Bernie Sanders opposes ‘Squad,’ rejects permanent cease-fire between Israel, Hamas
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on Sunday defended his decision to oppose a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, breaking with progressive Democrats in the House. Progressive “Squad” members, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., who was censured last month over her antisemitic chants “from the river to the sea,” which is a slogan that calls for the elimination of the state of Israel, have voiced explicit support for a cease-fire in Gaza. Appearing on CBS’ “Face The Nation” on Sunday, Sanders made a distinction, saying he supports a temporary humanitarian pause in Gaza, referencing the United Nations’ resolution that the United States government stood alone in rejecting before the U.N. Security Council on Friday, but argues Hamas militants want a “permanent war.” “First of all, I strongly support and wish and hope that the United States will support the United Nations resolution that was vetoed, that we vetoed the other day,” Sanders said. “That was a humanitarian pause, a humanitarian cease-fire that would, by the way, call for the release of all of the hostages held by Hamas and would have allowed the U.N. and other agencies to begin to supply the enormous amount of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people. In terms of a permanent cease-fire, I don’t know how you could have a permanent cease-fire when Hamas has said before Oct. 7 and after Oct. 7 that they want to destroy Israel. They want a permanent war. I don’t know how you have a permanent cease-fire with an attitude like that.” BLINKEN: SEXUAL VIOLENCE HAMAS COMMITTED ON OCT 7 ‘BEYOND ANYTHING THAT I’VE SEEN’ “Squad” Democrats gathered on Capitol Hill last week and doubled down on accusations that the Israel Defense Forces are targeting civilians and committing a “genocide.” Sanders said Israel “has a right to defend itself” against Hamas but condemned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach. The Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health has reported that more than 17,000 people have been killed in Gaza, though it does not make the distinction between civilians and combatants. CBS host Margaret Brennan cited how Israel has reported killing about 7,000 combatants in Gaza but has not said how many civilians are believed to have died. Sanders has argued the United States would be complicit in an “all-out war against innocent men, women and children who have nothing to do with Hamas” if his colleagues in Congress approve more no-strings-attached funding for Israel amid the conflict. While Congress failed to clear an aid package for Israel amid debate about funding for border security, Secretary of State Antony Blinken sidestepped the House and Senate, ushering through an emergency deal for more tank ammunition for Netanyahu’s government. The United States stood alone at the U.N. Security Council on Friday to block a United Nations resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza. The vote in the 15-member council was 13-1, with the United Kingdom abstaining. Blinken said Sunday that while Israel must continue its campaign, “it’s imperative that civilians be protected.” STATE DEPARTMENT BYPASSES CONGRESS TO CLEAR TANK AMMUNITION SALE TO ISRAEL: ‘VITAL TO US NATIONAL INTERESTS’ Brennan asked Sanders what he believes “Netanyahu’s government’s intent” is at this stage of the conflict. “It really is hard to say. It may be that they’re responding in rage against the horrific and terrible Hamas attack that killed 1,200 innocent Israelis,” Sanders said. “Or maybe in some of the right-wing extremist minds, there was the goal to drive the Palestinian people off of Gaza completely. But they have now destroyed about half of the housing units in Gaza. So, it’s hard to predict. But I think when Gen. [Defense Secretary Lloyd] Austin said you can win the battle but lose the war, Israel is losing the war in terms of how the world is looking at this situation. And I think that it would be irresponsible for the United States to give Netanyahu another $10 billion to continue to wage this awful war.” Sanders also responded to concern the Israel-Hamas war could further divide the Democratic Party ahead of a presidential election year. “The American people were outraged by Hamas’ attacks against Israel, rightfully so. But they are equally outraged now by what Israel is doing,” Sanders said Sunday. “So, you’re seeing all over this country, people say, ‘Why are we giving money to an Israeli government that is doing such awful things?’ Will it hurt politically? It might. At the end of the day, I think [President] Biden is going to win this election. But what’s going on now is not helpful.”
Blinken: Sexual violence Hamas committed on Oct. 7 ‘beyond anything that I’ve seen’
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday the evidence of sexual violence committed by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 is “beyond anything that I’ve seen.” Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Blinken was asked by host Jake Tapper why he thinks the United Nations and the international community have been so slow to condemn the atrocities, despite evidence mounting in Israel of rapes and sex crimes committed by Hamas against women and girls, and maybe even against men on Oct. 7. “I’ve heard antisemitism hypothesized as a reason why the U.N. and the international community might be so slow to acknowledge this. What do you think?” Tapper asked. “I don’t have an answer. I don’t know why countries, leaders, international organizations were so slow to focus on this, to bring it to people’s attention. I’m glad it’s finally happened,” Blinken said. “The atrocities that we saw on Oct. 7 are almost beyond human description or beyond our capacity to digest. And we’ve talked about them before. But the sexual violence that we saw on Oct. 7 is beyond anything that I’ve seen either.” STATE DEPARTMENT BYPASSES CONGRESS TO CLEAR TANK AMMUNITION SALE TO ISRAEL: ‘VITAL TO US NATIONAL INTERESTS’ The United States stood alone at the U.N. Security Council on Friday to block a United Nations resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza. The vote in the 15-member council was 13-1, with the United Kingdom abstaining. The United States’ isolated stand reflected a growing fracture between Washington and some of its closest allies over Israel’s months-long bombardment of Gaza. France and Japan were among those supporting the call for a cease-fire. In a vain effort to press the Biden administration to drop its opposition to calling for a halt to the fighting, the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey were all in Washington on Friday. But their meeting with Blinken took place only after the U.N. vote. The Biden administration revealed Saturday that the State Department is also sidestepping Congress to rush $106.5 million worth of tank ammunition to Israel after a congressional aid package failed to clear amid debate about funding for border security. “We want to make sure that as Israel continues this, this campaign… remember, they are dealing with a terrorist organization that engaged in the most vicious possible brutality on Oct. 7 and has made clear that it would do it again and again and again if given the opportunity,” Blinken said Sunday. “So Israel needs to be able to deal with this to protect itself, to prevent Oct. 7 from happening again. But as it does that, it’s imperative that civilians be protected.” UN REJECTS RESOLUTION CALLING FOR IMMEDIATE CEASE-FIRE IN GAZA “And here the critical thing is to make sure that the military operations are designed around civilian protection and to focus on that when it comes to humanitarian assistance that we, as you know, made the argument many weeks ago to get humanitarian assistance in, it started to flow. We got it doubled during the humanitarian pause for the hostage releases that we helped to negotiate,” the secretary continued. “But now what’s critical is this. Even as Israel has taken additional steps, for example, to designate safe areas in the south, to focus on neighborhoods, not entire cities, in terms of evacuating them.” He also addressed “a gap between the intent to protect Palestinian civilians and the actual results that we’re seeing on the ground in Gaza.” “What we’re not seeing sufficiently is a couple of things. One, making sure that the humanitarian operators who are there, starting with the United Nations, performing heroically, that there are deconfliction times, places and routes so that the humanitarians can bring the assistance that’s getting into Gaza to the people who need it,” Blinken said. “Similarly, we need to see the same kind of deconfliction. Time pauses. Designated routes, plural… not just one. And clarity of communication so that people know when it is safe and where it is safe to move to get out of harm’s way before they go back home. These are the kinds of things we’re working on every single day, again, to make sure that that gap between intent and result is as narrow as possible.” The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Maharashtra: Seven wagons of goods train derail near Kasara; check trains diverted from Mumbai
The derailment took place at 6.31 pm, leaving mail express traffic on the Kasara-Igatpuri section on the Down line and middle line affected.
SC to give verdict on pleas challenging abrogation of Article 370 on Monday; here’s all you need to know
According to the cause list for December 11 (Monday), uploaded on the apex court’s website, a five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud would deliver the verdict. The other members of the bench are Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Sanjiv Khanna, B R Gavai and Surya Kant.
Tennessee tornadoes leave at least 6 dead, tens of thousands without power
Severe storms and tornadoes in Tennessee left at least six people dead on Saturday and caused what local emergency services described as extensive damage with tens of thousands of residents without power.
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Tennessee looks to recovery after string of deadly tornadoes
Emergency crews worked on Sunday to check, clear and restore power to areas hard-hit by severe storms and tornadoes that claimed the lives of at least six people and left a trail of destruction in Tennessee this weekend.
MIT, Harvard face mounting pressure on ‘choice to defend terrorist sympathizers’ after UPenn president resigns
An Israeli PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology gave an emotional rebuke on campus of the university president’s testimony before Congress last week, in which she said it would depend on “context” whether calls for an intifada or the genocide of Jews would violate the prestigious university’s code of conduct or rules against bullying or harassment. Speaking through a microphone outside the New England Holocaust memorial in Boston, Liyam Chitayat, a doctoral student in computational and systems biology at MIT, cited how MIT President Sally Kornbluth testified that calls for the genocide of Jews would only violate the university’s code of conduct “if targeted at individuals, not making public statements.” This comes as MIT and Harvard are facing mounting pressure to remove their presidents after University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned Saturday. Chitayat demanded the school answer for its “obsession with context.” “Since the executive board responded to this pathetic congressional hearing of our President Sally Kornbluth by stating that they support Sally for her ‘excellent moral compass,’ I have to ask all of you about this continuous obsession with context,” the PhD student said. “I want someone to tell me, when is the right context to come and urinate on the window of the prayer room of MIT Hillel in front of the Jewish praying students inside there? Tell me, when is the right context to respond to reports of students facing blatant antisemitism by telling them, well, you can try talking to the police, you can go to therapy or you can go back to where you came from? I want to know when a dozen students are allowed to storm in and harass individual staff members that work or are Jewish and are Israeli.” HOUSE REPS ANNOUNCE INVESTIGATION INTO HARVARD, MIT, UPENN AFTER ‘MORALLY BANKRUPT’ TESTIMONY ON ANTISEMITISM When pressed by Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., during a House Committee on Education and Labor hearing last week about the rise of antisemitism in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, the leaders of three of America’s most prestigious universities could not clearly state under repeated questioning that calls on campus for the genocide of Jews would violate conduct policies. Stefanik and even former President Trump, speaking in New York this weekend, applauded Magill’s resignation, stating, “One down, two to go.” Seventy-four House members sent a bipartisan letter to the governing boards of Harvard, MIT and UPenn, calling on all three to take immediate action to remove the president of each respective institution. At the hearing last week, Kornbluth admitted she had heard calls for an intifada on MIT’s campus, but she said those chants “can be antisemitic depending on the context when calling for the elimination of the Jewish people.” Those calls, the president testified, would be investigated as harassment “if pervasive and severe.” “Somehow there’s a context in which you can tell Jewish students not to come to the entrance of MIT and to go to the back door to their classes,” Chitayat said, according to video shared on X by MIT professor Retsef Levi. “There is context where it makes sense that 70% of Jewish students at MIT do not show any sign of that they’re Jewish because they’re scared. There is a context where a chaplain advisor is allowed to stop an event four times to say that Israelis are European racists, white colonizers, right before asking who in this room eats kosher?” Chitayat went on to recall how she spent “17 hours holding my breath” on October 7th as she texted a friend in Israel who was hiding in a bomb shelter in Kibbutz Be’eri, describing to her how Hamas terrorists had invaded her grandparents’ home. “Every single moment she did not answer my texts I kept wondering whether that would be the last message from her. When I came to MIT the day after, all I wanted was a hug,” Chitayat said. “I just needed a hug because I have experienced the worst day in history we all have. But instead, MIT students and staff have celebrated this massacre – online and in a Victory is Ours rally.” UPENN PRESIDENT TORCHED OVER ANTISEMITIC SPEAKERS, TEACHERS ALLOWED ON CAMPUS BUT NOT TRUMP ICE DIRECTOR She also described how MIT students go around tearing down posters with pictures of Israeli children taken hostage by Hamas deeming them “Zionist propaganda.” “When I look at my family, I see the face of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas, a mom and her two babies that are currently held hostage, sedated, physically and psychologically abused,” Chitayat told the crowd. “When I go in my home and I sit in my home and think about the 138 individuals that are missing from there, and when I look in the mirror, I see the face Naama Levy who is seen being dragged through the streets of Gaza with blood gushing through her thighs.” Addressing Kornbluth and Harvard University President Claudine Gay by name, Chitayat asked, “When you look in the mirror, what do you see?” CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP “On top of your excellent, excellent moral compass, your choice to defend terrorist sympathizers will never be forgotten,” Chitayat said. “And quite frankly, your lack of humanity terrifies me. But it will not break our spirit. For thousands of years, us Jews had to defend our identity, our culture and our mere existence. And we will not stop now. The entire world should know that we would not let you erase us. Not in Israel and not here. We will not look away. And we will not take the back door. We are strong. We are united now and forever. Never again is now.” The House committee launched a congressional probe into all three institutions to include “substantial document requests” and possible subpoenas for information not readily provided.
Houston’s mayor-elect takes parting shot at Sheila Jackson Lee: ‘We don’t bully people’
Texas State Sen. and Houston Mayor-elect John Whitmire took a parting shot at Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas after winning Houston’s mayoral runoff over the congresswoman in a landslide. “People want to go to work for me because we respect people. We don’t bully people,” Whitmire said during his victory speech Saturday, according to a report from the Houston Chronicle. “My family taught me to treat people the way you want to be treated, and that works wherever you are, regardless of what community you’re visiting with. Treat these individuals like you want to be treated.” Whitmire, also a Democrat, appeared to be referring to Jackson Lee’s controversial tirade last month, where she was caught on audio berating her staffers with profane language amid the heated race. REP. JACKSON LEE IS GETTING BACKLASH FOR ANGRY RECORDING BECAUSE OF HER RACE, GENDER: SUPPORTERS “When I called Jerome, he only sits up there like a fat [expletive], just talking about what the [expletive] he doesn’t know. Both of y’all are [expletive]-ups… This is the worst [expletive] that I could’ve ever had put together. Two [expletive] big [expletive] children. [Expletive] idiots. Serve no [expletive] purpose,” Jackson lee said in an angry voice in one part of the recording. Jackson Lee was also at the center of ridicule for a gaffe earlier this month in which she encouraged her supporters to vote on the wrong day, urging voters to cast their ballots by Dec. 7, two days before the actual date of the runoff election. Whitmire ended up winning the election Saturday in a landslide, garnering 65% of the vote compared to Jackson Lee’s 34%. HOUSTON MAYORAL CANDIDATE SHEILA JACKSON LEE TELLS SUPPORTERS TO VOTE ON WRONG DATE “Great cities solve their problems,” Whitemire said after the victory. “We will face challenges, but I see that as an opportunity, and I need you to join hands with me. We’ll, meet our challenges, and it’ll be an opportunity to show the nation what the city of Houston could do.” Jackson Lee also addressed supporters after the defeat, conceding the race while vowing to work with Whitmire to “make Houston better.” “I’ve had a great opportunity to serve this city, and yes, I was there during every disaster bringing federal dollars here,” she said. ” I never ran away from the fight to make Houston better. Even though the outcome was not the way we would have wanted. The best thing for us to do is to shore up and stand up and be committed to Houston moving forward. That’s what I will do.” Jackson Lee’s campaign did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for comment.
Democratic US senator says Republican border security demands are currently ‘unreasonable’ -NBC
U.S. Republican border security demands tied to military aid for Ukraine and Israel are currently “unreasonable,” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said on Sunday during an interview with NBC News.