ISRAEL DOES NOT DETERMINE US FOREIGN POLICY, NOR SHOULD IT....

ISRAEL IS NOT CAPABLE OF FIGHTING WARS BY ITSELF....SO THE US IS SUPPOSED TO BE DRAWN INTO FIGHTING WARS THAT ISRAEL PROVOKES? 

ISRAEL IS PROVOKING LEBANON & IRAN....this will not end well! 

Americans were already reluctant to continuing to subsidize ISRAEL and this extremist FOLLY needs to be considered in your PRESIDENTIAL VOTE! 

THIS IS IRRATIONAL! 

ISRAEL DOES NOT WANT TO LIVE IN PEACE!

Ben-Gvir Endorses Trump, Says He's More Likely to Back War on Iran

The Israeli security minister, who leads the far-right Jewish Power party, accused the Biden administration of thwarting Israel's victory against Hamas.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir endorsed former U.S. President Donald Trump—the 2024 Republican nominee—for the White House in an interview published Wednesday in which he accused the Biden administration of preventing Israel from winning its war on Gaza.

"I believe that with Trump, Israel will receive the backing to act against Iran," Ben-Gvir, who heads the far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, told Bloomberg. "With Trump, it will be clearer that enemies must be defeated."

"A cabinet minister is supposed to maintain neutrality," the 48-year-old minister conceded, "but that's impossible to do after [U.S. President Joe] Biden."

"The U.S. has always stood behind Israel in terms of armaments and weapons, yet this time the sense was that we were being reckoned with—that we were trying to be prevented from winning. That happened on Biden's watch and fed Hamas with lots of energy," added Ben-Gvir, who was convicted in 2007 of incitement to racism after he advocated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

While Biden, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and other administration officials have decried Israel's indiscriminate bombing of Gaza and high civilian casualties—at least 140,000 Palestinians killed, injured, or missing, according to local and international agencies—the U.S. has approved billions of dollars in new military aid and more than 100 arms sales to Israel since October.

During his White House tenure, Trump—who boasted that he "fought for Israel like no president ever before"—moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and brokered the Abraham Accords between Israel and Arab nations Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates.

Trump has said that Israel should "get the job done" in Gaza, while criticizing the Israel Defense Forces for posting videos showing its obliteration of the embattled Palestinian enclave.

"I don't know why they released wartime shots like that. I guess it makes them look tough. But to me, it doesn't make them look tough," Trump said in April. "They're losing the PR war. They're losing it big. But they've got to finish what they started, and they've got to finish it fast, and we have to get on with life."

While Trump says he wants a deal with Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons, as president he unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—also known as the Iran nuclear deal—and oversaw a "maximum pressure" campaign against Tehran featuring deadly economic sanctions.

On the advice of Iran hawks in his administration including then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Trump also ordered the January 2020 assassination of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Qasem Soleimani in Iraq.

Ben-Gvir's interview was published as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to address a joint meeting of U.S. Congress Wednesday in Washington, D.C. A growing number of Democratic lawmakers have called for not only a cease-fire in Gaza but also a suspension of U.S. military aid to Israel, whose conduct in the war is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.

Dozens of Democratic lawmakers and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont have signaled they will skip Netanyahu's speech. Vice President Kamala Harris, who is also the Senate president, said she will not preside over Wednesday's session. Harris, who is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in the wake of Biden's withdrawal from the race on Sunday, said she will meet privately with Netanyahu on Thursday.

Echoing calls from groups including CodePink and the Council on American Islamic Relations, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) said this week that the prime minister should be arrested for war crimes and genocide.

Karim Khan, the International Criminal Court prosecutor, has applied for arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes including extermination committed on and after October 7.

Far-right Israeli lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir delivers a speech following the exit polls of the 2022 Israeli general election on November 2, 2022.

 (Photo: Ilia Yefimovich/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)

COMMON DREAMS

Ex Biden Officials: ‘Undeniable’ US Complicity in Gaza

July 5, 2024

 Twelve former members of the Biden administration are calling its policy in Gaza a failure and a threat to U.S. national security.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, foreground next to bannister, with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Tel Aviv on Nov. 30, 2023. (State Department, Chuck Kennedy)

By Edward Carver
Common Dreams

Former Biden administration officials this week sharply criticized its Gaza policy, arguing that the continued supply of weapons to Israel is not only “morally reprehensible” but also a violation of U.S. and international law. 

In a joint statement, 12 officials who’ve resigned in protest in the last nine months set forth a list of recommendations and urged their former colleagues in the administration to use American leverage to help bring an end to the assault on Gaza. 

“The administration’s policy in Gaza is a failure and a threat to U.S. national security,” the statement says. “America’s diplomatic cover for, and continuous flow of arms to, Israel has ensured our undeniable complicity in the killings and forced starvation of a besieged Palestinian population in Gaza.”

The 12 signatories included former officials from a wide range of posts and backgrounds. 

One was the the administration’s latest defector: 24-year-old Interior Department special assistant Maryam Hassanein, who resigned on Tuesday, telling HuffPost that “serving in the administration in any capacity does essentially make you complicit in the genocide of the Palestinians.”

Hassanein was the first Muslim American administration appointee to resign, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which applauded the resignation on social media. She said the administration was engaging in the “dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims.”

Another signatory was Harrison Mann, the most senior military official to have left in protest of the Gaza war. Mann had been a major at the Defense Intelligence Agency. He made the news this week when he told The Guardian that Israel was seeking out a war with Lebanon for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political gain. 

Stacy Gilbert, a 20-year-old State Department veteran who resigned in May over a key report, dealing in part with whether Israel was blocking humanitarian aid to Gazans, that she says contained “patently false” findings, was also among the statement’s signatories, as was Lily Greenberg Call, a former Interior Department official who was the first Jewish American appointee to resign in protest of the administration’s war policy.

The joint statement, timed to come on the week of Independence Day, warns that the U.S. government is risking its international credibility and the safety of its own citizens by putting a “target on America’s back.” 

The authors argued that the administration was “willfully violating multiple U.S. laws and attempting to deny or distort facts, use loopholes, or manipulate processes to ensure a continuous flow of lethal weapons to Israel.” They cited the Leahy Laws that forbid providing military support to forces engaged in human rights violations.

The U.S. provides Israel with billions of dollars per year in military aid and has significantly increased its support during the war. In April, President Joe Biden signed a bill providing at least $15 billion in military funds for Israel. 

The former officials called for an end not just to the U.S. supply of weapons for the war but also the “diplomatic cover” the U.S. provides for Israeli military occupation and settlements in Palestinian territory. The administration should announce that U.S. policy is “to support self-determination for the Palestinian people,” they wrote. 

The 12 ex-officials also called for an “immediate expansion” of humanitarian aid to Gaza and funding to help rebuild the territory. 

Their statement comes as Israel continues to pummel Gaza with strikes that kill Palestinian civilians. Nearly 38,000 Gazans have been killed in the last nine months, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Several strikes that killed Palestinian civilians, including a massacre in Rafah in late May that killed at least 45, have been undertaken with U.S.-made weapons, forensic analyses have showed. 

The conditions for those who have survived the Israeli bombardment are dire, with Gazans forced to live amid sewage and debris. 

“Civilians in Gaza are clinging to their dignity under the most inhumane conditions,” Sigrid Kaag, United Nations senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator, said in a statement on Tuesday. 

“The war has not merely created a humanitarian crisis, it has unleashed a maelstrom of human misery,” she said.

Edward Carver is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

This article is from  Common Dreams.

Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

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