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 821st day.)
Since the “ceasefire” began on October 11, Israel has killed at least 439 Palestinians. At least 1,223 have been injured. Death toll figures are tentative.
Israel has so far violated the 11 October ceasefire deal in Gaza at least 969 times (as of Dec. 28, 2025). 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.)
Doctors report surge in premature births and congenital defects in Gaza
According to Dr Ahmed Al-Farra, head of pediatrics and obstetrics at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, doctors are now seeing rare and severe congenital conditions, including tumors present at birth, heart and digestive system malformations, incomplete brain development, and cases of babies born without an anus or with disconnected intestines.
He said some newborns die within days of birth, while others require urgent surgical procedures or prolonged intravenous feeding in order to survive, placing additional strain on Gaza’s overstretched health system (continue reading here).
RELATED:
Gaza’s children face genetic harm ‘for generations to come’ from Israel’s genocide
Aid Groups: Infants Are Dying in Gaza Because Israel Impedes Import of Baby Formula
Cold kills another Palestinian baby in Gaza as Israel continues to block shelter aid
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‘We just sit and cry’: Gaza’s cancer patients die waiting for treatment
There are 11,000 cancer patients currently stranded in Gaza, where the healthcare system has collapsed entirely. Doctors say the number of cancer-related deaths has tripled since October 2023. With no chemotherapy, no radiotherapy, and no way out, a cancer diagnosis has become, for many, a death sentence.
The epicenter of this crisis is the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital. Once the sole facility providing specialized oncology care in the Gaza Strip, it now stands as a hollowed-out shell (continue reading here).
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Hamas says Israel’s escalation in Gaza aims to undermine calm agreement
Following the unusually high death toll in Gaza on Thursday, the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, said that Israel’s continued bombardment of the Gaza Strip represents a serious and criminal escalation aimed at creating confusion, avoiding commitments under the calm agreement, and blocking the move to the second phase.
In a statement, Hamas called on the mediators and the states guaranteeing the ceasefire agreement to condemn what it described as “grave violations overseen by war criminal Netanyahu, based on false and fabricated pretexts” (continue reading here).
RELATED: Netanyahu thwarted seven Gaza ceasefire deals, Israeli report finds
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.)
150 arrests* reported in West Bank, Jerusalem during first week of 2026
The Palestine Center for Prisoner Studies has reported that Israeli occupation forces carried out 150 arrests of Palestinians and 136 administrative detention orders without filing charges during the first week of 2026, as part of an ongoing policy of escalation and repression in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.
Israel also carried out hundreds of home raids, accompanied by wide-scale searches and damage to property. Villages, refugee camps, and Palestinian towns were also stormed, within what it described as a policy of collective punishment and systematic abuse against civilians (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).
Each year, hundreds of Palestinians (many of them minors) are imprisoned for throwing stones, which can carry a sentence of up to 20 years (for Palestinians, not Israeli Jews).
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Palestinian Prisoners’ Media: Israel arrested over 600 minors in 2025
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Media Office reported that it documented more than 600 cases of minors being arrested by Israel during 2025, including a child who died in prison as a result of starvation tactics. The office said that the enemy targets children with arrests, harsh interrogations, and harsh sentences with the aim of destroying their future, distorting their consciousness, and spreading fear in society.
Since 1967, 55,000 cases of child arrests have been recorded, and the number has risen to approximately 1,700 children since October 7, 2023, with an unprecedented escalation in torture” (continue reading here).
RELATED: This 16-Year-Old American Is Among Hundreds of Palestinian Children Jailed In Israel
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WEST BANK HEADLINES:
West Bank invasions leave injuries and abductions
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.)
Israeli minister reveals: our agents are operating in Iran now
Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu has revealed that Israeli agents are currently active in Iran, in an interview with Israel’s army radio.
He said, “When we struck Iran last year, we were on their territory and knew how to prepare the ground for the attack. I can assure you that our people are working there right now. “Are they now acting directly to topple the regime? No. Are they acting to ensure that Iran cannot threaten us from all other aspects? Yes” (continue reading here).
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Israeli warplanes launch heavy airstrikes across southern Lebanon*
Israeli army claims attacks targeted Hezbollah infrastructure (*NOTE: Israel has attacked Lebanon almost every day since the ceasefire was reached on 27 November 2024, committing over 10,000 air and ground violations.)
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Israeli forces stage new incursion into Syria’s Quneitra countryside
Troops set up temporary checkpoint before withdrawing, reports Syrian state media (*NOTE: The Israeli army has carried out over 1,000 airstrikes and 400 cross-border raids on Syria since December 2024).
NEWS & HEADLINES (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.)
Netanyahu Says He Aims to End Israeli Reliance on U.S. Military Aid* in Next Ten Years
Speaking with the Economist, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said while he ‘very deeply [appreciates] the military aid that America has given us over the years,’ Israel’s economy will reach $1 trillion and should be ‘tapered off’ from the U.S. (*NOTE: Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II.
Successive Administrations, working with Congress, have provided Israel with assistance reflective of robust domestic U.S. support for Israel and its security; shared strategic goals in the Middle East; and historical ties dating from U.S. support for the creation of Israel in 1948. To date, the United States has provided Israel $174 billion (current, or non-inflation-adjusted, dollars) in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding.
For detailed, annotated information about US aid to Israel, read U.S. Aid to Israel and to Palestinians).
US provides Israel over $63 million in military aid per day; Palestinians receive $3.2 million per day in foreign (non-military) aid.
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Israel Still Keeps Media Out of Gaza – and the Supreme Court Is Enabling It
The Supreme Court’s delays on the issue sustain an unlawful policy, with each postponement granting more time to a system that suppresses scrutiny of the Palestinians’ plight.
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Gazelles Are the Latest Victims of Israeli Illegal Activity Near the Separation Barrier
Unregulated construction and waste dumping threatens to destroy an important wildlife corridor between Israel and the West Bank.
OTHER NEWS & HEADLINES:
From Palestine to Minneapolis, ICE and Israel use the same violent playbook
ICE and the Israeli army are using the same playbook because they are born of the same system of state violence and white-supremacy – the same machinery of racialized control that has been refined in Palestine and imported to American cities through deliberate policy and corporate profit. As Noura Erakat penned, the ‘imperial boomerang has already made its way back.
Calling victims “terrorists” is how you make the dead responsible for their own deaths. Israel has spent decades making it so that every Palestinian killed at a checkpoint was “trying to ram soldiers,” every journalist shot while wearing a press vest was “operating with militants,” every child killed was somehow an imminent threat requiring lethal force. How else can you justify turning Gaza into a graveyard?
Palantir runs ICE’s case management systems that track and monitor immigrants to enable fast-track deportations, and that same company provides AI-based targeting platforms for Israeli military airstrikes that decide which Palestinians to kill using data that includes private communications between Palestinian Americans and their relatives in Gaza (continue reading here).
RELATED: Human Rights Watch: Questions and Answers: Israeli Military’s Use of Digital Tools in Gaza
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Russia carries out three evacuation flights from Israel in under 24 hours
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Keir Starmer ‘now more unfavorable than Hamas’ in UK: YouGov poll
A YouGov poll found that Brits have a higher unfavorability rating for their Prime Minister than Hamas, which is proscribed as a terrorist* group in the UK (*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).
RELATED: to see how Israel conveys “news,” read Five Days on a Media Junket in Israel: Lies, Half-Truths, and Conspiracy Nonsense
ICYMI (IN CASE YOU MISSED IT) – A SELECTION OF YESTERDAY’S HEADLINES:
35,000 ‘Partially or Completely’ Deaf in Gaza Due to Israeli Bombings
Israel is quietly erasing Palestinian refugee camps from existence in the West Bank
Social media calls the ICE killing incident “the full Israelification” of the US
(Read yesterday’s daily update here.)
STATISTICS OCTOBER 7, 2023 – JANUARY 9, 2026*:
- At least 72,494 Palestinians killed, 182,279 injured – including:
- At least 71,409 killed in Gaza (~22,000 children, 33,000 women and girls)
- At least 1,103 killed in the West Bank (~229 children)
- At least 171,304 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 9, 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 Targeted Churches, Mosques, and Markets during the Genocide.
- ‘We Saved the Child From Drowning’: In Gaza, Winter Storm Makes Displacement Even Deadlier
- Palestinian church committee urges churches worldwide to protect aid work in Gaza
- BlackNest: Inside Canary Mission’s Secret Web of Unlisted Sites
- Israel’s role in Trump’s attacks on Venezuela
- This is how Israeli settlers, backed by the military, erased a Palestinian village from existence last week
- Israel is waging a reproductive genocide against Palestinian mothers in Gaza
- With Their Breadwinners Killed, Gaza’s Children Turn to Begging to Survive
- Israel And Its Supporters Deliberately Foment Hate And Division In Our Society
- ADL’s J7: Biweekly Jewish Nationalism Think Tank
- Israel gives war profiteers sole control of life-saving Gaza aid: Report
- Once Again, the New York Times Sells Israel’s Genocide in Gaza as Law Enforcement
- Israel Accuses Zohran Mamdani of Antisemitism for Reversing Orders Adams Gave Under Indictment
- Controlled Dissent: The Hidden System That Broke Charlie Kirk
