What an example! Biden, commander in chief of American armed forces. A lying politician who can't keep his word and lacks a spine. What a badge of honor!
The past couple of days have seen Hamas in full Pallywood mode; first claiming the fire was in a "civilian evacuation zone" (no, it was over a mile away) then planted other missile parts in the area to parade in front of the world media. "Martyrs Inc. under Deif and Sinwar’s evil management is a mass-production enterprise — and grotesquely, the younger the fallen, the better." Maybe Hamas should not store munitions in civilian residences. Martyrs Inc. in Rafah as Hamas gets just what it wants: civilian deaths https://nypost.com/2024/05/28/opinion/in-rafah-hamas-gets-just-what-it-wants-civilian-martyrs/ Hamas is getting just what it wanted. On Tuesday, IDF tanks entered the heart of Rafah, inevitably causing more Palestinian civilian casualties and deaths. Savagely, Martyrs Inc. is open for business in Rafah — exactly as intended by Hamas and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps sponsors in Tehran and overlords in Moscow. Mohammed Deif and Yahya Sinwar have never sought to govern Gaza. Rather, they have plotted to turn it into a land of futile martyrdom in their jihad to destroy Israel. The IDF’s Sunday attack, which killed 45 civilians, underscored just how drenched in innocent blood the road to Rafah has become at the hands of Deif and Sinwar. The images were horrifying. Flames from hell, burned bodies, dead children — all proudly served up on social media by Hamas. Hamas would not have it any other way. In its demented world, Palestinian men, women and children are simply a means to an end. Ismail Haniyeh, the political chief of Hamas, told us as much last October. Safely tucked away in a luxury hotel 1,100 miles away from Rafah in Qatar, Haniyeh perversely reveled in the loss of Palestinian civilians as Israel began to strike back against Hamas targets in Northern Gaza, arguing that “we need this blood [of the children, women and elderly] so that it will ignite within us the spirit of revolution.” Palestinian civilians in the eyes of Hamas are their first line of defense, Geneva Conventions be damned. Martyrs Inc. under Deif and Sinwar’s evil management is a mass-production enterprise — and grotesquely, the younger the fallen, the better. None of this is new. Weaponizing civilians — Palestinians and Israelis alike — is a Hamas specialty, one shared by Tehran and Moscow. Hamas has used Gazans as human shields since 2007. It does so to enable the firing of rockets into Israel, often siting their weapons near schools, hospitals and mosques. Ditto “locating military or security-related infrastructures such as HQs, bases, armories, access routes, lathes or defensive positions within or in proximity to civilian areas,” according to NATO StratCom COE, a military think tank. Far from protecting civilians, as evidenced on Oct. 7, Deif and Sinwar have made non-combatants their targets of choice. Terrorize, kidnap and kill Israeli civilians — and then flee back to Gaza and hide behind Palestinian men, women and children to ensure mass casualties and garner international condemnation of Israel. We are living in a perverse dystopian reality. Hamas is being rewarded for weaponizing civilians — and Israel condemned for taking steps to ensure that Deif and Sinwar are never again able to target Israeli civilians.
Bizarre moment Biden, 81, insults reporter for asking if he will serve a full second term 30 May 2024 By Nikki Schwab, Senior U.S. Political Reporter For Dailymail.Com In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania President Joe Biden, 81, suggested a reporter was crazy Wednesday when asked if he would serve a full second term or turn over power to Vice President Kamala Harris. 'Are you OK? Are you alright? You're not hurt, are you?' Biden asked the reporter, pointing to his head, when asked the second term question. 'I said, are you OK? Did you fall on your head or something?' President Joe Biden (left) pointed to his head - an assertion that a reporter was nuts - when asked if he planned to serve a whole second term or would hand power over to Vice President Kamala Harris as he arrived in Philadelphia alongside Rep. Joyce Beatty (right) Wednesday Vice President Kamala Harris (right) got bigger screams when she was announced - especially from the schoolchildren who attended Girard College - at a campaign rally for black voters with President Joe Biden (left) Wednesday in Philadelphia 'So in 2020 black voters in Philadelphia and across our nation helped President Biden and me win the White House,' Harris said. 'And in 2024, with your voice and your power, we will win again.' 'Philadelphia, in Joe Biden we have a fighter, a leader with skill, vision, determination and compassion,' she continued. 'A leader who keeps his promises.' (Riiiight) When it was Biden's turn to speak, he said he came to Philadelphia 'to speak the truth.' (Riiiight) 'The truth about "promises made, promises kept,"' the president said - which was Trump's campaign motto for part of the 2020 race. (Riiiight) Biden went on to say..... 'He (Trump) is the same guy who wanted to teargas you as you peacefully protested George Floyd's murder,' Biden said. (But don't mention Palestinian protestors, Joe) 'He's that guy who won't say "Black Lives Matter" and invokes neo-Nazi Third Reich terms,' the president went on. (Don't mention Netanyahu, Joe) 'And then Trump tells you - I love this one - he says he's the greatest president for black people in the history of America, including more than Abraham Lincoln,' Biden said, garnering boos.
Dems in full-blown ‘freakout’ over Biden One adviser to major Democratic donors keeps a running list of reasons Biden could lose. There have been few moments in Joe Biden’s term as president that haven’t been second-guessed. | Susan Walsh/AP By Christopher Cadelago, Sally Goldenberg and Elena Schneider 05/28/2024 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/28/democrats-freakout-over-biden-00160047 A pervasive sense of fear has settled in at the highest levels of the Democratic Party over President Joe Biden’s reelection prospects, even among officeholders and strategists who had previously expressed confidence about the coming battle with Donald Trump. All year, Democrats had been on a joyless and exhausting grind through the 2024 election. But now, nearly five months from the election, anxiety has morphed into palpable trepidation, according to more than a dozen party leaders and operatives. And the gap between what Democrats will say on TV or in print, and what they’ll text their friends, has only grown as worries have surged about Biden’s prospects. “You don’t want to be that guy who is on the record saying we’re doomed, or the campaign’s bad or Biden’s making mistakes. Nobody wants to be that guy,” said a Democratic operative in close touch with the White House and granted anonymity to speak freely. But Biden’s stubbornly poor polling and the stakes of the election “are creating the freakout,” he said. “This isn’t, ‘Oh my God, Mitt Romney might become president.’ It’s ‘Oh my God, the democracy might end.’” Despite everything, Trump is running ahead of Biden in most battleground states. He raised far more money in April, and the landscape may only become worse for Democrats, with Trump’s hush-money trial concluding and another — this one involving the president’s son — set to begin in Delaware. The concern has metastasized in recent days as Trump jaunted to some of the country’s most liberal territories, including New Jersey and New York, to woo Hispanic and Black voters as he boasted, improbably, that he would win in those areas. While he’s long lagged Biden in cash on hand, Trump’s fundraising outpaced the president’s by $25 million last month, and included a record-setting $50.5 million haul from an event in Palm Beach, Florida. One adviser to major Democratic Party donors provided a running list that has been shared with funders of nearly two dozen reasons why Biden could lose, ranging from immigration and high inflation to the president’s age, the unpopularity of Vice President Kamala Harris and the presence of third-party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “Donors ask me on an hourly basis about what I think,” the adviser said, calling it “so much easier to show them, so while they read it, I can pour a drink.” The adviser added, “The list of why we ‘could’ win is so small I don’t even need to keep the list on my phone.” Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey implored a room of high-dollar donors and local Democratic leaders to “think long and hard” about the stakes of the election. | Domenico Stinellis/AP On the day after news broke that Biden had trailed Trump in fundraising last month, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey raised the pressure on donors as she introduced the president to a crowd of 300. The cluster of fundraising events Biden attended in Boston that day were expected to bring in more than $6 million for his political operation. But Healey said that wasn’t good enough. “To those of you who opened up your wallets, thank you,” said Healey, a Democrat in her first term. “We’d like you to open them up a little bit more and to find more patriots — more patriots who believe in this country, who recognize and understand the challenge presented at this time.” Laughter rippled through the room. But Healey’s voice turned serious. With unusual urgency for Healey, the governor implored the room of high-dollar donors and local Democratic leaders to “think long and hard” about the stakes of the election. There have been few moments in Biden’s term as president that haven’t been second-guessed, and his aides have made sport of sneering at grim predictions, compiling dossiers of headlines and clips in which the president was underestimated. Biden campaign aides and allies point to some positive polls, including in the battlegrounds, and Trump’s comparative lack of campaigning and infrastructure in the key states, including staff, organizing programs and advertising. A Biden campaign adviser granted anonymity to speak freely stressed that the president’s team never made any indication that Trump’s hush-money trial would help — or hurt — him. Instead, the adviser contended that Trump will be forced to defend cutting back abortion rights, attacking democracy and advancing corporate interests as president. “Trump’s photo-ops and PR stunts may get under the skin of some very serious D.C. people as compelling campaigning, but they will do nothing to win over the voters that will decide this election,” Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz told POLITICO. “The work we do every day on the ground and on the airwaves in our battleground states — to talk about how President Biden is fighting for the middle class against the corporate greed that’s keeping prices high, and highlight Donald Trump’s anti-American campaign for revenge and retribution and abortion bans — is the work that will again secure us the White House.” Biden supporters who remain optimistic say they’d rather be him than Trump, before rallying around abortion and issues of reproductive rights, which Rep. Dan Kildee, a Michigan Democrat, called “a fundamental game-changer.” “We have to run a campaign, where honestly, we drive home the message that Donald Trump takes us back to the 19th century. Biden takes us further into the 21st century,” Kildee said. He did not remark on whether such a campaign is being run, or run to his satisfaction. “A lot can happen between now and then,” acknowledged Rep. Ann Kuster, a Democrat from New Hampshire, who is retiring after the fall election. She, too, pointed to eroding abortion rights under the conservative-led Supreme Court remade by Trump. “I know a significant number of voters are going to be motivated by the Dobbs decision.”
Basically Israel has announced that 2024 will be the "year of war" where it focuses on removing Hamas as a governing and militant entity in Gaza -- and this effort will take another 7 months until the end of the year. Do not expect any type of cessation of hostilities before that. With this announcement Israel is firmly putting the stake in the ground and telling the internationally community to take a hike. Having a terrorist group dedicated to wiping out the entire population of your country living next door is not acceptable. Of course, another seven months of military operations will come at a cost. There are already 35,000 dead in Gaza -- half of them Hamas terrorists -- in the previous seven months. It is likely to be an additional toll of another 35,000 in the upcoming seven months just looking at the math. Of course, Hamas could surrender, leave Gaza, and stop using Palestinian civilians as human shields -- but this is not going to happen. Israel is turning the pressure up on Hamas; the IDF has now seized the entire border with Egypt which will eliminate the smuggling of more munitions to arm Hamas and destroying their tunnels in Rafah. Yet the campaign will take time -- all of 2024 according to Israel. There is also the issue of humanitarian aid to the civilian population in Gaza. Deliveries have dwindled to a halt as the 320 million dollar pier collapsed into the sea, Egypt closed the Rafah crossing, and aid via Israeli crossing points keeps getting attacked by Hamas. The other problem is that effective distribution of aid in Gaza is nearly non-existent; most of it being taken by Hamas or stolen by desperate mobs. If this military operation to eliminate Hamas is going to take another seven months, then the aid situation for Gaza must be rapidly improved to prevent starvation. Additionally, there is the risk that the Hamas militants simply alter their offense to an insurgency inside Gaza targeting whatever local government is put into place after the military effort ceases -- which would be harder to rub out than Hamas as a governing and militant entity controlling Gaza. War in Gaza expected to last through end of 2024, top Israeli official says https://nypost.com/2024/05/29/us-ne...last-7-more-months-top-israeli-official-says/
Israel could have used smaller weapons against Hamas to avoid deaths in Gaza tent fire, experts say By TARA COPP and JOSEF FEDERMAN May 31, 2024 https://apnews.com/article/bomb-rafah-civilians-israel-us-ada219d17926a14ca8c179338d53d109 WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense experts who have reviewed debris images from an Israeli airstrike that ignited a deadly fire in a camp for displaced Palestinians questioned why Israel did not use smaller, more precise weapons when so many civilians were nearby. They said the bombs used were likely U.S.-made. The strikes, targeting Hamas operatives, killed as many as 45 people sheltering in a temporary displacement camp near the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Sunday and have drawn international condemnation. Israel is investigating the attack but says the Hamas targets were 1.7 kilometers (1 mile) away from a declared humanitarian zone and that its review before the strike determined no expected harm to civilians. But displaced civilians were scattered throughout the area, and Israel had not ordered evacuations. So even if the tents that burned were not inside the marked humanitarian zone, the civilians there thought it was safe. Israel, which was attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, has not said where the burned tents were in relation to the compound it bombed on Sunday, but has released one satellite image showing there were some known civilian shelters located about 180 meters (600 feet) away. It emphasized that while there were no tents “in the immediate vicinity,” due to “unforeseen circumstances, a fire ignited tragically taking the lives of Gazan civilians nearby.” Footage released by the Israeli military appears to show people walking next to the targeted buildings before the blast. The footage also appears to show tents nearby. Israel has not identified the bombs it used, but Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israel Defense Forces spokesman, has emphasized that the country chose the smallest munition its jets could carry — with 17 kilograms (37 pounds) of explosive material each — and that an unintended secondary explosion may have caused the fire. Even the smallest jet-launched munition may be too big when civilians are near because of how they explode and can send fragments far, defense experts said. Images posted on social media from the tent camp on Monday and verified by The Associated Press showed a CAGE code, a unique identifier assigned to U.S. government suppliers, on pieces of the exploded weapons. Based on those images and satellite photos of the debris field, two defense experts said the bombs used were likely U.S.-made 250-pound (113-kilogram) GBU-39 small-diameter bombs. Though they’re smaller than many other weapons the U.S. has provided to Israel, these bombs can still create a wide swath of damage. The entire 250-pound shell and components are designed to spew fragments that can travel as far as 2,000 feet (600 meters). “You essentially have two bombs they use that the fragments can travel 600 meters in a densely packed area. So that just doesn’t check out if they’re trying to limit casualties,” said Trevor Ball, a former Army explosive ordnance demolition technician. Ball said the serial number on the pieces of the tail kit and the shell debris shown in the photographs identify the munitions as the 250-pound GBU-39. It’s unusual to describe a bomb by its explosive load — in this case, 37 pounds — instead of its total weight, according to Ball and Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps Reserves colonel and senior adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The debris field in Gaza is indicative of the bombs possibly being set to detonate before impact, which would ensure their intended targets were killed but also risk unintended deaths, Ball and Cancian said. The images showed a small hole where shrapnel was found. The GBU-39’s fuse settings can be adjusted to have the bomb explode on impact, which would create a crater at the site, or set for a delayed blast if the goal is to have it more deeply penetrate a target first. They can also be set to detonate in the air, right before impact, to ensure multiple targets are hit. But that setting also maximizes area damage, which could explain a secondary explosion even if weapons or other flammable materials were some distance away, Ball said. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on Wednesday during a visit to Moldova that the U.S. is waiting for an investigation to show what weapons were used and how they were deployed. Even if that confirms Israel used a small-diameter weapon, “we also see that even limited, focused, targeted attacks — designed to deal with terrorists who have killed innocent civilians that are plotting to kill more — even those kinds of operations can have terrible, horrific, unintended consequences,” Blinken said. The defense experts said Israel had better options to turn to than the GBU-39 when civilians were nearby. The Israelis have previously deployed drones to launch weapons that are smaller and more precise, Cancian said. These precision airstrikes used over the years have caused little damage beyond the immediate target. Israel, for example, in this strike could have used a smaller anti-personnel weapon called the mini-Spike, which would not have created as wide an area of debris, if it was targeting specific Hamas leaders, Cancian said. The U.S. has withheld a shipment of even larger 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bombs from Israel out of concern they would be used in Israel’s Rafah operation, where more than 1 million Palestinians crowded after Israel bombed other parts of Gaza. Now, that same number of people have escaped Rafah and are scattered across makeshift tent camps and other areas. Sunday’s strike shows that even the smaller 250-pound bombs the U.S. has continued to provide can be too large for use near densely packed refugee areas, Cancian said. White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday that the U.S. was still trying to gather information from Israel about the deadly Rafah strike. He declined to discuss the specific munitions used by Israel but said Israel’s public comments about the munitions used “certainly indicate a desire to be more deliberate and more precise in their targeting.” ___ Federman reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Prague, Ellen Knickmeyer and Zeke Miller in Washington and Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut, Lebanon, contributed.
US State Department official resigns, says US report on Gaza inaccurate By Daphne Psaledakis and Humeyra Pamuk May 31, 2024 An Egyptian truck carrying humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, is seen at the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Israel, May 30, 2024. REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo WASHINGTON, May 30 (Reuters) - A U.S. State Department official who quit this week said on Thursday her resignation was precipitated by an administration report to Congress that she said falsely stated Israel was not blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza, prompting her to resign in protest of President Joe Biden's Israel policy. Stacy Gilbert, who served in the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, was a subject matter expert working on the report. "There is so clearly a right and wrong, and what is in that report is wrong," Gilbert said in an interview. The United Nations and aid groups have long complained of the dangers and obstacles to getting aid in and distributing it throughout Gaza. As the Palestinian death toll in Gaza has exceeded 36,000 and a humanitarian crisis has engulfed the enclave, human rights groups and other critics have faulted the U.S. for providing weapons to Israel and largely defending Israel's conduct. The State Department submitted the 46-page unclassified report earlier this month to Congress as required under a new National Security Memorandum that Biden issued in early February. Among other conclusions, the report said that in the period after Oct. 7 Israel “did not fully cooperate” with U.S. and other efforts to get humanitarian aid into Gaza. But it said this did not amount to a breach of a U.S law that blocks the provision of arms to countries that restrict U.S. humanitarian aid. Gilbert, who worked for the State Department for over 20 years, said she notified her office the day the State Department report was released that she would resign. Her last day was Tuesday. U.S. State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters on Thursday that he would not comment on personnel issues but that the department welcomes diverse points of view. He said the administration stood by the report and continued to press the government of Israel to avoid harming civilians and urgently expand humanitarian access to Gaza. "We are not an administration that twists the facts, and allegations that we have are unfounded," Patel said. The Israeli embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Gilbert's accusations. Gilbert’s bureau was one of the four that contributed to a classified initial options memo, reported exclusively by Reuters in late April, that informed U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken Israel might be violating international humanitarian law. Gilbert said the State Department removed subject matter experts from working on the report to Congress when the document was a rough draft about 10 days before it was due. She said the report was then edited by more senior officials. In contrast to the published version, the last draft she saw stated that Israel was blocking humanitarian assistance, Gilbert said. Officials who resigned prior to Gilbert include Arabic language spokesperson Hala Rharrit and Annelle Sheline of the human rights bureau.
Let's catch up with the latest on the ceasefire front. Biden is pushing a deal that Israel has agreed to with path forward to an extended ceasefire. Hamas has made some positive comments about the proposal -- but with Hamas it is the same old game, this is nothing more than another opportunity for a delaying tactic to stop their demise. This makes the entire proposal an intersection of Biden's political posturing in an election year, coupled with concrete Israeli proposals allowing short-term ceasefires but nothing longer term (until Hamas is eliminated) and Hamas negotiating in bad faith to extend their oversight in Gaza (no matter the cost to the Palestinian civilians which they couldn't care less about). Biden says Israel has agreed to ‘enduring’ Gaza ceasefire proposal US president’s announcement comes as he faces widespread criticism over his Gaza policy in lead-up to November election. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024...as-agreed-to-enduring-gaza-ceasefire-proposal President Biden outlined a new Israeli cease-fire proposal that he endorses. “Its time for this war to end,” he said. Speaking from the White House, President Biden said that Hamas was no longer capable of carrying out a major terror attack on Israel and declared that it was time for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/05/31/world/israel-gaza-war-hamas-rafah