An alleged Hamas supported encouraged a repeat of the deadly 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack on another French newspaper over a cartoon “mocking Muslims in Gaza”, a court has been told.

Majid Novsarka, also known as Majid Freeman, allegedly shared the drawing published by French paper Liberation on March 11 2024 via his X account – which had more than 58,000 followers at the time, a trial was told.

In that same post, the 37-year-old referred to the terrorist attack against French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, which was carried out in retaliation for the newspaper’s irreverent caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

Novsarka posted about the cartoon again the following day on Instagram, saying: “France’s left-wing newspaper Liberation published a cartoon mocking Muslims fasting in Gaza, who are being starved to death by Israel in Ramadan…” jurors sitting at Birmingham Crown Court heard.

Prosecutor Tom Williams, opening the trial on Wednesday, said: “The defendant’s Instagram post shows a larger version of the cartoon, with a Muslim man in Gaza chasing two rats and being told by a woman with a child sitting next to her not to do so ‘before sunset’, as Ramadan has begun, the ‘start of a month of fasting’.”

Mr Williams added: “The defendant identifies a cartoon in a French newspaper which is arguably offensive to Muslims, and in the same post, he identifies that when Charlie Hebdo did the same thing almost 10 years before, people who worked at the magazine were shot and killed.

“What did he want his followers to take from his Twitter post? He wanted them, the prosecution suggest, to do the same.

“There is, if you think about it, no other sensible explanation for deliberately putting these two things in exactly the same post.”

The post on X included a video of the attack “showing the two killers firing their weapons, dressed all in black, at one point shouting something about ‘the prophet Mohammed’, and then driving off in a black car,” Mr Williams told the court.

In his Instagram post, Novsarka also identified the cartoonist Corinne Rey, adding: “Liberation is owned by French-Israeli billionaire Patrick Drahi,” the court heard.

Jurors were told Novsarka’s X account had 58,500 followers at the time of the alleged offence, which made him “somebody with significant influence online”.

Novsarka, whom prosecution alleges has been a supporter of Hamas since at least May 2021, is also accused of inviting support for the proscribed organisation in posts and messages on Twitter, Instagram and Telegram.

Jurors were provided with a timeline which contained more than 200 entries, including a link the defendant allegedly shared on a WhatsApp group in December 2023 which led to a Hamas recruitment post.

In another post dated December 31 2023, Novsarka allegedly shared a video of Hamas firing rockets at Tel Aviv saying “Happy new year from Hamas to Israel”.

The video itself seems to have come from Hamas, Mr Williams told jurors.

Novsarka was arrested on July 9 2024 by police officers from Counter Terrorism East Midlands at his home address in Leicester.

He was interviewed under caution but made no comments, the court heard.

He denies one count of encouraging terrorism under section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2006, one count of inviting support for Hamas under section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000, and a third alternative count of expressing support for a proscribed organisation.

The Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack on January 7 2015 took place at the offices of the magazine in Paris, where 12 people, including some of France’s most beloved cartoonists, were shot dead.

The massacre was carried out by two brothers claiming allegiance to Al Qaeda and signalled the beginning of a wave of extremist violence in France, culminating in the co-ordinated November 2015 attacks and the Bataclan atrocity.

An asylum seeker accused of murdering a pensioner in the street told police he was motivated by “the conflict in Gaza and to further his desire that Palestine would be free from the Zionists”, a court has heard.

Ahmed Alid, 45, denies murdering Terence Carney, 70, in Hartlepool town centre, as well as the attempted murder of his housemate Javed Nouri, and assaulting two female police officers who had interviewed him after his arrest.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the military would have to retain open-ended security control over the Gaza Strip long after the war against Hamas ends.

The remarks came as Israel’s military said its troops had entered Gaza’s second-largest city in its its pursuit to wipe out the territory’s Hamas rulers.

The war has already killed more than 15,000 Palestinians and displaced over three-quarters of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, who are running out of safe places to go.

The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said the death toll in the territory since October 7 has surpassed 15,890, with more than 41,000 wounded.

The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths, but said 70% of the dead were women and children.

Israel says it targets Hamas operatives and blames civilian casualties on the militants, accusing them of operating in residential neighbourhoods.

The United States, Qatar and Egypt, which mediated an earlier ceasefire, say they are working on a longer truce.

Hamas said talks on releasing more of the scores of hostages seized by militants on October 7 must be tied to a permanent ceasefire.

Meanwhile, Israel has intensified its bombardment of Gaza’s second largest city, Khan Younis, with dozens of injured people rushed to hospital as a new phase of the war continues.

Under US pressure to prevent further mass casualties, Israel said it is being more precise as it widens its offensive into southern Gaza after obliterating much of the north.

At the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, ambulances brought dozens of injured people in throughout the night. At one point, a car pulled up and man emerged carrying a young boy in a bloody shirt whose hand had been blown off.

Satellite photos taken on Sunday showed tanks and troops massing outside Khan Younis, the latest target of the offensive, which was home to more than 400,000 people before the war.

Israel has ordered people out of nearly two dozen areas instead of the entire region, as it did in the north.

But with most of Gaza’s population already packed into the south, cramming UN shelters and family homes, there are few places left to go. Israel has barred people who fled the north earlier in the war from returning.

Palestinians say that as Israel continues to strike across the besieged territory, there are no areas where they feel safe, and many fear that if they leave their homes they will never be allowed to return.

Israel has said it must dismantle Hamas’ extensive military infrastructure and remove it from power in order to prevent a repeat of the October 7 attack that ignited the war.

The surprise assault through the border fence saw Hamas and other Palestinian militants kill about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and capture some 240 men, women and children.

The Israeli military has said it makes every effort to spare civilians and accuses Hamas of using them as human shields as it fights in dense residential areas, where it has a labyrinth of tunnels, bunkers, rocket launchers and sniper nests.

But the militant group is deeply rooted in Palestinian society, and its determination to end decades of open-ended Israeli military rule is shared by most Palestinians, even those opposed to its ideology and its attacks on Israeli civilians.

That will complicate any effort to eliminate Hamas without causing massive casualties and displacement.

Even after weeks of unrelenting bombardment, Hamas’ leaders in Gaza were able to conduct complex ceasefire negotiations and orchestrate the release of more than 100 Israeli and foreign hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners last week. Palestinian militants have also kept up their rocket fire into Israel, both before and after the truce.

The fighting has brought unprecedented death and destruction to the coastal strip.

The health ministry in Gaza said the death toll in the territory since October 7 has surpassed 15,890 people – 70% of them women and children – with more than 42,000 wounded. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. It says hundreds have been killed or injured since the ceasefire’s end, and many still are trapped under rubble.

An Israeli army official provided a similar figure for the death toll in Gaza on Monday, after weeks in which Israeli officials had cast doubt on the ministry’s count.

The official said at least 15,000 people have been killed, including 5,000 militants, without saying how the military arrived at its figures. The military says 84 of its soldiers have been killed in the Gaza offensive.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Monday that it was too soon to pass judgment on Israeli operations, but that it was unusual for a modern military to identify precise areas of expected ground manoeuvres and ask people to move out, as Israel has done in Khan Younis.

“These are the kinds of steps that we have asked them to undertake.” he said. “These are the conversations we’re having day in, day out.”

The US has pledged unwavering support to Israel since the October 7 attack, including rushing weapons and other aid to the country.

We stand before Shavuot, the festival of the giving of the Torah. This Torah is always understood as Torat chaim, the teaching of life. In these terrible times across Israel and Gaza, we pray for the teaching of life.

We pray for the safety of everyone, an end to the violence, a restoration of calm and coexistence across shared cities and neighbourhoods, and leadership which can bring hope for the future to both Israelis and Palestinians. Our hearts go out to everyone bereaved, wounded, and living in anxiety and fear. Our thoughts are for our family and friends, – and everyone.

The first of the Ten Commandments spoken at Sinai is ‘I am the Lord your God.’ Since the human being is created in God’s image, the echo of that commandment can be heard in every person. God calls out in the unique sanctity of each life. There is therefore no place in true faith for race hate, vigilante groups, be they Jewish, Muslim or any other, or for cruelty, injustice and humiliation.

I will never forget my short visit to Israel towards the end of the fighting in Gaza in 2014. I visited Tel Hashomer hospital and listened to wounded soldiers. A family whose son was killed showed me his Siddur, his prayer book. Handwritten on the opening pages were his hopes for a life of goodness and generosity. He’d been due to get married in just a few weeks. Terrible!

I was taken to a hospital in East Jerusalem which was receiving wounded children from Gaza. I’ll never forget this searing experience. I asked an older man sitting by the bed of a child whether this was his son. ‘No,’ he said; the parents were dead, killed together with eighteen members of the family.

There is only more hurt in all this violence, another ring of pain and anger which will someday have to be overcome. Only respect for all human life, fairness and something to hope for can bring a truly safe future.

So I turn with respect and deep admiration to some of the messages sent in these last days. Here is a letter from The Abraham Initiatives:

We are planning a national campaign entitled: “Only Together.” The campaign, in Hebrew and Arabic, will feature images of Jews and Arabs in everyday life: shopping together; studying together at university; working together in hospitals fighting Covid-19. Our campaign will feature on the main TV channels…

Here is a joint statement sent by Rabbi Ofek Meir from headteachers of Jewish and Arab schools in Haifa:

Our role as educators is to raise the younger generation to be independent, critical thinkers, with values; and to be a generation who will create knowledge, opinions, narratives and culture; and who respect the other’s opinion, and who believe in the values ​​of equality and human rights. This is true anytime, anywhere, but especially now and in Haifa in particular.

This is from Rabbi Arik Ascherman, so often attacked for his defence of basic human justice:

One of the few positive developments has been the religious and other civil leaders who have begun to stand together and call for an end to the hate and violence that has led to Israeli Jews and Arabs lynching each other. Tonight around the country average Jewish and Arab citizens stood together to say no to the violence.

Here is from Rabbi Yoav Ende of the Masorti community of Hannaton:

Tonight, activists from Hannaton will join together with others from nearby communities and Arab villages for a joint demonstration of peace and hope; spreading a message of change, a message of a better Israel that can and must be here – showing that living together without conflict, without violence, is not only imperative, it is immediately achievable.

I see in my garden Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish, three of whose daughters were killed in Gaza, standing by the apple tree I planted in their memory, taking a photograph of it to send to his other children. I often reread sections of his book I Shall Not Hate.

Dr Abuelaish, Rabbi Yoav Ende, may our prayers ascend together.

Shabbat Shalom

Jonathan Wittenberg

A Georgian-Israeli billionaire has found an innovative solution to the Gaza Strip’s chronic water crisis.

Michael Mirilashvili wants to deliver hundreds of generators that produce drinking water out of thin air.

His company, Watergen, sent a machine to a Gaza hospital last week in a rare case of Israeli-Palestinian co-operation in the Hamas-ruled enclave.

Gaza’s water situation is dire. Since the 2007 Hamas takeover of the crowded Palestinian territory, Gaza’s 2 million people have endured a crippling border blockade by Israel and Egypt that froze virtually all trade and most travel.

The 13-year-old lockdown, along with three Israel-Hamas wars, has produced chronic power cuts and damaged Gaza’s infrastructure, contributing to water contamination.

Gaza relies on an aquifer as its main source of potable water. But over-extraction has allowed sea water to seep in, rendering 97% of the area’s water undrinkable.

Mr Mirilashvili told the AP news agency he wants to send more water generators to Gaza “because they are our neighbours and it’s a great pity to look at them suffering from such severe water shortages”.

He spoke days after one of his machines was installed on the roof of the Al-Rantisi Medical Centre in Gaza City.

Just a day after delivery, the generator, a large blue cube roughly the size of a vending machine, began producing cold, clean water for the hospital’s paediatric cancer ward.

Functioning like a dehumidifier, the machine extracts moisture from the air and converts it into drinking water.

The machine sent to the Gaza hospital is a medium-sized model and generates about 800 litres a day.

Watergen says its largest generators can provide clean drinking water to thousands of people. The company has also developed a new consumer version for home use.

Watergen’s technology was initially developed for military use in 2009, but it shifted gears to civilian markets after Mr Mirilashvili bought the company in 2017.

Mr Mirilashvili, who was born in Georgia, controls a vast business empire that has included casinos, hotels, oil, real estate and Russia’s largest social network.

He donated the generator to the hospital after he was approached by Jerusalem-based Palestinian businessman Fayez Husseini, a former chief executive of Palestinian mobile phone company Wataniya.

Mr Husseini said for this project, Israeli authorities gave quick approval to move the generator across the border. Although there were no dealings with Hamas authorities in Gaza, he said he did not expect any trouble there either.

“I think both sides need to take electricity and drinking water off the table,” he said. “This should not be part of politics.”

Egypt is finalising details of a long-term truce deal between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, an Egyptian security source said on Thursday, amid easing tensions on the border of the enclave where some two million Palestinians live.

Cairo has brokered an interim truce that has allowed commercial goods into Gaza ahead of the Muslim Eid al-Adha feast which starts next week.

“We are putting the final touches to the terms of the truce that will be signed by all sides, and we expect to announce the terms next week if Fatah helps us to do so,” the source said, referring to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s mainstream party which dominates the occupied West Bank.

Officials from Fatah have not joined those of Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, and other Palestinian factions for the talks in Cairo on the long-term truce.

But Fatah’s backing is crucial for any deal as the party retains a large presence in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and has overall control in areas under Abbas’s Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.

“The period of calm will be for one year, during which contacts will be held to extend it for another four years,” the source told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A long-term truce could pave the way for talks on other issues, including the easing of a blockade that has crippled Gaza’s economy and allowing a possible swap of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers.

The source said Egyptian intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, was expected to meet Abbas in Ramallah after similar talks in Israel, and a deal could be announced by next week. An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed Kamel had met with Netanyahu in Israel this week, but gave no details.

A Palestinian source in Ramallah said Kamel has left without seeing Abbas, who had been preoccupied with a Palestinian leadership conference. But the source said Abbas had informed Egypt that Fatah representatives would join the Cairo talks later this week or next week.

EASING BLOCKADE

Apart from the opening of its Kerem Shalom commercial crossing into Gaza, Israel also expanded the enclave’s fishing zone, in waters under Israeli naval blockade, from three to nine nautical miles off the southern coast and to six nautical miles in the north, according to the head of Gaza’s fishermen’s union.

The Egyptian security source said the extended truce would also include opening a sea lane from Gaza to Cyprus under Israeli supervision.

A Palestinian official in Gaza familiar with the talks said Palestinian factions were demanding a “total lifting of the blockade on Gaza, opening all crossings with Israel and Egypt and a water corridor”.

Israel says its blockade is a self-defence measure against Hamas, a group that has called for its destruction.

Israel’s security cabinet, a forum of senior ministers headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, discussed the Gaza situation on Wednesday and an Israeli “diplomatic official” said Hamas would have to prove its commitment to the truce.

As well as wanting calm along the border, Israel has said Hamas must return the remains of two soldiers killed in the 2014 Gaza war and release two civilians whose fate is unknown. It says they are being held by Hamas in Gaza.

“That’s the only way,” Israeli Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi, a member of Netanyahu’s security cabinet, said on Thursday when asked if a broad arrangement depended on the return of the soldiers’ bodies.

“Nothing will be done to enable (Gaza’s) significant rehabilitation and the improvement of infrastructure and ports and other such fantasies, unless they release the bodies and the two Israeli captives,” he told Israel radio.

The Egyptian security source said the long-term truce would also envisage Israel freeing hundreds of detained Palestinians in a prisoner swap.

However, the Palestinian official denied any talks were taking place on a swap, saying Hamas opposed mixing the issues.

Egypt has brokered a Palestinian reconciliation agreement that provides for Hamas to cede control of Gaza to Abbas’s Palestinian Authority. A dispute over power-sharing has hindered implementation of the deal, but the Egyptian source said Cairo was still seeking progress on the issue.

Israel will reduce electricity supplies to the Gaza Strip after the Palestinian Authority limited how much it pays for power to the enclave run by Hamas, Israeli officials said on Monday.

The decision by Israel’s security cabinet is expected to shorten by 45 minutes the daily average of four hours of power that Gaza’s 2 million residents receive from an electricity grid dependent on Israeli supplies, the officials said.

The West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) blamed Hamas’s failure to reimburse it for electricity for the reduction in power supplies.

But PA spokesman Tareq Rashmawi coupled that explanation with a demand that Hamas agree to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s unity initiatives, which include holding the first parliamentary and presidential elections in more than a decade.

“We renew the call to the Hamas movement and the de facto government there to hand over to us all responsibilities of government institutions in Gaza so that the government can provide its best services to our people in Gaza,” he said.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said Israel and the Palestinian Authority “will bear responsibility for the grave deterioration” in Gaza’s health and environmental situation.

Any worsening to Gaza’s power crisis – its main electrical plant is off-line in a Hamas-PA dispute over taxation – could cause the collapse of health services already reliant on stand-alone generators, many of them in a poor state of repair, Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesman for the Health Ministry in Gaza, said.

Israel charges the PA 40 million shekels ($11 million) a month for electricity, deducting that from the transfers of Palestinian tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Authority. Israel does not engage with Hamas, which it considers a terrorist group.

Last month, the Palestinian Authority informed Israel that it would cover only 70 percent of the monthly cost of electricity that the Israel Electric Corporation supplies to the Gaza Strip.

At the security cabinet session late on Sunday, ministers decided that Israel would not make up the shortfall, the officials said.

“This is a decision by (Abbas) … Israelis paying Gaza’s electricity bill is an impossible situation,” Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said on Army Radio.

Israeli military and security chiefs backed the move, despite concern Hamas could respond by increasing hostilities with Israel.

Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from Abbas’s Fatah movement in 2007, and several attempts at reconciliation, most recently in 2014, have failed. Hamas has accused Abbas of trying to turn the screw on them to make political concessions.

We see the cycle of hatred, an Israeli Jewish couple murdered, Jewish settlers retaliate by running over innocent Palestinians and burning olive groups, apart from the harassment and humiliation they mete out to Palestinian farmers.

A Jewish man is stabbed in the Old City by young Palestinians, whilst Palestinian children are shot and killed in cold blood by IDF soldiers as they demonstrate. Palestinian houses are demolished so that families pay the price for their relatives and Palestinians and Israeli Jews work out ways how they can disentangle themselves forever. Is this what we have come to?

The cycle of violence carries on and the propaganda and political pitches are played out by both sides. Yet, in all of this, children are dying once again, looking like they are in an eternal sleep as they are laid out on hospital beds in Gaza and within Israel and the West Bank.

Israel deserves peace, of that there is no doubt. But a future state of Palestine must be born with its security protected. It must be born for the sake of future peace and it must be given life without the crushing occupation that seeps into the daily lives of Palestinians. In all of these discussions, we must never fail to mention the fact that the occupation in the West Bank must and should end. It provides no security to Israel and most of all, it destroys hope in the eyes of young Palestinians who have seen nothing but humiliation and occupation. It must end and end now!

Furthermore, the conflict in Israel and the Middle East affects Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities globally. The Al Haram Al Sharif, also known as the Temple Mount, will spark regional tensions if it is continually used politically by the Netanyahu Government. Such tensions when ignited are sadly sweeping into the West Bank, Gaza and within Israel itself, but they play into the hands of those who want to destroy Israel at all costs. It strengthens the hardliners and weakens the pragmatists. But then again, Netanyahu can hardly be called a pragmatist.

Our only call, is that those who truly believe that Israelis and Palestinians can live together, step forward and demonstrate their opposition to the politics of division. For it is only at moments of trauma that cousins regret historical relationship breakdowns and yearn for another chance to repair the bonds. That window of opportunity is fast fading and the future is one which could see many more young children sleeping the eternal sleep of peace.