Browsed by
Category: Politics

Israel has dropped a staggering 6,000 bombs on Gaza in less than a week

Israel has dropped a staggering 6,000 bombs on Gaza in less than a week

Dozens of fighter jets and helicopters attacked a series of terrorist targets of the Hamas terrorist organization throughout the Gaza Strip. So far, the IAF has dropped about 6,000 bombs against Hamas targets. pic.twitter.com/3Xm1vxvq7D — Israeli Air Force (@IAFsite) October 12, 2023 The Washington Post reports: The Israeli air force on Thursday said it had dropped 6,000 bombs against Hamas targets so far — a staggering number over the course of six days, according to warfare experts. “Israel is dropping…

Read More Read More

Hamas’ gift to Vladimir Putin

Hamas’ gift to Vladimir Putin

Jamie Dettmer and Christian Oliver write: Hamas’ brutal assault against Israel came on Vladimir Putin’s birthday. Such a catastrophic security shock in the Middle East was probably a welcome surprise for a Russian president whose strategic priority is to divert Western support and attention away from Ukraine. A massive conflagration in Israel risks doing exactly that. The big question is how much credit to give the Kremlin for the perfect storm of mounting crises — in Israel, Kosovo, the Caucasus…

Read More Read More

Stunning State Department memo warns diplomats: No Gaza ‘de-escalation’ talk

Stunning State Department memo warns diplomats: No Gaza ‘de-escalation’ talk

HuffPost reports: As Israel escalates its attacks on Gaza, the State Department is discouraging diplomats working on Middle East issues from making public statements suggesting the U.S. wants to see less violence, according to internal emails viewed by HuffPost. In messages circulated on Friday, State Department staff wrote that high-level officials do not want press materials to include three specific phrases: “de-escalation/ceasefire,” “end to violence/bloodshed” and “restoring calm.” The revelation provides a stunning signal about the Biden administration’s reluctance to…

Read More Read More

Israeli president says there are no innocent civilians in Gaza

Israeli president says there are no innocent civilians in Gaza

HuffPost reports: As Israel engages in a massive air campaign ahead of an anticipated full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said on Friday that all citizens of Gaza are responsible for the attack Hamas perpetrated in Israel last weekend that left over 1,200 people dead. “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Herzog said at a press conference on Friday. “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not…

Read More Read More

Trump tells allies he wants Netanyahu ‘impeached’

Trump tells allies he wants Netanyahu ‘impeached’

Rolling Stone reports: Donald Trump has been absolutely furious with Benjamin Netanyahu since the Israeli prime minister declined to publicly back his conspiracy-fueled effort to overturn the 2020 election. The Israel-Hamas war that erupted over the weekend has only stoked the former president’s animus toward Netanyahu, and he’s now trying to use the unfolding horror to get even. In recent days, Trump has had phone calls with various pro-Israel GOP allies and donors who want to know how Trump would…

Read More Read More

Trump’s longtime CFO lied, under oath, about Trump Tower penthouse

Trump’s longtime CFO lied, under oath, about Trump Tower penthouse

Forbes reports: Allen Weisselberg, the longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, lied in sworn testimony on Tuesday when questioned about Donald Trump’s penthouse atop Trump Tower. Weisselberg was on the stand as part of a $250 million lawsuit that the New York attorney general is waging against Trump and his associates, including Weisselberg, accusing them of lying about Trump’s net worth to financial institutions. To arrive at inflated figures, the Trump Organization used demonstrably incorrect facts, such as…

Read More Read More

Humanitarian crisis in Gaza worsens as Israel prepares a possible invasion

Humanitarian crisis in Gaza worsens as Israel prepares a possible invasion

The New York Times reports: Six days of Israeli airstrikes have left more than 300,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip homeless, with two million residents facing critical shortages of food, water and fuel, while Israeli troops prepared on Thursday for a possible ground invasion after Hamas’s deadly weekend assault. Retaliating for the bloodiest attack on Israel in 50 years, Israel is pummeling Gaza with a ferocity not seen in past conflicts and has cut off vital supplies to the coastal…

Read More Read More

Majority of Israelis blame government for Hamas massacre, say Netanyahu must resign

Majority of Israelis blame government for Hamas massacre, say Netanyahu must resign

The Jerusalem Post reports: Four out of five Jewish Israelis believe the government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are to blame for the mass infiltration of Hamas terrorists into Israel and the massacre that followed, a new Dialog Center poll released on Thursday found. An overwhelming majority – 86% of respondents, including 79% of coalition supporters, said the surprise attack from Gaza is a failure of the country’s leadership, while a staggering 92% said the war is causing anxiety. Furthermore,…

Read More Read More

After Hamas onslaught, Trump appears to mock Israel, calls Gallant a ‘jerk’

After Hamas onslaught, Trump appears to mock Israel, calls Gallant a ‘jerk’

The Times of Israel reports: Former US president Donald Trump on Wednesday appeared to mock Israel for failing to anticipate the weekend Hamas onslaught and for not going on the offensive against Hezbollah amid several deadly clashes along its northern border. He also launched personal attacks against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he accused of “letting him down,” and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, whom he called a “jerk.” His comments stood in sharp contrast to the full-throated support given to…

Read More Read More

How to think morally about the Israel-Hamas war

How to think morally about the Israel-Hamas war

Zack Beauchamp writes: In southern Israel, Hamas terrorists broke into a room where a family of five was hiding and slaughtered every one of them. In Gaza, a father wrapped in gauze held his child, butchered in an Israeli strike, for the last time. These scenes pose a very simple moral test: Do you believe that it is wrong for innocent people to suffer in this way? That mass death should be deplored, not defended, regardless of who its victims…

Read More Read More

The massacre in Israel and the need for a decent Left

The massacre in Israel and the need for a decent Left

Michelle Goldberg writes: On Tuesday evening, I was drinking on the porch of my friend and neighbor Misha Shulman, the Israel-born rabbi of a progressive New York synagogue called the New Shul. All day, he’d been on the phone with congregants deeply distraught over the massacres and mass kidnappings in Israel. Of all the people he spoke to, he said, those most devastated were either people who had lost close friends or family, or young Jews “completely shattered by the…

Read More Read More

Iran president, Saudi crown prince speak for first time since ties restored

Iran president, Saudi crown prince speak for first time since ties restored

Reuters reports: Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman discussed the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on Wednesday, in the first telephone call between the two leaders since a China-brokered deal between Tehran and Riyadh to resume ties. The two leaders’ call came as Israel carried out air strikes in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for a deadly attack by Palestinian Hamas militants in Israel. Raisi and the Saudi crown prince discussed the “need to end war crimes against…

Read More Read More

Trump claims the insurrection clause ‘does not apply’ to the president – or prohibit someone from ‘running for office’

Trump claims the insurrection clause ‘does not apply’ to the president – or prohibit someone from ‘running for office’

Law & Crime reports: Attorneys for Donald Trump this week argued that the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause does not and cannot apply to a president, or someone running for president, of the United States. “Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment does not prohibit someone from running for office—it prohibits someone from holding office, and even then, only if Congress chooses not to lift the prohibition,” a Monday filing by the ex-president’s lawyers reads. The argument was made in response to…

Read More Read More

Netanyahu bolstered Hamas in order to thwart the creation of a Palestinian state

Netanyahu bolstered Hamas in order to thwart the creation of a Palestinian state

Gidi Weitz writes: It’s impossible to close your eyes to the reality. There’s a clear connection between the corruption trial [of Benjamin Netanyahu], the government’s judicial overhaul, and the greatest failure since the Yom Kippur War of 1973, perhaps even since the establishment of the state. Admittedly, the intelligence agencies failed inconceivably at foreseeing the actual attack. But they warned Netanyahu time and again in recent months that Israel’s enemies had identified a historic weakness, making the likelihood of war…

Read More Read More

Israeli cabinet ministers heckled out of hospitals as they try to visit the wounded

Israeli cabinet ministers heckled out of hospitals as they try to visit the wounded

The Forward reports: Israeli cabinet ministers faced the wrath of anguished citizens and doctors during visits to local hospitals on Thursday. Israel is in mourning after a surprise attack by Hamas on Saturday, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 1,200 people. But the country, before the attacks, had been convulsed for months over a judicial reform package pushed by the right-wing government, which has led hundreds of thousands of Israelis to protest in the streets. “You’ve ruined…

Read More Read More

The attack on Israel has been called a ‘9/11 moment’. Therein lies a cautionary tale

The attack on Israel has been called a ‘9/11 moment’. Therein lies a cautionary tale

Kenneth Roth writes: Hamas’s appalling attack on Israeli civilians has been widely described as the country’s “9/11 moment”. It is an appropriate description of such wanton cruelty. But the analogy carries a cautionary note as well. The US government lost the world’s sympathy, and the moral high ground, when its response to 9/11 degenerated into a highly abusive war in Iraq, systematic torture, and endless detention without trial in Guantánamo. The Israeli government should be careful not to replicate this…

Read More Read More