Hassan Nasrallah’s Funeral to be on 23 February

Hezbollah on Sunday annoucned that the funeral for it longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, killed in an Israeli attack last year, will take place on Feb. 23 in Beirut.

In a televised statement, Secretary General Naeem Qassem said Nasrallah “was martyred at a time when the conditions were difficult, and there was no possibility for a funeral.”

Nasrallah “was temporarily buried (due to security conditions), and we have now decided to hold a public funeral on Feb. 23,” he added.

Qassem said a funeral will also be held for Sayyid Hashem Safieddine, another senior Hezbollah official who was killed in an Israeli airstrike nearly a week after Nasrallah’s assassination.

He said Safieddine will be buried with the title of secretary-general, confirming for the first time that he had been elected as Nasrallah’s successor before being killed.

“Sayyid Hashem Safieddine will also be mourned as the secretary-general of the party, as four days after Nasrallah’s assassination, we elected Hashem as secretary-general, and we consider him martyred in that capacity,” Qassem said.

The Hezbollah chief said Nasrallah will be buried on the outskirts of Beirut “in a plot of land on the airport road,” while Safieddine will be laid to rest in his hometown of Deir Qanoun in southern Lebanon.

Nasrallah was assassinated by Israel on Sept. 27, 2024 in a series of airstrikes in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Safieddine was targeted on Oct. 3.

Israel was to complete its army’s withdrawal from Lebanon by Jan. 26 under a ceasefire deal, but it refused and the deadline was extended to Feb. 18.

The truce ended shelling between Israel and the Lebanese group that began in October 2023 after the onslaught in the Gaza Strip commenced, and escalated into a full-scale conflict in September 2024.

The more than a year of fighting killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon and injured many others.​​​​​​​

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Israeli Government Behind Settler Violence

Israeli human rights group B’Tselem stated that Israel supports settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, aiming to scare Palestinian communities into leaving their homes.

B’Tselem shared footage on X of settlers setting fire to a mosque and a tractor at dawn on Sunday, targeting the Bedouin community of Arab Al-Malehat, northwest of Jericho.

According to Palestine’s Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, Israeli settlers carried out 2,971 attacks on Palestinians and their property in the West Bank in 2024, killing ten Palestinians and destroying over 14,000 trees.

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To Piers Morgan: How Can The Killing of Women Children Be Justified as a ‘Moral Right’

British broadcaster and journalist Piers Morgan said Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, including women and children, could be justified as a “moral right.”

In an interview this week with journalist Tucker Carlson on a rooftop in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Morgan discussed several topics, including the Israeli assault in Gaza and whether the U.S. should be funding it.

Carlson condemned Israel’s bombardment of civilians for over a year, which Morgan questioned as he said such bombing ‘wasn’t evil.’

Carlson said: ‘If you’re intentionally killing civilians, you probably shouldn’t beat your chest and brag about it… maybe you can make the case that you had to do it, but you should weep.’

‘Is it evil though?’ Morgan responded, to which Carlson argued: ‘To kill civilians on purpose? I think it is. Kids and children? Yeah.’

Morgan said he could see there being a ‘moral right’ to civilian deaths in wartime, saying: ‘If there is a world war that threatens the entire world, yes.’

When Carlson called his view ‘disgusting’, he walked back and said it could be justified ‘in a pure defensive action’ as the two journalists sparred over the assault.

‘To intentionally kill noncombatants, women and children, I think we can say that’s wrong,’ he concluded.

The two journalists moved onto the issue of whether the US should continue funding Israel’s assault in Gaza, after former President Joe Biden sent at least $17.9 billion in military aid since the start of the Israeli genocide in October 2023.

After Carlson repeated his calls for the US to stop supplying aid to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, Morgan questioned: ‘Why do you support Israel against Hamas? Why do you support giving them billions of dollars?’

‘I don’t,’ Carlson snapped back.


‘I support Israel in the sense that I really like Israel, I brought my family on vacation there… but (I support Israel) only to the extent that it helps the United States.’

Morgan said this was a hypocritical stance given his criticism of aid to Ukraine, saying his support merely ‘depends on which country’.

‘I don’t see a difference between (Israel’s bombing of Gaza) and what is happening in Ukraine,’ Morgan continued.

‘This is a long way away from America, there is no direct involvement with America or no mainland involvement, and yet you think it’s right that America supports Israel, but you don’t think it’s right that America supports Ukraine.’

Fifteen months of Israeli bombardment have reduced buildings to rubble and ash, leaving large areas of Gaza uninhabitable. More than 47,400 Palestinians were killed during the Israeli assault, with 70 percent of the victims being women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

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King Abdullah Meets Trump on 11 Feb.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II will meet with US President Donald Trump at the White House on Feb. 11, the royal court said on Sunday.

The visit comes upon an invitation from the US president, it said in a brief statement.

Trump suggested last weekend that Palestinians in Gaza should be relocated to Jordan and Egypt, calling the enclave a “demolition site” after Israel’s war. His proposal, however, was vehemently rejected by Amman and Cairo.

A six-nation Arab ministerial meeting in Cairo on Saturday firmly rejected Palestinian displacement from Gaza and renewed calls for implementing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Last week, Abdullah had a phone call with Trump, during which he underlined the importance of the US role in achieving peace and stability in the Middle East region according to Anadolu.

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