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.
7 US HOSTAGES STILL HELD BY HAMAS TERRORISTS AS FAMILIES PLEAD FOR THEIR RELEASE: ‘THIS IS URGENT’
“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.
AMERICAN FATHER OF HAMAS HOSTAGE ITAY CHEN PUSHES US, ISRAEL ON ‘PLAN B’ AS NEGOTIATIONS FALTER
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
‘28 Years Later’ Trailer: Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Fiennes Fight Zombies in Danny Boyle’s Apocalyptic Threequel — but Is Cillian Murphy One of Them?
Lace up your running shoes and get ready to return to Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s world of fleet-footed zombies because “28 Years Later” has its first official trailer.
The third installment in the “28 Days Later” franchise sees Boyle and Garland return to their respective roles in the franchise as director and writer, having served as executive producers on Juan Carlos Fersnadillo’s 2007 sequel “28 Weeks Later.”
The film is led by franchise newcomers Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer and Ralph Fiennes, who are seen throughout the creepy trailer fighting off zombies. Though original movie star Cillian Murphy had been reported to be reprising his role as Jim in addition to being an executive producer, he appears absent from the trailer and is not listed as a cast member in the promotional material. However, the new trailer features a particularly jarring clip of a zombie that some on social media speculated bears a resemblance to the Oscar winner. (Columbia Pictures did not immediately respond to Variety‘s request for comment on the matter.)
Other new cast members include Erin Kellyman and Jack O’Connell. The film’s official synopsis reads: “It’s been almost three decades since the rage virus escaped a biological weapons laboratory, and now, still in a ruthlessly enforced quarantine, some have found ways to exist amidst the infected. One such group of survivors lives on a small island connected to the mainland by a single, heavily-defended causeway. When one of the group leaves the island on a mission into the dark heart of the mainland, he discovers secrets, wonders and horrors that have mutated not only the infected but other survivors as well.”
“28 Years Later” will serve as the first in a trilogy of sequel films spearheaded by Boyle and Garland. It shot back-to-back with “28 Years Later II: The Bone Temple,” the second film in the trilogy, directed by Nia DaCosta.
The film was shot by cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle using an iPhone 15 Pro Max. Andrew MacDonald and Peter Rice will serve as producers alongside Garland and Boyle. “28 Years Later” is produced by Columbia Pictures in association with BFI, DNA Films, and Decibel Films. The film will be released June 20, 2025.
Watch the trailer below.
World
Biden seems to take credit for Assad's downfall amid fears of Islamic State revival
JERUSALEM — The rapid-fire collapse of the Syrian dictatorship of Bashar Assad has engulfed the Biden administration in a new wave of criticism about its efforts to claim a win for the end of one of the most brutal regimes in the Middle East.
Questions abound about whether Biden’s foreign policy team had a significant blind spot in Syria, where roughly 900 U.S. troops and American military contractors operate in the northeastern part of the war-ravaged country.
Speaking from the White House on Sunday, President Biden seemed to claim a much-needed victory for his administration’s foreign policy, “Our approach has shifted the balance of power in the Middle East.”
“This is a direct result of the blows that Ukraine, Israel have delivered upon their own self-defense with unflagging support of the United States,” he said.
John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America’s Gemunder Center for Defense and Strategy and who served as Vice President Dick Cheney’s national security adviser, told Fox News Digital, “President Biden’s efforts to take credit for the fatal weakening of Iran and Hezbollah is, frankly speaking, unseemly.”
SYRIAN DICTATOR BASHAR ASSAD FLEES INTO EXILE AS ISLAMIST REBELS CONQUER COUNTRY
“The harsh reality is that if Israel had succumbed to the Biden administration’s pressures and followed its advice over the past 14 months of war, Iran and Hezbollah would have been far stronger and Israel far weaker than they are today,” said Hannah, who also served in the Clinton administration.
“There’s no doubt that President Biden deserves a lot of credit for his unflagging support of Israel’s ability to defend itself against the multifront war that Iran and its proxies launched on Oct. 7, 2023,” he continued. “But what he refused to do was provide that same unflagging support of Israel’s ability to actually win that war by inflicting a comprehensive defeat on its enemies, particularly Iran and Hezbollah, precisely the element that was required to make last week’s historic events in Syria possible.”
“The collapse of the Syrian regime is a direct result of the severe blows we inflicted on Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters at a press conference on Monday. “I would like to clarify: challenges are still expected in the campaign, and our hand is outstretched.”
He also expressed appreciation to President-elect Donald Trump for recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights in 2019.
“The Golan will forever be an inseparable part of Israel,” he said, per Israeli news agency TPS-IL.
FALL OF SYRIA’S BASHAR ASSAD IS STRATEGIC BLOW TO IRAN AND RUSSIA, EXPERTS SAY
Fox News Digital has reported that since Hamas terrorists from Gaza slaughtered nearly 1,200 people, including more than 40 Americans, on Oct. 7, 2023, in southern Israel, the Biden administration sought to curtail Israel’s efforts to root out Hamas, as well as Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, and not launch counterstrikes against Iran’s regime.
After Biden’s speech, a senior administration official seemed to echo the president’s bravado, “I think U.S. policy is a direct contributor to this for the reasons I laid out, and the president laid out, is significant, is important, has completely changed the equation in the Middle East, and you saw that play out here over the last week.”
Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran expert and senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, offered a different take, saying, “Respectfully, it’s a bit odd to have an administration, which pulled punches against the Assad regime in Syria as well as its patron, the Islamic Republic of Iran, try to take credit for the fall of the Assad regime.”
“Less, not more, has defined Biden’s risk-averse approach to the region,” he continued. “Over the past year, the administration has watched Israel box in the Iran-backed threat network in the region, and in so doing break taboos that have long hindered Washington’s regional policy.”
Obama-Biden failures
Democrat politicians like former Secretary of State John Kerry and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi courted Assad before his use of chemical weapons on his population after the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011. Former National Security Council spokesperson Gordon Johndroe said about Pelosi’s 2007 visit with Assad, “On the contrary, these visits have convinced the Assad regime that its actions in support of terrorists have no consequences.”
Deeply misjudging Middle East dictators and radical Islamist movements has plagued the Biden and Obama administrations, according to experts.
The Biden-Harris administration faced congressional criticism for the reportedly premature and botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 that resulted in the radical Islamist Taliban movement absorbing the country and U.S. weapons.
TRUMP URGES US TO STAY OUT OF SYRIAN CIVIL WAR, BLAMING OBAMA FOR FAILURE AS ISLAMISTS CLOSE IN ON CAPITAL
Islamic State threats
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., wrote on X, “As to U.S. interests in Syria, there are over 50,000 ISIS prisoners primarily being held by the Kurdish forces who helped President Trump destroy the caliphate. These ISIS fighters planned and executed plots against the American homeland and our allies. A breakout and reestablishment of ISIS is a major threat to the U.S. and our friends. Obama and Biden got this wrong big time, requiring President Trump to clean up their mess.”
On Sunday it was announced that U.S. Central Command launched dozens of key strikes against ISIS in a move said to stop the terror group from taking advantage of the fluid situation in Syria.
The Syrian Kurds have faced slashing attacks from Turkey and pro-Turkey Syrian Sunni jihadi organizations, including the Islamic State, over the years.
Sinam Sherkany Mohamad, the representative of the Syrian Democratic Council mission in the United States, told Fox News Digital, “Defeating Assad was the goal of all Syrians, to build a pluralistic democratic system that guarantees the rights of all ethnic and religious components and diversity in Syria.”
“ISIS is still present in the Syrian desert and has sleeper cells in northern and eastern Syria in addition to the prisons of ISIS fighters and the Al-Holl camp, all of which threaten our people, while warning the current situation could whet ISIS’s appetite to become active again,” Mohamad said.
Incoming freshman Rep. Abraham Hamadeh, R-Ariz., told Fox News Digital, “We cannot ignore the impact of President Biden’s weak leadership, which has eroded deterrence and encouraged our allies to hedge their bets. President Trump understood that arming the Kurds and working with them to dismantle ISIS was a critical success. The reward for standing with America should never be betrayal or abandonment.”
Hamadeh, whose parents are Syrian immigrants, added, “We must ensure Syrian Kurdish civilians are not caught in the crossfire and that they are integral to any peace process.”
Max Abrahms, a leading expert on counterterrorism and a tenured professor of political science at Northeastern University, told Fox News Digital, “It is also expected that ISIS will manifest as a non-trivial issue in the new Syria. It is on this issue where the Kurds and America have the most strategic overlap, as both regard ISIS as a serious threat. The more ISIS presents as a problem, the stronger the logic of maintaining American forces to work with the Syrian Democratic Forces.”
The U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces has been a key player in stopping the spread of ISIS in Syria.
World
The real work on Mercosur deal starts now, says French liberal MEP
Last week, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen signed the EU-Mercosur deal, despite opposition from France.
With French opposition remaining to the EU-Mercosur deal struck last week by the EU, the real work on the deal starts now, French liberal MEP Marie-Pierre Vedrenne tells the Radio Schuman podcast today.
Last week, the EU finalised the contentious Mercosur agreement with some South Amercan countries, a deal that follows on-and-off negotiations that began in 1999.
However, France—one of the largest EU member states—along with several other countries with sizeable dairy and beef industries, opposes the agreement. They argue it could expose local farmers to unfair competition and heighten environmental risks.
To block the deal, France is attempting to form a coalition of like-minded member states. Under EU rules, it would need the support of at least three other countries representing 35% of the bloc’s population. Additionally, the agreement must gain approval from the European Parliament.
In the second segment of the podcast, we look at EU ministers discussions with the Commission on the economic plans for their countries. Are they performing well?
On the last part of the show, Radio Schuman reveals which airlines are using more sustainable form of fuel.
Radio Schuman is hosted and produced by Maïa de la Baume, with journalist and production assistant Eleonora Vasques, audio editing by David Brodheim and Georgios Leivaditis. Music by Alexandre Jas.
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