Latest news with #hostageCrisis
Reuters
11-06-2025
- Reuters
Body of hostage Yair Yaakov recovered from Gaza, Israeli media reports
CAIRO, June 11 (Reuters) - The body of Israeli hostage Yair Yaakov was recovered from the Gaza strip, Israeli media reported on Wednesday.
Telegraph
09-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Left-wing activists like Greta Thunberg care more about fame than facts
This image will forever be compared with the horror show of the actual kidnap of hostages by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups. There are girls younger than Greta, with bloodied pants, their Achilles tendons cut; a mother clutching her two red-haired children whom we now know are dead; a terrified old lady being abducted. It is said that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) will force Thunberg and her crew to watch the brutal footage recorded on October 7. I doubt this will make much difference. In 2023, the IDF showed Hamas body cam footage collected after the Nova festival attack to the press in London. Most of the viewers were in tears but certain activist 'journalists' came out saying there was no proof of women being raped as they had not been shown that. Thunberg, like so many of her generation wrapped up in their made-in-China keffiyehs, are not interested in the specifics of this conflict. This is what happens when a young girl with a penchant for protest becomes too feted. She addressed national parliaments and Davos as a climate activist and was interviewed everywhere, so she must have grasped the fact that her youth and passion energised many. Unsurprisingly, then, her symbolic power was soon commodified as she appeared at protest after protest, morphing effortlessly from climate change activism to Palestinian solidarity. Political activism is now algorithmic. Hey, if you liked that cause, then try this one. The 'Left' these days often seems little more than a collection of disparate causes: eco stuff, trans rights and Free Palestine. The contradictions between these beliefs are underplayed as they become bundled together as an omnicause. I first heard that word used in 2023. The omnicause can incorporate everything from animal rights to emptying the jails. Forget the single issues that require specific, often boring campaigning: the omnicause is a moronic vacuum where analysis goes to die. It is a product partly of the horizontalisation of social media. By this, I mean that something such as Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police, which had relevance in America a few years ago, gets picked up here… even though we have a quite different population and methods of policing. Those protesting what is happening in Gaza are not all uninformed, but many are. Younger people recruited from Just Stop Oil (and now presenting as Youth Demand) have stopped soup-throwing in favour of this new pressing cause. But they have not talked about famine in Yemen or the atrocities of Sudan. Interconnectedness has its limits, after all. There may well be links between climate change and war. Many argue that drought was a factor in the unrest that led to the Syrian civil war. The omnicause, though, does not do specifics. It favours symbolic demonstrations that can go viral. These simplistic spectacles of righteousness often backfire. What did Fossil Free Books achieve, for instance? It decided to campaign against companies that had any connection to Israel. The result was that investment firms such as Baillie Gifford stopped funding book festivals. How this helped either the environment or indeed the Palestinian cause is something of a mystery. Thunberg's stunt has been similarly self-aggrandising and vacuous. Watching footage of this climate activist and her mates all chucking their expensive phones into the sea as they were about to be taken by the Israelis showed that, of course, when the chips were down, environmental concerns went out of the window. The omnicause does not require logic, consistency or even coherence. It is closer to acting than activism. It depends on melodrama and a narrative of provocative images. Thunberg may be brave and have been prepared to sacrifice herself – though for what, exactly, I am not sure. But now we have seen the pictures, I am afraid that what she has sacrificed has been her integrity. The omnicause burns itself out in the end because it has no actual strategy. It simply signifies tribal loyalty. It gobbles everything up and spits out its participants, who simply move on to the next 'wrong' thing. You might think that, for Thunberg, her ship has sailed. But that does not mean she won't clamber aboard the next one that hoves into view.
New York Times
07-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Israel Recovers Body of Thai Farmworker in Gaza
Israelis security forces have recovered the body of a Thai citizen who was abducted and taken back to Gaza in the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, the military said on Saturday. Nattapong Pinta was in his 30s and was a farmworker at Kibbutz Nir Oz in southern Israel when he was taken hostage. He was held and later killed by members of the Mujahideen Brigades, a small militant group in Gaza, according to the Israeli military statement. Security forces brought the body back from the Rafah area in southern Gaza after the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency obtained intelligence from a Palestinian militant during an interrogation, the statement added. Palestinian militants took dozens of Thai farmworkers hostage in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack. During a short cease-fire in November 2023, 23 Thai captives were released and five others were released during another cease-fire this year. Israel believes the bodies of two other Thai citizens, Sonthaya Oakkharasri and Sudthisak Rinthalak, remain in Gaza, according to Yahel Kurlander, a sociologist who has been fighting for the release of Thai hostages. The latest hostage retrieval brings the number of remaining living and dead captives believed to still be held in Gaza to 55. The Israeli government has said that up to 23 are believed to be alive. Israel's foreign minister, Gideon Saar, updated his Thai counterpart, Maris Sangiampongsa, about the details of the operation to bring the Thai farmworker's body back to Israel, according to a statement from the Israeli Foreign Ministry. He was married and has a son, the ministry said. He had been in Israel for more than a year when he was taken hostage, and he was a strong personality who acted as a bridge between other Thai farmworkers at Nir Oz and employers, according to Josh Lawson, an official in the Israeli prime minister's office who deals with foreign hostages.
The Independent
07-06-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Body of Thai hostage has been retrieved in Gaza, Israel defence minister says
The body of Nattapong Pinta, a Thai national taken hostage during the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, has been recovered from Rafah in southern Gaza, defence minister Israel Katz said. Mr Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a community near the border with Gaza that suffered heavy losses during the Hamas-led attack. One in four residents were either killed or taken hostage. Mr Katz said Mr Pinta's body had been held by the Palestinian militant group, the Mujahedeen Brigades. The Israeli military said Mr Pinta was abducted alive and later killed by his captors, who were also responsible for the deaths of two Israeli-American hostages whose bodies were recovered earlier this week. Mr Pinta's family in Thailand has been notified. There has been no immediate comment from the militant group. Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in Israel in the 2023 attack, Israel's deadliest day, and took 251 hostages, 55 of whom remain in Gaza. Twenty hostages are believed to still be alive, according to Israeli authorities. Israel responded to the Hamas attacks with a military campaign that has killed over 54,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities in the Hamas-run strip, and left much of the enclave in ruins, with a population of more than 2 million people largely displaced. Authorities in Israel have come under pressure in recent days for shootings which have occurred in the vicinity of aid hubs where Palestinians have been directed to collect food. Several aid sites ran by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation have now temporarily ceased operations after dozens of Palestinians have been killed in recent days. , Sir Keir Starmer called Israel's actions in the region 'appalling, counterproductive and intolerable,' telling MPs that sanctions on members of the country's government were under consideration.
The Guardian
07-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Body of Thai hostage retrieved from Gaza, says Israeli defence minister
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of Thai hostage, Nattapong Pinta, who had been held in Gaza since Hamas's attack on 7 October 2023, according to defence minister, Israel Katz. . Pinta's body was held by a Palestinian militant group called the Mujahideen Brigades, and was retrieved from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified. Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from the Nir Oz kibbutz, a small community near the border, where one in four people was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas-led 2023 attack. The Israeli military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved this week. There was no immediate comment from the militant group. Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in Israel in the 2023 attack, Israel's deadliest day, and took 251 hostages, 55 of whom remain in Gaza. Twenty hostages are believed to still be alive, according to Israeli authorities. Israel responded to the Hamas attacks with a military campaign that has killed more than 54,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities in the Hamas-run strip, and left much of the enclave in ruins, with a population of more than 2 million people largely displaced.
