Day: October 23, 2023

More US conservatives demand to de-fund Ukraine; Russian shells injure more civilians in Kherson; Russians make gains around Avdiivka while AFU pushing forward on Bakhmut fronts

More than 140 countries – representing the vast majority of the world’s woodlands – pledged at the 2021 United Nations climate summit in Glasgow to halt and reverse forest loss and degradation by the end of the decade.

Yet deforestation increased by 4% worldwide in 2022 compared with 2021, as some 66,000 square kilometers (25,000 square miles) were destroyed, the annual Forest Declaration Assessment report said. That means the world is 21% off track to end deforestation by 2030.

“The world’s forests are in crisis. The opportunity to make progress is passing us by,” said Erin Matson, a senior consultant at environmental group Climate Focus.

The report was conducted by a coalition of civil society and research organizations who assess progress toward pledges to eliminate deforestation by 2030.

That includes the Glasgow pledge and the 2014 New York Declaration on Forests, which saw a shorter list of countries as well as dozens of the world’s biggest companies make a similar commitment.

Efforts to preserve old-growth tropical forests — prized for their dense carbon content and rich biodiversity — are 33% off track, with 4.1 million hectares lost in 2022, according to the study.

In a news briefing, the researchers involved in the report stressed that the annual $2.2 billion in public funds channeled to projects to protect forests every year is a fraction of the investment needed.

The study also looked beyond deforestation to analyze forest degradation, with one researcher estimating the area of degraded forests to be much larger than the area of global deforestation.

Drivers of forest degradation include logging activities, livestock grazing, and road construction, according to Climate Focus.

But some parts of the world are making progress, said Franziska Haupt, a lead author and managing partner at consultancy Climate Focus.

Haupt said that some 50 countries are on track to end forest loss, with Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia showing drastic reductions in deforestation.

“Hope isn’t lost,” Haupt said. “These countries set clear examples that others must follow.”

Brazil, which is responsible for around 30 percent of the world’s deforestation, has seen a significant turnaround with a new government that is much more committed to fighting deforestation than the last, said a WWF Brazil representative during the news conference.

“This showcases what could happen when countries with good laws and the books actually invest in enforcing them,” said Darragh Conway, lead on rights & governance for the Forest Declaration Assessment.

An aide close to former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo alleges that the campaign to reelect former President Donald Trump fanned unrest in New York’s Orthodox neighborhoods over COVID-19 restrictions imposed by the state in the fall of 2020. The aide, Cuomo’s former secretary, also levels the accusation against Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in her new book. She describes the campaign’s behavior as retaliation against Cuomo following a public disagreement between the governor and Kushner. 

“Something about the sequence of the events struck me as orchestrated,” writes Melissa DeRosa of the two days of demonstrations against Cuomo’s coronavirus restrictions in Brooklyn’s Borough Park. Her book, “What’s Left Unsaid: My Life at the Center of Power, Politics & Crisis,” is scheduled for release on Tuesday.

The demonstrations, on Oct. 7 and 8, turned violent. Orthodox New Yorkers resented Cuomo’s executive order limiting attendance at houses of worship. And they felt he singled out Orthodox neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens when he publicly noted their high infection rates.

DeRosa suggests in the book that Trump, whose poll numbers were flagging, tweeted about an earlier attempt to break up an Orthodox gathering in Crown Heights to embolden the protesters. She writes that the Trump campaign helped formulate messaging used by protesters tying Cuomo to high death rate in New York nursing homes. And she notes a robocall sent to households in the Hasidic community in Yiddish that encouraged people to bring ‘Cuomo killed thousands’ signs to the demonstrations. Cuomo had cited the call when he accused the Trump campaign of fomenting violence at the protests. (Organizers later denied the Trump campaign was behind it.)

“It was a nakedly political and cynical ploy by the Trump campaign to further damage the governor,” writes DeRosa. She also thought Kushner was involved. “I privately speculated about whether Jared Kushner, whose family was notoriously close with the ultra-Orthodox communities in New York and New Jersey, had a hand in it.” 

Spokespeople for the Trump campaign and Kushner didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Until the COVID-19 outbreak, Cuomo enjoyed a healthy relationship with the Orthodox community. In his 2014 reelection campaign, Cuomo did better in districts with significant Orthodox populations than in predominantly non-Jewish neighborhoods of New York City.

After the demonstrations, DeRosa writes, Cuomo “spent days personally calling prominent rebbes and community leaders,” imploring them to “bring sobriety and rationality” to the situation and postpone a major wedding. In the calls, Cuomo cautioned that the mass gatherings and protests would not only spread the virus but also “demonize the Jewish community” in the mainstream media. The rabbis, according to DeRosa, “reluctantly agreed” to lower the temperature and adhere to the restrictions. 

Cuomo resigned in 2021 after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment. 

How a ‘nonaggression’ deal with Kushner blew up

DeRosa’s speculation about Kushner’s involvement with the protests came after his relationship with the governor, which had once been close, soured. Kushner had disliked Cuomo’s speech to the Democratic National Convention, in which he criticized Trump and the federal COVID response.

She writes that Cuomo was initially hesitant to lambast the Trump administration, and that he had up until then a “nonaggression pact with Trump” to make sure New York received its share of federal assistance. After the speech, his fears about provoking Trump and endangered federal aid to the state materialized, DeRosa writes. The president went on a Twitter rampage against the governor. And in the midst of a morning meeting with Cuomo, DeRosa received a phone call, during which an irate Kushner said “the deal is off” and “we will not negotiate with you anymore.”

Months earlier, during the peak of the COVID-19 crisis in New York, Kushner praised Florida to DeRosa, which had remained open for business, and disparaged New York, with its many COVID-19 restrictions and rising death toll. “His tone was smug,” she writes. 

According to DeRosa, Kushner told her: “We’ve done polling, and you guys are in the wrong place on this.” He added that in battleground states, “people do not support these shutdowns there. And they want their kids back in school and the economy open.”

DeRosa writes that she then wondered: “Was New York not part of Trump’s America, all of a sudden?”

The post Former Cuomo aide alleges that Kushner was behind Boro Park protests during COVID-19 outbreak appeared first on The Forward.

Some of Israel’s actions in its war against Hamas, like cutting off food and water for Gaza, could “harden Palestinian attitudes for generations” and weaken international support for Israel, former U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday.

In rare comments on an active foreign policy crisis, Obama said any Israeli military strategy that ignores the human costs of the war “could ultimately backfire.”

“The Israeli government’s decision to cut off food, water and electricity to a captive civilian population (in Gaza) threatens not only to worsen a growing humanitarian crisis; it could further harden Palestinian attitudes for generations, erode global support for Israel, play into the hands of Israel’s enemies, and undermine long-term efforts to achieve peace and stability in the region,” Obama said.

Israel has heavily bombarded Gaza with air strikes since Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault on Israel left over 1,400 people dead. Israel’s air strikes have killed more than 5,000 Palestinians, Gaza officials say.

Obama condemned Hamas’ attack and reiterated his support for Israel’s right to defend itself, while cautioning about risks to civilians in such wars.

It was not clear whether Obama had coordinated his statement with U.S. President Joe Biden, who served as his vice president for eight years.

During his presidency, Obama often backed Israel’s right to self-defense at the start of conflicts with Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza, but quickly called for Israeli restraint once Palestinian casualties mounted from airstrikes.

Gaza, a 45 km-long (25-mile) strip of land that is home to 2.3 million people, has been ruled politically since 2007 by Hamas, an Iran-backed Islamist group, but faces a blockade from Israel.

The Obama administration sought, but ultimately failed to broker, a peace deal in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Since taking office in early 2021, Biden has not tried to resume long-stalled talks, saying that leaders on both sides were too intransigent and the climate was not right.

Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a testy relationship when Obama was in office, including when Obama’s administration was negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran.

Biden, as Obama’s vice president, often acted as a mediator between the two men.

In his statement on Monday, Obama acknowledged that the U.S. had itself “fallen short of our higher values when engaged in war,” especially after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

What was left of Donald Trump’s cognitive state appears to have been finally, fully shattered by the plea deals that Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro have cut against him. Trump is attempting to put on a brave face in public today, but so far he’s said he’s going to prison like Nelson Mandela, and gotten distracted by the spelling of a two letter word.

Now Trump is on an almost indescribably bizarre bender about how he fantasizes about punching President Joe Biden in the face, so that he can prove to everyone that Biden’s nose is fake. No really, this happened. There’s just so much to unpack here, and yet so little.

For starters, now that Trump understands that his life is over and he’s spending the rest of his days in prison, his fantasies are becoming more violent. But it’s important to remember that this doesn’t mean Trump now has some magical “violence” powers over us. If anything, this is a sign that Trump knows he’s more powerless than ever.

It’s also the most clear cut proof yet that Donald Trump is fully cognitively incompetent. His handlers sent him out there to portray himself as a political candidate and distract everyone from the fact that he’s a criminal defendant. So what did Trump do? Talked about how he’s going to prison, shared his fantasies about personal violence, and then got lost in a conspiracy about the President having a fake nose.

Keep talking, Donald. Sooner or later the media is going to have to admit that you’re completely senile – and that’s going to put an end to your political relevance even quicker than your criminal trials can.

The post Donald Trump has insanely senile and violent meltdown about punching Joe Biden to prove Biden has a fake nose or something appeared first on Palmer Report.

He’s been called the “godfather of human rights” — and, after leading an organization that accused Israel of apartheid, nearly lost an appointment at Harvard.

But now, as the Israeli and U.S. governments are facing severe criticism from the left with which Kenneth Roth, who served as executive director of Human Rights Watch for nearly three decades, has long been affiliated, Roth is speaking out against Israel’s critics.

Well, kind of. Roth, who oversaw Human Rights Watch when it became the first major human rights group to use the word “apartheid” in characterizing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, said in an interview that while Israel’s actions in Gaza raise serious humanitarian concerns, “the left discredits itself if it becomes an apologist for Hamas slaughtering civilians.” 

Roth’s was initially blocked from a fellowship at Harvard Kennedy School because of his anti-Israel stances. After a public backlash over this violation of freedom of speech, Harvard reversed its stance and now Roth is a senior fellow at HKS’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and a Visiting Professor at Princeton.

I spoke with Roth, currently a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School and a visiting professor at Princeton, about the state of human rights in Israel and Gaza and the range of American political responses to the war.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

After Hamas murdered more than 1,300 Israelis and, according to Israel’s latest count, took 222 hostages, Israel retaliated by bombing Gaza and ordering more than 1 million Palestinians to evacuate the area around Gaza City. How do you evaluate Israel’s response to the attacks in the context of international human rights law?

Under international humanitarian law, Hamas committed a horrendous war crime. They blatantly violated everything that the Geneva Conventions and Protocol stand for: deliberately killing civilians, taking civilians hostage and firing rockets indiscriminately into civilian-populated areas. Israel has every right to respond militarily and target Hamas combatants. 

But Israel, too, is bound by international humanitarian law. The fundamental premise of humanitarian law is that war crimes by one side do not justify war crimes by the other side. The duty to comply with humanitarian law is absolute and is not premised on reciprocity. 

It’s essential that Israel do everything it can to spare civilian life. That means not simply refraining from targeting civilians, but also refraining from firing indiscriminately into civilian populated areas because there might be some Hamas targets within that. Israel is also prohibited from hitting a military target if the civilian harm would be disproportionate.

International humanitarian law also requires allowing civilians in need access to humanitarian aid. There’s no question that the people of Gaza are in need. The Israeli siege — their blockage of food, water, fuel and electricity — clearly violates that legal response responsibility. 

The other concern about this evacuation warning is based on history. In 2006, during the Israeli military conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Israeli army also issued a warning to civilians to evacuate southern Lebanon. But the problem is that they treated everybody who remained as if they were Hezbollah and attacked many of them. This is a clear violation of humanitarian law: 

The failure to heed a warning does not turn a civilian into a combatant who can be targeted. 

How can Israel balance its imperatives to defeat Hamas and keep Israelis safe, while safeguarding the human rights of Palestinians, especially given Hamas’ use of human shields? 

There’s no question that sometimes Hamas uses civilians as human shields. Other times, it fires from populated areas — not deliberately using people as shields, but nonetheless endangering them. That fact does not absolve the Israeli military from the duty to spare civilians. 

Every time the Israeli military attacks, it still has to abide by humanitarian law. It’s legally wrong to say, “Hamas is using civilians as human shields. Therefore, anything goes.” That’s not what humanitarian law requires. 

Many people have asked me: “What is Israel supposed to do? How can they defend themselves?” 

Israel has a right to respond militarily to the horrible Hamas attack. But the right to respond militarily does not mean carte blanche. The civilian population of Gaza had nothing to do with the hostages and has no capacity to control this situation.

Sixteen congressional Democrats have signed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Israel. Do you favor a ceasefire, and how would you respond to Israelis who expect military action in response to the terrorist attack? 

I don’t think anybody’s quarreling with the right of the Israeli military to respond to the Hamas attack. But Israel needs to allow humanitarian aid to the Palestinian civilian population. First, that means opening up the Rafah crossing with Egypt so humanitarian aid can come in. Second, civilians have to be able to receive that aid safely. This doesn’t necessarily require an overall ceasefire.

Can you see a pragmatic long-term path to peace and a two-state solution? 

Even before this latest conflict, the two-state solution was dead. I took an interesting tour with Breaking the Silence (the human rights group composed of IDF veterans) and saw a quasi-aerial view of the West Bank. By the time you consider the settlements, the outposts and the bypass roads, what you’re left with is a Swiss cheese of Palestinian enclaves, but nothing that would allow a contiguous, viable state. 

I was left with the sad conclusion that the relentless settlement expansion pursued by various Israeli governments (not just Netanyahu) has pretty much killed a two-state solution. I think that is why more and more observers have begun to call the situation a one-state reality between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. That’s just all that’s left. 

Given that reality, one has to ask, “What is life like under that one-state reality?” The conclusion that every serious human rights group that has looked at the issue has arrived at is that this is apartheid. The answer to apartheid is equal rights. 

Human Rights Watch has not prescribed the details of what an equal rights regime would look like. There are many possible permutations as to who governs where. But the current state of affairs, where you have millions of Palestinians living under completely unequal and oppressive circumstances, is an unjust and unsustainable solution.

Last week at Harvard, the Palestine Solidarity Committee and 34 other student groups released a statement in which they held “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” The statement was widely criticized for failing to condemn the Hamas massacre. As a Harvard affiliate, what is your perspective? 

I would not have signed on to that statement. I think it’s not a fair portrayal of reality. You cannot blame Hamas’ slaughter of civilians on Israel. It’s possible to talk about context, motivations and why there would be anger, but none of that excuses the deliberate slaughter of civilians. 

The problem arose when the Harvard administration felt the need to condemn that statement and I think that was a mistake. I don’t think university administrations should get into the business of denouncing statements by students or faculty on the campus.

Universities these days are pressured to take positions on many political issues, but they should refrain. They will inevitably be selective: why are they commenting on Israel-Palestine and not on the Chinese government’s persecution of the Uyghurs, or the Ethiopian government’s slaughter of Tigrayans, or the latest round of ethnic cleansing in Darfur? 

These issues are not the business of university administrations; they shouldn’t get into this realm. By doing so, they end up undermining academic freedom. They are inevitably pushed by donors to denounce — if not curtail — statements by students and faculty members that the donors disagree with.

The New York Times has reported that over a dozen major donors at colleges including the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, Stanford and Cornell are pressuring administrations to support Israel and condemn Hamas. Are you concerned about these dynamics between universities and donors?

Yes. But it’s the universities’ own fault for getting into this business. If universities were to respond and say, “we don’t comment on events in the world. We defend academic freedom,” then the donors would have nothing to say. A donor could still say, “I don’t care about academic freedom. I just want you to speak on my favorite topic.” But then they don’t belong as a donor to the university. 

I faced this when I ran Human Rights Watch. There were certain donors who would say, “Will you take this position on my favorite issue? Then here’s my money.” And my answer was: “I don’t want your money. We uphold human rights principles at Human Rights Watch and we’re not going to allow donors to influence an objective principle.”

There’s an argument that the left — I’m thinking of the Democratic Socialists of America in particular — has really undermined their credibility by failing to strongly condemn Hamas. Do you think the left can criticize Israel without being antisemitic? 

I’m not referring to how any particular left-wing group responded to recent events and I’m not sure I followed all of them closely. But the left discredits itself if it becomes an apologist for Hamas slaughtering civilians. There’s no excuse for that. It’s an odd conception of what it means to be progressive to not see that. 

There’s an element of the left whose top priority is not human rights, but rather being anti-imperialist: just opposing the U.S. government or any close U.S. allies such as Israel. Prioritizing that over the defense of human rights and basic life is wrong.

On the question of antisemitism, clearly some criticism of the conduct of the Israeli government is antisemitic. But certain defenders of the Israeli government have a tendency to try to silence legitimate criticism of the conduct of the Israeli government conduct by accusing the critics of being antisemitic. I’ve faced this myself. I’ve been accused of being antisemitic and being a Jew hater, which is ridiculous. 

We have to be frank here: antisemitism is a scourge that harms Jews around the world. But when charges of antisemitism are seen as just a way to deflect and silence criticism of the Israeli government’s conduct, the result is people stopped taking antisemitism seriously. It cheapens the concept of antisemitism to be just another tool to defend the Israeli government’s abuse. 

The effect may somewhat strengthen the reputation of the Israeli government by discrediting a handful of critics, but it weakens protection for Jews around the world. 

To contact the author, email opinion@forward.com.

The post The ‘godfather of human rights’ criticized Israeli ‘apartheid’ — now he’s calling out the left for making excuses for Hamas appeared first on The Forward.

U.S. Senator Tim Scott is increasing his staff in Iowa and shifting resources to the early voting state as he seeks to revive his languishing campaign to be the Republican 2024 presidential nominee.

Former President Donald Trump is the runaway favorite to win the Republican primaries that kick off on Jan. 15 in Iowa.

However, Trump has shown some weakness among Iowa’s crucial evangelical voters, a trend Scott and other presidential contenders, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, are hoping to capitalize on.

Describing the evangelical lane as “wide-open,” Scott’s campaign said on Monday they were doubling their staff in Iowa and increasing advertising spend in the midwestern state. Following the next debate on Nov. 8, Scott will travel to Iowa every week ahead until January vote, his campaign added.

The decision is reminiscent of DeSantis’ do-or-die approach to Iowa. The DeSantis campaign has relocated one-third of its campaign staff to Iowa and has committed to a $2 million TV ad buy to run through the caucuses.

DeSantis’ much-anticipated presidential bid is sputtering after missteps and relentless targeting by Trump, while Scott’s never truly got off the ground. The only Black Republican in the U.S. Senate, Scott has run a presidential campaign focused on optimism that has struggled to compete against the more aggressive approaches put forward by Trump and DeSantis.

Scott has also been eclipsed since former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley’s strong debate showings. Haley is now in a battle with DeSantis for donors and voters to become the leading Trump alternative.

Scott attracted 2% support among Republicans, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling conducted from Sept. 8 through Sept. 14.