Tag: israel

Dozens of Israeli raids hit Nabatieh region in south Lebanon in major escalation

Israeli warplanes carried out a wide-scale air attack on the Nabatieh region in southern Lebanon on the morning of 8 May, Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reported. The violent raids came in two waves, targeting valleys, heights, and forests extending between the towns of Kfar Tibnit, Nabatieh al-Fawqa, and Kfar Reman.

Most of the raids focused on the Ali al-Taher extraction site and the former archaeological site. 

The Israeli military said in a statement that it targeted an “infrastructure site” used by Hezbollah that included “terrorists, weapons, and tunnel shafts.” 

The sound of huge explosions caused by the strikes echoed in most areas of Nabatieh and the south, sparking “an atmosphere of terror and panic among citizens, most of whom rushed to schools to evacuate their students,” NNA wrote.

The panic caused traffic jams on the roads, while dozens of ambulances were seen heading towards the vicinity of the targeted areas. Most official government departments also closed their doors.

While Israel regularly bombs southern Lebanon despite signing a ceasefire with the country reached on 27 November of last year, Thursday’s attacks were an “unusually high number.” The Times of Israel noted.

Late last month, Israel conducted an airstrike on a residential neighborhood of Dahiye in the southern suburbs of Beirut. 

Videos showed three bombs hitting a building. Rescue crews worked to put out fires after the blast. The Israeli military issued an evacuation warning before the bombing, prompting panic as residents fled the area.

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Israeli Military Lists Returning Hostages as Least Important Goal for Gaza

The Israeli military has listed the return of the remaining Israeli captives in Gaza as its least important goal in its plans for an escalated assault on the Strip, Haaretz reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, retrieving the hostages was placed last in a list of six objectives. Those goals include:

  1. Defeating Hamas
  2. Operational control over the territory
  3. Demilitarizing the territory
  4. Striking Hamas government targets
  5. Concentrating and moving the population
  6. Returning the captives

News of the Israeli military’s goals comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that retrieving the hostages was not his priority, something that’s been clear for a long time but hasn’t been explicitly stated by the Israeli leader until last week.

The Israeli military finalized plans for the expanded offensive, dubbed “Gideon’s Chariot,” on Tuesday and Wednesday after the government approved the escalation.

The purpose of the expanded assault is to achieve the full Israeli military occupation of Gaza and concentrate the entire civilian population into a tiny area of southern Gaza with the goal of forcing them to leave to achieve ethnic cleansing.

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Joint US-Israeli air raids hit major Yemeni cities

US and Israeli airplanes conducted joint airstrikes late on 5 May on the Yemeni cities of Sanaa and Hodeidah, in response to the Yemeni Armed Forces’ (YAF) attack on Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv on Sunday.

“The United States bombed Sanaa and Israel bombed Hodeidah,” Israel’s Channel 12 reported, citing officials who said that the Israeli raids in Yemen are being coordinated with Washington “while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is overseeing the Israeli attack from the Ministry of Defense building.”

Dozens of warplanes reportedly took part in the western aggression against Yemen.

Despite the intensity of the attacks, a security official told Channel 13 News that Monday’s operation is “merely a repetition of the past.”

“We do not expect the airstrikes to stop Houthi missile launches, and the Air Force is also preparing for a possible Houthi response,” the unnamed official is quoted as saying.

Earlier in the day, US and British warplanes carried out seven airstrikes in Al-Hazm District, located in Yemen’s Al-Jawf Governorate, northeast of Sanaa. Additionally, US aircraft carried out three strikes in the Al-Sawad area of Sanhan District within Sanaa Governorate.

Monday’s blitz against the Arab world’s poorest nation occurred one day after the YAF targeted Ben Gurion Airport with a hypersonic ballistic missile and announced the start of an aerial blockade until Israel ends its siege of Gaza.

“The blessed strike proves the development that [Ansarallah leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi] spoke of, confirms the failure of the defense systems in the region and the entity, and confirms the continued failure of the US aggression to stop the Yemeni support for Gaza,” Member of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council Mohammed Ali al-Houthi declared on Monday.

This is the sixth Israeli air strike against Yemen since July 2024, following over 400 attacks by the YAF on Israel since the start of the genocide in Gaza.

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It Was Never About Hostages. It Was Never About Hamas.

Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that freeing the Israeli hostages in Gaza was not his top priority, suggesting instead that defeating Hamas should take precedence over a hostage deal.

“We have many objectives, many goals in this war,” Netanyahu said. “We want to bring back all of our hostages. That is a very important goal. In war, there is a supreme objective. And that supreme objective is victory over our enemies. And that is what we will achieve.”

Nothing the prime minister said here is true or valid — unless by “enemies” he means “all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip”.

Netanyahu has been fairly transparent about the fact that Israel’s ultimate goal in Gaza is neither freeing the hostages nor defeating Hamas, but seizing Palestinian territory and removing its Palestinian inhabitants. He has openly said that Israel will occupy Gaza via military force, completely ruling out the possibility of any form of Palestinian government for the enclave. He has openly said he wants to enact President Donald Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza, which explicitly entails removing “all” Palestinians and never allowing them to return.

So they’ve made this perfectly clear. This isn’t about Hamas, except insofar as an armed resistance group will make it difficult to forcibly remove all Palestinians from Gaza. And it certainly isn’t about hostages.

And yet, bizarrely, this is how the western political-media class continues to frame this onslaught. They call it Israel’s “war with Hamas”, when it’s nothing other than an undisguised ethnic cleansing operation. They prattle on about October 7, hostages, and terrorism, even though it has already been made abundantly clear that this has nothing to do with any of those things. They act as though the admission was simply never made.

There is absolutely no excuse for continuing to babble about hostages and Hamas after the US and Israel said the goal is the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza. They told you what this is really about. They said it. With their face holes. They said it right to you. End of debate.

Israel has been seeking ways to purge Gaza of Palestinians for generations. That’s all this has ever been about. Not October 7. Not hostages. Not Hamas. Not terrorism. Everything about Israel’s operations in Gaza have indicated that their real goal is to remove Palestinians from a Palestinian territory and not to free hostages or defeat Hamas. And then when Trump took office, they started openly admitting it.

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Rep. MTG Says House Bill to Criminalize EU and UN-Backed Boycotts of Israel with $1 Million Fines and 20-Year Sentences Has Been PULLED

The U.S. House of Representatives has reportedly pulled H.R. 867, the IGO Anti-Boycott Act, following fierce opposition from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), and former Rep. Matt Gaetz.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), aimed to expand the 2018 Anti-Boycott Act to include international governmental organizations (IGOs) like the United Nations and European Union, targeting efforts to boycott U.S. allies, particularly Israel.

The Anti-Boycott Act of 2018 is a U.S. federal law that prohibits U.S. individuals and companies from participating in or supporting foreign-led boycotts against countries that are friendly to the United States, unless such boycotts are sanctioned by U.S. law.

This legislation is particularly aimed at countering boycotts initiated by foreign entities, such as the Arab League’s boycott of Israel.

The Arab League’s boycott of Israel—originally initiated in 1945—still exists on paper, but only a few member countries continue to actively enforce it in a comprehensive way.

  • Iraq
  • Kuwait
  • Lebanon
  • Libya
  • Qatar
  • Saudi Arabia
  • Syria
  • Yemen

Violations can result in civil penalties up to $300,000 or twice the value of the transaction, whichever is greater, and criminal penalties up to $1 million and/or imprisonment for up to 20 years.

In recent years, several companies have faced penalties for antiboycott violations:

  • Quantum Corporation was fined $151,875 for 45 alleged violations involving requests from a distributor in the United Arab Emirates to refrain from importing Israeli-origin goods.
  • Wabtec Corporation was hit with a $153,175 fine for 43 violations after failing to report requests from a Qatari customer to participate in a foreign boycott by avoiding Israeli-origin goods.
  • Pratt & Whitney was penalized $48,750 for 13 violations tied to similar unreported requests from a Qatari customer urging the company to refrain from importing products from Israel.

The new bill, co-sponsored by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), María Elvira Salazar (R-FL), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), and several others, will expand the 2018 law’s scope to include international governmental organizations (IGOs) such as the United Nations and its affiliates.

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RFK Jr. Calls Out King Abdullah: ‘They’ve Cut Us Off’

It’s a rare moment today in American politics that Donald Trump’s West Wing, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi are on the same side of an issue. And it’s rarer still that each of these parties is irritated at the same person.

Yet as Jordan’s King Abdullah II returns to Washington on Monday, top Trump aides, Kennedy, and Pelosi are venting their frustration with one of the Middle East’s longest-serving monarchs.

At issue: the commitment Abdullah made in February sitting by Trump’s side in the Oval Office to accept 2,000 children from Gaza with cancer and other grave illnesses.

Abdullah, say multiple high-ranking officials in both parties, is slow-walking his pledge, and Jordan has only accepted a fraction of sick children because of fears Israel will not let them and their families return to Gaza after treatment.

“They took 44, and then they’ve cut us off,” Kennedy told me over the weekend.

Alluding to Abdullah, an adviser and ally to American presidents for over a quarter-century, Kennedy said: “I would encourage him to put the welfare of these children first and put the politics aside.”

The health secretary pointedly recalled that the king’s “statements to President Trump were really unconditional.” Kennedy repeatedly emphasized the life-and-death urgency of the patients. “These kids are very, very fragile,” he said.

A top West Wing official involved in the discussions was even more to the point, calling Jordan’s reluctance to fully fulfill their pledge “a sad commentary” and that “the war makes things difficult for obvious reasons.”

Pelosi, who has a longstanding friendship with Abdullah, took matters into her own hands last week and had a blunt, private conversation with Jordan’s ambassador to the U.S., Dina Kawar. Kawar told Pelosi that Abdullah’s pledge was contingent on Israel allowing those children who’ve finished treatment to return to Gaza and suggested the former speaker talk to the king, I’m told by a person familiar with the conversation.

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Yemeni Missile Strikes Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport

A missile fired from Yemen struck an access road on the grounds of Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport on Sunday, as a heavy US bombing campaign has failed to deter Yemen’s Houthis, who are officially known as Ansar Allah.

According to The Times of Israel, the Israeli military tried multiple times to intercept the missile but failed. A US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system that’s deployed to Israel also failed to intercept the Yemeni missile.

The missile left a crater, and six people were injured by the attack, though none of them were seriously hurt. The Houthis have fired a series of missiles and drones at Israel since the Israeli military resumed its genocidal war on Gaza on March 18, but the Sunday attack marked the first time a Yemeni missile made it past Israel’s air defenses.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israel would respond to the Houthi attack. “We’ve acted against them in the past, and we’ll act again in the future,” he said. “This isn’t a one-and-done, but there will be some big hits.”

Israel launched a few rounds of airstrikes on Yemen last year but hasn’t done so under the Trump administration. In March, the Israeli news site Ynet reported that the US has asked Israel not to respond to the Houthis’ attacks and said that US forces will handle the retaliation.

Since March 15, the US has launched over 1,000 strikes on Yemen, killing more than 200 civilians. The Trump administration started the bombing campaign in response to the Houthis announcing they would re-impose their blockade on Israeli shipping after Israel imposed a total blockade on Gaza in violation of the ceasefire deal.

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Donald Trump fired national security adviser Mike Waltz for ‘plotting with Israel’s leader to bomb Iran’

President Donald Trump sacked his national security adviser Mike Waltz because he was plotting with Israel‘s leader to attack Iran, it was claimed last night.

Waltz, 51, was thought to have been fired because he accidentally added a journalist to a Signal chat about plans to attack Yemen’s Houthi terrorist group, causing global embarrassment for the Trump administration.

But last night the Washington Post reported the real reason for Trump’s ire was that Waltz huddled with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the latter’s White House visit in February and ‘appeared to share the Israeli leader’s conviction that the time was ripe to strike Iran,’ according to a source.

Trump was angered that Waltz ‘engaged in intense coordination with Netanyahu about military options against Iran ahead of an Oval Office meeting between the Israeli leader and Trump.’

The source said: ‘Waltz wanted to take US policy in a direction Trump wasn’t comfortable with because the US hadn’t attempted a diplomatic solution. 

It got back to Trump and the president wasn’t happy with it. You can’t do that. You work for the president of your country, not the president of another country.’

Waltz, a former Green Beret, was sacked from his position as head of the National Security Council (NSC) on Friday and will now become ambassador to the United Nations, a ‘massive downgrade move to save face’, according to one Trump insider.

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Israel Bombs Humanitarian Aid Flotilla on Way to Gaza

A ship carrying supplies bound for the Gaza Strip was attacked by Israeli drones in international waters on Friday, according to the activist group that organized the flotilla. The vessel reportedly took at least one direct hit to its hull and sustained damage from fire, forcing its crew to issue an urgent call for help.

Organizers with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) said one of their vessels was attacked by an unidentified drone in the early hours of Friday morning, noting the ship was not far off the coast of Malta when it was hit.

“At 00:23 Maltese time, the Conscience, a Freedom Flotilla Coalition ship, came under direct attack in international waters,” the group said in a press release. “Armed drones attacked the front of an unarmed civilian vessel twice, causing a fire and a substantial breach in the hull. [. . .] The drone strike appears to have deliberately targeted the ship’s generator, leaving the crew without power and placing the vessel at great risk of sinking.”

An FFC spokesperson, Caoimhe Butterly, later told Reuters that the ship was struck en route to Malta, where it was scheduled to pick up other activists, among them climate campaigner Greta Thunberg and retired US Army Colonel Mary Ann Wright. The group said it had arranged the aid shipment “under a media black out to avoid any potential sabotage.”

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Two Israeli businessmen murdered hours apart in same LA neighborhood — with one held captive for hours and beaten to death

Two Israeli businessmen were found murdered hours apart in their homes in the same section of Los Angeles Saturday, with one tied up and beaten to death while the other was identified as the brother of a prison warden in the Jewish state, police said.

There is no apparent connection between the two killings, but they both occurred in the San Fernando Valley inside the victims’ homes.

The murder of Alexander Modebadze, 47, was particularly heinous, according to cops.

Three attackers broke into Modebadze’s home, held him captive for hours and savagely beat him to death, police said in a statement.

Police later arrested and charged three Georgian nationals for the murder: Pata Kochiashvili, Zaza Outarashvili and Basiki Kutsishvili.

They are being held on a $2 million bail.

Later that day, cops found another murdered Israeli businessman in the San Fernando Valley: Meni Hidhra, the brother of the warden of Israel’s Nitzan Prison, the Jewish Journal reported.

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