In other news, the US House of Representatives held a vote to see if Jim Jordan (R-OH) could win the position of Speaker. Jordan, a member of Trump’s ironically named Freedom Caucus, fell far short (MSN).
So the Honorable Representatives are taking the weekend off. They will come back on Monday, hopefully with a solution to this embarrassing and extremely untimely pause in doing their job. Remember to thank Matt Gaetz (R-FL) for this disruption.
Hamas leaders Mousa Marzook and Ismail Haniyeh decided to send some of their men out to kill about 1,200 Israelis and scramble back to Gaza to hide among their own people with hostages they took.
They streamed the event from their phones. The Telegraph UK is running a story showing Hamas kidnappers with captured children taunting the IDF (The Telegraph). The reason for the barbarity and their showmanship? They knew they would be pursued into Gaza where the Israeli forces would end up causing civilian casualties. They then hoped to turn this into a propaganda ploy to entice other Arab states to repeat the 6 Day War. Khaled Marshaal, former head of Hamas and currently a spokesman, said the governments and peoples of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt have a bigger duty to support the Palestinians (Reuters).
“To all scholars who teach jihad… to all who teach and learn, this is a moment for the application (of theories),” Meshaal said.
The events in Israel are a great distraction from the bigger war in Ukraine against Vlad Putin‘s expansionist invasion. It also distracts from the Goat Rodeo in the House; they still haven’t gotten down to the business of funding for Ukraine because of their lack of a House Speaker.
The White House reported that North Korea sent 1,000 shipping containers to Russia with supplies, weapons and ammunition (Boston Herald). Ukraine forces have achieved a break through in Russian defensive lines and are moving to exploit the same. Ukraine has been so successful in it’s attacks on the Russian naval base in Sevestapol that the Russian’s pulled their Black Sea Fleet to their own port at Novorossiysk (The Guardian). The European Parliamentary Assembly has declared Russia a dictatorship (Yahoo News).
It sure would be nice if the House of Reps could get back to work and move the aid package along. Backing out of support for Ukraine would seriously harm the credibility of the US and it’s NATO allies, credibility that provides safety for all our nations.