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I’m writing to you as a J Street advocacy leader to share important updates from the region as well as J Street’s statements and resources from this past week. As a reminder, you can always find our most recent statements here, and I invite you to reach out to your J Street Public Affairs staff with any questions.
All the best,
Lily
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Lily Adelstein
She/Her
Deputy Director of Government Affairs, J Street
Cell: 202-699-2701
J Street’s Congressional Resource Page
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This week on j street
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ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH, AND THE POTENTIAL FOR FULL-SCALE WAR
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What we’re reading
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Blinken reiterates push for ceasefire as road to diplomacy in northern Israel
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| Secretary of State Antony Blinken repeated calls for diplomacy between Israel and Hezbollah during a White House press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday as the United States continues attempting to tamp down Israeli desire to attack Hezbollah. Sixty-two percent of Jewish Israelis support an attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon with “full force,” a Jewish People Policy Institute survey released Monday revealed, with 36% of those responded supporting an immediate attack. However, Blinken said he doesn’t believe Israel or Hezbollah wants to see the conflict spread. |
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White House cancels meeting, scolds Netanyahu in protest over video
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| The White House canceled a high-level U.S.-Israel meeting on Iran that was scheduled for Thursday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a video on Tuesday claiming the U.S. was withholding military aid, two U.S. officials tell Axios… President Biden’s top advisers were enraged by the video — a message U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein delivered personally to Netanyahu in a meeting hours after it was published, two U.S. and Israeli sources say. Then the White House decided to go a step farther by canceling Thursday’s meeting. “This decision makes it clear that there are consequences for pulling such stunts,” a U.S. official said. “The Americans are fuming. Bibi’s video made a lot of damage,” a senior Israeli official said, using a nickname for Netanyahu. |
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Netanyahu Dissolves War Cabinet After 2 Members Quit
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| The two members, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, quit Mr. Netanyahu’s small war cabinet last week amid disagreements over the direction of the war in Gaza. The men, both former military chiefs, had been seen as voices of moderation in the body, which was formed in October after the Hamas-led assault on Israel and made many decisions about the conflict. The Israeli official suggested that Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to disband the body — which was communicated to ministers at a wider cabinet meeting on Sunday — was largely symbolic given that Mr. Gantz and Mr. Eisenkot had already resigned. |
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Netanyahu’s Growing Rift With Israel’s Military Raises Questions About Gaza War’s Future
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| Growing divisions between Israel’s military commanders and the civilian government over the war in Gaza spilled into the open this week, raising questions about how Israel will conduct the next phase of the war…[T]he sharpest and most public break came on Wednesday, with unusually blunt comments from the armed forces’ chief spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, reflecting fears among military leaders that the government’s failure to articulate a vision for a postwar Gaza could squander the gains made against Hamas. “If we do not bring something else to Gaza, at the end of the day, we will get Hamas,” he said in an interview with Israel’s Channel 13. “Who is that someone else, what is that thing?” he asked. “The political leadership will decide. But in order to reach a situation in which we really weaken Hamas, that is the path.” |
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Anarchy Hinders Gaza Aid Efforts, Despite Daily Combat Pause
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| Days after the pause took hold, over 1,000 truckloads of supplies remained stranded in Gaza near the Kerem Shalom border crossing with Israel, with thousands of tons of food, medicine and other goods mere miles from Palestinians who need them, aid groups and Israeli officials say. The threat of looting and attacks by armed gangs have forced relief groups to stop delivering assistance in southern Gaza. Trucks using supply routes have been riddled with bullet holes. Businesspeople sending commercial goods into the territory and aid agencies have decided they cannot risk employees’ lives on the drive. As a result, the Israeli military’s decision to pause fighting for hours each day along the aid route has so far produced scant humanitarian benefit. |
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‘We cannot look away,’ Kamala Harris says after White House screening of Sheryl Sandberg documentary on Oct. 7 sexual violence
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| “We cannot look away and we will not be silent,” Harris said ahead of the screening, to a room packed with representatives of women’s and human rights groups. “My heart breaks for all these survivors and their families and for all the pain and suffering from the past eight months in Israel and in Gaza.” Sandberg, the former chief operating officer of social media giant Meta, produced the film to counter denialism of sexual violence that took place on Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists massacred more than 1,200 people in Israel, and the sexual assault endured by some of the hostages Hamas terrorists abducted that day. “Some pretty mainstream people are either ignoring or worse denying this happened,” Sandberg told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency after the screening. “So this aspect I think, gets to the heart of what people need to believe to understand what happened and what this kind of terror really is.” |
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Israeli Official Describes Secret Government Bid to Cement Control of West Bank
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| An influential member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition told settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank that the government is engaged in a stealthy effort to irreversibly change the way the territory is governed, to cement Israel’s control over it without being accused of formally annexing it. In a taped recording of the speech, the official, Bezalel Smotrich, can be heard suggesting at a private event earlier this month that the goal was to prevent the West Bank from becoming part of a Palestinian state. |
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