Tag Archives: Politics

Gaza Civilians Now Deciding ‘Where Do We Want To Be When We Die’

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Civilians trapped in Gaza are now deciding “where do we want to be when we die”, a British MP who has family in the territory has said.

Lib Dem Layla Moran said on Sunday that “nowhere in Gaza is safe”, as Israel conducted its military operation in response to the October 7 Hamas attack.

“The conversion in Gaza now I’m afraid to say has changed. No longer are people saying, where do we go to be safe,” she told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme.

“The question they are now asking is, where do we want to be when we die?”

Moran’s mother is Palestinian and father is British and some of her extended family have been sheltering in a church in Gaza since a Israeli bomb hit their house.

She said it had been “torturous” not to be able to contact them after phone and internet connections were cut.

“I can’t tell you wha that did to us as a family,” Moran said. “Not knowing if they were dead or alive.”

Moran, the Lib Dem foreign affair spokesperson, said the UK government was essentially “sanctioning” the Israeli action and called for a ceasefire.

On October 7 Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza, killing 1,400 people and taking around 230 hostages.

In response, Israel has launched an intensive bombing campaign in Gaza and a broader ground invasion is expected.

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Despite Calling Hezbollah ‘Very Smart,’ Trump Remains Loved Among Jewish Republicans

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LAS VEGAS — Despite having praised the anti-Israel group Hezbollah as “very smart” and disparaging Israeli leaders just days after an attack that killed well over a thousand people in the country, Donald Trump nevertheless received a hero’s welcome Saturday at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual conference.

Trump, the eighth and final speaker at a forum of 2024 GOP presidential candidates, got a lengthy standing ovation before he even said a word in a massive ballroom at The Venetian Resort on the Las Vegas Strip.

“I love Israel,” he said to cheers. “I love Israel.”

Over the next half-hour, the former president ticked off all the things he had done for the country and encouraged Israel to wipe out Hamas, whose members carried out the Oct. 7 assault, while criticizing U.S. President Joe Biden’s calls for Israel to restrain its retaliatory strikes to avoid harming civilians.

“Every single life that is lost in this conflict is on the shoulders of Hamas alone,” Trump said to more cheers.

Matt Brooks, the Republican Jewish Coalition’s CEO, said he understood why attendees gave Trump a pass on his comments, considering Trump’s “incredible pro-Israel record” during his four years in office. “His record is unblemished on this,” Brooks said.

Ari Fleischer, a press secretary in the George W. Bush White House and a member of the group’s board of directors, said most Jewish Republicans still back Trump. “He shouldn’t have said it,” Fleischer said of Trump’s comments. “But his record is so strong and so good, he still has a deep pool of goodwill.”

Trump’s remarks praising Hezbollah came just four days after Hamas, the Gaza-based militant group, killed more than 1,400 people in Israel, according to the country, with another 200 taken hostage. “You know, Hezbollah is very smart. They’re all very smart,” Trump told his West Palm Beach audience in a speech that also denigrated Israeli military officials and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump, who as president reversed several U.S. policies to encourage Netanyahu to do as he pleased, soured on the Israeli leader after he called to congratulate Biden after the 2020 election. Trump falsely claimed then, and continues to falsely claim now, that he actually won.

While attendees at the annual summit said they were irked by Trump’s remarks, many said they would not hold them against him as he seeks the 2024 GOP nomination because, as president, he moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, supported the building of even more Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank territory, recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, and helped broker a normalization treaty between Israel and multiple Arab countries.

“There is nobody who did more for Israel than Trump,” said Sinan Gursoy, a cardiologist in Naples, Florida, as he downplayed Trump’s previous remarks. “This is his style. People have got to get used to it.”

Biden’s campaign, meanwhile, pointed to Trump’s comments as an example of the sort of rhetoric that Americans grew weary of during his presidency. “The simple truth is, Trump’s erratic attacks on Israel are par for the course for a man who undermined our national security and embarrassed our nation on the world stage,” said campaign spokesperson T.J. Ducklo. “The more Trump speaks, the more voters are reminded just how dangerous and unfit to lead he is.”

Among Trump’s rivals for the 2024 GOP nomination, though, only former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley criticized Trump. She said that in a time of conflict in Israel and Russia’s continuing assault on Ukraine, the United States could not afford another Trump presidency.

“We cannot have four years of chaos, vendettas and drama. Eight years ago it was good to have a leader that broke things. Now we need a leader that knows how to put things back together,” she said. “America needs a captain that will steady the ship, not capsize it. And Republicans need a candidate who can actually win.”

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Keir Starmer Has A ‘Grip’ On Labour Despite Gaza Ceasefire Divisions, Say Shadow Minister

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Keir Starmer still has a “grip” on Labour despite a growing revolt over his refusal to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, one of his close allies has said.

But Peter Kyle, the shadow science minister, refused to say whether the Labour leader would sack members of his frontbench team who defied him.

Starmer has only called for a humanitarian pause in the war, stopping short of demanding a full ceasefire.

On Sunday morning 13 members of his own frontbench team had so far called for a ceasefire.

London mayor Sadiq Khan, Manchester mayor Andy Burnham and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar have done the same.

Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Kyle attempted to play down the significance of the divisions.

“We are united in sympathy in what is unfolding there and impacting civilians,” he said.

“People are calling for a ceasefire. We are calling for a pause. So we can dance on the head of a pin.”

Ceasefires tend to be long-term and designed to deescalate a conflict and pave the way for a political solution.

While humanitarian pauses can last just hours to enable aid to be delivered and are often confined to a small area rather than the entire conflict zone.

Kyle said: “Keir has been listening to people with both perspectives in the party and has turned it into a set of policy announcements and calls that would make a tangible difference on the ground.

“Keir is doing so, leading in a way which has strength, it has absolutely firm policies which are implementable and in line with the international community right now.

“That shows he has a grip on our party, yes we are having a debate and Keir is engaged in that debate. Don’t ever doubt his leadership ability.”

Asked if Starmer would sack shadow ministers who publicly differed with him on policy, Kyle said: “What he is going to do, I suspect, is to continue to engage with them.”

Members of a political party’s fronbench team are usually expected to abide by collective responsibility and not voice opposition to the leader’s policies.

In July last year Starmer removed Labour MP Sam Tarry as a shadow transport minister for making up policy “on the hoof”.

“That can’t be tolerated in any organisation because we have got collective responsibility,” the Labour leader said at the time.

On October 7 Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza, killing 1,400 people and taking around 230 hostages.

In response, Israel has launched an intensive bombing campaign in Gaza and a ground invasion is expected.

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Seth Meyers Unearths ‘Amazing’ Old Video Of ‘Sheepish’ Donald Trump

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Seth Meyers on Thursday contrasted the “blustery, unhinged” figure that former President Donald Trump cuts in public to the Trump “who only exists when he’s under oath” and under threat of perjury.

Trump when testifying is “suddenly much calmer, he’s more restrained, you could even say sheepish,” noted the Late Night comedian.

To prove the point, Meyers aired a video deposition from the future president in a 2016 lawsuit. In the clip, Trump answers questions in a respectful tone.

“That footage is amazing,” said Meyers. “It’s like watching the neighbourhood Rottweiler who’s always terrorising the mailman suddenly mope around in a cone.”

“Like in public he’s a raving lunatic screaming shit like, ‘Radical woke Democrats are using windmills and secret satellites to kill Christmas’ and then under oath he’s practically Emily Post,” he added.

It’s because under oath is “the only place Trump faces consequences,” explained Meyers, who later noted how the ex-POTUS’ latest outburst against a court staffer in his civil fraud trial — in violation of a gag order which banned him from doing so — saw him slapped with a $10,000 (£8,256) fine.

Watch Meyers’ full monologue here:

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US Confirms It Has Sent Artillery Previously Meant For Ukraine To Israel

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The US has confirmed that shells originally intended to aid Ukraine in its war against Russia have now been sent to Israel amid its conflict with the Palestinian militants, Hamas.

Reports that tens of thousands of artillery shells – specifically 155mm projectiles – previously earmarked for Ukraine, were being redirected to Israel started circulating last week.

And on Monday, a US senior defence official confirmed some had indeed been re-routed.

The unnamed official told journalists that “prior to the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack, some 155[mm shells] had been withdrawn from the war reserve stockpile in Israel, to replenish US stocks in Europe”.

The New York Times has previously reported that the US had been moving munitions, potentially up to 300,000 shells, from Israeli storage to Ukraine since 2022.

But, as the official noted, there’s now been a U-turn in the Pentagon, following the outbreak of war in the Middle East.

They said: “Much of that has been redirected and provided to the Israel Defence Forces for their use.”

The Pentagon had been keeping munitions in Israel as an emergency in case of war in the region or as a resource for other US allies.

The US does not formally need Israel’s consent to move such items, but local officials confirmed they had it anyway – from then-prime minister Yair Lapid’s –when looking to transport the munitions to Ukraine.

As Reuters noted in January, if such transfers had happened under current PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s watch, it may have stretched his budding relationship with Russia.

Now, munitions have been redirected back to Israel – even though Ukraine still has more than 1,000km of active frontline to fight.

Ukraine’s minister for strategic industries, Oleksandr Kamyshin, told POLITICO on Monday that the Israel-Hamas war showed the West needs to increase its arms production.

“The free world should be producing enough to protect itself. That’s why we have to produce more and better weapons to stay safe,” Kamyshin said.

Back in the US media briefing on Monday, journalists asked the Pentagon representative why weapons were going to Israel, even though the White House has regularly emphasised how much munition Ukraine needs.

The official said the US is “assessing US stocks globally and what can be made readily available to the needs of Israel as well as Ukraine”, before adding: “Also the United States can walk and chew gum at the same time.

“So we’re going to continue to ensure that Ukraine has what it needs to defend its territory. And at the same time we’re ensuring that Israel has what it needs. Two very different operational environments with different levels of need and consultation. And we’re continuing to prioritise both.”

The change follows a domestic split in US politics about just how much funding and weaponry Washington DC should continue to send to Kyiv more than 18 months after Russia first invaded.

As Nikolay Kozhanov, a consulting fellow at the Russia and Eurasia Programme of think tank Chatham House told HuffPost UK, the conflict in the Middle East works to Russia’s advantage as a means to distract the West from the Ukraine war.

The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed in his own press briefing on Tuesday that the West’s ability to keep supplying Ukraine was limited, according to Sky News.

It’s worth remembering that are some complicated international politics at play between the two wars, too.

Since the Hamas massacre on October 7 and the following war between Gaza and Israel, Ukraine has sided with Tel Aviv.

Meanwhile, Russia has reiterated its support for a Palestinian state, after years of trying to build a friendship with Israel. Moscow is openly calling for a ceasefire, too.

The Israel-Hamas war is threatening to spill into a regional conflict – a fight which began in the Gaza Strip, has already led to many deaths in West Bank – and the war in Ukraine is expected to continue for some time yet.

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Critics Bring The Receipts Over Trump’s New Claim About Sidney Powell

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Donald Trump is suddenly claiming Sidney Powell was never his attorney, but reporters and social media users were quick to jog his memory.

The former president posted on Truth Social on Sunday morning that the election-denying lawyer “WAS NOT MY ATTORNEY, AND NEVER WAS.”

The post followed Thursday’s news that Powell had reached a deal with Fulton County prosecutors handling the Georgia racketeering case against Trump and 17 others over an alleged plot to change the state’s 2020 election results.

Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanours related to intentionally interfering with an election.

In exchange for her cooperation with prosecutors, Powell must serve six years of probation, pay a fine of $6,000 (£4,940) and write an apology to Georgia residents.

Over on X (formerly Twitter), people promptly pointed out someone who contradicts Trump’s latest version of events: Trump, in 2020.

Trump announced in a tweet on November 15, 2020, that Powell had joined his “truly great” legal team, weeks after losing the election to YS President Joe Biden, as the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake noted.

Trump’s former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who led the legal charge to overturn the 2020 results, also made comments explicitly to the contrary.

At a now-infamous press conference on November 19, 2020, Giuliani introduced himself, Powell and others as members of Trump’s legal team, saying, “We’re representing President Trump and we’re representing the Trump campaign.”

Powell testified under oath before the House January 6 committee that Trump had asked her to be “special counsel to address the election issues.”

Video of that moment from her deposition was shown at one of the panel’s congressional hearings last year.

Some people, including HuffPost’s SV Dáte, also noted that if Trump claims Powell was never his attorney, then that means he was never entitled to attorney-client privilege — a tidbit that prosecutors might find useful.

See some of the other posts about Trump’s claim below:

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Michael Gove Delays Scrapping No-Fault Evictions In Face Of Major Tory Rebellion

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Michael Gove has delayed plans to end no-fault evictions after dozens of Tory MPs threatened to vote against it.

The levelling up secretary said the changes – which were promised in the Conservatives’ election manifesto – would not go ahead until reforms were made to the way courts handle so-called “Section 21” cases.

But Labour accused him of striking a “grubby deal” with Tory MPs to avoid an embarrassing backbench rebellion.

Gove’s climbdown was revealed in a letter to MPs ahead of a Commons debate on the Renters Reform Bill.

In it, he said ministers will “reform the courts before we abolish section 21”.

Shadow levelling up secretary Angela Rayner said: “The government has betrayed renters with this grubby deal with the Tory backbenches.

“The Conservatives’ long-promised ban on no-fault evictions has majority and cross-party support across the House, but this flip-flop kicks it into the long grass.

“Having broken the justice system, they are now using their own failure to indefinitely delay keeping their promises to renters in the most underhand way.”

She added: “Tens of thousands more families who the government promised to protect, now face the prospect of being threatened with homelessness or kicked out of their homes by bailiffs.”

A spokesman for Rishi Sunak this morning insisted the government was still committed to ending no-fault evictions, but could not guarantee that it will happen before next year’s general election.

He said: “We think that this is an important commitment. Equally, it’s right that the right provisions are in place.”

One of the Tory rebels, Marco Longhi, told LBC: “The consequences of this well-meaning legislation is a reduction in supply as landlords continue to leave the market.

“Where will these tenants go at a time of huge demand? This is an inflationary measure that will make things worse for tenants.”

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‘Are You In Denial?’: Robert Jenrick Mocked Over His Response To Tory By-Election Defeats

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A Tory minister was asked if he was “in denial” after he tried to play down the significance of the party’s latest by-election disasters.

Robert Jenrick insisted “the public are undecided” about Labour, despite their seismic victories last Thursday.

The Conservatives lost in Tamworth despite having a majority of nearly 20,000, while Keir Starmer’s party managed to overturn a 25,000 majority in Nadine Dorries’ former seat of Mid Bedfordshire.

But appearing on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme this morning, Jenrick, who is the immigration minister, insisted Rishi Sunak is “making good progress” on his promises to voters, which he said were in tune with people’s priorities.

Presenter Victoria Derbyshire replied: “It doesn’t seem to be having any effect though if you look at what happened in Tamworth and Mid Beds.

“In Tamworth Labour overturned a majority of almost 19,000, in Mid Beds a majority of 25,000.”

Jenrick said: “With all due respect I wouldn’t read too much into by-elections – governments tend to lose by-elections.”

But Derbyshire hit back: “They are massive majorities with double digit swings – are you in denial?”

The minister replied: “I think we all have to listen to what the voters are saying in those by-elections, but we also shouldn’t read too much into them.

“My sense is that the public are undecided, they’re certainly not sold on Keir Starmer.”

Derbyshire interrupted: “Labour just won those two by-elections.”

Jenrick said: “The key thing for us as a party right now is not to worry about party politics but to deliver on the public’s priorities.”

Derbyshire then asked Jenrick how worried he was about losing his own seat of Newark, where he has a majority of 21,816.

“It would be foolish to be complacent – we all need to work hard and be good constituency members of parliament every day,” he said.

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Further Civilian Casualties ‘Entirely Likely’ In Gaza, Tory Minister Admits

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Further civilian casualties are “entirely likely” in Gaza as Israel continues its campaign to destroy Hamas, a government minister has admitted.

Robert Jenrick called on Israel to “surgically” attack the Palestinian militant group amid fears of a humanitarian disaster in the region.

But he conceded that more civilians will probably be killed as the conflict continues.

More than 1,400 Israelis were killed after Hamas launched an assault on the country two weeks ago.

An estimated 4,300 Palestinians have died as a result of Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Gaza.

Appearing on Sky News this morning, immigration minister Jenrick said: “We have confidence that Israel will take all the steps that it can in the circumstances to avoid civilian lives being lost.

“But the real tragedy here is that Hamas, who started this war by committing those appalling, barbaric atrocities in Israel deliberately enmesh themselves with the civilian infrastructure in Gaza, using innocent Palestinians as hostages to their own political aims.

″And so it is entirely likely that more civilian lives will be lost in this appalling conflict, but we have to defend Israel’s right to secure its borders, to release the hostages and bring a degree of security to its situation.

“What we need Israel to do is to surgically degrade and eradicate Hamas and their unfrastructyre in the Gaza Strip so that Palestinians can be free from Hamas and Israel can have the security that it needs.”

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‘You’re Not Doing Very Well, Are You?’: Robert Jenrick Roasted By Trevor Phillips On Tory Record

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Immigration minister Robert Jenrick was left squirming on Sky News as he was presented with proof of the government’s failures.

Presenter Trevor Phillips told him “you’re not doing very well” on the five pledges Rishi Sunak made to voters at the start of the year.

The prime minister vowed to halve inflation, grow the economy, reduce national debt, cut NHS waiting lists and stop the small boats carrying asylum seekers across the Channel.

But Jenrick was shown a graphic demonstrating how the government is failing on four of them.

Inflation is still running at 6.7%, debt and waiting lists have gone up and the government is nowhere near stopping the boats.

Phillips said: “That [small boats] pledge does not say stop 10% of small boats, it says stop small boats. You’re not doing very well really, are you?”

Jenrick replied: “I’m not pretending this is job done, I’m saying our plan is beginning to work.

“We’re around a quarter reduction now in small boats compared to last year, and if you compare that to Italy and much of Europe, small boat arrivals are up by 100%.

“If you look at the number of Albanians coming illegally to the UK, down by 90%. If you look at the number of people who are being returned who shouldn’t have come here, up 75%.”

He added: “On this area we are delivering. There is clearly a long way to go.”

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