French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has set off a cacophony of criticism over her plans to attend a weekend march to protest against rising antisemitism in France, with critics saying that her once-pariah party has failed to shake off its antisemitic heritage despite growing political legitimacy.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, numerous political parties and people are to attend Sunday's march. Le Pen has said that she and her National Rally party also will be there, in what some see as an attempt to leverage the Israel-Hamas war to make herself more palatable to mainstream voters.

Party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, her father, was convicted repeatedly of antisemitic hate speech and played down the scope of the Holocaust. Daughter Marine — runner-up in the last two presidential elections and likely a top contender in 2027 — has worked to scrub the party’s image, kicking her father out and changing its name from National Front to National Rally.

But the party’s current president, Jordan Bardella, said in an interview on BFM TV this week that he doesn’t think Jean-Marie Le Pen is antisemitic, a remark that revived the link between past and present.

Hundreds of journalists have signed an open letter condemning Israel’s killing of reporters and urging integrity in the Western media’s coverage of the war with Hamas.

“We are writing to urge an end to violence against journalists in Gaza and to call on Western newsroom leaders to be clear-eyed in coverage of Israel’s repeated atrocities against Palestinians,” it says, adding, “We also hold Western newsrooms accountable for dehumanizing rhetoric that has served to justify ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.” 

Accusing Israel of “wide scale suppression of speech,” it says, “We stand with our colleagues in Gaza and herald their brave efforts at reporting in the midst of carnage and destruction. Without them, many of the horrors on the ground would remain invisible.” 

Among the signatories are journalists from The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Boston Globe and the Reuters news agency.

JERUSALEM — There is no news this morning about the fate of two Israeli hostages whose release was promised by the military wing of the Islamic Jihad group yesterday.

Abu Hamza, a spokesperson for the Al-Quds Brigade, said in a video on the Telegram messaging app yesterday that Hanna Katsir, 77, would be released for health reasons because they could not provide her with medicine.

He also said that 12-year-old Yagil Yaqoub would be freed. In a statement earlier this week, Israel’s government said the child had a life-threatening peanut allergy.

The International Committee of the Red Cross told NBC News today that it would need guarantees. “We cannot force our way through the bullets,” spokesperson Alyona Synenko said.

The Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt is preparing to receive 595 foreign passport holders, according to the spokesman for Egypt's North Sinai governorate.

Most of the foreign nationals are Russian, Ukrainian and Egyptian. So far, 3,828 have been able to leave Gaza, not including those slated to exit today. At the start of the war, there was an estimated 7,500 foreigners in Gaza.

Evacuations from the border crossing are heavily negotiated, and have included more than 400 U.S. citizens, among other countries, as well as injured Palestinians.

Israel’s decision to allow a daily four-hour humanitarian pause in combat operations in northern Gaza is “very cynical and cruel,” the U.N. special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories said today.

“There has been continuous bombings, 6,000 bombs every week on the Gaza Strip, on this tiny piece of land where people are trapped and the destruction is massive," Francesca Albanese told reporters in the Australian city of Adelaide. "There won’t be any way back after what Israel is doing to the Gaza Strip.”

She added that the four-hour pause would “let people breathe and to remember what is the sound of life without bombing before starting bombing them again."

"It’s very cynical and cruel,” Albanese added.

Palestinians stand at the edge of a blast crater in Rafah, in southern Gaza, this morning.

President Mahmoud Abbas said today that his Palestinian Authority was ready to assume responsibilities in the Gaza Strip as part of a comprehensive political solution for the occupied West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza.

His comments came as Israel continued its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, having vowed to “destroy” the militant group that has been entrenched in Gaza for decades and in power since 2006. Abbas' Fatah-run Palestinian Authority partially administers the West Bank.

However, the Israeli government has yet to outline what it envisions for the densely populated enclave after the military operation ends. Netanyahu said last night that Israel had no intent to reoccupy or govern Gaza, having earlier suggested that his country would maintain “overall security responsibility” for the enclave when the conflict ends.

Gaza City's Al-Shifa Hospital was coming "under bombardment," a spokesperson for the World Health Organization said today, adding that 20 hospitals in the besieged enclave were now out of action entirely.

Quoting colleagues on the ground, Margaret Harris told a news briefing that she didn't have “the detail on Al-Shifa but we do know they are coming under bombardment.” Asked to elaborate, she said there was “intense violence” at the site.

At the same briefing, the U.N. humanitarian office said that there had been some “issues” getting aid into Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, which it said had been designed for pedestrians, not trucks.

Only 65 trucks carrying food, medicine, hygiene supplies and water, and seven ambulances, crossed from Egypt into Gaza on Wednesday, it said.

An image taken from the Israeli side of the border with Gaza shows a fire burning at dawn in the northern Gaza Strip today.