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      Israel Accuses World Central Kitchen Worker of Role in Oct. 7 Attack

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      The Israeli military said it killed the worker in a strike in Gaza on Saturday. “To the best of our knowledge, no WCK team members are affiliated with Hamas,” a spokeswoman for the aid group said.Israel on Saturday said it had killed a World Central Kitchen worker it accused of taking part in the Hamas-led attack that started the war in Gaza last year, in the second Israeli strike to kill workers affiliated with the aid group.A spokeswoman for World Central Kitchen, a U.S.-based relief group, said on Saturday that three of its contractors had been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a vehicle. In a statement, the aid group said that it “had no knowledge that any individual in the vehicle had alleged ties” to the Hamas-led attack. “To the best of our knowledge, no WCK team members are affiliated with Hamas,” the spokeswoman, Linda Roth, said in an email. The Israeli military declined to comment on the two other workers World Central Kitchen reported were killed.The aid group said it was pausing operations in Gaza, where a dire humanitarian crisis is unfolding for some two million people. The organization took a similar action in April, after seven of its workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike.The Israeli military said on Saturday that the person it targeted in the latest strike had taken part in the Oct. 7 attack on Kibbutz Nir Oz, an Israeli village near the Gaza border where dozens of people were abducted. He had been monitored by Israeli “intelligence for a while and was struck following credible information regarding his real-time location,” the military said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Thanksgiving in America, when obsequious Trumpers genuflect to the president-elect | Arwa Mahdawi

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      JD Vance is being weird againMelania Trump has made it clear that her second stint at being first lady will be conducted entirely on her own terms. It’s been reported that she’s unlikely to move back to the White House and will spend a lot of the next four years flitting between New York and Florida. Maybe she’ll write another coffee table book. Maybe she’ll develop another caviar-infused skincare line. Who knows. But whatever she does, it’ll be in the service of her own interest, rather than the country’s.With Melania not particularly interested in being by Donald’s side, there’s a void to be filled. And it looks like JD Vance and Elon Musk are furiously competing to win the incoming president’s affections. Musk has basically been camping out at Mar-a-Lago since the election, and has earned “uncle status” according to Trump’s granddaughter Kai.The tech billionaire also had a seat at the Trump family table for Thanksgiving dinner, where he bopped to YMCA and presumably had a little giggle over a bizarre AI-generated video Trump tweeted which showed Donald popping out of a turkey Joe Biden was about to carve and gyrating. It’s not clear if Musk, who spent the rest of the day tweeting self-aggrandizing videos of himself, had any quality time with his children over the holiday but that seems to be his MO: urging people to have multiple kids while ignoring his own.JD Vance may be the next vice-president but from the looks of it, Musk very much seems to be Trump’s number two. Vance looks keen to change that, however, and celebrated Thanksgiving with a weird tweet of his own. The vice-president-elect posted an edited image of Norman Rockwell’s 1943 Thanksgiving painting Freedom from Want with Trump’s face Photoshopped on the patriarch and Vance Photoshopped over the wife. (To be clear: it’s not explicitly stated who the matriarch figure is in the painting but, while Rockwell’s cook is the model, the woman is often interpreted as being the wife of the man she’s standing next to.) In the original painting, the matriarch is holding up a turkey. In Vance’s version he – clad in an apron and blue dress – is holding up a very red map of America. Once upon a time Vance compared Trump to Hitler; now he’s eagerly doctoring pictures so he can depict himself as Trump’s trad wife.Why would Vance embarrass himself like this? Former Kamala Harris adviser Mike Nellis reckons “Vance is worried about Elon having more influence than him, so he thought posting this weird ass meme would win him favor again.” I’m not sure anyone should listen to a Democratic strategist about anything ever again but this interpretation does seem about right.While I couldn’t tell you exactly what went through Vance’s head when he posted an image of himself as an aproned matriarch, I can very confidently say that we have (at the very least) four more years of these sorts of posts. Forget the banality of evil, the Trump administration represents the inanity of evil: we’re going to see the passing of inhumane policies, the rollback of reproductive rights, and the gutting of public services alongside idiotic memes designed to “own the libs”. The online trolls have crawled out from below the bridge and now advise the president; the shitposters are in charge now.I guess it’s totally fine to threaten Muslim congresswomen in the US nowSpeaking of trolls, Trump-endorsed congressional candidate and Florida state senator Randy Fine tweeted a casual death threat to Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar – the only Muslim women in Congress – this week. “The Hebrew Hammer is coming,” Fine tweeted. “[Rashida Tlaib] and [Ilhan Omar] might consider leaving before I get there. #BombsAway.” Can you imagine if Tlaib or Omar had delivered a similar message to Fine? It would be front-page news and Biden would have made an outraged statement. This was barely covered. Fine is the same guy, by the way, who cheered the murder of 26-year-old American citizen Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, an activist reportedly killed by the Israeli forces while peacefully protesting illegal settlements in the West Bank.Blue Origin deletes video of female astronaut after sexist commentsAstronaut and MIT-trained engineer Emily Calandrelli became the 100th woman in space when she joined six space tourists in a Blue Origin launch. An Instagram video of her excited reaction to being in space was inundated with misogynistic comments, which led to Blue Origin taking it down. Being a woman in the public eye is a real barrel of laughs!A fifth woman has died as a likely result of abortion bansAccording to ProPublica, Porsha Ngumezi, a 35-year-old Texas woman, is the fifth woman who is known to have died because their medical care was delayed after miscarriages or because they couldn’t undergo legal abortions.Fox News’ Jesse Watters: ‘Trump’s going to treat Denver like a woman. He’s going to protect the city whether they like it or not’Poor Denver.Brazilian congressional committee votes for bill to ban abortion in all casesThat includes in cases of fetal deformation, rape or when the mother’s health is in danger. The proposed bill has to go to a special committee before it can advance further but the fact it has got this far is alarming.Walmart is the latest company to abandon its DEI initiativesThe right has declared war on DEI and it looks as if they’re winning. Not a good time for my (satirical) company Rent-a-Minority, I’ve got to say.Gen Z isn’t a big fan of dating apps“There is a growing romanticisation of in-person meeting and interaction,” one expert told the Guardian.Former ICC chief prosecutor says she faced threats and ‘thug-style tactics’Fatou Bensouda has said she experienced direct threats to herself and her family just for doing her job. Meanwhile, the US government and its allies continue to undermine the ICC and international law.Israel’s finance minister proposes ‘thinning out’ Gaza’s population“It is possible to create a situation where Gaza’s population will be reduced to half its current size in two years,” the Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said on Monday. (While these remarks were covered by the Israeli press, they strangely didn’t seem to be deemed newsworthy by a lot of the US press.) Israeli settlers are already preparing to occupy the strip and build new houses next to mass graves.The week in pawtriarchyWould you like to see a picture of a poorly penguin named Flop who learned to walk again because zoo staff made her a bespoke baby bouncer and treadmill? Of course you do. This Guardian piece is guaranteed to make you pen-grin. More

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      Israeli Strike in North Gaza Kills Dozens, Rescue Group Says

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      Israel was pressing forward with an operation in Gaza to combat what it described as a Hamas resurgence. In Lebanon, an uneasy cease-fire appeared to be largely holding.Dozens of people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes in northern Gaza and more were trapped under debris, according to emergency rescue workers in the territory, as a weekslong Israeli offensive continued to isolate the area.Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza, an emergency response group, said it believed that more than 75 people had been killed in strikes in Beit Lahia, a farming town north of Gaza City, although it said it had been unable to reach the site because of an Israeli blockade. Civil Defense does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its death tolls, but it said that families were among the dead.“Entire families were wiped out in northern Gaza and we don’t know anything about them,” the group said in a statement on Friday night. “And there are survivors who remain under the rubble for a long time, and there is no civil defense to rescue them.”Rescue workers have been unable to operate in northern Gaza since an Israeli offensive began almost two months ago. Internet and phone service to the area has also been unreliable in recent days, leaving both rescue workers and the families of those killed and missing with few ways to obtain reliable information.The Israeli military dismissed reports of airstrikes in Beit Lahia as “false Hamas propaganda” on Saturday, but said it was continuing its “counterterrorism activity against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.”The military “operates following precise and credible intelligence against Hamas terrorists and terror targets, not against the civilians in Gaza,” the military said in a statement. “We emphasize that the area in question is an active war zone.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israel-Hezbollah Cease-Fire Rests on a Wobbly Linchpin: Lebanon’s Army

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      The Lebanese Army is tasked with ensuring that Hezbollah abides by the cease-fire. It has failed at that task before.The fragile peace between Israel and Hezbollah largely hangs on 10,000 soldiers in the Lebanese Army.The last time it was tasked with enforcing a cease-fire, it plainly failed.The current cease-fire, which came into effect on Wednesday, calls for a 60-day truce between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, during which time Israeli forces gradually withdraw from Lebanon, and Hezbollah moves away from Lebanon’s border with Israel.To ensure Hezbollah’s retreat, the agreement relies heavily upon the Lebanese Army, a national military strained under competing priorities and sectarian complexities that has long proved unable — or unwilling — to rein in Hezbollah.In a new buffer zone along the border — a strip of land ranging from a few miles to 18 miles wide — the Lebanese Army is responsible for destroying all Hezbollah military infrastructure, confiscating any unauthorized weapons and blocking the transfer or production of arms. United Nations peacekeeping forces will sometimes accompany the Lebanese soldiers in a supporting role. On Wednesday, the army began deploying more soldiers to the region.But that approach has been tried before — and it did not work.The Israel-Hezbollah cease-fire that ended the 2006 Lebanon War, known as Resolution 1701, also called on the Lebanese Army to keep Hezbollah away from the border, with U.N. peacekeepers assisting. Years later, Hezbollah emerged even stronger than before, with extensive weaponry, infrastructure and tunnels across the border region.Yet despite those past failures, the international community is once again banking on the Lebanese Army. In recent months, the United States and other nations revived an effort to train, equip and fund Lebanese forces.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lebanese Residents of Baalbek Return to a Bombed-Out City

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      Tens of thousands of people who had fled the city of Baalbek returned to bombed-out restaurants, flattened apartment buildings and many of the dead still buried under the rubble.Hammers clanged against brick and metal as the residents of Baalbek set to work repairing their homes, desperate to restart their lives again.A day after a cease-fire ended Lebanon’s deadliest war in decades, tens of thousands of people who fled the violence had already returned on Thursday to the hard-hit city in the country’s east.Teenage girls snapped selfies in front of the ancient Roman temples. Excited young men on motorcycles performed doughnuts in the street, their back tires spinning up dust and shards of glass.But after weeks of pounding Israeli airstrikes, the scars were not easy to ignore: bombed-out restaurants, flattened apartment buildings, trees snapped like twigs. And many of the dead were still buried under the rubble, residents said.“I’m an old woman. I’m not affiliated with anyone. What did I do to deserve this?” said Taflah Amar, 79, as she swept debris from the front of her house, one of the few still standing on her street.“I’ve been crying all day,” she said.“What did I do to deserve this?” said Taflah Ammar, 79, at her home in Baalbek.Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Guardian view on the Lebanon ceasefire: a lasting regional peace must go through Gaza | Editorial

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      Unsurprisingly, Joe Biden struck an upbeat, optimistic note on Tuesday as he announced a US-brokered ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah. “It reminds us that peace is possible,” said Mr Biden, as the deal brought to an end the 14-month conflict, during which close to 4,000 people lost their lives and hundreds of thousands were displaced.For the outgoing American president, who has signally failed to restrain Israel’s excesses after the heinous Hamas massacre of 7 October 2023, the agreement amounts to a valedictory breakthrough after months of weak and ineffective diplomacy. More importantly, it affords the suffering people of Lebanon some respite, after a bombing campaign and ground invasion that paid scant regard to the appalling impact on civilian lives. For the 60,000 citizens of Israel forced to flee the country’s northern border region by Hezbollah rockets, there is the prospect of a return home after spending more than a year in displacement camps.Peace on Israel’s northern front will inevitably spark hopes of wider progress, as the disgraceful, savage destruction of Gaza continues to the south, and hope dwindles for surviving Israeli hostages held captive there. But it would be unwise to overstate the catalytic potential of an agreement that was made on the terms of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and to suit his interests.Crucially, Hezbollah’s weakness meant that Israel was able to decouple the Lebanon and Gaza wars, reaching a ceasefire that leaves it with a free hand in the latter. Based on a UN security council resolution that ended the 2006 Lebanon war but was never fully implemented, the deal will oblige Israeli forces to depart and Hezbollah to pull back north of the Litani River in southern Lebanon. This time the buffer zone created is more likely to stick. Hezbollah is currently in a state of disarray, denuded of leaders, infrastructure and military hardware.With the live threat of a powerful Iranian proxy on Israel’s doorstep removed, Mr Netanyahu is free to double down on his bellicose objectives elsewhere – notably in relation to Tehran. In Gaza, meanwhile, he has shown no willingness to engage in peace talks brokered by Qatar, which suspended its mediating role this month in exasperation. The unconscionable death toll there now stands at more than 44,000 – the vast majority women and children.In a region on the brink, any lasting settlement must go through Gaza and involve the creation of realistic conditions for a viable Palestinian state. As Óscar Romero, the martyred Salvadoran bishop, once wrote, “Peace is not the silence of cemeteries / Peace is not the silent result of violent repression” – a warning that resonates starkly in Gaza’s ongoing tragedy. But Mr Netanyahu has no desire to be a peacemaker, as he attempts to dodge a corruption trial, and an election that would empower the anger of voters following 7 October. His interest lies rather in perpetuating a sense of national emergency; and in indulging far-right members of his cabinet who could bring him down, and who dream of new settlements in a broken, ethnically cleansed Gaza.As Donald Trump prepares to replace Joe Biden in the White House, the world must hope that his appetite for imposing immediate solutions opens up new possibilities. For now, welcome developments in the north offer little comfort to the desperate inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. More

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      The Israel-Hezbollah Cease-Fire: What to Know

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      Under the agreement, Israel will gradually withdraw its forces from Lebanon over the next 60 days, and Hezbollah will not entrench itself near the Israeli border.A cease-fire meant to end the deadliest war in decades between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah officially took effect early Wednesday, less than a day after President Biden announced the deal and Israel approved its terms.Thousands of Lebanese began to return to their homes in the first hours of the cease-fire. The fighting has killed thousands in Lebanon and around 100 Israeli civilians and soldiers. The conflict has also displaced about one million people in Lebanon, in addition to doing vast physical damage there, and about 60,000 people in Israel.Lebanon’s government agreed on Wednesday morning to the deal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed it on Tuesday night and argued that a truce would allow Israel to rebuild its weapon stockpiles while it works to isolate Hamas, the Hezbollah ally that Israel is fighting in Gaza.Here’s what you need to know:A 60-day truceHow will it be enforced?What are the obstacles to a permanent deal?Why did the sides agree to stop fighting?How did we get here?A 60-day truceThe agreement, mediated by American and French diplomats, calls for Israel and Hezbollah to observe a 60-day truce.During that period, Israel would withdraw its forces gradually from southern Lebanon.Hezbollah forces would move north away from the Israeli border and the Lebanese military will send more troops to Lebanon’s south.The withdrawals would effectively create a buffer zone between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, along the Israeli border.If the truce holds though the 60-day period, negotiators hope the agreement will become permanent.How will it be enforced?Under the terms of the deal, a U.N. peacekeeping force, along with the Lebanese Army, will keep the peace in the border zone, as envisioned in a 2006 United Nations Security Council resolution that ended the previous Israel-Hezbollah war but that was never fully carried out.The cease-fire will be overseen by several countries, including the United States and France, as well as by the United Nations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Cease-Fire Deal Leaves Beleaguered Palestinians in Gaza Feeling Forgotten

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      As a tenuous cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah began to take hold early Wednesday, some Palestinians in Gaza said they felt forgotten, nearly 14 months into a war that has shattered the enclave and killed tens of thousands of Gazans.Announcing the deal on Tuesday, President Biden said he hoped it could pave the way to an end to the war in Gaza. But for months, cease-fire talks between Israel and the Palestinian armed group Hamas, which sparked the war with its deadly October 2023 attack on Israel, have stalled as Israeli airstrikes and shelling have continued to pound Gaza. Palestinians there say they have lost hope that the war will ever end.Majed Abu Amra, a 26-year-old displaced from his home and living in Deir al Balah in central Gaza, said he was frustrated that the international community had managed to secure a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, while Gazans were still trying to survive relentless Israeli bombardment.“There is no global pressure to achieve an agreement here,” he said. “It is not only the occupation that is killing us — the world is complicit in what we are suffering,” Mr. Abu Amra added, referring to the presence of Israeli forces in Gaza.“The blood of Gazans has become cheap,” he said.A lasting cease-fire has proved harder to reach in Gaza because the hostages held by Hamas give it more leverage in negotiations, and because any deal with the group could create political peril for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.That leaves Gazans heading into a second straight winter of war. United Nations agencies have repeatedly warned that Gazans face a worsening crisis, with falling temperatures adding to the plight of hundreds of thousands living in makeshift shelters. The war in has displaced the majority of the enclave’s 2.2 million people, many of them multiple times.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More