Drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), have revolutionized modern warfare by providing military forces with unprecedented intelligence, surveillance, and attack capabilities.
The Russian Defense Ministry has released footage of reconnaissance drone crews and FPV kamikaze drone operators tracking and destroying a group of Ukrainian infiltrators in the direction of Artemovsk (Bakhmut).
Since the beginning of the special military operation in Ukraine, the Russian Armed Forces have been using kamikaze drones, which are designed to explode on impact with a target.
Both reconnaissance and kamikaze drones have their own unique advantages and disadvantages in modern warfare. Reconnaissance drones provide valuable intelligence that can inform military decision-making and reduce the risk of casualties by allowing troops to avoid dangerous situations. Kamikaze drones, on the other hand, offer a low-cost alternative to traditional weapons systems for certain types of missions.
Watch Russian Drones Eliminate Ukrainian Infantry
Since the beginning of the special military operation in Ukraine, the Russian armed forces have been effectively using various types of drones. They can be equipped with a variety of sensors and weapons, making them versatile tools for reconnaissance, surveillance and combat operations.
The Russian Defense Ministry has released footage of Novorossiysk paratroopers using UAVs to eliminate Ukrainian infantry in the Zaporozhye region.
The ministry noted that after launching an attack drone with munitions on mountings, the operator identified the crew of a damaged Ukrainian infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) and enemy personnel moving along trenches as targets.
Watch: Russian Tank Crew's Luxury Dugout in Special Op Zone
Russian tank crews have a reputation for being some of the most skilled and formidable in the world. Their tanks are equipped with advanced technology and weapons systems that make them a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield.
The Russian Defense Ministry has released footage of a tank commander with the callsign "Adam" showing how his crew lives in the special military operation zone. According to the tank commander, everything has been prepared for the onset of winter, as the hut is insulated, has a kerosene stove, and even a game console inside.
Russian tank crews undergo rigorous training and selection processes to ensure they are capable of operating these powerful machines in combat. Their skills and experience have been demonstrated during the special military operation in Ukraine.
Ukraine Loses Over 1,580 Soldiers in Donetsk Direction in Past Week - MoD
Ukraine has lost more than 1,580 soldiers both killed and wounded in the Donetsk direction over the past week, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Friday.
Over the given period, the Russian armed forces have repulsed 49 attacks by Ukrainian troops in the Donetsk direction, 11 attacks in the Krasny Liman direction, eight attacks in the Zaporozhye direction and two attacks in the South Donetsk direction.
"The enemy’s losses over the week in this [Donetsk] direction amounted to more than 1,580 military personnel killed and wounded, two tanks, 16 armored combat vehicles, 13 vehicles and 31 field artillery guns," the ministry said in a statement.
Kiev has also lost up to 1,100 soldiers in the Krasny Liman direction, more than 600 soldiers in the South Donetsk direction, 425 soldiers in the Kupyansk direction, 335 soldiers in the Zaporozhye direction and up to 290 soldiers in the Kherson direction.
Additionally, Russian forces prevented Ukraine's attempts to land sabotage groups on the left bank of the Dnepr River, the ministry said.
Lavrov: 'Time to Realize Deadlock of Conflict West Launched Using Ukraine Against Russia'
On Friday, Moscow's top diplomat, Sergey Lavrov, attended a joint meeting of the boards of the Russian and Belarusian Foreign Ministries.
Vladimir Zelensky has clearly failed to meet the expectations of Western countries, thus Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasized on Friday that it is imperative for NATO and the EU to recognize the current impasse in their ongoing conflict with Russia, using the Kiev regime.
"You hear the assessments of clear-headed politicians in NATO and the European Union. Better late than never. It's time for them to realize the complete deadlock of the conflict that they had launched with the hands of the Zelensky regime against the Russian Federation," Lavrov said.
He noted that Moscow hears talk that it is time for NATO and EU countries to cut aid to Ukraine.
"And this is not just talk. There are already concrete difficulties both in Europe and in the United States to find spare cash to continue backing the Zelensky regime, which has clearly failed to live up to expectations, has clearly failed to play the role of a tool to undermine the security of the Russian Federation, to snuff out our common history, culture, and to eradicate everything Russian on the territory that this regime continues to control," the diplomacy chief added.
Lavrov added that the longer the hostilities in Ukraine persist, the more challenging the conditions will become for commencing peace talks.
"At the time, the president said that those who are now against negotiations, that is, including those who have forbidden Zelensky from signing the agreement already reached in April 2022, should understand that the longer they force Zelensky to wage war, the more difficult it will be for them to create the conditions for negotiations to begin," Lavrov emphasized.
Lavrov reiterated that Russia "has never walked away from negotiations".
Joint Security Architecture in Eurasia
Russia and Belarus will join forces to build a new security architecture in Europe and Asia without relying on Western countries, Lavrov said on Friday.
"Against the backdrop of the current international situation, we will pay special attention to the prospects for shaping a European security system," Lavrov maintained.
He added that the actions of the collective West, which among other things triggered the Ukrainian crisis, "have effectively torn down the entire security system in Europe, while the West has completely destroyed the principles of equality and indivisible security."
Lavrov also noted that, with NATO expanding toward the western borders of the Union State of Russia and Belarus, there was no point in seeking a consensus with the West that would ensure regional stability.
"Therefore, the goal is to build a sustainable architecture of security and cooperation throughout Eurasia together with constructively minded countries and existing integration associations," the Russian diplomacy chief concluded.
Lavrov said the diplomats would look at how to foster cooperation and build up trade links between Russia and Belarus, on the one hand, and their partners in Asia, Africa and Latin America, on the other.
Over half of US adults from ages 18 to 24 believe the ongoing crisis in Gaza should be resolved by abolishing the state of Israel and turning it over to Hamas and the Palestinian people, a new poll has found.
The Harvard-Harris poll, conducted this week and released on Friday, showed that 51% of young Americans believe the Israeli state should be “ended,” compared with 32% who favor a two-state solution. Just 17% said Arab countries should absorb the Palestinians to resolve the conflict. Among all age groups, six in ten Americans call for a two-state deal, while only 19% want Israel to be given to the Palestinians.
The survey marked the latest poll showing a dramatic divide between Americans young and old on issues relating to Israel and the Jewish people amid the ongoing war between West Jerusalem and Hamas. An Economist/YouGov poll released last week found that nearly half of US adults under age 30 either believe the Jewish Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany is a myth or are not sure that it happened.
Two-thirds of 18- to 24-year-olds in the Harvard-Harris poll said they agree that “Jews as a class are oppresses and should be treated as oppressors.” By contrast, 73% of Americans in all age groups – and 91% of respondents ages 65 and older – disagreed with the anti-Jewish statement. Similarly, half of the youngest respondents said they support Hamas in the war, while 81% of overall participants favor Israel. Six in ten young adults – but only 37% of overall respondents – believe Israel is committing genocide against the people of Gaza.
Americans are similarly divided on identity politics. For instance, 79% of young adults believe that “white people are oppressors” and that non-white people should therefore be shown favoritism in college admissions and employment, the poll found. Among all age groups, 65% of Americans oppose such anti-white discrimination.
Just 42% of Americans approve of how US President Joe Biden is handling the Israel-Hamas war, down from 45% in November, the poll showed. Only 32% believe that the country is on the “right track,” and 33% see the nation’s economy as heading in the right direction.
Such perceptions may bode poorly for Biden as he seeks reelection in 2024. The president has a net favorability rating of minus 10%, the poll showed. By comparison, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has the highest favorability rating among all political figures listed in the survey, at plus 18%.
The poll found that if the election were held today, former President Donald Trump would defeat Biden by a margin of 43% to 35%, while Kennedy would garner 17% of the votes. More than seven in ten Americans believe that a vote for Biden would essentially be a vote for Vice President Kamala Harris because the 81-year-old incumbent wouldn’t likely complete a second term.
The chronicle of the Israel-Palestine conflict long foretold
Between 1919 and 1948, at least nine official reports commissioned by the British and US governments issued a series of dire warnings about the consequences of the Jewish colonization of Palestine.
But in the headlong rush to accommodate the aims of the Zionist movement, born in Eastern Europe in the late 19th century, all these warnings were brushed aside.
Seventy-five years after the foundation of Israel, the causes of the seemingly insoluble Arab-Israeli conflict and the origins of the current crisis in Gaza can be found in prophetic words written up to a century ago.
In 1922, Palestine was one of several former Ottoman territories placed by the League of Nations under temporary mandates to be administered by France and Great Britain in preparation for them to become independent nations.
In due course Iraq obtained its independence in 1932, followed by Lebanon in 1943, Syria in 1944, and the Kingdom of Jordan in 1946.
The people of Palestine, however, were to be denied the benefit of US President Woodrow Wilson’s post-war doctrine of the “self-determination of peoples.”
In December 1917, the British government, at war with Germany, and anxious to secure the support of America and international Jewish opinion, had publicly proclaimed its backing for the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”
One of the foremost opponents of the declaration by Lord Balfour, Britain’s foreign secretary, seen by many as a betrayal of earlier pledges of independence made to the Arabs, was Sir Edwin Montagu, secretary of state for India and the only Jewish member of the Cabinet.
Like many non-Zionist Jews, he held that Judaism was a faith, not a nationality, and feared the creation of a “national home of the Jewish people” would mean Muslims and Christians “are to make way for the Jews, that the Jews should be put in all positions of preference,” and that the Arabs would become foreigners in their own land.
Palestinians fleeing the Israeli ground offensive arrive in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023. (AP)
Regardless, in April 1918, the British government gave its blessing to a Zionist Commission to Palestine, led by Chaim Weizmann, the leader of the British Zionist Federation and the future first president of Israel.
In a memo to the Foreign Office, Col. Ronald Storrs, the British military governor of Palestine, warned that the commission lacked “a sense of the dramatic actuality,” and that the Zionist project “can hardly open for the inhabitants the beatific vision of a new heaven and a new earth.”
The commission’s report formed the basis of the Zionist movement’s presentation to the post-war Paris Peace Conference in 1919, to which no Arab representatives from Palestine were invited, but at which the former territories of the Ottoman Empire were carved up between the victorious allies.
After reading the Zionist delegation’s proposals that the conference should “recognize the historic title of the Jewish people to Palestine,” Lord Curzon, Britain’s then-foreign secretary, wrote to his predecessor Balfour to express his alarm.
Weizmann, he believed, “contemplates a Jewish State (with) a subordinate population of Arabs, etc. ruled by Jews; the Jews in possession of the fat of the land, and directing the Administration ... with the Arabs as hewers of wood and drawers of water.”
Although “the poor Arabs” formed the vast majority of the population of Palestine, they were “only allowed to look through the keyhole” while the Zionists planned “a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine.”
President Wilson, reminding his wartime allies that “one of the fundamental principles to which the USA adhered was the consent of the governed,” dispatched a commission to Palestine.
Reporting in 1922, the King-Crane Commission recommended “serious modification of the extreme Zionist program for Palestine of unlimited immigration of Jews.”
It added: “The non-Jewish population of Palestine — nearly nine-tenths of the whole — are emphatically against the entire Zionist program … To subject a people so minded to unlimited Jewish immigration, and to steady financial and social pressure to surrender the land, would be a gross violation of (their) rights.”
Yet the commission’s recommendations, and the rights of the Palestinians, were ignored.
In the so-called Churchill Memorandum, issued in July 1922, the British government declared that the Jewish people were in Palestine “as of right and not on sufferance,” and that in pursuit of the goal of establishing a Jewish national home in Palestine “it is necessary that the Jewish community in Palestine should be able to increase its numbers by immigration.”
Alarmed, Palestinian representatives wrote to British administrators to make the case for a role in their own future, and for “the immediate creation of a national government which shall be responsible to a parliament of all, whose members are elected by the people of the country — Muslims, Christians and Jews.”
The alternative, they warned, was “division and tension between Arabs and Zionists increasing day by day and resulting in general retrogression.”
But, again, the warning went unheeded.
In the decade from 1920 to 1929, about 100,000 Jewish immigrants came to Palestine, doubling the Jewish population in a country with a total population in 1922 of about 750,000, of whom almost 600,000 were Muslims.
In August 1929, tensions created not only by the rising tide of immigration, but also by the anti-Arab policies of Jewish organizations spilled over into outbreaks of intercommunal violence that left hundreds of Jews and Arabs dead, and many injured.
In 1930 the Shaw Commission, appointed by the British government to investigate the troubles, concluded that the fundamental cause was “the Arab feeling of animosity and hostility toward the Jews consequent upon the disappointment of their political and national aspirations and fear for their economic future.”
Following the widespread 1929 Palestine riots, John Hope Simpson (L) was sent to British Mandate Palestine on a fact finding mission, which resulted in the Hope Simpson Report in 1930. Center, the King-Crane Commission. (Supplied/Oberlin College Archive)
Immigration to Palestine, the commission found, was in effect under the control of the Zionist General Federation of Jewish Labor, which selected only Jews for admission.
This policy of racial discrimination also extended to the recruitment of only Jewish labor to work on the Jewish farms and settlements that were springing up on land bought by well-funded international Jewish organizations.
The “persistent and deliberate boycott of Arab labor,” the commission concluded, was “a constant and increasing source of danger to the country.”
Consequently, in October 1930, Lord Passfield, the British secretary of state for the colonies, announced plans to reclaim authority from the Jewish Agency over the issues of immigration and land purchase.
But that policy, designed to both appease and improve the lot of the Arabs in Palestine, was short-lived. It was countermanded the following year by an extraordinary letter from British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald to Chaim Weizmann, read out in the House of Commons on Feb. 13, 1931.
MacDonald reassured Weizmann that “the obligation to facilitate Jewish immigration and to encourage close settlement by Jews on the land remains a positive obligation of the Mandate.”
As the exhaustive UN document “Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem” notes, “this sudden reversal of British policy, coming as it did after Palestinian hopes for fair play had been raised by the Passfield White Paper, did little to improve the deteriorating situation in Palestine.”
International events, in the shape of the rise of the antisemitic Nazi party in Germany, then conspired to make matters even worse. During the 1930s a quarter of a million Jews emigrated to Palestine, with 134,000 arriving between 1933, the year Adolf Hitler took power, and 1936.
More violence between the two communities exploded in 1933 and, although the causes were blindingly obvious, yet another British commission was appointed in 1937 to find out why.
The Peel Commission concluded that the Arab reaction to the “sudden and striking” increase in Jewish immigration was “quite natural. All that the Arab leaders had felt in 1929 they now felt more bitterly … the greater the Jewish inflow, the greater the obstacle to their attainment of national independence.”
Recognizing that reconciling the statehood ambitions of the Jews and the demands of the Palestinians to independence was not possible under the Mandate, the commission raised the prospect of partition, which “seems to offer at least a chance of ultimate peace.”
But the proposal was rejected by both the Arab Higher Committee, determined to achieve the promised full independence for Palestine, and the 1937 Zionist Congress, determined to transform the whole of Palestine into a Jewish state.
After the failure of a conference in London in 1939 on the eve of the Second World War, attended by the Jewish Agency and representatives of the Palestinians and the Arab states of Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Transjordan and Yemen, Britain made one more attempt to unravel the Gordian knot it had created.
In May 1939, Malcolm MacDonald, the British colonial secretary, issued a white paper that would be the British government’s last statement of policy on Palestine.
This rejected the idea of partition, or the creation of either a Jewish or Arab state, proposing instead to strictly restrict Jewish immigration and land acquisition, and “the establishment within 10 years of an independent Palestine State ... in which Arabs and Jews share in government.”
Although the coming of the war put consideration of such plans on hold, even as Britain was battling the Nazi regime responsible for instigating the Holocaust, militant Jewish groups began a campaign of terror in Palestine.
Throughout the war years, groups such as the Stern Gang, the Irgun and the Haganah — all of which would merge in 1948 to form the Israel Defense Forces — attacked British targets, carrying out political assassinations, kidnappings and acts of terrorism.
The most serious of these included the bombing of the offices of the British Government Secretariat in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in July 1946, which killed more than 80 Arab, Jewish and British civil servants, and the assassination by the Stern Gang of Lord Moyne, the British minister for the Middle East, in Cairo in 1944.
Despite the public condemnation of the acts of “a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany” by British wartime leader Winston Churchill, a long-time supporter of Zionism, the Zionists would soon get their way.
Following the failure of another conference in London, in February 1947 the British finally gave up, relinquished the mandate for Palestine, and handed the problem they had created to the fledgling UN.
The UN proposed the partition of Palestine into two independent states, with the city of Jerusalem, so important to all three Abrahamic faiths, to be administered by a “Special International Regime.”
Although the Arabs still outnumbered the Jews two to one, the plan allocated 56 percent of the territory to the Zionists and was rejected by the Arab Higher Committee, the Arab League and Arab governments throughout the region.
Following the adoption of Resolution 181 by the UN General Assembly on Nov. 29, 1947, and the announcement by Britain two weeks later that it would end its mandate on May 15 the following year, Palestine descended into civil war.
On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, head of the Jewish Agency, declared the establishment of the State of Israel, and the stage was set for 75 years of strife and oppression, of which the events on and after Oct. 7, 2023, are merely the latest manifestation.
Writing in 1968, the British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, who had attended the 1919 Paris Peace Conference as a British delegate, passed a judgment on the tragedy of Palestine that holds true to this day.
“The reason why the State of Israel exists today … is that, for 30 years, Jewish immigration was imposed on the Palestinian Arabs by British military power,” he wrote.
“If Palestine had ... become an independent Arab state in 1918, Jewish immigrants would never have been admitted into Palestine in large enough numbers to enable them to overwhelm the Palestinian Arabs in this Arab people’s own country.”
The tragedy in Palestine, he concluded, “is not just a local one; it is a tragedy for the world, because it is an injustice that is a menace to the world’s peace.”
A funeral attended by dozens of mourners has been held for Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abudaqa in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis.
Al Jazeera television cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa who was killed during an Israeli army bombing on the Gaza Strip, was laid to rest on Saturday per Islamic last rites following his funeral prayer, which was attended by hundreds of Palestinians.
Samer Abu Daqqa's body, bearing his bullet-proof vest and helmet, was carried through a crowd in the city of Khan Yunis before being buried in a grave dug by fellow journalists.
Samer Abudaqa [Screengrab/Al Jazeera]
His mother Umm Maher Abu Daqqa accused Israel of targeting journalists, "especially those working for Al Jazeera".
Abu Daqqa, born in 1978, was reporting from a school in Khan Yunis when he was hit by a drone strike on Friday, said the Qatar-based Al Jazeera television network.
His colleague, Gaza bureau chief Wael al Dahdouh, was wounded in the same attack. Dahdouh had lost his wife and two children in a separate Israeli strike in the initial weeks of the war.
Wael ed-Dahduh, Al Jazeera's Gaza correspondent, was also injured in the same attack and attended his colleague's funeral.
Abu Daqqa and Wael ed-Dahduh were injured in the Israeli attack on Friday near the Ferkhane School in Khan Younis city, where the displaced people were staying.
OTHERS
Colleagues and family members mourn over the body of Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa, who was killed during Israeli bombardment, during his funeral in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on December 16, 2023. / Photo: AFP
It was reported that ambulances were barred from entering the Ferkhane School area, where Abu Daqqa was shifted after being injured amid Israeli attacks, while first aid teams were unable to enter the area surrounded by Israeli forces.
For several hours, medical teams were denied access to the school where the journalist was lying in a pool of blood.
Later, Al Jazeera television announced that Abu Daqqa had died, and local sources stated that three civil defense workers who wanted to help those trapped in the school were also killed in the Israeli attack.
On Wednesday, the Gaza government media office said at least 87 journalists have been killed in the ongoing Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7.
Also, at least 18,800 Palestinians have since been killed and 51,000 injured in the Israeli onslaught, according to Gaza’s health authorities.
The Israeli death toll in the Hamas attack stands at 1,200, while more than 130 hostages are still held by the Palestinian group in Gaza, according to official figures.
