[IMPORTANT] Hamas launches foot assault against settlements.

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“Settlements continue to be a barrier to peace. Settlements continue to be inconsistent with international law,” US State Department Matthew Miller says, reiterating a stance that was voiced for the first time last month by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken when Israel announced its intention to advance plans for thousands of new settlement homes, which were formally green-lit earlier today.

In characterizing settlements as inconsistent with international law, Blinken restored historic US policy on the issue and rejected a stance implemented by the former administration,

“These settlements don’t just harm the Palestinian people, but they ultimately weaken Israel’s security and weaken the prospects for a lasting agreement that would provide real peace and real security for the Israeli people,” Miller says.

Sadly by the appearances of these circumstances, I find myself having to agree with the above Posting .
For a People , whom seemly went through so much during their existence,and the compassion they Gotten from the world based on their collective experiences ?? They do not seem to offer the same compassion, to other Peoples .?

I think that's a fair assessment.

What is a Lion? How does a Lion operate? When you puzzle that out, tell me what you think the "Lion of Judah" implies?

I think that's a fair assessment.

What is a Lion? How does a Lion operate? When you puzzle that out, tell me what you think the "Lion of Judah" implies?

Israeli minister Benny Gantz encountered harsh criticism and tough questions about the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza and Israel's war strategy during his meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan at the White House on Monday, three Israeli and U.S. officials said.

Why it matters: Gantz, who is considered a more moderate member of the Israeli war cabinet, absorbed a lot of the frustration the White House has with the Israeli government right now, a U.S. official said.

The strong messages Gantz received in private, which were accompanied by stronger public criticism from the Biden administration in the last 48 hours, signal the White House has lost its patience and is ratcheting up pressure on the Israeli government.

Gantz's visit to the White House enraged Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu who ordered the Israeli embassy in Washington to not take any part in the visit or assist Gantz in any way.

Gantz is a political rival of Netanyahu, who is under increasing pressure in Israel as calls mount for early elections.

Israeli minister Benny Gantz encountered harsh criticism and tough questions about the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza and Israel's war strategy during his meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan at the White House on Monday, three Israeli and U.S. officials said.

The big picture: The aid convoy disaster in Gaza last Thursday, during which more than 100 Palestinians were killed, was a turning point for the Biden administration, U.S. officials tell Axios.

U.S. officials saw it as an event that embodied all the Israeli policy failures in Gaza and were surprised about the indifference on the Israeli side about what happened.

Driving the news: Shortly before Gantz arrived at the White House on Monday, Biden tweeted: "There are no excuses. The aid flowing into Gaza is nowhere near enough – and nowhere fast enough."

Around the same time, Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Netanyahu's confidant, minister Ron Dermer, about the issue. In an unusual move, the State Department shortly after made the call public.

"Blinken pressed Dermer that more must be done to get aid into Gaza, to ensure that the delivery of aid is sustained into Gaza, and to ensure that once aid gets into Gaza it can be distributed to those who need it," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a press briefing.

"We will continue to press them to allow more aid in. The government of Israel tells us that they want to ensure that aid gets to those who need it. But ultimately it's the results that matter, not the intent. And right now not enough aid is getting in and not enough aid is getting distributed, and that needs to change," Miller said.

Behind the scenes: A senior Israeli official said that already after the meetings Gantz had on Sunday to prepare for the meetings with White House and State Department officials, the Israeli minister started realizing the Israeli government "is in deep s**t" when it comes to how the U.S. sees Israel's responsibility for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Gantz spent three hours at the White House. Harris and Sullivan both pressed Gantz on the humanitarian situation and said Gaza "needs to be flooded" with aid and it is Israel's responsibility to find solutions that will allow it to happen, Israeli and U.S. officials said.

The Israeli official said Harris told Gantz the administration wants to continue backing Israel, but the Israeli government needs to do its part. "The Vice President said: help us help you," the Israeli official said.

The official said Gantz wasn't only surprised by the strength of criticism about the humanitarian crisis but also about how far apart Israel and the U.S. are when it comes to a possible operation in Rafah.

Zoom in: Harris and Sullivan asked Gantz where Israel is planning to move more than one million Palestinian civilians who are in Rafah and expressed deep skepticism it is even possible, two U.S. and Israeli officials said.

Gantz tried to reassure Harris and Sullivan that Israel won't go into Rafah without evacuating the civilian population and stressed Israel has ways to do it, but also realized the White House doesn't believe the previous assurances received from Netanyahu about this issue, the senior Israeli official said.

Another pessimistic message Gantz received at the White House was that the chances are slim of reaching the mega-deal with Saudi Arabia that includes normalization with Israel as long as the war continues and as long as the Israeli government is unwilling to chart a path for a Palestinian state, the Israeli official said.


Between the lines: The senior Israeli official said Gantz's conclusion was his visit to Washington was two months too late. "There is a big difficulty right now in the relations with the U.S. and we have to find a way to overcome it," the official said.

Five months after Hamas launched multipronged attacks on Israel, almost half of Gaza’s buildings lie in ruins and at least 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry, which, along with aid agencies, is warning that some of the most vulnerable children in the territory have begun to starve to death.

The Israeli military controls swaths of the Gaza Strip, and it has threatened to attack Rafah, a southern city where 1.5 million Palestinians have fled, unless a cease-fire deal is reached by next week. Israel has not achieved its military goals: destroying Hamas in response to its Oct. 7 attacks, which killed 1,200 people, and rescuing the 100-plus remaining hostages taken that day. It is unclear whether either is even possible.

“When children are starting” to “die from starvation, that should be a warning like no other,” Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the United Nations humanitarian office, said at a news briefing Tuesday. “If not now, when is the time to pull the stops, break the glass, flood Gaza with the aid that it needs?”

The raw statistics are grim.

American and U.N. officials have said the death toll given by the Palestinian Health Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas, is likely to be an undercount. Aid workers on the ground estimate thousands more people remain buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings.

About 80% of the population, or 1.9 million people, has been forced to flee their homes, according to the U.N., some up to half a dozen times because of the Israeli military push southward. Around 60% of the buildings in Gaza have been damaged, 45% of them destroyed — including schools, hospitals, bakeries, mosques and thousands of homes — according to research by the World Bank.

Even by the scarce standards of Gaza, which Israel and Egypt have blockaded for 16 years, there are shortages of everything: water, food, fuel, electricity and medicine. The U.S. has sent several aid drops into Gaza in recent days, but even if they are successful, they will not solve the issue. With desperation mounting, more than 100 Palestinians were killed last week in a chaotic encounter with Israeli troops around an aid convoy.

The lack of clean water means diseases such as diarrhea and hepatitis are rife. The lack of food means people are simply starving to death, according to local doctors and international aid workers.

Gaza’s Health Ministry has reported that at least 16 children have died since last week as a result of malnutrition and dehydration. It has also expressed concerns for six infants who it said were being treated for malnutrition at Kamal Adwan hospital in the town of Beit Lahia.

Some had underlying health conditions, like Yazan Kafarneh, 10, who was recorded by an NBC News crew before he died Monday. Yazan had been dependent upon a special diet, such as blended fruit and milk, items now unavailable in Gaza, doctors told Reuters.

Pictures showing the emaciated boy covered in blankets and receiving fluids intravenously were widely shared on social media after he died.

People in Gaza have been “totally dehumanized, deprived of their own dignity and their human well-being,” said Dalal Iriqat, a Palestinian associate professor of diplomacy at the Arab American University, based in the occupied West Bank. “Let alone the fact that they have lost all their property, their homes and in many cases their family members.”

She shares the view of many Palestinians that the war is not about Hamas at all but rather about what they see as a thinly veiled, decadeslong desire by the Israeli government to push them out of Gaza and repopulate it with Israelis.

Far-right members of the Israeli government coalition have openly supported the idea of expelling Palestinians from Gaza, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly denied that is his policy.

Unbowed by international pressure to ease off his military assault, Netanyahu remains adamant the country must eliminate Hamas, which does not recognize Israel’s existence and is a banned terrorist group in the West.

The 134 remaining hostages, some of whom are believed to be dead, are a constant and growing torment not just for their campaigning families but also for the nation and the Jewish diaspora as a whole. In a report Tuesday, which many saw as long overdue, the U.N. said there was “clear and convincing” evidence that women and children had been subjected to “sexual violence, including rape” and “sexualized torture,” after the Oct. 7 attacks. The hostages in Gaza may still be suffering the same treatment, it said.

Polls indicate most Israelis support the war in Gaza.

“What happened on Oct. 7 is very much still vivid in the Israeli mindset,” said Nimrod Goren, a Jerusalem-based senior fellow for Israeli affairs at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. “Even people who have lost all faith in Netanyahu still believe that the military objectives that were stated were the right ones to pursue — it’s very different to where the international discourse is at.”

Militarily, Israel controls most of northern Gaza, as well as swaths of the south, according to a rolling analysis by the Institute for the Study of War, a nonprofit think tank in Washington. It began a relentless bombing campaign of Gaza hours after Hamas’ attack, and on Oct. 27 it launched a land invasion.

Netanyahu has heavily signaled that he intends to attack Rafah next, believing it to be the location of four Hamas battalions. The government has instructed people sheltering there to evacuate once again, to which many of them respond: where?

Another problem for Israel is that Hamas has not been totally purged from the north, with some locals and analysts seeing signs it has been regrouping in pockets outside Israeli control. Israel says it has killed as many as 10,000 Hamas fighters. Both that figure and the number of Hamas members in total are unconfirmed, making it difficult to understand the extent to which the group has been truly weakened.

Israel may be able to eradicate the militants and their bases. But harder to kill are the ideas behind the group: at once virulently antisemitic and reviled in the West but also seen as a bastion of resistance by many Palestinians who feel that every other avenue, peaceful or otherwise, has been thwarted.

“A major failure — one I think that is deliberate — is the failure to prepare for the ‘day after,’” said Michael Horowitz, the head of intelligence at Le Beck International, a security and risk management consultancy.

“There is no one to take over authority in Gaza, not even the beginning of a solution.

Israel has allegedly told Hezbollah that they have until March 15 to resolve the conflict diplomatically, according to an article by Lebanese media source Al-Akhbar published on Thursday.

The article claims that American envoy Amos Hochstein has been attempting to subdue conflicts "of the southern front" as a preliminary stage to Israel forming a comprehensive agreement with Lebanon.

American officials are reportedly applying pressure out of fear that a greater conflict with Hezbollah would "turn into a fuse that would blow up the entire region."

Lack of trust in diplomatic resolutions
While Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is cited as having told Hochstein that Israel is committed to finding a diplomatic solution to the conflict, Al-Akhbar claimed that an anonymous Western diplomatic source said that a diplomatic solution would not be enough to ensure a conflict-free resolution to the situation.

“The political path [is] not enough for reassurance, despite the American side’s insistence on drafting the initials of the agreement between Beirut and Tel Aviv," the source said. "which revolves around consolidating the ceasefire, resolving the dispute over the disputed points, finding a formula for the Shebaa Farms and Kfar Shuba, and formulating a sustainable solution that prevents a major clash.”

The source also said, “Hochstein has become convinced of the difficulty of stopping the fighting in Lebanon before it stops in Gaza, and he is also convinced that Hezbollah does not want escalation.

There is also a conviction that the 45-day period for the truce will be an opportunity to collect aid for the army, mobilize resources, secure the required logistical equipment, and secure the necessary funds.”

Speaking on the European efforts to subdue the conflict, the source said, “The Europeans, specifically the British, believe that France must coordinate with the Americans regarding the political arrangements because the American side intends to launch the route at the time the truce takes effect in Gaza.

“The process of deploying the watchtowers that Britain proposed to construct on the southern border will be among the measures taken, and coordination is being conducted regarding it with the Lebanese army and the American side.”

Well you seem intent on calling me out in someway, Asking to share what I think the Lion if Judah implies ..?
Am I suppose to relate Christ or Jesus( the Lion of Judah) in someway, to what you are saying ? Am sensing a religious
reference here ? Apologies , perhaps I misunderstood?...In matters of real life & death , Religiousity ..is/ has never been my intent to imply any relation to such things in the face of a Genocidal situation ...

^ I’ve not seen any evidence for that claim.

If people thought that God was involved in the situation in any way, why would they still want anything to do with him?

People are suffering and dying. Any all-knowing, all-powerful God that would encourage or even allow the current atrocities to take place would be a major as*hole unworthy of even a modicum of respect.

It appears to be a horrifying situation all around with no supernatural influences whatsoever.

Have you ever read the Bible, half of which is the Old Testament which is what the Jews adhere to? Throughout it are battles just like this, where God instructed the Jews to kill them all, leave none left, not even children. People who believe in the God of the Jews know very well that this is business as usual. And it doesn't seem at all unusual to them. So, I'll say it again: Just because YOU are appalled doesn't mean you're right. Whether you choose to believe in them or not, there are other forces at play. And no amount of outrage will change that. Enjoy beating your heads against a brick wall...

Have you ever read the Bible, half of which is the Old Testament which is what the Jews adhere to? Throughout it are battles just like this, where God instructed the Jews to kill them all, leave none left, not even children. People who believe in the God of the Jews know very well that this is business as usual. And it doesn't seem at all unusual to them. So, I'll say it again: Just because YOU are appalled doesn't mean you're right. Whether you choose to believe in them or not, there are other forces at play. And no amount of outrage will change that. Enjoy beating your heads against a brick wall...

That is YOUR philosophy. Naturally, you assume that your take on this is right, moral, wise, etc... The thing is, you aren't in charge. And the powers that be don't seem to be agreeing with you either. So, call it Religiousity, Jesus Christ, or whatever you please. Something else seems to be seeing to it that this struggle continues in favor of Israel, you call it immorality, the UN, an evil world. Did you ever stop to think that the Universe, or Fate, or God doesn't see it your way?

The word "Torah" is a tricky one, because it can mean different things in different contexts. In its most limited sense, "Torah" refers to the Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. But the word "torah" can also be used to refer to the entire Jewish bible (the body of scripture known to non-Jews as the Old Testament and to Jews as the Tanakh or Written Torah), or in its broadest sense, to the whole body of Jewish law and teachings.