident for the film's central drama – finding the Jewish perpetrators of the appalling murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir."

According to CAMERA film reviewer Ricki Hollander, "Much of the trailer is devoted to scenes of bloodthirsty Israeli Jews screaming for revenge, and these scenes of revenge-bent Israelis are juxtaposed with sympathetic images of Muhammad Abu Khdeir's heartbroken father. The trailer includes no sympathetic scenes of the Israeli parents whose children were murdered, even though the killings were a national trauma."

At one point in the trailer, Israel's security and judicial system, which in reality includes Arab officials, is presented as racist.

"When the victim is a Jew, you're champions," Muhammad's father yells at an Israeli security official. "But when it's an Arab, you don't have a clue!"

"If the trailer accurately reflects the series, I'm concerned that audiences will be misled about the actual tragedy," Hollander said. "The trailer, for example, suggests that Abu Khdeir's murder was fomented by some widespread call for revenge by Israelis.

"It includes no hint that in reality Israelis across the political spectrum were horrified by the murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir, a crime condemned by Israel's entire leadership and society, from secular to ultra-Orthodox, and from far Left to far Right."

That the trailer suggests an equivalence between the murders of the Israeli teenagers and the Palestinian boy is also a serious cause for concern, according to Hollander.

"In contrast to the blanket condemnation of the Palestinian boy's murder," said Hollander, "murders of Israeli Jews are encouraged and incentivized not only by Hamas – just a few days ago a senior Hamas official, Fathi Hammad, made headlines for urging Palestinians to kill Jews around the world – but by the Palestinian Authority, which glorifies terrorists, naming streets and schools after them and subsidizing the families of convicted Palestinian terrorists."

"It's hard, obviously, to judge a series by a brief trailer," Levin said, "but if the teaser accurately forecasts what's to come, there will be valid concerns about how the tragic events of 2014 are depicted. Hopefully, the series will not replicate the problems of the trailer."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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