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  • Chinese fighter jets have been circling Taiwan. (photo: Getty)

    China has deployed more than 20 fighter jets and eight warships towards Taiwan, the self-ruled island's defense ministry announced on Wednesday.

    The Chinese People's Liberation Army sent 20 military aircraft and eight navy vessels around Taiwan in a 24-hour-window leading up to 6am local time Wednesday, Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense said.

    Of these, 14 fighter jets crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait - an unofficial boundary that spans over 90 miles wide and is regarded a buffer zone between the island and China.

  • Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounces the US failure to veto a UN Security Council ceasefire and hostage resolution, while hosting Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida at his Jerusalem office, March 27, 2024. (photo: Youtube screenshot)

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office reached out to the White House, asking to reschedule a meeting regarding a potential Israeli operation in Rafah, which the premier canceled earlier this week, a US official told The Times of Israel on Wednesday.

    Netanyahu’s office denied granting final authorization for any such trip, but an Israeli official told The Times of Israel that the reports were “not wrong” and that Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and National Security Council chairman Tzachi Hanegbi would likely travel to Washington when the meeting was finalized.

    The US official said the sides were working on a new date for the inter-agency meeting that was supposed to be held on Wednesday with Dermer and Hanegbi.

  • Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, at far left, speaks while meeting with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, across table at far right, at the Pentagon, Tuesday, March 26, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

    WASHINGTON — Defense Minister Yoav Gallant sought to present a sense of business as usual in meetings with top Biden administration officials in Washington on Tuesday, even as ties between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and the US descended to their lowest point in years.

    “I am here to emphasize the importance of… relations [with the US]. We share 100 percent of the values and 99 percent of the interests with the United States,” Gallant told reporters in a briefing between meetings with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and CIA chief William Burns.

    But that one-percent disagreement appeared a lot more noticeable on Tuesday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office accused the Biden administration of torpedoing the hostage talks by allowing the passage on Monday of a UN Security Council resolution that calls for an immediate ceasefire and hostage release without explicitly conditioning the former on the latter.

  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) in Jerusalem on March 27, 2024. Credit: Haim Zach/GPO

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) for his “unwavering support for the State of Israel, especially at this time” during the latter’s visit to Jerusalem, per Netanyahu’s office.

    The two officials met at the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem on Wednesday.

    Netanyahu told Scott that Washington’s decision to abstain, rather than veto, a recent ceasefire resolution at the United Nations Security Council “was a very, very bad move.”

  • Israeli troops operating in the Gaza Strip, March 23, 2024. (photo: IDF)

    The Biden administration has verified that Israel is using U.S.-supplied weaponry in line with international law and is not blocking humanitarian supplies from entering the Gaza Strip, the State Department confirmed on Monday.

    “We have had ongoing assessments about their [Israel’s] compliance with international humanitarian law,” spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters at a briefing. “We have not found them to be in violation of international humanitarian law, either when it comes to the conduct of the war or when it comes to the provision of humanitarian assistance.”

    Miller also said Washington received written assurances from a “credible high-level official” in Jerusalem that the Israel Defense Forces is acting in compliance with a Feb. 8 memorandum issued by Biden.

  • Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant meets with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington, March 26, 2024 (photo: Ariel Hermoni, IMoD)

    As relations between the United States and Israel are seemingly at their lowest point in decades, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant met with several senior U.S. officials to discuss the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.

    “[I just completed a meeting] at the U.S. Department of State, with my friend Secretary Blinken,” Gallant stated on Tuesday afternoon.

    "We discussed developments in the war against Hamas and the military operations required to destroy Hamas as a military and governing authority in Gaza."

    Gallant's visit began on the same day that the U.S. abstained from votingon a UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire, without conditioning it upon the release of the Israeli hostages by Hamas.

    “During our discussion, I emphasized that Israel will not cease operating in Gaza until the return of all the hostages. Only a decisive victory will bring to an end of this war.”

  • Julia Nikhinson/Reuters

    The Francis Scott Key Bridge along I-695 in Maryland collapsed into the Baltimore harbor following a "ship strike" early Tuesday morning, setting off a search and rescue mission for those inside vehicles that plunged into the chilly waters.

    A livestream of the bridge appeared to show a cargo ship colliding with a support beam, causing the bridge to break apart and fall into the Patapsco River. Officials said "upwards of seven" people were missing and that two had been pulled from the water. Multiple vehicles were on the bridge at the time, but no update on casualties has been offered.

  • Defense Minister Yoav Gallant leaves the State Department after meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the US State Department in Washington, DC, on March 25, 2024. (Defense Minister Yoav Gallant leaves the State Department after meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the US State Department in Washington, DC, on March 25, 2024. (photo: Roberto Schmidt, AFP)

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised US opposition to a major ground operation in Rafah with Israel’s defense minister on Monday, after a delegation to discuss Washington’s concerns was scrapped earlier in the day.

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to send the delegation to Washington to discuss the Rafah offensive but cancelled it after the United States abstained on a UN Security Council resolution that demanded an immediate ceasefire in Gaza during Ramadan.

    In his meeting with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Washington, Blinken reiterated US “opposition to a major ground operation in Rafah,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller says in a statement.

  • The U.N. Security Council adopts Resolution 2728 (2024) 14-0, demanding an immediate ceasefire to Israel's war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip during Ramadan and immediate release of all hostages taken from Israel and being held in Gaza, with Washington abstaining, March 25, 2024 . Credit: Loey Felipe/United Nations Photo.

    The U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a resolution that demands a ceasefire for the rest of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan and the release of all hostages being held captive by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

    Washington abstained in the 14-0 vote on Monday. As one of the council’s permanent members, the United States could have vetoed the resolution, which the 10 elected, non-permanent members (E10) of the council drafted and circulated.

    The resolution “demands an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties leading to a lasting ceasefire and also demands the immediate and conditional release of all hostages.”

  • Illustrative: The United Nations Security Council votes on a resolution concerning a ceasefire in Gaza at UN headquarters, February 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

    The United Nations Security Council is set to vote Monday on a resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

    The vote comes after Russia and China vetoed a United States-sponsored resolution Friday that would have supported “an immediate and sustained ceasefire” in the Israeli-Hamas conflict.

    The US warned that the resolution to be voted on Monday morning could hurt negotiations to halt hostilities by the US, Egypt and Qatar, raising the possibility of another veto, this time by the Americans.

     

  • Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant during a press conference in Tel Aviv, Dec. 18, 2023. (photo: Chad McNeeley, U.S. Department of Defense)

    Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant departed for Washington on Sunday, at the invitation of his American counterpart Lloyd Austin.

    Gallant is scheduled to meet with Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and additional senior officials.

    “The parties will discuss developments in the war against the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza, efforts undertaken to return the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, humanitarian efforts and measures required to ensure regional stability,” the minister’s office said in a statement.

  • This image from a video posted to social media purports to show an Iron Dome interceptor missile downing a rocket fired by Hezbollah at northern Israel, early March 24, 2024.

    The Hezbollah terror group fired at least 50 rockets at northern Israel in the predawn hours of Sunday, with the Israel Defense Forces saying it shot down several of the projectiles as others hit open areas.

    The barrage, one of the heaviest since the start of hostilities in October, came amid a weekend of strikes by Israel on the Iran-backed terror group’s sites, including one far in the northeastern part of the country shortly after midnight on Sunday, that Hezbollah said prompted the rocket fire in response.

    Israel has been launching airstrikes deeper and deeper into Lebanese territory against Hezbollah positions for several weeks as the terror group steps up its attacks, heightening the threat of open warfare and an expansion of the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip to Israel’s south.

  • United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres at the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing with Gaza, March 23, 2024. Source: X/United Nations

    Under the leadership of Secretary-General António Guterres, the United Nations has become “an antisemitic and anti-Israel body that shelters and emboldens terror,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.

    The X post came in response to Guterres’s visit earlier in the day to the Sinai-Gaza border, in which he called a long line of waiting humanitarian aid trucks on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing “tragic” and “a moral outrage.”

  • Security Cabinet meeting to discuss Rafah, March 15, 2024. (photo: Kobi Gideon, GPO)

    Israel is willing to defy the United States on Rafah if it has to, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said as top Israeli officials are prepared to head to Washington this week to discuss the controversial military operation in southern Gaza.

    “There is no way for us to defeat Hamas without going into Rafah and eliminating the rest of the battalions there,” Netanyahu said on Friday after he met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Tel Aviv. Blinken made his sixth trip to the region since the start of the war.

    The two men discussed the growing tension between their governments over the Rafah operation, which the US opposes and which Israel insists is the only way to win the war.

  • Mossad Director David Barnea speaks during a Conference of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), in Tel Aviv, on September 10, 2023. (photo: Avshalom Sassoni, Flash90)

    The Israeli delegation in Qatar has agreed to an American compromise on the issue of the number of Palestinian prisoners who will be swapped for each Israeli hostage and await a response from Hamas, Israeli media reported Saturday night.

    According to the reports, there were originally major disagreements about this number, prompting the American compromise proposal.

    The Israeli team in Qatar has been authorized to discuss the return of Palestinians to northern Gaza, according to N12, who also reported that the delegation will likely remain in Qatar for a few days while awaiting a Hamas response that is expected to take some time to receive due to the logistics of getting approval from Hamas leadership in Gaza.

  • US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks to media in Tel Aviv, before leaving Israel after a brief visit, March 22, 2024. (photo: Evelyn Hockstein, Pool via AP)

    After meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doubled down on the message he has expressed in recent days — that while Israel will happily work with the US on improving the humanitarian situation and evacuating civilians from Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, a military operation there is inevitable.

    Blinken said he told Netanyahu in response, however, that a major ground offensive in Rafah was not the way to defeat Hamas. And he warned starkly that it would risk more civilian fatalities, undermine aid assistance, risk greater isolation for Israel and endanger Israel’s security and international standing.

    In a video statement after meeting with Blinken, Netanyahu said, “I told him that I deeply appreciate the fact that for more than five months, we have stood together in the war against Hamas.”

  • The U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed the “minibus” spending package that combines six appropriations bills, with billions in funding for Israel and other projects supported by U.S. Jewish groups.

    The $1.2 trillion package, which passed  286-134 on Friday, funds the U.S. Departments of Defense, State and Homeland Security. The vote split the Republican caucus in half, garnering further opposition from progressive Democrats. It needed a two-thirds majority of 280 votes to pass.

  • Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seen with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Mossad direct David Barnea on May 12, 2023. (photo: Kobi Gideon, Israel GPO)

    Mossad Chief David Barnea is set to meet CIA Director William Burns in Qatar on Friday, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken indicated that an agreement could be coalescing between Hamas and Israel for the release of hostages.

    “The gaps are narrowing. And we’re continuing to push for an agreement in Doha,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Cairo during a joint press conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry.

    He cautioned, however, that there is “still difficult work to get there. But I continue to believe it’s possible.

  • A meeting of the UN Security Council. (photo: AFP)

    Israel is "not entirely happy" with some aspects of a ceasefire resolution the US will bring up for a vote at the UN Security Council on Friday but, overall, "can live with it," Israeli mission to the UN told i24NEWS on Thursday.

    The US mission to the UN stated earlier it "has been working in earnest with Council members over the last several weeks on a Resolution that will unequivocally support ongoing diplomatic efforts aimed at securing an immediate ceasefire in Gaza as part of a hostage deal, which would get hostages released and help enable a surge in humanitarian aid."

  • A meeting between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on January 20, 2023.

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken will arrive in Israel later today to press for a temporary truce in Gaza, ahead of a key UN Security Council vote on a US draft resolution calling for an “immediate” ceasefire.

    Washington said it would submit for a vote on Friday a draft to the Security Council on the need for an “immediate ceasefire as part of a hostage deal.”

    After talks in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Blinken will travel to Israel, his sixth trip to the region since the war began with Hamas’s shock attack on Israel on October 7.

  • U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, March 20, 2024. Source: X/Secretary Antony Blinken.

    During U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, he discussed with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman the American-Saudi component of a larger plan that would see Riyadh recognize Israel.

    A senior State Department official traveling with Blinken on his Mideast trip told the Associated Press that the pair talked about the bilateral portion of the deal, with only a “handful of issues” remaining to be resolved.

     

  • Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer arrives for the weekly cabinet meeting at Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem on January 29, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/ Flash90)

    Israel will take control of Rafah even if it causes a rift with the United States, a senior Israeli official said on Thursday, describing the Gazan city packed with evacuees as a final Hamas bastion harboring a quarter of the terror group’s fighters.

    The prospect of tanks and troops storming Rafah worries Washington, which says Israeli must have a plan to move more than a million Palestinians who have sheltered there since being displaced from elsewhere in the Gaza Strip during the five-month-old war.

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to ensure civilian evacuation and humanitarian aid — measures that top Israeli aides are due to discuss in the White House in the coming days at the behest of US President Joe Biden.

  • US Secretary of State Antony Blinken steps out of a car as he departs Jeddah for Cairo, Egypt, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia March 21, 2024. (photo: Evelyn Hockstein, Reuters)

    Arab ministers held talks with a Palestinian official in Cairo on Thursday to discuss efforts to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. They were due to meet US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, seeking to secure a ceasefire of at least six weeks.

    The ministers met with Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) executive committee general secretary Hussein al-Sheikh to discuss "efforts to stop the Israeli war against Gaza, the inevitability of achieving a ceasefire, and full access to aid," the Egyptian foreign ministry's spokesperson said.

    Blinken was also due to meet with Sheikh - a confidant of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and an intermediary in contacts with Israel - along with the foreign ministers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates state minister for international cooperation, according to an Egyptian foreign ministry note.

  • This infographic released by the Israel Defense Forces on March 21, 2024, shows senior Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad commanders who were captured during an Israeli operation at Gaza City's Shifa Hospital. (photo: Israel Defense Forces)

    The IDF and Shin Bet security agency say troops have captured some 650 terror operatives during the ongoing operation at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, including several senior Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad commanders.

    The Islamic Jihad operatives holed up at the medical center surrendered to troops, the IDF says.

    Among them were Hussam Salameh, the commander of PIJ’s observation and intelligence unit in Gaza City, and his brother, Wissam Salameh, head of the terror group’s propaganda unit in Gaza City, according to the IDF.

  • Ninety-three percent of Palestinians believe that Hamas did not commit atrocities during its mass invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, and 72% support the attack, according to recent polling conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR).

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Provocative Commentary


“The men who have done the most for God in this world have been early on their knees. He who fritters away the early morning, its opportunity and freshness, in other pursuits than seeking God will make poor headway seeking Him the rest of the day. If God is not first in our thoughts and efforts in the morning, He will be in the last place the remainder of the day.” 
― E.M. Bounds