The Israeli military is converging on Gaza, as it continues to pummel the Palestinians from air, sea and land.

The Operation, dubbed "Pillars of Defence" - is on the verge of turning into a new invasion, as Tel Aviv says it's prepared to go all the way - under the pretext of self-defence.

3 Israelis and at least 15 Palestinians - including children and a pregnant woman - have already been killed.

Political scientist, activist and author Norman Finkelstein doubts that the current crisis in Gaza will further escalate.

A UN agency working for Palestinian refugees said that one of its teachers was killed in northern Gaza on Thursday by an Israeli airstrike, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters here.

"The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) says that one of its teachers was killed on Thursday by an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza," Nesirky said at a daily news briefing here.

"Marwan Abu El Qumsan, an Arabic teacher at the Agency's Preparatory Boys School in Jabalia, was killed, while his brother was severely injured," Nesirky said.

The Relief and Works Agency expressed its condolences to Marwan 's family on their tragic loss and reiterated its concern about the escalation of violence, which puts civilians on both sides of the conflict at risk, he said.

The incoming top commander in charge of the United States' military efforts in Afghanistan made remarks to Congress on Thursday that suggest he sees a US presence extending overseas well past US President Barack Obama's deadline of 2014.

Gen. Joseph Dunford told members of the Senate this week that he envisions the US continuing its operations in Afghanistan indefinitely, dismissing the president's long-standing promise to end America's lengthiest war during the next two years.

"[W]e'll be there beyond 2014 to secure our objectives," Gen. Dunford told lawmakers on the Hill early Thursday as he fielded questioning from Congress before they agree with Pres. Obama's decision to make him the new commander of the Afghanistan war.

Most recently the four-star officer has been tasked with serving as assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, a role that has made him responsible for directing combat forces in the now-defunct Iraq war.

Despite pleas to soon end the war from Pres. Obama delivered throughout his first term in office, on the campaign trail while vying for a second term and, most recently, during his re-election victory speech, the likely next commander of US troops in Afghanistan sees the US staying overseas for the unforeseeable future. Speaking to the the Senate Armed Services Committee, the general suggested that the US cannot retire from its war overseas until the Afghan National Security Forces are properly trained to battle the insurgents that led then-President George W. Bush to send Americans into war after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Yesterday, Wed. 14th Nov. 2012 Israel launched the latest in a long line of "Operations" that stretch back over 60 years aimed at terrorizing the people of Palestine. By naming the attack 'Operation 'pillar of cloud" the Israeli military was unambiguous about its intent: to blow up as much of Gaza and as many Palestinians as they saw fit.

Why do Palestinians fire rockets into Israel? The vast majority of them, and I mean the VAST majority either miss their target or make a small hole in the ground far from their intended target. The rocket attacks appear to serve only as justification for the Israeli military to attack Gaza and murder Palestinians. So what's the point?

The point is that the rocket attacks are the Palestinians ONLY way of protesting against the 60 year long occupation of their land responding to unprovoked Israeli attacks against and murder of Palestinian civilians. Think about that. The Palestinians have no option to appeal to the international community because no one listens. They have zero chance of the Western media applying pressure to halt Israeli aggression and redress Palestinian grievances because the Western media is unashamedly biased towards Israel.

The Palestinians have two choices: they can sit quietly by and allow the IDF to arbitrarily and summarily murder them, or they can fire primitive rockets at the closest targets inside Israel and hope that they make the Israeli government think twice. But even here the Palestinians have a problem: the Israeli government welcomes the firing of Palestinian rockets into Israel, and they periodically provoke it.

The latest attacks by Israel against Gaza have been condemned as a violation of international law. However the US and UK have given their unwavering support to the new strikes on Gaza.

US President Barack Obama "reiterated US support for Israel's right to self-defense in light of rocket attacks from Gaza" in a phone call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday.

Meanwhile UK Foreign Secretary William Hague also stepped forward in Israel's defense, claiming that Hamas "bears principle responsibility" for the Israeli attacks on Gaza.


Israel has now reportedly hit over 200 "targets" in Gaza, killing 13 and injuring over 120 people.

The unwavering support by the US and the UK is astounding, considering Israel has yet to comply with to any of the resolutions passed (see list) by the United Nations in relation to the Middle East conflict

Hamas and the Palestinians have to share some of the responsibility. Ever since Israel was accused of breaking the 10 year truce in 2006, when an explosion killed eight Palestinian civilians, Hamas have launched a number of rocket strikes into Israel. However their retaliations and attacks are severely outweighed and outmuscled by Israel's military power.

BP has agreed to a plead guilty to 14 criminal counts, including manslaughter, and will pay $4 billion over five years in a settlement with the Justice Department over the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the company and Justice Department announced Thursday.

In addition, the London-based oil giant will pay $525 million over three years to settle claims with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which said the company concealed information from investors.

"This marks both the single largest criminal fine - more than $1.25 billion - and the single largest total criminal resolution... in the history of the United States," Attorney General Eric Holder said during a news conference in New Orleans. "I hope this sends a clear message to those who would engage in this wanton misconduct that there will be a penalty paid."

Holder also announced a separate 23-count criminal indictment - including charges of seaman's and involuntary manslaughter - against the two top-ranking BP supervisors on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig where a blowout occurred April 20, 2010, sinking the rig and killing 11 workers.

Holder also announced an indictment against David Rainey, a BP vice president, for hiding information from Congress and lying to law enforcement officials about the rate at which oil was gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

Gently cradling the tiny body of his baby son to his chest, Jihad Masharawi's face is transfixed by relentless and inescapable anguish. The BBC Arabic picture editor's 11-month-old son Omar was injured in Gaza by an Israeli airstrike yesterday and despite being rushed to a local hospital, he was pronounced dead.

Israeli aircraft, tanks and naval gunboats pounded the Gaza Strip as Israel targeted the Islamic militants - the attack resulted in the death of eleven Palestinians including young Omar.

A Hamas rocket killed three Israelis north of the Gaza Strip on Thursday, drawing the first blood from Israel as the Palestinian death toll rose to 15 in a military showdown lurching closer to all-out war and an invasion of the enclave.

On the second day of an assault Israel said might last many days and culminate in a ground attack, its warplanes bombed targets in and around Gaza city, where tall buildings trembled.

Plumes of smoke and dust furled into a sky laced with the vapor trails of outgoing rockets.

The sudden conflict, launched by Israel with the killing of Hamas's military chief, pours oil on the fire of a Middle East already ablaze with two years of revolution and an out-of-control civil war in Syria. Palestinian allies, led by Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi, denounced the Israeli offensive.

After watching powerlessly from the sidelines of the Arab Spring, Israel has been thrust to the centre of a volatile new world in which Islamist Hamas believes that Mursi and his newly dominant Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt will be its protectors.

Six years after the White House first started running amok on the computer networks of its adversaries, US President Barack Obama has signed off on a top-secret order that finally offers blueprints for the Pentagon's cyberwars.

Pres. Obama has autographed an executive order outlining protocol and procedures for the US military to take in the name of preventing cyberattacks from foreign countries, the Washington Post reports, once and for all providing instructions from the Oval Office on how to manage the hush-hush assaults against opposing nation-states that have all been confirmed by the White House while at the same time defending America from any possible harm from abroad.

According to Post's sources, namely "officials who have seen the classified document and are not authorized to speak on the record," Pres. Obama signed the paperwork in mid-October. Those authorities explain to the paper that the initiative in question, Presidential Policy Directive 20, "establishes a broad and strict set of standards to guide the operations of federal agencies in confronting threats in cyberspace."

Confronting a threat may sound harmless, but begs to introduce a chicken-and-the-egg scenario that could have some very serious implications. The Post describes the directive as being "the most extensive White House effort to date to wrestle with what constitutes an 'offensive' and a 'defensive' action in the rapidly evolving world of cyberwar and cyberterrorism," but the ambiguous order may very well allow the US to continue assaulting the networks of other nations, now with a given go-ahead from the commander-in-chief. Next in line, the Post says, will be rules of engagement straight from the Pentagon that will provide guidelines for when to carry out assaults outside the realm of what is considered 'American' in terms of cyberspace.

"What it does, really for the first time, is it explicitly talks about how we will use cyber operations," one senior administration official tells the paper of the policy directive. "Network defense is what you're doing inside your own networks. . . . Cyber operations is stuff outside that space, and recognizing that you could be doing that for what might be called defensive purposes."