Your morning briefing: Hundreds feared dead after Gaza hospital hit; EPA responds to ‘meat’ tweet; and how Ireland has changed since 1973

Hundreds feared dead after strike on Gaza hospital

Hamas and Israel traded blame over an air strike at a Gaza City hospital on Tuesday night that health authorities said killed at least 300 people.

Eyewitnesses described horrific scenes as terrified residents fled the hospital, with a huge fire burning in the compound. Hundreds of people were feared trapped under the rubble.

The Gaza authorities immediately said Israel was responsible for the attack, but in a statement the Israeli army said intelligence analysis had determined conclusively that the blast had been caused by an Islamic Jihad projectile aimed at Israel that fell short, hitting the Al-Ahli Baptist hospital. Islamic Jihad denied the Israeli claim.

Israel Hamas conflict

• Biden visit to Israel poses both political and physical risks and challenges: Analysis: Israel is the closest ally of the United States in the Middle East, and going back to Richard Nixon virtually all presidents have visited during their period in office. However few, if any, have made the trip during a time of war.
• EU vows to be ‘consistent’ in defending international law: Europe must be consistent in demanding respect for international law wherever conflicts occur in the world, European Council president Charles Michel said on Tuesday night after national leaders met for extraordinary talks on the Israel-Palestine conflict writes Naomi O’Leary.
• Taoiseach stresses need to distinguish ‘between Hamas and innocent Palestinian people’: Taoiseach Leo Varadkar told EU leaders that Israel must make a distinction “between Hamas and innocent Palestinian people” during a teleconference on Tuesday evening, stressing the “dire humanitarian situation unfolding in Gaza”, officials said.
• ‘Can you imagine the sheer horror for an eight-year-old?’: Tom Hand tells of grief at daughter Emily’s death: It has been 11 days since Thomas Hand’s daughter, Emily (8), was shot dead by Hamas militants, who went door-to-door in the kibbutz Be’eri, a few kilometres from the Gaza border, shooting anyone they could find.
• Hamas destroyed its Zionist utopia. What would it take now for Jews to return?: Asked why he moved to Kfar Aza – a kibbutz so poor in the 1960s that when the food wagon arrived each evening, he had to choose between half a boiled egg or a slice of cheese – 67-year-old Shai Hermesh answered proudly with a single word.
• Israel’s retribution on the people of Gaza is exactly what Hamas planned: The atrocious Hamas massacre and hostage-taking in Israel was intended to have the exact outcome which is now unfolding before our eyes. Hamas’s evil calculus was, and is, that Israel would unleash a mighty retribution on the entire people and territory of the Gaza Strip. What else could they have expected and hoped for? It was intended as a polarising event, writes Michael McDowell.

Top News Stories

• EPA call for public to eat less meat deleted for being ‘too flippant’: Officials in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initially felt complaints it received about a controversial social media post encouraging people to eat less meat did not “warrant” a response.
• Statistics illustrate how Ireland has changed since joining EU in 1973: In 1973, the year Ireland joined the European Union (or then EEC), the Irish Republic had a population of three million, its citizens were, on average, poorer than the average European, and food and live animals made up 41 per cent of all exports. John and Mary were the most popular birth names and the average age for a bride was 24.8 years.
• Man caught driving Lamborghini at 217km/h in Co Mayo disqualified and fined: A man who drove a Lamborghini at 217km/h in a 100km/h zone during a charity motoring event has been disqualified from driving for two years and fined €2,000 at Castlebar District Court.
• ‘No public appetite’ to change model of neutrality: The “prevailing view” is that the triple-lock mechanism – whereby Ireland requires UN Security Council approval before committing the Defence Forces abroad – should be reconsidered, according to a report to Government from the forum on defence and security policy.
• It took almost 20 years to deliver. So what have Junior Cycle reforms delivered?: Analysis: There will be no shortage of whooping, leaping, hollering or high-fiving in schools today when tens of thousands of Junior Cycle students get their results today. Yet if education reformers had got their way about 15 years ago none of this would be happening, writes Carl O’Brien.
• One-third of maternal death due to suicide, report finds: Suicide accounted for a third of all maternal deaths in Ireland over a three-year period, according to a new report. There were no deaths attributed to Covid-19 between 2019 to 2021, it found.
• Check out today’s Most Read stories
• Ireland’s weather today: Outbreaks of heavy rain today with some flooding likely. Rain will be especially heavy in southern coastal counties during the morning with a heightened risk of flooding and disruption there. Highest temperatures of 12 to 16 degrees, in a moderate to fresh and gusty east to southeast wind, easing in southern areas later.

News from around the World

• Suspected Brussels gunman who killed two Swedes shot dead by police: A Tunisian gunman suspected of killing two Swedish football fans in Brussels died on Tuesday after being shot by police in a cafe, hours after an attack which Sweden’s prime minister said showed Europe must bolster security to protect itself.
• Republican Jim Jordan fails to secure backing for US House speaker in first vote: Republicans in the US House of Representatives will again on Wednesday seek to agree on a new Speaker after another day of disagreement within the party on who should fill the role. The Republican nominee for the post, conservative congressman Jim Jordan, failed to secure sufficient backing from his party colleagues in a vote in the chamber on Tuesday.

The Big Read

• Financial planners: What do they do and do you need one?: As teenagers we hated it but as we enter into the hard and confusing slog of adulthood, many of us realise that, actually, it’s quite nice occasionally being told what to do. We have never had more access to information but that means we face a brain-melting range of options and opinions when trying to figure out what is the best approach to a range of challenges, writes Brianna Parkins.

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Letters to the Editor

Israel and Hamas – war in the Middle East

Sir, – President Michael D Higgins’s comments that Ursula von der Leyen’s approach to the Israel-Hamas conflict was “thoughtless and reckless” is spot on, if lacking perhaps some diplomacy in its robust delivery (News, October 17th).

But the reality is Ms von der Leyen was only endorsing what US president Joe Biden said: that Israel has a right to defend itself and a duty to respond. This new construct “duty to respond” is at the core of the difficulty facing western powers, but that response should never put a defenceless civilian population in grave danger, as has happened since the barbaric attack on Israel by Hamas.

There has to be a better way to root out Hamas without inflicting death and destruction on innocent Palestinian people. There is also a paramount duty to respond to their humanitarian needs now. – Yours, etc,

AIDAN RODDY, Cabinteely, Dublin 18.

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