President Joe Biden speaks as he meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday in Tel Aviv.
Published October 19, 2023
President Joe Biden left for home after seven hours in the Israeli war zone with an increasingly tense Middle East in worse shape than when he arrived.
Biden told reporters on Air Force One that he was satisfied he got a job done – notably on the issue of unblocking humanitarian aid to besieged Gaza, which has been under heavy Israeli bombardment since the horrific Hamas terror attacks on October 7.
But his mission also showed the limits of US leverage in a region on the brink of wider violence as conflicting narratives between Israel and Arab states about a blast at a hospital in Gaza City believed to have killed hundreds of people deepened the crisis.
The president did accomplish one key goal of his mission – expressing his deep respect for Israel, movingly shouldering the country’s trauma and grief and invoking Holocaust analogies in vowing to stand forever with the Jewish people.
But he also pleaded with Israeli leaders not to allow the rage over the killings of “your fathers, your grandparents, sons, daughters, children, even babies” to blur the clarity over their objectives in trying to destroy Hamas.
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SOURCE: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/18/politics/middle-east-conflict-biden-israel/index.html
RELATED: Rocket fire at northern and southern Israel intensifies after Biden’s departure
Published October 19, 2023
US senators say after classified briefing that Israel not behind Gaza hospital blast
US senators who attended a classified briefing with top defense, intelligence and other administration officials say they were briefed that Israel was not responsible for the hospital blast in Gaza on Tuesday.
“The intelligence community assesses that Israel is not to blame for the explosion of the hospital in Gaza,” Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. said as he left. “They believe it was an errant rocket from terrorists in Gaza.”
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said the intelligence is “definitive” that it was not an Israeli operation.
In a joint statement earlier in the day, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the panel, said they had reviewed intelligence and “feel confident that the explosion was the result of a failed rocket launch by militant terrorists and not the result of an Israeli airstrike.”
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SOURCE: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-october-18-2023/
RELATED: Biden to deliver a prime-time foreign policy address
The address comes on the heels of the president’s trip to Israel to show support in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks.
Published October 18, 2023
President Joe Biden will deliver a prime-time foreign policy speech to the country on Thursday night, White House officials said Wednesday.
The Oval Office address is scheduled for 8 p.m. ET and will address the administration’s response to Hamas’ terrorist attacks against Israel and Russia’s war in Ukraine. It comes after Biden flew to Tel Aviv on Wednesday pledging his support for Israel in the wake of the sprawling attack carried out by Hamas terrorists this month.
In remarks there after meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden said, “Israel was born to be a safe place for the Jewish people in the world.”
