Medical vehicle. More dead people. Is that allowed in war. NO! but Israel is doing it and getting away with it. All they have to say to excuse what they do is Hamas. Say it to all the kids killed, all the women bombed, over 10,000 Palestinians civilians killed, a third of them children. But Hamas, it is OK Hamas attacked us and killed about 1,400 people. Maybe 40 were children. But Hamas … but never show proof it was Hamas where they targeted. Just leave the area Israel says as they bomb the only ways out. This is the deliberate killing of a people to drive them out of a land and to somewhere else, and that is terrorism in the highest level. Hugs. Scottie
November 3, 20238:01 PM EDTUpdated 14 hours ago
GAZA, Nov 3 (Reuters) – An Israeli air strike on an ambulance being used to evacuate the wounded from besieged northern Gaza killed 15 people and injured 60 others on Friday, the Hamas-controlled enclave’s health ministry said.
Israel’s military said it had identified and hit an ambulance “being used by a Hamas terrorist cell”. It said Hamas fighters were killed in the strike, and accused the group of transferring militants and weapons in ambulances.
Hamas official Izzat El Reshiq said allegations its fighters were present were “baseless”. Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesperson for Gaza’s health ministry, said the ambulance was part of a convoy that Israel targeted near Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital.
Qidra said Israel had targeted the convoy of ambulances in more than one location, including at al-Shifa Hospital gate and at Ansar Square a kilometer (0.6 miles) away.
In a statement on the incident, Israel’s military gave no evidence to support its assertion that the ambulance was linked to Hamas but said it intended to release additional information.
“We emphasize that this area is a battle zone. Civilians in the area are repeatedly called upon to evacuate southwards for their own safety,” the military said.
Reuters was unable to independently verify either side’s account.
[1/4]Palestinians pull an ambulance after a convoy of ambulances was hit, at the entrance of Shifa hospital in Gaza City, November 3, 2023. REUTERS/Anas al-Shareef
Video shared on social media, which Reuters has verified, showed people lying in blood next to an ambulance with flashing lights on a city street as people rushed to help.
Another video showed three ambulances standing in a line, with about a dozen people lying either motionless or barely moving next to them. Blood was pooled nearby.
World Health Organisation Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a social media post he was “utterly shocked by reports of attacks on ambulances evacuating patients”, adding that patients, health workers and medical facilities must be protected.
Earlier on Friday, Qidra said ambulances would send critically injured Palestinians who urgently need to be taken to Egypt to be treated from besieged Gaza City to the south of the enclave.
Israel, which has accused Hamas of concealing command centres and tunnel entrances in al-Shifa hospital, ordered all civilians to leave the north of Gaza last month and its military encircled the area on Thursday.
Despite its order for civilians to leave northern areas of Gaza, Israel’s military has continued to bombard the south of the strip as well.
Hamas and al-Shifa hospital authorities have denied the facility is used as a base by militant fighters.
Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Alison Williams, Alistair Bell and by Sandra Maler
Israel has some of the best precision bombs / missiles that can hit pinpoint targets. They got them from the US. They know it is against the rules to hit US humanitarian sites, it is off limits to hit shelters. Yet they are doing it and waving it in the world’s face. They know they can keep gaslighting the US public and threaten US politicians with loads of lobby money and threats of primaries. This is sick! We need to put pressure on the US government at all levels to stop this. Hugs. Scottie
U.N. agency says evacuees hurt when one of its schools was hit
Blinken to meet Arab leaders demanding ceasefire
US says it has ‘indirect engagement’ in efforts to free hostages
GAZA/AMMAN, Nov 4 (Reuters) – Palestinians reported a deadly Israeli strike on a U.N.-run school in northern Gaza serving as a shelter on Saturday ahead of talks in Jordan at which U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken heard Arab demands for a ceasefire in the enclave.
Witnesses said the strike hit Al-Fakhoura school in Jabalia, where thousands of evacuees were living. At least 15 people died and dozens more were wounded, said Gaza health ministry official Mohammad Abu Selmeyah.
Reuters pictures of the aftermath showed broken furniture and other belongings lying on the ground, patches of blood spilled on the ground and over food and people crying.
“I was standing here when three bombings happened, I carried a body and another decapitated body with my own hands,” a young boy said in video obtained by Reuters, crying in despair. “God will take my vengeance.”
Nearby, a resident comforted a woman in shock.
One man asked angrily: “Since when has it become normal to strike shelters? This is so unfair.”
Juliette Touma, director of communication for the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA), confirmed to Reuters that the U.N-run school, which is in the Gaza City area, had been hit.
She said there were children among the casualties, but that UNRWA had not yet been able to verify the exact death toll.
“At least one strike hit the schoolyard where there were tents for displaced families. Another strike hit inside the school where women were baking bread,” Touma said by phone.
The ministry of health in Gaza said another Israeli missile strike killed two women at the door of the Nasser Children Hospital. Several more people were injured, it said.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment on either incident.
Israel’s ground forces encircled Gaza City on Thursday after stepping up a bombing campaign it says aims at wiping out Hamas, after the militant group which runs Gaza killed 1,400 people and took more than 240 hostage in an Oct. 7 assault in southern Israel.
Gaza health officials said on Saturday that more than 9,488 Palestinians have been killed so far in the Israeli assault.
Israel last month ordered all civilians to leave the northern part of the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City where it says Hamas militants are hiding in tunnels, and head to the south of the enclave.
It has continued to bomb the whole enclave, saying the militants are hiding among civilians, and many people have stayed in the north, where they say they now feel trapped.
The military said it would enable Palestinians to travel on a main Gaza Strip highway, the Salah a-Din road, on Saturday between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. (1100 GMT and 1400). “If you care about yourself and your loved ones, heed our instruction to head south,” it said in a social media post in Arabic.
U.S. Special Envoy David Satterfield said in Amman that between 800,000 to a million people have already moved to the south of the Gaza Strip, while 350,000-400,000 remain in northern Gaza City and its environs.
BLINKEN HEARS CEASEFIRE DEMANDS
In what appeared to presage a widening of Israel’s ground offensive, the military issued footage showing armoured bulldozers churning up northern Gaza areas in what it described as “creating access routes for forces”.
[1/6]A Palestinian child reacts following a strike at a UN-run school sheltering displaced people, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip November 4, 2023. REUTERS/ Anas al-Shareef
A combined tank and combat engineering unit carried out a “pinpoint raid” in the southern Gaza Strip “to map out buildings and neutralise explosives”, it said.
Israel’s military also said it was striking what it described as “a number of Hezbollah terror targets in Lebanon” following fire from there, part of the biggest flareup since 2006.
A Lebanese source familiar with Hezbollah’s attacks said the group had fired a powerful missile not yet used in the fighting and that it had hit an Israeli position across the border from the villages of Ayta al-Shaab and Rmeich.
Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah group is backed by Iran, as is Hamas. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Friday warned that conflict could spread if Israel continued bombing Gaza.
Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati emphasized the urgency of a ceasefire in Gaza when he met Blinken in Amman on Saturday, Lebanon state news agency said.
Blinken, in turn, emphasized his efforts to halt military operations for humanitarian reasons and to address the issue of prisoners.
Blinken was also meeting the Saudi, Qatari, Emirati and Egyptian foreign ministers on Saturday.
The Arab leaders were set to stress the “Arab stance calling for an immediate ceasefire, delivering humanitarian aid and ways of ending the dangerous deterioration that threatens the security of the region”, the Jordanian foreign ministry said ahead of the meeting.
Washington has maintained robust military and political support for Israel, while calling on its ally to take steps to avoid civilian deaths and address Gaza’s humanitarian crisis.
AMBULANCE HIT
Gaza health officials had said 15 people were killed in an Israeli air strike on an ambulance on Friday evening that was part of a convoy carrying injured Palestinians at Gaza’s biggest hospital, al-Shifa.
Israel’s military said it had hit an ambulance “being used by an Hamas terrorist cell” and killed a number of Hamas fighters.
The Palestinian health ministry challenged Israel to provide proof that the ambulance was carrying militants. Israel said it would release more information. It has accused Hamas of concealing command centres and tunnel entrances in al-Shifa, something Hamas and the hospital denies.
Gaza’s living conditions, already dire before the fighting, have deteriorated further. Food is scarce, residents have resorted to drinking salty water, medical services are collapsing.
ISRAEL SAYS NO PAUSE UNLESS HOSTAGES ARE FREED
Hamas has prepared for a protracted war in Gaza and believes it can hold up Israel’s advance long enough to force a ceasefire, two sources close to the organization’s leadership said. They said it also seeks concessions like the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli hostages.
A senior Biden administration official said on Friday the U.S. had “indirect engagement” aimed at freeing the hostages.
Foreign nationals have been leaving Gaza, but the official said Hamas initially conditioned the release of foreigners on wounded Palestinians being able to exit as well, but one-third of the Palestinians on the list turned out to be Hamas members.
Hamas official Izzat El Reshiq on Saturday urged Arab leaders and people to pressure Israel and the United States by cutting diplomatic ties, expelling ambassadors and leveraging oil and economic interests to support the Gaza Strip’s people.
The United States has dismissed growing international calls for a ceasefire but has sought to persuade Israel to accept localized pauses, an idea rejected by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after he met Blinken on Friday.
Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Simon Lewis and Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman, Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Writing by Daphne Psaledakis and Ingrid Melander; Editing by Rami Ayyub, Diane Craft, Michael Perry and William Mallard, Philippa Fletcher
What the hell? That is the place they are demanding the Palestinian people leave. No they want them back where the bombs can kill them. Don’t we finally see what this is, it is the attempt to kill all the Palestinians they can? It is a version of the finial solution. They want to push of kill all the people there and take the land. And the Israeli government is starting to be honest about it as other governments including the US pull back support. They will not stop, they don’t need our help to do it, and so they will. Time for threats of sanctions and other actions we would take against any other government doing this. Hugs. Scottie
BY TIA GOLDENBERG AND ISABEL DEBRE
Updated 5:10 PM EDT, November 3, 2023
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel on Friday deported thousands of Palestinian workers from the Gaza Strip back to the besieged territory, Palestinian authorities said, capping what many described as harrowing weeks trapped in legal limbo since their detention when the Israel-Hamas war erupted.
Some workers, streaming by foot through an Israeli crossing that had been sealed shut since Hamas unleashed its brutal attack on southern Israel Oct. 7, told of violent mistreatment by Israeli authorities in detention centers. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations.
“We sacrificed and they treated us like livestock over there,” one of the workers, Wael al-Sajda, said from the border, pointing to his ankle fitted with an identification bracelet.
Al-Sajda was among the roughly 18,000 Palestinians from Gaza allowed to work in menial jobs in Israel. The permits have been coveted in Gaza, which has an unemployment rate approaching 50%. Israel began issuing the permits in recent years, a measure it thought helped stabilize Gaza and moderate Hamas, despite a broader blockade aimed at weakening the Islamic militant group.
Read the title again please before the article. No justification for this! Israeli officials keep saying there was no justification for the attack on them by Hamas, OK but there is no justification for what Israel is doing now to a captured people who can not fight back and can not escape. There is a video at the link. Hugs. Scottie
Israeli troops have been tightening their encirclement of Gaza City with army videos showing ongoing battles with Hamas militants (4 November).
BY NAJIB JOBAIN, SAMY MAGDY AND DAVID RISING
Updated 8:29 AM EDT, November 4, 2023
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli military strikes killed multiple civilians Saturday at a U.N. shelter and hospital in the main combat zone in the Gaza Strip as the assault intensified on the besieged enclave’s Hamas rulers amid growing international uproar over the soaring death toll and deepening humanitarian crisis.
Israel’s military has said it has encircled Gaza City, the target of its offensive to crush Hamas, but on Saturday offered a three-hour window for residents trapped by the fighting to flee south.
The new attacks came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in the region trying to find ways to ease the plight of the civilians caught in the fighting. He met with Arab foreign ministers on Saturday in Jordan, the day after talks in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who insisted there can be no temporary cease-fire until all hostages held by Hamas are released.
The Israeli military has repeatedly demanded that northern Gaza’s 1.1 million residents flee south as it escalates bombardment of the north and tightens the noose around Gaza City. However, some of those traveling south were killed during their journey in recent days, and Israel has continued bombing in the south, saying it is striking Hamas targets.
Great history lesson on how Israel was created and the people already in Palestine. The person being interviewed, Bassem Youssef, goes back to 1914. Lance gives more information towards the 42 minute mark. This is a great listen if you want to know about this conflict. Hugs. Scottie
While most (myself included) thought this would be another satire filled embarrassment for Piers Morgan, Bassem Youssef uses the platform to educate the world on Palestine.
The lyrics were provided by The Freedom Toast. Performance by Don Caron and the Band – The original song, if you don’t recognize it, is Pop Goes the Weasel. The skeleton animations are courtesy of Green Screen Brasil. The band is listed below:
I have been reading rumors that Mike Johnson was a regular in a popular gay bar and was well known to go home with men. He also is said to be currently exchange emails with the boy about their shared “addiction to porn and masturbation”. He adopted the boy who was 14 when he was a single man, just as Matt Gaetz adopted the preteen Nestor. I am not able to confirm yet the gay rumors, and there is no reason to suspect child abuse just because he was single at the time of adoption, but I do find it weird to be sharing with your son that you have an addition to porn and love to masturbate? But I am sure the truth will come out. So many of these rabid anti-gay religious people are gay and think god will cure them. It is the same with gay guys who go into the military to “man up and go straight”. It doesn’t work. Hugs. Scottie
“It’s time for an honest conversation about homosexuality. There’s freedom to change if you want to. Our race, the size of our feet, the color of our eyes, these are things we’re born with and cannot change. But what these adult advocacy groups like the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network are promoting is a type of behavior. Homosexual behavior is something you do. It’s not something that you are.” – House Speaker Mike Johnson, speaking about the now-defunct ex-gay torture group Exodus International and his joint mission with them on a Christian counter protest to the annual anti-bullying Day Of Silence. As you’ll see in the clip below, Johnson goes on to blame the acceptance of homosexuality for the fall of the Roman Empire. Yes, really.
The real choice is to be open about who one is (bi, queer, whatever) and thus live a happy, productive life! Or, to pretend to hide (closet) oneself from who one is and thus make themself, and everyone else as well, miserable!
I’m always reminded of the line from the movie Auntie Mame (1958) with Rosalind Russell as Mame Dennis where she says, “Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!“
This fall of the Roman Empire hypothesis is so irritating, because it is demonstrably false. Homosexuality was considered to be a normal facet of human sexuality in Europe for millennia. Rome fell after it was Christianized and Abrahamic prohibitions were introduced into Europe for the first time.
Wow, they really are recycling all the oldies for this tour.
When someone says “every empire that fell accepted homosexuality”, I ask “name me one empire that didn’t fall.” They can’t. Empires rise and fall. Empires eventually overreach. It’s unsustainable. So of course they always collapse. It’s just a question of when.
Nor is homosexuality mentioned in “The Fall of the Roman Empire” (1964). I’m not ready to watch all three hours to be sure of that, although there are some compelling gladiator scenes.
It just bugs me when I see that crap pushed. I took a couple of courses on Rome back in college (yay, History 114A through 114C!), and the collapse of the Western Empire is a *huge* subject, one that I doubt people like Johnson have ever studied in any detail.
Some of the thesis of E. Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” was that Christianity, and it’s divisions, politicization, and diversion of resources of the Empire to the Church, was responsible for the Empire’s fall. It’s not generally accepted today, but his critique is worth noting. When I tell people talking about “Roman Decadence destroyed the empire” that Rome didn’t fall (in 410 CE) until Christianity was Established as the sole religion, and Alaric the Goth was as Christian as Pope Honorius, they don’t believe me. And then there’s that inconvenient Byzantine empire surviving another 1000 years…
I would dispute whether it was known as “homosexuality,” as such.
Our concepts of sexuality and sexual orientation really emerged in the 19th century, and I think it’s questionable at best, to impose these concepts onto antiquity.
Sexual behavior was all about the person who had the POWER to do what he (yes, always he) wanted. Generally, however, high status males were presumed to want to reproduce, legitimately, to produce an heir(s). Anything other than that was, again, about the power to do it. Women, slaves, certain untouchable classes had NO power, and anything could be done TO them.
I reeeeeeeeally don’t want to Go Back to what was considered “normal” in antiquity.
Read the full article. PREVIOUSLY ON JMG: Wommack says homosexuals should have a “warning label on their foreheads.” Wommack says he prayed away “the curse of mildew.” Wommack says Jesus protects Christians from COVID by “turning off your virus receptors.” Two dozen Christians get infected with COVID at Wommack’s illegal bible conference. Wommack says he knows COVID is “no big deal” because his wife and son were “raised from the dead.”
I went to the link in the story above. This guy is one hell of a piece of shit hate preacher. He wants a complete take-over of civilian life, politics, government, every aspect of your life he wants to control. It is a total power grab for him and his followers, in the name of his god of course. Someone has to speak for god, he was just the one chosen to rule your life. Some of the batshit crazy stuff in the article will chill you on what these people believe. And they’re doing it by stealth and then steam rolling over ever right of others to form their perfect society in the name of their god, you know the one that god wants so to hell with your wants or needs. And as you can see they will break the law because god’s will is far more important than the laws of men. Plus once in power they will brook no disagreement with them, 1st amendment be damned. Some quotes listed below. There is much more of the danger these people represent in the article and the Joe My God post also.
“We have enough people here in this school we could elect anybody we want,” he said at a meeting of the Citizen’s Academy, an event held at Charis by the Truth & Liberty Coalition, a nonprofit organization also founded by Wommack.“This county ought to be totally dominated by believers.”
When voters in 30 school districts go to the polls Tuesday (Nov. 7), they will find ballots primed with candidates recruited and trained by Transform Colorado, a movement, launched by Truth & Liberty, “that unites Christian leaders to restore biblical values in the public square,” according to its website.
As in Woodland Park, where Wommack succeeded in getting his chosen candidates elected to City Council and gaining a majority on the school board, the goal, in the words of one victor, is to oppose “the teachers’ union and their psycho agenda.”
Truth & Liberty has lately served as Wommack’s main tool in reversing Colorado’s shift from red to blue, a tragedy he blames on “demonic” liberals. As proof, Wommack has claimed his “spies” in the local school system had found hundreds of obscene books.He warned that public schools taught fourth graders how to have anal sex and that they placed litter boxes in classrooms for students who identified as dogs or cats.
Wommack is harsh in his opposition to LGBTQ rights. The day after five people were killed and 18 injured in a Nov. 19, 2022, shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Wommack said he was “not endorsing” violence against LGBTQ people but complained they received too much sympathy, calling homosexuality “one of the major threats of the devil.”
But once elected, Woodland Park’s new conservative majority worked quickly — sometimes meeting in private, she alleged, in violation of state law — to turn the district upside down.
The district became the first and, so far, only locality in the U.S. to adopt the controversial American Birthright social studies curriculum, which has been rejected by Colorado’s State Board of Education. Since it was adopted, some students have been required to perform make-up work to qualify for college admission.
The school board also put a gag order on faculty and staff who disagreed with the changes, firing some who aired their concerns anyway. Recently, more than 80 teachers and staff signed a letter condemning the new “culture of fear and silence” and calling for solutions that “prioritize our children’s futures over politics.”
The district now budgets more than $200,000 a year for legal fees, more than 10 times its legal budget five years ago.
Despite the controversy, Wommack has given the new board his full support. Charis bused nearly 100 students to a May meeting where a vote was being held to elect a new superintendent, displacing hundreds of parents and teachers who were barred by capacity regulations. Some citizens now gather as much as five hours early at board meetings to make sure they can speak and vote.
Students from Charis, which operates a Practical Government school, also often sign up for many of the limited public speaking slots, using their allotted time to criticize “violent, extreme radicals, communists and socialists taking over our schools.”
Health and wealth preacher Andrew Wommack teaches that Christians should "reform nations" and rule over the godless. His Truth & Liberty Coalition has started by pushing its candidates in some 30 school districts across Colorado. Read the full story:https://t.co/mPdQYmnSwh
People ask: how do we know who the stealth candidates are so we can vote against them? This is how. Look for who the christfascists are voting for and vote for anyone else. It’s not perfect (some can still slip through) but it will help.
I agree with the idea but…how do I find out who the Republicans are supporting? I can sometimes know when I see school board candidates signs on the same lawn as a Trump one but, mostly, I have to try and read between the lines on their webpages to see if they’re idiots or not…and some hide it really well!
They’re not just targeting trans kids. For example, in states where these extremists have seized control of education, they’ve banned books, pedagogical content and practices and entire subjects, adopted curricula and standards and materials that turn the clock waaaay back on the rights and recognition of BBIMP, immigrants, Jews, people practicing minority religions, women and girls, disabled people as well LGBTQI+ people.
Scottie's Playtime 