Compilation of news reports – IAK staff
(While a “ceasefire” is ostensibly in place, Israel has continued its assault on Gaza without interruption. If Americans Knew considers the war to be ongoing, and in its 824th day.)
At least five Palestinian people were killed in Gaza as a fierce winter storm toppled buildings damaged by Israeli attacks in its genocidal war on the territory, local health officials said. The dead included 2 women and a girl; a one-year-old boy also died of hypothermia overnight. The Israeli army also killed two Palestinians in Rafah.
Deaths caused by extreme cold in the Gaza Strip have risen to 24, including 21 children, since the start of Israel’s genocidal war in October 2023, local authorities said Tuesday.
Since the “ceasefire” began on October 11, Israel has killed at least 449 Palestinians. At least 1,246 have been injured. Death toll figures are tentative.
Israel has so far violated the 11 October ceasefire deal in Gaza at least 1,193 times (as of Jan. 9, 2026). More statistics below.
GAZA NEWS & HEADLINES:
(For some basic info on the Palestine-Israel conflict, go here. For more critical context, skim this, this, and this. To read about a remarkable but underreported, 20-month-long peaceful protest in Gaza against Israel, go here.)
During Gaza’s “Ceasefire,” Over 100 Children Killed: UNICEF
UNICEF Spokesperson, James Elder said in a press briefing Tuesday, “More than 100 children have been killed in Gaza since the ceasefire of early October. That is roughly one girl or boy killed every day. During a ceasefire.
“What the world now calls ‘calm’ would be considered a crisis anywhere else. Unfortunately, the ceasefire has had an unintended effect: Palestinian children in Gaza have disappeared from view” (continue reading here).
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‘Alive or dead?’: Gaza families trapped in information void about detained* relatives
Thousands of Palestinian families in Gaza wait in agonizing silence for news of missing loved ones swallowed by Israel’s detention system. This psychological limbo was highlighted this week by the case of Hamza Adwan, a 67-year-old detainee whose family was informed of his death on Sunday – four months after he actually died in custody on September 9, 2025 (continue reading here).
*NOTE: The vast majority of Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons are political prisoners; thousands are administrative detainees, being kept behind bars without charge, trial, or access to a lawyer. A growing number are children. Administrative detention is intended to be used only in “exceptional” circumstances, but Israel uses it widely. (Read more here.)
Israeli prisons regularly use torture (and have done so for over 50 years). The Palestinian detainee death toll since October 2023 is around 100, some of whom have not been identified.
NOTABLE QUOTE: “Criminalizing compassion”
What Israel is doing now is not strength. It is panic dressed up as sovereignty.
When a state begins to ban humanitarian organisations en masse—many of them globally respected, medically neutral, and active in conflict zones across the world—it signals something deeper than “security concerns.” It signals a collapse of moral confidence. It signals fear without proportion, fear without reason—and fear that ultimately devours its own justifications.
The list is staggering: ActionAid, CARE, Oxfam, Médecins Sans Frontières across multiple countries, the Danish and Norwegian Refugee Councils, World Vision, Caritas, Defense for Children International, Medical Aid for Palestinians, and many more. These are not armed factions. These are doctors, aid workers, child-protection advocates, refugee specialists. Their crime is not violence. Their crime is witness.
To ban them is not to fight terror. It is to criminalize compassion (continue reading here).
OCCUPIED WEST BANK/EAST JERUSALEM NEWS & HEADLINES:
(Every day, Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem endure dozens of incidents like the ones below, at the hands of Israeli soldiers and/or settlers. For background on the West Bank, read this and this. For information on the significance of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, read this and this.)
WATCH: Israeli soldier dances as homes demolished in occupied West Bank
Ha’aretz: For Hundreds of Palestinians*, a 2-kilometer Jerusalem Commute Takes Three Hours
A checkpoint near Al-Sawahreh al-Sharqiyeh, in East Jerusalem, once provided direct access to the city, but most residents of the neighborhood [the Palestinian ones] are longer permitted to use it, with no explanation from the authorities.
*NOTE: This headline from the Israeli news site Ha’aretz is just one of many examples of the separate but unequal system Israel has set up across the territory it controls – a system determined by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Israeli human rights groups B’Tselem, and Yesh Din , the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, the International Court of Justice, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), and Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic to be apartheid.
Israeli Army Abducts Six Palestinians In Jerusalem
Widespread Invasions, Abductions Across West Bank
ISRAEL NEWS & HEADLINES:
(Israel is a tiny country, about the size of New Jersey, with a population smaller than the US state of Georgia – about 10 million (of which about 20 percent are Palestinians), yet it is in the news constantly. As has been demonstrated again and again, however, mainstream media rarely covers Israel accurately. IAK passes along only factual reporting.)
UN chief warns he could refer Israel to ICJ over laws targeting UNRWA*
In October 2024, Israel passed a law banning the agency for Palestinian refugees in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem. In a January 8 letter to Netanyahu, Guterres said the UN cannot remain indifferent to “actions taken by Israel, which are in direct contravention of the obligations of Israel under international law. They must be reversed without delay.”
*NOTE: UNRWA, the United Nations body with a mandate to help Palestinian refugees, has been serving the refugees in exile in Gaza for decades as they wait for their internationally recognized right of return to be activated. After a years-long campaign to dismantle UNRWA, Israel outlawed the organization following an unsubstantiated accusation that 12 employees (out of a staff of 13,000) were part of the October 2023 attack. Israel’s brief dossier, allegedly proving their guilt, offered no compelling evidence. As of July 2025, Israel has still failed to provide evidence to back up its accusations against UNRWA.
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*NOTE: Anyone can visit the Al Aqsa Mosque grounds, but only Muslims are allowed to pray there, according to an understanding known as the ‘status quo agreement,’ under which for decades, Israel has formally pledged to allow Muslims to pray at the site, while Jews pray at the Western Wall below. The agreement has been in place since Israel captured the Old City of Jerusalem from Jordan in 1967.
In practice, however, restrictions have steadily eroded. Since 2023, Israeli police have increasingly allowed Jewish visitors to pray inside the compound. Authorities have also permitted audible group prayer, singing and, in 2024, public Torah lessons, particularly on the eastern side of the compound.
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Which countries made the biggest deals with Israel in 2025?
Israel signed several record multibillion-dollar gas, technology and military deals with its trading partners last year. Among them were several record multibillion-dollar deals in the technology and military sectors in 2025, profiting largely from selling military and surveillance equipment that has been “battle-tested*” in Palestine and across the region.
*NOTE: Read about Israel’s highly profitable weapons and surveillance industry, thanks to their marketability as “battle-tested” here and here.
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Israel raises alert for Air Force after reports of possible US strike on Iran
Israel cuts ties with UN agencies, international organizations over their criticisms of Gaza genocide
Knesset approves bill allowing death penalty for Palestinians over 7 October attack
Israeli prime minister returns to court for 70th hearing in corruption trial*
*NOTE: Read about Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s corruption trial here and here.
NEWS (WITH NOTES) FROM ISRAELI MEDIA:
(You can learn a lot about a country from its headlines. Get a glimpse inside this country that is rife with turmoil and contradictions that receives $63 million a day from America.)
A growing number of Palestinians suspected of illegal entry are being held in police custody in overcrowded cells, even told to ‘defecate on each other.’ One Palestinian was held overnight in an open-air cell in the Jerusalem Hills with no shoes, what he described as ‘a cage with damp blankets.’
*NOTE: Large numbers of Palestinians – including women and children – have always been arrested by Israel, but the practice has been particularly rampant since October 2023 – including children. Since 1967, about 40% of male Palestinians in the occupied territories have been arrested.
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Ben-Gvir switches terrorist* execution method to hanging in revised death penalty bill
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir announced that hanging would be the method of execution for terrorists under the death penalty law instead of lethal injection, presenting a revised outline of the bill during a Tuesday Knesset National Security Committee meeting.
Ben-Gvir told the panel, “This formulation is acceptable to the majority of citizens of the State of Israel, whereas at the beginning of the term I was told it was unrealistic” (read about Ben Gvir’s racist rhetoric here and here, and the Israeli public’s general disdain for Palestinians here and here).
*NOTE: The use of the word “terrorist” for an individual or group that resists occupation and oppression is a political, not fact-based choice. In reality, international law supports the efforts of resistance groups against an occupying power, the UN extending that right to the point of armed resistance. Additionally, Israel regularly labels Palestinians they have killed as “terrorists” to rationalize their deaths, whether they did anything threatening or not.
OTHER NEWS & HEADLINES:
The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is demanding the university turn over names and personal information about Jewish members of the Penn community as part of the administration’s stated goal to combat antisemitism on campuses.
But some Jewish faculty and staff have condemned the government’s demand as “a visceral threat to the safety of those who would find themselves identified because compiling and turning over to the government ‘lists of Jews’ conjures a terrifying history”, according to a press release put out by the groups’ lawyers (continue reading here).
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New York AG Slams Pro-Israel Group Betar U.S. for Biased Harassment of Arabs, Muslims
“New York will not tolerate organizations that use fear, violence, and intimidation to silence free expression or target people because of who they are,” Letitia James, the state’s attorney general, said in a statement. “My office’s investigation uncovered an alarming and illegal pattern of bias-motivated harassment and violence designed to terrorize communities and shut down lawful protest” (continue reading here).
We must act before Palestinian hostages are executed in the world’s worst prisons*
*NOTE: To learn about the horrific situation in Israel’s prisons for Palestinians, read this and this.
ICYMI – A SELECTION OF YESTERDAY’S HEADLINES:
Two more children die of exposure
As genocide continues in Gaza, the West Bank is pushed into a new Nakba
Israeli officials openly call for permanent occupation* of Gaza
(Read yesterday’s daily update here.)
STATISTICS OCTOBER 7, 2023 – JANUARY 13, 2026*:
- At least 72,542 Palestinians killed, 182,324 injured – including:
- At least 71,439 killed in Gaza (~22,000 children, 33,000 women and girls)
- At least 1,103 killed in the West Bank (~229 children)
- At least 171,324 injured in Gaza
- About 11,000 injured in the West Bank
*NOTE: Thousands of those killed in Gaza have yet to be identified, and an estimated 10,000 more are still buried under rubble. Additionally, the numbers of injured and starved are very conservative estimates. Only the dead who are brought to hospitals are included in the official fatality count.
Reported Israeli death toll from October 7, 2023 – January 13, 2026: ~1,661 – including ~1,139** on October 7, 2023 (~36 children), 471 military forces since the ground invasion began in Gaza, about 52 military and civilians (by one count, there have been 59 victims) in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Israel.
By one count, Israeli attacks have killed approximately 275 Palestinian journalists and media workers; Palestinians have killed 4 Israeli journalists (other groups have tallied between 215 and 328 Palestinian journalists killed – depending on the criteria used).
**NOTE: It is unknown at this time how many of the deaths and injuries of Israelis on October 7 were caused by Israeli soldiers.
- Human rights reports on Israel-Palestine (regularly updated)
- Israel Has Demolished 2,500 Buildings in Gaza Since Signing Ceasefire Deal
- Iran, Gaza and the politics of counting the dead
- How Israel’s move in Somaliland fits in its broader strategy for regional dominance
- As genocide continues in Gaza, the West Bank is pushed into a new Nakba
- Israeli settlers beat elderly, deaf Palestinian man in West Bank attack, video shows
- U.S. May Bankroll New Israeli Armored Vehicles With Billions of Dollars, Internal Files Reveal
- How Israel and the US are exploiting Iranian protests
- The New Neoconservatives
- The Israeli Influence Operation Aiming to Install Reza Pahlavi as Shah of Iran
- Israel is quietly erasing Palestinian refugee camps from existence in the West Bank
- The “Zionist tint” to the Maduro abduction, if not operational, then normative
- Press association condemns Israel’s continued ban on media access to Gaza
- Israeli Indifference to Palestinian Suffering Is Fertile Ground for the Growth of Sadism
- Israel Targeted Churches, Mosques, and Markets during the Genocide.
