Israeli continues its effort to seal down the North Gaza araea and hunt down members of Hamas….
Complaints from around the world have fallen on deaf ears…..
It IS interesting that other Middle East countries have NOT come down hard against the Israeli actions which are of course a defeat for Iran’s efforts ….
There is a report that Hezbollah is trying to get help from the Wagner group…..
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US House passes a aid bill for Israel ONLY that won’t go anywhere in the Senate and White House…
A divided House on Thursday passed a Republican-written bill that would tie $14.3 billion in military aid to Israel for its war with Hamas to domestic spending cuts, defying a veto threat from President Biden and bipartisan opposition in the Senate.
Republicans pushed through the measure on a mostly party-line vote of 226 to 196, a rare occurrence because aid packages for Israel normally enjoy broad bipartisan support. But the legislation, put forward by the newly elected Republican Speaker Mike Johnson, alienated Democrats because it would slash a tax enforcement initiative at the Internal Revenue Service, a part of the Inflation Reduction Act that is a key piece of Mr. Biden’s agenda.
Only a dozen Democrats voted in favor.
The measure is headed for a bipartisan bloc of opposition in the Senate, where lawmakers favor packaging aid for Israel with money to help Ukraine fend off Russia’s invasion, as well as for other global crises. Mr. Biden has requested such a package, totaling $105 billion, and White House officials said on Tuesday that he would veto the House bill because it was limited to Israel and contained “partisan poison pill offsets.”….
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Hamas leader vow’s more attacks….
Even as Israeli warplanes pounded Gaza last week ahead of a major ground invasion, Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, unabashedly championed the Oct. 7 terror attack Hamas launched from Gaza that prompted those airstrikes. And he promised similar future assaults with the goal of annihilating Israel.
The surprise attack of Oct. 7 “was just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth,” he told a Lebanese television channel in an interview that aired on Oct. 24 and was later put online by a media watchdog organization.
“We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again,” Mr. Hamad said in the interview, according to clips of the interview published and translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI, a nonprofit monitoring group founded by an Israeli and an Israeli-American that is based in Washington, D.C. The videos, as they appeared on the group’s website, had been edited for length but the provided translations were accurate….
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American officials call for a “humanitarian pauses”
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken will urge the Israeli government to agree to a series of brief cessations of military operations in Gaza to allow for hostages to be released safely and for humanitarian aid to be distributed, White House officials said on Thursday.
The message comes as President Biden revealed on Wednesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had previously agreed to halt shelling briefly on Oct. 20 to allow for the release of two Americans, Judith Raanan, 59, and her daughter, Natalie Raanan, 17.
The push for what American officials call “humanitarian pauses” is one of several subjects Mr. Blinken will raise with Mr. Netanyahu and other officials when he arrives in Israel on Friday for another round of diplomacy amid fierce fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas, the group that controls Gaza.
Speaking to reporters before boarding a plane on his way to the Middle East, Mr. Blinken said part of his mission would be to help ensure that civilians in Gaza were protected as Israel wages its war…..
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Netanyahu and the blame for the intel failures….
A growing list of Israeli officials have accepted responsibility for failing to prevent Hamas’ brutal attack on Israeli communities during the Oct. 7 incursion that triggered the current Israel-Hamas war. Conspicuously absent from that roll call is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Following the horrific assault, which saw the deadliest day for Israelis since the country was established 75 years ago, Netanyahu has repeatedly sidestepped accountability. He has instead blamed others, in what critics say shows a leader thinking more about his own political survival than soothing and steering a traumatized nation.
“Netanyahu is fighting a personal battle of survival and that takes precedence over fighting Israel’s war against Hamas,” said Netanyahu biographer and journalist Anshel Pfeffer. “As part of that battle, he’s prepared to malign those who are now commanding Israel’s army and intelligence services.”…
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The attack also shattered a widely-held belief among Israeli military, intelligence and political leaders that Hamas was uninterested in a new conflict and that Israel’s military power served as a deterrent.
Israel’s top security brass, including the military chief of staff, the defense minister and the head of the domestic security agency Shin Bet, came forward and accepted responsibility for the blunder in the days after the attack.
Netanyahu, however, has not taken outright responsibility for the missteps that led up the horrific attack, despite serving as prime minister for 13 of the past 14 years. He says there will be time for investigations — after the war.
“This debacle will be investigated. Everyone will have to give answers, including me,” Netanyahu said, two and half weeks after the attack. But he has brushed off criticism and rejected suggestions that he should resign….
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