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The Israel Defense Forces on Saturday confirmed killing Hamas military chief Izz al-Din al-Haddad, the terror group’s leader in Gaza, in a “precise strike” on Gaza City in the Strip’s north the previous day.
In a statement Saturday, the military said Haddad had recently “acted to rebuild the capabilities of the terrorist organization’s military wing and to plan numerous terror attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops,” despite a US-brokered ceasefire agreement in October.
A senior Hamas official and a member of the group’s armed wing were also cited by AFP and Reuters confirming Haddad’s death. Haddad was killed along with his wife and a daughter, according to another Hamas source.
AFP photographs showed mourners carrying the body of Haddad, wrapped in a Hamas flag, on a stretcher from the ruins of a building.
Separately, the IDF said it also killed two other Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel during the October 7 onslaught in recent strikes in the Strip. It said Khamer Iyad Muhammad Al-Matouq and Khaled Muhammad Salem Jouda were killed in separate strikes in northern Gaza in the past two weeks.
The military said the pair had recently attempted to carry out attacks on troops in Gaza, and had “posed an immediate threat to the forces.”
Another strike in central Gaza on Wednesday killed Abdel Rahman Mahmoud Jumaa Shafi, a member of Hamas’s Bureij Battalion, who the military said had advanced attacks on troops in Gaza.
The terror group had not officially commented on the killing of Haddad as of Saturday afternoon, even as witnesses said Gaza mosques announced his “martyrdom,” and Palestinian media published footage of a funeral procession and “martyr poster” for him in the Strip. Nicknamed “The Ghost,” Haddad had survived multiple assassination attempts by Israel, according to Hamas sources. Israel confirmed on Friday that it had targeted Haddad, without saying whether the strike had succeeded. Haddad, whom the IDF called “one of the architects of the brutal October 7 massacre,” took over his roles after the May 2025 killing of Mohammed Sinwar, the brother and successor of Yahya Sinwar, who led the terror group in the 2023 onslaught that sparked the war in Gaza.
“Throughout the war, Haddad was involved in holding many Israeli hostages in Hamas captivity. Haddad managed Hamas’s hostage captivity system and surrounded himself with hostages in an attempt to prevent his elimination,” the IDF said.
Israel’s last hostages in Gaza were freed as part of the October 2025 ceasefire.
Haddad joined the fledgling terror group in the 1980s and became one of its longest-surviving commanders. According to the military, he “maintained close ties with Hamas leadership” and played a “central role in Hamas’s terrorist rule” over the Strip.
He led Hamas’s Gaza City Brigade during the October 7 onslaught, and was one of the last remaining senior commanders “who directed the planning and execution of the October 7 massacre and the management of combat operations against IDF troops,” the IDF said. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir hailed his killing as a “significant operational success by the IDF led by the Southern Command, the Intelligence Directorate, the Air Force and the Shin Bet.”
Zamir said that “the name of the arch-terrorist” Haddad “came up again and again” in his conversations with former hostages, according to remarks published by the IDF.
“Today, we succeeded in eliminating him,” Zamir said. “The IDF will continue to pursue our enemies, strike, and settle accounts with everyone who took part in the October 7 massacre.”
Meanwhile, Zamir instructed the Southern Command to “maintain high operational readiness and to respond immediately to any attempt to harm our forces or the territory of the State of Israel,” the military said. Israel vowed to kill Hamas leaders following the October 7 onslaught, and has since then killed senior Hamas officials, including the Sinwar brothers, Hamas politburo head Ismail Haniyeh and longtime military chief Muhammad Deif.
The attack saw thousands of Hamas-led terrorists storm southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, who were eventually returned in military operations and truce-hostage deals.
Israeli forces have killed over 72,000 people in Gaza, according to the Strip’s Hamas-run health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
The IDF says it has killed over 23,000 combatants in Gaza and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught. Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas, including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques."
https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-confirms-hamas-gaza-chief-izz-al-din-al-haddad-killed-in-airstrike/
"A large portion of school students in Israel are falling below the educational standards set by the Education Ministry, Channel 12 reported on Saturday, citing leaked results from exams conducted last year by the National Authority for Educational Measurement and Evaluation (RAMA).
While the results had partially been made public earlier this month, Channel 12 reported that the Education Ministry had attempted to keep the science scores confidential, and they were not released with the rest of the data.
According to the leaked results, just three percent of ninth grade students in Israel met the requirements of the science curriculum, while another 16% came close to, but did not meet, the requirements. Eight-one percent of students fell short of the science curriculum’s expectations for ninth grade students.
The issue was not limited to science or to ninth grade students, Channel 12 found, as just 37% of sixth grade students were up to par in mathematics, and only 36% of sixth grade students met the English language curriculum requirements.
The data published by Channel 12 was the continuation of a trend that sparked concern over the state of Israel’s education system earlier this month, when results from 2025 exams showed that only 22 percent of Israeli ninth graders met the requirements of the English language curriculum.
Students in Israel have had their studies heavily interrupted in recent years, with the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers’ strikes, and wartime closures all contributing factors...."
https://www.timesofisrael.com/report-just-3-of-israeli-ninth-graders-met-science-requirements-in-latest-tests/
"Palestinian media reported several settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank on Saturday, hours after the IDF and police announced investigations into violent incidents involving settlers and soldiers in the territory a day earlier, including reports that troops stood by during attacks on Palestinians and property or, in some cases, participated.
The Red Crescent said Saturday night that one Palestinian was injured after being assaulted by settlers in the village of Kafin in the Tulkarem area of the western West Bank.
Palestinian media outlets also reported that a woman was injured after being assaulted by settlers in the Wadi Sa’ir area north of Hebron.
And in a separate incident, Palestinian media published footage of a confrontation between settlers and Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills area of the southern West Bank, in which two settlers could be seen physically fighting with several Palestinians.
Hours earlier, the army said it was probing the conduct of soldiers in several incidents, while police announced investigations into suspected crimes by settlers.
The spate of incidents, all of which took place in the central or northern West Bank over the past two days, came amid heightened tensions and ongoing military operations in the territory and near-daily incidents of settler attacks on Palestinians...."
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-probes-several-settler-attacks-troop-misconduct-as-w-bank-assaults-continue/
"One of the allegations made in the criminal complaint against Kata’ib Hezbollah senior official Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, following the US Department of Justice announcement of his arrest on Friday, was that Iranian proxies may have been behind at least two March shooting attacks in Toronto.
In the complaint, Al-Saadi, working on behalf of the Islamic Regime proxy, told an undercover law enforcement officer that his "people" were behind two attacks in Canada, against a consulate and synagogue.
The officer believed the consulate attack to be the March 10 shooting at the US consulate in Toronto. No injuries were caused by the early morning shooting, the Toronto Police Service said at the time, but damage was caused to the building.
March saw three different shooting attacks on Toronto area synagogues. On March 2, after Purim celebrations ended, there was a shooting at the Temple Emanu-El synagogue, leaving multiple bullet holes in the synagogue’s front windows.
On March 6, shots were fired at the Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto (the BAYT), and on March 7 at the Shaarei Shomayim synagogue....Al-Saadi was allegedly behind 20 different attacks and plots in North America and Europe, many of them under the banner of Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (HAYI). He was arrested, extradited, and charged on Friday for attacks on US interests in Europe and a plot to attack three Jewish sites in the US.
Kata’ib Hezbollah is widely regarded as a proxy of the Iranian regime and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps..."
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-896386
"The Swiss Federal Intelligence Service announced this month that it will reveal previously sealed files on the Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele, without specifying when, the BBC reported on Saturday.
Mengele, the doctor known as the Angel of Death, ran a system of experiments on Auschwitz camp prisoners, including severe torture of twins and people with disabilities, exploiting his professional status to advance Nazi racial theory.
Mengele evaded punishment for decades until his accidental death in 1979.
Although historically Mengele's interaction with Switzerland has been considered minimal, with a skiing visit in 1956 with his son as the most prominent publicly known connection, Swiss historian Regula Bochsler told the BBC that there was some evidence he'd been planning a trip to Europe, possibly including Switzerland.Crucially, this trip would have occurred sometime in 1959, after an international warrant was issued for Mengele's arrest...."
https://www.jpost.com/history/article-896384
"Amid security tensions with Iran, residents of Beit Shemesh reported and documented a large explosion Saturday evening in an area near the city. Tomer, a government-owned rocket propulsion company, was responsible for the explosion. The company said the blast had been coordinated and planned with the authorities.
The Beit Shemesh municipality denied that any official from the company or the defense establishment had informed it ahead of the explosion..."
https://www.israelhayom.com/2026/05/17/mystery-blast-near-beit-shemesh-sparks-panic-amid-iran-tensions/
"Izz al-Din Haddad, who was eliminated in Gaza over the weekend, was a marked man. Israel had no shortage of reasons or motivation to eliminate him: He was a member of Hamas' leadership for decades, one of the main planners and commanders of the Oct. 7 attack, a man who kept many hostages close to him as human shields, and the figure who in recent months led Hamas' force buildup efforts and firmly refused to advance US President Donald Trump's 20-point plan for Gaza's reconstruction.
His elimination is an operational achievement for the IDF and the Shin Bet security agency, the kind Israel has carried out countless times in recent years in every possible theater of war. It is certainly a morale blow to Hamas, but it is far from a strategic victory. Past experience shows that a successor will quickly arise, and that the terrorist organization will not change course. What was not achieved in two years of difficult fighting will not be achieved by one elimination more or less. There is no total victory here.
Still, several things can be learned from this elimination. The first is Israel's commendable determination to continue pursuing those responsible for the worst massacre in its history, certainly if they continue to play a central role in the ranks of its enemies. The second is Trump's limited interest in Gaza, which had been his "baby" until just a few months ago. The third is Hamas' determination to continue holding on to Gaza, both politically and militarily. The fourth is the absence of any solution, contrary to what was promised, to the Gaza issue. And the fifth, following from that, is the possibility, which is not at all remote, of renewed large-scale fighting in the Strip.
The IDF has been preparing for this in recent months and is meanwhile expanding the areas it holds on its side west of the border, amounting to more than 50% of the Gaza Strip. Hamas is also preparing for fighting, mainly in terms of recruiting fighters and acquiring weapons. For now, it is careful not to give Israel a pretext to launch a renewed campaign, although it is difficult to bet that this will not happen in the coming months. The international system, led by mediator Nikolay Mladenov, is expected to face considerable work in the effort to prevent the fighting from resuming.
For now, the international system is mainly occupied with Iran. A report in The New York Times hinted at what was written in Israel Hayom last week: The campaign is close to being renewed in the absence of a diplomatic way out. Trump must now address this, upon his return from China, after failing in his efforts to enlist the leadership in Beijing for effective pressure that would force Tehran to make concessions in the negotiations. He will do so, if he does, with obvious reluctance: His generals are struggling to promise that they can now achieve what they failed to achieve in six weeks of fighting in March and April..."
https://www.israelhayom.com/2026/05/17/as-iran-standoff-nears-breaking-point-gaza-war-could-reignite/
