Israel will say it had no choice, but its airstrikes in Lebanon risks igniting a regional war
Israel carried out "pre-emptive" strikes against Hezbollah overnight, while the militant group says it has completed the "first phase" of an attack on 11 Israeli military sites.
This appears to have been a high-stakes Israeli military operation that risked igniting a regional war.
Israel will say it had no choice: One of the pillars of Israeli military doctrine has long been the principle that offence is the best form of defence.
It is not the first time it has used its air force hoping to defang an imminent threat. Israel insists it sent an armada of warplanes to the skies over Lebanon, more than a hundred strong, to stop an 'extensive planned attack involving thousands of rocket launches' about to be let loose by Hezbollah.
Just as Israel launched audacious air attacks obliterating Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser's air force in 1967 and Saddam Hussein's atomic programme in 1981, Israel says it despatched jets overnight to neutralise Hezbollah.
It is not clear how many enemy drones and missiles were already in the air. Hezbollah claims all 11 of its targets in Israel were hit and it launched 320 Katyusha rockets.
The primary strike it says was aimed at "a qualitative Israeli military target that will be announced later" as well as "enemy sites and barracks and Iron Dome [missile defence] platforms".
Israeli intelligence sources had claimed the airbase used in the strike on Shukr and the headquarters of Unit 8200, the Israeli military intelligence agency, north of Tel Aviv, were on Hezbollah's target list.
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Hezbollah meanwhile says Israel's operation failed to pre-empt its long-awaited retaliation and insists it succeeded in striking targets deep within Israel.
Two questions for now: Hezbollah's next move and what this does to efforts to end the war in Gaza.
Will Hezbollah draw a line under the Shukr/Haniyeh affair? The organisation says today's action is over but is more planned in the coming days? All eyes are on its commander Hassan Nasrallah who will address his faithful by video link tonight.
He has not been seen in public since Hezbollah's war with Israel in 2006 for fear of being assassinated by Israeli jets himself.
Hezbollah attacked Israel in the wake of Hamas atrocities on 7 October and has been locked in an almost daily artillery duel with Israel over their border ever since.
Israeli intelligence claims Hezbollah has amassed an arsenal of 150,000 missiles secreted in the hills of southern Lebanon since 2006, 10 times the amount it possessed back then.
It has so far refrained from unleashing that firepower: Analysts believe its paymasters and patrons in Tehran prefer to keep that armoury in reserve as an insurance policy for the day Israel may attack Iran itself, as well as its alleged nuclear programme.
But Israel has been testing that theory for months now, responding with force to Hezbollah's attacks in the north. Each exchange of fire has the potential to escalate the region into a wider war through miscalculation and unintended mass civilian casualties.
So far, events overnight do not seem to have upended the fragile efforts towards a ceasefire in Gaza. Delegations are still on their way to Cairo for the next round of talks. If anything the escalation reemphasises the urgency behind the diplomacy.
But it could also offer the Israelis a distraction, should they want one, from huge pressure from the US to make the concessions required to reach a deal.
Most Israeli observers believe Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not want a ceasefire on the terms currently being negotiated for fear it could lead to his coalition government falling apart.
But US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators insist the truce terms are the best and possibly last chance of bringing home Israel's hostages and ending the war.
They also believe a ceasefire in Gaza is the best way of reducing tensions in the north - which have exploded overnight so spectacularly.
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Harris Gets Progressives’ Stamp of Approval for Tim Walz VP Pick
Progressive support of Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz is not a surprise, considering the alternative is former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance. But there are still issues progressives hope to push Harris left on.
Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday picked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate – a decision that not only capitalizes on his proven ability to appeal to swing voters but one that also helps her avoid a possible fissure in the Democratic Party’s support.
Walz was a safe choice for several reasons – not the least of which was that he’s well-liked by progressives whose backing she needs to ensure her base is unified and motivated.
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont called Walz a “great asset” to Harris’ campaign.
“He is a former public school teacher, football coach and strong union supporter,” Sanders posted on social media. “As governor, he delivered for working families in MN. As VP, he will deliver for the working families of the U.S.”
Progressives point to Walz’s track record, campaigning for governor on a “One Minnesota” platform that emphasized union organizing, a $15-per-hour minimum wage and assistance for school children and college students.
“Governors Tim Walz and Andy Beshear are persuasive advocates for core Democratic values and will energize voters across America without marginalizing any of the communities that we must engage in order to win the electoral college,” the progressives, who included California Democratic Party Progressive Caucus Chair Emeritus Amar Shergill, wrote.
The group’s main desire was that Harris not pick Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate.
“Governor Shapiro, although a valued member of the Democratic coalition, has made too many controversial policy decisions on issues such as school choice and the environment to be the consensus voice our nation needs right now,” they wrote.
Others expressed worries about Shapiro’s strong support for Israel and the possibility that his stance could alienate progressive voters who are concerned about the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
Harris already garnered the support of leading progressives like Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York before her vice president decision. Still, going with Shapiro would have risked creating a crack in what had otherwise been overwhelming support from the Democratic Party since she announced she was running for president.
Progressive support of Harris is not a surprise, considering the alternative would be former President Donald Trump. And while Trump and his surrogates are eager to characterize Harris as so liberal as to be out of touch with mainstream America, there are certain issues on which progressives hope to push Harris further left.
Sanders recently said that Harris should run on a progressive economic agenda that includes expanding Social Security benefits by making the wealthy pay the same tax rate as the working class, expanding Medicare, cutting the cost of prescription drugs and hiking taxes on rich and multinational corporations.
“Indeed, it is the formula that could give Harris the sort of victory that sweeps in a Democratic Senate and House and allows her to govern in the best tradition of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Joe Biden’s Build Back Better program,” Sanders wrote in an opinion for The Guardian.
Notably, Harris has moved to the center on a couple of issues she ran on during her 2020 presidential bid, including reversing her stance on a fracking ban.
Though the focus for now is on Harris winning the election, expect progressives to ramp up the pressure on certain issues – including abortion access and climate change – if she does become president.
For example, restoring protections promised under Roe v. Wade won’t be enough for certain reproductive rights groups, who will likely push for abortion protections to go further under a potential Harris administration. And climate advocates, while happy with Harris and Walz on the ticket, will probably want to see progress on slashing fossil fuel production.
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Whenever my mom is losing an argument
Whenever my mom is losing an argument
Mom: I Carried your for 9 months
#meme #fun #funny
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Echoes of a massacre: Tales from Israel's attack on al-Tabin
Al-Tabin School was not the first school in Gaza that Israel has targeted. But medics, journalists and survivors told Al Jazeera that Israel’s August 10 attack on it was the most gruesome massacre since Israel launched its assault on the besieged enclave in October last year.
Israel killed more than 100 displaced Palestinians, leaving victims dismembered, charred and often unidentifiable by their loved ones.
Some 2,400 displaced Palestinians, many exhausted by having been displaced several times, were sheltering in the school in eastern Gaza's Daraj neighbourhood when it was struck by two guided missiles.
The missiles blazed through the upper level, a space that women and children slept and prayed in, to reach the men's prayer area on the ground floor.
Most of the men and boys had woken up to perform the Fajr - or dawn - prayers and were gathered in that space. It was timed for maximum casualties, medics who were there said.
The nearby al-Ahli Arab Hospital - which came under attack months ago and is only partially operational with no burn ward - was overwhelmed as injuries and bodies of slain Palestinians began pouring in.
Throughout the war, Israeli forces have largely kept Gaza’s vital crossings sealed shut, blocking the entry of much-needed fuel, medicine and humanitarian aid to the enclave, where famine is looming.
Al Jazeera spoke to some of the displaced people who survived the attack but lost loved ones, as well as rescue workers and medics who worked in mute horror to save as many people as they could.
Sumaya Abu Ajwa had woken up for the Fajr prayer with her two foster daughters, 16-year-old Nuseiba and 14-year-old Retaj, and their mother.
She and the girls' mother were off to one side when the missiles struck, one of them passing between the two girls, Abu Ajwa told Al Jazeera.
"Suddenly, dust and fire spread everywhere, like it was Judgement Day. I started looking frantically for the girls," she says tearfully, sitting on a bed because she has difficulty walking.
"I found the younger girl [Retaj] and held her in my arms. Her blood was pouring onto my clothes, but I could sense that she was still breathing," Abu Ajwa said, adding that she screamed for help, for anyone to come and save Retaj, but the scene was so chaotic nobody was able to help.
Soon after, Retaj succumbed to her wounds.
The search for Retaj's big sister Nuseiba took longer.
"I went back into the flaming prayer room over and over, looking for her, I couldn't see her anywhere. Then someone told me that she was under the rubble so I went to look where they said.
"When I reached her," Abu Ajwa breaks down, "I found her and her body had been torn in two."
Weeping bitterly, she said she and the girls' mother had done everything they could, through several displacements, to keep the four of them together.
Abu Ajwa had discussed leaving al-Tabin with the girls, but Nuseiba had been reluctant to leave, she said, because she was attending Quran classes there and was proud of her progress in memorising the holy book.
"She told us that if we wanted to leave that was fine, she would stay behind in the school. I told her that I had stayed with them throughout the war and wouldn't leave them now, we'd either make it together or die together, but now they've gone on ahead and left us. They died before us."
The girls only had one wish, she added - for the war to end because they "have been scared so many times, displaced so many times, they were so exhausted and had gone hungry so many times".
The girls have a 14-year-old brother, Abu Ajwa said, who had been taken from them when the Israeli army raided al-Shifa Hospital where they were sheltering at the time.
"The Israelis sent him north on his own. We were very sad then but, who knows, this may have saved him, he's the only hope we have left.
"Who will call me Mama Sumaya now? I crave those words so much," Abu Ajwa sobs.
Suzan al-Basyouni heard the impact first then realised that the school had been targeted, with the mosque hit hardest, and ran to look for her husband who had gone to perform the Fajr prayer.
"The moments of the massacre are etched into my eyes... imagine looking for your husband amid piles of human body parts, to try to identify him and not be able to," al-Basyouni told Al Jazeera.
"Inside the mosque were piles of bodies, dismembered limbs flung around. Those very few who survived were running out of the mosque screaming, in flames.
"I was struggling to get through, stepping on bodies with my own two feet. I stepped on a woman as I was trying to find my husband. I know her, she's a friend of mine and I didn't realise that I was stepping on her. She was at the mosque's entrance."
The dark made it hard for al-Basyouni and her family to find her husband and it was only when the sun rose and rescue efforts advanced a bit that they found him under a pile of bodies.
"His legs had been blown off and his abdomen torn open. He had been martyred alongside his father.
"My solace, my only hope now is that we will find ease in heaven. There is no life left to live in Gaza, we had no idea how horrific life could be and now we know that it's all over.
"There will be no earthly justice, how could there be when we live in Gaza and nobody has moved to help us? Justice will be served by God alone."
Vascular surgery consultant Tayseer al-Tanna stood in shock in the hospital corridor, recounting what he saw after the attack in a voice he was trying to control.
"I deal in science," he said. "So, I try to use my head more than my heart when it comes to treating people.
"But that day, what I saw and what I had to do, I was working with a vice gripping my heart. Yet I kept working, I couldn't stop."
The severity and sheer number of injuries he encountered have left a lasting impression on al-Tanna.
"The burns were unlike anything I’ve seen before, covering 50...70... up to 90 percent of the victims' bodies. Many lost limbs, and so many died in surgery because their injuries were so severe," he said.
Al-Tanna used to work at al-Shifa Hospital and is now the only vascular surgeon remaining in northern Gaza, working out of al-Ahli Arab Hospital where he receives cases from all over the north.
Al Jazeera Arabic’s Anas al-Sharif was among the first journalists who reported on the direct aftermath of the attack.
"I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. The number of martyrs was beyond anything I could have imagined," al-Sharif said.
"There were bodies and limbs outside the school, but nothing could prepare me for the scenes inside. I documented what was happening outside the school and kept going.
"But when I got to the mosque that had been targeted, I was so shocked that I had no words left any more," he recalled.
"I was walking over the bodies of martyrs without realising it. A very painful scene unfolded in front of me, a girl saying goodbye to her father as he died from his burns," he said.
"It’s difficult to move past something like this. Those images, I see them everywhere... in my dreams, when I’m awake."
Asked whether this shock could make him give up journalism, al-Sharif said seeing such a crime being perpetrated against the people of Gaza only makes him more determined to carry on documenting what is happening.
"There are still families who haven't found their loved ones," he said. "The victims are nothing more than body parts.
"I went to the school after the attack and saw some families trying to clean it up, they were collecting kilos and kilos of just body parts, they don't know who they are."
Momen Silmi, a civil defence worker who was among the first to reach the school, said the scenes at al-Tabin were "terrifying", with people standing outside the school, afraid to enter.
When he and his team entered, they found the scene of the strike in flames, upstairs and down.
"Some of the victims were engulfed in flames, but they couldn't extinguish the fire because their limbs had been blown off.
"No human should have to witness such a sight," Silmi said. "But we've seen so much, we were able to go in there and try to help. I would grab anything I could find and try to put out the fires that were burning some of the injured people.
"We went upstairs and the sight I saw there was appalling. Most people were burned, dismembered, disembowelled, and they were all women and children. There were no men, not even teenagers up there.
"I saw an injured mother holding her daughter of about 18 or 19 who was badly injured... her intestines were spilling out and her hands had been blown off. She had her eyes closed and was screaming out for help: 'Baba! Don't leave me please!' she was crying, holding on to me because she thought I was her father.
"I was trying to help her while my colleague was trying to calm her mother down because she was bleeding profusely as well.
"We were all deeply branded by this experience, yes we've seen a lot and helped a lot of people in terrible conditions, but working on a disembowelled injured person while their seriously injured parent or child looked on wailing, that was horrific and will stay with us forever."
"I had just woken up really, we were about to pray Fajr at the civil defence centre," rescue worker Noah al-Sharnoubi said.
"As I walked through the carnage, I felt like I was in a dream. There were tens of bodies piled up, and dismembered body parts were strewn everywhere.
"We've seen schools targeted before, we knew to expect a dozen casualties maybe, but this time the number of bodies and injured screaming for help...
"People were screaming out to me to save their mothers, brothers, and fathers, grabbing me in desperation. Sometimes I would go to them and find that their loved ones were taking their last breaths, and I would have to leave to help someone else."
Al-Sharnoubi kept working alongside his team until all the injured people on the ground floor had been taken to hospital, then he headed upstairs to help out there too.
"As I was going up the stairs, I saw a human head on the steps with a fire blazing nearby. It was a head with part of the shoulders still attached.
"I tried to move it with my hands, but they started trembling … I lost control of myself and couldn’t lift bodies or help the injured," he said.
All the rescue workers on the site cried at some point, he added, because of the severity of the attack.
"I haven't slept for three days since the massacre. The images keep replaying in my mind. This wasn't just a massacre - it was a genocide against displaced people who sought refuge in a school.
"Believers were killed while they prayed; they were children, women and the elderly."
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in 1961, Ranger 1, the first mission in the Ranger program, launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
#OTD in 1961, Ranger 1, the first mission in the Ranger program, launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. A rocket malfunction during launch caused the spacecraft to get stranded in low-Earth orbit. Read More...
40,405 Palestinians killed in Israel's military offensive on Gaza since Oct. 7, Gaza health ministry says
CAIRO, Aug 25 (Reuters) - At least 40,405 Palestinians have been killed and 93,468 others injured in Israel's military offensive on Gaza since Oct. 7, said the Gaza Health Ministry.
In the last 24-hours, 71 were killed and 112 were injured in what the ministry called three "massacres" by Israel in the strip.
The recent war in Gaza started after Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel says it goes out of its way to avoid civilian casualties and accuses Hamas of using human shields, an allegation the group denies.
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Kenyan police deployed to Haiti haven’t received full promised salary in two months
Hundreds of Kenyan police officers leading an international policing force in Haiti have not received their full pay for two months, the latest complication in what has been a rocky start to the security mission in the gang-plagued Caribbean nation.
The first Kenyan officers deployed to Haiti arrived in June, the vanguard of a multinational security support mission (MSS) that is being funded largely by the United States. There are now around 400 Kenyan police in the country, many from specialized units.
In an August 25 statement acknowledging delays to payments, the MSS announced that officers could expect the missing funds to hit their bank accounts this week.
“Therefore, there is nothing to worry about (regarding) welfare issues of the MSS officers, since mainstream processes have been finalized,” the MSS added.
In a “progress report” released Monday, Kenya’s National Police Service (NPS) said that the officers were continuing “to draw their NPS salaries” while waiting for the supplemental pay for their MSS duties.
Kenyan officers had expected to be paid a significant supplement for their Haiti deployment – a grueling assignment more typical of a military than of a police force. Officers are not allowed to leave their base in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince during non-working hours.
Speaking to CNN, some officers expressed frustration and concern about the missing supplemental payments. With schools reopening in Kenya this week, some say they need the money urgently to manage school fees and other expenses for their families back home.
“The officers feel frustrated after not having been paid for two months. And we hear that the money has already been sent to Kenya but they haven’t paid us, so please help us out,” one officer in Haiti told CNN before the police statement was released, requesting anonymity.
The MSS force is expected to ultimately grow to 2,500, with more troops expected from Jamaica, Benin, Chad, the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados and Belize. The force is hoped to bolster the Haitian National Police’s battles against an alliance of gangs that controls an estimated 85% of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area.
Around 600,000 Haitians have been forced to flee their homes due to gang violence, and some 2 million people live in gang-ravaged areas where fear of attack is constant, Haitian interim Prime Minister Garry Conille said in an interview with CNN in early August.
The MSS is financed through a UN-managed trust fund, to which the US, Canada, France and Spain have contributed millions of dollars. The United States has committed at least $380 million overall in support of the mission, largely in the form of equipment and materiel.
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