Day: October 20, 2023

Palestinian Islamist group Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed about 1,400 people aimed to disrupt a potential normalization of ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia sought by Riyadh, U.S. President Joe Biden said on Friday.

Biden suggested Saudi wanted to recognize Israel in the comments he made at a campaign fundraiser.

Saudi Arabia, a Middle East powerhouse and home to Islam’s two holiest shrines, gave its blessing to Gulf neighbors United Arab Emirates and Bahrain establishing relations with Israel in 2020 under the previous U.S. administration of Donald Trump.

Riyadh has not followed suit, saying Palestinian statehood goals should be addressed first.

“One of the reasons Hamas moved on Israel … they knew that I was about to sit down with the Saudis,” Biden said.

“Guess what? The Saudis wanted to recognize Israel.”

The potential normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states was a top priority for Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his June trip to Riyadh, although he acknowledged no progress should be expected imminently.

Blinken told CNN on Oct. 8 that “it wouldn’t be a surprise that part of the motivation (for the attack) may have been to disrupt efforts to bring Saudi Arabia and Israel together.”

Biden told CBS’ 60 Minutes in an interview that aired last Sunday that the prospect of normalization was “still alive, it’s going to take time.”

Israel responded to the Oct. 7 attack by pounding Gaza with air strikes, killing more than 4,000 people, and has said it will act to free hostages taken by Hamas militants while wiping out the group.

Hamas released two American hostages Friday, a mother and her teenage daughter, who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ cross-border attack two weeks ago.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel is “not giving up on the effort to return all abducted and missing people. … At the same time, we’ll continue to fight until victory.”
Israel said Friday it plans to evacuate Kiryat Shmona residents to state-funded guest houses. The city is near Israel’s border with Lebanon where there have been repeated rocket and missile attacks.
The death toll from the hospital strike in Gaza is now reported to be on the lower end of 100-300 people.
More than 1,400 Israelis, 4,100 Palestinians have been killed.        

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country would “fight until victory” in Gaza, signaling there would be no pause in Israel’s bombing of the area or an expected invasion there despite Hamas’ release of two U.S. hostages.

“Two of our abductees are at home. We are not giving up on the effort to return all abducted and missing people,” Netanyahu said in a statement released Friday night.

“At the same time, we’ll continue to fight until victory,” he said.

His remarks came hours after two Americans, a mother and daughter from the Chicago area who also hold Israel citizenship, were released by Hamas. They were the first of what Israel says is more than 200 hostages held by the militant group in Gaza to be freed.

Reporters asked U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday as he was walking up the stairs to board Air Force One whether Israel should delay an invasion of Gaza until more hostages can be freed. Biden replied, “Yes,” but the White House said shortly afterward that Biden did not fully hear the question.

White House Communications Director Ben LaBolt said Biden was far away when the question was asked.

“The question sounded like ‘Would you like to see more hostages released?’ He wasn’t commenting on anything else,” LaBolt said.

Earlier Friday, Biden said he believed Hamas was motivated to attack Israel partly because the militant group wants to stop Israel from normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia.

Biden told a campaign fundraiser in Washington on Friday that Hamas “knew I was about to sit down with the Saudis.”

The United States had been working toward bringing Israel and Saudi Arabia together to establish diplomatic relations following U.S. efforts in 2020 that succeeded in getting the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to recognize Israel.

Meanwhile early Saturday, Israeli planes bombed six homes in Gaza, killing at least eight Palestinians and injuring 45, Palestinian media said. According to the United Nations, 140,000 homes in Gaza have been damaged, which amounts to nearly a third of all homes in the territory. It says nearly 13,000 homes have been destroyed.

In Egypt, an official told The Associated Press that two trucks filled with aid entered the Egyptian side of the border crossing with Gaza early Saturday but said they have not passed through into the Gaza Strip.

Israel said Wednesday that that aid would be allowed into Gaza from Egypt, but the border has remained closed. Egypt says the crossing has been damaged by Israeli air strikes.

Israel pummeled the Gaza Strip on Friday night with airstrikes, amid warnings that Israeli forces could invade the Hamas-ruled territory at any time.

The Israel Defense Forces posted Friday on X, formerly known as Twitter: “During the night, fighter jets attacked over a hundred operational targets of the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip, destroying tunnel shafts, munitions warehouses and dozens of operational headquarters.”

In other developments, Israel is planning to evacuate the northern city of Kiryat Shmona. Authorities said Friday that the residents will be placed in state-funded guest houses. The northern city is near Israel’s border with Lebanon and has been subjected to numerous rocket and missile attacks from Palestinian militant groups.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak traveled Friday to Egypt, his latest Middle Eastern destination, as the conflict continues to grow. Sunak has already met with Israeli leaders and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Sunak followed Biden with a visit to Israel to demonstrate Western support for the war against Hamas militants.

“You have suffered an unspeakable, horrific act of terrorism, and I want you to know that the United Kingdom and I stand with you,” Sunak said. Later, he told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “We will stand with your people. And we also want you to win.”

Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told hundreds of thousands of the country’s ground troops to get ready to invade the Gaza Strip.

Gallant met with Israeli infantry soldiers positioned on the Gaza border, telling the forces to “get organized, be ready,” but did not say when the order would come for the invasion.

“Whoever sees Gaza from afar now, will see it from the inside,” he said. “I promise you.”

Israel has amassed 300,000 or more troops along the border following Hamas’ cross-border Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,400 people, most of them civilians.

Biden said after his brief visit to Tel Aviv on Wednesday that he had candid discussions with Israeli leaders as they conduct military strikes that have taken more than 3,400 lives in Gaza, many of them civilians.

“I was very blunt with the Israelis,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One. Biden said that while Israel “has been badly victimized,” the country has “an opportunity to relieve the suffering” of innocent civilians in Gaza “who have nowhere to go.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.

Protesters gathered in Arab nations and beyond, including Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen, Morocco, Malaysia and Indonesia.

In Egypt, where the military usually bans public gatherings, thousands took to the streets of Cairo and other cities in a public outpouring of anger.

Demonstrators chanted, “The people want the fall of Israel,” modifying a common chant from the Arab Spring: “The people want the fall of the regime.”

In Bahrain, which has normalized relations with Israel, several thousand people marched, chanting slogans such as, “No to normalization!”

The protests came two weeks after Israel began its campaign in Gaza in response to a surprise Hamas attack on October 7 that killed at least 1,400 people, most of them civilians.

The Hamas-run health ministry said the ongoing Israeli attacks have killed more than 4,100 Palestinians.

Many Western governments have voiced support for Israel’s military campaign, while most Muslim states have called for an immediate cease-fire.

President Joe Biden has said the U.S. will provide unwavering support for Israel in its military response to the Hamas attack and pledged during a brief visit to Tel Aviv this week that the United States would ensure Israel’s qualitative military edge as it has done for decades.

In a prime-time speech Thursday night, Biden urged Congress to pass more than $100 billion in aid for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan.

He said it was a matter of national security for the U.S. to stand up to Hamas and Russian President Vladimir Putin, each of whom is trying to “annihilate a neighboring democracy.”

Palestinians in the West Bank city of Ramallah expressed frustration toward Biden and his administration’s support for Israel.

Hanin, a 29-year-old journalist who asked that his last name not be used, told VOA that Biden is “not even neutral about the war.”

“He can end everything with easy steps, but he … doesn’t want peace. … [Biden] and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu are the head of everything that’s happening here. They are responsible for everything happening here.”

Hamza, 20, who also did not want his last name used, said he believed Biden’s words showed that the president thinks Palestinians are terrorists.

“We are not terrorists. They are trying to distort the attack. All we are trying to do is to get our liberation from the occupation soldiers,” he told VOA.

Protests broke out in the main cities of the occupied West Bank on Friday following midday prayers. Protesters threw stones at Israeli troops and burned tires, while Israeli security forces responded by firing tear gas and live rounds.

The mounting anger in Muslim countries is also being expressed by its leaders.

On Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Israel’s attacks on Gaza amounted to genocide.

“I repeat my call for the Israeli leadership to never expand the scope of its attacks on civilians and to immediately end its operations amounting to genocide,” Erdogan said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Following the Hamas attack on Israel, Turkey initially condemned the civilian deaths in Israel and called for restraint.

But as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has intensified, Ankara, which has diplomatic relations with Israel, has toughened its stance.

Erdogan spoke to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi by phone on Friday and said, “The savagery toward Palestinian lands was deepening,” according to his office.

‘Accumulated fury’

Earlier this week, el-Sissi told visiting U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that while Egypt “unequivocally condemns” the Hamas attacks on Israeli, the militants were motivated by the dire conditions Palestinians face.

“We need to understand that this is the result of accumulated fury and hatred over four decades, where the Palestinians had no hope to find a solution,” he said.

Egypt is holding a summit on the Gaza crisis on Saturday amid growing fears of a wider war in the Middle East. The Cairo Peace Summit will bring together officials from Arab and European countries, but the fact that the U.S. and Israel will not send top officials has dampened expectations.

Jordan’s foreign minister said on Thursday that his country feared the worst was yet to come and said the war would have “catastrophic repercussions.”

In Jordan’s capital, Amman, several thousand protesters marched in the center of the city while thousands more rallied near the Israeli Embassy to show their support for Palestinians.

Yan Boechat, reporting for VOA from Ramallah, contributed to this report. Some information came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.

From the minute House Republicans eked out a narrow majority in the 2022 midterms after massively underperforming expectations, we all knew it was going to fall apart for them. It took fifteen rounds to elect a Speaker to begin with. All of their stated plans, from a shutdown to impeachment, have failed to happen as they’ve endlessly bickered with each other. And now they’ve gone weeks without a Speaker.

Now that high profile candidates Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, and Steve Scalise have all been eaten alive by their own side, at least eight other House Republicans have entered the race for Speaker. In other words, the Republican Party is becoming even further divided into factions and fiefdoms.

To that end, one far right pundit now says that a “Republican civil war is looming.” This is a guy who’s generally wrong about everything, but for once he could be right. The total lack of leadership within the Republican Party does appear to have the party on track to rip itself into pieces.

We’ll see where this Speaker battle goes from here. But at this point the Republican Party is about as divided within itself as the Democratic Party is united within itself. The last time a major U.S. political party was in this bad of shape, it was the Whig Party – and it ceased to exist not too long thereafter.

The post “Republican civil war is looming” appeared first on Palmer Report.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “fight until victory” in Gaza, signaling no pause in his military’s bombardment and expected invasion of the enclave after Hamas released two U.S. hostages.

The Islamist group Hamas on Friday released U.S. mother and daughter Judith and Natalie Raanan who were kidnapped in its attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7.

They were the first hostages confirmed by both sides in the conflict to be freed since Hamas gunmen burst into Israel, killing 1,400 people, mainly civilians, and taking around 200 hostages.

“Two of our abductees are at home. We are not giving up on the effort to return all abducted and missing people,” Netanyahu said in a statement released late Friday night.

“At the same time, we’ll continue to fight until victory,” he added.

An image obtained by Reuters after their release, showed the two surrounded by three Israeli soldiers and holding hands with Gal Hirsch, Israel’s coordinator for the captives and missing. In the image, Natalie is wearing jeans and a grey hoodie while Judith was wearing a long blue shirt.

Abu Ubaida, a spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, said the hostages were released in response to Qatari mediation efforts, “for humanitarian reasons, and to prove to the American people and the world that the claims made by Biden and his fascist administration are false and baseless”.

But the violence continued.

Israeli aircraft struck six homes in northern Gaza early on Saturday, killing at least eight Palestinians and injuring 45, Palestinian media reported.

Israel has already told all civilians to evacuate the northern half of the Gaza Strip, which includes Gaza City. Many people have yet to leave saying they fear losing everything and have nowhere safe to go with southern areas also under attack.

At least 4,137 Palestinians have been killed, including hundreds of children, and 13,000 wounded in Gaza, the Palestinian health ministry said. The U.N. says more than a million have been made homeless.

Asked if Israel had so far followed the laws of war in it’s response, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated on Friday that Israel has the right to defend itself and make sure Hamas is not able to launch attacks again.

“It’s important that operations be conducted in accordance with international law, humanitarian law, the law of war… There will be plenty of time to make assessments about how these operations were conducted but I can just say from the part of the United States, this continues to be important to us,” he added

The United Nations humanitarian affairs office said more than 140,000 homes – nearly a third of all homes in Gaza – have been damaged, with nearly 13,000 completely destroyed.

International attention has focused on getting aid to Gaza through the one access point not controlled by Israel, the Rafah crossing to Egypt.

Biden, who visited Israel on Wednesday, said he believed trucks carrying aid would get through in the next 24-48 hours.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres toured the checkpoint on Egypt’s side on Friday and called for a meaningful number of trucks to enter Gaza every day and checks – which Israel insists on to stop aid reaching Hamas – to be quick and pragmatic.

Western leaders have so far mostly offered support to Israel’s campaign against Hamas, although there is mounting unease about the plight of civilians in Gaza.

Many Muslim states, however, have called for an immediate ceasefire, and protests demanding an end to the bombardment were held in cities across the Islamic world on Friday.

Related Galleries:

Former U.S. Representative Justin Amash said on Friday that several of his relatives had been killed when a Greek Orthodox church in the Gaza Strip was hit overnight by an Israeli air strike.

“Our family is hurting badly,” Amash wrote on X. “May God watch over all Christians in Gaza — and all Israelis and Palestinians who are suffering, whatever their religion or creed.”

Palestinian officials said at least 500 Muslims and Christians had taken shelter from Israeli bombardments in the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Porphyrius, and the Hamas-run government’s health ministry said 16 were killed.

The Israeli military said part of the church was damaged in a strike on a nearby militant command center, and that it was reviewing the incident.

The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem condemned the strike in a statement.

Amash, a Palestinian-American, represented Michigan as a Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2011 to 2021. A vocal critic of former Republican President Donald Trump, Amash left the party in 2019 and later joined the Libertarian Party.

Israel has besieged Gaza since Hamas killed 1,400 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7. More than 4,100 Palestinians have been killed, according to Palestinian health officials, and more than 1 million Palestinians have been left homeless, according to the United Nations.

Related Galleries:

The post Webster in The Diplomat: Will Russia and China Agree to the Power of Siberia 2? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

President Joe Biden’s green energy loan czar struggled to explain his relationship with a trade association he founded that has been selling companies access to him at paid private events, during a Senate Energy Committee hearing on Thursday.

Since 2022, Jigar Shah, the head of the Department of Energy’s $400 billion Loan Programs Office, has headlined at least 10 paid dinners and events for loan-seeking companies hosted by Cleantech Leaders Roundtable, a green tech trade group that he founded in 2017, the Washington Free Beacon reported earlier this month.

Shah’s DOE office and Cleantech Leaders also co-hosted an invitation-only conference in Washington, D.C., for companies looking for loans in early October—and Cleantech Leaders was in charge of the invite list and ticket sales.

Shah appeared flustered when questioned about the relationship and was left speechless at one point in the hearing. His testimony comes as Republican lawmakers and the DOE inspector general are ramping up investigations into conflicts of interest at the Loan Programs Office, a previously small department whose influence and funding has ballooned under the Biden administration.

Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.), the top Republican on the committee, told Shah that the paid events were a “very bad look for you personally and a very bad look for the Department of Energy,” arguing that it gave the appearance that Shah was helping his former trade group sell access to him.

Barrasso highlighted a social media post from Cleantech Leader Roundtable’s executive director last year, which touted Shah’s control over a $400 billion loan budget authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act.

“Hundreds of Billions $$$$$$,” wrote Cleantech Leaders’s executive director in the post. “We love Jigar Shah for that and also for co-founding the Cleantech Leaders Roundtable.”

Barrasso said it “sounds like she thinks she hit the lottery. And apparently she did. She is openly touting Cleantech’s access specifically to you [and] hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars.”

Shah declined to say if he would end his relationship with his former group, when pressed by Barrasso. The DOE official also downplayed his position as head of the Loan Programs Office.

“I have no role to play whatsoever in choosing who gets a loan. In fact, those decisions are made by federal staff,” said Shah. He said his job “has been to gain private sector trust” by attending events “to promote the loan programs office.”

Later in the hearing, Shah said attendees at his Cleantech Roundtable speaking events—which cost up to $250-a-person to attend—are “not paying to see me. I’m not that important.”

His comments drew laughter from some in the room, and a stunned response from Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.).

“You’re the—wow… You’re the director of the loan programs for the federal government, Department of Energy,” said Hawley. “People who want to get loans from the government are paying to see you, and you think that that’s fine?”

After an extended silence from Shah, Hawley quipped, “That’s not a rhetorical question.”

DOE inspector general Teri Donaldson, the department’s chief watchdog, also testified at the hearing. She said her office has launched a new project “looking at conflicts of interest particularly in the Loan Programs Office.”

Her comments came after Barrasso and House Energy Committee chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.) sent a letter to Shah’s office on Wednesday requesting records about the “close collaboration between your office and Cleantech Leaders Roundtable.”

“It gives rise to perceptions of a pay to play scheme, where access to DOE loans could be potentially influenced by affiliations with Cleantech Leaders Roundtable,” wrote the lawmakers.

The letter noted that a Cleantech Leaders Roundtable board member is also on the board of Sunnova Energy, a solar company that received final approval for a $3 billion loan from Shah’s office earlier this month.

The lawmakers asked Shah to turn over “all correspondence between the [Loan Programs Office], including yourself and Cleantech Leaders’s Roundtable,” during Shah’s time in office.

The post ‘It’s a Very Bad Look’: Biden Energy Loan Czar Freezes Up During Senate Hearing on ‘Pay-To-Play’ Allegations appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The U.K.’s Met Office issued a rare red severe weather warning for parts of eastern Scotland with “exceptional rainfall” of up to 22 centimeters (8.6 inches) forecast for Friday and Saturday.

Police said the body of a 57-year-old woman had been recovered after she was swept into a river in the county of Angus on Thursday afternoon.

A second person also died in Angus on Thursday evening after a falling tree hit the van the 56-year-old was driving.

A man in his 60s was dead Friday, washed away by waters that had flooded a road in Cleobury Mortimer in Shropshire in central England, police said.

Officials in the southern Irish county of Cork, where hundreds of homes and businesses were flooded earlier in the week, described the deluge there as the worst in at least 30 years.

A community hospital for the elderly had to be evacuated in the town of Midleton, Cork, where the main street was up to four feet under water.

As the storm hit Scotland, Scottish leader Humza Yousaf warned Friday that he could not “stress how dangerous” conditions were, in the northeastern town of Brechin.

Emergency services were battling to reach trapped residents but being hampered by strong currents and flooding of up to 6 feet (nearly 2 meters).

“Around half the average monthly rainfall for October is expected to fall through tonight and tomorrow in areas that have already been severely affected by exceptional levels of rainfall,” Yousaf said late Friday.

“It’s just absolutely horrendous. I’ve never seen anything like it,” said local councilor Jill Scott, adding that hundreds of homes had been flooded.

Like a river

“People are trapped. … Some have been stuck there for hours. The boats are trying to get to them [but] they can’t get to them because the current is too strong. It’s all white water running round there. It’s like a river,” she added.

Fire crews and the coast guard began evacuating residents Thursday in Angus, knocking on doors and urging people to leave.

“Over 350 homes across Angus were contacted yesterday [Thursday] and advised to evacuate,” a spokesperson for Angus council said.

“Brechin, and increasingly other parts of Angus, are now only accessible via boat,” he added.

Train services meanwhile were severely disrupted as far south as central England due to heavy rainfall and high winds.

Some routes in northwest England and north Wales were completely closed due to flooding, rail officials said.

The Energy Networks Association said around 10,000 houses were without power in England while 45,000 others had been reconnected.

The Met Office has issued a string of less severe yellow and amber warnings indicating adverse weather conditions including flooding, heavy rain and high winds for other parts of central and northern England.