Yocheved Lipshitz via Ynet:

“I’m suspicious because Israel didn’t want to accept me: I have a deep wound over this. First of all, they abandoned us on October 7th. The army didn’t come to us at all.”

“The 17th day of my captivity arrived. I was sick – suffering from diarrhea and vomiting, I hadn’t eaten or drunk. There was a doctor there who gave me medication, but it didn’t help. Hamas wanted to release me and Nurit Cooper from Nir Oz, who was with me. Her shoulder was broken. Israel didn’t want to accept us – the government was afraid they’d have to give too much in return. Then Hamas said, ‘If you don’t want to accept them, we’ll leave them at the border fence. If you want them, you can take them; if not, you don’t have to.’ Israel accepted us for free – no compensation.”

“In the year and a quarter since, my suspicions have only grown stronger. I think the government only wants bodies – it doesn’t want hostages to return and tell what happened to them. It’s uncomfortable for them to hear what happened to people they left behind for so long. When I told what happened to me, they didn’t like it, and that was only after 17 days, when the kidnappers were still humane.”

[NP]

⚡️A huge fire broke out at a battery factory in Monterey, California.

The factory contains a very large store of dangerous lithium.

[G&T]