How the Israel/Gaza War Gives Russia More Global Power, US Commandos Enter the Israel/Gaza War, Banks Following Starbucks, Walgreens in Leaving San Francisco (The Five for 11/01/23)
Hey, welcome to The Five, a publication about the stories that matter, but don’t always make the front page.
Let’s dive into the news.
[one]
The U.S. has (un)officially entered the Israel/Gaza war.
American commandos on the ground in Israel are helping locate the more than 200 hostages seized during Hamas’ surprise cross-border attacks on Oct. 7, the Pentagon’s top special operations policy official said Tuesday.
“We’re actively helping the Israelis to do a number of things,” Christopher Maier, an assistant secretary of defense, said at a special operations conference in Washington. He said a main task was to help Israel “identify hostages, including American hostages. It’s really our responsibility to do so.”
Maier declined to say how many U.S. Special Operations forces were currently in Israel. But other U.S. officials say the Defense Department has dispatched several dozen commandos in recent weeks, in addition to a small team that was in Israel on Oct. 7 conducting previously scheduled training.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters, said the commandos would join FBI, State Department and other U.S. government hostage-recovery specialists in their discussions with Israeli counterparts.
The U.S. Special Operations forces are not assigned any combatant roles in Israel, but they are talking through with their Israeli counterparts “what is going to be a very complex fight going forward” in the Gaza Strip, Maier said.
In his discussions with his Israeli counterpart, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has stressed the need for careful consideration of how Israeli forces conduct a ground invasion of Gaza, where Hamas maintains an intricate network of tunnels under densely populated areas.
“We will work with them as much as possible to help advise them on those types of activities,” Maier said.
Given that Americans are being held hostage, sending in American Special Forces is expected.
However, this move does put the U.S. and Iran a step closer to open war, because (see next story)….
[two]
The Houthi military group in Yemen has taken a break from their own Civil War (not even kidding), which has been going since 2014, to declare war on Israel.
Yemen's Houthi rebels for the first time Tuesday claimed missile and drone attacks targeting Israel, drawing their main sponsor Iran closer into the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and further raising the risks of a regional conflict erupting.
The Houthis had been suspected of an attack earlier this month targeting Israel by sending missiles and drones over the crucial shipping lane of the Red Sea, an assault that saw the U.S. Navy shoot down the projectiles.
This time on Tuesday, however, Israel said its own fighter jets and its new Arrow missile defense system shot down two salvos of incoming fire hours apart as it approached the country's key Red Sea shipping port of Eilat.
The Houthis, who have held Yemen's capital, Sanaa, since 2014 as part of that country's ruinous war, claimed three attacks on Israel in a later military statement, without elaborating on the timeframe of the operations and whether Tuesday's salvos represented one or two attacks.
Yemen’s Civil War is essentially a proxy conflict for Iran and Saudia Arabia to duke it out for dominance in the region. More than 150,000 people have died due to the conflict in Yemen, with another 227,000 deaths attributed to a war-induced famine and severe shortage of medical supplies.
[three]
An Ivy League student is facing five years in prison after threatening Jewish students at Cornell.
Patrick Dai, age 21, a junior at Cornell University who is originally from Pittsford, New York, was arrested today on a federal criminal complaint charging him with posting threats to kill or injure another using interstate communications.
The complaint alleges that Dai posted threatening messages to the Cornell section of an online discussion site, including posts calling for the deaths of Jewish people and a post that said “gonna shoot up 104 west.” According to information provided by Cornell University Police and other public information, 104 West is a Cornell University dining hall that caters predominantly to Kosher diets and is located next to the Cornell Jewish Center, which provides residences for Cornell students. In another post, Dai allegedly threatened to “stab” and “slit the throat” of any Jewish males he sees on campus, to rape and throw off a cliff any Jewish females, and to behead any Jewish babies. In that same post, Dai threatened to “bring an assault rifle to campus and shoot all you pig jews.” The charges and the allegations in the complaint are merely accusations. The defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
The charge filed against Dai carries a maximum term of 5 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, and a term of supervised release of up to 3 years.
[four]
If you had “Russia blames Ukraine for Muslim airport riot over Israeli flight” on your 2023 bingo card, I guess you win.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sought Monday to deflect blame from the Kremlin for a riot in the southern region of Dagestan that targeted a flight from Israel, charging without evidence that Ukrainian agents of Western spy agencies were behind the rampage.
More than 20 people were hurt — none Israelis — in the clashes Sunday night that Putin cast as part of U.S. efforts to weaken Russia.
Hundreds of angry men, some carrying banners with antisemitic slogans, rushed onto the tarmac of the airport in Makhachkala, the capital of the predominantly Muslim region, looking for Israeli passengers on the flight from Tel Aviv.
Police officers and civilians were injured and two of them were in critical condition, regional health authorities said. More than 80 people were detained in the unrest, according to police. Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a criminal probe on charges of organizing mass unrest.
U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby called Putin’s allegation that Western entities were behind the violence “classic Russian rhetoric.”
“The West had nothing to do with this,” he added, criticizing Putin for not doing more to condemn the violence, which he described as “a chilling demonstration of hate.”
Russia has issued carefully calibrated criticism of both sides in the war between Israel and Hamas, a conflict that is giving Moscow new opportunities to advance its role as a global power broker and challenge Western efforts to isolate it over Ukraine.
Don’t miss that last part…the Israel/Gaza war is providing Moscow with more power on the global stage.
[five]
Finally, banks are closing in San Francisco. Which is different than the bank collapses (Silicone Valley, Republic), which happened earlier this year. These banks are simply closing branches due to an increase in armed robberies, rampant open-air drug use, and loitering.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports:
Bank branches are vanishing across the country, and San Francisco is having a record-testing year.
Twenty branches shuttered across the city through Oct. 28, according to data from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The closures — from the central Richmond District in the west to Mission Bay in the east, from Fort Mason in the north to Bayview in the south — add up to more than the previous two years combined and represent the most in a single year since at least 2000.
All over California, 277 bank branches have closed so far this year, second only this century to 2020, when 325 branches closed. Branch openings are a much rarer occurrence: Only eight have occurred statewide this year.
The bank branches follow a trend which includes Whole Foods, Walgreens and Starbucks abandoning a city which was once considered a crown jewel of the U.S. The map below shows shuttered Starbucks in 2023.
Some have tried to blame the Starbucks closings on more remote work…but if that were the case, we’d see similar closings in New York and Chicago.
Until the next one,
-sth