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.

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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.

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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).
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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.”

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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).

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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)

By Javier Milei, TIERNEY’S REAL NEWS               19 January 2024

Javier Milei gave an important speech at Davos that I think every American needs to hear and digest. Milei is an economist and the new conservative President of Argentina. He explains, in simple terms, why the West and free-market capitalism is worth fighting for. Here is an edited, abbreviated transcript of his speech, that I prepared, that you can read in 10 minutes.

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Israel has no obligation to restore the lives and homes of those who tried to destroy ours because we don’t owe them that consideration.

By Cookie Schwaeber-Issan, JPOST                          20 January 2024

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken attends the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week. (photo credit: DENIS BALIBOUSE/REUTERS)

In his need to be clever and come up with new creative ways to achieve the goal of Palestinian statehood, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has now resorted to the threat that “Arabs won’t pay to rebuild Gaza without a path to Palestinian statehood” (The Jerusalem Post, January 17, 2024).

In short, Blinken is making it clear that unless we want to absorb the full cost of rebuilding Gaza, we are going to have to offer to make nice with the Palestinians by incentivizing their willingness to take on the massive restoration project. And under what framework would that incentive come? Being agreeable to the acceptance of a Palestinian state alongside the Jewish one.

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T. Belman. I disagree with the title and the sub-title. Remember if Ganz leaves the emergency government it will still be in effect as Saar and his party remain.  If Saar also leaves , it will signal the end of the “emergency government” but the original government with 64 seats will remain. But I don’t think Saar will leave.  Saar hopes to merge his party with Likud and replace Bibi as the leader and prime minister. He is even positioning himself to the right of Netanyahu.  The public wants right-wing policies. All other leaders stand to the left.

The question is no longer whether an election will take place in 2024, but rather when in 2024.

By YANIR COZIN, JPOST    JANUARY 19, 2024

‘The Americans have realized that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is incapacitated because of the political situation he is in,” a senior official from one of Israel’s opposition parties informed me last week.

Kevin Roberts, January 19, 2024

(Jan 18, 2024) Kevin Roberts: “It’s laughable that anyone would describe Davos as protecting liberal Democracy… It is equally laughable to use the word dictatorship at Davos and aim that at President Trump. That’s absurd… With all due respect, nothing personal, you are part of the problem.”

Peloni. Here is the link for the interview on X where it won’t be taken down (Thank you Musk):
https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1744777758507504061

CLIMATE CHANGE IS A HOAX

Critics say exemption neuters sanctions meant to choke off Iranian proxy’s resources.

By Adam Kredo, FREE BEACON                                  19 January 2024

WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 02: U.S. President Joe Biden/Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The Biden administration’s recently announced sanctions on the Iran-backed Houthi rebels will include a carveout that permits the terror group to engage in lucrative energy and fuel-related transactions with Americans, a decision that congressional critics say effectively neuters the sanctions.

A license issued by the Treasury Department and circulated to Congress this week authorizes “transactions related to refined petroleum products in Yemen involving Ansarallah,” otherwise known as the Houthi militant group. This includes authorization for the “sale of refined petroleum products for personal, commercial, or humanitarian use in Yemen.”

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