T. Belman.  Once again, the title is misleading.  Netanyahyu did not use the expression “no full Palestinian state”. What he did say is ““I will not compromise on full Israeli security control over all the territory west of the Jordan [River]”.

Blinken said Israel cannot achieve “genuine security” without a pathway to a Palestinian state ” The opposite is true.

PM pushes back on White House vision of pathway to two-state solution and reports of a grand bargain that would end war, though he doesn’t rule out demilitarized Palestinian state

By LAZAR BERMAN,TOI    21 January 2024, 11:55 pm

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks in a video statement, January 19, 2024. 

As US President Joe Biden’s administration called for the war against Hamas to wind down alongside a pathway toward a two-state solution at the end of the fight, Israel’s leadership presented a vision at odds with that of the White House on Sunday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doubled down in a video message on his determination not to allow a full-fledged, militarized Palestinian state to emerge.

“I will not compromise on full Israeli security control over all the territory west of the Jordan [River],” he said, echoing recent comments.

Read more…

Nothing in this hypocritical world is a surprise, but the insistence on leaving Gazans in tents instead of helping them emigrate is a shock to the most cynical among us. Film

By Ezri Tubi, BOOMERANG                                           22 January 2024

Gazans wait to enter Egypt

Millions of refugees from countries like Iraq, Syria, and Yemen fled wars in their homelands in the past few decades and sought refuge in other countries.

So why, suddenly, when it comes to the voluntary migration of the Gazans, and polls show that they wanted to migrate even before the war to escape the clutches of Hamas, does the matter become so controversial?”

And why is the world turning a blind eye to the fact that any and every one of them who can possibly get the money together, is paying unscrupulous smugglers exorbitant sums to get into Egypt and help them leave for anywhere they can get to?

Read more…

By Con Coughlin, GATESTONE  •  January 22, 2024

US President Joe Biden meets with Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Israel on October 18, 2023. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

• The Israeli premier has also reiterated his long-standing opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state, which he insists would become a launching pad for attacks on Israel.
• Israel’s efforts to achieve its goal of destroying Hamas, though, are at serious risk of being undermined by the Biden administration’s growing hostility towards Netanyahu’s government.
• Read more…

Despite the schism, there was agreement between both groups that the best way to secure the release of the hostages was by exerting military pressure on Hamas.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF  JANUARY 19, 2024 19:29

Israelis are split on whether the most important outcome of the Israel-Hamas War is to secure the release of the hostages or whether it is to achieve victory over Hamas, according to a recent “Panels” survey commissioned by the “Mothers’ March.”

The polling, which was conducted among Israelis on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, sought to examine the stances of the Israeli public on issues related to the hostages and the war.

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THE TOM NASH REPORT

Excellent monologue by Avi Abelow

T. Belman.  This stand by Netanyahu will win him another election.

In rebuke of the US, PM declares Israel must maintain security control over West Bank and Gaza; says Israel will know soon if medicines sent into Gaza have reached hostages

By LAZAR BERMAN, TOI Jan 18/24

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a press conference on January 18, 2024. (Kobi Gideon/GPO)

During a combative press conference Thursday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the prospect of Palestinian statehood after the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, and vowed to resist the United States on the matter.

He also denied blindsiding his defense minister over a deal to send medicines into Gaza for Israeli hostages, accused Israeli media of spreading pessimism about the progress of the war, and said Hamas and Iran were hoping to see his government fall and elections held mid-war.
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By Melanie Phillips

BBC headquarters

The Conservative MP Andrew Percy has accused the BBC of putting British Jews directly at risk through its coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Absolutely. The BBC’s relentless portrayal of the Israelis not as the victims of genocidal terror but as hard-hearted, vengeful and wanton killers of children and the innocent has channelled ancient antisemitic tropes of Jewish blood-lust and helped fuel an enormous increase in attacks on Jews.

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The current Gaza war creates a historic opportunity to change the region and the fate of the refugees

By Dror Eydar, ASIA TIMES                                         20 January 2024

Palestinians attend a rally marking the 32nd anniversary of the founding of the Islamist movement Hamas, in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on December 13, 2019. Photo: Majdi Fathi / NurPhoto via AFP

On September 9, 2023, less than a month before the October 7 massacre and the war that followed, violent clashes broke out between hundreds of young Gazans and security guards from a Gaza travel agency that had been granted a license to issue visas to Turkey. Several people were injured, and the company’s offices were damaged.

The Gaza branch of the Palestine Society of Tourism and Travel Agents (yes, Gaza did have a tourism and travel association) accused the travel agency of exploiting its monopoly on issuing permits to raise prices. So why did the fracas break out in the first place?

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By Jonathan Pollard, MACHON SHILO                    19 January 2024

Report reflects on how Hamas is still capable of harming Israel and Israeli forces in Gaza for months and notes that the group is attempting to reconstitute its police force in parts of Gaza City.

Israel National News    Jan 21, 2024, 8:34 AM 

Hamas terrorists in GazaAbed Rahim Khatib/Flash90

Israeli forces have killed 20% to 30% of Hamas’s fighters, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing US intelligence estimates.This is in line with IDF predictions that the war will take a year since Hamas terrorists are estimated at 30,000.

The report furthermore states that the US estimate found that the terror organization still has enough munitions to continue striking Israel and Israeli forces in Gaza for months and that the group is attempting to reestablish its police force in parts of Gaza City.

Read more…

By Jim Hoft, GATESTONE      Jan. 20, 2024 7:15 pm

In June 2023, the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Georgia unsealed the 96-page Halderman Report – the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had been hiding this report from the public for two years.

University of Michigan Professor of Computer Science and Engineering J. Alex Halderman and Security Researcher and Assistant Professor at Auburn University Drew Sringall collaborated on the report where they discovered many exploitable vulnerabilities in the Dominion Voting Systems’ ImageCast X system.

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“There will be no more UNRWA. Not in Gaza, not in the PA and not in Jerusalem. The era of incitement education is over.”

The Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, chaired by MK Yuli Edelstein, held a confidential discussion with the participation of MLA head Tzachi Hanegavi, and dealt, among other things, with the issues of “the day after”

By  Atara Germa, Makor Rishon   01/17/2024

The discussion in the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee. Photo: Dani Shem Tov, spokeswoman for the Knesset

The Foreign Affairs and Security Committee chaired by MK Yuli Edelstein, held a confidential discussion today (Wednesday) with the participation of the Chief of Staff for National Security Tzachi Hanegbi, during which he said that the residents of Gaza will not return to the northern Gaza Strip – until the end of the war.

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Compulsion to attack – the radical Iranian regime’s version of “responsibility to protect”?

J.E. Dyer, The Optimistic Conservative, January 17, 2024

Another quick-look on the fast-moving events in the Middle East.

This article, like the previous one of 15 January 2024, will mainly quote from other correspondence.  I make this point to explain the informality of the language and composition, which I am not cleaning up.  The points being made are important, and can be made effectively even in on-the-fly format.

To briefly introduce the topic, the political condition of Yemen – reduced as it often is to warring factions, with no central government in control – is a key element affecting the stability of the whole region.  The conditions of today, with the Houthis, backed by Iran, attacking third parties, can be exploited well beyond the level at which Tehran’s regime is currently exploiting them.

Read more…

Peloni:  For further details, see Beattie’s tweet thread summary or his comprehensive article on Revolver News.  Revolver has been an important source of investigative reporting since its founding, but this recent revolation was in a class all of its own.  Highly recommended.

by Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge Friday, Jan 19, 2024 – 07:20 PM

“If the Republicans step up, if the speaker steps up, if the relevant congressional figures step up, this is the chance to utterly demolish the January 6th narrative that the regime is using to weaponize the national security state against the American people, and to take Trump off the ballot.”

Having acquitted himself extremely well (and calmly) during the ZeroHedge Debate on January 6th, Darren Beattie brandished his considerable tome of facts to discuss with Tucker Carlson the impact of newly-released footage surrounding the pipe-bomb incidents of January 6th (well 5th).
Read more…

The Israeli public is in no mood today to give Palestinians a state, but the U.S. keeps pushing it.

By The Editorial Board, WSJ Jan. 18, 2024

Liberal policy on the Middle East is like a machine with a part missing. No matter the input, its output stays the same. Hamas launches the most gruesome invasion of Israel imaginable? Create a Palestinian state. The Palestinian Authority glorifies the massacre, prepares to compensate the killers and pledges solidarity with Hamas? Create a Palestinian state.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken laid out in Davos on Wednesday the perennially failing solution to Middle East problems. “If you take a regional approach, and if you pursue integration with security, with a Palestinian state, all of a sudden you have a region that’s come together in ways that answer the most profound questions that Israel has tried to answer for years,” he said. “Iran is suddenly isolated,” he envisioned, “and will have to make decisions about what it wants its future to be.”

Read more…

By: Hugh Fitzgerald, JIHAD WATCH January 18, 2024:

For decades, the Israelis have worried about the quality, and reach, of their hasbara — the “explaining” to the world why Israel does what it does. And nothing has cried out for more ”explaining” to the world than the campaign in Gaza to uproot the Hamas terrorists. It’s been little more than three months after the Hamas atrocities on October 7, and already, the shock has worn off for most of the world.

There are pro-Palestinian marches in major cities in the Western world with protesters in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Montreal, Toronto, New York, and Los Angeles, denouncing Israel, as if it, and not Hamas, had inflicted atrocities. These protesters demand an immediate end to the Gaza war, which would leave Hamas still standing, chant about a Palestine “from the river to the sea,” which means the obliteration of Israel and its replacement by a twenty-third Arab state, and inveigh against Israel as a “settler colonial apartheid state.” Most recently, these marchers have described Israel as guilty of “genocide’ and called for the Jewish state to be declared guilty of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” by the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Read more…

by Majid Rafizadeh, GATESTONE  •  January 20, 2024

The USS Enterprise, which played a key role in Operation Praying Mantis, is shown in the Persian Gulf on December 15, 1998. (U.S. Navy photo by Michael W. Pendergrass)