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Herzog: Terrorists Slain in Beirut Were Plotting Oct. 7-Style Attack
Israeli President Isaac Herzog looks on during a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, not pictured, in Washington, DC, on Oct. 25, 2022. Stefani Reynolds/Pool via REUTERS
JNS.org – Hezbollah leaders killed in an airstrike on Friday were planning the same type of invasion Hamas carried out on Oct. 7 farther south, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said in an interview with Britain’s Sky News on Sunday.
“We do not want to get into a war with Lebanon, but Lebanon has been hijacked by a terror organization which is also a political party in Lebanon called Hezbollah,” the president told senior news presenter Sir Trevor Phillips via satellite feed from Jerusalem.
“It’s been armed to its teeth by the Iranian empire of evil, and all of these leaders who were eradicated on Friday by the Israeli attack, all of these leaders were meeting together in order to launch the same horrific, horrendous attack that we had on October 7 by Hamas, by burning Israelis, butchering them, raping their women, abducting and taking hostage old people and young, and little babies,” Herzog continued.
“So this is exactly the same plan that they’ve been planning for years under the empire of evil of Iran. So we are fighting, actually the war for the entire free world,” the president said.
On Friday, Israel bombed a building in Beirut, killing more than a dozen Hezbollah officers including Ibrahim Aqil, 61, who was the second top commander of Hezbollah killed since Oct. 7. This was preceded earlier in the week by a series of communication device explosions that killed dozens and wounded thousands of Hezbollah terrorists across Lebanon.
IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a video statement on Friday that Aqil and the Radwan Force commanders at the meeting were discussing plans to carry out an Oct. 7-style invasion of Israel, which they called “Conquer the Galilee.”
“These terrorists planned to do in northern Israel what Hamas did in southern Israel on Oct. 7,” Hagari said.
A source close to Hezbollah confirmed to Al–Monitor that the meeting in the Dahiya neighborhood of Beirut was convened to study “plans for a ground operation in the heart of the occupied territories [i.e., Israel]” in response to the communication device attacks.
During the Sky News interview, Herzog stressed that “we are working to change this equation, meaning we have to bring our hostages back from Gaza, and we have to make sure that this attack does not recur from Gaza, and we have to make sure that this attack does not recur again from Lebanon. That’s all there is. It’s very simple, and life can go on in a peaceful manner on an internationally recognized boundary between Israel and Lebanon.”
Herzog also had choice words from the government in London, which hasn’t always seen eye-to-eye with Jerusalem during the campaign against Hamas and other Iranian-supported terrorist groups.
“I believe our friends should understand that we are fighting their war too. In the long term, you have to understand that there is an empire of evil which really thinks and believes as part of an ideology in the jihadist ideology, in conquering the Middle East and moving on into Europe and the rest of the world,” he said.
“They call you Satans. They want to plant bombs in your cities all over the world. Hezbollah has terror cells situated in countries all over the world so and you ask yourself, why? How come Iran armed a tribe in Yemen called the Houthis on the shore of the Red Sea, and they’re affecting the cost of living of each and every British family or European family or American family [by attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea]?
“This cannot go on. We expect that all our allies will be side-by-side with us in combating this terrible situation and fighting like we are to bring back our hostages home. There are 101 Israeli hostages, already 352 days they are in the dungeons of Gaza,” Herzog said.
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Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd
Magdeburg Christmas market, December 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Mang
i24 News – A suspected terrorist plowed a vehicle into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, west of the capital Berlin, killing at least five and injuring dozens more.
Local police confirmed that the suspect was a Saudi national born in 1974 and acting alone.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed his concern about the incident, saying that “reports from Magdeburg suggest something bad. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
Police declined to give casualty numbers, confirming only a large-scale operation at the market, where people had gathered to celebrate in the days leading up to the Christmas holidays.
The post Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister
A person waves a flag adopted by the new Syrian rulers, as people gather during a celebration called by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) near the Umayyad Mosque, after the ousting of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, Photo: December 20, 2024. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo
Syria’s new rulers have appointed Murhaf Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency which toppled Bashar al-Assad, as defense minister in the interim government, an official source said on Saturday.
Abu Qasra, who is also known by the nom de guerre Abu Hassan 600, is a senior figure in the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group which led the campaign that ousted Assad this month. He led numerous military operations during Syria’s revolution, the source said.
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa discussed “the form of the military institution in the new Syria” during a meeting with armed factions on Saturday, state news agency SANA reported.
Abu Qasra during the meeting sat next to Sharaa, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, photos published by SANA showed.
Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir said this week that the defense ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Assad’s army.
Bashir, who formerly led an HTS-affiliated administration in the northwestern province of Idlib, has said he will lead a three-month transitional government. The new administration has not declared plans for what will happen after that.
Earlier on Saturday, the ruling General Command named Asaad Hassan al-Shibani as foreign minister, SANA said. A source in the new administration told Reuters that this step “comes in response to the aspirations of the Syrian people to establish international relations that bring peace and stability.”
Shibani, a 37-year-old graduate of Damascus University, previously led the political department of the rebels’ Idlib government, the General Command said.
Sharaa’s group was part of al Qaeda until he broke ties in 2016. It had been confined to Idlib for years until going on the offensive in late November, sweeping through the cities of western Syria and into Damascus as the army melted away.
Sharaa has met with a number of international envoys this week. He has said his primary focus is on reconstruction and achieving economic development and that he is not interested in engaging in any new conflicts.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.
Washington designated Sharaa a terrorist in 2013, saying al Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad’s rule and establishing Islamic sharia law in Syria. US officials said on Friday that Washington would remove a $10 million bounty on his head.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times and left cities bombed to rubble and the economy hollowed out by global sanctions.
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Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.