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Kathianne
05-10-2024, 12:48 PM
You're always there when needed:

https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2024/05/10/thanks-biden-hamas-now-refuses-to-budge-on-hostage-talks-n3788138


Thanks, Biden: Hamas Now Refuses to Budge on Hostage TalksED MORRISSEY 10:00 AM | May 10, 2024



AP Photo/Alex Brandon
Incentives: How do they work again? Perhaps someone needs to explain that concept to the White House.


Republicans and no small number of Democrats (more on that in a moment) warned that Joe Biden's suspension of arms shipments to Israel would take pressure off Hamas in negotiations. It didn't take long before Hamas proved Biden's critics correct in an utterly predictable manner:


Indirect talks between Israel and Hamas over a deal to halt fighting in the Gaza Strip and free hostages kidnapped on October 7 appeared to break up with no discernable progress, as the terror group said it had no intention of budging from a proposal already rejected by Israel. ...


In a message to other Palestinian factions published by the group’s al-Aqsa TV mouthpiece Friday, Hamas said talks had ended after Israel “rejected the proposal submitted by the mediators and raised objections to it.”


It said Hamas had decided to stick to the terms of the proposal it agreed to Monday, rejecting the possibility of making any concessions.


“The ball is now completely in the hands of the occupation,” the statement read.


In fairness, why would Hamas budge from its current maximalist position? Israel's closest ally is publicly blaming PM Benjamin Netanyahu for the war that Hamas started. US negotiators have piled pressure on Israel to make more and more concessions, all without bothering to even scold Hamas over the American hostages it holds. Key Democrat leaders in the US have called for Netanyahu to resign to find more compliant politicians in Israel to help Hamas get what it wants out of the talks, and Biden publicly agreed with them.


And now Biden has begun cutting off arms shipments to force Israel to allow Hamas to survive in Rafah.


Could Hamas have better representation than Joe Biden?


Biden's absolutely craven betrayal has also managed to do something that looked impossible while Donald Trump remains the GOP nominee -- split the Democrat Party. Jewish Insider reports that the "center-Left" has broken with Biden on Israel, with a number of them going public in doing so:


“We need to provide Israel with the unconditional security assistance it needs to defend itself and that demonstrates our unwavering support, particularly as Iran and its proxies escalate their attacks,” Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) told Jewish Insider. “The administration should not do anything that undermines Israel’s ability to defeat Hamas and address mounting threats across the region.”


Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said he wants to see U.S. support for Israel continue.


“I don’t know what the president meant. I haven’t seen what the actual operation in Rafah is, but I certainly hope that we’ll continue to provide support militarily and diplomatically that Israel needs to defend itself,” he said.


Asked if he thinks the announcement will empower Hamas in negotiations, he said, “I am worried about any appearance of division between the United States and Israel. The bond should be unquestionable and unbreakable.”


If Blumenthal wasn't worried about empowering Hamas in negotiations yesterday, he certainly has reason to worry about it today. And it's not just the arms-suspension decision that has Democrats distancing themselves from Biden either. His plan to relocate Gazan refugees in the US is running into considerable opposition from his own caucuses in Congress, and may well impact how many of them will come back next year to Capitol Hill.


For instance, Sen. Bob Casey faces a tough re-election in Pennsylvania, where Biden reportedly plans to house those refugees. When asked about it yesterday, Casey clammed up:




Perhaps even more concerning to the White House -- if Biden et al were inclined toward self-reflection at all -- was a speech from Chris Coons in the Senate yesterday. Jewish Insider also includes that in the same report as evidence of a real fracture even among Biden's closest supporters. Coons declared that Israel and Netanyahu had an obligation to destroy Hamas in Rafah, while still finding ways to relocate civilians that had sought refuge from earlier phases of the war:




The reaction from the White House highlights their utter strategic and tactical incoherence. After insisting for months that Israel had to somehow prove to them that the IDF had plans to get civilians out of the way in Rafah, and after Israel and Egypt built large-scale refugee camps near Khan Younis to accommodate them, the Biden administration announced that they would oppose any kind of operation in Rafah, period:


Administration officials said on Thursday that the U.S. does not support any operation in Rafah, with or without civilian evacuation procedures, which Israel has already begun. They also said that the administration believes that Israel’s efforts to defeat Hamas have already “largely succeeded.”


Oh, really? If so, have the remaining hostages been "largely returned"? Have the Gazans "largely surrendered"?


Or is this administration "largely staffed with idiots"?


Coons, Rosen, Blumenthal, and other Democrats (including John Fetterman) see the political and strategic situation much more clearly than Biden and his team, both in Gaza and here at home. After seven months of this war, the American public remains overwhelmingly in support of Israel and against any agreement with Hamas that doesn't include the return of all hostages up front. Biden's policy decisions cut directly against that consensus among American voters and makes Democrats look like they've been captured by a bunch of pro-Hamas campus radicals. Scratch that -- it doesn't make Democrats look that way, it demonstrates the extent to which their party has been captured by the anti-Semitic radical Left.


Biden isn't just engineering a split between Israel and the US -- he's splitting his party at the same time. And he's doing all this just to win a handful of votes in Dearborn.

Kathianne
05-10-2024, 03:28 PM
Continuing:

https://nypost.com/2024/05/10/us-news/more-than-two-dozen-house-democrats-blast-biden-holding-back-israel-military-aid-say-it-emboldens-hamas/


More than two dozen House Democrats blast Biden holding back Israel military aid, say it ‘emboldens’ Hamas terroristsBy Social Links forJosh Christenson
Published May 10, 2024, 11:58 a.m. ET
More than two dozen House Democrats led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer told national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Friday they were “deeply concerned” about President Biden’s decision to withhold military aid from Israel.


Gottheimer (D-NJ) and 25 of his fellow lawmakers wrote in a letter to Sullivan obtained by The Post that “withholding weapons shipments to Israel … only emboldens our mutual enemies, including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other Iranian-backed proxies.”


“Seven months after October 7, the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the end of the Holocaust, Iranian-backed terrorist proxies continue to fire rockets and mortars into Israel and at Americans from all directions,” they wrote. “At the same time, antisemitism is spreading globally like wildfire.”


Congressman Josh Gottheimer with Congresswoman Kathy Manning speaks at a press conference regarding recent anti-semitism directed towards jewish students studying at Columbia University in New York on Monday, April 22, 2024.


Twenty-six House Democrats led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer told national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Friday they were “deeply concerned” about President Biden’s decision to withhold military aid from Israel.
AP
Biden, 81, announced Wednesday he would not supply arms to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war effort if his military forces moved forward with an invasion of Rafah, the last stronghold of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.








“I made clear that if they go into Rafah — they haven’t gotten into Rafah yet — if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, to deal with that problem,” he told CNN’s Erin Burnett.

Gunny
05-10-2024, 04:27 PM
Continuing:

https://nypost.com/2024/05/10/us-news/more-than-two-dozen-house-democrats-blast-biden-holding-back-israel-military-aid-say-it-emboldens-hamas/Biden is by the numbers stupid. He has been incompetent and anti-US from the get go, but his sliding further down in the polls has made him desperate. Upping the ante on his anti-US, trying to cater to a base of malcontents and morons that can be satisfied about as well as Hamas.

For him to be so against MTG, he sure is caught up in her playbook:rolleyes:

Kathianne
05-10-2024, 04:44 PM
More Thanks To Joe!

https://hotair.com/david-strom/2024/05/10/al-qaeda-rebuilding-in-afghanistan-n3788146


Al Qaeda Rebuilding in AfghanistanDAVID STROM 5:20 PM | May 10, 2024



AP Photo/Khwaja Tawfiq Sediqi
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, reports to Congress 4 times a year about how things are going in Afghanistan.


The answer is not well. Not well at all.


SIGAR is a relic of the Afghan war, and I was not aware it was still a thing, although I am glad it is. Given the hundreds of billions of dollars we poured into that country, somebody with a conscience should be rooting out all the corruption and incompetent actions that took place and keep tabs on what our blood and treasure bought.




Apparently what it bought was a reconstitution of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, along with some other terror groups thrown in to spice things up.


Al Qaeda Deepens Presence in Afghanistan


Al Qaeda remained weakened yet maintained safe haven in Afghanistan, according to General Kurilla.183 A UN sanctions monitoring team reported there are around a dozen senior al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan.184 The ODNI 2024 Annual Threat Assessment said, “While [al Qaeda] has reached an operational nadir in Afghanistan and Pakistan...regional affiliates will continue to expand.”185


UN Assesses al Qaeda Operations


Despite its weakened operational state, al Qaeda’s general command increased its volume of media products aimed to expand recruitment, demonstrate adaptability, and “restore credibility,” according to a January UN sanctions monitoring team report. This heightened the UN’s concern that “the renewed narrative could inspire self-initiated attacks globally.”186 However, the sanctions team added, al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan are unable to “provide strategic direction to the broader organization,” and “cannot at present project sophisticated attacks at long range.”187 The UN sanctions team identified up to eight new al Qaeda training camps, one stockpile weapons base, and five madrassas this quarter with help from al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent. The UN also said that al Qaeda continued to support other violent extremist organizations in Afghanistan, including TTP, with cross-border attacks and weapons.188


Taliban Support for al Qaeda


Taliban efforts to restrict some al Qaeda activities reportedly strained their relationship, according to the UN, but the two groups remain close.189This quarter, the Taliban general directorate of intelligence assigned al Qaeda members to various ministry and military positions in eastern Afghanistan.190 The Taliban also announced that they dissolved several sui- cide battalions and incorporated them in the army’s special forces. These battalions were reportedly established by the Taliban deputy director of intelligence and an al Qaeda affiliate.191


In a SIGAR-commissioned informal security assessment, almost all participants said that al Qaeda did not play a role in their province. One par- ticipant in Mazar-e Sharif said, “They are not as strong as they were in the past...Now, they carry out their activities under the Taliban’s role.” Another participant in Badakhshan said they heard al Qaeda was active in Kandahar, Khost, and Helmand Provinces.192 However, the 12 participants from these three provinces said they had not heard of al Qaeda activities in their prov- inces, with one in Khost Province saying, “We don’t know if the definition of al Qaeda has changed or if it is not the old al Qaeda.”193


The US still provides some aid to Afghanistan, and I don't know enough to assess how effective it is or whether it makes sense to continue it.


The idea is to influence the Taliban to be less repressive, and much of it is aimed at helping women and girls. It's hard to argue that this isn't a very good thing, assuming it accomplishes that goal. I have my doubts, both because the Taliban are not exactly the warm and fuzzy male feminist types, but also because the country is notoriously corrupt.


Some of the programs, such as funding scholarships for women to study STEM fields, sound nice but are unlikely to accomplish much. The market for female physicists and engineers in Afghanistan is hardly likely to be large or become so anytime soon.


Perhaps I am wrong about that, but I don't think so. The Taliban are kicking girls out of schools, not sending them to Oxford.


Al Qaeda is a shadow of what it once was, but its ideology lives on and the US has created the conditions for it to rise from the ashes. Biden promised that the US could conduct "over the horizon" strikes, eliminating the necessity of a troop presence in the country.


It sounds good and all, but as with so many things, Joe Biden's promises don't match his policies. We know where these camps are and do nothing about them.


Biden likes to follow a policy of harming our friends and helping our enemies. He sends money to Iran as it strikes Americans, conducts proxy wars against our allies, and continues its work to build nuclear weapons. All while abandoning Israel and pissing off the Saudis.


If Biden were a foreign asset he couldn't do worse to America than he has. And the rest of the world too.

Gunny
05-10-2024, 04:50 PM
More Thanks To Joe!

https://hotair.com/david-strom/2024/05/10/al-qaeda-rebuilding-in-afghanistan-n3788146If you're going this route, we need to get you some MSM access :)

Kathianne
05-10-2024, 04:54 PM
If you're going this route, we need to get you some MSM access :)

One more, sort of fits with my 'not voting Trump' post:

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2024/05/10/dem-megadonor-warning-and-a-bunch-of-other-reports-spell-big-trouble-for-biden-n2174013


Dem Megadonor Warning and a Bunch of Other Reports Including From Elon Musk Spell Big Trouble for BidenBy Nick Arama | 1:00 PM on May 10, 2024The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.



AP Photo/Adam Bettcher
We've been writing about Joe Biden making ugly moves, like withholding arms from Israel if they go into Rafah, apparently to appeal to the left when it comes to the Israel-Hamas war.


But what Biden doesn't seem to factor into the equation in addition to the fact that his appeasement action may not work with the left is that he's turning off people — perhaps far more people — with his actions that help the terrorists who also attacked and are holding Americans.


Even some of the Never Trump folks were now jumping the fence away from Biden, with some movement toward Trump.


READ MORE: Are Never Trumpers Abandoning Biden and Moving Toward ... Trump?


But there's more, and it gets even broader.


Our sister site Townhall noted this big warning from Haim Saban, a big Democratic megadonor, to the Biden powers behind the scenes, Steve Ricchetti & Anita Dunn.




"Let's not forget there are more Jewish voters who care about Israel than Muslim voters who care about Hamas," Saban said, saying this sends a terrible message to allies and shows Biden will flip to political pressure. "Bad..Bad..Bad decision, on all levels. Please reconsider."


There was also more anecdotal support for this from a variety of reports that our sister site, PJ Media, found.






The Daily Wire's Kassy Akiva then amended her assessment that three out of five would be voting for Trump, noting she would be voting for Trump and the last of the five she thought the last person would finally see the light as well.


Dr. Eli David recounted the story of an "extreme Trump-hater" who had flipped and now said he was even going to "buy the red hat and the gold sneakers."




They're seeing how bad Biden is when he caves to the far left and the terrorists. That's ultimately what happens when people compare what the left says about Trump versus the reality of Biden's awful actions. Suddenly, that blows up all the liberal media fictions they may have heard.


Elon Musk responded to Dr. Eli David's tweet and said he also knew people who were flipping.




While this is anecdotal and yes, it's hard to assess how many people this would add up to, one has to think that with the folks that these people are talking about, there are more who feel the same way.


Given that Biden doesn't have any wiggle room left and he can't afford to lose any support, one has to think that this is going to hurt.

Gunny
05-10-2024, 04:59 PM
One more, sort of fits with my 'not voting Trump' post:

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2024/05/10/dem-megadonor-warning-and-a-bunch-of-other-reports-spell-big-trouble-for-biden-n2174013Agree with that. I was winding myself up to either leave President blank, or vote for some 3rd party outcast but Biden is appealing to my get rid of Biden as the priority red flag...

Kathianne
05-10-2024, 05:07 PM
Agree with that. I was winding myself up to either leave President blank, or vote for some 3rd party outcast but Biden is appealing to my get rid of Biden as the priority red flag...

I was never going to vote for Biden, but the dems are pushing me towards Trump. Again. Damn.