Day: October 10, 2023

X criticised for enabling spread of Israel-Hamas disinformation  The Guardian

  Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

Israel vows complete siege of Gaza as it strikes the Palestinian territory after incursion by Hamas  KCRG

Israel vows complete siege of Gaza as it strikes the Palestinian territory after incursion by Hamas  The Indian Express

Officers betray Putin and leak intel for massive strike that killed admiral  The Mirror

Israel ‘s invasion by HAMAS has triggered growing anti-Semitism in some European nations. Russia, in particular, has seen a sharp increase in anti-Semitic sentiment, which means that Russian people are ready to get back to the practice of anti-Jewish riots.

The published video shows some people, who belong to the Russian ethnic group, placing the Stars of David and Mossad inscriptions on the walls of buildings in Moscow, where the offices of Jewish -related businesses are located.

Law enforcement agencies did nothing to stop them, which means the government supports this initiative.

It means that our summer 2022’s forecast on growing worries about anti-Semitic and anti-Israel sentiment in Russia was correct, despite Israel’s sympathy and caution to Russian regime.

We believe Russia will keep supporting the anti-Jewish narrative, as a tool to divert the people from criticizing the Kremlin.

Declassified Cold War CIA files suggest that loyalty and authoritarian regime support by Russian people come along with anti-Semitism promotion.We pointed out, in May 2022, that Russia’s Foreign Ministry made an effort to impose a new paradigm of established identity between Nazism and Jews, with regard to the nationality of Ukrainian leaders. Such efforts by Moscow are highly probable, therefore, to trigger anti-Jewish riots in Russia.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailed ties with Romania as a “factor of stability for Europe and beyond” on Tuesday as he visited the NATO member state for the first time since Russia’s invasion last year.

Zelenskiy met President Klaus Iohannis, whose country is also in the European Union, at the start of a brief visit which the Ukrainian leader said would focus on security in the Black Sea region and also discuss developing an aviation coalition.

The Romanian port of Constanța has become Ukraine’s main export route for grain via Ukrainian ports on the Danube River since Russia quit a deal in mid-July that had guaranteed safe shipments via three Ukrainian Black Sea ports.

“(The) Ukraine-Romania partnership is a factor of stability for Europe and beyond,” Zelenskiy wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, after starting talks with Iohannis.

In earlier comments on Twitter, he wrote: “Romania is a friend who came to our help on our darkest day and whose support gets stronger with time. I am certain this visit will be beneficial for both of our nations.”

Zelenskiy, who was dressed in military khaki, said the agenda of his visit included “defense cooperation, Black Sea security, and economic cooperation …. with a focus on developing infrastructure and creating jobs in both nations.”

He also said he would discuss further security cooperation including “developing aviation and other coalitions, strengthening Ukraine’s air defense, the Black Sea security architecture, and our relations with partners.”

Romania has said it is considering opening a regional training hub for F-16 fighter jet pilots which would ultimately be available to its NATO allies and partners, including Ukraine.

The country, which shares a 650-km (400 mile) border with Ukraine, is host to a U.S. ballistic missile defence system and, as of last year, has a permanent alliance battlegroup stationed on its territory.

Romania has detected several drone fragments falling on its territory as Russia attacked Ukrainian port and grain infrastructure across the Danube River.

Defence officials in Bucharest told Reuters last month that the Romanian military was moving air defences closer to Danube villages and was adding more observation posts and patrols to the area.

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Israel pounded the Gaza Strip on Tuesday with the fiercest air strikes in the 75-year history of its conflict with the Palestinians, razing whole districts to dust despite a Hamas threat to execute a captive for each home hit.

Israel has vowed “mighty revenge” since Islamist gunmen rampaged through its towns, leaving streets strewn with bodies in by far the deadliest attack in its history.

It has called up hundreds of thousands of reservists and placed Gaza, crowded home to 2.3 million people, under total siege.

Israeli media said deaths from Saturday’s Hamas attacks had reached 900, mostly civilians gunned down in homes, on streets or at a desert dance party, dwarfing past modern attacks by Islamists except 9/11.

Scores of Israelis and some foreigners were taken to Gaza as hostages. Some were paraded through the streets.

Gaza’s health ministry said Israel’s retaliatory strikes had killed at least 770 people and wounded more than 4,000. The air strikes, already the heaviest ever, intensified on Tuesday night, shaking the ground and pouring columns of smoke and flames into the morning sky.

The United Nations said more than 180,000 Gazans had been made homeless, many huddling on streets or in schools. Bombardment shut roads to emergency crews.

At the morgue in Gaza’s Khan Younis hospital, bodies were laid on the ground on stretchers with names written on their bellies. Medics called for relatives to pick up bodies quickly because there was no more space for the dead.

There were heavy casualties in a former municipal building struck while being used as an emergency shelter.

“There is an extraordinary number of martyrs, people are still under the rubble, some friends are either martyrs or wounded,” said Ala Abu Tair, 35, who had sought shelter there with his family after fleeing Abassan Al-Kabira near the border. “No place is safe in Gaza, as you see they hit everywhere.”

Radwan Abu al-Kass, a boxing instructor and father of three, said he had been one of the last to evacuate his five-storey building in the Al Rimal district after the area came under attack. He finally left when a missile hit the building, which was destroyed by a bigger strike after he got out.

“The whole district was just erased,” he said.

Three Gaza journalists were killed when an Israeli missile hit a building while they were outside reporting, bringing the number of journalists killed to six. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said civilians had been harmed in strikes on tower blocks, schools and U.N. buildings.

“International humanitarian law is clear: the obligation to take constant care to spare the civilian population and civilian objects remains applicable throughout the attacks,” he said.

In Israel, there has still been no complete official count of the dead and missing from Saturday’s attacks. In the southern town of Be’eri, where more than 100 bodies have been retrieved, volunteers in yellow vests and face masks solemnly carried the dead out of homes on stretchers.

A long, wide trail of blood wound along the floor of a house where bodies had been dragged out to the street from a bloodsoaked kitchen strewn with overturned furniture.

“The thing I want the most is to wake up from this nightmare,” said Elad Hakim, a survivor from a music festival where Hamas had killed 260 partygoers at dawn. “Everything was so amazing, the best party I’ve been to in my life, until it… from paradise to hell, in one second.”

Israel’s next move could be a ground offensive into the Gaza Strip, territory it abandoned in 2005 and has kept under blockade since Hamas took power there in 2007. The total siege it announced on Monday would block even food and fuel from reaching the strip.

Israel also struck the border gate inside the sole crossing from Gaza into Egypt. Hours earlier it had advised Gazans to flee to Egypt, only to issue a swift clarification to say the crossing was closed.

Hamas operatives had “nowhere to hide in Gaza”, Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said. “We will reach them everywhere.”

Israel was caught so completely off guard by Saturday’s attack that it took more than two days to finally seal off the multi-billion dollar high-tech barrier wall, meant to have been impenetrable.

Military spokesperson Hagari said early on Tuesday there had been no new infiltrations from Gaza since the previous day.

Israeli leaders will now have to decide whether to constrain their retaliation to safeguard the hostages. Hamas spokesperson Abu Ubaida issued the threat on Monday to kill one Israeli captive for every Israeli bombing of a civilian house without warning – and to broadcast the killing.

Saturday’s attacks and Israel’s retaliation tore up the plans of diplomats in the Middle East at a crucial juncture when Israel was on the verge of reaching an agreement to normalise relations with the richest Arab power, Saudi Arabia.

Western countries have strongly backed Israel. Arab cities have seen street demonstrations in support of the Palestinians. Iran, Hamas’s patron, celebrated the attacks but denied playing a direct role in them.

“We kiss the hands of those who planned the attack on the Zionist regime,” Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said in a televised speech wearing a Palestinian scarf, though he said accusations Tehran was behind it were false.

A deadly clash on Israel’s northern border on Monday raised fears of a second front in the war, with Iran’s other main ally in the area, Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, being drawn into the fray. It said it was not behind any incursion into Israel.

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U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday there had been “serious engagement” during a meeting between a visiting U.S. bipartisan congressional delegation and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The visit aims to advance U.S. economic and national security interests ahead of a potential summit between Xi and U.S. President Joe Biden next month.

The United States and China are at odds over issues from Taiwan to trade, fentanyl and human rights. Biden has taken steps to restrict China’s access to sensitive U.S. technology while at the same time seeking to keep communication channels open.

“There was serious engagement with President Xi and others,” Schumer said during a briefing at the Beijing residence of U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns.

“We need to get results,” Schumer said, adding that “there seems to be a difference” in China’s current posture compared to previous engagement with U.S. officials.

The United States last week announced actions against Chinese companies and individuals as it targets the trafficking of the deadly drug fentanyl, a major sticking point in U.S.-China relations.

Schumer and other senators on the visit said they pressed Chinese officials on the issue.

Schumer said he “asked Xi to appoint a senior official on the China side” responsible for fentanyl, adding “they said they would look into that”.

Republican Mike Crapo, co-leader of the visit, said the meetings had been “remarkably successful”.

“We were candid and frank but respectful,” he told journalists. “We want the engagement to continue.”

Schumer said on Monday he urged Xi to support Israel after Saturday’s deadly attacks by Hamas, adding he was “disappointed” that Beijing showed “no sympathy” for the country over the weekend.

In response, China’s foreign ministry urged “relevant parties” to end hostilities and advocated “implementing the two-state solution”.

During Monday’s meeting, Xi said “competition and confrontation are not in line with the trend of the times”, according to a Chinese state media readout.

Schumer’s visit to Asia also includes stops in South Korea and Japan.

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A Russian court on Tuesday dismissed a complaint by U.S. reporter Evan Gershkovich against the extension of his pre-trial detention, more than six months after his arrest on spying charges which he denies.

Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was detained by the Federal Security Service (FSB) on March 29 in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg on charges of espionage that carry up to 20 years in prison.

Gershkovich, wearing jeans with a dark shirt over a white T-shirt, smiled quizzically from a glass box in court at journalists who were allowed to photograph him before the closed hearing. FSB officers, some in masks, looked on.

Judge Yuri Pasyunin said the Moscow city court had decided to leave without change an earlier court decision to extend his pre-trial detention.

“The appeal complaint is left without satisfaction,” Pasyunin said. Reporters were allowed to listen to the court’s decision via a video link in a different part of the court house.

The decision essentially means that Gershkovich, 32, will remain in detention. No date has been set for his trial.

Gershkovich is the first American journalist to be detained on spy charges in Russia since the Cold War. American diplomats attended the Moscow courthouse.

Russia has said Gershkovich, the first American journalist to be detained on such charges since the Cold War, was caught “red-handed” while the FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said he was trying to obtain military secrets.

The White House has called the charges “ridiculous” and President Joe Biden has said Gershkovich’s detention is “totally illegal”. The Journal denies the charges and has called for his immediate release, as has his family.

Russia has yet to make any evidence in the case public. Tuesday’s hearing was closed due to the case containing materials classified as secret.

A fluent Russian-speaker born to Soviet emigres and raised in New Jersey, Gershkovich moved to Moscow in late 2017 to join the English-language Moscow Times, and subsequently worked for the French news agency Agence France-Presse.

Russia announced the start of its “special military operation” in February 2022, just as Gershkovich was in London, about to return to Russia to join the Journal’s Moscow bureau.

It was decided that he would live in London but travel to Russia frequently for reporting trips, as a correspondent accredited with the Foreign Ministry.

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