🇮🇱🪖Foreign mercenaries, who were sent by Western allies to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, are currently leaving Ukraine and heading to Israel to participate in the IDF operation in the Gaza Strip, Ukrainian media report.

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🇺🇸 The White House is preparing to make a supplemental funding request to provide additional security assistance to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan, American media reported citing US officials.

The report also said the supplemental request will include additional funding to bolster US border security.

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🇱🇧🇮🇱 Hezbollah posted a video of an ATGM operator eliminating two Israeli soldiers 0:20

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🇺🇸 US House Republicans are nominating Congressman Steve Scalise to serve as the next House speaker, after the lower chamber of Congress ousted Kevin McCarthy from the role last week, an American newspaper reported on Wednesday.

House Republicans nominated Scalise during a closed meeting in a vote of 113-99, the report said, citing multiple lawmakers familiar with the matter. Scalise currently serves as House Majority Leader.

The House of Representatives will now vote to elect a speaker, which they must do before conducting regular legislative business. House Democrats are set to put their support behind Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

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According to multiple American officials, US intelligence suggests that key Iranian leaders were caught off guard by the Hamas attack in Israel, raising doubts about Iran's direct involvement in planning the assault.

The Iranian officials unaware of the attack are typically involved with Iran's Quds Force, which supports proxy forces, US officials say.

While the United States and its allies believe Iran's long-standing support for Hamas makes it complicit in the attack, US intelligence officials, like DNI Deputy Director Morgan Muir, have conveyed there is no direct link between Iran and the Hamas operation.

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❗️ The Israeli Cabinet of Ministers announces the formation of an emergency government and a “military council,” media reports

❗️ A UN Security Council meeting on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will be held on Friday, a Security Council source told Sputnik

Fact check: Hamas 'beheading babies' story based on weak evidence

Amid the fresh escalation of Middle East violence, a story by Israeli reporter Nicole Zedeck, in which she reported that Israeli soldiers claimed they found babies with heads severed by Hamas militants, was seized upon by the Western mainstream media despite a lack of official confirmation.

Sputnik fact-checked the media hype around the swirling Hamas "beheadings" story, and found it to be based on weak evidence.

Check out the full Sputnik's investigation

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❗️ The United States and Western countries put pressure on Mahmoud Abbas to condemn the Hamas operation, but he refused, after which they threatened to stop aid to Palestine, a source in the autonomy administration told Sputnik

🇵🇸🇮🇱 The infiltration of thousands of Palestinian fighters into Israel from Gaza seems to have at least temporarily caught Israel’s military and intelligence services totally off guard. As Israel recovers, questions have swirled about exactly what Tel Aviv may have known ahead of time.

Sputnik asked senior Israeli intelligence experts to weigh in.

Check out the full interview

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❗️ Mahmoud Abbas will meet with Antony Blinken in Amman on Friday, a source in the Palestinian administration told Sputnik

❗️ Air defense systems have destroyed a Ukrainian drone over the Belgorod region, the Russian Defense Ministry said

A private residential house caught fire because of the drone's wreckage, the region's governor added.

❗️Two people were injured when a downed drone crashed into a house near Belgorod, two more people may be under the rubble, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said

The Hamas attack into southern Israel became possible due to an array of intelligence lapses, along with operational and logistical weaknesses of the military, a US report has claimed, citing senior Israeli security officials.

▪️ Firstly, intelligence officers had failed to duly track key communication channels resorted to by Palestinian attackers.

▪️ Secondly, there had been an overreliance by the Israeli military on border surveillance equipment, which the attackers had no trouble shutting down.

▪️ Thirdly, Israeli commanders had been amassed at the time of the attack at one border base. After it was overrun, communication had been cut off with the rest of the Israeli armed forces.

▪️ Willingness to “take at face value” statements by Gazan military leaders made in wiretapped telephone conversations, that they were not preparing an attack. Israeli intelligence is reportedly now determining whether these calls were real or staged.

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❗️ Kim Jong-un congratulated Putin on the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the DPRK and the Russia, which are “developing in the direction of eternal prosperity,” Korean Central News Agency reported

Israel’s defense industry: can Tel Aviv survive without American weapons?

The escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has underlined Tel Aviv’s potentially precarious security situation, with Washington’s focus on the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine sparking questions about whether the US can afford to back two allies at once. In this light, it’s worth taking a closer look at Israel’s domestic defense sector.

What prompted the birth of Israel’s defense industry? Does Israel actually need American arms?

Find out here

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❗️Two people died when a drone crashed near Belgorod; a child may remain under the rubble of a house, the governor said.

The governor added that one victim is in a coma, the second is in serious condition.

Why US warship deployment nearby Israel spells escalation risks

In response to the surprise attack by Hamas on Israeli cities on October 7, the US deployed a carrier strike group, led by the USS Gerald R. Ford, to the Eastern Mediterranean.

Retired CIA intelligence officer Larry Johnson expressed concerns about the situation, warning that increased US military presence could heighten the danger and volatility. He noted that such involvement could lead to airstrikes on Palestinian and Hamas positions, potentially resulting in civilian casualties.

Johnson drew a historical parallel to the 1983 conflict with Hezbollah, where US warships were deployed off the coast of Israel and Lebanon, leading to a series of terrorist attacks causing significant loss of life. He emphasized the potential for a similar scenario if the US chooses to engage militarily in the region.

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Holocaust comparisons seek to ‘exceptionalize’ Hamas violence, not contextualize it

In the 75 years since Israel was founded in 1948 there have been numerous civilian massacres by both Israelis and Palestinians - a context that has been erased in recent reporting on the killings of hundreds of Jewish civilians in towns on the Gaza border, a Jewish peace activist told Sputnik.

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