(Nov. 25, 2024) 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.

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.

(Nov. 27, 2024) France said on Wednesday it believed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had immunity to actions by the International Criminal Court (ICC) which is seeking his arrest for alleged war crimes in Gaza, given Israel has not signed up to the court statutes.

France‘s view, issued a day after the announcement of a ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah brokered by the US and France, was condemned by rights groups. Other countries including Italy have also questioned the legality of the mandate.

A statement by the French Foreign Ministry said it would continue to work closely with Netanyahu.

Paris has taken almost a week to come up with a clear position, after the court in The Hague issued arrest warrants on Nov. 21 for Netanyahu, his former defense chief Yoav Gallant, and a leader of the Hamas Palestinian terrorist group.

After initially saying it would adhere to the ICC statutes, France‘s foreign ministry fine-tuned that in a second statement on Nov. 22 amid concerns that Israel could scupper efforts for a ceasefire in Lebanon, saying it noted that the court’s decision merely formalized an accusation.

On Wednesday, the ministry pointed out that the Rome Statute that established the ICC provided that a country cannot be required to act in a manner incompatible with its obligations “with respect to the immunities of States not party to the ICC.”

“Such immunities apply to Prime Minister Netanyahu and other relevant ministers and will have to be taken into consideration should the ICC request their arrest and surrender.”

The French ministry statement, referring to what it called the historic friendship between two democracies committed to the rule of law, said France intended to continue to work closely with Netanyahu and other Israeli authorities “to achieve peace and security for all in the Middle East.”

The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel as it is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, which established the court. Other countries including the US have similarly not signed the ICC charter. However, the ICC has asserted jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, despite no such state being recognized under international law.

Rights groups suggested France had tempered its response in order to maintain a working relationship with Netanyahu and his government.

“Some shocking nonsense from France here. No one gets immunity from an ICC arrest warrant because they’re in office – not Netanyahu, not Putin, no one,” Andrew Stroehlein, European media director at Human Rights Watch, said on X.

He pointed to article 27 of the Rome Statute on the “irrelevance of official capacity.”

Amnesty called France‘s position “deeply problematic.”

“Rather than inferring that ICC indictees may enjoy immunity, France should expressly confirm its acceptance of the unequivocal legal duty under the Rome Statute to carry out arrest warrants.”

Israeli leaders have lamabsted the ICC’s allegations against Netanyahu and Gallant as false, politically motivated, and “antisemitic.”

The US similarly rejected the arrest warrants for the Israelis.

The post France Believes Israel’s Netanyahu Has Immunity From ICC Arrest Warrant first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

By BERNIE BELLAN I’m not sure how many readers follow Thomas Friedman’s writing in the New York Times; after all, he’s been highly critical of Netanyahu for years, which probably makes him persona non grata for a lot of you.

But, on Tuesday, November 26, Friedman wrote a piece that was so particularly incisive – and came across as so laudatory of what Israel has been able to achieve in the past 13 months, that even diehard Friedman critics should be able to take some very meaningful lessons away from that column.
Toward the beginning of what he wrote, Friedman makes what, for most readers of his columns, would probably be perceived as a fairly shocking statement when he writes: “In just the last two months, the Israeli military has inflicted a defeat on Iran that approaches its 1967 Six-Day War defeat of Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Full stop.”
He goes on to describe what Israel has been able to do to Hezbollah in the past few months as so destructive of that terrorist organization’s abilities that “Hezbollah and, by extension, Iran have decided to delink themselves from Hamas in Gaza and stop the firing from Lebanon for the first time since Oct. 8, 2023, the day after Hamas invaded Israel.”
Friedman then provides some very interesting information about how effective two attacks Israel launched against Iran – one in April and then one in October, were, both in inflicting tremendous damage to Iran’s capability to defend itself against a full scale Israeli attack – should one be launched, and in undermining Iran’s confidence that it can continue to arm Hezbollah without severe repercussions.
Here is what Friedman wrote:
“There is a reason for this (Hezbollah’s agreeing to a cease fire). Hezbollah’s mother ship has suffered a real blow. According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s April strike on Iran eliminated one of four Russian-supplied S-300 surface-to-air missile defense batteries around Tehran, and Israel destroyed the remaining three batteries on Oct. 26. Israel also damaged Iran’s ballistic missile production capabilities and its ability to produce the solid fuel used in long-range ballistic missiles. In addition, according to Axios, Israel’s Oct. 26 strike on Iran, which was a response to an earlier Iranian attack on Israel, also destroyed equipment used to create the explosives that surround uranium in a nuclear device, setting back Iran’s efforts in nuclear weapons research.
“A senior Israeli defense official told me that the Oct. 26 attack on Iran ‘was lethal, precise and a surprise.’ And up to now, the Iranians ‘don’t know technologically how we hit them. So they are at the most vulnerable point they have been in this generation: Hamas is not there for them, Hezbollah is not there for them, their air defenses are not there anymore, their ability to retaliate is sharply diminished, and they are worried about Trump.’ “
Friedman’s column goes on to offer advice to President-elect Trump how to deal with other changing realities in the world, including the rapid pace of artificial intelligence development in which, Friedman points out, Israelis are playing a leading role. But one has to wonder whether anyone in Trump’s circle bothers to read anything written by Friedman. After all, he was very close to President Biden – which would certainly put him into Trump’s enemies’ camp, on top of which he writes for that most hated of all media: The New York Times.
Still, if someone who is as critical of Israel’s government as Friedman has been is capable of pointing out the vastly changed dynamic now permeating the entire Middle East as a result of the huge blows Israel has inflicted both on Iran’s number one proxy in the region – Hezbollah, and on Iran itself, once can more readily understand how Israel’s strategy of taking on different enemies all at the same time has paid off.
I, for one, will admit that I was quite surprised to read Friedman’s analysis – and it leads me to question my own thoughts as to what would happen when Israel opened up a new front in Lebanon at the same time as it was still engaged in Gaza. I had thought that it might lead to a repeat of the 2006 debacle, in which a ground invasion by Israel into Lebanon led to heavy Israeli losses and what was, in effect, a victory for Hezbollah – not by being able to defeat Israel, but simply by surviving that invasion.
This time around though – and we’ll have to wait for military analysts to tell us just how effective the heavy Israeli bombardment of Lebanese areas has been in terms of degrading Hezbollah’s military capabilities, Israel has managed to keep its own casualties relatively low by relying upon bombing of Hezbollah infrastructure. As has been the case in Gaza, however, it’s so difficult to tell what those devastating bombings have actually accomplished in specific terms beyond realizing that they have thoroughly degraded both Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s military capacities. It seems though that the aphorism that “the sum is greater than its parts” is particularly apt in describing what the Israel Air Force has been able to achieve.
While we have been witnessing the wholesale destruction of civilian areas – in both Gaza and Lebanon, it now seems evident that Israeli intelligence has been able to locate terrorist locations with tremendous accuracy. The fact that both Hamas and Hezbollah have been so thoroughly embedded within civilian population areas made it inevitable that, once the IAF embarked upon a relentless campaign to destroy terrorist infrastructure and locations where terrorists were embedded within the civilian population, there would be huge civilian casualties – but ultimately Israel would be able to degrade both Hamas and Hezbollah’s fighting abilities to the point where they have both been neutralized in large part.
The question, of course, is what will now happen as a result of Friedman himself describing Israel’s having forced Hezbollah and Iran to “delink” themselves from Hamas. Hamas is, in effect, nothing more than a mafia type organization, now terrorizing the Palestinian population in Gaza, with its own survival now being its purpose. The Israel Defence Forces seem content to let Hamas carry on its campaign of looting aid trucks and terrorizing the population for its own benefit.
But Hamas fighters, however many may remain, don’t have the same option as Hezbollah’s fighters – which is to retreat behind a defined line north of the Litani River in Lebanon. How many are in the tunnels? How many are embedded within the rest of the Gaza population? If the IDF has an idea what the answers to those questions are, I haven’t seen them.
So, the war in Gaza will likely carry on for some time. It appears that the bombing campaign has thoroughly reduced Hamas’s ability to carry on any effective strikes on Israeli targets, but it is not clear at what point the Israeli government might be willing to accept any sort of a ceasefire. The government’s position has been that a ceasefire can only be entered into when at least the majority of the hostages are released, but frankly, Israel is now operating from such a position of strength vis-a-vis Hamas, that the idea of accepting a ceasefire that would allow Hamas fighters to remain in place seems unconscionable to the vast majority of Israelis. It may seem perverse to think that the government has been willing to sacrifice hostages’ lives for the sake of dealing a final, crushing blow to Hamas, but that’s the sad reality.
Still, who would have thought that Israel would be able to wage successful wars on so many fronts? As Thomas Friedman has noted, Israel has upended the situation in the Middle East, albeit at a very heavy price. And even though I’ve been questioning from the outset the Israeli government’s strategy of seeking total victory over Hamas, given how thoroughly Israel has been able to undermine Hezbollah’s and Iran’s positions, perhaps I was wrong to question Netanyahu’s goal of thoroughly crushing Hamas. Credit has to be given though to the IDF and how much they learned from previous wars with Hamas and Hezbollah.
Amidst all this though, one has to feel great sympathy for the people of Gaza. They are being held to ransom by a gang of thugs and there does not appear to be any way out for them. For their sake, let’s hope that Israel can “finish the job” quickly, although how that can be done remains difficult to know. Perhaps Thomas Friedman, who is always so thoughtful and insightful, can shed some answers to that question as well.