Eurasia Press & News
On the menu today: Israel tells President Biden it’s not interested in just “taking the win” and launches an airstrike against an Iranian air base; Hamas proves itself the intractable obstacle to a cease-fire again; mainstream American institutions finally get tired of putting up with the tantrum-throwing Hamas apologists; a wild and unpredictable afternoon with Megyn Kelly; and a special article in the newest issue of the magazine.
Last weekend, Iran, along with proxies based in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, fired 170 drones, more than 30 cruise missiles, and more than 120 ballistic missiles at Israel. Because so few of the projectiles reached their intended targets, some figures, including our president, believed that Israel should treat its own successful air defense as a military victory and declare the conflict resolved. This would mean that there would be no counterstrike or other visible consequence for the Iranian decision to launch more than 300 drones and missiles at Israel.
Unsurprisingly, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was unpersuaded by that logic. (Netanyahu has been preparing to fight the enemies of Israel since before the Jets won the Super Bowl.) But the military response may well have been more limited because of Biden’s declaration that the U.S. would not assist in any retaliation.
Reuters:
Explosions echoed over an Iranian city on Friday in what sources described as an Israeli attack, but Tehran played down the incident and indicated it had no plans for retaliation – a response that appeared gauged towards averting region-wide war.
The limited scale of the attack and Iran’s muted response appeared to signal a successful effort by diplomats who have been working to avert all-out war since an Iranian drone and missile attack on Israel last Saturday.
Iranian media and officials described a small number of explosions, which they said resulted from air defences hitting three drones over the city of Isfahan in central Iran. Notably, they referred to the incident as an attack by “infiltrators”, rather than by Israel, obviating the need for retaliation.
A senior Iranian official told Reuters there were no plans to respond against Israel for the incident.
“The foreign source of the incident has not been confirmed. We have not received any external attack, and the discussion leans more towards infiltration than attack,” the official said.
The New York Times reported that “three Iranian officials confirmed that a strike had hit a military air base near the city of Isfahan, in central Iran.”
In the early morning hours, the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a statement declaring, “IAEA can confirm that there is no damage to Iran’s nuclear sites. [Director-General Rafael Grossi] continues to call for extreme restraint from everybody and reiterates that nuclear facilities should never be a target in military conflicts. IAEA is monitoring the situation very closely.”
Israel may well have wanted to tell the Iranians, “We’re not going to hit your nuclear facilities . . . but we could if we wanted to, and you wouldn’t be able to stop us.”
A senior U.S. official told CNN that the U.S. did not “endorse” the Israeli response.
The G-7 is meeting in Italy this week, and the leaders issued the typical zero-impact statement that is almost obligated at moments like this:
Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, said the G7 foreign ministers meeting in Capri, Italy, had changed their Friday morning agenda to “address the Iran issue and put priority attention on the Middle East.” He told reporters that “the political goal of the G7 is de-escalation,” adding that the group had reaffirmed its support for a cease-fire in Gaza “to ensure the release of the hostages and to ensure the provison of goods and food to the civilian population.”
Calls for a cease-fire these days are pointless because Hamas refuses to cease fire. It doesn’t matter how generous the offer on the table is. Don’t take it from me, take it from CIA director William Burns, who’s been leading the U.S. effort to get Hamas to release the hostages:
Earlier this month, William J. Burns, C.I.A. director and lead American negotiator, traveled to Cairo and pushed what he called “a far-reaching proposal” that Egyptian and Qatari negotiators took to Hamas. The proposal contained an offer to allow some Gazans to return to the northern part of the enclave, a key Hamas demand.
While Mr. Burns did not describe the details of that proposal, he said that so far Hamas has not accepted it.
“It was a deep disappointment to get a negative reaction from Hamas,” said Mr. Burns, speaking at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas. “Right now, it’s that negative reaction that really is standing in the way of innocent civilians in Gaza getting humanitarian relief that they so desperately need.”
(For those wondering why the CIA director is taking this role, the Arabic-speaking Burns was a diplomat for more than 30 years, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs from 2001 to 2005, and ambassador to Jordan from 1998 to 2001. He knows the region and its players about as well as anyone in the U.S. government.)
To be an international diplomat, you must pretend that the remaining leaders of Hamas are reasonable, rational, good-faith negotiators and can be talked into a good deal if the Israelis and other countries will just pile on more carrots and take away more sticks.
You also have to avert your eyes from the evidence that many of the hostages are dead, or that Hamas has lost track of where the hostages are. The Israelis believe there are 129 Israeli hostages remaining in Hamas custody; five are dual U.S.–Israeli citizens. Hamas reportedly told negotiators that it does not have 40 living women and sick and elderly men in custody. Hamas remains unwilling, or unable, to tell negotiators how many hostages are still alive.
International diplomats start from the supposition that Israel just hasn’t been willing to bend over backward enough to placate forces that have sworn to kill Israelis. And that if they just apply more pressure to Israel, and gather around tables in fancy hotels in places such as Cairo and Paris, suddenly Hamas will come to its senses and a deal will appear.
Earlier this month, Israel offered to release “hundreds of Palestinian prisoners” but Hamas responded, “The [Israeli] position remains stubborn and has not responded to any of the demands of our people and our resistance.”
Meanwhile, on the U.S. home front, there are signs that mainstream American institutions are starting to get tired of the Hamas apologists.
Our Kayla Bartsch reports:
At Google headquarters, 28 staffers — or “Googlers,” as they are called — were fired after orchestrating an anti-Israel sit-in inside of their bosses’ offices.
The keffiyeh-wearing bunch, which organized the “No Tech for Apartheid” group, were protesting a $1.2 billion deal Google recently made with the State of Israel. Specifically, they were protesting Project Nimbus, a joint contract with Amazon that provides cloud-computing and artificial-intelligence services to one of America’s firmest and longest-standing allies.
Y’all know your job at work is to . . . you know, work, not organize sit-ins to protest your bosses’ decisions, right?
You might say, “Ah, those Google employees thought they were still in college.” But apparently even the Ivy Leagues are getting tired of lawbreaking in the name of cutting Hamas some slack. Our Zach Kessel reports:
Isra Hirsi, the daughter of Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), was handcuffed and led away from the site of an anti-Israel encampment on Columbia University’s campus by New York Police Department officers on Thursday, photographs show. . . .
Before police escorted her from the quad, Hirsi announced on social media Thursday that she had been suspended from Barnard College as a result of her involvement with anti-Israel protests. . . .
Noting that the students who set up the tents “violated a long list of rules and policies,” [Columbia president Minouche] Safik wrote that the students received warnings that they would face suspension if they remained on the lawn.
“I regret that all of these attempts to resolve the situation were rejected by the students involved. As a result, NYPD officers are now on campus and the process of clearing the encampment is underway,” she wrote in the statement.
Over at the Dispatch, Nick Catoggio wondered when, if ever, President Biden will be willing to have a “Sistah Souljah moment” with the pro-Hamas, anti-Israel left. Donald Trump is telling the pro-life community they’ll get half a loaf and like it, but the incumbent Democratic president can’t bring himself to tell young lefties to stop blocking bridges and the roads to the airport.
Think about it. You can find plenty of examples of Biden and Kamala Harris and just about every major Democratic elected official expressing visible anger about the laws proposed and passed by pro-lifers. They’re outraged by the idea of restricting abortion, even late in a pregnancy. They seethe about it. The effort to restrict abortion infuriates them as much as anything else they encounter in public life.
But when Michigan protesters chanted, “Death to America,” we got a brief statement from a campaign spokesman that Biden “denounces these disgusting and antisemitic remarks.” No, Biden doesn’t support that sort of literally anti-American perspective . . . but he’s not going to call any additional attention to it.
Our Noah Rothman concludes that Biden and the Democratic establishment clearly fear unhinged and irate students blocking traffic and harassing donors outside party fundraisers more than they fear alienating the American mainstream:
It’s simply not good enough for Biden and his fellow Democrats to gently chide the anti-American left and move on. Throw them under the bus. Pick one — any will do, as this is a target-rich environment — and make an example of him or her. Democrats are clearly afraid of how America’s restive students would react to that sort of banal majoritarianism.
Forget standing up for Israel. Does any Democrat want to stand up for America? Or have the Democrats convinced themselves that as goes Dearborn, so goes America?
