Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on December 03-04/2023
Israel, Hezbollah trade fire across Israel-Lebanon border for third day
Hezbollah missile from Lebanon wounds 12 in northern Israel
Al-Rahi: Lebanese can’t be forced to bear burdens of others' war
Netanyahu: Lebanon will be destroyed if Hezbollah launches war
11 Israelis wounded as Hezbollah and Israel trade fire anew
Mikati meets TotalEnergies CEO: The possibility of resuming drilling as the matter is subject to report
Hezbollah: We targeted a military vehicle at the Beit Hillel base, which resulted in fatalities and injuries
The Israeli bombing targets the vicinity of two Lebanese Army centers
MP Najat Saliba on LBCI: Climate change affects human health, and this is what we witnessed in Lebanon
Abiad to LBCI: We are working on preparing health institutions to confront climate change
Qatar's Prime Minister: Doha is committed to ceasefire efforts
Israel, Threatened by Hezbollah, Seeks Solution for Empty North

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on December 03-04/2023
Iran says Israeli strike in Syria killed 2 Revolutionary Guard members
IDF shells targets in Syria after rocket fire
Suspected U.S. strike in Iraq kills 5 militia members, sources say
Israel expands Gaza ground offensive, says efforts in south will be 'no less strength' than in north
Israeli security chief in recording vows to hunt down Hamas abroad -Kan TV
Israel-Gaza war: Israeli forces pushing into south Gaza
Kirby says intelligence sources did not have access to Hamas’ attack plan after NYT report
Wounded and dead overwhelm southern Gaza hospital on third day of renewed war
Israel says it uncovered 800 shafts to Hamas tunnels below Gazaalestinian Islamist group Hamas in northern Gaza
US and Israeli officials react to blockbuster report that Israel knew Hamas was planning attack
Houthis claim responsibility for the attack on two ships in Red Sea
COP28: The link between climate change and health
More than 15,500 Palestinians killed from Israeli bombing in Gaza: Health Ministry
Buffer zone: Israel's proposed plan for Gaza's future borders sparks rejections
German tourist killed and two wounded in Paris knife attack
US VP focuses on shaping post-war Gaza in diplomatic blitz in UAE with Arab leaders
US defense chief says Israel must shield civilians to win in Gaza
Israel widens evacuation orders as it shifts its offensive to southern Gaza amid heavy bombardments
British military reports an explosion off the coast of Yemen in the key Bab el-Mandeb Strait
Why Israel’s peace activists are re-evaluating their position on the war

Titles For The Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on December 03-04/2023
Nazis, Muslims and the Jews ...Did Nazis carry out the horrific Oct 7th massacre?/Mordechai Nisan /Front Page/December 03/2023
Why Belgium, Norway, Spain and Everyone Should Refrain from Recognizing a 'Palestinian State' Just Now/Drieu Godefridi/ Gatestone Institute./December 3, 2023
Gaza and the Double Standards/Tariq Al-Homayed/Asharq Al-Awsat/December 03/2023
Israel faces new front in Iran’s drone war/Haid Haid/The Arab Weekly/December 03/2023

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on December 03-04/2023
Israel, Hezbollah trade fire across Israel-Lebanon border for third day
BEIRUT/JERUSALEM (Reuters)/December 3, 2023
Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants traded fire across the Israel-Lebanon border on Sunday for the third consecutive day and Israel said several if its soldiers were hurt, following the collapse of a truce between it and Hamas militants in Gaza.The Israeli military said its soldiers were "lightly injured" when an anti-tank missile fired from Lebanon hit a vehicle in the Beit Hillel area of northern Israel. Israeli forces fired artillery in return, the military's statement read. Iran-backed Hezbollah said it had targeted a number of Israeli positions with what it called "appropriate weapons". Following the eruption of the Hamas-Israel war on Oct. 7, Hezbollah mounted near-daily rocket attacks on Israeli positions at the frontier while Israel launched air and artillery strikes in south Lebanon. But the border was largely calm during a week-long truce in Gaza that collapsed on Friday. It has been the worst fighting since the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, a Hamas ally. Just over 100 people in Lebanon have been reported killed during the hostilities, 83 of them Hezbollah fighters. Tens of thousands of people have fled both sides of the border.

Hezbollah missile from Lebanon wounds 12 in northern Israel
JNS/December 3, 2023 /
Ziv Medical Center in Safed admitted 12 people injured by an anti-tank missile attack from Lebanon on Sunday. One woman and 11 men between the ages of 20 and 65 were lightly wounded from shrapnel and the missile’s blast, the hospital said. Several soldiers were lightly injured by fragments and a vehicle was damaged in the attack, the Israel Defense Forces said earlier.It was unclear whether the other hospitalized victims were soldiers or civilians. Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the attack on the army vehicle that was targeted in the area of Moshav Beit Hillel in the Eastern Galilee.In addition, the IDF detected several launches in the Mount Dov area, some of which struck inside Lebanese territory. IDF artillery targeted the sources of the fire. The IDF updated in the late afternoon that fighter jets attacked Hezbollah targets in Lebanon and that several launches were detected from Lebanon toward Israeli territory, with IDF artillery attacking the sources of the fire. The army shelled several targets in Southern Lebanon earlier on Sunday in response to anti-tank missile fire. The missile hit an open area near Kibbutz Yiftah, also in the Eastern Galilee, causing no injuries, the military said. Later on Sunday, air-raid sirens were activated in Moshav Keshet in the Golan Heights. The IDF subsequently announced a “projectile” was launched into Israeli territory from Syria, landing in an open area. IDF forces attacked the source of the fire in response. On Saturday, the IDF confirmed that terrorists in Lebanon fired numerous rockets at Israel the previous night. The Iron Dome aerial-defense system was not activated as the projectiles hit open areas, causing no injuries or damage. In response, the IDF shelled the area from which the launches were carried out, and fighter jets struck the terrorist cell responsible for the fire. Later on Saturday, the military said that aircraft and artillery were striking Hezbollah terrorist assets in Lebanon. Israel has responded to multiple daily attacks from Hezbollah terrorists throughout the war against Hamas in Gaza, but the northern border was mostly quiet during the week-long ceasefire that ended on Friday.

Al-Rahi: Lebanese can’t be forced to bear burdens of others' war
Naharnet/December 3, 2023
Maronite Patriach Beshara al-Rahi on Sunday lamented the end of the truce in Gaza, decrying that “the innocent people are bearing the consequences of the destructive war.”“What is the meaning of the humanitarian truce if it will pave the way for a ferocious war after a break,” al-Rahi wondered in his Sunday Mass sermon. “No one in Lebanon wants the spread of the war to the South and to our innocent Lebanese residents there. If, God forbid, it spreads to the South, no one would know where it would stop and the magnitude of victims and destruction it would leave, so we pray to God to keep it away from us,” the patriarch added. “No one can force the Lebanese people to bear the burdens of a war in which they have nothing,” al-Rahi went on to say. The patriarch also said that “the failure to elect a president and the closure of the presidential palace are a blatant crime that is destroying state institutions and public administrations while spreading chaos and corruption and tarnishing Lebanon’s civilized face.”

Netanyahu: Lebanon will be destroyed if Hezbollah launches war
Naharnet/December 3, 2023 
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reiterated numerous warnings he had made against Hezbollah before the recent ceasefire with Hamas, telling the Lebanese Iran-backed group that Lebanon will be destroyed if it opens up a major war against Israel. “We are acting in the north all the time against all efforts by Hezbollah to operate against us. We are eliminating terror cells, pushing them away from the border, destroying munitions. We will continue with strong deterrence in the north, and total victory in the south,” Netanyahu said. “We will restore security to the north and the south. If Hezbollah makes a mistake and enters into a broad war it will have destroyed Lebanon with its own hands,” he warned. Daily skirmishes between Hezbollah and Israel have renewed since the end of the Gaza ceasefire on Friday. Three Hezbollah members and a civilian have been killed in south Lebanon since then, raising Lebanon's death toll from the skirmishes that erupted on October 8 to more than 100.

11 Israelis wounded as Hezbollah and Israel trade fire anew
Associated Press/Agence France Presse
Hezbollah on Sunday launched several attacks on Israeli positions near Lebanon’s border, including a missile strike on a military vehicle. Eleven Israelis -- eight soldiers and three civilians -- were wounded by Hezbollah fire in the area of Beit Hillel, army radio reported.
The Israeli military said its artillery struck sources of fire from Lebanon. It also said its fighter jets struck other Hezbollah targets.

Mikati meets TotalEnergies CEO: The possibility of resuming drilling as the matter is subject to report
LBCI/December 3, 2023
The caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Energy and Water Minister Walid Fayad met with Patrick Pouyanné, the Chairman and CEO of the French company TotalEnergies. The meeting focused on the periodic report prepared by TotalEnergies regarding drilling and exploration for gas and oil in Lebanese territorial waters, including the possibility of resuming drilling activities at a second site in Block 9. Pouyanné noted that this action is contingent upon the results obtained so far, as outlined in the report. Additionally, discussions encompassed the potential for drilling in Blocks 8 and 10 and the proposals submitted by TotalEnergies for solar power generation. The Prime Minister urged expeditious submission of the report, allowing for a comprehensive examination of the following steps based on the findings.Furthermore, deliberations took place regarding the proposal presented by TotalEnergies and Qatar Energies for the swift implementation of solar power electricity generation projects.

Hezbollah: We targeted a military vehicle at the Beit Hillel base, which resulted in fatalities and injuries
LBCI/December 3, 2023
In a recent announcement, Hezbollah declared on Sunday that it had targeted a military vehicle at the Beit Hillel base using guided missiles, resulting in fatalities and injuries. They stated, "We successfully struck strategic locations in Zebdine, Radar, and Rweisat al-Alam in the occupied Lebanese Shebaa Farms, achieving direct hits with appropriate weapons."

The Israeli bombing targets the vicinity of two Lebanese Army centers
LBCI/December 3, 2023
On Sunday, the Israeli bombing targeted the vicinity of two Lebanese Army centers in the Maisat neighborhood, west of Wazzani, and in Sarda, with no casualties reported.
Lebanon News

MP Najat Saliba on LBCI: Climate change affects human health, and this is what we witnessed in Lebanon
LBCI/December 3, 2023
MP Najat Aoun Saliba announced that the work on combating climate change began 20 years ago in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO).
It is a topic closely linked to the health of the earth and human health, as it is an integral part of climate change. She pointed out that today is a very important day at COP28 as it addresses the health issue we witnessed in Lebanon. She emphasized that climate change affects water scarcity, intertwined with water pollution, leading to the spread of diseases. Saliba said on LBCI, "We witnessed changes in seasons and temperatures, with a longer summer and shorter winter. Snow is no longer sufficient to accumulate, in addition to increased dust in the air causing respiratory diseases."
She emphasized the need to investigate the distribution of losses.

Abiad to LBCI: We are working on preparing health institutions to confront climate change
LBCI/December 3, 2023
Caretaker Minister of Health Firas Abiad, spoke about the impact of climate change on health, highlighting issues related to water scarcity, desertification, and pollution leading to respiratory diseases, cancer, and more. During an interview with LBCI at COP28, he mentioned Lebanon's challenges in recent years related to climate, such as the spread of cholera due to water scarcity, high rates of cancer and asthma related to pollution. The Health Minister emphasized the ministry's role in preparing for climate change, mentioning a plan that includes equipping hospitals and health centers to operate on solar energy. Abiad stressed that shared responsibility is a fundamental principle in today's conference, especially considering Lebanon as a country hosting a large number of refugees.

Qatar's Prime Minister: Doha is committed to ceasefire efforts
LBCI/December 3, 2023
Qatar's Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, has confirmed Doha's dedication to collaborate with all relevant parties to resume the ceasefire and achieve a permanent cessation of hostilities. Addressing the conclusion of the 158th meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) foreign ministers, he emphasized that the situation in Gaza would be a top priority on the agenda of the upcoming Gulf summit in Doha scheduled for Tuesday.

Israel, Threatened by Hezbollah, Seeks Solution for Empty North
Antony Sguazzin/Bloomberg/December 3, 2023
 A winding road in northern Israel lined with vineyards leads to Kibbutz Menara atop the Ramim Ridge in the Naftali mountains where pomegranate and avocado trees grow.
It should be an idyllic scene. Instead, gaping holes have been blown through the blackened walls of the community’s double-story houses. A roof has collapsed and a twisted lump of melted metal denotes what was once a car. For the last few weeks, Islamist militant group Hezbollah has been firing anti-tank missiles into the kibbutz from the Lebanese village of Meiss El Jabal in the valley a few hundred yards below. Other villages in the region have also come under attack and the Israeli military has responded with strikes of its own. While the world’s attention focuses on a resumption in fighting between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip in the south, this largely abandoned cooperative highlights an upcoming problem for the embattled Middle Eastern state: How to get the tens of thousands of people who have fled the region to return when an existential threat is in eyesight just across the border.
“Anyone who moves here will get injured. They have no actual security and no sense of security to come back,” Yoshiau, a bearded 27-year-old mechanical engineering student who’s also a tank captain in the Israeli military and limited his identification to his first name in line with its rules, said in an interview at the kibbutz. “In order to allow the citizens to come back, we have to have a clear indication from our enemies in Lebanon, Hezbollah, that they have no intention of attacking people.”The issue has bedeviled Israel since it fought Hezbollah in a 34-day war in 2006. Yet the sense of precarity that farmers and other inhabitants of Israeli villages that line the Lebanese border live with has reached unprecedented levels since Hamas militants poured out of Gaza into Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and abducting another 240. The Israeli military hit back with air raids that reduced much of northern Gaza to rubble and a ground invasion that Hamas authorities in the Mediterranean strip say have killed more than 15,000 people. Fighting resumed Friday after a seven-day pause that allowed for the exchange of some Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners. The US considers Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist organizations. Hezbollah is bigger and better-armed than Hamas, and they are both backed by Iran and share the aim of eradicating the Jewish state. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, adopted after the 2006 war ended, required the establishment of a demilitarized zone between the Israeli border and the Litani River, about 29 kilometers (18 miles) to the north. It has been widely flouted and so far the international community has done little to enforce it, Eyal Hulata, a former national security adviser in the Israeli government, said in a press briefing on Thursday. “Hezbollah has planned to do something very similar in the north for years” to the incursion carried out by Hamas, said Yoshiau, the tank captain, who left his wife and 18-month-old son at his home near the border with Gaza a few weeks ago to help guard the northern frontier. There was “an informal cease-fire” with Hezbollah during the temporary truce in the south, he said.
Hezbollah began firing volleys of mortars, rockets and anti-tank missiles at Israel on Oct. 7, the heaviest attacks it has staged since 2006. The military was placed on high alert and fully deployed along the 48-mile-long border.
The ongoing tension was evident on Thursday morning, the day that Bloomberg spoke to Yoshiau, with the military shooting down what it said was “a suspicious aerial target” that crossed from Lebanon into Israel. Cross-border hostilities resumed after the fighting in Gaza restarted. For now, many of the 250 people who usually live in Kibbutz Menara have decamped to the town of Tiberias, an hour’s drive south on the western shores of the Sea of Galilee, where the government is paying for their accommodation. While the stronger military presence may deter Hezbollah from crossing the border or stepping up its attacks, it’s unlikely to convince Israelis who live in the region to come home. Nor will it diminish the threat of Hezbollah’s more advanced weaponry, which includes missiles that could strike as far afield as Eilat on Israel’s southeastern tip.
The conundrum in the north has been put on the back burner while the military and the government mainly focusing on the war in the south, but the problem isn’t going away and is of major concern to some of Israel’s most prominent business leaders. “People will not continue to be on the border with Hezbollah breathing over them and shooting at the fence or the houses with anti-tank missiles,” said Erel Margalit, founder and chief executive officer of Jerusalem Capital Partners, one of Israel’s biggest venture capital firms. “Something is going to need to be done about that either diplomatically or militarily.”The government has begun paying incentives to workers to return to their jobs in the north, topping up their salaries, according to Ron Tomer, president of the Manufacturers’ Association of Israel, who says 70 of the group’s member companies operate there. That doesn’t address the security question, or provide long-term clarity to those who live along the northern border as to whether they should return. While Israel, concerned about the reaction of the international community, held back from preemptive ground invasions of both Gaza and Lebanon for years, the Hamas attack “changes that calculus” and once it achieves its aims in Gaza of eliminating Hamas and freeing the remaining hostages that may change, Hulata said. “Doing what we need in Gaza is difficult enough. We don’t need to find ourselves entangled on two fronts,” he said. “I would not propose to any Israeli government to wait again. I think we need to act before it happens to us and prevent another massacre of civilians in any part of Israel.”Yoshiau, who passed corpses and cars riddled with bullet holes close to his home when driving north to join his unit on Oct. 7, sees no immediate alternative to Israel maintaining an enhanced military presence along the Lebanon border. “There’s no other option,” he said, even as he bemoaned missing key moments in his son’s childhood. “We need to be here until we can bring back the sense of security.”
--With assistance from Ethan Bronner, Julius Domoney and Roy Katz.

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on December 03-04/2023
Iran says Israeli strike in Syria killed 2 Revolutionary Guard members
Associated Press/December 3, 2023
Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard stated through its website that two of its forces stationed in Syria were killed in an Israeli airstrike Saturday. The report on the Guard's news portal identified the two members as Mohammad Ali Ataei Shourcheh and Panah Taghizadeh, and said they were carrying out an advisory mission in Syria. It did not elaborate on their rank, or the area where they were killed. Syrian state media, quoting an unnamed military official, said Israeli airstrikes hit several areas on the outskirts of the capital Damascus early Saturday. The strikes resulted in only "material losses," the report added. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition war monitor, said the strikes hit the southern Damascus suburb of Sayyida Zeinab, where "there are military forces working with the Lebanese Hezbollah." It said the strike killed two Syrian citizens and two foreigners and wounded five others. This latest development is likely to increase tensions between Israel and Iran, which has been a staunch supporter of the militant Palestinian group Hamas. Iranian officials have warned repeatedly that the Israel-Hamas war, which erupted on Oct.7, could spread to other parts of the region. Iran's military presence in Syria has been a major concern for Israel, which has vowed to stop Iranian entrenchment along its northern border. Syria has accused Israel of carrying out hundreds of strikes on targets in government-controlled parts in recent years — but Israel has rarely acknowledged such strikes. Iran has been a main supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during the country's 12-year civil war. Thousands of Iran-backed fighters have been deployed in Syria where they helped tip the balance of power in Assad's favor over the past years. Scores of Iranian Revolutionary Guard members have been killed during the war in Syria though Tehran has long said it has only a military advisory role in Syria. Since the Israel-Hamas began, Israel has carried out several strikes targeting Syria, putting the international airports of Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo out of commission for more than a month.

IDF shells targets in Syria after rocket fire
JNS/December 3, 2023
Israel Defense Forces artillery struck targets in Syria on Sunday morning in response to rocket fire earlier in the day. One enemy projectile hit an open area, causing no injuries or damage. The Iron Dome aerial-defense system was not activated and air raid sirens were not activated in surrounding Israeli communities. Israeli airstrikes near Damascus early Saturday killed two Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers. Iran said Mohammad Ali Atai Shoorcheh and Panah Taghizadeh were “martyred” while advising the Syrian military, and blamed “Zionists” for their deaths. Last Sunday, Israel Air Force strikes damaged Damascus International Airport and other targets near the Syrian capital, according to local media reports. The pro-regime Sham FM radio said the runways were struck, in at least the fourth such instance since Iran-backed Hamas terrorists in Gaza launched their cross-border assault on the Jewish state on Oct 7. Israel has struck hundreds of targets in Syria in recent years as part of an effort to prevent Iranian military entrenchment in the country. However, Jerusalem rarely acknowledges these incidents.

Suspected U.S. strike in Iraq kills 5 militia members, sources say
Reuters/December 3, 2023
A suspected U.S. air strike killed five members of an Iran-aligned Iraqi armed group north of the city of Kirkuk as they were preparing to launch projectiles at U.S. forces in the country, three Iraqi security sources said. U.S. military officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A U.S. military official earlier in the day said U.S. and international forces faced an attack with multiple rockets at the Rumalyn Landing Zone in northeastern Syria, but there were no casualties or damage to infrastructure. Iraqi armed groups have claimed more than 70 such attacks against U.S. forces since Oct. 17 over Washington's backing of Israel in its bombardment of Gaza. The attacks paused during the recent Israel-Hamas ceasefire but have since resumed. The U.S. in November launched two series of strikes against what it said were Iran-aligned armed groups who had engaged in attacks against their forces. Those strikes killed at least 10 militants who were identified both as members of shadowy militia Kataeb Hezbollah and of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces, an official security institution composed mainly of Shi'ite Muslim armed groups, many with close links to Iran. Iraq's government condemned those strikes as escalatory and a violation of Iraqi sovereignty. The United States has 900 troops in Syria and 2,500 in Iraq on a mission it says aims to advise and assist local forces trying to prevent a resurgence of Islamic State, which in 2014 seized large swaths of both countries before being defeated.

Israel expands Gaza ground offensive, says efforts in south will be 'no less strength' than in north
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP)/December 3, 2023
The Israeli military said Sunday that its ground offensive had expanded to every part of Gaza, and authorities ordered more evacuations in the crowded south as they vowed that operations there against Hamas would be “no less strength” than the earlier efforts in the north. Heavy bombardment followed the evacuation orders, and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip said they were running out of places to go in the sealed-off territory that borders Israel and Egypt. Many of its 2.3 million people are crammed into the south after Israel ordered civilians to leave the north in the early days of the war, which was sparked by the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack in Israel that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The United Nations estimates that 1.8 million Gazans have been displaced. Juliette Toma, director of communications at the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, said nearly 958,000 of them were in 99 U.N. facilities in the south.
After dark, gunfire and shelling could be heard in the central town of Deir al-Balah as flares lit the sky. In Gaza’s second-largest city of Khan Younis, Israeli drones buzzed overhead. U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk urged an end to the war, saying civilian suffering was “too much to bear.”
The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said the death toll there since Oct. 7 has surpassed 15,500, with more than 41,000 wounded. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths, but said 70% of the dead were women and children. A Health Ministry spokesman asserted that hundreds had been killed or wounded since a weeklong cease-fire ended Friday. “The majority of victims are still under the rubble,” Ashraf al-Qidra said. Fears of a wider conflict intensified. A U.S. warship and multiple commercial ships came under attack in the Red Sea, the Pentagon said. Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels claimed attacks on two ships they described as being linked to Israel but did not acknowledge targeting a U.S. Navy vessel. Hopes for another temporary truce in Gaza were fading. The cease-fire facilitated the release of dozens of the roughly 240 Gaza-held Israeli and foreign hostages in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. But Israel has called its negotiators home, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the war will continue until “all its goals” are achieved. One is to remove Hamas from power in Gaza.
Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan said resuming talks with Israel on further exchanges must be tied to a permanent cease-fire. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told NBC’s “Meet the Press” the U.S. was working "really hard” for a resumption of negotiations.
Israel's military widened evacuation orders in and around Khan Younis in the south, telling residents of at least five more areas to leave. Residents said the military dropped leaflets saying “Khan Younis city is a dangerous combat zone" and ordering them to move south to the border city of Rafah or a coastal area in the southwest. But Halima Abdel-Rahman, a widow and mother of four, said she won’t heed such orders anymore. She fled her home in October to an area outside Khan Younis, where she stays with relatives. “The occupation tells you to go to this area, then they bomb it,” she said by phone. "The reality is that no place is safe in Gaza. They kill people in the north. They kill people in the south.”The United States, Israel’s closest ally, has urged Israel to avoid significant new mass displacement and do more to protect civilians. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris told Egypt's president that “under no circumstances” would the U.S. permit the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank, an ongoing siege of Gaza or the redrawing of its borders.
On the ground in Gaza, there was frustration and mourning. Outside a Gaza City hospital, a dust-covered boy named Saaed Khalid Shehta dropped to his knees beside the bloodied body of his little brother Mohammad, one of several bodies laid out after people said their street was hit by airstrikes. He kissed him. “You bury me with him!” the boy cried. A health worker at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital said more than 15 children were killed. Israel's military said its fighter jets and helicopters struck targets in the Gaza Strip including “tunnel shafts, command centers and weapons storage facilities." It acknowledged ”extensive aerial attacks in the Khan Younis area."The bodies of 31 people killed in bombardment of central Gaza were taken to the Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah, said Omar al-Darawi, a hospital administrative employee. One woman wept, cradling a child’s body. Another carried the body of a baby. Later, hospital workers reported 11 more dead after another airstrike. Bloodied survivors included a child carried in on a mattress. Outside a morgue in Khan Younis, resident Samy al-Najeila carried the body of a child. He said his sons had been preparing to evacuate their home, “but the occupation didn’t give us any time. The three-floor building was destroyed completely, the whole block was totally destroyed.” He said six of the bodies were his relatives. “Five people are still under the rubble,” he said. “God help us.”During a trip to the United Arab Emirates as the top U.S. representative at the U.N. climate conference, Harris said: "Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.” Mark Regev, a senior adviser to Netanyahu, said Israel was making “maximum effort” to protect civilians. In addition to the leaflets, the military has used phone calls and radio and TV broadcasts to urge Gazans to move from specific areas.
Israel says it targets Hamas operatives and blames civilian casualties on the militants, accusing them of operating in residential neighborhoods. It claims to have killed thousands of militants, without providing evidence. Israel says at least 78 of its soldiers have been killed in the offensive in northern Gaza.
The widening offensive likely will further complicate humanitarian aid to Gaza. Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Palestinian Crossings Authority, said 100 aid trucks entered Sunday, but U.N. agencies have said 500 trucks per day on average entered before the war. The renewed hostilities also have heightened concerns for the 137 hostages who the Israeli military believes are still being held by Hamas. During the recent truce, 105 hostages were freed, and Israel released 240 Palestinian prisoners. Most of those released by both sides were women and children.
The families of hostages have called for an urgent meeting with Israel's Security Cabinet, saying time is “running out to save those still held by Hamas.”Elsewhere in the region, Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group said it struck Israeli positions near the tense Lebanon-Israel border. Eleven people — eight soldiers and three civilians — were wounded by Hezbollah fire in the area of Beit Hillel, army radio reported. The military said its artillery struck sources of fire from Lebanon. It also said its fighter jets struck other Hezbollah targets. And Iraqi militants with the Iran-backed umbrella group the Islamic Resistance in Iraq said they struck the Kharab al-Jir U.S. military base in Syria with rockets. A U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said rockets hit Rumalyn Landing Zone in Syria but there were no reports of casualties or damage.

Israeli security chief in recording vows to hunt down Hamas abroad -Kan TV
JERUSALEM (Reuters)/December 3, 2023
Israel will hunt down Hamas in Lebanon, Turkey and Qatar even if it takes years, the head of Israel's domestic security agency Shin Bet said in a recording aired by Israel's public broadcaster Kan on Sunday. It was unclear when Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar made the remarks or to whom. The agency itself declined to comment on the report. "The cabinet has set us a goal, in street talk, to eliminate Hamas. This is our Munich. We will do this everywhere, in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in Turkey, in Qatar. It will take a few years but we will be there to do it." By Munich, Bar was referring to Israel's response to the 1972 killing of 11 Israeli Olympic team members when gunmen from the Palestinian Black September group launched an attack on the Munich games. Israel responded by carrying out a targeted assassination campaign against Black September operatives and organizers over several years and in several countries.
Israel has vowed to annihilate Hamas after its gunmen on Oct. 7 burst through the border with Gaza, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 240 hostage. More than 15,500 people have been killed so far during Israel's offensive in Gaza since, according to Gaza's health ministry. Other than in Gaza, Hamas leaders reside in or frequently visit Lebanon, Turkey and Qatar. Qatar helped to mediate a week-long truce that broke down on Friday. Over the years, various countries have offered some protection for Hamas, designated a terrorist group by Australia, Canada, the European Union, Israel, Japan and the United States. In 1997, Israeli Mossad agents botched the poisoning of then-Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Jordan. Israel had to give Jordan an antidote to save Meshaal's life. Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu was prime minister at the time.

Israel-Gaza war: Israeli forces pushing into south Gaza
BBC/December 3, 2023
Israeli ground forces are pushing into southern Gaza, after three days of heavy bombardment. Initial reports from Israeli army radio effectively confirmed Israel has launched a ground operation to the north of Khan Younis. The BBC has also verified images of an Israeli tank operating near the city. The head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) later told troops the IDF was also fighting "strongly and thoroughly" in south Gaza. Lt General Herzi Halevi was speaking to reservists from the Gaza division about military objectives and the IDF's killing of Hamas commanders. He told the soldiers: "We fought strongly and thoroughly in the northern Gaza Strip, and we are also doing it now in the southern Gaza Strip". An IDF spokesman later confirmed Israel "continues to expand the ground incursion" across all of Gaza, including troops "conducting face to face battles with terrorists".
Since a week-long ceasefire ended on Friday, Israel has resumed a large-scale bombing campaign on Gaza, which residents of Khan Younis have described as the heaviest wave of attacks so far. The seven-day truce saw Hamas release 110 hostages being held in Gaza in return for 240 Palestinians being released from Israeli prisons. On Sunday morning, the Israeli army issued evacuation orders for several districts of Khan Younis, urging people to leave immediately. Israeli authorities believe members of the Hamas leadership are hiding in the city, where hundreds of thousands of people have been sheltering after fleeing fighting in the north in the early stages of the war. A UN official has described a "degree of panic" he has not seen before in a Gaza hospital, after the Israeli military shifted the focus of its offensive to the south. James Elder, from the children's agency Unicef, described Nasser Medical Hospital in Khan Younis as a "warzone". An adviser to Israel's prime minister said Israel is making "maximum effort" to avoid killing civilians. Mr Elder told the BBC he could hear constant large explosions close to the Nasser hospital and children were arriving with head injuries, terrible burns, and shrapnel from recent blasts. "It's a hospital I've gone to regularly and the children know me now, the families know me now. Those same people are grabbing my hand, or grabbing my shirt saying 'please take us somewhere safe. Where is safe?'""They are unfortunately asking a question to which the only answer is there is nowhere safe. And that includes for them, as they know, that hospital," he said.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says more than 500 people have been killed since the bombing resumed. More than 15,500 people have been killed in the strip since the war began, the ministry also said. A Palestinian woman is rushed into hospital following an Israeli strike Nasser hospital in Khan Younis has been described by a UN official as a "warzone" since IDF airstrikes began again. Mohammed Ghalayini, a British-Palestinian who has stayed in Gaza, said the situation in the city was "beyond catastrophic". "People have been, for 50 days or more, withstanding brutal Israeli onslaught and are very low on all resources - food, water, power and the sanitation and the waste services," he told the BBC by phone, before the connection cut off. The air pollution expert, who normally lives in Manchester, arrived in Gaza for a three-month visit to see his mother shortly before the 7 October attacks.
Israel began its retaliatory bombing of Gaza following Hamas's attacks on southern Israel on 7 October, which saw around 1,200 people killed and 240 taken hostage. Rockets have also been regularly fired at Israel from Gaza since fighting resumed on Friday. A 22-year-old man in the city of Holon, near Tel Aviv, was treated for minor shrapnel injuries on Saturday.Hundreds of thousands of people have already fled the fighting to take shelter in Khan Younis, after Israel told them to leave the north of the strip. The latest UN update says around 1.8 million people are internally displaced in Gaza. Speaking to the BBC, the UN's human rights chief, Filippo Grandi, said Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are being "pushed more and more towards a narrow corner of what is already a very narrow territory". The IDF has begun posting maps of areas set to be attacked online. It says these maps, along with other measures like phone calls and leaflets being dropped on Gaza by plane, will warn people to evacuate. Speaking to the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's senior adviser Mark Regev said civilians are not targets and protecting them is made more difficult by Hamas "embedding its military terror machine" in civilian neighbourhoods. He says the IDF are trying to be "as surgical as we can in a very difficult combat situation", and has given advance warning of attacks. Separately, the IDF say they have destroyed 500 "terror tunnel" shafts used by Hamas in Gaza, out of the 800 they say have been found so far. It also said around 10,000 air strikes on "terror targets" have been carried out by the air force "under the guidance of IDF soldiers on the ground" since the war began.

Kirby says intelligence sources did not have access to Hamas’ attack plan after NYT report
Lauren Sforza/The Hill/December 3, 2023
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the intelligence community was not aware of a document detailing militant group Hamas’ plans to attack Israel that The New York Times reported on last week. “The intelligence community has indicated that they did not have access to this document that there’s no indications at this time if they had any access to this document beforehand,” Kirby said when NBC’s Kristen Welker asked him about The Times’ report on “Meet the Press.”The New York Times reported last week that Israel was aware of Hamas’ plan to launch an attack on its soil more than a year before the Oct. 7 attack that left more than 1,200 Israelis dead. The Times’ article outlined a 40-page report named “Jericho Wall” that described what kind of incursion Hamas’ was planning into Israel and what kind of destruction it could cause. However, The Times reported that Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the report, saying that the plan was “aspirational.” The Times cited multiple interviews, documents and emails to back its reporting. Kirby dodged answering whether the U.S. should have had access to the document when pressed further by Welker, who pointed to the coordination between the two countries’ intelligence agencies. “Intelligence is a mosaic and sometimes you know, you can fashion things together and get a pretty good picture,” he said. “Other times, you know, there’s pieces of the puzzle that are missing. As I said, our own intelligence community said that they’ve looked at this. They have no indications at this time that that they had any advanced warning of this document or any knowledge of it.”The plan reported by The Times included Hamas saying they would bombard Israel with rockets and use drones to disable security abilities near the border. The Times also noted that a 2016 memo by Hamas and obtained by the newspaper said the militants wanted to take hostages into Gaza. The attack on Oct. 7 echoed the details laid out in the plan, with more than 1,200 Israelis killed and another 240 people captured by the militants and taken into Gaza. Both Israeli and U.S. officials have previously said that they will look into what intelligence may have been missed leading up to the attacks after the conflict is resolved. “I think there’s going to be a time and a place for Israel to do that sort of forensic work,” Kirby said on Sunday. “I mean, Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu has already spoken pretty candidly about this and calling it you know, a failure on their part.”“They’ll take a look at this at the right time. They need to do that right now though, the focus has got to be on making sure that they can eliminate this truly genocidal threat to the Israeli people,” Kirby continued.

Wounded and dead overwhelm southern Gaza hospital on third day of renewed war
GAZA (Reuters)/ December 3, 2023
In southern Gaza's Nasser Hospital, a young man cradled the lifeless body of his brother then reached out to try to grab a medic running past him in the corridor. "My brother!", the man yelled out, crying and slapping the floor as others crowded around him seeking treatment for their wounded and mourning their loved ones on Sunday, the third day of renewed warfare and Israeli bombardment. The hospital is one of only a handful operating in Khan Younis, a southern city which residents say is one of the focuses of the Israeli offensive that resumed on Friday after the collapse of a truce with Palestinian militant group Hamas. Nearby, doctors stepped over bodies and pools of blood as they rushed to their next case, and relatives brought more dazed and sometimes unconscious children through the main doors. Footage taken by Reuters showed about a dozen young people needing treatment, several of them with what looked like serious injuries.The U.N. and aid groups say dozens of medics have been killed since the war began and basic supplies, including fuel to run generators, are running short in hospitals and clinics. More than 15,500 people have been confirmed killed in Gaza since the start of the conflict, according to Gaza's health ministry. Israel has sworn to annihilate Hamas in response to the Oct. 7 rampage by the militants, when gunmen killed 1,200 people and took 240 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Hamas, sworn to Israel's destruction, has ruled Gaza since 2007. Israel's bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza laid waste to much of the territory. The Palestinian health ministry said on Sunday that 316 had been killed since Friday in Gaza since the truce expired following the breakdown in talks over an exchange of prisoners and hostages. There was no immediate comment from Israel on the reports of Sunday's strikes. The Israeli military earlier ordered Palestinians to evacuate several areas in and around Khan Younis and posted a map highlighting shelters they should go to. But residents said that areas they had been told to go to were themselves coming under attack. One man at Nasser Hospital told Reuters that an air strike had hit a house in the city and he had carried a young boy who was injured to the hospital, but the boy had died in his arms on the way. Reuters could not verify that account. Elsewhere in Khan Younis, families gathered at funerals. One man, Akram el-Rakab, said he was burying his son as well as a sister and a nephew. He said he was praying to God to help Palestinians stay strong and would stay where he was in the city.

Israel says it uncovered 800 shafts to Hamas tunnels below Gazaalestinian Islamist group Hamas in northern Gaza
JERUSALEM (Reuters)/December 3, 2023
Israeli forces have found 800 shafts leading to Hamas' vast subterranean network of tunnels and bunkers since a Gaza ground operation began on Oct 27, and have destroyed more than half of them, the military said on Sunday. The Palestinian Islamist group said before the now eight-week-old war in the Gaza Strip that it had hundreds of kilometres of tunnels - a network comparable in size to the New York subway system - to protect and serve as operational bases. That has made them prime targets for Israeli air strikes with penetrating munitions and army engineers using mapping robots and exploding gel that can be poured into the passages. "The tunnel shafts were located in civilian areas, many of which were near or inside civilian buildings and structures, such as schools, kindergartens, mosques and playgrounds," the military said in a statement on Sunday. The statement, summarising anti-tunnel operations so far, followed near-daily accounts to the media by troops who said they uncovered access shafts in civilian sites. The war's civilian toll has increasingly worried world powers. Washington urged Israel to use caution on Saturday. Of some 800 shafts discovered, the military said, 500 had been destroyed using a variety of operational methods, including by "detonation and by sealing off". It added that "many miles" of main tunnel routes had also been destroyed.

US and Israeli officials react to blockbuster report that Israel knew Hamas was planning attack
ABC/December 3, 2023
In the wake of blockbuster new reporting that Israel was aware Hamas was planning a major terror attack a year in advance, American officials are continuing to assess that information while Israel plans to conduct its own investigation after the fighting with Hamas, officials said Sunday. "All of these questions, we're going to have to get to the bottom of it after the war," Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer told ABC "This Week" anchor George Stephanopoulos. Dermer maintained that he had been unaware of this intelligence until it was published in The New York Times late last week. White House spokesman John Kirby, in a separate "This Week" appearance, was pressed by Stephanopoulos on whether the U.S. had any warning of the attack or should have. "Our intelligence community is taking a look into that," Kirby said. But he added, "They have no indications that we, the United States intelligence community, had any knowledge of that [Hamas planning] document beforehand or any visibility into it."Kirby also noted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said there were intelligence failures.

Houthis claim responsibility for the attack on two ships in Red Sea
AFP/December 3, 2023
Houthis in Yemen declared that they attacked two ships off the Yemeni coast, specifying that the targeting of the "Israeli" vessels is in response to the ongoing war in Gaza. In a statement released by the Iran-backed Houthi group, they claimed to have executed a "targeting operation against two Israeli ships in the Bab el-Mandeb" – the strategic maritime passage connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.
The statement highlighted that the first ship was targeted with a naval missile, while a maritime drone hit the second.

COP28: The link between climate change and health
LBCI/December 3, 2023
In a groundbreaking move, this year's Climate Change Conference COP28 directly focuses on health and its profound connection to climate change. The United Arab Emirates adopted an initiative, with over 120 countries endorsing a declaration to center health at the core of climate action. The aim is to expedite the development of sustainable, equitable, and climate-resilient healthcare systems. For the first time, the World Health Organization (WHO) organized a Health Day at the summit, attracting health ministers from around the globe. Notably, represented by its Health Minister, Lebanon actively participated, underlining the vital intersection of health and climate concerns. The significance of this event lies in elevating health and the healthcare sector to the forefront of climate-related conferences on its fourth day. The chairman of the COP28, Minister Sultan Al-Jaber, noted that "Climate impacts are affecting food security, water security, and of course clean air. The World Health Organization estimates that seven million deaths could be attributed to air pollution alone."

More than 15,500 Palestinians killed from Israeli bombing in Gaza: Health Ministry
AFP/December 3, 2023
The death toll from the Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip rose to 15,523, Hamas' Health Ministry said on Sunday. "Israel's aggression against the Gaza Strip has risen to 15,523 martyrs and 41,316 people have been injured," the ministry said in a statement.

Buffer zone: Israel's proposed plan for Gaza's future borders sparks rejections
LBCI/December 3, 2023
In a clear stance, US Vice President Kamala Harris expressed her rejection of any proposals to amend the boundaries of the Gaza Strip as part of Israel's suggested plans for the territory's future. Harris's candid remarks echo the rejection previously conveyed by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the Israeli government concerning the proposed plan for establishing a buffer zone in Gaza after the war. The plan aims to prevent the return of Hamas elements to the borders with Israeli settlements. The Israeli government's miniaturized plan, revealed by Netanyahu's foreign policy advisor Ophir Falk, outlines three post-Hamas elimination objectives: destroying Hamas, disarming Gaza, and eradicating extremism in the region.The "buffer zone" could be part of the disarmament process. Still, its depth remains unclear, potentially extending one to two kilometers into the 41-kilometer-long Gaza Strip, approximately 12 kilometers wide to the north. What is the purpose behind this zone? The primary purpose of this zone is not, of course, protection from Hamas rockets that primarily target north of Tel Aviv. Instead, it may serve as partial reassurance for settlers who are apprehensive about returning to the border areas, fearing a recurrence of October 7 scenarios once the war ends. However, Haaretz newspaper argues that this zone alone will not provide the residents of southern Israel with the security that was taken from them without arrangements with the Palestinian Authority, which will eventually govern the Gaza Strip. Experts and diplomats suggest that this proposed zone is unlikely to succeed, as all Arab, regional, and international parties reject it. Ultimately, it is seen as a concept that would further inflame the war, prolonging the duration beyond the cessation of hostilities.

German tourist killed and two wounded in Paris knife attack
Associated Press/December 3, 2023
French police arrested a man who targeted passersby in Paris on Saturday night, killing a German tourist with a knife and injuring two others, France's interior minister said. Police subdued the man, a 25-year-old French citizen who had spent four years in prison for planning a violent offense. After his arrest, he expressed anguish about Muslims dying, notably in Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, and claimed that France was an accomplice, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said. The attacker apparently cried "Allahu Akbar" (God is great), Darmanin added. "This person was ready to kill others," Darmanin told reporters. The anti-terrorism prosecutor's office confirmed it has opened an investigation. The attacker went after a German couple with a knife, killing the man and used a hammer to injure two others. The attacker, who was not identified by name, left prison after four years in 2020 and was under surveillance and undergoing psychiatric treatment, the minister said, painting a brief portrait of the assailant, who was born in Neuilly-Sur-Seine, a Paris suburb. He was most recently living with his parents in the Essonne region, south of Paris. The fatal attack occurred in the 15th district of the French capital with the assailant using a knife to kill the German tourist, who was not identified. He then crossed the Seine river to the Right Bank and used a hammer to attack the injured. Details about the victims were not immediately known. The attacker was stopped by police who twice fired a taser at him in the stomach, the minister said, praising the officers for their quick response and reiterating that "there would doubtless have been other dead." France has been under a heightened terror alert since the fatal stabbing in October of a teacher in the northern city of Arras by a former student originally from the Ingushetia region in Russia's Caucasus Mountains and suspected of Islamic radicalization. That fatal attack came three years after another teacher was killed outside Paris, beheaded by a radicalized Chechen later killed by police. The Saturday attack raised the fear level in the French capital, still marked by the 2015 attacks of cafes and a music hall by Islamist radicals that killed 130 people. "We will cede nothing in the face of terrorism. Never," Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said on X, formerly Twitter, sending her condolences to the victims and their families.

US VP focuses on shaping post-war Gaza in diplomatic blitz in UAE with Arab leaders
Associated Press/December 3, 2023
Vice President Kamala Harris engaged in a speed round of diplomatic talks with Arab leaders on Saturday where she focused on shaping the outlook for a post-conflict Gaza while calling on Israel to do more to protect Palestinian civilians from the "devastating" bombardment. She made a hastily planned trip to the United Arab Emirates as the top American representative at the U.N. climate conference but the Israel-Ham1,as war was a main objective of her visit. She met with leaders of the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan and spoke by phone with Qatar's emir. Her efforts to focus on what Gaza will look like once the fighting ends played out against the backdrop of an overpowering attack that Israel has unleashed on the crowded southern area of the territory since fighting resumed Friday morning after a weeklong truce. "As Israel defends itself, it matters how. The United States is unequivocal: International humanitarian law must be respected," Harris said after her meetings. "Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images and videos coming from Gaza are devastating.'' She added that as Israel "pursues its military objectives in Gaza, we believe Israel must do more to protect innocent civilians."Dubai is the first Arab nation to host an annual U.N. environmental gathering where world leaders discuss ways to best slow the effects of climate change. Harris said she had "productive" talks on the summit sidelines with Middle Eastern leaders. She said she and President Joe Biden have repeatedly noted the magnitude of the Hamas attack against Israel on Oct. 7 that triggered the war, while also hailing a recent pause in fighting to enable the release of more than 100 hostages taken by Hamas. The vice president said that, at some point, the fighting will draw to an end and a plan must be ready for what comes next. Since the pause in fighting ended, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, Israeli strikes on houses and buildings have killed more than 200 Palestinians. "There is a mutual desire to figure out how we are going to figure out and approach 'the day after' in ways that bring stability and peace to this region," Harris said, referring to a time when fighting in Gaza subsidies. Harris spent just one day at the conference and her Saturday schedule was so packed that the vice president wasn't in the cavernous, IMAX-style conference room when her name was called to participate in a session with other leaders on the best ways to make a just and orderly transition to cleaner energy. Her chair sat empty on stage until her name was called again near the end of the meeting, when she was the only panelist who hadn't spoken. Harris swept into the room and gave her speech, declaring that the U.S. planned to join 90-plus nations aiming to double their energy efficiency and triple renewable energy production by 2030.
When she was done, she dashed off the stage and was nearly out of the room when the moderator asked participants to pose for a photo. That prompted Harris to move quickly back for the picture. Then she swept briskly through the hallway to a waiting motorcade to take her nearby for meetings with Arab leaders. Harris wouldn't disclose the details of her conversations with Qatar's emir about the potential for future pauses in fighting to secure the release of additional hostages. But she said the U.S. wants to see the release of all hostages. The vice president said she also talked with Arab leaders about three key elements for a post-conflict Gaza: reconstruction, security and governance. She said she stressed that it will be up to the region's key nations, as well as other nations and organizations, to "dedicate significant resources" to rebuilding hospitals and housing. Electricity and clean water must be available, while bakeries must be able to reopen, she said. Harris said Palestinian Authority security forces "must be strengthened to eventually assume security responsibilities in Gaza" while stressing that terrorists cannot be allowed to continue to threaten Israel as a condition for security.
Lastly, Harris said the Palestinian Authority in control of the West Bank should also govern in Gaza to achieve a lasting peace, echoing similar sentiments to those of Biden. "The Palestinian Authority must be revitalized, driven by the will of the Palestinian people," the vice president said, adding that it would "allow them to benefit from the rule of law and a transparent responsive government."

US defense chief says Israel must shield civilians to win in Gaza
Agence France Presse/December 3, 2023
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Saturday urged Israel to protect civilians as it battles Hamas in Gaza, saying that shielding noncombatants is necessary for victory in the urban fight against the Palestinian militant group. Fighting between Israel and Hamas resumed the day before after a week-long truce between the two sides collapsed, with both sides blaming the other for the breakdown of the deal and the resumption of violence. Austin told the Reagan National Defense Forum in California that he had "learned a thing or two about urban warfare" while fighting in Iraq and leading the campaign against the Islamic State jihadist group (ISIS). "Like Hamas, ISIS was deeply embedded in urban areas. And the international coalition against ISIS worked hard to protect civilians and create humanitarian corridors, even during the toughest battles," Austin said. "The lesson is not that you can win in urban warfare by protecting civilians. The lesson is that you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians," he said. "In this kind of a fight, the center of gravity is the civilian population. And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat." The latest round of fighting in the long-running conflict between Israel and Hamas began when the Palestinian militant group carried out a shock cross-border attack from Gaza on October 7 that Israeli officials say killed about 1,200 people. Israel responded with a relentless land and air campaign on Hamas-controlled Gaza that the group's officials say has killed more than 15,000 people. Those deaths have provoked widespread anger in the Middle East and provided an impetus for armed groups to carry out attacks against American troops in the region as well as on Israel. Israel has faced drone and missiles launched from Lebanon and Yemen, while American forces in Iraq and Syria have been targeted in a series of attacks that have injured dozens of US personnel. Washington has blamed the attacks on its personnel on Iran-backed forces and responded with air strikes on multiple occasions in recent weeks. "We will not tolerate attacks on American personnel. And so these attacks must stop," Austin said. "Until they do, we will do what we need to do to protect our troops -- and to impose costs on those who attack them."

Israel widens evacuation orders as it shifts its offensive to southern Gaza amid heavy bombardments
Associated Press/December 3, 2023
Israel's military on Sunday ordered more areas in and around Gaza's second-largest city of Khan Younis to evacuate, as it shifted its offensive to the southern half of the territory where it says many Hamas leaders are hiding. Heavy bombardments were reported overnight and into Sunday in the area of Khan Younis and the southern city of Rafah, as well as parts of the north that had been the focus of Israel's blistering air and ground campaign. Many of the territory's 2.3 million people are crammed in the south after Israeli forces ordered civilians to leave the north in the early days of the 2-month-old war. With the resumption of fighting, hopes receded that another temporary truce could be negotiated. A weeklong cease-fire, which expired Friday, had facilitated the release of dozens of Gaza-held Israeli and foreign hostages and Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. "We will continue the war until we achieve all its goals, and it's impossible to achieve those goals without the ground operation," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an address Saturday night. On Sunday, the Israeli military widened evacuation orders in and around Khan Younis, asking residents of at least five more areas and neighborhoods to leave for their safety. Residents said the Israeli military dropped leaflets ordering residents to move south to Rafah or to a coastal area in the southwest. "Khan Younis city is a dangerous combat zone," the leaflets read. U.N. monitors said in a report issued before the latest evacuation orders that the areas residents were told to leave make up about one-quarter of the territory of Gaza. The report said that these areas were home to nearly 800,000 people before the war. Ahead of a resumption of fighting, the United States, Israel's closest ally, had warned Israel to avoid significant new mass displacement. The Israeli military said Sunday that its fighter jets and helicopters "struck terror targets in the Gaza Strip, including terror tunnel shafts, command centers and weapons storage facilities" overnight, while a drone killed five Hamas fighters.  In northern Gaza, rescue teams with little equipment scrambled Sunday to dig through the rubble of buildings in the Jabaliya refugee camp and other neighborhoods in Gaza City in search for potential survivors and dead bodies. "They strike everywhere," said Amal Radwan, a woman sheltering in Jabaliya, an urban refugee camp. "There is the non-stop sound of explosions around us."
Mohamed Abu Abed, who lives in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City, also said there were relentless airstrikes and artillery shelling in his neighborhood and surrounding areas. "The situation here is imaginable," he said. "Death is everywhere. One can die in a flash."The Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said Saturday that the overall death toll in the strip since the Oct. 7 start of the war had surpassed 15,200, a sharp jump from the previous count of more than 13,300 on Nov. 20. The ministry said 70% of the dead were women and children. It said more than 40,000 people had been wounded since the war began. U.S. appeals to protect civilians came after an offensive in the first weeks of the war devastated large areas of northern Gaza. Much of Gaza's population is packed into the territory's southern half. The territory itself, bordering Israel and Egypt to the south, is sealed, leaving residents with the only option of moving around within Gaza to avoid the bombings. "Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images and videos coming from Gaza are devastating," U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters Saturday during the COP28 climate conference in Dubai. Mark Regev, a senior adviser to Netanyahu, said Israel was making "maximum effort" to protect civilians and the military has used leaflets, phone calls, and radio and TV broadcasts to urge Gazans to move from specific areas. He added that Israel is considering creating a security buffer zone that would not allow Gazans direct access to the border fence on foot.
Israel says it targets Hamas operatives and blames civilian casualties on the militants, accusing them of operating in residential neighborhoods. It claims to have killed thousands of militants, without providing evidence. Israel says at least 78 of its soldiers have been killed in the offensive in northern Gaza.
Bombardments on Saturday destroyed a block of about 50 residential buildings in the Shijaiyah neighborhood of Gaza City and a six-story building in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya on the northern edge of the city, said the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
More than 60 people were killed in the Shijaiyah strikes and more than 300 buried under the rubble, the monitors said, citing the Palestinian Red Crescent.
Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for Gaza's Civil Defense, said rescuers lack bulldozers and other equipment to reach those buried under the rubble, confirming the Red Crescent estimate of about 300 people missing. He said the block had housed over 1,000 people. "Retrieving the martyrs is extremely difficult," he said in video comments from the site of the attack. Meanwhile, Harris told Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi in a meeting that "under no circumstances" would the U.S. permit the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank, an ongoing siege of Gaza or the redrawing of its borders, according to a U.S. summary. The war was sparked by an Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and other militants that killed allegedly about 1,200 soldiers and civilians in southern Israel. Around 240 people were taken captive. The renewed hostilities have heightened concerns for 137 hostages, who the Israeli military says are still being held after 105 were freed during the recent truce. Israel freed 240 Palestinians during the truce. Most of those released by both sides were women and children.

British military reports an explosion off the coast of Yemen in the key Bab el-Mandeb Strait
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)/December 3, 2023
A “potential explosion” has struck a key shipping route off the coast of Yemen, the British military said Sunday. The British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations issued a brief warning to shippers that the incident happened in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait that separates East Africa from the Arabian Peninsula. The UKMTO said drone activity also had been reported in the area. The Bab el-Mandeb links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. That area has seen a series of attacks in recent weeks attributed to Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, who have also launched missiles and drones toward Israel over its war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The Houthis did not immediately acknowledge the incident.

Why Israel’s peace activists are re-evaluating their position on the war
Tara John and Lottie Beilin, CNN/December 3, 2023
When human rights activist Ziv Stahl was awakened to the booms of rocket fire on October 7, while staying at her sister’s home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, she did not for a moment anticipate the scale of the terrorist attack unfolding around her. Nor did she imagine the horror she would feel when she later called the police, who “basically told me no one is coming.”That day saw Hamas militants murder her sister-in-law and several prominent peace activists living in the kibbutz, one of the communities that bore the brunt of the attack on Israel.
Stahl, who is the executive director of the human rights organization Yesh Din, says she is not calling for revenge over what happened that day nor is she taking a pacifist position on Israel’s ensuing war in Gaza against Hamas. “I am not saying ceasefire at any cost,” she said. “Israel has a right to defend itself and protect Israeli citizens,” she explained, but not indiscriminately or at the cost of thousands of Palestinian lives. Her position, which she described as “complicated,” speaks to the challenge Israel’s peace movement faces when coming to terms with the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust.
Jewish Israelis who have spent their lives committed to co-existence with Palestinians have found themselves balancing worries about the cycle of violence churned by Israel’s war and the security needs of Israelis amid great personal loss.
As Palestinian solidarity protests take place throughout the West, some of Israel’s small group of leftists, peace activists and human rights advocates, like Stahl, have chosen to take a step back from the public debate on a permanent ceasefire. Others say finding an end to the war and forging a two-state solution is more urgent than ever, even if it may be an unpopular opinion in the country that over the decades has drifted rightward politically. Some activists complain that authorities are attempting to equate peace activism with support for Hamas. Anti-war protests have been near impossible to get permits for, except for one in Tel Aviv by the left-wing Arab and Jewish Hadash party. And in early November, four high-profile Palestinian political leaders in Israel were detained for taking part in an anti-war silent protest.
The radical left
At a left-wing community space in Tel Aviv, decorated with a red banner with the words “a nation that occupies another nation will never be free,” a group of young Israelis discuss their newly-formed anti-war group, which they have named “Gen Zayin,” which means Gen Z.
The group’s members have asked CNN to use pseudonyms for them, pointing to the dozens of people arrested since October 7 in Israel for allegedly inciting violence and terrorism. Many of those arrested are Palestinian and activists say their arrests and detention are carried out without proper legal justification and simply for showing support for Palestinian people. While in the West, young voters are often more liberal than their grandparents,’ the opposite is true in Israel, Rafael, one of Gen Zayin’s co-founders who is using a pseudonym, told CNN. A 2022 poll by the Israeli Democracy Institute found that 73% of Jewish people surveyed between the ages of 18 and 24 identified as right-wing compared with 46% of people polled over the age of 65.
The group’s anti-war position won’t be welcomed by most of the Jewish population at this current moment, they say, which is why Gen Zayin members stick up posters in the dead of night and surreptitiously share pamphlets that espouse their anti-war, anti-government manifesto in high schools.
Rafael, 24, passionately supports a two-state solution and accuses the country’s right-wingers, like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of emboldening Hamas with their attempt at repressing a Palestinian state. “The situation is unsustainable, and the only way that we can live in a just, equal, and democratic society is through peace, the end of occupation, eviction of the settlers” from the West Bank and the right of return of an estimated 5.9 million Palestinian refugees around the world, he said.
Gen Zayin members are fearful of Israeli public opinion but also feel abandoned by parts of the Western leftist movement, who they see as advocating for the abolition of the Israeli state. Rafael raged at an anti-war slogan he saw online: “Do you support decolonization as an abstract concept or a tangible event?” it read. That “tangible event” was in reference to Hamas’ attack, which killed 1,200 people in Israel and led to the outbreak of the war, he said.
“They don’t understand that 7 million Israelis are living here, and aren’t going anywhere, and a lot of Israelis don’t know that the 7 million Palestinians [in Israel and the territories] are not going anywhere either,” he said. “The only way forward is together.”
Doxed and threatened
Expressing public sympathy for Palestinians can land you in hot water. Some Jewish Israelis have lost their jobs or have been publicly sanctioned for speaking out in favour of Gaza, say activists. Ofer Cassif, a Hadash lawmaker in the Knesset, told CNN he was suspended in October for 45 days for saying “the Israeli government wanted confrontation.”He was also accused of comparing Israel’s plan for Gaza to the Nazi Final Solution, he said. “That’s not what I said. But they didn’t really care because that committee was interested in political persecution, in political silencing of the opposition and dissident voices who raise a voice against the war,” he said.The left-wing, ultra-Orthodox journalist Israel Frey recounts how he was doxed and chased out of his home in Jerusalem on October 15 with his wife and two children by far-right football ultras. It was over a video of him saying the Kaddish, the Jewish mourner’s prayer, where he prayed for those slaughtered by Hamas and for Palestinian women and children under fire in Gaza. “Little by little, the street was filling up. They arrived at my home. I tried to look (through) the viewfinder (in the door) and they closed it. Knocking, trying to hurt me. Two months later I talk about it with some amusement, but in real time it was very scary. Hundreds of people came (and) tried to hurt me,” he told CNN from an undisclosed location, as he is currently in hiding. Riot police officers who came to usher him out of his apartment also tormented him, he said, with one spitting on him, he said. CNN has reached out to Yasam, the Israel Police Special Patrol Unit, for comment.
Grieving families consider the future
Over a hot cup of tea, filled with herbs he picked from the roof garden of a hostel he co-owns in Tel Aviv, Maoz Inon told CNN he became a peace activist a week after his parents were killed in the October 7 attack. In that moment, he realized that “peace is the only thing that can bring security to everyone living in between the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea,” he said.He has not been sanctioned in the same way as other people in the peace movement, saying that it’s down to him being among the families affected by Hamas’ attack. “I’m using my privilege and 15 minutes of fame of being a victim in order to prevent others from becoming victims,” Inon said. Not many Jewish peace activists are ready to vocally advocate for peace “because everyone is traumatized – but I have the words,” Inon said.
Speaking from a suburban community near Jerusalem, just meters away from the Green Line with the occupied West Bank, Israeli American Elana Kaminka told CNN she used to buy vegetables from a small Palestinian village across the border. But everything changed after October 7, when her 20-year-old son Yannai was killed as he heroically defended Zikim training base near the border with Gaza, she said. Since then, the metaphorical and physical walls have gone up around her stretch of the Green Line. The checkpoints have hardened and many Palestinians living in the West Bank, have seen permits for work in Israel revoked, say Kaminka, who has not visited the village since her son died. If Israelis “really understood what was happening in the territories – the actual practical meaning of the occupation – I think their opinions would be different,” she told CNN from the home she shares with her husband and three other children. “And for Palestinians, also, it’s very easy to demonize Israelis and every Israeli soldier as a horrible person. It is super easy to live in a bubble where you don’t have any interaction with the other side.”
The grief she feels for the loss of her son is all encompassing. She has struggled to write or continue with her volunteer work, which includes supporting victims of racist violence and transporting unwell Palestinian children to Israeli hospitals.
Kaminka does not have a clear position on the war and, like Stahl, says there are huge security concerns at play, especially when more than 100 hostages remain in Gaza. What she is certain of is that, in the long-term, Jewish-Palestinian coexistence is the only way forward.
While pointing to the Palestinian village she used to visit, she said: “We have to find a way to build a common society that feels fair and feels just to as many people as possible.”

Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on December 03-04/2023
Nazis, Muslims and the Jews ...Did Nazis carry out the horrific Oct 7th massacre?
Mordechai Nisan /Front Page/December 03/2023
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/124901/mordechai-nisan-nazis-muslims-and-the-jews-did-nazis-carry-out-the-horrific-oct-7th-massacre-%d9%85%d8%b1%d8%af%d8%ae%d8%a7%d9%8a-%d9%86%d9%8a%d8%b3%d8%a7%d9%86-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%86%d8%a7%d8%b2/
One of the most accurate aspects about Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza is the use of the word Nazi to describe the terrorist enemy. No other label or historical parallel could capture the chilling ferocious madness – but not scope – of Palestinian butchery of Israelis. The Nazi vilification epithet has now become conventional Israeli discourse in public and media circles with the vivid revelation – in words and photos – of Palestinian savagery and barbarism by Hamas on October 7. Hamas terrorists, without an ounce of inhibition or remorse, shot youth in cold blood at the music festival at Re’im, burnt and beheaded Jews, vaunting their sadistic impulses upon children, men, and the elderly – raping women and girls. They decapitated a baby cut from the mother’s womb in front of her eyes. The pyromaniacs set fire to homes, barns and cars.
Nazis and Jews
The murder of approximately 1,200 Israelis in an orgy of bloodshed evoked the sensation that Nazis carried out such a horrific massacre of helpless Jews on that ‘Black Saturday’ on Gaza’s border. Decades of Palestinian terrorism upgraded from stoning and stabbing Jews to the diabolical nightmare of Nazi crematoria – burning Jewish people alive. Later, in a child’s room in Gaza, Israeli soldiers came upon an Arabic translation of Mein Kampf, Hitler’s bible. The kidnapping of 241 Israelis to Gaza became an additional chilling chapter of this unparalleled ordeal.
Are the Palestinians Nazis by ideology?
Berl Katznelson, the foremost leader of Labor Zionism until his death in 1944, was a witness to Arab massacres of Jews in the 1920s and 1930s. He referred to “the Palestinian Nazis who succeeded to unite here in [Eretz] Israel the zoological antisemitism of Europe and the lust for the dagger of the Orient.” The connection between Nazis and Palestinians led the esteemed songwriter Naomi Shemer to offer a remarkable insight:
“Arabs like their murder hot, moist, and steamy, and if they will ever be free to fulfill themselves, we [Jews] will yearn for the good sterile gasses of the Germans.”
In Kfar Aza and Be’eri, Nir Oz and Sderot, there was no Palestinian industrialized war machine in operation; rather just primitive hordes of “Muhammad’s monsters”[1] mangling and mutilating Jews whose innocence, in the double sense of the word, became ready prey for the Gazan rabble run wild. To define those Hamas Palestinian as ‘terrorists’ is a gross understatement, perhaps a euphemism.
In Israel today, after the October 7 pogrom, the liberation of language has allowed the use of ‘Nazi’ to describe the horrendous event. During the entire year prior to the pogrom, the leftist street protests against the judicial reform package of the Netanyahu government introduced the odious word – Nazi – specifically targeting Netanyahu himself. Placards portrayed him in a Nazi uniform, the demonization of the prime minister becoming a central axis of the intense brainwashing campaign. The year 1933 became a symbolic benchmark for Netanyahu’s devious dictatorial designs – said the protest.
Of memorable notoriety was ex-general and member of Knesset Yair Golan’s “processes speech” from 2018 that hinted Israel was already adopting Nazi features in its ideological transformation from a democracy to a dictatorship. The end of liberty in Israel was approaching. The leftist-liberal secular camp, unhinged and full of hatred for Netanyahu during the decades of his premiership, had lost its cultural poise and historical judgment.[2] When the Arab Nazis struck and slaughtered in October, the outrageous accusation that the rightist-nationalist camp is Nazi-like paled and dissolved.
The gruesome real Nazis changed the contours of the domestic Israeli dialogue. Now Netanyahu, the would-be Nazi in the furtive imagination of some bewitched Israelis, labeled Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, “a little Hitler hiding in a bunker” on November 5. Here was a candidate worthy of the title.
However, many years earlier, the enemies of Israel from near and far had adopted the Nazi charge against the Jewish state as an ideological staple of de-legitimization. The Russians had initiated this perversion of comparing Zionism to Nazism, and their Syrian proxy followed suit. The loathsome ‘Zionism-is-Nazism’ canard served to vilify Israel and render its existence to be a wicked injustice imposed on the Arabs, Muslims, and the world.[3] This fabricated indictment shaped the victimology of the Palestinians that became a marketable political logo.
Incompatibilities and Conflict: The Primacy of Islam
Islam, the religion of the Muslim faithful, predominates in the political calculus of Hamas (an Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement). This turns the Israeli–Palestinian clash into a Muslim–Jewish religious war. In the language of the Hamas covenant from 1988 (Art. 15): “the Palestinian problem is a religious problem” which obligates Muslims to conduct jihad. In Articles 20 and 31 Hamas makes the heinous accusation that Israel uses Nazi methods against the Palestinian people. Where has Israel concealed those death camps and gas ovens? Needless to say that the very victims of Nazism are not the Palestinians but the Jews, then in Europe and now in the Middle East.
It is worth recalling that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) earlier flung the Nazi charge against Israel in its 1964 Charter (Art. 22). This diatribe against Zionism is an incredulous inversion of truth, no less because of the intimate collaboration in World War II between Hitler and Haj Amin Al-Husseini, the Palestinian leader in British-mandated Palestine. The latter’s ideological and nationalist successor, Yasser Arafat, stated in an interview in 1981 that “the Zionist invasion recalled the Nazi invasion” (of Austria, Poland…).[4] Fatah, the core faction in the PLO, and Hamas are of one Palestinian mind.
The religious engine instructing, validating, inspiring, and mobilizing Hamas is, expectedly, the Koran. The book of Allah revealed to the prophet Muhammad guidance in confirming that the only true faith is Islam (3:18), it is above all religions (48:28), and it will conquer or convert the entire world. To “fight for the cause of Allah” (9:111) against “those who do not embrace the true faith” (9:29) is the greatest deed a Muslim can do. The “believers” (Muslims) must confront the “unbelievers” (Jews) and thereby establish truth and justice on earth. Indeed, “ruthlessness toward unbelievers” (48:29), beheading without mercy, is the mark of Islam as a complete religious-political way of life. For hundreds of years Muslim regimes applied restrictions and humiliations against dhimmi Jews (and Christians) in the lands of Islam[5] – similar to Nazi Germany’s anti-Semitic legislation, turning Jewish citizens into outcasts and dwarfing their public presence. With the spread of armed radical Islam, militant and triumphalist, Muslims seek nothing less than a resounding victory against the Jewish people.
With an ineluctable mandate from Kitab Allah (The Book of God), no moral restrictions stayed the hand of Hamas savages. Like the Nazis in the 1930s, Hamas was always rearming and preparing for the war it would start. Nazis reviled the godless communists, Hamas reviled godless Fatah – and both saw the Jews as the ultimate and diabolical enemy. Hitler aroused frenzy among the Germans, he whipped up passion and hatred, and the mob would follow him; all this featured in the role of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his successors – Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar. In both cases, Germany and Palestine, exultant mass support for the regime as befits totalitarian movements was more essential than the democratic vote that brought them to power.
Hamas cutthroats and murderers assaulted civilian communities and military posts across the Gaza line and slaughtered the Israelis. The spirit of Itbach el-Yahud – “slaughter the Jews” – filled the air. This sacred mission gave life significance and purpose. Twelve hundred dead Israelis and 241 Israeli hostages were a trophy of victory that, when the news of the operation spread, brought the Gazan Palestinians to the streets, joyous at the Jewish blood spilled, and – as is customary – to distribute sweets and candies in celebration. Fatah followers in the West Bank were no less exuberant.
The Hamas plan for war was sophisticated in its tactical maneuvers and deceptive in implementation. In the months prior, Sinwar had avoided provoking Israel, rather conveying his emphasis on economic development for Gaza and shying away from joining the more active terror campaign by Islamic Jihad in Samaria. Netanyahu apparently may have believed that Israel had successfully deterred Hamas from any concerted military campaign. In the German case, until September 1, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland, Hitler conducted a disinformation campaign aimed at America, England, and Russia, to conceal his intention to go to war.[6] In the end, Hitler fooled Chamberlain and later Stalin; Sinwar arguably fooled Netanyahu – as Arafat fooled Rabin, not with war but with a peace offensive.
War is at the heart of Islam and conquest is the banner of its glory. Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran inspiring, training, arming, and financing Hamas and other Islamic terrorist groups, declared in a speech in 1942 that Islam is not a religion of peace. Rather, “Kill them [the non-Muslims] put them to the sword…Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword.”[7] Religious euphoria bonds with the Islamic maxim: Din Muhammad bi’l Saif (the religion of Muhammad by the sword). Khomeini demanded that no one should insult Islam by calling it a religion of peace. His Hamas proxies, bold and ferocious, did not disappoint.
The classic Islamic works – Sirat Rasul Allah and The Sahih Al-Bukhari Anthology – relate the gruesome actions and instructions of Muhammad against enemy forces. They document his war against his own Quraysh tribe, the expulsion of the Bani al-Nadir tribe, and the slaughter of the Bani Qurayza. Mercy, attributed to Allah in the opening Al-Fatiha Koranic verse, was not included in the arsenal of qualities or attributes of Muhammad’s Muslims. A traditional saying commands: “Kill any Jews that fall into your power.” The Hamas Charter (Art. 8) cites the movement’s slogan: “Allah is its target, the prophet is its model, the Koran its constitutions, jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.” In a street rally in Ramallah weeks into the Gaza War, the chant arose: “Whoever has a rifle, shoot a Jew.”[8]
The goal of the Nazis was to kill all the Jews and cleanse Germany of any Jewish presence. The Palestinians are unarguably their true successors and ideological compatriots in the Middle East, fighting to cleanse Israel of all Jews.
Reflections on Gnostic Heresy
The Hamas-Nazi analogy requires a few final reflections. Four distinctive features define the resemblance:
One: they engaged in the dehumanization of the Jews, as vermin (rats and parasitic insects) by the Nazis, and as apes and pigs by Hamas;
Two: they had the singular and obsessive objective of killing Jews more than even victory in war;
Three: they aspired to achieve global conquest in the name of their ideology – Nazism and Islamism – without compromise.
Four: German Nazism emerged in the 1920s with a fervent hatred of Great Britain and saw her as the major strategic rival, so to the Muslim Brotherhood – Hamas’ parent organization – was born in the same decade and saw Britain, with its mandate over Palestine, its Great Power enemy. The shame of the Versailles Treaty for Germany compared with the humiliation of the Balfour Declaration for the Arabs.
Germans and Palestinians acted under a mysterious spell, they did things out-of-the-ordinary in a conflictual-military context. They burnt Jews alive, and Hamas in earlier years conjured up the holocaust “still to come upon the Jews.”[9] A primordial force operated in such cultures dedicated to domination but also destruction, the perpetrators never blaming themselves. They do not countenance the possibility of error. The Nazi truth and the Hamas truth are unassailable: the faithful ask no questions. Hitler youth in Germany and Islamic youth in Palestine receive an education that prepared them to sacrifice, murder, and die.[10] Anointed to rule with a mission to launch a new era, Nazism and Islamism set forth to build a new world.
Only with such language and interpretation can we begin to grasp the violent nightmares that these diabolical gnostic forces imposed on their Jewish victims, and the world.[11] Hitler’s declaration of the Thousand Year Reich, and Islam’s belief in the Coming of the Mahdi or the Day of Judgment, make possible and permit every conceivable monstrosity.
*Dr. Mordechai Nisan taught Middle East Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Notes:
[1] The title of a book edited by David Bukay, Muhammad’s Monsters, Green Forest, Arkansas: Balfour Books, 2004.
[2] See my book The Crack-up of the Israeli Left, Canada: Mantua Books, 2019.
[3] Robert S. Wistrich, “Islamic Judeophobia: An Existential Threat,” in Muhammad’s Monsters, pp. 195-219.
[4] “A Discussion with Yasser Arafat,” Journal of Palestine Studies, 42, Winter 1982, pp. 4-5.
[5] Bat Ye’or, “Dhimmi Peoples – Oppressed Nations,” in Robert Spencer, ed., The Myth of Islamic Tolerance, Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2004, chapter 6, pp. 115-146. For most purposes, the Islamic diatribes against Jews are also against the Christians.
[6] See William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Pub., 1960, chapters 14-16.
[7] In Andrew G. Bostom, ed., The Legacy of Jihad, Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, p. 226.
[8] The source is Palestinian Media Watch, Nov. 11, 2023.
[9] Markos Zographos, Genocidal Antisemitism: A Core Ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, Occasional Paper Series, no. 4, 2001, Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, p. 41.
[10] Rafael Medoff, “Hitler Youth in Gaza,” Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, Nov. 17, 2023.
[11] See Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1952, chapter VI, on the phenomenon of gnosticism in politics.

Why Belgium, Norway, Spain and Everyone Should Refrain from Recognizing a 'Palestinian State' Just Now
Drieu Godefridi/ Gatestone Institute./December 3, 2023
In the case of a "Palestinian State", there is no territory on which even the Palestinians agree. Indeed, the charter of Hamas -- designated as a terrorist organization by many countries in the West, and which has reigned unchallenged in the Gaza Strip since 2007 when it forcibly expelled the Palestinian Authority, in part by throwing its members off 15-storey buildings -- calls for the "liberation" of "every inch of Palestine" through jihad.
The Palestinian Authority also lays claim over all of the territory, including all of Israel...
In addition, the Palestinian Authority is counting on the Palestine Liberation Organization's 1974 "Ten Point Plan" (also known as the "phased plan") for the "comprehensive liberation" of all the land stretching "from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea" -- a euphemism for the elimination of Israel. The plan calls for the PLO to use whatever territory it is offered as a base of operations to get the rest.
Belgium's possible recognition of a "Palestinian State" makes no sense in terms of international law. It comes, in reality, less as the result of a desire to help the Palestinians -- whose lives will not be improved by it -- than of a fierce and increasingly undisguised hostility towards the State of Israel, and most likely also Jews.Recognizing a Palestinian state with no authority, no realistic territorial demands and no acceptable leadership -- and with a long-term, outspoken desire to militarize and destroy its neighbor Israel -- right after a jihadist pogrom against Jews, will not add to the happiness of any of the parties involved, or, for that matter, anyone else.
There are whispers in the corridors of power that Belgium, like Norway and Spain, is preparing to recognize a "Palestinian State". This move seems questionable, on both legal and political grounds.
The first conditions for recognizing a state are territory and state authority. International law defines a sovereign state as an established territorial unit, within which its laws apply to a permanent population, and which is constituted by institutions through which it exercises authority and effective power.
In the case of a "Palestinian State", there is no territory on which even the Palestinians agree. Indeed, the charter of Hamas -- designated as a terrorist organization by many countries in the West, and which has reigned unchallenged in the Gaza Strip since 2007 when it forcibly expelled the Palestinian Authority, in part by throwing its members off 15-storey buildings -- calls for the "liberation" of "every inch of Palestine" through jihad.
The Palestinian Authority also lays claim over all of the territory, including all of Israel (see also here, here, here and here). The territory of the "Palestinian State" is therefore not contested at the margins; it is contested in substance. At present, no one, and certainly not the Palestinians themselves, can say what the boundaries of the territory they are claiming are, even approximately, apart from the openly desired entire territory of Israel.
In addition, the Palestinian Authority is counting on the Palestine Liberation Organization's 1974 "Ten Point Plan" (also known as the "phased plan") for the "comprehensive liberation" of all the land stretching "from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea" -- a euphemism for the elimination of Israel. The plan calls for the PLO to use whatever territory it is offered as a base of operations to get the rest.
Nor is there any constituted state authority. Or rather, there are two. In Gaza, Hamas has governed since 2007. In the Palestinian-populated areas of Judea and Samaria, the Palestinian Authority dominates. These two authorities do not recognize each other, so much so that they went to war. Between 2007 and 2008, hundreds of cadres and activists were killed in clashes between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip. An estimated 600 Hamas political prisoners are being held in Palestinian Authority jails.
So, what is this enigmatic "authority" that should be recognized? The Palestinian Authority, which has no legitimacy, no representatives in Gaza and is hated by a large number of its own people? Or Hamas, which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007, is a terrorist organization and has just perpetrated the worst act of mass murder against Jews since the Shoah?
Does Belgium realize that recognizing any kind of "authority" in these conditions is tantamount to recognizing either a terrorist organization or the Palestinian Authority, whose authority in Gaza is a pure myth, or a mixture of the two that has no relevance on the ground?
In strict international law, it makes no sense to recognize a "Palestinian State" that does not exist in any of its fundamental components. How can one justify recognizing a myth such as the Palestinian State, while at the same time as refusing to recognize a democratic "State of Taiwan," which is perfectly constituted and has been for decades? It's all very well claiming to be governed by international law, but it is even better to be consistent in respecting its categories.
Another problem is that of "Palestinian refugees". It is estimated that there are two million "Palestinian refugees" recognized as such by the United Nations currently living in the West Bank and Gaza. The refugee issue is one of the most sensitive in the Israeli-Arab conflict. Five million Palestinian Arabs who are currently registered as "Palestine refugees" - the two million in the West Bank and Gaza, plus two million in Jordan and another million in Syria and Lebanon - are demanding to "return" to what they claim is their historic homeland.
If these five million Palestinians were to join the two million or so Palestinian Arabs who are already citizens of Israel, there would be a massive demographic change, as Einat Wilf points out. The Jews of Israel would likely be relegated to minority status. This is why Israelis have always rejected the Palestinians' claimed "right of return". Yet Palestinians insist that this is a fundamental requirement of any peace agreement.
Recognizing a "Palestinian State" means putting an end to the myth of refugees already living in these territories. You cannot be a refugee from Palestine and live in a Palestinian State at the same time. If Gaza and the West Bank become "Palestine," then the millions of Palestinians living there cease to be refugees. Pretending to recognize a "Palestinian State" while maintaining the myth of refugees betrays the inherently political and hostile nature of this recognition of a phantom "Palestinian State".
Moreover, according to many commentators, there already is a Palestinian State: it is called Jordan.
Which brings us to the heart of the matter: Belgium's possible recognition of a "Palestinian State" makes no sense in terms of international law. It comes, in reality, less as the result of a desire to help the Palestinians -- whose lives will not be improved by it -- than of a fierce and increasingly undisguised hostility towards the State of Israel, and most likely also Jews.
Belgium, Norway and Spain would do well to come to their senses. Recognizing a Palestinian state with no authority, no realistic territorial demands and no acceptable leadership -- and with a long-term, outspoken desire to militarize and destroy its neighbor Israel -- right after a jihadist pogrom against Jews, will not add to the happiness of any of the parties involved, or, for that matter, anyone else.
*Drieu Godefridi is a jurist (University Saint-Louis, University of Louvain), philosopher (University Saint-Louis, University of Louvain) and PhD in legal theory (Paris IV-Sorbonne). He is an entrepreneur, CEO of a European private education group and director of PAN Medias Group. He is the author of The Green Reich (2020).
© 2023 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Gaza and the Double Standards
Tariq Al-Homayed/Asharq Al-Awsat/December 03/2023
Since the outbreak of the Israeli war on Gaza, following the Oct. 7 operation, we have been hearing the expression, “double standards” by all Arab countries and their officials. I do not think there is another term that has been used more frequently throughout this war.
This expression is often used to criticize the West, and the United States in particular, but does this criticism only apply to them? My conviction is no. The truth is that our region also suffers from “double standards,” whether in dealing with Israel or Hamas... How? Here is the answer...
Since the outbreak of the war, we have not heard an Arab voice telling Hamas: Enough of the adventures... solutions must be found to stop the bloodshed of the people of Gaza, and that there is a real danger to Gaza, geographically, and to the security of Jordan and Egypt.
No Arab official, in any hint or statement, has told Ismail Haniyeh following his calls for a ceasefire and the initiation of a two-state solution: If you truly believe in that, then why create unequal or unjustified wars, because that would also be a double standard?
None of them told Hamas: How can you go to war without preparing to protect the innocent, provide the slightest basics they need, and at least take care of the people of Gaza, as you did with the young Israeli woman, Maya, or the other woman who escaped captivity with her dog?
We have not heard from the Arabs anyone saying, or leaking to the media, that some countries in the region that have relations with Israel must stop bidding, and stop their electronic armies’ campaigns through social media to “demonize” some Arab countries!
We have not heard criticism of the sponsors of the Muslim Brotherhood in our region, whether by establishing misleading electronic armies’ websites, as some have the right to communicate with Israel and its leaders, while incitement and provocation are being directed against Arab countries that do what serves their national interests.
Aside from the Gaza story, but within the time frame, we did not hear from the Arabs anyone telling the regime in Syria, in a hint or a statement, to stop killing and targeting civilians, and proceed with a political solution to end the bloodshed.
No one told the Lebanese government that just as you condemn the killing of journalists whose lives Hezbollah risks, stop the party’s targeting of journalists who disagree with it, because that is also a double standard.
We did not hear anyone directing criticism at the combatants in Sudan, and calling things by their names, in order to stop the bloodshed and preserve what is left of the country, if there is anything left of it at all.
Yes, the West, led by Washington, has double standards. Indeed, Washington is the official purveyor of double standards internationally, in a blatant and provocative manner, but we also have our problems.
It is inconceivable that this brutal war in Gaza will continue without Hamas bearing responsibility. Campaigns of treason and moral assassination cannot continue with the support of parties in our region that deliberately practice double standards.
Israel is a criminal, but we should not also criminalize ourselves and the innocent by running forward. No one will fight on behalf of Gaza, neither Iran nor Hezbollah, and therefore we must say enough killing and destruction.
This situation must be defused by saying what needs to be said.

Israel faces new front in Iran’s drone war
Haid Haid/The Arab Weekly/December 03/2023
Since the Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing military campaign in Gaza, Israel has found itself the target of missiles and drones fired by Iranian-backed groups from various points in the Middle East. While there has not been a full-scale escalation from groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the attacks, many of which have been intercepted, have served as a warning of what Israel’s enemies in the region have at their disposal. One particular incident marked a notable departure from previous attacks on Israel and will be causing increased concern for the country’s security officials. On November 9, a drone launched from Syria struck a school in the southern Israeli city of Eilat. The drone managed to hit a target more than 400 kilometres away from the nearest Syrian territory. Previous attacks on Israel from Syria have typically involved mortar shelling across the border confined to unpopulated areas.
Beyond its remarkable long-distance reach, the drone’s capacity to fly undetected and execute a precise strike suggests the involvement of a well-trained operator. The message conveyed by the attack is equally noteworthy; it demonstrates the capability to target any location in Israel from Syria. Eilat is Israel’s southernmost city and its only port on the country’s sliver of Red Sea coastline. The questions that loom large are: who was responsible for the attack? and how did they manage to reach the target without triggering alarms from Israel’s sophisticated defence systems?
The Israeli military said the drone crashed into the school while about 40 students were in the basement. No serious injuries were reported.
The next day, the Israeli army said it had responded by targeting the organisation in Syria responsible for launching the drone. However, the statement did not identity the group, and failed to give details about the target.
Initially, there were suspicions that the attack originated in Yemen, after several recent attempted strikes on Israel carried out by the Iran-backed Houthis. Examinations of the drone fragments indicated that it was most likely an Iranian-made Shahed-101 or a similar model. The Shahed-101 boasts a range of up to 700 kilometres. Given that the distance from the Yemeni border to Eilat is nearly 2,000 kilometres, it became clear that the drone must have been launched from a location closer to Israel.
Two primary theories continue to circulate regarding the launch location and who was operating the drone. The prevailing assumption is that the drone was launched from southern Syria by Hezbollah, or a group linked to it, which has had a large presence there since the Lebanese group backed Bashar Al Assad in the Syrian civil war.
Hezbollah announced that seven of its fighters were killed on the day of the Eilat drone attack, without disclosing the location of their deaths. However, reports citing a Hezbollah official, among others, acknowledging that they were killed in Syria, added to suspicions that the seven died in Israel’s retaliatory airstrike. If these reports prove accurate, it would tie in with Israeli concerns over Hezbollah’s drone capacity and substantial influence in southern Syria. The absence of official acknowledgment from either party may stem from a shared interest in preventing further escalations.
However, there is a second theory as to who was responsible. Israeli news website Walla identified the elite Iranian-backed Imam Hussein Division as responsible for the attack. The group, also known as the Imam Hussein Brigades, was established by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria in 2016 and armed with Iranian-made drones and surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles. The media outlet, however, did not specify from where the attack originated. Military experts told this writer that while southern Syria remains a potential location, northeast Syria, Imam Hussein’s stronghold, is considered a more likely launching point. The considerable distance of northeast Syria from the border with Israel renders it a more strategic launch spot for the drone compared to the southern part of Syria, which is subject to closer monitoring by Israel.
Regardless of which account of the November 9 attack is more accurate, both suggest the potential for drone strikes from different parts of Syria. The trajectory of the drone is an equally crucial detail. All reports say the drone approached Eilat from the direction of Jordan, covering hundreds of kilometres across the kingdom’s airspace.
The same military experts said the choice of Jordanian airspace for the drone’s path was because Israel sees its border with Jordan as relatively low risk. Consequently, Tel Aviv directs its sensors, radars and patrol aircraft to regions where the risk of attacks is deemed higher, such as southern Syria. The rugged terrain along the Jordan-Israel border near Eilat adds complexity to drone detection and provides cover for the devices approaching from a distance at low altitudes.
Moreover, the drone’s distinctive features facilitated its discreet flight to the target without triggering Israel’s alarms. It flies at slow speed, low altitude, can be programmed to deviate from a straight path and has a compact size.
Amid the conflict in Gaza, the drone attack from Syria is unlikely to be the last. The Israeli military is expected to bolster security measures along the Jordanian border. However, the technical challenges, Israel’s engagement on various fronts and the capability of Iranian-backed groups to deploy multiple and more advanced drones diminish the likelihood of Israel completely neutralising the threat. Hence, a diplomatic resolution for Gaza is the sole guaranteed means to prevent further escalation against Israel, domestically and regionally.