Meanwhile while Biden is spending wasting BILLIONS of dollars killing Arabs who are running around in sandals and towells, Russia and China are gearing up. You just can't make this stupid shit up any funnier.
Braindead Biden who believes in fairy jesus thinks he can achieve peace with Israel's help. LMAO Israel doesn't want peace, but keep believing anyhow.
And if Biden thinks Israel will help USA fight a war with Russia or China, you've gotta be truly dreaming. Biden pouring American taxpayer money down a hole where he'll never ever see a return.
Opinion Israel-Hamas war For Putin, Gaza is an endless gift For Biden, Israel’s war on Hamas is a serious drain Edward Luce May 8 2024 https://www.ft.com/content/368207df-f52d-43d1-a9cf-a13121a55574 A smiling Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Joe Biden in Geneva in 2021 The Russian and US presidents in Geneva in 2021. Since Israel’s invasion of Gaza, Vladimir Putin now finds it easier to depict Joe Biden’s ‘liberal international order’ as a hollow shell © Alexander Zemlianichenko/Pool/AFP/Getty Images The mafia supposedly asked cui bono (who benefits?) when trying to figure out who was behind a hit. There is no evidence that Russia’s Vladimir Putin had anything to do with Hamas’s horrific slaughter of 1,200 Israeli civilians last year. But Russia has been a leading beneficiary. To reach that conclusion, you have only to ask, cui malo (who loses?). The biggest answer geopolitically is Joe Biden. As Israeli forces move into the Gazan enclave of Rafah, that is only likely to get worse. Fate decreed that Hamas’s barbarity took place on October 7, which is Putin’s birthday. The geopolitical instability since then has been delivered gift-wrapped to Moscow. Putin now finds it easier to depict Biden’s “liberal international order” as a hollow shell. Biden has made it clear that he will back Israel to the hilt if the International Criminal Court issues any indictments of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his colleagues. By contrast, the US president supports the ICC indictment of Putin for his alleged war crimes in Ukraine. The irony is that until October 7 Putin and Netanyahu had something of a mutual admiration society. Each recognised in the other a strongman leader who would do what it takes to hold on to power. Each shared a disdain for American liberals, and do-gooding democrats in general. Those overlapping resentments remain. Since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, however, and particularly since October 7, Russia has tilted away from Israel and thrown in its lot with Iran, Israel’s chief enemy. Iran has sent Russia vast supplies of drones to use against Ukraine. Russia, in turn, has given up any pretence of being even-handed between Iran and Israel, which it had delicately been trying to do for many years. Moscow also received a delegation of senior Hamas officials three weeks after the attacks on Israel. Ominously, Putin has also been drifting into overt antisemitism. Until recently, he was one of the few leaders in Russian history who avoided that ancient scapegoat. Now he routinely refers to the fact that Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is Jewish. Bizarrely, he does this in tandem with alleging that Zelenskyy is running a Nazi state. Anything that is bad for Biden is good for Putin. As he is the only defender of a “rules-based international order” in the 2024 presidential election, a Biden victory would be bad news for Moscow. As Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, told the FT Weekend Festival last weekend, a Biden second term would tee up Ukraine for a 2025 counteroffensive against Russian-occupied territory. A Donald Trump victory would mean Ukraine’s enforced capitulation to Russian terms at the negotiating table. The more chaos there is in Gaza between now and November, the harder it will be for Biden to defeat Trump. That is what makes the Israel Defense Force’s move into eastern Rafah this week so dangerous to Biden. For the most part, Putin is a passive beneficiary of the fallout from the IDF’s Gaza operations. But his interests on this overlap with Netanyahu’s. The Israeli leader this week in effect sabotaged chances of a ceasefire with Hamas by saying he would move into Rafah regardless. Israel’s leader has an epic conflict of interest. When the war ends, there will be an Israeli general election. Polls suggest that Netanyahu’s Likud party would not pass Go, which means he could go straight to jail on his delayed corruption trials. He has every incentive to keep the war going. This makes Netanyahu as big a threat to Biden’s re-election prospects as Putin. It remains possible that Biden’s team, led by Antony Blinken, his secretary of state, and Bill Burns, his CIA director, will find a way to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a ceasefire and the release of some hostages. That could change the weather in Israel. Netanyahu knows it would be far harder to resume military operations once that three-stage process has begun. As Sullivan also said last weekend, diplomacy is about getting “a thousand no’s, until one day you get to a yes”. Arriving at that yes is the White House’s overriding priority. Failure to secure a ceasefire could mean thousands more civilian deaths in Gaza, possible famine as humanitarian aid is restricted and more campus protests in America. It would also lead to widening splits in the Democratic party. Biden recently held up a weapons shipment to Israel over humanitarian concerns. He will be forced to be far tougher than that if the Gaza war escalates again. All the while, Biden will need to bear one thing in mind. What is good for Netanyahu is good for Putin, and therefore for Trump.
UNRWA to close East Jerusalem headquarters after arson attack by ‘Israeli extremists’ By Hande Atay Alam and Kareem Khadder, CNN Thu May 9, 2024 The UNRWA East Jerusalem compound gate is seen plastered with pro-Israeli stickers on May 9, 2024. CNN — The United Nations’ agency for Palestinian refugees will shutter its East Jerusalem headquarters after the compound was set on fire by “Israeli extremists” while staff were inside, its chief said Thursday. In a statement on social platform X, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said the arson attack was the latest in a series of threats, harassment and violent incidents perpetrated by Israelis against the agency’s staff over the past two months. “This evening, Israeli residents set fire twice to the perimeter of the UNRWA Headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem. This took place while UNRWA and other UN Agencies’ staff were on the compound,” Lazzarini said. “It is an outrageous development. Once again, the lives of UN staff were at a serious risk.” The facility would be closed “until proper security is restored,” he added. Lazzarini posted a video of the compound showing staff trying to extinguish the flames while people chanted outside, and said that a crowd accompanied by armed men were witnessed outside the compound shouting, “Burn down the United Nations.” Several social media videos were also posted on Israeli Telegram platforms on Thursday showing the UNRWA compound on fire. In one video, the repeated chant “UNWRA is Hamas, UNWRA is Hamas,” could be heard. Lazzarini said the fire caused “extensive damage to the outdoor areas.” There were no casualties among UN staff, he added. Burnt areas can be seen along the fence of the UNRWA East Jerusalem compound on May 9, 2024 CNN Israel’s relations with the UN have sunk to a historic low in recent months, with senior UN officials highly critical of Israel’s war conduct in Gaza. Israeli officials have long criticized UNRWA, which plays a central role in feeding and sheltering hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees. UNRWA has repeatedly denied Israeli allegations that its aid is being diverted to Hamas or that it teaches hatred in its schools, and has questioned “the motivation of those who make such claims.” The agency has condemned the Hamas attack on October 7 as “abhorrent.” In March, UNRWA accused Israel of detaining and torturing some of its staffers, coercing them into making false confessions about the agency’s ties to Hamas, two months after Israel accused at least 12 UNRWA staffers of being involved in the October 7 terrorist attacks. Israel has also alleged that about 12% of UNRWA’s 13,000 staffers are members of Hamas or other Palestinian militant groups, leading more than a dozen countries to suspend funding to the agency. UNRWA said it had fired 10 of the 12 accused staffers and that the other two are dead. CNN cannot confirm the allegations by Israel or UNRWA. On Thursday, Lazzarini said it was Israel’s responsibility to ensure the safety of UN personnel. “I call on all those who have influence to put an end to these attacks and hold all those responsible accountable,” he wrote on X. “The perpetrators of these attacks must be investigated and those responsible must be held accountable. Anything less will set a new dangerous standard.” CNN has reached out to the Israeli government for comment.
China outweighs Ukraine war as U.S. security priority: Trump-linked group Ex-aides in America First institute lay foreign policy groundwork for possible second term In October 2019, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, right, talks with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He during a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office. © Reuters KEN MORIYASU, Nikkei Asia diplomatic correspondentMay 10, 2024 https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/In...-as-U.S.-security-priority-Trump-linked-group WASHINGTON -- The top priority for U.S. foreign policy must be China, not the war in Ukraine, a group affiliated with former President Donald Trump wrote in a book released Thursday painting a picture of what a second Trump presidency could look like. The book, "An America First Approach to U.S. National Security," urges the country to decouple from China, "starting with the most sensitive sectors and working down," to ensure Chinese Communist Party policies are "largely irrelevant to American life." It was written by former Trump advisers including Robert Lighthizer, who served as U.S. trade representative; Rep. Michael Waltz, a Florida Republican and former Green Beret; and Fred Fleitz, who was a chief of staff to Trump's National Security Council. All of them are rumored by Republican insiders to be chosen for high-ranking positions should Trump win the presidential election in November. The group, America First Policy Institute, was formed in 2021 as a think tank to promote Trump's policies. AFPI said it does not speak for the Trump campaign, but the book's authors told Nikkei Asia they have been in frequent contact with the former president. "As serious as the war in Ukraine is, it is not the top national security threat to our country. That threat is China," the authors wrote in the book. A prolonged war in Ukraine risks deepening the alliance among Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, which the nonprofit calls a new "anti-American axis." Fleitz, the book's editor, wrote that he hopes the book will serve not just as a guide for a new U.S. administration in 2025 but also "help lay a foundation for American foreign policy for many years to come." The America First institute's stance on Russia's war against Ukraine represents one of its major differences from President Joe Biden's administration. "Under an America First administration, the United States must focus its military power on deterring the peer threat of China," using the full spectrum of political, economic and military power, Waltz wrote in a chapter. The book claims that decades of U.S. efforts to transform China into a responsible partner on the global stage were a "self-destructive policy." American investment in China has provided liquidity to Beijing's high-tech projects, which are used to strengthen military-civil fusion, fortifying the People's Liberation Army, the authors said. Future China policy should be guided by the principle of "reciprocity," they said. The Chinese Communist Party and its affiliates should not have access to land, infrastructure, intellectual property, educational opportunities, social media applications "and many other facets of civil society in the U.S. beyond that which Americans have access to in China," the book said. AFPI is working with U.S. states to enact laws that ban foreign ownership -- especially Chinese ownership -- of agricultural land. Such laws have been enacted in states like Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, Montana, North and South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Utah. The book called for sustaining all tariffs imposed on China during the Trump administration and urged the U.S. to develop supply chains that "rely solely on American workers, our allies, or our friendly neighbors in the Americas." They gave credit to the Biden administration for restricting U.S. investment into sensitive Chinese sectors, such as artificial intelligence, but urged for further measures to sever American investment ties with entities related to the Chinese Communist Party. The book is expected to be widely read among foreign embassies in Washington, eager to glimpse what a potential second Trump administration may look like. Whether Trump would send American troops to defend Taiwan -- which is not a treaty ally -- from a Chinese invasion has been widely discussed in the U.S. capital. But the book is unequivocal, noting, "the island must be defended." Preserving Taiwan's security fits both the economic and national security interests of the U.S., the authors said. But the authors insisted that the U.S. demand more from allies. "Allied countries can dramatically reduce the strategic burden on the United States if they are allowed to contribute in their own way," the book said. The U.S.-Japan alliance "sets the standard" for successful America First foreign policy, the authors wrote, commending Tokyo's decision to increase defense spending and to acquire stand-off missiles. Regarding the Quad, an informal four-way partnership among the U.S., Japan, India and Australia, the authors encouraged a "closer military integration" to counter China's rise.
Meanwhile joining America to Israels hip while bombing the living crap out of Palestine is how bullies go about making friends in the Arab world?
Biden’s weapons sales to Israel breach legal limits, former officials say While the administration has expressed alarm over civilian casualties in Gaza, former officials say it has sidestepped laws governing foreign arms transfers. By Louisa Loveluck May 10, 2024 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/05/10/israel-gaza-biden-weapons-rafah/ Internally displaced Palestinians leave with their belongings following an evacuation order issued by the Israeli army in Rafah, Gaza, on May 8, 2024. (Mohammed Saber/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) President Biden’s striking admission this week that American weapons are killing civilians in Gaza appeared to mark a turning point in U.S. policy toward Israel — coming days after the Israeli military made its first move on Rafah and before a highly anticipated government report on Israel’s adherence to the laws of war. While the Biden administration has repeatedly expressed alarm over civilian casualties in Gaza, some former officials say it has drawn out the implementation of laws and policies intended to prevent American weaponry from being used in violation of international humanitarian law. The breaking point for Biden came Monday, when Israel’s military ordered the immediate evacuation of 100,000 civilians from the southern city of Rafah and seized the border crossing with Egypt, warning it would use “extreme force” against militants in the heavily-populated area. “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah … I’m not supplying the weapons,” Biden told CNN on Wednesday. The United States has always been selective in how it invokes international law, experts say, and how it balances rights concerns with realpolitik. But its ongoing material support for Israel’s war in Gaza has led to a rare surge in public backlash from former officials, who say the administration is dragging its feet on enforcing laws meant to limit or condition military assistance to foreign allies. Rights groups and humanitarian organizations have spent months documenting alleged violations of international law by the Israeli military in Gaza — many believed to have been carried out with U.S.-made weapons — including attacks on civilian neighborhoods, health facilities, journalists and aid workers. “Just from a legal perspective within U.S. domestic law, there’s a much wider body of rules that is being ignored right now,” said Josh Paul, who formerly worked on arms transfers at the State Department and is the most senior U.S. official to resign over the war in Gaza. “The arms are just continuing to flow. U.S. weapons under scrutiny The Departments of State and Defense must soon submit a report to Congress assessing the credibility of allegations that U.S.-provided weapons have been used in violation of international law — or in ways that do not mitigate civilian harm. That report — mandated by the The National Security Memorandum-20, or NSM-20, issued in February — has been delayed, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters Wednesday, promising an assessment “in the very near future.” An analysis of several thousand distinct incident reports from Gaza, published by an independent panel of experts last month, found that Israel’s military was acting with a “systematic disregard for international humanitarian law, with recurrent attacks launched despite foreseeably disproportionate harm to civilians and civilian objects.” The report, echoing the findings of rights groups, also found that American weaponry was used in a significant number of cases. “When you look at those collapsed buildings where people are trapped underneath, the odds are that that death and destruction is being caused by a United States-supplied weapon,” said Charles Blaha, who worked as Director of the State Department’s Office of Security and Human Rights between 2016 and 2023 and contributed to the independent report. “There is no remaining reason why the [NSM-20] report should not accurately reflect Israel’s misuse of U.S.-provided weapons,” the authors said in a statement after Biden’s comments Wednesday. An NSM-20 report that finds Israeli assurances about upholding international law credible “would mean continuing the long-standing U.S. approach to providing support for Israel … making the support unconditional, and endorsing the impunity,” said Brian Finucane, a Crisis Group senior adviser who previously advised the U.S. government on counterterrorism and the use of military force Nearly 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in seven months of war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed 13,000 fighters but has not provided supporting evidence. Israeli officials blame the steep human toll on Hamas, saying the militant group embeds itself in populated areas and uses civilians as human shields. Yet international humanitarian law still requires that warring parties distinguish between civilians and combatants. According to a Washington Post analysis published last year, the Israeli military conducted repeated and widespread airstrikes near hospitals in northern Gaza over two and a half months. In at least ten cases, the craters suggested the use of bombs weighing 2,000 pounds, many of which are supplied by the U.S. Multiple American-made 2,000-pound bombs were probably used in a daytime strike on the densely populated Jabalya refugee camp in November. The attack, which Israel said targeted a Hamas commander, killed more than 110 Palestinians. The Insecurity Insight monitoring group has logged 839 incidents of violence against health-care workers, or obstruction of access to health care in Gaza since the conflict began. A Post investigation into one of them — the killing of paramedics dispatched to save the life of a 6-year-old girl — found that an ambulance appeared to have been targeted with an antitank round fired from a Merkava tank, an armored vehicle for which the United States has provided key parts and components. American weapons have also been linked to multiple attacks on aid workers and installations. A near-fatal Israeli strike in January on a residential compound housing international aid workers most likely involved the use of a 1,000-pound U.S.-made “smart bomb,” according to the findings of a multiagency United Nations investigation reviewed by The Post. Doctors Without Borders and an independent investigative team concluded that a Merkava tank had also been used in a Feb. 20 attack on a guesthouse for MSF staff, killing two of their family members. ‘It’s just inexplicable’ In one of his first acts as president, Biden authorized a temporary freeze on the transfer of stealth F-35 fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates and precision-guided missiles to Saudi Arabia, following widespread reports that the weaponry was linked to civilian casualties in the Saudi-led coalition’s war in Yemen. The decision was made under the Conventional Arms Transfer (CAT) Policy, requiring the government to halt arms transfers where it is deemed “more likely than not” that they will be used to commit serious violations of international humanitarian law. About 9,000 civilians in Yemen were killed over seven years of coalition airstrikes, according to the Yemen Data Project. The Gaza Health Ministry says more than 10,000 children have been killed in Gaza in just seven months. Halting arms sales to Saudi Arabia, Paul recalled, “was a simple policy decision made by the Biden administration before they even took office and then communicated to us directly within 20 minutes of the swearing in. The whole debate over Saudi arms certainly informed the discussion on the CAT Policy.” That updated policy guidance, issued by the Biden administration in early 2023, is “in terms of human rights and international humanitarian law, the best conventional arms transfer policy ever,” Blaha said. “To see how it has not been implemented [in Gaza], when it is something that this administration put forward, it’s just inexplicable to me,” he added. “I don’t think there’s any such thing as an exception,” said Oona Hathaway, who served for a year as special counsel to the U.S. Department of Defense. “When you allow a state to engage in actions that at least many people see as inconsistent with international humanitarian law … this has an impact.” Another set of U.S. laws, known as the Leahy Laws, require an automatic cutoff of security assistance to foreign military units credibly implicated in gross human rights violations until the perpetrators have been adequately punished — or “remediated.” In 2022, they were applied to U.S.-supplied units in Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico and the Caribbean nation of St. Lucia. As Secretary of State Antony Blinken weighs whether to withhold support for one such Israeli unit serving in Gaza, some former U.S. officials describe the administration as going out of its way to avoid making a decision. Two current U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations, said the unit in question is the Netzah Yehuda Battalion — notorious among rights groups and Palestinian civilians for its brutality in the West Bank. The Washington-based Democracy for the Arab World Now has documented 12 instances of serious abuse by the unit. They include two fatal shootings, two cases of electrocution against detainees, five beatings and one case of sexual assault. While criminal charges have been brought against some lower-ranking soldiers, commanders have often been spared the worst of the consequences. In a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) obtained by The Post, Blinken said that while the unit was accused of committing gross violations of human rights and had not been appropriately punished, the United States would “engage on identifying a path to effective remediation.” Blaha described that wording as “unheard of.” “The phrase identifying a ‘path to’ remediation occurs nowhere in the Leahy laws,” he said. “I have never seen it used, ever.” The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Washington’s continuing support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, even as it condemns rights abuses in other conflict zones — from Ukraine to Sudan — “undercuts U.S. credibility as it tries to promote international criminal justice efforts and accountability,” Finucane said. It has also made diplomatic exchanges with other nations more charged in recent months, said one Western diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about sensitive discussions. “I’ve sat in conversations where the double standard just hangs heavy,” he said. John Hudson and Michael Birnbaum in Washington contributed to this report.
You'll hear this alot. It's Israels' excuse and justification for ongoing murder of Palestinian civilians and anyone else who is in their way.