From PressTV
Israel fighter jets conduct air raids on Gaza Strip
The Israeli military has reportedly launched fresh airstrikes on the Gaza Strip after the regime’s forces opened fire and wounded six Palestinians in the northern part of the besieged coastal sliver.
According to reports, Israeli warplanes targeted an area in the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on Friday night.
Tel Aviv’s aerial assaults came after six Palestinians were shot and injured by Israel’s troops in the city of Jabalia in northern Gaza.
This is the first Israeli air raid on the Gaza Strip since a ceasefire deal put an end to the Tel Aviv regime’s 50-day military offensive against the blockaded Palestinian land in August.
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From PressTV
Israeli forces shoot and injure six in Palestine’s Jabalia
At least Six Palestinians have been shot and injured by Israel’s troops in another breach of a truce deal it signed with the Gaza Strip, Press TV reports.
The “unprovoked attack” happened in the Palestinian city of Jabalia, located north of the Gaza Strip on Friday.
According to medics, the victims sustained light to moderate injuries, most of which were to the lower body.
Israel unleashed aerial attacks on Gaza in early July and later expanded its military campaign with a ground invasion of the Palestinian coastal strip.
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From PressTV
Nine Palestinians injured in West Bank village
As many as nine Palestinians have been injured in the West Bank after Israeli forces suppressed a march in a village in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory.
The casualties were caused on Friday. The march took place in the Turmus Ayya.
Israeli forces fired rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas at the demonstrators and detained four activists.
One demonstrator, named as Muhammad al-Khatib, reportedly had his arm broken while being arrested.
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From the Jewish Telegrapic Agency
Gaza rocket hits Israeli kibbutz
(JTA) — A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip exploded in a kibbutz near the Gaza border, but did not cause casualties or damage.
The rocket that exploded Friday morning was the third that Palestinian terrorists have fired at Israel since the end of Israel’s 50-day assault on Hamas in Gaza, Army Radio reported. The operation, carried out by Israel in response to rocket launches from Gaza at its territory, ended on Aug. 26.
In recent weeks, Palestinians have fired several test rockets that were not aimed at Israel. Last month, the Israel Defense Forces reported that four such rockets were launched in the space of 24 hours at the sea west of Gaza.
Separately, representatives of Fatah and Hamas met in Gaza on Thursday in what Fatah spokesman Fayez Abu Aita described to the Ma’an news agency as a resumption of efforts to “heal the rift” between the rival groups.
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From PressTV
Video shows Israel army treating injured Takfiri militants
A newly released video shows Israeli soldiers providing the wounded Syrian Takfiri militants with medical assistance.
The footage, which was issued by Vice News on Wednesday, depicts Israeli soldiers tending to three Syrian Takfiri militants in the occupied Golan Heights.
The Israeli military medics evaluate the injured militants’ condition and then provide them with initial treatment before transferring them to a hospital, the video shows.
Earlier in the month, the Israeli media reported that the regime’s forces took three wounded militants belonging to Takfiri groups fighting against the Syrian government to hospitals in Israel.
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From PressTV
UN urges Israel to pay Lebanon $850mn in damages for oil spill
The United Nations has adopted a resolution, urging Israel to pay Lebanon in excess of USD 850 million for causing an “environmental disaster”.
The UN General Assembly approved the non-binding resolution overwhelmingly on Friday.
As many as 170 countries voted in favor of the resolution, six countries said “no” and three abstained.
Tel Aviv is obliged to pay the amount for an oil spill the regime caused in July 2006 during its war on Lebanon.
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From the Jewish Daily Forward
For Older Cuban Jews, Opening To Havana Is Bad Idea
Generation Divide Splits Jewish Emigre Community
(JTA) — For many Cuban Jews – the majority of whom now live in the United States – it has been a bittersweet week.
Like countless Jews around the world, they cheered the release of Alan Gross, the American Jewish telecommunications contractor who had been held in a Cuban prison for the last five years.
But then there’s the matter of reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana.
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From the Jewish Telegrapic Agency
Obama signs ‘No Social Security for Nazis’ act
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Obama signed into law a bill that ends Social Security payments to former Nazis.
The “No Social Security for Nazis Act” Obama signed Thursday was passed unanimously by both chambers in Congress earlier this month.
The measure closes a loophole that had allowed ex-Nazis who lied about their past when immigrating to the United States — and had been identified and deported by the Justice Department — to continue receiving Social Security and other government benefits.
News of the continued benefits was uncovered in October when The Associated Press published an expose.
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From the Jewish Telegrapic Agency
Mossad spy reached Hezbollah’s upper ranks, Arab media report
(JTA) — Arab media are reporting that Hezbollah uncovered a Mossad spy in its upper ranks.
The reports have named Mohammed Shorbah, a Lebanese businessman who succeeded Imad Mughniyeh, the operations chief assassinated in 2008 in a Syrian car bomb attack, as the agent for Israel’s intelligence agency. Hezbollah blames the Mughniyeh killing on Israel.
Shorbah was arrested last week, according to the reports, which were translated this week by the Israeli media.
Hezbollah, the terrorist group that launched a war against Israel in 2006, believes Shorbah was responsible for helping to plot the assassination of Mughniyeh and another senior Hezbollah official in 2013, and helped authorities arrest Hezbollah agents who planned attacks in Thailand, Peru and Cyprus.
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From the Jewish Telegrapic Agency
Jesus comes to the Hanukkah party
Sure, his birthday usually falls around the same time as Hanukkah, but Jesus and the Jewish holiday generally don’t mix.
This year, however, two Jesus-Hanukkah juxtapositions have been getting a lot of social media attention.
First, there’s Bud Williams, the Springfield, Mass., city counselor who said “Jesus is the reason for the season” — at a menorah lighting.
And there’s the morning host of St. Louis’ Fox affiliate, Kim Kelly Hudson. who sported a T-shirt bearing an image of Jesus on the cross while she interviewed a local rabbi about Hanukkah.
Asked about the T-shirt by Jim Romenesko, via Twitter, Hudson explained that she routinely wears T-shirts promoting local events — this one was for a Christian rap concert the same evening. “No insult was intended,” she said.
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From the Jewish Telegrapic Agency
Despite passionate reactions, EU ruling on Hamas is a small legal glitch
The Luxembourg-based General Court of the European Union said its ruling on Wednesday was procedural and in no way an assertion of whether Hamas merits the terrorist designation. In a statement, the court explained the EU’s blacklisting of Hamas had been based on “factual imputations derived from the press and the internet” instead of “on acts examined and confirmed in decisions of competent authorities.” Stating that the European Council, which placed Hamas on the terrorism list in 2001, “did not produce the obligatory judicial effects for the designation,” the court scrapped it but kept sanctions in place for another three months pending appeal.
The procedural nature of the ruling dampened neither the indignation of its detractors nor the grandiloquent celebration of its supporters. Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, said it heralded ”an incredibly dark day for Jewish communities across Europe.” Hamas called it a “moral victory over colonialism.”
Others, however, saw the ruling as a technical and easily reversible legal kink, which may nonetheless serve Hamas’ propaganda machine in Europe and encourage other terrorist groups to dispute their own blacklisting.
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From PressTV
PA blasts Canada for boycotting anti-Israel confab
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has lashed out at Canada for boycotting a recent conference on the Israeli regime’s human rights violations in the occupied territories.
The government of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper should have joined other countries at a one-day meeting in the Swiss city of Geneva inspecting Tel Aviv’s rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian lands, Said Hamad, the top PA diplomat in Canada, said in a statement released on Friday.
“We had hoped Canada would participate in this conference, given its long-standing policy that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The settlements also constitute a serious obstacle to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace,’” Hamad said.
On Wednesday, the majority of the signatories to the Geneva Convention criticized Israel for illegal settlement construction in the occupied West Bank and East al-Quds (Jerusalem).
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From PressTV
Gazans bearing brunt of Israel war destruction
People in the blockaded Gaza Strip are still suffering from the destruction in the besieged territory caused by a recent Israeli war, Press TV reports.
More than 7,000 refugee homes were completely destroyed in the Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip, affecting some 10,000 Palestinian families. A total of 89,000 homes suffered damage, with about 10,000 having been seriously damaged.
“We don’t know how we are going to rebuild our homes or even pay rent. Our life is so miserable. We can’t live like this for long,” a Gazan told the Press TV correspondent.
People in the blockade area believe that most countries in the world and specially the Arab states have turned a blind eye to their plight.
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From the Jewish Daily Forward
Harvard President Plans Probe of SodaStream Ban
Dining Services Won’t Buy Israeli Firm’s Equipment
Harvard University’s president has requested an investigation into the decision by the university’s dining service to stop buying SodaStream equipment.
Drew Faust asked for an investigation into the decision, Provost Alan Garber told The Harvard Crimson student newspaper on Wednesday night.
The request came following an article written earlier in the day by the newspaper reporting that the university’s dining service agreed in April to halt buying the equipment following protests by Palestinian students and their supporters.
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From the Jewish Daily Forward
Israel Never Would’ve Killed ‘The Interview’ — So Why Did We?
Americans Need To Get Tougher About Upholding Our Values
By Jay Michaelson
Which is why I find myself so puzzled and exasperated by the pathetic behavior of the country’s four largest chains of movie theaters, which caved into hysteria and fear in declining to show the James Franco/Seth Rogen comedy “The Interview.” It was in response to their actions that Sony pulled the film, handing the small state of North Korea an undeserved victory over a supposed superpower.
There were no credible threats to moviegoers, and indeed, no official public government assessment of the threats that were out there at all. Even assuming the North Korean dictatorship was behind the hacking of Sony’s pathetically insecure computer networks, there’s a big difference between hacking and gas attacks.
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