![Israel must continue to be able to deter Hezbollah, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar stressed on Wednesday, speaking amid efforts to reach a ceasefire with Iran's Lebanese terrorist proxy. "We need to keep the freedom to act if there will be violations. And we will have to act in time, before the problem will grow," the minister told a gathering of nearly 100 foreign ambassadors in Jerusalem, the Times of Israel reported. A deal to end more than a year of fighting on the northern border must be durable, Sa'ar said, saying Jerusalem “would like to reach an agreement that will stand the test of time." He added that a ceasefire would be an "opportunity" for Lebanon to regain its sovereignty after the Israeli military severely degraded the Iranian-backed group in recent months. He called for the Lebanese Armed Forces to be strengthened and urged the international community to invest more in the economically devastated country, which is drowning in debt following years of mismanagement and corruption. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz also emphasized on Wednesday the necessity for Jerusalem to be able to act against any Hezbollah threats that may arise after a ceasefire deal is implemented. “The condition for any political settlement in Lebanon is the preservation of the intelligence capability and the preservation of the [IDF’s] right to act and protect the citizens of Israel from Hezbollah,” Katz said. Meanwhile, U.S. special envoy Amos Hochstein remained in Beirut for a second day on Wednesday to discuss "technical details" of an American ceasefire proposal with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who heads the Hezbollah-allied Amal movement. President Joe Biden's point man in the Land of the Cedars announced he would travel to Israel on Wednesday night, speaking after he made "additional progress" in a second meeting with Berri. Hochstein was scheduled to meet with Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer shortly after his arrival, followed by a tête-à-tête with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the following day. “The meeting today built on the meeting yesterday, and made additional progress,” Hochstein said. “So I will travel from here in a couple hours to Israel to try to bring this to a close if we can.” The Biden envoy added that he will work with the incoming Trump administration on ceasefire efforts, saying that he has kept the president-elect's transition team informed of progress. Hochstein described as "very productive" his meetings with Lebanese officials on Tuesday. “We have a real opportunity to end the conflict, and now is the moment to decide. We are committed to doing everything we can to work with Lebanon and Israel to end this conflict,” Hochstein said at a press conference on Tuesday. Hochstein also met on Tuesday with Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, and he was scheduled to meet with Lebanese Armed Forces commander Gen. Joseph Aoun. Mikati emphasized that Lebanon’s primary objectives are achieving a ceasefire and safeguarding its sovereignty. He highlighted the need to implement international resolutions and bolster the Lebanese Armed Forces in the southern part of the country. Lebanon delivered its written response to the latest U.S. proposal on Monday. According to Ali Hassan Khalil, an aide to Berri, the response included “comments” that were “presented in a positive atmosphere.” He did not provide details on the nature of the comments, saying only that they “affirm the precise adherence to [U.N. Security Council] Resolution 1701 with all its provisions,” according to Reuters. Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem said in a speech on Wednesday that the terrorist group had "read the ceasefire proposal. "We have our comments, and Nabih Berri has comments, and ours and the Lebanese government's comments are, Inshallah ['God willing'], identical," Qassem said. "We have decided not to discuss these ceasefire proposals or our comments in the media. All I will say is that Israeli is trying to obtain through negotiations what it couldn't through war." The terrorist leader vowed to “continue our efforts on the ground, whether the negotiations succeed or not. “We are confronting a savage enemy, and we will remain on the ground, no matter the cost, as we will also increase the cost for the enemy. We are facing Israeli human monsters supported by American human monsters,” threatened Qassem. Disarm and retreat Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War, stipulated that Hezbollah must disarm and retreat north of the Litani River, but was never enforced. The Litani lies some 20 miles from the Israel-Lebanon border. Its enforcement, along with Israeli freedom of operation in Lebanon should Hezbollah violate the terms of a ceasefire agreement, are the key sticking points in the current negotiations. Netanyahu emphasized during a speech in the Knesset plenum on Monday that Israel will not allow Hezbollah to “return to the state it was in on Oct. 6, 2023. “We will be required, in order to ensure our security in the north, to systematically carry out operations—not only against Hezbollah’s attacks, which could come. Even if there is a ceasefire, nobody can guarantee it will hold. So it’s not only our reaction, a preventive reaction, a reaction in the wake of attack but also the capacity to prevent Hezbollah from strengthening,” he said. Hezbollah has launched some 16,000 rockets, missiles and drones from Lebanon at Israel since joining the war in support of Hamas on Oct. 8, 2023, a day after the Gaza-based terrorist group’s massacre in southern Israel. More than 60,000 residents of northern Israel remain internally displaced due to the ongoing rocket and drone attacks from Lebanon. Seventy-six people in northern Israel have been killed by Hezbollah cross-border rocket, missile and drone attacks since the start of the war, including 31 soldiers and six foreign citizens, according to the latest data provided by the Prime Minister’s Office, updated on Sunday. In addition, 729 people have been wounded, including 497 civilians and 232 soldiers. Of these, 29 civilians and 37 soldiers were severely injured; 63 civilians and 38 soldiers were moderately injured and 405 civilians and 157 soldiers were lightly injured. Hezbollah’s leadership has been left in tatters following a series of targeted killings by Israel, including that of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut on Sept. 27. This was preceded by Israeli sabotage of Hezbollah communication devices that killed 39 people and wounded more than 3,400 members of the terrorist group. Israel has been waging a devastating aerial campaign against Hezbollah throughout Lebanon, including its stronghold of Dahieh south of Beirut. According to Israeli estimates, the terrorist group has lost most of its arsenal to the ongoing strikes. Then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in late October that Hezbollah had lost an estimated 80%-plus of its long-range rockets since the start of the war. Israel also continues to battle Hamas terrorists in Gaza. The terrorist group still holds 101 hostages in the Strip, 97 of whom were kidnapped on Oct. 7. Many of the captives are believed to be dead. Brazil summit Meanwhile, G20 leaders gathered in Rio de Janeiro for a summit put out a joint statement on Monday calling for “comprehensive” ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon. The leaders of the world’s biggest economies called for U.S. proposals to end fighting in Gaza and free the hostages, and one for Lebanon “that enables citizens to return safely to their homes on both sides of the Blue Line.” The 13-point U.S. proposal presented to Lebanese officials on Nov. 14 includes a 60-day truce, during which Lebanon would redeploy its troops along the border. The proposal also calls for Moscow to prevent Hezbollah from resupplying itself via Syrian land routes. Hezbollah would retreat north of the Litani River, with the border area then being under control of the Lebanese Armed Forces, overseen by the United States and Britain. Israeli officials are emphasizing, however, that the Israel Defense Forces must retain freedom of operation in Lebanon to thwart attempts by Hezbollah to violate the agreement and rearm and reestablish itself. A senior Israeli diplomatic official told Israel Hayom on Saturday that the IDF will retain operational freedom to respond to any security threats from across the northern border, regardless of any diplomatic arrangements. However, a source close to Hezbollah told The Washington Post that the group’s “condition for progress remains clear: Israel must be prohibited from conducting operations within Lebanese territory.” Berri emphasized at the time that any ceasefire agreement must not include the ability for Israel to attack by land, sea or air, Channel 12 reported. “Otherwise, what’s the purpose of an agreement?” he remarked. Another sticking point is Lebanon’s objection to the United Kingdom and Germany monitoring the implementation of U.N. Resolution 1701. Beirut reportedly favors the United States and France. If the ceasefire efforts fail, there are plans in the works to expand ground operations in Lebanon, an Israeli military official told the Post. Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer discussed the proposal with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump during a visit to his Florida estate earlier this month, as well as with senior Biden administration officials in Washington. Dermer also traveled to Russia to discuss the ceasefire proposal. Tehran is telling its Lebanese terrorist proxy Hezbollah that it supports ending the war against Israel, The New York Times reported over the weekend. Ali Larijani, senior adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, met with senior Lebanese officials in Beirut on Nov. 15 to discuss the matter. Two Iranians affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps told the Times that Larijani conveyed messages to Hezbollah from Khamenei that he supported the end of the war and that the regime would assist with rebuilding the terrorist group’s forces and recovering from the war.](https://jewishwebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Gideon-Saar-1320x880-2-218x150.jpg "Sa’ar: Israel must be free to act against Hezbollah truce violations")
President Joe Biden is rightly being raked over the coals by Republicans for his latest egregious display of hypocrisy, which in this case couldn’t be chalked up solely to brain fog.
In his speech on Monday night at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, the now-shunted-aside Oval Office occupant reiterated a false claim about his predecessor. As it’s one of his key go-to accusations against former (and potentially future) President Donald Trump, Biden runs with the debunked anecdote whenever the opportunity presents itself—and then milks it for all it’s worth.
Rewriting history in order to: a) boast about prioritizing country over personal concerns, and b) to smear Trump, he recounted the events surrounding a deadly riot seven years ago in the state of Virginia.
“I ran for president in 2020 because of what I saw in Charlottesville in August of 2017,” he bellowed to the crowd at the United Center arena. “Extremists coming out of the woods, carrying torches, their veins bulging from their necks, carrying Nazi swastikas and chanting the same exact antisemitic bile that was heard in Germany in the early ’30s. Neo-Nazis, white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan, so emboldened by a president then in the White House that they saw as an ally. … Hate was on the march in America. Old ghosts in new garments, stirring up the oldest divisions, stoking the oldest fears, giving oxygen to the oldest forces that they long sought to tear apart America.”
He went on, “In the process, a young woman was killed. … When the president was asked what he thought had happened, Donald Trump said, and I quote, ‘There are very fine people on both sides.’ My God, that’s what he said. That is what he said and what he meant. That’s when I realized … I could not stay on the sidelines.”
Yeah, right. That’s what caused the politician who fantasized his entire life about holding the highest office in the land to enter the race.
More importantly, Trump wasn’t referring to the neo-Nazis and white supremacists when he made the comment in question.
A recap of the awful episode is in order to illustrate Biden’s repeated disingenuousness in relation to it. Though it’s true that the two-day “Unite the Right” rally was organized by a white supremacist—to protest the Charlottesville City Council’s decision to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee from the park in the Confederate general’s name—the car-ramming that left one person dead and some 35 wounded was universally condemned. Yes, including by Trump. And the perpetrator, 20-year-old Alex Fields Jr., was justifiably sentenced to life in prison.
How Trump actually responded to the act of domestic terrorism that sent shockwaves around the United States was very different from the way that his words have been portrayed by many Democrats, especially Biden, since the incident.
Addressing reporters in its immediate aftermath, the then-president indeed said that there were “very fine people on both sides,” but he wasn’t giving a pass to racists. He was referring, rather, to the peaceful protesters on either side of the statue-removal debate, specifically stressing that neo-Nazis and white nationalists “have no place in America” and should be “condemned totally.”
So much for Biden’s slanderous citations. Still, karma is a bi**h and it came back to bite him at the DNC.
As pro-Hamas anarchists were throwing antisemitic tantrums and burning American flags outside the United Center arena, the lame duck leader said, “Those protesters out in the street, they have a point. A lot of innocent people are being killed on both sides.”
Hmmm.
What he failed to mention was Israel. Hearing shouts of “Genocide Joe” for not turning completely against the Jewish state after it suffered the worst atrocities since the Holocaust clearly made him uneasy.
Unlike Trump’s, Biden’s “both sides” remark was not taken out of context. This is evident in the sentiments he expressed right before uttering it.
“We’ll keep working to bring hostages home and end the war in Gaza and bring peace and security to the Middle East,” he said, omitting the identity of the captives and the terrorists who kidnapped them on Oct. 7.
Then he made a peculiar assertion.
“As you know, I wrote a peace treaty for Gaza,” he said. “A few days ago, I put forward a proposal that brought us closer to doing that than we’ve done since Oct. 7.”
Huh? Was this ad libbed or did a speech writer put that in there on purpose?
Either way, it would have been laughable if it weren’t such a grave slip. As if by way of explanation, he added, “We’re working around the clock, my Secretary of State, to prevent a wider war and reunite hostages with their families and surge humanitarian health and food assistance into Gaza now, to end the civilian suffering of the Palestinian people and finally, finally, finally deliver a ceasefire and end this war.”
And that’s when he acknowledged that the mob outside had “a point.” You know, because “a lot of innocent people are being killed on both sides.”
This wasn’t merely an example of creating moral equivalence where it doesn’t exist. It gave credence to the idea that the nameless “hostages” and the crimes committed against them and all Israelis by the savages who rule Gaza and their fellow travelers are all victims of some pointless war that has to be stopped.
It was ironic, then, that the “ceasefire now” sloganeers didn’t buy it. They were too busy hurling tired “tentifada” epithets.
The world isn’t likely to hear much more from Biden now that his party and fair-weather friends have put him out to pasture. In case he’s schlepped out for a last hurrah, however, he’d do well to refrain from invoking Charlottesville with Chicago so fresh in everybody’s minds.