[IMPORTANT] Hamas launches foot assault against settlements.

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IDF troops attempted to dismantle the illegal outpost Givat Tzur Harel but were pelted with stones by residents, leaving one soldier wounded, Israeli media reported on Tuesday.

About 50 settlers gathered to attack the IDF soldiers, injuring one soldier who was taken to hospital with head injuries, according to Israel Hayom.

Two people were later arrested as a result of the violence.

The IDF later confirmed that a soldier had been injured by a glass bottle thrown by an Israeli citizen and that he was then taken to hospital for medical treatment.

The IDF also confirmed that "dozens" of Israeli citizens were involved in the stone-throwing directed at IDF troops.

A perennial problem
Troops were present in the illegal outpost as it had been ordered dismantled and were there to complete the destruction of the settlement.

The outpost has been destroyed and rebuilt numerous times over the past two decades since it was first established.

The settlement was the cause of a disagreement between the IDF and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich after the IDF ordered the settlement dismantled in July, but the move was blocked by Smotrich, who also serves as the minister responsible for civilian activity in the West Bank.

At that time, residents also attacked IDF and police officers who were there to dismantle the settlement

US President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be the next US ambassador to Israel said the incoming administration could support the annexation of the West Bank, though such a decision would be out of his hands.

Mike Huckabee, a politician and Evangelical Christian leader with a history of strong support for Israeli building in the West Bank, was named Tuesday as Trump’s nominee for the post, drawing plaudits from settlement leaders.

Speaking to Israel’s Army Radio Wednesday morning, Huckabee was asked whether annexation would be a possibility after Trump takes office in January.

“Well of course,” Huckabee answered. “I won’t make the policy, I will carry out the policy of the president.”

The former Arkansas governor also did not rule out the possibility of Israel rebuilding settlements in the Gaza Strip when asked.

“Well I haven’t had time to process that,” he said. “I don’t want to make any comments about policy because those won’t be mine to make.”

Support for annexation of the West Bank or the return of settlements in Gaza would mark a significant break with the current US administration, which has repeatedly spoken out against settlement activity as a barrier to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The administration has also warned repeatedly against resettling Israeli civilians in Gaza, which Israel evacuated in 2005.

Trump’s first ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, was also an ardent supporter of West Bank settlements, and the administration largely shied away from criticizing Israeli building in the West Bank.

A peace plan rolled out by Trump toward the end of his term was interpreted by Friedman and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a green light to annex the West Bank, though the effort never got off the ground.

Since Trump’s election last week, pro-settlement forces in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition have repeatedly raised hopes that Israel will annex the territory and win Washington’s backing for the move.

On Monday, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared that 2025 would be “the year of sovereignty in [the West Bank],” thanks to Trump’s return to office, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir last week said that “this is the time for sovereignty.”

However, at least two officials in Trump’s previous administration have warned senior Israeli ministers not to assume that the president-elect will support Israel annexing the West Bank in his second term, three sources familiar with the conversations told The Times of Israel.

Huckabee has called Israel’s claim to the West Bank stronger than American ties to Manhattan and laid bricks in 2018 as ground was broken on a new housing complex in the settlement of Efrat.

During the Army Radio interview, he noted that he was “a frequent visitor to Judea and Samaria,” using a Biblical term for the West Bank favored by those on the right wing.

“I also very much believe that the people of Israel deserve a secure and safe country and anything I can do that will help accommodate that is going to be a great privilege for me,” he said.

Aside from backing settlements, a term he says he abhors, Huckabee is also a bitter opponent of Palestinian nationalism.

“There’s really no such thing as a Palestinian,” the former Baptist minister told a rabbi in Massachusetts in 2008, according to The New Yorker. “That’s been a political tool to try to force land away from Israel.”

Eighty-eight Democratic lawmakers have signed onto a letter urging US President Joe Biden to sanction far-right Israeli ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich before he departs the White House in January.

Smotrich and Ben Gvir are “driving policies that promote settler violence, weaken the Palestinian Authority, facilitate de facto and de jure annexation, and destabilize the West Bank,” the House and Senate lawmakers argue in a letter sent on October 29 but was not made public until Thursday.

The Biden administration has weighed the unprecedented step in recent months, but has thus far held off on the move, with the president feeling that the US should not be sanctioning officials from a democratic ally, American officials have told The Times of Israel.

Internal calls to sanction Ben Gvir and Smotrich have recently grown, however, as settler violence has continued unabated and Israel advances steps aimed at further expanding its presence and grip on the West Bank. The sanctions would likely be implemented through an executive order Biden signed last February aimed at targeting Israeli and Palestinian extremists destabilizing the West Bank.

Ben Gvir and Smotrich have called for Israel to formally annex much of the territory now that Trump has been elected, given that he and his aides have been less critical — if not outright supportive — of Israel’s presence in the disputed territory.

But a move to sanction them would almost certainly be reversed by President-elect Donald Trump and it also comes with significant questions regarding enforcement. If Israel continues to pay the ministerial salaries of Smotrich and Ben Gvir, the government would be exposed to sanctions of its own, which is likely not the administration’s intention, given its support for the US-Israel relationship more broadly.

“Government leaders instigating violence must be subject to US sanctions… With radical officials in the Netanyahu government continuing to enable settler violence and enact annexationist policies, it is clear that further sanctions are urgently needed,” the letter states.

The signatories are largely made up of some of the more progressive Democrats in Congress, but they also include the more moderate Senator Chris Coons of Delaware — a close Biden ally — as well as Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democratic appropriator who, this year, received the endorsement of a PAC affiliated with the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, and Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, the number-two Democrat in the Senate. Eight Jewish lawmakers are also among the signatories

Israel’s airstrikes in Iran last month destroyed an active nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, the Axios news site reported Friday, citing three US officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.

The report came as the UN nuclear watchdog prepares to vote on censuring Iran for refusing to cooperate with its inspectors, and amid a report that the Islamic Republic told the Biden administration last month it would not seek to assassinate US president-elect Donald Trump.

According to Axios, an Israeli strike on Parchin — part of an hours-long operation on October 26, which came in response to an earlier Iranian attack on Israel — destroyed sophisticated equipment used to design the explosives that could surround uranium in a nuclear device, significantly damaging Iran’s efforts to resume its nuclear weapons research.

The Israeli strike “will make it much harder for Iran to develop a nuclear explosive device if it chooses to do so,” Axios cited two Israeli officials saying.

Iran would need to “replace the equipment that was destroyed” if it wants to produce nuclear weapons, the report cited the Israeli officials saying, “and if Iran tries to procure it, they believe they will be able to track it,” Axios said.

The “Taleghan 2” complex was already known to have been targeted in the strikes — as testified by satellite imagery — and was already recognized as having been a site of Iran’s earlier nuclear program which officially shut down in 2003.

US and Israeli intelligence reportedly began to detect new activity at the site earlier this year, including computer modeling, metallurgy and research on explosives, that would be relevant to creating a nuclear device.

We won’t try and kill Trump
Also Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that an Iranian message, delivered in writing on October 14, assured the Biden administration that it would not seek to kill Trump.

The message came in response to a written warning sent by the US to Tehran in September, over alleged plots to kill the former president, who has since won election to a second, non-consecutive term.

American officials have reported ongoing efforts by Iran to assassinate Trump administration members — including, but not limited to, Trump himself — who were behind a 2020 US airstrike that killed Qassem Soleimani, who led the Quds Force in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a proscribed terror organization.

Israel Defense Forces troops reached the deepest point in Lebanon since the army started its incursion over the border six weeks ago, Lebanese state media reported, before ostensibly pulling back early Saturday after fierce battles with Hezbollah.

The state-run National News Agency reported that Israeli troops temporarily captured a strategic hill in the southern Lebanese village of Shama, about five kilometers (3 miles) from the border early Saturday, before later being pushed back. The outlet claimed soldiers detonated several buildings including a shrine before they withdrew.

None of the claims could be immediately verified.

The push on the ground came as Israeli warplanes pounded Beirut’s southern suburbs as well as several other areas in southern Lebanon, including the port city of Tyre.

The Israel Defense Forces announced two waves of strikes Saturday targeting Hezbollah infrastructure, command rooms, and weapon depots. At least nine individual airstrikes were reported by Reuters.

In southern Lebanon, Israel carried out several strikes on Friday night and early Saturday, according to NNA. The outlet said a strike in Tyre “targeted the ‘ruins district,’ resulting in the destruction of two buildings and damage to other surrounding buildings.”

Airstrikes killed a medic in the town of Borj Rahal in the Tyre District, and strikes on an emergency response team in the southern town of Kfar Tebnit killed one medic and injured four others while two medics were missing, the Lebanese health ministry said.

Separately, two senior Islamic Jihad figures were killed in an Israeli strike on Syria on Thursday, according to a source from the Palestinian terror group, which has fought against Israel in Gaza alongside Hamas.

Dozens of masked settlers set fire to several buildings and a car in the West Bank village of Beit Furik near Nablus on Saturday, the Israel Defense Forces said.

Before the violent attack, the IDF said it received reports that Palestinians had stolen a herd of sheep and attacked an Israeli man.

A short while later, dozens of masked Israelis entered Beit Furik, where a “violent confrontation developed between them and the Palestinians who were there, which included mutual stone throwing,” according to the military.

Troops and Border Police officers were then dispatched to the scene, and they used riot dispersal means to clear the rioters, the IDF said, adding that it is unaware of any injuries in the violence. No arrests have been made.

According to Haaretz, the military suspects the perpetrators came from the settlement of Itamar, which is known for its particularly far-right population.

Settler violence spiked after the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre. Violence has swelled since the start of the olive harvest season last month, when the United Nations said that farmers were facing “the most dangerous olive season ever.”

Israeli authorities rarely arrest Jewish perpetrators in such attacks. Rights groups lament that convictions are even more unusual and that the vast majority of charges in these types of attacks are dropped.

Since October 7 last year, troops have arrested some 5,250 wanted Palestinians across the West Bank, including more than 2,050 affiliated with Hamas.

According to the Palestinian Authority health ministry, more than 716 West Bank Palestinians have been killed in that time. The IDF says a majority of them were gunmen killed in exchanges of fire, rioters who clashed with troops or terrorists carrying out attacks.

During the same period, 41 people, including Israeli security personnel, have been killed in terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank. Another six members of the security forces were killed in clashes with terror operatives in the West Bank.

I'm sure this video is overstating things but the complete collapse of the IGF as a viable military force would greatly benefit the region.

Eliran Mizrahi, a 40-year-old father of four, reported for duty to the Gaza Strip shortly after the October 7 massacre, but he did not come back the same, his family told CNN.

Mizrahi struggled with PTSD for six months after his return and died by suicide shortly before he was supposed to be redeployed.

“He got out of Gaza, but Gaza did not get out of him. And he died after it, because of the post-trauma,” his mother, Jenny Mizrahi, told CNN.

In the wake of the Israel-Hamas war and with tensions steadily rising on the Northern front, thousands of Israelis have struggled with their mental health, especially those serving in the IDF. In January, Walla reported that 1,600 IDF soldiers had shown symptoms of combat-related PTSD since the start of the war.

Of those, 76% returned to combat duties after receiving treatment from mental health officials attached to their units stationed near combat zones.

The IDF has not provided an official figure on the number of soldiers who have taken their own lives, but it says that it has been tirelessly working to treat the mental health concerns of service members.

In the wake of the Israel-Hamas war and with tensions steadily rising on the Northern front, thousands of Israelis have struggled with their mental health, especially those serving in the IDF. In January, Walla reported that 1,600 IDF soldiers had shown symptoms of combat-related PTSD since the start of the war.

Of those, 76% returned to combat duties after receiving treatment from mental health officials attached to their units stationed near combat zones.

The IDF has not provided an official figure on the number of soldiers who have taken their own lives, but it says that it has been tirelessly working to treat the mental health concerns of service members.

He saw a lot of people die. Maybe he even killed someone. (But) we don’t teach our children to do things like this,” Jenny said. “So, when he did something like this, maybe it was a shock for him.”

During his service in Gaza, Mizrahi drove a D-9 bulldozer, an armored vehicle that can withstand bullets and explosives.
His friend and co-driver, Guy Zaken, testified before the Knesset in June that the two were ordered to “run over terrorists, dead and alive, in the hundreds" on several occasions.

He says he no longer eats meat because of this. “When you see a lot of meat outside, and blood… both ours and theirs (Hamas), then it really affects you when you eat,” he told CNN, referring to bodies.

Zaken further told CNN that the two saw "very, very, very difficult things,” Zaken told CNN. “Things that are difficult to accept.”

At the June Knesset hearing, PTSD survivors and veterans from the Israel-Hamas war recounted their experiences after ending their service.

"There shouldn’t be any inequality between physical and mental disabilities. I’ve already died once," said Omer Amsalem, a PTSD survivor who fought in Operation Protective Edge in a June meeting with the Knesset. "Why must I come here daily, shouting and complaining like garbage? Why do we keep hearing about another trauma victim who committed suicide? Why do we have to come to you? You should be coming to us at home. You didn’t take care of PTSD victims before, so how will you handle the wounded from Operation Iron Swords? I’m tired of coming here. My peace is only at home, and that’s all I need."

Walla reported that some testifiers felt like the government had forgotten them, and some of them even mentioned Eliran.

"My financial situation is a disaster—I’m a million shekels in debt. I can’t get loans, and soon, I might end up on the street," said Avichai Levy, an IDF veteran and PTSD victim. "My friends are dealing with rocket attacks and gunfire. The ministers ignore us; everyone turns their backs and insults our intelligence.

Additionally, survivors say that they're scared that they will get drafted again with the war's expansion into Lebanon. There have been approximately 760 requests for psychological assistance since the start of the war, though not all were PTSD related, according to a report from Walla.

“A lot of us are very scared of getting drafted again to a war in Lebanon,” an IDF medic who served four months in Gaza told CNN, speaking on condition of anonymity. “A lot of us don’t trust the government right now.”

Assaf, 29, recalls one of his nights as an Israeli soldier in Gaza: “I had the telescopic sight and the night vision scope. I remember aiming at his face and looking at him, ready to shoot as soon as he did something. But I looked at him and it was not the face of someone who posed a threat to us.” He reflects on the despair, emptiness and discomfort he felt after leaving the Strip, where he and the men of his unit spent almost a month fighting Hamas to prevent a repeat of the carnage of October 7 last year. But at the same time, he saw how, in addition to killing civilians and destroying the enclave, the release of the 100 of his compatriots still held hostage by Hamas and other Palestinian groups is not being prioritized. He suspects that the main obstacle to this is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Assaf (who prefers not to give his real name) is one of the 130 soldiers, regular troops and reservists, who signed a letter addressed to Netanyahu on October 7, the first anniversary of the war. In it they declared themselves deserters. The main reason given is the abandonment of those hostages, although they also point to the deaths of innocent Palestinians among the 43,000 Gazans who have already lost their lives. The war, they say in reference to the captives, is “a death sentence” for their “brothers and sisters.” The text has also been sent to Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant and the head of the Armed Forces, General Herzi Halevi. “Many hostages have died from the bombings of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), many more than those who have been rescued in military operations,” states the letter.

In addition to Assaf, who has no doubts about supporting a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, two other military officers have agreed to be interviewed by EL PAÍS, by name and surname. Everyone knows that their public gesture of protest made the prime minister very uncomfortable, but they do not regret it. Netanyahu asked that the full weight of the law fall on them, in addition to implying that they were not patriots, according to the newspaper Haaretz. Asked about the matter, a spokesman for the army simply played down the number of signatories compared to the hundreds of thousands of troops that make up the IDF.

The testimonies of these three reservists offer a reality of the war far removed from that usually given by military spokesmen and government leaders. And they launch harsh criticisms of the way in which a conflict is developing that they consider to be entrenched, which is why they have not returned to uniform. Assaf has fought in Gaza and the West Bank; Max Kresch, 28, has been deployed on the Lebanese border, and Michael Ofer-Ziv, 29, has decided, among other things, which places to bomb in the Strip from a military operations room on Israeli soil.

After more than two months of having a “broad view” of the military occupation of Gaza and the movements of his unit through his screens, Ofer-Ziv finished what was his only and last rotation at the end of 2023. A few days earlier, an event that left him “devastated” and continues to affect him mentally was the death of three Israeli hostages at the hands of his fellow soldiers who had approached IDF troops waving a white flag and shouting in Hebrew. “How many incidents like that happened with Palestinians, who were simply raising a white flag, trying to run away from the war and ended up shot by the military? There were many such cases,” he confirms, aware that protocols are often not followed and civilians, overwhelmingly Palestinians, are killed.

“We were killing a lot of Hamas fighters and attacking any military target we found. I think we set Hamas back 10 or 20 years in terms of its military capability,” Assaf said, adding that this was already achieved earlier this year, when he had already left the Strip. “I don’t think going from house to house and demolishing them all, even if it’s a military site, is worth the cost in human lives,” he added. “If we were fighting to get the hostages back, I would 100% [re-enlist] and be willing to risk my life to get my compatriots back,” he explained, before saying that every time a possible agreement comes closer, it gets bogged down. “I think it’s the prime minister, but we can’t know for sure.”

”Diabolical choice”
“Many Israelis believe that it is justified to hate the Palestinians in Gaza because they support Hamas. But in the same way, there are many Israelis who support Bibi,” as the prime minister is popularly known, argues Kresch. He does not hesitate to compare Netanyahu with Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader recently killed in the Strip, “two leaderships that are really harmful to their people.” It is not a question of choosing one or the other “as if they were football teams, because both represent a diabolical choice,” says Kresch, while stressing that the current government is leading Israel down the path of “racism” and “literally, terrorism.”

“From day one, I never had faith in him [Netanyahu], but I still risked my life for him,” he says. Kresch posted, and still maintains, a message on his Facebook profile in which he criticized the “kill them all” atmosphere that surrounded his deployment on the front lines in Lebanon. That comment raised the ire of his comrades and, weeks later, he was removed from his post, although his commanders never linked him to that post. From outside, he says, he received numerous expressions of support.

For Assaf, the fact that Palestinian militias are now reorganizing in some areas of the Strip does not mean that they have the capacity to attack Israel, much less to repeat October 7. “But they will continue to want to kill us if we do not push for a political solution,” he adds. With the battle won at the military level, he believes that the priority should have been the captives, but the attacks continued and “many hostages have been killed directly by the IDF or by Hamas in circumstances of pressure from the army” which in his view should have been avoided. “The price we are paying is greater than the achievements we obtain,” he adds, remembering especially the three comrades of his unit who fell between August and September, in the rotation that he refused to join and whom he said goodbye to in the cemetery.

“I completely disagree with those who say that there are no innocent people in Gaza. […] I am sure that among the two million inhabitants, many of them are not members of Hamas or sympathetic to Hamas,” says Assaf, describing a climate of growing tension and hatred fuelled, above all, by the supremacist positions of some ministers and far-right leaders. Kresch expresses similar sentiments: “I have experienced a very, very hostile atmosphere of revenge and racism against Arabs. And I have several Arab friends and I like to get involved in activism for coexistence.”

Ofer-Ziv, like Kresch, had participated in anti-Netanyahu protests before the war and was highly critical of the most right-wing government in the country’s history, which he describes as “terrible.” But he did not hesitate, as did Assaf, to enlist after October 7, 2023, when the war began with the Hamas-led attack, which caused some 1,200 deaths and saw 250 people kidnapped, according to official figures.

They feel that the burden of obligation weighed on them, but none of them believe that they will suffer “reprisals” or “revenge.” They argue that their objective as reservists was to prevent another similar massacre from taking place and to facilitate the return of the hostages, although the reality on the ground was different. They believe that the objective of avoiding another massacre is being partially achieved, despite the tens of thousands of civilian deaths. But they think that military operations hinder the return home of the captives. Not wearing the uniform — something frowned upon by much of Israeli society — is “the way to recover the hostages and save the lives of the soldiers,” according to Assaf, who says he does not accept criticism from politicians who have never gone into combat.

For Kresch, the hardest part came after his mission. He separated from his partner, froze his studies, had to return to his parents’ home and, in addition, saw the government abandon him. He only found help in organizations outside the state, his family, and friends. “We have been through a tragedy. But it is very important to remember that the Arabs are not our enemies. Our enemy is Hamas,” he stresses. The real conflict, he reflects, is not between Israelis and Palestinians, but between those who want war and those who want peace.

El Pias is the second leading newspaper as far as circulation goes in Spain.

OTOH they may choose to follow their ancient Jewish forbearers in Masada and commit mass suicide, or tear each other apart. Who knows?

5. Ransoming/Redeeming hostages in most cases is mandated by Jewish law, so both the failure to get so many home and the belief that Netanyahu is not prioritizing them is deflating morale.

4. As I mentioned a few months ago constantly capturing, withdrawing, and recapturing the same areas is a morale killer. It did result in the collapse of the American army in Vietnam to the point of widespread drug use and fragging(killing officers who gave orders deemed pointless or reckless).

2. Prior to 10/7 Israel was in a state of near revolution over Netanyahu’s “judicial reforms”. In the wake of 10/7 the country agreed to put that aside but following orders from a leader so many have no faith in is not sustainable.

1. The IDF doctrine centers on very short wars They have never fought for as long and on so many fronts.

That combined with the collapse of tourism is doing a number on the economy.

Fox news is the leading news source in the US. That doesn't make them good at journalism.


Are they projecting their feelings toward the Palestine, Lebanese and Syrian people?


To more serious notes...

Have Israel (the state) ever been interested in retrieving the hostage alive? Is there any evidence for that.
I mean they have killed their hostages with both bombs and even bullets at a few instances. Isn't the Hannibal directive something that disprove that intention?
They killed the Hamas person who was negotiating the release of the hostage. That doesn't quite display an intention of freeing the hostages, does it?
It's a ridiculous notion that Israel ever have had the interest of free the hostages.
The family, loved ones and Israelis I don't doubt it for a second that they want them back.



O.o..o...oh my...Are you being genuine? It's such an exquisite comparison, the Vietnam War and IDF assult on the region. Are you familiar with that the Vietnam War was a lost cause but the US kept sending their troops to slaughter. For the status quo...and killing VietNamese people. Kissinger got the Nobel peace prize and never held accountable.
The difference today is it is mostly Palestine and Lebanese people who are slaughtered.



Might that be the point of it all, the War/Genocide? What happens when it's all over, to Netanyahu specifically? (Probably nothing particular if we look at history...Kissinger, Bush/Cheney.) But does he stay in power? That's my question.



Feels like it's a choice of their own. The could choose not to do it.
It's not like the Palestine civilian and children can choose not to die.



Isn't that a creation of their own making? And an utterly absurd point in the context.


I find it abhorrent to defend torture, terrorism and so on.

Lebanon and Hezbollah have agreed to a U.S. proposal for a ceasefire with Israel with some comments on the content, a top Lebanese official told Reuters on Monday, describing the effort as the most serious yet to end to the fighting.

Ali Hassan Khalil, an aide to Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, said Lebanon had delivered its written response to the U.S. ambassador in Lebanon on Monday, and White House envoy Amos Hochstein was travelling to Beirut to continue talks.

There was no immediate comment from Israel.

Hezbollah, a heavily armed movement backed by Iran, endorsed its long-time ally Berri to negotiate over a ceasefire.
"Lebanon presented its comments on the paper in a positive atmosphere," Khalil said, declining to give further details. "All the comments that we presented affirm the precise adherence to (U.N.) Resolution 1701 with all its provisions," he said.

He was referring to U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended a previous war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006.

Its terms require Hezbollah to have no armed presence in the area between the Lebanese-Israeli border and the Litani River, which runs some 30 km (20 miles) north of the frontier.

Khalil said the success of the initiative now depended on Israel, saying if Israel did not want a solution, "it could make 100 problems".

Israel has long claimed that Resolution 1701 was never properly implemented, pointing to the presence of Hezbollah fighters and weapons along the border. Lebanon has accused Israel of violations including flying warplanes in its airspace.

Khalil said Israel was trying to negotiate "under fire", a reference to an escalation of its bombardment of Beirut and the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs. "This won't affect our position," he said.

Mass looting in Gaza as the decimated police force collapses

What's left of the police has resorted to simply shooting looters; these looters are being protected by Israel, which is doing whatever it can to worsen the starvation among Gazans.

I was an American who was alive and old enough to remember the Vietnam War. The comparison is apt. The American military collapsed because the soldiers felt they had been sent by their leaders to fight a pointless war and fight it with bad strategy which is what the IDF soldiers interviewed were talking about.

How Netanyahu is going to be removed is a good question nobody has come up with a good answer for. The number one problem is Israel has no constitution. Netenyahu is beholden to genocide supporters to stay in power. He does something to piss them off his government collapses and he faces jail time from multiple criminal investigations. He has every motivation to continue the war. IDF soldiers know this and being commanded by such a person is also a morale killer.