Republican presidential hopeful defends Israel and says Palestinians are Arabs who "had a chance to go many places". - The former House of Representatives speaker, who is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for the 2012 presidential race, made the remarks in an interview with the US Jewish Channel broadcaster released on Friday. Asked whether he considers himself a Zionist, he answered: "I believe that the Jewish people have the right to a state ... Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire" until the early 20th century,

"I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs, and who were historically part of the Arab community. "And they had a chance to go many places, and for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it's tragic."

Most historians mark the start of Palestinian Arab nationalist sentiment in 1834, when Arab residents of the Palestinian region revolted against Ottoman rule. Israel, founded amid the 1948 Arab-Israel war, took shape along the lines of a 1947 UN plan for ethnic partition of the
then-British ruled territory of Palestine which Arabs rejected. More than 700,000 Palestinians were forced from their lands by Zionist armed groups in 1948, in an episode Palestinians refer to as the Nakba or "catastrophe".

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Jews For Justice in the Middle East: THE ORIGIN OF THE PALESTINE-ISRAEL CONFLICT (Part I)
Jews For Justice in the Middle East: THE ORIGIN OF THE PALESTINE-ISRAEL CONFLICT (Part II)

A senior Iranian lawmaker says Iran owns the “ultra-advanced technology” which enables it to decode the captured US drone's data and documents.

Member of the Majlis (parliament) National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Seyyed Hossein Naqavi Hosseini said on Saturday that the Americans are seriously concerned about the documents the drone was carrying, Fars News Agency reported.

“However, they should know that the Islamic Republic of Iran will 'decode' the American drone's documents and data with the 'ultra-advanced technology' that it has,” he added. The lawmaker said decoding the US drone's data will provide Iran's armed forces with very important information.

On Sunday December 4, the Iranian Army's electronic warfare unit downed, with minimum damage, the US RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft which was flying over the Iranian city of Kashmar, some 140 miles (225km) from the Afghan border. The RQU-170 crossed into Iran's airspace over the border with neighboring Afghanistan earlier this week. Naqavi further said the unmanned aerial vehicles operate via a remote navigation system and “therefore, if a country has the technology to remotely control the drones, it can put spy drones on any course it wants.”

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The biggest opposition rally in recent Russian history has taken place in the capital. The protest against the results of Russia's December 4 parliamentary election has drawn an estimated turnout of between 25,000 and 40,000. - The rally has been held on Bolotnaya Square, in Central Moscow, on December 10 between 2 pm and 6 pm. The square is almost empty, except for media crews and a few groups of youngsters, say police. Earlier the Interior Ministry reported around 25,000 people gathered at the scene. However opposition leaders claim up to 40,000 on the square. Before the rally police have blocked access to the squares adjacent to the Kremlin and have restricted entry to Red Square. Security in the capital has been stepped up with police trucks and Interior Ministry troops surrounding the scene. Moscow police say security will be tightened in the city until nightfall to prevent possible incidents.

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Despite US efforts to impose an information blackout on its war casualties, the number of US troops killed and wounded in Iraq has surpassed 50,000, a senior Iranian commander says. - “Based on the existing figures and data, the American forces killed and injured in Iraq are estimated to be 50,000. However, it seems that the real statistics are much higher than this,” said Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri, the deputy head of Iran's Armed Forces Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Friday. “Of course the figure 50,000 killed and wounded Americans, is notwithstanding the mercenaries of other nationalities who are in the US Army fighting against the people of Iraq,” the Iranian commander added. Jazayeri made reference to the enormous cost of maintaining US military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and argued that the American taxpayers are rarely aware of the undeniable fact that the cost of the Iraq war is at least USD 1,000 billion.