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- Disgraced former president Donald Trump, geography expert
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The White House continues to press the Israeli government for a humanitarian ceasefire but has made little progress.
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The White House announced on Thursday that the Israeli government has agreed to a four-hour-per-day humanitarian pause in fighting in parts of northern Gaza. The pauses, which will be limited to specific areas, are meant to allow Palestinians a window in which to flee south along pre-approved routes. Israel has implemented similar pauses for the last few days, which the agreement is intended to formalize. Statements from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Thursday did not mention such an agreement. When asked, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesperson Elyon Levy said only that Israel would continue to allow a “window for the evacuation of civilians” along a specific humanitarian corridor of the enclave. The agreement does not call for a pause in Israeli airstrikes, which have continued unabated.
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President Biden confirmed on Thursday that he had asked Netanyahu for a three-day humanitarian pause in a call with him on Monday, which Netanyahu rejected. Both men continue to oppose calls for a more comprehensive ceasefire. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said, “We will not stop fighting as long as our hostages are in Gaza and as long as we have not completed our mission, which is toppling the Hamas regime and eliminating its military and governance capabilities.” Sources familiar with ongoing negotiations told The Guardian that, prior to the IDF’s ground invasion, Netanyahu had rejected a deal for a five-day ceasefire in exchange for which Hamas would have released all women, children, elderly hostages, and sick individuals among its hostages.
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The United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, said on Wednesday that both Israel and Hamas have committed war crimes in their month of fighting. “The atrocities perpetrated by Palestinian armed groups on 7 October were heinous, brutal and shocking; they were war crimes — as is the continued holding of hostages,” he said, adding, ”The collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians amounts also to a war crime, as does the unlawful forcible evacuation of civilians.” He continued, “In Rafah I have witnessed the gates to a living nightmare … where people have been suffocating, under persistent bombardment, mourning their families, struggling for water, for food, for electricity and fuel.”
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The question of what happens in Gaza after Israel’s ground invasion has become a point of contention with the White House.
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In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby said that he expected a period after the war is over “where Israeli forces will likely still be in Gaza and will have some initial security responsibilities,” but added that it was too soon to estimate the duration or to what extent that may be. Netanyahu said earlier this week that Israel could take over Gaza security “for an indefinite period,” but President Biden and other senior White House officials have warned the country against a reoccupation of Gaza. Secretary of State Antony Blinken towed a similar line to Kirby’s on Wednesday, saying, “there may be a need for some transition period at the end of the conflict, but it is imperative that the Palestinian people be central to the governance of Gaza and the West Bank.”
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The third GOP presidential primary debate, held on Wednesday, served as an important illustration of the differences in the way the two U.S. political parties approach the Israeli-Hamas conflict. The Republican candidates used characteristically violent rhetoric and expressed support only for Israel’s military efforts. At no point did any of them signal that they would make efforts to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza or that they held even a shred of concern for the climbing Palestinian death toll. They also made few meaningful distinctions between Hamas and the Palestinian people, and all of them categorized pro-Palestinian rallies as “anti-Semitic.” Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) called for students who are visiting the country on visas who “are making common cause with Hamas” — which they seemed to imply included joining pro-Palestinian campus rallies — to be deported.
French president Emmanuel Macron went further than many of his fellow Western heads of state on Thursday when he called not only for an immediate humanitarian pause in the fighting, but also said, “we have to strive for a ceasefire.”
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Good news! You can still snag some Pod Save America tickets for New Orleans, Louisiana this Friday, November 10th! Come on out to see Pod Save America Live—what many people are calling the Mardi Gras of political podcast recordings. We’ll be joined by co-host Tim Miller, guest Devante Lewis, and more! Who knows, maybe Dan will throw some beads. Tickets are going fast! Head to crooked.com/events to get yours today.
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The strike is over! (If you want it.) One of the largest labor stoppages in Hollywood history is finally coming to an end. The Screen Actors Guild, or SAG-AFTRA, reached a tentative deal for a new contract with the Hollywood studios on Wednesday. Strikes by film and television writers and actors shut down the industry beginning in May, and the studios’ monthslong recalcitrance put almost two million Americans in the industry out of work. The Writers Guild of America reached a tentative agreement with the studios on September 24, and ended their 148-day strike three days later. SAG members will vote on their own tentative deal in the coming days. The deal reportedly includes substantial increases in compensation for streaming shows and films, better healthcare funding, and guarantees that studios will not use artificial intelligence to create digital replicas of their likenesses without payment or approval. However, SAG was unable to get the studios to agree to a 2 percent share of revenue generated by streaming series, an issue that SAG president Fran Drescher had made a priority. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers balked, but instead offered a new residuals model for streaming programs based on performance metrics, which SAG ultimately agreed to. The 118-day strike was the longest in SAG history.
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Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) announced that he will not run for re-election in 2024. I guess he voted not to extend the child tax credit not fearing political retribution, but just for his personal love of child poverty!
A federal judge in New York will weigh final approval of JP Morgan Chase’s $290 million settlement with women who were reportedly abused by Jeffrey Epstein. The women claim that the largest U.S. bank looked the other way rather than address reports of his sex trafficking and abuse.
Jill Stein announced on Thursday that she is launching a 2024 presidential bid as a Green Party candidate. Gotta respect the commitment to the grift, babe!
The third GOP debate was another shitshow, but this time, the majority of the audience thought there was a clear winner: Trump’s former U.N. Secretary Nikki Haley.
Legendary feminist news and commentary outlet Jezebel shut down abruptly and laid off its entire staff after noted herb Jim Spanfeller said he couldn’t find a buyer for the site. Spanfeller has run G/O media — and presided over its wholesale destruction — since 2019, when private equity firm Great Hill Partners bought out the company, which owns Jezebel, Gizmodo, and Deadspin, among others.
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Recent polling has suggested that President Biden may lag behind Donald Trump in the general election next year among key voting demographics he needs. But on Tuesday, voters in states as conservative as Kentucky and Ohio showed up en masse to defend a woman’s right to choose, and thoughtfully took the time to vote in or reelect a whole ton of Democratic lawmakers while they were there. Ergo, the new Democratic strategy is to put lifesaving pro-choice measures on as many 2024 ballots as possible, ideally in swing states so that Biden can establish a kind of pro-choice firewall. Arizona, Nevada, and Florida are important gets — Florida has a punishingly-early deadline of February for any ballot initiatives, so Democrats need to mobilize quickly if they’re going to get all the requisite signatures. Republicans are already whining enthusiastically about being “mischaracterized” as extremists who don’t want anyone to have a legal abortion under even the most horrific circumstances. “A majority of Americans don’t like the rape and incest thing,” observed Lawrence Jones on Wednesday’s Fox and Friends. That’s SO true, Lawrence. They don’t.
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