A tribute was paid at the ministry of information in Damascus for Press TV’s correspondent Maya Nasser who lost his life reporting on Syria’s events. The event comes forty days after foreign backed armed men shot Maya dead near the chief of staff office in the Omawiyeen square in the Syrian capital.
Israel has launched a deadly military offensive against Gaza, with fighter jets and warships attacking the occupied territory.
The operation began with the airstrike assassination of the military leader of Hamas. The Palestinian group pledged to open the gates of hell in retaliation. Israel Defense Force spokesperson Lt Col Avital Leibovich has told RT that Israel doesn’t need justification for its military operation against Hamas – READ MORE http://on.rt.com/nssjyv
RT (Russia Today) is a global news network broadcasting from Moscow and Washington studios. RT is the first news channel to break the 500 million YouTube views benchmark.
03:25 GMT: Internet hacktivist collective ‘Anonymous’ claims to have taken down the Israeli Defense Ministry website http://www.idf.il. In a message shared via one of the group’s Twitter accounts, they posted the site address with a popular hashtag used for similar actions, ‘tango down’.
03:06 GMT: Increasing number of reports claim Israel is planning to shut down internet services in Gaza, citing IDF.
02:34 GMT: Russia hopes the UNSC will convince Israel to cease fire, said the country’s permanent representative in the United Nations Vitaly Churkin.
01:57 GMT: Worldwide protests are being planned to protest Israeli strikes in Gaza. People in the US, the UK, Israel and many European countries plan to gather to show their concern over escalating violence in the Middle East.
01:13 GMT: Diplomats say both the Israeli and Palestinian envoys are to speak at the emergency UNSC meeting.
00:51 GMT: The United Nations Security Council has called an emergency meeting to discuss escalating tensions between Israel and the Palestinian territory of Gaza. The meeting is scheduled for 0200 GMT, and will take place behind closed doors.
00:02 GMT: Palestinians reports 15 people dead and over 100 wounded since the beginning of Operation Pillar of Defense.
22:43 GMT: Alarms sound in Be’er Sheva as two Gaza rockets hit city; no casualties reported.
22:26 GMT: Hamas’ armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, claims to be shelling “the occupied city of Tel Aviv”.
21:37 GMT: Israeli National Security Minister Avi Dichter: “We have no intention to end this round of fighting and suffer more hits in the next”
A rocket is launched from Rafah, in the southern Gaza strip towards Israel, on November 14, 2012. (AFP Photo/Said Khatib)
21:06 GMT: The Israeli Security Cabinet has given the IDF permission to draft reservists and expand the Gaza operation.
20:51 GMT: The Arab League will meet Saturday to discuss the Gaza attack, reports Egypt’s news agency.
20:43 GMT: Israel’s ambassador to Egypt has left for Tel Aviv together with a number of the embassy’s employees, claim some media reports. Others insist embassy functioning as usual.
19:55 GMT: Israel is reportedly preparing for a ground operation into Gaza.
19:48 GMT: According to AlJazeera, the Israeli army has reported a rocket from Gaza hitting a shopping center in a southern Israeli city.
19:40 GMT: Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov calls for end to violence in Gaza.
19:34 GMT: Egypt’s president orders UN representative to call for emergency security council meeting over Israel Gaza strikes, spokesman says, according to Egyptian state TV.
19:27 GMT: Egypt has decided to withdraw its ambassador to Israel.
19:22 GMT: Former US President Jimmy Carter was quoted by Israel’s Haaretz daiy as saying: “Both sides should cease all hostilities; Israel should end iblockade of Gaza“.
19:20 GMT: People in Gaza describe how ships have been shelling the ground, they can hear bombs dropping, F16s flying above them all day & drones buzzing overhead, according to tweets from inside Gaza.
19:15 GMT: Hamas has announced a state of emergency in Gaza, and evacuated all its security buildings, according to bloggers in Gaza.
19:10 GMT: Locals inside Gaza take to Twiiter to claim that at least 3 children have already been killed in the attacks.
19:06 GMT: Palestinians in the Gaza Strip fired a Grad rocket toward Dimona Wednesday night, Channel 2 reported. No injuries or damages were reported from the attack. It was not immediately clear where the rocket struck, according to the Jerusalem Post.
19:00 GMT: Palestinians in Gaza fired two rockets in the Eshkol region of southern Israel Wednesday night. The rockets exploded in open areas and no injuries or damages were reported, according to AP.
18:58 GMT: Israeli Defence Minster Ehud Barak says “We are at the start of the action, not the end. But in the long term, this military action will restore calm” according to the Jerusalem Post.
18:54 GMT: Israeli prime minister says military is `prepared to expand’ Gaza operation, according to AP.
18:45 GMT: Health minister says 10 people killed in 20 airstrikes on Gaza Strip today, including 2 young children according to AP.
18:40 GMT:“Israel’s goal is to achieve a long-term ceasefire with Egyptian mediation. IDF will continue to pound Gaza until such a truce is reached” says Volunteers for Israel, a charity that connects Israel and the USA.
18:35 GMT: Israeli Navy has struck terror sites in the Gaza Strip according to an IDF spokesman.
18:30 GMT: Medics in Gaza report more than 30 injuries in the last attack on Tal Al-Hawa most of whom are kids and women, according to tweets from inside Gaza.
18:27 GMT: The Iron Dome rocket defense system successfully intercepted a total of 15 rockets on Wednesday evening, Israeli’s Channel 2 reported.
Acting Palestinian Authority Chief, Mahmoud Abbas leaves the podium after speaking during the 67th session of the United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York on September 27, 2012.
US President Barack Obama has asked the Palestinian Authority (PA) to abandon its plan to submit a resolution to the United Nations General Assembly later this month to enhance Palestine’s status at the UN.
Nabil Abu Rudeina, the spokesman for acting PA Chief, Mahmoud Abbas, said on Sunday that the US president had called on Abbas to halt the bid aimed at enhancing Palestine’s status to “observer state” from an observer “entity,” AFP reported.
“There was a long telephone conversation” between the two, Abu Rudeina said, adding that “Obama expressed the opposition of the United States to the decision to go to the UN General Assembly.”
The spokesman noted that Abbas explained “the reasons and motives for the Palestinian decision to go to the UN…, including the continued [Israeli] settlement activity and Israeli aggression against citizens and property.”
Most of the members at the 193-member General Assembly are sympathetic to the Palestinian plan.
The observer state status will grant Palestinians access to bodies such as the International Criminal Court where they could file complaints against Israel.
The US and Israel assert that Palestinians would have to first return to the negotiation table with Tel Aviv.
In 2010, Israel broke down the talks after refusing to extend a moratorium on its settlement activities on the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Last September, the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) accepted the Palestinian Authority as a full member.
Almost all of the defense industries are owned by a Jewish family. And Israel’s real role is to protect criminals. Rude comments get deleted.
btw – the next video going up is from an Ayurvedic Doctor – in case this is all toooo much.
Following the re-election of Barack Obama in last week’s US presidential poll, Washington and its allies have stepped up their war drive against Syria. In the most serious escalation of the 20-month conflict in the Middle East country, the Israeli armed forces fired a missile into Syrian territory Sunday.
The strike, by an advanced Tammuz guided missile, is the first acknowledged attack by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on Syria since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Israeli warplanes struck the site of an alleged Syrian nuclear project in 2007, but neither regime ever officially confirmed the action.
The Israeli missile reportedly struck a Syrian army base, though the government in Damascus has not released any details of the damage caused.
The IDF strike was reportedly carried out in response to a Syrian mortar that landed in the Golan Heights, the Syrian territory illegally occupied by Israel since 1967. Nobody was reported killed or injured by what appears to have been a misdirected 120mm Syrian tank shell.
A statement issued by the IDF shortly after the Tammuz missile struck Syrian territory claimed, “IDF forces fired warning shots and relayed a message to the Syrian forces via the United Nations that warns against additional fire. Additional fire will prompt a quick response.”
The IDF acknowledged that eight Syrian shells had fallen within the Israeli-controlled section of the Golan Heights over the past two months, likely the inadvertent result of fighting between Syrian government forces and “rebel” fighters, without any military response from the IDF.
While Israel appears to have turned a blind eye to errant Syrian shells in the weeks leading up to the US election, the decision by the IDF to launch a strike now indicates that Washington and its allies are entering into a new phase of their conflict with the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
Further evidence of a shift toward open conflict between the major powers and the Syrian regime was provided by General Sir David Richards, Britain’s Chief of the Defence Staff, who on Sunday revealed to the BBC that plans were in place for a military intervention by British forces into Syria.
General Richards told BBC television’s Andrew Marr Show that he expected the humanitarian crisis in Syria to worsen over the winter, which would increase pressure to “intervene in a limited way.”
“Obviously we develop contingency plans to look at all these things. It is my job to make sure that these options are continually brushed over to make sure that we can deliver them and they are credible,” Gen. Richards revealed.
While the UK’s top soldier couched his comments in “humanitarian” language, any invasion of Syrian territory by British and allied forces would be an act of war that would throw Syria and the entire region into even deeper turmoil, threatening to spark military counter-measures by Damascus.
Such a military intervention by Britain and the US, acting with their NATO and Middle Eastern allies, could spark a wider conflict with countries such as Iran, Russia, and China, which have retained close ties to the Assad regime and feel threatened by the explosion of militarist aggression, led by Washington, in the region.
In preparation for such a major offensive against Syria, the Obama administration has initiated a tactical shift away from some of the opposition political forces it has relied upon until now.
Addressing a press conference in Zagreb, Croatia, October 31, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the US was transferring its support from the Syrian National Council (SNC) to a new opposition leadership.
After promoting the SNC for more than a year as the “legitimate” representative of the Syrian people, Clinton declared that they “could no longer be viewed as the visible leader of the opposition.”
The SNC could “be part of a larger opposition,” Clinton allowed. “But that opposition must include people from inside Syria and others who have a legitimate voice that needs to be heard.”
A Turkish-based gathering of affluent Syrian exiles with links to the CIA and the Muslim Brotherhood, the SNC is deeply unpopular and wields almost no influence inside Syria. The fact that Washington has abruptly and unilaterally jettisoned the SNC only exposes the bogus character of US claims to have been working to secure “peace” and “democracy” in Syria.
Secretary Clinton then called for the formation of a new Syrian opposition bloc, declaring that the US State Department had compiled a list of “names and organizations that we believe should be included in any leadership structure.”
Washington moved rapidly to convene a meeting of its Syrian assets at a luxury hotel in the Qatari capital, Doha. The four-day gathering, which ended Sunday, saw officials from the US, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates broker a tentative deal between various opposition groups and individuals to establish a 55- to 60-member assembly.
As late as 3 a.m. on Sunday morning, the Doha talks seemed on the brink of collapse, as SNC representatives fought to maintain their influence over the new opposition bloc. One source inside the talks told the Reuters news agency that the SNC finally agreed to take a backseat role within the new assembly only after being threatened that the umbrella group would be set up and recognized by the US and its allies with or without the participation of the SNC.
The Obama administration expects that this new opposition leadership, which has been named the Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces, will be even more directly subordinate to the orders coming from State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA.
Washington also hopes that the refurbished opposition bloc will provide a more “inclusive” face for the US-led proxy war against Syria, proving more able to wield influence inside the country than the discredited SNC.
Cobbled together from various religious figures, exiled academics, disgruntled businessmen, defectors from the Assad regime, and Islamist militia commanders, the new Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces is unlikely to prove any more popular than the old SNC.
The new head of the Syrian opposition assembly is Moaz al-Khatib, a Sunni Muslim cleric. The former imam of the Umayyad mosque in Damascus, Khatib fled Syria in July after being repeatedly detained by Syrian authorities for voicing criticisms of the regime.
Considered to be a political and religious “moderate,” Khatib is a compromise candidate between the rival factions of the Syrian opposition, all of whom are scrambling to secure foreign backing and a share in the spoils of victory in the event that the Assad regime falls. Given these divisions, which were evident during the conference in Doha, it is doubtful that Khatib will be able to unify the opposition forces.
Khatib’s prominent position at the head of a major Damascus mosque is intended to garner support for the opposition from moderate Sunnis and the urban population of Syria’s capital city. Despite widespread popular hatred of the Assad dictatorship, many Syrians remain deeply hostile to the Sunni sectarian-based “rebel” militias that Washington and its allies are using as their shock troops to weaken and destabilize Assad’s forces.
But the main purpose of Khatib’s sudden elevation is to provide Washington with another face — without widespread support, and just as disposable as SNC — behind which it can work to suppress the social demands of the Syrian masses and enforce the interests of imperialism in the Middle East.
Multiple military sources have told the Global Network that Pentagon personnel responsible for selecting targets for cruise missile first strike attacks have been sent to Israel.
This indicates that U.S. and Israeli military strategists are now likely meeting to plan a joint attack on Syria and/or Iran.…
The Syrian army has carried out military maneuvers that included test-firing of missiles and operations by its ground and air forces “similar to a real battle,” state-run media reported Monday dpa reported
According to Syrian television the military exercises took place over the weekend.…
by Stephen Lendman
Days of Syrian/Turkish border incidents threaten further escalation into something more serious. Free Syrian Army (FSA) militants fired mortar rounds on Turkish territory from Syrian locations they control.
Assad was wrongfully blamed for their provocation. Syria has been very circumspect.…
The United Nations Security Council agreed Saturday to deploy 30 international military observers to Syria. An advance team of six monitors met Saturday with former UN General Secretary Kofi Annan in the Syrian capital, Damascus.
Annan is in Syria as head of a mission sponsored by the UN and the Arab League to negotiate a six-point “peace plan” between the government of President Bashar al-Assad and armed opposition groups.…
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The Algerian ambassador to Tehran says the Israeli regime’s war rhetoric against Iran and other regional countries is in flagrant violation of international laws and the UN Charter.
Sofiane Mimouni said on Monday that according to the United Nations Charter, any threat against a UN member state is “forbidden and unacceptable.”
Mimouni said his country continues to support Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear technology, adding that the Islamic Republic has never violated the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“Algeria has constantly supported the legal rights of countries, including the Islamic Republic of Iran, to possess and use peaceful nuclear technology,” said the Algerian diplomat.
Tel Aviv has repeatedly threatened Iran with a military strike, falsely claiming that Tehran is pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.
Iran argues that as a signatory to the NPT and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it has the right to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
Iranian officials have promised a crushing response to any military strike against the country, warning that any such measure could result in a war that would spread beyond the Middle East.
Following the re-election of Barack Obama in last week’s US presidential poll, Washington and its allies have stepped up their war drive against Syria. In the most serious escalation of the 20-month conflict in the Middle East country, the Israeli armed forces fired a missile into Syrian territory Sunday.
PN 