CBS News
Israelis and Palestinians anguish as Netanyahu set to address Congress amid growing backlash over Gaza war
Hundreds of Jewish activists calling for a cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip were removed from the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday as they staged a sit-in protest against visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli leader’s visit has also drawn protests from Palestinian demonstrators, and family members of the hostages still held by Hamas and its allies in Gaza.
Netanyahu will deliver a speech to both houses of the U.S. Congress later Wednesday on the state of the war he launched immediately in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack. That attack saw Hamas kill some 1,200 people across southern Israel and take about 240 others hostage.
But the war that has now raged for 291 days has killed almost 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the health officials in the Hamas-run territory, with a devastating impact on children in particular.
It has also been a traumatic 291 days for the families of the Israeli hostages, including Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose 23-year-old son Hersch was among those kidnapped by the Hamas militants who raided a music festival in the southern Israeli desert on Oct. 7. He lost most of one arm in the assault, but is believed to be among the roughly 80 captives still held alive. About 30 others are thought to be dead, but their bodies still in the possession of Gazan militants.
“We wake up every single day and we hit the ground running, and we run to the ends of the Earth, doing every single thing possible to try to save Hersh and the other 119 people who are still in Gaza,” Goldberg-Polin told CBS News ahead of Netanyahu’s address.
She’s in the U.S. this week, along with the families of seven other dual U.S.-Israeli national hostages held in Gaza, calling on Netanyahu to make a deal to bring back their loved ones.
It’s a demand that has been echoed almost daily by angry protesters in Jerusalem, and by a group of top former Israeli security and political officials who sent a blistering letter to U.S. congressional leaders on Tuesday, accusing Netanyahu of destabilizing Israeli and American security.
The scathing letter describes Israel’s leader as selfishly prioritizing his own political survival over the hostages’ fate and the security of his nation, the region, and even the world. It holds him responsible for the failure to defeat Hamas and to formulate a plan for what comes after the war in Gaza.
“We are all pawns in a game of this handful of deciders,” Rachel Goldberg-Polin told CBS News. “Everyone in the region is oozing with pain and agony and misery, and it is enough.”
It’s been 291 days of suffering for Palestinians in Gaza, too — more than half of 18-month-old Sewar’s life. The tiny girl lost both of her parents in an Israeli airstrike. Covered in shrapnel wounds and severe burns, she’s fighting for her life this week in an intensive care unit — but laying in a cardboard box, as the hospital has run out of cots.
Goldberg-Polin told CBS News the hostage families understand why Israel went to war, but she argued the military has diminished Hamas’ capacity to stage another attack like Oct. 7, and that the priority now must be to bring the hostages back home.
Netanyahu has not signaled what he’ll tell the gathered U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday, but so far, he’s been adamant that the war will continue until his stated mission to secure the hostages’ release — and to destroy Hamas — is complete.
Goldberg-Polin said she’s hoping Israel’s leader is not just in Washington to reiterate those points.
“How can you leave this dire situation [in Israel] unless there’s something that’s really good, that you want to share,” she said. “So, we are hopeful and optimistic that he is going in order for something good to be shared, and I’m going to pray that that’s what happens when he speaks on Wednesday, that he’s going to be sharing some positive news.”
The Israeli leader will meet with President Biden on Thursday at the White House, according to Netanyahu’s office, and he’s also expected to meet Vice President Kamala Harris while he’s in Washington, according to a White House official.
Despite losing his boxing match to Jake Paul, Mike Tyson in a social media post Saturday said he had “no regrets” to getting “in ring one last time.”
The boxing legend was defeated by social media star Jake Paul in a highly anticipated fight on Friday night with an age difference of over three decades between the two contenders.
Netflix said Saturday that 60 million households worldwide tuned in to watch the match. The two fighters went eight full rounds, with each round two minutes long. Paul defeated Tyson by unanimous decision and the 27-year-old upset boxer and 58-year-old former heavyweight champion hugged afterward.
Paul was expected to earn about $40 million from the fight, and Tyson was expected to take around $20 million for the fight, according to DraftKings and other online reports.
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Tyson said on his social media that “this is one of those situations when you lost but still won. I’m grateful for last night.”
The fight almost didn’t happen after Tyson experienced an ulcer flare-up while on a plane in March. He addressed his illness Saturday, writing that he “almost died in June.” He said he had eight blood transfusions and “lost half my blood and 25lbs in hospital and had to fight to get healthy to fight so I won.”
Tyson retired from boxing in 2005 after a 20-year career. He last fought in a 2020 exhibition match against former four-division world champ Roy Jones Jr.
“To have my children see me stand toe to toe and finish 8 rounds with a talented fighter half my age in front of a packed Dallas Cowboy stadium is an experience that no man has the right to ask for. Thank you,” he said.
Alex Sundby and
contributed to this report.
In their final meeting, China’s leader Xi Jinping told U.S. President Biden that his nation was “ready to work with a new administration,” as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take over.
The two leaders gathered Saturday on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Mr. Biden was expected to urge Xi to dissuade North Korea from further deepening its support for Russia’s war on Ukraine. It marked their first in-person meeting since they met in Northern California last November.
Without mentioning Trump’s name, Xi appeared to signal his concern that the incoming president’s protectionist rhetoric on the campaign trail could send the U.S.-China relationship into another valley.
“China is ready to work with a new U.S. administration to maintain communication, expand cooperation and manage differences so as to strive for a steady transition of the China-U.S. relationship for the benefit of the two peoples,” Xi said through an interpreter.
LEAH MILLIS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Mr. Biden, meanwhile, spoke in broader brushstrokes about where the relationship has gone and reflected not just on the past four years, but on their long relationship.
“Over the past four years, China-U.S. relations have experienced ups and downs, but with the two of us at the helm, we have also engaged in fruitful dialogues and cooperation, and generally achieved stability,” he said.
Mr. Biden and Xi, with top aides surrounding them, gathered around a long rectangle of tables in an expansive conference room at Lima’s Defines Hotel and Conference Center.
There’s much uncertainty about what lies ahead in the U.S.-China relationship under Trump, who campaigned promising to levy 60% tariffs on Chinese imports.
Bobby Djavaheri, president of Los Angeles-based Yedi Houseware Appliances — which manufactures its products in China — told CBS News in an interview this week that such tariffs “would decimate our business, but not only our business. It would decimate all small businesses that rely on importing.”
Trump has also proposed revoking China’s Most Favored Nation trade status, phasing out all imports of essential goods from China and banning China from buying U.S. farmland.
Already, many American companies, including Nike and eyewear retailer Warby Parker, have been diversifying their sourcing away from China. Shoe brand Steve Madden says it plans to cut imports from China by as much as 45% next year.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden administration officials will advise the Trump team that managing the intense competition with Beijing will likely be the most significant foreign policy challenge they will face.
It’s a big moment for Mr. Biden as he wraps up more than 50 years in politics. He saw his relationship with Xi as among the most consequential on the international stage and put much effort into cultivating that relationship.
Mr. Biden and Xi first got to know each other on travels across the U.S. and China when both were vice presidents, interactions that both have said left a lasting impression.
“For over a decade, you and I have spent many hours together, both here and in China and in between. And I think we’ve spent a long time dealing with these issues,” Mr. Biden said Saturday.
But the last four years have presented a steady stream of difficult moments.
The FBI this week offered new details of a federal investigation into Chinese government efforts to hack into U.S. telecommunications networks. The initial findings have revealed a “broad and significant” cyberespionage campaign aimed at stealing information from Americans who work in government and politics.
U.S. intelligence officials also have assessed China has surged sales to Russia of machine tools, microelectronics and other technology that Moscow is using to produce missiles, tanks, aircraft and other weaponry for use in its war against Ukraine.
And tensions flared last year after Mr. Biden ordered the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon that traversed the United States.
President-elect Donald Trump has selected Chris Wright, a campaign donor and fossil fuel executive, to serve as energy secretary in his upcoming, second administration.
CEO of Denver-based Liberty Energy, Wright is a vocal advocate of oil and gas development, including fracking, a key pillar of Trump’s quest to achieve U.S. “energy dominance” in the global market.
Trump also said in a statement Saturday that Wright will serve on the newly-created National Energy Council, which will be chaired by North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Trump’s selection for secretary of the Interior.
Burgum will oversee a panel that crosses all executive branch agencies involved in energy permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation and transportation, Trump said in a previous statement.
Wright has been one of the industry’s loudest voices against efforts to fight climate change and could give fossil fuels a boost, including quick action to end a year-long pause on natural gas export approvals by the Biden administration.
Wright also has criticized what he calls a “top-down” approach to climate by liberal and left-wing groups and said the climate movement around the world is “collapsing under its own weight.”
Consideration of Wright to head the administration’s energy department won support from influential conservatives, including oil and gas tycoon Harold Hamm.
Hamm, executive chairman of Oklahoma-based Continental Resources, a major shale oil company, is a longtime Trump supporter and adviser who played a key role on energy issues in Trump’s first term.
Hamm helped organize an event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in April where Trump reportedly asked industry leaders and lobbyists to donate $1 billion to Trump’s campaign, with the expectation that Trump would curtail environmental regulations if re-elected.
The Energy Department is responsible for advancing energy, environmental and nuclear security of the United States. The agency is in charge of maintaining the country’s nuclear weapons, oversees 17 national research laboratories and approves natural gas exports, as well as ensuring environmental cleanup of the nation’s nuclear weapons complex. It also promotes scientific and technological research.
Republican Sen. John Barrasso, who is expected to become chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said Trump promised bold choices for his Cabinet, and Wright’s nomination delivers.
“He’s s an energy innovator who laid the foundation for America’s fracking boom. After four years of America last energy policy, our country is desperate for a secretary (of energy) who understands how important American energy is to our economy and our national security,″ Barrasso said of Wright, adding: “Wright will help ensure America remains committed to an all-of-the-above energy policy that puts American families first.”
Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, a conservative group that supports fossil fuels, said Wright would be “an excellent choice” for Energy secretary. Pyle led Trump’s Energy Department’s transition team in 2016.
Liberty is a major energy industry service provider, with a focus on technology. Wright, who grew up in Colorado, earned undergraduate degree at MIT and did graduate work in electrical engineering at the University of California-Berkeley and MIT. In 1992, he founded Pinnacle Technologies, which helped launch commercial shale gas production through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
He later served as chairman of Stroud Energy, an early shale gas producer, before founding Liberty Resources in 2010.