Secretary of State Antony Blinken concluded his trip to the occupied West Bank amid a major escalation in violence. 

Tuesday, January 31, 2023
BY JULIA CLAIRE & CROOKED MEDIA

- Laura Ingraham ([link removed]) , with zero irony

Few positions of public service seem particularly glamorous, but almost none of them have us saying, “Damn, glad I’m not that guy,” like the U.S. secretary of state on a trip centered around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

* Secretary of State Antony Blinken began his fraught trip to the region amid an alarming uptick in violence. Israel carried out its deadliest army raid in years last Thursday, killing at least nine Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp ([link removed]) , which was followed by an attack on a synagogue in Jerusalem by a Palestinian gunman ([link removed]) , killing seven Israelis. Two Palestinians were also fatally shot in the West Bank in separate incidents on Sunday and Monday.

* Blinken criticized Israeli settlement activity in the occupied West Bank as an obstacle to peace, underscoring the Biden administration’s opposition to a central piece of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government platform: strengthening and expanding the settlements. However, he also reiterated Washington’s “ironclad” commitment to Israel ([link removed]) that has persevered through multiple administrations, while simultaneously calling for peace, and support for the elusive two-state solution.

* Blinken held a joint press conference with Netantyahu in Jerusalem yesterday ([link removed]) , and almost everything he said echoed words of the secretaries of state who came before him. It seems that Blinken has been given the unenviable (and honestly questionable) task of trying to maintain the status quo, even as violence increases and peace seems to be receding further into the distance. Today, Blinken met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who blamed Israel for the increase in violence and criticized the “lack of international efforts to dismantle the occupation” of Palestinian territory.

Wasn’t Jared Kushner supposed to have solved this whole thing already?

* The last few weeks have been some of the deadliest in the decades-long conflict ([link removed]) between Israelis and Palestinians. The Biden administration has promised to anchor its foreign policy in human rights, while also maintaining a steadfast and unequivocal support for Israel. Many on both sides of the conflict feel that it is a low priority for President Biden, who has both a far-reaching domestic agenda and America’s role in the war in Ukraine to juggle.

* The question for the Biden administration is how they can pledge support for Israel and the two-state solution concurrently, because Netanyahu’s far-right government is dominated by a coalition that vehemently opposes Palestinian statehood. In other words, the United States cannot simultaneously want to protect the “status quo” and promote moving towards the two-state solution when the ruling ideology in Israel opposes both of those aims. Criticizing Israeli settlements as an obstacle to peace is all well and good, but President Biden has not restored the decades-old legal opinion that settlements are “illegitimate” which was rescinded under President Donald Trump.

Palestinians and Israelis do seem to agree on one thing: that the United States is both interfering too much and also not helping enough. Only about one-third of each population supports the two-state solution ([link removed]) , an all-time low in the region. The Biden administration is trying to use an old playbook, but the playing field has changed. Netanyahu’s ultranationalist government was elected on a platform of increasing settlements and arming Israeli civilians, and now it’s trying to weaken the country’s Supreme Court, eroding a key component of democratic checks and balances. The United States needs to acknowledge the current reality of the conflict, and either carve out a more coherent stance, or get out of the way.

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The House January 6 Committee concluded that the FBI and other federal security agencies could have prevented insurrectionists from breaching the Capitol ([link removed]) had they acted on volumes of intelligence collected beforehand, an opinion the committee omitted from its televised hearings and final report. The committee’s chief investigative counsel Tim Heaphy, a former federal prosecutor, said that while he endorses the panel’s main findings, his inquiry documented the ways in which federal law enforcement failures contributed to the riot. He was exacting in his words, saying, “Law enforcement had a very direct role” in those failures which led to the violence, and that the advanced intel provided to them was copious and specific enough for them to have taken a different course of action. According to Heaphy, investigators found that particularly the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (the
two agencies charged with collecting intelligence about domestic terrorism) did not adequately sound the alarm. Why the House January 6 Committee chose to downplay this element in its hearings and reporting is unclear, but it’s unsettling to think that those vulnerabilities in our nation’s most sophisticated intelligence agencies will not receive rigorous, necessary scrutiny.

The United States Department of Commerce issued new trade restrictions on several Iranian entities for producing drones for Russia ([link removed]) to use in its war on Ukraine.


The Kremlin claimed that their forces have captured another town near the city of Bakhmut ([link removed]) , which Russia is trying to surround.


A new study shows that Black Americans are at least three times as likely to be audited by the IRS as other taxpayers ([link removed]) .


Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has been making the rounds of political events with an anti-vaxxer dermatologist named Dr. Jon Ward ([link removed]) , who says, among other insane things, that Dr. Anthony Fauci “should face a firing squad.” The news coming out of Florida always delivers.


Newly-released video shows disgraced former president Donald Trump pleading the fifth more than 400 times ([link removed]) in a civil-fraud deposition overseen by New York Attorney General Letitia James last summer. Classic innocent guy stuff!


Speaking of that case, the office of the New York AG also alleged today that Trump and three of his adult children lied in their depositions. ([link removed])


Backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Florida Republicans are pursuing legislation that would allow judges to issue death sentences without unanimous consensus from the jury ([link removed]) .


The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office began presenting evidence to a grand jury about disgraced former president Trump’s role in paying hush money ([link removed]) to adult film actress Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign.

Rep. George Santos (R-NY) reportedly told House Republicans that he will recuse himself from sitting on committees ([link removed]) after having been assigned. We won’t be so naive as to take him at his word, though.

The Kremlin abolished one of Russia’s oldest rights groups in a renewed push to extinguish dissent, as the country’s war in Ukraine approaches its one-year mark, with more than 100,000 casualties estimated on each side. Russian prosecutors also banned the work of Meduza, a popular news site made up of journalists in exile ([link removed]) as an “undesirable organization” and threatens to prosecute anyone caught aiding or promoting it. The Kremlin has steadily dismantled Russia’s independent media since the war began, exiling independent journalists, and cutting off access to Facebook, the BBC, and other news sources. The European Union condemned the decision, calling it “yet another serious politically motivated attack on media freedom,” and also denounced government plans to terminate the leases of a Moscow museum dedicated to the history of Soviet abuses. Not great, folks!
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Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) signed the Pro Act ([link removed]) , enshrining abortion protections into state law.


Pope Francis visited the Democratic Republic of Congo today and condemned wealthy nations for centuries of exploiting the African continent ([link removed]) in the name of “the poison of greed.” He concluded his visit with the statement “Hands off Africa. Stop choking Africa: it is not a mine to be stripped or terrain to be plundered.”


All 49 Democrats in the North Carolina House of Representatives have signed on to co-sponsor a bill to codify Roe-like guarantees for abortion rights ([link removed]) in the state.

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are getting back together for a FOURTH “Bad Boys” sequel ([link removed]) . We know this has nothing to do with anything in politics, but a win’s a win.
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