Tag: israel

Israel Drops “Bunker Buster” Bombs on Apartment Complex in Beirut – Claims “Hezbollah Headquarters”

Israeli fighter jets launched a series of massive airstrikes on a crowded area in the Lebanese capital Beirut on Friday, causing widespread destruction with fears of a large death toll.

At least 10 explosions rocked Beirut’s southern suburbs, a densely-populated area known as Dahiyeh, with large clouds of black smoke rising over the city. 

At least six residential buildings were flattened in the raids with extensive damage reported in nearby structures, according to Al Jazeera.

At least one large crater was seen at the site of the attack and filmed by local media, as dozens of rescue workers and paramedics rushed to the scene. 

Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said Israel’s attacks on Beirut’s southern suburb show it “does not care” about efforts to bring about a ceasefire.

Mikati’s press office sent a statement while he was in New York for the UN General Assembly.

Video of the strikes suggested they were carried out with ground-penetrating munitions known as bunker busters. In some footage, a vertical jet of flame was visible as a bomb appeared to explode beneath the ground.

Israeli media reported that Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was the target and that the military was checking whether he had been hit. Sources close to Hezbollah told Reuters he was alive.

Friday’s strike in Beirut marked a major escalation by Israel, which has been gradually expanding deadly attacks on Lebanon in recent days. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has circulated a photograph of what it says is the prime minister using a landline telephone to approve the strike, the New York Times reported. The newspaper said Netanyahu was returning from New York to Israel.

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Israeli Ground Incursion Into Lebanon To Begin Soon

Sources tell CDM/Tsionizm that Israeli troops are preparing for an imminent ground invasion into southern Lebanon to establish an ‘exclusion zone’ to protect Israeli civilians in the north that still have not returned to their homes.

The Times of Israel reported on small commando raids into Lebanon already…

The small raids made by Israeli special forces into Lebanon in recent months have included sending troops into Hezbollah tunnels along the border, the Wall Street Journal reports.

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More Money for Ukraine, More Weapons for Israel

Whether they like it or not (and they seem very much to like it), the Democratic Party has become America’s war party.

This is especially true with respect to Ukraine. Zelensky has won another $7.9 billion in its war with Russia, prompting this “thank you” from him:

I am grateful to Joe Biden, US Congress and its both parties, Republicans and Democrats, as well as the entire American people for today’s announcement of major US defence assistance for Ukraine totalling $7.9bn and sanctions against Russia.

On behalf of the Ukrainian people and our brave warriors on the frontlines, I thank our closest ally, the United States, for finding a way to allocate the remaining security assistance to Ukraine and ensure that the Presidential authority is not expired by the end of the US financial year.

We will use this assistance in the most efficient and transparent manner to achieve our major common goal: victory for Ukraine, just and lasting peace, and transatlantic security.

I am grateful to the United States for providing the items that are most critical to protecting our people. An additional Patriot air defence battery, other air defence capabilities and interceptors, drones, long-range missiles, and air-to-ground munitions, as well as funds to strengthen Ukraine’s defence industrial base.

I also appreciate the decision to expand programs to train more of our pilots to fly F-16s, as well as the strong sanctions measures imposed to further limit Russia’s ability to fund its aggression against Ukraine.

Kamala Harris is committed to supporting Ukraine “for as long as it takes,” meaning, I guess, some sort of “victory” over Russia, however unlikely that is. So look for a lot more dead and wounded Ukrainians and Russians and a world still hovering on the brink of nuclear war.

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At UN, Netanyahu blames Israel’s isolation on ‘anti-Semitism’

Speaking at the UN General Assembly on 27 September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed the condemnation of Israel at the UN and International Criminal Court (ICC) on anti-Semitism, saying allegations of war crimes have nothing to do with Israel’s actions, including its slaughter and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.

“It’s not about Gaza,” he claimed. “It’s about Israel” and its very existence.

“[U]ntil this anti-Semitic swamp is drained, the UN will be viewed by fair-minded people everywhere as nothing more than a contemptuous farce,” Netanyahu claimed.

“What hypocrisy. What a double standard. What a joke,” he said to applause from Israel supporters.

The assembly hall was otherwise almost empty after several delegations walked out as Netanyahu reached the podium.

On 27 September, the UN member states voted overwhelmingly in the General Assembly to adopt a resolution calling on Israel to comply with international law, withdraw its military forces, immediately cease all new settlement activity, evacuate all settlers from occupied land, and dismantle parts of the separation wall it constructed inside the occupied West Bank.

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Blinken buried reports indicating Israel blocked aid to Gaza so U.S. would keep sending them weapons

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken received an assessment from a pair of prominent authorities on humanitarian assistance showing that Israel purposely blocked deliveries of food and medicine to Gaza but rejected the finding so the U.S. could continue sending weapons to Israel.

The report by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) reached this disturbing conclusion, and it was corroborated by a separate report from the State Department’s Bureau Of Population, Refugees And Migration. The latter also determined that the Foreign Assistance Act needed to be enacted to freeze more than $800 million worth of taxpayer dollars that had been set aside for weapons and bombs for Israel.

However, Blinken and the Biden administration rejected the findings of both authorities. Shortly thereafter, Blinken saw fit to tell Congress: “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”

It’s a shocking stance to take when you consider the fact that USAID’s 17-page memo detailed some of the most blatant examples of Israeli interference with aid efforts, such as bombing hospitals and ambulances, turning away trucks that were full of medicine and food, razing agricultural structures, sitting on supply depots and most appallingly, killing aid workers.

The memo noted that while the population of Gaza grappled with famine and countless children starved to death, food that could have potentially saved people’s lives was stockpiled just miles across the border at a port in Israel, where it is believed there was enough flour on hand to feed 1.5 million Palestinians for a span of five months. The Israeli government would not let the flour be transferred because they claimed that the UN Palestinian branch it was destined for had ties to Hamas.

U.S. law requires the government to stop shipping weapons to countries that have been found to be preventing the delivery of American-backed humanitarian aid, and USAID officials said that America should stop selling arms to Israel. They stated that the famine in Gaza was caused by Israel’s “arbitrary denial, restriction, and impediments of U.S. humanitarian assistance” and called it “one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in the world.”

The situation was so bad that a senior State Department official resigned over it. Stacy Gilbert, a senior civil military adviser for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, claims that the State Department falsified her report. The 20-year State Department veteran said that when the report was ultimately published, she couldn’t believe it when she saw its conclusion that Israel was not blocking humanitarian assistance given the fact that the experts who wrote it reached the opposite conclusion.

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Netanyahu: Israel Is Fighting a War on Seven Fronts

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the UN during his remarks at the 79th General Assembly summit on Friday. He called the body a swamp of antisemitism while saying Israel needed to defend itself on seven fronts.

The Israeli leader’s speech was contentious. Before Netanyahu took to the podium, Pakistani Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif blasted Israel for waging a genocide in Gaza and creating a war with Lebanon. As Netanyahu began his address, a large portion of the UN General Assembly body walked out.

During his remarks, Netanyahu referred to the UN General Assembly as a “swamp of antisemitic bile.” He went on to slam the International Criminal Court (ICC) for considering charging him with war crimes, adding the true war criminals are in Iran and its allied nations.

During his address, Netanyahu presented two maps, one titled “the blessing” and the other “the curse.”  The Israeli leader said Tel Aviv is still seeking a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia. He claimed that if Riyadh established official ties with Israel, the world would receive a “blessing,” but Iran represented a “curse” to the region.

The Israeli leader explained “the blessing” was establishing a “landbridge” from India to Israel. The blessing requires Saudi Arabia to enter the Abraham Accords and normalize ties with Israel. Netanyahu claimed that would have happened, but the October 7 Hamas attack prevented the deal.

In the map titled “the curse,” five countries were represented in black: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. The Israeli leader claimed that Tehran was working to eliminate Tel Aviv using its allies in the region. Netanyahu presented the conflict as a battle between forces of civilization against barbarism.

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CNN shares details of ‘sophisticated’ pager attacks against Hezbollah

The alleged Israeli plot to target senior members of Hezbollah through their pagers relied on explosives hidden in the devices’ batteries in a way that was nearly impossible to detect, CNN reported Friday, citing sources.

Earlier this month, a series of powerful pager explosions swept through the Middle East, killing 12 people and injuring around 3,000. The victims included numerous officials of the Lebanese-based Islamist movement. The attack was followed a day later by portable radio explosions that killed at least 20 others. Iran and Lebanon accused Israel of orchestrating the attack, a charge denied by West Jerusalem.

An unnamed Lebanese official familiar with the investigation told CNN that the explosives in the pagers were hidden inside the device in a way “so sophisticated that it could not be detected.”

Another official told the network that the materials were “laced” into the pager’s lithium battery and were virtually undetectable, adding that he had “never seen anything like it.” Lebanese officials also witnessed controlled explosions of the pagers and observed how devastating they must have been to their owners, according to the article.

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Israel’s new war front in Lebanon has no clear off-ramp

There has recently been an alarming escalation of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. On 23 September, Lebanon experienced its deadliest day since the end of its civil war (1975-90), with more than 560 people killed and another 1,800 injured in a single day by Israeli airstrikes in the country’s south and east.

Hezbollah maintains that it will continue fighting Israel until there is a ceasefire in Gaza. Israeli strikes against Lebanon continuing at this level of intensity will soon constitute a full-scale war.

This scenario would inevitably devastate Lebanon, with Hezbollah’s missiles and drones striking cities and many other targets across Israel. Such a conflict would add new layers of chaotic instability to the Middle East.

The nearly one-year-old Israel-Hezbollah conflict entered a new and dangerous phase with the explosion of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies in Beirut, elsewhere in Lebanon, and Syria on 17 and 18 September.

Israel did not officially claim responsibility for this operation but was undoubtedly behind it. The explosions resulted in dozens of deaths and thousands of injuries of Hezbollah members and civilians, including two children.

Days later, an Israeli airstrike destroyed a high-rise building in the Dahiyeh district south of Beirut, killing 31 people, including senior Hezbollah officials Ibrahim Aqil and Ahmed Mahmoud Wahbi.

Hezbollah responded by attacking northern Israel with dozens of rockets.

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REPORT: Israel To Establish ‘Security Zone’ At The Expense Of Lebanese Territory

Israeli journalists are famously tied into the security state when it comes to the information narrative. Tamir Morag is from Channel 14 and considered a ‘right wing’ journalist that clashes with the Israeli government at times, but he put this out on X yesterday.

Israel is considering re-establishing the security zone in southern Lebanon. If this happens, Hezbollah, which has caused the evacuation of a significant area within Israel’s territory for the past year, will see Lebanon pay for it by losing its sovereign territory. This will be the result of the actions of Nasrallah, the man who prides himself on the title “Protector of Lebanon.”

A source close to the Prime Minister tells us: “There will be no resolution in the north without a security zone inside Lebanon where the IDF is present. Without this, residents simply will not return. The establishment of the zone will be carried out in one of two ways: a political settlement, and if Hezbollah does not agree, a ground maneuver and seizure of the area.”

The source also adds that Israel will not be satisfied with the current terms of Resolution 1701 and will demand certain improvements: “We will not be content with pushing Hezbollah beyond the Litani River. In some areas, such as Metula, the river’s course is very close to the border, and additional solutions will be required there. The residents will not return because we tell them to; they will return only when they feel truly safe.”

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A War Criminal Comes to New York

The war criminal leader of a dangerous rogue state is coming to speak to the UN General Assembly this week. The AP reports:

But Netanyahu arrives at the United Nations this week at a time when his own diplomatic capital and legitimacy, as well as that of the country he represents, are at a low. Critics say that aside from a moment in the spotlight, it’s not clear what Netanyahu will achieve with the visit.

“He is a great believer in speechmaking,” said Tal Schneider, an Israeli political commentator. “He thinks that if he delivers a speech in English, he can convince people in the justness of his ways,” she said, adding that that demonstrated he was “disconnected from reality.”

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