Near Sderot, Israel — Israeli emergency responders with years of experience doing the grim work of recovering bodies broke down in tears Wednesday as they told CBS News what they’d witnessed in the aftermath of Hamas’ brutal terror attack on Israel. The depth of the horror unleashed by Hamas Saturday on Israeli communities near the border with the Gaza Strip was still emerging five days later.
After finally wresting back control of the small farming community of the Kfar Aza kibbutz, Israeli security forces discovered the aftermath of what a military spokesperson said could only be described as “a massacre.”
Residents were murdered wherever the Hamas gunmen found them on the kibbutz, a type of communal living enclave unique to Israel, witnesses have said.
“We see blood spread out in homes. We’ve found bodies of people who have been butchered,” said Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Maj. Libby Weiss. “The depravity of it is haunting.”
IDF soldiers remove the body of a civilian killed days earlier in an attack by Hamas militants on the Kafr Azah kibbutz near the border with Gaza, Oct. 10, 2023.
Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty
Weiss told CBS News that more than one of the Israeli soldiers who first reached Kfar Aza reported finding “beheaded children of varying ages, ranging from babies to slightly older children,” along with adults who had also been dismembered.
Yossi Landau, the head of operations for the southern region of Zaka, Israel’s volunteer civilian emergency response organization, told CBS News he saw with his own eyes children and babies who had been beheaded.
“I saw a lot more that cannot be described for now, because it’s very hard to describe,” he said, speaking of parents and children found with their hands bound and clear signs of torture.
Israel is accustomed to living in close proximity to its enemies, but the last four days have shocked the nation and shaken its sense of security.
Yehuda Gottlieb, a dual U.S.-Israeli national who works as a first responder, was outside the Be’eri kibbutz, another small farming community, as Israel’s security forces battled the militants over the weekend. Security camera video shows the gunmen breaking into the compound and opening fire on its defenseless residents. Israel says more than 100 people were killed in that community alone.
Gottlieb said he’d never seen anything like it as he recalled driving into the town, carefully avoiding bodies that littered the road.
For many — both in Israel and the Gaza Strip, the small Palestinian territory run by Hamas and used as a launch pad for its terror attack — the question on Wednesday, five days after the brutal assault, was how Israel would respond.
It was raining down deadly airstrikes on the blockaded strip of land Wednesday for a fifth consecutive day, perhaps trying to soften Hamas’ defenses ahead of a widely expected ground invasion.
Palestinian officials said the strikes had killed at least 950 people as of Wednesday morning, with some 5,000 more wounded — most of them purportedly women and children.
“We do whatever we can, whatever is operationally feasible, to minimize the impact on the civilians within the Gaza Strip,” the IDF’s Weiss told CBS News. “They are not our targets.”
“The loss of life here is tragic,” she said, but added that Israel “must make sure Hamas cannot launch massacres and slaughter civilians as they did this past weekend. It’s just a reality with which we cannot live anymore.”
President Biden reiterated U.S. support of Israel on Tuesday, vowing to continue sending military assistance. The president and members of his administration spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the situation room. CBS News senior White House and political correspondent Ed O’Keefe has the latest.
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Early on Saturday, Hamas militants broke through the border between Israel and Gaza, launching a massive attack that left more than 1,200 Israelis dead, most of them civilians, and another 2,700 wounded. The attack triggered a swift response by the Israeli military and at least 900 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip in retaliatory airstrikes, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Hamas, which the U.S. classifies as a terrorist organization, has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007.
What is the Gaza Strip?
The Gaza Strip is a narrow, 25-mile stretch of land pressed against the Mediterranean Sea, between Israel and Egypt.
When Israel was established in 1948, many Palestinian refugees where forced to move to the strip of land. In 1967, Israel gained control of Gaza after its victory in the Six-Day War against Egypt, Syria and Jordan.
A Palestinian uprising in 2000 unleashed a new wave of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, and Israel decided to leave Gaza in 2005, withdrawing its forces and removing some 9,000 Jewish settlers living there.
Map shows Israel, the Gaza Strip, West Bank and Egypt. Israel and Egypt closed its border with the Gaza Strip, which is run by Hamas, a terrorist organization.
AP
Soon after, Hamas defeated the Palestinian Authority, the governing body in charge of Palestinian-populated areas, in elections in Gaza. In 2007, the militant group expelled the Palestinian Authority and gained full control of the territory. Hamas, unlike the Palestinian Authority, doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist.
Hamas and other militant groups have managed to launch attacks against Israel from Gaza, using rockets, drones and ground operations. Israel has responded with numerous military campaigns that have damaged infrastructure in Gaza and led to the death of many civilians.
Palestinians take down the fence on the Israel-Gaza border and enter Israel after clashes and attacks in Gaza City, Gaza on October 07, 2023.
Hani Alshaer/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
How big is the Gaza strip?
The strip is about 139 square miles –that’s slightly more than twice the size of Washington, D.C. Its border with Israel is about 36 miles and its border with Egypt is about eight miles. There are about 24 miles (40 kilometers) of coastline on the strip, but it has been blocked by the Israeli Navy since 2009 and is closed to all maritime traffic.
Who lives in the Gaza Strip?
The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. More than 2 million people live in the territory.
Hamas’s capture of Gaza led to an Israeli air, sea and land blockade, and conditions in the territory have worsened for years, with Israel’s critics referring to it as an “open-air prison.” Most people rely on humanitarian aid and are unable to travel without Israeli permission.
Forty percent of Gaza’s population is under the age of 14, according to the CIA. Unemployment is high, electricity is only available for about half the day and many people do not have sufficient access to clean water, according to the Israeli organization Gisha.
As Israel ramps up its current offensive against Hamas, civilians are already feeling the impact. “There are no shelters or bunkers or safe routes or safe zones in Gaza,” Omar Ghraieb, a resident of Gaza, told CBS News. “So it’s not like you can sit down and plan with your family on how to leave.”
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza, vowing “no fuel, electricity or food supplies,” will be allowed in or out.
Israel’s missile defense system, known as the Iron Dome, was stretched to its limit when Hamas launched barrage after barrage of rockets in the early part of its attack. David Martin takes a look at how the defense system works.
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President Biden addressed the nation Tuesday, saying, “The United States has Israel’s back.” Mr. Biden also said U.S. citizens are among those being held hostage by Hamas. Ed O’Keefe has the latest from the White House.
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Images from the grisly attack by Hamas militants in southern Israel near the Gaza Strip reveal some of the devastating aftermath from the surprise strike. A map shows the highly coordinated assault that ignited a war struck several parts of Israel surrounding the Palestinian territory.
What towns has Hamas attacked?
Among those killed in the attack were American Deborah Matias and her husband Shlomi, who lived in a kibbutz near the Gaza border, according to Matias’ father, Brandeis University professor Ilan Troen. He was on the phone with his daughter during the attack.
“She could only say to us that, ‘I hear glass breaking and voices in Arabic and they’re shooting,’” Troen told CBS News chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes.
Matias’16-year-old son was also shot, but he survived.
“It was she who saved his life, by design, falling on him,” Troen said. “And the bullet that reached his abdomen came through her.”
This map shows some of the locations of Hamas’ attacks in Israel.
Yasin Demirci/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
In the Kfar Aza kibbutz, Israeli Maj. Gen. Itai Veruv described the scene to reporters as “something that we used to imagine from our grandfathers, grandmothers in the pogrom in Europe and other places,” according to the Reuters news agency.
Bodies of Israelis and Hamas fighters were seen in the streets near burned-out houses and cars, according to Reuters.
“You see the babies, the mothers, the fathers, in their bedrooms, in their protection rooms and how the terrorist kills them. It’s not a war, it’s not a battlefield. It’s a massacre,” Veruv said.
An aerial view shows covered bodies of victims of an attack by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, in southern Israel, October 10, 2023.
Reuters/Ilan Rosenberg
In a field outside of Kibbutz Re’im, located in the northwestern area of the Negev desert a little over 3 miles from the border wall between Israel and Gaza, according to The Associated Press, Hamas gunmen attacked a music festival, killing at least 260 people and abducting others. Among those believed to have been kidnapped include 25-year-old Noa Argamani, who was forced onto the back of a motorcycle, CBS News foreign correspondent Imtiaz Tyab reports.
Destroyed vehicles are seen near the grounds of a music festival after a deadly attack by Hamas militants, near Re’im, Israel, Oct. 10, 2023.
Ilia Yefimovich/picture alliance via Getty Images
Festivalgoer Gal Levy, 22, was shot in both of his legs and told Tyab he’s not sure if he’ll walk again.
“I feel let down by the army,” Levy said. “… I lost like two liters of blood, and I was really sure … that that’s it, I am going to die. And I told my parents, like, ‘all good, I’m OK,’ but when I told them that, I was with both my legs, like, popped out.”
An aerial picture shows the site of the attack on a music festival by Hamas militants near Kibbutz Re’im in the Negev desert in southern Israel on October 10, 2023.
Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images
In the small farming community of Be’eri, about three miles from Gaza, Israeli rescue workers discovered more than 100 bodies, about 10% of the kibbutz’s population.
Hamas militants set fire to the apartment building where Miri Messika lived with her husband and three children on the kibbutz. She told “CBS Evening News” anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell they had to jump from a second-floor window to escape the flames, her 15-year-old son breaking his foot from the fall.
Asked what she thought would have happened if they didn’t jump, she told O’Donnell they would have burned to death. The family then spent seven hours in a bomb shelter before Israeli soldiers evacuated them.
“We know that there are bodies over there, we know that many people got killed, we don’t have names yet,” Messika said.
In Sderot, less than 2 miles from the Gaza border, Hamas gunmen killed dozens, leaving Israelis dead in the streets. At least nine people were shot dead at a bust shelter, The Associated Press reported. The local police station was burned and left in ruins.
A man walks past an Israeli police station in Sderot after it was damaged during battles to dislodge Hamas militants who were stationed inside, on October 8, 2023.
Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images
What is a kibbutz?
A kibbutz is an Israeli collective settlement. Other kibbutzim attacked by Hamas include Nir Oz, Gevim and Zikim.
Journalists take cover behind cars as Israeli soldiers take position during clashes with Hamas fighters near the Gevim kibbutz, close to the border with Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Oren Ziv/AFP via Getty Images
Where is the Gaza Strip?
The Gaza Strip is a narrow, 25-mile-long stretch of land located on the eastern Mediterranean coast with Egypt to its west and Israel to its south and east. The territory is controlled by Hamas, which took power in 2007.
The strip’s border with Israel is about 36 miles long and its border with Egypt is about eight miles. Gaza’s 25-mile coastline has been blocked by the Israeli Navy since 2009 and is closed to all maritime traffic. Fishermen operating out of Gaza can only go six nautical miles from the shore.
The strip is about 139 square miles — a little more than twice the size of Washington, D.C. — with a population of over 2 million, 40% of whom are under the age of 14, according to the CIA.
An aerial view shows vehicles on fire during a rocket attack from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, southern Israel, October 7, 2023.
Reuters/Ilan Rosenberg
What Middle East countries surround Israel?
Israel shares its western border with Egypt. Jordan is east of Israel. Between part of Israel and Jordan is the Palestinian territory of the West Bank. Lebanon is north of Israel, and Syria is to its northeast.
An American woman who had five family members were taken hostage during Hamas’ attacks on Israel told CBS News about the experience and the moment she and her family realized their loved ones were missing.
Abbey Onn said that she was in her Israel home, north of Tel Aviv, when she and other family members got messages from relatives in southern Israel. Her five family members — Ofer Kalderon, 50, Sahar Kalderon, 16, Noya Dan, 13, Erez Kalderon, 12 and Carmela Dan, 80 — lived in Nir Oz, a kibbutz in the area. It was one of the towns that was attacked by rocket fire, land incursions and more on Saturday in a series of violent attacks that have killed hundreds of people.
“We last heard from them on WhatsApp in the middle of the day on Saturday,” Onn said. “We got messages throughout the morning that Hamas was in the kibbutz, that there was gunfire, and that they were in their homes, that they had overturned everything in their house and that they were afraid for their lives.”
Onn said that she believes the Israeli army eventually told them to stop using their phones, so the family members stopped communicating. But when other family in the area “came out of the bomb shelters, after Hamas had burned and murdered half the kibbutz, they understood that these five members were not there,” Onn said.
Abbey Onn’s family members.
Abbey Onn
It wasn’t until the next day that they understood what had happened to the missing relatives.
“It was on Sunday that we saw on Instagram, on social media, the video of Erez in the hands of Hamas, which made us understand that they had been taken captive and that they’re being held hostage in Gaza,” Onn said.
Onn said that her family members have been in the Nir Oz area for generations. Carmela Dan’s father moved to Israel a century ago and built the kibbutz “literally from the ground up,” Onn said. Dan moved to the kibbutz “60 years ago,” Onn said.
“Since then, she’s become the matriarch of a major clan of people,” Onn said. “They are family oriented, they love the land, they’re deeply, deeply connected to Nir Oz and to this area and to peace. Carmela was the mother and grandmother not only to the people in these pictures, but to a much larger community. They loved the simple things, they loved celebrating things, they loved where they lived.”
Onn said that beyond her family’s loss, the kibbutz has been destroyed.
“Nir Oz is no longer,” she said. “It is an unthinkable atrocity that from one day to the next, that could happen.”
It’s been confirmed that hostages have been taken, with the Israeli government saying that more than 100 people have been taken captive. That number includes women, children and the elderly. Hamas previously vowed that the group would kill one of its Israeli hostages in retaliation for any Israeli strikes against civilian infrastructure carried out without warning. American citizens are believed to be among those taken.
Since the violence broke out, Israel has tightened the blockade around the Gaza Strip, where 2 million Palestinian people live. CBS News’ Holly Williams reported earlier Tuesday that Israel is planning a ground invasion of the area, which has been hammered by airstrikes since Saturday’s violence.
Onn said that she is hoping for a diplomatic solution.
“This is not the first time this country has been up against this kind of challenge,” said Onn. “And they have an army and a government that knows how to solve this. And they just need to do that. … These are civilians who are being terrorized and we want them brought home.”
Israel has launched relentless airstrikes on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the Palestinian faction’s surprise attack over the weekend. More than 1,500 people have been killed in Israel and Gaza. Holly Williams has the latest.
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More than 1,500 people have been killed since the Hamas militant group launched a surprise assault on Israel from Gaza early Saturday, leading Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to declare “we are at war.”
An Israeli embassy spokesperson said Monday the death toll has risen to at least 900 Israelis, most of them civilians. Another 2,500 were reported wounded, IDF international spokesperson Lt. Col. (Res.) Jonathan Conricus told CBS News on Monday. More than 250 of the dead were Israelis who came under attack at the Supernova music festival near the border with Gaza when militants opened fire on the crowd.
Israeli officials also say Hamas fighters captured more than 100 hostages, including women, children and elderly people, who were apparently taken into Gaza as captives.
At least 11 U.S. citizens are among the dead, the White House confirmed Monday, while an unknown number of Americans remain missing.
Meanwhile, at least 687 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes, including 140 children, and more than 3,700 people were wounded, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
The coordinated, multi-front attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian territory controlled by Hamas, came almost 50 years to the day since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and marked a dramatic escalation in the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Tel Aviv — Air raid sirens blared in Israel’s largest city, Tel Aviv, again Monday morning as Palestinian militants fired more missiles at the Jewish state and the death toll on both sides soared to over 1,500, with at least 11 Americans among the dead. Explosions rang out as Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system brought down some of the rockets, but there was no immediate word on how many might have slipped through.
The latest salvo of rockets, claimed by Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades military unit, came after Israel said it had struck hundreds of Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip overnight and as four Israeli combat divisions were deployed to the country’s south. Some 100,000 Israeli reservists were called up to fight as battles with Hamas militants continued.
People inspect the damage to a building in the southern city of Ashkelon, Israel, on Oct. 9, 2023, after it was hit during the night by a rocket from the Gaza Strip.
MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said “fighter jets and helicopters, aircraft and artillery struck over 500 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip” Sunday night and Monday morning, claiming to have destroyed tunnels and at least seven “Hamas command centers” in the blockaded Palestinian territory. The IDF said it also struck a command center used by Islamic Jihad, another Iran-backed terror group based in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
“It’s taking more time than we expected to get things back into a defensive security posture,” Israeli military spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht told journalists Monday morning, acknowledging the ongoing battles in southern Israel three days after Hamas launched its unprecedented attack on the Jewish state.
Death toll mounts as Israel bolsters Gaza blockade
An Israeli embassy spokesperson said Monday the death toll has risen to at least 900 Israelis. Most were civilians. Another 2,500 were reported wounded, and IDF spokesperson told CBS News on Monday.
More than 250 of the dead were people who had been attending a music festival near the border with Gaza when gunmen attacked.
At least 11 U.S. nationals were among the dead, President Biden said in a statement Monday afternoon. “It’s heart wrenching. These families have been torn apart by inexcusable hatred and violence,” Mr. Biden said.
An undetermined number of Americans remained missing.
Israel made it clear that it wants vengeance, and in the Gaza Strip, retribution was falling from the sky. The airstrikes had killed more than 687 people as of Monday, including at least 140 children, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. It said another 3,700 more were wounded in the strikes.
Palestinians inspect destruction in a neighborhood heavily damaged by Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp, early on Oct. 9, 2023.
Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto/Getty
In the coming days, Israel is expected to launch a ground incursion into Gaza, a small, densely packed region sandwiched between the Mediterranean Sea to the west and Israel to the north and east.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Monday that he’d ordered a tightening of the Gaza blockade: “Nothing is allowed in or out. There will be no fuel, electricity or food supplies,” he said in a statement. “We fight animals in human form and proceed accordingly.”
CBS News’ Marwan al-Ghoul reported from Gaza City that the Israeli airstrikes had been relentless since Saturday. While Israel insists it is targeting Hamas and other terror groups, it has long accused those militants of positioning both fighters and weapons in or near civilian infrastructure.
Houses, apartment buildings and mosques were all among the targets hit overnight, most of them without prior warning, al-Ghoul said.
Palestinians inspect the rubble of the Yassin Mosque, destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in the al-Shati refugee camp just outside Gaza City, Oct. 9, 2023.
Adel Hana/AP
“I could not sleep last night as the planes bombed the mosque nearby, causing casualties and breaking the windows of my house,” Samar Alyan, who lives in the sprawling al-Shati refugee camp just west of Gaza City, told CBS News.
“We do not know what fate has in store for us,” she said. “Israel retaliates on civilians.”
The camp is home to some 150,000 refugees.
In the center of Gaza City, schools run by the U.N.’s humanitarian agency in the Palestinian territories, UNRWA, were full of displaced people looking for any safety they could find.
Israeli infrastructure minister Israel Katz said in a tweet that he had “ordered to immediately cut off the water supply from Israel to Gaza,” adding that “electricity and fuel were cut off yesterday” to the Palestinian territory, which is home to some 2 million people.
AP
Israel has been locked in a cycle of violence with Palestinian militant groups for decades, but what happened on Saturday was unprecedented. Hundreds of Hamas militants broke through the steel and concrete barrier that Israel has used for decades to contain Palestinians inside Gaza.
They stormed into Israel by land, sea and even on paragliders as waves of rockets — more than 3,000 of them — were unleashed on Israeli towns and cities.
The gunmen from the group, which has long been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and Israel, went on a rampage, slaughtering civilians in the streets, engaging Israeli security forces with deadly effect, and kidnapping hostages including women, children and the elderly.
Some of them were paraded through the streets of Gaza — human trophies that Hamas knows it can use as leverage against its enemy.
One of the captives is Noa Argamani, a university student who was hauled away on the back of a motorcycle as she screamed for help.
“She is an amazing person, a sweet child,” her father Yaacov told CBS News. “I cannot believe it.”
The shocked father said he wanted the Israeli government to rescue his daughter, but “only by peaceful measures.”
“We need to act with sensitivity,” he said. “They [Palestinians] also have mothers who are crying, the same as it is for us.”
“Seems like Israel had no clue”
For many in Israel, the question burning Monday morning was how the country’s intelligence agencies could have failed to detect and disrupt planning for such a significant Hamas assault.
“It seems like Israel had no clue,” former Israeli intelligence officer Gonen Ben Itzhak, who used to recruit spies to infiltrate Hamas, told CBS News. He said Israel — distracted by simmering violence in the other Palestinian territory, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where it’s been protecting Israeli settlers — let down its guard in Gaza.
“I won’t be surprised if they will start to even kill some of the hostages on camera,” he said, predicting that Hamas would try to force the Israeli government to negotiate.
But Israeli leaders and military officials weren’t discussing any negotiations Monday morning.
With some people calling the attack Israel’s 9/11, military spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said the objective was “to make sure that at the end of this war, Hamas will no longer have any military capabilities to threaten Israeli civilians with, and in addition to that, we also need to make sure Hamas will not govern the Gaza Strip.”
CBS News’ Erin Lyall and Duarte Dias contributed to this report.
Israel has launched a series of strikes in Gaza following a surprise assault by Hamas militants over the weekend. More than 1,500 people have been killed in the fighting. Holly Williams has the latest.
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Israel has launched a series of strikes in Gaza following a surprise assault by Hamas militants over the weekend. More than 1,500 people have been killed in the fighting. Holly Williams has the latest.
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After Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israel early Saturday, Republicans were quick to connect, without evidence, the assault to the $6 billion in funds that were unfrozen as part of the prisoner swap between the U.S. and Iran in September.
“Let’s be clear: the deal to bring U.S. citizens home from Iran has nothing to do with the horrific attack on Israel. Not a penny has been spent,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Saturday.
Where did the $6 billion come from?
Five Americans who had been wrongfully detained in Iran were freed as part of a high-stakes deal between Iran and the Biden administration that included the transfer of $6 billion in Iranian oil assets that were held in a restricted account in South Korea.
South Korea owed Iran the money for oil it purchased before the Trump administration imposed sanctions on such transactions in 2019.
Where is the $6 billion now?
Treasury’s top sanctions official Brian Nelson said Saturday that the funds are still in restricted accounts in Qatar.
The Biden administration has insisted that the money would not be given directly to Iran and that it could only be used to fund Iran’s purchases of humanitarian goods, such as food and medicine. Though Iran’s president has said he would decide how to spend the previously frozen funds.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Sept. 13 that the funds that were moved to Qatar would have “more legal restrictions” than in South Korea and that the U.S. would have oversight about where the money is being spent.
“If Iran tries to divert the funds we’ll take action, and we’ll lock them up again,” Kirby said.
A senior State Department official told CBS News on Saturday that “it will take many months for Iran to spend down this money” because of the “due diligence involved and the complexity of what have to be specific humanitarian transactions through this channel.”
What have Republican critics said?
A number of Republicans have criticized the Biden administration for releasing the funds, claiming it freed up resources for Iran to support the attack.
“You can say certain funds can’t be used, but you can use other funds that may be freed up as a result,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running for president, told reporters on Saturday.
Vivek Ramaswamy, who is also vying for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, made similar comments on the campaign trail.
Former President Donald Trump said he would not be surprised if Iran put the “tremendous wealth that they just accumulated” toward the violence in Israel.
“To think that they’re not moving money around is irresponsible,” Nikki Haley, former ambassador to the United Nations, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “They hate Israel. They hate America. They are going to continue to use this. It was wrong to release the $6 billion.”
On Monday, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said “handing over $6 billion to Iran only helps the cause” and called on the Biden administration to refreeze the funds.
How is Hamas linked to Iran?
Iran funds and provides weapons to Hamas, an Islamist militant group that controls the Gaza Strip. The U.S. has designated it a terrorist organization.
“Iran and Hamas have a long relationship,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “Hamas wouldn’t be Hamas without the support it’s had for many years from Iran. In this moment, we don’t have anything that shows us that Iran was directly involved in this attack, in planning it or in carrying it out, but that’s something we’re looking at very carefully, and we’ve got to see where the facts lead.”
Iran provides up to $100 million annually to Hamas and other terrorist groups, according to a 2021 State Department report.
“There’s a degree of complicity here writ large,” Kirby told reporters Monday of Iran’s potential involvement in the attack.
But he said the U.S. doesn’t yet have evidence that Iran was directly involved.
“We haven’t seen hard tangible evidence that Iran was directly involved in participating in or resourcing or planning these sets of complex attacks that Hamas pulled off over the weekend,” he said.
Willie James Inman and Margaret Brennan contributed reporting.
Supporters of both Israel and Palestinian liberation gathered in cities across the U.S. following the surprise assault on Israel by Hamas militants over the weekend. Jericka Duncan reports.
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Miri Messika says she and her family barely survived when Hamas attacked their home on a kibbutz about three miles from Gaza. “CBS Evening News” anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell shares her story.
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The White House is sending weapons to Israel and moving warships to the region amid the ongoing fighting between Hamas militants and Israel. Congress currently cannot approve further aid following the ousting of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Nancy Cordes reports.
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The Palestinian militant group Hamas carried out a devastating attack on Israel over the weekend killing hundreds of Israelis, which was praised by the Lebanese group Hezbollah. The assault ignited a war with the Jewish state, leading to the deaths of hundreds of more people in the Gaza Strip in retaliatory strikes.
What is Hamas’ ideology?
Hamas is an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya, which means Islamic Resistance Movement, according to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center. The group is “committed to armed resistance against Israel and the creation of an Islamic Palestinian state in Israel’s place,” according to the center.
What is the Hamas charter?
Hamas’ 1988 charter calls for the destruction of Israel, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Steven Cook, a senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies for the council, said in 2021 that Hamas “sees all of Israel and Palestine as Muslim lands, and thus the illegitimacy of Israel and Jewish claims to those lands.”
Who funds Hamas?
Hamas receives material and financial support from Iran, according to the U.S. government and the Council on Foreign Relations. U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer told CBS News on Monday that Iran was “broadly complicit” in the latest conflict, but he also said Iran wasn’t directly involved in the attacks.
“What I can say, without a doubt, is that Iran is broadly complicit in these attacks,” Finer said on “CBS Mornings.” “Iran has been Hamas’ primary backer for decades. They have provided them weapons, they have provided them training, they have provided them financial support. … What we have not seen yet at this moment, although we are continuing to look at it very closely, is any sort of direct involvement in the immediate attacks that took place over the last couple of days.”
Iran openly admits to supporting Palestinian groups in Gaza; leaders of both Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which also participated in the attack on Israel, regularly visit the country’s capital of Tehran. They both visited the city in June, and held extensive meetings with top Iranian officials, including with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
During his meeting with Hamas’ politburo chief, Khamenei reiterated “Iran’s continued support for the Palestinian people, their resistance, and their just cause, as it is a legitimate duty from which there is no retreat,” Hamas said in a statement after the meeting. He also called for “exerting and consolidating efforts to support the steadfastness of the Palestinian people and end the siege on the Gaza Strip,” the statement added.
The Palestinian factions don’t make their ties with Iran a secret either. They admit Iran has been their primary supporter.
In a televised speech in December 2017, Hamas’ top commander in Gaza, Yahya al-Sinwar, bragged that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard general killed by the U.S. in Baghdad in 2020 — Qassem Soleimani — had contacted the leadership of the al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, as well as with the leadership of the al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad, and offered them the Guard’s full support.
“All our resources and capabilities are at your disposal in the battle to defend Jerusalem,” al-Sinwar quoted the Iranian general as saying.
Once Iran’s foreign operations chief, Soleimani was killed by a U.S. drone strike outside Baghdad Airport in Iraq on Jan. 3, 2020.
Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad recently held military drills in the Gaza Strip, as did Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
A member of the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Hamas movement, takes part in a parade in Gaza City on November 14, 2021.
Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty Images
Where is Hamas located?
According to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, Hamas primarily operates in Gaza but also has a presence in the West Bank, where the Israeli government and Palestinian Authority control different parts of the Palestinian territory.
Other areas where Hamas operates are the Middle Eastern capitals of Doha, Qatar, and Cairo, Egypt, as well as Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, according to the center.
Is Hamas Palestinian?
Yes. The group formed in 1987 as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist political movement that was founded in Egypt in 1928.
In 2007, Hamas ousted the Palestinian Authority from power in Gaza.
Is Hamas designated a terrorist group?
Yes. Hamas was designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department in October 1997 along with several other groups, including Hezbollah.
In the U.S., the designation makes it illegal for Americans to knowingly provide “material support or resources” to such groups. U.S. financial institutions must also seize control of a designated organization’s funds in their possession and report them to the government.
What is the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah?
Like Hamas, Hezbollah is also an Iran-backed group with a political party and a militant wing that’s been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S., which refers to the group as Hizballah. Hezbollah also opposes Israel, and the two sides have fought against each other before.
But Hezbollah is based in south Lebanon, which borders Israel. It operates as a militia alongside Lebanon’s armed forces, according to the CIA World Factbook.
Hamas and Hezbollah follow different divisions of Islam. Hamas is predominately Sunni, the religion’s single biggest group that a majority of several countries follow, including Egypt. Hezbollah is a Shiite group, the religion’s second-largest division that Iran’s population overwhelmingly follows.
