Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett admitted to ordering retaliatory strikes on Iran in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Thursday.

Bennett, who served as Israel’s Prime Minister from June 13, 2021, to June 30, 2022, published sensitive information despite allegedly not receiving approval from the Israel Defense Forces censor unit first, The Jerusalem Post reported. Public admissions by Israel about operations against Iran are rare, according to the Israeli news outlet.

“After Iran launched two failed UAV attacks on Israel in February 2022, Israel destroyed a UAV base on Iranian soil. In March 2022, Iran’s terror unit attempted to kill Israeli tourists in Turkey and failed. Shortly thereafter, the commander of that very unit was assassinated in the center of Tehran,” Bennett wrote in the Wall Street Journal about his time in office countering malign Iranian influence.

https://dailycaller.com/2023/12/29/naftali-bennett-publish-classified-information-iran-attack-wall-street-journal/

They are desperate to get a war going with Iran

China & Iraq Begin Construction Of New City Near Baghdad

On Friday Iraq broke ground on 30,000 housing units near Baghdad, as part of a $2 billion project in partnership with Chinese firms to build five new cities across Iraq, Bloomberg has reported.

The government of Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani is seeking to build 250,000 to 300,000 housing units for poor and middle-class families. The new city on the outskirts of Baghdad will include universities, commercial centers, schools and health centers and should be completed in four to five years.

Contracts to build the housing units were awarded to East China Engineering Science and Technology Co., Ltd. and China National Chemical Engineering Co., Ltd along with their Iraqi partner Shams al-Binaa.

Contracts to build four more cities are expected to be awarded soon and another 10 will be announced next year, including in Karbala, Anbar, Nineveh and Babel governorates.

Chinese firms have increased their presence in Iraq in recent years, in part due to a deal between Baghdad and Beijing.

In 2019, Iraq signed a 20-year contract, agreeing to supply Chinese firms with 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil, with the revenue earmarked for funding various development projects in Iraq undertaken by Chinese firms.

Following the deal, Chinese firms built 1,000 schools, developed the Nasiriya city airport, erected power plants, and completed several other infrastructure projects.

China has accelerated its investment in Iraq and other West Asian nations as part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) announced in 2013.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/china-iraq-begin-construction-new-city-near-baghdad

Google Agrees to Settle $5 Billion Class Action Lawsuit Over Tracking Users in ‘Incognito’ Mode

Google has agreed to settle a $5 billion class-action privacy lawsuit that alleges the tech giant has been tracking people using the “incognito” mode in its Chrome browser.

The lawsuit was filed in 2020 and claimed that Google had misled the public into believing their activity would not be tracked while using the private browser.

WTOP reports that the plaintiffs claimed Google continued to “catalog details of users’ site visits and activities despite their use of supposedly ‘private’ browsing.”

This act gave Google an “unaccountable trove of information” from people who believed they were not being monitored.

“Google has made itself an unaccountable trove of information so detailed and expansive that George Orwell could never have dreamed it,” the lawsuit said.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/12/google-agrees-settle-5-billion-privacy-lawsuit-tracking/

Biden Admin Rolls Out Slew Of Regs Targeting Americans’ Appliances On Last Friday Of The Year

Biden Admin Rolls Out Slew Of Regs Targeting Americans’ Appliances On Last Friday Of The Year

https://dailycaller.com/2023/12/29/biden-admin-regulations-appliances-department-of-energy/

Over 7,000 Women in Germany Have Been Raped or Sexually Assaulted by Asylum Seeking Migrants Since 2015: Report

Since opening the gates to unfettered mass migration in 2015, at least 7,000 women have been raped or sexually assaulted in Germany by alleged asylum-seeking illegal migrants, an analysis of government figures has found.

A report from the Swiss-German paper of record, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, claimed that statistics from the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) show that more than one thousand women — mostly Germans — have been sexually assaulted by migrants seeking refuge every year since 2017.

Extrapolating from this figure, the paper calculated that therefore at least 7,000 women have been raped or sexually assaulted by asylum seekers since former German Chancellor Angela Merkel ushered in the European Migrant Crisis in 2015 by unilaterally o

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/12/30/over-7000-women-in-germany-have-been-raped-or-sexually-assaulted-by-asylum-seeking-migrants/

Undocumented Migrants Will Qualify for Free Health Care in California on Jan. 1, 2024

For over a decade Democrats have called for free health care for illegal aliens in the United States.

Democrats were open to this idea back in 2009.

In 2018 California Democrat Gavin Newsome campaigned on the with to pay for universal healthcare for all illegal aliens.

In 2019 California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law to give taxpayer funded healthcare to illegal aliens.

In 2022 Newsome proposed a budget that would pay for all illegals to have free health care.

And now, in just two days, illegal aliens will qualify for free health care in the state of California.

That ought to keep the record flow of illegals to the United States to continue unabated.

There’s nothing like giving free health benefits to people who walk across the border into the US illegally.

The New York Post reported:

Cash-strapped California will ring in the new year by offering free health care to all undocumented immigrants who qualify for the state’s government-run health insurance program.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/12/undocumented-migrants-will-qualify-free-health-care-california/

Ex-Albanian Prime Minister Placed Under House Arrest over Corruption Probe

An Albanian court on Saturday ordered house arrest for former Prime Minister Sali Berisha, who leads the opposition Democratic Party and is being investigated for possible corruption.

Judge Irena Gjoka of the First Instance Special Court on Corruption and Organized Crime, which covers cases involving senior officials and politicians, accepted prosecutors´ request to put Berisha, 79, under house arrest after he violated the previous restrictive measures of reporting every two weeks. He was also barred from traveling abroad.

His lawyer, Genc Gjokutaj, said the court also barred Berisha from communicating with people other than his family who lives with him, and considered the order a violation of law. Depriving Berisha of communication may become a wider political issue because he’s the leader of the main opposition party.

Gjokutaj said he would appeal the court order.

It is not clear how police officers would monitor Berisha at his apartment in downtown Tirana.

Last week, parliament voted to strip Berisha of his legal immunity. Lawmakers loyal to Berisha tried to disrupt the session and boycotted the vote.

Berisha has criticized his investigation and arrest as political repression ordered by Prime Minister Edi Rama, and has warned of “powerful protests.”

In October, prosecutors publicly put Berisha under investigation for allegedly abusing his post to help his son-in-law, Jamarber Malltezi, privatize public land to build 17 apartment buildings. Prosecutors have yet to file formal charges in court and Berisha is still technically under investigation.

“Rama’s New Year postcard is the arrest and isolation of the opposition leader!” Berisha’s son Shkelzen posted on Facebook.

Prosecutors have said that if convicted, Berisha faces a prison sentence of up to 12 years.

Berisha served as Albania’s prime minister from 2005-2013, and as president from 1992-1997. He was reelected as a lawmaker for the Democratic Party in the 2021 parliamentary elections.

The United States government in May 2021 and the United Kingdom in July 2022 barred Berisha and close family members from entering their countries because of alleged involvement in corruption.

Just days before the investigation into Berisha’s role in the land deal was revealed in October, opposition lawmakers have regularly disrupted sessions of parliament to protest the ruling Socialists’ refusal to create commissions to investigate alleged cases of corruption involving Rama and other top government officials.

The Socialists say the plans are not in line with constitutional requirements.

The disruptions are an obstacle to much-needed reforms at a time when the European Union has agreed to start the process of harmonizing Albanian laws with those of the EU as part of the Balkan country’s path toward full membership in the bloc.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/12/30/ex-albanian-prime-minister-placed-under-house-arrest-over-corruption-probe/

ICE report unmasks staggering toll of Biden border crisis: illegal alien cases hit 6 million

Total of non-detained illegal aliens has nearly doubled under Biden while straining resources, annual report shows

The Homeland Security Department agency entrusted with removing illegal immigrants is providing a staggering portrait of America’s border crisis, revealing the backlog of aliens inside the United States awaiting decisions has nearly doubled under President Joe Biden to more than 6 million while arrests of suspected terrorists and violent offenders have also exploded.

The year-end report from U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement released Friday showed nearly every measure of illegal immigration rose substantially in 2023, candidly admitting the southern border's being overrun by millions of illegal crossers has taken a major toll on the agency.

“While ICE carefully prioritized its resources to meet these evolving mission needs and agency personnel continued to perform at a high standard, these increased demands have strained a workforce that has remained relatively static for the past decade,” the report declared.

The report offered warning signs for both liberals who support loosened immigration enforcement and conservatives who are worried the nation’s security is being jeopardized by Biden’s policies, which have lured millions into the country and overwhelmed cities like Chicago thousands of miles from the southern border.

Liberal activists are certain to be alarmed by the number of illegal aliens kept in detention: ICE reported the number exploded 40.1% from 26,299 last year to 36,845 at the end of the 2023 fiscal year that finished Sept. 30.

Meanwhile, the number of illegal aliens permitted into the country without being detained, usually with court dates far in the future, leapt 30.3 percent in 2023 to more than 6.2 million, nearly double the 3.26 million total in the last year of Donald Trump’s presidency. The report said the vast majority of that total came from the Southwest border where illegal crossings have surged to as many as 12,000 or more a day.

You can read the full report here.

File

iceAnnualReportFY2023.pdf

Administrative arrests rose sharply in 2023 to 170,590, with more than 43% of those apprehended having some sort of criminal conviction or pending charges. The figures confirm claims by Trump during his 2024 campaign that large numbers of illegal immigrants come with criminal baggage.

“[T]here were 290,178 charges and convictions for an average of four per individual,” the report noted. “These included many serious charges or convictions for offenses, such as 1,713 charges or convictions for homicide; 1,655 for kidnapping; 4,390 sexual assaults; 33,209 assaults; 3,097 robberies; 6,964 burglaries; and 7,520 weapons offenses.”

https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2023-12/iceAnnualReportFY2023.pdf

Over 1,000 Children in Gaza Have Had One or Both Legs Amputated Since Oct 7

International aid workers describe a growing humanitarian nightmare in the Strip

International aid workers visiting the Gaza Strip are relaying the horrific situation Israel is inflicting on the Palestinians. UNICEF reports over 1,000 children have lost legs. Israel is forcing the 2.3 million residents of Gaza into increasingly small areas that lack the ability to accommodate basic needs for survival.

UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said, “Around 1,000 children in Gaza have lost one or both their legs.” He told journalists in Geneva that “every single child is enduring these ten weeks of hell and not one of them can escape.”

Due to the conditions in Gaza, as well as the lack of aid, doctors are often forced to conduct surgeries in unsanitary facilities and without painkillers. “Not only were they amputated without anesthesia, but many of them were amputated in a very quick fashion,” he said.

Dr. Ghassan Abu Sitta, a London-based surgeon who traveled to Gaza to treat patients, told Middle East Eye that having to perform these operations without anesthetic was “one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do in my career.” At a November press conference, he said, “One night, at Al-Ahli Hospital, I performed amputations on six children.”

The UNICEF official said that even if children recover from the amputation, they do not escape the hell of the threat of death. “As a parent of a critically sick child told me, ‘Our situation is pure misery…I don’t know if we will make it through this.’”

Spokesperson Dr. Margaret Harris added that WHO staff in Gaza spoke of not being able to walk in the emergency wards “for fear of stepping on people” lying on the floor “in severe pain” and asking for food and water. She called the situation “unconscionable” and said that it is “beyond belief that the world is allowing this to continue.”

The Israeli military has destroyed most hospitals in Gaza. The medical facilities continuing to operate face frequent attacks and a lack of supplies. A Washington Post investigation recently found that the Israeli Air Force is using 2,000-pound bombs near hospitals.

Elder went on to say that the Israeli military operations make civilians face the constant threat of death. He explained, “Where do children and their families go? They are not safe in hospitals. They are not safe in shelters. And they are certainly not safe in the so-called ‘safe’ zones.” The safe zones are “tiny patches of barren land, or street corners, or half-built buildings, with no water, no facilities, no shelter from the cold and the rain and no sanitation.”

https://news.antiwar.com/2023/12/29/over-1000-children-in-gaza-have-had-one-or-both-legs-amputated-since-oct-7/

8 of 10 richest people in world are Jewish

Too Big To Cancel': Elon Musk Is Once Again World's Richest Person

The 500 billionaires on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index added $1.5 trillion in net worth in 2023, fully recovering $1.4 trillion lost last year.

https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/elon-musk-once-again-worlds-richest-person

Israel Says It's Anti-Semitic To Invoke The Genocide Convention Over Gaza

South Africa has invoked the Genocide Convention, formally launching a case at the UN’s international court of justice accusing Israel of genocide for its mass atrocities in the Gaza Strip. Israel immediately responded by (deep sigh) accusing South Africa of “blood libel”.

Blood libel, for those who don’t know, refers to the way medieval Europeans would falsely accuse Jews of murdering Christians in blood sacrifices in order to justify persecuting them. Which is to say, Israel has responded to South Africa’s accusations by accusing South Africa of anti-semitism.

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-says-its-anti-semitic-to-invoke?utm_source=post-email-title

Israel Demands U.S. Launch Regime Change War Against Iran

Israel is demanding America fight Israel's war with Iran and "bring down" their "regime."

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett wrote a column in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday titled, "The U.S. and Israel Need to Take Iran On Directly."

Bennett writes in the WSJ:

The Iranian regime is at the center of most of the Middle East's problems and much of global terror. Yet inexplicably, almost nobody is touching it. For the past 45 years, the regime has been the source of endless war, terror and suffering throughout the world. I've come to realize that enough is enough. The evil empire of Iran must be brought down.

[…] Iran constantly attacks Israel via its proxies in such places as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Gaza and Yemen. Its brutal Quds unit exported terror around the globe. Iran's terrorist proxies have waged war on every moderate element in the Middle East. They've attacked the Saudi oil company Aramco, the United Arab Emirates, the Kurds and Israel on many occasions. The most amazing part: Iran has largely gotten away with it.

[…] Israel's national-security resources must be focused on weakening our primary enemy—Iran.

There are many ways to weaken Iran: empower domestic opposition, ensure internet continuity during riots against the regime, strengthen its enemies, increase sanctions and economic pressures. But Israel can’t and shouldn’t do this alone. The U.S. should be leading the effort. This doesn't require a full-scale war, just as the demise of the Soviet Union didn't result from total war. Rather, the Soviet Union collapsed from internal rot coupled with external pressure applied by the U.S.

[…] The U.S. and Israel must set the clear goal of bringing down Iran's evil regime. Not only is this possible. It is vital for the safety and security of the Middle East—and the entire civilized world.

Key line: "The U.S. should be leading the effort."

https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=64207

STRIKES HIT ALEPPO CITY IN THIRD ATTACK ON SYRIA IN LESS THAN 24 HOURS

On December 30 afternoon, a series of Israeli strikes hit the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency.

Citing a Syrian military official, the state-run news agency reported that Israeli fighter jets launched missiles from over the Mediterranean Sea, to the west of Latakia, hitting several positions in the southern outskirts of Aleppo. The unnamed official said that the attack resulted in “material losses.”

This was the third attack to target Syrian territory in less than a day. In the early morning, a series of strikes hit the eastern town of al-Bukamal near the border with Iraq.

Lebanese Hezbollah, a close ally of the Syrian government, later mourned four fighters, who were reportedly killed in the attack. The group said the fighters were killed “on the road to Jerusalem.” The U.S. didn’t claim responsibility, which means that the attack was most likely carried out by Israel.

Later in the morning, the Israeli military announced strikes on Syria in response to a rocket attack that targeted the occupied Golan Heights a day earlier. Retaliatory strikes targeted the outskirts of the southern town of Hader and a military post at the nearby hilltop of Qurs al-Nafl. There were no reports of casualties however.

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes against Syria over the past decade, often hitting targets of Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed forces, but it rarely acknowledges or discusses the operations.

The number of Israeli attacks on the war-torn country has significantly increased since the outbreak of the war in the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

https://southfront.press/strikes-hit-aleppo-city-in-third-attack-on-syria-in-less-than-24-hours-video/

FBI confirms there was no insurrection on Jan. 6

This report is a devastating blow to President Joe Biden and Democrats, who have attempted to make the existence of an "insurrection" on Jan. 6 a key issue in the 2022 midterm elections. Reuters does note that some "cells of protesters," including members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, did coordinate to "break into the Capitol," but the FBI found "no evidence that the groups had serious plans about what to do if they made it inside."

The Cambridge Dictionary defines “insurrection” as: “an organized attempt by a group of people to defeat their government and take control of their country, usually by violence”

By that definition, there was no “insurrection” at the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, according to the FBI. Reuters reports:

The FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result, according to four current and former law enforcement officials.

…

"Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases," said a former senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. "Then you have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized. But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages."

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/fbi-confirms-there-was-no-insurrection-on-january-6

Gaza’s government media: 29,000 dead or missing people as a result of Israeli aggression

The director of Gaza’s government media office confirmed that there are now more than 29,000 dead or missing people as a result of Israeli aggression.

“We believe that more than 7,000 people are still trapped under rubble,” he said in remarks Friday, noting that “800,000 residents of Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip do not have access to hospitals.”

For its part, the Ministry of Health in Gaza announced an increase in the37 number of martyrs and injuries in Gaza since the start of the aggression on the Strip.

The ministry said in a statement on Friday that 21,507 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes since October 7, while 55,915 people have been injured.

According to the ministry, in the past 24 hours, 187 people were killed and 312 injured in the Gaza Strip.

https://en.ypagency.net/314766

The Long History of Zionist Proposals to Ethnically Cleanse the Gaza Strip

Ethnic cleansing or "transfer" is an intrinsic part of Zionism's early history, and has remained an essential feature of Israeli political life. More recently, "transfer" has been mainstreamed by billing it as encouraging "voluntary emigration."

Senior Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, are again publicly advocating the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip. Their proposals are being presented as voluntary emigration schemes, in which Israel is merely playing the role of Good Samaritan, selflessly mediating with foreign governments to find new homes for destitute and desperate Palestinians. But it is ethnic cleansing all the same.

Alarm bells should have started ringing in early November when U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other Western politicians began insisting there could be “no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza.” Rather than rejecting any mass removal of Palestinians, Blinken and colleagues objected only to optically challenging expulsions at gunpoint. The option of “voluntary” displacement by leaving residents of the Gaza Strip with no choice but departure was pointedly left open.

Ethnic cleansing, or “transfer” as it is known in Israeli parlance, has a long pedigree that goes back to the late-nineteenth-century beginnings of the Zionist movement. While the early Zionists adopted the slogan, “A Land Without a People for a People Without a Land,” the evidence demonstrates that, from the very outset, their leaders knew better. More to the point, they clearly understood that the Palestinians formed the main obstacle to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. This is for the simple reason that, to them, a “Jewish state” denotes one in which its Jewish population acquires and maintains unchallenged demographic, territorial, and political supremacy.

Enter “transfer.” As early as 1895, Theodor Herzl, the founder of the contemporary Zionist movement, identified the necessity of removing the inhabitants of Palestine in the following terms: “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country … expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.” David Ben-Gurion (née Grün), Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and later Israel’s first prime minister, was more blunt. In a 1937 letter to his son, he wrote: “We must expel the Arabs and take their place.”

Writing in his diary in 1940, Yosef Weitz, a senior Jewish National Fund official who chaired the influential Transfer Committee before and during the Nakba (“Catastrophe”), and became known as the Architect of Transfer, put it thus: “The only solution is a Land of Israel devoid of Arabs. There is no room here for compromise. They must all be moved. Not one village, not one tribe, can remain. Only through this transfer of the Arabs living in the Land of Israel will redemption come.” His diaries are littered with similar sentiments.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/long-history-zionist-proposals-ethnically-cleanse-gaza-strip/5844637

Max Blumenthal: (TheGrayZone) - What the IDF Did on Christmas

https://youtu.be/zYlAYU4r66c