Demonstrators in New York City protest PM Netanyahu’s wars


<sub>Among the speakers at the protest were families of Israeli captives held in Gaza


A large antiwar protest is expected on Manhattan’s East Side</sub>

_{Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu also faces an imminent warrant for his arrest by the International Criminal Court}

‘A nightmare’: Lebanese Americans angry as Israel attacks homeland

Israel’s large-scale bombing campaign in Lebanon has hit close to home for Ali Dabaja, a Detroit-area physician. His cousin was killed along with her husband and three children in an Israeli air strike on southern Lebanon.

“There is disbelief. There is anger and there is the feeling of loss – tremendous loss,” Dabaja told Al Jazeera.

He is not alone. As the war in Lebanon intensifies, Lebanese Americans say they are feeling anxiety and sorrow for their loved ones back home – and outrage at the US government for continuing to arm and support Israel.

Israel’s Aggression On Palestine and Zionism’s Relationship to Judaism, w/ Zachary Foster



What’s the history of Israel’s genocidal ambitions and the indoctrination that it requires in the Jewish community? Is Zionism really about protecting Jews or does it actually pose a danger to them? What’s the history of Gaza, Hamas and the timeline of Israel’s violence against them? To discuss this and more Rania Khalek was joined by Zachary Foster, a historian of Palestine.

Calls for Blinken’s resignation grow as serious charges of war crime revealed | Janta Ka Reporter

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is facing calls for resignation after it became clear that he had changed the experts’ findings on Israeli war crimes to ensure an uninterrupted supply of weapons to Israel to be used in Gaza.

"Hell Is Breaking Loose in Lebanon": Israel Rejects Ceasefire Proposal as U.N. Chief Calls for Peace

Israel is continuing its bombardment of Lebanon and preparing for a possible ground invasion of the country, with the Netanyahu government rejecting a proposed 21-day ceasefire put forward by the United States, France, Canada, Australia, Japan, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

About 500,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced, and the Health Ministry reports at least 72 people were killed and nearly 400 wounded in Israeli attacks on Wednesday, bringing the death toll to over 620 in recent days. "There is a lot of suffering. There is a lot of hardship right now," says Beirut-based journalist Lara Bitar, who details how Israel has repeatedly attacked and invaded Lebanese territory going back decades. "The source of this pain can be pinpointed to the presence of the Israeli settler state in our region that continues to wreak havoc in Palestine, in Lebanon and across most of the world."

He’s here “to defend the indefensible,” Mehdi explains why Israel’s actions are “never justified”

“You can choose to be on the side, not of cruelty, not of criminality, but on the side of the innocent people of Gaza who are being killed as we speak by Eylon’s former colleagues in the Israeli military on the orders of Eylon’s former bosses in the Israeli government.”

Watch Mehdi’s opening statement during the Open to Debate event in front of a live audience in New York. Mehdi debated former Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy on whether Israel’s actions in Gaza were justified.

New wave of Israeli attacks on Lebanon’s Nabatieh

There’s been another wave of strikes here in Lebanon by the Israeli military on the city of Nabatieh, it’s about 70 kilometres south of Beirut. It is a predominantly Shia-Muslim city. We will bring you more information on that strike as soon as we have it.

We’ve also heard Hezbollah announcing the death of Mohammed Hussein Surur who was the head of what they call their air force since 2020, that’s their drone and missile unit. He was killed today in that strike on Dahiyeh, the southern suburb of Beirut.

So, the situation here on the ground remains very tense. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced. Just today, the Lebanese Ministry of Health announced that 92 people have been killed in the last 24 hours and 153 wounded.

And the International Organization for Migration is saying 64,000 people have moved into just over 500 makeshift shelters across the country. So it’s putting huge strains on all the resources here.

We’ve also had this quite horrible report from Save the Children that said that their staff here in Lebanon are seeing “children arriving at shelters showing severe signs of distress”. So it’s a very difficult situation here in Lebanon and a lot of pressure is being put on both the capital Beirut and the country.

About 140,000 children have been displaced from strikes in Lebanon, Save The Children says

Israeli strikes on Lebanon over the past four days have displaced about 140,000 children “with many arriving at shelters showing signs of severe distress,” Save the Children, a humanitiarian organization, said in a statement on Thursday.

“Over 400,000 people have been displaced since the start of Israeli airstrikes on Sunday in the latest escalation in cross-border violence, with numbers expected to increase in the coming days,” the statement added.

Dr Firass Abiad, Lebanon’s health minister, told CNN earlier on Thursday that he estimates there are likely 400,000 to 500,000 internally displaced people, much higher than officially recorded figures. He said authorities only know how many people have been internally displaced to official shelters but there are “multitudes” that have also fled to stay with relatives, friends or the homes of strangers who have offered them accommodation.

Save the Children staff expressed concern over the psychological impact of the conflict on children, “many of whom are showing signs of severe distress due to the displacement and constant shelling,” according to the statement.

The humanitarian group also expressed concerns about the closure of many schools across Lebanon, saying it has impacted “all of the country’s 1.5 million children, with Lebanon’s already critical mental health crisis worsening as the hostilities continue to escalate,” the statement said.

“Children are telling us that danger is everywhere, and they can never be safe. Every loud sound makes them jump now. Many children’s lives, rights, and futures have already been turned upside down and now their capacity to cope with this escalating crisis has been eroded.”

Israeli army draws up new plans for Lebanon offensive as Netanyahu rejects calls for a truce

There’s still no sign from the Israelis about ending the hostilities on both sides of the border. In fact, the Israeli military has said that they have hit more than 200 Hezbollah targets in the last day alone.

There were some reports within the last 24 hours about Netanyahu giving the green light for his negotiators to start the process of negotiating so that there can be an end to the fighting. However, when Netanyahu got off his plane in New York, he said that that was not true.

His office also released several statements saying that the military action against Hezbollah is still going to continue.

And it comes after a lot of pushback from members of Netanyahu’s government, specifically from the far right. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the country’s national security minister and a known ultra-nationalist, had reportedly given Netanyahu a lot of pushback about a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah and publicly said on Thursday that he and his party would leave the government and essentially topple the ruling coalition if Netanyahu agrees to a ceasefire deal.

Nonetheless, the Israeli army’s chief of staff has said that he and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant had approved new plans in a continuation of their offensive in Lebanon. It comes as a lot of fears are looming about a potential ground invasion into Lebanese territory – something that the Israeli army chief of staff, the head of the Israeli air force and the country’s defence minister have all said they would do if necessary.

French national killed in southern Lebanon explosion

The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs has announced that an 87-year-old French woman was killed in “a strong explosion” in southern Lebanon, which has come under intense Israeli bombing since Monday.

“The building in which our countrywoman lived collapsed after a strong explosion that occurred nearby,” the Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.

About 20,000 French citizens are registered with the Foreign Ministry as living in Lebanon, the Reuters news agency reports.

More than 700 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since Monday, the country’s Health Ministry reports, with 92 killed over the past 24 hours alone.

The toll on UNRWA after a year of war in Gaza

Israel’s military has carried out repeated attacks on hospitals, schools and refugee camps run by the UN’s relief agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) since launching the war on Gaza nearly a year ago.

Al Jazeera’s Um-e-Kulsoom Shariff looks at the realities that UNRWA’s staff face on the ground.

Palestinian PM calls for doubling efforts to support UNRWA

Palestinian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammad Mustafa has called for doubling international efforts to support the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

His ministry said today on X that Mustafa told the ministerial meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York yesterday that “Israel cannot be allowed to destroy this long-term investment by the international community in human dignity and peace”.

“UNRWA’s role in addressing the Palestinian refugee crisis is more important than ever at this moment,” he was quoted as saying.

“Since the Nakba in 1948, UNRWA has been a lifeline for Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the occupied Palestinian territory,” Mustafa said.

“Today, in Gaza in particular, UNRWA has become more than just a service provider, it is a safe haven between life and death for our people in the Strip,” he added.

Lazzarini appeals for safeguarding UNRWA’s role in Gaza

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, says the agency “is critical for ensuring a viable transition” after the war ends in the Palestinian enclave.

He made the remarks yesterday at the ministerial meeting co-hosted by Jordan and Sweden on the margins of the 79th UN General Assembly in New York.

Lazzarini said the agency requires “a sustainable model of funding”, adding that UNRWA’s operations are only secure until the end of October, with a shortfall of $80m for this year.

He also called for the rejection of “attempts to tarnish UNRWA’s reputation and end its operations”.

“These efforts do not only threaten Palestine refugees. They threaten the multilateral system. They threaten a future political solution. Your actions at this critical juncture will have repercussions for generations to come. UNRWA is a formidable tool at your disposal – I urge you to use it wisely,” Lazzarini said.

Palestinians bury unidentified bodies sent back by Israel

Israel’s military sent a truck containing the bodies of 88 Palestinians taken during operations in Gaza, without any information on who they were and where they had been taken from. The International Committee of the Red Cross declined to participate in the reception of the bodies, saying there was ‘no data, lists, or evidence’ identifying the bodies

The AFP news agency reported that Israel regularly takes dead bodies out of Gaza to determine whether they are of the captives seized during Hamas’s October 7 attacks. The military said it returns the bodies that are not of the captives after an identification process at a ‘secure and alternate location’.

Palestinian officials raised the possibility the bodies were of Palestinians unlawfully killed by Israeli forces in Gaza while the Health Ministry accused Israel of ‘exhuming graves and stealing bodies’ and treating them in an ‘inhumane and unethical’ manner

Some of the bodies were buried in a mass grave in Khan Younis, south of the Gaza Strip

One Palestinian killed near Gaza City

Israel’s military has carried out an attack near a busy street west of Gaza City, killing at least one person, report our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic. Meanwhile, artillery fire hit the city’s nearby Zeitoun neighbourhood, our colleagues report.

Israeli forces destroy food warehouse during West Bank raid

A convoy of Israeli military vehicles stormed the occupied West Bank city of Qalqilya in the early hours of Friday morning, the Wafa news agency reports. Israeli forces toured the city’s Kafr Saba neighbourhood, where they raided a workshop and a food warehouse, destroying the contents of the latter.

Israeli forces have also stormed the villages of Safa and Kafr Nima, west of Ramallah, Wafa reports. No arrests have been reported.

Israeli forces storm Balata camp in West Bank

Israeli forces are carrying out a raid on the Balata refugee camp east of Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, local media has reported.

Gunfire and explosions were heard from the camp, according to the Palestinian Wafa news agency.

Israel has been conducting its largest military assault in two decades in the occupied West Bank, repeatedly targeting several locations including the Balata refugee camp, Tulkarem, Jenin and areas in the Hebron governorate.

The focus is even more off the West Bank with the war on Lebanon.

Blinken tells Israel escalation makes return of civilians to border region more difficult

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Israel’s Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer that escalating its attack on Lebanon will only make it harder for Israeli and Lebanese civilians to return to their homes on both sides of the border, the State Department said after their meeting.

Blinken’s warning follows after Israeli officials publicly dismissed a US and France-led international call for a 21-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah that Washington later said had been “coordinated” with Israel.

Amid Israel’s ‘military momentum’, little hope for ceasefire in Lebanon: Analyst

Majid Rafizadeh, Harvard scholar and president of the International American Council on the Middle East, said he had little hope for a diplomatic solution to Israel’s bombing of Lebanon as “Israel is now in a military momentum”.

Israel “wants to eliminate or weaken all groups that it perceives as threats to it in the short term or long term. So, that includes Hezbollah,” Rafizadeh told Al Jazeera.

Despite international calls for a ceasefire, Rafizadeh said the situation in the region “is very different now” and the conflict has escalated both in terms of the intensity of attacks and those involved in the fighting.

“There are several players. Not only groups but governments involved, and I think this is a very dangerous situation because any escalation of conflict in Lebanon can really turn the region into a conflagration,” he said.

“It can easily spill into other countries … Unfortunately, I don’t see any diplomatic solution to the conflict,” he added.


Fears Israel’s bombing of Lebanon could draw in Iran as conflict grows: Analyst

“Another danger of this conflict is that it can, yes, drag Iran into the conflict because Iran is Hezbollah’s strongest ally in the region,” Rafizadeh said.

“Iran will feel that it is obliged to defend its political ally, and I think what you will see is tit-for-tat retaliation. For example, Israel is now bombarding Lebanon. Hezbollah is going to retaliate, and Israel will use more force to respond and this could lead to a vicious cycle that could drag Iran into the war,” he said.

But Iran has been “very careful” to not be dragged into the war so far, Rafizadeh said. Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian has said that Israel is “laying traps for Iran to be drawn into the war, which later will draw the US also into the war”, he said.

“So I think this is really a dangerous development and if it is not contained, it can turn into a wide conflict in the region and affect every other country.”

UK, Lebanese PMs meet on sidelines of UNGA summit

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met his Lebanese counterpart at the United Nations and discussed the importance of an immediate ceasefire and a negotiated solution in the conflict with Israel, his office says.

Starmer met Lebanon’s Najib Mikati at the United Nations General Assembly.

“The Prime Minister opened by giving his sincere condolences to Prime Minister Mikati for the loss of civilian life in recent weeks,” the statement said. “They discussed the escalating conflict in Lebanon, and agreed on the importance of an immediate ceasefire and a negotiated solution.”

The UK joins the US and France in a group of Israel’s close allies calling publicly for a ceasefire, despite Israel’s continuation of its intense bombing campaign against Lebanon this week.

None of the above-mentioned countries has offered consequences for Israel if it continues to kill civilians.

Israeli PM’s office now says officials discussing ceasefire proposal with US

Israeli officials have met with their US counterparts to discuss the 21-day ceasefire proposal, which has been advanced by the US and France along with countries in the Middle East and Europe.

The office of Israel’s prime minister said in a series of posts on social media that a meeting took place on Thursday to “discuss the US initiative” and “we will continue those discussions in the coming days”.

The announcement marks a stark change of tone from Israel.

On Thursday, the PM’s office released a statement on X saying the “news about a ceasefire – not true”. “This is an American-French proposal, to which the prime minister did not even respond,” the office said in a statement that was reposted by Netanyahu on his personal X account.

The statement added that Netanyahu had instructed Israeli forces attacking Lebanon “to continue the fighting with full force, and according to the plans presented to him”.

Netanyahu is currently in New York to address the UN General Assembly.

Can Israel’s economy survive another war in Lebanon?

Almost a year into the war on Gaza, Israel’s economy is facing its deepest decline in years.

Military spending is ballooning, borrowing is rocketing and revenues are drying up.

International trust in Israel’s economy is also waning, while thousands of highly educated and skilled workers are leaving the country. Israeli economists now fear a wider war in the Middle East could strain the economy even further and say only a ceasefire can help repair the financial damage.

Israeli air strikes alone will not stop Hezbollah rocket attacks: Analysts

Hezbollah fired rockets targeting the headquarters of Israeli arms manufacturer Rafael Advanced Defense Systems in Haifa on Thursday, the third attack aimed at the firm’s plant in the Israeli port city in recent days, military analysts report.

US-based defence think tanks the Critical Threats Project (CTP) and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), said Hezbollah also targeted four civilian areas in northern Israel for the first time on Thursday and noted the difficulty Israel’s military has in responding to such attacks.

“Targeting the relatively mobile and well-hidden Hezbollah drone, missile, and rocket array is a difficult undertaking, even for an air force as tactically proficient as the [Israeli] Air Force,” the CTP and ISW said in a joint report on the fighting in Lebanon.

“The 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War taught the [Israeli military] the lesson that airstrikes alone cannot stop Hezbollah rocket barrages, even when such an air campaign is effectively designed and executed on a tactical level,” the CTP-ISW report adds.

Netanyahu’s growing popularity at home spells grim outlook for ceasefire in Lebanon

The message from Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday, as he faced a backlash from his coalition amid leaked reports that he was considering a ceasefire, was that Israel would continue full force. And this is what you are seeing on the ground.

Netanyahu is all about domestic politics and nobody in Israel wants a ceasefire with Hezbollah. They see what is happening as a major victory for their army and intelligence, so they certainly don’t want a pause.

However, there has been some walk back from the prime minister’s office, saying that they spoke to the Americans about the ceasefire proposal and that they share values in terms of returning residents to their homes in the north of Israel. Those meetings [with US officials] went on Thursday and will continue today. I think the big question mark is whether Netanyahu will agree [to a ceasefire] because of the political pressures he faces inside Israel.

The latest polls show his popularity higher than ever since October 7. That is what’s important to him.