Defender of US arms transfers to Israel gets prominent State Dept role: Report
US news outlet HuffPost is reporting that Mira Resnick has been appointed to a special Israel-Palestine role at the US State Department, prompting rebuke from critics of the administration’s policy.
Resnick had previously worked in a bureau that oversaw billions in arms shipments to Israel, the report said. A source also told HuffPost that Resnick has more recently been privately defending new arms transfers to Israel to lawmakers and their staff.
The appointment “reflects a doubling down on the administration’s determination to continue to provide unconditional material support for Israel’s genocidal campaign against civilians in Gaza”, former State Department official Annelle Sheline, who quit over the Biden administration’s Israel policy, told the news outlet.
Resnick is set to replace Andrew Miller as deputy assistant secretary for Israeli-Palestinian affairs in the State Department’s Middle East office. Sheline said Miller was known to be wary of the Biden administration’s approach, and “did his best” to push back.
Palestinian American Lawmaker Gives Speech the DNC Wouldn't Allow on Stage
Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic nomination Thursday after a four-day convention in Chicago where her campaign refused to allow a Palestinian American to take the stage to address Israel's war on Gaza. We hear Georgia state Representative Ruwa Romman, who was among the list of speakers offered by the Uncommitted National Movement that the Harris campaign rejected, reading the speech she would have given on the convention floor had the DNC and the Harris campaign allowed her onstage.
Great speech, she even calls out the importance of defeating Trump while encouraging to vote for Harris. But apparently having any Palestinian looking women on stage was already too much for Harris.
Meanwhile Biden couldn't be more of a pussy, occupation of the Philadelphi corridor (14km border with Egypt) is a red line for Hamas and Egypt. What does Biden/Blinken do in the bridging proposal
Biden asked Netanyahu to withdraw from small part of Philadelphi corridor: Report
The Axios website has reported that the US president made the request during a call with the Israeli prime minister on Wednesday. Joe Biden asked for Israeli troops to withdraw from a 1-2km area along the Egypt-Gaza border, Axios reported, citing unnamed Israeli officials.
Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that Israel must retain control of the entire strategic corridor, however, and his position has been a main impasse in efforts to reach a Gaza ceasefire.
A Netanyahu aide told Axios that the Israeli leader agreed to change the location of one army position and move it by only a few hundred metres, “in a way that does not harm operational control” along the Philadelphi Corridor.
If Biden doesn't get serious about a ceasefire this will continue to hang over Harris' campaign through to the elections.