The World Cannot Afford to Forget Israel’s Horrific Crimes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On an unusually cold afternoon, a bunch of friends and I got together and set off towards an art show seeking to shed light on the 100-year old plight of the Palestinian people.

An unaffiliated grassroots movement, consiting of young people who want to preserve the memory of their history, attempts to bring to life the horrors inflicted on the entire nation of Palestine for the past 100 years when a European colonial project decided to uproot the Palestinian people from their land and replace them with European settlers. The British government was the prime operator in this criminal enterprise as it was still basking in its glorious Empire and its atrocities of theft, killings, massacres, enslavement, occupation and resource-pilfering of hundreds of native nations. It was obligated under the League of Nations mandate of 1920 to assist the indigenous Palestinians, finally free from 400 years of Turkish occupation, in building their state and its institutions.

Just like France was granted a similar mandate over Syria and Lebanon leading to the independence of these two nations, Britain was supposed to lead Palestine, Jordan and Iraq to statehood. The League of Nations at the time deemed the native peoples of these nations to be sufficiently sophisticated that they only needed assistance, whereas other nations were deemed insufficiently prepared for independence and were left as colonies of the French and the British to later gain their independences in the 1960s and 1970s.

But the British crooks, bribed by a powerful European Jewish club with me-too colonial ambitions, issued the Balfour Declaration promising European Jews a “Jewish homeland” in the heart of Palestine, the nation the perfidious English were supposed to lead to independence, on condition that “it be clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

Upon assuming their mandatory powers over Palestine, the English crooks opened the floodgates of illegal immigration into Palestine, all the while pretending to prevent such illegal migration as a way to curry favor with rising Arab nationalism across the region. The creation of a Jewish homeland was code for establishing a European colony in the Near East from which the English crooks could control the Suez Canal, their maritime routes to India, and the nascent oil fields in nearby Arabia.

As we entered an abandoned building by the docks where the exhibit was, we were reminded that the Gaza population is itself mostly composed of refugees who were chased from their ancestral villages by Jewish terrorism beginning in the 1920s and 1930s and continuing into the 1960s and 1970s. Some of these families had been uprooted more than once, from their villages to a first refugee camp, then again from their refugee camp to to another refugee camp. An abandoned building highlighted the dispossession suffered by the Palestinians at the hands of criminal European settlers intent on chasing them out of their lands. In the ethnic cleansing campaign of the 1940s, 500 Palestinian villages were erased from the map. Villagers who refused to leave were killed and their women raped. The village of Tantura is one example [See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantura_massacre], another is Deir Yassin [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre], two such atrocities committed by European Jewish terrorism in Palestine. Many more similar atrocities remained undocumented; there were no cell phones back then, only a couple of often biased journalists and reporters on the pay of the Zionists to write an unblemished history for the killers and a distorted history for the victims.

Inside the building, tents were arranged on the main floor of the building, just as the Palestinian refugees would be living in them in Gaza today. Every tent had its own unique, depraved tale to tell. One contained an uncovered mattress with several mannequins representing little children drenched in cold winter rain. Another corner contained a representation of a cooking area with one large pot sitting on cinder blocks where some firewood appeared to be burning. On the wall of one tent hung a title deed with a large key, representing the homes that the Palestinians owned and whose keys they still carry to this day. By another corner there is an older woman lying ill on a thin mattress on the cold ground. She remembers her village, the one from which she was expelled when she was 8 years old, and the horror of that day when the European Jews broke down the door and killed her father and brother, then dragged her and her mother out of the house and forced them to leave without any of their possessions. Along the walls inside the building, scores of fleeing Palestinians carrying their bales on their backs, their children in the arms or walking behind a donkey cart... Just as the Gaza people are doing today. 

Take a good look at Gaza and what is happening to it today, and understand that this is excatly how Israel was created in 1948: bombings, invasions, displacement and dispossession of the natives, assassinations and killings with the specific objective of terrorizing and DRIVING PEOPLE OUT OF THEIR LANDS. The purpose was for the profoundly antisemitic Europeans to get rid of their own Jews, and create for them an Anglo-Saxon colony, a brand new artificial, albeit useful, state to use as a staging ground for controlling the Middle East and its oil. It is because they created the monster Israel that Westerners are so eager to defend it at all costs: They don't want the Jews back!

The biggest fear that the Palestinian refugees have is that their history will one day be forgotten; that their ties to their native land be forever denied; that a Jewish state was built over the ashes of their own nation, for no fault of their own, but for the fault of the Christian Europeans who persecuted the Jews for so long that they finally decided to kick them out of Europe and give them someone else’s land. Palestine has never been good at explaining itself or its history. It assumed that there is justice and goodness in this world, and that somehow the world will heal its injuries and repair the injustices inflicted on its people. The refugees waited and waited for the Arabs and the West to come to terms with the horror of the creation of Israel and the destruction of Palestine. But it is only now that the Palestinians are recognizing that only they will have to fight for their land and their identity. Their enemies disparage them, dehumanize them, deny them their existence as a nation and as a people. And the world believed the lies for so long.

Palestine's enemies criticize UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees) as an agency for the exclusive benefit of the Palestinian people. Why, they say, doesn't the UNHCR (UNited Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), which handles all other refugees, doesn't include care for the Palestinians? Why are the Palestinians spoiled with their own agency? The answer is that the 1948 creation of Israel was seen by the international community as a most egregious crime of such magnitude that the Palestinian refugees' tragedy, this monumental exercise in ethnic cleansing deserved its own agency.

But finally, the Gaza episode has revealed the true nature of Israel as a brutal supremacist racist, some would say Nazi-like, colonial enterprise that serves as an outpost for imperial Britain and the US. As it proceeds with its carnage of Palestinians in Gaza, the latter cannot afford to allow the world to forget who the real criminal is and who the real victim is.

Around the world, there is growing fear that many autocrats, dictators and theocratic governments could cite the Israeli example of flouting rules, international laws and UN resolutions and carrying out massacres, ethnic cleansing and genocide, in total impugnity, against minorities or other abused communities and ethnic groups. So far, the world has adhered to the principle that no one, except Israel, is above the law. Will the Israeli exception now spread like a cancer across the world?

 

Israeli Troop Buildup along Lebanon Border: War of Bluff?

More Jewish troops in occupied Palestine are apparently moving to the border with Lebanon in preparation for "what comes next", according to the terrorist settler defense minister Yoav Gallant of the American colony of Israel.  More soldiers will "very soon go into action…so the forces in the north are reinforced".

The Jewish country’s militia chief, Herzi Halevi, had already warned that the risk of war on the northern border had become “much higher”, echoing an earlier deadline set by Israel for the escalating conflict with Hezbollah to be resolved by diplomacy. US envoy Amos Hochstein has been trying to reach a resolution that would involve Hezbollah's retreat north of the Litani river in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territories it occupies in the south. 

Do these declarations aim to scare off Hezbollah and force it to choose the diplomatic path? Or do they really reflect a determination by the Jewish colony to wage an all-out war against Lebanon with the objective of eliminating the so-called Hezbollah threat it has itself carefully nurtured over the decades to maintain a climate of instability and a source of pretexts to interfere and steal land?

Neither the Iranian militia Hezbollah is likely to retreat north of the Litani, as this would signal an end to its fake "resistance", nor does the American Jewish colony of Israel seem willing to end its silly occupation of tiny spots inside Lebanon with which it maintains instability by providing Hezbollah with the justification of its so-called "resistance".  Neither side seems willing to end the charade that has been going on since the late 1960s and which has led to the disintegration of the Lebanese state. Perhaps the West in collusion with Syria, Iran and Israel wants to solve the burdensome Palestinian question over the ashes of Lebanon? 

For several decades, the West granted Syria a free hand to occupy and sow discord in Lebanon and undermine the Lebanese state using Palestinian and Iranian militias. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the brutal Syrian occupation and its repeated indiscriminate shelling of Lebanese cities were deemed a "factor of stability" by the US. When the barely emerging Hezbollah blew up and killed 241 US Marines in Beirut in October 1983, Ronald Reagan packed up his remaining men and ran away instead of staying and fighting the still small and weak Hezbollah, and in so doing handed Lebanon over to Syria on a silver platter. Similarly, Israel withdrew from the Lebanese south in 2000 but delivered the area to its archenemy Hezbollah instead of coordinating with, and handing it to, the legitimate Lebanese armed forces and the UNIFIL contingent. If the US and Israel really wanted to pacify the Lebanese south, they had plenty of opportunities to do so. But they consistently chose to maintain Lebanon as a war arena for every regional Jewish, Sunni and Shiite theocracies to settle scores among themselves.

The US-backed Jewish militia in occupied Palestine and the Iranian-backed Shiite militia Hezbollah in Lebanon have been exchanging fire since the savagery against Gaza broke out on October 8. Now that both sides have warmed up, the stage is set for a major blowup that might involve major destruction and civilian deaths in both Israel and Lebanon. If the Israelis choose a land incursion into south Lebanon, the Lebanese should prepare themselves to permanently lose the entire sector south of the Litani which includes the major city of Tyre. For all the Arab-Israeli wars of the past 6 decades, Lebanon has been the only one not to see any part of its territory annexed by Israel. But this time, Israel's savagery hubris might lead it to creating a new "fact on the ground" by stealing the Lebanese south and settling it with more foreign Jews. A permanent displacement of the mostly Shiite population out of the Lebanese south would not be such a bad thing for Israel after all.

Worries of a regional war are growing by the day. Beyond Gaza, Jewish violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank has increased dramatically in recent months with both the Jewish militia and the illegal Jewish terrorist settlers raiding refugee camps and killing and arresting thousands of Palestinian civilians on a daily basis. The US seems interested in another adventure in the Middle East, and takes no action to prevent being dragged into the conflict by its own land-stealing Jewish colony in Palestine. After the drone attack against the US military base on the Syrian-Jordanian border that killed three American soldiers and injured dozens, Biden is enjoying the process of choosing a target for revenge. 

The Jewish army's chief, Herzi Halevi, warned that the risk of war along the Lebanese border had increased.  “I don’t know when the war in the north is, I can tell you that the likelihood of it happening in the coming months is much higher than it was in the past,” Mr Halevi said.

Hard as it says it is trying to prevent an outbreak of war on regional fronts surrounding its Jewish colony, it looks as though the US is eagerly preparing to become directly involved. While conveniently opposing any ceasefire in the Jewish-led genocide of Gaza's Palestinian population, Biden claims to be under domestic pressure to respond forcefully to the drone attack on the Tower 22 American base inside Jordan next to the Syrian border. With the US presidential elections in view, Biden cannot afford to appear weak. He already has lost significant support among his own Democrat base for his callousness and impotence at calling for a ceasefire and ending the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza and West Bank Palestinians. And as is usually the case with the Americans, they always choose war as an exit strategy: Imagine the unity that Biden will muster in his deeply divided country if he goes to war. Defeating Trump in November might require such a move regardless of the consequences.

Exposing IDF Nazi Lies and Practices in the Gaza Ghetto

Gaza is like the Warsaw Ghetto, except the Jews are now the Nazi Oppressors while the Palestinians are their Victims

A large void fills the space where rows of graves once stood. The gaping hole is all that is left after the Jewish terrorists excavated the western side of the Bani Suheila cemetery, near Khan Younis in southern Gaza, claiming a Hamas tunnel ran directly through the site and that Hamas militants attacked Jewish troops from here.

A week after a CNN investigation found that the Jewish militants damaged or destroyed at least 16 cemeteries in Gaza since the beginning of the war, the Jewish terror organization invited CNN into Gaza to explain why it partially destroyed one of those cemeteries. But they failed to prove their claim during a three-hour visit to the Bani Suheila cemetery and the surrounding area.

On Saturday, a group of IDF terrorists took CNN into a tunnel near the Bani Suheila cemetery and into an underground command center that the military said was below the cemetery. However, the terrorist commanders declined to show reporters the tunnel shaft they said emerged inside the cemetery, claiming there was sensitive machinery underground and that the structure was unstable.

In other words, the Jewish terrorists want the propaganda and will distort the facts and fabricate stories at the expense of the truth, namely that they desecrate cemeteries because their ultra-religious supremacist barbarism against other religions allows them to do so.

“The whole thing can collapse,” said Dan Goldfuss, the German Jewish commander of the terrorist group. “You have to walk to the edge. The edge is not secure, it can collapse," he said as he lied his way through the visit. The Israeli terrorists said they would instead provide a video of the tunnel shaft in the enormous hole, but never did, confirming that they were lying to CNN.

Instead, the European Jewish IDF terrorists provided drone footage that showed two other tunnel entrances – one of which CNN entered – near the cemetery. CNN geolocated the tunnel entrances using footage filmed on the ground, as well as satellite imagery, and found that neither was in the cemetery grounds, another bie lie by the terrorists.

The Israeli terrorists then issued a press release which said that a tunnel ran directly through the religious site. But that press release also undermined the German Jewish terrorist commander Goldfuss’ claim that the underground command center was directly below the cemetery. A map released by the military placed the command center outside the graveyard.

Goldfuss also told CNN that his troops repeatedly came under fire from the area of the cemetery. “My forces – at the beginning we tried to flank this area – were fired from this area, again, and again,” Goldfuss said. “They couldn’t understand why. Once we… found the military compound underneath the graveyard, we took all the measures to attack that compound.”

The Israeli military subsequently bulldozed and excavated the western section of the cemetery, where dozens of graves once stood, and exposed and dismembered the human remains that were buried in them. The German Jewish commander Goldfuss maintained that the heavy damage to the cemetery was necessary to uncover what he claimed was a tunnel beneath its surface, a tunnel whose existence CNN was clearly unable to confirm.

The US-backed IDF terror organization has also damaged at least one other cemetery and disturbed bodies in its search for hostages, with a previous CNN investigation earlier this month finding bodies removed from gravesites. Medical staff at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza have also said that Israeli terrorists used bulldozers to dig up bodies buried in the hospital’s courtyard, after concluding a raid in the hospital.

According to international law, an intentional attack on a cemetery could amount to a war crime, except under very limited circumstances relating to that site becoming a military objective.

The entrance to the tunnel CNN entered lay in the rubble of what the Israeli military said was a residential building. After uncovering the site, the military blew a hole through a section of the tunnel – exposing it on two sides in order to outflank Hamas fighters who were inside. A dark, humid and seemingly endless labyrinth awaited us once inside. Without a light on, the tunnel was pitch-black and it was impossible to hear the outside world.

According to the IDF terror organization, the tunnel had been outfitted with wiring – electricity and telecommunications – installed by Hamas. But there were no lights on when CNN visited. At the end of one section, CNN found what the Israeli terrorists described as a Hamas battalion commander’s office: two rooms, a bathroom and a kitchen linked by a hallway held up with steel beams.

There were tiled floors, painted walls, plus electricity and plumbing. Large frames also hung on the walls, which the Israeli military said once displayed maps. A large map that would fit one of the frames was sprawled on a table.

IDF Terrorists Excel at Nazi Practices they Learned in Germany

On the way to embed with Israeli forces in Gaza, CNN saw more than two dozen detained Palestinian men blindfolded and barefoot, their hands tied behind their backs. The men, kneeling or sitting on the wet, cold ground, had been detained by the Israeli military in Gaza. Israeli soldiers, their faces obscured by balaclavas, stood guard around them.

Some of the men appeared to be physically exhausted, with their heads falling and swaying as they attempted to remain kneeling. One detainee lay on the ground before an Israeli soldier arrived to rouse him, propping him back up. The men appeared to be wearing nothing more than disposable white coveralls, despite the 10 degree Celsius temperature (50 degrees Fahrenheit). The Israeli military said the men were “suspected of terrorist activity and were arrested in Gaza and transferred to Israel for interrogation.”

The IDF said the men filmed on Saturday had been brought into Israel from Gaza and were about to be transferred to a “heated bus” when CNN filmed the scene. They maintained that detainees are treated in accordance with international law. It is not clear how long the men were detained outside in this way.

A bus was waiting nearby, but CNN could not confirm when the men were put onto the bus, as an Israeli soldier at the scene ordered CNN to leave the premises within minutes.

Hochstein Wants More of America's Half-Ass Solutions in South Lebanon

Hochstein's objective: Perpetuate Kissinger's deadly US Band-aid in Lebanon

In the interview below, the US envoy to Lebanon Amos Hochstein - who used to be an ISraeli soldier who may have fought and killed Lebanese citizens - does not say that Hezbollah needs to put down its weapons and bring an end the 50-year old charade in South Lebanon in which the US colluded with the Syrian regime to keep Lebanon as the only open war front against Israel. Syria's occupation and rape of Lebanon was done with the blessing of successive US administrations - beginning with the war criminal Henry Kissinger in 1974 - as long as Syria kept peace on the Golan and denied any Palestinian or Hezbollah resistance against the Israeli occupation and annexation of the Golan Heights. Everyone agreed that any war in the Mideast must be contained in Lebanon. And now Amos Hochstein continues with this treacherous charade.

Hochstein wants only to "prevent the low grade fight" between Israel and Hezbollah from becoming "an escalation into an all out conflict that would drag us [i.e. the US] into war." In other words, the US wants the 56-year old low grade fight to continue, for the made-up disputes over barren strips of land to continue to be a pretext, for the Lebanese army to be denied exclusive control over the border, and for the country to continue to disaggregate. In brief, by not wanting to see a definitive end to tiny Lebanon's heartache  serving as a fighting arena for every other brutal asshole country in the region, the US wants Lebanon to disintegrate so that the Syrian and Palestinian refugees settle in it and cease to demand to return to their homelands.

Hochstein wants "negotiations to ensure that the Lebanese army is in that area". 

"IS IN THAT AREA"? What the fuck does that mean? What area? In what capacity? The Lebanese army is already in that area, but only as a dummy behind the terrorist Hezbollah lines that the US seemingly has no problem with since Hochstein has been negotiating with Hezbollah, while his administration holds secret talks with Iran. The bastard Americans seem to have forgotten that Iran, via Syria and Hezbollah, killed 241 US servicemen and Marines in Beirut in October 1983, and kidnapped scores of westerners in the 1980s whom it released one by one for one concession after another to Syria and Iran. It is this policy by both Republican and Democrat administrations that has allowed Hezbollah to thrive, grow and become the "threat" that Israel loves to see in it. It is this policy which, over decades, kept Lebanon time and again from recovering the attributes of full sovereignty. And now, Amos Hochstein, the former Israeli soldier who is so pleasantly negotiating with Hezbollah via Lebanese traitor politicians, wants more of the same.

What Hochstein should be negotiating about is for the Lebanese army to take full control of the border with both Israel and Syria; for Hezbollah to be disarmed; and for the rule of law to prevail. The Lebanese must reject Hochstein's half-ass proposals reeking of Kissinger's criminal vintage, proposals that have destabilized the country for so long and are slowly leading to its demise. One is led to become convinced that the US wants Lebanon to break down and disappear.

A firm position, with a direct threat of violence against the Syrian regime, is what is needed. The Syrian regime must end its support to Hezbollah. It must end its role as a bridge between Iran and Hezbollah. The smuggling of goods, weapons and mercenaries across the lawless Syrian Lebanese border must be stopped. The Syrian regime must take back its 2.5 million Syrians illegally present on Lebanese soil. Israel must take back the Palestinian refugees and stop its harassment of Lebanon.

The Lebanese traitor politicians, serving as proxies for the Syrian and Iranian regimes, must be exposed and denounced. The truth must be told. Lebanese patriots must refuse to meet with Hochstein until the Americans stop playing their dirty backstabbing game which consists in sacrificing Lebanon to Syria, so that Syria in turn gives a break to Israel. With the looming end of UNRWA, the Palestinian refugees will finally be permanently settled in Lebanon, thus relieving Israel of the Right of Return. Henry Kissinger must be smiling in his grave. Then the 2.5 million Syrians will also be settled in Lebanon if Assad is not forced to take them back. 

Lebanon will cease to exist as we know it. It will become an essentially Muslim country that will eventually merge with Syria. All the Lebanese Muslims used to be Syrians before 1920 when the Greater Lebanon monstrosity was fabricated by a short-sighted nationalist Maronite Church. And now with close to 3.5 million Syrian and Palestinian Muslim refugees on top of Lebanon's Muslims who number 4 million, the Christians will become such a tiny minority that they will practically cease to have any say in their destiny. 

An only-Muslim Lebanon has no reason to exist. Lebanon exists because of its Christians who are the last free Christians in this tormented east. If Hochstein's endless peregrinations and negotiations do not address these fundamental issues, then he and his administration are in fact working on dismantling Lebanon and turning it into a parking lot for all the refugees discarded by the brutal regimes of Israel and Syria.

If they want to salvage their country, the patriotic Lebanese should not cede to American blackmail or bribery. Since 1974 they have allowed the US to rape Lebanon via Syria, the Palestinians, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, either because they were bribed or because they were naive in believing that the US is an honest broker who will ultimately deliver Lebanon from the claws of radical Jews and Muslims. But it is time to recognize that the US's sole obsession is Israel and its presumed threatened security, even at the cost of millions of lives, endless wars and the demise of Lebanon. The Gaza carnage is the direct proof of what the US and Israel have long planned for Lebanon.

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The following is a transcript of an interview with Amos Hochstein, a White House envoy and top energy adviser to President Biden, that aired on "Face the Nation" on Jan. 28, 2024.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We turn now to the conflict in the Middle East and the Biden administration's efforts to prevent a regional war. White House envoy Amos Hochstein is with us. And he's been working on a diplomatic accord between Israel and neighboring Lebanon. He's also a top adviser to the President on energy. How concerned are you right now that we are about to see another front open up in this war?

AMOS HOCHSTEIN: Well, I think we should all be very concerned about another front. And in fact, we have somewhat of a front already. So from the beginning of this conflict, the day after October 7, October 8, there was shelling and action coming from Lebanon towards Israel, [inaudible] reaction. And since then, we've been in a, sort of a low grade fight between Israel and Lebanon, President Biden has been clear that we want to do everything we can to prevent an escalation of that lower level conflict into an all out conflict that would drag us further into war and risk civilian lives on both sides. And that's what we're trying to do is to avoid that.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So, Hezbollah has been firing rockets, Israel has been carrying out strikes into southern Lebanon. You had brokered a maritime border between Israel and Lebanon. How close are you to getting a land border negotiated here?

AMOS HOCHSTEIN: So just over a year ago, we were able to negotiate a maritime boundary, which is really the first time Israel and Lebanon who, Lebanon doesn't recognize Israel diplomatically, reached any kind of boundary agreement. What we need to do now is to get to two things. One is the cessation of hostilities across both sides, so that people over almost 100,000 people on each side and Lebanon and Israel are refugees in their own countries, because they can't live in southern Lebanon or in northern Israel. So we have to get to a cessation of hostilities. But post October 7, we also have to make sure that Israelis and Lebanese can live in their homes with security. And that is not just a ceasefire, it requires a more intricate piece of the negotiations to ensure that the Lebanese army is in that area, that there is more parameters of security for civilians. Once we do that, though, we do need to start looking at how do we mark the border, an actual border, between the two countries so that we can have long term security and long term peace in an area that's seen so many rounds of conflict over the last several years.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And are you headed back soon?

AMOS HOCHSTEIN: I will likely head back soon. But I think we, this is something we do every day, not just when we're in the region. We do this also when we're here.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Because the Israeli government has said time is running short. Their defense minister said what, end of January?

AMOS HOCHSTEIN: Well, I don't know about hard deadlines. But–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay.

AMOS HOCHSTEIN: The window for diplomacy is definitely there. And that is what President Biden has said we have to try to solve this diplomatically. I don't deny that the status quo of where we are now can't last forever. And that is why we need to make sure that we can get to diplomatic resolution.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So oil prices jumped Friday, as you know, there was a tanker carrying Russian oil going through the Red Sea that was hit by rockets fired by Houthi militias. And we can see here a lot of ships going through that area have had to take longer routes because of this conflict here. How are you gauging the geopolitical risk when it comes to energy prices going forward?

AMOS HOCHSTEIN: Well, I think we're, we're in a remarkable situation where we have two global conflicts, one, the ongoing war of Russia's war against Ukraine, and what's happening in the Middle East and the Houthis attacking the ships. So the first thing to remember, we are responding to the Houthi attacks. And this is not an attack on the United States or related to Gaza. This is an attack on the global commercial system, on global shipping lanes. This is not about just the United States. And that's why the reaction has not just been the US. It's US led, but this is a coalition, and a coalition that's growing, both the diplomatic coalition, as well as the military coalition.

MARGARET BRENNAN: It's also not stopping the attacks.

AMOS HOCHSTEIN: Well, I think that we've seen a reduction of attacks. But let's take the example that you gave of the ship on Friday. It was not an American ship not had not destined for Israel, either. It's part of the global commercial system. It was aided by the US Navy, the French Navy and the Indian Navy, all vessels that were in the area, so and save the ship that was able to then move on safely and securely. The impact on the markets? Look, I think that there is a clearly a sentiment issue where prices have gone up a little bit because of this, but the actual cost to energy commodities, cargo ships, yes, they have to go around a further distance. It's more logistics cost than it is an actual cost. The costs do go up. But if you look at what they impact, the inflationary impacts are relatively muted and we're act– and we're going to continue to work to mitigate and to grade the efforts that the Houthis have to attack.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.

AMOS HOCHSTEIN: But also make sure that we can look at the global markets and make sure they're not affected.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So the Washington Post reported you oppose the decision the White House announced Friday, to put limits on some liquefied natural gas projects in order to conduct environmental review. First of all, is that true? And given that we haven't seen LNG prices really move, how significant can this decision really be? It looks very political.

AMOS HOCHSTEIN: So first, no, it is totally, I don't know who's saying that I oppose that, I did not oppose it. I think this is the right decision. I, the White House, in the White House in the Department of Energy and across the administration, there was full support for this decision, I was one of them. Look, where we have to look at this decision, as, for what it is. One, we are today, the largest exporter of LNG in the world. Based on what's under construction with the United States, we'll double our exports of LNG, our capacity to export LNG over the next three, four years. So we've already done an enormous amount. At some point, you have to stop and say, alright, this is how much we're exporting. We now need to look, what are the economic impacts? Does the market still need significantly more that will come post 2030? And as we learn more, what are the environmental impacts so that we're not just building this out without looking at all of the parameters that needs to be looked at when we, that's why we do permitting.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, Senator Manchin says he's going to hold some hearings to get answers to the questions on, on what happened here and we will watch for that, and thank you for coming in. We'll be back in a moment.