Friday, December 13, 2024

12/13 Links Pt1: If Israel had listened to the State Department on Syria …; Syrian Druze call to be annexed to Israel

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The kaleidoscope is shaken
Not prepared to take the risk that Syria will now become an ISIS or al Qaeda-style caliphate, Israel has been using detailed intelligence to destroy Syria’s air force, navy, missile arsenals, air defences and suspected chemical-weapons stores.

This is a profound service to humanity for which, of course, the world isn’t thanking it. Instead, it’s grotesquely accusing Israel of “making a land grab”. The United Nations, which has been silent over Syria’s appalling human-rights abuses, has actually condemned Israel for “violating Syria’s territorial integrity”.

And the Biden administration also scolded Israel with the US State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, telling Al Arabiya: “It is the responsibility of those who are taking the reins of power inside Syria first and foremost to secure and destroy any chemical weapons that they find in areas that they control.”

It is beyond astounding that the United States can seriously suggest that it would have been better to leave such chemical weapons to the discretion of al Qaeda-style Islamists whose aim is to destroy the non-Islamic world.

Credulous or bigoted eagerness to believe the worst about Israel, based on demonstrable falsehoods and distortions, usually goes hand in hand with an equally credulous eagerness to believe the best about the Islamic world, based on demonstrable falsehoods and distortions.

The eagerness to assume that Islamists have reformed themselves accompanies the west’s suicidal refusal to see what is so plainly the case —that whether it involves Shia or Sunni Muslims, Hezbollah or the Houthis, Hayat Tahrir al Sham or the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamists are waging world war against unbelievers wherever they are.

The Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on October 7, 2023 set in train a series of events that have shaken the geopolitical kaleidoscope. Tiny Israel is now well on the way to smashing the Shia axis and — in the words of a member of the Iranian regime — becoming the foremost power in the region.

This also represents a shattering defeat for the strategy of former President Barack Obama, which has been continued by the Biden administration. This strategy was — remarkably — to empower the Islamic Republic of Iran.

To this end, the Obama and Biden administrations spared no effort to appease and protect the Tehran regime. In the war that followed the October 7 pogrom, Washington refused to respond appropriately to repeated Iranian attacks while putting Israel under enormous pressure also not to do so.

And after Donald Trump won the presidential election last month, the United States renewed a controversial sanctions waiver that will allow Iran access to some $10 billion in payments from Iraq.

The stupendous developments in the Middle East are a cause for unprecedented optimism. With the likely destruction of the Shia axis, the way will be set for Saudi Arabia finally to make its peace with Israel and thus end, once and for all, the Arab war against the Jewish state. The cause of the Palestinian Arabs, who never were the issue until the west chose to make them so, would simply evaporate.

To envisage this is not to fall into the trap of wishful thinking. The dangers for Israel and the free world remain acute and unresolved. Iran is poised to get the nuclear bomb, and there are fears that with its back to the wall it will now do just that.

But Iran now has no military defences or proxy shields. This is therefore the moment to destroy totally its nuclear programme and maybe finish off this evil regime altogether.

To do this, however, Israel needs America to be involved. Will Trump be willing to do this? Or will he believe that he alone can make a deal that will tame the Iranian regime?

Any such deal would be illusory. Iran has lied about its activities for more than four decades and won’t stop now.

The old order has been shattered. Bad actors have been weakened; others are now empowered. It will take wise heads indeed to turn this extraordinarily complex set of developments into a real leap for peace in the world. It can be done. Are there the leaders to do it?
If Israel had listened to the State Department on Syria …
Yet in Ross’s account of his role in the Syria negotiations in his book The Missing Peace, he speaks fondly of Assad and about his friendly, sometimes warm relationship with the chemical-weapons war criminal.

Ross recalls wistfully one time when Assad was “holding my arm as he shook my hand to convey greater warmth and appreciation.” Assad “respected my knowledge and my attention to detail.” When the Syrian leader complimented him, “You never forget a thing,” Ross obsequiously replied, “I learned that from you, Mr. President.” The two joked around about which of them could stay in the negotiating room longer without taking a bathroom break.

And the human touch! In talks that took place a day after Assad visited the grave of a loved one, the warmongering dictator was “soft-spoken, fatalistic and clearly touched when I expressed my sorrow for his loss and the difficulty of this time for him personally,” Ross writes.

It’s painfully reminiscent of what some Western journalists wrote about Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.

Assad was the man who twice tried to annihilate the Jewish state—first as Syria’s defense minister in the 1967 Six-Day War and then as Syria’s president in 1973’s Yom Kippur War. The man who daily ranted against Israel and Jews. The man whose schools raised entire generations of young Syrians to become antisemitic fanatics. The man who, at the very moment he was negotiating with Ross, was feverishly developing chemical weapons with which to slaughter millions of Israeli Jews. Assad literally aspired to finish Hitler’s job by asphyxiating millions of Jews with poison gas.

The only thing that stood between Israel and Hafez Assad’s chemical weapons was the Golan Heights. The same is true for Assad’s equally monstrous son, the deposed dictator Bashar Assad. If Israel had been foolish enough to follow along with Dennis Ross and his State Department colleagues, the Assads would have had the Golan—and their guns and poison gas would have been trained on the families who live in Israel’s Galilee, Jewish and Arab alike.

Today, Dennis Ross is again dishing out “expertise,” hoping that nobody remembers the awful advice he gave Israel about surrendering the Golan Heights. But Israelis, who are watching the unfolding chaos on their northeastern border, have not forgotten. They know just what the consequences would have been.
Douglas Murray: After Syrian rebels force Assad out, the Iranian regime could be the next one to collapse
The dominos are falling in the Middle East, and the last one may be about to topple.

For the past 45 years, the Revolutionary Islamic Government in Iran has been the main destabilizing force in the region, against pretty stiff competition.The ayatollahs have colonized vast swaths of the Middle East, though you won’t hear the dolts on American college campuses hollering about that.

For decades the mullahs moved their armies into Lebanon. After the vacuum left by American-led intervention in Iraq, they moved their militias there.

They also moved into Yemen.

And for the past 13 years, they propped up their ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

But then Iran’s proxy army Hamas invaded Israel. The ayatollahs hoped to wipe out the Jewish state. But that didn’t go as well as they planned. In fact, it has backfired completely.

Begging for cease-fire

Israel has spent the past 14 months decimating the armies of Iran.

It has almost completely degraded Hamas in Gaza.

It whacked Hezbollah so hard in Lebanon that Hezbollah started begging for a cease-fire, though there weren’t many people in the organization left to make that ask.

And after a set of direct missile strikes from Iran at Israel, the Israeli air force took out all of Iran’s air defenses.

Then this past week, with Iran’s armies diverted and destroyed, the Assad regime finally fell.

After decades of despotic governance, the disgusting Assad family fled to Russia.

The vacuum left in that country will be troubling everyone in the region — and the world.

But the main defeat is Tehran’s.

The mullahs are now naked and increasingly alone.

They haven’t yet dared retaliate for the last Israeli strike — probably because they know that this time, the response might herald the end not just of their oil fields and nuclear ambitions, but of their revolutionary regime altogether.


John Spencer: Assad's Syria Was a Narco-State. Its New Rulers Must Just Say No
In the shadow of the Syrian civil war, the drug trade emerged as a grim cornerstone of Bashar al-Assad's regime. Known for its stimulant effects, Captagon became Syria's largest illicit export, generating an estimated $10 billion annually—a figure surpassing the country's official GDP. This staggering economic reliance highlights the former regime's transformation of Syria into a narco-state, where high-ranking officials, including Assad's own brother, Maher al-Assad, reportedly managed the drug's production and global distribution.

By the mid-2010s, Syria accounted for 80 percent of the world's Captagon supply, a dominance that reshaped the dynamics of conflict and crime in the region. The Islamic Republic of Iran, an ally of Assad, facilitated this trade, ensuring its proxies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, had access to a steady stream of funding. This drug-fueled economy not only stabilized Assad's regime amid economic collapse but also enabled Iran's broader regional ambitions, feeding conflicts across the Middle East.

The main group now controlling Damascus, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), under Mohammed al-Jolani, is positioning the dismantling of the Captagon trade as a pivotal objective. Al-Jolani's recent condemnation of the Assad regime painted a vivid picture of Syria under Assad's rule: a "farm for Iran's greed." For HTS and others seeking to redefine Syria's future, uprooting this criminal enterprise represents more than an economic or moral imperative—it is a reclamation of sovereignty. However, consolidating power in a fractured and war-torn nation may pose challenges for HTS, including resistance from entrenched networks with vested interests in the trade.

The dismantling of Syria's Captagon industry would disrupt Iran's ability to channel funds to its regional proxies. For groups like Hezbollah, which have historically benefited from this trade, such a shift could significantly curtail their operations. Iran's influence in Syria, already diminished after years of war, would face further erosion.
Richard Kemp: Turkey is seeking domination of Syria. Why does Israel get the blame?
The Turkish foreign ministry has strongly condemned Israeli military action in Syria, including the IDF’s advance into the buffer zone between Israel and Syria. “Israel is once again displaying its occupation mentality,” according to Ankara. Never mind that Turkey has invaded, illegally occupied, and ethnically cleansed large areas of northern Syria since 2016.

Jerusalem has temporarily deployed its forces into largely uninhabited areas of critical terrain to prevent Syrian rebels from using them to threaten Israel. It has also been conducting precision attacks against weaponry that would otherwise fall into jihadist hands.

Turkey, meanwhile, has carried out airstrikes against Kurds in northern Syria, while its proxies have killed and kidnapped civilians. Looting and burning homes, the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army has seized the northern towns of Tal Rifaat and Manbij, previously held by the US-backed and largely Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces which played a key role in vanquishing the Islamic State.

Turkey’s condemnation of Israel’s legitimate defensive actions is perhaps understandable for a regime that wants to deflect from its expansionist activity in Syria. Outspoken criticism has also been heaped on Israel’s actions by Iran, again hardly surprising as the ayatollahs lick the wounds inflicted by their ignominious withdrawal from Syria and the devastation wreaked on their number one proxy, Hezbollah, both from Israeli military assault and the loss of Syrian territory vital for its survival.

However, right on cue, the UN, never willing to miss an opportunity to attack Israel, also demanded that the IDF pull back from the buffer zone and cease its air strikes against Syrian military assets. France, too, leapt onto the anti-Israel bandwagon. Search as I might, I have seen only tumbleweed at the UN and across much of the media on Turkey’s egregious assaults against northern Syria in the last few days, even though there have been reports of several hundred killed.

Israel is accused of breaching the 1974 Disengagement Agreement with Syria following the Yom Kippur War. Israel’s position is that, with the fall of the regime, that agreement is void until order is restored in the country. Given current instability, the potential for infiltration from Syria is obvious. Indeed, last weekend, the IDF had to come to the aid of peacekeepers when a UN post on the edge of the buffer zone was attacked by a group of armed men.

As for the destruction of Syrian planes, ships, tanks, missiles, chemical weapons and armaments factories, it is equally obvious that no responsible country could risk these weapons being seized by any of the jihadist gangs that now have free rein in Syria. Aside from the direct threat to Israel, let us not forget the vast quantities of advanced weaponry that were distributed around the region after the withdrawal of Western forces from Afghanistan and the fall of Gaddafi in Libya.


Cruz accuses State Department of influencing flight suspensions to Israel
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is accusing the U.S. State Department of having influenced U.S. airlines to suspend flights to Israel indefinitely.

“The Biden-Harris administration was lax in pursuing why some airlines will not fly to Israel,” Cruz said in a statement to Jewish Insider. “Indeed, they may have been worse than lax, and the State Department may have become inappropriately entangled in deliberations over safety and subverted the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration].”

He stated that “there have been allegations about antisemitic discrimination by airlines and that calls by unions not to fly to Israel were motivated solely by pro-Hamas activists.”

“These allegations are troubling, and, of course, American law prohibits American companies from participating in politically motivated boycotts of Israel,” he added.

Cruz, the incoming chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said he “welcomes a full investigation of these issues” after more than a year of airlines refusing to resume regular service to the Jewish state.

American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines suspended flights to Israel with varying end dates, leaving El Al as the only company providing direct flights between the United States and Israel.

“One of the things that Iran is trying to accomplish is to isolate Israel economically. This is just another sign of that,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said as airlines began their cancellations of flights to Israel earlier this year.


'What’s our fate, our brothers?': Syrian Druze call to be annexed to Israel
“What’s our fate, our brothers?”
-“Israel!”

Viral videos circulating on social media depicted a gathering of dignitaries from the village of Hader, on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, speaking in favor of joining Israel.

In the videos, a dignitary who spoke in front of a crowd of dozens, said: “In the name of the all the people of Hader, and if anyone objects, please say… if we have to choose, we will choose the lesser evil – to be annexed to the (Israeli) Golan!”

The speaker argued that Israel for them is ‘the lesser evil,’ warning that ‘the other evil coming our way,’ meaning the Islamist militias, would “take our wives, our daughters, our homes.”

The speaker continued, arguing he speaks on behalf of several villages in the region: “We are with those who preserve our dignity… I don’t mind if anyone is taking pictures or recording – we ask to be annexed to the Golan… The fate of Hader is the fate of the surrounding villages, we want to ask to join our kin in the Golan, to be free from injustice and oppression,” to which those present at the convention replied shouting: “We agree, we agree!”

‘Fear of retaliation’
A source from Syria explained to the Jerusalem Post that, as opposed to the major Druze population concentrations in the Suwayda area, who have protested against the Assad regime for over a decade, these villages in the Syrian Golan area have remained largely loyal to the now overthrown regime. The source explained that they now fear violent acts of retaliation from other Syrians who were opposed to the Assad regime. They also called on Israel to trust their good intentions, despite their former alignment with Assad.

“These villages were in fact an enclave surrounded by rebel groups, most of them Sunni Islamists,” added Dr. Yusri Khaizran, senior lecturer in the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at Shalem College and a research fellow at the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University.

“For years Israel faced a conflict: on the one hand, it sought to create a certain mechanism of understandings with rebel organizations in the Golan Heights; while on the other hand, Israel’s commitment to the Druze community in Israel prompted it to create a balancing equation, signaling to the Islamists that they will not be allowed to invade the Hader enclave and carry out violent mass massacres against the Druze.”


US indicts two Assad officials for torture in Syria, rebels vow to hold them accountable
The US has charged two high-ranking officials of the fallen Assad regime with war crimes for allegedly torturing Syrian and American citizens, as rebels vow to hold the ousted leaders accountable.

A newly unsealed indictment in the Northern District of Illinois names former Syrian Air Force intelligence officers Jamil Hassan, 72, and Abdul Salam Mahmoud, 65, as the main perpetrators who oversaw brutal human rights abuses at the Mezzeh Military Airport near Damascus.

“The perpetrators of the Assad regime’s atrocities against American citizens and other civilians during the Syrian civil war must answer for their heinous crimes,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

From 2012 to 2019, Hassan and Mahmoud oversaw the operations at the prison in Mezzeh where their lackeys “whipped, kicked, electrocuted and burned their victims,” according to the indictment.

The prison staff were also accused of routinely removing the detainees’ toenails and subjecting them to acid.

Detainees were allegedly hung by their wrists “for prolonged periods of time,” as well as threatened with rape and death, according to the DOJ.

Mezzeh officials also allegedly lied to detainees by telling them that their family members had been killed during the brutal civil war happening outside the jail, Garland added.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said the torture was carried out on anyone suspected of aiding or supporting groups opposed to Assad’s regime during the Syrian civil war.

Prosecutors said Hassan and Mahmoud remain at large, but the indictment did not specify where the two men are located or if US intelligence even knows where they are.


Sullivan: Hamas has refused to provide names of hostages it’s holding
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan says that “for many months, Hamas has not been prepared to even do the basic things of coming to the table with the names of hostages.”

The comments in an interview with Channel 13 come amid reports earlier in the week that the terror group has passed along a list of hostages it is prepared to release in the first stage to the mediators.

An Arab diplomat denied a Wall Street Journal report claiming as much.

Sullivan spoke in the present tense, saying “has” and not “had,” but it wasn’t entirely clear whether he was revealing that Hamas has still yet to provide names of the hostages to date or whether he was referring to previous months before talks were jumpstarted last week.

Pressed on whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been an obstacle in the talks, as Arab mediators have told The Times of Israel, Sullivan gives a diplomatic answer.

“Israel negotiated hard to defend and justify its position in this negotiation,” he says.

He is less generous regarding Hamas, asserting that the terror group “has been deeply intransigent,”

“We have seen Hamas repeatedly, time and again, when the opportunity was there to do something, not be prepared to step up and do it,” Sullivan says.
Australian women hold countrywide vigil for Israeli hostages
Hundreds of Jewish women gathered in the central Australian business districts of Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth on Tuesday to mark International Human Rights Day. The women held a silent vigil to highlight the plight of the 96 hostages who have been held in captivity in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas terror organization for more than 430 days.

The attendees represented a coalition of women’s organizations that included the National Council of Jewish Women Australia, the Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO), United Israel Appeal (UIA) Women’s Division, Emunah, Great Women, Orah Sydney, B’nai Brith Womanpower Unit and others.

Attendees held photographs of the hostages and signs saying, “Jewish women’s rights are human rights,” referring to the silence of feminist organizations and the United Nations about the crimes of sexual violence committed against women and girls during the Hamas assault in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and thereafter.

There are still 12 women who remain captive, including the remains of Judith Weinstein, who is believed to have been murdered during the initial attack last year.

Speaking to JNS, Penny Goodman, vice president of WIZO Victoria, said: “Since October the 7th WIZO has been advocating for the release of the hostages. Time and time again, these people have been forgotten in the narrative. As today was International Human Rights Day, I felt that maybe people would listen to us when we said that we Jews and Israelis have the same rights as anyone. And where are the humanitarian organizations standing up for our rights? We organized this in a week and feel very proud that we were able to do it Australia-wide. What these Jew-haters do not realize is the more they try and destroy us, the stronger and prouder we get. Am Israeli Chai!”

Across the country, in Perth, Lynda Ben Menashe, president of the National Council of Jewish Women Australia, noted the success of the event and promised that “it won’t be the last” of its kind.


Mother of British hostage accuses Starmer of putting ‘another nail in Emily’s coffin’
The mother of a British hostage being held in Gaza has accused the government of delivering a message to Hamas that the terror group can kill her daughter.

Mandy Damari, the mother of Emily, 28, the only British hostage still being held by terrorists in Gaza, accused Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of putting “another nail in [Emily’s] coffin” after the UK supported a United Nations ceasefire vote.

Posting on X, Damari recalled Starmer’s pledge to bring Emily home in a ceasefire deal.

Noting that the UK voted in favour of the UN General Assembly resolution calling for an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza, Damari suggested that the PM had broken his promise.

Damari posted on X: “Last week @Keir_Starmer you told me that Britain would not support a ceasefire without the release of Emily and the hostages.

“This week the UK voted yet again for an unconditional ceasefire. A message to Hamas that they can kill Emily. Another nail in her coffin. I am devastated.”

Damari’s comment comes a day after the British-Israeli mother joined X to advocate for her daughter’s release.

Her first post on Thursday was in response to Foreign Secretary David Lammy announcing an additional package of £13m to the controversial aid agency UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East).

Damari told Lammy: “I hope that part of the £13 million in new aid to UNRWA can also be directed toward supporting the hostages. They are enduring inhumane conditions in the tunnels. I am desperate for Emily to be kept alive until we can safely bring her home.”

She has repeatedly called for all hostages in Gaza to be released without condition and have access to humanitarian aid. This week, Damari called for any potential deal to include her daughter.


FDD: FDD Morning Brief | feat. Jay Solomon (Dec. 11)
FDD Executive Director Jon Schanzer delivers timely situational updates and analysis, followed by a conversation with Jay Solomon, chief investigative reporter for The Free Press.


The Israel Guys: Secret Reason Israel Decimated Syria’s Defenses in STUNNING Operation
When the Assad regime fell in Syria, Israel began to move very quickly. Left-wing pundits quickly began to accuse Israel of invading Syria, using the opportunity to attack yet another country, and some even blamed Israel for the fall of Assad’s regime. Many were wondering why Israel viewed the fall of Syria as a good thing for the region when the conquering rebels have the possibility of being an even worse dictator than Assad was.

Meanwhile, Israel was making some very quiet, fast, stunning, calculated, and brilliant moves. One week later, the entire scope of this region has changed. Iran’s control of the region is gone. According to Hillel Fuld, the question now is: when will Israel attack Iran. Not if…when? We’ll get into all of the details on today’s episode.


Labor playing ‘student politics’ at the UN
Former Labor MP Michael Danby has slammed Labor for playing “student politics” in the United Nations.

Penny Wong has again called for a ceasefire in Gaza after Australia backed a United Nations resolution demanding an “immediate, unconditional and permanent” end to the fighting in the Palestinian territory.

Mr Danby told Sky News host James Macpherson that Penny Wong has “completely ignored the real world”.


'When hate is allowed to fester, we all lose': Pro-Israel presenter Erin Molan fired from Sky News
In a Friday video statement on her social media, Molan - an outspoken supporter of Israel - confirmed that she had finished with Sky News despite the show being her "purpose."

Her firing comes just a few months after she announced she was receiving hate and threats for her support of Israel.

Daily Mail Australia confirmed that Molan had presented her last show, would not be returning to Sky News, and would not be able to say farewell to viewers.

Nevertheless, in her video message, Molan said she is "harder to kill off than you think" and that her mission has just begun.

She said she would continue "fighting for children" and for "every single hostage still held captive in Gaza," adding that she was not only "fighting against a world who lets their captors off the hook" but also one that "praises [the hostages' captors], worships them, idolizes them, rewards them."

Molan said she supports the "only democracy in the Middle East fighting bloodthirsty killers on multiple fronts on behalf of the entire world," adding that Israel was "desperately trying to get their people back, including babies, while desperately trying to protect their citizens from the same fate."

That people keep "falling for the demonization of Israel hook, line, and sinker beggars belief," she continued.

She insinuated that the ending of her term at Sky News comes due to her "caring too much" about the suffering of the "innocent children in Gaza at the hands of terrorists who attack, kill, kidnap Jews" and her efforts "exposing the support for unfathomable evil among young people in the West, who are so deluded about where their empathy belongs it is terrifying."

Molan also outlined her reasons for being a vocal advocate for Israel and those suffering in general.

"Evil requires three things to thrive: one, weak leadership; two useful idiots; and three, a silent majority.

The first one, she said, has been going on for "far too long" but "comes to an end soon, at least in the US." Molan thanked President Trump for his effective policy of "peace through strength."

Useful idiots, she added, are a side effect of weak leadership.

In terms of the silent majority, their "quiet existence allows the loud minority to take up way too much space."

"I’m here to be the loudest member of the silent majority that I can be," she continued.

Molan admitted that she had received offers from other networks, which would be the "easy option," but alluded to the fact that these offers would be conditional on her quietening her outspoken support for Israel.

"I'm not from Israel, I'm not Jewish, I'm not American, I have no skin in this game. But you see, I do. When hate is allowed to fester, we all lose; when stupidity isn't called out, it becomes very dangerous, and if I sit idly by, I am just as much to blame as the fool waving the flag at the Hamas protest."

"The standard you walk past is the standard you accept, and I won't ever accept the standard the world is dishing out right now, and neither should you."


77 House Democrats accuse Israel of violating arms sales laws
A group of 77 House Democrats signed on to a letter to the Biden administration on Thursday accusing Israel of violating U.S. arms sales law and of failing to rectify issues, a situation that could trigger the suspension of offensive arms sales to Israel.

While the letter does not make an explicit request to halt aid, it references the statute requiring the administration to cut off arms sales to countries that block delivery of humanitarian aid, and accuses Israel of deliberately restricting aid.

“We are… deeply troubled by the continued level of civilian casualties and humanitarian suffering in Gaza,” the lawmakers said, accusing Israel of failing to meet the requirements the U.S. outlined for delivery of humanitarian aid. “Although overall access to humanitarian aid

has improved, it remains insufficient and there are credible reports of potential breaches of U.S. law.”

The letter asks the administration to create a full assessment of Israel’s compliance with U.S. arms sales laws, saying that their concerns “remain urgent and largely unresolved, including arbitrary restrictions on humanitarian aid and insufficient delivery routes, among others.”

Israel officials have blamed the situation on the United Nations’ failure to distribute aid and on looting by Hamas and other armed gangs, insisting that Israel does not have any unnecessary restrictions on aid.

The lawmakers said “further administrative action must be taken to ensure Israel upholds the assurances it provided in March 2024 to facilitate, and not directly or indirectly obstruct, U.S. humanitarian assistance.”

A statement by J Street, which backed the letter, makes a clearer push for suspending arms, saying “US laws clearly prohibit unrestricted weapons transfers to partner governments found to be obstructing humanitarian aid, and outline a process for assessments and enforcement in such cases. President Biden has the authority to exempt Iron Dome and other defensive systems from any weapons pauses, and J Street urges him to do so.”


Wicked and malicious Galloway may be, but I never had him down as nuts
He seems to like to press buttons, does George Galloway. Like the school bully with a rapt audience of sycophants, he gets a kick out of prodding and poking.

Condemning antisemitism within the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t just a “disgraceful campaign”, Galloway wrote in 2019. It was a “disgraceful campaign of Goebbelsian fiction.”

October 7 wasn’t just a “break out” by Hamas, he said last January, but a “concentration camp break out and ugly things happen in prison break outs, concentration camp break outs even more so”.

And again, last July: “The only surprising thing about October 7 and the breakout from the Gaza concentration camp is that it doesn’t happen every October 7, or ever six weeks.”

Geddit?

Is this Galloway’s way of getting some kind of visceral kick out of rubbing the noses of Jews, sorry Zionists, in the Shoah which targeted… er… Jews?

As the novelist and journalist Howard Jacobson observed, Israel haters who compare the country by reference to the Holocaust do so to “wound Jews in their recent and most anguished history and to punish them with their own grief. Its aim is a sort of retrospective retribution, cancelling out all debts of guilt and sorrow.”

In other words, they know the analogy hurts.




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