US, UK attack Yemeni capital with deadly B-2 ‘stealth bombers’

President Donald Trump’s pick for the United States ambassador to the United Nations has become the latest administration nominee to voice the belief that Israel has “biblical” dominion over the occupied West Bank.

Elise Stefanik’s comment came during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday. 

At the hearing, Elise Stefanik pledged to continue the US’s defense of Israel and advance Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda.

Stefanik, a Republican congresswoman from New York, further said that she supports the claims made by the far right in Israel that Jews have the “biblical right” to take land from Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Stefanik was definitive when asked if she shared the view of far-right Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and former hawkish minister Itamar Ben Gvir that Israel has a “biblical right to the entire West Bank”.

She responded with one word, “Yes.”

Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen further asked Stefanik whether she supported Palestinians' right to self-determination.

Stefanik refused to answer the question directly, saying, “I think they deserve more than the failures that they have suffered under the leadership of terrorists.”

Representative Stefanik was first elected to the US House of Representatives in 2014, the youngest woman elected to Congress at the time, at just 30 years old, and represented New York's 21st Congressional District.

She is known to be a staunch advocate of Israel supports its decision to defund the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), 

Stefanik is an advocate of claims by Zionists that that Israeli regime is justified in killing and ethnically cleansing Palestinian Christians and Muslims from their lands and homes.

She made headlines in 2024 by questioning the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about what she claimed was antisemitism on college campuses.

At the time, US students at university campuses all across the country were protesting Israel's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

After positioning herself as a champion in the fight against the alleged rise in antisemitism, Rep. Stefanik began receiving large donations from Republican Jewish donors.

Stefanik has long been one of most ardent defenders Israeli occupation and annexation policy. 

In June 2024, US-Israeli billionaire Miriam Adelson reportedly donated $100 million to Trump for his presidential campaign in exchange for a promise to allow Israel to annex the West Bank. 

Israel's occupation and Jewish settlement of the West Bank and Gaza since 1967 have brought the Palestinian Christian community to the brink of extinction.

In a no-holds-barred attack on RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat for his remark that India got "true independence" after the Ram Temple in Ayodhya was consecrated, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi today said the comment amounted to "treason" and that Mr Bhagwat would be arrested and tried if he was in any other country.

Mr Gandhi was addressing an event to mark the inauguration of the new Congress headquarters in Delhi. "We are getting a new headquarters at a very particular time. I think it's quite symbolic that yesterday, the chief of the RSS said that India never achieved Independence in 1947. He said true Independence in India was achieved when the Ram Mandir was built. He says that the Constitution was not the symbol of our freedom."

"Mohan Bhagwat has the audacity to inform the nation every two or three days what he thinks about the Independence movement, what he thinks about the Constitution. What he has said yesterday is treason because it is stating that the Constitution is invalid, it is stating that everything (done) to fight against the British was invalid and he has the audacity to say this publicly," Mr Gandhi said, adding, "in any other country, he would be arrested and tried".

"To say that India did not get Independence in 1947 is an insult to every single Indian and it's about time we stop listening to this nonsense that these people think they can just keep parroting out and shouting and screaming," the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha said.

Mr Bhagwat was in Indore on Monday to present the National Devi Ahilya award to Champat Rai, general secretary of Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust. Addressing a gathering there, he said the day of the consecration of Ram Temple in Ayodhya should be celebrated as "Pratishtha Dwadashi" as it marks the "true independence" of Bharat. 

"India, which faced enemy attacks for centuries, witnessed its true independence that day. We had independence, but it had not been established. India got political independence on August 15, 1947, we also brought a Constitution but the country did not run in its spirit. How can we accept that dreams have been fulfilled and pain alleviated? Our swa (self) is Ram, Krishna and Shiva. Do they belong only to those who worship them? No. Ram connects people from north to south, Krishna from east to west and Shiva is in every particle of Bharat," he said.

The director general of the Ministry of Health in Gaza has described as “hell” the situation in the north of the strip which has been under an Israeli ground offensive and siege for “100 days”.

“The situation is literally like hell,” Munir al-Barsh said on Sunday, referring to daily Israeli attacks and the regime’s ban on food delivery to medical staff trapped in the north’s hospitals.

He added that “hospitals in northern Gaza have turned into mass graves.”

Al-Barsh noted that the offensive and the destruction of hospitals and infrastructure and any sign of life in the north are aimed to empty the region of its residents.

“The Israeli occupation has been deliberately destroying the health system since the very first moment,” he said, adding that “the destruction of hospitals was the greatest evidence of the [Israeli] genocide.”

According to his statements, 5,000 people have been killed or gone missing, while 9,500 others have been injured since the start of Israel’s offensive on the north of Gaza in early October 2024. The regime’s forces have also abducted about 2,300 people, including 65 medical staff, during the ongoing offensive.

Al-Barsh slammed the “disgraceful” silence of the international community on Israel’s atrocities, which he said, has “deepened the suffering of innocent civilians.”

Israel launched a genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime's decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.

The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed at least 46,565 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured more than 109,660 others. Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under rubble.

However, the UK’s Lancet medical journal estimates the actual number of deaths in the war is much higher than the official toll.

According to the study, figures reported by the Palestinian health ministry likely undercounted the death toll by 41 percent in the first nine months of the war as the Gaza Strip’s healthcare infrastructure unraveled.