Israel

John Kerry admitted that the United States gives Israel more than half of the aid that we give “to the entire world,” but Israel doesn’t pay attention to anything the U.S. says. Kerry: Every president, Republican and Democrat, has been opposed to settlements – we issue a warning today when we see a new settlement announced. Nothing happens. It’s ignored, a new settlement goes up. New units, new sales. So the issue — Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg: You’re describing a situation in which you have zero leverage.

The United Nations General Assembly has once again adopted a resolution demanding that Israel withdraw from Syria’s Golan Heights, territory that they have occupied since 1967. The resolution, which had been proposed by 37 countries, was passed by an overwhelming majority on November 30th.

Israel has begun a bombing campaign in Syria, carrying out multiple air strikes in the country under the guise of targeting Hezbollah. According to Arab news outlets, Israeli aircraft used Lebanese airspace in order to hit a weapons cache and a convoy of military vehicles belonging to Hezbollah and the Syrian army. Ibtimes.co.uk reports: The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has neither confirmed nor denied the attacks in line with the position Israel always takes when it comes to sensitive operations. The aerial assault is believed to have taken place during the night of 29-30 November.

Coming on the sixth year anniversary of the infamous "Cablegate", when on this day in 2010 Wikileaks made global headlines when it unveiled classified cables sent to the US State Department, revealing assessments of countries and details of eavesdropping, this morning WikiLeaks released more than half a million US diplomatic cables from 1979, covering various diplomatic events and incidents such as the Iranian revolution, Osama bin Ladin's departure of his native Saudi Arabia for Pakistan to support the Mujahideen, the siege of Mecca, Saddam Hussein becoming president of Iraq and much more.

The IDF reportedly bombed an Islamic State held facility in the Syrian Golan Heights after an ISIS affiliated group opened small arms and mortar fire on an Israeli patrol on Sunday. This was the first encounter between ISIS and Israel.