Israeli unmanned aerial vehicles and artillery units have launched a series of strikes against several areas in southern Lebanon, after Hezbollah fighters targeted an Israeli tank with a guided missile on the border between the Arab country and the 1948 Israeli-occupied territories. | According to Lebanon’s Arabic-language al-Mayadeen television news network, Israeli drones launched missiles at the outskirts of Kfarchouba village, the heights of Halta village as well as the Bistara Farm near the occupied Shebaa Farm on Wednesday. This came after Hezbollah targeted the Branit barracks and another Israeli post facing Naqoura town in southern Lebanon. The Lebanese resistance fighters also successfully targeted an Israeli battle tank in the area of Avivim, killing and wounding a number of soldiers onboard the armored fighting vehicle.

CJ Hopkins | Welcome back to the War on Terror. I hope you had a nice 7-year break. | Yes, that’s right, once again, Democracy is under attack by the Axis of Pure Unadulterated Evil! It’s time to switch off your critical faculties, wrap yourself in the American flag, or the Israeli flag, or the Ukrainian flag, or, better yet, all three flags, and stand with the Forces of Freedom and Goodness as they exercise their God-given right to defend the world from the Children of Darkness, and the Putin-Nazis, and Hate, and Rape, and Baby Murderers, and Baby Rapers, and Baby-Raper sympathizers!

Russia and China have prevented the passage of a US-drafted UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution that had said Israel, which has killed more than 6,500 people as part of its underway war on Gaza, has been acting in "self-defense." | The draft was put to vote on Wednesday. The United Arab Emirates also voted no, while 10 members voted in favor and Brazil and Mozambique abstained. ● Israel launched the devastating war on October 7 after the Gaza Strip-based Palestinian resistance groups staged Operation al-Aqsa Storm, a surprise attack on the occupied territories, in response to the Israeli regime’s intensified crimes against the Palestinian people. The war has killed 6,546 Palestinians, including 2,704 children, according to the Palestinian health ministry. ● The Council then voted on a Russian-drafted resolution that had called for a humanitarian ceasefire and urged Tel Aviv to immediately cancel its orders on Palestinian civilians to head into southern Gaza. Only Russia, China, the UAE, and Gabon voted in favor of the draft, while nine members abstained and the United States and Britain voted no. A resolution needs at least nine votes and no vetoes by the US, France, Britain, Russia or China to be adopted. ● Also on Wednesday, Russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the death of thousands of children in the Gaza Strip had not been enough to get the West behind a resolution demanding a ceasefire in the besieged coastal territory.

■ West support for Israeli atrocities lays bare their true nature of racism, colonialism: Raeisi (PressTV)
■ Russia regrets that UNSC fell short of expectations — UN envoy (TASS)

Israel's threatened ground offensive in Gaza is still on hold, almost three weeks after the devastating Hamas raid into southern Israel. Independent journalist Sam Husseini and veteran war correspondent Elijah Magnier argued that fear of another defeat was holding Israel back. | Israel fears a second military defeat by Hamas if it goes ahead with an offensive to destroy the Palestinian group and free hundreds of hostages, two journalists say. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called up some 350,000 military reservists after a surprise Hamas attack from the Gaza Strip left almost 300 Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) troops and over 1,000 civilians dead, with more than 200 taken captive. ● Earlier this week, US media reported that US President Joe Biden's government was pressuring Israel to delay its ground invasion in the hope of negotiating the release of dual US-Israeli nationals taken hostage there by the Hamas movement. But journalist Sam Husseini told Sputnik that it was not Washington holding the IDF back, but Israel's fear of taking heavy casualties in the assault. He said Netanyahu's vow to destroy Hamas in return for the October 7 attacks was merely a "pretext" for ethnic cleansing and a land-grab. 💬 "Israel is doing what it's long wanted to do, which is to go after the civilian Palestinian population, to decimate Palestinian society as much as possible in order to drive out more and more Palestinians from their lands so they can take it, so they can take the resources, the gas reserves off the coast of Gaza, for example, as well as just another ethnic cleansing as they did in 1948, 1967," Husseini said.

Latypova and Watt Iceland presentations, excerpted by Dave Ratcliffe of Ratical.org, uploaded to Odyssey, Substack and Rumble. Lots of LINKS (SASHA LATYPOVA + KATHERINE WATT)