TIMES OF ISRAEL
A wounded, weakened Israel is a fiercer one
Haviv Rettig Gur
October 8, 2023

…The footage from Saturday, the snuff videos shared gleefully by Hamas supporters, including in some Western far-left circles, weren’t an aberration. Hamas gunmen didn’t get “carried away,” as some explained. They were the essence of the whole enterprise. They were Hamas’s basic message to Israelis: That they weren’t being killed and kidnapped just for tactical advantage in the struggle for Palestinian independence, but rather were being humiliated and dehumanized as traitors against God…Hamas did everything it could to shock Israelis, to humiliate and horrify, kidnapping children, desecrating corpses, and then crowing about it to the world. READ MORE

CBS NEWS Mother of missing Israeli-American says she believes he is a hostage in Gaza The mother of a 23-year-old Israeli-American told CBS News that she believes her son may be among those have been taken captive in Gaza after Saturday’s unprecedented attack inside Israel by Hamas militants.  Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was born in California, was attending the dance music festival in the southern Israeli kibbutz of Re’im, near the Gaza Strip, when the bloody invasion by Hamas militants began — an attack in which at least 260 festival attendees were killed.  His father, Jonathan Polin, told CBS News on Sunday that Goldberg-Polin sent his parents two short messages on Saturday morning as the attack began. The first one just said “I love you,” and the second only: “I’m sorry.” It was the last interaction that Goldberg-Polin had with his parents.