There is a humanitarian pause in Gaza
The U.S. Stands With Israel, and Its Consequences to the American People and to the Palestinians: Reply to Rep. Joe Biden
Tlaib, who is the only Palestinian American in Congress, is standing in front of a group of progressives who are angry with Mr. Biden over his embrace of Israel. She already beat back an attempt to censure her in the House this week over her comments on the war and is facing attack ads from a Democratic pro-Israel group.
After she speaks, the screen goes dark and a message appears in white lettering stating: “Joe Biden supported the genocide of the Palestinian people. The American people will not forget. Biden, support a cease-fire. Or don’t count on us in 2024.”
The video posted by Ms Tlaib starts with a video of Mr. Biden saying that the US stands with Israel and then cuts to pictures of dead and injured people around the United States calling for a cease-fire.
Humanitarian pauses to allow aid to get to civilians and for more people to leave the Gaza Strip has been called for by the Biden administration. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to have rejected that plea, saying any end to Israel’s military campaign would be contingent on the release of over 200 hostages Hamas abducted in the Oct. 7 attack.
In a follow-up post on X, formerly Twitter, Ms. Tlaib wrote, “From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate.”
Ms. Tlaib said that President Biden is cheering on Netanyahu in the midst of ethnic cleansing in Gaza. “We must be laser focused on saving lives, no matter their faith or ethnicity.”
The House struck down a resolution on Thursday to formally rebuke Ms. Tlaib, with about two dozen Republicans joining Democrats in opposition. The resolution, which was brought by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, accused Ms. Tlaib of “antisemitic activity” and referred to an Oct. 18 protest in a House office building, in which Ms. Tlaib accused Israel of genocide, as an “insurrection.”
The resolution was signed by a group of far left members of the House. Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, on Thursday became the first senator to call for a cease-fire if the hostages are released, and Pope Francis called for an end to the war on Sunday.
Both sides of the conflict must abide by this measure to be effective. Hamas would have to agree, through its interlocutors, to stop launching rockets at Israel. Arab countries in the region should also put pressure on Hamas to release all of its hostages, which include many women and children.
The result of these sickening tactics is the civilian suffering we are all watching unfold. There are many unconfirmed reports of humanitarian difficulties in Gaza, but there are more real problems than unverifiable. These are our neighbors, and our full withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 was meant to give them free lives and open the door for peace. To our dismay, Hamas and its many Palestinian supporters chose otherwise.
While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has so far resisted them, those calls have grown louder and more insistent after Israel’s recent bombardment of the Jabaliya neighborhood in Gaza, which Israel said targeted Hamas militants located there. More than 3,500 children are believed to have been killed by weeks of bombardment, and the damage was described as “horrific and appalling” by the UN agency for children.
Hassan Nasrallah: Hezbollah is prepared in the upcoming war-time, but not in the Israeli Regime
That is not Hezbollah’s plan, the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said in a widely anticipated address to his followers on Friday, his first public remarks since the start of the war.
Hezbollah, he said, was already doing what it set out to do: exchanging fire with a portion of Israel’s military to keep it tied up along the northern border with Lebanon, reducing the burden on Hamas.
“The Lebanese front has lessened a large part of the forces that were going to escalate the attack on Gaza,” Mr. Nasrallah said. Some people in Lebanon say that we are taking a risk. But this risk is part of a beneficial, correct calculation.”
Hamas, Hezbollah’s ally, probably didn’t like that message and is trying to figure out how to get more involved in the fight against Israel. Both groups terrorist organizations are considered by Israel, the US and other countries.
Mr. Nasrallah warned that Hezbollah was prepared should hostilities with Israel increase. “All the possibilities on our Lebanese front are open,” he said. “All the choices are available and we could resort to them at any time.”
During one of the most tense periods in the Middle East in recent years, though, Mr. Nasrallah’s speech offered a small measure of relief for many, that at least one powerful force was not seeking to plunge the region into even greater violence.
Mr. Nasrallah is a highly respected figure inside a group that calls itself the “axis of resistance,” a network of Iranian-backed militias in several Arab countries that share an anti-American and anti-Israeli ideology and have come to coordinate their operations more closely in recent years. A decision by Hezbollah to launch a full-on war with Israel would most likely encourage attacks by allied militias in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Mr. Nasrallah accused the US of being dishonest when it told Israel that it had the right to defend itself, but that it had to respect.
He also said the group was not intimidated by the two aircraft carriers that the United States had dispatched to the eastern Mediterranean, which could strike Hezbollah targets.
“Your fleets in the Mediterranean do not scare us and will never scare us,” Mr. Nasrallah said. Your fleets that threaten us are also prepared for them.
Hezbollah could retaliate against the US in the war with Iraq and other places, said Mr. Nasrallah.
The U.S. military has said the carriers were sent to deter a wider regional war — a fear that has grown alongside mounting anger in Arab countries over the crisis facing Gazan civilians and the death toll in the strip, which has risen into the many thousands since Israel’s bombardment began. Israel has faced increasing international criticism over the dire conditions in Gaza, but has so far resisted calls for either a cease-fire or humanitarian “pauses” to help deliver aid.
The leader of the armed groups in Lebanon praised their fighters because they were destroying communications infrastructure and launching attacks on Israeli military positions. Israel had to use its military resources to the north because of the attacks so that they couldn’t contribute to attacks on Gaza.
Thousands of Hezbollah supporters gathered to watch the speech on giant screens in locations throughout Lebanon. The southern suburbs of Lebanon had the largest site adorned with Hezbollah and Palestinian flags. Supporters chanted “we are here for you, Nasrallah” when gunfire rang out when he appeared.
He claimed that the plight of the Palestinians had become so bad that a great event had to be done to fix it.
Israel’s Antisemitism Exposed: The Redux of Moslem, Syria, and the Gazan Abuse Crisis
In Beirut, Mohamad Sbeti, 40, fired a volley of celebratory gunshots into the air with a pistol after Mr. Nasrallah finished speaking. He said he’d respond to Hezbollah’s call to fight Israel.
Mr. Sbeti was not concerned about the large amount of damage that Israel could do to Lebanon in a new war.
Ross Abramson, a software engineer and recent New York University graduate, had a fairly conventional news diet until recently. He looked his phone over for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. A Jew with a lot of interest in Israel, he would look at several outlets such as The Times of Israel.
I don’t know if I watched it religiously before. He said that he found the reporting and commentary on Israel’s military campaign in Gaza by Fox less hostile than other news organizations. Mr.Abramson said you don’t feel attacked.
It’s somewhat of an improbable alliance. Most Jews identify with the Democrats. As the GOP embraced a more populist brand of politics that vilifies “globalist” corporate interests and wealthy liberals, Fox News hosts and guests promoted those views.
A Fox News correspondent clashed with a Biden press secretary over the issue of whether the administration would label protesters as extremists. The White House announced this week that it would put in place a national strategy to fight hate crimes against Jews, but the hosts were not happy about it. It debuted a new section on its website this week called “Antisemitism Exposed.”
I write these lines from Jerusalem, after spending time with the families of some of the 240 people kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7. Jews, Muslims and foreign citizens are among the hostages 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 have spoken to the families of some of the more than 1,400 people who were killed that day, many of whom were murdered in their living rooms or dancing at a music festival. When I returned to Israel, I had to remove the blood from my shoes.
Hamas, just like Al Qaeda and ISIS, had no problem burning babies when attacking Israeli homes. They tortured children, raped women and destroyed peace-loving communities. They were so proud of their deeds that they made sure to capture them on video and even broadcast them live. The videos will stain those who celebrated that day and show the depravity of the terrorists and the ideas that inspired them.
There is a realization that many in the world are willing to support these actions, even if it is only for a short time. In the capitals of Europe we’ve seen rallies supporting the total destruction of Israel “from the river to the sea.” Professors and students at American colleges make speeches and sign statements justifying terrorism, even glorifying it.
Even as Hamas fires hundreds of rockets at our cities and as our soldiers fall in battle, we’re making an effort to give early warning to civilians with leaflets and phone calls, to move them out of the main battle zones and to enable humanitarian aid through Gaza’s 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.
On Saturday, there will be marches in New York, Seattle, and San Francisco, as well as smaller cities like Orono, Maine, which have voiced opposition to Israeli tactics.
The survey found that 84 percent of respondents were worried that the US would be drawn into the Middle East conflict. More military aid to Israel was supported by 51 percent of the people, while 72 percent supported humanitarian assistance for Palestinians in Gaza.
The groups that connected themselves to Palestinian politics are expected to participate in the demonstrations on Saturday.
Well before the protest’s scheduled start, many lifted placards high, broadcasting messages like “Mourn the Dead, Fight Like Hell for the Living” and “Let Gaza Live!” A coffin shrouded in a Palestinian flag rested on the ground, not far from where more than a dozen adults and children stretched out another flag. Around 1 p.m., a Muslim call to prayer sounded through the plaza.
