War between Hamas and Israel

[N.E. Brigand]

The U.S. millitary has completed construction of a pier for delivery of food and other humanitarian supplies to Gaza.

[River]

We'll see how it works out, but think about the flex. Oh, you won't let us onto your soil to build a pier? Cool. We'll just do it anyway. It's for humanitarian purposes but there's definitely a message being sent, if you know what I mean.

[N.E. Brigand]

Donald Trump not only gets his audience to boo the idea of the U.S. admitting Palestinian immigrants...



But in feigning surprise at the audience's displeasure because, he says, "I thought you were a very liberal place," he tries to support that by reference to famously leftist members of Congress, but instead of naming the one from Minnesota -- Rep. Ilhan Omar -- he mentions only Rep. Rashida Tlaib (of Michigan) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (of New York).

[N.E. Brigand]

If this young woman were, say, my sister, I'd want the military to kill every person who stood in the way of rescuing her:



They sliced her heels to keep her from running away?!

The question, of course, is who standing in the way, and who is a bystander.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Daily Mail today says that Israel fears that the International Criminal Court is going to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for Israel's actions in Gaza. Believe me, I have no love for Netanyahu, but any such warrant that isn't issued simultaneously with warrants for the leaders of Hamas is trash.

While I agree that the leaders of Hamas are at least as liable for criminal conduct as Netanyahu (or much more so), why would one depend on the other?

CNN: "ICC prosecutor seeks arrest warrants against Sinwar and Netanyahu for war crimes over October 7 attack and Gaza."

That would be Yahya Sinwar, who is the leader of Hamas in Gaza. The ICC is also requesting warrants for two other members of Hamas's leadership (Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri aka Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh) as well as Israel's defense minister Yoav Gallant.

I'm not saying that answers your question.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I certainly think the ICC is right to issue warrants for Sinwar and the other Hamas leaders; there is no question that they have violated international law. I think the case for issuing warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant is more complicated. Nonetheless, I continue to maintain that the one is independent of the other.

[N.E. Brigand]

The United States says the International Criminal Court has violated its own rules by asking for warrants on Netanyahu and Gallant.

And the prosecutors who requested the warrants were actually supposed to visit Israel today on a fact-finding mission but at the last minute didn't board their flight.

[N.E. Brigand]

It seems the International Criminal Court has yet to issue any warrants in the Ethiopian civil war, which has been raging since 2018 and resulted in 600,000 civilian deaths. Some people say this is because Ethopia never signed the Rome Statute that created the ICC. But while Israel signed, its legislature never ratified. And while the Palestinian Authority did sign and ratify, the P.A. doesn't control Gaza (and didn't control it at that time), and Hamas, which controls Gaza, never signed.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Posted without comment (because I don't trust myself to comment).

[N.E. Brigand]

Posted without comment (because I don't trust myself to comment).

I saw that an Israeli opposition leader called on Netanyahu's government to reverse this decision, and now there's an update:

"Israel cancels order to cut AP live feed, will return camera equipment it seized" (CNN).

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Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Arab American leaders -- and this is insane but apparently true -- that if the United Nations officially recognizes Palestine as an independent nation, then the U.S. is required to cut all its funding to the United Nations and its associated bodies, including the World Food Program, which will lead to starvation across the globe. And also the law explicitly states that the President cannot waive its provisions. This law led the U.S. to cut funding for UNESCO in 2011. However, there may be a way for the President to get around the law, although that's not clear.

[N.E. Brigand]

More than 500 metric tons of food have reached the shore of Gaza via the U.S. Navy temporary pier ...

And yet the Pentagon says that none of it has actually been delivered to the Palestinian people. It's a last mile problem. I think both the IDF and Hamas are to blame.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has given 22 interviews since Oct. 7th, but all of them have been conducted in English with foreign services, including one tonight with Jake Tapper. Netanyahu hasn't been interviewed on Israeli TV for more than two years. To Tapper's credit, he did ask Netanyahu about this. Netanyahu simply denied it was true.

[N.E. Brigand]

Graphic video here, newly released at the request of hostages' families, of their loved ones being abducted by Hamas on Oct. 7th.

[N.E. Brigand]

"Egypt changed terms of Gaza ceasefire deal presented to Hamas, surprising negotiators, sources say" (CNN).

Remember when a ceasefire deal seemed close and then fell apart a few weeks ago? Turns out that was the fault of Egyptian intelligence and surprised negotiators from the United States, Qatar, and Israel. It's not clear why Egypt did that, and I think it's fair to speculate about cui bono.

[N.E. Brigand]

Some interesting but disheartening details here about Israel-Hamas negotiations being mediated by Qatar.

[N.E. Brigand]

"Under a rug in Gazan home, IDF troops found shaft leading to bodies of 4 hostages."

That happened last week, but the details are only being reported now.

[N.E. Brigand]

"In a phone call with President Biden, Egyptian president el-Sisi agrees to resume delivery of aid trucks to Gaza through Israel."

The "deliveries were halted two weeks ago in protest of Israel's takeover of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing."

[N.E. Brigand]

I didn't realize that calling for "normalization" of Israeli-Palestinian relations is a crime in the eyes of Hamas. I learned that from these notes on journalist Hind Khouray, who has been reporting on Gaza for the Channel 4 and other outlets. In 2020, Khouray alerted Hamas to the efforts of Rami Ahman, a Palestinian who had created the Gaza Youth Committee, which is "an organization that seeks to connect people in Gaza with the outside world through the internet" and "has been organizing small-scale video chats between Israelis and Palestinian peace activists in the Gaza Strip in an initiative called 'Skype With Your Enemy.'" Hamas arrested Ahman as a result. Khouray cheered that outcome on social media and publicly wished that Hamas wouldn't stop there. She apparently got her wish because Hamas reportedly tortured Ahman before releasing him more than six months later.

[N.E. Brigand]

At least 37 Palestinians died after Israeli forces struck a refugee camp near Rafah on Sunday. There were gruesome images of people who burned to death in tents. However, the IDF says the location of the deaths was 100 meters from the location they struck, and they suspect that there were Hamas munitions stored under the tents.

[N.E. Brigand]

"Trump told donors he will crush pro-Palestinian protests, deport demonstrators" (Washington Post).

Former president Donald Trump promised to crush pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, telling a roomful of donors — a group that he joked included “98 percent of my Jewish friends” — that he would expel student demonstrators from the United States, according to participants in the roundtable event with him in New York.

“One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave,” Trump said on May 14, according to donors at the event.

When one of the donors complained that many of the students and professors protesting on campuses could one day hold positions of power in the United States, Trump called the demonstrators part of a “radical revolution” that he vowed to defeat. He praised the New York Police Department for clearing the campus at Columbia University and said other cities needed to follow suit, saying “it has to be stopped now.”

“Well, if you get me elected, and you should really be doing this, if you get me reelected, we’re going to set that movement back 25 or 30 years,” he said, according to the donors, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail a private event.

He also reminded the donors that he had the U.S. formally recognize the Golan Heights, territory Israel took from Syria in a 1967 war, as an official part of Israel. He said he made that decision after "a five-minute conversation with David Friedman," who was then the U.S. ambassador to Israel, and Trump said of the Golan Heights: "You know that’s worth $2 trillion, they said, that piece, if you put it in real estate terms. But it’s worth more than that. It is."

(The way that's written suggests to me that the donor meeting was recorded: that doesn't read like someone's summary of Trump's remarks.)

[N.E. Brigand]

My guess is that protests like this have more impact than most: