The Middle East IS…
Well?
The Middle East……
Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed 33 people and injured many more, according to medical officials, in one of the most serious escalations of violence since the US-backed ceasefire came into effect last month.
Officials at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis said they received the bodies of 17 people, including five women and five children, after four Israeli airstrikes targeted tents sheltering displaced people. In Gaza City, medical officials said two airstrikes killed 16 people, including seven children and three women.
Israel said it launched the attacks after its soldiers came under fire in Khan Younis on Wednesday, though they suffered no reported casualties. Hamas condemned the Israeli strikes as a “shocking massacre” and denied firing toward Israeli troops.
Palestinians in Gaza said they felt as if the two-year war had never stopped. Officials in the territory say more than 300 people have been killed by Israeli strikes since the ceasefire…
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Hamas is still holding the remains of three hostages, and Israeli military forces hold more than 50% of Gaza after withdrawing from some of their positions at the time of the ceasefire. The territory is now divided by the “yellow line”.
Gaza’s health ministry has reported more than 300 deaths since the ceasefire came into effect, an average of more than seven a day. Each side has accused the other of violating its terms, which include increasing the flow of aid into Gaza and returning hostages, dead or alive, to Israel.
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Jefferey Epstein as a Israeli ‘Asset’?
Second, Epstein has long been rumored to have been an intelligence asset, specifically for Israel. Epstein was meant to have come into the employ of Israel as early as the 1980s after working as an arms dealer, sources told journalist Vicky Ward a few years back, and the discovery of a false passport and cash in his safe seemed to lend further credence to this.
More recently, Drop Site has done the best reporting on this front, running a series of stories based on a tranche of leaked emails of former Israeli prime minister (and Epstein associate) Ehud Barak that show Epstein’s work for the Israeli government. That included: repeatedly hosting an Israeli military intelligence officer and Barak aide who was in the United States to conduct official business; working with Barak to secure actions against Israeli adversaries, whether a US bombing of Iran or Russian backing for regime change in Syria; or brokering security agreements between Israel and Mongolia and Côte d’Ivoire.
As these stories pile up, it has become increasingly difficult to deny that Epstein was, at minimum, an asset for Israeli intelligence….
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Most shockingly, a former editor for the conservative Weekly Standard reported that then and future Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu once obliquely threatened Clinton with tapes of his embarrassing conversations with Monica Lewinsky in order to get him to release a man then serving prison time for selling US military secrets to Israel. That bombshell claim was corroborated by several facts: that Lewinsky testified that Clinton had told her “he suspected that a foreign embassy (he did not specify which one) was tapping his telephones”; that he told her this shortly afterClinton met with Netanyahu at the Oval Office; and contemporary reporting about the “heated exchanges” and “tense discussions” between the two that nearly derailed the signing of the Oslo Accords, after a revolt from the national security establishment led Clinton to reverse course on pardoning the spy.
It’s at this point you start to think about the often embarrassing servility Trump has shown to Netanyahu and Israel over the past year, coming into office on an “America First” platform and the image of a bulldozing strongman and then, once in office, continually selling out that platform for the benefit of Israel and meekly letting Netanyahu walk all over him.
Of course, you do not need the specter of blackmail to explain US lawmakers’ bizarre fealty to Israel, especially in an increasingly nakedly corrupt campaign finance system. But as more and more of this information piles up, it does make you wonder if Netanyahu has pulled something similar today to what he reportedly did with Clinton all those years ago — or if he even has to, given the potential for something damaging to have made its way from Epstein to the Israeli government, and given the president’s palpable anxiety over the public learning more about his friendship with the late pedophile….
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Israel and the Trump Saudia F-35 Buy….
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday the United States has assured his country’s “qualitative advantage” in the Middle East despite President Trump’s plan to sell F-35 advanced fighter jets to Saudi Arabia.
The sale concerned Israeli and some U.S. officials about whether it could destabilize Israel’s so-called qualitative military edge (QME), which Congress has committed to maintain in a 2008 law.
“They didn’t ask us before the sale of the F-35, but once it happened, I spoke with [Secretary of State Marco Rubio] and made sure of it,” Netanyahu told Abu Ali Express, an Israeli news outlet. “[Saudi Crown Prince] Mohammed Bin Salman did not receive from [Trump] everything he wanted.”
Netanyahu also said there was a “remote” possibility that the U.S. could sell F-35s to Turkey, “even if it exists at all.” Israel has pushed to prevent the sale of F-35s to other Middle Eastern nations, including the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.
Israel’s military previously told The Hill that it sent a formal position paper to the country’s political echelon stating that it objected to the sale of the F-35, as it could hinder Israel’s air superiority in the region….
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