Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on November 29-30/2023
Macron Urges Lebanon to Avoid Being Dragged into War
What political and security recommendations does Le Drian have for Lebanon?
Le Drian engages with major Lebanese figures in an effort to revive the presidential election process
Le Drian meets key Lebanese players in bid to reactivate presidential file
Berri holds two meetings with Le Drian and Spanish ambassador to discuss the latest developments
Le Drian meets Army Commander: Discussions on Lebanon's situation and southern developments
Ain el-Tineh sources: Le Drian stresses importance of electing a President, no names proposed
Reaffirming the "Quintet Committee" position: Le Drian urges Lebanon to expedite presidential elections
Israeli soldiers open fire close to Lebanese Army patrol
Macron says Hezbollah shouldn't compromise Lebanon's sovereign interests
What are Le Drian's political and security proposals for Lebanon?
Mikati meets Le Drian at Grand Serail
In Northern Israel, Soldiers Prepare for Extended Standoff with Hezbollah
Quintet 'agrees on' presidential candidate, Doha proposes Bayssari and Hitti
Israel fires on Lebanese Army, violating anew unofficial truce
Report: Central bank inclined to abolish 'lollar'
Bassil says Lebanese must respect each other's martyrs
Hezbollah politician hopes truce will continue

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on November 29-30/2023
Pope: May the truce in Gaza continue
UN Secretary General addresses Security Council on Middle East
12 more Gaza hostages freed as truce enters sixth day
Hamas eyes extending truce by four more days
Blinken seeks new extension of Gaza truce as he heads again to Middle East
Israeli President Due in UAE in First Foreign Trip Since War
Israel has no real option for fighting Hamas' diabolical strategy
Blinken says will work on extending pauses in Israel to free more hostages
UN Chief Says Gaza in Midst of ‘Epic Humanitarian Catastrophe’
WHO Says Gaza’s Health System Must Be Protected as Disease Spreads
Jordan Says to Host a Conference to Coordinate Aid to Gaza
Report: Netanyahu Rejected Plan to Kill Hamas' Yahya Sinwar Six Times
Israeli Official Says Hamas Has Enough Hostages to Cover 2-3 Day Truce Extension
6 members of American UN aid worker’s family killed by Israeli attack in Gaza
Gaza truce gives displaced children rare chance to sing and play
Putin is urging women to have as many as 8 children after so many Russians died in his war with Ukraine
Ukraine Has Received 300,000 of EU’s Promised Million Shells, Says FM
Türkiye's Erdogan Welcomes Gaza Pause as Temporary ‘Stop of Bloodshed’
Iran Finalizes Arrangements for Delivery of Russian Fighter Jets
Iran FM says US visa delay keeping him away from UN Gaza meeting
Kuwait's ruling emir, 86, hospitalized but reportedly stable

Titles For The Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on November 29-30/2023
Genocidal Hatred of Jews and the West/Guy Millière/Gatestone Institute/November 29, 2023
Saudi Journalist Musa'ad Al-Thobaiti Like All Other Terror And Jihad Leaders, Hamas Leaders Live In Luxury And Save Their Own Skin, While Sending Their People To Be Killed/MEMRI/November 29/2023
Muslims in Europe feel vulnerable to rising hostility over Israel-Gaza/Layli Foroudi, Thomas Escritt, Andrew MacAskill and Sarah Marsh/Reuters)/November 29, 2023
Palestine that Enriches and Palestine that Impoverishes/Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al Awsat/November 29/2023
Gaza… Queues and Queues/Tariq Al-Homayed/Asharq Al Awsat/November 29/2023
We must respect others’ beliefs — no matter how painful/Carla DiBello/Arab News/November 29, 2023

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on November 29-30/2023
Macron Urges Lebanon to Avoid Being Dragged into War
Beirut: Asharq Al Awsat/November 29/2023
French President Emmanuel Macron warned on Tuesday against the spillover of Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza to Lebanon. The spillover of the conflict into Lebanon “will have serious repercussions for the country,” Macron said in a letter to caretaker Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati on the occasion of Lebanon's Independence Day, which falls on November 22. Macron stressed that the creation of appropriate conditions for the election of a Lebanese president and the formation of an operational government is an urgent issue, and that his personal representative, Jean-Yves Le Drian, who is currently in Beirut, continues to work in this direction. “France, given the historical relations that bind our two countries, is redoubling its efforts to strengthen the stability, security and independence of Lebanon. We have always supported these goals,” he said. Macron added: “France recognizes that it has a unique responsibility towards your country, a responsibility that is reflected in particular by the role we play within the UNIFIL peacekeeping forces. No party should use Lebanese territory in a way contrary to its sovereign interests. Today we must avoid the worst. I therefore invite you to continue your efforts in this direction.”The French President continued: “I had indicated to the Israeli Prime Minister, every time I communicated with him, all the attention we were paying to your country, and I had told him of my concern about the dangers of escalation and expansion of the conflict to Lebanon.”In addition to this fundamental issue, Macron said it is urgent to stabilize Lebanese institutions. “The presidential vacuum that has persisted for more than a year is weighing heavily on the country's ability to emerge from the current crisis and avoid the deterioration of security related to the ongoing war in Gaza,” he stated. “Without a president or an effective government, there is no possibility of breaking the security, social, economic and financial impasse that the Lebanese people are suffering from,” he warned. Meanwhile, the French Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Ludovic Pouille, said on his X account that Le Drian, had a “fruitful meeting” in Riyadh with the advisor within the General Secretariat of the Saudi Council of Ministers, Nizar Al-Aloula. Pouille emphasized that Paris and Riyadh are working together for the stability and security of Lebanon, and to ensure that presidential elections are held as soon as possible.

What political and security recommendations does Le Drian have for Lebanon?
Daily Star/November 29/2023
Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French Special Presidential Envoy for Lebanon, who recently arrived in Beirut, held a meeting in Riyadh with Nizar al-Aloula, a Saudi Royal Court adviser. Ludovic Pouille, the French Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, described the meeting as productive, emphasizing that France and Saudi Arabia are collaboratively working towards ensuring Lebanon’s stability, security, and the expedited conduct of the Lebanese presidential election. According to Annahar newspaper, citing French diplomatic sources, Le Drian is bringing a dual-focused message to Lebanon, one political and the other related to security. The political aspect includes two proposals aimed at facilitating the swift holding of the presidential election. The first proposal suggests organizing a conference in Doha, similar to a previous one, to achieve a consensus among Lebanese factions on a consensual presidential candidate. The second proposal involves urging Speaker Nabih Berri to initiate an electoral session for choosing a president from proposed candidates, with the process remaining open until a president is elected. Al-Liwaa newspaper reported that Le Drian plans to discuss with Hezbollah’s leading MP, Mohammad Raad, the possibility of an agreeable presidential candidate, highlighting the urgency of electing a president. Senior sources from the Shiite Duo, speaking to the daily, revealed that Le Drian is carrying two drafts. One is a revised version of his initial Franjieh-Salam initiative, while the other is a completely new proposal that either suggests a third candidate or open-ended sessions for consensus on any agreeable choice. Ad-Diyar newspaper’s informed sources mentioned that Le Drian might present an “American-Israeli proposal” to Hezbollah, Berri, and caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati. This proposal involves Hezbollah withdrawing from the area south of the Litani River, an operations zone under Resolution 1701. While some sources familiar with the French stance speculated that Le Drian might offer Hezbollah a deal to withdraw from the area south of the Litani River in exchange for support for Suleiman Franjieh’s presidential bid, other sources told ad-Diyar that such a scenario is highly unlikely for Hezbollah.

Le Drian engages with major Lebanese figures in an effort to revive the presidential election process
Daily Star/November 29/2023
Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French special presidential envoy, arrived in Beirut on Tuesday and held meetings on Wednesday with key Lebanese leaders, including caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, and Army Chief Gen. Joseph Aoun. His visit to Lebanon is primarily focused on reactivating the presidential election process. During an interview with France Info, Le Drian mentioned that he was returning to Lebanon on French President Emmanuel Macron’s request. He aims to encourage Lebanese officials to set aside their differences and work together towards establishing a functional constitutional system. Le Drian emphasized the need for Lebanese leaders to regain a sense of responsibility. Le Drian’s discussions in Lebanon are also expected to cover the situation in southern Lebanon, particularly the deadly cross-border exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel, which have resulted in significant casualties, including Hezbollah fighters and civilians. In his meeting with Mikati, Le Drian highlighted the importance of achieving Lebanese consensus on current challenges and reiterated the five-nation group’s call for Lebanon to unify its positions. This includes swiftly electing a president and being open to receiving assistance in this regard, as reported by the National News Agency. Mikati, on his part, emphasized the urgency of halting Israeli aggression in southern Lebanon and Gaza. Le Drian’s schedule also includes meetings with Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi, former Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat, Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea, and Marada leader Suleiman Franjieh. President Macron, in a letter to Mikati published on Tuesday by the Grand Serail, warned that the ongoing presidential vacancy in Lebanon is hindering the country’s ability to address its crises and poses a risk of security deterioration, especially in the context of the escalating Hamas-Israel conflict.

Le Drian meets key Lebanese players in bid to reactivate presidential file
Naharnet/November 29/2023
French special presidential envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian, who arrived Tuesday in Beirut, met Wednesday with caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and Army chief Gen. Joseph Aoun. Le Drian is reportedly visiting the crisis-hit country in a bid to reactivate the presidential election file. In an interview with France Info, Le Drian said he is returning to Lebanon at the request of French President Emmanuel Macron to urge the Lebanese officials to overcome their rivalries and to agree together in order to establish a constitutional system that works. "The sense of responsibility must return to the leaders in Lebanon," he added. But Le Drian might also discuss with Lebanese officials the situation in south Lebanon, where cross-border exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel have killed 109 people in Lebanon, at least 77 of them Hezbollah fighters and 14 civilians. During his meeting with Mikati, Le Drian said his visit aims at securing a Lebanese consensus regarding the current junctures and to renew the five-nation group' call on the Lebanese to unify their stances, to swifty elect a president and to show willingness to receive help in that regard, the National News Agency said. Mikati, stressed for his part, the urgent need to stop the Israeli aggression against southern Lebanon and Gaza. Le Drian will later meet with Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi, former Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat, Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea and Marada leader Suleiman Franjieh.
Macron had warned in a letter to Mikati, published Tuesday by the Grand Serail, that the presidential vacancy weighs on the country's ability to overcome its crises and to prevent a security deterioration amid risks of escalation of the Hamas-Israel conflict to Lebanon.

Berri holds two meetings with Le Drian and Spanish ambassador to discuss the latest developments
LCCC/November 29/2023
On Wednesday, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri welcomed the French presidential envoy, Jean-Yves Le Drian, and the accompanying delegation at the second presidential residence in Ain el-Tineh. The meeting, also attended by French Ambassador Hervé Magro, delved into the latest political developments and updates. Berri also received the Spanish Ambassador to Lebanon, Jesus Santos Aguado, to discuss the overall situation in Lebanon and the region. The talks encompassed the Israeli aggression on Gaza and the southern Lebanese border villages. Additionally, discussions touched upon the bilateral relations between Lebanon and Spain. Le Drian met also patriarch Al Rai, Samit Geagea, Slieman and Toni Frangea, Walid  and Tymour Jumblat, Berri., Mekati

Le Drian meets Army Commander: Discussions on Lebanon's situation and southern developments
LBCI/November 29/2023
Army Commander, General Joseph Aoun, received in his office in Yarzeh the French Presidential Envoy, Jean-Yves Le Drian, in the presence of the French Ambassador to Lebanon, Hervé Margo. The meeting discussed the general situation in Lebanon and the latest developments in the south. Le Drian acknowledged the army's performance amidst the challenges it faces, affirming his country's continuous support for the military institution. On another note, General Aoun thanked the French Republic for its constant interest in the army, regularly sending assistance, including the latest provision of medical aid.

Ain el-Tineh sources: Le Drian stresses importance of electing a President, no names proposed
LBCI/November 29/2023
Ain el-Tineh sources confirmed that Jean-Yves Le Drian emphasized the importance of electing a president at this stage and avoiding a vacuum in the leadership of the [Lebanese] army. He did not propose any names related to the presidential election.

Reaffirming the "Quintet Committee" position: Le Drian urges Lebanon to expedite presidential elections
LBCI/November 29/2023
French Presidential Envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian emphasized that his visit to Lebanon aims to reaffirm the position of the "Quintet Committee," urging the Lebanese to unify their stance and expedite the completion of the presidential elections.
He expressed readiness to assist them in this context. Le Drian's stance came during his meeting with Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Wednesday at the Grand Serail. Le Drian revealed that he would hold several meetings and discussions to secure Lebanese consensus on the current developments.

Israeli soldiers open fire close to Lebanese Army patrol
LBCI/November 29/2023
LBCI sources confirmed that Israeli soldiers at the al-Abad site opened fire near a military vehicle belonging to the Lebanese Army during a patrol it was conducting near the site adjacent to a site for the UNIFIL forces. The sources added that no casualties were reported.

Macron says Hezbollah shouldn't compromise Lebanon's sovereign interests
Naharnet/November 29/2023
Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati had received on the occasion of Lebanon's independence day a letter from French President Emmanuel Macron that the Grand Serail published on Tuesday, a day before the PM met with the French President's envoy in Beirut. Before his envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian reiterated the need to elect a President in a meeting with Mikati, Macron warned in his letter that the presidential vacancy might weigh on the country's ability to overcome its crises and to prevent a security deterioration related to the war in Gaza. Macron said that the involvement of Lebanon in the Hamas-Israel war would have "serious repercussions for the country," blaming Hezbollah without naming the group for "compromising" Lebanon's interests. "No party should use Lebanese territory in such a way as to compromise the country's sovereign interests," the letter said.

What are Le Drian's political and security proposals for Lebanon?
Naharnet/November 29/2023
French Special Presidential Envoy for Lebanon Jean-Yves Le Drian, who arrived in Beirut overnight, met Tuesday in Riyadh with Saudi Royal Court adviser Nizar al-Aloula. French Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Ludovic Pouille said the meeting was “fruitful” and that France and Saudi Arabia are “working hand in hand to ensure Lebanon's stability and security and the speedy holding of the Lebanese presidential election.”Annahar newspaper meanwhile quoted French diplomatic sources as saying that Le Drian is carrying “a political message and a security message” to Lebanon.
The political message entails two proposals for holding the presidential election as soon as possible. “The first proposal calls for holding a conference in Doha similar to the previous Doha conference in an attempt to secure consensus among Lebanese players over a candidate who would be elected consensually,” the sources said. “The second proposal would be for the five-nation group on Lebanon to ask Speaker Nabih Berri to launch an electoral session for electing a president from the proposed candidates while keeping the electoral rounds open until the election of a president,” the sources added.
French sources meanwhile told al-Liwaa newspaper that Le Drian will discuss with Hezbollah’s top MP Mohammad Raad “the name of an acceptable presidential candidate, because it is not possible to stay without a president for a long time.”
Senior Shiite Duo sources meanwhile told the daily that Le Drian is “carrying two drafts.”“The first is a modified and amended version of his first Franjieh-Salam initiative while the second is a totally new initiative that is based on a proposing a third candidate or resorting to open-ended sessions to agree on any choice that the conferees might agree on,” the sources added. Informed sources meanwhile told ad-Diyar newspaper that Le Drian might carry an “American-Israeli proposal” to Hezbollah, Berri and caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati. The proposal calls for “Hezbollah’s withdrawal from the area south of the Litani River, which is considered the operations zone of Resolution 1701,” the sources said. And as some sources informed on the French stance said that Le Drian might propose to Hezbollah a bargain based on withdrawing from the area south of the Litani River in return for backing Suleiman Franjieh’s election as president, other sources told ad-Diyar that such a scenario is “totally out of the question for Hezbollah.”

Mikati meets Le Drian at Grand Serail
NNA/November 29/2023
Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati is currently in a meeting at the Grand Serail with French envoy, Jean-Yves Le Drian, accompanied by French Ambassador to Lebanon, Hervé Magro. Further details regarding the outcomes of the meeting are anticipated to emerge shortly.

In Northern Israel, Soldiers Prepare for Extended Standoff with Hezbollah
Daily Star/November 29/2023
Israeli soldiers stationed in the northern part of the country are bracing for an extended period of high tension with Hezbollah, situated across the border in Lebanon. This prolonged deployment follows weeks of near-daily exchanges of fire with the Iranian-supported group along the Israel-Lebanon border, which only recently subsided with the commencement of a truce with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Yoshiahu, a 27-year-old captain and reservist, who left his family and engineering studies to join the frontline following Hamas’s major attack on Israel on October 7, shared insights with AFP during a military-organized tour. He spoke about the escalating intensity of the situation and the belief among the troops that their presence is crucial for the protection of the people in the area. The commitment of these soldiers to their duty is evident, as Yoshiahu emphasized their readiness to stay as long as necessary. The so-called Blue Line, an approximately 80-kilometer demarcation outlined by the U.N. between Lebanon and Israel, has been patrolled extensively by Yoshiahu over the past two months. The area has witnessed sporadic exchanges of fire since the last major conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, with a significant increase in incidents following the October 7 attack. Hezbollah has claimed responsibility for targeting Israeli soldiers and posts. Israeli military concerns include incursions by armed militants and drones, with evidence of such activities already reported. The situation has led to the evacuation of almost all civilians living along the northern border, transforming communities like the Galilee kibbutz of Menara into near ghost towns. Despite the ceasefire with Hamas reducing the intensity of fire exchanges in the north, the tension remains palpable. Soldiers stationed along the border emphasize their role in defending Israel, reflecting on the events of October 7 as a lesson in preparedness and vigilance. The clashes between the Israeli army and Hezbollah have resulted in significant casualties on both sides of the border, with the majority of the 109 Lebanese deaths being combatants, including three journalists. On the Israeli side, the conflict has claimed the lives of at least nine individuals, six of them soldiers. The troops express a deep sense of responsibility towards the remaining civilians in the area, understanding the expectation placed upon them for protection and safety.

Quintet 'agrees on' presidential candidate, Doha proposes Bayssari and Hitti
Naharnet/November 29/2023
The five-nation group on Lebanon -- which comprises the U.S., France, KSA, Qatar and Egypt -- has agreed on a presidential candidate for Lebanon whose name will be highlighted in the coming days, al-Jadeed TV reported overnight.
Al-Liwaa newspaper meanwhile reported Wednesday that “the members of the quintet, especially France and Saudi Arabia, are seeking an agreement on a president as soon as possible and before the end of the year.”The Nidaa al-Watan daily for its part said that a Qatari envoy who visited Lebanon has proposed candidates such as ex-minister Nassif Hitti and General Security acting chief Elias Bayssari. “Hezbollah and Speaker Nabih Berri listened to his proposals and insisted on (Suleiman) Franjieh’s nomination, as Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil was not opposed to Bayssari’s nomination,” the daily added.

Israel fires on Lebanese Army, violating anew unofficial truce
Naharnet/November 29/2023
Israeli soldiers opened fire Wednesday from the Abbad post on a Lebanese Army patrol near the southern border town of Houla, despite an unofficial truce. During The four days of truce, calm was interrupted by occasional Israeli shelling and incessant buzz of Israeli surveillance drones, while Hezbollah abided by the truce. On Tuesday, Israeli artillery shelled the outskirts of the border town of Aita al-Shaab. Over the weekend, Israel shot down a surface-to-air missile launched from Lebanese territory at an Israeli military drone, a citizen from Kfarkila narrowly escaped unharmed after Israeli forces fired five gunshots at his Renault Rapid car, Israeli forces fired in the air to scare farmers working in their land in the Hounin Valley and hit one of UNIFIL's patrols with gunfire. While Lebanon and Hezbollah weren't officially parties to the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, it has brought at least a temporary halt to the daily exchanges of rockets, artillery shelling and airstrikes.

Report: Central bank inclined to abolish 'lollar'
Naharnet/November 29/2023
Lebanon’s Central Bank is inclined to abolish the so-called lollar, a term coined by Lebanese economist Dan Azzi in 2019 to refer to a ‘Lebanese dollar’, or a dollar that became trapped in Lebanon’s banking system in the wake of the 2019 crisis, media reports said. “Circular 151, which sets the exchange rate of the (trapped) dollar at LBP 15,000, will be abolished, and accordingly the exchange rate will become LBP 89,000, as per the (black market rate and the) dollar exchange rate specified in the 2024 state budget,” al-Joumhouria newspaper said. “This process will take place once this budget is approved and it will be inevitable to approve a capital control law with it,” the daily added. Central Bank sources told al-Joumhouria that “should the 2024 budget not be approved soon, the Central Bank is mulling the possibility of resorting to a measure that would be similar to capital control through an internal circular, with the aim of reining in exchange operations and preventing the monetary base from going out of control.”

Bassil says Lebanese must respect each other's martyrs
Naharnet/November 29/2023
Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil lauded Wednesday Hezbollah MP Mohammed Raad's steadfastness after the killing of his son last week in an Israeli airstrike in south Lebanon. "We, as Lebanese, must respect each other’s martyrs,” Bassil said as he offered his condolences to Raad in Beirut's southern suburbs. Hezbollah deputy chief Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hezbollah political council chief Ibrahim Amin al-Sayyed and Hezbollah Executive Council head Sayyed Hashem Safieddine attended the memorial service, in addition to Hezbollah MPs and former minister Ziad Baroud. Raad's son Abbas and four other Hezbollah fighters were killed in an Israeli airstrike last week on a house in the southern town of Beit Yahoun.

Hezbollah politician hopes truce will continue
BEIRUT (Reuters) / November 29/223
A senior Hezbollah politician said on Tuesday he hoped a truce would continue and his Iran-backed group had started paying compensation to people who had suffered losses during weeks of Israeli strikes in south Lebanon. ollowing the start of the Hamas-Israel war on Oct. 7, Hezbollah and Israel have engaged in their worst hostilities since 2006, with Hezbollah attacking Israeli positions at the border and Israel launching air and artillery strikes. ut the cross-border violence has ceased since Hamas - a Hezbollah ally - and Israel reached a temporary truce on Friday. God willing, the truce will continue," senior Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah said after a meeting with caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati. he violence at the Israel-Lebanese border has forced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the frontier to flee their homes. Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed around 100 people - 80 of them Hezbollah fighters. Hostilities spiralled following the Oct. 7 Hamas raid from the Gaza Strip into Israel, setting off a conflict that spread around the region. Citing a Hezbollah survey of damage done by Israeli attacks in Lebanon, Fadlallah said 37 residential buildings had been totally destroyed and 11 more completely burned. Another 1,500 homes across the south had suffered varying degrees of damage. Fadlallah said Mikati had agreed the government would pay compensation, including for destroyed cars and olive groves. This would be separate from compensation to be paid by Hezbollah, he added. It is true that we, in Hezbollah, began paying compensation ... but this does not mean at all that the government is not concerned, indeed it is concerned, and (Mikati) was very responsive," Fadlallah said. Hezbollah said it spent more than $300 million on compensation and reconstruction following the 2006 war, during which Israeli air strikes laid waste to swathes of the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut.

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on November 29-30/2023
Pope: May the truce in Gaza continue
NNA/November 29/2023
Pope Francis appealed for the continuity of the truce in Gaza during his Wednesday General Audience. His plea emphasized the need for the release of all hostages and the crucial entry of humanitarian aid into the region. "May we please continue to pray for the serious situation in Israel and Palestine," urged the Pope, underlining the significance of peace. He stressed the extension of the temporary ceasefire, revealing his recent conversation with Gaza's Catholic parish of the Holy Family. The dire conditions there were highlighted: scarcity of water and bread, alongside the widespread suffering among ordinary citizens. "The people are suffering," Pope Francis empathically conveyed, pinpointing the stark contrast between the suffering of civilians and those perpetuating the conflict. He expanded his plea for peace, also directing attention to the ongoing plight of the Ukrainian people embroiled in a severe crisis. Emphasizing the devastating consequences of war, the Pontiff concluded, "War is always a defeat. Everyone loses. Well, not everyone—there's a group that earns a lot. Those who make weapons. They earn a lot from the deaths of others."Pope Francis's heartfelt appeal at the audience highlighted the urgency for sustained peace in Gaza, resonating with his global call for an end to conflict-driven suffering.

UN Secretary General addresses Security Council on Middle East
NNA/November 29/2023
UN Secretary General, António Guterres, on Wednesday addresses the Security Council regarding the situation in Gaza and Israel, highlighting the devastating impact of the conflict.
In his speech, Guterres emphasized the need to protect civilians and UN facilities, as well as the urgent requirement for humanitarian aid, including medical supplies and shelter. He called for the immediate release of hostages and prisoners.
While resolutions' implementation remains partial, Guterres pleaded for a true humanitarian ceasefire and a long-term solution based on international law for peace between Israel and Palestine.
The following is the UN Secretary General’s full speech:
“I welcome this opportunity to brief the Security Council on implementation of resolution 2712. My Special Coordinator for the Middle East process Tor Wennesland will follow with his regular monthly briefing. Resolution 2712 was approved in a context of widespread death and wholesale destruction unleashed by the conflict in Gaza and Israel. According to Israeli authorities, more than 1,200 people were killed -- including 33 children -- and thousands were injured in the abhorrent acts of terror by Hamas on 7 October. Some 250 people were also abducted, including 34 children.
There are also numerous accounts of sexual violence during the attacks that must be vigorously investigated and prosecuted. Gender-based violence must be condemned. Anytime. Anywhere. According to the de facto authorities, more than 14,000 people have been killed since the start of the Israeli military operations in Gaza. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have also been injured, with many more missing. In Gaza, more than two-thirds of those killed are reported to be children and women. In a matter of weeks, a far greater number of children have been killed by Israeli military operations in Gaza than the total number of children killed during any year, by any party to a conflict since I have been Secretary-General – as clearly indicated in the annual reports on Children and Armed Conflict that I have submitted to the Council.
Over the past few days, the people of the Occupied Palestine Territory and Israel have finally seen a glimmer of hope and humanity in so much darkness.
It is deeply moving to see civilians finally having a respite from the bombardments, families reunited, and lifesaving aid increasing.
Resolution 2712 “demands that all parties comply with their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law, notably with regard to the protection of civilians, especially children.”
It is clear that before the pause, we witnessed serious violations.
Beyond the many civilians killed and wounded that I spoke of, eighty percent of Gaza’s people have now been forced from their homes. This growing population is being pushed towards an ever-smaller area of southern Gaza. And, of course, nowhere is safe in Gaza.
Meanwhile, an estimated 45 percent of all homes in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. The nature and scale of death and destruction are characteristic of the use of wide-area explosive weapons in populated areas, with a significant impact on civilians.
At the same time, rocket attacks on population centres in Israel by Hamas and other groups have continued – along with allegations of the use of human shields. This is also inconsistent with international humanitarian law obligations.
I want to stress the inviolability of United Nations facilities which today are sheltering more than one million civilians seeking protection under the UN flag. UNRWA shares the coordinates of all its facilities across the Gaza Strip with all parties to the conflict.
The agency has verified 104 incidents that have impacted 82 UNRWA installations – 24 of which happened since the adoption of the resolution. A total of 218 internally displaced people sheltering in UNRWA schools have reportedly been killed and at least 894 injured.
In addition, it is with immense sadness and pain that I report that since the beginning of the hostilities, 111 members of our UN family have been killed in Gaza. This represents the largest loss of personnel in the history of our organization.
Let me put it plainly:
Civilians – including United Nations personnel – must be protected. Civilian objects – including hospitals – must be protected.
UN facilities must not be hit.
International humanitarian law must be respected by all parties to the conflict at all times.
Security Council resolution 2712 calls “for urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors throughout the Gaza Strip …to enable …full, rapid, safe, and unhindered humanitarian access.” I welcome the arrangement reached by Israel and Hamas – with the assistance of the governments of Qatar, Egypt and the United States. We are working to maximize the positive potential of this arrangement on the humanitarian situation in Gaza. The pause has enabled us to enhance the delivery of aid into and across Gaza. For example, for the first time since 7 October, an inter-agency convoy delivered food, water, medical supplies, and shelter items to northern Gaza – specifically to four UNRWA shelters in Jabalia camp. Prior to this, minimal or no assistance had reached these locations – even as tens of thousands of people had crowded there for shelter. Also, for the first time, supplies of cooking gas entered Gaza where people waited in lines that extended for two kilometres. In the south, where the needs are dire, UN agencies and partners have increased both the amount of aid delivered, and the number of locations reached. I express my appreciation to the Government of Egypt for their contribution in making this assistance possible. But the level of aid to Palestinians in Gaza remains completely inadequate to meet the huge needs of more than two million people. And although the total volume of fuel allowed into Gaza has also increased, it remains utterly insufficient to sustain basic operations. Civilians in Gaza need a continuous flow of life-saving humanitarian aid and fuel into and across the area. Safe and unimpeded humanitarian access to all those in need is critical. Humanitarian partners carried out several medical evacuations from north to south Gaza, including to transport dozens of premature babies as well as spinal and dialysis patients from Shifa and Al-Ahli Anglican hospitals.
Several critically ill patients have also been evacuated for treatment in Egypt. Hospitals across Gaza lack the basic supplies, staff and fuel to deliver primary health care at the scale needed, let alone safely treat urgent cases. The medical system has broken down under the heavy caseload, acute shortages, and the impact of hostilities. Security Council resolution 2712 calls for “the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas and other groups.” The arrangement announced on 22 November has so far led to the release, over 5 days, of 60 hostages – 29 women, 31 children – held by Hamas and other groups since 7 October. Outside the arrangement during the same period, another 21 hostages were released. This is a welcome start. But as I have been saying from day one, all hostages must be released immediately and unconditionally. Until then, they must be treated humanely and the International Committee of the Red Cross must be allowed to visit them. The arrangement also saw the release of 180 Palestinian prisoners and detainees from Israeli jails, mostly women and children. Security Council resolution 2712 “calls on all parties to refrain from depriving the civilian population in the Gaza Strip of basic services and humanitarian assistance indispensable to their survival, consistent with international humanitarian law.” Much, much more is required to begin to address human needs in Gaza. Water and electricity services must be fully restored. Food systems have collapsed and hunger is spreading, particularly in the north.
Sanitary conditions in shelters are appalling, with few toilets and sewage flooding, posing a serious threat to public health. Children, pregnant women, older people and those with weakened immune systems are at greatest risk. Gaza needs an immediate and sustained increase in humanitarian aid including food, water, fuel, blankets, medicines and healthcare supplies. It is important to recognize that the Rafah border crossing does not have enough capacity, especially taking into account the slow pace of security procedures. That is why we have been urging the opening of other crossings, including Kerem Shalom, and the streamlining of inspection mechanisms to allow for the necessary increase of lifesaving aid. But humanitarian aid alone will not be sufficient. We also need the private sector to bring in critical basic commodities to replenish completely depleted shops in Gaza. Finally, Security Council Resolution 2712 “underscores the importance of coordination, humanitarian notification, and deconfliction mechanisms, to protect all medical and humanitarian staff, vehicles, including ambulances, humanitarian sites, and critical infrastructure, including UN facilities.” A humanitarian notification system is now in place, and is being constantly reviewed and enhanced, including through plans for additional civil-military experts to support coordination. I welcome the adoption of resolution 2712 – but its implementation by the parties matters most. In accordance with the resolution, I will revert to the President of the Security Council with a set of options on effectively monitoring the implementation of the resolution. I have already established a working group composed of the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, the Department of Peace Operations, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and the Office of Legal Affairs to urgently prepare proposals in this regard. So far it is clear that implementation has been only partial at best, and is woefully insufficient. Ultimately, we know that the measure of success will not be the number of trucks dispatched or the tons of supplies delivered – as important as these are. Success will be measured in lives that are saved, suffering that is ended, and hope and dignity that is restored. The people of Gaza are in the midst of an epic humanitarian catastrophe before the eyes of the world.
We must not look away.  Intense negotiations are taking place to prolong the truce – which we strongly welcome -- but we believe we need a true humanitarian ceasefire. And we must ensure the people of the region finally have a horizon of hope – by moving in a determined and irreversible way toward establishing a two-State solution, on the basis of United Nations resolutions and international law, with Israel and Palestine living side-by-side in peace and security. Failure will condemn Palestinians, Israelis, the region and the world, to a never-ending cycle of death and destruction.”

12 more Gaza hostages freed as truce enters sixth day
Agence France Presse/November 29/2023
A truce between Israel and Hamas enters its sixth day Wednesday after additional hostages were released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, with mediators pushing for a "sustainable" ceasefire.
Hostages, prisoners released
After a 48-hour extension of an initial four-day truce, a new group of 12 hostages was freed from Gaza on Tuesday, with 30 Palestinians released by Israel. An AFP journalist saw masked and armed fighters from the militant groups Hamas and the Islamic Jihad hand over hostages to Red Cross officials in Rafah, near the border with Egypt. The Israeli hostages freed were all women, including 17-year-old Mia Leimberg, who returned to Israel with her mother and aunt. The three were all abducted from kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, and the teenager was seen after her release holding her dog Bella. The grandmother of 12-year-old Eitan Yahalomi, who was released on Monday, said the boy had been held in solitary confinement for 16 days. "The days that he was alone were horrible," Esther Yaeli told Israeli news website Walla. "Now Eitan appears very withdrawn."Hamas has also released a Russian-Israeli, 20 Thais and one Filipino outside the scope of the agreement. Thailand's foreign ministry said 17 of the released Thai hostages would arrive back in the kingdom on Thursday. It said about 13 Thais remained among the hostages held in Gaza. Among the Palestinian prisoners freed in Tuesday's exchange was 14-year-old Ahmad Salaima who returned to his home in east Jerusalem to cheers and hugs from relatives."When Ahmed was in prison, we couldn't visit him, even though he's the youngest Palestinian prisoner," his father Nayef said. Israel's government has received a list of the new hostages to be freed Wednesday, Israeli media reported. There was no official confirmation.
'Risk of famine'
The truce agreement has brought a temporary halt to fighting that began on October 7 when Hamas militants poured over the border into Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping about 240. Israel's subsequent air and ground campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 15,000 people, also mostly civilians, according to Hamas officials, and reduced large parts of the north of the territory to rubble. The World Food Programme warned Tuesday that Gaza's population faced a "high risk of famine if WFP is not able to provide continued access to food."Conditions in the territory are "catastrophic," the agency's Middle East director Corinne Fleischer said. A spokesman for the UN children's agency UNICEF said aid entering Gaza under the truce deal was "not even enough for triage," or emergency care.
Gazans 'fed up' -
On Tuesday, Hamas and Israel traded accusations of truce violations, but Qatar's Ansari said the "minimal breaches" did not "harm the essence of the agreement."Israel has made clear it sees the truce as a brief interlude to ensure hostage releases before its war continues. Israel's allies have been wary of calling for a complete end to military operations designed to eliminate Hamas, but foreign ministers from the Group of Seven have urged a longer truce. "We support the further extension of this pause and future pauses as needed to enable assistance to be scaled up, and to facilitate the release of all hostages," they said in a statement Tuesday. Washington has also warned Israel that any fresh offensive in southern Gaza must be "done in a way... not designed to produce significant further displacement," a senior US official said. An estimated 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to leave their homes so far, more than half the territory's population, according to the United Nations. "I hope this truce will lead to a complete ceasefire, because we are fed up of sleeping outdoors in the rain, of losing our loved ones and having to flee," said Umm Mohammed, who was forced from her home in northern Gaza by the assault. The truce in Gaza has not ended violence in the occupied West Bank, where two Palestinian teenagers were killed in clashes with Israeli troops on Tuesday, the Palestinian health ministry said. Since the October 7 attacks, more than 230 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli soldiers or settlers, according to the ministry.

Hamas eyes extending truce by four more days
Agence France Presse/Associated Press/November 29/2023
Hamas is willing to extend a truce for four days and release more Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, a source close to the militant group said Wednesday, as mediators sought a lasting halt to the conflict. A current truce is scheduled to expire early Thursday after a six-day pause in the conflict, sparked by deadly Hamas attacks that prompted a devastating Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip. With 60 Israeli hostages and 180 Palestinian prisoners already released and more set to walk free on Wednesday under the agreement, Qatari mediators said they were working for a "sustainable" ceasefire. Hamas on Wednesday "informed the mediators that it is willing to extend the truce for four days," a source close to the militant group told AFP on condition of anonymity. Under that arrangement, "the movement would be able to release Israeli prisoners that it, other resistance movements and other parties hold during this period, according to the terms of the existing truce," the source added. Qatar's foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari told a Doha news conference on Tuesday that negotiators were seeking "a sustainable truce that will lead to further negotiations and eventually to an end... to this war."A source with knowledge of the talks added in comments to AFP on Wednesday that discussions were "focused on building on the progress of the extended humanitarian pause agreement and to initiate further discussions about the next phase of a potential deal."Israel has welcomed the release of dozens of hostages in recent days and said it will maintain the truce if Hamas keeps freeing captives. But its other major goal — the annihilation of the armed group that has ruled Gaza for 16 years — could be slipping out of reach. Weeks of heavy aerial bombardment and a ground invasion have demolished vast swathes of northern Gaza and killed thousands of Palestinians. But it seems to have had little effect on Hamas' rule, evidenced by its ability to conduct complex negotiations, enforce the cease-fire among other armed groups, and orchestrate the smooth release of hostages. Hamas' leader in Gaza, Yehya Sinwar, and other commanders have likely relocated to the south, along with hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians who have packed into overflowing shelters. An Israeli ground invasion of the south could eventually ferret out Hamas' leaders and demolish the rest of its militant infrastructure, including kilometers of tunnels, but at a cost in Palestinian lives and destruction that the United States, Israel's main ally, seems unwilling to bear. The Biden administration has told Israel that if it resumes the offensive it must operate with far greater precision, especially in the south. That approach is unlikely to bring Hamas to its knees any time soon, and international pressure for a lasting cease-fire is already mounting. "How far both sides will be prepared to go in trading hostages and prisoners for the pause is about to be tested, but the pressures and incentives for both to stick with it are at the moment stronger than the incentives to go back to war," Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, wrote on X.
DIPLOMACY RAMPS UP
CIA director William Burns and David Barnea, who heads Israel's Mossad spy agency, were in Qatar on Tuesday to discuss extending the cease-fire and releasing more hostages. Qatar has played a key role in mediating with Hamas, hosted the talks, which also included Egyptian mediators. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was set to visit the region this week, and was also expected to push for a longer truce. A joint statement from foreign ministers of the G7 group of wealthy democracies, which includes close allies of Israel, called for the "further extension of the pause" and for "protecting civilians and compliance with international law."The war began with Hamas' Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel, in which 1,200 Israelis were reportedly killed and Hamas dragged some 240 people back into Gaza, including babies, children, women, soldiers, older adults and Thai farm laborers. Israel responded with a devastating air campaign across Gaza and a ground invasion in the north. More than 13,300 Palestinians have been killed, roughly two-thirds of them women and minors. Israel says 77 of its soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive, and it claims to have killed thousands of militants, without providing evidence. The plight of the captives, and the lingering shock from the Oct. 7 attack, has galvanized Israeli support for the war. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also under intense pressure to bring the hostages home, and could find it difficult to resume the offensive if there's a prospect for more releases. Hamas is still believed to be holding around 150 hostages — enough to extend the cease-fire for another two weeks under the current arrangement of releasing 10 each day. But it is expected to drive a harder bargain for the release of Israeli soldiers, likely demanding the release of Palestinian prisoners convicted of deadly attacks.
TENSE CALM IN GAZA
Israel's bombardment and ground offensive have displaced more than 1.8 million people inside Gaza, nearly 80% of the territory's population, and most have sought refuge in the south, according to the U.N. The cease-fire has allowed increased aid delivered by 160 to 200 trucks a day into Gaza, but that is less than half what Gaza was importing before the fighting, even as needs have soared. People stocking up on fuel and other basics have had to wait for hours in long lines that form before dawn. As U.N.-run shelters have overflowed, many have been forced to sleep on the streets outside in cold, rainy weather. The head of the World Health Organization warned about the dire conditions in overcrowded shelters on Monday, saying "more people could die from disease than bombings."Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said some 111,000 people have respiratory infections and 75,000 have diarrhea, more than half of them under 5 years old. He too urged a sustained truce, calling it "a matter of life and death." On Tuesday, Israel and Hamas blamed each other for a brief exchange of fire in northern Gaza, but it did not appear to endanger the truce. Palestinian militants have halted rocket fire into Israel, as has Lebanon's Hezbollah, which had repeatedly traded fire with Israeli forces along the northern border since the start of the war.

Blinken seeks new extension of Gaza truce as he heads again to Middle East
Associated Press/November 29, 2023
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the Biden administration would like to see a new extension of the cease-fire agreement in Israel's war with Hamas after the current one expires to secure the release of additional hostages held by the militant group and to ramp up humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza. As he prepared to make his third visit to the Middle East since the war began with Hamas' Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, Blinken said Wednesday that in addition to discussing short-term logistical and operational planning, the Biden administration believes it is imperative to discuss ideas about the future governance of Gaza if Israel achieves its stated goal of eradicating Hamas. Israel and Arab nations have resisted such discussions about future governance, with Israeli officials concentrating on the war and Arab leaders insisting the immediate priority must be ending the fighting that has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians. The extension of the current deal expires later Wednesday. "Looking at the next couple of days, we'll be focused on doing what we can to extend the pause so we can continue to get more hostages out and more humanitarian assistance in," Blinken told reporters in Brussels, where he was attending a NATO foreign ministers meeting. "And we'll discuss with Israel how it can achieve its objective of ensuring that the terrorist attacks of Oct. 7 never happen again, while sustaining and increasing humanitarian assistance and minimizing further suffering of Palestinian civilians."He added before leaving Brussels for Israel and the West Bank: "Everyone's focused on the day of, on what's happening in Gaza right now, but we also need to be focused at the same time -- and we are in conversations with many other countries -- on what I call the 'day after' and 'the day after the day after': I mean, what happens in Gaza once the campaign is over?"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear that Israeli forces will eventually restart military operations after the conclusion of the current, temporary cease-fire that has allowed for an exchange of hostages taken by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. U.S. President Joe Biden has said he would like to see the pause continue for as long as feasible. Biden and Blinken have also stressed the importance of planning for post-conflict Gaza as well as the need to resume negotiations for the eventual creation of an independent Palestinian state. Netanyahu is opposed to a Palestinian state and has said he is the only Israeli leader who can prevent one from being formed. "We believe that that is the only path to enduring peace, to enduring security, to the preservation of Israel as a strong secure, democratic Jewish state and Palestinians having their legitimate aspirations for a state and self determination," Blinken said.

Israeli President Due in UAE in First Foreign Trip Since War
Ethan Bronner, Ben Bartenstein and Courtney McBride/Bloomberg/Wed, November 29, 2023
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog is planning a quick visit to Dubai later this week to take part in COP28, the United Nations climate talks, several people familiar with the situation said. t will be his first trip abroad since the war with Hamas erupted last month. The plans are subject to last-minute changes if there are significant developments in the conflict. hile in the United Arab Emirates, he may meet Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, according to Japanese news agency Kyodo. Others expected to attend COP include US Vice President Kamala Harris and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
While Herzog’s role is largely ceremonial — executive power’s held by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — he’s become more visible since the war started, speaking to and meeting world leaders to bolster support for Israel. he conflict began on Oct. 7 when Hamas operatives crossed into Israel from Gaza, killing 1,200 people and abducting 24O, according to Israeli officials. More than 15,000 have been killed in Gaza since Israel retaliated with airstrikes and a ground offensive, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
Herzog is taking representatives from the communities around Gaza that were attacked by Hamas to the UAE. He’s also planning a series of diplomatic meetings that are mainly about the war and not the environment, two people familiar with the matter said.
Israel and Hamas, designated a terrorist group by the US and European Union, agreed to a truce last week that’s now in its sixth day. Under the agreement, Hamas is freeing some of the hostages each day and Israel is releasing Palestinian prisoners.
More aid is also getting into Gaza, where more than 1 million people have been displaced and hunger and disease are spreading. S President Joe Biden is keen for the cease-fire to be extended, which Israel says it’s open to as long as Hamas agrees to release more captives. Netanyahu has insisted, though, that Israel won’t pull back from its goal of destroying Hamas. iggest Climate Talks Ever Confront Global Chaos and Record Heat. etanyahu was invited to COP months ago by the UAE government. Before the war broke out, he was widely expected to attend.
The UAE and Israel only formally recognized each in 2020, under the Abraham Accords mediated by the US.

Israel has no real option for fighting Hamas' diabolical strategy
Harlan Ullman/UPI/November 29, 2023
To a cynic, American administrations are regularly criticized for having no strategy or having the wrong one. un Tzu had it right. The best strategy is to win without fighting. But how is that to be accomplished? Second best on the great Chinese strategist's list was to win by attacking the enemy's strategy. That, in turn, requires understanding what that strategy is in order to defeat it. States have not always been prescient enough to figure that out. Traditional strategies were based on defeating or destroying an enemy's means and will to resist, principally armies, navies and later air forces. However, that was not how the United States won independence from Britain. It did so by losing virtually every battle, winning the two most important: Saratoga in 1777, which brought France onto the colonies' side as part of its global war with England; and Yorktown in 1781, when Gen. Charles Cornwallis surrendered, ending the revolution.
Ho Chi Minh successfully employed this strategy of winning by not losing to drive the French and later the Americans out of Vietnam. Ho won the battle of Dienbienphu, forcing the French to leave in 1953. And while North Vietnam lost virtually every battle it fought with the U.S. military, it won in America's living rooms. Some 58,000 dead Americans made that war unwinnable. The latest and most diabolical and demonic strategy is that of Hamas in Gaza. While some will argue that many decades of Palestinian repression by Israel in the West Bank and Gaza was the provocation for Oct. 7, the most proximate cause was the prospect of a rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. However, the extremely barbaric and inhuman executions of the strategy to force Israel to (over)react were obscene and violated all the laws of war, as well as the Geneva Conventions.
The question is how might Sun Tzu attack Hamas' strategy to defeat it? One answer is that he could not. The more Israel attempts to destroy Hamas, the more death and destruction will be levied on Gaza, ultimately damaging Israel. The diabolical part is that Israel had no real option.
The more contemplative strategy would have been highly precise kinetic and non-kinetic strikes, including propaganda, misinformation and disinformation that over time would have greatly degraded Hamas, combined with a diplomatic plan to provide a functional government for Gaza when the war ends.
In fairness, given the brutality of Oct. 7, not even Job would have been able to implement this alternative. Hence, how does one defeat this strategy of forcing the enemy to lay waste to one's home? Perhaps one does not. As the North Vietnamese may have learned from the American Revolution, to win by not losing, might other state and non-state actors plagiarize the Hamas strategy? One parallel is in financial markets. Short-selling is when you bet that a stock will steeply drop in value. The difference in the price when you buy in and when the stock depreciates is your profit.
Short-sellers are notorious at staging events and creating false data to drive a stock down. Clearly, some of this is illegal. And some of it is not. A select number of investors made billions betting that markets would collapse over the credit default swaps in 2008-09. And they won that bet.
The geostrategic parallel is obvious. Suppose societal infrastructure were attacked, from power and water distribution to financial and healthcare facilities. My last book wrote of the looming existential dangers of Massive Attacks of Disruption, whether a pandemic or extreme weather, and of man -- Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The aim is to impose such harm to collapse the system to force a regime change or to exploit another opportunity. or those who dismiss this as fantasy, what conclusions can be drawn from Hamas' strategy? As Ho was clever, will another actor recognize the power of winning by imposing massive destruction? How does one defeat that strategy? There is a need for MAP -- Mutual Assured Prevention as the intellectual foundation for future security. While replacing old and traditional thinking is invariably a reaction only to a crisis or a calamity, in the future that may be too late. Action is needed now.
Hamas has concocted a strategy from hell that may not be countered by traditional thinking. We would be well advised to begin thinking about what happens when others embrace this nightmare scenario to achieve whatever outrageous aims they may harbor.
*arlan Ullman is UPI's Arnaud de Borchgrave Distinguished Columnist, a senior adviser at Washington's Atlantic Council, the prime author of "shock and awe" and author of "The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large." Follow him @harlankullman. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

Blinken says will work on extending pauses in Israel to free more hostages
BRUSSELS (Reuters)November 29, 2023
- U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that he would work with the Israelis during his trip to Israel in the coming days to see if a temporary ceasefire that has been in place and allowed hostages kidnapped by Hamas to go free could be extended. Speaking at a press conference in Brussels following a NATO meeting, Blinken said the continuation of the pauses would mean more hostages to be freed and more assistance getting into Gaza. "Clearly, that's something we want. I believe it's also something that Israel wants," he said. "We're working on that every single day and I expect to take that up tomorrow when I'm in Israel with the government," he added. Israel and Hamas were negotiating through mediators on Wednesday over extending a six-day pause in fighting that has seen Gaza militants free 60 Israeli women and children from among the 240 hostages they seized in a deadly rampage on Oct. 7.
In return, Israel has released 180 Palestinian security detainees, all women and teenagers. Blinken, who also will visit Jordan and the United Arab Emirates this week, said he would also be having conversations about the future of Gaza and a future two-state solution to the conflict.

UN Chief Says Gaza in Midst of ‘Epic Humanitarian Catastrophe’
Asharq Al Awsat/November 29/2023
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday said the Gaza Strip was in the midst of an "epic humanitarian catastrophe", urging the world not to look away. Intense negotiations are taking place to prolong the truce – which we strongly welcome - but we believe we need a true humanitarian ceasefire," he told a meeting of the UN Security Council, chaired by China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi because China is president of the 15-member council for November. ast-minute negotiations were continuing between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas on Wednesday to extend a truce in Gaza. uterres briefed the council on the implementation of a resolution it adopted earlier this month that called for humanitarian pauses in fighting to allow aid access and the release of all hostages held by Hamas. he United Nations has scaled up the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza - a coastal enclave of 2.3 million people - during the truce, but Guterres said the level of aid "remains completely inadequate to meet the huge needs." The people of Gaza are in the midst of an epic humanitarian catastrophe before the eyes of the world," he said. "We must not look away."
Several Arab foreign ministers also travelled to New York and were due to address the council later on Wednesday. The truce must become a ceasefire, a permanent ceasefire. The massacres cannot be allowed to resume," Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki told the Security Council. Our people are faced with an existential threat. Make no mistake about it. With all the talk about the destruction of Israel, it is Palestine that is facing a plan to destroy it, implemented in broad daylight," he said. "Anyone who supports a ceasefire basically support Hamas continued reign of terror in Gaza. Hamas is a genocidal terror organization - they don't hide it - not a reliable partner for peace," Israel's UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan told the Security Council. Israel says Hamas militants killed 1,200 people and took about 240 hostage in a surprise assault on Oct. 7. Israel has focused its retaliation against Hamas in Gaza, bombarding it from the air, imposing a siege and launching a ground assault.

WHO Says Gaza’s Health System Must Be Protected as Disease Spreads
Asharq Al Awsat/November 29/2023
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday called for Gaza's vulnerable health infrastructure to be safeguarded as the war-torn enclave faces an increased risk of epidemics and challenges in detecting infectious diseases. fragile truce agreement between Israel and Hamas last week has allowed WHO and aid organizations to increase their deliveries of essential supplies but these have been far from enough to meet the needs of Gaza's 2.3 million people. peaking at a press conference in Geneva, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said only 15 of Gaza's 36 hospitals were still functioning and were completely overwhelmed. "Of the 25 hospitals north of the Wadi Gaza (river) before the conflict began, only three are functioning at the most basic level, but they lack fuel, water and food," Tedros said. "The remaining health system capacity must be protected, supported and expanded." WHO has sounded the alarm about the spread of infectious disease in Gaza, where the internal displacement of the population has caused overcrowding in shelters and other temporary living facilities. he agency has noted a staggering increase in cases of diarrhea, especially among infants and children, and detected "very serious signals around acute jaundice syndrome" in the enclave. With severe overcrowding, the risks are increasing for epidemics of respiratory tract infections, acute watery diarrhea, hepatitis, scabies, lice and other diseases," Tedros said. edros, who said that 1.3 million people were currently living in shelters in Gaza, said the enclave had recorded 111,000 acute respiratory infections, 24,000 cases of skin rash and 12,000 cases of scabies since the conflict began. ike Ryan, head of WHO's Health Emergencies Program, said the detection of infectious diseases in Gaza had become more complicated given that samples could not longer be sent to Israel or the West Bank for processing. "Not only has Gaza lost its hospital capability, it has lost its ability to confirm even the most basic of diseases," he said. "This creates a blindspot where we have huge risk of epidemic diseases." he WHO welcomed the extension of the truce but said the prospect of the conflict flaring up again was very high and could further harm the health system. "Any resumption of violence could damage the health facilities and make more health facilities dysfunctional," said Richard Peeperkorn, WHO Representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Gaza can absolutely not afford to lose more hospital beds... We need to make the vulnerable system work again."

Jordan Says to Host a Conference to Coordinate Aid to Gaza
Asharq Al Awsat/November 29/2023
Jordan will host on Thursday an international conference attended by the main UN bodies and regional and international relief agencies to coordinate humanitarian aid to war-devastated Gaza, official media said. hey said UN aid chief Martin Griffiths and key UN bodies and NGO's involved in ramping up aid to Gaza will be present at the conference, along with representatives of Western and Arab countries involved in the aid effort.

Report: Netanyahu Rejected Plan to Kill Hamas' Yahya Sinwar Six Times
Asharq Al Awsat/November 29/2023
Israeli former defense minister Avigdor Liberman confirmed on Tuesday a Maariv report saying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had rejected - several times - a plan to kill leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya al-Sinwar. The report by Ben Caspit said that between 2011 and 2023, Netanyahu rejected several plans presented by the Shin Bet to eliminate Sinwar and other senior members of the Palestinian movement.
Netanyahu’s office denied the reports.
However, Liberman said Netanyahu was the one who granted “immunity” to Sinwar and the leaders of Hamas, standing against any attempts to neutralize them.
“I'm stating this not as mere speculation, but as someone with personal knowledge of the matter,” he stated. In his report, Caspit said Netanyahu rejected the plan to eliminate Sinwar at least six times in recent years. He added that the plan was put forward to Netanyahu by the three most recent heads of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) during their respective tenures: Yoram Cohen, Nadav Argaman, and the current head, Ronen Bar. Caspit wrote that according to conversations with numerous senior figures in the security establishment, the operational plan was well-thought-out and actionable that could be put into motion at any given moment. According to the plan, Sinwar didn’t spend most of his time in hiding; he maintained a visible presence and did not move between secret apartments or bunkers, unlike Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who has followed such practices since 2006. A month ago, former Shin Bet head Cohen revealed to “Meet the Press” that the agency had recommended conduction operations targeting all of Hamas' leaders in Gaza. He said Netanyahu rejected all of these operational opportunities. Caspit, a leading journalist in Israel, has accused Netanyahu of systematically strengthening Hamas to deepen divisions between the Palestinian factions. He is also working on weakening the Palestinian Authority and its President Mahmoud Abbas. Netanyahu views Hamas as a “treasure” that will help him scuttle the two-state solution, continued Caspit. He added that the first favor Netanyahu offered Hamas was the prisoner swap deal that saw the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in return for 1,027 Palestinian detainees, including Sinwar, in 2011.

Israeli Official Says Hamas Has Enough Hostages to Cover 2-3 Day Truce Extension
Asharq Al Awsat/November 29/2023
Israel believes Hamas has enough women and children hostages to allow the current pause in fighting in Gaza to be extended by another two to three days, an official involved in the negotiating process said on Wednesday.
"We know for a fact that there are additional hostages in the hands of Hamas for at least two more days, potentially three days from the list of women and children," said the official, who spoke on condition that he not be named. Any additional agreement would be conditional on first of all releasing these remaining women and children and only then could we negotiate follow-on agreements," he said. he official made the remark on the last day of a two-day extension to the original pause in fighting agreed to allow hostages held by Hamas to be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
"We are of course fully prepared to resume fighting, but our preference would be to continue," the official said. n Wednesday, he said Hamas was expected to release 10 Israeli hostages and another two hostages with joint Israeli and Russian citizenship who were being freed under a separate agreement between the movement and Russia.

6 members of American UN aid worker’s family killed by Israeli attack in Gaza
Arab News/November 29/2023
CHICAGO: All 14-year-old Siwar Almadhoun wanted to do was play basketball. Her 9-year-old brother, Omar, dreamed of being a soccer star.Their dreams died with them in the early hours of Friday, Nov. 24 when, as they slept, Israeli forces dropped a massive bomb on their home in Beit Lahia, in the Gaza Strip.Their parents, Majed, 41, and Safa, 38, were also killed in the indiscriminate Israeli slaughter, along with siblings Reman, 18, who had just started college, and 7-year-old Ali, said Hani Almadhoun, Majed’s brother. He is an American citizen who works for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East office in Washington D.C., where he supervises charitable fundraising efforts to help needy families. Only two of his brother’s children, daughters Roa and Salam, survived the carnage. They are married and live with their families in Rafah.
“Siwar, the basketball player, a 14-year-old girl, she loved basketball,” Almadhoun, 42, told Arab News as he struggled to speak through the grief. “The salt of this earth. A very sweet girl. She was killed. She did nothing. She was asleep, just like her family.
“And half of her mom, only one half, was recovered. Reman was recovered. Ali was recovered … their cat was buried and killed next to them. They adopted a cat named Lucky. A very unfortunate name. They liked to call her Cici. She was killed between the two kids because they loved to play with her so much.“The only body that was found immediately was Omar. He flew through the window into the street 20 meters away. They went to bury him. They went to find Majed, and my mom knew her son was there. She was grieving and then, on top of that, (there were) no ambulances, no bulldozers were able to come to remove this rubble.”The bodies of some of the occupants of the five-story apartment building the Almadhoun family owned were thrown from the building when it was destroyed but they could not be immediately recovered because of Israeli sniper fire and the missile strikes that continued to pound the civilian neighborhood.
Almadhoun said his father and mother spent three days searching for the remains of Majed, Safa and their grandchildren. “They kept digging through the rubble of their destroyed homes but they could find nothing,” he said. “As they searched the area they recovered two and a half bodies that had been thrown by the explosion and were found in a destroyed home next door. “(My mother) was desperate. She is heart-broken. Nobody is coming to the rescue. I have had meetings as high as the White House, the State Department and all these guys, and I can’t get safety to my family. It broke me.
“We all love our moms and dads. But she is just a lady whose son is buried and she can’t even have a minute with him. She can’t even take a picture with him because his face is swollen.”Almadhoun said the search continues for Siwar’s body but his family’s efforts are hampered by the communications blackout imposed during the conflict by Israel, which has had total control of the Gaza Strip since 1967. “There is heartbreak. There is sorrow,” he said. In response to suggestions that his relatives might have somehow had a connection with Hamas or were being used as human shields, he added: “This is personal … I know my family. There is no way that you could build a case against Majed, my brother.
“Majed loved his mom, honored his parents. He was very generous to help neighbors in need. We don’t know why they were killed.”Almadhoun’s father owned a small grocery store a three-minute walk from the family home. Majed leased space for a kitchenware store in Sheikh Radwan, a 10 minute ride from Beit Lahia. Both shops have also been destroyed.“All their savings were lost. My family is homeless,” Almadhoun said. “Remember the refugees from 1948.”The massacre of his family, and the thousands of other civilians killed since the Israeli bombings and invasion began, are difficult to comprehend given their scale, he added. According to official estimates, more than 14,000 Palestinians have been killed during the Israeli assaults and invasion, nearly 10,000 of whom were civilians with no connection to Hamas.
The attacks are not only partly funded by US taxpayers through US support for Israel, but the Israelis are using American-made weapons including massive 2,000-pound bombs capable of flattening an apartment building in a single strike.
Almadhoun said his brother and sister-in-law had been grieving the loss of 12 members of the latter’s family who were wiped out several weeks ago during the early stages of the Israeli onslaught. They were killed by an attack in the Atwan area, a few miles south of Beit Lahia, Almadhoun said. The dead included Safa’s father and mother, five of her siblings and five of their young children. “They lived in the Atwan area of northern Gaza,” he said. “The good volunteers in the family went and dug out the bodies. It was so horrific a scene, and a genocide at their home, that they would not let Safa see her family because of the brutality: the body parts, the known pieces, the plastic bags. “My brother Majed, her husband, went and collected the bodies and buried them. There was no proper burial because we know that Gaza is running out of spaces for graves and cemeteries are overflowing with dead bodies.”
The Almadhouns originally came from Ashkelon, which was in the Gaza District of Palestine before it was captured by Israel in 1948. The family fled Gaza to find work in the UAE, which is where Hani was born. But they returned to Beit Lahia to open their businesses there.
Almadhoun said the last time he saw his brother and his family was during a visit to Gaza in August this year. His parents and other surviving relatives are still in northern Gaza but cannot easily be reached. “My dad is trying to be strong, trying to be normal,” he said. “I know he is not doing well but he is trying to be strong for everybody else. My mom cries and when she cries, I cry. I can’t take it. It is a lot.”

Gaza truce gives displaced children rare chance to sing and play
Arafat Barbakh/KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip/(Reuters)November 29, 2023
- Displaced Gazan children clapped, sang and jumped up and down clasping a giant multi-coloured parachute, rare moments of fun as the truce between Israel and Hamas gave an opportunity for a youth group to entertain them in a school courtyard. The war has turned Gaza's schools into overcrowded camps for displaced people, where children have been enduring the fear of bombardment, displacement from their homes and shortages of food, water and electricity. "We were very scared from the war," said Lina Mohareb, a young girl in a pink sweatshirt with a Palestinian flag painted on her cheek.
She was taking part in games and activities organised at the Abdullah Siam school in Khan Younis by Watan Youth Centre, a local civil society organisation that has held similar events at 26 schools. "As soon as they arrived, we all ran towards them. They played some Palestinian songs for us and we performed the dabke (a folk dance) and sang and played some games. We had so much fun today," said Mohareb. The children stood in a large circle around a row of yellow plastic cones, with entertainers dressed up in costumes of cartoon characters, as adults looked on, leaning on the railings of the school's upper floors which overlooked the courtyard. Clothes were hanging on the railings, and people had suspended pieces of fabric across doorways and along corridors to provide a modicum of privacy in what was now a living space rather than an educational setting. "Palestinian children and especially Gazan children are the best in the world, because they've endured so many things," said Samer Nofal, the team leader from Watan Youth Centre, listing the hardships of the war. "We took advantage of this truce to organise these events to entertain the children and ease away their stress," he said. "They deserve to play and be happy."
The war began on Oct. 7 when militants from Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Gaza, rampaged through southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, including babies and children, and seizing about 240 hostages of all ages, according to Israeli figures. Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched an assault on Gaza that has killed more than 15,000 people, four in ten of them children, according to health officials there. It has displaced most of the population into schools and camps. Wednesday was the sixth day of a truce between Israel and Hamas that has allowed for the release of some Israeli and foreign hostages as well as Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons. More aid trucks have been allowed into Gaza. Diplomatic efforts were underway to try and extend the truce. "I am so happy with the games, and I am so happy with this truce," said Gilnar Ahmed, another displaced girl at the Abdullah Siam school. "Hopefully the truce continues."

Putin is urging women to have as many as 8 children after so many Russians died in his war with Ukraine
Tom Porter/Business Insider/Wed, November 29, 2023
President Vladimir Putin is urging Russians to have more children."Large families must become the norm," Putin said in a speech Tuesday.Russian birthrates are falling amid war in Ukraine and a deepening economic crisis.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is urging women to have as many as eight children after so many Russians are dying in his war with Ukraine, worsening the country's spiraling population crisis. Addressing the World Russian People's Council in Moscow Tuesday, Putin said the country must return to a time when large families were the norm."Many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers, had seven, eight, or even more children," said Putin. "Let us preserve and revive these excellent traditions. Large families must become the norm, a way of life for all of Russia's people. The family is not just the foundation of the state and society, it is a spiritual phenomenon, a source of morality." He continued: "Preserving and increasing the population of Russia is our goal for the coming decades and even generations ahead. This is the future of the Russian world, the millennium-old, eternal Russia."Putin's remarks come amid decades of falling birthrates in Russia that have been made worse by its invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent economic fallout. The war in Ukraine has led an estimated 900,000 people to flee the country. A further 300,000 people have been enlisted to fight in Ukraine, deepening Russia's workforce crisis. Around 50,000 Russian men are believed to have died in the war in Ukraine, according to a statistical analysis done by Russian media outlets, Mediazona and Meduza in July. In October, the UK's Ministry of Defence reported that Russia has likely suffered up to 290,000 soldiers killed or wounded in the war against Ukraine. Since coming into power 24 years ago, Putin has been seeking to boost Russia's birthrate by introducing a range of government incentives for those who have children, including payouts for families who have more than one child. But the measures have had little to no impact, with figures from Rosstat, Russia's federal statistics service, putting the Russian population at 146,447,424 as of January 1, less than it was in 1999 when Putin first became president, Le Monde reported. "Russia lacks workers," Alexei Raksha, a demographer who previously worked at the Rosstat statistics agency, told AFP in February. "It's an old problem, but it has gotten worse due to mobilization and mass departures," he said. Some Russians claimed that the economic help the government has pledged for large families, such as plots of land, never materialized, RFE/RL reported in 2020. Putin himself is rumored to have six children, though he has never publicly discussed this.

Ukraine Has Received 300,000 of EU’s Promised Million Shells, Says FM
Asharq Al Awsat/November 29/2023
The European union has delivered about 300,000 of its promised million shells to Ukraine so far, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Wednesday while attending a NATO meeting in Brussels. peaking to reporters on the event's sidelines, Kuleba called for greater alignment of Ukraine's and NATO's defense industries to ensure Kyiv has the supplies it needs to defeat Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022. We need to create a Euro-Atlantic common area of defense industries," Kuleba said, adding this would ensure both Ukraine's security and that of NATO countries themselves. yiv has for the last several months engaged in a concerted drive to entice leading global arms manufacturers to set up operations in Ukraine, part of a bid to diversify its reliance on weapons and ammunition given by its allies. uleba also said he had a "productive" meeting on Tuesday with Slovak Foreign Minister Juraj Blanar. lovakia's newly-elected President, Robert Fico, promised to halt military aid to Ukraine, although later clarified that he would not block arms purchases from private companies. He reiterated that the maintenance hub for Ukrainian heavy equipment will continue to function in Slovakia. Contracts between Ukrainian and Slovak companies producing weapons will continue," Kuleba said.

Türkiye's Erdogan Welcomes Gaza Pause as Temporary ‘Stop of Bloodshed’
Asharq Al Awsat/November 29/2023
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday he welcomed a pause in the war in Gaza and the exchange of hostages and prisoners between Israel and Hamas as a temporary "stop of bloodshed" in the enclave. peaking to lawmakers in parliament, Erdogan said statements by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government were "lessening" Ankara's hopes that the pause could turn into a full ceasefire, but added Türkiye would ramp up diplomatic efforts for a lasting ceasefire and the exchange of hostages in coming days. rdogan also said Türkiye had "largely completed" evacuating its citizens from Gaza, where he repeated a genocide was taking place. e added that he would discuss the war in Gaza during a trip to Dubai later this week.

Iran Finalizes Arrangements for Delivery of Russian Fighter Jets
Asharq Al Awsat/November 29/2023
Iran has finalized arrangements for the delivery of Russian made Sukhoi su-35 fighter jets and helicopters, Iran's deputy defense minister told Iran's Tasnim news agency on Tuesday, as Tehran and Moscow forge closer military relations. Ian's air force has a limited quantity of strike aircrafts, including Russian jets as well as ageing US models acquired before the 1979 revolution. Plans have been finalized for Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets, Mil Mi-28 attack helicopters, and Yak-130 jet trainers to join the combat units of Iran's Army,” Iran's deputy Defense Minister Mehdi Farahi said, according to Reuters. he Tasnim report did not include any Russian confirmation of the deal. n 2018, Iran said it had started production of the locally-designed Kowsar fighter for use in its air force. Military experts believe the jet is a carbon copy of the F-5, first produced in the United States in the 1960s.

Iran FM says US visa delay keeping him away from UN Gaza meeting
Agence France Presse/November 29/2023
Iran's foreign minister said he will miss a key meeting on Gaza at UN headquarters in New York later Wednesday, blaming the late delivery of US visas for his delegation. Hossein Amir-Abdollahian had been due in New York to attend a UN Security Council meeting on the Israel-Hamas war. "The Americans issued visas for me and all my companions at 1:00 am (2130 GMT)," Amir-Abdollahian said after a cabinet meeting. The delay meant it was "not possible" for the Iranian delegation to attend the meeting, which is due to begin at 1430 GMT, he added. Amir-Abdollahian said that despite his absence, Iran would exert "all efforts" for an extension to a humanitarian truce deal in Gaza. Palestinian militant group Hamas is due to release a sixth batch of Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners later Wednesday before the six-day truce expires early on Thursday. Iran-backed Hamas is willing to extend the truce for four more days, a source close to the militant group said on Wednesday. In principle, the United States is required to allow access to the United Nations for foreign diplomats. But in 2020, Tehran accused Washington of refusing a visa to then-foreign minister Javad Zarif for a visit to UN headquarters. The two governments have had no formal diplomatic ties since 1980.

Kuwait's ruling emir, 86, hospitalized but reportedly stable
Associated Press/November 29/2023
The ruling emir of oil-rich Kuwait was hospitalized Wednesday "due to an emergency health problem" but later reported to be in stable condition, renewing the longstanding concerns over his health since he became ruler in 2020. The report by the state-run KUNA news agency did not elaborate on the problem faced by 86-year-old Sheikh Nawaf Al Ahmad Al Sabah. However, Sheikh Nawaf has handed over power several times during his rule to his deputy while facing medical checks and other issues. Given Sheikh Nawaf's age, the emergency renews concerns about his health. State-run news previously reported that he traveled to the United States for unspecified medical checks in March 2021. The health of Kuwait's leaders remains a sensitive matter in the tiny Mideast nation bordering Iraq and Saudi Arabia which has seen internal power struggles behind palace doors. Sheikh Nawaf was sworn in as emir following the 2020 death of his predecessor, the late Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah. The breadth and depth of emotion over the loss of Sheikh Sabah, known for his diplomacy and peacemaking, was felt across the wider Middle East. Sheikh Nawaf's term, meanwhile, has largely been quiet as Kuwait struggles through political disputes — including the overhaul of Kuwait's welfare system — which prevented the sheikhdom from taking on debt. That's left it with little in its coffers to pay bloated public sector salaries, even as Kuwait generates immense wealth from its oil reserves. In 2021, Sheikh Nawaf issued a long-awaited amnesty decree, pardoning and reducing the sentences of nearly three dozen Kuwaiti dissidents in a move aimed at defusing a major government standoff. Kuwait, a nation home to some 4.2 million people that's slightly smaller than the U.S. state of New Jersey, has the world's sixth-largest known oil reserves. It has been a staunch U.S. ally since the 1991 Gulf War expelled the occupying Iraqi forces of Saddam Hussein. Kuwait hosts some 13,500 American troops in the country, as well as the forward headquarters of the U.S. Army in the Middle East.

Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on November 29-30/2023
Genocidal Hatred of Jews and the West
Guy Millière/Gatestone Institute/November 29, 2023
Many Muslims living in the West remain under the influence of Islamist movements and the hatred of Israel and Jews that permeates their countries of origin. Hatred of Jews and Israel is therefore markedly present in Muslim communities in the West. In the 1960s, when the Soviet Union wanted to gain more influence in the Arab Muslim world, its leaders decided to support what was at the time a sacred cause for Arab leaders: the attempt to destroy Israel. They... chose to invent a "national liberation struggle".... The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in 1964 with the task of "liberating Palestine," and the borders of "Palestine" on the maps used by the PLO showed that the goal was to erase Israel from the face of the earth. Western leftists started vocally to express hatred of "imperialist Israel" and, ironically, the hard-won democratic freedoms they were at that moment enjoying to the fullest: freedom of speech, assembly, education, sexuality, and supposedly equal justice under the law. The Oslo Accords only made everything worse. By signing them, Israel's then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin recognized... that a terrorist organization was somehow the legitimate representative of a people invented fewer than three decades earlier, and that this invented "people" had "rights" and deserved to have territory and self-government.
In reality, it was Israel that decolonized the land from the grip of the British, who governed it from 1917 until Israel's war of independence in 1948.
The recent pro-Hamas demonstrations in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia show that hatred of Jews and Israel among Muslims living in the West has reached a degree where many of them openly support genocidal atrocities not only against Jews in Israel but against Jews anywhere.... These demonstrations also show that support for the "Palestinian cause" sometimes also leads Westerners to support genocidal atrocities so long as they are committed against Jews. [I]f nothing is done to respond to the forces seeking to overturn Western civilization, all in the name of "democracy" of course – and Western values such as equal justice under law, equality of opportunity rather than of result, education from facts rather than from propaganda, a media that actually challenges authority rather than allowing itself to be suborned by it, freedom of speech with which one disagrees, the sovereignty of the individual rather than of groups -- the worst is bound to come. The recent pro-Hamas demonstrations in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia show that hatred of Jews and Israel among Muslims living in the West has reached a degree where many of them openly support genocidal atrocities not only against Jews in Israel but against Jews anywhere. Pictured: Demonstrators protest against Israel on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City on November 7, 2023.
The atrocities committed by the terrorist group Hamas in Israel on October 7 aroused fear and horror throughout the West. As soon as the Israeli government decided to retaliate and announced that it seeks to destroy Hamas, "the new ISIS", fear and horror began to fade and rapidly gave way to a return of "the world's oldest hatred". The mainstream media described the demonstrations that swept through Western Europe and the United States as "pro-Palestinian". They were, in reality, anti-Jew and brimming with hatred towards Israel. The slogan "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" -- meaning that Israel must be wiped off the map -- was shouted out and emblazoned on banners. In Sydney, Australia, men chanted "gas the Jews" and boasted that they, the demonstrators, were "on the hunt to kill Jews". In Berlin, demonstrators shouted "death to the Jews". In the US, anti-Semitic acts increased by 400%, Jewish students on university campuses were physically attacked and threatened. During the last three weeks of October, anti-Semitic hate crimes in London, England were up 1,350%. In France, between October 8 and November 1, the Ministry of the Interior recorded 1,762 anti-Semitic acts -- far more than throughout the entire year of 2022.
French historian Georges Bensoussan, said:
"Hundreds of Jews were murdered in Israel and as a result, anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish hatred was unleashed throughout the Western world. It is urgent to ask ourselves what went wrong, otherwise we could be heading towards a nightmare."
Bensoussan had already diagnosed what went wrong in France, when he wrote The Lost Territories of the Republic, published in 2004. He noted at the time that Muslim students in French high schools denied that the Holocaust ever even existed and expressed such hatred of Jews that even talking about the Holocaust in a classroom led to immediate physical violence. In Bensoussan 2017 book, A Submissive France, he stated that the situation had worsened, and that hatred of Jews was now pervasive in all Muslim neighborhoods of the country. He also noted that many Muslim butcher shops displayed posters supporting Hamas. Books similar to Bensoussan's have not been written in most other Western European countries, but articles published in the British, Belgian and German press show that wherever in Europe large number of Muslims settled in recent decades, the same kinds of changes have taken place.
The countries where the Muslim immigrants to Europe originated happen to be imbued with a strong hostility both to Israel and Jews. A 2014 survey by the Pew Institute, conducted in North Africa and the Middle East showed that 87% percent of Algerians were anti-Semitic. The figure for Tunisia was 86%; for Morocco 80%, and for Turkey 71%. In many Arab and Muslim countries: the name "Israel" does not appear on maps; it is replaced by the word "Palestine" or a blank space with no name.
Islamist movements have taken root in all Western countries where Muslims reside, and they are recruiting. The Muslim Brotherhood, considered a terrorist organization in most Arab and Muslim countries -- and whose motto is, "Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope" -- has nevertheless created branches across the West. In the United Kingdom, the Muslim Association of Britain has close ties with the Muslim Brotherhood. The same goes for "Muslims of France," the main Muslim organization in France, as well as for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in the United States.
Many Muslims living in the West remain under the influence of Islamist movements and the hatred of Israel and Jews that permeates their countries of origin. Hatred of Jews and Israel is therefore markedly present in Muslim communities in the West.
So-called leftist or progressive movements have also been adding their hatred to the widespread Muslim hatred of Jews and Israel. Throughout Europe, many have long considered immigrants from the Muslim world as victims of "capitalist exploitation", "colonialism" and the Western world, and the left has supported -- and still supports -- anti-Western uprisings wherever they are. Until the 1960s, they had no special reason to hate Israel. That quickly changed.
In the 1960s, when the Soviet Union wanted to gain more influence in the Arab Muslim world, its leaders decided to support what was at the time a sacred cause for Arab leaders: the attempt to destroy Israel. They recognized that, two decades after the Holocaust, explicitly supporting the destruction of the world's only Jewish state and its Jewish inhabitants would seem horrible and would be difficult to defend, so they chose to invent a "national liberation struggle". They convinced their Arab friends to rally behind the invention. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in 1964 with the task of "liberating Palestine," and the borders of "Palestine" on the maps used by the PLO showed that the goal was to erase Israel from the face of the earth.
The "Palestinian people" was, according to one of its senior leaders, invented at the same time, and described by Soviet propaganda as a small people, oppressed by an imperialist, colonialist, racist state and who would have to "liberate" their land through "armed struggle". The "Palestinian cause" was born. The leaders of the Arab and Muslim world immediately supported it, as did Muslims in the West. Western communist parties and left-wing movements rapidly followed and became supporters of the "Palestinian cause" and the "liberation struggle of the Palestinian people". Western leftists started vocally to express hatred of "imperialist Israel" and, ironically, the hard-won democratic freedoms they were at that moment enjoying to the fullest: freedom of speech, assembly, education, sexuality, and supposedly equal justice under the law. One only need look at what happened overnight to females in Afghanistan:
"Since September 2021, the return to school for all Afghan girls over the age of 12 have been indefinitely postponed leaving 1.1 million girls and young women without access to formal education."
The idea that Israel, of all places, is an oppressive country nevertheless became widely dominant throughout the West. The idea that there actually is a "Palestinian people" fighting against a supposedly oppressive country became widely accepted, as well as the idea that Palestinian terrorist acts against Israeli Jews were ostensibly justifiable acts of resistance.
The Oslo Accords only made everything worse. By signing them, Israel's then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin recognized the PLO as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" and accepted the idea of Palestinian "self-government" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He therefore recognized that a terrorist organization was somehow the legitimate representative of a people invented fewer than three decades earlier, and that this invented "people" had "rights" and deserved to have territory and self-government.
The PLO, never honored its commitment, undertaken in the Oslo Accords, to:
"Reaffirming their determination to put an end to decades of confrontation and to live in peaceful coexistence, mutual dignity and security, while recognizing their mutual legitimate and political rights".
When the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994 and became the new name for the PLO, the worst wave of terrorist attacks ever perpetrated against Israeli Jews began. As a "peace process" was supposed to take shape, Western leaders pushed Israel to negotiate. Two Israeli Prime Ministers -- Ehud Barak in 2000 and Ehud Olmert in 2008 -- accepted 97% of the Palestinians' demands, offering them 93% of the West Bank and the creation of a Palestinian state. Both times, the Palestinian leaders refused the offer without so much as a counter-offer, and accused Israel of not having conceded enough. In the West, Israel was also widely accused by supporters of the "Palestinian cause" of not having of not having offered enough.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority continued to receive massive financial aid from Western governments, and equipped itself with powerful propaganda tools to demonize Israel even further, a hatred quickly picked up by many Muslims and non-Muslims in the West. The West Bank has increasingly, and incorrectly, been described as "occupied Palestinian territory" -- not "occupied Israeli territory" that was promised to the Jews by the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations -- and the presence of Jews in the West Bank is often incorrectly described as the presence of "colonizers". In reality, it was Israel that decolonized the land from the grip of the British, who governed it from 1917 until Israel's war of independence in 1948.
In 2005, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon completely and without any conditions handed over the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority. In 2007, Hamas (an Islamist organization that explicitly proclaims its desire, not just for the total destruction of Israel and its population, but in fact of all Jews) seized power of the Gaza Strip -- throwing officials of the Palestinian Authority from high buildings -- and turned it into an Islamic dictatorship, dedicated to the most barbaric and murderous anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli terrorism.
Oddly, Hamas, which is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, is considered by some, even in the West, to be a legitimate movement.
Since handing over the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians in 2005, Israel has had to protect itself from the terrorist actions of Hamas and intervene militarily countless times since. Each time, many Muslims living in the West showed their support for Hamas, and many on the left followed and often demonstrated against Israel alongside anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli Muslims. Propaganda from Islamists and leftists has described the Gaza Strip as an "open-air prison", a misrepresentation that became widespread throughout the West.
Year after year, the number of Muslims living in the West has been increasing, as well as the number who join the expansionist objectives of Islam. Demonstrations, well-funded and organized (here, here and here), promoting hatred of Israel and the West have also been gaining ground.
The atrocities perpetrated by Hamas on October 7 were clearly genocidal, and recent pro-Hamas demonstrations in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia show that hatred of Jews and Israel among Muslims living in the West has reached a degree where many of them openly support genocidal atrocities not only against Jews in Israel but against Jews anywhere (here, here , here and here). When Israel defends itself, these Muslims express without shame or restraint their hatred of Jews and many become violent and murderous. These demonstrations also show that support for the "Palestinian cause" sometimes also leads Westerners to support genocidal atrocities so long as they are committed against Jews.
Hamas uses civilians as human shields, but many Muslims, rather than condemn the Hamas government's war crime against their own civilians in Gaza, instead accuse Israel -- in spite of the Israeli Defense Forces doing their utmost to target only Hamas terrorists and protect civilians. The IDF even guarded the Gazans moving south to avoid the crossfire, as Israel had instructed them to do, while Hamas shot at those Gazans to prevent them from fleeing. That way, if they died in the war, Hamas would have dead civilians and grisly statistics to show the Western media, on the assumption that the media would blame Israel – as they mostly did.
Many journalists in the Western world now fully support the "Palestinian cause", do not hesitate to accuse Israel of "war crimes," and "crimes against humanity", and most news channels in the Western world broadcast propaganda images and statistics from Hamas as if they were not propaganda provided by a terrorist organization for the purpose of inciting hatred.
In Europe, political parties try to attract the Muslim vote, establish relationships with Islamist movements and refuse to condemn Hamas. In the UK, the Labour Party ousted Jeremy Corbyn from the party leadership in 2020 when his support for Hamas became too blatant, but he remains a powerful and influential member of the House of Commons. In France, the leftist party Rebellious France refused to say that the October 7 massacre was a terrorist act and defined Hamas as a "resistance movement." The leader of the party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon received 22% of the votes in the 2022 French presidential election, and 69% of Muslim votes.
In the United States, Muslims are fewer than in Europe and Islamism has less influence, but the Democratic Party nevertheless has accepted into its ranks two outspoken Islamist representatives, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar , who make distasteful remarks on a regular basis.
The United States is the only country in the West where a majority of the population still has a positive image of Israel. Support for Israel had long been bipartisan; this may no longer be true. A majority of Democrats now have a negative image of Israel, and the support given to Israel by the Biden administration is apparently creating discontent within the left wing of the party.
In Paris, on November 11, a pro-Hamas demonstration in Paris was held. It brought together a few thousand people. On November 12, a march against anti-Semitism was held. Its organizers wanted no slogans to be displayed that appeared pro-Israeli or hostile to Hamas. They also banned any mention of French hostages captured by Hamas. The two French political parties that denounced Islamic anti-Semitism, the National Rally and Reconquest, were relegated to the end of the procession. No Muslim organizations participated. According to reports, more than 100,000 people came.
In Washington, DC, on November 14, when a march for Israel was organized, Hamas was thoroughly denounced, and demonstrators demanded the release of hostages captured by Hamas. Roughly 300,000 people came.
Hatred of Israel, often meaning Jews, is reaching an alarming level throughout the Western world. The support for a movement calling for the genocidal destruction of Israel by hundreds of thousands of people in Western Europe and the United States should probably be seen as a wake-up call. American columnist Dennis Prager told the British newspaper the Daily Telegraph: "Supporting Hamas is like supporting Nazis in WW2."
In a recent interview, Éric Zemmour, leader of the French political party Reconquest, said that by carrying out a genocidal attack against Jews in Israel, Hamas attacked Judeo-Christian civilization itself. He quoted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had noted that Israel's battle against Hamas is a battle of civilization against barbarism. Zemmour added that support for Hamas in the West shows that many Muslims living there behave as enemies of civilization, and when they receive support from the "Left", it shows that now the "Left" are also enemies of civilization. He concluded that if, in the West, the processes of a genocidal hatred of Jews continue unhindered, it means that "the West is in mortal danger" and could die.
A temporary ceasefire is currently in place, accepted by Israel in exchange for the release of some Israeli hostages, undoubtedly under pressure from Western leaders, the Biden administration, and of course the families of the hostages themselves. The argument in Israel, apparently, was that the war could go on for months but there was no assurance that the hostages could survive that. The price for Israel is high. Every day of a pause means an opportunity for Hamas to rearm, regroup and reorganize to attack Israel harder.
Calm will temporarily return in the streets of Western cities, but if nothing is done to respond to the forces seeking to overturn Western civilization, all in the name of "democracy" of course – and Western values such as equal justice under law, equality of opportunity rather than of result, education from facts rather than from propaganda, a media that actually challenges authority rather than allowing itself to be suborned by it, freedom of speech with which one disagrees, the sovereignty of the individual rather than of groups -- the worst is bound to come.
*Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris, is the author of 27 books on France and Europe.
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Saudi Journalist Musa'ad Al-Thobaiti Like All Other Terror And Jihad Leaders, Hamas Leaders Live In Luxury And Save Their Own Skin, While Sending Their People To Be Killed
MEMRI/November 29/2023
Saudi Arabia, Palestine | Special Dispatch No. 10987
In a November 13, 2023 article in the Saudi daily Okaz, titled "They Hide in Their Tunnels and Sell Out Their People For a Paltry Price," journalist Musa’ad Al-Thobaiti condemned the fighters of the Hamas miliary wing, who hide in tunnels in Gaza, as well as Hamas' leaders abroad, who stay in luxury hotels, saying that they all forsake their people instead of fighting Israel. The Hamas leaders, he added, and Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, resemble numerous other leaders of terrorist organizations, such as Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and the Islamic State (ISIS) leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who hid in tunnels or in fortified houses with the members of their family while leaving their supporters alone in the fray. Al-Thobaiti lamented the fact that the Islamic nation is deceived by “a gang of cowards and traders in blood” who sell their people illusions and bring them nothing but death and destruction.
Musa'ad Al-Thobaiti's article (Image: Twitter.com/OKAZ_online, November 13, 2023)
The folloing are translated excerpts from Al-Thobaiti’s article:[1]
"Before America's invasion of Afghanistan, [the late Al-Qaeda founder Osama] bin Laden, fearing for his life, used to hide in the caves of Tora Bora. He chose fortified caves for himself, his children and his wives, and for the elite [of his organization], so they could save their lives, while leaving his followers [to face] the American missiles. After [the Americans] invaded [Afghanistan], he arranged a fortified house for himself in Pakistan…, and sufficed with prompting and goading the simple folk to wage terror, while he himself lived peacefully with his four wives, one of which was a minor he had brought to pleasure him while he oversaw [the terror activity] from his Pakistan home.
"[The late Iraqi president] Saddam Hussein also lived in a tunnel after the U.S. invaded his country, and hid in a hole, from which he was [eventually] dragged in disgrace, while his army and people faced the death and the destruction that ensued.
"The same goes for [the late ISIS leader] Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who wallowed in bloodshed and sent his savage beasts to carry out acts that even the cruelest criminals do not perpetrate, but dug himself a tunnel near Mosul, under a cattle pen, in order to save himself, obviously along with his wife and family.
"What happened in the past is now happening again. Mr. Resistance [i.e., Hizbullah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah] hides in tunnels while urging his followers to die in the service of his patron [Iran], having completely destroyed [Lebanon], the country that used to be the jewel of the east.
"Hamas leaders, along with their children, live in luxury in five-star hotels [in Qatar], and have immeasurable wealth, and at the same time give high-flown speeches about resistance. As for [Hamas] fighters, after bringing death and destruction upon the Gazans, they hid themselves in tunnels and left the Gazans to face their fate [alone], exposed to the cruelest Israeli weapons and to a merciless army.
"When the Israeli forces entered Gaza, they did not have to fight in the streets, as they had expected, for the soldiers of [the Hamas military wing, the Izz Al-Din] Al-Qassam [Brigades], preferred to stay alive and forgot their claim that 'Gaza will become the graveyard of the occupier,' which they had used to drug the Arabs. [Instead] Gaza became the graveyard of the weak Palestinians, and it's quite possible that the members of Hamas left the tunnels and traveled to other countries.
"Sadly, these are the people whom the [Islamic] nation praises. A group of cowards and traders in blood, who are the root of the disaster of this region. A genuine, brave and devoted commander stands with his followers and leads them. These guys are interested [only] in the vanities of this world, yet there are people who are deceived by them, people who have lost their minds and are fighting for nothing and losing their lives for leaders who have sold them out for a paltry price – and behind them is a nation that has become addicted to shouting and warnings and is hanging on to anyone who sells it illusions."
[1] Okaz (Saudi Arabia), November 13, 2023.

Muslims in Europe feel vulnerable to rising hostility over Israel-Gaza
Layli Foroudi, Thomas Escritt, Andrew MacAskill and Sarah Marsh/Reuters)/November 29, 2023
Jian Omar, a Berlin lawmaker of Kurdish-Syrian background, feels unprotected by police after suffering hate-filled flyers mixed with glass and faeces, a broken window and a hammer-wielding assailant since the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel. The three incidents at Omar’s constituency office form part of increased hostility to Muslims in Europe fanned at times by politicians since the Hamas assault, more than 30 community leaders and advocates consulted by Reuters said, adding that incidents were under-reported because of low trust in police. "I feel really alone and if somebody with the status of an elected official can’t be protected then how must others feel?” said Omar. He said police were investigating but had told him they could not offer extra security at his premises. "Imagine if a white German politician was attacked by a migrant or a refugee,” he said, suggesting security forces would do more in such cases. Berlin police did not reply to a request for comment. Hate crime has risen dramatically in Europe since the Oct. 7 assault killed around 1,200 Israelis and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza which has killed around 14,800 Palestinians, with registered antisemitic incidents up 1,240% in London and steep rises also seen in France and Germany. Official data shows a significant, smaller increase in anti-Muslim incidents in Britain and is patchy for the other two countries. It does not fully capture the extent of attacks and hostility against individuals and mosques, including children targeted at school, according to the people Reuters consulted, some of whom asked not to be named citing fear of retaliation. Under-reporting is also prevalent among victims of antisemitism, Jewish groups and leaders in the three countries said. Zara Mohammed, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said government language, such as calling pro-Palestinian protests "hate marches," had made the fight against antisemitism and for the rights of Muslims or Palestinians a zero-sum game in many people’s minds. "Ministers have been really reckless, this peddling of the culture wars and pitting communities off one another is really unhelpful and it is very divisive and dangerous as well," she said. The British government did not respond to a question about official use of such language. European Muslims' sense of vulnerability was further heightened with the electoral victory last week of Dutch far-right populist Geert Wilders, who previously called for mosques and the Koran to be banned in the Netherlands. In the United States, there has been deadly anti-Palestinian violence since Oct. 7. At the Ibn Ben Badis Mosque in Nanterre, Paris, elderly worshippers fear attending the dawn prayer in the dark, two worshippers there said, after a written arson threat against the mosque in late October apparently from a far-right sympathiser. Rachid Abdouni, the mosque president, said a request for extra police protection was not met. Local police said they were patrolling the area but were low on resources, he said. The police did not immediately respond to a comment request."Do I want my daughter to grow up in this climate?" said Khalil Raboun, 42, a French-Moroccan taxi driver, speaking after Friday prayers outside the mosque.
UNDER-REPORTING
Attempted arson, verbal abuse, vandalism and a pig's head left at a mosque site were among more than 700 reports of Islamophobic incidents in Britain the month after the Hamas attack, campaign group Tell Mama said, a sevenfold increase over the previous month. Tell Mama only reports some incidents to the police, with the consent of the complainant. The French Muslim Council received 42 letters containing threats or insults between October 7 and November 1 but has not reported any of them, said council vice president Abdallah Zekri, among a wave of hate mail and racist graffiti on mosques.
"The vast majority of Muslims do not file a complaint when they are victims of such acts. Even the heads of mosques don't want to. They don't want to spend two hours or more in a police station to file a complaint that in the end is often going to be dismissed," Zekri said. In Germany also, police often do not register Islamophobic crime as such due to a lack of awareness, for example attacks on mosques are sometimes registered simply as damage to property, said Rima Hanano of Claim, an NGO. "People affected by racism like Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim often fear to go to authorities because they are afraid of secondary victimization, that they will not be believed or made out to be the perpetrators," she said. A British government spokesperson said "there must be zero tolerance for antisemitism, anti-Muslim hatred, or any other forms of hatred," adding that police were expected to fully investigate such attacks. Germany's interior ministry said it "confronts all kinds of hate, including Islamophobia explicitly" and noted it conducted a survey this year it said gave greater understanding of anti-Muslim racism. In France, interior minister Gerald Darmanin acknowledged additional anti-Muslim acts since Oct. 7, however French official figures for 2023 appeared on track for a drop, with 130 incidents through Nov. 14, compared to 188 incidents recorded all last year. The ministry did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for France's national police acknowledged data on anti-Muslim incidents was "incomplete", and relied on victims filing a complaint. Security services are actively monitoring for antisemitic incidents, the spokesperson said.
HISTORY
Both France and Germany developed institutional mechanisms to respond to antisemitic acts in the aftermath of the Holocaust of World War Two and in response to continued prejudice against Jews. Western Europe's colonial and religious past has also cast Islam as regressive and foreign, contributing to entrenched prejudice among parts of the population and in institutions, said Reza Zia-Ebrahimi, historian at Kings College London and author of 'Antisemitism and Islamophobia: an entangled history'. Attacks by Islamist militants in Europe or abroad often bring repercussions for the general Muslim population. After mosques were defaced and the spread of anti-Muslim commentary by pundits on TV, French President Emmanuel Macron said last week that "to protect French people of Jewish faith should not be to pillory French people of Muslim faith." However, historian Zia-Ebrahimi said, the decision by France's interior ministry to ban pro-Palestinian protests as a risk to public order in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks fomented a view that Arabs are aggressors and that supporters of Palestinians are motivated by antisemitism. Amnesty International called the blanket ban disproportionate. Aiman Mazyek of the German Muslim Council said a federal government commissioner on Islamophobia was needed to complement existing commissioners for antisemitism and anti-Roma racism. "The fact that we have so many commissioners in Germany and no commissioner for Islam in particular is discrimination in itself," he said. Germany's newly appointed commissioner on racism, Reem Alabali-Radovan, acknowledged a need for better monitoring after the interior ministry survey showed one in two Germans hold Islamophobic views. For some Muslims in Germany, which has welcomed about a million Syrians and just under 400,000 Afghans in recent years, rising hostility came as a surprise. Ghalia Zaghal came to Germany from Syria in 2015 and said she never had major issues with discrimination. But shortly after Oct. 7, she was shoved twice in one day, with one man shouting at her: "This is my street, not yours.""I was too shocked to go to the police,” said Zaghal, who owns a Berlin beauty salon.

Palestine that Enriches and Palestine that Impoverishes
Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al Awsat/November 29/2023
Following the "Al-Aqsa Flood," many voices, mostly Israeli and Western, compared Hamas's operation to the 9/11 attacks carried out by Al-Qaeda in the United States. Some went even further, considering them to be exactly the same and the operation to be Israel’s 9/11. On the other hand, however, other voices were less concerned with attributes and more interested in proposals drawn from experience. To them, if they truly do resemble one another, it is more true that a response like that which followed the attacks of September 11, with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, must be avoided. The reasoning underlying this conviction is that violence and killing cannot be stopped through even greater violence and more killing, which ultimately creates a zero-sum outcome. This is precisely the outcome that Israel avoided when it retaliated with violence of even greater scale and magnitude, repeatedly targeting far more innocent civilians that Al-Aqsa Flood had. In doing so, the Jewish state adopted a vengeful and brutal approach that it continues to follow, and criticizing it has become a necessary requisite for any sense of humanism and civilization in the world.
This behavior was accompanied, and continues to be, by Israeli and Western actions that are as lacking in precision as they are in justice. In the media, as in other non-military spheres, their behavior has the same effect as the military operations inflicting collective punishment. Examples of this can be seen in countries like Germany, where any criticism of the Jewish state and its policies is seen as anti-Semitic, which is detrimental to the German democratic experience itself and could produce reactions that are indeed undemocratic and anti-Semitic.
This unjust behavior, be it military or otherwise, raises a burning question: at what point does the response to injustice and atrocious actions cease to be a response, becoming a source of wrongdoing that leads to self-harm before harming others?
The American response to September 11, which failed to further the interests it was meant to serve or strengthen the values it claimed to uphold, led to a broad surge in the tendency to glorify tyrants and dictators fighting the US or seen as doing so. As a result, broad segments of the population in the Arab and Islamic worlds extolled Osama bin Laden and then Saddam Hussein, elevating them to the status of noble heroes. In the meantime, romantic poems, both chaste and erotic, were preserved for Taliban chief Mullah Omar. A similar phenomenon can be seen today in a few Arab cities, where Hamas leaders like Yahya al-Sinwar, Mohammed al-Deif, to say nothing about Abu Ubaida, are being idolized and celebrated. While it is understandable for Israel’s brutality to make those confronting it look better, it is not understandable for positions on Israel, or anything else, to become the single criterion by which to judge individuals, leaders, developments, and history.
In such trials, the judges hide many of the frustrations that the contemporary Arab experience is riddled with. Confronting and addressing those frustrations and what lies beneath them would be preferable to contenting ourselves with choosing new saviors to spare us experiments and lead us to disaster. However, these judges themselves demonstrate that we are one-dimensional and that we have built our world and our perceptions of it on a particular issue or contradiction. One-dimensional beings are vulnerable to being toyed with by anyone who chooses to toy with them, as is clear from the long history of the Palestinian cause, which has been exploited by many beneficiaries, be they rulers or aspiring rulers. Despite its significance, one’s stance on the conflict with Israel should not obscure the long list of other criteria upon which our position on a particular party or individual should be built. Among them are questions about the person’s character and their stance on other social, economic, educational, and ethical causes that are no less important than the struggle against Israel. The Lebanese have undergone something similar, and the scars it left continue to burn. As we all know, Hezbollah kidnapped two soldiers in 2006, leading to the famous July War. Afterward, the party declared victory, which was elevated to an official "divine victory" soon after. It thereby triggered a wave of adulation and idolization of those who had "humiliated Israel" and achieved this "divine victory." Those who did not join in the celebrations and refrained from sharing this idolization swallowed their reservations about this party that holds views divergent to their own regarding almost everything, simply because this party had fought Israel and, according to the narrative that became popular among some of us, emerged victorious. Because the pursuit of a single cause repels all others, we failed to notice that this victory laid the groundwork for the dire situation on all fronts that we in Lebanon are confronted with today.
The theory of a single cause has stung us many times, and the scorpions were not only those fighting Israel. We also have those who claim they will fight Israel one day, after deciding on the appropriate place and time, which never comes.
Nothing pushes back against Israel’s behavior and threatens it more than enriching the Palestinian cause by making it coexist alongside other struggles and meanings. Allowing Israel to deny us a rich definition of ourselves by reducing ourselves to being "anti-Israelis," would be to grant it a crucial victory bigger than its destruction of Gaza.

Gaza… Queues and Queues
Tariq Al-Homayed/Asharq Al Awsat/November 29/2023
Following the ceasefire in Gaza, the screaming has intensified. There are two types: screams of suffering and mendacious screams. The former are the screams of the people we are seeing and hearing in Gaza, children, women, and men. The latter are screams that seek to distort the picture and muddle the facts, those of what I call online “keyboard Jihadists.”While the people of Gaza - as our newspaper reported yesterday - queue for seven hours to buy gas for their homes, the “keyboard Jihadists” and digital armies spread misinformation and promote the narrative of a victory 24 hours a day. While Ayman Hamdan from Khan Yunis stands in line for about 10 hours to get 30 liters of fuel to fill his tank - as the report tells us - the hypocrites spend all day behind their screens distorting reality.
This is the scene during the ceasefire, which the people of Gaza hope will last. We heard them on real news broadcasters that do not mislead their audience. The people of Gaza are praying for the ceasefire to become permanent instead of ending in a few days or years. No one in Gaza wants their life to become hell. As Ayman Hamdan told our newspaper, life in Gaza has become “queues and queues.” Someone might ask: is the problem the stories told by the “keyboard Jihadists” from the Muslim Brotherhood or other militias? No, the problem with them is bigger. It is that they trade in people's suffering twice, first when they are alive, and then again after their death. Now, they want to mislead the Arab public opinion and rile up their audience, to ensure that resentment and anger grow, without a goal or a plan.
They want to mislead the Arab public opinion to avoid scrutiny of their misadventures, which have destroyed Gaza and are also putting Lebanon, what remains of Syria, Iraq, and Yemen at risk of destruction. They use noble Quranic verses and insults at the same time, in a blatant state of decline. They do all of this so that the Arab public does not listen to the screams of pain and suffering in Gaza, and to prevent the most important question from being asked: Why go on these adventures? Why repeat actions that have been tried, and why this fifth or sixth war in Gaza? And why hasn't Hezbollah, which is concerned with Iran's security, entered the war?
They also do this so that the public does not become aware of Arab and Islamic efforts to stop the brutal Israeli war machine. Indeed, officials have been traveling around the world to rally support for the peace process and a two-state solution, as well as to put an end to the crimes committed against the Palestinians.The adventure merchants, along with the “keyboard Jihadists,” are behind this deception. They fear that Hamas will lose power in Gaza, not for Gazan civilians’ lives. Their entire goal is to distract from the screams of suffering.
They do so by throwing accusations of treachery around and pursuing moral assassination, using many tools to do so, from religious discourse or foul language. They are the same people who had misled the region in previous crises, from the rise of Al-Qaeda and ISIS to even the time when Mohamed Morsi addressed the Israeli president with a letter that began with: “My dear and great friend.”This is their game, their religion. Thus, the media must stand firmly against them and prevent them from muffling the cries of suffering in Gaza. The media must remind audiences of their previous positions and their clear objectives, which are to destroy our countries and realize their miserable dream of attaining power.

We must respect others’ beliefs — no matter how painful
Carla DiBello/Arab News/November 29, 2023
There are many things I am grateful for that have come from moving to the Middle East more than 10 years ago. As an American expat, one of the things that has opened my eyes the most is the kaleidoscope of experiences and perspectives that have helped expand my horizons and ways of seeing the world. Living in the diverse city of Dubai has exposed me to a multitude of different cultures and experiences, as well as offering access to a whole host of media sources from around the world.
Watching the current situation in Gaza unfold through various news sources has been an entirely new kind of eye-opener that I have never experienced before. Flipping from one channel to the next, from Egyptian to Saudi news to the UK or US and others, the topic may be the same, but the story is entirely different — to the point where, aside from the main players, the narratives are almost unrecognizable. Bias within journalism is nothing new; it has always been there to some degree and a good journalist is one who can acknowledge their bias and work to neutralize it. But given the current state of the world and the way we communicate, it is hard to imagine this is even possible anymore. From homogenous mainstream media coverage that operates with blinders on to doctored viral content and propaganda, the truth is nearly impossible for any of us to fully discern. But one thing should be as clear as day: the Gaza conflict is a humanitarian crisis; it is destroying everyone involved and even those who are not. Because the reality is, we are all involved in one way or another, whether we like it or not.
When it comes to human life, we are all responsible. What is done to us becomes what we know. And so, we repeat it. Those who are hurt are those who hurt again. The cycle is evident on both sides, constituting an unmistakable pattern. Unimaginable violence and imprisonment create a breeding ground for desperate acts. With Gaza, the Palestinians are growing more and more desperate, in a constant state of fight or flight. The escalating and persistent violence witnessed from Israel poses a threat to the essence of the Jewish soul.
Disapproval is being communicated by more and more world leaders, including Sheikha Moza bint Nasser’s resolute resignation as a UN ambassador. An increasing number of organizations and businesses, including Huda Beauty, are expressing advocacy for humanity before financial profit. The collective global voice is getting louder, reinforcing that, even in war, there are rules.
I grieve as a result of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, mourning for the hostages and innocent lives lost. At the same time, I grieve because of the attacks on Gaza and the growing thousands of innocent Palestinian lives lost. Out of more than 14,000 Palestinian deaths, 40 percent of those killed have been children. One of the most important life skills we as a global society have lost is understanding that two things can be true. Our world has become more and more polarized, seeing only in black and white. We tend to think, “If you are not 100 percent with us, then you are 100 percent against us.” But that is just not how life works and definitely not how anything gets resolved. It is critical that we are able to continue to communicate respectfully with those who have different perspectives from our own, instead of stonewalling or vilifying anyone who goes against the narrative of a belief system built from personal histories — even when it is incredibly painful to do so. I have lost friends whom I truly love due to conversations about Palestine. And it breaks my heart because, at the end of the day, I think we hold the same principles and values. But in this new world of ours, it is too easy to categorize anyone different as the enemy.
One of the most important life skills we as a global society have lost is understanding that two things can be true.
Organizational psychologist Adam Grant argues that the difference between belief systems and values is that, while values offer a more flexible, big-picture framework from which to operate, beliefs are a narrow and static scope that make it difficult for us to adapt to new evidence or perspectives. Identifying how the world should be according to our beliefs, rather than intrinsic values like compassion and respect, makes it easy for us to get stuck in seeing only a small part of the whole story.
Too many of us are so wed to our belief systems that we abandon our actual values, leaving ourselves blind to the critical foundation of what it means to be a human being. This is not about politics. This is not about religion. This is about human life and the way we treat one another, the way we see each other and the way we communicate with each other. This is just as much anyone else’s world as it is yours or mine. And seeing it as such, even when it feels threatening to who we are and where we come from, is our only hope for a way out.
**Carla DiBello is a documentarian and founder and CEO of CDB Advisory, a bespoke consulting firm that bridges connections across private sectors throughout the Middle East and North America. X: @CarlaDiBello