Israel-Lebanon live: Netanyahu tells UN to ‘immediately’ remove peacekeepers from Lebanon after five wounded

Since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon, Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have clashed along the border while the Lebanese army has largely stood on the sidelines.

It’s not the first time the national army has found itself watching war at home from the discomfiting position of bystander.

Lebanon’s widely beloved army is one of the few institutions that bridge the country’s sectarian and political divides. Several army commanders have become president, and the current commander, Gen. Joseph Aoun, is widely regarded as one of the front-runners to step in when the deadlocked parliament fills a two-year vacuum and names a president.

Read the full article here:

Donald Trump’s family business tried to open a luxury hotel in Jerusalem, Israel, according to a report.

The Trump Organization sought a deal last year to open a Trump-branded hotel on the former site of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The New York Times reported.

The former president’s company also looked into transforming a developing skyscraper — near the Israel Defense Forces headquarters — in Tel Aviv into another hotel. Once completed, that building will house the most hotel rooms in the country, the outlet noted.

Read the full article here:

UN humanitarian officials say aid entering Gaza is at its lowest level in months and warn that critical lifelines in the territory’s north, where Israel has renewed its military offensive, have been cut off.

UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq delivered the grim news Friday, saying the main crossings into northern Gaza have been closed and no food or other essential supplies have entered since Oct. 1. More than 400,000 people who remain in the north are under increasing pressure to move south, he said.

“The situation is terrible” across northern Gaza, Haq said, adding that the entire territory faces insecurity.

Read the full article here:

A wounded Israeli soldier urged the UK not to forget the mistake of Neville Chamberlain by being more like Churchill and standing up against “the evil of Iran”.

Barak Deri, an Israeli Defence Force reservist, has been hailed as a hero in his country and is visiting London this week as part of a mission to win support for Israel’s struggle in the ongoing war on multiple fronts in the Middle East.

The 32-year-old, who was wounded and is likely to be disabled for the rest of his life, arrived in the UK with a simple warning that “Israel’s war is the West’s war” and the demand: “We cannot be quiet, we must send a clear message that another Holocaust is not an option.”

Read the full article here:

Hours after an Israeli strike destroyed a three-story building in Beirut, killing at least 10 people, Maggie Sharawi received a telephone call from a person living nearby saying that the attack had killed a cat that had several kittens.

While civil defense members were combing through the rubble for human victims or survivors, Sharawi and other members of Animals Lebanon, an animal protection organization, also rushed to the scene in Beirut’s central Burj Abi Haidar neighborhood Friday.

They began climbing through rubble, twisted metal and collapsed walls to reach the kittens. The animals, just a few days old, were pulled out, put in a plastic carrier and taken away as the rescuers continued searching for other cats whose cries could be heard emerging from under the debris.

Read the full article here:

Rwo events took place last weekend in Germany. At a conference in Berlin called The Big Chill, a group of thinkers and activists denounced what they called “anticipatory obedience” in which Germans, including Jews, had been “muted, de-platformed and stigmatised” for criticising Israel’s response to the atrocities of 7 October 2023.

At the same time, in a small town called Zeitz in eastern Germany, 10 “stumbling stones”, small memorial brass plates denoting the homes of Jews taken to be exterminated in concentration camps, were ripped up. “Whoever did this wants to tear the Holocaust out of our memory,” a leading local politician, Götz Ulrich, declared.

The sad fact is both sets of assertions are largely true. And yet, it was a weekend like any other and neither event received particular coverage.

Read the full article here:

Israeli airstrikes flattened a residential area and killed at least 22 people including women and children in an urban refugee camp in northern Gaza, Palestinian medical officials said Saturday.

In an area where Israel’s military launched a major ground operation last week, one of the strikes late Friday destroyed an entire building, killing at least 20 people and severely damaging several nearby buildings in the center of Jabaliya camp, according to the Health Ministry’s Ambulance and Emergency service.

A different strike killed a mother, father and injured their baby in another part of Jabaliya, medical officials said.

First responders who rushed to the area before the strikes had ceased found a 20-meter (65-foot) deep hole within a house in the area.

At least 20 bodies had been recovered from the area as of Saturday morning, with many others said to be missing under the rubble, emergency service officials said, adding that at least six women and seven children were killed.

Gaza’s health ministry on Saturday said hospitals across Gaza received the bodies of 49 people killed over the past 24 hours. Hospitals also received 219 wounded. The deaths brought the death tally to 42,175 since the war began on Oct. 7 last year, with 98,339 wounded, according to the ministry.

The 30 Irish peacekeepers carried only rifles and small arms. The Israeli force was preparing to advance with all the tools of a military superpower: tanks, aircraft, drones, heavy artillery and thousands of troops.

But when the Israelis ordered the Irish soldiers to vacate their observation post on the Lebanon-Israel border last week to clear the way for their invasion, they refused.

The incident, which sparked a tense stand-off and diplomatic spat, was just the latest in a long history of confrontations between the Israeli army and the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL.

Read the full article here:

The leaders of nine southern European Union countries on Friday pledged support for Lebanon’s armed forces to reassert control over the country’s southern territory in hopes of bringing peace to an area plagued by fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

In a joint declaration, the leaders of the so-called MED9 — Italy, Spain, France, Greece, Malta, Cyprus, Slovenia, Portugal and Croatia — said they would “continue advocating for further support to Lebanon and its people, including to the Lebanese Armed Forces which are called to play a critical stabilizing role.”

“The unfolding situation in the Middle East is gravely alarming,” the declaration said. “In light of the reverberations of the Gaza conflict on the wider region, we express our extreme concern with the escalation of the military confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah.”

Read the full article here:

Hours after an Israeli strike destroyed a three-story building in Beirut, killing at least 10 people, Maggie Sharawi received a telephone call from a person living nearby saying that the attack had killed a cat that had several kittens.

While civil defense members were combing through the rubble for human victims or survivors, Sharawi and other members of Animals Lebanon, an animal protection organization, also rushed to the scene in Beirut’s central Burj Abi Haidar neighborhood Friday.

They began climbing through rubble, twisted metal and collapsed walls to reach the kittens. The animals, just a few days old, were pulled out, put in a plastic carrier and taken away as the rescuers continued searching for other cats whose cries could be heard emerging from under the debris.

Read the full article here: