News
The Guardian, – September 23, 2024
At least 100 people have been killed and 400 injured in ongoing Israeli airstrikes targeting southern Lebanon, the country’s health ministry has said – the heaviest daily toll in nearly a year of cross-border clashes.
“Enemy raids on southern towns and villages since this morning… killed 100 and injured more than 400,” the ministry said, adding that “children, women and paramedics” were among the casualties.
Israel said it had hit 300 targets, in one of the most intense barrages against the militant group Hezbollah since the war in Gaza began in October last year.
BBC News – September 22, 2024 (05:20)
The United Nations is warning that the Middle East is on the brink of imminent catastrophe, with fears of escalation into an all-out war.
Israel and the Hezbollah militia-group in Lebanon have continued to exchange fire across the border. Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, launched more than 100 rockets into Israel in retaliation for the attacks in Lebanon using exploding pagers and radio handsets, which killed dozens and injured hundreds more. Israel struck targets in northern Lebanon, saying it had destroyed thousands of rocket launch sites.
Reeta Chakrabarti presents BBC News at Ten reporting by Orla Guerin in Beirut and Jeremy Bowen in Jerusalem.
Weakened militarily and stripped of its cloak of secrecy, Hezbollah has arrived at the most delicate phase of its decades-long fight against Israel. It hoped that a low-level fight on the border on behalf of the Palestinians would prop up Hamas’ position in the negotiations, but a ceasefire in Gaza seems more elusive than ever before. Now its limited confrontation with Israel has exacted a seemingly unlimited price from the militant group.
Yet the compulsion to lash out has rarely been greater, bringing the region even closer to the brink of a catastrophic war.
In its most high-level statement since the Israeli airstrike on Friday, Hezbollah’s second in command Naim Qassem declared “a new chapter” in the confrontations which he called “a battle without limits.”
PBS NewsHour – September 23, 2024 (09:40)
To discuss the spiraling violence between Israel and Lebanon, Geoff Bennett spoke with Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a longtime State Department official in both Democratic and Republican administrations, and Hussein Ibbish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
The current phase of fighting in the Middle East began almost a year ago, with the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas and the subsequent pummeling of Gaza by Israel. But to many academics, foreign policy experts and international observers, what is taking place is also the latest episode in the decadeslong conflict commonly referred to as the “Arab-Israeli conflict.”
The experience of the past 11 months has led many experts on the region like myself to reassess that term. Is “Arab-Israeli conflict” an accurate reflection, given that the active participants are no longer just Arabs and Israelis? Should we retire that term for good now that the conflict has widened, drawing in the United States and Iran – and potentially Turkey and others in the coming years?
How it all began
The Arab-Israeli conflict began after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1922. In what is now Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, but was then the Palestine mandate under British rule, sporadic disputes over land ownership led to violence between the Jewish and Palestinian Arab communities.
When Israel declared independence in 1948, the conflict expanded into an interstate war between Israel and several Arab countries – Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. Hence it was named the Arab-Israeli War by both the media and political leaders at the time.This name remained accurate for several decades as the conflict remained geopolitically and geographically confined to the Arab countries and Israel.
After the initial 1948 war, the unresolved conflict resulted in several other wars between Israel and Arab countries. Some oil-exporting Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, also became indirectly involved by providing financial support for the front-line Arab states and declared oil embargoes against the West during the 1967 and 1973 wars.
Iraq was also directly affected by this prolonged conflict in the 1980s when Israel destroyed its nuclear facilities. Subsequently Iraq targeted Israel with missiles several times in 1991 during the first Gulf War.
Going beyond the Arab world
The phrase “Arab-Israeli conflict” isn’t heard as much these days, but it’s still commonly in use, including by the United Nations, the United States government, media outlets and many scholars of the region.
However, reference to “Arab-Israeli conflict” obscures the active role of several other participants, particularly in recent decades.
The U.S. diplomatic support for Israel began with President Harry Truman’s decision to be the first to recognize the new state in May 1948. This was followed in the 1960s by an increase in U.S. military and financial support during Lyndon Johnson’s presidency.
Substantial U.S. arms transfers to Israel also occurred in September 1970 when, at President Richard Nixon’s request, Israel mobilized its forces to save King Hussein of Jordan from a Palestinian uprising aided by Syrian forces.
In the following decades, however, the role of the U.S. has expanded into direct involvement in air defense operations against missile and drone attacks against Israel. The U.S. Army air defense units, for example, were used to defend Israel against Iraq’s scud missile attacks as early as the 1990-91 Gulf War.
This U.S. participation has been in evidence since the Oct. 7 attacks, too. In the months after the attacks, U.S. operations have been conducted against missile and drone attacks launched toward Israel by the Houthis in Yemen and by Iran.
By all accounts, the U.S. military support for Israel has played a crucial role in Israel’s military superiority over its neighbors. Therefore, an appropriate name for the broader conflict, I would argue, should reflect this active U.S. participation.
An Israeli soldier marches a soldier from Jordan through the streets of Bethlehem during 1967’s Six-Day War. Bettmann via Getty Images
On the “Arab” side of the conflict, too, the adversaries of Israel are no longer limited to Arab nations. Iran is now an active participant; Tehran not only provides military support for groups hostile to Israel, including Hamas, Houthis and Hezbollah, but it has had direct military exchanges with Israel during the current Gaza war.
Furthermore, Iran and Israel have been involved in covert operations and cyberwars against each other for the past 15 years, which have only intensified since the Israel-Hamas war.
Risk of Turkish involvement?
And with no resolution to the current fighting in sight, the chances of widening the conflict further shouldn’t be dismissed. Two possible scenarios that can widen this conflict are a serious escalation between Israel and Iran, and the active participation of Turkey.
The intense Israeli bombardment of Gaza and the resulting high casualties have escalated tensions between Israel and Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and politicians from various Turkish political parties have been very vocal in their criticism of Israel’s military operations.
Public anger and anti-Israeli sentiments in Turkey have reached high levels, partly as a result of the extensive coverage of the carnage and human suffering in Gaza. There is even a small possibility that an unexpected event, such as an encounter between the Israeli navy and a Turkish ship approaching Gaza to defy Israel’s naval blockade, might lead to a military exchange between Turkey and Israel. While the likelihood of such an exchange remains small, a military escalation between Israel and Turkey could also be triggered by a major Israeli operation in Lebanon, according to some experts.
The ‘MENA-ISRAME conflict’?
Almost a year into the latest phase of fighting in the Middle East, it is clear that the label “Arab-Israeli conflict” no longer reflects the facts on the ground. But “Israeli-Palestinian” or “Gaza-Israeli” fail to take into account the growing number of countries that have a stake – or an active role – in the fighting.
Indeed, in the course of the current Gaza conflict, people have been killed in Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran. Similarly, the list of belligerents includes Hamas and Israel, but also a plethora of Iran-backed militias across the Middle East and the Arab Peninsula.
So where does that leave us?
A more accurate title for the ongoing hostilities needs to better reflect all the major participants.
On one side, we have several nonstate actors and governments from across the Middle East and North Africa, or “MENA,” as the region is commonly called. On the other side we have an Israel heavily reliant on the U.S. for its military prowess and protection, and a United States that is fully committed to the security of Israel. I believe any name for the conflict should acknowledge the U.S. participation.
So, in my opinion, it is better to call this the “MENA-ISRAME conflict” – in which “ISRAME” is constructed by combining the first three letters of “Israel” and “America.”
I acknowledge that it is a bit of a mouthful and unlikely to catch on. But a name that reflects the larger set of participants in the Arab-Israeli conflict is nonetheless needed. It will increase awareness of the destruction, suffering and financial burden that it has inflicted on all the involved countries over its lifetime.
By doing so, it might increase the willingness of the world community, especially the active participants, to put more efforts toward finding a solution that can bring the MENA-ISRAME conflict to an end.
Wars of peace are rarely successful. They are normally of choice: pre-emptively attacking to neutralize a perceived threat. Israel and Hezbollah have been stuck in the tit-for-tat horror of escalation chicken for nearly a year. But over the past week Israel has clearly decided to massively amplify its attacks on the Iran-backed militant group, claiming, according to some reports, they seek to “escalate to deescalate” – to cow their adversary into a diplomatic solution.
It is a highly risky and likely flawed mantra, perhaps designed to dupe their frustrated ally, the United States, into believing that the diplomatic solution, which Washington has now sunk an almost embarrassing amount of energy into, is still also Israel’s goal.
But the greater the harm inflicted on Hezbollah recently, the more likely a shorter-term Israeli success has seemed. A full-scale ground war between a tired, divided Israeli military and an experienced, angry Hezbollah inside southern Lebanon would likely be disastrous for Israel. It is exactly what the militant group is good at and waiting for. Yet it is also something Israel does not for now need to get into.
PBS NewsHour, September 24, 2024 – 9:00 am to 5:00 pm (ET)
American influence in the Middle East has reduced in recent years, most significantly since the Arab Spring, yet is still substantial.
Currently stated priorities of the U.S. government in the Middle East include resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and limiting the spread of weapons of mass destruction among regional states, particularly Iran.
For more information and ongoing online discussion on the government agencies, legislative committees, and leading Senate and House representatives addressing this issue, go to this category in the US onAir hub (displayed as a slideshow of posts on computers).
2 WAY, September 20, 2024 – 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm (ET)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsY41mm9FA4
PBS NewsHour, September 23, 2024 – 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm (ET)
NPR’s Tamara Keith and Jasmine Wright of NOTUS join Geoff Bennett to discuss the latest political news, including new developments in two key states that could affect the potential path to victory, if there will be a second debate between Trump and Harris, how Trump is softening his message to appeal to women voters and the Harris campaign gets a win in Nebraska.
In an interview with Sharyl Attkisson over the weekend, Donald Trump said this would be his last presidential bid.
Attkisson asked him about running in 2028 if he lost in 2024 and Trump responded: “No, I don’t. No, I don’t. I think that that will be, that will be it. I don’t see that at all. I think that hopefully we’re gonna be successful.”
Which, I call BS on
PBS NewsHour, September 23, 2024 – 9:00 pm to 10:00 pm (ET)
Two years ago, PBS News special correspondent Judy Woodruff and her team set out to better understand the growing political polarization in America. That project is America at a Crossroads.
PBS NewsHour, September 23, 2024 – 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm (ET)
PBS NewsHour – September 23, 2024 (05:00)
In our news wrap Monday, prosecutors say Ryan Routh engaged in a premeditated plot to kill Donald Trump and left behind a pre-written note, the Biden administration is proposing a ban on Chinese software and hardware in autonomous vehicles, Alabama officials are asking for information related to a mass shooting in Birmingham and FBI data shows that violent crime dropped across the U.S. last year.
Sunday Sunshine, Monday Clouds
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
And yet, for Trump and Vance, acknowledging the truth in a damaging media report cuts against every one of their core political instincts. You don’t assess the validity of claims from the lying lib media—you scoff at them, dismiss them, and fundraise off them. Sure, it might be tough to get around the fact that Robinson signed up for his porn accounts with his own name and personal email address. But if they admit that, where does it stop? Next you’ll be trying to tell them it wasn’t actually Antifa that stormed the Capitol.
A shortage of homes for sale, combined with rising expenses like homeowners’ insurance and rent, have made the cost of both owning and renting a home in America increasingly unaffordable for many, taking an ever-growing share of Americans’ paychecks and savings accounts.
“No question this is good news,” said Shaun Donovan, a former US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, told CNN of the Fed’s rate cut. “But there’s a lot more we have to do to solve an unprecedented housing crisis in this country.”
CNN, – September 23, 2024
Democrats have bet the destiny of the White House on the premise that once voters remember the chaos and divisiveness of Donald Trump’s presidency, he’d suffer an election-defining slump.
Wild weeks of outlandish rhetoric by the ex-president have revived memories of the cacophony of his four White House years and shattered perceptions that he’s running a more disciplined campaign than in 2020 or 2016. But the nature of the race — a toss-up contest in swing states — has not budged.
Trump has peddled baseless rumors that immigrants in Ohio are eating pets. He’s warned that Jewish voters will be to blame if he loses in November. He’s refused to openly condemn a protege in the North Carolina gubernatorial contest who described himself as “black Nazi” on a porn site, as CNN’s KFile reported last week. Trump also reacted to a second apparent assassination attempt by implying that Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats are inviting such attacks when they highlight his refusal to accept his 2020 election loss and say he’s a danger to democracy.
Spending Deal Averts Shutdown, Associated Press
Congressional leaders struck a bipartisan deal to avert a federal shutdown, extending government funding through mid-December with added Secret Service and transition provisions.
Harris Grows More Popular, NBC News
A new NBC News poll shows Harris leading Trump 49%-44%, with her popularity surging due to increased favorability on competence, mental fitness, and representing change.
“This Will Be It,” Says Trump, USA Today
Trump confirmed in a recent interview that 2024 will be his final presidential campaign, stating he won’t run again in 2028 if he loses, saying, “I think that will be it. I don’t see that at all.”
Zelensky Thanks Scranton Workers, The Scranton Times-Tribune
President Zelensky visited Scranton Army Ammunition Plant to thank workers producing 155mm artillery shells for Ukraine, as PA officials reaffirmed U.S. support in Ukraine’s defense.
Walz Makes a Play for Northampton County, Politico
Tim Walz campaigns in PA’s crucial swing county, Northampton, aiming to boost Democratic turnout and win over working-class men, a key challenge for the Harris-Walz ticket
Ground News
Secret Service Shoots Self By Accident , For the Left
A U.S. Secret Service officer accidentally shot himself while on duty in D.C. but sustained non-life-threatening injuries and was hospitalized for treatment.
Stevie Wonder Kicks Off Pre-Election Tour, For the Right
Stevie Wonder announced a 10-stop U.S. tour in October, titled “Sing Your Song! As We Fix Our Nation’s Broken Heart,” aimed at inspiring change ahead of Election Day.
FEATURE STORY & ISSUE
Today’s feature story is centered around the possibility of a major new war between Hezbollah and Israel.
Our featured issue for today is “Midde East”. For more information and ongoing online discussion on the government agencies, legislative committees, and leading Senate and House representatives addressing this issue, go to this category in the US onAir hub (displayed as a slideshow of posts on computers).
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Who: Haurie Hahn
What: How can racial healing be achieved at a time when political and social divisions across the country run deep?
Hear the inspiring story of special guests Pastor Chuck Mingo and Jess Knight as they and other evangelicals in a Cincinnati congregation struggle to bridge racial divides in their own church, their community, and across the nation.
When: Tuesday, Sept. 24 | 6:15 p.m. EDT
Where: Bloomberg Center, near the US Capitol
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