Dozens of Palestinian civilians were killed and hundreds more injured on Sunday in a blaze caused by an Israeli airstrike on a Rafah tent camp full of displaced people. The massacre has been widely condemned:
Several countries and global organisations have condemned the Israeli air attack on tents housing displaced people in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah that killed at least 40 Palestinians, including many children.
The Biden administration finally released their report on Israeli compliance with international humanitarian law on Friday. Predictably, the administration ignored the mountain of evidence showing Israeli violations of international law in their conduct of the war and their ongoing efforts to impede the delivery of humanitarian aid. Akbar Shahid Ahmed reported:
President Joe Biden’s administration on Friday concluded its assessment of whether Israel is breaking international and American laws in its U.S.-backed military campaign in Gaza and did not conclude that Israel’s conduct requires Washington to cut off aid for the offensive, according to a copy of the assessment reviewed by HuffPost.
Garry Kasparov calls for more regime changes in The Wall Street Journal:
A war can’t be won by following the rules set in peacetime. The only way to win this long war is through regime change in Moscow and Tehran. Such change will be brought closer by isolating Russia and Iran politically and economically and by halting their foreign aggression.
Kasparov’s argument is deranged, but it is useful in reminding us how extreme and dangerous this worldview is. If hardliners like Kasparov had their way, they would unleash chaos and instability unlike anything most of us have seen in our lifetimes. The same people that want to set the world on fire are constantly warning us that if we don’t do what they want that we face “a global catastrophe the likes of which we have never seen,” but it is clear that they are the ones demanding that the U.S. initiate such a catastrophe with overly aggressive policies.
The head of the World Food Program, Cindy McCain, acknowledged the famine in Gaza in an interview on Meet the Press:
“What I can explain to you is – is that there is famine – full-blown famine – in the north, and it’s moving its way south,” she said.
McCain called for a ceasefire to allow for humanitarian relief to reach the population. That is what humanitarian agencies have been demanding for the last six months to no avail. All of them could see what would happen to the people of Gaza if the war was allowed to continue, and they have been shouting from the rooftops that famine was coming. This famine was the most readily foreseen and most easily prevented famine in decades, and that makes the shame of failing to stop it all the greater. The international response to these warnings has been pitiful, and the response from our government has been downright criminal.
Tom Friedman just can’t stop shilling for Mohammed bin Salman:
The crown prince wants as peaceful a region as possible, and a Saudi Arabia as secure from Iran as possible, so he can focus on making Saudi Arabia a diversified economic powerhouse.
Continue reading “Tom Friedman Writes Another Love Letter to Mr. Bonesaw”
The Guardian reports that the Saudis are looking to make a separate deal with the U.S. in which Washington gives them everything they want in exchange for nothing:
All three parts of the draft deal involve the US giving vital strategic assistance to Saudi security. In place of progress towards Israeli-Palestinian peace, the Saudi monarchy is presenting a purely bilateral deal as a US win in its efforts to contain Iranian expansionism and in Washington’s “great-power competition”, particularly with China.
This “less for less” agreement is no better for the U.S. than one that also involves Israel. In both arrangements, the U.S. is expected to hand out major favors and commitments and gets nothing for its trouble except extra burdens in the future. The Saudis don’t want the free giveaway to be put at risk by tying it to an agreement with Israel, and they are naturally still happy to accept the bribe that Biden was going to give them for normalization. It is clearly a bad, one-sided deal that creates new obligations for the U.S. that we can’t afford.
Read the rest of the article at Eunomia
Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.
