41,615 + killed* and at least 96,359 wounded in the Gaza Strip. 32,280 of the slain have been identified, including 10,627 children and 5,956 women, representing 60% of the casualties, and 2,770 elderly as of August 6, 2024. Some 10,000 more are estimated to be under the rubble*
719+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes at least 146 children.**
Since the beginning of the current Israeli offensive on Lebanon, Israel has killed 1,640 Lebanese and wounded at least 8,000, according to Lebanese authorities.
Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,140.
The Israeli army recognizes the death of 714 Israeli soldiers and the injury of at least 4,100 others since October 7.***
But if a well-intentioned platforming of i24 turns into an attempt to bankrupt Informed Comment, then I wonder if people shouldn’t stay away from formal Israeli institutions. There is something creepy and cult-like about this level of antipathy to any criticism at all. (The cultish side of Israel derangement syndrome is examined in the film, Israelism, which streams on Apple TV among other places.)
The source of Israel’s security challenges, the heart of the “rising tensions” in the region, is Israel’s siege on Gaza, what is widely condemned as apartheid in the West Bank, its continuing occupation of territories that it has been ordered by UN security council resolutions to vacate, and its illegal expansion of settlements. As long as these conditions continue, uprisings through both justified and illegitimate means, from intifada to 7 October, will persist.Resiste
Israeli officials claimed that Hezbollah was storing thousands of long-range rockets in civilian homes. They sent people in Lebanon text messages and automated calls cautioning them to move away from Hezbollah’s weapons caches. But Lebanese civilians could not know how close they were to potential military targets, human rights groups said. UNIFIL, which is the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, has “grave concern for the safety of civilians in southern Lebanon” amid what it called “the most intense Israeli bombing campaign” since October 7.
As it continues its genocidal campaign in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Israel is demonstrating that it is fully prepared to commit war crimes in Lebanon as well. In addition to their illegality, Israel’s actions imperil the entire region, and indeed, the world.
As Israel intensified its deadly attacks on Lebanon, the U.S. moved more troops to the Middle East. The move shows Joe Biden’s priority is not to avoid escalation but to ensure that Israel has full impunity.
Having learned from their mistakes in 2020, Trump and his MAGA allies have now corrupted the system from within. More than 100 “election deniers” who have refused to accept Trump’s 2020 defeat now serve as local election officials in the eight swing states that will decide the 2024 contest: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Some have already demonstrated their willingness to wreak post-election havoc.
The strike targeted and leveled six residential buildings. The Israeli army’s spokesperson, Daniel Hagari, released a video statement shortly after the strike claiming that the buildings contained Hezbollah’s “Central Headquarters.” Lebanese media reported that over 10 Israeli missiles were dropped in less than three minutes on the complex, situated in the Haret Hreik area in Dahiya. The Israeli army’s radio said that Israeli F-35 fighter jets dropped 2000-pound bunker-buster bombs on the residential buildings.
The danger is Israel, an increasingly unhinged rogue state with an illegal and unregulated nuclear stockpile who is at war with itself and losing badly.
Don’t get me wrong, in a perfect world we would have no nukes and all of those motherfuckers above from the Mullahs to the Mossad would be locked in the same bunker somewhere in the desert with two chains and one rusty saw. But we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in some place just north of hell where a bunch of macho imbeciles with small dicks and even smaller brains have us all held hostage by their states and the stockpiles they’ve compiled to keep them relevant.
While there was some audience applause from the sparsely populated room on Friday, Al Jazeera Arabic’s Rami Ayari explained that “the people you hear cheering the PM during the speech are in the gallery who he brought for that purpose.”
In response to diplomats’ Friday walkout, Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said that “the impunity Biden has offered Israel has been used by Netanyahu to make Israel an international pariah. Neither good for the U.S. nor for Israel.”
The military tech conference, set for November at one of Google’s Tel Aviv offices, was scrubbed from the internet when The Intercept asked questions.
For the past year, Google-sponsored conferences have been the target of people protesting Project Nimbus, the $1.2 billion contract it shares with Amazon that involves providing cloud services and other tools to the Israeli government.
The only way to stop a bloody and electorally disastrous regional war in the Middle East is for President Joe Biden to do the one thing he wants to avoid: cut off military aid to Israel.
It seems the Israeli leadership, the Zionists and Prime Minister Netanyahu will not be satisfied until the Biblical promise of the land belonging to the descendants of Abraham is realised, and the land cleansed of those who are not identified as such… and the identification is one of belief, a religious creed, that of Judaism. In effect, using the same argument the Nazis had for eliminating people who did not conform to their definition of what a good German looked like.
But why are there so many women and children killed in these conflicts?
Could it be that each child killed cannot grow up to become the enemy?
And could it be that by killing women and children cannot be born to grow up to become the enemy?
olddogthoughts 
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