DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — An attack by armed separatists on a police station in a southeastern city killed 19 people, including four members of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported Saturday.
The assailants in Friday’s attack hid among worshippers near a mosque in the city of Zahedan and attacked the nearby police station, according to the report.
IRNA quoted Hossein Modaresi, the provincial governor, as saying 19 people were killed. The outlet said 32 Guard members, including volunteer Basiji forces, were also wounded in the clashes.
It was not immediately clear if the attack was related to nationwide antigovernment protests gripping Iran after the death in police custody of a young Iranian woman.
Sistan and Baluchestan province borders Afghanistan and Pakistan and has seen previous attacks on security forces by ethnic Baluchi separatists, although Saturday’s Tasnim report did not identify a separatist group allegedly involved in the attack.
IRNA on Saturday identified the dead as Hamidreza Hashemi, a Revolutionary Guard colonel; Mohammad Amin Azarshokr, a Guard member; Mohamad Amin Arefi, a Basiji, or volunteer force with the IRG; and Saeed Borhan Rigi, also a Basiji.
Tasnim and other state-linked Iranian news outlets reported Friday that the head of the Guard’s intelligence department, Seyyed Ali Mousavi, was shot during the attack and later died.
It is not unusual for IRG members to be present at police bases around the country.
Thousands of Iranians have taken to the streets over the last two weeks to protest the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who had been detained by the morality police in the capital of Tehran for allegedly wearing her mandatory Islamic headscarf too loosely.
The protesters have vented their anger over the treatment of women and wider repression in the Islamic Republic. The nationwide demonstrations rapidly escalated into calls for the overthrow of the clerical establishment that has ruled Iran since its 1979 Islamic revolution.
The protests have drawn supporters from various ethnic groups, including Kurdish opposition movements in the northwest that operate along the border with neighboring Iraq. Amini was an Iranian Kurd and the protests first erupted in Kurdish areas.
Iranian state TV has reported that at least 41 protesters and police have been killed since the demonstrations began Sept. 17. An Associated Press count of official statements by authorities tallied at least 14 dead, with more than 1,500 demonstrators arrested.
Also on Friday, Iran said it had arrested nine foreigners linked to the protests, which authorities have blamed on hostile foreign entities, without providing evidence.
It has been difficult to gauge the extent of the protests, particularly outside of Tehran. Iranian media have only sporadically covered the demonstrations.
Witnesses said scattered protests involving dozens of demonstrators took place Saturday around a university in downtown Tehran. Riot police dispersed the protesters, who chanted “death to dictator.” Some witnesses said police fired teargas.
Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, meanwhile, reminded Iran’s armed forces of their duty to people’s lives and rights, the foreign-based opposition Telegram channel Kaleme reported.
Mousavi’s Green Movement challenged Iran’s disputed 2009 presidential election in unrest at a level unseen since its 1979 Islamic Revolution before being crushed by authorities.
“Obviously your capability that was awarded to you is for defending people, not suppression people, defending oppressed, not serving powerful people and oppressors,” he said.
UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. chief is strongly urging Yemen’s warring parties to not only renew but expand a truce that expires Sunday, saying it has brought the longest period of relative calm since the conflict began in 2014.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday that the internationally recognized government and Houthi rebels should prioritize the national interests of the Yemeni people and “choose peace for good.”
His statement followed a stark warning Tuesday from the U.N. envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, that the risk of a return to fighting “is real.”
Yemen’s brutal civil war began in 2014 when the Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, and much of northern Yemen and forced the government into exile. A Saudi-led coalition entered the war in early 2015 to try to restore the internationally recognized government to power.
The conflict has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises and over the years turned into a regional proxy war between Saudi Arabia, which backs the government, and Iran, which supports the Houthis. More than 150,000 people have been killed, including over 14,500 civilians.
Both sides accepted the U.N.-brokered truce for two months at the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on April 2. It has been extended twice, and Grundberg and the secretary-general have been pushing both sides for a longer extension to try to start negotiations toward ending the conflict.
“Over the past six months,” Guterres said, “the government of Yemen and the Houthis have taken important and bold steps towards peace by agreeing to, and twice renewing, a nationwide truce negotiated by the United Nations.”
With the Sunday deadline looming, Guterres strongly urged the parties to expand the duration and terms of the truce in line with a proposal presented by Grundberg that has not been made public.
Nabil Jamel, a government negotiator, said the U.N. proposal includes ways to pay civil servants in Houthi-held territories and reopen roads of blockaded cities, including Taiz.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Leaked government documents show that Iran ordered its security forces to “severely confront” antigovernment demonstrations that broke out earlier this month, Amnesty International said Friday.
The London-based rights group said security forces have killed at least 52 people since protests over the death of a woman detained by the morality police began nearly two weeks ago, including by firing live ammunition into crowds and beating protesters with batons.
It says security forces have also beaten and groped female protesters who remove their headscarves to protest the treatment of women by Iran’s theocracy.
The state-run IRNA news agency meanwhile reported renewed violence in the city of Zahedan, near the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan. It said gunmen opened fire and hurled firebombs at a police station, setting off a battle with police.
It said police and passersby were wounded, without elaborating, and did not say whether the violence was related to the antigovernment protests. The region has seen previous attacks on security forces claimed by militant and separatist groups.
Videos circulating on social media showed gunfire and a police vehicle on fire. Others showed crowds chanting against the government. Video from elsewhere in Iran showed protests in Ahvaz, in the southwest, and Ardabil in the northwest.
The death in custody of Mahsa Amini, who was detained for allegedly wearing the mandatory Islamic headscarf too loosely, has triggered an outpouring of anger at Iran’s ruling clerics.
Her family says they were told she was beaten to death in custody. Police say the 22-year-old Amini died of a heart attack and deny mistreating her, and Iranian officials say her death is under investigation.
Iran’s leaders accuse hostile foreign entities of seizing on her death to foment unrest against the Islamic Republic and portray the protesters as rioters, saying a number of security forces have been killed.
Amnesty said it obtained a leaked copy of an official document saying that the General Headquarters of the Armed Forces ordered commanders on Sept. 21 to “severely confront troublemakers and anti-revolutionaries.” The rights group says the use of lethal force escalated later that evening, with at least 34 people killed that night alone.
It said another leaked document shows that, two days later, the commander in Mazandran province ordered security forces to “confront mercilessly, going as far as causing deaths, any unrest by rioters and anti-Revolutionaries,” referring to those opposed to Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, which brought the clerics to power.
“The Iranian authorities knowingly decided to harm or kill people who took to the streets to express their anger at decades of repression and injustice,” said Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.
“Amid an epidemic of systemic impunity that has long prevailed in Iran, dozens of men, women and children have been unlawfully killed in the latest round of bloodshed.”
Amnesty did not say how it acquired the documents. There was no immediate comment from Iranian authorities.
Iranian state TV has reported that at least 41 protesters and police have been killed since the demonstrations began Sept. 17. An Associated Press count of official statements by authorities tallied at least 14 dead, with more than 1,500 demonstrators arrested.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday that at least 28 reporters have been arrested.
Iranian authorities have severely restricted internet access and blocked access to Instagram and WhatsApp, popular social media applications that are also used by the protesters to organize and share information.
That makes it difficult to gauge the extent of the protests, particularly outside the capital, Tehran. Iranian media have only sporadically covered the demonstrations.
Iranians have long used virtual private networks and proxies to get around the government’s internet restrictions. Shervin Hajipour, an amateur singer in Iran, recently posted a song on Instagram based on tweets about Amini that received more than 40 million views in less than 48 hours before it was taken down.
A suicide bomb attack on an education center in Kabul has killed at least 23 people, most of whom are believed to be young women, in the latest sign of the deteriorating security situation in the Afghan capital.
The explosion took place on Friday at the Kaaj education center, in a predominantly Hazara neighborhood – an ethnic minority group that has long faced oppression.
Students were taking a practice university entrance exam at 7:30 a.m., local time (11 p.m. ET) when the blast first took place, Kabul Police Spokesman Khalid Zadran told CNN.
Abdu Ghayas Momand, a doctor from Ali Jinah Hospital, where some of the victims have been taken, said 23 people had been killed and 36 more injured.
There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack.
Taiba Mehtarkhil, an eyewitness, told CNN many of the casualties were young women. She had gone to the center to look for her friend after she heard news of the attack and was confronted with scenes of chaos and despair, she said.
“I saw parents, other members of the families of the Kaaj students, screaming and running up and down,” she said. “Some were trying to get emergency medical attention to their loved ones and some others were looking for their sons and daughters. I saw around 20 killed and many more wounded with my own eyes.”
Mehtarkhil’s friend survived the attack as she was running late and hadn’t reached the classroom when the blast occurred, she said.
Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August 2021, there have been multiple attacks against the Hazara community.
The Islamic State of Khorasan Province has claimed responsibility for 13 attacks against the Hazaras and been linked to three more that have killed and injured at least 700 people, according to Human Rights Watch.
“The Taliban authorities have done little to protect these communities from suicide bombings and other unlawful attacks or to provide necessary medical care and other assistance to victims and their families,” the report added.
A string of attacks in Kabul have claimed dozens of lives in recent weeks.
Earlier this month, two Russian embassy employees were among six people killed in a suicide blast near the Russian embassy, and in August, an explosion at a mosque during evening prayers killed 21 people and injured 33 more.
“There is no sugar, I have to take a taxi very far away to buy one kilogramme of sugar,” one woman explains in frustration, at a market in Kairouan, a town several hours drive south of the capital, Tunis.
“The prices are going up! Poor people can no longer afford anything. It is like the world is on fire,” another woman explains, as she opens her purse to pay for a bagful of tomatoes, jumbled together on a wooden cart by the side of the road.
Surprise appeal
Nodding his head in agreement, the stallholder takes her money and makes an astonishing, if discreet, appeal. “Please, make it easier for us to migrate across the sea, so we can leave,” he says.
Although the elderly customer scoffs at the idea – “He wants to drown! He wants to drown!” – for many younger Tunisians, leaving the country in search of work and security is a frequent topic of conversation.
This is despite the fact that many thousands of people have died trying to cross the Central Mediterranean Sea from North African nations to Europe on unsafe boats in recent years, and regular TV news reports that announce yet another missing person – or family – at sea.
UN News/Daniel Johnson
In Tunis, Tunisia, a local newspaper says that there will be a sugar delivery soon in the country.
Migration pressures
“I think what the crisis in Ukraine has brought up again, is the hard choices that people have to make on a daily basis, because people forced to flee their homes, people forced to flee their country, are not taking that decision lightly,” says Safa Msehli, spokesperson for the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
For many Tunisians, it remains a challenge to source basic staples, although more than 85,000 metric tonnes of Ukrainian wheat have arrived in Tunisian ports in the two months since the Black Sea Grain Initiative kicked into action, its Joint Coordination Centre in Odesa, said on Thursday.
Since 1 August, 240 vessels have sailed from Ukrainian ports with some 5.4 million metric tons of grain and other foodstuffs.
Spreading the load
At an enormous mill in the Tunisian capital, there’s an abundance of flour, as workers stand under a conveyor belt which transports an apparently endless supply of semolina, packaged up into large, heavy-duty plastic sacks.
As the bags start to fall, the men grab them in turns and load them into a large flat-bed lorry until it is full, their faces covered in fine white flour.
The scene is industrious, but the mill is not nearly as busy as it should be, thanks in no small part to the impact of the Ukraine conflict on cutting grain exports from Black Sea, and its role in accentuating existing economic uncertainty.
“Now, we are not in crisis, the crisis is always happening,” says Redissi Radhouane, the chief mill operator at La Compagnie Tunisienne de Semoulerie. “When we look for the wheat, we don’t find any. The wheat is not abundant like before.”
UN News/Daniel Johnson
Redissi Radhouane is the chief mill operator at La Compagnie Tunisienne de Semoulerie flour mill in Tunis, Tunisia.
‘It’s like hunting without bullets’
At a wholesaler’s outlet in Mornag, a town on the outskirts of Tunis, customer Samia Zwabi knows all about the shortages and rising prices.
She explains to UN News that she has to borrow money or buy goods on credit for her grocery store, assuming she can find them in the first place. Like many parents, the fact that it’s the start of the school year is an additional concern.
Half capacity
“We are working at half capacity,” says Samia Zwabi, who reels off a wishlist that includes milk, sugar, cooking oil and fruit juice. “When a client comes, he can’t get all the basics. Clients ask for something I don’t have. We have no options. We need to be able to work to feed our kids.”
Echoing that message, wholesaler Walid Khalfawi’s main headache is the lack of available cooking oil, as his bare storerooms indicate. Another growing worry is the number of customers who pay on credit, he tells us, as he waves a thick wad of handwritten IOU chits.
“If a grocery owner comes here for cooking oil and finds it, he’ll automatically buy pasta, tomatoes, couscous and other products,” says the married father-of-three. “If he doesn’t find it, he won’t buy anything…It’s like going into the forest to hunt with your rifle but you have no bullets. What can you do?”
UN News/Daniel Johnson
Wholesaler Walid Khalfawi talks with UN News at local grocery store in Tunis, Tunisia.
Sole breadwinner
From her modest single-storey home in the city of Kairouan, Najwa Selmi supports her family making traditional handmade bread patties known as “tabouna”, twice in the morning and once in the evening.
The process is laborious and time-consuming, a batch of eight flat rolls taking around 15 minutes to knock into shape from semolina flour, water, yeast and a drop of olive oil.
Once prepared, Najwa wets the surface of the soft patties and slaps them into the inside of a concrete oven that’s been stoked with firewood outside. She grimaces in pain as she removes them with her scorched hands, once she’s satisfied that they’re cooked.
The bread is delicious and Najwa has loyal customers, but it is not easy getting hold of a regular supply of flour, she tells us.
UN News/Ahmed Ellali
Najwa Selmi, at home with her daughter, demonstrates to a UNTV film crew how to make traditional ‘tabouna’ bread.
Classroom blues
“My youngest daughter will start school soon and I haven’t bought her anything yet, no bag, no books, no school stationery, no clothes,” she says. “If for any reason I had to stop working …or if I got sick, we do not know what the future holds, my family will be hungry, what will they eat?
“From where will they get the money? We do not have another alternative source of income.”
In the bustling Tunis neighbourhood of Ettadhamen, bakery owner Mohamed Lounissi is open about the stresses and challenges of keeping his business afloat, thanks to chronic shortages of flour caused by the war in Ukraine.
“For us, it’s a big problem, if I order eight tonnes, they only give me one tonne. They say you need to wait and then when I tell them I can’t work and I might close, they say, ‘Ok, close, it is not our business!’”
Essential oils
For olive grove and cereal farmer Inès Massoudi, the Russian invasion of Ukraine this February is just the latest in a series of problems that are beyond her control, coming after five years of failed rains and two years of economic uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In particular, she worries that everything she needs for her 50-hectare holding in Beja is now more expensive – and more scarce – than before the war.
Never mind having to pay for more expensive grain for planting, without pesticides to treat common wheat fungus, along with fertilizer to promote growth – a key Russian export before the war – Inès’s harvest could be down by as much as 60 per cent.
“My farm is part of the world and it feels it when something happens outside,” she says of her 50-hectare holding, where olive trees stretch away into the distance in a green haze.
Ahead of the upcoming planting season, “everybody is hesitating”, Inès continues, “because the cost of planting the wheat today is the equivalent of a car, or a new apartment…There is also the crisis in Ukraine that made the cereal prices increase, along with the prices of agrochemicals and fertilizers which have become very expensive.”
UN News/Daniel Johnson
Inès Massoudi (back to camera) is olive grove and cereal farmer who owns a 50-hectare holding in Beja, Tunisia.
Feeling the heat
Back in Tunis, in the bustling Ettadhamen neighourhood, baker Mohamed Lounissi accepts that he is struggling. “It is a daily challenge,” he explains:
“There are no goods and raw material at all; it is (all) too little: no flour, no sugar, oil is not available all the time, everything is not available all the time, along with the price increase, the prices have increased terrifically, they are big increases.”
Standing in front of a sweltering bread oven that he worries he might lose his livelihood, unless he can repay his mortgage, Mohamed concedes that the stress of running a business in the current situation is getting to him. “If I don’t get the raw material I can’t work and I feel that I have a big responsibility in terms of paying the workers.”
In an outdoor storeroom, Mohamed shows us his meagre supply of wheat flour – a small pile of sacks barely reaching knee-height. He carefully locks the door on leaving, quietly chiding himself for not doing so earlier.
Getting hold of the precious ingredient “is a big problem”, he says. “If I order eight tonnes, they only give me one tonne. They say you need to wait and then when I tell them I can’t work and I might close, they say, ‘Ok, close, it is not our business!’”
UN News/Daniel Johnson
A customer chats with UN News at a Tunis neighbourhood bakery in Ettadhamen.
In a statement on Friday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said it was time for Government forces and their allies, together with Houthi rebels and their international backers, to “choose peace for good.”
The hiatus since 2 April, has been twice renewed, providing the longest period of relative calm since the beginning of the intensified conflict, in 2015, Mr. Guterres said. In a statement calling for the truce to be expanded earlier this month, the Security Council said casualties were down 60 per cent since it began.
“I strongly urge the Yemeni parties not only to renew but also to expand the truce’s terms and duration, in line with the proposal presented to them by my Special Envoy, Hans Grundberg.”
In a tweet on Thursday, Mr. Grundberg said he had held “intense discussions” in the capital this week, and said renewal and expansion was a “humanitarian imperative and a political necessity.”
‘Tangible benefits’
The UN chief said the truce had “delivered tangible benefits and much needed relief to the Yemeni people, including a significant reduction in violence and civilian casualties countrywide”.
It has also allowed an increase in fuel deliveries via the main Red Sea port of Hudaydah, and the resumption of international flights to and from the Houthi-controlled airport in the capital, Sa’ana, for the first time in nearly six years.
“Yet more needs to be done to achieve its full implementation, including reaching an agreement on the reopening of roads in Taiz”, in the south, and other governorates, the Secretary-General added.
Beginning to pay civil service salaries, would further improve the day-to-day life of ordinary Yemenis, said, proposing progress “long-term political, economic and military issues”, which “would signal a significant shift towards finding lasting solutions.”
Seize the day
Mr. Guterres strongly urged all those involved in the long-running conflict, to “seize this opportunity.”
“This is the moment to build on the gains achieved and embark on a path towards the resumption of an inclusive and comprehensive political process, to reach a negotiated settlement to end the conflict. The United Nations will spare no efforts to support the parties in this endeavour.”
IOM/Rami Ibrahim
An IOM worker distributes aid kits to newly displaced communities in Ma’rib, Yemen.
KOYA, Iraq — An Iranian drone bombing campaign targeting the bases of an Iranian-Kurdish opposition group in northern Iraq on Wednesday killed at least nine people and wounded 32 others, the Kurdish Regional Government’s Health Ministry said.
The strikes took place as demonstrations continued to engulf the Islamic Republic after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman who was detained by the Iranian morality police.
Iran’s attacks targeted Koya, some 65 kilometers (35 miles) east of Irbil, said Soran Nuri, a member of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan. The group, known by the acronym KDPI, is a leftist armed opposition force banned in Iran.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in a statement said the attacks “impacted the Iranian refugee settlements” in Koya, and that refugees and other civilians were among the casualties.
Iraq’s Foreign Ministry and the Kurdistan Regional Government have condemned the strikes.
Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency and broadcaster said the country’s Revolutionary Guard targeted bases of a separatist group in the north of Iraq with “precision missiles” and “suicide drones.”
Gen. Hasan Hasanzadeh of the Revolutionary Guard said 185 Basijis, a volunteer force, were injured by “machete and knife” in the unrest, state-run IRNA news agency reported Wednesday. Hasanzadeh also said rioters broke the skull of one of the Basij members. He added that five Basijis are hospitalized in intensive care.
The Iranian drone strikes targeted a military camp, homes, offices and other areas around Koya, Nuri said. Nuri described the attack as ongoing.
Iraq’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said the government in Baghdad was expected to summon the Iranian ambassador to deliver a diplomatic complaint over the strikes.
In Baghdad, four Katyusha rockets landed in the capital’s heavily fortified Green Zone on Wednesday as legislators gathered in parliament.
The zone, home to the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, is a frequent target of rocket and drone attacks that the United States blames on Iran-backed Iraqi militia groups.
The Iraqi military earlier said in a statement that one rocket landed near parliament, another near the parliament’s guesthouse, and a third at a junction near the Judicial Council. Two security officials told the AP that the fourth rocket also landed near parliament.
Iraqi state news reported four security officers were wounded.
The office of Iraq’s caretaker prime minister, Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, in a statement said security forces were pursuing the assailants who fired the rockets, and asked protesters to remain peaceful.
Cellphone footage circulating on social media showed smoke billowing from a carpark near the parliament building.
Following the first series of strikes in northern Iraq, Iran then shelled seven positions in Koya’s stronghold in Qala, a KDPI official told The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity in order to speak publicly. The Qala area includes the party’s politburo.
An Associated Press journalist saw ambulances racing through Koya after the strikes. Smoke rose from the site of one apparent strike as security forces closed off the area.
Meanwhile, security forces lobbed tear gas and fired rubber bullets at protesting Iranian Kurds in Sulimaniyah.
On Saturday and Monday, Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard unleashed a wave of drone and artillery strikes targeting Kurdish positions.
The attacks appear to be a response to the ongoing protests roiling Iran over the death of a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman who was detained by the nation’s morality police.
The U.S. Department of State called the Iranian attacks an “unjustified violation of Iraqi sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
“We are also aware of reports of civilian casualties and deplore any loss of life caused by today’s attacks,” said spokesperson Ned Price in a statement. “Moreover, we further condemn comments from the government of Iran threatening additional attacks against Iraq.”
The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq said in a tweet that the country cannot be treated as “the region’s “backyard” where neighbors routinely, and with impunity, violate its sovereignty.”
“Rocket diplomacy is a reckless act with devastating consequences,” the U.N. agency said.
Meanwhile, Britain’s State Minister for the Middle East said the attacks “demonstrate a repeated pattern of Iranian destabilizing activity in the region,” while the German Foreign Ministry and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez also condemned Iran for the strikes.
The U.N. secretary-general called on Iran early Wednesday to refrain from using “unnecessary or disproportionate force” against protesters as unrest over a young woman’s death in police custody spread across the country.
Antonio Guterres said through a spokesman that authorities should swiftly conduct an impartial investigation of Amini’s death, which has sparked unrest across Iran’s provinces and the capital of Tehran.
“We are increasingly concerned about reports of rising fatalities, including women and children, related to the protests,” U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric in a statement. “We underline the need for prompt, impartial and effective investigation into Ms. Mahsa Amini’s death by an independent competent authority.”
Protests have spread across at least 46 cities, towns and villages in Iran. State TV reported that at least 41 protesters and police have been killed since the demonstrations began Sept. 17.
An Associated Press count of official statements by authorities tallied at least 14 dead, with more than 1,500 demonstrators arrested.
Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard in a statement called for an international investigation over the deaths of protesters.
“Dozens of people, including children, have been killed so far and hundreds injured,” the statement read. “The voices of the courageous people of Iran desperately crying out for international support must not be ignored.”
The human rights organization added that it has documented cases of Iranian security forces sexually assaulting women protesters.
Meanwhile, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said it documented the arrests of at least 23 journalists as the clashes between security forces and protesters heated up.
CPJ in a Wednesday statement called on Iranian authorities to “immediately” release arrested journalists who covered Amini’s death and protests.
Dujarric added that Guterres stressed the need to respect human rights, including freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association during the meeting with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on September 22nd.
The EU is seeking to reset its often testy relationship with Israel next week, convening a summit on Monday of senior political figures for the first time in a decade.
The meeting format, known as the EU-Israel Association Council, has essentially been dormant since 2013, when Israel canceled a gathering in protest over the EU’s stance on Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Since then, the two sides have continued to clash over similar issues.
But the 2021 exit of hardline Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened the door for current rapprochement. His replacement, Yair Lapid, who also holds the foreign minister role, has embraced a two-state solution with Palestine — a position more in line with many EU countries’ approach, even if several countries are still expected to express disapproval of Israel’s Palestinian policies on Monday. Brussels is also eager to shore up energy supplies from Israel amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Lapid is expected to attend Monday’s council meeting.
“There’s a big hope that the upcoming association council between the EU and Israel will bring … a new wind into our relationship,” Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský told POLITICO last week at the United Nations General Assembly, expressing optimism that the development will be one of the key achievements of the Czechs’ six-month rotating EU presidency.
Still, getting EU consensus on one of the world’s most notoriously contentious conflicts is not going to be easy.
Countries like Ireland and Sweden have traditionally taken a more pro-Palestinian stance — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas stopped off in Dublin for a meeting with the Irish prime minister earlier this month en route to the U.N. annual gathering. On the other end of the spectrum, Israel has strong supporters within the EU. Hungary, for example, is a staunch ally with economic and ideological bonds forged over the years between Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Netanyahu.
Before the EU-Israel council went dark, it had served for more than a decade as a forum for officials to regularly meet and discuss these issues. Now, with the council set to be revived, member states are tinkering with an official communique that needs to satisfy the spectrum of views regarding EU-Israeli relations.
Finding common language can mean weeks of fighting over a single word while backroom deals are cut to appease the myriad interests at play. Palestinian officials are also watching closely, demanding not to be left out of a similar diplomatic engagement with Brussels.
The EU’s complicated role in the Israel-Palestine conflict has played out in numerous controversies this year alone.
This spring, the European Commission was forced to delay funding for the Palestinian Authority over the content of textbooks, which critics say included anti-Israeli incitements to violence.
The decision to block the funds was led by Hungarian EU Enlargement Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi. As POLITICO first reported, 15 countries sent a letter to the Commission in April blasting the move. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen finally announced the money would be disbursed during a visit to the Palestinian city Ramallah in July.
EU commissioner for neighbourhood and enlargement Olivér Várhelyi | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
Further tensions with Tel Aviv emerged following an Israeli raid in July on the offices of Palestinian NGOs.
Israel had accused the groups — some of which received funds from EU countries — of being terrorist organizations. But numerous EU countries weren’t convinced.
In a joint statement at the time, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden all blasted Israel, saying it had not supplied “substantial information” to justify the raids. The bloc reiterated those “deep concerns” in August after further Israeli raids on civil society groups.
Another dynamic affecting the EU’s relationship with Israel is the Continent’s energy woes. As Europe scrambles to find alternative sources of Russian gas, furthering energy ties with Israel is one possible answer.
In a June visit to Israel, von der Leyen signed a memorandum of understanding with Israel and Egypt to boost gas exports. The EU is also Israel’s largest trade market and accounts for about a third of Israel’s total trade.
But while economic imperatives explain part of the new push for engagement with Israel, long-term observers say the outreach also reflects a new willingness to engage with Tel Aviv after Lapid came to power this summer. Lapid entered office as part of a power-sharing arrangement with Naftali Bennett, who held the job for a year prior to him.
“I think it is a genuine shift,” said Maya Sion-Tzidkiyahu, who helms the Israel-Europe Program at Mitvim Institute, an Israeli think tank. “The change of tone was made by Lapid, who shares much of the EU’s normative stance on the liberal democratic world order. It’s now much more positive than during Netanyahu’s government, even if Bennett and now Lapid government is not advancing the peace process.”
Sion-Tzidkiyahu said mutually beneficial scenarios are helping to replace “megaphone diplomacy” with closer dialogue.
“Disagreements on contentious issues such as the Palestinian or Iranian one will not disappear, but perhaps there are now better understanding for the concerns of each side,” she said.
Lipavský, the Czech foreign minister, is aware of the concerns some EU countries have about the Israeli’s government actions in the West Bank and towards Palestinians.
“We need to discuss [these concerns] openly, but I don’t think that one issue should block the debate about the others,” he said.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen poses for pictures with Israel’s Yair Lapid | Pool photo by Maya Alleruzzo/AFP via Getty Images
Officially, the EU supports the two-state solution that sees a Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace and security with Israel — a vision also shared by the United States. But making that prospect a reality seems as far away as ever.
Sven Koopmans, the EU special representative for the Middle East peace process, wrote earlier this month that all parties needed to help identify ways to solve the man-made conflict.
“The current situation is increasingly seen as a structural human rights problem, in which Israel has the upper hand,” he wrote in the Israeli outlet Haaretz. “That negatively affects how the world perceives Israel, and holds risks for the long-term. It should not be that way.”
When it comes to resuming the peace process, Sion-Tzidkiyahu is not confident.
“Under the current political circumstances in the Palestinian Authority and Israel, such development is not foreseen,” she said. “At most, the EU can push for more practical steps by Israel to improve Palestinian’s condition.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — American tech firms will be allowed to expand their business in Iran, where most internet access has been cut off in response to anti-government protests, the Treasury Department said Friday.
Iran has been cracking down on demonstrators protesting the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of its morality police. Iranian state TV suggests that as many as 26 protesters and police have been killed since violence erupted over the weekend.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the move will help counter the government’s surveillance efforts.
“It is clear that the Iranian government is afraid of its own people,” Blinken said in an emailed statement. “Mahsa Amini is senselessly, tragically dead, and now the government is violently suppressing peaceful protesters rightly angry about her loss.”
The morality police detained Amini last week, saying she didn’t properly cover her hair with the Islamic headscarf, known as the hijab. Amini collapsed at a police station and died three days later.
U.S. sanctions were imposed Thursday on the morality police and leaders of other law enforcement agencies.
The Treasury Department said an updated general license issued Friday authorizes tech firms to offer more social media and collaboration platforms, video conferencing and cloud-based services.
The updated license also removes the condition that communications be “personal,” which Treasury said was burdening companies with the need to verify the purpose of the communications.
“As courageous Iranians take to the streets to protest the death of Mahsa Amini, the United States is redoubling its support for the free flow of information to the Iranian people,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in a statement.
“With these changes, we are helping the Iranian people be better equipped to counter the government’s efforts to surveil and censor them.”
Amir Rashidi, an exiled Iranian who is director of internet security and digital rights at Miaan Group, said lifting restrictions will help Iranians bypass censorship.
“Also it’s going to provide Iranians with safety and security,” he said. “When you can have your data outside the country Iranian security services cannot unlawfully access your data because your data is protected by international law outside Iran.”
In 2014, Treasury’s sanctions arm issued a license authorizing exports of software and services to Iran that would allow the free exchange of communication over the internet, with the intent to foster the free flow of information to Iranian citizens.
Even so, U.S. firms have been reluctant to do business in Iran, due to fears of violating existing sanctions and other laws that impose penalties.
On Monday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that his satellite internet firm Starlink would seek permission to operate in Iran. National security adviser Jake Sullivan said it was up to Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control to decide on Starlink’s next steps.
The White House said the move, along with a recent increase in sanctions, does not affect the administration’s plans to reenter the Iran nuclear deal.
“We have concerns, we do, with Iran,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, but pursuing the Iran deal “is the best way for us to address the nuclear problem.”
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Associated Press writer Frank Bajak contributed to this report from Boston.
Actions by Facebook and its parent Meta during last year’s Gaza war violated the rights of Palestinian users to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, political participation and non-discrimination, a report commissioned by the social media company has found.
The report Thursday from independent consulting firm Business for Social Responsibility confirmed long-standing criticisms of Meta’s policies and their uneven enforcement as it relates to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: It found the company over-enforced rules when it came to Arabic content and under-enforced content in Hebrew.
It, however, did not find intentional bias at Meta, either by the company as a whole or among individual employees. The report’s authors said they found “no evidence of racial, ethnic, nationality or religious animus in governing teams” and noted Meta has “employees representing different viewpoints, nationalities, races, ethnicities, and religions relevant to this conflict.”
Rather, it found numerous instances of unintended bias that harmed the rights of Palestinian and Arabic-speaking users.
In response, Meta said it plans to implement some of the report’s recommendations, including improving its Hebrew-language “classifiers,” which help remove violating posts automatically using artificial intelligence.
“There are no quick, overnight fixes to many of these recommendations, as BSR makes clear,” the company based in Menlo Park, California, said in a blog post Thursday. “While we have made significant changes as a result of this exercise already, this process will take time — including time to understand how some of these recommendations can best be addressed, and whether they are technically feasible.”
Meta, the report confirmed, also made serious errors in enforcement. For instance, as the Gaza war raged last May, Instagram briefly banned the hashtag #AlAqsa, a reference to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City, a flash point in the conflict.
Meta, which owns Instagram, later apologized, explaining its algorithms had mistaken the third-holiest site in Islam for the militant group Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed offshoot of the secular Fatah party.
The report echoed issues raised in internal documents from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen last fall, showing that the company’s problems are systemic and have long been known inside Meta.
A key failing is the lack of moderators in languages other than English, including Arabic — among the most common languages on Meta’s platforms.
For users in the Gaza, Syria and other Middle East regions marred by conflict, the issues raised in the report are nothing new.
Israeli security agencies and watchdogs, for instance, have monitored Facebook and bombarded it with thousands of orders to take down Palestinian accounts and posts as they try to crack down on incitement.
“They flood our system, completely overpowering it,” Ashraf Zeitoon, Facebook’s former head of policy for the Middle East and North Africa region, who left in 2017, told The Associated Press last year. “That forces the system to make mistakes in Israel’s favor.”
Israel experienced an intense spasm of violence in May 2021 — with weeks of tensions in east Jerusalem escalating into an 11-day war with Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. The violence spread into Israel itself, with the country experiencing the worst communal violence between Jewish and Arab citizens in years.
In an interview this week, Israel’s national police chief, Kobi Shabtai, told the Yediot Ahronot daily that he believed social media had fueled the communal fighting. He called for shutting down social media if similar violence occurs again and said he had suggested blocking social media to lower the flames last year.
“I’m talking about fully shutting down the networks, calming the situation on the ground, and when it’s calm reactivating them,” he was quoted as saying. “We’re a democratic country, but there’s a limit.”
The comments caused an uproar and the police issued a clarification saying that his proposal was only meant for extreme cases. Omer Barlev, the Cabinet minister who oversees police, also said that Shabtai has no authority to impose such a ban.
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Associated Press reporter Josef Federman contributed from Jerusalem.
BERLIN (AP) — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz planted a tree at a mangrove park in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday, a token nod to environmentalism during a two-day visit to the Gulf region focused mainly on securing new fossil fuel supplies and forging fresh alliances against Russia.
To do so, the German government has sought out new natural gas suppliers while also installing terminals to bring the fuel into the country by ship.
After visiting the Jubail Mangrove Park in Abu Dhabi, Scholz met with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan to sign an accord on energy cooperation and discuss the country’s hosting of next year’s U.N. climate talks.
German utility company RWE announced Sunday that it will receive a first shipment of liquefied natural gas from the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company this year. In a separate deal, RWE will partner with UAE-based Masdar to explore further offshore wind energy projects, the company said.
From Abu Dhabi Scholz flew to Qatar to meet the emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and discuss bilateral relations, regional issues such as tensions with Iran and the Gulf nation’s upcoming hosting of soccer’s World Cup.
Speaking to reporters in Doha, Scholz acknowledged that there had been progress on improving conditions for foreign workers involved in the construction of the venues for the tournament, but left open whether he would attend any of the games himself.
The German leader’s first stop Saturday was Saudi Arabia, where he met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Human rights groups criticized the meeting because of Prince Mohammed’s alleged involvement in the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Scholz told reporters after the meeting that he had discussed “all the questions around civil and human rights” with the prince, but declined to elaborate.
German officials said all energy agreements will take into account the country’s plans to become carbon neutral by 2045, requiring a shift from natural gas to hydrogen produced with renewable energy in the coming decades.
Saudi Arabia, which has vast regions suitable for cheap solar power generation, is seen as a particularly suitable supplier of hydrogen, they said.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iranian counterprotesters gathered across the country on Friday in a show of support for authorities after nearly a week of anti-government protests and unrest over the death of a young woman who was being held by the morality police.
Thousands attended a rally in the capital, Tehran, where they waved Iranian flags, and similar demonstrations were held in other cities. The government claimed the demonstrations of support were spontaneous. Similar rallies have been held during past periods of widespread protests.
The pro-government demonstrators chanted against America and Israel, according to state media, reflecting the official line that blames the latest unrest on hostile foreign countries.
State TV suggested late on Friday that the death toll from this week’s unrest could be as high as 35, raising an earlier estimate of 26. Anti-government protesters and security forces have clashed in several major cities in the most severe political violence since 2019, when rights groups say hundreds were killed amid demonstrations against a hike in state-controlled gasoline prices.
Iran has also disrupted internet access and tightened restrictions on popular platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp, which can be used to organize rallies.
In response, the U.S. Treasury Department said it would allow American tech firms to expand their business in Iran to boost internet access for the Iranian people. Iran is under heavy U.S. and international sanctions.
A state TV newswoman said late Friday that 35 protesters and policemen had been killed since the protests erupted last Saturday after the funeral of the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, without elaborating. She said official statistics would be released later, but authorities have not provided a full accounting of deaths and injuries during past unrest.
A tally by The Associated Press, based on statements from state-run and semiofficial media, shows that at least 11 people have been killed. Most recently, the deputy governor of Qazvin, Abolhasan Kabiri, said that a citizen and paramilitary officer had been killed there.
The crisis unfolding in Iran began as a public outpouring of anger over the the death of Amini, a young woman who was arrested by the morality police in Tehran last week for allegedly wearing her Islamic headscarf too loosely. The police said she died of a heart attack and was not mistreated, but her family has cast doubt on that account.
Amini’s death has sparked sharp condemnation from Western countries and the United Nations. Iranians across at least 13 cities from the capital, Tehran, to Amini’s northwest Kurdish hometown of Saqez have poured into the streets, voicing pent-up anger over social and political repression.
“The death has tapped into broader antigovernment sentiment in the Islamic Republic and especially the frustration of women,” wrote political risk firm Eurasia Group. It noted that Iran’s hard-liners have intensified their crackdown on women’s clothing over the past year since former judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi became president.
“The prospect of the leadership offering concessions to Iranian women is minimal,” it said. “In the cold calculus of Iranian leaders, the protests have likely gone far enough and a more forceful response is required to quell the unrest.”
“We have announced many times that if anyone has a fair comment, we will listen to it. But anarchy? Disturbing national security? The security of people? No one will succumb to this,” he said.
Videos on social media show protesters in Tehran torching a police car and confronting officers. Others show gunfire ringing out as protesters bolt from riot police, shouting: “They are shooting at people! Oh my God, they’re killing people!”
In the northwestern city of Neyshabur, protesters cheered over an overturned police car. Footage from Tehran and Mashhad shows women waving their obligatory headscarves, known as hijab, in the air like flags while chanting, “Freedom!”
Separately, hackers have targeted a number of government websites in recent days, taking some of them down at least briefly. On Friday, hackers interrupted Iran’s Channel 3 on a popular streaming website and played videos in support of the protests. Normal programming was restored a couple of minutes later.
The protests have grown into an open challenge to the theocracy established after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The chants have been scathing, with some chanting “Death to the dictator!” and “Mullahs must be gone!”
Local officials have announced the arrest of dozens of protesters. Hasan Hosseinpour, deputy police chief in the northern Gilan province, reported 211 people detained there on Thursday. The government of the western Hamadan province said 58 demonstrators had been arrested.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday that at least 10 reporters have been arrested since the start of the protests, many of them during late night raids on their homes by security forces who did not identify themselves.
London-based watchdog Amnesty International has accused security forces of beating protesters with batons and firing metal pellets at close range. Videos show police and paramilitary officers using live fire, tear gas and water cannons to disperse demonstrators.
Iran has grappled with waves of protests in the recent past, mainly over a long-running economic crisis exacerbated by American sanctions linked to its nuclear program. In November 2019, the country saw the deadliest violence since the revolution, as protests erupted over gas price hikes.
Economic hardship remains a major source of anger today as the prices of basic necessities soar and the Iranian currency declines in value.
The Biden administration and European allies have been working to revive the 2015 nuclear accord, in which Iran curbed its nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief, but the talks have stalled for months.
The Eurasia Group said the protests make any immediate return to the agreement less likely, as Iran’s government will be more hesitant to make concessions at a time of domestic unrest and the United States will be reluctant to sign a deal as Iran violently cracks down on dissent.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Two of the world’s most persistent conflicts punctuated debate at the United Nations on Friday, as the annual gathering of world leaders deviated from the dominating issue of the war in Ukraine.
Addressing hostilities thousands of miles apart and sharing little more than their decades of longevity, the Palestinian and Pakistani leaders nonetheless delivered similar messages, accusing a neighbor of brutality and urging world leaders to do more.
“Our confidence in achieving a peace based on justice and international law is waning,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said. “Do you want to kill what remains of hope in our souls?”
With Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank in its 55th year and no substantial peace talks in 13 years, it was a stark if perhaps unsurprisingly pessimistic assessment. Israel’s prime minister backed a two-state solution to the conflict in his own speech a day earlier — but there is almost no prospect for one in the near term.
Speaking to the U.N. General Assembly after the Palestinian leader, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif of Pakistan similarly addressed a generations-old fight, accusing India of a “relentless campaign of repression” in Jammu and Kashmir. Those mountainous lands have been claimed by both sides since British rule of the subcontinent ended 75 years ago and India and Pakistan were born.
Sharif urged world leaders and the U.N. to “play their rightful role” in resolving the fight and said India “must take credible steps” too.
India’s external affairs minister, S. Jaishankar, might provide a rebuttal to Sharif when he gets his turn at the rostrum on Saturday. India has called the region an integral part of its nation.
After days of world leaders returning again and again to Ukraine, Sharif and Abbas provided a reminder of the other problems facing the international community.
Later, Iraqi caretaker Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi spoke of the “political impasse” gripping his country for nearly a year and preventing the formation of a new government. He called for “serious and transparent dialogue” among the various factions.
And Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, repeated complaints that 1 million Rohingya refugees in crowded camps in her country are a threat to its security.
“The situation can potentially fuel radicalization,” she said of those who fled a harsh crackdown by Myanmar’s military.
Hasina has said that repatriation is the only solution to the crisis, but that Bangladesh would not force them to go back to Myanmar, where members of the Muslim minority face extensive discrimination.
Throughout the first three days and 104 leaders’ speeches, many criticized how Russia had managed to block U.N. action on Ukraine because of the veto it wields as a permanent member of the Security Council. Abbas shifted the attention to the power of Israel and its allies, which he said meant no matter how many hundreds of resolutions pass, none would be implemented.
“Do you know who is protecting Israel from being held accountable? The United Nations,” he said in a speech more than three times the 15-minute limit leaders are asked to respect.
Israel, in turn, has complained that it has been treated unfairly by the world body and has been held to a different standard from other member states, as when it comes to complaints about human rights violations. Its ambassador to the U.N., Joshua Lavine, issued a statement calling Abbas’ speech “a lie-filled rant.”
“He won’t stop at Ukraine if we don’t stop him now,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Friday.
Major battlefield developments in Ukraine cast a shadow over the week – nuclear threats by Putin, the activation of some military reservists and votes in Russian-held territories derided by many world leaders and seen as a prelude to annexation.
Russia and Ukraine faced off Thursday at a Security Council meeting — an extraordinary if brief encounter during which the top diplomats from nations at war were in the same room exchanging barbs and accusations, albeit not directly to each other.
Meanwhile, on Friday, a team of experts commissioned by the U.N.’s top human rights body, said its initial investigation turned up evidence of war crimes committed in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion.
Besides Ukraine, familiar refrains have resounded in U.N. speeches, with repeated mentions of climate change, economic crises and inequality. The gathering is a rare moment for many leaders to grab the spotlight on a global stage dominated by the biggest, richest and most militarily mighty countries and issue calls for action.
“The obligation of each leader before history is not to overlook failings and shortcomings in favor of wishful thinking or flattery,” President Nicos Anastasiades of Cyprus said Friday in his final General Assembly speech as leader of the Mediterranean island nation.
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Associated Press writer Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Kremlin-orchestrated referendum got underway Friday in occupied regions of Ukraine that sought to make them part of Russia, with some officials carrying ballots to apartment blocks accompanied by gun-toting police. Kyiv and the West condemned it as a rigged election whose result was preordained by Moscow.
Meanwhile, in a grim reminder of the brutality of the 7-month-old invasion, U.N. experts and Ukrainian officials pointed to new evidence of Russian war crimes. Kharkiv region officials said a mass burial site in the eastern city of Izium held hundreds of bodies, including at least 30 displaying signs of torture.
The referendums in the Luhansk, Kherson and partly Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions were widely seen as a prelude to Moscow annexing the regions. The voting, which was overseen by authorities installed by Russia, is scheduled to run through Tuesday and is almost certain to go the Kremlin’s way.
Authorities in the Kherson region said residents of a small Moscow-controlled area of the neighboring Mykolaiv province also will be able to vote, and that small area was “incorporated” into Kherson until all of Mykolaiv is taken over by Russian forces.
Ukraine and the West said the vote was an illegitimate attempt by Moscow to slice away a large part of the country, stretching from the Russian border to the Crimean Peninsula. A similar referendum took place in Crimea in 2014 before Moscow annexed it, a move that most of the world considered illegal.
Citing safety reasons, election officials carried ballots to homes and set up mobile polling stations for the four-day voting period. Russian state TV showed one such election team accompanied by a masked police officer carrying an assault rifle.
Ivan Fedorov, the Ukrainian mayor of Melitopol in the Zaporizhzhia region, told The Associated Press that Russians and residents of Crimea were brought into his city to urge people to vote.
“The Russians see an overwhelming reluctance and fear to attend the referendum and are forced to bring people… to create an image and an illusion of the vote,” he said. “Groups of collaborators and Russians along with armed soldiers are doing a door-to-door poll, but few people open the doors to them.”
Voting also occurred in Russia, where refugees and other residents from those regions cast ballots.
Denis Pushilin, the Moscow-backed separatist leader in the Donetsk region, called the referendum “a historical milestone.”
Lawmaker Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia’s State Duma, said in an online statement to the regions: “If you decide to become part of the Russian Federation, we will support you.”
Thousands attended pro-Kremlin rallies across Russia in support the referendums, news agencies reported. “Long live the one, great, united Russian people!” one speaker told the large crowd at a central Moscow rally and concert titled, “We Don’t Abandon Our Own.”
Luhansk Gov. Serhii Haidai accused officials of taking down the names of people who voted against joining Russia. In online posts, Haidai also alleged that Russian officials threatened to kick down the doors of anyone who didn’t want to vote.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Ukrainians in occupied regions to undermine the referendums and to share information about the people conducting “this farce.” He also urged Ukrainians to avoid being called up in the Russian mobilization announced Wednesday.
“But if you do end up in the Russian army, then sabotage any enemy activity, interfere with any Russian operations, give us all important information about the occupiers. … And at the first opportunity, switch to our positions,” he said in his nightly address.
President Vladimir Putin’s partial mobilization of reservists could add about 300,000 troops, his defense minister said. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed as false media reports of plans to muster up to 1.2 million troops.
Across the vast country, men hugged their weeping family members before departing as part of the call-up, which has raised fears that a wider draft might follow. Anti-war activists planned more protests Saturday.
Other Russian men tried desperately to leave the country, buying up scarce plane tickets and creating traffic jams hours or even days long at some borders. The lines of cars were so long at the border with Kazakhstan that some people abandoned their vehicles and walked — just as some Ukrainians did after Russia invaded their country Feb. 24.
Russian authorities sought to calm public fears over the call-up. Lawmakers introduced a bill Friday to suspend or reduce loan payments for those called to duty, and media emphasized that they would be paid the same as professional soldiers and that their civilian jobs would be held for them.
The Defense Ministry said many of those working in high tech, communications or finance will be exempt, the Tass news agency reported.
Amid the mobilization and referendums, the horrors of the conflict persisted.
Kharkiv regional Gov. Oleh Synyehubov and regional police chief Volodymyr Tymoshko said at least 30 of the 436 bodies exhumed so far in Izium bore signs of torture. Among them were the bodies of 21 Ukrainian soldiers, some found with their hands bound behind their backs, they said.
Russian forces occupied Izium for six months before being pushed out by a Ukrainian counteroffensive this month. The exhumations, which began a week ago, are nearing an end, as investigators work on identifying victims and how they died. A mobile DNA lab was parked at the edge of the burial site.
“Each body has its own story,” Synyehubov said.
Experts commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council also presented evidence of potential war crimes, including beatings, electric shocks and forced nudity in Russian detention facilities, and expressed grave concerns about extrajudicial killings the team was working to document in Kharkiv and the regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy.
With world opinion pushing Moscow deeper into isolation over the war, Russia lashed out against the West. Its U.S. ambassador, Anataly Antonov, said at a Moscow conference Friday about the 1962 Cuban missile crisis that Washington is trying to bring Russia “to its knees” and divide it into “several fiefdoms” while stripping it of its nuclear weapons and its permanent seat at the U.N. Security Council.
In new reports of fighting, Ukraine’s presidential office said 10 civilians were killed and 39 others wounded by Russian shelling in nine regions. Battles continued in the southern Kherson province during the vote, it said, while Ukrainian forces meted out 280 attacks on Russian command posts, munitions depots and weapons.
Heavy fighting also continued in the Donetsk area, where Russian attacks targeted Toretsk, Sloviansk and several smaller towns. Russian shelling in Nikopol and Marhanets on the western bank of the Dnieper River killed two people and wounded nine.
In other developments, Kyiv expelled Iran’s ambassador and reduced staff at the Iranian Embassy in response to Tehran’s “supply of weapons to Russia for war on Ukrainian territory,” said Oleh Nikolenko, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry. Ukraine reported shooting down an Iranian-made Mohajer-6 drone that can be used for surveillance or to carry precision-guided weapons, adding that it destroyed four other Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones.
Earlier Friday, Ukrainian officials said Russia had attacked the port city of Odesa with Iranian-made drones, killing one person.
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Associated Press writer Lori Hinnant in Izium contributed.
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At Sunrise Mart, a small Japanese grocery with a branch in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, you can’t miss the mountain of KitKats. The shop sells all kinds of fresh foods and imported snacks, but as soon as you step inside, you’re toe-to-toe with an enormous heap of colorful bags of the chocolate bars, rising up from the floor in the store’s most prominent real estate. The bags offer flavors such as lychee, chocolate orange, and cheesecake. At $10 each, they’re a little expensive. That doesn’t seem to matter. When I visited the store this spring in search of soup ingredients, multiple shoppers buzzed around me on an otherwise slow weekday afternoon, snapping up bag after bag.
I’d never had anything but a standard American KitKat before, but I’d heard so many people rave about the Japanese versions that stumbling on the opportunity to try them myself seemed like money I couldn’t afford not to spend. I stuffed two bags of the pistachio and matcha flavors in my tote and headed for the subway, feeling like I’d just unearthed some kind of treasure. When I got home, I pulled out both, plus a few other packages of impulse-purchased Asian candy that I’d scooped up (you know, while I was there), and staged my own little taste test on my kitchen counter. Their flavors and textures differed from the candy I’d been eating for my entire life. They were all great. Matcha won.
Without realizing it, I’d repeated a ritual that’s become pretty common, both online and in real life. YouTube and TikTok videos of Americans taste-testing candies from Europe, Asia, and Latin America rack up millions of views. At Economy Candy, a Manhattan confectioner that stocks a huge variety of sweets, new customers come in every day, brandishing their phones, fiending to try candies from far-flung locales that they heard about on the internet or that their roommate tried on vacation. Skye Greenfield Cohen, who runs the store with her husband, told me that as recently as five years ago, Economy Candy had only a few racks of imports. “That meant halvah from the Middle East, Turkish delight, those kinds of grandmalike candy that were more nostalgic for a homeland, rather than fun,” she said. Now imports from around the world make up about a third of the store’s inventory.
On one level, it’s not difficult to understand why any type of candy, foreign or domestic, becomes popular. Candy is engineered to entice and delight, and it’s mostly pretty cheap. But American shoppers don’t exactly lack domestic candy options; any average grocery store’s checkout line is bursting with Snickers, Twizzlers, M&Ms, and Skittles. The hunger for foreign treats can’t be entirely explained by the vagaries of social-media virality, either. According to one estimate, since 2009, the annual value of America’s non-chocolate candy imports has grown by hundreds of millions of dollars; in 2019, it crossed the $2 billion threshold for the first time. Some logistical and cultural factors help explain the United States’ imported-candy boom. But first and foremost, Americans seem to love foreign sweets because they’re having the same revelation I had in my kitchen with my green KitKats: The international stuff puts most domestic candy to shame.
In the early 2010s, executives at the American division of the Japanese confectioner Morinaga & Company noticed something strange happening in Utah. The company’s Hi-Chew brand of fruit-flavored candies, which was then difficult to find in much of the United States, was selling extraordinarily well in Salt Lake City. The success was welcome—Morinaga wanted to expand its market in the U.S.—but it didn’t immediately make sense. At the time, the majority of the company’s American sales came from West Coast cities with large Asian populations, where the candies were stocked by grocers who catered to people who already knew and liked them. Salt Lake City, which is almost three-quarters white, was anomalously enamored of the intensely chewy little fruit nuggets.
The company eventually figured out what was going on: According to Teruhiro Kawabe, Morinaga America’s president, missionaries from the Church of Latter-Day Saints were coming home from stints in Japan, where Hi-Chew has been omnipresent for decades, and buying up as much of the candy as they could find. “They got to know the candy in the Japanese grocery stores, and they got addicted,” Kawabe told me. Soon their friends and families were, too. The Salt Lake City scenario wasn’t exactly replicable, but Kawabe said that it served as proof of concept: Americans would love the candy, if the company could get it in front of them.
Getting a particular product in front of shoppers, though, is much easier said than done, especially when it comes to things that are largely unknown or thought to have a niche audience. Candy purchases tend to be spur-of-the-moment decisions made at checkout counters, and that real estate is limited and has long been spoken for by conglomerates such as Hershey and Mars, which make much of the candy that Americans have been eating for their entire life. To take a shot at mainstream American success, Hi-Chew’s makers did the usual stuff that consumer-products businesses do: They hired retail consultants, switched distributors, that kind of thing. But they also set their sights on a very important group: Major League Baseball players, the only people who routinely spend time chewing snacks in extreme close-up on TV. Morinaga supplied Japanese players in the league with Hi-Chew, Kawabe told me, focusing first on teams in markets where major retailers were headquartered. The gambit worked; ESPN reported on just how obsessed the 2015 Yankees squad was with the little fruit candies. Walgreens and CVS picked up the brand after it became popular with the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox. Regular people tried the newly plentiful and suddenly trendy candy, and then insisted that their brother or spouse or co-workers try it. Hi-Chew’s U.S. sales grew from $8 million in 2012 to more than $100 million in 2021, according to Kawabe.
This success story might feel a little bit too convenient, but baseball players’ mid-2010s Hi-Chew mania was well documented—and, apparently, ongoing. Moreover, explosive American growth in the past decade has been common among foreign candy brands. Sales of gummy candies from the German confectioner Haribo more than doubled from 2011 to 2017. Ferrero, the Italian parent company of Kinder chocolates, says that the line’s U.S. sales are growing by double digits annually. The European chocolate brands Milka and Cadbury are now owned by the American Oreo-maker Mondelez—an advantage over other confectioners when navigating import and retail red tape.
None of these companies pulled off the same tactic with baseball players, but their rise seems to have followed similar patterns. Greenfield Cohen, from Economy Candy, said sales growth largely happens by word of mouth. This is helped along by the increasing popularity of international travel and the internet’s ability to serve niche products to a potentially large pool of previously untapped buyers. European candy in particular benefits from these dynamics—millions of American tourists visit the continent every year, and destination-specific candies are a common gift for returning travelers to bring home to loved ones. (That’s how I first tried Hi-Chew way back in 2002, although my high-school best friend had gone on a family trip to the exotic land of Tampa, not Japan.) Now the barrier between trying one piece of interesting candy—or even just hearing someone rave about it—and keeping a stockpile in your pantry or desk drawer is as low as it’s ever been.
Of course, candy also needs to taste good for people to like it. All the word of mouth in the world won’t permanently increase sales of a bad product. Once people try candy from other parts of the world, they return to it because it is, in some very real ways, better than its domestic competitors.
Have you ever had a matcha KitKat? Its physical form is identical to that of a regular KitKat, except instead of chocolate, it’s blanketed in bright green. Where many Americans would expect the familiar, slightly bland flavor of milk chocolate, there’s an earthy, creamy sweetness—perfect for people who, like me, get a little queasy after a few pieces of sickly sweet Halloween candy. With Hi-Chews, each wrapped in tiny squares of plain-white waxed paper, the flavors are important—and far more varied than in popular American fruit candies—but the primary feature is the texture. Chewing one feels like you’ve encountered a Starburst that fights back. It’s delicious.
The reasons for foreign candy’s superiority are varied—and more surprising than you might expect. In some cases, yes, a candy is better because it is fundamentally different, on a chemical level, than what’s available in America. Europe’s strict regulations on chocolate quality mean that it offers something that’s not really comparable to a Hershey bar (and that Europeans are generally enthusiastic to tell you how much American chocolate sucks). The European Union also bans certain food additives that the FDA allows, which can yield slightly different results in all kinds of finished products, including candy.
These cases seem to be the exception, not the rule, however. Ali Bouzari, a culinary scientist and co-founder of the product-development firm Pilot R&D, doesn’t buy the idea that inherently superior quality is the reason that so many people are charmed by imported sweets. “The basic tools of commercial candy manufacture are pretty universal, and the ingredients that people work with are fully globalized,” Bouzari told me. German brands, Japanese brands, and American brands likely all source their grape flavorings, for example, from the same vendors. What’s different—and what makes foreign candies so enticing—instead mostly seems to be in the implementation. Imported candies tend to embrace flavors and textures that American candies don’t. “I will always first go for the melon stuff” when shopping in an East Asian grocery store, Bouzari said. “This is candy inspired by a culture that thinks about melons more than we do.” Every part of the world has some kind of confection that it does particularly well: Scandinavians produce more flavors and textures of licorice than most Americans could dream of. Mexican candy frequently includes savory or spicy flavors. Candies from a number of East and South Asian countries tend to feature a far wider array of fruit flavors than are available in the West.
The flavorings and ingredients that go into these candies are likely available to American manufacturers from the vendors they’re already using, according to Bouzari. Foreign producers develop products primarily for their domestic markets, so they make different choices and end up with results that can feel idiosyncratic—sometimes thrillingly so—to the American palate. As food culture has globalized, those palates have become more adventurous, especially in larger metropolitan areas, where more types of food have become more widely available in restaurants and grocery stores than ever before. Meanwhile, Bouzari told me, major U.S. manufacturers haven’t really kept up. They depend on appealing to as broad a swath of the country’s atypically diverse population as possible—not just across racial and ethnic lines, but across the country’s many local and regional food cultures. The results are candies that tend to be highly sweet and pretty bland, forgoing flavors and textures that brands believe might alienate white Americans in particular.
All that being said, American tastes have a way of bending the world to their will. Once a foreign confectioner achieves a certain level of American success, it usually ends up adjusting its products for the American market, even if only a little. Kawabe, Morinaga America’s president, told me that some of the Hi-Chew flavors sold in mainstream U.S. retailers vary slightly from what’s available in Japan. When Americans buy grape candy, for example, their flavor expectations are just different from when the Japanese buy the same thing. Candy companies that want huge U.S. sales growth, for better or worse, need to meet people where they are.
The most salient difference between foreign and domestic candy might not be chemical or methodological, but rather philosophical. New American products could theoretically embrace the lessons of imported candy and snatch up some of its growing domestic market share. But in Bouzari’s experience, much of the candy being developed domestically, such as low-carb candy from brands like Smart Sweets and Highkey, isn’t trying to delight consumers, but to placate their health fears by engineering it into diet food. “Candy is meant to be edible, ephemeral entertainment,” he said. “If you try to turn it into food, you get caught in a weird no-man’s-land where it’s neither the complete entertainment that it should be, and it’s not as nourishing as it should be.”
For Americans who want something fun and novel and sweet, overseas might just be the most logical place to look right now. “In most other places I’ve been in the world, there is a more well-adjusted relationship to hedonism in food than we have here,” Bouzari said. “Other people spend less time trying to figure out how to eat gummy bears with no sugar.”
GENEVA, June 27, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– Gathering on the sidelines of the 50th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the Yemen Coalition of Independent Women and its partner organizations, including The Washington Outsider, held a series of seminars on human rights abuses by the Iran-backed Houthis against children and women. The Washington Outsider’s Editor-in-Chief, Irina Tsukerman, participated in these events.
Wesam Basindowah, the founder of the Coalition, stressed the need to protect children by specialized international organizations such as the UNICEF. Basindowah recalled the tragedy of the girl Lian, who was killed with a ballistic missile along with her father in the city of Ma’rib last year, considering that this tragedy epitomizes the situation of children in Yemen.
According to Mansour Al-Shadadi, who represented one of the other participating European NGOs, half of all militia fighters are child soldiers who are recruited through manipulation of their families, in exchange for money, or through coercion.
Al-Shadadi considered the control of the extremist wing of the Houthi group over the Ministry of Education as a major reason for the process of recruiting children and facilitating their radicalization.
He also considered the economic effects of the war on families and the attempt to attract children from poor and uneducated families through food baskets provided by international organizations and seized by group supervisors as another major reason for recruitment.
According to statistics cited by another panelist, Dr. Mosali Buhaibah, nearly half a million children were accommodated in 6000 Houthi summer centers, which was confirmed by senior officials in the group, where they are trained to fight and to adopt sectarian curricula.
The head of the Coordination of Associations and People for Freedom of Belief, Thierry Valle, said that 10,000 children killed or maimed since the fighting began in March 2015. That equates to four children a day.
According to a statistic, Thierry Valli said, “450 children were killed or wounded in the city of Taiz during the past six years, and the Houthis deliberately targeted them with snipers.”
Thierry Valli reported the case of the 8-year-old girl, Ruwaida Saleh, who was shot in the head in August 2020 while collecting water in the Kalba district of Taiz, stressing that it is an example of Houthi deliberate sniping of children.
He also reported the story of the 10-year-old child, Saber, who was killed in 2020 by a sniper’s bullet while he was with his brother, to fetch water for his family.
In another seminar in the series, European Union Council International Affairs Advisor Dr. Manal al-Muslimi said that women in Yemen are the most vulnerable and not only lack their basic rights, but also lack individual freedoms. Houthis have long targeted, arrested, harassed, imprisoned, and tortured women mainly journalists, human rights activists, political figures and influential women leaders, such as Yemeni model Intisar al-Hammadi.
GENEVA, June 24, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– On the sidelines of the 50th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), Dr. Wesam Basindowah’s Yemen Coalition of Independent Women, with co-organizer The Washington Outsider, whose Editor-in-Chief Irina Tsukerman participated in the seminar, and along with other international human rights organizations, revealed the humanitarian disaster in Yemen unleashed by the widespread use of land mines by the Iran-backed Houthis.
Tsukerman had interviewed demining experts from MASAM, a civilian project with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre, which had removed hundreds of thousands of mines since 2018. From the start of the war, KSA has contributed approximately $20 billion to humanitarian aid in Yemen.
Tsukerman explained that Houthis fought numerous wars with Yemen’s government before the current civil war and grew in sophistication thanks to training from Iran’s and Hezbullah’s military advisers. Iran, Tsukerman asserted, views Yemen as a gateway to Saudi Arabia; controlling the Two Holy Mosques is at the epicenter of the Islamic Republic’s goal to export the Islamic Revolution, becoming the only recognized religious authority. The land mines would help clear the way.
The land mines progressed from old Soviet mines and locally made simple IEDs to sophisticated technology imported from Iran or developed on the ground, similar to ordnances recovered after use by Iran’s proxies in Iraq, Bahrain, and Lebanon. Since the start of the current war over 9000 Yemenis were reported killed from IED blasts with hundreds injured each year. Even if the war comes to an end, due to lack of cooperation from the Houthis in mapping the land mine sites, the humanitarian disaster may persist for decades, Tsukerman added.
The panel recommended sanctioning Houthis, increasing international demining cooperation, building more hospitals and artificial limb centers in remote areas, providing psychological care and rehabilitation for victims, especially for children, providing safety training for volunteers, disrupting Iran’s efforts in providing land mine materials, providing safe passage and humanitarian assistance to communities where facilities have become inaccessible, and increasing coordination among demining groups.
GENEVA, June 21, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– Gathering on the sidelines of the 50th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the Yemen Coalition of Independent Women and its partner organizations, including The Washington Outsider, addressed the nexus between the human rights violations by the Iran-backed Houthi militias (Ansar Allah) in Yemen and the security risks to the region and the international community. At the June 17 symposium on human rights abuses in Yemen, Senior Director for Countering Extremism Dr. Hans Jacob Schindler discussed the Houthi threats to regional and global security by the use of ballistic missiles against Yemen’s residential areas and displacement camps, and attacks on economic infrastructure and vital installations in Saudi Arabia and UAE.
Addressing Iran’s arming, training, funding, and political support for Ansar Allah and the Houthi connections to other Iranian proxies in the region, Dr. Schindler confirmed that the Houthis had received material support and training from Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, and that Yemen had become a testing ground for Iran and Hezbollah. Dr. Schindler asserted that the Houthis represented a real threat to international navigation in the Red Sea by transforming public ports into operational centers through which international shipping lines, commercial and humanitarian vessels were targeted, booby-trapped, and pirated.
In the June 19th seminar on Houthi violations against media freedom, Irina Tsukerman, who moderated the panel, stated that Houthis use cyberspace to raise funds and to block anti-Houthi websites, and to spy on citizens. She added that the Houthis used communications and information technology and infrastructure they controlled to support military operations. The Houthi punished the Yemeni people and cut off internet service in 2018 from 80% of the area of Yemen. The Houthi control of the main internet provider in the country gave them information monopoly and frustrated resistance. Tsukerman stressed that Houthi control of the internet isolates the Yemeni population from the rest of the world, citing the importance of helping Yemen restore internet access and end militia control as a necessary priority to end the war.
Keith Boyfield, Senior Fellow at the Euro-Gulf Information Centre, addressed the potential environmental disaster resulting from the ticking time bomb of the trapped FSO Safer oil carrier near the Hodeidah port. He also spoke of child soldier recruitment and hate indoctrination, which prolongs the conflict, creating generations of dedicated fighters.
The seminar also discussed the impact of the arbitrary detentions, torture, and assaults on journalists, the bans of media outlets, and the hacking and cell phone searches and seizures, as well as the impact on information flow about security and on digital rights in Yemen.
I grew up half Jewish and half Italian-Catholic. I made jokes about how these different identities left me mostly confused. Had Jesus risen again or not? I thought I had to choose one side rather than celebrating all the parts within myself, so I almost erased my Jewish half. I learned how to make risotto, but not matzah ball soup.
Christianity is the dominant culture in the United States and obscures the other religions. People would always say Merry Christmas to me, assuming everyone celebrated it, assuming it was the only holiday. I unconsciously accepted that and embraced my Catholic heritage more. I learned gospel hymns, but never learned the Hebrew blessings sung on Shabbat.
In addition to being stifled by Christianity’s dominant force, I also grew up internalizing sexism, striving to be like the men I deemed superior, by playing jazz and chess, composing music, reading philosophy, being stoic, and working hard.
Weighed down by sexism from without and within, I was unaware of the ways I was also part of oppressive systems. In undergraduate jazz school I was so anxious about playing equally to men that I didn’t wake up to systemic racism. I took a jazz history class, where I learned about the racism Black musicians endured, but that felt like history, miles away. I couldn’t see my white privilege because I only noticed how inferior I felt to my male classmates.
It wasn’t until I was 30 that I realized I had spent most of my life trying to prove I was as good as men, and this had distracted me from other issues. It wasn’t until I was 32, when I made a joke about Jewish people, that my Jewish friend let me know what I said was antisemitic.
“But I’m Jewish!” I said, stunned.
It turns out antisemitism is everywhere.
Even inside me.
In my thirties, when I finally uncovered the side of me that was Jewish and uprooted my internalized antisemitism, I found the joy of being Jewish: dressing up for glittery Purim events in Brooklyn; going to a feminist, antiracist synagogue; and connecting to a community of inspiring Jewish activists. The more I learned about Jewish traditions, the more I realized there was so much of Judaism already flowing through me without me even knowing: my connection to the moon, my eco-spirituality, my humor, my animated hand gestures.
As I became in touch with the Jewish part of me that was lost and erased, I also learned about the Israeli government’s erasure and deliberate killing of a large amount of Palestinian people. US media and Zionist culture declare that Israel and Palestine are in conflict, it’s complicated, and there are two sides. But 5,590 Palestinians were killed from 2008-2020 compared to 251 Israelis killed. Human Rights Watch has declared Israel to be guilty of apartheid and human rights crimes. Israel has the largest army in the Middle East, funded by the US government’s aid of 3.8 billion dollars a year. Hamas, meanwhile, has rocks and rockets that are easily intercepted by Israel’s military system. Israel is the one with the power, and their government uses it to oppress and kill the Palestinian people.
My Grandma had always talked about her love of Israel, and I absorbed that without any questions for too long. The truth of Israel’s aggression was hidden in plain sight.
Just as I first had to embrace Judaism within myself, and then awoke more to the antisemitism around me, so I learned about Zionism and Israel’s mass killings of Palestinians. The uncovering never ends, just like my battle with sexism delayed my awakening to racism. Different oppressions conceal other oppressions. Until they don’t anymore. Until we wake up from our individual struggles and realize how the system wants to keep people separated.
The veil that kept me isolated in my own struggle of sexism and antisemitism also became the path toward connection. Once we know there is a veil, we can then see through it, leading us to pursue solidarity with other causes. We can see how all the struggles overlap — that the Black Lives Matter movement is part of Palestinian liberation, part of queer and trans liberation, part of reproductive rights and feminism — that the intersection of all these injustices is where our community power lies.
When white supremacists stormed the capital on January 6th, some wore shirts that said “6MWE.” My stomach churned when I saw on Facebook what that meant: “6 Million Wasn’t Enough.”
I texted a friend: They’re talking about the Holocaust. They’re talking about me.
Some people hate me, which is sickening, and I am not going to hate or oppress anyone else. I know that it is, in the words of Jewish organization If Not Now, a “false choice between Palestinian freedom and Jewish safety.” The intergenerational trauma from the Holocaust has created an extreme militant Israeli government unable to see they are now harming others. Israel’s government is stuck in a pattern they feel is defensive but is actually violently aggressive. This round of Israeli bombing in May killed at least 256 Palestinians in Gaza, including 67 children, displaced tens of thousands, destroyed hospitals, schools, sewage systems, clean drinking water supplies, and the only COVID testing site. In contrast, thirteen Israelis were killed. That’s not Israel acting in defense — that is aggressive and violent, a series of human rights violations. When you bombard an area densely populated with civilians who are unable to escape, that’s a deliberate and horrific mass killing. That’s a war crime.
The more I dig into the rich and beautiful culture of Judaism, I learn that there is a long history of anti-Zionism within Judaism. The Judaism that I know and love wants basic human rights for all people. If Not Now states, “Palestinian liberation and dismantling antisemitism are intertwined … We will not be pitted against each other … We won’t be distracted from our fight for freedom and safety for all people.” No one is free until everyone is free, and that includes Palestinians oppressed under apartheid; Black, brown, and Indigenous people brutalized and killed by the police in the US; transgender people who are horrifically murdered; Jews experiencing hate crimes; and people in other countries fighting totalitarian and fascist governments. Our liberation is bound up in each other’s.
Still, some people try to link any opposition to Israel’s government as being antisemitic. As Palestinian-American writer and policy analyst Yousef Munayyer writes, “When people turn humanizing Palestinians into antisemitism, they not only enable the continued dehumanization of Palestinians but they also cheapen antisemitism by cynically weaponizing it.”
I, an American Jew, stand with Jews all around the world in protest of Israel’s government, because I know injustice, war crimes, human rights violations, and apartheid when I see them. I will fight for the rights of marginalized people until everyone is free.
[Feature image: Close-up of barbed wire with the golden Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem visible in the distance under a blue sky. Source: @RJA1988 for Pixabay.]
Mare Berger is a singer-songwriter, pianist, teacher, writer, improviser, gardener, and activist living in Brooklyn, NY. In April 2020 Mare released an album “The Moon is Always Full” featuring their original lyrics, songs and orchestration. You can buy Mare’s album here. Follow Mare @maremoonsong. Listen to music and read more of their writings at marielberger.com.
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Top House Democrats are rebuking Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal’s comments from earlier this weekend that “Israel is a racist state,” which she sought to walk back on Sunday.
“Israel is not a racist state,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Whip Katherine Clark, Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar and Vice Chair Ted Lieu said in a statement that did not mention the progressive leader by name.
A draft statement signed by a handful of other House Democrats and circulating among lawmakers’ offices on Sunday expresses “deep concern” over what it calls Jayapal’s “unacceptable” comments, adding, “We will never allow anti-Zionist voices that embolden antisemitism to hijack the Democratic Party and country.”
Their pushback comes ahead of Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s address to a joint meeting of Congress later this week, which some progressives have said they’ll skip, citing concerns about human rights. House progressives have been vocal about their opposition to Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the US sponsorship of Israel’s Iron Dome defense system.
Jayapal, a Washington State Democrat, said “Israel is a racist state” on Saturday while addressing pro-Palestine protesters who interrupted a panel discussion at the Netroots Nation conference in Chicago.
“As somebody who’s been in the streets and participated in a lot of demonstrations, I want you to know that we have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state, that the Palestinian people deserve self-determination and autonomy, that the dream of a two-state solution is slipping away from us, that it does not even feel possible,” she told protesters chanting “Free Palestine.”
Jayapal sought to clarify her remarks in a Sunday afternoon statement, saying that she does “not believe the idea of Israel as a nation is racist,” while offering an apology “to those who I have hurt with my words.”
She went on to call out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “extreme right-wing government,” which she said she believes “has engaged in discriminatory and outright racist policies.”
But her initial remark – made after protesters yelled “Israel is a racist state” during a panel she was participating in with Illinois progressive Reps. Jan Schakowsky and Jesús “Chuy” García – struck a nerve with some members of her own party.
Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has signed the statement circulating among Democratic lawmakers, told CNN’s Jim Acosta on Sunday that not only was Jayapal’s statement “hurtful and harmful, it was wholly inaccurate and insensitive. I’m thankful that she retracted it.”
The Florida Democrat added that Jayapal had spoken to a number of Jewish members of Congress on Sunday “and that is in part, I think, what resulted in the retraction and apology.”
“We need to make sure we continue to work together,” Wasserman Schultz said. “But we all have to be careful about what we say in the heat of the moment, and I think she learned that the hard way.”
CNN reached out to Jayapal earlier Sunday before she released her statement.
In her statement, the congressman reiterated her commitment to “a two-state solution that allows both Israelis and Palestinians to live freely, safely, and with self-determination alongside each other.”
And she explained her earlier comment by saying, in part, “On a very human level, I was also responding to the deep pain and hopelessness that exists for Palestinians and their diaspora communities when it comes to this debate, but I in no way intended to deny the deep pain and hurt of Israelis and their Jewish diaspora community that still reels from the trauma of pogroms and persecution, the Holocaust, and continuing anti-semitism and hate violence that is rampant today.”
The draft statement from some Democrats nodded to antisemitism and also invoked American national security.
“Israel is the legitimate homeland of the Jewish people and efforts to delegitimize and demonize it are not only dangerous and antisemitic, but they also undermine Americas’s national security,” the lawmakers write.
House Democratic leadership also touted Israel as “an invaluable partner.”
“Our commitment to a safe and secure Israel as an invaluable partner, ally and beacon of democracy in the Middle East is ironclad,” the leaders wrote in their own statement. “We look forward to welcoming Israeli President Isaac Herzog to the United States House of Representatives this week.”
Jayapal said Friday she doesn’t believe she will attend Herzog’s speech Wednesday on Capitol Hill. “I don’t think I am. I haven’t fully decided.”
“I think this is not a good time for that to happen,” Jayapal told CNN’s Manu Raju when asked if Speaker Kevin McCarthy had made a mistake in inviting Herzog.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri have all said they will not attend.
Democratic leadership has been supportive of Herzog’s visit, with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York extending the invitation last year. “I look forward to welcoming him with open arms,” Jeffries, a New York Democrat, said at a news conference last week, calling Herzog “a force for good in Israeli society.”
Herzog will visit the White House on Tuesday. “As Israel celebrates its 75th anniversary, the visit will highlight our enduring partnership and friendship. President (Joe) Biden will reaffirm the ironclad commitment of the United States to Israel’s security,” the White House said in a statement.
“President Biden will stress the importance of our shared democratic values, and discuss ways to advance equal measures of freedom, prosperity, and security for Palestinians and Israelis,” the statement continued.
Netanyahu has not been invited to Washington by the Biden administration since taking office again in December last year, amid a raft of policy differences between the two governments.
This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.
