Iran's Hezbollah bombs Israel. US UK Sweden France Canada Jordan urge nationals to leave Lebanon

NOTE from Sudan Watch Editor: In 2017, the US established an official, permanent military base in Israel: an air defense base in the heart of the Negev desert. US Air Force soldiers work at the base, located inside the Israeli Air Force’s Mashabim Air Base, west of the towns of Dimona and Yerucham. More here from The Times of Israel including a video of the opening ceremony. Note that since a US flag flies over the base, the Americans consider any attack on Israel to be an attack on the US.

After this news of Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel exchanging fire in the early hours of today, it seems the right time to post the following videos showing whistleblower, Gen. Wesley Clark, Retired 4-star US Army general, Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the Kosovo War, saying in a 2007 interview that America’s objective is to take out 7 countries in 5 years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran. Other videos of the interview are online at YouTube. Here are two, incase one is deleted.

Interestingly, the events covered in this post are prophesied in the Holy Bible (King James Version). Anglican Christians believe these to be signs of the End Times and the Second Coming of Christ who will appear in Jerusalem. True Christians are not afraid of death. Life is camping, Heaven is for eternity. The Word of God assures us that all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ will have everlasting life (John 3:16; 6:47; 1 John 5:13)

Source: https://youtu.be/Eo6u9DpASp8

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VIDEO with Transcript. Gen. Wesley Clark. Retired 4-star US Army general. Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the Kosovo War. Here general Wesley Clark describes how he was told on 20th Sept. 2001 that the administration had decided to attack Iraq followed by Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran: https://www.youtube.com/watch

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Report from BBC News online

By Tom Bennett, BBC News reporting from London

Hugo Bachega BBC News Middle East correspondent, reporting from Beirut

Dated Saturday, 03 August 2024. Updated 04 August. Full copy:

Countries urge nationals to leave Lebanon as Mid-East war fears grow

IMAGE SOURCE, EPA Image caption, 

Hezbollah and Israel exchanged fire in the early hours of Sunday

Several countries have urged their nationals to leave Lebanon, as fears grow of a wider conflict in the Middle East.

Iran has vowed “severe” retaliation against Israel, which it blames for the death of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday. Israel has not commented. 

His assassination came hours after Israel killed Hezbollah senior commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut.

Western officials fear that Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia and political movement based in Lebanon, could play a key role in any such retaliation, which in turn could spark a serious Israeli response.

Diplomatic efforts by the US and other Western countries continue to try to de-escalate tensions across the region.

A growing number of flights have been cancelled or suspended at the country’s only commercial airport in Beirut.

The US, the UK, Australia, Sweden, France, Italy, Canada, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are among the countries to have urged their citizens to leave Lebanon as soon as possible.

Fears of an escalation of hostilities that could engulf Lebanon are at their highest since Hezbollah started its attacks on Israel, a day after the deadly Hamas attacks on southern Israel on 7 October, in support for Palestinians in Gaza.

Most of the violence has been contained to border areas, with both sides indicating not being interested in a wider conflict. 

Hezbollah, however, has vowed to respond to Shukr’s assassination, which happened in Dahiyeh, the group’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

On Sunday, Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets at the town of Beit Hillel in northern Israel at around 00:25 local time (21:25 GMT Saturday).

Footage posted on social media showed Israel's Iron Dome air defence system intercepting the rockets. There have been no reports of casualties.

Israel’s air force responded by striking targets in southern Lebanon.

In a separate development on Sunday morning, two people were killed in a stabbing attack in the Israeli city of Holon. The attacker was later “neutralised”, police said.

Also on Sunday, officials from the Hamas-run ministry of health in Gaza said an Israeli air strike had hit a tent inside a hospital, killing at least five people. The officials said 19 Palestinians had been killed on Sunday.

In a statement on Saturday, the US embassy in Beirut said those who chose to stay in Lebanon should “prepare contingency plans” and be prepared to “shelter in place for an extended period of time”.

The Pentagon has said it is deploying additional warships and fighter jets to the region to help defend Israel from possible attacks by Iran and its proxies, a strategy similar to the one adopted in April, when Iran launched more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel in retaliation to an attack on its diplomatic compound in Syria. 

It blamed Israel for that strike.

Many fear Iran’s retaliation on this occasion could take a similar form.

The UK says it is sending extra military personnel, consular staff and border force officials to help with any evacuations.

It has urged UK citizens to leave Lebanon while commercial flights are running.

Two British military ships are already in the region and the Royal Air Force has put transport helicopters on standby.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the regional situation “could deteriorate rapidly”.

In a phone call with EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell on Friday, Iran's Acting Foreign Minister Ali Baqeri Kani said Iran would "undoubtedly use its inherent and legitimate right" to "punish" Israel.

On Friday, an announcer on Iran's state TV warned "the world would witness extraordinary scenes".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Israelis that "challenging days lie ahead... We have heard threats from all sides. We are prepared for any scenario".

Tensions between Israel and Iran initially escalated with the killing of 12 children and teenagers in a strike on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Israel accused Hezbollah and vowed “severe” retaliation, though Hezbollah denied it was involved.

Days later, Shukr, who was a close adviser to the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in a targeted Israeli air strike in Beirut. Four others, including two children, were also killed.

Hours after that, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Iran, Hamas's main backer. He was visiting to attend the inauguration of Iran's new president, Masoud Pezeshkian.

Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has said Israel will suffer a “harsh punishment” for the killing.

Haniyeh's assassination dealt a blow to the negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, the main hope to defuse tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border.

The war began in October when Hamas carried out an unprecedented attack on Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 others back to Gaza as hostages. 

The attack triggered a massive Israeli military response, which has killed at least 39,480 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

Media caption [Video] Watch: Israel intercepts rockets fired from Lebanon

Bowen: Israel's killing of Haniyeh deals hammer blow to ceasefire prospects

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp4wgqypwrxo
Published 31 July 2024

Bachega: Hezbollah leader says conflict with Israel in 'new phase' after killings

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn05v009n2ko

Published 1 August 2024

Publishe31 July 2024

Full story: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c80xxeqel5po

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POSTSCRIPT from Sudan Watch Editor:

Verse of the Day for Sunday, August 4, 2024: 

"And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." Deuteronomy 6:5 (KJV)

END

Why our world today is uncannily - and worryingly - like the one Jesus was born into 2,023 years ago

From The Mail Online

Written by NIALL FERGUSON 

Niall Ferguson is Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford, a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics, and columnist with Bloomberg Opinion

Dated: Saturday, 23 December 2023, 01:43 - here is a copy in full:

Why our world today is uncannily - and worryingly - like the one Jesus was born into 2,023 years ago

The story of Jesus's birth is rarely told with much 

attention to its historical context 

It happened during the reign of the first Roman emperor. A child was born in an obscure farm building in a Middle Eastern province of the empire. 

All kinds of strange events occurred around the time of His birth, including a massacre of children, ordered by the Judean King Herod.

Along with some bewildered shepherds, three foreign 'magi' (wise men) found their way to the child's birthplace. But no one in the imperial capital Rome paid much attention.

This proved to be a mistake, as the birth of this child would ultimately transform the empire — and the world — for ever.

The story of Jesus's birth is rarely told with much attention to its historical context. But this year the circumstances of the time seem uncannily relevant. The Middle East is in just the kind of turmoil that had led the Romans to impose their imperial rule on Judaea.

And the United States is in just the kind of political crisis that led the Roman republic to become an empire under Augustus Caesar. In other surprising ways, too, what we are living through is similar to what the people of the early first century experienced.

Like our ancestors two millennia ago, we inhabit a distressing spiritual vacuum marked by pleasure seeking and unbridled consumerism. 

Christianity, the old religion, has become hollow to us, even as we go through the motions of recollecting the story of Christ's birth.

Let's begin with the war in the Middle East, which I believe will ultimately lead the United States to send troops back into the region, despite the painful memories of the 2003 Iraq invasion and subsequent occupation — which, in truth, are painful only for the families of the relatively small number of U.S. service personnel who were killed (3,519) or wounded (32,000) there. God bless them and their British counterparts this Christmas.

Most of us have strongly held but casually informed political opinions on the Middle East. On one side, supporters of Israel — not all of them Jews — regard it as obvious that Israel has a right to defend itself after the horrendous atrocities perpetrated against Israeli civilians by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) on October 7.

Supporters of the Palestinians, some of whom shamelessly celebrated those atrocities, insist that the Palestinian resistance is justified because of the wretched conditions in Gaza and the lack of Israeli commitment to a viable Palestinian state. Arguments about the issue will ruin many a family Christmas this year.

However, this debate about whose cause is more just — the Israelis' or the Palestinians' — misses the point. 

The reality is that, in the 50 years since the last surprise attack on Israel on the Holy Day of Yom Kippur (October 6, 1973), it has proved impossible for Israel to find a peaceful modus vivendi with the Palestinians.

Israel made peace with Egypt at Camp David in 1978. It made peace with Jordan in 1994. It signed the Oslo Accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1995. 

And, under the Abraham Accords of 2020-21, Israel normalised its relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.

Indeed, it was about to reach a similar rapprochement with Saudi Arabia when the slaughter of the innocents happened on October 7, freezing if not killing the negotiations.

The United States is in just the kind of political crisis that led the Roman republic to become an empire under Augustus Caesar

There are two obvious reasons why peace with the Palestinians has proved elusive. First, the Palestinian Authority established under the Oslo Accords has proved to be an oxymoron — it lacks any kind of authority.

Second, many Palestinians themselves have preferred the path of violence, turning to Hamas and other terrorist groups for leadership, apparently oblivious to Hamas's true character as a criminal racket. 

While ordinary Gazans bear the brunt of Israel's war of retaliation, the Hamas mafiosi live in luxury in Qatar on the money sent to Gaza by naive international donors.

But there is a third explanation for the agony of the Holy Land, and that is geopolitical. The Abraham Accords were one of the diplomatic triumphs of Donald Trump's administration. 

Yet Joe Biden decided to change course, opting to try to revive the obviously dead Iran nuclear deal, the 'Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action' of 2015.

That deal was President Barack Obama's attempt to induce the Islamic Republic of Iran to suspend — not to end — its nuclear weapons program in return for relief from U. S. sanctions.

It did nothing to prevent Iran using the money it received under the deal to finance terrorist organisations throughout the region, including not only Hamas and PIJ, but also Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.

That was why Trump abandoned the nuclear deal and re-imposed sanctions on Iran. It was why in 2020 he killed one of Iran's principal malefactors, Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The present crisis in the Middle East is, therefore, the result of a combination of Iranian aggression and American pusillanimity.

Consider the passivity with which Washington has reacted to a succession of Houthi attacks on U.S. bases in the region and, most recently, merchant shipping in the Red Sea. 

Why send two aircraft-carrier strike groups to the region if you have no intention of using them for fear of 'escalating' the crisis?

However, the haplessness of the Biden administration's foreign policy is not the main reason why Trump is now narrowly the favourite to be the next president of the United States, though the perception that Biden is drifting into new 'forever wars' is playing its part.

The probability of Trump's re-election on November 5 next year is now, in my view, above 50 per cent. The prediction market agrees. So do most recent polls.

Despite his sea of legal troubles — and perhaps partly because of them — the former president is the clear frontrunner to be the Republican nominee, about 50 points ahead of Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. 

And Trump is well placed to defeat Biden in a rerun of the 2020 contest, especially if you look at his polling leads in key swing states.

The crucial issue is not Biden's foreign policy flops. Nor is it his advanced age, though even a majority of Democratic voters admit that, at 81, he is too old to be president. The key issue is 'Bidenomics,' a term devised by the dotard president's handlers.

Trump is well placed to defeat Biden in a rerun of the 2020 contest, 

especially if you look at his polling leads in key swing states

Objectively, by most conventional measures, the U.S. economy is in good shape — certainly in better shape than Britain's or Europe's. Unemployment is low (3.7 per cent). Inflation has come down substantially (to 3.1 per cent, compared with a peak of 9.1 per cent in June last year). The financial markets are rooting for interest-rate cuts next year. 

But voters have still not forgiven the administration for the inflation they suffered last year. They also sense that a slowdown is coming, if not a recession — the inevitable result of the Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes.

As a consequence, Biden's polling on this key issue is terrible: on average, nearly 61 per cent of voters disapprove of his handling of the economy, and 65 per cent his handling of inflation. An even higher proportion (69 per cent) think the country is 'on the wrong track'.

Though he has not sunk as low as Jimmy Carter in 1979, Biden's position is uncomfortably similar to that of Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush at the same stages in their only presidential terms.

I do not entirely blame my fellow Americans for considering re-electing Trump. His first term was much better for the average U.S. household — who saw their real income surge 9 per cent before Covid struck, after 17 years of stagnation — than most elite media coverage would have you believe.

However, in view of all that has emerged about Trump's unconscionably reckless conduct between election night 2020 and the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, I fear that his return to the White House could mark the beginning of the end of the American republic and the first step towards an unconstitutional American empire.

And I worry that Trump will be able to justify overriding the constitution by pointing to both domestic and international emergencies.

At home, there will inevitably be 'mainly peaceful' (i.e. partly violent) protests in Democratic strongholds if Trump is declared the election winner.

Abroad, Trump will inherit a triple global crisis in Ukraine, Israel and potentially also Taiwan. Even if China's President Xi Jinping does not risk blockading the island he covets, it would not surprise me if Hezbollah opened a new front against Israel in the New Year.

Consider how the Roman republic died as the ruthless political operator Octavian — Julius Caesar's adopted son — asserted his power.

He became emperor by steps: first as one of the second triumvirate — an alliance between three rival statesmen, Octavian, Mark Antony and Lepidus, giving them absolute power; then as lifetime commander-in-chief (imperator), tribune and censor; and finally as 'princeps civitatis' (First Citizen) with the title 'Augustus'.

What made the Roman Empire possible — indeed, necessary — was the need to end a state of recurrent civil war at home and of geopolitical crisis abroad, especially in the Middle East, but also in central Europe — Rome's Ukraine was Germania — and even in unruly Britannia, conquered by the Romans after AD 43.

Augustus won power by ousting Lepidus and then defeating Mark Antony and his lover Queen Cleopatra and invading Egypt, which he subsequently annexed. It was Augustus, too, who incorporated Judaea, including Herod's kingdom, into the Empire. It was a Roman census that required Joseph and the pregnant Mary to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

And this brings me to the other major resemblance between our time and the time of Jesus's birth 2,023 years ago.

One reason why Donald Trump's return to power is now a possibility is that we in the West inhabit a moral and ethical wasteland. If we were still a truly Christian civilisation, Trump would stand no chance of becoming president again.

A people who were committed to the teachings of the Old and New Testaments would have no hesitation in identifying him as a serial violator of at least half the Ten Commandments and, therefore, morally unqualified to occupy the highest office in the republic.

Yet the U.S. today is only nominally a Christian country, in the sense that a majority of Americans still identify as Christians of one denomination or another.

According to survey data, both faith and observance have significantly declined in the 20 years since I have lived and worked there. In the 1990s, 90 per cent of Americans identified as Christians. It's now down to two-thirds. Weekly church attendance has also slumped.

In this respect, the U.S. is beginning to resemble England, where less than half the population (46.2 per cent) now say they are Christians. More than a third (37.2 per cent) say they have no religion, according to the 2021 census.

Like the people of the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago, we are almost entirely consumed by the pleasures and preoccupations of this world. One of many symptoms of our spiritual bankruptcy is the epidemic of mental ill-health sweeping the English-speaking world.

Dark days may lie ahead. It is some comfort, surely, that a saviour could be born at such a time

Another symptom is the slump in fertility rates as more and more couples opt to have just one child or no children at all.

Whatever people may say when they rationalise this decision to limit their reproduction below the replacement rate (to sustain the species), in truth the decision to restrict or forgo parenthood is an implicit expression of despair.

For there is no greater joy to be had in this world than that of bringing a baby into it. It is, I would argue, the ultimate affirmation of faith. Yes, we know that every child is doomed, as are we, to experience suffering and, inevitably, death.

And yet we know that the delights of life are worth all its trials and its inevitable end. A Christian knows that we humans are more than mere naked apes. We know that God made us 'in His image'.

It is, thus, no accident that at the heart of the Christian faith is the Nativity. The greatest story ever told begins with the birth of a baby boy, immaculately and divinely conceived, to a young Jewish woman. 

And the story ends, not with His cruel crucifixion in Jerusalem, but with the conquest of the Roman Empire itself by the religion founded by Him — Christos, the Anointed One of the Lord God.

This Christmas, let us remind ourselves that His 2,000-year reign over the faithful began not only amid a Middle Eastern crisis, but also in the period of transition from republic to empire.

Dark days may lie ahead. It is some comfort, surely, that a saviour could be born at such a time.

View original: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12895595/world-today-uncannily-one-Jesus-born.html#comments

ENDS

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Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, said to be Jesus's birthplace  

Mail writer Richard Pendlebury pictured inside 

the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, said to be Jesus's birthplace 

Source: How Bethlehem became the backdrop to violence and fear as war comes to the West Bank, Richard Pendlebury report

ENDS