Day: October 28, 2023

At this point Mike Pence is hated by all of the left, most of the center, and much of the right. So why did he bother running for President? The same reason any washed up political figure does anything: money. He was hoping to limp along in the race all the way to Iowa, use his media coverage leading up to the Iowa caucus to promote his next book, make a million bucks, and disappear into obscurity.

The trouble for Pence is that while you only really need to poll at perhaps 5% to keep limping along like that, Pence couldn’t even pull that off. His numbers were so ugly that he couldn’t even bring in the trickle of money required to keep limping along. Worse, it appeared he wasn’t even going to qualify for the next Republican primary debate. How embarrassing is that? No one participating in these debates is in contention. Yet Pence’s numbers are so much worse than theirs, he was in danger of not making the stage.

So now Mike Pence is doing what all failed candidates do when they’re forced to drop out but want to pretend they’re not dropping out: he’s suspending his campaign. Has anyone ever suspended their campaign and then actually made a comeback? Of course not. But keep in mind that with Donald Trump heading for criminal trial and prison, we could end up seeing a bizarre Republican National Convention full of floor fights.

So maybe Pence envisions himself getting back into the race later, after Trump is hauled away. He still won’t have any support at that point, but a man can dream, right? The kicker is that while Pence’s political relevance is now over (it was over awhile ago), he is about to become very relevant in one specific way. He’ll be forced to testify during Trump’s criminal trial in March. Pence may finally become relevant right around the time of the Iowa caucus – just not in the way that he had been hoping.

The post Mike Pence just surrendered appeared first on Palmer Report.

Vivek Ramaswamy defended his proposed Israel policies, which include cutting aid to Israel and conditioning funding to the Jewish state’s war against Hamas, in a speech to Jewish Republicans on Saturday.

Ramaswamy told the Republican Jewish Coalition that the United States should “mind our own affairs to avoid foreign military entanglements that do not relate directly to our homeland.”

The comment drew a few scattered boos from the audience, leading Ramaswamy to defend himself as a “George Washington America-First conservative”—explaining to the Jewish American crowd that “[Israeli founder David] Ben Gurion is to Israel as George Washington is to this country.”

The speech comes as the candidate has faced criticism for his positions on Israel. The Republican presidential candidate, who is polling at around 4.5 percent, has taken shifting positions on military aid to Israel throughout the primary, but said he supports ending it by 2028.

“Many of you have heard my policy views described by the press as unfriendly to Israel,” said Ramaswamy. “Some have even described me and my views as anti-Israel.”

“We have enough anti-Semitism in this country that we don’t need to artificially manufacture more of it,” he added. “My message to you this morning will be, I believe, the most pro-Israel vision that you will hear today.”

Ramaswamy went on to say he would support bringing the “Abraham Accords to new heights” and would give Israel full American diplomatic support at the United Nations and other international venues.

Ramaswamy said last week that he opposes additional U.S. military funding to Israel, saying the Jewish state has yet to come up with a clear “objective” in Gaza. Israel has said its objective is to destroy the political and military infrastructure of Hamas.

But he told the RJC that Israel should pursue its own goals in Gaza without restrictions from the United States.

“If Israel wants to destroy Hamas, Israel should go ahead and destroy Hamas,” he said. “If Israel wants to destroy Hezbollah, Israel should go ahead and destroy Hezbollah … If Israel wants to at long last abandon the myth of the two-state solution, Israel should go ahead and abandon the two-state solution.”

The post Ramaswamy Defends Opposition to Israel Aid in Speech to Jewish Republicans appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

As Saturday morning dawned in the Middle East, an obvious expansion of Israeli air strikes and incursions into Gaza appeared hard to define. Was this the major invasion that’s been expected for three weeks? It was not, but Israel’s official spokespeople were seemingly being intentionally vague. They were not going to reveal anything to Hamas, and shutting down nearly all of Gaza’s phone and internet communications was aimed at sowing confusion.

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The surprise of the week was that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet had decided in recent days—much to the relief of many Israelis—to hold off on waging all-out war. Netanyahu felt public pressure at home to allow more time for negotiations that might free Israeli hostages. Israel also had to pay attention to President Joe Biden, who has been highly supportive since the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7. Biden publicly urged Israel not to act out of “rage,” to be cautious, and to permit more aid to reach Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

With over 1,400 Israelis killed by Hamas terrorists and more than 220 taken hostage, the anger and anguish in Israel has not diminished in three weeks. Yet the Netanyahu team came to their senses, deciding to keep delaying a full-scale ground incursion into Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It wasn’t just pressure from Biden and other Western leaders who have visited Israel since the Hamas attack. It wasn’t just the tears and anger of desperate families of the Israeli hostages hidden in Gaza, many heartbroken because their country failed to protect its citizens—and wondering if the same political, military, and intelligence leaders can be trusted to wage a war in response.

Rather, Netanyahu and his advisors had the self-realization that an all-out invasion would be very hard to justify, when almost all Israelis are viscerally tied in knots over the hostage crisis, seeing photographs of the defenseless civilians kidnapped by the terrorists. On the morning of Oct. 28, hundreds of relatives of hostages gathered in a square in Tel Aviv. Showing a united front, they called for the Israeli government to put the return of their loved ones ahead of military objectives. If rescuing hostages is the highest priority, the IDF has a huge weight on its shoulders; and an unrelenting assault to defeat and remove Hamas might well seem immoral. The terrorists are not only hiding behind their own Palestinian civilians, Hamas is also hiding behind kidnap victims.

Among the clearest voices saying the hostages’ welfare must come first is that of Tamir Pardo, a former head of the Mossad who was himself an IDF commando soldier. Known for thinking outside the box, he expressed to us that military rescues—even with the well-practiced expertise of Israel’s most elite fighters—would be impossible, with hostages divided into many groups in perhaps unreachable underground lairs. Pardo, and now many others in the security establishment, have reached the conclusion that negotiations are the best route to save hostages’ lives. Using Egypt and especially Qatar as mediators, four women were set free in the first releases.

We have come to learn that top Israelis have reluctantly concluded that a huge prisoner swap would be the best way to bring the hostages home. That would likely mean the release of thousands of Palestinians held by Israel, even many convicted of murders and bombings. Terrorists “with blood on their hands,” as Israel puts it, have been freed in the past—painful deals even to recover just one soldier or corpses. Hamas would hail that as a victory. Israel needs to swallow its pride and put aside the standard rhetoric of refusing to make deals with terrorists. The great news would be that hostages from 25 nations, including U.S. citizens, would be safe at home. And only then, could the IDF strike Hamas hard with a clear conscience. Israel could proceed with its post-October 7 goal of eliminating that radical Islamic faction from power in Gaza, once and for all.

Still, a ground invasion will be very costly: not just to Hamas, and Gaza civilians already suffering mightily from the air strikes, but also to Israeli troops. The invasion has to be cautious and gradual, a block-by-block search for terrorists and their infrastructure, rather than trying to take all of the Gaza Strip at once. American generals, led by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin who experienced the war in Iraq, know very well how difficult it is to conduct urban warfare. And they have been telling the Israelis, in person, along with concrete advice. Austin was in Tel Aviv a few days after the Oct. 7 shock to Israel, outlining to Defense Minister Yoav Gallant how to move slowly and carefully. Gaza, with over 2.2 million people, is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Hamas dug a labyrinth of dozens of miles of underground tunnels, bunkers, war rooms, and rocket depots, and the terrorists are highly practiced at popping up for hit-and-run operations.

Now that Israel has expanded its ground operation in Gaza, it would be advisable to conquer some parts of the northern sector first, establishing a bridgehead to be used as a launching pad for further pushes toward Hamas strongholds—including precise in-and-out commando raids. And that is exactly what Israel appears to be doing, as the IDF posted an “urgent message for the residents of Gaza” on Oct. 28, instructing all residents of Northern Gaza and Gaza city to “temporarily relocate South immediately.”

Israel is putting aside the intelligence failures that made Oct. 7 possible and is amassing excellent information on the hideouts sheltering Hamas leaders. That will give the IDF the opportunity to inflict strong psychological blows, by eliminating top terrorists and publicizing those wins.

While Netanyahu and the army promise to “eliminate Hamas,” that is not realistic. Hamas is an extreme Islamic ideology, a set of ideas—including total refusal to accept a Jewish state right alongside—that cannot be wiped out. But their quasi-government in Gaza can be shut down. Of course, there will then be the challenge of finding someone to govern that poverty-stricken areas needing reconstruction and a new, hopefully more positive, beginning.

The best way to end the war would be to combine IDF military successes with substantial international pressure to force Hamas leaders and terrorists to lay down their weapons—in return for free passage out of Gaza, to be relocated in Arab countries that don’t border Israel.

That is exactly how the 1982 war in Lebanon ended, when the Israeli invasion force permitted the PLO—led by Yasser Arafat—to sail away from Beirut to far- off Tunisia and Yemen.

A U.S. Army reservist accused of spraying a bowling alley and bar with gunfire in Lewiston, Maine, killing 18 people, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a recycling plant trailer after a 48-hour manhunt, police said on Saturday.

The body of Robert R. Card, 40, was discovered on Friday night at a recycling plant in Lisbon Falls where he worked at one point, less than a mile from where police had found his abandoned getaway vehicle shortly after his shooting spree on Wednesday night.

A Maine State Police tactical team discovered Card’s body in an unlocked trailer in an overflow parking lot of the recycling plant, Maine Public Safety Commissioner Mike Sauschuck told reporters on Saturday.

Officers had cleared the plant twice in the course of their search, Sauschuck said, as they believed Card had some “employment relation” to the business, but had missed the extra parking lot, where about 60 box trailers full of crushed plastic and metal were parked, he said.

Officials said they recovered a long rifle in Card’s abandoned white Subaru and two guns on his body, without confirming the make and model. All the weapons were apparently purchased by Card legally, a representative for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said.

A total of 18 people were killed and 13 others were wounded in Wednesday night’s carnage, which began when the gunman opened fire with a rifle inside the Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley, then launched another attack minutes later at Schemengees Bar & Grille Restaurant a few miles away.

Officials have not confirmed a possible motive for the gun violence, but Sauschuck said on Saturday that there was “a mental health component” to the tragedy.

Sauschuck said police found a note left at Card’s house, addressed to a loved one, which listed the passcode to his phone and bank account information.

“I wouldn’t describe it as an explicit suicide note, but the tone and tenor was that the individual was not going to be around,” Sauschuck said.

The shootings and prolonged manhunt terrorized the normally bustling but serene community of Lewiston, a former textile hub and the second-most populous city in Maine. It lies on the banks of the Androscoggin River, about 35 miles (56 km) north of the state’s largest city, Portland.

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Calls for peace are growing amid escalating violence between Israel and Hamas, putting the lives and well-being of millions of Palestinian civilians trapped and under siege in Gaza at risk.

“The violence needs to end, and there need to be strong efforts to seek an alternative to this carnage,” said Volker Turk, high commissioner for human rights in a statement Friday.

Turk warned that a humanitarian catastrophe was unfolding for the 2.2 million people locked inside Gaza who he said are being collectively punished.

“Collective punishment is a war crime. Israel’s collective punishment of the entire population of Gaza must immediately cease,” he said.

Israel said Saturday it will allow trucks carrying food, water and medicine to enter Gaza later in the day, indicating a possible pause in bombing, at least in the area of its border with Egypt where small amounts of aid have been arriving.

The country launched its operation against Hamas following the militant group’s deadly October 7 attack that killed some 1,400 Israelis, including children, and injured more than 5,340 others. At least 200 people were taken hostage.

The U.N. human rights chief also denounced indiscriminate attacks by Palestinian armed groups, including through the launching of unguided rockets into Israel, which he said must stop.

“They must immediately and unconditionally release all civilians who were captured and are still being held. The taking of hostages is also a war crime,” said Turk.

Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, criticized world leaders for failing to live up to their responsibilities to protect civilian life on all sides.

“Leaders are not helping to break the vicious cycle, which condemns future generations of Palestinians and Israelis to yet more conflict and death,” he said in a statement.

“World leaders must immediately call for a humanitarian cease-fire to end the suffering and restart the process that can address the root causes of generations of deprivation, conflict, terror and occupation,” Egeland said, calling for an end to Israel’s “suffocating siege” of Gaza, which he indicated is endangering thousands of “innocent lives.”

Citing the Ministry of Health in Gaza, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, reported 298 deaths in Gaza in the past 24 hours, including 125 children. Since October 7, at least 7,326 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 19,000 injured in Gaza — of whom 66% are children and women, OCHA said.

“There is no place safe in Gaza now,” said Lynn Hastings, humanitarian coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Speaking to journalists from Jerusalem, Hastings said nearly 630,000 of some 1.4 million displaced people have been living in schools and other shelters run for 19 consecutive days by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA.

“Gaza remains under a full electricity blackout following the Israeli halt of electricity and fuel supply to Gaza, and water as well,” she said. “The backup generators for many essential services, including hospitals and water desalination plants and food production, are one by one coming to a halt because of a lack of fuel.”

Since Israel partially lifted its siege of Gaza on October 21, 84 trucks carrying mainly food, water and medication have been allowed to enter Gaza through the Rafah Border Crossing with Egypt.

“To put things in comparison, there were 450 trucks going into Gaza every day before October 7, and that was under very strict restrictions,” Hastings said. “We do not have agreement yet with the Israelis to bring fuel in.

“We need the electricity lines to be reconnected, and I have heard the government of Israel saying they will not do that. 

“We need to get the fuel trucks in, we need to get the Gaza power plant running again, and we need to do it in a secure way that offers Israel assurances to make sure that it is not going to be diverted,” she said.

The Israeli government has refused to allow fuel into the Gaza Strip, asserting that Hamas has fuel it is hoarding for use in military operations.

The World Food Program warned the catastrophic conditions facing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza risk getting worse because of severe fuel shortages that threaten to bring food and other humanitarian operations to a standstill.

“Bakeries that have been providing bread will shut within days if fuel is not allowed in,” Samer Abdeljaber, WFP representative in Palestine, said from Jerusalem.

“People are risking their lives and queueing for hours to secure bread, and many are going back to shelters with no bread,” he said. “The notion of a warm meal is out of reach. There is no way for people to cook. In the words of one of our staff members in Gaza, the situation is like a nightmare that we cannot wake up from.”

The World Health Organization reported Saturday its health workers, patients and civilians had endured a night of intense bombardment and ground incursions in Gaza and “been subject to a total communication and electrical blackout,” adding that “WHO has not been able to communicate with its staff in Gaza, nor have other agencies.”

Richard Peeperkorn, WHO Representative for the West Bank and Gaza, reported from Jerusalem Friday that one-third of the hospitals in Gaza have shut down and two-thirds of the primary health care clinics have closed because of damage and lack of fuel.

“The acute shortage of fuel and medical supplies is putting patients at risk,” he said, emphasizing that hospitals were overwhelmed and unable to treat the many trauma and injury cases, as well as the increasing number of patients suffering from noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

He said a team of seasoned WHO medical doctors in Gaza told him they were devastated by the conditions under which local medical personnel were forced to work.

“As my colleague said, the smell of death — the stench and the smell of death — is everywhere,” he said.

The Israel Defense Force has been using all means possible today to Urge the Residents of the Northern Gaza Strip to Evacuate to the South of the Wadi Gaza River stating that, “The Northern Gaza Region has become a Battlefield and Shelters there are not Safe;” besides the… pic.twitter.com/FaJgec5al8

— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) October 28, 2023

Israel unleashed an intense bombardment on the Gaza Strip overnight amid a widespread telecommunications and internet blackout in Gaza. “The anxiety has been devastating ever since the telecommunications went black,” said a resident with rare phone access. https://t.co/UdqnijiSuS

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 28, 2023

The man suspected of killing 18 people and injuring 13 others in Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday night was found dead on Friday, officials said, ending a sweeping manhunt that had forced thousands of residents to remain in their homes. https://t.co/Ieoj3NEn3o

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 28, 2023

Elon Musk said on Saturday that SpaceX’s Starlink will support communication links in Gaza with “internationally recognized aid organizations”.

“No terminals from Gaza have attempted to communicate with our constellation,” Musk said in a post on social media X, adding that “SpaceX will support communication links with internationally recognized aid organizations.”

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A telephone and internet blackout isolated people in the Gaza Strip from the world and from each other on Saturday, with calls to loved ones, ambulances or colleagues elsewhere all but impossible as Israel widened its air and ground assault.

International humanitarian organisations said the blackout, which began on Friday evening, was worsening an already desperate situation by impeding life-saving operations and preventing them from contacting their staff on the ground.

Three weeks into a war between Israel and Hamas that has saturated global media coverage, the blackout also meant a previously constant flow of information, images and videos from inside the strip had reduced to a trickle, making it difficult to understand the extent and impact of the latest strikes.

“My brain cannot fathom that things can get any worse. And here we are on Day 21, we have lost service. If you are dying, you can’t ring up the ambulance service. If you are struck, whatever happens, you can’t communicate with anyone,” said Plestia Alaqad, a freelance journalist in Gaza.

She was speaking in a video recorded on Friday night and uploaded on Saturday to Instagram, where she has 1.4 million followers, when she said she was able to access the internet, one of a small number of Gazans who have managed to do so.

“I’m supposed to tell the world what is going on, well I am in Gaza and I don’t know what is going on. There is no internet, no network, no service, no fuel to move around by car, no electricity, nothing,” she said in a mix of English and Arabic.

Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Saturday Israeli forces would continue operations begun overnight in the Gaza Strip, targeting tunnels and other infrastructure of Hamas as well as leaders of the Islamist movement.

“We attacked above the ground and under ground, we attacked terror operatives of all ranks, everywhere,” he said in a video statement.

Israel had earlier made only brief incursions into Gaza during three weeks of bombardment to root out Hamas militants, who it said had killed 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians, on Oct. 7.

The Palestinian health ministry said on Saturday 7,650 people had been killed and 19,450 injured in Gaza since Israel’s bombardment began. It said 70% of the dead there and in the West Bank, were women, children or the elderly.

The U.N. World Food Programme, World Health Organization and other agencies, as well as independent aid groups including Medecins Sans Frontieres and the Norwegian Refugee Council were among those saying they had lost contact with staff in Gaza.

Several humanitarian groups said Israel had deliberately cut off communications to the strip. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reuters has been unable to independently verify what was causing the blackout.

“The Israeli authorities have cut off landline, cellular, and internet communications, severely affecting our essential emergency medical services,” said the Palestine Red Crescent Society on social media plaform X, without citing evidence.

For media organisations including Reuters, the inability to maintain regular contact with teams in Gaza underlined concerns over the safety of their staff and made it much harder to report comprehensively on what was happening.

The Israeli military says it does not deliberately target journalists but cannot guarantee their safety in Gaza.

“The shelling was intense everywhere in the strip,” one Reuters reporter wrote in a message to colleagues, one of the few able to be sent by the Reuters team inside Gaza on Saturday.

Gaza-based freelance photographer Mohammed Zaanoun, speaking from inside the strip in a video he posted on social media on Saturday morning, said this might be the last video he uploaded.

“I have driven a long way to reach the border with Egypt to be able to send you this message and tell you that Gaza has been disconnected from the world,” he said.