In a speech in which he angrily pushed back on criticism of Israel’s conduct of the war that has cleaved the Democratic Party and disrupted American college campuses, Mr. Netanyahu linked Israel’s security directly to that of the United States, insisting: “We’re not only protecting ourselves; we’re protecting you.”

“Our enemies are your enemies; our fight is your fight; and our victory will be your victory,” Mr. Netanyahu said, emphasizing the strategic role of Israel in countering Iran.

The fact of Mr. Netanyahu’s speech was almost as notable as anything he said. In the face of increasing international censure and dissent both in Israel and in the United States, Mr. Netanyahu was seeking to use Congress to lift his sagging political fortunes — and leaders in both parties obliged with a bipartisan invitation to receive him.

But in the House chamber as he spoke, there was clear evidence of how the longstanding bipartisan consensus to back Israel has eroded in Congress since the Hamas attack of Oct. 7 and the offensive in Gaza that followed. Dozens of Democratic members, including two top senators and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker, boycotted the speech. Vice President Kamala Harris declined to preside, as is traditional for the vice president, citing a scheduling conflict.

And Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan and the first Palestinian American member of Congress, held up a sign as Mr. Netanyahu spoke that read “war criminal” on one side and “guilty of genocide” on the other.

Outside, more than 5,000 pro-Palestinian demonstrators massed on streets near the Capitol, some wearing Palestinian kaffiyehs, chanting for the United States to stop arming Israel. As they hoisted signs calling Mr. Netanyahu a “war criminal” and the “prime minister of genocide,” some clashed with police who used pepper spray to disperse the crowd and a few burned an effigy of him.

Inside the House chamber, the standing ovations Mr. Netanyahu received were mostly partisan, as Republicans applauded loudly and Democrats hung back, some clapping and others sitting silently and stone-faced. The speech appeared to be aimed at an Israeli audience to demonstrate that his leadership is critical for the state’s well-being and its future.

The bipartisan split in support for him is deeply concerning for Israel’s future, experts said.

“The one adhesive that has maintained the resilience of the relationship is bipartisanship,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator and adviser in Republican and Democratic administrations. “That is under extreme stress.”

He added: “If you have a Republican view and two or three Democratic views about what it means to be pro-Israel, the nature of the relationship is going to change.”

Mr. Netanyahu appeared aware of those politics in trying to strike a bipartisan tone.

He emphasized that Israel is a strategic asset and deserves America’s support, in a speech in which he praised both President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump. He did not mention Ms. Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, whom he is set to meet later this week.

“He came to Israel to be with us in our darkest hour,” Mr. Netanyahu said of Mr. Biden, thanking him for being a self-proclaimed “proud Irish American Zionist.”

In a roughly hourlong address, Mr. Netanyahu graphically described what happened on Oct. 7, when 3,000 Hamas terrorists stormed into Israel. “They burned babies alive,” he said.

And he placed the war in context with the struggles of Jews throughout history, including the Holocaust. “After Oct. 7, ‘Never Again’ is now,” he said, emphasizing the historical right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.

In a nod to the deep political divisions the war has sown in the United States, Mr. Netanyahu condemned Americans who have protested his tactics — including large swaths of the Democratic Party — equating criticism of his conduct of the war with sympathy for terrorists.

“Many choose to stand with evil, they stand with Hamas, they stand with rapists and murderers,” Mr. Netanyahu said of pro-Palestinian protesters. “They should be ashamed of themselves.”

He received raucous cheers for calling the protesters outside “Tehran’s useful idiots.”

“For all we know, Iran is funding the anti-Israel protests that are going on right now, outside this building,” he added.

Above all, Mr. Netanyahu sought to claim the moral high ground as he spoke to lawmakers, thanking them for their support against Hamas.

“Give us the tools faster and we’ll finish the job faster,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

He wore a yellow ribbon in honor of the hostages, even though experts in the region said he was more responsible than anyone else in the country for blocking a deal that would bring them home, because of his own political calculations. He singled out Israeli soldiers seated in the chamber for their heroism, including one who immigrated from Ethiopia and one from Israel’s Bedouin community.

“These are the soldiers of Israel — undaunted, unbowed, unafraid,” he said.

Mr. Netanyahu’s visit was fraught for Democrats, some of whom wanted to show support for the state of Israel while at the same time criticizing its current leader. Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, did not shake hands with Mr. Netanyahu when he entered the chamber.

“Benjamin Netanyahu is the worst leader in Jewish history since the Maccabean king who invited the Romans into Jerusalem over 2,100 years ago,” Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, said in a statement ahead of the speech. Still, he sat in the chamber, and rose to applaud Mr. Netanyahu throughout his speech.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel advocacy group, immediately criticized the speech for what it failed to do. “The speech was devoid of an actual plan for ending the war and bringing real security and peace to the region,” he said in a statement. “His empty calls for ‘total victory’ are simply an illusion as there is no military solution to the underlying conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.”

A few Republicans also did not attend.

Senator JD Vance of Ohio, Mr. Trump’s running mate, was on the campaign trail. Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, said that he would not attend the speech, denouncing the event as “political theater.” In a social media post, Mr. Massie said “the purpose of having Netanyahu address Congress is to bolster his political standing in Israel.”

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RIVERSIDE, CA — Students at UC Riverside established an encampment in the middle of campus to protest Israel’s actions in Gaza, joining nearly a dozen universities across California and numerous nationwide to demand the school end “all investments and endowments” benefiting the Jewish state.

“We are joining the student movement, the student Intifada,” according to an unnamed spokeswoman for Students for Justice in Palestine, UCR chapter. “We are not leaving this encampment day and night until the university complies and meets with us to discuss our demands.”

The encampment was set up Monday, with several dozen tents placed on the green adjacent to the campus Bell Tower, recognized as the center of UCR.

Campus administrators did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The specific number of students participating in the peaceful campus demonstration could not be confirmed. On Wednesday, a group of students staged a midday walkout from classes and held a rally at the tower, chanting “Israel is a racist state!” and “Free, free, free Palestine!”

There was no obvious law enforcement presence, and no campus buildings appeared to be obstructed.

The “demands” issued by the SJP UCR chapter included “a full transparent disclosure of all investments and endowments in weapons manufactures and the Israeli genocidal machine,” as well as a “full divestment from weapons manufacturers and any corporations that either fund or profit off the genocidal machine.”

The SJP-UCR representative noted there is no “standing university in Gaza” due to the unabated bombing campaign since early October conducted by the Israeli Defense Forces using U.S.-supplied drones and fighter-bombers.

The chapter spokeswoman alleged American “universities are complicit in the genocide,” and the protests at UCR and other campuses are intended to “condemn war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Messages taped to the large UCR sign underneath the Bell Tower included “Stop the U.S.-funded Genocide” “End the Occupation Now” and “Ceasefire Now!”

Estimates on the number of campuses where anti-war movements have surfaced over the last month vary, but according to the nonprofit National Students for Justice in Palestine, “solidarity encampments” numbered just over 70 as of May 1.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health and the International Committee of Red Cross-affiliated Palestine Red Crescent Society, nearly 35,000 people have been killed in Gaza — over 14,500 of them children — since the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas incursion into Israel, culminating in the IDF’s invasion of the Gaza Strip.

The number of injuries is in excess of 77,000, according to published reports.

Israel’s official casualty rate for the duration of hostilities is 8,730, of which just over 1,000 have been fatalities.

Along with universities, hospitals, refugee camps and residential complexes in Gaza have been targeted, displacing hundreds of thousands of people, according to reports from the region.

Human Rights Watch has alleged Israel “is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the Gaza Strip,” and according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the humanitarian crisis caused by the bombardments on the Strip’s infrastructure has resulted in almost 500,000 “displaced persons” requiring shelter and other assistance.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday that of the 97 reporters killed in hostilities since early October, 92 have been Palestinian. Others have been assaulted, injured and arrested.

The CPJ said the current “war … has led to the deadliest period for journalists since we began gathering data in 1992.”

Aid workers have also been killed. The United Nations has estimated the number at 220, including seven World Central Kitchen volunteers whose vehicle took a direct hit on April 1 during an IDF drone strike on a convoy.

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Ismail Haniyeh ’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.”

The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated cease-fire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far apart on key issues.

The slayings also come as Israel is under intensifying pressure — increasingly from its top ally, the U.S. — to change tack in the war, especially when it comes to humanitarian aid for desperate people in Gaza.

Haniyeh said Hamas would not cave to the pressure leveled by the strike on his family.

“The enemy believes that by targeting the families of the leaders, it will push them to give up the demands of our people,” Haniyeh told the Al Jazeera satellite channel. “Anyone who believes that targeting my sons will push Hamas to change its position is delusional.”

Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV station aired footage of Haniyeh receiving the news of the deaths through the phone of an aide while visiting wounded Palestinians who have been transported to a hospital in Qatar, where he lives in exile. Haniyeh nodded, looked down at the ground and slowly walked out of the room.

Hamas said Hazem, Amir and Mohammed Haniyeh were killed in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, where Ismail Haniyeh is originally from. The militant group said three of Haniyeh’s granddaughters and a grandson were also killed, without disclosing their ages.

Al-Aqsa TV said the brothers were traveling with family members in a single vehicle targeted by an Israeli drone.

The Israeli military said Mohammed and Hazem were Hamas military operatives and that Amir was a cell commander. It said they had conducted militant activity in the central Gaza Strip, without elaborating. It did not comment about the grandchildren killed.

The strike on Haniyeh’s family is the latest bloodshed in a war with no end in sight.

Earlier, Israeli War Cabinet minister Benny Gantz claimed Hamas has been defeated militarily, although he also said Israel will fight it for years to come.

“From a military point of view, Hamas is defeated. Its fighters are eliminated or in hiding” and its capabilities “crippled,” Gantz said in a statement to the media in the southern Israeli city of Sderot.

But he added: “Fighting against Hamas will take time. Boys who are now in middle school will still fight in the Gaza Strip.”

Gantz reiterated the Israeli government’s commitment to go into Rafah, the city at the far southern tip of the Gaza Strip where more than half the territory’s 2.3 million people are now sheltering.

For Palestinians, the strike on Haniyeh’s family darkened an already grim Eid al-Fitr holiday, which ends the holy fasting month of Ramadan. Palestinians marked the holiday by visiting the graves of loved ones killed in the war. In the Jabaliya refugee camp near Gaza City, people sat quietly by graves surrounded by buildings destroyed in Israel’s offensive, which was launched in response to the deadly Hamas attack on Oct. 7.

As misery in Gaza lingers, Israel has faced increasing pressure, including from its own top ally, the U.S., to change tack in the war, especially with regards to the delivery of humanitarian aid.

In an interview with Spanish-language broadcaster Univision that was recorded April 3 and aired Tuesday, U.S. President Joe Biden criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the war in Gaza and urged his government to flood the beleaguered territory with aid. He repeated that call again Wednesday, saying the efforts to boost aid were “not enough” and demanding another entry point for trucks in northern Gaza.

Gantz said Israel would soon open a new crossing to serve hard-hit northern Gaza, an early target of Israel’s in the war.

After months of supporting the war against Hamas, the White House has ramped up pressure on Israel to reach a cease-fire and taken a sterner line that has rattled the countries’ decades-old alliance and deepened Israel’s international isolation over the war.

The most serious disagreement has been over Israel’s plans for an offensive in Rafah. The rift was worsened by an Israeli airstrike last week on an aid convoy that killed seven workers with the World Central Kitchen charity, most of them foreigners. Israel said the deaths were unintentional, but Biden was outraged.

Biden’s latest comments highlight the differences between Israel and the U.S. over humanitarian aid to people in Gaza, where the war has led to warnings of imminent famine for more than a million people.

“What he’s doing is a mistake. I don’t agree with his approach,” Biden told Univision when asked if Netanyahu was prioritizing his political survival over Israel’s interest.

Israel halted aid deliveries to Gaza in the early days of the war, but under U.S. pressure has slowly increased the number of trucks allowed to enter the territory.

Still, aid groups say supplies are not reaching desperate people quickly enough, blaming Israeli restrictions and noting that thousands of trucks are waiting to enter Gaza. Countries have attempted less efficient ways to deliver aid, including airdrops and by sea.

Israel says it has opened up more entry points for trucks to enter, especially for northern Gaza. Israel also accuses aid groups of being too slow to deliver aid once it’s inside Gaza.

Aid groups say logistical issues and the precarious security situation — underscored by the strike on the aid workers — complicate deliveries.

Netanyahu has vowed to achieve “total victory,” pledging to destroy Hamas’ military and governing capabilities to prevent a repeat of the Oct. 7 attacks and to return hostages captured by Hamas and others that day. He says that victory must include an offensive in Rafah.

Israel launched the war in response to Hamas’ cross-border assault in which militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took roughly 250 people hostage, according to Israeli authorities.

More than 33,400 Palestinians have been killed in the relentless fighting, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count but says most of the dead are women and children. Israel says it has killed some 12,000 militants, without providing evidence.

The war has ignited a humanitarian catastrophe. Most of the territory’s population has been displaced and with vast swaths of Gaza’s urban landscape leveled in the fighting, many areas are uninhabitable.

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DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — An apparent Israeli airstrike killed four international aid workers with the World Central Kitchen charity and their Palestinian driver late Monday, hours after the group brought in a new shipload of food to northern Gaza, which has been isolated and pushed to the brink of famine by Israel’s offensive.

Footage showed the bodies of the five dead at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah. Several of them wore protective gear with the charity’s logo. Staff showed the passports of three of the dead — British, Australian and Polish. The nationality of the fourth aid worker was not immediately known.

The Israeli military said it was conducting a review “to understand the circumstances of this tragic incident.”

World Central Kitchen, the charity founded by celebrity chef José Andrés, said it was aware of the reports and would “share more information when we have gathered all the facts.”

“This is a tragedy. Humanitarian aid workers and civilians should NEVER be a target. EVER,” WCK spokeswoman Linda Roth said in a statement.

Mahmoud Thabet, a Palestinian Red Crescent paramedic who was on the team that brought the bodies to the hospital, told The Associated Press the workers were in a three-car convoy that was crossing out of northern Gaza when an Israeli missile hit. Thabet said he was told by WCK staff the team had been in the north coordinating distribution of the newly arrived aid and were heading back to Rafah in the south.

The source of fire could not be independently confirmed.

Three aid ships from Cyprus arrived earlier Monday carrying some 400 tons of food and supplies organized by the charity and the United Arab Emirates — the group’s second shipment after a pilot run last month. The Israeli military was involved in coordinating both deliveries.

The U.S. has touted the sea route as a new way to deliver desperately needed aid to northern Gaza, where the U.N. has said much of the population is on the brink of starvation, largely cut off from the rest of the territory by Israeli forces. Israel has barred UNRWA, the main U.N. agency in Gaza, from making deliveries to the north, and other aid groups say sending truck convoys north has been too dangerous because of the military’s failure to ensure safe passage.

The UNRWA said in its latest report that 173 of its “colleagues” have been killed in Gaza in the violence. The figure does not include workers for other aid organizations.

World Central Kitchen board member Robert Egger and the media reported that the Australian killed in Monday night’s strike was 44-year-old Zomi Frankcom from Melbourne.

Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was urgently seeking to confirm reports of an Australian death. The department said in a statement: “We have been clear on the need for civilian lives to be protected in this conflict.”

The strike came hours after Israeli troops ended a two-week raid on Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, leaving the facility largely gutted and a swath of destruction in the surrounding neighborhoods. Footage showed Shifa’s main buildings had been reduced to burned-out husks.

Israel said it launched the raid on Shifa because senior Hamas operatives had regrouped there and were planning attacks. The military said its troops killed 200 militants in the operation, though the claim that they were all militants could not be confirmed, and Palestinians coming to the site after the troops withdrew found bodies of civilians.

OTHER DEVELOPMENTS MONDAY:

Syrian officials and state media said an Israeli airstrike destroyed the Iran’s consulate in Syria, killing two Iranian generals and five officers. The strike appears to signify an escalation of Israel’s targeting of Iranian military officials and their allies in Syria. The targeting has intensified since Hamas militants — who are supported by Iran — attacked Israel on Oct. 7.

Israel, which rarely acknowledges such strikes, said it had no comment. Iran’s ambassador, Hossein Akbari, vowed revenge for the attack “at the same magnitude and harshness.”

Also, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would shut down satellite broadcaster Al Jazeera immediately after parliament passed a law Monday clearing the way for the country to halt the Qatari-owned channel from broadcasting from Israel.

Netanyahu called the network the “terror channel” and accused it of harming Israeli security, participating in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and inciting violence against Israel.

Al Jazeera condemned his remarks, calling them “a dangerous and ridiculous lie” and saying they were Netanyahu’s justification “for the ongoing assault” on the media network and press freedom. In a statement, the network vowed to persist in its reporting with “boldness and professionalism.”

RAID LEAVES SHIFA IN RUINS

The Shifa raid gutted a facility that had once been the heart of Gaza’s health care system but which doctors and staff had struggled to get even partially operating again after a previous Israeli assault in November.

The latest assault triggered days of heavy fighting for blocks around Shifa, with witnesses reporting airstrikes, the shelling of homes and troops going house to house to force residents to leave. Israeli authorities identified six officials from Hamas’ military wing they said were killed inside the hospital during the raid. Israel also said it seized weapons and valuable intelligence.

After the troops withdrew, hundreds of Palestinians returned to search for lost loved ones or examine the damage.

Among the dead were Ahmed Maqadma and his mother — both doctors at Shifa — and his cousin, said Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta, a Palestinian-British doctor who volunteered at Shifa and other hospitals during the first months of the war before returning to Britain.

The fate of the three had been unknown since their phone suddenly went dead as they tried to leave Shifa nearly a week ago. On Monday, relatives found their bodies with gunshot wounds about a block from the hospital, said Abu Sitta, who is in touch with the family.

Mohammed Mahdi, who was among those who returned to the area, described a scene of “total destruction.” He said several buildings had been burned down and that he counted six bodies in the area, including two in the hospital courtyard.

At least 21 patients died during the raid, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted late Sunday on X, formerly Twitter.

Israel has accused Hamas of using hospitals for military purposes and has raided many hospitals across the territory. Critics accuse the army of recklessly endangering civilians and of decimating a health sector already overwhelmed with wounded.

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the top military spokesman, said Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group established their main northern headquarters inside the hospital. He described days of close-quarters fighting and blamed Hamas for the destruction, saying some fighters barricaded themselves inside hospital wards while others launched mortar rounds at the compound.

Hagari said the troops arrested some 900 suspected militants during the raid, including more than 500 Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters, and seized over $3 million in different currencies, as well as weapons. He said the army evacuated more than 200 of the estimated 300 to 350 patients. Two Israeli soldiers were killed in the raid, the military said.

The war began on Oct. 7, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 people hostage.

Israel’s offensive since has killed at least 32,845 Palestinians, around two-thirds of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The Israeli military blames the civilian toll on Palestinian militants because they fight in dense residential areas.

The war has displaced most of the territory’s population and driven a third of its residents to the brink of famine.

Netanyahu has vowed to keep up the offensive until Hamas is destroyed and all hostages are freed. He says Israel will soon expand ground operations to the southern city of Rafah, where some 1.4 million people — more than half of Gaza’s population — have sought refuge.

But he faces mounting pressure from Israelis who blame him for the security failures of Oct. 7 and from some families of the hostages who blame him for the failure to reach a deal despite several weeks of talks mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt. Tens of thousands protested Sunday, demanding Netanyahu do more to bring home the hostages in the largest anti-government demonstration since the start of the war.

Hamas and other militants are still believed to be holding some 100 hostages and the remains of 30 others, after freeing most of the rest during a cease-fire last November in exchange for the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

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The new arms packages include more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, said the sources, who confirmed a report in the Washington Post.

Washington gives $3.8 billion in annual military assistance to Israel, its longtime ally.

The package comes as Israel faces strong international criticism over its continued bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza and as some members of President Joe Biden’s party call for him to cut U.S. military aid.

The United States has been rushing air defenses and munitions to Israel, but some Democrats and Arab American groups have criticized the Biden administration’s steadfast support of Israel, which they say provides it with a sense of impunity.

Biden on Friday acknowledged “the pain being felt” by many Arab Americans over the war in Gaza and over U.S. support for Israel and its military offensive.

Still, he has vowed continued support for Israel despite an increasingly public rift with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The White House declined comment on the weapons transfers.

The Israeli embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The decision on weapons follows a visit to Washington by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant this week when he discussed Israel’s weapons needs with U.S. counterparts.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Gallant, apparently seeking to cool U.S.-Israeli tensions, said he stressed the importance of U.S. ties to his country’s security and of maintaining Israel’s “qualitative military edge” in the region, including its air capabilities.

The war erupted on Oct. 7 after Hamas militants attacked Israel and killed 1,200 people and seized 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Israel has retaliated by launching an air and ground assault on Hamas in the Gaza Strip that has killed more than 32,000 people, health authorities in Gaza say.

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Assistant Secretary of State Bill Russo, overseeing global public affairs in the State Department, told Israeli foreign ministry officials in a call on March 13 that both the U.S. and Israel face a “major credibility problem” as a result of the “unpopular” Israeli military offensive in Gaza, according to a U.S. readout of the conversation.

“The Israelis seemed oblivious to the fact that they are facing major, possibly generational damage to their reputation not just in the region but elsewhere in the world,” the memo says. “We are concerned that the Israelis are missing the forest for the trees and are making a major strategic error in writing off their reputation damage.”

The State Department memo recommended pressing Israeli officials on the matter “at the highest levels.”

The stark differences between the countries’ views reflect a widening rift between Israel and its biggest ally over Israel’s conduct in the war, as Palestinian civilians face continuous bombing, mass displacement and extreme hunger.

The discord deepened Friday as Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv. Blinken urged Netanyahu not to launch an Israeli operation in the city of Rafah.

“It risks killing more civilians, it risks wreaking greater havoc with the provision of humanitarian assistance, it risks further isolating Israel around the world and jeopardizing its long-term security and standing,” Blinken said.

Netanyahu said Israel would carry out the Rafah operation — without U.S. support, if necessary.

According to last week’s memo obtained by NPR, Israeli foreign ministry Deputy Director General Emmanuel Nahshon disagreed with the U.S. assessment that Israel’s global reputation was damaged. He said public opinion polls found a “silent majority” of people in the U.S. and Europe continue to support Israel, and blamed TikTok’s algorithm, which he claimed favors pro-Palestinian content, for turning young people against Israel.

The Israeli government has solicited influencers to help target social media users in the U.S. and Europe to counter denial about atrocities committed in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. Israel plans a similar social media campaign soon in Egypt, Jordan and Gulf Arab countries, the memo said.

Israeli foreign ministry officials said the “silver lining” of the Oct. 7 attack is that it “now allows Israel to see who its real friends are,” according to the summary of the conversation in the State Department memo.

In response to an NPR request, the Israeli foreign ministry said it had no comment on the U.S. memo. The State Department also declined to comment.

The Israel-Hamas war is in its sixth month. It was sparked by the Hamas-led ambush on southern Israel — the deadliest day in Israeli history — when thousands of attackers from Gaza took nearly 250 hostages and killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israel.

But it is Israel’s continuing military response in Gaza — the deadliest war in Gaza’s history — that has sparked large protests against the war in Gaza in U.S. cities and Arab and European capitals.

Israel’s air and ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Three-quarters of Gaza’s population has been displaced, according to the U.N, and the world’s top experts in global hunger warn that Gaza faces imminent famine.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration has told Israel that it must work to avoid “significant further displacement” of Palestinian civilians in southern Gaza if it renews its ground campaign aimed at eradicating the Hamas militant group, senior U.S. officials said Tuesday.

Separately, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the Israelis have been receptive when U.S. officials have raised the issue.

The Democratic administration, seeking to avoid more large-scale civilian casualties or mass displacement like that seen before the current temporary pause in the fighting, underscored to the Israelis that they must operate with far greater precision in southern Gaza than they did in the north, said officials who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House.

Amid mounting international and domestic pressure about the rising Palestinian death toll, the White House has begun to put greater pressure on Israel that the manner of the coming campaign must be “carefully thought through,” according to one of the officials.

Kirby, told reporters separately, “Now you have an added population of hundreds of thousands more in the south that you didn’t have before (the Israelis) moved into Gaza City.”

“And so it’s even all that more of an added burden on Israel to make sure that as they start to plan for operations in the south, whatever that looks like, that they have properly accounted for…the extra innocent life that is now in south Gaza.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear that Israeli Defense Forces will eventually restart military operations after the conclusion of the current, temporary cease-fire that has allowed for an exchange of hostages taken by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. The two sides agreed Monday to extend the truce for an additional two days and to continue swapping hostages for prisoners.

President Joe Biden has said he would like to see the pause — which has also allowed a surge of much-needed humanitarian aid to get into Gaza — continue as long as feasible. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will return this week to the Middle East as the U.S. hopes to find a way to extend the cease-fire and get more hostages released, the State Department said Monday. It will be his third trip to the region since Israel’s war with Hamas began last month.

Meanwhile, CIA Director William Burns and David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, as well as Egyptian officials met in Qatar on Tuesday for talks on the same matter, according to a diplomatic official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.

Negotiations are turning to the dozens of Israeli men and Israeli security force members held captive in hopes of keeping the cease-fire and hostage-for-prisoner swap going, said Steven Cook, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Those released since Friday’s truce started have been mainly women and children. Brokering swaps for Israeli forces are expected to be much more difficult for U.S. and Arab negotiators, Cook said. Hamas in the past has demanded Israel release large numbers of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli detention in exchange for each Israeli soldier.

“The price may be too high for the Israelis,” Cook said.

The Americans spotlighted their concerns about civilians in Gaza as the latest swap of hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel was completed Tuesday. Israel said Tuesday that 10 Israelis and two foreigners freed by Hamas exited Gaza to Egypt. Thirty Palestinian prisoners were released by Israel.

Only one American, 4-year-old Abigail Edan, has been released by Hamas since start of the truce on Friday. Kirby said that the White House remained hopeful that some of the nine Americans still believed to be in captivity in Gaza would be released in the coming days.

“No Americans unfortunately got out today, but we’re hopeful.,” Kirby said. “You know, tomorrow’s another day.”

Biden and top officials have also been clear-eyed about Israel’s desire to continue operations focused on Hamas that over the last seven weeks have largely focused on the north. They have said they support Israel’s goal of eliminating Hamas’ control over Gaza and the threat it poses to Israeli civilians, but have grown more vocal about the need to protect the lives of Palestinian civilians. Hamas has been known to seek shelter among the territory’s civilian population, and Israeli officials have released videos from northern Gaza of what they said are weapons stockpiles and firing locations placed among civilian infrastructure.

More than 13,300 Palestinians have been killed since the war began on Oct. 7, roughly two-thirds of them women and minors, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. More than 1,200 people have been killed on the Israeli side, mostly civilians killed in the initial attack. At least 77 soldiers have been killed in Israel’s ground offensive.

The U.S. believes roughly 2 million Palestinians are now in south and central Gaza. Biden administration officials have made clear to the Israelis that an already stretched humanitarian support network would be unable to cope with the sort of displacement that those from northern Gaza have endured in Israel’s retaliatory strikes and ground operations.

Biden administration officials have also told the Israelis they expect them to conduct operations in a way that will be “maximally deconflicted” with the operation of humanitarian aid facilities, United Nations-supported shelters and core infrastructure, including electricity and water.

The World Health Organization has warned that the war has caused a burgeoning public health crisis that is a recipe for epidemics as displaced Palestinians have been forced to take shelter in cramped homes and camps.

One administration official said vaccines are among the medical goods flowing into Gaza, but there has also been a focus on potable water supplies and sanitation to prevent outbreaks of typhoid and cholera. To that end, the White House has also pushed to get as much fuel into Gaza as possible — something the Israelis resisted, particularly in the first weeks of war, citing concerns that it would be siphoned by Hamas.

Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said a U.S. military aircraft, a C-17 cargo plane, landed on Tuesday in Egypt with aid for Gaza, including medical supplies, food and clothing. The 54,000 pound shipment is the first of three U.S. military humanitarian aid flights to northern Egypt for Gaza’s civilian population planned for the coming days. The aid is to be delivered into Gaza by the United Nations.

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CNS | Contributed

The destruction in Gaza amid hostilities between Israel and Hamas shows how Palestinians are treated as “less than human” and the Jewish State engages in “unfathomable carelessness” to achieve its goals, two Inland Empire residents from Palestine said, while a Riverside rabbi equated condemnations of Israel with “antisemitism,” and a member of a Corona synagogue viewed Hamas’ actions as forcing Israel to react. The Israeli military’s bombardment of Gaza has been continuous since the deadly Oct. 7 incursion in southern Israel by groups of armed militants identifying as Hamas “freedom fighters,” which the Israeli government said resulted in more than 1,000 fatalities on kibbutzim and at a music festival.

Figures published by multiple outlets reporting from the Middle East estimate more than 11,000 Gazans have been killed in the ensuing Israeli military missile and air strikes, including more than 4,600 children — numbers based on figures provided regularly by the Hamas-run health ministry. Israeli and U.S. officials have expressed doubts about the figures, but ministry officials insist they are based on fatalities verified by medical professionals. “They are indiscriminately bombing people’s homes,” Moamer Shurrab, a pharmaceutical company employee and member of the Islamic Center of Temecula Valley, told City News Service. “It’s hard to imagine the scale of this massacre.

It’s especially horrific to see the scores of children who are killed. What did those little children do to Israel? Stop thinking of them as less than human. How can you call this self-defense?” Shurrab, who is from Gaza and immigrated to the United States to attend college in the 1990s, has immediate and extended family residing throughout the Strip. He said his brother’s apartment was adjacent to the Islamic University, which has been targeted by the Israeli military, causing his brother to flee for his life. “What people don’t realize is Gaza is a very small place, only 365 square kilometers,” he said. “With these attacks, there is no safe place in Gaza.

There are 2.3 million people living there. It’s so dense. Where are people going to flee? Are they going to jump in the sea?” Along with the Islamic University, the war has led to the damage or destruction of al-Azhar University, the Indonesian Hospital, Al Nasr Children’s Hospital, al-Ahli Arab Hospital, mosques, Gaza’s oldest Greek Orthodox church, refugee camps and at least one school operated by the United Nations Relief & Works Agency, according to published reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists said that 42 reporters — 37 Palestinians, four Israelis and one Lebanese — had been confirmed killed in the conflict. “I certainly believe Israel has the right to defend itself, and unfortunately I believe Hamas is hiding in civilian areas,” Rabbi Suzanne Singer, former head of Temple Beth El in Riverside and now a rabbinical teacher in Temecula, told CNS. “It’s very difficult to avoid these casualties. Hamas is luring Israel into Gaza so there are civilian casualties.

Can the government do something different? I don’t know.” She worried that a ceasefire might enable Hamas to “rearm and go on the attack.” Singer said she was not surprised by the massive demonstrations in Dallas, London, Jakarta, Paris, New York City and other places denouncing Israel and expressing solidarity with the Palestinians. “They ignore all the human rights violations committed around the world,” she said. “There’s only a major outcry when Israel does something. Being critical of Israel’s right to exist is antisemitism.” Cal State San Bernardino Professor Ahlam Muhtaseb, a Palestinian and Islamic Center of Temecula Valley member, said Israel’s side of the issue is over-represented in mainstream media, where Palestinians are too often portrayed as “extremists, violent terrorists.” “Israelis cite antisemitism and how they were treated by the Nazis,” Muhtaseb said. “But news reports `invisibilize’ Palestinians, dehumanize them. When there were 500 people massacred by the Israeli military in the bombing of al-Shifa Hospital, you saw 30 seconds of people shouting and screaming. We don’t know their names, ages, hobbies or dreams.

There are always details about Israeli victims and their families.” The professor said the pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been inspirational but doubted they would prompt a pullback by Israel. “Gaza is a small stretch of land. The unfathomable carelessness with which the Israelis are dropping bombs, with the United States’ support, makes this a genocide,” she said. “Israel has the fourth largest army in the world, and they have been given cart blanche to do whatever they want. We see hundreds of dead babies. Half of Gaza’s population is under 18.

We see the dead ones, but how many thousands are buried under the rubble, trying to stay alive?” Bruce Rouman, a longtime member of a Corona synagogue, said he felt “sorry for what’s happening to the people of Gaza,” but he could not denounce Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 deadly attacks “because there needs to be a Jewish homeland.” “This was totally unprovoked,” he said. “I don’t think they (Hamas) really desire the land. Their goal is to eliminate the Jewish population. You can’t just stand by and be battered. They are also launching missiles on Israel, and people are dying.” Rouman said he lacked confidence in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Singer said his administration is “problematic,” acknowledging she has witnessed Israeli settlers illegally seizing Palestinians’ land in the West Bank. But she said Israel is routinely painted in the worst light, despite “human rights violations in Muslim countries.” The rabbi said the criticism of Israel, with some demonstrators calling for “death to all Jews,” was “terrifying.”

Shurrab said the devastation in Gaza follows decades of the Strip being under Israel’s boot, “like an open-air concentration camp.” “Israel controls everything — electricity, water, travel, even fishing,” he said. “Have you ever heard of the oppressor defending itself from the oppressed? It’s mind-boggling. The Palestinian people are occupied. I know. I was there. I lived it.”

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Nearly 82 years ago, my father was born in Nazi-occupied Belgium. When he was only 3 weeks old, his own father, Max, was captured and murdered by Nazis; my dad survived because he was hidden by a series of Christian foster homes. I was born in a peaceful time and place — Victoria, Canada, in 1974 — but my own life was shaped by those events that happened decades before my birth.

As I write this, more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, including 4,000 children. According to Save the Children, more children have been killed in Gaza over the last few weeks than were killed in global conflicts in the last three years combined. I know firsthand that atrocities like this tear a hole through history that will take more than one generation to heal. My father still ran our family as if we were fleeing from the Gestapo. We lived in tents without running water, and moved every six months.

As an adult, I was diagnosed with a neurological form of lupus, a disabling autoimmune disease connected to early trauma. Women with PTSD have been found to be nearly three times as likely to develop this disease than those without significant trauma. I was susceptible, in part, because of my chaotic childhood. There is also epigenetic evidence that mass traumas like the Holocaust affect the genes of the children and grandchildren of survivors on a cellular level, leaving us predisposed to chronic disease.

Political violence is a disability justice issue because it leads to physical and psychological disabilities immediately, and will continue to seed them for generations to come. In Gaza, sick and disabled people, including children, are at the front lines of attacks.

Hussam Abu Safyiaa, a pediatrician in Gaza, writes: “Without an urgent resupply of fuel, the lights will go out permanently, and our hospital could turn into a morgue.” My father was also deprived of medical care as a child, and that legacy scarred him for life physically and psychologically. While he was in hiding, he got sick with whooping cough; the sound of his coughing threatened his own life and the life of the family who sheltered him from Nazis.

To spare everyone, he was taken to a Catholic orphanage in the countryside of Belgium. There, nuns cared for him without medicine. When he recovered, a young nun returned him in the dead of night to the doorstep of his foster family. By then, he was permanently left with respiratory issues and chronic bronchitis. His other wounds were harder to measure, but just as real.

As a parent, my dad was hilarious, brilliant and emotionally distant; he had terrifying rages, and little notion of what it meant to shelter children from danger. My dad was one of the lucky ones. He survived, and at 9 years old he was reunited with his mother and new stepfather in Los Angeles. He went on to Fairfax High, a historically majority-Jewish school. His classmates included the children of Hollywood writers and actors who had been blacklisted by McCarthyism. In 1967, the Summer of Love, he met my mother at a party in the Hollywood Hills. They became ardent anti-Vietnam war protesters, along with a number of other Jewish radicals. Growing up, this was what Judaism meant to me: intellectual dissent and peace activism.

In rabbinical school, I learned that according to ancient Jewish holy texts, saving a single life is the same as saving a whole world, because each of us contains distinctive cities of relationships, irreplaceable geographies of passions, and deep oceans of memories.

That is one reason more than 140 of my colleagues and I are calling for peace as a part of Rabbis for Ceasefire, along with a swelling Jewish peace movement. However, most major American Jewish organizations support this invasion. It is a profound moral injury for me that the community that taught me to value resistance, peace and the sanctity of each human life is supporting violence and silencing dissent.

Many rabbis and other Jewish professionals I know are afraid to speak out for peace and risk being ostracized from family or synagogues or lose funding for their nonprofit organizations. Now as Gaza is being bombed into a place of dust and ashes, my father is entering the last phase of his life in a hospital room in Toronto. My dad’s life once again has tapered to living only within a narrow room, while atrocities swirl outside. However, this time, unlike those who are gravely ill in Gaza, my dad is well cared for.

He is warm and dry, held and loved. When the time comes, there is enough fuel and food to ensure that he dies with dignity and ease. My dad didn’t enter the world being treated like a person, but he is leaving it being cared for with humanity. Everyone deserves this.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the various author’s articles on this Opinion piece or elsewhere online or in the newspaper where we have articles with the header “COLUMN/EDITORIAL & OPINION” do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints or official policies of the Publisher, Editor, Reporters or anybody else in the Staff of the Hemet and San Jacinto Chronicle Newspaper.

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It has become impossible to distinguish between Israel’s decidedly non-surgical operation against Hamas militants in Gaza and the indiscriminate killing of Palestinian civilians.

When so-called humanitarian pauses in the bombardment and ground operations are too brief to realistically permit innocents to flee, or when there is no place for non-combatants to go that is not also in the line of fire, such pauses are so deficient as to be meaningless.

It is time for a cease-fire. It is time for the Biden administration to assert strong and sustained pressure on the government of Benjamin Netanyahu to stop attacks that have reportedly already killed more than 11,000 Gazans.

The world cannot stand by to witness more slaughter of civilians. No one should harbor illusions about Hamas, the radical militant organization that serves as the de facto Gaza government and began the current hostilities with its murderous Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israeli civilians. Militants killed about 1,200 people and continue to hold more than 200 hostages — Israelis, Americans and others. Israel claims Hamas has used Shifa Hospital as a command center and weapons warehouse.

Although Israeli soldiers who entered the hospital were able to produce little evidence of that, there is no reason to doubt that Hamas would treat Palestinian civilians as human shields. But Hamas’ atrocities do not justify atrocities in kind. Following Hamas’ initial attack, Israel instructed the people of northern Gaza to leave their homes and made no commitment that they would ever be able to return.

Israel’s reprisal destroyed homes and cut off power and communications, making it impossible for survivors of the bombing even to search for the remains of family and neighbors beneath the rubble. Now Israel is signaling that it will step up its assault in southern Gaza, into which much of the territory’s population of more than 2 million have crowded in response to the warnings to flee the north. They will not be permitted to enter Egypt on Gaza’s southwestern border, and they cannot enter Israel.

They are trapped. Already, more children have died in Gaza in the last month than in all other conflicts around the world this year, according to Save the Children. That cruel fact is one of many that have turned world opinion against Israel, and against the U.S., its chief ally and the provider of most of its weapons. The consequences for both nations will last generations.

The trauma inflicted on Palestinian survivors only increases the recruiting ability of Israel’s enemies, whether they be Hamas, Hezbollah or any successors bent on destruction of Israel. On Wednesday, the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution calling for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors” in Gaza for “a sufficient number of days” to allow unhindered access for agencies delivering aid. The U.S. did not vote in favor of the resolution, but importantly, also did not veto it. Still, pauses and corridors mean little if they are immediately followed by a resumption of deadly attacks. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken testified at an Oct. 31 Senate hearing that a cease-fire would “simply consolidate what Hamas has been able to do and … potentially repeat what it did another day.”

But neither Israel nor the U.S. has explained how Hamas can be eradicated or removed from power without an unacceptable level of civilian deaths and casualties. Nor have they set forth what they intend to happen next. Israeli occupation? On his visit to Israel in the wake of Hamas’ initial attack, President Biden noted that the U.S., following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, made mistakes.

The statement was a clear message to Israel: Don’t blunder as we did. Don’t squander the goodwill of the rest of the world by killing civilians. Don’t mimic your enemy’s cruelty. Don’t leave a power vacuum that can be filled by other, even more potent enemies. Have an exit strategy.

Remaining mindful of America’s mistakes, it is incumbent upon the Biden administration now to avoid complicity with Israel’s. We are past the time to excuse the horror in Gaza. Biden has to press Netanyahu hard to stop the mass, indiscriminate killing. That starts with a call for a cease-fire.

DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the various author’s articles on this Opinion piece or elsewhere online or in the newspaper where we have articles with the header “COLUMN/EDITORIAL & OPINION” do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints or official policies of the Publisher, Editor, Reporters or anybody else in the Staff of the Hemet and San Jacinto Chronicle Newspaper.

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