Noam Chomsky has said, “People who call themselves supporters of Israel are actually supporters of its moral degeneration and ultimate destruction.”
75 years on the Palestinians have been struggling to establish their own homeland on their own soil! I am struck by the emptiness, the exhaustion – all of which I find surprisingly un-liberating in Palestine because of Israel’s forceful occupation and America’s mighty and untitled support to Israel all along the fault-lines!!!
But the Palestinians loyal to their race, land… They bend to death—but never to disgrace!
A Palestinian mother refuses to leave her son’s grave as the Israeli forces attempt to bulldoze it along with other Palestinian graves in the cemetery.
Israel won’t give Palestinians some peace even after they’re dead. Iran and Saudi Arabia say Israel, its supporters inviting destructive insecurity.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Benny Gantz on 11 October agreed to form an emergency unity government and war cabinet. In Gaza, officials have reported more than 1,200 people killed in Israel’s uninterrupted campaign of air and artillery strikes, while the UN said more than 338,000 people have been displaced. At least 1,200 Israelis were killed in Hamas’s attack on 7 October.
Germany has given Israel the go-ahead to use two Heron TP combat drones in its counter-attack against Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, a defence source told Reuters on 11 October confirming a report by Spiegel magazine.
Germany has leased five of these drones from Israel’s arms maker IAI ISRAI.UL, with two of them still deployed in Israel for training German drone pilots, the source said.
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius on Wednesday approved a request by Israel to use the drones, Spiegel reported, adding the 16 German pilots in training were returning home because of the Hamas attack.
Biden calls Hamas attacks the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust as US death toll ticks up. President Joe Biden on 11 October condemned the weekend attack by Hamas militants on Israel as the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust as the number of US citizens killed in the fighting ticked up to at least 22.
“This attack was a campaign of pure cruelty — not just hate, but pure cruelty — against the Jewish people,” Biden told Jewish leaders gathered at the White House.
Beyond the 22 known to have been killed, the State Department said at least 17 more Americans remain unaccounted for in a war that has already claimed more than 2,200 lives on both sides. A “handful” of US citizens are among the estimated 150 hostages captured by Hamas militants during their shocking weekend assault on Israel, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said 11 October.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken headed to Israel on 11 October on a Middle East mission to prevent a wider war from erupting after an attack and hostage-taking by Palestinian Hamas militants and an Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
In a show of solidarity with Washington’s closest Middle East ally, Blinken was due to meet senior Israeli officials, possibly including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to discuss further boosting military support.
“I’m going with a very simple and clear message … that the United States has Israel’s back,” Blinken told reporters before boarding a plane bound for Israel.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman stressed in a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the kingdom is making “unremitting efforts” regionally and internationally to stem an escalation of the Israeli-Hamas war, the Saudi state news agency said in a statement.
The crown prince asserted the need to stop the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip, said the statement. He also stressed the kingdom’s firm position on supporting the Palestinian cause and its efforts to achieve a comprehensive and just peace.
Announcing the formation of a unity government in a late night TV appearance, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to keep fighting Hamas. “Every member of Hamas is a dead man,” he said.
“Hamas is Daesh [Islamic State group] and we will crush them and destroy them as the world has destroyed Daesh,” he said in a brief televised statement, the first delivered jointly with his war cabinet.
Netanyahu also detailed some of the atrocities that took place during the Hamas attack. He said boys and girls were shot in the head and that people had been burned alive.
The UN Security Council will meet on 13 October afternoon, diplomats said, to discuss the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.
The council has not yet decided if the meeting will be public, diplomats said. The 15-member body met behind closed-doors on 6 October, a day after the Hamas incursionary into Israel.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has launched a negotiation process with Hamas seeking the release of Israeli hostages who were kidnapped by the Palestinian militant group, according to Turkish media reports.
“They are negotiating to secure the release of the hostages,” an official source told AFP, confirming a report by the private TV channel Haberturk.
The UN’s Palestinian refugee agency said it was seeking US$104 million for life-saving aid to Gaza. “UNRWA is urgently seeking US$ 104 million to enable its multi-sectoral humanitarian response over the coming 90 days,” the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said in a statement.
“The requested funds will cover the urgent immediate food, non-food, health, shelter and protection needs of up to 250,000 persons seeking safety in UNRWA shelters across the ravaged Gaza Strip and another 250,000 Palestine refugees within the community.”
FRANCE 24’s Gaza correspondent Maha Abu al Kass was injured in Israeli strikes on the besieged enclave. While Kass and other family members suffered minor injuries in the attack, she says the psychological impact of Israel’s bombardment is enormous.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on 11 October told Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that Turkey had started work to get humanitarian aid to civilians hit by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Turkish presidency said.
In a phone call, Erdogan also said it was unacceptable for civilian settlements to be bombed, adding “it is important for countries in the region to give constructive messages for the conflict to end,” the presidency said on messaging platform X.
At least four Palestinians were killed on 11 October as armed Israeli settlers attacked a town south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said.
In a separate incident, a Palestinian man was killed by Israeli army fire near Bethlehem, the ministry said.
Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said on X, formerly Twitter, that “since 7 October, settlers have been attacking Palestinian residents in many parts of the West Bank”.
Amid war between Israel and Gaza militants that left thousands dead on both sides, “settlers are utilising the fact that public attention is focused elsewhere to… add fuel to the fire of violence”, the group said.
The Israeli army said an “error” was behind reports of a suspected “aerial infiltration” from Lebanon, ruling out any major incident near the border.
“There are no launches at this point from Lebanon. There are no alerts,” army spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a televised statement.
“This has been an error that we are looking into… We will check wether it’s a technical malfunction or a human error.”
Iraq’s top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani calls on the world to stand up to the “terrible brutality” happening in Gaza and prevent Israeli plans to inflict more harm on the Palestinian people, according to a statement.
“Ending the tragedy of this honourable people, which has been ongoing for seven decades, by attaining them their legitimate right and ending the occupation from their usurped lands, is the only way to achieve peace and security in this region,” al-Sistani said in a statement.
“Without that, the resistance will continue against aggressors and the cycle of violence will continue to claim more innocent lives,” the statement added.
The US is watching developments on the Lebanon-Israel border closely and does not want to see the conflict widened or expanded, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said on 11 October.
“We have seen rocket fire coming from southern Lebanon …into northern Israel. We obviously are watching this with great concern. We don’t want to see this conflict widened or expanded,” Kirby said in an interview with MSNBC.
The armed wings of Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad said on 11 October they were targeting southern and central Israel with rockets, as sirens sounded in areas surrounding the Gaza Strip.
Ask the Palestinians, they’ll reveal the face of occupation. Life, liberty and happiness, are the rights of every being. Whenever a government violates them, civilized humanity must intervene. I call to all humans far and near, rest not till Palestine statehood is declared.
