Russian Nuclear Sub Docked In Cuba. Is it Armed? My Best Essay? Our Republic's Base. Much More.

Do Russian nuclear submarines, docked in Cuba, carry nuclear weapons?

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Some clever ones:
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You may not know this but many non-living things have a gender.

1)  Ziplock Bags are Male, because they hold everything in, but you can see right through them.

2)  Copiers are Female, because once turned off, it takes a while to warm them up again.  It's an effective reproductive device if the right buttons are pushed, but can wreak havoc if the wrong buttons are pushed.

3)  A Tire is Male, because it goes bald and it's often over-inflated.

4)  A Hot Air Balloon is Male, because, to get it to go anywhere, you have to light a fire under it, and of course, there's the hot air part.

5)  Sponges are Female, because they're soft, squeezable, and retain water.

6)  A Web Page is Female, because it's always getting hit on.

7)  A Subway is Male, because it uses the same old lines to pick people up.

8) An Hourglass is Female, because over time, the weight shifts to the bottom.

9)  A Hammer is Male, because it hasn't changed much over the last 5,000 years, but it's handy to have around.

10)  A Remote Control is Female.  Ha! You thought it'd be male, didn't you?  But consider this - it gives a man pleasure, he'd be lost without it, and while he doesn't always know the right buttons to push, he keeps trying!

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The family is the critical  foundation upon which our republic rests. Without it, as we have surely learned, everything falls apart over time.

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Married Fatherhood

The importance of married and actively engaged fathers is not just a luxury belief.

By IAN V. ROWE

Under a dark sky illuminated by brilliant lightning and thunder strikes, driving on a crowded highway through a torrential downpour is not for the faint of heart. Yet my destination made the arduous, stormy journey worth every fretful moment.

I was part of a caravan of married fathers, all traveling 200 miles to a weekend baseball tournament to coach and cheer on our eleven and twelve-year-old sons. Spending time with my own son reaffirmed the age-old wisdom of the importance of fathers’ presence, especially for boys.

Yet what was equally fulfilling was watching the boys' reactions when they saw they were supported by a community of fathers who had no other purpose than to encourage them. Even young men from single-mother households or who had fraught relationships with their own fathers seemed to get a lift from the engagement of these dedicated dads.

I can only describe what the boys seemed to be experiencing as a collective safety net—deriving the benefit themselves directly and hopefully learning how to pass the torch on to future generations when they reach manhood and fatherhood. 

As we celebrate another Father’s Day, this communal good of married fathers should add a new dimension to what we already know about the indispensable role of an active, engaged married father being present in the home. 

This is especially important now as competing visions of fatherhood emerge that will have different impacts on kids. 

Richard Reeves, the founding president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, has gained traction by arguing that society needs to reimagine fatherhood as an institution independent of marriage and cohabitation. In Reeves’ own words, his “goal is to bolster the role of fathers as direct providers of care to their children, whether or not they are married to or even living with the mother.”

I imagine everyone would agree that we should find more ways to help strengthen the direct relationships between fathers and children, perhaps especially when they are not in a healthy or otherwise relationship with the child’s mother. However, this vision of fatherhood in which men don’t need to be married to the mother of their children, nor even living with either, does not bode well given the dismal outcomes for the young men in society who have already experienced growing up with fathers not married to their mothers nor living with either of them.

This misguided prescription is a quintessential luxury belief: an idea that confers status on the privileged who don’t need to subscribe to that idea, but that idea takes a toll on the less privileged.

Take, for example, the role of fathers and marriage in the black community. In a much-cited New York Times article highlighting what they called the Punishing Reach Of Racism For Black Boys, they state that “Black boys raised in America, even in the wealthiest families and living in some of the most well-to-do neighborhoods, still earn less in adulthood than white boys with similar backgrounds.” The provocative headline posits race as the causal factor driving these outcomes.

However, the study conducted by researchers at Stanford, Harvard, and the Census Bureau suggests a far more nuanced, inclusive recognition of family structure as a key contributor to these racial disparities and the likely factor driving upward mobility among black boys. The study states that “higher rates of father presence among low-income black households are associated with better outcomes for black boys...Black father presence at the neighborhood level predicts black boys' outcomes irrespective of whether their own father is present or not, suggesting that what matters is...community-level factors associated with the presence of fathers, such as role-model effects or changes in social norms.”

As far as the impact of black fathers in the home, as the below chart from the Statista data platform shows, the poverty rate for black married couples has remained in the single digits for nearly thirty consecutive years.  

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The Israeli public speaks.

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Poll: Israelis say Bennett more suitable for PM than Netanyahu

36% say Bennett is more suitable for the role of Prime Minister, compared to 28% who think Netanyahu is more suitable. When compared to Gantz, both Netanyahu and Gantz receive the same percentage of support.

  

Bennett and Netanyahu

A poll conducted by the Midgam Institute and published on Channel 12 News on Friday evening finds that there is a majority of Israelis who think that former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is more suitable for the position of Prime Minister than current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

36% of poll respondents said they believe that Bennett is more suitable for the role of Prime Minister, compared to 28% who thought that Netanyahu is more suitable. This marks the first time that Bennett has overtaken Netanyahu in the question of compatibility for the role of Prime Minister.

When the comparison was made between Netanyahu and National Unity Party chairman Benny Gantz, they received the same percentage of support from the respondents - 32%.

Poll respondents also compared opposition leader Yair Lapid to Prime Minister Netanyahu on the question of suitability for the role of Prime Minister. 28% thought Lapid would be better suited to serve as Prime Minister, compared to 33% who thought Netanyahu was more suitable.

Netanyahu also overtook Economy Minister Nir Barkat (29% versus 12%) and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (30% versus 15%), while Bennett overtook Gantz (27% versus 25%) among respondents.

63% of those surveyed responded that they thought Netanyahu's performance during the war has been poor. Regarding Gallant, 46% of respondents thought that his performance was bad as well, although 45% believed that his performance was good. In addition, respondents gave poor marks to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir (68% and 65% respectively).

In contrast, 50% of respondents thought that the performance of IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi was good, as was the performance of the IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari (74%).

Meanwhile:

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Netanyahu is right to reject vassal-state etiquette

The prime minister broke protocol by calling out the Biden administration for slow-walking arms shipments. Washington’s real goal, however, is appeasing Iran and toppling him.

By Jonathan S. Tobin- editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate).

As far as the White House and Democrats are concerned, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is doing it again. Similar to multiple occasions during the presidency of Barack Obama, Netanyahu is not playing by the rules Washington and the foreign-policy establishment believe are laid down to govern the behavior of client states.

Rather than assume the role of the loyal and pliant vassal to his nation’s superpower ally, there have been several times when Netanyahu has talked back in public to Obama and now President Joe Biden. Washington’s angry response to the video the prime minister released this week in which he spoke of the way the administration has been slow-walking arms deliveries made it clear that—assurances of goodwill from both sides notwithstanding—U.S.-Israel relations have reached a crisis point.

In the 49-second video posted on the YouTube page of the prime minister’s office on June 18, Netanyahu said the following:

“When Secretary Blinken was recently here in Israel, we had a candid conversation. I said I deeply appreciated the support the U.S. has given Israel from the beginning of the war. But I also said something else. I said it’s inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunition to Israel. Israel, America’s closest ally, fighting for its life, fighting against Iran and our other common enemies. Secretary Blinken assured me that the administration is working day and night to remove these bottlenecks. I certainly hope that’s the case. It should be the case. During World War II, Churchill told the United States, ‘Give us the tools, we’ll do the job.’ And I say, give us the tools and we’ll finish the job a lot faster.”

Washington’s anger

In reaction, Washington expressed shock and anger. According to U.S. officials, Netanyahu’s claims were both fictional and a sign of ingratitude after all that Biden had done for him and Israel since Oct. 7, and throughout the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Their story is that despite Biden’s talk of potentially refusing to continue to send arms and ammunition to Israel if it doesn’t obey him and not attack the last Hamas strongholds in Rafah, there have been no such cutoffs. The only exception, they assert, is a review of whether the United States should send a special kind of 2,000-pound bomb that might cause too many civilian casualties in urban areas.

Beyond the details of the dispute, in which the administration claims it is guiltless, this has resurrected the charge that Netanyahu doesn’t know his proper place.

That’s the line we’re hearing from the American foreign-policy establishment and its leading media spokesman, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who has recently accused Netanyahu of being the moral equivalent to Hamas senior leader Yahya Sinwar. He’s also called Netanyahu an extremist who is trying to destroy the alliance as well as an open supporter of former President Donald Trump (a point on which Trump doesn’t concur because Netanyahu congratulated Biden for winning the 2020 presidential election). It’s also echoed by the Israeli opposition, such as Haaretz columnist Alon Pinkas, whose latest anti-Bibi diatribe in that far-left newspaper bluntly described the prime minister as hostile to the United States.

Unlike other Israelis, like President Isaac Herzog, who has stuck to continual praise of Biden’s post-Oct. 7 aid with no mention of Washington’s unhelpful actions, Netanyahu differs. He has come to believe that while it remains crucial for any Israeli premier to stay as close to the Americans as possible, there are times when it’s necessary to break protocol and state the truth. Given the enormous help that the United States has given Israel over the past few decades, those who characterize the relationship as one between a great power and a client state aren’t wrong. That’s why the diplomats at the Israeli foreign ministry and those who share its mindset think that there is virtually no circumstance in which Jerusalem should openly challenge Washington.

Given the power imbalance between these two countries, there is a strong argument for this point of view. There’s also the danger that open opposition to the last two Democratic presidents is hastening the process by which support for Israel is rapidly becoming a partisan dispute between America’s two major parties. Although the Republicans have become a lockstep pro-Israel party and the Democrats are now, at best, deeply divided on the issue, that’s not a development any friend of the Jewish state should welcome.

Aid dies via the bureaucracy

As with Netanyahu’s past challenges to Obama, the prime minister is right to believe that those concerns must be set aside. Indeed, just as he was right to refuse to go along with Obama’s commitment to pushing Israel back to the 1967 borders and the appeasement of Iran, Biden’s arms shipment slowdown at a time when the Jewish state is fighting an existential conflict with Hamas, as well as facing the prospect of an even more frightful war with Hezbollah and its Iranian allies on its northern border, constitutes a fundamental breach in the alliance that cannot be allowed to go unchallenged.

The point here is that Washington is flatly lying about there being no slow-walking of arms to Israel or holdups.

As Michael Doran recently wrote in Tablet magazine, the Israelis have been aware since January that something has gone wrong in the pipeline by which arms and ammunition are sent to Israel. While Biden, Blinken and others in the administration are correct to claim that there has been no absolute cutoff, what they are doing is using the federal bureaucracy to slow down the flow to a standstill. Under normal circumstances, the bureaucratic logjam involved with shipments can involve the departments of State and Defense, the U.S. House and Senate, as well as arms manufacturers. However, when Washington deems it necessary to send arms expeditiously, the impediments can magically disappear just as quickly as they arise when the powers that be want to send a message to those waiting for American supplies.

Ukraine treated differently

Indeed, there is no better example of how an administration can manipulate this process than the contrast between the way Ukraine and Israel are currently being handled.

Ukraine has received more aid from the United States in the last two years than Israel has in decades. Their funding is less accountable, and unlike Israel, not all of it is spent in the United States. But Kyiv continues to publicly complain about not getting everything it wants from American taxpayers, who have sent them hundreds of billions of dollars. They’re also unhappy that Washington has placed some limits on their use. Biden is aware that it is madness to allow Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a blank check to fire them into Russia since doing so could start a nuclear war.

In spite of that, Ukraine gets priority over every other American ally, including Israel, and due to Biden’s insistence, there have been no bureaucratic logjams to slow the shipments down.

That’s not the case with Israel. Not only have American officials done everything to slow down and second-guess the effort to eradicate Hamas, but they are also openly pushing to end the war before the terrorists are completely defeated. As Doran also wrote, they’re equally concerned to prevent Israel from doing something to silence the nonstop firing on northern Israel from Hezbollah in Lebanon. Biden is determined at all costs to prevent a war that might involve Iran coming to the defense of its Lebanese auxiliaries, even if that means up to 200,000 Israelis continue to be refugees in their own country because they were forced to flee their homes. In other words, Biden is not only willing to let Hamas remain a genocidal threat to Israel but seems perfectly willing to allow parts of the Jewish state to be effectively depopulated in the north as well as the south.

Given the stakes of the current conflict, Netanyahu is not only right to speak out in an effort to shame the Americans to stop slow-walking arms deliveries. He is obligated to do so.

Pushing back pays dividends

The claim that Netanyahu’s outspokenness is damaging the alliance misses the point. Israel may be an American client state, but given the existential nature of the conflict that was reignited by the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, it simply cannot afford to behave like a docile vassal.

Indeed, if there is anything that Netanyahu has learned in his long tenure as prime minister it is that those who always counsel caution and silence in the face of American betrayal don’t succeed. It is only by speaking up and making Israel’s case to the world, and most specifically, the American people, that it can maintain the alliance.

Obama seethed when in 2011—with him sitting right there—Netanyahu lectured him about the unacceptability of a forced Israeli retreat to the 1967 borders at a public White House media availability a day after that was the substance of a presidential speech. Later, the Obama White House depicted Netanyahu’s 2015 address to a joint meeting of Congress in which he urged Americans to reject the Iran nuclear deal as an unprecedented insult to the United States, the presidency and Obama personally. In both cases, Netanyahu’s behavior was denounced as destructive to the relationship and beyond the pale.

But he was right to understand that talking back to Obama strengthened dissent against policies aimed at undermining Israel and strengthening Iran, both in the United States and abroad.

By demonstrating a willingness to defend Israel’s vital strategic interests, even at the cost of being depicted as an extremist or the dispute being a function of his own partisan interests and personal animus for Obama, Netanyahu achieved real results. Given Obama’s determination to make it his signature foreign-policy accomplishment, he couldn’t stop the Iran deal from being adopted. But his speech emboldened the GOP to move further towards Israel. It also showed the Arab world that while Obama was leaving them to the tender mercies of the terror-funding Shi’ite tyrants of Tehran, they could count on a strong Israel as an ally against it. In retrospect, Netanyahu’s speech must be seen as the first step in developing the 2020 Abraham Accords.

Who is playing politics?

Biden came into office claiming that he would be different from Obama and keep disputes with Israel private. That changed once Netanyahu won the November 2022 Israeli elections and returned to the prime minister’s office. Since then, the hostility that Biden and the rest of the Obama alumni running American foreign policy have for Netanyahu has not been kept under wraps. The administration has not merely undermined the Jewish state but has openly conspired with the Israeli opposition, and even members of the military and intelligence establishment, in an effort to topple Netanyahu’s government both before and after Oct. 7.

At this point, Netanyahu has nothing to lose by not allowing Biden to get away with slowing down the flow of arms to pressure Israel to stand down at its borders on the north and south.

There are plenty of cogent criticisms to be made about Netanyahu, including those involving Oct. 7 happening on his watch and the dysfunctional nature of his governmental coalition. Regardless of how long Netanyahu lasts in office—and right now, it is not the prime minister but Biden who, in appeasing the anti-Israel intersectional left wing of the Democratic Party, is playing politics over the war—or what you think of his character, policies or tactics, he needs to use every form of leverage to counter U.S. pressure that could ensure victories for Hamas and Iran. With so many lives at stake, client-state etiquette should be the last of his concerns.

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( Prefatory comment to you editors:

This is a point-counterpoint essay and thus may be rejected because your audience , apparently, can't cope.

 

However, I consider it one of my most lucid and best because it explains how I came to be  a pessimist but also why I believe there is hope.  Time, however, is not our ally.  Me)

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Continue To Spiral Down Or Take The Way Out? 

Will POGO Prove To Be Right?

Prologue:

About 6 months ago I chose to try and get a more national reputation so I chose American Thinker as my conduit.  I began writing memos in 1960, dictated to a secretary who then typed and mailed them.  Today, being retired,  I have no secretary, type them myself and email them.

I never took any course in writing and several of the American Thinker editors are helping me along  to specifically write for their readership. I mostly get rejected when I cram multiple subjects into one Op Ed as I am doing again. However, this one is a point-counterpoint essay on the economic plight America is dangerously on and a potential way out, so consequently,  I have no choice

I am an only child and my mother, I believe, was born chronically depressed. I came to this conclusion after many psychiatric sessions with therapists who were Freudian disciples and  believed strongly in the influence of Oedipus.  

I too am pessimistic and cynical and know my mother profoundly influenced my psyche and personality.

If opposites attract, my mother and father were well suited.  At the time, her father, Alex, was a shoe salesman in Birmingham, at Pizitz  Department Store and played pinochle with my father, to be, who was a lawyer.. My mother eloped, I believe at 18, with an Italian friend and Alex called my father to annul her spirited action. My future father did, fell in love and married her so the story goes. I never confronted them  and they never said anything.

Her entire life was devoted to protecting him from slurs because of his outspoken liberal political stance regarding Civil Rights and his personal comforts.  My mother was an outstanding cook, baker, ironer, better than professional laundries, and whatever she turned her mind to, she was superb.

My father ate breakfast every morning in our apartment kitchen beneath her needlepoint which said:
"getting up gets me down."  He would have breakfast and then go to town with her "sunny" reminder. He also never drove a car,  He either took a bus or she drove him.

My mother also was a marvelous, Streisand crystal ball like. singer. During WW1 she sang with The Gus Edwards' local  New York orchestra selling War Bonds.  She was billed as "Baby Estelle."  
After I was born, being very shy, she played the piano and sang for her own pleasure only at home or her mother, Jeanette, would accompany her.  

Another matter that shaped her was her pique with her father's sister, Helen, who owned a stylish, successful New York dress shop, Stein and Blaine, which catered mostly to the wives of South American Dictator's and thus was able to remain open during the Depression. My mother never could accept that Aunt Helen had her brother, Alex, dressed in a  "Johnny Phillip Morris "outfit running the elevator.

At least he had steady employment while hoards of other men were unemployed.  

So what does all of this have to do with our dire federal deficit which I always knew would hit us but never knew when?  Being a pessimist, I always liked William Wordsworth's phrase:  "The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and Spending, we lay waste our powers."


Well folks, a recent WSJ  Editorial says we are there as does an excellent Gerald Seib  WSJ Op Ed entitled: " Will Debt sink the American Empire?"

You just cannot spend what you do not have forever.  The interest rate on our soaring debt now equals what we spend on the military.  Federal spending "chows" up 28% of GDP and continues  to soar higher.  No nation has sustained this dismal path. It is sheer fiscal insanity.

I believe this downward spiral commentary does not leave us much time to correct our course and yet, I believe there is another "way out course" we can take if we elect Trump and choose to follow what I believe is a new path out of our current profligacy.  That is the reason for the second essay.

The Way Out

I believe there are four /five critical actions we must take and we do not have the luxury of time on our side.

First, if I understand Trump's plan to solve the illegal immigration laws and he fleshes them out more, they could become an important beginning. Why?  Because he seems willing to allow illegal immigrants, with no rap sheets, who already are connected with someone living here, as a citizen, for a period of time, to earn their way to citizenship by going to college or  trade school, earn their degree and become a productive citizen.

This should solve some of our critical employment category issues.

Yes, Trump is not presidential. Yes, his language is not often presidential. However, neither is he the person radical progressives, who hate our country because they are neo-Marxists , want you to believe is their portrayal of Trump.

Trump loves America. Unlike most self centered politicians he thinks outside the box and is a problem solver.  Most politicians do not care about economics nor do they understand the consequences of sustained deficits as long as they get to spend on their pet re-election projects and other "wants."

Second, add to the above the awesome impact AI will bring about and which certainly should enhance productivity of an already educated work force which should bring domestic employment costs down while possibly increasing taxable federal income receipts..

Third, the cost of supporting educated working citizens should radically alter the cost and incidences of criminality thus, restoring quality of life experiences and support of law abeyance..  This, alone, would be a boon to our society along with the deportation of truly illegal criminal types.

Fourth, Anwar, in Alaska, is flush with oil.  Income from a rapid build up of world class oil production would have several impacts.  It would cause energy prices to decline as production soars.  It would support  the world's need for oil just as electric utility demand increases to support the escalating adoption of AI usage, and it would provide an enormous dedicated  federal income source for paying down our debt.

The profit from this oil must be totally dedicated to the essential of debt reduction so greedy uncaring  politicians cannot get their hands on it for their own self-desires.

Finally, a strengthened American Federal Deficit picture would allow us to remind China they must repay us for COVID cost impositions. We could accomplish this by canceling $3 trillion of debt they hold in American Bonds.

Trump is the only one with the guts to willingly "offend" XI.

That I am optimistic we have a way out that is logical , plausible and doable is most unusual considering my generally  dour outlook.

There is no time to lose and the choice remains ours to make. Let's pray POGO is wrong.

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Biden’s Fiscal Crisis Is Far Worse Than We Thought

Posted by Ruth King

Nothing should shock us anymore, but the latest Congressional Budget Office report did. Released this week, the report shows that the nation is in vastly worse financial shape than anyone thought just a few months ago. And the report makes clear who is to blame.

The CBO’s latest “Budget and Economic Outlook” projects that the federal deficit this year will top $1.9 trillion. That’s $408 billion higher – a 27% increase – than what the CBO thought it would be just four months ago.

This will make the 2024 deficit the biggest ever recorded in American history – not counting the two years of panic-induced COVID-19 spending sprees – and will mark the third consecutive increase in deficits under Biden. (See the chart below.)

It’s also highly unusual for the CBO to make such a huge correction to its forecast.

The nonpartisan office routinely produces a budget and economic forecast at the start of the year, and then an update mid-year. Normally, these don’t vary much. In Trump’s first three years, for example, the average variance between the first forecast and the final deficit was just $73 billion.

Under Biden, however, deficits have come in higher than expected every single year by an average of $380 billion.

Here’s where the sudden, sharp jump in the 2024 deficit came from, according to the CBO:

Student loan bailouts: $145 billion. Not only did Biden add another $66 billion to his student bailout scheme this year, the previous giveaways are costing far more than expected – $74 billion this year alone.

Health care subsidies: $69 billion. Biden’s expansion of Obamacare is costing $22 billion more this year than expected, and changes in Medicaid payment rules added another $47 billion.

Bank bailouts: $72 billion. The cost of bailing out banks – banks that failed largely because of Biden’s inflationary economic policies – is turning out to be $72 billion higher than the CBO had previously expected.

Net interest: $22 billion. The CBO also had to boost the cost of servicing the national debt by $22 billion just this year thanks to inflation, higher interest rates, and bigger-than-expected deficits.

Discretionary spending: $60 billion. This is mainly the result of the “emergency” supplemental Biden insisted upon to finance the war in Ukraine, with some for Israel, as well as appropriations bills that came in higher than expected. (Republicans share the blame for these increases in spending.)

A small fraction of these unexpected spending increases was offset by larger-than-expected tax revenues and slight changes to the CBO’s economic forecast.

But remember, this is just for 2024. Over the next decade, the CBO projects the government will run $22 trillion in deficits, which is $2 trillion more than it had forecast in February.

The current forecast is also way above what the deficit would have been had Donald Trump’s policies remained in effect. In February 2021, before Biden got any of his policies enacted, the CBO projected deficits from 2024-2031 would total $10.2 trillion.

The CBO now expects those deficits over those years to be $5.6 trillion bigger – a more than 50% increase. (See chart below.)

In other words, Biden’s policies will add $3.7 trillion to the deficit in just seven years.

Keep all this in mind the next time the president brags about how he’s cut the deficit “more than any president in history.”

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board

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Is War with Lebanon Imminent?

 

By Sherwin Pomerantz

 

Senior US officials assured an Israeli delegation to Washington that the Biden Administration would be fully prepared to back Israel if an all-out war develops with Lebanon, according to a CNN report. The report follows a visit to Washington last week by Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer and national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi.  They met with US national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and White House Middle East affairs coordinator Brett McGurk.  The Israeli and US officials discussed the escalation on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon as well as the hostage deal that Hamas has yet to accept and the role of Iran in the wider conflict.

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They also discussed how to de-escalate the tension along the border and ways tens of thousands of Israelis who have been evacuated since the beginning can return to their homes.  US officials said that if Israel and Lebanon are engaged in a full-scale war, the US will provide Israel with the security it needs.  However, they emphasized that the Biden Administration will not deploy US troops on the ground.

 

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was enroute to Washinton today to meet with US officials about both the war in Gaza and the impeding war with Lebanon which seems closer to reality each day.   

 

The Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror group overnight Saturday threatened to wage war against Israel “with no restraints.”  In a video message, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said, “In case an inclusive war is imposed on Lebanon, the resistance will fight without restraints, without rules, without limits.”  The minute-long clip then shows footage of various sites in central Israel, along with their GPS coordinates. “Whoever thinks of war against us, will regret it,” the video ends.

 

Last week, U.S. presidential envoy Amos Hochstein visited Israel and Lebanon in an attempt to prevent all-out war on Israel’s northern border.  Hochstein met with Prime Minister Netanyahu, telling the premier that de-escalation was possible but that there was no “magic solution” to the situation, which he said was largely dependent on what happens with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

 

Prime Minister Netanyahu announced on Sunday during the governmental meeting the appointment of coordinators for the North and the South of Israel, according to a report in the Jerusalem Post.   Former IDF Ground Forces commander Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yiftach Ron-Tal is set to become coordinator for the South, and former Israel Navy commander Maj.-Gen. (res.) Eliezer 'Cheney' Marom is set to become coordinator for the North. In an interview with Radio 103FM Ron-Tal commented on the situation in the North, stating "A government that will not transfer the war to the enemy's territory and remove the threat does not deserve to be the government of Israel."

 

Speaking with Radio 104.5FM last week Marom shared his opinion regarding the handling of the war. "I have a lot of criticism of the conduct of the war until now, I think things could have been done much faster and differently. I think the security and political leadership should be replaced as quickly as possible."  Referring to IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi Marom added, "The Chief of Staff said that he bears the responsibility and everyone is waiting for the moment when he will put (away) the keys and vacate the place. In the meantime, he is running the war, he is doing it alone, there is almost no one around him, he bears the responsibility alone and the results speak for themselves."

 

In response to the appointments, the Fighting for the North headquarters issued a statement on Sunday congratulating Marom and affirming that a broad understanding of the "full picture" in the North was needed.  "In the coming days we will contact him and convey the message of the hundreds of families: It is time for an extensive campaign in the North, which will only end in a security strip in Lebanon, and absolute Israeli control," the statement continued.  The headquarters also stated, "It's been close to nine months that we are not at home, and we will say no to a surrender agreement, no momentary peace, and yes only to a long-term victory.  Fighting for the North is a group representing the evacuated residents of the area of Israel just south of the Lebanese border.

 

So, is war imminent? It certainly appears so but there is still hope that cooler heads will prevail and that some diplomatic understanding will emerge.  After all, prior to October 7^th there was no dispute in place with Lebanon.  Their daily attacks on Israel, per their own words, was only to show support for the Gaza war.  To now move to a full-scale war between us makes no logical sense but, then again, this is the Middle East after all, where logic is not always the governing factor.

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