Rocky waters: The multiple challenges faced by the US's lofty aid pier plans

The “hastily constructed" maritime corridor was not equipped to withstand the roughness of the Mediterranean Sea, which worsens at this time of year

A truck carries humanitarian aid across Trident Pier, a temporary pier to deliver aid, off the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, near the Gaza coast, May 19, 2024. (photo credit: VIA REUTERS)

Following extensive repairs in Ashdod, the US temporary aid pier in Gaza went back into action on Saturday, only to be closed again a day later due to rough waters, reported the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. This epitomizes the pier’s rocky journey so far, breaking apart and partially sinking only ten days into its operation in late May.

Citing two Pentagon officials, the Washington Post estimated the cost of the repairs at $22 million.

As of Tuesday, the pier was once more open for aid, but the WSJ reports that multiple issues are impeding the success of "ambitious” plan to provide Gaza with aid via sea.

The pier, constructed at a cost of $230 million off the Gazan coastline, was intended to provide an alternative to land aid distribution, given the then-upcoming IDF military advancement into Rafah, as well as the closure of two border crossings in the south of Gaza, reports WSJ.

However, WSJ states that the “hastily constructed" maritime corridor was not equipped to withstand the roughness of the Mediterranean Sea, which worsens at this time of year. Nor, WSJ continues, were the logistics of transferring aid from pier to people fully considered.

Pallets of food now sit unused in huge warehouses, say WSJ, food intended to prevent the IPC-predicted famine among the Gazan population.

Each aid pallet is wrapped in black or clear cellophane to help protect them during them during their 36 hours sea transit. A majority of the 4,000 pallets that reached Gaza have sat in warehouses for weeks, yet to be delivered, says the report.

Trucks carrying humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip are parked, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, at Erez Crossing in southern Israel, May 5, 2024. (credit: AMIR COHEN/REUTERS)

During his State of the Union address in March, President Biden said the pier “would enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day.” The pier, however, has only been used to bring in enough aid to feed Gazans for a few days.

The WSJ alleges that defense officials were not told of the plan before the speech, and were in a rush to assemble it. Soon, roughly 1,000 troops left Virginia’s shores in ships carrying parts of the pier.

1000 troops left Virginia to build the 1,800 long foot structure leading to the shore, but the WSJ says that the weather and maritime conditions were not accounted for.

The Joint Logistics Over the Shore organization (JLOTS) says that the pier’s functioning is “weather-dependent,” and that it cannot work if the sea is above State 3, which is usually only found in a bay and involves small waves of between 0.50-1.25m.

The Mediterranean Sea is often at sea state 4, involving higher winds and waves 1.25–2.50. According to Israel Marine Data Center (ISRAMAR) the current sea state in the area is a 2, and is not predicted to be higher than a 3 for the next week.

Another challenge that the pier faced was coordination between the different parties involved - the US military, the Israeli military, the Cypriot government, and the US Agency for International Development – reported WSJ.

During a war, and with a short timeline, the ability of the different parties to come to work efficiently was compromised, especially given the fact that key details had not been finalized before the pier was built, such as how the US would ensure sufficient aid was reaching Cyprus.

Miki Peleg, general manager of EDT Offshore, a Cypriot cargo-ship company that was contracted by the US to remove the pier by tugboat, said: “We know the weather, and we know the rhythm of the waves and the wind at any time of year, and we could have told it was not going to work,” Other experts also claimed that the failure of the pier was “inevitable”, reports the WSJ.

When it reopened on June 7, Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander, US Central Command, told reporters that “issues with the pier stemmed solely from unanticipated weather” and that the Pentagon expected to increase the level of humanitarian aid to higher than before it was closed the first time.

On Saturday, 1.1 million pounds of traveled from Cyprus to Gaza, however the WSJ cites a US defense official as saying “let’s see how long this lasts.”

The practice of Gematria - calculating and using numeric values of letters - originated in ancient times, most notably using the Greek and Hebrew alphabets. It is a fundamental concept in Kabbalah - Jewish mysticism.

from Chabad.org

Gematria in Kabbalistic and Chassidic texts

Gematria is an integral element of sod, the concealed aspects of the Torah. Kabbalah makes frequent use of gematria as a way of crystallizing a teaching.

Gematria using English has numerous ciphers, the base four are Ordinal, Reverse Ordinal, Reduction and Reverse Reduction.

The floating pier story has been interesting because there was no need to build it. So it probably has another purpose - one we may never be able to directly verify.

Deciphering the numeric elements in a story can give us insight about things that don't outwardly appear to be - but are in fact - related; that names are created, like Trident pier, because they match numerically with other elements of the story.

Wikipedia:

On 14 May 1948, the day the British Mandate over Palestine expired, the Jewish People's Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum, and approved a proclamation, in which it declared "the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel."

Trident pier and Eretz Israel match in three out of the four base Gematria ciphers.

The Temple of Solomon - is relevant to the building of the Third Temple. It appears - numerically at least - that the pier is relevant to the Third Temple.

more on the Third Temple in post #2..

https://jewishcurrents.org/the-gops-plan-to-build-the-third-temple
(Corey Sherman - October 7, 2022)

The GOP’s Plan to Build the Third Temple

Republicans are working with Kahanist activists to advance a violent vision of Jewish control over Jerusalem’s holy sites.

The Temple Movement’s influence—once largely limited to the most extreme settler groups in Hebron and Jerusalem—has been on the rise since 2010, the same year that US voters gave the GOP control over the House of Representatives. Since then, Republicans traveling in Israel/Palestine have repeatedly visited Al-Aqsa with Temple Movement escorts. A Jewish Currents review of travel filings with the House Ethics Committee revealed that Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan has met with Kahanists on more occasions than any other member of Congress, sitting down with them on four separate trips to Israel/Palestine—in 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2020. In all, more than 40 Republicans—including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, and, following his time in office, former Vice President Mike Pence—have met with Kahanists since 2011, in Hebron and near Nablus as well as in Jerusalem. Many of these meetings occurred as part of privately sponsored Congressional delegations to Israel/Palestine that were organized and funded by Christian Zionist groups, including the United States Israel Education Association (USIEA) and Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN). (Under House rules, lawmakers are permitted to participate in privately sponsored trips like those arranged by Christian Zionist groups, and members of Congress are under no obligation to notify the State Department when traveling on such junkets.)

The movement’s GOP allies have publicly amplified a sanitized version of these goals, claiming that the Temple Movement’s aim is simply to end religious discrimination against Jews and give them prayer rights at Al-Aqsa. In 2014, after DeSantis and Maryland Rep. Andy Harris entered the esplanade with members of the Temple Institute in secret—concealing their identities as congressmen — Harris put out a video decrying the “discrimination against Jews above any other religion” at the esplanade.

Evicting Muslims from Al-Aqsa was one prong of the Kach Party’s genocidal platform—and the Temple Movement has carried it forward even after the party’s banning. The Temple Movement began in earnest in 1983, when Ariel, then the highest-ranking Kach Party member after Kahane, attempted to bore a tunnel beneath Al-Aqsa in an effort to physically seize the site. Israeli police arrested Ariel, who explained in a 2007 interview that he began planning for the creation of what would become the Temple Institute during his detention. Rather than wage violence in the open, he decided, the Temple Institute would use research and advocacy to influence public opinion, ultimately forcing the Israeli government to claim the site and rebuild the Jewish Holy Temple. Since the banning of the Kach Party, Ariel’s Temple Institute has become the Kahanist movement’s organizational fulcrum and publicity arm. Its reach is international: Americans can claim tax deductions by donating to Jerusalem Lights, a 501(c)(3) registered in Texas that is closely associated with the Temple Institute. The institute presents what Tatarsky refers to as the movement’s “friendly face,” arguing that the movement seeks only prayer rights for Jews at the Holy Esplanade.

When leaders of the movement bring members of Congress to Al-Aqsa, they appear to push a similar narrative. In 2018, for example, Chaim Richman, the Temple Institute’s former international director, escorted West Virginia Rep. David McKinley and then-Colorado Rep. Scott Tipton on a tour of Al-Aqsa as part of a trip sponsored by the Christian Zionist organization Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, which pursues complete Jewish control in Israel/Palestine based on the belief that it will bring about the end of days and the second coming of Jesus Christ. Though the Jewish activists don’t share this theological endgame, their aims align with those of the Christian Zionists in the immediate term. On the tour, Avi Abelow, an American-born settler who recorded the excursion and posted the video to his Facebook page—and who also works with Beyadenu—explained that the Temple Institute’s strategy was to “generate the awareness necessary to prepare the Jewish people to be ready to then declare sovereignty [over Al-Aqsa].”

Should the GOP return to power in this fall’s midterms, the Temple Movement’s allies in Congress will be in an even better position to continue chipping away at the diplomatic consensus, to the benefit of the political fringe. Although the House can’t unilaterally usher in the changes that the Temple Movement demands, Republican leaders like Jordan could, for example, pass Congressional resolutions calling on the US to revoke its support for the status quo at Al-Aqsa, or condition congressional appropriations on such moves. These would represent a challenge to President Biden, who has said that hesupports a Palestinian state, though his administration has made no effort to start talks between Israelis and Palestinians. If nothing else, the GOP could use such measures to put the Temple Movement’s vision into wider circulation—just as both chambers of the US Congress in 1995 overwhelmingly passed a resolution to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, decades before Trump actually did so. “The Temple Movement knows how to build power,” Tatarsky said. “Evangelicals and Congressmen provide the movement with access to funding and political support.” Both sides seek total Jewish sovereignty in the area, if for different reasons, he said. “Both groups are using each other for their own goals.”

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