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A loud blast was heard, and a plume of smoke could be seen rising late on Tuesday above the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, a stronghold of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, a Reuters witness said. The city has been on edge for days ahead of an anticipated Israeli attack in retaliation for a strike on Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights that killed a dozen Druze children and teenagers. Israel and the United States have blamed Hezbollah for the attack. Hezbollah has denied responsibility.

Well, here we are its vacation week your host on the road thankful and grateful to the Lord giving me another day to keep the road trip moving forward some of the geography I've visited reflected in the music above. Gasoline Prices In The USA At the start of the week gasoline in Somerset, Pennsylvania 375.9 a gallon. At the week's end gasoline on west side of Knoxville, Tennessee 275.9 a gallon. In Taxylvania our gasoline tax can be bumped up by a decline in wholesale gasoline prices... On a brighter note I visited this place during the week... RFK...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) joined an anti-Israel commentator this week in blaming the Abraham Accords peace deal and the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem for Hamas’s massive terror attack on Israel on October 7. “AOC” also agreed that Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights — which are not claimed by Palestinians, but were taken from Syria in a defensive war — was also “directly” responsible for October 7.

Israel had decided to expand its military responses to Hezbollah aggression on the Northern front after Iran was seen to expedite weapons delivery to the Lebanese terror group ahead of a possible full-blown war with Israel. Attacks attributed to the IDF, targeted the Syria-Iraq border area at Al-Bukamal, a supply rout for weapons transported from Iran, resulting in some 19 non-Syrians killed. Hezbollah said four of its members were killed but did not say where and when, although pro-Iranian militias in the area confirmed four of the fatalities were from Hezbollah. The border crossing at Al-Bukamal had been attacked by...

IDF fighter jets struck military infrastructure and mortar launchers belonging to the Syrian Army overnight Tuesday. The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said the strikes in response to the launches toward Israel on Tuesday evening. On Tuesday, shortly after 8:15 p.m., sirens were sounded in the Golan Heights area. Two launches were identified from Syria toward Israeli territory, which fell in open areas, causing no physical injuries or damages. The IDF responded with artillery fire at the sources of the launch.

Decades ago I spent three years writing The Samson Option (1991), an exposé of the unstated policy of American presidents going back to Dwight Eisenhower to look the other way as Israel began the process of building an atomic bomb. The right or wrong for Israel, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, was not the point of the book. My point was that what America was doing was known throughout the Third World, as it was then called, and our duplicity made our worries about the spread of nuclear weapons another example of American hypocrisy. Since then others have undertaken...

Navigate to Israel & The Middle East section Biden Backdoors Israel in the U.N., Rescinding Trump’s Recognition of Sovereignty over the Golan In a move from the Obama playbook, the U.S. is advancing a stealth agenda in the Middle East at the expense of its allies Sometimes, U.S. foreign policy is what you see on the news. Increasingly, however, changes in policy are hidden from view because they are unpalatable to many Americans. The growing divide between the policies that America claims to be pursuing and the policies that it’s implementing on the ground poses a growing threat to America’s...

Israel’s opposition leader and contender for next prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine and urged him to reconsider, in his most direct criticism yet of the war. Netanyahu said in an interview with USA Today that he thought Putin’s decision to go to war in Ukraine was “guided by his vision of reconstituting a great Russian realm,” adding, “I hope he’s having second thoughts about it.” “We all have sympathy to Ukraine, it’s not even a question, and I’m no different,” he said. Israel has sought not to antagonize Russia in the conflict,...

Israeli archaeologists have discovered a secret stash of Byzantine-era coins inside a stone wall—where someone may have once tried to hide them.Made of pure gold, the 44 coins are decorated with portraits of Emperors Phocas and Heraclius, who ruled in the first half of the seventh century. Experts believe the treasure, which is dated to 635 C.E., was hidden during the Muslim conquest of the area around the end of Heraclius' reign.The artifacts were unearthed as part of a larger excavation in the ancient city of Banias, now a part of Hermon Stream Nature Reserve in the Golan Heights, an...

Russia has just finished a Potemkin referendum conducted in the illegally occupied Ukrainian oblasts (provinces) of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson (see Vladimir Putin to Address Russia; Annexation of Ukraine Provinces and Mobilization Seem to Be on the Table). The “voting” began on September 23, and the question is whether those provinces wish to be annexed to Russia.There are complicating factors. All four oblasts are on the front line of a war between Putin’s invading army and the armed forces of Ukraine. Many, if not most, of the residents, are refugees. The voting began within 48 hours after the announcement....

'We will deal very big strikes in the war, but we will warn the residents and allow them to leave the areas' Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi on Sunday warned that overwhelming force would be used in Lebanon during the next potential war with Hezbollah. Speaking at the first National Conference on the Home Front, Kochavi detailed the IDF's strategy for responding to an attack from the radical Shiite terrorist group. "We will deal very big strikes in the war, but we will warn the residents and allow them to leave the areas. I say to...

Syrian and Russian warplanes on Tuesday carried out military drills amid increasing Israeli strikes, according to a military statement released by Syrian defense ministry. The drills and patrols took place near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in southern Syria and also in the northern and eastern parts of Syria. Two Russian SU-35 jets and six Syrian MIG warplanes took part in the drills...

Air defenses respond to missile attack on Damascus Syria accused Israel of launching missiles on an area south of Damascus on Monday evening, targeting the suburb of Saida Zaynab. Air defenses were activated around 11:18 pm on Monday in response to “hostile missiles” detected approaching Damascus, the state news agency SANA reported. State TV described the attack as “Israeli aggression.” The missiles came from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights and “most” were intercepted by air defenses, SANA said, citing military sources. Eyewitnesses reported seeing several explosions in the night sky over the Syrian capital. At least one missile...

An American family set off a bomb scare at Israel’s main airport when they showed security inspectors an unexploded shell that they found while visiting the Golan Heights and had packed for their return trip, authorities said.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is suddenly the favorite to mount a comeback after current Prime Minister Naftali Bennett lost the majority he needs to hold his coalition together with a key defection on Wednesday. Israel’s government looked set to crumble Wednesday after coalition whip Idit Silman announced she is quitting to form a new government, causing the ruling coalition headed by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to lose its majority. … Silman, who is a member of Knesset in Bennett’s Yamina party, chose to defect after she clashed with Israel’s Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz over his order to hospitals...

As Russia pummels Ukraine in an invasion waged on Thursday, Moscow’s Deputy Ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyanskiy, leveled the same type of sentiment at Israel as the Kremlin did towards Ukraine. “We’re concerned over Tel Aviv’s announced plans for expanding settlement activity in the occupied Golan Heights, which contradicts the provisions of the 1949 Geneva Convention. Russia doesn’t recognize Israel’s sovereignty over Golan Heights that are part of Syria,” he tweeted. Putin refused to recognize republics Donetsk and Luhansk as sovereign Ukraine like the Golan. Interestingly, Polyanskiy referred to Israel’s capital as Tel Aviv rather than Jerusalem. Russia has...

The United Nations is a completely corrupt organization that gives cover to tyrants and pedophiles, and that has made destroying Israel its primary focus. On Wednesday, even as Russian troops were massed on Ukraine's border, the U.N. Security Council found time to hold a debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Just to show how farcical the United Nations is, despite Russia being poised to attack Ukraine, the U.N. Security Council nevertheless followed its usual leadership rotation, making Vladimir Putin the Security Council chairman. Thus, Russia helmed the meeting regarding the U.N.'s obsession: Israel.The meeting occurred just a few hours after Israel announced...

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Sunday that his country plans to double the number of settlers living in the Golan Heights. The plan was approved by the Israeli Cabinet on Sunday, Bennett’s office said. The move comes nearly three years after the United States, under former President Donald Trump, recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan, which Israel captured from Syria more than five decades ago. Trump’s declaration was condemned by the rest of the international community as the annexation is not widely recognized. […] Israel conquered the Golan Heights in 1967 and 14 years later, in 1981, annexed the...

With Ramat HaSharon approaching its centennial year, archaeological evidence indicates the Tel Aviv suburb’s history goes back much further than previously thought. “The excavation unearthed evidence of agricultural-industrial activity at the site during the Byzantine period – about 1,500 years ago. Among other finds, we discovered a large winepress paved with a mosaic as well as plastered installations and the foundations of a large structure that may have been used as a warehouse or even a farmstead,” said Dr. Yoav Arbel, who directed the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority. “Inside the buildings and installations, we found many...

State Department pushes back on signature Trump admin foreign policy decision The Biden administration is walking back the United States' historic recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the contested Golan Heights region along Israel's northern border, a significant blow to the Jewish state and one of the Trump administration's signature foreign policy decisions. The Trump administration declared the territory—seized by Israel from Syria in 1967 and later annexed by the country—to be wholly part of the Jewish state in 2019. Then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo took a trip to the area in 2020 and reaffirmed that America formally abandoned a decades-long...