With Netanyahu’s help, ‘racist’ aide could become MP

Jewish Power party’s Itamar Ben Gvir, left, argues with the Israeli Arab candidate Ata Abu Medeghem of Raam-Balad in Jerusalem on March 14. (AFP)
Updated 04 April 2019
Follow

With Netanyahu’s help, ‘racist’ aide could become MP

HEBRON: The bespectacled man was given a hero’s welcome when he arrived for the party on the recent Jewish holiday of Purim, with teenagers singing and applauding around him.

Itamar Ben-Gvir was on the streets of Hebron, a flashpoint city in the occupied West Bank, among Israeli settlers reveling while disguised and masked according to Jewish tradition.

The support for him there was a sign of why he may soon become a member of Israel’s Parliament as part of an extreme-right party many view as racist — helped along by a deal brokered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“No way — there’s no way that they’re racist,” said Yehudit Katz, a resident of another West Bank settlement who came to celebrate for Purim in Hebron.

Several hundred Israeli settlers live in Hebron under heavy military guard — including Ben-Gvir — amidst around 200,000 Palestinians.

“The solution that they have is to keep the people that are not Jewish — the Arabs, whoever — that are loyal to the state of Israel as a Jewish homeland, and there are many Arabs like that,” said Katz.

“We don’t want terrorists. Terrorists can go live somewhere else,” he added.

Ben-Gvir, a 42-year-old lawyer, said “God willing” Jewish Power will make it into Parliament.

It is a prospect that has touched off one of the most intense debates in the campaign ahead of April 9 elections.

Jewish Power’s leaders are followers of an assassinated racist rabbi whose group was labeled a terrorist organization by the US, the EU and Israel itself.

Netanyahu’s deal that saw Jewish Power join two other far-right parties to run on the same electoral list drew disgust at home and among Jewish communities abroad, particularly in the US.

For Netanyahu, the deal ahead of what is expected to be a close election was pure politics.

He defended it by saying he does not want any right-wing votes to go to waste as he eyes his next coalition.

Running alone, Jewish Power was unlikely to pass the 3.25 percent electoral threshold.

But all has not gone smoothly for Jewish Power, whose leader Michael Ben-Ari was also running but has been disqualified by the Supreme Court for statements it ruled were an incitement to racism.

Ben-Gvir’s candidacy was also challenged at the court, but he was allowed to stand, making him the only Jewish Power representative with a chance to make it into Parliament. Jewish Power are followers of late racist rabbi Meir Kahane, whose Kach movement wanted to chase Arabs from Israel.

The ideology of Kahane, assassinated in New York in 1990, also inspired Baruch Goldstein, who carried out a massacre of 29 Palestinian worshippers in Hebron in 1994.

Ben-Gvir acknowledges having a picture of Goldstein in his living room, but has reportedly said it is because he was a medical doctor who rescued Jews targeted in Palestinian attacks.

For Adalah, a rights group for Arab Israelis, Ben-Gvir belongs to a “racist movement recognized as a terrorist organization.”

Jewish Power strongly disputes the characterization, with Ben-Gvir telling the Supreme Court it is only against “enemies of Israel” and not Arabs in general.

Opinion polls show the list that Jewish Power is part of winning between five and seven seats in the 120-seat Parliament.

Ben-Gvir is seventh on the list.

Jewish Power advocates removing “Israel’s enemies from our land,” a reference to Palestinians and Arab Israelis who carry out attacks or who they see as not accepting the Jewish state they envision.

It also calls for Israel annexing the West Bank, where more than 2.5 million Palestinians live.

Ben-Ari was previously a member of Parliament as part of a different right-wing list between 2009 and 2013, but Jewish Power has never passed the electoral threshold.

Ben-Gvir has long been an outspoken member of the far-right.

Indicted 53 times since his youth, he boasts of having been cleared in 46 cases. He decided to study law on the recommendation of judges so he could defend himself.

He defends settlers accused of violence, including those allegedly responsible for an arson attack that killed an 18-month-old boy and his parents in 2015 in the West Bank, an incident that drew widespread revulsion.

In 1995, when only 19 and in a time of turmoil following the Oslo accords with the Palestinians, he appeared on television with what he said was the stolen emblem from then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s Cadillac.

Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli opposed to the Oslo accords later that year.

“We got to this symbol. We’ll get to him,” Ben-Gvir said at the time.


Britain ups Gaza aid ahead of donor conference

Updated 4 sec ago
Follow

Britain ups Gaza aid ahead of donor conference

  • Aid organizations accuse Israel of preventing trucks from entering Gaza in large enough numbers to alleviate a humanitarian crisis in the war-torn territory

LONDON: Britain will provide an additional 19 million pounds ($24 million) in humanitarian aid to Gaza, the international development minister said Monday, calling for Israel to give greater access ahead of a key conference on the conflict.
“Gazans are in desperate need of food, and shelter with the onset of winter,” the minister, Anneliese Dodds, said in a statement as she headed for a three-day visit to the region, including an international conference in Cairo Monday on the Gaza Strip’s aid needs.
“The Cairo conference will be an opportunity to get leading voices in one room and put forward real-world solutions to the humanitarian crisis,” she added.
“Israel must immediately act to ensure unimpeded aid access to Gaza.”
Aid organizations accuse Israel of preventing trucks from entering Gaza in large enough numbers to alleviate a humanitarian crisis in the war-torn territory.
The new UK funding will be split into 12 million pounds for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the World Food Programme (WFP), and seven million pounds for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), the statement said.
UNRWA announced Sunday it had halted the delivery of aid through the key Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza because of safety fears, saying the situation had become “impossible.”
Britain has committed to spending a total of 99 million pounds this year in humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territories, the government said.
After Dodds’s Cairo stop, the minister is to travel to the Palestinian territories and Israel.
Islamist militant group Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 resulted in the death of 1,207 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures, which includes hostages killed in captivity.
Israel responded with a military offensive that has killed at least 44,429 in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable.
 

 


Airstrikes in northwestern Syria kill 25 people, says Syria’s White Helmets

Updated 55 min 32 sec ago
Follow

Airstrikes in northwestern Syria kill 25 people, says Syria’s White Helmets

  • The Syria offensive began Wednesday, the same day a truce between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah came into effect

DAMASCUS: The Syrian rescue service known as the White Helmets said early on Monday on X that at least 25 people have been killed in northwestern Syria in airstrikes carried out by the Syrian government and Russia on Sunday.

 


In Blinken call, Turkiye backs moves to ease Syria tension

Updated 02 December 2024
Follow

In Blinken call, Turkiye backs moves to ease Syria tension

  • The flareup has also seen pro-Turkish militants groups attacking both government forces and Kurdish YPG fighters in and around the northern Aleppo province over the weekend, a Syrian war monitor said

ISTANBUL: Turkiye’s top diplomat and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke Sunday about the “rapidly developing” conflict in Syria where militants have made gains.
Blinken and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan discussed by telephone “the need for de-escalation and the protection of civilian lives and infrastructure in Aleppo and elsewhere,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
The call came after Syrian militants and their Turkish-backed allies launched their biggest offensive in years, seizing control of Syria’s second-largest city Aleppo from forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.
According to a Turkish foreign ministry source, Fidan told Blinken Ankara was “against any development that would increase instability in the region” and said Turkiye would “support moves to reduce the tension in Syria.”
He also said “the political process between the regime and the opposition should be finalized” to ensure peace in Syria while insisting that Ankara would “never allow terrorist activities against Turkiye nor against Syrian civilians.”
The flareup has also seen pro-Turkish militant groups attacking government forces and Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG) fighters in and around Aleppo, a Syrian war monitor said.
Turkiye sees the YPG as an offshoot of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has led a decades-long insurgency against Ankara.
The Syria offensive began Wednesday, the same day a truce between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah came into effect.
More than 400 people have so far been killed in the offensive, most of them combatants, a Syrian war monitor said.
The State Department said the two also discussed “humanitarian efforts in Gaza and the need to bring the war to an end” as well as efforts to secure the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
Fidan said Israel “should keep its promises in order for the Lebanon ceasefire to become permanent” and called for a ceasefire in Gaza “as soon as possible.”
The pair also discussed Ukraine and South Caucasus, the source said.

 


Russia says helping Syrian army ‘repel’ insurgents in three northern provinces

Updated 02 December 2024
Follow

Russia says helping Syrian army ‘repel’ insurgents in three northern provinces

  • Russia launched airstrikes on militant targets in Aleppo for the first time since 2016

MOSCOW: Russia on Sunday said it was helping the Syrian army “repel” armed insurgents in three northern provinces, as Moscow seeks to support the government led by its ally Bashar al-Assad.
An Islamist-dominated militant alliance launched an offensive against the Syrian government on Wednesday, with Syrian forces losing control of the city of Aleppo on Sunday, according to a war monitor.
“The Syrian Arab Army, with the assistance of the Russian Aerospace Forces, is continuing its operation to repel terrorist aggression in the provinces of Idlib, Hama and Aleppo,” the Russian military said in a briefing on its website.
“Over the past day, missile and bombing strikes were carried out on places where militants and equipment were gathered,” it said in the same briefing, without saying where or by whom.
It said at least “320 militants were destroyed.”
Russia announced earlier this week that it was bombing militant targets in the war-torn country, with Russian warplanes striking parts of Aleppo — Syria’s second city — for the first time since 2016, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Moscow is Syrian leader Assad’s most important military backer, having turned the tide of the civil war in his favor when it intervened in 2015.


Jordanian, Iraqi FMs discuss Gaza, Syria conflicts

Updated 02 December 2024
Follow

Jordanian, Iraqi FMs discuss Gaza, Syria conflicts

  • The ministers urged the international community to take “effective and immediate” measures to address Palestinian crisis

AMMAN: Jordan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ayman Safadi spoke on the phone with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein on Sunday to discuss strengthening bilateral ties and addressing pressing regional issues, Jordan News Agency reported.

According to a statement from Jordan’s Foreign Ministry, they stressed the urgency of halting Israel’s aggression in Gaza and ensuring the swift and comprehensive delivery of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territory.

The ministers urged the international community to take “effective and immediate” measures to address the crisis, Jordan News Agency reported.

They also expressed concern over the conflict in Syria, emphasizing the importance of a political resolution that ensures the country’s stability, territorial integrity and sovereignty while safeguarding its citizens and eliminating terrorism.

Safadi and Hussein reaffirmed their commitment to ongoing communication and coordination to address regional challenges.