Editorial Note: The following news reports are summaries from original sources. They may also include corrections of Arabic names and political terminology. Comments are in parentheses.

 

While Biden Faces Irish Anger Over Gaza Genocide, Trump Says Israel Should End the War Quickly

Saying: We Need Peace. 

March 18, 2024

 

Trump says Israel should quickly end the Gaza war, 'we need peace,' March 17, 2024	Biden licking ice-cream in New York, on February 26, 2024
Members of a bagpipe marching band perform as they march during the annual St Patrick's Day Parade in New York City on March 16, 2024	St Patrick's Day Parade, in Atlanta, March 16, 2024

 

Trump says Israel should quickly end the Gaza war, "we need peace"

Story by Barak Ravid

Axios, March 17, 2024

Former President Donald Trump called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza quickly during an interview with Fox News Channel's "MediaBuzz."

Why it matters: This is the first time Trump has called to end the war in Gaza since the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7.

Trump's comments in Sunday's aired interview follow calls he made on Friday with FNC's "Fox and Friends" host Brian Kilmeade that Israel should "finish the problem." "You had a horrible invasion. It took place. It would have never happened if I was president, by the way," he added Friday. On Sunday, the former president didn't mention hostages or any other conditions that he would back to broker a ceasefire.

What they are saying: "You have to finish it up and do it quickly and get back to the world of peace. We need peace in the world…we need peace in the Middle East," Trump said when asked by "MediaBuzz" host Howard Kurtz what he would tell Netanyahu about the war in Gaza.

Trump added that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's (D-N.Y.) criticism of Israel was motivated by domestic politics. "He looks at 'where do I get more votes' and I guess he's seeing, you know, the Palestinians and he's seeing marches and, you know, they are big, and he says 'I want to go that way instead of Israel,'" Trump said, later adding that Schumer "dumped Israel."

Flashback: In the early days after the Hamas attack, Trump criticized Netanyahu for failure to prevent it.

Since the war began, Trump has said multiple times that he was disappointed by Netanyahu for not helping in the mission that led to the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. Trump has expressed support for Israel in recent months, but has avoided publicly backing Netanyahu.

Trump says Israel should quickly end the Gaza war, "we need peace" (msn.com)

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Trump Claims He’d Get Israel to End the War in Gaza ‘Quickly’

The daily Beast, March 17, 2024 

The ex-president and presumptive GOP nominee also said in a Fox News interview that Israel should disavow Democrats.

Donald Trump claims he’d be able to end the war in Gaza simply by pressuring Israel to seek out peace.

During an interview with Fox News’ MediaBuzz, Trump blasted Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s condemnation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and said Israel should disassociate itself from Democrats. He then claimed that he would tell Netanyahu to end the war “quickly,” urging the country to move on from a state of violence.

“I think you have to finish it up and do it quickly and get back to the world of peace,” Trump told host Howard Kurtz. “We need peace in the world.”

Trump claimed a resolution to the Middle East violence would be one of the first things he gets accomplished should he win in November, along with an end to the war in Ukraine. That war, he said, he would try and get done before taking office—despite the Logan Act preventing citizens from acting as government representatives. “I wanted to do it before, you know, before taking office, if that’s possible, and I think it is,” Trump said.

The end of both wars adds to the list of things Trump wants to do soon after taking office should he win a second term. He has previously expressed a desire to act like a dictator on “day one” in order to close the border and increase U.S. gas and oil drilling. He also expressed last week a desire to free people convicted for attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, calling them “hostages” on Truth Social.

Trump Claims He’d Get Israel to End the War in Gaza ‘Quickly’ (thedailybeast.com) 

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Biden faces Irish backlash over Israel-Hamas war ahead of St. Patrick's Day event with Ireland's leader

By Emmet Lyons

Sara Cook and Caitlin Yilek contributed reporting.

CBS, March 15, 2024

This St. Patrick's Day will see all of the customary White House traditions: Green ties will be worn, grip-and-grin photo opportunities between diplomats will be had, and a bowl of shamrocks will be presented to President Biden by Ireland's leader, Leo Varadkar, as he visits the White House before a traditional lunch with congressional leaders Friday. 

But amid the pomp and pageantry to mark St. Patrick's Day, which is on Sunday, the diplomatic discussions at this year's festivities may have a certain edge to them, as public fury rises in Ireland over President Biden's stance on the Israel-Hamas war. There will be pressure on the Irish delegation from their constituents and elected officials back at home to call out what they see as American complicity in the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians.

Varadkar, Ireland's prime minister, or Taoiseach, as he's called in the Irish language, has spent the week in the U.S. and, while he's been quick to compliment Mr. Biden and his administration ahead of the two men's first bilateral meeting later Friday, Varadkar has also been assertive in pushing Ireland's position when it comes to the war in Gaza.

Speaking alongside Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday morning, Varadkar praised Harris and said she'd shown "great courage and leadership in recent weeks, when you spoke publicly in favor of a cease-fire in Gaza... we support the work of the United States in trying to bring that about." 

Ahead of a meeting with Mr. Biden in the Oval Office, Varadkar told reporters he was keen to talk about situation with the president. 

"You know my view that we need to have a ceasefire as soon as possible to get food and medicine in and the hostages out," Varadkar said. "We need to talk about how we can make that happen and move towards a two-state solution which I think is the only way we'll have lasting peace and security." 

"I agree," Mr. Biden responded. 

Varadkar has called for a permanent cease-fire, while Mr. Biden wants a temporary one of at least six weeks as part of a hostage deal. 

After their Oval Office meeting, Mr. Biden and Varadkar attended the annual Friends of Ireland lunch on Capitol Hill.

Mr. Biden said that he was "deeply grateful for Ireland's unwavering humanitarian aid" to Gaza and Ukraine, and again called on Congress to send him a foreign aid bill. 

"I'm committed to continue to do our part," Mr. Biden said. 

Varadkar was measured when he spoke of Mr. Biden earlier in the week. 

"The situation in Gaza is catastrophic and of great concern, and I have to say I believe President Biden's heart is in the right place here," Varadkar said, speaking to reporters at a dinner in Washington on Wednesday. "I know he's working with Egypt, with Qatar, Saudi and other countries in the region like the Jordanians to try and get Israel and Hamas to agree to a ceasefire."

"But I also want to put across the very strong view of the Irish people that there should be an immediate cease-fire," the Irish leader added.

On Tuesday in Boston, Varadkar said that "when thousands of children are being killed, no one can avert their eyes."

His remarks, while hardly a condemnation of the Biden administration's Middle East policy, may sting an American president who considers himself the most Irish of recent U.S. leaders. It was less than a year ago that Mr. Biden — who's known to regularly cite the poetry of Seamus Heaney and make reference to his Irish ancestors arriving in America on "coffin" ships — visited the country, to great diplomatic success.

The president was greeted with adulation by elected Irish officials and members of the public as thousands of people turned up to watch him address a large crowd in his great-great-great grandfather's hometown of Ballina in County Mayo last April.

Much of that enthusiasm appears to have evaporated on Irish soil as the war in Gaza rages.

"It's amazing how much things can change in a year," said Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, a center-left Irish lawmaker who warmly welcomed Mr. Biden to Dublin last year, when the U.S. leader addressed both chambers of Ireland's parliament. 

"That visit would be impossible today," said Ó Ríordáin. "If that happened today, there would be nobody in the chamber."

Ó Ríordáin said while the average Irish person would have warmly welcomed Mr. Biden a year ago, owing largely to his heritage, he would receive no such homecoming this year, after more than five months of imagery showing mass destruction in the embattled Palestinian enclave.

"What we see from the Irish vantage point is the elimination of 30,000 lives, disproportionately women and children," he told CBS News. "What we see is a very well equipped, well armed, powerful nation exact revenge on a very beleaguered people."

Ireland has long been considered one of the biggest proponents of the Palestinian people's call for an end to Israeli occupation and statehood — partly due to what the Irish public see as parallels in the two peoples' histories. The history of British occupation still leaves an indelible mark on the collective Irish psyche.

"I think that's very clear from Irish history. I think that's part of it," said Ó Ríordáin. "We have muscle memory of instances such as Bloody Sunday or British atrocities in Ireland… there is a clear delineation between the acts of a terrorist organization and the retribution of a state."

Fatin Al Tamimi, an Irish-Palestinian national who emigrated to the Emerald Isle in 1988, told CBS News that public outrage over the conflict has led to thousands of Irish people showing up at weekly demonstrations she's helped to organize across the country. The protesters, including some 100,000 people who took to the streets for one demonstration in Dublin last month, are also demanding an immediate cease-fire.

"The Irish are human," Al-Tamimi told CBS News. "They feel with others and they refuse oppression."

Al-Tamimi said that, like many in the Irish public, she didn't believe Varadkar and his delegation should even have visited the White House for St. Patrick's Day this year.

Members of political parties from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland traditionally visit the White House for St. Patrick's Day, but this year, the leader of one of Northern Ireland's smaller Irish nationalist parties decided to boycott the event.

"I'm not going to the White House, which is basically a kind of party and not much more," said Colum Eastwood, the leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party. "I just think it would be kind of gross to be drinking pints of Guinness and eating canapes when Biden is facilitating what's happening in Gaza." 

"All we've really seen from the White House has been briefings that he [Biden] is a bit annoyed with Netanyahu. It's a bit pathetic, really, when America is providing Israel with weapons and when bombs are being dropped on children."

The disconnect between Irish political leadership and the White House can be seen in clear terms when it comes to funding of UNRWA, the United Nations humanitarian agency for Palestinians — a controversial agency that is nonetheless considered a vital lifeline for desperate civilians in Gaza.

Israel alleged in January that at least a dozen UNRWA staff members took part in Hamas' bloody Oct. 7 terror attack, prompting the U.S. and a number of other Western nations to suspend further funding for the agency pending a full investigation.

Ireland has not only continued funding UNRWA, it committed about $22 million in new funding for the agency in February, citing the "humanitarian catastrophe" in Gaza.

Ireland's President Michael Higgins, whose role is largely ceremonial, roundly condemned the pause in funding by other countries this week, calling it, "a propaganda campaign against the United Nations" and a "scandalous travesty."

"Those countries, and they include some of the strongest economies in the world, who have removed over $450m from the UNRWA budget must take account of what is now being shown on the television screens of the world for all to see — infant children dying from lack of oxygen," Higgins said in a statement.

Biden faces Irish backlash over Israel-Hamas war ahead of St. Patrick's Day event with Ireland's leader - CBS News 

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Joe Biden Faces Irish Anger on St. Patrick's Day

Newsweek, March 15, 2024

By Kate Plummer

Joe Biden might hope his annual St. Patrick's Day celebrations will be a chance to drum up support as his presidential reelection campaign kicks off in earnest.

But while he hobnobs with a number of international politicians including Michelle O'Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly, the first and deputy first ministers of Northern Ireland, the United States president will face anger from some on both sides of Ireland's border who oppose his response to the Israel-Hamas war.

The U.S. has long been an ally of Israel and Biden has supported the country with aid and weaponry. The U.S. has vetoed three United Nations resolutions calling for a ceasefire, despite global criticism. Biden has toughened his approach to Israel in recent months, calling for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, and warning Israel that it faces "strategic defeat" if it allows the humanitarian crisis to continue.

Since the conflict escalated to other countries, the U.S. and its allies have carried out attacks on Houthi bases in Yemen after the Houthis targeted shipping in the Red Sea in response to the war in Gaza.

Biden's approach has caused backlash both in the U.S. and abroad. Some pro-Palestinian demonstrators in the U.S. have called the Democrat "Genocide Joe," and 13 percent of voters declared themselves "uncommitted" in the Michigan Democratic presidential primary last month in protest of the White House's backing of Israel.

Meanwhile politicians in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland have faced calls to boycott St. Patrick's Day celebrations.

Gerry Carroll, a member of the Northern Ireland legislative assembly for the People Before Profit party, called for a boycott in January, and Colum Eastwood, leader of the country's Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), said he has declined his invitation to celebrations in Washington this year.

Newsweek reached out to representatives for Biden via email for comment.

Eastwood told Newsweek that he had visited Gaza in 2012, where he witnessed death, injury, and the displacement of entire communities.

"It's that direct experience of the horror faced by Palestinians in Gaza that's led to my decision that I can't join St. Patrick's Day events at the White House this year," he said.

"The international community's response to the unimaginable violence in Gaza has been appalling but the U.S. response in particular has been heinously deficient. In those circumstances, I can't drink Guinness, have a bit of craic, and pretend that nothing's happening on the other side of the world.

"I'm not naive about the scale of the impact of our decision not to attend—I don't expect U.S. foreign policy to change as a result. But I think that not attending sends a far stronger message about the depth of feeling in Ireland about the situation in Gaza than 30 seconds with Joe Biden pretending that we can change his mind.

"I sincerely hope that the U.S. administration will move to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza to end the monstrous violence soon."

Ireland's response is perhaps unsurprising when considering its geopolitical context. The Republic, in the south, is one of four European Union members that is not part of NATO and is militarily neutral. Some have compared the Palestinian experience with British colonialism in Ireland, and this week, Irish President Michael D. Higgins urged countries to increase aid funding to UNRWA, the U.N. agency that provides aid to Palestinian refugees. Other countries paused aid after allegations that the agency had links to Hamas.

In January, experts told Newsweek that the U.S. risked alienating Ireland over its policy.

Eastwood's colleague Claire Hanna, an SDLP lawmaker, told The Washington Post: "The White House St. Patrick's Day event is a party. We have taken the principled position that we won't be attending that party."

She continued: "This is about the deep distress that we and our constituents feel practically every hour of the day about what's going on in Gaza, and our attempt to use whatever opportunities we have — parliamentary and otherwise — to contribute and create international momentum to end this."

Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is among those who will attend the event, despite opposition. He and Biden will take part in a traditional shamrock handover in the Oval Office on Sunday.

But this symbolic exchange will not be without its tensions. During a visit to Boston on Tuesday, Varadkar said he would use the visit to call for a ceasefire. Similarly, in a statement to The Washington Post, republican party Sinn Féin said it was attending to advocate for an end to the war and to strengthen support for Irish peace and reunification.

Dr. Peter McLoughlin, a political lecturer at Queen's University Belfast, said the White House celebrations have become politicized because of the war in Gaza.

"The issue of White House attendance for St Patrick's Day festivities has become hugely politicized in Ireland by Biden's failure to restrain Israel's actions in Gaza," McLoughlin told Newsweek.

"It is ironic that Colum Eastwood, representing the most moderate nationalist party in Northern Ireland, is not attending, whilst the Sinn Féin leader, Mary Lou McDonald, will—particularly given that Sinn Féin supporters have traditionally been amongst the most radically pro-Palestinian voices here.

"However, the Irish historical experience of colonialism makes most Irish people at least sympathetic if not strongly pro-Palestinian, and support the perceived underdog in any conflict," he said.

"That means that McDonald and the Irish Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, will need to constantly justify their attendance at the White House, stressing that they are using this access to press the U.S. government to do more to achieve peace in the Middle East—and not just pursuing economic and other interests that are also important to Ireland."

Robert Schmuhl, Professor Emeritus of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame and the author of Ireland's Exiled Children, said that while there were "brickbats of criticism" over Biden's approach to Gaza, Ireland and the U.S. still have "important and strong" ties.

"Both at home and abroad, the Biden administration's approach to the carnage in Gaza continues to bring brickbats of criticism," he told Newsweek. "This is certainly the case in Ireland. But policy reservations notwithstanding, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and other Irish officials will meet with President Biden in the annual joint recognition of St. Patrick's Day at the White House later this week.

"No other foreign country receives the yearly attention in Washington as the Irish do, and, despite serious differences over Gaza, the ties between America and Ireland remain both important and strong. It truly is 'a special relationship,' and one where frank words can be spoken by the leaders of both democracies."

Political tension withstanding, several of Northern Ireland's politicians will still attend the St. Patrick's Day celebrations, including Economy Minister Conor Murphy, Stormont speaker Edwin Poots, Education Minister Paul Givan, and DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson.

On October 7, the Palestinian militant group Hamas carried out a surprise attack in the south of Israel, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking hostages. The subsequent Israeli military response in Gaza has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, according to the Associated Press, citing the Gaza Health Ministry.

Correction 03/15/24, 08:23 a.m. ET: This article was updated with corrections to the spelling of Clare Daly and Leo Varadkar.

Joe Biden Faces Irish Anger on St. Patrick's Day (newsweek.com) 

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