This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference in Jerusalem on December 9, 2024 [MAYA ALLERUZZO/POOL/AFP via Getty Images]
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was re-elected leader of the right-wing Likud Party on Thursday, with the premier nominated as the party’s candidate in the upcoming legislative elections, Anadolu reports.
According to Israeli Channel 14, Netanyahu was re-elected unopposed during a meeting of the party’s Election and Oversight Committee in Tel Aviv.
Under the party’s bylaws, a candidate is automatically elected when only one nomination is submitted, without the need for a vote.
Israel’s upcoming elections are scheduled for Oct. 27, 2026.
Netanyahu has led multiple Israeli governments since first taking office in 1996.
Thursday’s decision signals Netanyahu’s intention to run again despite the ongoing corruption charges against him.
Israeli law does not require him to resign unless convicted by the Supreme Court.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Smoke billows from the area following Israeli attacks on the town of Tayr Dibba in the southern Lebanese province of Tyre, Lebanon, on November 6, 2025. [Houssam Shbaro – Anadolu Agency]
The Israeli army launched a series of airstrikes in southern Lebanon on Thursday evening, shortly after warning residents to evacuate, despite a ceasefire agreement in place since November 2024, Anadolu reports.
Israeli fighter jets struck a building in Tayr Debba in the Tyre district, and another in Al-Taybeh in the Marjayoun district. Airstrikes also targeted a building in Aita al-Jabal in Bint Jbeil, and another in Zoutar al-Sharqiya in Nabatieh, the Lebanese news agency NNA reported.
No information was yet available about casualties.
Footage obtained by Anadolu and shared on social media showed powerful explosions and rising flames, and smoke following the strikes in the three towns.
According to NNA, Israeli drones flew at very low altitude over the capital, Beirut, and its southern suburbs.
The attacks came after the Israeli army ordered Lebanese residents in the three towns to evacuate before the attacks.
The army claimed that the strikes aimed to thwart Hezbollah’s attempts to rebuild its capabilities in Aita al-Jabal, al-Taybeh, and Tayr Debba.
There was no comment from Hezbollah on the Israeli attacks.
Tensions have been mounting in southern Lebanon for weeks, with the Israeli army intensifying near-daily air raids inside Lebanese territory despite the ceasefire, under the pretext of targeting Hezbollah members and infrastructure.
Israeli Channel 12 reported on Thursday that Tel Aviv is preparing for another possible round of fighting with Hezbollah.
The Israeli army has killed more than 4,000 people and injured nearly 17,000 in its attacks on Lebanon, which began in October 2023 and turned into a full-scale offensive in September 2024.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
In an age of resurgent fascism, the left can fight back and win
Zohran Mamdani’s triumph in the contest for the New York mayoralty is a historic moment. He has crushed Andrew Cuomo – but more importantly, the brand of politics that the Democratic Party establishment represents.
He now has the opportunity to ensure that it is the US left which assumes the leadership of the movement against Trumpism.
He has won over half the vote, defying the opinion polls, and he is the first mayoral candidate to win over a million votes since John Lindsay in 1969.
The socialist left – the authentic, real deal, unapologetic, loud and proud socialist left – will now take power in New York City, the biggest and important city in the United States. In age of darkness, one of the great centres of the Western world has elected a socialist who stands against capitalism, against racism, against genocide.
This is a historic moment – and the consequences will reverberate not just around the United States, but across the Western world and indeed beyond. There are so many lessons that we must now learn so that what is today triumphed in New York will tomorrow take power at national level across the West – and drive back the rising tide of fascism.
Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and US President Donald Trump. Photos via X
“We know the heart and intent of Trump is to help us fight insecurity,” states the spokesperson of Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, who has time and again demonstrated his loyalty to the West.
US President Donald Trump has threatened to go “guns-a-blazing” into Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, which he denigrated as a “disgraced country”. In a social media post on Saturday, November 1, he declared, “I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet.”
“Yes sir,” War Secretary Pete Hegseth replied to his post. “The Department of War is preparing for action.”
Why? Ostensibly to “wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities” against “our CHERISHED Christians”. For over two months, the US right wing has been peddling a conspiracy about a “genocide” against Christians in Nigeria.
Championing this false claim, Senator Ted Cruz has proposed the so-called “Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act” to use “powerful sanctions and other tools” against Nigerian officials he accuses of “ignoring and even facilitating the mass murder of Christians by Islamist jihadists.”
Myth of Christian genocide
Facts, however, contradict this accusation. The majority of people killed by the Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province are Muslims, simply because they make up the majority in the northern region these Islamist insurgencies are ravaging. For the same demographic reasons, Muslims are also the majority victims of bandits who kill, loot, and kidnap in the northwest region, where the state is struggling to enforce the rule of law.
In the central region, Christian victims of violence are in the majority, not because of their religious identity but because of their occupation: farming. Amid intensifying competition over depleting land and water due to climate change, raids on farmlands by mobile herders, groups of whom are armed, are a serious problem in several African countries suffering desertification.
90% of these herders are Muslims, while in this region of Nigeria, farmers are predominantly Christian. But the violence is over resources, not faith. There is no evidence of a systematic and large-scale, religiously motivated targeting of Christians in Nigeria, where they are almost equal to Muslims in population.
“While Christians make up roughly 50% of the population, violence in which Christians have been specifically targeted in relation to their religious identity accounts for only 5% of reported civilian targeting events,” the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project reported in mid-2022.
Trump’s own envoy for Arab and African affairs, Massad Boulos, had pointed out at a summit last month in Italy to discuss counter-terrorism in West Africa that Boko Haram has killed more Muslims than Christians. Facts notwithstanding, “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria,” Trump insisted.
“Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter,” he claimed, announcing on Friday, October 31, his decision to designate Nigeria a “country of particular concern” for systematic violation of religious freedoms.
“The characterization of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality, nor does it recognize government efforts to safeguard freedom of religion and belief,” replied Nigeria’s president, Bola Tinubu, a Muslim, married to a Christian Pastor.
A secular suffering
Under his secular regime, Christians, Muslims, and non-believers have all suffered alike, from hunger, unaffordability, unemployment, etc, as a consequence of his aggressive implementation of the IMF-World Bank prescribed reforms.
This crisis has enhanced the fertility of the ground for terror groups, bandits, and other criminal gangs to harvest more recruits, especially in the hinterlands and remote areas the state is struggling to police.
While struggling to restore security in these regions, Tinubu tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to lead the Nigerian military into a war with neighboring Niger at the behest of US ally France after its neocolonial puppet regime in Niger was ousted in mid-2023.
A year later, he unleashed his security forces on the domestic front to crush the “hunger protests” demanding a reversal of the IMF-World Bank prescribed liberalization, killing at least two dozen people. Another 1,200 protesters were arrested, many of whom were tortured in custody. Several, including minors, faced charges of treason.
Later in November, allegations of treason were leveled against Tinubu himself when the CIA objected to the release of the unredacted files of the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) investigation into Tinubu in the early 1990s. Accused of laundering money for a major heroin racket in Chicago at the time, Tinubu entered into a plea bargain to avoid a trial, forfeiting USD 460,000 to US authorities.
Tinubu’s loyalty to the West, unrewarded
In response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for the release of unredacted files of the investigation, “We oppose the full… release of the DEA’s Bola Tinubu heroin trafficking investigation records,” the DEA insisted. “While Nigerians have a right to be informed about what their government is up to, they do not have a right to know what their president is up to.”
Reminding that its activities are “carried out through clandestine means, and therefore they must remain secret,” the CIA objected to full release as it could “cause damage to US national security by indicating whether or not the CIA maintained any human intelligence sources related to Tinubu.”
“The CIA effectively confirmed that Nigeria’s sitting president is an active CIA asset,” remarked David Hundeyin, author of the documentary “Bola Ahmed Tinubu: From Drug Lord to Presidential Candidate.”
From his alleged contribution to US intelligence, his readiness to hurl Nigeria into war with a neighbor for France, his obedient implementation of IMF-World Bank diktats, and ruthless crushing of protests against it – Tinubu has time and again demonstrated his loyalty to the West.
But Trump is not placated. Ordering the Department of War to prepare for a military action, Trump doubled down on Sunday, adding that both airstrikes and boots on the ground were open options.
Groveling again
“Nigeria is US’s partner in the global fight against terrorism,” said Tinubu’s spokesperson, Daniel Bwala. “We know the heart and intent of Trump is to help us fight insecurity,” he groveled. “We do not see (Trump’s threat) in the literal sense… We know that Donald Trump has his own style of communication.” It was, he suggested, Trump’s way to “force a sit-down between the two leaders so they can iron out a common front to fight their insecurity”.
But he is confident that when Tinubu and Trump meet, “there will be better outcomes.” Will these “outcomes” from the suggested meeting include Tinubu’s walking back on his refusal to accept foreign nationals deported by the US? Will he throw open Nigeria’s vast critical mineral deposits for US extraction, which the establishment think tank, Brookings Institution, deems “a win-win policy”?
Admiral Radakin met the head of Israel’s military last year. (Photo: IDF / Handout)
Arms control expert calls the scale of visits “a moral failing of massive proportions”.
Britain’s most senior military personnel made at least a dozen official visits to Israel during the Gaza war, newly published government data reveals.
The trips, largely unpublicised, almost entirely took place as Israeli forces barraged Gaza and international calls for an arms embargo intensified.
The scale of these visits is revealed in recent Ministry of Defence (MoD) expense records and senior staff travel disclosures covering November 2023 to March 2025.
They detail the costs of visits by officers ranked two-star and above and senior MoD civil servants, including Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton and General Sir James Hockenhull.
Together, the trips cost more than £18,000, excluding several Royal Air Force (RAF) flights recorded as “nil return.”
Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), the London-based research charity which analysed the material, found that Britain’s defence establishment maintained regular contact with Israel’s armed forces throughout the conflict.
The findings expand on Declassified’s earlier reporting, which identified five such visits as well as a meeting by Major General Zac Stenning.
These additional records show that senior British officers continued to travel to Israel well into 2025, meeting their counterparts even as accusations of war crimes mounted.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.