1 year after Hezbollah strikes, Israel reinforces troops and questions mount over ‘limited’ operation
One week after Israel launched a ground incursion into Lebanon and one year after Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in support of Hamas, Jerusalem reinforced its troops fighting inside Lebanon with a third division, prompting immediate questions over the extent of its “limited” operations in Lebanon. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Sunday sent troops from its 91st Division, also known as the Galilee Formation, to join forces already in Lebanon hunting down Hezbollah strongholds. The 91st Division, traditionally responsible for overseeing security for the entirety of the border with Lebanon, will reinforce efforts already being carried out by two other divisions. AMERICAN FATHER OF HAMAS HOSTAGE ITAY CHEN PUSHES US, ISRAEL ON ‘PLAN B’ AS NEGOTIATIONS FALTER Israel’s initial advance into Lebanon was led by soldiers from the 98th Division on Oct. 1, which encompassed paratroopers, elite commandos and the 7th Armored Brigade, who were transferred to northern Israel from the border with Gaza in early September for training, reported the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) Long War Journal on Sunday ahead of the IDF announcement. “Forces from the Commando Brigade, including soldiers from the Egoz Unit, located and destroyed a Hezbollah attack infrastructure, which included a rocket launcher, explosive stockpiles, and additional military equipment,” the IDF said of the initial operation. Though Hezbollah’s response was fairly muted as many were believed to have retreated ahead of the incursion, at least nine IDF soldiers were killed between Oct. 1-2 during one of the opening battles in Lebanon, confirmed the Long War Journal. Reinforcements from the IDF’s 36th Division, including the Golani infantry, 188th Armored Brigade and the 6th Reserve Infantry Brigade were then sent in, according to reports last week. Following the Israeli incursion – a security measure that the U.S. and other international allies warned Jerusalem against – IDF spokesperson Rear. Adm. Daniel Hagari said Israel would not push its ground forces north toward Beirut and would instead focus on securing the villages near the border. Jerusalem has said the operation in Lebanon is necessary to secure the area so some 60,000 Israelis from northern Israel could return home, though data collected by the FDD shows that some 150,000 Israelis have evacuated from the northern border areas. IDF MEETS LITTLE RESISTANCE FROM HEZBOLLAH AFTER WEEKS OF HITTING TERROR TARGETS, OFFICIALS SAY Hagari said the incursion would be “limited” and take “days” to “weeks” to complete. But the renewed support of additional troops on Monday prompted questions over the scope of Israel’s plans in southern Lebanon, including from the U.S. State Department on Monday. In response to questions from reporters regarding Israel’s operations in Lebanon, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said, “We’re watching this very closely.” “We support their ability to target militants, to degrade Hezbollah’s infrastructure, to degrade Hezbollah’s capability. But we are very cognizant of the many times in the past where Israel has gone in on what looked like limited operations and has stayed for months or for years,” he added. “And ultimately, that’s not the outcome that we want to see.” Israel has not announced any additional plans for its ground forces and said the IDF Divisions have engaged in “targeted, limited, and localized operations” in southern Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah’s infrastructure. But one security expert with the FDD pointed out that Israel could be taking precautionary steps to build up its force in the region should Israel decide it needs to bolster its ability to go after Hezbollah even further. “What the Israelis have been doing is gradually ratcheting up pressure on Hezbollah to make the price of continuing to attack in support of Gaza too costly for the organization,” David Daoud, senior fellow at FDD specializing in Hezbollah and Lebanon, told Fox News Digital. Daoud explained that in the wake of the Oct. 8 attacks, Israel and Hezbollah engaged in “mutual attrition,” continuing to strike one another but rarely taking the level of attack beyond aerial bombardments, unlike the attacks carried out by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. ISRAEL’S GROUND INVASION INTO LEBANON IMMINENT AS CABINET APPROVES NEXT PHASE OF THE WAR This level of engagement shifted after Israel’s telecommunication device operation in which it allegedly detonated some 5,000 pagers previously distributed to Hezbollah operatives, killing more than three dozen and wounding nearly 3,000 others in a coordinated attack in late September. Israel has not taken credit for the attacks, but according to open-source data compiled by the FDD in its latest interactive report dubbed “Road to the Third Lebanon War, Mapping the War of Attrition,” the event was a clear launching point in which Jerusalem drastically changed its modus operandi when it came to countering Hezbollah. On Sept. 22, Israel carried out its most significant bombardment against the terrorist group than at any other point since the Oct. 8, 2023,attacks, firing some 1,182 strikes, nearly five times the number of attacks it fired during its second-heaviest strike campaign on Feb. 11, 2024, when 239 strikes were fired, the FDD found. “I would call it a kind of proactive attrition,” said Daoud, who co-authored the FDD report. “The Israelis are no longer keeping a balance of attrition, they’re really weighing heavily on Hezbollah without going to a full ground invasion.” The expert explained that the IDF is “ratcheting up pressure” on Hezbollah in an attempt to get it to back off its support for Hamas, a similar strategy it has taken in Gaza in an attempt to persuade Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar to hand over the hostages. The merits of this approach are debatable as hostages remain in Hamas captivity despite the immense pains the IDF has caused in the Gaza Strip, and Daoud questioned whether this tactic would be effective against Hezbollah, an organization that is more sophisticated, better armed, better financed and more entwined in Lebanese society. “I don’t see Hezbollah backing down, even at this level of pain that the Israelis are inflicting upon them,” Daoud said. “So a ground invasion may become necessary, and you
House GOP targets Biden ‘social cost’ policy for rising energy prices
FIRST ON FOX – House Republicans are moving to roll back a progressive Obama-era regulatory metric for greenhouse gas emissions, arguing that it’s sandbagging the U.S. energy sector by using “nonscientific” standards. “North Carolinians are struggling to fill up their tanks and pay their electricity bills. The last thing they are worried about is the ‘social cost’ of energy,” Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., told Fox News Digital. “We need to be unleashing American energy to lower prices, not crippling production with burdensome, costly regulations.” Hudson, who also chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, is leading 12 fellow GOP lawmakers in introducing a bill to stop federal agencies using the “social cost of carbon” when creating new regulations for the U.S. energy sector. HOUSE PASSES BILL BLOCKING BIDEN ADMIN ATTEMPT TO REQUIRE TWO-THIRDS OF NEW CARS TO BE ELECTRIC WITHIN YEARS Models calculating the “social cost” of greenhouse gases use several factors, including population health, sea level changes, economic impacts and other human-felt costs. Because of the vastly different indicators, “social cost” emissions projections can vary widely, according to the Brookings Institute. It was first used as a federal regulatory tool under the Obama administration but was rolled back by former President Trump. President Biden made it part of his clean energy plan when he took office, directing a task force to study where federal agencies should consider the “social cost of greenhouse gases” as part of an executive order titled “Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis.” BIDEN-HARRIS EV MANDATES WILL HURT WORKERS IN STATES LIKE MICHIGAN: TUDOR DIXON Democrats have held it up as a necessary tool that presents a more holistic picture for the long-term harms of carbon pollution. Republicans, however, have criticized the metric as a nonscientific tool that’s responsible for burdensome regulations. Republican Study Committee Chair Kevin Hern, R-Okla., a co-sponsor of the bill, said the “social cost” metric and the Biden administration’s green energy push overall was pushing gas prices up. EXPERTS RIP ‘TRIPLE CROWN OF BAD REGS’ AS BIDEN ADMIN POSTS GAS STOVE RULE IT DENIED WAS A BAN “It’s just a fact that government interference in the energy industry has directly contributed to these rising costs. No more manipulated studies and biased research – the American people deserve transparent and honest information,” Hern told Fox News Digital. Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, another co-sponsor of the bill, said, “The Biden-Harris White House has proven their willingness to hide behind biased and flawed research to advance their war against American energy producers.” “The White House should unleash clean, affordable American energy to bring costs down for the American people,” he said. The White House did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
‘Social cost of greenhouse gases’: House GOP targets progressive Biden policy for rising energy prices
FIRST ON FOX: House Republicans are moving to roll back a progressive Obama-era regulatory metric for greenhouse gas emissions, arguing that it’s sandbagging the U.S. energy sector by using “nonscientific” standards. “North Carolinians are struggling to fill up their tanks and pay their electricity bills. The last thing they are worried about is the ‘social cost’ of energy,” Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., told Fox News Digital. “We need to be unleashing American energy to lower prices, not crippling production with burdensome, costly regulations.” Hudson, who also chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, is leading 12 fellow GOP lawmakers in introducing a bill to stop federal agencies using the “social cost of carbon” when creating new regulations for the U.S. energy sector. HOUSE PASSES BILL BLOCKING BIDEN ADMIN ATTEMPT TO REQUIRE TWO-THIRDS OF NEW CARS TO BE ELECTRIC WITHIN YEARS Models calculating the “social cost” of greenhouse gases use several factors, including population health, sea level changes, economic impacts and other human-felt costs. Because of the vastly different indicators, “social cost” emissions projections can vary widely, according to the Brookings Institute. It was first used as a federal regulatory tool under the Obama administration but was rolled back by former President Trump. President Biden made it part of his clean energy plan when he took office, directing a task force to study where federal agencies should consider the “social cost of greenhouse gases” as part of an executive order titled “Protecting Public Health and the Environment and Restoring Science to Tackle the Climate Crisis.” BIDEN-HARRIS EV MANDATES WILL HURT WORKERS IN STATES LIKE MICHIGAN: TUDOR DIXON Democrats have held it up as a necessary tool that presents a more holistic picture for the long-term harms of carbon pollution. Republicans, however, have criticized the metric as a nonscientific tool that’s responsible for burdensome regulations. Republican Study Committee Chair Kevin Hern, R-Okla., a co-sponsor of the bill, said the “social cost” metric and the Biden administration’s green energy push overall was pushing gas prices up. EXPERTS RIP ‘TRIPLE CROWN OF BAD REGS’ AS BIDEN ADMIN POSTS GAS STOVE RULE IT DENIED WAS A BAN “It’s just a fact that government interference in the energy industry has directly contributed to these rising costs. No more manipulated studies and biased research – the American people deserve transparent and honest information,” Hern told Fox News Digital. Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, another co-sponsor of the bill, said, “The Biden-Harris White House has proven their willingness to hide behind biased and flawed research to advance their war against American energy producers.” “The White House should unleash clean, affordable American energy to bring costs down for the American people,” he said. The White House did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Kamala 2.0’s challenge? Making more news, and not just with ultra-friendly hosts
For well over a month, Kamala Harris rode a wave of the most positive press any presidential candidate has gotten in two decades, and her own skills, to turn what had been a lost cause for the Democrats into an extremely tight race. But does she have a second act? Kamala 2.0, under constant attack by Donald Trump and the Republicans, doesn’t have much new to say. She is conducting a play-it-safe campaign, like a basketball team sitting on a lead and running out the clock. But Harris doesn’t have a lead in the three “blue wall” midwestern states she needs to win, and the loss of any one of them could hand Trump the presidency once again. VANCE-WALZ VP DEBATE ENDED IN A ‘DRAW’: DEMOCRAT REP. DEBBIE DINGELL For all the focus on Pennsylvania, Harris leads by 0.7 percent in Michigan – a statistical tie, based on the Real Clear Politics average. On Sunday’s “Media Buzz,” Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell told me her state could go either way. “The vice president has a problem with union workers,” Dingell said. “Many of the men, as well as, quite frankly, African-American young men who have said to me, I was with a group with them last week. ‘You know what, Donald Trump talks to us. Democrats take us for granted.’” The lawmaker recalls how “everybody got mad at me” when she predicted in 2016 that Trump would win Michigan – which he did, along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. A major problem for Harris is that she doesn’t seem to know how to make news. With less than 30 days to go, with many voters understandably believing they don’t know her, or enough about her policies, since she took over for Joe Biden, the VP is stitching together parts of her stump speech and recycling the same anecdotes virtually verbatim. A presidential candidate has to deliver a few new lines, a new proposal, something to break into the news cycle, which is currently being dominated by Trump. So what’s on this week’s agenda? Kamala will sit down with Howard Stern (who is totally against his old pal Donald); “The View,” where the ladies despise Trump, and Stephen Colbert, who hosted fundraisers for Joe Biden in 2020 and this year. For good measure, she’s also spoken to Alex Cooper, whose podcast, “Call Your Daddy,” is about sex. WHY VANCE EASILY BEAT WALZ IN DEBATE, SOFTENING HIS IMAGE IN THE PROCESS I’ll go out on a limb here and say these sessions are designed to be friendly – not unlike the conversation with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, who kept agreeing with Harris and had just pronounced Trump a danger to democracy. In fairness, Harris also sat for a “60 Minutes” interview, an invitation declined by Trump. Look, there’s nothing wrong with candidates showing their softer side with unorthodox outlets in our fragmented media universe. We’ve come a long way since critics scoffed at candidate Bill Clinton answering the “boxers or briefs” question on MTV, calling it unpresidential. On “Call Your Daddy,” Harris was actually quite thoughtful in responding to Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying that her kids keep her humble and the VP doesn’t have anyone to keep her humble. Rather than jab at the Arkansas governor, which would have produced a cheap headline, she ruminated that families come in all shapes, bound by blood or love, that she is deeply involved with her stepchildren, and this isn’t the 1950s anymore. They also discussed, uh, tampons. Still, the party is getting nervous. “Democratic operatives, including some of Kamala Harris’ own staffers,” says Politico, “are growing increasingly concerned about her relatively light campaign schedule, which has her holding fewer events than Donald Trump and avoiding unscripted interactions with voters and the press almost entirely.” Since the convention, the veep has spent more than a third of days on meeting and briefings, with no public events. With early voting under way in more than half the states, Politico describes this “a do-no-harm, risk-averse approach to the race.” GEORGIA GOP CHAIR SHARES 2-PRONGED ELECTION STRATEGY AS TRUMP WORKS TO WIN BACK PEACH STATE Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, who fervently doesn’t want Trump to win, nonetheless is whacks Harris pretty hard: “She hasn’t fleshed out her political intent — what she stands for, what she won’t abide, what she means to establish, what she won’t let happen. What is her essential mission? Is it national ‘repair,’ is it to ‘stabilize’ an uncertain country, is it ‘relaunch’?.. “She so far hasn’t conveyed a sense of intellectual grasp. Her campaign has placed too many chips on the idea of the mood, the vibe, the picture.” And vibes can only take you so far. But the VP has certain duties, and spent two days visiting hurricane victims and relief workers in North Carolina and Georgia–which also happens to be good politics. She also met with Volodomyr Zelenskyy. Harris attended a fundraiser over the weekend. Why bother? Her campaign has already had $400 million roll in. She’s already outspending Trump 2-½ to 1 on ads. She doesn’t need any more money. What’s more, Harris doesn’t make news at these fundraisers, which in any event are off camera. A ground game is great, but it has to be married to a winning message. Here’s one more: Dan Pfeiffer, a former top Obama White House official, says on Message Box, his Substack column, that “the media — and Politico Playbook in particular — are fuming over the Harris-Walz media strategy.” Kamala “must be on offense at all times — say new things, be edgy enough to get attention, and dictate the terms, or the campaign could “take on water…In this media world, there is a never-ending, insatiable appetite for content. Either serve lunch or become the menu… “Dominating attention is Trump’s political superpower…Even when he doesn’t have a big moment, Trump speaks so outrageously that it shifts attention to his issues of choice.” Now it’s easy to snipe from the sidelines. For Harris to be
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‘They tried to murder everyone’: Haiti reels after deadly gang attack
More than 6,200 people are staying with relatives or in makeshift shelters after massacre in central Haiti town. Survivors of a deadly gang attack in central Haiti last week have described waking up to gunfire and walking for hours in search of safety, as the country continues to grapple in the aftermath of the assault that killed at least 70 people. Dozens of Gran Grif gang members armed with knives and assault rifles killed infants, women, the elderly and entire families in their attack last Thursday on Pont-Sonde, about 100km (62 miles) northwest of Port-au-Prince in the Artibonite region. “They tried to murder everyone,” Jina Joseph, a survivor, told The Associated Press news agency. Jameson Fermilus, who had crouched in a corridor next to his house as smoke and gunfire filled the air, was among thousands of survivors who walked for hours, looking for safety. “We don’t know what we are going to do,” said another resident who joined them, 60-year-old Sonise Morino. “We have nowhere to go.” The massacre has underscored the deadly violence and instability gripping Haiti, where powerful armed groups have carried out attacks and kidnappings across the capital of Port-au-Prince and in other parts of the country. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said at least 6,270 people were displaced in the attack on Pont-Sonde. The vast majority have sought refuge with relatives and friends in nearby communities. Others with nowhere to go have crowded into a church, a school and a public plaza shaded by trees in the coastal city of Saint-Marc. “These deaths are unimaginable,” Mayor Myriam Fievre said as she met with survivors. The attack – retribution for self-defence groups trying to stop the gang from erecting a toll on a nearby road – was the largest massacre in central Haiti in recent years. It came just days after the United Nations reported that at least 3,661 people had been killed in Haiti in the first half of 2024 amid the “senseless” gang violence that has engulfed the country. “To those who sow terror, I say this: You will not break our will,” Haiti’s interim Prime Minister Garry Conille said in a statement following the Pont-Sonde attack. “You will not subjugate this people who have always fought for their dignity and freedom. We will never abandon our right to live in peace, security and justice.” More than 6,000 people have been displaced following armed attacks in Pont-Sondé, a locality in Haiti situated in the commune of Saint-Marc, in the Artibonite department. The majority have taken shelter with relatives in nearby localities. 👉 https://t.co/oBLDDVMoWI pic.twitter.com/AhA3d8iW0H — IOM Haiti (@IOMHaiti) October 5, 2024 Yet, despite the defiant rhetoric, Conille late last month acknowledged that Haiti was “nowhere near winning” the battle against the gangs. The UN Security Council recently extended the mandate of a Kenya-led policing mission meant to help restore security in the Caribbean nation, but the force has struggled to wrest control from the gangs. Funding for the deployment – formally known as the Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS) – has lagged, and a UN expert said last month that the force remains under-resourced. Conille has travelled to Kenya and the United Arab Emirates this week to push for additional help. Adblock test (Why?)