Transatlantic blame game: Trump, Merkel, Biden and the danger of Germany’s dependence on Huawei

Four and a half years ago, former President Donald Trump’s crusade to pressure U.S. allies into banning the Chinese tech company Huawei ran into a wall of resistance in Berlin.

Then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel dismissed Trump’s warnings that Huawei posed a grave security risk to the West — and defied his threat that the U.S. would curb intelligence sharing with allies who let the Chinese company build their future mobile networks.

Germany will not “exclude a company simply because it’s from a certain country,” Merkel declared at global policy conference in Berlin in March 2019.

Egypt moves troops to Gaza border amid fears of expulsion of Palestinians

Egypt is stepping up its military presence at its Rafah border crossing with Gaza, with fears that Israel intends to push hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees over the frontier into the Sinai desert.

Cairo has said the expulsion of so many Palestinians from their homes would be in breach of international law, and a national security risk for Egypt that is liable to bankrupt the country’s ailing economy. Palestinians themselves, and other Arab states, fear refugees would never be allowed back to their homes.

The Viral Protester Who Explains Why Benjamin Netanyahu’s Long Political Career May Finally End

The familiar pattern of countries rallying around their elected officials has not been the case in Israel, where huge majorities of the public blame Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right government for security lapses enabling the Palestinian group Hamas to invade and massacre Israeli civilians on Oct. 7.

The Israeli death toll from Hamas’ deadly incursion and the subsequent battle with the Israeli military now exceeds 1,300 people, the vast majority of them civilians. The Islamist militant group has also taken an estimated 150 Israelis as hostages. 

Russia’s Avdiivka offensive is failing, says top Ukrainian officer

A top Ukrainian commander has claimed that Russia’s biggest offensive in months – involving tanks, thousands of soldiers and armoured vehicles in an attack on the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka – is failing, as he admitted Kyiv’s own attempts to advance in the south were proving “difficult”.

Russian forces have pummelled the town over the past week, a key bulge surrounded by Russian-held territory on the eastern Donbas front.

Ramaswamy blasts Haley in escalating feud over Israel

NASHUA, N.H. — Vivek Ramaswamy is escalating his attacks on Nikki Haley over Israel.

The first-time candidate said the former U.N. ambassador and GOP primary rival should be “disqualified from being president,” accusing her of having “personal conflicts of interest” — an apparent reference to her business ties — and a “hawkish neoconservative vision that I worry is going to lead us to prolonged conflict and war.”

“Nikki Haley has foreign policy experience and it shows — in her bank account, to the tune of $8 million,” Ramaswamy said outside a New Hampshire GOP event on Friday night, gathering reporters while Haley was midway through speaking to activists inside the ballroom.

Iran’s foreign minister warns Israel it could suffer ‘a huge earthquake’

BEIRUT — Iran’s foreign minister on Saturday called on Israel to stop its attacks on Gaza, warning that the war might expand to other parts of the Middle East if Hezbollah joins the battle, and that would make Israel suffer “a huge earthquake.”

Hossein Amirabdollahian told reporters in Beirut that Lebanon’s Hezbollah group has taken all the scenarios of a war into consideration and Israel should stop its attacks on Gaza as soon as possible.

Israel considers Hezbollah its most serious immediate threat, estimating it has some 150,000 rockets and missiles, including precision-guided missiles that can hit anywhere in Israel. The group, which has thousands of battle-hardened fighters who participated in Syria’s 12-year conflict, also has different types of military drones.

Russia Will Survive a Defeat in Ukraine. It’s Time to Prepare for What Comes Next.

In the midst of the raging war in Ukraine, Washington’s attention is understandably focused on maintaining robust Western support for Ukraine’s valiant effort to thwart Russia’s aggression and expel it from its territory. The setbacks of Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive have made it clear that victory will not come soon, if at all. A long war of attrition lies ahead.

But the conflict will eventually end, and the United States will remain faced with the question of Russia. Win, lose, or draw, Russia is not going to disappear as a major challenge.

China says Israel has gone too far

China’s foreign minister said Saturday that Israel has gone too far in responding to last week’s invasion by Hamas, China’s official news agency reported.

Speaking to Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Israel’s actions have extended beyond self-defense.

China's Belt and Road Initiative: Kenya and a railway to nowhere

The first section of Kenya's Chinese-built railway was opened with much fanfare in 2017 - but two years later work on the tracks stopped in the middle of the country and the master plan of linking it to other landlocked countries in East Africa seems to have derailed.

This means the project is not bringing as much money as was hoped at this stage, while Kenya is left servicing loans totalling around $4.7bn (£3.9bn), mainly borrowed from Chinese banks.

Donald Trump and Stephen Miller Exploit Gaza Crisis to Push Muslim Travel Ban

In the latest example of Republicans wrongly conflating disparate crises in order to whip up anger and fear, former President Donald Trump and others in his mold are responding to attacks on Israelis and the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza by spreading disinformation about the Mexican border and promoting extremist anti-immigrant policies such as reviving the ban on travelers from majority-Muslim countries that Trump pushed since 2016.

The rhetoric became increasingly unhinged on Thursday after right-wing commentators interpreted a call for global action in solidarity with Palestine as a call for terrorist attacks. Khaled Meshaal, the former leader of Hamas in Gaza and the chief of the group’s diaspora office, reportedly left Reuters a voice message urging Muslims globally to take the streets in support of Palestinians.

Not Israel’s 9/11, but a Prison Riot

The world has been struggling to find a good historical parallel for the vicious and horrific surprise attack Hamas launched against Israel on October 7.

It is often said that 10/7 is the new 9/11. But 10/7 was more like a prison riot.

For nearly two decades, the Gaza Strip has been bottled up and almost completely blocked off. It has been widely compared to an open-air prison. Israel and the United States have tried to seal Gaza, isolating its nearly 2 million residents on a tiny, impoverished strip of land. Washington and Tel Aviv thought that would let them keep Hamas at arm’s length.

To end Hamas, Israel may need to grieve first

When I called an Israeli defense analyst this week to talk about the terror visited on her country, I wanted to jump quickly to my questions: How long will Israel’s fight against Hamas last? What will victory ultimately look like? And what happens when the immediate clashes end?

But she had something to share first.

“I just came home from a funeral,” she said, her voice breaking. “It was awful. There aren’t enough slots to hold all the funerals. They’re running out of flowers. There are so many bodies. It’s insane, just insane.”

Will the United States Be the Next Israel?

Americans are watching the Hamas attacks on Israel and the ensuing war with horror, mourning the death of innocent civilians, thinking about their family and friends, and worrying that the violence in Gaza will trigger an even more violent conflagration in the Greater Middle East.

There’s another reason Americans should be worried.

Will Jim Jordan bully his way to the speakership?

Back in September 2016, Rep. Jim Jordan was on a crusade: He wanted the House to launch impeachment proceedings against IRS Commissioner John Koskinen over allegations that the agency had targeted conservatives.

But Jordan (R-Ohio) had a problem: GOP party leaders saw impeachment as a political loser and refused to even haul Koskinen in for questioning.

Jordan wasn’t about to back down, however. He cornered then-House Judiciary Committee Chair Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) on the House floor and presented him with a choice: Either you summon Koskinen to the Hill or the Freedom Caucus forces a vote on his impeachment a few weeks before Election Day.

Jordan got his hearing.

Israeli President Suggests That Civilians In Gaza Are Legitimate Targets

As Israel engages in a massive air campaign ahead of an anticipated full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said on Friday that all citizens of Gaza are responsible for the attack Hamas perpetrated in Israel last weekend that left over 1,200 people dead.

“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Herzog said at a press conference on Friday. “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”

Before They Vowed to Annihilate Hamas, Israeli Officials Considered It an Asset

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said this week that, as far as the military is concerned, there is little difference between Gaza’s civilian population and Hamas, which has governed the besieged territory since 2007. “It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians [being] not aware, not involved,” Herzog said in the middle of an unprecedented Israeli bombing campaign in retaliation for Hamas’s massacre of Israeli civilians last week. “They could have risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”

Hard-right House Republicans are against Ukraine aid – and they seem to be in charge

As he excoriated Kevin McCarthy over his leadership of the House Republican conference last week, hard-right congressman Matt Gaetz accused the then speaker of cutting a “secret side deal” with Joe Biden to provide additional funding to Ukraine amid its ongoing war against Russia.

“It is becoming increasingly clear who the speaker of the House already works for, and it’s not the Republican conference,” Gaetz, who represents a solidly Republican district in Florida, said in a floor speech at the time.

New Zealand abandons Labour and shifts to the right as country votes for wholesale change

New Zealand voters have delivered a forceful rejection of the Labour government as a surge in support for the National party delivered what analysts described as a “bloodbath” for the government and a new right-leaning era for politics in the country.

The result marked a dramatic change in fortunes for the Labour party, which three years earlier – led by Jacinda Ardern - secured a historic mandate, but saw its support dwindle in the face of rising living costs and the Covid pandemic.

Israeli ground offensive in Gaza faces physical and political risks

Israel is poised to launch a ground offensive into the northern half of Gaza, an attack that, for all the country’s military superiority, is fraught with uncertainty and whose potential humanitarian consequences are grim.

The military called up 300,000 reservists on Monday to add to its 170,000-strong standing army and has been massing them near the Gaza border. Hamas, it is estimated, can count on 30,000 fighters, perhaps a tenth of the likely invasion force, and it has neither the tanks nor the air power available to the attackers.

Three ways Republican House Speaker chaos ends on Capitol Hill

A day after one Republican nominee to be Speaker of the House of Representatives withdrew from the running, another with equally long odds is making a fresh bid for the gavel.

Jim Jordan, a leader of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, won a Republican vote to be the nominee after his colleague Steve Scalise stepped aside on Thursday.

But it is unclear if Mr Jordan has the majority support needed in the full House.

A Jewish Plea: Stand Up to Israel’s Act of Genocide

I have by my desk a quote attributed to beloved Jewish writer and activist Grace Paley: “The only recognizable feature of hope is action.” For over a decade that has motivated my work to build a thriving moment of American Jews in solidarity with Palestinians. But where do you find hope in the midst of utter horror? My only hope in this moment is that my fellow Jewish Americans and people of conscience all across America will unite in a way we never have before to call for an end to genocide.