Israeli tanks are being moved, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, in the Golan Heights, Sept. 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Jim Urquhart

A ceasefire to halt fighting between Israel and the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah is close, but an agreement has not yet been achieved, according to the US State Department.

“We don’t believe we have an agreement yet. We believe we’re close to an agreement. We believe that we have narrowed the gaps significantly, but there are still steps that we need to see taken. We hope that we can get there,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters during a press briefing on Monday.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby expressed similar sentiments.

“We’re close,” he told reporters, but “nothing is done until everything is done.”

Miller and Kirby’s comments came not long after a senior Israeli official told Reuters that Israel’s cabinet would meet on Tuesday to approve a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Islamist group that wields significant political and military influence across Lebanon.

Reuters also reported on Monday that US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron are expected to announce a ceasefire in Lebanon between Hezbollah and Israel within 36 hours, citing four senior Lebanese sources. The US and France have been seeking to broker a truce for months.

The news cite Axios reported separately that Israel and Lebanon had agreed to the terms of a deal, citing a senior US official.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has declined to comment on reports that both countries had agreed to the text of a ceasefire agreement.

Hezbollah has been launching barrages of rockets, missiles, and drones at northern Israel from neighboring Lebanon almost daily since Oct. 8 of last year, one day after the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of the Jewish state from Gaza to the south.

The relentless attacks from Hezbollah have forced tens of thousands of Israelis to flee their homes in the north, and Israel has pledged to ensure their safe return.

Israel had been exchanging fire with Hezbollah but drastically escalated its military operations over the last two months, seeking to push the terrorist army further away from the border with Lebanon.

Diplomacy has largely focused on restoring and enforcing UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which calls for Hezbollah’s withdrawal to north of the Litani River (around 30 km, or 19 miles, from the Israeli border) and the disarmament of its forces in southern Lebanon, with the buffer zone under the jurisdiction of the Lebanese army and UN peacekeeping forces.

Israel has insisted on retaining the right to conduct military operations against Hezbollah if the group attempts to rearm or rebuild its infrastructure — a stipulation that has met resistance from Lebanese officials, who argue it infringes on national sovereignty. Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon has said Israel would maintain an ability to strike southern Lebanon under any agreement.

Retired Israeli Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi — who leads the Israel Defense and Security Forum, a group of former military commanders — recently warned The Algemeiner that any deal must include Iran’s “full exit” from Lebanon and Israel’s freedom of action to prevent any future build up of Hezbollah. Otherwise, he added, the agreement would be “devastating” for the Jewish state.

Lebanon’s deputy parliament speaker, Elias Bou Saab, told Reuters the proposal under discussion would entail an Israeli military withdrawal from south Lebanon and regular Lebanese army troops deploying in the border region, long a Hezbollah stronghold, within 60 days.

He added that a sticking point over who would monitor compliance with the ceasefire was resolved in the last day, with an agreement to set up a five-country committee, including France and chaired by the United States.

Nabih Berri, the Hezbollah-aligned Lebanese parliamentary speaker, has been leading the Iran-backed terrorist group’s mediation efforts.

Miller told reporters that US officials are pushing hard for a ceasefire but the final steps to reaching a deal can be the toughest.

“Oftentimes the very last stages of an agreement are the most difficult because the hardest issues are left to the end,” Miller said. “We are pushing as hard as we can.”

The post US Cautions Israel-Hezbollah Ceasefire Close but Not Finalized as Truce Announcement Expected Imminently first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Scene from Netflix’s show “Mary.” Photo: Screenshot

Palestinian media outlets have castigated the new biblical epic “Mary” coming to Netflix next month because of the film’s Israeli cast, falsely accusing Israel of perpetrating a “genocide” against Palestinian Christians.

Netflix announced earlier this month the coming release of “Mary,” which according to a synopsis provided by the streaming giant “tells the story of one of history’s most profound figures and the remarkable journey that led to the birth of Jesus.”

Notable in the cast are Noa Cohen in the titular role as Jesus’s mother and Ido Tako as her husband Joseph — two Israeli actors under the spotlight in a large-scale production depicting Jewish life during a period when Jews were the primary ethnic group of the region.

Director DJ Caruso previously defended casting Israeli actors for the roles.

“It was important to us that Mary, along with most of our primary cast, be selected from Israel to ensure authenticity,” he told Entertainment Weekly last month.

Nonetheless, the castings were met with derision among anti-Israel activists on social media and elsewhere upset with the choice of selecting Israeli actors. Critics called for a boycott of the film, claiming that Mary and Joseph were “Palestinian” despite them being Jewish and living in modern-day Israel.

Among those expressing outrage was Quds Media Network, the self-described “largest independent youth Palestinian news network,” which lambasted the production, publishing an article tying “Mary” to what it called the “ongoing genocide of Christians in Palestine.”

The article, quoting Father Abdullah Julio of the Melkite Greek Catholic Monastery in Ramallah, alleged that one of Israel’s goals is “the eradication of Christian presence in the region.”

On Aug. 3, Julio filmed a statement on TRT Arabic mourning Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, calling him “a martyr of our Palestinian people and nation.”

In its recent article, Quds Media Network cited the deaths of Christian residents of Gaza amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war as evidence of “ongoing violence and Christian persecution,” and included a note to readers that “Israelis are not native to Palestine, the birthplace of Jesus.”

Both Jews and Christians boast an age-old presence in the southern Levant — a land sacred to both faiths and central to their peoples’ histories. The early Jewish people underwent an ethnogenesis in the region as a monotheistic people who formed a united kingdom in the late Bronze Age (around 1000 BCE), and remained the primary civilization there until their dwindling numbers under Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic persecution in the early medieval period.

During the Roman period, Jesus — an Aramaic-speaking Jew from the Galilee in modern Israel, then Roman Judea — led a sect of Judaism that would morph into modern Christianity in the decades following his storied execution. Palestinian Christians (culturally Arab local Christians who identify with Palestinian nationalism) likely represent the oldest continuous Christian community, as descendants of the first converts during the Roman occupation.

Genetic studies have confirmed the relationship of both Jewish diaspora groups and Palestinians of all faiths to Iron Age peoples of the region. Likewise, Jews and Palestinian Arabs each claim competing indigenous status, based on a combination of continued settlement and a culture inextricably connected to the Land of Israel.

Critics of “Mary” on social media maintained “Jesus was Palestinian,” or “a Palestinian Jew,” seemingly conflating residency in ancient Judea with Palestinian nationalism — which emerged much later in the early 20th century as a local expression of pan-Arabism and was hostile to local Arabic-speaking Jews (who consequently allied themselves with Zionism) from its outset.

Anti-Israel activists also cited the fair olive complexion of Cohen and Tako as evidence of their foreignness, ignoring that many Palestinians look similar and that skin tone does not necessarily equate to ancestry or claim to territory.

Palestinian Christians’ numbers in the West Bank and Gaza have dwindled in the past decade, from 11 percent of the Palestinian population in 1922 to 1 percent in 2017.

Meanwhile, in Israel proper, where Christians compose 6.9 percent of the Arab minority, they are among the best educated and most successful of Israel’s citizens.

“Mary,” which was shot in Morocco, is set to air on Dec. 6 to a wide audience.

The post Palestinian Media Lambast Casting of Israelis in Netflix’s Upcoming Biblical Movie ‘Mary’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

US Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) gives an interview in his office in the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, Jan. 18, 2024. Photo: Rod Lamkey / CNP/Sipa USA for NY Post via Reuters Connect

US Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) expressed excitement about the incoming Trump administration’s seemingly pro-Israel posture, suggesting that he will seek bipartisan opportunities to advance policies that favor the Jewish state. 

During an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” with host Shannon Bream, Fetterman reiterated that he wants Israel to continue its ongoing wars in Gaza and Lebanon until it decimates the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups. The senator also praised the foreign policy selections for US President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet, predicting that the incoming administration will allow Israel to continue its “progress” in thwarting neighboring Iran-backed terrorist groups. 

“In terms of the incoming administration, I like what I see in terms of being very, very strong pro-Israel,” Fetterman said. 

Fetterman affirmed that he will continue his vocal support for Israel when the Trump administration takes office in January. 

“And when the administration will change, my vote and voice won’t change either, and that’s going to follow Israel,” Fetterman said, lauding the “magnificent” efforts of the Jewish state to secure peace in the Middle East by fighting against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.

Though Fetterman campaigned as a progressive, he has emerged as a staunch ally of Israel in the year following Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks. Fetterman has repeatedly condemned anti-Israel voices within his own party in the US Congress, as well as elite universities for tolerating what he has characterized as antisemitic and anti-Israel hate speech on their campuses.

Senator John Fetterman:

“I am really excited that the new Trump administration is strongly pro-Israel, and I will continue to support Israel.”

pic.twitter.com/9yOOF2M6f0

— Vivid. (@VividProwess) November 24, 2024

Fetterman praised Trump’s selection of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to serve as the next secretary of state, stating that he will “enthusiastically vote yes” for the Florida Republican. The Pennsylvania Democrat signaled that he’s open to voting for several of Trump’s cabinet picks, claiming that he’s not going to “pre-hate” any of the candidates the president-elect has put forward without engaging in conversation with them. 

Fetterman also took a swipe at his Democratic colleagues for expressing an increasingly adversarial stance toward Israel. He asserted that Israels military campaign against Hamas in Gaza was “very just” and touted his repeated refusals to support a “ceasefire” between the Jewish state and the terrorist group, praising Israel for having effectively “eliminated and broken” Hamas, Hezbollah, and their backers in Iran. 

“For me it’s about standing on the side of democracy, and I was very supportive about that aid, and I don’t understand [why] the other side would now stop the delivering [of] that kind of aid,” Fetterman said, referencing efforts by some fellow Democrats to cut off US military assistance to Israel.

The senator added that it “was a pleasure” to vote “a big no” on three measures advanced and spearheaded last week by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to impose an arms embargo on Israel. 

“I don;t understand why anybody would bring that to the floor, but hey, if they want to go down you know [81 to 19] that’s up to you,” Fetterman stated.

The post John Fetterman Signals ‘Enthusiastic’ Support for Pro-Israel Trump Cabinet Picks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.