conflict
Over 200 Days Into War, Family Of American Hostage in Gaza Strives For Deal To Bring Son Home
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By JAKE SMITH
The parents of an American-Israeli hostage in Gaza are doing everything in their power to bring him back home since the Israel-Hamas war began more than 200 days ago, they told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Edan Alexander, 20, is one of five American hostages currently being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. His parents, Adi and Yael, have been meeting with U.S. and Israeli officials to discuss how to get him home as international negotiators rush to reach a deal with Hamas that would see the release of hostages in exchange for a temporary ceasefire.
“They’ve been constantly optimistic for months now since the beginning of January, and I know that they keep negotiating, although Hamas, sometimes they’ve stopped negotiating,” Adi told the DCNF. “But right now it feels like it’s a perfect storm. And everything needs to come kind of together. Even if it’s a small humanitarian deal that can open the gate for the bigger deal, we need to start with that. Just to kind of strike the first small deal.”
There are approximately 128 hostages being held by Hamas, including Israeli and foreign civilians and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers.
The current proposal being negotiated would see a 40-day ceasefire in exchange for up to 33 hostages currently in Hamas captivity, with the possibility of a longer-term ceasefire should both sides uphold the deal, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The following phases of the ceasefire could possibly extend up to a year.
Edan was born in Tel Aviv and brought to the United States before his first birthday, growing up mostly in New Jersey, Yael and Adi told the DCNF. He joined the IDF after graduating from high school and was serving at a small base near the border of Gaza when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping hundreds of others.
“Before 7 a.m., he’s calling me. And he was yelling, ‘Mom. It’s like a war here. I’m seeing terrible stuff. You cannot believe what I’m seeing,” Yael told the DCNF. “And then I’m like, you’ll be ok, you just protect yourself. You will be okay … I told him that I love him. And that’s it. This is the last time that I heard him.”
Israeli intelligence later contacted Yael and Adi and told them Edan had been among those kidnapped during the attacks, showing them bodycam footage recovered from Oct. 7 depicting him being arrested and taken by Hamas operatives, the parents told the DCNF.
Yael and Adi have since spent their time raising awareness about their son and the hostages in news conferences and rallies with the other hostage families.
“We met with President Biden twice, with Vice President Kamala Harris twice, and numerous times with [White House National Security Advisor] Jake Sullivan and with [CIA Director] Bill Burns,” Adi told the DCNF. Yael added that they have a weekly update call with the State Department.
Yael has also met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the family speaks with Israeli officials when visiting the region. Conversations on the Israeli side are highly sensitive and guarded to ensure vital information isn’t leaked, they told the DCNF.
“We try to keep them private and yes, a lot of confidential things are being shared there. So it’s a little bit different,” Adi told the DCNF. “It’s also that the Israelis have to have bigger fish to fry.”
Though Hamas has previously rejected several proposals, there’s some hope on the U.S. and Israeli side that they’re closing in on reaching a deal, Yael and Adi told the DCNF. Sullivan told MSNBC during an interview on April 26 that there was “new momentum” in negotiations.
Having shared the common struggle of knowing their relatives are being held by a terrorist organization in currently one the most deadly places in the world has brought many of the families closer together, Yael and Adi told the DCNF.
“It’s unreal, all the stories and everything. All the families now we are like all together, and we’re like big family, these people that I never met before, and now I’m feeling the connection with them,” Yael told the DCNF. “I just want to spend time with them because they get it.”
Yael and Adi told the DCNF that, above all, they are looking forward to their son coming home so that the family can resume some sense of normalcy. Adi joked that they’d take a trip to the Bahamas and help Edan start applying for colleges.
“I don’t think I’m gonna stop holding him,” Yael said.
conflict
US and UK authorize missile strikes into Russia, but are we really in danger of World War III?
From LifeSiteNews
By Frank Wright
Hopefully a world war appears unlikely, but the decision to allow Ukraine to shoot U.S. and U.K.-provided missiles into Russia once again reveals the lengths to which the ‘neocon globalists’ will go to throw a lifeline to their failing business model.
News that the lame duck President Joe Biden has authorized long-range strikes into Russia using NATO systems was announced with the alarming warning that he had “started World War III.”
The following day, U.S.-supplied and operated ATACMS missiles were fired into Russia.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described the authorized strikes as an “escalation” showing that the West wants war.
“The fact that ATACMS were used repeatedly in the Bryansk region overnight is, of course, a signal that they want escalation,” he said, according to Reuters.
Lavrov continued: “Without the Americans, it is impossible to use these high-tech missiles, as Putin has repeatedly said.”
Why would the U.S. president finally give the green light to use NATO systems to attack Russia? German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has refused to follow suit and supply German-made Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine – because he does not want to see Germany drawn into a direct war with Russia.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer responded by suggesting it is only a matter of time before U.K.-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles strike deep into Russian territory.
Today – Wednesday, November 20 – the Guardian reported that it has already happened.
The U.K. government has been behind a long campaign to escalate the war in Ukraine, a move seen as an attempt to secure continued U.S. commitments in Europe. The Trump camp has long signaled its desire to draw down its security provision to leave a “dormant NATO.”
In an indication of the dangers of the U.K.-backed move by Biden, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced an alarming amendment of the Russian nuclear doctrine.
The policy change, announced in September and published following Biden’s announcement, says “an attack from a non-nuclear state, if backed by a nuclear power, will be treated as a joint assault on Russia,” according to the BBC.
Russian nuclear doctrine has long included the use of low-yield “tactical” nuclear weapons in “conventional” warfare – a significantly lower threshold than that of NATO.
While Russian officials urged Western leaders to consult the text, Foreign Minister Lavrov stressed that “we strongly are in favor of doing everything to not allow nuclear war to happen.”
As Reuters reported, this latest provocation is “unlikely to be a gamechanger.” Western media outlets have moved from a narrative of Ukrainian victory to mulling how or even if the state of Ukraine can survive its “inevitable” defeat.
Yet it is not only Ukraine which faces an uncertain future with a Russian victory. The entire globalist order faces a significant blow should the war conclude. Statements from figures such as George Soros, U.S. General Mark Milley, E.U. chief Ursula von der Leyen, and the former head of NATO stressed that their liberal-globalist regime is threatened by defeat in Ukraine.
Biden’s decision has been seen as an attempt to frustrate Donald Trump’s declared agenda – to clear out the “deep state globalists” whose “neocons seeking confrontation … such as Victoria Nuland” have led the U.S. into endless wars since that in Iraq.
An escalation to all-out war with Russia would not only be a disastrous precursor to nuclear escalation, but would also preserve the dominance of the same “neocon globalists” whose “forever wars” Trump has pledged to end.
Arch-neocon Robert Kagan said Americans who support ending wars are “intolerant.” He went on to author two articles which Hitlerized Trump and appeared to incite the assassination of a man who promised in his 2024 victory speech, “I’m not going to start wars. I’m going to stop wars.”
This follows a long series of claims in the same vein.
“I will end the war in Ukraine,” Trump declared in February 2023, saying he would also end “the chaos in the Middle East” and “stop World War III.”
This move by Biden has no military significance in improving Ukraine’s chances of victory. Russia claimed to have shot down seven of eight ATACMS fired into its Bryansk region. Yet prolonging or even escalating this war has enormous political significance.
Since the publication of the RAND Corporation’s 2019 paper “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia,” a strategy of bleeding Russia on the battlefield to collapse its government has been clear. Russia’s near-limitless mineral wealth would provide an obvious boon to a Western system self-sabotaged by sanctions and the destruction of the Nordstream gas supply.
The enormous significance of the war is found in its use as an attempt to extend and consolidate the power of the same system of neocon “globalism” which Trump has vowed to end.
This context explains why the U.K. government has consistently pressed for escalation since the 2022 intervention of then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson seems to have sabotaged peace in favor of an all-or-nothing gamble towards “regime change” in Russia.
Since then, the U.K. government has urged the authorization of long-range strikes into Russia, and it has supplied cruise missiles to attack Russian over-the-horizon nuclear radar warning systems, which play no role in the Ukraine war.
Reports have confirmed “terrorist operations” in Russia, including attacks on the Kerch Bridge leading to Crimea were U.K.-led. A recent expose by The Grayzone revealed that the British state appears to be training Ukrainians to fight a guerilla war, extending hostilities even beyond any ceasefire.
Ukraine’s recent and failed offensive into Russia’s Kursk region appears to have also been a British operation – to secure the kind of “morale boost” which Alastair Crooke says is the only significant war-fighting contribution of the authorization of “wonder weapons” like ATACMS.
The ATACMS authorization was heralded as a turning point in the war by Foreign Affairs. Yet the suspicion of Responsible Statecraft that it was a “sideshow that may become a tragedy” appears to have been confirmed.
The grim reality of this war is underscored by the fact that measures taken which will result in even more needless loss of human life are done so to legitimize useful propaganda headlines. This is undertaken to sell a war which has long been predicted to end as it now seems certain to do so: with a victory on Russian terms.
Though it appears unlikely that a world war will result from this latest reckless move, what has been demonstrated once more is the lengths to which the “neocon globalists” will go to throw a lifeline to their failing business model.
That lifeline is perpetual war, and when they end – so do the careers of so many whose livelihoods and reputations depend on keeping them going.
conflict
Putin Launches Mass-Production of Nuclear Shelters for his People
From Armstrong Economics
By Martin Armstrong
Russia has begun mass production of mobile nuclear bunkers. This is in response to Ukraine’s use of Western US and British missiles to attack deep inside Russia to destroy its conventional capability so NATO can launch an invasion by March/April 2025.
This has coincided with Mr Putin’s change of Russia’s doctrine to lower the threshold for using nuclear weapons to include the use of conventional weapons by Ukraine. Russia’s defense ministry said Ukraine attacked an ammunition stockpile in the Bryansk region using missiles supplied by the US military’s MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS).
Russia has also ordered the production of its mobile nuclear bunkers to protect citizens. They are shelters capable of protecting people from the light radiation of a nuclear explosion and radioactive contamination of the surrounding environment. These are known as “KUB-M” and will protect 54 people for 48 hours from the air shock wave and light radiation of a nuclear explosion; penetrating radiation and radioactive contamination of the area; high-explosive and fragmentation effects of conventional weapons; falling debris from building structures; dangerous chemicals; fires. Unlike traditional, stationary bunkers, mobile bunkers are built to be easily moved from one location to another, often on vehicles or trailers. They can be equipped with advanced shielding, air filtration systems, and other necessary survival equipment to withstand the harsh conditions of a nuclear event.
The Western press keeps putting out the Neocon and NATO propaganda that Russia will never fire a nuke and Ukraine can win the war. But this is all a smoke screen for NATO will invade Russia, and they are using Ukraine as our Hesbolla, the same as Iran is using Lebanon. Zelensky claimed he invaded Russia to force Putin to peace. But they had a peace deal. Boris Johnson ran to Kiev and instructed Zelensky he was not allowed to sign a peace deal, and now far more than 1 million Ukrainians have been killed so Europe can invade Russia.
Just as Robert McNamara said about Vietnam and the Weapons of Mass Destruction that did not exist in Iraq, what if these people are wrong AGAIN? There goes Europe! Not a single European leader cares about their own people.
Either the Ukrainian people rise up and take their country back, or Putin needs to nuke Kiev to show the world he is serious. Otherwise, we are sleepwalking into World War III. Our press will NEVER write a single word for peace. It is always Putin is bluffing. What if you are wrong again?
Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in Kiev was just shut down after Biden gave the go-ahead to use long-range missiles. Hm. If this was to win the war, then why flee Kiev? They know Putin will respond forcefully against Zelensky. Russians get nuclear bomb shelters, and we get Fake News – Don’t worry – he’s bluffing.
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