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    State department official’s resignation highlights rifts over US Gaza policy

    A human rights official has resigned from the US state department over Gaza saying the Biden administration is flouting US law by continuing to arm Israel, and is hushing up evidence that the US had seen on Israeli human rights abuses.Annelle Sheline, said she had hoped to have an influence on policy by staying at her post in the Near Eastern section of the bureau of democracy, human rights and labor, taking part in discussions, signing dissent cables and raising her concerns with her supervisor. But she had lost confidence she could do anything that would affect the flow of US arms to Israel.“The fundamental reason was – I no longer wanted to be affiliated with this administration,” Sheline told the Guardian. “I have a young daughter. She’s not yet two, but if some day in the future, she is learning about this and knows that I was at the state department and she asked me [about it] – I want to be able to tell her that I did what I could.”Sheline is only the second state department official to resign over US policy on the Gaza war (another official left the education department over the issue), but she said that many of her colleagues had told her they would resign if they could afford to lose their job, and had urged her to speak out about her reasons for quitting, rather than to leave quietly.View image in fullscreenThe 38-year-old, who studied the foreign policy of Arab governments for her doctorate, said the state department was aware of plenty of evidence that Israel was violating international law in its conduct of the Gaza war, and that the Biden administration was violating US law by continuing to supply weapons.She pointed in particular to the Leahy laws, which forbid assistance to foreign military units implicated in atrocities, and section 620 (I) of the Foreign Assistance Act, which states that no assistance should be given to any government which “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance”.On Monday, the state department said it had received assurances from Israel officials and “not found them to be in violation of international humanitarian law”. But Sheline said: “The law is clear here and we do have evidence. But the specifics are just not being followed.”The state department has said it is reviewing evidence of civilian harm under a mechanism established by the Biden administration last year, weeks before the Gaza war broke out, but Sheline said the results of those investigations would only be made public when the White House wanted them to be.“There are a lot of people working on this at State but at the end of the day, the public policy does have to be something that the White House signs off on,” Sheline said. “Until the White House is ready to take a different line, some of the other things happening in State are just not going to come out.”She said she believed administration policy was being driven by domestic political considerations, but argued that domestic politics were shifting on the issue, pointing to the significant “uncommitted” protest vote in the Democratic presidential primary election, and suggested that the Biden administration had misjudged the mood.“I do think the president’s view of Israel is deeply influenced by a generational divide,” she said. “I think it’s taken this administration a long time to realise that the previous political calculus on this, in terms of big donors, in terms of the Israel lobby, … is seeing a shift.”On Wednesday, Gallup published a new poll showing a significant drop in American public support for Israel’s conduct of the war, from 50% in November to 36% now, with 55% disapproving of Israel’s actions.Sheline credited this shift for helping lead to the US abstention on a UN security council resolution on Monday, allowing it to pass after the US vetoed three earlier draft texts over the nearly six months since the war started.“I am glad to see that slight shift, but it hasn’t really made any difference to the people in Gaza yet,” Sheline said. “So it’s really too little, too late.“Not only are these policies devastating the people of Gaza, but I think they’re also devastating the US image in the world,” she argued. “This administration came in promising to rebuild American diplomacy and America’s moral leadership after the Trump administration, but so many of these issues that the administration said were so important – including human rights – seem to be less important to this administration than the US-Israel relationship.” More

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    Netanyahu has been spoiling for a fight with the US. He may not survive this one | Alon Pinkas

    How do you gaslight an entire nation about a war and then try to do the same to a superpower that is your ally? And how do you turn a just war into global isolation and widespread condemnation? Just ask Benjamin Netanyahu. He has the patent.Netanyahu has been deliberately and intently seeking a confrontation with the US ever since late October. The UN security council resolution 2728, demanding an “immediate ceasefire”, is just the latest pretext for this premeditated showdown. This may sound counterintuitive and imprudent to you, given that the two countries are close allies, given Israel’s heavy reliance on US military aid and its diplomatic umbrella, and particularly given President Biden’s sweeping and unwavering support for Israel since the 7 October catastrophe.But Netanyahu has two reasons to instigate such a confrontation. The first is pure gaslighting on a grand scale. He concocted a narrative that supposedly explains the war’s context and consequently absolves him from the responsibility and accountability he persistently refuses to assume. It also distracts from his stated policy of imploring Qatar to funnel more funds to Gaza to strengthen Hamas, all in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority and render any political negotiations impossible.According to this narrative, 7 October was simply a debacle that could have been averted had the Israel Defense Forces and Shabak intelligence not failed. The bigger problem now, according to Netanyahu, is the possibility of a Palestinian state that the world, especially the US, has been trying to impose on Israel since the attack. According to this narrative, only a heroic Netanyahu can stand up to the US, defy an American president and prevent this travesty.Now of course it is impossible that a new Palestinian state could be “imposed” from outside. But this framing allows Netanyahu to placate his rightwing extremist coalition and partners, who have long opposed any form of Palestinian statehood. And it lets him make conflict with the US a focal point, rather than his own failures. It’s not about the Louis XIV wannabe prime minister. It never is.The second reason is more current and practical: the confrontation is about setting up Biden as the scapegoat for Netanyahu’s failure to achieve “total victory” or “the eradication of Hamas”, two fortune cookie-type slogans that he spews regularly.The security council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire, adopted by 14 members with the US abstaining, puts Israel on a double collision course: with the UN security council but more critically, with the US. Netanyahu’s sanctimonious tantrums about how “surprised” he was and how the US abstention is a departure from policy that would prevent victory is mendacious. He was warned repeatedly by the Biden administration that this would be an inevitable outcome if he persisted with his endless recalcitrance, defiance and effective refusal to engage with the US, ostensibly Israel’s staunch ally and protector.When you ignore US requests, dismiss the president’s well-intentioned advice, inundate the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, with duplicitous spin, casually deride US plans and ideas for a reconfigured region, show crude intransigence by refusing to present a credible and coherent vision for postwar Gaza, hold a video call with Republican senators (a group that Netanyahu feels he is a life member of) and actively pursue an open confrontation with the administration, there’s a price to pay. Most recently, Blinken’s state department has warned Israel that it is increasingly isolated and is in danger of inflicting “generational damage” to its reputation and image.Had Israel seriously engaged with the US on any of the above issues, without necessarily agreeing to everything, it would have prevented this rift. The US has one long-running fundamental contention with Israel: the lack of a coherent political objective for the war, with which military means must be aligned. The US inquired time after time about Israel’s goals and got nothing but “topple Hamas”, which is a worthy goal, but does not address the “day after”.In respect of the security council, Israel will conveniently explain to itself that the resolution is not a big deal, that there is no imminent threat of sanctions and anyway, the UN was always and remains anti-Israeli. Perhaps. But that’s not the point. The resolution puts Israel in a very unpleasant and precarious place to be for a country, let alone a democracy and a US ally. The more critical and consequential arena is US-Israel relations. Their deterioration under Netanyahu has been well documented over the past year, but the security council resolution represents a new low.Since around January time, the US has negatively revised its assessment of Israel under Netanyahu. He does not behave as an ally, he has accrued a debilitating credibility deficit over the years on a multitude of issues, and he has intentionally failed to come up with a plan for postwar Gaza – to the point where he is now seriously suspected in Washington of prolonging the war for his own political survival antics. The current showdown over the security council resolution widens the rift to the point that it is impossible to see how the trajectory will change as long as Netanyahu is in power.At the moment, the US has three points of disagreement with Israel regarding the details of the prosecution of the war: the notion that Israel is impeding humanitarian aid; the number of civilian non-combatant deaths; and a possible military invasion of Rafah, on the southern tip of Gaza. These differences could have been resolved had Netanyahu and Biden had a working, honest and good-faith relationship. They do not. In fact, Netanyahu has a track record of confrontations and frequent spats with US administrations, from George HW Bush through to Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and now Biden. His – unsuccessful, it must be added – meddling in US politics is also a familiar trait of his since the 1990s.The current state of relations is close to an inflection point, and could go in one of two directions: either Netanyahu is ousted or leaves or loses an election, or the US will be convinced that the bilateral ecosystem has faltered and warrants a major reassessment of relations. Under Netanyahu, Israel has reached the point at which its very value as an ally is being questioned. It took the US some time, but it finally seems to realise a simple fact: Israel may be an ally, but Netanyahu most certainly is not.
    Alon Pinkas served as Israel’s consul general in New York from 2000 to 2004. He is now a columnist for Haaretz
    Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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    Kamala Harris says Israel assault on Rafah ‘would be a huge mistake’

    Senior US Democrats on Sunday increased pressure on Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to abandon a planned offensive into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians are sheltering.Two days after a similar call by US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was rejected by the Israeli leader, vice-president Kamala Harris said that the Joe Biden White House was “ruling out nothing” in terms of consequences if Netanyahu moves ahead with the assault.Harris said that Washington had been “very clear in terms of our perspective on whether or not that should happen”.“Any major military operation in Rafah would be a huge mistake,” Harris said on ABC’s This Week. “I have studied the maps – there’s nowhere for those folks to go. And we’re looking at about a million and a half people in Rafah who are there because they were told to go there.”Harris declined to say if she, like Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, the most senior politician of the Jewish faith in the US, believed that Netanyahu is an obstacle to peace. But she said: “We’ve been very clear that far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.“We have been very clear that Israel and the Israeli people and Palestinians are entitled to an equal amount of security and dignity.”Her remarks came as political figure from progressive elements of the Democratic political established added their voices to the growing opposition to the humanitarian costs of Israel’s five-month military campaign on the Palestinian territory.That air and ground campaign began after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, killing more than 1,100 and taking hostage. The offensive has killed more than 30,000 people and pushed Gaza to the brink of famine.On Friday, New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused the Jewish state of committing “genocide” against the Palestinians and called on the US to suspend military aid to Israel.She went further Sunday, saying that Israel had “crossed the threshold of intent” in blocking humanitarian aid from reaching starving Gazans.“Multiple governments [and other entities] have stated themselves plainly that the Israeli government and leaders in the Israeli government are intentionally denying, blocking and slow-walking this aid and are precipitating a mass famine,” she told ABC News.“It is horrific. What we are seeing here, I think, with a forced famine, is beyond our ability to deny or explain away. There is no targeting of Hamas in precipitating a mass famine of a million people, half of whom are children.”Netanyahu responded to US pressure on Friday by issuing a statement saying that he told Blinken there was no way to defeat Hamas without going into Rafah.“And I told him that I hope we will do it with the support of the US, but if we have to – we will do it alone,” Netanyahu said.Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday dismissed Netanyahu’s position, saying: “The actions of Hamas do not justify forcing thousands, hundreds of thousands of people to eat grass as their bodies consume themselves.“We are talking about collective punishment, which is unjustifiable.”Separately on Sunday, senator Ralph Warnock of Georgia – a key Black Democrat in Biden’s political coalition for re-election – was asked by CBS’s Face the Nation why the humanitarian crisis in Gaza had become a key issue for African American voters amid a broader discussion around US values.“We in the African American community understand human struggle. We know it when we see it,” Warnock said. While the US cannot forget or turn away from the 7 October attack by Hamas, he said, “we cannot turn away from the scenes of awful suffering and human catastrophe in Gaza”.“For Mr Netanyahu to go into Rafah, where some 1.4 million Palestinians are now sheltering, would be morally unjustifiable,” Warnock added. “It would be unconscionable. And I hope that at the end of the day, cooler heads will prevail.”Asked if continuing to transfer military supplies to Israel was a sacrifice of US moral authority, Warnock instead acknowledged that “Israel lives in a dangerous neighborhood, and its enemies are more than just Hamas”.“But look, we can walk and chew gum at the same time,” Warnock said. “We can be consistent in our support of Israel’s right to defend itself – and at the same time, be true to American values, and engage this catastrophic humanitarian situation that’s on the ground.” More

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    Biden administration failures drove the fall of Kabul, say top former US generals

    The top two US generals who oversaw the evacuation of Afghanistan as it fell to the Taliban in August 2021 blamed the Biden administration for the chaotic departure, telling lawmakers on Tuesday that it inadequately planned for the evacuation and did not order it in time.The rare testimony by the two retired generals publicly exposed for the first time the strain and differences the military leaders had with the Biden administration in the final days of the war. Two of those key differences included that the military had advised that the US keep at least 2,500 service members in Afghanistan to maintain stability and a concern that the state department was not moving fast enough to get an evacuation started.The remarks contrasted with an internal White House review of the administration’s decisions which found that Joe Biden’s decisions had been “severely constrained” by previous withdrawal agreements negotiated by former president Donald Trump and blamed the military, saying top commanders said they had enough resources to handle the evacuation.Thirteen US service members were killed by a suicide bomber at the Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate in the final days of the war, as the Taliban took over Afghanistan.Thousands of panicked Afghans and US citizens desperately tried to get on US military flights that were airlifting people out. In the end, the military was able to rescue more than 130,000 civilians before the final US military aircraft departed.That chaos was the end result of the state department failing to call for an evacuation of US personnel until it was too late, both former joint chiefs chairman Gen Mark Milley and US central command retired Gen Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie told the House foreign affairs committee.“On 14 August the non-combatant evacuation operation decision was made by the Department of State and the US military alerted, marshalled, mobilized and rapidly deployed faster than any military in the world could ever do,” Milley said.But the state department’s decision came too late, Milley said.“The fundamental mistake, the fundamental flaw was the timing of the state department,” Milley said. “That was too slow and too late.”Evacuation orders must come from the state department, but in the weeks and months before Kabul fell to the Taliban, the Pentagon was pressing the state department for evacuation plans, and was concerned that the state department was not ready, McKenzie said.“We had forces in the region as early as 9 July, but we could do nothing,” McKenzie said, calling the state department’s timing “the fatal flaw that created what happened in August”.“I believe the events of mid and late August 2021 were the direct result of delaying the initiation of the [evacuation] for several months, in fact until we were in extremis and the Taliban had overrun the country,” McKenzie said.Milley was the nation’s top-ranking military officer at the time, and had urged the US president to keep a residual force of 2,500 forces there to give Afghanistan’s special forces enough back-up to keep the Taliban at bay and allow the US military to hold on to Bagram Air Base, which could have provided the military additional options to respond to Taliban attacks.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden did not approve the larger residual force, opting to keep a smaller force of 650 that would be limited to securing the US embassy. That smaller force was not adequate to keeping Bagram, which was quickly taken over by the Taliban.The Taliban have controlled Afghanistan since the US departure, resulting in many dramatic changes for the population, including the near-total loss of rights for women and girls.The White House’s 2023 internal review further appeared to shift any blame in the 26 August 2021 suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai international airport, saying it was the US military that made one possibly key decision.“To manage the potential threat of a terrorist attack, the president repeatedly asked whether the military required additional support to carry out their mission at HKIA,” the 2023 report said, adding: “Senior military officials confirmed that they had sufficient resources and authorities to mitigate threats.”A message left with the state department was not immediately returned on Tuesday. More

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    Arizona county fears ‘homelessness on steroids’ as migrant shelter funds end

    An Arizona migrant shelter that has housed thousands of asylum seekers plans to halt most operations in two weeks when funding from Washington runs out, a problem for towns along the border where officials fear a surge in homelessness and extra costs.Arizona’s Pima county, which borders Mexico, has said that at the end of the month its contracts must stop with Tucson’s Casa Alitas shelter and services that transport migrants north from the border cities of Nogales, Douglas and Lukeville.The Pima county administrator, Jan Lesher, said the county could not afford the roughly $1m a week that previously would have been covered by federal funds.The amount “is not something that can be easily absorbed into a Pima county budget”, she said.Funding predicaments similar to Pima county’s are playing out in other border regions and faraway cities like New York City, Chicago and Denver that have received migrants.As in Tucson, other local governments anticipate that without federal dollars, communities will face many more migrants living on their streets, greater demands on police, hospitals and sanitation services.Pima county, which since 2019 has received over 400,000 migrants who have been processed by USborder authorities, estimated 400 to 1,000 migrants with nowhere to stay could start arriving daily in Tucson beginning in April.Congress faces a Friday deadline to fund the US Department of Homeland Security, which pays for migrant services, along with other federal agencies. Current money could be temporarily extended as a stopgap measure to keep DHS and other federal agencies running.View image in fullscreenBut additional funding for the shelter and transportation services has been caught in broader political battles about illegal migration and government spending, and Congress is at an impasse, largely due to election-year politics.Immigration is among the top three concerns for voting-age Americans, and Arizona is an election battleground state that could help decide control of the White House and US Senate.President Joe Biden, a Democrat running against the Republican former president Donald Trump for re-election on 5 November, has tried to appeal simultaneously to the Democratic base in favor of protecting asylum seekers while also courting other voters who want to reduce the number of illegal crossings from Mexico.Biden has grappled with record numbers of such migrants since he took office in 2021.In recent months, Biden has toughened his stance, blaming Republicans for opposing additional border security funding and legislation that would grant him new enforcement authority.Republicans counter that Biden should reinstate restrictive Trump policies and end new legal entry programs before Congress devotes more money to border security.‘Homelessness on steroids’Casa Alitas started in 2014 as a church effort to help Central American migrants whom authorities dropped at Tucson’s bus station. By 2023 it had served over 180,000 asylum seekers, mostly families, who are legally entitled to stay in the US as they pursue their immigration cases.While some migrants come from Mexico, Guatemala and other Latin American countries, Casa Alitas has recently housed people from west Africa, India and elsewhere.At one of five Casa Alitas shelter sites last week, migrants rested on cots and received meals, clean clothes, toiletries and assistance planning onward travel.Sara Vásquez González, 45, came with her husband and three of her six children from Chiapas, Mexico, where cartel violence has driven Mexican families to flee to the US.As they ate breakfast sandwiches, Vasquez said criminals had shot at their house, forcing them to seek refuge in the US.View image in fullscreen“We lost our house, our corn, our harvest,” she said.Casa Alitas has already told two-thirds of its 60-person workforce that they will be dismissed due to lack of funding, according to Diego Lopez, the executive director.The shelter plans to reduce its capacity from 1,400 people a day to 140, a level that may not even be enough to house all incoming families with infants and toddlers, he said.In December, Pima county received 46,000 migrants – more than ever before, according to county figures. Numbers have been just below 30,000 a month in January and February.In a February memo to Pima officials, Lesher said migrants being released by border patrol without shelter services could result in “homelessness on steroids”.Tucson officials are considering setting up a migrant site with bathrooms but no sleeping accommodations. By giving migrants “some place where they can go”, the city hopes to avoid people living on the streets and resulting calls on police and emergency services, said a county spokesperson, Mark Evans.The Democratic Arizona governor, Katie Hobbs, last week sent a letter to top US lawmakers on funding committees saying her state needed at least $752m in shelter funds. In the meantime, Hobbs said in a press conference that her office was working to find ways to deal with the situation.‘Stopping the flow’In Congress, lawmakers representing the area are divided on the issue of shelter funding.Representative Raúl Grijalva, a Democrat who represents part of Pima county and more than 350 miles (563km) of the Mexico border, called for more federal funds and said Republicans were “continuing to exploit the humanitarian crisis for their political gain.”Representative Juan Ciscomani, a Republican whose district includes another part of Pima county, said in an interview that Biden should reinstate more restrictive Trump-era policies and increase deportations before Congress provides more money for migrant shelter and transportation.“We need to focus on what would actually solve the problem, which is stopping the flow at the border,” Ciscomani said. More

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    Biden says Schumer made ‘good speech’ in breaking with Benjamin Netanyahu

    Joe Biden on Friday said Senator Chuck Schumer made “a good speech” that reflected many Americans’ concerns when he publicly broke with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over his handling of the war in Gaza.While the US president announced no changes in his administration’s policy towards Israel, his views on the speech Schumer made Thursday from the floor of the US Senate, where the New York Democrat is the majority leader, could portend a broader shift in sentiment.Tensions have been rising between senior members of the Biden administration, including the president and the vice-president, Kamala Harris, and rightwinger Netanyahu, in the continued absence of a ceasefire deal.Schumer’s speech was a surprise to many and attracted criticism from US Republican lawmakers and Israel’s ruling party.“I’m not going to elaborate on the speech. He made a good speech,” Biden said at the start of an Oval Office meeting with Irish taoiseach Leo Varadkar , adding that he had been given advance notice of Schumer’s comments.“I think he expressed a serious concern shared not only by him, but by many Americans,” Biden said.Varadkar also addressed the conflict, saying: “We need a ceasefire as soon as possible to get food and medicine in, to get the hostages out. We need to talk about how we can make that happen and move towards a two-state solution.”Biden said he agreed with his comments.Hamas, the Islamist militancy that controls Gaza, launched a surprise attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing more than 1,200 people and taking around 240 hostages back into the Palestinian territory, where more than 100 are still being held. In response, Israel invaded and besieged Gaza and has so far killed at least 30,000 people in the coastal strip, and put some parts on the brink of famine, according to the United Nations.In a separate statement, the president marked the International Day to Combat Islamophobia by warning that prejudice against Muslims has seen an “ugly resurgence … in the wake of the devastating war in Gaza”.“That includes right here at home. I’ve said it many times: Islamophobia has no place in our nation,” Biden said.The US government has publicly supported Israel since the October attack. But on Thursday, Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the US, called for new elections in the country, saying Netanyahu had “lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel”.View image in fullscreenSchumer said Netanyahu, who has long opposed Palestinian statehood, was among several roadblocks to implementing the two-state solution supported by the United States, where Israel and a Palestinian state would exist in peace. He also blamed rightwing Israelis, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas.“These are the four obstacles to peace, and if we fail to overcome them, then Israel and the West Bank and Gaza will be trapped in the same violent state of affairs they’ve experienced for the last 75 years,” Schumer said.The Senate leader accused the prime minister of being “too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows. Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah.”The ruling Likud party responded to Schumer by defending the prime minister’s public support in the country and saying Israel was “not a banana republic”.“Contrary to Schumer’s words, the Israeli public supports a total victory over Hamas, rejects any international dictates to establish a Palestinian terrorist state, and opposes the return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza,” it said in a statement.The Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, struck a similar tone. “Israel is not a colony of America whose leaders serve at the pleasure of the party in power in Washington. Only Israel’s citizens should have a say in who runs their government,” he said from the chamber’s floor, shortly after Schumer spoke.Congress is in the midst of a months-long deadlock over passing legislation to authorize military assistance for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. The bill has the support of Biden and passed the Democratic-led Senate, but the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has so far refused to put it to a vote in the Republican-controlled chamber.Retired Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas told the New York Times it was significant that such a high-ranking US Jewish official would publicly take Netanyahu to task.“For a Jewish senator from New York, the majority leader, a friend of Netanyahu who’s the most centrist possible Democrat and even leans hawkish on Israel, to voice criticism like this?” Pinkas told the New York Times. “If you’ve lost Chuck Schumer, you’ve lost America.”View image in fullscreenThe US sees Israel as its closest ally in the Middle East, and is a major supplier of its weapons. But concern has risen among Democrats over the death toll in Gaza.Biden’s support for Israel has caused a domestic split, with pro-Palestine protesters disrupting his speeches and tens of thousands of people casting protest votes in the Democratic primaries, including in swing states that will be crucial to his re-election chances in November. Last week, Biden was overheard saying he needs to have a “come to Jesus meeting” with the Israeli prime minister as relations fray.Netanyahu appears ready to press on with a fresh military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, though Biden has warned against doing so without a “credible” safety plan for the 1.3 million people sheltering there.On Friday, the Times of Israel reported that the prime minister rejected as “ridiculous” a Hamas proposal for a ceasefire and release of hostages in exchange for Israel freeing between 700 and 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. Israel nevertheless said it would send a delegation to Qatar for more talks. 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    Biden’s ‘bear-hugging’ of Netanyahu a strategic mistake, key Democrat says

    Joe Biden has committed a “strategic mistake” by “bear-hugging” the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as he prosecutes war with Hamas, a leading congressional progressive Democrat and Biden campaign surrogate said.“The bear-hugging of Netanyahu has been a strategic mistake,” Ro Khanna said, accusing the Israeli leader of conducting “a callous war” in Gaza, in defiance of the United States.Speaking to One Decision, a podcast co-hosted by Sir Richard Dearlove, a former British intelligence chief, Khanna, from California, also called Netanyahu “insufferably arrogant”, for acting as if he is “somehow an equal” to Biden.But his comments about Biden’s mistakes may land with a thud at the White House.Liz Landers, a One Decision guest host, asked Khanna about a recent trip to Michigan to meet leaders of the state’s large Arab American community.“What did they tell you about the Biden administration’s policy with Israel?” Landers asked.“They were opposed,” Khanna said, adding: “I’ve been a longtime supporter of the US-Israel relationship. I’ve been in Congress eight years and my record reflects that I unequivocally condemned the brutal Hamas attack [on Israel] on 7 October, the rapes, the murders. I’ve called Hamas a terrorist organisation, which obviously they are.“They committed a terrorist act on 7 October, but the bear-hugging of Netanyahu has been a strategic mistake. Netanyahu has conducted a callous war in defiance of the United States.“I did not support a ceasefire for the first six weeks. I thought [Israel] would go and get the people responsible [for the 7 October attacks]. But they started bombing refugee camps, bombing hospitals, defying the United States and not letting aid in.”Biden, Khanna said, needed to set out “clear consequences for Netanyahu” if Israel does not change course.“He needs to say, ‘I’m for Israel, but I’m not for this extreme rightwing government.’ And that means if [Netanyahu] defies the United States, not allowing aid, or going into Rafah” – which Biden has said must not happen but Netanyahu has said will – “[then] no more weapons transfers … unconditionally.“It means not protecting [Netanyahu] from the entire international community at the United Nations, it means recognising a Palestinian state. And those are the things I think some of the Arab American community want.”Asked about a looming clash over Rafah, Khanna highlighted Netanyahu’s behaviour, refusing to heed Biden’s warning that the attack would represent a “red line”.“What I disagree with and sort of the media narrative on this [is that] Netanyahu and Biden, somehow they’re equals,” Khanna said.“They’re not. We’re the greatest superpower in the world. We’re giving Netanyahu weapons. He needs to be deferential with respect to the American president, whoever that is. And I find it insufferably arrogant for him to act as if he’s somehow an equal to the American president. And that’s just going to rub people the wrong way.“So if he defies the American secretary of defense, the American president, then we should stop the arms shipments now. We can stop the offensive arms shipments … I voted for defensive funding and we need to continue to protect Israel against an invasion from Hezbollah or Iran. But we certainly shouldn’t be giving Netanyahu the offensive weapons to go kill more people in Gaza when he’s acting in defiance to the president of the United States.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“You can act as an equal if you’re not begging for weapons at the same time.”Biden’s Israel policy has also had an effect in domestic politics, protest votes in Democratic primaries sounding a warning for the presidential election to come. Landers asked Khanna if Biden could lose his re-election fight against Donald Trump because of such protests as seen in Michigan, where about 100,000 voted “uncommitted”.Khanna said: “I think the president’s gonna win. I mean, he won Michigan [by] almost 150,000 votes.”But he said anger with Biden was spreading “probably beyond the Muslim or Arab American community. It’s more young people, voters of colour, the broader Democratic coalition.“And I think if this war continues, particularly if it’s continuing when we head to the Democratic convention in Chicago, then it creates a problem for us with the coalition that Barack Obama built, which was young people, progressives, voters of colour, that really turned out.”Khanna said there was potential for the convention, in mid-August, to generate unwelcome echoes of chaos in Chicago in 1968, the year of an election won by the Republican Richard Nixon amid protests against the Vietnam war.“I still believe the president will win, but this should be a warning sign that there are large parts of our base that are unhappy,” Khanna said.“My hope is that the president, I believe, has changed tone and changed course. He’s now using the word ‘ceasefire’. He’s saying that weapons will not be indefinitely transferred to Netanyahu. So my hope is this pressure is going to work on getting a ceasefire and release of the hostages” held by Hamas. More

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    White House announces $300m stopgap military aid package for Ukraine

    The Pentagon will rush about $300m in weapons to Ukraine after finding some cost savings in its contracts, even though the military remains deeply overdrawn and needs at least $10bn to replenish all the weapons it has pulled from its stocks to help Kyiv in its desperate fight against Russia, the White House announced on Tuesday. It’s the Pentagon’s first announced security package for Ukraine since December, when it acknowledged it was out of replenishment funds. It wasn’t until recent days that officials publicly acknowledged they weren’t just out of replenishment funds, but $10bn overdrawn. The announcement comes as Ukraine is running dangerously low on munitions and efforts to get fresh funds for weapons have stalled in the House because of Republican opposition. US officials have insisted for months that the United States wouldn’t be able to resume weapons deliveries until Congress provided the additional replenishment funds, which are part of the stalled supplemental spending bill.The replenishment funds have allowed the Pentagon to pull existing munitions, air defense systems and other weapons from its reserve inventories under presidential drawdown authority, or PDA, to send to Ukraine and then put contracts on order to replace those weapons, which are needed to maintain US military readiness.“When Russian troops advance and its guns fire, Ukraine does not have enough ammunition to fire back,” said the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, in announcing the $300m in additional aid.The Pentagon also has had a separate Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, or USAI, which has allowed it to fund longer-term contracts with industry to produce new weapons for Ukraine.Senior defense officials who briefed reporters said the Pentagon was able to get cost savings in some of those longer-term contracts of roughly $300m and, given the battlefield situation, decided to use those savings to go ahead and send more weapons. The officials said the cost savings basically offset the new package and keep the replenishment spending underwater at $10bn.One of the officials said the package represented a “one-time shot” – unless Congress passes the supplemental spending bill, which includes roughly $60bn in military aid for Ukraine, or more cost savings are found. It is expected to include anti-aircraft missiles, artillery rounds and armor systems, the official said.The aid announcement comes as Polish leaders are in Washington to press the US to break its impasse over replenishing funds for Ukraine at a critical moment in the war. The Polish president, Andrzej Duda, met on Tuesday with Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate and was to meet with President Joe Biden later in the day.The House speaker, Mike Johnson, has so far refused to bring the $95bn package, which includes aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, to the floor. Seeking to put pressure on the Republican speaker, House Democrats have launched a long-shot effort to force a vote through a discharge petition. The seldom-successful procedure would require support from a majority of lawmakers, or 218 members, to move the aid package to a vote.Ukraine’s situation has become more dire, with units on the front line rationing munitions as they face a vastly better supplied Russian force. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has repeatedly implored Congress for help, but House Republican leadership has not been willing to bring the Ukraine aid package to the floor for a vote, saying any aid must first address border security needs.Pentagon officials said on Monday during budget briefing talks they were counting on the supplemental to cover the $10bn replenishment hole. This is the second time in less than nine months that the Pentagon has “found” money to use for additional weapons shipments to Ukraine. Last June, defense officials said they had overestimated the value of the weapons the US had sent to Ukraine by $6.2bn over the past two years.The United States has committed more than $44.9bn in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration, including more than $44.2bn since the beginning of Russia’s invasion on 24 February 2022. More