Hamas militants released eight more Israeli hostages and three bodies Thursday as a cease-fire with Israel was expected to expire. 

The Israeli military said six Israeli hostages had been released from captivity in the Gaza Strip and transferred to Egypt by the Red Cross late Thursday. They arrived hours after two additional hostages were turned over to Israel separately.

From Egypt, the newly freed hostages were to be transferred to Israel to be reunited with their families after nearly eight weeks in captivity.

The names of Thursday’s freed hostages are as follows: Ayesha Alzyadna, 17; Bilal Alzyadna, 18; Nili Margalit, 41; Mia Schem, 21; Ilana Gritzewsky, 30; Shani Goren, 29; Amit Soussana, 40; and Sapir Cohen, 29. 

Thursday marked the seventh straight night of hostage releases under a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas. Israel was to free 30 Palestinian prisoners later in the evening under the deal.

The cease-fire is set to expire early Friday, though international mediators are working to extend it.

Roughly 140 hostages are believed to remain in Hamas captivity.

International pressure has mounted for the truce to continue as long as possible after weeks of Israeli bombardment and a ground campaign following Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war. Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza have been killed and more than three-quarters of the population of 2.3 million have been uprooted, leading to a humanitarian crisis.

Israel has vowed to resume the fighting — with the goal of dismantling Hamas — once the cease-fire ends.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A liberal columnist posted a column in the Washington Post calling California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s alleged ‘shadow campaign’ a ‘patriotic’ move and slammed the Democratic Party for the ‘reckless gamble’ of moving forward with President Biden in 2024.

‘Here’s the reality: Whether you like Biden or not (I do, and I’m pretty sure Newsom does, too), the Democratic Party right now is taking a shockingly reckless gamble with the country’s future,’ journalist Matt Bai wrote in the Washington Post on Wednesday, the day before the highly anticipated debate between Newsom and Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Bai outlines the recent prominent moves made by Newsom that have led to accusations from many  on both sides of the aisle that Newsom is running a ‘shadow campaign’ to step in for Biden as questions continue to grow about his age. 

Bai then slams Democrats, including Sen. John Fetterman, who publicly defended Biden’s re-election and dismissed Newsom’s potential challenge. Fetterman said earlier this year that Newsom doesn’t have the ‘guts’ to admit he’s running and said anyone going against Biden is writing a ‘check for Trump.’

‘Because, apparently, having guts in the Democrat Party right now means mindlessly cheerleading for the president and hoping, despite all available data and the ominous mood, that everything is going to work out just fine,’ Bai wrote.

Bai continued: ‘The oldest president in history is about to become an even older nominee, backstopped by a vice president whom barely a third of the country likes. For the next year, we will all be one major health issue, or one small slip on the stairs, from inviting a lying autocrat back to the White House.’

Bai wrote that the ‘Democratic answer’ to this problem has been ‘some version’ of ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got this.’ 

‘Which might sound familiar to you, since it’s precisely what Hillary Clinton’s strategists told everyone in 2016, when they tried, mostly with success, to shut down support for anyone who dared to run against her,’ Bai wrote. ‘That worked out great.’

Bai wrote that Democrats should watch the Fox News debate between the two governors and ‘assess Newsom’s skills and his command of the issues, just in case they should wake up one day and find themselves in the market for an alternative to Biden who isn’t named Harris.’

‘That’s not me being mean or ghoulish. That’s being practical, and even patriotic.’

Bai said that viewers will see Newsom as a ‘polished politician’ who can be ‘too slick’ but can ‘articulate’ a ‘next-generation agenda without pretending ‘everything will be OK’ if the party is loyal to Biden.

‘In Democratic politics at the moment, that’s about as brave as it gets,’ Bai wrote.

A Monmouth University poll released earlier this month showed that 76% of voters agreed Biden, 80, was ‘too old’ to serve another term, compared to just 48% who said the same about Trump, 77. 

Newsom has denied he’s running for president multiple times, and when asked, he told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo in September that he’s ‘not worthy of that conversation’ and that Biden ‘deserves it.’

At the start of the Fox News debate on ‘Hannity’ Thursday night, Newsom again denied running a shadow campaign. 

‘The one thing we have in common is neither of us will be our party’s nominee in 2024,’ Newsom told DeSantis.

Fox News Digital reached out to the DNC for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

Former President Donald Trump’s team went after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a scathing message on Truth Social on Thursday saying that his GOP opponent is ‘thirsty’ like an ‘OnlyFans’ model and debating California Gov. Gavin Newsom because he is ‘so desperate for attention.’

‘Ron DeSanctimonious is acting more like a thirsty, third-rate OnlyFans wannabe model than an actual presidential candidate. Instead of actually campaigning and trying to turn around his dismal poll numbers, DeSanctus is now so desperate for attention that he’s debating a Grade A loser like Gavin Newsom,’ Trump Spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a press release titled ‘Kiss of Death’ on the day DeSantis and Newsom were set to debate on Fox News.

Cheung continued: ‘At the debate, Ron will flail his arms and bobble his head wildly, looking more like a San Francisco crackhead than the governor of Florida. This isn’t a prediction. It’s a spoiler.’

‘It’s never been clearer that Ron DeSanctus doesn’t have his eye on the ball. Despite falling to FIFTH PLACE in New Hampshire and failing to gain any ground in Iowa for months, DeSantis appears to already be auditioning for a career in reality television, with tonight’s circus with Gavin Newsom,’ Cheung wrote. 

The Trump campaign has continued to spar with the DeSantis campaign in recent months as the Florida governor attempts to position himself as the most viable alternative to Trump. 

‘Donald Trump is a high-risk proposition as a nominee because I think the chance of him getting elected is small, but it’s a low reward because he’s going to be a lame duck on day one – that even if he could get elected, he would not be able to attract the type of talent to work in his administration and he’d be saddled with all these distractions that it’d be virtually impossible to get the job done,’ DeSantis said earlier this month.

The super PAC backing Trump’s campaign revived attack ads against DeSantis last month, spending millions going after DeSantis in the past few weeks, which the DeSantis team pointed out on social media earlier this month as a public admission that DeSantis is ‘climbing in Iowa.’

DeSantis was recently endorsed by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and influential Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats who said ‘there’s definitely a shot that the former president can be beat here’ despite Trump leading DeSantis by at least 30 points, according to the Real Clear Politics average, with just over six weeks until the Iowa caucus. 

‘The good news for Ron DeSantis is he is the front-runner in Iowa if former President Trump was not competing to win Iowa,’ David Avella, chairman of GOPAC and a veteran Republican strategist, told Fox News Digital earlier this week. 

‘The bad news for Ron DeSantis is former President Trump is organizing to win Iowa. For DeSantis to win, he needs to get [there to] caucus those voters who are still keeping their options open and those voters who are only considering candidates other than Donald Trump. It is going to take him convincing voters with a clear, concise message that his ideas are the best solutions.’

The House of Representatives will try for the third time Friday to expel Rep. George Santos from Congress amid a slew of accusations against him, including alleged campaign finance abuses.

But some are concerned a successful expulsion of Santos could set an unnecessary precedent. 

Santos, R-N.Y., survived the first two efforts to expel him from Congress, but the third time may be the charm for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who believe Santos is unfit to serve.

‘We’re going to allow people to vote their conscience,’ House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said of the impending vote.

Support for ousting the freshman congressman has grown after an investigation by the House Ethics Committee found that Santos ‘sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit.’

The committee found Santos ‘used campaign funds for personal purposes’ including spa days and purchases at luxury stores. The committee also found he ‘engaged in fraudulent conduct,’ and ‘engaged in knowing and willful violations of the Ethics in Government Act as it relates to his Financial Disclosure (FD) Statements filed with the House.’

That includes $50,000 in campaign donations that were wired to Santos’ personal account on Oct. 21, 2022, and allegedly used to, among other things, ‘pay down personal credit card bills and other debt; make a $4,127.80 purchase at Hermes; and for smaller purchases at OnlyFans; Sephora; and for meals and for parking.’

Santos also made a number of false statements, and lied about where he went to school and his employment history. 

Santos has denied wrongdoing and accused the committee of ‘bias,’ but also announced upon the release of the report that he would not run for re-election. 

Santos was indicted in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in October for allegedly filing fraudulent fundraising reports with the Federal Election Commission to obtain financial support for his campaign, among other accusations.

Santos faces 23 federal charges: One count of conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States, two counts of wire fraud, two counts of making materially false statements to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), two counts of falsifying records submitted to obstruct the FEC, two counts of aggravated identity theft, and one count of access device fraud, in addition to the seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making materially false statements to the United States House of Representatives.

Santos has pleaded not guilty.

Some Republicans have argued that Santos should have his day in court and enjoy due process before an expulsion vote occurs, which has been House precedent so far. Others believe that some of Santos’ alleged activity are ‘infractions against the House itself’ and that he should be expelled.

‘And so what we’ve said as the leadership team is we’re going to allow people to vote their conscience I think is the only appropriate thing we can do,’ Johnson said this week. ‘We’ve not whipped the vote and we wouldn’t. I trust that people will make that decision thoughtfully and in good faith.’ 

He added, though, that he ‘personally’ has ‘real reservations about doing this.’ 

‘I’m concerned about a precedent that may be set,’ he said. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

The late Henry Kissinger, an esteemed German-born diplomat and statesman known for his role in shaping U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War era, is described by former colleagues and friends as ‘a really brilliant negotiator.’

Kissinger died at the age of 100 on Wednesday. His legacy included vilification as well as a Nobel Peace Prize.

‘And every negotiation, he understood that everybody has to learn something. You can’t have one side just completely eviscerate the other side,’ KT McFarland, former President Trump’s deputy national security adviser, told Fox News Digital in an interview Thursday.

McFarland worked under Kissinger – her first boss – in the Nixon administration. He later became a mentor figure to her, she said. 

‘When Trump was elected, Henry returned the favor and suggested to President-elect Trump to hire me as his deputy national security adviser,’ McFarland said. ‘So, my time with Henry goes from the full circle, from the White House Situation Room to the White House Situation Room in 45 years.’

As for the controversy surrounding his legacy, such as ‘secretly’ opening the door to China relations, Mcfarland said, ‘Put him into the context of the times.’

Robert Charles, who served as assistant secretary of state at the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs from 2003 to 2005, called Kissinger ‘a titanic figure in every sense of that word.’

‘He was one of the largest political and diplomatic figures of the second half of the 20th century,’ Charles told Fox News Digital. ‘He could manipulate and properly understand the motivations and help to create peaceful environments, using the pieces that were on the board.’

But Kissinger’s controversial policy with China was a significant shift in U.S. foreign relations. He initiated secret negotiations with China while serving as national security adviser under Nixon, culminating in Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972. This laid the groundwork for the normalization of relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China, effectively breaking the isolation that had existed between the two nations since 1949.

The decision to recognize the People’s Republic of China as a legitimate government of China was a departure from the United States’ previous support for Taiwan. This move was criticized for abandoning a longtime ally in favor of establishing relations with a communist regime.

‘The thinking at the time was if you could open China economically to free markets or began to integrate them into the global market, that economic freedom would lead to political freedom,’ Charles said. ‘He was in many ways wrong about that, as was Nixon.’

Charles described Kissinger as ‘a great tactician.’ He recalled seeing Kissinger ‘saunter down the hall with his thumbs in his belt loops’ while working occasionally in the George H.W. Bush White House.

Kissinger had ‘an incredibly deep reservoir of knowledge,’ Mike Pompeo, who served as secretary of state from 2018 to 2021 and director of the CIA from 2017 to 2018, told Fox News Digital. The two conversed on occasion, and every time, Pompeo said, he would walk away having learned something new. 

‘He was just enormously helpful to me during my four years in service, and I think there are many other American leaders of both political parties who turned to him for important data, history, wisdom and guidance,’ he said.

But ‘he did not view [China] as the malevolent actor that I do,’ Pompeo said. ‘And it’s just a difference in judgment, so I don’t critique what he did in 1972. I think it made sense then, that set of policies and effort to get China to become more like us through engagement might even have made sense in 1982.’

He added, ‘But by 2022, it’s no longer a viable foreign policy process, at least in my view.’

Foreign policy strategist, former public official and author of the bestselling book, ‘The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower,’ Michael Pillsbury, told Fox News Digital that he worked under Kissinger during the Reagan campaign. 

‘And I was one of the few people who knew about the China opening, having worked for Kissinger. And in those days, all of the negative, all of the scary things about China was suppressed by Kissinger,’ said Pillsbury, who later served as assistant undersecretary of defense for policy planning during the Reagan administration.

‘The American policy toward China was based on a series of assumptions [that] turned out to be tragically inaccurate,’ he said.

Kissinger, born in Germany in 1923, became a towering figure in American politics and diplomacy and was praised by supporters as a brilliant strategist and condemned by critics as a master political manipulator.

He fled Nazi persecution with his family and settled in the United States in 1938. Educated at Harvard University, he went on to become an academic and a significant authority on international relations.

He served as national security adviser and secretary of state under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, playing a pivotal role in shaping U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War era. His policy of détente aimed to ease tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union and engage China, altering the dynamics of international relations. He conducted the first ‘shuttle diplomacy’ in the quest for Middle East peace. 

Kissinger played a crucial role in the Vietnam War, actively engaging in negotiations with North Vietnam and overseeing the Paris Peace Accords that facilitated the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam. His strategies and choices during this period sparked controversy, drawing criticism for prolonged conflict and civilian casualties.

In 1973, Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize alongside North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho for their efforts in negotiating the Vietnam ceasefire. However, Tho declined the prize, citing the absence of real peace.

The United Nations office in Geneva removed multiple photos from a pro-Palestinian exhibit after several critics, including the Israeli mission, noted that dead Israeli children had been included.

‘Hamas killed Ido,’ the Israeli mission to the U.N. in Geneva posted on X, formerly Twitter. ‘We call on [U.N. Geneva Director-General Tatiana] Valovaya to immediately remove this exhibition, which spreads misinformation and is part of a propaganda campaign.’

The mission first flagged the misinformation on Thursday after identifying the picture of a 5-year-old named Ido Avigal among the pictures of Palestinian children allegedly killed by Israel in Gaza. The mission said that Avigal had died in 2021 when a Hamas rocket barrage hit his house in Sderot, and it called his inclusion in the exhibition ‘despicable.’

Another user noted that the exhibit also included the picture of a Palestinian teenager who allegedly served in the Mujahideen Brigades, another extremist group based in Gaza and the West Bank. The U.N. did not confirm the veracity of any specific claim but acknowledged that some errant photos were posted ‘near’ the exhibition and disavowed them.

‘While some people may indeed have seen [the photos] as the exhibition was in a public area, our colleagues were notified very quickly and very quickly put them down,’ Alessandra Vellucci, director of the United Nations Information Service, told Fox News Digital.

Velluci acknowledged that multiple ‘images’ were included in the exhibit but insisted they ‘were not there for long.’ She said that no one saw who included the images. 

Vellucci explained that the Geneva U.N. office included the exhibit as part of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people – an annual observance dating to 1977 on the day when the General Assembly had 30 years earlier voted to adopt the resolution on the partition of Palestine.

‘The exhibition was organized in accordance with the GA resolution 60/37 of 1 December 2005, which requested the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and the Division for Palestinian Rights to organize an annual exhibit on Palestinian rights or a cultural event in cooperation with the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the U.N.,’ Vellucci said.

‘However, before the commemoration started, additional images – including the one you refer to – were found to have been posted near the official exhibition,’ Vellucci continued. ‘They were immediately removed as they were not part of the official, authorized exhibition.’

‘The director-general was not informed in advance about these additional images, and as I said, her staff immediately took them off,’ she added, promising to reach out to the Israeli mission for any potential information on the issue. 

Stephane Dujarric, the spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said he had no knowledge about the exhibit or who organized it, but a critic slammed the New York headquarters for continuing to perpetuate its own forms of misinformation with two videos near the public entrance that amount to a form of ‘blood libel.’ 

‘At UN Headquarters in New York the public entrance currently has an exhibition for the same occasion that has a litany of grotesque blood libels,’ Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, told Fox News Digital. 

She described how one video claims that ‘leading Zionist politicians’ pursued ‘the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians’ while the other video accused Israel of promoting an ‘apartheid’ state driven by ‘the capacity of the sword to defeat the sword.’ 

Bayefsky argued that these videos, in contrast to the exhibit in Geneva, convey the image of Jews who ‘massacre’ hapless Arab civilians while saying ‘absolutely nothing about 75 years of successive Arab wars launched to annihilate the Jewish state.’ 

‘Where is the outrage of this vile incitement of Jew hatred that is funded and organized by the United Nations itself, together with its Palestinian partners?’ Bayefsky said. 

The U.N. did not provide comment to Fox News Digital regarding the videos by time of publication.