UN General Assembly demands immediate Gaza ceasefire
The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday overwhelmingly backed a resolution calling for an immediate, unconditional, and lasting ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, with 149 countries including Germany voting in favour.
The United States and Israel were among the 12 nations that voted against the measure, while 19 abstained. The resolution also calls for the release of all hostages held by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and increased humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza.
Although resolutions passed by the 193-member General Assembly are non-binding, they carry symbolic weight and reflect global sentiment. Since the outbreak of the war between Israel and Hamas in October 2023, the assembly has passed several similar resolutions urging a halt to the fighting and greater protection of civilians.
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New York Post
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US appeasement of Iran made Rising Lion inevitable — but Israel's strikes may transform the Middle East
Make no mistake: Operation Rising Lion is the inevitable culmination of recent history since at least President Barack Obama eroded all traditional US alliances in the Middle East in favor of a dangerous fantasy that a lasting partnership with the Iranian terror regime was possible. Obama's betrayal began years of appeasement of Tehran, interrupted by the first Trump term but then exacerbated in the Biden years — appeasement that actually funded the regime's growing network of terror proxies. All the while, Iran doggedly moved ever closer to nuclear-weapons capabilities. Advertisement The mullahs doubtless ordered up Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, assault on Israel not only to stop Saudi Arabia from recognizing the state of Israel but also to provide a distraction and cover for the final sprint. As of Thursday, Tehran had answered the International Atomic Energy Agency's censure over its nuclear violations (the loudest IAEA alarm bell in 20 years) by announcing the activation of a new, secret third nuclear-enrichment facility — even as it kept up the stall by embracing continued negotiations with US envoys. That's when the Israelis moved decisively to lance the festering boil before it was too late. Advertisement Any prime minister of Israel, not only Benjamin Netanyahu, would have chosen to do the same at one minute to nuclear midnight. For Israelis, this is existential. The Islamic Republic's ambitions are wholly evil and Tehran's never been shy in proclaiming it. Keep up with today's most important news Stay up on the very latest with Evening Update. Thanks for signing up! Enter your email address Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Never miss a story. Check out more newsletters Advertisement It's far too early for any safe bets on how this plays out. But clearly, with Iran showing no serious intention to strike a deal with Trump as the clock ticked ever closer to a nuclear Iran, Israel felt it had to act now. Let us point out: Contra the ahistorical, twisted, clickbaiting fearmongers on the right, Iran hasn't dared order attacks on US forces in the region, nor is Washington being magically 'drawn into Israel's war.' Advertisement Rather, Israel is doing the world-policeman work — 'excellent' work, as President Donald Trump acknowledged Friday. If the Iranian regime is defanged enough, it not only retreats as a global nuclear threat but also becomes vulnerable to revolt at home and crippled in projecting power abroad. That would allow for a further flowering of the Abraham Accords, joining Israel with key Arab nations and a full-on retreat of radicalism across the region — and, yes, perhaps a new golden age.
New York Post
2 hours ago
- New York Post
Anti-Israel activist Mahmoud Khalil can remain in detention, judge rules
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Politico
3 hours ago
- Politico
The MAGA split over Israel
Presented by Housing For US NOT SO SPECIAL — Israel's early-morning strikes targeting Iran have supercharged a debate that has been simmering for years on the MAGA right: Is America's 'special relationship' with Israel consistent with the realist principles of an 'America First' foreign policy? The clash — which is taking place between two powerful factions of the MAGA movement — is unfolding primarily at an ideological level, but its consequences are far from academic. As the U.S. and Israel weigh their response to retaliatory strikes from Iran, the position that the Trump administration eventually adopts in this intra-conservative skirmish will almost certainly shape its involvement in the next stages of conflict — and, by extension, the long-term trajectory of the Middle East. For now, the contours of the debate are straightforward, even if the politics surrounding them are far from it. Since the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, America has treated Israel as first among equals in the universe of American allies, offering the Middle Eastern country extensive diplomatic, military and economic support. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy Jr. coined the term 'special relationship' to describe the unusually close partnership between the two states, noting that the extent of the U.S.'s ties to Israel is 'really comparable only to that which it has with Britain over a wide range of world affairs.' Since then, the unique status of the relationship has garnered broad bipartisan support, illustrated most recently by President Joe Biden's offer of 'rock-solid and unwavering support' to Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. But the re-emergence of 'America First' foreign policy thinking under Trump has posed a fundamental challenge to the ideological underpinnings of the special relationship. In the eyes of America First hardliners, U.S. foreign policy should limit American involvement in foreign conflicts to those that have direct bearing on U.S. interests — and, in particular, to the interests of the 'forgotten Americans' that Trump has claimed as his base since 2016. That re-framing of the foreign policy discussion has inevitably raised questions on the right about the U.S.-Israel alliance: If the relationship between the two nations is 'special' — which is to say, grounded in an unchanging transnational bond — is it really based on cool-headed calculations of self interest? Are the interests of Israel always coextensive with the interests of the U.S.? Questions like these have been quietly swirling within the MAGA coalition since Trump's ascent in 2016, kept below the surface by the widespread perception that publicly breaking with Israel — especially following the Oct. 7 attacks — remains politically suicidal within the mainstream GOP. Yet there have been signs of a subtle rethinking of the relationship on the MAGA right. In May 2024, then-Sen. JD Vance, a leading proponent of foreign policy restraint within the GOP, gave a speech defending the U.S. relationship with Israel within the America First framework — a tacit admission that abstract invocations of the special relationship no longer carry much weight in the populist right's new foreign policy paradigm. Then earlier this year, the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation — widely considered the intellectual barometer of Beltway conservatism — published a report calling on the U.S. to 're-orient its relationship with Israel' from a special relationship 'to an equal strategic partnership' based on mutual interests. But the debate has taken on new urgency as Israel has escalated its attacks on Iran. In the lead-up to the strikes this week, several prominent figures on the nationalist-populist right — including Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Charlie Kirk, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jack Posobiec and Curt Mills, the editor of paleoconservative magazine The American Conservative — spearheaded a campaign to persuade Trump to keep America out of the conflict by appealing to the America First framework. In the aftermath of the strikes, some of those same figures confronted the contradiction between America First and the special relationship more directly. On a live-stream Thursday night, Kirk — while assuring his audience that he remains 'very pro-Israel' — wondered aloud: 'The question is also, I think fundamentally at its core: How does the America First foreign policy doctrine and foreign policy agenda … stay consistent with this right now?' In a post this morning, Carlson made the argument even more forcefully, arguing that 'regardless of what our 'special ally' says, a fight with the Iranians has nothing to offer the United States.' He added: 'Drop Israel. Let them fight their own wars.' Notably, the schism has taken on something of a generational character. In general, young conservatives like Kirk and Mills are making the case that America First foreign policy requires revising the special relationship with Israel, while older conservatives are tending to defend the status quo. 'There is no appetite among the Gen Z MAGA cohort for war with Iran,' said Nick Solheim, the 28-year-old CEO of the conservative talent network American Moment. 'There is definitely a fear among the MAGA youth in D.C. that the Israeli strikes have the potential to drag us into yet another extended conflict in the Middle East — and America First foreign policy is the bulwark against that.' In the eyes of this younger generation, a more arms-length posture toward Israel's latest strikes on Iran is merely a natural extension of Trump's broader foreign policy vision. 'The president was unambiguous about his preference for diplomacy to resolve the tensions with Iran,' said Solheim, referring to Trump's earlier comments about the conflict. 'Our talent network knows what's been obvious for the last 10 years, ever since he trashed the Iraq War on the Republican primary debate stage — President Trump is the No New Wars President.' That position, in turn, has drawn fire from conservative supporters of Israel, who argue that the maintenance of the 'special relationship' remains an integral part of Trump's foreign policy. 'The demand that [Trump] abandon [Israel] is not MAGA. It's isolationist, which he has never been,' wrote Mark Levin, the conservative talk-radio host who has lobbied the White House to support strikes on Iran, on social media on Thursday. 'For crying out loud, don't accuse him of abandoning MAGA by projecting your own isolationism onto him. He's upholding a crucially important campaign promise.' The politics around the debate are complicated by two additional factors. The first is that the anti-Israel position on the right has long been occupied by conservatives who openly embrace antisemitism — meaning that populist conservatives who forcefully criticize the special relationship risk aligning themselves with politically toxic figures. Today, for instance, the most vocal critic of Israel on the right remains Nick Fuentes, the openly white nationalist commentator who has called for the execution of 'perfidious Jews' and other non-Christian groups. Despite an infamous dinner with Trump in 2022, Fuentes remains persona non grata on much of the mainstream right, making him an unattractive ally for populist conservatives trying to make a principled case for a revision of the special relationship. The second factor is, of course, Trump himself. Despite both sides' claims that they are following Trump's true foreign policy vision, the president himself has been characteristically ambiguous about his view of the special relationship. Today, Trump publicly affirmed his stalwart support for Israel, telling CNN: 'We of course support Israel, obviously, and supported it like nobody has ever supported it.' But in the past, Trump has offered some unusually pointed criticisms of Israel's leadership, suggesting that he sees limits to the special relationship. The direction of the debate will hinge in large part on the actions of the next few days. If the U.S. avoids getting drawn deeper into the conflict — even as Iran carries out retaliatory strikes against Israel — the populists can claim limited victory. 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With marine and coastal ecosystems facing multiple threats from climate change, fishing, and pollution, the treaty's main aim is to establish marine protected areas in international waters, which make up around two thirds of the ocean. But if getting 60 countries to ratify a treaty they already endorsed was hard, deciding which parts of the world's international waters to protect from overfishing — and how — won't be much easier. SPANISH SCANDAL — Corruption scandals rocking Spain's governing Socialist Party spell trouble for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez — but they're being celebrated by the country's far-right Vox party. The ultranationalist group, which campaigns on the principle that Spain's democratic system is rotten, on Thursday said it was vindicated by news reports revealing that organized crime investigators had evidence connecting the Socialist Party's third-highest ranking member, Santos Cerdán, with taking kickbacks. 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Nightly Number RADAR SWEEP DOWN AND DIRTY — There's a new semi-sport that's finding purchase around the country that's deceptively simple — it's called CarJitsu, and it's what it sounds like: JiuJitsu that takes place entirely inside a car. The sport, which is already legal to bet on in New Jersey, takes premiere athletes from JiuJitsu competitions and puts them inside a hard interior that restricts their movement. And it gets brutal quickly. In a photo essay for The Baffler, Tristan deBrauwere depicts the intensity in photos with accompanying words from Adrian Nathan West. Parting Image Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.
