More than 69,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war so far, Gaza health officials said Saturday, as both sides completed the latest exchange of bodies under the terms of the tenuous ceasefire.
The latest jump in deaths occurred as more bodies are recovered in the devastated Gaza Strip since the ceasefire began on Oct. 10, and as other bodies are identified. The toll also includes Palestinians killed by strikes that Israel says target remaining militants.
Israel on Saturday returned the remains of another 15 Palestinians to Gaza, according to hospital officials there, a day after militants returned the remains of a hostage to Israel. He was identified as Lior Rudaeff, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ’s office. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said that Rudaeff was born in Argentina.
The exchanges are the central part of the ceasefire’s initial phase, which requires that Hamas return all hostage remains as quickly as possible. Families and supporters rallied again Saturday night in Tel Aviv for the return of all.
The truce is aimed at winding down the deadliest and most destructive war ever between Israel and the Palestinian militant group. It began with the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage.
Gaza death toll tops 69,000 as Israel and militants again exchange remains
‘Swap Mush for Steel’ – Lithuania Urges NATO to End Era of ‘Self-Deterrence’ Against Russia
Lithuania’s top diplomat, Kęstutis Budrys, delivered a stark message to Western allies from NATO’s eastern flank during his Monday visit to Washington: The era of self-deterrence is over.
The time, he insisted, is now to confront Russian aggression with overwhelming force – and budget.
Speaking at the Hudson Institute after a day of meetings with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Benson and other US officials, Budrys offered a stark, cold-eyed assessment from NATO’s frontline. The West, he argued, has been trapped by a Russian-planted idea: that escalation should always be avoided.
“The only thing that you shouldn’t do is escalate – who created this [mantra]?” Budrys challenged. “You shouldn’t be afraid to escalate. This is what works,” he emphasized.
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Drawing on Lithuania’s long experience with Russian power, Budrys said that Western restraint only invites more aggression.
He paraphrased Lenin’s maxim – that if you probe with a bayonet and encounter mush, push; if you encounter steel, withdraw – to argue that Russia always advances until it meets force.
Every time the West holds back, he warned, “they think we’re weak – pushovers,” he said.
Revealed: Israel demanded Google and Amazon use secret ‘wink’ to sidestep legal orders
When Google and Amazon negotiated a major $1.2bn cloud-computing deal in 2021, their customer – the Israeli government – had an unusual demand: agree to use a secret code as part of The demand, which would require Google and Amazon to effectively sidestep legal obligations in countries around the world, was born out of Israel’s concerns that data it moves into the global corporations’ cloud platforms could end up in the hands of foreign law enforcement authorities.
Like other big tech companies, Google and Amazon’s cloud businesses routinely comply with requests from police, prosecutors and security services to hand over customer data to assist investigations.
This process is often cloaked in secrecy. The companies are frequently gagged from alerting the affected customer their information has been turned over. This is either because the law enforcement agency has the power to demand this or a court has ordered them to stay silent.
For Israel, losing control of its data to authorities overseas was a significant concern. So to deal with the threat, officials created a secret warning system: the companies must send signals hidden in payments to the Israeli government, tipping it off when it has disclosed Israeli data to foreign courts or investigators.
To clinch the lucrative contract, Google and Amazon agreed to the so-called winking mechanism, according to leaked documents seen by the Guardian, as part of a joint investigation with Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call.
Based on the documents and descriptions of the contract by Israeli officials, the investigation reveals how the companies bowed to a series of stringent and unorthodox “controls” contained within the 2021 deal, known as Project Nimbus. Both Google and Amazon’s cloud businesses have denied evading any legal obligations.
YouTube Quietly Erased More Than 700 Videos Documenting Israeli Human Rights Violations
A documentary featuring mothers surviving Israel’s genocide in Gaza. A video investigation uncovering Israel’s role in the killing of a Palestinian American journalist. Another video revealing Israel’s destruction of Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank.
YouTube surreptitiously deleted all these videos in early October by wiping the accounts that posted them from its website, along with their channels’ archives. The accounts belonged to three prominent Palestinian human rights groups: Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.
The move came in response to a U.S. government campaign to stifle accountability for alleged Israeli war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
The Palestinian groups’ YouTube channels hosted hours of footage documenting and highlighting alleged Israeli government violations of international law in both Gaza and the West Bank, including the killing of Palestinian civilians.
“I’m pretty shocked that YouTube is showing such a little backbone,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now. “It’s really hard to imagine any serious argument that sharing information from these Palestinian human rights organizations would somehow violate sanctions. Succumbing to this arbitrary designation of these Palestinian organizations, to now censor them, is disappointing and pretty surprising.”
After the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants and charged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Secretary Yoav Gallant with war crimes in Gaza, the Trump administration escalated its defense of Israel’s actions by sanctioning ICC officials and targeting people and organizations that work with the court.
Ghislaine Maxwell eyeing commutation, whistleblower tells House Democrats
Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime associate and co-conspirator who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking crimes, is reportedly preparing a “commutation application” for the Trump administration to review, according to new allegations from a whistleblower shared with House Democrats.
Democrats on the House judiciary committee announced on Monday that they had received information from a whistleblower that indicates that the British former socialite, 63, is working on filing a commutation application. They also said Maxwell had been receiving special treatment at federal prison camp Bryan in Texas – the minimum-security facility she was transferred to earlier this year.
Congressman Jamie Raskin, the ranking member and top Democrat on the House judiciary committee, stated in a news release that the prison’s warden was also “helping” Maxwell “copy, print, and send documents” to support her bid for clemency.
The exact content of this “commutation application” was unclear, Raskin added.
Raskin states that according to the whistleblower, Maxwell has been receiving “customized” meals that are “personally delivered” to her cell, and that the warden has “personally arranged” private meetings for Maxwell and her visitors. The visits allegedly include providing a “special cordoned-off area” for visitors to arrive, as well as “an assortment of snacks and refreshments for her guests”.
Angry Democrats call on Schumer to resign after eight vote to end shutdown
Democrats are seething after news emerged on Sunday that eight members of their Senate caucus had collaborated with Republicans on crafting a compromise to end the longest government shutdown in US history, without winning any healthcare concessions that they had sought.
But one name is coming in for more opprobrium than any other: Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader who had led the Democrats’ weeks-long stand against reopening the government without an extension of tax credits that lower premiums for Affordable Care Act (ACA) health plans.
If the results of the crucial Sunday vote are any indication, the outcome Democrats fought so hard against is now set to happen, potentially in the next few days. And though Schumer does not publicly support the compromise, lawmakers and Democrat-affiliated groups have turned on him, criticizing his leadership and calling for his ouster.
“Last night, eight ‘moderate’ Democrats got played. Conned. Rooked. Pantsed. Pumped and dumped. Rode hard and put away wet,” Rick Wilson, the ex-Republican strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, wrote in a piece titled “Schumer and the Hateful Eight Betray America”.
UK commentator detained by ICE after Israel criticism to be released, family says
The family of British political commentator Sami Hamdi, who was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in late October while on a speaking tour in the US, say he is set to be released and will be able to “return home soon”.
“The government has agreed to release Sami,” the family said in a statement on Monday. “He will be able to return home soon insha’Allah.”
Hamdi was detained on 26 October at San Francisco international airport. At the time, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) said his detention appeared to be in retaliation for the Muslim political commentator’s criticism of Israel while touring the US, calling it a “blatant affront to free speech”, and called for his release.
Later on 26 October, the Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said that Hamdi’s visa had been revoked and that he was in “ICE custody pending removal”.
“Under President Trump, those who support terrorism and undermine American national security will not be allowed to work or visit this country,” McLaughlin said.
Longtime Trump Defender Goes Scorched-Earth On 'Weak And Rudderless' President
Prominent Donald Trump supporter Sean Davis hit out at Republicans ― and the president himself ― in a scathing takedown on X over the weekend.
Davis, CEO and co-founder of the conservative website The Federalist, called out whoever “is advising congressional Republicans on strategy right now,” saying they have “an IQ barely approaching room temperature.”
“Republicans right now have no accomplishments, no plans, and no vision,” he said, asking, “Why on earth would anyone be excited to go vote for them 12 months right now?”
“Trump needs to ditch the foreign policy crap and focus all his attention on the domestic economy, which is still not working for the majority of people,” he said. “Right now he looks weak and rudderless. Be mad all you want, but it’s the truth.”
Davis railed: “You cannot have a viable country or future when half your country and all its young people are locked out of the economy and locked out of ever owning a home or much of anything beyond next month’s streaming subscription.”..
Reagan-Appointed Federal Judge Rebukes Trump In Damning Resignation Letter
A federal judge appointed to the bench in 1985 by President Ronald Reagan announced his resignation over the weekend in a damning public letter, excoriating the Trump administration for its assault on the rule of law.
U.S. District Court Judge Mark L. Wolf didn’t hide behind niceties in the missive, published by The Atlantic on Sunday, instead stating his opinion bluntly.
“President Donald Trump is using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment,” he warned.
“This is contrary to everything that I have stood for in my more than 50 years in the Department of Justice and on the bench. The White House’s assault on the rule of law is so deeply disturbing to me that I feel compelled to speak out. Silence, for me, is now intolerable.”
Wolf proceeded to detail numerous abuses of the law by Trump and his appointees, describing the blatant corruption of justice as an “existential threat to democracy and the rule of law.”
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