this is america s newsroom. all right. today is the day. moments from now we ll be seeing president biden, he is set to depart for saudi arabia late yesterday the kingdom lifted its longstanding ban on israeli commercial flight towards normalization. bill: the real objective of the trip. convincing the world s largest exporter of oil is ramp up production and reestablish things with this administration. we watch a beautiful air force one head down the runway, complicating all of this, remarks from then candidate biden back in 2020. president biden: i would make it very clear we are not going to sell more weapons to them. we were going to make them pay the price and make them the pariah that they are. there is very little social redeeming value of the in the present government in saudi arabia. one of the president s first acts in the white house was releasing the c.i.a. report assessing the saudi prince ordered the killing of journalist khashoggi and also sanctioned
Americas strongest mideast ally is at war. Israel is striking back at Hamas Terrorists in response to a coordinated series of Terror Attacks resulting in the murder of more than 800 men, Women And Children. The u. S. Now confirming at least Nine Americans are among the dead. Good morning to you, im dana perino and bill is off today. Good morning, aishah. Aishah a very tough day as the world wakes up to this horrific attack. This is americas newsroom and here is where things stand at this hour. The combined death toll in israel and in gaza has now surpassed more than 1200 people. There are thousands more wounded and more than 100 israelis kidnapped behind enemy lines. Dana despite israels Retaliation Hamas is still attacking. They have now fired more than 3500 rockets into israel. Aishah the Wall Street Journal is reporting that iran was directly involved in all of this. The paper says tehran worked with hamas for weeks to plan the attacks. This directly after the u. S. Opened up 6 bill
leadership i m not talking about the leadership in gaza led by hamas. i m talking about the palestinian authority. they refuse to recognize the nation state of the jewish people, the right of the jews to have a state in our ancestral homeland in any boundary and the reason we don t have peace. i commend president biden for not putting the political capital of his administration behind a fantasy that you are going to be able to appease palestinian demands and get peace. the real game in town is the ability to get peace between israel and saudi arabia. and that is possible to do. the abraham accords would not have happened if it were not for the leaders of saudi arabia. i know everybody is focused on khashoggi and that horrific incident and it is clear that something had to be done to show that you can t do that with impunity but without the support of mbs the peace between israel and bay ran does not happen or anything else and
it plays out in syria, in lebanon, in bay ran. so in a strange way the wonder is it doesn t take longer for this to erupt but now you have open hostility between the leading sunny power, saudi arabia and iran and this is going to complicate the middle east even further if that s even possible. saudi arabia was obviously upset about the nuclear iran deal and any kind of growth or rise of iran on the international stage is of concern to saudi arabia. that s right and saudi arabia views this i think from two prisms. one is strategy, the growth of iran as a regional player and things like that. but the other one is very sectarian. remember, saudi arabia represents is very pure islam in which the shiite are apostates. the saudis be in large destroy any shiite shrine in the country so they are also viewing this as the growth of any kind of shiite
care of a funeral home in jersey. we re following developments on both fronts. cnn s don lemon on the west coast, deborah feyerick back east in newark. hello to you both. deb, let s start with you. what can you tell us about the arrangements? reporter: well, michael, whitney houston s mom, cissy houston, a gospel legend, is making all the funeral arrangements. and they decided to make it an intimate, invitation-only event, at the hope baptist church, the church where whitney houston grew up. another friend and church member said that at the church, whitney houston also felt safe and adored. her mother was the choir director there, the musical director. and whitney often would kick off her shoes and she would just be filled with the holy spirit. and she described her experience growing up in the church saying, when she was there, she was singing for god, and when she would visit later in life, oftentimes, michael, she wouldn t even bring security, because she felt so comfort