World
Lawmakers hold moment of silence for slain Omer Neutra as thousands mourn in hometown synagogue
A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday night held a moment of silence for American-Israeli Omer Neutra who was determined this week to have been killed by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, after it was believed that he had been alive for more than a year.
Neutra, 21 years old, was a tank platoon commander in the 7th Armored Brigade’s 77th Battalion in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and was among the first to respond to the Hamas attack that ultimately killed some 1,200 people and initially saw the abduction of more than 250 men, women and children.
His parents, Orna and Ronen, who spoke with Fox News Digital just days prior to the tragic development, believed their son was still alive after the IDF had long assessed that he, along with Nimrod Cohen, another soldier from his tank, were taken hostage into Gaza and remained alive.
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“For 420 days Omer’s parents and his brother Daniel have done everything they can with the love and support of hundreds of thousands of others to free their son from captivity,” Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., who represents the Neutra family’s district, said from the House floor. “Every day they soldiered on through alternating deep sorrow and brief bursts of hopefulness. They went from crushing anxiety to steely determination.
“Just a few days ago we learned that this courageous young man, this bright light, this courageous idealist, made the ultimate sacrifice,” Suozzi continued. “Omer had not been alive for the last 422 days, he was murdered on Oct. 7.”
Footage from the attack on Omer’s tank showed the commander, as well as three others, Shaked Dahan, Oz Daniel and Nimrod Cohen being pulled from the military vehicle by Hamas terrorists and being taken captive.
Daniel and Dahan had previously been assessed to have been killed following the attack, and according to the IDF, intelligence now suggests Omer, a descendant of Holocaust survivors, was also killed on Oct. 7. 2023.
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The Israeli military has not said how they came by this new information and the fate of Cohen remains unknown.
In a memorial service held for Omer on Tuesday in the Long Island synagogue where he reportedly celebrated his bar mitzvah years earlier, Omer’s father Ronen, said the news had left them “breathless and empty.”
“For over a year now, we’ve been breathing life into your being, my beautiful boy,” Orna said through tears, according to reports. “With the hope and love of so many, we kept going and going and going, keeping you alive, speaking your name from every outlet, pushing any hint of despair, not stopping to breathe or to take in the deep pain of your absence.”
“Now things are clear,” she said to the reported 1,500 attendees at the service. “But not as we’d hoped.”
Onra and Ronen have described their son as loving, a good friend and an athlete, but they also highlighted his ability to lead and how his actions on Oct. 7, 2023 saved lives.
Omer’s body is believed to still be held by Hamas along with the six other American hostages, only three of whom are still assessed by the IDF to be alive at this time, including Edan Alexander, Sagui Dekel-Chen and Keith Siegel.
Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s body was recovered after he, along with five others, were discovered to have been murdered by Hamas in the tunnels in Gaza in August.
There are still 100 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza following the recovery of Itai Svirski’s body on Wednesday, an Israeli hostage taken during the attack on Kibbutz Be’eri on Oct. 7, 2023.
The IDF confirmed he “was murdered in captivity by his captors, and his body was held hostage in the Gaza Strip.”
World
Trump taps his attorney Alina Habba to serve as counselor to the president
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump has announced that he is appointing one of his defense attorneys in the New York hush money case as counselor to the president.
Alina Habba, 40, defended Trump earlier this year, also serving as his legal spokesperson. Habba has been spending time with the president-elect since the election at his Florida club Mar-a-Lago.
“She has been unwavering in her loyalty and unmatched in her resolve — standing with me through numerous ‘trials,’ battles and countless days in Court,” Trump posted on his social network Truth Social. “Few understand the Weaponization of the ‘Injustice’ System better than Alina.”
Trump became the first former American president to be convicted of felony crimes when a New York jury in May found him guilty of all 34 charges in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex.
In Trump’s first term, the position of counselor was held by Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway. Habba has Iraqi ancestry and is Chaldean, which is Iraq’s largest Christian denomination and one of the Catholic Church’s Eastern rites.
Habba frequently accompanied Trump on the campaign trail and was one of the speakers at the late October rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden.
On Sunday, Trump also announced he is bringing back former staffer Michael Anton to serve as director of policy planning at the State Department. Anton served as the National Security Council spokesman from 2017 to 2018.
Trump said he also will be appointing Michael Needham, a former chief of staff for Sen. Marco Rubio, as counselor of the State Department. The Florida senator was chosen by Trump to be his next secretary of state.
World
Gunmen storm Iranian embassy in Damascus as Russia claims Assad left 'instructions' to 'transfer power'
A group of unknown gunmen stormed the Iranian embassy in Damascus on Sunday after Islamist rebels took the city and overthrew the regime of Bashar Assad, who the Russian Foreign Ministry says fled the country and left “instructions” for a transfer of power.
Iranian state television reported on the embassy incident, saying they did not believe the gunmen were affiliated with the wider rebel group that took the city. Iran had withdrawn most of its officials and their families on Saturday, leaving only a handful of diplomats.
“It is said that the Iranian embassy was stormed alongside nearby stores by an armed group different from the group now controlling [most of] Syria,” Iranian state TV said, referring to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) which spearheaded recent rebel advances.
Arab and Iranian media have shared footage from inside the embassy’s premises, where assailants rummaged through furniture and documents inside the building and damaged some windows.
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Assad and his British-born wife, Asma al-Assad, fled Damascus with their three children this weekend, according to Syrian television reports. It was not known where they were headed.
A video statement from a group of men on Syrian state TV said that Assad had been overthrown and all prisoners have been set free.
Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali said early Sunday he didn’t know the whereabouts of Assad. He told the Saudi television network Al-Arabiyya that they lost communication Saturday night.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a Telegram post Sunday that Assad left Syria following negotiations with rebel groups, and that the long-time Syrian leader had left “instructions” to “transfer power peacefully.” The Russian ministry said the Kremlin was not directly involved in those discussions.
Crowds of Syrians gathered in the central squares of Damascus to celebrate the news of Assad’s departure. Some chanted anti-Assad slogans and honked horns. In other areas, celebratory gunshots rang out.
Syria has been embroiled in a bloody, nearly 14-year civil war as Islamist rebels looked to overthrow the Assad dynasty. The apparent collapse of more than 50 years of Assad family rule over the Syrian Arabian Republic is a monumental turning point in Middle East politics.
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Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the Islamist leader of HTS, who has a $10 million bounty on his head from the U.S., seeks to present a toned-down version of the radical Islamism that has defined his years of fighting in Syria and in Iraq against American troops. Al-Golani was detained by the U.S. military in the first decade of this century.
Syrian experts have told Fox News Digital that HTS seeks to impose a totalitarian Islamist regime on the population. Phillip Smyth, an expert on Iranian regime proxy groups and Syria, who is with the Atlantic Council, told Fox News Digital, “HTS is a group that is an outgrowth of Al-Qaeda and has connections to Turkey. Their endgame is to create a Taliban-esque society with a few tweaks.”
Al-Golani banned his fighters from opening fire into the air in Damascus.
“Public institutions will remain under the supervision of the prime minister until they are officially handed over,” he said in a statement published on his group’s social media outlets.
Fox News’ Benjamin Weinthal, Bradford Betz, the Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report
World
Romania's Georgescu protests cancelled vote outside polling station
Standing outside a closed polling station on Sunday, the so-called ‘TikTok Messiah’ claimed the Consitutional Court was “cancelling democracy” by anulling the first round of the presidential vote.
Romania’s defiant far-right presidential candidate, Călin Georgescu, stood outside a closed polling station on Sunday in protest of the country’s top court’s unprecedented decision to annul the first round of the vote in which he emerged as the frontrunner.
The Constitutional Court cancelled the election on Friday after a trove of declassified intelligence alleged Russia organised a sprawling campaign across social media to promote Georgescu.
“Today is Constitution Day and there is nothing constitutional in Romania anymore. I am here in the name of democracy,” Georgescu told media in Mogosoaia, outside Bucharest.
“By cancelling democracy, our very freedom is cancelled.”
The court cited the illegal use of digital technologies including artificial intelligence, as well as undeclared sources of funding. Without naming Georgescu, the court said one candidate received “preferential treatment” on social media platforms, distorting voters’ expressed will.
Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said in a statement marking Constitution Day on Sunday that “We find ourselves in a moment of profound responsibility toward the values that characterise us as a nation.”
“The Romanian Constitution defines the framework within which the state and political life operate, serving as a shield against threats to democracy,” he said.
“In turbulent times, state institutions are called upon to act with calm, wisdom and respect for the law, the Constitution and democracy.”
George Simion, the 38-year-old leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, told reporters outside a closed polling station in Bucharest on Sunday that the annulment amounted to an attack against democracy, saying Iohannis should “take a step back and respect the Constitution, not mock it.”
‘TikTok Messiah’
After Georgescu unexpectedly topped the polls in the first round, his success left many political observers wondering how most local surveys had placed him behind at least five other candidates before the vote.
Many observers attributed his success to his TikTok account, which now has 6.2 million likes and 565,000 followers. But some experts suspected Georgescu’s online following was artificially inflated, while Romania’s top security body alleged he was given preferential treatment by TikTok over other candidates.
Despite being a huge outsider who declared zero campaign spending, Georgescu topped the polls in the first round on 24 November, and was due on Sunday to face reformist Elena Lasconi of the Save Romania Union party in a runoff.
On Friday, Lasconi also strongly condemned the court’s decision to annul the elections, saying it was “illegal, immoral, and crushes the very essence of democracy” and that the second round should have gone forward.
New dates will be set to rerun the presidential vote from scratch.
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