I have been asked if I feel lucky in life. Theorizing about what luck is or isn't is very hackneyed, but in these times of burdens, borders and ores it is more necessary than ever.. I am not lucky to work in what I like or have good friends, I have earned that, I feel lucky to have been born where I was born, for which I have not done any merit. Nor have children born in Gaza, Biafra or North Korea made merit.

Feeling excessive pride for being from a place has always seemed childish to me, I am proud of what I earn, not of what I get. Therefore, when people cling to borders like an immovable mantra, a border being the most lax, ductile and diffuse thing there is, as world history shows, I am invaded by the shame of others.. Consider those who talk about their country, or rather autonomous community, as if they were talking about their car, the one that belongs to them, they have paid in installments and they take more care of themselves than their child.. Also shameful are the speeches in which insecurity or illness is blamed on those who come from outside, because what is outside is dangerous.

There is nothing more stupid than thinking that the unknown is bad, for the simple fact of being different, fear makes us stupid.. Of course, when other people have money, then fears dissipate and language once again puts things in their place.. If you are black and poor you are an immigrant, if you are black and a soccer player you are a star, if you are humble and South American you are poor, if you are rich and South American you are an investor. Let's call things by their name, they are not menas, they are minors, they are not burdens, they are people, it is not pride of country, it is racism and xenophobia.

“This is the tragedy of war. “We told them to go south.”. With these words, Lieutenant Colonel of the Israeli Army, Richard Hecht, referred to the bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp that this Tuesday left many civilians dead and injured.. This town, in the north of the Gaza Strip, was according to Israel the refuge of the commander of the Central Jabalia Battalion of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), Ibrahim Biari.

Tel Aviv assures that the air attacks carried out on the Palestinian enclave since October 7 are aimed at destroying weapons warehouses or operations centers of the Islamist organization.. Despite this, in one of the most densely populated places in the world, civilians killed as a result of these attacks are already in the thousands, as recognized by the UN.. If the figures from this Tuesday's bombing are confirmed, it would be one of the deadliest since the start of the war.

Knowing the exact number of deaths in Gaza is not easy, given the blockade of the press and foreign organizations from entering the Palestinian region.. However, the images of local journalists and the information that is arriving little by little allow us to get an idea of the seriousness of what happened.. The first information points to 145 fatalities, as hospital sources confirm to Efe.. The number of people under the rubble could still be high, so the death toll could be higher.

The head of Public Relations at the Indonesian Hospital explained to the Spanish agency that the bombings occurred around 3:00 p.m. local time (2:00 p.m. Spanish peninsular time). After the afternoon prayer, “a large number of injured people began to arrive at the Emergency Department, in the hundreds, the majority were minors and women,” he said.. At least 90 deceased have been taken to its hospital, while another 55 have been transferred to the Kamal Adwan center, both in the north of the enclave.

According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, there are “hundreds dead and injured”. For his part, the spokesman for the Hamas Interior Ministry, Iyad Bozum, stated in a press conference that there could be up to 400 deaths and injuries from the fall of six “American-made” bombs dropped by Israeli planes.

Israel confirms bombing in the area

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have confirmed the attack on the area, framing it as a “large-scale” offensive against Hamas members and their structures.. In this bombing, the IDF claims to have killed the commander of the Jabalia Hamas Central Battalion, Ibrahim Biari, “one of the leaders” of the attack on October 7 that left nearly 1,400 Israelis dead and more than 200 hostages. Likewise, the Israeli Army has added that “numerous” Hamas members also died in the attack and that the underground infrastructure was destroyed, which collapsed after the collapse of buildings.

In an interview with US television CNN, IDF Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht said they “are doing everything possible to minimize” the number of civilians killed in the attacks.. The soldier has been asked up to three times about the Jabalia event and if he knew that there were civilians in that field, to which he responded that the entire population had been notified. The Israeli military authorities assure that they have been calling for days to the population of northern Gaza to avoid their death in the bombings.. A call that the UN has recognized is “impossible” to fulfill and Amnesty International has warned that the displacement of the population can “constitute a war crime.”

This Tuesday marks the twenty-fifth day of war between Israel and Hamas. Since then, the deaths in the Strip due to bombings have reached 8,500 and the injured exceed 21,500.

Abu Obeida, spokesman for the al-Qasam Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamist group Hamas, stated this Tuesday in a televised speech that “in the coming days” they will release “more hostages” kidnapped during the attack on October 7 against Israel.

“We have informed the mediators that we will release several hostages in the coming days, in line with our desire not to keep them in Gaza,” Abu Obeida reported in a speech broadcast on television, according to EFE sources.

The spokesperson, in the same speech, denied the information that Israel released a soldier kidnapped by the Islamist group last Monday and stressed that he denies that Israeli soldiers “reached any prisoner in the hands of Al Qasam.” “If this were correct, it could have happened to individual parties, including Gazans holding hostages,” Obeida said.

Furthermore, the spokesperson has also condemned that, if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasts about the release of a hostage a month later “it means that he will need 20 years to free the rest of his prisoners in Gaza.” The Israeli Army assures that there are currently 240 kidnapped people in Gaza who were taken by Hamas and other Palestinian militias during their attack on October 7 against Israel, which also left 1,400 dead and more than 5,400 injured, according to what the Gazan authorities have reported. to EFE.

Israel began bombing that same day against the Gaza Strip, and expanded its ground operations last Friday, which has caused 8,500 deaths and more than 21,500 injuries, according to Gaza authorities. Abu Obeida has assured that the Israeli Army has decided to “invade by land” the Strip, after adopting a “scorched earth” policy, which has caused great destruction through land, air and sea bombardments.

The spokesman reported that, since the beginning of the Israeli ground offensive, they have responded and defended all fronts and have engaged in “fierce and direct” clashes. In that sense, Abu Obeida assured that the al Qasam Brigades have destroyed 22 Israeli military vehicles with 22 anti-tank projectiles and that for the first time they have introduced “zero distance” bombs against tanks in this battle.

The leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadirov, has authorized the Police to use lethal force against protesters to prevent incidents such as the one recorded over the weekend in neighboring Dagestan, where a mob stormed the airport to attack people who had recently arrived from Israel. .

In both cases, they are republics located in the North Caucasus and with a majority Muslim population.. Kadirov has therefore made it clear after meeting members of his government in Grozny that local authorities will arrest anyone involved in unrest.

If they resist, he warned, the Police reserve the right to fire three warning shots.. “Then, if the person continues violating the law, fire the fourth shot to the head. Won't do it anymore. “It is my order,” Kadirov declared, according to official news agencies.

The Chechen leader has accused Western governments of fomenting the anti-Semitic attack, in line with what the Kremlin has also denounced, which has denounced external interference in relation to an attack that left more than 80 arrested and more than 20 injured.

Israel has launched the second phase of its war against Hamas, as announced this weekend by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.. This is, without a doubt, the longest and most complicated stage of the plan designed by the Hebrew government to end the threat of Islamist militias in the Gaza Strip and which consists of three phases.

What does phase 2 of the Israeli plan consist of?

The second phase of the Israeli strategy is what is known as the ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, which began during the early hours of this Friday to Saturday.. “Our soldiers are in the Gaza Strip, they are deployed everywhere,” Netanyahu declared on Saturday, confirming that infantry troops and armored vehicles of the Israeli army are already deployed inside the Strip.

How long will it last?

Netanyahu himself stated in a televised speech that “the war inside Gaza is going to be long” and equated it to a “Israel's second war of independence.”. Hebrew military intelligence contemplates that this phase of the war could last several months.

“Israel's intention is not to enter, clean and leave, as on other occasions in which it has carried out retaliation operations or raids to capture or kill a terrorist. Now the intention is to stay in the Strip and the Israeli army is prepared so that this war could last up to a year. Israel is planning a long-term war and staying in the Strip for a long time,” says Ernesto Pascual, doctor in International Relations at the UOC.

What is the objective of phase 2?

The objective is none other than “to eliminate all sources of Hamas resistance,” as stated by the Israeli Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, while pursuing the release of the hostages kidnapped by the Islamist militia.

The first phase of Israel's plan was launched on Saturday, October 7, the day of the Hamas massacre in Israeli territory, and consisted of an intense campaign of aerial bombardments against the Strip to “destroy Hamas' infrastructure.”. It lasted 21 days until early this Saturday, phase 2 began, the objective of which is to end all the resistance of the Islamist militias, once their infrastructure was reduced from the air.

Pascual maintains that completely ending Hamas “is going to be complicated,” although he points out that “with a long stay on the territory” by the Israeli army, “it can be achieved.”

How has the second phase started?

The Israeli army has entered Gaza territory through several points in the north of the Strip and has even reached the capital: Gaza City.. Heavy fighting has taken place against pockets of resistance in the northeastern city of Beit Hanoun, as well as in the central area of Bureij and in the capital's suburbs.. In addition, Israeli troops have cut off the Salah al-Din road (the Saladin road), the main artery that connects the north of the Strip with the south.

Pascual points out that Israel is trying to control all the roads that connect Gaza City with the rest of the Strip to “strangle the areas where they consider there is greater Hamas infrastructure.”. For now, the Israeli strategy has drawn a divide in the central area of the Strip and the army concentrates its efforts in the northern half.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have reported, for their part, that in the last 24 hours they have attacked “more than 450 terrorist targets” in Gaza, including “operational command centers, observation posts and launching points.” of anti-tank missiles”.

The ground invasion of Gaza also has air support, since selective bombing continues in large areas of the Strip and helicopters are also intervening to neutralize Hamas positions.

What are the risks?

This phase of the war against Hamas is the most risky for Israeli soldiers and the Ministry of Defense assumes that it will have to count casualties in its ranks, although at the moment it has not offered figures for victims or injuries.

In this regard, Professor Pascual points out that these casualties will cause discomfort in an Israeli society that, for the moment, massively supports the military intervention in Gaza: “Israel has to be prepared to suffer casualties and that will affect Israeli public opinion. Launching aerial bombardments, where there are no casualties beyond carrying the collateral damage caused on your conscience, is not the same as entering the field, because there you will have personal casualties and those casualties will reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.. “We will have to see how far the Israeli population is able to withstand the flood of casualties that will occur.”

The complex system of tunnels that Hamas has in northern Gaza is the great obstacle for the Israeli army, since it hides numerous ammunition and a good part of the Islamist infrastructure.

For their part, the local authorities of Gaza, under the command of Hamas, report that more than 8,000 Palestinians have died since the beginning of the Israeli bombings and it is feared that the ground incursion will increase the number of victims.

Could there be a global war in the region?

Israel's ground incursion will further raise tensions in the region and violent clashes have already occurred in the West Bank. In fact, Israeli forces killed four Palestinians this Monday in a military operation in the Jenin refugee camp, north of the West Bank, where 122 Palestinians have already died since the war in Gaza began.

At the same time, Israeli forces “are on alert” on the border with Lebanon and Syria against possible incursions by Hezbollah militiamen. In that sense, a spokesman for the Hebrew army has warned that “any terrorist squad that Hezbollah sends towards the border fence with Israel will die.”

Pascual does not rule out that the conflict could escalate into a broader war in the region: “There may be a reaction from the Arab world in this regard and we will see what it is.”

What will happen in phase 3?

Phase three will begin when Israel has completely neutralized the terrorist threat in Gaza and consists, in the words of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, in “the elimination of Israel's responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip and the establishment of a new security reality for the citizens of Israel.

In other words, when Israel considers the Strip pacified, it intends for it to stop depending on Israel for its supplies, as was the case until now.. Although it withdrew its troops from Gaza in 2005, the UN continues to consider the Strip as an occupied territory, like the West Bank, and considers Israel responsible for the basic needs of its inhabitants.

“Israel has designed a long-term plan in three phases and these types of plans hold everything on the maps, but the reality is that we have many previous experiences, such as the United States in Vietnam or the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, in which these operations were they complicate a lot. Maintaining order in a hostile territory is always complicated,” says Pascual.

The Italian city of Milan (north) is in a state of alert this Tuesday after the Seveso River has overflowed, causing flooding in the north of the town, after a violent storm with lightning and thunder, as well as strong winds, recorded this morning.

The Civil Protection of the Lombardy region has decreed the alert in the second city of the country, after the heavy rains, with 75 mm per hour, caused in just two hours the flooding of the river to flood the neighborhood of Niguarda, which has forced the closure of streets, adjacent roads and underpasses.

In Como, the level of its famous lake “has risen rapidly beyond the flood threshold” and mobile barriers have already been installed to prevent the water from reaching the population, since “during the day it is destined to rise”, explained on social networks the Civil Protection of the Lombard town, very close to the Swiss border.

Alert from Monday

In addition, the Veneto region is today on red alert due to the hydrological risk caused by the strong storm that has hit northern Italy in recent hours and that this Monday already caused serious problems in Emilia-Romagna, where several bridges and numerous schools were closed.

Five other regions are on orange alert, the second level of alert: Lombardy – whose capital is Milan, Emilia Romagna, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Liguria and Trentino Adigne, while in Venice the “acqua alta” phenomenon, which floods the city of the canals, has reached 154 centimeters and the Brenner motorway is closed on the border with Austria due to a landslide.

Although the unexpected announcement of the overflow of the Seveso by the Councilor for Security and Civil Protection, Marco Granelli, caught the city unexpectedly, no personal injuries have been caused, according to public television RAI, which has shown images of areas of the city completely flooded and where water runs violently through the streets.

In addition to the Seveso, which reached 2.92 meters, the course of the Lambro is monitored, whose level is high, but under control thanks to the opening of the locks, while the residents of the Lambro Park area have been evacuated As a precaution, the police and firefighters are working tirelessly to prevent as much damage as possible.

The rains were accompanied this morning by strong gusts of wind that knocked down trees and scaffolding and caused some electrical blackouts, although at the moment no major collapses have been verified.

Weather forecasts predict an improvement in the situation in the coming hours, while the storm will move to the center and south of the country, where temperatures have been high despite the last few hours, with 34 degrees in Palermo (Sicily) and 28 in Rome.

“These large differences are due to the sirocco winds that blow throughout the country, fueling strong tides along the exposed coasts and the air is expected to noticeably strengthen its intensity over Italy, particularly in the upper Adriatic, with gusts hurricane in Polesine, Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia, according to the specialized site meteoweb.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has warned that “a military confrontation between nuclear powers” could be a “catastrophic consequence” of the Western line of successive escalation of the conflict with Russia.. In his speech at the Beijing Forum on global security, Shoigu accused the US and NATO of trying to “undermine Russia's security” and defended the revocation of the treaty that prohibits nuclear weapons testing by his country.

In this sense, he also added that in the event that the necessary conditions are created, Moscow is willing to hold “political debates on realistic bases, both on the post-conflict settlement of the Ukrainian crisis, and on coexistence with the West in general.”

Likewise, the Russian Defense Minister also showed his country's willingness to dialogue with the West about security if it reviews its “destructive policy” that seeks to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, he stated.

“Without the West reviewing its destructive policy, which involves inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia, fruitful negotiations in this area will hardly be possible,” Shoigu said, quoted on his portfolio's Telegram channel.

“The United States and NATO continue to seriously believe that they will be able to undermine Russia's security and deprive us of the will to resist,” Shoigu said.

We live in a society that consumes more reality than it is capable of digesting, analyzing and interpreting.. Accustomed as we are to feeding on images and value judgments, we are losing the ability to form our own criteria through the study of different points of view.. That famous phrase from Groucho Marx comes to mind: “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”. And the thing is that by trying to believe some we have lost the ability to interpret others, regardless of who they are.

The wars that we live through the plasma of screens, networks and any means of communication in the different variants to which we have access, represent, on too many occasions, a crude simplification of an extremely complex reality, which greatly exceeds the possibility. to synthesize it in a few images – of very high emotional impact – and some short and appropriate phrases to the case.

We thus speak of technological warfare, networked, cyber, multidomain, automated systems, information, asymmetric, total… incorporating more and more categories without knowing for sure what they mean.. The truth is that war continues to respond to the most primitive and ancestral of drives, imposing our will on the 'other' by any means we have at our disposal, resorting to the use of force.. And in the use of these means, the only thing that differentiates one contestant from another is the voluntary restriction on the excessive use of force.

In this sense, submission to the laws and customs of war, respect for the lives of civilians and non-combatants – terrorists are not considered combatants in the strict sense – are the true indicators of respect for the Ius in bello. .

A technological environment, one could say futuristic, is enthusiastically described to us: sensors, remotely manned devices, observation satellites, autonomous combat systems supported by AI, high precision and lethality ammunition, systems of a range and precision never seen before, etc

And all of this is true, except that the subjects who are the object – objective – of these systems are soldiers, people in vehicles, in the open field, in trenches, in rest areas, in homes or restaurants, in reality everywhere.. Modern war, said Sir Rupert Smith in his book The utility of war, is war between people, the front lines are on the battlefield, in the rearguard, in cities and in intangible cyberspace.

They fight for land, for will, for emotions, for international support, in short, to impose a narrative that allows some to be praised and others to be demonized, being aware that the victims and the target audience coincide, they are people. .

I ask the reader to abstract the caption and the sound from what he sees and hears on a daily basis and to try to discriminate – without having to assign a priori roles of heroes and villains – the scenes of war between invaders and invaded, between offended and offenders. , Between good and bad. You must have a solid and well-founded criterion to be able to interpret facts and actions that instinctively produce approval or rejection in us, simply because we are conditioned to do it in a certain way.. Gaza, Ashkelon, kyiv, Donetsk, Lugansk, are names, places and feelings, especially if you were born and live or die in them.

That is the true face of war, that of those who suffer it in their flesh, that of those who live and die without being aware of when and why.. Images are representations of reality, not reality itself.. Between the emotion that an image produces and the judgment we make about it, only judgment mediates. Let's cultivate it.

The apartment that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife, Olena Zelenska, owned in the Crimean resort of Yalta was auctioned this Monday for 44.3 million rubles ($475,400).

According to the official Russian agency TASS, the property, confiscated last May by the Parliament imposed by Russia on the annexed Crimean peninsula, was auctioned in a prefinished state, since the presidential couple never lived in that property and only the walls They were whitewashed.

The apartment, for which two bidders bid, was awarded to a businesswoman specialized in real estate sales and apartment renovations, the Russian agency said.

The Zelensky family home has an area of 119.5 square meters and is located in the Imperator residential area in the town of Livadia, located on the outskirts of the popular seaside resort of Yalta, one of the main tourist destinations on the peninsula.

The property, which was registered in the name of Olena Zelenska, was put up for auction with a starting price of 24.6 million rubles (242,875 euros or $257,562 at the current exchange rate).

Zelensky's apartment has several rooms: a living room with a panoramic window to the balcony, a bedroom with a bathroom and a kitchen combined with a dining room.

The apartment is located on the fifth floor and from its balcony there are views of the Black Sea and the Livadia Palace with the adjacent garden. This palace was the resting home of the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II, shot by the Bolsheviks in 1918.

In February 1945, that imperial palace hosted the Yalta Conference that brought together the Soviet leaders, Joseph Stalin, the British leaders, Winston Churchill, and the American leaders, Franklin D.. Roosevelt.

The Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) of Venezuela has ordered the suspension of “all the effects of the different phases of the electoral process conducted by the National Primary Commission” (CNP), held on the 22nd, after receiving an appeal filed by the opposition deputy José Brito who requested a review of “irregularities.”

In accordance with ruling 122 of the Electoral Chamber of the TSJ, published on the Supreme Court website, the organizing commission of the opposition elections must record “the administrative background, containing the twenty-five phases of the electoral process” of the primaries, which range from the call to the event to the minutes of scrutiny, totalization and proclamation.

In addition, they must submit to the Supreme Court the minutes of acceptance of the candidacy of the candidates disqualified by the Comptroller's Office from holding elected positions, as is the case of the winner of the internal elections María Corina Machado, who is subject to this administrative measure, imposed in 2015 for a period of one year, but recently extended until 2030.

Likewise, they must deliver the resignations of the candidates Henrique Capriles and Freddy Superlano – who declined to participate just a couple of weeks before the elections -, also disqualified, as well as those of “any other citizen who has decided to renounce their candidacy.”

The TSJ gives the CNP a period of three days to submit “a report” indicating “the mechanism used to safeguard electoral material and the place designated for this purpose.”

Finally, he orders to notify the attorney general, Tarek William Saab, and other public powers of this sentence and of the facts reported by Brito that – he assured – could constitute “the alleged commission of electoral crimes and the alleged commission of common crimes,” without specifying what type of illegal acts they committed.

Criticisms of the sentence

The Venezuelan opponents defending the primary elections on October 22 rejected the sentence on Monday. The anti-Chavista Freddy Superlano, who registered as a candidate in the primaries and eventually withdrew, said on the social network in championing María Corina Machado as the winner” of the primaries.

The Venezuelan leader, Juan Guaidó, denounced this Monday that the Government of the president of that country, Nicolás Maduro, is failing to comply with the agreements signed in view of “competitive elections.” “The dictatorship intends to make invisible and dehumanize (typical of dictatorships) millions of Venezuelans who we elect in primaries with many obstacles” to María Corina Machado, lamented Guaidó, currently exiled in Miami, in the south of Florida (USA), in a message posted on X.

For her part, Delsa Solórzano, who competed with Machado and eight other candidates in the primaries, reiterated her support for the organizing commission and the technical teams that supported the process in which “Venezuela expressed itself”, for which, as she stressed, “nothing can change the will of a nation that wants change.”

For primary candidate Andrés Caleca, “each attack by the regime” receives “an intelligent response in unity, without free drawing and without falling into provocations.”

In the opinion of former governor Henrique Capriles, with “each attack and mockery” of citizens who “suffer the consequences of an indolent government”, the number of votes with which voters will change what they consider to be the “worst” Executive will “multiply.” “of history.”

“We Venezuelans confirm that we are a peaceful, democratic people with full conviction that the electoral route is our best tool.”. “United we are stronger!” insisted the two-time candidate for the Presidency.