Author: CNN

When Hamas fires rockets at Israel, advanced warning detectors set off alarms in targeted neighborhoods, civilians flee to an extensive network of bomb shelters, and the vaunted Iron Dome system works to intercept projectiles in the air.  

But in Gaza, none of those high-tech defenses were available to protect Maisara Baroud, 47, when his apartment building was hit by Israeli airstrikes Monday night. The only thing that saved him and his family: A neighbor yelling from the street.  

The neighbor received a call from Israeli military, giving him a heads up that a strike at a nearby residential building was imminent. Still, the neighbor told Baroud and the 15 other family members living in Baroud’s building — including nine children — to get out. 

The first strike wrecked most of the six buildings on the block, including Baroud’s.  

Still, Baroud and others assumed the worst was over and headed back into the building to salvage their belongings. Minutes later, the neighbor received a follow-up call from the Israeli military that a follow-up bombing was coming, and the families fled again. 

A second strike destroyed Baroud’s home, reducing his building and his art studio to rubble. 

This is the reality for Palestinians living in Gaza without the protection of a robust civil defense infrastructure. With no air raid sirens or bomb shelters, the more than 2 million Palestinians living in the besieged territory — half of whom are children — rely on rare phone calls or text messages from the Israeli military to alert them of imminent strikes.    

The lack of protection serves as a stark contrast to the civil defense systems of Israel, which has faced intense barrages of rocket fire from Hamas in recent days. Israel boasts elaborate and technologically advanced capabilities — ranging from early radar detection to the Iron Dome — meant to protect its civilians in the event of an attack.  

In Gaza, the call or text alerts are far from guaranteed and — at most — give residents a few minutes to evacuate. Often, it’s just a guessing game.  

Read more about the difficult circumstances for those in Gaza.

The silence on Lebanon’s border with Israel is deafening. After five days of near constant crossfire between fighters in Lebanon and Israeli forces, the guns seem to have largely gone quiet.

This remains one of the most important, and dangerous, fault lines in this volatile region. Following the surprise Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, this frontier — largely calm since the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war — is even more charged with consequence.

Any conflict erupting here could pour fuel on the raging fire of the current Hamas-Israel war by drawing in the most powerful paramilitary group in the Middle East: Iran-backed Hezbollah.

Hezbollah’s political stance has unambiguously supported the Palestinian militants. It has sponsored rallies in support of Palestinian groups and has roundly condemned Israel’s large-scale airstrikes on Gaza.

At least 1,300 people have been killed in the Hamas attacks on Israel, while more than 1,500 people have been killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza since Saturday.

But it is still unclear whether Hezbollah will actively participate in this conflict. So far, it has adhered to its current rules of engagement and repeatedly stated that it will fire at Israel only when Lebanese territory, or its fighters, are fired upon. It has broadly stuck to that, despite the spiraling wider tensions.

Read the full analysis here.

CNN
 — 

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise announced he was dropping out of the speaker’s race Thursday after House Republicans failed to coalesce behind him in the aftermath of Kevin McCarthy’s historic ouster.

“I just shared with my colleagues that I’m withdrawing my name as a candidate for the speaker designee,” the Louisiana Republican told reporters.

The swift downfall of Scalise’s speakership nomination came just a day after the GOP conference voted for him over Rep. Jim Jordan, 113-99. The withdrawal was as shocking as it was predictable, after a band of Republicans almost immediately blocked his path and said there was no way they would vote for Scalise as speaker. The move deepens the House GOP leadership crisis, with still no indication there is any viable candidate who could secure the 217 votes needed to win the gavel.

Republicans will now have to scramble to find a path forward as the House remains in a speakerless paralysis. The chaos has prompted some Republicans to call for expanding the powers of the interim speaker.

Many GOP lawmakers quickly urged the conference to support Jordan for speaker. But Republicans, divided and angry over their leadership fiasco, are not unified behind the Ohio Republican.

Several Republicans said they expected opposition to grow for a variety of reasons. One said Jordan will “never” become speaker.

Rep. Ann Wagner of Missouri told CNN Jordan is a non-starter for her. Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia stood up in the GOP conference meeting and said he would not support Jordan, a source familiar told CNN.

And Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said he’s worried about “rewarding bad behavior” after Jordan supporters helped tank Scalise’s bid.

“I think there’s enough people that would see what has happened and transpired over the last 40 hours to not support him that we’re going to have the same problem with Jordan that we had with Scalise,” said Rep. Mike Garcia of California, who said he is backing Jordan. “I think it’s a math problem, frankly.”

Jordan or any other candidate needs to win a majority of the entire House to be elected speaker, which is 217 votes, due to two vacancies. That means a GOP speaker nominee can only afford to lose four GOP Republican votes if there are no absences. Democrats are expected to uniformly back House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

House Republicans will hold another closed-door meeting Friday morning to regroup and discuss their path forward.

Jordan declined to say if he would launch a bid for the speakership Thursday evening. “Any type of announcement about what may or may not happen is best done tomorrow,” he told reporters following the conference meeting.

Scalise scrambled earlier Thursday to try to salvage his bid, seeking to address his critics’ concerns directly in a two-hour-plus conference meeting behind closed doors. He then invited his detractors to meet with him in his office, in an attempt to win over the holdouts.

But Scalise went the wrong direction, as the list of opponents in the GOP conference nearly doubled to around two dozen.

“If you look at where our conference is there’s still work to be done. Our conference still has to come together and is not there,” Scalise said as he announced his withdrawal. “There are still some people that have their own agendas, and I was very clear we have to have everybody put their agendas on the side and focus on what this country needs. This country is counting on us to come back together. This House of Representatives needs a speaker and we need to open up the House again, but clearly not everybody is there, and there’s still schisms that have to get resolved.”

Scalise, who announced he was withdrawing at a second members-only GOP conference meeting Thursday evening, did not endorse a candidate. He will remain House majority leader, the No. 2 Republican in the House.

McCarthy, who earlier Thursday publicly acknowledged Scalise’s difficult task, said after the withdrawal that the GOP conference has to solve its problem – after he was removed by eight Republicans in last week’s vote.

“I just think the conference as a whole has to figure out their problem, solve it and select their leader,” McCarthy said.

As the reality of the deadlock set in Thursday during the earlier conference meeting, the anger inside the conference kept rising.

“This is petty, and I’m getting freaking tired of it,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, a New York Republican. “We’re all in there sharing our feelings, but the reality is we still need to get to 217.”

Late Wednesday, members of the conference had already began to weigh how they would handle the potential collapse of Scalise’s bid, with several GOP sources saying they believed they’d have to consider a new candidate who has yet to run for the speakership.

Many Republicans felt there may not be a candidate at this point who can receive the votes of nearly the entire fractured GOP conference.

“There is no Paul Ryan in this facility. These are the two most viable candidates,” Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican opposed to Scalise, said of Scalise and Jordan.

While there was some belief on Capitol Hill that the brutal assault on Israel over the weekend might prompt Republicans to quickly select a leader – House lawmakers were given a classified briefing on Israel on Wednesday before the conference vote for speaker – the deep divisions in the conference that led to McCarthy’s removal last week have now left the quest for a new speaker at a standstill.

Before Scalise withdrew, Republicans were already considering whether they should try to expand the powers of interim Speaker Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, so the House can pass legislation, like a resolution for Israel, multiple lawmakers told CNN.

“That is an option that we could pursue,” GOP Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas told reporters.

A group of more centrist Republicans are circulating a letter asserting that McHenry should have more temporary power, sources told CNN – a sign of desperation as the GOP scrambles to coalesce around a speaker.

Separately, some House Democrats have started having preliminary conversations with some Republicans about who, aside from Scalise, would be interested in working with them, one source familiar with the conversations told CNN ahead of the withdrawal.

One of the Republicans Democrats would be interested in is House Rules Chairman Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the source added. But no deal with Republicans would come for free, and Democrats have said they would need major concessions for any talks to become real.

Scalise had hoped to turn his opponents one by one. But even the support Scalise won over proved fickle. On Wednesday, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna said after meeting with Scalise that she felt “comfortable” enough to support his speaker nomination, after he spoke to her about the Oversight Committee’s impeachment investigation into President Joe Biden.

But leaving Thursday’s afternoon meeting, Luna said she was no longer supporting Scalise. “As of right now we need someone who can unite the party and right now, there is no candidate that has 217,” the Florida Republican said.

While many of the Scalise holdouts say they’re backing Jordan, a number of Republicans don’t think that Jordan could be a viable alternative given that he lost to Scalise in the nominating contest, and some Republicans were irritated when he didn’t immediately close ranks behind Scalise

“If Scalise were not to make it, the next person got less votes,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida said of Jordan. “And by the way, I think, more controversial. So that would not be a good thing for this place.”

Before Scalise withdrew, Republican Rep. Erin Houchin of Indiana said she didn’t know if “it will be Jordan or Scalise or even someone else at this point.”

“I think we’re in uncharted territory,” she said, “and it’s gonna be very hard to predict.”

This story and headline have been updated to include additional developments.

CNN
 — 

Iran has loomed large as one of Hamas’ most generous financial backers, providing the militant group crucial resources it needs to carry out acts of terrorism. But investigators in the US and across the globe have identified another revenue source being exploited by Hamas: Far-flung online donors offering support in cryptocurrency.

Even before Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel over the weekend, Justice Department officials in Washington, D.C. had been pursuing a criminal investigation into the militant group’s use of cryptocurrency through alleged money launderers, CNN has learned.

Justice Department lawyers have released scant details of its money laundering case – with most of the court filings sealed – but those that are public reveal it stems from Hamas-linked cryptocurrency accounts the US government seized three years ago. A court filing in May said the case was “ongoing” and a judge halted proceedings in a related civil matter until next month to allow the criminal case to continue without interference.

Separately, cryptocurrency addresses that Israel has seized for alleged links to Hamas and another Palestinian militant group have collectively been worth tens of millions of dollars, according to private analysts who spoke to CNN.

Hamas’ use of digital currency represents just one of the many ways the group – designated a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union – has sought to raise funds while evading sanctions.

“There’s not one financing method for Hamas or other terrorist organizations. They’re opportunistic and adaptive,” said former CIA analyst Yaya Fanusie, now an adjunct senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security. “Efforts to stop them are a constant game of cat-and-mouse.”

Still, some calls for donations have appeared in plain sight.

Hamas and other terrorist groups have used Facebook and X, formerly known as Twitter, to publicly post their crypto wallet addresses and tell people how to donate, according to a report released this year by the Department of Homeland Security.

Charges filed against a New Jersey man in 2019 described how he posted on Instagram that he “just donated $100 to Hamas.” The man, also accused of sending about $20 in bitcoin to the group, later pleaded guilty to concealing his attempts to provide material support to Hamas.

As governments have sought to police such transactions, Hamas’ military wing – al-Qassam Brigades – announced in April that it would stop fundraising in bitcoin to protect its donors, Reuters reported.

But Hamas has apparently not stopped such efforts altogether. On Tuesday, Israeli authorities announced the freezing of additional cryptocurrency accounts that the group had allegedly used to collect donations during this week’s conflict.

And aside from bitcoin, crypto wallets that Israeli authorities have said are linked to Hamas have included the cryptocurrencies Ether, XRP, Tether and others, according to an Israeli government order.

It’s unclear how much money Hamas has received in cryptocurrency, but there’s evidence they have amassed significant amounts. According to Dmitry Machikhin, the CEO of crypto analytics software BitOK, cryptocurrency addresses linked to Hamas and seized by Israeli authorities received nearly $41 million between 2020 and 2023, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Another $94 million was allegedly held by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a militant partner of Hamas, according to Elliptic, another analytics firm. The company noted, however, that it was unclear what portion of those assets directly belonged to the group.

Hamas and its al-Qassam Brigades, are among the “most successful initiators of cryptoasset-based fundraising to date in terms of amount raised,” Arda Akartuna, a researcher with Elliptic, told CNN.

Akartuna noted that tracking cryptocurrency linked to al-Qassam Brigades has been complicated by the group’s reliance on “one-time-use” crypto addresses that are generated for each individual donor, and illicit money exchanges that anonymously convert cryptocurrency to cash without records.

“Criminals are always going to look for the next best alternative to continue their activities,” said Akartuna, explaining how new ways to raise funds pop up as enforcement actions shut down others.

A major benefactor for Hamas is Iran, which has provided up to $100 million annually to Palestinian terrorist groups, including Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad, according to a US State Department report from 2021. That report noted that Hamas has raised funds in other Gulf Arab countries and from its own charity organizations.

Disclosures from the US Treasury Department have outlined the way in which Hamas has at times received Iranian funds through financiers based in Turkey and Lebanon. For example, a Lebanon-based financial operative functioned as a “middle man” between Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hamas and worked with the Lebanese group Hezbollah to ensure funds were transferred, according to a 2019 Treasury report.

Separately, the US Treasury sanctioned nine targets in 2018 for what the department described as involvement in a network through which Iran used Russian companies to provide oil to Syria in exchange for Syria sending funding to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that was then sent to Hamas and Hezbollah.

Iran has used various tactics to fund terrorist groups including Hamas, such as networks of shell companies, transactions masked by senior officials and the use of precious metals to evade sanctions, a 2018 US Treasury advisory stated.

Tehran has both commended Hamas’ recent incursion in Israel and denied involvement.

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday that Iran “is complicit in a broad sense because they have provided the lion’s share of the funding for the military wing of Hamas” as well as other support. Sullivan added that no information currently suggests Iran helped plan or direct the attack.

Hamas additionally raises funds through informal taxes and smuggling, according to a Congressional Research Service report from May.

CNN attempted to reach Hamas representatives for a response to the allegations but received no reply.

Government investigators aren’t the only ones tracking Hamas’ finances.

Attorney Asher Perlin, who represents the family of Yitzchak Weinstock, a 19-year-old American who was murdered by Hamas terrorists outside Jerusalem in 1993, has also kept tabs on the group’s assets.

The Weinstock family obtained a legal judgment of nearly $80 million against Hamas in 2019 but had few conceivable paths to collect on that sum.

That changed in Perlin’s mind after the US Justice Department announced what officials described in 2020 as an unprecedented crackdown on three groups that relied on “cryptocurrency and social media to garner attention and raise funds for their terror campaigns.” Among them was Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades.

Investigators were able to seize 150 cryptocurrency accounts “that laundered funds to and from” Hamas accounts, according to a DOJ news release.

With court approval, law enforcement officials surreptitiously took control of Hamas fundraising websites, and donors who thought they were contributing to the terrorist organization were actually making deposits in bitcoin wallets controlled by the US government.

At the time, prosecutors filed paperwork asking a judge to issue a forfeiture order granting them legal ownership of what they had seized.

Perlin saw the government’s pending forfeiture case as an opportunity to collect the money his clients in the Weinstock family were owed.

But since filing a claim two years ago, Perlin said the case has been repeatedly delayed as government lawyers have asked the judge for more time to allow a related criminal investigation to proceed.

In May, the judge noted that the criminal investigation was for “alleged money laundering” for Hamas and issued a six month stay on proceedings in the forfeiture case. That stay is set to expire next month.

In a telephone interview from Israel, Perlin expressed frustration that the Justice Department has indicated to him that it will oppose allocating any of the forfeited assets to his clients.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Perlin said the Weinstocks were the only people he is aware of who are trying collect on a judgment against Hamas.

“There’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to enforce their judgment against those assets,” he said.

Minneapolis
CNN
 — 

Inflation remained elevated in September as gas and rents kept prices high and heaped more pressure on consumers, according to new data released Thursday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

However, the latest Consumer Price Index also showed that certain inflation gauges are the lowest they’ve been in more than two years.

The Consumer Price Index rose 3.7% for the 12 months ended in September, holding steady with August’s annual gain and landing a touch above economists’ expectations for a 3.6% rise.

On a monthly basis, prices grew 0.4%, landing above Refinitiv estimates for a 0.3% gain.

Although the annual headline inflation rate held steady, Thursday’s CPI report also showed encouraging progress on areas critical to American households as well as the Federal Reserve.

Food price inflation is at its lowest rate since March 2021, matching overall inflation at 3.7%. It’s the first time since early 2022 that food prices did not outpace overall inflation, CPI data shows. And grocery price increases are even lower, at 2.4% annually.

Also, underlying inflation trends are moving in the desired direction of the Fed, which has been on an inflation-busting campaign of rate hikes since March 2022.

When stripping out gas and food, the core CPI cooled for the sixth month in a row and was up 4.1% annually off a 0.3% monthly gain.

It’s the lowest annual growth rate for core CPI in two years. The monthly increase in core held steady from what was seen in August.

Nagging, and lagging, rents

The shelter index, which is largely a measurement of rental leases as well as the implicit rental value of owner-occupied properties, accounted for 70% of the monthly core increase and more than half of the overall monthly increase.

Economists have said that shelter costs, as measured by the CPI, should eventually start to wane. That’s because the CPI rental calculations significantly lag what’s happening in real time and are not showing the recent declines.

“Market rents are flat across the country since the end of last year,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told CNN. “So it’s only a matter of time — months — before we start to see much slower increases in shelter costs. And once that happens, we’ll be back within spitting distance of the Fed’s target.”

Taking shelter out of the equation, core CPI rose just 0.1% for the month and is up 2% year over year, according to the report. That’s the lowest annual increase that index has recorded since March 2021.

The Fed’s goal inflation rate is 2%, as measured by the core Personal Consumption Expenditures price index. That inflation gauge remains nearly double that target rate — it rose 3.9% for the 12 months ended in August — however, it’s been steadily cooling.

“The Fed will want to see at least six months of lower inflation before declaring victory,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at online job marketplace ZipRecruiter. “In the meantime, higher borrowing costs are weighing on households, particularly those with credit card debt or subprime car loans; and on businesses, especially those with high levels of debt in variable-rate bonds. If rates stay higher for longer, as the Fed has signaled, that will likely drag down consumer spending and business spending — including on hiring — in the coming months.”

Adding to the consumer headwinds are a cooler labor market, the return of student loan payments and slowing wage growth.

While that’s not great news for Americans, it could help bring down inflation.

“When you look ahead, and you look at the broader picture, we’re still in an environment in which labor market conditions are going to be softening and continuing to loosen, we are also expecting to see more disinflation from reduced housing rents and just lower economic activity,” Lydia Boussour, EY’s senior economist, told CNN in an interview. “So we do think that this disinflation trend remains in place and will continue as we head into 2024.”

There may be some bumpiness on that path lower, Zandi said.

“But we’re on a line, and I think we’re going to get back to the target and something all Americans feel comfortable with by this time next year,” he said.

Dead Sea, Israel
CNN
 — 

People from Be’eri sometimes used to say the reason the Israeli kibbutz was so close to the Gaza Strip was because otherwise, it would be too perfect.

“It was a joke, something we used to say because Be’eri is so beautiful. It’s the place where you want your kids to grow up. The sunset is beautiful, the fields are green, it has everything you want from a vacation spot,” Lotan Pinyan told CNN on Wednesday.

Be’eri’s proximity to Gaza, which is only a few kilometers away, means the liberal community has been a frequent target of Hamas rockets fired from the enclave – usually intercepted by Israeli defenses. The rockets were the one downside of the otherwise idyllic spot, Pinyan and his friends would say. “It’s not a joke now,” he said.

Early on Saturday morning, Hamas militants stormed Be’eri and left behind a devastation of unimaginable scale.

They murdered more than 120 of its residents, including children, and kidnapped others. They set people’s homes on fire, then killed them when they tried to escape the heat and smoke. They looted, stole and destroyed what they could.

It all started with the sirens.

The community of about 1,100 people was woken up at 6:30 a.m., when the alarm indicating an imminent rocket attack went off.

“But it was not normal. We are used to the bombing, we know what is sounds like: ‘tat – tat – tat.’ But this was different. It didn’t stop. Tat – tat – tat – tat – tat – tat – tat,” Michal Pinyan, Lotan’s wife, told CNN. “And then some 45 minutes later, we started getting messages that there are terrorists in the kibbutz,” Lotan added.

The family’s WhatsApp group was flooded with anxious messages between Michal’s parents, Amir and Mati Weiss, and her three brothers.

9:25 a.m. Mati: gunshots in the balcony

9:26 a.m. Ran: also here there are gunshots outside the shelter window

9:30 a.m. Mati: I hear voices in Arabic outside the house

9:31 a.m. Dalit: do you also hear the security forces?

9:43 a.m. Amir: dad is injured they are in the house

9:43 a.m. Ran: what do you mean?

9:44 a.m. Dalit: they came inside?

9:44 a.m. Lotan: what? talk to us

9:47 a.m. Ran: limor spoke to racheli, sending you something

9:49 a.m. Michal: mom keep writing all the time

9:52 a.m. Eddie: When????

9:57 a.m. Limor: When, what’s happening with you?

10:01 a.m. Michal: mom

10:01 a.m. Michal: Answer

10:03 a.m. Mati: save us

10:04 a.m. Mati: Save us

10:00 a.m. Michal: are you in the shelter?

10:04 a.m. Mati: dad was shot and they are throwing grenades

10:04 a.m. Mati: They blew up the safe room

10:04 a.m. Michal: inside the house?

10:04 a.m. Mati: yes

That message was the last one that came from Mati, Michal’s mother. After that, silence.

“We knew they were probably dead. But there was still a small hope that maybe they weren’t, that they were kidnapped,” Lotan said.

Across the kibbutz, Tom Hand was getting the same terrifying messages about terrorists breaking into his neighbors’ houses. All he could think about was his eight-year-old daughter Emily – one of the tallest in her class, with honey blond hair and pale skin that tanned in the sun, a talented dancer and singer, a fun, bright girl, he said.

Hand came to Be’eri 30 years ago as a volunteer, planning to stay a few months, and never left. After his wife, Emily’s mother, died of cancer a few years ago, he and Emily have lived here on their own.

The community is close-knit; residents told CNN they eat meals together and share everything, including their salaries, which go into a communal treasury and are redistributed equally among all the families.

Politically, the kibbutz leans left. Many sees Gazans as their neighbors, Michal told CNN.

“There were people from Gaza who worked in the kibbutz and they were a part of the community, they’d bring their children to the kindergarten in the kibbutz. When they couldn’t come to work there anymore, we began collecting money from the community and there is now a fund that keeps them alive,” she said, adding that she is determined to keep sending the money to the family.

On Friday night, Emily went to her friend’s home for a sleepover. “They were having a girly night,” Hand said.

When the sirens went off at 6:30 on Saturday, Hand was not particularly worried; the alarms are not uncommon in the kibbutz. Emily was sleeping over at a friend’s house, and he was sure both children would be safe.

“Until I heard the shots. And it was already too late. If I had known … I could have maybe ran, got her, got her friend, got the mother, brought them back to my place. But by the time I realized what was happening, it was already too late,” he said.

He was not able to get in touch with them, and he was not able to go out because the kibbutz was by then overrun by swarms of heavily armed militants.

“I had to think of Emily. She already lost her mother, I couldn’t risk her losing her father too,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Pinyans, in shock from what they understood to be happening in their parents’ house, were bracing for the possibility that their home could be the terrorists’ next target.

They were inside their safe room, but faced a problem. Its door is not lockable from the inside. While all Israeli homes built after 1993 must have a shelter, these safe rooms are designed to withstand a blast, not an armed incursion.

“We knew we had to keep the door closed, so we took anything we found in the safe room and wrapped it to the handle … we tied it to the window and then put a chair inside it and kept it tight with a baseball bat,” Lotan said.

He spent the next many hours sitting by the door, wrenching the bat against it, waiting for the military to come and rescue them.

The kibbutz has its own volunteer emergency squad, about 15 people who are supposed to protect the community from danger until the army comes. With an army base just a few minutes away, everyone thought that the Israel Defense Forces would come any moment. But that did not happen.

“We were waiting for about 20 hours, with no food, no water, no toilet,” Lotan said. “And the children, they never asked for anything. Not once,” Michal added.

The IDF told CNN that it took them days of intense battle to gain control of the kibbutz. To rescue the Pinyans, 15 soldiers stormed the house, formed a tight circle around the family and walked them to a safe place – while battle still raged in the kibbutz, the family said.

As they left, Lotan said, he covered the kids’ eyes so that they wouldn’t see the dead bodies.

“We saw them, all of them, soldiers, kibbutz members and terrorists. It was like someone sprinkled sesame on a bunny, spread all over the kibbutz, everywhere we went, there were bodies,” Lotan said.

Many of those eventually rescued from Be’eri by the military were evacuated to a hotel on the shores of the Dead Sea. Among them was Tom Hand, who spent the next few days waiting to hear anything about Emily.

Then, the news came.

“Two people from the kibbutz, a team of doctors, psychiatrists, social workers … and they tell you. Softly, but quickly, because they have a lot people to get through,” he said, adding he felt relieved.

Of all the horrible possibilities, death seemed the least painful.

“She was dead. I knew she wasn’t alone, she wasn’t in Gaza, she wasn’t in a dark room filled with Christ knows how many people, pushed around … terrified every minute of every day, possibly for years to come. So death was a blessing,” he told CNN, his voice broken, tears streaming down his tired, ashen face.

“In this crazy world, here is me hoping my daughter is dead,” he said.

Many of the people rescued from Be’eri are staying in the same hotel as Hand, which means he is surrounded by love – but also constant reminders of Emily. Many of her friends who survived the massacre are at the hotel.

“Emily’s friends know that she’s not here with me. So they ask me what happened to her … they look up at me and I say I don’t know yet,” he said. “But then they see their parents hugging me, crying … kids are not stupid, even at that age, so just by seeing that I’m sure they realize.”

The community is holding onto itself, trying to keep going, Michal Pinyan said. Every few minutes, someone comes by to give her a hug, have a chat, share a memory of her parents.

She told CNN that she knows her parents have died, because their bodies were identified by people who knew them personally. However, she has been asked to provide a DNA sample for official identification, which may take some time.

She has no idea what will happen next. “Nobody talks about funerals. We don’t have a place to go to. The kibbutz is a closed army space now,” she said.

Still, she believes Be’eri will be rebuilt in some form. “We will need lots and lots and lots of strength, physical and emotional, to go back. But we will go back it’s not a question,” she said.

When their children question going back to a place where such horrors happened, the Pinyans say they must.

“We explained to them that we don’t leave the ship sinking. We need to go and repair the place, repair the community. And after that, we can decide, as a family, what we will do next,” Lotan said.

CNN
 — 

Forget about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, she and Beyoncé are the true power pair of the year.

On Wednesday night it was the era of two queens when Beyoncé attended the premiere for Swift’s “Eras Tour” concert film in Los Angeles.

Naturally, the internet went bananas.

Both women have reigned supreme this year with powerhouse concert tours that they are capitalizing on by bringing them to the big screen.

First up is Swift’s, which “due to unprecedented demand” opened with early access shows on Thursday and will have additional showings over the weekend.

Queen Bey, who recently wrapped her “Renaissance Tour” in Kansas City, has announced that her “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé” will hit theaters on December 1.

The women have been longtime admirers of each other and, early Thursday, Swift posted a video of the two of them together in a theater with Beyoncé tossing popcorn.

Read more: Can you sing and dance during Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour film?

Swift wrote in the caption, “I’m so glad I’ll never know what my life would’ve been like without @beyonce’s influence.”

“The way she’s taught me and every artist out here to break rules and defy industry norms,” Swift wrote. “Her generosity of spirit. Her resilience and versatility. She’s been a guiding light throughout my career and the fact that she showed up tonight was like an actual fairytale.”

Given how often the world pits female superstars against each other, the mutual support of two of music’s biggest stars was a powerful statement.

Gaza and Jerusalem
CNN
 — 

Gaza’s humanitarian crisis deepened Thursday, with warnings that the population is at risk of starvation and fuel could run out within hours, as Israel continues airstrikes and withholds essential supplies from the enclave in response to Hamas’ brutal terror attacks.

The decades old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has entered uncharted territory this week as Israeli declared a “complete seige” on Gaza. Bombardment by Israeli war planes have reduced entire streets to rubble and killed over 1,500 people in the isolated and densely-inhabited area, including 500 children, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Israel’s stepped-up offensive in Gaza follows a bloody surprise attack by Hamas on October 7, which saw armed militants pour over the heavily-fortified border into Israel. The group’s gunmen killed more than 1,200 people, wounding thousands more in a coordinated rampage through farms and communities, and taking civilian and military captives. Some 150 hostages are thought to be currently held by Hamas in Gaza.

The atrocities committed by Hamas have sparked international revulsion and vows by Israel’s government to destroy the group, which controls Gaza and has continued to fire rockets at Israeli towns over the last five days.

In a press conference with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Tel Aviv on Thursday, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas should be “crushed” and “spat out from the community of nations.”

Blinken vowed US support for Israel and likened Hamas’ crimes to ISIS. At least 25 Americans have been killed in Israel, he said.

He said he discussed with Israeli officials ways to address humanitarian needs in Gaza “while Israel conducts its legitimate security operations.”

More than 2 million Palestinians – including over a million children – live in the Gaza Strip, an area that has been under a land, sea and air blockade enforced by Israel since 2007.

Children make up “between 30 and 40% of the wounded” in recent Israeli air strikes on Gaza, British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah told CNN on Thursday.

Speaking to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour from Al Awda Hospital in Gaza, Abu-Sittah said that “the overwhelming majority of the wounded are coming from the rubble of their own home.”

“There are body parts scattered everywhere. There are still people missing,” one man in the northern neighborhood of Al-Karama said. “We’re still looking for our brothers, our children. It’s like we’re stuck living in a nightmare.”

Among the dead are at least 12 United Nations employees, the UN said on Thursday. All of the aid workers who died were Palestinian, UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric added.

Israel says its strikes are intended to target Hamas-associated locations.

Israel has also ordered a “complete siege” on the enclave, including halting supplies of electricity, food, water and fuel. Israel’s Energy Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday that supplies would remain cut off until hostages being held by Hamas are freed.

“No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened, and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home. Humanitarian for humanitarian. And no one will preach us morals,” Katz said on social media.

The European Union and the United Nations have strongly criticized the tactic, with the UN warning that withholding essential supplies will “precipitate a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where its population is now at inescapable risk of starvation.”

Food and water are “quickly running out,” the deputy head of emergencies of the UN World Food Programme, Brian Lander, said Thursday.

More 338,000 people are have been displaced in Gaza, according to a statement by the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Thursday. The figure represents a increase of 30% since Wednesday.

Gaza’s only power station stopped working on Wednesday after running out of fuel, the head of the Gaza power authority Galal Ismail told CNN.

Hospitals are expected to run out of fuel on Thursday, leading to “catastrophic” conditions, the Palestinian Health Ministry warned.

A surge in injured people seeking treatment has pushed Gaza’s health infrastructure close to breaking point, according to Ashraf Al-Qudra, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health in Gaza. “Even after expansion, all beds are occupied, leaving no room for new patients in critical condition,” he said on Thursday.

The International Committee of the Red Cross warned on Thursday that hospitals in the enclave “risk turning into morgues” following Israel’s siege.

Palestinian Minister of Health Mai al-Kaila has called for urgent international assistance to help set up field hospitals in the Gaza Strip and to provide medicines and medical supplies.

“We are extremely worried that what is happening now is totally unprecedented,” Najla Shawa, an Oxfam worker in Gaza, told CNN. “We are talking about entire areas, not just one area. Entire areas are being wiped and destroyed.”

On Thursday, the IDF said it was continuing “large scale strikes on terror targets belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza strip,” as speculation of a possible ground incursion into Gaza grows.

Some 300,000 reservists have also been moved near the Gaza border, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), a huge mobilization given the country’s 9 million population.

“They are now close to the Gaza Strip, getting ready to execute the mission that they have been given,” Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said Wednesday said.

Video shows people trying to save themselves inside of bomb shelter in Israel during the Hamas attack

Israel’s government also said it was preparing its hospitals and healthcare system for “possible escalations in the security situation,” its health ministry said.

Hamas’ attack has also sparked some political unity in Israel after months of domestic friction with Netanyahu and National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz jointly announcing an emergency government and war management cabinet on Wednesday.

Gantz, a former defense minister, will join Netanyahu and current defense minister Yoav Gallant in a wartime cabinet.

“There is time for war and time for peace. This, now, is the time for war,” Gantz said during a televised address.

A diplomatic push is being made to try and bring about some sort of mediation.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will travel to Israel on Friday to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, according to a senior defense official.

Blinken will also visit Egypt as part of his trip, and will meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and King Abdullah II of Jordan on Friday.

Talks are currently “underway” to allow US citizens and Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip to exit the territory into Egypt ahead of any land invasion of the territory by Israeli forces, a senior Israeli official told CNN on Wednesday.

The official with knowledge of the negotiations said that under the proposal being discussed, all US citizens would be permitted to pass through the Rafah border crossing if they present their US passports, while the movement of other Palestinian civilians would be limited to 2,000 people a day.

A US official said on Wednesday that Cairo wants to use a humanitarian corridor to send food and medical supplies into Gaza, but does not to open the border in the other direction for civilians who are fleeing.

With the current Israeli blockade on Gaza, the only route through which people or aid can pass in and out of the strip is the Rafah Crossing, which links Gaza and Egypt, and has been damaged in Israeli airstrikes.

Horrifying details on the scale and nature of Hamas’ attacks have emerged each day, as well as tales of survival and bravery amidst the carnage. On Thursday, Netanyahu’s office released photos of “babies murdered and burned” by Hamas.

Tom Hand, a resident of the Be’eri, a kibbutz where Hamas gunmen left at least 120 dead, learned his daughter Emily, 8, was among those killed in Saturday’s onslaught.

“I knew she wasn’t alone, she wasn’t in Gaza, she wasn’t in a dark room filled with Christ knows how many people, pushed around… terrified every minute of every day, possibly for years to come. So death was a blessing,” he told CNN, his voice broken, tears streaming down his tired, ashen face.

‘Death was a blessing’: Father on learning fate of 8-year-old daughter

The fact that Hamas has taken an unprecedented number of hostages now complicates Israel’s response.

On Wednesday, International IDF spokesperson, Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus, told CNN that Israeli authorities believe the hostages are being held underground.

“Reason dictates that they are underground,” he said. “Reason dictates that they planned in advance locations to hide these hostages and keep them safe from Israeli intelligence, and efforts to get them out.”

He said even though Israel has had “some experience” with hostage situations they have never dealt with anything like this.

Izzat al-Risheq, a senior Hamas official, told CNN on Wednesday that it’s too early to exchange Israeli hostages.

“There were many calls made by Arab and non-Arab states to Hamas leadership abroad asking about the possibility of exchanging Israeli captives with Hamas prisoners,” al-Risheq said from Doha, Qatar.

“But we told everybody that it’s now too early to discuss it while Israel continues to pound Gaza and kill Palestinian civilians indiscriminately.”

New York
CNN
 — 

Wall Street CEO Marc Rowan is calling for the leaders of the University of Pennsylvania to resign and donors to close their checkbooks over an alleged failure to condemn antisemitism and hate.

Rowan, the CEO of private equity giant Apollo Global Management, wrote in an op-ed posted online Wednesday that UPenn failed to condemn an event held on campus last month that the university acknowledged included speakers with a history of making antisemitic remarks.

“Why is UPenn repeating tragic mistakes of the past? Words of hate and violence must be met with clear, reasoned condemnation, rooted in morality from those in positions of authority,” Rowan wrote.

Rowan, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes to be nearly $6 billion, is one of the university’s wealthiest donors and supporters. He chairs the board of advisors at the university’s famed Wharton School and is the latest business leader to slam an Ivy League school over its handling of antisemitism in the wake of Hamas deadly attack on Israel.

UPenn leaders said in a statement Tuesday they were “devastated by the horrific assault on Israel by Hamas.”

“These abhorrent attacks have resulted in the tragic loss of life and escalating violence and unrest in the region,” UPenn President Elizabeth Magill and UPenn Provost John Jackson, Jr., said in that statement.

But the billionaire CEO argues UPenn leaders failed to condemn the “hate-filled” Palestine Writes Literature Festival, a multi-day event that took place at the university’s campus last month.

“The polarizing Palestine Writes gathering featured well-known antisemites and fomenters of hate and racism and was underwritten, supported and hosted by various UPenn academic departments and affiliates,” Rowan said.

The Apollo CEO, who is also a parent of UPenn graduates, demanded all UPenn alumni and supporters “who believe we are heading in the wrong direction to ‘Close their Checkbooks’” until Magill and Board of Trustees Chair Scott Bok both step down.

Rowan also alleged that instead of condemning the event, Magill and Bok have been “working to purge all Trustees with dissenting points of view by explicitly and aggressively demanding” the resignation of those who signed an open letter calling for Magill to resign.

In response, UPenn issued a statement from Julie Platt, vice chair of the school’s board of trustees and past president of the Penn Alumni board of directors, who said she has “full confidence” in the leadership of Magill and Bok.

“I join with the many members of the Penn family in expressing solidarity with all those who have been impacted by the horrific assault on Israel by Hamas and in condemning these hateful acts of terror,” Platt said. “The University has publicly committed to unprecedented steps to further combat antisemitism on its campus, reaffirmed deep support for our Jewish community, and condemned the devastating and barbaric attacks on Israel by Hamas. The Executive Committee of Penn’s Board of Trustees has unanimously endorsed the actions taken by the University.”

Bok, who is the CEO of investment bank Greenhill & Co., said in a statement provided by the University that the trustee executive committee decided not to force anyone to resign even if board members publicly opposed decisions.

“Mr. Rowan is a respected alumnus and benefactor of the University and is entitled to his views,” Bok said. “But it is a falsehood for him to say that the University sought to ‘purge’ dissenting Trustees from Penn’s Board in relation to the Palestinian Writes Literature Festival.”

UPenn leaders issued a statement last month ahead of the Palestine Writes Literature Festival that acknowledged some of the speakers have a history of antisemitism and condemned antisemitism broadly, though not the festival specifically.

“While the Festival will feature more than 100 speakers, many have raised deep concerns about several speakers who have a documented and troubling history of engaging in antisemitism by speaking and acting in ways that denigrate Jewish people,” read the September 12 statement from Magill, Jackson, Jr. and Steven Fluharty, dean of the School of Arts & Sciences.

“We unequivocally – and emphatically – condemn antisemitism as antithetical to our institutional values,” the UPenn leaders wrote. “As a university, we also fiercely support the free exchange of ideas as central to our educational mission. This includes the expression of views that are controversial and even those that are incompatible with our institutional values.”

Organizers of the Palestine Writes festival denied that it embraced antisemitism, according to UPenn student newspaper The Daily Pennsylvanian.

In an interview on CNBC on Thursday, Rowan argued the central issue was not hosting the festival, but failing to forcefully condemn it.

“That condemnation should not be so hard. Unfortunately, if you lack moral courage, it is hard,” Rowan said, adding there is a “climate of fear” at UPenn where professors are afraid of being canceled or ostracized.

Rowan’s UPenn op-ed was praised on Wednesday by Bill Ackman, the hedge fund billionaire who earlier this week called for Harvard University to publicly release the names of students who belong to organizations that signed a letter blaming Israel for last weekend’s deadly attacks by Hamas.

“We see sickening parallels between Harvard leadership’s inaction against Harvard’s antisemitism and the failure by UPenn’s leadership to take a stand against hate,” Rowan wrote in his op-ed.

The Apollo CEO argued the “embrace of antisemitism and other forms of discrimination by these institutions legitimizes and reinforces hate, racism and, ultimately, violence.”

Rowan warned there will be financial repercussions for UPenn’s handling of the situation.

In his op-ed, he called for alumni and supporters to send UPenn $1 donations in place of their normal contributions “so that no one misses the point.”

“I think the fundraising impact from this will be overwhelming,” Rowan told CNBC on Thursday.

Washington, DC
CNN
 — 

Mortgage rates climbed for the fifth consecutive week Thursday, following recent jobs and inflation reports that surged past forecasts and set expectations that decades-high interest rates could stay higher for longer.

The persistently higher mortgage rates are putting added strain on today’s would-be homebuyers who are also confronting elevated home prices due to a lack of inventory of homes for sale.

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 7.57% in the week ending October 12, up from 7.49% the week before, according to data from Freddie Mac. A year ago, the 30-year fixed-rate was 6.92%. The last time rates were this high was in December 2000.

“The good news is that the economy and incomes continue to grow at a solid pace,” said Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. “But the housing market remains fraught with significant affordability constraints. As a result, purchase demand remains at a three-decade low.”

The average mortgage rate is based on mortgage applications that Freddie Mac receives from thousands of lenders across the country. The survey includes only borrowers who put 20% down and have excellent credit.

Mortgage rates have spiked during the Federal Reserve’s historic inflation-curbing campaign — and while a good deal of progress has been made, it is not yet as low as the Fed would like.

The Fed’s preferred inflation measure, the core Personal Consumption Expenditures index, is currently 3.9%, which is nearly double the Fed’s target of 2%. But it is the lowest annual increase that index has seen in two years and is a positive step toward the Fed’s target.

“Last week’s jobs report exceeded investor expectations, with 336,000 net new jobs, resulting in a late-week surge in the 10-year Treasury yield and a bump in mortgage rates,” said Hannah Jones, senior economic research analyst at Realtor.com.

But the incursion by Hamas into Israel this weekend created geopolitical uncertainty that brought mortgage rates lower: Investors sought out the safety of the bond market, sending the yield on the 10-year Treasury note falling earlier this week.

Mortgage rates tend to track the yield on 10-year US Treasuries, which move based on a combination of anticipation about the Fed’s actions, what the Fed actually does and investors’ reactions. When Treasury yields go up, so do mortgage rates; when they go down, mortgage rates tend to follow. While the Fed does not set the interest rates that borrowers pay on mortgages directly, its actions influence them.

“Though the weekly movement settled from last week’s surge, rates remain near two-decade highs and more than 4 [percentage] points higher than two years ago,” said Jones.

“The Fed’s ‘higher-for-longer’ monetary policy keeps upward pressure on rates, making a descent unlikely until new data suggests that inflation is moving in the right direction.”

Even as rates were climbing last week, applications for mortgages ticked up slightly, mostly because of an increase in applications for adjustable-rate mortgages, or ARMs, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

“Mortgage applications increased for the first time in three weeks, pushed higher by a 15% jump in ARM applications,” said Bob Broeksmit, CEO of MBA. “With mortgage rates well above 7%, some prospective homebuyers are turning to ARMs to lower their monthly payment in the short term amidst these high mortgage rates.”

MBA’s average rate for a fixed-rate 30-year mortgage last week moved up to 7.67%, while the average rate for a 5/1 ARM, which has a fixed rate for the first five years and resets once per year after that, dropped to 6.33% from 6.49%. (Freddie Mac does not track average rates for adjustable-rate mortgages.)

Adjustable-rate mortgages accounted for 9.2% of all mortgages last week, according to MBA. That’s the highest share since November 2022, when rates on 30-year fixed rate loans also were over 7%.

Prospective buyers have had to get creative to prepare financially for homeownership, said Jones.

“Though buyers have shown signs of adjusting to the higher-rate environment, limited inventory has kept home prices elevated, cutting further into the buying power of shoppers hoping to find a suitable home,” she said.

While many repeat buyers can leverage their existing home equity in today’s expensive market, she said, younger homebuyers often have a harder time coming up with the money for a home purchase.

At today’s mortgage rate, a household typically needs an annual income of at least $120,000 to purchase a median-price US home, assuming a 20% down payment, Jones said.