Meanwhile on the International front....

If you have Apple TV, watch season 1 of Tehran.

 

Worthwhile thread on some of the history at work here.

 

The UN isn't the body committing war crimes here. That would be the two warring parties. In other cheery news. Israel's defense minister said the country was at war with Lebanon, the West Bank and Iran as well as with Hamas.

 

And so let's give the reins to the guy who thinks the West Bank is a financial institution to which he gave fraudulent info.

 

Iran and elements within Lebanon and the West Bank have been at war with them all along, so that's just acknowledging reality.

 

The U.S. has a massive military base in Djibouti. Right across the strait from Yemen. I think the fact that people realize that is preventing the markets from freaking out. The U.S. will lock things down in the Red Sea and will give the rebels what they love: death.

 

Gaza war puts US’s extensive weapons stockpile in Israel under scrutiny

Their precise location is classified, but somewhere in Israel there are multiple closely guarded warehouses that contain billions of dollars’ worth of weapons owned by the US government.

Long shrouded in secrecy, the warehouses are part of an extensive but previously little-known stockpile now facing scrutiny as pressure mounts on the Biden administration over its support for Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

 

Skepticism Grows Over Israel’s Ability to Dismantle Hamas

Standing before a gray backdrop decorated with Hamas logos and emblems of a gunman that commemorate the bloody Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Osama Hamdan, the organization’s representative in Lebanon, professed no concern about his Palestinian faction being dislodged from Gaza.

“We are not worried about the future of the Gaza Strip,” he recently told a crowded news conference in his offices in Beirut’s southern suburbs. “The decision maker is the Palestinian people alone.”

Mr. Hamdan thus dismissed one of Israel’s key objectives since the beginning of its assault on Gaza: to dismantle the Islamist political and military organization that was behind the massacre of about 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and which still holds more than 100 hostages.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has repeatedly emphasized that objective even while facing mounting international pressure to scale back military operations. The Biden administration has dispatched senior envoys to Israel to push for a new phase of the war focused on more targeted operations rather than sweeping destruction.

And critics both within Israel and outside have questioned whether resolving to destroy such a deeply entrenched organization was ever realistic. One former Israeli national security adviser called the plan “vague.”

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/26/netanyahu-gaza-hamas-israel/

The U.N. Security Council has called for “urgent and extended” humanitarian pauses in Gaza to allow more aid into the enclave. The United States, Israel’s best friend, says it wants its ally to move from block-flattening airstrikes to operations that target Hamas leaders more precisely.

But in recent days, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli military commanders have suggested that the level of violence with which they’re prosecuting the war — already among the most destructive of the century, and a source of regional instability — will persist or even intensify.

 

What could go wrong?

India deploys three warships to Arabian Sea after attack on tanker

India has said it is sending three warships to the Arabian Sea after a drone hit an "Israel-affiliated" merchant vessel off its western coast last week.

MV Chem Pluto was attacked about 200 nautical miles (370km) off the coast of the western state of Gujarat.

 

As ever, please spare a thought for our colleagues. Thanks.



Committee to Protect Journalists – Defending Journalists Worldwide.

More journalists have been killed in the first 10 weeks of the Israel-Gaza war than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year, according to CPJ data. By December 23, at least 69 journalists and media workers had been killed since the October 7 start of the conflict. Of those 69, 62 were Palestinian, four Israeli, and three Lebanese.