Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Lockheed Martin Thanks Israel
Legal Battles Target Supply Chain Keeping Israeli F-35s Flying Over Gaza & Lebanon
A slew of court cases around the world are raising questions about the legality and transparency of the international supply chain that helps keep Israeli F-35 fighter jets flying over Gaza and Lebanon. Israel has used the F-35, described by its American manufacturer Lockheed Martin as "the most lethal" fighter jet in the world, extensively in its nearly year-long offensive in Gaza, in which a reported over 41,000 people have been killed.
Best known for its stealth capabilities, the F-35’s use in Gaza, an enclave without an air force where less sophisticated F-16s and F-15s are perfectly capable of dropping bombs, may seem out of place. However, arms control experts and researchers say Israel has had to rely on F-35s to maintain the high volume of strikes conducted over the past year in Gaza and now in Lebanon, where weeks of bombings have killed more than 1,000 and displaced over 1.2 million.
"They need all of their planes to participate," said Noam Perry, strategic research coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee’s (AFSC) Action Center for Corporate Accountability. Israel has been aided by surges in the flow of F-35 parts from the United States, which experts say have been crucial in keeping the planes airborne.
Litigation in the Netherlands has already stopped the transfer of spare parts stored at one of three global F-35 distribution hubs to Israel since February. As four cases against arms exports to Israel move forward, governments in the UK, the Netherlands, Canada and Denmark face difficult legal questions regarding F-35 parts made in their countries.
Middle East Eye also understands that NGOs that took Australia to court over arms exports to Israel in a case that was discontinued last year remain determined to find ways to hold the government accountable for F-35 parts manufactured there.
A key question posed by these cases is how the governments can continue to license the export of F-35 parts bound for Israel while complying with domestic laws and international treaties, which require them to assess whether such parts could have been, or will be, used in violation of international humanitarian law.
So far, the response in at least three of the countries - the Netherlands, the UK and Canada - is that F-35 parts sent to third countries, but ultimately destined for Israel, can be treated differently than weapons that go directly to Israel. One rationale provided by the UK and Dutch governments is that suspending parts whose final destination is Israel would disrupt the global supply chain, as the parts are difficult, if not impossible, to trace.
Last year, the US Government Accountability Office (US GAO) found that over $85m worth of spare F-35 parts had been lost globally because the US government and private contractors had not determined who was responsible for tracking them.
However, arms control experts and litigants who spoke with MEE say this is clearly a case of politics, not logistics. "They can track these things within very small areas, in real time, everywhere in the world," said Martin Butcher, policy advisor on arms and conflict for Oxfam, which is involved in a legal challenge against UK arms exports to Israel being brought to the High Court. "The idea that they can’t track them is absolute nonsense."
Parts moved 'at breakneck speed'
While experts say it is difficult to establish which type of aircraft Israel has used in specific attacks over the past year, it is clear that F-35s have played a key role in Israel’s air war on Gaza and now Lebanon.
Much of what is known comes from Israeli media reports or other public sources, including a post on Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant's X account. This post was utilized by the Danish news outlet Information and NGO Danwatch to confirm that an F-35 had been used in a designated safe zone in Gaza in July that killed at least 90 people. However, there are other signs that the F-35 has been crucial.
Chairing a hearing before the US House Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces in December, Representative Rob Wittman said the F-35 program had "moved at a breakneck speed" to deliver more spare parts to Israel.
Last year, British companies used open licences covering the F-35 program 14 times to export items directly to Israel, nearly three times more than in each of the two previous years, according to data obtained by the UK-based Campaign Against the Arms Trade (Caat).
It is unclear when the shipments were sent in 2023, but Caat believes the jump likely indicates a heightened demand from Israel for spare parts since October 7.
While bombs are often the focus of arms embargo campaigns, spare parts for the F-35 - and other fighter jets in Israel's fleet - have been critical to Israel's air war in a way that is frequently overlooked by the public, said Josh Paul, a former State Department official who resigned in protest last October.
"Modern fighter jets rely on immense amounts of continuous maintenance," said Paul, who is now a fellow at the US-based NGO Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn). He estimated that for every one hour of flying, a fighter jet requires three hours of maintenance.
"If you cut off the supply of spare parts, particularly on something like the F-35s, which relies on a global just-in-time delivery chain, it would very quickly become unflyable."
Flying F-35s in seemingly unnecessary conditions over Gaza may have been useful for the Israeli Air Force to maintain fleet readiness and gain insights into the fighter jet's capabilities in combat.
That information will also have been relayed back to the prime contractor, Lockheed Martin, the US Air Force and potentially other partner countries in the F-35 program, several arms experts told MEE. Lieutenant-General Michael Schmidt, who oversees the F-35 programme, said in December that Israeli F-35 users were "achieving exceptional mission capability rates and the aircraft is proving resilient."
Monday, October 14, 2024
No Hiding It Now
Spy Drones Swarmed Langley Air Base, Pentagon Unable To Counter Threat
Since the start of the 21st century, America's defense spending has soared nearly 50%, with this year's budget surpassing $841 billion. Yet, despite being the world's largest military spender, the Pentagon alarmingly struggles to protect the homeland against the rising threat of spy drones operating within US borders.
A new Wall Street Journal report said a fleet of spy drones swarmed some of America's most sensitive national-security sites, including Langley Air Force Base on Virginia's shoreline late last year.
For several nights, military personnel had reported a mysterious breach of restricted airspace over a stretch of land that has one of the largest concentrations of national-security facilities in the US. The show usually starts 45 minutes to an hour after sunset, another senior leader told Kelly.
The first drone arrived shortly. Kelly, a career fighter pilot, estimated it was roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour, at an altitude of roughly 3,000 to 4,000 feet. Other drones followed, one by one, sounding in the distance like a parade of lawn mowers.
The drones headed south, across Chesapeake Bay, toward Norfolk, Va., and over an area that includes the home base for the Navy's SEAL Team Six and Naval Station Norfolk, the world's largest naval port. -WSJ
US Air Force Gen. Mark Kelly told the Journal that he was stumped by reports of spy drones over Langley AFB. The Journal said the drones flew around the base and other highly sensitive military installations in the region at night for a little more than two weeks. Some officials suspected Russian or Chinese agents were conducting aerial spy operations.
Kelly said some drones were roughly 20 feet long and flew more than 100 mph at 3,000 to 4,000 feet altitude. None of these drones were shot down because federal law prohibits the military from dispatching F-22s, F-35s, and other fighter jets to neutralize drones for 'aerial snooping' - unless these unmanned systems posed an 'imminent threat.'
Shortly after the spy drones first appeared across the Chesapeake Bay region, President Biden was briefed on the national security threat. Officials from the Defense Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Pentagon's UFO office consulted with outside experts to understand the gravity of the situation.
Drone incursions into heavily restricted airspace shouldn't be some shocker in Biden-Harris' America, where open southern borders have flooded the nation with ten-plus million illegal aliens, some of which have been terrorists, spies, prison gangs from South America, and other violent criminals.
Mr. NAFTA Himself
Bill Clinton Unintentionally Creates Trump's Next Campaign Ad
Former President Bill Clinton was supposed to be campaigning for VP Kamala Harris but inadvertently spilled the beans about just how disastrous open southern border policies pushed by the Biden-Harris administration have been, leading to the deaths of innocent Americans, including Laken Riley from Georgia, who an illegal alien murdered.
Clinton admitted that Laken Riley would still be alive today if there were actual vetting procedures on the southern border. Yet there weren't as 'Border Czar' Harris facilitated the greatest migrant invasion this nation has ever seen.
Clinton told the crowd at a campaign stop:
"You had a case in Georgia not very long ago ... a young woman who had been killed by an immigrant. If they all had been properly vetted, that probably wouldn't have happened."
Clinton continues:
"... and America is not having enough babies to keep our population up, so we need immigrants that have been vetted to do work. There wouldn't be a problem."
X users respond:
Democrats are the only ones pushing de-population and de-growth policies to muzzle the Western world. 'Weird' ... right?
Some folks are saying the earlier clip of Bill is out of context. However, former Trump adviser Stephen Miller makes sense of it all...
Just Tourists
UMich Chinese Grads Criminally Charged For Military-Base Photos
Federal law enforcement has charged five recent University of Michigan graduates who were found taking photos near a military base hundreds of miles from campus.
The recent grads are accused of “lying and trying to cover their tracks, more than a year after they were confronted in the dark near a remote Michigan military site where thousands of people had gathered for summer drills,” according to the Associated Press.
“The five, who were University of Michigan students at the time, were not charged for what happened at Camp Grayling in August 2023,” the AP reported. “Rather they are accused of misleading investigators about the trip and conspiring to clear their phones of photos, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court.”
“The defendants are not in custody,” the U.S. Attorney’s office said. “Should they come into contact with U.S. authorities, they will be arrested and face these charges.”
“We are media,” the students said when “confronted” by a National Guard member, the AP reported.
The students graduated in spring as part of a “joint program between the university and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, China,” the AP reported.
“They have been identified as Zhekai Xu, Renxiang Guan, Haoming Zhu, Jingzhe Tao, and Yi Liang,” Just the News reported.
A Michigan congressman said the charges highlight the need to be “vigilant” about spying from the Chinese Communist Party.
Michigan Republicans have been critical of plans for a Chinese Communist Party-linked battery company to build a plant just 88 miles from the military base.
Congressman John Moolenar stated in his news release:
Be Peaceful Or We Hurt You
Violence Has Been Normalized
Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,
During the misnamed and mostly preposterous debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, a moderator fact-checked Trump’s claim that crime is up.
In contrast to Trump’s claim, moderator David Muir said that the FBI reports that crime is down, a claim that likely struck every viewer as obviously wrong.
Shoplifting was not a way of life before lockdowns. Most cities were not demographic minefields of danger around every corner. There was no such thing as a drugstore with nearly all products behind locked Plexiglas.
We weren’t warned of spots in cities, even medium-sized ones, where carjacking was a real risk.
It is wildly obvious that high crime in the U.S. is endemic, with ever less respect for person and property. As for the FBI’s statistics, they’re worth about as much as most data coming from federal agencies these days.
They’re there for purposes of propaganda, manipulated to present the most favorable picture possible to help the regime.
Lies, Damn Lies and Government Statistics
This is certainly true of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Commerce Department, which have been shoveling out obvious nonsense for years.
Professionals in the field know it but go along for reasons of professional survival. In truth, we’ve never had a real economic recovery since lockdowns.
Crime is up. Literacy is down. Trust has collapsed. Societies were shattered and remain so.
Only a few weeks following the officious fact-check at the debate, we now have new data from the National Crime Victimization Survey.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
“The urban violent-crime rate increased 40% from 2019–2023. Excluding simple assault, the urban violent-crime rate rose 54% over that span. From 2022–2023, the urban violent-crime rate didn’t change to a statistically significant degree, so these higher crime rates appear to be the new norm in America’s cities.”
But the FBI tries to tell you that crime is down. Sure, whatever they say.
The report isolates the “post-George Floyd protests” because no media source wants to mention the lockdowns. It is still a taboo subject.
We somehow cannot say, even now, that the worst abuses of rights in U.S. history in terms of scale and depth were a disaster, simply because saying so implicates the whole of the media, both parties, all government agencies, academia and all the upper reaches of the social and political order.
Politics Has Become Life and Death
The problem of political division is getting alarmingly serious. It’s no longer just about competing yard signs and loud rallies. We now have regular assassination attempts, plus even an extremely strange appearance of a bounty put on a candidate’s head by an official agency.
Surveys have shown that 26 million people in the U.S. believe that violence is fine to keep Trump from regaining the presidency. Where might people have gotten that idea?
War Is Peace
Why We Shouldn't Expect Peace In 2025
Submitted by Vincenzo Lorusso,
With a likely victory of Donald Trump in a month’s time, one may be forgiven for expecting that he will be true to his promise to end the Ukraine war “in 24 hours”.
Logic and facts on the ground suggest that this outcome is highly unlikely.
First, next year Moscow will increase military spending by 22.6% compared to this year and by 54% compared to the original project for 2025, drawn up at the end of 2023. Defense spending will exceed 8% of GDP and will amount to a staggering 40% of all federal spending.
Do you think that this spending is related to the fact that the war ends next year?
The Kremlin will enter the path of negotiations only when it achieves the main military-political goal of the campaign: Ukraine's non-participation in NATO.
At the moment, the situation around the special military operation can hardly be considered concluded for negotiations to begin.
The Russian armed forces are facing the fall of Pokrovsk, Mirnograd, Chasov Yar. The complete liberation of Donbass and access to the Dnepropetrovsk region are already a preliminary sign of Russia's victory. Before that happens, talking about Moscow’s participation in the negotiations is empty talk.
However, with the whole of NATO technological fire power aligned against it, accomplishing this goal will take Russia a lot of time and money. Military experts from both camps have been consistently wrong since the outset.
Secondly, the end of the conflict is not beneficial to the United States. No matter how much Trump and other Republicans complain about the Ukrainian issue and link all America’s problems to it, the Ukrainian war is the most successful investment in US foreign policy in recent decades.
You have to be a complete idiot to believe that Americans are sorry for the $150-200 billion spent that will impoverish Russia.
In 20 years, America has spent more than a trillion dollars on Afghanistan. But is it possible to compare Afghanistan’s dividends with Ukraine’s? The EU economy is destroyed and totally dependent on the United States, Russian gas and oil are being withdrawn from the European market, Russia is spending enormous resources on victory in the Ukrainian steppes.
And now the question is: how many tens of thousands of American soldiers would have to die with the direct participation of the United States in the conflict with the Russian Federation to achieve such indicators? Incredible results are achieved at the cost of the lives of Ukrainians, which no one cares about.
Any sane person in the place of the US President would in no case limit the Ukrainian conflict, but would continue it. If there had been any pressure to resolve the conflict, it should by now have come from Europe. Alas, for reasons that will be poured over by historians for decades to come, there is no such sign. Quite the contrary.
Thirdly, premature peace is not beneficial for China. The warming of the “Korean” and “Taiwanese” cards is coming. Beijing would prefer that by the time conflicts in the Asian region resume, the United States would be “in trouble” and forced to be distracted by other local conflicts. In addition, peace in Ukraine in the current conditions is a complete geopolitical triumph for the United States. On such a victorious wave, all the centrifugal forces of the world will accept the will of the White House, depriving Beijing of room for maneuver. Many countries currently “sitting on the fence” or at least keeping their options open would have to conclude that Russia does not have the force to shape a future world order.
China will contribute in every possible way to the prolongation of the conflict until: a) Russia enforces its conditions and humiliates the West; b) China does not deem it necessary to be ready for an acute phase of confrontation with the United States.
The dream of the West in the war in Ukraine is the destruction of Russia, or to make it a vassal state like any "little Italy" or all other European countries.
The White House will do everything to force the Kremlin to abandon the alliance with Beijing, the main competitor of the United States.
They dream of the maximum impoverishment of the Russian Federation, after which they will try to impose the "rules of the 1990s", when Moscow was an absolutely amorphous and non-independent actor.
Neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris will change this strategic logic, since it is fully consistent with the interests of the deep state and the largest global financial institutions.
Step By Step
Russia Claims Another Ukrainian Town In East As Fighting Also Intensifies In Zaporizhzhia
Russian forces on Sunday announced more advances in the vicinity of the strategic Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, after weeks of steady gains and several villages recently being brought under Russia's control.
The defense ministry said Russian troops have now taken the village of Mykhailivka, which lies just outside the town of Selydove and to the south of Pokrovsk.
Selydove could be next to fall. It has already been largely turned to rubble after months of heavy shelling, and most of the population had along ago fled.
Further details published in Newsweek show that Selydove is a current main focus of Russian forces:
In an update published at 4 p.m. local time, the Ukrainian General Staff did not mention Mykhailivka by name, but said Russian forces were "concentrating its main efforts near Selydove, where 12 battles have taken place so far."
Popular Ukrainian war-tracking blog, DeepState, showed the vast majority of Mykhailivka to be under Russian control as of Sunday.
For the majority of the war, Pokrovsk has acted as the logistical hub and rear operations base for Ukraine's eastern defensive lines. It sits astride both a key railroad juncture and the highway to Ukraine’s fourth-largest metro, Dnipro.
The city's defensive positions are a final obstacle to Russia's access to most of the region. If Pokrovsk falls Russian forces will be able to easily flank entrenched troops in the north and south of the country. Donetsk and the whole east would then be under complete Russian control.
Apart from Donetsk, heavy fighting has also been reported in southern Zaporizhzhia region this weekend. Ukraine's military on Sunday is sounding the alarm over "new assault operations".
Fresh widespread power outages have been reported in Zaporizhzhia as a result. "Power outages have been reported in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts over the past 24 hours due to ongoing hostilities," local media reports.
Losing The Narrative
Liberals Are Losing Their Minds Over Elon Musk
This week, Elton John publicly renounced the Rocket Man - no, not the 1972 song, but Elon Musk, whom he called an “a**hole” in an awards ceremony.
Sir Elton, 77, is only the latest among celebrities and pundits to denounce Musk for his support of former president Donald Trump and his opposition to censorship. Musk-mania is so overwhelming that some are calling for his arrest, deportation and debarment from federal contracts.
This week, the California Coastal Commission rejected a request from the Air Force for additional launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base. It is not because the military agency did not need the launches. It was not because the nation and the community would not benefit from them. Rather, it was reportedly because, according to one commissioner, Musk has “aggressively injected himself into the presidential race.”
By a 6-4 vote, the California Coastal Commission rejected the military’s plan to let SpaceX launch up to 50 rockets per year from the base in Santa Barbara County.
Musk’s SpaceX is becoming a critical part of national security programs. It will even be launching a rescue mission for two astronauts stranded in space. The advances of SpaceX under Musk are legendary. The Air Force wanted to waive the requirement for separate permits for SpaceX in carrying out these critical missions.
To the disappointment of many, SpaceX is now valued at over $200 billion and just signed a new $1 billion contract with NASA. Yet neither the national security value nor the demands for SpaceX services appear to hold much interest for officials like Commissioner Gretchen Newsom (no relation to California’s governor, Gavin Newsom): “Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet.”
Newsom is the former political director for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 569. It did not seem to matter to her that increased launches meant more work for electrical workers and others. Rather, it’s all about politics.
Commission Chair Caryl Hart added “here we’re dealing with a company, the head of which has aggressively injected himself into the presidential race and he’s managed a company in a way that was just described by Commissioner Newsom that I find to be very disturbing.”
In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss how Musk became persona non grata when he bought Twitter and announced that he was dismantling the company’s massive censorship apparatus.
He then outraged many on the left by releasing the Twitter Files, showing the extensive coordination of the company with the government in a censorship system described by a federal court as “Orwellian.”
After the purchase, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton called upon Europeans to force Musk to censor her fellow Americans under the notorious Digital Services Act. Clinton has even suggested the arrest of those responsible for views that she considers disinformation.
Silicon Valley investor Roger McNamee called for Musk’s arrest and said that, as a condition of getting government contracts, officials should “require him to moderate his speech in the interest of national security.”
Former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich wants Musk arrested for simply refusing to censor other people.
Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann called for Musk to be deported and all federal contracts cancelled with this company. As with many in the “Save Democracy” movement, Olbermann was unconcerned with the denial of free speech or constitutional protections. “If we can’t do that by conventional means, President Biden, you have presidential immunity. Get Elon Musk the F out of our country and do it now.”
Of course, none of these figures are even slightly bothered about other business leaders with political opinions, so long as, like McNamee, they are supporting Harris or at least denouncing Trump. Musk has failed to yield to a movement infamous for cancel campaigns and coercion. The usual alliance of media, academia, government and corporate forces hit Musk, his companies and even advertisers on X.
Other corporate officials collapsed like a house of cards to demands for censorship — see, for example, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Musk, in contrast, responded by courageously releasing the Twitter Files and exposing the largest censorship system in our history.
That is why I describe Musk as arguably the single most important figure in this generation in defense of free speech. The intense hatred for Musk is due to the fact that he was the immovable object in the path of their formerly unstoppable force.
The left will now kill jobs, cancel national security programs and gut the Constitution in its unrelenting campaign to get Musk. His very existence undermines the power of the anti-free speech movement. In a culture of groupthink, Musk is viewed as a type of free-thought contagion that must be eliminated.
Their frustration became anger, which became rage. As Elton John put it in “Rocket Man,” he was supposed to be “burning out his fuse up here alone.”
Yet, here he remains.
George Bernard Shaw once said “a reasonable man adjusts himself to the world. An unreasonable man expects the world to adjust itself to him. Therefore, all progress is made by unreasonable people.”
With all of his idiosyncrasies and eccentricities, Elon Musk just might be that brilliantly unreasonable person.
* * *
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
Sunday, October 13, 2024
"Netanyahu is as close as he has ever been to his ultimate wish: making the US fight Iran on Israel's behalf."
Some 100 US Troops Will Deploy In Israel To Man Anti-Air Batteries
On Saturday we were among the first outlets to report that the United States is preparing to deploy THAAD anti-ballistic missile systems in Israel, a major development which will put American troops directly in harm's way (or... boots on the ground) amid the tense showdown with Iran.
The Pentagon in follow-up statements to the NY Times has confirmed the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) systems will be sent to Israel, and that about 100 American troops will operate them.
This means that at least 100 American soldiers will be placed in positions likely to be targeted by another potential barrage of ballistic missiles from Iran, at a moment Israel is preparing its own counterattack in the wake of the the Oct.1st strikes (which witnessed about 200 missiles sent) on Israeli territory from the Islamic Republic. Each full missile battery and associated systems cost American taxpayers some $800 million to $1 billion.
All of this follows the Pentagon having weeks ago deployed thousands more US troops to the broader region amid escalation in Lebanon. Some of those forces were sent to Cyprus, and others likely to Gulf countries or possibly Jordan.
The Pentagon has tried to deflect from language which portrays the obvious: that without Congressional authorization American troops are entering an escalating overseas war zone to defend a foreign country.
The NY Times acknowledged the following exchange:
When asked on Sunday, Mr. Biden said only that he had ordered the Pentagon to deploy the system “to defend Israel. General Ryder said in his statement that the battery would “augment Israel’s integrated air defense system.” It was not immediately clear how quickly the missile defense system and troops announced on Sunday would arrive in Israel.
“This action underscores the United States’ ironclad commitment to the defense of Israel, and to defend Americans in Israel, from any further ballistic missile attacks by Iran,” the statement said. “It is part of the broader adjustments the U.S. military has made in recent months to support the defense of Israel and protect Americans from attacks by Iran and Iranian-aligned militias.”
So interestingly this is the new talking point from the national security state: Americans are being deployed to defend Americans who happen to still be in Israel. This certainly marks a new and interesting rationale.
This big "gift" is being sent to Israel even after rising tensions between Netanyahu and Biden...
Moving Borders
Netanyahu's Finance Minister Calls For Israel's Borders To Extend To Damascus
Hardline Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich has drawn criticism for calling for Israel to expand its borders to Damascus in a recent documentary.
In an interview for the documentary, In Israel: Ministers of Chaos, produced by European public service channel, Arte, Smotrich claimed that Israel would expand “little by little” and eventually encompass all Palestinian territories as well as Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
"It is written that the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus," he said, citing the “greater Israel” ideology, which envisions the expansion of the state across the Middle East.
Jordan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the incendiary remarks saying that they highlighted Smotrich’s dangerous and "racist" ideology.
Smotrich previously cited the concept at a memorial service for a Likud activist in Paris. When speaking from a podium decorated with a map of Israel that included Jordan, he claimed that there was “no such thing” as the Palestinian people.
The French foreign ministry subsequently announced that government representatives in Paris did not intend to meet with Smotrich during his visit to the country.
Aside from being the finance minister, Smotrich now holds significant powers over the occupied West Bank.
Meanwhile, over at US Central Command (CENTCOM) on Saturday...
In August, Smotrich expressed support for blocking aid to Gaza, saying that: “Nobody will let us cause two million civilians to die of hunger even though it might be justified and moral until our hostages are returned.”
Watch a portion of the interview...
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