Gaza live: Israel attacks Gaza 'humanitarian zone'
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A pro-Israel protester has been charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, as well as violation of a constitutional right causing injury, after shooting a passerby who taunted and charged at the crowd carrying Israeli flags.
Authorities in Newton, Massachusetts - a town less than eight miles west of Boston proper - said the scuffle happened on Thursday evening, and that the man charged in this incident - 47-year-old Scott Hayes - is a legal gun owner.
In Massachusetts, a man set himself on fire outside the Israeli consulate in Boston on 11 September. He was transported to hospital with serious burns, but no further news on his condition is known.
Video revealing his identity only surfaced via YouTube on Friday, though police have not confirmed who he is.
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller says the US will continue to push Israel’s army to “change rules of engagement” to protect civilians after the killing of American-Turkish activist Aysenur Eygi.
“We know enough to know that the Israeli security forces need to make changes in the way that they are operating in the West Bank, because you have now seen not just one but two American citizens killed,” said Miller.
“So it’s very clear that they need to make changes in the rules of engagement, and we are going to continue to press them on that.”
Pope Francis on Friday decried the deaths of Palestinian children in Israeli military strikes in Gaza, calling bombings of schools, on the "presumption" of striking Hamas militants, "ugly".
He also expressed doubt that either Israel or Hamas were seeking to end the conflict. "I am sorry to have to say this," the pope said. "But I do not think that they are taking steps to make peace."
Israeli forces attacked several areas in southern Lebanon, targeting a residential apartment complex in Ahmadiyeh in the western Bekaa Valley.
At least one person was killed in an air strike on the building, and seven others were wounded, including four children, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported.
The Israeli military said in a statement on Friday that it had acted against targets in Syria, days after Syrian state media reported Israeli air strikes killed 18 people in Hama province's Masyaf area, in western Syria, and wounded dozens more.
"In southern Syria, the IDF targeted several terrorists who were advancing terror activities against Israel," the statement read, without giving further detail.
The Israeli military rarely comments on allegations that it acts in Syria and declined to comment on a New York Times report that Israeli special forces destroyed an underground missile production facility near the Syria-Lebanon border on Sunday.
The head of the World Health Organisation has hailed the "massive" success of the first phase of a polio vaccination campaign in Gaza which wrapped on Thursday after more than 560,000 children received their first dose.
“This is a massive success amidst a tragic daily reality of life across the Gaza Strip,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X.
“We admire all the health teams, who conducted this complex operation."
Israeli forces destroyed an underground missile production facility built under Iranian supervision after helicoptering into Syria days ago, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Syrian authorities said 18 people had been killed in Israeli strikes on "military sites" in Hama province's Masyaf area.
"Helicopters dropped down dozens of Israeli forces who were able to enter the weapons production site and destroy it," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP on Friday.
He added that before troops descended, Israel launched intense strikes that also destroyed a separate "scientific research centre" in Masyaf used for weapons development where Iranian experts worked.
Nearly a year into the world’s first live-streamed genocide - which began in Gaza, and is rapidly expanding into the occupied West Bank - the establishment western media still avoid using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s rampage of destruction.
The worse the genocide gets, the longer Israel’s starvation-blockade of the enclave continues, the harder it gets to obscure the horrors - and the less coverage Gaza receives.
The worst offender has been the BBC, given that it is Britain’s only publicly funded broadcaster. Ultimately, it is supposed to be accountable to the British public, who are required by law to pay its licence fee.
This is why it has been beyond ludicrous to witness the billionaire-owned media froth at the mouth in recent days about “BBC bias” - not against Palestinians, but against Israel. Yes, you heard that right.
We are talking about the same “anti-Israel” BBC that just ran yet another headline - this time after an Israeli sniper shot an American citizen in the head - that managed somehow, once again, to fail to mention who killed her. Any casual reader risked inferring from the headline “American activist shot dead in occupied West Bank” that the culprit was a Palestinian gunman.
READ MORE: How the war on Gaza exposed Israeli and western fascism
The International Court of Justice announced that Chile has filed a declaration of intervention in South Africa's genocide case against Israel.
PRESS RELEASE: #Chile, invoking Article 63 of the #ICJ Statute, filed a declaration of intervention in the case concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (#SouthAfrica v. #Israel) https://t.co/RZrdodMcoC pic.twitter.com/7MXETCqh7C
— CIJ_ICJ (@CIJ_ICJ) September 13, 2024
The body of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, the US-Turkish activist who was shot dead by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank, reached Istanbul and is believed to be taken to her hometown of Didim.
Al Jazeera reports that Turkish authorities are attempting to convince Eygi's family to give permission to conduct an autopsy to gather evidence that can later be used in South Africa's genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
Turkey declared its intention to the join the case against Israel back in May.
From Beirut to Amman passing by Ramallah or Tel Aviv, a collective fear resurfaces with each new earthquake. Natural laws ignore geopolitical issues, borders and conflicts: in the Middle East, millions of people live along the Dead Sea Fault, a major seismic hazard zone.
Rooted in the eastern Mediterranean Basin, the rift is located at the junction of the African and Arabian plates, perforating the region from south to north over 1,200 kilometres, from the Gulf of Aqaba to Turkey, via Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
And if in recent decades, several low-intensity earthquakes have shaken the region, including as recently as last July, the shock wave of the quake that plunged Turkey and Syria into mourning on 6 February 2023 awakened old demons, buried in the collective unconscious, but not forgotten.
Since then, haunting questions have been going round and round: is the Middle East doomed to experience a huge disaster one day? Is the region prepared?
READ MORE: Lebanon, Palestine, Israel: Is the Middle East doomed to a major earthquake?
Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar has sent a letter to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah thanking the latter for his group's support in the war against Israel.
"Your blessed actions have expressed your solidarity on the fronts of the Axis of Resistance, supporting and engaging in the battle," Sinwar told Nasrallah, as reported as pro-Hezbollah pan-Arab broadcaster Al Mayadeen.
Sinwar vowed that "blessed convoys of martyrs will increase in strength and power in confronting the Nazi Zionist occupation".
Sinwar also said his group will keep fighting "the Zionist project" alongside other groups in the Iran-backed axis of resistance "until the occupation is defeated and swept away from our land, and our independent state with full sovereignty is established with Jerusalem as its capital".
رئيس المكتب السياسي لحركة حماس يحيى #السنوار يوجّه رسالة شكر وامتنان إلى الأمين العام لـ #حزب_الله السيد حسن نصر الله في #لبنان.#الميادين pic.twitter.com/KtAPNoBNj2
— قناة الميادين (@AlMayadeenNews) September 13, 2024
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said his country's police are "going to war" against "criminal organisations" in Palestinian communities in Israel.
The minister says the move comes after "decades of turning a blind eye".
Ben Gvir added that he took part in overnight raids against "crime families" in communities including in the city of Lod.
The body of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, the US-Turkish activist shot dead by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank, arrived in Turkey on Friday.
The killing last week of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, has sparked international condemnation.
The United Nations rights office has accused Israeli forces of shooting Eygi in the head.
Turkish officials, including Istanbul governor Davut, Gul attended the ceremony at Istanbul's airport, where they prayed before the coffin wrapped in the Turkish flag.
Several Lebanese and international press freedom and human rights organisations have signed a letter calling for the UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel to investigate and help provide accountability for Israel's murder of Reuters photographer Issam Abdallah in south Lebanon.
Abdallah was killed on 13 October by Israeli forces while covering the cross-border clashes between Israel and Hezbollah.
Several Reuters, AFP and Al Jazeera journalists were also injured in the attack.
