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Biden’s pattern with Israel: public support, private scold
It’s a story Joe Biden has loved recounting over the decades: A chain-smoking Golda Meir welcoming the 30-year-old senator to Israel on his first visit in 1973 and giving him a grandmotherly hug before schooling him on the Six-Day War and the dangers still faced by Israel.
A classified Israeli government memo, though, paints a less anodyne version of Biden’s meeting with the Israeli prime minister that day, reporting that the young senator privately “displayed an enthusiasm” that “signaled his lack of diplomatic experience” as he laid out his concerns over land seized in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by Israel years earlier. The document was published last year by Israel’s Channel 13.
For Biden it was the start of a familiar dynamic. Over his nearly 50 years in national politics, he has often reserved his toughest messages for Israeli leaders for private talks while publicly burnishing his image as an unwavering supporter of Israel.
The pattern holds true to the present, as Biden has delivered his most pointed messages for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the conflict with Hamas in Gaza during private conversations while having little to say in public.
Read:AP source: US encouraging Israel to wind down Gaza offensive
For days, as Hamas rockets have flown toward Israel and Israeli airstrikes pounded Gaza, Biden resisted mounting calls from some Democrats and U.N. Security Council members to more forcefully pressure Israel for a cease-fire. On Wednesday, in their fourth conversation in eight days, Biden told Netanyahu that he expected a “significant de-escalation” by day’s end on the path to a cease-fire, according to a White House readout of the phone call.
But hours later, Biden didn’t make even a passing reference to the Gaza war or his diplomacy during a commencement speech at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy as he spoke of the need to face accelerating global challenges.
In 1982, Washington was the setting when Biden was among a group of U.S. lawmakers who had a tense meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Biden reportedly pressed Begin to halt the building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, while some of his colleagues were critical of other aspects of Israel’s policies.
″I think it is fair to say that in my eight years in Washington I’ve never seen such an angry session with a foreign head of state,″ Sen. Paul Tsongas, a Massachusetts Democrat, told reporters after the meeting.
Overall, Biden has hewed to the U.S. establishment line of reaffirming a financial commitment to Israel regardless of its actions toward Palestinians, while frequently reminding Jewish American audiences of his personal closeness to their community. In a 1986 Senate floor speech, he offered a fulsome defense of U.S. aid to Israel — calling it “the best $3 billion investment we make” — and urged colleagues to stop apologizing for their support of the country.
Biden has spoken to Jewish audiences about building bonds with the nine Israeli prime ministers who’ve overlapped with his own time in elected office, recalled his father teaching him about the horrors of Nazi efforts to rid Europe of Jews, and noted that he took each of his children to visit the Dachau concentration camp. On the lighter side, he often jokes that his daughter gave him every Irish-Catholic father’s dream when she married a Jewish surgeon.
But there have also been moments where Biden’s frustration with Netanyahu has seeped into public view.
Read:Israel unleashes strikes after vowing to press on in Gaza
As vice president, he kept Netanyahu waiting for a dinner meeting after the Israeli leader embarrassed Biden and President Barack Obama by approving the construction of 1,600 new apartments in disputed east Jerusalem in the middle of Biden’s 2010 visit to Israel.
Netanyahu sought to patch up hurt feelings at the dinner. But after the meal, Biden admonished the prime minister in a statement, saying the move undermined an Obama administration effort to persuade the Palestinians to resume peace talks.
Amid ongoing tension between Obama and Netanyahu, Biden went out of his way during a 2014 speech before the Jewish Federations of North America to note that he and Netanyahu were “still buddies” — albeit with a somewhat complicated relationship.
Biden noted that he had once inscribed a photo for Netanyahu with the message “Bibi I don’t agree with a damn thing you say but I love you.’”
In late 2019, during a question-and-answer session with voters on the campaign trail, Biden called Netanyahu “counterproductive” and an “extreme right” leader, while accusing Palestinian leaders of “fomenting” the conflict and “baiting everyone who is Jewish.” He also suggested that some on the U.S. political left give the Palestinian Authority “a pass” when criticizing Israeli leadership.
As the Biden White House negotiated the current crisis, the president and his advisers made the calculation that the Israelis are unlikely to respond to international resolutions or public demands by the U.S. and that their best leverage would happen behind the scenes, officials said.
At the same time, the White House is mindful that the longer the conflict goes, the greater chance of a very high-casualty event or other provocative action by either side that could make reaching a cease-fire more difficult.
Aaron David Miller, a former Mideast adviser to Democratic and Republican administrations, said Biden had demonstrated patience with Netanyahu’s campaign to degrade Hamas’ military capability in part because Biden has bigger priorities, including shepherding the U.S. recovery from the global pandemic and focusing on an emerging economic and strategic competition from China.
Read:Gaza’s health system buckling under repeated wars, blockade
“This is not Joe Biden approaching the crisis as a young senator or as the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” said Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “This is not even Joe Biden as vice president. This is Joe Biden as a president that faces immediate crises and an agenda that would make your head spin. The last thing he wants to do is find himself bogged down on this issue.”
Biden validated that notion this week during a visit to Michigan as he sat in the cab of an electric-powered Ford truck he was taking for a test drive.
A reporter asked Biden if he would take a question about the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.
“Not unless you get in front of the car as I step on it,” Biden shot back. He added that he was teasing, but then hit the gas and sped away.
US Congress OKs bill to tackle hate crimes against Asian Americans
US Congress on Tuesday approved a bill aimed at combating hate crimes and violence against Asian Americans following a sharp rise in such incidents amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The bill, which will be sent to President Joe Biden to be signed into law, will require the Justice Department to expedite the review of hate crimes and issue guidance aimed at raising awareness against such acts, while enhancing support to state and local law enforcement agencies responding to hate crimes.
"The COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act will strengthen our defenses" against attacks targeting Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said prior to the vote at the chamber.
Also read: Asian Americans see generational split on confronting racism
The United States has seen a rise in violent hate crimes and discrimination against Asians and Asian Americans, coinciding with the spread of the novel coronavirus first detected in China in late 2019.
Shocking footage of attacks on Asian people has circulated on social media from time to time and a shooting in the Atlanta area that killed six Asian women in March sparked demonstrations across the country against anti-Asian racism.
Also read: Asian Americans haunted by white supremacy, hate
Over 6,600 incidences of anti-Asian and Pacific Islander discrimination and violence were reported during the year through March in all 50 states in the United States, Pelosi said, adding, "Hundreds more occur unreported in the shadows."
The bill passed the House with a vote of 364 to 62 on Tuesday following a Senate approval in April. It was sponsored by Sen. Mazie Hirono, who was born in Japan's Fukushima Prefecture and immigrated to Hawaii.
‘City in transition’: New York vies to turn page on pandemic
More than a year after coronavirus shutdowns sent “the city that never sleeps” into a fitful slumber, New York could be wide awake again this summer.
Starting Wednesday, vaccinated New Yorkers can shed their masks in most situations, and restaurants, stores, gyms and many other businesses can go back to full capacity if they check vaccination cards or apps for proof that all patrons have been inoculated.
Subways resumed running round-the-clock this week. Midnight curfews for bars and restaurants will be gone by month’s end. Broadway tickets are on sale again, though the curtain won’t rise on any shows until September.
Officials say now is New York’s moment to shake off the image of a city brought to its knees by the virus last spring — a recovery poignantly rendered on the latest cover of The New Yorker magazine. It shows a giant door part-open to the city skyline, letting in a ray of light.
Read:Biden boosting world vaccine sharing commitment to 80M doses
Is the Big Apple back to its old, brash self?
“Maybe 75%. ... It’s definitely coming back to life,” said Mark Kumar, 24, a personal trainer.
But Ameen Deen, 63, said: “A full sense of normalcy is not going to come any time soon. There’s far too many deaths. There’s too much suffering. There’s too much inequality.”
Last spring, the biggest city in America was also the nation’s deadliest coronavirus hotspot, the site of over 21,000 deaths in just two months. Black and Hispanic patients have died at markedly higher rates than whites and Asian Americans.
Hospitals overflowed with patients and corpses. Refrigerated trailers served as temporary morgues, and tents were set up in Central Park as a COVID-19 ward. New York’s hectic streets fell quiet, save for ambulance sirens and nightly bursts of cheering from apartment windows for health care workers.
After a year of ebbs, surges, reopenings and closings, the city hopes vaccinations are turning the tide for good. About 47% of residents have had at least one dose so far. Deaths have amounted to about two dozen a day in recent weeks, and new cases and hospitalizations have plummeted from a wintertime wave.
Large swaths of the country and world are also starting to get back to normal after a crisis blamed for 3.4 million deaths globally, including more than 587,000 in the U.S.
Las Vegas casinos are returning to 100% capacity and no social distancing requirements. Disneyland in California opened up late last month after being shuttered for more than 400 days. Massachusetts this week announced that all virus restrictions will expire Memorial Day weekend.
Summer music festivals like Lollapalooza are back on, the Indy 500 is bracing for more than 100,000 fans, and the federal government says fully vaccinated adults no longer need to wear masks.
France is opening back up on Wednesday as well, with the Eiffel Tower, Parisian cafes and cinemas and the Louvre bringing back visitors for the first time in months.
Read:Pfizer COVID-19 shot expanded to US children as young as 12
In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio has declared it the “summer of New York City.”
There are other signs New York is regaining its bustle. Some 80,000 city employees returned to their offices at least part time this month, joining the many municipal workers whose jobs never were done remotely.
Subway and commuter rail ridership is averaging about 40% of normal after plunging to 10% last spring, when the subway system began closing for several hours overnight for the first time in its more than 115-year history.
Shakeem Brown, an artist and delivery person who works late in Manhattan, spent up to three hours a night commuting back to his Queens apartment before 24/7 service resumed Monday. Brown, 26, said it’s “refreshing” to see things opening up.
At e’s Bar on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, “we feel the energy” of social life ramping up, co-owner Erin Bellard said. “People are so excited to be out.”
Still, receipts at the bar and grill have been down about 35% because of pandemic restrictions on hours and capacity, she said. The impending end of the midnight curfew will give the bar two more crucial hours, and the owners are planning to survey patrons to determine whether to regain full capacity by requiring vaccinations.
From other vantage points, “normal” looks farther off.
The sidewalks and skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan, for instance, are still noticeably empty. Big corporate employers largely aren’t looking to bring more workers back until fall, and only if they feel it’s safe, said Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City, a major employers group.
“Shutting down was easy. Reopening is hard,” Wylde said after a meeting last week with a group of CEOs. “All the employers say that there still is fear and some resistance to coming back.”
Besides virus fears, companies and workers are wondering about safety, she said.
Crime in the city has become a growing source of concern, but it’s a complicated picture. Murders, shootings, felony assaults and auto thefts rose in the first four months of this year compared with the same period in pre-pandemic 2019, but robberies and grand larcenies fell. So did crime in the transit system, probably because of the drop in ridership.
Read:COVID’s US toll projected to drop sharply by the end of July
Brandon Goldgrub has been back at his midtown office since July, but it’s just in the last few weeks that he has noticed the sidewalks seem a bit crowded again.
“Now I feel it’s a lot more normal,” said Goldgrub, 30, a property manager.
Visiting from Tallahassee, Florida, Jessica Souva looked around midtown and felt hopeful about the city where she used to live.
“All we heard, elsewhere in the country, was that New York was a ghost town, and this doesn’t feel like that,” said Souva, 47. “It feels like a city in transition.”
AP source: US encouraging Israel to wind down Gaza offensive
President Joe Biden and administration officials have encouraged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials to wind down the bombardment of Gaza, a person with knowledge of the discussions said Tuesday, as the Israeli and Palestinian death tolls mounted and pressure grew on Biden to move more forcefully to stop the fighting.
Top Biden administration officials underscored to the Israelis on Monday and Tuesday that time is not on their side in terms of international objections to nine days of Israeli airstrikes and Hamas rockets, and that it is in their interest to wind down the operations soon, according to the official, who was not authorized to comment publicly on the private talks and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The account shows Biden administration officials going further privately in messaging to Netanyahu than they have previously revealed. A White House readout of a Biden call to Netanyahu on Monday said Biden had expressed support for a cease-fire, but said nothing about the U.S. urging Israel to bring fighting to a close.
The fighting has killed at least 213 Palestinians and 12 people in Israel, and tested both Biden’s reluctance to publicly criticize Israel and his administration’s determination not to bog down its foreign policy focus in Middle East hot spots.
Read:Palestinians go on strike as Israel-Hamas fighting rages
The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations on Tuesday challenged the Biden administration to show any results from what it is calling its quiet diplomacy to stop the new Israeli-Hamas battles. Ambassador Riyad Mansour pointed to the U.S. repeatedly blocking a U.N. Security Council action on the conflict, and he urged the Biden administration to do more.
“If the Biden administration can exert all of their pressure to bring an end to the aggression against our people, nobody is going to stand in their way,” Mansour said.
France, in consultation with Egypt and Jordan, on Tuesday was preparing a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire, Zhang Jun, China’s U.N. ambassador, and other diplomats told reporters. The move to put the U.N.’s most powerful body behind a demand for Israel and Hamas to stop hostilities came after the U.S. repeatedly blocked what would have been a unanimous Security Council statement expressing concern about the fighting.
The White House has so far resisted the calls for ramping up public pressure on Netanyahu. It has made the calculation that Israelis will not respond to international resolutions or public demands by the U.S. and that its greatest leverage is behind-the-scenes pressure, according to the person familiar with the administration’s discussions.
The person said that the Israelis have signaled that it is possible their military campaign could end in a matter of days.
The effort to press U.S. ally Israel to find an endgame to the military campaign in Gaza came amid a split this week among House Democrats on whether to step up pressure for a cease-fire and call for more forceful U.S. diplomacy to end the fighting.
Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee weighed — but on Tuesday shelved — writing Biden to demand that he delay a pending $735 million sale of precision-guided missiles to Israel.
Read:Gaza children bearing the brunt in Israel-Hamas conflict
Dozens of progressive and mainstream Democratic lawmakers already have called for a cease-fire between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas militants, and some Democrats are demanding Biden push harder for an end to fighting.
Committee member Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, was among the Democrats seeking a harder line, saying he has “serious concerns about the timing of this weapons sale, the message it will send to Israel and the world about the urgency of a cease fire.” He said late Monday that the Biden administration “must use every diplomatic tool to de-escalate this conflict and bring about peace.”
Committee chair Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y. said the lawmakers expect an administration briefing Wednesday on the crisis. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on Tuesday acknowledged the difference between a growing number of progressive Democrats and the Biden administration on the U.S. approach to the conflict, but played it down.
“Every Democrat, and I think every Republican, wants to minimize the exposure of both sides in Gaza and in Israel,” Hoyer told reporters. “There’s a difference about how that can be done.”
Biden did not join in the calls by some of his party’s lawmakers and by many foreign governments to demand a cease-fire, however.
In talks with the Israelis, administration officials have pointed to Hezbollah’s stature rising in the region after their 34-day war with Israel in 2006 to make the case for limiting the time of the military action. But Israeli officials have argued to the administration that a slightly prolonged campaign to degrade Hamas’ military capabilities is necessary and in their interest, according to the person familiar with the talks. Hamas operates in the crowded Gaza Strip, a 25-by-6-mile (40-by-10-kilometer) territory crowded with more than 2 million people.
Hamas has sought to portray their rocket barrages as a defense of Jerusalem. The Israelis have made the case to Biden administration officials that that message is losing resonance as mob violence against Arabs in mixed Israeli cities, including Lod, has been tamped down.
Read:US reaches out to Arab leaders on Israel, Gaza fighting
Administration officials are defending Biden’s decision to avoid ratcheting up public pressure on Israel for its role in the fighting. The U.S. this week killed a proposed U.N. Security Council statement that would have expressed concern for civilian deaths and raised the issue of a cease-fire.
“The president has been doing this long enough ... to know sometimes diplomacy has to happen behind the scenes,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Tuesday.
She spoke as Biden headed to a Ford electric vehicle site in Michigan to promote a green infrastructure plan.
Pressure on the White House to do more in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dogged the trip, with protesters in communities with large populations of Arab Americans shouting condemnation of Biden.
US reaches out to Arab leaders on Israel, Gaza fighting
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his envoy reached out to Palestinian and regional Arab leaders on Tuesday as attacks between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers raged on, maintaining what the Biden administration is calling its quiet diplomacy while still declining to press for an immediate cease-fire.
Blinken, speaking during an unrelated trip focusing on Russia and Nordic countries, also defended the U.S. decision to block what would have been a unanimous U.N. Security Council statement on the fighting and its civilian toll, and the overall U.S. approach to the worst Israeli-Palestinian fighting since 2014. President Joe Biden, speaking to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, expressed general support for a cease fire but stopped short of joining dozens of Democratic lawmakers in demanding one.
“Our goal remains to bring the current cycle of violence to an end” and then return to a process in which a lasting peace can be forged, the U.S. diplomat said.
Blinken said he had spoken to the foreign ministers of Morocco and Bahrain, two Arab countries that recently have moved to normalize relations with Israel, while US envoy Hady Amr in Israel spoke with Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
The ongoing U.S. outreach — reflecting an administration that has emphasized working with allies, and has refrained from publicly criticizing ally Israel — came as new Hamas rockets and Israeli airstrikes continued for a ninth day. At least 213 Palestinians and 12 people in Israel have died. Efforts by Egypt and others to mediate a truce have stalled.
Biden’s carefully worded statement expressing general support for a cease-fire, in a White House readout Monday of his second known call to Netanyahu in three days as the attacks pounded on, came with the administration under pressure to respond more forcefully despite its reluctance to challenge Israel’s actions in its part of the fighting. The administration also has expressed its determination to wrench the main U.S. foreign policy focus away from Middle East hotspots and Afghanistan.
Biden’s comments on a cease-fire were open-ended and similar to previous administration statements of support in principle for a cease-fire.
Biden also “encouraged Israel to make every effort to ensure the protection of innocent civilians,” the White House said in its readout.
An administration official said the decision to express support and not explicitly demand a cease-fire was intentional. While Biden and top aides are concerned about the mounting bloodshed and loss of innocent life, the decision not to demand an immediate halt to hostilities reflects White House determination to support Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private deliberations.
Meanwhile, European Union foreign ministers were meeting Tuesday to discuss how to use the 27-nation bloc’s political clout to help diplomatic efforts to end the fighting between the Israeli armed forces and Palestinian militants. The EU has been united in its calls for a cease-fire and the need for a political solution to end the latest conflict, but the nations are divided over how best to help.
Netanyahu told Israeli security officials late Monday that Israel would “continue to strike terror targets” in Gaza “as long as necessary in order to return calm and security to all Israeli citizens.”
Separately, the United States, Israel’s top ally, blocked for a third time Monday what would have been a unanimous statement by the 15-nation U.N. Security Council expressing “grave concern” over the intensifying Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the loss of civilian lives. The final U.S. rejection killed the Security Council statement, at least for now.
Blinken said the U.S. was “not standing in the way of diplomacy” and that the U.N. statement would not have advanced the goal of ending the violence.
“If we thought and if we think that there is something, including at the United Nations that could advance the situation, we would be for it,” Blinken said.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki and national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the United States was focusing instead on “quiet, intensive diplomacy.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday joined dozens of Democratic lawmakers — and one Republican and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders — in calling for the cease-fire by both sides. A prominent Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff, the House intelligence committee chairman, pressed the U.S. over the weekend to get more involved.
But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., took the Senate floor on Monday to assail lawmakers for including Israel in their demands for a cease-fire.
“To say that both sides, both sides need to de-escalate downplays the responsibility terrorists have for initiating the conflict in the first place and suggests Israelis are not entitled to defend themselves against ongoing rocket barrages,” McConnell said.
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., led 19 Republican senators releasing a resolution supporting Israel’s side of the fighting. They plan to try to introduce the legislation next week.
Biden boosting world vaccine sharing commitment to 80M doses
President Joe Biden said Monday that the U.S. will share an additional 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines with the world in the coming six weeks as domestic demand for shots drops and global disparities in distribution have grown more evident.
The doses will come from existing production of Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccine stocks, marking the first time that U.S.-controlled doses of vaccines authorized for use in the country will be shared overseas. It will boost the global vaccine sharing commitment from the U.S. to 80 million.
“We know America will never be fully safe until the pandemic that’s raging globally is under control,” Biden said at the White House.
The announcement comes on top of the Biden’s administration’s prior commitment to share about 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is not yet authorized for use in the U.S., by the end of June. The AstraZeneca doses will be available to ship once they clear a safety review by the Food and Drug Administration.
Biden also tapped COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients to lead the administration’s efforts to share doses with the world.
Also read: Bangladesh’s request for vaccine doses under active consideration: Miller
“Our nation’s going to be the arsenal of vaccines for the rest of the world,” Biden said. He added that, compared to other countries like Russia and China that have sought to leverage their domestically produced doses, “we will not use our vaccines to secure favors from other countries.”
The Biden administration hasn’t yet said how the new commitment of vaccines will be shared or which countries will receive them.
To date, the U.S. has shared about 4.5 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine with Canada and Mexico. Additional doses of the Pfizer vaccine manufactured in the U.S. have begun to be exported as the company has met its initial contract commitments to the federal government.
Also read: Will do our best to support vaccine rollout in neighbouring countries: India
The U.S. has faced growing pressure to share more of its vaccine stockpile with the world as interest in vaccines has waned domestically.
“While wealthy countries continue ramping up vaccinations, less than 1 percent of COVID-19 vaccine doses globally have been administered to people in low-income countries,” said Tom Hart the acting CEO of the ONE Campaign. “The sooner the US and other wealthy countries develop a coordinated strategy for sharing vaccine doses with the world’s most vulnerable, the faster we will end the global pandemic for all.”
More than 157 million Americans have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and 123 million are full vaccinated against the virus. Biden hopes the U.S. will have 160 million people fully vaccinated by July Fourth.
Globally, more than 3.3 million people are confirmed to have died from the coronavirus. The U.S. has seen the largest confirmed loss of life from COVID-19, at more than 586,000 people.
AP’s top editor calls for probe into Israeli airstrike
The Associated Press’ top editor on Sunday called for an independent investigation into the Israeli airstrike that targeted and destroyed a Gaza City building housing the AP, broadcaster Al-Jazeera and other media, saying the public deserves to know the facts.
Sally Buzbee, AP’s executive editor, said the Israeli government has yet to provide clear evidence supporting its attack, which leveled the 12-story al-Jalaa tower.
The Israeli military, which gave AP journalists and other tenants about an hour to evacuate, claimed Hamas used the building for a military intelligence office and weapons development. Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said Israel was compiling evidence for the U.S. but declined to commit to providing it within the next two days.
Also read: Israel strike in Gaza destroys building with AP, other media
“We’re in the middle of fighting,” Conricus said Sunday. “That’s in process and I’m sure in due time that information will be presented.”
Buzbee said the AP has had offices in al-Jalaa tower for 15 years and never was informed or had any indication that Hamas might be in the building. She said the facts must be laid out.
“We are in a conflict situation,” Buzbee said. “We do not take sides in that conflict. We heard Israelis say they have evidence; we don’t know what that evidence is.”
Also read: AP 'horrified' by Israeli attack on its office
“We think it’s appropriate at this point for there to be an independent look at what happened yesterday — an independent investigation,” she added.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday repeated Israel’s claim that the building housed an intelligence office of Hamas. Asked if he had relayed supporting evidence of that in a call with President Joe Biden on Saturday, Netanyahu said “we pass it through our intelligence people.”
Buzbee said the AP journalists were “rattled” after the airstrike but are doing fine and reporting the news. She expressed concern about the impact on news coverage.
Also read: Israeli military says it bombed home of a top Hamas leader
“This does impact the world’s right to know what is happening on both sides of the conflict in real time,” she said.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke by phone Saturday with AP’s president and CEO, Gary Pruitt. The State Department said Blinken offered “his unwavering support for independent journalists and media organizations around the world and noted the indispensability of their reporting in conflict zones.”
Buzbee and Conricus spoke on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” and Netanyahu was on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
‘Free Palestine’: Protesters in major US cities decry airstrikes over Gaza
Pro-Palestinian protesters took to the streets of Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta and other U.S. cities on Saturday to demand an end to Israeli airstrikes over the Gaza Strip.
Thousands of people shut down traffic on a major thoroughfare in west Los Angeles as they marched two miles from outside the federal building to the Israeli consulate. The protesters waved signs that said “free Palestine” and shouted “long live intifada,” or uprising.
A protest that started in a neighborhood in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, which has a large Arabic-speaking community, continued through the streets for several hours on Saturday afternoon. Footage on social media showed people had climbed up the poles of street lights to wave flags while others set off fireworks. As the sun set, some protesters walked onto the Interstate 278 shutting down traffic in at least on direction, according to video posted online.
Read:Israeli military says it bombed home of a top Hamas leader
Bella Hadid, a well-known Palestinian-American model, participated in the Brooklyn protest.
The marches coincided with Nakba Day, which commemorate the 1948 displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians amid Israel’s declaration of independence.
In Atlanta, hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, including grandparents, teenagers and mothers and fathers with youngsters in tow, assembled downtown to wave signs and chant slogans, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.
One sign read, “We can’t breathe since 1948” — a nod to the racial injustice and police brutality protests in the U.S. during the past year in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody after he couldn’t breathe, the newspaper reported.
In San Francisco, a raucous crowd banged drums and yelled “Palestine will be free” as they marched across the Mission district to Dolores Park.
A similar scene played out in Boston as protesters walked a short distance from Copley Square to the Israeli Consulate for New England, blocking traffic.
Footage on social media shows protesters unfurl a banner in the colors of the Palestinian flag with the words “Free Palestine” while standing on top of the awning of the building where the consulate is located.
In Washington, thousands of protesters streamed from the Washington Monument and to the National Archives. In Philadelphia, demonstrators filled Rittenhouse Square to decry U.S. support for Israel.
Read:AP 'horrified' by Israeli attack on its office
At a protest in Pittsburgh, one speaker called on lawmakers to put restrictions on how Israel can spend aid from the United States.
The protests were stoked by five days of mayhem that left at least 145 Palestinians dead in Gaza and eight dead on the Israeli side. The violence, set off by Hamas firing a rocket into Israel on Monday, came after weeks of mounting tensions and heavy-handed Israeli measures in contested Jerusalem.
Israel stepped up its assault and slammed the Gaza Strip with airstrikes Saturday, in a dramatic escalation that included bombing the home of a senior Hamas leader, killing a family of 10 in a refugee camp and destroying a building that house the offices of The Associated Press and other media.
Kid reporter who interviewed Obama at White House dies at 23
The student reporter who gained national acclaim when he interviewed President Barack Obama at the White House in 2009 has died of natural causes, his family says.
Damon Weaver was 23 when he died May 1, his sister, Candace Hardy, told the Palm Beach Post. Further details were not released. He had been studying communications at Albany State University in Georgia.
Weaver was 11 when he interviewed Obama for 10 minutes in the Diplomatic Room on Aug. 13, 2009, asking questions that focused primarily on education. He covered school lunches, bullying, conflict resolution and how to succeed.
Weaver then asked Obama to be his “homeboy,” saying then-Vice President Joe Biden had already accepted.
“Absolutely,” a smiling Obama said, shaking the boy’s hand.
Read:Biden opens 'Obamacare' window for uninsured as Covid-19 rages
He used that meeting to later interview Oprah Winfrey and athletes like Dwyane Wade.
“He was just a nice person, genuine, very intelligent,” Hardy said. “Very outspoken, outgoing. He never said no to anybody.”
Weaver got his start in fifth grade when he volunteered for the school newscast at K.E. Cunningham/Canal Point Elementary in a farm community on the shores of Lake Okeechobee.
“Damon was the kid who ran after me in the hall to tell me he was interested,” his teacher, Brian Zimmerman, told the Post in 2016. “And right away, I just saw the potential for the way he was on camera. You could see his personality come through. He wasn’t nervous being on camera.”
Biden, GOP senators upbeat, plan more infrastructure talks
After meeting at the White House, President Joe Biden and a group of Republican senators agreed to talk again early next week as negotiations intensified over a potentially bipartisan infrastructure package that could become one piece of the administration’s ambitious $4 trillion public investment plan.
The GOP senators exited the more than 90-minute meeting Thursday “encouraged” about their discussions with the president and prepared to build on the $568 billion proposal they had put forward last month as an alternative to his sweeping American jobs and families plans.
“The president asked us to come back and rework an offer so that he could then react to that,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who is leading the group.
“We’re very encouraged,” she told reporters outside the White House. “The attitude the president had in the Oval Office with us was very supportive and desirous of striking a deal.”
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Biden also emerged upbeat. “I am very optimistic that we can reach a reasonable agreement — and even if we don’t, it’s been a good faith effort,” Biden said in the Rose Garden.
Biden is intent on at least trying to strike a deal with Republicans rather than simply going it alone with a Democrats-only bill, which might in some ways be a more politically viable route in a Congress held by the president’s party with only the slimmest of majorities.
One strategy that appears to be coming into focus would be for Biden to negotiate a more limited, traditional infrastructure bill of roads, highways, bridges and broadband as a bipartisan effort. Then, Democrats could try to muscle through the remainder of Biden’s priorities on climate investments and the so-called human infrastructure of child care, education and hospitals on their own.
“I’m willing to negotiate,” Biden said earlier at the White House. But the president has indicated that he’s not about to wait indefinitely for a compromise that may or may not come, and reiterated his view Thursday that “doing nothing is not an option.”
The White House said the president stressed that inaction was a “red line for him.” He set a Memorial Day deadline for progress on a bipartisan deal.
Those gathered included some of the top ranking Republicans — Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Mike Crapo of Idaho, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Roger Wicker of Mississippi. Joining Biden were Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
Thursday’s meeting followed a lengthy session at the White House with the congressional leadership the day before. Republican leader Mitch McConnell has said his side will accept spending as much as $800 billion, but Republicans made it clear they would refuse to embrace Biden’s broad proposals or his idea of raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy to pay for the plans.
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The White House outreach is part political strategy and part practical legislating. Striking a deal with Republicans would give all sides a political win — a rare bipartisan accomplishment — without fully forfeiting the president’s broader goals, which are largely shared by Democrats.
It also acknowledges the “red line” that McConnell has drawn against GOP votes for undoing the 2017 tax law by raising taxes on corporations or those earning more than $400,000.
“I want to get a bipartisan deal on as much as we can get a bipartisan deal on — and that means roads, bridges, broadband, all infrastructure,” Biden said Wednesday on MSNBC. “And then fight over what’s left and see if I can get it done without Republicans, if need be.”
Capito has taken the lead for Senate Republicans, keeping in close contact with both the president’s team and McConnell, she said, as she shuttles between the White House and Capitol Hill.
The West Virginia senator is no stranger to the legislative process, serving more than a decade in the House and now as the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Public Works Committee. She ushered a $35 billion bipartisan water resources bill to passage in the Senate and is hard at work with the panel’s Democratic chairman, Tom Carper of Delaware, a Biden ally, on a big surface transportation bill.
Biden personally reached out to Capito late last week after the water bill cleared the Senate.
“The president he expressed on the phone with me, and has with others, that you know he’s anxious to move forward,” she said.
“His desire is to define where we have common ground and I think we’ll probably spend the bulk of the time talking about that.”
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Biden has insisted he doesn’t want working-class Americans to bear the “burden” of paying for all the new infrastructure investments alone, resisting GOP plans for taxes and user fees, like tolls, to fund the projects.
One potential new funding source could be the more than $1 trillion in unpaid taxes each year.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has mentioned tapping that potential funding source and she said Biden discussed it at their meeting Wednesday. Republicans have not resisted it.
“That’s a big chunk that would go a long way,” she said Thursday.
McConnell and House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy have insisted they want the infrastructure bills to go through the committee process, where lawmakers can hammer out the details and take ownership of the proposals, rather than have the package negotiated in their leadership suites.