Biden’s Twin Crises: Possible U.S. Hostages, Risks of Wider War

Deploying substantial new air and naval forces to the Middle East, President Biden and his top aides are scrambling to deal with twin crises unleashed by the hot war between Israel and Hamas: the possibility that American hostages may have been taken into Gaza along with Israelis during the deadly weekend assaults, and the danger that the conflict could spread in the region, potentially drawing the U.S. closer to conflict.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

As Israeli Defense Forces continued to battle Hamas militants in Israeli towns, American officials worried violence could erupt in the West Bank and that Iran-backed forces in Syria and Lebanon may try to open additional fronts against Israel. The Biden administration is also trying to find out just how many Americans may have been taken hostage from a music festival and in other kidnappings during Hamas’s bloody incursion into Israel. Biden spent the day at the White House on Sunday being briefed on the attack and the fallout, calling allies, and instructing the U.S. military to deploy more firepower to the eastern Mediterranean Sea near Israel.

In a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday morning, Biden expressed “deep sympathy” for the killed, missing, and wounded in Israel and “pledged his full support” to Israel, according to a White House description of the phone call.

Biden told Netanyahu that he had directed the U.S. military to rush equipment and ammunition to Israel to assist the Israeli Defense Forces. The two leaders talked about the hostages taken by Hamas, which include families, elderly people, and young children, the White House said.

Biden Administration officials hope that the show of U.S. military force in the Mediterranean will help deter an escalation of fighting elsewhere on Israel’s borders, including in the occupied West Bank. “What we’re really focused on right now is trying to ensure,” said a senior administration official, “that this does not spread to the West Bank. We want to try to make sure this is contained in Gaza, as terrible as the situation in Gaza is.”

A day earlier, Biden had put enemies to Israel, including Iran, on notice. “Let me say this as clearly as I can: This is not a moment for any party hostile to Israel to exploit these attacks to seek advantage. The world is watching,” Biden said, during televised remarks on Saturday.

The U.S. is doing more than watching. The U.S. military is sending ammunition and equipment to the Israeli Defense Forces, and Biden ordered a heavily armed carrier group to change course and move into the waters off the coast of Israel. The naval formation includes the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and Ticonderoga-class cruiser USS Normandy, as well as four U.S. Navy destroyers.

The U.S. is also adding aircraft to several fighter jet squadrons already based in the area, the Defense Department said Sunday. Additional fighter aircraft include Air Force F-35, F-15, and F-16 fighter jets as well as A-10 attack jets.

Moving the forces closer to Israel would speed up the response time if the U.S. decided it needed to strike targets in the region or, at some point, wanted to launch a rescue operation for any American hostages held in Gaza.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Sunday that the deployment of U.S. forces was in response to the Hamas attack on Israel and are designed to “bolster regional deterrence efforts” and underscore the U.S.’s “ironclad support for the Israel Defense Forces and the Israeli people.”

In addition to military assistance rushing to the region, American officials are working to track down reports that Americans were killed or have been taken hostage in the Hamas attacks, including from a large trance music festival. “We have reports that several Americans may be among the dead. We are very actively working to verify those reports. Similarly, we’ve seen reports about, about hostages and there again, we’re very actively trying to verify them, and nail that down,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday morning on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

U.S. intelligence officials are likely reviewing troves of intercepted electronic communications and other material to see what may have been missed in the run up to the attacks, said Michael Allen, a former staff director of the House Intelligence Committee and a former senior official on President George W. Bush’s national security council. “We look at our intelligence holdings to see if there is anything relevant to this, something we may have missed,” Allen said.

Asked if intelligence agencies failed to see the attack coming, Secretary of State Blinken said there would be time for Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies to see how they missed seeing the planning for the coordinated attacks from Gaza. “In terms of the intelligence, there will be plenty of time in days to come to look and see what anyone missed, what might, what we could have done better. Right now, the focus is on helping Israel, making sure that it has what it needs to deal with this attack,” Blinken said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

The deadly attacks could have been partly motivated by an effort to disrupt the push to normalize relations between Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab states, Blinken said. “Certainly, that could have been part of the motivation. Look, who opposes normalization? Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran. So it wouldn’t be a surprise that part of the motivation may have been to disrupt efforts to bring Saudi Arabia and Israel together, along with other countries that may be interested in normalizing relations with Israel,” said Blinken.

U.S. diplomats have been concerned about escalating violence in the region. In the wake of the attacks from Gaza in Israel’s south, Hezbollah and Israel briefly exchanged fire along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. But officials haven’t seen a major escalation. Biden’s national security team also made a blitz of calls over the weekend to high level officials in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, as well as European countries and the Palestinian Authority to try to keep allies aligned.

In the past two days, Biden, Blinken and other senior U.S. officials have worked to press allies and countries in the region to stand up in defense of Israel in the face of the assault on Israel by Hamas.

But the outreach so far hasn’t delivered a full-throated condemnation of Hamas and the attacks from Arab states that U.S. diplomats wanted. After Blinken spoke with Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan bin Abdullah on Saturday evening, a statement from the minister stopped short of condemning Hamas, saying only that the Kingdom rejects the targeting of civilians.

source https://time.com/6321860/hamas-us-hostages-israel-biden-wider-war-iran/

A Surprise Attack Upends Israel and the Middle East

The obvious and intended point of reference for the shattering surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7 was the 1973 October War, the devastating invasion that Arab armies launched precisely 50 years earlier, plus a day. It was the last time Israelis awoke to a life-changing assault that its intelligence apparatus had not seen coming, and also the last time they found themselves, officially, in a “war.”

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Another analogue might be the Tet Offensive, the 1968 Viet Cong surprise attack that changed the course of the Vietnam War. Like the Hamas assault out of the Gaza Strip, it broke out on the morning of a holiday and seemingly everywhere at once; it demonstrated capacities unforeseen in a guerrilla force; it briefly overwhelmed a far superior military; and it produced images that challenged fundamental assumptions about a conflict that had ground on for years.

In Israel, the challenged assumption is that its conflict with the Palestinians can be “managed” rather than solved. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu all but disavowed that assumption as he addressed the camera in the Kirya, the Defense Ministry high-rise in downtown Tel Aviv: the coming conflict meant the country was in “not an operation. Not a round. At war.” 

And like the October War and the Tet Offensive, the Hamas raid and its fallout are forcing reconsideration worldwide too, as political and military leaders from Washington to Beijing weigh the possible outcomes of the war. The attack stalls, and perhaps kills, a hoped for peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia that depended on the presumed acquiescence of occupied Palestinians to the status quo. It calls into question America’s long-standing hope that it would be able to focus attention away from the Middle East, and it resets a competition between global powers in the region. Once again, the world is finding the near future of geopolitics depends heavily on Israel and the Palestinians.

Brief, lopsided battles with Gaza militants, usually fought by drone or fighter jet, had become so regular that Israeli officials had come to refer to them, in bemused tones, as a homeowner’s routine chores: “cutting the grass,” they would say. Mowing was the most starkly military component of “managing the conflict,” which has been the overarching approach for decades. The strategy assumes that there is no political solution to Jewish Israelis’ contest with the Palestinians, both of whom want the same land. The best that can be done is to contain them.

On the hills of the West Bank, which 3 million Palestinians share with some 500,000 Jewish settlers, much of that management is outsourced to a formidable internal security apparatus that answers to Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Also known as Abu Mazen, Abbas, now 87, wagered that subduing violent resistance (which, conveniently, also meant subduing Hamas, a rival to Abbas’ Fatah party) would produce negotiations that ended with a Palestinian state. That wager has not paid off.

There are no longer Jewish settlers among the 2.2 million Palestinians crowded into the Gaza Strip. They departed, with the Israeli military, in 2005. For most of the time since, the enclave has been ruled by Hamas, or the Islamic Resistance Movement, and sealed off by Israel. As on the West Bank, Israel controls Gaza’s power supply, telephone systems, and much of its economy, but it has proved harder to manage. Poverty is endemic, and the youthful population has no option to leave. Israeli security has relied heavily on the fences and walls that Hamas guerrillas tunneled under in 2014, and on the morning of Oct. 7 tore down and flew paragliders over. 

The scenes that ensued are seared into the souls of Israelis who already possess, along with the most powerful military in the region, a deep reservoir of trauma. In the chaotic morning hours of sabbath, everything was overwhelmed: the Israel Defense Force that forms the core of Israeli society, the Iron Dome missile batteries that ordinarily shield the civilian population, and the almost luxurious sense of security that led hundreds of young people to an overnight rave in the desert where the paragliders landed and opened fire. Some of the terrified young revelers ended up among the estimated 100 hostages, young and old, Israelis and foreign citizens, carried into Gaza as hostages.

Abduction, including of bodies, is a tried and true tactic of the asymmetrical warfare Israel faces, offering bargaining leverage from hit-and-run operations. Like the deaths of civilians, the kidnappings also guaranteed Israel sympathy, and wide latitude to respond; Netanyahu vowed to turn parts of Gaza “to rubble,” though how to do that with dozens of Israeli hostages in the line of fire?

As darkness fell on Oct. 7, Israeli forces were hauling tanks south and, in Gaza, Palestinians’ phones buzzed with texts from the IDF, warning them out of buildings that were about to be bombed. In an instant, Israeli society was no longer torn asunder by Netanyahu’s efforts to sideline the Supreme Court. But the feeling was far from familiar. Some, groping for a reference point, thought not of 1973 or 1968, but 2001. It felt like 9/11. In just moments, a great deal had changed. —With reporting by Solcyre Burga

source https://time.com/6321849/israel-attack/

Here’s How the World Leaders Have Reacted to Hamas’ Surprise Attack on Israel

Global leaders have been watching tension in the Middle East escalate after Palestinian militant group Hamas unleashed an attack near the Gaza strip on Saturday, launching rockets in the air and sending fighters to attack on land. At least 600 people have died as a result of the attack, according to Israeli authorities, with both soldiers and civilians reportedly taken hostage by Hamas.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that his country is at war, and told global leaders that a “long, difficult” campaign against Hamas will take place. “The Israel Defense Forces will act immediately to destroy Hamas’ capabilities,” said Netanyahu on Sunday. “We will cripple them mercilessly and avenge this black day they have brought upon Israel and its citizens.”

Below, find out what the world leaders have said about the attack on Israel.

U.S. President Joe Biden 

U.S. President Joe Biden condemned the attack, referring to it as an “appalling assault against Israel.” In a statement uploaded to the official White House website, he said: “Terrorism is never justified. Israel has a right to defend itself and its people. The United States warns against any other party hostile to Israel seeking advantage in this situation. My Administration’s support for Israel’s security is rock solid and unwavering.”

The U.S. has continuously spoken about the country’s commitment to Israel’s security, and has been strong allies with Israel for decades. Hamas was designated as a terrorist group by the U.S in 1997.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

In a statement posted on X (formerly Twitter) Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said: “Canada strongly condemns the current terrorist attacks against Israel. These acts of violence are completely unacceptable. We stand with Israel and fully support its right to defend itself. Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this. Civilian life must be protected.”

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak posted on X: “As the barbarity of today’s atrocities becomes clearer, we stand unequivocally with Israel. This attack by Hamas is cowardly and depraved. We have expressed our full solidarity to [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu and will work with international partners in the next 24 hours to co-ordinate support.” He later returned to X to share a video statement about his solidarity.

The scenes we have seen in Israel over the last 36 hours are truly horrifying.

I spoke to Prime Minister @netanyahu earlier today to assure him of the UK’s steadfast support as Israel defends itself against these attacks.

Terrorism will not prevail. pic.twitter.com/5EGoqiZM8b

— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) October 8, 2023

UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly supported the idea that Israel has the “right to defend itself” and that the UK will always support that endeavor.

Iranian Ministry Spokesperson Nasser Kanaani

Iran’s foreign ministry said that the Hamas group acted in self defense when it attacked Israelis, and vocalized their support for the group. 

“This operation … is the spontaneous movement of resistance groups and Palestine’s oppressed people in defense of their inalienable rights and their natural reaction to the Zionists’ warmongering and provocative policies,” Iranian spokesperson Nasser Kanaani is quoted as saying, according to Reuters.

Kanaani reportedly added that Israel’s supporters are responsible for the “violence and killing against Palestinians” and asked Islamic countries to support them.

Iran’s role in the most recent attack is unclear, but the Biden administration has claimed that Tehran has provided funding and weapons to the Hamas group, per the Wall Street Journal.

Saudi Arabia‘s Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it is “closely following” the situation between Palestinian and Israeli forces, and called for “an immediate halt to the escalation between the two sides.”

Saudi Arabia also called for the international community to try and create a two-state solution to build peace in the area.

#Statement | The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is closely following the developments of the unprecedented situation between a number of Palestinian factions and the Israeli occupation forces, which has resulted in a high level of violence on several fronts there. pic.twitter.com/KEFsNB5ZVb

— Foreign Ministry 🇸🇦 (@KSAmofaEN) October 7, 2023

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz 

The Chancellor of Germany called news of the attacks “horrifying” and said he was “deeply shocked” by the violence. “Germany condemns these attacks by Hamas and stands by Israel,” he said on X on Saturday morning.

On Sunday, Scholz announced that he was increasing the security of Israeli and Jewish temples, schools and monuments in the country and spoke out against reported German celebrations of the attack.

French President Emmanuel Macron 

The President of France similarly denounced the attacks, and shared France’s support of the Israeli people and their security on Saturday. “I have spoken to President Herzog and Prime Minister Netanyahu. I condemn the attacks carried out from Gaza on Israel, its soldiers and its people,” he said. “France stands in solidarity with Israel and the Israelis, committed to their security and their right to defend themselves.”

France has had diplomatic ties with Israel since 1959. The country’s foreign affairs page strongly speaks in favor of Israel’s right to security while also condemning settlement-building in occupied regions.

I have spoken to President Herzog and Prime Minister Netanyahu.

I condemn the attacks carried out from Gaza on Israel, its soldiers and its people.

France stands in solidarity with Israel and the Israelis, committed to their security and their right to defend themselves.

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) October 7, 2023

Qatar Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Officials from Qatar have asked all parties involved in the conflict to settle down. “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs holds Israel alone responsible for the current escalation due to its ongoing violence of the rights of the Palestinian people, the latest of which is the repeated raids on the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque under the protection of Israeli police,” they wrote in a public statement.

State officials urged the international community to ask Israel to stop “its blatant violation of international law.”

Statement | Qatar Expresses Concern over the Developments in Gaza Strip and Calls for De-escalation#MOFAQatar pic.twitter.com/QtoyaFDnRw

— Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Qatar (@MofaQatar_EN) October 7, 2023

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky

In a statement posted on X, Zelensky wrote: “Today, the entire world saw horrifying videos from Israel. Terrorists humiliate women and men, detain even the elderly, and show no mercy. In the face of such a terrorist strike, everyone who values life must stand in solidarity.”

Today, the entire world saw horrifying videos from Israel. Terrorists humiliate women and men, detain even the elderly, and show no mercy.
 
In the face of such a terrorist strike, everyone who values life must stand in solidarity.
 
We in Ukraine have a special feeling about… pic.twitter.com/AnBgVO2X0J

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) October 7, 2023

Prime Minister of Japan Fumio Kishida

Prime Minister of Japan Fumio Kishida strongly condemned the attacks on Israel. In a statement posted to X, he wrote: “Hamas and other Palestinian militants attacked Israel from Gaza yesterday. Japan strongly condemns the attacks which severely harmed innocent civilians. I express my condolences to the bereaved families and heartfelt sympathies to the injured.”

Hamas and other Palestinian militants attacked Israel from Gaza yesterday. Japan strongly condemns the attacks which severely harmed innocent civilians. I express my condolences to the bereaved families and heartfelt sympathies to the injured.

— 岸田文雄 (@kishida230) October 8, 2023

source https://time.com/6321800/world-leaders-react-hamas-attack-israel/

Biden Condemns Terrorist Attacks In Israel, Offers Full U.S. Support

President Joe Biden said the U.S. stands by Israel and supports its right to defend itself in response to deadly surprise attacks by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Biden in a phone call Saturday his country would launch a prolonged military campaign against Hamas and expressed confidence Israel would win, according to Netanyahu’s office. 

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

“I made clear to Prime Minister Netanyahu that we stand ready to offer all appropriate means of support to the Government and people of Israel,” Biden said in a statement Saturday.

The president denounced the attacks as “horrific” and “appalling.” Biden said his administration’s support for Israel is “rock solid” and pledged to “remain in close touch” with Netanyahu and have his staff closely track the situation. 

“Terrorism is never justified. Israel has a right to defend itself and its people. The United States warns against any other party hostile to Israel seeking advantage in this situation,” Biden said. 

Israel received backing from its top ally following some of the worst attacks the Jewish state has experienced in years. Hamas militants launched a coordinated barrage of rockets and infiltrations that resulted in numerous deaths, injuries and captures of civilians and soldiers.

The violence is likely to provoke a massive military retaliation against the Gaza Strip, which Hamas controls, which could turn into a broader conflict with major implications for the Middle East. Netanyahu said earlier Saturday following the attacks his nation is “at war.”

Such a conflict could create a foreign-policy headache for Biden ahead of his 2024 reelection bid. Biden has argued to voters he has restored U.S. global leadership that was damaged under his predecessor, Donald Trump.

Israel is in talks with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia on a sweeping deal, in which Washington would offer security guarantees to Riyadh in exchange for the Saudis normalizing relations with Israel, which would in turn give concessions to the Palestinians.

Iran, which is a backer of Hamas, could see its regional clout diminish under such an agreement. Some U.S. lawmakers accused Tehran of engineering the attacks for its geopolitical benefit.

“I am convinced that this unprecedented and brutal attack by Hamas is not only supported by Iran, it was designed to stop peace efforts between Saudi Arabia and Israel,” said South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican foreign-policy hawk.

U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan earlier Saturday spoke to his Israeli counterpart, Tzachi Hanegbi, White House National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, according to Gallant’s office.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken was at the White House Saturday to attend meetings and call foreign counterparts about the situation, according to State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.

The attacks also come at a pivotal moment for Israel, which has been embroiled in political turmoil that has left it weakened and vulnerable. Israelis have protested for months against Netanyahu’s efforts to strip power from the nation’s judiciary. 

The controversial push has also caused a rift with the Biden administration. The U.S. president has criticized it, as well as right-wing members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, and refused to meet with the Israeli prime minister for months until they sat down the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September.

Netanyahu told Biden in that meeting that under his leadership, “we can forge a historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia” that would also “advance a genuine peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”

source https://time.com/6321628/biden-condemns-israel-hamas-terrorist-attacks/

How $6 billion In Ukraine Aid Collapsed in a Government Funding Bill Despite Congress Support

WASHINGTON — The collapse of Ukraine aid in Congress was months in the making, and exactly what Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell had feared.

McConnell had warned that political support for Ukraine was in danger as a small but vocal contingent of fellow Republican lawmakers intensified their efforts against sending U.S. money overseas for the fight against Russia.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

First in a series of high-profile speeches this summer then in direct overtures to the White House, the Republican leader who had visited Kyiv and put a priority on U.S. support for Ukraine tried to steer the hard-right flank of his party.

But in the end, neither McConnell nor the White House nor Democrats in Congress could muscle a scaled-back $6 billion military and civilian aid package for Ukraine to passage in last week’s deal to avoid a U.S. government shutdown.

Despite overwhelming bipartisan support in Washington for stopping Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, the failure to approve Ukraine aid was a sizable setback for an administration seeking to lead a Western alliance to protect the young democracy as the fighting grinds on.

It also shows the perils ahead in Washington as a hardened band of Republican lawmakers who are just a minority in Congress — many allied with Donald Trump, the party’s 2024 presidential front-runner — flex their power to overcome the will of the majority. The next steps are highly uncertain.

“It does worry me,” President Joe Biden acknowledged last week. “But I know there are a majority of members in the House and Senate — both parties — who have said that they support funding Ukraine.”

Biden said he is preparing to deliver a major speech on U.S. aid to Ukraine and has a plan in the works to ensure the flow of assistance after the upheaval on Capitol Hill, which was punctuated by the ouster of the Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

As Washington regroups, the sudden shift has unleashed political blame over the inability of the White House and Congress to work around the small but intensifying minority of lawmakers who are putting aid in jeopardy.

“Not another penny for Ukraine!” wrote Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Greene, a top Trump ally, arguing money should be spent on securing the U.S. border with Mexico instead.

McConnell, R-Ky., had been trying to build support Ukraine for months, ever since he met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv in May.

The senator gave repeated floor speeches, talked with allies overseas and made the case his priority among colleagues on Capitol Hill, where Zelenskyy received a hero’s welcome last year and visited with a follow-up appeal weeks before the funding showdown.

But after the White House announced Biden’s $24 billion request for Ukraine aid in August, McConnell knew it would not have the support needed to pass, according to a person familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it.

McConnell had met with a group of Republican defense hawks in the Senate before the end of September deadline to fund the government or risk a shutdown, which would typically be the time to also pass the White House’s spending request for Ukraine.

But the GOP senators left McConnell with the understanding the support for Ukraine funding overall would be lacking.

A week before the deadline, McConnell told Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, on a Friday call that it “would be impossible” for Congress to pass the full $24 billion request, said the person familiar with the situation.

Instead, McConnell encouraged the White House to look “strongly” at whether it could rely on sending Ukraine aid through existing ways for transferring or reprogramming money in the short term, the person said.

The White House, in a series of conversations with McConnell’s team over the weekend, considered smaller amounts of funding and insisted that the Ukraine aid was vital.

McConnell agreed to do what he could. Days later the Senate advanced its package to keep government open for the short term, until Nov 17, with $6 billion for Ukraine. It passed the Senate on an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote.

The problem was, however, that the Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill had never fully articulated Ukraine as a top priority as they fought off House Republican demands for steep budget cuts to keep the government open.

And McCarthy, R-Calif., was having his own problems in the Republican-led House.

Greene and other hard-liners in the House had essentially forced McCarthy to strip a much smaller amount of Ukraine security assistance funds, $300 million, from an annual defense funding bill.

It was a stark example of how a growing flank of the party — some 100 Republicans — was wresting control from the majority who widely supported the bill.

It was a sign of the trouble to come.

Staring down a potentially devastating government shutdown, the embattled McCarthy then stripped the $6 billion Ukraine aid from the federal funding package before the House vote to keep the U.S. government open.

As the House was preparing last Saturday to avert a shutdown, McConnell convened his Republican senators behind closed doors for a lunch meeting.

McConnell spoke of the need to retain the Ukraine aid in the final package, but it was clear the room was not with him.

South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the Republicans’ second in command, had been in talks with McCarthy, including that morning, and understood from the speaker that the package could not pass with the Ukraine aid attached.

Thune told the Republican senators he thought they should move forward with the House version, without the Ukraine money, as the best way to avoid a shutdown, according to Republican familiar with the private meeting and granted anonymity to discuss it.

The third-ranking Republican senator, John Barrasso of Wyoming, swiftly agreed, according to another Republican granted anonymity to discuss the conversation.

Listening to his colleagues, McConnell then shifted course.

McConnell came out after lunch and said the Republicans would vote against advancing the Senate bill as they waited to see what their House colleague would do.

That afternoon, the House approved the package hours before the midnight deadline to keeping government open. The Ukraine aid was dropped.

Gone from the final bill was not only the $6 billion in Ukraine assistance, but also pages of text outlining the ability to transfer funds to Ukraine.

It was just what McConnell had been trying to avoid.

In the aftermath, the White House made it clear that McCarthy had made a commitment on Ukraine beyond what was in the package.

But when reporters asked McCarthy about it, the speaker said there’s no “secret deal” with Biden on Ukraine.

What there was, McCarthy explained, was an assurance that the ability to transfer funds for Ukraine would remain intact. If there was any confusion about that, he said, “We’ll fix it.”

The next day, McCarthy was ousted from the office over long-simmering complaints about his leadership, leaving any fix for Ukraine funding uncertain.

Biden’s speech about Ukraine aid is coming. The White House is waiting for the House to elect a new speaker. And it’s working with Congress to ensure the transferability of funds and to provide new support for Ukraine.

source https://time.com/6321620/ukraine-aid-billions-collapsed-government-funding-bill/

A New Book Tells a Palestinian Story from Behind the Wall

If it’s hard to make people care about someone they’ve never met, it’s even harder when that someone is behind a wall. But in A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, the journalist Nathan Thrall makes that a virtue of that. The book reports a profoundly difficult story—a father searching for his five-year-old son at the scene of a fiery school bus crash—made more difficult by where it occurs: On the Palestinian side of Israel’s separation barrier.

“There is so much discussion—of abstract statistics and talking points and two states and one state, analyses of the 30th anniversary of Oslo ad nauseum,” Thrall says, from his Jerusalem home. “And I feel that all of that is an enormous distraction from the actual present-day reality of people in this place.”

“This place” is the territory known for centuries as Palestine, but for the last 75 years has defied simple description. In 1948, a Jewish army established the state of Israel on part of it, then 19 years later conquered the rest. The victors built an extraordinary nation while subjugating an Arab population that claims the same land.

So, while the 2012 school bus crash is the event that propels A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, the subject of the book is the control of the Palestinians by the Israelis. Its 272 pages take in the life stories not only of Salama and his household, but also the roles played in their lives by the officials, passersby, and first responders who, eventually, showed up at the scene that day.

TIME: How did you come to find Ahmed?

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

NATHAN THRALL: I had decided that I wanted to write about this accident before I met Abed. You know, the parents and teachers who were involved in the crash live two miles away from me, but on the other side of a 26-foot tall concrete wall and, I drive by that walled ghetto all the time, and it’s really easy to ignore it.

But after this crash took place I couldn’t stop thinking about the lives of the parents and children who were involved and were sharing the city with me and living a radically different existence than mine. And so when professionally I found the time to actually work on a book, it just so happened that a very close family friend told me that she has a distant relative who was a father of one of the children who passed away. And I came to his home and met him and started asking him questions about an accident that was nearly a decade old.

And he opened himself up to me. We immediately had a connection, and he started kind of telling me about his entire life. It wasn’t just interviewing him. It was a process of getting to know him and getting to know his whole family. There was this cloud of silence around the accident and everyone is so afraid of upsetting the bereaved that no one talks about it, and as a result he really felt hungry to talk about it. He yearns to talk about it because it made him feel closer to his son.

Not a lot of people write about Palestinians these days.

They don’t.

Talk about that. Everyone’s writing about Israel at the moment.

People will say “it’s too complicated.” They have a Get Out of Jail Free card with respect to having a position on this issue, because it’s too complicated.

There is real complexity, there’s no doubt, but the way to address that is was not to write yet another analysis that “clarifies the situation.” What you really needed was to show the people who live within that complexity and their lives and what it actually means to navigate it. That’s not complex at all. That’s totally comprehensible and it grounds people in a situation that is, you know, grossly unjust. And that every American citizen is complicit in.

It is complicated, though. You take a whole book to make that clear. In fact you manage to find drama in the most boring thing the Israelis do—which is bend the situation to their will through administration, the most boring word in the world. The Israeli general who runs the occupation of the West Bank has the title Civil Administrator.

An invasion in Jenin and several Palestinians are killed, or an attack in Tel Aviv—those things make headlines. But they are the foam on the surface of the sea. And the sea doesn’t make headlines. The sea is this enormous system of control and the only way to get to that system is to show people ordinary people struggling through it.

I wanted an everyday occurrence—a car accident. What does it mean to have a car accident in this awful set of circumstances where there’s an elaborate system of rules that makes it difficult for a parent to find his child, to access a hospital that his child might have been taken to? There’s an elaborate system of color coded IDs that dictate who can go where even within the same family. There’s a wall that snakes through and circles a community, and its route is actually dictated by a logic. All of that is the everyday reality of all of these people, and they faced it on the worst day of their lives.

And what is the logic of that wall? [Israel announced the separation barrier at the height of the Second Intifada as a means to impede suicide bombings.]

Well, first and foremost, a logic of the wall that specifically encircles the enclave of Anata [where Abed lives] and Shuafat Camp—that was dictated by the Israel’s overriding goal, which was to minimize the number of Palestinians in the center of Jerusalem and to route the wall in such a way that would put the maximum number of Palestinians outside the heart of the city while retaining, for Israel, the maximum amount of land.

Your previous book, The Only Language They Understand, made clear that the “language” that has moved the conflict in either direction was coercion, was force. The force is all on one side now. Are the Palestinians as bad off as they’ve ever been?

I would say that the Palestinians are in the worst situation they’ve been in since the Nakba, since 1948. The book is called A Day in the Life of Abed Salama but it’s not just a day. It’s the entire life and family history of several characters, both Jewish and Palestinian. And those everyday experiences described in the book include a mother whose teenage boy throws stones at occupying soldiers and is entirely helpless to do anything to protect her son when at 1:30 in the morning the army comes and takes him away and refuses to tell her where they’re taking him and what he’s done. And she spends over a week just trying to find where her son is located after this happens. That feeling of total powerlessness that every Palestinian family feels, those are the experiences that are in this book. And those experiences are as widespread and as far from being alleviated as they’ve ever been.

What do you make of the crisis in Israel? [The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is passing legislation sidelining the Supreme Court, the only check on its power. Massive weekly protests call it an existential crisis for Israeli democracy.]

The fundamental element that unites all of the people who are involved in this debate over the judicial reform, both for it and against it, is the notion that Israel is a democracy, and it exists within the pre-1967 borders. Because that’s the only way you could imagine that Israel is a democracy, when for the majority of the state’s existence it’s held millions of people of a different ethnic or national group without basic civil rights.

All of the debate is about preserving democracy, the threats to democracy.

And yet, if you actually ask any of these people they will tell you, “No, Israel doesn’t actually end at the Green Line at the pre-1967 border.” One in ten Israeli Jews lives beyond the Green Line [in Jewish settlements in the Palestinian West Bank], and when they go home, they don’t have to stop at a checkpoint; they just drive on a highway and go straight to their homes. And when they vote, they vote in their settlements. And the Central Bureau of Statistics, when it lists the number of residents of the country, it lists the people in the settlements. In every respect these people are living inside Israel. And they have millions of Palestinians without rights living in the same territory, next to them. And so to me, the entire debate over the preservation or threat to Israeli democracy is entirely mis-characterized.

The book mentions young Israelis posting gleefully on Facebook about Palestinian kindergarteners dying in a burning school bus. It’s grotesque, but it’s not weirdly out of line. More than 70 percent of Israeli young people characterize themselves as right wing.

This was 10, 11 years ago. There was a left wing Israeli TV news anchor, and what he was most shocked by was, they were posting under their own names. He was horrified by the fact that his society had this strong element of unvarnished racism, and so he actually wanted to, as he put it, put a mirror up to the society and to go and interview the people who were posting. And in a way you could say that that his report was prescient because the young teens he interviewed are now probably voters for people like [Itamar] Ben Gvir, who’s the National Security Minister and espouses openly racist views.

In 2002, Saudi Arabia offered Israel diplomatic relations with Arab states in exchange for a Palestinian state. Going by reports of the negotations being steered by the Biden Administration, the price for diplomatic relations is down to the kind of concessions U.S. officials historically jawboned Israel about—easing up on settlements and the like.

That is part of the reason that the Palestinian situation has never been this bad since 1948. The Palestinian national movement has long held out hope that at the very least the Arab states would back them and it’s become abundantly clear to every Palestinian that’s not the case. They are truly alone.

And yet it appears that in the U.S., the Palestinians are gaining sympathy. At least among Democrats and young people, public opinion is moving in line with the European perspective.

There’s no doubt that younger Americans and Democrats and younger American Jews are all coming to a position that is less blindly, you know, Israel, right or wrong. But at the same time we are eons away from any kind of significant change in policy. That’s part of part of the reason that I feel ordinary people just need to get a better sense of what it actually is to live in this place.

The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

source https://time.com/6320059/israel-palestine-nathan-thrall/

The Best Exorcist Is the One Almost Everyone Hates

When William Friedkin died in August at age 87, the affectionate accolades and tributes started pouring in, as was only right. His career had spanned more than 60 years, but the Friedkin film that lurks in the memory of almost everyone who has seen it is The Exorcist, from 1973, a somber, jaggedly effective work hailed by many as one of the greatest horror films of all time. Friedkin made only one Exorcist film, but in adapting William Peter Blatty’s 1971 best-seller, he’d unwittingly created a renewable resource. The Exorcist has spawned numerous sequels and imitators over the years (one of them, The Exorcist III: Legion, directed by Blatty himself), and it extends its long reach into the present with The Exorcist: Believer, directed by David Gordon Green and starring Leslie Odom Jr. As a movie subject, demonic possession is evergreen. But the greatest, strangest Exorcist film may be neither the first nor the most recent; in fact, it’s the one almost everyone hates, though how anyone can resist the totally out-there vision of James Earl Jones in a locust headdress is beyond me.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Read more:The 14 Most Anticipated Horror Movies of Fall 2023

The 1977 Exorcist II: The Heretic, directed by John Boorman—with the input of his frequent collaborator Rospo Pallenberg—is generally hailed as a camp classic, a ludicrous follow-up to a masterpiece made by a genius. The consensus among many serious-minded people is that it’s just bad; they’ll happily quote its howler dialogue, and point to the ostensibly stiff performance of its star, Richard Burton, as evidence. After a screening of the wholly lackluster Exorcist: Believer, I blurted out to a group of my fellow critics that Exorcist II was my favorite Exorcist film. They told me outright I was crazy, that this could not even be possible. But at this point, I’ve watched Exorcist II so many times that its weird excesses, its sometimes cheap-looking and sometimes dazzling effects, seem perfectly normal to me. Unlike Friedkin’s movie, it’s hardly scary at all, which could be yet another reason horror fans dismiss it. But I find Boorman’s spirit of imagination and inventiveness affecting by itself. Exorcist II takes great leaps, some of which don’t work. Yet even its perceived failures force us to ask questions of ourselves: What do we really expect from a sequel? We want more of the same, only different. If we really love a movie, we may subconsciously want its follow-up to fail; that way, we can remain comfortable in our original judgment, instead of being jarred out of it. A sequel that’s a let-down is an opportunity to say those words that put an extra gloss of validity on our own good taste: Nothing can top the original.

There are, of course, sequels that are even greater than their predecessors—I’d submit The Godfather Part II as Exhibit A. But the issue most people seem to have with Exorcist II is that it’s barely a sequel at all, and even though it stars Linda Blair, who played Regan, the bedeviled preadolescent of the first film, they’re essentially right. In Exorcist II, Blair’s Regan is now a teenager living in New York with her caretaker, Sharon (Kitty Winn, also returning from the first film), while her mother, actress Chris MacNeil, is off filming on location. (Ellen Burstyn refused to come aboard Exorcist II, though she does have a pointless role in The Exorcist: Believer. More on that later.)

It has been four years since Fathers Merrin and Karras (Max von Sydow and Jason Miller) cast out the surly demon that had taken possession of little Regan’s body, instigating some rather impressive 360-degree head-spinning and much spewing of bilious green goo, though it cost them their lives. (Von Sydow appears in Exorcist II in a few flashback scenes.) Regan remembers nothing of the demon’s destructive residency, but there’s still some danger that she may be harboring damaging suppressed memories. Dr. Gene Tuskin (Louise Fletcher), a psychologist who specializes in high-toned hypnosis techniques, is trying to help her. Enter Burton’s Father Philip Lamont, a friend of the late Father Merrin’s who has recently attempted and failed at an exorcism of his own, resulting in a young woman’s death. To distract him from despair, a big-deal Cardinal—played by the aged Paul Henreid, who, some 35 years earlier, had wooed Bette Davis by lighting two cigarettes at once in the spectacular Now, Voyager—has assigned him to investigate the details of Father Merrin’s death. He approaches Dr. Tuskin in the hopes of learning about Regan’s experience, and he and the formerly possessed teen become both mentally and spiritually connected with the help of a humming, flashing-light doohickey called a Synchronizer.

That’s a lot to take in right there, though we haven’t even addressed major plot points like Father Lamont’s time-travel adventure on the back of a flying locust, the physical embodiment of the powerful demon Puzuzu, or the appearance of Jones in that fetching locust headgear. Why locusts at all, you might ask? Boorman is drawing on their fearsome Biblical connotations, but he’s also interested in ewky closeups showing how the collective beating of the swarm’s wings incite them into a violent frenzy, causing them to cannibalize one another. Good times.

Read more: 21 Underrated Horror Movies You Probably Haven’t Seen and Can Stream Right Now

It all sounds so silly. And it is, in a way, but it’s also bracingly unapologetic. The plot of Exorcist II makes almost no sense—but when you’re dealing with spiritual mysteries, does it really pay to get too hung up on logic? Exorcist II is one of those hallucinatory fever-dream pictures that you can’t fully believe you just witnessed. (At least not unless you’ve seen it five or six times, as I have.) Part of the story takes place in an African city, resplendent with a natural stone church. Boorman and his crew created this setting, an Emerald City of hardened mud clay, in Warner Bros.’ Burbank studio—the sun, a hard, red-hot circle, hangs so ominously over this landscape that it feels both real and unreal, the phantasmic illusion of a tormented priest. And Dr. Tuskin’s office is a fantastic assemblage of glass panels that reflect and refract images that may be real, or maybe not. At one point we see the real Regan, under the spell of the Synchronizer, and a ghostly version of her past, demon-possessed self engaged in a literal struggle for Dr. Tuskin’s beating heart. It’s a nutty, virtuosic effect, the kind that only a symphonic director like Boorman—the guy behind the marvelous autobiographical reverie Hope and Glory, as well as the Arthurian wonder Excalibur, and the feat of gorgeous madness that is Zardoz—could pull off. And while you wouldn’t call Burton’s performance in Exorcist II one of his best, his eyes alone carry realms of weariness. He’s convincing even when he’s not really trying, maybe because he’s not really trying.

Is Exorcist II objectively greater than Friedkin’s film? Objectively, no. But then, there’s no such thing as objectivity when it comes to explaining why certain films beguile us and others merely earn our admiration. I was 12 when The Exorcist came out, a dutiful Catholic schoolgirl, and our teacher, Sister Joseph, forbade us from seeing it. The bishops—or someone—had decreed that even watching The Exorcist could cause us to become possessed. Yipes! Who needed that? Pimples were bad enough.

When I finally did see it, some 20 years later, I understood why it had why it had terrified audiences upon its release, and also why it had been so controversial. (Though in some ways, it’s the best advertisement for the Catholic Church you could possibly make. Hey, their arcane, rarely used ritual actually worked.) But Friedkin’s skill and elegance notwithstanding, I still love Exorcist II more. As for Green’s Exorcist: Believer, which starts out strong—evoking all the reasons demons in search of a body to possess can’t resist the hormonal lightning rod of adolescent girls—and ends in a dumb jumble of generic-looking zombie-girl Blumhouse special effects: I’ve already forgotten it. Odom is a terrific actor, and he makes a believably distraught dad. But poor Ellen Burstyn. Long after refusing to appear in Exorcist II, she agrees to show up in this thing—as the older version of Chris, now the ultimate coastal grandma, dressed in floaty, flattering white scarves and ropes of crystal beads—only to get about 10 minutes of screen time, during which her character suffers a needless and stupid indignity. Though it’s not something she could have known some 47 years ago, Burstyn said yes to the wrong Exorcist sequel. If only she’d chosen the one with poetry in its soul.

source https://time.com/6321075/exorcist-believer-review/