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Top Democrats Make Unprecedented Statements Against Israel, Signaling Party Shift
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) chats with Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in the House of Representatives ahead of US President Joe Biden’s third State of the Union address in the US Capitol in Washington, DC, March 7, 2024. Photo: Shawn Thew/Pool via REUTERS
A growing number of prominent, mainstream US Democrats have made recent statements calling to condition Washington’s military aid to Israel and even suggesting the Jewish state is committing genocide, indicating a potentially larger shift within the party against one of America’s closest allies.
Prior to the Hamas terrorist group’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7 and the ensuing war in Gaza, members of a small group of vocal, young, far-left progressives were the only members of Congress consistently calling for conditions on aid to Israel and accusing it of egregious crimes.
Over the past few weeks, however, many more mainstream figures have joined the choir as Israel’s war on Hamas reached its six-month mark.
Last week, while speaking at the Islamic Center of Boston, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) was asked if she believed Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, the neighboring enclave ruled by Hamas. She responded, “If you want to do it as an application of law, I believe that they’ll [the International Court of Justice will] find that it is genocide, and they have ample evidence to do so.”
The senator added, “For me, it is far more important to say what Israel is doing is wrong.”
Warren appeared to somewhat walk back her response after it went viral. Her office said in a statement that she was commenting “on the ongoing legal process at the International Court of Justice, not sharing her views on whether genocide is occurring in Gaza.”
The statement referred to ongoing efforts to argue before the International Court of Justice at The Hague that Israel’s defensive war against Hamas in Gaza constituted a “genocide.” South Africa failed in its bid earlier this year to make such a case.
Israel launched its military campaign following Hamas’ Oct. 7 invasion, saying its objectives were to free the hostages seized by the terrorists and to incapacitate Hamas, which murdered over 1,200 people and committed mass atrocities during the onslaught, to the point that it could no longer pose a serious threat to the Israeli people.
Nonetheless, US President Joe Biden last week called for an “immediate ceasefire” and threatened to pull back support for Israel due to the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Biden’s warning came after his administration abstained from a UN Security Council resolution that de-linked a ceasefire from the release of hostages — Israel has said any truce must include the freeing of those still held captive.
This week, Biden suggested in an interview that he supports a unilateral Israeli 6-8-week ceasefire, seemingly implying it should be done even if it would leave all the hostages in Gaza. The White House had to clarify that was not what he actually meant, and that he was reiterating support for both the hostages and ceasefire negotiations.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) said in an interview with The Algemeiner that he felt “the president has been fundamentally supportive of Israel,” but also noted he worried that “a number of the statements that have been made have gone too far and undermine Israel” in its war.
Biden expressed strong support for Israel in the weeks following the Oct. 7 massacre and his administration has sent significant amounts of munitions to the Israeli military since the start of the war. According to Torres, however, the messaging from Biden and many other Democrats in recent weeks could benefit Hamas.
“Hamas knows that it cannot defeat Israel militarily. It can only defeat Israel diplomatically and geopolitically,” he explained. “And when you have members of Congress falsely accuse Israel of genocide, or targeting civilians, or assassinating aid workers, or using starvation as a weapon of war, or indiscriminate bombing … you are playing into the hands of Hamas.”
Last week, more than 30 House Democrats, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), sent a letter to Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken reading, “We strongly urge you to reconsider your recent decision to authorize the transfer of a new arms package to Israel, and to withhold this and any future offensive arms transfers until a full investigation into the airstrike [which accidentally killed World Central Kitchen aid workers] is completed.”
The letter continued: “We also urge you to withhold these transfers if Israel fails to sufficiently mitigate harm to innocent civilians in Gaza, including aid workers, and if it fails to facilitate — or arbitrarily denies or restricts — the transport and delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza.”
Since Biden’s warning last week, Israel increased what were already significant amounts of aid entering Gaza.
Following the letter, Pelosi tried to clarify her stance in an interview on MSNBC, saying she was “not a fan of having conditions on aid to Israel.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on Tuesday that he would not approve a large arms transfer to Israel until he has more information about how the Jewish state would use the weapons.
“I’m waiting for assurances,” Meeks told CNN. “I want to make sure that I know the types of weapons and what the weapons would be utilized for.”
In a separate interview on CNN, Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) — a top Biden ally and longtime supporter of Israel — said “I think we’re at that point” when asked about conditioning aid to Israel.
“If Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister, were to order the [Israel Defense Force] into Rafah at scale, if they were to drop 1,000-pound bombs and send in a battalion to go after Hamas and make no provision for civilians or for humanitarian aid, then I would vote to condition aid to Israel,” he said.
Rafah is Hamas’s last stronghold in Gaza. The United States has been pressuring Israel not to move forward with a full-scale military operation in the southern Gazan city, where Israel says the Palestinian terrorist group still has four battalions. Israeli officials have said they must operate in Rafah but are discussing with US counterparts how best to target Hamas there.
The recent flurry of criticisms of Israel came after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who is Jewish, told the Senate last month that Netanyahu’s government “no longer fits the needs of Israel” — a striking comment against a democratic ally at a time of war.
Amid heightened criticism from key Democrats and rising tensions between Washington and Jerusalem, some observers are warning that support for the Jewish state must remain bipartisan.
“Keeping support for Israel bipartisan is critical,” the group Democratic Majority for Israel told The Algemeiner. “History tells us there will be times when both of the two parties are in charge, and we need two pro-Israel parties. Right now, most Democratic leaders are pro-Israel, and we need to work very hard to ensure it remains that way.”
Torres concurred, noting that “there is no US-Israel relationship without bipartisanship.”
When asked about what appears to be an increasingly mainstream shift among Democrats against Israel, Torres argued that conditioning aid among Democrats is still a “minority position.”
However, he added that the increasingly frequent statements pressuring Israel to implement a ceasefire — when it has previously agreed to parameters for one and Hamas has rejected every deal over the past few months — could have the effect of helping the terrorist group in its war effort.
“International pressure is the only hope that Hamas has for achieving victory in the war,” Torres said.
The post Top Democrats Make Unprecedented Statements Against Israel, Signaling Party Shift first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
JNS.org – The Israeli airstrikes on Iran last month destroyed a secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, 19 miles southeast of Tehran, Axios reported on Friday.
The clandestine site held sophisticated equipment used for testing explosives needed to detonate nuclear devices, the report read, citing three US officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of the facility, which showed that it was completely destroyed in Israel’s Oct. 26 attack.
Israeli and US intelligence agencies began noticing activity in the Taleghan 2 facility in the Parchin military complex in early 2024, which had been largely inactive since 2003, when the Islamic Republic froze its military nuclear program, according to Axios.
One unnamed US official quoted in the report said: “[The Iranians] conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.”
Although President Joe Biden asked Jerusalem not to target Tehran’s nuclear facilities, the site in Parchin was chosen as a target because it was not part of Iran’s declared nuclear program.
This placed the mullah regime in a position where admitting a hit to the site would expose its efforts to resume activity forbidden by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Moreover, “The strike was a not so subtle message that the Israelis have significant insight into the Iranian system even when it comes to things that were kept top secret and known to a very small group of people in the Iranian government,” the report cited a US official as saying.
Last week, Rafael Grossi, the director of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, visited Iran for the first time since May.
He is expected to meet with his agency’s board of governors in Vienna this week for a vote on a resolution to censure Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Speaking about the tensions between Israel and Iran, Grossi said during a news conference in Tehran on Thursday that the Islamic Republic’s “nuclear installations should not be attacked.”
Earlier in the week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz suggested that Iran’s nuclear facilities may be targeted.
Iran is “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal—to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel,” Katz said.
Israel’s two assaults against Iran’s air defense system this year have left the country vulnerable to future attacks, with all four of Tehran’s Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries destroyed, according to U.S. media.
On April 19, Israel took out one of the S-300 systems in response to Tehran’s first-ever direct attack against the Jewish state. On Oct. 26, in response to a second Iranian attack, Israel targeted 20 sites in Iran, destroying the remaining three.
“The majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out,” a senior Israeli official told Fox News.
The post Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat
Houthi-mobilized fighters ride atop a car in Sanaa, Yemen, Sept. 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Yemen’s Houthi forces attacked “a vital target” in Israel’s Red Sea port city of Eilat with a number of drones, the Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said on Saturday.
The terrorist group has launched dozens of attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea region since November in solidarity with Hamas.
“These operations will not stop until the aggression stops, the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted, and the aggression on Lebanon stops,” Saree added in a televised speech.
The Houthi attacks have upended global trade by forcing ship owners to reroute vessels away from the vital Suez Canal shortcut, and drawn retaliatory U.S. and British strikes since February.
The post Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks
US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
JNS.org – Muslim leaders in the United Stated who called for supporting President-elect Donald Trump at the expense of Democrat runner Kamala Harris are deeply disappointed with the former president’s Cabinet nominees, Reuters reported on Thursday.
“It’s like he’s going on Zionist overdrive,” Abandon Harris campaign co-founder Hassan Abdel Salam, a former professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, said about Trump’s recently announced picks.
“We were always extremely skeptical. … Obviously we’re still waiting to see where the administration will go, but it does look like our community has been played,” Abdel Salam told Reuters.
Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump, was cited as saying: “Trump won because of us and we’re not happy with his secretary of state pick and others.”
Some political strategists believe that the Muslim vote for Trump, or the renunciation of Harris, helped tilt several swing states such as Michigan in the favor of the Republican candidate.
“It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the side of President Trump, to the pro-peace and anti-war movement,” said Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network.
On Wednesday, Trump named Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his choice to be secretary of state.
Rubio is known for his staunch pro-Israel stance, including calling on Jerusalem earlier this year to destroy “every element” of Hamas and dubbing the Gaza-based terrorist organization as “vicious animals.”
Rubio joins a slew of pro-Israel officials Trump has tapped since he won the U.S. election, including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) as his U.N. ambassador with a seat in the Cabinet.
Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), told JNS that Trump’s focus so early in the transition process on Israel-related foreign policy picks is a mark of how his second administration will approach the region.
“That, in and of itself, signals that President Trump and his administration are going to take the region, the Middle East, the threats confronting Israel, seriously and take the U.S. friendship with Israel seriously,” Misztal said.
“The people that we’ve seen are known to be tremendously strong friends of Israel, first and foremost, but also very clear-eyed about the threats that the United States and Israel face together in the region.”
Before the election on Nov. 5, Trump promised Arab and Muslim voters he would restore stability in Lebanon and the Middle East, while criticizing the current administration’s regional policies during campaign stops targeting Muslim communities in Michigan.
Trump recently addressed Lebanese Americans, stating, “Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity and harmony with their neighbors, and this can only happen when there is peace and stability in the Middle East.”
Israel has been at war for more than a year on its southern and northern borders, ever since Hamas led a surprise attack on communities near the Gaza Strip border on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 more into the Palestinian enclave. A day later, Hezbollah joined Hamas’s efforts by firing rockets into Israel’s north.
The post Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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