Important Takeaways:
- Netanyahu said Israel would enter Rafah, which Israel says is Hamas’ last stronghold, regardless of whether a truce-for-hostages deal is struck. His comments appeared to be meant to appease his nationalist governing partners but it was not clear whether they would have any bearing on any emerging deal with Hamas.
- “The idea that we will stop the war before achieving all of its goals is out of the question,” Netanyahu said, according to a statement from his office. “We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate Hamas’ battalions there — with or without a deal, to achieve the total victory.”
- What we are witnessing throughout the nation right now is truly sad. At colleges and universities all over the United States, crazed protesters are setting up encampments, attacking Jewish students, replacing the American flag with the Palestinian flag, and illegally occupying buildings. Unfortunately, these protests are likely to become even more heated in the days ahead because Israel is preparing to make a really big move.
- When this operation takes place, pro-Hamas protesters all over the U.S. will go completely nuts.
- [The occupation of a building at Columbia University]
- One student that witnessed the occupation of the building is using the term “lawless” to describe what is happening…
- Columbia junior Jessica Schwalb described the campus to CBS News as “lawless. Utter anarchy.” She said demonstrators in Hamilton Hall “zip-tied the doorhandles together and then broke the windows, bashed the windows with hammers and put these metal bike locks around the door handles. They put the bike lock on the first set of doors is what I saw and then they were bringing tables, the heavy black metal tables from the eating area that’s right in front of Hamilton Hall, and had a group of people push them up against the door handles as a barricade and then people were also bringing furniture from Hamilton Hall to barricade inside.”
- At Portland State University, students have actually been trying to take over the entire school library…
- Officials at Portland State University in Oregon closed the campus Tuesday citing an “ongoing incident at library.” The school asked police to help remove dozens of protesters occupying the building. Last week the university paused seeking or accepting gifts or grants from Boeing pending a review of weapons sales to Israel.
- Down in Texas, authorities are taking a much different approach to these protests.
- Police are using flash bangs and pepper spray against pro-Hamas protesters, and dozens are being cuffed and hauled away…
- Sadly, this is just the beginning.
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Important Takeaways:
- Roughly 100 pro-Israel vigilantes stormed the “Palestine Solidarity Encampment” at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, sparking battles with activists.
- The raid occurred after nearly a week in which UCLA not only allowed the encampment to occupy the main plaza on campus, but also allowed pro-Palestinian activists to run their own security, barring access to students and the public.
- The Daily Bruin, the student newspaper, reported the clashes:
- Fireworks, tear gas and fights broke out just after 10:50 p.m. Tuesday night and continued early Wednesday morning as around 100 pro-Israel counter-protesters attempted to seize the barricade around and storm the ongoing Palestine solidarity encampment in Dickson Plaza.
- After the barricades came down, counter-protesters and protesters inside the encampment began to fight. Counter-protesters shot fireworks into the encampment just after 11 p.m., and irritant gasses were released from both sides. A Daily Bruin reporter was indirectly sprayed in the face.
- In another statement released at 3:30 a.m., protesters inside the encampment said the university has not done enough to protect students, and they repeated earlier calls for the university to meet their demands.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israeli Leaders Could Face War Crimes Charges as White House Pushes Hostage-Ceasefire Deal
- President Biden has again told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the White House opposes Israel’s planned invasion of the Gazan city of Rafah.
- Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Saudi Arabia for the first leg of a Mideast tour to lobby for a ceasefire in exchange for the release of hostages in Gaza.
- White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby told ABC, “That’s going to be right at the top of the list for Secretary Blinken to keep pushing for this temporary ceasefire. We want it to last for about six weeks. It would allow for all those hostages to get out, and of course to allow for easier aid access to places in Gaza, particularly up in the north.”
- The website Axios reports the Israeli government has proposed a possible hostage deal with Hamas that includes discussing an end to fighting in exchange for the hostages.
- Hamas reportedly has no objections to the deal and is sending a delegation to Cairo.
- While ending the war has been a key Hamas demand, right-wing party members of Israel’s governing coalition have threatened to leave if it agrees to what they call a “reckless deal.”
- Today Hamas took credit for launching about 20 rockets from southern Lebanon into northern Israel. The IDF says they were all intercepted.
- Thousands demonstrated in Tel Aviv on Saturday, demanding the release of the hostages and the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, after a Hamas propaganda video showed two Israeli hostages in captivity: 47-year-old Israeli Omri Miran and Israeli American Keith Siegel, who said, “I want to tell my family that I love you very much.” He then begins to weep during his message.
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Important Takeaways:
- US Campuses: Incubating Terrorism
- Some of the signs say “pro-Palestine”, “ceasefire now” and “end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza”. But these benign statements hide a far more malignant agenda, the end of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, the end of America as the world’s leading power and the end of democracy and the free market economy. Even if there were a unilateral ceasefire, accompanied by massive humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza, many of these protests would continue, because Gaza is merely an excuse for a much wider agenda: to destroy Israel and destroy America.
- One never sees a sign calling for a two-state solution or for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. These are not the goals. What is demanded is the end of any Jewish presence in the Middle East. “Death to America,” similarly, means the end of America’s influence and Western values.
- Many of the signs call for “revolution.” These are not directed against Israel, but rather against America, American Jews and all other Western democracies.
- As in the 1960s, many of these students are being groomed to be the terrorists of the future — in the manner of Kathy Boudin and Bernardine Dohrn back then – and, in the United States, a fifth column, the aim of which is taking down America.
- That these useful idiots are young does not make them less dangerous. Young students were instrumental in bringing to power tyrants such as Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Pol Pot and Mao.
- Where are the armed guards escorting Jewish students to class, as there were escorting the threatened Black youths to integrated school in the 1960s in the South?
- Universities are failing not only their Jewish students but all their students by refusing to educate them about what behavior is acceptable and what is not.
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Important Takeaways:
- George Soros is PAYING left-wing activists to head up camp outs at colleges across America – as huge wads of cash they’re getting are shared
- Multiple leaders of the anti-Israel protests at college campuses across the nation have been revealed to be paid fellows of George Soros-connected groups.
- Three of the major figures in the pro-Palestine encampments in universities are fellows at the Soros-funded US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, the New York Post reports.
- USCPR ‘community-based’ fellows are paid up to $7,800 for their labor, while ‘campus-based’ fellows are given between $2,880 and $3,660 for spending eight hours a week organizing ‘campaigns led by Palestinian organizations.’
- The organization instructs its fellows to ‘rise up’ and spark ‘revolution,’ while specifically telling them to reject ‘reform.’
- It has received at least $300,000 from Soros’ Open Society Foundations since 2017.
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Important Takeaways:
- Netanyahu’s response to Oct. 7 has been ‘terrible,’ Pelosi says
- Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an “obstacle” to peace and called on him to resign this week.
- “We recognize Israel’s right to protect itself. We reject the policy and the practice of Netanyahu — terrible. What could be worse than what he has done in response?” she said. “He should resign. He’s ultimately responsible,” she added.
- “I don’t know whether he’s afraid of peace, incapable of peace, or just doesn’t want peace. But he has been an obstacle to the two-state solution,” she added.
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Important Takeaways:
- The strike came less than a week after Iran’s unprecedented retaliatory drone and missile attack on Israel, to which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had vowed to respond.
- U.S. officials did not provide any information about the location or extent of the Israeli strike, and the Israel Defense Forces would not comment on the attack when asked by CBS News.
- State media and Iranian sources speaking with various news outlets mentioned only small drones flying around a couple sites in the country, without any reference to a missile strike.
- Iran’s President, Ebrahim Raisi, spoke of Iran’s assault a week earlier against Israel, which he called “necessary, obligatory” and a “sign of the power of the Islamic republic and its armed forces.”
- Iran announced that it had grounded commercial flights in Tehran and across areas of its western and central regions, but state television later said normal flight operations had resumed.
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Important Takeaways:
- Bowman said Omar, D-Minn., had questioned Columbia leadership’s commitment to “free academic expression” during a fiery congressional hearing on Wednesday and the following day her daughter, Isra Hirsi, was arrested.
- She was among more than 100 people issued a summons for trespassing, the NYPD said.
- Hirsi, an organizer with Columbia University’s Apartheid Divest group, was released hours later from NYPD headquarters.
- Dozens of anti-Israel activists began protesting at Columbia University on Wednesday morning, creating an encampment on the main lawn in protest of Israel’s war against Hamas.
- Fiery protests continued into the overnight hours with calls for an intifada and the death of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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Important Takeaways:
- How ancient hatreds are reshaping the Middle East and forging unlikely alliances. The rise of Iran – and its chilling proximity to a nuclear weapon – has driven old foes closer, explains STEPHEN POLLARD
- The competition is strong, but for my money the most important geopolitical statement so far this year came on Monday from an obscure Israeli news site.
- A member of the Saudi Arabian royal family had reportedly told the broadcaster Kan that, in his view, Iran had started the Gaza war by instructing its proxy group Hamas to massacre Israelis on October 7.
- Tehran’s intention, according to this nameless royal, was to thwart the imminent normalization of diplomatic relations between Israel and the Saudis.
- Why is that so important? Because it symbolizes the extraordinary transformation under way in the politics of the Middle East. For a Saudi royal to express such a view – that a Muslim country instigated the conflict for the purpose of spreading discord – would have been unimaginable only a few years ago. But that’s not the only way in which the winds of change are resettling alliances in this volatile region.
- On Saturday night, the ayatollahs of Iran inflicted their first direct attack on Israel since they came to power in the 1979 revolution.
- Allies such as the US and UK played a role in this. But they were joined by two other countries for whom defending the Jewish state would have been fanciful until recently: Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
- For most of the time Israel has existed, Saudi, as one of the world’s leading Muslim nations and home to the holy city of Mecca, has been its implacable foe. But now it is on the verge not just of tolerating Israel but becoming an ally.
- Similarly, back in 1967, Jordan actually invaded Israel – a disastrous move which lost it the territories of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Yet now Jordan, too, has stood alongside Israel to protect it from Iranian bombs. This newfound co-operative spirit continues: just yesterday it emerged that both the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates had passed helpful intelligence to America to use in Israel’s defense, with Jordan further agreeing to let the US and ‘other countries’ warplanes’ use its airspace, as well as sending up its own jets.
- One thing is clear. The rise of Iran – and its chilling proximity to a nuclear weapon – has driven old foes closer.
- There is a logic, then, to the gradually deepening alliances between Sunni states and Israel. The Arab nations understand that while Israel has no ambitions to dominate its neighbors, Iran [the Ayatollah] seeks to control all of the Middle East.
- In Gulf states such as the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and especially Saudi Arabia, the Shia threat – in other words the threat from Iran – is seen as existential.
- It needs to be stressed that the vast majority of Sunnis and Shias would rather just get on with their lives than embroil themselves in these disputes
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Important Takeaways:
- Oil prices a ‘chief concern’ for markets after Iran attack on Israel
- Colas estimated that a spike in oil prices pushing U.S. gasoline to $5.40 a gallon this summer would make a recession later in 2024 “a genuine possibility.” U.S. gas prices averaged $3.634 a gallon at the pump on Monday, according to AAA, at last check.
- “Crude prices are our chief concern, but we are a long way” from $125 a barrel — a level of West Texas Intermediate oil that “would almost certainly cause a recession if sustained,” said Colas. “Gasoline prices are the transmission mechanism between Mideast conflict and the US economy: when pump prices increase quickly, consumers must cut back on other spending.”
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