Amos Hochstein meets with Gallant in Tel Aviv amid shuttle diplomacy efforts to deliver agreement, defuse roiling tensions on Israel’s northern border.

>By TOI STAFF and EMANUEL FABIAN   5 February 2024, 6:29 am

Peloni: Making the unpopular topics of aid to Ukraine and a permanently open US border as conditions of any aid destined to Israel defies credulity, while it also completely disrespects the position to which Israel rightly deserves as a faithful, (too faithful some might say) ally to the US.  It should comes as little surprise that the Neocons will use any excuse to fund their proxy war against Russia while ignoring their own border, but these matters are completely unrelated to the attack which took place on October 7 against America’s only certain ally in the Middle East.  Sink or swim, each of these issues must be addressed in turn, weighed for their merits and voted up or down based upon those merits.  Let the Congress show the public how each of their members votes on each of these issues and China Joe too.  Then the public will see which of their elected officials are acting as good stewards of the public purse.

Biden has vowed to veto the House’s standalone bill, which may not have the votes to pass, while Senate Republicans will likely block a procedural vote on the Senate package this week

Alex Wong/Getty Images

U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on energy as (L-R) Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and Special Presidential Coordinator Amos Hochstein listen.

By Marc Rod Jewish Insider February 6. 2024

Prospects appeared increasingly uncertain for both the House and Senate’s Israel aid bills on Monday, as President Joe Biden vowed to veto the House’s standalone Israel bill while Senate Republicans signaled their intent to block a procedural vote this week on the Senate’s multi-part package, demanding further changes to long-negotiated immigration policy provisions.

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Peloni: Carlson is quite correct to have pursued this interview, and it is quite regrettable that he was blocked from doing so three years ago.  This will be an important chance for people to actually hear Putin’s responses to real questions, questions to which they have never heard the answers because the sycophantic Western media have been co-opted to buttress the control of Western leadership over the public, instead of providing the much needed role of public oversight, the proper purview of journalists.

Tucker Carlson, X  February 6, 2024

Why I am interviewing Putin.

Argentine President Javier Milei arrived in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Tuesday afternoon (local time) as part of a three-day visit to the country.

By Christian K. Caruzo, BREITBART                               6 February 2024

The trip marks Milei’s first official state visit as Argentina’s head of state following his inauguration in December and following his trip to Davos, Switzerland, in January, in which he did not engage in any official events with Swiss leaders.

Milei’s travel to Israel also marks the first time in 40 years that an Argentine president visits a country in a state of war. Following his visit to Israel, Milei will continue his three-country tour with stops in Italy and the Vatican.
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‘The Austrians and Spanish began the 30 Years’ War with twice France’s population and the wealth of a global empire’

By Spengler, ASIA TIMES                                              2 February 2024

Cardinal Richelieu’s abode, beneath the streets of Paris. Photo: Asia Times files / AFP / Gilles Targat

The Cardinal’s invitation was scrawled on the crumbling paper of a 1634 edition of La Gazette de France, so I knew at once that it was genuine: “Midnight on the 31^st of January, below the Pont d’Alma” – the Bridge of Souls, above the entrance to the sewers of Paris, where I first held séance with Richelieu’s Ghost more than a decade ago.

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By Caroline Glick, JNS                                                      6 February 2024

by Daniel Greenfield, GATESTONE  •  February 6, 2024

 Iranians storm the US embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979. (Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images)

• We were not ready for the seizure of our embassy in Tehran. We were not ready for the Marine Barracks bombings in Beirut. We were not ready for 9/11. We were not ready for the fall of Kabul. We were not ready for the takeover of shipping in the Red Sea near Yemen.
• What aren’t we ready for next?
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by Gordon G. Chang, GATESTONE   February 6, 2024 

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and Chinese President Xi Jinping pose for a photograph during their meeting in Beijing, on February 4, 2022. (Photo by Alexei Druzhinin / Sputnik / AFP)

• China and Russia [do]… not respect the sovereignty of other states.
• Biden… should realize that there can be no accommodation with regimes that either seek the destruction of the United States—China and Iran, for instance—or regimes helping such enemies—most notably Russia. Biden should be supporting America’s friends to the hilt and seeking total victory for Ukraine and Israel.

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T. Belman. There were so many warnings from so many different people, that it defies understanding that nothing was done and that all these warnings were either ignored or worse, suppressed. The only conclusion available was that people in high places didn’t want anything to be done.

The chief of security of the Supernova festival claims that a friend of his knew of a plan by Hamas to invade Israeli towns, but was forbidden from passing on the information.

Israel National News    Feb 6, 2024, 8:14 AM

The era of reckoning for alternative energy continues.

By James Freeman, WSJ    Feb. 5, 2024 6:02 pm ET

Why do bad things keep happening to customers of alternative energy? The obvious answer is that producing power with only wind or the sun is not efficient. But the fleecing of electricity customers is getting increasingly creative, even in a market that’s been hailed as a model for the future of green power.

As alternative energy’s era of reality checks continues to unfold, it turns out that some customers have been forced to write much larger checks than expected. In the windy United Kingdom, it may have seemed that a future beyond fossil fuels had already started to arrive. Anmar Frangoul reported for CNBC last year:

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Peloni:  Further revelations regarding the Nazi goes to Parlaiment Affair.

Marie Wool, The Globe and Mail February 5, 2024

Yaroslav Hunka, right, waits for the arrival of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the House of Commons in Ottawa on Sept. 22, 2023.Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invited Yaroslav Hunka, the Ukrainian Waffen-SS veteran who received two ovations in the House of Commons during a visit by Volodymyr Zelensky, to a reception he hosted in the Ukrainian President’s honour the same day.

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By Victor Davis Hanson, AM GREATNESS              5 February 2024

What Excites Biden?

Things are becoming so strange, so surreal, so nihilistic in contemporary America that the chaos can only be deliberate. Chance, incompetence, and accident could not alone explain the series of disasters we now daily witness that are nearly destroying the country.

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By Gadi Taub & Mike Doran  Tablet-Israeli Update  February 4, 2024

A source in the military claims there’s deep dissatisfaction among midlevel reserve officers in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at the prospect of the war slowing down or stopping before reaching its main objectives: destroying Hamas as a military threat to Israel and as a political organization capable of ruling Gaza. Gadi also describes testimony, from a third party, that the IDF brass is ignoring orders from the security cabinet. This claim provokes a heated disagreement between Gadi and Mike, who is much more sympathetic to the IDF leadership.

By Irina Tsukerman, JCPA                                          5 February 2024

The Tulkarm Brigade, an amalgamation of fighters from various affiliations, emerged in January 2024, according to the Iranian Tasnim News Agency. (Photograph published by Tasnim)

• Mahmoud Abbas has persisted in de-normalizing relations with Israel as he competes with Hamas in the West Bank. His failed leadership of the splintered Palestinian Authority has caused the West Bank to descend into terror-driven chaos.
• Western leaders have not internalized the increasingly radical politics of the West Bank leadership, still viewing it as a viable, moderate option.
• Read more…

By Yoni Ben Menachem, JCPA                                      5 February 2024

Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar (left), and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh commemorate the thirteenth anniversary of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s death in Gaza City on March 22, 2017. Note the empty wheelchair on the right. (Paltoday.ps)

Yahya Sinwar is perceived as actively pursuing Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s goal of dismantling Israel by the year 2027.

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By Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, Attorney and Author

When President George W. Bush delivered his State of the Union address months after the 9/11 attacks, and identified Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as an Axis of Evil, he made a point to say, “North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction while starving its citizens.” That description eerily applies to what Hamas has done in Gaza. It should therefore come as no surprise that the Hermit Kingdom and the fundamentalist Islamic terror group have become dangerous and clandestine allies who together have set the Middle East on fire.
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Leveraging the fate of the hostages to compel an Israeli surrender to Hamas is a sick, manipulative strategy that is doomed to political failure

By Gadi Taub, TABLET                                                      4 February 2024

An IDF reservist walks past ‘Bring Them Home Now’ street art in the Florentin neighborhood of Tel Aviv on Nov. 16, 2023/ALEXI J. ROSENFELD/GETTY IMAGES

Something fundamental changed in Israel on Oct. 7. We were reminded of the mortal danger our complacency and fantasies about our neighboring enemies pose to our survival. This in turn awakened in us a fierce determination to prevail and a spirit of self-sacrifice we thought we no longer had. At the same time, our political concepts, habits, alliances, and enmities remain those of Oct. 6. In our public square, or what modern states have for a public square—newspapers, TV shows and social media—we still revert to fighting old battles. These fissures are being exacerbated, if not driven, by the preferences and demands of our biggest ally, the United States.

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By Neil Turner, THE CONSERVATIVE WOMAN            5 Feb 2024

IF YOU’VE been watching the situation in Israel, you’ll have noticed a contradiction. On the one hand, the Americans, the British, Australian and EU politicians and officials have been queuing up for photo opportunities on the Gaza border to express their solidarity against the horrific Hamas attack of October 7. On the other hand, in almost every case and the passage of a few days – even minutes – the same people effectively blamed Israel in general and PM Benjamin Netanyahu in particular for causing the problem by oppressing the ‘poor Palestinians’ and failing to provide Statehood.

Confused? Let me explain.

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A principal in Europe: A 12-year-old boy came to me and said, ‘I hate you. We will take back the country’. They reject our culture, our values. Their hatred is unimaginable.”

Giulio Meotti, INN      Feb 4, 2024, 8:08 AM

Katharine Birbalsingh, known as “Britain’s strictest headteacher”, has just been forced to ban Muslim prayers at her school after teachers were attacked. This time we are in London.

The head teacher ended up in the High Court in a lawsuit brought by Muslim students at Michaela School. Birbalsingh decided to stop the prayer rituals after “violence, intimidation and appalling harassment of our teachers”.

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