Day: October 27, 2023

LONDON — The United States on Friday expanded its effort to cut off funding for Hamas, announcing a second round of sanctions against people and organizations linked to the group since it launched an attack on Israel that killed more than 1,400 people.

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Read More: The Families of Israelis Held Hostage by Hamas Speak Out

The new sanctions highlight Iran’s role in providing financial, logistical and operational support to Hamas, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said in a statement. They include a Hamas representative in Iran and members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

The sanctions were announced as Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo travelled to London to shore up support from Britain, one of America’s closest allies, for the drive to squeeze off funding for Hamas, which both countries consider a terrorist organization.

“Today’s action underscores the United States’ commitment to dismantling Hamas’s funding networks by deploying our counterterrorism sanctions authorities and working with our global partners to deny Hamas the ability to exploit the international financial system,” Adeyemo said.

Read More: Column: What the World Can Learn From the History of Hamas

Among those targeted are Khaled Qaddoumi, described as a liaison between Hamas and the Iranian government; and Ali Morshed Shirazi and Mostafa Mohammad Khani, officials in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Qods Force who are accused of training and assisting Hamas fighters.

The U.S. also sanctioned a number of organizations, including the Iranian Bonyad Shahid, also known as the Martyrs Foundation. U.S. officials say the group, which is affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, funnels millions of dollars through the Gaza-based Al-Ansar Charity Association for the families of militants.

The practice “ultimately serves as a recruiting tool for terrorist activities,” the U.S. said.

The sanctions freeze any U.S.-based assets owned or controlled by the named individuals and organizations. They also block financial transactions with those designated and prohibit the contribution of funds, goods and services to them.

Most European Union leaders on Friday backed granting more financial support to Ukraine as it fights a Russian invasion, but Hungary and Slovakia voiced reservations ahead of a decision the bloc needs to make unanimously in December.

The EU executive has proposed that the bloc’s 27 countries chip in more funds in a revision to its shared budget to finance additional shared spending through 2027, including extending 50 billion euros ($52.8 bln) in new aid to Kyiv.

“There is a strong view that we need more money for Ukraine, almost unanimity for that,” Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said in EU leaders’ talks on the matter in Brussels. “But there is very little agreement on where we would find the money.”

Overall EU support for Ukraine has totalled almost 83 billion euros since Russia invaded in February 2022, the Brussels-based executive European Commission said this week.

Beyond sending it money and arms, the bloc has also imposed rounds of sanctions on Russia. The summit in Brussels is meant to highlight the bloc’s continued support for Kyiv even as a new war rages in the Middle East.

“The European Union will continue to provide strong financial, economic, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support to Ukraine and its people for as long as it takes,” a draft joint statement from the EU leaders reads.

But Hungary has emerged as a vocal critic of the policy, and Slovakia’s Robert Fico, recently installed as prime minister for the second time, seemed to have joined the Hungarian camp in his first summit since being appointed in Bratislava on Wednesday.

Fresh from meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin, Orban said on Friday that EU strategy of sending money and military aid to Ukraine to help it fight against Russia has failed.

“The Ukrainians will not win on the battlefield,” he said as footage from the start of the summit on Friday showed him standing alone while other EU leaders greeted one another on arriving in their discussions chamber.

Orban has also said he would not endorse in its current form the proposed EU budget revision, which includes the 50 billion in new aid for Kyiv.

But he did not reject the proposal outright either, suggesting there is scope for horse-trading ahead.

Budapest is trying to unlock billions in aid earmarked for Hungary in the EU budget but blocked by the European Commission over accusations that Orban has damaged democracy in his country.

Fico said there was endemic corruption in Ukraine as he demanded that any new aid include guarantees that the funds not be misappropriated, according to a statement from his office on Friday. He also said Bratislava would stop providing military support to Ukraine.

“Ukraine is among the most corrupt countries in the world and we are conditioning what is excessive financial support on guarantees that European money (including Slovak) not be embezzled,” he said.

Fico himself resigned as Slovakia’s prime minister in 2018 amid protests after the murder of a journalist who had spent years investigating state corruption. The leftist veteran of Slovak politics has repeatedly swatted away accusations of graft that have dogged his party.

“What I can say is that both of them didn’t refuse the possibility for providing aid to Ukraine, even for a long time,” Bulgarian Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov told reporters.

“The questions are, what type of aid and how it is used, how we are sure, the European Union is sure, that this aid is used efficiently,” he said.
($1 = 0.9477 euros)

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Rising domestic pressures and a desire to boost its anti-Israel credentials pushed Hamas to attack and most likely drove its decision to inflict terror.

Rising domestic pressures and a desire to boost its anti-Israel credentials pushed Hamas to attack and most likely drove its decision to inflict terror.

Sydney has 25 government-funded statues of Australia’s early colonial leaders.  Plaques for the monuments are being reviewed by the City of Sydney council to assess whether they should be changed to reflect Australia’s complicated and at times brutal colonization after the arrival of British settlers in 1788.

Yvonne Weldon, Sydney’s first Aboriginal councilor, told VOA she believes many of the statues’ inscriptions are “inaccurate, misleading and offensive.”

A plaque on a memorial to the former New South Wales state Governor Lachlan Macquarie, a Scot, said he was a “perfect gentleman” despite once telling colonial soldiers to shoot hostile “natives” and hang them in trees.

Weldon said the truth about Macquarie should be told.

“He did have a profound impact on the colony. He was not a guardian angel for my people,” said Weldon. “At one point he called for Aborigines to be made prisoners of war and if they resisted to be shot and their bodies hung from trees as to strike fears into the hearts of surviving natives. That is not a guardian angel of New South Wales and I think we need to make sure we have a balanced history-telling in this country.”

Weldon called an inscription stating that the famous British explorer Captain James Cook “discovered” Australia in 1770 inaccurate and upsetting.

“There’s others such as Captain Cook saying that he discovered the lands. Like, my people have been here for 65,000 years plus. There is nothing discovered because we have always been here,” said Weldon.

Statues of colonial figures are frequently targeted and damaged by activists. Some Aboriginal campaigners have said the memorials should be removed. In 2017 former conservative Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull dismissed calls to change colonial-era monuments, saying it was a “Stalinist” exercise in rewriting history.

Canberra radio Stephen Cenatiempo on Tuesday told Australia’s Sky News that it was “absolutely ridiculous” that the City of Sydney council wants to wipe out certain parts of history.

Aboriginal leaders say that amending inscriptions on the statues should be part of a “truth-telling” and healing process after Australians overwhelmingly rejected a referendum to recognize First Nations people in the constitution on October 14.

Pfarrer, a special correspondent for the Kyiv Post, explains why Russian troops, despite the increase in the number of soldiers, are doomed to defeat in Ukraine.

The discussion on Ukraine took place on the second day of the summit, after the first day was dominated by coming up with a unified European Union position on the Israel-Hamas war.