Study says food aid meets quality, quantity for Gazans as UN, ICC say Israel starving civilians

JERUSALEM – A new scientific study examining food insecurity in the war-torn Gaza Strip has found that the quality and quantity of food that has entered the Palestinian enclave over the past few months meets international nutritional standards and should adequately provide for the territory’s entire population of around 2.4 million. 

The findings of the report come in stark contrast to statements and predictions made over the past few months by the U.N., aid agencies and human rights organizations, as well as government officials in the U.S., who have warned of severe malnutrition, especially among children, and of looming famine in some parts of Gaza. It also comes a week after the world’s top two courts issued rulings accusing Israel, and its leaders, of purposely starving the Palestinian people. 

Conducted by a group of leading Israeli academics and public health officials, the study, which is based on data from COGAT, the Israeli military body responsible for facilitating the entry of aid into Gaza, found that the quantity and nutritional composition of the food that has been delivered over the past four months complied, and even exceeded, the Sphere standards, an internationally recognized benchmark for humanitarian response.

While the study assessed all food aid shipments that passed through the Kerem Shalom and Nitzana land crossings, as well as air drops into the territory from January-April 2024, it did not, however, examine what happened to the food aid after it entered into the Strip or how it was distributed to the civilian population. 

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Both Israel and the United Nations recognize there have been problems in distributing the aid, but blame each other for the severe shortages of basic items reaching the population.

"We don't usually deal with humanitarian crises, we usually deal with food security domestically, but we were concerned by the reports and international declarations projecting the risks of famine, which were quickly accepted by the media and used by those who are hostile to Israel to make claims of deliberate starvation, genocide and war crimes," Aron Troen, a professor of agriculture, food and environment at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who oversaw the study, told Fox News Digital.

"Clearly, we are concerned with the horrific toll that this war is taking on civilians, both Palestinians and Israelis, but there is a large gap between the harms of war and claims that Israel is deliberately starving Palestinian people," he said. 

As part of its research, Troen’s team scanned COGAT’s registry of all the aid that entered Gaza via air and land between January and April. Quantifying and assessing the nutrient composition of the individual food items and summing up the energy, protein, fat and iron content of all the shipments, the researchers then calculated the supply per capita per day according to population size in 2023. The findings were then compared to the Sphere standards for food security and nutrition in conflict-affected populations, showing that what has entered should have been sufficient to feed the entire population. 

"There’s no question of suffering [in Gaza] and that is very concerning to my colleagues who work in the public health arena and those who concern themselves with food and nutrition," Troen said, noting that "simply having food in a warehouse does not mean that people are actually consuming what they need."

Alternatively, Troen said reports about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza "were based on scams and very limited data" and that most of the "projections were worst case scenarios."

"What we found most confusing was the controversy highlighted in the media of counting trucks and the different claims and counter claims of how many trucks there are and how many trucks there were before and how many trucks are needed to provide for the needs of the civilian population," he continued, emphasizing, "counting trucks does not tell you how much food is actually getting in." 

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Ahed Al-Hindi, a senior fellow at the Center for Peace Communications, who has been monitoring the humanitarian situation in Gaza by speaking to people on the ground, told Fox News Digital "there is no way that we can say there is a famine in Gaza."

"Of course, it's not ideal, there’s a war and many people have fled to areas such as Rafah or Khan Younis, so there is a lot of demands there," he said. "But also, the supplies are there and available and the prices are reasonable." 

Al-Hindi shared a video released by the Center for Peace Communications with Fox News Digital showing footage of a Gazan man who is identified as a Hamas supporter, examining produce in a local market and purchasing cucumbers, bananas, melons and even peaches. 

"I’ve worked in many countries that suffered from famine," he continued, describing the extreme famine in places such as Syria, where President Bashar Al-Assad forbid food from entering a town called Madaya in 2016 and famine was clearly evident.

Also in Sudan, Al-Hindi said, his contacts on the ground described severe food shortages. 

"We have reporters on the ground in Sudan, and they are all complaining how they are suffering from real famine but everybody is ignoring them because of the war in Gaza," he said. "They say it is because of the color of their skin color that nobody is paying them attention, instead all the eyes are Rafah."

In Israel, Col. Elad Goren, who heads the civil department of COGAT, told Fox News Digital there are currently no limits on the amount of food going into Gaza and that the U.N. calculations, widely cited by international organizations and government officials in the U.S., were misleading and inaccurate. 

He said the U.N. figures on the aid going into Gaza did not encompass the entire picture, failing to include what is also being brought in by other international agencies, daily air drops by the Jordanian and Egyptian militaries, and the pier, which the U.S. Central Command put in place earlier this month but last week was temporary closed for safety reasons. 

"From our side everything is open, if the agencies want to bring in 700 trucks a day of food or whatever, then they can, there is no problem," Goren said, highlighting that the problem of getting food to the ordinary people caught up in the fighting stemmed from the challenges of distribution. 

"There is a limited number of trucks for delivering the aid, and it is up to the U.N. and other international agencies to purchase more trucks for this use," he said, explaining what he said was one large part of the problem.

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Prior to the war, Goren detailed how the U.N. had only about eight aid trucks in Gaza. Since the war started on Oct. 7 and the humanitarian situation deteriorated, the U.N. had added around 15 more trucks to its fleet – not enough to reach all the areas in need. Goren also noted that the U.N. had sent in fewer than 60 people to help deal with the crisis. 

Also hampering efforts, he said was Hamas, which often disrupts aid efforts, firing rockets at humanitarian convoys and emptying all the available cash from the banks. Last week, COGAT released a photograph showing aid workers running for cover as the terrorist organization attacked the Kerem Shalom crossing. 

In response to a request from Fox News Digital, Eri Kaneko, spokesperson for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said, however, that "the responsibility to facilitate aid operations in order to meet people’s humanitarian needs lies with parties to the conflict."

"Humanitarian workers and volunteers spare no effort, often risking their lives, to support civilians in Gaza amid active hostilities," she said, explaining that "mounting an effective humanitarian operation in a war zone requires security assurances for aid workers and unimpeded passage to distribute assistance at scale." 

"In that context, we have stressed that Israel’s responsibility does not end when supplies are dropped off at the border, as that alone does not guarantee aid workers’ access to safely pick them up, let alone distribute them to those in need inside Gaza," Kaneko continued. 

The spokesperson did not address the lack of delivery trucks or humanitarian workers, but did say that its missions were "routinely denied access to their destinations, delayed at [Israeli-run] checkpoints, or otherwise impeded." 

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In recent weeks, Kaneko said "every third humanitarian mission coordinated with the Israeli authorities in southern Gaza was either impeded following an initial approval or denied access altogether."

"As a result, the already poor flow of humanitarian supplies into Gaza has dropped by 67% since May 7, leaving civilians without essentials for their survival," she added. 

Last week, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, also held Israel and its leaders responsible for preventing the crucial supplies from reaching the population, saying he would seek warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including "the starvation of civilians as a weapon of war."

Khan's announcement was not only based on the U.N. assessment but also on data from agencies dealing with food security. The World Food Program, who’s executive director Cindy McCain has already declared that there is a full-blown famine in Gaza, told Fox News Digital that its predictions were based on data provided by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Organization. 

Israel, however, has accused the IPC of not following its own protocols in making its famine assessment for Gaza, pointing out that it relies on information provided by Hamas-run bodies. Asked if they might update their analysis based on the new report on food security, the IPC – and FEWS NET, which also provides early warnings and analysis on acute food insecurity to international agencies – told Fox News Digital that they were currently working on new reports due out in the coming weeks. 

In March, world leaders expressed serious concerns regarding the aid situation in Gaza, prompting the U.S. administration to push the Israelis to open more entry points and allow more goods to go in. The Israeli army agreed to reverse earlier policies and said it would "flood" the Palestinian territory with both aid and commercial goods. Since then, additional land crossings have opened in northern Gaza, and aid also arrives from Jordan over land through Israel. In addition, Israel’s international port in Ashdod is now clearing aid for the Strip. 

Jeremy Konyndyk, president of U.S.-based Refugees International, said the research paper offered a skewed view of the "cumulative food supply deficits" because almost no food was able to enter Gaza in the early months of the war. It also does not address the challenges of distributing the aid, he said.

"It is disputable that enough food is entering the strip," Konyndyk continued, adding "there are numerous obstacles related to Israeli government policies and Israeli military conduct that have prevented food from reaching many who most need it."

While he acknowledged looting by Hamas and others, he said the "greater obstacle is the extensive movement restrictions imposed by the Israeli military, and the atmosphere of fear and insecurity that aid agencies face due to repeated army strikes on humanitarian movements and facilities."

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"Safe aid access and last-mile distribution within Gaza remain the biggest challenges in terms of combating famine," said Konyndyk.

"I think Israel's humanitarian policy has evolved substantially since Oct. 7," Shira Efron, senior director of policy research at the Israel Policy Forum, told Fox News Digital. "Whereas in the beginning, insufficient quantities of aid, including foodstuff was going in, now it seems, at least from the number of trucks and that way of counting, there are sufficient quantities of food going into Gaza, at least according to the Spheres standard."

Efron, who has been monitoring the aid situation closely, said that while counting calories to determine whether civilians were receiving enough supplies was problematic, in a chaotic situation such as Gaza, it was "difficult to find a suitable metric to assess the quantity and diversity of the food going in." 

She noted the discrepancies between figures put out by Israel vs. the United Nations agencies but also highlighted that the U.N.’s figures were only partial, while COGAT provided a fuller and more up-to-date picture of the aid operations. 

Efron also said there was a problem with distribution once the aid entered into the Strip, highlighting the difficulties of getting goods to displaced people who are constantly on the move and other war-related factors. 

"While there might be enough food going to prevent large-scale hunger, unless we solve the distribution problems inside Gaza it will not reach the people who need it," she said. "I think it’s time for the U.N. or international organizations, and Israel, to try to develop a more result-oriented approach to understand how this aid is going in, where it is going and whether it is getting to the people who really need it." 

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Tourist defaces ancient Roman wall on vacation, angering Italian authorities

A young man from the Netherlands was reprimanded by Italian police after he allegedly vandalized a historic Roman wall while on holiday.

The incident took place in Herculaneum, an Ancient Roman town that – like Pompeii – was covered in volcanic ash from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

In a press release published Monday, the Carabinieri, an Italian law enforcement agency, explained that the tourist "signed" the walls of a domus in the town on Sunday night. A domus was a townhouse-like residence for families in antiquity.

The 27-year-old was touring southern Italy on vacation at the time.

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"A 27-year-old Dutchman, on holiday in Campania, decided to leave a sign of his passage, writing with a marker on the ancient stuccoes of a house torn from the ashes of Vesuvius," the police's statement read. "A signature, with a black marker, [was] indelible."

"The man was immediately identified and reported for damage and smearing of artistic works."

Italian Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano said on Facebook that the suspect was punished for "damaging and [the] oxidation of [the] artwork."

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"Any damage hurts our heritage, our beauty and our identity and that is why it must be punished with the utmost firmness," Sangiuliano said in a statement obtained by Reuters.

This incident is not the first time a tourist in Italy was tempted to leave their mark. Last summer, a British tourist apologized for defacing the Colosseum in Rome.

Ivan Danailov Dimitrov, who was then 31, carved a wall with his name and his fiancée's name, writing: "Ivan+Haley 23."

"I admit with deepest embarrassment that it was only after what regrettably happened that I learned of the monument’s antiquity," a letter he wrote read. "[I apologize to] Italians and the entire world for the damage done to a monument, which is, in fact, heritage of all humanity." 

Fox News Digital reached out to the Carabinieri for additional details.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Claudia Sheinbaum elected as Mexico's 1st female president

Claudia Sheinbaum is projected to win Mexico's presidential election and become the nation's first female president in history.

"I will become the first woman president of Mexico," Sheinbaum said at a downtown Mexico City hotel shortly after electoral authorities announced a statistical sample showed she held an irreversible lead, according to The Associated Press. "I don't make it alone. We've all made it, with our heroines who gave us our homeland, with our mothers, our daughters and our granddaughters." 

The former Mexico City mayor said that her two competitors – Xóchitl Gálvez and Jorge Álvarez Máynez – had called her and conceded.  

The National Electoral Institute’s president said Sheinbaum had between 58.3% and 60.7% of the vote, according to a statistical sample. Opposition candidate Gálvez had between 26.6% and 28.6% of the vote, and Álvarez Máynez had between 9.9% and 10.8% of the vote. Sheinbaum's Morena Party was also projected to hold majorities in both chambers of Congress. 

SHEINBAUM FACES HUGE HURDLES FROM POWERFUL CARTELS

Sheinbaum, the AP reports, will also be the first Jewish leader of the overwhelmingly Catholic country. 

She will start her six-year term on Oct. 1. Mexico’s constitution does not allow re-election. 

The leftist has said she believes the government has a strong role to play in addressing economic inequality and providing a sturdy social safety net, much like her political mentor President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is also a member of the Morena Party. 

"Of course, I congratulate Claudia Sheinbaum with all my respect who ended up the winner by a wide margin," López Obrador said Monday. "She is going to be Mexico’s first (woman) president in 200 years." 

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The main opposition candidate, Gálvez, a tech entrepreneur and former senator, had promised to take a more aggressive approach toward organized crime. 

In her concession speech, she said, "I want to stress that my recognition (of Sheinbaum's victory) comes with a firm demand for results and solutions to the country's serious problems." 

Julio García, a Mexico City office worker, had told the AP he was voting for the opposition in Mexico City’s central San Rafael neighborhood.  

"They’ve robbed me twice at gunpoint. You have to change direction, change leadership," the 34-year-old was quoted as saying. "Continuing the same way, we're going to become Venezuela." 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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North Korea agrees to stop sending balloons with manure, trash to South Korea

North Korea agreed to stop flying hundreds of balloons carrying trash and manure to South Korea, saying Sunday it launched the campaign to leave its neighbors to the south with "enough experience of how much unpleasant they feel."

The Associated Press reported that North Korea’s announcement came mere hours after South Korea said it would punish the North with an "unbearable" retaliation over its balloon activities and other provocations lately.

Last week, North Korea flew hundreds of balloons with trash and manure toward South Korea, prompting the South’s military to mobilize chemical and explosive response teams to recover objects and debris in various parts of the country.

The balloon campaign came as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un urged his military scientists to overcome a failed satellite launch and continue developing space-based reconnaissance capabilities. He described those efforts as crucial for countering U.S. and South Korean military activities, state media said Wednesday.

NORTH KOREA FLIES BALLOONS CARRYING GARBAGE OVER SOUTH KOREA FOLLOWING FAILED SATELLITE LAUNCH

The wire reported observers' claims that South Korea was likely going to restart front-line loudspeaker broadcasts into North Korea, criticizing the country for violating human rights while also broadcasting world news and K-pop songs.

North Korean leaders are sensitive to the broadcasts because most of the 26 million people living in the country do not have access to radio programs and foreign television.

Kim Kang II, a North Korean vice defense minister, said Sunday that the country would temporarily suspend the balloon activities, adding they were a countermeasure against the South’s leafleting campaigns.

"We made the ROK (Republic of Korea) clans get enough experience of how much unpleasant they feel and how much effort is needed to remove the scattered wastepaper," Kim said in a statement carried by state media.

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He also said if South Korean activists send more anti-Pyongyang leaflets via balloons into North Korea again, they will resume flying balloons to dump rubbish hundreds of times the amount of South Korean leaflets found in the North.

South Korea’s military said on Sunday that more than 700 balloons were found in various parts of the country, plus another nearly 260 balloons found days earlier.

Tied to the balloons, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, was manure, cigarette butts, scraps of cloth, waste paper and vinyl. No dangerous substances were said to be included.

Despite the South's claims that only about 1,000 balloons were launched, North Korea's vice defense minister said 3,500 balloons were launched carrying 15 tons of waste.

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Chang Ho-jin, South Korea’s national security director, said Sunday that the government decided to take "unbearable" measures against North Korea in retaliation for balloon launches, alleged jamming of GPS navigational signals in South Korea and simulation of nuclear strikes against the South.

Experts say North Korea’s balloon campaign, reportedly the first of its kind in seven years, is meant to stoke an internal divide in South Korea over its conservative government’s tough policy on the North.

Animosity between the Koreas is at its worst level in years as the pace of both Kim's weapons demonstrations and South Korea’s combined military exercises with the U.S. and Japan have intensified since 2022.

The failed satellite launch was a setback to Kim’s plan to launch three more military spy satellites in 2024 after North Korea’s first military reconnaissance satellite was placed in orbit last November. The November launch followed two failed attempts.

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North Korea has maintained that it has the right to launch satellites and test missiles in the face of what it perceives as U.S.-led military threats. Kim has described spy satellites as crucial for monitoring U.S. and South Korean military activities and enhancing the threat posed by his nuclear-capable missiles.

"Given the fact that the security environment for our state is undergoing drastic changes owing to U.S. military maneuvers and provocations of all sorts, possessing military reconnaissance satellites presents itself as a prerequisite for our state to bolster up its self-defensive deterrent and safeguard its sovereignty and security from potential threats," Kim said.

"Although we failed to achieve the results we had hoped to get in the recent reconnaissance satellite launch, we must never feel scared or dispirited but make still greater efforts. It is natural that one learns more and makes greater progress after experiencing failure."

North Korea hasn’t commented on when it would be ready to attempt a satellite launch again, which some experts say could take months.

Kim has been boosting the visibility of his ties with Russia in recent months, highlighted by a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in September as they align in the face of their separate confrontations with Washington.

Kim’s meeting with Putin was held at a spaceport in the Russian Far East and came after North Korea’s consecutive failures in its attempts to launch its first spy satellite. Putin told Russian reporters at the time that Moscow was willing to help the North build satellites.

The U.S. and South Korea have also accused North Korea of providing Russia with artillery shells, missiles and other military equipment to help prolong its fighting in Ukraine.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Fire breaks out at Russian oil refinery; deaths, injuries reported

Fire broke out at an oil refinery in northwestern Russia on Sunday, resulting in deaths and injuries, local officials said.

The regional governor said the fire was not caused by a Ukrainian drone strike and investigators opened a criminal case on suspicion of negligence.

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The fire near the city of Ukhta in Russia’s northwestern Komi Republic left at least three people injured, Komi’s emergencies ministry said. Regional investigators said that the fire also caused deaths, but did not specify how many. They did not say whether the fire had yet been extinguished.

"Today a fire occurred at an oil refinery facility in the city of Ukhta during scheduled technical work by a contractor, resulting in deaths and injuries," the investigative department wrote on Telegram.

Investigators have opened a criminal case into possible negligence at the oil refinery.

Regional Gov. Vladimir Uyba said that the fire was not related to a drone strike. In recent months, Russian refineries and oil terminals have become priority targets of Ukrainian drone attacks, part of stepped-up assaults on Russian territory.

Local officials did not specify which company the refinery belongs to, but images published by the local emergencies ministry show the logo of oil giant Lukoil.

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Protesters face deportation after participating in disruptive anti-Israel demonstrations

Nine European nationals are set to be deported from Greece for their participation in disruptive anti-Israel demonstrations on the campus of University of Athens School of Law last month.  

The protesters awaiting deportation are from Germany, Britain, France, Italy, and Spain. They were among 28 people of Greek and foreign origin who were detained on charges of disrupting the operation of a public entity and assistance in damaging foreign property, according to court documents.

The protesters have denied any wrongdoing. 

Evidence included leaflets, Palestinian flags, two smoke flares, gas masks, helmets, paint cans and banner poles, along with a statement uploaded on a website in Greek and English urging others to join the protest, according to the documents. 

The Greek protesters were released pending trial last Tuesday but the nine foreign nationals – one man and eight women, aged 22 to 33 – remain in custody pending an administrative decision on their deportation.

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Their lawyers said in a statement that deportation orders had been issued, which would prevent the defendants attending their own trial. 

Lawyers Ioanna Sioupouli and Anny Paparoussou said that their clients who live and work in Greece planned to appeal. Lawyer Vassilis Papadopoulos, representing a 33-year-old Spaniard, called the decision "arbitrary and illegal." 

In 2019, Greece’s conservative government scrapped a law that had prohibited police from entering universities, saying the legislation was used as a cover for lawlessness. 

Demonstrations in support of Palestine, like in the U.S., have swept Greece in response to Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza. 

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Addressing antisemitism should be priority for Europe before recognizing Palestinian state, leading rabbi says

Following the announcement by Spain, Norway and Ireland that they would recognize a Palestinian state, the president of the Conference of European Rabbis and the exiled chief rabbi of Moscow, Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, told Fox News Digital that Oct. 7 "came with a message: it is politically correct to be an antisemite again." He said this has made the past seven months "the most difficult time" for European Jews "since the Holocaust."

Goldschmidt explained that it is vital for Ireland, Norway and Spain "to understand that their declaration not only impacts the Middle East, it impacts the life and security of their own Jewish citizens."

Goldschmidt believes European countries that recognize a Palestinian state need to accept the extent to which terrorist and totalitarian entities influence the region. For "a two-state solution, you have to deradicalize the population. And then you can start building the bricks which are going to build an independent state for the Palestinians. But as long as the population is controlled by Iranian proxies, by a totalitarian ideology of radical Islam... it is not going to bring peace. It is going to bring war, and again, God forbid, the 7th of October." 

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Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez stated his country would diplomatically recognize a Palestinian state with its pre-1967 borders, according to an AP report. The recognition "is not against the Israeli people" but is rather "in favor of peace, justice and moral consistency." On May 23, Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz posted a video to X in which she stated that "Palestinians will be free from the river to the sea." The Times of Israel reported that Díaz later claimed that her use of the phrase was intended to support a two-state solution. For many, the phrase is considered a call to eliminate the state of Israel.

There are concerns among the Jewish community that pro-Palestinian sentiments in the country have led to increased antisemitism inside Spain. 

Jewish leaders penned an open letter in early May to the Spanish Conference of Rectors to decry their "complacency and permissiveness" in allowing antisemitic demonstrations to take place on Spanish campuses since Oct. 7, the European Jewish Congress reported. In their letter, leaders also noted that the Spanish Conference of Rectors spoke out after Oct. 7 "not to condemn, but only to reject" the terror attack, which the rectors referred to as a "military escalation." 

During the six months following Oct. 7, the Observatory for Religious Freedom and Conscience registered 36 attacks on Spain’s Jewish community. These included an attack on a synagogue, boycotts on Jewish businesses, a Star of David hung from a gallows, and antisemitic graffiti at a Barcelona public school reading "Hitler was right."

Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris said of the decision that "Palestinian statehood will contribute to peace and to reconciliation in the Middle East. A peace that honors the legitimate aspirations of all people in the region to live with respect, justice, security and dignity free from violence or the threat of violence." 

At home, however, there is criticism that some Irish leaders have stoked anti-Israel tensions.

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Maurice Cohen, chairman of the Jewish Representative Council in Ireland, told The Journal on Oct. 18 that Irish Jews were feeling supported by their communities after Hamas’ attack, but that statements from members of parliament had been "far from adequate."

In April, a primary and secondary school curriculum about the Israel-Palestinian conflict garnered criticism from the World Jewish Congress’ president, Ronald S. Lauder. According to Lauder, the lessons charged Israel with genocide, failed to report on Hamas’ atrocities, and encouraged students to "join the fight for Palestinian justice" without mentioning a peace process that would include Israel. 

The World Jewish Congress asked the Irish government to "prevent the use of this pernicious curriculum" in favor of one that "reflects historical truths and promotes peace."

Israeli officials have noted that the country is among the most hostile toward the Jewish state. Ireland’s Jewish population is only around 2,200 members. 

As a recognition of Palestinian statehood, Norwegian leaders have confirmed that they will convert their diplomatic office in the West Bank into an embassy. 

Though no available statistical data demonstrate the frequency of antisemitic incidents in Norway, Oslo’s Rabbi Joav Melchior told the Algemeiner in February that the country has experienced "a wave of antisemitism that we have not seen before." Melchior said Norwegian Jews are now debating whether to stay in the country. 

Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Espen Barth Eide was photographed in May with Mona Osman, the daughter of Palestinian terrorist Walid Osman, the Jerusalem Post reported. Osman was part of a Palestinian Liberation Organization splinter group that conducted a 1982 attack on Paris Jews that left six dead, including two Americans. In the photo with Eide, Osman’s daughter holds a sign saying "F--- Israel, F--- capitalism, F--- NATO." 

The Foreign Ministry issued a statement that Eide was not aware of the text, and "repeatedly supports NATO and Israel." Osman boasted on social media that she had "radicalized Foreign Minister Eide."

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In France, Germany and Poland, synagogues have been attacked. Jewish cemeteries have been vandalized in Austria and Belgium, and Jewish graves were damaged in Moulin-sous-Touvent, north of Paris.

Holocaust memorials in Drancy and Paris, Rome, Berlin, and Copenhagen have been defaced. Murals featuring young Holocaust victims, including Anne Frank, were also reportedly vandalized in Milan.

In March, Reuters reported that a Swiss teen attacked a 50-year-old Jewish man in Zurich, leading Swiss authorities to increase security at Jewish establishments. In May, the president of the Union of Jewish Students of Belgium was assaulted at a violent anti-Israel protest at Brussels University, according to Reuters. 

Of the 4,103 antisemitic events recorded in the U.K. in 2023, 2,140 took place in London. Israeli Minister for Disaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Amichai Chikli said he considers the British capital "the most antisemitic city" because of "the atmosphere created by pro-Hamas supporters."

As Europe’s Jewish population is targeted with hate, Rabbi Goldschmidt noted that Israelis still face the harrowing reality that it "is impossible to live with Hamas next door." He said the "only real discussion going on between parts of society in Israel today is what comes first, the return of the hostages, or the destruction of Hamas."

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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