I also have little love for Netanyahu, but I think the best outcome is for him to be ousted as the leader of Likud. I was looking at current polls to see what a coalition would look like if elections were held now.
Gantz’s National Unity is projected to win the most seats. I doubt that Netanyahu would want to work with him, so let’s assume that Likud is out of a coalition. Gantz is also trying to get the ultra-religious drafted into the army, so the 2 religious parties, Shas and UTJ, are also out. That would mean Gantz would need to work with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, and also Lieberman. Those are 3 parties of hard-liners when it comes to dealing with Palestinians, although Lieberman has promoted a 2 state solution. With current polls, that would bring it to 52 seats. The only party left to get to 61 is Lapid’s Yesh Atid.
So you’d have a government with real hard-liners, who are also upsetting the religious right in Israel, so you’d also be facing challenges on the home front.
Is that better than Netanyahu?
New reports now, that US officials are confirming that munitions shipments to Israel had dropped by 50%. Seems Bibi wasn’t lying.
I don’t see that as aid being withheld, unless the aid was approved and not sent?
It sounds like Netanyahu just wants more weapons and is claiming that the US is withholding weaponry. If he means that the US owns weapons and isn’t giving them to Israel, sure, we have a lot of weapons that we don’t give to countries.
But, it’s his choice to complain about the US on an international stage if he wants. Appears the US isn’t very happy about it. I wonder if Netanyahu thinks that criticizing Biden during an election year is a successful way to squeeze more out of him, and if Biden loses then it sets him up for Trump’s strategy of “finish the job”.
Bibi wants to keep the conflict going (to keep himself in power) but this time he is looking at Hezbollah.
The US knows full well that a conflict with Hezbollah could potentially lead to a much wider war in the ME.
So Bibi’s additional requests for offensive weapons are being ignored.
Defensive weapons only. Sounds reasonable to me.
i believe the levels increased at the onset of the war, so when they went back to normal, was his complaint
not lying, but not exactly honest
I would call it lying to say that the US is withholding aid that was not promised or approved.
Hey, give me $1,000. Why are you withholding my money?
Actually, there are things that were approved that Biden delayed. A shipment of precision bombs and also 50 F-15 fighters. They were approved by Congress, but the shipments keep getting delayed.
Ah, I see that the US since May has been reviewing a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs and 500-pound bombs that are wanted for the offensive into the civilian centers of Rafah.
Those must be the weapons being discussed. It seems the F-15s, which have been delayed but the State Department reiterates will be transferred, may be under review for the same reason.
the president was asked about the U.S. pause last week of a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel and whether those bombs were “used to kill civilians in Gaza.” Mr. Biden replied, “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs.”
“I’ve made it clear to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] and the war cabinet, they’re not going to get our support, if in fact they go in these population centers.”
There was a report which claimed that Hezbollah is using Beirut Airport to store weapons. The Lebanese government arranged for a tour of the airport by journalists to try and debunk the report. But on the tour, the journalists were not allowed into the cargo-handling area due to “organizational issues”.
Instead of debunking the report, many of the journalists now believe that the tour just gave it more credibility.
Glad to see this guy got the boot.
Actually the complaint is apparently centered on the State Department slow walking paperwork on item already paid for. Which, given that State has had a couple of mid-level people quit over Gaza I can believe. Especially after the way they slow walked Trump initiatives.
This is why the US is not sending more munitions.
Bibi’s strategy is to keep the conflict going until the US elections.
If Trump does win, he might get out of this one from a political standpoint because then he would get a blank check to do whatever he likes.
Biden has been damaged electorally speaking by putting some initial trust on Bibi when this all started. He cannot afford to be so magnanimous anymore with his help as he is now in danger of losing against Trump.
And, this is probably end then of Bibi’s current coalition
As I wrote a couple of days ago, I don’t know if this will lead to a better or worse outcome. I think the best thing is for Bibi to lose control of Likud, and then for Likud to stay in power.
A group of Oct 7 survivors have filed a lawsuit again UNRWA. They say that UNRWA knowingly helped Hamas, and led to the attacks.
One allegation is that UNRWA demanded that all aid for Gaza be given in US Dollars, despite the local currency being shekels. This is not the practice in other areas, only in Gaza. Giving the aid in dollars forced them to use Hamas money-changers to convert the money into shekels. Hamas charged fees between 10% and 20% for the service. This gave Hamas between $2m and $4m per month, and also gave them a steady supply of US Dollars, which weapons smugglers demand for payment - they don’t take shekels.
This is a 20 minute interview with Ami Ayalon that is worth watching. He is a former head of Shin Bet, the Israeli secret service. He is also former commander in chief of the Israeli Navy and a former Knesset member for the Labor Party.
One of the quotes:
“If we shall not end the occupation, we shall not have security, and if we shall not end this occupation we shall not have democracy.”
New report by IPC says there is no famine in Gaza, and that assumptions they made about how much food would enter Gaza were wrong. This means that their previous report, which was based on these assumptions, was also wrong. This is a huge blow to Polymath, as well as the case against Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, which claimed that they were trying to starve the Palestinians.
Only 44% of Gaza considered to be at the “catastrophic” or “emergency” level, with IPC noting “extreme human suffering is without a doubt currently ongoing in the Gaza Strip.”
But they said it doesn’t fall into the strict definition of “famine”, so that’s probably a relief to that 44%.
“Not a famine!! TP is so wrong! I win the internet!”
I’m glad we figured out what was the important part of that news story.
The “catastrophic” and “emergency” levels are about projections, not about people currently starving. They were wrong about the projections earlier, so I’m not too worried about the projections now.