Day: October 7, 2023

JERUSALEM (AP) — Without warning on Saturday, Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers attacked Israel by air, land and sea. Millions of Israelis in the country’s south awoke to the searing sound of incoming rockets and the inevitable thud of impact. Air raid sirens wailed as far north as Tel Aviv. Israel’s anti-rocket interceptors thundered in Jerusalem.

And in an unprecedented escalation, armed Hamas fighters blew up parts of Israel’s highly fortified separation fence and strode into Israeli communities along the Gaza frontier, terrorizing residents and trading fire with Israeli soldiers.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right allies were scrambling to respond to the rapidly changing events. Within just nine hours, some 40 Israelis and nearly 200 Palestinians were confirmed dead, with the numbers expected to rise.

Here are some key takeaways from the multi-pronged attack that has suddenly plunged Israel into war.

ISRAEL CAUGHT UNAWARE

The shock that Israelis felt on Saturday morning — on Simchat Torah, one of the most joyous days of the Jewish calendar — recalled the surprise of the the 1973 Mideast war. Practically 50 years earlier to the day, a full-scale Egyptian-Syrian attack on a Jewish holiday quickly turned into a disaster for an unprepared Israeli military.

Then, as now, Israelis had assumed that their intelligence services would be able to alert the army to any major attack or invasion well in advance. That colossal failure still haunts the legacy of then-Prime Minister Golda Meir and helped bring down the lengthy rule of the once-dominant Labor Party.

Now, the question of how the militants were able to stage such a huge and coordinated attack — which has already killed more Israelis than any single assault since the second Palestinian uprising two decades ago — without triggering Israeli intelligence concerns has already presented a major challenge to Netanyahu’s ultranationalist government.

The government’s supporters had expected Netanyahu and powerful hard-line ministers with a history of anti-Arab rhetoric like National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to take a particularly belligerent stance against the Palestinians and respond more forcefully to threats from militants in Gaza.

As political analysts lambast Netanyahu over the failure, and the casualty count climbs, Netanyahu risks losing control of both his government and the country.

UNPRECEDENTED INFILTRATION

Hamas claimed its fighters had taken several Israelis captive in the enclave, releasing gruesome videos of militants dragging bloodied soldiers across the ground and standing over dead bodies, some of them stripped to their underwear. It said that senior Israeli military officers were among the captives.

The videos could not immediately be verified but matched geographic features of the area. Fears that Israelis had been kidnapped evoked the 2006 capture of soldier Gilad Shalit, whom Hamas-linked militants seized in a cross-border raid. Hamas held Shalit for five years until he was exchanged for over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

In a dramatic escalation unseen in decades, Hamas also sent paragliders flying into Israel, the Israeli military said. The brazen attack recalled a famous assault in the late 1980s when Palestinian militants crossed from Lebanon into northern Israel on hang-gliders and killed six Israeli soldiers.

The Israeli army belatedly confirmed that soldiers and civilians had been taken hostage in Gaza, but refused to provide further details.

A DANGEROUS GAMBLE BY HAMAS

Hamas officials cited long-simmering sources of tension between Israel and the Palestinians, including the dispute around the sensitive Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which is is sacred to both Muslims and Jews and remains at the emotional heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Competing claims over the site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, have spilled into violence before, including a bloody 11-day war between Israel and Hamas in 2021.

In recent years, Israeli religious nationalists — such as National Security Minister Ben-Gvir — have increased their visits to the compound. Last week, during the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot, hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jews and Israeli activists visited the site, prompting condemnation from Hamas and accusations that Jews were praying there in violation of the status quo agreement.

Hamas statements have also cited the expansion of Jewish settlements on lands that the Palestinians claim for a future state and Ben-Gvir’s efforts to toughen restrictions on Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

More recently, tensions have escalated with violent Palestinian protests along the Gaza frontier. In negotiations with Qatar, Egypt and the United Nations, Hamas has pushed for Israeli concessions that could loosen the 17-year blockade on the enclave and help halt a worsening financial crisis that has sharpened public criticism of its rule.

Some political analysts have linked Hamas’ attack to ongoing U.S.-brokered talks on normalization of ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia. So far, reports of possible concessions to Palestinians in the negotiations have involved Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, not Gaza.

“We have always said that normalization will not achieve security, stability, or calm,” Bassem Naim, a senior Hamas official, told the AP.

ISRAEL IN CRISIS

The eruption of violence comes at a difficult time for Israel, which is facing the biggest protests in its history over Netanyahu’s proposal to weaken the Supreme Court while he is on trial for corruption.

The protest movement, which accuses Netanyahu of making a power grab, has bitterly divided Israeli society and unleashed turmoil within the Israeli military. Hundreds of reservists have threatened to stop volunteering to report for duty in protest at the judicial overhaul.

Reservists are the backbone of the country’s army, and protests within the army ranks have raised concerns about the military’s cohesion, operational readiness and power of deterrence as it confronts threats on multiple fronts. Netanyahu on Saturday called up “an extensive mobilization of reserve forces.”

A PERILOUS CYCLE

Israel and Hamas have fought four wars and exchanged fire numerous times since the Islamic militant group seized control of Gaza from forces loyal to the Palestinian Authority in 2007. Cease-fires have stopped major fighting in past rounds of conflict but have always proven shaky.

Each agreement in the past has offered a period of calm, but the deeper, underlying issues of the conflict are rarely addressed and set the stage for the next round of airstrikes and rockets.

With its increased leverage in this round, Hamas is likely to push harder for concessions on key issues, such as easing the blockade and winning the release of prisoners held by Israel.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Saturday decried the “unconscionable” assault by Hamas militants and his administration pledged to ensure Israel has “what it needs to defend itself” after the surprise attack that drew worldwide condemnation and anger from Israel’s allies.

Biden said from the White House that he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States “stands with the people of Israel in the face of these terrorist assaults. Israel has the right to defend itself and its people, full stop. There’s never a justification for terrorist attacks and my administration’s support for Israeli’s security is rock solid and unwavering.’’

The president also warned Israeli’s enemies that “this is not a moment for any party hostile to Israel to exploit these attacks to seek advantage. The world is watching.”

Biden said he would keep in close touch with Netanyahu, and had called Jordan’s King Abdullah II and members of Congress to discuss the situation.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken was at the White House for meetings and spoke to Israel’s president and foreign minister, while Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with Israel’s defense minister. The Pentagon chief said the U.S. was committed to helping Israel to “protect civilians from indiscriminate violence and terrorism” and with its defense needs.

Hamas’ unprecedented incursion, which Biden noted came not long after Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, was the deadliest attack in Israel in years and was threatening to spiral into a broader conflict. Israel retaliated with airstrikes in Gaza. “We are at war,” Netanyahu said.

Biden said the people of Israel were “under attack orchestrated by a terrorist organization” and that “in this moment of tragedy, I want to say to them and to the world and to terrorists everywhere, the United States stands with Israel. We will not ever fail to have their back. We’ll make sure that they have the help their citizens need and they can continue to defend themselves.”

He said “the world has seen appalling images — thousands of rockets in the space of hours raining down on Israel cities” and that Hamas had killed not just Israeli soldiers but also Israeli civilians – “in the street, in their homes, innocent people murdered and wounded, entire families taken hostage by Hamas just days after Israel marked the holiest of days in the Jewish calendar. It’s unconscionable.’’

The hostilities dealt a significant blow to U.S. efforts to expand the Arab-Israeli Abraham Accords normalization agreements, not only with Saudi Arabia, which has commanded most of the public attention, but also with smaller Arab states.

U.S. officials say they intend to press ahead but acknowledge efforts are unlikely to bear fruit while there is an active conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Blinken had been planning a trip to the Middle East, with stops in Israel and Saudi Arabia, later this month, but those plans are now on hold, according to multiple U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations.

In the immediate term, these officials said the U.S. would work Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, among Arab partners in the region, to try to deescalate the situation. But given the scale of the Hamas attacks and Israel’s military response, the officials said they were not optimistic about any short-term solution.

Like Biden, who said the U.S. “unequivocally condemns this appalling assault,” many world leaders stressed that Israel has a right to defend itself and they pledged solidarity.

“We believe that order will be restored and the terrorists will be destroyed,” Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in a post on his official Telegram channel. Zelenskyy, who is Jewish and had relatives who died in the Holocaust, said “Israel’s right to self-defense cannot be questioned.”

European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen denounced the “senseless attack” by Hamas and said, “This violence is neither a political solution nor an act of bravery. It is purely terrorism.”

German Chancellor OIaf Scholz said his country stands beside Israel, a sentiment echoed by the Austrian chancellor, Karl Nehammer. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak tweeted that he was shocked by the attacks and that “Israel has an absolute right to defend itself.”

In Vienna, the Israeli flag was raised at the Austrian chancellor’s office and Foreign Ministry in a gesture of solidarity. “There is no excuse for terror,” Nehammer said in a post on X.

Mikhail Bogdanov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister and a former ambassador to Israel and Egypt, told the state Tass agency that Moscow was in touch with “all parties (of the conflict), including Arab countries” and urged “an immediate cease-fire and peace” between Hamas and Israel.

Bogdanov did not specify the Arab nations with which Russian diplomats were speaking.

Saudi Arabia called for an immediate halt to the fighting, urging both sides to protect civilians and exercise restraint.

“The kingdom recalls its repeated warnings of the dangers of the situation exploding as a result of the continued occupation, the Palestinian people being deprived of their legitimate rights and the repetition of system provocations against” them by Israel, a Saudi Foreign Ministry statement said.

But in Iran, Israel’s regional archenemy, members of parliament opened their session Saturday by chanting “Death to Israel” and “Israel will be doomed, Palestine will be the conqueror.” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said “today’s operation created a new page in the field of resistance and armed operation against occupiers,” the semiofficial ISNA news agency reported.

In Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps, hundreds took to the streets to celebrate the operation by Hamas. In the Bourj al-Barajneh camp south of Beirut, residents danced in the streets, while young men in the northern city of Tripoli distributed celebratory sweets to passersby in the streets.

In the Bekaa Valley, pro-Palestinian demonstrators blocked the roads. The country’s highest Sunni religious authority called for mosques to broadcast “God is great” over loudspeakers following afternoon prayers “in solidarity with our people in Palestine.”

___

Associated Press writers from around the world contributed to this report.

The best case scenario for House Democrats by far is if Republicans can’t elect any Speaker at all. But if Republicans really want to go with someone with as much baggage as Jim Jordan, so be it. All the scandals he’s “gotten away with” will suddenly come front and center.

Jordan’s involvement in trying to overthrow the 2020 election? Jordan’s coverup of the Ohio State abuse scandal? It’ll all suddenly be right back in the headlines if Jordan becomes Speaker.

So if the Republicans really want to go that route, bring it on. All it’ll do is help put the Democrats in a better position to take the House majority in 2024. And if that happens, Jim Jordan will no longer even be a committee chair.

The post Jim Jordan? Bring it on! appeared first on Palmer Report.

U.S. President Joe Biden said on Saturday the United States was ready to offer “all appropriate means of support” to Israel after an attack from pro-Iran group Hamas and warned “any other party hostile to Israel” not to seek advantage.

The attack from the Palestinian Islamist group erupted amid efforts by Biden and his team to negotiate a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia and a U.S.-Saudi defense pact.

Biden spoke by phone to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday to offer U.S. support, with scenes of violence playing out on American news networks. The two leaders have had strained relations but met in New York last month in a showing of solidarity.

“I made clear to Prime Minister Netanyahu that we stand ready to offer all appropriate means of support to the Government and people of Israel,” Biden said in a statement issued after their call.

“Israel has a right to defend itself and its people. The United States warns against any other party hostile to Israel seeking advantage in this situation,” Biden added.

Threat actors behind the QakBot malware are still active, since August they are carrying out a phishing campaign delivering Ransom Knight ransomware and Remcos RAT.

In August, the FBI announced that the Qakbot botnet was dismantled as a result of an international law enforcement operation named Operation ‘Duck Hunt.’

Qakbot, also known as QBot, QuackBot and Pinkslipbot, is an info-stealing malware that has been active since 2008. The malware spreads via malspam campaigns, it inserts replies in active email threads.

The Duck Hunt operation involved law enforcement agencies from the U.S., France, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Latvia, and the United Kingdom.

Duck Hunt is one of the largest U.S.-led disruptions of a botnet infrastructure used by crooks to commit criminal activities, including ransomware attacks.

Despite the law enforcement operation, the threat actors behind QakBot are still active, Cisco Talos warns.

According to the researchers, the threat actors behind the Qakbot bot have been conducting a campaign since early August 2023. The attacks aimed at distributing Ransom Knight ransomware and the Remcos RAT.

This campaign began before the FBI shut down the Qakbot infrastructure in late August, but it is still ongoing. The experts speculate that the feds’ operation may not have impacted Qakbot spam delivery infrastructure and its impact was limited to part of the C2 infrastructure.

Talos linked this campaign to Qakbot affiliates and speculated that developers are still operational.

The experts tracked this new campaign by connecting the metadata in the LNK files used in the attacks to the machines employed in previous Qakbot campaigns.

“Talos identified new LNK files in August 2023 that were created on the same machine referenced above, but observed that the payload of the files pointed to a network share in the command line that served a variant of Ransom Knight ransomware.” reads the analysis published by Talos.

Some of the filenames observed by Talos are written in Italian, which suggests the campaign is targeting users in Italy. The messages use Zip archives containing the LNK files and an XLL file (XLL is the extension used for Excel add-ins).

The XLL files are the Remcos backdoor used by the attackers along with Ransom Knight to gain access to the machine after the infection.

“We do not believe the Qakbot threat actors are behind the ransomware-as-a-service offer, but are simply customers of the service. As this new operation has been ongoing since the beginning of August 2023 and has not stopped after the takedown, we believe the FBI operation didn’t affect Qakbot’s phishing email delivery infrastructure but only its command and control servers.” concludes the report. “Though we have not seen the threat actors distributing Qakbot post-infrastructure takedown, we assess the malware will likely continue to pose a significant threat moving forward. Given the operators remain active, they may choose to rebuild Qakbot infrastructure to fully resume their pre-takedown activity.”

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Malware)

The post QakBot threat actors are still operational after the August takedown appeared first on Security Affairs.

(JTA) — Hours after Saturday’s deadly surprise attack on Israel by Hamas, the Israeli protest group Achim le’Neshek (Brothers and Sisters in Arms) was helping arrange transportation for army reservists being called to the front. 

“Brothers and Sisters in Arms call on everyone who is required to stand up for the defense of Israel without hesitation and immediately,” the group tweeted early Saturday. “Right now the most important thing is the safety of the country’s citizens.”

It was an abrupt turnabout by a group of military veterans and reservists who previously threatened  to refuse service if the government carried out its judicial reform plans, but a sign of how what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called a “war” with Hamas has mobilized a polarized Israeli public. 

Opposition party heads in Israel’s Knesset issued a statement backing the Israel Defense Forces. The heads of the Yesh Atid, National Unity, Yisrael Beitenu and Labor parties wrote that they “are united in the face of terrorism,” and that “in days like these there is no opposition and no coalition in Israel.”

Organizers of the huge anti-government, pro-democracy protests that have convulsed the country for much of the year suspended the weekly demonstrations for the first time.

“We stand with the residents of Israel and give full support to the IDF and the security forces,” the protest organizers said in a statement, the Times of Israel reported. “We call on all those who are needed to report [for duty] and play their part to safeguard the security and health of the residents of Israel.”

Brothers and Sisters in Arms set up an online signup sheet for those needing transportation to army bases, hospitals and “family.”

The coordinated attack by Hamas came at a low point in the morale of the country. Last month, more than 180 former military, intelligence and  police officals warned that the far-right government’s plan to reshape the country’s judiciary threatened the country’s resilience.  “We’ve been through wars, through military operations and all of a sudden you realize that the greatest threat to the state of Israel is internal,” Tamir Pardo, a former head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency and an organizer of the protest letter, told the Associated Press.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who has called for a compromise on the judiciary overhaul, also called for solidarity.

“I call on everyone to obey the directives of the Home Front Command, to show mutual support and calmness,” he wrote on X. “We can defeat all those who wish us harm!”

“I call on everyone to obey the directives of the Home Front Command, to show mutual support and calmness,” he wrote on X. “We can defeat all those who wish us harm!”

Hints of future divisions were already being seen in early reactions to the deadly attacks, with commenters in Israel questioning the military’s preparedness, the failure of Israeli intelligence to anticipate the attack and provocations by Jewish religious extremists at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. But as rockets continued to rain down on Israel’s south and the border with Gaza remained breached, and Hamas reporting having taken Israelis prisoner, protesters, opposition leaders and those in power presented a united front. 

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Israeli opposition, pro-democracy protesters press unity in face of attacks from Hamas appeared first on The Forward.

Where do most of them come from? Check out these data visualizations from Visual Capitalist to find out. (September 2023).