Opinion on seeing the big picture in two big wars

The Iran-US Connection: What Putin can do to stop Iran from joining the West, the Middle East, and the West from threatening to invade Israel

If you walk back a bit, you can see thatUkraine is trying to join the West. Israel is trying to join a new Middle East. And Russia and Iran have teamed up to try to block both.

Putin has an opportunity due to all of this. He welcomed a Hamas delegation to Moscow last week and also has an expanding relationship with Iran, which could be used to kill Ukrainians if Iran supplies Putin with drones and missiles. It’s a win-win situation for Putin. Putin knows that the U.S. will have to send more spare parts, missiles, and shells to Israel if it wants to avoid a war with Iran. Putin doesn’t need to worry about the arms flow to Kyiv being stopped until after Trump is re-elected, because he knows that Ukraine will be his for a long time. Plus all the instability drives up oil prices!

And he’s conditioned even the $14.3 billion the administration wants to send to Israel on President Biden agreeing to strip the same amount from funds added to the Internal Revenue Service so it could better collect taxes from cheaters. The Israel lobby has an important message for them: Do not go along with that game. Aid to Israel will be tied to the G.O.P. positions on abortion or guns.

Source: Opinion | Seeing the Big Picture in Two Big Wars

The Cold War World: What Do House G.o.P. Leaders Really Want to Tell Us About Iran, Russia and the United States (and More)?

During World War II, Johnson might have pressed to fund the war against Germany in Europe, but he would not have argued against the Japanese in the Pacific. Or they would have agreed to Lend-Lease assistance for the allies only if President Franklin Roosevelt would eliminate the I.R.S. altogether. More guns, more butter, no taxes and two fronts.

It is because it is that it sounds like an incoherent view of the world we have thrived in for the past century. It feels as if House G.o.P. leaders are small thinkers, because they are. They are shameless, shameful and dangerous. It’s time to try out for Fox News on some other issue.

The post-Cold War world has a better chance to handle other global challenges like climate change if these shifts happen.

But you don’t need to speak Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Russian or Ukrainian to understand that Iran-backed Hamas launched its war to stymie the Saudi-Israel normalization and prevent Tehran from being isolated and that Vladimir Putin launched his war to stop Ukraine from expanding a Europe whole and free and prevent Moscow from being isolated.

And both leaders are gunning for other countries whose aspirations are the antithesis of Russia’s and Iran’s poisonous core regime identities. “Ukraine proves that there can be a Slavic, Orthodox country, very close to Russia ethnically — yet free, democratic and thriving, with a Western political and economic orientation and not needing a state of war with the West or to be a police state like Belarus or a military dictatorship like Russia,” Aron said.

Source: Opinion | Seeing the Big Picture in Two Big Wars

The Hamas Gaza War: What It Means for Israel and the Middle East, How It Affects Humanity and the Lives of Thousands of Palestinians

Meanwhile, normalization of relations between the Jewish state and Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, would very likely pave the way for normalization between Israel and the most populous Muslim country in the world, Indonesia, as well as Malaysia and maybe later even Pakistan. It would prove that Jews and Muslims aren’t destined to be forever in conflict and can revive the not always harmonious — but often harmonious — relations their communities enjoyed throughout much of history before the Palestinian conflict.

If Israel were to be normalized with Saudi Arabia, it would not only satisfy the more moderate Palestinian authority in the West Bank, but it would also bring significant financial advantages and more legitimacy to the Hamas Gaza model. Hamas knew it would ruin and kill many Israelis, as well as many of the innocent civilians it had employed, so it launched this war. Disgusting. Iran knew the same.

Since Hamas pushed us into war, our military has acted to permanently eliminate the unbearable threat, and allow the return of our hostages. The battlefield that Hamas has created in Gaza over the past 30 years is one in which terrorists hide behind civilians, and this is what this means. This is a battlefield with terrorist tunnels under civilian streets, one in which civilian casualties are not avoided at all costs but rather encouraged by Hamas in order to draw global sympathy and blunt Israel’s response. Hamas hides its command center in the central hospital of Gaza, according to our intelligence and the confessions of captured terrorists.

I spent time with some of the families of the people that were kidnapped by Hamas, and wrote these lines from Jerusalem. Jews, Muslims, and foreign citizens of different ethnicities are being held in Gaza.

In all my years of public life, the meetings with these families were the most difficult and fraught I’ve ever held. I’ve also spoken with families of some of the more than 1,400 of my people who were killed that day, many of them murdered in their living rooms and kitchens or dancing at a music festival. When I returned from one kibbutz devastated in the attack, I had to wash the blood off my shoes.

The result of these sickening tactics is the civilian suffering we are all watching unfold. Many reports of the humanitarian difficulties in parts of Gaza are unverifiable, but there is real suffering, and it concerns us, too. The withdrawal of our troops from Gaza in 2005 was supposed to provide free lives and give peace a chance. We were not happy that Hamas and its many Palestinian supporters chose otherwise.

The Hamas terrorists did not mind burning babies if they attacked Israeli homes. They tortured children, raped women and destroyed peace-loving communities. They broadcasted their actions live because they were so proud of them. These videos will forever remain a stain on those Palestinians and their supporters who celebrated that day and a testament to the depravity of the terrorists and of the ideas that inspired them.

Many in the world, including the West, are willing to support these actions or even rationalize them. In the capitals of Europe we’ve seen rallies supporting the total destruction of Israel “from the river to the sea.” American college professors and students make speeches and sign statements justifying terrorism.

We are trying to give early warning to the civilians in the Gaza Strip with leaflets and phone calls to move them out of the battle zones so that we can give humanitarian aid through the border with Egypt. Hundreds of aid trucks are now arriving, with more expected each day.

These questions will be key among the strategic issues on the agenda in our discussions with Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his visit to the region beginning Friday — as they were during the visit to Israel of President Biden a few weeks ago.