A place to post and discuss news related to the recent events in Israel, including the Hamas/Islamic Jihad incursion and repercussions.
The amount of shit we're going to find out about when the war is over is going to be staggering.
And the amount of shit we're never going to find out about because it gets buried by the victors is going to be equally horrifying -- we just won't know it to be horrified by it.
US gives Israel a ‘fail’ grade on improving aid to Gaza so far
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is stepping up criticism of Israel for not doing enough to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza as a 30-day deadline looms for Israeli officials to meet certain requirements or risk potential restrictions on military assistance.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller on Monday gave Israel a “fail” grade in terms of meeting the conditions for an improvement in aid deliveries to Gaza laid out in a letter last month to senior Israeli officials from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
He said there were still roughly nine days until the deadline expires, but that limited progress so far has been insufficient.
“As of today, the situation has not significantly turned around,” Miller told reporters. “We have seen an increase in some measurements. But if you look at the stipulated recommendations in the letter — those have not been met.”
A day before the U.S. election, the Biden administration called out its close ally, with support for Israel a key issue for many voters and the humanitarian crisis for Palestinians also a factor for many in the race. Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have been competing for Muslim and Arab American voters and Jewish voters in battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Among other conditions, Austin and Blinken’s letter from mid-October said that Israel must allow in a minimum of 350 trucks a day carrying desperately needed food and other supplies for Palestinians besieged by more than a year of war between Israel and Hamas. By the end of October, an average of just 71 trucks a day were entering Gaza, according to the latest U.N. figures.
“The results are not good enough today,” Miller said. “They certainly do not have a pass. … They have failed to implement all the things that that we recommended. Now, that said, we are not at the end of the 30-day period.”
He would not say when asked what the U.S. would do when the deadline comes up next week, just that “we will follow the law.”
Blinken spoke Monday with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, urging additional steps to “substantially increase and sustain humanitarian aid” to civilians in Gaza, according to a State Department readout of their call.
Similarly, Austin has been reinforcing “how important it is to ensure that humanitarian assistance can flow and flow faster into Gaza” in calls with Gallant, said Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary.
Watch Matt Lee call out Miller for joking as Israel starves Gaza.
Miller: They’ve failed to implement the things we recommended, we’re not at end of the 30 daysLee: So it’s a fail
Miller: It’s not the end of the semester (laughs)
Lee: I suspect the levity is a little bit inappropriate
Netanyahu fires Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. It's not an understatement to say that this is a big friggin' deal.
He's moving further to the Right to maintain his coalition and stay out of jail until he dies in office.
With Ukraine doomed, expect Russia to cut bait with Iran-Hezbollah-Hamas and let Israel take over the Middle East.
Palestinians will not be allowed to return to homes in northern Gaza, says IDF
Israeli ground forces are getting closer to “the complete evacuation” of northern Gaza and residents will not be allowed to return home, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said, in what appears to be the first official acknowledgment from Israel it is systematically removing Palestinians from the area.
In a media briefing on Tuesday night, the IDF Brig Gen Itzik Cohen told Israeli reporters that since troops had been forced to enter some areas twice, such as Jabaliya camp, “there is no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes”.
He added that humanitarian aid would be allowed to “regularly” enter the south of the territory but not the north, since there are “no more civilians left”.
International humanitarian law experts have said that such actions would amount to the war crimes of forcible transfer and the use of food as a weapon.
The Israeli army and government have repeatedly denied trying to force the remaining population of northern Gaza to flee to the relative safety of the south during a month-long renewed offensive and tightened siege. Residents still clinging on in the north have said the new operation has created the worst conditions of the war to date. Israel said the push is necessary to combat regrouped Hamas cells.
Rights groups and aid agencies have alleged that despite the denials, Israel appears to be carrying out a version of the so-called “generals’ plan”, which proposes giving civilians a deadline to leave and then treating anyone who remains as a combatant.
It is unclear how many people remain in northern Gaza; last month, the UN estimated there were about 400,000 civilians unable or unwilling to follow Israeli evacuation orders. On Wednesday social media footage showed waves of several dozen displaced people carrying children and rucksacks and walking south through flattened areas of Gaza City.
Palestinians will not be allowed to return to homes in northern Gaza, says IDF
International humanitarian law experts have said that such actions would amount to the war crimes of forcible transfer and the use of food as a weapon.
Netanyahu: "Perhaps you should ask the UN to invoke 'sanctions'! Ha ha ha!"
Benji watched the US election too
Trump Tower Gaza City, opening in 2028.
Trump will give Israel ‘blank check’ which may mean all-out war with Iran, says ex-CIA chief
Donald Trump will as president give Benjamin Netanyahu a “blank check” in the Middle East, possibly opening the way for all-out war between Israel and Iran, the former CIA director and US defense secretary Leon Panetta predicted.
“With regards to the Middle East, I think he’s basically going to give Netanyahu a blank check,” Panetta said of Trump, who won the presidential election this week and will take office again in January.
“‘Whatever you do, whatever you want to do, whoever you want to go after, you have my blessing.’ I mean, he basically said that [before the election].”
The Israeli prime minister has overseen attacks on Iran and its assets as part of a growing conflagration since Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October last year. He and the US president-elect were reported to have spoken during the US election campaign. Netanyahu congratulated Trump on Wednesday, after Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris was confirmed.
Panetta continued: “And so the real question there is whether Netanyahu decides to continue to try to expand that war, go after Iran, or do things that basically create an even greater concern about whether or not the Middle East is ever going to resolve itself or be in constant conflict.”
‘It will be harder on us’: Palestinians weigh up impact of Trump election win
The waiters at Ramallah’s cafes and the tenders of its falafel stands all had more or less the same question: is Donald Trump’s win good or bad? It is a question reserved for outsiders. The Palestinians in the biggest city on the West Bank seem to have already come to a provisional consensus: that the US election result has no real impact here because things could not possibly be worse.
“It will not make a big difference,” said Eyad Barghouti, a retired university teacher, expressing a commonly held view as the Gaza war rages on. “What Biden was doing before with a low profile, Trump will be more vocal about.
“Biden would say in public: ‘We’re not trying to starve Gaza, we’re trying to give them food aid,’ all the while supporting Israel’s army. [Trump] will say it in a clear way, that we are trying to get rid of such-and-such people. He will not play the game of trying to make himself sound like a humanitarian.”
Well, can't argue with that.
All the worst-case consequences of Trump’s victory – the loss of freedom, the corrosion of justice, economic collapse and, for US allies, the possible encroachment of an aggressive neighbour and devastating wars – are already a reality for most Palestinians, many of them argue.
Those in the West Bank point out they only have to look at their social media feeds to see today’s equivalent of Guernica, Dresden or Grozny being streamed live from Gaza. They say that when it comes to the strip, the liberal order being mourned this week across the west was not just a bystander. It supplied the bombs.
“What we have seen has made us believe that the whole of western ideology is a lie,” a librarian in his 50s said, preferring that his name not be used. “They never cared about us. What they care about is the good of Israel. That is the one thing they can all agree on.”
While the first gut response in Ramallah is that Trump’s restoration will not significantly change the region’s disastrous trajectory, many acknowledge there is still room for the already dismal prospects of Palestinians to darken further.
Barghouti said the “violence could get worse” and that Trump in the White House could add unpredictability to despair. “It is like a monkey holding a bomb,” he said. “You don’t know when he will throw it or where he will throw it.”
Lama Sheikha, who works in a printing shop, said the US election result would “make Israel even stronger”. “More and more, I think it is Israel that makes the decisions, not the US. The US goes along with them, ready to help,” Sheikha said.
A Trump administration is far more likely than the current US government to go along with Israel’s intended destruction of the UN relief agency Unrwa, which provides basic services to 871,000 Palestinians on the West Bank as well as virtually the entire 2.3 million population of Gaza. Trump suspended US funding of Unrwa in 2018.
While Gaza’s economy has been almost completely wiped out, GDP on the West Bank has fallen by more than 20% over the past year and the employment rate now hovers around 35%. And it could be worse still. It is probably only pressure from the Biden administration that has prevented the far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, from permanently withholding all the customs tax that Israel collects on the Palestinian Authority’s behalf. Without those revenues and Unrwa, the West Bank would be all but an economic wasteland.
Meanwhile, the wave of settler violence against Palestinians has risen exponentially in the past year. Many have been killed or injured by militant settlers while harvesting olive groves, which are frequently torched. In the early hours of Monday this week, a gang of masked militant settlers infiltrated as far as Al-Bireh, a Ramallah suburb, threw petrol bombs at cars and buildings, and shot at firefighters trying to reach the scene.
One of the few punitive measures the Biden administration has taken in the past few months has been to impose sanctions on some of the militant settler leaders. It is debatable what effect those measures have had on the ground, but they were anyway lambasted by Republicans as anti-Israeli. It is a reasonable bet that a Trump administration would drop them.
“People are leaving already. They are being forced to leave,” Sheikha said. “Now it will happen on a bigger scale, it will be harder on us, with the economic situation, and people are being attacked on their land as they harvest olives.”
She said she understood those who chose to flee, but she swore she would not be among them. “Whatever they do, they will not force me out of my country.”
Palestinian aspirations for full nationhood, already at a low ebb, have received another devastating setback with Trump’s re-election, a fact celebrated by Israeli settlers.
“The threat of a Palestinian state is off the table,” Israel Ganz, the head of the Yesha Council, the umbrella settler organisation, declared on Wednesday in a statement welcoming the US result. “This is a historical moment and opportunity for the settlement movement … Now, with the election of President Trump, it is time to change reality in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] as well, to ensure it will forever be a part of Israel and to ensure the security of the Jewish state.”
Trump has not yet picked his team but it is fair to say that his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his former bankruptcy lawyer turned ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, are likely to have the president-elect’s ear. Both are steadfast supporters of the settlements and Friedman has produced a book advocating complete annexation of the West Bank.
Annexation is already happening by stealth. Smotrich has begun a process of transferring parts of the West Bank from military to civilian control, a move towards absorption into Israel.
Barghouti and his librarian friend agreed that by enabling more overt extremism for the Israeli right, a Trump White House would have the virtue of removing a veil from the brutal realities of the Middle East and perhaps would galvanise a response.
The librarian pointed to the emergence of Hezbollah in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The Shia militia became a formidable force, contributing to full Israeli withdrawals from Lebanon in 2000 and 2006. He said: “We are hoping for the same thing here – real resistance.”
As a sidenote, the election is geuinely, the perfect result for Bibi. Not only will he be able to continue the war unabated, he might even get expanded military capability against Iran and I'd argue a much better chance of surviving whenever the war ends.
Netanyahu appoints hardline backer of settlements as Israeli envoy to US
Netanyahu appoints hardline backer of settlements as Israeli envoy to US
Yechiel Leiter, American-born rightwinger, has called for ultimate Israeli ‘sovereignty’ over West Bank territoriesAndrew Roth in Washington
Fri 8 Nov 2024 16.38 EST
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Benjamin Netanyahu has appointed a hardline supporter of the war in Gaza and longtime backer of settlements in the West Bank as his ambassador to the US as Israel prepares for the incoming administration of Donald Trump.Yechiel Leiter, an American-born rightwing publicist and former government aide who immigrated to Israel four decades ago, was announced as Israel’s next ambassador to Washington on Friday. His son, a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces, was killed in fighting in northern Gaza last year.
Leiter is a “highly talented diplomat, an eloquent speaker, who has a deep understanding of American culture and politics”, Netanyahu said in a statement announcing the appointment. “I am convinced that Yechiel will represent the state of Israel in the best possible way, and I wish him success in his position.”
Leiter will replace the current ambassador Michael Herzog, whose term will end on 20 January.
Leiter, who was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, has been a prominent rightwing thinker in Israel who was chief of staff to Netanyahu when he was finance minister and an aide to the late prime minister Ariel Sharon when he was a member of the Knesset.
According to Israeli media, Leiter has been affiliated with conservative policy centres including the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and the Kohelet Forum.
Haaretz also reported that he was previously a member of the Jewish Defense League, which was founded by the far-right Rabbi Meir Kahane and was designated a terrorist organisation by the US for a series of attacks and assassinations. It was removed from that list for inactivity due to inactivity.
Leiter is reported to live in a West Bank settlement north of Ramallah, and is a founder of the One Israel Fund, which fundraises for settlers. His appointment was lauded by Israel Ganz, a rightwing settler leader who called Leiter a “key partner in English-language advocacy for Judea and Samaria”, the Biblical term used by Israeli settler communities in the West Bank.
He has been a vocal supporter of Trump’s Abraham accords, meant to normalize Israel’s relations with several large Arab states, saying that they have split support in the Muslim world for the Palestinian cause. And has also called for ultimate Israeli “sovereignty” over the West Bank territories, a topic that will revive concerns about a potential annexation of the West Bank by the Netanyahu government.
Trump during his first term reversed the US position that Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank were illegal under international law, and a number of settler leaders have said that Israel should formally annex the West Bank following Trump’s re-election to a second term.
Leiter’s son Moshe was killed in fighting in northern Gaza last year. He was Netanyahu’s guest when the prime minister visited Washington this summer during a contentious speech before a joint session of Congress.
Trump will soon have what Netanyahu wants and hasn't been able to get yet: total control with absolute immunity from the law.
I will spit milk if Trump tells Bibi to have at it and then actually keeps his promise to stop our involvement in all the wars by shutting down our arms sales to Israel. (And yes I know it will never happen.)
The only thing I've heard that could slow Netanyahu down is when Biden was elected he was early to congratulate and confirm him.
Aka Trump could be petty about reminding him about that slight. But Trump couldn't be that petty right? Even in this situation I'm sure it would just be something to leverage more horse trading.
Qatar to close Hamas office over lack of ‘good faith’ in Israel-Gaza ceasefire talks
The Qatari government is planning to close Hamas’s political office in Doha and has informed the US and Israel it will stop mediation efforts to halt the conflict in Gaza because it no longer thinks the parties are negotiating in good faith.
The Gulf state has concluded that talks have become a political football, and its efforts to facilitate them were generating criticism towards it, according to a diplomatic source briefed on the situation.
“As long as there is a refusal to negotiate a deal in good faith, they cannot continue to mediate,” the source said. “As a consequence, the Hamas political office no longer serves its purpose.”
Qatar’s move is the latest major blow to a crippled, faltering effort to end fighting in Gaza which has not produced significant results since a temporary ceasefire and hostage release deal nearly a year ago.
But with a new US administration taking power in just over two months, the Qataris have also made clear to US contacts that they would be willing to resume mediation if both sides showed a “sincere willingness” to reach a deal.
Qatar informed Israel, Hamas officials, the US and Egypt of the decision after a US delegation including the CIA director, Bill Burns, visited Doha for inconclusive meetings in late October.
Its government had concluded that the warring parties were focused on “political optics” rather than genuine security concerns, the diplomatic source said, and had tried to undermine the process “by backing out from some of the commitments”.
“There is insufficient willingness from either side, with the mediation efforts becoming more about politics and elections rather than a serious attempt to secure peace,” the source added.
A source close to Hamas said the group considered news reports about closing the political office and Qatar’s retreat from its mediation role were more a negotiating tactic than leaks about a firm decision.
“There is a lot of manipulation through the media going on. Actually [Qatar] wants its role as mediator to continue, because it is very useful,” the source said.
Hamas members living in Qatar are not believed to have been given a deadline to leave, and one western European diplomat said deportations or extraditions of senior Hamas leaders were very unlikely in the immediate future.
However, this is the second time that Qatar has warned publicly that it is not prepared to play host to dead-end talks indefinitely.
“There is definitely some real pressure now and it is quite heavy. It is heavier than when there have been similar threats before during this year,” the source close to Hamas said.
In April Doha had briefly asked Hamas commanders to leave the country, after the prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, announced Qatar was going to review its mediation role.
They headed to Turkey but within weeks Israel and the US government had asked Qatar to bring them back in order to intensify negotiations. The Qataris are trusted by senior figures on and have a long track record in mediation.
The Hamas office in Doha was opened in 2012, at the request of the Obama administration. For over a decade it has provided a key channel of communication to the group, including during talks last year to agree a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of evermore than 100 hostages.
However, since that agreement in November 2023, talks aimed at reaching a second deal have repeatedly collapsed, and Qatar has come under increasing criticism in Israel and from parts of the US political establishment for hosting Hamas.
A group of Republican US senators on Friday asked Washington to seek the extradition of Hamas officials in Qatar and freeze their assets.
These attacks, on an initiative launched at the US’s request, rankled in Doha and contributed to Qatar’s decision to distance itself from Hamas and peace talks.
“Qatar also advised the US administration and both parties that it would not accept being subjected to political exploitation aimed at gaining political leverage at Qatar’s expense while misleading public perception,” the source said.
US officials have briefed American media outlets that Washington had requested the closure of the Hamas office, but the Biden administration has not commented publicly.
The Qataris told Washington that they would be willing to pick up their mediation role again “when both sides reach an impasse and demonstrate a sincere willingness to return to the negotiating table with the objective of putting an end to the war and the suffering of civilians”.
Qatar is a close US ally, hosts a major military base, and its diplomats had a good relationship with Donald Trump during his first presidential term.
The state also hosted a political office for the Taliban, then an insurgent movement, and facilitated talks with Trump’s administration on a deal to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.
Hamas leaders have been preparing for many months to leave Doha, and Turkey and Iraq have been suggested as possible alternatives. The group recently opened a political office in Baghdad.
Western and regional politicians and diplomats who favour allowing Hamas to stay in Qatar warned that if it is pushed out, it will hinder engagement with Hamas figures potentially more inclined to compromise, and could allow more hostile states such as Iran to boost their hold over the group.
The request to Qatar comes amid a flurry of activity as the Biden administration prepares a final effort to end Israeli assaults in Gaza and Lebanon before handing over power to Donald Trump, who has said he too wants to see an end to the conflict. However, there is no immediate sign that any breakthrough is possible.
Trump names former Arkansas governor and Rapture aficionado Mike Huckabee as US ambassador to Israel. Nothing says unilateral support for Israel better than sending them someone who believes God will destroy them all.
He believes god will destroy them all, but only after they completely take over the area, so they've got unilateral support to make that happen, which is exactly what they want from us in the first place.
Good news for the admin now is that their miserable, total failure is pretty much out of their hands.
(This is assuming they ever meaningfully gave a shit, to be fair.)
(This is assuming they ever meaningfully gave a shit, to be fair.)
The State Department on Tuesday said that Israel is not in violation of U.S. law related to the delivery and access of humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip, despite pushback from aid groups and the United Nations.
The U.N. and aid groups have sounded the alarm over dire conditions for Palestinians’ access to food, medical care and shelter.
The U.S. assessment came at the end of a 30-day timeline where Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin issued a warning to the Israeli government that concrete steps needed to be taken to increase humanitarian assistance deliveries into the Gaza Strip or risk triggering a block on U.S. weapons deliveries under federal law.
“We, at this time, have not made an assessment that the Israelis are in violation of U.S. law,” State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said on Tuesday.
“Israel has taken a number of steps to address the measures laid out in the letter that secretaries Blinken and Austin sent earlier in October. We continue to be in discussion with our partners in Israel about these steps that they’ve taken, which they took as a result of U.S. intervention, as well as additional steps that we feel that still need to be taken.”
The U.S. assessment came after eight international aid organizations said Israel had failed to meet the criteria laid out by Blinken and Austin. They said Israel had taken actions “that dramatically worsened the situation on the ground particularly in Northern Gaza,” The Associated Press reported.
F*cking hell, honestly.
If it weren't so f*cking dire for literally everything else, I'd be glad they lost. Not because I have any expectation of Trump being any better for Gaza, but because the blatant and fully transparent lies deserve some sort of punishment.
You wanted to vote to punish Biden/Kamala, fine.
This is just being a gullible dumbass in public.
This is just being a gullible dumbass in public.
We don't kink-shame here. Clearly they enjoy getting humiliated in public.
I have moved past the point of being able to extent Biden the slightest bit of good faith on this. This miserable, cowardly failure should be the second line of his Presidential bio (after the miserably failing to protect democracy part).
Absolutely dejecting to see how many dems are still echoing the line that no one has done more for Palestinians than Biden.
"For" or "to"?
"For" or "to"?
Not enough people were doing this for/to Trump.
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