Politician makes bold prediction following VP Vance’s remarks in Europe
Nigel Farage, the leader of the right-wing Reform UK party, believes a “political revolution” will sweep through Europe as it did the U.S. with the re-election of President Donald Trump.
In answer to questions about controversial comments made by Vice President JD Vance during the Munich Security Conference last week, Farage told Fox News Digital in an interview he “loved every word of what he said” and argued Vance was “speaking ahead of his time.”
“He was talking to an audience of a European political class who are on the way out,” Farage said at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London this week. “It’s a political revolution, and it swept through America. And it’s going to sweep through the rest of Europe too.”
NIGEL FARAGE RESPONDS AFTER ELON MUSK DECLARES HE ‘DOESN’T HAVE WHAT IT TAKES’ TO LEAD REFORM UK PARTY
Vance, who argued the biggest threat facing Europe was not from Russia or China, but rather from alleged government efforts to silence freedom of speech, drew international rebuke from some who argued his comments were misleading or inaccurate. Others praised his comments, including those who attended the Conservative Political Action Conference Thursday, where he was reportedly given a standing ovation.
Farage said Vance reminds him of where he was a decade ago when he served in the European Parliament and remembered “getting up and giving speeches and being screamed at and shouted at and hated.”
NIGEL FARAGE: ‘OUR COUNTRY IS CHANGING FUNDAMENTALLY’
Farage left the European Parliament in 2020 after the UK’s decision to leave the European Union under the 2016 Brexit referendum, which he ardently supported as leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP).
He then launched the Brexit Party in 2019, before renaming it Reform UK, which he told Fox News Digital has leaped in popularity over the last seven months and is “leading consistently in the national opinion polls.”
“It is quite remarkable. It’s a reflection, I think, on what we call the Uni-Party,” he added, arguing there are no differences between the UK’s Labor Party, which is currently in power under Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and the Conservative Party.
“We’re upbeat, we’re optimistic, we’ve got a good vibe, and we believe, with the right leadership, we can and will turn this country around,” he said.
According to a report by Reuters, Reform UK has just five members of parliament out of 650. But members of the party came in second place in roughly 100 races during the last election in July 2024.
The report noted the party was “benefiting from a growing anti-establishment” sentiment rising across Europe by which both far-right and far-left parties are seeing increasing support.
“We’re in societal decline,” Farage said, pointing to statistics relating to knife crime, immigration and the economy. “Now, can it be fixed? Not under this government.”
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“They’re talking us into a recession. We’re in for a couple of very, very tough years, but the turnaround will come at the next election,” he added.
The U.K. has been dipping in and out of technical recessions since 2023 and has struggled to economically recover from the coronavirus pandemic, a fact that likely cost the Conservative Party its 14-year reign to the Labor Party in July.
Israel responds to Iranian general’s threat to wipe Jewish state off the map
JERUSALEM — After President Donald Trump announced he was reimposing his maximum economic sanctions pressure campaign on the Islamic Republic of Iran, a high-level Iranian general declared Thursday his nation will wage an attack designed to obliterate Israel.
Tehran’s rogue regime launched two massive aerial attacks against the Jewish state, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, in 2024.
According to Iranian regime media outlets, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) General Ebrahim Jabbari said, “Operation True Promise 3 will be carried out at the right time, with precision, and on a scale sufficient to destroy Israel and raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground.”
IRAN ‘TERRIFIED’ OF TRUMP PRESIDENCY AS IRANIAN CURRENCY FALLS TO AN ALL-TIME LOW
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar fired back at Jabbari’s threat on X, saying, “If the Jewish people have learned anything from history, it is this: if your enemy says his goal is to annihilate you – believe him. We are ready.”
Tom Gross, a Middle East expert, told Fox News Digital, “The Israeli foreign minister is right, of course. Genocidal threats from Iran need to be taken seriously. If previous threats by Iran and its Hamas terror allies had been taken more seriously, the Oct. 7 onslaught might have been prevented.”
Jabbari’s remarks seem to also be aimed at setting up a showdown between Trump and Iran’s regime. Jabbari made his declaration to destroy Israel when he spoke to paramilitary forces during military drills called “The Great Exercise of Prophet Mohammad’s Power.”
“The United States can do nothing against Yemen,” Jabbari said in an apparent reference to the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the Iran-backed Houthi movement in Yemen.
INTELLIGENCE REPORT SAYS IRAN WILL KEEP TRYING TO KILL TRUMP REGARDLESS OF ELECTION OUTCOME
The Islamic Republic has Trump in its crosshairs with assassination plans since the president ordered a military strike that eliminated IRGC General Qassem Soleimani in 2020.
“If they are trying to send a message to Trump, they should be careful,” Gross said. “The U.S. president had no problem dispatching the previous head of the revolutionary guards in his first term, and, since then, the regime has tried to assassinate Trump, who now has unfinished business with the regime in Tehran.”
Fox News Digital reported that the U.S. State Department said Soleimani was responsible for 17% of U.S. troops killed during the Iraq war — over 600 military personnel.
Trump responded to Iran’s plan to murder him by declaring if Tehran assassinated him, “That would be a terrible thing for them to do.
“If they did that, they would be obliterated. That would be the end. … There won’t be anything left.”
Gross said “Iran’s Islamic regime may be nervous, having lost its allies Hezbollah and Assad, and perhaps Russia too. The regime may be threatening Israel to try and scare off Washington and Jerusalem from moving against the regime’s nuclear weapons program.”
Banafsheh Zand, an Iranian-American expert on the Islamic Republic, told Fox News Digital, “The Khomeinist regime has never hidden its intentions, yet the West has continually chosen to ignore these threats. Even as the Shia regime destroyed Iran and its people and launched terrorist attacks around the world, Western leaders ignored it. They could have stood with the people of Iran, the region, and the Islamic world but willfully chose not to.”
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Ali Khamenei is the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic Iran, a regime the U.S. State Department classified as the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism.
Zand complained that “Western leaders have proven to be short-sighted, entirely out of touch, greedy and penny-wise and pound-foolish. And here we are, 46 years later, and the cycle of slipshod choices goes on and on, putting Western citizenry in impending harm’s way as well.”
Controversial Dem lawmaker calls Trump voters ‘less educated’
Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Tx., took aim at the voters of President Trump, suggesting they refuse to educate themselves on the “facts” and that “racists” will support “other racists.”
During Friday’s installment of “The Breakfast Club,” Crockett insisted Trump will not be held accountable by his own supporters as he distracts them with things like hypothetical DOGE payouts and sharing “king” memes like he did after his administration halted New York City’s congestion toll program.
Crockett invoked Trump’s famous 2016 comments when he said he loves “the poorly educated” when polls showed him leading among Americans without a college education.
REP. JASMINE CROCKETT ‘ROOTING’ FOR MEXICO AND CANADA AMID TARIFF WAR WITH TRUMP
“This isn’t me trying to throw shade. These are just the facts,” Crockett said. “When you look at who’s voting for who, the less educated folk- and when I say educated, I’m not even talking about formal education. I’m talking about people that literally don’t want to read and enlighten themselves on facts. Those are the people that typically vote for the Republicans…. Like, we want to give you every single little detail that we can find so that you can have all the information. But the reality is that the average person that is going out there and voting, they’re not paying attention to that.”
REP. JASMINE CROCKETT SUGGESTS VOTERS ARE BETTER OFF WITH ‘SLEEPY JOE’
The progressive lawmaker went on to scold Democrats who “fail to realize how selfish people are.”
“People go out and they vote in their own self-interest, right? And so you had all these racists that showed up and decided that they were gonna vote for the other racist because they thought, ‘Hey, we are all the same.’ But the reality is that he is a rich racist, okay? And so when he decided that he was gonna look out for somebody, it was only gonna be other rich White guys, not the rest of y’all!”
“So as you’re losing your job, as you’re losing your Medicaid, as you’re losing your farm, you’re feeling a way because you’re like, ‘Wait a minute. You were supposed to go after the others, not come after us.’ And now they’re saying, ‘Oh well, we’ll give you a $5,000 check.’ I don’t see it happening right now,” she added.
Crockett’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
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In a separate conversation from her “Breakfast Club” interview, Crockett appeared to rally behind America’s neighbors as Trump engages in aggressive trade negotiations and threatening tariffs.
“Canada has really been the one to call it out. The fact that I am rooting for Canada and that I am rooting for Mexico a lot is really wild. “But they are really the ones speaking truth to power right now,” Crockett said.
“They can see what it is, and they were, like, ‘We are not messing with this crazy regime from Mar-a-Lago and basically calling them thugs,’” she added.
Trump envoy rallies behind president amid backlash for Zelenskyy ‘dictator’ remark
Richard Grenell, President Donald Trump’s special envoy for special missions, defended Trump’s recent criticism of Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy as being a “dictator,” saying that the president is focused on what is best for the American people.
While speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, on Friday, Grenell said: “I’m so thankful that we have a president who’s concentrating on peace. And that’s what Donald Trump has just said: ‘You know, let’s stop.'”
“Remember that we handed Joe Biden total peace in the Middle East and total peace in Europe. He handed us a war in the Middle East and a war in Europe,” he added.
GOP SENATORS BACK TRUMP’S DEMAND FOR UKRAINE ELECTIONS, BUT WON’T CALL ZELENSKYY ‘DICTATOR’
Grenell is a former U.S. ambassador to Germany and previously served as Trump’s Acting National Intelligence Director.
Pressed by a reporter on whether he stood by Trump recently calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator,” Grenell said, “I think when you reject having elections, and you’re not moving towards that way that people get angry about that.”
“I think the American people are really frustrated with Zelenskyy. I think that there’s a big frustration that he’s not making great choices for peace,” he added. “And again, when the American people are spending hundreds of billions of dollars, there is a frustration.”
TRUMP’S FRUSTRATIONS WITH ZELENSKYY ESCALATE AS US TURNS UP PRESSURE ON UKRAINE TO REACH PEACE DEAL
“What President Trump is saying very clearly: ‘We have to stop this war,’” he explained. “He’s somebody who is concentrating on saying to both sides: ‘Let’s talk to both sides and figure out how we stop this.’”
“But I want to say that’s really important in this conversation is Donald Trump has done something different than Republican foreign policy leaders have done for 25 years,” he emphasized. “We articulate very clearly under Donald Trump, we don’t do regime change. We are going to deal with the countries that are in front of us. And our criteria is not how do we make that country better [but] how do we make America better, stronger and more prosperous for the people that live here.”
TRUMP AND ZELENSKYY WAR OF WORDS HEATS UP EVEN AS US LOOKS TO WIND DOWN WAR IN UKRAINE
Grenell, who is a resident of California, also shared that he “may not be able to resist” running against former Vice President Kamala Harris if she decides to run to be California’s next governor.
“Honestly, it’s not in my plan unless Kamala Harris runs for governor,” he said.
“I mean, here’s the thing. We already know who she is. We’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars to define who Kamala Harris is,” he went on. “If she thinks that she’s going to run for governor of California, but a Republican is going to win, and I may not be able to resist trying to run against her.”
VP JD VANCE SPEAKS ON ‘FUNDAMENTAL GOAL’ OF TRUMP ADMINISTRATION AT CPAC ADDRESS
Grenell has previously floated running for California governor as a Republican. He expressed interest in running to replace current Governor Gavin Newsom during the recall vote against the Democrat in 2021.
Despite the state’s notoriously liberal and leftist policies, Grenell has said that California is a “magnificent state” and expressed: “We deserve better than the failed leadership and partisan politics of our elected officials.”
Grenell also criticized California political leaders for botching the response to the recent Los Angeles wildfires.
LOS ANGELES MAYOR KAREN BASS SACKS FIRE CHIEF WHO SAID CITY FAILED RESIDENTS IN WILDFIRES
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He said that the Trump administration will be attaching strings on future federal funding to California to ensure such a disaster does not happen again.
“There are going to be conditions,” he said. “As a Californian, I’m all for it because I don’t have faith that if we went back and we just gave California hundreds of millions of dollars, they were going to go back to their same old ways of not giving us enough water [and] having dangerous situations on the ground when it comes to forestry. It’s going to happen again.”
Nation’s largest city sues after Trump admin claws back $80M migrant housing grant
New York City filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Friday seeking to wrestle back more than $80 million previously sent to the city via the Federal Emergency Management Agency to house migrants.
The suit argues that the funds were previously approved and then paid out by FEMA, only to be removed from a city bank account on Feb. 11 without notice or administrative process.
The funding had been revoked after Elon Musk claimed that the Department of Government Efficiency found a $59 million FEMA payment to New York City that was being used on luxury hotels to house illegal migrants. Trump later repeated Musk’s claim and argued that “massive fraud” was happening.
New York City was awarded two separate grants during the Biden administration – one for $58.6 million and another for $21.9 million – as the city attempted to pay to house migrants, many of whom were sent by Texas officials who were frustrated with the Biden administration’s handling of the influx of migrants entering the U.S. through the southern border.
NEW YORK CITY MAYOR ERIC ADAMS SAYS HE WILL RUN FOR RE-ELECTION AS A DEMOCRAT
The payments were made under the Shelter and Services Program (SPP) that Congress appropriated $650 million for last year to help local governments respond to the migrant crisis. There are currently fewer than 45,000 migrants staying at taxpayer-funded shelters in New York City, up from a high of 69,000 more than a year ago.
Friday’s lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by the city’s law department, which handles the city’s legal affairs, against President Donald Trump, the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The lawsuit accuses the federal government of violating federal regulations and the terms of the SSP grant, as well as abusing the federal government’s authority and obligations to implement congressionally approved and funded programs.
The suit argues that on Feb. 19, the federal government belatedly provided the city with a “noncompliance” letter that did not identify any noncompliance by the city.
“Rather, it announced ‘concerns,’ which are unfounded and do not comport with how the city has managed the unprecedented crisis brought to its doorstep,” the law department said.
Citing the government’s actions as a “money grab,” the law department said the letter was a “mere cover” to mask the federal government’s real purpose, which is to permanently withhold the funds because it opposes their use on migrants.
The city is looking to recoup the funds and is seeking a motion for a preliminary and permanent injunction, and motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO).
New York City Mayor Eric Adams defended and supported the lawsuit in a series of posts on X late Friday, writing that the $80 million was approved, paid for and then rescinded – all while the city spent more than $7 billion of its own taxpayer money to tackle the crisis over the last three years.
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT MOVES TO DROP CASE AGAINST NYC MAYOR ERIC ADAMS
“We are going to work to ensure our city’s residents get every dollar they are owed,” Adams wrote in on post.
“Without a doubt, our immigration system is broken, but the cost of managing an international humanitarian crisis should not overwhelmingly fall onto one city alone. We have skillfully shouldered the cost of this humanitarian crisis almost entirely on our own, with more than 231,000 people entering our city seeking shelter.”
Meanwhile, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander claimed the suit came about after he forced Adams’ hand on the matter. Adams has come under fire from New York Democrats over his decision to be more cooperative with federal immigration agencies in apprehending criminal illegal migrants amid the Justice Department efforts to dismiss corruption charges against him.
“After my office discovered that Elon Musk and his DOGE goon squad stole $80 million out of the City’s coffers, we successfully pressured Mayor Adams to allow the City’s lawyers to sue the federal government to get our money back,” Lander said in a statement.
“The lawyers who are standing up to President Trump and Eric Adams’ collusion deserve praise and we look forward to Donald Trump returning the money he stole from New York.”
Lander is running against Adams in the mayoral election later this year.
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Trump’s first month in office flips script on radical Biden-Harris border policies
President Donald Trump unleashed an earthquake on the U.S. immigration system during his first full month in office, quickly overturning Biden-era policies and overhauling how authorities conduct enforcement in the interior and at the border.
An order late Wednesday, which was implemented a day ahead of the administration’s one-month mark, directed all federal agencies to identify all federally funded programs currently providing any financial benefits to illegal immigrants and “take corrective action.” The order is intended to ensure that any federal funds to states and localities “will not be used to support sanctuary policies or assist illegal immigration.”
But it was just the latest in what has been a battery of overhauls to the U.S. immigration system.
TRUMP FREEZES APPLICATIONS FOR BIDEN-ERA MIGRANT PROGRAMS AMID FRAUD, NATIONAL SECURITY CONCERNS
Day One
Trump, who ran his campaign centered on border security and cracking down on illegal immigration, got to work on day one of his administration — signing executive orders that declared a national emergency at the border and deployed the U.S. military. He also signed orders ending birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants, suspending refugee admissions and also ending the use of the CBP One app at the southern border to admit migrants via humanitarian parole.
Other orders included moves to restart border wall construction, which had ended under the Biden administration.
It wouldn’t take long before the moves were followed up by additional decisions from Cabinet agencies. The Pentagon quickly deployed troops to the southern border and also opened up Guantánamo Bay to flights of migrants.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also issued orders that ended limits on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) imposed by the Biden administration on “sensitive” places, and also took limits on the use of expedited removal, allowing the rapid-fire removal process to be used more broadly after being limited by the prior administration. Another order allowed ICE to review the parole status of migrants brought in under parole, opening them up to deportation.
DHS has also gone after federal funding to migrant causes. Most recently, four Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees were fired and tens of millions of dollars taken back from New York City designated for hotels where migrants are being housed.
“Secretary [Kristi] Noem has clawed back the full payment that FEMA deep state activists unilaterally gave to NYC migrant hotels,” a DHS spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
Raids
Meanwhile, the administration quickly moved to ramp up interior arrests and deportations. A number of high-profile raids were quickly launched across the U.S., particularly in “sanctuary” cities that do not cooperate with ICE agents. Daily arrests quickly moved above 1,000 a day, and officials pointed to a number of criminals and gang members that were picked up in the process.
According to DHS data, obtained by Fox News Digital, there were 11,791 interior ICE arrests from Jan. 20 to Feb. 8, compared to 4,969 during the same period in 2024. That’s a 137% increase.
Arrests of aliens with criminal histories have soared by nearly 100% from 4,526 in the same period in 2024 to 8,993 under Trump this year. Arrests of fugitive aliens at-large, meanwhile, have gone up from 2,164 to 5,538, a 156% increase. Arrests of criminal aliens in local jails have risen 59%.
DHS SAYS IT ‘CAN, SHOULD AND WILL’ ADMINISTER POLYGRAPH EXAMS AMID ICE RAID LOCATION LEAKS
Biden-era efforts quashed
The new Trump era has seen the rapid unwinding of a number of Biden-era programs. Fox News Digital confirmed on Wednesday that DHS has now paused pending applications for three Biden-era programs: Uniting for Ukraine; parole processes for Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela (CHNV); and family reunification programs.
Trump had already ordered an end to the use of some Biden-era parole programs on day one, including CHNV. He had also ordered the end to the practice of paroling migrants at ports of entry who had made appointments on the CBP One app.
At the time, the Biden administration touted the expansion of “lawful pathways,” claiming they were part of an effort to reduce illegal crossings, but Republicans accused the administration of abusing limited parole power and allowing in migrants who should not legally have entered.
The Trump administration has also suspended refugee resettlement, which had expanded under the Biden administration. It has also frozen funding to foreign nations, which was a cornerstone of the “root causes” strategy championed by the prior administration.
International diplomacy
Migration strategies often require foreign cooperation, and the Trump administration used diplomacy and tariff threats to secure additional cooperation with neighbors and other countries in the region.
Both Canada and Mexico agreed to ramp up their border security efforts after Trump floated new tariffs on incoming goods from their countries. Meanwhile, both Venezuela and Colombia agreed to take back their immigrants being deported, with Colombia’s president backing down after a public clash with President Trump.
Guatemala, separately, agreed to accept deportees from other countries as part of a deal hashed out with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
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Having an effect?
So far, there are indications that border numbers continue to trend lower with the new administration.
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U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) apprehended just 29,116 illegal immigrants along the southern border during the month of January, down from 47,000 in December and hitting a low mark not seen since May 2020, when 32,349 arrests were made at ports of entry, according to a White House press release.
Meanwhile, border czar Tom Homan said this week that Border Patrol “has encountered a total of 229 aliens across the entire southwest border” in a single day and rallied around President Trump, saying, “He is delivering.”
“That is down from a high of over 11,000 a day under Biden,” he said. “I started as a Border Patrol Agent in 1984, and I don’t remember the numbers ever being that low.”
EPA says it uncovered $2B ‘scheme’ involving Stacey Abrams-linked group
A climate group linked to high-profile Democrat Stacey Abrams was granted $2 billion by the Biden administration in a “scheme” of “wasteful” spending, the Trump administration’s leading environmental agency has revealed.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently made a revelation that the Biden administration was allowing just eight entities to distribute $20 billion of taxpayer dollars “at their discretion.”
Included in the funds was a $2 billion grant to Power Forward Communities, a nonprofit with ties to former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams that seeks to “reduce our impact on the climate” by financing the replacement of household appliances in lower-income communities with green alternatives.
Abrams, who lost the Georgia gubernatorial race in the 2022 midterms, reportedly “played a pivotal role” in establishing the group, according to a LinkedIn post by Ian Magruder, who works at one of the coalition’s partners, Rewiring America.
‘WASTEFUL AND DANGEROUS’: DOGE’S TOP FIVE MOST SHOCKING REVELATIONS
“If you care about clean air, land and water, if you think there are some communities that have been left behind, then why aren’t you spending a dollar actually remediating that issue instead of paying off your friend,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham.
The $2 billion was used for the “decarbonization of homes” in low-income communities and paid for new household appliances, such as water heaters, induction stoves, solar panels, EV chargers, and weatherization, according to an April 2024 press release from Power Forward Communities.
Zeldin told Fox News that in 2023, Power Forward Communities reported just $100 in revenue but was later granted $2 billion by the Biden-era EPA in 2024.
TRUMP TO SIGN EXECUTIVE ORDER INSTRUCTING AGENCIES TO HUNT DOWN REGULATIONS THAT VIOLATE CONSTITUTION
The climate group was given only 21 days to distribute the $2 billion, and another 90 days to complete a training session called “How to develop a budget,” Zeldin said.
“I would say that if an organization needs to take a training on how to develop a budget, one, they should be taking the training before they are spending a dollar, but they definitely shouldn’t be getting two billion [dollars],” the administrator told Fox News.
“The entire scheme as set up is fraud, it’s wasteful, it’s abuse,” he said.
Zeldin also noted the EPA found a potential “conflict of interest” payment of $5 billion to the former director of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund under Biden.
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“All this money was put up front,” Zeldin said. “It was ‘here is $20 billion.’ And it was going to their friends on the left.”
The news that the Biden administration gave $2 billion to a climate group linked to Abrams was first reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
Fox News Digital reached out to Rewiring America, Power Forward Communities and Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund for comment.
Terror group parades Israeli hostages in front of cheering crowd before release
Hamas freed six hostages on Saturday in exchange for more than 600 Palestinian prisoners as part of the fragile ceasefire agreement with Israel.
The first two men released were identified as Tal Shoham, 40, and Avera Mengistu, 39. Video footage showed the two men looking frail and scared as they were taken to a stage in front of a crowd while flanked by masked gunmen. They were handed over to the Red Cross and were on their way to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
An additional three hostages – Omer Wenkert, 23; Omer Shem Tov, 22, and Eliya Cohen, 27 – were subsequently released in the central town of Nuseirat. They were dressed in fake army uniforms, though they were not soldiers when they were kidnapped.
The three were put in Red Cross vehicles that then headed for Israel.
President Donald Trump seemed to welcome the news, writing on Truth Social, “SIXTH HOSTAGE HAS JUST BEEN RELEASED BY HAMAS!”
Hisham Al-Sayed, 36, an Israeli Bedouin who was kidnapped by Hamas in April 2015, was officially handed off to the Red Cross on Saturday after nearly 10 years in Gaza.
“A short while ago, accompanied by IDF and ISA forces, the two returning hostages crossed the border into Israeli territory, and they are currently on their way to an initial reception point in southern Israel, where they will be reunited with members of their families,” the statement said after Shoham and Mengistu were freed earlier on Saturday.
“According to the information communicated by the Red Cross, three hostages were transferred to them, and they are on their way to IDF and ISA forces in the Gaza Strip,” a later statement said, adding: “The IDF is prepared to receive an additional hostage who is due to be transferred to the Red Cross in the near future.”
Two of the hostages — Mengistu and Al-Sayed — are civilians who have been held since entering Gaza on their own more than a decade ago, long before the war sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack against Israel, which prompted military retaliation from Israeli forces.
Shoham’s family said in a statement that his release from Hamas captivity “is an unforgettable moment, where all emotions are rapidly mixing together.”
“Our Tal is with us. We thank all the people of Israel who stood with us through all the long days of pain and suffering,” the statement said. “During these days, we need privacy for Tal, Adi, and the children. At this crucial moment in our lives, our only request is to seize this window of opportunity to secure a deal that will bring fathers back to their children – children need their fathers – and return all hostages home: the living for rehabilitation and the deceased for eternal rest. There is a window of opportunity; we must not miss it.”
Mengistu’s family also released a statement saying they have “endured ten years and five months of unimaginable suffering.”
“During this time, there have been continuous efforts to secure his return, with prayers and pleas, some silent, that remained unanswered until today,” the family said. “In these moments, we gather in anxious anticipation of the return of our beloved son, brother, and uncle Avera. We ask that these moments be respected, and that we be granted the peace and rest we so desperately need.”
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum also released a statement from Shem Tov’s family in which they celebrated his return, thanking the IDF and God. His family also vowed to fight for the remaining hostages.
“Our Omeriko is home after 505 days of suffering and nightmare. Our child, our brother, who became a child of the entire state of Israel since October 7th, has returned home despite medical difficulties. We still don’t know everything – the horror stories will only be revealed with time. But now, we can hug him again,” the statement read.
“We will continue to fight together with all the families and the Hostages Families Forum – our lifeline from the first moment – until every hostage returns home, for rehabilitation or proper burial.”
Wenkert also enjoyed an emotional reunion with his parents. As they hugged, his father said the Jewish prayer “Shehecheyanu,” which is often recited in joyous moments.
Shoham also reunited with his family, some of whom saw the horrors of Hamas captivity first-hand. On Oct. 7, Shoham was kidnapped along with his wife, two children, mother-in-law and two other family members all of whom were freed in November 2023.
One of the hostages released from Israel allegedly brought back a sign of life from Guy Gilboa-Dalal, who was taken captive on Oct. 7, 2023, TPS-IL, an Israeli news agency, reported. Gilboa-Dalal is not one of the hostages set to be released in the current phase of the deal.
REMAINS OF SHIRI BIBAS, MOM OF TWO KILLED, ALLEGEDLY RETURNED TO ISRAEL FOLLOWING HAMAS’ BROKEN PROMISE
This comes as the delicate ceasefire deal reached a month ago remains in place despite recent revelations that hostage Shiri Bibas’ body was not initially returned to Israel as promised by Hamas.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas would “pay the full price” for allegedly handing over the body of a Palestinian woman from Gaza instead of the body of the Israeli hostage. The hostage’s sons — Ariel and Kfir Bibas — along with Oded Lifshitz were returned by Hamas on Thursday as expected.
TERROR GROUP RESPONDS AFTER FAILING TO RETURN THE BODY OF MURDERED HOSTAGE SHIRI BIBAS
Late Friday, Hamas said it handed over Shiri Bibas’ body to the Red Cross, which confirmed it had received human remains inside Gaza and transferred them to Israeli authorities. Bibas’ family confirmed her identity early Saturday.
Hamas said it “has no interest in withholding any bodies in its possession.” The terror group said the dead hostages handed over on Thursday had been killed by an Israeli airstrike in November 2023 and that the bodies could have been misidentified due to bombardments in the area.
The terror group also killed Ariel and Kfir Bibas “with their bare hands,” according to the Israeli military, which did not offer evidence to support the claim.
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Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari alleged that forensic analysis of the Bibas boys’ bodies showed that Hamas “did not shoot the boys,” but “killed them with their bare hands” and then “committed horrific acts to cover up these atrocities.” Hagari said Lifshitz was killed by captors inside Gaza.