RSS
In Washington, calls for a ceasefire are loud, but not pervasive or, to Biden, persuasive
WASHINGTON (JTA) — At about 11 a.m. Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Biden administration favored “humanitarian pauses” so that assistance could reach Gaza Palestinians caught in Israel’s war with Hamas.
Left-wing social media lit up: Until Blinken’s comments, made to the United Nations Security Council, the Biden administration had rejected calls for a ceasefire.
“The tide is turning — the Biden administration is beginning to recognize that this war will only bring more death and suffering for Palestinians and Israelis,” IfNotNow, a left-wing Jewish group that accuses Israel of “genocide” and has led protests for a ceasefire, said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Blinken’s comments were a reversal of sorts. Just last week the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for a “humanitarian pause.” But shortly after Blinken spoke, John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, threw cold water on any notion of U.S. support for a ceasefire.
“We’re going to continue to make sure Israel has the tools and the capabilities that they need to defend themselves,” he said just after 1 p.m., when asked at the daily White House press briefing about the prospects of a ceasefire. “A ceasefire right now really only benefits Hamas.”
Given Kirby’s statement, it appeared Blinken’s support for “humanitarian pauses” meant just that — short breaks in the fighting so food, water and medical assistance could reach people in need, nothing more. “We want to see all measure of protection for civilians. Pauses in operation [are] a tool and a tactic that can do that for temporary periods of time,” Kirby said. “That is not the same as saying a ceasefire.”
Calls for a ceasefire from some progressives, including Jewish groups, have been loud and insistent. They are backed by nearly two dozen progressive members of Congress, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish.
But Kirby’s forceful rejection shows how ineffective those demands have been in the face of a Biden administration steadfast in its support for Israel, as well as a large majority of Congress that opposes a ceasefire.
Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said she has counted 23 Democrats in the House and Senate who have called for a ceasefire, out of 263 overall. Congressional Republicans are opposed almost wall-to-wall to a ceasefire.
“The overwhelming majority — more than 90% of all Democrats in the Senate and the House — stand with the president on the issue of a ceasefire,” Soifer said, although she noted that she has only been tracking those explicitly in favor of a ceasefire, and not those explicitly opposed.
Hamas broke a 2021 ceasefire when it launched its attack on Israel Oct. 7, killing more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, wounding thousands and abducting more than 200. Israel’s ensuing war on Hamas has killed more than 5,000 people, Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health ministry says. It is not clear how many of those casualties are civilians, though a significant number are children.
A new ceasefire would aim to end all combat, including Israeli airstrikes and Hamas rocket launches, as well as all cross-border infiltration between Gaza and Israel. It would also leave Hamas in control of Gaza. Israel rejects those terms, saying the return of the hostages and the dismantling of Hamas must come first. A ceasefire would also nix a potential ground invasion by Israel that hopes to achieve those ends.
Biden has opposed a ceasefire because he, like Israel, believes Hamas must be permanently debilitated. He has called on Congress to deliver more than $10 billion in defense assistance to Israel. He said on Monday that at a minimum, the hostages should be released before a ceasefire is countenanced.
“We should have those hostages released and then we can talk,” he told a reporter shouting out a question about a ceasefire at a White House event.
Sanders, the de facto leader of progressives in Congress, was among the first to make the call for a ceasefire.
“The bombs and missiles from both sides must end, massive humanitarian aid must be rushed to Gaza, and the hostages must be returned to their families,” Sanders said in an Oct. 17 statement.
Members of the Squad, the group of House progressives, joined last week’s rally at the Capitol, which was led by the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace along with IfNotNow, and culminated in arrests.
J Street, the liberal Jewish Israel lobby that is influential among Democrats, is not joining the calls. “Our position is, we have not called for a ceasefire,” said Logan Bayroff, J Street’s spokesman. “Our position is, Israel has the right to defend itself in accordance with international law.”
The group last week urged lawmakers to sign a letter spearheaded by three Jewish House Democrats wholeheartedly backing Biden’s policy on the war. The letter did not explicitly oppose a ceasefire. But by garnering a majority of the caucus — 131 signatures, including every Jewish House Democrat — it created a firewall against demands for a ceasefire when taken in combination with Republican votes.
The ceasefire calls have at times been intensely personal. On Tuesday, nearly 300 veterans of Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns signed a letter and made a video urging him to introduce legislation in the Senate matching a resolution in the House that calls for a ceasefire. The House resolution, sponsored by Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Cori Bush of Missouri, has so far garnered just 18 cosponsors. “Many of us, your former staff, share your Jewish heritage,” the letter to Sanders said.
IfNotNow, which backed the letter, said Sanders needed to do more. Eva Borgwardt, the group’s spokeswoman said in an email, “We need him to stay true to his legacy of principled, antiwar leadership now.”
Also on Tuesday, the Boston Jewish Community Relations Council effectively expelled a constituent, the Boston Workers Circle, after it joined with anti-Zionist groups at a pro-ceasefire rally that also accused Israel of “genocide.”
The Intercept reported on Oct. 13 that J Street threatened to pull support from lawmakers who failed to join a separate resolution condemning Hamas — one that has so far garnered 425 cosponsors out of 434 members of Congress. (The resolution has yet to reach the floor because the Republican majority has been floundering in its attempt to elect a speaker.)
Bayroff denied that report. J Street’s political action committee is still raising money for New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who is a member of the Squad and one of the holdouts. Bayroff said he did not see the disagreement over the ceasefire creating long-term rifts between J Street and its progressive allies in Congress. The group does not endorse most other members of the Squad, including Tlaib, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley and Missouri Rep. Cori Bush.
“We appreciate that views of members of Congress and folks will continue to evolve and we’re not looking for everybody to be marching in ideological lockstep right now, or to be cracking down on folks with slightly different opinions,” Bayroff said. “We certainly believe that every single one of our endorses needs to condemn or have condemned what Hamas has done in no uncertain terms.”
Bowman condemned the attack almost immediately but did not join a letter signed by more than half of House Democrats, including some prominent critics of Israel, praising Biden’s handling of the crisis.
Soifer, who noted that JDCA’s affiliated PAC did not endorse and has no plans to endorse any of the 23 Democrats calling for a ceasefire, agreed that no intra-party rift was in the offing, because the issue of a ceasefire was a difference of policy, not philosophy.
Soifer nonetheless said Tlaib should be considered as having crossed a red line and as having sowed danger for the Jewish community. Tlaib has not forcefully condemned Hamas, Soifer said, and has not retracted claims that Israel bombed a hospital, even though experts have now assessed that the explosion was caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket.
U.S. officials strengthened their assessment on Tuesday to say they believed with “high certainty” that a Palestinian rocket caused the blast.
“It was dangerous because it was a lie,” Soifer said. “Once that was clear, as a U.S. policymaker and a member of Congress, she should clarify her remarks. And she chooses not to. So it’s dangerous to perpetuate that lie, especially at this incredibly volatile time.”
—
The post In Washington, calls for a ceasefire are loud, but not pervasive or, to Biden, persuasive appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
Pro-Hamas Campus Groups Call for Toppling US Government, Killing Soldiers
A pro-Hamas demonstrator uses a megaphone at Columbia University, on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, in New York City, US, Oct. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mike Segar
The National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) organization condemned the US bombing of nuclear facilities in the Islamic Republic of Iran over the weekend, threatening that the American government will be deposed.
The anti-government comments came one day after US President Donald Trump ordered the bombing of three key Iranian nuclear sites — Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz — where Western governments believe the Islamist regime was working to build nuclear weapons. Tehran has claimed its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes
“The empire will fall, from Gaza to Tehran,” NSJP said, writing on the Instagram social media platform. “The unprovoked attacks the US and the Zionist entity have launched against Iran prove only one thing: imperialism in the region will not stop at suffocating Palestine. From Iraq to Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and now Iran, the Empire [sic] demands constant expansion and destabilization.”
It added, “We must be clear: Nuclear development is neither a crime nor the reason for the US’ war against Iran. The US Empire cannot permit the continued existence of a country that dares to stand against Zionism and imperialism.”
On Monday, Asaf Romirowsky, a Middle East expert and the executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), said that NSJP is mirroring an ideology that university professors have trafficked and taught to their students since the 1960s.
“Left-wing academics have loathed ‘American imperialism’ since the Vietnam War and used it to explain and more importantly justify violent ‘’iberation movements’ around the world. Both communist and Muslim revolutions and insurgencies have been applauded over the years by American academics and their European counterparts,” Romirowsky said. “Some of that has been transmitted to students disinterested in the details of Islamic theology (which underlie Iranian policy). Anti-imperialism situates the Palestinian cause firmly on the political left and glosses over its theological basis in Sunni theology — which is perfectly well expressed in the Hamas Charter and countless other Hamas statements.”
SJP splinter groups across higher education rallied to share NSJP’s post, as noted by the antisemitism watchdog group AMCHA Initiative on Monday. Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapters at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Florida reposted it to their Instagram stories, while an SJP group for graduate students of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) did so as well. At Columbia University, a group which calls itself “Unity Fields” posted a photograph of the coffins of fallen US soldiers, captioning it, “Soon, Inshallah,” which means “God willing” in Arabic.
Within Our Lifetime (WOL), another pro-Hamas group which directs campus activities, said, “From Iran to Palestine, from Lebanon to Syria to Yemen, it is our duty from within the belly of the beast to stand against the US empire and zionist [sic] entity’s barbaric, illegal genocidal aggression, and to stand by all those resisting the ongoing genocide in Gaza by any means necessary.”
The tight coordination of the group’s messaging demands a complete accounting of NSJP’s funding, according to Alex Joffe, a historian and editor of the BDS Monitor for SPME.
“The relationship between NSJP and other action-oriented groups, such as Within Our Lifetime and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, suggest nearly complete overlap in interests and even personnel. Most problematic are the relationships between these Muslim and communist vanguard groups and the nominally legitimate Democratic Socialists of America and Working Families Party,” he explained. “These overlaps and penetrations into broader politics leaves outstanding the question of who is directing whom. The instant pivoting of Communist Chinese Party-backed groups like Code Pink to support Iran points to the fact that they, like NSJP, are not grassroots movements but primarily tools for state actors, above all Qatar, China, Iran, Russia and North Korea.”
He continued, “The question of who funds NSJP is therefore more important than ever. With NSJP and other organizations threatening and engaging in domestic violence, the national security threats have increased and should be addressed by local and federal authorities.”
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, National Students for Justice in Palestine, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, has publicly discussed its strategy of using the anti-Zionist student movement as a weapon for destroying the US.
“Divestment [from Israel] is not an incrementalist goal. True divestment necessitates nothing short of the total collapse of the university structure and American empire itself,” the organization said in September 2024. “It is not possible for imperial spoils to remain so heavily concentrated in the metropole and its high-cultural repositories without the continuous suppression of populations that resist the empire’s expansion; to divest from this is to undermine and eradicate America as we know it.”
The tweet was the latest in a series of revelations of SJP’s revolutionary goals and its apparent plans to amass armies of students and young people for a long campaign of subversion against US institutions, including the economy, military, and higher education. Like past anti-American movements, SJP has also been fixated on the presence and prominence of Jews in American life and the US’s alliance with Israel, the world’s only Jewish state.
On the same day the tweet was posted, Columbia University’s most strident pro-Hamas organization was reported to be distributing literature calling on students to join the Palestinian terrorist group’s movement to destroy Israel during the school’s convocation ceremony.
“This booklet is part of a coordinated and intentional effort to uphold the principles of the thawabit and the Palestinian resistance movement overall by transmitting the words of the resistance directly,” said a pamphlet distributed by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) spinoff, to incoming freshmen. “This material aims to build popular support for the Palestinian war of national liberation, a war which is waged through armed struggle.”
Other sections of the pamphlet were explicitly Islamist, invoking the name of “Allah, the most gracious” and referring to Hamas as the “Islamic Resistance Movement.” Proclaiming, “Glory to Gaza that gave hope to the oppressed, that humiliated the ‘invincible’ Zionist army,” it said its purpose is to build an army of Muslims worldwide.
“We call upon the masses of our Arab and Islamic nations, its scholars, men, institutions, and active forces to come out in roaring crowds tomorrow,” it added, referring to an event which took place the previous December. “We also renew our invitation to the free people and those with living consciences around the world to continue and escalate their global public movement, rejecting the occupation’s crimes, in solidarity with our people and their just cause and legitimate struggle.”
Middle East experts have long suspected that foreign agents are conspiring with SJP chapters — and its spinoffs — in the US to convulse college campuses and lobby for the disintegration of the US-Israel relationship, an outcome that would benefit Middle Eastern powers such as Iran, whose leaders regularly call for the destruction of both the US and Israel.
In July 2024, then-US National Intelligence Director Avril Haines issued a statement outlining how Iran has encouraged and provided financial support to the anti-Israel campus protest movement and explaining that it is part of a larger plan to “undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.” Haines also confirmed that US intelligence agencies have “observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Pro-Hamas Campus Groups Call for Toppling US Government, Killing Soldiers first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
UK to Ban Group Palestine Action Under Anti-Terrorism Laws
Police officers block a street as pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather in protest against Britain’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s plans to proscribe the “Palestine Action” group in the coming weeks, in London, Britain, June 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jaimi Joy
Britain said on Monday it would use anti-terrorism laws to ban the organization Palestine Action, making it a criminal offence to belong to the group after its activists damaged two UK military planes in protest at London’s support for Israel.
The proscription would put the pro-Palestinian group on a par with Hamas, al-Qaeda, or ISIS under British law, making it illegal for anyone to promote it or be a member. Those who breached the ban could face up to 14 years in jail.
Palestine Action has regularly targeted British sites connected to Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems as well as other companies in Britain linked to Israel since the start of the conflict in Gaza in 2023.
In its latest and most high-profile action, two of its members entered a Royal Air Force base in central England on Friday, spraying paint into the engines of the Voyager transport aircraft and further damaging them with crowbars.
“The disgraceful attack on Brize Norton … is the latest in a long history of unacceptable criminal damage committed by Palestine Action,” Home Secretary [interior minister] Yvette Cooper said in a written statement to parliament.
“The UK’s defense enterprise is vital to the nation’s national security and this government will not tolerate those that put that security at risk.”
She said the group‘s actions had become more aggressive and caused millions of pounds of damage.
Under British law, the Home Secretary can proscribe a group if it is believed it commits, encourages, or “is otherwise concerned in terrorism.” The banning order will be laid before parliament on June 30 and will come into effect if approved.
Palestine Action, which says Britain is an “active participant” in the conflict in Gaza because of military support it provides to Israel, called the ban “an unhinged reaction” which it would challenge, and accused Cooper of making a series of “categorically false claims.”
“The real crime here is not red paint being sprayed on these war planes,” it said in a statement.
Earlier on Monday, the group was forced to change the location of a planned protest after police banned it from staging a demonstration outside parliament, otherwise a popular location for protests in support of a range of causes.
The post UK to Ban Group Palestine Action Under Anti-Terrorism Laws first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
MAGA Commentators Clash Over Trump’s Choice to Bomb Iran
Tucker Carlson speaks on July 18, 2024, during the final day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Photo: Jasper Colt-USA TODAY via Reuters Connect
US President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb three of Iran’s key nuclear facilities over the weekend has divided his longtime supporters, with some prominent voices in the so-called Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement opposing the strikes and others standing with the administration’s military action.
Mark Levin, the longtime conservative talk radio host and vocal pro-Israel voice, called out US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for her disagreement with the US strikes, known as Operation Midnight Hammer.
On Sunday, Greene wrote on X, “I don’t know anyone in America who has been the victim of a crime or killed by Iran, but I know many people who have been victims of crime committed by criminal illegal aliens or MURDERED by Cartel and Chinese fentanyl/drugs.” She warned that “Neocon warmongers beat their drums of war and act like Billy badasses going to war in countries most Americans have never seen and can’t find on a map, but never find the courage to go to war against the actual terrorists who actually do kill Americans, invade our land, and make BILLIONS doing it day after day, year after year.”
In response, Levin labeled Greene a “shameless nitwit” and asked, “How incredibly dumb is this Marjorie Taylor Green? She doesn’t know anyone in America who has been a victim of crime or killed by Iran? You mean the thousands of Americans, especially military personnel, killed and maimed by the Iranian terrorist regime?”
Levin aimed his ire at other leaders on both left and right who he christened “America’s Iranian nukes coalition.” He wrote that “if the radical Democrats and their Isolationist fake MAGA reprobates had their way, Iran would have nuclear weapons. This is the new gravely dangerous coalition of Marxists-Islamists-isolationists-grifters. They’re represented by the likes of Bernie Sanders- AOC-Schumer-Jeffries and Rand Paul-Massie-MTG- Qatarlson-Bannon. And they’re giving aid and comfort to a regime that has murdered directly and indirectly thousands of Americans. Never forget. They will forever be opposed and challenged by we, the people — America First loving patriots.”
Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host-turned-podcaster, has faced recent accusations promoted by social media influencer Laura Loomer, alleging links to Qatar, claims which he denies, thus prompting Levin’s “Qatarlson” epithet. Carlson had clashed over Iran in a recent interview with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), reportedly watched by Trump.
Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart News CEO-turned-presidential adviser-turned America First podcaster, declared his disagreement with Trump’s invocation of America’s potential engagement toward regime change in a Truth Social post on Sunday.
“Is this because the ultimate goal is regime change?” Bannon asked. “And if that’s fine, Israelis, have at it. If you want regime change, go for it, baby. Just no participation by the United States government.”
The Daily Beast reported that according to anti-Trump biographer Michael Wolff, unnamed sources within the administration described how Trump had initially leaned toward the Carlson-Bannon isolationist position until shifting Friday under congressional Republicans’ influence toward seeing the value to his image of a successful strike. “The tenor of the phone calls was him saying, ‘I think I’m gonna look very good if I do this,’” Wolff said.
Further exposing the extent to which the Iran strikes have diverged from the last decade of the MAGA movement’s tilt toward isolationism, two of Trump’s former close allies who later parted ways with him and went on to criticize his actions have now voiced their support.
Former Vice President Mike Pence and former National Security Adviser John Bolton have both historically identified with former President Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength” hawkish foreign policy philosophy. Each praised the bombings of Iran’s nuclear sites.
Pence said to Fox News on Sunday that even though “the president and I have had our differences,” he “couldn’t be more proud [sic] of President Trump’s decisive leadership in this moment or the extraordinary professionalism and courage of our armed forces that brought about this historic mission.”
On Sunday morning, the conservative magazine Washington Examiner published an article with the headline “Trump did the right thing in Iran” by Bolton, one of the conservative movement’s most steadfast and robust Iran hawks.
“It was long past time that Washington did more to aid Israel in defeating Iran and took direct action against Tehran’s nuclear proliferation efforts,” Bolton wrote. “There are undoubtedly additional measures now underway to protect American deployed forces and civilian personnel in the region against Iranian retaliation now that we have taken offensive military action. Similarly, we should continue bringing forward additional forces to bolster Israeli and Gulf Arab state defenses against Tehran military retaliation.”
Bolton warned that “peace and security in the Middle East are impossible while the ayatollahs rule in Tehran.” He urged that “overthrowing the current regime is a necessary, even if not a sufficient, condition to reach that goal. The sooner the better.”
Trump said after Saturday night’s strikes that the US was acting to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons but not seeking regime change. The next day, however, he seemed to entertain the idea. Writing on Truth Social, he posted: “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”
The post MAGA Commentators Clash Over Trump’s Choice to Bomb Iran first appeared on Algemeiner.com.