A Palestinian family in Gaza says they witnessed the summary execution of 15 men when Israeli soldiers raided their apartment last month. pic.twitter.com/JAhbcXNYO1

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) January 18, 2024

With each passing day, there is growing evidence that Israeli troops are functioning as mobile mass execution parties in Gaza. On Thursday, Al Jazeera published video interviews of residents of an apartment building in Gaza City, where residents said Israeli troops systematically tortured and executed 15 men. Heba Selem, a witness, stated: 💬 “They stripped them of their clothes except for their boxers and forced them to lay on their stomachs on the floor. They started to execute the men on the floor. They didn’t leave anyone. I swear to God, they turned the entire place into a bloodbath. ● “It’s a day you can’t forget, I can’t forget it.” Her husband was killed during the execution. “After they tortured my husband in front of us and they broke his jaw, and beat up his face, they beat him until his arms were bleeding. They stripped all the men, tortured them, and humiliated them, then executed them. That all happened while we watched.”

■ APPLICATION INSTITUTING PROCEEDINGS (.pdf)(84 pages) Press Release (.pdf)
■ The Expression of Hatred for Gentiles (Richard Edmondson/Nahida Izzat) (10/04/14)

Admiral Rob Bauer urged civilians to prepare for cataclysmic conflicts | A top defence chief has revealed that NATO forces are bracing for an all-out war with Russia in the next two decades. Admiral Rob Bauer, the chairman of NATO's Military Committee urged both civilians and governments to prepare for cataclysmic conflicts and the chilling prospect of being conscripted. 💬 'We have to realise it's not a given that we are in peace. And that's why we [NATO forces] have the plans, that's why we are preparing for a conflict with Russia,' Bauer told reporters after a meeting of NATO defence chiefs in Brussels. ● 'But the discussion is much wider. It is also the industrial base and also the people that have to understand they play a role.' In a stark warning, he said civilians must be ready for a conflict in the next 20 years that would require wholesale change in their lives.

■ NATO has five years to prepare for war with Russia (Estonia) (RT.com)
■ Putin: There Will No Longer BE a “Ukraine” – NATO Direct Intervention Will Not Change Outcome (Medeea Greere)
■ NATO plots escalation of Ukraine war against Russia into all out war across Europe (Johannes Stern, Alex Lantier)

Netanyahu has vehemently denied such claims, blaming Iran for the flow of arms and funds to the Palestinian group | EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has openly accused the Israeli government of funding Hamas, an allegation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has denied. Borrell did not elaborate on the claim, which has been repeatedly made by opponents of Netanyahu and the Israeli media. Speaking at the University of Valladolid in Spain, Josep Borrell said Hamas “was financed by the Israeli government in an attempt to weaken the Palestinian Authority led by Fatah,” according to El Pais newspaper. Netanyahu has blamed the rise of Hamas on Iran, for supporting the Palestinian militant group “with money, training and weapons and technological know-how” and intelligence.

■ How Israel helped create Hamas (The Washington Post)
■ ‘Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas (The New York Times)

■ EU set to sanction 6 tied to Hamas funding; Borrell: Israel boosted the group (Times of Israel) | The European Union has adopted a dedicated sanctions regime targeting Palestinian "terror group Hamas," a high-ranking EU official said Friday, adding that the first measures would target six people [but not israel] involved in the financing of Hamas.

Israel has killed an Iranian Revolutionary Guards military official in a missile strike on Damascus early on January 20, according to Iranian and Syrian media. | The Israeli strike happened in the Mezzeh neighbourhood of western Damascus, an area known for housing several embassies, including those of Lebanon and Iran, video released on the Aparat page shows. Iran’s hardline Keyhan newspaper Telegram channel reported a “number of Iranian [military advisors] were martyred in the Israeli attack.” Official sources have not yet confirmed the statement. ●&nbspThe strike on the pro-Iranian Syrian capital is part of a broader escalation in the region between Iran and Israeli aggression targets residential building in DamascusIsrael that has rapidly escalated in just the last week, including a large-scale Israeli offensive in Gaza that has resulted in more than 21,000 deaths in three months in Gaza alone.

■ Israeli aggression targets residential building in Damascus (Al Mayadeen)

The “Israeli” regime has ramped up its US-backed aggression against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip despite claims about shifting to a "low-intensity phase" in the months-long genocidal war in the besieged territory. | Palestinian media reported on Saturday a surge in “Israeli” attacks in the south of the Gaza Strip, citing witnesses as saying that the regime’s bombardment was mostly focused overnight on Khan Yunis in the south as well as on Jabalia in the north. Reports said “Israeli” strikes targeted Batn al-Sameen neighborhood in the south of Khan Yunis and violent clashes took place in the vicinity of Nasser Medical Complex. ● Palestine's Shehab news agency said the occupation planes also targeted a house near al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza and a baby boy was recovered alive from under the rubble. ● Palestinian Red Crescent announced that its crews had over the past day “dealt with 10 martyrs and 21 injuries as a result of Zionist bombing that targeted various areas in Jabalia.” ● The Gaza health ministry said on Friday that 142 Palestinians had been martyred and 278 injured in the Strip over the past 24 hours, confirming that the total number of Palestinians martyred since the beginning of the “Israeli” war in early October was over 24,620, in addition to more than 6,1830 injured and thousands missing.

■ Israel continues offensives in Gaza, kills 165 Palestinians, injures 280 more in last 24 hours (Anadolu Ajansi)
■ “Israel” Detains 1000s of Gazans during Aggression (Alahed News)
■ APPLICATION INSTITUTING PROCEEDINGS (.pdf)(84 pages) Press Release (.pdf)

An outraged Israeli mom has sparked an uproar after accusing the Israeli army of deliberately gassing her son to death while he was being held in a Gaza tunnel. Now she says the Israeli military had her son’s gravestone removed after her critical message went viral. ● His killing follows a pattern of Israeli military attacks on Israeli captives in Gaza, raising questions about the existence of a friendly fire policy to prevent prisoner swaps. | The mother of a now-dead Israeli soldier captured by Hamas militants on October 7 says it was the Israeli military, not Palestinian resistance fighters, who killed her son. In a recently-published post on Facebook, Israeli mother Maayan Sherman wrote that her son Ron was “indeed murdered – not by Hamas,” but in circumstances more akin to “Auschwitz and the showers.” The killing of her son, she wrote, was caused “not from accidental gunfire, nor from crossfire, but from premeditated murder – bombing with poison gas.”

■ Israel gassed own soldier to death in Gaza tunnel: Mother (PressTV)
■ Mother of captive in Gaza says IOF killed her son, not Hamas (01/18/24)

Eight rodents infected with the pathogen 'surprisingly' died within eight days. Critics of the study said: 'This madness must be stopped before [it is] too late' | Chinese scientists have been experimenting with a mutant coronavirus strain that is 100 percent lethal in mice — despite concerns such research could spark another pandemic. Scientists in Beijing — who are linked to the Chinese military — cloned a Covid-like virus found in pangolins, known as GX_P2V, and used it to infect mice. ● The mice had been 'humanized', meaning they were engineered to express a protein found in people, with the goal being to assess how the virus might react in humans. Every rodent that was infected with the pathogen died within eight days, which the researchers described as 'surprisingly' quick. ● The team were also surprised to find high levels of viral load in the mice's brains and eyes - suggesting the virus, despite being related to Covid, multiplies and spreads through the body in a unique way. Writing in a scientific paper that has not yet been published, they warned the finding 'underscores a spillover risk of GX_P2V into humans'.

France is sending active duty troops to Ukraine | The French Ambassador was summoned today to the Russian Foreign Ministry. During that meeting, the Ambassador was asked why troops from the French Foreign Legion, and active duty troops from the French Army were in Ukraine to fight the Russian Army and why Russia should not simply declare that France is waging war upon Russia? The Ambassador did not have a good answer. Hal Turner Editorial Opinion: Once again, countries of the collective West are shown to be sneaks and liars. Only this time, they've been caught red-handed and suddenly, the boisterous West has nothing to say. This is quite simple: If active duty military troops from a country's government, are fighting Russians inside Ukraine, then THAT COUNTRY is, de facto, at-war with Russia. There is no wiggle room.

■ Russian MFA summons French envoy over elimination of French mercenaries in Kharkov (TASS)
■ Russia's Medvedev says any UK troop deployment to Ukraine would be a declaration of war (RT.com)(12 Jan, 2024)