Some progress, & much uncertainty, as Blinken marks end of 2023
“If we come up short, it won't be our adversaries and competitors who stopped us,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said today. “It will be ourselves.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, suffering from a bad cold, took to the podium at the State Department for an end of the year press conference today and urged Congress to overcome their differences to pass a supplemental budget request to ensure Ukraine can continue to defend itself from Russia’s invasion.
“What we do, what we fail to do in this moment, will have profound consequences for decades to come,” Blinken said. “The stakes could not be clearer. If we want to deliver on the issues that affect the lives of the American people, we have to keep investing in ourselves, in our network of allies and partners, in our ability to solve global challenges.
“And to do that, we need Congress to pass the President's additional national security funding request,” Blinken said. “If we come up short, it won't be our adversaries and competitors who stopped us. It will be ourselves.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin “thinks his strategy of waiting us out while sending wave after wave of young Russians into a meat grinder of his own making will pay off,” Blinken said. “On one and only one point, I agree with Putin: America’s ongoing support is critical to enabling Ukraine’s brave soldiers and citizens to keep up their fight.”
“Putin is betting that our divisions will prevent us from coming through for Ukraine,” Blinken said. “We have proven him wrong before; we will prove him wrong again.”
In Gaza, Israel’s conflict “needs to move to a lower intensity phase”
On Gaza, Blinken acknowledged the last few months for him have been “gut-wrenching.”
“It’s clear that conflict will move and needs to move to a lower intensity phase,” Blinken said. “And we expect to see and want to see a shift to more targeted operations with a smaller number of forces, that’s really focused in on dealing with the leadership, Hamas’ tunnel network, and a few other critical things.
“And as that happens, I think you'll see as well that the harm done to civilians also decreases significantly,” Blinken said.
“The last couple of months have been gut wrenching,” Blinken said. “When you see the suffering of men, women, especially children, in Gaza…it affects me very deeply.”
In addition to urging Israel to minimize harm to civilians, Blinken said “there seems to be silence on what Hamas could do, should do, must do if we want to end the suffering of innocent men, women and children. It would be good if the world could unite around that proposition as well.”
Blinken said the United States was continuing to engage with countries in good faith negotiations on a possible UN Security Council resolution on the Gaza conflict, a vote on which has now been postponed until Thursday. He suggested concern about alleged text in the draft that reportedly calls for a different inspection mechanism for humanitarian aid convoys going into Gaza. Blinken seemed to be referring to that when he said the United States wants to ensure that the resolution does not inadvertently set back recent progress getting more aid into Gaza, including via the Kerem Shalom crossing point which Israel opened this past week under U.S. encouragement.
“We want to make sure that the resolution… and what it calls for…actually advances that effort, and doesn’t do anything that could actually hurt the delivery of humanitarian assistance (or) make it more complicated,” Blinken said.
Iran: Journalist Sara Massoumi sentenced to six months prison and banned from journalism for two years for a tweet
Prominent Iranian journalist Sara Massoumi wrote today on Twitter that that she has been sentenced by Iran’s Revolutionary Court to six months prison and banned from practicing journalism for two years. Allegedly as punishment for a tweet she wrote a few months ago about a young woman who died in suspicious circumstances after being confronted over hair covering on the Tehran metro.
I spent many months covering the Iran nuclear deal talks alongside Sara, especially from 2013-2016, and have tremendous respect for her professionalism.
She told me that she expected a prison sentence. “But the news that annoyed me immensely was the ban from work,” she wrote. “Journalism was not work for me, it was love.”
A book recommendation
I have been enjoying a novel by a Palestinian British author, Isabella Hammad, called “Enter Ghost.”
It is about a London theater actress of Palestinian descent, who goes to Haifa, Israel to visit her sister, who is a professor at an Israeli university. The actress, Sonia, ends up getting recruited by a family friend to perform in a production of Hamlet the friend is producing in the West Bank. The big episodes of violence are before and after what is taking place (okay, I haven’t quite finished it yet), but there is a sense of dislocation and unease and suspense, and it is very moving and relatable in a way sometimes news reports struggle to be.
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Best wishes, readers, for the holidays. Wishing much health, happiness, peace, security and democracy for all in the new year.
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