The link Ten Grain has is a gift link which allows you to read the WaPo article. When I try to post them people hit the paywall. So please go enjoy the meme Ten Grain posted and follow the link. Hugs. Scottie
Category: Violence
Let’s talk about some messages and new developments….
Man Get Three Years In Anti-LGBTQ Hate Crime Spree- JMG
An Oregon man was sentenced today to 37 months in prison and three years of supervised release for attempting to run over three people with a car as part of a week-long crime spree targeting the LGBTQI+ community around Boise, Idaho, in October 2022.
According to court records, on Oct. 8, 2022, while at the Boise Public Library Main Branch in downtown Boise, Matthew Alan Lehigh, 31, approached a transgender library employee, called her a slur, punched her and threatened to stab her.
A member of the library’s security staff intervened, and Lehigh fled into the parking lot. When the security guard attempted to speak to Lehigh in the parking lot, Lehigh got into a car and suddenly accelerated it toward the guard, intending to collide with him.
The guard narrowly escaped being struck by jumping behind a concrete barricade at the last moment, and Lehigh fled the scene.
Four days later, while sitting in his car in a public parking lot elsewhere in Boise, Lehigh saw two women walking together towards another vehicle.
Assuming that the women were lesbians, Lehigh began shouting threats and slurs at them, then suddenly accelerated his car toward the women, intending to collide with them. The women jumped out of the path of Lehigh’s oncoming car, which struck the other vehicle at significant speed.
On June 15, 2022, Lehigh pleaded guilty to one felony count of violating the Hate Crimes Prevention Act for the vehicular assault on the library security guard, and a second felony violation for the vehicular assault on the two women.
As part of his plea agreement, Lehigh also admitted that he was responsible for three other instances of anti-LGBTQI+ vandalism and violence that occurred in Boise during early October 2022.
Specifically, he admitted to setting fire to a rainbow-striped “pride” flag attached to a residential property in North Boise, breaking several windows at a commercial building jointly occupied by an LGBTQI+ community organization and an LGBTQI+-affirming religious congregation and punching a grocery store customer after calling him an anti-LGBTQI+ slur.
Read the full press release.
Israel strikes ambulance near Gaza hospital, 15 reported killed
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.
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
Palestinians say Israeli strike hits U.N.-run school; Blinken meets Arab leaders
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
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”.
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
Israel deports thousands of Palestinian workers back to Gaza’s war zone
https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-hamas-workers-rights-7a86c936a64ab785ab27bd72247ce1ef
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
Updated 5:10 PM EDT, November 3, 2023JERUSALEM (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.
Israeli strikes kill multiple civilians at shelters in Gaza combat zone, as Blinken seeks more aid
https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-11-4-2023-baf5a858e29aa6a4b8100e3afc5afdf2
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
https://apnews.com/16c1fcdc8255451b9503b3d0a038ca1f
Israeli troops have been tightening their encirclement of Gaza City with army videos showing ongoing battles with Hamas militants (4 November).
Updated 8:29 AM EDT, November 4, 2023RAFAH, 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.
Bassem Youssef vs Piers Morgan ROUND 2 (incredible conversation)
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
Scottie's Playtime 