Hezbollah Denies Israeli Allegations of Targeting Majdal Shams
Hezbollah | July 27, 2024
The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon categorically denied in a statement the allegations made by some Israeli media outlets and various media platforms about targeting the Majdal Shams area in the occupied Golan Heights.
Hezbollah thus issued the following statement:
The Islamic Resistance in Lebanon categorically denies the allegations reported by some Israeli media outlets and various other media platforms about targeting the Majdal Shams area. Hezbollah affirms that it has no connection to the incident whatsoever and emphatically denies all false claims in this regard.
Commenting on the incident, Ghaleb Saif, head of the Druze Initiative, stated that the missiles that fell on the Syrian Golan and Galilee were Israeli interceptor missiles, which often cause significant damage to property and lives. “Every day, we see how Iron Dome missiles miss their targets and end up falling on us,” Saif added.
Palestinian crowd stops PA security forces’ arrest of Tulkarm Battalion commander
An aerial view shows the destruction amidst road damage, potholes and ditches after Israeli forces withdraw from the Nur Shams Refugee Camp in Tulkarm, leaving behind significant destruction in Tulkarm, West Bank on July 09, 2024 [Issam Rimawi – Anadolu Agency]
MEMO | July 27, 2024
US Navy Drops Details on Pricey Missiles and Bombs It’s Using Against Yemen’s Warriors
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 27.07.2024
The US and Britain have been bombing Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen since January, killing and maiming scores of civilians and targeting hundreds of militia sites but failing to “degrade” the Houthis missile and drone capabilities, or to stop their months-long partial blockade of the Red Sea in support of Palestine.
The US Navy has revealed new details about the weapons systems it has been using in the ongoing US-UK bombing campaign against the Houthis.
According to information shared with the Navy Times, F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets aboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which left the Middle East and steamed home last month after a nine-month long deployment in the Red Sea area, used the AIM-9X infrared-guided heat-seeking missile to target Houthi kamikaze drones.
The AIM-9X is a variant of Raytheon’s widely used AIM-9 Sidewinder short-range air-to-air missile. The weapon has a per unit price of between $430,800 and $472,000, making it between 215 and 236 times the cost of the estimated $2,000-each price of a Houthi attack drone.
The Navy also confirmed the deployment of its Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile, or AARGM, also launched from Super Hornets aircraft, against Houthi air defenses. Produced by Northrup Grumman, these ground attack weapons have a per missile price of $874,000.
The Navy did not provide any details on the Houthi systems targeted by these weapons, The militia’s arsenal is thought to consist mostly of older Soviet-era SAMs and anti-aircraft guns, similarly dated radars, and Yemeni-built copies of Iranian missile and MANPADS designs.
Another weapon used by the Super Hornets in their campaign is the AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon – a glide bomb possessed by the US Navy and Air Force and by the air forces of more than half a dozen of Washington’s allies. The Navy said the Raytheon-made missiles being used against the Houthis are the latest, AGM-154C variant, which cost roughly $719,000 each. The Navy did not specify what kinds of targets the munition was used to attack, but the inertial and GPS-guided, terminal infrared homing-equipped weapons are designed for use against both stationary ground targets and moving targets at sea.
Apart from their machinegun-armed speedboats, the Houthis don’t have a navy to speak of, and their naval drones aren’t the fancy, $250,000 apiece, custom-built unmanned vehicles possessed by NATO countries. Instead, the militia has improvised by fitting ordinary speedboats with remote controls, packing them with explosives and launching them toward their enemies, with the total cost of such weapons not exceeding $30,000 (or about 24 times less than the US munitions deployed to dispatch them).
The imbalance in pricing between the Houthis’ guerilla warfare-purposed weapons and the US’s sleek, arms expo showroom-class air-launched missiles and bombs parallels the chasm between the surface-to-air missiles the US Navy has been using and the Yemeni militia’s drones.
In explosive testimony by US air and missile defense officials to Congress in May, Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces Angus King lambasted the state of affairs in which the US military has been forced to use $4.3 million SM-6 interceptor missiles to take down $20,000 Houthi UAVs.
“In the Red Sea, the Houthis are sending $20,000 drones and we’re shooting them down with missiles that cost $4.3 million. The math doesn’t work on that, gentlemen. It just doesn’t work. What are we thinking?” King asked. The lawmaker urged the Pentagon to urgently ramp up the development of directed energy weapons instead.
US Navy expenditures on their policing mission in the Middle East beginning after October 7 and the start of the Israel-Gaza war have surpassed $1 billion, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro told the Senate Appropriations Committee in April.
The US-led operation against the Houthis shows no sign of slowing down, but neither does the militia’s resolve against Washington and its allies. US Central Command announced on Friday that American forces had destroyed six Houthi aerial drones, and three uncrewed surface vessels, off the Yemeni coast. Also Friday, hundreds of thousands Yemenis gathered in the streets of Sanaa and other cities in solidarity with the Houthis’ operations against the US and Israel.
France’s Le Monde newspaper wrote in a piece Friday that Western powers had proven “powerless to halt Houthi attacks,” with Western warships’ presence in the Red Sea and strikes on the militia said to have “failed to deter the rebel militia.”
The glum attitude comes in the wake of reports in US business media last week that CENTCOM chief General Michael Erik Kurilla had written a letter to his boss, Lloyd Austin, and urged Washington to ramp up its economic, diplomatic and military pressure on the Houthis, admitting that the Western coalition’s operations to date had “failed” to stop the militia.
Harris claims support of Palestinian rights, sends IOF weapons: DFLP
Al Mayadeen | July 27, 2024
The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine responded to the US Vice President’s statement regarding Palestinian rights, saying “There is nothing new about such statements, the lesson remains in implementation.”
Vice President Kamala Harris had previously discussed the Palestinian people’s rights to liberation, self-determination, and security, in a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In a statement, the DFLP compared Harris’ words to those of the US presidents that came before her.
“Barack Obama, in a visit to Cairo at the beginning of his term as president, claimed that Palestinian Statehood was part of US national security.
Before him was Bush Jr., who vowed to establish a Palestinian State until he concluded his presidency in 2008 with a brutal war on the Gaza Strip via Ehud Olmert’s Israeli government.
Biden also vowed to instate the two-state solution but rapidly backed down before Netanyahu’s fascist government, which rejected the establishment of a Palestinian State. Biden evaded the issue saying there is more than one model for a Palestinian state, hinting at self-administrative rule for our people,” which he considered to be an Israeli-American model of the so-called two-state solution.
The Democratic Front further blasted Harris, noting that while she speaks of Palestinian liberation and self-determination, the US military continues to supply the Israeli occupation forces with weapons to commit massacres against Palestinians and transform the entire Gaza Strip into a murder zone using Israeli-American war machines.
Amid theatrics about Gaza, Harris starts campaign with lies: Hamas
Izzat al-Risheq, a member of the political bureau of Hamas, considered Kamala Harris’ pretensions about her concerns and sorrow regarding the humanitarian situation and human suffering in Gaza to be yet another American lie.
He reiterated that the United States could have ended the war and blocked its military, security, political, and intelligence support to “Israel’ and its occupation forces if it wanted to.
Al-Risheq also affirmed that the presidential candidate and vice president kickstarted her presidential campaign with fabricated lies, reminding her that Gaza’s martyrs are not just “deaths”, but innocent civilians, elderly, women, children, and refugees, killed by the “Zionazi army” with American decisions, weapons, and political cover.
Harris “disregards the human rights she pretends to protect, and the Resistance’s right to confront an occupier protected by international law,” he said, adding that her vision was biased toward the Israeli occupation and opposed the people of Palestine in Gaza.
This comes after Harris convened with Netanyahu and emphasized her rock-solid support for “Israel”.
‘Americans, Please, Go Home’ – German Politician on US Deploying Missiles in Germany
Sputnik – 27.07.2024
The Pentagon’s decision to begin rotating deployments of long-range missiles in Germany starting from 2026 has caused a stir in the media and in the public, prompting Germans to doubt the necessity of such a step and question US motives.
Chairman of the German Council for Constitution and Sovereignty Ralph Thomas Niemeyer has called for shutting down US military facilities in Germany, noting that Washington is using them to carry out its own conflicts.
“We saw the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Ukraine being fought from German territory,” Niemeyer told Sputnik. “From the Ramstein Air Base and from other places such as Wiesbaden, Grafenwöhr and Stuttgart [locations with US military sites]. It would be impossible if they were not present there. So I am all for saying, ‘Please go home’.”
The German politician believes that Donald Trump taking office for a second term would be a good opportunity for Germany to gain more independence from Washington, since Trump “does not want to spend too much on the troop deployment either.”
“Trump voiced all this during his last presidential term… He could have gone as far as shutting them [US military bases in Germany] down. That is what we are interested in. We would say: ‘Sure, Americans, please, go home. Be our friends, but do not occupy us anymore,” he emphasized.
Without its own constitution, the country cannot have a genuine sovereignty, Niemeyer also stated, indicating this need for Germany.
The German Council for Constitution and Sovereignty has advocated for replacing the 1949 Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. This law was viewed as a temporary substitute for a full-fledged constitution, but is still in act.
Scholz’s views on Ukraine ‘simple-minded’ – Lavrov
RT | July 27, 2024
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz “is known for his simple-minded ideas,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said at a press conference in Vientiane, Laos.
He was commenting on a statement by Scholz earlier in the week about the possibility of abandoning the deployment of US missiles in Germany if Russia ends its military operation against Kiev.
Berlin and Washington announced earlier in July that US cruise missiles will be stationed in Germany from 2026. The deployment of these weapons had been banned under the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, but Washington withdrew from the agreement in 2019. Russia abided by the treaty for several years after the US withdrawal. In June, President Vladimir Putin warned that Moscow might resume production of previously banned missile systems in response to the “hostile actions” of the US.
At a press conference in Berlin earlier this week, Scholz dismissed concerns that the plans could further escalate tensions with Russia. He argued that Moscow must first end its military operation against Kiev to prevent the deployment of US long-range missiles in Germany.
Lavrov said, “no one asked Scholz whether the Germans want this deployment or not.” “He again, simple-mindedly, when the news came out, said: ‘I welcome the US decision to deploy the missiles in Germany’… he did not hide the fact that the decision was American,” the minister stated.
Lavrov stressed that the problem is not the deployment of the missiles, explaining that Moscow’s military operation aims “to eliminate threats to Russia’s security that were created in Ukraine, [where] NATO military bases were planned to be deployed, including in the Sea of Azov.”
He went on to say that the operation also has the goal of protecting the population of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, which have since joined Russia following referendums in 2022.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov previously said that Moscow reserves the right to deploy missiles with nuclear warheads if the US goes ahead with plans to station longer-range missiles in Germany.
Pentagon reacts to Russia-China bomber patrols near Alaska
RT | July 26, 2024
Russian and Chinese bombers jointly operating in international airspace near the coast of Alaska is a sign of their expanding military cooperation, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said, adding that Washington is “concerned” by the development.
On Wednesday, two Russian Tupolev TU-95 long-range bombers and two Chinese H-6 bombers were tracked and intercepted by US and Canadian fighter jets. The aircrafts were carrying out joint air patrols over the waters of the Chukchi and Bering Seas, as well as the North Pacific.
According to the Pentagon chief, it was the first time that Chinese bomber aircraft have flown within the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone, and the first time Chinese and Russian jets have taken off from the same base in northeast Russia.
“This is the first time that we’ve seen these two countries fly together,” Austin told a press conference on Thursday. “This is a relationship that we have been concerned about throughout – mostly because we’re concerned about China providing support to Russia’s illegal and unnecessary war in Ukraine,” he stated.
Both Moscow and Beijing have rejected Western allegations that Beijing has been supplying Russia with dual-use components that can be utilized to produce weapons for the Ukraine conflict.
Austin said the flight on Wednesday was “not a surprise,” adding that Moscow and Beijing had likely planned it for some time.
The aircraft came only within about 200 miles (320km) of the US coast and did not enter either US or Canadian airspace, according to the Pentagon chief.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported on Thursday that the crews “worked out issues of interaction at all stages of air patrol in the new area of joint operations.” It stressed that the patrols, which lasted over five hours, were conducted in accordance with international law.
Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson Zhang Xiaogang told reporters that the flight was the eighth “joint air strategic patrol” carried out by the two nations since 2019. The exercise was “not directed at any third party” and is “unrelated to the current international and regional situation,” it said.
Russia often conducts flights near US airspace and also monitors US and NATO flights near its own airspace too, and has sent its jets to escort American fighters and bombers away from its borders on numerous occasions in recent years.
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The lies about the 1967 war are still more powerful than the truth
By Alan Hart | June 4, 2012
In retrospect it can be seen that the 1967 war, the Six Days War, was the turning point in the relationship between the Zionist state of Israel and the Jews of the world (the majority of Jews who prefer to live not in Israel but as citizens of many other nations). Until the 1967 war, and with the exception of a minority of who were politically active, most non-Israeli Jews did not have – how can I put it? – a great empathy with Zionism’s child. Israel was there and, in the sub-consciousness, a refuge of last resort; but the Jewish nationalism it represented had not generated the overtly enthusiastic support of the Jews of the world. The Jews of Israel were in their chosen place and the Jews of the world were in their chosen places. There was not, so to speak, a great feeling of togetherness. At a point David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, was so disillusioned by the indifference of world Jewry that he went public with his criticism – not enough Jews were coming to live in Israel.
So how and why did the 1967 war transform the relationship between the Jews of the world and Israel? … continue
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