Day: October 22, 2023

Israeli tank ‘mistakenly’ blasts Egyptian border post: IDF says investigation is underway into incident that c  Daily Mail

Hamas Mortally Threatens Israel’s Existence – WSJ  The Wall Street Journal

Will Hezbollah launch an all-out war on Israel?  Al Jazeera English

For Netanyahu and His Cronies, Life and Death Are Just a Photo Op – Haaretz Today  Haaretz

President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Sunday it was an outrage that Germany’s Jewish institutions had required enhanced security protection since Hamas’s attack on Israel two weeks ago, urging attendees at a rally to stand against antisemitism.

The Holocaust meant that Germany had a particular responsibility to protect Jewish lives, Steinmeier told a solidarity rally convened in Berlin by its five main democratic parties, its Jewish community, trade unions and employers’ organisations.

“Our democracy makes no distinction: regardless of origins, experience or religion, everyone who lives here must know Auschwitz and understand the responsibility that our country has because of it,” he said.

Every attack against Jewish residents or institutions in Germany was an “outrage”, Steinmeier added.

Since Hamas’s deadly incursion and reprisal attacks by Israeli forces, Germany has witnessed a series of protests in support both of Israel and Gaza, at some of which antisemitic slogans were heard.

The country is home to some of Europe’s largest Jewish and Palestinian communities.

Over the past two weeks, Stars of David have been daubed on some buildings and a petrol bomb was thrown at a synagogue in central Berlin. Some Jewish parents have stopped taking their children to school out of fears for their safety.

Israel’s ambassador and relatives of German hostages taken by Hamas also addressed the rally, which organisers said drew some 25,000 participants.

Though most pro-Palestinian protests have been explicit that their focus is on the humanitarian situation in Gaza and not in support of Hamas, all but two have been banned, with police using pepper spray to disperse gatherings, prompting accusations of discrimination.

Steinmeier said terror was also impacting people on the Gaza Strip “whose interests Hamas only pretends to represent.”

Police on Sunday dispersed a banned pro-Palestinian protest taking place nearby, arresting some participants.

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The South Korean, U.S. and Japanese militaries conducted their first-ever trilateral aerial exercise Sunday in response to evolving North Korean nuclear threats, South Korea’s air force said.

The training held near the Korean Peninsula was to implement the three countries’ earlier agreement to increase defense cooperation and boost their joint response capabilities against North Korean threats, the air force said in a statement.

The drill involved a nuclear-capable B-52 bomber from the United States and fighter jets from South Korea and Japan, the statement said.

South Korea and Japan are both key U.S. allies in Asia, which together host about 80,000 American troops. 

The three countries have occasionally held trilateral maritime drills, such as anti-submarine or missile defense exercises, but Sunday’s training marked the first time for them to perform a trilateral aerial drill.

In South Korea, expanding military drills with Japan is a sensitive issue, because many still harbor strong resentment against Japan’s brutal 1910-45 colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula. But the North’s advancing nuclear program has pushed South Korea’s conservative president, Yoon Suk Yeol, to move beyond historical disputes with Japan and beef up a trilateral security cooperation with the U.S. and Japan.

In August, Yoon, U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met at Camp David in their countries’ first stand-alone trilateral summit and agreed to bolster their defense cooperation to deal with North Korea’s nuclear threats. The three leaders decided to hold annual trilateral exercises and put into operation by year’s end the sharing of real-time missile warning data on North Korea.

Sunday’s drill could draw a furious response from North Korea, which has long bristled at U.S. training exercises with South Korea, calling them an invasion rehearsal and responding with missile tests. The North slammed the Camp David agreement, accusing the U.S., South Korean and Japanese leaders of plotting nuclear war provocations on the Korean Peninsula. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called Yoon, Biden and Kishida “the gang bosses” of the three countries.

Worries about North Korea’s nuclear program have deepened after it enacted a law that authorizes the preemptive use of nuclear weapons last year and has since openly threatened to use them in potential conflicts with the U.S. and South Korea. 

 NATO’s Message to Israel: Russia’s Defeat Is Also in Your Interest … – Haaretz

 NATO’s Message to Israel: Russia’s Defeat Is Also in Your Interest … – Haaretz

  Haaretz