Before I share the clips a personal note. I spend the morning with Ron. We went to get blood work done. Then we did some other things. Then he went shopping while I did housework. Then after he got home I started working on a computer project a friend asked me if I would do for him as he couldn’t do it. I agreed to. I still have a lot of work on it but I will get it done today I think.
The lab work came back and I think I have a reason while I have been so tired, short of breath, and not able to concentrate or think clearly. My blood work shows I am very anemic again. I once had it get so bad I collapsed as I was entering my allergist office. They thought I was having a heart attack and I ended up in the hospital. Turned out my heart is great, but my damaged large bones don’t produce enough red blood cells. Their solution was to eat more red meat and take iron supplements. For a long time they watched for it but as I always managed to stay right inside the ok zone they stopped worrying about it. But my diet changed, red meat got too expensive and I just don’t eat much anymore. But my lab work showed my hematocrit is very low. So I imagine the doctor will ask me to do some more tests. I hope I don’t need a blood transfusion, that sucks. Now on to the clips, enjoy.
Updated 5:58 PM EST, December 11, 2024Israeli strikes pounded the Gaza Strip overnight and into Wednesday, with one attack ripping through a home where displaced people were sheltering in the isolated north. The strikes killed at least 33 people including children, Palestinian health officials said.
Violence also flared in outside Jerusalem, where an Israeli bus came under fire from a suspected Palestinian attacker late Wednesday, wounding three people including a 10-year-old boy, according to the military and hospital officials. The attack took place on a highway near major Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, and the army was looking for the shooter in the area around Bethlehem.
The Israel-Hamas war in Gaza shows no end in sight, even after Israel reached a ceasefire with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants and attention shifted to the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad by insurgents. Both the current and incoming U.S. administrations have said they hope to end the war in Gaza before the inauguration in January, but ceasefire talks have repeatedly stalled.
The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved resolutions Wednesday demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and backing the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees that Israel has moved to ban.
General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, although they do reflect world opinion. The votes in the 193-nation assembly were 158-9 with 13 abstentions to demand a ceasefire. Israel and its close ally the United States were in the tiny minority voting against.
Israeli strike in north Gaza wipes out 3 generations
The strike on the home killed 19 people in the northern town of Beit Lahiya near the border with Israel, according to nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital, which received the bodies. Hospital records show that a family of eight was among those killed: four children, their parents and two grandparents.
The Israeli military said it targeted a Hamas militant in the vicinity of the hospital. It said reports about the number of casualties in the strike were inaccurate, without elaborating. The military says it tries to avoid harming civilians and accuses militants of hiding among them, putting their lives in danger.
The hospital said another strike near its entrance on Wednesday killed a woman and her two children.
The hospital director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, said Israeli drones struck nearby residential blocks overnight, causing explosions that sparked panic among the facility’s more than 120 sick and wounded patients.
“We have received distress calls from neighbors and trapped people, but we’re not able to leave the hospital because of the continued risk,” he said. “We are witnessing a massive loss of life, with many martyrs in the targeted areas.”
Another strike in the decades-old Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza killed at least seven people, according to the Awda Hospital. The dead included two children, their parents and three other relatives, it said. Later, the hospital said another attack hit the same camp, killing four people and injuring 16 more.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the other strikes.
In Lebanon, where near-daily Israeli attacks have continued despite the ceasefire, at least five people died Wednesday in Israeli strikes in the south, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry and state news agency.
Elsewhere in southern Lebanon, Israeli forces withdrew from a strategic town and handed it back to the Lebanese army in coordination with U.N. peacekeepers, the two militaries said. It appeared to be the first Israeli pullout from a Lebanese border town captured during the ground invasion.
In Syria, the Israeli military estimates it has destroyed 70% to 80% of Syrian military assets in recent days, according to an official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss an intelligence assessment. The military has said it has carried out hundreds of airstrikes.
Evacuation orders in camp after rocket fire
Militants in central Gaza fired four projectiles into Israel on Wednesday, two of which were intercepted, the military said. The other two fell in open areas, and there were no reports of casualties.
The military ordered the evacuation of a five-block area of the built-up Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, saying the rockets had been fired from there. The orders indicated that Israel would soon carry out strikes in the area.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 people, including children and older adults. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third believed to be dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 44,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to local health officials. They say women and children make up more than half the dead but do not distinguish between fighters and civilians in their count. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
Thousands more Palestinians have gone missing during the war, some after encounters with Israeli troops.
UN says Gaza civilians face ‘utterly devastating situation’
Israel has been waging a renewed offensive against Hamas militants in Gaza’s heavily destroyed north since early October. Troops have surrounded Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and the urban Jabaliya refugee camp, allowing in almost no humanitarian aid and ordering tens of thousands to flee to nearby Gaza City.
Israeli officials have said the three communities are mostly deserted, but the United Nations humanitarian office said Tuesday it believes around 65,000 to 75,000 people are still there, with little access to food, water, electricity or health care. Experts have warned that the north may be experiencing famine.
Sigrid Kaag, the senior U.N. humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, told reporters on Tuesday that civilians trying to survive all across Gaza face an “utterly devastating situation.”
She pointed to the breakdown in law and order and looting that has left the U.N. and many aid organizations unable to deliver food and other humanitarian essentials to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in need.
Kaag said she and other U.N. officials repeatedly ask Israel for access for convoys to northern Gaza and elsewhere, to allow in commercial goods, to reopen the Rafah crossing from Egypt in the south and to approve dual-use items.
The Israeli military says it allows in enough humanitarian aid and blames U.N. agencies for not distributing it, saying large amounts of aid have accumulated just inside Gaza’s borders. U.N. officials say Israeli restrictions, the breakdown of law and order and ongoing fighting make it difficult to access the aid and distribute it, and have repeatedly called for a ceasefire.
The United States, Egypt and Qatar have mediated talks between Israel and Hamas for nearly a year, and diplomats say those efforts have recently gained momentum.
But Hamas has said it will not release the remaining hostages without an end to the war and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to continue the war until Hamas is destroyed and all the hostages are returned and has said Israel will maintain a lasting military presence in some areas.
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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Natalie Melzer in Nahariya, Israel, Josef Federman in Jerusalem and Edith Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
Brain drain could undermine the country’s hi-tech economy as liberal families conclude social contract has been broken
This summer, the Nobel laureate Prof Aaron Ciechanover joined a group of prominent Israelis gathered in the ruins of the Nir Oz kibbutz to demand a hostage release and ceasefire deal.
Nir Oz was the worst hit of all the communities targeted by Hamas on 7 October, with a quarter of its residents kidnapped or killed. Twenty-nine are still in Gaza.
If the hostages were not brought back, the basic social contract that underpinned Israeli society would unravel, the 77-year-old professor of medicine warned – with catastrophic consequences for the entire country.
He cited an accelerating “brain drain” of doctors and other professionals as a worrying sign that some of Israel’s elite already feel they no longer have a future in the country. And without them, Israel itself might struggle to have a future.
Ciechanover is a long-term critic of Benjamin Netanyahu and joined protests against his government before the war. But concern about this trend is not limited to political opponents of the Israeli leader. Earlier this year, Netanyahu’s former chair of the National Economic Council, Eugene Kandel, joined forces with the administrative expert Ron Tzur to warn that Israel faces an existential threat.
In a paper calling for a new political settlement, they warned that under a business-as-usual scenario “there is a considerable likelihood that Israel will not be able to exist as a sovereign Jewish state in the coming decades”. (snip)
The problem precedes the 7 October attacks and the war that followed, as demographic and political shifts have prompted some secular, liberal Israelis to question their future in a state increasingly dominated by religious traditionalists.
Noam is a father of three with businesses that include a PR consultancy and a cannabis pharmacy. He expected that his 40s would be a time of “less doing, more enjoying”, after decades of hard work.
Instead, he and his wife spend evenings poring over school options in European countries as they weigh up where to start a new life. The war increased the urgency of the search, but it has been a decision born out of longstanding concerns.
“The main reason we are leaving is that we are seeking a better future for our children. Even if peace can be brokered tomorrow, we still can’t see a future we want to be a part of,” Noam said. “The demographics speak for themselves.”
(snip-MORE- not tl;dr)
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