Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on April 10-11/2024
The Killer Of Pascal Suleiman is the same criminal who assassinated Elias Hasrouni, Luqman Slim, Joe Bejjani, PM, Hariri, and many other free & sovereign Lebanese Leaders, Journalists & Activists/Elias Bejjani/ April 09, 2024
Abu Arz - Etienne Saqr: Such Mercenaries & Criminals, Must Be Hanged
Video/On Pascal Sleiman’s assassination & misdirected anger towards Syrian refugees
Ronnie Chatah/ The Beirut Banyan
A Lebanese man sanctioned by the US over alleged Hamas links is found shot dead near Beirut
UNIFIL Commander: Danger of Escalation on Lebanon-Israel Border is Real
Commander of UN peacekeepers in Lebanon warns of escalation danger in Israel-Hezbollah conflict
Video/Sleiman’s Coffin and the Procession of Anger
Israel Renews its War Threats Against Lebanon
Lebanon 'will bear the cost' if war expands, says Israel war cabinet member Gantz
Israel hits Hezbollah targets in Syria
Mossad in the Shadows: Probing Mohammed Sarur's Mysterious Death and Alleged Funding Ties to Hamas and Hezbollah
‘Middle Man’ Between Tehran and Hamas Found Dead in Metn Area
Mikati on Eid al-Fitr: ‘Lebanon Will Regain Its Health’
Lebanon's Interior Minister promises public updates on investigation into Pascal Sleiman's case
Attack on an SSNP Office in Jdita
Antonio Tajani Assures Italy’s Support for the Lebanese Army
MP Mohammad Raad says resistance stands firm against Israel's temporary ceasefire proposal
Monnot Theater Cancels the Premiere of Wajdi Mouawad’s Play
Lebanon's Demands and Challenges at the Brussels Conference for Refugees
Editorial – The Need for a Second Cedar Revolution/Michel Touma/This is Beirut/April 10/2024
Ziad Itani: Pascal Suleiman and the story of the boy’s mother…I was not convinced by the authority’s narrative, but I want to believe it. I fear for the homeland, its stability, security, and safety./Ziad Itani/Asas Media/April 9, 2024

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on April 10-11/2024
Video/Interview with DAVID SCHENKER from The Beirut Banyan channel
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh says 3 of his sons have been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza
Hamas tells negotiators it doesn’t have 40 Israeli hostages needed for first round of ceasefire
Gallant Claims Israel to ‘Flood Gaza With Aid’
Israel FM threatens attack on Iran if it retaliates to consulate strike
Gantz Proclaims the Defeat of Hamas
Israel Continues Gaza Strikes on Eid Al-Fitr
Biden says US security commitment to Israel remains ‘ironclad’ amid threat of ‘significant attack’ from Iran
Israel Threatens to Strike Iran Directly if it Launches Attack from its Territory
Australian Foreign Minister Criticized for Suggesting Possible Recognition of a Palestinian State
Biden Says Netanyahu’s Approach to War in Gaza Is a ‘Mistake’
Israel would let 150,000 Gazans return north in potential truce, officials say
Israel threatens to strike Iran directly if Iran launches attack from its territory
Iran’s Mehr news agency removes report about closing Tehran’s airspace, denies publishing it
Khamenei Reiterates Promise to Retaliate Against Israel over Killings of Generals
Iran's stealth drones have become the new blueprint for international warfare
Eight Members of Pro-Iran Militia Killed in Syria’s Mayadeen
US Sends Seized Iranian Weapons to Ukraine
US general warns time running out for Ukraine without US aid
France's Bordeaux knife attack kills one, reports BFM TV
Germany’s Lufthansa pauses flights to and from Tehran amid Middle East crisis
US agrees on potential sale of information distribution systems to Saudi Arabia

Titles For The Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on April 10-11/2024
How Biden is Sabotaging His Peace Deal Between Israel and Saudi Arabia/Bassam Tawil/Gatestone Institute./April 10, 2024
Questions Regarding the Cultural Themes of War/Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al-Awsat/April 10/2024
Cairo Negotiations… Why Are the Mediators Optimistic?/Nabil Amr/Asharq Al-Awsat/April 10/2024
Hamas-Supporter Qatar ‘Sponsoring’ What Americans Learn/Raymond Ibrahim/April 10/2024

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on April 10-11/2024
The Killer Of Pascal Suleiman is the same criminal who assassinated Elias Hasrouni, Luqman Slim, Joe Bejjani, PM, Hariri, and many other free & sovereign Lebanese Leaders, Journalists & Activists
Elias Bejjani/ April 09, 2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/128651/128651/
"Our enemies are doomed! They have robbed and betrayed, although no one has robbed them or betrayed them. But their time to rob and betray will end, and they themselves will become victims of robbery and treachery.." (Isaiah/33/01)
The ruthless act of assassinating Pascal Suleiman following his abduction by a professional team of hired killers, and the subsequent attempts to fabricate a nonsensical story about stealing his car by Syrian citizens, unequivocally exposes the true identity of the perpetrators. This same terrorist entity, Hezboollah is responsible for the murders of Elias Hasrouni, Luqman Slim, Joe Bejjani, Prime Minister Hariri, and numerous other esteemed leaders, thinkers, activists, and journalists who championed Lebanese sovereignty and freedom.
The assassins are none other than the terrorist, Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy who was behind the Beirut port explosion, perpetuate the occupation of Lebanon, instigate senseless conflicts, and boast of its unwavering allegiance to its masters, the Iranian mullahs.
The perpetrators are known, and the details of the crime confirm this reality. Furthermore, Nasrallah's blatant threats yesterday, against the Lebanese Forces, the Kataeb party, and certain media outlets serve only to terrorize the Lebanese populace. His rhetoric is a desperate attempt to silence dissent and subdue those who oppose his group's ongoing crimes, occupation, and the systematic dismantling of Lebanon as a sovereign state.
Nevertheless, Hezbollah, this oppressive, Trojan, and diabolical occupier, will ultimately fail. It will be defeated and compelled to vacate Lebanon, just as its numerous predecessors have failed, including its close ally, the Assad Syrian occupier.
By the end, definitely, the sacred land of Lebanon, cherished by its peace-loving people, will prevail.
In the realm of faith, Pascal Suleiman, the martyr, has not perished but has transitioned from death to life, like all believers who await the promise of resurrection. Though his family, his party, and the people of Lebanon mourn, their sorrow will eventually transform into joy, as foretold in the Gospel of Saint John 16/20: "Most certainly I tell you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy."
Our prayers are offered for the repose of the martyr's soul and for the souls of all the martyrs of Lebanon. Our heartfelt condolences extend to his immediate family as well as to the broader family of Lebanon and all Lebanese people.
"The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away, blessed be his name." (Job 01/21)

Abu Arz - Etienne Saqr: Such Mercenaries & Criminals, Must Be Hanged
Guardian Of The Cedars/April 10/2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/128692/128692/
It is the height of crime, treachery and insolence, that Lebanese people are kidnapped from their own homes, in broad daylight, by foreign refugees, transported to Syria and killed in cold blood, with unprecedented brutality.
There is more than one party involved in the assassination of Pascal Suleiman:
-The absent, loose, and decapitated Lebanese state, with its crippled government and paralyzed institutions.
-The most corrupt political system in the world, which has controlled the levers of power for decades, turning the country from the beacon of the East into the dustbin of the East and the West, while to this day it is still governing and in authority without accountability or supervision.
-The stateless terrorist Iranian armed proxy that took control of the state, replaced it, dominated its decision making process and established mini-state and a private army affiliated with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which contributed to the collapse of the mother state.
-The killers who carried out the crime, tortured and kill the victim in a brutal way that exceeded all imagination.
Meanwhile, the rhetoric of denunciation and condemning that puppet officials are parroting to cover up their failure is of no benefit, do not raise the dead or heal the wounds. Rather, what is required of the authority, or what is left of it, is to rush to take revenge on the killers and all those involved with them, and issue death sentences against them because they Must be hanged. Gallows is what they need... Otherwise, the country is heading, God forbid, to an unknown fate.
Long Live Lebanon
Abu Arz - Etienne Saqr
(Free translation by Elias Bejjani)

Video/On Pascal Sleiman’s assassination & misdirected anger towards Syrian refugees
Ronnie Chatah/ The Beirut Banyan
On Pascal Sleiman’s assassination & misdirected anger towards Syrian refugees
https://twitter.com/i/status/1778055206711771620

A Lebanese man sanctioned by the US over alleged Hamas links is found shot dead near Beirut
BEIRUT (AP)/Wed, April 10, 2024
A Lebanese man sanctioned by the U.S. for his alleged links with the Palestinian group Hamas was found dead Wednesday after he went missing for a week, Lebanese state media and judicial officials said. Mohammad Srour, 57, was sanctioned by the U.S. in August 2019 for giving “financial, material, technological support, financial or other services” to Hamas and for his affiliation with Hezbollah. He was accused of transferring tens of millions of dollars annually from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to Hamas' military wing, the Qassam Brigades, which is currently at war with Israel's military in Gaza. Lebanese judicial officials say Srour worked for Hezbollah’s financial arm. A top U.S. Treasury official visited Lebanon in March and pressed authorities to obstruct funds being funneled to Hamas through the Mediterranean country. Srour’s relatives in a televised statement said all his financial transactions were transparent and he simply worked in money exchange. They urged security agencies to swiftly find the perpetrators. The circumstances of Srour's death are unclear. Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, referring to Srour by his initials, said he went missing for several days after he went to a money transfer shop to withdraw a payment sent to him. The NNA said his body was found with bullet wounds.

UNIFIL Commander: Danger of Escalation on Lebanon-Israel Border is Real
Asharq Al-Awsat/April 10/2024
The commander of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon (UNIFIL), Aroldo Lazaro, said on Wednesday the danger of escalation on the Lebanon-Israel border was real. Hostilities between Lebanon's Hezbollah and Israel have rumbled on in parallel to the Gaza war for more than six months, fueling concern about the risk of a wider conflict between the heavily armed adversaries. Hezbollah says it would stop firing rockets once a ceasefire is reached in the Gaza Strip that would end the Israel-Hamas war. "UNIFIL calls for a return to the cessation of hostilities, and a move towards a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution to the conflict", Lazaro said in a statement. “The danger of escalation is real. There is no military solution to the current confrontation and violence; a political and diplomatic solution is the only way forward,” he added. Lazaro urged “all parties to embrace the spirit of unity and compassion that Eid represents, and seek the path of peace.”

Commander of UN peacekeepers in Lebanon warns of escalation danger in Israel-Hezbollah conflict
NAJIA HOUSSARI/Arab News/April 10, 2024
BEIRUT: The commander of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, Gen. Aroldo Lazaro, warned on Wednesday of the continuing danger of escalation in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah along Lebanon’s southern border.
He said the UN Interim Force in Lebanon “calls for a return to the cessation of hostilities and a move toward a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution to the conflict.” There can be no military solution, he added, a political and diplomatic solution is the only way forward. “Almost 50 countries send peacekeepers to southern Lebanon out of a sense of commitment, friendship and a belief that long-term peace is possible for the region,” said Lazaro. “Over 46 years, we have developed strong bonds with the communities in which we have lived and worked.
“Since October, UNIFIL has continued to call on the parties to respect their commitments under Resolution 1701 and has maintained its operational activities aimed at lowering tensions and preventing escalation.” Resolution 1701 was adopted by the UN Security Council in 2006 with the aim of resolving the war at the time between Israel and Hezbollah. “The mission has also provided medical, dental, and veterinary care in villages across south Lebanon; supplied solar-energy systems to villages, civil defense and schools; donated needed equipment to schools, hospitals and first responders; and given infant formula and flour to people in need, among many other projects,” Lazaro continued. “We have also liaised with the parties to ensure the safety of workers repairing critical civilian infrastructure damaged in the exchanges of fire or to facilitate the provision of humanitarian assistance. We will continue to be here for the people and to stand for peace, as long as it takes.
“Regardless of faith or background, we urge all parties to embrace the spirit of unity and compassion that Eid represents and seek the path of peace.” Lazaro’s appeal came as Israeli forces carried out air and artillery strikes on Wednesday in the vicinity of several border towns, including Kfarkela, Dhaira, Yarine and Alma Al-Shaab. Residential neighborhoods in the towns of Odaisseh, Kfarkela and Blida came under machine gun fire and intermittent shelling. In Israel, the Kiryat Shmona settlement was targeted by missiles. Israeli media said sirens sounded in the vicinity of the settlement, the Iron Dome air-defense system was activated, and an interceptor missile exploded over the Lebanese border town of Blida. On the first day of the Eid Al-Fitr holiday, the movement of civilian residents of towns close to the front lines of the fighting was largely limited to visits to cemeteries.
Hezbollah has reported 274 deaths among its members in the six months since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas on Israel, mostly in border towns and the Baalbek-Hermel region. Meanwhile, Mohammed Srour, a 57-year-old money changer who had been missing for days, was found shot dead inside a house in Beit Meri, Mount Lebanon. He was reportedly under sanctions by the US Department of the Treasury for “facilitating the transfer of funds from Iran to the military wing of Hamas.”
His body was discovered on Tuesday along with an undisclosed sum of money his killers ignored, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported. Other media sources said “the gun used to kill the victim was found soaked with bleach to remove fingerprints and glove traces,” and security cameras “showed that he entered the house and never left. The tenant of the house went off the grid once the crime was committed.” In August 2019, the US Treasury imposed sanctions on several people, including Srour, for funneling “tens of millions of dollars” from the foreign operations arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards through Hezbollah in Lebanon “to Hamas for terrorist attacks originating from the Gaza Strip.” Officials in Washington said Srour “served as a middle man” between the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force and Hamas, “and worked with Hezbollah operatives to ensure funds were provided” to Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigade, the armed wing of Hamas. “As of 2014, Srour was identified as in charge of all money transfers,” the Treasury said, adding that he had “an extensive history working at Hezbollah’s sanctioned bank, Bayt Al-Mal.” Washington blacklisted the bank in 2006. The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control described it as “an institution owned, controlled or operated by, for or on behalf of Hezbollah.”

Sleiman’s Body Arrived at Notre Dame des Secours Hospital in Jbeil
Chelsea Al Arif /This is Beirut/April 10/2024
Pascal Sleiman’s body arrived at the Notre-Dame des Secours hospital in Jbeil, where it will remain until Friday, the day of the funeral. Part of the procession, guarded by members of the Internal Security Forces, performed a prayer over the coffin with incense at the hospital.

Video/Sleiman’s Coffin and the Procession of Anger
https://youtu.be/9BAKN0tr1WA
Chelsea Al Arif /This is Beirut/April 10/2024
Pascal Sleiman’s coffin was carried by a sad and angry crowd on Wednesday. The procession, which left Badaro at 10 AM, accompanied the deceased to Notre-Dame des Secours hospital in Byblos.

Israel Renews its War Threats Against Lebanon
Jalaa MAREY/AFP/This is Beirut/April 10/2024
Israel has renewed its war threats against Lebanon if Hezbollah were to pursue its attack. “Lebanon will pay the price if the war expands,” said Israeli war council member, Benny Gantz, on Wednesday. “Iran knows that we will retaliate immediately, should it attack Israel,” he pursued. For his part, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant stated that “whoever tries to attack Israel will face a strong defense.” “Israel will respond to those who try to attack it inside their territory,” declared Gallant during a tour of Israel’s northern border. “We stand by the fact that our enemy is unaware of the surprises we have prepared for it,” he added. On the southern front, artillery exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel resumed on Wednesday, with the Israeli army bombing Odaisseh, Kfar Kila, Blida, and Tallet Hmames in the afternoon. The Israeli army also raided the towns of Wata Khiam and Aita al-Shaab. Hezbollah announced that it had attacked the Sammaka position in the Kfarchouba hills, as well as the Zebdine barracks.

Lebanon 'will bear the cost' if war expands, says Israel war cabinet member Gantz
LBCI/April 10/2024
Israel war cabinet member Benny Gantz said on Wednesday: "If necessary, we may expand the war in the north." He added that the Lebanese state "will bear the cost" in such a case. He confirmed that the fighting will persist in the Gaza Strip, with its intensity adjusted according to the situation and needs. Benny Gantz also said that the war against Hamas will continue, adding: "Our soldiers will fight in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon."

Israel hits Hezbollah targets in Syria
Agence France Presse/April 10/2024
The Israeli army said early Wednesday it had carried out bombardments on positions of Lebanon's Hezbollah in Syria in a bid to thwart its "entrenchment" in the country. While fighting Hamas militants in Gaza, Israel has repeatedly said it was also ready to confront Hezbollah and has stepped up strikes, including in Syria, in recent weeks. An Israeli army statement said the army had "struck military infrastructure that based on precise intelligence was used by the Hezbollah terrorist organization on the Syrian front."The military released a video of a strike against a building.
Israel has been waging one major campaign against Hamas in Gaza since the October 7 attacks by the group last year and international concern has been expressed about the possible spread of the conflict. The Israeli army said it "holds the Syrian regime accountable for all activities which take place within its territory and will not allow for any attempted actions which could lead to the entrenchment of Hezbollah on the Syrian front." "In parallel, in the past hours, the IDF (Israeli army) struck a number of Hezbollah observation posts and terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon," the statement added. "Throughout the day, IDF artillery struck to remove threats in the areas of Dhayra and Tayr Harfa in southern Lebanon," the statement said. On Tuesday, Israel said its warplanes had hit a Syrian military position in response to rocket fire from southern Syria on the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in Britain, said Israeli jets staged raids in Syria on Tuesday and late Monday. One destroyed a weapons and ammunition depot in the Daraa region of southern Syria while on Monday the raid hit a military site in the south used by groups backed by Iran and Hezbollah to fire rockets onto the Golan Heights, the observatory said.The Israeli army has staged hundreds of strikes inside Syria since the country's civil war started in 2011, notably hitting pro-Iranian targets. On April 1, an Israeli strike on an Iranian embassy consular building in Damascus killed 16 people including seven members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, according to the observatory. Israel has not commented on the attack.

Mossad in the Shadows: Probing Mohammed Sarur's Mysterious Death and Alleged Funding Ties to Hamas and Hezbollah
LBCI/April 10/2024
Mohammed Sarur, a notable figure in money exchange according to his family, recently vanished under mysterious circumstances. Since 2019, the US has sanctioned him for allegedly moving tens of millions of dollars from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force to Hamas's military wing, the Izz-Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, via Hezbollah. Sarur's disappearance followed a call from a woman in Beit Merri concerning a money exchange, indicating he might have been deceived into a trap. Information available to LBCI reveals that Sarur was formerly employed in Islamic banking at Qardh al-Hasan and resided in the southern suburbs. Initial reports suggest that last Thursday, he received a call from a woman in Beit Merri wanting to exchange money. Allegedly, this led him to be duped into transferring funds. He left with a significant amount of money, after which all contact was lost, according to his family. Upon reporting his disappearance, security authorities launched an investigation, leading the Information Branch to discover his body in a Beit Merri villa. A coroner’s examination determined that Sarur died from multiple gunshot wounds. Prosecutor Ghassan Khoury has since requested further forensic analysis to elucidate certain details concerning Sarur’s demise. Judicial sources indicate that the murder was executed with a high degree of organization and professionalism, noting the absence of surveillance DVR cameras and fingerprints at the scene. Additionally, the villa was leased under various names, none of whom have been traceable since the murder. The phone number used to contact Sarur is now out of service.Investigations are still in preliminary stages, with efforts focusing on analyzing area surveillance footage and communications. Field sources have suggested Mossad's involvement, considering Israel's view of Sarur as a principal financial conduit to Hamas. The Israeli newspaper Maariv reported that Mossad has targeted Sarur since 2018.

‘Middle Man’ Between Tehran and Hamas Found Dead in Metn Area
AFP/This Is Beirut/April 10/2024
A Lebanese man who was found dead in the town of Beit Mery in the Metn area was under US sanctions for allegedly funneling money from Iran to Palestinian militant group Hamas, a security source told AFP on Wednesday. The body of Mohammad Srour, struck by more than five bullets, was discovered on Tuesday in a villa in the mountain town of Beit Mery. He was found in possession of an undisclosed sum of money that the killers did not touch, the source said, adding that Srour was subject to US sanctions, for working with financial institutions belonging to Iran-backed Hezbollah, a Hamas ally. The National News Agency (NNA) reported late on Tuesday that the body of a 57-year-old Lebanese man, who had been missing for three days was discovered in Beit-Mery. He was identified as Mohammed Ibrahim Srour. He had disappeared on Saturday after withdrawing money from a stockbroker in the town. According to AFP, the US Treasury announced, in August 2019, sanctions against several people including Srour, accusing them of funneling “tens of millions of dollars” from the foreign operations arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards through Hezbollah in Lebanon “to Hamas for terrorist attacks originating from the Gaza Strip.”The Treasury said that Srour “served as a middle-man” between the Guards’ Quds Force and Hamas “and worked with Hezbollah operatives to ensure funds were provided” to Hamas’ armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades. “As of 2014, Srour was identified as in charge of all money transfers” between the Quds Force and the al-Qassam Brigades, the Treasury added. He also “has an extensive history working at Hezbollah’s sanctioned bank, Bayt al-Mal,” the Treasury said. Washington blacklisted Bayt al-Mal in 2006. Last month, US Treasury official Jesse Baker met with political and financial officials in Beirut, asking them to prevent funds from transiting through Lebanon to Hamas, media reports said at the time. According to Al Hadath media, Srour would have been killed by the Israeli Mossad which has been searching for him since 2018 for transferring Iranian funds to Hamas.

Mikati on Eid al-Fitr: ‘Lebanon Will Regain Its Health’
This is Beirut/April 10/2024
Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati expressed confidence that “Lebanon will regain its health,” hoping that “the Israeli page of aggression against South Lebanon will be turned.”Speaking after Eid al-Fitr prayer at al-Mansouri Mosque in Tripoli, Mikati said, “Lebanon will regain its health with the concerted efforts of everyone and their positive cooperation.” “We hope that ongoing international and Arab efforts yield results and end Israeli aggression against Gaza, so Palestinians enjoy security and stability,” Mikati added. Sheikh Ali Al-Khatib, Vice President of the Supreme Islamic Shiite Council, was assigned by the Mufti of Jbeil, Sheikh Abdul Amir Shamseddine, to deliver his sermon. “The current dangerous situation imposes on us, as Lebanese, the duty of uniting our national will to confront it. This danger does not affect a particular group or sect, but all of us without exception.” For his part, Grand Jaafari Mufti Sheikh Ahmad Qabalan insisted on the need to adopt “preventive security” to protect the country. “We will not accept any presidential compromise that conflicts with the resistance on the southern front,” he said.

Lebanon's Interior Minister promises public updates on investigation into Pascal Sleiman's case
LBCI/April 10/2024
Lebanon's Caretaker Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi expressed his condolences following the death of the Lebanese Forces coordinator in Jbeil, Pascal Sleiman. Mawlawi reassured that "the security and military forces, which exerted great effort in the past two days, continue to do everything necessary to uncover all aspects of the crime."He said: "We will announce all of this to the public."He affirmed that the criminals will be prosecuted, saying: "It is our duty to provide evidence to the judiciary." Mawlawi added: "The security agencies are following up on the investigations and monitoring all the cameras again in all areas to determine the motive behind this crime." In response to a question, he suggested that dealing with the problem of Syrians entering the country should involve enforcing the laws concerning refugees living in Lebanon, with the involvement of security agencies, municipalities, and residents. He emphasized that ensuring security is a responsibility shared by all, as it affects everyone. He said: "It is the duty of citizens to assist the state and security agencies in maintaining security and order, and criminal activity can occur in any country." Mawlawi pointed out that despite the difficulty, the Lebanese army is performing its duties regarding border control. He affirmed: "We refused to dismantle the surveillance towers that Syria requested to remove because they protect the Lebanese, and we support the further deployment of security forces and army along the border."

Attack on an SSNP Office in Jdita
This is Beirut/April 10/2024
An office of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) in Jdita, in the central Beqaa region, was attacked on Wednesday. Unknown individuals threw a Molotov cocktail inside the premises in the afternoon, leaving behind a Lebanese Forces (LF) flag. This security incident occurred in a climate of tension, particularly following the murder of Pascal Sleiman, the LF coordinator for the Jbeil region. Reacting to the attack, the SSNP accused the LF of being a “fifth column in the service of Israel.” In a statement, it said it would not stand idly in the face of the attacks on its offices. The FL office in Zahle was quick to respond. It condemned the attack, asserting that the party was opposed to this kind of behavior. “We are committed to living together in Jdita, as well as all the towns and villages of Zahle,” read the statement. In this context, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati gave instructions to the heads of the security services to clarify the circumstances of this aggression and arrest the perpetrators. Mikati also contacted LF party leader Samir Geagea, asking him to act to avoid impulsive reactions during this time. Geagea condemned the incident, stating that his party had nothing to do with it. The attack was also condemned by the office of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) in Beqaa. In a statement, it stressed the need “to make every effort to maintain civil peace.” The Free Patriotic Movement office in Zahle also denounced the incident.

Antonio Tajani Assures Italy’s Support for the Lebanese Army
This Is Beirut/April 10/2024
Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has highlighted his country’s support for the Lebanese Army, through the provision of personnel training and its large contingent operating with the UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon. In an interview with Al-Arabiya TV channel on Wednesday, Tajani said that “around 100 Italian military personnel are providing training to Lebanese soldiers,” as part of Italy’s efforts to beef up the Army’s capacities. “Lebanon’s stability depends largely on reinforcing the capacities and might of its Army,” the head of the Italian diplomacy said, praising Army Commander-in-Chief, General Joseph Aoun, whom he described as a “good commander” and a friend of Italy. Tajani also called for “stabilizing southern Lebanon and holding presidential elections,” stressing the importance of defusing tensions, not only in Lebanon, but also in Syria and the whole region.
“We need the participation of Arab countries such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and Qatar, all of which can play an important role in pushing toward peace,” he added. Tajani pointed out that Jordan is also an important country, and that all these countries, alongside the US and Italy, must work together for peace between the Palestinians and Israel.

MP Mohammad Raad says resistance stands firm against Israel's temporary ceasefire proposal
NNA/April 10/2024
During a commemorative celebration held by Hezbollah, the head of the "Loyalty to the Resistance" bloc, MP Mohammad Raad, suggested that if Israel succeeds in weakening and removing the resistance option in Gaza, it will then focus on Lebanon, attempting to eliminate the choice of resistance there with support from Western powers. He stated: "We stopped [Israel] before it fully grasped its actions, and we challenged it before it could execute its plans. In this current confrontation, we've handed it all the factors that will lead to its failure in achieving its goals."
He pointed out that Israel wants the negotiations currently underway to be for a temporary ceasefire, while the resistance insists that the negotiations be for ending the attacks, withdrawing from Gaza, and exchanging captives and detainees.
Raad said: "Some people in Lebanon believe that they can achieve sovereignty with the help of allies. However, they are beginning to realize that the world operates on principles of self-interest, racism, and selfishness, rather than genuine support." --- LBC English

Monnot Theater Cancels the Premiere of Wajdi Mouawad’s Play
This is Beirut/April 10/2024
The Monnot Theater’s management announced on Wednesday evening the cancellation of the world premiere of Wajdi Mouawad’s “Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons,” scheduled for April 30th. The decision comes in the wake of a campaign against Wajdi Mouawad accusing him of normalization with Israel.
“This difficult decision was taken because of inadmissible pressure and serious threats made to the Monnot Theater by activists against artists and technicians, whose courage we wish to salute. These disapproving activists, who carried out all sorts of intimidation, and disseminating hostile and defamatory remarks, have also filed a complaint against Wajdi Mouawad with the military prosecutor’s office,” read a statement issued by the theater’s management team. “The safety of our staff, as well as the teams we welcome, and our public is our absolute priority,” said the Monnot’s management team, who admitted being “deeply disappointed by this situation.” “While affirming our attachment to freedom of expression, we are committed to pursuing the provision of quality theatrical work against all odds,” concluded the statement.

Lebanon's Demands and Challenges at the Brussels Conference for Refugees
LBCI/April 10/2024
Lebanon is poised to address critical issues at the upcoming Brussels conference for refugees, notably advocating for the repatriation of Syrian refugees to their homeland or their resettlement in third countries. However, the complexity of this displacement crisis extends beyond mere financial considerations, with significant security and social ramifications looming large, underscored by the presence of 2,800 Syrian prisoners in Lebanese prisons. Contrary to previous appeals primarily focused on securing additional funding for host communities and refugees themselves, Lebanon's foremost demand is greater than a funding matter. Yet, the path towards realizing this objective appears daunting, as Lebanon grapples with formidable obstacles. Many countries, particularly in Europe, remain reluctant to accept refugees or endorse their return to Syria, citing safety concerns. Key among these nations are France and Germany. Additionally, Lebanon faces challenges stemming from the Syrian government's reluctance to engage in the repatriation process, compounded by stringent political and economic conditions imposed by Damascus.Information indicates that the data provided by the UNHCR to the Lebanese state regarding Syrian refugees was not sufficiently helpful, as it only included names and did not include entry dates to Lebanon or the Syrian region they came from. Failure to complete this and other information will not allow Lebanon to launch a practical plan for return, part of which relies on identifying the identity of refugees whose return to Syria poses a danger to them. In such cases, Lebanon requests the UNHCR to resettle them to third countries within a certain deadline. As for others, they can easily be returned to the area they fled from or to areas considered safe. Lebanon is preparing a list to be presented at the Brussels conference, as it seeks to shift responsibility for refugee management and welfare onto the shoulders of Syria, the United Nations, and the international community. Just as in security, the economic impact of displacement is significant. According to available information, the World Bank has prepared a study, not yet published, showing that the annual cost of the Syrian displacement in Lebanon amounts to $1.2 billion. Lebanon, the United Nations organizations, and private associations are struggling to cover this cost currently due to the decline in financial support from donor countries focused on the wars in Ukraine and Palestine.

Editorial – The Need for a Second Cedar Revolution
Michel Touma/This is Beirut/April 10/2024
Sketchy scenarios… The endless series of political assassinations that have been plaguing and destabilizing the country for many years are often coupled by far-fetched narratives, stemming from a woefully barren imagination. These narratives usually serve to divert attention for some unavowable purpose, or to conceal the true masterminds of the crimes who, in such cases, engage in the most devious disinformation tactics. In all likelihood, the entire truth regarding the murder of Pascal Sleiman, a key figure of the Lebanese Forces in the Jbeil district, will probably never come to light. At this stage, it would be prudent to refrain from levelling direct accusations. However, it is legitimate to raise pertinent questions about the circumstances surrounding this crime and its broader implications.
One notable aspect of the official narrative is the persistent focus on implicating Syrians. This raises legitimate concerns, as in such cases, the identities of the perpetrators on the ground often pale in comparison to those of the masterminds behind the scenes. Was it a premeditated diversion or a lack of foresight regarding the risks of uncontrollable security escalation, given the strong resentment expressed by a significant portion of the population towards Syrian refugees? The question gains even greater relevance as official authorities demonstrate far more restraint and caution in their media communications in similar cases.
However, this is not the sole inconsistency in the official narrative. If the incident involved a gang of car thieves, why would they resort to killing the driver? It is noteworthy that caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati explicitly stated in his announcement that the abductors “liquidated” the victim, implying a calculated and premeditated act, thus ruling out the possibility of death resulting from a mere scuffle. Furthermore, why was the body transported to Syria, and for what reason did the kidnappers (who were apprehended in Lebanon!) take such a risk, especially considering the strict control exercised by Hezbollah on both sides of the border and in the surrounding areas?
How can one not be astonished by the statements made by Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah? Just a few hours before the announcement of the body’s discovery, he launched a scathing attack on the Lebanese Forces and the Kataeb, as well as the Christian community at large, accusing them of attempting to drag the country into a civil war (!) in his remarks on the kidnapping of Pascal Sleiman. Nasrallah appears to have overlooked the fact that it is the Lebanese Forces and their leader who are the victims and who are being targeted in this affair…
The wise and clear-sighted reaction of the Lebanese Forces leadership, following the announcement of the assassination, decisively rebutted the allegations made by the pro-Iranian party leader and prevented the country from sliding into serious security disturbances with unforeseeable consequences. However, it remains imperative to swiftly devise a political, peaceful yet resolute response to address the escalating tensions at all levels. The assassinations, acts of violence, insecurity, militia threats, and the systematic dismantling of state institutions and the country’s various vital sectors, alongside the senseless and self-destructive war that has been devastating the South for the past six months, are direct outcomes of the pro-Iranian camp’s exploitation of the Lebanese population to further the hegemonic ambitions of the mullahs’ regime.
Faced with this dire situation, there is an urgent need to build momentum for a second Cedar Revolution. This endeavor should unite all sovereigntist parties and figures, akin to the broad cross-community coalition of spring 2005, with a single objective: thwarting the pro-Iranian mini-state’s endeavors to distort Lebanon and further consolidate its grip over the country. A pivotal step in this crucial national awakening is to quell petty partisan calculations and over-inflated personal egos. It is through such a course of action that the sovereigntist movement could prevent Hezbollah’s schemes that cost Pascal Sleiman his life from happening again and again with impunity…

Ziad Itani: Pascal Suleiman and the story of the boy’s mother…I was not convinced by the authority’s narrative, but I want to believe it. I fear for the homeland, its stability, security, and safety.
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/128683/128683/
Ziad Itani/Asas Media/April 9, 2024 (Google translation from Arabic)
I was not convinced by the authority’s narrative that Pascal Suleiman’s murder was motivated by theft. How can a thief take his spoils with the victim’s body? He is either a stupid thief, an amateur criminal, or a sick killer. I do not trust the state and its agencies. We no longer trust authority and its prestige. Its words have long since become ink on paper. So what if this authority itself is unable, due to the scarcity of its budget, to supply its institutions with paper? I do not believe the Minister of Interior, the Minister of Defense, and all the agencies that report to them. The first is having fun with honorary iftar parties, and the second is busy with the commotions of politics, the “parking” military, and refraining from signing. I am not convinced by the authority’s narrative, but I want to believe it. I fear for the country, its stability, security and safety.
I will believe the authority’s story about Pascal Suleiman
Yes, I will believe the authority’s narrative, which I did not believe in for fear of chaos, blocking roads, and identity theft. I do not want myself and my fellow countrymen to be deprived of visiting Jbeil, Jounieh, and Qubayat. I do not want my friends in the other side of Lebanon, may God curse a country with another sphere, to be afraid to come to Beirut, Manara, Tripoli, Sidon, Tyre, and Nabatieh. I don’t want my colleague to have to cancel his son’s wedding. Ever since he got married and had his son, he has dreamed of this moment. I am afraid that I will not be able to visit any area in Lebanon that I miss. And I get terrified when I approach the museum, Barbara, or Al-Kafaat Street. I worry when I see in my daughter’s eyes a desire to immigrate and flee the country. I don’t want all those horrible pictures to come back. These matters have exhausted us. We grew up. Our resolve to face difficulties has declined.
The worst thing that happened to us
The most horrific thing that happened to us was not the kidnapping and killing of Pascal Suleiman, nor the kidnapping of Ramzi Irani before him, nor the kidnapping and killing of Al-Zayadin in Beirut, nor that long convoy of kidnapped people, victims and martyrs. The worst thing that happened to us is that we colluded in all this blood. We agreed to bargain with the killer and make an agreement with him for the blood of our martyrs in exchange for security and stability. It is neither chivalry nor heroism. We have no choice but to believe the story of the authorities and the system about Pascal Suleiman
Our first sin was that we claimed to fear for the country and that we were the boy’s mother and the boy’s mother, so the killer cursed our mother, the boy’s mother, and the mother of the country. We bargained over that blood and extended our hand at the doors of the courts in The Hague, and we turned a blind eye to the racism of the military court located at what was called the Line of Contact.
We agreed for Ahmed Al-Assir to be tried and imprisoned without trial for the gunmen in the suspicious apartments in Abra, and to refuse to listen to Mrs. Bahia’s testimony about how these people opened fire on our homes, and to prevent the judiciary from seeing what the cameras recorded. We agreed that the youth of the Arab tribes in Khaldeh, both young and old, would be arrested without anyone from the other party being arrested, whose photos and faces of its members carrying weapons were documented. We agreed to accept the story that Rafik Hariri was involved in a car accident, that Walid Eido fought with his son and the car exploded, that Antoine Ghanem died in a foreign country, that George Hawi’s car crashed into the wall, and that kidnapping Syrian dissidents in Lebanon is not a crime against humanity and freedom in Lebanon. We bargained for all these principles and blood to protect the country, so we had no freedom left and we forgot the martyrs and the country fled with them.
It is neither chivalry nor heroism. We have no choice but to believe the story of the authorities and the system about Pascal Suleiman. We have become accustomed to being at the service of the authorities and the “one-party” system and its funny stories in the season of crying. We are accustomed to covering our private parts by closing our eyes. This is the doctrine of the helpless and lacking the ability to resist and struggle.
A popular proverb says, “Everything is born small and then grows larger with the days, except sadness that is born large and becomes smaller and fades away with the hours and days.” This is what we did in all the dates with Kamal Jumblatt, Bashir Gemayel, Rafik Hariri, and Walid Eido, and before them with Mufti Hassan Khaled, and before that with Riad Al-Solh and Musa Al-Sadr. This is what we did when the state was assassinated in Lebanon. And so we will do today after Pascal Suleiman

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on April 10-11/2024
Video/Interview with DAVID SCHENKER from The Beirut Banyan channel
Absent from Diplomacy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAmaf_wG2_Q&t=414
The Beirut Banyan channel/April 10/2024
A conversation with David Schenker - Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former United States Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. Covering ongoing Hezbollah-Israel attacks, diplomacy and deescalation efforts, difficulties surrounding UNSCR 1701's implementation, opposition capabilities, the likelihood of expanded war into Lebanon.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh says 3 of his sons have been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP)/April 10, 2024
Three sons of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh were killed Wednesday in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, relatives and official Hamas media said, with Haniyeh accusing Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.”Haniyeh confirmed the deaths Wednesday in an interview with the Al Jazeera satellite channel, saying his sons “were martyred on the road to liberating Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”There was no immediate comment from the Israeli army. “The criminal enemy is driven by the spirit of revenge and murder and does not value any standards or laws,” he said in the phone interview.
Ismail Haniyeh lives in exile in Qatar, where Al Jazeera is based. He said the killings would not pressure Hamas into softening its positions. The two sides have been involved in months of cease-fire talks. “The enemy believes that by targeting the families of the leaders, it will push them to give up the demands of our people,” he said. “Anyone who believes that targeting my sons will push Hamas to change its position is delusional.”Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV station said Hazem, Ameer and Mohammed Haniyeh were killed with family members in the strike near the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City. Ismail Haniyeh is originally from Shati. The brothers were traveling with family members in a single vehicle targeted by an Israeli drone, Al-Aqsa TV said. It said a total of six people were killed, including a daughter of Hazem Haniyeh, and a son and daughter of Ameer.
The strike comes as international mediators have been trying to broker a new cease-fire agreement. It was not immediately clear what effect the strike would have on those talks. Earlier, Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz claimed Hamas has been defeated militarily, although he also said Israel will fight against it for years to come. “From a military point of view, Hamas is defeated. Its fighters are eliminated or in hiding” and its capabilities “crippled,” Gantz said in a statement to the media in Sderot. But, he added: “Fighting against Hamas will take time. Boys who are now in middle school will still fight in the Gaza Strip.”
Gantz reiterated the Israeli's government commitment to go into Rafah, the city in the far southern tip of the Gaza Strip where more than half the territory's population is now sheltering. "Wherever there are terrorist targets – the IDF will be there,” he said. The strike came as Palestinians in Gaza marked a muted Eid al-Fitr holiday ending the holy fasting month of Ramadan, visiting the graves of loved ones killed in the war. In the Jabaliya refugee camp near Gaza City, people sat quietly by graves surrounded by buildings destroyed by Israel's offensive in response to the deadly Hamas attack on Oct. 7.
Separately, U.S. President Joe Biden called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the war in Gaza a mistake and called for his government to flood the beleaguered territory with aid, ramping up pressure on Israel to reach a cease-fire and widening a rift between the staunch allies.
Biden has been an outspoken supporter of Israel’s war against Hamas. But in recent weeks his patience with Netanyahu has appeared to wane and his administration has taken a more stern line with Israel, rattling the countries’ decades-old alliance and deepening Israel's international isolation over the war.
The most serious disagreement has been over Israel’s plans for an offensive in the southernmost Gaza city of Rafah. The rift was worsened by an Israeli airstrike last week on an aid convoy that killed seven workers with the World Central Kitchen charity, most of them foreigners. Israel said the deaths were unintentional but Biden was outraged. Biden’s latest comments, made in an interview that aired late Tuesday and recorded two days after the WCK strike, highlight the differences between Israel and the U.S. over humanitarian aid to people in Gaza, where the war has led to warnings of imminent famine for more than a million people. “What he’s doing is a mistake. I don’t agree with his approach,” Biden told Spanish-language broadcaster Univision when asked if Netanyahu was prioritizing his political survival over Israel's interest.
Israel halted aid deliveries to Gaza in the early days of the war, but under U.S. pressure has slowly increased trucks allowed to enter the territory. Still, aid groups say supplies are not reaching desperate people quickly enough, blaming Israeli restrictions and noting that thousands of trucks are waiting to enter Gaza. Countries have attempted less efficient ways to deliver aid including airdrops and by sea. Israel says its has opened up more entry points for trucks to enter and reach especially hard-hit areas like northern Gaza, an early target of Israel in the war. Israel also accuses aid groups of being too slow to deliver aid once it's inside Gaza.Aid groups say logistical issues and the precarious security situation — underscored by the WCK strike — complicate deliveries.
Israel and Hamas are engaged in talks meant to bring about a cease-fire in exchange for the release of hostages captured by Hamas and others on Oct. 7. But the sides remain far apart on key issues, including the return of Palestinians to northern Gaza. Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet met late Tuesday to discuss the hostage negotiations but did not appear to make any decisions. Netanyahu has vowed to achieve “total victory,” pledging to destroy Hamas' military and governing capabilities to prevent a repeat of the Oct. 7 attacks and to return the hostages. He says that victory must include an offensive in Rafah, which Israel says is Hamas’ last major stronghold, but more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are currently seeking shelter there. Six months into the war, Israel is growing ever more isolated, with even its closest partner increasingly vocal about its discontent in the war’s direction and longtime trading partners like Turkey taking potentially painful economic steps to express dismay. Netanyahu, who is on trial for alleged corruption, is under pressure to decide on a postwar vision for Gaza. But critics say he is delaying because he doesn’t want to anger his ultranationalist governing partners, who support resettling the Gaza Strip, which Israel withdrew from in 2005 and an idea Netanyahu has ruled out. Netanyahu's governing partners also oppose making significant concessions to Hamas and have threatened to exit the government -- a step that would cause the ruling coalition to collapse and trigger new elections.
Israel launched the war in response to Hamas’ cross-border assault, where militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took roughly 250 people hostage, according to Israeli authorities. More than 33,400 Palestinians have been killed in the relentless fighting, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count but says most of the dead are women and children. Israel says it has killed some 12,000 militants, without providing evidence. The war has ignited a humanitarian catastrophe. Most of the territory’s population has been displaced and with vast swaths of Gaza’s urban landscape leveled in the fighting, many areas are uninhabitable.

Hamas tells negotiators it doesn’t have 40 Israeli hostages needed for first round of ceasefire
Alex Marquardt and Jeremy Diamond, CNN/April 10, 2024
Hamas has indicated it is currently unable to identify and track down 40 Israeli hostages needed for the first phase of a ceasefire deal, according to an Israeli official and a source familiar with the discussions, raising fears that more hostages may be dead than are publicly known. The framework that has been laid out by negotiators says that during a first six-week pause in the fighting, Hamas should release 40 of the remaining hostages, including all the women as well as sick and elderly men. In exchange, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners would be released from Israeli prisons.
Hamas has told international mediators – which include Qatar and Egypt - it does not have 40 living hostages who match those criteria for release, both sources said. CNN’s record of the conditions of the hostages also suggests there are fewer than 40 living hostages who meet the proposed criteria. The inability - or unwillingness - of Hamas to tell Israel which hostages would be released, alive, is a major obstacle, the second source added. With Hamas appearing to be unable to reach 40 in the proposed categories, Israel has pushed for Hamas to fill out the initial release with younger male hostages, including soldiers, the Israeli official said. Throughout the months of negotiations since the last ceasefire Israel has repeatedly asked for a list of the hostages and their conditions. Hamas has argued that it needs a break in the fighting to be able to track and gather down the hostages, the same argument it made in November before a week-long pause that broke down after Hamas failed to deliver more hostages. The majority of the almost 100 hostages who remain alive are believed to be male IDF soldiers or men of military reserve age. Hamas is expected to try to use to them in later phases to try to negotiate more significant concessions, including more high-level prisoners and a permanent end to the war. The more than 250 hostages captured or killed on October 7 are believed to have been spread out among different members and factions of Hamas, as well as other militant groups, gangs and even held by families.
The Israeli prime minister’s office said Wednesday that of the 129 hostages from the October 7 attack currently held, 33 are dead. Among those believed to still be held in Gaza are the Bibas family, who were snatched from their homes in Kibbutz Nir Oz. Yarden Bibas was separated from his wife Shiri and their children Kfir and Ariel, who were just 9 months and 4 years old respectively on October 7.
The two boys and their mother were not released from Gaza during the temporary truce in late November, despite the fact that the deal agreed between Israel and Hamas required all women and children to be set free. Hamas claimed in November that Shiri, Kfir and Ariel had been killed in an Israeli airstrike, but did not provide evidence. Hamas has claimed repeatedly that Israeli bombing has killed a number of the hostages held in Gaza and that its continuing campaign is threatening those still alive. In January, Hamas released a video showing clips of three hostages – Noa Argamani, Itai Svirsky and Yossi Sharabi – speaking to the camera, ending with a caption saying, “Tomorrow, we will inform you of their fate.” The next day, another video appeared to show the dead bodies of Svirsky and Sharabi. In the video, Argamani said both men had been killed by Israeli bombing. Israel said Hamas was carrying out “psychological torment” on the hostage families, and IDF chief spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the two men had not been hit. “We do not strike in places where we know there may be hostages,” he said. The hostage families have become a political force in Israel, staging mass protests to demand more be done to free their relatives. Two relatives of Israeli hostages were arrested last month during a protest outside the defense ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv, staged after the Israeli delegation holding indirect hostage negotiations with Hamas left talks in Qatar without a deal.

Gallant Claims Israel to ‘Flood Gaza With Aid’
AFP/This Is Beirut/April 10, 2024
Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Wednesday it is planning to flood starving Gaza with aid through a new crossing and a port just north of the besieged territory. With Israel under severe international pressure to allow more food in, Gallant said it planned to ramp up aid deliveries to 500 trucks a day — the pre-war figure cited by the UN. “We plan to flood Gaza with aid and we are expecting to reach 500 trucks per day,” Gallant told reporters. He also vowed to “streamline security checks” that aid organizations had blamed for choking the flow through six months of war. Israel promised last week it would open the Erez crossing in the north after a tense telephone call between Joe Biden and Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu in which the US president demanded “immediate action” on aid. But it is understood the trucks will not use the crossing with Israeli media reporting that the government feared protests from far-right groups who are against any aid reaching Gaza. Another route is being planned, Gallant said, to “reduce pressure on (the) Kerem Shalom” crossing further south. He did not say when it would happen. Humanitarian groups have accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, where UN experts say half the population is facing “catastrophic” food insecurity. Israel denies the charges and has repeatedly blamed the UN and aid organizations for the distribution problems. Gallant told reporters that Israel planned to bring the Port of Ashdod, half an hour north of Gaza, on stream shortly.

Israel FM threatens attack on Iran if it retaliates to consulate strike
Agence France Presse/April 10, 2024 
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei again warned Israel Wednesday that it "will be punished" for a Damascus air strike that killed seven Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals. "The evil regime made a mistake in this regard. It must be punished and will be punished," Khamenei said in a televised speech after Eid al-Adha prayers in Tehran. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz swiftly riposted with a Persian-language statement on social media site X. "If Iran attacks from its territory, Israel will respond and attack Iran," he said. Khamenei said the April 1 strike, which leveled the five-storey Iranian consulate building in the Syrian capital, had run roughshod over international agreements providing for the inviolability of diplomatic premises. "The consulate and embassy offices in any country are the territory of that country," he said. "When they attacked our consulate, it means they attacked our territory." Khamenei has led Iranian officials in a succession of promises to avenge the strike, which was widely blamed on arch foe Israel. One of his senior advisers, Yahya Rahim Safavi, warned on Sunday that Israeli embassies were "no longer safe." Israel said last week it was strengthening its defenses and pausing leave for combat units following Iran's retaliation threats.Iran does not recognize Israel, and the two countries have fought a shadow war for years. Iran charges that Israel was behind a wave of sabotage attacks and assassinations targeting its nuclear program.

Gantz Proclaims the Defeat of Hamas
AFP/This Is Beirut/April 10, 2024 
Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz said Wednesday that “Hamas is defeated” as fighting raged on in the Gaza Strip and negotiations towards a truce seemed to falter. Gantz, a former army chief and defense minister, warned of a long war, saying Israeli forces would have to fight in Gaza for years to come.
More than six months into the war triggered by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, Gantz said, “Victory will come step by step.”“From a military point of view, Hamas is defeated. Its fighters are eliminated or hiding, its abilities are cut off, and we will continue to fight what remains of it.” According to Gantz, “boys who are now in middle school will also fight in the future in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank and in the Lebanon front.” With Israel facing a multi-fronted war with Iran-backed groups in Lebanon and Syria as well as in Gaza, and with violence also surging in the occupied West Bank, Gantz touted Israel’s military capability which he said exceeds that of all of its regional foes. He told a meeting of his National Unity party in the southern city of Sderot, near the Gaza border, that the army would go back into southern Gaza. Echoing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and despite growing international concern, Gantz said, “We will enter Rafah. We will return to Khan Younes,” which Israeli commandos left on Sunday. Rafah, on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, is packed with displaced Palestinians and remains the territory’s last city yet to be the target of a ground invasion during the war.“We will operate in Gaza wherever there are terrorist targets,” Gantz said.

Israel Continues Gaza Strikes on Eid Al-Fitr
AFP/This Is Beirut/April 10, 2024 
Israel has continued striking Gaza on Wednesday as Gazans mark Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Israeli strikes hit Gaza on Wednesday as Muslims marked the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan.Palestinians gathered for morning prayers on the first day of the Eid al-Fitr holiday amid the ruins of Gaza, which has been devastated by more than six months of war since Hamas’ October 7 attacks. Tens of thousands also flocked to Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound, where one worshipper, nurse Rawan Abd, said, “It’s the saddest Eid ever… You could see the sadness on people’s faces.” Israeli forces kept up combat operations and air strikes on Gaza a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted that “no force in the world” would stop Israeli troops from entering Gaza’s far-southern city of Rafah.
‘Famine-like Conditions’
Another 14 people were killed — including small children — in a strike on a home in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, the local health ministry said.The Army said on Wednesday that “Israeli troops are continuing to operate in the central Gaza Strip and have killed a number of terrorists over the past day.”
It added that an aircraft had “struck dozens of terror targets in the Gaza Strip, including military sites, launchers, tunnel shafts, and infrastructure.”Humanitarian groups have accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, where UN experts say half the population is facing “catastrophic” food insecurity. Biden, voicing his growing frustration with hawkish Netanyahu, issued some of his sternest criticism yet of the war. Washington’s recent tougher line with Israel, its main ally in the region, has brought some results, according to the US Agency for International Development. However, Samantha Power, head of USAID, stressed that Israel needs to do more, saying that “we have famine-like conditions in Gaza and supermarkets are filled with food within a few kilometers away” in southern Israel. Washington has also resumed funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees after cutting it weeks ago after Israel claimed that some UNRWA staff took part in the October 7 attack. According to Al-Jazeera, the Israeli Army is setting up a new border crossing to avoid blocking by Israeli protestors at Erez-Beit Hanoun.
‘It Will Be Punished’
Hamas has said it is studying the latest proposal for a truce. However, Hamas has so far also publicly insisted on a full withdrawal of Israeli ground forces and a permanent ceasefire — demands that Israel has outright rejected. US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday that Israel had to “take some steps forward,” while Hamas’ public statements had been “less than encouraging.” Regional tensions have surged amid the Gaza war, and Israel was widely blamed for an April 1 strike on arch foe Iran’s consulate in Damascus that killed seven Revolutionary Guards.Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned Israel that “the evil regime made a mistake in this regard. It must be punished and will be punished.”
Belal Al-Sabbagh and Fiachra Gibbons, with AFP

Biden says US security commitment to Israel remains ‘ironclad’ amid threat of ‘significant attack’ from Iran
Andrew Feinberg/The Independent/April 10, 2024
President Joe Biden on Wednesday said America would remain steadfast in its’ commitment to Israel’s defence amid Iranian threats of what he called a “significant attack” in recent days. Speaking alongside Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio during a joint press conference in the White House Rose Garden, Mr Biden said he and the Japanese leader discussed “developments in the mideast including our shared support for a cease fire and a hostage deal, and urgent efforts to deal with the humanitarian crisis that exists in Gaza”.He also said he and Mr Kishida both wanted to “address the threat” posed by Iran and said Tehran is “threatening to launch a significant attack on Israel”.“As I told prime minister Netanyahu, our commitment to Israel’s security against these threats from Iran and their proxies is ironclad ... we’re going to do all we can to protect Israel’s security,” Mr Biden said. The president’s reaffirmation of America’s defence commitment to Israel comes as a growing chorus of US lawmakers — including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — are calling on him to condition future defence assistance to Israel on whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government allows an appropriate amount of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip and takes steps to protect civilians as he continues his country’s xix-month-old war against Hamas. Mr Biden told reporters he has been “very blunt and straightforward” in his talks with the Israeli leader during what he described as a “long conversation” the two men had last week after a series of Israeli drone attacks killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers. He said Mr Netanyahu had agreed to work towards “getting more aid of both food and medicine into Gaza” and “reducing significantly” the number of civilian casualties during Israeli attacks on Hamas positions. He said Hamas must decide whether to accept a proposal for the release of hostages and a cease-fire put forth by CIA Director Bill Burns during negotiations in Qatar. “They need to move on the proposal, and ... get these hostages home where they belong,” he said. Currently, a US defence aid package containing funds for both Israel and Ukraine is held up in the House of Representatives as extremist Republicans led by Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene have threatened to move to depose House Speaker Mike Johnson if he allows lawmakers to take an up-or-down vote on the proposal. Mr Biden said there is “overwhelming support” for the Ukraine aid bill among both Democratic and Republican lawmakers.“There should be a vote now,” he said.

Israel Threatens to Strike Iran Directly if it Launches Attack from its Territory
Asharq Al-Awsat/April 10/2024
Israel's foreign minister threatened Wednesday that its country's forces would strike Iran directly if Tehran launched an attack from its territory against Israel. “If Iran attacks from its territory, Israel will respond and attack in Iran,” Israel Katz said in a post on X in both Farsi and Hebrew. The remarks came after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei reiterated early Wednesday a promise to retaliate against Israel over the attack on its consulate in Damascus earlier this month. Tehran holds Israel responsible for the strike that leveled the building, killing 12 people. Khamenei spoke at a prayer ceremony celebrating the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, saying the airstrike was “wrongdoing" and akin to an attack on Iranian territory. “When they attacked our consulate area, it was like they attacked our territory,” Khamenei said, in remarks broadcast by Iranian state TV. “The evil regime must be punished, and it will be punished.” Among 12 killed in the blast on Apr. 1 were seven Iranian Revolutionary Guard members, four Syrians and a Hezbollah member.

Australian Foreign Minister Criticized for Suggesting Possible Recognition of a Palestinian State
Asharq Al-Awsat/April 10/2024
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong is facing criticism after she raised the prospect of Australia recognizing a Palestinian state.
Wong said in a speech late Tuesday that recognizing Palestinian statehood could be the only way to end the cycle of violence in the Middle East and build momentum toward a two-state solution amid ongoing conflict between Palestinians and Israel. She said Wednesday she wasn’t changing Australia’s position, but was starting a conversation. “We’ve made no such decision. The discussion I want to have is to look at what is happening in the international community where there is the very important debate about how it is we secure long-lasting peace in a region which has known so much conflict,” Wong told Australian Broadcasting Corp. Wong said Hamas must free hostages and that the armed group would have no place in a Palestinian state. She also said there needed to be an immediate humanitarian ceasefire so that aid could be delivered to Gaza. And she urged Israel not to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah because of the risk to civilians. Both Australia’s center-left Labor Party government and the conservative opposition parties support a two-party solution in the Middle East. But opposition spokesperson on foreign affairs Simon Birmingham called it “downright dangerous to reward (Hamas for its Oct. 7 attack on Israel) with a fast track to recognition of statehood."

Biden Says Netanyahu’s Approach to War in Gaza Is a ‘Mistake’
Asharq Al-Awsat/April 10/2024
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's approach to the war in Gaza is a "mistake," US President Joe Biden said in an interview published on Tuesday, offering further criticism of Israel's handling of the conflict. "I think what he's doing is a mistake. I don't agree with his approach," Biden said in comments to Univision, a US Spanish-language TV network. Biden has also previously called Israel's bombing in Gaza "indiscriminate" and its military actions "over the top."The White House said last week that the president, in a call with Netanyahu, threatened to make conditional US support for Israel's offensive on it taking concrete steps to protect aid workers and civilians. That call followed an Israeli airstrike that killed seven staff of the aid group World Central Kitchen. "What I'm calling for is for the Israelis to just call for a ceasefire, allow for the next six, eight weeks, total access to all food and medicine going into the country," Biden said in Tuesday's interview. Israel's military assault on Gaza has been the subject of mounting international criticism. Domestically, Biden has also faced months of protests from anti-war activists, Muslims and Arab Americans across the country, who have demanded a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and restrictions on US military assistance for Israel. Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies. Israel's subsequent military assault on Hamas-governed Gaza has killed over 33,000, according to the local health ministry, displaced nearly all of its 2.3 million population and led to genocide allegations that Israel denies. The coastal enclave also suffers widespread hunger. Israel has received more US foreign aid than any other country since World War Two, although annual assistance has been dwarfed for two years by funding and military equipment sent to Ukraine since Russia's 2022 invasion. The United States has traditionally shielded Israel in the UN Security Council and vetoed three draft resolutions on the war in Gaza. It abstained last month when the Security Council demanded an immediate ceasefire.

Israel would let 150,000 Gazans return north in potential truce, officials say
REUTERS/April 10, 2024
JERUSALEM: Israel has agreed in Gaza war ceasefire talks in Egypt to concessions about the return of Palestinians to the north of the enclave, but believes Islamist group Hamas does not want to strike a deal, Israeli officials said on Wednesday. Two officials with knowledge of the talks said that under a US proposal for a truce, Israel would allow the return of 150,000 Palestinians to north Gaza with no security checks. In return, they said, Hamas would be required to give a list of female, elderly and sick hostages it still holds alive. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office declined to comment. Hamas said on Tuesday that the latest proposal passed on by Eqyptian and Qatari mediators did not meet demands, but that it would study it further before responding. Israel’s assessment is that Hamas does not want to strike a deal yet, the two Israeli officials said. In the seventh month of the war, Hamas wants an end to the Israeli military offensive, a withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, and permission for displaced Palestinians to return home. Israel’s immediate aim is to secure the release of hostages seized by Hamas in its Oct. 7 cross-border rampage. It says it will not end the war until Hamas no longer controls Gaza or threatens Israel militarily. More than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed since the Israeli offensive began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, with most of the 2.3 million population displaced and much of the enclave laid to waste. Israel pulled back most ground forces from southern Gaza this week after months of fighting, but still says it plans to launch an assault on Rafah, on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, where more than half of Gazans are now sheltering. Netanyahu has said civilians will be evacuated from Rafah before Israeli forces pursue Hamas’ remaining battalions there, but that pledge has done little to calm international alarm. The war began when Hamas led an attack on southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and 253 taken hostage. Around 130 are still being held incommunicado in Gaza, Israel says.

Israel threatens to strike Iran directly if Iran launches attack from its territory
AP/April 10, 2024
JERUSALEM: Israel’s foreign minister threatened Wednesday that his country’s forces would strike Iran directly if the Islamic Republic launched an attack from its territory against Israel. His comments came amid heightened tensions between the rival powers following the killings of Iranian generals in a blast at the Iranian consulate in Syria earlier this month. “If Iran attacks from its territory, Israel will respond and attack in Iran,” Israel Katz said in a post on X in both Farsi and Hebrew. Earlier Wednesday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reiterated a promise to retaliate against Israel over the attack on its consulate in Damascus. Tehran holds Israel responsible for the strike that leveled the building, killing 12 people. Israel has not acknowledged its involvement, though it has been bracing for an Iranian response to the attack, a significant escalation in their long-running shadow war.
The strike killed Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior figure in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard who led the group’s elite Quds Force in Lebanon and Syria until 2016. The 11 others who died included six Revolutionary Guard members, four Syrians and a Hezbollah militia member.
Israel has attacked scores of Iranian-linked targets in Syria over the years with the apparent intent of disrupting arms transfers and other cooperation with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran. The Israeli army rarely comments on these attacks. Since the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza began six months ago, there have been near-daily exchanges of fire between Israeli forces and Hezbollah along the Israel-Lebanon border. Gaza’s Hamas rulers, who triggered the war by attacking southern Israel on Oct. 7, are also backed by Iran. Tehran also backs an umbrella group of Iraqi militias targeting US military bases and positions in Syria and Iraq, known as The Islamic Resistance of Iraq. Khamenei made the remarks at a prayer ceremony celebrating the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, saying the strike on its consular was akin to an attack on Iranian territory. “When they attacked our consulate area, it was like they attacked our territory,” Khamenei said, in remarks broadcast by Iranian state TV. “The evil regime must be punished, and it will be punished.” Neither Katz nor the Ayatollah elaborated on the way they would retaliate. Khamenei also criticized the West, particularly the US and Britain, for supporting Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza. “It was expected they (would) prevent (Israel) in this disaster. They did not. They did not fulfil their duties, the Western governments,” he said. Iran does not recognize Israel.

Iran’s Mehr news agency removes report about closing Tehran’s airspace, denies publishing it
REUTERS/April 11, 2024
DUBAI: Iran’s Mehr news agency removed a report on Wednesday from its official channel on X that had said Iran was closing its airspace over the capital Tehran and denied in a new post that it had published any such news. In the original report posted on X, the semi-official news agency cited the Iranian defense minister as saying that all air traffic had been suspended over Tehran from 2030 GMT on Wednesday “due to military drills.”

Khamenei Reiterates Promise to Retaliate Against Israel over Killings of Generals
Asharq Al-Awsat/April 10/2024
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei reiterated on Wednesday a promise to retaliate against Israel over the killings of Iranian generals in Syria. Khamenei spoke at a prayer ceremony celebrating the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, saying the airstrike that demolished Iran’s consulate in Syria earlier this month was “wrongdoing" against a diplomatic post that is considered Iranian territory. “When they attack our consulate section it looked like they attack on our territory,” Khamenei said. “The evil regime must be punished, and it will be punished.” The strike killed 12 people: seven Iranian Revolutionary Guard members, four Syrians and a Hezbollah member. Israel has not acknowledged its involvement, though it has been bracing for an Iranian response to the attack that was a significant escalation in their long-running shadow war. Khamenei also criticized the West, particularly the US and Britain, for supporting Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza. “It was expected they (would) prevent (Israel) in this disaster. They did not. They did not fulfil their duties, the Western governments,” he said.

Iran's stealth drones have become the new blueprint for international warfare
Erin Snodgrass/Business Insider/Wed, April 10, 2024
Iran has become a global drone powerhouse as countries around the world copy its technology. Russia has become increasingly reliant on Iranian drones to fight its war in Ukraine. Iran can easily bypass Western sanctions and buy electronic parts from Asian suppliers. Iran's stealth drones and their copycats are popping up on battlefields from Ukraine to Sudan, making it a standout in global drone warfare and raising concerns about increasing military instability around the world. In the past forty years, Iran has emerged as an expert in low-tech drone warfare thanks to decades of Western sanctions that forced the country to innovate weapons production by any means possible. Countries around the world are now increasingly taking inspiration from Iran's drones. Bloomberg reported this week that at least six countries had ramped up production of Iranian drones in the past two years, bringing the total number of countries producing drones with Iran's help to at least a dozen. The issue has become of particular importance as Russia becomes more reliant on Iranian tech to produce its drones for the war in Ukraine. Iran maintains that it isn't selling drones to Russia, but documents and extensive reporting indicate otherwise.
Business Insider reported in January that Russia was probably already in possession of an explosive new version of Iran's Shahed drone, causing massive headaches for Ukraine's air defenses. Iran's Shahed-136 drones are frequently popping up on Ukrainian battlefields, despite being made up almost entirely of American and European parts — highlighting just how easy it is for Iran to bypass Western sanctions and buy electronic parts from Asian suppliers and front companies, as Bloomberg reported. Iran is meanwhile pocketing foreign money in exchange for its much-coveted drone tech and expertise. Bloomberg reported that the country was primarily using model airplanes propelled by lawnmower motors and guided by US-made components to power its drone empire. But despite the seemingly makeshift nature of the weapons, both the US and Israel — two of the most powerful militaries in the world — are struggling to defend themselves against the stealth drones that are reported to circumvent Western defenses by shadowing American drones. In January, an Iranian exploding drone hit a US military base in Jordan, killing three US service members. The Washington Post cited a defense source who said the weapon was a small attack Shahed-101. The drone was able to sneak past American defenses by shadowing a US drone also landing at the base — a trick believed to have been picked up from Russia, Bloomberg reported. "Russia and Iran are learning from each other. That is almost as important as the technology-sharing itself," Matthew McInnis, a Pentagon intelligence officer who was a State Department representative for Iran, told the outlet. But Iran's influence goes beyond Russia. Iranian-backed Houthis have curtailed trade in the Red Sea in recent months by perpetrating drone attacks on cargo ships. Bloomberg reported that Ethiopia had used Iranian drones to squash rebellions in the country, while Tajikistan, Algeria, and Venezuela were also partnering with Iran.

Eight Members of Pro-Iran Militia Killed in Syria’s Mayadeen
Asharq Al-Awsat/April 10/2024
Eight members of a pro-Iran militia were killed by unknown assailants in Syria’s al-Mayadeen city in the Deir Ezzor region. The assailants attacked the headquarters of the “Syrian Revolutionary Guards” militia that is affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, butchering their victims with knives. Security and military forces in the region went on high alert in wake of the attack, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. This was the second attack of its kind in less than 48 hours in Deir Ezzor, the so-called “capital of Iranian militias in Syria.”Earlier, three Syrian members of the Revolutionary Guards were killed by unknown gunmen in an attack on their military position on the outskirts al-Mayadeen. Naher Media said the victims were killed by ISIS. A man in his 50s was killed by a stray bullet fired by mourners during the funeral of the three victims, who hail from the predominantly Shiite town of Hatla. The town is one of seven located east of the Euphrates River in Deir Ezzor where extremists have thrived. In 2013, a massacre was committed in the area against mostly Shiite gunmen. Around 60 people were killed.

US Sends Seized Iranian Weapons to Ukraine
Asharq Al-Awsat/April 10/2024
Washington has given Ukraine small arms and ammunition that were seized while being sent from Iranian forces to Tehran-backed Houthi militias in Yemen, the US military has said. The transfer last week came as Ukraine suffers from significant shortages of ammunition and US Republican lawmakers block new aid funding, but it does not address Kyiv's need for key items such as artillery and air defense munitions. “The US government transferred over 5,000 AK-47s, machine guns, sniper rifles, RPG-7s and over 500,000 rounds of 7.62mm ammunition to the Ukrainian armed forces" on Thursday, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said on social media. “The government obtained ownership of these munitions on December 1, 2023, through the Department of Justice's civil forfeiture claims,” it said on Tuesday. “Iran's support for armed groups threatens international and regional security, our forces, diplomatic personnel, and citizens in the region, as well as those of our partners. We will continue to do whatever we can to shed light on and stop Iran's destabilizing activities,” CENTCOM said. The Houthis have been targeting vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since November 2023 in attacks they say are in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza -- a significant international security challenge that threatens a major shipping lane. Washington made a similar transfer to Ukraine in early October, providing 1.1 million rounds of 7.62mm ammunition that was seized from Iranian forces on the way to Yemen.
But funding for crucial artillery and air defense munitions for Ukraine has been held up by Republican lawmakers who have stalled a $60 billion support package in the US Congress since last year. The United States announced a $300 million assistance package for Kyiv on March 12 -- the first since December -- that included anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons and artillery shells, but warned at the time that it would run out after a few weeks. That package was funded by using money that the Pentagon saved on other purchases, allowing the US government to provide aid despite the congressional impasse. Washington has been by far Kyiv's biggest donor of security aid, committing tens of billions of dollars to aid Ukraine since the invasion.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III told lawmakers on Tuesday that his department seeks to invest in American security and in America's defense industrial base. It's also why the administration has requested nearly $60 billion in the National Security Supplemental for the Department of Defense, he said.
“And that supplemental would support our partners in Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan while making investments to increase submarine production,” the Secretary of Defense added. Also, Austin explained that about $50 billion of this supplemental would flow through our industrial base, rushing aid to our partners while creating good American jobs in more than 30 states. He then thanked all those who have worked to pass an effective funding package. And now we are more than two years into the Kremlin's war of aggression against Ukraine.
Austin also said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is betting that the United States will falter and abandon our friends and leave Ukraine in mortal danger. “If the Kremlin prevails in Ukraine, it would embolden would-be aggressors around the globe. The United States would be far less secure if Putin got his way in Ukraine,” he said. The Secretary of Defense reiterated that Biden has warned Putin will not stop at Ukraine. “If America walked away, we would put the free world in peril and risk unimaginable cost and dangers,” he said, adding that the price of US leadership is real, but it is far lower than the price of US abdication. During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Defense Department's FY 2025 budget request, Austin said the US is in a global struggle between democracy and autocracy and that its security in these turbulent times relies on Americans' strength of purpose. At the same hearing, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force General Charles Quinton Brown cited five challenges the US is currently facing. “The risky behavior of China, a newly aggressive Russia, and a destabilizing Iran and North Korea were among them — as being threats to an increasingly complex global security environment,” he said. On Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron described US support for Ukraine as the “keystone in the arch” of the fight for democracy in his latest appeal to Congress over a stalled package of aid. During a visiting to Washington, he warned that success for Kyiv in defeating Russia is “vital for American and European security.” He urged lawmakers across the Atlantic to approve “urgent” further assistance for the country. Cameron’s German counterpart Annalena Baerbock earlier also urged increased international efforts to supply more air defense systems in view of the threat of a major Russian offensive on the city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine.

US general warns time running out for Ukraine without US aid
WASHINGTON (Reuters)/April 10, 2024
The top U.S. general in Europe told Congress on Wednesday that Ukraine will run out of artillery shells and air defense interceptors "in fairly short order" without U.S. support, leaving them vulnerable to a partial or total defeat. In a sign of how scarce some weapons were, General Christopher Cavoli, commander of European Command, told the House Armed Services Committee that Russia was currently firing five artillery shells for every one fired by Ukrainian forces and that disparity could increase in coming weeks to 10 to one. "If one side can shoot and the other side can't shoot back, the side that can't shoot back loses. So the stakes are very high," Cavoli said. "They're really dependent this year on us, Mr. Chairman. And without our support, they will not be able to prevail," he added. Republican House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson is refusing to call a vote on a bill that would provide $60 billion more for Ukraine. The White House is scrambling to find ways to send assistance to Kyiv, which has been battling Russian forces for more than two years. Some lawmakers voiced increasing frustration with lack of progress on funding for Ukraine, a measure passed by the Senate already.
During the hearing, Democratic U.S. Representative Elissa Slotkin of Michigan said Johnson should put on his "big boy pants" and make a tough choice, even at the risk of losing his job. "That's what leadership is," Slotkin said. Russian air strikes on Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region on Wednesday afternoon hit a clinic and a pharmacy, killing at least three people. Russian attacks have long targeted Kharkiv and the surrounding region, but the strikes have grown more intense in recent weeks, hitting civilian and energy infrastructure. President Joe Biden's administration has voiced concern about the lack of funding for Ukraine. Last month, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned that Ukraine's survival was in danger and sought to convince allies the U.S. was committed to Kyiv. Officials say lack of funding available is already having an impact on the ground in Ukraine, where Russian troops are advancing and Ukrainian forces must manage limited resources. European support has become more important with Biden struggling to get a big Ukraine aid package through Congress while devoting more foreign policy energy to the war in Gaza. Yet U.S. officials say European support for Ukraine will not be enough. On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced that it had transferred to Ukraine thousands of infantry weapons and more than 500,000 rounds of ammunition that were seized over a year ago from an Iranian shipment to Houthi forces in Yemen.

France's Bordeaux knife attack kills one, reports BFM TV
Reuters/April 10, 2024
A man armed with a knife fatally stabbed one person and wounded at least one other in an attack in the French city of Bordeaux, BFM TV reported on Wednesday, citing police sources. BFM TV said the attacker was killed by police. Police do not initially think the attack was terrorism-related, the news channel reported. The Bordeaux prosecutor's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Less than four months out from the Olympic Games, France is on its highest state of security alert. A soccer match between Paris St-Germain and Barcelona in the French capital on Wednesday night took place under tightened security measures after a threat from Islamic State.

Germany’s Lufthansa pauses flights to and from Tehran amid Middle East crisis
LBCI/April 10, 2024
Germany’s Lufthansa pauses flights to and from Tehran amid Middle East crisis
Germany’s Lufthansa on Wednesday said after careful evaluation it decided to suspend flights to and from Tehran until probably Thursday, April 11, “due to the current situation in the Middle East.” “We are constantly monitoring the situation in the Middle East and are in close contact with the authorities. The safety of our guests and crew members is Lufthansa’s top priority,” a spokesperson for the company told Reuters.

US agrees on potential sale of information distribution systems to Saudi Arabia
LBCI/April 10, 2024
The US State Department has approved the potential sale of multifunctional information distribution systems to Saudi Arabia for an estimated cost of $101.1 million, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on April 10-11/2024
How Biden is Sabotaging His Peace Deal Between Israel and Saudi Arabia
Bassam Tawil/Gatestone Institute./April 10, 2024
Recently, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said after meeting with [Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed] bin Salman that there is "good progress" on Saudi Arabia-Israel normalization talks. "I believe we can reach an agreement which would present an historic opportunity... We had a very good discussion about the work that we've been doing for many months now on normalization, and that work is moving forward. We're continuing to make good progress."
[T]here is good reason to believe that the Saudis will eventually agree to normalize their relations with Israel. In order for that to happen, however, Hamas, which is strongly opposed to any peace with Israel and does not recognize its right to exist, must be defeated and eradicated.
It is no secret that Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries despise Hamas and consider it a threat to their own national security....
There is no doubt that the Saudis, together with the UAE, Bahrain and the even the Palestinian Authority, are quietly praying for Israel to finish the job and get rid of Hamas. These Arabs, understandably, cannot express their views in public lest they be accused of "colluding" with Israel.
Arab states are motivated to sign peace treaties with Israel when they see Israel as a winner.
By pressuring Israel not to invade Rafah, the US administration is sabotaging its own efforts to persuade Saudi Arabia to normalize its ties with Israel...
By demanding that Israel refrain from entering Rafah, the Biden administration is actually asking Israel to forget about recovering the 130 hostages being raped and tortured by Hamas every day -- which still include six Americans – and to lose the war. This is something that neither Israel nor Hamas's Arab enemies -- nor even Biden -- can afford to accept.
Arab states are motivated to sign peace treaties with Israel when they see Israel as a winner. By pressuring Israel not to invade Rafah, the US administration is sabotaging its own efforts to persuade Saudi Arabia to normalize its ties with Israel. Pictured: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on March 20, 2024. (Photo by Evelyn Hockstein/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
When the Iran-backed Hamas terror group invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, it not only sought to kill and kidnap Israelis. The group and its patrons in Tehran undoubtedly had other goals in mind, such as thwarting US-sponsored efforts to achieve normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Fortunately, Hamas has so far been unsuccessful in achieving this goal. In addition, Hamas has failed to drive a wedge between Israel and the Arab countries that have peace treaties with it: Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. None of these countries has cut off its diplomatic relations with Israel, despite their harsh criticism of Israel over the war in the Gaza Strip and pressure from the Arab street.
Less than a month before the Hamas assault, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, told Fox News that the prospect of normalized relations with Israel was "getting closer every day."
The war that erupted in the Gaza Strip after Hamas's atrocities on October 7 may have paused the normalization process, but it did not destroy it.
In the past few months, the Saudis have emphasized that they have not abandoned the idea of normalizing their relations with Israel, notwithstanding the war in the Gaza Strip that erupted after the Hamas attack.
One month after the assault, Saudi Arabia's Minister of Investment Khaled Al-Falih said talks towards a normalization of ties with Israel remain on the table:
"That was on the table – it remains on the table and obviously the setback over the last month has clarified why Saudi Arabia was so adamant that resolution of the Palestinian conflict has to be part of a broader normalization in the Middle East."
Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Britain, Prince Khaled bin Bander, told the BBC earlier this year that the Kingdom still believed in establishing ties with Israel despite "deplorable casualty figures in Gaza."
Recently, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said after meeting with bin Salman that there is "good progress" on Saudi Arabia-Israel normalization talks.
"I believe we can reach an agreement which would present an historic opportunity... We had a very good discussion about the work that we've been doing for many months now on normalization, and that work is moving forward. We're continuing to make good progress."
Consequently, there is good reason to believe that the Saudis will eventually agree to normalize their relations with Israel. In order for that to happen, however, Hamas, which is strongly opposed to any peace with Israel and does not recognize its right to exist, must be defeated and eradicated.
It is no secret that Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries despise Hamas and consider it a threat to their own national security as well as an obstacle to achieving peace between the Arabs and Israel.
In 2019, the Saudi authorities arrested 60 Hamas members and sympathizers, including the terror group's representative in the Kingdom, Mohammed Al-Khudari, who was later sentenced to 15 years in prison on charges of supporting Hamas.
The Saudis would no doubt be delighted to see Hamas removed from power and eliminated. This, however, cannot happen unless Israel is permitted to destroy Hamas's entire military capabilities. Since the beginning of the war, Hamas is reported to have lost thousands of its fighters. Israel has dismantled 20 of the 24 Hamas battalions. Yet, the group still has four battalions in the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.
The total defeat of Hamas will undoubtedly incentivize the Saudis and other Arabs to make peace with Israel. As long as Hamas remains around and is allowed to have a say on issues related to the Israeli-Arab conflict, many Arabs will be reluctant to normalize their ties with Israel. There is no doubt that the Saudis, together with the UAE, Bahrain and the even the Palestinian Authority, are quietly praying for Israel to finish the job and get rid of Hamas. These Arabs, understandably, cannot express their views in public lest they be accused of "colluding" with Israel.
This is why the Biden administration is making a disastrous mistake by pressuring Israel not to go after Hamas in Rafah. The Biden administration's approach is like asking a marathon runner to stop just before he reaches the finish line. If Hamas is allowed to keep its forces in Rafah, this will be seen by the group and its supporters as a victory.
The thousands of Hamas fighters in Rafah will quickly return to other parts of the Gaza Strip when the Israeli army pulls out from the coastal enclave. Then, it will only be a matter of time before Hamas carries out another massacre against Israelis.
Failure to destroy Hamas's military capabilities and allowing it to remain in power – as the Biden administration is suggesting – will be bad not only for Israel, but for the Saudis and other Arab states eager to make peace with Israel.
By pressuring Israel not to invade Rafah, the US administration is sabotaging its own efforts to persuade Saudi Arabia to normalize its ties with Israel. Additionally, the Biden administration would do well to consider the following: Arab states are motivated to sign peace treaties with Israel when they see Israel as a winner. Like it or not, Israelis are indisputably a superpower in the domains of economics, medicine, technology, and the military arena in the Middle East.
By demanding that Israel refrain from entering Rafah, the Biden administration is actually asking Israel to forget about recovering the 130 hostages being raped and tortured by Hamas every day -- which still include six Americans – and to lose the war. This is something that neither Israel nor Hamas's Arab enemies -- nor even Biden -- can afford to accept.
**Bassam Tawil is a Muslim Arab based in the Middle East. The work of Bassam Tawil is made possible through the generous donation of a donor who wished to remain anonymous. Gatestone is most grateful.
© 2024 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Questions Regarding the Cultural Themes of War
Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al-Awsat/April 10/2024
Last Sunday (7/4) the Israeli newspaper “Haaretz” published an investigative report by Judy Maltz, the newspaper's Jewish World correspondent, entitled "Six Months On: How October 7 and the Gaza War Transformed Jews Across the Globe." It traces how these two major events have reflected on the lives of Jewish individuals: 7 in the United States, 2 in Argentina, 2 in Australia, 2 in Britain, 2 in South Africa, 2 in Canada, and 1 in each of Ukraine, Türkiye, Uganda, Chile, France, Iceland, Italy, Germany.
The sample surveyed includes 14 women and 11 men aged between 22 to 75. Some are married and others are single; some are believers and others are not. Moreover, the sample includes people from a very broad spectrum of social and professional backgrounds: one works in television, another at a Hasidic social center, a third is pursuing a doctorate in linguistics, and a fourth is a medical assistant. The sample also includes a historian, an employee at a funeral home, a rabbi, a director at a real estate company, a high school teacher, a veterinarian, a bank manager, an artist, and a retired sociology teacher...
The opinions they expressed are no less broad and discordant than their backgrounds. A young Australian man says: “I stopped speaking to my parents over some very rough arguments". A young man from the US adds: “Being with pro-Palestinian Jews who were on the same page as me was such an impactful experience.” A Turkish woman protests: “Everything would be fine if we kept silent, but what kind of home is that?” An American historian deplores: "I think of Israel's retaliation as a genocidal attack." An American woman criticizes: "Israel's response has not been helpful. It just doesn't seem Jewish to me to be killing so many people indiscriminately." A French woman is defiant: "I’ve never before felt the need to wear a Star of David around my neck, but since October 7, I do." An American rabbi dissents: “I don’t get the sense that there is compassion for what the people of Gaza are going through. It turned me into an anti-Zionist.” An Italian woman is furious: “The leading feminist organization in Italy refused to condemn sexual violence against Israeli women”. A German woman says she “Sometimes thinks this is what it must have felt like on the streets of Germany before the Nazis came to power.”
Every one of their relationships with their family, friends, and colleagues is subject to discussion and reflection. Their relationship to space, from their place of residence to their homeland, as well as their relationship with Israel, are contemplated. The ramifications of the two events on where they live and work, security, and immigration are all put forward. As for the themes most frequently discussed (or whose core is addressed circuitously), they could maybe be divided into four:
- The end of the relationship between leftist and progressive movements and Zionism
- The generational divide among Jews from around the world regarding Israel, with older Jewish people generally attached to it while antipathy and disavowal is becoming increasingly common among younger ones
- Crises around the conditions of Jews, especially in universities
- The strains in the relationship between Jewish artists and the art world and its circles
Naturally, Haaretz is not Israel. It is nothing more than a voice for a narrow segment of Israeli society, which fanaticism and cruelty have taken by storm; indeed, it may even be one of the loudest voices opposing the genocidal tendencies that are taking hold of the Jewish state. Nonetheless, this voice is maintained through depicting a world that is diverse, critical, and transnational at the same time.
As for what Haaretz’s behavior demonstrates, in this investigation as in many other articles and much of their other reporting, it is a cultural vision haunted by concerns about the conditions of humanity, both as individuals and groups, with its great shifts and the intimate truths revealed by historical junctures. However, it is also haunted by the idea that when people are free, they are different; they do not think in the same way as those cast in the same mold or forced to echo the same collective narrative.
It is astonishing, on the other hand, how little interest our culture, through its mediums, has shown in portraying our differences and diversity, and in presenting us as varied and plural. In fact, it is obsessed with presenting us as a single, unified, and robust voice that only a traitor or foreign agent could go against.
Worse still, people’s conditions and opinions, under these circumstances, are not on the cultural agenda at all. This is just as true for those who reside in their home countries as it is for the millions of Arab and Muslim migrants scattered across the four corners of the earth. Do they not feel the impact on their bodies, places of residence, work, and relationships with others, or is this impact not taken seriously by our culture, which has dedicated its attention to exposing the West's duplicity and digging up colonial themes? And that is when we are allowed a brief break from questions of "modernity and authenticity" and "innovation and imitation"!
Today more than ever, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the distance between peoples’ actual concerns and the infrastructure underlying "our culture" is astronomical. According to the latter, people are a block of stone, and there is an abundance of humans who embody the nation and a scarcity of individual- or even communal- humans, while we seem fated to obscure life’s experiences, relationships, and the particular way in which it interacts with the world.
As we wait for someone to awaken us from our "dogmatic slumber," to borrow a famous phrase Kant used in discussing Hume, we will continue to march firmly towards glory "so long as we resist!"

Cairo Negotiations… Why Are the Mediators Optimistic?
Nabil Amr/Asharq Al-Awsat/April 10/2024
Optimism regarding the likelihood of a truce and hostage exchange deal, through the ongoing talks in Cairo, is on the rise. This optimism has not been sprung by dramatic Israeli initiatives or flagrant concessions by Hamas. Rather, a deal seems more likely because the Egyptians, Qataris, and Americans are applying pressure more effectively, with each party pushing the side they "can count on" as they strive to prevent this latest attempt from collapsing and avert a dead end. Indeed, this is particularly crucial now, the region has been on shaky ground since Israel attacked the Iranian consulate in Damascus and Tehran threatened retaliation.
No actor can make as much of a tangible impact as the Americans. US pressure has made Israel more flexible, reduced the intensity of its campaign, delayed its invasion of Rafah, and increased the quantity of aid entering Gaza by land and sea. The same cannot be said for the joint Egyptian-Qatari stance, it is not the same as that of the US. The two Arab states are both calling for a comprehensive and permanent ceasefire, as well as insisting that Israel withdraw from Gaza, and that everyone who has been displaced be allowed to return, starting now, to their places of residence, even if most of them have been destroyed.
It is worth noting, after months of failed negotiations between Paris, Cairo, Doha, and Washington, that the mediators are part of the game, though the extent of each side's direct involvement varies. Each party has its own agenda and strives to achieve its objectives, or some of them.
The US needs the talks to succeed in order to reduce the dangerous tensions in the region, especially since the Biden administration knows that the crucial presidential election is not far off. The Qataris, who manage an almost monopolistic relationship with Hamas, consider these negotiations a test of their effectiveness and influence. This is a perilous situation for the region and the world, and the Qataris want to succeed in order to affirm their role and influence.
As for Egypt, it is tied to the conflict more directly than any of the other mediators, as the war is raging on its borders. While Rafah and the Philadelphi Corridor are currently the most sensitive locations, Gaza is a major national security issue for Egypt, however one looks at it. This has not been the case only since the current war broke out; it is a historical and strategic fact and it will never change.
The rising optimism, despite the talks not having been officially finalized, also reflects the fact that the mediators know better than anyone else how important it is that they succeed. They are not neutral actors performing a technical role but essential players. Success is crucial, as any deal has implications for what comes next, and what comes next inevitably concerns everyone.
A six-week ceasefire would allow for addressing all parties' concerns regarding the day after, which has yet to take shape. This has been relevant since the Americans realized that achieving decisive outcomes on the ground, what Netanyahu calls "total victory," is impossible. This realization has pushed the Americans to escalate and play a more active and visible role in determining the outcome of the war, by becoming directly and decisively involved in preparing for what comes next.
More complex than everything that has happened over the past six months- and this will remain the case until the war ends- is laying the groundwork for what comes next. The Americans have talked a lot about this but in vague terms. They have put forward trial proposals that go as far as promising to end with a two-state solution to put out fires flaring across the region. These questions do not only have implications for Gaza but the entire region as well.
A list of the flashpoints in the region and the agendas of each arena or party involved, along with what they could be offered to meet their needs (needs that were urgent before the Gaza war and remain so afterward) allows us to understand the challenges of the day after. From here, the prospects of success in the current round of talks in Cairo seem like the first station of the post-war era.
This is the foundation upon which a new phase of conflicts or agreements in the Middle East will be built. It is ironic that Gaza (more seriously than ever before) could become the launching pad for what lies ahead for the entire region.

Hamas-Supporter Qatar ‘Sponsoring’ What Americans Learn
Raymond Ibrahim/April 10/2024
“Hamas Patron” Qatar has given more than $5.6 billion to 61 American schools since 2007, including Ivy Leagues such as Harvard University, Yale University, Cornell University, and Stanford University, according to a February, 2024 report.
Qatar is not the only nation to be supportive of “learning” in the West while simultaneously having deep ties to Hamas and other terrorist organizations—not to mention exhibiting a very anti-liberal stance and unenlightened mind at home.
According to another report from 2023,
China, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Turkey have poured millions of dollars into the University of Delaware since the school launched the Biden Institute, President Joe Biden’s domestic policy think tank led by his sister…. Since the Biden Institute was established in 2017, the University of Delaware has received $6,704,250 in funding from China, $23,610,996 from Saudi Arabia, $2,513,646 from Oman and $1,673,847 from Turkey, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education.
Every one of these “generous donors” is either explicitly or implicitly hostile to Western civilization and everything it stands for, prompting a simple question:
Why are nations that are notoriously hostile to freedom, diversity, women’s rights—basically all Western values—donating many billions of dollars to fund, of all things, liberal American universities? The answer seems clear enough: elite universities produce American leaders, and foreign money—“donations”—buys power and influence over those very same future leaders, not least by ensuring that what they “learn”—or are indoctrinated into believing—is beneficial to them, the donors, while also detrimental to the U.S.
All of this was made abundantly clear by a blockbuster report published by the Department of Education under the Trump administration in 2020. It thoroughly documented the “purchased” influence foreign nations have on America’s most prestigious universities and, as a result, on what America’s current and upcoming generations of analysts and policymakers will think and believe.
As seen, among those “gifts” has been a whopping $5.6 billion from the Muslim Brotherhood’s number one state backer, Qatar, which also runs the Arabic propaganda network, Al Jazeera. Another $1.1 billion came from the chief disseminator of “radical” Islamic ideology, Saudi Arabia, and nearly $1.5 billion came from China.
As the 2020 Dept. of Ed. report explained,
[A]t least some of these foreign sources are hostile to the United States and are targeting their investments (i.e., ‘gifts’ and ‘contracts’) to project soft power, steal sensitive and proprietary research, and spread propaganda.
As one example of how these “hostile donations” work, in March 2019, an event described as a “Three-Day Anti-Israel Hate-Fest” was sponsored by the University of North Carolina’s Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies and the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies—both recipients of big bucks from Islamic nations that hate Israel.
Following this event, the Dept. of Ed. warned the Consortium, in a letter dated August 29, 2019, to stop misusing federal grants by advancing “ideological priorities.” According to the letter:
The Duke-UNC CMES appears to lack balance as it offers very few, if any, programs focused on the historic discrimination faced by, and current circumstances of, religious minorities in the Middle East, including Christians, Jews, Baha’is, Yadizis, Kurds, Druze, and others. Also, in your activities for elementary and secondary students and teachers, there is a considerable emphasis placed on the understanding the positive aspects of Islam, while there is an absolute absence of any similar focus on the positive aspects of Christianity, Judaism, or any other religion or belief system in the Middle East. This lack of balance of perspectives is troubling.
Similarly, a 2018 report found that “elite U.S. universities took more than half a billion dollars” from Saudi Arabia in gifts and donations between 2011 and 2017; as far back as 2005, Georgetown and Harvard each received $20 million “to support Islamic studies on their respective campuses.”
Here, again, the question arises: why would a nation such as Saudi Arabia—which treats women like chattel, insists that all Muslims are obligated to hate all non-Muslims, arrests and tortures Christians for “plotting to celebrate Christmas”—become a leading financial supporter of America’s liberal arts?
The answer should be clear: to influence what students are taught about the Middle East and Islam.
The Dept. of Ed.’s 2020 expose (section E.5) on Georgetown University’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, “exemplifies how foreign money can advance a particular country’s worldview within U.S. academic institutions.” As such, it is worth quoting at length:
[T]he Center could advance Islamic ideology in a fashion that belittles opposition, threatens academic integrity, and improperly influences future civil servants. The Center also received criticism for deceptively labeling itself as pluralistic; according to critics, the ‘Christian’ studies portion of the Center was a ‘misnomer’ as there was no Christian representation…
This donation empowered the Saudi Arabian government to advance a particular narrative about Islamic society to the West via a legitimate Western institution like Georgetown University…..
The Saudi Arabian government had successfully impacted American foreign policy thinking through money alone. The Saudi Arabian government invested significantly into the dissemination of its favored ideological views at Georgetown University and several other U.S. academic institutions.
The report further adds that, while raking in and failing to report on these billions in foreign “gifts,” these same universities “depend on direct and indirect subsidies from U.S. taxpayers, including through Federal student loans that have encumbered Americans with staggering debt loads, to operate.” Even so, “the evidence suggests institutional decision-making is generally divorced from any sense of obligation to our taxpayers or concern for our American national interests, security, or values.”
In all spheres of life, education is an indicator of the potential for success; its opposite, ignorance—or worse, indoctrination in falsehoods—is an indicator of potential failure. As such, clearly one of the reasons U.S. foreign policy, from China to the Middle East, has been a disaster is because policymakers and the advisors and analysts on whom they depend upon are products of academic indoctrination financed by those who are hostile to the United States.