Tag: israel

Israeli Forces Raise Flag Over Syrian Town In Latest Raid: ‘Provocative Act’

Israeli military vehicles rolled into the town of Hadr in Syria’s Quneitra Governorate days ago and raised the Israeli flag over the town’s entrance. Locals say they also closed all but one road leading into or out of the town, and established a checkpoint on that road as well.

Though Israel routinely raids Quneitra’s towns and villages of late, raising the Israeli government’s flag over a town is more provocative than what usually happens in these incidents, and like most of Israel’s military forays on Syrian soil, they’ve yet to issue a statement to even attempt to explain the purpose of the operation.

Hadr is a relatively small town of about 5,000 people along the frontier between Quneitra Governorate and the UNDOF demilitarized zone, a zone which has subsequently been occupied militarily by Israel. Some suburbs of Hadr extend into the demilitarized zone.

Israel also launched operations against multiple other villages in Quneitra earlier this week, including Saida al-Golan and Saida al-Hanout. They captured two young men who were herding sheep to the west of the village.

The troops also captured two village elders in Saida al-Golan, though the elders were ultimately released without incident. The fate of the shepherds remains uncertain, and again the IDF has not commented.

As for the flag-raising incident, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which the mainstream media had long relied on as its main anti-Assad source throughout the prior war, detailed the following of the “provocative act”:

Al-Quneitra province: Israeli forces raised the Israeli flag at the entrance of Hadr Town in northern Al-Quneitra countryside [on Wednesday], raising local questions regarding the escalation in the area.

According to sources, these forces closed secondary roads leading to the town from the side of Al-Qanaif checkpoints, and only kept the main road leading to the town open.

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Israel Targeted Churches, Mosques, and Markets during the Genocide.

Gaza City is home to landmarks such as the Church of Saint Porphyrius, the Great Mosque and Gaza’s al-Zawiya and gold markets.

These landmarks testify to Gaza’s archaeological history, religious significance and commercial heritage.

But throughout its genocide in the Gaza Strip, Israel has wreaked havoc on these places.

The Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius is located in Gaza City’s al-Zaytoon neighborhood, with roughly 20 Christian homes standing around it.

The church is believed to be the third-oldest in the world.

But its heritage and status as a place of worship didn’t deter Israel from bombing the church on 19 October 2023, targeting the church’s annex building and killing 17 Palestinian Christians who were sheltering there.

“It was the greatest catastrophe of our lives,” Fuad Ayyad, a Christian working at the church, told The Electronic Intifada.

“I can still see the faces and bodies of the martyrs I collected with my own hands, the children I buried myself,” Ayyad, 44, said. “It was the first time in our history that a church – a house of worship – was directly targeted.”

The Christian community sought refuge in Gaza’s churches during the genocide.

More than 400 sought refuge in Saint Porphyrius, while a few hundred meters away, the Latin convent, which comprises the Catholic Holy Family Church, sheltered around 500 others.

On 16 December 2023, an Israeli sniper fatally shot two Christian women while they were sheltering at the Holy Family Church.

On 18 July 2025, an Israeli artillery shell struck the Holy Family Church, killing three Christians.

Churches weren’t safe havens only for Christians.

The Saint Porphyrius Church, Ayyad said, was also housing Palestinian Muslims.

But “the Israeli army makes no distinction between a Christian or a Muslim,” Ayyad said.

The 19 October 2023 bombing, he said, killed another Muslim man who was sheltering at the church.

“The church lost its majesty, but it still carries the memory of coexistence and love,” Ayyad said, referring to the 2014 Gaza war when the church sheltered Palestinian Muslims during Ramadan, Muslims’ holy month, where they broke their fasts and worshiped god.

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Yemen enters war, launches ballistic missile at ‘sensitive’ sites in southern Israel

The Ansarallah-led Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) announced on 28 March the launch of a barrage of ballistic missiles targeting sensitive military sites in southern Israel.

Saturday’s attack marked the first action by the YAF against Israel since Tel Aviv and Washington initiated a war on Iran on 28 February. Shortly afterward, the US and Israel also engaged in wars against the Resistance Axis in Lebanon and Iraq.

YAF spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree stated that the operation was carried out in response to Israel’s crimes and massacres “against our brothers in Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, and Palestine.”

Saree added that the operation successfully achieved its objectives and coincided with the “heroic operations” carried out by “our mujahideen brothers in Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon.”

He also confirmed that Yemeni military operations will continue until the declared objectives are achieved and the aggression against all resistance fronts ceases.

The attack came one day after Sanaa urged the US and Israel to participate in international diplomatic efforts to end the war against Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq.

“[Our] fingers are on the trigger for direct military intervention,” the YAF declared on Friday, warning other countries against joining the US and Israel in their war against the Axis of Resistance, including if the Red Sea is used to carry out “hostile operations against Iran or any Muslim country.”

The Yemeni forces emphasized that Saturday’s ballistic missile attack stems from a religious and moral responsibility to resist the US and Israel’s effort to establish “Greater Israel.”

The Israeli military announced on Saturday that it had identified a missile launched from Yemen.

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Israel kills three journalists in south Lebanon after strike on press vehicle

The Israeli army killed veteran Al-Manar correspondent Ali Shoeib, Al-Mayadeen journalist Fatima Ftouni, and her brother, photojournalist Mohammad Ftouni, during a double-tap drone strike on a press vehicle in southern Lebanon on 28 March.

The Israeli attack wiped out the entire media team traveling together to deliver coverage of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon’s south. Media officials confirmed the team was inside a clearly marked “PRESS” vehicle when it was bombed.

Images show the car was moving along a forested road in the town of Jezzine with very little traffic due to the forced displacement of residents, confirming a deliberate targeted strike.

The area was then targeted again with a second strike after people attempted to provide aid. The Israeli military broadcast video of the attack, claiming that Shoeib was a “terrorist in the intelligence unit of Hezbollah’s Radwan Force.”

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CNN Crew Apprehended by IDF in the West Bank – Says They Were Assaulted and Equipment was Damaged – IDF Releases Statement

A CNN crew reporting on Israeli settlements in the West Bank in Palestine was detained by IDF soldiers on Friday. 

The reporters say they were put in a chokehold after they and several Palestinian residents were approached by armed troops.

According to the Jerusalem Post,

The CNN team was interviewing Palestinian residents of the West Bank town of Tayasir after settlers established an outpost in the town and violently attacked residents.

While conducting interviews on camera, IDF soldiers ordered the team and the Palestinians to stop speaking and aimed their weapons at the group, according to the CNN reporters present.

Video from the incident shows the reporters being approached and detained.

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Houthis join Iran war, Israel accuses Yemen of entering conflict

The Houthis, the Iranian-backed militant group, took to X to announce they have joined the Iran war, saying they have launched a salvo of ballistic rockets at military targets in southern Israel.

It came after Israel’s military said it had detected a missile launched from Yemen toward its territory and that its aerial defence systems were engaged to intercept the incoming threat.

Earlier, explosions were heard in the Syrian capital Damascus as well as the Lebanese capital of Beirut, despite the United States saying it was “hopeful” that peace meetings with Iran would take place this week.

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Ghislaine Maxwell’s Father Sold Bugged Israeli Software to Two Nuclear Weapons Labs in New Mexico. Then His Daughter Led Jeffrey Epstein to Purchase a Ranch Located Halfway Between Them.

In 1985, a British media mogul walked into Sandia National Laboratories — one of the most sensitive nuclear weapons facilities in the United States — and signed a contract to install surveillance software that federal investigators would later allege was engineered to spy on its own users.

In 1993, a convicted sex offender purchased a ranch at the precise geographic midpoint between that facility and Los Alamos National Laboratory, the other crown jewel of American nuclear weapons research. He equipped that ranch with an industrial-sized spy-grade private microwave communications link running directly to a relay tower at Sandia Crest.

In 2023, a Texas family with documented ties to Russian officials and the Trump White House purchased that ranch, terminated most of its federal communications licenses — but kept the microwave link to Sandia Crest running, in the dead man’s company name.

The British media mogul was Robert Maxwell. His daughter is Ghislaine Maxwell. The sex offender was Jeffrey Epstein. The Texas family is Donald and Mary Catherine Huffines.

These documented facts are all drawn from federal court records, FCC license filings, FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, the Epstein files, congressional testimony, published investigative reporting, and this reporter’s own review of primary sources.

What follows is a chronological account of what the records show — and of what New Mexico journalism and law enforcement has failed, for forty years, to ask.

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Chief of Staff Zamir warns IDF will collapse due to lack of manpower, raises ‘ten red flags’

The IDF could soon collapse if there is no solution to the shortage of manpower, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir warned in remarks during a security cabinet meeting held on Wednesday.

“I am raising 10 red flags before the IDF collapses into itself,” Zamir said during the cabinet meeting, The Jerusalem Post confirmed.

IDF sources also told the Post that there is tremendous concern due to the severe manpower shortage, especially amid the ongoing war.

Even in peacetime, Israel would still need more soldiers – not fewer – on the border in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank, the sources said.

If the government does not add more soldiers, then there will be places with big gaps, they added.

There has also been no law set in place to significantly increase haredi (ultra-Orthodox) conscription into the army, contributing to the lack of manpower.

Before Operation Roaring Lion, the government was rapidly advancing controversial legislation that was said to enforce haredi conscription.

Critics argued the proposed bill was a political measure intended to appease the haredi parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition and would not effectively enforce conscription.

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New Israeli policy targeting Christian schools in Jerusalem could threaten their future existence

The Israeli government instituted a policy prohibiting Christian Palestinian teachers who live in the West Bank from working in any of the 15 Christian schools in Jerusalem in a move that threatens to weaken the two-millennia presence of Christians in the Holy City.

School principals in Jerusalem recently received letters from the Israeli Ministry of Education stipulating that beginning in September they are required to only hire teachers who reside in the city and hold Israeli-issued qualifications.

The March 10 directive comes in the wake of a bill approved last July by the Education Committee of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) aimed at prohibiting Palestinian teachers who earned their degrees at institutions in the West Bank from teaching in Israel or the occupied East Jerusalem.

Therefore, work permits for Christian Palestinian teachers living in the West Bank will no longer be granted despite their possessing a green card that allows individual Palestinians to work and travel within Israeli-controlled areas.

According to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), this restriction will affect almost 230 Christian teachers at 15 schools in Jerusalem, relegating them to the financial hardship of unemployment.

A representative of the General Secretariat of Christian Schools (GSCS) in the Holy Land told ACN that the new policy threatens the future of Christian education in the Holy City.

Additionally, he said, “If this decision is truly implemented, our Christian schools will find themselves in a very difficult position, which will jeopardize their sustainability and cause them to lose their Christian mission.”

The GSCS representative, who spoke on condition of anonymity, explained, “There are not enough Christian teachers in Jerusalem to take over. In the long term, these restrictions risk permanently affecting the Christian character of our institutions and weakening the Christian faith and presence in the city.”

With most of these Christian schools having been founded in the late 19th century, they have educated hundreds of thousands of students, both Christian and Muslim, throughout the decades.

According to ACN, they were established “to promote Christian education and to preserve the Faith and the Christian presence in Jerusalem,” and “have played an essential role at national and interreligious levels.”

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US Arms Control Official Refuses To Comment When Asked If Israel Has Nuclear Weapons

A senior US arms control official on Wednesday refused to comment when asked during a congressional hearing if Israel has nuclear weapons, maintaining the US government’s ambiguity over Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal.

“I can’t comment on that specific question. I’d have to refer you to the Israelis on that,” Thomas DiNanno, the US undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, told Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) when asked about Israel’s nuclear capabilities.

Castro asked why DiNanno wouldn’t answer whether or not Israel has nuclear weapons, but DiNanno continued to say he wouldn’t comment. “I don’t understand why this issue is so taboo when it’s a basic question, and we’re in a war alongside Israel against Iran. We’re dealing with the potential for nuclear fallout, and you won’t answer this basic question,” Castro said.

Every US presidential administration since President Nixon has maintained an understanding with Israel under which the US and Israel do not acknowledge Israel’s nuclear weapons program, and the US doesn’t pressure Israel to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The ambiguity has allowed the US presidents to provide military assistance without worrying about the 1976 Symington Amendment, a foreign assistance law that prohibits aid to countries that traffic in or receive nuclear enrichment equipment or technology outside of international safeguards.

Israel’s nuclear arsenal, which is estimated to be somewhere between 70 and 400 nuclear warheads, is almost always missing from the conversation in US media coverage and political discussions surrounding Iran’s nuclear program, which has never been used to develop weapons. Unlike Israel, Iran is a signatory of the NPT, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader killed by an Israeli strike on February 28, had maintained a Fatwa banning the development of nuclear weapons.

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