After decimating Lebanon’s infrastructure and killing enough Known or Suspected Terrorists (KSTs), as well as innocent bystanders and medical personnel (3,580 killed, over 15,000 wounded), the Israeli Death Forces (IDF) accepted a ceasefire. So they continued their Nakba in Gaza. At least four people in the al-Tabin school shelter for displaced people in Gaza City were killed. And the IDF continues blockading humanitarian relief into Gaza.
Opposition leader Yair Golan questioned why Benjamin Netanyahu has not struck a deal to stop the bloodbath in Gaza.
“The most important test is to end the war in Gaza,” said Golan, who heads the opposition coalition the Democrats.
“If it is possible to reach an agreement with Hezbollah, why can’t we reach an agreement with Hamas and free the hostages? The fighting continues only because Netanyahu is politically dependent on a fanatical and messianic group that wants to win the war,” Golan concluded.
Women and children queue for bread at a bakery in Khan Younis. “NHI” is when people die of starvation, disease, exposure, or untreated wounds. Winter is fast approaching. (25 Nov 2024 Photo: UNRWA)
The Gaza Health Ministry said 44,056 people have been killed and 104,268 wounded since 7 Oct 2023. The real toll is probably higher because thousands of bodies are buried under rubble or in areas that medics cannot access.
The Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count and more than half of the fatalities are women and children. The IDF reported it has killed over 17,000 militants without providing evidence or proving their guilt in a court of law. That means 27,056 Palestinian deaths were innocent non-combatants. The Likud government will no doubt encourage an exodus of Palestinians from Gaza in the near future.
In the occupied West Bank, at least 760 Palestinians have been killed and more than 12,769 injured by the IDF and lunatic Settlers. This is pure homicide and simply ethnic cleansing. Those maniacs recently attacked IDF Major General Avi Bluth (see previous post).
The incredibly unpopular Netanyahu faces a bribery and corruption trial which has dogged him for years, but the proceedings have been held in abeyance because of the war. The longer the conflict goes, the better it is for the “Crime Minister” and the 100 or so hostages be damned. Possibly a third of them are dead, some killed accidentally killed by the IDF.
This clever protestor above holds her version of the iconic poster below.
The Chief of Staff to Benjamin Netanyahu is being investigated over allegations of altering documents relating to the 7 Oct 2023 surprise attack to portray the Prime Minister in a more favorable light. The Israeli police Lahav 433 major crimes unit questioned Tzachi Braverman for over five hours. Inevitably the loathsome Netanyahu will have to face a 9/11 Commission-style inquiry into his handling of 7 Oct 2023. Israel, now described as a Pariah State, is defending itself of genocide charges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the Hague. Netanyahu and ex-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague and international arrest warrants have been issued for them.
In a statement that should not surprise anyone, French President Emmanuel Macron breathtakingly said that Paris would not honor the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu in a dazzling display of duplicitous dissembling. As previously posted, French diplomacy is chaotic. And do diplomats at the Quai d’Orsay wonder why France lost complete influence over Lebanon in a span of ten years? The leader of La Francophonie, consisting of Arab, Muslim, and African populations, just shot himself in the foot with both barrels. Curiously, no journalist asked President Macron if France, an EU and NATO member, as well as signatory to the Rome Statutes, would honor the similar ICC arrest warrant for indicted war criminal Russian President Vladimir Putin? And of all places, INTERPOL is based in Lyon, France.
An INTERPOL Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant, but an alert to governments that the individual is wanted for alleged crimes. While many Red Notices are publicly visible at www.interpol.int, many are not, as in the case of PIFWCs Netanyahu and Doav Gallant.
To help Netanyahu control the narrative and crush any dissenting voices in Israel, the Likud cabinet has approved a proposal to cut all government links with Haaretz – a move that could cripple the 105-year-old newspaper financially and force it to shut down. The al-Jazeera News Bureau in Israel was previously banned.
The “Crime Minister” is counting the days until President-elect Donald Trump takes over. Once Trump is in, Netanyahu can proceed full steam ahead with ethnic cleansing Palestinians in the West Bank under the contented eye of US Ambassador Mike Huckabee who refers to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria. Moreover, knowing that he’ll be supported by the full might of USCENTCOM, Netanyahu can resume focusing his ire on Iran. Of course, the American taxpayer will continue funding this warmonger.
Sources:
Netanyahu aide investigated by police over 7 October timeline
Netanyahu aide investigated by police over 7 October timeline
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/3c87/live/88e7f150-a35e-11ef-bc62-3d90412554cd.jpg.webp
Death toll in Gaza from Israel-Hamas war passes 44,000, Palestinian officials say | AP News
Russia-Ukraine Update
Kremlin Expels UK Diplomat; Ex-British Soldier POW; Russian Senior General Replaced; Confirmation of North Korean Casualties
Through South Korean intelligence channels, the US confirmed that 500 North Koreans had been killed in a Ukrainian attack with British Storm Shadow missiles last week. A high-ranking North Korean commander may have also been liquidated. Kiev struck “firstest with the mostest” and the North Koreans troops learned they were now in a real war– not in showcase parades– and they can be killed unexpectedly. This won’t demoralize Pyongyang, but will erode any fighting spirit in the young North Korean conscripts. Vladimir Putin warned South Korea they would be making a “big mistake” if Seoul provides Ukraine with its high-tech mass casualty producing weapons. South Korea is a top-ten weapons manufacturer in the world. But the South Korean military establishment is not easily intimidated having spent decades dealing with North Korea, as well as deploying their soldiers to foreign combat zones, like Vietnam or Iraq.
South Korean commandos about to demonstrate extraordinary martial arts feats during a rehearsal for welcoming ceremony of the Seoul International Aerospace & Defense Exhibition (ADEX) at the Ministry of National Defense in South Korea, 29 Oct 2013. (Xinhua/Park Jin-hee)
Second Secretary Edward Pryor Wilkes (Undated photo / FSB)
Authorities in Moscow have ordered a British diplomat accused of espionage to leave the country. Edward Pryor Wilkes was allegedly sent to Moscow to replace one of six British diplomats accused of spying in August, according to the FSB.
The FSB claimed Wilkes “deliberately provided false information when obtaining a permit to enter our country, thus violating Russian law.” It also alleged that his activities showed “signs of intelligence and subversive work” threatening national security.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry revoked the diplomat’s accreditation and ordered him to leave the country within two weeks. State media reported that Britain’s ambassador to Moscow was summoned over the allegations.
The British Foreign Office said the expulsion order was “not the first time that Russia has made malicious and baseless accusations against our staff. We will respond in due course.”
The agency accused the directorate of being transformed into “an intelligence service tasked with inflicting strategic defeat on Russia” following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
James Scott Rhys Anderson (22), former UK Army Signalman
A Russian court ordered the arrest of James Scott Rhys Anderson, a British national, on charges of mercenary activity and participation in Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region.
Anderson, as part of Ukraine’s International Legion, illegally crossed into Russian territory and took part in hostilities within the Kursk region, according to the Kursk Regional Court’s media service. He was captured by Russian forces in an unspecified manner.
A hearing was held behind closed doors because of the sensitive nature of the allegations, which include crimes considered particularly severe.
Lieutenant General Alexander Sanchik. (Undated photo: Gavriil Grigorov / POOL / TASS)
Russia’s military has replaced the commander of one of its six operational groups fighting in Ukraine.
Lieutenant General Alexander Sanchik was reportedly appointed acting commander of Russia’s “South” group of forces. Sanchik succeeds Colonel General Gennady Anashkin, who was removed as part of a “planned rotation,” according to the Defense Ministry.
Pro-war military bloggers reported over the weekend that Anashkin was removed after misleading his superiors about settlements he allegedly claimed were captured near the Ukrainian town of Siversk. Some bloggers claimed the alleged misinformation led to “unjustified losses” on the front lines.
The “South” group has been active in recent weeks near the towns of Kurakhove, Chasiv Yar and Siversk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region. It consists of units drawn from Russia’s Southern Military District.
Sanchik previously attended a 15 May meeting with President Vladimir Putin as acting commander of the Eastern Military District.
A career officer, Sanchik served as deputy commander of the Eastern Military District in 2023 and commanded the district’s 35th Combined Arms Army in 2020. Putin promoted Sanchik to Colonel-General in February 2022, shortly before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In retaliation for expelling the Second Secretary, Whitehall will select a suitable Russian diplomat to be dubiously named Persona Non Grata. As for the young British mercenary, he will no doubt be part of any future prisoner swap Kiev and Moscow conclude. The Zelensky government must demonstrate its loyalty to the International Legion by making James Anderson’s release a priority. Seoul must deliver any powerful weapons to Kiev before the Trump administration can interfere next year. Lastly, if Russian bloggers are correct that Colonel-General Gennady Anashkin caused useless Russian casualties in this horrible war of attrition, his fate is in the hands of a cold-blooded KGB veteran.
Sources:
Russia Expels British Diplomat Over Alleged Espionage Activities
Russia Opens Criminal Case Against Brit Accused Of Terrorism, Mercenary Activities
US official confirms North Korean casualties in Russia’s Kursk – Radio Free Asia
Russian Military Replaces Senior Commander in Eastern Ukraine – RBC – The Moscow Times
CDC Confirms H5N1 Bird Flu Infection in Child in California
This is the first reported avian influenza H5 virus infection in a child in the US. Consistent with previously identified human cases in the US, the child reportedly experienced mild symptoms and received flu antivirals. The child, in Alameda County CA, is recovering and an investigation into the child’s possible H5N1 exposure source is ongoing.
California public health authorities also detected avian flu in raw milk from a produced in Fresno County. No illnesses have been reported and pasteurized milk is safe to drink.
Human infections with bird flu viruses are rare, and no person-to-person spread has been detected in California or the US. Including this most recent case, 55 human cases of H5 bird flu have now been reported in the US during 2024, with 29 in California.
CDC’s risk assessment for the general public is low. However, people with exposure to infected or potentially infected animals, such as birds, dairy cattle, or other animals (including livestock), or to environments contaminated by infected birds or other animals, are at higher risk of infection.
Americans could be in trouble over the next four years as President-elect Donald Trump’s selections to head the US health agencies have no experience in dealing with public health emergencies and have been pilloried as quacks. If anti-vaccination Robert F. Kennedy Jr is confirmed by the US Senate to become Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), expect American preventable mortality rates to increase.
Sources:
State Reports Single, Possible Case of Bird Flu Virus in Child with Mild Symptoms
CDC confirms H5N1 Bird Flu Infection in a Child in California | CDC Newsroom
INTERPOL: Operation Serengeti Nets 1,006 Cyber-Crime Suspects in Africa
Authorities across 19 African countries have arrested 1,006 suspects and dismantled 134,089 malicious infrastructures and networks thanks to a joint operation by INTERPOL and AFRIPOL against cybercrime.
Operation Serengeti targeted criminals behind ransomware, business email compromise (BEC), digital extortion, and online scams.
More than 35,000 victims were identified with cases linked to nearly USD 193 million in financial losses worldwide.
Cyber-crime suspects detained in Angola. (Photo: INTERPOL)
In Kenya, officers cracked a case of online credit card fraud linked to losses of USD 8.6 million. The funds, stolen through fraudulent scripts run after altering the banking system’s security protocol, were promptly redistributed by the group via SWIFT to companies in the UAE, Nigeria, and China. Nearly two dozen arrests have been made so far.
Eight people, including five Chinese nationals, were arrested in Senegal for a USD 6 million online Ponzi scheme affecting 1,811 victims. A search of their apartment uncovered over 900 SIM cards, USD 11,000 in cash, phones, laptops, and copies of victims’ ID cards.
Nigerian authorities arrested a man accused of running online investment scams. He made over USD 300,000 by luring victims through messaging platforms with false promises of cryptocurrency returns.
In Cameroon, authorities arrested a group suspected of trafficking victims from seven different countries to run a multi-level marketing scam. After paying a “membership fee”, victims were promised employment opportunities or training but once in Cameroon, they were held captive and obliged to lure others into the scheme to gain their freedom. Initial estimates show that the group had already pocketed at least USD 150,000 in fees.
Angolan investigators dismantled an international criminal group running a virtual casino in Luanda. The group, which primarily targeted Brazilian and Nigerian gamblers, defrauded hundreds through its online platform, offering a percentage of winnings to members who recruited new subscribers. Some 150 arrests were made, with officers seizing 200 computers and more than 100 mobile phones.
Operation Serengeti was carried out with funding of the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the German Federal Foreign Office and the Council of Europe.
Participating countries:
Algeria, Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, Zambia, Zimbabwe
Operational partners:
Cybercrime Atlas, Fortinet, Group-IB, Kaspersky, Team Cymru, Trend Micro, Uppsala Security
Source:
Major cybercrime operation nets 1,006 suspects
Democrats Ignored Gaza and Brought Down Their Party
By Peter Beinart for The New York Times.
Illustrations and captions added by Coriolanus. We are grateful to him and trust he will appreciate the accents to his finely crafted editorial.
During the presidential campaign, journalists trying to assess the electoral impact of Israel’s war in Gaza often focused on Arab and Muslim voters, particularly in Michigan. That’s understandable. In the heavily Arab-American city of Dearborn, MI, which supported Joe Biden in 2020, results show that Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris by about six percentage points.
But viewing Gaza’s political repercussions merely through the lens of identity misses something fundamental. Over the past year, Israel’s slaughter and starvation of Palestinians — funded by US taxpayers and live-streamed on social media — has triggered one of the greatest surges in progressive activism in a generation. Many Americans roused to action by their government’s complicity in Gaza’s destruction have no personal connection to Palestine or Israel. Like many Americans who protested South African apartheid or the Vietnam War, their motive is not ethnic or religious. It is moral.
Both the 1968 and 2024 Democratic candidates were loyal VPOTUS to their one term predecessors and wanted to continue their policies. And Just like in 1968, nationwide anti-war protests gripped the US in 2024. The 1968 protestors were not pro-South Vietnamese, just as the 2024 protestors were not pro-Hamas. They were both simply anti-war.
The outrage has been particularly intense among Black Americans and the young. This spring, encampments expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people rose on more than 100 college campuses. In February, the Council of Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the nation’s most prominent Black congregations, called the war in Gaza a “mass genocide” and demanded that the Biden-Harris administration stop funding it. In June, the NAACP urged an end to weapons shipments as well. A June CBS News poll found that while most voters over the age of 65 supported arms sales to Israel, voters under the age of 30 opposed them by a ratio of more than three to one. And while only 56 percent of white voters favored cutting off weapons, among Black voters the figure was 75 percent.
Those pre-election polling numbers may explain some of what we saw Tuesday night. Kamala Harris is far more youthful than Joe Biden. Yet, early exit polls — from CNN, The Washington Post, Fox News and The Associated Press — suggest she suffered a sharp decline among voters under the age of 29 compared with Mr. Biden’s result in 2020. Ms. Harris is Black, yet according to CNN and The Washington Post, she did slightly worse than Mr. Biden among Black voters. One exit poll, from Fox News and The Associated Press, suggests she did significantly worse.
Surely, many young and Black voters were dissatisfied with the economy. Some may have been attracted to Mr. Trump’s message on immigration. Others may have been reluctant to vote for a woman.
But these broader dynamics do not fully explain Ms. Harris’s underperformance, because she appears to have lost far less ground among voters who are older and white. Her share of white voters equaled Mr. Biden’s. Among voters over age 65, she actually gained ground.
Which brings us back to Ms. Harris’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza.
Despite overwhelming evidence that the Democratic Party’s most devoted constituents wanted to end sales of weapons to Israel, the Biden administration kept sending them, even after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel expanded the war into Lebanon. And not only did Ms. Harris not break with Mr. Biden’s policy, she went out of her way to make voters who care about Palestinian rights feel unwelcome. When antiwar activists interrupted a speech of hers in August, Ms. Harris snapped, “If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that.” At the Democratic National Convention, her campaign rebuffed a plea from activists to let a Palestinian-American speak from the main stage. And just days before the election, the Harris surrogate Bill Clinton told a Michigan crowd that Hamas had forced Israel to kill Palestinian civilians by using them as human shields.
All this provided Mr. Trump an opportunity. According to The Times, his campaign found that undecided voters in swing states were about six times as likely as other swing-state voters to be motivated by the war in Gaza. Mr. Trump wooed them. He pledged to help “the Middle East return to real peace” and lambasted former Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican with whom Ms. Harris had chosen to campaign, as a “radical war hawk.” Like Richard Nixon, who in 1968 appealed to antiwar voters by promising “an honorable end to the war in Vietnam,” Mr. Trump portrayed himself — however insincerely — as the candidate of peace.
The US has spent a record $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since the war in Gaza began in Oct 2023. This is only a partial amount of the US financial support provided during this war. The Gaza Health Ministry said the IDF killed 44,056 people and wounded 104,268 since 7 Oct 2023. The IDF claims 17,000 of these deaths were militants.
For months now, commentators close to the Palestinian rights movement have feared exactly this scenario. In August, the Palestinian American analyst Yousef Munayyer warned that “unless Harris takes some steps to break from Biden’s Israel policy, the same issue that helped tank an already vulnerable Joe Biden with his base could put major obstacles in her path to victory.”
But people who are passionate about Palestinian rights rarely occupy influential positions in Democratic campaigns. For decades, the party’s politicians and operatives have treated the struggle for Palestinian freedom as a taboo. They’ve grown so accustomed to sequestering it from their stated commitment to human rights that, even amid what prominent scholars call a genocide, Ms. Harris thought it wiser to campaign with Ms. Cheney than, say, Representative Rashida Tlaib. Despite overwhelming evidence, her campaign could not see that among progressive voters, the Palestine exception no longer applies.
There is only one path forward. Although it will require a fierce intraparty brawl, Democrats — who claim to respect human equality and international law — must begin to align their policies on Israel and Palestine with these broader principles. In this new era, in which supporting Palestinian freedom has become central to what it means to be progressive, the Palestinian exception is not just immoral. It’s politically disastrous.
For a long time, Palestinians in Gaza and beyond have been paying for that exception with their lives. Now Americans are paying, too. It may cost us our freedom.
Palestinian children queue up for food in Gaza. 90% do not receive enough food daily. (Data and Photo: World Food Program)
2024 Election
Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart) is a contributing Opinion writer at The Times. He’s also a professor at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York, an editor at large of Jewish Currents and writes The Beinart Notebook, a weekly newsletter. His book “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza” is forthcoming.
Sources:
Opinion | Democrats Ignored Gaza and Brought Down Their Party – The New York Times
Japan: Police Finally Identify School Shoe Thief
Police set up security cameras at a Japanese school after students’ shoes started disappearing and the culprit was ultimately identified as a furry footwear fan — a weasel (itachi イタチ) .
The Gosho Kodomo-en kindergarten in Koga, Fukuoka Prefecture, contacted police for help after 15 shoes vanished from the school in early Nov 2024, and three more were taken the following day.
Police set up three security cameras in the school to catch the culprit in the act.
A single shoe vanished during the night of 11 Nov and police reviewed the captured footage to identify the perpetrator.
The video shows a weasel appearing from behind a wall and raiding the cubbyholes where the children store their indoor shoes. The animal spread shoes across the floor and made off with one item of footwear.
Animal experts said the weasel had likely given birth recently and was using the shoes to line its nest. The school said the cubbyholes are now being covered with netting at night to keep furry thieves at bay.
Japanese weasels were introduced to Sakhalin Island (and other areas of Japan) to help control rodents. Above, an itachi (イタチ) caught a frog for dinner.
Source:
Watch: Serial shoe thief at kindergarten identified as a weasel – UPI.com
Coriolanus 
