[IMPORTANT] Hamas launches foot assault against settlements.

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That's why the mayor should be relieved of his duties

The United States is concerned about reports Israel used U.S.-supplied white phosphorus munitions in an October attack in southern Lebanon, White House spokesperson John Kirby said on Monday.

"We've seen the reports. Certainly concerned about that. We'll be asking questions to try to learn a little bit more," Kirby told reporters on Air Force One.

Kirby said white phosphorus has a "legitimate military utility" for illumination and producing smoke to conceal movements.

"Obviously any time that we provide items like white phosphorous to another military, it is with the full expectation that it will be used in keeping with those legitimate purposes ... and in keeping with the law of armed conflict," he said.

This post was not about the real estate market. It is about would Israelis and thus the people who govern them accept that 30 percent or whatever their country is uninhabitable because of terrorism.

This is why I think once Gaza is secured they will to try to destroy Hezbollah, then Iran. That is why I am surprised Hezbollah has not gone to total war while a lot of the IDF is occupying Gaza.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/white- ... 023-12-11/

I’m not sure that that’s “obvious” but okay.

Conditions in Gaza are deteriorating rapidly as battles between the Israeli military and Hamas rage in Khan Younis, the largest city in Gaza's south, with aid deliveries becoming increasingly difficult and humanitarian zones for displaced people shrinking. "Gaza’s health system is on its knees and collapsing," World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said the country was still trying to move things forward for hostage release negotiations despite a breakdown in talks. The U.S. is coming under increased international criticism after it approved $106 million in emergency arms sales to Israel.

Israel released the names of 20 hostages held by Hamas who it believes are dead. Pressure continues from families of those held and those who have been freed to rescue more than 100 people still being held captive by Hamas.

About 1.9 million people have been displaced in Gaza, where health officials say the death toll has surpassed 18,000 after more than two months of Israeli attacks. Thousands more are buried under the rubble and presumed dead. The Israel Defense Forces estimates 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas attack, with around 140 people still held captive in Gaza.

Israel announced that it will open the Kerem Shalom border crossing for security screenings tomorrow, a decision that it says will double the amount of aid being sent into Gaza. It is estimated that half of the population in the Palestinian enclave are starving as aid organizations say the current convoys cannot meet their needs"

Going around Congress, the Biden administration said Saturday it has approved the emergency sale to Israel of nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth more than $106 million as Israel intensifies its military operations in the southern Gaza Strip.

The move comes as President Biden's request for a nearly $106 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other national security is languishing in Congress, caught up in a debate over U.S. immigration policy and border security. Some Democratic lawmakers have spoken of making the proposed $14.3 billion in American assistance to its Mideast ally contingent on concrete steps by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza during the war with Hamas.

The State Department said it had notified Congress of the sale late Friday after Secretary of State Antony Blinken determined "an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale" of the munitions in the U.S. national security interest.

That means the purchase will bypass the congressional review requirement for foreign military sales. Such determinations are rare, but not unprecedented when administrations see an urgent need for weapons to be delivered without waiting for lawmakers' approval.

The sale is worth $106.5 million and includes 13,981 120 mm High Explosive Anti-Tank Multi-Purpose with Tracer tank cartridges as well as U.S. support, engineering and logistics. The material will come from Army inventory.

Bypassing Congress with emergency determinations for arms sales is an unusual step that has in the past met resistance from lawmakers, who normally have a period of time to weigh on proposed weapons transfers and, in some cases, block them.

Israel's military says it has captured Hamas' former headquarters in Gaza City, but the war between the two sides was still raging Monday further south in Gaza, and the situation for civilians is only getting worse. United Nations relief agencies say about 90% of the Palestinian territory's population has been displaced — nearly 2 million men, women and children.

The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) says nearly all of those in the enclave are going without food for days at a time, and half of the displaced Palestinians are starving.

"I have seen a family gathering over a loaf of bread, just getting it into small pieces like croutons that we put on the side," WFP spokesperson Abeer Etefa told CBS News. "The suffering of the children in Gaza is, I think, it's unmatched."

"The humanitarian operation is actually on the brink of collapse," added Etefa. "It's impossible to deliver aid in these conditions… We need the cease-fire now."

Lazzarini said he was visiting the area to show solidarity with the Palestinian people trapped there, and with the more than 10,000 staff members from his agency still trying to help those people. UNRWA said over the weekend that at least 134 members of its staff had been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, when the war was sparked by Hamas' brutal terror attack on southern Israel.

With the flow of aid into Gaza constrained by the war raging again after a brief truce last month, Lazzarini said there was a "total discrepancy between the few trucks" being permitted to enter the enclave with aid materials and "the immensity of the needs."

In a message shared Monday on social media, UNRWA said it was "on the verge of collapse," and added that if the agency did cease operations, "humanitarian aid that almost an entire population of Gaza depends on, will also collapse."

Separately, almost two dozen U.N. ambassadors were on an informal trip sponsored by the United Arab Emirates and Egypt to visit the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing Monday.

The U.N. ambassadors visited just a day before the General Assembly was scheduled to vote on a non-binding resolution calling for a cease-fire, similar to the one vetoed by the U.S. in the Security Council, which would have been binding under international law.

In the meantime, undaunted by the increasingly urgent calls for a new cease-fire, Israel continued with the military operation it has vowed will destroy Hamas.

An Israeli airstrike obliterated a family home in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. And Nasser hospital, the biggest in southern Gaza, was left overflowing with the dead, the injured, and scores of parents and children — many who had fled their homes in the north, as they were instructed to do by Israel's military — grappling with loss and grief.

The Ministry of Health in Hamas-ruled Gaza said 208 people were killed in Israeli strikes Monday alone, and many more were believed to be trapped under the rubble of destroyed buildings. According to the ministry, which does not discern between civilian and militant deaths in Gaza, more than 18,000 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory since the war started on Oct. 7.

Of the 105 Israeli soldiers killed in the Gaza Strip during Israel’s ground offensive against Hamas, which began in late October, 20 were killed by so-called friendly fire and other accidents, according to new data released by the IDF on Tuesday.

Thirteen of the soldiers were killed by friendly fire due to mistaken identification in airstrikes, tank shelling, and gunfire.

One soldier was killed by gunfire that was unintended to hit them, and another two were killed by accidental misfires.

Two soldiers were killed in incidents involving armored vehicles running over troops.

And two soldiers were killed by shrapnel, including from explosives set off by Israeli forces.

The IDF has assessed that there are myriad of reasons that have led to the deadly accidents, including the large number of forces operating in Gaza, communication issues between forces, and soldiers being tired and not paying attention to regulations.

Alongside its fight with Hamas, Israel is fighting another battle: to convince the world, and chiefly the United States, that this is a just war.

Israel’s public-relations machine has gone into overdrive in recent weeks to make the case that its pummeling of Gaza has been necessary and conducted in a way meant to minimize civilian deaths. It has allowed journalists, including those from NBC News, to embed with its soldiers in Gaza, maintained a steady drumbeat of social media posts, and made Israeli representatives available for TV appearances.

But in its recent outreach to global allies, Israel has released several pieces of inaccurate or disputed information including claiming that an Arabic calendar was a shift schedule for Hamas kidnappers, and using curtains as evidence that hostage videos had been filmed in a hospital.

The widespread reaction calling out these questionable pieces of evidence has weakened Israel’s credibility, according to some experts, and could lead to a boy-who-cried-wolf situation unless concrete evidence for a Hamas headquarters is found beneath Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital, one of Israel’s key contentions at this stage of the war.

“The irony is they might find something and nobody is going to believe them,” said H.A. Hellyer, a senior associate fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington, D.C., think tank. “At this point their credibility is shot.”

This is not an evenhanded information war between Israel and Hamas, the latter being a terror group banned in the U.S. and Europe that carried out the Oct. 7 attack that killed some 1,200 people.

And while some of Hamas’ propaganda has been able to sidestep Western efforts to limit its reach, Hellyer, whose career has included senior anti-radicalization roles in the U.K. government, said this information war should not be seen as one between two equal parties.

“We don’t take seriously what a terror group says, but we do take seriously what an army says, especially one that’s an ally of ours,” he said. “So we naturally hold it to a higher standard.”

Israel knows the international debate matters. While the White House backs Israel’s stated goal to destroy Hamas in response to its Oct. 7 attack that killed some 1,200 people, Biden administration officials have privately expressed concerns that the Israel Defense Forces are not doing enough to avoid civilian deaths, of which there have been more than 12,000, over half of whom were women and children, according to Palestinian health officials.

Pressure isn’t only coming from the United States. This week, the 15-member United Nations Security Council voted for a pause in the fighting. And streets across the world have been filled with hundreds of thousands of protesters demanding a cease-fire.

Polling suggests much of the outpouring of goodwill Israel received after the Oct. 7 attacks has now ebbed in the face of images showing mass casualties and destruction in Gaza.

Nimrod Goren, a Jerusalem-based senior fellow for Israeli affairs at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, the oldest think tank focusing on the region, said these shifts do not go unnoticed.

A mistaken calendar and curtains lead to ridicule

Much of Israel’s PR effort has centered on hospitals, where IDF strikes have contributed to a soaring Palestinian death toll. Israel has maintained that Hamas uses the facilities as military bases, making them legitimate targets. Hamas has denied those claims.

The Israeli military says at Al-Shifa it has found one tunnel shaft, a vehicle containing weapons and other caches of guns and ammo. Nearby, Israel said its soldiers found the bodies of Yehudit Weiss, a civilian hostage, and Noa Marciano, a 19-year-old soldier, who were both taken by Hamas on Oct. 7.

But efforts to prove its case have at times hurt Israel’s cause.

Most notably, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari showed what he said was evidence that the Al-Rantisi hospital had been used by Hamas to detain hostages. He pointed to a piece of paper, saying that it showed a rota for guarding the captives. “Every terrorist has his own shift,” he said.

Written above the document in pen was “Al-Aqsa Flood,” Hamas’ name for its Oct. 7 assault. But Arabic speakers pointed out that the rest of the paper merely showed days of the week, with no trace of the Hamas captors’ names described by Hagari.

Elsewhere in the hospital, he pointed out curtains had been hung on a wall with no window. There was “no reason” to do this “unless you want to film hostages and deliver movies,” Hagari said.

Some people from the region pointed out that this is a common interior decor theme among Palestinian households.

In response, the IDF told NBC News that it had issued a “prompt correction” to Hagari’s calendar comment, and that any “suggestions that the IDF is manipulating the media are incorrect.”

“We are taking all necessary precautions to report as much information as we can,” it said in a statement, “whilst maintaining the safety of our troops and retaining our operational readiness.”

Nevertheless, ridicule soon followed. Videos on social media have lampooned increasingly ridiculous and mundane objects held up as “IDF evidence.”

Israel has been accused of spreading misinformation before. Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesperson for Arab media, Ofir Gendelman, posted to X a video that he claimed showed Gazans faking their injuries with makeup. Despite countless people correcting him that the footage was in fact from a Lebanese film, it had not been deleted as of Friday.

Attacking a hospital is a war crime unless a military or militant group is using it for operations, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Even then, doctors and patients must be warned, with extra care taken not to harm those who stay.

Alongside its fight with Hamas, Israel is fighting another battle: to convince the world, and chiefly the United States, that this is a just war.

Israel’s public-relations machine has gone into overdrive in recent weeks to make the case that its pummeling of Gaza has been necessary and conducted in a way meant to minimize civilian deaths. It has allowed journalists, including those from NBC News, to embed with its soldiers in Gaza, maintained a steady drumbeat of social media posts, and made Israeli representatives available for TV appearances.

But in its recent outreach to global allies, Israel has released several pieces of inaccurate or disputed information including claiming that an Arabic calendar was a shift schedule for Hamas kidnappers, and using curtains as evidence that hostage videos had been filmed in a hospital.

The widespread reaction calling out these questionable pieces of evidence has weakened Israel’s credibility, according to some experts, and could lead to a boy-who-cried-wolf situation unless concrete evidence for a Hamas headquarters is found beneath Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital, one of Israel’s key contentions at this stage of the war.

“The irony is they might find something and nobody is going to believe them,” said H.A. Hellyer, a senior associate fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington, D.C., think tank. “At this point their credibility is shot.”

This is not an evenhanded information war between Israel and Hamas, the latter being a terror group banned in the U.S. and Europe that carried out the Oct. 7 attack that killed some 1,200 people.

And while some of Hamas’ propaganda has been able to sidestep Western efforts to limit its reach, Hellyer, whose career has included senior anti-radicalization roles in the U.K. government, said this information war should not be seen as one between two equal parties.

“We don’t take seriously what a terror group says, but we do take seriously what an army says, especially one that’s an ally of ours,” he said. “So we naturally hold it to a higher standard.”

Israel knows the international debate matters. While the White House backs Israel’s stated goal to destroy Hamas in response to its Oct. 7 attack that killed some 1,200 people, Biden administration officials have privately expressed concerns that the Israel Defense Forces are not doing enough to avoid civilian deaths, of which there have been more than 12,000, over half of whom were women and children, according to Palestinian health officials.

Pressure isn’t only coming from the United States. This week, the 15-member United Nations Security Council voted for a pause in the fighting. And streets across the world have been filled with hundreds of thousands of protesters demanding a cease-fire.

Polling suggests much of the outpouring of goodwill Israel received after the Oct. 7 attacks has now ebbed in the face of images showing mass casualties and destruction in Gaza.

Nimrod Goren, a Jerusalem-based senior fellow for Israeli affairs at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, the oldest think tank focusing on the region, said these shifts do not go unnoticed.

A mistaken calendar and curtains lead to ridicule
Much of Israel’s PR effort has centered on hospitals, where IDF strikes have contributed to a soaring Palestinian death toll. Israel has maintained that Hamas uses the facilities as military bases, making them legitimate targets. Hamas has denied those claims.

The Israeli military says at Al-Shifa it has found one tunnel shaft, a vehicle containing weapons and other caches of guns and ammo. Nearby, Israel said its soldiers found the bodies of Yehudit Weiss, a civilian hostage, and Noa Marciano, a 19-year-old soldier, who were both taken by Hamas on Oct. 7.

But efforts to prove its case have at times hurt Israel’s cause.

Most notably, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari showed what he said was evidence that the Al-Rantisi hospital had been used by Hamas to detain hostages. He pointed to a piece of paper, saying that it showed a rota for guarding the captives. “Every terrorist has his own shift,” he said.

Written above the document in pen was “Al-Aqsa Flood,” Hamas’ name for its Oct. 7 assault. But Arabic speakers pointed out that the rest of the paper merely showed days of the week, with no trace of the Hamas captors’ names described by Hagari.

Elsewhere in the hospital, he pointed out curtains had been hung on a wall with no window. There was “no reason” to do this “unless you want to film hostages and deliver movies,” Hagari said.

Some people from the region pointed out that this is a common interior decor theme among Palestinian households.

In response, the IDF told NBC News that it had issued a “prompt correction” to Hagari’s calendar comment, and that any “suggestions that the IDF is manipulating the media are incorrect.”

“We are taking all necessary precautions to report as much information as we can,” it said in a statement, “whilst maintaining the safety of our troops and retaining our operational readiness.”

Nevertheless, ridicule soon followed. Videos on social media have lampooned increasingly ridiculous and mundane objects held up as “IDF evidence.”

Israel has been accused of spreading misinformation before. Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesperson for Arab media, Ofir Gendelman, posted to X a video that he claimed showed Gazans faking their injuries with makeup. Despite countless people correcting him that the footage was in fact from a Lebanese film, it had not been deleted as of Friday.

Attacking a hospital is a war crime unless a military or militant group is using it for operations, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Even then, doctors and patients must be warned, with extra care taken not to harm those who stay.

It would seem the sense of urgency is getting even more apparent
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/hama ... rcna119532

It seems there is a lot at stake