Food Aid Becomes Main Sticking Point in Gaza Cease-Fire Talks
Hamas is insisting that the United Nations and the Palestinian Red Crescent control all the aid running into Gaza, the mediators said. The U.S. proposal on the table has those groups participating in distribution, but not in control. The U.S.-designated terrorist group is also demanding that an Israeli-American aid effort, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, be cut out entirely from aid distribution, the mediators said.
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Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Novelist David Grossman says Israel is committing ‘genocide' in Gaza, joining a rising chorus
Grossman, a longtime left-wing peace activist whose son was killed while serving in the Israeli army in Lebanon in 2006, has joined a growing number of Jews accusing Israel. The Israeli novelist David Grossman has joined a growing number of Jews and Jewish organizations saying that Israel is carrying out a 'genocide' in Gaza. Grossman is a longtime left-wing peace activist whose son was killed while serving in the Israeli army in Lebanon in 2006. He told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica in an interview published on Friday that he had not wanted to level the charge, which Israel rejects, and did so only with 'intense pain and a broken heart.' 'For many years I refused to use this word,' he said. 'But now, after the images I've seen, what I've read, and what I've heard from people who were there, I can't help but use it.' He noted that the charge, leveled by pro-Palestinian activists throughout the Israel-Hamas war, is especially freighted when applied to the Jewish state. Israel was born after the Holocaust, which the word 'genocide' was coined to describe. 'How did we come to be accused of genocide?' Grossman said. 'Just uttering that word — 'genocide' — in reference to Israel, to the Jewish people, that alone, the fact that this association can even be made, should be enough to tell us that something very wrong is happening to us.' International furor over Gaza's humanitarian aid Grossman's comments come amid an international furor over a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, 22 months into the war that began when Hamas attacked Israel from the enclave. Last month, the genocide scholar Omer Bartov announced in a New York Times essay that he had changed his earlier stance and concluded that Israel's campaign now constituted genocide. And earlier this week,B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, said they, too, had come to the conclusion. 'Recognizing this truth is not easy. Even for us, people who have spent years documenting state violence against Palestinians, the mind resists it. It rejects the facts like poison, tries to spit them out,' Yuli Novak, B'Tselem's executive director, wrote in The Guardian. 'But the poison is here.' Israel and its defenders staunchly deny that it is committing genocide in either intent or effect, noting that despite a heavy death toll the population of Gaza does not reflect a sustained campaign of elimination. 'Few claims are more offensive and blatantly wrong,' the American Jewish Committee said in a response to Bartov's essay. It remains to be seen whether Grossman's comments change the conversation in Israel the way he said his criticism of the occupation landed differently after his son was killed. 'There were people who stereotyped me, who considered me this naive leftist who would never send his own children into the army, who didn't know what life was made of,' he said in 2010. 'I think those people were forced to realize that you can be very critical of Israel and yet still be an integral part of it.' Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Israel's left and right are both making Jewish state a global pariah
Israel's international standing is being battered from both ends of its political spectrum. The far Right undermines it with reckless belligerence; the far Left corrodes it with moral preening. It's a story that could be written even before it unfolds. On Tisha B'Av, the fast day marking the destruction of the two ancient Temples in Jerusalem, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir will go up to the Temple Mount. Once there, he will make some provocative statement that will be beamed worldwide. Shortly afterward, the Prime Minister's Office will issue a statement walking it back. On Sunday, that script — predictably — played itself out yet again. Ben-Gvir ascended the Temple Mount, led prayers there — in violation of the status quo that forbids public Jewish prayer — and said the following: 'I say this precisely from here - from the Temple Mount, where we've proven sovereignty is possible - that a clear message must be sent: The entire Gaza Strip must be conquered, sovereignty declared, every Hamas member taken down, and voluntary emigration promoted. Only then will we return the hostages and win the war.' The furious reaction from Jordan and Saudi Arabia quickly followed. As did this clarification from the Prime Minister's Office: 'Israel's policy of preserving the status quo on the Temple Mount has not changed, nor will it change.' Another predictable part of the ritual followed as well: people asking themselves, or their friends, why Ben-Gvir doesn't just keep quiet already, why Netanyahu doesn't muzzle him, and whether they both don't realize the damage these comments cause to Israel's standing internationally. Words that harm Israel's image Ben-Gvir is not the only far-right minister whose careless words irreparably harm Israel's image. Just last week, Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, responding to an interviewer who noted Israel was racing toward a hostage deal, said that Israel was instead racing ahead 'for Gaza to be wiped out.' He added that all of Gaza will be Jewish, and that — unlike Israel's prior settlements in Gush Katif — 'there will not be settlements inside cantons, closed up behind a fence.' At a time when Israel is facing a diplomatic backlash of the kind it has rarely experienced — when it is being accused of starving the Gazan population, committing ethnic cleansing and even genocide — statements like these are seized upon by the country's harshest critics to validate their claims. The harm is real and lasting. In the torrent of commentary last week from politicians and pundits trying to understand and explain the West's growing hostility toward Israel — in the avalanche of countries announcing plans to recognize a Palestinian state and essentially reward Hamas — many pointed directly to statements like these. Not just isolated comments by Ben-Gvir or Eliyahu, but a steady stream of similar remarks over recent months from figures like Bezalel Smotrich, Orit Struck, and others. So much so that some diplomatic officials are urging Netanyahu to freeze all Gaza-related media appearances by government ministers — whether to international or domestic outlets — because even a seemingly minor interview with an obscure local radio station can and will be translated, circulated, and weaponized abroad. But here's the rub: it's not only the extreme Right that's damaging Israel's standing. Just look at the far Left. The international media is now running wild with an interview that author David Grossman gave to an Italian daily in which he described Israel's actions in Gaza as genocide. In a Friday interview with La Repubblica, Grossman said he was leveling the genocide accusation with 'intense pain and a broken heart.' 'For many years I refused to use this word,' he said. 'But now, after the images I've seen, what I've read, and what I've heard from people who were there, I can't help but use it.' Do you think Eliyahu's rhetoric was damaging? It pales in comparison to Grossman accusing Israel of genocide. As a celebrated author who lost his son in Lebanon, Grossman's words carry tremendous moral weight abroad. If he says Israel is committing genocide, then who are La Repubblica's readers — or anyone else — to argue? Grossman's defenders will say that it's the statements from Eliyahu, Ben-Gvir, and Smotrich that are isolating Israel internationally. But so are Grossman's. He may believe that by saying what he did, he's presenting the moral, compassionate face of Israel. But many abroad will simply take his words and use them — deliberately and gleefully — to portray Israel as an irredeemable villain, as a perpetrator of genocide. And Grossman is far from alone. Worried that Ben-Gvir is turning Israel into a pariah state? Consider this editorial last week by Yuli Novak, head of B'Tselem, published in the ever-hostile Guardian. The headline: 'I lead a top Israeli human rights group. Our country is committing genocide.' That headline is an echo of a recent New York Times op-ed written by an Israeli academic who has taught in the US since 1989 — Omer Bartov — titled: 'I am a genocide scholar. I know it when I see it.' His conclusion: Israel is committing genocide. All this is to say nothing of the Ehud Olmerts and Moshe Ya'alons -- the former accusing Israel of war crimes, the latter of ethnic cleansing. Their harsh words are picked up with enthusiasm by the international press, often stripped of context. Context, like Ya'alon's personal grudge as a frustrated former defense minister pushed out by Netanyahu, or Olmert's bitterness as a disgraced former prime minister who served 16 months in prison. In May, Olmert wrote in Haaretz: 'What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. We're not doing this due to loss of control in any specific sector, not due to some disproportionate outburst by some soldiers in some unit. Rather, it's the result of government policy — knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated. Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.' That op-ed has been cited and quoted repeatedly since its publication, used by critics as authoritative evidence to support the most vile charges being leveled against the Jewish state. So what's the point? The point is simple: Israel's international standing is being battered from both ends of its political spectrum. The far Right undermines it with reckless belligerence; the far Left corrodes it with sanctimonious moral preening. One declares that Gaza should be wiped out, the other accuses Israel of genocide. One shouts, the other indicts. Both hands of ammunition to those eager to delegitimize the country. Both feed the same narrative: that Israel is evil. And left to pay the price and bear the consequences for these over-the-top and irresponsible remarks are the millions of Israelis in the middle — the vast majority — who are being defined in the eyes of the world by the rhetoric and portrayals of those on the country's extremes. Solve the daily Crossword
Politico
an hour ago
- Politico
Canada's trade minister confident that countries will come to a deal
Trump imposed heightened tariffs on Canada on Thursday. The levies only apply to goods not covered by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that Trump negotiated in his first term, meaning much of Canada's economy is insulated. Still, Canada's steel and aluminum industries are feeling the heat, with the White House working to revitalize American production capacity. 'We understand and respect totally the President's view in terms of the national security interest,' LeBlanc said. 'In fact, we share it, and what we've said to our American counterparts is, how can we structure the right agreement, where we can both continue to supply one another in a reliable, cost-effective way that preserves jobs essential to the American economy, but the same thing is true, obviously in Canada as well.' Another wrinkle: Trump last week suggested on his social media platform that Carney's pledge to recognize Palestinian statehood could imperil talks, making it 'very hard for us to make a Trade Deal with them.' But LeBlanc, who left Washington on Friday after spending much of the week in town meeting with senior White House officials, remains positive. He cites the connective tissue underpinning the two countries' economies as a key reason for hope. 'One description which I thought was very apt: we don't sell things to each other as much as we build things together,' he told Brennan. 'And that's why it's difficult in this relationship when so much is integrated, but we remain very optimistic.'
