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Wisconsin Primary Tests ‘Uncommitted’ Vote on Biden’s Israel Stance
US President Joe Biden speaks about rebuilding communities and creating well-paying jobs during a visit to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, US, March 13, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Opposition to US President Joe Biden’s support of Israel‘s war against Hamas faces a fresh test on Tuesday in Wisconsin where pop-up groups on a shoestring budget are urging voters to mark themselves uncommitted in the state’s Democratic primary.
For two weeks, 60 grassroots groups and organizers have advanced their cause with phone banks, mailers, banners, knocks on doors, and “friend banks” where volunteers contact friends who then contact their friends.
Their goal is to get 20,682 voters to mark their ballots “uninstructed,” Wisconsin‘s version of “uncommitted.” The number is significant. Biden, a Democrat, beat Republican Donald Trump by that number in the state in the 2020 presidential election.
It remains unclear whether these uncommitted voters will abandon Biden and cost him the White House.
But the Wisconsin efforts, buoyed by similar campaigns in primaries in Hawaii, Michigan, and Minnesota, could have consequences. Opinion polls show Biden and Trump running neck-and-neck nationally ahead of their Nov. 5 election rematch and Biden’s 2020 victory was due to narrow wins in key states.
“We’re watching the precincts in Madison and Milwaukee the closest and there is a flurry of activity in those areas,” said Halah Ahmad, a spokeswoman for the “uninstructed” campaign in Wisconsin, a state with an open primary where voters need not register a party to vote.
Some Democrats have voiced surprise at opposition to Biden’s support for Israel‘s military campaign in Hamas-ruled Gaza following the Palestinian terror group’s Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and 253 taken hostage.
Amid pressure for a truce at home and abroad, the US abstained last week on a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire, sparking a spat with Israel, its close Middle East ally. Israel has said any ceasefire must include the release of its remaining hostages in Gaza. It has also argued that a permanent cessation of hostilities would allow Hamas, which is reeling amid Israel’s offensive, to strengthen its position and pose a significant threat to the Jewish state.
Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said the president “shares the goal for an end to the violence and a just, lasting peace in the Middle East. He’s working tirelessly to that end.”
Organizers demand that Biden call for a permanent ceasefire and stop military aid to Israel as they plan for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, where Biden is expected to be nominated.
“The White House has changed its rhetoric on the war to where it should have been since the start, but they are still failing to demonstrate a meaningful policy shift when it comes to weapons and funding,” said Abbas Alawieh, a top official for the national uncommitted campaign.
Biden, who expressed strong support for Israel in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 massacre, has adopted a tougher position toward Israel in recent weeks amid growing pressure from fellow Democrats to distance the US from the Jewish state, in large part due to to the rising civilian casualty toll in Gaza. However, some prominent observers have suggested that the Biden administration’s changing position on Israel and the war may be influenced by domestic political fears of losing electoral support from anti-Israel voters.
In Michigan, a key battleground state and home to America’s largest Arab population, a campaign to vote “uncommitted” during the state’s primary rather than for Biden gained significant support — including from US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).
More than 4,500 delegates will gather in Chicago to formally nominate Biden this summer. So far, uncommitted movements have won 25 delegates in five states, but Alawieh said he sees the meeting as an “important inflection point for the movement.”
Wisconsin and Michigan are part of an imaginary “blue wall” that Biden will need to hold to secure a second term, a drive complicated by the popularity of third party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
In 2016, Trump flipped both battleground states as he defeated Hillary Clinton and won the White House; Biden took them back from Trump in 2020.
The president visited Wisconsin in March and said there is an “awful lot at stake” and his campaign will “get down to knocking on doors” in Wisconsin and several other states.
Conventional wisdom among Democrats is that inflation remains the bigger concern for voters in US Midwestern states like Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin and the impact from the uncommitted movement there will be minimal in November.
Adrian Hemond, a political analyst and chief executive of the consulting firm Grassroots Midwest, who previously worked for Democrats in Michigan, said the uncommitted movement needs 20 to 25 percent in swing state primaries.
“So far that hasn’t been the case,” he said.
SHOESTRING BUDGETS, PHONE CALLS
In Michigan, “uncommitted” won about 13 percent of the state’s Democratic primary vote. In Minnesota, it won over 19 percent of the state’s primary vote after an eight-day campaign with a budget of less than $20,000. Wisconsin campaigners are operating on a similar shoestring budget and with little time to waste.
“We made over 200,000 calls in four days before the primary,” said Asma Nizami, an organizer with Vote Uncommitted Minnesota, who is a part of the national uncommitted group. Wisconsin‘s Ahmad said the state is using the same dialer system to reach 15,000 to 20,000 voters a day.
“It’s almost unheard-of for political campaigns to be up and running as fast,” Alawieh said. “But this movement is grounded in historic levels of anti-war organizing since October.”
The post Wisconsin Primary Tests ‘Uncommitted’ Vote on Biden’s Israel Stance first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Is ‘Pressing the Gas Pedal’ on Uranium Enrichment, IAEA Chief Says
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi arrives on the opening day of the agency’s quarterly Board of Governors meeting at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, Nov. 20, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Lisa Leutner
Iran is “pressing the gas pedal” on its enrichment of uranium to near weapons grade, UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday, adding that Iran‘s recently announced acceleration in enrichment was starting to take effect.
Grossi said last month that Iran had informed the International Atomic Energy Agency that it would “dramatically” accelerate enrichment of uranium to up to 60 percent purity, closer to the roughly 90 percent of weapons grade.
Western powers called the step a serious escalation and said there was no civil justification for enriching to that level and that no other country had done so without producing nuclear weapons. Iran has said its program is entirely peaceful and it has the right to enrich uranium to any level it wants.
“Before it was [producing] more or less seven kilograms [of uranium enriched to up to 60 percent] per month, now it’s above 30 or more than that. So I think this is a clear indication of an acceleration. They are pressing the gas pedal,” Grossi told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
According to an International Atomic Energy Agency yardstick, about 42 kg of uranium enriched to that level is enough in principle, if enriched further, for one nuclear bomb. Grossi said Iran currently had about 200 kg of uranium enriched to up to 60 percent.
Still, he said it would take time to install and bring online the extra centrifuges — machines that enrich uranium — but that the acceleration was starting to happen.
“We are going to start seeing steady increases from now,” he said.
Grossi has called for diplomacy between Iran and the administration of new US President Donald Trump, who in his first term, pulled the United States out of a nuclear deal between Iran and major powers that had imposed strict limits on Iran‘s atomic activities. That deal has since unraveled.
“One can gather from the first statements from President Trump and some others in the new administration that there is a disposition, so to speak, to have a conversation and perhaps move into some form of an agreement,” he said.
Separately, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at Davos that Iran must make a first step towards improving relations with countries in the region and the United States by making it clear it does not aim to develop nuclear weapons.
The post Iran Is ‘Pressing the Gas Pedal’ on Uranium Enrichment, IAEA Chief Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli Minister Says Army Applying Lessons From Gaza in West Bank Operation
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Israel’s defense minister said on Tuesday forces were applying lessons learned in Gaza as a major operation continued in Jenin which the military said was aimed at countering Iranian-backed terrorist groups in the volatile West Bank city.
A military spokesperson declined to give details but said the operation was “relatively similar” to but in a smaller area than one last August, in which hundreds of Israeli troops backed by drones and helicopters raided Jenin and other flashpoint cities in the West Bank.
It was the third major incursion by the Israeli army in less than two years into Jenin, a longtime major stronghold of terrorist groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which said its forces were fighting Israeli troops.
At least four Palestinians were wounded on Tuesday, after 10 were killed a day earlier, Palestinian health services said, and residents reported constant gunfire and explosions.
Israeli military spokesperson Nadav Shoshani said the militants’ increasing use of roadside bombs and other improvised explosive devices were a particular focus of the operation, which included armored bulldozers to tear up roads in the refugee camp adjacent to the city.
Before the raid, which came two weeks after a shooting attack blamed by Israel on gunmen from Jenin, roadblocks and checkpoints had been thrown up across the West Bank in an effort to slow down movement across the territory.
As the raid began, Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces pulled out after having conducted a weeks-long operation to try to reassert control over the refugee camp, dominated by Palestinian factions that are hostile to the PA, which exercises limited governance in the West Bank.
The operation came just two days after the launch of a ceasefire deal in Gaza and exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, with Israeli troops pulling back from their positions in many areas of the enclave.
LEARNING FROM GAZA
Defense Minister Israel Katz said the Jenin raid marked a shift in the military’s security plan in the West Bank and was “the first lesson from the method of repeated raids in Gaza.”
“We will not allow the arms of the Iranian regime and radical Sunni Islam to endanger the lives of [Israeli] settlers [in the West Bank] and establish a terrorist front east of the state of Israel,” he said in a statement.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza following the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel by thousands of Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists. The military has said it has refined its urban warfare tactics in the light of its experience in Gaza, but Shoshani declined to provide details of how such lessons were being applied in Jenin.
Israel considers Palestinian terrorist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad that are backed by Iran as part of a multifront war waged by an axis that includes Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.
The post Israeli Minister Says Army Applying Lessons From Gaza in West Bank Operation first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Envoy Says He’ll Go to Gaza to Monitor Ceasefire
US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy-designate Steve Witkoff gives a speech at the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena on the inauguration day of Trump’s second presidential term, in Washington, DC, Jan. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
US President Donald Trump‘s Middle East envoy said on Wednesday he would travel to the region to be part of what he described as an inspection team deployed in and along the Gaza Strip to ensure ceasefire compliance.
In an interview with Fox News, the envoy, Steve Witkoff, also said he believed all countries in the region could get “on board” to normalize ties with Israel. Asked to identify specific countries, he singled out Qatar, saying the Gulf country was a critical player in reaching the Gaza ceasefire deal.
Qatar, Egypt, and the United States brokered the multi-phase deal between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, and the two Arab countries have set up a communications hub in Cairo to head off new clashes between the foes.
Witkoff told Fox that implementation of the deal, which took effect on Sunday, would be more difficult than its execution.
“I’m actually going to be going over to Israel. I’m going to be part of an inspection team at the Netzarim corridor, and also at the Philadelphi corridor,” Witkoff said.
Netzarim is an east-west strip Israel cleared during the war that divides north and south Gaza. Philadelphia is a narrow border strip between Gaza and Egypt.
“That’s where you have outside overseers, sort of making sure that people are safe and people who are entering are not armed and no one has bad motivations,” Witkoff added.
His comments appeared to be the first public confirmation of US involvement on the ground in Gaza to help keep the deal on track. Witkoff did not say who else might be part of the inspection teams.
Witkoff was also asked which countries in the region might join the Abraham Accords, a series of agreements struck during the president’s first term that saw Israel establish ties with Arab countries including the United Arab Emirates.
“I think you could get everybody on board in that region. I really do. I think there’s a new sense of leadership over there,” Witkoff said.
Asked to name a specific country, Witkoff said: “I mean, Qatar … Qatar was enormously helpful in this. Qatar’s [Prime Minister] Sheikh Mohammed, [his] communication skills with Hamas were indispensable here.”
The post Trump Envoy Says He’ll Go to Gaza to Monitor Ceasefire first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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