When Israel agreed to withdraw from southern Lebanon, it did so on the condition that the Lebanese Army would keep Hezbollah from rearming. The ceasefire gave Israel 60 days to pull back, a deadline that is now up. But Lebanon hasn't deployed troops to its southern border. So, for now, Israel is staying, our Andrew Tobin reports from Jerusalem.
The decision, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Friday, "points to a dilemma at the heart of the U.S.-brokered efforts to end Israel's war in Lebanon and the Gaza strip," writes Tobin.
"On both fronts, Israel has agreed to stop fighting and withdraw on the condition that Iran-backed terrorists—Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza—effectively give up the fight to destroy the Jewish state. But no force other than the Israeli military appears to have the will and the capability to enforce this condition."
A similar situation could soon play out in Gaza, according to former senior Israeli military official Amir Avivi, who said Defense Minister Israel Katz "was already committed to keeping troops in southern Lebanon, as well as in Gaza and Syria."
"The plan is basically to stay in all the buffer zones," Avivi told Tobin, referencing closed military zones near Israel's borders that would allow IDF soldiers to maintain order. "Overall, there is an understanding that we need to be in Lebanon, Gaza, and Syria for at least the rest of the year, because this is the best way to defend the Israeli border."
Roughly five years ago, California launched an on-call strike force of certified firefighters within the California State Guard known as Team Blaze. The force was made up entirely of volunteers who paid out of pocket to attend training and used firefighting equipment provided by an outside charity. California paid members only when they were activated to quell fires like the ones that have decimated Los Angeles in recent weeks.
But Team Blaze was not on the scene to fight those fires—because the Newsom administration disbanded it "after barring its charitable benefactor from providing free firefighting equipment to its volunteers," the Free Beacon's Andrew Kerr and Susannah Luthi report.
"Team Blaze had to return its equipment to the state and many of its firefighters quit, while those that remained were transferred to support a separate state initiative called Task Force Rattlesnake, a senior enlisted leader in the California State Guard told the Free Beacon."
The move left L.A. firefighters shorthanded. Team Blaze included crews that work in support of "hotshot" firefighters, helping them prevent fires from spreading further. Its elimination meant that those firefighters lacked the support they needed, and the state spent 10 days training soldiers to do that support work. The delay, Team Blaze's founder told us, likely cost lives.
Gavin Newsom's office responded to Kerr and Luthi's report shortly before Donald Trump landed in the Golden State to survey the wildfire damage. That response did not dispute the facts of the story, though it did include a personal attack on a member of the press.
During his first week back in the White House, Donald Trump has unleashed a blitzkrieg of executive orders targeting corporate and higher ed diversity programs. Years ago, in the wake of George Floyd's death, those companies and colleges scrambled to hire prominent attorneys to conduct race and diversity "audits," and the Don ain't having it.
"One of the so-called diversity experts in high demand," our Andrew Stiles writes, "was corporate lawyer Eric Holder, the controversial former attorney general under Barack Obama." Starbucks, for example, paid him thousands of dollars an hour to conduct a 2018 "civil rights audit" that later got the company sued. Trump's executive orders have since caused "fear and confusion" among corporate leaders, according to the New York Times—so Holder wrote them a memo "attempting to assuage their concerns."
Stiles exclusively and semi-legally obtained that memo. Here is some of Holder's advice:
- Shred and burn all documents bearing the name of "Eric H. Holder Jr." and the "Covington & Burling" law firm.
- Cease all contact with Hamas freedom fighters and their affiliated "Islamophobia consultants."
- Destroy any and all shrines or monuments to Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X. Kendi.
- Cease all DEI-related incentive programs, such as awarding gift cards and extra vacation days to white employees who attend WNBA games or leave five-star Amazon reviews of the bestselling memoir, Our Unfinished March: The Violent Past and Imperiled Future of the Vote: A History, a Crisis, a Plan, by Eric H. Holder Jr.
- Hire a Jewish attorney.
Check out the full memo here.
Away from the Beacon:
- Donald Trump departed the White House for North Carolina on Friday morning—and he, unlike Joe Biden, took the big stairs on Air Force 1.
- A Newsweek reporter reached out to Ron DeSantis's team to discuss Trump's immigration-related executive orders—and referred to illegal aliens as "unauthorized citizens."
One of the Columbia crazies who stormed an Israeli history class earlier this week is reportedly the same student who held a sign threatening violence toward her Jewish classmates. If only Columbia could do something to keep her off campus.