GET OUT: Israel has told nearly half the Palestinian population of Gaza to evacuate within 24 hours in advance of a likely bloody and devastating urban ground war. A spokesman for Hamas said, “We are telling the enemy, if you dare enter Gaza, we will destroy your army.”

    Russia’s Vladimir Putin, of all people, said, “Civilian casualties would be completely unacceptable.”  

  The order involves about 1.1 million people in northern Gaza who have nowhere to go. But it sounds like Israel plans to level the place, so some Gazans are packing and leaving.

   The United Nations protested and asked Israel to rescind the order, saying it could not be carried out “without devastating humanitarian consequences.”

THE DIPLOMAT: As Israeli forces continued to pound Gaza, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Tel Aviv yesterday delivered the most moving and humanitarian speech so far by possibly anyone since the Hamas attacks on Israel. 

  “Babies slaughtered.  Bodies desecrated,” Blinken said. “Young people burned alive.  Women raped.  Parents executed in front of their children, children in front of their parents.  How are we even to understand this, to digest this?”

  He said, “It’s impossible for me to look at the photos of families killed – such as the mother, father, and three small children murdered as they sheltered in their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz – and not think of my own children.”

  Blinken told of his family history. “I come before you not only as the United States Secretary of State, but also as a Jew,” he said.  “I come before you not only as the United States Secretary of State, but also as a Jew.  My grandfather, Maurice Blinken, fled pogroms in Russia.  My stepfather, Samuel Pisar, survived concentration camps – Auschwitz, Dachau, Majdanek.”

  The secretary later toured a donation center where he met a young woman and her boyfriend who survived the music festival massacre. He listened as 24-year-old Lior Gelbaum told him of the attacks, of seeing friends killed, and feeling that her experience was beyond comprehension. When she was done, Blinken gave her a loving hug. 

THE IRANIAN CONNECTION: Suspicious that Iran was involved with the Hamas attack on Israel, the US and Qatar agreed to block Iran’s use of the $6 billion recently freed from impoundment in exchange for five Americans held in Iran. The money was supposed to be used only for humanitarian purposes, but the deal was always criticized because it could free up other money for such things as supporting Hamas.

  Iran’s UN delegation objected, issuing a statement saying, “The US cannot renege on the agreement,”and “The money rightfully belongs to the people of Iran.”

  The US says it has no evidence of direct Iranian involvement in the Hamas attack, but Iran has long been a supporter of the extremist group that controls Gaza. Hamas has built an arsenal of thousands of rockets, possibly tens of thousands of them. It is almost certain that they came from Iran in parts and were smuggled into Gaza through Egypt into Hamas’s complex web of tunnels that lace their territory. Even if Iran did not have a direct hand in last Saturday’s slaughter, they made the aerial attack possible.

CONGRESS OF CHAOS: Despite winning the private vote to be the Republican nominee for speaker of the House, Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise last night withdrew from consideration. The hard core right wingers refused to abandon support for their equally hard core candidate, Jim Jordan of Ohio. Jordan did not fold his hand and endorse Scalise.

  “Nobody’s going to use me as an excuse to hold back our ability to get the House opened again,” Scalise told reporters. He did not endorse Jordan.

  After Scalise had spent hours behind doors yesterday trying to collect the 217 votes he needed to become speaker, Republican Rep. Troy Nehls, of Texas said, “It’s broken; we are a broken conference.” 

  Adding to the trouble, former President Donald Trump came out against Scalise, saying he’s unfit for the job because he’s being treated for blood cancer. “Steve is a man that is in serious trouble, from the standpoint of his cancer,” Trump said on Fox News Radio. “I just don’t know how you can do the job when you have such a serious problem.”

POLITICAL INFLUENCER: New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez was heaped with addition federal charges yesterday accusing him of conspiracy by a public official to act as a foreign agent.

  Menendez, his wife, Nadine, and an associate, Wael Hana, were charged in a superseding indictment with conspiring to have Menendez act as an illegal foreign agent on behalf of the Egyptian government while having access to intelligence secrets when he was head of the Foreign Relations Committee.

  Last month the trio was charged with bribery, accepting cash, and gifts including gold in exchange for assistance to the Egyptian government between 2018 and 2022.

THE SPIN RACK: The IRS says there’s a big gap between taxes owed and taxes paid … $601 billion and $688 billion for the years 2020 and 2021.

BELOW THE FOLD: An Oklahoma judge is facing removal from the bench after being caught texting her bailiff during a murder trial, ridiculing the prosecutors and calling the mother of a dead toddler mother “liar, liar.”

  Courtroom video even shows Lincoln County District Judge Traci Soderstrom texting during the murder trial. 

  Soderstrom fiddled with her phone during Khristian Martzall’s trial for the murder of 2-year-old Braxton Danker. When Judith Danker, the mother, testified against her boyfriend Martzall, Soderstrom texted, “State just couldn’t accept that a mom could kill their kid, so they went after the next person available.” 

  In as many as 500 texts, Soderstrom also questioned whether a juror was wearing a wig, if a witness has teeth, and described a police officer “pretty,” saying, “I could look at him all day.” 

  Objection, your honor.

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