Friday, July 29, 2022

07/29 Links Pt1: UN Official Running Investigation Into Israel Defends Colleague Who Said Jewish Lobby Controls Social Media; Children in Houston sing religious anthem associated with Iranian regime

From Ian:

UN Official Running Investigation Into Israel Defends Colleague Who Said Jewish Lobby Controls Social Media
The United Nations official in charge of an investigation into Israel is standing by a colleague who came under fire this week for claiming social media platforms are controlled by a "Jewish lobby."

Navi Pillay, chairwoman of the U.N. investigation into alleged Israeli human rights crimes, says her colleague, Miloon Kothari, is being unfairly accused of anti-Semitism after he stated in an interview this week that social media are controlled by an all-powerful "Jewish lobby" that throws around "a lot of money."

Pillay defended the remarks, saying in a letter sent Thursday to the president of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which helms the Israel investigation, that Kothari was "deliberately misquoted." A copy of the letter, which was written after the UNHRC's president raised concerns about the comments, was provided to the Washington Free Beacon by U.N. officials.

Kothari was "deliberately misquoted to imply that ‘social media' was controlled by the Jewish lobby," Pillay says in the letter, though she does not specify how Kothari was misquoted. Pillay also said that those critical of Kothari's comments are attempting to discredit the U.N. investigation into Israel, which has been dogged by accusations it is biased and fueled by animosity toward the Jewish state.

"The commission takes great exception to personal attacks against individual commissioners appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Such attacks have been continuously directed against all three commissioners throughout our tenure, and it is to this that Commissioner Kothari was making reference," Pillay wrote.

Kothari in an interview with the anti-Zionist website Mondoweiss said the "Jewish lobby" is behind social media efforts attempting to discredit the ongoing probe into Israel.

"We are very disheartened by the social media that is controlled largely by whether it's the Jewish lobby or it's the specific [nonprofit groups]," Kothari said. "A lot of money is being thrown into trying to discredit us."

Kothari also questioned Israel's membership in the United Nations.

"I would go as far as to raise the question of why [Israel is] even a member of the United Nations," he said. "The Israeli government does not respect its own obligations as a U.N. member state. They, in fact, consistently, either directly or through the United States, try to undermine U.N. mechanisms."

Kothari's comments were labeled anti-Semitic by pro-Israel groups, the Free Beacon reported on Wednesday.




Navi Pillay: "I can't tell you who the lobby is..."
TONY EASTLEY: The Federal Government will soon have to make up its mind on whether to attend a controversial United Nations conference on racism next month. Already the US, Israel, Canada and Italy have announced they will boycott the forum in Geneva.

The first conference, held in Durban in 2001, ended up with the US and Israel walking out, upset over the behaviour and anti-Semitic statements of some delegates. While the final declaration at the Durban conference condemned anti-Semitism, it wasn't enough to calm the waters, then and now.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay spoke to me from Geneva this morning. I asked what she thought about the calls for a boycott of the Geneva conference.

NAVI PILLAY: The original conference was marred by abusive or hurtful remarks against Israel, but in a small section of the NGO parallel forum. But it seems that those who have been hurt have continued this kind of fear that there will be a repetition of the anti-Semitic behaviour.

Now I can assure all Australians this is not a repetition of the Durban conference and we need Australia's voice here.




Melanie Phillips: Israeli TV’s shallow and irresponsible stunt
In a culture governed by the twin concepts of honor and shame, this offense is grievous indeed. And since Arab society doesn’t recognize the concept of an independent media free of state control, Tamary’s contempt for Islamic precepts will have been viewed as Israel’s contempt for Islam and Saudi Arabia, too.

This is potentially disastrous. There are hopes that Saudi Arabia will join the Abraham Accords, the transformational alliance between Israel and the other Gulf states signed in 2020.

Although this rapprochement wouldn’t have taken place without tacit Saudi approval, and although there has long been backchannel co-operation between Israel and the desert kingdom, open normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel would be a revolutionary step towards peace in the Middle East.

Tamary, who also holds U.S. citizenship, was one of just three Israeli journalists allowed into Saudi Arabia to cover the GCC+3 summit last weekend. This permission was itself a sign of the transformed relations with Israel. Now, as a result of Channel 13’s indefensible action, that crucial and sensitive relationship has been set back.

The stunt reveals a shallowness by these broadcasters not just towards Israel’s interests in normalizing with Saudi Arabia but also towards any sense of the sacred.

While some secular people display appropriate respect towards religious faith, many in both Israel and the West do not. They are not just disrespectful but actively hostile.

Such people believe that modernity and religion are packaged up in different boxes. The one labeled modernity, they think, contains everything that’s good—rationality, freedom, compassion, tolerance and so on. The one labeled religion contains everything that’s bad— superstition, obscurantism, authoritarianism, selfishness and bigotry.

The Muslim world tells itself the reverse. Modernity, it believes, represents an evil contagion that threatens Islam. It has never found a way of reconciling Islam with individual autonomy and political freedom. And it views the Jews as being the source of modernity.

For their part, secular Westerners have, in fact, got this very wrong. The specific religion at the core of their culture is the wellspring of modernity. The values prized by the West, such as respect for every individual, political liberty, limited government and the belief in reason that produced scientific progress, all originated in the Hebrew Bible and became the West’s bedrock values through the vehicle of Christianity.
JPost Editorial: Russia should let the Jewish Agency work freely
Prime Minister Yair Lapid and President Isaac Herzog have done a good job trying to keep any tensions from boiling over. Both of them are right to work at keeping the issue from growing into a larger spat. This is because there is nothing to be gained by having Russian Jews used as pawns, or having the agency’s work ended in Russia.

Israel has always had to be aware since its foundation that it has a unique position in the world. Not only is Israel the sole Jewish state, it is also a destination for Jews who are fleeing persecution or want to immigrate to Israel. That has often meant that Jews have found themselves targeted in other countries when disputes are connected to Israel.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict has often been overshadowed by attempts to drag Israel into the spotlight. For instance, some in the West have accused Israel of not being sufficiently pro-Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also made this an issue. Meanwhile, pro-Russia commentators have accused Ukraine of being “Nazis,” a kind of rhetoric that has often meant both sides compare the other to the Nazi era.

Inevitably then, Jews have become pawns, asked to back both sides. Israel is unfairly put in the middle with no easy way to thread the needle of making the right moral decisions while keeping out of the conflict.

“The less we talk about it and the more we do, the better,” President Herzog has said. “Russia is an important country. There could be numerous different scenarios and explanations to why and how this happened.”

We agree. We don’t want to see the controversy in Russia exploited for politics in Israel, and we don’t want to harm relations with Moscow. However, Israel must make it clear that Jews in Russia and immigration to Israel should never pay the price for political differences. We value relations with Russia but the Jewish Agency should not be at the center of a legal controversy.

Russia should allow the Jewish Agency to work as it has in the past.
New law may cement de facto ban on Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Jews holding high office
Thousands of people gathered outside the gates of the Office of the High Representative in Sarajevo on Monday night, shouting slogans like “you will not divide us” between chants of “Bosna, Bosna, Bosna” to an office whose European and American staff had likely already checked out for the night.

They waved the blue flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose prominent yellow triangle represents its three constituent ethnic groups.

They were protesting news leaked last week, which shows that the Office of the High Representative, or OHR, will use its powers to impose a new electoral system in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina — one that protesters say will favor nationalist parties and further shun minority groups.

Among those particularly concerned about the changes is the country’s small Jewish community, whose leaders have been fighting against inequality in the local electoral system for over a decade. If implemented, the changes would come just months before Bosnians are set to head to the polls in October.

An unelected body, the OHR was established at the end of the Bosnian war to oversee the implementation of the new civic structure in the fledgling post-Yugoslav state. Since its inception, all of the OHR’s heads have been picked from the European Union, by an international Peace Implementation Council, while their deputies have hailed from the United States.

The high representative, currently German diplomat Christian Schmidt, has the mandate to unilaterally dismiss elected officials as high up as presidents, implement or annul laws, and even change the country’s national symbols.

The post has been compared to a colonial governor or a medieval viceroy.
New Tunisian constitution calls for Palestinian state, Jerusalem as capital
The new Tunisian constitution, which passed in a referendum on Tuesday, enshrines the right for Palestinians to establish a state in the Levant with Jerusalem as the new country's capital.

"We defend the legitimate rights of the peoples who, according to this legitimacy, have the right to decide their own destiny, the first of which is the right of the Palestinian people to their stolen land and the establishment of their state over it after its liberation, with Al-Quds Al-Sharif [Jerusalem] as its capital," reads the preamble of the new constitution.

Pro-Israel blogger Elder of Ziyon, who first reported the inclusion of the passage on Wednesday, asserted that the phrase "stolen land" supports "Palestinian claims to all of Israel."

Tunisia's 2014 constitution also had a passage in support of Palestinians, saying the state would support "all justliberation movements, at the forefront of which is the movement for the liberation of Palestine."

"The right of the Palestinian people to their stolen land and the establishment of their state over it after its liberation, with Al-Quds Al-Sharif [Jerusalem] as its capital."

2022 Tunisian Constitution
The constitution, which passed with the support of 90%-95% of the 27.5%-30.5% of Tunisian citizens who turned out for the vote, is controversial also for what critics say is a move toward autocracy.

The constitution includes changes that shift power away from parliament to the presidency, The Media Line reported on July 6.

The referendum did not require a minimum turnout to be approved.


Do We Still Know the Meaning of “Fascist”?
Last week, someone called a candidate for Los Angeles City Council a fascist. That someone was a former Los Angeles mayoral candidate who has a committed following on the extreme left of the political spectrum. Her target was Sam Yebri, a Democrat who’s running for a seat on the LA City Council against fellow Democrat Katy Young Yaroslavsky, representing the Fifth District. The accusation was hurled against Yebri (and Eleventh District candidate Democrat Traci Park) on Twitter — where else?

Her exact tweet, which was posted from her campaign account, read: “Sam Yebri in CD5 and Traci Park in CD11 are full blown fascists. Please tell your friends and family not to vote for them. They want to continue the practice of giving LAPD 50% of our city’s budget.”

The author of the tweet, Gina Viola, was referencing Yebri’s recent endorsement by the Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL), the police officers’ union. In a statement, the LAPPL President said, “Sam Yebri will fight to ensure our Police Officers have the resources they need.”

For receiving this endorsement, Yebri was called a fascist. And not just a run-of-the-mill fascist, but a “full blown” one by Viola and hundreds of her followers who piled on.

Viola herself has acknowledged that her politics aren’t for everyone. In a mayoral candidates’ debate sponsored by UCLA, she said, “I’m the infamous defund-the-police candidate.” Her self-description on her personal Twitter account makes her position clear: “DEFUND ALL POLICE EVERYWHERE.” Viola is a self-described “abolitionist”; she’s vocal about her ultimate desire to abolish the LAPD and to replace police with social services.

I decided to contact Viola via Twitter for further comment. She told me, “I have not met Mr. Yebri. I equate 41.18 and those who support it with fascism. I equate growing an over bloated, over militarized LAPD, and those who support that, with fascism.” Section 41.18 of the Los Angeles Municipal Code (LAMC) is related to homelessness and makes it illegal to “sit, lie or sleep in or upon any street, sidewalk or other public way,” after certain conditions are met, including an offer of shelter.


IDF releases court documents from Kfar Kassem massacre
The IDF Archives released Friday court documents from the trial of officers involved in the 1956 Kfar Kassem massacre, in which 49 Israeli Arabs were killed by Border Police officers.

On October 29, 1956, a curfew was placed on the village and other Arab villages along the border with Jordan, but the commander of the district, Issachar Shadmi, decided on his own to change the hour when it would start from 9 p.m. to 5 p.m. without warning the villagers who were out working in the fields. Residents who didn't know about the change went out of their homes and were shot to death.

In 1957, a number of officers involved in the massacre were put on trial in a military court and some of them were imprisoned, although one commander who was convicted returned to command soldiers afterward.

The Kfar Kassem protocols
The protocols released on Friday show that the Border Police commanders held a discussion the day before the massacre about the possibility of conquering Jordan in the upcoming operation so they were on alert.

The court documents reveal that there were directives to keep the peace and to allow residents returning to be allowed into their homes in the village even once the curfew began if it was moved up to the afternoon from the evening.

The defendants referred multiple times to a plan called the "Hafarferet" ("Mole") plan which involved a series of procedures that could be carried out concerning the Arab population in the case of war, including pushing Arab residents into Jordan.

Company commander Haim Levy stated that the plan included measures for curfews, confiscating property that had value for war and moving entire villages from place to place. In the case of Kfar Kasem, the entire population of the village was to move to Tira if the plan was implemented.

During questioning, one of the witnesses stressed that the Hafarfert plan was only meant for a situation in which Israel was on the defensive, not for a case like Operation Kadesh, in which Israel was the initiator.
Beware the Israeli-Arab violent riots of the future - opinion
He argues that last year’s broadscale violence was driven by Arab gang and Islamist elements and coordinated with Hamas. They purposefully inflamed the masses and rallied otherwise peaceful Israeli Arabs for pogrom-style rioting and lynching. After all, why did last year’s riots cease as soon as the Gaza hostilities ended?

“If poverty and marginalization were indeed the culprits, why did Arab dissidence increase dramatically with the vast improvement in Arab standard of living in the 1970s and 1980s? Why did it escalate into an open uprising in October 2000 – after a decade that saw government allocations to Arab municipalities grow by 550% and the number of Arab civil servants nearly treble? And why did it spiral into a far more violent insurrection in May 2021 – after yet another decade of massive government investment in the Arab sector?”

A somewhat less alarmist but equally disturbing study on Israeli Arabs was published last year Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He argues that alongside a desire to benefit from integration economically and sociologically, there is a deep-rooted ideological consciousness among Israeli Arabs that rejects Zionism and the Jewish right to a homeland in Israel. He writes that the hard-core Islamist rejectionists have been making headway in radicalizing Israeli Arabs.

In fact, there has been a resurgence of the “Nakba” (disaster) narrative and the demand for an Arab “right of return” in the fullest-imaginable magnitude among Israeli Arabs. These demands have moved from refugee camp residents and descendants on the margins of Palestinian society into the mainstream, he finds.

Indeed, a public opinion survey conducted earlier this year by Habithonistim, a conservative Israeli defense and security forum founded by ex-generals and intelligence officials, found that, as a matter of principle, 75% of Israeli Arabs do not recognize any Jewish “right” to a sovereign state in the Land of Israel.

Hostile outside actors like the UN and Amnesty International capitalize on Israeli Arab rioting and Bedouin complaints to “prove” how discriminatory Israel is, warns Kuperwasser. And the PA leverages Amnesty’s “apartheid” charge both to egg on Israeli Arab radicals and to advance Ramallah’s campaign to criminalize Israel in international legal institutions.

The bottom line: It is high time to impose more obligations and responsibilities on this country’s Arab minority, while investing in their advancement too; and to ramp-up intelligence gathering and enforcement capabilities to crush radicals and criminals. Not to punish Israeli Arabs, but to encourage their good citizenship and better integration, and to rule effectively. This will be a painful but long overdue process.

And with regard to the Israel Police, well, if the police were to pursue those who block roads with burning tires in the Galilee and Negev, rampage through mixed Muslim-Jewish cities, vandalize public infrastructure and steal weaponry from IDF bases – with anything resembling the toughness and prosecutorial zeal applied to, say, Nir Hefetz (a state witness in the cases against former prime minister Netanyahu), then the country would be a lot safer.
Terror attack against IDF thwarted in southern Nablus
IDF soldiers from Battalion 636 thwarted a shooting attack targeting a military post at the entrance to the city of Nablus in the West Bank on Thursday night, according to the IDF Spokesperson's Unit.

According to the IDF, a squad of armed Palestinians arrived in a vehicle at one of the southern entrances to the city and one of them got out and fired at a military post in the area.

Soldiers from the 636th Battalion who were operating in the area returned fire and hit several of the gunmen, one of the militants was arrested and sent for medical treatment.

Three gunmen were injured by IDF fire, according to Palestinian reports.

The others that were hit by the IDF fled in a vehicle, after which another vehicle arrived, collected the weapons and fled the scene.

There were no casualties among IDF troops.

"Another attempt at an attack in Samaria. Thanks to the correct and quick action of the soldiers of the Samaria Regional Brigade, under the ommand of Col. Roi Zweig, a serious incident was avoided. The residents of Samaria and the entire people of Israel thank you." Yossi Dagan

The head of the Shomron Regional Council, Yossi Dagan, congratulated Shomron Brigade Col. Roi Zweig for thwarting the attack: "Another attempt at an attack in Samaria. Thanks to the correct and quick action of the soldiers of the Samaria Regional Brigade, under the command of Col. Roi Zweig, a serious incident was avoided. The residents of Samaria and the entire people of Israel thank you."
In reversal, High Court rules Mitzpe Kramim outpost can remain on Palestinian land
The High Court of Justice ruled Wednesday that the Mitzpe Kramim settlement outpost built on private Palestinian land can remain in place, backtracking two years after ordering the state to remove settlers living on the hilltop.

The court said that the wildcat outpost did not need to be evacuated because the land was allocated by the government to the settlers in good faith.

The decision stipulates that compensation be provided to the registered land owners or those who can prove their ownership of the land.

The precedent-setting ruling, which overturns a High Court decision from 2020 made with a smaller panel of justices, could theoretically pave the way for the legalization of thousands more homes facing legal challenges due to Palestinian claims on the land.

Right-wing politicians and organizations welcomed the ruling, including opposition leader and Likud leader MK Benjamin Netanyahu, although some argued that the ruling did not go far enough in legalizing settlements built on private Palestinian property.

Netanyahu warmly praised the ruling and the settlers of Mitzpe Kramim, adding that he would formally legalize the settlement and work towards the legalization and success of “settlement outposts and settlements all over the country” if he is able to establish a new right-wing government after the coming elections.

Peace Now decried the ruling, saying it “tramples on the little protection that remained for Palestinian property” in the West Bank and said it would allow for the retroactive legalization of “settler land seizures.”

In its 2020 ruling on Mitzpe Kramim, the High Court ruled that a legal tool endorsed by then-attorney general Avichai Mandelblit known as “market regulation” could in theory be used to protect settlement and outpost homes from being demolished.
The Israel Guys: Israel Should Not Have Trusted Them
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has two faces. One is the face that he shows when he is shaking hands with and embracing President Joe Biden. He shows his other face when he pays a condolence call to Palestinian Arabs who murder or attempt to murder Jews.

Today’s show breaks down the nest of terrorism that has been growing in Judea and Samaria for several years, the IDF’s plan to root it out, and the PA’s resistance to it. Not only that, but the PA is fostering a hero mentality around terrorism, even training children in their summer camps to commit acts of terror against Israel. Find out why Abbas declared Biden’s visit a “big zero”, and much more on today’s program.




‘I thought everyone held guns’: Gazan girl makes rare Israel visit to face her fears
Gimel also visited a petting zoo run by the Hossen (“Resilience”) Center in the Gaza-adjacent town of Sderot. Over the years Sderot has been one of the towns most affected by rocket attacks from terrorists in the Strip. The treatment center uses various means, including animal care, to help people deal with psychological trauma.

Gimel was accompanied there by Ibrahim al-Etauna, director of the Bedouin Resilience Center in the Negev.

“I got the impression that now she understands that reality is not black and white, but the thought of war still scares her. In any case, she said that now she will be less worried when her father goes to work in Israel,” he told Ynet of a private conversation he and Gimel had after the visit.

At the end of the visit, Gimel noted that she wished she could stay longer.

“We want to live like good neighbors, with love and cooperation,” Gimel’s father said at the end of the visit. “I hope that one day everything will be over and the children of Gaza and Israel will be able to live as good neighbors. If it was up to [the children], there would already be peace and everything would be fine. I hope my daughter can visit Israel again.”

As for Gimel, her fears amid conflict certainly won’t evaporate, but her views have unquestionably changed.

“I thought that in Israel everyone wore military uniforms and held guns, but the Jews were really nice,” she said.
Israel’s defense establishment actively seeks to develop Gaza economically
A key goal of Israel’s defense establishment is to delay frequent war to the extent possible in order to give Israeli civilians extended periods of calm and to allow Israel’s economy to continue to develop.

As part of that goal of conflict delay, the Israel Defense Force’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories Unit has been taking increasingly bold steps in the Gaza Strip in the past year to improve the economic situation of Gaza’s estimated 2.2 million civilians, thereby contributing to the stability of the region to a degree.

“We don’t want to have a war or round of escalation every year—not because we can’t but because it’s bad for development in our area and for the State of Israel,” an IDF official stated on Wednesday.

He warned, however, that this objective is constantly undermined by the “existence of the Hamas terror organization; all it does is prepare for war.”

While Israel builds and replenishes its military deterrence against Hamas in Gaza, it also pursues a civilian economic policy—one that has changed since Hamas first took over Gaza in a violent coup in 2007, ousting its rival Fatah.

Since the completion of “Operation Guardian of the Walls” in May 2021, Israel has taken unique steps to promote Gazan economic well-being, such as increasingly growing the number of Gazans with daily work permits in Israel, which is set to soon rise to 20,000.

While fighting Hamas’s force build-up every day, the official said, Israel is allowing thousands of Gazans into Israel to work, while also promoting the development of factories in the Strip, fishing, agriculture, and imports and exports.
Polish delegation to Palestinian territories pays tribute to Arafat
Polish parliamentarians paid tribute to Yasser Arafat on Monday as part of a three-day official parliamentary delegation to the Palestinian territories. In a tweet by the Representative Office of Poland in Ramallah, members of the delegation can be seen holding a wreath that they then laid at the grave of the former leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

“The Polish parliamentary delegation honored the memory of the first President of Palestine and the leader of the nation. Yasser Arafat was also a friend of Poland,” the tweet read. Among those tagged in the tweet was the PLO’s Negotiations Affairs Department.

In another tweet, the office included a picture of four delegation members from multiple parties wearing traditional Palestinian scarves in front of photos of Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.

Maciej Konieczny, a member of Poland’s left-wing Razem party, tweeted an image of himself standing by Arafat’s grave and endorsed the Boycott Divest and Sanctions movement. Part of the tweet stated that “We are united by solidarity with Palestine.”

“We are in Palestine as part of the official delegation of the Polish Sejm,” he wrote. “Today we had a series of official meetings with authorities and visited the grave of Yasser Arafat. We have intensive days of talks, visits and observations ahead of us.

"We are also here to stand up for human rights. The world's largest human rights organizations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have recognized that the actions of the State of Israel meet the definition of apartheid. It's time for the international community to act accordingly. Therefore, as the Razem Party, we support the boycott and sanctions campaign.”


Lebanon gas deal creates strangest of connections
In a much-reported move, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt signed an agreement at the Lebanese Energy Ministry in Beirut on June 21 for the provision of Egyptian natural gas to Lebanon, via Syria. According to the deal, Egypt will export 650 million cubic meters of natural gas per year to the Deir Ammar power plant in Lebanon. The gas will reach Lebanon through the Arab Gas Pipeline (AGP), which runs through Jordan and Syria.

This agreement, which requires final approval from the World Bank, which is set to partially finance it, and from the United States, is significant from a number of points of view.

Firstly, if implemented it will go some way toward alleviating the plight of Lebanese citizens, for whom daily power outages and long hours without electricity have become a part of daily life. The agreement promises to generate an additional 450 megawatts of electricity, according to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. This is set to give Lebanese homes an additional four hours of electricity per day. The state-owned generator in Lebanon has been barely functioning in recent months, leaving citizens dependent on private generators that run on diesel fuel.

Secondly, the agreement represents a significant achievement for the Assad regime in Syria. United States approval is still required, because the agreement is in contravention of the US Caesar Act, which maintains financial sanctions on the Syrian regime, because of the mass killings of civilians it carried out in the period of the Syrian civil war.

Gas was pumped from Egypt to Lebanon prior to the war, but this process was stopped in 2011 because of instability and attacks on the pipeline in Syria. So the agreement will enable the Syrian regime to bypass sanctions and project an image of a return to normality, as well as gaining a modest injection of income from the transfer of the gas.


Syrian Ship Carrying ‘Stolen Ukrainian Barley, Flour’ Docks in Lebanon, Ukrainian Embassy Says
A Syrian ship under USsanctions has docked in the northern Lebanese port of Tripoli carrying barley and wheat that the Ukrainian embassy in Beirut told Reuters on Thursday had been plundered by Russia from Ukrainian stores.

The Laodicea docked in Tripoli on Wednesday, according to shipping data website MarineTraffic.

“The ship has traveled from a Crimean port that is closed to international shipping, carrying 5,000 tonnes of barley and 5,000 tonnes of flour that we suspect was taken from Ukrainian stores,” the embassy told Reuters.

“This is the first time a shipment of stolen grains and flour reaches Lebanon,” the statement said.

Russia has previously denied the allegations that it has stolen Ukrainian grain. An official from the Russian embassy in Lebanon told Reuters it could not immediately comment.

Ukrainian Ambassador Ihor Ostash met Lebanese president Michel Aoun on Thursday to discuss the shipment, telling him that purchasing stolen Ukrainian goods would “harm bilateral ties” between Kyiv and Beirut, the embassy told Reuters.

A Lebanese official confirmed that the issue had been raised during a Thursday meeting with Aoun and noted Ukraine’s general concerns that Russia might try selling stolen Ukrainian wheat to a host of countries including Lebanon.
Iran's Deepening Military Expansion Into Europe
The Iranian regime's decision to give its backing to Russia's military offensive against Ukraine... represents an alarming expansion in Iran's military ambitions beyond the Middle East.

Arguably Khamenei's most revealing comment during the visit was his call for Iran and Russia to increase what he termed "reciprocal cooperation" between the two countries to counter the threat of Western sanctions.

The concern now, say Western security officials, is that the commercial ties between the two countries will lead to closer military cooperation.

Iran's very public displays of support for Russia certainly undermine the long-standing assumption of American and European policymakers that the Iranian threat, allowing Iran unlimited nuclear weapons, relates only to the Middle East -- and specifically against Israel.

US President Joe Biden's confused position on the Iran issue has been further exposed by the head of Britain's MI6 intelligence agency, who told this month's Aspen Security Forum that, in his view, Iran had shown little interest in negotiating a new nuclear deal.

The truth of the matter is that Mr Biden's policy on Iran has become completely untenable, and the sooner he and his officials recognise their courtship of Tehran is doomed to end in failure, the better it will be for all concerned.


Children in Houston sing religious anthem associated with Iranian regime
Shi'ite children in Houston, Texas were seen in a video shared by Iranian media singing a song often used as a sort of religious anthem that also supports the Islamic Republic of Iran while wearing headbands, waving flags and saluting. The children sang the song in English and Persian.

The song, Salam Farmande (Hello Commander), was first published last year in Iran by a group called "Mah" (an abbreviation of the "Nation of Imam Hosayn" in Persian).

The song is written from the perspective of a child singing about his dedication to Muhammad al-Mahdi, a messianic deliverer who according to Islamic belief will fill the earth with justice and equity and redeem Islam. The lyrics describe the child as insisting that despite his young age, he will "sacrifice everything" and serve al-Mahdi.

In the 9th century CE, the representative of Imam Hasan al-Askari, the eleventh Imam in Twelver Shia belief, claimed that the imam, who was killed had a son named Muhammad who was being kept hidden from the public out of fear of persecution. According to Twelver Shia belief, al-Mahdi will reappear at the end of time.

The original song in Persian makes references to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and former IRGC Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, with one line stating "I promise to be your Haj Qasem."




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