President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have offered differing accounts of a call about the fighting in Lebanon, as the US struggles to get efforts toward an Iran peace deal back on track. Bloomberg's Laura Davison has the latest. (Source: Bloomberg)
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President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered differing accounts of a call about the fighting in Lebanon, as the US struggled to get efforts toward an Iran peace deal back on track. The mismatched statements were the latest example of confusing signals on progress to end a war. Bloomberg's Abeer Abu Omar reports. (Source: Bloomberg)
President Donald Trump’s heavy pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hasn’t gone over well in some sectors of Israeli society, with some Israeli officials starting to speak out against the president. After Trump got Netanyahu to call off renewed attacks against Beirut, the right wing of Netanyahu’s coalition voiced their collective outrage, accusing Trump […]
2-to-1 decision claims 'The Hegseth policy is both arbitrary and based upon animus'
President Donald Trump has often been accused of starting the Iran war to help Israel — and yet now one of America’s major conservative newspapers is blasting him for not being pro-Israel enough.“Iran’s regime began Monday by throwing a wrench into negotiations with the U.S., and President Trump spent the rest of the day scrambling to satisfy Iran’s demand,” The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote on Monday. “The result is a new cease-fire in Lebanon, rescuing Hezbollah for the moment, though the terrorists didn’t abide by the first cease-fire for even a day.”The Journal proceeded to argue that “Hezbollah began this war with Israel on March 2, firing on soldiers and civilian targets on the orders of its Iranian patrons. The first Lebanon cease-fire was announced April 17 after Iran’s regime had said Israeli retaliation against Hezbollah was preventing the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Mr. Trump pressured Israel and delivered the cease-fire, but Iran reneged on Hormuz—and its Hezbollah proxy kept firing.”After adding that Israel refrained from attacking Hezbollah’s Dahiyeh stronghold in Beirut until Monday, after the attacks averaged 125 rockets and 49 drones every day for a week, the Journal described the next events as involving Iran’s state media reporting they had stopped exchanging messages with Trump because of Israel’s retaliation.“The shamelessness is always striking,” the Journal opined. “Iran has repeatedly violated its April 7 cease-fire with the U.S. by firing drones and missiles at commercial vessels, U.S. forces and Gulf states. In recent days it has downed a U.S. drone over international waters and fired ballistic missiles at U.S. forces in Kuwait. Through it all, Mr. Trump has limited the U.S. responses to self-defense and insisted the cease-fire still obtains.”Yet instead of recognizing these facts, the Journal concluded, Trump had blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pressured him into agreeing to a ceasefire against Lebanon.“Lebanon and Israel suggested the deal is only partial,” the Journal continued. “As long as Hezbollah doesn’t attack Israeli territory, Israel won’t attack the terrorists in Dahiyeh, Mr. Netanyahu said. This is a recipe for managing the conflict, limiting it to southern Lebanon, where both sides expect to continue the fight.”While this status quo is currently adequate for Israel, since they won the high ground in Lebanon and need time to protect themselves against fiber-optic drones, the Journal declared that “Hezbollah’s capital again has been spared the consequences of the group’s own actions. Iran is winning its proxy a refuge. Anytime it wants, Iran could tell Hezbollah to stop shooting and end the war, which Israel has no desire to wage. Instead it encouraged Hezbollah’s fire, so it could cut off U.S. talks when Israel inevitably responded in force.”Expanding the critique beyond Israel’s war against Lebanon, the Journal expressed concern that Trump may take the same approach in his war against Iran.“If it fires on U.S. forces in the Strait or Gulf, will he still try to salvage the cease-fire?” the Journal asked. “How about stepped-up attacks on Israel? How about claiming to quit negotiations? In each case, Mr. Trump has chosen to avoid escalation and keep talking. If he won’t send a different message, it will be difficult to get the regime to comply with a deal, no matter what it promises now.”Despite being criticized for his recent policy toward Israel, Trump has actually been accused by some elements in his party of being too pro-Israel. Indeed, both the Democratic and Republican parties have seen a massive surge in anti-Israel sentiment since the Oct. 7th terrorist attacks. When it comes to Trump’s Republican base, this includes far right voters who are motivated by opposition to Israel’s alleged human rights violations, a desire to limit foreign spending in general, a belief in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jewish control of government and the anti-Semitic opinion that all Jews and/or Israelis should be blamed for the Israeli government’s actions.Speaking with AlterNet in March about the issue of American anti-Semitism, Brandeis University historian Jonathan Sarna argued that one can criticize Israeli government policy without being anti-Semitic. He added that it can easily become anti-Semitic, however.“If you go back to ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ — the great antisemitic forgery of the turn of the last century — that really began this sense that Jews are all-powerful, that they operate behind the scenes, and that whatever happens is ultimately their fault,” Sarna told AlterNet. “Before then, for centuries, the prevailing view was that Jews were persecuted and lowly because they had killed Christ, and that was what they deserved — they were powerless. That was their punishment.
Iran has severed all diplomatic talks with the United States, accusing Israel of violating the ceasefire by bombing its proxy militia Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Republican Senators were not satisfied with the Justice Department's statement on the $1.77 billion weaponization fund and demanded a clear statement from Trump. The post SHOWDOWN: GOP Senators Make More Demands as DOJ Signals Trump Administration is Dropping Weaponization Fund appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.