GNITN - Special Edition

Israel At War – Day 228

Israel Is Fighting A Just War

Not Genocide

In a rather surprising move, Biden tells Israeli hostage families that he’s fully behind Israel as we read in a report from The Times Of Israel:

US President Joe Biden said Monday that his administration is united with Israel in its mission to destroy the terror group Hamas and rejected claims that the war in the Gaza Strip is a genocide.

“Contrary to allegations made against Israel in the International Court of Justice, what’s happening is not genocide,” Biden said at a White House event marking Jewish American Heritage Month. “We reject that.”

Biden went on to say that he is committed to defeating Hamas as well:

The US, Biden stressed, “stand[s] with Israel to take out Sinwar and the rest of the butchers of Hamas,” referring to Hamas’s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar.

“We want Hamas defeated, and we’re working with Israel to make that happen,” he said.

He also said that Israel was the victim on October 7th:

Biden said Israel was the victim dating back to the October 7 attack by Hamas terrorists, who killed 1,200 people and took 252 hostages amid acts of brutality and sexual assault. Israel responded with a campaign to destroy Hamas and free the hostages.

Biden received applause when he said this:

Among those present at the event were the families of some of the hostages.

“I’ll always ensure that Israel has everything it needs to defend itself against Hamas and all its enemies,” Biden said, reiterating that US support for the safety and security of Israelis is “ironclad.”

The crowd of several hundred in the Rose Garden cheered and applauded those remarks, which were seemingly made in reference to the recent, controversial, pause in the delivery of US bombs to Israel over concerns about their use in Gaza.

Biden then spoke about the rise in hatred for Jews:

The president also decried antisemitism, specifically on college campuses, where some pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protests have devolved into attacks on Jewish students. A prominent accusation at the rallies was that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

“In America, we respect and protect fundamental rights of free speech, protest peacefully. That’s America,” he said. “But there’s no place in any campus in America, any place in America for antisemitism, for hate speech that threatens violence of any kind against Jews or anyone else.”

The surge in antisemitism is “despicable” and must stop, Biden said.

Is all of this a photo-op to strengthen the Jewish vote? I doubt that it is much more than that, but Israel will take any support it can get now.

No Deal With Saudi Arabia

It seems that every good deal offered to Israel has a poison pill in it as see in a report from The Jerusalem Times:

The Israeli government might not be in the position to proceed with Saudi normalization given that such a deal requires a pathway to Palestinian statehood, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“The Saudis have been very clear that [normalization] would require calm in Gaza, and it would require a credible pathway to a Palestinian state,” Blinken said.

“It may well be... that at this moment, Israel is not able or willing to proceed down that pathway,” he explained.

It should be pointed out that every time an opportunity to occupy land in Israel was given to the Palestinians they turned to terrorism against Israelis. Unless they prove they are not wanting to annihilate Israel anytime they can, quit teaching their people to hate Israel and quit voting in terrorists like Hamas or the Palestinian Authority statehood is not an option. But despite knowing that Israel isn’t going to try a two-state solution again, it gets pushed over and over:

The November presidential elections, which would also shift the makeup of the Senate, have set a tight timeline for the completion of such a deal.

The Senate has to approve the agreement with 67 out of 100 votes, given that it includes a security pact. The existing Senate would support the deal, as long as it includes all three elements. It’s unclear, however, if there would be enough backing in the next Senate.

The report went on to solidify why any such deal would be DOA with Netanyahu:

The spotlight, therefore, has now moved to the possibility of a normalization deal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long sought such an agreement.

Securing such a deal was one of the goals he set for his government when it was sworn in at the end of December 2022.

His government, however, has opposed Palestinian statehood. Netanyahu, in a statement his office issued only on Saturday, explained that such a state would become a terror entity.

Trust but verify seems to be the consensus, though. Israel has tried the trust part over and over again in the past only to have more rockets launched at them and more bombings, knife attacks and terrorism attacks of all kinds in return. They said never gain on October 8th and I think this time they mean it.

It Was A Good Idea On Paper

When the plans for a port just offshore of Gaza was proposed it was thought that it would take out Hamas from the equation of distributing the aid to Gazans. As it turns out civilians decided to just steal it once it got off the pier as seen in an article by the Jewish News Syndicate:

Close to three-fourths of the humanitarian aid transported from a new $320 million floating pier built by the U.S. military off the Gaza coast was stolen on Saturday en route to a U.N. warehouse, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

Eleven trucks “were cleaned out by Palestinians” on the journey to the World Food Programme warehouse in Deir El Balah in the central Strip, with only five truckloads making it to the destination.

The UN isn’t going to deliver anymore aid until they know this won’t happen again:

“We need to make sure that the necessary security and logistical arrangements are in place before we proceed,” said the U.N. official.

It’s not clear if these civilian aren’t Hamas terrorists dressed like civilians, though. They’ve done this kind of thing in the past:

According to Israeli estimates, Hamas has been stealing up to 60% of the aid entering the Gaza Strip, and a Channel 12 report last week revealed that the terrorist organization has made at least $500 million in profit off humanitarian aid since the start of the war on Oct. 7.

No matter how much international aid is sent it never seems to get to the people who need it. And according to another report from The Jerusalem Post, Gazans don’t need all the temporary aid thrown at them because that’s not their main concern:

The Media Line spoke to people within the Gaza Strip who criticized the large-scale but ineffective aid distribution, asserting that Gazans need sustainable solutions rather than temporary relief, and accused the UN and Arab countries of neglecting Gaza’s children.

Women and children voiced their frustration over the lack of stability and normalcy, with no safe havens available and children missing out on their education and playtime. Additionally, citizens expressed a desperate hope for a hostage exchange to bring an end to the war, emphasizing the dire need for safe areas.

In short, they just want to go back to their homes and have stabile lives much like they had before October 7th. Ending the war would get them closer to that. And eliminating Hamas, the very ones who started the war is how that will happen.