Israeli authorities said hundreds were killed and hundreds were wounded in the deadliest attack in Israel in years, CBS News reported.
The NYPD released a statement saying, “We are aware of the situation and continue to monitor for further developments. At this time there is no known threat nor nexus to New York City.”
NYPD deploying resources to Jewish communities
Mayor Eric Adams said the NYPD is deploying resources to Jewish communities and houses of worship across the five boroughs as a precaution.
“We have resources on the ground in Israel gathering intelligence, and we are continually monitoring multiple channels to identify any potential threats, both here and abroad. I am also communicating directly with Police Commissioner Caban and Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism Weiner about the situation. While there is no credible threat to New York City at this time, our administration is in touch with Jewish leaders across the five boroughs, and we have directed the NYPD to deploy additional resources to Jewish communities and houses of worship citywide to ensure that our communities have the resources they need to make sure everyone feels safe,” Adams said.
We extend our sincerest condolences for all the innocent lives lost in these attacks, and hope that not another family has to experience the pain of losing a loved one.
Bronx Borough President Vanessa L. Gibson added, “Working closely with our law enforcement partners in our Borough to ensure that our Jewish communities, Muslim communities, synagogues and mosques are safe during this time of heightened security. We stand with Israel and are praying for abundant peace.”
Working closely with our law enforcement partners in our Borough to ensure that our Jewish communities, Muslim communities, synagogues and mosques are safe during this time of heightened security. We stand with Israel and are praying for abundant peace. 🙏 @NYPDPBBronx
— Hon. Vanessa L. Gibson, MPA (She, Her, Hers) (@Vanessalgibson) October 7, 2023
New York, New Jersey leaders condemn attack in Israel
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “The terrorist attacks by Hamas on the people of Israel are absolutely horrific. The U.S. stands with Israel in its unwavering right to defend itself. I stand ready to ensure Israel has the support to do so. My prayers are with the dead, reported hostages, and hundreds injured.”
The terrorist attacks by Hamas on the people of Israel are absolutely horrific. The U.S. stands with Israel in its unwavering right to defend itself. I stand ready to ensure Israel has the support to do so. My prayers are with the dead, reported hostages, and hundreds injured.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said, “I’m horrified by the scenes we’ve seen in Israel today. I strongly condemn these terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens, and my heart goes out to the families of those who have been killed or injured. The United States’ support for Israel is unwavering.”
I’m horrified by the scenes we’ve seen in Israel today. I strongly condemn these terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens, and my heart goes out to the families of those who have been killed or injured. The United States’ support for Israel is unwavering.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said, “As the home of the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, New York condemns the abhorrent attacks by Hamas. I stand with the people of Israel.”
As the home of the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, New York condemns the abhorrent attacks by Hamas. I stand with the people of Israel.
On X, the New York City Council Jewish Caucus wrote, “As Jewish members of the @NYCcouncil, while we should be celebrating the joyous holidays of Shabbat and Simchat Torah, we are instead heartbroken at this morning’s unprecedented terrorist attacks on Israel. We stand with Israel and condemn these attacks.”
As Jewish members of the @NYCcouncil, while we should be celebrating the joyous holidays of Shabbat and Simchat Torah, we are instead heartbroken at this morning’s unprecedented terrorist attacks on Israel.
The world must unequivocally condemn terrorism against innocent civilians. Just like any country, the State of Israel has a right to defend itself and rescue hostages who have been kidnapped. As a state with one of the largest Jewish and Israeli American communities in the world, today’s news is especially hard to fathom. As Governor, I stand with the people of Israel in this dark hour in a united show of resolve against terrorism.
Tammy and I are sickened by the videos and images of Hamas terrorists attacking, killing, and kidnapping innocent Israeli civilians in an unprecedented coordinated series of terrorist attacks.
We share the pain that so many are feeling today in Israel, NJ, and across the world. pic.twitter.com/nxn73zRfsh
I emphatically condemn the murderous invasion by Hamas into Israel during its religious holidays. The killing of innocent Israelis in their homes by Hamas, during an invasion from Gaza, shows them to be what they are – a murderous terrorist organization. I hope the detractors of Israel will now understand the constant life and death struggle the Israeli people live with every day. It is time for the international community to unequivocally condemn Hamas. The United States must unequivocally stand with Israel at this time of war with Hamas.
The ruling Hamas militant group in the Gaza Strip carried out an unprecedented, multi-front attack on Israel at daybreak Saturday, firing thousands of rockets as dozens of Hamas fighters infiltrated the heavily fortified border in several locations by air, land and sea and catching the country off-guard on a major holiday.
The death toll has risen to 200 in the Hamas militant group’s incursion in southern Israel, according to Zaka, Israel’s national rescue service, making it the deadliest attack in Israel in decades. Zaka says an additional 1,100 people were wounded in the attack Saturday that took Israel by surprise.
The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza reported injuries among “many citizens” without giving numbers and loudspeakers on mosques broadcast prayers of mourning for killed militants.
The Israeli military confirmed Saturday that Hamas militants are holding Israeli civilians and soldiers hostage in Gaza. The military did not say how many hostages were seized, but their capture marks a major escalation in the fighting.
Police officers evacuate a woman and a child from a site hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, southern Israel, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.
Tsafrir Abayov / AP
Six hours after the invasion began, Hamas militants were still fighting gunbattles inside several Israeli communities in a surprising show of strength that shook the country. Civilians in the southern and central regions of the country have been warned to shelter in place.
“We are at war,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised address, declaring a mass mobilization of the country’s army reserves. “Not an ‘operation,’ not a ’round,’ but at war.”
“The enemy will pay an unprecedented price,” he added, promising that Israel would “return fire of a magnitude that the enemy has not known.”
The attack began with an early-dawn rocket attack that lasted for nearly half an hour. Thousands of rockets were launched from inside Gaza, some making it as far as Tel Aviv, causing widespread damage. Next came an invasion from Hamas militants who had infiltrated Israel in at least seven locations. The fighters had sneaked across the separation fence and even invaded Israel through the air with paragliders and by sea, the army said. The fighters stormed the streets of nearby border towns, setting Israeli tanks on fire as they went.
In the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, just 2.5 miles from the Gaza Strip, terrified residents who were huddled indoors said they could hear constant gunfire echoing off the buildings as firefights continued even hours after the initial attack.
“With rockets we somehow feel safer, knowing that we have the Iron Dome (missile defense system) and our safe rooms. But knowing that terrorists are walking around communities is a different kind of fear,” said Mirjam Reijnen, a 42-year-old volunteer firefighter and mother of three in Nahal Oz.
Israeli security forces take cover during rocket attack siren warning in Ashkelon, southern Israel, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.
Tsafrir Abayov / AP
Social media was replete with videos of Hamas fighters parading what appeared to be stolen Israeli military vehicles through the streets and at least one dead Israeli soldier within Gaza being dragged and trampled by an angry crowd of Palestinians shouting “God is Great.” CBS News has not verified the video. The military declined to give details about casualties or kidnappings as it continued to battle the infiltrators.
“At this time, the IDF is reinforcing the south and the communities surrounding the Gaza Strip with several operational forces,” said Rear. Admiral Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesperson, in a statement to CBS News. “Operational commanders are arriving to manage the combat in each location. In parallel to this, we have begun a wide mobilization of reservists for all IDF units.”
In a televised address, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned that Hamas had made “a grave mistake” and promised that “the state of Israel will win this war.”
In comments made before the country’s Security Cabinet, Netanyahu said the country’s “first objective is to clear out the hostile forces that infiltrated our territory and restore the security and quiet to the communities that have been attacked.”
“The second objective, at the same time, is to exact an immense price from the enemy, within the Gaza Strip as well. The third objective is to reinforce other fronts so that nobody should mistakenly join this war,” Netanyahu continued. “We are at war. In war, one needs to be level-headed. I call on all citizens of Israel to unite in order to achieve our highest goal – victory in the war.”
The escalation comes after weeks of heightened tensions along Israel’s volatile border with Gaza, and heavy fighting in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It also comes at a delicate time for Netanyahu’s far-right government, with hundreds of soldiers in the military reserves have either pulling out of training sessions or promising they won’t report for duty over government’s deeply divisive plan to weaken the Supreme Court.
The divisions within army ranks have threatened to undermine Netanyahu’s reputation as a security expert who would do anything to protect Israel and the cohesion of an institution crucial to the stability of a country locked in low-intensity conflicts on multiple fronts and facing threats from Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group.
Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, condemned the attacks on Saturday in a statement, saying: “The United States unequivocally condemns the unprovoked attacks by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians. There is never any justification for terrorism. We stand firmly with the Government and people of Israel and extend our condolences for the Israeli lives lost in these attacks. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has spoken to Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi and we remain in close contact with our Israeli partners.”
Rockets are fired toward Israel from Gaza, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.
Fatima Shbair / AP
Lloyd J. Austin, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, said he was closely monitoring developments in Israel.
Our commitment to Israel’s right to defend itself remains unwavering, and I extend my condolences to the families of those who lost their lives in this abhorrent attack on civilians,” he said. “Over the coming days the Department of Defense will work to ensure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself and protect civilians from indiscriminate violence and terrorism.”
The infiltration of fighters into southern Israel marked a major accomplishment — and escalation — by Hamas that forced millions of Israelis to hunker down in safe rooms, sheltering from rocket explosions and ongoing gunbattles with Hamas fighters. Cities and towns emptied as the military closed roads near Gaza. Israel’s rescue service and the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza appealed to the public to donate blood.
“We understand that this is something big,” Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli army spokesman, told reporters. He said the Israeli military had called up the army reserves.
It was not immediately clear what prompted Hamas to launch its attack, which came after weeks of simmering tensions along the Gaza frontier. The shadowy leader of Hamas’ military wing, Mohammed Deif, announced the start of what he called “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm.”
“Enough is enough,” Deif, who does not appear in public, said in the recorded message, as he called on Palestinians from east Jerusalem to northern Israel to join the fight. “Today the people are regaining their revolution.”
Hezbollah congratulated Hamas on Friday, praising the attack as a response to “Israeli crimes” and saying the militants had “divine backing.” The group said its command in Lebanon was in contact with Hamas about the operation.
Ismail Haniyeh, the exiled leader of Hamas, said that Palestinian fighters were “engaged in these historic moments in a heroic operation” to defend the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
The serious invasion on Simchat Torah, a normally joyous day when Jews complete the annual cycle of reading the Torah scroll, revived painful memories of the 1973 Mideast war practically 50 years to the day, in which Israel’s enemies launched a surprise attack on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.
Comparisons to one of the most traumatic moments in Israeli history sharpened criticism of Netanyahu and his far-right allies, who had campaigned on more aggressive action against threats from Gaza. Political commentators lambasted the government over its failure to anticipate what appeared to be a Hamas attack unseen in its level of planning and coordination.
The attack comes at a time of historic division within Israel over Netanyahu’s proposal to overhaul the judiciary. Mass protests over the plan have sent hundreds of thousands of Israeli demonstrators into the streets and prompted hundreds military reservists to avoid volunteer duty — turmoil that has raised fears over the military’s battlefield readiness and raised concerns about its deterrence over its enemies.
Hecht, the army spokesman, declined to comment on how Hamas had managed to catch the army off guard. “That’s a good question,” he said.
Israel has built a massive fence along the Gaza border meant to prevent infiltrations. It goes deep underground and is equipped with cameras, high-tech sensors and sensitive listening technology.
Israeli firefighters extinguish fire after a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip hit a parking lot in Ashkelon, southern Israel, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.
Tsafrir Abayov / AP
Israel has maintained a blockade over Gaza since Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007. The bitter enemies have fought four wars since then. There have also been numerous rounds of smaller fighting between Israel and Hamas and other smaller militant groups based in Gaza.
The blockade, which restricts the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza, has devastated the territory’s economy. Israel says the blockade is needed to keep militant groups from building up their arsenals. The Palestinians say the closure amounts to collective punishment.
The rocket fire comes during a period of heavy fighting in the West Bank, where nearly 200 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli military raids this year. In the volatile northern West Bank, scores of militants and residents poured into the streets in celebration at the news of the rocket barrages.
Israel says the raids are aimed at militants, but stone-throwing protesters and people uninvolved in the violence have also been killed. Palestinian attacks on Israeli targets have killed over 30 people.
The tensions have also spread to Gaza, where Hamas-linked activists held violent demonstrations along the Israeli border in recent weeks. Those demonstrations were halted in late September after international mediation.
Cars burn after a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip hit a parking lot and a residential building in Ashkelon, southern Israel, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. The rockets were fired as Hamas announced a new operation against Israel.
The attack has killed at least 70 people in Israel so far, and hundreds more are reportedly injured. The multi-front attack began with rocket fire, and then expanded as Hamas members invaded Israel from Gaza. In a televised address, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the country is “at war” and swore the militants “will pay an unprecedented price.” The Associated Press reported that nearly 200 people have died in Palestine, with hundreds of injuries reported, in Israel’s response.
President Joe Biden called Netanyahu Saturday morning. The Israeli president said Mr. Biden “emphasized that the U.S. stands alongside Israel” and “fully supports” the country’s right to self-defense. Netanyahu characterized Biden’s support as “unreserved.”
The White House told CBS News that Mr. Biden, who met with Netanyahu last month, has been briefed on the situation and will “continue to receive updates” as officials “remain in close contact with Israeli partners.”
Police officers evacuate a woman and a child from a site hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, southern Israel, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.
Tsafrir Abayov / AP
In a statement, National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the U.S. “unequivocally condemns the unprovoked attacks” and “stands firmly with the Government and people of Israel.” Watson said that national security adviser Jake Sullivan has communicated with Israeli national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken shared a similar statement, noting that the U.S. “condemns the appalling attacks by Hamas terrorists against Israel, including civilians and civilian communities.”
“There is never any justification for terrorism,” said Blinken.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that he is “closely monitoring developments” in Israel.
“Our commitment to Israel’s right to defend itself remains unwavering, and I extend my condolences to the families of those who lost their lives in this abhorrent attack on civilians,” Austin said. “Over the coming days the Department of Defense will work to ensure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself and protect civilians from indiscriminate violence and terrorism.”
Congressional leaders react
The leaders of both political parties have also issued statements about the situation. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, called the attacks “absolutely horrific” in a statement shared on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter.
“The U.S. stands with Israel in its unwavering right to defend itself. I stand ready to ensure Israel has the support to do so,” Schumer said.
The terrorist attacks by Hamas on the people of Israel are absolutely horrific. The U.S. stands with Israel in its unwavering right to defend itself. I stand ready to ensure Israel has the support to do so. My prayers are with the dead, reported hostages, and hundreds injured.
Rep, Patrick McHenry, Republican of North Carolina, the speaker pro tempore and temporary leader of congressional Republicans after Rep. Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, was ousted from the speakership earlier this week, called Israel the U.S.’ “most sacred ally” on X.
“America stands with Israel,” McHenry said. “The Israeli people have our unwavering support and the Israeli government has every right to defend its citizens against this act of war.”
America stands with Israel.
The vicious attack on our most sacred ally by Hamas terrorists cannot stand. The Israeli people have our unwavering support and the Israeli government has every right to defend its citizens against this act of war. 🇮🇱
Sen. Ben Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement that he condemned “the brazen and ongoing terrorist attack.”
“I mourn those lost and my heart goes out to their families. May their memory be for a blessing,” Cardin said. “Just as the United States stood by Israel after it was attacked exactly 50 years ago on Yom Kippur, today we stand by Israel in this time of crisis. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I am committed to ensuring that Israel has what it needs to defend itself and its citizens, today and every day.”
The chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, called the attack “unprovoked and despicable” in a statement.
“Today, Hamas terrorists launched an unprovoked and despicable attack on Israeli civilians,” he said. “The United States must stand firmly beside our friend and partner Israel as it defends its security and its citizens,” and he said the committee would “continue to monitor the situation closely.”
GOP hopefuls speak about attack
Several candidates campaigning for the 2024 Republican party presidential nomination have also condemned the attack on social media and in statements to the media.
Former President Donald Trump, who has not appeared at debates but is leading the polls, issued a statement calling the attacks “a disgrace” and criticizing Mr. Biden’s handling of the Middle East.
“These Hamas attacks are a disgrace and Israel has every right to defend itself with overwhelming force,” Trump said. “Sadly, American taxpayer dollars helped fund these attacks, which many reports are saying came from the Biden Administration. We brought so much peace to the Middle East through the Abraham Accords, only to see Biden whittle it away at a far more rapid pace than anyone possible. Here we go again.”
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who criticized fellow candidate Vivek Ramaswamy for comments he had made suggesting the U.S. cut funding to Israel during the first Republican presidential debate, issued a statement calling Hamas “a bloodthirsty terrorist organization … determined to kill as many innocent lives as possible.”
“Hamas has declared war on Israel on the Jewish holiday of Shemini Atzeret and the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War,” Haley said. “…The reports out of Israel are horrific with a stunning number of dead and wounded and should be universally condemned. Israel has every right to defend its citizens from terror. We must always stand with Israel and against this Iranian regime.”
Ramaswamy’s team said in a statement that they are “appalled by the Hamas attack” and “stand with Israel.”
On X, Florida governor Ron DeSantis called on the U.S. to “stand with Israel.”
The dastardly terrorist attacks perpetrated against innocent Israeli civilians by Iran-backed terror group Hamas deserve a swift and lethal response.
Israel not only has the right to defend itself against these attacks, it has a duty to respond with overwhelming force.
“The dastardly terrorist attacks perpetrated against innocent Israeli civilians by Iran-backed terror group Hamas deserve a swift and lethal response,” DeSantis wrote. “Israel not only has the right to defend itself against these attacks, it has a duty to respond with overwhelming force. I stand with Israel. America must stand with Israel.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence, who is also running for president, shared an article about the violence on X and called Israel the country’s “most cherished ally.”
Every American should condemn the unprovoked and massive attack on Israel by terrorists in Hamas. Our prayers are with the families and soldiers of our most cherished ally. @netanyahu says Israel is “at war” America Stands With Israel🇺🇸🇮🇱 https://t.co/D1M8y5EjCe
RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA—Insisting that they wished to demonstrate they were negotiating in good faith, Saudi officials announced Friday they had attempted to normalize ties with Israel by conducting an air strike in Gaza that killed eight Palestinians and left dozens more wounded. “As an olive branch to Israeli leaders, we’ve recently carried out a major strike on a Gazan apartment complex that may or may not have been housing Hamas militants—but the important thing here is we showed we’re serious about tearing apart the lives of Palestinians,” said a Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, adding that the significant casualties among unarmed women and children alone might be enough to push the historic deal to the finish line. “Obviously, obstacles remain, but we have the broad contours of a deal here that could absolutely decimate the Palestinian people. And this is just the beginning. Israel knows that if they normalize ties with the Saudis, that raises the likelihood of other Gulf States joining them in killing and maiming Palestinians.” At press time, Israel had reportedly attempted to show its seriousness by beheading a journalist reporting on the deal for an American newspaper.
X says it has removed “hundreds of Hamas-affiliated accounts”and taken down thousands of postssince the attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group, even as the European Commission formally opened an investigation into X after a previous warning about disinformation and illegal content on its platform linked to the Israel-Hamas war.
The platform, formerly known as Twitter, was given 24 hours by the European Unionearlier this week to address illegal content and disinformation regarding the conflict or face penalties under the bloc’s recently enacted Digital Services Act.
CEO Linda Yaccarino responded to EU official Thierry Breton in a letter dated Wednesday that she posted to X. She said the company had “redistributed resources and refocused internal teams who are working around the clock to address this rapidly evolving situation.”
“There is no place on X for terrorist organizations or violent extremist groups and we continue to remove such accounts in real time,” Yaccarino wrote.
“X is… addressing identified fake and manipulated content during this constantly evolving and shifting crisis,” she added. The platform had “assembled a leadership group to assess the situation” shortly after news broke about the attack, Yaccarino said.
European Union officials are now assessing X’s compliance with the DSA and have asked the company to start responding to investigators by as early as Oct. 18.
The probe covers X’s “policies and practices regarding notices on illegal content, complaint handling, risk assessment and measures to mitigate the risks identified,” the Commission said in a release.
“X is required to comply with the full set of provisions introduced by the DSA since late August 2023,” the release added, “including the assessment and mitigation of risks related to the dissemination of illegal content, disinformation, gender-based violence, and any negative effects on the exercise of fundamental rights, rights of the child, public security and mental well-being.”
X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Beyond X, European officials have sent similar warnings to Meta and TikTok in recent days.
The announcement did not name the Israel-Hamas war. But this week, EU officials sent a letter to X owner Elon Musk warning that if an investigation finds that the company had failed to meet its legal obligations in connection with content about the war, it could face steep penalties, including billions in fines.
A slew of mischaracterized videos and other posts went viral on X over the weekend, alarming experts who track the spread of misinformation and offering the latest example of social media platforms’ struggle to deal with a flood of falsehoods during a major geopolitical event.
Since the attack on Israel, Yaccarino said X had acted to “remove or label tens of thousands of pieces of content” that break its rules on violent speech, manipulated media and graphic media. It had also responded to more than 80 “take down requests” from EU authorities to remove content.
“Community Notes” — which allow X users to fact check false posts — are visible on “thousands of posts, generating millions of impressions,” shewrote.
According to Yaccarino, notes related to the conflict take about five hours on average to show up after a post is created, a revelation that could fuel concerns that fake or manipulated content is being seen by thousands — or in some cases millions — of people before being moderated.
The DSA is one of the most ambitious efforts by policymakers anywhere to regulate tech giants and companies face billions in fines for violating the act.
In an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday, Biden said it would be a “big mistake” for Israel to occupy Gaza. Israel has been signaling it is preparing for a ground invasion of Gaza, even as a humanitarian crisis grows inside the coastal Palestinian enclave. Biden has called for the protection of civilians, and the United States has been working to alleviate shortages of food, water and gas.
“What happened in Gaza, in my view, is Hamas and the extreme elements of Hamas don’t represent all the Palestinian people,” Biden told interviewer Scott Pelley.
Biden said he believes Hamas should be eliminated entirely, “but there needs to be a Palestinian Authority. There needs to be a path to a Palestinian state.”
The comments amount to one of the few times the US president has called on Israel to use some sort of restraint in responding to the Hamas attacks that left 1,400 dead. In its response, Israel unleashed a massive bombing campaign against the northern Gaza Strip, from which Hamas launched its attack.
Michael Herzog, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday that Israel does not intend to occupy Gaza after the conflict ends.
“We have no desire to occupy or reoccupy Gaza. We have no desire to rule over the lives of more than 2 million Palestinians,” Herzog said.
In the “60 Minutes” interview, Biden notably did not say it was time for a ceasefire.
“Look, there’s a fundamental difference. Israel is going after a group of people who have engaged in barbarism that is as consequential as the Holocaust,” he said.
“So I think Israel has to respond. They have to go after Hamas. Hamas is a bunch of cowards. They’re hiding behind the civilians. … The Israelis are gonna do everything in their power to avoid the killing of innocent civilians.”
The situation in Gaza has quickly become a humanitarian disaster, and the Israelis told civilians living in the northern part of the area to evacuate to the south ahead of an anticipated invasion. However, many human rights organizations have called that impossible as Israeli strikes have damaged infrastructure and Palestinians face a lack of housing in one of the most densely populated places on Earth.
Biden told Pelley he believes that there needs to be a humanitarian corridor to help civilians trapped amid the fighting and that Israel will abide by the “rules of war.”
“I’m confident that Israel is going to act under the measure … the rules of war,” Biden said. “There’s standards that democratic institutions and countries go by. And so I’m confident that there’s gonna be an ability for the innocents in Gaza to be able to have access to medicine and food and water.”
The president said he does not anticipate American troops engaging in combat in the area as Israel readies its ground counterattack. The US will provide Israel “everything they need,” Biden said.
He added “there is no clear evidence” that Iran is behind the attacks on Israel.
“Now, Iran constantly supports Hamas and Hezbollah,” Biden said. “I don’t mean that. But in terms of were they, did they have fore knowledge; did they help plan the attack? There’s no evidence of that at this point.”
The US intelligence community is digging through its stores of data and tasking the nation’s spy agencies to hunt for fresh clues to determine whether Iran played a direct role in Saturday’s deadly attack on Israel by Hamas, a senior Biden administration official said Tuesday.
Even as the US believes Iran is “complicit” in the attack, given its years of support to the Palestinian militant group, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday that the administration still does not have direct evidence linking Tehran to the planning and execution of the assault.
“We’re looking to acquire further intelligence,” Sullivan told reporters at the White House. “But as I stand here today, while Iran plays this broad role – sustained, deep and dark role in providing all of this support and capabilities to Hamas – in terms of this particular gruesome attack on October 7, we don’t currently have that information.”
Privately, multiple intelligence, military and congressional officials with access to classified intelligence tell CNN the same thing that Sullivan said publicly: No direct evidence has been found indicating Iran was directly involved.
“Waiting to see if we get a smoking gun in the intel,” said one military official.
Israeli intelligence is also going back and examining previous evidence, a senior Israeli official told CNN.
“I doubt that Iran had no knowledge whatsoever,” the official said. “We’ve seen meetings and we’ve seen the close coordination between them.”
US and Israeli intelligence had no advance warning of the attack – something US officials say is stunning given the scale of the assault – and now, the Biden administration is treading cautiously.
Iran has for years been Hamas’ chief benefactor, providing it with tens of millions of dollars, weapons and components smuggled into Gaza, as well as broad technical and ideological support.
Hamas maintains a degree of independence from the Iranian regime. Tehran doesn’t have advisers on the ground in blockaded Gaza, according to former security officials and other regional analysts, and it doesn’t command the group’s activities.
But the unprecedented scale of the weekend’s attack – combined with analysts’ broad belief that Iran sees the attack as a net positive for its interests in the region – have fueled questions of whether Hamas could have pulled off such a sophisticated operation without direct Iranian assistance.
“We spend a lot of time and resources worrying about what Iran is doing and how to counter what Iran is doing,” a State Department official said. “This certainly opens up a new chapter in that discussion.”
In 2022, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said publicly that the group had received about $70 million from Iran that year and that it used the money to build rockets. A State Department report from 2020 found that Iran provided about $100 million annually to Palestinian terrorist groups, including Hamas.
Former US officials say there is little question the massive stockpile of weapons used in Saturday’s attack was acquired and assembled with help from Iran.
“Hamas didn’t build the guidance system and those missiles in Gaza,” said retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, the former commander of US Central Command. “They got them from somewhere. And the technology assistance to put it together certainly came from Iran – where else would it have come from?”
Still, the Biden administration has for days stopped short of attributing a role in the tactical planning and execution of the attack to Tehran, and current and former US intelligence analysts who spoke to CNN cautioned that past Iranian support to the group isn’t enough evidence to prove its direct involvement.
“Even if they didn’t give the instruction, you see it in the support,” said Zohar Palti, the former head of the Political-Military Bureau at Israel’s Ministry of Defense. “Is Hamas a complete Iranian proxy that does everything Iran wants? No. But the relationship is much closer than it was even three years ago.”
Tehran has denied any involvement in the attack, even as it has lauded it publicly. Israel has also expressed caution publicly.
“We have no evidence or proof” that Iran was behind the attack, Maj. Nir Dinar, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces, told Politico on Monday. “We are 100 percent sure that the Iranians were not surprised.”
Privately, some US officials believe it’s likely Iran had at least some involvement in the planning of the attack. But those personal assessments are largely based on the belief that Iran would likely look for any opportunity to disrupt the fragile negotiations that had been in the works to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Saturday’s attack is widely seen as having endangered those talks.
Other analysts say it’s equally likely that Iran would have wanted to maintain its distance from any Hamas operation against Israel — even if it was aware of the attack in advance.
It is not in Iran’s interest to have more direct involvement, said Norm Roule, the former national intelligence manager for Iran at the CIA.
“Iran identifies regional proxies and then provides them with the political, financial and security support to dominate their particular geography,” Roule said. “Iran encourages military operations, but its proxies manage those actions.”
It’s possible that Iran provided some operational and planning support in advance of the attack, but that it told Hamas, “You’re on your own once it happens,” said Mike Knights, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute who specializes in Iran-backed proxy groups.
“This looks like Hamas learned some very significant new tricks from someone else and that may well have been the Iranians,” Knights said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Iran is up for broadening the war.”
The relationship between Iran and Hamas has evolved over the years. In the early days of the Syrian civil war a decade ago, Hamas and Iran found themselves on opposite sides of the conflict.
For years, the two had a fraught relationship driven by two different Islamist ideologies: Sunni Muslim Hamas and Shia Muslim Iran. But Hamas saw Iran’s influence expanding in the region, especially as America’s shrinking role in the Middle East created a power vacuum for Tehran to exploit, according to Michael Milshtein, the former head of the Department for Palestinian Affairs in the Israeli military’s intelligence directorate.
More recently, Tehran has stepped up the training assistance it provides Hamas inside Iran, according to a former Western defense official. “Iran was being more proactive in logistics and training of these people,” the former official said. “They’ve gone full on in last few years … with explicit desire to destabilize” the region.
According to Knights, the closest relationship that Shia Iran now has with any Sunni group is Hamas. Tehran has “provided Hamas with precision loitering munitions drone systems that it has not even provided the Iraqi militias, (with) which it has had relationships since the 1980s.”
“This suggests a level of actual operational arming, training, equipping that we’ve only previously seen with Lebanese Hezbollah, and then with the Houthis in Yemen,” Knights said.
But Hamas is not a proxy of Iran, Milshtein said. Unlike terror groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas maintains a large degree of independence from Tehran, even as the assistance has dramatically expanded.
“Hamas became comfortable getting close to Iran,” Milshtein said, but the relationship remains largely based on military cooperation. Hamas received Iranian weapons and military technology, and learned from the Iranians about planning operations. But the power to make a decision remained with Hamas’ leadership.
“Everything we have seen in the last four days, we can’t say it’s an Iranian plan or an Iranian effort,” Milshtein said. “It’s a Hamas plan that got Iranian help.”
US intelligence officials are also working to understand Hamas’ immediate motivation for launching the attack. Unlike the Palestinian Authority, the militant group does not recognize Israel and is committed to the destruction of the Jewish state.
Broadly, the more than 2 million residents of the Gaza Strip live in crowded and substandard conditions, partly as a result of a yearslong Israeli blockade and recurring airstrikes on the densely populated enclave.
McKenzie and others said Hamas was likely motivated by its own parochial cause more than it was by any interest in disrupting normalization talks.
“I think the Hamas calculation is very little on normalization,” McKenzie said. “I think it’s less the larger geostrategic things in the theater.
“It’s the Hamas-Israeli relationship, not the larger, ‘What does this mean to Saudi Arabia?’”
As the Israel-Hamas war reaches the end of its first week, millions have turned to platforms including TikTok and Instagram in hopes of comprehending the brutal conflict in real time. Trending search terms on TikTok in recent days illustrate the hunger for frontline perspectives: From “graphic Israel footage” to “live stream in Israel right now,” internet users are seeking out raw, unfiltered accounts of a crisis they are desperate to understand.
For the most part, they are succeeding, discovering videos of tearful Israeli children wrestling with the permanence of death alongside images of dazed Gazans sitting in the rubble of their former homes. But that same demand for an intimate view of the war has created ample openings for disinformation peddlers, conspiracy theorists and propaganda artists — malign influences that regulators and researchers now warn pose a dangerous threat to public debates about the war.
One recent TikTok video, seen by more than 300,000 users and reviewed by CNN, promoted conspiracy theories about the origins of the Hamas attacks, including false claims that they were orchestrated by the media. Another, viewed more than 100,000 times, shows a clip from the video game “Arma 3” with the caption, “The war of Israel.” (Some users in the comments of that video noted they had seen the footage circulating before — when Russia invaded Ukraine.)
TikTok is hardly alone. One post on X, formerly Twitter, was viewed more than 20,000 times and flagged as misleading by London-based social media watchdog Reset for purporting to show Israelis staging civilian deaths for cameras. Another X post the group flagged, viewed 55,000 times, was an antisemitic meme featuring Pepe the Frog, a cartoon that has been appropriated by far-right white supremacists. On Instagram, a widely shared and viewed video of parachuters dropping in on a crowd and captioned “imagine attending a music festival when Hamas parachutes in” was debunked over the weekend and, in fact, showed unrelated parachute jumpers in Egypt. (Instagram later labeled the video as false.)
This week, European Union officials sent warnings to TikTok, Facebook and Instagram-parent Meta, YouTube and X, highlighting reports of misleading or illegal content about the war on their platforms and reminding the social media companies they could face billions of dollars in fines if an investigation later determines they violated EU content moderation laws. US and UK lawmakers have also called on those platforms to ensure they are enforcing their rules against hateful and illegal content.
Since the violence in Israel began, Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the social media watchdog group Center for Countering Digital Hate, told CNN his group has tracked a spike in efforts to pollute the information ecosystem surrounding the conflict.
“Getting information from social media is likely to lead to you being severely disinformed,” said Ahmed.
Everyone from US foreign adversaries to domestic extremists to internettrolls and “engagement farmers” has been exploiting the war on social media for their own personal or political gain, he added.
“Bad actors surrounding us have been manipulating, confusing and trying to create deception on social media platforms,” Dan Brahmy, CEO of the Israeli social media threat intelligence firm Cyabra, said Thursday in a video posted to LinkedIn. “If you are not sure of the trustworthiness [of content] … do not share,” he said.
‘Upticks in Islamophobic and antisemitic narratives’
Graham Brookie, senior director of the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC, told CNN his team has witnessed a similar phenomenon. The trend includes a wave of first-party terrorist propaganda, content depicting graphic violence, misleading and outright false claims, and hate speech – particularly “upticks in specific and general Islamophobic and antisemitic narratives.”
Much of the most extreme content, he said, has been circulating on Telegram, the messaging app with few content moderation controls and a format that facilitates quick and efficient distribution of propaganda or graphic material to a large, dedicated audience. But in much the same way that TikTok videos are frequently copied and rebroadcast on other platforms, content shared on Telegram and other more fringe sites can easily find a pipeline onto mainstream social media or draw in curious users from major sites. (Telegram didn’t respond to a request for comment.)
Schools in Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States this week urged parents to delete their children’s social media apps over concerns that Hamas will broadcast or disseminate disturbing videos of hostages who have been seized in recent days. Photos of dead or bloodied bodies, including those of children, have already spread across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X this week.
And tech watchdog group Campaign for Accountability on Thursday released a report identifying several accounts on X sharing apparent propaganda videos with Hamas iconography or linking to official Hamas websites. Earlier in the week, X faced criticism for videos unrelated to the war being presented as on-the-ground footage and for a post from owner Elon Musk directing users to follow accounts that previously shared misinformation (Musk’s post was later deleted, and the videos were labeled using X’s “community notes” feature.)
Some platforms are in a better position to combat these threats than others. Widespread layoffs across the tech industry, including at some social media companies’ ethics and safety teams, risk leaving the platforms less prepared at a critical moment, misinformation experts say. Much of the content related to the war is also spreading in Arabic and Hebrew, testing the platforms’ capacity to moderate non-English content, where enforcement has historically been less robust than in English-language content.
“Of course, platforms have improved over the years. Communication & info sharing mechanisms exist that did not in years past. But they have also never been tested like this,” Brian Fishman, the co-founder of trust and safety platform Cinder who formerly led Facebook’s counterterrorism efforts, said Wednesday in a post on Threads. “Platforms that kept strong teams in place will be pushed to the limit; platforms that did not will be pushed past it.”
Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X, said in a letter Wednesday to the European Commission that the platform has “identified and removed hundreds of Hamas-related accounts” and is working with several third-party groups to prevent terrorist content from spreading. “We’ve diligently taken proactive actions to remove content that violates our policies, including: violent speech, manipulated media and graphic media,” she said. The European Commission on Thursday formally opened an investigation into X following its earlier warning about disinformation and illegal content linked to the war.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said that since Hamas’ initial attacks, the company has established “a special operations center staffed with experts, including fluent Hebrew and Arabic speakers, to closely monitor and respond to this rapidly evolving situation. Our teams are working around the clock to keep our platforms safe, take action on content that violates our policies or local law, and coordinate with third-party fact checkers in the region to limit the spread of misinformation. We’ll continue this work as this conflict unfolds.”
YouTube, for its part, says its teams have removed thousands of videos since the attack began, and continues to monitor for hate speech, extremism, graphic imagery and other content that violates its policies. The platform is also surfacing almost entirely videos from mainstream news organizations in searches related to the war.
Snapchat told CNN that its misinformation team is closely watching content coming out of the region, making sure it is within the platform’s community guidelines, which prohibits misinformation, hate speech, terrorism, graphic violence and extremism.
TikTok did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
Large tech platforms are now subject to content-related regulation under a new EU law called the Digital Services Act, which requires them to prevent the spread of mis- and disinformation, address rabbit holes of algorithmically recommended content and avoid possible harms to user mental health. But in such a contentious moment, platforms that take too heavy a hand in moderation could risk backlash and accusations of bias from users.
Platforms’ algorithms and business models — which generally rely on the promotion of content most likely to garner significant engagement — can aid bad actors who design content to capitalize on that structure, Ahmed said. Other product choices, such as X’s moves to allow any user to pay for a subscription for a blue “verification” checkmark that grants an algorithmic boost to post visibility, and to remove the headlines from links to news articles, can further manipulate how users perceive a news event.
“It’s time to break the emergency glass,” Ahmed said, calling on platforms to “switch off the engagement-driven algorithms.” He added: “Disinformation factories are going to cause geopolitical instability and put Jews and Muslims at harm in the coming weeks.”
Even as social media companies work to hide the absolute worst content from their users — whether out of a commitment to regulation, advertisers’ brand safety concerns, or their own editorial judgments — users’ continued appetite for gritty, close-up dispatches from Israelis and Palestinians on the ground is forcing platforms to walk a fine line.
“Platforms are caught in this demand dynamic where users want the latest and the most granular, or the most ‘real’ content or information about events, including terrorist attacks,” Brookie said.
The dynamic simultaneously highlights the business models of social media and the role the companies play in carefully calibrating their users’ experiences. The very algorithms that are widely criticized elsewhere for serving up the most outrageous, polarizing and inflammatory content are now the same ones that, in this situation, appear to be giving users exactly what they want.
But closeness to a situation is not the same thing as authenticity or objectivity, Ahmed and Brookie said, and the wave of misinformation flooding social media right now underscores the dangers of conflating them.
Despite giving the impression of reality and truthfulness, Brookie said, individual stories and combat footage conveyed through social media often lack the broader perspective and context that journalists, research organizations and even social media moderation teams apply to a situation to help achieve a fuller understanding of it.
“It’s my opinion that users can interact with the world as it is — and understand the latest, most accurate information from any given event — without having to wade through, on an individual basis, all of the worst possible content about that event,” Brookie said.
Potentially exacerbating the messy information ecosystem is a culture on social media platforms that often encourages users to bear witness to and share information about the crisis as a way of signaling their personal stance, whether or not they are deeply informed. That can lead even well-intentioned users to unwittingly share misleading information or highly emotional content created with the intention of collecting views or monetizing highly engaging content.
“Be very cautious about sharing in the middle of a major world event,” Ahmed said. “There are people trying to get you to share bullsh*t, lies, which are designed to inculcate you to hate or to misinform you. And so sharing stuff that you’re not sure about is not helping people, it’s actually really harming them and it contributes to an overall sense that no one can trust what they’re seeing.”
A weekend of terror in Israel has sharpened already grave questions about the capacity of the politically fractured United States to lay out a unified and coherent response to a world spinning out of its control.
When the House of Representatives descended into chaos last week, many Republicans, Democrats and independent experts warned that anarchy raging in US politics sent a dangerous message to the outside world. But no one could foresee just how quickly the paralysis in Washington would test the country’s reaction to a major global crisis.
The horrific Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians, which have killed hundreds of people and shattered the country’s sense of security, thrust the Middle East to the precipice of a new era of violence and instability. This followed a period of relative calm and after US presidents spent years trying to extricate American forces from the region.
Israel’s response to the carnage caused by a major Iranian proxy raises the possibility of a wider regional war that would further destabilize the global order already rocked by the war in Ukraine and China’s flagrant challenges to Western power.
A situation this dangerous requires a calm, united and thoughtful US response, supported across the political spectrum. But the turmoil in America’s politics – plagued by internal extremism, threats to democracy and the hyperpoliticization of foreign policy – means it will be an impossible task to bring the country together at a perilous moment.
Swift efforts by lawmakers to quickly register support for Israel and to rush extra aid to its government could be hampered by the collapse of the Republican Party’s ability to govern in the House after the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy last week by his party’s extreme elements.
And the US is also facing an unprecedented election season. A president with low approval ratings confronting questions about his advanced age could go up against a potential Republican nominee who could be an indicted felon by Election Day. This means, at best, the United States will spend the coming months preoccupied by its own political plight. At worst, the world’s superpower guarantor of democracy could actually worsen global disruption and instability.
Republican front-runner Donald Trump rushed to exploit the crisis for his political gain, accusing President Joe Biden of causing the conflict because of “weakness.”
“Joe Biden betrayed Israel, he betrayed our country. As president, I will once again stand with Israel,” Trump said.
Foreign policy issues rarely decide US elections. But the danger for Biden and the opening for Trump is that yet another crisis abroad could foment an idea that the world is in turmoil, American power is weakening and Biden is hapless. At home and abroad, chaos is Trump’s friend as he seeks to foment the classic conditions that benefit aspiring autocrats promising strongman rule.
Fractured American governance doesn’t simply pose a material issue for Israel and for Ukraine, whose US lifeline as it battles Russia’s unprovoked invasion is now in extreme jeopardy due to far-right Republicans. The spectacle also suggests to US enemies – including Iran, the main supporter of Hamas, and Russia and China – that the US is hopelessly divided and may struggle to wield power to safeguard its interests.
“It wasn’t my idea to oust the speaker. I thought it was dangerous,” Rep. Michael McCaul, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “I look at the world and all the threats that are out there, and what kind of message are we sending to our adversaries when we can’t govern, when we’re dysfunctional, when we don’t even have a speaker of the House?
“How does Chairman Xi in China look at that when he says democracy doesn’t work?” the Texas Republican added. “How does the Ayatollah look at this, knowing that we cannot function properly? And I think it sends a terrible message.”
US sends a message of chaos and weakness
The shuttered House created a particularly damaging symbol of the US – and the democratic system of governance it promotes around the world – in disarray. The Biden administration has the capacity to send immediate military aid to Israel, whose government has asked Washington for JDAM precision-guided munition kits and more interceptors for the Iron Dome air defense system as Hamas rockets rain down on Israeli cities. But any delay in seating a new speaker and creating a functioning majority in the House could have serious consequence.
Republican Rep. Michael Lawler, who faces a tough reelection in a New York district that Biden would have carried in 2020 under its new lines, warned that the chaos in the House needs to end. “Given the situation in the Middle East with one of our closest allies in the world, it is critical that we bring this to a close expeditiously,” Lawler told CNN’s Dana Bash. “And so, I think it is imperative, frankly, that this nonsense stop, that Kevin McCarthy be reinstated as speaker,” Lawler added.
Republicans left town after ousting McCarthy last week, and are expected to try to choose between Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, who has the backing of Trump, and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise this week. But given the demands of extremists in the GOP conference, the complications of a tiny majority and the fact it took McCarthy a marathon 15 rounds of balloting to win the job in January, there is no guarantee that strong, new Republican leadership will quickly emerge.
While there is crossparty consensus over supporting Israel in the House, the US response to another murderous assault on a vulnerable democracy – Ukraine – threatens to be derailed by America’s viciously polarized politics in a way that could seriously erode Washington’s global leadership.
Right-wing Republicans who back Trump are echoing the former president’s opposition to further US aid and ammunition to Ukraine. While there is still a majority in favor of such measures in the House and the Senate, any future Republican speaker will likely have to pass aid packages with the help of Democratic votes – the very scenario that caused McCarthy’s fall as he tried to head off a damaging government shutdown (even though that stopgap funding bill did not include Ukraine aid, as the White House had wanted).
Already, the political showdown over Ukraine is causing deep concern in Kyiv that it will be unable to continue its fight against Russia in the current form without the more than $20 billion in assistance that the Biden administration has requested.
In a broader sense, the possibility that a populist, nationalist wing of the Republican Party under Trump could desert a democracy under attack from Russia – and therefore reward the aggression of an autocrat who shaped his worldview as a member of the KGB – threatens to not just shatter the logic of decades of US foreign policy, but to fundamentally change the US’ role in the world and the values on which its allies believed they could depend.
The politicization of global crises is not just confined to Israel or Ukraine. A Chinese spy balloon that wafted over US soil this year caused an extraordinary outburst of Republican fury toward Biden, which threatened to tie the president’s hands when managing the critical issue of US relations with the Pacific superpower.
A growing sense abroad that America’s political problems are limiting its ability to lead globally could also have a devastating effect on its power. This can only play into the hands of enemies in Beijing, Moscow and Tehran, who have all sought to influence US elections, according to US intelligence agencies, and all have strong geopolitical incentives in seeing American democracy fail.
The extraordinary and sudden Hamas attack on Israel – which has been compared to the September 11 attacks in the United States, and in terms of per capita casualties was far more bloody – falls into the category of tragedies that could change the world.
Aside from the awful human toll – now also being felt by Palestinian civilians in Gaza, where hundreds have perished in the initial Israel reprisal attacks on the infrastructure of Hamas – the onslaught will have far-reaching strategic consequences that will be felt in the US.
If evidence is found that Iran directly plotted the attack with Hamas, there will be huge pressure on the Israelis to respond by directly confronting the Islamic Republic, at the risk of sparking a wider regional conflagration that could draw in the United States.
The attacks and their fallout are also almost certain to disrupt the effort, in which the US is a key player, to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia and allied Arab states. Such an agreement would fundamentally reshape the region and further isolate Iran – a logical reason why it could have had an interest in perpetrating the Hamas assault. US officials are still trying to establish how, if at all, Iran was involved.
The horror in Israel presents Biden with another fearsome foreign policy crisis as he contemplates his reelection bid – alongside the war in Ukraine and a rising confrontation with China.
It comes at a moment of political vulnerability for the administration as it seeks to explain why it made a deal to release US prisoners from Iran that resulted in the release of $6 billion in frozen Iranian funds. The Iranian government can use the funds only to buy humanitarian and medical supplies. The deal took place far too recently for such money to be used to finance this attack. But such subtleties don’t count for much in an election year, as multiple Republican presidential candidates accused the president of funding Iranian terror.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday tried to defuse the political impact of the agreement. “Not a single dollar has been spent from that account. And, again, the account is closely regulated by the US Treasury Department, so it can only be used for things like food, medicine, medical equipment,” he insisted on “State of the Union.”
But, in a political sense, it only matters that enough Americans believe what the Republicans are saying is true.
GOP hopeful Nikki Haley, a former US ambassador to the United Nations, for instance, implied Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that funds that Iran may not have to spend on medicine because of the hostage deal could now be spent on terror.
“Secretary Blinken is just wrong to imply that this money is not being moved around as we speak,” Haley said, although her argument is undercut by the fact that Iran’s clerical regime has rarely seemed to prioritize the humanitarian needs of its people while building up a huge state military complex.
Another 2024 candidate, GOP Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, went even further, accusing Biden – who has been one of the strongest Washington supporters of Israel in half a century in politics – of being “complicit” in the attacks.
The US intelligence community assesses that there likely were between 100 to 300 people killed in the blast at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza, and there was “only light structural damage at the hospital,” according to an unclassified intelligence assessment obtained by CNN that adds more detail to the initial assessment released Wednesday finding Israel was not responsible for the strike.
The unclassified assessment sent to Capitol Hill by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence adds more detail to the US intelligence community’s initial assessment released Wednesday that Israel was not responsible for the strike on the hospital.
“Israel Probably Did Not Bomb Gaza Strip Hospital: We judge that Israel was not responsible for an explosion that killed hundreds of civilians yesterday [17 October] at the Al Ahli Hospital in the Gaza Strip,” the assessment states. “Our assessment is based on available reporting, including intelligence, missile activity, and open-source video and images of the incident.”
The US intelligence community also estimates the number of deaths from the hospital at the “low end of the 100-to-300 spectrum,” according to the assessment, a lower number than figures initially cited by Hamas of more than 500.
The intelligence community “observed only light structural damage at the hospital,” with no observable damage to the main hospital building and no impact craters, according to the assessment.
“We see only light damage to the roofs of two structures near the main hospital building, but both structures remained intact,” the assessment states.
The US intelligence community released its initial assessment on Wednesday that Israel was not responsible after President Joe Biden stated publicly while in Israel that the strike appeared to have been “the result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza.” Biden is giving a primetime address from the Oval Office on Thursday evening.
The National Security Council has said that the Biden administration plans to publicize as much intelligence as it can about the strike amid accusations that Israel was responsible for the blast.
“We will be sharing that information with our friends and partners in the region we have shared as much of that information as we can publicly,” Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer said on “CNN This Morning” on Thursday.
The assessment states that intelligence indicates that “some Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip assessed that the explosion was likely caused by an errant rocket or missile launch carried out by Palestine Islamic Jihad” and that the militants were still investigating.
“We continue to work to corroborate whether the explosion resulted from a failed PIJ rocket,” the ODNI assessment states.
“We are still assessing the likely casualty figures and our assessment may evolve, but this death toll still reflects a staggering loss of life,” the assessment states. “The United States takes seriously the deaths of all civilians, and is working intensively to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”
Finer told CNN that the assessment of the hospital strike was a warning to the danger of drawing conclusions amid the fog of war. “I think this is a cautionary note for governments in the region, and frankly for press, in responding to each and every twist and turn in a conflict,” he said.
The Biden administration has been debating how much raw intelligence to declassify underpinning its assessment that the deadly blast at the Gaza hospital was caused by an errant rocket from a Palestinian militant group — not a missile from Israel, according to a senior administration official.
The White House believes that providing a clearer assessment to the public would be useful in trying to establish a clear and accurate narrative of events, this official said, noting it hasn’t reached a conclusion about how effective raw intelligence would be in that effort.
The debate a reflects growing concern that the US and Israel have lost control of the narrative spiraling out of Gaza that Israel was to blame for those killed in the hospital blast on Tuesday evening.
Former intelligence officials and sources familiar with current US intelligence were skeptical that there was anything the US might make public that would be believed in the Arab world.
“Unfortunately, the narratives have already spread and solidified at this point,” said one US official.
Following a classified Capitol Hill briefing Wednesday afternoon, a bipartisan group of senators urged the Biden administration to make public as much of the intelligence as possible.
“A part of the focus also has to be lowering the temperatures in some of the countries that have had reasonably good relationships with Israel — think Jordan, think Egypt,” Sen. Thom Tillis, Republican from North Carolina, told reporters on Wednesday. “That’s more of the focus now.”
Schools in Israel, the UK and the US are advising parents to delete their children’s social media apps over concerns that Hamas militants will broadcast or disseminate disturbing videos of hostages who have been seized in recent days.
A Tel Aviv school’s parent’s association said it expects videos of hostages “begging for their lives” to surface on social media. In a message to parents, shared with CNN by a mother of children at a high school in Tel Aviv, the association asked parents to remove apps such as TikTok from their children’s phones.
“We cannot allow our kids to watch this stuff. It is also difficult, furthermore – impossible – to contain all this content on social media,” according to the parent’s association. “Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.”
Hamas has warned that it will post murders of hostages on social media if Israel targets people in Gaza without warning.
There are additional concerns that terrorists will exploit social media algorithms to specifically target such videos to followers of Jewish or Israeli influencers in an effort to wage psychological warfare on Israelis and Jews and their supporters globally.
During the onslaught on Saturday, armed Hamas militants poured over the heavily-fortified border into Israel and took as many as 150 hostages, including Israeli army officers, back to Gaza. The surprise attacks killed at least 1,200 people, according to the Israel Defense Forces, and injured thousands more.
Since Israel began airstrikes on the Palestinian enclave Saturday, at least 1,055 people have been killed in Gaza, including hundreds of children, women, and entire families, according to the Palestinian health ministry. It said a further 5,184 have been injured, as of Wednesday.
As the war wages on, some Jewish schools in the US are also asking parents not to share related videos or photos that may surface, and to prevent children – and themselves – from watching them. The schools are also advising community members to delete their social media apps during this time.
“Together with other Jewish day schools, we are warning parents to disable social media apps such as Instagram, X, and Tiktok from their children’s phones,” the head of a school in New Jersey wrote in an email. “Graphic and often misleading information is flowing freely, augmenting the fears of our students. … Parents should discuss the dangers of these platforms and ask their children on a daily basis about what they are seeing, even if they have deleted the most unfiltered apps from their phones.”
Another school in the UK said it asked students to delete their social media apps during a safety assembly.
TikTok, Instagram and X – formerly known as Twitter – did not immediately respond to requests for comment on how they are combating the increase of videos being posted online and for comment on schools asking parents to delete these apps.
But X said on its platform is has experienced an increase in daily active users in the conflict area and its escalation teams have “actioned tens of thousands of posts for sharing graphic media, violent speech, and hateful conduct.” It did not respond to a request to comment further or define “actioned.”
“We’re also continuing to proactively monitor for antisemitic speech as part of all our efforts,” X’s safety team said. “Plus we’ve taken action to remove several hundred accounts attempting to manipulate trending topics.”
The company added it remains “laser focused” on enforcing the site’s rules and reminded users they can limit sensitive media they may encounter by visiting the “Content you see” option in Settings.
Still, misinformation continues to run rampant on social media platforms, including X.
A post viewed more than 500,000 times – featuring the hashtag #PalestineUnderAttack – claimed to show an airplane being shot down. But the clip was from the video game Arma 3, as was later noted in a “community note” appended to the post.
Another video that is purported to show Israeli generals after being captured by Hamas fighters was viewed more than 1.7 million times by Monday. The video, however, instead shows the detention of separatists in Azerbaijan.
On Tuesday, the European Union warned Elon Musk of “penalties” for disinformation circulating on X amid Israel-Hamas war.
The EU also informed Meta CEO Zuckerberg on Wednesday of a disinformation surge on its platforms – which include Facebook – and demanded the company respond in 24 hours with how it plans to combat the issue.
In an Instagram story on Tuesday, Zuckerberg called the attack “pure evil” and said his focus “remains on the safety of our employees and their families in Israel and the region.”
The European Commission sent a warning letter Friday to Google and its subsidiary YouTube over disinformation and graphic content linked to the Hamas-Israel conflict, in the European Union’s latest effort to scrutinize Big Tech’s handling of the war.
The letter from European Commissioner Thierry Breton, addressed to Google CEO Sundar Pichai and also sent to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, reminded the company about its content moderation obligations under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). Breton shared the letter on X.
Breton highlighted legal requirements for Google to keep graphic content such as hostage videos away from underage users; to act swiftly when authorities flag content that violates European laws; and to mitigate disinformation.
“This brings me to a second area of pressing concern: tackling disinformation in the context of elections, a priority which we personally discussed when we met in Brussels in May,” Breton wrote, referencing upcoming elections in a number of EU countries.
It also warned of possible penalties if a future investigation were to find Google (GOOGL) is not complying with the DSA.
Breton’s warning comes after similar letters he sent this week to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, as well as Meta and TikTok.
Unlike some of those previous letters, however, Breton’s letter to Google does not directly suggest the company has spread misleading or illegal content. And where Breton had asked some of Google’s counterparts to respond to his letter within 24 hours, Friday’s letter to Google merely requests a report “in a prompt, accurate and complete manner.”
In response, YouTube spokeswoman Ivy Choi said the company has been actively working to take offensive videos down.
“Following the devastating attacks on civilians in Israel and the escalating conflict in Israel and Gaza, our teams have removed thousands of harmful videos, and our systems continue to connect people with high-quality news and information,” Choi said. “Our teams are working around the clock to monitor for harmful footage and remain vigilant to take action quickly across YouTube, including videos, Shorts and livestreams.”
YouTube previously told CNN its teams have removed thousands of videos since Hamas’ attacks on Israel began, and that it continues to monitor for hate speech, extremism, graphic imagery and other content that violates its policies.
According to CNN’s own review of the platform, YouTube is also surfacing almost entirely videos from mainstream news organizations in searches related to the war.
President Joe Biden on Friday spoke with the families of the Americans who remain unaccounted for in Israel after promising to speak with family members of those who are held hostage by Hamas.
During a speech in Philadelphia Friday afternoon, Biden recounted the conversation.
“They’re going through agony not knowing what the status of their sons, daughters, husbands, wives, children are,” he said. “You know, it’s gut wrenching. I assured them my personal commitment to do everything possible, everything possible” to ensure the Americans’ return.
National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby told reporters that Biden “conveyed directly to these families that they have been in his prayers and we affirmed for them that the United States government is doing everything possible to locate and bring home their loved ones.”
The call was led by special presidential envoy for hostage affairs Roger Carstens, Kirby said.
“Several of the family members shared information about their loved ones – personal stories and experiences that they have gone through as they endure this, quite frankly, unimaginable ordeal,” Kirby said.
The family members joined Biden from both Israel and the US for the video call, a source familiar with the conversation told CNN. It made for a large gathering, as multiple family members joined from different locations in some cases.
The person described the call as emotional and said there were no contentious or heated moments. Biden appeared to want the call to not be formal in nature, they added.
Saray Cohen, whose sister and niece were kidnapped by Hamas, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that her brother attended the call and that it was touching Biden found time to speak with each of them.
“He reassured us that the United States will do everything in its power to get them back home and to get a sign of life from them. We are confident that we are in good hands,” she said on “The Situation Room.”
Cohen noted that she has many other family members unaccounted for. “As you can imagine, we are devastated. We are having quite a hard time. We are worried sick about them,” she said.
In clips of an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that aired Friday, Biden promised to speak with the families.
“I think they have to know that the president of the United States of America cares deeply about what’s happening. Deeply. We have to communicate to the world (that) this is critical. This is not even human behavior. It’s pure barbarism,” the president told CBS’ Scott Pelley in a clip of a “60 Minutes” interview that was released Friday morning.
He added: “We’re going to do everything in our power to get them home if we can find them.”
Asked about his message for those holding Americans hostage in Gaza, Biden said, “Everything in our power. And – I’m not gonna go into the detail of that, but there’s – we’re workin’ like hell on it.”
Biden said he feels so strongly about speaking personally with the families “because I think they have to know that the President of the United States of America cares deeply about what’s happening, deeply.”
“We have to communicate to the rest of the world, this is critical. This is not even human behavior. It’s pure barbarism,” he continued.
Fourteen Americans remain unaccounted for, and the White House believes “less than a handful” are being held hostage by Hamas following this weekend’s attacks, Kirby has said.
The US is in “direct communication” with Israeli counterparts and the families, Kirby told CNN’s Poppy Harlow on Friday morning.
“The families have been a good source of information because some of them, you know, they saw their loved one being abducted or they know they’ve seen images of their loved one being abducted. So they have been a significant and an important source of information as well,” Kirby said Friday.
But, he added, “We just don’t have enough information to develop any specific policy options one way or the other.”
The US is offering Israel hostage recovery expertise, with FBI and Pentagon personnel on the ground providing support.
Diplomatic efforts to recover the hostages are also underway, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken currently traveling in Qatar, which CNN has reported is among the countries in talks with Hamas over hostages.
Kirby noted to CNN on Thursday that it is a “common tactic in the Hamas playbook to break up hostages and move them in rounds in sometimes small groups,” though the US has not confirmed whether that is the case.
Biden called Hamas “pure evil” but said the majority of Palestinians were suffering as a result of the militant group’s terror. In some of his most direct public comments about the suffering inside Gaza, the president said he was working “urgently to address the humanitarian crisis” in the coastal Palestinian enclave.
“We can’t lose sight of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with Hamas,” Biden said, adding, “They’re suffering as a result as well.”
FBI hostage negotiators and agents, some working in Israel and others in field offices around the US, have been assisting in the efforts, according to US law enforcement officials involved in the matter.
These include members of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group, which has extensive experience in helping to resolve hostage incidents, including in war zones from Afghanistan to Iraq and across the Middle East. Negotiators and agents are talking to family members, getting proof of life information that can be used in the investigation and for possible questions to be asked if hostage-takers reach out.
Earlier this week, Biden pledged the full force of his administration’s commitment to rescuing hostages, saying that while “we’re working on every aspect of the hostage crisis in Israel,” if he relayed in detail what steps the administration was taking, “I wouldn’t be able to get them home.”
“Folks, there’s a lot we’re doing – a lot we’re doing. I have not given up hope of bringing these folks home,” Biden said. “But the idea that I’m going to stand here before you and tell you what I’m doing is bizarre, so I hope you understand how bizarre I think it would be to try to answer that question.”
This story has been updated with additional details.
TikTok is stepping up efforts to counter misinformation, incitement to violence and hate relating to the Israel-Hamas war on its online platform, it announced Sunday, days after the European Union (EU) warned social media companies they risked falling foul of the bloc’s content moderation laws.
As part of its measures, TikTok is launching a command center to coordinate the work of its “safety professionals” around the world, improving the software it uses to automatically detect and remove graphic and violent content, and hiring more Arabic and Hebrew speakers to moderate content.
TikTok said in a statement that, following the brutal attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians on October 7, it had “immediately mobilized significant resources and personnel to help maintain the safety of [its] community and integrity of [its] platform.”
“We do not tolerate attempts to incite violence or spread hateful ideologies,” it added. “We have a zero-tolerance policy for content praising violent and hateful organizations and individuals.”
The firm, owned by China’s ByteDance, said it had already removed more than 500,000 videos and shut down 8,000 livestream videos from the “impacted region” since the Hamas attack.
As the conflict escalates — Israel has blocked the provision of electricity, food, fuel and water to Gaza, and has been signaling it is preparing for a ground invasion of the area — millions have turned to social media for updates, while misinformation has proliferated on these sites.
One recent TikTok video, seen by more than 300,000 users and reviewed by CNN, promoted conspiracy theories about the origins of the Hamas attack, including false claims that it was orchestrated by the media.
Last week, the EU told social media companies they needed to better protect “children and teenagers from violent content and terrorist propaganda” on their platforms.
EU Commissioner Thierry Breton wrote to TikTok Thursday, in a letter shared on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, saying the company had 24 hours to detail the steps it was taking to comply with EU rules on content moderation. Breton has sent similar letters to X, Google and Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook.
The US is allowing Israel to make its own calls on timing and strategy in its war with Hamas, but US President Joe Biden did weigh in on the matter during his visit with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the war cabinet in Tel Aviv earlier this week, according to a senior administration official.
“He asked some hard questions” about what was being planned and what the effects would be, the official told CNN, adding: “We’re not directing the Israelis, the timeline is theirs – their thinking, their planning.”
The White House late Friday sought to clarify a brief comment made by Biden after he was asked by a reporter whether Israel should delay a ground invasion in Gaza until more hostages can get out. As he climbed the stairs to Air Force One, the president responded, “Yes.”
The White House immediately moved to explain the president’s comments – which could be seen as the US staking out a role in the war between Israel and Hamas that erupted on October 7.
“The president was far away. He didn’t hear the full question. The question sounded like ‘Would you like to see more hostages released?’ He wasn’t commenting on anything else,” White House communications director Ben LaBolt said less than an hour after the president’s comment, according to the press pool.
Earlier Friday, Hamas released two American hostages in a deal brokered by the Qatari government. A number of foreign nationals were among those kidnapped by Hamas, but information about the status, location and identity of all the hostages remains scarce.
As CNN has reported, the US and its allies have been urging Israel to be strategic and clear about its goals if and when it launches a ground invasion of Gaza, warning against a prolonged occupation and placing a particular emphasis on avoiding civilian casualties, according to US and Western officials.
During the October 7 attack, Hamas militants killed more than 1,400 people, including civilians and soldiers, according to Israeli authorities. It was the most deadly attack by militants in Israel’s 75-year history and revealed a staggering intelligence failure by the country’s security forces.
Israel has since responded by enacting a blockade on Gaza and launching a barrage of airstrikes into the Palestinian enclave, sparking a humanitarian crisis. Israeli airstrikes in Gaza have killed more than 4,100 people, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Biden suggested earlier Friday that Hamas’ attack on Israel was in part to derail US-backed efforts to normalize Israel-Saudi relations.
“One of the reasons Hamas moved on Israel … they knew that I was about to sit down with the Saudis,” Biden told supporters at a campaign fundraiser in Washington, according to a pool report.
“Guess what? The Saudis wanted to recognize Israel,” Biden said at the event, which was hosted at the home of a Democratic National Committee official in Washington. The president added that the Saudis were “about to recognize Israel.”
The president has maintained in recent weeks that the effort to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia “is still alive” and remains crucial amid the ongoing conflict, though he has said “it’s going to take time to get done.”
“The Saudis, and the Emiratis and other Arab nations understand that their security and stability is enhanced if there’s normalization of relations with Israel,” Biden told CBS News in an interview that aired Sunday, adding that “the direction of moving into the normalization makes sense for the Arab nations as well as Israel.”
The war between Israel and Hamas has raised concerns that it could widen into a regional conflict that could snowball into an even greater geopolitical crisis. With US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trips to multiple Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, and Biden’s visit to Israel this week, the administration has attempted to make clear that they remain hopeful and committed to a normalization deal.
A senior US official told CNN last month that Biden and Netanyahu discussed normalization efforts “in some depth” during a September meeting. Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman expressed optimism that they were close to reaching a deal with Netanyahu telling CNN last month that the agreement would “change the Middle East forever” and would be a “quantum leap” in the region.
However, when repeatedly asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins at the time what kind of concessions he would make to get the deal across the line, Netanyahu refused to answer. MBS had previously said a deal to recognize Israel would have to “ease the life of the Palestinians” though he stopped short of calling for an independent Palestinian state to be established, which has been the kingdom’s official position for decades.
Many schools, psychologists and safety groups are urging parents to disable their children’s social media apps over mounting concerns that Hamas plans to disseminate graphic videos of hostages captured in the Israel-Gaza war.
Disabling an app or implementing restrictions, such as filtering out certain words and phrases, on young users’ phones may be sound like a daunting process. But platforms and mobile operating systems offer safeguards that could go along way in protecting a child’s mental health.
Following the attacks on Israel last weekend, much of the terror has played out on social media. Videos of hostages taken on the streets and civilians left wounded continue to circulate on varying platforms. Although some companies have pledged to restrict sensitive videos, many are still being shared online.
That can be particularly stressful for minors. The American Psychological Association recently issued a warning about the psychological impacts of the ongoing violence in Israel and Gaza, and other research has linked exposure to violence on social media and in the news as a “cycle of harm to mental health.”
Alexandra Hamlet, a clinical psychologist in New York City, told CNN people who are caught off guard by seeing certain upsetting content are more likely to feel worse than individuals who choose to engage with content that could be upsetting to them. That’s particularly true for children, she said.
“They are less likely to have the emotional control to turn off content that they find triggering than the average adult, their insight and emotional intelligence capacity to make sense of what they are seeing is not fully formed, and their communication skills to express what they have seen and how to make sense of it is limited comparative to adults,” Hamlet said.
If deleting an app isn’t an option, here are other ways to restrict or closely monitor a child’s social media use:
Parents can start by visiting the parental control features found on their child phone’s mobile operating system. iOS’ Screen Time tool and Android’s Google Family Link app help parents manage a child’s phone activity and can restrict access to certain apps. From there, various controls can be selected, such as restricting app access or flagging inappropriate content.
Guardians can also set up guardrails directly within social media apps.
TikTok: TikTok, for example, offers a Family Pairing feature that allows parents and guardians to link their own TikTok account to their child’s account and restrict their ability to search for content, limit content that may not be appropriate for them or filter out videos with words or hashtags from showing up in feeds. These features can also be enabled within the settings of the app, without needing to sync up a guardian’s account.
Facebook, Instagram and Threads: Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and threads, has an educational hub for parents with resources, tips and articles from experts on user safety, and a tool that allows guardians to see how much time their kids spend on Instagram and set time limits, which some experts advise should be considered during this time.
YouTube: On YouTube, the Family Link tool allows parents to set up supervised accounts for their children, screen time limits or block certain content. At the same time,YouTube Kids also provides a safer space for kids, and parents who decide their kids are ready to see more content on YouTube can create a supervised account. In addition, autoplay is turned off by default for anyone under 18 but can be turned off anytime in Settings for all users.
Hamlet said families should consider creating a family policy where family members agree to delete their apps for a certain period of time.
“It could be helpful to frame the idea as an experiment, where everyone is encouraged to share how not having the apps has made them feel over the course of time,” she said. “It is possible that after a few days of taking a break from social media, users may report feeling less anxious and overwhelmed, which could result in a family vote of continuing to keep the apps deleted for a few more days before checking in again.”
If there’s resistance, Hamlet said should try to reduce the time spent on apps right now and come up with an agreed upon number of minutes each day for usage.
“Parents could ideally include a contingency where in exchange for allowing the child to use their apps for a certain number of minutes, their child must agree to having a short check in to discuss whether there was any harmful content that the child had exposure to that day,” she said. “This exchange allows both parents to have a protected space to provide effective communication and support, and to model openness and care for their child.”
TikTok: A TikTok spokesperson, which said the platform uses technology and 40,000 safety professionals to moderate the platform, told CNN it is taking the situation seriously and has increased dedicated resources to help prevent violent, hateful, or misleading content on the platform.
Meta: Meta similarly said it has set up a special operations center staffed with experts, including fluent Hebrew and Arabic speakers, to monitor and respond to the situation. “Our teams are working around the clock to keep our platforms safe, take action on content that violates our policies or local law, and coordinate with third-party fact checkers in the region to limit the spread of misinformation,” Meta said in a statement. “We’ll continue this work as this conflict unfolds.”
YouTube: Google-owned YouTube said it is providing thousands of age-restricted videos that do not violate its policies – some of these, however, are not appropriate for viewers under 18. (This may include bystander footage). The company told CNN it has “removed thousands of harmful videos” and its teams “remain vigilant to take action quickly across YouTube, including videos, Shorts and livestreams.”
When Google Maps users navigated to the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt on Tuesday, they might have seen placenames that included, “F**k Israel,” and “May god curse Israel’s Jerusalem.”
Cyber activists appeared to have targeted the service to post anti-Israel messages, likely by taking advantage of a feature on Google Maps that allows people to create and contribute information about businesses and landmarks that appear on the service.
CNN found dozens of anti-Israelplacenames created in Arabic and English, including one in Arabic that read, “Palestine is free, may god forgive us.”
There is no evidence that any Google systems were breached or compromised as part of this stunt which, Ben Decker, CEO of online threat analysis company Memetica, described as “cyber vandalism.”
“Cyber vandalism traces its origins back to the early stages of the internet,” Decker said, “when communities would hack into and deface websites.”
Google, which also owns the map service Waze, said on Monday it was disabling its live traffic data in Israel and Gaza as Israeli forces prepare for a potential ground invasion of Gaza.
The company did not say if the action was at the request of the Israel Defense Forces. CNN reached out to the IDF for comment.
Google took the same action at the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year after online researchers used live traffic data to track the movements of Russian troops.
It is unclear if the targeting of Google Maps with anti-Israeli messages was the result of the company’s decision to disable live traffic data.
After CNN shared several examples of fake anti-Israel placenames with Google on Tuesday, a company spokesperson said, “On Google Maps, we strive to strike the right balance of helping people find reliable information about local places, and reducing inaccurate or misleading content. We have clear policies for user contributions – we are actively reviewing the examples you shared and are in the process of removing policy-violating content.”
Many of the fake placenames were still live as of Tuesday evening.
Memetica’s Decker said cyber vandalism is “a politically agnostic form of hacktivism that has been used by online communities around the world.”
“The reason cyber vandalism is far more prevalent than real-world vandalism, particularly when it comes to geopolitical conflicts like Israel-Gaza, is that it can be a completely faceless and anonymous act,” he said.
European officials warned X on Tuesday that the company formerly known as Twitter appears to have been hosting misinformation and illegal content about the war between Hamas and Israel, in potential violation of the European Union’s signature content moderation law.
In a letter addressed to X owner Elon Musk, Thierry Breton, a top European commissioner, said X faces “very precise obligations regarding content moderation” and that the company’s handling of the unfolding conflict so far has raised doubts about its compliance.
As a platform subject to Europe’s Digital Services Act (DSA), X could face billions in fines if regulators conclude that violations have occurred. X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The warning letter highlights X’s potentially vast legal exposure as it battles a wave of bogus claims linked to the war that have been attributed to everything from fake White House press releases to false news reports and out-of-context videos from unrelated conflicts or even video games.
Much of the problematic content appears to stem from platform changes made under Musk’s supervision, Breton suggested in the letter, which he shared on X.
For example, he wrote, X announced over the weekend that it was making it easier for accounts to qualify for newsworthiness exceptions to its platform rules. The change to X’s Public Interest Policy made it so that accounts no longer require a minimum of 100,000 followers to qualify; they need only be “high profile” accounts that, as before, represent current or potential government officials, political parties or political candidates.
Removing the follower threshold and replacing it with a celebrity standard leaves it “uncertain” what content, particularly “violent and terrorist content that appears to circulate on your platform,” will be removed, Breton wrote.
Under the DSA, which became enforceable for large platforms in August, companies must also act swiftly when officials highlight content that violates European laws, which X may not be doing, Breton warned.
“We have, from qualified sources, reports about potentially illegal content circulating on your service despite flags from relevant authorities,” Breton wrote.
“I remind you that following the opening of a potential investigation and a finding of non-compliance, penalties can be imposed,” he added.
In an exchange on X, Musk replied to Breton. “Our policy is that everything is open source and transparent, an approach that I know the EU supports,” Musk wrote. “Please list the violations you allude to on X, so that that the public can see them.”
Breton posted back: “You are well aware of your users’ — and authorities’— reports on fake content and glorification of violence. Up to you to demonstrate that you walk the talk. My team remains at your disposal to ensure DSA compliance, which the EU will continue to enforce rigorously.”
The EU letter comes as misinformation about the conflict continues to spread widely across X.
On Tuesday, the investigative journalism group Bellingcat said a fake video designed to look like a BBC News report was circulating on social media.
The video falsely claimed Bellingcat found evidence that Ukraine had smuggled weapons to Hamas. Elliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat, said the report was “100% fake.”
In an effort to make the video look like a real BBC News report, its creators used graphics almost identical to what the BBC uses in its own online video reports.
The video circulated on Telegram and was shared by at least one verified account on X.
X did not remove the fake BBC News video, but it did append a small label under the video noting it is “manipulated media.”
In response to a question about the fake video, a BBC spokesperson said, “In a world of increasing disinformation, we urge everyone to ensure they are getting news from a trusted source.”
Shayan Sardarizadeh, a BBC News reporter, wrote on X Tuesday, “The video is 100% fake.”
Since taking over, Musk has laid off large swaths of X’s content moderation and policy teams, prompting backlash from civil society groups, which have warned about an increased threat of misinformation and hate speech.
In what he called an effort to deter the creation of automated accounts, Musk also eliminated the traditional verification badges that once reassured users of an account’s authenticity, replacing it with a paid system that has allowed any user to receive a verification badge without undergoing an identity check. Misinformation experts have said that the move undermined users’ ability to determine the credibility of any given account, particularly during a fast-moving news event.
But Musk himself has directly contributed to the chaos, at one point sharing – and then deleting – a post recommending that users follow an account that has been known to share misinformation, including a fake report earlier this year of an explosion at the Pentagon.
EU officials warned TikTok Thursday about “illegal content and disinformation” on its platform linked to the war between Hamas and Israel, calling for CEO Shou Zi Chew to respond within 24 hours.
In a letter to Chew, European Commissioner Thierry Breton said failure to comply with European Union laws around content moderation could result in penalties.
It is the third such letter Breton has sent to large social media platforms this week, after he sent similar warnings to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, and Meta.
In August, a recently passed EU law known as the Digital Services Act went into effect for large online platforms including the companies Breton addressed this week. The law sets out specific obligations for social media companies to protect user privacy and safety.
Since the war began, Breton wrote, TikTok has reportedly spread graphic videos and misleading content on the platform.
“I therefore invite you to urgently step up your efforts and ensure your systems are effective, and report on the crisis measures taken to my team,” Breton wrote in the letter, which he shared on X.
TikTok didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The European Union has told Meta it has a week to explain in greater detail how it is fighting the spread of illegal content and disinformation on its Facebook and Instagram platforms following the attacks across Israel by Hamas.
The European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, said it had sent the formal request for information to Meta (META) Thursday.
The commission also asked TikTok for more information on the steps it had taken to prevent the spread of “terrorist and violent content and hate speech,” it said, but without referring to the Israel-Hamas war.
Last week, EU Commissioner Thierry Breton wrote to several social media companies, including Meta and TikTok, giving them 24 hours to detail the measures they were taking to comply with EU rules on content moderation enshrined in the recently enacted Digital Services Act (DSA).
On Friday, Meta said its teams had been working “around the clock” since the attacks by Hamas on October 7 to monitor its platforms and outlined some of its actions against misinformation and content that violates its policies and standards.
And on Sunday, TikTok announced that it had, among other measures, launched a command center to coordinate the work of its “safety professionals” around the world and improve the software it uses to automatically detect and remove graphic and violent content.
But the European Commission has made it clear it needs more information. In its Thursday announcement, the body gave both Meta and TikTok until October 25 to respond to its requests and warned that it had the power to impose financial penalties if it was not satisfied with their responses.
Both companies also have until November 8 to detail how they intend to protect the “integrity of elections” on their platforms, the commission said.
Both Meta and TikTok are bound by obligations set out in the DSA, a landmark piece of legislation, enacted in August, that seeks to more stringently regulate large tech companies, and protect people’s rights online.
The commission’s formal requests come a week after it issued a similar ultimatum to X, the company formerly known as Twitter, asking for information on how it intends to stop the spread of illegal, misleading, violent and hateful content.
The commission said it had opened an investigation into X’s compliance with the DSA. It has not announced parallel investigations into Meta or TikTok.
