LIVERPOOL, England — Britain’s main opposition Labour Party said Monday that it will focus on economic growth rather than higher taxes to “rebuild” the country after more than a decade of Conservative rule.
Labour economy spokeswoman Rachel Reeves told delegates at the party’s annual conference that “Labour will tax fairly and spend wisely.”
“But I must tell you, you cannot tax and spend your way to economic growth,” she said. “The lifeblood of a growing economy is business investment.”
Reeves was making her pitch to British voters and businesses at the four-day conference in Liverpool, where Labour is trying to cement its front-runner status in opinion polls before an election due in 2024.
The party is running 15 or more points ahead of the governing Conservatives in multiple opinion polls, as Britain endures a sluggish economy and a cost-of-living crisis driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and economic disruption following the U.K.’s exit from the European Union.
Labour is trying to show it can provide an alternative to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives, who have been in power since 2010. But the opposition party is wary of promising big public spending increases that would require tax hikes. The social democratic party also wants to convince corporate Britain that it is on the side of business.
For years, businesses were wary of the party, which has its roots in the trade union movement, and tended to favor the Conservatives. But recent economic and political upheavals have made many think again.
Reeves said a Labour government would get the economy growing faster to fund public services and boost investment through a new national wealth fund. She pledged to build 1.5 million homes to ease Britain’s chronic housing crisis, reform an “antiquated” planning system Labour says is holding back infrastructure improvements, and repair the creaking, overburdened state-funded National Health Service.
Money for health and education will come from abolishing “non-domiciled” tax status, which allows some wealthy individuals to avoid paying U.K. tax, and ending private schools’ tax-free status, she said.
Reeves said Labour also will strengthen workers’ rights and abolish “zero hours” contracts that do not guarantee employees a minimum number of hours a week.
The speech was broadly welcomed by both business and workers’ groups — no mean feat. Rain Newton-Smith, chief executive of the Confederation of British Industry, said businesses would be “encouraged” to hear Labour “speak so ambitiously about driving up business investment and committing to tackle some of the key blockers.”
Gary Smith, general secretary of the GMB trade union, said Reeves’ speech “gave a far-sighted vision of a better U.K.”
Reeves also said a Labour government would appoint a “COVID corruption commissioner” to try to recoup some of the billions lost to fraud and waste during the pandemic.
Reeves said the commissioner would bring together tax officials, fraud investigators and law enforcement officers to track down an estimated 7.2 billion pounds ($8.8 billion) in lost public money spent on grants and contracts related to COVID-19, and “get back every penny of taxpayers’ money that they can.”
Like many countries, the U.K. was forced to sidestep usual rules as it rushed to procure essential supplies and prop up people’s livelihoods during the coronavirus pandemic.
A multi-year public inquiry is examining Britain’s handling of the pandemic, which left more than 200,000 people in the country dead.
Leader Keir Starmer has steered Labour back toward the political middle ground after the divisive tenure of predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, a staunch socialist who advocated nationalization of key industries and infrastructure. Corbyn resigned after Labour suffered its worst election defeat in almost a century in 2019.
The brutal, shocking attack by Hamas militants on Israel, and Israel’s military response, overshadowed the gathering of a party that has spent several years confronting allegations that antisemitism was allowed to fester under Corbyn, a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause.
After being elected leader in 2020, Starmer apologized and vowed to restore relations between Labour and the Jewish community. Corbyn was expelled from the party.
The conference schedule includes several meetings by pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups, including one on Monday organized by Labour Friends of Palestine that opened with 30 seconds of silence to reflect on the “horrors” of recent days.
In a speech to delegates, party foreign affairs spokesman David Lammy said that Labour “utterly condemns Hamas’s appalling attack on Israel.”
“There is never a justification for terrorism,” he said. “Labour stands firmly in support of Israel’s right to defend itself, rescue hostages and protect its citizens.”
He reiterated Labour’s support for a two-state solution that now seems a distant prospect.
“There will not be a just and lasting peace until Israel is secure, Palestine is a sovereign state and both Israelis and Palestinians enjoy security, dignity and human rights,” Lammy said.
Major airlines have suspended flights in and out of Israel after the nation declared war following a massive attack by Hamas.
Israel hit more than 1,000 targets in Gaza and Palestinian militants continued firing barrages of rockets, setting off air raid sirens in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Video posted online appeared to show a plume of smoke near a terminal at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport.
Scores of arriving and departing flights at Ben Gurion were canceled or delayed, according to the airport’s online flight board, which also showed a steady trickle of flights. Most were operated by Israel’s national airline El Al along with others by regional carriers like Turkey’s Pegasus Airlines and Greece’s Blue Bird Airways.
American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta Air Lines suspended service as the U.S. State Department issued travel advisories for the region citing potential for terrorism and civil unrest.
American suspended service to Tel Aviv through Friday. The airline said that it has issued a travel alert providing additional flexibility for customers whose travel plans are impacted.
“We continue to monitor the situation with safety and security top of mind and will adjust our operation as needed,” American said.
United said it allowed two scheduled flights out of Tel Aviv late Saturday and early Sunday and accommodated its customers, crews and employee travelers who were at the airport. The airline said that its Tel Aviv flights will remain suspended until conditions improve.
Delta said its Tel Aviv flights have been canceled through Oct. 31. The airline said it’s monitoring the situation and making schedule adjustments accordingly. The company said customers with canceled flights or who want to change their Tel Aviv ticket should check the Delta app, website or call Delta reservations to make adjustments.
Airlines in Europe and Asia also put flights on hold amid the hostilities, offering refunds and waiving rebooking fees for passengers.
Air France said that it has suspended services to Tel Aviv “until further notice” after coordinating with French and Israeli authorities.
“The airline is constantly monitoring the geopolitical situation in the areas served and overflown by its aircraft in order to ensure the highest level of flight safety,” Air France said in on its website.
Germany’s Lufthansa, which suspended flights to and from Tel Aviv until Saturday, said Monday that the decision regarding its planes and those of its subsidiaries was made “due to the still unclear developing security situation in Israel and after an intensive analysis of the situation.”
The Lufthansa Group includes Austrian Airlines, Swiss and Brussels Airlines as well as Lufthansa itself.
Hong Kong’s main carrier, Cathay Pacific Airways, said that “in view of the latest situation in Israel,” it was cancelling its Tel Aviv flights scheduled for Tuesday and Thursday.
“The safety of our passengers and crew are our top priority. We will continue to monitor the situation very closely,” the airline said on its website, adding it would provide another update on Friday ahead of its third weekly flight on Sunday to the Israeli city.
Virgin Atlantic canceled its service between London’s Heathrow Airport to Tel Aviv on Monday and Tuesday as well as part of that route on Wednesday.
Budget airline Wizz Air, which flies to Israel from Abu Dhabi and more than two dozen airports in Europe, said it was cancelling all flights to and from Tel Aviv “until further notice.”
The U.K. discount carrier easyJet said that “due to the evolving situation in Israel,” it has decided to “temporarily pause operations,” by canceling its Monday flights from London Luton and Manchester airports to Tel Aviv.
“Our thoughts are with those who have been affected and the safety and security of our passengers and crew is always easyJet’s highest priority,” easyJet said in a statement.
British Airways said it’s planning to continue operating flights to Israel “over the coming days with adjusted departure times.”
Dutch carrier KLM said it’s scrubbing flights to Tel Aviv “until and including Wednesday.”
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AP Business Writer Kelvin Chan contributed to this report from London. AP Writer Geir Moulson contributed from Berlin. AP Writer David McHugh contributed from Frankfurt.
Ilan Troen said he was on the phone with his daughter in Israel when she was shot and killed by Hamas gunmen while shielding her son from their bullets.
Troen, a professor emeritus from Brandeis University in Massachusetts, said his daughter and son-in-law, Deborah and Shlomi Matias, were killed by Hamas militants over the weekend. Troen’s grandson, 16-year-old Rotem Matias, was shot but will survive, Troen told CNN’s Poppy Harlow on Monday.
The killings came after the Gaza-based militant group launched devastating attacks on Israel early Saturday.
At least 11 US citizens have died in the conflict in Israel, President Joe Biden said in a Monday statement, adding there are also Americans who remain unaccounted for. It is also “likely” that Americans are among those being held hostage Hamas, the statement said.
As desperate families continue to wait for information about missing loved ones, Troen said he has “too much information” about what happened when the gunmen burst into his daughter’s home.
“We were on the phone with Deborah as she was killed,” Troen said. “We were on the phone the entire day with our grandson, Rotem, as he lay first under her body, and then found a place to escape under a blanket in a laundry.”
Rotem was shot in the stomach, Troen said, but will recover.
“The brunt of the shot was borne by his mother,” he said. “The terrorists who came, they had explosives and blew up the front door to their house and then blew out the front door to their so-called safe room.”
Rotem hid for more than 12 hours after he was shot, texting on his phone to communicate with people who were coaching him on how to breathe and how to manage “the blood that was coming out of his abdomen,” Troen said, adding Rotem’s phone was down to a 4% charge when he was rescued.
Deborah Matias attended the Rimon School of Music in the Tel Aviv area, where she met her husband, Troen told CNN.
“Deborah was a child of light and life,” Troen said. “She, rather than becoming a scientist or a physician, she said to me one day, ‘Dad, I have to do music, because it’s in my soul.’”
Troen spoke to CNN from Be’er Sheva, Israel, where he said jet planes flew over his house into Gaza. “This is not a normal war,” he said. “It isn’t like there’s a front and rear.”
Troen said the last he heard, Rotem was with family in the hospital.
“He’s 16, tough, resilient – he survived this. He’ll survive more, but the trauma of this is going to last his lifetime,” he said.
Jacob Ben Senior said his daughter Danielle was attending the Nova music festival near the Gaza-Israel border and has not been heard from since Friday. Ben Senior said he has been calling her phone since Saturday morning but has not been able to reach her.
Born in Los Angeles, Danielle Ben Senior is a 34-year Israeli-American citizen who has lived most of her life in Israel, according to her father. Danielle was working at the Nova festival with a group of event organizers, her father said.
“We are in close contact with the government of Israel as they continue to conduct security operations to locate missing US citizens,” Miller, the State Department spokesperson, said.
A mother and daughter from the Chicago area who were visiting relatives in Israel are also missing following Hamas’ attacks and it’s feared they are being held hostage, a family member told CNN.
US citizens Judith Tai Raanan and Natali Raanan were visiting relatives in Nahal Oz, a kibbutz that was attacked by Gazan militants on Saturday. The family said they are in touch with the US Embassy.
Judith Raanan’s brother Adi Leviatan said he suspected the pair was taken hostage after not hearing from them since the weekend. Natali and Judith arrived in Israel on September 2, he said.
Nahal Oz is in southern Israel, about one and a half miles from the Gaza border. Dozens of Gaza fighters took control of a military base nearby, and an IDF spokesperson told CNN there was fighting in Nahal Oz on Sunday.
The Biden administration is “laser-focused” on confirming whether any Americans have been taken hostage by Hamas, deputy national security adviser Jon Finer said during an appearance on CBS News earlier Monday. The US is prepared to offer “expertise on how to address these hostage situations,” he said, with more information expected in the coming days.
Israel’s Minister of Defense on Monday ordered the “complete siege” of Gaza, cutting off electricity, food, fuel and water to the enclave. This comes as Israel has pounded Gaza with airstrikes and formally declared war on Hamas on Sunday.
More than 680 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and medical care has been complicated by Israel cutting power to the territory.
It’s unclear whether any US citizens are among those killed or injured in Gaza.
Misinformation has run rampant on Elon Musk’s social media platform X in the 48 hours since Hamas militants’ surprise attack on Israel, with users sharing false and misleading claims about the conflict and Musk himself pointing users to an account known for spreading misinformation.
Multiple users over the weekend shared a fake White House news release falsely claiming the US was sending billions of dollars in new aid to Israel in response. Accounts on X with hundreds of thousands of followers in total quickly spread the doctored White House press release after it appeared online on Saturday. Social media influencer Jackson Hinkle, who was among those shared the fake release, claimed it was a slap in the face to Ukraine, which has been pleading with Washington for more money to defend itself from Russia.
Musk himself added to the information chaos on Sunday by recommending X users follow the Israel-Hamas conflict by following an account known for spreading misinformation, including a fake report earlier this year of an explosion at the Pentagon.
Musk and Hinkle later deleted their posts. Musk later posted: “As always, please try stay as close to the truth as possible, even for stuff you don’t like.”
Elsewhere on X (formerly known as Twitter), an account impersonating the Jerusalem Post shared a bogus report that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been hospitalized. (The account was later suspended.)
CNN has requested comment from Musk and X on the posts related to the Israel-Gaza conflict.
A slew of mischaracterized videos and other posts went viral on the platform over the weekend.
One video that is purported to show Israel generals after being captured by Hamas fighter was viewed more than 1.7 million times by Monday. The video however actually shows the detention of separatists in Azerbaijan.
Another post viewed more than 500,000 times on X purported to show an airplane getting shot down with the hashtag #PalestineUnderAttack. The video is in fact a clip from the video game Arma 3, as was later noted in a “community note” appended to the post.
Community notes allow users on X to fact-check false posts on the platform. While notes were appended to both of these false posts, they often come after a false post has been viewed thousands – or in some cases millions – of times.
X has relied more heavily on community notes to moderate content since Musk laid off thousands of the company’s employees, including many responsible for detecting and addressing false claims, following his takeover of the platform last year.
Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, one of the government’s main cyber defense agencies, on Monday took to X to urge people not to spread unverified information. “[T]he rumor mill is overflowing,” the directorate wrote in Hebrew. The Anti-Defamation League also raised concerns in a statement Saturday about false and antisemitic claims being spread on the platform, including posts by a verified user falsely claiming that Israel helped to facilitate 9-11 on US soil, which have been viewed thousands of times.
The viral nature of the misinformation has alarmed experts on information operations, offering a fresh example of social platforms’ struggle to deal with a flood of falsehoods during a major geopolitical event.
“In times of war, social media becomes a propaganda battlefield; there is always an element of disinformation and exaggeration,” said Emerson Brooking, senior resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. “Today, X is the main platform where this online battle plays out.”
Brooking said changes to X policy under Musk’s ownership have incentivized propagandists and scam artists. Any user can now purchase a “verification” checkmark on X by signing up for the platform’s $8 per month subscription program, and their posts are then boosted by the platform’s algorithm and eligible for monetization.
“Paid verification means that you cannot distinguish between a vetted journalist and a scam artist,” Brooking told CNN. “The for-profit ‘views’ system incentivizes accounts to impersonate news outlets and to post as frequently as possible, drawing from whatever source they can or just making things up.”
Twitter has long played a pivotal role in information sharing during conflicts, from the Arab Spring to the 2014 and 2022 invasions of Ukraine, and during previous violence in Israel and Gaza.
Viral misinformation has always existed on the platform, but it has become particularly pronounced under Musk’s stewardship, experts say.
“In the past decade, every conflict has inevitably bred a digital “fog of war,” where both sides, and their supporters, try to use social platforms to spin the narrative in their favor,” Joe Galvin, a journalist who has specialized in open-source intelligence for more than a decade, told CNN Monday.
“The volume and reach of misinformation today, though, far exceeds what we saw in the early social media era conflicts, and is exacerbated by platforms like X, which has taken the guardrails off and allows the most egregious types of disinformation to run rampant,” Galvin said.
He said other platforms that have little or no guardrails including the social media messaging app Telegram are also hotbeds of misinformation, but X is unique given Musk’s behavior.
“Even the owner of X takes part in the chaos, promoting accounts that are known to spread falsehoods to his 150 million followers. The fact is that malicious users, state-backed and otherwise, have become better at spreading falsehoods, with more sophisticated networks being built and better technology – including AI – being used. The platforms are in a perpetual state of catch-up.”
BRUSSELS — Defense ministers flying into the Belgian capital for a NATO meeting starting Wednesday were expecting to spend their time backing Ukraine — instead, they find their intel briefings full of a region mostly forgotten in the past two years: the Middle East.
From the White House’s new military support for Israel to emergency meetings across European capitals, to a fumbled EU response to the crisis, NATO allies are grappling with a renewed sense of urgency over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hamas’ surprise attacks on Israel over the weekend has led to the Israeli government’s vow of total retaliation in the Gaza Strip, with a record number of 300,000 reservists already drafted within 48 hours.
The timing is an inconvenience for the Ukrainians, who aim to galvanize further support from NATO countries in what will be the first defense ministers’ meeting following a NATO leaders’ summit in July that saw beefed-up pledges for Ukraine’s security and military support.
Oleksandr Merezhko, chairman of the Ukrainian parliament’s committee on foreign policy, acknowledged the “fears” among his compatriots over whether the West can stay focused on Russia’s invasion while also dealing with the ongoing Israeli-Hamas situation.
“I can only speak for myself. Yes, there are such fears,” Merezhko told POLITICO. “But, at the same time, I think that in the end it will not be a problem, because the USA is such a powerful country in economic and military terms.”
While Ukraine’s new Defense Minister Rustem Umerov is scheduled to get hours of attention, Israel is also expected to be discussed — at least on the sidelines.
“I would be surprised if the situation in the Middle East isn’t mentioned at the meeting,” said a NATO diplomat granted anonymity to speak freely. A second diplomat said they expected strong interest in what U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had to say.
The interest isn’t unusual because Israel has a longtime partnership with NATO, another diplomat pointed out, so it would only be “natural” for the alliance to be concerned about its next steps.
Just a week before the Hamas attack, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, the chair of the NATO Military Committee, visited Israel to meet with President Isaac Herzog and military officials. Bauer also visited the Gaza border crossing, where he praised the Israeli military’s “unique expertise in underground counterterrorism activity.”
While the line from the White House is that the United States can deal with two regional crises at the same time, domestic skeptics of helping Ukraine are already piling on.
“Israel is facing existential threat. Any funding for Ukraine should be redirected to Israel immediately,” Josh Hawley, a Republican senator allied with former President Donald Trump, said on social media.
Pledges for Kyiv
U.S. officials are trying to dispel Ukrainian concerns, pointing out that the two countries have differing needs because they face very different threats.
“On the question of whether or not U.S. support for Israel could possibly come at the expense of U.S. support for Ukraine, we don’t anticipate any major challenges in that regard,” U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith told reporters on Tuesday. “I suspect the United States will be able to stay focused on our partnership and commitment to Israel’s security, while also meeting our commitments and promise to continue supporting Ukraine as it defends its territory.”
Hamas’ surprise attacks on Israel over the weekend has led to the Israeli government’s vow of total retaliation in the Gaza Strip | Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images
“I think allies no doubt will want to talk about what happened in Israel and express their solidarity. We’ve seen all members of the alliance issue their own national statements — really in real time almost as the attack was ongoing. And I suspect that will be part of our conversation,” Smith said.
Ukraine still remains a key focus for this week’s NATO meeting.
It begins on Wednesday with the U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a regular gathering of NATO and Ukrainian ministers to discuss what weapons to give Ukraine. It will be followed by the NATO-Ukraine Council meeting, a format that’s already in its fourth edition since it was created in July, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attended the NATO Summit in Lithuania.
“I anticipate that the emphasis will be mostly on air defense and ammunition although no doubt the Ukrainians will come in with a variety of other requests,” Smith said. “It always is an organic meeting where ministers step forward and offer assistance in real time.”
Shortly before the NATO meeting, Umerov, the Ukrainian defense minister, reached out to his Dutch counterpart, Kajsa Ollongren, on Ukraine’s “urgent needs” for air defense systems, long-range missiles and artillery. The Netherlands has also been leading on the F-16 fighter jet training for Ukraine’s pilots.
That’s a sign that the alliance can juggle both Ukraine and Israel, Ollongren told POLITICO.
“Splits? No. But I think of course there will also be attention and focus on Israel and how the situation is developing over there,” she said. “But I think it’s very important, it’s a good thing that we are meeting tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, to underline that the support for Ukraine is not affected.”
CORRECTION: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of the Dutch defense minister’s name: it is Kajsa Ollongren.
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Veronika Melkozerova, Stuart Lau, Paul McLeary and Laura Kayali
Hamas’ attack against Israel being celebrated on the streets of Berlin indicates that Germany has let too many foreigners into the country, according to former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
“It was a grave mistake to let in so many people of totally different culture and religion and concepts, because it creates a pressure group inside each country that does that,” the 100-year-old ex-top American diplomat said in an interview with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner for Germany’s Welt TV.
German-born Holocaust survivor Kissinger — who went on to become the architect of American foreign policy during the Vietnam War — said that it was “painful,” in response to a question about seeing Arabs in Berlin celebrating last weekend’s assault on Israel.
In a surprise attack that started on Saturday morning, Hamas militants stormed out of the Gaza Strip, killing more than 1,200 Israelis and abducting dozens more, while firing rockets at cities including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Israel has since hit back by commencing a siege of Gaza and firing its own barrage of retaliatory missiles, killing hundreds of Palestinians.
Hamas’ “open act of aggression” must be met with “some penalty,” Kissinger said — while warning about the potential for dangerous escalation in the region.
“The Middle East conflict has the danger of escalating and bringing in other Arab countries under the pressure of their public opinion,” Kissinger warned, while pointing to the lessons learned from the 1973 Yom Kippur War, during which an Arab coalition led by Egypt and Syria attacked Israel.
The real goal of Hamas and its supporters “can only be to mobilize the Arab world against Israel and to get off the track of peaceful negotiations,” Kissinger said.
It is also “possible” that Israel could take action against Iran, if it considers Tehran to have had a hand in perpetrating the attack, the former top diplomat added.
More broadly, Kissinger said, Russia’s ongoing aggression in Ukraine coupled with Hamas’ attack on Israel represent a “fundamental attack on the international system.”
At least Europe no longer has to endure that hackneyed Henry Kissinger quip about whom to call if you want “to call Europe.”
No one’s calling anyway.
Of the myriad geostrategic illusions that have been destroyed in recent days, the most sobering realization for anyone residing on the Continent should be this: No one cares what Europe thinks. Across an array of global flashpoints, from Nagorno-Karabakh to Kosovo to Israel, Europe has been relegated to the role of a well-meaning NGO, whose humanitarian contributions are welcomed, but is otherwise ignored.
The 27-member bloc has always struggled to articulate a coherent foreign policy, given the diverse national interests at play. Even so, it still mattered, mainly due to the size of its market. The EU’s global influence is waning, however, amid the secular decline of its economy and its inability to project military might at a time of growing global instability.
Instead of the “geopolitical” powerhouse Commission President Ursula von der Leyen promised when she took office in 2019, the EU has devolved into a pan-Europeanminnow, offering a degree of bemusement to the real players at the top table, while mostly just embarrassing itself amid its cacophony of contradictions.
If that sounds harsh, consider the past 72 hours: In the wake of Hamas’ massacre of hundreds of Israeli civilians over the weekend, European Enlargement Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi announced on Monday that the bloc would “immediately” suspend €691 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority. A few hours later, Slovenian Commissioner Janez Lenarčič contradicted his Hungarian colleague, insisting the aid “will continue as long as needed.”
The Commission’s press operation followed up with a statement that the EU would conduct an “urgent review” of some aid programs to ensure that funds not be funneled into terrorism, implying such safeguards were not already in place.
As far as the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell was concerned, the outcome of any review of assistance for the Palestinians was a foregone conclusion: “We will have to support more, not less,” he said on Tuesday.
To sum up: Over the course of just 24 hours, the Commission went from announcing it would suspend all aid to the Palestinians to signaling it would increase the flow of funds.
The EU’s response to the events on the ground in Israel was no less confused. Even as Israel was still counting the bodies from the most horrific massacre in the Jewish state’s history, Borrell, a longtime critic of the country who has effectively been declared persona non grata there, resorted to bothsidesing.
Borrell, a Spanish socialist, condemned Hamas’ “barbaric and terrorist attack,” while also chiding Israel for its blockade of Gaza and highlighting the “suffering” of the Palestinians who voted Hamas into power.
The Spaniard’s approach stood in sharp contrast to that of von der Leyen, who unequivocally condemned the attacks (albeit in a series of tweets) and had the Israeli flag projected onto the façade of her office.
Borrell organized an emergency meeting of EU foreign ministers in Oman to discuss the situation in Israel, but Israel’s foreign minister declined to participate, even remotely | AFP via Getty Images
Those moves immediately drew protest from other corners of the EU, however, with Clare Daly, a firebrand leftist MEP from Ireland, questioning von der Leyen’s legitimacy and telling her to “shut up.”
By mid-week, ascertaining Europe’s position on the crisis was like throwing darts — blindfolded.
Bloody hands
Compare that with the messaging from Washington.
“In this moment, we must be crystal clear,” U.S. President Joe Biden said in a special White House address Tuesday. “We stand with Israel. We stand with Israel. And we will make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself, and respond to this attack.”
Biden noted that he’d called France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom to discuss the crisis. Notably not on the list: any of the EU’s “leaders.”
On Tuesday, Borrell organized an emergency meeting of EU foreign ministers in Oman, where they were already gathering, to discuss the situation in Israel. Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, declined to participate, even remotely.
That’s not too surprising, considering Europe’s record on Iran, which has supported Hamas for decades and whose leadership celebrated the weekend attacks. Though Iran denies direct involvement, many analysts say Hamas’ carefully planned assault would not have been possible without training and logistical support from Tehran.
“Hamas would not exist if not for Iran’s support,” U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, said on Wednesday. “And so it is a bit of splitting hairs as to whether they were intimately involved in the planning of these attacks, or simply funded Hamas for decades to give them the ability to plan these attacks. There’s no doubt that Iran has blood on its hands.”
Despite persistent signs of Tehran’s malevolent activities across the region, including the detention of a European diplomat vacationing in Iran, Borrell has repeatedly sought to engage with the country’s hard-line regime in the hope of reigniting the so-called nuclear deal with global powers that then-U.S. President Donald Trump exited in 2018.
Last year, Borrell even traveled to Iran in a bid to restart talks, despite the loud objections of Israel’s then-foreign minister, Yair Lapid.
If nothing else, Borrell is consistent.
“Iran wants to wipe out Israel? Nothing new about that,” he told POLITICO in 2019 when he was still Spanish foreign minister. “You have to live with it.”
European Council President Charles Michel mounted an ambitious diplomatic effort earlier this year amid a resurgence in tensions | Jorge Guererro/AFP via Getty Images
Now Europe has to live with the consequences of that misguided policy and its loss of credibility in Israel, the region’s only democracy.
The Charles Michel Show
Another glaring example of Europe’s geopolitical impotence is Nagorno-Karabakh, the disputed, predominantly Armenian, region in Azerbaijan.
The long-simmering conflict there was all but forgotten by most of the world, but not by European Council President Charles Michel, who mounted an ambitious diplomatic effort earlier this year amid a resurgence in tensions.
In July, Michel hosted leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Brussels, the sixth such meeting. He described the discussions as “frank, honest and substantive.” He even invited the leaders to a special summit in October for a “pentalateral meeting” with Germany and France in Granada.
It wasn’t meant to be. By then, Azerbaijan had seized the region, sending more than 100,000 refugees fleeing to Armenia. Europe, in dire need of natural gas from Azerbaijan, was powerless to do anything but watch.
Earlier this month, Michel blamed Russia, traditionally Armenia’s protector in the region, for the fiasco.
“It is clear for everyone to see that Russia has betrayed the Armenian people,” Michel told Euronews.
A similar pattern has played out in Kosovo, where the Europeans have been trying for years to broker a lasting peace between its Albanian and Serbian populations. The main sticking point there is the status of the northern part of Kosovo, bordering Serbia, where Serbs comprise a majority of the roughly 40,000 residents.
Borrell even appointed a “Special Representative for the Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue and other Western Balkan Regional Issues.”
The incumbent in the post, Miroslav Lajčák, Slovakia’s former foreign minister, hasn’t had much luck. Though Lajčák was awarded the grandiose title more than three years ago, the parties are, if anything, further apart today than ever.
The EU has spent untold millions trying to stabilize the region, funding civil society organizations, schools and even a police force.
When tensions threatened to devolve into all-out combat following an incursion into northern Kosovo by Serbian militiamen last month, however, the EU was forced to resort to its tried-and-true crisis resolution mechanism: Uncle Sam.
”We get criticized for too little leadership in Europe and then for too much,” U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke said in 1998, after Washington dragged its reluctant European allies into an effort to halt the “ethnic cleansing” campaign unleashed by Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milošević in Kosovo.
”The fact is the Europeans are not going to have a common security policy for the foreseeable future,” Holbrooke added. “We have done our best to keep them involved. But you can imagine how far I would have got with Mr. Milošević if I’d said, ‘Excuse me, Mr. President, I’ll be back in 24 hours after I’ve talked to the Europeans.”’
Risky business
One needn’t look further than Ukraine for proof that his point is no less valid today. Though the EU has done what it can, providing tens of billions in financial, humanitarian and military aid, it’s not nearly enough to help Ukraine keep the Russians at bay. If it weren’t for American support, Russian troops would be stationed all along the EU’s eastern flank, from the Baltic to the Black Sea.
Ukraine’s plight highlights the divide between Europe’s geostrategic aspirations and reality. Even though Europe didn’t anticipate Russia’s full-scale invasion, it had been talking for years about the need to improve its defense capabilities.
“We must fight for our future ourselves, as Europeans, for our destiny,” then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared in 2017.
And then nothing happened.
The reality is that it will always be easier to lean on Washington than to achieve European consensus around foreign policy and military capabilities.
That’s why Europe’s discussions about security sound more like fantasy football than Risk.
After Biden decided to send a U.S. aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean in response to the Hamas attack this week, Thierry Breton, France’s EU commissioner, said Europe needed to think about building its own aircraft carrier. Even in Brussels, the comment generated little more than comic relief.
Despite all the rhetoric about the necessity for Europe to play a more global role, not even the leaders of the EU’s biggest members, France and Germany, seem to be serious about it.
As Biden hunkered down in the White House Situation Room to discuss the crisis in Israel, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz were busy conferring in Hamburg.
After agreeing to redouble their efforts to cut red tape in the EU, they took a harbor cruise with their partners.
The leaders celebrated their successful deliberations on a local wharf with beer and Fischbrötchen, a Hamburg fish sandwich. The sun even came out.
At least four civilians were killed while in the custody of Hamas, just feet from where armed militants had been escorting them near the Gaza border, videos obtained and geolocated by CNN show.
One video from the kibbutz of Be’eri in southern Israel showed armed fighters with burned cars and a bulldozer in the background. Toward the end of the video, which was released on a Hamas-affiliated Telegram channel, four bodies can be seen on the ground.
Another video previously geolocated by CNN showed five Israeli civilians taken captive by armed militants in nearly the same spot.
A CNN analysis of the videos determined that the bodies, and the individuals being escorted by heavily armed militants, had matching clothes and hairstyles.
It is not clear what happened to the fifth hostage.
Be’eri lies just three miles from the eastern border of Gaza.
Alongside other towns and settlements close to Gaza such as Ofakim, Sderot, Yad Mordechai, Kfar Aza, Yated and Kissufim, it was among the first to be targeted by Hamas fighters as they launched Saturday morning’s unprecedented and carefully coordinated killing and hostage-taking spree.
The community of Be’eri was “very badly hit,” Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said Monday during a briefing, more than 48 hours after Hamas launched the surprise attack.
Hecht said most Hamas militants in Be’eri had been killed, but Israeli troops were still there attempting to clear the area of any remaining fighters.
“We are still fighting. We thought this morning we would be in a better place,” Hecht said.
As many as 1,000 Hamas fighters breached the border from Gaza, according to Israeli authorities, in an attack that has killed more than 700 Israelis, prompting retaliatory Israeli airstrikes and a formal declaration of war on Sunday.
More than 400 Palestinians have been killed, including 78 children, according to the health ministry in Gaza, and medical care has been complicated by Israel cutting power to the territory.
Hamas militants have taken more than 100 Israelis hostage, including high-ranking army officers, a spokesperson for the group claimed Sunday. It’s believed they are in Gaza but their fate is unknown.
Another Palestinian armed group, Islamic Jihad, on Sunday said it is holding at least 30 hostages in Gaza. CNN is unable to verify the claims.
Israel authorities have said that dozens of Israelis are being held hostage in Gaza but have not confirmed exact numbers. In addition to Israeli captives, several other nationalities are believed to have been taken hostage.
Hecht said it was possible that Hamas fighters were still crossing into Israel from Gaza, adding that four fighting divisions had been deployed in the south.
He said around 20 breach points had been totally secured but other points were more vulnerable.
“There are some areas where we are still holding on with tanks and air cover. I can’t deny the fact that there are still people coming in … It’s an ongoing fight,” 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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.”
