[IMPORTANT] Hamas launches foot assault against settlements.

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Lying is when kokopelli doesn't appreciate what one has observed, apparently.

Kokopelli do you have some personal interest..in your opinion about The Genocidal circumstances regarding the Middle
East.The Point,I thought was the continual attacks by IDF upon non combatants,per orders of Netenyahu . In other countries. .Discussion did not appear to include, Any Christian sects but rather Israels indiscriminate over reacts to all its neighbours ,Possibly except Jordanians ? a US ally but still Islamic based society. Perhap the Christians, deserve their own discussion thread...regarding these circumstances. Not a good thing that they may have gotten into the middle of the situation.

It comes to my mind that not a one of you have any idea where my biases lie.

I'm starting to think that all you do is lie. Truth doesn't seem to matter to you at all.

If you can't be rational, then there is no use paying any attention to your drive. Time to add you to the ignore list.

The bodies of father and son hostages Youssef and Hamza Ziyadne have been found in Gaza, Israel's Defense Minister Israel Katz said Tuesday.

Offering his condolences to the family on X, Katz said their memory would “not be forgotten.” He added that during his tenure as Israel’s foreign minister he “accompanied the courageous family through difficult moments and formed a special bond with Ali, Yosef’s brother and Hamza’s uncle, who joined me on many of my trips and diplomatic meetings.”

Meanwhile, Israeli military strikes across Gaza killed at least 27 people on Wednesday, Palestinian medics said, as international mediators stepped up efforts to seal a ceasefire and hostage exchange deal between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas.

An airstrike killed at least 10 people in a multi-story house in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City, while another killed five in the nearby Zeitoun suburb, medics said.

In Deir Al-Balah city in central Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering, and in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, a total of seven people were killed, they said.

Israel’s military said it struck Hamas militants operating in a school in Jabalia, and that it took steps to minimize risk to civilians.

Later on Wednesday, an Israeli airstrike killed five Palestinians inside the public garden in Gaza City, medics said. There was no Israeli military comment.

Such mass casualties are a daily occurrence in Gaza, where more than 46,000 Palestinians have now been killed in Israel’s 15-month-long assault against Hamas, according to health officials in the enclave.

As Israel continued its bombardments, the United States, Qatar and Egypt were making intensive efforts to reach a ceasefire deal.

The outgoing U.S. administration has called for a final push for a deal before President Joe Biden leaves office, and many in the region view president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20 as an unofficial deadline.

Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff said early Tuesday that he hoped to have good things to report about Israeli hostages held by the time Trump is sworn in as president. A deal would also involve the release of Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

The Gaza Health Ministry meanwhile warned that Nasser Hospital and the Gaza European Hospital might stop operations in a few hours unless the Israelis stop restricting the flow of fuel to the hospitals.

It later said it received a limited amount of fuel that would delay a complete halt of operations until Thursday unless more fuel arrives.

Israel denies hindering humanitarian relief to Gaza.

On Tuesday, Hamas stood by its demand that it will only free its remaining hostages if Israel agrees to end the war and withdraw all its troops from Gaza. Israel says it will not end the war until Hamas is dismantled and all hostages are free.

The German government has quietly decided to cut funds towards two Israeli human rights organizations, according to a Sunday report by the German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

The two NGOs in question are Zochrot and New Profile, with the former being reported to have lost 25% of its budget and the latter losing about half. The government also recently defunded Palestinian NGOs.

Zochrot advocates for Israel taking accountability of the Nakba, referring to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Arab residents during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and for the "right of return" for Palestinians. German officials told the Israeli NGO's director, Rachel Beitarie, that it was "important for Germany to support Israel because of Germany's history," according to the report.

The work organization Kurve Wustrow has done
Kurve Wustrow, a German anti-violence aid organization, wanted to continue working with the Israeli NGOs, holding meetings with officials and making phone calls. None of this, however, convinced the German government not to cut funding.

The German NGO's acting director, John Preuss, left feeling "tired and frustrated" as a result, with the report citing him saying that it was the first time that the German government defunded one of their projects. The NGO is also active in combat zones in other countries, such as Myanmar and Sudan.

Zochrot issued a response to the cutting of funds, saying, "We understand it as being consistent with the German government’s unconditional support of the state of Israel as the latter continues its crimes against the Palestinian people, in Gaza and everywhere."

The organization also said that the move puts them in a financially difficult situation. They then accused the German government of being actively involved in anti-Palestinian racism, as evident from its suppression of Palestinian expression in Germany.

The other NGO, New Profile, is more volunteer-based, offering support to objectors of the IDF who risk imprisonment.

An investigation by Deutsche Welle concluded that the defunding of the two Israeli organizations is a precursor to cutting funds of other human rights organizations that are critical of Israel's military conduct in Gaza.

Olga Deutsch, NGO Monitor Vice President, stated: “Since October 7, the German government has made a fundamental change in its approach to funding human rights projects and NGOs. Germany is now screening NGO output and holding its grantees accountable, as they should. Both Zochrot and New Profile openly promote one-state agendas and make statements that are unacceptable in Germany. A German organization like Kurve Wustrow should have been able to do its own due diligence."

"There is a clear difference between encouraging healthy discourse about human rights and denying Israel’s right to exist. When this line is crossed, Germany and other governments should act decisively and swiftly," Deutsch concluded.

Amnesty’s International Board has suspended Amnesty International (AI) Israel’s membership with the nongovernmental organization’s network for two years, according to leaked internal memorandums issued on Monday.

The decision was allegedly taken after the Israeli branch criticized the international body’s recent reports on it, including that it systematically excluded Palestinians.
Insiders said, however, that evidence of racism on Israel’s part may have been orchestrated by AI leadership, and the international body has its obsessions and bias against Israel.

“We take this action in response to evidence of endemic anti-Palestinian racism within AI Israel, which violates core human rights principles and Amnesty values, and evidence of AI Israel’s misalignment with and hostility to Amnesty positions,” read a Monday email from the Amnesty International Board’s interim chair Tiumalu Lauvale Peter Fa’afiu.

Fa’afiu asserted that Amnesty Israel had taken action against Amnesty International’s research publicizing differing opinions against the 2022 report, “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity” and the 2023 report, “You Feel Like You Are Subhuman:’ Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza.”

AI Israel has sought to publicly discredit Amnesty’s human rights research and positions,” said Fa’afiu.

“Its efforts to publicly undermine the findings and recommendations of Amnesty’s 2022 report on Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians and, more recently, Amnesty’s 2024 report on Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, have been deeply prejudicial to Amnesty’s human rights mission, threatening our credibility, integrity and operational coherence.”

AMNESTY ISRAEL in December had rejected AI’s findings accusing the State of Israel of committing genocide during the war against Hamas in Gaza, arguing that the allegation of genocide had not been “sufficiently substantiated.”

The local branch did say it believed that there were possible widespread international law violations, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.

It added that a minority of its team agreed that there was enough information to establish that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump shared a video of contentious economics professor Jeffrey Sachs describing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as "a deep, dark son of a b***h" responsible for orchestrating U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.

Trump's sharing of the video on Truth Social highlights the President-elect's questionable sources of information on policy matters and his role in amplifying contentious historical interpretations using his substantial social media platform.

It further underscores a growing foreign policy debate within the GOP, challenging the party orthodoxy's efforts to paint itself as unabashedly "pro-Israel" as the Democratic Party continues refining its own position.

In a video originally posted by an account called Wall Street Apes, Sachs charged Netanyahu with orchestrating the U.S. invasion of Iraq. "It was a phony war, where did it come from?" he asks.

"Netanyahu had, from 1995 onward, the theory that the only way we're going to get rid of Hamas and Hezbollah is by toppling the governments that support them. That's Iraq, Iran and Syria. The guy is nothing if not obsessive."

"He's gotten us into endless wars and because of the power of all of this in U.S. politics, he's gotten his way," alluding to the power of the pro-Israel lobby and groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Sachs's video also alleges U.S. involvement in overthrowing the Assad regime in Syria, with Sachs accusing the media of "lying through their teeth" about Russia's role in Syria, while "Obama [tasked] the CIA to overthrow the Syrian government starting four years before Russia intervened."

The Wall Street Apes account, which shared Trump's post, claimed that if the CIA orchestrates regime changes abroad, it "100 percent" engages in similar activities domestically, tying Syria to the so-called "deep state" narrative that has become an obsession of Trump's movement.

So will Hamas release their American hostages?

Why would they have not already released them? We already know the answer to this one -- Hamas is a terrorist organization and are committing terrorism.

Today, Trump is threatening strong action against Hamas if those hostages are not released by his inauguration day of January 20.

That likely depends on whether Israel will release the hundreds of Palestinian hostages held without charge and many taken before Oct 7th.

Trump is a self-serving pompous oaf, an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Everything Trump touches dies.

Hamas has lost track of the majority of the hostages held in captivity in northern Gaza due to Israel's military activities in the area, a source in the Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas's armed wing, told Qatari state-run media giant Al Jazeera on Friday.

"Most of the enemy's prisoners in the northern Gaza Brigade are now missing due to the Zionist aggression," the source told Al Jazeera.

Hamas has previously repeatedly stated that in order to compile a list of hostages it has been holding, it would need several days to at least a week a week, in order to locate them.

The Hamas official said that the Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades had warned a number of times of the potentiality of hostages going missing in areas where the IDF was operating.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF are "fully responsible for the lives and fate of their prisoners," the source added.

A message to the hostage families
Also on Friday, the terror organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad published a propaganda video directed at the hostages' families.

"To the families of the enemy prisoners," PIJ captioned the video in Hebrew and Arabic. The video featured clips of Netanyahu speaking to the hostages' families.

"Your leadership is killing your children with persistence and insistence," PIJ wrote in Hebrew and Arabic at the end of the video.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump warned in December that there will be “hell to pay” if hostages held by Hamas in Gaza are not released by his inauguration on Jan. 20.

Trump echoed this warning during a press conference on Tuesday, stating that “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if the hostages aren’t returned by the time that he takes office. “It will not be good for Hamas. And it will not be good, frankly, for anyone,” Trump said.

But the president-elect hasn’t elaborated on what this means or detailed what steps he would take if this deadline were not met. Trump’s team did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Foreign Policy on his recent remarks surrounding a Gaza hostage deal.

Trump’s warnings to Hamas come amid one of the most transformative and chaotic periods for the Middle East in recent history and raise questions about how involved the president-elect is willing to get in the region after pledging “no new wars” on the campaign trail.

“Trump’s threat is designed to convince Hamas that it’s more likely to get a better deal with the outgoing Biden administration than with the incoming Trump administration, and so it should make one now,” Jonathan Panikoff, who served as the deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East at the National Intelligence Council from 2015 to 2020, told Foreign Policy.

“While there are limited avenues of additional pressure the Trump administration can put on Hamas in Gaza aside from supporting more Israeli strikes in the strip, much of Hamas’s current leadership is external to Gaza, and the Trump administration could seek to apply additional sanctions on them and their families to try to increase pressure,” added Panikoff, who is now the director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council.

By setting a hard deadline of Jan. 20 for the release of the hostages, Trump is trying to “put more pressure on the process” and “create a sense of urgency,” retired Gen. Joseph Votel, who oversaw U.S. military operations in the Middle East from 2016 to 2019 as commander of U.S. Central Command, told Foreign Policy.

Votel, who is now a distinguished senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said it’s unlikely that Trump would turn to U.S. military power as a solution if the Israel-Hamas war is still raging on Inauguration Day. Trump could increase support for Israeli military activities in Gaza to ramp up pressure on Hamas, Votel said, but with the “level of destruction” already seen in the enclave, “it’s hard to see what more might be done.”

One possible step that Trump could take is to support Israel imposing increased restrictions on humanitarian assistance into the enclave, as one close associate of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for. However, this would likely lead to both domestic and international criticism, and it might not sway Hamas one way or another.

“If Hamas were worried about the suffering of Gazans, this would have been settled a long time ago. Its leaders are not concerned about the suffering—they exploit it,” said Dennis Ross, a former U.S. envoy to the Middle East, in an interview with Foreign Policy. “Even if President Trump gives Israel more of a free hand and does not pressure it on humanitarian assistance, it is not clear how much that will affect Hamas leaders in Gaza.

Another question hanging over Trump’s push for a hostage deal is whether Netanyahu, who has faced fierce criticism from families of hostages and been accused of hampering cease-fire talks, will be an obstacle. Netanyahu and Trump have historically been close allies, but the Israeli prime minister is also trying to keep his fragile coalition government together—and far-right members have threatened to bring it down if he accepts a cease-fire deal.

Trump’s Jan. 20 deadline “probably does not mean much to Netanyahu so long as he’s not viewed as being the impediment to a deal,” said Panikoff, the former National Intelligence Council official. “If Hamas actually signs off on a deal, then the pressure will shift to Prime Minister Netanyahu, because he will do almost anything—short of collapsing his coalition—to ensure he begins the second Trump term in good graces with the president-elect,” he added.