Weekend Quotables
Israel's missile strike on Iranian consulate and Iran's strike back bring the entire Middle East to the brink of all-out war.
Iran’s counterattack yesterday marked the first time they have launched a direct military assault on Israel, despite decades of provocation dating back to the country's 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Western media is dutifully repeating verbatim, White House talking points about Iran’s retaliatory drone and missile attack against Israel. They go something like this. The Iranian attack was fruitless. 99% of Iranian drones and missiles were shot down, thanks mainly to the US. Israel should declare “victory” and not launch another attack. If they do, the US won’t take part, but their defense of Israel is “ironclad”.
Whatever the hell all that means.
Five ballistic missiles hit the southern Nevatim Air Base, a US official said, damaging a C-130 transport plane, an unused runway, and empty warehouses. Four additional ballistic missiles struck the Negev Air Base, but no significant damage was reported, he added. — Haaretz
There was little mention until this morning that the two Israeli air bases were struck by at least nine Iranian missiles that penetrated Israel's air defense systems, causing damage to some US-supplied aircraft. I had to read the Israeli media for that. Neither was there any mention of yesterday’s uprising by thousands of Palestinians who protested at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and took down sections of the apartheid wall.
JERUSALEM/DUBAI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. will not take part in a counter-offensive against Iran, an option Netanyahu's war cabinet favors after a mass drone and missile attack on Israeli territory, according to officials.
Weekend Quotables
The New York Times editorial board called on the U.S. to condition military aid to Israel, writing that "Netanyahu has turned his back on America and its entreaties," and "The United States cannot remain beholden to an Israeli leader fixated on his own survival and the approval of the zealots he harbors."
The World Bank
Half of the world's 75 poorest countries are experiencing a widening income gap with the wealthiest economies for the first time this century in a historical reversal of development, the World Bank said in a report on Monday.
The differential between per capita income growth in the poorest countries and the richest has widened over the past five years, according to the report.
"For the first time, we see there is no convergence. They're getting poorer," Ayhan Kose, deputy chief economist for the World Bank and one of the report's authors, told Reuters.
Jewish faculty members at Columbia University
Pro-Palestinian expression is not anti-Jewish hate speech. — Letter to President Minouche Shafik
Chaim Levinson\, Israeli journalist
We've lost. Truth must be told. The inability to admit it encapsulates everything you need to know about Israel's individual and mass psychology. There's a clear, sharp, predictable reality that we should begin to fathom, to process, to understand, and to draw conclusions from for the future. It's no fun to admit that we've lost, so we lie to ourselves. — Haaretz
Dr. Charles Perlmtutter, president of the World Surgical Foundation
“Genocide was the overwhelming impression that I got. This is dehumanization. The purpose of this is to kill a population.” — Democracy Now
