J Street Deeply Frustrated by the Biden Administration’s Failure to Enforce US Law Over Netanyahu’s Aid Obstruction, J Street
J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami said, “President Biden should not end his term by bending US law to allow Netanyahu’s far-right government to withhold aid from starving families, opening the door to further violations under Trump. He has the chance to give force and meaning to his stated empathy for the Palestinian people and to strengthen US legal safeguards before Trump takes office.”
West Bank Annexation in 2025? Trump’s Mideast Team Has Israeli Right Exulting., The New York Times
“If, with Mr. Trump’s assent, the Israeli right makes good on threats to annex large parts of the West Bank, to return settlers to Gaza and to begin to evict Palestinians, American and Israeli Jews could be driven apart irrevocably,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of the liberal Zionist group J Street.
US Takes No Action as Deadline Passes for Israel to Meet Gaza’s Humanitarian Needs, Jewish Telegraphic Agency
J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy lobby, urged Biden to implement the sanctions outlined in the Austin-Blinken letter. “The time for action and enforcement of American law is long past,” its president Jeremy Ben-Ami said in a statement. “The law is clear: American arms should not be provided to countries that block humanitarian assistance. The White House should not give any country — even its closest friends — a pass. This can’t be delayed anymore.”
Biden’s Two-Month Window of Opportunity, The Times of Israel
J Street Israel Director Nadav Tamir writes, “Ironically, Trump’s desire to end the fighting on both fronts before he takes office, and the powerful leverage he has over Netanyahu, could prompt him to implement the Biden Doctrine, which the incumbent president failed to do despite intense and tireless efforts.”
J Street Vehemently Opposes Nomination of Mike Huckabee as US Ambassador to Israel, J Street
His public support for annexation and complete denial of the Palestinian right of self-determination – including making the deeply bigoted claim that the Palestinian people don’t even exist and calling a future Palestinian state a “fantasy” – is profoundly out of touch with the views and values of the overwhelming majority of Jewish Americans and all Americans.
What ‘Lame Duck’ Biden Can Do to Stop the Gaza War, Haaretz
Dahlia Scheindlin writes, “If Biden wants to assert a coherent Democratic alternative, he needs to admit that bear hugs and bribery have not worked. What’s left is to constrain Israel’s capacity. A Democratic policy should anchor a cease-fire in Gaza to a long-term end of the occupation as a whole – this is not a punishment, but a service to Palestinians and Israelis alike.”
Aid Deliveries to Gaza Remain Low Despite U.S. Warning to Israel, The New York Times
More trucks began to enter Gaza in the past several weeks, and in the days before the American deadline, Israel announced a handful of policy changes. But the total amount of aid and commercial goods into Gaza since Oct. 13 has been substantially lower than what the Biden administration had demanded, and far lower than it was even in September.
Israel Prepares Lebanon Cease-Fire Plan As ‘Gift’ to Trump, Officials Say, The Washington Post
A close aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Donald Trump and Jared Kushner this week that Israel is rushing to advance a cease-fire deal in Lebanon, according to three current and former Israeli officials briefed on the meeting, with the aim of delivering an early foreign policy win to the president-elect.
Israel Keeps Up Strikes Near Beirut After 6 Soldiers Are Killed in Lebanon, The New York Times
The Israeli military issued new evacuation warnings on Thursday for four neighborhoods in the Dahiya, a densely populated area near Beirut that has been a frequent target of its airstrikes, a day after it said six Israeli soldiers had been killed in combat in southern Lebanon.
Matt Gaetz, Trump’s AG Nominee, Has a History of Clashes With U.S. Jewish Establishment Over Antisemitism, Haaretz
The Florida congressman — who himself is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for sexual misconduct — has often found himself on the wrong side of controversies with the American-Jewish community, often citing antisemitic tropes and voting against legislation aimed at combating anti-Jewish hatred.
C.I.A. Official Charged in Leak of Classified Documents About Israeli Military Plans, The New York Times
The official, Asif W. Rahman, was indicted last week in federal court in Virginia on two counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information under the Espionage Act. He was arrested by the F.B.I. on Tuesday in Cambodia and was set to appear in federal court in Guam on Thursday.
UN Sounds Alarm at Israel’s ‘Severe Violations’ at Key Buffer Zone With Syria, CNN
“Violations of the 1974 Disengagement Agreement have occurred where engineering works have encroached into the AoS (the area of separation),” the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), which has maintained the ceasefire between Israel and Syria since 1974, said in a statement Tuesday.
Israel’s Crimes Against Humanity in Gaza, Human Rights Watch
The 154-page report, “‘Hopeless, Starving, and Besieged’: Israel’s Forced Displacement of Palestinians in Gaza,” examines how Israeli authorities’ conduct has led to the displacement of over 90 percent of the population of Gaza—1.9 million Palestinians—and the widespread destruction of much of Gaza over the last 13 months.
‘Nowhere Is Safe’: Concerns Grow As Israel Strikes New Areas of Lebanon, BBC
Carine Torbey reports, “The rescue workers had just left when we arrived at the scene of an Israeli air strike on a building in Aramoun, south-west of Lebanon’s capital Beirut. It was supposed to have been cleared. They had found eight bodies – including three children and three women – and taken the many injured to hospitals; some were in a critical condition. […] The strike bore similarities to several in other parts of the country: launched without warning on residential buildings or houses hosting displaced people. The Israeli military has said many of those strikes have targeted Hezbollah infrastructure.”
As Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee Could Derail Trump’s Plans for the Middle East, The Forward
Alex Lederman writes, “Huckabee’s nomination suggests that the formation of a Palestinian state will cease to be a U.S. priority on Jan. 20. In the most extreme outcome, we could be in for a resumption and acceleration of the previous Trump administration’s embrace of settlements and annexation, eventually leading to a wholesale U.S. rejection of two states — including the greenlighting of Israeli settlements in Gaza. This would all but torpedo the dream of Israeli-Saudi normalization, and could even endanger Israel’s existing regional ties.”