Your morning news briefing: Tributes paid after ‘barbaric’ death of Irish-Israeli woman Kim Damti, intruder caught inside Department of the Taoiseach

Gaza left without power ahead of expected Israeli ground offensive

Israel has formed an emergency war cabinet and unity government as it tightens its siege of the Gaza Strip in advance of an expected ground offensive.

Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu struck the deal on Wednesday with Benny Gantz, head of the centre-right opposition National Unity party, in the wake of Saturday’s deadly attack by Hamas.

The agreement came as the siege brought down Gaza’s power supply, leaving residents alarmed they would soon lose contact with the outside world and as Israel sent tens of thousands of army personnel to the border with the enclave.

Israel-Hamas Conflict

• Death of Irish-Israeli woman Kim Damti (22) in Hamas attack confirmed by family: The death has been confirmed of Kim Damti, the 22-year-old Irish-Israeli woman who had been missing since a Hamas attack on an outdoor music festival at the weekend in Israel, near the Gaza border.
• ‘Tiocfaidh ár lá,’ Sinn Féin councillor tells pro-Palestinian rally in Dublin: A Sinn Féin councillor used the slogan “tiocfaidh ár lá”, long associated with militant republicanism, while addressing a demonstration in Dublin on Wednesday evening in support of Palestine. Daithí Doolan, a Sinn Féin councillor on Dublin City Council, was one of a number of politicians who addressed the rally on O’Connell Street.
• ‘Madness, rage and inhumanity’: A scene of utter destruction at Kibbutz Be’eri: Kibbutz Be’eri, a few miles drive from the Gaza border, has become a symbol of what Israelis are calling the Hamas massacres, which occurred when more than 1,000 people – the vast majority civilians – were killed on Saturday in more than 20 communities close to the Gaza border. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) opened the kibbutz farming community to the foreign media on Wednesday to see the carnage at first hand. The first thing that strikes you is the stench. It was a smell I wasn’t familiar with: it was the smell of death, writes Mark Weiss in Be’eri.
• EU response to the Israel-Hamas conflict is an ugly mess: Analysis: Late on Tuesday a significant warning was sent to billionaire Elon Musk by the European Commission. The letter said X, formally known as Twitter, was being used to spread both illegal and “manifestly false or misleading information”.
• Gaza hospitals are already overwhelmed. They must not become targets: Opinion: The situation in Gaza is catastrophic; the hospitals are overwhelmed. The number of wounded is extremely high – there is a constant influx into all the hospitals in the Gaza Strip. The medical teams are exhausted, working around the clock to treat the wounded. The bombardments are very intense. Entire buildings are being destroyed, including one last night right next to the Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) office.

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Explainer

• Mortgage interest relief – who is not getting it and why? The decision by the Minister for Finance, Michael McGrath, to limit mortgage interest relief measures to those on tracker and variable rates has been described as “bizarre” and of help only to people who “enjoyed rock-bottom interest rates for many years”.

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Letters to the Editor

Sir, – Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty was obviously reading a script when he described Michael McGrath’s efforts as a “budget for landlords”. Nothing could be further from the truth.

For me, the initial saving of €600 for 2024 represents the difference between one month’s rent I receive on one property (torturously held down due to rent pressure zone legislation), compared to one month’s market rent for that same property.

Yet this “tax break”, coming as it does with terms and conditions, is supposedly designed to encourage landlords to stay in the market.

It won’t go anywhere towards doing that.

This weak and insufficient effort is merely a confirmation that the Government continues to look over its shoulder at populist parties, abandoning its traditional supporters in favour of those it hopes to gain, but never will.

The disconnect between landlords and legislators is palpable and after years of promises, it is clear that our current administration no longer view property investors as being part of the housing solution. We are being forced out of the market while real-estate investment trusts enjoy tax rates of which the smaller landlord can only dream. – Yours, etc,

NEVILLE SCARGILL, Bray, Co Wicklow.

Video & Podcast Highlights

Review of the day

• Lost Lear director Dan Colley: ‘Go with a person’s reality. Step into their world’: “There tends to be a track of theatre-making in Ireland of which I’m not really considered a part,” Dan Colley says. “Somebody’s doing an Ibsen, they’re going to call 10, 20 people before they call me.” It sounds like disarming honesty, especially when Colley adds, “I know the limits of my creative talents in front of a typewriter and a blank page.”

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