The US intelligence agencies have reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “viability as a leader” is “in jeopardy”.
The agencies made this assessment in an annual report on the national security threats facing the United States that was presented to Congress on Monday. “Distrust of Netanyahu’s ability to rule has deepened and broadened across the public from its already high levels before the war, and we expect large protests demanding his resignation and new elections,” the report said. “A different, more moderate government is a possibility.”
Israeli prime minister has faced fierce criticism for his government’s failure to predict or forestall the October 7 attack in which 1,200 Israelis.
The US intelligence report notes that the Israeli population broadly supports the destruction of Hamas. But its assessment of Netanyahu’s political fortunes nevertheless delivers a stark report on a leader President Joe Biden once claimed to “love.”
Meanwhile, Lebanon’s Hezbollah group said it carried out a drone attack on Monday against an Israeli air defence outpost across the border in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
It said the rare attack, in which it deployed four drones, hit their target with “accuracy” in what it said was another operation in support of Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967.
The Iran-aligned Hezbollah and the Israeli military have been exchanging fire along Lebanon’s southern border since October, when Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, facing war with Israel in the Gaza Strip.
Moreover,
After casualties of hundreds of Palestinian women in Israel’s ongoing genocidal attack on Gaza, Iran’s top human rights official says that Israel should be expelled from the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
Kazem Gharibabadi, secretary of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights, made the comments in three identical letters to the UN secretary general, the president of the UN Economic and Social Council, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Alluding to Israel’s ruthless crimes in Gaza, he said “What is more deplorable… is the situation of women and girls.”
Gharibabadi pointed out that seventy percent of the victims of the Israeli murderous onslaught on the besieged strip are women and children.
He quoted several UN reports that demonstrated the terrible effects of the conflict on Gazan women and girls in his letters.
“Unfortunately, this regime, with such a dark history, is a member of the [UN] Commission on the Status of Women that -according to the declared objective- was formed to establish gender equality and empower women, and whose one of its important tasks is to accelerate the fulfillment of the needs of women all over the world.”
I am an experienced writer, analyst, and author. My exposure in English journalism spans more than 28 years. In the past, I have been working with daily The Muslim (Lahore Bureau), daily Business Recorder (Lahore/Islamabad Bureaus), Daily Times, Islamabad, daily The Nation (Lahore and Karachi). With daily The Nation, I have served as Resident Editor, Karachi. Since 2009, I have been working as a Freelance Writer/Editor for American organizations.
