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Turkey
Is Turkey's big break with Israel for real?
Depends on who you ask, but there is a history here that may be difficult to escape
In recent months, media reports have suggested that long-standing Israel-Turkey relations have reached a “breaking point,” particularly as Israel intensifies its attacks on Gaza and Lebanon. These claims exploded following President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s declaration last Wednesday that Ankara has “currently severed all relations with Israel.”
That assertion, however, was complicated by the response from Israel’s foreign ministry, which stated it was “not aware of a change in the status of relations with Turkey,” despite the trade embargo imposed by Ankara last May.
Nonetheless, it is clear that the longstanding and generally cordial Israel-Turkey relationship is fractured, primarily due to the policies of the current Israeli government. A protracted war in Gaza, a second war in Lebanon, the expansion of settlement activities on the West Bank, and the intractability of the Palestinian issue have led to the present impasse. Yet, the long history of engagement and mutual interests suggests that their relationship will likely withstand the current challenges.
A long history
One of the most notable historical links between Turkey and the Jewish community dates back to the Ottoman Empire, which provided refuge to Jews fleeing persecution in Europe from the late 15th century onward. Jewish Ottomans enjoyed privileges, such as holding key positions in state institutions and engaging freely in business activities. Today, Turkey’s Jewish community, concentrated primarily in Istanbul, traces its roots to this era. The term “Mousavi,” a term derived from the biblical Moses and used instead of “Jew,” reflects an effort to avoid the negative connotations imposed by European prejudice.
Following World War II and the establishment of the state of Israel, the Mousavi community in Turkey continued to thrive – in stark contrast to Jews in Arab countries, most of whom were expelled or forced to flee their homelands. To this day, the Mousavi community remains largely silent during periods of heightened tensions between Israel and Turkey, avoiding public involvement in conflicts such as those in Gaza and the West Bank and prioritizing its security and sustainability within Turkey.
This legacy helped to influence Ankara’s post-World War II approach to the numerous Arab-Israeli conflicts. While Turkey repeatedly faced criticism from Arab states for recognizing Israel in 1948, Ankara has usually maintained a balanced position, in large part due to pressure from its American and European NATO allies.
Domestic considerations
Over the decades, Israel-Turkey relations have suffered frequent ups and downs, but shared interests have consistently brought the two sides back together. Of late, however, the bilateral relationship has deteriorated to historic lows for a number of reasons, primarily, however, as a result of changes in the ideologies of the two countries’ ruling parties.
Ultra-conservative coalitions in Israel have hardened policies on Palestinians and other minorities, fueled by their claims to the “promised land” and aspirations for a “Greater Israel,” the realization of which would impact Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, as well as the West Bank.
At the same time, since the AK Party’s rise to power in Turkey in 2002, Erdogan has pursued a foreign policy guided by “justice and Islamic values.” Rights for Palestinians have become an important driver, illustrated most dramatically perhaps by Erdogan’s confrontation with then-Israeli President Shimon Peres at the World Economic Forum in 2009. Tensions peaked with the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, when Israeli forces killed 10 Turkish activists aboard a humanitarian aid ship bound for Gaza. Turkey demanded compensation and condemned Israel’s actions, further deepening the rift.
Yet there are a number of key issues that, so far, have prevented a complete break, notably the geoeconomic dynamics in the Eastern Mediterranean. Recent developments in energy politics have driven some reconciliation efforts and are likely to remain relevant if and when the Palestinian question is resolved. Shared interests in energy cooperation had prompted dialogue between Erdogan and Israeli leaders, including President Isaac Herzog and Netanyahu. Meetings, notably one in New York on September 20, 2023, signaled progress toward full normalization.
The October 7 attacks by Hamas three weeks later and subsequent Israeli military operations, however, reignited tensions, with Turkey condemning civilian casualties inflicted by Israel’s offensive and eventually filing a case with the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide.
Prospects for rapprochement
Turkey’s approach to Palestinian issues is often perceived as a strategic factor for Israel, particularly due to Ankara’s engagement with and political support for various groups, including Hamas. However, its policy has fluctuated over the years, shaped by broader regional dynamics and Turkey’s shifting diplomatic priorities.
While Ankara has sought to reassert its leading role in promoting Palestinian aspirations — particularly through strong rhetoric and international legal actions after October 7 — its actual sway over groups like Hamas and Hezbollah remains subject to debate and varies depending on specific circumstances.
The recent allegation that Turkey has offered to host Hamas political offices is perceived by both Israel and the United States as a major setback to improving relations. Turkish officials reject the accusation, suggesting that permitting some Hamas members to “occasionally visit” Turkey does not equate to providing an institutional base for the group. Historically Turkey has taken in members of various opposition groups (as far back as the post-Russian Revolution period) but has been clear about prohibiting operational activities within its borders.
Israel has sought to counter Turkey’s regional influence in recent years by strengthening its ties with Greece, the Greek-led government of Cyprus and various Kurdish factions. Recent developments, such as Turkish allegations that the government in Nicosia is allowing U.S. and allied forces to use their ports for supplying Israel, certainly work against better relations.
Quo Vadis?
Nearly universal condemnation of Israeli military actions and few prospects for ceasefires – much less lasting peace – underpin the view that an intransigeant Israeli prime minister is the most disruptive factor in regional peace and stability. That perception is very much shared by Erdogan’s Turkey. There is a sense that only a successor Israeli government may offer an opportunity for serious dialogue.
Turkey-Israel relations is likely to return to a status quo antebellum, but that would require Israel to shift back to centrist policies, reject the expansionist and neo-colonial agenda of Israel’s ultra-orthodox and ethno-nationalist political parties, and clearly embrace a settlement that respects Palestinian aspirations for a viable state of their own.
Depends on who you ask, but there is a history here that may be difficult to escape
In recent months, media reports have suggested that long-standing Israel-Turkey relations have reached a “breaking point,” particularly as Israel intensifies its attacks on Gaza and Lebanon. These claims exploded following President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s declaration last Wednesday that Ankara has “currently severed all relations with Israel.”
That assertion, however, was complicated by the response from Israel’s foreign ministry, which stated it was “not aware of a change in the status of relations with Turkey,” despite the trade embargo imposed by Ankara last May.
Nonetheless, it is clear that the longstanding and generally cordial Israel-Turkey relationship is fractured, primarily due to the policies of the current Israeli government. A protracted war in Gaza, a second war in Lebanon, the expansion of settlement activities on the West Bank, and the intractability of the Palestinian issue have led to the present impasse. Yet, the long history of engagement and mutual interests suggests that their relationship will likely withstand the current challenges.
A long history
One of the most notable historical links between Turkey and the Jewish community dates back to the Ottoman Empire, which provided refuge to Jews fleeing persecution in Europe from the late 15th century onward. Jewish Ottomans enjoyed privileges, such as holding key positions in state institutions and engaging freely in business activities. Today, Turkey’s Jewish community, concentrated primarily in Istanbul, traces its roots to this era. The term “Mousavi,” a term derived from the biblical Moses and used instead of “Jew,” reflects an effort to avoid the negative connotations imposed by European prejudice.
Following World War II and the establishment of the state of Israel, the Mousavi community in Turkey continued to thrive – in stark contrast to Jews in Arab countries, most of whom were expelled or forced to flee their homelands. To this day, the Mousavi community remains largely silent during periods of heightened tensions between Israel and Turkey, avoiding public involvement in conflicts such as those in Gaza and the West Bank and prioritizing its security and sustainability within Turkey.
This legacy helped to influence Ankara’s post-World War II approach to the numerous Arab-Israeli conflicts. While Turkey repeatedly faced criticism from Arab states for recognizing Israel in 1948, Ankara has usually maintained a balanced position, in large part due to pressure from its American and European NATO allies.
Domestic considerations
Over the decades, Israel-Turkey relations have suffered frequent ups and downs, but shared interests have consistently brought the two sides back together. Of late, however, the bilateral relationship has deteriorated to historic lows for a number of reasons, primarily, however, as a result of changes in the ideologies of the two countries’ ruling parties.
Ultra-conservative coalitions in Israel have hardened policies on Palestinians and other minorities, fueled by their claims to the “promised land” and aspirations for a “Greater Israel,” the realization of which would impact Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, as well as the West Bank.
At the same time, since the AK Party’s rise to power in Turkey in 2002, Erdogan has pursued a foreign policy guided by “justice and Islamic values.” Rights for Palestinians have become an important driver, illustrated most dramatically perhaps by Erdogan’s confrontation with then-Israeli President Shimon Peres at the World Economic Forum in 2009. Tensions peaked with the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, when Israeli forces killed 10 Turkish activists aboard a humanitarian aid ship bound for Gaza. Turkey demanded compensation and condemned Israel’s actions, further deepening the rift.
Yet there are a number of key issues that, so far, have prevented a complete break, notably the geoeconomic dynamics in the Eastern Mediterranean. Recent developments in energy politics have driven some reconciliation efforts and are likely to remain relevant if and when the Palestinian question is resolved. Shared interests in energy cooperation had prompted dialogue between Erdogan and Israeli leaders, including President Isaac Herzog and Netanyahu. Meetings, notably one in New York on September 20, 2023, signaled progress toward full normalization.
The October 7 attacks by Hamas three weeks later and subsequent Israeli military operations, however, reignited tensions, with Turkey condemning civilian casualties inflicted by Israel’s offensive and eventually filing a case with the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide.
Prospects for rapprochement
Turkey’s approach to Palestinian issues is often perceived as a strategic factor for Israel, particularly due to Ankara’s engagement with and political support for various groups, including Hamas. However, its policy has fluctuated over the years, shaped by broader regional dynamics and Turkey’s shifting diplomatic priorities.
While Ankara has sought to reassert its leading role in promoting Palestinian aspirations — particularly through strong rhetoric and international legal actions after October 7 — its actual sway over groups like Hamas and Hezbollah remains subject to debate and varies depending on specific circumstances.
The recent allegation that Turkey has offered to host Hamas political offices is perceived by both Israel and the United States as a major setback to improving relations. Turkish officials reject the accusation, suggesting that permitting some Hamas members to “occasionally visit” Turkey does not equate to providing an institutional base for the group. Historically Turkey has taken in members of various opposition groups (as far back as the post-Russian Revolution period) but has been clear about prohibiting operational activities within its borders.
Israel has sought to counter Turkey’s regional influence in recent years by strengthening its ties with Greece, the Greek-led government of Cyprus and various Kurdish factions. Recent developments, such as Turkish allegations that the government in Nicosia is allowing U.S. and allied forces to use their ports for supplying Israel, certainly work against better relations.
Quo Vadis?
Nearly universal condemnation of Israeli military actions and few prospects for ceasefires – much less lasting peace – underpin the view that an intransigeant Israeli prime minister is the most disruptive factor in regional peace and stability. That perception is very much shared by Erdogan’s Turkey. There is a sense that only a successor Israeli government may offer an opportunity for serious dialogue.
Turkey-Israel relations is likely to return to a status quo antebellum, but that would require Israel to shift back to centrist policies, reject the expansionist and neo-colonial agenda of Israel’s ultra-orthodox and ethno-nationalist political parties, and clearly embrace a settlement that respects Palestinian aspirations for a viable state of their own.
Spain
Spain’s Israel problem
For a country that exiled its Jewish community—and tortured and sentenced to death thousands of Jews—you would think that it would show some sensitivity towards Israel, recognizing the threats it faces.
It should come as no surprise that Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has joined the call for an arms embargo against Israel. Spain is now in the company of Canada, France and the United Kingdom in calling for or enacting either a full or partial arms embargo.
The Sánchez government has been particularly aggressive in its criticism of Israel, predating the massacres carried out by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023. Spain is part of a group of “never-Israel’’ governments inside the European Union, including Ireland, Norway and Slovenia, that compete to see which can excoriate Israel more. It’s no coincidence that all four countries have recognized a Palestinian state in the wake of the fighting.
Post-Oct. 7 comments emanating from the capitals of these countries are deep in charges of genocide and violations of international law. Cabinet members in each place have laced their statements on Israel’s defensive war in the Gaza Strip with full servings of opprobrium.
In May, Spanish Minister of Defense Margarita Robles called the fighting in Gaza “a real genocide.’’ She gratuitously added that Spain’s recognition of “Palestine’’ was meant to “help end the violence.’’
Spain’s minister of social rights, Ione Bellara, has endorsed the International Criminal Court’s case against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “war crimes,” calling the fighting in Gaza a “planned genocide.”
Spain’s early and full-throated endorsement of the International Court of Justice’s efforts to push Israel into the dock on genocide charges is but further evidence of the Sánchez government’s efforts to feather its pro-Palestinian street cred.
To be certain that no one would miss the point, Spain has repeatedly voted for a series of anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations in recent years, including the odious document introduced in the General Assembly by “the state of Palestine” and adopted recently, which includes a laundry list of measures to be imposed on Israel, such as an arms embargo and BDS-style trade restrictions.
Just this week, Spain doubled down on ways to further Israel’s isolation by calling for the E.U. to suspend a free-trade agreement with the Jewish state over what it is calling Israel’s “human-rights violations.” In a further move meant to complicate Israel’s operations in Southern Lebanon, the Sánchez government has rejected Israel’s call for U.N. peacekeeping forces in the area to stay out of harm’s way while the Israel Defense Forces conducts its defensive war against Hezbollah. This is all against the backdrop of the glorious and tragic history of Jews in Spain. Much has been written and told about the “Golden Age” of philosophers and advisers to the royal courts. Maimonides, Judah Halevi, Shmuel HaNagid, Moshe ibn Ezra, and others are names etched in Spanish Jewish iconography and Jewish historical consciousness.
But so is the Spanish Inquisition with its expulsion of more than 100,000 Jews and its auto-da-fés, public humiliation and burning at the stake of thousands of conversos, those Jews who converted to Christianity and who practiced Jewish customs in secret.
Spain was very late in establishing full diplomatic relations with Israel. That happened in 1986, long after almost every European country had done so.
But it was only in 1992, on the 500th anniversary of the expulsion of the Jews, that then-King Juan Carlos, in the presence of Israeli President Chaim Herzog at the synagogue in Madrid, offered an apology for the Spanish Inquisition. Said the king: “May hatred and intolerance never again provoke expulsion or exile. On the contrary, let us be capable of building a prosperous Spain, in peace amongst ourselves on the basis of concord and mutual respect.”
Not long after, the center-right Spanish government led by José María Aznar introduced a period of increasingly close relations between Madrid and Jerusalem.
Aznar spoke out early about the dangers of BDS and presciently defended Israel’s strategic importance. In 2010, he stated: “Anger over Gaza is a distraction. We cannot forget that Israel is the West’s best ally in a turbulent region.”
After leaving office, Aznar became active in the Friends of Israel group of international public figures who have been outspoken in their support of the Jewish state.
Now, Sánchez and his government have sought to turn the clock back by erasing the positive strides that had been made in Spanish-Jewish relations. Frankly, the message now is, “We don’t care.”
Sánchez’s Socialist Workers Party, with its doctrinaire policies aimed at punishing Israel in multinational fora, especially at the ICJ and the ICC, has given aid and succor to Hamas and to those who advance the Palestinian narrative.
While the 1992 royal apology was welcome, it could not wash out the stain of the Inquisition. And what we are witnessing today in terms of Spain’s antagonizing of Israel suggests an echo of lingering hostility toward Jews and now the Jewish state.
For a country that exiled its storied Jewish community—and tortured and sentenced to death thousands of Jews—you would think there would be a measure of remorse, and a sensitive and understanding policy towards Israel that recognizes the threats it faces.
That is not the case. Spain’s shameful policies are not based on correcting history; they seem to be writing another sorry chapter of it.
For a country that exiled its Jewish community—and tortured and sentenced to death thousands of Jews—you would think that it would show some sensitivity towards Israel, recognizing the threats it faces.
It should come as no surprise that Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has joined the call for an arms embargo against Israel. Spain is now in the company of Canada, France and the United Kingdom in calling for or enacting either a full or partial arms embargo.
The Sánchez government has been particularly aggressive in its criticism of Israel, predating the massacres carried out by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023. Spain is part of a group of “never-Israel’’ governments inside the European Union, including Ireland, Norway and Slovenia, that compete to see which can excoriate Israel more. It’s no coincidence that all four countries have recognized a Palestinian state in the wake of the fighting.
Post-Oct. 7 comments emanating from the capitals of these countries are deep in charges of genocide and violations of international law. Cabinet members in each place have laced their statements on Israel’s defensive war in the Gaza Strip with full servings of opprobrium.
In May, Spanish Minister of Defense Margarita Robles called the fighting in Gaza “a real genocide.’’ She gratuitously added that Spain’s recognition of “Palestine’’ was meant to “help end the violence.’’
Spain’s minister of social rights, Ione Bellara, has endorsed the International Criminal Court’s case against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “war crimes,” calling the fighting in Gaza a “planned genocide.”
Spain’s early and full-throated endorsement of the International Court of Justice’s efforts to push Israel into the dock on genocide charges is but further evidence of the Sánchez government’s efforts to feather its pro-Palestinian street cred.
To be certain that no one would miss the point, Spain has repeatedly voted for a series of anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations in recent years, including the odious document introduced in the General Assembly by “the state of Palestine” and adopted recently, which includes a laundry list of measures to be imposed on Israel, such as an arms embargo and BDS-style trade restrictions.
Just this week, Spain doubled down on ways to further Israel’s isolation by calling for the E.U. to suspend a free-trade agreement with the Jewish state over what it is calling Israel’s “human-rights violations.” In a further move meant to complicate Israel’s operations in Southern Lebanon, the Sánchez government has rejected Israel’s call for U.N. peacekeeping forces in the area to stay out of harm’s way while the Israel Defense Forces conducts its defensive war against Hezbollah. This is all against the backdrop of the glorious and tragic history of Jews in Spain. Much has been written and told about the “Golden Age” of philosophers and advisers to the royal courts. Maimonides, Judah Halevi, Shmuel HaNagid, Moshe ibn Ezra, and others are names etched in Spanish Jewish iconography and Jewish historical consciousness.
But so is the Spanish Inquisition with its expulsion of more than 100,000 Jews and its auto-da-fés, public humiliation and burning at the stake of thousands of conversos, those Jews who converted to Christianity and who practiced Jewish customs in secret.
Spain was very late in establishing full diplomatic relations with Israel. That happened in 1986, long after almost every European country had done so.
But it was only in 1992, on the 500th anniversary of the expulsion of the Jews, that then-King Juan Carlos, in the presence of Israeli President Chaim Herzog at the synagogue in Madrid, offered an apology for the Spanish Inquisition. Said the king: “May hatred and intolerance never again provoke expulsion or exile. On the contrary, let us be capable of building a prosperous Spain, in peace amongst ourselves on the basis of concord and mutual respect.”
Not long after, the center-right Spanish government led by José María Aznar introduced a period of increasingly close relations between Madrid and Jerusalem.
Aznar spoke out early about the dangers of BDS and presciently defended Israel’s strategic importance. In 2010, he stated: “Anger over Gaza is a distraction. We cannot forget that Israel is the West’s best ally in a turbulent region.”
After leaving office, Aznar became active in the Friends of Israel group of international public figures who have been outspoken in their support of the Jewish state.
Now, Sánchez and his government have sought to turn the clock back by erasing the positive strides that had been made in Spanish-Jewish relations. Frankly, the message now is, “We don’t care.”
Sánchez’s Socialist Workers Party, with its doctrinaire policies aimed at punishing Israel in multinational fora, especially at the ICJ and the ICC, has given aid and succor to Hamas and to those who advance the Palestinian narrative.
While the 1992 royal apology was welcome, it could not wash out the stain of the Inquisition. And what we are witnessing today in terms of Spain’s antagonizing of Israel suggests an echo of lingering hostility toward Jews and now the Jewish state.
For a country that exiled its storied Jewish community—and tortured and sentenced to death thousands of Jews—you would think there would be a measure of remorse, and a sensitive and understanding policy towards Israel that recognizes the threats it faces.
That is not the case. Spain’s shameful policies are not based on correcting history; they seem to be writing another sorry chapter of it.
Australia
Australia changes position to support vote demanding Israel end occupation of Gaza, East Jerusalem and West Bank
Australia has changed its position to support a UN resolution demanding "Israel bring to an end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible".
The resolution, passed by the UN General Assembly, also calls for an end to all new settlement activities and for settlers to be removed from the occupied territory.
Australia was one of 157 nations that voted in favour of the resolution. Seven abstained, and eight voted against it, including the USA and Israel.
Australia has abstained from similar resolutions at past meetings of the General Assembly, including at a vote in September.
Since then, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, which allege war crimes and crimes against humanity. Australia is a party to the ICC and has a legal obligation to arrest the men if they visit. Australia's ambassador to the United Nations, James Larsen, said Australia had now returned to a position it held up until the year 2001.
He said that was a time "when the international community and the parties themselves came together to chart a path towards a two-state solution", and the vote "reflects our determination that the international community again work together to build momentum towards this goal".
The Occupied Palestinian Territory includes Gaza, which has been almost completely flattened by Israeli bombardment since the October 7 terror attack perpetrated by Hamas, and the West Bank. It also includes East Jerusalem. The resolution also calls for a high-level international conference to be convened next year, aimed at implementing a two-state solution.
"A two-state solution remains the only hope of breaking the endless cycle of violence, the only hope to see a secure and prosperous future for both peoples," Mr Larsen told the General Assembly.
Ahead of the vote, a spokesperson for Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Australia had "few ways to move the dial in the Middle East", and its only hope was working with the international community.
"We don't always get everything we want," the spokesperson said. "But if, on balance, we believe the resolution will contribute to peace and a two-state solution, we will vote for it."
Deputy opposition leader Sussan Ley suggested Australia's change in position was "rewarding terrorists".
"We still have hostages in tunnels under Gaza," she told Sky News.
"We still have Hamas in the Gaza Strip, almost in control. And how is this not rewarding terrorists at this point in time?"
She also said the move was "not going to encourage that strong closeness that we need" with the US.
Australia also changed its position, from a "no" vote to abstention, on another resolution concerning Palestinian representation at the UN.
Australia has changed its position to support a UN resolution demanding "Israel bring to an end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible".
The resolution, passed by the UN General Assembly, also calls for an end to all new settlement activities and for settlers to be removed from the occupied territory.
Australia was one of 157 nations that voted in favour of the resolution. Seven abstained, and eight voted against it, including the USA and Israel.
Australia has abstained from similar resolutions at past meetings of the General Assembly, including at a vote in September.
Since then, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, which allege war crimes and crimes against humanity. Australia is a party to the ICC and has a legal obligation to arrest the men if they visit. Australia's ambassador to the United Nations, James Larsen, said Australia had now returned to a position it held up until the year 2001.
He said that was a time "when the international community and the parties themselves came together to chart a path towards a two-state solution", and the vote "reflects our determination that the international community again work together to build momentum towards this goal".
The Occupied Palestinian Territory includes Gaza, which has been almost completely flattened by Israeli bombardment since the October 7 terror attack perpetrated by Hamas, and the West Bank. It also includes East Jerusalem. The resolution also calls for a high-level international conference to be convened next year, aimed at implementing a two-state solution.
"A two-state solution remains the only hope of breaking the endless cycle of violence, the only hope to see a secure and prosperous future for both peoples," Mr Larsen told the General Assembly.
Ahead of the vote, a spokesperson for Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Australia had "few ways to move the dial in the Middle East", and its only hope was working with the international community.
"We don't always get everything we want," the spokesperson said. "But if, on balance, we believe the resolution will contribute to peace and a two-state solution, we will vote for it."
Deputy opposition leader Sussan Ley suggested Australia's change in position was "rewarding terrorists".
"We still have hostages in tunnels under Gaza," she told Sky News.
"We still have Hamas in the Gaza Strip, almost in control. And how is this not rewarding terrorists at this point in time?"
She also said the move was "not going to encourage that strong closeness that we need" with the US.
Australia also changed its position, from a "no" vote to abstention, on another resolution concerning Palestinian representation at the UN.
Albania
Muslim-majority Albania to open economic mission in Jerusalem
Albania "has shown, again and again, that you stand with the people of Israel as we fight to defend our borders and our civilization," Israeli President Isaac Herzog said. Albania will open a commercial liaison office in Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish state, Prime Minister Edi Rama told Israeli President Isaac Herzog during a meeting in Tirana on Thursday.
The move “marks a significant upgrade in the strong relationship between the two nations and represents a symbol of the deep friendship between the two peoples,” according to a statement by Herzog.
Herzog’s trip to the Albanian capital marked the first official visit of Israel’s head of state to the Muslim-majority Balkan nation. The president was accompanied by Idit Ohel, an Israeli of Serbian origin whose son Alon was taken hostage when Hamas attacked the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im on Oct. 7, 2023.
“It is especially meaningful to be among friends at this painful time for Israel, as we near the one-year mark since Hamas terrorists brutally attacked Israel. One year since thousands of terrorists invaded our country, savagely murdered and wounded thousands, and kidnapped hundreds of Israelis and foreign nationals into Gaza,” Herzog told Rama.
“Your country has shown, again and again, that you stand with the people of Israel as we fight to defend our borders and our civilization,” he continued. “Unfortunately, we are fighting more than one terrorist enemy simultaneously. The trail of blood linking all of the agents of hate is Iran, and its cruel, antisemitic fixation with the destruction of the State of Israel.”
The Albanian premier presented his Israeli guests with a book of his paintings as a token of appreciation and stressed the importance of freeing the remaining 101 hostages from Hamas captivity in Gaza.
“Thank you for having brought here with you the mother of hostage, of Alon, to whom I had the privilege to dedicate a book of my art. And I’ll pray for him to get back,” Rama said.
“I want to send a very brotherly message to all the parents of the hostages on one hand, expressing the most heartfelt condolences to all of them who lost their kids, who lost their loved ones in this horrendous moment in time, and on the other hand, to wish to all the others, to hug their kids and to hug their loved ones as soon as possible,” he said.
“These images of that day, that very dark day, not just for Israel, but for all the world, were images that no one should forget,” he added.
On Wednesday, Herzog traveled to Belgrade, Serbia, where he met with President Aleksandar Vučić, Prime Minister Miloš Vučević, Foreign Minister Marko Đurić, Parliament Speaker Ana Brnabić and members of the Jewish community.
Albania "has shown, again and again, that you stand with the people of Israel as we fight to defend our borders and our civilization," Israeli President Isaac Herzog said. Albania will open a commercial liaison office in Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish state, Prime Minister Edi Rama told Israeli President Isaac Herzog during a meeting in Tirana on Thursday.
The move “marks a significant upgrade in the strong relationship between the two nations and represents a symbol of the deep friendship between the two peoples,” according to a statement by Herzog.
Herzog’s trip to the Albanian capital marked the first official visit of Israel’s head of state to the Muslim-majority Balkan nation. The president was accompanied by Idit Ohel, an Israeli of Serbian origin whose son Alon was taken hostage when Hamas attacked the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im on Oct. 7, 2023.
“It is especially meaningful to be among friends at this painful time for Israel, as we near the one-year mark since Hamas terrorists brutally attacked Israel. One year since thousands of terrorists invaded our country, savagely murdered and wounded thousands, and kidnapped hundreds of Israelis and foreign nationals into Gaza,” Herzog told Rama.
“Your country has shown, again and again, that you stand with the people of Israel as we fight to defend our borders and our civilization,” he continued. “Unfortunately, we are fighting more than one terrorist enemy simultaneously. The trail of blood linking all of the agents of hate is Iran, and its cruel, antisemitic fixation with the destruction of the State of Israel.”
The Albanian premier presented his Israeli guests with a book of his paintings as a token of appreciation and stressed the importance of freeing the remaining 101 hostages from Hamas captivity in Gaza.
“Thank you for having brought here with you the mother of hostage, of Alon, to whom I had the privilege to dedicate a book of my art. And I’ll pray for him to get back,” Rama said.
“I want to send a very brotherly message to all the parents of the hostages on one hand, expressing the most heartfelt condolences to all of them who lost their kids, who lost their loved ones in this horrendous moment in time, and on the other hand, to wish to all the others, to hug their kids and to hug their loved ones as soon as possible,” he said.
“These images of that day, that very dark day, not just for Israel, but for all the world, were images that no one should forget,” he added.
On Wednesday, Herzog traveled to Belgrade, Serbia, where he met with President Aleksandar Vučić, Prime Minister Miloš Vučević, Foreign Minister Marko Đurić, Parliament Speaker Ana Brnabić and members of the Jewish community.
Georgia
Germany
When German politicians hold speeches on German-Israeli relations, they like to use the term "reason of state." But what does this "solidarity of German politics" really look like in these dramatic times?
The relationship between Germany and Israel relationship is unique — this was the message reiterated at an event hosted by Germany's opposition conservatives in Berlin earlier this week.
"There are no comparable relationships between any other two countries in the world," said Norbert Lammert, of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and former president of the Bundestag, Germany's parliament.
Lammert, 75, is the chairman of the CDU-affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation. A few days before the anniversary of Hamas terror attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023, when around 1,200 people were killed and more than 230 taken hostage, the foundation dedicated a "study day" to the unique German-Israel relationship. Participants voiced clear criticism of Germany's center-left federal government, which has been in office since 2021.
Hamas is classified as a terrorist organization by Germany, the European Union, the US and other governments.
Merkel's legacy
The murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust in the Nazi era is an indelible mark in German history. Germany's "special responsibility" for Israel, which became the homeland of Holocaust survivors, is summed up by German politicians as "Staatsräson" (reason of state). However, this term does not appear anywhere in the Basic Law, the German constitution. In March 2008, Angela Merkel, who was then German chancellor and the leader of the CDU, became the first foreign head of government ever to speak in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
In her speech, Merkel emphasized that "every German government and every German chancellor before me was committed to Germany's special historical responsibility for Israel's security. That historical responsibility of Germany is part of my country's reason of state." Meaning for her, "as German chancellor, Israel's security is never negotiable."
The current coalition agreement of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and its partners, the environmentalist Greens and the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP), signed in 2021, states: "Israel's security is a reason of state for us."
German politicians have been increasingly referring to "the reason of state" ever since the terror of October 7, 2023 — which shook Israel to its core. That includes Chancellor Olaf Scholz , who emphasized this statement in the Bundestag shortly after the attacks: "At this moment, there is only one place for Germany. That place is at Israel's side. That is what we mean when we say: Israel's security is the reason of state for Germany." However, some of Berlin's political decisions in the past year have upset Israel. One example is Berlin's abstentions on UN resolutions on the Middle East.
Josef Schuster, the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, expressed his own disillusionment during the Konrad Adenauer Foundation conference on Monday. He said the phrase "reason of state" should be "about standing up for Israel," and observed that this position was waning in German politics. Schuster said the position is increasingly carrying qualifications, pointing explicitly to Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock from the Green Party.
Schuster has long reprimanded German politicians. During his speech to inaugurate a new synagogue in Potsdam in July, Schuster lamented the fact that the Bundestag's parliamentary groups had not yet agreed on a resolution against antisemitism and for the protection of Jewish life in this country. Baerbock was present at the inauguration but Chancellor Scholz, who was due to attend, canceled at short notice citing scheduling reasons.
Schuster said it was "shameful" that such a resolution had still not been passed, one year after the October 7 attacks. Mentioning the current social mood in Germany, he said antisemitic attacks have risen over the past year, and said recent surveys showed decreasing support for Israel among the German population. There are ever more protests, graffiti and other attacks against Jewish institutions, he said.
At the Konrad Adenauer Foundation's conference, some Jewish participants described their recent experiences. Ricarda Louk, whose daughter Shani Louk was abducted on October 7 by Hamas and later murdered, shared her thoughts about the situation in Israel, her fears and expectations for the future. However, she emphasized that what should be remembered most is the image of her daughter full of joy. As participants entered the building to attend the conference they faced 20 pro-Palestinian protesters, some of whom had chained themselves up and were shouting abuse at the conference members, calling them "Nazis" or "murderers." The demonstrators were briefly arrested hours later.
Among the participants entering the building was the Israeli ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, who was more outspoken than ever about Germany's political course.
Prosor picked up the term "reason of state," which no other country has used in a comparable form, saying that Hamas had "set itself the goal of destroying the Jewish state as its 'reason of state'."
Prosor stressed that after the terror attacks, Scholz had reaffirmed that Germany can only stand on Israel's side, so this must be put into practice. He criticized the German course in the UN on resolutions that are critical of Israel, where Germany abstained time and again: "Our friends," Prosor declared, "this abstention is not an attitude."
The relationship between Germany and Israel relationship is unique — this was the message reiterated at an event hosted by Germany's opposition conservatives in Berlin earlier this week.
"There are no comparable relationships between any other two countries in the world," said Norbert Lammert, of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and former president of the Bundestag, Germany's parliament.
Lammert, 75, is the chairman of the CDU-affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation. A few days before the anniversary of Hamas terror attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023, when around 1,200 people were killed and more than 230 taken hostage, the foundation dedicated a "study day" to the unique German-Israel relationship. Participants voiced clear criticism of Germany's center-left federal government, which has been in office since 2021.
Hamas is classified as a terrorist organization by Germany, the European Union, the US and other governments.
Merkel's legacy
The murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust in the Nazi era is an indelible mark in German history. Germany's "special responsibility" for Israel, which became the homeland of Holocaust survivors, is summed up by German politicians as "Staatsräson" (reason of state). However, this term does not appear anywhere in the Basic Law, the German constitution. In March 2008, Angela Merkel, who was then German chancellor and the leader of the CDU, became the first foreign head of government ever to speak in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
In her speech, Merkel emphasized that "every German government and every German chancellor before me was committed to Germany's special historical responsibility for Israel's security. That historical responsibility of Germany is part of my country's reason of state." Meaning for her, "as German chancellor, Israel's security is never negotiable."
The current coalition agreement of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and its partners, the environmentalist Greens and the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP), signed in 2021, states: "Israel's security is a reason of state for us."
German politicians have been increasingly referring to "the reason of state" ever since the terror of October 7, 2023 — which shook Israel to its core. That includes Chancellor Olaf Scholz , who emphasized this statement in the Bundestag shortly after the attacks: "At this moment, there is only one place for Germany. That place is at Israel's side. That is what we mean when we say: Israel's security is the reason of state for Germany." However, some of Berlin's political decisions in the past year have upset Israel. One example is Berlin's abstentions on UN resolutions on the Middle East.
Josef Schuster, the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, expressed his own disillusionment during the Konrad Adenauer Foundation conference on Monday. He said the phrase "reason of state" should be "about standing up for Israel," and observed that this position was waning in German politics. Schuster said the position is increasingly carrying qualifications, pointing explicitly to Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock from the Green Party.
Schuster has long reprimanded German politicians. During his speech to inaugurate a new synagogue in Potsdam in July, Schuster lamented the fact that the Bundestag's parliamentary groups had not yet agreed on a resolution against antisemitism and for the protection of Jewish life in this country. Baerbock was present at the inauguration but Chancellor Scholz, who was due to attend, canceled at short notice citing scheduling reasons.
Schuster said it was "shameful" that such a resolution had still not been passed, one year after the October 7 attacks. Mentioning the current social mood in Germany, he said antisemitic attacks have risen over the past year, and said recent surveys showed decreasing support for Israel among the German population. There are ever more protests, graffiti and other attacks against Jewish institutions, he said.
At the Konrad Adenauer Foundation's conference, some Jewish participants described their recent experiences. Ricarda Louk, whose daughter Shani Louk was abducted on October 7 by Hamas and later murdered, shared her thoughts about the situation in Israel, her fears and expectations for the future. However, she emphasized that what should be remembered most is the image of her daughter full of joy. As participants entered the building to attend the conference they faced 20 pro-Palestinian protesters, some of whom had chained themselves up and were shouting abuse at the conference members, calling them "Nazis" or "murderers." The demonstrators were briefly arrested hours later.
Among the participants entering the building was the Israeli ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, who was more outspoken than ever about Germany's political course.
Prosor picked up the term "reason of state," which no other country has used in a comparable form, saying that Hamas had "set itself the goal of destroying the Jewish state as its 'reason of state'."
Prosor stressed that after the terror attacks, Scholz had reaffirmed that Germany can only stand on Israel's side, so this must be put into practice. He criticized the German course in the UN on resolutions that are critical of Israel, where Germany abstained time and again: "Our friends," Prosor declared, "this abstention is not an attitude."
United States of America
WASHINGTON: Former US President Donald Trump said that if he became the president again, the relationship between Israel and the United States (US) would be even stronger than ever before, reported Sputnik.
“If and when I’m President of the US, it (Israel-US ties) will, once again, be stronger and closer than it ever was before,“ Trump said on Monday evening during an event in Florida.
Trump added that he was committed to protecting the Jewish state and American Jewish communities, pledging to prevent threats against Israel and support its fight against terrorism. On Oct 7, 2023, Israel was subjected to an unprecedented rocket attack from the Gaza Strip. In addition, fighters of Palestinian movement Hamas infiltrated the border areas, opened fire on the military and civilians, and took hostages.
Israeli authorities say that about 1,200 people were killed during the raid. The Israel Defence Forces launched Operation Iron Swords in the Gaza Strip and announced a complete blockade of the enclave. The death toll from the Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip since October 7 has exceeded 41,900, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
“If and when I’m President of the US, it (Israel-US ties) will, once again, be stronger and closer than it ever was before,“ Trump said on Monday evening during an event in Florida.
Trump added that he was committed to protecting the Jewish state and American Jewish communities, pledging to prevent threats against Israel and support its fight against terrorism. On Oct 7, 2023, Israel was subjected to an unprecedented rocket attack from the Gaza Strip. In addition, fighters of Palestinian movement Hamas infiltrated the border areas, opened fire on the military and civilians, and took hostages.
Israeli authorities say that about 1,200 people were killed during the raid. The Israel Defence Forces launched Operation Iron Swords in the Gaza Strip and announced a complete blockade of the enclave. The death toll from the Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip since October 7 has exceeded 41,900, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
Italy
Meloni: Italy imposed full arms embargo on Israel over Gaza ground op
We have blocked everything," Meloni told lawmakers during a debate in Italy's senate ahead of a European Council summit in Brussels.
The Italian government blocked all new arms deals with the Jewish state just weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 massacre, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Tuesday, the local ANSA news agency reported.
“After the start of [Israeli military] operations in Gaza, the government immediately suspended all new export licenses, and all agreements signed after October 7th were not implemented,” the Italian leader stated during a debate at Italy’s Senate ahead of Thursday’s European Council summit.
Meloni told lawmakers that licenses authorized before Oct. 7 are being “analyzed on a case-by-case basis by the competent authority at the foreign ministry.”
“We have blocked everything,” the Italian premier declared, noting that the policies of her government are “much more restrictive than that applied by our partners—France, Germany and the United Kingdom.”
Israeli ground forces entered Gaza on Oct. 27 following a weeks-long air campaign in response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in the northwestern Negev, in which Palestinian terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, wounded thousands of others, and abducted 251—97 of whom remain in Gaza.
Among those murdered were three dual Italian-Israeli nationals.
Italy’s rhetoric toward the Jewish state has become increasingly hostile in recent weeks as Israel Defense Forces troops fight Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists in Southern Lebanon in an attempt to return the approximate 60,000 displaced Israeli civilians to the country’s north.
Hezbollah has attacked Israel nearly daily in support of Hamas since Oct. 8, firing thousands of rockets, missiles and drones at the Jewish state. These attacks have killed more than 40 people and caused widespread damage.
In her speech to the Senate on Tuesday, Meloni decried alleged Israeli attacks on U.N. Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL) peacekeepers. Rome is Europe’s largest contributor of troops, and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has said they will remain in the region despite the escalation.
“Even if there have been no casualties or extensive damage, I think that Israel’s attack on UNIFIL cannot be considered acceptable,” she said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday rejected the allegations that Israel had targeted U.N. troops in Lebanon, while noting that Jerusalem “repeatedly asked UNIFIL to get out of harm’s way.”
Earlier this week, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi called Italian Chief of Defense Staff Gen. Luciano Portolano to discuss the security situation in Lebanon and “associated challenges,” the IDF said.
Halevi addressed Hezbollah’s exploitation of areas surrounding UNIFIL positions for terrorism against the State of Israel, Jerusalem stated.
Halevi noted that the IDF would continue to probe the circumstances surrounding reports of harm to Italian UNIFIL forces and expressed his appreciation for the relationship between the two militaries, per the IDF.
We have blocked everything," Meloni told lawmakers during a debate in Italy's senate ahead of a European Council summit in Brussels.
The Italian government blocked all new arms deals with the Jewish state just weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 massacre, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Tuesday, the local ANSA news agency reported.
“After the start of [Israeli military] operations in Gaza, the government immediately suspended all new export licenses, and all agreements signed after October 7th were not implemented,” the Italian leader stated during a debate at Italy’s Senate ahead of Thursday’s European Council summit.
Meloni told lawmakers that licenses authorized before Oct. 7 are being “analyzed on a case-by-case basis by the competent authority at the foreign ministry.”
“We have blocked everything,” the Italian premier declared, noting that the policies of her government are “much more restrictive than that applied by our partners—France, Germany and the United Kingdom.”
Israeli ground forces entered Gaza on Oct. 27 following a weeks-long air campaign in response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in the northwestern Negev, in which Palestinian terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, wounded thousands of others, and abducted 251—97 of whom remain in Gaza.
Among those murdered were three dual Italian-Israeli nationals.
Italy’s rhetoric toward the Jewish state has become increasingly hostile in recent weeks as Israel Defense Forces troops fight Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists in Southern Lebanon in an attempt to return the approximate 60,000 displaced Israeli civilians to the country’s north.
Hezbollah has attacked Israel nearly daily in support of Hamas since Oct. 8, firing thousands of rockets, missiles and drones at the Jewish state. These attacks have killed more than 40 people and caused widespread damage.
In her speech to the Senate on Tuesday, Meloni decried alleged Israeli attacks on U.N. Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL) peacekeepers. Rome is Europe’s largest contributor of troops, and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has said they will remain in the region despite the escalation.
“Even if there have been no casualties or extensive damage, I think that Israel’s attack on UNIFIL cannot be considered acceptable,” she said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday rejected the allegations that Israel had targeted U.N. troops in Lebanon, while noting that Jerusalem “repeatedly asked UNIFIL to get out of harm’s way.”
Earlier this week, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi called Italian Chief of Defense Staff Gen. Luciano Portolano to discuss the security situation in Lebanon and “associated challenges,” the IDF said.
Halevi addressed Hezbollah’s exploitation of areas surrounding UNIFIL positions for terrorism against the State of Israel, Jerusalem stated.
Halevi noted that the IDF would continue to probe the circumstances surrounding reports of harm to Italian UNIFIL forces and expressed his appreciation for the relationship between the two militaries, per the IDF.
Israel
Montenegro
DPM Ivanović meets with Honorary Consul of Montenegro in Israel Nimrod Rinot
Deputy Prime Minister for Foreign and European Affairs Filip Ivanović met today with Nimrod Rinot, the Honorary Consul of Montenegro in Israel.
During the meeting, they exchanged views on the ongoing developments in the Middle East. Deputy Prime Minister Ivanović expressed concern over the persistent escalation of tensions in the region and the real risk of the conflict spreading. He emphasised that Montenegro will continue to call on all parties and stakeholders to pursue a ceasefire and commit to finding a political and diplomatic solution, as the only sustainable and lasting resolution to the crisis in the Middle East.
Both sides agreed that Montenegro and Israel are developing their relations on strong and stable foundations, and highlighted the successful cooperation in the areas of economy, investments, and tourism. They welcomed the growing interest of Israeli companies in investing in Montenegro and their increasing presence in the country.
It was noted that the current year has been a record one in terms of the number of Israeli tourists visiting Montenegro. Mr. Rinot informed Deputy Prime Minister Ivanović about the introduction of direct flights between Tel Aviv and Podgorica outside the summer tourist season, opening up significant opportunities for Montenegro's winter tourism.
Deputy Prime Minister Ivanović also emphasised that Montenegro places great importance on the work and contributions of the Jewish community in Montenegro, which undoubtedly plays a significant role in the country's multicultural society.
Deputy Prime Minister for Foreign and European Affairs Filip Ivanović met today with Nimrod Rinot, the Honorary Consul of Montenegro in Israel.
During the meeting, they exchanged views on the ongoing developments in the Middle East. Deputy Prime Minister Ivanović expressed concern over the persistent escalation of tensions in the region and the real risk of the conflict spreading. He emphasised that Montenegro will continue to call on all parties and stakeholders to pursue a ceasefire and commit to finding a political and diplomatic solution, as the only sustainable and lasting resolution to the crisis in the Middle East.
Both sides agreed that Montenegro and Israel are developing their relations on strong and stable foundations, and highlighted the successful cooperation in the areas of economy, investments, and tourism. They welcomed the growing interest of Israeli companies in investing in Montenegro and their increasing presence in the country.
It was noted that the current year has been a record one in terms of the number of Israeli tourists visiting Montenegro. Mr. Rinot informed Deputy Prime Minister Ivanović about the introduction of direct flights between Tel Aviv and Podgorica outside the summer tourist season, opening up significant opportunities for Montenegro's winter tourism.
Deputy Prime Minister Ivanović also emphasised that Montenegro places great importance on the work and contributions of the Jewish community in Montenegro, which undoubtedly plays a significant role in the country's multicultural society.
Sri-Lanka
The National Security Council is calling on Israeli citizens to immediately leave Arugam Bay and the south and west coastal areas of Sri Lanka
The National Security Council is calling on Israeli citizens to immediately leave Arugam Bay and the south and west coastal areas of Sri Lanka
Today, Wednesday, October 23, 2024, the National Security Council (NSC) raised the travel alert level for Sri Lanka due to credible terrorism threats at the tourist and coastal areas:
1. The travel alert for Arugam Bay and the coastal areas in south and west Sri Lanka (including for the cities Ahangame, Galle, Hikkaduwa and Weligama) has been raised to level 4. We recommend leaving these areas immediately. For those currently in these areas, we recommend leaving the country or at least traveling to the capital city Colombo, where there is heavier presence of local security forces.
2. For the rest of Sri Lanka, the travel warning has been raised to level 3, and we recommend that Israelis planning to travel to Sri Lanka delay any non-necessary trips to the country. If you do travel to Sri Lanka, avoid the areas for which level-4 travel alerts have been issued.
In addition, the NSC stresses that Israelis in Sri Lanka must exercise increased precaution. Specifically:
When in public, avoid openly exhibiting anything that could identify you as Israeli, such as t-shirts with Hebrew writing, or any symbol that discloses your religion or nationality.
Avoid gatherings of Israeli citizens in public places where there is no security.
Report any suspicion or unusual event to local security forces.
The Israel security forces are in close contact with the Sri Lankan security forces through the relevant organizations, and are monitoring the developments.
The National Security Council is calling on Israeli citizens to immediately leave Arugam Bay and the south and west coastal areas of Sri Lanka
Today, Wednesday, October 23, 2024, the National Security Council (NSC) raised the travel alert level for Sri Lanka due to credible terrorism threats at the tourist and coastal areas:
1. The travel alert for Arugam Bay and the coastal areas in south and west Sri Lanka (including for the cities Ahangame, Galle, Hikkaduwa and Weligama) has been raised to level 4. We recommend leaving these areas immediately. For those currently in these areas, we recommend leaving the country or at least traveling to the capital city Colombo, where there is heavier presence of local security forces.
2. For the rest of Sri Lanka, the travel warning has been raised to level 3, and we recommend that Israelis planning to travel to Sri Lanka delay any non-necessary trips to the country. If you do travel to Sri Lanka, avoid the areas for which level-4 travel alerts have been issued.
In addition, the NSC stresses that Israelis in Sri Lanka must exercise increased precaution. Specifically:
When in public, avoid openly exhibiting anything that could identify you as Israeli, such as t-shirts with Hebrew writing, or any symbol that discloses your religion or nationality.
Avoid gatherings of Israeli citizens in public places where there is no security.
Report any suspicion or unusual event to local security forces.
The Israel security forces are in close contact with the Sri Lankan security forces through the relevant organizations, and are monitoring the developments.
Sochi SFD Russia
France
The French president and the Israeli prime minister had a telephone conversation on Sunday, after tense exchanges triggered by Macron's declarations calling for a halt to arms deliveries to Israel.
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https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/10/07/a-weekend-of-tension-between-emmanuel-macron-and-benjamin-netanyahu_6728425_4.html
Even for a leader who is used to engaging in power struggles, even with his allies, the message sent by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to French President Emmanuel Macron on the evening of Saturday, October 5, was rather out of the ordinary. Speaking to give details on the "seven fronts" his country is engaged on, according to him, from Gaza to Lebanon, from Yemen to the West Bank; Netanyahu lost his temper, concluding: "Yet President Macron and other Western leaders are now calling for arms embargoes against Israel. Shame on them. (...) Israel will win with or without their support. But their shame will continue long after this war has been won."
Earlier on Saturday, the French president had declared on French radio: "I think that today, the priority is to return to a political solution, to stop delivering arms [to Israel] for fighting in Gaza."
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https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/10/07/a-weekend-of-tension-between-emmanuel-macron-and-benjamin-netanyahu_6728425_4.html
On Sunday afternoon, the two leaders had a telephone conversation "in complete frankness," according to a statement from the president's office. Macron reiterated France's "unwavering" commitment to Israel's security, but also stressed the need for a ceasefire in Lebanon, since arms deliveries cannot, in his view, "produce the security expected by the Israelis." For his part, the Israeli prime minister said in a statement that, in the present circumstances, "Israel's friends are expected to stand behind it, and not impose restrictions on it that will only strengthen the Iranian axis of evil."
Powerlessness
By mentioning a halt in arms deliveries, Macron has brought the question of the war Israel has been waging in the Palestinian territory – in retaliation for Hamas's attack on October 7, 2023 – back to center stage, at a time when recent events, including Israeli bombardments in Lebanon and Iranian strikes against Israel, had relegated it to the background.
The President's remarks also reflected his weariness and feelings of powerlessness in the face of Israel's year-long military operations in Gaza. It is also possible that Macron wanted to correct the perception (which surfaced after the October 1 Iranian strikes against Israel) that the country's alignment is too close to Israel against Tehran. Against this backdrop, the West, including France,
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https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/10/07/a-weekend-of-tension-between-emmanuel-macron-and-benjamin-netanyahu_6728425_4.html
Even for a leader who is used to engaging in power struggles, even with his allies, the message sent by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to French President Emmanuel Macron on the evening of Saturday, October 5, was rather out of the ordinary. Speaking to give details on the "seven fronts" his country is engaged on, according to him, from Gaza to Lebanon, from Yemen to the West Bank; Netanyahu lost his temper, concluding: "Yet President Macron and other Western leaders are now calling for arms embargoes against Israel. Shame on them. (...) Israel will win with or without their support. But their shame will continue long after this war has been won."
Earlier on Saturday, the French president had declared on French radio: "I think that today, the priority is to return to a political solution, to stop delivering arms [to Israel] for fighting in Gaza."
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https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/10/07/a-weekend-of-tension-between-emmanuel-macron-and-benjamin-netanyahu_6728425_4.html
On Sunday afternoon, the two leaders had a telephone conversation "in complete frankness," according to a statement from the president's office. Macron reiterated France's "unwavering" commitment to Israel's security, but also stressed the need for a ceasefire in Lebanon, since arms deliveries cannot, in his view, "produce the security expected by the Israelis." For his part, the Israeli prime minister said in a statement that, in the present circumstances, "Israel's friends are expected to stand behind it, and not impose restrictions on it that will only strengthen the Iranian axis of evil."
Powerlessness
By mentioning a halt in arms deliveries, Macron has brought the question of the war Israel has been waging in the Palestinian territory – in retaliation for Hamas's attack on October 7, 2023 – back to center stage, at a time when recent events, including Israeli bombardments in Lebanon and Iranian strikes against Israel, had relegated it to the background.
The President's remarks also reflected his weariness and feelings of powerlessness in the face of Israel's year-long military operations in Gaza. It is also possible that Macron wanted to correct the perception (which surfaced after the October 1 Iranian strikes against Israel) that the country's alignment is too close to Israel against Tehran. Against this backdrop, the West, including France,
India
India has been under scrutiny recently after reports that Indian weapons, ammunition and technology were making their way into Israel's arm
India will be guided by its "national interest" before reconsidering the transfer of weapons or arms sales to Israel, the country's external affairs minister has said, in yet another sign that Delhi is committed to providing diplomatic and military cover for Israel's genocide in Gaza.
On Thursday, several opposition politicians took the opportunity to use the Q&A session in parliament to probe India's external affairs minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, on India's policies, including its decision to abstain from several UN resolutions on Gaza, as well as to clarify its position on the International Criminal Court's (ICC) decision to issue warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
Jaishankar said that India officially supports the two-state solution but if resolutions did not adequately condemn terrorism or the holding of hostages, in reference to the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Delhi could not sign them.
“As a country that has suffered from terrorism, India cannot support resolutions that underplay such acts. Resolutions must be well-drafted, balanced, and reflect the entirety of the situation,” he said.
On the ICC warrants, Jaishankar said that India was not a signatory to the ICC and had not taken a formal position on the matter. The Indian government has been under scrutiny over the past several months with reports that Indian arms, ammunition and technology were making their way to Israel's army for potential use in operations in Gaza.
In late November, MEE found that an AI weapons system used by Israeli ground forces in Gaza was co-produced by the Indian company, Adani Defense and Aerospace.
The revelations stirred concerns among activists and politicians over Indian complicity in Israeli war crimes, culminating in several attempts to pressure the government to impose an arms embargo on Israel. These efforts have mostly fallen on deaf ears.
In September, the Indian Supreme Court dismissed a petition seeking to suspend military exports from India.
Israel 'stood by us'
India is the largest purchaser of Israeli weapons, accounting for around $1bn of trade per year. Since 2017, both countries have considered their partnership a "strategic relationship", with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office often making a public spectacle of their friendship.
When asked whether Delhi had any intention to consider a call by Palestine's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Varsen Aghabekian to impose an arms embargo on Israel back in May, Jaishankar said that while India was a responsible member of various international regimes, with a fully-fledged export, control and licensing process, it made decisions based on what was best for the country. "The issue of India's exports, including India's exports of anything which directly or indirectly has any military implications, is guided by our national interest and by our commitments to various regimes," Jaishankar said.
"Where Israel is concerned, it is a country with which we have a strong record of cooperation in national security. It is also a country that has stood by us at different moments when our national security was under threat.
"So when we take any decision, we will bear in mind, obviously, the larger circumstances, but we will definitely be driven by our national interest in this matter," the minister added.
Jaishankar said that India had increased its aid to Palestinians - from $1m to $5m per annum. But given that India has refused to endorse an arms embargo on Israel and has instead been accused of sending combat drones, bombs and components for the Israeli military as it conducts a "genocide" in Gaza, the increase in aid is likely to be seen as little more than lip service.
At a separate foreign policy event held by the Asia Society in New York on Thursday, Nirupama Roa, India's former external minister, defended India's Palestine policy, arguing that even if India had moved notably closer to Israel and the US over the past few years, it would be wrong to say Delhi had abandoned the Palestinian people.
“It would be incorrect to say that India has abandoned the interests of the Palestinian people,” Rao said in response to a question from MEE.
Rao, who was India’s external minister between 2009-2011, said Palestine had always been a cornerstone of India’s foreign policy, given its relationship with the Arab world.
However, Rao cautioned that any peace deal that excluded the Palestinian people would come to Israel’s detriment.
“Otherwise, peace will never come to that region, and even Israel's, you know, stability for the future, I think, comes into question because it will always be a nation under threat, and it will always look at its neighbourhood as threatening it. So that is really not a good place to be in for any country," Rao added.
India will be guided by its "national interest" before reconsidering the transfer of weapons or arms sales to Israel, the country's external affairs minister has said, in yet another sign that Delhi is committed to providing diplomatic and military cover for Israel's genocide in Gaza.
On Thursday, several opposition politicians took the opportunity to use the Q&A session in parliament to probe India's external affairs minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, on India's policies, including its decision to abstain from several UN resolutions on Gaza, as well as to clarify its position on the International Criminal Court's (ICC) decision to issue warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
Jaishankar said that India officially supports the two-state solution but if resolutions did not adequately condemn terrorism or the holding of hostages, in reference to the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Delhi could not sign them.
“As a country that has suffered from terrorism, India cannot support resolutions that underplay such acts. Resolutions must be well-drafted, balanced, and reflect the entirety of the situation,” he said.
On the ICC warrants, Jaishankar said that India was not a signatory to the ICC and had not taken a formal position on the matter. The Indian government has been under scrutiny over the past several months with reports that Indian arms, ammunition and technology were making their way to Israel's army for potential use in operations in Gaza.
In late November, MEE found that an AI weapons system used by Israeli ground forces in Gaza was co-produced by the Indian company, Adani Defense and Aerospace.
The revelations stirred concerns among activists and politicians over Indian complicity in Israeli war crimes, culminating in several attempts to pressure the government to impose an arms embargo on Israel. These efforts have mostly fallen on deaf ears.
In September, the Indian Supreme Court dismissed a petition seeking to suspend military exports from India.
Israel 'stood by us'
India is the largest purchaser of Israeli weapons, accounting for around $1bn of trade per year. Since 2017, both countries have considered their partnership a "strategic relationship", with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office often making a public spectacle of their friendship.
When asked whether Delhi had any intention to consider a call by Palestine's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Varsen Aghabekian to impose an arms embargo on Israel back in May, Jaishankar said that while India was a responsible member of various international regimes, with a fully-fledged export, control and licensing process, it made decisions based on what was best for the country. "The issue of India's exports, including India's exports of anything which directly or indirectly has any military implications, is guided by our national interest and by our commitments to various regimes," Jaishankar said.
"Where Israel is concerned, it is a country with which we have a strong record of cooperation in national security. It is also a country that has stood by us at different moments when our national security was under threat.
"So when we take any decision, we will bear in mind, obviously, the larger circumstances, but we will definitely be driven by our national interest in this matter," the minister added.
Jaishankar said that India had increased its aid to Palestinians - from $1m to $5m per annum. But given that India has refused to endorse an arms embargo on Israel and has instead been accused of sending combat drones, bombs and components for the Israeli military as it conducts a "genocide" in Gaza, the increase in aid is likely to be seen as little more than lip service.
At a separate foreign policy event held by the Asia Society in New York on Thursday, Nirupama Roa, India's former external minister, defended India's Palestine policy, arguing that even if India had moved notably closer to Israel and the US over the past few years, it would be wrong to say Delhi had abandoned the Palestinian people.
“It would be incorrect to say that India has abandoned the interests of the Palestinian people,” Rao said in response to a question from MEE.
Rao, who was India’s external minister between 2009-2011, said Palestine had always been a cornerstone of India’s foreign policy, given its relationship with the Arab world.
However, Rao cautioned that any peace deal that excluded the Palestinian people would come to Israel’s detriment.
“Otherwise, peace will never come to that region, and even Israel's, you know, stability for the future, I think, comes into question because it will always be a nation under threat, and it will always look at its neighbourhood as threatening it. So that is really not a good place to be in for any country," Rao added.
Kosovo
Ukraine
A defeat or weakening of Russia in Ukraine would strain Iran’s alliance with it, reducing Iran’s capacity to project power in the Middle East. This outcome aligns with Israel’s long-term interests.
Israel has stood on the sidelines, refusing to give Ukraine substantial support in its resistance to Russian imperial aggression. However, as Israel battles Iranian proxies in the Middle East, Ukraine battles Russia, one of Iran’s primary partners, in its own country. Israel has taken a cautious approach to the Russo-Ukrainian war, trying to avoid upsetting Russia. What Israeli officials don’t see is that the quicker Ukraine can defeat Russia, the greater the long-term damage to Iran will be.
In its latest move, the Israeli government has imposed new travel restrictions on Ukrainians, with Ukraine responding in kind to Israelis traveling to Ukraine. Relations between Israel and Ukraine remain strained. In 2022, while Ukrainian cities were being pummeled by Russian bombs, Ukraine’s government asked Israel for air defense systems to counter Iranian missiles and attack drones, but Israel refused.
Israel also blocked Washington from sending US-owned Iron Dome batteries to Ukraine in 2023. However, there are signs of change as the United States, Israel, and Ukraine are currently negotiating the supply of eight Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine from Israel.
The reason for Israel's hesitancy
Israel’s hesitant stance in supporting Ukraine can be attributed to its complex relationship with Russia. Israel maintains a level of cooperation with Russia, particularly in Syria, where Russian forces have a large presence. The Israeli government believes it is crucial for Israel’s security to have a good relationship with Russia as it seeks to counter Iranian influence and Hezbollah operations in the region.
Any direct confrontation or significant support for Ukraine could jeopardize this delicate balance, potentially leading to more aggressive actions by Russian forces in Syria against Israeli interests.
HOWEVER, ISRAEL’S current approach overlooks the strategic benefits of supporting Ukraine. By aiding Ukraine in its fight against Russia, Israel could indirectly weaken Iran’s position. Iran and Russia have forged a close alliance, with Iran providing drones and other military support to Russia. Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s intelligence services (HUR), also said that he believed Russia sent weapons to Hamas.
Russia’s relationship with Hamas has also been growing closer, as Russia has historically been a hotbed of antisemitism. Moscow continues to label Ukraine’s leadership as a “neo-Nazi” regime, even though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish.
Russian state media and social media disinformation operations have also been working to support Hamas and undermine Israel and the US. Furthermore, over 75% of Israelis support Ukraine according to a survey by Shlomo Filber and Tzuriel Sharon of Direct Polls LTD in 2022.
A defeat or significant weakening of Russia in Ukraine would strain Iran’s alliance with Russia, reducing Iran’s capacity to project power in the Middle East. This outcome aligns with Israel’s long-term security interests.
Moreover, like other Western powers, Israel could gain significant advantages by partnering with Ukraine’s military to conduct strikes against Russian forces in the Middle East if the need arises.
By March 2024, the Kyiv Post reported that Ukrainian special forces from HUR were collaborating with Syrian rebels to launch attacks against Russian mercenaries in Syria. These operations targeted Russian forces stationed near the Golan Heights, a region internationally recognized as occupied by Israel. HUR has been focusing on striking Russian checkpoints, foot patrols, and military vehicle columns, among other strategic targets in Syria.
Since the beginning of 2024, Russia has established over 10 observation points along the border area between Syria and the Golan Heights, near Israel. Iranian militias have also been actively operating in southern Syria, which Israel has been bombing.
Maurizio Molinari, writing in la Repubblica, suggests that Russia has been gathering critical intelligence on the weapons used by Israel in southern Syria, which closely resemble the Western arms supplied to Ukraine. As a result, Ukrainian attacks could significantly disrupt Russian intelligence-gathering efforts, hindering their ability to analyze and adapt to these weapons. This disruption would not only impact Russia’s operations in Ukraine but also those of Iran, one of Russia’s closest allies.
Israel has stood on the sidelines, refusing to give Ukraine substantial support in its resistance to Russian imperial aggression. However, as Israel battles Iranian proxies in the Middle East, Ukraine battles Russia, one of Iran’s primary partners, in its own country. Israel has taken a cautious approach to the Russo-Ukrainian war, trying to avoid upsetting Russia. What Israeli officials don’t see is that the quicker Ukraine can defeat Russia, the greater the long-term damage to Iran will be.
In its latest move, the Israeli government has imposed new travel restrictions on Ukrainians, with Ukraine responding in kind to Israelis traveling to Ukraine. Relations between Israel and Ukraine remain strained. In 2022, while Ukrainian cities were being pummeled by Russian bombs, Ukraine’s government asked Israel for air defense systems to counter Iranian missiles and attack drones, but Israel refused.
Israel also blocked Washington from sending US-owned Iron Dome batteries to Ukraine in 2023. However, there are signs of change as the United States, Israel, and Ukraine are currently negotiating the supply of eight Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine from Israel.
The reason for Israel's hesitancy
Israel’s hesitant stance in supporting Ukraine can be attributed to its complex relationship with Russia. Israel maintains a level of cooperation with Russia, particularly in Syria, where Russian forces have a large presence. The Israeli government believes it is crucial for Israel’s security to have a good relationship with Russia as it seeks to counter Iranian influence and Hezbollah operations in the region.
Any direct confrontation or significant support for Ukraine could jeopardize this delicate balance, potentially leading to more aggressive actions by Russian forces in Syria against Israeli interests.
HOWEVER, ISRAEL’S current approach overlooks the strategic benefits of supporting Ukraine. By aiding Ukraine in its fight against Russia, Israel could indirectly weaken Iran’s position. Iran and Russia have forged a close alliance, with Iran providing drones and other military support to Russia. Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s intelligence services (HUR), also said that he believed Russia sent weapons to Hamas.
Russia’s relationship with Hamas has also been growing closer, as Russia has historically been a hotbed of antisemitism. Moscow continues to label Ukraine’s leadership as a “neo-Nazi” regime, even though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish.
Russian state media and social media disinformation operations have also been working to support Hamas and undermine Israel and the US. Furthermore, over 75% of Israelis support Ukraine according to a survey by Shlomo Filber and Tzuriel Sharon of Direct Polls LTD in 2022.
A defeat or significant weakening of Russia in Ukraine would strain Iran’s alliance with Russia, reducing Iran’s capacity to project power in the Middle East. This outcome aligns with Israel’s long-term security interests.
Moreover, like other Western powers, Israel could gain significant advantages by partnering with Ukraine’s military to conduct strikes against Russian forces in the Middle East if the need arises.
By March 2024, the Kyiv Post reported that Ukrainian special forces from HUR were collaborating with Syrian rebels to launch attacks against Russian mercenaries in Syria. These operations targeted Russian forces stationed near the Golan Heights, a region internationally recognized as occupied by Israel. HUR has been focusing on striking Russian checkpoints, foot patrols, and military vehicle columns, among other strategic targets in Syria.
Since the beginning of 2024, Russia has established over 10 observation points along the border area between Syria and the Golan Heights, near Israel. Iranian militias have also been actively operating in southern Syria, which Israel has been bombing.
Maurizio Molinari, writing in la Repubblica, suggests that Russia has been gathering critical intelligence on the weapons used by Israel in southern Syria, which closely resemble the Western arms supplied to Ukraine. As a result, Ukrainian attacks could significantly disrupt Russian intelligence-gathering efforts, hindering their ability to analyze and adapt to these weapons. This disruption would not only impact Russia’s operations in Ukraine but also those of Iran, one of Russia’s closest allies.
Moldova
United Arab Emirates
Mexico
Mexico’s election puts Lopez Obrador’s stance on Israel under microscope
As President Lopez Obrador’s tenure ends, advocates reflect on his reticence to speak out against Israel’s war in Gaza.
Mexico City, Mexico – It was a case where the president’s words — and his administration’s actions — did not seem to match.
On Tuesday, the International Court of Justice announced that Mexico had requested to join South Africa’s case accusing the Israeli government of committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
But the very next day, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, refused to define Israel’s actions as genocide.
“We don’t want to put ourselves into a definition of this type that, instead of resolving a conflict, aggravates it,” he said in his morning news conference.
It was the latest evidence of Lopez Obrador’s ambiguous, somewhat contradictory stance towards Israel and its war in Gaza, which is nearing its eighth month.
Lopez Obrador and his legacy in office have been under the microscope in recent months, as his political party — the National Regeneration Movement or Morena — prepares for a pivotal nationwide vote.
This Sunday, Mexico holds its largest election in history, with every seat in Congress and the presidency at stake. The vote is considered a referendum on Lopez Obrador’s outgoing administration, which enjoyed high popularity during its six years in office.
But critics have questioned what the legacy of his foreign policy will be — and whether his likely successor, Morena party candidate Claudia Sheinbaum, will carry on his ambivalent relationship towards Israel.
Bucking the ‘pink tide’
The left-leaning Lopez Obrador was elected in 2018 amid a tide of discontent.
Voters rejected the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party in a landslide, leading to a historic margin of victory for Lopez Obrador and his Morena party.
His election heralded a period of equally historic wins for left-leaning leaders across Latin America.
In the years that followed, Chile elected the progressive Gabriel Boric, its youngest president ever. In Colombia, meanwhile, Gustavo Petro became the first left-wing leader to win the modern presidency.
And in Brazil, the prominent left-wing leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva nabbed his third term in office, after a gap of more than a decade.
Critics have dubbed the election streak as a new “pink tide”, ushering in a generation of like-minded leaders. But when it comes to Israel, Mexico’s Lopez Obrador has broken the mould.
After the war erupted on October 7, much of the so-called “pink tide” spoke out against the spiralling death toll in Gaza.
Boric condemned Israel’s military offensive as “disproportionate”. Others went further: Lula recalled Brazil’s ambassador to Israel on Wednesday, and Petro cut diplomatic ties altogether in May.
However, their ally in Mexico has not followed suit with his own full-throated criticism.
Observers have said Lopez Obrador has instead sought to strike a middle ground, a stance that has failed to please both Israeli officials and Palestinian rights supporters.
On October 9, for instance, the Mexican president offered his support to Israel, but refused to condone the violence unfolding against Palestinians in Gaza.
“We respect the Israeli government and even more the Israeli people,” he said. “Mexico does not want war. We are pacifists, and we do not want anyone to lose their lives, whether they be Israeli or Palestinian.”
That equivocation earned a furious response from Israel’s ambassador to Mexico, Einat Kranz Neiger, who retorted in a media interview, “Not taking sides is supporting terror.”
Lopez Obrador also faced pressure from pro-Palestinian advocates. Still, a few weeks later, he doubled down, ruling out any possibility of taking a firm stance.
“We – and I want to be very clear when I say this – are not going to break relations with Israel or take a position beyond calling for peace,” López Obrador said at a news conference on November 7.
Response rooted in contradiction
Témoris Grecko, a journalist covering the war in Gaza, has spent two decades reporting on the Middle East for the Mexican newspaper Milenio and other publications.
He too has noticed a more muted reaction from the normally outspoken Lopez Obrador. “The pace has been really slow,” he said of the administration’s response.
Grecko was on the ground in the West Bank to report on the conflict in the weeks after Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing an estimated 1,139 people and taking nearly 250 captive.
Israel’s months-long counter-offensive, however, has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians in Gaza, nearly half of them children. Human rights experts have raised concerns about the “risk of genocide” and “full-blown famine”.
In Grecko’s opinion, Mexico’s reticence to join other left-leaning governments in condemning Israel hints at the weight of the military and commercial contracts between the two countries.
“Always, the public position of Mexico has been in favour of Palestine, but there’s a contradiction,” Grecko said, pointing to Mexico’s economic and military interests.
“Mexico buys products from Israel, like arms and spyware, and there are contracts for Israeli organisations to train police and private security as well,” Grecko explained. “And there is a Mexican company, Cemex, that provided raw materials for a wall in Israel.”
Israel is the second-largest supplier of technology and training for the Mexican military. Grecko said that while the pro-Israel lobby in the United States may be internationally renowned, similar interests exist in Mexico, too.
“There are lobbying forces, which may not be as loud or visible as in the United States, but you can feel them,” Grecko said.
Outside the presidential palace
Nevertheless, Lopez Obrador has also faced protests from pro-Palestinian voices who seek to push him to take action.
Cutting off diplomatic relations with Israel is the primary demand of university students at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City, who launched a solidarity encampment on their campus in May.
After the university’s administration agreed to consider methods to divest from Israel, the encampment relocated to the city’s central plaza, the Zocalo, in front of the national palace.
Carla Torres, one of the organisers of the encampment, said Lopez Obrador’s refusal to cut ties with Israel is an example of Mexico’s long history of lukewarm, neutral or outright isolationist responses to international conflicts.
But in her opinion, Mexico’s love-hate relationship with its northern neighbour, the US, is the primary reason the president has not denounced Israel more forcefully.
“Mexico is a subordinate nation,” she said, citing its dependence on the US, its largest trading partner and a key ally to Israel. The US provides $3.8bn in unconditional military aid to Israel every year.
The encampment has not been the only act of protest. On May 29, four days before Mexico’s nationwide election, several hundred rioters threw Molotov cocktails at the Israeli embassy in Mexico City.
Minor damage to the building was reported, as protesters sought to show their outrage over Israel’s attacks in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where many civilians have been displaced.
For Torres, these acts of protest are a potent tool for educating the public about the conflict – and encouraging the government to end its “all talk, no action” posture.
She and the team from the UNAM have passed out pamphlets in the Zocalo plaza, trying to engage passersby in conversations about the war. Torres told Al Jazeera that, in her experience, many of the Mexicans she met in the square knew little about the conflict.
Passing the baton
For Edith Olivares Ferreto, the director of Amnesty International’s Mexico section, Lopez Obrador’s tiptoed posture on Gaza mirrors the way he responds to human rights abuses on his home turf.
“An estimated 20 people disappear in Mexico every day, and nine women are murdered,” she said, listing problems like increased violence and military abuses that have unfolded under the Lopez Obrador presidency.
Lopez Obrador is expected to soon pass the baton to his Morena party colleague Claudia Sheinbaum, the frontrunner in Sunday’s race for the presidency. Mexican election law bars previous presidents from running for a second term.
Still, Olivares Ferreto expects that, under Sheinbaum, little will change — whether in human rights or international relations.
Torres and Grecko offered similar observations in interviews with Al Jazeera, predicting a Sheinbaum presidency will likely see her prioritise relationships with the military, Israel and the US over any pro-Palestinian stance.
“She has different origins, a background with more participation in protest movements, but she could be even more authoritarian than AMLO,” Torres said.
Nevertheless, Sheinbaum has spoken out about the Palestinian plight. In 2009, Sheinbaum wrote a newspaper op-ed calling for Palestinian liberation and reflecting on her own family’s history of escaping persecution.
If elected on Sunday, she stands to be the first Mexican president of Jewish heritage.
“Because of my Jewish origin, because of my love for Mexico and because I feel like a citizen of the world, I share with millions the desire for justice, equality, fraternity and peace,” Sheinbaum explained in the op-ed. “No reason justifies the murder of Palestinian civilians.”
A bitter legacy
For human rights advocate Eduardo Ibanez, however, the prospect of cutting ties with Israel is particularly complex.
Ibanez works as an organiser assisting the families of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College who disappeared in 2014, prompting nationwide outrage.
Both the Mexican military and criminal groups have been implicated in the mass kidnapping, which has yet to be solved. Decades later, forensic specialists have only managed to identify the partial remains of three students.
Lopez Obrador had campaigned for office on the promise of providing answers to the families of the missing students — but Ibanez points out that any rupture in Mexico-Israel bonds could potentially endanger the pursuit of justice.
A Mexican military official named Tomas Zeron fled to Israel in 2020, after being accused of covering up the military’s complicity in the Ayotzinapa case. Zeron also faces charges after being caught on tape torturing suspects during the initial Ayotzinapa investigation.
In the years since, Mexico and Israel have participated in unsuccessful talks to extradite Zeron. Ibanez fears that negotiations would surely end if Mexico were to cut off diplomatic ties.
Just last April, Mexico warned Israel about its refusal to arrest Zeron.
“The lack of progress in resolving this case is interpreted as de facto protection of Tomas Zeron by the Israeli government and threatens to become an irritating and disruptive factor,” the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote in a statement.
Still, Ibanez suspects progress will ultimately be made in neither case – not for Ayotzinapa, not for Gaza.
“Poor Palestine, poor Ayotzinapa. I really don’t think anything is going to get better,” he said.
As President Lopez Obrador’s tenure ends, advocates reflect on his reticence to speak out against Israel’s war in Gaza.
Mexico City, Mexico – It was a case where the president’s words — and his administration’s actions — did not seem to match.
On Tuesday, the International Court of Justice announced that Mexico had requested to join South Africa’s case accusing the Israeli government of committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
But the very next day, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, refused to define Israel’s actions as genocide.
“We don’t want to put ourselves into a definition of this type that, instead of resolving a conflict, aggravates it,” he said in his morning news conference.
It was the latest evidence of Lopez Obrador’s ambiguous, somewhat contradictory stance towards Israel and its war in Gaza, which is nearing its eighth month.
Lopez Obrador and his legacy in office have been under the microscope in recent months, as his political party — the National Regeneration Movement or Morena — prepares for a pivotal nationwide vote.
This Sunday, Mexico holds its largest election in history, with every seat in Congress and the presidency at stake. The vote is considered a referendum on Lopez Obrador’s outgoing administration, which enjoyed high popularity during its six years in office.
But critics have questioned what the legacy of his foreign policy will be — and whether his likely successor, Morena party candidate Claudia Sheinbaum, will carry on his ambivalent relationship towards Israel.
Bucking the ‘pink tide’
The left-leaning Lopez Obrador was elected in 2018 amid a tide of discontent.
Voters rejected the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party in a landslide, leading to a historic margin of victory for Lopez Obrador and his Morena party.
His election heralded a period of equally historic wins for left-leaning leaders across Latin America.
In the years that followed, Chile elected the progressive Gabriel Boric, its youngest president ever. In Colombia, meanwhile, Gustavo Petro became the first left-wing leader to win the modern presidency.
And in Brazil, the prominent left-wing leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva nabbed his third term in office, after a gap of more than a decade.
Critics have dubbed the election streak as a new “pink tide”, ushering in a generation of like-minded leaders. But when it comes to Israel, Mexico’s Lopez Obrador has broken the mould.
After the war erupted on October 7, much of the so-called “pink tide” spoke out against the spiralling death toll in Gaza.
Boric condemned Israel’s military offensive as “disproportionate”. Others went further: Lula recalled Brazil’s ambassador to Israel on Wednesday, and Petro cut diplomatic ties altogether in May.
However, their ally in Mexico has not followed suit with his own full-throated criticism.
Observers have said Lopez Obrador has instead sought to strike a middle ground, a stance that has failed to please both Israeli officials and Palestinian rights supporters.
On October 9, for instance, the Mexican president offered his support to Israel, but refused to condone the violence unfolding against Palestinians in Gaza.
“We respect the Israeli government and even more the Israeli people,” he said. “Mexico does not want war. We are pacifists, and we do not want anyone to lose their lives, whether they be Israeli or Palestinian.”
That equivocation earned a furious response from Israel’s ambassador to Mexico, Einat Kranz Neiger, who retorted in a media interview, “Not taking sides is supporting terror.”
Lopez Obrador also faced pressure from pro-Palestinian advocates. Still, a few weeks later, he doubled down, ruling out any possibility of taking a firm stance.
“We – and I want to be very clear when I say this – are not going to break relations with Israel or take a position beyond calling for peace,” López Obrador said at a news conference on November 7.
Response rooted in contradiction
Témoris Grecko, a journalist covering the war in Gaza, has spent two decades reporting on the Middle East for the Mexican newspaper Milenio and other publications.
He too has noticed a more muted reaction from the normally outspoken Lopez Obrador. “The pace has been really slow,” he said of the administration’s response.
Grecko was on the ground in the West Bank to report on the conflict in the weeks after Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing an estimated 1,139 people and taking nearly 250 captive.
Israel’s months-long counter-offensive, however, has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians in Gaza, nearly half of them children. Human rights experts have raised concerns about the “risk of genocide” and “full-blown famine”.
In Grecko’s opinion, Mexico’s reticence to join other left-leaning governments in condemning Israel hints at the weight of the military and commercial contracts between the two countries.
“Always, the public position of Mexico has been in favour of Palestine, but there’s a contradiction,” Grecko said, pointing to Mexico’s economic and military interests.
“Mexico buys products from Israel, like arms and spyware, and there are contracts for Israeli organisations to train police and private security as well,” Grecko explained. “And there is a Mexican company, Cemex, that provided raw materials for a wall in Israel.”
Israel is the second-largest supplier of technology and training for the Mexican military. Grecko said that while the pro-Israel lobby in the United States may be internationally renowned, similar interests exist in Mexico, too.
“There are lobbying forces, which may not be as loud or visible as in the United States, but you can feel them,” Grecko said.
Outside the presidential palace
Nevertheless, Lopez Obrador has also faced protests from pro-Palestinian voices who seek to push him to take action.
Cutting off diplomatic relations with Israel is the primary demand of university students at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City, who launched a solidarity encampment on their campus in May.
After the university’s administration agreed to consider methods to divest from Israel, the encampment relocated to the city’s central plaza, the Zocalo, in front of the national palace.
Carla Torres, one of the organisers of the encampment, said Lopez Obrador’s refusal to cut ties with Israel is an example of Mexico’s long history of lukewarm, neutral or outright isolationist responses to international conflicts.
But in her opinion, Mexico’s love-hate relationship with its northern neighbour, the US, is the primary reason the president has not denounced Israel more forcefully.
“Mexico is a subordinate nation,” she said, citing its dependence on the US, its largest trading partner and a key ally to Israel. The US provides $3.8bn in unconditional military aid to Israel every year.
The encampment has not been the only act of protest. On May 29, four days before Mexico’s nationwide election, several hundred rioters threw Molotov cocktails at the Israeli embassy in Mexico City.
Minor damage to the building was reported, as protesters sought to show their outrage over Israel’s attacks in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where many civilians have been displaced.
For Torres, these acts of protest are a potent tool for educating the public about the conflict – and encouraging the government to end its “all talk, no action” posture.
She and the team from the UNAM have passed out pamphlets in the Zocalo plaza, trying to engage passersby in conversations about the war. Torres told Al Jazeera that, in her experience, many of the Mexicans she met in the square knew little about the conflict.
Passing the baton
For Edith Olivares Ferreto, the director of Amnesty International’s Mexico section, Lopez Obrador’s tiptoed posture on Gaza mirrors the way he responds to human rights abuses on his home turf.
“An estimated 20 people disappear in Mexico every day, and nine women are murdered,” she said, listing problems like increased violence and military abuses that have unfolded under the Lopez Obrador presidency.
Lopez Obrador is expected to soon pass the baton to his Morena party colleague Claudia Sheinbaum, the frontrunner in Sunday’s race for the presidency. Mexican election law bars previous presidents from running for a second term.
Still, Olivares Ferreto expects that, under Sheinbaum, little will change — whether in human rights or international relations.
Torres and Grecko offered similar observations in interviews with Al Jazeera, predicting a Sheinbaum presidency will likely see her prioritise relationships with the military, Israel and the US over any pro-Palestinian stance.
“She has different origins, a background with more participation in protest movements, but she could be even more authoritarian than AMLO,” Torres said.
Nevertheless, Sheinbaum has spoken out about the Palestinian plight. In 2009, Sheinbaum wrote a newspaper op-ed calling for Palestinian liberation and reflecting on her own family’s history of escaping persecution.
If elected on Sunday, she stands to be the first Mexican president of Jewish heritage.
“Because of my Jewish origin, because of my love for Mexico and because I feel like a citizen of the world, I share with millions the desire for justice, equality, fraternity and peace,” Sheinbaum explained in the op-ed. “No reason justifies the murder of Palestinian civilians.”
A bitter legacy
For human rights advocate Eduardo Ibanez, however, the prospect of cutting ties with Israel is particularly complex.
Ibanez works as an organiser assisting the families of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College who disappeared in 2014, prompting nationwide outrage.
Both the Mexican military and criminal groups have been implicated in the mass kidnapping, which has yet to be solved. Decades later, forensic specialists have only managed to identify the partial remains of three students.
Lopez Obrador had campaigned for office on the promise of providing answers to the families of the missing students — but Ibanez points out that any rupture in Mexico-Israel bonds could potentially endanger the pursuit of justice.
A Mexican military official named Tomas Zeron fled to Israel in 2020, after being accused of covering up the military’s complicity in the Ayotzinapa case. Zeron also faces charges after being caught on tape torturing suspects during the initial Ayotzinapa investigation.
In the years since, Mexico and Israel have participated in unsuccessful talks to extradite Zeron. Ibanez fears that negotiations would surely end if Mexico were to cut off diplomatic ties.
Just last April, Mexico warned Israel about its refusal to arrest Zeron.
“The lack of progress in resolving this case is interpreted as de facto protection of Tomas Zeron by the Israeli government and threatens to become an irritating and disruptive factor,” the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote in a statement.
Still, Ibanez suspects progress will ultimately be made in neither case – not for Ayotzinapa, not for Gaza.
“Poor Palestine, poor Ayotzinapa. I really don’t think anything is going to get better,” he said.
Kurdistan
The Historic Ties between Israel and the Kurds of Iraq Will Continue
Iraq was one of five Arab countries that participated in the war against the newly created Jewish state in 1948. The war ended in 1949 with the United Nations brokering armistice agreements, a series of ceasefire agreements signed by all warring states except Iraq.
The Iraqi army participated in two more significant wars (in 1967 and 1973) against Israel and was defeated in both. Hence, technically, Iraq and Israel are still in a state of war and have no official diplomatic ties. This begs the question of why, in May 2022, the Iraqi Parliament passed a law that threatens the death penalty or life imprisonment for any Iraqi citizen, company, or institution that attempts any kind of normalization with Israel or Israelis. It is worth noting that this law applies to Iraqis as well as foreign companies and individuals operating in Iraq.
One of the key provisions of this law, titled “Criminalizing Normalization and Establishment of Relations with the Zionist Entity,” punishes any political, security, economic, technical, cultural, sports, and scientific cooperation with Israel and Israelis under any circumstances.
Undoubtedly, the timing of the law has to do with several factors, one of which is the Abraham Accords, which have changed the geopolitical landscape by offering the opportunities and enormous benefits that come with normalization. The younger generation, in particular, is well-aware that the Abraham Accords are creating jobs and fostering a stronger financial future.
On a societal level, the Abraham Accords have also broken decades-long hatred and hysteria over “Israel, the enemy.” They are changing public opinion through dialogue and mutual understanding to deepen and expand people-to-people connections.
In September 2021, Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, hosted a conference on normalizing relations with Israel. Some 300 influential people, including Iraqi Arab tribal leaders and lawmakers, attended. The conference came as two Arab countries, the UAE and Bahrain, were establishing ties with Israel, and Morocco and Sudan declared they would join the Abraham Accords.
The success of the Abraham Accords set off alarms with the mullahs of Iran. The prospect of the Abraham Accords’ expansion is undoubtedly one of Iran’s biggest fears. With the Iraqi government under the influence of Iran, it will do everything possible to prevent Iraq from becoming the next country to join.
Himdad Mustafa, an independent researcher based in Erbil, to whom the law would be applied, noted: “When 300 people gathered in Erbil calling for peace and normalization with Israel, the Iraqi government immediately passed a law criminalizing ties with Israel and Israelis. The law is clearly aimed at Kurds.”1
Shortly after the Erbil conference, the Iraqi government and several Shia militia groups released statements calling those who participated in the conference “traitors” and for the places where “traitors” and “evil bases” are located to be burned down.
Qais Al-Khazali, secretary-general of Asaib Ahl al-Hag (Coordination Framework), a powerful Iranian-backed Shia militia, slammed the conference as “disgraceful.” He called on the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to take action and slammed Kurdish officials for claiming they were not aware of the conference. The anti-Israel/antisemitic Al-Khazali posted a statement on his Twitter account on September 25, 2021, saying that “the Islamic opposition will not remain quiet about this great betrayal, and that we will give the Israeli enemy and those who have normalized ties with them a lesson that will stop all others who are thinking of normalization.”
The Iraqi parliament, which failed to form a unified and functional government since the fall of the decades-old regime of the feared dictator Saddam Hussain 20 years ago, finally managed to reach a consensus, with 275 lawmakers out of 329 voting in favor of the anti-Israel law. It is worth noting that Iraq’s current prime minister, Mohammed Al-Sudani, was nominated to the post thanks to the Iran-backed Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, the largest parliamentary bloc.
This is the same parliament that failed to address Iraq’s many socio-economic challenges and introduce policies that would improve the lives of millions of ordinary Iraqis who live in poverty. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, close to 3.2 million school-aged children are out of school, with the Iraqi Parliament allocating less than 6 percent of its national budget to the education sector, placing Iraq at the bottom rank of the Middle East countries.4 In addition, in 2022, Iraq’s public sector was ranked as the 23rd most corrupt in the world.5 The situation has prompted nationwide protests in recent years, particularly among youth frustrated with the lack of employment opportunities. The unemployment rate for this group reached a high of 34.6 percent in 2022.6
Moreover, Kurdish lawmakers voted in favor of this anti-Israel law. It might seem paradoxical that Kurds supported such a law against Israel, the only country in the world that supported the 2017 Kurdish independence referendum. Arafat Karam, an advisor to Masoud Barzani, the architect of the independence referendum, explained, “I predict the anti-Israel law will further deepen the rift between Baghdad and Erbil. The Kurds’ votes favoring the law does not mean that Erbil was joining the chorus against Israel.”7 In short, a yes-decision was taken due to political pressures.
Kurdish-Israeli Ties and the Fear of a “Second Israel”
In 1966, the then-Iraqi defense minister, Abd al-Aziz al-Uqayali, blamed the Kurds of Iraq for seeking to establish a “second Israel” in the region. Fifty-seven years later, the term “second Israel” is still perpetuated, claiming Kurdistan is imitating “Yahudistan,” meaning the land of the Jews or Israel.
Professor Ofra Bengio, head of the Kurdish studies program at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, said that “the linkages and parallels are intended to demonize and delegitimize both Jews and Kurds, while also implying illegitimate relations between them.”
Going back a century, Iraq was home to a vibrant Jewish community. In June 1941, Haj Amin al Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, incited an antisemitic pogrom in Iraq called the “Farhud,” when Arab nationalists looted Jewish businesses and brutally killed hundreds of Jews. Most Jews left Iraq by 1951, and discriminative policies and persecution targeted those who remained. Here, the Kurds played an important role: the Kurdish region became the only escape route for thousands of Jews, who were assisted by the Kurds to escape Iraq. The Jews who fled in the late 1960s recounted how Masoud Barzani, the son of Mulla Mustafa Barzani, who later became the president of KRG in 2005, personally helped smuggle them out over the mountains.
Professor Bengio writes that Kurdish Jews “became excellent ambassadors for the Kurds of Iraq, publicizing and pleading their cause among the Israeli public. For example, following the crushing of the 1991 Kurdish uprising by Saddam Hussein, the Kurdish community in Israel, estimated then at 100,000, organized a massive relief operation for Iraqi Kurds. They also staged demonstrations in front of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and called on the U.S. to protect the Kurds from Saddam.”9
Iraq’s Kurds also fit into the plans of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. His “Periphery Doctrine” sought alliances and friendly ties with non-Arab states in the periphery of the Middle East, including Turkey, Iran (a strong coalition partner that lasted until the Shah’s overthrow in 1979), Ethiopia, and also ethnic and religious minorities, like the Kurds and the Maronites in Lebanon, with whom Israel maintained a discreet relationship since the late 1950s.
The strengthening of ties between Israel and the Kurds of Iraq commenced with the outbreak of the Kurdish rebellion, also known as the Barzani rebellion against the Iraqi regime, which lasted from 1961 until 1970. The uprising was led by the much-loved, legendary Kurdish leader Mulla Mustafa Barzani in an attempt to establish an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq.
Turning to Israel for Help
The Kurdish rebellion faced serious challenges, and Mulla Mustafa asked the Israelis for help. As a result, a Kurdish team traveled to Israel and met with then-Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and Shimon Peres, then the head of the Labor Party. The visit resulted in Israel deploying an Israeli team to Iraqi Kurdistan with Reuven Shiloah, one of the first Israeli contacts there, who later became the director of the Mossad.
The relationship was conducted with a high level of secrecy, and it would deepen and expand following the Six-Day War of 1967, in which Arabs armies, including the Iraqi military, suffered a humiliating defeat by the Israeli army. Mulla Mustafa visited Israel at least two times (in 1968 and 1973), meeting with Prime Minister Eshkol and high-level Israeli officials from the Intelligence community.
Mulla Mostafa’s son, Masoud, and other Iraqi Kurdish leaders repeatedly visited Israel over the decades. Israeli officials also frequently visited the Kurdish region, and the Mossad reportedly set up bases in Kurdistan during the 1960s and 1970s.
Brig.-Gen. Tzuri Sagi was one of the first Israeli Mossad operatives to arrive in Kurdistan in 1965 to train Peshmerga fighters. Sagi stayed for about two years and had regular meetings with Mulla Mostafa. In an article published in the New York Times (September 29, 2017), Sagi expressed his love for the Kurdish people: “I became a patriotic Kurd,” saying many Israeli soldiers and Mossad operatives shared similar sentiments toward the Kurds of Iraq.
It is essential to highlight that, at first, the Israeli aid involved humanitarian assistance, building field hospitals and training Peshmerga fighters, but supplying them with no heavy weaponry. Later, Israel started providing the Kurds with significant amounts of more advanced weaponry, such as anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, and training Peshmerga fighters in Israel.
Israelis also helped to bring the “Kurdish question” to Europe by financing awareness campaigns about the Kurds and their plight. The ties between the two friends continued with the first official acknowledgment on September 29, 1980, when Prime Minister Menachem Begin revealed that Israel supported the Kurds “during their uprising against the Iraqis in 1965-1975.”10
Since the fall of Saddam Hussain’s Ba’athist regime in 2003, the geopolitical context for Kurdish-Israeli ties has changed dramatically, with the Kurds establishing a de facto Kurdish state and renewing and deepening their relations with Israel. In 2005, the Kurdish president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Masoud Barzani, openly called for establishing diplomatic ties with Israel. In 2008, Iraq’s then-president Jalal Talabani and the head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) openly embraced Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak during a conference in Greece. This move upset Iraqi Arab lawmakers. Talabani responded by saying that he had done so in his capacity as a Kurd and as head of the PUK, not as president of Iraq.
There are also unverified reports that both Masoud Barzani and Talabani had meetings with the late Ariel Sharon in 2004, and it has also been reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already met with the current KRG President of Kurdistan, Nechirvan Barzani.
Win-Win Relationship
Israel also maintains economic ties with Kurdistan, purchasing Kurdish oil despite objections from Iraq’s central government in Baghdad. A report in the Financial Times discusses investments by many Israeli companies in energy, development sectors, and communications projects in Iraqi Kurdistan, in addition to providing security training and purchasing oil.11 Moreover, in a poll conducted in 2009 in Iraqi Kurdistan, 71% of Kurds supported normalization with Israel.12 The results are unsurprising since, historically, Israel has had cordial ties with the Kurds in a generally hostile region where Jews and Kurds have fought against the odds with the same Arab enemy in their struggles for a homeland.
For more than 100 years, Kurds have been the victims of “Arabization” campaigns of ethnic cleansing programs and genocides. As early as the 1930s, Iraq attempted to ethnically cleanse the Kurdish areas by resettling large numbers of Arabs. The ethnic cleansing peaked in Kurdish regions in Syria and Iraq following the rise of the Arab Ba’ath Party, a party whose ideology was hugely influenced by Nazi Germany under Hitler. The Ba’athists sought to achieve their grandiose plan of creating “one Arab nation” built on Arab ethnic purity. To achieve their aims, they embarked on a campaign to erase non-Arab minorities such as the Kurds and Assyrians. In the early 1960s, the Syrian government implemented the “Arab Belt Project,” which saw 1.4 million acres of Kurdish agricultural land given to Syrian Arab farmers. In the past decades alone, at least half a million Kurds have been murdered by the Syrian and Iraqi governments. The worse atrocities occurred in Iraq between 1988 and 1991, when more than 200,000 Kurds were killed, and Saddam’s Anfal campaigns destroyed more than 4,500 Kurdish villages.13 “Anfal” is a Koranic term adopted by Saddam to describe his program to eradicate the Kurds and loot their possessions. “Suratal-Anfal” means the spoils (of war).
Aso Qaderi, a Kurdish filmmaker, political activist, and former peshmerga fighter, said in an interview,
Kurds and Jews have a common history of genocides, repression, exile, and displacement. And our history and sacrifices are similar, and we were two nations that no one supported in all the suffering that has come upon us….Our relationships date back to the late 1950s; these relations have always been in the interests of both sides. Over the decades, these relationships have grown economically, culturally, commercially, socially, politically, and security-wise.14
Qaderi pointed out that more than 300,000 Kurds (mainly Jewish) now live in Israel and have played a pivotal role in influencing Israel’s policy and public opinion on the Kurdish question.
In reference to the anti-normalization law, like Mustafa Himdad, the Erbil researcher, Qaderi points a finger at Iran, saying this “law is an order from the Iranian regime and has been enacted through Iranian militia groups and proxies in Iraq.”15 But Qaderi firmly asserts that Iran and its proxies in the Iraqi government will not succeed in breaking the decades-old Kurdish-Israeli ties.
Most Iraqis, including Arab Iraqis, are well aware that this law is just a propaganda tool enacted for domestic consumption. When the law came into force, the influential Shia cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr posted a tweet praising it as a “great achievement” and called on his followers to come out to the streets to celebrate. Yet only a few hundred responded to his call and gathered in downtown Baghdad to chant anti-Israel slogans.
Qaderi continued: “This law has no value for the Iraqi people. Even some Iraqi Arab leaders have ties to Israel.”16 “For us Kurds, it is business as usual – Kurds will maintain their relations with Israel diplomatically and politically.”17
Israel – The Only Country to Back Kurdish Statehood
The late Masoud Barzani, then president of the KRG, like his father Mulla Mostafa, the iconic leader of Kurdish nationalism, dreamed of establishing a homeland for the Kurds of Iraq. On September 25, 2017, he backed holding the Kurdish Independence Referendum. An overwhelming 92.73% of Kurds voted in favor of independence. Masoud had hoped to use the overwhelming “yes” vote as political leverage to open the path for negotiating independence from Iraq.
But the move was met with hostility from international allies and regional foes except for one country, Israel. The Jewish state was the only country in the world to endorse an independent Kurdish state. Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “(Israel) supports the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to achieve their own state.”
A month later, on October 20, 2017, tens of thousands of Iraqi troops and Hashd Al-Shaabi (“Popular Mobilization Forces”), an Iraqi Shia armed militia backed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and other proxy IRGC-backed militias, launched an offensive against the Kurdish region and were about to advance towards Erbil. The Shia Arab Iraqis, with the support of Iran, launched their attack to eliminate the political integrity of the autonomous Kurdish region.
However, Kurdish fighters from Syria and Iran joined Peshmerga forces from Iraqi Kurdistan. Together they were able to defeat the attackers and stop them from progressing. The General Directorate of Counterterrorism in the Kurdistan Region wrote: “The Pirde [Peshmerga base] epic is a symbol of the steadfastness of the people of Kurdistan, and a failure of a hostile scheme….October 20, 2017, was the day when the Kurdish people and the Kurdistan Region regained their dignity, and it was a graveyard for enemies.”18
Back in the 1960s, Israel was the only country that came to the aid of Iraqi Kurds, and decades later, it was again the only country that openly supported the Kurdish right to independence. As a result, waving Israeli flags became a frequent occurrence in the Kurdish region and a symbol of unity between Jews and Kurds.
In late 2017, the Iraqi parliament passed a law making flying an Israeli flag publicly a criminal act. However, that did not stop many Iraqi Kurds, especially young people, from feeling close to the Jewish state.
The Iranian regime, through its proxies in the Iraqi government, is the most significant source of Kurd-phobia in Iraq and the driving factor fueling tensions. In addition to their explicit threat to Israel, Iranian officials frequently threaten the Kurdish region, and repeatedly accuse the Kurds of working with Israel. The accusations include identifying and arresting “a network of agents of the Zionist regime’s spy organization (Mossad)” entering Iran through the Kurdish region to carry out attacks. The IRGC has launched ballistic missiles toward Erbil under the pretext they are targeting secret Israeli military bases.
As recently as May 21, 2023, Iran’s Intelligence and Security Minister Esmail Khatib claimed that Iranian security forces had detained several Kurdish-Iraqi spies cooperating with Israel “that tried to cross the western borders of Iran.” He warned, “If insecurity is created for the Islamic Republic, any action on the borders will be met with a decisive and overwhelming response.”19
If Kurds ever have their own independent state, they most definitely would join the Abraham Accords. However, many challenges and obstacles remain for this to happen. Kurds will continue their long-standing ties with Israel, but for now, these ties will remain “covert” due to the fear of Tehran and its loyalist supporters within the Iraqi government.
Israel’s hands are also tied due to a lack of interest or commitment by the American administration to an independent Kurdish area in northern Iraq. Americans and their allies often emphasize the territorial integrity of the Iraqi state, neglecting to mention that an overwhelming majority of Kurds reject being part of the illusory state of Iraq.
Iraq was one of five Arab countries that participated in the war against the newly created Jewish state in 1948. The war ended in 1949 with the United Nations brokering armistice agreements, a series of ceasefire agreements signed by all warring states except Iraq.
The Iraqi army participated in two more significant wars (in 1967 and 1973) against Israel and was defeated in both. Hence, technically, Iraq and Israel are still in a state of war and have no official diplomatic ties. This begs the question of why, in May 2022, the Iraqi Parliament passed a law that threatens the death penalty or life imprisonment for any Iraqi citizen, company, or institution that attempts any kind of normalization with Israel or Israelis. It is worth noting that this law applies to Iraqis as well as foreign companies and individuals operating in Iraq.
One of the key provisions of this law, titled “Criminalizing Normalization and Establishment of Relations with the Zionist Entity,” punishes any political, security, economic, technical, cultural, sports, and scientific cooperation with Israel and Israelis under any circumstances.
Undoubtedly, the timing of the law has to do with several factors, one of which is the Abraham Accords, which have changed the geopolitical landscape by offering the opportunities and enormous benefits that come with normalization. The younger generation, in particular, is well-aware that the Abraham Accords are creating jobs and fostering a stronger financial future.
On a societal level, the Abraham Accords have also broken decades-long hatred and hysteria over “Israel, the enemy.” They are changing public opinion through dialogue and mutual understanding to deepen and expand people-to-people connections.
In September 2021, Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, hosted a conference on normalizing relations with Israel. Some 300 influential people, including Iraqi Arab tribal leaders and lawmakers, attended. The conference came as two Arab countries, the UAE and Bahrain, were establishing ties with Israel, and Morocco and Sudan declared they would join the Abraham Accords.
The success of the Abraham Accords set off alarms with the mullahs of Iran. The prospect of the Abraham Accords’ expansion is undoubtedly one of Iran’s biggest fears. With the Iraqi government under the influence of Iran, it will do everything possible to prevent Iraq from becoming the next country to join.
Himdad Mustafa, an independent researcher based in Erbil, to whom the law would be applied, noted: “When 300 people gathered in Erbil calling for peace and normalization with Israel, the Iraqi government immediately passed a law criminalizing ties with Israel and Israelis. The law is clearly aimed at Kurds.”1
Shortly after the Erbil conference, the Iraqi government and several Shia militia groups released statements calling those who participated in the conference “traitors” and for the places where “traitors” and “evil bases” are located to be burned down.
Qais Al-Khazali, secretary-general of Asaib Ahl al-Hag (Coordination Framework), a powerful Iranian-backed Shia militia, slammed the conference as “disgraceful.” He called on the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to take action and slammed Kurdish officials for claiming they were not aware of the conference. The anti-Israel/antisemitic Al-Khazali posted a statement on his Twitter account on September 25, 2021, saying that “the Islamic opposition will not remain quiet about this great betrayal, and that we will give the Israeli enemy and those who have normalized ties with them a lesson that will stop all others who are thinking of normalization.”
The Iraqi parliament, which failed to form a unified and functional government since the fall of the decades-old regime of the feared dictator Saddam Hussain 20 years ago, finally managed to reach a consensus, with 275 lawmakers out of 329 voting in favor of the anti-Israel law. It is worth noting that Iraq’s current prime minister, Mohammed Al-Sudani, was nominated to the post thanks to the Iran-backed Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, the largest parliamentary bloc.
This is the same parliament that failed to address Iraq’s many socio-economic challenges and introduce policies that would improve the lives of millions of ordinary Iraqis who live in poverty. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, close to 3.2 million school-aged children are out of school, with the Iraqi Parliament allocating less than 6 percent of its national budget to the education sector, placing Iraq at the bottom rank of the Middle East countries.4 In addition, in 2022, Iraq’s public sector was ranked as the 23rd most corrupt in the world.5 The situation has prompted nationwide protests in recent years, particularly among youth frustrated with the lack of employment opportunities. The unemployment rate for this group reached a high of 34.6 percent in 2022.6
Moreover, Kurdish lawmakers voted in favor of this anti-Israel law. It might seem paradoxical that Kurds supported such a law against Israel, the only country in the world that supported the 2017 Kurdish independence referendum. Arafat Karam, an advisor to Masoud Barzani, the architect of the independence referendum, explained, “I predict the anti-Israel law will further deepen the rift between Baghdad and Erbil. The Kurds’ votes favoring the law does not mean that Erbil was joining the chorus against Israel.”7 In short, a yes-decision was taken due to political pressures.
Kurdish-Israeli Ties and the Fear of a “Second Israel”
In 1966, the then-Iraqi defense minister, Abd al-Aziz al-Uqayali, blamed the Kurds of Iraq for seeking to establish a “second Israel” in the region. Fifty-seven years later, the term “second Israel” is still perpetuated, claiming Kurdistan is imitating “Yahudistan,” meaning the land of the Jews or Israel.
Professor Ofra Bengio, head of the Kurdish studies program at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, said that “the linkages and parallels are intended to demonize and delegitimize both Jews and Kurds, while also implying illegitimate relations between them.”
Going back a century, Iraq was home to a vibrant Jewish community. In June 1941, Haj Amin al Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, incited an antisemitic pogrom in Iraq called the “Farhud,” when Arab nationalists looted Jewish businesses and brutally killed hundreds of Jews. Most Jews left Iraq by 1951, and discriminative policies and persecution targeted those who remained. Here, the Kurds played an important role: the Kurdish region became the only escape route for thousands of Jews, who were assisted by the Kurds to escape Iraq. The Jews who fled in the late 1960s recounted how Masoud Barzani, the son of Mulla Mustafa Barzani, who later became the president of KRG in 2005, personally helped smuggle them out over the mountains.
Professor Bengio writes that Kurdish Jews “became excellent ambassadors for the Kurds of Iraq, publicizing and pleading their cause among the Israeli public. For example, following the crushing of the 1991 Kurdish uprising by Saddam Hussein, the Kurdish community in Israel, estimated then at 100,000, organized a massive relief operation for Iraqi Kurds. They also staged demonstrations in front of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and called on the U.S. to protect the Kurds from Saddam.”9
Iraq’s Kurds also fit into the plans of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. His “Periphery Doctrine” sought alliances and friendly ties with non-Arab states in the periphery of the Middle East, including Turkey, Iran (a strong coalition partner that lasted until the Shah’s overthrow in 1979), Ethiopia, and also ethnic and religious minorities, like the Kurds and the Maronites in Lebanon, with whom Israel maintained a discreet relationship since the late 1950s.
The strengthening of ties between Israel and the Kurds of Iraq commenced with the outbreak of the Kurdish rebellion, also known as the Barzani rebellion against the Iraqi regime, which lasted from 1961 until 1970. The uprising was led by the much-loved, legendary Kurdish leader Mulla Mustafa Barzani in an attempt to establish an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq.
Turning to Israel for Help
The Kurdish rebellion faced serious challenges, and Mulla Mustafa asked the Israelis for help. As a result, a Kurdish team traveled to Israel and met with then-Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and Shimon Peres, then the head of the Labor Party. The visit resulted in Israel deploying an Israeli team to Iraqi Kurdistan with Reuven Shiloah, one of the first Israeli contacts there, who later became the director of the Mossad.
The relationship was conducted with a high level of secrecy, and it would deepen and expand following the Six-Day War of 1967, in which Arabs armies, including the Iraqi military, suffered a humiliating defeat by the Israeli army. Mulla Mustafa visited Israel at least two times (in 1968 and 1973), meeting with Prime Minister Eshkol and high-level Israeli officials from the Intelligence community.
Mulla Mostafa’s son, Masoud, and other Iraqi Kurdish leaders repeatedly visited Israel over the decades. Israeli officials also frequently visited the Kurdish region, and the Mossad reportedly set up bases in Kurdistan during the 1960s and 1970s.
Brig.-Gen. Tzuri Sagi was one of the first Israeli Mossad operatives to arrive in Kurdistan in 1965 to train Peshmerga fighters. Sagi stayed for about two years and had regular meetings with Mulla Mostafa. In an article published in the New York Times (September 29, 2017), Sagi expressed his love for the Kurdish people: “I became a patriotic Kurd,” saying many Israeli soldiers and Mossad operatives shared similar sentiments toward the Kurds of Iraq.
It is essential to highlight that, at first, the Israeli aid involved humanitarian assistance, building field hospitals and training Peshmerga fighters, but supplying them with no heavy weaponry. Later, Israel started providing the Kurds with significant amounts of more advanced weaponry, such as anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, and training Peshmerga fighters in Israel.
Israelis also helped to bring the “Kurdish question” to Europe by financing awareness campaigns about the Kurds and their plight. The ties between the two friends continued with the first official acknowledgment on September 29, 1980, when Prime Minister Menachem Begin revealed that Israel supported the Kurds “during their uprising against the Iraqis in 1965-1975.”10
Since the fall of Saddam Hussain’s Ba’athist regime in 2003, the geopolitical context for Kurdish-Israeli ties has changed dramatically, with the Kurds establishing a de facto Kurdish state and renewing and deepening their relations with Israel. In 2005, the Kurdish president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Masoud Barzani, openly called for establishing diplomatic ties with Israel. In 2008, Iraq’s then-president Jalal Talabani and the head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) openly embraced Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak during a conference in Greece. This move upset Iraqi Arab lawmakers. Talabani responded by saying that he had done so in his capacity as a Kurd and as head of the PUK, not as president of Iraq.
There are also unverified reports that both Masoud Barzani and Talabani had meetings with the late Ariel Sharon in 2004, and it has also been reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already met with the current KRG President of Kurdistan, Nechirvan Barzani.
Win-Win Relationship
Israel also maintains economic ties with Kurdistan, purchasing Kurdish oil despite objections from Iraq’s central government in Baghdad. A report in the Financial Times discusses investments by many Israeli companies in energy, development sectors, and communications projects in Iraqi Kurdistan, in addition to providing security training and purchasing oil.11 Moreover, in a poll conducted in 2009 in Iraqi Kurdistan, 71% of Kurds supported normalization with Israel.12 The results are unsurprising since, historically, Israel has had cordial ties with the Kurds in a generally hostile region where Jews and Kurds have fought against the odds with the same Arab enemy in their struggles for a homeland.
For more than 100 years, Kurds have been the victims of “Arabization” campaigns of ethnic cleansing programs and genocides. As early as the 1930s, Iraq attempted to ethnically cleanse the Kurdish areas by resettling large numbers of Arabs. The ethnic cleansing peaked in Kurdish regions in Syria and Iraq following the rise of the Arab Ba’ath Party, a party whose ideology was hugely influenced by Nazi Germany under Hitler. The Ba’athists sought to achieve their grandiose plan of creating “one Arab nation” built on Arab ethnic purity. To achieve their aims, they embarked on a campaign to erase non-Arab minorities such as the Kurds and Assyrians. In the early 1960s, the Syrian government implemented the “Arab Belt Project,” which saw 1.4 million acres of Kurdish agricultural land given to Syrian Arab farmers. In the past decades alone, at least half a million Kurds have been murdered by the Syrian and Iraqi governments. The worse atrocities occurred in Iraq between 1988 and 1991, when more than 200,000 Kurds were killed, and Saddam’s Anfal campaigns destroyed more than 4,500 Kurdish villages.13 “Anfal” is a Koranic term adopted by Saddam to describe his program to eradicate the Kurds and loot their possessions. “Suratal-Anfal” means the spoils (of war).
Aso Qaderi, a Kurdish filmmaker, political activist, and former peshmerga fighter, said in an interview,
Kurds and Jews have a common history of genocides, repression, exile, and displacement. And our history and sacrifices are similar, and we were two nations that no one supported in all the suffering that has come upon us….Our relationships date back to the late 1950s; these relations have always been in the interests of both sides. Over the decades, these relationships have grown economically, culturally, commercially, socially, politically, and security-wise.14
Qaderi pointed out that more than 300,000 Kurds (mainly Jewish) now live in Israel and have played a pivotal role in influencing Israel’s policy and public opinion on the Kurdish question.
In reference to the anti-normalization law, like Mustafa Himdad, the Erbil researcher, Qaderi points a finger at Iran, saying this “law is an order from the Iranian regime and has been enacted through Iranian militia groups and proxies in Iraq.”15 But Qaderi firmly asserts that Iran and its proxies in the Iraqi government will not succeed in breaking the decades-old Kurdish-Israeli ties.
Most Iraqis, including Arab Iraqis, are well aware that this law is just a propaganda tool enacted for domestic consumption. When the law came into force, the influential Shia cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr posted a tweet praising it as a “great achievement” and called on his followers to come out to the streets to celebrate. Yet only a few hundred responded to his call and gathered in downtown Baghdad to chant anti-Israel slogans.
Qaderi continued: “This law has no value for the Iraqi people. Even some Iraqi Arab leaders have ties to Israel.”16 “For us Kurds, it is business as usual – Kurds will maintain their relations with Israel diplomatically and politically.”17
Israel – The Only Country to Back Kurdish Statehood
The late Masoud Barzani, then president of the KRG, like his father Mulla Mostafa, the iconic leader of Kurdish nationalism, dreamed of establishing a homeland for the Kurds of Iraq. On September 25, 2017, he backed holding the Kurdish Independence Referendum. An overwhelming 92.73% of Kurds voted in favor of independence. Masoud had hoped to use the overwhelming “yes” vote as political leverage to open the path for negotiating independence from Iraq.
But the move was met with hostility from international allies and regional foes except for one country, Israel. The Jewish state was the only country in the world to endorse an independent Kurdish state. Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “(Israel) supports the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to achieve their own state.”
A month later, on October 20, 2017, tens of thousands of Iraqi troops and Hashd Al-Shaabi (“Popular Mobilization Forces”), an Iraqi Shia armed militia backed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and other proxy IRGC-backed militias, launched an offensive against the Kurdish region and were about to advance towards Erbil. The Shia Arab Iraqis, with the support of Iran, launched their attack to eliminate the political integrity of the autonomous Kurdish region.
However, Kurdish fighters from Syria and Iran joined Peshmerga forces from Iraqi Kurdistan. Together they were able to defeat the attackers and stop them from progressing. The General Directorate of Counterterrorism in the Kurdistan Region wrote: “The Pirde [Peshmerga base] epic is a symbol of the steadfastness of the people of Kurdistan, and a failure of a hostile scheme….October 20, 2017, was the day when the Kurdish people and the Kurdistan Region regained their dignity, and it was a graveyard for enemies.”18
Back in the 1960s, Israel was the only country that came to the aid of Iraqi Kurds, and decades later, it was again the only country that openly supported the Kurdish right to independence. As a result, waving Israeli flags became a frequent occurrence in the Kurdish region and a symbol of unity between Jews and Kurds.
In late 2017, the Iraqi parliament passed a law making flying an Israeli flag publicly a criminal act. However, that did not stop many Iraqi Kurds, especially young people, from feeling close to the Jewish state.
The Iranian regime, through its proxies in the Iraqi government, is the most significant source of Kurd-phobia in Iraq and the driving factor fueling tensions. In addition to their explicit threat to Israel, Iranian officials frequently threaten the Kurdish region, and repeatedly accuse the Kurds of working with Israel. The accusations include identifying and arresting “a network of agents of the Zionist regime’s spy organization (Mossad)” entering Iran through the Kurdish region to carry out attacks. The IRGC has launched ballistic missiles toward Erbil under the pretext they are targeting secret Israeli military bases.
As recently as May 21, 2023, Iran’s Intelligence and Security Minister Esmail Khatib claimed that Iranian security forces had detained several Kurdish-Iraqi spies cooperating with Israel “that tried to cross the western borders of Iran.” He warned, “If insecurity is created for the Islamic Republic, any action on the borders will be met with a decisive and overwhelming response.”19
If Kurds ever have their own independent state, they most definitely would join the Abraham Accords. However, many challenges and obstacles remain for this to happen. Kurds will continue their long-standing ties with Israel, but for now, these ties will remain “covert” due to the fear of Tehran and its loyalist supporters within the Iraqi government.
Israel’s hands are also tied due to a lack of interest or commitment by the American administration to an independent Kurdish area in northern Iraq. Americans and their allies often emphasize the territorial integrity of the Iraqi state, neglecting to mention that an overwhelming majority of Kurds reject being part of the illusory state of Iraq.
Honduras
Honduras recalls ambassador to Israel over ‘serious humanitarian situation’ in Gaza
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Honduras became the latest Latin American country Friday to recall its ambassador to Israel for consultations on what it described as the “serious humanitarian situation” facing Palestinians in Gaza amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
“In the face of the serious humanitarian situation suffered by the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip, the government” has called envoy Roberto Martinez to Tegucigalpa “for consultations,” Honduran Foreign Minister Eduardo Enrique Reina said on X, formerly Twitter.
Honduras is the latest leftist-led Latin American government to take diplomatic steps to express its disapproval of Israel’s expanded offensive against Hamas in the wake of the October 7 massacres carried out by the Gaza-ruling terror group.
Bolivia’s government severed diplomatic relations with Israel on Tuesday, accusing it of carrying out “crimes against humanity” in Gaza. Chile and Colombia also recalled their own ambassadors to Israel as they criticized the Israeli offensive against Hamas terrorists.
In the massive onslaught last month, Palestinian terrorists stormed across the border into Israel under the cover of heavy rocket fire, killing 1,400 people and taking over 240 hostages into Gaza. Most of those slain were civilians at their homes and at a music festival.
The Palestinian death toll in the war has reached 9,227, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. The figures cannot be verified independently and are also believed to include terrorists and civilians killed by misfired rockets.
Reina told The Associated Press that recalling the ambassador was a way to draw attention to the civilian situation in Gaza and said the government decided to pull him out until the situation was clearer. Relations with Israel remain stable and Honduran diplomats and staff will remain in the embassy, he added.
He noted the main points of a recent United Nations resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire, respect for humanitarian law and to start a dialogue in search of peace.
“It is a position to say, in a way, that the situation of the innocent population concerns us,” Reina said
In 2021, Honduras moved its embassy to Jerusalem under then-president Juan Orlando Hernández, who is now awaiting trial on drug trafficking charges in the United States.
At the time, Honduras’ decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem was seen as an attempt by Hernández to curry favor with the Trump administration, which had moved the US embassy there in 2018. Honduras, which has a significant Evangelical Christian population, was the fourth country to move its embassy to Jerusalem, and has since been followed by Papua New Guinea.
Castro, a leftist, succeeded Hernández. Honduras’ first female president has tried to walk a line that aligns with other leftist governments in the hemisphere like Venezuela and Cuba, but without completely alienating the United States.
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Honduras became the latest Latin American country Friday to recall its ambassador to Israel for consultations on what it described as the “serious humanitarian situation” facing Palestinians in Gaza amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
“In the face of the serious humanitarian situation suffered by the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip, the government” has called envoy Roberto Martinez to Tegucigalpa “for consultations,” Honduran Foreign Minister Eduardo Enrique Reina said on X, formerly Twitter.
Honduras is the latest leftist-led Latin American government to take diplomatic steps to express its disapproval of Israel’s expanded offensive against Hamas in the wake of the October 7 massacres carried out by the Gaza-ruling terror group.
Bolivia’s government severed diplomatic relations with Israel on Tuesday, accusing it of carrying out “crimes against humanity” in Gaza. Chile and Colombia also recalled their own ambassadors to Israel as they criticized the Israeli offensive against Hamas terrorists.
In the massive onslaught last month, Palestinian terrorists stormed across the border into Israel under the cover of heavy rocket fire, killing 1,400 people and taking over 240 hostages into Gaza. Most of those slain were civilians at their homes and at a music festival.
The Palestinian death toll in the war has reached 9,227, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. The figures cannot be verified independently and are also believed to include terrorists and civilians killed by misfired rockets.
Reina told The Associated Press that recalling the ambassador was a way to draw attention to the civilian situation in Gaza and said the government decided to pull him out until the situation was clearer. Relations with Israel remain stable and Honduran diplomats and staff will remain in the embassy, he added.
He noted the main points of a recent United Nations resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire, respect for humanitarian law and to start a dialogue in search of peace.
“It is a position to say, in a way, that the situation of the innocent population concerns us,” Reina said
In 2021, Honduras moved its embassy to Jerusalem under then-president Juan Orlando Hernández, who is now awaiting trial on drug trafficking charges in the United States.
At the time, Honduras’ decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem was seen as an attempt by Hernández to curry favor with the Trump administration, which had moved the US embassy there in 2018. Honduras, which has a significant Evangelical Christian population, was the fourth country to move its embassy to Jerusalem, and has since been followed by Papua New Guinea.
Castro, a leftist, succeeded Hernández. Honduras’ first female president has tried to walk a line that aligns with other leftist governments in the hemisphere like Venezuela and Cuba, but without completely alienating the United States.
Turkmenistan
Israel cements ties to Turkmenistan on Iran's border
ASHGABAT, April 20 (Reuters) - Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen inaugurated a permanent embassy in the Central Asian nation of Turkmenistan on Thursday, establishing his country's closest diplomatic presence to Iran, as Israel seeks to strengthen ties to its arch-foe's neighbours.
Although the countries established diplomatic relations 30 years ago, there had only been a temporary Israeli mission in Ashgabat and predominantly Muslim Turkmenistan still has no embassy in Israel.
"I came to open an Israeli embassy 17 kilometres from the border with Iran, and to hold a series of meetings with the president and other officials," Cohen tweeted on Thursday.
In English remarks to Israeli reporters accompanying Cohen, his Turkmen counterpart, Rashid Meredov, described the embassy inauguration as "a very shining example of our friendship".
Cohen, who also met Turkmen President Serdar Berdymukhamedov, called his visit "historic" and said Israel's ties with Central Asia's "energy superpower" were of strategic importance.
"We intend to widen economic relations to include agriculture, water, technology and border defence," Cohen said in a video issued by Israel's Foreign Ministry. "No doubt both countries will benefit from the closer cooperation."
The gas-rich desert nation of six million has an official neutrality policy, avoiding membership in any political or military blocs. Its main economic partner is China, which buys the bulk of Turkmen gas exports.
Turkmenistan's trade with Iran is relatively small and the two countries had disputes about potentially large hydrocarbon deposits in the Caspian Sea.
Although all five Caspian littoral states signed a convention in 2018 settling such disputes, Tehran is yet to ratify the document - which also holds up Ashgabat's plans to build a pipeline across the sea to ship gas to Europe.
ASHGABAT, April 20 (Reuters) - Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen inaugurated a permanent embassy in the Central Asian nation of Turkmenistan on Thursday, establishing his country's closest diplomatic presence to Iran, as Israel seeks to strengthen ties to its arch-foe's neighbours.
Although the countries established diplomatic relations 30 years ago, there had only been a temporary Israeli mission in Ashgabat and predominantly Muslim Turkmenistan still has no embassy in Israel.
"I came to open an Israeli embassy 17 kilometres from the border with Iran, and to hold a series of meetings with the president and other officials," Cohen tweeted on Thursday.
In English remarks to Israeli reporters accompanying Cohen, his Turkmen counterpart, Rashid Meredov, described the embassy inauguration as "a very shining example of our friendship".
Cohen, who also met Turkmen President Serdar Berdymukhamedov, called his visit "historic" and said Israel's ties with Central Asia's "energy superpower" were of strategic importance.
"We intend to widen economic relations to include agriculture, water, technology and border defence," Cohen said in a video issued by Israel's Foreign Ministry. "No doubt both countries will benefit from the closer cooperation."
The gas-rich desert nation of six million has an official neutrality policy, avoiding membership in any political or military blocs. Its main economic partner is China, which buys the bulk of Turkmen gas exports.
Turkmenistan's trade with Iran is relatively small and the two countries had disputes about potentially large hydrocarbon deposits in the Caspian Sea.
Although all five Caspian littoral states signed a convention in 2018 settling such disputes, Tehran is yet to ratify the document - which also holds up Ashgabat's plans to build a pipeline across the sea to ship gas to Europe.
Hungary
‘Hungary is one of the few pro-Israel voices in Europe’
Simcha Rothman is a sitting member of the Israeli Knesset, representing the National Religious Party–Religious Zionism, part of the governing Netanyahu administration. He has been serving in the national legislature since 2021. Mr Rothman recently travelled to Budapest, Hungary to speak at the second International Pro-Israel Summit, hosted by the Center for Fundamental Rights.
***
As a European, as I was following the news about the Hamas–Israel war, in July I had the impression the Western mainstream media made it seem like a lasting long-term peace was close when the two sides were starting to meet in Doha, Qatar. Was that the case to you as an insider? Was there a real chance of a peace agreement back in July?
I think that you can never have a peace agreement with Hamas. And there were no talks on peace agreements with Hamas ever, because Hamas’ ideology is to kill all the Jews. You cannot have peace with this. There were talks about a hostage deal that, in my point of view, of course, Hamas said no to, as to every deal that was on the table. And that’s common knowledge. I have to say, as a representative of the state of Israel, I can tell you that if there was a deal on the table that Israel agreed to, Hamas always said no. However, if you ask me about the right approach, in Israel I am the constant voice that says that even negotiating with Hamas makes the deal go further away. You should never negotiate with Hamas.
And I think what we saw in the past few months is just that. We negotiated with Hamas through indirect negotiations to try to get a hostage deal. Hamas will always say no, it’s a waste of time. It’s better to apply more and more and more pressure, military-wise, and maybe get the people who are holding the hostages to run for their lives and ask for small deals. But there is one thing they should know. And that’s—now I return to the formal stance of Israel—that after the war, Hamas will not exist in Gaza. We cannot have 7 October all over again. No normal country will ever agree to have its citizens threatened the way Israel was. Anyone who wants to reach the peace and quiet in the neighbourhood that Israel does, has to eliminate the forces who work every day to eliminate peace and quiet.
‘I think that you can never have a peace agreement with Hamas, because Hamas’ ideology is to kill all the Jews’
In your speech at the International Pro-Israel Summit, you mentioned that militarily there have been some Israeli successes lately. Can you elaborate on that, what were those successes?
So we all heard about getting rid of Nasrallah, for which, believe it or not, we were applauded by many, many Arabs in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, all around the world, because Nasrallah and Hezbollah have killed way more Arabs than they killed Jews. They are a threat to peace. They fight.
So the fact that Nasrallah has been killed means the world is a better place now than when Nasrallah was in this world. But it’s not only Nasrallah. The operations that took place in Lebanon and are happening as we speak now are eliminating Iran’s most powerful proxy. The threat to Israel through Iran’s proxies is unbearable, and Israel is dealing with them one at a time. We dealt with Hamas, and we will continue. They’re still not finished. Now we are dealing with Hezbollah. We dealt with the Houthi, and we will not rest until Israel is safe.
During wartime, the popularity of national leaders often increases. Do you think that was the case for Prime Minister Netanyahu? Do you think that he has more support now than he had before the Hamas attack last year?
I think in the beginning there was a blowback against the government, because it happened under our watch, despite the fact that my party and myself, but not only my party and myself, but also the leadership in the government were trying to change the course of the state of Israel. For many years, the course of the state of Israel was towards appeasement and accepting terror as part of reality, which we shouldn’t have agreed to to begin with. So, people were furious in the beginning that this attack happened on our watch. But as time goes by, I think more and more people see that the approach that the coalition, the right-wing coalition leads towards this war is the right way. They see the people in the opposition; that if the leader of the opposition would get his way, we would have a ceasefire with Hezbollah, we wouldn’t have assassinated Nasrallah, and Hezbollah would still be a bigger threat. The fact that Benjamin Netanyahu and the right-wing coalition are in power now means that I think the course of the war is way better than it could be under any other government.
Of course, I would like to see more done. I waited for the entrance to Rafah for three months. The pressure from the outside was terrible. We withstood this pressure, but it took us time. I think we are on the right path. And I think the public, as recent polls show, the public sees it.
Do you believe the previous administration has some culpability in the attack happening?
I think that the main thing about responsibility is that people who were part of the problem and made it even worse, they just run away from responsibility while claiming that we are not taking responsibility. The current government takes responsibility and deals with the problem. Benny Gantz from the last government was the Minister of Defense for three out of the four years before the war. This did not start in one day. Hamas did not build its power in a year. Hamas people, workers from Gaza started to get into Israel during the last government. I think we can take responsibility for not stopping it or not stopping it fast enough, but we did not start it. And suddenly the people that were in charge disappear. So of course the government, the sitting government is responsible. We are responsible, first and foremost, for taking care of the problem. We want to make sure that when we are leaving office, when our term ends, hopefully in 2026, we will leave Israel in a safer place than when we got it. That is our commitment and currently that is what we do.
In your speech you also talked about an experience you had at the University of California, Berkeley. Can you talk about that? And maybe can you contrast it with the reception you receive in Hungary?
In Berkeley, I was invited to speak there by the Federalist Society, which is a conservative group of lawyers and students in the US. And I was, of course, very happy for the invitation and to come, because the people that are of conservative legal thinking in Berkeley are in the minority and anything I can do to help them, I will do. As, I would say, expected, both the pro-Hamas mob—I would not say pro-Palestinian because it does not help the Palestinians what they do—from the far left in the US, together, sadly I must say, with the Israeli left, tried to stop me. But the people who were more violent were the pro-Hamas mob. They shut down the conversations, they pulled the fire alarm, they evacuated the entire building. But of course we continued. I met later with the students who wanted to hear from me in a different location. We had the conversations that we wanted to have to begin with.
Of course, in Hungary, the welcome and the love that the state of Israel gets are very different. So is the intolerance of the intolerance, which is the most important thing, because you don’t have to agree with everything I say, no one has to agree with everything I say, but the fact is that you are not tolerating intolerance. If you are not letting the violent people enjoy their free speech, like it happened in Berkeley, you are preventing the freedom of speech of the people who were not violent, that’s the main problem. And I think on that issue, Hungary got it right. It should not be tolerant of this intolerant mob.
‘In Hungary, the welcome and the love that the state of Israel gets are very different’
In terms of foreign policy, do you think the Orbán government has been effective in supporting Israel?
Of course, considering the support to Israel, in terms of votes and within the EU establishment, and all around, I believe Hungary is a great friend to Israel and Prime Minister Orbán is a great friend to Israel.
We, of course, appreciate what has been done. We are looking forward to the future. And we think that as many people here said, we have a lot to learn from each other, and we have a lot to benefit from this alliance. The fact that Hungary is one of the very few pro-Israel voices in the European continent and in the EU is something that we need to work on because, as we see in many places, if you are the enemy of Israel, you’re the enemy of the Jews, and you are the enemy of free speech and free thought all around the world. That’s why it’s important for everyone who wants to continue and live in this world to join forces and make sure that the right kind of approach wins. We will win elections all around Europe and get the right kind of ideologies in power that, again, do not tolerate the intolerance of the woke establishment.
Simcha Rothman is a sitting member of the Israeli Knesset, representing the National Religious Party–Religious Zionism, part of the governing Netanyahu administration. He has been serving in the national legislature since 2021. Mr Rothman recently travelled to Budapest, Hungary to speak at the second International Pro-Israel Summit, hosted by the Center for Fundamental Rights.
***
As a European, as I was following the news about the Hamas–Israel war, in July I had the impression the Western mainstream media made it seem like a lasting long-term peace was close when the two sides were starting to meet in Doha, Qatar. Was that the case to you as an insider? Was there a real chance of a peace agreement back in July?
I think that you can never have a peace agreement with Hamas. And there were no talks on peace agreements with Hamas ever, because Hamas’ ideology is to kill all the Jews. You cannot have peace with this. There were talks about a hostage deal that, in my point of view, of course, Hamas said no to, as to every deal that was on the table. And that’s common knowledge. I have to say, as a representative of the state of Israel, I can tell you that if there was a deal on the table that Israel agreed to, Hamas always said no. However, if you ask me about the right approach, in Israel I am the constant voice that says that even negotiating with Hamas makes the deal go further away. You should never negotiate with Hamas.
And I think what we saw in the past few months is just that. We negotiated with Hamas through indirect negotiations to try to get a hostage deal. Hamas will always say no, it’s a waste of time. It’s better to apply more and more and more pressure, military-wise, and maybe get the people who are holding the hostages to run for their lives and ask for small deals. But there is one thing they should know. And that’s—now I return to the formal stance of Israel—that after the war, Hamas will not exist in Gaza. We cannot have 7 October all over again. No normal country will ever agree to have its citizens threatened the way Israel was. Anyone who wants to reach the peace and quiet in the neighbourhood that Israel does, has to eliminate the forces who work every day to eliminate peace and quiet.
‘I think that you can never have a peace agreement with Hamas, because Hamas’ ideology is to kill all the Jews’
In your speech at the International Pro-Israel Summit, you mentioned that militarily there have been some Israeli successes lately. Can you elaborate on that, what were those successes?
So we all heard about getting rid of Nasrallah, for which, believe it or not, we were applauded by many, many Arabs in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, all around the world, because Nasrallah and Hezbollah have killed way more Arabs than they killed Jews. They are a threat to peace. They fight.
So the fact that Nasrallah has been killed means the world is a better place now than when Nasrallah was in this world. But it’s not only Nasrallah. The operations that took place in Lebanon and are happening as we speak now are eliminating Iran’s most powerful proxy. The threat to Israel through Iran’s proxies is unbearable, and Israel is dealing with them one at a time. We dealt with Hamas, and we will continue. They’re still not finished. Now we are dealing with Hezbollah. We dealt with the Houthi, and we will not rest until Israel is safe.
During wartime, the popularity of national leaders often increases. Do you think that was the case for Prime Minister Netanyahu? Do you think that he has more support now than he had before the Hamas attack last year?
I think in the beginning there was a blowback against the government, because it happened under our watch, despite the fact that my party and myself, but not only my party and myself, but also the leadership in the government were trying to change the course of the state of Israel. For many years, the course of the state of Israel was towards appeasement and accepting terror as part of reality, which we shouldn’t have agreed to to begin with. So, people were furious in the beginning that this attack happened on our watch. But as time goes by, I think more and more people see that the approach that the coalition, the right-wing coalition leads towards this war is the right way. They see the people in the opposition; that if the leader of the opposition would get his way, we would have a ceasefire with Hezbollah, we wouldn’t have assassinated Nasrallah, and Hezbollah would still be a bigger threat. The fact that Benjamin Netanyahu and the right-wing coalition are in power now means that I think the course of the war is way better than it could be under any other government.
Of course, I would like to see more done. I waited for the entrance to Rafah for three months. The pressure from the outside was terrible. We withstood this pressure, but it took us time. I think we are on the right path. And I think the public, as recent polls show, the public sees it.
Do you believe the previous administration has some culpability in the attack happening?
I think that the main thing about responsibility is that people who were part of the problem and made it even worse, they just run away from responsibility while claiming that we are not taking responsibility. The current government takes responsibility and deals with the problem. Benny Gantz from the last government was the Minister of Defense for three out of the four years before the war. This did not start in one day. Hamas did not build its power in a year. Hamas people, workers from Gaza started to get into Israel during the last government. I think we can take responsibility for not stopping it or not stopping it fast enough, but we did not start it. And suddenly the people that were in charge disappear. So of course the government, the sitting government is responsible. We are responsible, first and foremost, for taking care of the problem. We want to make sure that when we are leaving office, when our term ends, hopefully in 2026, we will leave Israel in a safer place than when we got it. That is our commitment and currently that is what we do.
In your speech you also talked about an experience you had at the University of California, Berkeley. Can you talk about that? And maybe can you contrast it with the reception you receive in Hungary?
In Berkeley, I was invited to speak there by the Federalist Society, which is a conservative group of lawyers and students in the US. And I was, of course, very happy for the invitation and to come, because the people that are of conservative legal thinking in Berkeley are in the minority and anything I can do to help them, I will do. As, I would say, expected, both the pro-Hamas mob—I would not say pro-Palestinian because it does not help the Palestinians what they do—from the far left in the US, together, sadly I must say, with the Israeli left, tried to stop me. But the people who were more violent were the pro-Hamas mob. They shut down the conversations, they pulled the fire alarm, they evacuated the entire building. But of course we continued. I met later with the students who wanted to hear from me in a different location. We had the conversations that we wanted to have to begin with.
Of course, in Hungary, the welcome and the love that the state of Israel gets are very different. So is the intolerance of the intolerance, which is the most important thing, because you don’t have to agree with everything I say, no one has to agree with everything I say, but the fact is that you are not tolerating intolerance. If you are not letting the violent people enjoy their free speech, like it happened in Berkeley, you are preventing the freedom of speech of the people who were not violent, that’s the main problem. And I think on that issue, Hungary got it right. It should not be tolerant of this intolerant mob.
‘In Hungary, the welcome and the love that the state of Israel gets are very different’
In terms of foreign policy, do you think the Orbán government has been effective in supporting Israel?
Of course, considering the support to Israel, in terms of votes and within the EU establishment, and all around, I believe Hungary is a great friend to Israel and Prime Minister Orbán is a great friend to Israel.
We, of course, appreciate what has been done. We are looking forward to the future. And we think that as many people here said, we have a lot to learn from each other, and we have a lot to benefit from this alliance. The fact that Hungary is one of the very few pro-Israel voices in the European continent and in the EU is something that we need to work on because, as we see in many places, if you are the enemy of Israel, you’re the enemy of the Jews, and you are the enemy of free speech and free thought all around the world. That’s why it’s important for everyone who wants to continue and live in this world to join forces and make sure that the right kind of approach wins. We will win elections all around Europe and get the right kind of ideologies in power that, again, do not tolerate the intolerance of the woke establishment.
Canada
Canada’s move away from Jewish state is ‘lamentable,’ says Israeli envoy
Israel's ambassador to Canada talks with JNS about the rise in antisemitism in the northern country, and Ottawa's move away from the Jewish state in the aftermath of Oct. 7, 2023.
In a sit-down with JNS at the Israeli embassy in Ottawa on Tuesday, Iddo Moed, Israel’s ambassador to Canada and top diplomatic representative in the country, discussed the rise in antisemitism in the country, as what he said was a concerning change of stance in Canadian policy towards the Jewish state.
Q: What are your thoughts on how Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has responded to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 terrorist attacks?
A: Trudeau has been very consistent. He said a few things that are very important for Israel. First, he reiterated Israel’s right to exist and its right to defend itself, calling for the release of all hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. He called for Hamas to lay down its weapons while making sure that Canada doesn’t see Hamas as part of the solution or the future of Gaza. At the same time, we saw a few things that are concerning to us, because of the very good relations we have with Canada and because of the shared values that were and still are at the foundation of our bilateral relations.
The shipment of goods that require export permits has been put under suspension, which we feel is a de facto embargo impeding not just the bilateral trade between our two countries but also the collaboration between Israeli and Canadian companies in the area of technology. This is lamentable.
[In September, Canada revealed that it had canceled around 30 existing permits for arms shipments to Israel, including a deal with the Canadian division of a U.S. defense contractor. The exports had been approved before January when Ottawa announced a ban on new sales of arms that could be used by the Israel Defense Forces in the war against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip.]
We also see in international organizations that Canada, which had a very clear policy of not allowing Israel to be singled out, has changed its policy in such a significant manner that at some point in time Hamas commended Canada for this stance.
[Last year, Trudeau received the equivalent of a high five from Hamas after Canada’s affirmative U.N. vote on Dec. 12 supporting an “immediate sustainable ceasefire” in Israel’s war against the terror group. In a five-minute English-language video statement posted on Dec. 18, Ghazi Hamad, a senior leader of the terror group, praised Canada, Australia and New Zealand by name.]
Most importantly, what is really concerning to us is the rise of antisemitism to levels that are not only unprecedented but go way beyond what people say and our disagreement within society. It’s the violent, intimidating, aggressive approach to Jewish institutions, Jewish communities, individuals—be it on universities and campuses or synagogues and schools being shot at.
What I’m hearing from the Jewish community is that they don’t feel secure. Even if the prime minister says that glorifying terrorism is not acceptable, there were talks of potentially holding a ceremony to glorify [slain Hamas leader] Yahya Sinwar by an organization condoned by the mayor [of Mississauga] and ahead of which the mayor herself went as far as to say Sinwar could be compared to Nelson Mandela.
Yahya Sinwar was responsible for the worst atrocities against the Jewish people since the Second World War. He is only comparable to Adolf Hitler. He cannot be compared to any kind of freedom fighter or anything else. His goal was to eliminate the State of Israel and kill as many Israelis as he could, Jews and non-Jews.
These are the very concerning developments in Canada. We’ve seen what happened on the streets of Amsterdam, and I think the Jewish community looks at the aggression here, the intimidation and the atmosphere, and they are very concerned. I can understand where they are coming from.
For the State of Israel, the relationship with the Jewish community is extremely important, and it’s also important for our bilateral relations. The Jewish community’s concern and support for Israel has always been part and parcel of the relationship between our two countries.
When the Jews feel uncomfortable or insecure, this is something that we also project to the leadership directly. The phenomenon of the rise of antisemitism, especially in Canada, which already accepted the international definition of antisemitism, the fact that antisemitism is growing and is so prevalent here is a great source of concern for us.
It’s happening under the current government and we share those concerns with them. We do whatever we can to develop programs to mitigate that, be it connecting law enforcement agencies in Israel and Canada, police forces, just to share with them our vision of combating antisemitism, experience, best practices and the like. We also connect Yad Vashem as an education resource with people who are interested in that here in Canada, and most importantly we point to areas where we think that a serious source of concern is coming up. We try to flag it and propose actions that involve Israeli contribution.
Q: What was your reaction to the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant?
A: I was shocked like many others at the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue those arrest warrants. [ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim] Khan’s request has no foundation and this decision has no merit and no jurisdiction. The court only has political motivation to come up with this legal mechanism that has been abused for the sake of attacking and isolating israel. Israel has a robust legal system proven to be able to address any issue at any level.
Neither Israel nor the Palestinians are members of the court.
I am disappointed. I have been speaking to legal experts who expressed their dismay, shock and disbelief that an international organ that is supposed to uphold international law has gone so far as to play an activist role against Israel, a country under attack and that is defending itself in accordance with international law.
At the end of the day, we see it as an attack not on our government and not on our democratically elected leader, we see it as an assault against Israel and its right to defend itself.
Q: What did you think of Canada voting on Nov. 20 in favor of U.N. General Assembly draft resolutions condemning Israeli settlements?
A: The resolutions Canada voted for have not changed anything. Canada’s change of position is lamentable. Canada supports Israel, we know that. We lament this change, which may reflect the image that Canada actually supports this activism against Israel and does not support the Jewish state at a time when it is defending itself against an assault by Iran and its proxies on seven fronts.
The U.N. has not been able to resolve any outstanding issues in the Middle East. It has only served those who aim to attack Israel again and again, and isolate it politically. It does not bring any peaceful resolution of the conflict.
Therefore it’s lamentable that Canada has joined this chorus of countries that play in the hands of extremist terrorists and the Iranian regime against Israel.
Q: Do you currently have ongoing projects meant to strengthen the link between the Israeli people and the Jewish community in Canada?
A: There are a lot of organizations that are very active. We don’t need to create something new. We strengthen what is already happening. We are present at festivities and milestones, and we’re behind the scenes talking to the leadership, the federations all around Canada and talking to specific organizations on specific issues—be it combating antisemitism, strengthening Jewish identity, strengthening solidarity with other communities and dialogue. There are a lot of areas where we try to support the existing collaboration or point at new initiatives but we don’t see the need to create new channels.
Our role is to strengthen it, be there and make sure the Jewish community sees us as part of the connection with the State of Israel, not just through the organizations but as the official representative of the State of Israel here in Canada. They need to see our presence, feel us, hear us, be there together. Having a physical presence is a very important aspect of the work that we do.
Q: Could you speak of the rise of antisemitism on campuses in Canada?
A: Antisemitism on campuses is very worrying. Just lately we have seen some very odd developments including Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur for the West Bank, a self-declared antisemite who was not received by any government official in Canada, speaking on campus. We saw [former Israeli government spokesman] Eylon Levy chased out of another university and Hassan Diab, a convicted terrorist, teaching at a university here in Ottawa without any trouble, and many other instances that are concerning.
[According to a report released in September by antisemitism watchdog Canary Mission, nearly 250 people, including 153 professors, 19 students and 76 others, took part in or endorsed a nearly two-month-long anti-Israel encampment that began on the University of Toronto campus in early May. Of the 153 faculty members, 122 were professors at the public school and 31 were on faculty at other institutions, per the report.]
Even if we don’t see the encampments, the vile antisemitic, anti-Israel sentiment is there, and since campuses are our future we have to make sure that younger people have a broader understanding of what we’re talking about when we talk about antisemitism and bring issues into perspective. They need to get their news sources right. Much of the social media and the information spreading there is causing them to believe in some of the craziest things, and that’s another area where much needs to be done.
Q: At the entrance to the embassy, there are posters of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Could you talk about your relationship with the families of the hostages?
A: The daughter of [Hamas captive] Judy Weinstein was here a few days ago. She met with politicians here on the hill. We supported that, and we also carry on her work. She was here to remind the world that her mother was murdered on Oct. 7 and her body abducted to Gaza, and that it needs to be brought back. She’s one of the eight Canadian casualties in this war. We, of course, stay in touch with them, either here in Ottawa or through our offices in Montreal and Toronto.
We keep in touch with the families. We try to involve them as much as we can in our activities and reach out to them but also call on the broader community not to forget, to remember the kids, the Bibas kids who I’m wearing an orange tie for, and remember that we have to call for their release. Israel will not stop the war in Gaza until we get our hostages back. Nobody in Israel can truly rest until they are home.
We see the Jewish community very much involved in that. It’s very easy to continue with our lives and say that ‘it’s important, but there are a whole lot of other things.’ We can’t do that, we can’t say that what happened 410 days ago is history. That day is still happening for the families in Israel who relive it every hour. We have to remember as a people that we don’t forget anyone and we don’t leave anybody behind. We want them back. We want them home.
We ask the Canadian government to do whatever they can. We repeat that in our meetings at the highest levels, and we want to make sure that people remember that they are still there, that they need to come home and that we need to do everything we can to extract and liberate them.
Q: The Israeli Knesset recently passed legislation banning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) from operating in the country. What do you think of Canada’s relation to UNRWA?
A: UNRWA is an organization that was set up by Palestinians, run by Palestinians and aimed at prolonging the wish of Palestinians to return to what is Israel now—for Israel to cease to exist.
UNRWA is a threat to the State of Israel in the way that they educate. We’ve shown that and many organizations have shown that in the past. They are not only educating about hating Jews but telling a narrative which is about the destruction of the State of Israel. Funding UNRWA means actually destroying any kind of a peaceful solution between the Jews and Arabs, and Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East.
We don’t really understand how a country like Canada can support the idea of a two-state solution and at the same time fund UNRWA. It’s either one or the other. When Canada froze the funding, we applauded that because we believe that there should be other alternatives. That was back in February. We propose to Canada and many other countries to seek alternatives.
There are so many other organizations around the world that support refugees and help them and solve their problems within a few years, but this organization exists for 75 years and they haven’t done anything to resolve the [Palestinians’] refugee status. They created fourth and fifth generations of refugees, which do not exist anywhere else around the world. A similar organization existed in Korea and was dismantled because they solved that problem for Korean refugees, but this organization is actually contravening any kind of a peaceful solution between Israelis and Palestinians.
We believe that they should be defunded and that all the other U.N. organizations that Israel works with on a daily basis, like UNHCR, the World Food Program and all the organizations that coordinate with the Israel Defense Forces on how to work in the Gaza Strip, should take over from UNRWA.
UNRWA today is only responsible for a small amount of the food distributed among Palestinians. We know however that Hamas and criminal gangs are taking over supplies and selling them on the market. That’s why much of it is not getting where it is supposed to. We also know [it can] no longer be responsible for Gaza’s education system, because it actually will determine the future of coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, and UNRWA is part of the problem, not the solution.
Q: What can you tell us about Canadian behavior and voting patterns at the United Nations?
A: We see a change as I noted before. Instead of objecting to singling Israel out they actually took on sort of a more neutral position, and other countries look at that and see the change in Canada’s policy, and they draw conclusions from it, including that Israel is being isolated.
It’s not about the content of those resolutions, because they don’t change anything on the ground. They are a political assault on Israel, just like terrorism is a physical assault on Israel, and allowing that to take place does not bring about any sort of peaceful resolution to the conflict. It only brings about a siege mentality which is not conducive to finding any kind of solution.
Canada has moved away. We think it’s wrong, we told that to the government on numerous occasions and we are looking forward to the time when it will change. There are occasions when Canada does stick with Israel in international organizations, international forums, but again we see a change that is lamentable in our eyes.
[In September, Canada abstained from a vote on a U.N. General Assembly resolution calling on the IDF to withdraw completely from Judea and Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip within 12 months. The resolution also banned the sale to the IDF of any military equipment that could reasonably be expected to be used in the disputed territories and called for a boycott of all Israeli products from those territories.]
At the end of the day, what we’re looking for is not necessarily for them to support Israel all of the time. Every country has its own considerations. But we do think that countries have to realize what we’re dealing with.
Hamas is not the Palestinian people, Hamas is out there to destroy Israel, and rewarding Hamas by changing voting patterns in the United Nations is wrong. Hamas was very satisfied that Canada changed. They feel they caused Canada to move away from Israel and in their eyes, that’s a success.
We are looking forward to a time when Canada will return to its pattern of the past and we believe that can be achieved because it’s the right thing to do. Stopping funding for UNRWA and seeking alternatives is something we are very much looking for. Israel is looking for alternatives but the international community should also be looking for alternatives.
Changes need to take place with regard to UNRWA just like with the Palestinian Authority, which has not condemned the atrocities of Oct. 7. It actually does not create an alternative for the Palestinian people to live peacefully. The P.A. does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and so working with the current P.A. is also wrong.
Some things need to change on the government side in Canada in terms of its approach for it to be conducive to a peaceful resolution of the conflict, and we don’t see enough of this.
Q: Do you have any relations with the head of the opposition?
A: We maintain good relations with all parties that are interested in maintaining good contacts with Israel, but it’s an internal affair. We try to stay away from internal politics. It’s complicated enough in Israel, let alone here. What we are seeking is public support for Israel.
We believe that the greatest majority of Canadians support Israel, stand with Israel and want to tell us that on a regular basis. I think Prime Minister Trudeau also supports Israel, and he said that and repeated that on the occasion of Oct. 7. He said it very clearly. He is also responsible for the government’s actions, and that’s where our differences are.
Canada supports Israel. It has always been the case, and we have full confidence that it will continue to be like that. What we are discussing is how to mitigate current crises in the Middle East but also how we together with local authorities can support the fight against antisemitism. Jewish communities and institutions feel that they are under threat and the number [who feel this way] is growing. That is a source of concern and we work together with Canadian authorities on that.
Q: Canada just foiled an attempt to assassinate [former Canadian justice minister] Irwin Cotler. What was your reaction?
A: According to reports, there are Iranian elements involved. In our part of the world, Iran is the head of the snake; they are running all these proxies, they have created seven fronts that confront Israel right now in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, the Houthis in Yemen. We are not surprised that Iran may be involved in this assassination attempt as well.
We know, including from the director of National Intelligence in the United States, that Iranians are also involved in campus activities and supporting [anti-Israel] encampments. When the government designated [Iran’s Islamic] Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terror organization, we believed it was the right move.
Iran and Canada have huge differences. We have known that for a long time, without any connection to Israel. It’s not surprising that Iran is involved here. We live in dangerous times, and that’s very unfortunate, and so it’s good to know the Canadian authorities have been able to foil such an attempt.
We just wish these kinds of elements would disappear so that we can live peacefully so that communities can come together and support each other in a way that’s really helpful for our societies to strengthen our values of freedom, tolerance and mutual respect. That is what we need and what’s really important at this time of differences.
Israel's ambassador to Canada talks with JNS about the rise in antisemitism in the northern country, and Ottawa's move away from the Jewish state in the aftermath of Oct. 7, 2023.
In a sit-down with JNS at the Israeli embassy in Ottawa on Tuesday, Iddo Moed, Israel’s ambassador to Canada and top diplomatic representative in the country, discussed the rise in antisemitism in the country, as what he said was a concerning change of stance in Canadian policy towards the Jewish state.
Q: What are your thoughts on how Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has responded to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 terrorist attacks?
A: Trudeau has been very consistent. He said a few things that are very important for Israel. First, he reiterated Israel’s right to exist and its right to defend itself, calling for the release of all hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. He called for Hamas to lay down its weapons while making sure that Canada doesn’t see Hamas as part of the solution or the future of Gaza. At the same time, we saw a few things that are concerning to us, because of the very good relations we have with Canada and because of the shared values that were and still are at the foundation of our bilateral relations.
The shipment of goods that require export permits has been put under suspension, which we feel is a de facto embargo impeding not just the bilateral trade between our two countries but also the collaboration between Israeli and Canadian companies in the area of technology. This is lamentable.
[In September, Canada revealed that it had canceled around 30 existing permits for arms shipments to Israel, including a deal with the Canadian division of a U.S. defense contractor. The exports had been approved before January when Ottawa announced a ban on new sales of arms that could be used by the Israel Defense Forces in the war against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip.]
We also see in international organizations that Canada, which had a very clear policy of not allowing Israel to be singled out, has changed its policy in such a significant manner that at some point in time Hamas commended Canada for this stance.
[Last year, Trudeau received the equivalent of a high five from Hamas after Canada’s affirmative U.N. vote on Dec. 12 supporting an “immediate sustainable ceasefire” in Israel’s war against the terror group. In a five-minute English-language video statement posted on Dec. 18, Ghazi Hamad, a senior leader of the terror group, praised Canada, Australia and New Zealand by name.]
Most importantly, what is really concerning to us is the rise of antisemitism to levels that are not only unprecedented but go way beyond what people say and our disagreement within society. It’s the violent, intimidating, aggressive approach to Jewish institutions, Jewish communities, individuals—be it on universities and campuses or synagogues and schools being shot at.
What I’m hearing from the Jewish community is that they don’t feel secure. Even if the prime minister says that glorifying terrorism is not acceptable, there were talks of potentially holding a ceremony to glorify [slain Hamas leader] Yahya Sinwar by an organization condoned by the mayor [of Mississauga] and ahead of which the mayor herself went as far as to say Sinwar could be compared to Nelson Mandela.
Yahya Sinwar was responsible for the worst atrocities against the Jewish people since the Second World War. He is only comparable to Adolf Hitler. He cannot be compared to any kind of freedom fighter or anything else. His goal was to eliminate the State of Israel and kill as many Israelis as he could, Jews and non-Jews.
These are the very concerning developments in Canada. We’ve seen what happened on the streets of Amsterdam, and I think the Jewish community looks at the aggression here, the intimidation and the atmosphere, and they are very concerned. I can understand where they are coming from.
For the State of Israel, the relationship with the Jewish community is extremely important, and it’s also important for our bilateral relations. The Jewish community’s concern and support for Israel has always been part and parcel of the relationship between our two countries.
When the Jews feel uncomfortable or insecure, this is something that we also project to the leadership directly. The phenomenon of the rise of antisemitism, especially in Canada, which already accepted the international definition of antisemitism, the fact that antisemitism is growing and is so prevalent here is a great source of concern for us.
It’s happening under the current government and we share those concerns with them. We do whatever we can to develop programs to mitigate that, be it connecting law enforcement agencies in Israel and Canada, police forces, just to share with them our vision of combating antisemitism, experience, best practices and the like. We also connect Yad Vashem as an education resource with people who are interested in that here in Canada, and most importantly we point to areas where we think that a serious source of concern is coming up. We try to flag it and propose actions that involve Israeli contribution.
Q: What was your reaction to the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant?
A: I was shocked like many others at the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue those arrest warrants. [ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim] Khan’s request has no foundation and this decision has no merit and no jurisdiction. The court only has political motivation to come up with this legal mechanism that has been abused for the sake of attacking and isolating israel. Israel has a robust legal system proven to be able to address any issue at any level.
Neither Israel nor the Palestinians are members of the court.
I am disappointed. I have been speaking to legal experts who expressed their dismay, shock and disbelief that an international organ that is supposed to uphold international law has gone so far as to play an activist role against Israel, a country under attack and that is defending itself in accordance with international law.
At the end of the day, we see it as an attack not on our government and not on our democratically elected leader, we see it as an assault against Israel and its right to defend itself.
Q: What did you think of Canada voting on Nov. 20 in favor of U.N. General Assembly draft resolutions condemning Israeli settlements?
A: The resolutions Canada voted for have not changed anything. Canada’s change of position is lamentable. Canada supports Israel, we know that. We lament this change, which may reflect the image that Canada actually supports this activism against Israel and does not support the Jewish state at a time when it is defending itself against an assault by Iran and its proxies on seven fronts.
The U.N. has not been able to resolve any outstanding issues in the Middle East. It has only served those who aim to attack Israel again and again, and isolate it politically. It does not bring any peaceful resolution of the conflict.
Therefore it’s lamentable that Canada has joined this chorus of countries that play in the hands of extremist terrorists and the Iranian regime against Israel.
Q: Do you currently have ongoing projects meant to strengthen the link between the Israeli people and the Jewish community in Canada?
A: There are a lot of organizations that are very active. We don’t need to create something new. We strengthen what is already happening. We are present at festivities and milestones, and we’re behind the scenes talking to the leadership, the federations all around Canada and talking to specific organizations on specific issues—be it combating antisemitism, strengthening Jewish identity, strengthening solidarity with other communities and dialogue. There are a lot of areas where we try to support the existing collaboration or point at new initiatives but we don’t see the need to create new channels.
Our role is to strengthen it, be there and make sure the Jewish community sees us as part of the connection with the State of Israel, not just through the organizations but as the official representative of the State of Israel here in Canada. They need to see our presence, feel us, hear us, be there together. Having a physical presence is a very important aspect of the work that we do.
Q: Could you speak of the rise of antisemitism on campuses in Canada?
A: Antisemitism on campuses is very worrying. Just lately we have seen some very odd developments including Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur for the West Bank, a self-declared antisemite who was not received by any government official in Canada, speaking on campus. We saw [former Israeli government spokesman] Eylon Levy chased out of another university and Hassan Diab, a convicted terrorist, teaching at a university here in Ottawa without any trouble, and many other instances that are concerning.
[According to a report released in September by antisemitism watchdog Canary Mission, nearly 250 people, including 153 professors, 19 students and 76 others, took part in or endorsed a nearly two-month-long anti-Israel encampment that began on the University of Toronto campus in early May. Of the 153 faculty members, 122 were professors at the public school and 31 were on faculty at other institutions, per the report.]
Even if we don’t see the encampments, the vile antisemitic, anti-Israel sentiment is there, and since campuses are our future we have to make sure that younger people have a broader understanding of what we’re talking about when we talk about antisemitism and bring issues into perspective. They need to get their news sources right. Much of the social media and the information spreading there is causing them to believe in some of the craziest things, and that’s another area where much needs to be done.
Q: At the entrance to the embassy, there are posters of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Could you talk about your relationship with the families of the hostages?
A: The daughter of [Hamas captive] Judy Weinstein was here a few days ago. She met with politicians here on the hill. We supported that, and we also carry on her work. She was here to remind the world that her mother was murdered on Oct. 7 and her body abducted to Gaza, and that it needs to be brought back. She’s one of the eight Canadian casualties in this war. We, of course, stay in touch with them, either here in Ottawa or through our offices in Montreal and Toronto.
We keep in touch with the families. We try to involve them as much as we can in our activities and reach out to them but also call on the broader community not to forget, to remember the kids, the Bibas kids who I’m wearing an orange tie for, and remember that we have to call for their release. Israel will not stop the war in Gaza until we get our hostages back. Nobody in Israel can truly rest until they are home.
We see the Jewish community very much involved in that. It’s very easy to continue with our lives and say that ‘it’s important, but there are a whole lot of other things.’ We can’t do that, we can’t say that what happened 410 days ago is history. That day is still happening for the families in Israel who relive it every hour. We have to remember as a people that we don’t forget anyone and we don’t leave anybody behind. We want them back. We want them home.
We ask the Canadian government to do whatever they can. We repeat that in our meetings at the highest levels, and we want to make sure that people remember that they are still there, that they need to come home and that we need to do everything we can to extract and liberate them.
Q: The Israeli Knesset recently passed legislation banning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) from operating in the country. What do you think of Canada’s relation to UNRWA?
A: UNRWA is an organization that was set up by Palestinians, run by Palestinians and aimed at prolonging the wish of Palestinians to return to what is Israel now—for Israel to cease to exist.
UNRWA is a threat to the State of Israel in the way that they educate. We’ve shown that and many organizations have shown that in the past. They are not only educating about hating Jews but telling a narrative which is about the destruction of the State of Israel. Funding UNRWA means actually destroying any kind of a peaceful solution between the Jews and Arabs, and Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East.
We don’t really understand how a country like Canada can support the idea of a two-state solution and at the same time fund UNRWA. It’s either one or the other. When Canada froze the funding, we applauded that because we believe that there should be other alternatives. That was back in February. We propose to Canada and many other countries to seek alternatives.
There are so many other organizations around the world that support refugees and help them and solve their problems within a few years, but this organization exists for 75 years and they haven’t done anything to resolve the [Palestinians’] refugee status. They created fourth and fifth generations of refugees, which do not exist anywhere else around the world. A similar organization existed in Korea and was dismantled because they solved that problem for Korean refugees, but this organization is actually contravening any kind of a peaceful solution between Israelis and Palestinians.
We believe that they should be defunded and that all the other U.N. organizations that Israel works with on a daily basis, like UNHCR, the World Food Program and all the organizations that coordinate with the Israel Defense Forces on how to work in the Gaza Strip, should take over from UNRWA.
UNRWA today is only responsible for a small amount of the food distributed among Palestinians. We know however that Hamas and criminal gangs are taking over supplies and selling them on the market. That’s why much of it is not getting where it is supposed to. We also know [it can] no longer be responsible for Gaza’s education system, because it actually will determine the future of coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, and UNRWA is part of the problem, not the solution.
Q: What can you tell us about Canadian behavior and voting patterns at the United Nations?
A: We see a change as I noted before. Instead of objecting to singling Israel out they actually took on sort of a more neutral position, and other countries look at that and see the change in Canada’s policy, and they draw conclusions from it, including that Israel is being isolated.
It’s not about the content of those resolutions, because they don’t change anything on the ground. They are a political assault on Israel, just like terrorism is a physical assault on Israel, and allowing that to take place does not bring about any sort of peaceful resolution to the conflict. It only brings about a siege mentality which is not conducive to finding any kind of solution.
Canada has moved away. We think it’s wrong, we told that to the government on numerous occasions and we are looking forward to the time when it will change. There are occasions when Canada does stick with Israel in international organizations, international forums, but again we see a change that is lamentable in our eyes.
[In September, Canada abstained from a vote on a U.N. General Assembly resolution calling on the IDF to withdraw completely from Judea and Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip within 12 months. The resolution also banned the sale to the IDF of any military equipment that could reasonably be expected to be used in the disputed territories and called for a boycott of all Israeli products from those territories.]
At the end of the day, what we’re looking for is not necessarily for them to support Israel all of the time. Every country has its own considerations. But we do think that countries have to realize what we’re dealing with.
Hamas is not the Palestinian people, Hamas is out there to destroy Israel, and rewarding Hamas by changing voting patterns in the United Nations is wrong. Hamas was very satisfied that Canada changed. They feel they caused Canada to move away from Israel and in their eyes, that’s a success.
We are looking forward to a time when Canada will return to its pattern of the past and we believe that can be achieved because it’s the right thing to do. Stopping funding for UNRWA and seeking alternatives is something we are very much looking for. Israel is looking for alternatives but the international community should also be looking for alternatives.
Changes need to take place with regard to UNRWA just like with the Palestinian Authority, which has not condemned the atrocities of Oct. 7. It actually does not create an alternative for the Palestinian people to live peacefully. The P.A. does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and so working with the current P.A. is also wrong.
Some things need to change on the government side in Canada in terms of its approach for it to be conducive to a peaceful resolution of the conflict, and we don’t see enough of this.
Q: Do you have any relations with the head of the opposition?
A: We maintain good relations with all parties that are interested in maintaining good contacts with Israel, but it’s an internal affair. We try to stay away from internal politics. It’s complicated enough in Israel, let alone here. What we are seeking is public support for Israel.
We believe that the greatest majority of Canadians support Israel, stand with Israel and want to tell us that on a regular basis. I think Prime Minister Trudeau also supports Israel, and he said that and repeated that on the occasion of Oct. 7. He said it very clearly. He is also responsible for the government’s actions, and that’s where our differences are.
Canada supports Israel. It has always been the case, and we have full confidence that it will continue to be like that. What we are discussing is how to mitigate current crises in the Middle East but also how we together with local authorities can support the fight against antisemitism. Jewish communities and institutions feel that they are under threat and the number [who feel this way] is growing. That is a source of concern and we work together with Canadian authorities on that.
Q: Canada just foiled an attempt to assassinate [former Canadian justice minister] Irwin Cotler. What was your reaction?
A: According to reports, there are Iranian elements involved. In our part of the world, Iran is the head of the snake; they are running all these proxies, they have created seven fronts that confront Israel right now in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, the Houthis in Yemen. We are not surprised that Iran may be involved in this assassination attempt as well.
We know, including from the director of National Intelligence in the United States, that Iranians are also involved in campus activities and supporting [anti-Israel] encampments. When the government designated [Iran’s Islamic] Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terror organization, we believed it was the right move.
Iran and Canada have huge differences. We have known that for a long time, without any connection to Israel. It’s not surprising that Iran is involved here. We live in dangerous times, and that’s very unfortunate, and so it’s good to know the Canadian authorities have been able to foil such an attempt.
We just wish these kinds of elements would disappear so that we can live peacefully so that communities can come together and support each other in a way that’s really helpful for our societies to strengthen our values of freedom, tolerance and mutual respect. That is what we need and what’s really important at this time of differences.
Greece
Greece Supports Pro-Palestine UN Resolution, Explains Stance to Israel
ATHENS – Greece voted in favor of a nonbinding UN resolution on September 18 demanding that Israel end its “unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory” within a year. The document is based on the opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague regarding Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank. In light of the continual deepening and strengthening of Greece-Israel relations – including military cooperation and support – the Greek government issued a statement explaining its vote, emphasizing its obligation to support the ICJ.
The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted the resolution, which the New York Times described as “a significant but symbolic move that highlighted growing international condemnation of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people… The resolution was approved by a vote of 124 to 14, with Israel and the United States in opposition and 43 other nations abstaining. The decision followed a landmark opinion issued in July by the International Court of Justice, the world’s highest court, which said that Israel’s occupation violated international law and should end ‘as rapidly as possible.’”
The Times added that “the resolution was the first to be put forth by Palestine, a U.N. nonmember observer state, since it was granted new diplomatic privileges by the Assembly in May. The Assembly granted those privileges after the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution that would have recognized full membership for a Palestinian state in April.”
The resolution demands that Israel withdraw all military forces and evacuate settlers from the occupied territory and calls on nations to halt the transfer of weapons to Israel if there are reasonable grounds to believe they may be used there, and also to halt the imports of “any products originating in the Israeli settlements.”
A spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, Oren Marmorstein, said on social media that it was “disconnected from reality, encourages terrorism and harms the chances for peace,” also accusing the Palestinian Authority of being interested only in “defaming” and harming Israel.
Greece Had Some Explaining to Do
Citing “well-informed sources” Kathimerini said “the Greek vote was dictated by two main considerations: first, because Greece enters the UN Security Council as a non-permanent member from January 1, and hence there is a need to maintain good relations with the states of the so-called Global South, with Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis scheduled to have dozens of meetings in New York next week ahead of the new year. Secondly, Athens firmly supports international justice and in this particular case the UN decision is also based on the opinion of the ICJ regarding the occupied territories. In short, Greece took a principled stand, as Greek diplomacy defends international law as a tool of universal and not selective application.”
Prior to the vote Greece informed Israel of its intentions given the importance of the strategic relations of the two countries. The explanation noted everything that Greek diplomacy has supported since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, including references to the release of the hostages and the security of Israel.
“However, Greece decided to vote in favor of the resolution based on Greece’s undivided support for international law and the institution that embodies it, the ICJ,” Kathimerini noted, adding that “the explanation said further that it is Greece’s belief that the work of the ICJ must be protected, even in the event of a dispute. International law and the rule of law are at the heart of the United Nations Charter and serve as a shield against all forms of violations, it said.”
The following EU member-states voted in favor of the resolution: Greece, the Republic of Cyprus, Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, Portugal, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovenia, Spain, Estonia and Latvia. Twelve countries abstained: Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Croatia, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden and Lithuania. The Czech Republic and Hungary voted against.
ATHENS – Greece voted in favor of a nonbinding UN resolution on September 18 demanding that Israel end its “unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory” within a year. The document is based on the opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague regarding Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank. In light of the continual deepening and strengthening of Greece-Israel relations – including military cooperation and support – the Greek government issued a statement explaining its vote, emphasizing its obligation to support the ICJ.
The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted the resolution, which the New York Times described as “a significant but symbolic move that highlighted growing international condemnation of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people… The resolution was approved by a vote of 124 to 14, with Israel and the United States in opposition and 43 other nations abstaining. The decision followed a landmark opinion issued in July by the International Court of Justice, the world’s highest court, which said that Israel’s occupation violated international law and should end ‘as rapidly as possible.’”
The Times added that “the resolution was the first to be put forth by Palestine, a U.N. nonmember observer state, since it was granted new diplomatic privileges by the Assembly in May. The Assembly granted those privileges after the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution that would have recognized full membership for a Palestinian state in April.”
The resolution demands that Israel withdraw all military forces and evacuate settlers from the occupied territory and calls on nations to halt the transfer of weapons to Israel if there are reasonable grounds to believe they may be used there, and also to halt the imports of “any products originating in the Israeli settlements.”
A spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, Oren Marmorstein, said on social media that it was “disconnected from reality, encourages terrorism and harms the chances for peace,” also accusing the Palestinian Authority of being interested only in “defaming” and harming Israel.
Greece Had Some Explaining to Do
Citing “well-informed sources” Kathimerini said “the Greek vote was dictated by two main considerations: first, because Greece enters the UN Security Council as a non-permanent member from January 1, and hence there is a need to maintain good relations with the states of the so-called Global South, with Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis scheduled to have dozens of meetings in New York next week ahead of the new year. Secondly, Athens firmly supports international justice and in this particular case the UN decision is also based on the opinion of the ICJ regarding the occupied territories. In short, Greece took a principled stand, as Greek diplomacy defends international law as a tool of universal and not selective application.”
Prior to the vote Greece informed Israel of its intentions given the importance of the strategic relations of the two countries. The explanation noted everything that Greek diplomacy has supported since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, including references to the release of the hostages and the security of Israel.
“However, Greece decided to vote in favor of the resolution based on Greece’s undivided support for international law and the institution that embodies it, the ICJ,” Kathimerini noted, adding that “the explanation said further that it is Greece’s belief that the work of the ICJ must be protected, even in the event of a dispute. International law and the rule of law are at the heart of the United Nations Charter and serve as a shield against all forms of violations, it said.”
The following EU member-states voted in favor of the resolution: Greece, the Republic of Cyprus, Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, Portugal, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovenia, Spain, Estonia and Latvia. Twelve countries abstained: Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Croatia, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden and Lithuania. The Czech Republic and Hungary voted against.
Turkey
Is Turkey's big break with Israel for real?
Depends on who you ask, but there is a history here that may be difficult to escape
In recent months, media reports have suggested that long-standing Israel-Turkey relations have reached a “breaking point,” particularly as Israel intensifies its attacks on Gaza and Lebanon. These claims exploded following President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s declaration last Wednesday that Ankara has “currently severed all relations with Israel.”
That assertion, however, was complicated by the response from Israel’s foreign ministry, which stated it was “not aware of a change in the status of relations with Turkey,” despite the trade embargo imposed by Ankara last May.
Nonetheless, it is clear that the longstanding and generally cordial Israel-Turkey relationship is fractured, primarily due to the policies of the current Israeli government. A protracted war in Gaza, a second war in Lebanon, the expansion of settlement activities on the West Bank, and the intractability of the Palestinian issue have led to the present impasse. Yet, the long history of engagement and mutual interests suggests that their relationship will likely withstand the current challenges.
A long history
One of the most notable historical links between Turkey and the Jewish community dates back to the Ottoman Empire, which provided refuge to Jews fleeing persecution in Europe from the late 15th century onward. Jewish Ottomans enjoyed privileges, such as holding key positions in state institutions and engaging freely in business activities. Today, Turkey’s Jewish community, concentrated primarily in Istanbul, traces its roots to this era. The term “Mousavi,” a term derived from the biblical Moses and used instead of “Jew,” reflects an effort to avoid the negative connotations imposed by European prejudice.
Following World War II and the establishment of the state of Israel, the Mousavi community in Turkey continued to thrive – in stark contrast to Jews in Arab countries, most of whom were expelled or forced to flee their homelands. To this day, the Mousavi community remains largely silent during periods of heightened tensions between Israel and Turkey, avoiding public involvement in conflicts such as those in Gaza and the West Bank and prioritizing its security and sustainability within Turkey.
This legacy helped to influence Ankara’s post-World War II approach to the numerous Arab-Israeli conflicts. While Turkey repeatedly faced criticism from Arab states for recognizing Israel in 1948, Ankara has usually maintained a balanced position, in large part due to pressure from its American and European NATO allies.
Domestic considerations
Over the decades, Israel-Turkey relations have suffered frequent ups and downs, but shared interests have consistently brought the two sides back together. Of late, however, the bilateral relationship has deteriorated to historic lows for a number of reasons, primarily, however, as a result of changes in the ideologies of the two countries’ ruling parties.
Ultra-conservative coalitions in Israel have hardened policies on Palestinians and other minorities, fueled by their claims to the “promised land” and aspirations for a “Greater Israel,” the realization of which would impact Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, as well as the West Bank.
At the same time, since the AK Party’s rise to power in Turkey in 2002, Erdogan has pursued a foreign policy guided by “justice and Islamic values.” Rights for Palestinians have become an important driver, illustrated most dramatically perhaps by Erdogan’s confrontation with then-Israeli President Shimon Peres at the World Economic Forum in 2009. Tensions peaked with the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, when Israeli forces killed 10 Turkish activists aboard a humanitarian aid ship bound for Gaza. Turkey demanded compensation and condemned Israel’s actions, further deepening the rift.
Yet there are a number of key issues that, so far, have prevented a complete break, notably the geoeconomic dynamics in the Eastern Mediterranean. Recent developments in energy politics have driven some reconciliation efforts and are likely to remain relevant if and when the Palestinian question is resolved. Shared interests in energy cooperation had prompted dialogue between Erdogan and Israeli leaders, including President Isaac Herzog and Netanyahu. Meetings, notably one in New York on September 20, 2023, signaled progress toward full normalization.
The October 7 attacks by Hamas three weeks later and subsequent Israeli military operations, however, reignited tensions, with Turkey condemning civilian casualties inflicted by Israel’s offensive and eventually filing a case with the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide.
Prospects for rapprochement
Turkey’s approach to Palestinian issues is often perceived as a strategic factor for Israel, particularly due to Ankara’s engagement with and political support for various groups, including Hamas. However, its policy has fluctuated over the years, shaped by broader regional dynamics and Turkey’s shifting diplomatic priorities.
While Ankara has sought to reassert its leading role in promoting Palestinian aspirations — particularly through strong rhetoric and international legal actions after October 7 — its actual sway over groups like Hamas and Hezbollah remains subject to debate and varies depending on specific circumstances.
The recent allegation that Turkey has offered to host Hamas political offices is perceived by both Israel and the United States as a major setback to improving relations. Turkish officials reject the accusation, suggesting that permitting some Hamas members to “occasionally visit” Turkey does not equate to providing an institutional base for the group. Historically Turkey has taken in members of various opposition groups (as far back as the post-Russian Revolution period) but has been clear about prohibiting operational activities within its borders.
Israel has sought to counter Turkey’s regional influence in recent years by strengthening its ties with Greece, the Greek-led government of Cyprus and various Kurdish factions. Recent developments, such as Turkish allegations that the government in Nicosia is allowing U.S. and allied forces to use their ports for supplying Israel, certainly work against better relations.
Quo Vadis?
Nearly universal condemnation of Israeli military actions and few prospects for ceasefires – much less lasting peace – underpin the view that an intransigeant Israeli prime minister is the most disruptive factor in regional peace and stability. That perception is very much shared by Erdogan’s Turkey. There is a sense that only a successor Israeli government may offer an opportunity for serious dialogue.
Turkey-Israel relations is likely to return to a status quo antebellum, but that would require Israel to shift back to centrist policies, reject the expansionist and neo-colonial agenda of Israel’s ultra-orthodox and ethno-nationalist political parties, and clearly embrace a settlement that respects Palestinian aspirations for a viable state of their own.
Depends on who you ask, but there is a history here that may be difficult to escape
In recent months, media reports have suggested that long-standing Israel-Turkey relations have reached a “breaking point,” particularly as Israel intensifies its attacks on Gaza and Lebanon. These claims exploded following President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s declaration last Wednesday that Ankara has “currently severed all relations with Israel.”
That assertion, however, was complicated by the response from Israel’s foreign ministry, which stated it was “not aware of a change in the status of relations with Turkey,” despite the trade embargo imposed by Ankara last May.
Nonetheless, it is clear that the longstanding and generally cordial Israel-Turkey relationship is fractured, primarily due to the policies of the current Israeli government. A protracted war in Gaza, a second war in Lebanon, the expansion of settlement activities on the West Bank, and the intractability of the Palestinian issue have led to the present impasse. Yet, the long history of engagement and mutual interests suggests that their relationship will likely withstand the current challenges.
A long history
One of the most notable historical links between Turkey and the Jewish community dates back to the Ottoman Empire, which provided refuge to Jews fleeing persecution in Europe from the late 15th century onward. Jewish Ottomans enjoyed privileges, such as holding key positions in state institutions and engaging freely in business activities. Today, Turkey’s Jewish community, concentrated primarily in Istanbul, traces its roots to this era. The term “Mousavi,” a term derived from the biblical Moses and used instead of “Jew,” reflects an effort to avoid the negative connotations imposed by European prejudice.
Following World War II and the establishment of the state of Israel, the Mousavi community in Turkey continued to thrive – in stark contrast to Jews in Arab countries, most of whom were expelled or forced to flee their homelands. To this day, the Mousavi community remains largely silent during periods of heightened tensions between Israel and Turkey, avoiding public involvement in conflicts such as those in Gaza and the West Bank and prioritizing its security and sustainability within Turkey.
This legacy helped to influence Ankara’s post-World War II approach to the numerous Arab-Israeli conflicts. While Turkey repeatedly faced criticism from Arab states for recognizing Israel in 1948, Ankara has usually maintained a balanced position, in large part due to pressure from its American and European NATO allies.
Domestic considerations
Over the decades, Israel-Turkey relations have suffered frequent ups and downs, but shared interests have consistently brought the two sides back together. Of late, however, the bilateral relationship has deteriorated to historic lows for a number of reasons, primarily, however, as a result of changes in the ideologies of the two countries’ ruling parties.
Ultra-conservative coalitions in Israel have hardened policies on Palestinians and other minorities, fueled by their claims to the “promised land” and aspirations for a “Greater Israel,” the realization of which would impact Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, as well as the West Bank.
At the same time, since the AK Party’s rise to power in Turkey in 2002, Erdogan has pursued a foreign policy guided by “justice and Islamic values.” Rights for Palestinians have become an important driver, illustrated most dramatically perhaps by Erdogan’s confrontation with then-Israeli President Shimon Peres at the World Economic Forum in 2009. Tensions peaked with the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, when Israeli forces killed 10 Turkish activists aboard a humanitarian aid ship bound for Gaza. Turkey demanded compensation and condemned Israel’s actions, further deepening the rift.
Yet there are a number of key issues that, so far, have prevented a complete break, notably the geoeconomic dynamics in the Eastern Mediterranean. Recent developments in energy politics have driven some reconciliation efforts and are likely to remain relevant if and when the Palestinian question is resolved. Shared interests in energy cooperation had prompted dialogue between Erdogan and Israeli leaders, including President Isaac Herzog and Netanyahu. Meetings, notably one in New York on September 20, 2023, signaled progress toward full normalization.
The October 7 attacks by Hamas three weeks later and subsequent Israeli military operations, however, reignited tensions, with Turkey condemning civilian casualties inflicted by Israel’s offensive and eventually filing a case with the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide.
Prospects for rapprochement
Turkey’s approach to Palestinian issues is often perceived as a strategic factor for Israel, particularly due to Ankara’s engagement with and political support for various groups, including Hamas. However, its policy has fluctuated over the years, shaped by broader regional dynamics and Turkey’s shifting diplomatic priorities.
While Ankara has sought to reassert its leading role in promoting Palestinian aspirations — particularly through strong rhetoric and international legal actions after October 7 — its actual sway over groups like Hamas and Hezbollah remains subject to debate and varies depending on specific circumstances.
The recent allegation that Turkey has offered to host Hamas political offices is perceived by both Israel and the United States as a major setback to improving relations. Turkish officials reject the accusation, suggesting that permitting some Hamas members to “occasionally visit” Turkey does not equate to providing an institutional base for the group. Historically Turkey has taken in members of various opposition groups (as far back as the post-Russian Revolution period) but has been clear about prohibiting operational activities within its borders.
Israel has sought to counter Turkey’s regional influence in recent years by strengthening its ties with Greece, the Greek-led government of Cyprus and various Kurdish factions. Recent developments, such as Turkish allegations that the government in Nicosia is allowing U.S. and allied forces to use their ports for supplying Israel, certainly work against better relations.
Quo Vadis?
Nearly universal condemnation of Israeli military actions and few prospects for ceasefires – much less lasting peace – underpin the view that an intransigeant Israeli prime minister is the most disruptive factor in regional peace and stability. That perception is very much shared by Erdogan’s Turkey. There is a sense that only a successor Israeli government may offer an opportunity for serious dialogue.
Turkey-Israel relations is likely to return to a status quo antebellum, but that would require Israel to shift back to centrist policies, reject the expansionist and neo-colonial agenda of Israel’s ultra-orthodox and ethno-nationalist political parties, and clearly embrace a settlement that respects Palestinian aspirations for a viable state of their own.
Spain
Spain’s Israel problem
For a country that exiled its Jewish community—and tortured and sentenced to death thousands of Jews—you would think that it would show some sensitivity towards Israel, recognizing the threats it faces.
It should come as no surprise that Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has joined the call for an arms embargo against Israel. Spain is now in the company of Canada, France and the United Kingdom in calling for or enacting either a full or partial arms embargo.
The Sánchez government has been particularly aggressive in its criticism of Israel, predating the massacres carried out by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023. Spain is part of a group of “never-Israel’’ governments inside the European Union, including Ireland, Norway and Slovenia, that compete to see which can excoriate Israel more. It’s no coincidence that all four countries have recognized a Palestinian state in the wake of the fighting.
Post-Oct. 7 comments emanating from the capitals of these countries are deep in charges of genocide and violations of international law. Cabinet members in each place have laced their statements on Israel’s defensive war in the Gaza Strip with full servings of opprobrium.
In May, Spanish Minister of Defense Margarita Robles called the fighting in Gaza “a real genocide.’’ She gratuitously added that Spain’s recognition of “Palestine’’ was meant to “help end the violence.’’
Spain’s minister of social rights, Ione Bellara, has endorsed the International Criminal Court’s case against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “war crimes,” calling the fighting in Gaza a “planned genocide.”
Spain’s early and full-throated endorsement of the International Court of Justice’s efforts to push Israel into the dock on genocide charges is but further evidence of the Sánchez government’s efforts to feather its pro-Palestinian street cred.
To be certain that no one would miss the point, Spain has repeatedly voted for a series of anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations in recent years, including the odious document introduced in the General Assembly by “the state of Palestine” and adopted recently, which includes a laundry list of measures to be imposed on Israel, such as an arms embargo and BDS-style trade restrictions.
Just this week, Spain doubled down on ways to further Israel’s isolation by calling for the E.U. to suspend a free-trade agreement with the Jewish state over what it is calling Israel’s “human-rights violations.” In a further move meant to complicate Israel’s operations in Southern Lebanon, the Sánchez government has rejected Israel’s call for U.N. peacekeeping forces in the area to stay out of harm’s way while the Israel Defense Forces conducts its defensive war against Hezbollah. This is all against the backdrop of the glorious and tragic history of Jews in Spain. Much has been written and told about the “Golden Age” of philosophers and advisers to the royal courts. Maimonides, Judah Halevi, Shmuel HaNagid, Moshe ibn Ezra, and others are names etched in Spanish Jewish iconography and Jewish historical consciousness.
But so is the Spanish Inquisition with its expulsion of more than 100,000 Jews and its auto-da-fés, public humiliation and burning at the stake of thousands of conversos, those Jews who converted to Christianity and who practiced Jewish customs in secret.
Spain was very late in establishing full diplomatic relations with Israel. That happened in 1986, long after almost every European country had done so.
But it was only in 1992, on the 500th anniversary of the expulsion of the Jews, that then-King Juan Carlos, in the presence of Israeli President Chaim Herzog at the synagogue in Madrid, offered an apology for the Spanish Inquisition. Said the king: “May hatred and intolerance never again provoke expulsion or exile. On the contrary, let us be capable of building a prosperous Spain, in peace amongst ourselves on the basis of concord and mutual respect.”
Not long after, the center-right Spanish government led by José María Aznar introduced a period of increasingly close relations between Madrid and Jerusalem.
Aznar spoke out early about the dangers of BDS and presciently defended Israel’s strategic importance. In 2010, he stated: “Anger over Gaza is a distraction. We cannot forget that Israel is the West’s best ally in a turbulent region.”
After leaving office, Aznar became active in the Friends of Israel group of international public figures who have been outspoken in their support of the Jewish state.
Now, Sánchez and his government have sought to turn the clock back by erasing the positive strides that had been made in Spanish-Jewish relations. Frankly, the message now is, “We don’t care.”
Sánchez’s Socialist Workers Party, with its doctrinaire policies aimed at punishing Israel in multinational fora, especially at the ICJ and the ICC, has given aid and succor to Hamas and to those who advance the Palestinian narrative.
While the 1992 royal apology was welcome, it could not wash out the stain of the Inquisition. And what we are witnessing today in terms of Spain’s antagonizing of Israel suggests an echo of lingering hostility toward Jews and now the Jewish state.
For a country that exiled its storied Jewish community—and tortured and sentenced to death thousands of Jews—you would think there would be a measure of remorse, and a sensitive and understanding policy towards Israel that recognizes the threats it faces.
That is not the case. Spain’s shameful policies are not based on correcting history; they seem to be writing another sorry chapter of it.
For a country that exiled its Jewish community—and tortured and sentenced to death thousands of Jews—you would think that it would show some sensitivity towards Israel, recognizing the threats it faces.
It should come as no surprise that Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has joined the call for an arms embargo against Israel. Spain is now in the company of Canada, France and the United Kingdom in calling for or enacting either a full or partial arms embargo.
The Sánchez government has been particularly aggressive in its criticism of Israel, predating the massacres carried out by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023. Spain is part of a group of “never-Israel’’ governments inside the European Union, including Ireland, Norway and Slovenia, that compete to see which can excoriate Israel more. It’s no coincidence that all four countries have recognized a Palestinian state in the wake of the fighting.
Post-Oct. 7 comments emanating from the capitals of these countries are deep in charges of genocide and violations of international law. Cabinet members in each place have laced their statements on Israel’s defensive war in the Gaza Strip with full servings of opprobrium.
In May, Spanish Minister of Defense Margarita Robles called the fighting in Gaza “a real genocide.’’ She gratuitously added that Spain’s recognition of “Palestine’’ was meant to “help end the violence.’’
Spain’s minister of social rights, Ione Bellara, has endorsed the International Criminal Court’s case against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “war crimes,” calling the fighting in Gaza a “planned genocide.”
Spain’s early and full-throated endorsement of the International Court of Justice’s efforts to push Israel into the dock on genocide charges is but further evidence of the Sánchez government’s efforts to feather its pro-Palestinian street cred.
To be certain that no one would miss the point, Spain has repeatedly voted for a series of anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations in recent years, including the odious document introduced in the General Assembly by “the state of Palestine” and adopted recently, which includes a laundry list of measures to be imposed on Israel, such as an arms embargo and BDS-style trade restrictions.
Just this week, Spain doubled down on ways to further Israel’s isolation by calling for the E.U. to suspend a free-trade agreement with the Jewish state over what it is calling Israel’s “human-rights violations.” In a further move meant to complicate Israel’s operations in Southern Lebanon, the Sánchez government has rejected Israel’s call for U.N. peacekeeping forces in the area to stay out of harm’s way while the Israel Defense Forces conducts its defensive war against Hezbollah. This is all against the backdrop of the glorious and tragic history of Jews in Spain. Much has been written and told about the “Golden Age” of philosophers and advisers to the royal courts. Maimonides, Judah Halevi, Shmuel HaNagid, Moshe ibn Ezra, and others are names etched in Spanish Jewish iconography and Jewish historical consciousness.
But so is the Spanish Inquisition with its expulsion of more than 100,000 Jews and its auto-da-fés, public humiliation and burning at the stake of thousands of conversos, those Jews who converted to Christianity and who practiced Jewish customs in secret.
Spain was very late in establishing full diplomatic relations with Israel. That happened in 1986, long after almost every European country had done so.
But it was only in 1992, on the 500th anniversary of the expulsion of the Jews, that then-King Juan Carlos, in the presence of Israeli President Chaim Herzog at the synagogue in Madrid, offered an apology for the Spanish Inquisition. Said the king: “May hatred and intolerance never again provoke expulsion or exile. On the contrary, let us be capable of building a prosperous Spain, in peace amongst ourselves on the basis of concord and mutual respect.”
Not long after, the center-right Spanish government led by José María Aznar introduced a period of increasingly close relations between Madrid and Jerusalem.
Aznar spoke out early about the dangers of BDS and presciently defended Israel’s strategic importance. In 2010, he stated: “Anger over Gaza is a distraction. We cannot forget that Israel is the West’s best ally in a turbulent region.”
After leaving office, Aznar became active in the Friends of Israel group of international public figures who have been outspoken in their support of the Jewish state.
Now, Sánchez and his government have sought to turn the clock back by erasing the positive strides that had been made in Spanish-Jewish relations. Frankly, the message now is, “We don’t care.”
Sánchez’s Socialist Workers Party, with its doctrinaire policies aimed at punishing Israel in multinational fora, especially at the ICJ and the ICC, has given aid and succor to Hamas and to those who advance the Palestinian narrative.
While the 1992 royal apology was welcome, it could not wash out the stain of the Inquisition. And what we are witnessing today in terms of Spain’s antagonizing of Israel suggests an echo of lingering hostility toward Jews and now the Jewish state.
For a country that exiled its storied Jewish community—and tortured and sentenced to death thousands of Jews—you would think there would be a measure of remorse, and a sensitive and understanding policy towards Israel that recognizes the threats it faces.
That is not the case. Spain’s shameful policies are not based on correcting history; they seem to be writing another sorry chapter of it.
Australia
Australia changes position to support vote demanding Israel end occupation of Gaza, East Jerusalem and West Bank
Australia has changed its position to support a UN resolution demanding "Israel bring to an end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible".
The resolution, passed by the UN General Assembly, also calls for an end to all new settlement activities and for settlers to be removed from the occupied territory.
Australia was one of 157 nations that voted in favour of the resolution. Seven abstained, and eight voted against it, including the USA and Israel.
Australia has abstained from similar resolutions at past meetings of the General Assembly, including at a vote in September.
Since then, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, which allege war crimes and crimes against humanity. Australia is a party to the ICC and has a legal obligation to arrest the men if they visit. Australia's ambassador to the United Nations, James Larsen, said Australia had now returned to a position it held up until the year 2001.
He said that was a time "when the international community and the parties themselves came together to chart a path towards a two-state solution", and the vote "reflects our determination that the international community again work together to build momentum towards this goal".
The Occupied Palestinian Territory includes Gaza, which has been almost completely flattened by Israeli bombardment since the October 7 terror attack perpetrated by Hamas, and the West Bank. It also includes East Jerusalem. The resolution also calls for a high-level international conference to be convened next year, aimed at implementing a two-state solution.
"A two-state solution remains the only hope of breaking the endless cycle of violence, the only hope to see a secure and prosperous future for both peoples," Mr Larsen told the General Assembly.
Ahead of the vote, a spokesperson for Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Australia had "few ways to move the dial in the Middle East", and its only hope was working with the international community.
"We don't always get everything we want," the spokesperson said. "But if, on balance, we believe the resolution will contribute to peace and a two-state solution, we will vote for it."
Deputy opposition leader Sussan Ley suggested Australia's change in position was "rewarding terrorists".
"We still have hostages in tunnels under Gaza," she told Sky News.
"We still have Hamas in the Gaza Strip, almost in control. And how is this not rewarding terrorists at this point in time?"
She also said the move was "not going to encourage that strong closeness that we need" with the US.
Australia also changed its position, from a "no" vote to abstention, on another resolution concerning Palestinian representation at the UN.
Australia has changed its position to support a UN resolution demanding "Israel bring to an end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible".
The resolution, passed by the UN General Assembly, also calls for an end to all new settlement activities and for settlers to be removed from the occupied territory.
Australia was one of 157 nations that voted in favour of the resolution. Seven abstained, and eight voted against it, including the USA and Israel.
Australia has abstained from similar resolutions at past meetings of the General Assembly, including at a vote in September.
Since then, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant, which allege war crimes and crimes against humanity. Australia is a party to the ICC and has a legal obligation to arrest the men if they visit. Australia's ambassador to the United Nations, James Larsen, said Australia had now returned to a position it held up until the year 2001.
He said that was a time "when the international community and the parties themselves came together to chart a path towards a two-state solution", and the vote "reflects our determination that the international community again work together to build momentum towards this goal".
The Occupied Palestinian Territory includes Gaza, which has been almost completely flattened by Israeli bombardment since the October 7 terror attack perpetrated by Hamas, and the West Bank. It also includes East Jerusalem. The resolution also calls for a high-level international conference to be convened next year, aimed at implementing a two-state solution.
"A two-state solution remains the only hope of breaking the endless cycle of violence, the only hope to see a secure and prosperous future for both peoples," Mr Larsen told the General Assembly.
Ahead of the vote, a spokesperson for Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Australia had "few ways to move the dial in the Middle East", and its only hope was working with the international community.
"We don't always get everything we want," the spokesperson said. "But if, on balance, we believe the resolution will contribute to peace and a two-state solution, we will vote for it."
Deputy opposition leader Sussan Ley suggested Australia's change in position was "rewarding terrorists".
"We still have hostages in tunnels under Gaza," she told Sky News.
"We still have Hamas in the Gaza Strip, almost in control. And how is this not rewarding terrorists at this point in time?"
She also said the move was "not going to encourage that strong closeness that we need" with the US.
Australia also changed its position, from a "no" vote to abstention, on another resolution concerning Palestinian representation at the UN.
Albania
Muslim-majority Albania to open economic mission in Jerusalem
Albania "has shown, again and again, that you stand with the people of Israel as we fight to defend our borders and our civilization," Israeli President Isaac Herzog said. Albania will open a commercial liaison office in Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish state, Prime Minister Edi Rama told Israeli President Isaac Herzog during a meeting in Tirana on Thursday.
The move “marks a significant upgrade in the strong relationship between the two nations and represents a symbol of the deep friendship between the two peoples,” according to a statement by Herzog.
Herzog’s trip to the Albanian capital marked the first official visit of Israel’s head of state to the Muslim-majority Balkan nation. The president was accompanied by Idit Ohel, an Israeli of Serbian origin whose son Alon was taken hostage when Hamas attacked the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im on Oct. 7, 2023.
“It is especially meaningful to be among friends at this painful time for Israel, as we near the one-year mark since Hamas terrorists brutally attacked Israel. One year since thousands of terrorists invaded our country, savagely murdered and wounded thousands, and kidnapped hundreds of Israelis and foreign nationals into Gaza,” Herzog told Rama.
“Your country has shown, again and again, that you stand with the people of Israel as we fight to defend our borders and our civilization,” he continued. “Unfortunately, we are fighting more than one terrorist enemy simultaneously. The trail of blood linking all of the agents of hate is Iran, and its cruel, antisemitic fixation with the destruction of the State of Israel.”
The Albanian premier presented his Israeli guests with a book of his paintings as a token of appreciation and stressed the importance of freeing the remaining 101 hostages from Hamas captivity in Gaza.
“Thank you for having brought here with you the mother of hostage, of Alon, to whom I had the privilege to dedicate a book of my art. And I’ll pray for him to get back,” Rama said.
“I want to send a very brotherly message to all the parents of the hostages on one hand, expressing the most heartfelt condolences to all of them who lost their kids, who lost their loved ones in this horrendous moment in time, and on the other hand, to wish to all the others, to hug their kids and to hug their loved ones as soon as possible,” he said.
“These images of that day, that very dark day, not just for Israel, but for all the world, were images that no one should forget,” he added.
On Wednesday, Herzog traveled to Belgrade, Serbia, where he met with President Aleksandar Vučić, Prime Minister Miloš Vučević, Foreign Minister Marko Đurić, Parliament Speaker Ana Brnabić and members of the Jewish community.
Albania "has shown, again and again, that you stand with the people of Israel as we fight to defend our borders and our civilization," Israeli President Isaac Herzog said. Albania will open a commercial liaison office in Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish state, Prime Minister Edi Rama told Israeli President Isaac Herzog during a meeting in Tirana on Thursday.
The move “marks a significant upgrade in the strong relationship between the two nations and represents a symbol of the deep friendship between the two peoples,” according to a statement by Herzog.
Herzog’s trip to the Albanian capital marked the first official visit of Israel’s head of state to the Muslim-majority Balkan nation. The president was accompanied by Idit Ohel, an Israeli of Serbian origin whose son Alon was taken hostage when Hamas attacked the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im on Oct. 7, 2023.
“It is especially meaningful to be among friends at this painful time for Israel, as we near the one-year mark since Hamas terrorists brutally attacked Israel. One year since thousands of terrorists invaded our country, savagely murdered and wounded thousands, and kidnapped hundreds of Israelis and foreign nationals into Gaza,” Herzog told Rama.
“Your country has shown, again and again, that you stand with the people of Israel as we fight to defend our borders and our civilization,” he continued. “Unfortunately, we are fighting more than one terrorist enemy simultaneously. The trail of blood linking all of the agents of hate is Iran, and its cruel, antisemitic fixation with the destruction of the State of Israel.”
The Albanian premier presented his Israeli guests with a book of his paintings as a token of appreciation and stressed the importance of freeing the remaining 101 hostages from Hamas captivity in Gaza.
“Thank you for having brought here with you the mother of hostage, of Alon, to whom I had the privilege to dedicate a book of my art. And I’ll pray for him to get back,” Rama said.
“I want to send a very brotherly message to all the parents of the hostages on one hand, expressing the most heartfelt condolences to all of them who lost their kids, who lost their loved ones in this horrendous moment in time, and on the other hand, to wish to all the others, to hug their kids and to hug their loved ones as soon as possible,” he said.
“These images of that day, that very dark day, not just for Israel, but for all the world, were images that no one should forget,” he added.
On Wednesday, Herzog traveled to Belgrade, Serbia, where he met with President Aleksandar Vučić, Prime Minister Miloš Vučević, Foreign Minister Marko Đurić, Parliament Speaker Ana Brnabić and members of the Jewish community.
Georgia
Germany
When German politicians hold speeches on German-Israeli relations, they like to use the term "reason of state." But what does this "solidarity of German politics" really look like in these dramatic times?
The relationship between Germany and Israel relationship is unique — this was the message reiterated at an event hosted by Germany's opposition conservatives in Berlin earlier this week.
"There are no comparable relationships between any other two countries in the world," said Norbert Lammert, of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and former president of the Bundestag, Germany's parliament.
Lammert, 75, is the chairman of the CDU-affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation. A few days before the anniversary of Hamas terror attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023, when around 1,200 people were killed and more than 230 taken hostage, the foundation dedicated a "study day" to the unique German-Israel relationship. Participants voiced clear criticism of Germany's center-left federal government, which has been in office since 2021.
Hamas is classified as a terrorist organization by Germany, the European Union, the US and other governments.
Merkel's legacy
The murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust in the Nazi era is an indelible mark in German history. Germany's "special responsibility" for Israel, which became the homeland of Holocaust survivors, is summed up by German politicians as "Staatsräson" (reason of state). However, this term does not appear anywhere in the Basic Law, the German constitution. In March 2008, Angela Merkel, who was then German chancellor and the leader of the CDU, became the first foreign head of government ever to speak in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
In her speech, Merkel emphasized that "every German government and every German chancellor before me was committed to Germany's special historical responsibility for Israel's security. That historical responsibility of Germany is part of my country's reason of state." Meaning for her, "as German chancellor, Israel's security is never negotiable."
The current coalition agreement of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and its partners, the environmentalist Greens and the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP), signed in 2021, states: "Israel's security is a reason of state for us."
German politicians have been increasingly referring to "the reason of state" ever since the terror of October 7, 2023 — which shook Israel to its core. That includes Chancellor Olaf Scholz , who emphasized this statement in the Bundestag shortly after the attacks: "At this moment, there is only one place for Germany. That place is at Israel's side. That is what we mean when we say: Israel's security is the reason of state for Germany." However, some of Berlin's political decisions in the past year have upset Israel. One example is Berlin's abstentions on UN resolutions on the Middle East.
Josef Schuster, the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, expressed his own disillusionment during the Konrad Adenauer Foundation conference on Monday. He said the phrase "reason of state" should be "about standing up for Israel," and observed that this position was waning in German politics. Schuster said the position is increasingly carrying qualifications, pointing explicitly to Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock from the Green Party.
Schuster has long reprimanded German politicians. During his speech to inaugurate a new synagogue in Potsdam in July, Schuster lamented the fact that the Bundestag's parliamentary groups had not yet agreed on a resolution against antisemitism and for the protection of Jewish life in this country. Baerbock was present at the inauguration but Chancellor Scholz, who was due to attend, canceled at short notice citing scheduling reasons.
Schuster said it was "shameful" that such a resolution had still not been passed, one year after the October 7 attacks. Mentioning the current social mood in Germany, he said antisemitic attacks have risen over the past year, and said recent surveys showed decreasing support for Israel among the German population. There are ever more protests, graffiti and other attacks against Jewish institutions, he said.
At the Konrad Adenauer Foundation's conference, some Jewish participants described their recent experiences. Ricarda Louk, whose daughter Shani Louk was abducted on October 7 by Hamas and later murdered, shared her thoughts about the situation in Israel, her fears and expectations for the future. However, she emphasized that what should be remembered most is the image of her daughter full of joy. As participants entered the building to attend the conference they faced 20 pro-Palestinian protesters, some of whom had chained themselves up and were shouting abuse at the conference members, calling them "Nazis" or "murderers." The demonstrators were briefly arrested hours later.
Among the participants entering the building was the Israeli ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, who was more outspoken than ever about Germany's political course.
Prosor picked up the term "reason of state," which no other country has used in a comparable form, saying that Hamas had "set itself the goal of destroying the Jewish state as its 'reason of state'."
Prosor stressed that after the terror attacks, Scholz had reaffirmed that Germany can only stand on Israel's side, so this must be put into practice. He criticized the German course in the UN on resolutions that are critical of Israel, where Germany abstained time and again: "Our friends," Prosor declared, "this abstention is not an attitude."
The relationship between Germany and Israel relationship is unique — this was the message reiterated at an event hosted by Germany's opposition conservatives in Berlin earlier this week.
"There are no comparable relationships between any other two countries in the world," said Norbert Lammert, of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and former president of the Bundestag, Germany's parliament.
Lammert, 75, is the chairman of the CDU-affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation. A few days before the anniversary of Hamas terror attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023, when around 1,200 people were killed and more than 230 taken hostage, the foundation dedicated a "study day" to the unique German-Israel relationship. Participants voiced clear criticism of Germany's center-left federal government, which has been in office since 2021.
Hamas is classified as a terrorist organization by Germany, the European Union, the US and other governments.
Merkel's legacy
The murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust in the Nazi era is an indelible mark in German history. Germany's "special responsibility" for Israel, which became the homeland of Holocaust survivors, is summed up by German politicians as "Staatsräson" (reason of state). However, this term does not appear anywhere in the Basic Law, the German constitution. In March 2008, Angela Merkel, who was then German chancellor and the leader of the CDU, became the first foreign head of government ever to speak in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
In her speech, Merkel emphasized that "every German government and every German chancellor before me was committed to Germany's special historical responsibility for Israel's security. That historical responsibility of Germany is part of my country's reason of state." Meaning for her, "as German chancellor, Israel's security is never negotiable."
The current coalition agreement of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and its partners, the environmentalist Greens and the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP), signed in 2021, states: "Israel's security is a reason of state for us."
German politicians have been increasingly referring to "the reason of state" ever since the terror of October 7, 2023 — which shook Israel to its core. That includes Chancellor Olaf Scholz , who emphasized this statement in the Bundestag shortly after the attacks: "At this moment, there is only one place for Germany. That place is at Israel's side. That is what we mean when we say: Israel's security is the reason of state for Germany." However, some of Berlin's political decisions in the past year have upset Israel. One example is Berlin's abstentions on UN resolutions on the Middle East.
Josef Schuster, the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, expressed his own disillusionment during the Konrad Adenauer Foundation conference on Monday. He said the phrase "reason of state" should be "about standing up for Israel," and observed that this position was waning in German politics. Schuster said the position is increasingly carrying qualifications, pointing explicitly to Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock from the Green Party.
Schuster has long reprimanded German politicians. During his speech to inaugurate a new synagogue in Potsdam in July, Schuster lamented the fact that the Bundestag's parliamentary groups had not yet agreed on a resolution against antisemitism and for the protection of Jewish life in this country. Baerbock was present at the inauguration but Chancellor Scholz, who was due to attend, canceled at short notice citing scheduling reasons.
Schuster said it was "shameful" that such a resolution had still not been passed, one year after the October 7 attacks. Mentioning the current social mood in Germany, he said antisemitic attacks have risen over the past year, and said recent surveys showed decreasing support for Israel among the German population. There are ever more protests, graffiti and other attacks against Jewish institutions, he said.
At the Konrad Adenauer Foundation's conference, some Jewish participants described their recent experiences. Ricarda Louk, whose daughter Shani Louk was abducted on October 7 by Hamas and later murdered, shared her thoughts about the situation in Israel, her fears and expectations for the future. However, she emphasized that what should be remembered most is the image of her daughter full of joy. As participants entered the building to attend the conference they faced 20 pro-Palestinian protesters, some of whom had chained themselves up and were shouting abuse at the conference members, calling them "Nazis" or "murderers." The demonstrators were briefly arrested hours later.
Among the participants entering the building was the Israeli ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, who was more outspoken than ever about Germany's political course.
Prosor picked up the term "reason of state," which no other country has used in a comparable form, saying that Hamas had "set itself the goal of destroying the Jewish state as its 'reason of state'."
Prosor stressed that after the terror attacks, Scholz had reaffirmed that Germany can only stand on Israel's side, so this must be put into practice. He criticized the German course in the UN on resolutions that are critical of Israel, where Germany abstained time and again: "Our friends," Prosor declared, "this abstention is not an attitude."
United States of America
WASHINGTON: Former US President Donald Trump said that if he became the president again, the relationship between Israel and the United States (US) would be even stronger than ever before, reported Sputnik.
“If and when I’m President of the US, it (Israel-US ties) will, once again, be stronger and closer than it ever was before,“ Trump said on Monday evening during an event in Florida.
Trump added that he was committed to protecting the Jewish state and American Jewish communities, pledging to prevent threats against Israel and support its fight against terrorism. On Oct 7, 2023, Israel was subjected to an unprecedented rocket attack from the Gaza Strip. In addition, fighters of Palestinian movement Hamas infiltrated the border areas, opened fire on the military and civilians, and took hostages.
Israeli authorities say that about 1,200 people were killed during the raid. The Israel Defence Forces launched Operation Iron Swords in the Gaza Strip and announced a complete blockade of the enclave. The death toll from the Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip since October 7 has exceeded 41,900, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
“If and when I’m President of the US, it (Israel-US ties) will, once again, be stronger and closer than it ever was before,“ Trump said on Monday evening during an event in Florida.
Trump added that he was committed to protecting the Jewish state and American Jewish communities, pledging to prevent threats against Israel and support its fight against terrorism. On Oct 7, 2023, Israel was subjected to an unprecedented rocket attack from the Gaza Strip. In addition, fighters of Palestinian movement Hamas infiltrated the border areas, opened fire on the military and civilians, and took hostages.
Israeli authorities say that about 1,200 people were killed during the raid. The Israel Defence Forces launched Operation Iron Swords in the Gaza Strip and announced a complete blockade of the enclave. The death toll from the Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip since October 7 has exceeded 41,900, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
Italy
Meloni: Italy imposed full arms embargo on Israel over Gaza ground op
We have blocked everything," Meloni told lawmakers during a debate in Italy's senate ahead of a European Council summit in Brussels.
The Italian government blocked all new arms deals with the Jewish state just weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 massacre, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Tuesday, the local ANSA news agency reported.
“After the start of [Israeli military] operations in Gaza, the government immediately suspended all new export licenses, and all agreements signed after October 7th were not implemented,” the Italian leader stated during a debate at Italy’s Senate ahead of Thursday’s European Council summit.
Meloni told lawmakers that licenses authorized before Oct. 7 are being “analyzed on a case-by-case basis by the competent authority at the foreign ministry.”
“We have blocked everything,” the Italian premier declared, noting that the policies of her government are “much more restrictive than that applied by our partners—France, Germany and the United Kingdom.”
Israeli ground forces entered Gaza on Oct. 27 following a weeks-long air campaign in response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in the northwestern Negev, in which Palestinian terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, wounded thousands of others, and abducted 251—97 of whom remain in Gaza.
Among those murdered were three dual Italian-Israeli nationals.
Italy’s rhetoric toward the Jewish state has become increasingly hostile in recent weeks as Israel Defense Forces troops fight Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists in Southern Lebanon in an attempt to return the approximate 60,000 displaced Israeli civilians to the country’s north.
Hezbollah has attacked Israel nearly daily in support of Hamas since Oct. 8, firing thousands of rockets, missiles and drones at the Jewish state. These attacks have killed more than 40 people and caused widespread damage.
In her speech to the Senate on Tuesday, Meloni decried alleged Israeli attacks on U.N. Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL) peacekeepers. Rome is Europe’s largest contributor of troops, and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has said they will remain in the region despite the escalation.
“Even if there have been no casualties or extensive damage, I think that Israel’s attack on UNIFIL cannot be considered acceptable,” she said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday rejected the allegations that Israel had targeted U.N. troops in Lebanon, while noting that Jerusalem “repeatedly asked UNIFIL to get out of harm’s way.”
Earlier this week, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi called Italian Chief of Defense Staff Gen. Luciano Portolano to discuss the security situation in Lebanon and “associated challenges,” the IDF said.
Halevi addressed Hezbollah’s exploitation of areas surrounding UNIFIL positions for terrorism against the State of Israel, Jerusalem stated.
Halevi noted that the IDF would continue to probe the circumstances surrounding reports of harm to Italian UNIFIL forces and expressed his appreciation for the relationship between the two militaries, per the IDF.
We have blocked everything," Meloni told lawmakers during a debate in Italy's senate ahead of a European Council summit in Brussels.
The Italian government blocked all new arms deals with the Jewish state just weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 massacre, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Tuesday, the local ANSA news agency reported.
“After the start of [Israeli military] operations in Gaza, the government immediately suspended all new export licenses, and all agreements signed after October 7th were not implemented,” the Italian leader stated during a debate at Italy’s Senate ahead of Thursday’s European Council summit.
Meloni told lawmakers that licenses authorized before Oct. 7 are being “analyzed on a case-by-case basis by the competent authority at the foreign ministry.”
“We have blocked everything,” the Italian premier declared, noting that the policies of her government are “much more restrictive than that applied by our partners—France, Germany and the United Kingdom.”
Israeli ground forces entered Gaza on Oct. 27 following a weeks-long air campaign in response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in the northwestern Negev, in which Palestinian terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, wounded thousands of others, and abducted 251—97 of whom remain in Gaza.
Among those murdered were three dual Italian-Israeli nationals.
Italy’s rhetoric toward the Jewish state has become increasingly hostile in recent weeks as Israel Defense Forces troops fight Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists in Southern Lebanon in an attempt to return the approximate 60,000 displaced Israeli civilians to the country’s north.
Hezbollah has attacked Israel nearly daily in support of Hamas since Oct. 8, firing thousands of rockets, missiles and drones at the Jewish state. These attacks have killed more than 40 people and caused widespread damage.
In her speech to the Senate on Tuesday, Meloni decried alleged Israeli attacks on U.N. Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL) peacekeepers. Rome is Europe’s largest contributor of troops, and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has said they will remain in the region despite the escalation.
“Even if there have been no casualties or extensive damage, I think that Israel’s attack on UNIFIL cannot be considered acceptable,” she said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday rejected the allegations that Israel had targeted U.N. troops in Lebanon, while noting that Jerusalem “repeatedly asked UNIFIL to get out of harm’s way.”
Earlier this week, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi called Italian Chief of Defense Staff Gen. Luciano Portolano to discuss the security situation in Lebanon and “associated challenges,” the IDF said.
Halevi addressed Hezbollah’s exploitation of areas surrounding UNIFIL positions for terrorism against the State of Israel, Jerusalem stated.
Halevi noted that the IDF would continue to probe the circumstances surrounding reports of harm to Italian UNIFIL forces and expressed his appreciation for the relationship between the two militaries, per the IDF.
Israel
Montenegro
DPM Ivanović meets with Honorary Consul of Montenegro in Israel Nimrod Rinot
Deputy Prime Minister for Foreign and European Affairs Filip Ivanović met today with Nimrod Rinot, the Honorary Consul of Montenegro in Israel.
During the meeting, they exchanged views on the ongoing developments in the Middle East. Deputy Prime Minister Ivanović expressed concern over the persistent escalation of tensions in the region and the real risk of the conflict spreading. He emphasised that Montenegro will continue to call on all parties and stakeholders to pursue a ceasefire and commit to finding a political and diplomatic solution, as the only sustainable and lasting resolution to the crisis in the Middle East.
Both sides agreed that Montenegro and Israel are developing their relations on strong and stable foundations, and highlighted the successful cooperation in the areas of economy, investments, and tourism. They welcomed the growing interest of Israeli companies in investing in Montenegro and their increasing presence in the country.
It was noted that the current year has been a record one in terms of the number of Israeli tourists visiting Montenegro. Mr. Rinot informed Deputy Prime Minister Ivanović about the introduction of direct flights between Tel Aviv and Podgorica outside the summer tourist season, opening up significant opportunities for Montenegro's winter tourism.
Deputy Prime Minister Ivanović also emphasised that Montenegro places great importance on the work and contributions of the Jewish community in Montenegro, which undoubtedly plays a significant role in the country's multicultural society.
Deputy Prime Minister for Foreign and European Affairs Filip Ivanović met today with Nimrod Rinot, the Honorary Consul of Montenegro in Israel.
During the meeting, they exchanged views on the ongoing developments in the Middle East. Deputy Prime Minister Ivanović expressed concern over the persistent escalation of tensions in the region and the real risk of the conflict spreading. He emphasised that Montenegro will continue to call on all parties and stakeholders to pursue a ceasefire and commit to finding a political and diplomatic solution, as the only sustainable and lasting resolution to the crisis in the Middle East.
Both sides agreed that Montenegro and Israel are developing their relations on strong and stable foundations, and highlighted the successful cooperation in the areas of economy, investments, and tourism. They welcomed the growing interest of Israeli companies in investing in Montenegro and their increasing presence in the country.
It was noted that the current year has been a record one in terms of the number of Israeli tourists visiting Montenegro. Mr. Rinot informed Deputy Prime Minister Ivanović about the introduction of direct flights between Tel Aviv and Podgorica outside the summer tourist season, opening up significant opportunities for Montenegro's winter tourism.
Deputy Prime Minister Ivanović also emphasised that Montenegro places great importance on the work and contributions of the Jewish community in Montenegro, which undoubtedly plays a significant role in the country's multicultural society.
Sri-Lanka
The National Security Council is calling on Israeli citizens to immediately leave Arugam Bay and the south and west coastal areas of Sri Lanka
The National Security Council is calling on Israeli citizens to immediately leave Arugam Bay and the south and west coastal areas of Sri Lanka
Today, Wednesday, October 23, 2024, the National Security Council (NSC) raised the travel alert level for Sri Lanka due to credible terrorism threats at the tourist and coastal areas:
1. The travel alert for Arugam Bay and the coastal areas in south and west Sri Lanka (including for the cities Ahangame, Galle, Hikkaduwa and Weligama) has been raised to level 4. We recommend leaving these areas immediately. For those currently in these areas, we recommend leaving the country or at least traveling to the capital city Colombo, where there is heavier presence of local security forces.
2. For the rest of Sri Lanka, the travel warning has been raised to level 3, and we recommend that Israelis planning to travel to Sri Lanka delay any non-necessary trips to the country. If you do travel to Sri Lanka, avoid the areas for which level-4 travel alerts have been issued.
In addition, the NSC stresses that Israelis in Sri Lanka must exercise increased precaution. Specifically:
When in public, avoid openly exhibiting anything that could identify you as Israeli, such as t-shirts with Hebrew writing, or any symbol that discloses your religion or nationality.
Avoid gatherings of Israeli citizens in public places where there is no security.
Report any suspicion or unusual event to local security forces.
The Israel security forces are in close contact with the Sri Lankan security forces through the relevant organizations, and are monitoring the developments.
The National Security Council is calling on Israeli citizens to immediately leave Arugam Bay and the south and west coastal areas of Sri Lanka
Today, Wednesday, October 23, 2024, the National Security Council (NSC) raised the travel alert level for Sri Lanka due to credible terrorism threats at the tourist and coastal areas:
1. The travel alert for Arugam Bay and the coastal areas in south and west Sri Lanka (including for the cities Ahangame, Galle, Hikkaduwa and Weligama) has been raised to level 4. We recommend leaving these areas immediately. For those currently in these areas, we recommend leaving the country or at least traveling to the capital city Colombo, where there is heavier presence of local security forces.
2. For the rest of Sri Lanka, the travel warning has been raised to level 3, and we recommend that Israelis planning to travel to Sri Lanka delay any non-necessary trips to the country. If you do travel to Sri Lanka, avoid the areas for which level-4 travel alerts have been issued.
In addition, the NSC stresses that Israelis in Sri Lanka must exercise increased precaution. Specifically:
When in public, avoid openly exhibiting anything that could identify you as Israeli, such as t-shirts with Hebrew writing, or any symbol that discloses your religion or nationality.
Avoid gatherings of Israeli citizens in public places where there is no security.
Report any suspicion or unusual event to local security forces.
The Israel security forces are in close contact with the Sri Lankan security forces through the relevant organizations, and are monitoring the developments.
Sochi SFD Russia
France
The French president and the Israeli prime minister had a telephone conversation on Sunday, after tense exchanges triggered by Macron's declarations calling for a halt to arms deliveries to Israel.
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https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/10/07/a-weekend-of-tension-between-emmanuel-macron-and-benjamin-netanyahu_6728425_4.html
Even for a leader who is used to engaging in power struggles, even with his allies, the message sent by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to French President Emmanuel Macron on the evening of Saturday, October 5, was rather out of the ordinary. Speaking to give details on the "seven fronts" his country is engaged on, according to him, from Gaza to Lebanon, from Yemen to the West Bank; Netanyahu lost his temper, concluding: "Yet President Macron and other Western leaders are now calling for arms embargoes against Israel. Shame on them. (...) Israel will win with or without their support. But their shame will continue long after this war has been won."
Earlier on Saturday, the French president had declared on French radio: "I think that today, the priority is to return to a political solution, to stop delivering arms [to Israel] for fighting in Gaza."
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https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/10/07/a-weekend-of-tension-between-emmanuel-macron-and-benjamin-netanyahu_6728425_4.html
On Sunday afternoon, the two leaders had a telephone conversation "in complete frankness," according to a statement from the president's office. Macron reiterated France's "unwavering" commitment to Israel's security, but also stressed the need for a ceasefire in Lebanon, since arms deliveries cannot, in his view, "produce the security expected by the Israelis." For his part, the Israeli prime minister said in a statement that, in the present circumstances, "Israel's friends are expected to stand behind it, and not impose restrictions on it that will only strengthen the Iranian axis of evil."
Powerlessness
By mentioning a halt in arms deliveries, Macron has brought the question of the war Israel has been waging in the Palestinian territory – in retaliation for Hamas's attack on October 7, 2023 – back to center stage, at a time when recent events, including Israeli bombardments in Lebanon and Iranian strikes against Israel, had relegated it to the background.
The President's remarks also reflected his weariness and feelings of powerlessness in the face of Israel's year-long military operations in Gaza. It is also possible that Macron wanted to correct the perception (which surfaced after the October 1 Iranian strikes against Israel) that the country's alignment is too close to Israel against Tehran. Against this backdrop, the West, including France,
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https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/10/07/a-weekend-of-tension-between-emmanuel-macron-and-benjamin-netanyahu_6728425_4.html
Even for a leader who is used to engaging in power struggles, even with his allies, the message sent by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to French President Emmanuel Macron on the evening of Saturday, October 5, was rather out of the ordinary. Speaking to give details on the "seven fronts" his country is engaged on, according to him, from Gaza to Lebanon, from Yemen to the West Bank; Netanyahu lost his temper, concluding: "Yet President Macron and other Western leaders are now calling for arms embargoes against Israel. Shame on them. (...) Israel will win with or without their support. But their shame will continue long after this war has been won."
Earlier on Saturday, the French president had declared on French radio: "I think that today, the priority is to return to a political solution, to stop delivering arms [to Israel] for fighting in Gaza."
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https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/10/07/a-weekend-of-tension-between-emmanuel-macron-and-benjamin-netanyahu_6728425_4.html
On Sunday afternoon, the two leaders had a telephone conversation "in complete frankness," according to a statement from the president's office. Macron reiterated France's "unwavering" commitment to Israel's security, but also stressed the need for a ceasefire in Lebanon, since arms deliveries cannot, in his view, "produce the security expected by the Israelis." For his part, the Israeli prime minister said in a statement that, in the present circumstances, "Israel's friends are expected to stand behind it, and not impose restrictions on it that will only strengthen the Iranian axis of evil."
Powerlessness
By mentioning a halt in arms deliveries, Macron has brought the question of the war Israel has been waging in the Palestinian territory – in retaliation for Hamas's attack on October 7, 2023 – back to center stage, at a time when recent events, including Israeli bombardments in Lebanon and Iranian strikes against Israel, had relegated it to the background.
The President's remarks also reflected his weariness and feelings of powerlessness in the face of Israel's year-long military operations in Gaza. It is also possible that Macron wanted to correct the perception (which surfaced after the October 1 Iranian strikes against Israel) that the country's alignment is too close to Israel against Tehran. Against this backdrop, the West, including France,
India
India has been under scrutiny recently after reports that Indian weapons, ammunition and technology were making their way into Israel's arm
India will be guided by its "national interest" before reconsidering the transfer of weapons or arms sales to Israel, the country's external affairs minister has said, in yet another sign that Delhi is committed to providing diplomatic and military cover for Israel's genocide in Gaza.
On Thursday, several opposition politicians took the opportunity to use the Q&A session in parliament to probe India's external affairs minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, on India's policies, including its decision to abstain from several UN resolutions on Gaza, as well as to clarify its position on the International Criminal Court's (ICC) decision to issue warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
Jaishankar said that India officially supports the two-state solution but if resolutions did not adequately condemn terrorism or the holding of hostages, in reference to the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Delhi could not sign them.
“As a country that has suffered from terrorism, India cannot support resolutions that underplay such acts. Resolutions must be well-drafted, balanced, and reflect the entirety of the situation,” he said.
On the ICC warrants, Jaishankar said that India was not a signatory to the ICC and had not taken a formal position on the matter. The Indian government has been under scrutiny over the past several months with reports that Indian arms, ammunition and technology were making their way to Israel's army for potential use in operations in Gaza.
In late November, MEE found that an AI weapons system used by Israeli ground forces in Gaza was co-produced by the Indian company, Adani Defense and Aerospace.
The revelations stirred concerns among activists and politicians over Indian complicity in Israeli war crimes, culminating in several attempts to pressure the government to impose an arms embargo on Israel. These efforts have mostly fallen on deaf ears.
In September, the Indian Supreme Court dismissed a petition seeking to suspend military exports from India.
Israel 'stood by us'
India is the largest purchaser of Israeli weapons, accounting for around $1bn of trade per year. Since 2017, both countries have considered their partnership a "strategic relationship", with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office often making a public spectacle of their friendship.
When asked whether Delhi had any intention to consider a call by Palestine's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Varsen Aghabekian to impose an arms embargo on Israel back in May, Jaishankar said that while India was a responsible member of various international regimes, with a fully-fledged export, control and licensing process, it made decisions based on what was best for the country. "The issue of India's exports, including India's exports of anything which directly or indirectly has any military implications, is guided by our national interest and by our commitments to various regimes," Jaishankar said.
"Where Israel is concerned, it is a country with which we have a strong record of cooperation in national security. It is also a country that has stood by us at different moments when our national security was under threat.
"So when we take any decision, we will bear in mind, obviously, the larger circumstances, but we will definitely be driven by our national interest in this matter," the minister added.
Jaishankar said that India had increased its aid to Palestinians - from $1m to $5m per annum. But given that India has refused to endorse an arms embargo on Israel and has instead been accused of sending combat drones, bombs and components for the Israeli military as it conducts a "genocide" in Gaza, the increase in aid is likely to be seen as little more than lip service.
At a separate foreign policy event held by the Asia Society in New York on Thursday, Nirupama Roa, India's former external minister, defended India's Palestine policy, arguing that even if India had moved notably closer to Israel and the US over the past few years, it would be wrong to say Delhi had abandoned the Palestinian people.
“It would be incorrect to say that India has abandoned the interests of the Palestinian people,” Rao said in response to a question from MEE.
Rao, who was India’s external minister between 2009-2011, said Palestine had always been a cornerstone of India’s foreign policy, given its relationship with the Arab world.
However, Rao cautioned that any peace deal that excluded the Palestinian people would come to Israel’s detriment.
“Otherwise, peace will never come to that region, and even Israel's, you know, stability for the future, I think, comes into question because it will always be a nation under threat, and it will always look at its neighbourhood as threatening it. So that is really not a good place to be in for any country," Rao added.
India will be guided by its "national interest" before reconsidering the transfer of weapons or arms sales to Israel, the country's external affairs minister has said, in yet another sign that Delhi is committed to providing diplomatic and military cover for Israel's genocide in Gaza.
On Thursday, several opposition politicians took the opportunity to use the Q&A session in parliament to probe India's external affairs minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, on India's policies, including its decision to abstain from several UN resolutions on Gaza, as well as to clarify its position on the International Criminal Court's (ICC) decision to issue warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
Jaishankar said that India officially supports the two-state solution but if resolutions did not adequately condemn terrorism or the holding of hostages, in reference to the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Delhi could not sign them.
“As a country that has suffered from terrorism, India cannot support resolutions that underplay such acts. Resolutions must be well-drafted, balanced, and reflect the entirety of the situation,” he said.
On the ICC warrants, Jaishankar said that India was not a signatory to the ICC and had not taken a formal position on the matter. The Indian government has been under scrutiny over the past several months with reports that Indian arms, ammunition and technology were making their way to Israel's army for potential use in operations in Gaza.
In late November, MEE found that an AI weapons system used by Israeli ground forces in Gaza was co-produced by the Indian company, Adani Defense and Aerospace.
The revelations stirred concerns among activists and politicians over Indian complicity in Israeli war crimes, culminating in several attempts to pressure the government to impose an arms embargo on Israel. These efforts have mostly fallen on deaf ears.
In September, the Indian Supreme Court dismissed a petition seeking to suspend military exports from India.
Israel 'stood by us'
India is the largest purchaser of Israeli weapons, accounting for around $1bn of trade per year. Since 2017, both countries have considered their partnership a "strategic relationship", with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office often making a public spectacle of their friendship.
When asked whether Delhi had any intention to consider a call by Palestine's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Varsen Aghabekian to impose an arms embargo on Israel back in May, Jaishankar said that while India was a responsible member of various international regimes, with a fully-fledged export, control and licensing process, it made decisions based on what was best for the country. "The issue of India's exports, including India's exports of anything which directly or indirectly has any military implications, is guided by our national interest and by our commitments to various regimes," Jaishankar said.
"Where Israel is concerned, it is a country with which we have a strong record of cooperation in national security. It is also a country that has stood by us at different moments when our national security was under threat.
"So when we take any decision, we will bear in mind, obviously, the larger circumstances, but we will definitely be driven by our national interest in this matter," the minister added.
Jaishankar said that India had increased its aid to Palestinians - from $1m to $5m per annum. But given that India has refused to endorse an arms embargo on Israel and has instead been accused of sending combat drones, bombs and components for the Israeli military as it conducts a "genocide" in Gaza, the increase in aid is likely to be seen as little more than lip service.
At a separate foreign policy event held by the Asia Society in New York on Thursday, Nirupama Roa, India's former external minister, defended India's Palestine policy, arguing that even if India had moved notably closer to Israel and the US over the past few years, it would be wrong to say Delhi had abandoned the Palestinian people.
“It would be incorrect to say that India has abandoned the interests of the Palestinian people,” Rao said in response to a question from MEE.
Rao, who was India’s external minister between 2009-2011, said Palestine had always been a cornerstone of India’s foreign policy, given its relationship with the Arab world.
However, Rao cautioned that any peace deal that excluded the Palestinian people would come to Israel’s detriment.
“Otherwise, peace will never come to that region, and even Israel's, you know, stability for the future, I think, comes into question because it will always be a nation under threat, and it will always look at its neighbourhood as threatening it. So that is really not a good place to be in for any country," Rao added.
Kosovo
Ukraine
A defeat or weakening of Russia in Ukraine would strain Iran’s alliance with it, reducing Iran’s capacity to project power in the Middle East. This outcome aligns with Israel’s long-term interests.
Israel has stood on the sidelines, refusing to give Ukraine substantial support in its resistance to Russian imperial aggression. However, as Israel battles Iranian proxies in the Middle East, Ukraine battles Russia, one of Iran’s primary partners, in its own country. Israel has taken a cautious approach to the Russo-Ukrainian war, trying to avoid upsetting Russia. What Israeli officials don’t see is that the quicker Ukraine can defeat Russia, the greater the long-term damage to Iran will be.
In its latest move, the Israeli government has imposed new travel restrictions on Ukrainians, with Ukraine responding in kind to Israelis traveling to Ukraine. Relations between Israel and Ukraine remain strained. In 2022, while Ukrainian cities were being pummeled by Russian bombs, Ukraine’s government asked Israel for air defense systems to counter Iranian missiles and attack drones, but Israel refused.
Israel also blocked Washington from sending US-owned Iron Dome batteries to Ukraine in 2023. However, there are signs of change as the United States, Israel, and Ukraine are currently negotiating the supply of eight Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine from Israel.
The reason for Israel's hesitancy
Israel’s hesitant stance in supporting Ukraine can be attributed to its complex relationship with Russia. Israel maintains a level of cooperation with Russia, particularly in Syria, where Russian forces have a large presence. The Israeli government believes it is crucial for Israel’s security to have a good relationship with Russia as it seeks to counter Iranian influence and Hezbollah operations in the region.
Any direct confrontation or significant support for Ukraine could jeopardize this delicate balance, potentially leading to more aggressive actions by Russian forces in Syria against Israeli interests.
HOWEVER, ISRAEL’S current approach overlooks the strategic benefits of supporting Ukraine. By aiding Ukraine in its fight against Russia, Israel could indirectly weaken Iran’s position. Iran and Russia have forged a close alliance, with Iran providing drones and other military support to Russia. Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s intelligence services (HUR), also said that he believed Russia sent weapons to Hamas.
Russia’s relationship with Hamas has also been growing closer, as Russia has historically been a hotbed of antisemitism. Moscow continues to label Ukraine’s leadership as a “neo-Nazi” regime, even though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish.
Russian state media and social media disinformation operations have also been working to support Hamas and undermine Israel and the US. Furthermore, over 75% of Israelis support Ukraine according to a survey by Shlomo Filber and Tzuriel Sharon of Direct Polls LTD in 2022.
A defeat or significant weakening of Russia in Ukraine would strain Iran’s alliance with Russia, reducing Iran’s capacity to project power in the Middle East. This outcome aligns with Israel’s long-term security interests.
Moreover, like other Western powers, Israel could gain significant advantages by partnering with Ukraine’s military to conduct strikes against Russian forces in the Middle East if the need arises.
By March 2024, the Kyiv Post reported that Ukrainian special forces from HUR were collaborating with Syrian rebels to launch attacks against Russian mercenaries in Syria. These operations targeted Russian forces stationed near the Golan Heights, a region internationally recognized as occupied by Israel. HUR has been focusing on striking Russian checkpoints, foot patrols, and military vehicle columns, among other strategic targets in Syria.
Since the beginning of 2024, Russia has established over 10 observation points along the border area between Syria and the Golan Heights, near Israel. Iranian militias have also been actively operating in southern Syria, which Israel has been bombing.
Maurizio Molinari, writing in la Repubblica, suggests that Russia has been gathering critical intelligence on the weapons used by Israel in southern Syria, which closely resemble the Western arms supplied to Ukraine. As a result, Ukrainian attacks could significantly disrupt Russian intelligence-gathering efforts, hindering their ability to analyze and adapt to these weapons. This disruption would not only impact Russia’s operations in Ukraine but also those of Iran, one of Russia’s closest allies.
Israel has stood on the sidelines, refusing to give Ukraine substantial support in its resistance to Russian imperial aggression. However, as Israel battles Iranian proxies in the Middle East, Ukraine battles Russia, one of Iran’s primary partners, in its own country. Israel has taken a cautious approach to the Russo-Ukrainian war, trying to avoid upsetting Russia. What Israeli officials don’t see is that the quicker Ukraine can defeat Russia, the greater the long-term damage to Iran will be.
In its latest move, the Israeli government has imposed new travel restrictions on Ukrainians, with Ukraine responding in kind to Israelis traveling to Ukraine. Relations between Israel and Ukraine remain strained. In 2022, while Ukrainian cities were being pummeled by Russian bombs, Ukraine’s government asked Israel for air defense systems to counter Iranian missiles and attack drones, but Israel refused.
Israel also blocked Washington from sending US-owned Iron Dome batteries to Ukraine in 2023. However, there are signs of change as the United States, Israel, and Ukraine are currently negotiating the supply of eight Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine from Israel.
The reason for Israel's hesitancy
Israel’s hesitant stance in supporting Ukraine can be attributed to its complex relationship with Russia. Israel maintains a level of cooperation with Russia, particularly in Syria, where Russian forces have a large presence. The Israeli government believes it is crucial for Israel’s security to have a good relationship with Russia as it seeks to counter Iranian influence and Hezbollah operations in the region.
Any direct confrontation or significant support for Ukraine could jeopardize this delicate balance, potentially leading to more aggressive actions by Russian forces in Syria against Israeli interests.
HOWEVER, ISRAEL’S current approach overlooks the strategic benefits of supporting Ukraine. By aiding Ukraine in its fight against Russia, Israel could indirectly weaken Iran’s position. Iran and Russia have forged a close alliance, with Iran providing drones and other military support to Russia. Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s intelligence services (HUR), also said that he believed Russia sent weapons to Hamas.
Russia’s relationship with Hamas has also been growing closer, as Russia has historically been a hotbed of antisemitism. Moscow continues to label Ukraine’s leadership as a “neo-Nazi” regime, even though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish.
Russian state media and social media disinformation operations have also been working to support Hamas and undermine Israel and the US. Furthermore, over 75% of Israelis support Ukraine according to a survey by Shlomo Filber and Tzuriel Sharon of Direct Polls LTD in 2022.
A defeat or significant weakening of Russia in Ukraine would strain Iran’s alliance with Russia, reducing Iran’s capacity to project power in the Middle East. This outcome aligns with Israel’s long-term security interests.
Moreover, like other Western powers, Israel could gain significant advantages by partnering with Ukraine’s military to conduct strikes against Russian forces in the Middle East if the need arises.
By March 2024, the Kyiv Post reported that Ukrainian special forces from HUR were collaborating with Syrian rebels to launch attacks against Russian mercenaries in Syria. These operations targeted Russian forces stationed near the Golan Heights, a region internationally recognized as occupied by Israel. HUR has been focusing on striking Russian checkpoints, foot patrols, and military vehicle columns, among other strategic targets in Syria.
Since the beginning of 2024, Russia has established over 10 observation points along the border area between Syria and the Golan Heights, near Israel. Iranian militias have also been actively operating in southern Syria, which Israel has been bombing.
Maurizio Molinari, writing in la Repubblica, suggests that Russia has been gathering critical intelligence on the weapons used by Israel in southern Syria, which closely resemble the Western arms supplied to Ukraine. As a result, Ukrainian attacks could significantly disrupt Russian intelligence-gathering efforts, hindering their ability to analyze and adapt to these weapons. This disruption would not only impact Russia’s operations in Ukraine but also those of Iran, one of Russia’s closest allies.
Moldova
United Arab Emirates
Mexico
Mexico’s election puts Lopez Obrador’s stance on Israel under microscope
As President Lopez Obrador’s tenure ends, advocates reflect on his reticence to speak out against Israel’s war in Gaza.
Mexico City, Mexico – It was a case where the president’s words — and his administration’s actions — did not seem to match.
On Tuesday, the International Court of Justice announced that Mexico had requested to join South Africa’s case accusing the Israeli government of committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
But the very next day, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, refused to define Israel’s actions as genocide.
“We don’t want to put ourselves into a definition of this type that, instead of resolving a conflict, aggravates it,” he said in his morning news conference.
It was the latest evidence of Lopez Obrador’s ambiguous, somewhat contradictory stance towards Israel and its war in Gaza, which is nearing its eighth month.
Lopez Obrador and his legacy in office have been under the microscope in recent months, as his political party — the National Regeneration Movement or Morena — prepares for a pivotal nationwide vote.
This Sunday, Mexico holds its largest election in history, with every seat in Congress and the presidency at stake. The vote is considered a referendum on Lopez Obrador’s outgoing administration, which enjoyed high popularity during its six years in office.
But critics have questioned what the legacy of his foreign policy will be — and whether his likely successor, Morena party candidate Claudia Sheinbaum, will carry on his ambivalent relationship towards Israel.
Bucking the ‘pink tide’
The left-leaning Lopez Obrador was elected in 2018 amid a tide of discontent.
Voters rejected the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party in a landslide, leading to a historic margin of victory for Lopez Obrador and his Morena party.
His election heralded a period of equally historic wins for left-leaning leaders across Latin America.
In the years that followed, Chile elected the progressive Gabriel Boric, its youngest president ever. In Colombia, meanwhile, Gustavo Petro became the first left-wing leader to win the modern presidency.
And in Brazil, the prominent left-wing leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva nabbed his third term in office, after a gap of more than a decade.
Critics have dubbed the election streak as a new “pink tide”, ushering in a generation of like-minded leaders. But when it comes to Israel, Mexico’s Lopez Obrador has broken the mould.
After the war erupted on October 7, much of the so-called “pink tide” spoke out against the spiralling death toll in Gaza.
Boric condemned Israel’s military offensive as “disproportionate”. Others went further: Lula recalled Brazil’s ambassador to Israel on Wednesday, and Petro cut diplomatic ties altogether in May.
However, their ally in Mexico has not followed suit with his own full-throated criticism.
Observers have said Lopez Obrador has instead sought to strike a middle ground, a stance that has failed to please both Israeli officials and Palestinian rights supporters.
On October 9, for instance, the Mexican president offered his support to Israel, but refused to condone the violence unfolding against Palestinians in Gaza.
“We respect the Israeli government and even more the Israeli people,” he said. “Mexico does not want war. We are pacifists, and we do not want anyone to lose their lives, whether they be Israeli or Palestinian.”
That equivocation earned a furious response from Israel’s ambassador to Mexico, Einat Kranz Neiger, who retorted in a media interview, “Not taking sides is supporting terror.”
Lopez Obrador also faced pressure from pro-Palestinian advocates. Still, a few weeks later, he doubled down, ruling out any possibility of taking a firm stance.
“We – and I want to be very clear when I say this – are not going to break relations with Israel or take a position beyond calling for peace,” López Obrador said at a news conference on November 7.
Response rooted in contradiction
Témoris Grecko, a journalist covering the war in Gaza, has spent two decades reporting on the Middle East for the Mexican newspaper Milenio and other publications.
He too has noticed a more muted reaction from the normally outspoken Lopez Obrador. “The pace has been really slow,” he said of the administration’s response.
Grecko was on the ground in the West Bank to report on the conflict in the weeks after Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing an estimated 1,139 people and taking nearly 250 captive.
Israel’s months-long counter-offensive, however, has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians in Gaza, nearly half of them children. Human rights experts have raised concerns about the “risk of genocide” and “full-blown famine”.
In Grecko’s opinion, Mexico’s reticence to join other left-leaning governments in condemning Israel hints at the weight of the military and commercial contracts between the two countries.
“Always, the public position of Mexico has been in favour of Palestine, but there’s a contradiction,” Grecko said, pointing to Mexico’s economic and military interests.
“Mexico buys products from Israel, like arms and spyware, and there are contracts for Israeli organisations to train police and private security as well,” Grecko explained. “And there is a Mexican company, Cemex, that provided raw materials for a wall in Israel.”
Israel is the second-largest supplier of technology and training for the Mexican military. Grecko said that while the pro-Israel lobby in the United States may be internationally renowned, similar interests exist in Mexico, too.
“There are lobbying forces, which may not be as loud or visible as in the United States, but you can feel them,” Grecko said.
Outside the presidential palace
Nevertheless, Lopez Obrador has also faced protests from pro-Palestinian voices who seek to push him to take action.
Cutting off diplomatic relations with Israel is the primary demand of university students at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City, who launched a solidarity encampment on their campus in May.
After the university’s administration agreed to consider methods to divest from Israel, the encampment relocated to the city’s central plaza, the Zocalo, in front of the national palace.
Carla Torres, one of the organisers of the encampment, said Lopez Obrador’s refusal to cut ties with Israel is an example of Mexico’s long history of lukewarm, neutral or outright isolationist responses to international conflicts.
But in her opinion, Mexico’s love-hate relationship with its northern neighbour, the US, is the primary reason the president has not denounced Israel more forcefully.
“Mexico is a subordinate nation,” she said, citing its dependence on the US, its largest trading partner and a key ally to Israel. The US provides $3.8bn in unconditional military aid to Israel every year.
The encampment has not been the only act of protest. On May 29, four days before Mexico’s nationwide election, several hundred rioters threw Molotov cocktails at the Israeli embassy in Mexico City.
Minor damage to the building was reported, as protesters sought to show their outrage over Israel’s attacks in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where many civilians have been displaced.
For Torres, these acts of protest are a potent tool for educating the public about the conflict – and encouraging the government to end its “all talk, no action” posture.
She and the team from the UNAM have passed out pamphlets in the Zocalo plaza, trying to engage passersby in conversations about the war. Torres told Al Jazeera that, in her experience, many of the Mexicans she met in the square knew little about the conflict.
Passing the baton
For Edith Olivares Ferreto, the director of Amnesty International’s Mexico section, Lopez Obrador’s tiptoed posture on Gaza mirrors the way he responds to human rights abuses on his home turf.
“An estimated 20 people disappear in Mexico every day, and nine women are murdered,” she said, listing problems like increased violence and military abuses that have unfolded under the Lopez Obrador presidency.
Lopez Obrador is expected to soon pass the baton to his Morena party colleague Claudia Sheinbaum, the frontrunner in Sunday’s race for the presidency. Mexican election law bars previous presidents from running for a second term.
Still, Olivares Ferreto expects that, under Sheinbaum, little will change — whether in human rights or international relations.
Torres and Grecko offered similar observations in interviews with Al Jazeera, predicting a Sheinbaum presidency will likely see her prioritise relationships with the military, Israel and the US over any pro-Palestinian stance.
“She has different origins, a background with more participation in protest movements, but she could be even more authoritarian than AMLO,” Torres said.
Nevertheless, Sheinbaum has spoken out about the Palestinian plight. In 2009, Sheinbaum wrote a newspaper op-ed calling for Palestinian liberation and reflecting on her own family’s history of escaping persecution.
If elected on Sunday, she stands to be the first Mexican president of Jewish heritage.
“Because of my Jewish origin, because of my love for Mexico and because I feel like a citizen of the world, I share with millions the desire for justice, equality, fraternity and peace,” Sheinbaum explained in the op-ed. “No reason justifies the murder of Palestinian civilians.”
A bitter legacy
For human rights advocate Eduardo Ibanez, however, the prospect of cutting ties with Israel is particularly complex.
Ibanez works as an organiser assisting the families of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College who disappeared in 2014, prompting nationwide outrage.
Both the Mexican military and criminal groups have been implicated in the mass kidnapping, which has yet to be solved. Decades later, forensic specialists have only managed to identify the partial remains of three students.
Lopez Obrador had campaigned for office on the promise of providing answers to the families of the missing students — but Ibanez points out that any rupture in Mexico-Israel bonds could potentially endanger the pursuit of justice.
A Mexican military official named Tomas Zeron fled to Israel in 2020, after being accused of covering up the military’s complicity in the Ayotzinapa case. Zeron also faces charges after being caught on tape torturing suspects during the initial Ayotzinapa investigation.
In the years since, Mexico and Israel have participated in unsuccessful talks to extradite Zeron. Ibanez fears that negotiations would surely end if Mexico were to cut off diplomatic ties.
Just last April, Mexico warned Israel about its refusal to arrest Zeron.
“The lack of progress in resolving this case is interpreted as de facto protection of Tomas Zeron by the Israeli government and threatens to become an irritating and disruptive factor,” the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote in a statement.
Still, Ibanez suspects progress will ultimately be made in neither case – not for Ayotzinapa, not for Gaza.
“Poor Palestine, poor Ayotzinapa. I really don’t think anything is going to get better,” he said.
As President Lopez Obrador’s tenure ends, advocates reflect on his reticence to speak out against Israel’s war in Gaza.
Mexico City, Mexico – It was a case where the president’s words — and his administration’s actions — did not seem to match.
On Tuesday, the International Court of Justice announced that Mexico had requested to join South Africa’s case accusing the Israeli government of committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.
But the very next day, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, refused to define Israel’s actions as genocide.
“We don’t want to put ourselves into a definition of this type that, instead of resolving a conflict, aggravates it,” he said in his morning news conference.
It was the latest evidence of Lopez Obrador’s ambiguous, somewhat contradictory stance towards Israel and its war in Gaza, which is nearing its eighth month.
Lopez Obrador and his legacy in office have been under the microscope in recent months, as his political party — the National Regeneration Movement or Morena — prepares for a pivotal nationwide vote.
This Sunday, Mexico holds its largest election in history, with every seat in Congress and the presidency at stake. The vote is considered a referendum on Lopez Obrador’s outgoing administration, which enjoyed high popularity during its six years in office.
But critics have questioned what the legacy of his foreign policy will be — and whether his likely successor, Morena party candidate Claudia Sheinbaum, will carry on his ambivalent relationship towards Israel.
Bucking the ‘pink tide’
The left-leaning Lopez Obrador was elected in 2018 amid a tide of discontent.
Voters rejected the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party in a landslide, leading to a historic margin of victory for Lopez Obrador and his Morena party.
His election heralded a period of equally historic wins for left-leaning leaders across Latin America.
In the years that followed, Chile elected the progressive Gabriel Boric, its youngest president ever. In Colombia, meanwhile, Gustavo Petro became the first left-wing leader to win the modern presidency.
And in Brazil, the prominent left-wing leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva nabbed his third term in office, after a gap of more than a decade.
Critics have dubbed the election streak as a new “pink tide”, ushering in a generation of like-minded leaders. But when it comes to Israel, Mexico’s Lopez Obrador has broken the mould.
After the war erupted on October 7, much of the so-called “pink tide” spoke out against the spiralling death toll in Gaza.
Boric condemned Israel’s military offensive as “disproportionate”. Others went further: Lula recalled Brazil’s ambassador to Israel on Wednesday, and Petro cut diplomatic ties altogether in May.
However, their ally in Mexico has not followed suit with his own full-throated criticism.
Observers have said Lopez Obrador has instead sought to strike a middle ground, a stance that has failed to please both Israeli officials and Palestinian rights supporters.
On October 9, for instance, the Mexican president offered his support to Israel, but refused to condone the violence unfolding against Palestinians in Gaza.
“We respect the Israeli government and even more the Israeli people,” he said. “Mexico does not want war. We are pacifists, and we do not want anyone to lose their lives, whether they be Israeli or Palestinian.”
That equivocation earned a furious response from Israel’s ambassador to Mexico, Einat Kranz Neiger, who retorted in a media interview, “Not taking sides is supporting terror.”
Lopez Obrador also faced pressure from pro-Palestinian advocates. Still, a few weeks later, he doubled down, ruling out any possibility of taking a firm stance.
“We – and I want to be very clear when I say this – are not going to break relations with Israel or take a position beyond calling for peace,” López Obrador said at a news conference on November 7.
Response rooted in contradiction
Témoris Grecko, a journalist covering the war in Gaza, has spent two decades reporting on the Middle East for the Mexican newspaper Milenio and other publications.
He too has noticed a more muted reaction from the normally outspoken Lopez Obrador. “The pace has been really slow,” he said of the administration’s response.
Grecko was on the ground in the West Bank to report on the conflict in the weeks after Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing an estimated 1,139 people and taking nearly 250 captive.
Israel’s months-long counter-offensive, however, has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians in Gaza, nearly half of them children. Human rights experts have raised concerns about the “risk of genocide” and “full-blown famine”.
In Grecko’s opinion, Mexico’s reticence to join other left-leaning governments in condemning Israel hints at the weight of the military and commercial contracts between the two countries.
“Always, the public position of Mexico has been in favour of Palestine, but there’s a contradiction,” Grecko said, pointing to Mexico’s economic and military interests.
“Mexico buys products from Israel, like arms and spyware, and there are contracts for Israeli organisations to train police and private security as well,” Grecko explained. “And there is a Mexican company, Cemex, that provided raw materials for a wall in Israel.”
Israel is the second-largest supplier of technology and training for the Mexican military. Grecko said that while the pro-Israel lobby in the United States may be internationally renowned, similar interests exist in Mexico, too.
“There are lobbying forces, which may not be as loud or visible as in the United States, but you can feel them,” Grecko said.
Outside the presidential palace
Nevertheless, Lopez Obrador has also faced protests from pro-Palestinian voices who seek to push him to take action.
Cutting off diplomatic relations with Israel is the primary demand of university students at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City, who launched a solidarity encampment on their campus in May.
After the university’s administration agreed to consider methods to divest from Israel, the encampment relocated to the city’s central plaza, the Zocalo, in front of the national palace.
Carla Torres, one of the organisers of the encampment, said Lopez Obrador’s refusal to cut ties with Israel is an example of Mexico’s long history of lukewarm, neutral or outright isolationist responses to international conflicts.
But in her opinion, Mexico’s love-hate relationship with its northern neighbour, the US, is the primary reason the president has not denounced Israel more forcefully.
“Mexico is a subordinate nation,” she said, citing its dependence on the US, its largest trading partner and a key ally to Israel. The US provides $3.8bn in unconditional military aid to Israel every year.
The encampment has not been the only act of protest. On May 29, four days before Mexico’s nationwide election, several hundred rioters threw Molotov cocktails at the Israeli embassy in Mexico City.
Minor damage to the building was reported, as protesters sought to show their outrage over Israel’s attacks in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where many civilians have been displaced.
For Torres, these acts of protest are a potent tool for educating the public about the conflict – and encouraging the government to end its “all talk, no action” posture.
She and the team from the UNAM have passed out pamphlets in the Zocalo plaza, trying to engage passersby in conversations about the war. Torres told Al Jazeera that, in her experience, many of the Mexicans she met in the square knew little about the conflict.
Passing the baton
For Edith Olivares Ferreto, the director of Amnesty International’s Mexico section, Lopez Obrador’s tiptoed posture on Gaza mirrors the way he responds to human rights abuses on his home turf.
“An estimated 20 people disappear in Mexico every day, and nine women are murdered,” she said, listing problems like increased violence and military abuses that have unfolded under the Lopez Obrador presidency.
Lopez Obrador is expected to soon pass the baton to his Morena party colleague Claudia Sheinbaum, the frontrunner in Sunday’s race for the presidency. Mexican election law bars previous presidents from running for a second term.
Still, Olivares Ferreto expects that, under Sheinbaum, little will change — whether in human rights or international relations.
Torres and Grecko offered similar observations in interviews with Al Jazeera, predicting a Sheinbaum presidency will likely see her prioritise relationships with the military, Israel and the US over any pro-Palestinian stance.
“She has different origins, a background with more participation in protest movements, but she could be even more authoritarian than AMLO,” Torres said.
Nevertheless, Sheinbaum has spoken out about the Palestinian plight. In 2009, Sheinbaum wrote a newspaper op-ed calling for Palestinian liberation and reflecting on her own family’s history of escaping persecution.
If elected on Sunday, she stands to be the first Mexican president of Jewish heritage.
“Because of my Jewish origin, because of my love for Mexico and because I feel like a citizen of the world, I share with millions the desire for justice, equality, fraternity and peace,” Sheinbaum explained in the op-ed. “No reason justifies the murder of Palestinian civilians.”
A bitter legacy
For human rights advocate Eduardo Ibanez, however, the prospect of cutting ties with Israel is particularly complex.
Ibanez works as an organiser assisting the families of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College who disappeared in 2014, prompting nationwide outrage.
Both the Mexican military and criminal groups have been implicated in the mass kidnapping, which has yet to be solved. Decades later, forensic specialists have only managed to identify the partial remains of three students.
Lopez Obrador had campaigned for office on the promise of providing answers to the families of the missing students — but Ibanez points out that any rupture in Mexico-Israel bonds could potentially endanger the pursuit of justice.
A Mexican military official named Tomas Zeron fled to Israel in 2020, after being accused of covering up the military’s complicity in the Ayotzinapa case. Zeron also faces charges after being caught on tape torturing suspects during the initial Ayotzinapa investigation.
In the years since, Mexico and Israel have participated in unsuccessful talks to extradite Zeron. Ibanez fears that negotiations would surely end if Mexico were to cut off diplomatic ties.
Just last April, Mexico warned Israel about its refusal to arrest Zeron.
“The lack of progress in resolving this case is interpreted as de facto protection of Tomas Zeron by the Israeli government and threatens to become an irritating and disruptive factor,” the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote in a statement.
Still, Ibanez suspects progress will ultimately be made in neither case – not for Ayotzinapa, not for Gaza.
“Poor Palestine, poor Ayotzinapa. I really don’t think anything is going to get better,” he said.
Kurdistan
The Historic Ties between Israel and the Kurds of Iraq Will Continue
Iraq was one of five Arab countries that participated in the war against the newly created Jewish state in 1948. The war ended in 1949 with the United Nations brokering armistice agreements, a series of ceasefire agreements signed by all warring states except Iraq.
The Iraqi army participated in two more significant wars (in 1967 and 1973) against Israel and was defeated in both. Hence, technically, Iraq and Israel are still in a state of war and have no official diplomatic ties. This begs the question of why, in May 2022, the Iraqi Parliament passed a law that threatens the death penalty or life imprisonment for any Iraqi citizen, company, or institution that attempts any kind of normalization with Israel or Israelis. It is worth noting that this law applies to Iraqis as well as foreign companies and individuals operating in Iraq.
One of the key provisions of this law, titled “Criminalizing Normalization and Establishment of Relations with the Zionist Entity,” punishes any political, security, economic, technical, cultural, sports, and scientific cooperation with Israel and Israelis under any circumstances.
Undoubtedly, the timing of the law has to do with several factors, one of which is the Abraham Accords, which have changed the geopolitical landscape by offering the opportunities and enormous benefits that come with normalization. The younger generation, in particular, is well-aware that the Abraham Accords are creating jobs and fostering a stronger financial future.
On a societal level, the Abraham Accords have also broken decades-long hatred and hysteria over “Israel, the enemy.” They are changing public opinion through dialogue and mutual understanding to deepen and expand people-to-people connections.
In September 2021, Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, hosted a conference on normalizing relations with Israel. Some 300 influential people, including Iraqi Arab tribal leaders and lawmakers, attended. The conference came as two Arab countries, the UAE and Bahrain, were establishing ties with Israel, and Morocco and Sudan declared they would join the Abraham Accords.
The success of the Abraham Accords set off alarms with the mullahs of Iran. The prospect of the Abraham Accords’ expansion is undoubtedly one of Iran’s biggest fears. With the Iraqi government under the influence of Iran, it will do everything possible to prevent Iraq from becoming the next country to join.
Himdad Mustafa, an independent researcher based in Erbil, to whom the law would be applied, noted: “When 300 people gathered in Erbil calling for peace and normalization with Israel, the Iraqi government immediately passed a law criminalizing ties with Israel and Israelis. The law is clearly aimed at Kurds.”1
Shortly after the Erbil conference, the Iraqi government and several Shia militia groups released statements calling those who participated in the conference “traitors” and for the places where “traitors” and “evil bases” are located to be burned down.
Qais Al-Khazali, secretary-general of Asaib Ahl al-Hag (Coordination Framework), a powerful Iranian-backed Shia militia, slammed the conference as “disgraceful.” He called on the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to take action and slammed Kurdish officials for claiming they were not aware of the conference. The anti-Israel/antisemitic Al-Khazali posted a statement on his Twitter account on September 25, 2021, saying that “the Islamic opposition will not remain quiet about this great betrayal, and that we will give the Israeli enemy and those who have normalized ties with them a lesson that will stop all others who are thinking of normalization.”
The Iraqi parliament, which failed to form a unified and functional government since the fall of the decades-old regime of the feared dictator Saddam Hussain 20 years ago, finally managed to reach a consensus, with 275 lawmakers out of 329 voting in favor of the anti-Israel law. It is worth noting that Iraq’s current prime minister, Mohammed Al-Sudani, was nominated to the post thanks to the Iran-backed Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, the largest parliamentary bloc.
This is the same parliament that failed to address Iraq’s many socio-economic challenges and introduce policies that would improve the lives of millions of ordinary Iraqis who live in poverty. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, close to 3.2 million school-aged children are out of school, with the Iraqi Parliament allocating less than 6 percent of its national budget to the education sector, placing Iraq at the bottom rank of the Middle East countries.4 In addition, in 2022, Iraq’s public sector was ranked as the 23rd most corrupt in the world.5 The situation has prompted nationwide protests in recent years, particularly among youth frustrated with the lack of employment opportunities. The unemployment rate for this group reached a high of 34.6 percent in 2022.6
Moreover, Kurdish lawmakers voted in favor of this anti-Israel law. It might seem paradoxical that Kurds supported such a law against Israel, the only country in the world that supported the 2017 Kurdish independence referendum. Arafat Karam, an advisor to Masoud Barzani, the architect of the independence referendum, explained, “I predict the anti-Israel law will further deepen the rift between Baghdad and Erbil. The Kurds’ votes favoring the law does not mean that Erbil was joining the chorus against Israel.”7 In short, a yes-decision was taken due to political pressures.
Kurdish-Israeli Ties and the Fear of a “Second Israel”
In 1966, the then-Iraqi defense minister, Abd al-Aziz al-Uqayali, blamed the Kurds of Iraq for seeking to establish a “second Israel” in the region. Fifty-seven years later, the term “second Israel” is still perpetuated, claiming Kurdistan is imitating “Yahudistan,” meaning the land of the Jews or Israel.
Professor Ofra Bengio, head of the Kurdish studies program at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, said that “the linkages and parallels are intended to demonize and delegitimize both Jews and Kurds, while also implying illegitimate relations between them.”
Going back a century, Iraq was home to a vibrant Jewish community. In June 1941, Haj Amin al Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, incited an antisemitic pogrom in Iraq called the “Farhud,” when Arab nationalists looted Jewish businesses and brutally killed hundreds of Jews. Most Jews left Iraq by 1951, and discriminative policies and persecution targeted those who remained. Here, the Kurds played an important role: the Kurdish region became the only escape route for thousands of Jews, who were assisted by the Kurds to escape Iraq. The Jews who fled in the late 1960s recounted how Masoud Barzani, the son of Mulla Mustafa Barzani, who later became the president of KRG in 2005, personally helped smuggle them out over the mountains.
Professor Bengio writes that Kurdish Jews “became excellent ambassadors for the Kurds of Iraq, publicizing and pleading their cause among the Israeli public. For example, following the crushing of the 1991 Kurdish uprising by Saddam Hussein, the Kurdish community in Israel, estimated then at 100,000, organized a massive relief operation for Iraqi Kurds. They also staged demonstrations in front of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and called on the U.S. to protect the Kurds from Saddam.”9
Iraq’s Kurds also fit into the plans of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. His “Periphery Doctrine” sought alliances and friendly ties with non-Arab states in the periphery of the Middle East, including Turkey, Iran (a strong coalition partner that lasted until the Shah’s overthrow in 1979), Ethiopia, and also ethnic and religious minorities, like the Kurds and the Maronites in Lebanon, with whom Israel maintained a discreet relationship since the late 1950s.
The strengthening of ties between Israel and the Kurds of Iraq commenced with the outbreak of the Kurdish rebellion, also known as the Barzani rebellion against the Iraqi regime, which lasted from 1961 until 1970. The uprising was led by the much-loved, legendary Kurdish leader Mulla Mustafa Barzani in an attempt to establish an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq.
Turning to Israel for Help
The Kurdish rebellion faced serious challenges, and Mulla Mustafa asked the Israelis for help. As a result, a Kurdish team traveled to Israel and met with then-Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and Shimon Peres, then the head of the Labor Party. The visit resulted in Israel deploying an Israeli team to Iraqi Kurdistan with Reuven Shiloah, one of the first Israeli contacts there, who later became the director of the Mossad.
The relationship was conducted with a high level of secrecy, and it would deepen and expand following the Six-Day War of 1967, in which Arabs armies, including the Iraqi military, suffered a humiliating defeat by the Israeli army. Mulla Mustafa visited Israel at least two times (in 1968 and 1973), meeting with Prime Minister Eshkol and high-level Israeli officials from the Intelligence community.
Mulla Mostafa’s son, Masoud, and other Iraqi Kurdish leaders repeatedly visited Israel over the decades. Israeli officials also frequently visited the Kurdish region, and the Mossad reportedly set up bases in Kurdistan during the 1960s and 1970s.
Brig.-Gen. Tzuri Sagi was one of the first Israeli Mossad operatives to arrive in Kurdistan in 1965 to train Peshmerga fighters. Sagi stayed for about two years and had regular meetings with Mulla Mostafa. In an article published in the New York Times (September 29, 2017), Sagi expressed his love for the Kurdish people: “I became a patriotic Kurd,” saying many Israeli soldiers and Mossad operatives shared similar sentiments toward the Kurds of Iraq.
It is essential to highlight that, at first, the Israeli aid involved humanitarian assistance, building field hospitals and training Peshmerga fighters, but supplying them with no heavy weaponry. Later, Israel started providing the Kurds with significant amounts of more advanced weaponry, such as anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, and training Peshmerga fighters in Israel.
Israelis also helped to bring the “Kurdish question” to Europe by financing awareness campaigns about the Kurds and their plight. The ties between the two friends continued with the first official acknowledgment on September 29, 1980, when Prime Minister Menachem Begin revealed that Israel supported the Kurds “during their uprising against the Iraqis in 1965-1975.”10
Since the fall of Saddam Hussain’s Ba’athist regime in 2003, the geopolitical context for Kurdish-Israeli ties has changed dramatically, with the Kurds establishing a de facto Kurdish state and renewing and deepening their relations with Israel. In 2005, the Kurdish president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Masoud Barzani, openly called for establishing diplomatic ties with Israel. In 2008, Iraq’s then-president Jalal Talabani and the head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) openly embraced Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak during a conference in Greece. This move upset Iraqi Arab lawmakers. Talabani responded by saying that he had done so in his capacity as a Kurd and as head of the PUK, not as president of Iraq.
There are also unverified reports that both Masoud Barzani and Talabani had meetings with the late Ariel Sharon in 2004, and it has also been reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already met with the current KRG President of Kurdistan, Nechirvan Barzani.
Win-Win Relationship
Israel also maintains economic ties with Kurdistan, purchasing Kurdish oil despite objections from Iraq’s central government in Baghdad. A report in the Financial Times discusses investments by many Israeli companies in energy, development sectors, and communications projects in Iraqi Kurdistan, in addition to providing security training and purchasing oil.11 Moreover, in a poll conducted in 2009 in Iraqi Kurdistan, 71% of Kurds supported normalization with Israel.12 The results are unsurprising since, historically, Israel has had cordial ties with the Kurds in a generally hostile region where Jews and Kurds have fought against the odds with the same Arab enemy in their struggles for a homeland.
For more than 100 years, Kurds have been the victims of “Arabization” campaigns of ethnic cleansing programs and genocides. As early as the 1930s, Iraq attempted to ethnically cleanse the Kurdish areas by resettling large numbers of Arabs. The ethnic cleansing peaked in Kurdish regions in Syria and Iraq following the rise of the Arab Ba’ath Party, a party whose ideology was hugely influenced by Nazi Germany under Hitler. The Ba’athists sought to achieve their grandiose plan of creating “one Arab nation” built on Arab ethnic purity. To achieve their aims, they embarked on a campaign to erase non-Arab minorities such as the Kurds and Assyrians. In the early 1960s, the Syrian government implemented the “Arab Belt Project,” which saw 1.4 million acres of Kurdish agricultural land given to Syrian Arab farmers. In the past decades alone, at least half a million Kurds have been murdered by the Syrian and Iraqi governments. The worse atrocities occurred in Iraq between 1988 and 1991, when more than 200,000 Kurds were killed, and Saddam’s Anfal campaigns destroyed more than 4,500 Kurdish villages.13 “Anfal” is a Koranic term adopted by Saddam to describe his program to eradicate the Kurds and loot their possessions. “Suratal-Anfal” means the spoils (of war).
Aso Qaderi, a Kurdish filmmaker, political activist, and former peshmerga fighter, said in an interview,
Kurds and Jews have a common history of genocides, repression, exile, and displacement. And our history and sacrifices are similar, and we were two nations that no one supported in all the suffering that has come upon us….Our relationships date back to the late 1950s; these relations have always been in the interests of both sides. Over the decades, these relationships have grown economically, culturally, commercially, socially, politically, and security-wise.14
Qaderi pointed out that more than 300,000 Kurds (mainly Jewish) now live in Israel and have played a pivotal role in influencing Israel’s policy and public opinion on the Kurdish question.
In reference to the anti-normalization law, like Mustafa Himdad, the Erbil researcher, Qaderi points a finger at Iran, saying this “law is an order from the Iranian regime and has been enacted through Iranian militia groups and proxies in Iraq.”15 But Qaderi firmly asserts that Iran and its proxies in the Iraqi government will not succeed in breaking the decades-old Kurdish-Israeli ties.
Most Iraqis, including Arab Iraqis, are well aware that this law is just a propaganda tool enacted for domestic consumption. When the law came into force, the influential Shia cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr posted a tweet praising it as a “great achievement” and called on his followers to come out to the streets to celebrate. Yet only a few hundred responded to his call and gathered in downtown Baghdad to chant anti-Israel slogans.
Qaderi continued: “This law has no value for the Iraqi people. Even some Iraqi Arab leaders have ties to Israel.”16 “For us Kurds, it is business as usual – Kurds will maintain their relations with Israel diplomatically and politically.”17
Israel – The Only Country to Back Kurdish Statehood
The late Masoud Barzani, then president of the KRG, like his father Mulla Mostafa, the iconic leader of Kurdish nationalism, dreamed of establishing a homeland for the Kurds of Iraq. On September 25, 2017, he backed holding the Kurdish Independence Referendum. An overwhelming 92.73% of Kurds voted in favor of independence. Masoud had hoped to use the overwhelming “yes” vote as political leverage to open the path for negotiating independence from Iraq.
But the move was met with hostility from international allies and regional foes except for one country, Israel. The Jewish state was the only country in the world to endorse an independent Kurdish state. Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “(Israel) supports the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to achieve their own state.”
A month later, on October 20, 2017, tens of thousands of Iraqi troops and Hashd Al-Shaabi (“Popular Mobilization Forces”), an Iraqi Shia armed militia backed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and other proxy IRGC-backed militias, launched an offensive against the Kurdish region and were about to advance towards Erbil. The Shia Arab Iraqis, with the support of Iran, launched their attack to eliminate the political integrity of the autonomous Kurdish region.
However, Kurdish fighters from Syria and Iran joined Peshmerga forces from Iraqi Kurdistan. Together they were able to defeat the attackers and stop them from progressing. The General Directorate of Counterterrorism in the Kurdistan Region wrote: “The Pirde [Peshmerga base] epic is a symbol of the steadfastness of the people of Kurdistan, and a failure of a hostile scheme….October 20, 2017, was the day when the Kurdish people and the Kurdistan Region regained their dignity, and it was a graveyard for enemies.”18
Back in the 1960s, Israel was the only country that came to the aid of Iraqi Kurds, and decades later, it was again the only country that openly supported the Kurdish right to independence. As a result, waving Israeli flags became a frequent occurrence in the Kurdish region and a symbol of unity between Jews and Kurds.
In late 2017, the Iraqi parliament passed a law making flying an Israeli flag publicly a criminal act. However, that did not stop many Iraqi Kurds, especially young people, from feeling close to the Jewish state.
The Iranian regime, through its proxies in the Iraqi government, is the most significant source of Kurd-phobia in Iraq and the driving factor fueling tensions. In addition to their explicit threat to Israel, Iranian officials frequently threaten the Kurdish region, and repeatedly accuse the Kurds of working with Israel. The accusations include identifying and arresting “a network of agents of the Zionist regime’s spy organization (Mossad)” entering Iran through the Kurdish region to carry out attacks. The IRGC has launched ballistic missiles toward Erbil under the pretext they are targeting secret Israeli military bases.
As recently as May 21, 2023, Iran’s Intelligence and Security Minister Esmail Khatib claimed that Iranian security forces had detained several Kurdish-Iraqi spies cooperating with Israel “that tried to cross the western borders of Iran.” He warned, “If insecurity is created for the Islamic Republic, any action on the borders will be met with a decisive and overwhelming response.”19
If Kurds ever have their own independent state, they most definitely would join the Abraham Accords. However, many challenges and obstacles remain for this to happen. Kurds will continue their long-standing ties with Israel, but for now, these ties will remain “covert” due to the fear of Tehran and its loyalist supporters within the Iraqi government.
Israel’s hands are also tied due to a lack of interest or commitment by the American administration to an independent Kurdish area in northern Iraq. Americans and their allies often emphasize the territorial integrity of the Iraqi state, neglecting to mention that an overwhelming majority of Kurds reject being part of the illusory state of Iraq.
Iraq was one of five Arab countries that participated in the war against the newly created Jewish state in 1948. The war ended in 1949 with the United Nations brokering armistice agreements, a series of ceasefire agreements signed by all warring states except Iraq.
The Iraqi army participated in two more significant wars (in 1967 and 1973) against Israel and was defeated in both. Hence, technically, Iraq and Israel are still in a state of war and have no official diplomatic ties. This begs the question of why, in May 2022, the Iraqi Parliament passed a law that threatens the death penalty or life imprisonment for any Iraqi citizen, company, or institution that attempts any kind of normalization with Israel or Israelis. It is worth noting that this law applies to Iraqis as well as foreign companies and individuals operating in Iraq.
One of the key provisions of this law, titled “Criminalizing Normalization and Establishment of Relations with the Zionist Entity,” punishes any political, security, economic, technical, cultural, sports, and scientific cooperation with Israel and Israelis under any circumstances.
Undoubtedly, the timing of the law has to do with several factors, one of which is the Abraham Accords, which have changed the geopolitical landscape by offering the opportunities and enormous benefits that come with normalization. The younger generation, in particular, is well-aware that the Abraham Accords are creating jobs and fostering a stronger financial future.
On a societal level, the Abraham Accords have also broken decades-long hatred and hysteria over “Israel, the enemy.” They are changing public opinion through dialogue and mutual understanding to deepen and expand people-to-people connections.
In September 2021, Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, hosted a conference on normalizing relations with Israel. Some 300 influential people, including Iraqi Arab tribal leaders and lawmakers, attended. The conference came as two Arab countries, the UAE and Bahrain, were establishing ties with Israel, and Morocco and Sudan declared they would join the Abraham Accords.
The success of the Abraham Accords set off alarms with the mullahs of Iran. The prospect of the Abraham Accords’ expansion is undoubtedly one of Iran’s biggest fears. With the Iraqi government under the influence of Iran, it will do everything possible to prevent Iraq from becoming the next country to join.
Himdad Mustafa, an independent researcher based in Erbil, to whom the law would be applied, noted: “When 300 people gathered in Erbil calling for peace and normalization with Israel, the Iraqi government immediately passed a law criminalizing ties with Israel and Israelis. The law is clearly aimed at Kurds.”1
Shortly after the Erbil conference, the Iraqi government and several Shia militia groups released statements calling those who participated in the conference “traitors” and for the places where “traitors” and “evil bases” are located to be burned down.
Qais Al-Khazali, secretary-general of Asaib Ahl al-Hag (Coordination Framework), a powerful Iranian-backed Shia militia, slammed the conference as “disgraceful.” He called on the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to take action and slammed Kurdish officials for claiming they were not aware of the conference. The anti-Israel/antisemitic Al-Khazali posted a statement on his Twitter account on September 25, 2021, saying that “the Islamic opposition will not remain quiet about this great betrayal, and that we will give the Israeli enemy and those who have normalized ties with them a lesson that will stop all others who are thinking of normalization.”
The Iraqi parliament, which failed to form a unified and functional government since the fall of the decades-old regime of the feared dictator Saddam Hussain 20 years ago, finally managed to reach a consensus, with 275 lawmakers out of 329 voting in favor of the anti-Israel law. It is worth noting that Iraq’s current prime minister, Mohammed Al-Sudani, was nominated to the post thanks to the Iran-backed Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, the largest parliamentary bloc.
This is the same parliament that failed to address Iraq’s many socio-economic challenges and introduce policies that would improve the lives of millions of ordinary Iraqis who live in poverty. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, close to 3.2 million school-aged children are out of school, with the Iraqi Parliament allocating less than 6 percent of its national budget to the education sector, placing Iraq at the bottom rank of the Middle East countries.4 In addition, in 2022, Iraq’s public sector was ranked as the 23rd most corrupt in the world.5 The situation has prompted nationwide protests in recent years, particularly among youth frustrated with the lack of employment opportunities. The unemployment rate for this group reached a high of 34.6 percent in 2022.6
Moreover, Kurdish lawmakers voted in favor of this anti-Israel law. It might seem paradoxical that Kurds supported such a law against Israel, the only country in the world that supported the 2017 Kurdish independence referendum. Arafat Karam, an advisor to Masoud Barzani, the architect of the independence referendum, explained, “I predict the anti-Israel law will further deepen the rift between Baghdad and Erbil. The Kurds’ votes favoring the law does not mean that Erbil was joining the chorus against Israel.”7 In short, a yes-decision was taken due to political pressures.
Kurdish-Israeli Ties and the Fear of a “Second Israel”
In 1966, the then-Iraqi defense minister, Abd al-Aziz al-Uqayali, blamed the Kurds of Iraq for seeking to establish a “second Israel” in the region. Fifty-seven years later, the term “second Israel” is still perpetuated, claiming Kurdistan is imitating “Yahudistan,” meaning the land of the Jews or Israel.
Professor Ofra Bengio, head of the Kurdish studies program at the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, said that “the linkages and parallels are intended to demonize and delegitimize both Jews and Kurds, while also implying illegitimate relations between them.”
Going back a century, Iraq was home to a vibrant Jewish community. In June 1941, Haj Amin al Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, incited an antisemitic pogrom in Iraq called the “Farhud,” when Arab nationalists looted Jewish businesses and brutally killed hundreds of Jews. Most Jews left Iraq by 1951, and discriminative policies and persecution targeted those who remained. Here, the Kurds played an important role: the Kurdish region became the only escape route for thousands of Jews, who were assisted by the Kurds to escape Iraq. The Jews who fled in the late 1960s recounted how Masoud Barzani, the son of Mulla Mustafa Barzani, who later became the president of KRG in 2005, personally helped smuggle them out over the mountains.
Professor Bengio writes that Kurdish Jews “became excellent ambassadors for the Kurds of Iraq, publicizing and pleading their cause among the Israeli public. For example, following the crushing of the 1991 Kurdish uprising by Saddam Hussein, the Kurdish community in Israel, estimated then at 100,000, organized a massive relief operation for Iraqi Kurds. They also staged demonstrations in front of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and called on the U.S. to protect the Kurds from Saddam.”9
Iraq’s Kurds also fit into the plans of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. His “Periphery Doctrine” sought alliances and friendly ties with non-Arab states in the periphery of the Middle East, including Turkey, Iran (a strong coalition partner that lasted until the Shah’s overthrow in 1979), Ethiopia, and also ethnic and religious minorities, like the Kurds and the Maronites in Lebanon, with whom Israel maintained a discreet relationship since the late 1950s.
The strengthening of ties between Israel and the Kurds of Iraq commenced with the outbreak of the Kurdish rebellion, also known as the Barzani rebellion against the Iraqi regime, which lasted from 1961 until 1970. The uprising was led by the much-loved, legendary Kurdish leader Mulla Mustafa Barzani in an attempt to establish an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq.
Turning to Israel for Help
The Kurdish rebellion faced serious challenges, and Mulla Mustafa asked the Israelis for help. As a result, a Kurdish team traveled to Israel and met with then-Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and Shimon Peres, then the head of the Labor Party. The visit resulted in Israel deploying an Israeli team to Iraqi Kurdistan with Reuven Shiloah, one of the first Israeli contacts there, who later became the director of the Mossad.
The relationship was conducted with a high level of secrecy, and it would deepen and expand following the Six-Day War of 1967, in which Arabs armies, including the Iraqi military, suffered a humiliating defeat by the Israeli army. Mulla Mustafa visited Israel at least two times (in 1968 and 1973), meeting with Prime Minister Eshkol and high-level Israeli officials from the Intelligence community.
Mulla Mostafa’s son, Masoud, and other Iraqi Kurdish leaders repeatedly visited Israel over the decades. Israeli officials also frequently visited the Kurdish region, and the Mossad reportedly set up bases in Kurdistan during the 1960s and 1970s.
Brig.-Gen. Tzuri Sagi was one of the first Israeli Mossad operatives to arrive in Kurdistan in 1965 to train Peshmerga fighters. Sagi stayed for about two years and had regular meetings with Mulla Mostafa. In an article published in the New York Times (September 29, 2017), Sagi expressed his love for the Kurdish people: “I became a patriotic Kurd,” saying many Israeli soldiers and Mossad operatives shared similar sentiments toward the Kurds of Iraq.
It is essential to highlight that, at first, the Israeli aid involved humanitarian assistance, building field hospitals and training Peshmerga fighters, but supplying them with no heavy weaponry. Later, Israel started providing the Kurds with significant amounts of more advanced weaponry, such as anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, and training Peshmerga fighters in Israel.
Israelis also helped to bring the “Kurdish question” to Europe by financing awareness campaigns about the Kurds and their plight. The ties between the two friends continued with the first official acknowledgment on September 29, 1980, when Prime Minister Menachem Begin revealed that Israel supported the Kurds “during their uprising against the Iraqis in 1965-1975.”10
Since the fall of Saddam Hussain’s Ba’athist regime in 2003, the geopolitical context for Kurdish-Israeli ties has changed dramatically, with the Kurds establishing a de facto Kurdish state and renewing and deepening their relations with Israel. In 2005, the Kurdish president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Masoud Barzani, openly called for establishing diplomatic ties with Israel. In 2008, Iraq’s then-president Jalal Talabani and the head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) openly embraced Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak during a conference in Greece. This move upset Iraqi Arab lawmakers. Talabani responded by saying that he had done so in his capacity as a Kurd and as head of the PUK, not as president of Iraq.
There are also unverified reports that both Masoud Barzani and Talabani had meetings with the late Ariel Sharon in 2004, and it has also been reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already met with the current KRG President of Kurdistan, Nechirvan Barzani.
Win-Win Relationship
Israel also maintains economic ties with Kurdistan, purchasing Kurdish oil despite objections from Iraq’s central government in Baghdad. A report in the Financial Times discusses investments by many Israeli companies in energy, development sectors, and communications projects in Iraqi Kurdistan, in addition to providing security training and purchasing oil.11 Moreover, in a poll conducted in 2009 in Iraqi Kurdistan, 71% of Kurds supported normalization with Israel.12 The results are unsurprising since, historically, Israel has had cordial ties with the Kurds in a generally hostile region where Jews and Kurds have fought against the odds with the same Arab enemy in their struggles for a homeland.
For more than 100 years, Kurds have been the victims of “Arabization” campaigns of ethnic cleansing programs and genocides. As early as the 1930s, Iraq attempted to ethnically cleanse the Kurdish areas by resettling large numbers of Arabs. The ethnic cleansing peaked in Kurdish regions in Syria and Iraq following the rise of the Arab Ba’ath Party, a party whose ideology was hugely influenced by Nazi Germany under Hitler. The Ba’athists sought to achieve their grandiose plan of creating “one Arab nation” built on Arab ethnic purity. To achieve their aims, they embarked on a campaign to erase non-Arab minorities such as the Kurds and Assyrians. In the early 1960s, the Syrian government implemented the “Arab Belt Project,” which saw 1.4 million acres of Kurdish agricultural land given to Syrian Arab farmers. In the past decades alone, at least half a million Kurds have been murdered by the Syrian and Iraqi governments. The worse atrocities occurred in Iraq between 1988 and 1991, when more than 200,000 Kurds were killed, and Saddam’s Anfal campaigns destroyed more than 4,500 Kurdish villages.13 “Anfal” is a Koranic term adopted by Saddam to describe his program to eradicate the Kurds and loot their possessions. “Suratal-Anfal” means the spoils (of war).
Aso Qaderi, a Kurdish filmmaker, political activist, and former peshmerga fighter, said in an interview,
Kurds and Jews have a common history of genocides, repression, exile, and displacement. And our history and sacrifices are similar, and we were two nations that no one supported in all the suffering that has come upon us….Our relationships date back to the late 1950s; these relations have always been in the interests of both sides. Over the decades, these relationships have grown economically, culturally, commercially, socially, politically, and security-wise.14
Qaderi pointed out that more than 300,000 Kurds (mainly Jewish) now live in Israel and have played a pivotal role in influencing Israel’s policy and public opinion on the Kurdish question.
In reference to the anti-normalization law, like Mustafa Himdad, the Erbil researcher, Qaderi points a finger at Iran, saying this “law is an order from the Iranian regime and has been enacted through Iranian militia groups and proxies in Iraq.”15 But Qaderi firmly asserts that Iran and its proxies in the Iraqi government will not succeed in breaking the decades-old Kurdish-Israeli ties.
Most Iraqis, including Arab Iraqis, are well aware that this law is just a propaganda tool enacted for domestic consumption. When the law came into force, the influential Shia cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr posted a tweet praising it as a “great achievement” and called on his followers to come out to the streets to celebrate. Yet only a few hundred responded to his call and gathered in downtown Baghdad to chant anti-Israel slogans.
Qaderi continued: “This law has no value for the Iraqi people. Even some Iraqi Arab leaders have ties to Israel.”16 “For us Kurds, it is business as usual – Kurds will maintain their relations with Israel diplomatically and politically.”17
Israel – The Only Country to Back Kurdish Statehood
The late Masoud Barzani, then president of the KRG, like his father Mulla Mostafa, the iconic leader of Kurdish nationalism, dreamed of establishing a homeland for the Kurds of Iraq. On September 25, 2017, he backed holding the Kurdish Independence Referendum. An overwhelming 92.73% of Kurds voted in favor of independence. Masoud had hoped to use the overwhelming “yes” vote as political leverage to open the path for negotiating independence from Iraq.
But the move was met with hostility from international allies and regional foes except for one country, Israel. The Jewish state was the only country in the world to endorse an independent Kurdish state. Prime Minister Netanyahu said, “(Israel) supports the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to achieve their own state.”
A month later, on October 20, 2017, tens of thousands of Iraqi troops and Hashd Al-Shaabi (“Popular Mobilization Forces”), an Iraqi Shia armed militia backed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and other proxy IRGC-backed militias, launched an offensive against the Kurdish region and were about to advance towards Erbil. The Shia Arab Iraqis, with the support of Iran, launched their attack to eliminate the political integrity of the autonomous Kurdish region.
However, Kurdish fighters from Syria and Iran joined Peshmerga forces from Iraqi Kurdistan. Together they were able to defeat the attackers and stop them from progressing. The General Directorate of Counterterrorism in the Kurdistan Region wrote: “The Pirde [Peshmerga base] epic is a symbol of the steadfastness of the people of Kurdistan, and a failure of a hostile scheme….October 20, 2017, was the day when the Kurdish people and the Kurdistan Region regained their dignity, and it was a graveyard for enemies.”18
Back in the 1960s, Israel was the only country that came to the aid of Iraqi Kurds, and decades later, it was again the only country that openly supported the Kurdish right to independence. As a result, waving Israeli flags became a frequent occurrence in the Kurdish region and a symbol of unity between Jews and Kurds.
In late 2017, the Iraqi parliament passed a law making flying an Israeli flag publicly a criminal act. However, that did not stop many Iraqi Kurds, especially young people, from feeling close to the Jewish state.
The Iranian regime, through its proxies in the Iraqi government, is the most significant source of Kurd-phobia in Iraq and the driving factor fueling tensions. In addition to their explicit threat to Israel, Iranian officials frequently threaten the Kurdish region, and repeatedly accuse the Kurds of working with Israel. The accusations include identifying and arresting “a network of agents of the Zionist regime’s spy organization (Mossad)” entering Iran through the Kurdish region to carry out attacks. The IRGC has launched ballistic missiles toward Erbil under the pretext they are targeting secret Israeli military bases.
As recently as May 21, 2023, Iran’s Intelligence and Security Minister Esmail Khatib claimed that Iranian security forces had detained several Kurdish-Iraqi spies cooperating with Israel “that tried to cross the western borders of Iran.” He warned, “If insecurity is created for the Islamic Republic, any action on the borders will be met with a decisive and overwhelming response.”19
If Kurds ever have their own independent state, they most definitely would join the Abraham Accords. However, many challenges and obstacles remain for this to happen. Kurds will continue their long-standing ties with Israel, but for now, these ties will remain “covert” due to the fear of Tehran and its loyalist supporters within the Iraqi government.
Israel’s hands are also tied due to a lack of interest or commitment by the American administration to an independent Kurdish area in northern Iraq. Americans and their allies often emphasize the territorial integrity of the Iraqi state, neglecting to mention that an overwhelming majority of Kurds reject being part of the illusory state of Iraq.
Honduras
Honduras recalls ambassador to Israel over ‘serious humanitarian situation’ in Gaza
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Honduras became the latest Latin American country Friday to recall its ambassador to Israel for consultations on what it described as the “serious humanitarian situation” facing Palestinians in Gaza amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
“In the face of the serious humanitarian situation suffered by the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip, the government” has called envoy Roberto Martinez to Tegucigalpa “for consultations,” Honduran Foreign Minister Eduardo Enrique Reina said on X, formerly Twitter.
Honduras is the latest leftist-led Latin American government to take diplomatic steps to express its disapproval of Israel’s expanded offensive against Hamas in the wake of the October 7 massacres carried out by the Gaza-ruling terror group.
Bolivia’s government severed diplomatic relations with Israel on Tuesday, accusing it of carrying out “crimes against humanity” in Gaza. Chile and Colombia also recalled their own ambassadors to Israel as they criticized the Israeli offensive against Hamas terrorists.
In the massive onslaught last month, Palestinian terrorists stormed across the border into Israel under the cover of heavy rocket fire, killing 1,400 people and taking over 240 hostages into Gaza. Most of those slain were civilians at their homes and at a music festival.
The Palestinian death toll in the war has reached 9,227, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. The figures cannot be verified independently and are also believed to include terrorists and civilians killed by misfired rockets.
Reina told The Associated Press that recalling the ambassador was a way to draw attention to the civilian situation in Gaza and said the government decided to pull him out until the situation was clearer. Relations with Israel remain stable and Honduran diplomats and staff will remain in the embassy, he added.
He noted the main points of a recent United Nations resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire, respect for humanitarian law and to start a dialogue in search of peace.
“It is a position to say, in a way, that the situation of the innocent population concerns us,” Reina said
In 2021, Honduras moved its embassy to Jerusalem under then-president Juan Orlando Hernández, who is now awaiting trial on drug trafficking charges in the United States.
At the time, Honduras’ decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem was seen as an attempt by Hernández to curry favor with the Trump administration, which had moved the US embassy there in 2018. Honduras, which has a significant Evangelical Christian population, was the fourth country to move its embassy to Jerusalem, and has since been followed by Papua New Guinea.
Castro, a leftist, succeeded Hernández. Honduras’ first female president has tried to walk a line that aligns with other leftist governments in the hemisphere like Venezuela and Cuba, but without completely alienating the United States.
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Honduras became the latest Latin American country Friday to recall its ambassador to Israel for consultations on what it described as the “serious humanitarian situation” facing Palestinians in Gaza amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
“In the face of the serious humanitarian situation suffered by the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip, the government” has called envoy Roberto Martinez to Tegucigalpa “for consultations,” Honduran Foreign Minister Eduardo Enrique Reina said on X, formerly Twitter.
Honduras is the latest leftist-led Latin American government to take diplomatic steps to express its disapproval of Israel’s expanded offensive against Hamas in the wake of the October 7 massacres carried out by the Gaza-ruling terror group.
Bolivia’s government severed diplomatic relations with Israel on Tuesday, accusing it of carrying out “crimes against humanity” in Gaza. Chile and Colombia also recalled their own ambassadors to Israel as they criticized the Israeli offensive against Hamas terrorists.
In the massive onslaught last month, Palestinian terrorists stormed across the border into Israel under the cover of heavy rocket fire, killing 1,400 people and taking over 240 hostages into Gaza. Most of those slain were civilians at their homes and at a music festival.
The Palestinian death toll in the war has reached 9,227, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. The figures cannot be verified independently and are also believed to include terrorists and civilians killed by misfired rockets.
Reina told The Associated Press that recalling the ambassador was a way to draw attention to the civilian situation in Gaza and said the government decided to pull him out until the situation was clearer. Relations with Israel remain stable and Honduran diplomats and staff will remain in the embassy, he added.
He noted the main points of a recent United Nations resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire, respect for humanitarian law and to start a dialogue in search of peace.
“It is a position to say, in a way, that the situation of the innocent population concerns us,” Reina said
In 2021, Honduras moved its embassy to Jerusalem under then-president Juan Orlando Hernández, who is now awaiting trial on drug trafficking charges in the United States.
At the time, Honduras’ decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem was seen as an attempt by Hernández to curry favor with the Trump administration, which had moved the US embassy there in 2018. Honduras, which has a significant Evangelical Christian population, was the fourth country to move its embassy to Jerusalem, and has since been followed by Papua New Guinea.
Castro, a leftist, succeeded Hernández. Honduras’ first female president has tried to walk a line that aligns with other leftist governments in the hemisphere like Venezuela and Cuba, but without completely alienating the United States.
Turkmenistan
Israel cements ties to Turkmenistan on Iran's border
ASHGABAT, April 20 (Reuters) - Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen inaugurated a permanent embassy in the Central Asian nation of Turkmenistan on Thursday, establishing his country's closest diplomatic presence to Iran, as Israel seeks to strengthen ties to its arch-foe's neighbours.
Although the countries established diplomatic relations 30 years ago, there had only been a temporary Israeli mission in Ashgabat and predominantly Muslim Turkmenistan still has no embassy in Israel.
"I came to open an Israeli embassy 17 kilometres from the border with Iran, and to hold a series of meetings with the president and other officials," Cohen tweeted on Thursday.
In English remarks to Israeli reporters accompanying Cohen, his Turkmen counterpart, Rashid Meredov, described the embassy inauguration as "a very shining example of our friendship".
Cohen, who also met Turkmen President Serdar Berdymukhamedov, called his visit "historic" and said Israel's ties with Central Asia's "energy superpower" were of strategic importance.
"We intend to widen economic relations to include agriculture, water, technology and border defence," Cohen said in a video issued by Israel's Foreign Ministry. "No doubt both countries will benefit from the closer cooperation."
The gas-rich desert nation of six million has an official neutrality policy, avoiding membership in any political or military blocs. Its main economic partner is China, which buys the bulk of Turkmen gas exports.
Turkmenistan's trade with Iran is relatively small and the two countries had disputes about potentially large hydrocarbon deposits in the Caspian Sea.
Although all five Caspian littoral states signed a convention in 2018 settling such disputes, Tehran is yet to ratify the document - which also holds up Ashgabat's plans to build a pipeline across the sea to ship gas to Europe.
ASHGABAT, April 20 (Reuters) - Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen inaugurated a permanent embassy in the Central Asian nation of Turkmenistan on Thursday, establishing his country's closest diplomatic presence to Iran, as Israel seeks to strengthen ties to its arch-foe's neighbours.
Although the countries established diplomatic relations 30 years ago, there had only been a temporary Israeli mission in Ashgabat and predominantly Muslim Turkmenistan still has no embassy in Israel.
"I came to open an Israeli embassy 17 kilometres from the border with Iran, and to hold a series of meetings with the president and other officials," Cohen tweeted on Thursday.
In English remarks to Israeli reporters accompanying Cohen, his Turkmen counterpart, Rashid Meredov, described the embassy inauguration as "a very shining example of our friendship".
Cohen, who also met Turkmen President Serdar Berdymukhamedov, called his visit "historic" and said Israel's ties with Central Asia's "energy superpower" were of strategic importance.
"We intend to widen economic relations to include agriculture, water, technology and border defence," Cohen said in a video issued by Israel's Foreign Ministry. "No doubt both countries will benefit from the closer cooperation."
The gas-rich desert nation of six million has an official neutrality policy, avoiding membership in any political or military blocs. Its main economic partner is China, which buys the bulk of Turkmen gas exports.
Turkmenistan's trade with Iran is relatively small and the two countries had disputes about potentially large hydrocarbon deposits in the Caspian Sea.
Although all five Caspian littoral states signed a convention in 2018 settling such disputes, Tehran is yet to ratify the document - which also holds up Ashgabat's plans to build a pipeline across the sea to ship gas to Europe.
Hungary
‘Hungary is one of the few pro-Israel voices in Europe’
Simcha Rothman is a sitting member of the Israeli Knesset, representing the National Religious Party–Religious Zionism, part of the governing Netanyahu administration. He has been serving in the national legislature since 2021. Mr Rothman recently travelled to Budapest, Hungary to speak at the second International Pro-Israel Summit, hosted by the Center for Fundamental Rights.
***
As a European, as I was following the news about the Hamas–Israel war, in July I had the impression the Western mainstream media made it seem like a lasting long-term peace was close when the two sides were starting to meet in Doha, Qatar. Was that the case to you as an insider? Was there a real chance of a peace agreement back in July?
I think that you can never have a peace agreement with Hamas. And there were no talks on peace agreements with Hamas ever, because Hamas’ ideology is to kill all the Jews. You cannot have peace with this. There were talks about a hostage deal that, in my point of view, of course, Hamas said no to, as to every deal that was on the table. And that’s common knowledge. I have to say, as a representative of the state of Israel, I can tell you that if there was a deal on the table that Israel agreed to, Hamas always said no. However, if you ask me about the right approach, in Israel I am the constant voice that says that even negotiating with Hamas makes the deal go further away. You should never negotiate with Hamas.
And I think what we saw in the past few months is just that. We negotiated with Hamas through indirect negotiations to try to get a hostage deal. Hamas will always say no, it’s a waste of time. It’s better to apply more and more and more pressure, military-wise, and maybe get the people who are holding the hostages to run for their lives and ask for small deals. But there is one thing they should know. And that’s—now I return to the formal stance of Israel—that after the war, Hamas will not exist in Gaza. We cannot have 7 October all over again. No normal country will ever agree to have its citizens threatened the way Israel was. Anyone who wants to reach the peace and quiet in the neighbourhood that Israel does, has to eliminate the forces who work every day to eliminate peace and quiet.
‘I think that you can never have a peace agreement with Hamas, because Hamas’ ideology is to kill all the Jews’
In your speech at the International Pro-Israel Summit, you mentioned that militarily there have been some Israeli successes lately. Can you elaborate on that, what were those successes?
So we all heard about getting rid of Nasrallah, for which, believe it or not, we were applauded by many, many Arabs in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, all around the world, because Nasrallah and Hezbollah have killed way more Arabs than they killed Jews. They are a threat to peace. They fight.
So the fact that Nasrallah has been killed means the world is a better place now than when Nasrallah was in this world. But it’s not only Nasrallah. The operations that took place in Lebanon and are happening as we speak now are eliminating Iran’s most powerful proxy. The threat to Israel through Iran’s proxies is unbearable, and Israel is dealing with them one at a time. We dealt with Hamas, and we will continue. They’re still not finished. Now we are dealing with Hezbollah. We dealt with the Houthi, and we will not rest until Israel is safe.
During wartime, the popularity of national leaders often increases. Do you think that was the case for Prime Minister Netanyahu? Do you think that he has more support now than he had before the Hamas attack last year?
I think in the beginning there was a blowback against the government, because it happened under our watch, despite the fact that my party and myself, but not only my party and myself, but also the leadership in the government were trying to change the course of the state of Israel. For many years, the course of the state of Israel was towards appeasement and accepting terror as part of reality, which we shouldn’t have agreed to to begin with. So, people were furious in the beginning that this attack happened on our watch. But as time goes by, I think more and more people see that the approach that the coalition, the right-wing coalition leads towards this war is the right way. They see the people in the opposition; that if the leader of the opposition would get his way, we would have a ceasefire with Hezbollah, we wouldn’t have assassinated Nasrallah, and Hezbollah would still be a bigger threat. The fact that Benjamin Netanyahu and the right-wing coalition are in power now means that I think the course of the war is way better than it could be under any other government.
Of course, I would like to see more done. I waited for the entrance to Rafah for three months. The pressure from the outside was terrible. We withstood this pressure, but it took us time. I think we are on the right path. And I think the public, as recent polls show, the public sees it.
Do you believe the previous administration has some culpability in the attack happening?
I think that the main thing about responsibility is that people who were part of the problem and made it even worse, they just run away from responsibility while claiming that we are not taking responsibility. The current government takes responsibility and deals with the problem. Benny Gantz from the last government was the Minister of Defense for three out of the four years before the war. This did not start in one day. Hamas did not build its power in a year. Hamas people, workers from Gaza started to get into Israel during the last government. I think we can take responsibility for not stopping it or not stopping it fast enough, but we did not start it. And suddenly the people that were in charge disappear. So of course the government, the sitting government is responsible. We are responsible, first and foremost, for taking care of the problem. We want to make sure that when we are leaving office, when our term ends, hopefully in 2026, we will leave Israel in a safer place than when we got it. That is our commitment and currently that is what we do.
In your speech you also talked about an experience you had at the University of California, Berkeley. Can you talk about that? And maybe can you contrast it with the reception you receive in Hungary?
In Berkeley, I was invited to speak there by the Federalist Society, which is a conservative group of lawyers and students in the US. And I was, of course, very happy for the invitation and to come, because the people that are of conservative legal thinking in Berkeley are in the minority and anything I can do to help them, I will do. As, I would say, expected, both the pro-Hamas mob—I would not say pro-Palestinian because it does not help the Palestinians what they do—from the far left in the US, together, sadly I must say, with the Israeli left, tried to stop me. But the people who were more violent were the pro-Hamas mob. They shut down the conversations, they pulled the fire alarm, they evacuated the entire building. But of course we continued. I met later with the students who wanted to hear from me in a different location. We had the conversations that we wanted to have to begin with.
Of course, in Hungary, the welcome and the love that the state of Israel gets are very different. So is the intolerance of the intolerance, which is the most important thing, because you don’t have to agree with everything I say, no one has to agree with everything I say, but the fact is that you are not tolerating intolerance. If you are not letting the violent people enjoy their free speech, like it happened in Berkeley, you are preventing the freedom of speech of the people who were not violent, that’s the main problem. And I think on that issue, Hungary got it right. It should not be tolerant of this intolerant mob.
‘In Hungary, the welcome and the love that the state of Israel gets are very different’
In terms of foreign policy, do you think the Orbán government has been effective in supporting Israel?
Of course, considering the support to Israel, in terms of votes and within the EU establishment, and all around, I believe Hungary is a great friend to Israel and Prime Minister Orbán is a great friend to Israel.
We, of course, appreciate what has been done. We are looking forward to the future. And we think that as many people here said, we have a lot to learn from each other, and we have a lot to benefit from this alliance. The fact that Hungary is one of the very few pro-Israel voices in the European continent and in the EU is something that we need to work on because, as we see in many places, if you are the enemy of Israel, you’re the enemy of the Jews, and you are the enemy of free speech and free thought all around the world. That’s why it’s important for everyone who wants to continue and live in this world to join forces and make sure that the right kind of approach wins. We will win elections all around Europe and get the right kind of ideologies in power that, again, do not tolerate the intolerance of the woke establishment.
Simcha Rothman is a sitting member of the Israeli Knesset, representing the National Religious Party–Religious Zionism, part of the governing Netanyahu administration. He has been serving in the national legislature since 2021. Mr Rothman recently travelled to Budapest, Hungary to speak at the second International Pro-Israel Summit, hosted by the Center for Fundamental Rights.
***
As a European, as I was following the news about the Hamas–Israel war, in July I had the impression the Western mainstream media made it seem like a lasting long-term peace was close when the two sides were starting to meet in Doha, Qatar. Was that the case to you as an insider? Was there a real chance of a peace agreement back in July?
I think that you can never have a peace agreement with Hamas. And there were no talks on peace agreements with Hamas ever, because Hamas’ ideology is to kill all the Jews. You cannot have peace with this. There were talks about a hostage deal that, in my point of view, of course, Hamas said no to, as to every deal that was on the table. And that’s common knowledge. I have to say, as a representative of the state of Israel, I can tell you that if there was a deal on the table that Israel agreed to, Hamas always said no. However, if you ask me about the right approach, in Israel I am the constant voice that says that even negotiating with Hamas makes the deal go further away. You should never negotiate with Hamas.
And I think what we saw in the past few months is just that. We negotiated with Hamas through indirect negotiations to try to get a hostage deal. Hamas will always say no, it’s a waste of time. It’s better to apply more and more and more pressure, military-wise, and maybe get the people who are holding the hostages to run for their lives and ask for small deals. But there is one thing they should know. And that’s—now I return to the formal stance of Israel—that after the war, Hamas will not exist in Gaza. We cannot have 7 October all over again. No normal country will ever agree to have its citizens threatened the way Israel was. Anyone who wants to reach the peace and quiet in the neighbourhood that Israel does, has to eliminate the forces who work every day to eliminate peace and quiet.
‘I think that you can never have a peace agreement with Hamas, because Hamas’ ideology is to kill all the Jews’
In your speech at the International Pro-Israel Summit, you mentioned that militarily there have been some Israeli successes lately. Can you elaborate on that, what were those successes?
So we all heard about getting rid of Nasrallah, for which, believe it or not, we were applauded by many, many Arabs in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, all around the world, because Nasrallah and Hezbollah have killed way more Arabs than they killed Jews. They are a threat to peace. They fight.
So the fact that Nasrallah has been killed means the world is a better place now than when Nasrallah was in this world. But it’s not only Nasrallah. The operations that took place in Lebanon and are happening as we speak now are eliminating Iran’s most powerful proxy. The threat to Israel through Iran’s proxies is unbearable, and Israel is dealing with them one at a time. We dealt with Hamas, and we will continue. They’re still not finished. Now we are dealing with Hezbollah. We dealt with the Houthi, and we will not rest until Israel is safe.
During wartime, the popularity of national leaders often increases. Do you think that was the case for Prime Minister Netanyahu? Do you think that he has more support now than he had before the Hamas attack last year?
I think in the beginning there was a blowback against the government, because it happened under our watch, despite the fact that my party and myself, but not only my party and myself, but also the leadership in the government were trying to change the course of the state of Israel. For many years, the course of the state of Israel was towards appeasement and accepting terror as part of reality, which we shouldn’t have agreed to to begin with. So, people were furious in the beginning that this attack happened on our watch. But as time goes by, I think more and more people see that the approach that the coalition, the right-wing coalition leads towards this war is the right way. They see the people in the opposition; that if the leader of the opposition would get his way, we would have a ceasefire with Hezbollah, we wouldn’t have assassinated Nasrallah, and Hezbollah would still be a bigger threat. The fact that Benjamin Netanyahu and the right-wing coalition are in power now means that I think the course of the war is way better than it could be under any other government.
Of course, I would like to see more done. I waited for the entrance to Rafah for three months. The pressure from the outside was terrible. We withstood this pressure, but it took us time. I think we are on the right path. And I think the public, as recent polls show, the public sees it.
Do you believe the previous administration has some culpability in the attack happening?
I think that the main thing about responsibility is that people who were part of the problem and made it even worse, they just run away from responsibility while claiming that we are not taking responsibility. The current government takes responsibility and deals with the problem. Benny Gantz from the last government was the Minister of Defense for three out of the four years before the war. This did not start in one day. Hamas did not build its power in a year. Hamas people, workers from Gaza started to get into Israel during the last government. I think we can take responsibility for not stopping it or not stopping it fast enough, but we did not start it. And suddenly the people that were in charge disappear. So of course the government, the sitting government is responsible. We are responsible, first and foremost, for taking care of the problem. We want to make sure that when we are leaving office, when our term ends, hopefully in 2026, we will leave Israel in a safer place than when we got it. That is our commitment and currently that is what we do.
In your speech you also talked about an experience you had at the University of California, Berkeley. Can you talk about that? And maybe can you contrast it with the reception you receive in Hungary?
In Berkeley, I was invited to speak there by the Federalist Society, which is a conservative group of lawyers and students in the US. And I was, of course, very happy for the invitation and to come, because the people that are of conservative legal thinking in Berkeley are in the minority and anything I can do to help them, I will do. As, I would say, expected, both the pro-Hamas mob—I would not say pro-Palestinian because it does not help the Palestinians what they do—from the far left in the US, together, sadly I must say, with the Israeli left, tried to stop me. But the people who were more violent were the pro-Hamas mob. They shut down the conversations, they pulled the fire alarm, they evacuated the entire building. But of course we continued. I met later with the students who wanted to hear from me in a different location. We had the conversations that we wanted to have to begin with.
Of course, in Hungary, the welcome and the love that the state of Israel gets are very different. So is the intolerance of the intolerance, which is the most important thing, because you don’t have to agree with everything I say, no one has to agree with everything I say, but the fact is that you are not tolerating intolerance. If you are not letting the violent people enjoy their free speech, like it happened in Berkeley, you are preventing the freedom of speech of the people who were not violent, that’s the main problem. And I think on that issue, Hungary got it right. It should not be tolerant of this intolerant mob.
‘In Hungary, the welcome and the love that the state of Israel gets are very different’
In terms of foreign policy, do you think the Orbán government has been effective in supporting Israel?
Of course, considering the support to Israel, in terms of votes and within the EU establishment, and all around, I believe Hungary is a great friend to Israel and Prime Minister Orbán is a great friend to Israel.
We, of course, appreciate what has been done. We are looking forward to the future. And we think that as many people here said, we have a lot to learn from each other, and we have a lot to benefit from this alliance. The fact that Hungary is one of the very few pro-Israel voices in the European continent and in the EU is something that we need to work on because, as we see in many places, if you are the enemy of Israel, you’re the enemy of the Jews, and you are the enemy of free speech and free thought all around the world. That’s why it’s important for everyone who wants to continue and live in this world to join forces and make sure that the right kind of approach wins. We will win elections all around Europe and get the right kind of ideologies in power that, again, do not tolerate the intolerance of the woke establishment.
Canada
Canada’s move away from Jewish state is ‘lamentable,’ says Israeli envoy
Israel's ambassador to Canada talks with JNS about the rise in antisemitism in the northern country, and Ottawa's move away from the Jewish state in the aftermath of Oct. 7, 2023.
In a sit-down with JNS at the Israeli embassy in Ottawa on Tuesday, Iddo Moed, Israel’s ambassador to Canada and top diplomatic representative in the country, discussed the rise in antisemitism in the country, as what he said was a concerning change of stance in Canadian policy towards the Jewish state.
Q: What are your thoughts on how Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has responded to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 terrorist attacks?
A: Trudeau has been very consistent. He said a few things that are very important for Israel. First, he reiterated Israel’s right to exist and its right to defend itself, calling for the release of all hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. He called for Hamas to lay down its weapons while making sure that Canada doesn’t see Hamas as part of the solution or the future of Gaza. At the same time, we saw a few things that are concerning to us, because of the very good relations we have with Canada and because of the shared values that were and still are at the foundation of our bilateral relations.
The shipment of goods that require export permits has been put under suspension, which we feel is a de facto embargo impeding not just the bilateral trade between our two countries but also the collaboration between Israeli and Canadian companies in the area of technology. This is lamentable.
[In September, Canada revealed that it had canceled around 30 existing permits for arms shipments to Israel, including a deal with the Canadian division of a U.S. defense contractor. The exports had been approved before January when Ottawa announced a ban on new sales of arms that could be used by the Israel Defense Forces in the war against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip.]
We also see in international organizations that Canada, which had a very clear policy of not allowing Israel to be singled out, has changed its policy in such a significant manner that at some point in time Hamas commended Canada for this stance.
[Last year, Trudeau received the equivalent of a high five from Hamas after Canada’s affirmative U.N. vote on Dec. 12 supporting an “immediate sustainable ceasefire” in Israel’s war against the terror group. In a five-minute English-language video statement posted on Dec. 18, Ghazi Hamad, a senior leader of the terror group, praised Canada, Australia and New Zealand by name.]
Most importantly, what is really concerning to us is the rise of antisemitism to levels that are not only unprecedented but go way beyond what people say and our disagreement within society. It’s the violent, intimidating, aggressive approach to Jewish institutions, Jewish communities, individuals—be it on universities and campuses or synagogues and schools being shot at.
What I’m hearing from the Jewish community is that they don’t feel secure. Even if the prime minister says that glorifying terrorism is not acceptable, there were talks of potentially holding a ceremony to glorify [slain Hamas leader] Yahya Sinwar by an organization condoned by the mayor [of Mississauga] and ahead of which the mayor herself went as far as to say Sinwar could be compared to Nelson Mandela.
Yahya Sinwar was responsible for the worst atrocities against the Jewish people since the Second World War. He is only comparable to Adolf Hitler. He cannot be compared to any kind of freedom fighter or anything else. His goal was to eliminate the State of Israel and kill as many Israelis as he could, Jews and non-Jews.
These are the very concerning developments in Canada. We’ve seen what happened on the streets of Amsterdam, and I think the Jewish community looks at the aggression here, the intimidation and the atmosphere, and they are very concerned. I can understand where they are coming from.
For the State of Israel, the relationship with the Jewish community is extremely important, and it’s also important for our bilateral relations. The Jewish community’s concern and support for Israel has always been part and parcel of the relationship between our two countries.
When the Jews feel uncomfortable or insecure, this is something that we also project to the leadership directly. The phenomenon of the rise of antisemitism, especially in Canada, which already accepted the international definition of antisemitism, the fact that antisemitism is growing and is so prevalent here is a great source of concern for us.
It’s happening under the current government and we share those concerns with them. We do whatever we can to develop programs to mitigate that, be it connecting law enforcement agencies in Israel and Canada, police forces, just to share with them our vision of combating antisemitism, experience, best practices and the like. We also connect Yad Vashem as an education resource with people who are interested in that here in Canada, and most importantly we point to areas where we think that a serious source of concern is coming up. We try to flag it and propose actions that involve Israeli contribution.
Q: What was your reaction to the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant?
A: I was shocked like many others at the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue those arrest warrants. [ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim] Khan’s request has no foundation and this decision has no merit and no jurisdiction. The court only has political motivation to come up with this legal mechanism that has been abused for the sake of attacking and isolating israel. Israel has a robust legal system proven to be able to address any issue at any level.
Neither Israel nor the Palestinians are members of the court.
I am disappointed. I have been speaking to legal experts who expressed their dismay, shock and disbelief that an international organ that is supposed to uphold international law has gone so far as to play an activist role against Israel, a country under attack and that is defending itself in accordance with international law.
At the end of the day, we see it as an attack not on our government and not on our democratically elected leader, we see it as an assault against Israel and its right to defend itself.
Q: What did you think of Canada voting on Nov. 20 in favor of U.N. General Assembly draft resolutions condemning Israeli settlements?
A: The resolutions Canada voted for have not changed anything. Canada’s change of position is lamentable. Canada supports Israel, we know that. We lament this change, which may reflect the image that Canada actually supports this activism against Israel and does not support the Jewish state at a time when it is defending itself against an assault by Iran and its proxies on seven fronts.
The U.N. has not been able to resolve any outstanding issues in the Middle East. It has only served those who aim to attack Israel again and again, and isolate it politically. It does not bring any peaceful resolution of the conflict.
Therefore it’s lamentable that Canada has joined this chorus of countries that play in the hands of extremist terrorists and the Iranian regime against Israel.
Q: Do you currently have ongoing projects meant to strengthen the link between the Israeli people and the Jewish community in Canada?
A: There are a lot of organizations that are very active. We don’t need to create something new. We strengthen what is already happening. We are present at festivities and milestones, and we’re behind the scenes talking to the leadership, the federations all around Canada and talking to specific organizations on specific issues—be it combating antisemitism, strengthening Jewish identity, strengthening solidarity with other communities and dialogue. There are a lot of areas where we try to support the existing collaboration or point at new initiatives but we don’t see the need to create new channels.
Our role is to strengthen it, be there and make sure the Jewish community sees us as part of the connection with the State of Israel, not just through the organizations but as the official representative of the State of Israel here in Canada. They need to see our presence, feel us, hear us, be there together. Having a physical presence is a very important aspect of the work that we do.
Q: Could you speak of the rise of antisemitism on campuses in Canada?
A: Antisemitism on campuses is very worrying. Just lately we have seen some very odd developments including Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur for the West Bank, a self-declared antisemite who was not received by any government official in Canada, speaking on campus. We saw [former Israeli government spokesman] Eylon Levy chased out of another university and Hassan Diab, a convicted terrorist, teaching at a university here in Ottawa without any trouble, and many other instances that are concerning.
[According to a report released in September by antisemitism watchdog Canary Mission, nearly 250 people, including 153 professors, 19 students and 76 others, took part in or endorsed a nearly two-month-long anti-Israel encampment that began on the University of Toronto campus in early May. Of the 153 faculty members, 122 were professors at the public school and 31 were on faculty at other institutions, per the report.]
Even if we don’t see the encampments, the vile antisemitic, anti-Israel sentiment is there, and since campuses are our future we have to make sure that younger people have a broader understanding of what we’re talking about when we talk about antisemitism and bring issues into perspective. They need to get their news sources right. Much of the social media and the information spreading there is causing them to believe in some of the craziest things, and that’s another area where much needs to be done.
Q: At the entrance to the embassy, there are posters of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Could you talk about your relationship with the families of the hostages?
A: The daughter of [Hamas captive] Judy Weinstein was here a few days ago. She met with politicians here on the hill. We supported that, and we also carry on her work. She was here to remind the world that her mother was murdered on Oct. 7 and her body abducted to Gaza, and that it needs to be brought back. She’s one of the eight Canadian casualties in this war. We, of course, stay in touch with them, either here in Ottawa or through our offices in Montreal and Toronto.
We keep in touch with the families. We try to involve them as much as we can in our activities and reach out to them but also call on the broader community not to forget, to remember the kids, the Bibas kids who I’m wearing an orange tie for, and remember that we have to call for their release. Israel will not stop the war in Gaza until we get our hostages back. Nobody in Israel can truly rest until they are home.
We see the Jewish community very much involved in that. It’s very easy to continue with our lives and say that ‘it’s important, but there are a whole lot of other things.’ We can’t do that, we can’t say that what happened 410 days ago is history. That day is still happening for the families in Israel who relive it every hour. We have to remember as a people that we don’t forget anyone and we don’t leave anybody behind. We want them back. We want them home.
We ask the Canadian government to do whatever they can. We repeat that in our meetings at the highest levels, and we want to make sure that people remember that they are still there, that they need to come home and that we need to do everything we can to extract and liberate them.
Q: The Israeli Knesset recently passed legislation banning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) from operating in the country. What do you think of Canada’s relation to UNRWA?
A: UNRWA is an organization that was set up by Palestinians, run by Palestinians and aimed at prolonging the wish of Palestinians to return to what is Israel now—for Israel to cease to exist.
UNRWA is a threat to the State of Israel in the way that they educate. We’ve shown that and many organizations have shown that in the past. They are not only educating about hating Jews but telling a narrative which is about the destruction of the State of Israel. Funding UNRWA means actually destroying any kind of a peaceful solution between the Jews and Arabs, and Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East.
We don’t really understand how a country like Canada can support the idea of a two-state solution and at the same time fund UNRWA. It’s either one or the other. When Canada froze the funding, we applauded that because we believe that there should be other alternatives. That was back in February. We propose to Canada and many other countries to seek alternatives.
There are so many other organizations around the world that support refugees and help them and solve their problems within a few years, but this organization exists for 75 years and they haven’t done anything to resolve the [Palestinians’] refugee status. They created fourth and fifth generations of refugees, which do not exist anywhere else around the world. A similar organization existed in Korea and was dismantled because they solved that problem for Korean refugees, but this organization is actually contravening any kind of a peaceful solution between Israelis and Palestinians.
We believe that they should be defunded and that all the other U.N. organizations that Israel works with on a daily basis, like UNHCR, the World Food Program and all the organizations that coordinate with the Israel Defense Forces on how to work in the Gaza Strip, should take over from UNRWA.
UNRWA today is only responsible for a small amount of the food distributed among Palestinians. We know however that Hamas and criminal gangs are taking over supplies and selling them on the market. That’s why much of it is not getting where it is supposed to. We also know [it can] no longer be responsible for Gaza’s education system, because it actually will determine the future of coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, and UNRWA is part of the problem, not the solution.
Q: What can you tell us about Canadian behavior and voting patterns at the United Nations?
A: We see a change as I noted before. Instead of objecting to singling Israel out they actually took on sort of a more neutral position, and other countries look at that and see the change in Canada’s policy, and they draw conclusions from it, including that Israel is being isolated.
It’s not about the content of those resolutions, because they don’t change anything on the ground. They are a political assault on Israel, just like terrorism is a physical assault on Israel, and allowing that to take place does not bring about any sort of peaceful resolution to the conflict. It only brings about a siege mentality which is not conducive to finding any kind of solution.
Canada has moved away. We think it’s wrong, we told that to the government on numerous occasions and we are looking forward to the time when it will change. There are occasions when Canada does stick with Israel in international organizations, international forums, but again we see a change that is lamentable in our eyes.
[In September, Canada abstained from a vote on a U.N. General Assembly resolution calling on the IDF to withdraw completely from Judea and Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip within 12 months. The resolution also banned the sale to the IDF of any military equipment that could reasonably be expected to be used in the disputed territories and called for a boycott of all Israeli products from those territories.]
At the end of the day, what we’re looking for is not necessarily for them to support Israel all of the time. Every country has its own considerations. But we do think that countries have to realize what we’re dealing with.
Hamas is not the Palestinian people, Hamas is out there to destroy Israel, and rewarding Hamas by changing voting patterns in the United Nations is wrong. Hamas was very satisfied that Canada changed. They feel they caused Canada to move away from Israel and in their eyes, that’s a success.
We are looking forward to a time when Canada will return to its pattern of the past and we believe that can be achieved because it’s the right thing to do. Stopping funding for UNRWA and seeking alternatives is something we are very much looking for. Israel is looking for alternatives but the international community should also be looking for alternatives.
Changes need to take place with regard to UNRWA just like with the Palestinian Authority, which has not condemned the atrocities of Oct. 7. It actually does not create an alternative for the Palestinian people to live peacefully. The P.A. does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and so working with the current P.A. is also wrong.
Some things need to change on the government side in Canada in terms of its approach for it to be conducive to a peaceful resolution of the conflict, and we don’t see enough of this.
Q: Do you have any relations with the head of the opposition?
A: We maintain good relations with all parties that are interested in maintaining good contacts with Israel, but it’s an internal affair. We try to stay away from internal politics. It’s complicated enough in Israel, let alone here. What we are seeking is public support for Israel.
We believe that the greatest majority of Canadians support Israel, stand with Israel and want to tell us that on a regular basis. I think Prime Minister Trudeau also supports Israel, and he said that and repeated that on the occasion of Oct. 7. He said it very clearly. He is also responsible for the government’s actions, and that’s where our differences are.
Canada supports Israel. It has always been the case, and we have full confidence that it will continue to be like that. What we are discussing is how to mitigate current crises in the Middle East but also how we together with local authorities can support the fight against antisemitism. Jewish communities and institutions feel that they are under threat and the number [who feel this way] is growing. That is a source of concern and we work together with Canadian authorities on that.
Q: Canada just foiled an attempt to assassinate [former Canadian justice minister] Irwin Cotler. What was your reaction?
A: According to reports, there are Iranian elements involved. In our part of the world, Iran is the head of the snake; they are running all these proxies, they have created seven fronts that confront Israel right now in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, the Houthis in Yemen. We are not surprised that Iran may be involved in this assassination attempt as well.
We know, including from the director of National Intelligence in the United States, that Iranians are also involved in campus activities and supporting [anti-Israel] encampments. When the government designated [Iran’s Islamic] Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terror organization, we believed it was the right move.
Iran and Canada have huge differences. We have known that for a long time, without any connection to Israel. It’s not surprising that Iran is involved here. We live in dangerous times, and that’s very unfortunate, and so it’s good to know the Canadian authorities have been able to foil such an attempt.
We just wish these kinds of elements would disappear so that we can live peacefully so that communities can come together and support each other in a way that’s really helpful for our societies to strengthen our values of freedom, tolerance and mutual respect. That is what we need and what’s really important at this time of differences.
Israel's ambassador to Canada talks with JNS about the rise in antisemitism in the northern country, and Ottawa's move away from the Jewish state in the aftermath of Oct. 7, 2023.
In a sit-down with JNS at the Israeli embassy in Ottawa on Tuesday, Iddo Moed, Israel’s ambassador to Canada and top diplomatic representative in the country, discussed the rise in antisemitism in the country, as what he said was a concerning change of stance in Canadian policy towards the Jewish state.
Q: What are your thoughts on how Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has responded to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 terrorist attacks?
A: Trudeau has been very consistent. He said a few things that are very important for Israel. First, he reiterated Israel’s right to exist and its right to defend itself, calling for the release of all hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. He called for Hamas to lay down its weapons while making sure that Canada doesn’t see Hamas as part of the solution or the future of Gaza. At the same time, we saw a few things that are concerning to us, because of the very good relations we have with Canada and because of the shared values that were and still are at the foundation of our bilateral relations.
The shipment of goods that require export permits has been put under suspension, which we feel is a de facto embargo impeding not just the bilateral trade between our two countries but also the collaboration between Israeli and Canadian companies in the area of technology. This is lamentable.
[In September, Canada revealed that it had canceled around 30 existing permits for arms shipments to Israel, including a deal with the Canadian division of a U.S. defense contractor. The exports had been approved before January when Ottawa announced a ban on new sales of arms that could be used by the Israel Defense Forces in the war against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip.]
We also see in international organizations that Canada, which had a very clear policy of not allowing Israel to be singled out, has changed its policy in such a significant manner that at some point in time Hamas commended Canada for this stance.
[Last year, Trudeau received the equivalent of a high five from Hamas after Canada’s affirmative U.N. vote on Dec. 12 supporting an “immediate sustainable ceasefire” in Israel’s war against the terror group. In a five-minute English-language video statement posted on Dec. 18, Ghazi Hamad, a senior leader of the terror group, praised Canada, Australia and New Zealand by name.]
Most importantly, what is really concerning to us is the rise of antisemitism to levels that are not only unprecedented but go way beyond what people say and our disagreement within society. It’s the violent, intimidating, aggressive approach to Jewish institutions, Jewish communities, individuals—be it on universities and campuses or synagogues and schools being shot at.
What I’m hearing from the Jewish community is that they don’t feel secure. Even if the prime minister says that glorifying terrorism is not acceptable, there were talks of potentially holding a ceremony to glorify [slain Hamas leader] Yahya Sinwar by an organization condoned by the mayor [of Mississauga] and ahead of which the mayor herself went as far as to say Sinwar could be compared to Nelson Mandela.
Yahya Sinwar was responsible for the worst atrocities against the Jewish people since the Second World War. He is only comparable to Adolf Hitler. He cannot be compared to any kind of freedom fighter or anything else. His goal was to eliminate the State of Israel and kill as many Israelis as he could, Jews and non-Jews.
These are the very concerning developments in Canada. We’ve seen what happened on the streets of Amsterdam, and I think the Jewish community looks at the aggression here, the intimidation and the atmosphere, and they are very concerned. I can understand where they are coming from.
For the State of Israel, the relationship with the Jewish community is extremely important, and it’s also important for our bilateral relations. The Jewish community’s concern and support for Israel has always been part and parcel of the relationship between our two countries.
When the Jews feel uncomfortable or insecure, this is something that we also project to the leadership directly. The phenomenon of the rise of antisemitism, especially in Canada, which already accepted the international definition of antisemitism, the fact that antisemitism is growing and is so prevalent here is a great source of concern for us.
It’s happening under the current government and we share those concerns with them. We do whatever we can to develop programs to mitigate that, be it connecting law enforcement agencies in Israel and Canada, police forces, just to share with them our vision of combating antisemitism, experience, best practices and the like. We also connect Yad Vashem as an education resource with people who are interested in that here in Canada, and most importantly we point to areas where we think that a serious source of concern is coming up. We try to flag it and propose actions that involve Israeli contribution.
Q: What was your reaction to the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant?
A: I was shocked like many others at the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue those arrest warrants. [ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim] Khan’s request has no foundation and this decision has no merit and no jurisdiction. The court only has political motivation to come up with this legal mechanism that has been abused for the sake of attacking and isolating israel. Israel has a robust legal system proven to be able to address any issue at any level.
Neither Israel nor the Palestinians are members of the court.
I am disappointed. I have been speaking to legal experts who expressed their dismay, shock and disbelief that an international organ that is supposed to uphold international law has gone so far as to play an activist role against Israel, a country under attack and that is defending itself in accordance with international law.
At the end of the day, we see it as an attack not on our government and not on our democratically elected leader, we see it as an assault against Israel and its right to defend itself.
Q: What did you think of Canada voting on Nov. 20 in favor of U.N. General Assembly draft resolutions condemning Israeli settlements?
A: The resolutions Canada voted for have not changed anything. Canada’s change of position is lamentable. Canada supports Israel, we know that. We lament this change, which may reflect the image that Canada actually supports this activism against Israel and does not support the Jewish state at a time when it is defending itself against an assault by Iran and its proxies on seven fronts.
The U.N. has not been able to resolve any outstanding issues in the Middle East. It has only served those who aim to attack Israel again and again, and isolate it politically. It does not bring any peaceful resolution of the conflict.
Therefore it’s lamentable that Canada has joined this chorus of countries that play in the hands of extremist terrorists and the Iranian regime against Israel.
Q: Do you currently have ongoing projects meant to strengthen the link between the Israeli people and the Jewish community in Canada?
A: There are a lot of organizations that are very active. We don’t need to create something new. We strengthen what is already happening. We are present at festivities and milestones, and we’re behind the scenes talking to the leadership, the federations all around Canada and talking to specific organizations on specific issues—be it combating antisemitism, strengthening Jewish identity, strengthening solidarity with other communities and dialogue. There are a lot of areas where we try to support the existing collaboration or point at new initiatives but we don’t see the need to create new channels.
Our role is to strengthen it, be there and make sure the Jewish community sees us as part of the connection with the State of Israel, not just through the organizations but as the official representative of the State of Israel here in Canada. They need to see our presence, feel us, hear us, be there together. Having a physical presence is a very important aspect of the work that we do.
Q: Could you speak of the rise of antisemitism on campuses in Canada?
A: Antisemitism on campuses is very worrying. Just lately we have seen some very odd developments including Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur for the West Bank, a self-declared antisemite who was not received by any government official in Canada, speaking on campus. We saw [former Israeli government spokesman] Eylon Levy chased out of another university and Hassan Diab, a convicted terrorist, teaching at a university here in Ottawa without any trouble, and many other instances that are concerning.
[According to a report released in September by antisemitism watchdog Canary Mission, nearly 250 people, including 153 professors, 19 students and 76 others, took part in or endorsed a nearly two-month-long anti-Israel encampment that began on the University of Toronto campus in early May. Of the 153 faculty members, 122 were professors at the public school and 31 were on faculty at other institutions, per the report.]
Even if we don’t see the encampments, the vile antisemitic, anti-Israel sentiment is there, and since campuses are our future we have to make sure that younger people have a broader understanding of what we’re talking about when we talk about antisemitism and bring issues into perspective. They need to get their news sources right. Much of the social media and the information spreading there is causing them to believe in some of the craziest things, and that’s another area where much needs to be done.
Q: At the entrance to the embassy, there are posters of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Could you talk about your relationship with the families of the hostages?
A: The daughter of [Hamas captive] Judy Weinstein was here a few days ago. She met with politicians here on the hill. We supported that, and we also carry on her work. She was here to remind the world that her mother was murdered on Oct. 7 and her body abducted to Gaza, and that it needs to be brought back. She’s one of the eight Canadian casualties in this war. We, of course, stay in touch with them, either here in Ottawa or through our offices in Montreal and Toronto.
We keep in touch with the families. We try to involve them as much as we can in our activities and reach out to them but also call on the broader community not to forget, to remember the kids, the Bibas kids who I’m wearing an orange tie for, and remember that we have to call for their release. Israel will not stop the war in Gaza until we get our hostages back. Nobody in Israel can truly rest until they are home.
We see the Jewish community very much involved in that. It’s very easy to continue with our lives and say that ‘it’s important, but there are a whole lot of other things.’ We can’t do that, we can’t say that what happened 410 days ago is history. That day is still happening for the families in Israel who relive it every hour. We have to remember as a people that we don’t forget anyone and we don’t leave anybody behind. We want them back. We want them home.
We ask the Canadian government to do whatever they can. We repeat that in our meetings at the highest levels, and we want to make sure that people remember that they are still there, that they need to come home and that we need to do everything we can to extract and liberate them.
Q: The Israeli Knesset recently passed legislation banning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) from operating in the country. What do you think of Canada’s relation to UNRWA?
A: UNRWA is an organization that was set up by Palestinians, run by Palestinians and aimed at prolonging the wish of Palestinians to return to what is Israel now—for Israel to cease to exist.
UNRWA is a threat to the State of Israel in the way that they educate. We’ve shown that and many organizations have shown that in the past. They are not only educating about hating Jews but telling a narrative which is about the destruction of the State of Israel. Funding UNRWA means actually destroying any kind of a peaceful solution between the Jews and Arabs, and Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East.
We don’t really understand how a country like Canada can support the idea of a two-state solution and at the same time fund UNRWA. It’s either one or the other. When Canada froze the funding, we applauded that because we believe that there should be other alternatives. That was back in February. We propose to Canada and many other countries to seek alternatives.
There are so many other organizations around the world that support refugees and help them and solve their problems within a few years, but this organization exists for 75 years and they haven’t done anything to resolve the [Palestinians’] refugee status. They created fourth and fifth generations of refugees, which do not exist anywhere else around the world. A similar organization existed in Korea and was dismantled because they solved that problem for Korean refugees, but this organization is actually contravening any kind of a peaceful solution between Israelis and Palestinians.
We believe that they should be defunded and that all the other U.N. organizations that Israel works with on a daily basis, like UNHCR, the World Food Program and all the organizations that coordinate with the Israel Defense Forces on how to work in the Gaza Strip, should take over from UNRWA.
UNRWA today is only responsible for a small amount of the food distributed among Palestinians. We know however that Hamas and criminal gangs are taking over supplies and selling them on the market. That’s why much of it is not getting where it is supposed to. We also know [it can] no longer be responsible for Gaza’s education system, because it actually will determine the future of coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, and UNRWA is part of the problem, not the solution.
Q: What can you tell us about Canadian behavior and voting patterns at the United Nations?
A: We see a change as I noted before. Instead of objecting to singling Israel out they actually took on sort of a more neutral position, and other countries look at that and see the change in Canada’s policy, and they draw conclusions from it, including that Israel is being isolated.
It’s not about the content of those resolutions, because they don’t change anything on the ground. They are a political assault on Israel, just like terrorism is a physical assault on Israel, and allowing that to take place does not bring about any sort of peaceful resolution to the conflict. It only brings about a siege mentality which is not conducive to finding any kind of solution.
Canada has moved away. We think it’s wrong, we told that to the government on numerous occasions and we are looking forward to the time when it will change. There are occasions when Canada does stick with Israel in international organizations, international forums, but again we see a change that is lamentable in our eyes.
[In September, Canada abstained from a vote on a U.N. General Assembly resolution calling on the IDF to withdraw completely from Judea and Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip within 12 months. The resolution also banned the sale to the IDF of any military equipment that could reasonably be expected to be used in the disputed territories and called for a boycott of all Israeli products from those territories.]
At the end of the day, what we’re looking for is not necessarily for them to support Israel all of the time. Every country has its own considerations. But we do think that countries have to realize what we’re dealing with.
Hamas is not the Palestinian people, Hamas is out there to destroy Israel, and rewarding Hamas by changing voting patterns in the United Nations is wrong. Hamas was very satisfied that Canada changed. They feel they caused Canada to move away from Israel and in their eyes, that’s a success.
We are looking forward to a time when Canada will return to its pattern of the past and we believe that can be achieved because it’s the right thing to do. Stopping funding for UNRWA and seeking alternatives is something we are very much looking for. Israel is looking for alternatives but the international community should also be looking for alternatives.
Changes need to take place with regard to UNRWA just like with the Palestinian Authority, which has not condemned the atrocities of Oct. 7. It actually does not create an alternative for the Palestinian people to live peacefully. The P.A. does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and so working with the current P.A. is also wrong.
Some things need to change on the government side in Canada in terms of its approach for it to be conducive to a peaceful resolution of the conflict, and we don’t see enough of this.
Q: Do you have any relations with the head of the opposition?
A: We maintain good relations with all parties that are interested in maintaining good contacts with Israel, but it’s an internal affair. We try to stay away from internal politics. It’s complicated enough in Israel, let alone here. What we are seeking is public support for Israel.
We believe that the greatest majority of Canadians support Israel, stand with Israel and want to tell us that on a regular basis. I think Prime Minister Trudeau also supports Israel, and he said that and repeated that on the occasion of Oct. 7. He said it very clearly. He is also responsible for the government’s actions, and that’s where our differences are.
Canada supports Israel. It has always been the case, and we have full confidence that it will continue to be like that. What we are discussing is how to mitigate current crises in the Middle East but also how we together with local authorities can support the fight against antisemitism. Jewish communities and institutions feel that they are under threat and the number [who feel this way] is growing. That is a source of concern and we work together with Canadian authorities on that.
Q: Canada just foiled an attempt to assassinate [former Canadian justice minister] Irwin Cotler. What was your reaction?
A: According to reports, there are Iranian elements involved. In our part of the world, Iran is the head of the snake; they are running all these proxies, they have created seven fronts that confront Israel right now in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, the Houthis in Yemen. We are not surprised that Iran may be involved in this assassination attempt as well.
We know, including from the director of National Intelligence in the United States, that Iranians are also involved in campus activities and supporting [anti-Israel] encampments. When the government designated [Iran’s Islamic] Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terror organization, we believed it was the right move.
Iran and Canada have huge differences. We have known that for a long time, without any connection to Israel. It’s not surprising that Iran is involved here. We live in dangerous times, and that’s very unfortunate, and so it’s good to know the Canadian authorities have been able to foil such an attempt.
We just wish these kinds of elements would disappear so that we can live peacefully so that communities can come together and support each other in a way that’s really helpful for our societies to strengthen our values of freedom, tolerance and mutual respect. That is what we need and what’s really important at this time of differences.
Greece
Greece Supports Pro-Palestine UN Resolution, Explains Stance to Israel
ATHENS – Greece voted in favor of a nonbinding UN resolution on September 18 demanding that Israel end its “unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory” within a year. The document is based on the opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague regarding Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank. In light of the continual deepening and strengthening of Greece-Israel relations – including military cooperation and support – the Greek government issued a statement explaining its vote, emphasizing its obligation to support the ICJ.
The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted the resolution, which the New York Times described as “a significant but symbolic move that highlighted growing international condemnation of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people… The resolution was approved by a vote of 124 to 14, with Israel and the United States in opposition and 43 other nations abstaining. The decision followed a landmark opinion issued in July by the International Court of Justice, the world’s highest court, which said that Israel’s occupation violated international law and should end ‘as rapidly as possible.’”
The Times added that “the resolution was the first to be put forth by Palestine, a U.N. nonmember observer state, since it was granted new diplomatic privileges by the Assembly in May. The Assembly granted those privileges after the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution that would have recognized full membership for a Palestinian state in April.”
The resolution demands that Israel withdraw all military forces and evacuate settlers from the occupied territory and calls on nations to halt the transfer of weapons to Israel if there are reasonable grounds to believe they may be used there, and also to halt the imports of “any products originating in the Israeli settlements.”
A spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, Oren Marmorstein, said on social media that it was “disconnected from reality, encourages terrorism and harms the chances for peace,” also accusing the Palestinian Authority of being interested only in “defaming” and harming Israel.
Greece Had Some Explaining to Do
Citing “well-informed sources” Kathimerini said “the Greek vote was dictated by two main considerations: first, because Greece enters the UN Security Council as a non-permanent member from January 1, and hence there is a need to maintain good relations with the states of the so-called Global South, with Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis scheduled to have dozens of meetings in New York next week ahead of the new year. Secondly, Athens firmly supports international justice and in this particular case the UN decision is also based on the opinion of the ICJ regarding the occupied territories. In short, Greece took a principled stand, as Greek diplomacy defends international law as a tool of universal and not selective application.”
Prior to the vote Greece informed Israel of its intentions given the importance of the strategic relations of the two countries. The explanation noted everything that Greek diplomacy has supported since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, including references to the release of the hostages and the security of Israel.
“However, Greece decided to vote in favor of the resolution based on Greece’s undivided support for international law and the institution that embodies it, the ICJ,” Kathimerini noted, adding that “the explanation said further that it is Greece’s belief that the work of the ICJ must be protected, even in the event of a dispute. International law and the rule of law are at the heart of the United Nations Charter and serve as a shield against all forms of violations, it said.”
The following EU member-states voted in favor of the resolution: Greece, the Republic of Cyprus, Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, Portugal, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovenia, Spain, Estonia and Latvia. Twelve countries abstained: Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Croatia, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden and Lithuania. The Czech Republic and Hungary voted against.
ATHENS – Greece voted in favor of a nonbinding UN resolution on September 18 demanding that Israel end its “unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory” within a year. The document is based on the opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague regarding Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank. In light of the continual deepening and strengthening of Greece-Israel relations – including military cooperation and support – the Greek government issued a statement explaining its vote, emphasizing its obligation to support the ICJ.
The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted the resolution, which the New York Times described as “a significant but symbolic move that highlighted growing international condemnation of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people… The resolution was approved by a vote of 124 to 14, with Israel and the United States in opposition and 43 other nations abstaining. The decision followed a landmark opinion issued in July by the International Court of Justice, the world’s highest court, which said that Israel’s occupation violated international law and should end ‘as rapidly as possible.’”
The Times added that “the resolution was the first to be put forth by Palestine, a U.N. nonmember observer state, since it was granted new diplomatic privileges by the Assembly in May. The Assembly granted those privileges after the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution that would have recognized full membership for a Palestinian state in April.”
The resolution demands that Israel withdraw all military forces and evacuate settlers from the occupied territory and calls on nations to halt the transfer of weapons to Israel if there are reasonable grounds to believe they may be used there, and also to halt the imports of “any products originating in the Israeli settlements.”
A spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, Oren Marmorstein, said on social media that it was “disconnected from reality, encourages terrorism and harms the chances for peace,” also accusing the Palestinian Authority of being interested only in “defaming” and harming Israel.
Greece Had Some Explaining to Do
Citing “well-informed sources” Kathimerini said “the Greek vote was dictated by two main considerations: first, because Greece enters the UN Security Council as a non-permanent member from January 1, and hence there is a need to maintain good relations with the states of the so-called Global South, with Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis scheduled to have dozens of meetings in New York next week ahead of the new year. Secondly, Athens firmly supports international justice and in this particular case the UN decision is also based on the opinion of the ICJ regarding the occupied territories. In short, Greece took a principled stand, as Greek diplomacy defends international law as a tool of universal and not selective application.”
Prior to the vote Greece informed Israel of its intentions given the importance of the strategic relations of the two countries. The explanation noted everything that Greek diplomacy has supported since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, including references to the release of the hostages and the security of Israel.
“However, Greece decided to vote in favor of the resolution based on Greece’s undivided support for international law and the institution that embodies it, the ICJ,” Kathimerini noted, adding that “the explanation said further that it is Greece’s belief that the work of the ICJ must be protected, even in the event of a dispute. International law and the rule of law are at the heart of the United Nations Charter and serve as a shield against all forms of violations, it said.”
The following EU member-states voted in favor of the resolution: Greece, the Republic of Cyprus, Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, Portugal, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovenia, Spain, Estonia and Latvia. Twelve countries abstained: Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Croatia, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden and Lithuania. The Czech Republic and Hungary voted against.
Israeli House
"Israeli House NET" represents a new methodology in public diplomacy (hasbara) that enables optimal and effective hasbara and the means of building bilateral bridges.
The idea arose in 2012 due to the attitude towards Israel in the United Nations by its founder, Itsik Moshe, who was the first representative of the Jewish Agency in the USSR.
It was decided to create a pilot plan in Georgia with the participation of Israeli parliamentarians, public opinion leaders and international organizations. After the pilot plan, the goal is to establish a hundred representative offices, the ideological spirit of which will come from Jerusalem, without financial support from the Israeli government.
To implement all this, the Israeli House cooperates with: WZO, EAI, GIL & AEPJ under auspices of the Council of Europe.
Although the central idea of the Israeli House is to represent the real Israel, the hasbara, the pilot project showed us that the representation of the real Israel made it easier for other countries to establish bilateral ties.
Activities
Find out about the news about the ISRAEL-HAMAS war
If you are part of humanity and you have humanity, be on Israel's side
Georgia, Israel, World Jewry – 35 Years Since the Beginning of Relations
A delegation led by the head of the friendship group of the Israeli parliament and the chairman of the Knesset economy committee is to visit Georgia.
The delegation will be hosted by the “Israeli House” and the Israel-Georgia Chamber of Business.
Anti-Semitism and the law against anti-Semitism
According to the German legislation, Nazi's propaganda and sharing the ideology of Fascism is punishable. Even posting and sharing it on social media provides appropriate sanctions. Germany condemns hate speeches, in which antisemitic ideology can be implied.
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