American-Israeli IDF platoon commander Omer Neutra killed in battle

Captain Omer Neutra, 21, from New York was killed in battle on October 7th 2023, and his body has been held hostage in Gaza since, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced on social media. Neutra was from Long Island, served as a tank platoon commander in the Armored Corps 77th Battalion, 7th Brigade. Neutra was killed during the Hamas attack on the Nova Music Festival in Israel.

Prior to the IDF announcement, it was believed Neutra was alive and being held hostage. Due to Neutra’s body being held hostage, he is considered one of seven American hostages held in Gaza. Their families once again sat through another Thanksgiving dinner with an empty seat on Thursday, after urging that their release be prioritized. Cease-fire negotiations have all but collapsed, while Israel’s military campaign to defeat Hamas continues.

Many hold out hope that even if the Biden administration cannot secure the release of the hostages before he leaves office in January, that the incoming Trump administration may bring a change to the negotiations and secure the hostages’ release. The other American hostages still being held in Gaza include Edan Alexander, Sagui Dekel-Chen, Gadi Haggai, Judi Weinstein Haggai, and Keith Siegel. In October 2024, Israel was looking into the possibility that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, a mastermind of the October 7th 2023 attack that triggered the war in Gaza, had been killed in a military operation.

Authorities were conducting DNA tests on a body to determine if it was Sinwar.

Three militants were killed during operations in Gaza, without specifying where or elaborating further. Sinwar’s death would be a significant moment in Israel’s yearlong offensive against the militant group and could complicate efforts to release dozens of hostages held in Gaza. Sinwar became the head of Hamas after the killing of the previous leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in an explosion in Iran in July 2024 that was widely blamed on Israel.

Sinwar was born in 1962 in a refugee camp in the Gaza town of Khan Younis. Sinwar was an early member of Hamas, which was formed in 1987. Sinwar eventually led the group’s security arm, which worked to purge it of informants for Israel. Israel arrested Sinwar in the late 1980s and he admitted to killing 12 suspected collaborators, a role that earned him the nickname “The Butcher of Khan Younis”.

Sinwar was sentenced to four life terms for offenses that included the killing of two Israeli soldiers. Sinwar organized strikes in prison to improve working conditions. Sinwar also studied Hebrew and Israeli society. Sinwar survived brain cancer in 2008 after being treated by Israeli doctors. Sinwar was among more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners released in 2011 by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as part of an exchange for an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas in a cross-border raid.

When Sinwar returned to Gaza, he quickly rose through Hamas’ leadership ranks with a reputation for ruthlessness.

Sinwar was widely believed to be behind the 2016 killing of another top Hamas commander, Mahmoud Ishtewi, in an internal power struggle. Sinwar became head of Hamas in Gaza, effectively putting him in control of the territory, and worked with Haniyeh to align the group with Iran and its proxies around the region while also building the group’s military capabilities. Sinwar, along with Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’ armed wing, was believed to have engineered the surprise October 7th 2023 attack on Israel.

The attack killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and sparked a war that killed over 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza. Hamas launched the attack in retaliation for Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and to push the Palestinian cause back onto the world agenda. The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor sought arrest warrants in May 2024 for Sinwar, Deif, and Haniyeh for their alleged roles in the attack.

Israel killed Deif in a strike in July 2024, while Hamas said he was still alive. Sinwar had been in hiding since the attack, and cease-fire negotiators said it could take several days to send and receive messages from him. Even before becoming Hamas’ top leader, Sinwar was believed to have the final word on any deal to release hostages held by the militant group.

Some 100 hostages remained in Gaza, around a third of whom were believed to be dead.

It was unclear who would replace Sinwar, and what that might mean for the cease-fire efforts, which sputtered to a halt in August 2024 after months of negotiations brokered by the United States, Egypt, and Qatar. Hamas had hundreds of thousands of supporters in Gaza, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and Palestinian refugee camps across the region. Several of its top leaders were based in Qatar, which served as a mediator between Israel and the militant group.

Israel arrested and killed several top Hamas leaders and militant commanders over the years, and the militant group had quickly replaced them. Israeli forces continued a more than week-old major air and ground assault in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza. On Thursday October 17th 2024, an Israeli strike hit a school sheltering displaced Palestinians, killing at least 28 people.

The dead included a woman and four children, dozens of people were wounded. The Israeli military targeted a command center run by Hamas and Islamic Jihad inside the school. The Israeli military provided a list of around a dozen names of people it identified as militants who were present when the strike was called in. The list was not immediately possible to verify the names.

Israel repeatedly struck tent camps and schools sheltering displaced people in Gaza.

The Israeli military carried out precise strikes on militants and tried to avoid harming civilians, but its strikes often killed women and children. Israel’s offensive killed over 42,000 Palestinians. It did not differentiate between civilians and combatants but women and children made up a little more than half of the fatalities. Northern Gaza was the first target of Israel’s ground invasion and suffered the heaviest destruction of the war, with entire neighborhoods in Gaza City and other towns reduced to rubble.

Most of the population fled after Israel issued evacuation orders in the opening days of the war, but about 400,000 were believed to have remained despite the harsh conditions. In early October 2024, Israel once again ordered the full-scale evacuation of the north, and allowed no food aid to enter the area. That led many Palestinians to fear that it had adopted a surrender-or-starve strategy suggested by former Israeli generals.

Israel allowed two shipments of aid to enter the north after the United States warned it might reduce its military aid if its ally did not do more to address the humanitarian crisis. In September 2020, Bar Refaeli was sentenced by an Israeli court to nine months of community service along with her mother, who received 16 months in prison for tax evasion, putting an end to a prolonged court battle. Refaeli and her mother were convicted on offenses of evading paying taxes on income nearing $10 million in a case that sullied the name of the once-beloved national icon.

Refaeli entered the Tel Aviv courthouse in a beige T-shirt and wearing a light blue surgical face mask.

Refaeli was accompanied by her father, mother, and flanked by lawyers. According to a plea bargain accepted by the court, the daughter and mother were also ordered to pay a $1.5 million fine on top of millions of back taxes owed to the state. Refaeli’s mother was set to begin serving her prison sentence. The prolonged case, built around Refaeli’s worldwide income and the family’s attempts to downplay her ties to Israel, damaged her well-crafted public image as an informal ambassador for the country.

Still, Refaeli remained a popular TV personality and pitch-woman whose image was ubiquitous on highway billboards throughout the country. In 2019, Refaeli hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv. The case centered around Refaeli’s residence during years when she traveled around the world in high-profile modeling campaigns, graced the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, and had a lengthy romantic relationship with Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

Israeli tax law determined residency primarily upon whether the person spent most of the calendar year in the country. Refaeli claimed that she had not and therefore did not have to declare her income during certain years. Prosecutors rejected Refaeli’s claim and charged her with providing incorrect tax information. Refaeli’s indictment said she earned some $7.2 million between the years 2009-2012 while claiming to reside overseas to avoid paying Israeli taxes on her income.

In previous appeals, an Israeli court ruled that Refaeli’s relationship with DiCaprio did not qualify as a “family unit” and therefore she could not claim his United States residence to avoid paying the full taxes she owed.

Refaeli’s lawyers said the plea bargain proved she had not intentionally evaded paying taxes. Refaeli’s mother, who also acted as her agent, was charged with failure to report income, avoiding paying taxes, and aiding someone else in evading tax payments. The indictment said Refaeli’s mother signed leases for her daughter under the names of other family members to blur Refaeli’s actual residency status and refrained from declaring her own income as her daughter’s agent.