Tag: Hezbollah

Hell hath no fury
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Hell hath no fury like a Bill Ackman scorned: For those just tuning in, let me catch you up on the Harvard/antisemitism/plagiarism scandal that just won’t end.

Back in December, three elite university presidents—including Harvard President Claudine Gay, University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, and MIT President Sally Kornbluth—were trotted before Congress to give testimonies related to their handling of antisemitic speech and pro-Palestine activism on campus. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R–N.Y.) raked them all over the coals, declaring their answers unsatisfactory and insensitive and full of legalese, and Magill soon resigned.

Harvard initially stood by Gay, but then a mostly conservative collection of journalists and activists—as well as some big donors, like hedge fund manager Bill Ackman—publicized her extensive track record of plagiarism. Gay resigned, but not before calling everyone racist. (She is a black woman, and she claims that that’s the real reason people tried to take her down.)

Now Business Insider has accused Ackman’s wife—Neri Oxman, an entrepreneur and former MIT professor—of plagiarism herself. Oxman, they say, “stole sentences and whole paragraphs from Wikipedia, other scholars and technical documents in her academic writing.” (As an aside: Oxman’s work is interesting. “Her team at the MIT Media Lab coaxed silkworms to build sculptures,” notes the article. Oxman “also made undulating structures out of natural materials like cellulose and chitin, the material found in shrimp cells.”)

Now, Ackman has basically sworn revenge: “There has been no due process,” wrote Ackman this morning on X. “Neri Oxman was given 90 minutes to respond to a 7,000-word plagiarism allegation before Business Insider published a piece saying she was a plagiarist.” For the record, it’s good to give sources sufficient time to respond, but that’s not quite a due process issue.

“This experience has inspired me to save all news organizations from the trouble of doing plagiarism reviews,” he declared, vowing to helpfully review the work of all Business Insider reporters and MIT faculty, after claiming that Insider‘s source is most likely inside MIT. (Side-by-side reviews for plagiarism are getting easier and faster to do in the era of artificial intelligence.)

Now Ackman’s allegiance to his wife is being alternately memed and criticized:

when he says “I love you,” but ackman said “would they accuse you of plagiarism, I would burn the institutions to the ground, and salt the earth where they once stood, let there be a thousand dark ages, and you, lordess of my castle laboratory, my dark queen for eternity”

— Mike Solana (@micsolana) January 7, 2024

This all started in early Oct. when Bill Ackman went ballistic and tried to ruin the lives of some 18 year old Harvard students, get them blacklisted over an Israel letter, and got upset university leaders didn’t help with this project, so he escalated — v pathetic news cycle.

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) January 7, 2024

Truly Shakespearean if Bill Ackman’s wife loses her academic career because her husband led a national charge against the very crime she committed many years ago.

— Joe Colangelo (@Itsjoeco) January 5, 2024

Bill Ackman is literally trying to claim that you can copy Wikipedia wholesale and claim it as your own because it’s “open source”

If you ever had the misconception that billionaires were all brilliant, let his words disabuse you of the notion. https://t.co/Q5PlbvC1ay

— Whey Standard (@Whey_standard) January 8, 2024

On one hand, it’s fair to collectively groan Why do we have another goddamn Harvard-related news cycle? On the other, we’re in a weird moment for plagiarism and the related subject of intellectual property. If ChatGPT is the death knell for plenty of academic writing, maybe it’s replacing something that had already mostly withered and died.

The focus of the Harvard kerfuffle could have been the initial congressional testimony, and the speech double standards present on college campuses. Or it could’ve been the intellectual bankruptcy of DEI bureaucracy. Instead, it is becoming trench warfare over plagiarism, which seems like the dumbest possible way for this to all go.

Israel pummels Hezbollah: Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari says the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have struck Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon in retaliatory fire, killing at least seven fighters. The IDF claims that Hezbollah struck an Israeli military base on Saturday, most likely due to Israel’s killing of a senior Hamas leader inside Lebanon last week.

Though war has been raging between Israel and Hamas since October 7, when Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel, killing 1,200 civilians—in some cases brutally raping and beheading the victims—many had hoped that other factions in the Middle East, particularly those backed by Iran, would not be drawn into the conflict. With the increased Israel-Hezbollah conflict, as well as Houthi activity snarling global shipping and provoking some U.S. military action, that’s not looking likely.

Scenes from New York:

Surfer politics, spotted in Rockaway.

(Liz Wolfe)

QUICK HITS
- The Supreme Court will decide whether former President Donald Trump can be kept off ballots via the 14th Amendment, which includes a section barring officials who have “engaged in insurrection” from holding public office. Oral arguments will be held on February 8.
- Congress returns this week and is supposed to pass some funding bills, as another shutdown deadline looms on January 19.
- A story about a salon upcharge for clients with autism is making the rounds, but the actual underlying facts seem…mostly fine, like a hairstylist is catering to an underserved market.
- The National Park Service apparently has nothing better to do with its time than tear down statues of old white men.
- Please enjoy the absolute worst segment on the Claudine Gay scandal, involving the most Hilaria Baldwin–esque overpronunciation of the word Latino you could possibly imagine.
- “Often, when an issue becomes polarized, you’ll see thermostatic effects in public opinion, as when Democrats became more liberal on immigration in response to Donald Trump’s histrionic attacks on immigrants,” writes Josh Barro on Very Serious. “But while liberal figures on campus like to talk about themselves as a vanguard in a fight against conservative know-nothings who would take down knowledge and expertise, there is no pro-college backlash among liberals that is apparent in the polls.”
- Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 had an accident while up in the air, and part of the plane flew off. A few injuries were sustained, but all passengers survived following an emergency landing.
- Tell me you don’t know what unrealized gains are without telling me you don’t know what unrealized gains are:
BREAKING: Billionaires and centimillionaires held $8.5 TRILLION in untaxed, unrealized capital gains in 2022.

Unrealized gains are the largest source of income for the ultra-rich—but they’re completely UNTAXED under our tax code.

This is why we need a billionaire income tax ???? pic.twitter.com/0ewB3H05SQ

— Americans For Tax Fairness (@4TaxFairness) January 3, 2024
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Liz Wolfe

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January 8, 2024
Hezbollah fires rockets at Israel in response to killing of top Hamas leader

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Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets from Lebanon into northern Israel on Saturday, warning that the barrage was its initial response to the targeted killing, presumably by Israel, of a top Hamas leader in Lebanon’s capital earlier this week.

The rocket attack came a day after Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said his group must retaliate for the killing of Saleh Arouri, the deputy political leader of the militia’s ally Hamas, in a Hezbollah stronghold south of Beirut. He said if Hezbollah did not strike back, all of Lebanon would be vulnerable to Israeli attack. He appeared to be making his case for a response to the Lebanese public, even at the risk of escalating the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel as the war between Israel and Hamas rages on.

Hezbollah said it launched 62 rockets toward an Israeli air surveillance base on Mount Meron and that it scored direct hits. It said rockets also struck two army posts near the border. The Israeli military said about 40 rockets were fired toward Meron and that a base was targeted, but made no mention of the base being hit. It said it struck the Hezbollah cell that fired the rockets.

Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon hit the outskirts of Kouthariyeh al-Siyad village, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the border, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said, adding that there were casualties. Such strikes deeper inside Lebanon have been rare since the border fighting started nearly three months ago. NNA also said Israeli forces shelled border areas including the town of Khiam. Israel’s army had no immediate comment.

An Israeli military vehicle moves along the border with Gaza as smoke rises following an Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip, seen from southern Israel, Saturday, Jan. 6, 2024. In Gaza, Israel is moving to scale down its military assault in the north of the territory and pressing its heavy offensive in the south, vowing to crush Hamas.

Leo Correa / AP

Separately, the armed wing of the Islamic Group in Lebanon, the country’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and a close ally of Hamas, said it fired two volleys of rockets toward the Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona on Friday night. Two of the group’s members were killed in the strike that killed Arouri.

The cross-border escalation came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was kicking off an urgent Middle East diplomatic tour, his fourth to the region since the Israel-Hamas war erupted three months ago. The war was triggered by a deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages.

In recent weeks, Israel has been scaling back its military assault in northern Gaza and pressing its heavy offensive in the territory’s south, vowing to crush Hamas. In the south, most of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians are being squeezed into smaller areas in a humanitarian disaster while still being pounded by Israeli airstrikes.

On Saturday, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said 122 Palestinians had been killed over the past 24 hours, bringing the total since the start of the war to 22,722. The count does not differentiate between combatants and civilians. The ministry has said two-thirds of those killed have been women or children. The overall number of wounded rose to 58,166, the ministry said.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah received at least 46 bodies overnight, according to hospital records seen by The Associated Press. Many were men who apparently had been shot. Fighting has raged between Israeli forces and militants in the area. The dead also included five members of a family who were killed in an airstrike, the records showed.

The latest Israeli-dropped leaflets urged Palestinians in some areas near the hospital to evacuate, citing “dangerous fighting.”

In the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, the focus of Israel’s ground offensive, the European Hospital received the bodies of 18 people who were killed in an overnight airstrike on a house in the city’s Maan neighborhood, said Saleh al-Hamms, head of the hospital’s nursing department. Citing witnesses, he said more than three dozen people had been sheltering in the house, including some who had been displaced.

Israel has held Hamas responsible for civilian casualties, saying the group has embedded itself within Gaza’s civilian infrastructure. Still, international criticism of Israel’s conduct in the war has grown because of the rising civilian death toll. The United States has urged Israel to do more to prevent harm to civilians, even as it keeps sending weapons and munitions while shielding its close ally against international censure.

Blinken began his latest Mideast trip in Turkey on Saturday. The Biden administration believes Turkey and others can exert influence, particularly on Iran and its proxies, to tamp down fears of a regional conflagration. Those fears have spiked in recent days with incidents in the Red Sea, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran.

In talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Blinken sought Turkish support for nascent plans for post-war Gaza that could include monetary or in-kind contributions to reconstruction efforts and some form of participation in a proposed multinational force that could operate in or adjacent to the territory.

From Turkey, Blinken was traveling to Turkish rival and fellow NATO ally Greece to meet Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis at his home on the island of Crete. Mitsotakis and his government have been supportive of U.S. efforts to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from spreading and have signaled their willingness to assist should the situation deteriorate.

Other stops on the trip include Jordan, followed by Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on Sunday and Monday. Blinken will visit Israel and the West Bank next week before wrapping up the trip in Egypt.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief said during a visit to Beirut that he aims to jump-start a European-Arab initiative to revive a peace process that would result in a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Josep Borrell said he will visit Saudi Arabia on Sunday.

Israel & Hamas At War

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January 6, 2024
A top Hamas official, Saleh al-Arouri, is killed in Beirut blast

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An explosion in Beirut on Tuesday killed Saleh al-Arouri, a top official with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, and several others, officials with Hamas and the Lebanese group Hezbollah said.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the blast was carried out by an Israeli drone. Israeli officials declined to comment. Tuesday’s blast shook a residential building in the Beirut suburb of Musharafieh. Reports differed on the death toll, but Hamas said six other members of the group were also killed, including two military commanders.

If Israel is behind the attack it could mark a major escalation in the Middle East conflict. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who has previously vowed to retaliate against any Israeli targeting of Palestinian officials in Lebanon, said on local television, “We affirm that this crime will never pass without response and punishment.”

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati said many people were injured in the explosion, which he called “a crime” and said was meant “to drag Lebanon into a new phase of confrontation with Israel.”

Multiple deaths were reported after an explosion in southern Beirut on January 2, 2023.

Houssam Shbaro/Anadolu via Getty Images

Hamas official Bassem Naim confirmed to The Associated Press that al-Arouri was killed in the blast. A Hezbollah official speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations also said al-Arouri was killed.

Al-Arouri, one of the founders of Hamas’ military wing, had headed the group’s presence in the West Bank. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had threatened to kill him even before the Hamas-Israel war began on Oct. 7.

The United States government had previously offered a reward of up to $5 million for information on al-Arouri, saying he had “been linked to several terrorist attacks, hijackings, and kidnappings.”

The explosion shook Musharafieh, one of the Lebanese capital’s southern suburbs that are a stronghold of the militant Hezbollah group, an Iran-backed ally of Hamas and one of the world’s most heavily armed non-state military forces.

The explosion came during more than two months of heavy exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and members of Hezbollah along Lebanon’s southern border. Hezbollah fighters and Israeli soldiers have been killed in the fighting there, and Israel has evacuated thousands of civilians from border communities.

The fighting has mainly been concentrated a few miles from the border, but on several occasions Israel’s air force hit Hezbollah targets deeper in Lebanon. Earlier on Tuesday, Hezbollah said its fighters carried out several attacks along the Lebanon-Israel border targeting Israeli military posts.

Israeli war cabinet member and former defense minister Benny Gantz said late last month that, if the Hezbollah attacks did not stop along the border, Israel’s military would work to push the armed group back inside Lebanon.

Israel & Hamas At War

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January 2, 2024
Israeli army launches attacks on targets in Syria and Lebanon

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As war in Gaza rages, Israel is continuing its campaign against Syrian military and Hezbollah targets, sparking fears of regional spillover.

Israel has launched attacks on positions in Syria and Lebanon, as part of its ongoing campaign against opposing militaries and armed forces in the Middle East.

“The [Israeli army] struck military infrastructure belonging to the Syrian Army,” the Israeli military said in a post on the social media platform X on Tuesday.

“[Israeli military] fighter jets also struck Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure in Lebanon,” it added, promising it would “continue to operate against any threat to Israel’s sovereignty”.

Israel’s military has been engaged in cross-border fighting with Hezbollah and has launched repeated air raids on Syria since its war on Gaza began on October 7, raising fears of the conflict spilling over into the wider region.

In response to yesterday’s launches toward Israeli territory, the IDF struck military infrastructure belonging to the Syrian Army.

IDF fighter jets also struck Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure in Lebanon.

The IDF will continue to operate against any threat to Israel’s… pic.twitter.com/xSty1eyMkb

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) January 2, 2024

The latest attacks, which occurred between Monday and Tuesday, marked a spike in tensions between Israel and neighbours it has said have links to its enemy, Iran.

Earlier on Tuesday, Syrian state news agency SANA said pre-dawn Israeli attacks came from the direction of the Golan Heights.

The air raids targeted “a number of sites in the Damascus countryside”, SANA reported, citing an unnamed military source as saying only “material damage” had been caused.

Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that one position targeted near the town of Kanaker housed members from Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the AFP news agency reported.

Parts of the southern Lebanese city of Yaroun also came under fire, the Israeli military said on Tuesday, after Hezbollah announced it had fired on Israeli units near the northern Israeli village of Sarit.

Iran links

“What Israel is facing at the moment is fighters in various countries in the region that are mostly backed by Iran,” said Al Jazeera’s Sara Khairat, reporting from Tel Aviv on Tuesday.

Syria and Iran are regional allies, with President Bashar al-Assad having received staunch support from Tehran during the war in Syria. Since its formation in 1982, Iran-backed Hezbollah has grown into a powerful “state within a state” in Lebanon, and has also backed Hamas in Gaza.

“Of course the biggest threat so far has been from the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah in Lebanon that has been firing every single day,” Khairat said. “This is just showing that despite [Israel’s] continued war in Gaza, these attacks are going to continue.

“Certainly there has been a call amongst those in the [Israeli] military to start to look to redirect their efforts especially along that northern border, with Israel itself saying that if diplomatic efforts don’t work then it wouldn’t be afraid to consider other military action against Lebanon,” our correspondent added.

Tuesday’s attacks follow closely on the heels of an Israeli air raid near Aleppo at the end of December, which caused some material damage, according to the Syrian Ministry of Defence.

Since the Syrian war began, Israel has launched hundreds of air raids on Syrian territory, both on Syrian military and Hezbollah targets. Israel has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran to expand its presence in Syria.

In December, an Israeli air raid outside Damascus killed Razi Moussavi, a senior adviser in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) responsible for coordinating the military alliance between Syria and Iran.

Reports from Iran’s news agency INRA said that Mousavi had been part of an entourage accompanying IRGC General Qassem Soleimani at Baghdad airport when he was killed by a US drone attack almost exactly four years ago.

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January 2, 2024
Israelis protest for hostages’ release as clashes increase with Hezbollah at the Lebanon border

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Israelis protest for hostages’ release as clashes increase with Hezbollah at the Lebanon border – CBS News

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The Israel Defense Forces and Hezbollah are continuing to trade blows along Lebanon’s border with Israel, leading to concerns that the northern border may become a second front amid the war in Gaza. Meanwhile, Israeli citizens are calling for the release of all remaining hostages taken on Oct. 7. Ian Lee has more from Israel.

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December 29, 2023
U.S. retaliates in Iraq after three U.S. troops wounded in attack

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U.S. Army soldiers watch as fellow Coalition soldiers pass by near the entrance to the International Zone on May 30, 2021 in Baghdad, Iraq.

John Moore | Getty Images News | Getty Images

The U.S. military carried out retaliatory air strikes on Monday in Iraq after a one-way drone attack earlier in the day by Iran-aligned militants that left one U.S. service member in critical condition and wounded two other U.S. personnel, officials said.

The back-and-forth clash was the latest demonstration of how the Israel-Hamas war is rippling across the Middle East, creating turmoil that has turned U.S. troops at bases in Iraq and Syria into targets.

Iran-aligned groups in Iraq and Syria oppose Israel’s campaign in Gaza and hold the United States partly responsible.

At President Joe Biden’s direction, the U.S. military carried out the strikes in Iraq at 1:45 GMT, likely killing “a number of Kataib Hezbollah militants” and destroying multiple facilities used by the group, the U.S. military said.

“These strikes are intended to hold accountable those elements directly responsible for attacks on coalition forces in Iraq and Syria and degrade their ability to continue attacks. We will always protect our forces,” said General Michael Erik Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command, in a statement.

A U.S. base in Iraq’s Erbil that houses U.S. forces came under attack from a one-way drone earlier on Monday, leading to the latest U.S. casualties.

The base has been repeatedly targeted. Reuters reported on another significant drone attack in October on the barracks at the Erbil base on Oct. 26, which penetrated U.S. air defenses but failed to detonate.

The Pentagon did not disclose details about the identity of the service member who was critically wounded or offer more details on the injuries sustained in the attack. It also did not offer details on how this drone appeared to penetrate the base’s air defenses.

“My prayers are with the brave Americans who were injured,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement.

The White House National Security Council said Biden was briefed on the attack on Monday and ordered the Pentagon to prepare response options against those responsible.

“The President places no higher priority than the protection of American personnel serving in harm’s way. The United States will act at a time and in a manner of our choosing should these attacks continue,” NSC spokesperson Adrienne Watson said.

Still, it is unclear if the latest U.S. retaliation will deter future action against U.S. forces, who are deployed in Iraq and Syria to prevent a resurgence of Islamic State militants.

The U.S. military has already come under attack at least 100 times in Iraq and Syria since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, usually with a mix of rockets and one-way attack drones.

The U.S. embassy compound in Baghdad also came under mortar fire earlier in December, the first time it had been attacked in more than a year, in a major escalation.

The latest unrest came less than a week after Austin returned from a trip to the Middle East focused on containing efforts by Iran-aligned groups to broaden of the Israel-Hamas war.

That includes setting up a U.S.-led maritime coalition to safeguard Red Sea commerce following a series of drone and missile attacks against commercial vessels by Houthi militants in Yemen.

The Pentagon said on Thursday that more than 20 countries have agreed to participate in the new U.S.-led coalition, known as Operation Prosperity Guardian.

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December 25, 2023
How the Hamas hostage-release deal evolved — and nearly fell apart — in final days

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The negotiations hardly ran smoothly. But, in the end, persistence paid off.

Six weeks ago, not long after Hamas killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and took scores of others hostage in a surprise assault, the government of Qatar quietly reached out to the United States to discuss how to secure the release of those who were taken captive by the militant group.

But…

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November 24, 2023
Republican warns Hezbollah could have “huge” drug-dealing market in US

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Republican Senator Tom Cotton warned that President Joe Biden‘s push to ban menthol cigarettes could create a “huge black market” for groups like Hezbollah to sell in the United States.

The White House has long sought to ban menthol cigarettes, which health advocates say can be more addictive and harder to quit than other tobacco products. But Biden’s administration has faced pushback on the plan from both sides of the aisle, including recent critics who warn that the ban could worsen the illegal drug market in the U.S.

In a post to X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday, Cotton, of Arkansas, claimed that Biden’s plan to bar menthol cigarettes was “paternalistic” and “hypocritical,” and raised concerns about how the ban could impact national security.

Senator Tom Cotton is pictured at the U.S. Capitol on February 9, 2023, in Washington, D.C. Cotton warned on Wednesday that the Biden administration’s push to ban menthol cigarettes could open an opportunity for Lebanon militant group Hezbollah to trade contraband cigarettes in the U.S.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images

“Joe Biden wants to ban menthol cigarettes, which are favored by black smokers,” Cotton wrote. “Meanwhile, he wants to legalize weed for white college kids and mail out free crack pipes.”

“The administration’s ban is paternalistic, it’s hypocritical, and it creates a huge black market for Mexican cartels and Hezbollah,” Cotton added. “And all because Mike Bloomberg told him to.”

Newsweek reached out to the White House Press Office via email for comment Wednesday evening.

The Food and Drug Administration sent final rules to the White House Office of Management and Budget regarding a ban on menthol cigarettes in October. As CNN reports, advocates for the ban say that restricting menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars could save hundreds of thousands of lives.

Hezbollah, a militant group in Lebanon that the U.S. State Department characterizes as a terrorist organization, has previously been linked to illegal cigarette smuggling schemes both within the U.S. and abroad. In the 1990s, U.S. officials at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (AFT) discovered that a portion of the profits made from a contraband cigarette scheme sold between North Carolina and Michigan were being put toward funding Hezbollah.

A similar scheme was discovered in New York in 2013, CNN previously reported, when 16 Palestinian men, some of whom had ties to known terrorist organizations, were indicted for smuggling contraband cigarettes across several state lines.

Tensions between militant groups such as Hezbollah and the Western world have risen in the past month after Palestinian militants Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel October 7, subsequently launching the Israeli government’s heaviest-ever military response on the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah leadership has touted that the group has a “plan and vision” for its involvement in the war, and conflict between the Israeli military and Hezbollah has escalated along the northern border of Israel.

Cotton’s statement on Wednesday arrived a day after Republican Congressman Andrew Garbarino, of New York, and Democratic Representative Jared Moskowitz, of Florida, signed a joint letter that warned the pending FDA ban on menthol cigarettes could lead to “unintended national security consequences.”

“If there was ever a moment to pause and reevaluate the potential impact of every U.S. policy choice on our national security, this is the time,” the lawmakers wrote.

“It is well-documented that Hezbollah is a leader in the illicit cigarette trade—not halfway around the world but right here in the Western Hemisphere,” the letter continued, which was addressed to Biden.

“There have been cases in which Hezbollah and Hamas cells have smuggled cigarettes into the United States to send the revenue overseas,” read the letter. “Given Hezbollah’s established cigarette business and its ties to the Mexican drug cartels, we cannot discount the potential for this FDA-proposed rule to open a massive revenue stream for this Hamas-allied foreign terrorist organization.”

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November 15, 2023
Blinken in Tel Aviv as Israel says its troops have surrounded Gaza City

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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel Friday to press for more humanitarian aid to be allowed into besieged Gaza, while the Israeli military said its troops tightened their encirclement of Gaza City, the focus of Israel’s campaign to crush the enclave’s ruling Hamas group.

Soldiers from an Israeli artillery unit operate near the border with the Gaza Strip on Nov. 3, 2023 in Sderot, Israel.

Amir Levy / Getty Images

On the northern border with Lebanon, tensions continued to escalate ahead of a speech planned later Friday by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, his first public comments since Hamas attacked Israel last month, stoking fears the conflict could widen into a regional one.

On Thursday, Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, attacked Israeli positions in the north with drones, mortar fire and suicide drones. The Israeli military said it retaliated with warplanes and helicopter gunships.

Since the Gaza war began Oct. 7, Hezbollah has been taking calculated steps to keep Israel’s military busy on its border with Lebanon, but so far nothing of the extent that it would ignite an all-out war.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Israeli troops killed another Hamas commander Friday, Mustafa Daloul, who the IDF said “played a central role in managing the fight against the IDF forces in the Gaza Strip.”

The IDF said Friday Israeli forces have completely encircled Gaza City, a densely packed cluster of neighborhoods that Israel says is the center of Hamas military infrastructure and includes a vast network of underground tunnels, bunkers and command centers.

Israeli troops are “fighting in a built-up, dense, complex area,” said the military’s chief of staff, Herzi Halevy.

Israel military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Israeli forces were in “face to face” battles with militants, calling in airstrikes and shelling when needed. He said they were inflicting heavy losses on Hamas fighters and destroying their infrastructure with engineering equipment.

Casualties on both sides are expected to rise as Israeli troops advance toward the dense residential neighborhoods of Gaza City.

On Thursday, Israeli planes dropped leaflets warning residents to immediately evacuate the Shati refugee camp, which borders Gaza City’s center.

“Time is up,” the leaflets read, warning that strikes “with crushing force” against Hamas fighters were coming.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain in the path of fighting in northern Gaza, despite Israel’s repeated calls for them to evacuate. Many have crowded into U.N. facilities, hoping for safety.

Still, four U.N. schools-turned-shelter in northern Gaza and Bureij were hit in recent days, killing 24 people, according to Philippe Lazzarini, general-secretary of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA.

Rocket fire from Gaza into Israel, and daily skirmishes between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants, have also disrupted life for millions of Israelis and forced an estimated 250,000 to evacuate border towns.

More than 9,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, and Israeli authorities say another 1,400 people have died in there, mainly civilians killed during Hamas’ initial attack.

Blinken is making his third trip to Israel since the Hamas attack. This trip takes him to Tel Aviv and Amman, Jordan, and follows President Biden calling for a humanitarian “pause” in the fighting. The aim would be to let in aid for Palestinians and let out more foreign nationals and wounded.

Israel didn’t immediately respond to Mr. Biden’s suggestion. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has previously ruled out a cease-fire, said Thursday that, “We are advancing. … Nothing will stop us.” He vowed to destroy Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip.

The U.S. has pledged unwavering support for Israel after Hamas militants killed hundreds of men, women and children on Oct. 7 and took some 240 people captive.

Before Blinken departed, the U.S. State Department reiterated American “support for Israel’s right to defend itself.”

At the same time, the Biden administration has pushed for Israel to let more aid into Gaza amid growing alarm over the humanitarian crisis.

Around 800 people have entered Egypt through the Rafah border crossing from Gaza over the past two days.

Egypt has said it will not accept an influx of Palestinian refugees, fearing Israel will not allow them to return to Gaza after the war.

President Biden, during a brief exchange with journalists at the Oval Office, said 74 Americans who are dual citizens got out of Gaza on Thursday. A list released by Gaza’s Hamas-run Interior Ministry Friday had the names of 367 American nationals approved to cross over the border. At least five American nongovernmental organization workers were confirmed in statements by their respective groups to CBS News to have crossed into Egypt Wednesday.

More than 3,700 Palestinian children have been killed in 25 days of fighting, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. Bombardment has driven more than half the territory’s 2.3 million people from their homes. Food, water and fuel are running low under Israel’s siege, and overwhelmed hospitals warn they are on the verge of collapse.

Israel has allowed more than 260 trucks carrying food and medicine through the crossing, but aid workers say it’s not nearly enough. Israeli authorities have refused to allow fuel in, saying Hamas is hoarding fuel for military use and would steal new supplies.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. was not advocating for a general cease-fire but a “temporary, localized” pause.

Israel and the U.S. seem to have no clear plan for what would come next if Hamas rule in Gaza is brought down – a key question on Blinken’s agenda on his visit, according to the State Department.

Earlier in the week, Blinken suggested that the Palestinian Authority govern Gaza. Hamas drove the authority’s forces out of Gaza in its 2007 takeover of the territory. The authority now holds limited powers in some parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

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November 3, 2023
Photos: Christian village in Lebanon plans for war

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At Lebanon’s border with Israel, residents of a Christian village are hoping war can be avoided even as they prepare for the possibility of worsening hostilities between the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah and Israel.

Located just a couple of kilometres from the frontier, the village of Rmeich has already suffered fallout from three weeks of clashes along the border between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, the dominant force in southern Lebanon.

The village, along with the rest of Lebanon, is feeling the turbulence unleashed by the conflict raging some 200km (124 miles) away between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, an ally of the heavily armed Hezbollah.

Those who remain in Rmeich appear reluctant to discuss the politics of the crisis that has brought conflict to their doorstep, trying to preserve some normalcy in the village whose 18th-century church still holds a mass three times a day.

“I won’t say we’re feeling safe but the situation is stable,” village priest Toni Elias, 40, said as a military drone buzzed overhead.

“If we don’t hear the drone, we think something odd is going on. We’re used to it every day, 24/7,” Elias said.

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November 1, 2023
Israel’s military says ground forces “expanding their activity” in Gaza, as war with Hamas may be entering new phase

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Tel Aviv — Israel’s military said Friday its ground forces were “expanding their activity” in Gaza in what may be the beginning of a new phase in Israel’s war with Hamas, which started nearly three weeks ago.

Israel’s chief military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said a statement the Israel Defense Forces increased attacks in the Gaza Strip in recent hours.

“In addition to the attacks that we carried out in recent days, ground forces are expanding their activity this evening,” Hagari said. “The IDF is acting with great force … to achieve the objectives of the war.”

The extent of the expanded activity was unclear, but two U.S. officials tell CBS News this appears to be a rolling start to the ground invasion.

It comes as internet and phone services collapsed inside Gaza under heavy bombardment, the Associated Press reported. Paltel, the Palestine Telecommunications Company, said there was “a complete disruption of all communication and internet services” because of bombardment, the AP reported.

The country’s military said earlier Friday Israeli forces conducted a ground raid into Gaza for the second consecutive night. The small raid was backed by fighter jets and drones, with the IDF saying it had struck dozens of targets on the outskirts of Gaza City. The IDF said the small incursion had resulted in no Israeli casualties.

The Israeli army conducts intense air attacks on the Gaza Strip on the 21st day of its war with Hamas, Oct. 27, 2023. Gaza was plunged into darkness without electricity or fuel supplies.

Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images

The previous ground raid, early Thursday morning, lasted a few hours, struck rocket launching positions and involved battles with militants, according to the IDF. Hagari said Thursday that the ground raids were intended to “uncover the enemy” and destroy launch pads and explosives to “prepare the ground for the next stages of the war.”

The Gaza Strip’s Hamas rulers, along with other Palestinian militants, opened their bloody Oct. 7 terror attack on southern Israel with a salvo of thousands of rockets, and they have continued firing them from the enclave for the nearly three weeks since.

Most of Hamas’ rockets are intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, but at least one got through Friday and hit Tel Aviv, causing “significant destruction,” according to the civilian emergency response agency United Hatzalah, which said three people were lightly wounded.

Israel has responded to the unprecedented terror attack and ongoing rocket fire — which it says has killed more than 1,400 people and left Hamas holding almost 230 hostages — with an overwhelming barrage of artillery and airstrikes on Gaza.

Health officials in the densely populated, Hamas-controlled strip of land say more than 7,000 people have been killed. The Israeli military disputes that figure, but entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble, sometimes crushing entire families under the ruins of residential buildings.

What a rolling start to Israel’s ground incursion might look like

While Israeli ground forces have crossed into Gaza on night raids over the past few days, a rolling start is different, according to retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, a former commander of U.S. Central Command.

“A rolling start will be an operation where you put in reconnaissance forces, you sort of gain a feel for the battlefield, and then pull your main forces in behind them,” McKenzie told CBS News Friday.

The Pentagon sent a Marine general experienced in special operations and urban combat to advise the Israelis on how to do it. He has since left Israel.

“They’ll probably have several lines of advance going into Gaza, and Israeli commanders will see where they’re having success,” McKenzie said. “The axiom is, you reinforce success. Where you’re gaining ground, you put more forces in behind it.”

“You should think of it as multiple beachheads … all across the front,” he added.

Civilian deaths mount in Gaza

Raw, overwhelming grief is everywhere in Gaza.

“What did he do?” cried one man as he rocked the body of his son, just two and a half months old, in his arms. He lost his wife and four children in an Israeli strike Wednesday on a house in the Jabalia refugee camp, in northern Gaza. “Did he kill anyone? Did he kidnap someone? There were just innocent children inside this house.”

Deaths have been soaring at a staggering rate in Gaza, and while Israel and Hamas disagree on the toll — and who’s to blame for it — it is believed to far exceed the number of people killed during the four previous conflicts between Israel and Hamas combined.

People search through buildings destroyed during Israeli airstrikes in the southern Gaza Strip, Oct. 27, 2023, in Khan Younis, Gaza.

Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty

Every day, shrouded bodies pile up outside Gaza’s beleaguered hospitals and morgues as more seriously wounded are rushed in, many in need of urgent medical attention. But Palestinian doctors are often able to offer little more than words of comfort, as fuel for generators and medical supplies have all run short.

The United Nations, along with a growing number of nations and aid organizations, have warned that Israel’s long-expected ground invasion of Gaza, if and when it happens, would cause even more civilian casualties and exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territory.

The U.N. General Assembly voted Friday to approve a nonbinding resolution, sponsored by Jordan, calling for a “humanitarian truce” in Gaza leading to a cessation of hostilities. The U.S. voted against the resolution, after an amendment that would have condemned Hamas’ terror attack on Israel and demanded the release of hostages was defeated.

How laws of war apply to fighting between Israel and Hamas

11:06

On Thursday, the U.N. echoed international law experts and humanitarian groups to warn that Israel may be responding to Hamas’ atrocious war crimes with war crimes of its own.

“We are concerned that war crimes are being committed,” U.N. human rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told journalists Friday in Geneva. “We are concerned about the collective punishment of Gazans in response to the atrocious attacks by Hamas, which also amounted to war crimes.”

Iran’s allies and fear of a widening war

There is also significant and mounting concern that a full-scale invasion could see the war expand beyond Gaza and Israel’s borders.

The U.S. struck two facilities used by Iran-backed militants in eastern Syria overnight. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the strikes were “a response to a series of ongoing and mostly unsuccessful attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militia groups that began on Oct. 17.”

Austen said the strikes were distinct from the war between Israel and Hamas and meant to communicate that President Biden “will not tolerate such attacks and will defend itself, its personnel and its interests.”

What is Syria’s role as war in Israel impacts the Middle East?

03:56

Iran is a primary backer for a number of Muslim extremist groups across the region, including the Sunni Muslim Hamas in Gaza, and the powerful Shiite Muslim Hezbollah movement, based just across Israel’s northern border in Lebanon. Hezbollah militants have exchanged sporadic deadly fire with Israeli forces since Hamas launched its attack on October 7, and the group has said it’s prepared to join Hamas in the war with Israel if required.

The U.S. Treasury on Friday announced further sanctions against a handful of individuals and entities it accuses of facilitating funding for Hamas, including Khaled Qaddoumi, whom the Treasury describes as a “longtime Hamas member who currently lives in Tehran serving as Hamas’s representative to Iran, and acting as a liaison between Hamas and the Iranian government.”

Iran has also long supported Shiite groups that operate across parts of northern Iraq and neighboring Syria, and it’s those proxy forces that have fired rockets and explosive drones at U.S. forces based in the two countries for years.

Israel and Hezbollah trade fire

02:18

Another powerful Iran-backed group, the Shiite Muslim Houthi movement, is fighting a civil war against Yemen’s Western-backed government. The U.S. military said it shot down a handful of missiles and drones fired by the Houthis on Oct. 19 over the Red Sea, which it said could have been aimed at Israel.

Iran’s army launched a large-scale military exercise on Friday, meanwhile, meant to last two days in the central province of Isfahan. A military spokesman told Iranian state media that the war game would involve troops from all units of the Army Ground Force, including an airborne division, drone squads, electronic warfare units and support teams from Iran’s air force.

President Biden has warned Iran repeatedly not to get directly involved in the Israel-Hamas war.

On Friday, an Egyptian military spokesman said a drone had struck a building near a medical facility in the town of Taba, very close to the Israeli border, wounding six people. It was not immediately clear who launched the drone.

Family and friends of Kibbutz Kfar Aza residents who were kidnapped by Hamas militants during the Oct. 7, 2023 terror attack on Israel rally outside The Kirya, the Tel Aviv headquarters of the Israel Defense Forces, on Oct. 26, 2023 in Israel.

Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty

There is also mounting pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the families of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Many of the family members gathered Thursday night in Tel Aviv to voice their demand that Israel’s government rescue their loved ones, amid unverified claims by Hamas that Israel’s airstrikes have already killed more than 50 of the captives.

As the families gathered, air raid sirens blared yet again, warning of more incoming rockets and forcing the demonstrators to run for cover.

–David Martin and Pamela Falk contributed reporting.

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Haley Ott is an international reporter for CBS News based in London.

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October 27, 2023
Fear grows of Israel-Hamas war spreading as Gaza strikes continue, Iran’s allies appear to test the water

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Israel said its ongoing airstrikes hit more Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip Friday, as it began evacuating a town near its northern border with Lebanon, where almost daily exchanges of fire with the other major Iran-backed group in the region, Hezbollah, have fueled fear of new fronts opening almost two weeks into the war sparked by Hamas’ deadly terror attack.

Israel’s military has accused Hamas of killing about 1,400 people in that attack and seizing at least 203 hostages during the rampage. The military said Hamas kidnapped Israeli soldiers, but also dozens of civilians, including as many as 20 people over the age of 60 and more than 20 under 18. One Israeli family shared their heartache with CBS News on Friday as they waited desperately for any word on a 10-month-old baby among the captives.

A senior Israeli military leader told soldiers Thursday they would soon “see Gaza from the inside,” suggesting a long-expected ground invasion was still looming, but fear the conflict could spread beyond Israel’s borders and the decimated Palestinian territory were only growing Friday.

Israeli airstrikes continue pounding Gaza

04:44

Iran’s allies and fear of a spreading war

Hezbollah has exchanged deadly fire with Israeli forces for more than a week, but it has so far been relatively limited cross-border shelling. The powerful Iran-backed group is based in Lebanon, and it has a large arsenal of long-range rockets.

With tension along the northern border soaring, Israel’s Ministry of Defense announced Friday that the roughly 20,000 residents of the town of Kiryat Shmona, near that Lebanese border, would be evacuated.

A map shows Israel, with Jerusalem and other major cities labeled, along with the Palestinian territories of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Getty/iStockphoto

Another militant force in the region that’s considered by the U.S. and Israel to be an Iranian proxy group is the Houthi movement, which has fought Yemen’s Western-backed government in a brutal civil war for almost a decade. On Thursday, the Pentagon said a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Red Sea had shot down cruise missiles and drones launched by the Houthis, which may have been aimed at Israel.

Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said the U.S. was still completing its assessment of where the three intercepted ballistic missiles were headed, but if they were intended for Israel, it would be the first direct U.S. military intervention to protect Israel from its regional foes since Hamas’ unprecedented attack.

What to know about Hezbollah as militant group exchanges fire with Israel

07:40

A U.S. defense official confirmed to CBS News, meanwhile, that an American military base near Baghdad, Iraq, was targeted in a new rocket attack. Reports of U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria being targeted by drones have increased since the Israel-Hamas war erupted, and Iran-backed militias in northern Iraq and Syria have long targeted American forces in the region.

President Biden has warned Iran and its regional allies repeatedly and clearly not to get involved in Israel’s war with Hamas.

Speaking Friday to journalists at the Iranian Embassy in London, charge d’affaires Mehdi Hosseini Matin said Iran’s “first priority is stopping the war, not escalation.”

He was dismissive of the level of influence Iran could exert over allied groups in the region, claiming the Islamic republic was “not in a position to control any group effectively in the Middle East or in border countries with Gaza.”

The Iranian regime has said Hamas’ brutal terror attack on southern Israel was a justifiable response to “the establishment of an open air prison in Gaza for more than two decades,” which Matin said Friday was “absolutely unacceptable according to international law.”

Calling the situation in the region “very volatile and dangerous,” Matin said any further “escalation is not in the interest of anyone, including the United States.”

Anger in the West Bank and Egypt

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, clashes between Israelis and Palestinians had been increasing for a year even before Hamas’ terror attack. Palestinian officials in the Israeli-occupied territory, which is not controlled by Hamas like Gaza, say more than 70 people have died in confrontations with Israeli forces and armed Jewish settlers since Oct. 7.

Palestinian officials said a rare Israeli airstrike in the region, reportedly hitting a refugee camp near the West Bank-Israel border, killed 13 people on Friday, and anger was growing over that strike and the ongoing bombing of the Gaza Strip.

“It was horrible for all the Palestinians. Not just for Palestinians but I think for everybody in the world who saw this horror of what’s going on in the Gaza Strip,” Jamal Joumaa, a Palestinian activist who joined a demonstration in central Ramallah on Friday, told CBS News.

Hundreds protest against Israel’s airstrikes in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in Ramallah, West Bank, Oct. 20, 2023.

CBS News/Haley Ott

The protest swelled as Palestinians poured out of mosques following Friday prayers, with many chanting support for Hamas. Palestinian and Hamas flags could be seen in the crowd of a few hundred people.

“Give me a two state solution tomorrow, I will accept it. But this became impossible because of the American policies, because of the American backing of the colonial state,” Joumaa told CBS News, referring to Israel.

“I want the Americans first to know that they are supporting a crime of genocide in Gaza,” he said, adding that the leaders of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, based in Ramallah, had failed the people.

Another protester, 18-year-old Abeer Iyad Hassan al-Bezzary, told CBS News she was angry, “but what can we do here? We just pray for them [Gazans] to be safe.”

“We feel President Biden is taking one side… the ones who have force, the power. They [Israelis] have the weapons, they have everything,” Ahmad abu Dukhan told CBS News at the protest.

In Egypt, the only country to share a border with Gaza apart from Israel, the authoritarian government has made protests of any kind illegal, but there was a significant one Friday in the very heart of Cairo, in Tahrir Square. Elsewhere in the city, the government has not only allowed pro-Palestinian protests, it’s encouraging them, journalist and opposition activist Khaled Dawoud told CBS News on Friday.

“The anger is like, so widespread,” he said. “You can’t control it… We see the pictures, we see the Palestinian children, we identify with them… So, we get angry, and we go in the street and demonstrate and protest.”

People march from Tahrir Square to the downtown district of Cairo, Oct. 20, 2023, during a protest supporting the Palestinian people following Friday Noon prayers.

KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty

Asked if he believed the Egyptian government, by allowing the protests, was trying to send a warning that the Hamas-Israel could spread, Dawoud acknowledged that the demonstrations could help leaders in Cairo, who worry an escalation could send thousands of Palestinian refugees pouring over the Gaza border.

But, he stressed that he and the other protesters were “not acting by remote control. These feelings are genuine.”

Gaza airstrikes and the Rafah border crossing

The Israeli military said Friday that it had struck more than 100 Hamas targets in Gaza overnight, including command centers, warehouses full of weapons and an underground tunnel.

Palestinians in Gaza reported airstrikes in the south, where many civilians have relocated after being told by Israel’s military that the northern part of the small, densely populated enclave would not be safe. The United Nations has said more than one million people have been displaced within Gaza since Israel started striking the region in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.

Nobody has been able to flee Gaza, however, and there are as many as 600 U.S. nationals among the roughly 2.3 million people trapped there under a complete Israeli blockade of the strip.

That blockade has cut off supplies of food, energy and medicine to the decimated Palestinian territory, fueling an already monumental humanitarian crisis amid the shelling and drawing warnings from experts that Israel could be answering Hamas’ war crimes with war crimes of its own.

How laws of war apply to fighting between Israel and Hamas

11:06

Israeli leaders have consistently dismissed such warnings, insisting the country is only targeting Hamas militants and blaming the group itself — which has long been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., Israel and most European nations — for all deaths in the Palestinian territory that it controls and that it used as a launch pad for its brutal attack.

President Biden, during his visit earlier in the week, got Israel to commit to halting its strikes near the only border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, at Rafah, to enable aid to get in, but it remained unclear Friday when the gates might actually open. Crews were working to repair the Rafah crossing, with about 20 trucks full of humanitarian aid waiting on the Egyptian side.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visited the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing Friday and, surrounded by food and medical supplies waiting to be shipped out, he urged all sides to open humanitarian routes into Gaza.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (center) inspects aid materials waiting to be moved across the Rafah crossing from Egypt into the Gaza Strip, Oct. 20, 2023.

Handout/UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

“On this side, we have seen so many trucks loaded with water, with fuel, with medicines, with food. They are a lifeline. They are the difference between life and death for so many people in Gaza,” Guterres said. “What we need is to make them move, to make them move to the other side of this wall, to make them move as quickly as possible and as many as possible.”

The Egyptian Sinai for Human Rights group posted video of what it said were aid workers lined up Friday with vehicles on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, saying in a tweet that they were, “awaiting the opening of the crossing in the coming hours to bring humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip for the first time since the beginning of the war.”

What is Israel’s plan in Gaza?

Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of his country’s legislature, the Knesset, on Friday that the war Hamas started with its Oct. 7 terror attack would end with group’s destruction.

“We are at war, we have been left no choice. October 7th will be remembered as the day that started the destruction of Hamas,” Gallant told the lawmakers, laying out for the first time a vague outline of Israel’s planned military operation — which leaders have said could take months or even years.

He said the objectives of Israel’s three-phase operation included the elimination of Hamas as a power in Gaza, with both its military and governing capabilities destroyed, followed eventually by the establishment of a new “security reality” in the Palestinian territory.

Reflecting on historic week amid Israel-Hamas war

02:43

Gallant said Israel was still in the first of the three stages: “A military campaign that currently includes strikes, and will later include maneuvering, with the objective of neutralizing terrorists and destroying Hamas infrastructure,” which he said would be followed by a second phase focused on “eliminating pockets of resistance” in Gaza.

“The third phase,” Gallant said, “will require the removal of Israel’s responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip, and the establishment of a new security reality for the citizens of Israel.”

In an interview with 60 Minutes last week, President Biden said “Israel has to respond. They have to go after Hamas,” but the U.S. leader warned that an Israeli occupation of Gaza would be “a big mistake.”

NOTE: The original version of this article incorrectly described Hezbollah is a Palestinian group. It has been updated to reflect that it is a Shiite Muslim group based in Lebanon.

CBS News’ Pamela Falk at the United Nations and Emmet Lyons in London contributed to this report.

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October 20, 2023
Biden, Arab leaders call off meeting in Jordan

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Biden, Arab leaders call off meeting in Jordan – CBS News

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A senior Biden administration official confirmed to CBS News that the president’s meeting with Arab leaders in Jordan has been called off — saying it was a “mutual” decision. Weija Jiang unpacks what Mr. Biden hopes to accomplish with his trip to the Middle East. Plus, Roxana Saberi has the latest on the situation near the Israel-Lebanon border.

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October 17, 2023
Clashes at Lebanon-Israel border raise fears of wider war | CNN

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Southern Lebanon
CNN
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On the face of it, the crossfire on Lebanon’s border with Israel appears marginal, dwarfed by the scale and intensity of the Hamas-Israel war further south.

The fighting has stayed within a roughly 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) radius of either side of the demarcation line and less than 13 people have died here since last Saturday.

Yet this barely populated swathe of mountainous terrain could be the launching pad of a regional war, drawing in a myriad of actors, including Iran and the United States.

Hezbollah – an Iran-backed armed group that is also a regional force in its own right – dominates south Lebanon. It also operates alongside Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria, where the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights separates Israel from Tehran-aligned fighters.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian on Monday raised the specter of expanded fighting after talking to counterparts in Tunisia, Malaysia and Pakistan.

“Underlined the need to immediately stop Zionist crimes & murders in Gaza & to dispatch humanitarian aid,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“I stressed that time is running out for political solutions; probable spread of war in other fronts is approaching unavoidable stage,” he added.

It is a scenario that has gained more currency across a restive Arab and Muslim world as images of dead Palestinian civilians, including more than 500 children, flash on television screens and social media posts, reflecting a civilian death toll rapidly rising at a rate not seen in decades.

Meanwhile, the US has deployed two of its largest aircraft carriers — including the nuclear-powered USS Gerald Ford — to the eastern Mediterranean. It is an ominous sign of what may come if the situation on the Lebanon-Israel border combusts into a full-scale war.

For most of last week, the skirmishes were a low-rumbling exchange of fire between Lebanon-based militants and Israeli forces.

Palestinian militants fired the first shots from Lebanon, hours after Hamas’ surprise attack of October 7, launching rockets that were intercepted over Israel. Israel responded by shooting into Lebanese territory, including at Hezbollah positions. Hezbollah then launched missiles into Israel’s northern-most territory. That cycle repeated for several days.

By Friday morning, three Israeli soldiers and three Hezbollah fighters had been killed in the exchanges across the border.

But then the tit-for-tat escalated. At around 5 p.m. on Friday, Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah, who was also a south Lebanon native, was killed in an Israeli strike that wounded at least six other international journalists.

A CNN video analysis found that the journalists were wearing vest jackets clearly marked as press.

An Israeli Apache helicopter was flying over their location, according to a Lebanese security source as well as video seen by CNN, when they were fired upon by what Lebanese army and Israeli statements indicate was artillery.

Israel said it was investigating the incident. In an Israeli military statement that was released around the time of the attack, it said it was shelling Lebanese territory with artillery fire in response to an explosion at a border fence in Israel’s Hanita, near to where Abdallah was killed.

The situation at the border spiraled further the next day.

On Saturday, Hezbollah launched a series of strikes at Israeli targets in the disputed Shebaa farms, which was followed by a barrage of artillery fire from Israel. On Sunday, the Lebanese militants fired at several Israeli locations at the border, killing one civilian and one soldier. Earlier that day, Israel turned the 4-kilometer area near its border into a closed military zone.

In Hezbollah’s statements on Sunday, the group said its cross-border attacks were in response to Abdallah’s killing and the killing of two elderly civilians in Sunday’s Israeli attacks in the border region.

Unlike low-tech rockets that are fired by Palestinian fighters in Lebanon — and are mostly intercepted by Israel — Hezbollah uses Russian anti-tank guided missiles known as Kornets.

Every Hezbollah attack over the last week was followed by a video released by the group that demonstrated precision. They were direct hits that seemed to blindside Israeli troops seen in the videos.

These videos are key to the psychological warfare that underpins this flare-up. It shows clearly how much more sophisticated the group’s arsenal had become since its last conflict with Israel in 2006, when it relied largely on inaccurate Soviet-era Katyusha rockets.

Back then, the 2006 Lebanon-Israel war ended with no clear victor or vanquished. At the time, many parts of Lebanon were devastated, but Hezbollah foiled Israel’s ultimate plan to dismantle the group, dealing a blow to Israel’s aura of invincibility.

In the intervening years, Hezbollah has dramatically built up its arsenal, and its fighters are far more experienced in urban warfare. They’re battle-hardened from fighting in Syria against ISIS, the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, and armed opposition groups that tried to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly evoked a hypothetical scenario where his fighters would conduct an incursion into northern Israel in case war erupted between Lebanon and Israel again. Israel and US officials have repeatedly expressed alarm about Hezbollah’s precision-guided missiles, which were used against Israel for the first time this month.

Nasrallah has also said that his group boasts more than 100,000 fighters and reservists. Historically, Israeli and US officials have been reluctant to dismiss claims by the paramilitary leader, who oversaw a surge in the size and power of the group in the 32 years of his leadership.

Yet Nasrallah, known for his fiery televised speeches, has been noticeably silent since October 7. Observers don’t know what to make of this. In addresses he delivered in recent months, Nasrallah lauded the growing alliance between his group and Hamas, though they were on opposite sides of Syria’s bloody civil war.

He has also indicated that the loose rules of engagement between Hezbollah and Israel may soon change, with the Lebanon-based group possibly intervening on behalf of the Palestinians.

This has led many observers to speculate that Hezbollah may expand its fight against Israel in case of the much-anticipated Israeli ground invasion into Gaza.

Yet what happens from now is anyone’s guess. World leaders will continue to watch this border with bated breath.

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October 16, 2023
The US is mounting a frantic effort to head off a wider Middle East war | CNN Politics

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CNN
—

US leaders are mounting an urgent effort to prevent Israel’s war against Hamas and a resulting civilian catastrophe in Gaza from escalating into a widening regional conflict that could snowball into an even greater geopolitical crisis after this month’s horrific attacks.

As a second US aircraft carrier strike group steams to the region, President Joe Biden told “60 Minutes” that he has Israel’s back as it avenges its darkest day in 50 years – and as he focuses on the plight of Americans among the more than 150 people taken hostage during the Hamas incursion. But he also said, again, that it would be “a big mistake” for Israel to occupy Gaza and called for a return to a negotiation toward a Palestinian state.

His comments came after a weekend of frustration for American citizens stuck at the exit between Gaza and Egypt, as the Biden administration also sought to ease the already dire humanitarian conditions for Palestinian civilians without foreign passports who are trapped with no clear relief from relentless Israeli airstrikes.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s Middle East shuttle mission shows that the United States, despite its efforts to extricate itself from the region, is still uniquely positioned to influence Israel as well as key Arab power brokers at a moment of deep peril – and still willing to take on the task of projecting leadership in the Middle East, in spite of the domestic turmoil in Washington.

Administration officials speaking Sunday made clear they are also looking ahead, desperately trying to preserve the hope of a reshaped Middle East that would draw Israel and Saudi Arabia toward a diplomatic normalization that the Hamas attacks may now threaten.

The US task in balancing a quickly widening crisis is hugely complex and some of its aims could be irreconcilable with others: For example, Israel’s desire to stamp out Hamas once and for all could result in such enormous destruction and loss of life that it will alienate America’s Arab allies.

“We are talking to the Israelis about the full set of questions, looking out into the future to ensure that Israel is safe and secure and also that innocent Palestinians living in Gaza can have a life of dignity, security and peace in the future as well,” Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Sullivan also warned that the war between Israel and Hamas could be just the start. “There is a risk of an escalation of this conflict, the opening of a second front in the north and, of course, Iran’s involvement,” he told CBS.

The comments came as the full scale of an unfolding human tragedy in impoverished, densely populated Gaza is beginning to emerge, as UN officials warn of hellish conditions after over eight days of Israeli bombardments that have killed more than 2,600 Palestinians in response to Hamas’ brutal hostage-taking and killing of 1,400 in Israel.

Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, warned of severe shortages of water, electricity, food and medicine as thousands of Gazans flee from northern districts after an Israeli statement to evacuate but as the territory’s southern border with Egypt remains closed. “Gaza is being strangled and it seems that the world right now has lost its humanity. If we look at the issue of water – we all know water is life – Gaza is running out of water, and Gaza is running out of life,” Lazzarini said.

Israel has said it tries to mitigate civilian suffering, and blames Hamas, an Iran-backed militant group that has embedded its rocket launchers in packed urban areas and refugee camps, for hiding behind civilians. Hamas has urged civilians to ignore Israeli warnings to evacuate the northern part of Gaza.

Blinken is on a frantic swing that has included stops in Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt and Bahrain. He said in Cairo on Sunday that there was a determination throughout the region to prevent the Hamas attacks from spiraling into a larger regional war. The State Department said he’d return to Israel for further consultations on Monday.

Israel has also invited Biden to the country for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and both sides were considering the visit, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. The US president unexpectedly scrapped a planned trip to Colorado on Monday where he was to speak about wind energy, though the White House didn’t immediately tie the change in plans to a possible Israel trip.

But the possibility of the president visiting a war zone and putting his personal prestige on the line at this stage would be fraught with complications.

Washington is walking a knife-edge as it stresses its unshakable support for Israel’s right to try to eradicate Hamas but also attempts to mitigate the worst civilian blowback of the coming offensive while pursuing its own interests in heading off a situation that could force it to plunge back into the Middle East.

Blinken spelled out the multipronged US strategy.

“I don’t think we could be more clear than we’ve been, that when it comes to Israel’s security, we have Israel’s back,” he said in Cairo. But he also warned: “The way that Israel does this matters. It needs to do it in a way that affirms the shared values that we have for human life and human dignity, taking every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians.”

The top US diplomat also delivered a wider message of deterrence, adding: “No one should do anything that could add fuel to the fire in any other place. I think that’s very clear.”

There were signs of modest success for US entreaties on Israel on behalf of Palestinian civilians on Sunday when Blinken promised that the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt would open. The frontier has been closed, with Cairo citing a lack of immigration controls on the Gaza side and fear for the safety of aid convoys entering the bombarded territory.

Humanitarian supplies have been piling up at checkpoints on the wrong side of the border from where they’re urgently needed. And Sullivan told CNN’s Jake Tapper that while Israeli and Egyptian officials were willing to allow the evacuation of US citizens in Gaza through the Rafah crossing, Hamas was preventing it. Sullivan also told CNN that Israel had agreed to turn water supplies back on for Gaza, a concession confirmed by Israeli officials, but one that Gazan officials said could not be verified because electricity necessary to pump water for use had not been restored.

Blinken also announced the appointment of David Satterfield, former US ambassador to Turkey, to help coordinate aid efforts. The new US envoy will be in Israel on Monday.

The fear of escalation is linked to an expected Israeli ground offensive inside Gaza, which could result in heavy fighting with Hamas and appalling civilian casualties. Experts worry that scenes of civilians caught in the crossfire could spark violence among Palestinians on the West Bank. They could also prompt Hezbollah, a Lebanese-based Islamist party and militant group that – like Hamas – is designated as a terrorist organization by the US, to send thousands of missiles into Israeli cities, opening a second front in the war.

Hezbollah is far more powerful than Hamas, and Israel has warned it would launch a destructive counterattack into Lebanon if the group steps up border skirmishes that have already broken out between the two sides. A double assault on Israel by Iranian proxies Hezbollah and Hamas could also lead to Israeli retaliation against the Islamic Republic, raising the risks of US involvement to protect its ally Israel. Iran’s mission to the United Nations warned on social media Saturday that if Israel’s strikes on Gaza don’t stop, “the situation could spiral out of control & ricochet far-reaching consequences.”

For the United States, there is the risk that a wider conflict could lead to reprisals by terror groups of Iran-backed militias against its remaining troops in Iraq and Syria, where they are engaged in missions to counter ISIS. A fearsome Israeli ground offensive in Gaza would also narrow the diplomatic room that key Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt have to de-escalate the situation. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for instance called for the “immediate lifting of the siege on Gaza” when he met Blinken on Sunday and rejected the “targeting of civilians, the destruction of critical infrastructure, and the disruption of essential services.”

With his vehement support for Israel and repeated personal contacts with Netanyahu after the Hamas attacks, Biden laid the ground for Israel to defend itself. But he also created political room for the US to seek to constrain the worst impacts of what is expected to be a ruthless Israeli operation in Gaza and to try to keep longer-term regional peace efforts alive. Given the complexity of the situation and the trauma the Hamas assault created in Israel, it’s not certain that the president’s balancing act is sustainable. But he has to try, since a major war in the Middle East would stretch US resources even further as Washington maintains a multibillion-dollar lifeline for Ukraine, and could foster an impression of global chaos that could harm Biden’s reelection bid next year.

The president said in his interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” Sunday that the US could support both Israel and Ukraine and that it had no choice but to intervene because “we are the essential nation.”

“We’re the United States of America for God’s sake, the most powerful nation in the history – not in the world, in the history of the world,” Biden said. “We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense.” He added: “And if we don’t, who does?”

Biden’s effort to rush more aid to both nations is being complicated by chaos in the House of Representatives, which is paralyzed by the divided Republican Party’s failure to elect a new speaker. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted Sunday that the US had to send Israel the support it needed to defend itself. The New York Democrat said a delegation he was leading to Tel Aviv – which also includes Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah – was rushed to a shelter after an air-raid alert.

His post underscored the feeling of foreboding in Israel that is unfolding as Palestinians across the border in Gaza brace for even more relentless attacks, with hundreds of thousands of Israeli reservists poised for an order to move into the territory. Back in Washington, the administration is expected to offer a full classified briefing on the situation to senators Wednesday.

As the week begins, there is a daunting sense that as bad as the situation is, it’s about to get much worse. Veteran US Middle East peace negotiator Aaron David Miller said that the Israeli offensive was coming within days and would be agonizing, but he expressed the hope that diplomatic progress could eventually emerge.

“Whether it is 24 hours, 48 hours, whether it is by next week, the fact is, it’s coming,” he said. He added he hoped “like many crises in this region involving an extraordinary amount of pain, in large measure to civilians … there will be some prospect for turning that extra amount of pain into gain.”

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October 16, 2023
Gaza conditions a ‘complete catastrophe,’ official warns as Israel prepares for imminent offensive | CNN

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Gaza and Jerusalem
CNN
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Conditions in Gaza have deteriorated into a “complete catastrophe,” according to one official, with serious shortages of clean water and food as tens of thousands of Palestinians attempt to flee crippling airstrikes and an imminent Israeli ground offensive.

Israel’s military said Saturday its forces are readying for the next stages of the war, including “combined and coordinated strikes from the air, sea and land” in response to the unprecedented October 7 terrorist attacks by the Islamist militant group Hamas, which controls the enclave.

At least 1,300 people were killed during Hamas’ rampage in what US President Joe Biden described as “the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust.”

Further escalation of the long-running conflict now increasingly risks spilling over regionally, prompting the Pentagon to order a second carrier strike group and squadrons of fighter jets to the region as a deterrence to Iran and Iranian proxies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The clock is ticking for residents fleeing south through the battered streets of Gaza after the Israeli military told civilians to leave northern areas of the densely populated strip.

More than half of Gaza’s 2 million residents live in the northern section that Israel said should evacuate. Many families, some of whom were already internally displaced, are now crammed into an even smaller portion of the 140-square-mile territory.

Civilians packed into cars, taxis, pickup trucks and donkey-pulled carts. Roads were filled with snaking lines of vehicles strapped with suitcases and mattresses. Those without other options walked, carrying what they could.

“We will commence significant military operations only once we see that civilians have left the area,” Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told CNN early Sunday. “I cannot stress more than enough to say now is the time for Gazans to leave.”

Even as civilians fled southward, Israeli warplanes continued to blast Gaza over the weekend. Videos showed explosions and bodies along a Gaza evacuation route Friday, as tens of thousands of people abandoned their homes on the advice of the IDF.

Extensive destruction could be seen on Salah Al-Deen street – a main route for evacuation – in videos authenticated by CNN. A number of bodies, including those of children, can be seen on on a flat-bed trailer that appears to have been used to carry people away from Gaza City.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said 2,329 civilians have been killed and more than 9,000 injured since the conflict broke out a week ago, with 300 killed in the past 24 hours.

Casualties in Gaza over the past eight days have now surpassed the number of those killed during the 51-day Gaza-Israel conflict in 2014, according to the spokesperson for the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Richard Brennan, a World Health Organization official in Cairo, told CNN that 60 percent of those killed in Gaza the last week were women and children.

Several United Nations agencies have warned that mass evacuation under siege conditions will lead to disaster, and that the most vulnerable Gazans, including the sick, elderly, pregnant and disabled, will not be able to relocate at all. For days, Israel has cut off the Gaza population’s access to electricity, food and water.

“Despite Israeli announcements suggesting that there are safe areas for people trapped in the Gaza Strip, they are in fact exposed to bombardment throughout the entire territory, including in the south,” said Avril Benoit, executive director of Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

A growing number of nations, global rights groups and organizations are calling on Israel to respect international rules of war, urging the protection of civilians’ lives, and not to target hospitals, schools and clinics. Jordan’s foreign minister warned that Israel’s actions in Gaza are causing a humanitarian disaster and amount to mass punishment for more than 2 million Palestinians.

As food, clean drinking water and medical supplies in Gaza run out, there are urgent pleas for humanitarian aid to be allowed in. Footage showed aid convoys continuing to arrive into Egypt’s El-Arish stadium in preparation to enter Gaza through the Rafah land crossing. On the Gazan side, thousands of people are stuck at the crossing, with families telling CNN they have been unable to cross into Egypt.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told CNN Saturday that Egypt has tried to ship humanitarian aid to Gaza but has not received the proper authorization to do so.

Palestinians who fled south, and those who are still in the north, are rapidly running out of food and water. There is no more electricity, and those with fuel-powered generators will soon live in complete blackout. Internet access, through which residents communicate their plight to the world, is also shrinking.

MSF’s Benoit told CNN Saturday there is a serious water shortage in Gaza with many people beginning to suffer from severe dehydration.

“Everyone there feels like they are likely to be collateral damage,” Benoit said. “The health care system there has always been extra fragile and was considered (a) humanitarian chronic emergency for many, many years, and now it’s a complete catastrophe.”

Palestine Red Crescent Society spokesperson Nebal Farsakh told CNN the situation in Gaza is “devastating” and though they had been notified by Israel to evacuate Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City, they did not have the means to do so.

“We are not willing to evacuate because we do not have the means to evacuate our patients,” Farsakh said. “We have around 300 patients at the hospital. Some of them are in the intensive care unit. We have children in incubators. We can’t evacuate them.”

The World Health Organization said Saturday it “strongly condemns Israel’s repeated orders for the evacuation of 22 hospitals” in Gaza, calling it a “death sentence for the sick and injured.”

If patients are forced to move and are cut off from life-saving medical attention while being evacuated, they all face imminent deterioration of their condition or death, the WHO said in a statement.

Health facilities in northern Gaza continue to receive an influx of injured patients and are struggling to operate beyond capacity, with some patients “being treated in corridors and outdoors in surrounding streets due to a lack of hospital beds,” it added.

Israel, which has massed troops and military equipment at the border with Gaza, said its ramped up offensive will feature hundreds of thousands of reservists and encompass “a wide range of operational offensive plans.”

In addition to widespread airstrikes, Israel’s army is preparing troops for an “expanded arena of combat,” the IDF said in a statement on Saturday. The preparations have placed “an emphasis on significant ground operations.”

Hamas has shown a level of military capability far beyond what was previously thought, and a recent CNN investigation found it is probably well-prepared for the next phase of the war.

Texas woman has family stuck trying to evacuate Gaza

Complicating an Israeli offensive in Gaza are up to 150 hostages captured by Hamas – including soldiers, civilians, women, children and the elderly – and who are being held in the crowded enclave.

IDF spokesperson Conricus said it is a top priority to get hostages out of Gaza, despite the difficulty that a dense urban area adds to the fight.

Pointing to the “elaborate network of tunnels” that Hamas has, he said hostages “are most likely held underground in various locations.”

“Fighting will be slow. Advances will be slow, and we will be cautious,” he said.

As Israel battles Hamas, it also faces the threat of a wider conflict on new fronts.

Israel has said it is ready in case there are attacks from neighboring Lebanon or Syria.

Syria’s military reported late Saturday that an “air aggression” by Israel, originating from the Mediterranean Sea, damaged Aleppo International Airport and rendered it nonoperational.

Meanwhile, Iran’s Mission to the UN warned on Saturday that if Israel does not stop its attacks on Gaza, “the situation could spiral out of control and ricochet far-reaching consequences.”

The comments came as Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian met with Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Doha, Qatar on Saturday, according to Iran’s official news agency IRNA. The agency said it was the first official meeting between Iranian officials and Haniyeh since surprise Hamas attack on Israel that Hamas called Al-Aqsa storm.

Hostilities with neighboring Lebanon are being closely monitored internationally, as an escalation could draw the powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah paramilitary group into the conflict.

For days, Lebanon-based Palestinian militants have launched rockets into Israel, leading to Israeli attacks on Lebanese territory, including Hezbollah positions. Hezbollah has fired back at Israeli border positions with precision-guided missiles.

On Saturday, Israel returned fire after Hezbollah launched an attack on the disputed territory of the Shebaa farms near the Israel-Lebanon border, with CNN teams on the ground reporting prolonged shelling.

Mourners also gathered Saturday for the funeral of Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah in southern Lebanon after he was killed when Israel fired artillery into the area where he and other journalists were on Friday. The IDF said it was reviewing the circumstances surrounding the incident on the Lebanese border.

In response to the regional security situation, the Pentagon has ordered a second carrier strike group – the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower – to the eastern Mediterranean Sea, joining the strike group led by the USS Gerald R. Ford.

The US warships are not intended to join the fighting in Gaza or take part in Israel’s operations, but the presence of two of the Navy’s most powerful ships is designed to send a message of deterrence to Iran and Iranian proxies in the region.

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October 14, 2023
US sending second carrier strike group, fighter jets to region as Israel prepares to expand Gaza operations | CNN

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Washington/Seoul
CNN
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The Pentagon has ordered a second carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean Sea, according to two US officials, and is sending Air Force fighter jets to the region as Israel prepares to expand its Gaza operations.

The US warships are not intended to join the fighting in Gaza or take part in Israel’s operations, but the presence of two of the Navy’s most powerful vessels is designed to send a message of deterrence to Iran and Iranian proxies in the region, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The first carrier strike group, led by the USS Gerald R. Ford, arrived off the coast of Israel last week.

Now the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower strike group, which deployed from Norfolk, Virginia, on Friday, is headed to the eastern Mediterranean. The aircraft carrier was initially set to sail for the waters of US European Command, but the officials said it will now head for the waters near Israel.

It is unclear at this point how long the Ford will stay in the region once the Eisenhower carrier strike group arrives, one official said.

The Eisenhower is the flagship of the carrier strike group, which will be joined by a guided-missile cruiser and two guided-missile destroyers, according to the Navy.

The Eisenhower can carry more than 60 aircraft, including F/A-18 fighter jets. The Ford can deploy more than 75 aircraft.

ABC News first reported the carrier strike group’s orders.

The Biden administration made clear that the carrier, and its accompanying force, are not there to engage in combat activities on behalf of Israel.

“There is no intention or plan to put American troops on the ground in Israel,” said John Kirby, strategic communications coordinator for the National Security Council, on Thursday. Kirby underscored that the purpose of the increased military presence in the region is to deter others from entering the conflict if they perceive weakness on the part of Israel.

“We take our national security interests very seriously in the region,” he said, noting that the purpose of the bolstered force posture was “to act as a deterrent for any other actor, including Hezbollah, that might think that widening this conflict is a good idea.”

In addition, the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, a rapid reaction force capable of conducting special operations, is making preparations in case it is ordered closer to Israel to bolster the US’ force posture there, multiple US officials tell CNN.

The unit, which is on board the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan, is comprised of more than 2,000 Marines and sailors and would be capable of supporting a large-scale evacuation. Among the mission essential tasks for a Marine Expeditionary Unit are evacuation operations and humanitarian assistance.

No such order has been given yet to the unit, the officials said.

Meanwhile, US Air Forces Central on Saturday announced the deployment of F-15E fighter jets and A-10 ground-attack jets to the region.

The movement of the warplanes from the 494th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron and 354th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, respectively, “bolster the U.S. posture and enhance air operations throughout the Middle East,” an Air Force statement said. It did not give specific numbers of warplanes involved.

A US Central Command social media post said the A-10s will join another squadron of the aircraft already in the region.

“By posturing advanced fighters and integrating with joint and coalition forces, we are strengthening our partnerships and reinforcing security in the region,” Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, 9th Air Force commander, said in a statement.

Defense officials have said repeatedly in recent days that the Pentagon will be able to flow in additional forces and assets to the region quickly as needed, as Israel continues to fight a war against the terrorist group Hamas.

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October 14, 2023
Deadly blast hits Gaza evacuation route after Israel issues deadline | CNN

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CNN
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A blast has struck a convoy on an evacuation route in Gaza, killing a number of people including several children, after a stark deadline ahead of a possible Israeli ground assault.

The IDF told civilians in and around Gaza City Friday that they must move south to avoid being caught up in Israeli military operations and announced a six-hour evacuation window on Saturday.

Israel has massed troops and military equipment at the border with Gaza, and continued bombarding the densely populated territory in response to the deadly October 7 attacks by the Islamist militant group, Hamas.

Videos authenticated by CNN showed a scene of extensive destruction following Friday’s blast on Salah Al-Deen street. A number of bodies, including those of children, can be seen on on a flat-bed trailer that appears to have been used to carry people away from Gaza City. There are also a number of badly burned and damaged cars.

It’s unclear what caused the widespread devastation. CNN has reached out to the IDF for comment on any airstrikes in the same location.

Even before the evacuation warning, more than 400,000 Palestinians had already been internally displaced by the past week of fighting as conditions worsen inside the bombarded strip.

But the evacuation statement and the prospect of a potential incursion have been sharply criticized by rights groups, including the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) head, who warned that such a move could bring “catastrophic humanitarian consequences.”

The IDF announced on Saturday it would allow people to move south “for their own safety” on specified streets of Gaza from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. local time, according to a statement shared by the IDF’s Arabic spokesperson Avishay Adraee on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The IDF claimed Hamas leaders had already taken measures to protect themselves from strikes in the area.

It is unclear how widely the messaging has been received on the ground given the current electricity and internet blackout.

When asked by CNN how this six-hour window has been communicated to citizens in Gaza, IDF spokesperson Maj. Doron Spielman said that “everybody in Gaza City now knows exactly what’s happening.”

“They’ve been notified in Arabic, in multiple languages on every available platform, both electronic and non-electronic platforms. Everyone in Gaza City knows that they need to go past Wadi Gaza.”

Spielman confirmed the IDF had dropped leaflets informing people in Gaza about the IDF’s announcement.

However, CNN has talked to a United Nations Relief and Works Agency school official, a paramedic and a journalist on the ground who were all unaware of this latest advisory on Saturday.

Palestinian-Americans have been waiting for the Rafah border crossing into Egypt to open Saturday, after the US State Department sent out guidance to families Friday telling them that it “may be open” Saturday afternoon.

“They told everybody to be here at 12, it’s been two hours almost, nobody showed up, nobody is here to open the gates.” Haneen Okal, a New Jersey resident, waiting with her three children, said.

“People are waiting at the Rafah crossing point but it’s not open and there is no clear direction from the embassy,” said Mai Abushaaban, a 22-year-old from Houston who is in contact with her family at the border.

CNN has reached out to the State Department and the US National Security Council for comment.

More than 2 million Palestinians – including over a million children – live in the 140-square-mile Gaza Strip, one of the most densely populated places on Earth.

Images from Gaza have shown a mass rush toward the south of the coastal enclave beginning Friday. Civilians crammed into cars, taxis, pickup trucks and even donkey-pulled carts. Roads were filled with snaking lines of vehicles strapped with suitcases and mattresses.

Those without other options walked, carrying what they could. Some have stayed put regardless, telling CNN they felt nowhere was safe.

Since the evacuation order was issued Friday, Israeli military airstrikes have killed 70 evacuees and injured 200 more, Hamas’ media office told CNN.

Palestinian medical services and civil defense crews were targeted by an Israeli strike at the site of a rescue operation in northern Gaza on Saturday, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Interior and National Security.

“Occupation forces target civil defense crews and medical services while they were working to rescue martyrs and wounded from the house of the Dahman family in the northern Gaza Strip, early this morning, Saturday,” the ministry said in a statement.

Some healthcare facilities in the north of Gaza and Gaza City have said they will not be complying with Israel’s evacuation orders, as these “threats effectively act as a ‘death sentence’ for the thousands of injured and patients housed within these facilities.”

Saturday morning marked one week since Hamas’ unprecedented and bloody attack on Israel, which killed more than 1,300 people and led to the capture of civilian and military hostages now believed to be held in Gaza.

The surprise attack, widely described as Israel’s 9/11, saw waves of heavily armed Hamas fighters rampage through rural Israeli towns, kibbutzim and army bases.

In response, Israel ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza, including blocking food, water and fuel, while mounting its heaviest ever airstrikes on the enclave.

International observers warn the cutoff will see Gaza civilians die by starvation, disease and lack of medical care for the growing numbers of dying and wounded.

Hostilities spilled over between the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and IDF forces on Saturday in the disputed Shebaa farms, near the Israel-Lebanon border. Israel said it returned fire after Hezbollah launched an attack on the territory – a disputed strip of land between Lebanon and Syria adjoining the Golan Heights, under Israeli control.

The UN has described the situation in the Gaza Strip as a matter of “life and death,” warning that the clean water supply for the 2 million people there is running dangerously low. The UN also warned of increasing risks of waterborne diseases.

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) on Saturday called on Israel to not target its shelters in Gaza, warning that many people, including pregnant women and elderly or disabled people, will be unable to flee the area.

At least 2,215 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza from Israeli strikes, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said in an update Saturday. That toll includes 724 children.

An overwhelmed hospital in Gaza has resorted to using ice cream trucks from local factories as makeshift morgues to supplement the overflowing hospital mortuaries.

Dr. Yasser Khatab, a forensic pathologist in al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, said in a video message sent to CNN on Saturday that the hospital in Deir al-Balah is unable to accommodate the increasing number of deceased.

UN officials were initially told by Israel on Thursday that the relocation of Gaza residents should happen within 24 hours. But Israel has since acknowledged that the mass migration order will take time, and IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said Friday that any deadline “may slip,” adding to the uncertainty swirling.

Another IDF spokesperson, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, claimed on Saturday that Hamas was trying to stop Palestinian civilians from evacuating “via messages and also checkpoints and stops on the ground,” citing media reports.

When asked by CNN whether the evacuation order suggested an impending ground incursion, Conricus said the IDF would “assess the situation on the ground” and “see how many civilians are left in the area … Once we see that the situation will be permissible for significant combat operations, then they will commence.”

The IDF also said Saturday that its fighter jets had struck operational headquarters used by Hamas militants, killing the head of the Hamas Aerial System in Gaza City, who the military claimed was “largely responsible for directing terrorists” during last week’s attack on Israel.

Israel’s evacuation deadline has raised international alarm and sharp criticism from some rights groups, especially as critical supplies run out and deaths rise in the isolated enclave, from which residents say they have no escape.

“The order to evacuate 1.1 million people from northern Gaza defies the rules of war and basic humanity,” wrote OCHA head Martin Griffiths in a statement late Friday. “Roads and homes (in Gaza) have been reduced to rubble. There is nowhere safe to go.”

The territory has been under a land, sea and air blockade enforced by Israel since 2007, with more than half its residents living below the poverty line even before the latest conflict. Now there’s only one corridor left for Palestinians to flee or for aid to enter, connecting Gaza to Egypt – and it’s not clear if that’s even operational.

Meanwhile, the World Food Programme said it distributed food to 135,000 people in shelters across Gaza on Friday, but warned “humanitarian supplies are running low.”

OCHA added that most people now have no access to water in the strip. “As a last resort, people are consuming brackish water from agricultural wells, triggering serious concerns about the spread of waterborne diseases,” it said.

In response, Israel’s ambassador to the UN said on Friday the government is doing “all that we can to minimize civilian casualties” by issuing the evacuation order, and accused the UN of not wanting Israel to “defend itself.”

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October 14, 2023
Tens of thousands across Middle East protest Israeli airstrikes on Gaza

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Tens of thousands of Muslims demonstrated Friday across the Middle East in support of the Palestinians and against the intensifying Israeli bombardment of Gaza, underscoring the risk of a wider regional conflict as Israel prepares for a possible ground invasion.

From the typically sedate streets of downtown Amman in Jordan, to Yemen’s war-scarred capital of Sanaa, crowds of Muslim worshippers poured into the streets after weekly Friday prayers, angered by devastating Israeli airstrikes on Gaza that began after the militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented surprise attack on Israel last Saturday.

At the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City, Israeli police were permitting only certain older men, women and children to enter the sprawling hilltop compound for prayers, trying to limit the potential for violence. Only 5,000 worshippers made it into the site, the Islamic endowment that manages the mosque said. On a typical Friday, some 50,000 perform the prayers.

An Associated Press reporter watched police allow just a Palestinian teenage girl and her mother into the compound out of 20 worshippers who tried to get in, some of them even over the age of 50. Young Palestinian men who were refused entry gathered at the steps near Lion’s Gate, eyes downcast, until police shouted at them and shepherded them outside the Old City ramparts altogether.

“We can’t live, we can’t breathe, they are killing everything that is good within us,” said Ahmad Barbour, a 57-year-old cleaner, red-faced and seething after police blocked him from entering for prayers.

“Everything that is forbidden to us is allowed to them,” he added, referring to the Israelis.

The mosque sits in a hilltop compound sacred to both Jews and Muslims, and conflicting claims over it have spilled into violence before. Al-Aqsa Mosque is the third-holiest site in Islam and stands in a spot known to Jews as the Temple Mount, which is the holiest site in Judaism.

Hundreds of young Palestinian worshippers who had been turned away from the Old City threw down small prayer rugs on the street in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Wadi Joz and prayed in the open. When some of the men started shouting, Israeli police charged into the crowd with batons and fired rounds of tear gas at the worshippers, wounding at least six people, said the Palestinian Red Crescent.

Thousands demonstrated in Amman in neighboring Jordan, some crying out: “We are going to Jerusalem as millions of martyrs!”

“What do they want from Palestine? Do they expect them to leave?” asked protester Omar Abu-Sundos. “For what remains of Palestine to leave? They won’t leave.”

Jordanians march from Grand Husseini Mosque to Al-Nahl Square after Friday prayer in Amman, Jordan on Oct. 13, 2023.

Laith Al-jnaidi/Anadolu via Getty Images

In Beirut, thousands of supporters of Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group waved Lebanese, Palestinian and Hezbollah flags, chanting slogans in support of Gaza and calling for “death to Israel.” The Iranian-backed militant group in neighboring Lebanon has launched sporadic attacks since the Hamas assault, but largely stayed on the sidelines of the war.

However, Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general warned that it would be “on the lookout” for the United States and British naval vessels heading to the Mediterranean Sea. U.S. officials, including President Biden, have repeatedly warned Iran and the regional militias Tehran backs to stay out of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

“Your battleships do not interest us, nor do your statements frighten us,” Naim Kassim said at a rally in a southern suburb of Beirut. “When the time is right to take action, we will do so.”

In Baghdad, tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Tahrir Square — the protest hub of Iraq’s capital — for rallies called by the influential Shiite cleric and political leader Muqtada al-Sadr.

Thousands of followers of influential Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr take part in a rally at Tahrir Square in a show of support for Palestinians against retaliatory Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, Oct. 13, 2023.

Ameer Al-Mohammedawi/picture alliance via Getty Images

“We, as Iraqis, know the pain of having an occupier on our land,” said protester Alaa al-Arabyia, referring to the U.S. occupation of Iraq following its 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. “Palestinian women have husbands, loved ones and sons fighting the occupation. We stand with them in their struggle.”

U.N. calls Israel’s evacuation order for Gaza “impossible”

07:10

Across Iran, a supporter of Hamas and Israel’s regional archenemy, demonstrators also streamed into the streets after prayers. In Tehran, they burned Israeli and American flags, chanting: “Death to Israel,” “Death to America,” “Israel will be doomed” and “Palestine will be the conqueror.”

“The Palestinian people are fed up, now your idea is to destroy Gaza, the houses of the people,” Iran’s hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi said in a speech in the country’s southern Fars province. “The people of the world and Palestine will cause trouble for you.”

Iranian girls hold Palestinian flags as they attend a pro-Palestinian rally before the Friday prayer in Tehran, Iran, Oct. 13, 2023.

AP

In the Syrian capital of Damascus, protesters — including Palestinians from the Yarmouk refugee camp formed after the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation — also rallied.

“I tell the people not to leave their homes otherwise they will be like our grandparents who left Palestine and came to Syria but never returned,” Ahmad Saeed, a 23-year-old Palestinian living in Syria, said, referring to the 1948 war.

In Yemen’s Sanaa, held by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels still at war with a Saudi-led coalition, demonstrators crowded the streets waving Yemeni and Palestinian flags. The rebels’ slogan long has been: “God is the greatest; death to America; death to Israel; curse of the Jews; victory to Islam.”

“We are ready to participate actively and send hundreds of thousands of mujahedeen … .to defend Palestine, the Palestinian people and the holy sites,” the Houthi government said in a statement Friday.

After Friday prayers, Egyptian demonstrators ringed the historic Al-Azhar Mosque in downtown Cairo, the Sunni Muslim world’s foremost religious institution, chanting that Israel remained their enemy “generation after generation.” They repeated the traditionally nationalistic slogan, “We give our souls and blood to Al-Aqsa.”

Muslims shout out slogans as they protest Israel’s retaliation against Gaza after Hamas’ attack on Israel at Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, Egypt on Oct. 13, 2023.

Mohamed Elshahed/Anadolu via Getty Images

In Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad, some worshippers trampled on American and Israeli flags.

“International media and international courts turn a blind eye to the injustices with the Palestinians. But they only notice the actions that the Palestinians take to defend themselves,” said Faheem Ahmed, a worshipper in Karachi. “They call it terrorism.”

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October 13, 2023
Jimmy Kimmel Awards Withering Prize To Trump Over Israel Remarks

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Jimmy Kimmel ripped former President Donald Trump over what he called a “doozy of a speech” where he addressed Hamas’ attack on Israel “by attacking Israel.”

“He said Hamas would never have gone into Israel if his election hadn’t been rigged, he called Israel’s defense minister a ‘jerk,’ he did some axe grinding about [Benjamin] Netanyahu and had some complimentary words about Israel’s enemies in Lebanon,” said Kimmel in a look at Trump’s speech Wednesday.

“He’s really angling for that ‘Nobel Piece of Shit’ prize.”

“Poor Eric, Trump never said he was smart,” joked Kimmel about the former president’s son.

“Unfortunately, we do have to bother with it,” Kimmel quipped.

You can explore the rest of Kimmel’s monologue in the video below.

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October 12, 2023

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