The Ocean Avenue News - oceanavenuenews.com“We do not believe that Russia was involved in any way,” Israel’s ambassador to Moscow, Alexander Ben Zvi, told the Kommersant newspaper this week, adding that it was “complete nonsense” to suggest there was a Russian connection to the atrocities committed by Hamas in Israel.
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Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has long portrayed himself as a friend of Vladimir Putin. In a memoir published during Russia’s war on Ukraine, Netanyahu repeatedly lauded the Russian leader for his intellect and his “particularly friendly attitude” toward the Jewish people.
Putin, too, has over the years cast himself as a loyal ally of the Israeli state, promoting cultural ties and visa-free travel between the two countries.
But after the worst attack on Israel in decades, the much-touted friendship appears to have vanished.
Four days after the start of Hamas’s surprise attack, Putin is yet to call Netanyahu, while the Kremlin has not published a message of condolence to the country, a diplomatic gesture of goodwill that Russia routinely sends out to global leaders following deadly incidents on their soil.
On Tuesday, in his first comments about the Hamas incursion, Putin said the explosion of violence between Israel and the Palestinians showed that US policy had failed in the Middle East and had taken no account of the needs of the Palestinians.
“I think that many people will agree with me that this is a vivid example of the failure of United States policy in the Middle East,” Putin said, without acknowledging the gruesome deaths in Israel.
The shift in tone appears to point to a larger rift between the two countries that has taken place since the start of the war in Ukraine.
For years, Putin has sought to cultivate strong ties with Israel while also backing the Palestinian cause, an alliance which stems from the Soviet area.
Russia’s delicate diplomacy with Israel appeared to bear fruit when the country refused to participate in western sanctions against Russia, much to the chagrin of Kyiv, which accused Israel of ignoring the suffering of Ukrainian Jews.
But below the surface, there had been signs that the relationship between Russia and Israel was deteriorating over Putin’s claims that he was fighting “neo-Nazism” in Ukraine, while shifting his country into the orbit of Iran, an arch-enemy of Israel.
“The warm relationship [between Russia and Israel] that we have seen for years under Putin has cooled down. We are in a different world now,” said Pinchas Goldschmidt, who served as the chief rabbi of Moscow for nearly 30 years until fleeing the country over his opposition to the Ukraine war.
“Israel has always been careful to maintain a good relationship with Moscow given Russia’s large Jewish community and its influence over Syria,” Goldschmidt said, speaking to the Guardian by phone from Israel. On Saturday he attended the funeral of Yuval Ben Yaakov, an Israeli soldier killed in the fighting, who was the son of another former Moscow rabbi.
Goldschmidt said many in the Jewish community have been left deeply uncomfortable with Putin’s framing of the war, comparing Ukraine’s government to Nazi Germany to justify his invasion of the country.
Last summer, these tensions first spilled over into the public, when Russian officials accused Israel of supporting the “neo-Nazi regime” in Kyiv. The spat was ignited after Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, recycled an antisemitic conspiracy theory claiming that Adolf Hitler “had Jewish blood” – comments that Israel described as “unforgivable and outrageous”.
The Kremlin also cracked down on the Russian branch of the Jewish Agency, a private charity closely affiliated with the Israeli government that helped tens of thousands of highly skilled Jewish Russians to immigrate to Israel.
Perhaps more worryingly for Israel was Moscow’s growing reliance on Iran. Russia, isolated from western markets, has invested heavily in buying Iranian suicide drones to attack Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure, while the US has warned that Iran was seeking to acquire large numbers of Russian attack helicopters, warplanes and air defence systems.
As the US pledged to send its own military aid to Israel following the Hamas assault, some pro-Kremlin commentators expressed hope that the Israeli-Hamas war would drain western resources away from Ukraine.
Sergey Mardan, a Russian propagandist and television presenter, wrote: “This mess is beneficial for Russia, because the globalist toad will be distracted from Ukraine and will get busy trying to put out the eternal Middle Eastern fire.”
There was also a sense of glee in Moscow over Israeli military and intelligence blunders, which were presented as a testament of western weakness.
“Apparently, the IDF leadership … is resting on the laurels of long-past victories,” military expert Boris Rozhin, who is close to the Russian forces fighting in Ukraine, wrote on Telegram.
Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russia’s security services, said such comments “unmasked the acute psychological trauma suffered by the Russian military after its disastrous offensive against Ukraine in the early months of 2022.”
“That loss of global respect is hard to bear for a nation with a proud military tradition. So, the relief offered by Hamas has triggered an avalanche of schadenfreude. Did you laugh at our incompetence? Now it’s our turn,” Soldatov said.
On Russian state television, commentators also ridiculed the tens of thousands of Russian Jews who left for Israel following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in order to avoid mobilisation.
Addressing the Russian parliament on Wednesday, Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the Duma, said that Russians who fled the country to side with Ukraine should be charged with treason and sent to work in mines.
“We’re probably … talking about mines and we need to find territories where the weather is more constant, where there’s no summer,” Volodin said.
Meanwhile, Ukraine appears to have cast aside its previous grievances with Israel, eager to fill the friendship vacuum left behind by Russia.
In a speech made alongside Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, likened Hamas’s assault on Israel this weekend to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and said his people stood with Israel because they understood what it meant to suffer terror attacks.
“The only difference is that there is a terrorist organisation that attacked Israel, and here is a terrorist state that attacked Ukraine,” Zelenskiy said.
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As Israel prepared on Sunday for a ground assault on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, Palestinians who have lost family members in air strikes were bracing for more destruction.
Um Mohammad Al-Laham’s 4-year-old granddaughter Fulla Al-Laham lay in a Gaza hospital, which like others is operating on low supplies of medicine and fuel. She said an Israeli air strike hit the family home, killing 14 people including Fulla’s parents, siblings and members of her extended family.
“All of a sudden and without warning, they bombed the house on top of the residents inside. No-one survived except my grandchild Fulla,” said the grandmother, who has witnessed many wars between Hamas and the Israeli army over the years.
She says this is the toughest.
“Fourteen people martyred, no-one was left except Fulla,” she said. “She doesn’t talk, nothing, just lays in her bed and they give medicine.”
One other 4-year-old child in the family had also been left with almost no relatives, the grandmother said.
Israel has unleashed the heaviest air strikes ever on Gaza.
It has vowed to annihilate the Palestinian militant group Hamas in retaliation for a rampage by its fighters in Israeli towns eight days ago in which its militants shot men, women and children and seized hostages in the worst attack on civilians in the country’s history.
Some 1,300 people were killed in the unexpected onslaught, with graphic mobile phone video footage and reports from medical and emergency services of atrocities in the overrun towns and kibbutzes.
Israel has put Gaza, home to 2.3 million Palestinians, under siege and told people to leave their homes in the north of the enclave and move south.
Hamas has urged people not to leave, saying roads out are unsafe. It said dozens of people had been killed in strikes on vehicles carrying refugees on Friday, while medics, Hamas media and relatives say whole families have been killed in air strikes.
Reuters could not independently verify these statements.
The United Nations says so many people cannot be safely moved within Gaza without causing a humanitarian disaster.
Some residents said they would not leave, remembering the “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” of 1948 when many Palestinians were forced from their homes during the war that accompanied Israel’s creation.
Gaza authorities said more than 2,300 people have been killed, a quarter of them children, and nearly 10,000 wounded.
Rescue workers searched for survivors of night-time air raids.
The expected Israeli ground offensive and the air strikes have raised fears of unprecedented suffering in the narrow, impoverished enclave, one of the most crowded places in the world.
At Gaza’s Kamal Edwan Hospital, where some children were attached to ventilators, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, said: “If you want to kill us, kill us while we continue working here, we will not leave. We need days and weeks to secure another place.”
“The situation is really dangerous,” he said. “Transferring these children from this place means handing them a death sentence. They will die and this equipment only operates with electricity and oxygen.”
Hospitals say they are running out of medicine and fuel under the Israeli blockade.
Witnesses in Gaza City told Reuters the Israeli offensive had forced more people from their homes, some seeking shelter at medical facilities. Gaza’s largest Shifa hospital was overcrowded.
“We are living the worst nightmare of our lives. Even here in the hospital we are not safe. An air strike hit in the area outside the hospital around dawn,” said a 35-year-old woman who declined to give her name.
Taking the road to southern Gaza has become more difficult as several people who made the journey say Israel continues to bomb around it. The Israeli military was not immediately available for comment.
Ashraf Al-Qidra, Gaza’s health ministry spokesman, said 70% of people in Gaza City and the north of the strip are deprived of health services after the Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA evacuated its headquarters and suspended its services.
East of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, where hundreds of northern residents have fled to, some locals cooked for displaced people, using firewood to prepare 1,500 meals of meat and rice donated by residents.
“We are running out of gas, so we are cooking on firewood,” said Youssef Abu Assi, one resident helping out.
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The German was first elected for an eight-year term in 2013 and re-elected for a further four-year spell in 2021.
But allowing the 69-year-old former Olympic fencing champion to remain in the post beyond 2025 would require a change to the Olympic Charter.
Nevertheless, there were several calls for Bach to continue during Sunday’s opening day of the 141st IOC Session in Mumbai.
Luis Mejia Oviedo, the president of the Dominican Republic Olympic Committee, hailed Bach’s speech during Saturday’s opening ceremony where he announced plans to look at creating an eSports Games.
Oviedo, lauding Bach’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, said the IOC needs to “rely on the leadership which you have shown.”
Paraguay’s Camilo Perez Lopez Moreira urged Bach to run for a further four years, saying the IOC needed his “peaceful leadership.”
Djibouti’s Aïcha Garad Ali added she was speaking “on behalf of Africa” in calling for a Charter amendment.
International Gymnastics Federation president Morinari Watanabe told Bach “I love you” as he professed admiration for his leadership.
The Japanese, however, repeatedly insisted the IOC “must be a role model” for international federations when it came to “good governance.”
He also warned about the dangers of “corruption” and a “negative image” in what appeared to be a reference to Sepp Blatter having to resign as president of football’s global governing body after being re-elected to a fifth term in the middle of the 2015 ‘Fifagate’ scandal.
IOC vice-president John Coates of Australia said no alteration to the existing rules could take place in Mumbai because any proposal to amend the Charter must be submitted 30 days before a Session, and first requires consideration by the IOC’s executive board.
Bach responded by saying he was “loyal to the Olympic Charter” but did not rule out agreeing to an amendment that would allow him to run again.
“Thank you very much for your kind words of support, because I think these words of support are not only directed to me, they are directed to all of us,” he said.
Bach added the expressions of support for his leadership went “straight to my heart,” saying: “I always appreciate this support, friendship and the love expressed by Mr. Watanabe.”
Nevertheless, he added: “Having said this, you also know I am very loyal to the Olympic Charter. Being a core author of this Olympic Charter drives me to be more loyal to this Olympic Charter.
“You have heard the explanation of the chair of our legal commission [Coates] in this direction.”
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KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Medics in Gaza warned Sunday that thousands could die as hospitals packed with wounded people run desperately low on fuel and basic supplies. Palestinians in the besieged coastal enclave struggled to find food, water and safety ahead of an expected Israeli ground offensive in the war sparked by Hamas’ deadly attack.
Israeli forces, supported by a growing deployment of U.S. warships in the region, positioned themselves along Gaza’s border and drilled for what Israel said would be a broad campaign to dismantle the militant group. A week of blistering airstrikes have demolished entire neighborhoods but failed to stem militant rocket fire into Israel.
The Gaza Health Ministry said 2,329 Palestinians have been killed since the fighting erupted, more than in the 2014 Gaza war, which lasted over six weeks. That makes this the deadliest of the five Gaza wars for both sides. More than 1,300 Israelis have been killed, the vast majority of them civilians killed in Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault. This is the deadliest war for Israel since the 1973 conflict with Egypt and Syria.
Hospitals are expected to run out of generator fuel within two days, according to the U.N., which said that that would endanger the lives of thousands of patients. Gaza’s sole power plant shut down for lack of fuel after Israel completely sealed off the 40-kilometer-long (25-mile-long) territory following the Hamas attack.
In Nasser Hospital, in the southern town of Khan Younis, intensive care rooms are packed with wounded patients, most of them children under the age of 3. Hundreds of people with severe blast injuries have come to the hospital, where fuel is expected to run out by Monday, said Dr. Mohammed Qandeel, a consultant at the critical care complex.
There are 35 patients in the ICU who require ventilators and another 60 on dialysis. If fuel runs out, “it means the whole health system will be shut down,” he said, as children moaned in pain in the background. “All these patients are in danger of death if the electricity is cut off.”
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the head of pediatrics at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, said it did not evacuate despite Israeli orders. There are seven newborns in the ICU hooked up to ventilators, he said. “We cannot evacuate, that would mean death for them and other patients under our care.”
Patients keep arriving with severed limbs, severe burns and other life-threatening injuries. “It’s frightening,” he said.
The Shifa hospital in Gaza City, the territory’s largest, said it would bury 100 bodies in a mass grave as an emergency measure after its morgue overflowed, with relatives unable to bury their loved ones. Tens of thousands of people seeking safety have gathered in the hospital compound.
Gaza was already in a humanitarian crisis due to a growing shortage of water and medical supplies caused by the Israeli siege. With some bakeries closing, residents said they were unable to buy bread. Israel has also cut off water, forcing many to rely on brackish wells.
Israel has ordered more than 1 million Palestinians — almost half the territory’s population — to move south. The military says it is trying to clear away civilians ahead of a major campaign against Hamas in the north, where it says the militants have extensive networks of tunnels, bunkers and rocket launchers. Hamas urged people to stay in their homes.
The U.N. and aid groups say the mass exodus within Gaza, along with Israel’s complete siege, will cause untold human suffering. The World Health Organization said the evacuation “could be tantamount to a death sentence” for the more than 2,000 patients in northern hospitals.
The military said Sunday that it would not target a single route south between 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., again urging Palestinians to leave the north en masse. The military offered two corridors and a longer window the day before. It says hundreds of thousands have already fled south.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees says an estimated 1 million people have been displaced in Gaza in a single week.
The U.S. has been trying to broker a deal to reopen Egypt’s Rafah crossing with Gaza to allow Americans and other foreigners to leave and humanitarian aid amassed on the Egyptian side to be brought in. The crossing, which was closed because of airstrikes early in the war, has yet to reopen.
Israel has said the siege will only be lifted when the captives are returned.
Hundreds of relatives of the estimated 150 people captured by Hamas in Israel and taken to Gaza gathered outside the Israeli Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv late Saturday, demanding their release.
“This is my cry out to the world: Please help bring my family, my wife and three kids,” said Avihai Brodtz of Kfar Azza. Many expressed anger toward the government, saying they still have no information about their loved ones.
In southern Israel, residents of the town of Sderot, one of several communities targeted in the Hamas rampage, were boarding buses for other parts of the country to escape continuing rocket fire. Thousands have already left under a state-sponsored program that puts them in hotels elsewhere in the country.
“The kids are traumatized, they can’t sleep at night,” Yossi Edri told Channel 13 before boarding a bus.
The military said Sunday an airstrike in southern Gaza had killed a Hamas commander blamed for the killings at Nirim, one of several communities Hamas had attacked in southern Israel. Israel said it struck over 100 military targets overnight, including command centers and rocket launchers.
In the north, meanwhile, Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon fired an anti-tank missile toward an Israeli army post and Israel responded with artillery fire. Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said a 40-year-old man was killed, without giving his nationality. Israel later closed off areas up to 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) from the border and ordered civilians within 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) to shelter in safe rooms.
Israel and Hezbollah, which fought a devastating war in 2006, have traded fire along the border several times since the start of the latest Gaza war.
Israel has called up some 360,000 military reserves and massed troops and tanks along the border with Gaza. Israelis living near the Gaza border, including residents of the town of Sderot, continued to be evacuated. Militants in Gaza have fired over 5,500 rockets since the hostilities erupted, many reaching reaching deep into Israel, as Israeli warplanes pound Gaza.
In a televised address Saturday night, Israel’s chief military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said “we are going to attack Gaza City very broadly soon,” without giving a timetable for the attack.
When asked at a press briefing whether Israel would treat civilians who stay in the north as combatants, Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, another army spokesman, said: “That’s why we’ve encouraged people not involved with Hamas to move south.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said late Saturday that the U.S. was moving a second carrier strike group, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, to the eastern Mediterranean, in a show of force meant to deter Hamas allies like Iran and Hezbollah from seeking to widen the war.
Hamas remained defiant. In a televised speech Saturday, Ismail Haniyeh, a top official based abroad, said that “all the massacres” will not break the Palestinian people.
Hamas spokesperson Jihad Taha told The Associated Press in Beirut that Israel “does not dare to fight a ground battle,” because of the captives. He alluded to the possible entry of Hezbollah and other regional players in the battle should Israel launch a ground invasion but declined to say whether they had made any concrete commitments.
___
Kullab reported from Baghdad, Krauss reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Julia Frankel in Jerusalem, Abby Sewell in Beirut and Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed to this report.
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Poles vote on Sunday in a parliamentary election the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) hopes will earn it an unprecedented third term in office, while the opposition warns it could put the country on a path towards leaving the European Union.
Opinion polls suggest PiS will come out ahead but could lose its majority amid intensifying discontent over its democratic record, which has cost Poland billions of euros in EU aid, and concerns over women’s rights and the cost of living.
With war raging in neighbouring Ukraine and a migrant crisis brewing, the EU and Washington are watching the vote closely, although both PiS and its mainstream opposition support NATO-member Poland’s key role in providing military and logistical support to Kyiv.
PiS has cast the election as a choice between security from unfettered migration, which it says its opponents support, and a creeping westernisation it sees as contrary to Poland’s Catholic character.
“This election will show whether Poland will be governed by Poles, or by Berlin or Brussels,” PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski told supporters at the party’s last campaign rally on Friday.
“What will win is good, patriotic governance … not the screaming and hatred that fill the media and which affect weaker minds,” he said in Skarzysko Kamienna, a city in the PiS heartland in southeastern Poland.
Since sweeping to power in 2015, the party has been accused of undermining democratic checks and balances, politicising the courts, using publicly owned media to push its own propaganda, and stirring up homophobia.
PiS denies wrongdoing, or wanting to leave the EU, and says its reforms aim to make the country and its economy more fair while removing the last vestiges of communism. It has built its support on generous social handouts, which it says rival parties will stop.
Its main rival, the liberal Civic Coalition (KO), led by former European Council president Donald Tusk, has campaigned on a pledge to undo PiS reforms, hold its leaders to account and resolve conflicts with Brussels over democratic rule. Tusk says his party would maintain social support.
“We need change if you care about fundamental values such as trust, accountability, tolerance to dominate public life again,” Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, a senior KO official, told voters on Friday in Kalisz, in central Poland.
Voting started at 7 a.m. local time (0500 GMT) and will end at 9 p.m. (1900 GMT), with exit polls due to be released immediately afterwards.
Political analysts say Poland could face a period of instability if PiS fails to secure a majority.
One option would be to rely on lawmakers from the far-right Confederation party, whose support among younger voters jumped earlier this year on the back of promises to reduce taxes and limit support for Ukrainian refugees.
The mainstream opposition might also end up with a majority, but it may take time before it has a turn at forming a government if PiS takes the top spot.
“It would be really sad for us, at least for me, if the current party were still in power, which would probably lead to Poland leaving the European Union,” said Hanna Oktaba, a Polish citizen who emigrated to Mexico in the 1980s.
“We don’t want this for the young generation … if they wish to return to Poland. It would be a very poor option for them,” she said in Mexico City.
Regardless of who wins, credit rating agencies believe that pledges of higher social spending will be hard to reverse, raising questions about the public finances and leaving markets jittery.
Foreign investors have pulled $2.3 billion from domestic government bonds and in July held less than 15% of outstanding bonds, the lowest level in well over a decade and below the historic average of 20%, JPMorgan calculations show.
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The win is a major victory for the GOP as they reclaim the governor’s mansion for the first time in eight years. Landry will replace current Gov. John Bel Edwards, who was unable to seek reelection due to consecutive term limits. Edwards is the only Democratic governor in the Deep South.
“Today’s election says that our state is united,” Landry said during his victory speech Saturday night. “It’s a wake up call and it’s a message that everyone should hear loud and clear, that we the people in this state are going to expect more out of our government from here on out.”
By garnering more than half of the votes, Landry avoided an expected runoff under the state’s “jungle primary” system. The last time there wasn’t a gubernatorial runoff in Louisiana was in 2011 and 2007, when Bobby Jindal, a Republican, won the state’s top position.
The governor-elect, who celebrated with supporters during a watch party in Broussard, Louisiana, described the election as “historic.”
Landry, 52, has raised the profile of attorney general since taking office in 2016. He has used his office to champion conservative policy positions. More recently, Landry has been in the spotlight over his involvement and staunch support of Louisiana laws that have drawn much debate, including banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender youths, the state’s near-total abortion ban that doesn’t have exceptions for cases of rape and incest, and a law restricting youths’ access to “sexually explicit material” in libraries, which opponents fear will target LGBTQ+ books.
Landry has repeatedly clashed with Edwards over matters in the state, including LGBTQ rights, state finances and the death penalty. However the Republican has also repeatedly put Louisiana in national fights, including over President Joe Biden’s policies that limit oil and gas production and COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
Landry spent two years on Capitol Hill, beginning in 2011, where he represented Louisiana’s 3rd U.S. Congressional District. Prior to his political career, Landry served 11 years in the Louisiana Army National Guard, was a local police officer, sheriff’s deputy and attorney.
During the gubernatorial election season, Landry had long been considered the early frontrunner, winning the endorsement of high profile Republicans — Trump and U.S. Rep Steve Scalise — and a controversial early endorsement from the state GOP. In addition, Landry has enjoyed a sizable fundraising advantage over the rest of the field throughout the race.
Landry has made clear that one of his top priorities as governor would be addressing crime in urban areas. The Republican has pushed a tough-on-crime rhetoric, calling for more “transparency” in the justice system and continuing to support capital punishment. Louisiana has the nation’s second-highest murder rate per capita.
Along the campaign trail, Landry faced political attacks from opponents on social media and in interviews, calling him a bully and making accusations of backroom deals to gain support. He also faced scrutiny for skipping all but one of the major-televised debates.
Among other gubernatorial candidates on the ballot were GOP state Sen. Sharon Hewitt; Hunter Lundy, a Lake Charles-based attorney running as an independent; Republican state Treasurer John Schroder; Stephen Waguespack, the Republican former head of a powerful business group and former senior aide to then-Gov. Jindal; and Shawn Wilson, the former head of Louisiana’s Transportation and Development Department and sole major Democratic candidate.
Wilson, who was the runner-up, said during his concession speech that he had called Landry to congratulate him on his victory. The Democrat said during their phone call, he asked the governor-elect to keep Medicaid expansion, increase teacher pay and “educate our children the way they need to be educated.”
“The citizens of Louisiana spoke, or didn’t speak, and made a decision,” Wilson said.
Also on Saturday’s ballot were five other statewide contests and four ballot measures.
Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser won reelection Saturday night, but other races won’t be decided until November.
One closely watched race is for attorney general, which holds the highest legal authority in the state’s executive branch. Liz Baker Murrill, a Republican who currently works at the Attorney General’s Office and Lindsey Cheek, a Democrat and trial attorney, have advanced to a November runoff.
Also advancing to a runoff in the state treasurer race is John Fleming, Republican, and Dustin Granger, Democrat.
In the secretary of state race, First Assistant Secretary of State Nancy Landry, a Republican, and Gwen Collins-Greenup, a Democrat and attorney, will advance to a runoff. The winner in November will have the task of replacing Louisiana’s outdated voting machines, which do not produce the paper ballots critical to ensuring accurate election results.
There are hundreds of additional localized races, including all 39 Senate seats and 105 House seats, however a significant number of incumbents are running unopposed.
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IS PUTIN BEHIND THE GAZA WAR?
Putin and Gaza War: Gaza conflict offers strategic opening for Russia in Ukraine war … Hamas Attack Ends a Delicate Entente Between Russia and Israel … Israel-Gaza conflict: an opportunity for Putin while the world is distracted … Israel’s Blindness Toward Russia Will Prove to Be a Poor Choice – Israel News – Haaretz.com … Putin and Gaza War: Gaza conflict offers strategic opening for Russia in Ukraine war … Hamas Attack Ends a Delicate Entente Between Russia and Israel … Israel-Gaza conflict: an opportunity for Putin while the world is distracted … Israel’s Blindness Toward Russia Will Prove to Be a Poor Choice – Israel News – Haaretz.com … Putin Offers Muted Response to Attack on Israel. That Speaks Volumes.
12th October 2023 – (Moscow) The sudden eruption of violence between Israel and Hamas has created a potential inflection point in the Ukraine war, handing Russia an opportunity to regain momentum amid its ongoing military struggles. With global attention diverted and pressure on Ukraine’s Western backers mounting, the Gaza crisis significantly alters the strategic landscape to Russia’s advantage.
The timing of the clashes between Israeli forces and Hamas could hardly be better from Russia’s perspective. Coming just months into the Ukraine invasion, the Gaza conflict deals a major distraction that Russia can exploit on multiple fronts.
First, the crisis diverts America’s diplomatic bandwidth away from the Ukrainian conflict. This not only hampers U.S. support for Kyiv in the near-term, but also risks eroding Washington’s focus over time if the Israel-Hamas tensions become protracted.
Second, the fighting in Gaza threatens to redirect vital military equipment to the Middle East, starving Ukraine’s forces of much-needed arms and materiel. Israel will likely demand more American weapons to replenish its Iron Dome defences and conduct potential ground operations against Hamas. This risks depriving Ukraine of key munitions and hardware.
Moreover, an expanded Middle East war also risks weakening Western resolve to continue funding Ukraine’s military. With implications of a wider regional conflagration, pressures will grow on European governments and Washington to reduce commitments to the Ukrainian cause.
In essence, the eruption of clashes between Israel and Hamas is a strategic godsend for Russia as it seeks to regain momentum and leverage in the grinding Ukraine campaign. It effectively hits the “pause button” on global attention while forcing the West into tougher resource allocation choices.
Navigating Complex Regional Dynamics
To fully capitalise on this opportunity, Russia will need to calibrate its regional diplomacy carefully. Moscow has cultivated ties with both Israel and major Palestinian factions over the years. It must now balance these competing relationships amid the crisis.
On one hand, Russia cannot jeopardise its relatively cordial ties with Israel. Despite providing sanctuary for some Jewish oligarchs, Moscow has avoided directly antagonising Israel over Ukraine. Meanwhile, Israel has maintained neutrality over Russia’s invasion, declining to send military aid to Kyiv.
At the same time, Russia has strengthened relations with Israel’s nemesis, Iran, which is the likely source of Hamas’ sophisticated new rockets and drones. As Tehran’s new partner, Moscow will be reluctant to openly back Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
Hence, in both private and public messaging, Russia is likely to adopt a nominally balanced posture emphasizing de-escalation, while subtly favouring prolonging the tensions to distract from Ukraine. Despite rhetorical appeals for peace, a protracted Gaza crisis aligns with Russia’s strategic interests.
Putin’s Long-Term Vision
Beyond just the urgency of Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas clashes could advance Vladimir Putin’s broader long-term vision for a new global order. In a recent speech, Putin lambasted the West’s “rules-based order” as mere cover for its ideological and economic domination.
Instead, he advocated a “civilisational” model recognising diverse cultures and local traditions. This aligns with Russia’s historical role as protector of Orthodox Christianity and Middle East Christians.
Presenting itself as an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict allows Russia to portray its diplomatic ethos as superior to Western hypocrisy and double standards. Resolving this intractable dispute would cement Russia’s status as a major power bridging divides between civilisations.
Simultaneously, prolonged unrest prevents any solidifying of an American-led security architecture in the Middle East. Keeping the region in flux suits Russia’s aim of eventually displacing U.S. hegemony. Even absent direct instigation, the Gaza crisis furthers Moscow’s long-term multipolar objectives.
Managing Global Risks
While the timing of the clashes favours Russia for now, extreme escalation threatens dangerous spillover effects. A major regional war risks energising Islamic extremist networks and unleashing refugee outflows into Europe.
To safeguard its interests, Russia will likely press both Israel and Palestinian factions towards eventual ceasefire talks, while avoiding overt condemnation of Hamas rocket attacks. The optimal outcome for Moscow is sustained controlled tensions that bog down the West without unleashing unmanageable instability.
For Putin, the crisis represents a pivotal moment to regain momentum amid the strategic challenges of Ukraine. While Moscow will not publicly cheer turmoil that leaves civilians suffering, it offers undeniable geopolitical opportunities.
Russia has proven adept at capitalising on global disturbances to advance its interests — as seen after the 2008 Georgia war and 2014 Syrian intervention. The Gaza conflict offers the latest such opening at a crucial juncture. The true costs of Moscow’s machinations, as always, will be borne by ordinary people far from the Kremlin’s halls.
Hamas Attack Ends a Delicate Entente Between Russia and Israel
Time is an ally of Russia in the Ukrainian conflict. Russia needs to reduce its rate of battlefield deaths and remain militarily active in Ukraine for as long as possible.
A great aid to Vladimir Putin would be a disruption in the supply of weapons to Kyiv, and a diminishing commitment from European and US governments to support the war or to provide military equipment. A rival crisis to distract Ukraine’s allies, in the form of war in the Middle East, could provide just this.
Hamas’s violent incursion into Israel from Gaza on Saturday October 7 has already distracted the United States diplomatically.
The conflict could also divert military equipment to the Middle East rather than to Ukraine. How large the diversion of arms is depends upon whether Israel chooses to try to reoccupy Gaza or not.
A war might also serve to further loosen the will of Ukraine’s allies to sustain their spending in Ukraine. It might do so because the implications of a wider Middle Eastern conflict, or China opportunistically attacking Taiwan, would outweigh the consequences of continued hostilities in Ukraine.
The diplomatic picture for Russia towards the Israel-Hamas conflict is not clear cut. Russia has historically been friendly towards Israel. Israel has mirrored this by toning down any criticism it has made of the Ukrainian invasion.
Russia has recently become friendlier towards Iran as it has sought to buy military equipment. But Iran is likely to be the source of the military equipment used by Hamas to overwhelm Israel’s Iron Dome air defence system and to invade the country, including the electronic interference equipment used to deactivate the border sensors and remote sentries.
Iran is also the likely source of counterintelligence techniques that have enabled Hamas to avoid attention from the capable Israeli intelligence services. Russia has been active in selling intelligence techniques around the world and so Iranian counterintelligence is likely informed by Russian practices.
Russia has long operated multilevel diplomacy – managing to maintain positive relationships with competing and even warring nations – in the Middle East, and will continue to do so. It is unlikely to find disadvantage here.
Putin has a strong history of hiding in plain sight. He tells us what he intends to do, and we assume it is rhetorical bluster. But in reality Putin is telling us his plans and seeing how many of them he can complete.
Missed by the majority of the world’s media was the annual Russian security conference (the Valdai International Discussion Club, known simply as the Valdai), at which Putin spoke on October 5. There he described his ambition being to create a new world order founded upon a “civilisation-based approach”. This would recognise local differences and communities of common interest.
In this, Putin was softly echoing an Indian approach to society which emphasises the environment, meaning the physical environment, the people within it, and community as a supportive structure. It is also an echo of the ethos of Israeli kibbutz which emphasise equality, common identity, community loyalty and shared efforts.
This is an explicit rejection of western individualism and a nod to those in the developing world that Russia is a kindred spirit.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, will be aware that Russia is hoping for the international focus to be turned on Israel/Gaza and away from the Ukraine war. Ukraine President’s Office/ Alamy
In the speech, Putin recast the previous 20 years as Russia seeking to positively engage in helping to solve global challenges, but that this engagement had been seen as obedience to western desires and norms. Putin further argued that the world required multiple sources of power and ways of seeing the world, rather than to all follow western patterns of economic exploitation and ideological domination.
He cited China and India as plausible alternative sources of power and world views. In Putin’s civilisation-based approach, his invasion of Ukraine is not Russia trying to capture territory, but repelling the Euroatlantic control of Nato and the EU. Liberation from colonialism is at the heart of Putin’s Valdai speech – a message that ordinary Ukrainians would dispute.
Referring to the Middle East, Putin noted that Nato powers selectively engage with Arab nations. Protection is provided to those who are obedient, but not because of their values or traditions.
It is here that we can infer that Putin is supportive of both Israeli and Palestinian claims, and that it is only westerners providing an overriding security guarantee to one side over the other that generates the conditions for continuous conflict between Israel and Palestine.
Russia is a beneficiary but not likely an author of the conflict and upheaval in Israel and Gaza. Putin does not need to have caused the uptick in tension but he will not be disappointed to see it further escalate over the coming weeks and months.
Russia also benefits because of the distraction it places at the heart of the upcoming US presidential election and to a world order already placed on high alert because of Ukraine, because of China and Taiwan and Serbia and Kosovo.
For Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, then, time remains on its side, despite all its military losses. A change in US president, an activist US Congress continuing to show disquiet about further funding to Ukraine, and the US needing to support Israel in the Middle East all will play decisively in how the Ukrainian conflict will end.
If the war in Ukraine is still raging in 2025, it will be Russia with the upper hand.
For over a decade, Israel has prided itself on its growing ties with the Putin regime. But its silence on Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine will turn out to be a diplomatic error that will not be easily forgiven
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Jun 25, 2023
Russian President Vladimir Putin made the wrong gamble when he dragged his country into a floundering war with Ukraine last February, an expensive and blood-soaked war that continues to exact catastrophic costs.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has long portrayed himself as a friend of Vladimir Putin. In a memoir published during Russia’s war on Ukraine, Netanyahu repeatedly lauded the Russian leader for his intellect and his “particularly friendly attitude” toward the Jewish people.
Putin, too, has over the years cast himself as a loyal ally of the Israeli state, promoting cultural ties and visa-free travel between the two countries.
But after the worst attack on Israel in decades, the much-touted friendship appears to have vanished.
Four days after the start of Hamas’s surprise attack, Putin is yet to call Netanyahu, while the Kremlin has not published a message of condolence to the country, a diplomatic gesture of goodwill that Russia routinely sends out to global leaders following deadly incidents on their soil.
On Tuesday, in his first comments about the Hamas incursion, Putin said the explosion of violence between Israel and the Palestinians showed that US policy had failed in the Middle East and had taken no account of the needs of the Palestinians.
“I think that many people will agree with me that this is a vivid example of the failure of United States policy in the Middle East,” Putin said, without acknowledging the gruesome deaths in Israel.
The shift in tone appears to point to a larger rift between the two countries that has taken place since the start of the war in Ukraine.
For years, Putin has sought to cultivate strong ties with Israel while also backing the Palestinian cause, an alliance which stems from the Soviet area.
Russia’s delicate diplomacy with Israel appeared to bear fruit when the country refused to participate in western sanctions against Russia, much to the chagrin of Kyiv, which accused Israel of ignoring the suffering of Ukrainian Jews.
But below the surface, there had been signs that the relationship between Russia and Israel was deteriorating over Putin’s claims that he was fighting “neo-Nazism” in Ukraine, while shifting his country into the orbit of Iran, an arch-enemy of Israel.
“The warm relationship [between Russia and Israel] that we have seen for years under Putin has cooled down. We are in a different world now,” said Pinchas Goldschmidt, who served as the chief rabbi of Moscow for nearly 30 years until fleeing the country over his opposition to the Ukraine war.
“Israel has always been careful to maintain a good relationship with Moscow given Russia’s large Jewish community and its influence over Syria,” Goldschmidt said, speaking to the Guardian by phone from Israel. On Saturday he attended the funeral of Yuval Ben Yaakov, an Israeli soldier killed in the fighting, who was the son of another former Moscow rabbi.
Goldschmidt said many in the Jewish community have been left deeply uncomfortable with Putin’s framing of the war, comparing Ukraine’s government to Nazi Germany to justify his invasion of the country.
Last summer, these tensions first spilled over into the public, when Russian officials accused Israel of supporting the “neo-Nazi regime” in Kyiv. The spat was ignited after Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, recycled an antisemitic conspiracy theory claiming that Adolf Hitler “had Jewish blood” – comments that Israel described as “unforgivable and outrageous”.
The Kremlin also cracked down on the Russian branch of the Jewish Agency, a private charity closely affiliated with the Israeli government that helped tens of thousands of highly skilled Jewish Russians to immigrate to Israel.
Perhaps more worryingly for Israel was Moscow’s growing reliance on Iran. Russia, isolated from western markets, has invested heavily in buying Iranian suicide drones to attack Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure, while the US has warned that Iran was seeking to acquire large numbers of Russian attack helicopters, warplanes and air defence systems.
As the US pledged to send its own military aid to Israel following the Hamas assault, some pro-Kremlin commentators expressed hope that the Israeli-Hamas war would drain western resources away from Ukraine.
Sergey Mardan, a Russian propagandist and television presenter, wrote: “This mess is beneficial for Russia, because the globalist toad will be distracted from Ukraine and will get busy trying to put out the eternal Middle Eastern fire.”
There was also a sense of glee in Moscow over Israeli military and intelligence blunders, which were presented as a testament of western weakness.
“Apparently, the IDF leadership … is resting on the laurels of long-past victories,” military expert Boris Rozhin, who is close to the Russian forces fighting in Ukraine, wrote on Telegram.
Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russia’s security services, said such comments “unmasked the acute psychological trauma suffered by the Russian military after its disastrous offensive against Ukraine in the early months of 2022.”
“That loss of global respect is hard to bear for a nation with a proud military tradition. So, the relief offered by Hamas has triggered an avalanche of schadenfreude. Did you laugh at our incompetence? Now it’s our turn,” Soldatov said.
On Russian state television, commentators also ridiculed the tens of thousands of Russian Jews who left for Israel following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in order to avoid mobilisation.
Addressing the Russian parliament on Wednesday, Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the Duma, said that Russians who fled the country to side with Ukraine should be charged with treason and sent to work in mines.
“We’re probably … talking about mines and we need to find territories where the weather is more constant, where there’s no summer,” Volodin said.
Meanwhile, Ukraine appears to have cast aside its previous grievances with Israel, eager to fill the friendship vacuum left behind by Russia.
In a speech made alongside Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, likened Hamas’s assault on Israel this weekend to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and said his people stood with Israel because they understood what it meant to suffer terror attacks.
“The only difference is that there is a terrorist organisation that attacked Israel, and here is a terrorist state that attacked Ukraine,” Zelenskiy said.
Vladimir Putin has long projected friendly ties to Israel. But his silence since Saturday’s assault illustrates how the war in Ukraine has strained the relationship between the two countries.
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RIYADH: Saudi authorities arrested 16,790 people in one week for breaching residency, work and border security regulations, the Saudi Press Agency reported on Saturday. According to an official report, a total of 10,177 people were arrested for violations of residency laws, while 4,523 were held over illegal border crossing attempts and a further 2,090 for labor-related issues. The report showed that among the 709 people arrested for trying to enter the Kingdom illegally, 63 percent were Yemeni, 34 percent Ethiopian, and 3 percent were of other nationalities.
The post IS PUTIN BEHIND THE GAZA WAR? Putin and Gaza War: Gaza conflict offers strategic opening for Russia in Ukraine war … Hamas Attack Ends a Delicate Entente Between Russia and Israel … Israel-Gaza conflict: an opportunity for Putin while the world is distracted … Israel’s Blindness Toward Russia Will Prove to Be a Poor Choice – Israel News – Haaretz.com … Putin and Gaza War: Gaza conflict offers strategic opening for Russia in Ukraine war … Hamas Attack Ends a Delicate Entente Between Russia and Israel … Israel-Gaza conflict: an opportunity for Putin while the world is distracted … Israel’s Blindness Toward Russia Will Prove to Be a Poor Choice – Israel News – Haaretz.com … Putin Offers Muted Response to Attack on Israel. That Speaks Volumes. first appeared on The News And Times – thenewsandtimes.com.
12th October 2023 – (Moscow) The sudden eruption of violence between Israel and Hamas has created a potential inflection point in the Ukraine war, handing Russia an opportunity to regain momentum amid its ongoing military struggles. With global attention diverted and pressure on Ukraine’s Western backers mounting, the Gaza crisis significantly alters the strategic landscape to Russia’s advantage.
The timing of the clashes between Israeli forces and Hamas could hardly be better from Russia’s perspective. Coming just months into the Ukraine invasion, the Gaza conflict deals a major distraction that Russia can exploit on multiple fronts.
First, the crisis diverts America’s diplomatic bandwidth away from the Ukrainian conflict. This not only hampers U.S. support for Kyiv in the near-term, but also risks eroding Washington’s focus over time if the Israel-Hamas tensions become protracted.
Second, the fighting in Gaza threatens to redirect vital military equipment to the Middle East, starving Ukraine’s forces of much-needed arms and materiel. Israel will likely demand more American weapons to replenish its Iron Dome defences and conduct potential ground operations against Hamas. This risks depriving Ukraine of key munitions and hardware.
Moreover, an expanded Middle East war also risks weakening Western resolve to continue funding Ukraine’s military. With implications of a wider regional conflagration, pressures will grow on European governments and Washington to reduce commitments to the Ukrainian cause.
In essence, the eruption of clashes between Israel and Hamas is a strategic godsend for Russia as it seeks to regain momentum and leverage in the grinding Ukraine campaign. It effectively hits the “pause button” on global attention while forcing the West into tougher resource allocation choices.
Navigating Complex Regional Dynamics
To fully capitalise on this opportunity, Russia will need to calibrate its regional diplomacy carefully. Moscow has cultivated ties with both Israel and major Palestinian factions over the years. It must now balance these competing relationships amid the crisis.
On one hand, Russia cannot jeopardise its relatively cordial ties with Israel. Despite providing sanctuary for some Jewish oligarchs, Moscow has avoided directly antagonising Israel over Ukraine. Meanwhile, Israel has maintained neutrality over Russia’s invasion, declining to send military aid to Kyiv.
At the same time, Russia has strengthened relations with Israel’s nemesis, Iran, which is the likely source of Hamas’ sophisticated new rockets and drones. As Tehran’s new partner, Moscow will be reluctant to openly back Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
Hence, in both private and public messaging, Russia is likely to adopt a nominally balanced posture emphasizing de-escalation, while subtly favouring prolonging the tensions to distract from Ukraine. Despite rhetorical appeals for peace, a protracted Gaza crisis aligns with Russia’s strategic interests.
Putin’s Long-Term Vision
Beyond just the urgency of Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas clashes could advance Vladimir Putin’s broader long-term vision for a new global order. In a recent speech, Putin lambasted the West’s “rules-based order” as mere cover for its ideological and economic domination.
Instead, he advocated a “civilisational” model recognising diverse cultures and local traditions. This aligns with Russia’s historical role as protector of Orthodox Christianity and Middle East Christians.
Presenting itself as an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict allows Russia to portray its diplomatic ethos as superior to Western hypocrisy and double standards. Resolving this intractable dispute would cement Russia’s status as a major power bridging divides between civilisations.
Simultaneously, prolonged unrest prevents any solidifying of an American-led security architecture in the Middle East. Keeping the region in flux suits Russia’s aim of eventually displacing U.S. hegemony. Even absent direct instigation, the Gaza crisis furthers Moscow’s long-term multipolar objectives.
Managing Global Risks
While the timing of the clashes favours Russia for now, extreme escalation threatens dangerous spillover effects. A major regional war risks energising Islamic extremist networks and unleashing refugee outflows into Europe.
To safeguard its interests, Russia will likely press both Israel and Palestinian factions towards eventual ceasefire talks, while avoiding overt condemnation of Hamas rocket attacks. The optimal outcome for Moscow is sustained controlled tensions that bog down the West without unleashing unmanageable instability.
For Putin, the crisis represents a pivotal moment to regain momentum amid the strategic challenges of Ukraine. While Moscow will not publicly cheer turmoil that leaves civilians suffering, it offers undeniable geopolitical opportunities.
Russia has proven adept at capitalising on global disturbances to advance its interests — as seen after the 2008 Georgia war and 2014 Syrian intervention. The Gaza conflict offers the latest such opening at a crucial juncture. The true costs of Moscow’s machinations, as always, will be borne by ordinary people far from the Kremlin’s halls.
The post Gaza conflict offers strategic opening for Russia in Ukraine war first appeared on The News And Times – thenewsandtimes.com.
