"A sprawling fundraising scandal is convulsing Islamist circles from Istanbul to Amman after allegations that nearly $500 million collected in the name of Gaza never reached the Strip. The money ended up under the control of Muslim Brotherhood-linked networks operating across Turkey and Jordan, triggering an unusually public rupture with Hamas.

For more stories from The Media Line go to themedialine.org
Hamas abruptly distanced itself from a cluster of longstanding pro-Gaza charities, accusing them of acting without authorization, exploiting outdated endorsements, and channeling donations through opaque structures that bypassed the movement's oversight. The announcement sent shockwaves through the wider Islamist ecosystem, where fundraising for Gaza has long served as both a political project and a moral rallying cry.

“During the war months, people in Gaza developed a deeply negative view of anyone raising money in their name,” Mansour Abo Kareem, a Gaza-based political researcher, told The Media Line. “They have seen cases of sudden, extreme wealth built on the suffering of Gaza’s residents.”..."
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-876637

"A Hamas terrorist crossed Gaza's Yellow Line and surrendered to IDF soldiers on Saturday, a US official told CBS News.

The report did not specify where the incident occurred along the ceasefire line.

The terrorist told the IDF that Hamas recently recruited him, but he regrets his choice to join the terror group, the official told CBS..."
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-876632

"A journey that began more than 2,700 years ago may at last be coming to a dramatic end.

This past Sunday, the Israeli government announced that it had approved a comprehensive plan to bring all the remaining 6,000 members of the Bnei Menashe community of India on aliyah by 2030.

For some people, this might be just another entry in their newsfeed. But for anyone who believes in the promise of Jewish destiny, the vision proclaimed by prophets and carried by exiles over thousands of years, this is nothing less than a watershed moment..."
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-876404

"Al-Jamaa al-Islamiya terrorists who were arrested after operating in southern Syria admitted to ties with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, during an interrogation, a source told Israel's public broadcaster KAN News on Saturday.

The detainees also admitted to receiving funding from these sources in order to arm themselves to carry out attacks against Israel.

Terrorists from the group, largely based in Lebanon, published a denial that the group is operating in Syria..."
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-876634

Phase I requires all hostages to be returned. That not occurring is an issue if you want to proceed to Phase II. Already there has been movement toward aspects of Phase II. Phase II also requires Hamas to give up its arms. So far they have not committed to doing so. The excuses by Qatar are getting thin.

"A spokesman for Qatar’s Foreign Ministry says that Israel should not be able to delay the move to the next stage of the ceasefire plan on the grounds that the bodies of two hostages are still held in Gaza.

In an interview with an Al-Araby Al-Jadeed podcast, Majed al-Ansari says the issue of the two remaining bodies “is the most important” right now.

“We don’t believe Israel should be allowed to obstruct the implementation of the agreement over these two bodies. At the same time, of course, the Palestinian side is working to retrieve the bodies and preempt any Israeli pretexts,” he says.

“The current endeavor for Qatar and its partners in the region is to move from the first phase to the second [of the plan], and thus achieve a sustainable peace that can comprehensively end the state of war in the Gaza Strip,” he says. “There are significant challenges in reaching this stage of truce, but the focus now is on maintaining it long enough to reach a political solution in which all parties in the region, along with the international community and the United States, work together to make this plan a success and end the war.”

Ansari additionally says that any potential normalization between Doha and Israel will only occur within the framework of a solution to the Palestinian issue.

Two deceased hostages abducted on October 7, 2023, remain in Gaza: police officer Ran Gvili, killed fending off the Hamas invasion at Kibbutz Alumim; and Thai national Sudthisak Rinthalak, who was taken from Kibbutz Be’eri, where he worked in agriculture.

Yesterday, Ran’s father, Itzik Gvili, addressed the weekly rally in Tel Aviv, saying that there must “no next phase” to the current Gaza ceasefire, and “no ‘day after’ in Gaza,” until Hamas returns the last two bodies.

The first phase of US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan formed the basis of Israel and Hamas’s October 9 truce-hostage deal.

In the next stage of the plan, Israel is meant to withdraw further from the Yellow Line, alongside the establishment of a transitional authority to govern Gaza, the deployment of a multinational security force meant to take over from the Israeli military, the disarmament of Hamas, and the start of reconstruction.In addition to still holding two bodies, Hamas has so far refused to agree on the matter of demilitarization. Israel insists the Strip must be demilitarized before Trump’s plan can advance."
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/qatar-israel-shouldnt-obstruct-move-to-next-phase-of-gaza-deal-over-2-remaining-hostage-bodies/

"Five hundred years ago, the first Bible featuring a map was published. The anniversary has passed uncelebrated, but it transformed the way that Bibles were produced. The map appeared in Christopher Froschauer’s 1525 Old Testament, which was published in Zürich and widely distributed in 16th-century central Europe.

Yet despite being a groundbreaking moment in the Bible’s history, the initial attempt was hardly a triumph.

It is flipped along the north-south axis (meaning it’s back to front). As a result, the Mediterranean appears to the east of Israel/Palestine, rather than to the west. It illustrates how little many in Europe knew about the Middle East that such a map could have been published without anyone in the printer’s workshop questioning it..."
https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-the-first-bible-to-include-a-map-helped-spread-the-idea-of-countries-with-borders/

"For the first time, two scholars have used radiocarbon analysis to pinpoint the era in which Pharaoh Nebpehtire Ahmose reigned over Egypt, determining that he must have ascended the throne in the second half of the 16th century BCE.

In so doing, they have also opened new avenues for investigating a long-rumored connection between the events described in the biblical Exodus and a devastating volcanic eruption in the Aegean Sea long considered contemporary to Ahmose, said Prof. Hendrik J. Bruins from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the lead author of a new study in which the scholars published their findings.

The study, published in the prominent journal PLOS ONE last month, has significant implications for understanding the history of Egypt, the land of Israel, and the wider region. The Thera-Santorini volcano’s eruption has fascinated generations of archaeologists for its potential as a source of stories such as the Greek legend of Atlantis and the biblical narrative of the divine emancipation of the enslaved Israelites from their cruel Egyptian masters.

Located some 120 kilometers (75 miles) north of Crete, the volcano likely generated days of darkness, tsunamis, and possibly even a pillar of fire visible in Egypt (pumice from the eruption has been found in both modern-day Israel and Egypt). Previous assessments claimed that the eruption occurred around 1500 BCE. Ahmose was the founder of the 18th Dynasty and of the New Kingdom, a period of renewed prosperity in ancient Egypt following several difficult centuries.

An important archaeological artifact from the time of Ahmose, the “Tempest Stela,” describes disastrous climate phenomena. In the past, many scholars suggested the inscription refers to the Thera eruption. However, Bruins and his co-author Johannes van der Plicht from the University of Groningen used the same radiocarbon analysis method on samples associated with Ahmose and on seeds and branches charred by the eruption.

By comparing the results, the scholars determined that the pharaoh clearly ruled over Egypt several decades after the eruption. “In the last decade, geologists have found ash from the Thera eruption in many places in the eastern Mediterranean,” Bruins told The Times of Israel over the phone. “Eruptions can be very useful as anchors in time, because they happened over the course of a couple of days, and then they are over. Ash from this eruption is a kind of stratigraphic marker.”

Scientific methods, such as radiocarbon analysis, provide independent dating to compare with the more traditional methods used by scholars, including historical sources, pottery typology, and archaeological artifacts. These traditional methods often fail to provide exact dating.

“In many parts of the Mediterranean, including ancient Israel, the local stratigraphies are floating in time and [scholars] try to connect them to Egyptian history for the simple reason that Egyptian history is more well established in time,” Bruins explained.

Yet, even Egyptian chronology, based on when different dynasties and pharaohs ruled over the kingdom, leaves many questions open, even after radiocarbon dating has become more prevalent, offering new tools to support what historians had traditionally dated based on written sources. The Second Intermediate Period, one of the most obscure periods in Egypt’s ancient history, roughly spanned from 1700 to 1550 BCE. Its beginning, duration, and end are debated among scholars.

During this period, Egypt was divided into the Upper and Lower Kingdoms. Ahmose was the sovereign who reunited the country, defeated the Hyksos Dynasty that ruled over the Lower Kingdom, marking the beginning of the New Kingdom, and started his own dynasty.

“There has been a question about when the 18th Dynasty really began, also in relation to the Thera eruption, and so I was looking for material from the Second Intermediate Period [to date],” Bruins said.

“It was quite difficult to find, because these periods are less well known in historical terms, as its pharaohs do not always have records of them, nor do museums have many remains that could be dated with radiocarbon,” he added.

The scholar began pursuing this research avenue in 2013, approaching several museums and requesting their artifacts. Many did not respond positively, mainly because the study required extracting samples from the items for analysis. However, the British Museum and the Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology (University College, London) ultimately agreed to provide some artifacts from their collections.

“The most important object has been a mud brick excavated around 1900 by British archeologists in the temple of Ahmose in Abydos, in southern Egypt,” Bruins said. “The brick is stamped with the throne name of the king Nebpehtire. Ahmose was a quite common name in Egypt at the time, and other pharaohs were carrying it, but thanks to his throne name, this marked the first time that we could put our hands on an object that can be confidently related to this particular pharaoh." The researchers managed to extract a straw piece added to the brick to strengthen it, as was done at the time.

“Scholarly opinions about Ahmose’s accession year ranged from 1580 BCE to 1524 BCE,” Bruins explained. “Our radiocarbon dating of the Ahmose mudbrick supports the two youngest Egyptological dating assessments for when the mudbricks for his temple were made, around 1517 or 1502 BCE, or what we archaeologists refer to as the ‘low chronology.'” Since the temple depicts scenes of Ahmose’s battles against the Hyksos, the brick must date to a period in his kingdom after the war, possibly around the 22nd year of his reign.

Bruins was also able to study six shabtis, or human figurines roughly carved from wood representing mummies buried with the deceased, which he received from the Petrie Museum.

“One shabti carries the name of a person that is also mentioned on an important tomb in Southern Egypt as the mayor of Thebes, and his rule covered part of the time of Pharaoh Ahmose and of his son Amenhotep I,” Bruins said. “The radiocarbon date of this shabti is virtually the same as that of the mud brick. They confirmed each other.” At the same time, the researchers’ analysis of the Thera eruption yielded a time range of 60-90 years earlier.

According to the Bruins, therefore, the Tempest Stela must refer to a different meteorological event.

The PLOS ONE paper does not address the implications of the new datings for the history and chronology of the land of Israel, which have generally been based on the Egyptian chronology.

However, Bruins told The Times of Israel that they are significant and he is already working on a study on the subject. The transition between the Middle Bronze Age and the Late Bronze Age in Israel has traditionally been linked to the beginning of the 18th Dynasty in Egypt.

“At the time, many powerful city-states in the Middle Bronze Age were somehow destroyed or replaced or didn’t continue [to exist] afterward, and usually this transition was linked with the beginning of the New Kingdom and its pharaohs,” Bruins said.

According to the researcher, the incursions into Canaan have been generally attributed to Pharaoh Thutmose III, the fifth king of the 18th Dynasty.

“We have historical accounts about this pharaoh that he really penetrated into the Levant, in ancient Israel, and also more to the north,” he said.

According to Bruins, if Thutmose was not the one responsible for the destruction of the Canaanite city-states, it is important to investigate who else was.

“If these cities, or some of these cities, were destroyed before the beginning of the 18th Dynasty, then there’s a question about which Egyptians did this? Because we have no records from the Second Intermediate Period that Egyptian pharaohs made large military excursions into the Levant,” he said.

According to Bruins, there are questions to be explored around a potential correlation between the Thera eruption, the destruction of Canaanite cities, and the Exodus... Asked in which century he would look, he went back to the Thera eruption.

“If we take the [biblical] text, one of the features of the Exodus is the darkness in Egypt,” he noted, referring to one of the plagues that God sent against the Egyptians according to the Bible..."
https://www.timesofisrael.com/study-anchors-obscure-pharaoh-in-time-opening-research-path-into-dating-the-exodus/