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Jabalia Camp Hit by 2nd IDF Airstrike; Cornell Student Charged for Making Anti-Semitic Threats; Forensic Scientists Discover Brutality of October 7th Attacks; Opposition Grows Over House Speaker's Israel Aid Plan. Aired 12-1a ET
Aired November 02, 2023 - 00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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JOHN VAUSE, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: Wherever you are around the world, thank you for joining us here on CNN. I'm John Vause in Atlanta with our ongoing coverage of Israel's war with Hamas.
And for the first time since Israel declared war on Hamas, a few hundred people holding foreign passports and a few dozen seriously wounded Palestinians have arrived in Egypt from Gaza. For weeks, many have been waiting at the Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt, the 2 other border crossings into Israel remain closed.
Israel and Egypt agreed to open the border after negotiations brokered by the U.S. and Qatar, which will allow hundreds more to leave in the coming days. The U.S. State Department believes about 1,000 Americans and their families are stuck in Gaza trying to get out. Here's the U.S. President Joe Biden.
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JOSEPH BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're in a situation where safe passage for wounded Palestinians and foreign nationals to exit Gaza has started. The American citizens are able to exit today as part of the first group of probably over a thousand. We'll see more of this process going on in the coming days, working nonstop to get Americans out of Gaza as soon and as safely as possible.
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VAUSE: Aid worker Ramona Okumura was 1 of 2 Americans among the 361 people who left Gaza on Wednesday. Her niece spoke to CNN soon after her aunt arrived in Egypt.
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AKEMI HIATT, NIECE OF AMERICAN AID WORKER NOW IN EGYPT: I think there is still frustration from many who are still there. I don't know -- you know, we we understand the complexity of the negotiation and we were not, we were not privy to the nuances of that. And so, we just remain incredibly grateful. But we also do call upon our government to continue evacuating other dual citizens, other Americans to also hopefully call for a ceasefire, because this is, you know, from the last couple of days, we were very growing, very desperate.
We were hearing from her that there were really limited food. They were starting to ration. People had illnesses and she was relatively protected given her status as an aid worker. But we know that, that that is not the situation everyone else is in.
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VAUSE: The agreement also called for dozens of wounded Palestinians to be evacuated to Egypt for immediate, immediate medical attention. That does not apply to wounded Hamas fighters. And for the second time in as many days, the Jabali refugee camp has been hit by an Israeli airstrike. The IDF claimed Hamas command center was the target. At least 80 people were killed, according to hospital officials. UN human rights officers, the scale of destruction and high civilian casualties, quote, could amount to war crimes.
Well, for more on the opening of the rougher crossing, here's CNN's Melissa Bell reporting in from Cairo.
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MELISSA BELL, CNN PARIS CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): A tired smile and a wave from one of the lucky few finally allowed to leave Gaza since the war began. These families, just some of the first foreign and dual nationals finally permitted through the rougher crossing into Egypt on Wednesday, the result of a deal brokered by Qatar between Israel, Hamas, Egypt and the United States that will allow all foreign and dual nationals to leave the besieged enclave.
Also allowed to leave under the deal, the first Palestinians, 81 of the most severely wounded, those desperate enough for urgent surgical intervention taken one by one in a convoy of ambulances to a field hospital set up a few miles away and to other hospitals in northern Egypt. Large crowds of foreign nationals had been massing at the border after hearing at the start of the conflict that they'd be allowed out. Families desperately checking to see if they were some of those lucky enough finally to get through.
ISMAIL ABU SHAABANE, AMERICAM - PALESTINIAN IN GAZA: I'm an American living in Gaza. We heard that the crossing was open, but unfortunately, we discovered that it was open for specific nationalities at the moment. And we had to turn back because the cellular network was down and we weren't aware that there was a list. We hope to see our names on the list tomorrow or the next day.
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BELL (voice-over): As the only crossing from Gaza to anywhere other than Israel, all eyes had been on Rafah ever since the total siege of the Strip was announced by Israel. It is the only way in and out now, and what's gone in has been painfully little. A further 20 trucks arriving on Wednesday, a drop in the ocean, say aid organizations given the needs inside. For some here, it's been days or even weeks of waiting and praying. With ever-dwindling supplies and under the constant fear of Israeli strikes, even here in the south where civilians have been told by the IDF to evacuate. Nowhere in Gaza is safe. So finally, for a small few, a chance to leave and live again. Melissa Bell, CNN, Cairo.
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VAUSE: CNN's Clare Sebastian covering all of this now from London. 361 people out of about 2 million people who remain stuck in Gaza. Clearly not a lot of people out. But this has taken so very long to get this Rafah crossing open. What have been the issues here? Why has it taken so long to get these people out?
CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, John, 3.5 weeks since the start of this war. And as Melissa pointed out in her report, all eyes have been on that 1 crossing, given that Israel has really taken off the table any chance of reopening the other 2 crossings between Gaza and Israel. The negotiations we understand from a U.S. official were extremely delicate. Hamas was insisting that as part of this, wounded Palestinians were allowed out. That of course did happen.
But their other demand that it include Hamas fighters that were wounded was of course rejected. The U.S. official saying that it took a lot of convincing to get Israel to approve the list of Palestinians that were allowed out. And then of course we have these logistical sort of bottlenecks, complications that Egypt then has to vet each Palestinian, each wounded Palestinian refugee that was taken out. We understand now 45 of them are receiving treatment in Egyptian hospitals.
That obviously a very small number, given that we know north of 22,000 Palestinians have been injured so far in this conflict. These were assessed to be some of the most acute injuries. But those were just some of the factors in these negotiations. And John, of course, the issue of uninjured Palestinian refugees getting out of the Gaza Strip is still not on the table in these negotiations. Right now we're only talking about foreign passport holders, dual nationals who want to get out, as well as potentially injured people as well. So extremely delicate.
Separately, the Qatar-brokered negotiations on hostages are still ongoing. And we know that there are still significant concerns that those negotiations are complicated by the ongoing ground offensive, which of course is ramping up. The Israeli defense minister saying on Wednesday that there is fierce fighting in Gaza City. We had understood before this from our assessment that the Israeli forces were advancing relatively slowly before that city. But just this morning as well, seeing more evidence of a barrage of rocket fire over Gaza City. So, it certainly seems that even as these efforts to get people out really are in their very early stages, that ground offensive just less than an hour's drive north of that is ramping up.
VAUSE: Clare, thank you. Clare Sebastian for us live there with the very latest from London. Thank you. Well, Israel has confirmed both airstrikes on the Jabalia refugee
camp. What remains unknown right now is the full extent of the devastation, just how many people were killed in the attacks. Sinead Al Bashir has more now, reporting in from Jerusalem.
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NADA BASHIR, CNN INTERNATIONAL REPORTER: Chaos and horror at Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp. Wounded children rushed to nearby ambulances. The latest casualties of Israel's relentless aerial bombardment. This densely populated neighborhood, gripped by panic and sheer disbelief, a second Israeli airstrike in less than 24 hours.
I lost my whole family, Abdelkarim says, holding a list of those killed just today. My sister's house was struck with her children inside. My brother's house, too, with all of his children. There is no one left except for me and my younger brother. They were innocent. What did they do to deserve this? Israel's defense force says it was targeting a Hamas command and control complex in Jabalia.
Hamas fighters said to be among those killed. But Jabalia is home to more than 100,000 civilians, according to the UN. And while the full extent of the civilian death toll remains unclear at this stage, Gaza's Civil Defense Authority has described this latest disaster as a massacre, with more casualties and more fatalities added to the list of hundreds said to have been killed or wounded in Tuesday's airstrike.
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This situation is beyond belief. Many have been killed, bodies have been left burned and charred by the airstrike, this doctor says. There isn't a hospital in the world that could cope with this kind of situation. We're having to treat patients on the floor and in corridors.
The scale of the destruction at Jabalia is difficult to grasp. Many residents are still buried beneath the blackened rubble. Rescue workers and civilians dig side by side, desperate to find survivors. This house had 15 people in it, but we still haven't been able to find any of them, Hassan Ahmed says. We have no equipment. We are digging alone.
Northern Gaza continues to come under heavy bombardment, its residents warned by Israel to evacuate southwards. But airstrikes continue to rain down across both central and southern Gaza, too. And for the more than 2 million Palestinians living under an Israeli blockade, the fear is that there is nowhere safe to turn. Nada Bashir, CNN, in Jerusalem.
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VAUSE: Despite growing concerns over the humanitarian crisis inside Gaza and desperate need for food, fuel, water and medical supplies, Israel says there will be no let-up, no pause in its military operation against Hamas. At least 59 aid trucks crossed from Egypt into Gaza on Tuesday. More than 200 have made that journey in the past 10 days, according to the U.S. State Department. But that's just a fraction of what Gaza was receiving each day before Israel imposed a siege in response to the deadly Hamas attack last month.
And for the first time since the war began, the commissioner general of the UN Relief and Works Agency, the biggest aid group in Gaza, has visited the territory and says conditions are even worse than he expected.
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PHILIPPE LAZZARINI, UNRWA COMISSIONER-GENERAL: I was shocked by the fact that everyone there was asking for food, was asking for water. We -- I saw almost every children trying to express their way that they need to eat, they need to have water.
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VAUSE: So far more than 60 UNRWA workers have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli military operation began. Well, for more now, I'm joined by Dr. Mads Gilbert, a political activist and clinical director of emergency medicine at the University Hospital of North Norway. Doctor, thank you for being with us.
DR. MADS GILBERT, UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL OF NORTH NORWAY: Thank you. Good morning.
VAUSE: Good morning. Right now, for doctors and medical workers in Gaza, the focus is emergency triage, resources allocated to those who need it the most, those who are seriously wounded. What about treatment for other patients with life-threatening illnesses, those who need kidney dialysis, chemotherapy, whatever it may be? What happens to them?
GILBERT: Well, if you are a patient in Gaza today, you are in no way granted the treatment you need. In addition to the 22,000 wounded, you have a large number of people with the myocardial infarction and, as you said, kidney failure, diabetes, psychiatric problems. You have 100 plus deliveries per day, many of them needing caesarean section, many of them needing incubators for their babies.
So, it's a large, it's a huge medical undercapacity due to the lack of water, due to the lack of fuel to run the hospitals and the sheer large, large number of wounded. Among the wounded, I'm particularly concerned about the burns and the many burned children. In Shifa today, they have more than 100 burned, wounded with more than 40 percent burned body surface area. And these patients are in critical need for cleanliness, for humidity and for advanced medical treatment. They will die as they don't have these facilities any longer in Shifa. So, it is a dire crisis.
And adding to the crisis is, of course, that the Israeli forces are bombing or shooting at hospitals. Yesterday, the Turkish hospital was bombed, which is the central cancer hospital in Gaza, and cancer patients in Gaza will no longer receive their medication due to the destruction of the Turkish hospital yesterday. VAUSE: Right now, according to Human Rights Watch, there's 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza. If they don't receive the kind of neonatal pregnancy care, which they would expect to receive at this point, what's their prognosis? What can they expect medically in the coming weeks and months?
GIBERT: Well, you know, I mean, any woman who, who has been pregnant know how -- nervous, how much you care for the well-being of your, of your baby. And -- and of course, this enormous stress of being displaced, of being bombed, families that are split, and families that are losing their mothers and fathers and other family members.
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Of course, that is an enormous stress on the pregnant woman. You will see much more premature deliveries with the, with the medical problems for the newborn needing incubators. And you will see pregnant women who will have other types of complications. So, the fertility rate in Gaza is quite high, four to five kids per woman. So, these 50,000 pregnant women is a very, very sensitive and vulnerable group that should be cared specifically for.
Shifa is telling me that they cannot provide the needed care for the newborn premature babies because of lack of capacity, lack of water, lack of electricity, and don't forget that in Shifa, there are also around 50,000, yes, 50,000 internally displaced civilians that have been seeking refuge in the hospital. And every corridor, every waiting room, every single square of the hospital is filled with these desperate internal refugees.
VAUSE: What is it like for a child who has serious burns to their body, more than 40% or whatever, -- in a very serious issue of burns, without painkillers, without medication, what sort of pain is that child in?
GILBERT: I think there is a misconception that Palestinian healthcare workers are ruthless people doing major surgery without anesthesia. Number 1, they don't do that. There may be a lack of local anesthetics, and there may be a lack of anesthetics so that certain operations need to be postponed. But for the large, life-saving surgeries, of course, they do not do that without anesthesia.
But I have experienced firsthand myself that you had to do minor procedures without local anesthetics because simply there is no local anesthetic. And the essential drug list was down at 40% coverage before this started. So, for these kids who are needing debridement, dressing, and dressing many times a day, of course, it is painful when you cannot have the full scale of modern pain relief.
The most serious problem, though, for the burn patients are the infections. And when you don't have water, and they don't have water in Shifa now and the other hospitals, you have to use brackish water to clean, to clean your hands.
And I have been given reports that the large majority of the healthcare workers are now sick themselves from gastrointestinal infections, diarrhea, vomit, and they have fever because you cannot maintain hygiene and cleanliness when the water is cut off by the siege. And I would urge the Israeli authorities to turn on the water, turn on the electricity, turn on the medical supplies to Gaza so that the 2.2 million civilians can be given a decent and human treatment now.
VAUSE: Dr. Gilbert, thank you for bringing us up to date with what you've learned about the situation inside Gaza. We appreciate your time this morning. Thank you, sir. We'll take a short break when we come back. An Israeli commander says IDF forces are at the gates of Gaza City. The latest on Israel's ground offensive when we come back.
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VAUSE: The Jabalia refugee camp which was hit twice by Israeli airstrikes is just a few miles north of Gaza City. The biggest city in all the Palestinian territories are now not far from it seems advancing Israeli ground forces. Details from CNN's Jeremy Diamond.
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JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is all that remains. For the second day in a row Israeli jet striking the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp, flattening apartment buildings. Hundreds were wounded and at least 80 people were killed according to the director of the nearby Indonesian hospital. The IDF said it struck a Hamas command and control complex in Jabalia killing Hamas militants. But civilians also clearly among the casualties including children rushed out of the rubble.
Tonight, the United Nations Human Rights Office raising serious concerns that these are disproportionate attacks that could amount to war crimes. Israel blaming Hamas for using civilians as human shields as it continues its offensive. A top Israeli commander now says his forces are closing in on Gaza City. Hamas' stronghold in the Gaza Strip.
BRIG. GEN. ITZIK COHEN, ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES: We are deep in the strip at the gates of Gaza City. In the last 5 days we have dismantled a lot of the abilities of Hamas. We have attacked strategic positions, all the explosive abilities, underground facilities and other systems.
DIAMOND (voice- over): Five days after Israel launched its ground offensive in Gaza, Israeli forces are advancing towards Gaza City from 3 different directions. In the north Israeli armor and infantry have been spotted advancing from both ends of the strip. Israeli tanks also appear to be closing in from the south. CNN geolocated this tank at the strategic Netzarim Junction, the main road into Gaza City. Israel is also moving some of its artillery closer to Gaza.
Until recently this field was filled with Israeli artillery positions. You can see these mounds where howitzer guns or other types of artillery would dig in. And now as Israeli forces move closer into Gaza, those artillery positions are also moving closer to support the troops on the ground. Now all that remains are these boxes of munitions, artillery fuses used by the forces that were here. The question now is how deep Israeli forces will move into Gaza.
MIRI EISIN, INTL. REICHMAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE FOR COUNTER-TERRORISM: The only way to get to what Hamas has built over a decade inside the Gaza Strip, the only way is through a ground operation.
DIAMOND: Jeremy Diamond, CNN, Ashkelon, Israel.
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VAUSE: For more now on Israel's military offensive on Gaza, CNN military analyst and retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Cedric Leighton is with us this hour from Washington. Welcome back. It's good to see you.
CON. CEDRIC LEIGHTON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Good to see you too, John. Thanks for having me.
VAUSE: It's always a pleasure. I want you to listen to part of a conversation between CNN's Paula Newton and IDF spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus about the level of firepower or I guess explosive yield used in that first Israeli airstrike on the Jabalia refugee camp. Here they are.
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PAULA NEWTON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I've been in Gaza when the IDF has performed surgical strikes. The IDF is more than capable of this. This is not that. Why not?
LT. COL. JONATHAN CONRICUS, ISRAEL DEFENSE FORECES SPOKESPERSON: So, I don't think I really agree with what you say, because the precision here is to hit a target buried underground. What we did here was to strike with the acquired or the required amount of firepower in order to get to where he was hiding.
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VAUSE: So according to reporting from Bloomberg, an Israeli Air Force transport plane recently flew with GBU-39B 250 pound bombs from the United States to Israel. So, in terms of the firepower which would have been used, the Israelis call these sharp hail. They're precise and used to penetrate fortified structures. Is that the kind of bunker buster bombs which were being used in this instance, I guess. And once that part of the town was destroyed, does that explain essentially the implosion left behind? The ground sort of imploded, leaving these huge craters there.
LEIGHTON: Yeah, certainly that kind of GBU bomb could have been used in this particular case. There's also another possibility, and that's the GBU-28, which the Israelis have had in their inventory for about a decade, almost over a decade actually.
So, either type of bomb, either type of GBU precision-guided ammunition could have been used in this situation. And what it does is it homes in on a target, goes for, if it's programmed properly, goes for the most vulnerable points in that target and then detonates on impact. It is designed to go underground, in some cases up to 100 feet, which is a clear and really a useful place for it to, to go in a structure like the tunnels that they have in -- Gaza, that Hamas has put there.
VAUSE: And clearly, once it explodes, it destroys that infrastructure which the tunnel was holding up the ground above it. So once that infrastructure is gone, does that explain essentially what's left behind?
LEIGHTON: It could, depending on how the structures above it are built and what they rest on. It is possible that if the bomb hits exactly right, that it could actually take down above ground structures. And that could indicate exactly not only where things were located, but also it could manifest itself in the type of destruction that we see at the refugee camp in Gaza.
VAUSE: And help to understand this network of tunnels beneath Gaza, here's part of your analysis from just a few days ago. Here we go.
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LEIGHTON: As far as the tunnels go, they are at a minimum described like this about, you know, could be up to 300 miles of these tunnels. But they're all in this area right in here, particularly in the north and in the upper central part. And then there's some also here in the south. These are areas in which we can expect to find command and control nodes for Hamas, the hostages and also resupply efforts, plus the rockets.
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VAUSE: So, 300 miles or so, the Hamas metro is almost half as big as the New York subway, but notably bigger than the London Underground tube. And there's also said to be 3 different levels here with Hamas commanders, the senior leadership on the deepest level below ground, about 75 feet below ground. First, how difficult is it to target someone that far below ground? And I guess, but the more powerful the bomb, does that mean the more destruction above?
LEIGHTON: Yeah, generally it does, actually. So, the more powerful the bomb, depending on the warhead and the exact nature of the ground that it impacts, it could definitely cause destruction above. But normally these bombs are designed to go underground and explode underground. And if the soil is right, it could actually limit the impact above ground.
So, they're designed to avoid that type of destruction that you often see above ground for a normal type of bombing rate. But yes, the structures below, especially the command structures at 75 feet or so, they're the ones that are the prime targets, very difficult to reach. And it becomes really indicative of the targeting process, how well and how quickly those targets can be prosecuted in the Air Force jargon. [00:30:12]
VAUSE: And the IDF says the reason why they hit this tunnel at that particular moment, the tunnel beneath the refugee camp, was because of real-time information a senior Hamas leader was there.
Putting that scenario to one side, is one option here, essentially, flooding the tunnels? Because in recent years, Egypt has flooded cross-border tunnels with Gaza which have been used by smugglers. And it seems that's actually quite effective. Is that actually an option here for Gaza?
LEIGHTON: It potentially could be. I think there might be some issues with getting the -- enough water into a tunnel in a combat zone like Gaza. The Egyptians had the luxury of flooding those tunnels without being shot at. The Israelis would be shot at in a case like this. So it is one option that's possible.
But in this particular case, the more rapid disposition of the targets really calls for some kind of aerial attack or a ground-mounted attack. So that could be, you know, another alternative. But it's not infeasible to flood some of the tunnels, at least.
VAUSE: Colonel Leighton, as always, good to have you with us, sir. Thank you.
LEIGHTON: You bet, John. Thanks for having me.
VAUSE: Internet connections are being restored across Gaza, according to Netblocks. The Internet monitoring site confirmed communication and Internet service was completely disrupted for about eight hours on Wednesday.
CNN contacted the Israeli military about the communication blackout, but we were told no comment.
Independent monitoring groups tell CNN the Internet and phone services have been getting worse since the Hamas attack on October 7th.
When we come back, hundreds of people have now arrived in Egypt from Gaza after the Rafah crossing was opened briefly, but amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes, thousands more are desperately to get leave. The very latest, in a moment.
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VAUSE: Welcome back, everyone. I'm John Vause, and this is CNN NEWSROOM.
For the first time since the Israeli offensive on Hamas began 26 days ago, a few hundred people have been allowed to leave Gaza. According to Egyptian officials, at least 361 people holding foreign passports were allowed into Egypt via the Rafah crossing. Among them, all 22 remaining staff from Doctors Without Borders, a few
dozen seriously-wounded Palestinians who were granted permission to leave, as well, taken ambulance with at least 45 now being treated in hospitals across Egypt.
With the Rafah crossing the only exit to the outside world, officials in Gaza say it's crucial it remains open in both directions.
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HISHAM ADWAN, PALESTINIAN BORDER OFFICIAL (through translator): We call upon our Egyptian brothers to put pressure for the crossing to open in both directions, daily and continuously, so that many of the injured and the serious surgical cases can go through, as we have about 20,000 cases in hospital.
Thousands of those are very serious and include difficult injuries. Therefore, 81 people is not enough. We want hundreds of those injured to receive treatment abroad, as all the hospitals have exhausted their capacities in every respect. Medical supplies, medicines for wars (ph) and burns have run out, as well.
We also call for the fuel to be allowed in for the hospitals, the ambulances and civil defense vehicles to operate. Therefore, we call upon the Egyptian brothers to open this crossing daily and continuously.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: A hospital official in Gaza says it least 80 people were killed and hundreds more wounded by another Israeli strike on the Jabalia refugee camp.
Israel has hit the densely-populated camp twice in two days, both times claiming Hamas tunnels were the target.
Laura Aguirre has details now. And a warning: some viewers will find the video in her report disturbing.
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LAURA AGUIRRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Chaos in the aftermath of an Israeli strike on Gaza's largest refugee camp, Jabalya, Tuesday. The densely-populated camp is filled with families with children. And embedded Hamas militants, says Israeli military officials.
The IDF confirms they targeted and killed several Hamas combatants, including a top commander, in the strike.
LT. COL. JONATHAN CONRICUS, ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES SPOKESMAN: Our bombs struck, not on buildings but in between the buildings, because we were aiming for the tunnel complex where the Hamas combatant commander was.
AGUIRRE (voice-over): Wednesday, a second Israeli airstrike in the same camp. A doctor at the scene told CNN that there were hundreds wounded and dead. MAJOR DORON SPIELMAN, ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES SPOKESPERSON: It is
because there are terrorists that are embedded there. The IDF right now is fighting in face-to-face combat with Hamas terrorists inside Jabalya. Ultimately speaking, the collateral damage -- and this is very clear -- is on Hamas's shoulders.
AGUIRRE (voice-over): Meanwhile, at the Rafah gate crossing between Egypt and Gaza, limited evacuations have begun, part of a deal brokered by Qatar between Israel, Hamas and Egypt, in coordination with the U.S., according to sources familiar with the talks.
MATTHEW MILLER, U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESPERSON: An initial group of foreign nationals, including U.S. citizens, departed Gaza through Rafah today. And we expect exits of U.S. citizens and foreign nationals to continue over the next several days.
AGUIRRE (voice-over): This as hundreds of others wait outside the gate, hopeful that they, too, will soon escape the horrors of war.
I'm Laura Aguirre, reporting.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: A U.S. court has ordered a 21-year-old student to remain in jail after his arrest for allegedly making anti-Semitic threats against the Jewish community at Cornell University.
In the weeks since the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel, the number of threats against Jewish, Muslim and Arab-American communities across the United States has surged.
CNN's Brian Todd brings us the very latest.
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BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): After several days of fear gripping the Cornell University campus in upstate New York, an arrest. A 21-year-old junior at Cornell, Patrick Dai, charged in connection with threatening to kill Jewish students.
Prosecutors say, in online posts, Dai threatened to bring an assault rifle to campus to shoot up a mainly kosher dining hall, to stab Jewish students, to throw them off cliffs.
LEVI SCHMUEL, JEWISH STUDENT AT CORNELL: I can't imagine what would go through the mind of someone like that. Just, first of all, you're making threats on, like, this random website. Like, why would you do that?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I mean, I've seen general anti-Semitic sentiment, things like that. But to have not only a direct threat but a direct threat to a building that I personally go to and eat at and see friends that. Like, that was really scary, and that was really -- it was bad.
TODD (voice-over): Patrick Dai has not entered a plea. His parents told "The New York Post" they believe their son is innocent. They say he struggles with depression and never had a history of violence.
But in this climate, New York's governor is in no mood for lenience.
GOV. KATHY HOCHUL (D-NY): I want to make an example and say, as I said on Monday, when I told those students, if you do this, you will be caught and be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
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TODD (voice-over): Since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7th, tensions have boiled across the U.S.
On college campuses, at private homes, businesses, a dramatic spike, officials say, in anti-Semitic and Islamophobic incidents, including assaults, acts of harassment and vandalism. And one group says, in cases of harassment against Muslims in America --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Many cases do go unreported for fear of retaliation or backlash. The actual number is likely much higher.
TODD (voice-over): Why have incident spiked on college campuses since the start of the Israel-Hamas war?
LA'NITA JOHNSON, EXPERT ON EXTREMISM, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY: College campuses is where students are using their voices for the first time. They're politically active. Often, they're ready to vote. And so this comes with the territory of university campuses.
What we can say about this particular incident, is folks are feeling touched on both sides, due to their identities.
TODD (voice-over): But it's seemingly everywhere. A swastika was spray-painted on a high school football field in Virginia.
In Minnesota, in New York state, displays of pictures of Israelis taken hostage have been damaged or torn down.
A top Muslim advocacy group in New Jersey says the atmosphere for Muslims there is reminiscent of the post-9/11 era.
SELAEDIN MAKSUT, COUNCIL ON AMERICAN-ISLAMIC RELATIONS, NEW JERSEY: Muslims have been fired from their jobs for posting about Palestine. Hijabs have been pulled off in broad daylight here in New Jersey. Students have been called terrorists by public school teachers and parents.
TODD: As federal officials scramble to combat the spikes of anti- Semitism and Islamophobia, FBI Director Christopher Wray has stressed this is not a time for panic. He says no one should stop going to school or to houses of worship. But everyone, he says, should stay vigilant.
Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE) VAUSE: Europe, too, is seeing an increase in anti-Semitism. In Vienna, a ceremonial hall at a Jewish ceremony was defaced with swastikas and set on fire.
A police investigation is underway, with Austria's chancellor denouncing the attack and saying anti-Semitism has no place in society and will be fought with all political and legal means.
The mayor of Rome says two commemorative cobblestones honoring Auschwitz survivors have been desecrated, and he called for solidarity with the city's Jewish community.
When we come back, the brutality of the mass attack on October 7th not only shocked the world but for many was beyond comprehension. Israeli forensic scientists who are trying to identify the victims will explain just how horrific those attacks were.
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VAUSE: Well, Israel's forensic laboratories have been able to show the utter cruelty of the October 7th Hamas attacks on Israel. Fragments of bone, flesh, and other pieces of the victims are going under the microscope and revealing much more than the identity of those who were killed.
CNN's Jake Tapper visiting Israel's top forensic institute in Tel Aviv. And a warning: some of the images in his report are graphic.
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JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: We are approaching four weeks since Hamas's deadly October 7th terror attack on Israel, when more than 1,400 mostly Israeli individuals were killed, most of them civilians.
But hundreds, hundreds of bodies remain unidentified. I recently spoke with Dr. Chen Kugel, who is the director of Israel's National Institute of Forensic Medicine, who explained why it's been so difficult to identify these remaining bodies.
A warning now: I'm going to show you some images that are graphic and disturbing. We're showing them to you, because they explain something about the abject cruelty of what Hamas terrorists did to civilians on October 7th. And also because it shows how difficult this process has been for families who want answers about what happened to their lost loved ones.
Again, a warning of what I'm about to show you.
So Dr. Kugel says, what looks to be a piece of burnt wood or coal here is actually flesh. And upon further examination, with imaging, it reveals two sets of rib cages -- one of them is smaller -- with a wire tying them together.
And the conclusion of Dr. Kugel and his team: these are the burned bodies of an adult and a child, tied together, maybe embracing.
Opening a body bag, Dr. Kugel and his team found these charred remains. You'll notice that these remains are white. Kugel told me that that means the temperature was above 700 degrees centigrade, which Dr. Kugel says likely means the terrorists used some sort of chemical accelerant to get that high a temperature.
Ultimately, his team concluded, these were actually the remains of two different people, though there was no DNA to trace. No DNA was left because of the high temperatures. So their identities will never be known.
From a different body bag, a CAT scan revealed that there were bones in here. Three left legs and two right legs in that bag. So that meant, Dr. Kugel and his team concluded, three different people in this same body bag. And these five bones were the only traces left of these three people. Maybe in other bags, there were other pieces of these people, Dr. Kugel told me.
These are very difficult cases to deal with. And I'm about to show you an even more upsetting example.
This is a blurred picture from the National Center of Forensic Medicine. And even blurred, it's disturbing.
This is the burned body of an adolescent girl, and her head has been mostly separated from her body. Now, the forensic experts say they don't know if the separation happened before or after the girl was killed.
Still, this happened. And this is the level of cruelty that we are talking about here.
Jake Tapper, CNN, Tel Aviv.
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VAUSE: Time for a short break. We'll be right back after this.
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VAUSE: (Inaudible). In the U.S., new House Speaker Mike Johnson has proposed for a $14 billion aid package for Israel by cutting the budget for the Internal Revenue Service by the same amount. That doesn't include funding for Ukraine.
But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the proposal would actually increase the deficit about $12 billion over the next ten years.
CNN's Manu Raju reports now from Washington.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Speaker Mike Johnson, in his -- one of his first acts leading the chamber, moving ahead still with his plan to give aid to Israel, $14.3 billion in aid to Israel.
But this is controversial because of two things. One, it does not include aid to Ukraine, as Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, has been pushing, the White House has been pushing, Democrats in the Senate have been pushing, demanding it all go together.
That is something that Johnson told Republicans behind closed doors that he will simply not go for.
Also an inclusive measure aimed at going after IRS enforcement. This is part of a Democratic law that passed in the last Congress. The Republicans say it helped pay for the package.
But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office actually says it would increase the deficit, something that Republicans are dismissing.
Nevertheless, that provision has generated significant Democratic opposition to the Republican plan. So even if it does pass the House, it has no chance of passing the Senate, leaving questions about what ultimately can be passed.
Now, this all comes as there is growing tension within the Democratic ranks, as well, over the conduct of Israel and its war and about calls for President Biden to do more to push back against Israel coming from the left.
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): Right now, it is current standing U.S. law. We have leaky (ph) laws on the books that prohibit, as well as policies that prohibit, U.S. assistance to -- to aiding gross human rights violations. And what we are seeing play out on television, before all of us, are gross human rights violations. And I believe we have a responsibility to uphold our commitment to that.
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RAJU: But there are still just so many questions about how ultimately any of this will get resolved, because the Senate is still planning to move ahead with its own approach.
It could be close to the $105 billion plan that the White House put forward on a whole wide range of national security priorities. Mike Johnson made clear that Ukraine and Israel cannot be approved in one package in his House.
He said that Ukraine can get approved for it they have border policy measures, new immigration policy measures, things that the Democrats have resisted.
So, so many questions about whether any of this can get done, whether it will stall, or whether a deal can come together at this critical time amid these international crises abroad.
Manu Raju, CNN, Capitol Hill.
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VAUSE: Sport now. An incredible pitching performance by the Arizona Diamondbacks' Zac Gallen wasn't enough. The Texas Rangers pumped out four runs in the final inning to win baseball's 2023 -- yes, it's the World Series.
And it was bedlam as Texas pitcher Josh Sborz threw a cold strike to seal the win.
Arizona's Gallen had thrown a no-hitter through six innings. But a towering two-run homer Texas' Marcus Semien in the 9th was more than enough for the Rangers.
Final score, 5-nil. And after 64 years, long years, the first World Series championship ever for Texas. Celebrating.
Thank you for watching. I'm John Vause. Back with a lot more news after a very short break. You're watching CNN.
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