President Barack Obama said Sunday that Israel has "every right" to defend itself against missile attacks by militants inside Gaza but warned that escalating the offensive with Israeli ground troops could undermine any hope of a peace process with the Palestinians.

"Let's understand what the precipitating event here that's causing the current crisis and that was an ever-escalating number of missiles that were landing not just in Israeli territory but in areas that are populated, and there's no country on Earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders," Obama said at press conference in Thailand at the start of a three-nation tour in Asia.

"So we are fully supportive of Israel's right to defend itself from missiles landing on people's homes and workplaces and potentially killing civilians."

He added: "Israel has every right to expect that it does not have missiles fired into its territory. If that can be accomplished without a ramping up of military activity in Gaza, that's preferable. It's not just preferable for the people of Gaza. It's also preferable for Israelis, because if Israeli troops are in Gaza, they're much more at risk of incurring fatalities or being wounded."

Because we are NOT just numbers, keep following this post of the names and ages of murdered people who fell victim during the Israeli attacks on Gaza since Wednesday. The number rises to 53 and still rising :( I hope that this battle will cost us no more souls. However, nothing will depress us, no matter how much Israel escalates its inhumanity and crimes. We'll remain ready to pay any price for attaining of freedom and dignity. RIP!

1- Ahmad Al-Ja'bary, 52 years old.
2-Mohammed Al-hams, 28 years old.
3- Rinan Arafat, 7 years old.
4- Omar Al-Mashharawi, 11 months old.
5-Essam Abu-Alma'za, 20 years old.
6-Mohammed Al-qaseer, 20 years old.
7- Heba Al-Mashharawi, six-month pregnant, 19 years old.
8- Mahmoud Abu Sawawin, 65 years old.

Hillary Clinton is repeating the methodology of the Iran/Contra affair, using "black" funds to finance the operation to ensure President Correa is not re-elected.

I had two excellent sources for the news that the US/UK strategy against Julian Assange was to ensure the defeat of President Correa in Presidential elections next spring, and then have him expelled from the Ecuadorean Embassy. One source was within the UK civil service and one in Washington. Both had direct, personal access to the information I described. Both told me in the knowledge I would publish it.

Of course Assange is not the only reason Clinton wants rid of Correa; but it adds spice and urgency.

We now have completely independent evidence from Chile that this CIA operation exists, from journalists who were investigating a smuggling operation involving 300 kg per month of cocaine, organised by the Chilean army and security services.

The links to US intelligence emerged after an anonymous source from the Agencia Nacional de Inteligencia (ANI) told Panoramas News that the smuggling of 300 kilos of cocaine was in fact a highly sensitive CIA/DEA operation that would help to raise money to topple the government of Ecuador. The operation is similar to the one carried out by the Agency in Central America during the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980's, the source said.

Six injured as strikes target buildings housing media organisations including Sky News, al-Arabiya and al-Quds TV

Israeli military planes struck two media headquarters in Gaza City in the early hours of Sunday morning, injuring six people including a cameraman, who lost a leg.

A number of media organisations are based in the al-Shawa building, including al-Quds television, which is associated with Islamic Jihad. Khader al-Zahhar, a cameraman with al-Quds TV, had his leg amputated as a result of injuries sustained in the attack.

A second air strike struck another media complex in the city, the al-Shuruq building. It houses Sky News, the al-Arabiya news network, Dubai TV and an office of al-Aqsa TV, which is affiliated with Hamas.

Sky News reporter Sam Kiley was sleeping in the offices when the missile struck shortly before 7am. "The missile hit the floor above us. There was a big flash of light and the sound of breaking glass."

In a statement, the Israeli Defence Forces said: "A communications antenna used by Hamas to carry out terror activity against the state of Israel, was ... targeted."

Israel's interior minister has publicly vowed to "send Gaza back to the Middle Ages" as the aerial and naval bombardment of the besieged enclave, as well as the Palestinian rocket barrage against Israel, continued into Sunday.

"The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages," Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai, a member of the ultra-orthodox Shas party, said, according to the leading Israeli daily Haaretz.

"Only then will Israel be calm for 40 years." The Orthodox Jewish news site Yeshiva World News also quoted Yishai as saying, "We must blow Gaza back to the Middle Ages, destroying all the infrastructure including roads and water."

There was no calm in Gaza as 'Operation Pillar of Defense,' Israel's air and sea bombardment of the densely populated enclave, entered its fifth straight day on Sunday. Israel has carried out 950 air strikes targeting Palestinian militants who have launched more than 500 rockets into Israel during the course of hostilities.

Reuters reports that the Palestinian death toll stood at 47 going into Sunday morning. Around half of those deaths were civilians, including 12 children. Gaza health officials said that 385 Palestinians have been wounded.

Until this week, Prime Minister Netanyahu took pride in never having lead Israel into a war. Now he may be on the verge of starting not one but two.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have not given up the dream of carrying out a major operation in Iran. For some time, prior to the recent American election, they were in disagreement: Barak was against creating facts on the ground which President Barack Obama would be forced to deal with, whereas Netanyahu entertained the idea of exploiting the sensitive political period preceding what he thought would be the surefire victory of his esteemed ally, Mitt Romney.

As the election there recedes into history while ours approaches, this twosome is going back to dealing with the Iran plan - which is one that will necessarily influence the character of the next Knesset and government.

For Netanyahu, Operation Pillar of Defense is not a baptism of fire. Sixteen years have passed since the opening of the Western Wall tunnel in September 1996, an act that escalated events on the ground (called "Hot Iron" at the time by the Israel Defense Forces ). Netanyahu - at the time a novice, arrogant prime minister - took a public beating so painful that he was forced to revoke his refusal to make concessions to PLO leader Yasser Arafat concerning Hebron. Since then, throughout seven years of power during two terms in office, Netanyahu has kept his fingers off the trigger, and has even been proud of his restraint.

Thank you Gerald Kaufman, MP for speaking up. Labour MP Kaufman has urged an arms embargo and compared Israeli troops in Gaza to the Nazis who forced his family to flee Poland.

Sir Gerald Kaufman said the Israeli government was "ruthlessly and cynically" exploiting the guilt over the Holocaust as justification for the assault on Gaza. He also questioned the claim that many of the Palestinian victims were militants as "the reply of the Nazi" and added: "I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants."

Israel fired artillery into Syria in response to gunfire aimed at its troops in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, and may have killed Syrian soldiers, Israel's army said on Sunday.

There were no reported injuries on the Israeli side from the shootings, which occurred on Saturday, the third case this month of violence seen as a spillover of civil unrest in Syria that has also alarmed other neighbors such as Lebanon and Turkey.

"There was small arms fire (at Israeli forces), there was a response and from what I hear over Arab media it appears Syrian soldiers were killed," Brigadier-General Yoav Mordechai, Israel's chief military spokesman, told Army Radio.

"The Bible finds no worse image than this of the man from the desert. And why? Because he has no respect for any law. Because in the desert he can do as he pleases. The tendency towards conflict is in the essence of the Arab. He is an enemy by essence. His personality won't allow him any compromise or agreement. It doesn't matter what kind of resistance he will meet, what price he will pay. His existence is one of perpetual war. Israel's must be the same. The two states solution doesn't exist; there are no two people here. There is a Jewish people and an Arab population... there is no Palestinian people, so you don't create a state for an imaginary nation... they only call themselves a people in order to fight the Jews." [1]- Benjamin Netanyahu

The Israeli bombardment of Gaza being perpetuated under 'Operation Pillar of Defense' comes at an interesting time. Under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements into Palestinian lands has increased at unprecedented rates. Netanyahu's administration has approved the construction of 850 settler homes in the occupied West Bank in June 2012, even after the Israeli parliament rejected a bill to retroactively legalize some of the existing homes in the area. [2] The number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank has almost doubled in the past 12 years, with more than 350,000 residing illegally under international law. [3] While Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman asserts Tel Aviv's unwillingness to permit Palestinians any right to return to their lands, emphasizing, "not even one refugee," apartheid enforced on ethnic and religious lines has become a ratified part of Israeli government policy. [4] Far-right political discourse that was once considered extremism is now the status quo in Israel.

The Obama administration's unstinting financial, military and diplomatic support for Israel is a key enabling force in the conflict

A central premise of US media coverage of the Israeli attack on Gaza - beyond the claim that Israel is justifiably "defending itself" - is that this is some endless conflict between two foreign entitles, and Americans can simply sit by helplessly and lament the tragedy of it all. The reality is precisely the opposite: Israeli aggression is possible only because of direct, affirmative, unstinting US diplomatic, financial and military support for Israel and everything it does. This self-flattering depiction of the US as uninvolved, neutral party is the worst media fiction since TV news personalities covered the Arab Spring by pretending that the US is and long has been on the side of the heroic democratic protesters, rather than the key force that spent decades propping up the tyrannies they were fighting.

Literally each day since the latest attacks began, the Obama administration has expressed its unqualified support for Israel's behavior. Just two days before the latest Israeli air attacks began, Obama told Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas "that his administration opposes a Palestinian bid for non-state membership of the UN". Both the US Senate and House have already passed resolutions unequivocally supporting Israel, thus earning the ultimate DC reward: the head-pat from Aipac, which "praised the extraordinary show of support by the Senate for Israel's struggle against terrorist attacks on its citizens". More bipartisan Congressional cheerleading is certain to come as the attacks continue, no matter how much more brutal they become.

In reflexive defense of Israel, the US government thus once against put itself squarely at odds with key nations such as Turkey (whose prime minister accused Israel of being motivated by elections and demanded that Israel be "held to account" for mounting civilians deaths), Egypt (which denounced Israeli attacks as "aggression against humanity"), and Tunisia (which called on the world to "stop the blatant aggression" of Israel).

By rather stark contrast, Obama continues to defend Israel's free hand in Gaza, causing commentators like Jeffrey Goldberg to gloat, not inaccurately: "Barack Obama hasn't turned against Israel. This is a big surprise to everyone who has not paid attention for the last four years" (indeed, there are few more compelling signs of how dumb and misleading US elections are than the fact that the only criticism of Obama on Israel heard over the last year in the two-party debate was the grievance that Obama evinces insufficient fealty - rather than excessive fealty - to the Israeli government). That the Netanyahu government knows that any attempt to condemn Israel at the UN would be instantly blocked by the US is a major factor enabling them to continue however they wish. And, of course, the bombs, planes and tanks they are using are subsidized, in substantial part, by the US taxpayer.