RT News - November 02 2023

Numbers update 9,061 (confirmed) dead 32,000 wounded (unconfirmed) since the start of the conflict on 7th October. Day 27Show more

Short take: (will write up properly later with details) Almost 200 killed and 700 more wounded in an Israeli double air strike on the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza, while the IDF says they were targeting only two Hamas leaders who were killed in the attacks. Amnesty International accuses Israel again of using illegal white phosphorus bombs in Gaza and along Lebanon's southern border. The IDF says it has broken through Hamas' front line of defense and reached the gates of Gaza City. Later in the program, we'll hear from a former commander in Israel's security services.

events of the day "as they happened"

02 November 2023

13:56 GMT
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said that calls by Israel for its citizens to leave Russia’s North Caucasus and refrain from trips to the area “are simply aimed against our country and have nothing to do with reality.” The recommendations followed heated anti-Israeli protests in Russia’s Republic of Dagestan on Sunday. Zakharova stressed that rallies decrying IDF attacks on Gaza have also been taking place in some NATO countries, but the Israeli authorities have not issued any travel warnings about them.

13:25 GMT
Bahrain has announced that it has recalled its ambassador to Israel and has halted all economic ties with the country. The move was made in support of “the Palestinian cause and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people,” according to a statement. Israel’s envoy to Manama has already left the island nation, it added.

Israel and Bahrain established diplomatic ties in 2020 as part of the so-called Abraham Accords. On Wednesday, Jordan said it had recalled its ambassador to Israel to protest against the “catastrophe” caused in Gaza by the IDF’s attacks.

13:09 GMT
Gaza’s health ministry has updated the death toll from Israeli attacks on the Palestinian enclave, saying that 9,061 people, including 3,760 children, have been killed and more than 32,000 wounded in area since October 7.

People sift through the smouldering rubble of buildings destroyed in an Israeli strike on the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

12:14 GMT
The implementation of Israel’s plan to resettle the Palestinians from Gaza in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula would have “catastrophic” consequences and worsen the situation in the region, warned Maria Zakharova, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman. Such a move would affect not only the Palestinians and the Israelis, but the whole of the Middle East, she added.

AP reported earlier this week that Israel’s Intelligence Ministry had prepared a document on October 13, in which it proposed moving Gaza’s population to tent cities in northern Sinai and then building permanent cities there. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was just a “concept paper, the likes of which are prepared at all levels of the government and its security agencies.”

11:46 GMT
Lieutenant Colonel Salman Habaka has become the most senior Israeli military officer to be killed during the invasion of Gaza, the IDF has said. Habaka, who commanded the 188th Armored Brigade’s 53rd Battalion, died in the fighting with Hamas in the northern part of the Palestinian enclave, it added.

This brings the IDF’s losses to 18 soldiers during the ground offensive in Gaza and to 333 since the surprise attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7.

11:30 GMT
The further escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hamas could lead to a mild recession, a plunge in stock prices, and a loss of $2 trillion for the world economy, Gregory Daco, the chief economist at EY-Parthenon global consulting firm, has told the New York Times. He said this would only happen in a worst-case scenario, however, which would see fighting spread throughout the Middle East and lead to a spike in oil prices from the current $85 to $150 per barrel.

However, Jason Bardoff, the director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, assured the NYT that there’s “a recognition among most of the parties, the US, Europe, Iran, other gulf countries… that it’s in no one’s interest for this conflict to significantly expand beyond Israel and Gaza.”

10:45 GMT
Israel does not have the right to self-defense in the current conflict with the Palestinians, Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, said during the General Assembly special session on the crisis on Wednesday.

The US and its allies “keep speaking about Israel’s alleged right for self-defense, which – as an occupying state – it does not have, as was confirmed by the [UN] International Court consultative ruling in 2004,” Nebenzia stated in his address.

Russia recognizes Israel’s right to ensure its security, but “it could be fully guaranteed only in case of a fair resolution of the Palestinian issue based on recognized UN Security Council resolutions,” the envoy added.

10:02 GMT
British retailer Marks and Spencer has issued an apology following a backlash caused by its Christians advert, which some users claimed depicted the burning of the Palestinian flag. “We shared an outtake image from our Christmas Clothing and Home advert, which was recorded in August. It showed traditional, festive colored red, green and silver Christmas paper party hats in a fire grate,” the company said in a statement. According to Marks and Spencer, it only wanted to “playfully show that some people just don't enjoy wearing paper Christmas hats over the festive season.” The controversial post has been deleted from social media, with the company saying that it apologizes “for any unintentional hurt caused.” https://twitter.com/ShayXea/status/1719961133627396587

09:04 GMT
US Representative Florida Brian Mast, a Republican from Florida, compared Palestinian civilians to Nazis during a debate at the House of Representatives on Wednesday. Mast defended Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, which, according to the Palestinian side, have claimed more than 8,800 lives, by saying that “when we look at this, as a whole, I would encourage the other side to not so lightly throw around the idea of innocent Palestinian civilians. I don't think we would so lightly throw around the term ‘innocent Nazi civilians’” during World War II.

The comment was made amid the discussion of the Hamas International Financing Prevention Act, which is aimed at imposing sanctions on those supporting groups deemed to be “terrorist organizations” by Washington. Mast, 43, is a military veteran, who lost his legs while serving as an explosive ordnance disposal technician during the American invasion of Afghanistan. https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1719788747292623010

08:19 GMT
The IDF has said its troops were engaged in “prolonged battles” against Hamas in northern Gaza overnight. Israeli soldiers were targeted with missiles, explosive devices, and grenades, but fought back with the assistance of airstrikes, artillery, and tank shelling, according to a statement. “At the end of the clashes, dozens of terrorists were killed,” the Israeli military claimed. https://twitter.com/idfonline/status/1719958938802610517

07:51 GMT
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry has said that Cairo is going to help some 7,000 foreign citizens and dual nationals depart the besieged Gaza enclave. According to a statement issued by the ministry, Egypt’s Assistant Foreign Minister Ismail Khairat said during a meeting with foreign diplomats that the country was preparing “to facilitate the reception and evacuation of foreign citizens from Gaza through the Rafah crossing,” adding that they would “number at about 7,000” and represent more than 60 nationalities.

04:40 GMT
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reiterated its call to protect civilians in Gaza, adding that over 400 children have reportedly been killed or injured per day over the course of 25 straight days of Israeli strikes.

“Attacks of this scale on densely populated residential neighborhoods can have indiscriminate effects and are completely unacceptable,” the agency said in a statement. UNICEF cited reports that more than 3,500 Palestinian children were killed and over 6,800 were injured since the conflict between Hamas and Israel broke out on October 7.

04:07 GMT
The Israel Defense Forces said in the early hours of Thursday that it carried out air and artillery strikes on Lebanon after its drone came under a missile attack. It added that the UAV was unharmed.

According to the IDF, projectiles were also launched from the Lebanese territory towards the Mount Dov and Mount Hermon areas. The Israeli army responded by hitting the “source of the rocket fire” with artillery.

03:13 GMT
Eleven bakeries have been struck or destroyed in the Gaza Strip since 7 October, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its daily update on Wednesday.

It added that only nine bakeries remain operational and are supplying bread to shelters, mainly in the southern and middle parts of the Palestinian enclave. “Hours-long queues are reported in front of bakeries, where people are exposed to airstrikes,” the agency warned.

01:22 GMT
US President Joe Biden was heckled at a fundraiser in Minneapolis by an audience member who demanded that he “call for a ceasefire right now.”

“I think we need a pause. A pause means give time to get the prisoners out,” Biden responded, according to The Hill. https://twitter.com/jvplive/status/1719864496859054392
The White House previously argued that a ceasefire would only benefit Hamas, echoing the stance taken by the Israeli government.

00:32 GMT
The Israeli army published what it said was an intercepted call involving a senior Hamas commander and the director of the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza. The IDF described the recording as evidence that the Palestinian militants were “stealing” fuel reserved for medical facilities.

“The representative from the ministry said so, in the night he told me to fill up 1,000 liters,” a person described as a hospital manager is heard saying in Arabic. https://twitter.com/i24NEWS_EN/status/1719780945547452853
The UN previously warned that fuel shortages were impeding the efforts to bring humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip

01 November 2023

19:49 GMT
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has said that the Jewish state’s government should transfer frozen tax funds to the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank, in comments that could be construed as a criticism of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s decision to freeze Palestinian tax revenues to the PA.

Smotrich had on Sunday announced the step to pause the payments, claiming that Ramallah had supported Hamas’ incursion into Israel on October 7. Israel collects tax revenue from the West Bank, which it then transfers to the PA monthly, with the payments making up nearly 65% of the Palestinian annual budget.

Gallant said that the outstanding funds should be transferred to the PA “immediately” and that they “will be used by its forces that help prevent terrorism.”

19:07 GMT
The US is complicit in the deaths of children in Gaza, according to rights group Defence for Children International-Palestine “constituting the crime of genocide,” it said.

“President Biden’s statements over the last few weeks suggest he is completely unconcerned by the scope and scale of Palestinian civil harm – including the killings of 3,650 children – as a result of Israeli military attacks in Gaza,” the children’s rights organization said in a statement.

It added that Biden is “actively becoming evermore complicit in an Israeli military campaign where Israeli forces are killing Palestinian children with impunity, constituting the crime of genocide.”

via "Foreign Policy" (the reason we are being censored nationally and internally, in violation of our ordinary rights to free speech? Protests continued in Israel for years, with multi-$billion businesses and the lowliest, disregarded, junior office worker in attendance)

NOVEMBER 22, 2019

TEL AVIV, Israel—With Benjamin Netanyahu waging a scorched-earth battle for his political and legal life after being indicted Thursday on corruption charges, and the parliament stalemated after two straight inconclusive elections, Israel’s political system has run amok in a way never before imagined.

Yet even now, with Israel facing the possibility of a third vote in less than a year, the prime minister often dubbed “the magician” hopes to pull off his biggest feat yet and, against all odds, win a new election early in 2020 by running against the same government over which he presides.

The charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust served by Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit make Netanyahu the first sitting Israeli prime minister ever to face a criminal indictment. After Netanyahu twice failed to form a government, those indictments would seem to leave him mortally wounded on the political battlefield, but no one is counting him out after watching him recover from near-defeat so many times before. In two previous elections campaigns, Netanyahu has trumped pollsters who predicted defeat, and over the last 10 years of interrupted rule as premier, he has deftly been able to fend off rivals from left, right and center.

In a televised address responding to the indictment, the prime minister alleged that he was the target of a “governmental coup” and trumped-up charges from a biased investigation. “It’s aimed at overthrowing the rule of the right-wing. It’s aimed at overthrowing me,” he said. “Investigate the investigators.”

In addition to his bully pulpit, the prime minister has two factors in his favor: Israeli law only requires the resignation of a prime minister in the case of a final conviction, and, crucially, most of the leading figures in his Likud party and some of his religious party allies have so far remained loyal, giving him a foundation to keep the support of the rest of his coalition allies. Since the indictment, a parade of Likud politicians and other rightwing leaders have declared that Netanyahu deserves the presumption of innocence, rather than being punished by a forced resignation.

Even so, some cracks have emerged in the Likud party, which will pose a threat to Netanyahu over the next three weeks. Gideon Saar, a former education minister, said in October he wants to run against Netanyahu in a party primary in case of a new election. If Saar were to gather up enough Likud lawmakers in over the next three weeks, it could leave Netanyahu out in the cold and avoid a new vote—which a September poll found that 60 percent of Israelis oppose.

“If that happens, we’ll have a government very quickly,” said Jonathan Rynhold, a political science professor at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University. “If the Likud parliamentarians feel that the Likud as a party will be punished at the ballot box for causing a third election” then the possibility of abandoning the prime minister could become more tempting.

Netanyahu will “fight like a wounded lion,” wrote Yossi Verter, a political commentator, in the liberal Haaretz newspaper. “Nineteen days are now left for [Knesset members] to find a way out before we’re dragged into a third election campaign. The main dilemma has been placed before the 31 Likud [lawmakers] not named Netanyahu.” And it’s up to them to decide if they will remain loyal to the prime minister as he pushes Israel to the brink.

Before Netanyahu can begin his new election campaign, he must run out the clock on the stalemated Knesset that was elected Sept. 17. In October, the prime minister failed to cobble together a government. And just one day before Mandelblit’s indictment, Netanyahu’s political rival Benny Gantz, the former army chief who heads the centrist Blue and White party, conceded that he too had failed in his turn at forming a coalition government.

During those two rounds of talks, Netanyahu and Gantz danced around discussions of a power-sharing unity government, but neither has agreed who would be prime minister first. Gantz has vowed not to join a government with a prime minister under indictment.

“We are entering unknown territory,” said Yedidia Stern, a law professor and a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute. “The prime minister is a lame duck, because he’s operating under the heavy cloud of going to court and jail. This makes him vulnerable in the eyes of the public, along with the major doubt about whether he can function in office.”

The Knesset now finds itself in a post-election overtime period, which, once it expires, triggers a new, third round of voting. Israeli parliamentarians have a little bit less than three weeks to find a 61-member majority to get behind one lawmaker to form a coalition. The two-plus months of post-election stalemate and the consecutive votes are unprecedented in Israel’s 71-year history.

A third election would likely once again revolve around a referendum on Netanyahu’s fitness for an office, this time with a formal indictment over his head. In the bribery case, the prime minister is alleged to have eased telecommunications regulations for a business tycoon in return for positive coverage on the tycoon’s news website. In two other cases, the prime minister is accused of fraud and breach of trust for accepting gifts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and proposing to pass a law limiting the circulation of a newspaper in return for positive coverage in a rival paper.

“He’ll say that the prosecution is trying to take me down. I’m doing good work for the country, I’ve devoted my life for the country, let me finish the work,” said Aviv Bushinsky, a former spokesman for the prime minister. “People have got used to the situation in which Netanyahu is an alleged criminal for three years.”

Beyond the parliamentary and party dynamics, Israeli legal and judicial authorities might weigh in to disqualify Netanyahu. What’s more, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin might cite the indictments as a reason to refuse to grant Netanyahu a chance to form a new government, either before or after a new election.

Gantz’s Blue and White party on Friday demanded that the Israeli attorney general call for Netanyahu to resign immediately. The party’s call highlighted the near certainty that Netanyahu will face appeals to the Supreme Court arguing that the indictment should disqualify him from receiving a fresh mandate to serve as prime minister.

Even though Israeli law doesn’t require a prime minister to resign in the face of criminal charges, Netanyahu’s status is different and perhaps somewhat more tenuous, because he has been serving as caretaker prime minister in a temporary government ever since he dissolved the parliament 11 months ago and called the round of elections in April. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, was last confirmed as prime minister after Israel’s election in 2015.

Another avenue of appeal to the Israeli high court involves a judicial precedent from the 1990s that requires ministers under indictment to resign. Netanyahu’s predicament seems to ensure the high court will be asked to rule again—setting up a potentially unprecedented decision for a judicial panel already beleaguered by attacks from the Israeli right.

A case deciding the identity of the prime minister like the U.S. high court ruling after the 2000 election would likely provoke a constitutional crisis: Netanyahu’s allies would probably rejoin their assault on Israel’s legal system and the high court as usurping the will of the people.

“Right now we have a dangerous situation … my prime minister’s strategy to escape the law is by destroying the authority of the law. What can be worse,” Stern said. “The legitimacy of the authorities responsible for the rule of law is being questioned by too many people, and the one leading this terrible movement is a leader of the state. It’s like an autoimmune disease, the body attacks itself.”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/22/netanyahu-fights-political-life-israel-indicted-corruption/